#and honestly some people are better equipped to be empathetic to those in need of mental help

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Something Held | Feeding Habits Update #8

Hi all!

Not me not realizing it’s been 3 months since I posted a Feeding Habits update hahahahahaha. Today let’s chat chapter nine, SOMETHING HELD. This also marks the last chapter in Harrison’s POV so prepare to say goodbye to this icon!  TW: body horror, mental illness, trauma

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Scene outline, excerpts & a little reflection on making difficult decisions that my not particularly benefit the book but benefit you as the writer under the cut because this update is GIGANTIC.

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed):

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting​, @aetherwrites​

Scene Breakdown

Scene A:

It has been two weeks since Lonan found Harrison at his shared apartment with Suzanna and things are getting strange. Lonan and Suz are getting closer, Harrison is getting more distant and slowly losing it. One morning, Harrison wakes hearing Lonan and Suz’s laughter, and crawls to the kitchen to investigate. When he reaches them, Suz is evening out Lonan’s hacked haircut and they’re both sobbing.

Scene B:

Shortly after this bizarre encounter, Suzanna steps out of the apartment for a breather because her son is sort of terrifying her! So Lonan and Harrison double-team to clean up Lonan’s hair shavings. Harrison begins eating the hair while Lonan stares and they have a conversation about the state of their friendship.

Scene Ba:

This scene is gross and confusing! More hair is ingested. My god.

Scene Bb:

After the above ordeal, both boys rinse off because they’ve been rolling?? around?? in??? hair?? but also?? things don’t stop being a little gross

Scene C:

An air of calm finally settles over the apartment. Lonan brews earl grey tea for him and Harrison to share and Harrison asks if he abandoned Lonan in the final chapter of Moth Work. Lonan doesn’t really answer this question so Harrison continues on his confused, but finally lucid (one-sided) conversation, admitting he understands he burdens his mother, who still has not returned. They circle back to the question of abandonment and Lonan answers Harrison the way he wants to be answered (yes), and this is a moment of freeing, where he feels some sort of responsibility in this irresponsible new life he’s led in NYC. They sort of agree to be friends again.

Scene D:

The boys head into the city to find Suzanna, heading to a bakery near the Hudson River. Lonan drives in his used car, a strange experience since Harrison has not seen him drive in years. Taking the opportunity, he searches through the car and finds a map in the glove compartment. The map is erratically scribbled over and it takes him to moment to realize this is Lonan’s map and the first indication that Lonan, who he has assumed is this stable, perfect person, is not as unscathed as he seems.

The boys pass the waterfront and Lonan nearly crashes the car into an oncoming truck. Harrison regains control of the vehicle tucking them into a side street. Shaken, Lonan apologizes for the mess he’s created both physically from his nosebleed and between Harrison and his mother, which gets Harrison a little antsy because he doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s going to leave. Lonan clarifies, stating he won’t if that’s what Harrison wants.

Scene E:

Later, everyone is back at home and Harrison wakes up to a Lonan-less bed. He gets up to investigate the strange dripping coming from the bathroom and opens the door to find Lonan precariously teetering over a sink filled with water. Harrison, concerned, moves him away and tries to ask why Lonan is presumably going underwater, but doesn’t push. They both stand on opposite sides of the bathroom until the sun rises.

My process:

Honestly, writing this chapter was a huge up and down. The first half of it came much easier to me, but the rest was a literal hellfire to get through. I think I was incredibly fatigued with writing in Harrison’s POV as I’d been writing it since June (I finished this chapter in either December or January). This book has been a pain in the ass to write despite me liking what it is, and I really think it being the only place I’ve physically “gone” since the pandemic makes it even harder to write. I felt claustrophobic in Harrison’s POV since I’ve been writing it for half a year, and in a lil ~breakdown~ my beautiful sister reminded me of something she’d previously told me, “it's not about what works, it's about what you want”.

Let’s chat about this for a sec! I think I was watching a Harmony Nice video on her “hard-to-swallow” self-care, and she basically outline (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s critical we care for ourselves in ways that might not necessarily be easy to do. Honestly, leaving Harrison’s POV is one of those hard-to-swallow self-care things I literally had to do because my mental health was not happy with me! Y’all know my boys are very close to me, and I’m not picking favourites but Lonan is 2500 times easier for me to write with at the moment. I think Harrison’s situation and how he deals with it is much too similar to mine but in a way that is difficult to place (Lonan and I are unfortunately similar but in a way that is easier for me to understand about myself!). From the beginning of writing his POV I’ve been in Struggleville, but kept pushing through hoping the next chapter would be “the one”. Not to burst my own bubble but there is no such thing in the state of mind I was in! I was pushing myself to find something that doesn’t exist because my brain was really not equipped to do what I needed it to do. I really, really did not want to quit on Harrison’s POV, but I had to, not because I don’t like him (he’s my baby) but because I needed a moment to myself. I felt way too seen in ways I don’t really know how to address in myself, so writing him was horribly frustrating at all times (my fault, not his).

My characters really do live in my head rent-free lol. They live in there! They take up space! They take up energy! They take up concentration, and resources I need for myself! Empathy is so integral to my process, that I give a little part of myself in everything I write. This is a blessing because I really get to dig my heels into the mind of another person, but a curse because I’m not a machine (and sometimes I forget that). It is a lot of emotional energy and labour to give everything you have to fictional people. I don’t think an artist needs to be tortured to create good art (this is not it!) but I never truly practiced this well? In my attempt to be empathetic, I was torturing myself a little bit, not going to lie!

So to combat this, I decided I needed a change. Hence, this chapter is imperfect and probably needs some stuff added to it, and while I’ve only written little of Lonan’s second POV, I’m feeling a lot better! It’s nice to get “outside” in a different place lmao this is so sad (pandemic writing things).

Excerpts:

I wrote the beginning of this in a livestream I hosted on my YouTube channel! There’s also a shoutout here to my dragon tree Lisa <3 miss u boo

Two weeks go by. Lonan sleeps on the couch. Harrison wakes up at dawn—no earlier, no later. Suzanna buys a plant: a Madagascar dragon tree she names Lisa. June grows into the collar. Lonan plays sudoku in the newspaper. Harrison learns to bake focaccia, gluten-free, whole wheat. Suzanna learns to palm read, tells Lonan he’s experienced great betrayal (they stop the reading immediately; Lonan goes back to the newspapers). Harrison begins burning incense at sunrise—frankincense. The dragon tree nearly dies (Lonan saves it). It rains every weekday that contains the letter T. Lonan shifts stacks of soggy newspapers onto the breakfast table, answers crosswords with the help of Suzanna (four across, nine letters, Something held). Harrison burns a baguette. Suzanna buys a hanging basket of pothos. The power goes out for two days and the icebox floods the kitchen tile (Lonan mops it with old newspapers, the ink running like jellyfish). June barks for the first time. Harrison eats a bundle of dried bay leaves. Suzanna waters the plants with rainwater, icewater, wrung into a coffee tin. Harrison leaves the stove on while sautéing shallots (he eats them whole). Lonan wakes up feverish and fills out four newspaper crosswords, then falls asleep on the coffee table. Suzanna moulds panna cotta in coffee mugs and shares the batch with Lonan when they won’t tip out. Lonan teaches her how to propagate the pothos and soon they have twenty empty cans of cuttings poking from the windowsills. They rearrange the furniture, the couch facing the kitchen instead of the TV, the dining table right outside the bathroom, then put it all back the next day. They birdwatch from the tiny window with binoculars and a magnifying glass. They sort coupons. Whittle soaps. Watch Norwegian films without the subtitles. Discuss cliff diving. Make matching anklets (blue beads, elastic string, the plastic clacking how Harrison knows they’re coming). All of this they do as Harrison lies on his bed for two weeks, counting the corners of his ceiling and trying to determine a way to multiply them telepathically.

This is the very next paragraph!

At first he assumes they’re laughing. The sun nearly rising between other high rises, blotting his room with dawn. This is not a surprise. They are probably making pancakes out of buckwheat and discussing the hilarity of whole grains. They are probably laughing at store-bought cherry preserves. Too sour. Their cheeks puckered. But then the laughs get louder, and the sun rises higher and it’s not laughing at all, but gasping.

Here’s Harrison crawling!! is this straight out of the exorcist probably!

Harrison’s instinct is to crawl. As if his smallness against the ground will stop anyone from hearing him, even before he unlocks his door. On hands and knees he shuffles from his bed to his doorframe, edges the door open with his shoulder. On hands and knees he hikes through the hallway, the gasping getting louder, shuffling until he sees them. Lonan sitting on one of the kitchen stools, a grocery bag wound around his throat. Suzanna clacking scissors in two hands so their blades ping in the sun. Her fingers loped around his hair, knuckle-deep, the blades snipping, the gasps growing, them both sobbing, the hair falling, the sun stalking, their bodies rocking. Harrison takes it in from his crawl. Experiences it all on his knees.

So this excerpt seems really you know, normal:

They clean up the hair. Harrison with the dustpan, Lonan with the broom. Harrison still kneels. Lonan still cries. The only thing that has changed since crawling into the kitchen is that Suzanna is taking a walk around the apartment complex. She needs air. Room. If she cries long enough, a cigarette. So Lonan sweeps. Harrison collects. This repeats.

The kitchen smells of nutmeg. Freshly grated from a whole club over espresso, Harrison imagines. He smells this as he tracks Lonan with the dustpan, hovering its open belly for clippings of hair. And Lonan is so compliant, brushes cuttings of himself onto the plastic surface so Harrison can trash it. As Harrison looks on from his knees, Lonan diffuses in sunlight, the window illuminating only his edges. A body so familiar Harrison knows exactly where it flares with light or absorbs it. A body with skin like mulberry silk. A body he could recreate in charcoal with his eyes closed. His archangel translucent and luminescing.

Skip this excerpt if you don’t want to read about Harrison eating hair!! i’m sorry!

Harrison picks a bundle of fallen hair from the dustpan. It’s airy from being recently shampooed, smells faintly of pear, maybe even ginger. This hair, touched by a woman, or a few women, and cut by one, or a few, in different contexts. Eliza’s hands deveining the roots, and then Suzanna’s, trying to fix them. So Harrison eats it. That bundle like a toothpicked cube of cheese. He puts it in his mouth and swallows.

Lonan watches like he’s unconcerned. He watches this feral animal—Harrison must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. Chewing mouthfuls of hair like that will quell of him of what is missing, if there even is anything missing, something unidentifiable in this bland circuit of New York City, this time-loop of sonhood, this fresh start a dousing of flatness. As Harrison eats, he understands he consumes that something like it’s holy communion, reuniting with that something by absorbing it. And still, that hunger moves him, from finishing the dustpan of hair, and closer to Lonan.

“Do you think I’m a bad friend?” Harrison asks, wringing the corner of his lips clean from loose hairs. From this perspective, Harrison on his knees collecting hair, Lonan’s eyes look bluer. Maybe their saturation has nothing to do with the angle, but Harrison feels this is true; his eyes are so crystalline, they are temptingly edible. Like two plump blueberries. Or a matching set of clear glass marbles. Harrison swallows. He repeats, “Do you think I’m a bad friend?”

Lonan swallows, adjusts his grip on the broom. “We’d have to be friends for me to answer that.”

“Aren’t we?”

And here’s the rest of this scene!

“You’re my mother’s friend,” Harrison says. “She trusts you.” He crawls closer to Lonan. “You’ve got secrets. Rituals. Tell me her favourite finger-food and who she wants to marry.”

“I don’t know your mother that well.”

Harrison wraps a handle around Lonan’s ankle. A muscle there jumps like a dolphin breaching the water. He’s memorized this plane of skin, could rebuild it from single grains of sand while blindfolded. He furls his hands across its surface, unfurls.

“You garden with her,” Harrison says. “You share a plate for dessert.”

“She’s kind to me.”

“You cook her breakfast.” Harrison tugs on Lonan’s ankle, knowing it won’t raze him, knowing he’ll come down anyway. “You know the exact temperature she drinks her coffee down to the last digit.”

“I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“You’re trying to be a son.”

Lonan kneels. Crouching so they’re huddled over each other, so it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the other, which one sinks, which one rises.

“My mother’s only got one son to live with,” Harrison says, his voice thin from a clogged throat. He reaches for Lonan’s scalp, scrapes a line down the centre, now an even plane of cropped hair. “And it isn’t me.”

“You’re unstable,” Lonan says, burrowing his face either into a cabinet or Harrison’s shoulder—neither can tell. “You won’t let yourself have friends.”

Farther, toward the tile they go, a pile of hair scattering. “My mother wants me to forgive you by replacing me with you.”

“She’s grieving,” Lonan says.

Harrison loses his hands. He doesn’t know where they disappear to, if he touches skin or tile. “I haven’t died,” he says. Skin or tile. Skin or tile.

Here’s an excerpt from scene C ft. this memoir bit from the time I was shocked that this university I visited had real FANCY teabags:

Lonan brews tea. Earl grey, from a tin. Harrison doesn’t know why he expects it to come from a bag. An individual paper sachet, or if he’s lucky, one of those fancy ones woven from nylon. But it’s from a tin. Two teaspoons into the bottom of a single mug they pass back and forth, wordless at the kitchen table. Strung in the bathroom, Harrison’s t-shirt hang-dries, nearly figure-like, an unfilled phantom. He tugs a throw around his shoulders and stares at his hands. Each crest of cuticle. Each bulb of knuckle. Each maze of fingerprints.

He is material. This is fact. Not just outlines. He’s got skin that goes pinkish when pinched, a pulse that juts from his wrist, two eyes that burn at the scent of lavender, ten fingers. But as he holds his hands up, studying them in the faint moonlight, it is difficult to believe his tangibility. In the city, he has lived as a haze. Fogging over grocery stores, eateries, nondescript. Fresh start has always implied an air of zest, a zing that should have fueled him to plant roots in this restart. But Harrison is rotten, aphid infected, overwatered, underwatered, then not watered at all. He flexes his fingers. He pops the joints. He tries to press his pinkie to the back of his hand. But none of this brings him back to himself. His hands continue feeling like someone else’s. His body invisibly marred in some way he can’t reverse, disconnected in retaliation.

Harrison reflecting on his relationship with his mother:

Suzanna has never left him alone this long, and to her detriment. He imagines her now, living the life she always should’ve lived, the life she lived before he crosscut his way to her most important thing. She’s probably at a salon, having her hair twirled with a round brush, making dinner reservations at some place always too expensive for two (extra points if it has a French name, more if she has to wait a half hour before getting a table). When she talks to her stylist, she doesn’t mention a son, but plans to travel up the west coast, all the way into Canada if she’s feeling adventurous. She’ll buy crime novels she’ll never read at duty-free, reapply a lipstick that cost her a paycheck in the reflection of a hand-dryer. After the salon, she’ll meet a woman at a wine bar, converse about children, and still not mention a son. Suzanna’s singleness will be a celebration.

The boys finally trucing it out <3

When Harrison finally opens his eyes, Lonan is staring at him. His eyes two reels of the Pacific. They cycle in blue. So much of him has changed, and yet he is still the same. Beyond the haircut, Lonan isn’t that much different. He can’t be much different. But as Harrison searches, splaying his palm on the wet table, he knows this is untrue. Lonan is hollower than he was last summer. A little more haunted. They have this in common, then.

“Can we be friends?” Harrison asks. With his pinkie, he finds himself writing against the damp table just as he did Lonan’s scalp not too long ago. Lonan’s gaze follows each loop of each letter, Harrison’s steady left hand.

Lonan is consumed studying what Harrison has written, where each letter connects in near-cursive scrawl. After a moment, he nods, once, twice, and then reverts to staring at the table’s new inscription. On its surface are two words: something held.

The boys in the car like old times <3

Lonan drives. This is strange because Harrison has not seen Lonan drive a car in over a year. Usually, Harrison takes the wheel, but tonight he guides them through the city, in search of Suzanna. His car is clean. This isn’t unexpected. A cherry-coloured hatchback that rattles whenever he makes a left turn. It smells vaguely of cotton air-freshener and the undercurrent of cigarettes.

“You still smoke?” Harrison pokes at the plastic nob for the radio, and it crackles to life. Synth and electric guitar pulse in 4/4 time.

“I bought it used.”

They’ve agreed to get to know one another while they search for Suzanna. Another restart, some attempt at an honest hour. As Lonan changes lanes, Harrison pokes open the car’s glove compartment. A tin of nicotine gum falls on the mat. A hot pink feather pokes from underneath the driver’s manual. Harrison hauls out both, runs the feather along the gum tin, then the back of his hand, and then Lonan’s cheek. When that rouses nothing, he unlocks the tin and removes a slit of gum. Right as he’s about to pop it in his mouth, Lonan says, “I wouldn’t eat that.”

“Why?” Harrison asks. “Did you lace it?”

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

Harrison puts the gum back, and then the feather. He sticks his hand farther into the glove compartment, feels around until he drags out a map of the state, bilgy and half torn. He unfolds it, careful to avoid the rips, and flattens it against the dashboard. Almost immediately, it wilts against the cold, faded from time in the sun. It’s been marked up. Half with pencil, half with a red ballpoint pen. After a few minutes, Harrison understands the previous owner’s route. Or at least he does at first. Following the red pen arrows, they started at Long Island, then reached Manhattan. Then a much longer arrow takes him from Manhattan to Geneva, and then Buffalo. And then the red pen circles, once, twice, three times, four times, and what is in the centre doesn’t even have a city name. What it does say is HELP, in all-caps, each letter then melting into an illegible scrawl. Harrison sees bits of words: Luke, woe, hands, clay, guard, stray, each wobbly and disappearing into the other, becoming cities of their own, destroying others. He tries to understand the route, but the farther he pours over the map, recircling each line with his finger, the more lost he gets in the ink.

“Is this your map?” Harrison asks. There is no proof that it is. Even the handwriting is all wrong. Ragged. Confused. Desperate. Not like Lonan’s careful, hesitant print.

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

“But is it your map?” Harrison asks again. Gently, he creases the paper and then slots it back into the glove compartment. Outside, they pass three convenience stores in a row, a flock of couples emerging from a bowling alley, tipsy and cradling leftover deep dish pizzas and mozzarella sticks. They pass two more convenience stores before Lonan finally answers.

“I was confused,” he says.

“This is more than confused,” Harrison says. “It’s disturbed.”

“I’m not disturbed.”

“But something is wrong with you.”

Lonan slows at a crosswalk. A group of teenaged girls whisk by in glitter and lip gloss.

“Yes,” he says.

This is Harrison trying to stop Lonan’s nosebleed after their bizarre swerve which I think is kind of <3 tendy <3

Harrison reaches for him. One hand on the back of his neck, and the other reared toward the red stream. His touch is tactful, so faint his fingerprints wouldn’t even be left behind, but still, the dabbing with his jacket’s hem is enough to redirect the blood’s flow from Lonan’s upper lip to the cuff of leather. The radio is still on, garbled like an unmassing of crepe paper lanterns.

This is the final excerpt for this update that takes us to the very end of the chapter! Harrison has just found Lonan supposedly head-first in the sink and though he asks at first why he is doing that, takes an alternate approach as the chapter closes:

Harrison gets up, his knees popping like gnawed bubble gum. He decides he will handle Lonan at a distance, if he chooses to handle him at all. Like a timid pet owner trying to tame their suddenly-rabid yorkie. Like a friend not trying to tip the full glass. To let its contents film at its surface, but never spill.

Somewhere in the apartment, Suzanna probably listens to them. If Harrison didn’t know her better, he’d imagine her pressed neatly against the door, waiting to hear the shuffle of their bodies or the tang of an argument. Instead, he imagines her at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water for so long, half of it evaporates.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Harrison says, stepping back until his spine hits the counter’s lip. He curls his fingers under the granite. Looks toward the window, now a faint periwinkle. Lonan heaves. His fingers caging his face, an animal restrained. They stand there until the sun rises.

So that’s it for this gigantic update! I have like four short stories to update you on so I hope to be back soon!

—Rachel

#writing #writerblr #amwriting #writeblr #fostered #mothwork #writingupdates #feedinghabits

[vasylia]

vasylia  •  the wheel of fortune skeleton  •  application  •  connections

age: thirty-five, appears twelve years younger

pronouns: she/her

status: a loyalist in search of stability; advisor-in-training and apprentice to the high priestess

abilities: necromancy, limited by her own inexperience

faceclaim: anya chalotra

tw: death, child death, murder, blood, self harm, disassociation

blood and marrow  •  personality types

zodiac sign: virgo  /  virgos are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful signs of the zodiac. their methodical approach to life ensures that nothing is left to chance, and although they are often tender, their heart might be closed for the outer world. 

element: water  /  water people are emotional, intuitive, deeply creative, empathetic, spiritual and psychic. water allows people to emotionally connect with others. and yet, water people are so sensitive that they often have a hard time unplugging from life’s chaos. consequently, many water people suffer from addiction as they grapple for distraction from life’s pain. thus, water people tend to be secretive and private.

temperament: melancholic  /  the melancholy naturally wants to do things right, and is quality-oriented. melancholies are not trying to be right, they are driven to figure out what is right. they have a cautious, tentative response designed to reduce tension in an unfavourable environment. the melancholy’s second response is often to become aggressive to restore peace in an unfavourable situation. they influence their environment by adhering to the existing rules, and by doing things right according to predetermined (and accepted) standards.

moral alignment: true neutral  /  a neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. she doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. such a character thinks of good as better than evil-after all, she would rather have good neighbours and rulers than evil ones. still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

enneagram: the investigator  /  fives are alert, insightful, and curious. they are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. they become detached, yet high-strung and intense. they typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation.

mbti: intj, ‘the architect’  /  an architect (intj) is a person with the introverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging personality traits. these thoughtful tacticians love perfecting the details of life, applying creativity and rationality to everything they do. their inner world is often a private, complex one.

soul type: the scholar  /  being so focused on information and its logical implications means that scholars are naturally introspective and contemplative. they like to have time alone to fully process their experiences and observations internally, before trying to articulate their thoughts.

tree type: willow  /  willow signs are bursting with potential, but have a tendency to hold themselves back out of fear. your powers of perception will ultimately allow your true nature to shine, and will lead you to success in life. willows pair well with birch and ivy.

bones and lungs  •  a genesis

i. the fool, upright innocence, new beginnings, free spirit

The first thing a child sees in its life is its mother, and you are no different. The first thing you know is her, penniless enough that your infanthood would have been nothing short of unremarkable but provided for enough that she could have kept you if she’d wanted to. She has had children before, and she’s felt the billowing warmth that childrearing lends her, but you are stealing something from her. Your mother cannot quite place the feeling, cannot understand what it is you’re doing to her, but when she holds you in her arms she feels her limbs growing heavier, her muscles deaden. You must be, she determines, a punishment - so she resolves to rid herself of you. More important than that, she resolves to make an offering of you. The woman makes the long, arduous journey from Tyrholm, averts road bandits and street beggars and pardoners swearing by religious forgeries; she pushes herself halfway across Markholm with only her conviction to drive her. She commits you to the Temple of the Undying, and this is something she wants known. She wants the great, bipartite deity to know that this largesse of hers is an immolation, a symbol of her devotion. In return, she would have the punishment lifted. And you never see your mother again.

The temple names you Vasylia, assuming the role of a strange, distant mother who plucks the word from between the stars. You have no surname and therefore no genesis, nothing to remind you where you come from and who you are. Of course, as you well know now, none of that matters. As soon as you pass the threshold of that sacred place, it forges an identity for you.

(Your heritage is a secret that tucks itself away from you, like a shadow that shies from the light. You are the result of a union between a travelling merchant and a beautiful, beautiful woman, and this is all your mother has to protect her in life. Those who covet beauty, who wish to steal it away and display it among their wares, are always equipped with a lie or two. The lie is this: he loves her, he does; devotedly, honestly, purely, and he wants her to join him. To travel with him over pale waves and into the cove of pirates. Perhaps he’d believed in that at first, but it ends as all things end; in fiction. He leaves her as all men leave her, with an enormous pouch of gold. Your mother settles in a village at the border of Volkan Forest. You do not live there long. You never learn your mother’s name. Her name is Estrid.)

Life at the Temple is, for the most part, simple. Dull, pedestrian, but simple. Abandoned, you are raised as one amongst many, a single child amidst a whole throng of neglected children. It quickly becomes clear to you that some wield magical abilities, shielded from a world which harshly forejudges them, and some arrive with nothing to them at all. Like you: not even a name. Some of them are sickly, a few of them are malnourished, and far too many of them are the reluctant offspring of poverty, charily offered to the Temple by parents who lament of their penury. But you are not sickly or malnourished or magical, even. You wail out in the dark of night for a mother who doesn’t want you, but which child here does not? At least at first, there is nothing particularly special about you. You are still a child waiting to grow into yourself, and, well, there is nothing unusual about that fact.

Your childhood is, in a word, unremarkable. The Temple does its best to inspire loyalty in the offspring yielded to them - you are, after all, an opportunity for life-long indoctrination. Your earliest days are structured by a conformity which they shake into your bones: the Temple teaches you of the wolves and the snakes and the annihilating body they make as one. On magic, their position is less clear. Messages are mixed. Necromancers are a chosen, sacred few. But the other magi are being punished, cursed for a cycle of blasphemy and adultery and theft and anything else they can conjure up. As with all children, you assume the first thing you hear as gospel, but as the years gallop past you, you find yourself cordoned off by a low drone. The Temple is not so united as it seems, and there are people who whisper in disagreement. You think you are beginning to notice the resentment growing around you, but you are still a child - you know nothing. You determine that it is safer to be ordinary.

You cannot quite be called pious, but you rise with the morning light. You work hard. You devote time to your prayers and you comply with the codes of silence which linger between them. You restock ink and parchment for the Clerics working sedulously at translation. You trim the rose bushes at the edge of the forest. You are untroublesome and, for the most part, amenable; shapeable. You offer a hand to help wherever it may be required, because that is what you’ve always been taught to do. You are nothing much like some of the other children, boisterous and ambitious, hungry for stories of politics and warfare. Hankering to feel the weight of a bronze rapier in their hands, to run their fingers through enemies’ blood and call it an act of cleansing. The Temple is not cruel, but it is cyclical, and the pattern is not enough - for them or for you. But you do as you’re told, your life moves in a progressive rhythm, because what else is there?

You have always needed a hand to guide you.

When life drifts in a sequence it all blurs into one, so you find solace in the small things. You revel in the sanctuary of the forest. Its trees keel into spirals, bent by the weight of their branches. You like the stillness of the air, the way that the birds settle on the branches so completely at peace - unaware of the eyes watching them. You learn that silence is not solitude, that the reticences observed by the Temple do not always bring you peace. In fact, they rarely ever bring you peace, and at times they have the tendency to strangle you. You marvel at the way the water refracts in the moonlight, bending with the shape of its brilliance. It moves furtively and secretly, as if beneath the surface there is buried a whole other world that it hopes to keep concealed. You are never the sort of girl with fantasies mirrored from the vellum of a fairytale book, and you never touch things so delicately that you look to be afraid of them. You would never call yourself a dreamer, but there’s an intensity to you which makes it hard for you to stop staring at things. There are only a couple of children in the Temple you ever feel particularly close to, and when you think back, they are the only things you feel are worth remembering here. Curled up on a stony ledge, watching a religious darkness fall over the ancient rock. Organising altars and scrubbing floorboards and observing silences with a dash of humour. You have never truly felt like you belong anywhere, except when you lay down in the grass or you sit on the cold stone and run your fingertips through the water, imagining that you are somewhere else. It makes this place feel a little less dull.

ii. the hierophant, upright education, knowledge, beliefs

It is perhaps no coincidence that it’s during your sixteenth Summertide that you first raise an animal from the dead, completely by accident. A butterfly, crushed beneath the weight of a snow which is only now beginning to thaw. You cannot describe what brought you to pick it up. Beauty? You have always looked beneath the surface. Macabre as the very idea of it may be, you cannot not help but take it into your hand. You feel its limp body balance in your palm like parchment: you want it to be beautiful again. And as if by magic, it shifts in your palm, it wakes. Half-amazed and half-afraid, you watch how its wings unfurl themselves and its body cracks and distorts itself back into shape. But you are overcome by something strange: the insect sits in the centre of your palm, learning about the world again, but if you were blind you wouldn’t know it. You can’t feel it there. By instinct you clasp your hands around it and bring it into the Temple and, perhaps foolishly, you show them what you have done.

The Temple determines that it is no coincidence that your gift for rebirth, the very echo of Summertide, should reveal itself now. It’s an ancient celebration of renaissance. Fate twists, and the Temple has two Necromancers already, devoted to the craft and resolved to educate you. Educate perhaps puts it generously: they test you, push you, assign you tasks to complete without any tangible goal in sight. They never teach you what it takes, what you must sacrifice, what it truly means to excavate that void between life and death. This is the truth of it: you have been chosen by the Undying Herself and this gift is yours to own, but as with all things we take, it demands sacrifice. A piece of you, snapped off from bone; it lingers there at your side. They teach you that you are different, you are special. The other magi can manipulate solid matter and regenerate limbs, but you are sacred. They will not see twenty-five years, but you? You can live for hundreds of years.

Your schooling begins small. Insects, mice, small woodland creatures. But it’s a demanding, exhausting process -  still, you continue to work hard. When you’d brought back that butterfly on the third day of Summertide, it had seemed so easy. A case of simply wishing and being. But things are not so easy now. You find it difficult to pour that same longing into the creatures put down in front of you; you are more sophisticated, less candid. But you do as you’re told, make as many successes as you do failures, and for whatever end goal the Necromancers have in mind for you, you progress.

Then, as if you have not already experienced enough change, the world spins carelessly on its side. You are eighteen and you have been under the tutelage of the Necromancers for just under two years. You feel you are drifting away from the green beauty of that first instance, the first time you bartered with the universe and it chose to answer you. But you are still just a child and your teachers have lived for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, you learn that Necromancers are dangerous, they’re volatile, they’re lethal, and that includes you. It takes little more than the impetuosity of a boy sat next to you at dinnertime, for him to waggishly swipe the bread roll from your plate - as children are mischievously wont to do - for you to wreak tragedy. The action irritates you, infuriates you, even, because you have less patience for things now. You snatch the roll from his hands. Without warning, he collapses, body limp on the floor. You are puzzled at first, you’d scarcely touched him, but as the Brethren roll his body over on the stone, you realise what you have done. The boy is dead. The boy is dead, and you’re learning your emotions have consequences. But this you’ve forgotten. You’ve scrubbed it from your skin raw, as if that will absolve you.

Things are accelerating. You perform your lessons largely in isolation. You are kept away from the other children, particularly those who hope to take vows, because you are dangerous, you cannot be contained. Your tutors take the opportunity to teach you more diligently, more industriously. Your accomplishments are growing: frogs, small birds, rabbits. But the hours are slipping away and you don’t understand what it’s all for, bringing back forest animals contentedly buried beneath the moss. Nevertheless, you move forward. You think you are getting better at this. When you have lived for twenty years, they bring you live animals; they show you how to drain them, how to cleave to your youth. The work you are performing is an honour.

You have always needed a hand to guide you.

Something has changed in you. The forest recedes from you. You wake and you learn and you perform and you dream empty, hollow dreams in an unbroken cycle. More often than not you lie awake for hours, allowing your eyes to rest on a rotting mark in the corner of the ceiling. You smile still and you try to laugh, but as each chuckle worms its way up your throat you feel it strangle you in the process. Sometimes you cough up blood, thick and hard, and you stare at the red spot in confusion. One day, you catch your hand on a piece of shattered glass and feel nothing. You don’t even flinch. At the wound you simply stare and, out of curiosity perhaps, or a pointed desire to hurt at something, you pick up a shard of glass and feel the weight of it in your fingers. And with all the force you have, you burrow it into your flesh. That, you feel. You drop the glass, wincing, and a hot tear rolls down your cheek.

You lie in your bed and wish on a comet for somebody to steal you away from this place. You whisper it into existence. But in the morning you wake and everything is the same. A blur settles into your bones. Things are a cycle, so much more so than when your life had begun. But you know nothing else. You stay.

iii. the wheel of fortune, upright change, cycles, inevitable fate

In your life you have learned much. How to raise animals from the dead. How to canalise energy away from the living and into your bones. You have learned that things change, of course they do, but they also stay the same. For people like you, life motionlessly moves from one event to the next. You remember the day that your life had spun so carelessly on its axis once again with such precision that, at times, you are sure that you are back there. You think that you are back at the Temple, raising rabbits and drawing the lifeforce from dandelions. You think that the clouds are weeping into the earth with salted rain, and the chill of your salvation buries itself into you.

By now, you know she is not your deliverance. There is nothing holy in her but power, and how she revels in it. The woman alights on the Temple without a horse, without a thing to carry her here, and if you had ever been a foolish sort of girl you might have assumed she’d undertaken the journey on foot. But you have never been a fool. You are twenty-five years old. A solemn cold which seems to swell in her at once brings you a much-desired quiet and chills you to the bone. To your surprise, all bow to her. Cower from her. Even your teachers are beneath her. With purpose she pulls you aside, ungloves your hands and takes them in her own, and she promises you that the two of you are the same. She does not fear you, and you have no cause to fear her. You are cut from the same dust and made from the same bones - there’s divinity in that. Like you, she can raise the dead, and what’s more: she’s good at it. Perhaps for the first time in your life you are asked what it is that you want. You feel like the decision is yours. She offers you an ultimatum: remain here, raise rabbits and mice and crows, be nothing; or join her, learn the craft, study beneath her, become something. While you are torn between your desire to flee this place and a thick, breathless lump which lingers at the back of your throat unexplained, it is never really a question. It is an answer. You pack up everything you own: garments, mementos, fear and desire, all. You accept willingly, unthinkingly, blindly. You pass through the egress and step into a shimmering new world.

Even now, that is the only way you can think to describe this place. This new world you have chosen for yourself coruscates beneath the light as if in dance. It’s a world that winks like glitter - Castle Tyrholm is so unlike anything you’ve ever known. By now you are so accustomed to rough hems and the bland taste of food on your tongue that you have forgotten there was anything else. You only know things bland and bloodless, humble devotions. But here? Here, they dress lavishly. Here, they eat lavishly. Here, they live lavishly. You stand at the fortress’ great, impressive windows and you contentedly watch the way the pale waves lick at the black stone, the way the castle bends over the waves and balances on top of the rockline. It’s more than regal: it’s thunderous, luxurious, rich. Of course, you know a little better now. You know that glitter catches in the corner of your eye. It has the tendency to blind you, to force you to look at things between the sequins of a kaleidoscope, all twisted and torn out of shape.

You have been under The High Priestess’ tutelage for two years now, and you feel your life bisecting into two distinct worlds. You must reconcile yourself to that. Statesmanship has very little in common with religion, and unfortunately, that’s all you know. Religion is devotion, fidelity, constancy. Whatever fidelity you see before you has been rigorously shaped, re-wrought in the shadows for years, and that is the only constant here. Still, it does not shake you. Your first lesson is this: you must cut the history of yourself out into stone. You do. You become a silhouette which cleaves to your mentor’s side, a thing that can’t be shaken. Like a shadow you observe the way your mentor manoeuvres; the way she holds her tongue and the way she weaponises it; the way she plumes and crows and deceives as if she’s been doing it for a thousand years. You watch the way that King Septimus’ hands move with hers, shifting in mirrored gestures - like she has attached strings. You become an accepted prerequisite at her side, a creeping outline which follows her devotedly. Part of your status, you brush shoulders with some of the king’s most trusted advisors - you attend assemblies, convocations gathered in the throne-room. You are so far from home now; wherever your home is, wherever it was. You are beginning to learn the meaning of diplomacy: one keeps a knife permanently unsheathed beneath their cloak.

Your instructor resolves to fill in the gaps that the Temple left barren: you learn what you must give up for this gift, you learn of all the grief it has caused you. This is a magic you watch her lean into so deeply at times you think she’ll splinter apart - but, of course, she never has. Never will. This is a truth that lies uneasily in your stomach. It lies heavily on your lungs and it chokes you. You can feel your heart climbing up and down your windpipe - you aim to seize it in your hands, to still it, but you can only retch at it. You’ve lost count of all the creatures you’ve poured yourself into, and you wonder where all those pieces of you are now. The fading feeling of your bones makes sense now, at least; the universe is a glutton and it has been stealing from you. You never even knew the rules of the game.

The king’s physician brings you animals to practice upon. The High Priestess teaches you the most painless portions of yourself to sacrifice: you learn the things you need and the things you can go without. Your abilities are growing, and with that you feel the weight in your chest shift a little - things are becoming easier to swallow. You learn the importance of giving back: to creatures, to people, but also communities, dynasties. Yours are regular faces in the Farmlands which edge on Tyrholm. Here, you resurrect animals, livelihood; they are indebted to you both. One day, a farmer’s son slips from a ladder, cracks his skull open on the coarse ground. The High Priestess takes the opportunity to teach, to have you bring him back. But too much of you clings to the Temple, the way its cold was settling into your bones. The High Priestess’ dissatisfaction is evident. You’ve been studying beneath her for three years now, and still you have not raised a body. She wants you to look at this world without Necromancy directly in the eye: destruction, death, misery. You cast your eye down to the boy and swallow the lump growing in your throat. Grief. As painless as breathing, your teacher brings their son back. The world is better with Necromancers, she has resolved. Dutiful, devoted, you have resolved that as well.

You have always needed a hand to guide you.

As part of your schooling, you ride out with your mentor and Tyrholm’s great military army. To squash rebellion, to quell revolt. The two of you are never far from each other - you are a shadow clinging to a shadow. There’s something about the way that you both sit, regal and harrowing above your white horses, lingering like death at the rear of Septimus’ forces. You are a lethal sight, but your power is not enough. Not yet. You arch over the body of a fallen soldier, but something is stopping you. You try, you really try, but you fail. Half-alive, he blinks back at you. A lungful vibrates at the back of his throat. His chest rises and falls with air, but is nothing in his eye to suggest he recognises the figure bending over him. It is half a failure - but half a failure is still a failure. You have given him nothing human. As if flowing over water, your mentor dismounts her horse and puts an end to her experiment. She doesn’t look at you. You don’t look at you. Sometimes, you can’t bear to.

But your failures do not last forever. When you are thirty-two, you animate a body. At last. It has taken you seven years, seven long years of unlearning the Temple’s way, but at last, success. Of all the places you manage it, it is on the battlefield, and you are in your element. Surrounded by blood and warfare and death - ah, always death. You are getting better at this. At night, you rest your head down on your pillow and you dream. You dream of your hands, reaching out. The Undying God reaches back. You feel you are becoming one with Her.

iv. the high priestess, reversed repressed intuition, confusion, dissonance

You are a vault of fears, but you have spent these last ten years bent on throwing away the key. For the last decade you have been following your mentor indiscriminately, almost blindly, and while you are finally beginning to make progress, you are also beginning to feel that haze gather around your fingertips, weighing down your wrists. You feel yourself swallowing the sensation at times. You don’t like to close your eyes. If you do, you think you are back at the Temple, raising creatures injudiciously, feeling your soul taunt you in the air between you. A cold is settling into your bones again. Your dreams turn themselves inside out and empty themselves when you finally fall asleep, and when you wake in the morning you are confronted with a sense that your emotions have slipped out of you in the night. That you have slipped out of you in the night.

Your fingers pressed to rotting flesh, you decide that the bodies you have brought up in halves are warnings. As their eyes roll demonically back into their skull and the listlessness of their breath catches at the back of their throat, you cannot help but think that your half-failures are warning you. That this is what awaits you should you consider to amble down this narrow path. Not death, but instead life: long, death-defying, rotten life. A life of nullity stretches out in front of you, like a void that opens its black mouth and eats you raw. Impassibility is creeping into you, settling into the spaces between your bones and lungs. The taste of blood in your mouth has recently returned to you, though you only notice it when you can taste at all; you cannot determine whether being able to feel it flip thickly over your tongue brings you a sense of peace or horror. When you slip your rings over your fingers, heavy with all the ore you could never have afforded when you were young, you can’t feel them there. You feel ancient impressions dig their way into you.

Perhaps you have been foolish. You have been believing that carefully handpicking the parts of yourself to sacrifice can go on forever; that you will never feel the weight of your earliest years again. And while that’s true, you have been slicing off the most unforgiving parts of yourself and offering them up to the Undying God, you feel yourself recede from Her. They are determining that these pieces of you are not enough, and They would have you offer more. When you travel out with Septimus’ forces to quell revolts you feel eyes on you: The High Priestess’ eyes, impatient. In the battlefield you are anxious to stop your hands from trembling. Perhaps you can’t bear the pressure. Perhaps you can’t bear yourself. Your teacher is always left to clear up your mess, always left to do the brunt of the work, but she is never cruel about it. Sometimes you wish she was. Then, you might be better.

And yet, you are not all failure. In the last two months you have successfully resurrected five bodies, breathing and seeing and living, and that in itself is commendable. The High Priestess brings you to orphanages, and it is there that you set about your reanimations. While, like always, your mentor bears the brunt of the work, you manage to resurrect four bodies. Three girls, three children, and a boy who has been bound to these walls for too long. At Koldam, much to your own mystification, you bring back another. A Lieutenant, a real piece of chainmail in the king’s military armour. When his undead eyes finally settle upon your face, noticing the way that you lip quivers at your achievement, he breathes a sigh of relief. He looks at you as if you’re an angel, sent from the Undying God to rescue him. You are sent by Her, this you concede, but you are no angel.

Whispers of a coup have been present for as many years you have been beneath The High Priestess’ care, but they are thickening now - they are becoming more difficult to ignore. Still, you ignore them, as you must. You are not ready for Septimus to be toppled, you are not ready for the throne to keel over into the pale waves beneath the black rock. You don’t want to watch it drown, you don’t want to watch it to be torn apart like some; more than anything, you want it to stay put. Every time you squash a rebellion, every time a coup fails, you allow your heart to settle in your chest again. But it only lasts a moment, because treason is always being whispered, mutiny is always being accounted for. What you think of Septimus is irrelevant: you aren’t strong enough to fight for a place in whatever new world results from it. There’s still so much you can’t do, so much you don’t know if you want to do, and even now all you want is balance. It is a line you have toed your whole life and it has always got the better of you: religion and politics; life and death; permanence and impermanence; the girl you were and the girl you are becoming. You want the world to stop spinning. You want stability. You can’t know what you want if everything you know keeps changing.

You are only loosely beginning to learn the sort of vacancy you have inside you. Perhaps if you knew better, if you were better at knowing what you want, you would say: the world is creeping away from me, I am creeping away from me.

Do you still need a hand to guide you?

heart and soul  •  a making

METAMORPHOSIS: What she wants is stability. If she will live for centuries, she must have something to endure with her. Vasylia’s loyalty is very intricate. She doesn’t quite block out the throne’s transgressions in the same way that Temperance does, but there’s still a degree of selfishness to her fealty. She calls herself a Loyalist not because she believes Septimus is genuinely deserving of her love, but because her body cannot bear the instability. I’d like to see that shift very gradually, though. She can’t cling to this dream of stability forever, not when the path she’s chosen is so weathered by impermanence - and the dream will only become more impossible to uphold if Septimus grows in cruelty. I’d like her to realise that slowly. It begins small: she focuses her attention on those who bear the brunt of his mistreatment. I can see The Star, The Hermit or even The Hierophant factoring into this. And then it grows - whispers intensify. The king’s mistakes become impossible to ignore. Maybe he orders heads to be put on spikes on the castle barracks. Turncoats are beaten and hung as if crucified in the main hall. Equally, it could have nothing to do with violence at all. She may simply determine, like her mentor, that the throne doesn’t suit him. Either way, I’d like Vasylia to move with the developments of the game. She wouldn’t fight for Septimus, but she does tend to ignore whispers of coup. Right now, she is trying to balance the parts of herself she feels at war with; she can’t handle another one. Nevertheless, I want her to be forced to grapple with the fact that this is bigger than her and that she may have to act. I don’t know whether she’s likely to have confided in Vasylia of her intentions (depending on the player), but should the divergence become evident, questions of loyalty would certainly be pulled into the fore. Would she follow her mentor into revolt? There’s an opportunity here for conflict - but also for growth. Growing into the person The High Priestess wants them to be: willing to fight, to take, to reconcile yourself to your powers, hardened to the consequences. I want to see her really become a part of this war rather than hesitating at the edge of it.

NO MORE FALSE HEAVENS: The High Priestess never hesitates, she leans into this gift as deeply as her body is able without prying itself apart, and Vasylia believes that this has always been her way. The same can hardly be said for her, though. She is hesitant, at times she has misgivings, and the sight of a corpse almost always makes her tremble. The High Priestess has been guiding her for ten years now and in that time she’s discovered a lifetime’s worth of arcane knowledge, twice as much power as the Temple ever bequeathed her, but there is still so much she can’t do. What causes her to fail is hesitation, placing one foot in the art and one foot out of it. I suppose this is an alternative to plot #1, depending on which way things develop, but I’d like to see Vasylia turn away from The High Priestess. When she looks at her, at The Sun, she recognises what she might become. It is a fate she wishes to escape, and if she is truly committed to that, she may be forced to act. It’s no easy feat to kill a Necromancer, even one as wavering as herself, but severing ties with The High Priestess could breed disaster. She has always needed a hand to guide her in life, but it’d be fascinating to see her break away from that. The world opens its jaw and waits to swallow her whole, and The High Priestess is certain that without her guidance she’ll falter, but she needs to make herself more than what other people have made her. I’d like to develop her self-sufficiency, her willpower, but most importantly, I’d like to explore her desperation, to develop the recklessness which would no doubt begin to grow. Leaving The High Priestess’ tutelage is a make or break moment: and unless something considerable changes within her, it is likely to be the latter. Over time, she needs to determine whether she wants to be a Necromancer or a human-being. How far is she willing to go to excavate that small part of her, and is the act her genesis or her epilogue?

THE DARK MARK OF ME: As a Necromancer, she’s used to instilling at least a bit of apprehension in others. The Lovers’ eyes scan Vasylia’s skin for evidence of a pulse, a suggestion that, even now, she is alive. More importantly, though, The Emperor goes out of his way to make himself available to listen to her. Listen maybe isn’t the right word, to have his curiosity sated is probably more apt, and in moments of weakness, her secrets spill out of her like a river. He’s used to getting what he wants, and she will not stand in his way. But the very act of this is dangerous; it could breed conflict, consequences, even bring about Vasylia’s death (!?) should information fall into the wrong hands. I don’t think Vasylia has shared her hesitancy to continue down the path that The High Priestess has forged for her with her mentor - there’s no need to, it’s as easily distinguishable as ink spilled on skin - but there could be disastrous consequences should her concerns spill out. Not from The High Priestess, I don’t think, because I don’t see her as having an aim in mind to destroy Vasylia. Her resolve at least appears to be motivated by cutting away the thorns and making space for her prodigy to grow. Yet, Vasylia’s vulnerability is a weakness, and weaknesses can be exploited. While the dynamic between The Emperor and The Wheel of Fortune is… by far one of my favourite character dynamics you’ve written, perhaps The Emperor’s player would like to use this to his advantage in some way. The Emperor certainly isn’t The High Priestess’ first choice for the throne. So, I’d like to see these words come back to bite Vasylia, to further complicate her oscillation between this path or that. She’s no fool, but she by no means has the experience of her mentor. She studies underneath The High Priestess and lauds her propensity for manipulation and schemes, and while in her experience she’s picked up more than enough tricks, her hesitancy is weakness. She sacrifices her feelings and anxieties freely - because he coaxes it out of her, but also because she needs to purge. Over time, I’d like to see Vasylia’s actions breed consequences, over and over and over, to the point that she can’t run from them. She can only follow them blindly down a path she was always meant to.

SKIN AND TEETH: Maybe this is less of a personal plot point and more of a worldbuilding idea, but given that Necromancers have the ability to kill, I’d like Vasylia to dabble in that in the future. It’s something The High Priestess can do as second nature, as if she was born with the gift, and while Vasylia is better at drawing life into her than pouring herself into things, it’s not something she’s easily reconciled to. Still, I’d like to develop her skill here, figure out if it could be of use to The High Priestess or Septimus (because she serves the former first, the latter second). There’s an opportunity here to flesh out a dynamic between Vasylia and The Sun, who of course kills for a living, but I certainly think it’d be an irreversible path for her to walk down - one that, should she give herself over to it, solidifies her fate.

TRICK BOXES: If The High Priestess is the type to gather secrets in her plotting against Septimus, it could be interesting to have Vasylia drop by places such as The Rosewood Maiden in disguise. To gather secrets in a place where secrets are spilled like blood. She wouldn’t even need to disclose her plans to Vasylia if the player didn’t want her to, but I’d love an opportunity to branch out beyond the castle. Much of her life has been limited, either by the Temple or Castle Tyrholm, and it’d be interesting to feel her form an opinion on the ‘outside’ world; to get an idea of the sorts of people she’d be fleeing to should she leave The High Priestess’ care. Alternatively, it could be a good way to turn Vasylia away from her neutrality/loyalty and into the company of revolters.

A PLACE OUT OF MIND: Depending on how things shape up, I’d love to see Vasylia finally become an advisor. Perhaps not to the same degree as her mentor, but in some shape or form, I’d like to have her officially offer advice to the Crown. While The High Priestess’ intentions in extracting her from the Temple are, of course, ambiguous, it’s what she’s been training towards. What would make this even more interesting is: who will she be advisor to? To Septimus? Well, that spot is already taken by her mentor. The Emperor? Well, that depends whether his father can hold onto the throne until he dies. The Chariot? The World? Two vastly different options, but I suppose it depends which of them The High Priestess hopes to install on the throne. Vasylia is already quite content with the notion of serving The Emperor, and that could breed conflict, but it could also change.

WRITTEN IN THE FLESH OF US: While Vasylia is getting better at nominating the more sacrificable parts of herself every time she uses it, the sickness is spreading. She’s heard rumours, though. Rumours of a mage with the inexplicable ability to draw from two bodies of magic. I think The Moon could be a source of real fascination for Vasylia. If she fears anything, it’s that she’ll turn herself so irreversibly over to Necromancy that she loses the essence of who she is. Given that The Moon’s abilities lie in healing, I’d like Vasylia to investigate. If there is a possibility of regeneration, she wants it. It could be an opportunity to rehabilitate her self-image, to reconcile herself to this fate of hers, or even to break away from it - depending on what she discovers.

#d. #i literally just copied and pasted from my app BUT.... #THIS WILL DO FOR NOW

[iamnotawomanimagod]

lil nas x is islamophobic ):

Hi. Thank you for sending me this. I know you had good intentions. You’re not the first person to mention this since that post went viral, so I guess it’s time for me to take a stance, since that’s a thing you have to do when your words have widespread impact, however unexpectedly. I’m gonna say some stuff that is not directed at you, but at tumblr and social justice culture at large, and it’s gonna be long. I’m not trying to attack or belittle you, or your genuine concern. I’ll be addressing a wider audience than just you with this response. I appreciate your concern and you taking the time to send this.

For those who don’t know, here’s the short version:

A Twitter account was discovered earlier this September (2019) which allegedly belonged to Lil Nas X. From what I understand, the account was a private endeavor and never meant to face publicly, as part of LNX’s “brand.” The tweets were posted before LNX got famous, and the account has since been removed from Twitter for violating its terms of service. These tweets implied that Islam is a violent religion. While the account has not been publicly acknowledged by LNX, there is reason to believe it belongs to him. However, his team has denied that the account belongs to him (source). Please read these articles for more information, and draw your own conclusions, before you continue reading. (x) (x) (x)

Those are the facts as they stand now. Here’s where I stand, in turn.

The tweets in question were from two years ago, when LNX was only 18 - this is assuming the account was his, and I honestly don’t know one way or the other. 

Obviously, 18 year olds are legal adults, and they know right from wrong. However, I know that I personally said and believed some very problematic and incorrect shit at that age - things that were ingrained on a social and cultural level, that I had to unpack and confront, just like most of us do. 

I thought being “colorblind” to race was the only way to not be racist, and didn’t recognize how colorblindness is just whitewashing. 

I spent a long time afraid of Muslims after 9/11, even with teachers and my parents telling me there was no reason to be afraid. All of the signals I was receiving outside of the classroom and outside of my home were propaganda trying to make me believe otherwise. I would hide that fear, because I didn’t want to be rude, but it prevented me from being open and authentic around Muslims.

I regularly used the slur “g*psy” to mean “free-spirited wanderer” up until like, five years ago.

We (as Americans) are raised within a culture that teaches us to Other any groups which are different from ours, and to fear that Othering. Unlearning those viewpoints takes hard, intentional work.

Cancel culture is incredibly toxic. If we cancel every person every single time they say or do something ideologically impure, we cancel everyone. Absolutely nobody is perfect, and the hope is that everyone is doing better than they were a couple of years ago - have learned more, become more worldly, and know now what idiots we all used to be. That’s the whole life cycle in a nutshell. LNX might be famous, but he’s on that same path, just like the rest of us.

Not to mention, canceling people who say bad things puts them on the same level as people who do bad things, and I cannot abide by that. Chris Brown? That abusive fucker has been canceled since the moment he hit Rihanna. He inflicted physical violence on another person, and has showed no remorse about it since then - if anything, all he’s gained is a persecution complex. 

Am I going to cancel a kid who said some dumb shit as a teenager, as if he were on the same level? No. I just can’t do that.

We have to allow people room to grow. We have to give people the benefit of the doubt, and trust that they will work to understand their prejudices, given enough time, education, and empathy. And yes, we have to be empathetic towards ignorant people, otherwise, they become hateful people. 

You don’t fight ignorance with hate, not when someone is willing to work to be better. Not when there’s a more loving option. 

(You can fight Nazis with hate, though. That’s the only way. But we’re not talking about Nazis, we’re talking about dumb kids who spout off on Twitter when they don’t know any better - even if they should.)

But I think Lil Nas X is willing to do that work.

Everyone has to draw their own line, and make their own choice. If you find what LNX (allegedly) said to be unconscionable, stop listening to his music. Everyone can make that call for themselves, and will hopefully feel equipped to, after reading this post. 

I’m willing to give him another chance.

Lil Nas X is a creative, lighthearted, nerdy, gay, black kid. We need more people like him. I will not gatekeep for the sake of ideological purity. The only thing that accomplishes is maintaining the status quo, because more conventionally popular artists (read: white and straight) don’t have to work as hard to become successful.

That’s where I’m at. Thank you for messaging me.

(It should go without saying, but being willing to forgive does not mean I condone what was said. I in no way support islamaphobic attitudes. Islam is a religion with a billion peaceful and charitable followers. It should be respected and honored as an ultimate force for good in this world.)

#asks #dykommie #stephspeaks #panini #islamophobia #long post

[dragvn]

❧ that girl’s got whiskey kisses in her bloodstream and she wields them like a knife ❧

❝ She was a wild, wicked slip of a girl. She burned too brightly for this world. ❞ MARÍA GABRIELA DE FARÍA? No, that’s actually AURORA BLACK. Only NINETEEN years old, this GRYFFINDOR alumni works as a MAGIZOOLOGIST (XXXXX FOCUS) and is sided with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. SHE identifies as A CIS-WOMAN and is a HALFBLOOD who is known to be TEMPESTUOUS, BRAZEN, and RECKLESS but also PASSIONATE, EMPATHETIC, and UNFLINCHING. { JANE, TWENTY-TWO, NZT, SHE/HER }

hello this is rory and she is,,, a gryffindor™

her pinterest is HERE

first things first, she’s a twin. that’s the absolute first thing rory wants you to know about her. she’s an individual too, sure, but she came to this earth with leo and she cannot fathom the idea of ever having to be without. he’s her best friend, her brother, her other half, and she wants nothing but the best for him

incest tw (to do with the blacks, not rory) // sirius is not, biologically, a black. walburga and orion, likely due to their family’s inbreeding and their being related, struggled to conceive but were under immense pressure to provide an heir. they ended up passing off the baby of another pureblood family (a good one, of course —- not that they would ever deign to sully their name with the spawn of some blood traitor filth, merlin forbid) as their own: sirius orion black. it was a two-fold sort of situation for sirius —- when he began rebelling and finally ran away, walburga privately blamed his lack of biological connection on why he went astray, and possibly even in the last few years before it, shouting the truth at him at some point because she can’t imagine a worse insult than not being a black / is so furious that she wants him to know he is Not a Black, Not Good Enough to be like them anymore. if he did know, in some ways, it was a blessing, because he was able to say “i’m Nothing like them, literally” but also a space for Insecurity (given that he has a very complicated relationship in ootp with black family stuff, like he Hates it but he gets self-deprecating at points --- and ootp isn’t canon here, but his attitude and emotions still exist).  ------ anyway, that’s just spitballing, saz and i haven’t settled yet on whether he knows (honestly, as much as i can imagine walburga shouting that at him as an insult, it’s also something that i’m not sure how much sirius would believe / if she’d ever actually shout it, bc it’s her private shame that would reveal --- but the point is, he’s not biologically related and she privately would have blamed that for his estrangement & it’s a complicated situation) // end tw

rory and leo were born out of a one-night stand between sirius & mary macdonald, someone he used to know --- reconnection and shared grief and alcohol led to a one-night thing. neither of them were prepared to be parents --- neither of them wanted to be parents. as it was, mary didn’t even want to be in the wizarding world at all. all it had ever done was take from her, and she needed space to grieve and to find out who she was outside of all that loss. and so after the twins were born, they stayed with sirius, and mary left. sirius wasn’t equipped to be a parent either, but at least he had a support system in place --- harry, the weasleys, andromeda, the order --- everyone invested in him & trying to help raise the twins

they grew up with the potters. with all the order & cohorts who used to know harry and co., really, but the potters are the main crowd. sirius black is her father, always, even if he is not necessarily the best one ( maybe in another life, but this man spent twelve years in azkaban and lost so many people he loved —- he loves his children, that is never in doubt, but sometimes he is more friend than father ), and she would never think of anyone else as her father --- but it cannot be denied that harry and ginny are parental figures, are better at discipline and responsibility and instilling values into them than sirius. she is sirius black’s daughter to her bones, but the hands of all those who helped raise her can be seen too

parental death tw // sirius passes in their fifth year. rory Does Not Take It Well // end tw

alcohol, violence tw // there’s more fights than usual. she’s always been impulsive, running on soul and spirit and sheer emotion, but now there’s a sharper edge to it, a more desperate streak in the seeking of a distraction. she drinks. she fucks. she’s always been tactile, always been flirty, never afraid of promiscuity —- and that doesn’t change in light of this, it just has a new motivation. she’s not looking for a distraction, exactly. she’s just desperately looking for any way to hold onto the feelings she had before, of fun and frivolity and being young, being free. she makes some choices she wouldn’t have under other circumstances, but they are her choices. she holds onto that. even if some days she cannot believe that’s what she did, she doesn’t regret them, exactly —- she wouldn’t repeat them again, she thinks, a year on and handling it a bit better, but they’re hers. // end tw

hogwarts... she loves her friends, but she’s not always great at classes. absolutely abysmal at potions and herbology, dropped them as quickly as she could. care of magical creatures is her only true passion, though she’s excellent at charms and pretty decent at dada & transfiguration, though she has to work harder at the last one. the rest of her subjects go less well, with some fairly atrocious grades in all her OWLs except those subjects and astronomy, which she has a complicated relationship with in her head, given her father’s family’s situation with stars. that’s always how she thinks of them. as her father’s family. it’s separate to what she knows of the blacks now —- herself & leo & teddy, her father & andromeda, even the malfoys. the blacks of old are a cold, unforgiving bunch, and they would hate her. that’s fine, rory thinks. she would hate them too —- and the blacks she knows, her family, built as it is of the last remnants of the estranged blacks, featuring friends and war-time comrades? they love her. and that is something to hold onto always.

she becomes a magizoologist when she leaves hogwarts. begins training, anyway. luna lovegood-scamander is her mentor, and rory loves her. they have different focuses, different fascinations—-rory’s got a dangerous streak a mile wide, courtesy of her father, and she loves the things that feel like freedom. xxxxx creatures —- dragons, manticores, any of them, all of them, they are what she fights for especially, but she loves all creatures. there’s a special space in her heart for them. and she’s happy. she misses her father desperately, and it’s bizarre not seeing her twin every day anymore, but he’s at the flat with so many of their friends, and when she’s around, she’s pretty much always there, and it feels like coming home.

death tw // then harry dies. kingsley dies, minerva dies, harry dies, and rory’s world is quaking again. she’s in this weird space of hope and bitterness right now. she’s had a tendency to... not exactly believe the best in people, she’s still sirius’ daughter, but she believes everyone is worth saving, and everyone has good in them. and now with everything that’s happened, she’s got anger in her too because it kind of feels like a slap in the face. like she believes this world is worth saving but it has the audacity to throw blows like that? she lost her father, and now she’s lost harry too. and she’s not even entirely sure to what extent she’s allowed to feel that grief somedays —- it’s not like they’re his kids, after all —- but that’s when her thoughts are getting too much for her. usually, all she knows are her feelings, and she knows that’s enough. she loves her father but... lbr sirius has some issues with his emotional maturity/how to process emotions (which like... his family and then Azkaban, it’s no wonder) and then the potters are so good at it and she’s ended up with this immense capacity like her father but it’s a lot of empathy, much more like harry, and she feels and acts on her emotions primarily (like potters in general) but she’s, uh, not great at understanding them/processing. she needs to talk things through to really get things straight in her head when it comes to her own emotions. but she’s good at instinctive and instinctual handling of emotions, she just gets caught out a bit when she tries to think about them. so it’s a lot, it always it is, but when she doesn’t get too in her own head, she can sit in it. and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. but there’s resolve there too. she’s always been built of fire and laughter and empathy streaming from her in droves, even sharp as she can be from her father, and now it’s building itself into a dagger, a weapon, a danger. // end tw

tidbits bc this just got fuckin long and also kinda weird

aurora’s always been someone who prefers... not the background exactly bc that makes her sound like a wallflower but she’s happy not to be the brightest star. i think she’s warm and confident in a different way to her brother —- like if leo and james were doing something shenanigan-y in the centre of the common room during a party or something, she’s always ready to get involved and play her part but she doesn’t feel like she’s missing out if she’s sitting on the arm of the couch and drinking and watching and keeping a running commentary going

h8s all the lads. god. has totally pushed cas into a fountain before

would absolutely risk her life to save someone, even someone she hates and would totally not thank her for it and might even take advantage of it (like... those pesky lads!), and it’s a Terrible Thing in some ways (self-preservation ways) (also just... tactically speaking in war time) (leo is right to be like ?!?! at her for it)

maybe positive development for her looks like killing someone, we don’t know

her middle name marlena is after marlene, who was friends with both her parents, and leo’s is harry —- sirius wanted to save harry’s parents’ names for his use for his kids and, honestly, wanted to remember others who were in the fight too

quips when duelling smh

technically lives in a shitty bedsit but honestly spends most of her time when she’s in london at fulham flat

u know harry and ron to draco during the end of dh? when harry saves draco and then ron punches him in the face for being a lil asshole? rory is Both. she’ll save u but also break ur nose. duality of (wo)man

character tropes: undying loyalty ; action girl ; the heart ; the determinator ; chaotic good ; ethical slut // character parallels: brienne of tarth (asoiaf) ; daisy johnson (aos) ; sandrilene fa toren (the circle of magic) ; according to charactour, korra (tlok), leia (sw) & rey (sw), though honestly she’s a lot messier than any of them. verging on hawkguy!hawkeye levels of being a mess of a person, except unlike him, she’d never cheat on somebody lmao

#iidyintro #FINALLY #it's nearly 3:30 am imma try go 2 bed

[theparaminds]

It’s not as though Natalie Green knew what this year held in store or what would exist at the end of the road. Though, at every step of the way, he kept going. Embodied in both his music and his story of perseverance, is a rare example of an artistic soul that found peace where few would ever dream to look. It took months of learning and continued questioning of himself and what he wanted to be. But in the end, it resulted in a man anew.

With a new project taking shape in studio sessions that contrast his earlier life, Natalie Green is finding a voice he previously was nervous to share, speaking louder than before. The ideas, memoirs and anxieties he hopes to express have become clear. With every note, he continually finds himself as much as he does connect to those who battle the same confusions.

Natalie Green now stands with a new asset he hadn’t held prior, the ability to embark on the path he wants, not the one life throws him upon. He can stand and become the artist he visualizes, the artist he knows is essential to reveal to the world. For the first time in a while, Natalie Green is in control, with a steering wheel in hand and a road of possibility on the horizon.

Our first question as always, how’s your day going and how are you?

Things have been hectic, but good. Good busy you know? There are different kinds of busy and this one has been all positive.

On your last EP last year, it sounded like you weren’t fully at peace, do you find that you are now after a year of personal introspection?

Yeah for sure, when I was writing the EP, I was in a really terrible place physically, emotionally and mentally. It was a passion project when it came out, I didn’t have to think about it. Whereas now, I’ve got a place, I’m not just in my car anymore, I emotionally feel a lot more centered, I have my head on straight. I’ve found friends and people that I love to surround myself with. Everything’s been a thousand times better.

When you’re looking within this shift you’ve undertaken, where do you think you’ve personally grown the most, whether artistically or as an individual?

I think I’ve gotten more empathetic towards people. All people. As well, I feel more self-aware. What I realized when living in my car was that I didn’t know myself. Living in a house again with roommates made me, in a new way, learn more about myself, and where I needed to spend a lot of time mentally. As far as musically, I feel more confident, I think that’s apparent in my vocals and instrumentation, they’re far more personal in that sense.

With the new year in season, being a time of reflecting upon the past year, do you have any memories that stick out to you as positive through the difficult and turbulent times?

There’s a lot. I don’t know if there’s one specific moment, but definitely moving into the apartment. I also got to play a private show in my friend’s backyard for all my close friends. That was a big moment for me. There’s a lot of moments where I had friends reassure me, and believe in me when I wasn’t doing so myself. One of my best friends from back home came to live here a little while ago, that was really special to have him back. The whole tour with Roy, of course, was inspiring, to see him do all that and becoming closer to everyone I went on tour with will forever be in my memories.

With that tour, and even more so working on Cat Heaven, happening while you were working on your own projects, did they influence the way you approached your new work?

There are certain things I learn from other people I can implement in my own music later. There will be something I’ll figure out while I’m working with someone, be it a sound or a new style, I can kinda pull out later. A lot of it is just talking to others and learning their inspirations and how that reflects in their music. Then turning and comparing that to my own influences and seeing how I do the same. It’s all just inspiration.

To touch on that idea of inspiration, you’ve mentioned in the past how you have a wide range on influences in your life in terms on music, but in the last year, which artists have really been influencing the work you’re putting out?

There’s been a lot of really great artists I just got into this past year-ish, but a big one is Michelle Zauner, who’s the singer for Japanese Breakfast. I’m hugely inspired by her, the fact she directs her own music videos and does all her own creative output, it’s really amazing. I’ve also loved the movies of Michel Gondry and the writing of Charlie Kaufman, anything they work on is amazing and so intoxicating.

With this new album you’re ramping up to release, has there been a difference in approach to how you wrote songs and lyrics? And how does that process look like?

I mean it’s been different for almost every song, I tried to do the album the same way I did the EP, and it wasn’t working right. Every song I wrote just felt lacklustre or the same. So to change it up, I had to change my methods, like the first song I wrote, I did two guitar parts first and then I sang, then produced over. That is very different to the EP which was songs first then lyrics. There are certain songs where before I recorded, I had a guitar riff and just wrote the song in a very traditional way, just chords and singing. Maybe loops would be first at times, and then they’d be built off of. Everything has been different.

It’s interesting because it sounds like you’ve really been adding more to your skill set as an artist, would you say that if you had a tool belt of music, that you’ve been adding towards it in the last while?

Yeah, definitely. I’ve been doing that my whole life honestly. I started in bands, not knowing how to produce or anything, but I could play guitar and from then I learned the bass just to add of that. Then I learned production, and that is forever useful. Now I’m working more to be an artist and learn what that entails and requires. Every time I learn something new I really take that and hold onto it until needed.

If you could create your ideal music creation space, where would it be and how would it look like?

That’s interesting, It would really just need to be a secluded place. A place I could disappear and a place I could be as loud as I want as late as I want. No interruptions, all the equipment I needed. Some food, drinks and a bathroom, that’s all I need.

Over the year you’ve posted some concerts you went to, like Paramore in the summer. Are there other shows you saw live that really had an impact upon you and maybe changed the way you approach live shows yourself?

Well, of course, the tour with Roy, he’s been super inspiring in general and watching the man work is amazing. He has a lot of fantastic ideas and he goes through with them. I saw Daisy as well, and they’re so good live. Solange was also amazing with her stage design and her choreography. I also saw Soccer Mommy pretty recently, and it wasn’t too extravagant but it was so well done and exciting to see as a fan of the music.

When you’re on stage, even something like the backyard show you mentioned earlier, what’s the emotion you’re trying to achieve and what is the mindset that you find yourself within at that moment?

When I played that private show, I realized all my songs were pretty mellow and hard to dance or move to. All except for Beachwood didn’t translate very well. So with this new project, I want them to translate really well live, to feel energetic, to feel lively. The songs are just fun. But I keep that emotion in and make sure that I don’t lose what made the earlier work so special and important.

What’s been the overall message you’re trying to pursue this new work and what is it you’re hoping to convey?

I kinda just want to tell my story. Or a story of mine. If people learn things from that, its great, but I’m just saying what happened in my experience. What I realized is that there’s a lot of shitty things that happened to me in my life, but the truth is that things could be a lot worse, so far they’ve been pretty good for the most part. While I had those tough days, I’m still here kicking it.

I apologize if it’s a repeated question, but with the topic of your story, what’s the meaning behind the stage name you’ve taken upon yourself?

It is and it isn’t part of my story in a way. A big part of that choice was that I wanted to separate myself from my old name and work. I wanted this to be super new. The name is taken from two names of people I am very inspired by. And it also, to me, sounds like the quintessential hot girl from a high school, the girl in the coming of age movie they all go after.

If you had a message to artists out there who may find themselves in the same space as you have previously found yourself within, those who may feel as unsure, what would be your lesson to pass on?

I think it doesn’t matter if you’re as confident or as talented as you want to be, as long as you recognize what sounds good to you, just put out the song. It doesn’t matter if you think your voice was bad, just keep progressing as an artist. If you wait for that progression you’ll never put stuff out, you’ll never be happy. With whatever you have right now, just start putting something, anything, out.

Follow Natalie Green on Twitter and Instagram

Listen on Soundcloud and Spotify

All Photos by Guthrie King

[gotgifsandmusings]

My idiocy, reading lenses, and GRRM

So, I was away all weekend with family things. But as I said, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about my most recent podcast and the feedback I’ve received in reblogs, @’s, my inbox, direct messages, and replies. Which like, an absolutely sincere thank you for anyone who took the time, in whatever capacity.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Julia and I recorded a UBS episode called “is GRRM literal garbage,” which we were using as a platform to talk about the flaws of ASOIAF, while sort of being playful about the way that online dialogue puts things in such, you know, black and white terms. People are perfect or they’re toxic and garbage, right? And because of that, there are a lot of times where we feel—or really where I feel, cause it’s just my own thoughts I’m vomiting here—like content creators who at least like, *try*, really do receive unfair criticism.

But yeah, most of the feedback we got was very negative. Particularly, Julia and I—we’re two white women, and we recorded a segment on racial portrayals and racism in ASOIAF, since there are so many problems on this front that we felt disingenuous not doing it. We made sure to call out how we are white before entering into this discussion, and also said something like, ‘hey, if we miss something or if you disagree with us, please tell us so we can engage, because we are limited by our own lack of experiencing racism.’ (And anti-semitism is...not at all of the same vein; nothing pisses me off more than when white jews try to distance ourselves from our racial privilege, to be honest).

Well, not surprisingly at all, we missed stuff! Because of course we fucking did. And it wasn’t just that, but we also put ourselves in a position of saying, “oh we’re apologetic of Martin” and then trying to like...come up with reasons for what are obvious problems through the lens of intent or some shit, which is just...so not what should do ever. Hell, it’s not what we should do with any topic, let alone one where we’re entering into the conversation from such a place of privilege. So yeah, we missed stuff and we sounded like we were apologizing for racism which is not only not our place, but not even what we set out to do.

This wasn’t unique to the problems of racism in ASOIAF either; I received a lot of asks saying that it really felt like I was trying not to let my lens of Martin be challenged. And really ruminating on all this the past few days...there’s a ton of truth to that. Which is a bit silly, because I never exactly thought myself as holding Martin up in the first place—just what I got out of these book series. So what was it I was resisting?

It was Gretchen ( @gnelliswriter ) who ended up framing everything to me in a way where these things that were concatenating—all this criticism that I trying to absorb and understand, finally clicked. Because she talked about the balance of the 3 lenses: Doylist, Watsonian, and Reader Response. Which is also like, viewer response and gamer response, of course.

When she said this, it was just like...“Oh.” Because, Julia and I focus a ton on Doylist vs. Watsonian, you know? Watsonian being a character-level analysis, like “Cersei did this because she was feeling X.” Doylism then looks at what the author is trying to say. “Martin had Cersei do this because he was making a point about Y.” Julia’s the one who explained this to me in the first place—my background is engineering and I hadn’t done any type of literary analysis until the Arianne reread.

However, in terms of dialogue surrounding media, there is quite clearly a third lens. Reader Response is the *reader’s* takeaway. “Cersei did X and regardless of what Martin wanted that to mean, here’s what the message was that I saw, here’s how I reacted, and here’s the implications of it” (or just some aspect of this).

Which...this is the most obvious thing, because it’s the ONLY THING I talk about with Game of Thrones, right? Like, I say GOT isn’t worthy of Watsonian analysis, because it’s not, but then the series of retrospectives Julia and I do where we’re desperately hunting for a Doylist rationalization also reveals that...D&D don’t really have much to say anyway, and they don’t seem to particularly care. Then in these essays, we always go on and say, “Well okay, regardless of that, HERE’S the implications, and they suck donkey dick.” And fuck, I wrote an entire piece on the difference between intent and result, and why results really really matter.

So this whole thing, like... I don’t know, I realize I’m not an English major or anything, but in some ways I kind of feel like Reader Response is actually the only lens that matters? (I can hear the gasps from my academic friends right now.) Or at least, it matters the most heavily, because that’s where engagement is, and that’s where the dialogue occurs that fosters empathy and understanding. I suppose most stories I consume do also foster empathy in some ways (unless they’re nihilistic piss slop), but they’re not ever going to replace the experience of hearing a diversity of voices and viewpoints on something.

For example, with Legend of Korra, which I love, I had zero problems the first time I heard the line in the end about how Korra “needed to know what true suffering was so she could become more empathetic.” I thought the intent was clear, and it was a powerful way of showing someone recontextualizing their trauma and finding a healthy state of mind. However, after reading what many women of color in the fandom wrote on the matter, I understood why that had felt offensive to others, and why it was so uncomfortable to have had two white men put those words into the mouth of a brown, bisexual female protagonist.

So now I’ve like, written fix-it fic of that moment. Because the Reader Response to Korra’s words created that dialogue where otherwise my own lens wouldn't have been challenged, even as a bisexual woman myself. White women simply don’t have a history with the trope of being beaten to “learn respect” that women of color have in media. That’s a privilege, so learning about it was really important. All I want in life is to somehow work towards a world where people don’t feel like shit. The more we learn about the shittyness that exists and try to understand it, the better equipped we will be to fix it. Why *wouldn’t* we prioritize a lens of analysis that can bring that about? 

Honestly, as soon as Gretchen labeled “Reader Response” a third lens, it’s like the clouds parted, and the sun shined onto my own striking idiocy with how I’ve been talking about everything and framing everything (I think we’re going to do a joint piece on this soon). Cause like, it *is* deeply hypocritical—my approach to GRRM compared against my approach to D&D. I say it’s because of “benefit of the doubt”, and that’s a thing, but that doesn’t really explain what was actually happening, it’s more of “I don’t really want to think about this cognitive dissonance”, and it certainly doesn’t help me grow from what went so wrong on the podcast. I was using it as a rhetorical crutch. 

Like, before Gretchen parsed this out with me, I kind of thought a laser-focus on the flaws of a story was just someone being “too Doylist.” But that’s not actually a thing. How would that be one? You can’t try and figure out what an author is saying ~too~ much, though I guess if you only care about what the author’s saying you may, idk, not feel as into the characters or something.

No, what it is, is Reader Response and how you felt interacting with media, which...media is not created or consumed in a cultural vacuum. If I believe media analysis matters, which I do, it’s because of Reader Response. I’m not trying to take “death of the author” to the extreme, but there is a point where whatever authorial intent exists just doesn’t matter. There are impacts reading stories have on people, and on conversations.

So all of this makes how Julia and I approached a podcast about ASOIAF’s flaws all the more stupid. Because basically what we did was read out a laundry list of problems, which are all Reader Response by nature; if we happened to think it wasn’t much of a problem we’d say so (like when I said that I didn’t think Arya and Sansa’s scripting as sisters was sexist, which like...I’m sorry, but I’m sticking to that one), but otherwise the conversation was kind of us going, “oh this is an issue, but here’s maybe a Doylist or Watsonian reason for it.” And that’s...not constructive? I mean, what does that even do?

What should have been a tip-off, too, is that the only time we didn’t do this was when Julia tried to come up with an explanation for Dany’s scene with Irri, and I got really pissed because I just didn’t see any value or justification in it. As a queer woman, my reader response to that was super, super negative, and I had no patience for anything else. Well, Julia and I are limited by our own lenses and backgrounds, so apply that to other issues, and we don’t have experiences where we would get pissed about stuff about which other people are probably seething. But that doesn’t mean the people who are seething should have to listen to the bullshit of “well here’s a point you can consider that makes this gross ass thing valuable!” What the hell do we know about it?

Which, it wasn’t really what we were trying to do, but it absolutely is what the podcast ended up being. And frankly, it’s not like I’ve ever gotten positive or worthwhile takeaways from the way Martin portrays race, with maybe a small exception being the in-verse prejudice against Dorne getting deconstructed within Dornish POVs. That’s just because it even further hammers on POV-bias and shines a lens on Westerosi perspectives in a rather stark light, though I still question its effectiveness. And sure, you can apply that deconstruction elsewhere in the story and assume everyone is an unreliable and biased narrator (they are), but what value is there in Dorne being the only place that actually gets a closer inspection?

And even if Martin is doing something to a point, that doesn’t make it a helpful point or a necessary point. Like, oh we now know Dany’s in way over her head, and doesn’t understand the political or cultural complexity of where she’s trying to rule or what she’s trying to accomplish. Okay, but I’m about 99% sure that same point could have been made with Essosi POVs?? And almost certainly a lot better and clearer???

For fuck’s sake, if we hadn’t had any female POVs for the first three books and people were telling me, “oh it’s to make a point on women’s place in this society,” or idk to prove how unknowable women are to our male protagonists or some shit, there’s no way I’d even be reading this series. And it’s not as though I have any patience for super stereotypical jewish portrayal; it’s just that that’s not exactly possible in ASOIAF. If it were, you can sure as hell bet that I wouldn’t appreciate two goys telling me it’s all for the greater good of writing a...really gross world, or showing how much a character appreciates jewish culture. That doesn’t make any goddamn sense!

Look. Julia and I have gotten a lot out of Martin’s critique of the patriarchy. You can bet your ass a large reason for that is because there’s so many female POVs, not to mention male POVs who are also victims of this horrible setting, such as Theon and Aeron being victims of sexual assault (Theon’s chapters being a much more intimate look), Jaime struggling to define himself in a martial world now that he’s lost his hand, Sam’s trauma from his abusive upbringing, and so on. Julia and I also give Martin leeway because looking at his work chronologically, things do seem to be improving. Which...yay? Snaps?

But really, it’s something @witabif said to me that stuck in my craw as I was talking this out with pretty much anyone in my proximity the past few days: I have a huge tendency to take *my* positive reactions and takeaways to ASOIAF and apply them to Martin’s intent. I think the conflation of Reader Reaction and Doylism is the largest part of that, but what’s funny is I work overtime to not do that, especially with GoT. How many times have I said “we can’t know what’s in D&D’s head,” or steel-manned some dumbass plotpoint of theirs?

At the end of the day, all we really have to judge content creators on are their bodies of work. It’s why I say “it’s the pattern.” And Martin’s pattern? It’s one of a dude who is a pretty skilled storyteller, but also very much out of his depth in a lot of departments. Does he do better than most other 69-year-old white cishet men living in New Mexico? Probably. Is he making an effort to be more thoughtful as times go on? I mean...it feels that way in some places, but that doesn’t erase what’s hurtful in the books now, or what’s ugly, or most importantly, what’s shaping a large part of our cultural conversation because let’s be honest here: these books are hugely successful and have that power. This is why I’ve talked over and over again about fiction mattering. Fuck, this is why I engage with GoT at all and think it’s worthwhile looking at its flaws.

Really, ASOIAF isn’t any different. I mean, it tells a coherent story, so it’s different on that front. And I do find some of the takeaways of the books valuable. I also stand adamant that what Martin does with close PoV is impressive, and he is a gifted writer who can tease out nuance quite well. The battle between good and evil truly is within the human heart, and the experience of reading the books, and then rereading them where you find these other depths, has been one of an engagement I haven’t quite matched elsewhere yet.

But, part of liking something and caring about something means a willingness to engage with its flaws, no matter how deep or uncomfortable they are. Engaging shouldn’t be excusing, and even if I’ve found ways to tease out meaning (for instance, Cersei and Taena’s scene lands one way for me, but not at all the same way for many other wlw readers), my personal reaction and truth is...just that? And I do suspect that a lot of times, I’m seeing something there he didn’t see at all. Which is a tension I should have been digging into this whole time.

Looking back at the podcast, it was a horrible fucking structure for it. I don’t even know if it should have been an episode, to be honest. Because like, aside from just explaining what these problems were, and maybe sampling meta of people who had written on specific issues, there’s not much to add. We can’t proclaim someone to be literal garbage (which was part of the joke of the title), nor can we we proclaim them to be good enough, because...who the fuck are we anyway? I think what we could have done is had discussion about how to engage with deeply flawed media, as kind of a “Here’s all that’s wrong...so, what now?” thing, but we didn’t even discuss our approach beforehand.

I’m thinking about pulling it out of the feed entirely, and please let me know your thoughts on that. On one hand, I think it’s important to not hide from our mistakes and to allow a pathway to grow from them. For that reason, and because I just really want to after taking in this feedback, I’m working on a direct follow-up episode to it for the near future. On the other, I don’t want subscribers still hearing a conversation that’s out-of-balance and problematic, and I can see no reason why the follow-up discussion episode would require the former episode in the feed. I’m leaning towards the latter, but definitely value everyone’s input in the matter.

After typing all this out...it’s not complicated: it comes back to me not wanting to challenge my views on Martin. I didn’t. But now they have been, and it has been because of how amazingly thoughtful this fandom is, as well as the responses and suggestions I’ve received. And you know what? Yeah. I’m disenchanted with the guy. It’s not like a lightswitch, but seeing the misalignment between *my* reader reaction and *his* pattern/messaging has been eye-opening, embarrassing, and frustrating. He’s just some dude with a fairly unique approach to genre fiction and a few good ideas; there’s areas where he excels, and areas where he needs a lot of improvement. A lot.

I’m still going to say stop bothering him about writing speed and stop consulting actuary tables, because that shit is creepy. But otherwise, he’s welcome to fight his own battles. God knows he has the resources. I still think I will land in a different place with how effective his scripting of women is, among other things, and I look forward to continuing to have spirited discussions about all of that. However, it’s now with full cognizance that it’s our reactions and experience to the media that we’re discussing, and my own has diddly squat to do with Martin’s intent.

Which I should have realized from day fucking 1.

#the 'put it in writing'' won by a healthy margin #but I'm going to do a video follow-up too I think #should be tonight #asoiaf #grrm

[crohnsdigest]

25 Things that Living with Crohn’s Disease Has Taught Me By Courtney Maiorino · June 13, 2016

“There are many illnesses and negative things that have happened to people that have gotten them to greatness. Without the obstacles, these people may have never become great.” – Prince Ea As I sit here, at my computer, on my 25th birthday (May 16th, 2016). I get a chance to reflect on the past seven years of my life. It has been 7.5 years since I began this crazy journey with inflammatory bowel disease and I am so proud of the transformation that I have gone through to get to this point. As most of you know, May was also IBD Awareness Month, so I want to share with you what living with Crohn’s disease has taught me.

Lessons from living with Crohn’s disease

1. It has taught me to have an appreciation for the little things: having a whole day without pain, being able to get out of bed in the morning, and enjoying food after a serious flare. 2. It has taught me what my life’s purpose is. Before my diagnosis, I had little direction in regards to my life. When my health fell apart, the things that I thought I wanted were no longer important. In order to learn to truly take care of myself, I fell in love with anything health, wellness or nutrition-related. These things are my passion now and I hope one day to share them with other IBD patients who want to integrate alternative health modalities into their treatments. 3. It has taught me how to find and use my voice. As I got used to living with an autoimmune disease, I shared more about my journey and holistic perspective on living with Crohn’s. What I never expected was that sharing what I was going through would help me heal, and it truly has. 4. It has taught me how strong I really am. The multiple years without a diagnosis, the frustration and anger, the daily uncontrollable symptoms and pain, and the isolation that comes with living with Crohn’s has shown me that I am much stronger than I ever thought I could be. 5. It has taught me how to be more empathetic and understanding of people and their situations. When I was younger, I was never a mean person but I was unaware of the intense things that many people have to deal with. Crohn’s has allowed me to tap into a more empathetic side of myself that can relate to people who may be going through tough times. 6. It has taught me how to develop an internal, subtle confidence. As young teens, we usually identify ourselves by how we look and what we have and develop a loud confidence because of those things. Living with IBD has given me the opportunity to develop confidence within myself that is based on how I treat others (and myself) and how I see people for who they are on the inside. 7. It has taught me that I am able to get through whatever life hands me. Before Crohn’s, I’d never had an event that changed my life drastically. Adjusting to life with an autoimmune disease is tough, but now that I’ve done that, I know that I am better equipped to handle whatever else comes my way. 8. It has taught me that I can stand up for what I believe in. My perspective on living with IBD is different than most, and that has made this whole journey tougher than I thought it would be. However, it has also shown me that I am able to stand behind my beliefs and values while working with my care team to get the best care possible. 9. It has taught me how to be resourceful. The beginning of my Crohn’s journey was very hard because I had little knowledge about where to find resources to help myself. Going through this life change has shown me that I can dig deep and find information needed to help myself feel better. 10. It has shown me an appreciation for the select few people that have stuck with me on my journey. People come in and out of our lives, but it seems that they move more quickly when you’re chronically ill. 11. It has taught me how to laugh at myself. The embarrassing experiences that have come along with having Crohn’s have shown me how to laugh at myself and some of the things that I have had to deal with over the years. Laughing is some of the best medicine there is. 12. It has taught me that my health is constantly changing. Over the 7.5 years that I’ve lived with Crohn’s, the way that I eat, relax, exercise and relieve stress have changed so many times, and that is the beauty of life: there is always something new to learn. 13. It has taught me that is okay to be different. Everyone has an obstacle or circumstance that they have to deal with. In the end, we’re all different, and that’s okay! 14. It has taught me how to live in the present moment. Because of the severity of our diseases and the fleeting moments of relief from symptoms, being able to live in the moment and enjoy now is the best practice that we can cultivate as we live our lives with IBD. 15. It has taught me that I can be my own healer. While working with my medical care team, I also did my own homework about holistic health modalities and alternatives that I could incorporate into my life that could help me feel better, and they have. 16. It has taught me that I can be healed, even though I cannot be cured. While a cure for Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis is still in the works, finding my life’s purpose, living holistically, adopting a whole foods eating style, and minimizing my stress have allowed me to feel fully healed. I am finally able to live my life to the fullest potential while knowing that I have the tools in my toolbox and have practitioners to fall back on to help me if needed. 17. It has taught me how important my health really is. I have finally realized, with help from my autoimmune disease, how crucial it is to nourish my body, mind, and soul so that I can feel fully alive. If I don’t have my health, the other aspects of my life will begin to deteriorate too. 18. It has taught me the value of community. Being able to lean on people in the same situation who know what you’re going through is so inspiring and comforting. 19. It has taught me how to be okay with fitting out. I used to want so badly to fit in with the crowd. Thanks to Crohn’s, I’m now okay with fitting out instead! I have found my “thing” that makes me different, and I’m beginning to see that as a blessing. 20. It has taught me how to find the blessings in health complications. Inflammatory bowel disease is a serious, severe condition, and feeling grateful for that diagnosis took a long time. However, I am finally able to say that I am so grateful for the fact that I have Crohn’s disease and what it has brought into my life and taught me. 21. It has taught me that I can thrive on eating plants. While this lesson was unexpected due to the nature of my disease, I have found that eating a plant-based diet has helped me personally alleviate symptoms and feel my best! 22. It has taught me that I am able to run 13.1 miles. If I was never diagnosed with IBD, I would have never signed up for a Team Challenge Half Marathon in my hometown, completed it and beat my time goal! 23. It has taught me that being vulnerable and sharing my story can help and inspire others. I never knew that being so open and honest about what I go through and how I live my life would be so helpful for those in similar situations. 24. It has taught me that I am capable of so much more in my life than I had previously thought. Being diagnosed with Crohn’s has shown me that I can be a blogger, health coach, half marathon runner, weight lifter, and plant-based eater. This disease has pushed me so far outside of my comfort zone that I can’t even really remember the person that I used to be because I am so comfortable with who I am now and that is an amazing feeling. 25. It has taught me how to fully love all parts of myself. This has been the toughest lesson to learn because of Crohn’s. I used to be so angry and resentful and fight-minded, and my health didn’t get any better. Then, I tried being happy and loving and thrive-minded, and I’ve really, truly began to thrive!

Living with Crohn’s is hard, but I wouldn’t change a thing

While living with Crohn’s disease has made my young adult years hard, I wouldn’t change a single day of those years. I have learned so much about myself, other people and life because of my disease and I am happy that I can sit down and write this list honestly and openly. My hope is that one day, each of you who read this can write a list like this too! click here to read more on crohnsdigest Read the full article

[siva3155]

300+ TOP SALES MANAGER Interview Questions and Answers

SALES MANAGER Interview Questions for freshers experienced :-

1. What personality traits should a Sales Manager possess? “The traits of a perfect sales manager: loyalty (first to the customer, then the company, then the sales force), consistency, empathetic, and should be process-oriented.” 2. What is the difference between ‘managing’ and ‘leading’ which one is more important? “Usually managing and leading are misunderstood as words with the same meaning. Whereas in reality there’s a border line between the two; managing refers to management of the task or work usually conducted by the manager, while on the other hand leading is a broad term used to refer to one who has the responsibility of leading or directing the workforce on the path to achievement of certain goals. Managers are the brains of any business whereas leaders are the hearts. Managers do things right whereas leaders does the right things.” 3. How do you manage solving conflicts within your sales team? “As a manager I always prefer to remain calm, Let the others have their say. Than considering their issues in depth in order to work out a possible solution.” 4.Describe sales-teamwork; how did you handle your team challenges? Consider possible answer to these questions; select the most impressive. Consult with colleagues and friends, prepare and rehearse your responses so that you make smooth presentation. Sound positive and confident; prepare to share some telling experiences. If you have pertinent volunteer experience, relate one as well. Remember that the same qualities needed for a sale manager can be utilized to ensure you a job offer as well! 5. What is your management style? Interviewer is interested to know how effectively and efficiently you work .so it’s important to impress the interviewer with your competency and accuracy. “I believe I’m organized and efficient, able to do work quickly. Always ask for feedback and change my mind according to get the best outcome. Never lose interest in any project of mine unless I’ll get the desired result.” 6. Did you set up sale targets for your staff? “Yes I always set sales targets for sales staff because it will help them work towards the achievement of predetermined path leading to an efficient and a productive working environment.” 7. What are some of the typical key tasks of a sales Manager? “The typical tasks of a sales manager are to resolve customer complaints regarding sales and service, monitor customer preferences to determine focus of sales efforts, direct and coordinate activities involving sales of manufactured products, services, commodities, real estate or other subjects of sale, determine price schedules and discount rates, Review operational records and reports to project sales and determine profitability.” 8. Do you arrange any training programs for your staff development? “Yes I have conducted many training sessions for counselling weak staff to help them to enhance their skills and abilities so that they can contribute more effectively towards organization’s success.” 9. What selling techniques will you suggest? “For a sales person Optimism and enthusiasm should be always there. Negativity has no place in sales. Those sales people who think outside the box and take it upon themselves to thoroughly learn the product or service will be better equipped to confidently tackle questions. Consumers value transparency, so honesty and integrity rank highly in the list of desired sales traits. One of the most effective sales techniques is to develop a trusted relationship with your leads and customers. Every successful salesperson has a specific closing strategy that works for her. Whether appealing to a customer’s emotional triggers or confidently answering questions and dispelling doubts, finding and tweaking a closing strategy that works is one of the most vital parts of selling. Establishing a rapport with your customer will enable you to find out what your customer’s needs and wants are and will help you analyse his decision making process.” 10. What is it about sales you enjoy? Say that you enjoy the challenge of speaking to new customers and closing a deal. For you, the best thing about sales is the knowledge that you can turn people who are interested in a product into buyers.

SALES MANAGER Interview Questions 11. Why do you feel now is the right time to move to a sales manager position? Answer that during your career in sales you have had many opportunities to train and guide others and have come to learn that you can add more value to a team by sharing your experience and techniques than by working alone. Say that you feel now is the right time to make a move to managing a sales team. 12. How do you feel you would handle the extra demands placed upon you as a manager? Say that you are confident that given the opportunity you will thrive in this environment. You are eager to show what you can bring to the team and to pass on your experience and knowledge to the younger members of the sales team. 13. Have you any previous management experience? Say that although you have not worked as a manager you have had the opportunity to stand in when managers are absent to run a team. You always enjoyed these opportunities and from this realised that management is the course you wish to take. 14. How would you motivate a struggling salesperson in your team? Say that you would provide them with some closer mentoring and provide them with encouragement, and tell them that they are a capable salesperson. Also you would ensure that they had the tools needed to do their job well. 15. What is your previous record in sales? Be honest and talk briefly about your experience. Highlight any major deals you made and be very positive about the companies you have worked for. Talk about how your career has progressed to date and mention any responsibilities you had. 16. How would you create a competitive but positive atmosphere in your sales team? Say that you would set up some internal competitions with prizes based on sales targets. The prizes would be given at group events, such as a monthly team meal. 17. What skills do you think are required to be a successful salesperson? Say that being good at sales requires a broad set of skills, but the most important skills are an understanding of the product you are selling, and knowing the market and customers. Confidence and excellent communication skills are vital. 18. Can you tell us about a time you had to devise a successful strategy and implement it? Ideally you will be able to answer this honestly based on experience. If not, say that you kept a log of questions, answers and success rates in one of your first roles and streamlined the questions asked to increase success rates. 19. What do you find rewarding about working with people? Say that you enjoy being part of a team working towards a unified goal and you love to see team members develop and flourish. Talk about how you enjoy the camaraderie and banter of working with others in a sales team. 20. What do you know about our target audiences? How would you sell to them? Here you need to do some research on the company before the interview. Read their annual reports, their website and advertising material. This should provide details of who they are targeting. Make it clear that you have done your research and suggest a brief sales strategy. SALES MANAGER Questions and Answers Pdf Download Read the full article

[theshatteredrose]

Blossoming Friendships (Guardian Chronicles) - Etrian Odyssey Untold 2

Summary: Sometimes, it was nice spending peaceful moments with those who are like minded.

Pairings: Platonic/friendly Flavio/Lynus/Hrothgar fluff~

AN: This was supposed to be short. But somehow it kept growing XD These three honestly make such good friends~ Hope you feel the same way! Enjoy!

It was well after midnight, the sky a pitch black outside without the light of the moon, and Flavio found himself unable to settle and relax. Not that it was anything new for him. Staying up late and staring at the ceiling was quite the nightly occurrence. His mind was always reeling with preparation for what tomorrow would bring. He always did a mental checklist over the things he had and the things he needed for when they head into the labyrinth tomorrow.

But tonight he felt unquestionably restless.

And after turning over to his side for the umpteenth time, he decided that he wasn't going to be able to sleep in his current state. Instead Flavio threw off the blankets in an agitated fashion and sat up as he peered around at the darkness with a slight scowl on his face. He was agitated, but not all that surprised. There was a sound of thunder rumbling in the distance and the wind was starting to pick up. He had never been a very solid sleeper. And the sounds of nature outside were making him edgy. What survivalist didn’t feel that way, right?

Uttering an annoyed huff, Flavio swung his legs over the side of the bed and proceeded to sleep on some of his outwear clothes and his boots. If he couldn’t sleep, he should go for a walk or do something at least somewhat productive. Staying in his room and staring up at the ceiling wasn’t an option. That would honestly only irritated him further.

As Flavio slipped on his jacket, he quietly opened the door of his room and peered out. The hallway was as dark as the sky outside and there didn’t appear to be anyone else up and about. He couldn’t see any lights shining from the bottom of his guildmates’ rooms, so thankfully they appeared to be sleeping.

Stepping out into the hallway, Flavio silently closed the door behind him before he turned toward the direction of the front foyer. He figured he would loiter around there, perhaps help Hanna out if she had any late night guests. Or at least sit in the tearoom and just watch the flames in the fireplace. That was always calming.

The foyer was empty as Flavio passed through. He wrapped his arms around himself lightly when the sound of the wind intensified outside, and he shivered. Though not from the cold, but the sound of wind. He had never liked the sound of the high-pitched, shrieking wind. It made his skin crawl. Always had and it probably always will.

Deciding that he didn’t want to be in the foyer in case the wind blew open the front doors, Flavio continued to move and decided to head to the tearoom as he could see the door was open and a soft, flicking light was being emitted from within. If nothing else, he could sprawl out on the large, plush couch that was usually situated in front of the fireplace. The couch was a rather large piece of furniture, designed for anyone to sleep on it if they wanted, a couple of people even. It was there for the winter months, or so he was told, as rooms with their own fireplaces were extremely popular during those times.

He was also told that fights often broke out for the best spot in front of the fireplace. And, funnily enough, the Guardians were said to always win.

As Flavio stepped inside the room, his gaze immediately trailed over to the couch and immediately noticed that it was occupied by two familiar individuals. One was a certain orange-haired medic who was sat in the middle of the couch, reading a book in one hand while the other idly raked through the hair of another, a familiar protector with red hair who appeared to be asleep with his head resting on Lynus’ lap.

Flavio was…surprised by the sight.

“Lynus?” he found himself muttering in surprise.

Lynus glanced up from his book and smiled gently over at him, not at all perturbed by him. In fact, he simply placed his book down next to him, his hand still gently toying with Hrothgar’s hair.

“Hm? Oh, hello Flavio,” he said warmly. “You can come in if you want. Hrothgar is just resting. He tried to guide a rookie guild through the second floor, but their dark hunter was too energetic, I suppose you could say, and she foolishly pulled her guild into a battle against a raptor. And Hrothgar, being the staunch protector that he is, immediately placed himself on the front line. Not without consequence, though. He was thrown back into a tree and hit his head. Thankfully, though, there were no skull fractures and he managed to keep fighting, even with blurred vision.”

“Oh,” Flavio murmured in response before his brow furrowed with concern and he crossed the room to crouch in front of them so that he could get a better look at the redheaded protector. It was then that he noticed that he had fresh white bandages wrapped around his forehead. “How is he doing now?”

“He’s thankfully sleeping now,” Lynus answered with a slight hum. “The threat of concussion has passed. He’s not in any pain or discomfort now. He’s probably getting the best sleep he had in ages.”

Flavio felt his concern lift and he nodded his head as he gazed at Hrothgar for a moment. The protector was lying on his side, one leg on the couch while the other touched the floor. His hands were folded near his chest as his head rested comfortably on Lynus’ thigh. His face was smooth, without any tension or pain. He honestly looked comfortable. But…

“Shouldn’t he be in his room, though?” Flavio couldn’t help but ask.

“I wanted to keep an eye on him for the next couple of hours,” Lynus replied with a slight shrug of his shoulder. “The clinic is a little too cold at this time of night. I thought the tearoom, with the fireplace, would be better. At least Wulfgar seems to have settled.”

Flavio blinked and immediately glanced over his shoulder toward the fireplace. There, lying in front of it was a certain dark furred wolf, who of which lifted his head from his folded paws when he seemed to realise that Flavio was looking at him. And he wasn’t alone, either. He was lying next to a certain white-tiger who was at least twice the size of him. 

“Oh, hey Wulfgar, didn’t see you there.” Flavio greeted with a smile, of which grew when the white tiger seemed to flick his tail irritably at him. “Yes, I can see you too, Chi-hung.”

Lynus laughed warmly, which prompted Flavio to turn his attention back to him. And as he did so, Flavio saw a sense of tenderness in his violet eyes as Lynus gazed back down at Hrothgar.

“Also, I wanted him to have some company,” Lynus said as an empathetic smile appeared on his lips. “He tries to do so much on his own. And I worry that each time he finds a reckless guild, he’ll muse about the misfortune of his own.

Flavio’s gaze also wandered down to the protector and his heart immediately went out to him. “Yeah, that’s true. I’m glad he’s not on his own now.”

Lynus nodded his head idly before turning his back toward Flavio, and tilted his head to the side in curiosity. “What about you? Couldn’t sleep?”

“Ah, yeah,” Flavio answered as he rubbed the back of his neck and pushed himself to his feet. “Just feeling a little restless tonight.”

“Hmm,” Lynus hummed in thought for a moment before he suddenly said; “You have your hair out. This is the first time I’ve seen you with your hair out.”

Flavio blinked at him for a second before he reached out to rake a hand through his hair to see that, he was right. His hair was out. He normally tied it back, no matter where he went or what he did. He must have been so agitated by the wind that he plain forgot. “Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to tie it back,” he simply muttered.

He was about to make a remark about Lynus having his own hair down when Hrothgar uttered a soft, low moan and he began to stir. But Lynus carefully carded his fingers through his hair to gently lull him back to restfulness. Even as Hrothgar’s breathing eased out once more, Lynus kept running his fingers through his hair idly. As if it was something of a habit of his, now. As if…he had spent many a night sitting in front of the fireplace as he gently soothed and watch over another as they slept.

That…wouldn’t surprise Flavio a bit.

“Could you do me a favour?” Lynus suddenly asked him.

“Yeah, of course,” Flavio immediately replied.

Lynus gave him a grateful smile. “Could you duck into the clinic for me? In the cabinet right next to the door as you walk in are some medicine bottles. Could you grab a blue one and a green one for me?”

“Blue and green,” Flavio repeated as he nodded his head. “Sure, I can do that.”

“Thank you,” Lynus said in earnest. “I would, but I don’t want to wake Hrothgar now that he’s sleeping soundly.

Flavio smiled back at him. “Hm, of course. I’ll be right back.”

He turned on his heel and quickly left the room. The clinic was thankfully only a few doors down and it was open as well. There was no one else inside as Flavio stepped. He had never been inside the clinic before, so he couldn’t help but look around idly. There were several beds lined up with curtain partitions between them. There was a desk in the corner with a filing cabin. And there were bookcases and cabinets practically lining the walls, all of them either holding bottles of medicine or medical equipment.

Flavio didn’t know the first thing about clinics or medical practices, but this place looked efficient. If anything untoward should happen here, they were still in good hands.

Turning his gaze from his surroundings, Flavio turn back toward the door and toward the cabin Lynus said was close by. He pulled open the door to find that, too, was filled with medicine bottles. They had labels written onto the shelves, but they appeared to be in medical jargon, so he hadn’t a clue what they were. So he simply picked up the first blue and green bottle he saw and closed the cabinet.

As Flavio stepped back into the tearoom, he immediately noticed that Hrothgar was still asleep and Lynus was resting back against the couch, his book closed and resting on the small coffee table located half in front of the couch.

Lynus immediately glanced over at him and his expression brightened in a grateful warmth. “Thank you,” he said as Flavio wasted no time crossing the distance and presenting to Lynus the two medicine bottles. “The blue one is for when Hrothgar wakes up. And the green one is for you.”

Flavio blinked at him in surprise as Lynus only took one of the bottles from him. “Me?

“The wind outside increases your anxiety, causing you to feel on edge, like you are in the labyrinth, right?” Lynus stated more so than asked.

“How did-?”

Lynus laughed lightly, though not at him but at his reaction. “Tobyn is just the same. He hates the sound of howling wind. Thankfully I gave him something to ease his nerves, or we would have two survivalists wandering around, complaining about the wind.”

Oh, well, that made sense actually. Still…

“Are you sure it’s ok for me to-?”

Lynus arched an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn’t have asked you to retrieve it if it wasn’t ok.”

Oh…that made sense, too.

“Thank you,” Flavio said sincerely.

Lynus’ gaze softened. “Not at all,” he said before he motioned to the couch next to him. “Sit.”

And Flavio did just that without hesitation.

“Is there something else troubling you?” Lynus asked him gently as Flavio leaned back into the couch.

“I’m…honestly not sure,” Flavio found himself answering honestly as he fidgeted with the bottle in his hands.

Lynus nodded his head in understanding and continued to look at him in a way that Flavio could only describe as a supportive, empathetic parent figure would. “Do you wish to talk about it? I’m not prying, but you are your guilds caretaker, yes?”

Flavio felt himself pout a little when his mind immediately started to recall all the times Fafnir called him as much. “Well, Fafnir seems to think so.”

Again, Lynus simply nodded his head before he reached out to place his hand on top of Flavio’s that were unconsciously fidgeting with the glass bottle. “Sometimes, when you’re a caretaker, you tend to forget about yourself and think of everyone else. And, sometimes, it’s hard to talk to your guildmates when something is troubling you as you don’t want them to be worried or concerned.”

Flavio glanced down at Lynus’ hand that gently sat atop of his before he found himself biting the inside of his mouth. It…should be ok to talk to Lynus, right? He would understand.

“To be honest, I just have…this feeling that something terrible is going to happen,” Flavio found himself confessing. “I don’t mean like encountering a FOE in the labyrinth and coming out second best. As terrible as that would be, this is…different. I feel like…I’m going to lose Fafnir. For good.”

And it…scared the hell out of him. He didn’t…

“I understand that fear well,” Lynus said as he squeezed his hand in a truly comforting manner. “If I were to lose Axel, I…honesty don’t know what I would do.”

Yeah…it was a scary thing to imagine.

“It’s something I hope neither of you will ever experience.”

“Oh, Horthgar,” Flavio murmured before he winced guiltily as he and Lynus both turn to look over at Hrothgar who was pushing himself into a sitting position. “Sorry, did we wake you.”

Hrothgar smiled politely at the two of them as he eased himself upright. “Well, yes and no.”

“Don’t move around so quickly,” Lynus chided slightly as he removed his hand from Flavio’s and casted an inspecting gaze over the protector.

“I’m fine,” Hrothgar said in return before he smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry for taking up your time.”

Lynus made another softly chiding sound and shook his head. “Don’t be silly. You are an honorary member of the Guardians, after all.”

Hrothgar’s polite expression faltered and a look of surprise mixed with guilt, relief and happiness appeared to take its place. “…Hm, you’re right.”

Lynus smiled warmly at him before he pressed the blue glass bottle against his chest. “Now, take this. How are you feeling? Headaches?”

“A minor one,” Hrothgar answered honestly as he took the bottle and popped it open.

“That will fade shortly,” Lynus returned as he motioned for him to drink his medicine, though he couldn’t seem to stop himself from adding; “You need to take it easy for the next couple of days.”

Hrothgar chuckled lightly as he sipped his medicine slowly. “Yes, I understand. How long was I asleep?”

Lynus gave a one shoulder shrug. “A couple of hours.”

Hrothgar frowned and flushed at the same time. “I’m sorry; did you stay the entire time?”

“It was nothing, don’t worry,” Lynus immediately said as he gave a slightly dismissive wave of his hand. “I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

Hrothgar nodded his head slowly before a smile spread across his lips. “I bet there were a lot of jealous people passing by.”

Lynus tilted his head to the side. “Hm? What do you mean?”

Flavio felt a smile of amusement spread across his own lips. “Yeah, who wouldn’t want to rest their head on Lynus’ lap?”

Hrothgar chuckled as Lynus turned to regard him. “Are you saying you want to?” he unexpectedly asked.

Before Flavio had the chance to respond, Lynus suddenly reached up and grasped the collar of his jacket, and with a surprisingly amount of strength, tugged him forward so that Flavio sprawled across his lap. As Flavio made a sound of surprise, he heard Hrothgar laugh a genuinely amused laugh, and despite the fact that Flavio himself had never, ever rested his head on someone’s lap before, he found himself uttering a laugh too.

It wouldn’t hurt to experience some of the infamous Mother-Hen treatment, would it?

Instead of pushing away, Flavio twisted around until he was on his back with his legs dangling over the side of the couch, his head still resting on Lynus’ lap. “It must be hard being the caretaker of such a large guild,” he commented idly as he got himself settled and folded his arms comfortably over his stomach.

“Hm? Oh, not really,” Lynus replied in earnest as he nestled himself into the back of the couch. “I’m used to taking care of a lot of difficult people. My guild is a breeze compared to…other places, like the hospital, I mean.”

Flavio noticed the slight pause in Lynus’ words as quickly as he had noticed the softly pained look in his eyes. But both were fleeting and that soft, genuine smile soon appeared on his lips once more.

“A certain other guild, however,” he continued with an amused glint in his eyes. “Can test my patience.”

Flavio was about to ask who before he heard Hrothgar utter a sigh that was tinged with annoyance. “Cosmos…”

Cosmos…Wait, that was the name of the guild that Flavio had an encounter with! The one with two riding on the back of a giant moa with two more chasing them on foot.

“Don’t tell me you encountered Cosmos riding on the back of a monster, too?” Flavio asked as he tilted his head back slightly to look up at the redheaded protector.

“Sadly, yes,” Hrothgar answered with an exasperated huff and idly batted a strand of his hair from his eyes. “The first time I encountered them they were trying to tame a ragelope. Of course, you can imagine how well that went. No one believed me when I told them. They said no one would be that stupid. Thankfully, Lynus and the Guardians did. Or I would have questioned my own sanity.”

Flavio couldn’t help but laugh. He went through the same thing, after all, so it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one. “I saw them riding a giant moa and no one from my guild believed me.”

Lynus laughed softly. “Simmons is becoming quite notorious now. Though his guildmates aren’t much better. I have some stories about all of them, to be honest.”

Flavio casually swung one of his legs back and forth, completely at ease. “Regulars at the hospital?”

“Indeed they are,” Lynus readily answered before he shook his head slightly, a softly sympathetic look in his eyes as he stared over at the fireplace. “Poor Gerald, though. He tries so hard.”

“I take it Gerald is the older gunner who is usually chasing around after him on foot?” Flavio questioned.

Again, Lynus laughed and nodded his head as his hand unconsciously reached out to toy with Flavio’s hair, and Flavio made no attempt to stop him. “That’s him,” he said. “The trouble his guildmates put him through, honestly.”

“Hm,” Hrothgar made a sound of agreement. “In all honesty, I’m beginning to think that some of the novice guilds of today are trying to following in their footsteps.”

Flavio felt a smile of amusement spread across his lips. “Go on, give us a bedtime story.”

Both Lynus and Hrothgar laughed good-naturedly, quite contently really.

And Flavio soon forgot about the howling wind outside, too busy laughing at the stories that Lynus and Hrothgar were telling him in turn. Hrothgar about the strange events he had encountered in the labyrinth and the shocking stupidity of novice explorers, while Lynus told stories about his time at the hospital and humorous situations him and his guildmates had encountered both in and out of the labyrinth.

It was honestly nice spending time like this. Speaking with people Flavio felt understood him. They were both tireless caretakers and Flavio, though he may outwardly dispute it, was indeed the caretaker of his guild. And it was nice speaking with someone who didn’t know about the Fafnir Knight Curse or what was happening at Ginnungagap.

At this very moment, he was…normal. Life was normal. Everything was fine. There was nothing to worry about.

It was…peaceful.

“Are you feeling tired?” Lynus suddenly asked and Flavio turned his head to the side to look up at him, only to immediately notice that Hrothgar had his head resting on Lynus’ shoulder, appearing as if he was asleep. “Maybe you should retire to your room.”

“Hm,” Hrothgar murmured sleepily in reply though made no attempt to actually move. “But it’s so comfortable here.”

Yeah, Flavio thought to himself as his own eyes slipped close. It really was.

#Etrian Odyssey #etrian odyssey untold 2 #fanfiction #guardian chronicles