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i-did-not-mean-to · 3 years

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Diary found in K---D--- : Part 2

So, here's the next little part of this :D

Imagine by @lathalea is indented!

Enjoy <3

Taglist: @shrimpsthings, @mulasawala (so you see where I'm going with this lol)

(Yes, there will be MORE artwork coming, stay posted...)

Fandom: Hobbit

Characters: Ori x OC

Rating & Warning: Fluff and silliness

His name was Ori and he was a scribe in Erebor. It turned out he visited the forest often to sketch the animals and plants. You spent the rest of the day together. In the evening, you exchanged campfire stories, sharing a meal. At one point, he shyly asked about where you came from. Blushing, he admitted, almost whispering, he never saw a person with such beautiful hair before.

You told him that you came from another world, from a region called East Asia, where many people looked similarly to you. He was very curious about your homeland, your culture and your world. You spent hours telling him everything about it and he listened to you in awe.

“Ori.” He replied, his lips quirking a tiny bit as if he was not used to speaking his own name. “I’m a scribe. In Erebor. The Mountain.” He pointed to a tree beyond the clearing.

Thankfully, I was familiar with the Lonely Mountain and did not think that he didn’t know the difference between a living organism and a pile of minerals.

“I have never seen you, neither here nor in that Mountain.” I replied, for I went into the halls sometimes to translate for travellers, but for the most part, I let the king be his grumpy, glorious self.

“I come here often, to sketch, but I seem to have lost my way.” He admitted with a tiny frown. Ah, a real dwarf. They only knew up and down seemingly and if there was no way into a hill, they’d stubbornly trek up until they tumbled off the other side again.

As if to prove to me that he was not lying – dear reader, he had a face that was utterly devoid of malice or dissimulation – he showed me rather good sketches of the fauna and flora of the dense forest surrounding us. “That is really good, Ori, the scribe, from under the Mountain.” I commented which made him blush with a fierce and, apparently, unexpected pleasure.

In an expression of indescribable cuteness, he literally wiped his face with his sleeve as if he could clean away the rosy hue like a stubborn ink stain from under his skin.

“What are you here for?” He then asked, pushing out his chest heroically. As a reminder, he was the one who had lost his way, but apparently, he wanted to defend either the forest from me or the other way around.

“I am here to think…in silence.” I replied; he retreated a few steps. “Oh? I’ll leave you to it then, I guess. It was great to make your acquaintance…”

I gave him my name, after all, he had given me his, and he chewed on it for a few moments before his face split into a smile that was like the sunlight breaking through the cloudy afternoon sky: tentative, warm, and strikingly beautiful.

“Stay. I like your face.” I heard myself saying. Maybe, it was my teasing, mischievous streak acting up, but I had liked his embarrassment so much that I couldn’t help wanting to coax more of these blushes out of him.

“My…face?” In that weird dance he had been engaged in for the last few minutes, Ori stepped closer again, shuffling his feet in the heavy boots dwarrows insisted on wearing.

No, your ass, I thought, but bit my tongue; Ori the dwarf looked like someone who would die on the spot if I said anything even remotely inappropriate…as I was wont to do when nervous.

My sarcastic thought spurred my own interest though and I examined him a little closer: he was indeed swaddled like a babe, beads of sweat pearling down his temples on account of the steep climb and the stubborn blush powdering his nose and cheeks with pink blotches.

“Sit down, you’ll get a heat stroke.” I invited him and pointed to a patch of moss beside me while rummaging in my pack for the flask of ale I had brought.

“Thank you ever so much.” He plopped down in a cascade of earthen-coloured wool and awkward limbs. He did smell warm, I noticed, a blend of cinnamon and comfort.

Also, he had one of those faces that only became better when seen up-close, I admit freely; there were golden stars dancing in the depth of his dark eyes and he had the most adorable freckles as if some outlandish fairy had sprinkled gold dust over that heart-wrenchingly handsome face.

“Are you thirsty, Mistress?” He asked, nodding at the flask in my hand.

Handing it to him rather abruptly, I realised that I had spent the last moments intently staring at his face as if I had never seen a male dwarf before in my life.

“I have work to do.” I snapped, feeling immediately guilty for taking my own embarrassment out on him, but he merely nodded and pulled his sketching supplies into his lap.

Strangely enough, Ori did not disturb me. If anything, the silence felt fuller, richer, deeper with him by my side. As I translated a letter, as a spinster I had to support my family and my insufferable sisters as best as I could, I felt like the chirping of the birds and the vibrancy of the colours around me were even more enjoyable now that I shared them with someone else.

…

The sun crept along its never-changing arc slowly and yet, much too fast.

As I looked up, I wished I was a better painter myself, for this dwarrow was made for sunsets.

The way the last golden hurrah of a perfect day exploded in a halo of warmth around his figure, the way all the greys and the blues seemed to bleed out of the world to leave nothing but warm tones behind, and the way his smile was the perfect expression of this mellow, unhurried mood…it struck me deeper and more violently than a thunderstorm in all its booming rage would have.

“Will you join me for dinner, Ori?” I asked gently, “I shall escort you back down.”

“It would be my honour.” He nodded, tearing out a page of his notebook and handing it over.

“It was an invitation; I do not demand payment.” I said seriously, for the sketch of the doe was so good, it might have been worth actual money. “Oh…” His nose crinkled at little at that.

“I wanted you to…have something beautiful. I have seen you work very hard.”

Of course, he was a scribe as well, he would consider the scribbling work, I thought and gave him a thankful smile. “You’re beauty enough for one day.” I shrugged.

He gasped, bringing his notebook up to his face as if to shield himself from my words.

“You’re having me on, aren’t you? Dori has warned me that girls do that sometimes.” He sounded utterly dejected. “I am not having you on. Has nobody ever told you that you’re handsome?” It was my turn to be wide-eyed with shock.

“And who is Dori?” I followed-up when he didn’t really reply to my question even though I thought I had seen his braids move like strings of pearls in a draft. The minutest of shakes of the head, a quiet admission of inadequacy that sunk ugly, ragged claws into my soft heart.

“He’s my brother. I have two of them. Dori…and Nori. They’re…” – “Older than you.” I completed. “Protective.” He supplied.

He was still holding his drawing out to me, and, after a moment, I took it gingerly and put it between the pages of my own writing supplies. I would hang it in my room and look at it daily.

Nowadays, there were but very few gifts for me; all the money went to my two younger sisters who were still nubile and would, if Mahal willed it so, be able to make a good match.

Busying my hands with making a fire, I asked him to tell me about his brothers.

“Oh, Nori is…agile. He’s…funny and brave and resourceful.” Ori started, his voice warm with affection and admiration. He sounded like a proper rogue to me, and as it turned out, he was, but he also deserved every single ounce of the deep-felt care Ori held for him.

“Dori is…fussy. He’s polite, he’s very caring, and he’s exceedingly proper.” Ori went on as I waved a hand for him not to stop. I enjoyed hearing about the life of other families than my own.

“So, is he the one who raised you to be this…warmly clad and gentle?” I asked, turning to place the foodstuffs I had brought up and stored in the cool lake water on spits to roast over the fire.

“Warm? Oh yes…I was a sickly pebble and he’s been worried ever since. I hope I have behaved in a way that would not make him disappointed in me.” Again, he worried his lip.

“Let’s see, you’ve startled a bird and an unsuspecting dwarrowdam.” I listed with a wicked gleam in my eyes; his face fell, and he looked properly guilty.

“Then, you’ve kept me company, and the best company I’ve ever had, it has been, on my grandmother’s grave, I swear.” I went on and that treacherous blush was back with a vengeance.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He then said in a low voice. “Great beauty is always startling.”

“I am hardly Thorin Oakenshield.” He laughed. Readers, you cannot imagine that sound just by reading my words. If flowers blossoming had melody, if the sun setting on the eternal sea had a song, if autumn leaves dancing on a gale had a tune, they would have sounded like nails on scree, like cats having their tails trampled, and like kettles going unheeded compared to Ori’s laughter.

“There’s beauty in the doe as much as in the wolf.” I replied gently.

“May I…can I ask where you’re from? I don’t seek to be rude, but I’ve never seen anyone quite like you; your hair looks like those fabrics the Elves weave. It…seems so soft, so liquid, so smooth.” He blushed a darker shade yet.

This might well have been the first time that someone had asked me about my origins without making it sound like an accusation; there was honest fascination in his demeanour.

“My family and I have come from the Far East. I have travelled a lot, Ori, I have seen landscapes entirely made up of rock and sand, I have walked forests so stiflingly hot and moist it felt like being underwater, and now, I am here in the land of tall trees and taller mountains.”

I said, surprised by my own frankness.

“That sounds amazing.” He took the food I offered readily enough, and I told him about the people I’ve left behind to be stranded at the other end of the world.

“This is good, is that a recipe of your homeland?” He asked, looking down on the piece of meat I had seasoned with herbs I had grown myself in our small backyard.

“It actually is. I’m glad you like it. I had not planned to have company, otherwise I’d have brought something more palatable to the local tongue.” I apologised quickly.

“No, I like it. You should definitely trade some recipes with Dori…and Bombur…oh, and if any of your delicious herbs are medicinal, Óin.” He laughed again when he saw my dumbfounded expression.

“I make a good honeycake, if I can interest you in that? Maybe…” He fell back into silence.

…

A look at the sky told me that it was too late to go down in the inky darkness.

“We’ll have to stay here for the night.” I mumbled, slightly uncomfortable at the idea of spending the night with a dwarrow who had not lost a single word about a wife.

“Are you married, Mistress? Will that endanger your wedlock?” He asked shyly.

“No, I am not and I have no name to lose…It’s a long story.” I didn’t feel like blurting out my disgrace, lest it give him strange ideas after all, especially as he would easily have been able to overpower me if he so chose.

“Neither am I. I don’t know about my name…Doesn’t look like I’m going to be married either. There’s not enough dwarrowdams as it is, and I think the royal line has a prerogative there.” There was no resentment in his tone; he seemed to accept this as a fact.

How could someone that sweet not be married, I wondered. He was courteous, he was cute, and he would have made the fortune and happiness of someone.

“Well, in that case, I think we can risk our reputation rather than our necks.” I grinned, rolling out a blanket I kept tied to my pack for emergencies and stretched out next to the fire on the moss.

“Erm, yes…Good night…” He mumbled, fidgeting around with his different layers of clothing. Apparently, he was deciding which one he needed least on his body to use it as a bedroll or blanket.

I eyed the proceedings with interest and a good deal of amusement.

“I can offer you my cloak to lie upon…the ground will grow very cold and wet soon.” He said in a low voice, not sure if I had already fallen asleep or not.

“Alright, I can offer you a spot under the blanket then?” I extended my own graciousness.

“With you?” No, with the red bird, I thought, rolling my eyes internally.

“Yes, Ori the scribe, with me. I will not eat you, as you have witnessed, I have had dinner.” Not that he did not look good enough to devour, standing there with his cloak in his hands and his face all crunched up in embarrassment.

“Hmmm…I guess.” He muttered doubtfully, spreading out the cloak and sitting down on it carefully. Impatiently, I scooted over and spread my lousy blanket over the both of us with a flourish.

“Sleep!” I commanded as I turned around only to find him staring wide-eyed at the spot where the back of my head had been only a second ago. Now that he was presented with my face, only inches away from his, his eyes grew even rounder and bigger in wordless distress.

“Friend…Have you never lain with a woman? And I literally mean, lying next to one?” I laughed for there had been friends and cousins aplenty in my own life and the feeling of having another body so close to mine was not a new experience for me.

“Well, I fell down on the battlefield once, next to a foe…I’m pretty sure that was a Lady-Orc. She was dead. There was a…” He gestured, indicating a spear or a lance sticking out of his chest and brushing against my own with the back of his hand. Dear reader, he flinched back as if I was a tiny Durin’s bane wreathed in flames.

“A Lady-Orc, indeed…” I mused; no doubt, he could hear the smile I hid in my voice for his face crunched up in embarrassment.

“I am sorry.” He sighed, rolling his eyes, and thinking – there was not a shadow of a doubt about that much – of his brothers who would have mocked him mercilessly for his stammering.

“There’s no need to be sorry” I tried to reassure him, but I admit now that there were things that I did not tell him right away then. We had only just met, and he was blessedly unaware of my shameful past.

How could I have made him understand – without hurting his feelings – how much I enjoyed that air of purity about him that I had squandered myself on an undeserving fiend? As a daughter amongst others, I had been used to dwarrows coming to court or to seduce, their eyes ablaze with greed and their hands wandering.

He would not have comprehended how much the absence of that voracious hunger that had plagued my youth and had ended up destroying my promising future meant to me.

“Sleep.” I repeated, unable to put into words how miraculous and precious the things he seemed to be most ashamed of were to me.

“Good night, Mistress.” He breathed with a soft smile that was nowhere near the wolfish baring of fangs I was used to and so, it was easy to return it.

You who may or may not have stumbled upon this ludicrous account of the most important story in an otherwise unimportant life, you shall hear another confession I did not make at the time.

I was fiercely aware that – had I but leant forward a little – I might have pressed my lips upon his; I was young still at that time and, despite what had happened, parts of me, that should have withered and died in the aftermath of my botched engagement, were much alive.

He smelled like our dinner and warmth, and the gentle reticence of the curve of his smile was more inviting than any flashing grin I had ever seen before.

Yes, in that very moment, on this very first evening, I had already been conscious of the shrewd attraction this self-effacing dwarrow held for me…and it scared me half to death.

…

Part 3

#Fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #ori the dwarf #Ori #OC #Fluff #Diary #1st person

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mimiplaysgames · 3 years

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Terraqua Week Day 4 (Legends/Tales)

Summary: Someone calls for help from the deepest depths of darkness. Terra and Aqua trace the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. || Word Count: 8,983

Read on AO3

A/N: @terraquaweek hooooo if you thought yesterday’s was angsty dkfjdkfjdk So everyone and their mom compares Terraqua to Orpheus and Eurydice (Orphydice?) and I totally agree. It was time to officially jump that wagon. This one was difficult though - originally, I was going to have them sitting near a fireplace and talking about fairy tales over drinks, but I think I did the sit down apology fic way too many times and needed something different. This one was a huge challenge in such a tiny frame of time though. It took me the longest to write (a whole week, when I normally take months), so I couldn’t clean it as much as I would like to. I hope you like it anyway! <3

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Long Way Down ~ no further debts to be paid

Aqua has been dragging him all over town, following a call—this gut-wrenching feeling that something is wrong and someone is crying but she doesn’t know who or where. Except here, wandering around Thebes, though Terra doesn’t mind at all. Keyblade wielders are supposed to follow their hearts. Terra will follow hers anywhere.

What he does mind, though, are these screaming fangirls.

He collides head first into a neglected booth of rugs, scampering away from a group of young women who were trying to rip his left arm out of his socket, seeking pieces of his armor. They squeal, they cry, they sigh with all the fever of delusion. Champion! Terra! You’ve come back! You’re more beautiful than the gods!

Aqua strides by him, hiding an amused smirk behind her elegant fingers. “You picked a good hiding place.” She straightens a bent rug and rolls it tighter, letting it lean on its side by the wall.

Terra knocks a rug off of his head. “I did nothing to deserve this.”

“I nearly forgot,” Aqua says in a way that means she didn’t. “You won a championship.”

“Years ago. Once.” He kicks the pile on his back and crawls out. Zack and Hercules would never let it down if they hear about him hiding from harmless girls like he’s a mouse. “I’m no celebrity.”

“I beg to differ.” She unfolds a tapestry. Weaved into the fabric is a figure of a man armored in golds and burgundies, tall with dark hair and wielding a giant key. “You’re a story they share. Be grateful for your adoring fans.”

The only thing he’d be grateful for is the attention of the person standing right next to him. He never thought about the Olympus Coliseum championship while he was possessed and trapped in Darkness, not once. He thought of her every day and night.

“I think you’re jealous they’re chasing me and not you, Master Aqua.”

“Well, I would handle it with more grace.” She beats dust out of the corner of a rug with her hand.

The way she jokes with him is instinctual, natural, but the way her eyes wander is not, like she’s not paying attention. They’ve searched Thebes for hours, and while the city-state’s stairs for hills and elaborate gardens are impressive, they’ve found no lead as to who Aqua is looking for. She unrolls another tapestry like she’s reading a scroll. She doesn’t even have a name, just a dream that spoke to her one night: Find me, please.

“There’s nothing here, either,” she mumbles.

Terra doesn’t know how to lift her spirits. “Maybe the answer is not in Thebes.”

“We haven’t searched everywhere.” She pulls out another tapestry that he’s sure she’s already deciphered.

How many times are they going to circle the marketplace? Terra sighs and risks peeking at the main street from the alleyway. If he stays close enough to Aqua, the fangirls stay farther away, as though she’s a repellant. Who knew Aqua makes for a good shield.

The marketplace swarms with chatter and dust pickup from sandals and wheels. They’ve been through every store on this block. They’ve been through museums, they’ve listened to storytellers on the streets, met with sages and fortune tellers. There’s not much to deduce out of a whisper from a dream.

A high-pitched scream breaks through the loud talk of shopgoers, and Terra summons his Keyblade, watching for Heartless.

It comes from a girl, pointing a finger at him. Everyone else gawks. She shivers from head to toe. “Terra!”

At the sound of his name, like mockingbirds for sheep, they call out. “Terra!”

“Damn the stars,” he mutters and sprints back into the alleyway, a stampede behind him. “Aqua?” She’s not by the rugs. “Aqua!” He turns the corner of the empty alleyway, stuck between choosing a direction in a crossover. There’s no sign of her, no sign of his star in the darkness or his shield.

A hand waves at him through a window.

“Terra!” the girls squeal.

He dashes, throwing himself through the window. He lands on his back, on hard concrete. Aqua cradles his head on her lap and keeps low beneath the windowsill, a finger to her lips as the wave of giggles and cries ride past them and fade away.

“You were gone,” he whispers.

Aqua brushes her fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry,” she says, but she offers no explanation.

They’re in what looks like the back room of a pottery shop, half of them unpainted with the clay still slick, and the rest completed but possibly not inventoried yet.

“We’re breaking into people’s homes now?” Terra asks, grunting.

“You needed a hiding place,” Aqua says. She sounds unlike herself. Too tone-deaf, too distracted, her heart in the right place to help him like she always does, but she’s disregarding the consequences she’d normally consider before making such rash decisions.

“Why are we here?”

Aqua looks at him with a blank expression. “I don’t know.”

“You just waltzed in here?” He sighs. The shopkeeper is lucky Terra hasn’t destroyed anything when he crashed. He sits up and holds her chin, checking for vital signs of injury. “Are you feeling alright?”

Aqua grimaces. “Maybe we’re in here for a reason.”

Or maybe she’s lost her mind.

“Is it too early for me to say that I’m worried about you?”

“I’d say so.”

Terra scoffs and stands up, his knee hitting a table next to him. The vase on the surface rattles and spins. Aqua catches it.

When she glances at the artwork, she glares. “This one.”

“Huh?”

The vase is stamped with an image in black. Two figures, a man and a woman, reach out for each other, but there’s a wall between them.

“You recognize this?” Terra asks.

Aqua waits before she answers. On the man’s side is a lyre. On the woman’s, wisps of smoke. “Not really. But something about it is so unpleasant.”

It’s not much, but her reaction is the closest they have ever gotten so far.

She takes the vase with her and heads out the window, the door to the rest of the shop locked. “I’m borrowing it.”

“Aqua—”

“I’ll bring it back.”

Out in the alleyway, Aqua cradles the vase gently in her arms, desperately looking around for someone to talk to.

As much as he doesn’t want to, he says, “We can head back to the marketplace.”

The shuffle of feet approach them from behind the building next door. A lost girl blinks at them, her makeup smudged and running as though she’s been crying, her lip color smeared on her teeth. She recognizes Terra—

—Terra casts Silence on her and pulls her aside, up against a wall. “Shhh. Please don’t yell, please don’t yell.”

Without her voice, her squeals are replaced with gasps. She throws her arms around him.

“Hey!”

Aqua runs up to them without acknowledging how Terra is peeling this girl off himself. She points to the vase. “Do you know who this is?” The girl stares back. “Can you tell me? Please?”

As much as he really doesn’t want to, there are miles he’s willing to trek just for Aqua. “If I remove my spell,” Terra tells the girl, “and you answer Aqua, very gently, who this picture is supposed to be of, I’ll let you hug me again.”

The girl’s eyes go wide and she nods.

He recants his spell, and the girl suppresses her squeaks.

“Oh gods, it’s really Terra.” She hops, pinning her hands in between her legs. “You smell so good. I love you, Terra. I mean, um…” Instead of speaking to Aqua, the girl just locks her eyes at him. “That’s Orpheus. Everyone knows who that is.”

The look on Aqua’s face tells Terra that her heart is stirring.

“What’s his story?” Terra asks.

The girl is happy to oblige. “He sings the saddest ballads, all about the death of his most beloved wife.” She twirls a lock of hair. “Lost her to a snakebite. They say he went to the Underworld to find her, but he lost her along the way. He wasn’t a strong person.” She stands on her toes. “Not like you, Terra. You wouldn’t leave the one you love in the darkness, would you? You’d save them?”

Terra steps back. The onslaught of such specific questions makes him sick to his stomach.

The girl leans forward. “Can I touch your hair?”

“No.” He slaps her hand out of the way.

“Where can I find him?” Aqua asks, completely serious.

The girl rolls her eyes this time, as though it’s such a rude interruption. “If you trek up Mount Olympus, you’ll eventually cross a forest. You can find his head there.”

“His head?” Terra says.

The girl steps up to meet him face to face. “They say he still sings—that’s how Death came to meet him. Anyone who hears his songs will be instantly enamored. Man and beast alike. Even the leaves and the stones will move just to be near him. That reminds me of you, Terra.”

Aqua—already sprinting back toward his direction from the pottery shop after leaving her borrowed vase at its windowsill—cuts between Terra and the fangirl, pulling him away from her by the hand. The hug he promised this girl is cancelled, and Terra is grateful for it

“Thank you!” Aqua says, not breaking her speed. The girl is left behind, dejected.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Thebes is now a miniature, a toy town of red roofs and sandstone streets, that disappears from view as soon as they cross over a cliff, where the face of a forest is tucked away. The quiet greets them, a chirp of a bird here and there.

Terra follows Aqua, not knowing where she’s going.

“So we’re looking for a severed head?” he asks.

“According to the girl, yes.”

“Isn’t that a bit gruesome?”

“I think what she was hoping to do to you may be worse.”

Aqua skids to a stop. She looks over to her left, and runs in that direction. The treeline gets thicker, casting a dim filter over the ground. Aqua stops at a short, stone monument—a statue of a head on a pillar. The man’s face is carved with an open mouth, like he’s singing an opera. The trees sway in the wind.

“That’s Orpheus?” Terra asks quietly.

Aqua frowns. “I don’t hear a song.”

“I don’t, either.”

“But I feel so sad.” She holds a fist over her heart, her eyes watery.

Terra places a hand on her bare shoulder. She feels cold, and he has a sickly feeling that she’s getting worse. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, yet. There’s not much I can do here. There’s no text, no clues.” Aqua walks, scanning the ground for a hint.

For a mural, there are no words or poems honored to Orpheus, no maps or glyphs that lend to any guidance. Terra touches the head of the pillar. He feels nothing. Keyblade wielders can be invulnerable to certain spells, but this is supposed to represent grief, and grief is Darkness. How he isn’t affected is an enigma to him—how he is spared and Aqua is not, is worrisome.

“You know what I think?” he asks.

She’s no longer there. Terra steps away from the statue.

“Aqua?”

No answer.

He jolts into a sprint, passing tree after tree with no sign of blue, none of her sashes flowing in the air. How did she get so far away?

Terra shouldn’t be so worried. The Heartless population here after the Keyblade War is minimal, and Aqua is more than capable of taking care of herself—but how she’s coming in and out of reality is more than Terra can bear. He can’t lose her. Not ever again.

“Aqua!”

Terra cries out in relief. She’s standing in a field of red flowers. Lilies, by the shape of them, speckled in the color of raspberries. Their stems curve over, swaying like bells. They’re not stretched towards the sun but hang towards the ground, as if they’re watching for fingers to climb out through the grass.

“I thought I lost you,” he says when he approaches her.

Aqua crosses her arms. “There’s something here.” When she inhales, she turns around like she just realized he was there. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Terra fights the urge to hug her. He loses, taking her in his arms. “I think I’m going crazy... I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, though there’s so much more he needs to tell her.

“What a little, perfect, crispy portrait of a love story,” a heedy voice says, pronouncing every syllable with sweet spite, exaggerated by hand movements. First is the creep of black smoke over the grass. A shadow emerges from behind a tree, bald head with blue fire for hair, a long black cloak wrapped around his body. “Really, it’s a photo op, an exhibition, a grand spectacle.” He frames them with his fingers. “Bluebird and the Waste of Space, classic. All the children will hear about it.”

“Of course you’re involved in this,” Terra spits, letting Aqua go. He keeps his Keyblade near, in case he needs to summon it.

“On the contrary, I’m the victim in this case.”

“Hades,” Aqua says, an icy chill to her voice. “These flowers...”

“You like them?” Hades flashes a grin, teeth sharp as needles. “A specialty from- you could say a good friend. They’re called eurydice, funnily enough.”

Aqua freezes.

“What’s so funny about that?” Terra asks, stepping in front of Aqua so he’s a barrier.

“I forgot you’re not the sharpest rock in the canyon,” Hades mumbles, before animating his hands, presenting his words like they’re a marketing technique. “Eurydice, the pride of the forest. A muse, a sprite, a dryad.” He motions quotation marks with his fingers. “‘She’s not like other girls,’ whatever you want to call her. A gold prize.”

It comes to Terra like the dawn. Orpheus’s wife.

“What is she to you?” Aqua asks, defensive.

“Well…” Hades casually places a hand on his hip and relies on the other to tell his story. “The Underworld is a vibrant culture of flora. There’s still some Heartless mucking about in the crevices, little maggots, doing Zeus knows what, but…” He pinches the air with his fingers. “There was a teeny tiny leak, a blemish in the system.” He shrugs. “And she slipped. You want to save her, and I want her back in my perfectly packaged Paradise. We work together and we both win.”

Terra scoffs. “You lost a ghost in the Underworld?”

Hades bites a breathy laugh, flicking lint off his robe, a gross smile stretching across his face like he knows a dirty secret. “My Underworld is a tight machine. No. She went somewhere darker.”

Aqua is the first to speak after the silence. “I see.”

“You see what?” Terra says.

Aqua casts her eyes downward. She usually never breaks eye contact in the presence of an enemy. “She’s in the Realm of Darkness. That’s why I’m connected to her.”

Aqua has often said that she thinks a piece of the Darkness will stay with her until her final day, a single thorn growing out of her heart.

“It’s not a place for the sensitive.” Hades scoffs with false modesty.

This is something no one has the right to ask of her. “We’re not bringing Eurydice back to you,” Terra says.

Hades disappears in a blink, reappearing by Terra’s shoulder, his hand a warm pot on the stovetop. “You, my friend, are the last person to bargain.” He disappears again and bursts into flames by Aqua’s side. “Aren’t Keyblade wielders supposed to keep a world’s balance at the tip of their fingers? There’s only one place everyone ends up in this world. Who says you can take the dead away from me? Where else would they go?”

Aqua won’t give him the merit of a look. She swats his smoke away like it’s a fly.

Hades continues, “You see, the living owe a debt. You borrow life to breathe here for a few short happy years, and when you’re done, you return back to where you came from. And if you borrow, then you owe.” He flashes the teeth. “Therefore, she’s mine.” Hades flicks a finger on Terra’s chest. “You—both of you—have cheated. You’re thieves, you reek of it. Talk about privilege.”

Terra stammers.

“We’ll do it,” Aqua says.

Hades taps all his fingers together. “I’m glad we came to an agreement.”

“We didn’t agree to anything,” Terra says, his eyes begging Aqua for an alternative way to do this.

“Down boy. Your bite is just as intimidating as your bark.” Hades turns over his shoulder. “Oh, and one other thing.” He raises a finger, and addresses Terra directly. “Have you ever worked with ghosts before? Miserable company. They’re mopey, they babble too much about nonsense. Not the guest you want to invite over for dinner. They’re confused, it’s part of their nature. Being connected to one isn’t the most sane habit. If you’re not careful, they’ll infect you with their pain.” Hades winks, and nods toward Aqua. “You might want to keep an eye on her.”

Terra’s heart strikes his chest like a hammer to the blood vessel, and he swallows bile. Aqua doesn’t seem fazed.

“Well,” Hades says, “it’s a long walk down. Stay healthy, drink water, don’t go crazy.” With that, he vanishes for good this time, leaving the wind gliding through the flowers, all looking for someone below.

“She’s nearby,” Aqua says, her voice breaking a silence that doesn’t want to be heard. Like poison to be drunk, denial to be told the truth, there’s no ignoring this. “I can open a door here.”

“You’re really going back?”

“I can’t let her continue to suffer,” she says. “But I won’t put you in danger, either.”

“Wait,” Terra says, getting in her way. “I’m coming with you.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“I don’t expect it to be anything else. Danger doesn’t scare me.” Terra takes her face in his hand. “After everything you’ve been through, you can’t ask me to let you do this alone.”

Aqua opens her mouth as if to refuse but she grimaces. “I admit I would like the company this time.”

Terra’s heart thumps, stroking her cheek. “I’ll never turn my back on you again.”

“A shame. You look taller from behind,” she says, and he snorts.

When she moves away, he feels hollow, a sudden need to hold her again invading his body. He shrugs the feeling off. “I’m texting Ven.” He pulls out his Gummiphone. “He’ll need to open a Door to Light for our return.”

“Yes.”

“Any tips for how to survive?”

Aqua summons her Keyblade and points to the ground. “The Realm of Darkness wants you to feel hopeless and scared. It feeds from your mind.” She looks at him. “You can’t trust what you think or feel. You won’t be able to tell the difference between you or the Darkness.”

“Then how are we supposed to find her and come back if we can’t even think?”

Aqua lifts an elegant shoulder. “You keep your head up. That’s your best defense. The Realm will do many things to make you want to give up, to make you doubt yourself. You have to choose your battles. Even if you feel like you’re being followed, don’t look back. Don’t give in to its tricks.”

It sounds like hell. It feels like a knife to the liver—Aqua has suffered so much. His biggest regret is not having the strength to break out of his prison and do something about it.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Aqua asks.

“Not at all.”

The way she smiles this time makes her look like herself. “You know, I feel better now. Much clearer.”

Terra hopes that’s a sign of sweeter things to come. The smile he gives is weak when she summons a Door to Darkness.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Realm of Darkness is a dirt path in a forest that sprawls under patches of stars, as though someone has taken photos of different skies and pasted them together in a collage. Few lanterns light the way, smokey as if caked in fog. It would be similar to a romantic walk on the mountain in the spring if not for what it really is.

Terra trails close behind Aqua, the cape of her armor bouncing in the air. She jogs with such confidence despite that they have no map and have never been here before—well, Aqua has, but not here. According to her, the Realm of Darkness never stays the same. There’s no path back the way they came.

So far, it’s lacked excitement, a still silence as though this world’s heart has stopped beating.

“How do we find her?” Terra asks, his voice loud enough to make him worry if something hidden behind the trees has heard him.

“We keep going.”

A sudden clank, metal on metal. Terra sprints to her. “What’s going on?”

Aqua has stepped onto a metal surface, a sudden cutoff from the forest like mismatched puzzle pieces forced together, spreading beyond what they can see. When Terra steps on it, the boot of his armor reverberates from his weight.

“I don’t like this,” Aqua says.

The river is black and made of torn iron, shards that jut out like shredded waves frozen in time. Lanterns from broken boats wedge into the collisions, a ship graveyard where they all crashed into each other in a hurricane.

“What now?” Terra asks, hushed.

She turns to face him, her helmet obscuring her expression. “We keep going.”

Their only direction is forward. There’s no compass, no horizon to see where they’re going. They curve around mountains of broken war and cruise ships and melted steel, like hills to climb and descend. Whether they’ve trailed a huge arch and are going backwards, Terra can’t tell.

Then again, Aqua has said there is no backwards in the Realm of Darkness. But what if this river doesn’t have a shore?

“Those aren’t lights,” Aqua warns.

Some of the lanterns bob up and down, blinking.

“Stars,” Terra curses, summoning his Keyblade. Aqua has already conjured hers and is throwing a blast against a group of eyes hiding inside half of a ship, its inner scaffolding exposed like bent needles. The impact combusts.

Heartless swarm up and rain on him. They’re stronger here, these small Shadows more resistant, withstanding his powerful swings when they’d normally be thrown far back.

A huge crash rumbles behind them, and Terra is knocked onto his knees. A ship sinks as its bow breaks off. It sounds like a building caving in.

Aqua grabs his elbow. “Forget it,” she yells over the clamor. They run past hordes of Heartless materializing from the metal as if they’re being born, more and more and more until the sea behind them is a mass of yellow eyes. Terra relies on nothing but his two legs, pushing and pushing them despite the strain to catch up to her. Ships and boats disintegrate, about to swallow them if they can’t find solid ground.

They step onto dirt, a slab of earth suspended in space. They’re blocked by a huge stone gate without walls.

Aqua turns and slices her Keyblade across, light thrusting forward to cut through the first wave of Shadows.

Terra grunts when he jabs his Keyblade, a beam striking the gate in the middle. He summons a keyhole, a plea to enter.

The gate opens.

“Come on!” He grabs her elbow and bolts inside. Terra immediately pushes his weight against the gate, Aqua mimicking the same—a desperate slog at first, his breath hitched and pulsating at his temple, until they build momentum and shut it. At the slam of the door, dust drops from the ceiling and lands on their shoulders.

Behind them is a dim hallway of two choices: left and right. The little light they have here comes from nowhere.

Terra sighs, breathing heavily. The air inside his helmet doesn’t smell fresh. “Well, your heart, your pick.”

Aqua chuckles, her voice muffled. He wishes he could see her smile. “Enjoying your stay?”

“You’re sick.”

“Remember not to get too affected by what you see, Terra.” She holds his shoulder, her glove clunking onto his pauldron. “The Realm will probe your mind until it finds what it can use.”

She leads the way right, her steps kicking up clouds of dust. The entire floor is sand, sinking the sound of their steps. The hall turns left. It turns left again.

Terra can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched. He eyes the ceiling where the crevices that meet the wall are at their darkest, where he anticipates small, yellow eyes blinking at him.

He thinks he hears something, but shrugs it off.

No, he has heard something. Growling.

It thrums louder and Terra is walking slower, growing a distance between him and Aqua who hasn’t noticed yet.

The growling is coming from behind.

He turns.

There’s nothing.

“Aqua.”

“What is it?”

“I’m hearing an aggressive dog.”

“There are no dogs in the Realm of Darkness.”

“But it’s following us.”

“Trust me, there isn’t anything behind you.” She waves with her hand. “Come on. The Realm wants you to worry. The moment you start to believe it is when your heart begins to falter.”

At another two-way junction, Aqua chooses left—they’ve just gone in a circle. Terra expects to come back to the stone gate—but as though the Realm has heard him and is laughing at his assumptions, the hallway opens up into a path of eight directions. One of them a stairway up, one a stairway down. The opening next door is blocked from a staircase turned upside down, and the one next to that leads to a staircase that twists and leans on its side.

Aqua chooses the way straight ahead, a long uncomplicated hallway.

The hallway turns right. She’s no longer there.

“Aqua!” Terra dashes forward and the hallway turns dark, like the twist of the knob on a lantern, a flame fading.

He turns over and heads back. “Aqua!”

They went left, left, left, straight. All he has to do is trek that backwards.

When Terra arrives at the large expanse of eight directions, Aqua comes in from behind him. “Terra!”

She runs into him when he halts and spreads his arms, their breastplates colliding. “Where did you go?�� he asks.

“Down the hall, that’s it.” Her voice trembles. He’ll have to do better to be braver, for her. Aqua pulls away to look up at him. He wishes he could see her eyes. “What did I say about giving in?”

He licks his lips. “Don’t go back.”

Aqua swallows as if to stop a sob. “There’s no going back in this place, Terra. You could have gotten lost. The Realm wants you to doubt yourself.” She nods as if to make a point, her voice thick as if to mask how terrified she is. “Do you understand now?”

No. “We keep going.”

“I’ll stay close to you this time.”

“Please.”

“I-I can’t lose you. Not again.”

“You won’t, I promise.”

She points to a hallway different from the one she chose earlier, and walks by his side this time, step by step. Down this way is brighter, the stone newer, the sand thinning until they step on cobble. The walls shrink into a tight foyer framed by fully lit torches, parchment and paper scattered all over as though a storm blew through a library.

Terra bends to pick some up. They’re all blank.

“Love letters and songs,” Aqua says, reading through empty pages, “that Orpheus wrote to her.” She shakes her head. “The stories I grew up with were so stupid.”

“Which ones are we talking about?”

“Those books I used to read when I was a teenager.”

Terra grimaces. “About true love.”

“I believed them until the end.” She sighs. “They seem so silly now. That you could be in love at first sight, without ever bonding with them—without ever knowing the ties you create with them and how much it pains to have those cut. It’s improbable. How does anyone expect them to be willing to pluck their hearts out of their chests and sew them together like that? How is that supposed to be ‘true,’ or ‘pure?’ The trials they’ve gone through to prove themselves in the name of that love—so small in comparison to some.”

“You mean in comparison to what Orpheus tried to do.”

Aqua swipes her hand over a page to flatten the bends. “I can’t imagine how brave he had to prepare himself to be, and how little he cared for his personal safety. That he would descend so deep into darkness for her. After everything I’ve been through, I could say—that is love. The fairy tales I’ve read don’t come close.”

Terra watches her stack parchment together, tapping the edges so that they align, her movements stiff due to the armor. There are no written words to be read on the pages, but there’s not a single word that could describe the epiphany he’s having. That she is sitting next to him, that there are things neither of them uttered a sound for, that she is the same person who fell to the depths just to save him, that she is not the same child who used to sneer at his essays. That day, he only had a feeling that he was being hugged until he went to sleep, then he woke up twelve years later.

“You love me,” he says, part question, part certainty.

Aqua pauses. Her visor reflects his. “I do. I have for a long time.” She scoffs softly at herself. “You know, the Realm has brought you to me in lucid dreams. Five times. The first three, I told you how I felt. And you smiled. Then you were gone. I got fooled each time.” She hangs her head. “It was the fifth time that it was really you.”

“I remember,” Terra whispers.

“I couldn’t say how I felt, but you took those precious few seconds we had to tell me not to give up. I realized later that I needed that more than saying anything.” She sighs, her breath parched from the helmet. “I never expected to say it again, here, of all places, but now… Now you’re here. And I love you.”

Terra leans forward, bracing her arm, the cusp between her shoulder and neck. He feels the inner padding of his gloves. They can’t take their helmets off, not here, but a swelling of solace fills him. For a moment, he forgets where he is, his imagination only seeing her face, his heart asking to break the metal and touch her.

“Do you have any idea how important you are to me?” he asks.

She breathes like she’s laughing. “I have an inkling.”

He leans his helmet against hers. “With all my heart,” he says.

“I thought so.” She squeezes his gauntlet.

When they get out, the first thing he’ll do is take her in arms.

“I think we’re close,” Aqua says, talking about Eurydice.

They have to see the light of day first. When they get out, the first thing he’ll see is her smile.

“Let’s do it and get out here.”

Beyond the next archway is a new place: a cavern maze, the walls roughed up by raw mineral, crystals glowing pastel colors in the dark. It’s beautiful in its own expression, a small memory of whatever the Realm took and couldn’t digest. The single paths here are disorienting, the walls littered with natural dips and holes to take shortcuts.

The cave opens up to a jagged, rocky clearing, its natural structure much like a coliseum. He and Aqua stand at the top. The boulders cut off a clear sight of the path below, a single star in the sky and a single fig tree at the bottom, its exposed roots dug into a pond. Terra and Aqua descend, the rocks down here taller.

“Prepare yourself,” Aqua says, taking the lead.

Terra summons his Keyblade too, bracing himself for Heartless. A shadow moves near the tree, hiding behind one of the roots.

A surprised shriek comes from the tree, like it’s been woken up, and it shifts. The roots straighten out, the branches curl over and sharpen like claws. Cut through the trunk is the shape of a heart, empty and black inside. No yellow eyes.

“What is that thing?” Terra yells before dodging. The tree slams its branches between him and Aqua.

Terra trips. A tree root chokes his ankle, pulling him from under the dirt.

Aqua doesn’t see it happening. She scrambles and ducks behind a boulder before the earth behind her collapses into a sinkhole. She climbs the boulder and jumps onto the canopy.

The tree rocks viciously to knock her off but she stabs the bark with her Keyblade to hold on. It digs its vines and branches into the ground. A flash of purple lighting cracks the boulders into halves.

Terra cuts himself free. The root shrivels, and the ground it touched caves into nothingness. He dashes, taking fast cover behind boulders. It’s hard to tell if he’s effective since he doesn’t know whether the tree has blind spots.

When roots shoot up to throttle him and fail, they punish the earth instead, ripping away respites and hiding spots. If enough of the dirt sinks, the boulders fall with it.

Terra can only keep running.

The only signs that Aqua is okay are the flashes of light from her Keyblade, spellcasting and waves of reflective blues crushing the tree. Stuck on the canopy, Aqua doesn’t have much room to escape when the ground is collapsing at random.

Terra yells and charges towards the tree, calling upon his Keyblade to transform into his glider. He slams into the roots, all of his offense and magic building up and combusting against the bark.

The tree tumbles and Aqua lets go.

Terra catches her and flies up. He hovers a rock that is still holding on at the edge of a newly formed cliff.

A dark lightning bolt strikes from above and Aqua summons a barrier to protect them.

“It’s her,” Aqua says, straining to keep the barrier intact.

“That can’t be possible.”

“We don’t know what the Darkness can do to the dead. We don’t know anything.” Aqua chokes on her words. “But that’s Eurydice, I know it.”

The tree scratches at nothing and wails, its roots crumbling hard onto the ground with every step it makes. Eurydice sounds like anger, a need to make sure everyone else suffers with her.

“The hole in her trunk, where her heart would be if she wasn’t dead.”

“Terra—”

“Say no more.”

He revs his glider and charges towards the clearing, now a gaping hole sunk down the middle with no bottom. Terra sticks to the cliff sides. Aqua jumps off from the back, high into the sky, waiting for his next move.

Terra lets go and holds on to his Keyblade’s grip. It stretches and transforms into a whip. He slaps one of the branches where it hooks, and slams his fist onto the ground. The tree careens. He keeps pulling, forcing the tree flat against the ground.

From the sky, Aqua points her Keyblade towards the trunk and calls. A beam of light strikes through the heart void, glowing.

The tree shrieks and thrashes. Terra is thrown off and the tree slaps Aqua out of its way. Aqua lands on the side of a cliff, climbing up. The tree stampedes towards her with the motion to crush her.

Aqua yells and yanks herself over, rolling onto her back, pointing her Keyblade up again. Her light blinds this time, a force that shocks the air and pushes everything with swept pressure. As though Aqua has summoned water, Terra is thrown, the currents taking him away.

He lands and rolls. It’s quiet.

His muscles ache and sting. He’ll have bruises but those don’t matter. Terra stumbles when he stands, leaning on a boulder near him. He peers over, praying for the image of Aqua climbing over the hole, but what he sees is a picture from before the nightmare: the clearing back in its original state, as though he has hallucinated everything. The rocky exterior makes it hard for him to notice anyone. If she’s crouching due to pain, if she’s stranded somewhere, knocked out…

His knees give out when he runs, and he tumbles down the hill. Summoning his glider, Terra asks it to carry his slacked weight. There is no puddle at the bottom anymore. He keeps himself up high where he has a vantage point, calling her name. There’s no sight of her.

“I won’t be fooled. You’ll take me to her,” he tells the Realm. He scans. No sign of her. What if she’s buried beneath the earth...

A pale glow flickers between rocks.

He drops.

Aqua isn’t here. In her place is a green, ghostly apparition of a woman in a simple, flowy dress that allows for dancing, her long hair swaying to zephyr. Terra doesn’t need to ask for her name. His voice croaks. “Where is she?”

“Of whom do you speak?” Eurydice says. The ghost has no voice but a loud breath, as though she is whispering right into his ear.

“Aqua!” he calls but he gets no answer. No sound of the pebbles crumpled by her bootsteps, nor the clank of armor.

“Ah,” Eurydice sighs. “The one who looks like a naiad. A water nymph.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“In the labyrinth.”

Terra turns over his shoulder and starts up the hill. Where is the entrance they used to get here?

“If you enter the labyrinth, you will lock her inside, Keybearer.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” His helmet feels tight. “How do you know about Keyblades?”

“The body is an entrapment, a vessel designed to define concepts that we can’t understand. What we call prayers, offerings, angels, the Light, the fountain of the gods, Keyblades, Kingdom Hearts, Paradise, Mount Olympus—all bear the same resemblance depending on the language we use. Without a body, I am not burdened by any of those barriers.” She holds her hands together with reverence. “Your armor glimmers like a star.”

“Can you feel her then? Is she hurt?”

“She is with you.”

That’s the same thing people say to him about Eraqus. Your Master will always be with you, no matter where you are. You just need the faith to know he’s there.

I’m sure he’s proud of you.

I’m sure he knows how much you love him. He’s with you.

“Aqua!” Terra bolts into a run, picking whatever direction because this clearing is a circle and there is no exit. He’ll have to break one open. His helmet presses on the pulse in his neck. He’s losing oxygen. He’s gasping. He’s removing his helmet, collapsing to his knees, yelling at the most his lungs could give him, now that his voice is no longer muffled by metal. “Aqua!”

His throat throbs.

“No panic, no haven for panic, Keybearer.”

Terra stares at the dirt under him—cracked from drought, a single pebble and a patch of grass. “You should have taken me,” he wheezes.

The ground rumbles and he snaps up, dying to see if it’s her. A giant hand pounds towards him, attached to a giant body with beedy yellow eyes and tentacles for a face. A Darkside, towering over him, watching him like it’s going to grant a wish.

“Keybearer,” Eurydice warns.

The Darkside digs its fingers into the dirt like the roots of a tree. A black puddle opens up a pathway for the sprawl of eyes to crawl out.

Terra would summon his Keyblade but he’s slow and tired. Numb. His skin is exposed to the Realm, and it seeps into him. It lulls him, it quiets him. There’s no sanity better than the world the mind makes up.

The Darkside grabs him.

Terra is tired, watching for a hint of blue when he sees black.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Terra.

“Aqua.”

Terra wakes submerged in an ocean. He reaches for her but grabs air.

He’s gently sinking.

So he’s lost her. He’s failed at his duty of protecting someone who needs his help. This is why Aqua is stronger than him. Terra could never survive in a place like this, he could never withstand twelve years of this torture.

“Aqua, I’m so sorry.” He wants to cry but he can’t. The Realm won’t let him, anesthetizing the fall of tears.

What is in the ocean with him? A monster he can’t see? Will it have teeth? Will it swallow him? Or will it watch him float here, waiting for him to turn so he could become one with it? Terra could let go here—

—but a faint glow hovers near, like breath to a limp body, like a light at the exit. There’s still time and a chance. If he can open his eyes, then Aqua could, wherever she is.

Eurydice watches the amoebas in the water, floating by herself.

Terra swims to her.

“‘Twasn’t a long wait,” she whispers when he approaches.

“I’m sorry for turning my back on you,” he tells her. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

Eurydice smiles at him. She looks sickly, hollowed cheeks down to the lines of her skull. But if she was healthy, she would be the beauty that captivated people in the forest.

Terra takes her wrist and gravity takes them. They gently land on solid ground, in the black, in the middle of nothing. Endless dark, endless shadow, endless lack of everything.

“We can’t go anywhere without Aqua. We have to find her first.” Though Terra doesn’t know where he is or which direction he should take.

“We are everywhere, she is nowhere.”

“What does that mean, though? She isn’t here? Then where is she?”

“Below. Nowhere and the end. At the beginning, where you can’t see.”

Terra jerks forward to beg, but a ghost is the last person to ask for answers. He trembles.

“You have a kind face,” Eurydice says. “The bards would have sung in honor of you.”

That’s no consolation. Terra sobs but it’s dry.

“Beware, Keybearer.”

He hears the sloshing of water. His ankles are sunk under.

If he despairs, the Darkness will take him. If he stays calm, he’s betraying her.

“Aqua, what do I do?”

“I called to Lady Aqua because I saw her Light,” Eurydice says, nodding slowly. “The only star in the dark. I would trust her choice, always. I believe in the Fates.” She brings her hand to her chest. “I believe she brought me you.”

The truth stings, a slap to the face, the swallow of a knife, the burn of the tongue with a lighted match. He can’t bear it, but he has to. Aqua would trust him with anything.

“I…” He is such a horrible person, looking at the face of the needy and the hurt but thinking about someone else. He can’t do it. He has to. “I was supposed to hold her when we got out.”

“We were to be married.”

Terra feels as though a pail of water was dumped on him. He takes a hard look at Eurydice, at how she’s trying to warn him with bulging eyes, distorting. Ghosts are emotional. “What happened to you?”

“I died. Vipers are the most unpleasant.”

Terra doesn’t want to ask, afraid of where this conversation will go. “And Orpheus?”

She brightens up, washed over by nostalgia. “He came for me. With his gift of song, he moved Hades enough to agree to be charitable. Hades granted me freedom so long as Orpheus accepted the terms.”

Of course, Hades and his contracts.

Eurydice’s face ashens more than it possibly can. “I was to follow. Orpheus was to lead me to the sunlit earth, so long as he did not look back at me while I was in the dark.” She pauses, as though her lips are sewn together. Talking about this hurts her. “So Orpheus led with much enthusiasm. So much at peace. I was to finally be with my beloved again, to smell the pomegranates and taste the olives.

“Love is powerful but Death more so. Every step was a moment to rethink. He could not hear me behind him, for I was a mere shade. Orpheus could not trust Hades. I could feel his anticipation, his desperate need to hold me dearly, his doubt that he was being played.”

“I can’t blame him.”

“At the end, right as the light was about to touch us, Orpheus lost his faith. He looked back to see my face.” Eurydice hugs herself. “I gave him my farewell and kind regards, then I was whisked away, back into the Underworld.”

“I’m so sorry.” Terra swallows, not liking what this is supposed to mean for him. “Aqua would have chosen to help you.”

“Will you set me free?”

“Yes, of course but—” He inhales. “How could I leave her?”

The look on Eurydice’s face stops him. “I did what was asked of me. I followed him. I kept close. I was loyal. I spoke to him though he could not hear me. And yet he turned and tore us apart. I have yet to understand what I did wrong to let him doubt me.”

“He didn’t doubt you.”

“Then why hesitate to trust Lady Aqua?”

Like a knife to the throat, Terra falls to his knees and grips at his chest, the guilt inside so heavy and thick that he wants to rip his armor off and cut it open, dig it all out so he could finally breathe.

If she were here, Aqua would have told him to save Eurydice. There’s no denying that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hoping Aqua could hear him. “I’d give you my whole heart if it meant you were here.” He swallows. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be back, just wait for me.” He doesn’t want to stand up, for that would mean that he’d have to walk. But he tells himself that there must be ways around this. There must be an exception, a line in the fine print. “Wait for me, I’ll come to you. I swear with every will I have to live.”

Terra stands. He summons his helmet. When he wears it, he finally cries, soft tears that feel warm then cool, muted because they’re delayed.

“Okay,” he tells Eurydice. “Let’s go.”

He wades across the water, ripples that fan out and reflecting light that isn’t there.

Eurydice floats by his side. “I’m grateful. The vipers are the most unpleasant.”

Terra stops a chuckle. “Yeah, you told me.” Repetition is a symptom for the eldritch, an obsession with what life was. Eurydice deserves so much better. “Do you have to go back to Hades?”

“Orpheus is with him. Once we reunite, we will walk the Underworld together.”

“But it’s a prison.”

Eurydice glances at him. “Man and god are the same. They associate death with misery and see the Underworld as nothing else. But we don’t see what you see.”

“The thought of Hades hating his job is satisfying.”

“He makes for an upsetting neighbor.”

Terra scoffs.

“But I shall be content. Death is powerful but Love more so.”

Terra doesn’t know how to respond, but it spells for him a kind of peace. The Realm numbs everything it touches. As long as they play by the rules, it’s not so bad. Aqua is the only balm he’d need.

“How shall we escape?”

“Ven—my best friend—is waiting on the other side. You see that light?” Ahead of them, far in the distance, is a star. “He has a door open for us.”

“But we’ve been walking for so long and yet it does not come closer. Are you not looking forward to seeing him?”

“Of course I am.” Terra slows to a stop. The water has reached to his waist.

Eurydice studies him with sadness. “You mean to stay here.”

Terra doesn’t answer Eurydice’s remark. “I mean to see you free and happy.” He holds out his hand and she takes it.

Nothing is truly ever following Terra here, for the Darkness wants him to think so. So he will stay, walk forward and walk far without a map or a compass. Eventually, he’ll have to cross paths with her. There is no other place he’d want to go, and any world without her is a world behind him. With that vow to himself, the star finally comes close, the black fading into gray.

“Ven?” Terra calls.

“I have always wondered what it would be like to cross over,” Eurydice says.

Heavy, loud footsteps approach them. Ven appears in the light, in a box colored in white, his armor worn. “Terra? Finally, I’ve been—” He jerks his head towards Eurydice’s direction, the sharp rabbit ears of his helmet tilting. He leans forward as if to peer inside. He does not have a reflection in the water. “Where is Aqua?”

“We are everywhere, she is nowhere,” Eurydice says.

“You don’t see her?” Terra asks, his voice brittle. A tiny part of his heart was hoping he was wrong.

“Dude,” Ven says, “I can barely see you. You’re like an outline.”

“That’s proof enough.”

“Such lies,” Eurydice says.

“What is the ghost talking about?” Ven asks.

“It’s okay, Ven,” Terra says. “I’m going to find Aqua.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“She’ll never forgive me if you follow.” Terra hangs his head. “Please don’t ask me to leave her.”

“That’s not—”

“I’m not afraid of the Realm of Darkness.”

Eurydice turns to Terra. “Such bravery yet you are frightened to cross the threshold for her. Is it natural that faith betrays you? Don’t do this to her. Don’t punish her.”

Ven looks at her, looks at Terra, looks at her.

Terra says, “Once I find her, I’ll be okay.” He moves to turn.

Eurydice holds his shoulder. “Many don’t know how to love. They only know the fall, and they fall, waiting for peace to replace the ecstasy and despair. But it will not come if you do not beckon it. May you listen to your heart?”

His heart aches.

Ven grabs his forearm. “I’m going to listen to the freaky lady. She knows more than you.”

“Ven—”

“I can’t lose both of you. We’ll figure out an action plan, and”—Ven uses all his weight and both of his hands to try to pull Terra over—“you’re coming with me.”

“I can’t leave her here.”

“We’re not! Come on, man, she’s strong.”

“Step forward with me. The vipers are most unpleasant,” Eurydice says.

Terra holds onto the doorframe. The sun hits his gloved fingers, baking them. Aqua, what do I do?

Terra, please.

That’s Aqua’s voice, far away. For the Darkness wants him to think nothing is following him.

“You promise me we’ll come back?” Terra asks Ven.

“Of course. Anything for her.”

Terra doesn’t sob when he wants to. He doesn’t make a decision—he leaps, stepping forward into the light. Eurydice follows.

But a heavy ton, the Darkness, drags him back. Hands from the water grab his cape into bunches and pull on his neck. They hold onto his legs and bend his knees, desperate, like beggars that need his help, need the stars that glimmer in his armor.

One hand grabs his forearm, metal on metal, like it’s telling him not to forget something.

Terra gasps.

He grabs that hand and throws himself forward with a yell, ripping away from the Darkness begging him to stay, knocking Ven out of his balance, and pulling her out.

Terra lands on his back and hears her gasp and whimper out of shock, relieved. He throws his helmet off.

“Aqua.”

Aqua’s blue armor stares at the grass while she takes in the scene, her sobs controlled and hushed.

Terra pulls her helmet off to look at her face, stained with tears and tired smiles. “Aqua.”

“You didn’t hear me?” she asks, crying quietly. “No one heard or saw me, I was there the entire time.”

“I’m an idiot.” Terra weeps with her. He dispels his armor and touches her pauldron to dismiss hers. He holds her tightly. She’s warm and sweaty, small in comparison to him, folded into his chest like she fits perfectly. “Call me an idiot, I deserve it.”

Aqua’s cries tremble into laughter as she buries her face in his neck, twisting his suspenders in her fists. Terra lets her weight pull him onto the grass. “That girl was right. You smell good.”

“What are we talking about now?” Ven removes his helmet and brushes through his hair. Terra is so happy to see that chubby face. “Everything’s so confusing.”

“These girls have been chasing Terra. They’re harpies.” She looks up at him and smirks. “I don’t think they’d be pleased if they saw us like this.”

Terra chuckles into her hair. “I don’t care.”

“Wait,” Ven says, scoffing. “Now we’re going to be murdered by rabid fangirls? Ugh, Terra, why are you always inviting trouble? We don’t need it.” He slams his helmet back on. “Stay here, I’ll scout to see if it’s safe. I’m kicking your ass when we get back home.”

That’s fine. Terra will hold onto Aqua here, stroke his thumb on her cheek, wipe her hair off of her face, massage his hand over her exposed back, under the straps. It’s overcast, the clouds a respite.

Flowers named eurydice watch over them, their anthers hanging close.

“She’s okay,” Aqua whispers, sighing. Her body relaxes. “Thank you.”

Terra kisses her forehead and brings her waist closer. His star in the darkness. She blinks from behind blotted clouds.

#terraqua #terra #aqua #terraqua week #kingdom hearts fanfiction #orpheus #eurydice #AHHHHHH omg i finally finished this monster #the longest piece in the collection for sure #my fic

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gracewithducks · 4 years

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Strange Traditions (A Christmas Eve Sermon)

There is a man in Ohio who creates artwork out of chewing gum; he shapes gum in tiny little sculptures… using nothing but his mouth.[1] There’s a couple in Tokyo who recently went viral for posting pictures of their cats, which isn’t too unusual, except that the cats are wearing hats – bunny ears and crowns, Viking helmets and wigs – all kinds of hats made from the hair those cats shed around the house.[2]

And I’ve realized we all have weird things we do, things that make no sense, that others find strange or even a waste of time… but it brings us joy, so we do it, even if they don’t understand.

Some of us dress up like Star Trek characters. Some of us study the Elvish language of the Lord of the Rings. Some of us love to bake cookies and cakes, even when everyone we know is on a diet. Some of us read the same books over and over again. Some people make works of art out of beach sand and sidewalk chalk, even knowing it’s all going to wash away. Some people train for marathons, or jump out of airplanes, or collect stamps or build ships in bottles.

As for me, I knit stockings.

On its surface, not that strange. It all started innocently enough: my grandmother always knit stockings for our whole family: generations of stockings, each one unique, each one knit with love. And we love those stockings. As a kid, opening our stockings on Christmas Day was almost more exciting than opening the presents under the tree. Under the tree you’d get the usual pajamas and socks and, if you’re really lucky, that one thing we’d hoped and wished for all year. But the stockings were a free-for-all of surprises: candies and hairbows, puzzles we didn’t know existed, books we didn’t know we wanted to read, games and puzzles and funny little toys that sometimes were more fun than the big ones under the tree.

Stockings are an important part of our Christmas traditions. But when I was starting my own family, my grandma let me know that, because of the tremors in her hands, she couldn’t knit anymore. It was heartbreaking for her, but it was also nerve-wracking for me – because as the only other knitter in the family, the job of making stockings was handed down to me.

And when I say that I knew how to knit, I mean that my grandma – the same grandma – had taught me how to knit a potholder when I was about twelve years old. I don’t think I even ever learned to purl, just to knit – straight knit – the end.

But my grandma handed down her knitting needles and yarn, and I resolved to do the best I could.

I started working on my daughter’s stocking, the first stocking I’d ever made. And because I wasn’t so smart, I didn’t start working on the stocking until after she was born – which was about two months before her first Christmas. I still remember frantically knitting whenever anyone came to visit and offered to hold the baby; I remember wearing my daughter strapped in a Baby Bjorn and dancing around the living room, trying to keep her happy, while I knitted behind her back.

Somehow, I finished that stocking. And the even bigger wonder is that it actually looks like it belongs. It’s not perfect, but none of them are; they’re all made with love anyway.

When my husband and I found out we were expecting again, I knew I needed to plan another stocking. But because I’d only made one stocking before, I wanted to practice, to try following my notes and see if I could do it again. So I decided that, as a joke, I’d surprise my husband by making a stocking – not for a family member, but for Doctor Who. And if you don’t know who Doctor Who is, that’s okay; he’s a character in a British sci-fi show, and Doctor Who always has a Christmas special – a Christmas special which actually airs on the BBC on Christmas Day.

Since the Doctor always shows up for Christmas, then, I decided to make him his own stocking, with a picture of his time machine on it. And from that one stocking, a new tradition was born.

Yes, I made stockings for all of my children. But I’ve made many more than that. Every Christmas, I surprise my husband with another silly stocking for his collection, a stocking based on something he loves. We have Iron Man and Captain America; we have Harry Potter and Thing 1 from Doctor Seuss; we have a stocking for Despicable Me’s Gru, and for the Staypuft Marshmallow Man, and even Mickey Mouse.

Along the stairway to our house is a wall of stockings. My husband isn’t surprised to get a new stocking each year; he looks forward to them – and that year’s design is always a secret – and I so much love the planning, creating, and surprising him.

It’s a strange tradition, I know. Whenever I explain it, I always get some funny looks. People always want to know if I make my whole family new stockings every year (I don’t) or whether my husband gets presents in all those stockings – (he doesn’t).

Even my own extended family is confused. Earlier this year, my brother was over to visit, and he gazed up at our stocking collection, looked at me, and said, “You know, there are – other – things you can make, right?”

Of course I do. I make other things. I love making things. But I really, truly find joy and delight in making those novelty Christmas stockings – even if no one else gets it. I love our strange little tradition. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to follow the rules.

Sometimes I imagine – and to be clear, this isn’t in the bible; it’s my own imagination – but sometimes I imagine that, when God was creating humans, when God had the idea to create these free but flawed beings who would live in God’s creation – I imagine an angel walking up, looking at what God was making, and saying, “Are you sure that’s what you want to make? It looks messy, and loud, and it’s probably just going to break all your stuff.”

And when God nods, and the angel wrinkles his nose and says, “You know – there are other things you can make, right?”

And God’s like, “I know. I’ve made other things. I enjoy making other things. But these are different; each one is different, unique, and I delight in planning and creating each one – and maybe they’re messy, and maybe it doesn’t make sense… but love doesn’t have to make sense.”

And when God was planning to come down at Christmas, to get down and play with those unlikely and perplexing creations, to shrink to our size and play by our rules, so that we might see God’s love even more – when God said, “This is my idea: I’ll go down there as a baby” – I imagine that same angel wanders by and says, “Really? That’s your plan? Haven’t you learned anything?”

And God says, “It doesn’t have to make sense. Love doesn’t make sense. But it brings me joy. And that’s enough.

This is the lesson of Christmas: that God’s love for us doesn’t make sense – but God loves us anyway. God loves us too much to stay away, but God loves us enough to come down to our level, to squeeze infinity into an infant, to subject God’s self to cold, to poverty, to grief and hunger and pain – so that when we go through suffering, we know we are not alone.

God loves us enough to do the unusual, the bizarre, the impossible: to come and be with us.

And it doesn’t make sense. But some of the most important things we do in life don’t make any kind of sense: like telling your family to split the last pieces of pie when there isn’t enough to go around, and you tell them you didn’t feel like pie tonight anyway; or a grown adult getting down on the floor to play Legos or Barbies, or folding yourself down to fit on a playground slide; it’s driving for hours just so you can have dinner with your family, or giving a few dollars to the stranger at the side of the road, or inviting a stray animal to share your home and be your family; it’s sitting with someone who’s sick, even if they don’t know you’re there; telling your mother-in-law the biscuits really don’t taste burned at all, or going to your friend’s favorite restaurant even if you don’t like it. It’s buying coffee for a stranger; it's practicing for hours to bring music to worship, even knowing the beauty is fleeting – just a few moments and it’s over and gone; it’s gathering to worship a God we can’t see, celebrating a baby king sleeping on the hay, lighting candles and singing about heavenly peace on an earth that’s far from any kind of peace at all.

There are things we do that make no sense, and we wonder how much they matter – but they’re done from love, so maybe those things that don’t make sense are the ones that matter the most of all.

Love that doesn’t make sense – and love is what Christmas is all about.

This so familiar story of Christmas, this story which makes us comfortable and nostalgic on nights like this – this story is in fact a strange tradition: a tradition of looking for God in the cold, the hungry, and the helpless, in the most unlikely corners of a dangerous and perplexing world.

May the God who delights in you, may the God who loves you enough to be born in Bethlehem – may that God bless you, and may you know that you are loved. And may you too love even when it doesn’t make sense, seeing beauty where others see nonsense, bringing peace into the most unlikely places of all. May we all hold onto this strange tradition of generous, extravagant, beautiful, unlikely love.

God of strange traditions, God of risk-taking and self-sacrificing love: we are so thankful for the tradition, the story, the truth that brings us here tonight. We are grateful that you loved us into creation, even when it didn’t make sense; we are thankful that, when we were lost and cold and alone, you came to meet us right where we are. Meet us here tonight. In Jesus’ name we pray; amen.

[1] https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/annual-2012-gum/

[2] https://mymodernmet.com/hair-cat-hats-ryo-yamazaki/

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

Text

How Misha ruined slash fiction

THIS IS AN EDITED REPOST.

I first got into fandom slash fiction because of Lord of the Rings. Before that I had no idea there were others like me. The Ringers, as I prefer to call them, were the nicest slash fans and gave me the erroneous impression that slashers are really lovely girls. How wrong I was. But almost twenty years ago, I [and my generational demographic] had the semblance of mind to differentiate between fact and fantasy. I came across the definition of slash fiction, way back then. Its was generically defined as fanwork done by women for women. Of course one would argue that men like slash fiction too. Correction. Straight and Bi women like slash fiction. Gay or bisexual men like Bara. That is something that they indulge in because it is attractive to them. How trans people fit into this dynamic, would be an interesting study for the future and I have already done a post on that subject.

Straight women are completely different. How straight women show their attraction and what they are attracted to, is completely different to what gay or bi men like. Even bisexual women are still women and still writing from a female perspective. For decades, and I am counting the pre-star trek era, that was how things were. Women, for decades, had no other platform for sexual expression except slash fiction. The phenomenon started in the East, and spread all over the world. But Eastern and Western slash are completely different from one another. Why don't women just write something with a man and a woman? This is where we notice that slashers and other women are completely different. Slashers don't like to watch another woman’s love story. Its not satisfying for us. We can write ourselves as the other half of a pairing, like a Mary Sue scenario, but to be honest, its not the most popular genre because the only woman truly satisfied with the story is the writer herself. Women, very seldom, bond over Mary Sues. But slash stories are discussed as a way of bonding over a common interest.

Classic slash was hidden. It was underground, which was good because the uncultured riff raff stayed away. It was the ultimate girl talk. It surprised us, how similar our desires were and what we found attractive. Remember the faulty character Becky Rosen? Even though she is problematic, the moment Sam licked his thumb and wiped the ink stain off her nose, many of us turned into embarrassing swoony puddles. Why? He was cleaning her nose, for goodness sake. What’s so cute about that? I don’t know. We all just gushed at him. Remember Dean spinning the Impala in the episode “Baby”. I played that bit again and again. It had nothing to with sex. Dean was handling a car but I remember having a flushed face over it.

I read somewhere that foreplay starts in the kitchen. This applies to women anyway. So warming your girl up starts way before you even get her to the bedroom. So you start with a candle lit dinner and soft music and slow dancing. While he may be ready when he walks in through the door, she will need wining, dining, dancing and lovey dovey talk to get interested. Usually. Sometimes, she will appear suddenly turned on, but no, she just saw her husband helping an old man cross the street, and she thought ’‘why is he so stinking cute? Wait till I get my hands on him’’. But that is once in a while. We don’t switch on and off like men. We are, by nature, cautious creatures. Getting us in the mood is as important as the act of lovemaking itself. That is why art that is geared to women, generally, is over-the-top and melodramatic, indulging the foreplay more than the sex.

Ryan Gosling with a boom box [or whatever you call that thing] standing on top a car, confessing his undying love = foreplay. Jack Dawson making Rose stand at the head of the ship [or whatever you call it], making her imagine she’s flying = foreplay. Is it necessary to the story? Nope. Will the Titanic stay buoyant because Jack didn’t make Rose fly? Nah, its will still sink. Do we like it, nonetheless? Oooh, yeah.

For the past 80 or so years, we have kept slash fiction solely to ourselves because:

men wont appreciate it because its not their “thing”

men will misunderstand it [case in point: Misha Collins]

because it was sexual fantasy and some of us would prefer not to share that openly.

Did male actors speak about it when they did find out? Yes, in passing, especially if they were the subject of the story. A reporter or crew member would always tell them. In the case of J2, Kim Manners apparently told them what he had found on the internet. The Lord of the Rings cast found out because of Peter Jackson. What was their reaction? The same as all the other actor’s reactions: They would smirk/laugh about it, make a joke and move on. Then Misha Collins came along. The first time he had spoken about slash fiction, I had winced. Apparently, judging from the audience reaction, so had they. We really didn’t want this spoken about, openly, for two reason.

1] He was speaking to a general audience during his panel. Some of them don’t care for slash fiction and no, homophobia has nothing to do with it. If it doesn’t float your boat, it just doesn’t. Keep throwing the word homophobia around, unnecessarily, and its going to eventually lose its effectiveness because it is frequently being used to bully people into doing what you want, rather than for equality. So no, Jensen Ackles is not a homophobe because he doesn’t want to be up close and personal with Misha Collins. Grow up.

2] The sane slashers of those days, [and it was a decade ago] didn’t want their personal naughty little secrets spoken about so candidly in a public setting. Why? Let me illustrate. If you tell your friends, in a personal setting, how you like when a man runs his hands all over your body, it will illicit some “oohs” and giggles followed by their own contributions to the discussion. If you are sitting with that same gaggle of friends at a crowded restaurant and you say the same thing loudly for the whole room to hear, what will they think of you, especially if they have children with them.

Slash used to be one of those things a lady never spoke about in public, no matter how empowered she thought she was. Personally, I don’t think a lady has to relinquish her femininity and decency in order to feel empowered. That’s why I don’t like women, like Kim and Briana, who call themselves bitches to show how tough they are. Sure, I will break a man's face, if he puts his hands on me, but that doesn’t mean that I have no feminine qualities, and I won't exhibit this aggressive side of myself with a loving and caring man. I guess things have changed since the early days, and women are different now. But this is just my opinion and not relevant to the subject at hand.

If Misha knew how to gauge the audience, he would have understood there and then, that this is not a suitable topic to indulge in, where the audience was mixed and included some younger people, i.e., teens and children. What he did, was to keep running his mouth off about something he didn’t know. And its shows in the way he refers to Destiel as pseudo-porn. His fans were very angry about it, because it lessened their artistic efforts to pornography and nothing else. He said he went on Wikipedia to learn more about slash fiction. For a man who went to university, he is not very smart. If you have ever done any academic research report at university level, you will know that any report that includes citations from Wikipedia are immediately rejected.

Wikipedia is an unreliable source of convoluted, opinionated information that is sometimes not quantifiable and therefore cannot act as an academic resource. Plus anyone can edit those pages, no matter what agenda they have or how stupid they are. This fool didn’t know that. So he started to “educate” the still fixated younger batch [who have now grown into the hellers we loathe with gusto] in the audience and on YouTube as to what slash fiction was and that is why they like him so much. While other actors speak a line about it and move onto another topic, Professor Knowitall esq. will give his rather young audience a lecture on a subject he knows nothing about, thereby conditioning them to think that slash fiction is something that it isn’t. Is he that stupid or that arrogant?

If you look through Wikipedia, it will give you the impression that slash is homosexual in nature, and that it is an expression of gay love. The fact that those stories and artwork originated with straight women and are powered by the artistic efforts of straight women, is ignored. There are topics about queer recognition and LGBT relevance on that page. The page isn’t telling you what slash fiction is. It is telling you what other groups feel about it. I can tell you, almost a century ago, slash fans were not indulging this art form for those reasons. They were doing it for their own satisfaction. If other people like it too, that’s fine and dandy, but it is not about them. And what Misha has done with this fandom, which is bleeding into other fandoms via intrusive destiel fans, is to make slash about the LGBT.

That is why gay men are now getting angry because young impressionable girls are listening to him and turning a straight/bi female art form into an inaccurate gay platform. They are using things like closetedness, gay bashings, bigotry and even AIDS as a gay “trope” or theme for their stories. Gay men fought to change the name ''Gay Cancer'' to AIDS, because it was erroneously being considered a homosexual disease, and yet years later, we have a ''fake'' inclusive generation celebrating a story like ''Twist and Shout". No wonder gay men hate teen slash girls. If you write about a subject you know nothing of, you will write it wrong. These children [because they behave like that] are writing about some very sensitive and serious topics and they are romanticizing them. What person wont get angry?

In the old days, the two people who made up a pairing, were differentiated, by using two words: Seme and Uke. While slash was a straight female art form, gay men didn’t give two hoots about these words. They didn’t read the stuff. They didn’t care. They had bara. When “woke and non-bigoted, inclusive” slash fans started speaking for gay men through their stories despite the fact that these men have a voice of their own, the guys got angry because they don’t have a seme and uke role type in their relationships. Well, of course they don’t. Slash is not about gay men. Its about straight women and their sexual expression. And in their fantasies, there are seme’s and uke’s.

That is another problem with the Wikipedia page. When you look at the history, it starts with Kirk and Spock. The dunderhead who wrote that page, didn’t know that slash started in the east, probably Japan, although Hong Kong might dispute that. When it became animated in the 1970’s, the anime version was called Yaoi. The Japanese were actually making money from slash fiction way back when, by making comic type books, essentially novels with pictures. And it was those translated stories, which were almost always set in another world, that gave birth to Kirk/Spock slash fiction. Star Trek is also set in another world so to speak. The westerners got hold of these books when the Asians immigrated. The first slash stories were actually distributed in conventions, because the internet didn't exist back then.

There is only one other person who over-indulged his slash fan base. Harry Styles. He regretted it, because it ruined his friendship. So he stopped. But he had a good excuse. He was between the ages of 15 and 19 whilst in 1 Direction. He was a baby and didn’t know any better. Harry learned his lesson within five years and stopped. Misha has been on the show for ten years. He was in his mid thirties when he started on Supernatural. He was already a grown man who has no excuse, because he is not stupid. With the amount of damage the militant destiel fans have done, you would think that he would stop. He doesn’t. Because it gives him staying power.

The one thing I have noticed is, overindulging a slash fan [not necessary a heller - any slash fan] is like feeding a Mogwai after midnight. It turns into an uncontrollable gremlin. That is exactly what Misha’s militant fanbase is: a hideous collection of gremlins that he overfed and now they are attacking any mogwai that doesn’t show gremlin traits, even if they are mild-mannered destiel fans who don't like the leads beings threatened. What Misha’s dumb section have now done, is that they have taken slash fiction itself, and turned it into an increasingly hateful and problematic concept. Because, the general public, which includes J2 [because they have nothing to do with slash fiction], now have the impression that slash is a means of bullying and putting your indulgences before other peoples’ opinions and dignity, in the name of representation.

It also give the impression, to unknowing people, that homosexuals are boisterous and demanding people and you have to please them or else. The general public don’t know that predominantly female, heterosexual, entitled princesses are writing this crap. They think that gays are pushing slash fiction because words like gay, queer and LGBT keep popping up in a pro-destiel argument. Any gay man reading this, take heed, because these children are damaging your collective reputations. And if you don’t deal with it now, the PR headache you are going to have to deal with, in the future, as a group, is going to be immense. And it won’t even be your fault, but you will be blamed for it. How do you go about doing that? Speak directly to Misha. Shut up the master Gremlin-Troll himself. Tell him he is doing you a great disservice. After all, the mostly straight heller girls are speaking for you and he is pushing the microphones into their hands.

I always liked slash because not only was it a means of female sexual expression, but it was also a means of female creativity. Sure, we all like Cinderella, but it was lukewarm for some of us because, she was difficult to emulate. And growing up, we didn’t know she was a character to enjoy, not to emulate. Children always emulate what they see on screen. She was thin, pretty, a good singer with nice hair and small feet. I am club footed, bipolar and fat, with a lion’s mane that brushes broke on. I felt sorry for her because she was abused. I felt sorry for her because she was crying at one point. Then I remembered what I look like when I cry. Soft tears don't roll gently down my pink cheeks. Snot rolls down my nose, careening to the inside of my mouth. Not pretty. Not delicate. The story was nice but it left me feeling inadequate. Some women love it. Others, like myself, are “meh” about it.

When I read a bemusing slash version with actors in place of the fictional cast, I read the whole story smirking. I didn’t begrudge the beautiful lead [I think it might have been Jensen] because I was as besotted with him as Prince Charming was [presumably Jared]. I didn’t want to be him. I wanted him. I wanted the prince too, just FYI. I could be a fly on the wall in the story, without actually picturing how my insignificant self would fit into the story. That is what slash fiction meant to me. It was an escapist art form into a fantasy 'verse, that is custom made to put a smile on my face.

Now, Prince Charming is fighting for gay rights against his bigoted father, the king, and Cinderella is beaten by his ugly step siblings because he is a homo. And I look at it and blink. I am not the audience for this story. Empathy is one thing, but replacing your sexuality with someone else’s, is something else all together. Especially since every slash story now, seems to be about gay characters and gay rights and homophobia. Slash has turned into a one trick pony. How much could you write about gay rights? Slash’s creativity is running on autopilot. Take your ship, make them gay, make one closeted and unhappy, make the other out and happy, throw in a gay oriented trope, even AIDS [no decency threshold] and boom! You've got a story.

They’ve been writing in this way for the last ten years and they’ve ruined the whole genre. So much so, that destiel and cockles stories aren’t enjoyed by anyone except destiel fans, because Misha and Cas are in those stories. And he is always written as a precious smol bean. At this juncture, I have to point out that, to be fair, other ships on Supernatural and other fandoms are doing the same thing, because destiel fans bend the will of others to their own. I heard they are actually tagging destiel into posts about other shows. Other bloggers noticed that destiel and Misha are in Mother Nature tag. They don't even leave Mother Nature alone. Why? Because Misha has turned a harmless indulgence into an addiction. He is their only dealer and pursuing canon gives them their fix. They are gremlins on crack with stunted creativity.

Of course, the children argue that they can't read an unrealistic story which is why slash characters have to instead be gay. Oh yeah, then how come in Cockles stories, Misha is something pregnant. Sometimes, he is a pregnant wolf. So you can take your “realism” and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. When you write a totes realistic story, with gay characters rather than slash characters, you are disrespecting three groups of people:

the actors, who are your, sometimes, unwilling muses

the homosexual community, that you have absolutely no right to speak for

the earlier slash fans who nurtured this art form, before you ''woke'' idiots came barreling in, with your inclusiveness, and flushed their efforts down the toilet, all at the behest on one selfish man.

Decent slashers say: This is a work of fiction and has no bearings on reality. Then they go out of their way to not include themes that are synonymous with the gay community. The characters in a properly written story are never explicitly gay. They just like some guy, even though last week they were with a girl. And no, that doesn’t make them bisexual either. Remember, slash is a platform with a large percentage of straight females and bisexuals don’t want you speaking for them, either. Otherwise, nobody will dispute the hellers for saying that Dean is bi because he wore a purple shirt, once. The fed up bisexuals reading insulting meta on how Dean is bisexual, because of his food and clothing choices, are a case in point. So the character are fantasy slash characters. If I were to coin a word, then they are slashsexual.

They are just muses for the woman’s sexual expression. We don’t need to tell them what we are doing, thereby putting them in an uncomfortable position to amend or dispute our opinion about the subject. That is plain rude and borderline sexual harassment. Even if we are women and they are men. Treat them with the same dignity that you demand for yourself. Its got nothing to do with them. Don’t ask them. Misha, on the other hand, has no shame and will therefore never turn down a question. He will answer the question in a way that his gullible fangirls like, inflating his ego and giving him permanence in the show. Has Misha caused irreparable damage? I am afraid so. Older women, in the SPN fandoms, get caught up in life so they don’t indulge in slash as much. And so the brats are running this art form to the ground, teaching nonsense to those that are younger than them, parroting whatever crap Misha spews about slash fiction, in the name of sexual equality, representation and the LGBT. I am not even counting their online behaviour, just pointing out their horrible handling of slash fiction at the behest of Misha Collins. They still listen to him and its going to get worse and worse, until slash fiction becomes THE most hateful thing about fan culture.

Please note:

The analysis of slash fiction does not include tinhatting. Tinhats do not believe that the people they are writing about are mere muses. Cockles fans and J2 Tinhats believe that they people they are writing about, really are gay, but closeted due to public shame and ostracization. Tinhats, at least the ones that I came across, do not like to be seen as shippers. They are a separate entity altogether. That would be a fascinating topic for the future. Thank you to the tinhat who reminded me of this, because I completely forgot.

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upontheshelfreviews · 6 years

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Of all the animated Disney films out there, few have had a history as troubled or as fascinating as The Black Cauldron. Shaped less by the average process of transforming a novel to film and more by the decade, regime, mindset towards animation and internal struggle of power of the studio that made it, The Black Cauldron is considered the black sheep of the canon; those who worked on it have few fond memories of the experience, and the result of all that blood, sweat, tears, and voodoo curses hurled in Jeffrey Katzenberg’s direction is an odd creature Disney is content to let wallow in relative obscurity. To this day it’s looked down upon by all but a few loyal fans who’ve elevated it to semi-cult status. The story of how and why this is is worth a documentary of its own.

As for my thoughts on the film itself…well…

“It’s complicated.”

I honestly can’t talk about my feelings towards The Black Cauldron without putting it into some context first. And there’s a LOT of context that needs to be explained. Hence why I’ve decided to split this review into two parts. This first half will go over the history of the movie and behind the scenes shenanigans, while Part 2, which is the review I know you’ve been anticipating, will be released next week. So if you want to avoid an engaging history lesson that discusses the climate in which The Black Cauldron was created in depth and go right to the film itself, I suggest you return at a later date. Or go watch Waking Sleeping Beauty. It’s a fascinating, personal look into the struggle that shaped Disney’s Renaissance era and they devote a good chunk of the beginning into what went down during the making of The Black Cauldron.

By the 1980’s, Walt Disney had been dead for nearly twenty years and his enterprise as a whole was lacking a good leader to keep everything together. The live-action films were woefully behind the times, Walt Disney World’s recently-opened second park EPCOT wasn’t meeting attendance expectations, and while the animated films were holding up surprisingly well, the department had to deal with their budgets continually being slashed in order to make up for the failures of the previous two branches of the company.

Politics within the animation studio threatened to tear it apart as well. It was time for the stubborn old guard of Walt’s day, which included the revered animators known as the Nine Old Men, to pass on everything they knew to a ragtag band of fresh recruits with newfangled ideas about how Disney animation should be. Needless to say there was plenty of headbutting and saltiness from each end throughout the ordeal. One of the outcomes was that two no-name pipsqueaks decided to jump ship – Don Bluth, who committed high treason in his contemporaries’ eyes by forming his own animation studio (and giving Disney some admittedly much-needed competition to get their act together), and Tim Burton, who was dissatisfied with the direction The Black Cauldron was taking and felt his own inventive if bizarre contributions were going unappreciated. Bluth is still considered a persona non grata in Disney’s circle for his mutiny, but I can imagine their parting ways with Burton going something like this:

“Tell ya what, loser, if you manage to gross over a hundred million with those weird little films of yours, we’ll make that stop-motion singing skeleton picture you always wanted!”

Things came to a head after it was announced that Disney’s next animation project would be Lloyd Alexander’s popular high fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain – or rather, taking the first two books of said series and combining them into one 80 minute film.

“It worked for Ralph Bakshi!”

“No it didn’t.”

“Come on, what kind of cockamamie studio would we be running if we devoted an entire movie to each entry in some crummy little fairy tale saga? Or hell, splitting one book into two movies to cram everything in! How do you expect to make bank on that? We’re not made of money, you know!”

“Sir, the contractors are here to go over the building of your swimming pool to contain all your other swimming pools.”

“Thank you, Ramsley. Tell them they’ll receive their deposit once we get the box office returns on Herbie Goes Bananas.”

“Of course, sir.”

Now the 80’s were a golden age for cult fantasy flicks. You couldn’t swing a dead elf around without hitting a Labyrinth or a Princess Bride or a Last Unicorn or a kajillion overlooked Baron Munchausens. Disney tried their hand at this genre with fare such as Return to Oz and Something Wicked This Way Comes and I think they’re good films. Like, really, REALLY good films. But unfortunately they share something in common with the previously mentioned fantasy movies, and that is they were major flops upon release. Yet the animators’ toiled away under the sincere hope that The Black Cauldron would be the one to break that losing streak. They were going to do something unique, something that no other animation studio – least of all classic Disney – had ever done before…

…or they might have if the old guard hadn’t kept stepping in to curb their creativity.

I understand where the former generation was coming from; I’d be pretty grouchy too if I had to train these too-big-for-their-britches whippersnappers who were going to replace me, but one of the reasons why the Disney company was this close to declaring bankruptcy in the decades after Walt’s passing was because it was adhering dangerously close to the mentality of “What would Walt do” instead of trying new things and evolving with the times. The very idea of “What would Walt do” is a paradox; none of us – not me, not the most religious of Disney fans, not even the workers who knew him the longest – could ever really know what his course of action on creative decisions might be, and yet the one thing we do know for certain is that Walt Disney always chose to move forward instead of clinging to the formulas or modes of thinking that were deemed the most successful. His whole body of work reflects that. Walt was one of the first studio heads to embrace television as another method of entertainment instead of fearing its growing popularity over theatrical venues. He not only revolutionized the theme park business but he kept building upon what was already there to enhance the experience and bridge the gap between man and machine, rather than just letting Disneyland sit in the middle of Anaheim and churn out money while it gathered dust. And as for features, well, after he was pressured into making sequels to the successful Three Little Pigs which proved to be less popular than the first, he infamously said “You can’t top pigs with pigs!”. Walt hated repeating himself in order to triumph, and he took every opportunity to push the envelope when it came to the story or technical aspects of anything he touched. He dove head first into the new, and if he made a mistake along the way, he learned from it instead of retreating back into the safe zone. Sadly, in a misguided attempt to keep Walt’s legacy alive, the old regime forgot about that and micromanaged every aspect of the company until it became a time capsule instead of a thriving creative business.

Look no further than the artwork made during the concept stage of the film’s production if you need an example. Here’s some of what the new crowd came up with:

Pretty neat, huh? Now here’s what Milt Kahl and some of Walt’s homeboys pressed on to them.

Compare these sketches to something from Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone or any silver-era Disney film. It’s too close to the house style from back then. You’d think it was rejected concept art from one of those films. Poor Tim Burton got the worst of it. He shared some awesome ideas for the Horned King’s henchmen, his gwythaints (aka dragon things), and just about anything having to do with the guy not excluding his own living space. The animators adored them, but management, in a move that would be the last straw for Burton, told him they wouldn’t spare the time or expenses needed to revamp the look for the film.

“Redo a bunch of doodles so it’ll look like a bunch of DIFFERENT doodles?! We’re stretched for cash as it is!”

“Sir, your 30-foot diamond sculpture of yourself has arrived. Where shall I have the men place it?”

“Eh, stick it in the ballroom with all the other diamond sculptures, I’m busy!”

“Very good, sir.”

To further quash morale, the animation department was unceremoniously booted out of the original building it was housed in from back when Walt Disney built the studio. They now worked in what was basically a cramped little trailer park across the street.

Tensions were high all around.

Animation, once the lifeblood of the Disney company, was now on life support.

Certain higher-ups were even questioning if they should pull the plug and turn their focus to the parks and live-action films.

“Hmm, they did make those wacky duck cartoons I liked when I was five…then again, I’ve been wanting my own private archipelago for some time now. Oh, nobody has it harder than I do!”

“Sir, just a reminder, you have a meeting with Misters Eisner, Katzenberg and Wells at four.”

“Who?”

“Your new bosses? The former heads at Paramount Pictures? The men who greenlit hit after hit for film and television including Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Star Trek motion pictures?”

“…Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Indeed, a solution of sorts came in the form of a sweeping management makeover. Out went Ron Miller, in came Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. Together they were something unprecedented – they ran the company in a manner parallel to Walt and his brother Roy, and it WORKED. See, Walt was the idea man as well as the amicable people person; he was able to generate ideas and see them through thanks to his power of persuasion and ability to inspire others. Roy was the sensible subdued banker who calculated what could and could not be feasibly done and brought Walt’s dreams into reality. Through their lifelong partnership and ability to compromise commerce with art, they founded one of the biggest entertainment enterprises on the planet.

I’ve noticed any time where Disney’s CEO is just one person, they’re rarely able to handle that balance of creativity and finance without leaning heavily towards one aspect – which nine times out of ten is always the financial one. When it’s a partnership like these two pairs, however, the company has flourished. Wells was approachable, knew how to appeal to his employees, a good risk taker and vicariously enjoyed the process of bringing a project to fruition. Eisner was known for having some pretty stupid ideas – ideas he’d carry with him once he was given full command – but his business savvy brought the company out of the red and into a new golden age. Working together they shaped Disney into the company we know it as today. Wells was Walt, and Eisner was Roy; the only difference between them being it was Eisner who was the charming face of the company thanks to his many appearances on TV via holiday specials and the Wonderful World of Disney.

“…which is why it came as such a FUCKING HUGE STAB IN THE BACK when he cut corners in the parks, started the direct-to-video sequel line, and divorced Disney from traditional animation, the greedy bastard!! SHELF SMAAAASH!!!”

Also along for the ride at Eisner’s behest was Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was tasked with overseeing the animation studio. Eisner recognized from his years in television that there was money to be made in marketing nostalgia, and what gets people more nostalgic than Disney animation? This decision proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Sure, Jeffrey was one of the pillars in revitalizing Disney’s animated films, but his adjustment from working with the live-action medium to pencils and paper was rocky at best. He quickly developed a reputation among the staff for being passionate about his work but highly volatile. No one knew what could piss him off one day or make him laugh the next. The one certainty was that Katzenberg was a man with a mission. He wanted to bring Disney animation back to its glory days. To the days when the name Disney meant something. In his own words, to wake Sleeping Beauty.

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Joel Hale, producer on The Black Cauldron, scoffed at this. He already didn’t approve of the new animators acting like privileged children and he certainly wasn’t fond of these Hollywood big shots coming in and shaking up the status quo. “Who do they think they are? Sleeping Beauty’s already awake,” he replied.

He was fired almost immediately after.

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And so, down one producer, up several more, nearly seven years after production began and several million dollars over budget, The Black Cauldron finally entered the most anticipated and dreaded stage of the Hollywood assembly line, the test screening. When it got to the part with the cauldron born, animator Mike Peraza counted down to the second the moment he knew the screaming in the audience would commence. And he was right on time. According to well-documented testimonies, the children there not only screamed and cried but fled the theater. As for Katzenberg’s reaction to The Black Cauldron as a whole, it wasn’t a far cry from what was happening on screen.

Indeed, the animators succeeded in creating something Disney had never done before – and Katzenberg HATED it. It was too violent, too frightening, and too distant from all things associated with the Disney name. Granted, I can see why he would feel that way; Disney has gone dark before (The Headless Horseman, Fantasia’s Night On Bald Mountain, the entire second half of Pinocchio, you get the idea), but at this rate The Black Cauldron was coming very close to earning Disney its first R rating. Not mincing words here. The film we have today is the freaking Care Bears Movie compared to the original cut that was screened. There were some pretty gory deaths in the action scenes, the Horned King’s own demise was somehow even worse than the one we’re familiar with, and most notably the cauldron born sequence not only had them kill some unnamed henchmen onscreen but explicitly showed one dissolve alive in the mist. To this day, individual cels of that scene circulate the internet as proof of its existence, and I can only imagine the awe and terror of seeing it play out as it was meant to.

Desperate to salvage whatever he could with as minimal mental scarring as possible, Katzenberg demanded the directors cut fifteen minutes from the film. Not any specific fifteen minutes, mind you, just fifteen minutes. It went down almost exactly like the scene from Amadeus where Emperor Joseph praises Mozart’s opera but asks if he could cut a few notes because he thinks there’s too many. He thankfully backs down when Mozart pointedly asks him which notes he wants him to cut. Unfortunately, trimming a couple of seconds here and there wasn’t enough to mollify Katzenberg, and he took it upon himself to fix his own perceived problem.

Pictured: Katzenburg preparing for an editing session.

Katzenberg shocked all present when he said that this film needed to be edited. They protested that there’s no way you can edit an animated movie, to which Katzenberg replied “Of course you can!” In a way, he was correct. All films, including animated ones, can and should be edited to some degree; either to give a moment some breathing space or get to the point of a scene. The problem is, Katzenberg was NOT an experienced editor in his own right.

Imagine you’re given a fine steak to eat and someone offers to cut it for you. They trim off the fatty bits first, then carve it into equal portions. Seems good, right? But then they start to cut away parts they think may have too much gristle, or look burnt or undercooked, or has one peppercorn too many sprinkled on – parts that you might actually enjoy and would make the experience of enjoying this meal more complete – and you’re forced to watch as they turn a culinary treat into a dinner with an unfortunate amount of its flavor and meat stolen from you. Once you recognize where Katzenberg made those haphazard cuts and alterations, you see the film in a new light, like that steak. You’re left wondering what could have been, how a pretty decent movie could have become a potentially great one.

And how is it that I am privy to such arcane truths?

Because, hand to God, my boyfriend managed to procure a shooting script of The Black Cauldron that was produced before Katzenberg did his hack job.

What, you don’t believe me? Then tremble before me and despair, you heretics!

“BRING. IT. ON.”

• TO BE CONTINUED •

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Milt Kahl and Andreas Deja production sketches courtesy of Andreas Deja’s blog Deja View, which I can’t recommend enough.

October Review: The Black Cauldron (1985) PART 1 Of all the animated Disney films out there, few have had a history as troubled or as fascinating as The Black Cauldron.

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stophookingatmeswan · 7 years

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We’re Strange Allies with Warring Hearts

A deleted scene from 3x14 in the aftermath of “if it can be broken, it means it still works. Beautiful artwork by @somethingalltogether

Rated: M for sexual imagery because smut bunnies gonna smut bunny. Heavy on the angst and self-loathing with sprinkles of fluff.

Written for the 2017 CS Storybook, which can be found here.

Also on AO3

“Is that enough humor for you?”

The words haunted him in the dark, the stars overhead dimmed by fog, an unintended assist by nature to help reflect his mood. There was something beyond a chill in the air; Killian was cold to his bones even through layers of leather and rum, and he laughed humorlessly – a short staccato that reverberated on the water – at the metaphor of it all.

Those hero types, always talking about hope. And for once, he’d had hope in spades. Hope that he could find a magic bean. Hope that the offer to trade his ship would be enough, and that the accord with Blackbeard wouldn’t be too bitter a pill to swallow. Hope that when he found Emma, True Love’s kiss would break the curse and cause her memories would return. Hope she would come with him back to Storybrooke.

Hope that there would be an us.

One by one, those final hopes were dashed until he was left sitting alone at her kitchen table as she went to tend to the us she had with another man. Monkey or not, he’d had her heart, at least far more of it than Killian had ever had. It was a bitter pill to swallow and burned as much as his first sip of rum all those years ago and sat in his gut just as heavy and burdensome.

That acidity had bubbled up and over as they walked in the woods searching for Zelena as Emma questioned him about how he’d spent his time during the missing year. He’d lied and doubled down when she called him on it, and then brazenly changed the subject, simultaneously guarding his own heart and breaking it as he asked about the proposal.

I was in love, so of course I was considering it.

Sitting in the dark he allowed his envy to shape a different reality; one in which he rarely indulged. He usually allowed his frustrations to manifest themselves carnally, preferring a hand on his cock and her on his mind to soothe the ache in his loins to dreaming of things that multiplied the ache in his heart.

But instead of envisioning a veil of blonde hair in his lap, he stared at the water and let himself picture Emma in a veil made of tulle and lace that did nothing to obscure the joy on her face as her parents walked her down a makeshift aisle on the deck of the Jolly Roger where he stood waiting at an altar.

Her name fell from her lips – not as an oath as he spilled over his fist, but as a vow as he said I do.

He wasn’t holding her in arms against the door of the captain’s quarters as he fucked her breathless. They were dancing as husband and wife, his hand at her back and her fingers curled around his hook as they moved in unison to music she’d picked to play.

Killian’s breath caught suddenly as the visions of a life he so desperately wanted clouded, his mind’s eye distorting his own face until someone else stood before Emma on her wedding day.

With a curse, he willed the phantoms away; throwing his flask into the water at the spot on which his gaze had been fixated for good measure, hoping the ripples on the water spread his heartbreak just a little further when a familiar epithet in an even more familiar voice mingled with his own.

Shite.

Humor me.

Said entirely without humor and with measured challenge in his eyes, Hook’s words had put her on the defensive, not that she hadn’t already been on edge.

She almost preferred him flirty and laden with innuendo, his push and her pull (away) keeping things from becoming too complicated. Emma had kept things light as they trekked through the trees, joking about his hook and the swashbuckling adventures he must have had in the year she’d been in New York.

Instead of taking the bait with a snappy comeback offering to show her just what he could do with his hook, he’d become even more sullen and lied to her face – superpower be damned – and then refused to back down when she called him on it.

The water was calm tonight; the stillness a stark contrast to the whirlwind Emma had been caught in since the moment she’d downed a potion handed to her by a mysterious man whose presence unsettled her, baffled her and made a tiny corner of her heart ache in ways she couldn’t explain.

Life in New York had been comforting, each building serving as a stalwart soldier and obscuring the next in a never-ending battlefield of hustle and bustle. She supposed in hindsight there was a metaphor there; a parallel to the chaos of life in Storybrooke that somehow faded into the background at the water’s edge; water, she was loathe to notice, that was missing a familiar ship with yellow trim and tall rigging.

“What the hell were you doing for the last year alone on that trip?”

In the woods she’d been distracted by his caginess and deceit, anything but drawing him out the furthest from her mind but alone with her thoughts and the gentle lap of water against the docks, her mind wandered as she turned a rock she’d scooped up on her walk to the harbor in her hand.

Had he been alone? She’d left, his promise to think of her every day lost in the fog of a curse. What if he’d moved on as she had, spending his days one swashbuckling tale after another and his nights on the narrow bunk in the captain’s quarters, moving over and inside a writhing body from which he tirelessly wrung pleasure?

The thought infuriated her, the ire of being lied to pushed aside by a possessiveness on which she rarely allowed herself to dwell. He’d come back for her – to save her. Would he have done so if he’d spent a year indulging in sins of the flesh?

Scrubbing a gloved hand over her face, she wanted to scream into her hands, instead huffing out a forceful sigh. The warmth hung in the air, much as it had earlier when she was face to face with him, his hope and her fear mingling in the still air along with their breath. Since when did flowery, piratey phrases such as “sins of the flesh” replace things like the blunt but much more Emma Swan-like “banging some random wench he picked up at a bar.”

It felt like he’d been slowly seeping into her bloodstream and it was disconcerting. When she was cut, he bled and she didn’t know what to do when he stood in front of her, wounded and wanting something from her she didn’t think she’d ever be able to give.

With a loud, “Fuck!” she tossed the rock she’d been holding into the water, startling when a different curse echoed back in the darkness.

Shit.

They sat in their respective solitude for a moment, neither wanting to be the one to make the first approach. Emma had frozen when she heard Hook’s voice, wondering if she could just play possum and wait for him to leave if he hadn’t caught onto the fact that he wasn’t alone. Her ass was already all but frozen to the bench, so what were a few more minutes?

Her second bout of swearing was quieter but just as forceful when his voice rang out again, clear as day and closer than she’d anticipated.

“Swan, I’d recognize your dainty, ladylike ways even without the quiet veil of night.” He kept his tone light, the heavy burden of his private thoughts pushed aside by the possibility of a light game of cat and mouse. He even laughed when she called back, her voice gruff and filled with the exasperation he was beginning to think was just as natural a state as her willingness to fight.

“I’ll show you dainty and ladylike, pal.” Emma lobbed the retort, leaving the window open for some patented Captain Hook innuendo and he didn’t disappoint.

“Well, darling, if that’s the only slot left on your dance card for the evening, I’d be happy to oblige.”

They sat in an odd, companionable silence for a moment, drinking in the normalcy of the exchange. When she didn’t answer, Killian found himself lamenting the loss of his rum, suddenly in need of liquid courage. He wasn’t often at a loss for words, but somehow she brought it out in him. And after their exchange in the woods he was keenly aware of how far a divide there was between saying something and saying the right something.

Emma fell silent, too, knowing if she playing into his mentally wandering hand, things may go too far and wondered when the hell a quick scratch of nature’s itch with a gorgeous man became complicated. So, for once, she followed his other lead, the space between them giving her courage she hadn’t had earlier in the day.

“Did you mean what you said?”

“I’ve said a great many things, love. You’ll have to be more specific.” Killian bit his tongue – a tongue that had been saucily poking his cheek just a minute before as he’d once again pictured him wrapped around her, swaying to imaginary music as they coupled in a bed he could no longer call his own.

“That if a heart is broken, it means it still works.” It was a bastardized version of what he said, but Emma figured it was close enough as the moment of candor got away from her. “Sometimes I wish Cora had been able to pull my heart out of my chest. Just to see that I still have one. Sometimes it feels like it’s been ripped out, over and over again.”

Her sudden openness was a welcome surprise and Killian thought carefully but quickly before replying, not wanting to give her time to regret and repress. For once, his quick tongue might be useful for something other than talking himself out of a scrape.

“Isn’t that all sadness is though, Swan? Pulling our own hearts out over and over to look at the damage.” He shifted on his bench, every inch of his being trying to not transport himself to the deck of the Jolly watching the crocodile crush the life out of Milah right before his eyes. “As a man who has spent more than his fair share of lifetimes seeking revenge in a shroud of misery, I might be an expert on such matters. There have been times I’ve been the villain in my own story, hell bent on crushing my own heart. But every time I’ve pulled it out, it’s still been beating with purpose. It’s up to us to define that purpose and not let it rule us.”

He had a point. Several of them. As she mused on his offering, Emma heard him laugh.

“Take that all with a grain of sand, Swan. Wisdom for others I may have in spades, but it was also borne of hundreds of years of singular vengeance.”

Laughing along with him in spite of herself, Emma pivoted away from the depth of conversation into shallower waters.

“Must be the one hand. Keeps you from multi-tasking.”

His indignant gasp put a smile on her face as she stood, the cold and the gravity of the moment more than she could take.

“I’m heading home, Hook. You should do the same. And…thanks.”

Awkward, but better than nothing.

He caught himself before he could blurt out that he had no home, but it was neither the time nor place for such revelations.

“Good night, Swan.”

Her boot steps fell, echoing on the water, and Killian strained his ears as they grew faint until he could no longer hear them. He pulled his coat closer, the air still breathtakingly cold but with a new sliver of warmth in his chest.

Because even if it was broken, his heart still worked.

#cs ff #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #emma swan #killian jones #cs deleted scene ouat 3x14

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eddycurrents · 7 years

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For the week of 21 August 2017

As I write this, the gulf coast of Texas is being battered by hurricane Henry. I can only hope that everyone was able to evacuate and that those who couldn’t, or were and are caught in unexpected turns of the storm, are able to stay safe and sound. My thoughts go out to everyone effected by this disaster.

My two favourite books of the week were Hi-Fi Fight Club #1 by Carly Usdin, Nina Vakueva & Irene Flores and War Mother #1 by Fred Van Lente & Stephen Segovia. Published by BOOM!/Boom! Box and Valiant Comics respectively.

Hi-Fi Fight Club is essentially Empire Records or Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity recast with an all-female staff. And, well, the staff also has a secret, but it’s not revealed until the end of the issue really, so I’ll leave that out for you to figure out.

The first issue is from the point of view of Chris, Vinyl Mayhem’s newest and youngest employee, as she struggles with her identity and finding her place in the world/at work. Carly Usdin does a good job of presenting the setting and characters through Chris’ eyes.

One of the main draws, though, is the art. The art team of Nina Vakueva & Irene Flores with colours by Rebecca Nalty are a joy. Vakueva has a style that reminds me a lot of Veronica Fish mixed with a bit of Terry Moore, leading to some fairly expressive faces and overall some very pleasant art to convey the story.

I’m really looking forward to how this series deepens.

And then there’s the return of War Mother.

I’ve been waiting for a follow-up to the War Mother one-shot that was part of the 4001 AD crossover from last year by Fred Van Lente and Tomás Giorello, and this doesn’t disappoint. Van Lente is back for this new mini while he’s joined by Stephen Segovia for the artwork.

Van Lente does a good job of getting the reader up to speed on what occurred in the previous one-shot, while giving a concrete introduction (or re-introduction depending on if you’re a new reader or not) to the characters. I’d have liked a little more about the time’s overall current state, but I’m sure that will be addressed whenever Valiant gets back to a new Rai series, and isn’t really necessary to enjoy this issue.

War Mother (Ana) and her people’s biome, The Grove, is failing and she’s searching for something new before they run out of food completely. In doing so, she investigates a broadcast of a safe haven and goes to check out its source and the viability of the building claiming protection. This leads her to a confrontation with a couple other factions fighting to survive in this world, and a revelation that perhaps not everything is as it seems. It’s fairly compelling to find out what happens next.

Stephen Segovia also is a great addition to the book, giving the futuristic world a distinct lived-in feel. His depiction of the Urbanites is a suitably creepy addition to the world.

Quick Bits:

Archie #23 is kind of an “after the big event” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, focusing more on character ramifications and fallout of the horrible accident in the previous issue. It’s rather morose, but Mark Waid tries to alleviate that a bit through some of Archie’s natural clumsiness.

| Published by Archie Comics

Black Hammer #12 reminds me that David Rubín really deserves to be a household name. His panel transitions and page layouts are gorgeous. His art just flows. It also helps that Jeff Lemire’s story is quite compelling as well.

| Published by Dark Horse

Doctor Strange #24 concludes the Secret Empire tie-in story-arc from Dennis Hopeless and Niko Henrichon. Overall, the arc was decent, even if the victory is less than satisfying. I would have liked to have seen more from Hopeless & Henrichon, because they seem to have a good grasp on Doctor Strange himself and his magical world, but I’ve liked what they’ve given to us. Henrichon’s art is joyful in itself.

| Published by Marvel

Edge of Venomverse #5 closes out the prequel mini-series of mostly one-shots before the Venomverse event can start proper. Every issue of this series has been incredibly well done and this issue is no exception.

This may be the best, not necessarily due to the story of Deadpool working to stop an alien worm parasite from invading Earth--although Clay McLeod Chapman’s altered “Sound of Silence” lyrics are fairly humorous--but because of the truly incredible artwork of James Stokoe. I think there’s probably nothing that Stokoe can’t elevate with his art.

| Published by Marvel

Generation Gone #2 still feels like a new take on Akira to me. I don’t know if it will shape up to have nearly as much impact as that, but it’s very good so far. Aleš Kot and André Lima Araújo are doing something interesting here.

| Published by Image

Generations: The Thunder #1 is another that reminds me that they’ve never quite lain out what Generations actually is, how or why the modern heroes are being thrust wherever or whatever this “Vanishing Point” is in what’s mostly been various pasts, but still manages to deliver a decent story. Mostly winding up feeling like annuals or possibly an extended version of those old fifth-week events where every one-shot special followed a specific theme; like everyone was turned into an ape or all of the heroes rocked ‘80s mullets and big hair. Okay, maybe that last one didn’t happen, but you get my point.

The other three (Hulks, Jean Greys, & Wolverines) haven’t been bad, by any means, but they do feel kind of inconsequential with character points that have either already popped up in their source series or look to be brought more to the fore in upcoming issues. Jason Aaron’s work here with the Thors feels a little bit more like another important wrinkle in his ongoing Thor saga, as well as laying some groundwork for the upcoming Marvel: Legacy #1.

It also has some great art from Mahmud Asrar and Jordie Bellaire.

| Published by Marvel

The Hard Place #1 is a solid first issue, very nearly rising to one of my favourites of the week. Doug Wagner pens a fairly standard man-out-of-prison story that you see in film and television, complete with the temptation to get back into crime, but he does a great job of making AJ Gurney feel like a fully realised character.

Nic Rummel’s art is also compelling. He has a style similar to Shawn Martinbrough’s with angular features and heavy use of thick lines and solid black shading. The muted colour scheme from Charlie Kirchoff adds greatly to the feel and atmosphere of the issue.

This one comes highly recommended if you like crime dramas.

| Published by Image / 12 Gauge

Incidentals #1 is the first of the Catalyst Prime series that I’ve read since picking up the Free Comic Book Day issue back in May. I gravitated toward this one solely because Larry Stroman’s name was attached and I was in no way disappointed by his work here with Rob Stull inking his pencils and Snakebite Cortez providing the colours.

I’m not as sold on the story. The concept is fine, one of a team being gathered out of those transformed by “The Event”, but Joe Casey’s execution leaves a little to be desired. He’s got several plates spinning in following the different characters, but he provides very little in terms of exposition and narrative context. It leaves you wondering a bit as to who some of these people are and in some cases what exactly is going on. I normally tend to like Casey’s work, so I’ll give it a chance to grow on me, but I can’t say that I was won over by the story in this first issue.

| Published by Lion Forge / Catalyst Prime

Redneck #5 gives us the revelation of what really happened in the first issue and, well, all I can really say is “Ah, hell.” Donny Cates and Lisandro Estherren can really do no wrong here.

| Published by Image / Skybound

ROM vs. Transformers: Shining Armor #2 is every bit as dense as the first issue, even as we focus more on the initial battle between the Autobots, Decepticons, Space Knights, and Dire Wraiths. We also get to see what happens when a Cybertronian is taken over by a Dire Wraith, depicted in all its terrifying glory by Alex Milne.

| Published by IDW

X-O Manowar #6 closes out the “General” story-arc, but, like “Soldier” before it, it’s less a hard story break, and more of an end of an act. There’s some nice forward momentum in regards to the monoliths causing havoc on the planet Gorin, who’s behind them or at least allied with them, that looks like it’s going to come to a head in the next arc.

This issue also has some very beautiful shots of the landscape and the monoliths from Doug Braithwaite that break up the pace of the action and intrigue.

| Published by Valiant

Other Highlights: Conan: The Slayer #12, Daredevil #25, Dept. H #17, The Dying & The Dead #5, Eternal Empire #4, First Strike #2, I Am Groot #4, Lazarus: X+66 #2, Letter 44 #35, Lumberjanes #41, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers #18, Plastic #5, The Punisher #15, Red Sonja #8, Renato Jones: Season Two #3, Shipwreck #5, Shirtless Bear Fighter #3, Sisters of Sorrow #2, TMNT: Dimension X #4, Underwinter #6

Recommended Collections: The Beauty - Vol. 3, The Few, Guardians of the Galaxy: Mother Entropy, Sif: Journey Into Mystery Complete Collection, & Snowfall

d. emerson eddy is really, really bad at Quake Champions. Like “your grandma is probably better at this” level of bad.

#This Week in Comics #Hi-Fi Fight Club #War Mother

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ultralifehackerguru-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/why-new-parents-need-to-take-a-break-from-the-news-and-what-they-should-do-instead-2/

Why New Parents Need to Take a Break From the News (and What They Should Do Instead)

In the months after my kids were born, the news cycle would send me into tailspins of anxiety and fear. The Penn State sex-abuse scandal and the Newtown shootings paralyzed me for days—I wept while changing diapers, wept in the bathtub, wept while pushing the stroller down the street. What might have been (merely!) horrifying pre-kids was now incapacitating. For my own mental health, I had to stop reading the news and looking at social media.

Take a Media Fast

Judging from the conversations in my moms’ groups, these feelings aren’t at all unusual. New parents are especially vulnerable to anxiety, says Laura Venuto, a New York City therapist specializing in postpartum mental-health issues. “Sleep deprivation and hormones exacerbate mood and anxiety symptoms. With new parenthood comes a heightened awareness that you’re suddenly not only responsible for yourself, but also a small child in what sometimes seems like a dangerous world.”

Dr. Venuto suggests a total news-media fast or at least a major reduction, corralling your news into 10 or 15 minutes (“In the morning! Not before bed!” she says), and then doing something pleasurable, like playing with your baby or calling a friend. For those worried that being out of touch means slacking off in their political activism, she gently suggests cutting yourself some slack: “If you’re a new parent, you’re not going to be making changes on a global scale. You’re in survival mode. You can put in a call to your representative, and that can be enough.”

Practice ‘Containment’

Lissa Hunsicker Kenney, a social worker in Brooklyn who counsels trauma survivors, also recommends “containment”—the first line of treatment for anxiety—as a first step. “Turning off your iPhone is containment—because it’s so easy for it to become uncontained. It just scrolls and scrolls, and it’s endless.”

So what are we supposed to do, instead? (Besides take care of our kids, I mean.) I asked Lifehacker readers, and my own new-mom friends, what media they turn to for good escapist distraction. I didn’t vet all the answers (though I did nix anything that had “horror” in its IMDB description—what about “non-disturbing” did these people not understand?) so do your own research before leaping into something totally unknown. They’re a good mix of classics, favorite sitcoms and adventure shows, a few kids’ shows and books, comics, and pretty much the entire oeuvre of the BBC.

Ideally, this list will remind of you of beloved books, TV shows, and movies that you’ve enjoyed in the past and will be soothing entertainment now, while you’re still in the sensitive new-parent stage. I read all of Jane Austen at night instead of mindless smartphone scrolling; others swear by sitcoms: “When my son was born we very quickly figured out we had to stop watching Breaking Bad and Walking Dead and just ended up re-watching Parks and Rec on a continuous loop for like three years,” one commenter wrote. Check out the original comments here, and please add your favorite comforting (no child-in-peril, no dead parents, no rapes or murders) media below.

TV & Movies

30 Rock

All Creatures Great and Small

Alias (a spy thriller spanning five seasons, so there are murders and occasional child-in-peril plotlines, but it’s a pretty campy show, so I didn’t find it especially distressing)

The Andy Griffith Show

Flip This House (or any fixer-upper/DIY type shows)

Any stupid Adam Sandler movie

Archer

Arrested Development

Black Adder

Black Books

Bob’s Burgers

Boondocks

Borgen

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (skipping “The Body” and maybe the second half of season five)

Catastrophe

Community

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Critical Role on Geek and Sundry

Doctor Thorne (almost comically predictable, appropriate for anyone with only half a functioning brain, but any costume drama will do in a pinch. Check out this terrific resource for period dramas, but I strongly urge you to skip Call the Midwife if you have a newborn.)

Drunk History

Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy

Elimidate

Everybody Loves Raymond

Farscape

Father Ted

Friends

Futurama

Get Smart

Ghostbusters

Gilmore Girls

Gravity Falls

The Great British Bake-off (or any cooking show)

Grey’s Anatomy (I can’t believe this is still on the air; I have like 10 years to catch up on. Warning: it’s a hospital show, so people do die. Deeennnnnnny!)

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Laaaaaaaaaw

Hogan’s Heroes

How I Met Your Mother

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Jeeves and Wooster

Kids’ shows and movies, like Adventure Time, Reading Rainbow (the awesome 80’s-90’s version), A Dragon’s Tale, Out of the Box, Teen Titans GO, Rocko’s Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Babe, the Narnia movies, Nanny McPhee

Kiki’s Delivery Service (“Miyazaki in general is a great way to escape into a different realm. The colors, the music, the gorgeous inventive artwork and the great characters in all his films makes him a master illusionist and conductor into a whole new world..” “…but not Grave of the Fireflies,” says another commenter.)

Broad City (“It’s hilarious and my life feels like a complete financial success by comparison.”)

King of the Hill

Last Man on Earth

Lucha Underground

M*A*S*H

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Midsomer Murders (“While there are murders, everyone is so provincial and charming, it’s like coming home where you know everyone except for that darned stranger that got themselves killed.”)

The Mindy Project

Mr. Bean

MST3K

Any terrible reality TV (“I watch The People’s Court or Judge Judy, which I DVR in case I need them.”)

News Radio

Northern Exposure

Office Space

Only Fools and Horses

Over the Garden Wall

Parks and Rec

Party Down

Real Genius

Real Housewives (“Oddly enough, RHOC comforts me in that I always feel smart, competent, healthy, and sane afterward.”)

The Simpsons

SlowTV “Right after the election, my wife and I started watching a lot of SlowTV on Netflix. Things like Norwegian knitting competitions.”

Smallville

South Park

Space: 1999

Star Trek

Steven Universe

Supernatural

Taxi

The Blues Brothers

The Eagle Huntress (“a thoroughly enjoyable documentary”)

The first three Muppet movies

The IT Crowd

The Office

The Simpsons

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

The West Wing

The X Files

Top Gear

Trainwreck

Veep

Veronica Mars, season 1

The Vicar of Dibley

Waiting for Guffman

What’s Up, Doc?

Books

A Suitable Boy

The Age of Innocence, or really anything by Edith Wharton

Alexander Hamilton

All Creatures Great and Small

Anne of Green Gables (really anything by L.M Montgomery)

Born Standing Up

Bossypants

Bridget Jones’s Diary (good escapist movie too)

Calvin and Hobbes

Circle of Friends, or really anything by Maeve Binchy

The Code of the Woosters, or anything by P.G. Wodehouse

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Grand Sophy or anything by Georgette Heyer

the Harry Potter series

I Capture The Castle

I’m Your Biggest Fan

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Jane Eyre

The Last Days of Night

Love in a Cold Climate

Maisie Dobbs

Ms. Marvel (comic)

My Family and Other Animals

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

The Other Boleyn Girl, or anything by Philippa Gregory

Pride and Prejudice, Emma, or really anything by Jane Austen

The Pursuit of Love

A Room With a View

Restoration, or anything by Rose Tremain

Sir John Mortimer’s Rumpole books

Sherlock Holmes

Today Will Be Different

Tom Jones

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (comic)

Washington Square

West With the Night

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Yes Please

Recommended Stories

What Stress Actually Does to You and What You Can Do About It

How to Get Some Rest When Stress Is Keeping You Up at Night

Why You Need to Start Drinking in the Shower

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poorna-chandra · 6 years

Text

Obscured by Clouds

// At the behest of a few close friends: This entire writing is nothing but a piece of fiction

Ever wondered how your life would be if you were not answerable to anyone? Literally no one. Not your parents, not your your family, not your close circle of friends, not your job, not your boss - no one. Also, not answerable to the long list of cliched ambitions you have built for yourself since the time society subconsciously started imposing the elements of ‘you have made it’ upon you. Not your 1200 sqft house, not your shiny red car, not your extensive closet of designer wear, not your pockets filled with notes of cash. Sahi mein, zindagi aapko chutiya bana rahi hai aur aap bante jaa rahe ho.

You can only imagine how life would be and yet your wildest of imaginations do not come anywhere close to the actual feeling. You will never know what true liberation is, until you have taken a brave-heart gutsy call to live life without any answerability or have accidentally stumbled upon this situation. You have never truly lived, never understood yourself and the world around you - unless you have destroyed all the boundaries of answerability.

The lack of answerability is a tricky weapon. It can only be handled with care if you have a sense of conscience. Thoda bore karta hoon aapko. There are four sets of situations that can shape the basic character of a person. A sense of answerability with a conscience - that is where you become a part of the ‘majority’. This is where the society has trapped most of you. A sense of answerability without a conscience - you will end up leading a ‘dual life’. Bahar se lagta hai aadmi seedha hai, par andar se yeh tedha hi hoga. Zero answerability without a conscience - you are a ‘terror to the world’. In logo ko duniya se ghanta farak padta hai aur yeh humesha kaand karte rahenge. Zero answerability with a conscience - you become a ‘free spirit’. That is where I am (or so I aspire to be).

Last year, I lost my family in a plane crash. I am in no mood to explain the details of the events prior to and following this incident. Yeh kahaani unke baare mein nahi hai. But the moment I realised I am not answerable anymore to my closest set of people and I do not have to live life in a certain way that would make them happy - I was reborn. Shayad aap soch rahe honge, yeh kaisa insaan hai. Parivaar ke marne pe isko azaadi mil gayi! But yes, I was reborn. I quit my job, sold my property, bid a temporary good-bye to the few friends I had. (Fortunately, I am not married and did not have to deal with that side of things.)

Here I am in my early 30s - far away from the rushes of a crowded city, breathing the form of air the way God intended us to - amidst the hills far far away. This is a small village on a hill top. People call it ‘HaraTopi’. The conifers here are alive and lush green for most of the year - you get the green (Hara) from there. And it seems that the shape of the hill resembles that of a hat (Topi). Life here is as simple as the way the village gets its name.

The only reason that got me here, to this particular village, is that my childhood was heavily inspired by Bhagwan’s novel ‘In Through the Back Door’. Bada hoke sochne laga, yeh kaisa naam hai? In Through the Back Door. Kabhi yeh nahi socha tha ki ek din wakai mein gaand maregi. This novel to me was what ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was to the kids of the 1950s and there upon. No other product of art described teenage angst to me better than this novel. I was a rebel right from my school days, and the protagonist of this novel ‘Tipu’ resembled me (or so I felt). Tipu was a teenager based out of HaraTopi, who questioned the way the society was organised - study well, get a job, immigrate, keep your family happy, get married, provide for your kids, and then one day - die amidst your kids and grandkids. Tipu wanted to break free and be a ‘free spirit’. I idolised him and he was my hero. And now, when I had the opportunity to break free, HaraTopi was on top my list to visit, and l wanted to live here for sometime and feel like Tipu.

When I reached HaraTopi, I was a mere tourist. The monsoons had just ended, and it seemed like an ocean of greenery wherever I looked. The skies were clear without a single patch of clouds, and their blue was just bright enough to lighten up my soul. I spent time doing things that most of you would do on a scenic hill top. I enjoyed the local food, trekked a couple of places nearby, mingled with the locals and got high when the situation called for it. HaraTopi is best explored on foot, or on a cycle. Riding a cycle by the hills and the conifers, sipping on a hip-flask with an RD Burman or a Simon & Garfunkel on the earphones, as the chilly winds of the hills hit my face - I felt alive.

Ever wondered how it feels like to be completely alone? Let me tell you. There is no better companion than loneliness. An entire world resides within you, with no limit for self-exploration. Loneliness is your guide to this world. Sink to the bottom of boredom all by yourself, face and overcome the fear of dying alone by yourself someday, and you shall bear witness to the blossoming of the companionship with your loneliness. Blossoming into not just one flower, but into acres and acres of new species of magical possibilities. Loneliness is the seed. Through the journey of loneliness, there will be a few people and moments one may yearn for - and trust me, those are the only entities that really matter in life.

There is a trekking spot about 2000 ft. above HaraTopi called ‘Satila’. Here, the snow has stuck together to form sheets of ice and has become smooth enough to turn into a slide. It was a severe adrenaline rush to cycle all the way to Satila (have one of the locals get my cycle down), and slide downhill on my buttocks till a point I could. With almost a cliff to my left overlooking HaraTopi and other villages, tall and green conifers to my right and a bright horizon in front me - I slid my heart out. This was my form of skiing, my form of meditation - wherein I forgot all the noise in my head, all the relationships I had failed and all those that had failed me, all the mediocrities of life we are meant to chase till we die. It felt like how ‘Thelma and Louise’ would have probably felt in their eponymous movie when they jump off the Grand Canyon in their car - except, I was alive. And the nights - they were surreal. There were a countless number of stars in the sky and I had never thought a village could be lit just by the moon and the stars. Meri baat maano, aapke dilli wali shaadi mei bhi itni roshni nahi hogi. These were not mere stars, but this was a masterful artwork by some power beyond my cognition.

One fine morning, I was having my usual cup of chai at this view point they call ‘Lal Tibba’. My routine was to sit on a chair, sip chai until the fog dispersed and the Himalayan ranges hundreds of kilometres away became visible. There was this lean guy, in his early 20s perhaps and in fairly rugged clothes, next to me. He did not look like a local though, and identified himself by the name Guru. As the Himalayan ranges became visible, he turned towards me and said “Saab, ek din main bhi Everest ko chadhne waala hoon.” I just reluctantly smiled at him. I said to myself “Everest chadhega yeh! Kisiko jhaant farak padne waala hai”.

For some strange reason people have this extreme selfish desire to accomplish something in order to be immortal - to be remembered forever by the future generations, under the pretext of ‘making a difference’. Trust me, no matter what you do, you will be forgotten within a few years - even by your own ‘so called’ loved ones. Being remembered forever is nothing but a myth. Everyone will be forgotten except the ones in power, and power is the bastard child of ruthlessness, revenge and deception. Are you really willing to stoop so low? In fact, I am someone who has given up on this whole philosophy of ‘human endeavour’ and is running away breaking its walls forever. I simply do not understand ‘human endeavour’. Turn back the pages of history and this is the very reason for the hundreds of wars and the bloodshed that followed them. While advancements in technology and healthcare may have had a few benefits, aaj to har koi mobile ke gaand mei ghusa hua hai aur shahar ke pollution se mar raha hai. Apna desh ko hi dekh lo. Tarakki ke naam pe kisi ko desh chalaane diya aur abhi desh ki maa behan ho rakhi hai.

With time I realised, I cannot be a tourist at HaraTopi for long. It feels like you are looking at something through a tinted glass. I had to break the glass, and feel the place like I belonged there. After a few weeks passed by, in order to provide for my livelihood, I decided to run some local enterprise. It was not that I was running thin on money. But the plan was to not settle down in one place. I wanted to be a nomad for the rest of my life. I wanted to meet strangers but not get too familiar to be friends. I wanted to see places but not get too comfortable to call it a home. But the options for an enterprise were limited though. There were always a bunch of tourists at HaraTopi and I thought I could build on that. One thing that struck me was to run a bar. I had always wished to run a bar some day.

You may say “You are a fucking hypocrite. How is this any different from that guy who wanted to climb The Everest? Is this also not a form of ‘human endeavour’?”. Well, there is a fine line between vocation and vacation, and I am treading on that. This is only a means to blend with the locals, fulfil my little dream of running a bar and earn some money before I turn into my nomadic self and move to a different location. And do not term me a hypocrite. I dare you. There is only one set of people in this world that do not have my respect and those are the hypocrites. Politicians, celebrities, religious leaders and life partners - the world is full of them. I do not judge people with loose morals, dishonesty, dual lives. But hypocrites - I would eliminate them if I could. Maa kasam, inse bade gaandu log duniya mein koi nahi hai.

I met with a retired Army Colonel who spent his winters in Delhi and summers at his villa in HaraTopi. I learnt that he owned a couple of shops which had been closed for a few years now. It seems he never trusted the locals to have the acumen of running a fancy enterprise for the tourists and had decided to rather have the shops shut. Locals warned me “Bach ke rahiye saab. Colonel khadoos hai. Maa chod dega kuch galat kiya to”.

But my meeting with the Colonel went well. He was a Haryanvi, a widower in his late 60s, clean shaved and had the height and build of someone in the army who would have retired a decade ago. Colonel was also a whiskey connoisseur. The moment he got to know that I was well-read, educated and had quit a job that was paying me enough to put me amidst the ‘elite’ of the society - he ‘ordered’ me to have a drink with him and I obliged. Colonel had a loose tongue though, or maybe he was just bored of having not met someone recently to have a meaningful conversation with.

Colonel: I can judge a person just by looking at the way he drinks his whiskey.

Me: What do you mean, Sir?

Colonel: The way one holds the glass - the firmness says a lot of the character. The quantity of ice in the drink - differentiates a man from a boy. The amount of sip you take in - usse pata chalta hai woh sharaabi hai ki bevda.

Me: Well, Sir, your pointers seem a bit dubious. But I guess your experience is something that I cannot question. By the way, what do you make of me?

<Laughing> Colonel: I am not stupid to give away that answer. You are going to be my tenant soon. And all I can say is that I am happy to lease out my shop to you. What are your plans for the shop?

Me: Sir, I plan on running a bar here. Mostly tea, snacks and alcoholic drinks. I want to create a vibe and ambience that will attract the tourists. I am a huge fan of neo-noir Hollywood movies - so I want to create an ambience around this. I also love music of the 70s and 80s - so I will play their music as much as I can.

Colonel: Yeh neo-noir kya cheez hai?

Me: Sir, these are stylised crime movies with a dark humour. Aap shayad Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, Reservoir Dogs jaise movies ke baare mei suna hoga?

Colonel: Never heard of them. But anyway, people like new things. They may get attracted to this because they have no idea about it.

Me: No Sir, I plan on attracting the tourists. I guess they would appreciate this.

Colonel: Oh, tourists! Yes. They will come. Quite a few Israelis, Turks, Uzbeks and Asian people here. The ladies are hot, aren’t they?

Me: Yes, I have seen a few hot ones for sure. The locals are also beautiful in their own way.

Colonel: Tum shahar se itna door rehte ho aur akela rehte ho. Yeh batao, sex ke liye kya karte ho?

I was surprised for a moment, but perhaps the whiskey was kicking in.

Me: Wahi Sir, jo mai shahar mei karta tha

Colonel: Shahar mei kya karte the?

Me: Thodi der khud khel lo aur saali hawas mit jaati hai

Colonel: Kaafi seedhe lagte ho. We used to visit nearby villages during our army days. Affairs were a common thing. Men without the balls for an affair would depend on flings. Kabhi aadmi ko dekhte hi ladki maan jaati thi, aur kabhi bandook ko dekh ke.

With the permission to run my bar at his shop, I took leave from Colonel. The winters were soon approaching and Colonel left for Delhi a couple of days later. With the help of a local named Dhiru, I started setting up my bar. Dhiru had spent all his life at HaraTopi. He was about 35 years old, a little over five foot in height, brown skinned and had a thin moustache that looked out of place on his otherwise plump body. Dhiru’s wife had eloped with a tourist a couple of years back. Since then, he had turned into a alcoholic. He was famous in the village to drink late into the night and talk to his cows about his wife. My bar meant that Dhiru could get cheap booze if he worked for me.

The bar was ready in a month. The lighting and the ambience resembled those of the bar from the famous ‘Goodfellas’ scene with the dialog “I’m funny how? I’m funny like I’m a clown?”. The bar had wooden walls, a wooden roof with wooden pillars supporting them, dull orange lights, round tables, LED lights dispersed across the room, local hand-made lamps that felt like kaleidoscopes hanging from the roof. The walls had frames of neo-noir movies that I had loved and treasured all my life - The Usual Suspects, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Reservoir Dogs, Blue Velvet, True Romance, Mulholland Drive. The tunes, well, ranged from - Beatles, Floyd, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Eagles, Dire Straits, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Bowie, Doors, The Who, to Johnny Cash. Bar kaafi dhaasu lag raha tha. This felt like a place I could have a drink any day and anytime of the day!

Winter had arrived and sipping a hot beverage evoked an altogether new life from within. Chai was the winter drug for the soul. The clouds hovered around once in a while, but it used to be clear for most of the day. The days grew shorter and the village would shut by 6pm, except for a few tourists and locals at restaurants and at my bar. But I used to get done with work by 8pm, and taking a stroll in the darkness below the umpteen number of stars, galaxies, and the cosmos became an everyday habit. Walking aimlessly in the open is perhaps one of the simplest joys of life, and I had rediscovered it. And sometimes, I would sit by my cottage and gaze at the stars for hours together, trying to make formations and learn a few concepts of astronomy through my newly couriered telescope. In life, after everything is done, connecting the dots to make formations is a no brainer. But a dot in itself at its inception has little meaning. That dot could be a star, or could just be an artificial satellite - only time can tell. Also, we often wonder about a few dots that do not connect anywhere - I think either we have not lived long enough or have not lived brave enough to understand them.

Slowly and steadily, the tourists started pouring in to my bar. Some for the chai made from the tea leaves of nearby tea towns, but most for the alcohol served under an ambience that was not available anywhere nearby. Dhiru and I also made interesting cocktails - Rum served right out of a melon, Apricot Martini made from locally hand-picked apricots, BBB (Beer, Bourbon & Barbeque) Cocktail amongst others. The money was decent and soon we started issuing ‘monthly cards’ for the locals which allowed them to have drinks at much lower prices.

Running an enterprise also meant that I needed some sort of security to guard my territory. Given that the bar actually belonged to the Colonel, it was unlikely that I would face any issues. But then, I was not the one to take any chances. Soon, Dhiru introduced me to another local named Biju. Biju was astoundingly thin and always roamed around in his vest and a pair of worn out shorts. Biju had a dog named Rosie that had given birth a year back. Dhiru got Biju to my bar and told me that each dog would cost a thousand rupees.

Me: Kyu bechna chahte ho? Koi problem hai kya un mei?

Biju: Saab, kya bolun? Yeh Rosie hai na, saali raand hai!

Me: Kya matlab?

Biju: Itna kuch karke usko paala posa aur badha kiya. Par woh har koi kutte se chudti hai saab. Saali kutiya ko farak nahi gali ka kutta kaun hai aur apna shareef type wala kutta kaun hai!

Me: Woh sab theek hai. Par bechna kyu chahte ho?

Biju: Saab, main tang aa gaya hoon usse. Mujhe lagta hai usko maar hi dunga ek din. Aur uske haraam pillon ko bhi. 3-4 pillon ko bech chuka hoon. Yeh 2 bache hai bas.

Biju showed me the two dogs, and Dhiru confirmed that they belonged to Rosie and were about a year old. Surprisingly one dog was about 90% black and 10% white, and the other the complete opposite.

Me: Yeh kya hai? Ek kaala hai aur doosra gora

Biju: Aur kya hoga saab? Har koi kutte se chudegi to aise rang birange pille hi paida honge na. Tabhi to aapko sirf hazaar mein bech raha hoon

I felt it was a good deal, and I trusted Dhiru on this one. I bought the dogs, and named them Rinnie and Vinnie - one was a girl and the other a boy. I asked Dhiru to watch on them, since I did not want them to accidentally start humping each other in a few weeks time. For god’s sake, they were siblings! But that is how the village was. Discussing sex lives of your pet dogs at length in the open was considered normal and usual.

Over time, I grew fond of the general silence around me. The magnitude of silence increased as the day went by. In that silence, I started to observe and listen to nature as much as I could. Silence that is usually this uncomfortable space of air between people or entities, turned refreshing and soothing. In that silence, there was an introspection that had the power to take me on a ride ranging anywhere between the past, the future and within - deep within. That silence was so intimate that I don’t think I would ever be able to share it with anybody else. It belongs to me - just me. The forms of chirpings, burbles, fizzles, pitter-patters, ripples, murmurs, rustles - all of them started to feel like music to the ears. I guess I learnt to realise the simplicity of things around me and the power of observation to find beauty within that simplicity.

A few months passed by and the monsoons were soon approaching. The weather was fine and clear for now. The conifers were soon springing up to their usual self. The onset of monsoons also meant that it was the month of the festival ‘Singi’ for the tribal people who stayed at a nearby village ‘Singrawa’, about 1000 ft. higher when compared with HaraTopi. Dhiru narrated me the legend of this festival Singi. I have known Dhiru to narrate a few unbelievable incidents in the past - the three legged eagle of the size of a piglet that created havoc many years back; that after the Mahabharata, Ashwathama was roaming around the jungles a few hundreds of kilometres away from HaraTopi and as a result those jungles are now cursed with poor vegetation; few parts of a song from the hit movie ‘Jab We Met’ were shot at the foothills of HaraTopi. I assumed he was either hungover from the previous night or was plain lying.

But the legend of Singi was a notch above all of these stories. According to Dhiru, the festival of Singi is celebrated only in the night time post sun-set. The ceremony is blessed by the leader of the tribe. Soon after, they offer their prayers to their ‘Goddess of Procreation’ named ‘Miriya’ who is suppose to save the future generations of the tribe. This is followed by a feast of umpteen meat consumption, booze and as Dhiru calls it ‘kaala sutta’.

Me: Kaala sutta? Yeh kya hai?

Dhiru: Wahi saab aap marte ho na! Nashe ke liye.

The interesting part is after this. It seems the unmarried women are dressed in their best attire and jewellery during the feast. The men start picking a woman of their choice, and if the woman agrees - they have sex for the night.

Dhiru: Ladkiya mast tayyar rehti hai. Woh aag ke saamne line mei khade ho jaati hai. Aur aapko jo marzi hai, chun lo. Agar ladki maan gayi to raat bhar chudaai chalti hai saab.

Me: Dhiru, kuch bhi bakwaas karta hai tu!

Dhiru: Nahi saab. Chahe to bolo, leke chalta hoon. Par ek hi problem hai. Waha raat mein jaana padega. Raat ke 7-8 baje se pehle entry nahi milti hai. Aur ek phal aata hai ‘Arkoodi’ bolke. Usko kha lo to raat bhar daudoge.

Me: Yeh koi cinema theatre hai kya ki entry nahi milegi. Aur nahi, mujhe koi arkoodi nahi khaani hai. Aur mujhe jaana bhi nahi hai!

Dhiru: Waise, shadi karna zaroori nahi hai. Bachcha ho gaya to ho gaya bas, unka sarpanch hi sab kuch dekh lega. Waise, kuch din mei unke ladkiyan yahaan saamaan khareedne aayenge. Aap hi dekh lo.

I was neither in a mood to leave my progeny at the mercy of their ‘sarpanch’ (tribal leader) nor in a position to get married to a sex-deprived female from the tribes of Singrawa. But listening to such amusing stories of Dhiru made my day, and talking to people like Biju kept my day interesting at its best.

Life was definitely better than I had imagined. I had never thought that I would meet a variety of people. But having a fancy bar at a fairly travelled tourist place helped me. And being the conversationalist that I am, sometimes I did get to speak to my customers at length. My customers so far have included - a transgender couple who were open enough to discuss about their issues with the current judicial and societal system; a Nizam of Hyderabad who lost most of his ancestral wealth due to the forceful annexures by the Government of India and had eloped to Burma unable to pay off his debts; a famous rock musician (who prefers to be unnamed) in his 60s now, who has traveled the world and went on boasting at length about his sexual escapades with women from about 80 odd countries; an adventurer who had cycled all the way from Rajasthan to Sweden; a man in his 30s who was handsomely paid to accept a rape he had not committed as a minor and now, post-release, was spending his money travelling the world; a retired businessman who narrated the experiences of his grandfather who gamed the system to be a juror on multiple criminal cases and made it a way of life. And trust me, these are just the tip of the iceberg. I should probably narrate these conversations (censoring the private parts of the conversations, of course) to you. But let me keep that for another day.

A few days passed by and as Dhiru had mentioned, the women from Singrawa came to HaraTopi to buy clothes and jewellery. There were a couple of local guys with the ‘monthly card’ who were drinking at my bar. It was about 4pm and was a time a bit too early for the tourists to pour in. As the women from Singrawa waited for someone to come pick them up on a cycle for a ride back to Singrawa, the two guys started uttering something that disturbed me. They would point at a woman and say either ‘Choot’ or ‘Bhosada’. I was curious about what they were talking and approached them. On questioning them with a tone that indicated I do not mind using my fists on them, they revealed that if they think a Singrawa woman is a virgin, they would shout ‘choot’, and if they think she is already impregnated, they would shout ‘bhosada’. I lost of mind for some inexplicable reason, and gritting my teeth said “Kato yaha se. Warna yahi beer bottle tumhare pichwade mei ghusaake bhosada bana dunga”. I think I would have hit them that evening.

Retrospectively, even though this incident seems to be a minor one, it left me in a philosophical turmoil. My nature of reaction was perhaps uncalled for. What those two men were talking was in a pseudo-private setting - so why did I almost ambush them? Was there really something derogatory in their tone? Why is a sexual joke a taboo and why cant it be as integral as any other topic? Why can’t being a virgin or not, be discussed with the same comfort as being educated or not? In fact, who was I to judge them? Had I not agreed that I will not judge anyone but hypocrites? Am I the moral police now? Why did I behave in such a volatile, aggressive manner out of the blue, which is so uncharacteristic of me? Am I getting too comfortable with this place that I care about how people behave and act? Am I intending to turn HaraTopi into my home? Is it time for me to leave? When do I ever know what is the right time to leave? Am I waiting for some sign? Is there a sign? Is this a sign?

I pondered over this thought for a few days. Dhiru could make out that something was worrying me. Maybe, so did Rinnie and Vinnie. The monsoons were soon arriving and the gloomy clouds were reflecting my thoughts to some extent. I felt I had seen enough of this place. The very fact that my behaviour could affect Dhiru and the dogs told me that this was turning into my home. I did not want them to miss me when I was gone. And I did not want to miss them and this place when I was gone. But no matter how hard you try every living being - humans, animals and the rest of nature - gets mentally attached to one another over a period of interaction. Familiarity is the mother of all longingness. I had not signed up for this, and I realised I should be leaving soon. It was, perhaps, time.

The monsoons arrived the next day. The clouds were as dark as they could get at HaraTopi. It was quite a heavy shower that evening. The bar was open as usual, perhaps for one of the last few times. A bearded gentleman with grey hair, in a red jacket and khaki coloured shorts entered the bar. He closed his umbrella by the door. He clearly looked like someone from the cities. He came by the bar and took a seat. He started glancing at the alcohol cabinet and seemed to be making a choice of his drink. He seemed like someone with a keen sense of observation.

Me: Sir, kya lenge aap? Daaru peeyoge? Main yeh recommend..

<Cutting me short> Him: Meri bas chali to daaru se naha lunga

Me: Haha.. bahar baarish ka mausam hai sir. Aur bhi options hai nahaane ke liye

Him: Kaafi suna hai aapka yeh bar ke baare mein. Kaha se ho?

Me: Sir, kal ka parwah nahi lekhin abhi to main yaha se hi hoon

Him: Lagta hai kaafi cinema dekhte ho (looking around) aur kitaabein bhi padhte honge

Me: Yes, Sir. I do. How about you?

Him: I write. Watching or reading something makes me jealous. So I avoid others’ works of art

Me: Interesting. What do you write?

Him: Get me the best whiskey you have in the house. On the rocks.

I got him his drink and waited for his answer. He took a couple of sips and turned towards me.

Him: Do you keep cigarettes?

Me: Yes, Sir. Would you like..

<Cutting me short> Him: Do you have Camels?

It was extremely odd that he would ask me for Camels. Why would anyone keep Camels in a place like HaraTopi? And even if they did, why would someone expect this to be a default choice to ask? But I smoked Camels. Ever since I read that Tipu (from the book ‘In Through the Back Door’) flees to Delhi out of his angst and tries Camels during one of his night-outs in the city, I had romanticised trying them out someday. I always got the Camels couriered from Delhi for my personal consumption, along with the alcohol for the bar.

Me: Sir, I do not sell Camels. But I smoke them. You can borrow from my pack.

As I handed the pack to him, in that moment I realised that this was a familiar face. The media-shy author of ‘In Through the Back Door’, Bhagwan, was sitting in front of me. He had a beard now and seemed to have lost weight. Behenchod, yeh to wahi aadmi hai. Pooch hi leta hoon.

Me: Sir, are you the author Bhagwan?

Bhagwan: That is how the world knows of me. I am otherwise known as Surinder Koli.

Me: Sir, I am a huge fan of yours. ‘In Through the Back Door’ is my favourite book. I have..

<Cutting me short> Bhagwan: Good lord. What are the odds! I come here once in a while to reminiscence my writing days of the book. I read on Trip Advisor that a young man from the cities has opened a fancy bar here. Wait, let me take a punt. You were inspired by my book, a situation arose in your life and you decided to come to HaraTopi?

This literally made me shake where I stood. I had not told anyone about this - not the Colonel, not Dhiru, not my friends back in the city. In fact, most of my friends did not know my exact location right now. How on earth could he guess this? Or is it so straight-forward and is he making me seem stupid?

Me: Sir, you are right. I quit my job, sold my properties and came here. Tipu and your book have always been an inspiration. I thought..

<Cutting me short and laughing> Bhagwan: Mujhe pata tha duniya mein chutiyon ki kami nahi hai.

Me: What do you mean?

Bhagwan: Yeh bar aur aapko dekh ke lagta hai kaafi shaukeen aadmi ho. Shayad ameer bhi honge. You seem educated. The world out there would probably do better with a person like you. And look at you. Here you are! What difference are you making? You think running a bar in some secluded village will make you immortal like some childhood hero from the books?

Me: I do not want to be immortal. I just want to be free from all the traditional expectations of the society and the..

<Cutting me short, again> Bhagwan: Make me another drink.

I tried to gather myself through the rush of emotions - from a fanboy moment to the shock that he had deciphered me to the confusion that he was suggesting me to live life in a different way. I poured him another drink.

Bhagwan: Kitaabein padhne ke liye hai bas. Inspire hoke chutiyaape karne ke liye nahi hai. In the real world, people like you have to work on challenges such as publishing, cutting costs of book production and making books more accessible to people through technology. If everyone gets inspired and runs away being a ‘free spirit’ like that Tipu, people like me would die. We would all go back in time where we led a primitive agrarian life.

Me: But is that not what you professed through your book? Tipu represented all the rebellion that a teenager expresses in this country. Tipu was a hero..

Bhagwan: Tipu bawla tha. Waise, woh sirf kitaabon ke pannon mein hai. Gutter mein fek do, ya jala do - do second mein mar jaega. Kis duniya mein jee rahe ho? If everyone gets inspired by art - then the world would have come to an end after watching apocalyptic movies. Art is to be read, watched, heard and forgotten. Art is not meant to be followed as a way of life. Maan lo koi Mahabharat padhke Arjun se inspire ho gaya. Pata hai Arjun ne kitne kaand kiye the? Do you know how many wives he had and what he did to his son Iravan?

Me: I don’t know. But I assumed you actually believed in the message of your book. I thought you were..

<Cutting me short> Bhagwan: Bol raha tha na duniya mein chutiyon ki kami nahi hai. Jab tak tum jaise log ho, mere jaise kalakaar aapko banaate rahenge. I have a family to take care of. I have desires to lead a comfortable life. I need to sell books in order to achieve all that. This is what any artist does - create an art that reciprocates with the needs of the contemporary consumer. That need can be sexuality, madness, revenge, patriotism, rightist or a leftist ideology, laughter, or sometimes teenage angst. Make the consumer go crazy - that is it.

Me: Unbelievable! Kaisa insaan ho aap? Dekhiye, sirf apka naam Bhagwan hai, aur aap khud ko asli bhagwan samajhke baithe ho. What you are saying is..

<Cutting me short> Bhagwan: Make me another drink.

I wondered if I should ask him to leave, or just play my usual self of being a host who is having a conversation with one of his customers. I wondered. I poured him a drink, reluctantly.

Bhagwan: I guess the tempers are flaring. Look, it is your life. I was just trying to save you from a future disappointment. It feels rebellious now to give up on the society and be liberated from the traditional goals of life. But you will regret this in the future.

<Trying to compose myself> Me: Well, thank you for your concern. But I think I am capable of taking my own decisions.

In that moment I realised that this guy was perhaps the biggest hypocrite I had ever seen in my life. I did not have anymore respect for him. It would have been a mammoth gulp in the throat, but this first hand experience made me realise the true Bhagwan in one instant of a finger snap.

<Lighting a Camel cigarette> Bhagwan: Look at you! You smoke the same cigarettes as Tipu. Even after all these years. You cannot deny that that book is your inspiration. And it surprises me that you are in no mood to listen to me now.

Me: You are a fucking hypocrite. I’d rather not listen to anything from a man like you.

Bhagwan then took a last sip from his glass, looked for his wallet and left a two thousand rupee note on the table. He took a long hard puff of the Camel, and blew it up in the air.

Bhagwan: Well, you have already listened enough (referring to the book) of this hypocrite. And that has changed your life. And that has made all the difference.

Bhagwan took his umbrella and left. It had stopped raining by now, and the dark clouds had started to pass away for the day.

After a few seconds Rinnie and Vinnie came running towards me, expecting my undivided attention since there was no customer at the bar. They started licking me, as they always fondly did. It felt good to be back in a world where living beings were simple and so were the relationships.

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azvolrien · 5 years

Text

Anchored Tempest - Chapter Eight

In which some progress is made.

~~~

Tagra took Karash to one side as the others gathered around to study Nirali’s map. “You had the raising of Ikara and she’s a fine Windsister, so I have some faith in your opinion,” she said quietly. “Do you believe that this will end well?”

“Nirali is an older and more experienced Memory-Singer than me,” said Karash. “Her opinion isn’t enough?”

“Nirali is… eccentric,” said Tagra.

“Oh, sure,” said Nirali, overhearing. “Virazhi contrives to get himself struck by lightning indoors, and I’m the Warren’s resident eccentric.”

“You also barely leave the Warren and have very little experience of the outside world beyond what other people tell you,” said Tagra flatly.

“Moving back to your original question,” said Karash before the argument could develop further, “I cannot promise that this will end well. But… I do believe it will, yes.”

Tagra sighed. Her rukh crawled over and placed its chin on her shoulder, and she reached up to scratch its snout.

“Besides, I have every intention of going up there with them,” said Karash. “One way or another.” Tagra gave him a look of deep scepticism. “If Una can get her dragon up there, I’m quite sure they’ll work out how to clear the way for climbers. Before the sickness, I spent most of my free time climbing every crag around Crooked River Village.”

“The crags around Crooked River Village are not exactly on the same level as the Tempest Spires,” said Tagra. “But… I’ll grant you think things through. Just… try not to let anyone get killed.” She jabbed a thumb at Una. “Even that one.”

“I will do my very best.”

On foot, the Valley of the Fallen God was two days’ hard trek up into the mountains of Windhome, following rocky trails too steep and too narrow for Rohone; the longtusk stayed behind in the valleys around the Warren as the rest of the party made the journey. Star and Tsheer could have flown up in a fraction of the time, but neither were big enough to carry Karash or Nirali as well as their usual riders. Instead they would fly a short distance ahead and wait for the others to catch up, over and over until at long last they reached their destination.

Nirali promptly sat down on a boulder to rub her feet. “I forgot how far it was to get up here.”

“Yeah, it’s quite a climb,” said Karash. “I haven’t been back since we came up for Ikara to find a rukh.”

“I have, a few times,” said Ikara. “It’s much easier to get here by air. But… You never really get used to the sight.”

Una and Star stood a short distance away, neither one making a sound as they stared up the Valley to the enormous skeleton at the far end. Una held up one hand as if trying to gauge the size of the skull.

“Is that…” she began in Orcish.

“Voice of the Mountain,” said Karash. “Or what’s left of him.”

She murmured a word in a language Karash didn’t know before continuing in Orcish, then giving up halfway through and switching to Balaurin. “He certain have being… He must have been even bigger than Fury when he was alive!”

“Who’s Fury?”

“The oldest of the dragons up north – Star’s mother. Short of the Devourer I’d never even heard of anything that could threaten a dragon her size – but one orc took down Voice of the Mountain?”

“One orc and a rukh,” said Nirali helpfully.

“…How?”

Nirali wiggled each of her toes one by one and stood up. “Something you might have noticed about the dragons, and something Ikara – not you – certainly did, is that they don’t look up very often. Why would they? They’re top predators, they don’t expect anything to attack them.” Star tipped her head right back. “Ikara – still not you – and her rukh attacked him from above,” continued Nirali, closing one fist to represent Voice of the Mountain and holding her other hand up, palm down, to stand in for Ikara the Black and her rukh. “The Midsummer shows usually make the battle much more drawn-out than it actually was, going by accounts from the Memory-Singers of the time. He was making an example of a village north of here when they came at him out of the sun, diving like a falcon. Ikara threw herself from the back of her rukh mid-dive and drove her spear into the top of his head; if you look at the skulls, there’s a slight line of weakness where two bones fuse. That was where she hit. Then she leapt back off his head for her rukh to catch her midair.”

“She killed him with one blow?”

“Sort of,” said Nirali. “By itself, it probably wouldn’t have been a killing strike – the blade wasn’t long enough for that. But it did inflict enough damage on his brain that he lost control midair.” She gestured towards the huge skeleton. “Crashing here was what actually killed him. But I think we can still give Ikara the credit, all things considered.”

“You can go have a closer look, if you want,” said Karash. “It isn’t some sacred place where only orcs are allowed.”

Una bit her lip for a few seconds. “No,” she decided. “I think we can see fine from here.” She sighed and folded her arms. “So where’s the Sky Stone you want me to have a look at?”

“Up on that ridge,” said Nirali, pointing. “Not far at all, after the climb we’ve already had.”

The Sky Stone was a little taller than Una, though still shorter than Karash, and was shaped like a short obelisk: it was a squat pillar carved from the living rock, about three feet to a side with a small pyramid forming its upper half. The lower sections of each side were inscribed with writing carved deep into the stone, while each face of the pyramid bore a flat, perfectly smooth plate of obsidian set in an indent that fit so closely that Una’s fingers could barely feel the seam. The very top of the pyramid had been cut away, leaving a small cone-shaped indentation in its place.

“And they’re all exactly like this one?” asked Una.

“Some of them are a different colour of stone,” said Nirali. “But otherwise, yes – same size and shape, and the same markings here.” She patted the writing on one side with the flat of her hand. “We can’t tell what they’re supposed to represent, though. The Sky Kings left a lot of abstract carvings behind, lots of little symbols in rows like this, and none of them make much sense to us.”

Una gave her an odd look. “They don’t?”

“Well… No.” Nirali shrugged. “They’re clearly not pictures of anything. Everyone has their own ideas of what they meant to the Sky Kings.”

“It’s writing.”

Karash and Nirali looked at each other blankly, then back at Una. “It’s what?” asked Karash. “I – I don’t know that word.”

“You don’t-” Una stopped mid-sentence and stared into the distance, her brow furrowed in thought. “No, you don’t, do you? You’ve got your artwork, your songs… But now that you bring it up, I haven’t seen any of your writing. It didn’t occur to me that you don’t have any.”

Nirali raised an expectant hand.

“It’s… How do I explain this? Think of it like… like a way of drawing language. Different symbols standing in for different words or sounds.”

Karash nodded slowly.

“Oh, I see!” said Nirali, bouncing in place on her toes. “So these symbols-”

“Letters.”

“These letters – they’re not just pictures, they’re words?”

“Exactly.”

“Can you tell what it says?”

Una knelt beside the stone to study the writing. “It’s quite an archaic script – the Balaurin don’t use some of these letters any more – but I think I can make it out. It says…” She narrowed her eyes. “Well, this first line here is just the date they installed the stone, but then it goes on. These lines here are a list of dragons’ names. Voice of the Mountain is right at the top, then others beneath him. Red Snow in the Killing Winter, Shifting Blaze Coursing in the Heavens, Crashing Wave breaking the Cliff, Shadow of Rain on Grassland, Dappled Light through Calm Waters… It goes on, you probably don’t need to hear all of them. The Sky Stones were put in place during the Last Revolt, you said?” Nirali nodded. “These must be the names of dragons who had already been killed by then. Then at the end of the list… ‘We work now to cast the veil, that the savages will not claim the High Citadel and its final secrets.’”

“‘Savages’?” said Karash, raising his eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s what it says! Then the last line, right at the bottom: ‘Our work is sealed within the stone, to pass only to those of the Blood.’ And there it ends.”

“So… they put something inside the Sky Stone?” asked Nirali.

Una pressed her cheek against the stone. “I can feel a lot of magic tied up in there,” she said. “But it’s… I can’t tell what it’s supposed to do. Let me think… Hm.” She stood up on her toes to peer into the dip at the summit of the little pyramid. “‘Those of the Blood’,” she mused. “‘Those of the Blood’… A blood seal? Oh, that’s primitive. But whose blood, I wonder? Some particular bloodline, maybe?” She paused, looking at Star in one of their silent exchanges, and clicked her fingers. “Or…” She waved a hand around her hip, and looked down in confusion when it met nothing. “Oh – Karash, you still have my knife.”

“So I do,” said Karash. “I forgot I had it.” He drew it from the pouch on his sash and handed it over. Una nodded her thanks, pushed up her left sleeve, and made a shallow cut in her forearm.

“What is wrong with your arm?” asked Nirali, staring.

Una glanced down. “The scales? I’ll explain later. Let’s hope this does something…” She held her arm above the pyramid, grimaced, and squeezed a few drops of blood into the cut-off point.

Nothing happened. Una sighed. “A blood seal is a way of keying something – sometimes a physical lock, sometimes the activation of a spell, it can vary a lot – to a specific person or group of people,” she explained at Nirali’s questioning stare. “It’s a very old technique, and one that’s long since stopped being used by most people; there are ways of doing much the same thing that don’t require sharp blades. I wasn’t sure what they meant by ‘the Blood’ here – it could have just meant the Balaurin, but they’re not a homogenous enough group for that to work without letting any human access it, and they’ve never had a royal family to have that in mind. Star suggested that perhaps they just meant the dragonbound – people like me, people with a blood-bond to a dragon – but it looks like-”

The obsidian plates lit up.

“Like Star was right,” finished Karash.

Even Ikara – who had been entertaining herself throwing rocks down at Voice of the Mountain – gathered around to see what would happen. The light grew steadily brighter, channelling upwards to the tip of the pyramid, then vanished. After a couple of seconds, it reappeared, hanging midair above the stone as a formless blob of light about a foot across. Gradually it began to move, different parts growing brighter or dimmer, until instead of a rough orb, the head and upper body of an athletic middle-aged man hovered before them, outlined and shaded with light.

“This is weird,” said Ikara.

“Some kind of… scryed recording?” said Una. “Shaped out of a witchlight?”

“You’d know better than we would,” said Nirali, waving her hand through the image. It passed through without so much as a ripple, either to the image or to her fur.

The man began to speak.

“The savages have risen against us,” he said. He spoke in the same Balaurin dialect that the Memory-Singers learnt; Karash translated for Ikara. “Worse than they ever have before. They’ve learnt something we didn’t even know was possible for anything short of a force of nature: how to kill dragons. Voice of the Mountain himself was the first to die. Every day we get word of others – of dragons slain and strongholds burnt out, of populations slaughtered. Some are whispering that it is only a matter of time until the savages gain the upper hand.” He paused, sighing. “They are wrong; they already have. Their rebellion has gained far too much speed for us to stop it now, not now that the ‘gods’ who held them in check are being thrown from the sky to break on the rocks. With not just every day but every passing hour, more of the wild rukha carry riders. We are forced to admit that… this will be the end of the Black Mountain Alliance.

“If you are hearing this message then one of two things have happened. Either the impossible happened and we defeated the rebellion, in which case nothing that follows will be relevant, or… Our ancient kin from the north have finally lost patience with our scrying block and ventured out to find what became of us.

“Most of our strongholds have already fallen. Only the High Citadel, defended by Storm Clouds’ anchored tempest, remains. The civilians have been evacuated through the Throat, sealing it behind them, though if they make it out of the mountains it will be a miracle. Others have flown out to meet a great force of savages to the north of here; word has it that their leader, this ‘Ikara the Black’ will be there. Perhaps we can still claw our way back from this.

“I don’t believe we will. To that end… River and I have agreed to remain in the High Citadel, to protect the last of our treasures alone. River’s abilities may keep some hope alive for the Balaurin of the future to pick up. If you are a stranger, you will not know the approach to the High Citadel from the air. Come at it from the north, and spiral around with the motion of the storm until you reach the eye. Only then will you get through the shields.” He lifted a hand in farewell. “Good luck.”

The light faded and vanished, leaving nothing but the stone behind.

“Huh,” said Ikara.

“They did leave something in the Tempest Spires,” breathed Nirali. “Who is River? That’s not a name that shows up in any of the songs.”

“No idea,” said Una. “Well, a dragon, I assume from the name, but beyond that… What’s the Throat?”

“A tunnel, maybe?” said Karash. “If we can find and unseal it, it might provide a way up for me and Nirali while you and Ikara come in from the air.”

“It’s got to be worth a try,” said Nirali. She turned to face the ever-present storm to the south, tilting up the brim of her hat for a better view. “I cannot wait to see what they hid up there.”

~~~

Virazhi is a Memory-Singer who has been carrying out experiments trying to make and harness ‘tame lightning’, as he puts it. So far it hasn’t been going very well.

#az writes stories

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beardedd0nut · 5 years

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Medieval to communist, all changes from here

Ok so a little bit of an update from in the road. That first day in Helsinki was pretty damn big, much alike that first day in brussels too hard too fast.so the second day we had was spent wandering the streets and seeing bits we missed before meeting up with the tour group. The most interesting thing we found was that the city seemed to loop in on itself, well that or we just kept going in stupid circles... the Christmas markets were nice and resulted in me purchasing a fancy little handmade knife, I wanted a belt but there were none in my size so I went for the next best thing.

We got on the sky wheel that while not underwhelming just wasn't anything to write home about. Melbournes star is an absolute joke, but it is in a good position and gives a pretty reasonable view of the city, this just let us see the port and a slightly taller view of the city than you get on the ground. After that we met up with the majority of the tour group and our wonderful trip leader Tim.

Tim took us for a walk through the town that night and to the Christmas market again. The walk itself was nice, but the rain and snow combination was something none of us were ready for. It's like having little pieces of snow land in your eye is quaint, but being drenched and having snow hit you in the face is kinda sucky. After a short stop, a group picture, and finding out that the darude sandstorm video was filmed at the large church residing over the Christmas market we went on for a few pre dinner bevs (always the best way to get to know peeps)

Dinner was a strange combination of sort of raw salmon for the entree, chicken in something for dinner, and yogurt with orange stuff... might have been a little cut and not really sure what any of it was but it was edible and that's all you need sometimes. The following morning was spent just hanging around before getting on the ferry to Estonia. The ferry was less a ferry and more a small cruise ship. It got a little bumpy in a couple of spots, but for 2 hours it wasn't that bad overall, far better than the shitty little boat I had in mind.

Estonia itself is very lovely. Nice historic buildings in the old town, and apparently the birthplace of the first ever Christmas tree. It's still really hard getting used to this whole 6-8hours of light thing, it seriously fucks with you and I can easily see why the Norwegians go crazy and burn down churches and shit. The Christmas market here was even cuter than the one in Helsinki and we got a quick taste of a local mulled wine or rum like concoction, I tried some of the rum and it was mighty tasty and relatively cheap. The diner was a simple salad and steak but the surly barmaid obviuosly wasn't too far into her job coz she had a face like a smacked arse for most of the evening.

The following day was cold, like fucking cold. It has been cold anyway but the fucking wind was near unbearable. We all started the walking tour with a chill, but by halfway through a cafe break was beyond needed. The city itself, well the old town, has buildings and churches dating back to the 15th century. The houses and buildings are quite brightly coloured when compared to other older towns, and with the slowly melting glaciers Estonia is actually slowly rising up each year meaning the town we know would have been totally different back in the day.

We passed through where the monks had built a few places to take care of the sick and unwell, they honoured this by erecting big bronze statues that just look like death hanging around, and it would be creepy as shit at night. While trying to get around people I decided to take a dirt track instead of the pavement and guess who ate shit on some black ice? This guy. Came down right on the knees and wrists, but kept the camera safe and that's the main thing.

The churches in town are mostly orthodox Russian ones, the Estonian people are relatively unfazed by religion so to see these grand pieces with huge decorations within is very strange. The artwork held within the church walls is stunning, truly amazing but it feels like every old church in Europe had mastercraft peoples who were dedicated to their crafts putting the places together. The other church we went to had several tombs within and on all the walls were the family coat of arms for each group buried underneath.

The last church was followed by a trip to a local pancake place for lunch that was recommended by our walking tour guide. The pancakes were great, and at a great price too, nothing like the kidney you have to give up at the pancake parlour. A few of us decided to trek up to the palace made for One of the nobles after the delicious meal and found that the cold was somewhat subsiding.

The palace itself was host to a few different gardens, including the winter garden that was pretty much just small neatly trimmed hedges. Inside it is now a museum that shows off the artworks created by locals. Their art included crazily realistic sculptures all the way through to see-expressionist stuff. It was a lovely afternoon that was followed by a great evening filled with elk no boar pies (maybe the best meat pie I've ever had, I had about 5) and yet again bevvies.

Yesterday had just been spent travelling into Russia, more specifically St Petersburg. The drive was kind of meh being slightly hungover but the dickhead bus driver blasting the heating then the aircon wasn't helping. Crossing the border from Estonia into Russia was a very strange experience. We got taken off the bus and had to walk through to get our passports stamped, meanwhile thinking what was gonna happen if they wanted to search them. I could have made diamonds in my butt there was that much tension.

This arvo/ evening consisted of the fuckwit bus driver going back to Estonia instead of returning or the hotel and thus delaying our driving tour of the city. We still saw it all, but the dumb mother fucker had one job and screwed it up. This city is stunning, I had never realised it was a series of islands connected via bridges. The city was created to put up a pretty front and invite people to trade with Russia, the tsar at the time even forcing people to move there from Moscow. Dinner was held at a dinner and show place where we saw a dance show from some locals. It was kind of cheesy, but man can some of them dance. The dinner even included a sneaky shot of vodka that was thoroughly enjoyable.

That's about it for now. Looking at a couple more days here in St Petersburg then it's off to Moscow to finish it all up.

Catchyas all soon

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vileart · 6 years

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Dramaturgy Rinse:Mike Raffone @ Artworks Elephant

IT’S A KITSCH GIVEAWAY AT SOUTH EAST LONDON’S NEWEST CABARET NIGHT

Lovers of Kitsch are sure to enjoy award nominated comedy performer Mike Raffone’s monthly Cabaret show Cabaret Rinse. Apart from featuring top acts from the world of comedy and variety, Cabaret Rinse also boasts a unique raffle.

Before the show the audience are each given a free strip of raffle tickets. Throughout the show they must compete with each other in a series of bizzare games to randomly generate the winning ticket number. And if that’s not exciting enough the lucky winner then gets to choose her/his prize from The Cabinet of Kitsch, a mock conveyor belt of kitsch goodies that makes The Generation Game’s prizes look positively up market.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

With Cabaret Rinse I wanted to do something that could be a bit more anarchic than I usually do, I was always a big fan of the apparent anarchy of Tiswas when I was a kid.

I was originally thinking of a sort of game show type thing, but that's been done quite a bit recently, but I knew (like everything I do) it had to have a heavy interactive element with the audience. I remembered that I ran a raffle in a comedy night that I used to run about 5 years ago. It proved to be the most popular thing in the show, and the only thing that actually made money. So I had the idea of having a load of stupid games and routines that would generate the winning numbers of the raffle, sort of a bit like the big song and dance they used to make picking the numbers for the national lottery. Only my version would not be as slick and bland, and would have the lotteries and gaming commission break out in a cold sweat. Also the prizes are kitsch tat, but people seem to love that as well.

That's how the idea of Cabaret Rinse was born. It was originally a show that I would mainly feature in, with a few special guests, but after starting to do it once a month it became clear to me that the other acts on the bill should take centre stage. It's a tall order to come up with an entire show once a month! So it morphed from a interactive show idea into a comedy night with a bill of artists and the raffle idea just holding the whole evening together .Actually, if I'm honest I'd say that the idea came to me in a flash of inspiration whilst walking down the street in Adelaide, South Australia when I was there for the The Adelaide Fringe, but I think these were the ideas that were brewing in my head.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

I'm not sure that the performance has ever been a good space for the discussion of ideas, we performers set the agenda so any debate has to be a bit one sided.

I do think that it's always been a great platform for the dissemination and advancement of ideas. You could say that ideas are discussed as you can look at things from a variety of standpoints. It always says something and has value and meaning, I'm not sure there is any debate thought.

How did you become interested in making performance?

A variety of reasons really. I did always love the fact that theatre said things about all sorts of things, art, politics, science, religion, the human condition. I found that exciting as a young person which sometimes makes me wonder why I ended up in comedy and entertainment.

But then good comedy says a lot as well. I also have a shallow though, and have always reveled in the theatrical nature of theatre, the shear affront and arrogance of showing off. And of course I fell in love with actresses and show girls when I was young. I just decided that it was a world that I wanted to be part of wit all of it's amazing facets.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Although my shows are heavily interactive and are not really overtly text based I do like to actually write the shows before I perform them these days, and I also work with a director a bit to refine the ideas once they are up and running. Of course it all changes when I perform it, but I like the confidence of knowing that for any show, but biggest problem is too much stuff. I find ideas easy, but I have to work at giving them coherence, and sticking to the point. That's the challenge for me. I also like to give myself creative limitations.

For example for my one man comedy sketch show Brain Rinse the limitation was that every idea had to involve audience interaction and participation, whether onstage as individuals, or joining in en mass. I allowed myself to do anything, as long as I stuck to that one rule. I'm a great believer that it's impossible to fill the blank canvas without these sort of self imposed rules or creative limitations.

With Cabaret Rinse, it was the idea that all the interactive ideas had to generate a number between one and ten in some way, again after that the sky's the limit. Of course what makes Cabaret Rinse different is I have to refine the whole evening, the sort of acts I book, what the running order should be, how many and how long the intervals should be etc etc. Not just the bits that I do.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Yes, and no. Yes for all the reasons that I've explained, and no because for once I'm not the star of the show. I tend to so one man shows, write them, promote them, star in them, even do my own sound cues from onstage. I'm a bit of a control freak. I'm an performing empire builder, a bit like Chairman Mao, except my empire is very small, and I'm not so mean. I also don't have a little book... of any colour, but that's beside the point. It's interesting for me though, to take a back seat and let the other acts on the bill drive the show.

I actually enjoy having these great acts share the stage with me. I have genuine love, passion and respect for the acts that I book. Again it's creative limitations, this time applies to my programming of the evening. They have to be acts that I love, and then I hope that I communicate that love to the audience when I compere the evening.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Well I suppose the obvious answer to that is that I hope that they experience laughter, but also a togetherness. I want my comedy night to feel like it's just hanging out with friends. In fact some to the club stalwarts are friends of mine and I have no problem in calling them by there first name and being familiar with them.

I want them to feel like they are being entertained in their front room I guess... that familiar. I also love it when people tell me that they don't usually like audience participation but they loved my show.

I try not to put people down, but encourage them to go further with joining in than they ever thought they would. Then they are rewarded as being the heroes that they are, and it becomes their show. As for the acts I book, I've always seen Cabaret Rinse as being primarily a comedy night for acts, like me, who are misfits, who don't fit easily into any genre, or circuit of work. Many of the acts are unknown, or have been given licence if they are experienced for trying something new, or experimental so I guess I also want the audience to feel the excitement of this edge, of not quite ever knowing what they will get, but trusting that it will be good.

A Star Trek toby jug, a Chesney Hawkes picture disk, a home burlesque kit and a nodding Buddha, are just some of the prizes that audiences have eagerly snapped up over the past few months. But it’s not all about tacky consumerism, there has been a lot of fun along the way too. Audiences have re created a Busby Berkely water dance, taken part in a human version of space invaders and played a classic party game with a role of gaffa tape, some sweets and a man dressed in a piñata costume.

Mike explains further, “We get some great acts at Cabaret Rinse, and they are all different and very original in their own way. I felt that just bringing them on in the normal way just wouldn’t do them justice. I wanted a fun, madcap, off the wall way to compere the evening and the eureka moment came when I was on tour in Australia. That’s when I hit on the idea of an interactive raffle and it’s proved a real hit with our audiences. Last month’s raffle winner was so chuffed about winning the 1972 Ed Stewpot Stewart Pop Pary LP, on vinyl with a double gatefold sleeve that she tweeted about it after the show. I think she wasn’t even alive when the record was first released.”

ny c) America

Cabaret Rinse is on at The Artworks Elephant, Elephant Road, Elephant and Castle on every second Friday of the month. Next show is Friday 9th February. This month’s acts include Malcolm Hardee award winning character comic Candy Gigi and Jon Hicks, star of the hit variety show Slightly Fat Features. Show starts at 7:30pm and the Cabaret Rinse pop up bar is open from 7pm. Tickets are £9/£6 concs and there is a £2 discount if you book online via www.cabaretrinse.co.uk.

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2BCQNV7

#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique

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eddycurrents · 5 years

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For the week of 22 April 2019

Quick Bits:

A Walk Through Hell #9, like many issues before it, does its damnedest to break your mind. Garth Ennis, Goran Sudžuka, Ive Svorcina, and Rob Steen continue to deliver one of the best horror stories every month that just seems to get stranger and more complex with each subsequent chapter. This issue yanks the rug out from under us.

| Published by AfterShock

Action Comics #1010 raises a million and one more questions as to what’s actually going on with Leviathan and whether some things are supposed to be clues or if Brian Michael Bendis is just changing continuity. Maybe a little of both. Stellar art from Steve Epting and Brad Anderson who continue to deliver a solid mood and atmosphere for this espionage-heavy story.

| Published by DC Comics

Amazing Spider-Man #20 changes the game a bit as Black Ant reveals more of what Kraven has planned. Wonderful art from Humberto Ramos, Victor Olazaba, Edgar Delgado, and Erick Arciniega.

| Published by Marvel

Amber Blake #2 has some incredible artwork from Butch Guice as this action-packed thriller continues. Some interesting twists that ultimately are going to be crushing when they come to light.

| Published by IDW

Ascender #1 is pretty damn great. Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen, and Steve Wands kick-off this follow-up to Descender with what feels like a complete counterpoint to its hard science fiction. This delves deep into a universe taken over by magic and vampires, with technology either gone or kept under strict control. Even the art has shifted tone, from the dark inkiness from before to a greater reliance on white spaces here, to give it a different visual aesthetic.

| Published by Image

Avengers #18 is a single issue story, tying in to The War of the Realms, spotlighting Coulson’s new Squadron Supreme of America (it’s unclear as to whether these are new versions or existing ones being manipulated, but there’s shadowy shenanigans), from Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, Mark Morales, Justin Ponsor, and Cory Petit. Marvel’s Justice League analogue just got their Max Lord.

| Published by Marvel

Bad Luck Chuck #2 sees Chuck recount some of her cases and a bit of how her “powers” work, while forces around her conspire to bring her down. Nice character building from Lela Gwenn with some great artwork from Matthew Dow Smith and Kelly Fitzpatrick.

| Published by Dark Horse

Batgirl #34 begins “Terrible”, the three-part finale to Mairghread Scott, Paul Pelletier, Norm Rapmund, Jordie Bellaire, and AndWorld Design’s run on the title. Some nice detective work here as the Terrible Trio hatch a new plan.

| Published by DC Comics

Black Panther #11 builds off of last issue’s shock turn and the direct involvement of Bast as we get some answers about the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda and some of the machinations that are unfolding. The art from Kev Walker, Marc Deering, and Java Tartaglia continues to be a highlight.

| Published by Marvel

Coda #11 gears up for next issue’s finale as Murk unveils another stage in her plan and Hum does something incredibly stupid. This has been one of my favourite series over the past year and the build to the conclusion is wonderful. Absolutely phenomenal work from Si Spurrier, Matías Bergara, Michael Doig, and Jim Campbell.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Criminal #4 tells a haunting single issue story of a very messed up day in the life of Ricky Lawless. I love the mosaic that Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips are crafting out of these different time periods, building something larger out of an already sprawling world.

| Published by Image

Dark Red #2 takes an interesting turn as Chip is given a pitch to become the face of a new American heartland vampire nation. Interesting to see how racism also extends through to vampires. Very entertaining stuff from Tim Seeley, Corin Howell, Mark Englert, and Marshall Dillon.

| Published by AfterShock

Detective Comics #1002 continues “Medieval” with some really great art from Brad Walker, Andrew Hennessy, and Nathan Fairbairn. There’s a weight and gravity to the art that elevate the story nicely. Also, it’s interesting to see an antagonist who thinks that he’s a hero above Batman, especially as he goes about trying to recruit Damian. It should be interesting to see who Arkham Knight is under the mask.

| Published by DC Comics

Dial H for Hero #2 is probably even better than the first issue, and the first issue was one of the most fun debuts I’ve read in a while. Sam Humphries, Joe Quinones, Jordan Gibson, and Dave Sharpe capture a zany energy amidst the real, emotional drama that the kids are experiencing and it leads to some highly entertaining storytelling. Also, the art is phenomenal. Quinones is really stretching his artistic muscles, throwing in incredible different styles as the heroes emerge. This issue gives us pastiches of Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing and the transformation is amazing, the entire creative team perfectly capturing the style.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Doctor Strange #13 continues to force Galactus into the world of magic, delving further into some familiar faces from Strange’s past, in the second part of “Herald Supreme” from Mark Waid, Barry Kitson, Scott Koblish, Scott Hanna, Brian Reber, and Cory Petit.

| Published by Marvel

Fearscape #5 concludes what has been a highly ambitious, inventive series from Ryan O’Sullivan, Andrea Mutti, Vladimir Popov, and Andworld Design. Sadly, Henry Henry doesn’t get punched in the dick, repeatedly, but there are some tragic twists that change the landscape.

| Published by Vault

The Forgotten Queen #3 delivers more of Vexana’s history, revealing she’s responsible for Dracula in the Valiant universe, along with a few other twists. I’m really liking Amilcar Pinna and Ulises Arreola’s art here. The odd angles adding something unique to the feel of the story.

| Published by Valiant

Invisible Kingdom #2 sees G. Willow Wilson, Christian Ward, and Sal Cipriano continue to build a richly developed, intriguing world essentially founded upon a bedrock of an Amazon analogue, both in support of and opposition to. Gorgeous artwork from Ward.

| Published by Dark Horse / Berger Books

Justice League Dark #10 outlines the Lords of Order’s plans for the multiverse and magic and why they’re initiating an assault on all of the magic wielders. James Tynion IV is doing some rather impressive world-building and story seeding all throughout his work, but it really comes to a head in this series. Also, the art from Alvaro Martínez Bueno, Raul Fernandez, and Brad Anderson continues to be impeccable.

| Published by DC Comics

KINO #15 begins a new arc, tackling some messy current events throughout Europe in a rather interesting fashion. Alex Paknadel, Diego Galindo, Valentina Pinto, and Jim Campbell did some amazing things reinterpreting KINO in the last arc, delivering an intriguing thriller, and that doesn’t seem to be letting up any with this new arc. The politics and the manipulation are at an all time high and this is something you really don’t want to miss.

| Published by Lion Forge / Catalyst Prime

The Lollipop Kids #5 is the final battle between the kids and Morgan Le Fay and her army of monsters for all the lollipops. This has been an imaginative series from Adam Glass, Aidan Glass, Diego Yapur, DC Alonso, and Sal Cipriano with consistently some of the most beautiful art in comics. There’s a hint of what’s to come and I hope we see more of this story in the future.

| Published by AfterShock

Punk Mambo #1 is another great debut of a limited series for Valiant spotlighting one of their less used, but highly interesting characters from Cullen Bunn, Adam Gorham, José Villarrubia, and Dave Sharpe. The set up for supernatural intrigue delving into Voodoo belief is very entertaining, with some impressive artwork from Gorham and Villarrubia.

| Published by Valiant

Queen of Bad Dreams #1 is another highly imaginative, impressive debut for Vault. This time spotlighting a world where dreams can jump from the mind of the dreamer into the real world. Danny Lore, Jordi Pérez, Dearbhla Kelly, and Kim McLean offer up some interesting, fleshed-out characters in Daher and Viv, that elevate this from just a unique take on a police procedural to greater interpersonal drama. Also, a mystery that’s going to hook you immediately.

| Published by Vault

Spawn #296 features some absolutely stunning artwork from Jason Shawn Alexander, FCO Plascencia, and Greg Menzie for this first part of “History of Spawn” as the march to the 300th issue gets closer and the stakes get raised as the powers that loom through Spawn’s life gather to try to put an end to him.

| Published by Image

Star Trek: Year Five #1 to me feels like it has perfectly captured the spirit of the original series, delving deep into Star Trek lore and pulling forth a captivating story that showcases a lot of what made the television show great. Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Stephen Thompson, Charlie Kirchoff, and Neil Uyetake are off to a great start.

| Published by IDW

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge #1, like Tie Fighter from last week, is a tie-in to some of the new stuff in the broader Star Wars universe with some new characters and locations. In this case it ties in to the new attraction opening at the Disney theme parks. This first issue introduces us to the seedy underbelly of the world shortly before The Force Awakens, from Ethan Sacks, Will Sliney, Dono Sánchez-Almara, Protobunker, and Travis Lanham, weaving in an entertaining flashback with the familiar faces of Han Solo and Chewbacca.

| Published by Marvel

Stone Star #2 is as impressive as the debut issue, developing a couple more complex characters and spinning forth a political situation that makes the arena world of the Stone Star itself a bit more suspect. Jim Zub, Max Dunbar, Espen Grundetjern, and Marshall Dillon are telling a tale here that really shouldn’t be missed.

| Published by Swords & Sassery

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #93 is part one of “City at War” from Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz, Dave Wachter, Ronda Pattison, and Shawn Lee. It’s mostly a gathering storm as the forces prepare for the oncoming onslaught, with an absolutely harrowing spark to kick off the conflict.

| Published by IDW

Thanos #1 begins a new mini from Tini Howard, Ariel Olivetti, Antonio Fabela, and Joe Caramagna that offers up a look at the formative years of Thanos raising Gamora, along with other bits of early history. This first issue paints a rather intriguing picture of Thanos as a deranged serial killer, building his own Winchester House out of his space station, which certainly is a different take.

| Published by Marvel

Wizard Beach #5 brings an end to this fun series from Shaun Simon, Conor Nolan, George Schall, Chad Lewis, Meg Casey, and Mike Fiorentino. It’s wonderful to see Hex learn and grow these past couple of issues and we get an interesting resolution to the nefarious schemes that were popping up on the beach.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Other Highlights: Black Widow #4, Books of Magic #7, Delver #3, Dick Tracy Forever #1, Elvira: The Shape of Elvira #2, Fantastic Four #9, Fight Club 3 #4, Firefly #5, The Flash #69, Freedom Fighters #5, Ghost Tree #1, Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary Special: Extreme, GI Joe: Sierra Muerte #3, Goddess Mode #5, Hardcore #5, Invader Zim #42, Ironheart #5, Jughead: The Hunger vs. Vampironica #1, Little Girls, Mae #12, Marvel Comics Presents #4, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #38, Princeless Book 8: Princesses #1, Punks Not Dead: London Calling #3, The Realm #13, Redneck #19, The Replacer, Rick & Morty #49, Runaways #20, Sex - Volume 6: World Hunger, Sharkey: Bounty Hunter #3, The Silencer #16, Star Trek Waypoint Special 2019, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #31, Star Wars: Vader - Dark Visions #3, Superb #19, Superior Spider-Man #5, Turok #3, Venom #13, The Warning #6, The Wicked + The Divine #43, Wonder Woman #69

Recommended Collections: Aliens: Dead Orbit, Backstagers - Volume 3, Black Order: Warmasters of Thanos, Despicable Deadpool, Dick Tracy: Dead or Alive, Exorsisters - Volume 1, Fissure - Volume 1, Full Bleed - Volume 3, Jessica Jones: Purple Daughter, KINO - Volume 3: The Man in the Iron Mask, Livewire - Volume 1: Fugitive, Marvel Action: Avengers - Book 1, Marvel Knights, Scarlet - Volume 1, Shuri - Volume 1: The Search for Black Panther, Supergirl - Volume 1: The Killers of Krypton, Unstoppable Wasp: Fix Everything, Venom - Volume 2, The Warning - Volume 1

d. emerson eddy likes lemon cranberry muffins.

#This Week in Comics

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