#he confronted his own mortality recently!! that's a new development!!!!

[vulpinesaint]

I am asking not just because i am going to be getting a bunch of pathfinder books for christmas but because i know enough about you as a mutual that i know im going to hear about the most deeply fucked up person imaginable. What is your pathfinder character like

giggling delightedly... ok listen he's maybe the worst guy ever but the issue here is that i love him. introducing you to faedren. he's a half-elf magus and he wields a bastard sword because i like the option of both dual/single-handed wielding but also because he's a bastard and i think it's funny. he's blonde. he walks up to you and smiles all charming but something about him is Wrong. and then he opens his mouth and he sounds like if you ran a frat boy through years of pretentious wellness retreats. he's a follower of calistria, goddess of lust, trickery, and revenge, and every other sentence out of him is about how in love he is with his goddess and how she's the most beautiful powerful perfect deity there is or how beautiful and perfect and healing bloody revenge can be. guy who sees you get pushed by somebody and comes over to put a hand on your shoulder, goes "hey, you don't have to take that. you are a strong, powerful person, and you didn't deserve that. don't let your heart sit with that hurt. you should Gut Them" and then waxes poetic about the wonderful catharsis of gory retribution and how it's all tied back to a goal-oriented mindset in the end. flirts with anyone possible. so insufferable that his party members literally wouldn't let him talk about himself for Weeks cause he's just so terrible to listen to. high charisma stat but he just fucking Sucks. and then you let him talk a little bit and it becomes clear that his "community" that he talks about taking him in when he was a baby is Definitely a cult. they're summoning demons to take revenge on people with the most power possible and it's absolutely a twist on calistria's Actual values cause her whole thing is Not to get caught up on unending revenge but faedren feels slighted and goes after it like a dog with a bone. hears a super powerful dhamphir say something negative about his goddess and has to be dragged away fuming by his party members going "growth mindset. i'm not strong enough to kill him horribly Yet." his whole terrible fuckboy schtick is cause he's learned that the only way he can access affection is through sex. he's for real in love with his goddess because she's the only thing that he believes really cares for him. he gets his chest rent apart and sees elysium (his heaven is full of hot women. go figure) and when he gets brought back his skin is Branded Back Together with the symbol of calistria and he's even WORSE about things after that (obsessed with having the symbol on him permanently). he gets close with the party members but doesn't know how to express that he cares about them. he's caught off guard because caring is never Easy and it always Hurts and the only affection he was ever shown as a child was conditional. he's got some fucked up views on pain and punishment because he was definitely abused as a kid. he attacks a dragon with a lightning spell imbued into his strike and does 200 damage in one hit and then whiffs every swing after that. he taught the little pumpkin leshy in their party to read. he might be getting turned into a vampire now. anyway all that to say that there is much happening with this guy and i love him very much. y'know. nice ass sorry about the mental illness king. intimidation stat crazy high and he's intimidated people into committing suicide twice. cornered an enemy on a cliff and made that bitch jump off. check out my faedren tag for more information 👍 :)

(+ quick derail to say that i love pathfinder. what a beautiful system... pathfinder is kind to you in so many ways. pathfinder loves you back. dnd laughs in your face and calls you a bitch but pathfinder kisses you gently on the forehead and gives you substantial bonuses on skills at lvl 1... what a world we could all be living in)

#longest fucking post on planet earth i love this guy so much though #can't even talk about his relationships with all his party members... shit goes crazy #he confronted his own mortality recently!! that's a new development!!!! #has technically died before and genuinely seen the gates of his religious heaven but it didn't really stick until rn ksdjfghd #had to get attacked by someone that he trusted not to hurt him. and Then suddenly death was real. #faedren #valentine notes #pathfinder #ask

[isfjmel-phleg]

Why I like it: Psmith, Journalist

To be honest, this one is my least favorite of the series. Which is not to say that I don't like it, because I do, but it's very different from the other installments. Mike is barely present, so the friendship at the heart of the previous books isn't plot-crucial here. There's so much focus on the comedic view of America(ns), which would have been fascinatingly foreign to Wodehouse's original readership, that there's less of an actual plot or personal stakes for Psmith himself. Some content has not aged well. You could skip this one and not miss too much, because nothing that happens in it seems to have much, if any, particular bearing on the rest of the series.

But if you're up for it, there's still a reason to read Psmith, Journalist. Well, maybe two. The scene in which Psmith passes Mike off as a cat expert to a feline-loving gangster. And the next step of Psmith's character development.

Psmith was frequently an absolute jerk in the previous book, and he still has his moments here, but this book transports him from the oblivious light-heartedness of his usual genre into (attempted) realism, where he has to realize for the first time that there are people out there in miserable living conditions nothing like the privileged existence he's always led. And it's sobering. It takes a lot for Psmith to drop the flippant persona and get serious, and this is one of the few times. Of course he goes about fighting for the people in the slums in the most Psmithlike way possible, through words and wit and vendettas, and it's possible that somewhere along the way he loses track of exactly why he's fighting in the first place. But it's a step in the right direction that brings him into a wider world, encourages him to put his skills to use for more than just his own amusement and his and Mike's benefit.

It also puts him into some new and challenging experiences. He has to realize that he's utterly lacking in street smarts and would probably not have survived if he weren't in the company of a savvier friend. He gets into a lot of physical altercations, with more dangerous stakes than the trifling skirmishes he's dabbled in before. His hat gets shot off and he makes a huge deal out of the hat's destruction because the alternative is to have to think about how narrowly that bullet missed his head. He gets held at gunpoint in a cab and there's nothing he can do for a long time besides try to stall, and only a deus ex machina manages to save him. Psmith has perhaps gotten a little too comfortable in his ability to talk or bribe his way out of anything after the two previous books, and forcing him to confront his own naivete and mortality--however subtly--is good for him.

And in the end he still saves the day by fast-talking and throwing money at the problem, but he's hopefully been enriched by his experiences in New York and come away from it a more compassionate, self-aware person. He's going to need it for the next book.

For over a decade, Psmith, Journalist was the finale of the series. It ends with Mike and Psmith in Psmith's flat at Cambridge. Psmith sums up his adventures and our outcomes and how he feels about it all while Mike struggles to keep his eyes open. It's the smaller moments of peace and relaxation that stay with him, Psmith observes. Adventures are entertaining, but his heart is most in the pleasures of friendship and domesticity--even if he's still a bit grandiose about the outcome of his recent exploits. He's still very himself, but he's in a happier place than when he first appeared in this series. "The man behind Cosy Moments slept," declares the final line. And we're happy for him.

It's a pleasant, if not especially dramatic, conclusion that returns our hero to a setting evoking the heart of the series. But I don't think it reads like an intended closing of Psmith's entire story. There's evidence that Wodehouse was working on another Psmith book shortly after this one, but it seems to have been abandoned. Which is too bad! A story that flowed immediately from this one thematically, as Mike and Psmith and Psmith in the City do for each other, would have been an excellent addition to Psmith's arc. Where would his newly awakened altruism take him next? How might further growth (or attempts at such) affect him, especially against the backdrop of his law studies at Cambridge? That's a Psmith we'll never get to know, but all the same, the R. Psmith, journalist, who materializes in this volume is a persona that takes our hero a step or two more in the right direction toward personal growth.

#Psmith Pseptember

[centaurianthropology]

NY by Night S1E6 ‘When I am Hungry’ Thoughts

Apologies for the lateness of my viewing and synopsis, but here we are.  Better late than never.

The episode starts as the show started at the beginning, with four uneasy young vampires standing outside Cage.  This time, though, they’ve been through some things, and they know one another debatably better than they want to.  It’s an hour after the final conversations of the last episode, and they’ve all gotten texts from Richter.  After the divisions of the last episode, Serif seems far more withdrawn, Isaac and Fuego both have their masks firmly back in place, and Rey is unusually quiet.

He gets his attitude back when they meet Consuela again, who has her own mask up since last she and Fuego tangled.  It turns out that the Pit (the vampire fight club) is opening that night, though that apparently isn’t why our Coterie was asked to come to Cage.  Rey asks if Airbox wants to go another round, and for a guy who was lecturing Serif on having better self-preservation instincts, he certainly lacks some himself.  

It turns out that Richter has called them in due to the monster they fought two episodes ago, which definitely made the nightly news after it showed up on the overpass.  Isaac explains to Richter how their confrontation with the monster went down (including gleefully throwing Cat under the bus for attempting to ‘help’ them with it), and Richter explains that it’s called a wight, and it’s what happens when a vampire doesn’t deny its beast often enough.  Serif gives Fuego a very concerned look at this, and even Fuego looks a little taken aback.  It’s been very clear that she’s a little too in tune with her inner monster, and it will be interesting to see her evolve with the knowledge that she’ll lose her mind if she gives into its demands too often.  Interestingly, Richter (less observant than others, apparently), only sees Rey as the one to slip, but Rey tells him in no uncertain terms that he denies the beast as much as possible.  Richter encourages Rey to try harder.  Rey looks about like he expected this, and Isaac continues to play everything very cool.

The coterie hurries to assure Richter that they have everything under control.  Richter grudgingly recommends fire for a wight, and Isaac mentions he’s recently acquired something that might help.  Fuego uses force of personality to reassure Richter, Serif remains quiet, and Rey remains as aggressive as he can be in the circumstances.  I do love how they all continue to play hard into both what makes them unique and what makes them monstrous.

Richter then gives them one free question which, after some evasion from most of the coterie, ends up being an explanation about Elysium, a Camarilla concept of a neutral territory in which all kindred can exist unharmed.  This includes Anarchs, though leaving might become more difficult (perhaps a portend for season 3, in which our current Anarch coterie will be interacting heavily with next season’s Camarilla coterie).  After that, the group heads down to check out the Pit, with Rey making a surprising pass at Lizzie, the weird vampire in tattered couture before they leave.  

Fuego gets in a stare-down with Consuela, and she wins on the way out the door.  It seems like those two are rapidly developing beef, and I wonder when it’s going to come home to bite Fuego in the ass.  People are not afraid of another vampire for no reason, and there is something about Consuela that frightens people, according to the first episode.  But for now, she’s backed down, and takes the group to the basement.  Serif asks her who the man in the tanning booth from several episodes ago, and it turns out that his name was Jerry and he led a hunter to another one of the vampires.  That was what got him killed.  Serif quietly admits to Rey that he was right, which I take to mean he was right that she didn’t want to know.

When they reach the Pit they see Simone (played now by guest Persephone Valentine), who was last presiding over the room in the basement with mortals for vampires to feed on.  She is in the VIP box, still attended by mortals. The other person they see that they somewhat recognize is Fracis, the guitarist from Brox Cheer (previously seen in LA by Night as the guitarist for a previous band, Sour Sugar).  Serif casts chimestry and projects a graffiti ‘HI’ near Francis.  She heads over to talk to him.  Fuego decides to approach Simone accompanied by Isaac (and wow, have I been waiting for these two to interact more), and Rey decides to park himself there and watch the show, see who’s betting on what, who seems too interesting in something or not interested enough, basically just reading the room.

Fuego and Isaac go to the VIP booth, where Simone waves them in.  Simone is deliciously languors, and thought I first thought she was Toreador (the usual socialite vampires), the symbol next to her name indicates that she’s Ministry, the seductive corruptors who were formerly associated with the Sabbat. It’s very very interesting how many former Sabbat clans are showing up in this game, and I’m fascinated to see if the Camarilla has also embraced some of the Sabbat remnants, or if they’ve kept most out except the Lasombra, who are apparently incorporated into the Camarilla.

Persephone Valentine brings a fantastic inhuman drollness to Simone that makes her instantly intriguing. You wonder how many games she’s playing at any given time.  With Fuego Simone is as charming as she needs to be without putting herself out, and with Isaac she seems a little more formal in response to his usual weird politeness.  She’s clearly pumping Isaac and Fuego for information, and it’s interesting to see their responses to her questions.  Fuego is learning to be evasive, just a little more guarded, admitting they were doing ‘maintenance’ on their territory rather than specifying what they were doing. Isaac watches Fuego and Simone talk with rapt attention, but seems to be a little more pleased when Fuego starts to not just volunteer information.  She does admit that it’s their first territory, but that’s not exactly news, and something that’s fairly easy to admit.  

She also slips and calls what they do in their territory ‘land-lording’, and Simone responds that she shouldn’t call it that.  That they should care for those in their territory, mortal or not, and landlords don’t do that.  I would imagine that this is a far nastier shot than perhaps Simone realizes (or perhaps she knows all too well), that Fuego has vowed to take care of her community, but her very Ventrue nature makes her unconsciously place herself above the people around her.  I think those words come as a bucket of cold water over her head, and she disengages from the conversation, still present but mentally elsewhere.

That is, until Isaac, interested in digging for a bit of information of his own, asks Simone about where she lives, and she says she has apartments and mansions all over town, where her people live.  And that she was only embraced five years ago.  Snapping out of her reverie, Fuego has to ask what clan Simone is (that she could amass so much so fast), and we get confirmation that she is in fact with the Ministry.  She also suggests that running errands for Richter is not the ideal way to start one’s unlife.  That making one’s own way, without fetters, is far better.  However, she isn’t willing to immediately divulge how she would suggest they go about that, or how she went about that (which is likely down to being Ministry, who are quite organized).  She tells Isaac he would have to earn those answers, Isaac is his usual smiley self, and Fuego is just a little overwhelmed by everything, particularly when both of the others tell her to just breathe.  She momentarily snaps at Isaac not to tell her what to do, which I think is a callback to last episode, and a nod that, even if they’re playing as a united front in this place, all is definitely not settled amongst our coterie.

Meanwhile, Rey keeps watching the fights, while Serif and Francis talk.  Francis admits to being from LA, but has no more idea what went down in the Free States than Serif does.  He clearly wants to seem deeper than he is, making statements like ‘there’s a difference between freedom and autonomy’ while giving of an aura of quoting something he read rather than really knowing what it means.  However, once they start talking about thinbloods he opens up a little when she’s not repulsed or immediately withdrawn from him. He tells her about the blood magic that thin bloods can do (including flight) and that he can go out in the day. It’s clear she misses the sun, wishes she had what he does, even as he warns her that most kindred hate the thin bloods.  She says she doesn’t hate most people, but he just figures it’s a matter of time until she hates most.  He does agree to go on a tagging run with her, combining his magic with her paints.

Back in the VIP booth, things have come to a bit of a stand-still.  Isaac is curious about what Simone is offering, as is Fuego, but Fuego points out that she’s met a lot of vampires recently, and none of them give things away for free.  She wants Simone, lovely as she is, to cut to the fucking chase.  Simone says that she simply wants to know about this new coterie. When Fuego asks why, Simone tells her that all vampires are embraced for a reason, so she finds young vampires to be some of the most fascinating people in the world.  Fuego says she has no idea why she was embraced (a lie, but a smart one), and Simone doesn’t really care if Fuego knows the reason.  She wants to know about them personally.  She wants to be entertained.  Fuego punts Isaac into the social ring, and Isaac tells Simone about the monster, making it partly real and partly a fairy-story of gobbling up people whole.  After that, Fuego admits that she’s desperate to know how Simone has got her shit so well together, with such an obvious gathering of worshippers around her.  Because Fuego is feeling like a hot mess these nights, and all but admits such to Simone.

And that was what Simone seems to want, an admission of a problem she can solve.  Simone tells Fuego that those around her, who share her compounds (and Fuego’s little mouthing of ‘compounds’ is hilarious), who dote on her, be they mortal, ghoul, or kindred, love her, and she takes care of them.  Which is the heart of the Ministry, though she doesn’t tell Fuego that.  It’s interesting seeing Simone work, because she’s evangelizing the Ministry (which non-members can absolutely join), without saying that’s what she’s doing.  She’s just dangling her life in front of Fuego and hoping she bites.

Meanwhile, Francis wants to meet Serif’s friends, because he wants permission to come and go from their territory.  She wants to hold back on intros until after their art project, but he pushes: who should he talk to?  He proposes Rey with his ‘mind like an abacus’, but Serif immediately resists, still not forgiving Rey for making a ghoul.  So Francis asks her to be in the driver’s seat (while actually trying to manipulate her into introductions before the art), and asks her which of her friends he should talk to first.  It’s a clear gauge of Serif’s relationships with her Coterie.  

And Serif knows the manipulation for what it is, and the bullshit for what it is, and her friendliness evaporates as she both refuses to answer him about choosing amongst her coterie, and gives him what he wants by bodily hauling him over to the VIP section to introduce him to both Fuego and Isaac, while making it clear that this is not a friendly thing.  If he wanted her in the driver’s seat, then Serif is absolutely going to be setting the tone, and it won’t be in his favor.

Simone is immediately hostile to Francis, the first overt sign of vampire prejudice against the thinbloods this game, calling him trash and telling him to get out of her area. He glares at her, and tries to memorize her features.  She activates entrancement, and he falls immediately in love with her.  She sends him away and then asks Serif never to bring rif-raf to her area again.  Serif apologizes, and Simone redirects the conversation back on topic, about how they can all go about living their lives without being servants.  Serif is immediately and obviously almost as entranced as Francis was.

Rey sees that they’re all at the VIP box and joins them.  Simone pitches her way of life to him as well, while he comes back with the complications that inevitably stand in the way of living one’s life so free of fetters.  Sometimes getting what you want requires you to serve others.  Sometimes you do suffer because you suffer.  He clearly isn’t as ready to buy in as Serif is.  Simone agrees that sometimes life is disagreeable, but because those who serve her love her, she makes it so that there is far less suffering than there might be otherwise.  Her worshippers all agree, touching her reverently, and Serif suddenly seems a lot less interested when she realizes how entranced they all are. Rey seems wary too, and even Fuego looks cautious.  Isaac alone remains unchanged, polite but distant, forever unconvinced by Simone’s line.

But the Simone advises them to stop dying like they lived.  They have eternity, and they shouldn’t waste it just doing the same old shit, and that finally triggers something in Rey, who stalks down to the pit and challenges the next asshole in the ring, specifically a Nosferatu that had already beat several opponents.  Rey almost immediately gets a bestial failure, at which point Simone decides she likes him and tries to catch his opponent with Eyes of the Serpent, a power unique to a Minister.  But it’s too late not to have Rey lose himself to the beast, but rather than the traditional furry Gangrel, Rey’s spik pricks with scales, his eyes go flat black. Rey takes less after a wolf and more after a shark, and that is so fucking cool.

Isaac is fucking delighted, if only because this is so clearly something unexpected about Rey.  Fuego and Serif are worried.  Meanwhile, Simone goes serpentine and the Nosferatu becomes mesmerized by Simone.

Rey loses control, biting the Nosferatu, who is paralyzed.  Isaac won’t step in, but Serif will.  She soaring leaps into the ring, leaving Isaac alone with Simone.  Serif tries to drag Rey off the Nosferatu, Rey is still frenzying, Fuego jumps in to try to mesmerize Rey.  Rey realizes that Serif is in the way of his frenzy and starts burning willpower to keep himself from hurting her.

Simone asks Isaac if his friends have everything under control.  He tells her that they absolutely do not, but he doesn’t want her helping.  They will either learn to be less messy, or they won’t, but either way he thinks it’s a lesson that needs learned.  And with that Isaac takes himself down to the ring as well at a far more leisurely pace.

Rey, desperate not to hurt his friends, takes aggravated willpower damage in order to come out of frenzy and keep from hurting them.  Rey snaps at all of them for helping him, and Serif runs off, needing to find Francis and get away from her coterie.  The other kindred watching the fight also begin to leave, the fun finished for the night.

Simone makes her way down to the ring, activating awe so that kindred and ghouls get out of her way. Fuego activates unswayable mind and gets in between Simone and Rey, while Isaac spends willpower to resist and then choses to step aside.  Rey has already deflated.  It wasn’t the point he wanted to make at all, and he feels like he failed.  Simone tells him that there are good lessons in failure, but Rey doesn’t seem comforted.  Simone passes Fuego a wrapped parcel then, as it seems she was asked by a mutual acquaintance to give her something.  It’s wrapped in purple and gold tissue, and Fuego opens it immediately. Inside is a case, and inside that case is a pistol.  Fuego is confused, asking Isaac if this is from Angela, but instead she finds a card bearing a single letter: R.  As Fuego begins to quietly fall apart, seeing the initial of her sire attached to this gun, the episode closes.

 Thoughts

An interesting episode, albeit a lot slower paced than I was expecting.  After the momentum built last week, I had somewhat hoped for a blow-out between the coterie, a reckoning for everything, but instead they are interrupted and have to put on their company faces at what is essentially a vampire MMA fight.  We did get some fun moments--the conversations were great, but the standout moment was Rey turning into a fucking shark!  Simone is an interesting character, and a good way to introduce the Ministry to this game, but I found myself longing for at least a little time for our coterie to orient themselves and finally start working their shit out.  

Instead, we end this episode much as we ended the last one, with Serif running off, Fuego in crisis (this time thanks to her sire rather than murder), Isaac annoyed with the hot messes that are his coterie-mates and no longer willing to play nice with them beyond requirements, and Rey grappling with his beast and often failing.  It’s always interesting to see them interact with other kindred, and I really appreciate Persephone Valentine’s performance as Simone, but I do really want some serious forward momentum now.  We’re starting to look toward the end of the season, and our little coterie hasn’t done much.  They’ve reacted to a lot, sure, but they haven’t yet had a crucible moment to drag them all together.

Maybe this pistol is that step.  I don’t know if it’s just a gift, but I doubt it.  As Fuego herself said: no vampire gives anything for free, and it seems like her relationship with her Camarilla sire is a particularly nasty one.  I now have to wonder if she is essentially a Camarilla sleeper agent, placed under a blood bond or something and then triggered to assassinate a given target.  Richter is a possibility, as is Torque.  

Or perhaps it’s less a compulsion and instead has other meaning to Fuego, some other form of poisoned gift from the sire we know little about.  Would the coterie be willing to pull together to help her out of whatever mess Rafferty has put her in?  I’m not sure. Isaac wants them to learn to be less messy, but a sire’s compulsion is also something he understands, and he might recognize that conflict.  Serif likes Fuego the best of them at this point, but doesn’t like any of them terribly much.  Rey doesn’t trust Fuego, but he doesn’t like seeing her in pain or peril, so I think he’s the one most likely to step up to help.

We need a crisis for these characters, or this coterie is going to fall apart before it starts. They’re too different to stay together willingly, and even the territory wouldn’t be enough to keep Serif around for long unless some other major event keeps her there.  Likewise, Isaac seems to have little to hold him to the others beyond physical location.  Fuego misses her community.  Rey sticks around because he has nowhere else to go and no one else to take him in.

So I’m left feeling much as I did with the last episode, that these assholes have to get their shit together fast, and that will likely require some external event at this point. Here’s hoping that, after a week of social play, we get a real kick of plot come tomorrow.  And then we’ll see how this fragile coterie actually hangs together when the chips are down.

#NY by Night #synopsis #recap and thoughts

[helion-ism]

let’s talk about elucien

there are so many reasons why I love elain x lucien and why I think these two would not only be amazing together, but also why they belong together. one of those reasons is lucien’s sassy personality, which we already got a glimpse of in acotar (and that I miss terribly btw), and which is, in my opinion, exactly what elain needs in her life. we’re talking about lucien “your eyes are like stars, and your hair like burnished gold” vanserra. we know he’s got quite a big mouth, that’s how we got to know him, but we also know that mouth is exactly what’s gotten him into trouble before. case in point: the eye incident. lucien doesn’t mince his words and yes, that is one of the reasons why elain really needs to spend some more time with him. 

she has been coddled by not only her father, nesta, feyre, but also the entire inner circle, which has allowed her to live her life passively. yes, she killed the king of hybern, and good for her, but she did it because nobody else could have done it at that point in time. ever since the war ended, elain has not actively contributed to any plot matters, whether by choice or because someone else took the choice from her. azriel said in acosf, “there is an innate darkness to the dread trove that elain should not be exposed to.” even amren pointed out that elain is capable of defending herself, but for some reason, nobody let her even though elain said she would try to find it: “then I will find it. I might require some time to … reacquaint myself with my powers, but I could start today.” and yet,  by the end of the book, elain’s been barely in it and has not contributed at all. (I know some people claim there’s certain things already happening in the background, but honestly, I’m not satisfied with that development happening off page, so I can’t wait to finally go on her journey and actually see her do stuff)

this moment is crucial:

does it look like she is happy with the way the others treat her? not really. when nesta snapped at her, elain started laughing. that signals relief to me because nesta, the one who has always tried to protect elain the most (nesta baby Ilysm), is the one who suddenly lost her patience. elain needs somebody like lucien, somebody with a big mouth and sassy attitude, who can coax her out of that paralysis she’s been stuck in, a bit like nesta in this scene. additionally, the banter would be top tier. I want another “if I offer you the moon on a string, will you give me a kiss, too?” moment, please. god please. (elain blinks. “and where would you like that kiss?” — and lucien just loses his mind.)

another thing that lives in my head rent free is the fact that lucien has travelled almost everywhere and could introduce elain, who wishes to see more of the world (see: “elain had always wanted to visit the continent to study the tulips and other famed flowers”), to the different courts and the continent. I refuse to accept that we will not get to learn more about the other courts, for my sake, but also for elain’s sake. I want her to see the spring court at least once. I want her to go and see those tulips she’s dreamt of. I want her and lucien to discover the day court as a new home, which brings me to the next point. 

elain has been craving sunshine for some time now. there’s several quotes that emphasise her connection to sunshine/light, here are a few of my favourites: 

I marveled at it, actually — that those years of poverty hadn‘t stripped away that light from elain.

the suite was filled with sunlight. every curtain shoved back as far as it could go, to let in as much sun as possible. as if any bit of darkness was abhorrent.

she had been always so full of light. perhaps that was why she now kept all the curtains open. to fill the void that existed where all of that light had once been. and now nothing remained.

what can I get you, elain? — sunshine.

elain doesn’t belong into the night court. feyre has found her family there, with rhys and the inner circle. nesta has found (or should I say accepted) cassian and found gwyn and emerie, her chosen sisters. but elain?

elain is somewhere in the background hiding with the twins and tending to gardens of the citizens of velaris. you can’t tell me that is satisfactory to you. she is currently ignoring her seer abilities, and the members of the inner circle are basically encouraging her to do so. the only time she’s been confronted lately was during that conversation with nesta and her reaction was not exactly what any of us readers would have expected, was it? that tells me there’s much more about her we don’t know yet, and I’m convinced we won’t know until she finally leaves and finds her own people, finds herself again and start dealing with everything that happened to her. elain must leave the night court, i.e. the darkness, behind in order to grow.

the same goes to lucien: he’s not at a place where he can just jump into a relationship or mating bond. he’s got so much stuff going on. lucien was forced to abandon his home and his abusive family, his “father” killed the fae he loved in front of his eyes, his best friend is an abusive pos who never appreciated him anyway, and neither has anyone in the night court. lucien is used because of his connections and because of the mating bond that ties him to elain, whether he wanted it or not. feyre knows he would never turn away from elain unless she explicitly wishes him to, and so she and rhys and the others use that to their advantage. it is smart, of course, but at the same time, they also keep important information about his own life from him that could change many, many things. so he’s spending his time with mortals in the human lands — a place where he as a fae really does not belong. 

lucien being the heir to the day court, well, to me, it feels like sjm is practically screaming it into our face: how could he find a home in the night court, the literal opposite to the day? darkness vs. light. and what about elain “he’d never once in the two years he’d known her found elain to be plain, but wearing black, no matter how much she claimed to be part of this court … it sucked the life from her” archeron? just looking at the symbolism, not only do the quotes from above indicate that the night court cannot possibly be her home, but also very recent quotes from the latest book. elain is a side character in the night court. and so is lucien. they both need to leave in order to become main characters — and it doesn’t even matter that both are already crucial to the further plot of the series because how can they possibly contribute to it in a place where they are both kept down? 

mor said in acofas: “stay out of it. she’s not ready, and neither is he, no matter how many presents he brings.” and “let him figure out where he wants to be. who he wants to be. the same goes with her.” mor’s power is “truth”, whatever that means. but there you have it. they’re not ready to be with each other yet, and that’s okay. 

[elain and lucien are also connected not only because of the mating bond, but also because of the plot. lucien must know quite a lot about her and her sisters simply because of all the time he spent with their father. the father who made a bargain with koschei. koschei who put a spell on vassa. lucien is therefore tied to both papa archeron as well as koschei and vassa. elain, we know, is a seer, despite her not using her abilities (or is she, and we simply don’t know?). elain is (obviously) connected to her father, but also to koschei and vassa (remember those visions she had).]

now let’s get to the mating bond stuff, and I need to say this loud and clear: elain has always had and will always have one (1) true mate. there’s no such thing as “false mate” or even multiple mates. there has been no indication whatsoever. lucien is the mate the cauldron had given her when she was born. and elain is the mate the cauldron had given him when he was born. even when she was still human, they already belonged together — tied together by strings of fate. absolutely nothing will change this fact. should elain reject the bond, lucien will remain a part of her life/her soul forever. should lucien reject the bond, elain will remain a part of his life/his soul forever.

when she was still human, lucien had already felt a pull between them and tried to save and protect her from hybern. when elain was already fae, when it came to protecting her, azriel clapped cassian’s shoulder and left (is this the true mate they’re all talking about?). it’s unfair to lucien, elain, AND azriel and this comparison alone is enough to disprove this theory.

the thing is, lucien has been nothing but respectful, kind and caring towards elain. when he arrived in velaris in acowar, he could immediately sense what she needed and said, “she needs fresh air” (vs. the response “we’ll judge what she needs”) and “take her to the sea. take her to some garden. but get her out of this house for an hour or two.” (I’m gonna make another post about this because I have a few thoughts on this)

of course, she doesn’t owe him anything, but elain herself doesn’t wish to be treated like a child, she maybe she should start acting like an adult because although she doesn’t owe lucien an apology or explanation, she has to have a conversation with him, like two responsible adults. there is no way feyre or anyone in the inner circle hasn’t told her that she can reject the bond and move on with her life. but just like her powers, this is another thing she chooses to ignore. I’m not blaming her because I know she has to work through her trauma first and heal, but by the end of the series, she has to acknowledge that at least.

in acosf, elain says “I am not a child to be fought over” when they discuss the dread trove. I wonder what she would say about the fact azriel threatens to challenge lucien to the blood duel because of her? based on literally everything we know about lucien, I can say with certainty that he would not physically fight over elain. if she only had a conversation with him and told him to move on and leave her alone, lucien would do just that. he would leave her alone and try to move on as best as he could (which we know is difficult for males). but he would never act as entitled to her as to demand a blood duel and fight to death. it goes against his principles. 

to finish this off, sjm summing up everything I just said:

#elucien #mating bond #mp

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Whump you say? Geralt gets Hanahaki

I’ve been waiting for you, Anon. I’ve been waiting for this prompt specifically and boy when I tell you I might have cried writing it...

2k ish (a little less) words long. Idk why y’all were worried, it’s me. It’s gonna have a happy ending.

tw: Hanahaki, blood mention, illness, angst with a happy ending, whump with a happy ending ---

It had started up just before they parted ways for the winter; Geralt had quietly coughed a handful of rose petals into the corner of his cloak and hidden them from sight as Jaskier gave him their yearly parting embrace. “See you in the spring, Geralt!”

“Hmm.”

You might not ever see me again, actually, the Witcher thought. He tried not to let anything show on his face; not his fear and certainly not his longing, but he ached to tell Jaskier that he loved him and that he’d miss the bard’s presence through the long and dreary cold of the winter months. Geralt also knew that if he told Jaskier the truth about his feelings that he may never set eyes on the bard again anyway, regardless of how the disease currently wracking his body developed over their time apart. He was sure that Vesemir could identify whatever the strange illness was; the old swordmaster might even have a cure ready to go in the old storeroom. If not, they could send for Triss. 

“Safe travels.”

“And you as well,” Geralt nodded curtly. He mounted Roach with all his usual grace and ease, biting back another cough and tasting the sickly sweet floral note of rose rising up his throat to coat his tongue again. 

---

“Fuck,” Vesemir sighed. “It’s Hanahaki disease, Geralt. It’s not going to be easy to cure now that the pass is full of snow.”

“What’s Hanahaki disease?”

“It’s-” the eldest Wolf Witcher scrubbed his hand over his bearded face and took a moment to compose himself. He’d seen it happen before. He’d seen human bodies buried in the ground with entire root systems crawling from their chest cavities. He’d watched young men and women alike cough entire violet or rose or daisy buds from their mouths while they shivered with fever and seemingly unending pain, but a Witcher? Vesemir hadn’t even thought it was possible for a Witcher to contract such a frivolously deadly illness. “I don’t know exactly how to explain this to you, Geralt.”

“I won’t go screaming into the hills, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” his middle-child joked, “I can’t run very far anymore without a coughing fit.”

“I can’t send for Triss or Yennefer, either. They won’t be able to do anything,” Vesemir spoke calmly and evenly. Geralt, propped against some pillows on adoptive-father-enforced bed rest raised an eyebrow. “It’s a disease that eats at you from the inside out. It latches on to, uhm, romantic feelings and grows with them until it overtakes its host completely. Or until the host, uh… confronts those feelings head on and admits them to the object of their affection.”

“So this is…” Geralt’s eyes were wide and terrified. The eldest Wolf had never seen the stoic boy look quite so scared before, and he’d seen him go through the Trials. “This is going to kill me, is what you’re saying.”

“Who are you in love with, you stubborn oaf!?” Lambert cried, marching into the room from where he’d been lurking in the hall. He startled the other two Wolves and Geralt coughed out another handful of petals. The blood that came with them was surprisingly new. 

“What do you mean!?”

“He means,” Vesemir said, as slowly as possible (so that even the great Geralt of Rivia would understand his situation), “That until you tell this person how you feel, the flowers inside you will continue to grow and dig their roots in and, if you never tell them how you feel at all, you will eventually die.”

“Then I guess my fate is sealed,” Geralt smiled sadly, settling himself back against the pillows. “My time as a Witcher is up. Coughing up flowers isn’t the worst way to go, all things considered.”

Lambert growled angrily. “I’m not ready to lose my brother yet, Geralt, so just tell us who you’re pining after and we’ll go fetch her back!”

“No.”

“Why the fuck not?!”

Geralt, growing increasingly more feverish and already exhausted from everything that had happened that afternoon, closed his eyes. “Because he deserves better than me, Lambert. He deserves so much more than I could ever give him and I’m not about to steal him away like a selfish ass and force my feelings onto him for my own sake. I’d rather die.”

“Self-sacrificing bastard,” the youngest of the Wolf Witchers snarled, storming from the room. “Ass! Cock! Fool!”

Vesemir could only nod his agreement and follow silently after.

---

Jaskier read the letter once.

Then he read it again.

After a third time through he was sure that he hadn’t misunderstood the contents.

Dear Jaskier (aka Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, Prof. of the Seven Liberal Arts at Oxenfurt),

I am Eskel, brother to Geralt of the Wolf Witcher School at Kaer Morhen. I write to you now to ask for your presence at the keep. Geralt has fallen gravely ill and will not likely make it through the season. He does not know that I have written to you, but as his best friend and companion on the Path, I thought it my duty to invite you to see him one last time before he’s gone for good. He’s loathe to admit it, but he misses you and fears for your safety come springtime.

Sincerely,

Eskel of the Wolf School

Somewhere beneath the bright embroidery of his doublet and the hand-woven muslin of his chemise, Jaskier’s flighty, deeply-loving heart shattered into a million pieces. 

He grabbed his heaviest woolen cloak from its peg near the door and made for the stables at once.

---

“Geralt!”

The White Wolf opened his eyes a sliver to confirm that he wasn’t hallucinating again; ah yes. What a lovely last dream to have before I die. Standing in the middle of his bedroom at Kaer Morhen, covered with still-melting snow, was Jaskier. The bard’s blue eyes were brimming with tears and his bottom lip was wobbling violently as he gazed upon the Witcher’s withering form.

“Geralt, what’s wrong? Your father and brothers sort of explained it to me but I’m still not sure what’s happening. You’re dying?”

“Don’t worry, bard,” Geralt smiled. A loud, sudden cough wracked his body and he bent over double, spitting a blood-spattered but fully-bloomed rose out into his cupped palm. He laughed joylessly and tossed the bloom onto his bedside table. “I’ll be out of your hair, soon. Won’t this be a last ballad to write, a wolf dying as he’s eaten by flowers?”

“I don-”

“Hush,” Geralt rasped. Jaskier dropped his cloak to the ground uncaringly and rushed to his Witcher’s side. He sat on the edge of the mattress and took Geralt’s closest hand in his, grasping the appendage to his chest and sobbing into the sword-calloused skin like his tears might save his best friend’s life. “Don’t be sad, Jaskier.”

“I am sad, Geralt! I’m absolutely fucking terrified and heartbroken and crushed! Vesemir said you could heal this at any time but you just… you just won’t because you’re stubborn and an idiot and the sweetest goddamn man I’ve ever met in my life! How dare you tell me goodbye when you are perfectly capable of fixing this problem yourself! How could you promise to see me in the spring and then break your word by dying well before the grass turns green again?! You bastard!”

“You won’t miss me after another year passes,” Geralt reassured him, flexing the hand still held tight in Jaskier’s grip. “You won’t even remember me by the time the first daisies spring up.”

“How dare you,” the bard cried again. He pressed a nervous kiss to the tip of the Witcher’s pointer finger before letting go completely and dropping his head into his own hands. “How dare you say those things to me when you know full well that I love you with all my stupid, fragile mortal heart. You asshole.”

“Wh...what?” 

“I love you, Geralt!” The Witcher stared up at his friend with nothing but confusion written across his handsome features. Jaskier reached out, wiping a smear of blood away from the corner of Geralt’s mouth as tenderly as any maiden in any of the bard’s favorite romance novels. “I love you and I’ll never forgive you for letting yourself die on me like this.”

Geralt blushed. He stammered. He coughed up two or three more bloody roses and Jaskier tossed them all into the fire with rage blazing in his cornflower irises. 

“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything on this gods-forsaken Continent and now you’re going to take yourself away because you’re, what, scared of something? Is it Yennefer? If she’s refusing to help you then I’ll ride all the way to Vengerberg by daybreak and then I’ll break all her fucking fi-”

“I love you, too.”

“What?” Jaskier asked, stopped mid-rant and mid-thought by the Witcher’s sudden admission. “What did you just say to me, Geralt? If I didn’t misunderstand, you said you loved me too.”

“I did. I do! I have loved you for a rather long time, actually.”

“Well, I’m glad we’ve settled that,” Vesemir said from the doorway. He turned on his heel and disappeared. “See you both for breakfast tomorrow, I’m sure. Well... maybe breakfast is being a bit optimistic. I’ll see you for lunch.”

“What did he mean?” the bard asked. His eyes flitted between the empty doorway and Geralt’s guilty grimace. “What the fuck did Vesemir mean when he said he’d see us at lunch?! You’re still clearly dying and I-”

Geralt felt his fever receding and coughed experimentally. There were only a few brown, half-dried petals that fell from his lips. No blooms. He coughed again and nothing came out of his mouth at all. He grinned and laughed, tugging Jaskier up onto the bed and against his broad chest. “Vesemir was right!”

“What the fuck is going on?!” the bard begged. His hands twisted into the neckline of Geralt’s shirt, holding him still and steady. Blue bore into gold with such heated intensity that the Witcher thought he might pass out regardless of his recently healed disease, “What just happened!?”

“I- I told you I loved you and it cured the Hanahaki!”

“You had fucking Hanahaki and I was the cause of it? Oh Geralt, I’m so sorry! I should have noticed sooner! I should hav- Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“I didn’t think you loved me back.”

“You didn- Geralt, have you been paying any sort of attention for the past seven or so years? I follow you everywhere, I bandage your wounds, I put food on your plate and a pillow under your head whenever we get the chance. I bathe you and mend your clothes when your fingers are too stiff from practicing your forms to do it yourself… you utter fool. You buffoon. You great, dumb, goofy, idioti-”

He was cut off by Geralt bringing their mouths together with such gentle but insistent pressure that all Jaskier could do was melt against him. His hands unwound from the shirt and stabilized against the Witcher’s pectorals instead. He sighed into Geralt’s mouth, swallowing down the happy sounds his dearest Witcher made in return. When they were finished pouring out their affections they sat, breathless, curled against the pillows of Geralt’s enormous bed. 

A large pointer finger slipped beneath Jaskier’s chin and tilted his face up, locking their gazes, “This isn’t how I wanted you to meet my family or see Kaer Morhen for the first time, but I’m glad you came. I know the journey through the snow couldn’t have been easy, even though I’m sure there was some magical assistance.”

“For you, my love, I’d travel the pass barefoot.”

“You’d die of exposure.”

“Not if your life was on the line,” the bard murmured against those flower-chapped lips. “For you, Geralt, I could survive anything. Just as you must swear from this moment on to survive whatever you can to make it back to me.”

“Will you go back to the academy until spring?”

“I’m never leaving your side again, Geralt of Rivia. Come flora or fauna, you’re stuck with me for good.”

“Hmm. Good.”

“Just… Just don’t bring me flowers any time soon.”

#geraskier #geraskier whump #hanahaki disease #hanahaki #geralt whump #bounceacoinoffyouranons #sick geralt #sickfic #clueless jaskier #clueless geralt #eskel #lambert #vesemir #winter at kaer morhen #the kaer morons #geralt/jaskier #geralt is an idiot #idiots to lovers #blood tw #body horror tw #angst #angst with a happy ending #bouncey's fluff addiction #geraskier fluff #first kiss #love confessions #near death experiences

[larrythefloridaman]

Y'all like your deities with or without the shell?

Under the readmore is aaaaaaaaall color god observations and musings based on them, because I am studying to become the world's Premiere Chromatheologian and RGB Understander so under the cut is pretty much Oops! All Spoilers! up to the most recent episode of season 3.

Apparently Universal Color God Attributes:

Damage to their domain hurts them, but fixing the issue, or lashing out by using their powers destructively, can help them to repair the damage.

If they sustain enough damage, it can temporarily paralyze them and send them into a strengthened but 'exposed' state (chartreuse's spirit activation in the last fight of 19) and further damage after that will activate a failsafe, which is unique by domain but seemingly designed to give them the chance to balance things, but can get… very out of hand or backfire depending on circumstances. (see: cobalt’s failsafe sending mark's universe into a never-ending apocalyptic war because word of the cure for death became too widespread for the killing urge failsafe to affectively balance anything because every side could simply revive their fallen.)

Chartreuse's failsafe is something of a stopped time bubble quarantine where processes that require the passing of time cannot complete, allowing her the time to wear down the offending party to beat them to death or plan around finishing them.

Cobalt's is inciting war, the casualties serving to balance the scale. I'm not sure we know Crimson's yet- he's never taken enough direct damage without doing damage to compensate in order to trigger it, although i dont remember season one well enough to recall if any of the universe stuff in it tracks with the pattern bc season one is a bit fucky

Connected in a fashion that allows them to simply Sense the overall status of the others to some extent, although they don't know Why theyre in the state theyre in without asking (chartreuse [and by extension, folk, presumably on her information] confronting crimson via crimsonaut for pretending to be dead, Cobalt confronting both his siblings about how they are handling their duties improperly but not knowing about Folk. He knew about the constants deaths because hes a death god, duh, but he didnt use their names like crimson did, possibly implying they're erased upon death so thoroughly that only crimson and the constants can really recall a shattered constants' existence, not even the other guardians.)

Abilities of the guardians can be replicated by mortals through three apparent methods- through machines (dimensional bus, the time machine, presumably J0hn's part in Sephiroth's resurrection,) simply through advanced enough individual skill (Home MD curing death, potentially Dantoinette's universe portal travel, maybe Genwun's sped up time bubble that evolved them into Genfour? although that could very well have just been an illusion and theyre just like, a fuckin theater kid that was doing pretend character development for the Bit or something given GenFive turned out to be a zoroark) or through stealing some of the power of the relevant god (Dr. Order stealing Chartreuse's power, Dani maybe having stolen some of Crimson's when she beat his ass. Dani's one woman universal travel is like, wicked ambiguous)

Cobalt:

Can seemingly perceive or act through any living material. (The Tree. Cobalt instructed Larry to slap his hand on that tree, that shit glowed and he had a new deal tattoo without Cobalt ever having been physically present)

Can influence the resurrected by giving them a killing urge. Represented by an aberrant brainwave and a ringing in the undead's heads. This doesnt appear to be direct control- as the Grunk could clearly restrain himself from killing people that genuinely didn't deserve it (like nightly and cha cha, who WERE grunk event targets but not fatally so. Nagito was a crimson thing so it really doesn't count here. God poor grunk his life really is just a constant plaything in the hands of the gods huh) and Sephiroth very much had personal motivation to want to kill Folk. failsafe activates this ability on the scale of war.

Deals. The extent of what Cobalt can do with these is unclear but Iggy's god powers were taken from him as his part in the deal so what he can take isn't limited to physical things or things obviously related to his domain.

Weaknesses:

Deals. While this ability is impressive his preference for making deals for those that offend against his domain is potentially very exploitable- Larry's knowledge of the cure for death is, if word of it were to ever get out beyond Larry, wildly dangerous for this dimension, so technically the safest thing for the iron-fisted cobalt to do would be to nip the problem in the bud and get rid of him. But, fascinatingly, that wasn't even put on the table, the first thing Cobalt does is threaten J0hn, prompting Larry to make a deal. While Cobalt enforces death, he also doesn't like unnecessary death, and Larry demonstrably knows how to keep a secret for the good of the world even at great cost to himself and Cobalt is aware of this- easily clarifying to Larry the aberrant thing endangering the universe wasn't his timeloop business. So while he's clearly not letting his resurrection fuckery go unpunished, he's being pretty merciful when he doesn't have to be and from a strictly, brutally pragmatic perspective probably shouldn't be.

His control over the undead manifests as a ringing and an aberrant brainwave trackable by J0hn's equipment, and could probably therefore be accounted for and circumvented? J0hn has, wisely, largely sworn off fucking with people's brains after the sephiroth fiasco went So Wrong, So Very Wrong, Oh God Oh Fuck Someone Cool Almost Died, but if he hadn't, and if J0hn let his dislike for authority and keeping Larry safe outweigh reason like he let safety, spite and comedic value outweigh good ethical sense when reprogramming sephiroth, in theory Mr. 'hacked a time machine for breakfast?' could. y'know. probably do it. what is a god's authority to an anarchist, what better to challenge life and death than the cold and eternal machine, you get the point its a fun scenario

Olive Garden Breadsticks and Small Cute Dogs, apparently

Chartreuse's:

Time Clones: taps into parallel timelines to retrieve alternate versions of herself to utilize.

Time Travel: what it says on the tin. Travel to the past creates painful splits in the prime timeline, but through careful action and traveling back into the past, these can be weaved into a time loop. A split from the timeline is a wound, and a successful timeloop is the surgical scar it can become with attentive care, to use a medical metaphor. Carefully closed and healing. Keeping Folk here is essentially akin to chartreuse pulling out her stitches on the initial incision.

Time Stopping: creates a space wherein things that take time to complete cannot complete, where things can move, but everything within is in a perfect unchanging stasis until the bubble drops. This is the form her failsafe takes.

Timeline Creation: can create timelines from scratch.

Can fuse alternate timeline versions of the same individual to allow them to coexist. (Ryan's confirmed in the discord that Dantoinette experienced both failures in 20, because Chartreuse fused the two instances of her to save the post-raid instance from fading. Could... theoretically do this to Folk and save herself the pain, but while Folk and Therapuppy are the same person, there's seven years and untold amounts of difference deriving from the time and circumstance between them and the inherent cognitive dissonances that would result from attempting that would be wicked fucked up to inflict, and that's assuming there isn't some reason that it wouldn't be possible anyway. while the two Danis had like. A day or so's difference between them, so she could be safely fused with the only dissonant thing being that she remembers both being too slow to prevent order's time escape and beginning to dissipate post-raid, AND losing that fight to her pre-raid. RIP Dani, that perfectionism must be kicking her ass)

Weaknesses:

Unwilling to use her powers destructively in her pursuit of domain repair and thereby much easier to damage to the point of paralyzing her, making her particularly vulnerable to Power Theft

Morally Optimistic. At one point in 19, she briefly justifies Crimson's shitty evil actions to herself after experiencing for herself how Wack the kerfuffleverse is firsthand, ("and all he did was kill a couple people!" Chartreuse. Honey.) and when she fights Crimsonaut she seems to actually believe for a second that he's actually worried about her when Crimson asks if she's okay after he beats her. Additionally, as D+, she concerns herself with trying to understand doctor order's motive, and after Larry defeats Order, he makes a point of confirming she feels no remorse before making his request for what Chartreuse does with her, and appeals to the idea of letting Order fulfill her desire to be a god in a way which isn't a problem for anyone and Chartreuse is more than happy to oblige under these conditions after what Larry's done for everybody. Then immediately threatens to evaporate him for playfully teasing her about having a crush on folk. Fucked up a little bit

Crimson's:

Universe Shifting: Travel between universes.

Universe Correction: appears to replace an aberrant individual with the 'correct' version of themselves for that universe, presumably sending them back to their own. (Mario from super mario was universe corrected, but still seemingly exists in wario form as evidenced by smashup kerfuffle, and was simply temporarily replaced with his corrected universe counterpart. But like. The dimensional bus system is still active crimbo doing the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me routine aint gonna work if they can come back with a shrug and bus fare. you're fighting the symptoms without treating the problem)

Universal Constants:

Three individuals per universe that serve as the pillars which stabilize said universe, created by absorbing red orbs Crimson creates. Becoming a constant grants power, but also makes the constant fragile, and death wipes them from the face of the multiverse, only crimson, those he's possessed and the other constants seemingly able to recall they ever existed, although some physical evidence is still left behind (Larry's record of Nagito's death, which is just as redacted as everything else relating to him but still is very much something Larry has. Kind of a Voidfish adventurezone type beat ironically enough? Taako really has seen all this shit before no wonder he peaced tf out)

To counterbalance the weaknesses the constants have, they have a sort of spidey-sense to alert them to danger, and an intrinsic bonded connection to their fellow constants, and additionally, Crimson apparently doesn't suffer any pain from the death of constants or the structural instability of a universe.

Possession: what it says on the tin! Seemingly can only be done with permission to living things- none of crimson's direct hosts seem to have entered that agreement unwillingly, Valentine lost a bet, Hamburger and Crimsonaut have been by all evidence intentional allies to Crimson- but electronics are fair game, as seen with The Guy's suit. Kinda curious how that rule applies to bitches that are half and half, like J0hn or the clonebot gang, as its unclear whether The Guy's suit was yoinkable without permission because it was mechanical or because its not sentient. could go either way but if it's the former that's potentially very frightening

Fusion: Two individuals from alternate universes can be fused into one shared body which can take on aspects of either depending on which is currently in control. (possibly allows someone who traveled into a given universe to become a fixed resident there without it being an issue for Crimson, whose job is to prevent interdimensional travel?) Monday Mark and possibly T.O.M. are our main examples.

Corruption:

Unpleasant As Hell and can even kill you instead of changing you if you cant handle it.

turns the corrupted individual into a twisted exaggeration of themself, allows them supernatural control over their shape, and makes them very difficult- if not impossible by traditional means- to kill, based on Garfield.

Subjects them to control by Crimson, but can be exorcised of this influence just like crimson's direct hosts can, although the supernatural changes to their physiology are seemingly permanent, judging from Shantae.

Notable Weaknesses:

Exorcism can be performed to free a possessed or corrupted individual of Crimson's influence. Its unclear how exorcism works/is learned in CPUK, but confirmed exorcists: dantoinette and yung papaya's snake dad, confirmed non-exorcists: folk

The universal constant orbs are physical objects so they are Very Stealable and they grant a power boost so theres literally an Incentive to beat his ass for anybody who wants to be strong and either doesnt know or doesn't care about the whole 'getting erased when you die' part

Crimson has lots of tools to create pawns, but all of them have drawbacks. Corruption could kill a potential pawn, possession generally seems to require permission, and he has no control over the constants' choices and actions

Manipulative bitch's highest stat is charisma and it shows. This motherfucker is selling snake oil. If he was mortal rather than a Whole Entire God he'd make an excellent ineffectual saturday morning cartoon supervillain and i think everyone, including him, would be happier for it, ngl

Something interesting ive realized that likely wasnt fully intentional, is that a lot of Dr. Order's creations, considering her motive, can kind of be sorted by a color god it appears to be a crude attempt at mimicking the abilities of. My Grunk is a poorly executed resurrection, the clonebot gang vs chartreuse's timeclones (this one deserves special mention because Chartreuse used this shitty attempted mimicry to her advantage with D+, very smart and ironic play, excellent job Treusy,) spirits are somewhat similar to universal constant orbs (orbs which can be absorbed to grant power, but which have physical repercussions- key differences being that spirits require activation and grow stronger while attuning to a user without being used, and having far less severe drawbacks, taking a heavy toll on the body, but only once they've worn off and without the risk of wiping yourself from the face of existence,) and she also augmented Perfect Spriteman and Larry, which kind of track as crude imitations of Crimson's corruption!

Garfield was an acerbic cat who loved food and hated mondays, now its an actively malicious ever-hungry amorphous entity whose only weakness is monday and whose only consistency in form is 'cat-like.'

Shantae was (to my extremely limited understanding of shantae,) a friendly heroic type who had to introduce herself often, and she became something akin to a biblically accurate angel that can *only* introduce herself.

The Grunks a tough but sweet and supportive single dad with stage presence and a tendency to fly off the handle when he or his family are slighted, and now he gets so hype in the audience when his son does well that he bursts into flames and ascends and we get random grunk events along with the associated murder charges when he gets mad and the target sucks enough that he doesn't hold himself back from killing them.

Perfect Spriteman and Larry fit the trend of exaggeration of already present traits- Spriteman fucking loves sprite and became something that only thinks about sprite, and Larry the Florida Man, characterized from minute one by unpredictability and who spent his first matches in the series pre-shapeshifter transformation staying alive keeping stocks for Shockingly Long even despite getting seventh, became literally physically random as well as developing the ability to regenerate, albeit with the ability to feel pain normally very much intact, unlike Garfield just... Soaking up damage like its nothing in his pursuit of Jon. The fact that Arbuckle legit defeated Garfield, even temporarily, is terrifyingly impressive honestly that dude is fucking built different for being so chronically bland

i dont think they're actually corrupted in any meaningful way we have to worry about, to be fully clear, Spriteman was cured with fucking antacids, i simply think they could be a fucked up attempt at making something that kind of seems like it from a functional standpoint, from the wannabe god doctor that brought us green clones whose only fundamental association with time was accelerated aging and who thought an actively rotting corpse thats just reanimated enough that it can throw hands was as good as curing death

#cpu kerfuffle #cpuk cobalt #cpuk chartreuse #cpuk crimson #im like. 80% all this info is correct but im not feeling up to rewatching matches to doublecheck rn ngl asdsfgfghgfhfgsdf #will probably edit with fixes if im misremembering smthn later

[big-oof-bi-goof]

So there’s this meme going around with TMA fans, the whole “hello Jon” thing, but it kind of disappoints me. We, as a fandom, are capable of more. We can do better than this. We just need to Hello Jon. Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.

I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.

Now, shall we turn the page and try again?

Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, The Archivist.

Statement begins.

I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious.

Why does a man seek to destroy the world?

It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.

It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, Jon, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice.

I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.

I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.

Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott, and the rest – to discuss and hypothesize on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner, I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.

But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of our patrons.

I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.

At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be an inevitable transformation was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment soon became a race.

Beyond that, I was getting older, and mortality began to weigh more heavily on my mind. How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror?

I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank, leading him to design it as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, such that my own modifications to the design of the Panopticon went… unremarked.

It. Took. Years, for the dread of the prisoners to fully suffuse the place, and I was an old man before I made my first attempt at the Watcher’s Crown, sat in the center of that colossal eye, the great ring of cells encircling me like a coronet.

It was… flawed, of course, as all Smirke’s rituals were, and none of the inmates survived as the power I attempted to harness shook the building almost to pieces, and the murky swamp upon which the prison was built consumed it.

But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to.

It was a dizzying power, and one I discovered I maintained even as I found vessels to extend my life. Of course, I had to make sure the location was kept under my control while I worked on revising my plans, and so I moved the organization I had founded to assist in my research down to London, and the Institute as you know it was born.

I’ll not bore you with details of my bodies and failures through those intervening years. Suffice to say I kept busy, both planning my own next attempt, and doing my best to stymie those others who tried versions of their own.

Surely my interpretation of the Watcher’s Crown had been incomplete; there had been some element of the ritual I had overlooked.

It was not until I met Gertrude Robinson that things began to really come into focus.

You see, the role of Archivist has been part of the Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers; most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.

But Gertrude was unlike any other Archivist. She simply did not care about compiling experiences or collecting the fears of others. She was driven to stop those who served the Powers.

More than once I thought she must secretly be of the Hunt – but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times.

I once asked her what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me the Desolation had killed her cat.

I don’t know if she was joking, and, to be honest, I could never bring myself to look into her mind and find out for sure.

In any case, Gertrude’s ruthless efficiency in derailing and collapsing rituals threw into stark relief a question that had been bothering me for almost a hundred and fifty years: In the whole span of humanity, why had nobody ever succeeded?

Perhaps there were a long line of Gertrude Robinsons throughout history, but I found that hard to credit. Could it be, then, that there was something in the very concept of the rituals that meant they couldn’t succeed?

She was clearly having similar thoughts in that last year, all of which culminated with the People’s Church.

When I saw that she was making no preparations whatsoever to stop it, I realized she was putting into practice a theory, and one she couldn’t afford to be wrong. She was going to wait, and see if the unopposed ritual succeeded, or if it collapsed under its own strain as mine had all hose years ago.

Knowing Gertrude, I’m sure she had a backup plan if she had miscalculated – but she had not. The ritual failed. And all at once, I realized what had to be done.

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down.

To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.

Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.

The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once. All fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge. All under the Eye’s auspices, of course. We mustn’t forget our roots.

And there was only one being that could possibly serve as a lynchpin for this new ritual: The Archivist. A position that had so recently become vacant, thanks to Gertrude’s ill-timed retirement plans.

Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.

It might, perhaps, be better named: The Archive.

Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.

You are a living chronicle of terror.

Perhaps, then, if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and each in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom.

Do you see where I’m going, Jon?

It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.

I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but My God, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.

Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push, learn how you worked – So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and, while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be.

I reasoned if you couldn’t survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen. So, when Jane Prentiss attacked, I watched eagerly, one hand on the gas release from the start.

You acquitted yourself well enough, so I decided to see how far you would get, though I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones.

The discovery that one of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated the Institute in the aftermath was certainly a pleasant bonus. Even if that sliver of paranoia, that vague wrongness you couldn’t quite place wouldn’t count as a mark, it was only a matter of time before it confronted you in a far more direct and affecting matter.

Admittedly, given the advent of the Unknowing, I needn’t have bothered. But what’s the old saying about hindsight?

More important to me was Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion. If it had taken an interest, then I very much wanted it to cross your path.

So I found one of its current victims and convinced her to make a statement.

Poor Helen. I actually had to put her in a taxi myself, she was getting so lost in those narrow London side streets.

It worked, though.

Between the stabbing and at least two desperate flights into its doors – you’re marked very deeply by the Spiral.

Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast.

I… justified it to myself saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway, if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.

Still. I’d requested Detective Tonner be assigned to the case when they found Gertrude’s body in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.

Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you.

Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.

Honestly, I had – nothing to do with Melanie and her Slaughter adventure, but when I saw the situation, I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right there, a ready target.

I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

The Unknowing was a distraction, but not an unwelcome one. For this to work, you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things.

And it did serve another purpose, of course. It inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate. If I tried too early, you’d just die. Too late, and you might be powerful enough to see the attempt coming, and maybe even understand why.

As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colors.

By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you Knowing something you shouldn’t.

I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal.

All that remained, then, were the Dark, the Flesh, the Buried, and the Lonely.

I was a little put out when that idiot Jared Hopworth misinterpreted my letters and attacked the Institute too soon, before you were even out of the hospital, but then – Ho, you should have see my face when you voluntarily went to him.

I couldn’t see what happened in there, of course, but given how you came out, I’m very sure it counts as a mark.

I suspected the coffin might turn up again, and once it did, it was simply a matter of getting any, uh… restraining factors you might have had flying off on a wild goose chase, and waiting.

Honestly, Detective Tonner has been proving invaluable through this process. I’d been racking my brains for months about what I could use to lure you in.

And, of course, I knew the Dark Sun was just sitting there waiting. So when it came time, I just whipped up another apocalypse and sent you on your merry way.

Then all that remained was the Lonely.

Poor Peter. He really should have left well enough alone. Or just done what I’d asked in the first place.

Ah well. He knew what I was attempting, and was very unwilling to cooperate until I made him a little wager about Martin.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that, in addition to setting you up for the final mark, he was giving you all the tools you needed to escape from it.

How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that.

And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. I have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane, but past here lies only impatience.

You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you, and the time of our victory is here.

Don’t worry, Jon. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made.

Now. Repeat after me.

You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.

Come to us in your wholeness.

Come to us in your perfection.

Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and leads and dies!

Come to us.

I – OPEN – THE DOOR!

#tma #the magnus archives #jonah magnus

[les-mooserables]

Hello, John

[AS SOON AS HE BEGINS SPEAKING, A WHIZZING STATIC KICKS IN FROM THE BACKGROUND.]

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.

I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. (slightly strained) I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.

Now, shall we turn the page and try again?

[THE ARCHIVIST MAKES A PAINED COUPLE OF SOUNDS OUT-OF-STATEMENT-CHARACTER, AS IF HE’S TRYING TO TEAR HIMSELF AWAY FROM THE STATEMENT AND PHYSICALLY CANNOT.][WHEN HE PICKS THE STATEMENT BACK UP, THE WORDS SOUND LIKE THEY’RE BEING TORN FROM HIS LIPS.]ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, The Archivist.

Statement begins.

[A SLAP ON THE TABLE – OR A CRACK? SPOOKY.]

I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious.

Why does a man seek to destroy the world?

It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.

It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, John, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice.

I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.

I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.

Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott, and the rest – to discuss and hypothesize on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner, I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.

But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of our patrons.

I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.

At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be an inevitable transformation was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment soon became a race.

Beyond that, I was getting older, and mortality began to weigh more heavily on my mind. How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror?

I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank, leading him to design it as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, such that my own modifications to the design of the Panopticon went… unremarked.

It. Took. Years, for the dread of the prisoners to fully suffuse the place, and I was an old man before I made my first attempt at the Watcher’s Crown, sat in the center of that colossal eye, the great ring of cells encircling me like a coronet.

It was… flawed, of course, as all Smirke’s rituals were, and none of the inmates survived as the power I attempted to harness shook the building almost to pieces, and the murky swamp upon which the prison was built consumed it.

But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to.

It was a dizzying power, and one I discovered I maintained even as I found vessels to extend my life. Of course, I had to make sure the location was kept under my control while I worked on revising my plans, and so I moved the organization I had founded to assist in my research down to London, and the Institute as you know it was born.

I’ll not bore you with details of my bodies and failures through those intervening years. Suffice to say I kept busy, both planning my own next attempt, and doing my best to stymie those others who tried versions of their own.

Surely my interpretation of the Watcher’s Crown had been incomplete; there had been some element of the ritual I had overlooked.

It was not until I met Gertrude Robinson that things began to really come into focus.

You see, the role of Archivist has been part of the Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers; most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.

But Gertrude was unlike any other Archivist. She simply did not care about compiling experiences or collecting the fears of others. She was driven to stop those who served the Powers.

More than once I thought she must secretly be of the Hunt – but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times.

I once asked her what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me the Desolation had killed her cat.

I don’t know if she was joking, and, to be honest, I could never bring myself to look into her mind and find out for sure.

In any case, Gertrude’s ruthless efficiency in derailing and collapsing rituals threw into stark relief a question that had been bothering me for almost a hundred and fifty years: In the whole span of humanity, why had nobody ever succeeded?

Perhaps there were a long line of Gertrude Robinsons throughout history, but I found that hard to credit. Could it be, then, that there was something in the very concept of the rituals that meant they couldn’t succeed?

She was clearly having similar thoughts in that last year, all of which culminated with the People’s Church.

When I saw that she was making no preparations whatsoever to stop it, I realized she was putting into practice a theory, and one she couldn’t afford to be wrong. She was going to wait, and see if the unopposed ritual succeeded, or if it collapsed under its own strain as mine had all those years ago.

Knowing Gertrude, I’m sure she had a backup plan if she had miscalculated – but she had not. The ritual failed. And all at once, I realized what had to be done.

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down.

To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.

Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.

The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once. All fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge. All under the Eye’s auspices, of course. We mustn’t forget our roots.

And there was only one being that could possibly serve as a lynchpin for this new ritual: The Archivist. A position that had so recently become vacant, thanks to Gertrude’s ill-timed retirement plans.

Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.

It might, perhaps, be better named: The Archive.

Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, John. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.

You are a living chronicle of terror.

Perhaps, then, if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and each in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom.

Do you see where I’m going, John?

It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.

[THUNDERCLAPS.]

I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but My God, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.

Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push, learn how you worked – So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and, while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be.

I reasoned if you couldn’t survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen. So, when Jane Prentiss attacked, I watched eagerly, one hand on the gas release from the start.

You acquitted yourself well enough, so I decided to see how far you would get, though I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones.

The discovery that one of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated the Institute in the aftermath was certainly a pleasant bonus. Even if that sliver of paranoia, that vague wrongness you couldn’t quite place wouldn’t count as a mark, it was only a matter of time before it confronted you in a far more direct and affecting matter.

Admittedly, given the advent of the Unknowing, I needn’t have bothered. But what’s the old saying about hindsight?

More important to me was Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion. If it had taken an interest, then I very much wanted it to cross your path.

[THUNDER CONTINUES AS HE GOES ON.]

So I found one of its current victims and convinced her to make a statement.

Poor Helen. I actually had to put her in a taxi myself, she was getting so lost in those narrow London side streets.

It worked, though.

[SOMETHING CREAKS. ANOTHER LOUD SNAP/CRACKLE.]

Between the stabbing and at least two desperate flights into its doors – you’re marked very deeply by the Spiral.

Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast.

I… justified it to myself saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway, if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.

Still. I’d requested Detective Tonner be assigned to the case when they found Gertrude’s body in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.

Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you.

Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr. Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.

Honestly, I had – nothing to do with Melanie and her Slaughter adventure, but when I saw the situation, I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right there, a ready target.

I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

The Unknowing was a distraction, but not an unwelcome one. For this to work, you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things.

And it did serve another purpose, of course. It inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate. If I tried too early, you’d just die. Too late, and you might be powerful enough to see the attempt coming, and maybe even understand why.

As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colors.

By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you – (sigh) – Knowing something you shouldn’t.

I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal.

All that remained, then, were the Dark, the Flesh, the Buried, and the Lonely.

I was a little put out when that idiot Jared Hopworth misinterpreted my letters and attacked the Institute too soon, before you were even out of the hospital, but then – Ho, you should have see my face when you voluntarily went to him.

I couldn’t see what happened in there, of course, but given how you came out, I’m very sure it counts as a mark.

I suspected the coffin might turn up again, and once it did, it was simply a matter of getting any, uh… restraining factors you might have had flying off on a wild goose chase, and waiting.

Honestly, Detective Tonner has been proving invaluable through this process. I’d been racking my brains for months about what I could use to lure you in.

And, of course, I knew the Dark Sun was just sitting there waiting. So when it came time, I just whipped up another apocalypse and sent you on your merry way.

Then all that remained was the Lonely.

Poor Peter. He really should have left well enough alone. (cruel laugh) Or just done what I’d asked in the first place.

Ah well. He knew what I was attempting, and was very unwilling to cooperate until I made him a little wager about Martin.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that, in addition to setting you up for the final mark, he was giving you all the tools you needed to escape from it.

How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that.

And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. I have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane, but past here lies only impatience.

You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you, and the time of our victory is here.

Don’t worry, John. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made.

Now. (cruel, cruel laugh) Repeat after me.

[WHEN THE ARCHIVIST BEGINS TO READ THE INCANTATION, A HEAVY, DENSE STATIC RETURNS AND BEGINS TO BUILD, ADDING IN HIGHER PITCHES AS IT DOES SO.]

You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.

Come to us in your wholeness.

Come to us in your perfection.

Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!

Come to us.

I – OPEN – THE DOOR!

#tma #hello jon #tramp stamps #imagine saying this to the tramp stamps

[crossingscon]

March Myth of the Month: The Legend of Skalsh

The myth I’m bringing to you today is about a rock. Specifically, this one:

It’s most commonly known as Siwash Rock, though I’ll be referring to it as Skalsh (for reasons I’ll explain later). It’s a beloved local landmark here in Vancouver, BC, which I assume is mostly due to its location right off the busy Stanley Park seawall, surrounded by beautiful ocean, mountain, and city views. It’s in one of the most picturesque places in an already very picturesque city, and as such it gets photographed a lot:

People love this big rock!

And, to be fair, Skalsh is a very cool rock. It was formed some 32 million years ago when magma pushed up through a crack in the Earth’s crust and then cooled into basalt. Over time, wind and water wore away at the (relatively less dense) sandstone surrounding it until what we see today was all that remained.

There are also trees growing on top of Skalsh! The Douglas Fir trees seen nowadays were planted back in the 60s to replace an earlier (and much older) tree that had been growing out of it since at least the 1800s, as seen in this photo from either 1889 or 1890:

When that tree died following Typhoon Frieda in 1962, there was an honest-to-goodness obituary posted in the local paper—

—followed by a years-long effort to replace it by planting various tree saplings where the old one stood. Luckily, by the 1970s there were at least three new firs successfully growing atop Skalsh, and those firs are still going strong to this day.

But that’s not why I’ve chosen this particular rock to talk about today. Skalsh isn’t just a modern tourist landmark, after all--it’s been here millions of years, and has existed pretty much unchanged since long before Canada as a country even existed, let alone Vancouver. As such, the people who originally inhabited the peninsula that is now known as Stanley Park have legends and myths about this land that stretch back centuries. It’s one of those myths that I want to share.

The story of Skalsh was originally told to local Mohawk poet E. Pauline Johnson by Chief Joe Capilano of the Squamish nation, one of three First Nations who call this region home, and it first appeared in Johnson’s 1911 book Legends of Vancouver. There are several myths surrounding Skalsh, but this one is my personal favourite, and it’s the one most people are familiar with. I highly recommend you go read the full legend, but I’ll summarize it for you here as well:

Thousands of years ago, a young chief and father-to-be went swimming in the waters off Stanley Park to cleanse himself in preparation for his child’s arrival, for it was tribal law that all parents must be spotlessly clean when a child is born to ensure them a chance at a clean life. As he swam, he was confronted by a huge canoe carrying four equally huge men who commanded him to move out of their way. He refused, at which point the men, shocked at his disobedience, revealed themselves to be The Transformers, agents of the Creator with the power to transform him into anything, living or dead. Again they asked him to move aside, and again he refused, telling them that nothing was more important than “the cleanliness and purity of his coming child”, not even the Creator himself. While the Transformers were debating what to do about this transgression, they heard the first cries of a newborn child from the shore. Stirred, the man at the head of the canoe stood up and, rather than cursing the chief for his disobedience, decided to reward him for his commitment to his family, turning him to “living stone” so that he could stand as a “monument to clean fatherhood” for generations to come. That stone, of course, is Skalsh, who stands tall and proud to this day.

There are several reasons why I love this story. For one, it’s about a mortal disobeying the gods for the sake of his child and being rewarded for it (though I’m not sure I’d call being turned to stone on the day your child is born a “reward” necessarily). Too often people in myths do things to please a god, or because a god told them to, so it’s nice to hear about someone standing up to them and putting their family first, instead. I also love that it acknowledges the impact of a parent’s state or mindset on their child’s development and life, and casts the young chief’s devotion to his unborn child in a positive, relatively healthy light. It also isn’t a story about sacrifice, which parenthood myths so frequently are. Yes, he gets turned to stone, but it’s a transformation, not a death. In the full retelling of the myth linked above, his wife and newborn child are also turned to stone, effectively immortalizing all three of them, which is at least a kinder fate than leaving them to go on without him.

Mostly, though, I love this myth because it’s about a thing I’m very familiar with, but from the perspective of the original inhabitants of this area, whose voices and stories have so often been silenced and erased from our history. As a descendent of colonizers I think it’s important to be aware of the fact that this land I’ve been privileged to call home was claimed and reshaped and renamed against the will of those people, and learning their myths and legends (those that have been freely shared, at least), and honouring their wishes regarding how this land is seen and used, is one way to do that. It also provides greater meaning and context to the ordinary things and places I see everyday, which makes me appreciate them even more.

Which brings me, finally, to my reason for calling the rock in question Skalsh rather than its current name, Siwash Rock. Skalsh is an anglicization of the Squamish word Slhx̱í7lsh, meaning “standing man”, and was recently proposed as a new name for the rock by the current chief of the Squamish nation as it more closely resembles the names the local first peoples have been using to refer to it for centuries. Comparatively, siwash is a Chinook (not a local nation) jargon word derived from the French sauvage, meaning “native person”, and was chosen by white colonizers in the late 1800s. The plan is to officially change it soon, once everyone can decide on a pronunciation and spelling, but in the meantime I’d still rather call it Skalsh, in honour of that young chief who once stood up to the gods themselves so that his child could thrive, and was immortalized for it.

Claudia Kowalski Director of Public Relations, CrossingsCon

PS. Another of the legends described in Johnson’s book mentions Skalsh, and honestly it’s such a beautiful paragraph, and one that I feel would resonate so deeply with fans of the Young Wizards series, that I couldn’t not include it here, even though it’s not part of the original myth. Consider it an epilogue, I suppose:

The Indian belief is very beautiful concerning the results of good and evil in the human body. The Sagalie Tyee [God] has His own way of immortalizing each. People who are wilfully evil, who have no kindness in their hearts, who are bloodthirsty, cruel, vengeful, unsympathetic, the Sagalie Tyee turns to solid stone that will harbour no growth, even that of moss or lichen, for these stones contain no moisture, just as their wicked hearts lacked the milk of human kindness. The one famed exception, wherein a good man was transformed into stone, was in the instance of Siwash Rock, but as the Indian tells you of it he smiles with gratification as he calls your attention to the tiny tree cresting that imperial monument. He says the tree was always there to show the nations that the good in this man's heart kept on growing even when his body had ceased to be. On the other hand, the Sagalie Tyee transforms the kindly people, the humane, sympathetic, charitable, loving people into trees, so that after death they may go on for ever benefiting all mankind; they may yield fruit, give shade and shelter, afford unending service to the living by their usefulness as building material and as firewood. Their saps and gums, their fibres, their leaves, their blossoms, enrich, nourish, and sustain the human form; no evil is produced by trees–all, all is goodness, is hearty, is helpfulness and growth. They give refuge to the birds, they give music to the winds, and from them are carved the bows and arrows, the canoes and paddles, bowls, spoons, and baskets. Their service to mankind is priceless; the Indian that tells you this tale will enumerate all these attributes and virtues of the trees. No wonder the Sagalie Tyee chose them to be the abode of souls good and great.

#crossingscon #myth of the month #skalsh #siwash rock #Slhx̱í7lsh #squamish #legends of vancouver

[mantra4ia]

Desires: Lucifer season 5 on Netflix

Created: August 21, 2020. Last Modified: August 22, 2020.

Preface: Alright my Lucis, here’s the sitch: it’s been a minute. Life got a bit chaotic I wasn’t able to start season five quite on time when it premiered on August 21st because I haven’t finished the great 2020 Lucifer rewatch. I’m nearly done however and should be able to jump into it either later today or tomorrow, which is why beforehand I want to — as I’ve traditionally done for a few seasons — create a desires list and keep a tally throughout the season to see how many are met. I am going to try to pace myself, not binge, and watch a single episode a day so don’t spoil me. Likewise I will tag my spoilers. Here we go... #21DaysofLucifer

Season 3 and 4 Roundout - Desires Fulfilled / Questions Answered

✔We’ve seen other demons “like Maze” and a bit of what havoc they can reek. Well sort of. To be quite frank, although it was cool to see them possess the recently deceased, it wasn’t as impending doom as I was expecting. They didn’t seem nearly as disciplined or intimidating as Mazikeen, even Dromos, more bored and desperate.

✔ We’ve seen a little more or the heavenly host in Remiel. Remi was cool, if a bit intense. Her character, and her affinity to Amenadiel was a nice foil to see how far his character has come in evolution. But again like Uriel was for Lucifer, she kind of became a driving force character device to push Amenadiel’s growth. So I wonder if we’ll get to see more of her or not.

✔ (s3) The backstory of Lucifer’s arrival in LA, finding LUX, and making a deal with Amenadiel.

✔ (s3) Cain finally went to hell, YES! Not that I didn’t like Marcus Pierce/Tom Welling, there were some great interactions there, but I just think he was a wishy-washy antagonist based on how he was written and I can’t wait to trade up for Michael.

✔ Maze finally had some happiness and attachment to this silly mortal coil and it slipped away! Why Eve why? I love Maze’s bonding with humans, Linda, Trixie, Chloe. But I love that after a Millennia of serving, and then watching Amenadiel and Linda be happy in a family unit, that she might actually make her own and my hopes were dashed. 

Things we got that we didn’t even know we wanted. SO GOOD:

Season 4 ep 8: Amenadiel bonding with Caleb and confronting community violence, police brutality, and systemic racism. It was a rough episode to be sure, but absolutely needed,

Chloe talking Lucifer down and out of a self-hatred spiral and his transformation into full-fledged devil and back again.

Lucifer playing Creep on repeat while missing the detective (even after insisting in a therapy session that “he’s not a teenager playing Adele on repeat) and Mr. Said Out B**** trying to rob Lucifer and gun point and ultimately get rich. What a fun twist.

The Dan and Maze Los X’s fight. They are wicked good at laying down the  hurt on the criminal element and I was wondering when they’d pair up again after dispatching Warden Perry.

The devil in a bar fight! I mean, it’s only fair since the ladies had their brawl. I love how this fight sequence was filmed in bursts of slo-mo from various angles, involved everything from fists, to tasers, knives, bottles, and the infamous pool cue, and they picked the perfect song for pacing (Jake Bugg, Lightning Bolt, could listen to it all day on repeat.)

Time for all good demons to go home / Enough, you will bow down to your king. Go home! (aka appropriate use of Devilish intimidation face)

Amenadiel vs Remi 

A Rocky montage with Lucifer and Amenadiel / Amenadiel’s face the first time Lucifer drives the Corvette

Lucifer at the roller derby

Chloe the YA fangirl

Maze teaching Trixie about knives, with each handle decorated in a different toy.

Amenadiel and Chloe catching up: your father is so proud of you. Like and angel BOSS!

SEASON HIGHLIGHTS:

★ (s3) Amenadiel taking Charlotte home

★ Dan being comforted in his grief by Amenadiel

★ Amenadiel’s wrath and the brotherly duo tag team to lay the hurt on the drug dealer that got Charlie killed. It’s been a while since we’ve seen warrior angel ready to dispatch anyone in his way. And it was glorious!

★ (s3) Lucifer’s almost driving lesson with Trixie “Morningstar”

★ (s3) Maze torturing Lucifer by making him think he’s the Angel of San Bernadino

★ (s3) Amenadiel and Lina helping to dispose of Lucifer’s wings

★  Lucifer kicking Julian, Tiernan’s son, through a glass pane window

★ The goodbye kiss between Lucifer and Chloe

 DIDN’T LIKE:

☒ (s3) Cain playing guitar and singing. What is he, a crime lord, a top cop, or an act that the improv club wouldn’t take? 

☒ Eve. I liked Eve, but we mostly got to see one side of her around Lucifer, and a kind of floundering an confused side when she was with Maze. The side that I would have liked to see more of was the maternal side that came out when she briefly talked about Abel or was interrogated by Trixie. That made her more layered.

☒ Father Kinley. That dude is just meh.

☒ Dan’s broken heart and rebounding with Ella. Don’t get me wrong, its a good arc, but I don’t see it lasting

☒ (s3) Abel and Reese. Those were two side stories I could have done without, although they had great moments of humor. I quite enjoyed Reese’s character, and although I didn’t like Abel Lucifer’s stick-figure comic illustration of Cain fighting with him over a rock was quite enjoyable.

WHAT I TRULY DESIRE: SINFUL SEASON 5, my BURNING QUESTIONS, and SPECULATIONS

Obviously, don’t spoil anything for me, but if any of my desires end up coming true in any of the first eight episodes maybe drop me a hint in the comments...

A big time jump. We need to see the lasting impact of Lucifer’s absence. I know that time in hell works differently per that episode where Lucifer saved Chloe and almost got stuck in a loop, but we still need enough time to elapse that the impact is felt on the mortal side. Or, we need to see the passage of time through a series of events without Lucifer, like a montage of character development. At least a year or so, if for no other reason then Trixie is growing up and I actually want to see her take driving lessons with Lucifer.

Last season Maze gave baby Charlie a gift, something she’d wished she’d had growing up, and previously had alluded to the language of demons, her many siblings, and teased her mother, the mother of all demons. Will we finally get to meet Maze’s mom Lilith (or however they address her)? And, in spite of Mazikeen’s found family, she still has restlessness and abandonment issues. Will her mom finally finally bring her peace, or will clashing with her resolidify Maze’s purpose on earth?

A Decker/Mazikeen team-up or girls night out 2.0 would always be appreciated. At this point its probably 4.0 if you count the bar fight and the bachelorette party.

Will we see tougher, scarier demons, or are they just warmup to the really scary depths of hell?

Speaking of hell, more hell. Tons of hell. I want to know the minutia of all the mechanics. If Lucifer’s gotta be down there in self-imposed exile, he may as well show us around. Pour us a drink.

Will Lucifer see Cain in Hell? Not that I’m dying to see more of “sad Cain” but it would be interesting to see a more dark or desperate or cunning side to him at least now that he’s actually neck deep in torment. Or, alternatively, I’m hedging my bets that he could be a good candidate to light the fire under Lucifer’s *** to get of hell back to the earthly realm. Even in hell, I’m betting Cain would have a soft spot for Chloe, and if news reached Lucifer that Michael were trying to abscond with his life and with Chloe, it would give Cain and Lucifer one last bit of “A-Hole brothers” common ground to bond over. Like “Brothers, am I right? Go kick, get Chloe back, I’ll still have enough guilt to torture me with in a few thousand years when you get back,”   

Will Lucifer fall into peril in hell of once again potentially getting distracted and stuck in a hell loop? Will his servants be satisfied with his return? Will Amenadiel bust him out.

Mr. Said Out Bitch needs a role reprise. He’s been in every season opener 2-4, we’ve gotten to know his undergarments very well.  Its high time we get to know his name and story. He’s put in the work!  

Amenadiel should be running LUX in Lucifer's absence. We got a tease of that in previous seasons (remember when he asked what would Lucifer do?) its time for that to come to fruition. Plus, any excuse to put DB Woodside in a suit, just because he wears them so well. It would also be interesting if, after that tragedy he’s experienced, Amenadiel will start taking after Luci. Maybe not the punishing, not yet, but wanting to seek out evil and corruption. It has been teased since s1 “fall as I did.” Perhaps he’ll start developing a taste for his bother’s line of work whereas he found it repugnant in the early days

Dan and Maze or Dan and Ella pair up. Both Dan and Maze are due for some happiness.

An Azrael reboot, when need more of her. She’s the angel of Death for pity’s sake. I don’t know if the original actress is still available or if they would have to recast, or if the character concept by Netflix would even be the same, but I need Azrael to be capable of sweet and unassuming and on a coin flip downright menacing.

More of Lucifer as a godparent, bless! And maybe a cool montage of “cousin” Trixie and Lucifer co-babysitting Charlie please.

Whilst on the subject of Lucifer and parenting, and without putting Trixie too much into harm’s way, I need to see what “I would do anything to protect that little urchin” looks like. Trixstar ride or die.

Father Frank, come back! I need a cameo or recurrent role pleeeeease.

Trixie in every episode. This is non-negotiable, much like chocolate cake. Beatrice is an all-star. In fact, I’ve decided that when Dad/God finally does show up, Trixie needs to be the one to get to know him / introduce him first. She’s been captain on the celestial cheer squad for four seasons, she’s earned this.

Who's going to see through Michael's facade first? I mean, I know that trailer shows Maze torturing it out of him, but as far as intuition goes, I've got a 50/50 split between Trixie and Linda, with an honorable mention to Dan.

If Michael is Lucifer's twin, does he have the same angelic compulsion skill set? Or something different? And will it work on Chloe or is she universally immune?

A “be like Mike” pop-culture reference. ******Spoilers: ******* all the trailers have revealed Michael already, so they owe us this for letting the steam out.

As far as pop-culture, how many movie and TV references will we get from Lucifer and ensemble this year? I expect A-game, from sci-fi to 80s action, on par with the previous likes of Parent Trap, Star Wars, Home Alone, Kim Possible, and Rocky.

Will Amenadiel’s necklace make a reappearance, even after he put it around Caleb’s neck in the morgue? Heavenly artifacts have a way of causing trouble in this show.

Will what finally learn what, if any, significance there is to Lucifer’s ring? Again, as all my fictional writings will attest, I really kind of want it to be a stolen little trinket from him Dad.

Plot twist: will we get to see Hell and the silver city all in one season, or is that too devilishly good to ask? It would be intriguing if Lucifer fell from Heaven for rebelling and now some threat like, for example, the mother of demons would pose a threat to the gates such that Lucifer was called upon to defend them. Not expecting anything Endgame level with a host of Angels popping up like sorcerers...but it is food for the imagination.

Plot twist: will Michael, duplicitous twin that he is, be revealed as the reason that Lucifer does not lie and can’t stand liars? Will be get a Michael back story? Is he perhaps the true rebellious son? see: my original fan conjecture here.

Additional links to previous recaps, roundouts and wishlists: 

Season 1: Best Moments // Season 2: Predictions, Desires, Roundout, Best Moments // Season 3: Speculations, Quick-shot summary 

#21 days of Lucifer #Lucifer season 5 #lucifer on netflix #Lucifer s5 desire #Lucifer Morningstar #trixie espinoza #Chloe Decker #amenadiel #trixtstar #deckerstar #lucifer s5

[bobauthorman]

A Semblance of Reasoning (Part) 2

And now we go to the B-Team, or the “2nd A-Team” as called by the CRWBY, I think. (Could be wrong). Now, I should mention that because their development is not central to the progression of the show (Although it is important), we’re not going to see much discussion on how their Semblances have evolved. Because they haven’t changed. At all, really. And because we only get bits and pieces of their backstory compared to Team RWBY, it’ll be harder to determine the events that led to them developing the powers they had, so this will require a great deal of guesswork and should not necessarily be treated as canon.

Jaune Arc. It only took 5 Volumes, but he gains the power of Aura Amp. It’s basically him using his own aura to bolster the aura of others, such as speeding up their healing, and boosting the power of their Semblances. It’s pretty obvious that this is partially another Joan of Arc allusion, as she reportedly never took part in battles but only directed the troops, so Jaune now has the power to embolden his teammates and others. Up until V5, the only hint we got about this power was in V1, when Jaune unleashed a flash of light to heal himself from Cardin’s beat-down. However, since it took so long, we can easily guess how his Semblance became what it was.

Following V3, a major chip on Jaune’s shoulder has been the death of Pyrrha, his partner, mentor, and confident. He’s clearly haunted by how he couldn’t help her in her final battle, or even stop her from taking part. These feelings are so strong that when he’s confronted with Cinder, he throws himself into combat with her, despite being outmatched. And his own guilt towards his own failures is such that he doesn’t think his own life is worth anything. So much that even the prospect of death doesn’t cause him to develop a New Power To Save The Day. But when Weiss is mortally wounded, his Semblance appears; I believe that it was his desperation to save her life, coupled with his own willingness to sacrifice his own, that caused his Semblance to become what it is. He’s essentially giving his own life-force to fuel her regeneration. It hasn’t evolved much since then, but as he’s moving away from his self-destructive crusading tendencies, there no telling how or if it will change.

Nora Valkyrie: Hers is called High Voltage, and it’s basically absorbing electricity to become stronger. Nora herself tells us that she learned what her Semblance was when a bolt of lightning struck her once. “Crazy Thursday”. I personally subscribe to the theory that rather than ‘discovering’ she developed the Semblance split-second to survive what should have been a fatal accident. Of Team JNPR, she’s the most energetic, and the CRWBY once jokingly stated that she ‘eats’ Ren’s energy. I think this may be more truthful, as its possible that she is subconsciously stealing the electricity out from his body, slowing him down slightly.

The Semblance hasn’t changed at all since it first appeared, but how it’s used best illustrates the tone of the story; When Nora’s Semblance was first revealed, it was as a joke and a way to easily stomp Team BRNZ in Volume 3. When it’s used again Volumes 4 and 5 against Tyrian and Hazel, the stakes are higher and so she’s far more serious when she uses her Semblance.

Pyrrha Nikos: The “Invincible Girl” has the power of Polarity, or magnetic manipulation, and how she uses it best describes her character. Rather than using it to bash people with chunks of metal like Magneto (X-Men) or Eustace Kidd (One Piece), Pyrrha predominately uses her Semblance to subtly manipulate how people she’s fighting move, essentially controlling the flow of the fight. As Cinder notes, while Pyrrha seems destined for victory, what she’s really doing is taking her destiny into her own hands.

It’s possible that Pyrrha developed this style to help down-play her victories in battle, appearing to win purely by skill that anyone could develop and not by a one-of-a-kind Semblance. Pyrrha has clearly been uncomfortable with the pedestal she’s been placed on, and perhaps this is her way of trying to regain some control over her life. It should be noted that the few times that Pyrrha foregoes the subtle approach and full-on blitzes people, she ends up losing. Sadly, we don’t get any possible explanation as to how she could have developed her Semblance as of yet.

Lie Ren: Ren’s Semblance is called Tranquility, which is basically creating a field where Grimm cannot find whoever’s inside it. Nora describes it as “Can mask emotions”. Given the Grimm are drawn to negative feelings, this is a useful Semblance to have. We also see firsthand how Ren created this Semblance; As shown in the flashback of “Kuroyuri” shows that he gained it during the Grimm attack that destroyed his village, which was also where he met Nora. And like Nora, in order to avoid certain death, he gained the power he needed at that moment. When Little Lie uses his Semblance for the first time, you can see him calming down, a preferable state compared to the high-octane fear he was no doubt, and necessary so he and Nora can escape the danger they were in.

Like Nora, Ren’s Semblance hasn’t changed at all. But I think we can gauge Ren’s character development through the series by it. When we first meet Ren, he is the calmest character on the show, the ultimate straight man to Nora’s comic, manic energy.   However, as the series takes a turn towards the serious, Ren has shown that even he has his limits. That he’s prone to acting out, and not in a funny way. Bursts of anxiety and emotion. Now I did suggest that Nora was subconsciously eating his electricity with her own Semblance, I now wonder if Ren was using his Semblance to stay calm and better deal with her…Nora-ness. But this was all within the confines of the well-protected Vale. But in the post-Volume 3 status quo, Ren has to use his Semblance more frequently to better protect Team RNJR during their hike to Haven Academy. Even with Qrow’s secret protection, this means that Ren’s Aura levels are constantly being used, and as such his ability to stay calm is now frayed. Ren’s one of those characters who’s character, rather than shaping his Semblance, was shaped by how he used his Semblance. However, through Volumes 6 and 7, Ren begins using his Semblance in tandem with Jaune’s, symbolizing how more effective they are when they work together instead of going at it alone.

As of “War”, Ren’s Semblance has evolved, adding in him the ability to see the emotions of others. This may seem like a bit inexplicable, but looking back, we could see bits and traces of this ability being shown beforehand. In “Tipping Point”, he was able to seemingly sense Tyrian’s approach. And in “The Greatest Kingdom” and “A Night Off”, he seemed to react to the approach of the Atlas Elites, the Ace-Ops and Ironwood. All of the aforementioned characters have shown to be highly emotional, even if the Atlasians tend to high their feelings with epic poker faces. Throughout Volumes 7 and 8, Ren has been struggling with trying to communicate with how he feels about various things. Given how closed-off he was acting, his tendency to shut people out meant he would in turn have difficulty gauging the feelings of others. Recently before his Semblance evolved, Ren had let both his positive and negative feelings out- In “Fault”, he vented the rage he felt towards the apparent futility of their situation, and in “War”, expressed the importance of the people in our lives. By finally demonstrating how he felt, for ill and for good, Ren was able to both understand others and his Semblance shows that.

#RWBY Analysis #A Semblance of reasoning #RWBY #Semblance #JAuneArc #Jaune Arc #Lie Ren #Nora Valkyrie #Pyrrha Nikos #Analysis #High Voltage #Aura Amp #Tranquility #Polarity

[littlemisssquiggles]

Pinehead Headcanons: Oscar's Longest Memory

I’ve been meaning to share this headcanon ever since I discussed it with @miki-13​ a couple weeks back. So in light of the highly anticipated Schnee Dinner Party episode tomorrow, I figured now is a good time as any to share this new theory of mine for my favourite freckled farm boy turned little barn prince.

One thing I've been curious about for this season (or the Atlas Arc in general) is how exactly the PLOT is going to reintroduce Ozpin returning from his isolation. Speaking for myself, I don’t wish for Oz’s return to be just be him randomly coming to Oscar’s aid again when he’s in danger. Nor do I wish for Oz to just magically pop back into the story and instead of having everyone taking responsibility for the negative consequences their past and recent actions have done while using that to make amends with each other and start anew---it’s just Oz alone apologizing for what he’s done while the heroes get away with not even a slap on the wrist.

I don’t think it would be fair if Oz is the only one to apologize. While I understand that Oz made mistakes in his past, our heroes aren’t exactly innocent themselves. On the contrary, this season alone proves that the heroes are no different than Oz in their current predicament with Ironwood. Thus I’m still banking on this leading into the heroes realizing that they too were in the wrong for how they chose to treat Oz following the revelation of the whole truth. I’m still hoping that this experience with Ironwood is enough to finally help everyone understand why Oz chose to handle things the way he did after spending some time in his shoes. That way, once everyone reunites, they’ll be on the same page with one another and as I said, be able to start fresh and rebuild their previous trust in one another based on what they all learnt from this experience.

That being said, in regards to Oscar---one thing that I’ve been saying is that I believe Oscar is the key to repairing the severed bonds between Ozpin and his team. Right now, Oscar is caught in the middle of all this conflict. He seems to be the lone mutual party who isn’t biased towards one side. Meaning that in spite of his growing good rapport with the rest of his team, that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to trust Oz again. His remark of “Oz looking out for everyone in his isolation”  back in V6 sparked my certainty in this regard.

My theory has always been for Oscar to reconcile with Ozpin first within his mind. From there, Oscar would bring Ozpin out of his isolation and be prepared to speak on his behalf to help convince the others towards all of them making peace.

I still believe in this hunch. However for most of V7, there hasn’t really been much indication of Oscar attempting to reach out to Oz within his mind. So again I’m left pondering on what could be an interesting way to do this given the current plot development we have so far for season.

This brings me to my discussion with Miki. We both shared the same idea of perhaps…Oscar will have an unfortunate run-in with Tyrian Callows. Tyrian will sting Oscar and fall into a comatose state which will then lead to Oscar going on a journey to find Oz within his mind.

Since I’ve been quoting plot threads from the Little Prince tale in reference to Oscar’s story for RWBY, there is a part in the story where the Prince was stung by a snake before he could reunite with his beloved rose on his home planet. The presumption is that the Prince was killed by the snake; though according to my research, the story more alludes to the Prince’s death rather than directly saying it.

So all that in mind, here’s my idea for the next episode and the episode afterwards:

I think something detrimental needs to happen to Oscar again in order for to heroes to realize how wrong they've been about Ozpin.  

The last time we had a CH8 episode as the last episode of the year, it concluded on Oscar disappearing as a result of Jaune’s outburst after he had learnt the truth.

So imagine if …there is a major attack at the Schnee Dinner Party during which Oscar ends up mortally injured from an attack meant to kill Ironwood. Let’s say…Jacques planned to have Tyrian murder all the members of the Atlesian Council who had been invited to the party. That way, in the end, Jacques will be the only surviving Council member and will no longer have anyone standing in his way of getting what he wants. All of Atlas will be under Jacques’ reign.

Let’s say…Tyrian successfully manages to slaughter all the Council members except Ironwood. All because at the last minute, Oscar had saved James by pushing him out the way allowing himself to be Tyrians’ target instead.

Speaking of the General, I’m also curious as to what it will take to set Ironwood off and go into his own downward spiral. Despite implying that he wasn't going to end up like Lionheart, I think we can all come to same conclusion that this part of the General’s story is definitely in the cards at this point.

Leonardo gave into his fears and betrayed his allies to join Salem. And while Ironwood won't sink so low as to join Salem, I think he's more in danger of becoming more like her and losing his own humanity if he honestly considered a 'lack of humanity' as an asset to Salem's conquests.

 The last time Salem struck, Ironwood lost Ozpin. CH7 is the second time Ironwood has hinted at wishing Oz was still around. It's very evident that James misses his old friend and I'm wondering if there is a part of him that low-key blames himself for Ozpin's death too.

Just as how if anything were to happen to Oscar on the General’s watch with the poor boy being placed at death's doorstep in an attack that was meant for James, I think that would devastate James just as much as Oz's death did since he has been spending more time with Oscar; getting to know him personally.

Not to mention, Ironwood did promise Oscar back in the second episode that, quote, “He will be safe in Atlas”. So imagine how distraught Ironwood would feel if that promise were to be broken yet again.

I have a feeling that Oscar may be used once again as a catalyst to advance the third act of the plot. I could be wrong about that but I can't help but feel like one of our main heroes will be a victim to whatever Jacques had planned with Watts.

Last time for V6, I was right on the money with Oscar running away. So…will I be right again about something big happening at the party and Oscar being an unfortunate victim caught in the crossfire?

Only time will tell. However I actually wouldn’t mind if something that were to happen for the episode. Mainly because I feel like should Oscar were to get seriously hurt, it could lead to the following things:

Ruby realizing the error of her actions: The idea I had with this was that, while at the party, Oscar will once again confront Ruby on the matter of revealing the whole truth to Ironwood. However Ruby once again shows reluctance with this and she and Oscar end up arguing over the right call. During their heated quarrel, Ruby says something to Oscar that she will ultimately regret. Let’s say…Ruby reveals that her distrust in Ozpin, blaming him for everything which then leads to her confessing that she may never trust him again.

This revelation greatly upsets Oscar since, Oz is a part of him and there is a chance that he may even become him someday. So by extension, Ruby saying that she distrusts Oz and will never trust him again meant that she doesn’t trust Oscar either. Although Ruby tries to take back what she says, the damage had already been done.

The Little Prince had officially had enough his little red rose’s behaviour and just like in the original fairy-tale, Oscar leaves Ruby with her last words to him being that she doesn’t trust him…right before Oscar gets seriously hurt and on the verge of death. As far as I know, the Prince’s true rose never got the chance to see him again since he died before he could return to his home by the fangs of the Snake character.

And  similar to how the Rose didn’t realize her true feelings for her Prince until he departed from their planet, what if…Ruby didn’t realize how much faith she did have in Oscar until he was mortally wounded by Tyrian and on the verge of death?

 Oscar’s Journey to Oz in the form of him going to find Oz in his mind. Now we can get into the real meat of my post. Let’s discuss Oscar’s Longest Memory:

Okay, so as I mentioned before, my concept is that Oscar is mortally wounded by Tyrian Callows in a killing blow that was meant for Ironwood. After that, Oscar falls into a coma with all of his allies worrying whether or not he will ever wake up again.

While in his comatose state, Oscar finds himself trapped in a continuous loop where he keeps reliving the very last days he spent back home on the farm with his family---all leading up to the day he was supposed to leave with Ozpin to begin his journey to Mistral.

Let’s say…in the memory, Oscar never met Oz. As we all know, Oscar wouldn’t gotten the encouragement to leave the farm if Oz hadn’t spoken to him that first time. And with Oz presumably still in isolation and his presence no longer there to guide Oscar towards his true destiny, Oscar just goes about his days like normal. But the entire time, while Oscar is reliving his final days at home, the way its depicted is that, despite being home behaving like he’s never left, Oscar couldn’t help but feel the entire time like he was forgetting something. Forgetting something important that he was supposed to do. Or rather, meet someone he was supposed to?

I even have this idea of Oscar having a similar experience to Ozma in the Lost Fable during his lifetime with Salem as Diggs.

Remember that scene from the episode where Ozma is looking at a reflection of himself in the window of his and Salem’s home castle when his other half---I believe it was Diggs speaking to Ozma here---asked him “What are we doing?” which in turn snaps Ozma out of his confliction.

I’m imagining a moment similar to that Oscar is looking at himself in the mirror---the very same mirror down in his barn where he had first heard Ozpin speak to him. I’m picturing Oscar looking at his reflection, back in his old farm boy threads, wracking his brain to figure out what’s happening to him and why he felt so strange---like he was forgetting something very, very important. At first, all Oscar saw was his own reflection only for his mirror copy to suddenly ask him “What are we doing?”  

Since Oscar’s current qualm seems to be his conflicting feelings regarding the Merge, I’m imagining a moment where Oscar is standing almost at a crossroads within himself. Like picture Oscar coming face to face with his past self---his old farmhand self.

Let’s say…in his longest memory, the one sure-fire way for Oscar to wake up from his comatose state is for him to leave the farm and start his journey.

Perhaps even in the real world, there is this conflict going on where if Oscar doesn’t wake up from his unconsciousness soon, he could potentially die or something along those lines, just to amp up the stakes. So the others---his teammates, his friends are desperately trying to do whatever they can to wake Oscar up. To make him open his eyes.

Meanwhile in Oscar’s mind, he’s fighting his own internal battles on whether or not he should leave. In his mind, Oscar trapped home on the farm wondering if leaving was the right choice. Because that’s how this all started. With Oscar leaving the farm.

So it’s a scenario where Oscar has to leave but this time, rather than it being Ozpin telling Oscar he has to leave (and not really giving him much of a choice), it’s Oscar telling himself that he has to leave. Like maybe at first, Oscar believes that the person telling him to leave all the time---this boy in the mirror who looks exactly like him---is probably Oz trying to communicate with Oscar and help him escape this memory. But to Oscar’s surprise. It isn’t Oz. It’s Oscar himself---the part of him that made up his mind that he was going to see through on his promise to help his team no matter what---that was telling him to leave. This time, it’s Oscar’s own choice that he made on his own. Not just because it felt like the right thing to do. But because it was a choice he now believed in.

With this idea, I’m envisioning a scene where Oscar is standing face to face with his past ---Farm Boy Oscar back in his old farm boy threads who is actively chastising Oscar for even wanting to leave home since there was no good for him outside.

Basically imagine …Oscar’s past self being the embodiment of all of his concerns for the future; his doubts about himself, his doubts in his place on the team, his worries whether or not anyone actually trusts or even cares about him, his worries about just being ‘another one of Ozma’s lives’ to live and die in vain.

Here is this version of Oscar---with his own face and in his own voice, practically screaming every negative thought he’s been silently holding back from admitting to himself for so long.

“…We were a fool for leaving home. You think they actually care about you. You heard them. They never saw you for who you are. Of course they never trusted you! 

They don’t know you! They never knew you! You didn’t really think they’d accepted you into their group. You never had your own place. To them, you’re just another one of his lives and pretty soon, they’ll forget all about you.

Stay home Oscar! Don’t leave! This is where you belong. At least this way, you get to stay and be yourself again. This is what you truly want. Trust me. Because who knows you better than you…”

And somehow by doing that, by facing himself and hearing himself admit his own fears, it what makes Oscar’s choice all the more significant. He needed to leave. So basically, in a nutshell, Oscar yells back at his old self that this wasn’t who he was. I mean, it used to be and that part of him will always be there because it is a part of him. However Oscar has also accepted the other side of him---the side that he shares with Oz.

So in the end, Oscar makes up his mind to leave home. But not without Oz. So after dealing with past, Oscar goes and finds Oz. The two souls reunite deep within Oscar’s mind. They even have a chat and ultimately, Oscar convinces Oz to return to the others with him. Even extends his hand to Oz---as neat little call-back to what Oz had told him back in V4.

Because while the farm with his family and his old memories of his past was Oscar’s home back then (and not even the Merge was going to take that away from him) he eventually also comes to terms with the fact that his new home was with his team and he needed to reunite with them to fulfil his duties to humanity by working to stop Salem and her forces. So basically the memory ends with both Oscar and Ozpin walking through the gates of Oscar’s old home, returning to the real world.

And when next Oscar finally regains consciousness---as he opens his eyes, he awakens to find himself surrounded by everyone who had all eagerly been awaiting his return. And it is from this moment, folks where the reconciliation begins.

That’s my idea.

I know the likelihood of something like this happening in the canon is not really there. Nonetheless, I’d still like to think that something like this could’ve been cool to see done in the show. Especially for Oscar and Ozpin.  

Most of all, I was hoping for a future moment where the audience could’ve seen Oscar meet Oz for the first time within his mind. We never exactly got an interpretation of what the inside of Oscar’s mind looks like.

Somehow, this squiggle meister is envisioning Oscar’s mental dreamscape being an endless plane of grassy fields overlooking a beautiful sunrise since that time of the day seems to be most associated with Oscar.

It was a sunrise during the first scene we were introduced to Oscar’s character back in V4 and it was also sunrise when he left home and began his journey.

Now I’m imagining Oscar and Oz just sitting in a field watching the sunrise since this was Oscar’s lingering memory of his home. It’s a memory that Oscar shares with Oz, all before the little barn prince takes the old wizard’s hand and leads him back to reality where their friends were all waiting for them.

I think something like would’ve been real sweet for Oscar and Ozpin’s story. Like I said, I don’t think we’ll really get something like this for show. But nonetheless, it would’ve nice and for what it’s worth, I hope you all at least like it as a headcanon.

More Squiggles’ Pinehead Headcanons

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#rwby #oscar pine #professor ozpin #oscar and ozpin #rwby theories #rwby volume 7 theories #rwby volume 7 spoilers #squiggles pinehead headcanons #pinehead headcanons

[i-want-it-all-or-nothing-at-all]

The geo-political struggle and arms race with the communist world known as the Cold War lasted so long (1945–1991), and was so fraught with existential danger to human civilization, that it is often forgotten that the United States and Soviet Union had been allies against Nazi Germany. Strategic as it was, this alliance came down to a marriage of expediency and no sooner had the dust of war settled than the erstwhile confederates confronted each other over the spoils of victory. At war’s end the United States’ continental territory was untouched and it was by far the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. The Soviet Union, where most of the European fighting had been waged, lay in ashes with 30 million dead. With their common enemies prostrate the two allies briefly had a positive opportunity for a workable compromise over military and economic issues, and thus for a more peaceful future. But peace was not on the horizon.

After World War II anti-communism became the watchword of the day and the Soviets were demonized as entirely responsible for the state of tension that unfolded dangerously and rapidly. Neither side was blameless but the record clearly shows more effort at conciliation by Moscow than by Washington. Unwilling to acknowledge that the USSR had vital national security issues far more pressing than their own, advocates of a permanent military establishment and Open Door to the markets of Eastern Europe and East Asia claimed that the Soviets and Chinese communists had replaced the Nazis and imperial Japan as the threats to the ‘American way of life’. On the basis of this claim they militarized American society as never before.

Atwood, P. L. (2010). War and Empire: The American Way of Life. Chapter 9: Cold War: The Clash of Ideology or of Empires? Pluto Press. [bold and italisized emphasis added by me] Rest of the chapter below the break.

SOVIETS INDISPENSABLE TO DEFEAT OF HITLER

In American popular culture World War II is seen as the victory of democracy over German and Japanese dictatorship, with the United States playing the major role. There is no denying that US military fi repower defeated Japan. Indeed, American war planners never doubted victory. Americans have been loath, however, to accept less than full credit for triumph over Nazi Germany. Certainly the American Lend-Lease program provided Britain and the Soviet Union with essential resources, including arms, and the massive American and British aerial bombardment of German factories and cities contributed to Hitler’s downfall. But in terms of ground combat and the defeat of millions of Nazi soldiers, the Soviet Red Army was indisputably central. The war on Europe’s eastern front was far more destructive and savage than in the west and millions of soldiers and civilians on both sides perished. More than two-thirds of Hitler’s legions were concentrated against the Soviets, where they fought a desperate and losing effort to keep the Red Army at bay. When German forces entered the Soviet Union in 1941 they committed atrocities on a colossal scale, including the roundup and systematic extermination of Jews, and the slaughter of many other civilians. By late 1942 the Red Army had reversed Germany’s fortunes and in 1945 broke through into Germany itself and began to exact an equally atrocious retribution.

It is often forgotten too, deliberately omitted, that when the Nazis conquered states in Eastern Europe they subordinated their governments and forged military alliances with these puppet regimes. The result was that Hungarian, Ukrainian, Romanian and other pro-Nazi troops invaded Soviet Russia alongside the Germans as partners. Thus, it was on the basis that these regimes had waged war against the USSR that the Red Army occupied these nations after driving the Nazis back, eventually to total defeat. In the popular view of the Cold War the Reds had occupied innocent nations illegitimately. But this was false. The Soviets planted themselves in Eastern Europe for much the same reasons that the US occupied western Germany and Japan. It is true that the smaller nations of Eastern Europe were pawns but they were bargaining chips to each side. Both the US and USSR wished Europe to be reconstructed along lines benefi cial to their specifi c economic and security interests. In terms of physical security there was no doubt as to which nation had the greater claim.

The overwhelming majority of Hitler’s best troops had been locked in mortal struggle in the east. Thus, when the US fi nally, in the last year of war, was able to employ its vast wealth of resources to mount the largest seaborne invasion force in history on the north coast of France, the effort succeeded only because the least combat experienced, and fewest, Nazi troops were there as defenders. Had the bulk of Nazi forces not been bogged down in the east they would have been on the beaches of France and therefore no such invasion would have been possible or even considered. Hitler could not have been defeated without the Soviet Union. Had he confi ned his effort to conquering western Europe, and not attacked Russia, Europe’s recent history would be very different.

But Hitler had made it supremely clear in his book Mein Kampf that he intended to extend German living space (lebensraum) to the Slavic east and to defeat communism once and for all. The Soviet system had only recently been stabilized after years of civil war and internal communist party purges. Stalin feared that the western European powers might align with Germany against him. Since he desired no such war he allied with Hitler in 1939. This certainly disappointed the British and US bitterly. But then in the late summer of 1941 Hitler reneged on his pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR. By this time the US was in an undeclared but de facto naval war with Germany. Once full-scale declared war broke out both Britain and the United States understood that Germany could only be defeated with the aid of the Soviets. This posed a very difficult problem for American goals. If US foreign policy was predicated upon keeping an Open Door for American business enterprise to the resources, markets and labor power of Europe as a whole, and the Nazis had to be prevented from shutting that portal, this goal could only be achieved with the indispensable assistance of a regime that had been equally hostile to the Open Door. At best only half the loaf of American war aims could be attained. Instead of Nazi autarky throughout Eastern Europe, Soviet communism would prevail, and whatever access American corporations might have to trade with this bloc it would not be on American terms. The cold hard fact was that at war’s end the Russians occupied the same territory in Europe’s east as had the Nazis.

Some historians argue that if Roosevelt had been younger, healthier and able to continue he might have arranged a favorable agreement with Stalin that may have benefited both nations. FDR would have faced the same bitter opposition his successor faced domestically, but he was far more sophisticated a politician and more of a realist. The Soviets had been portrayed in heroic terms by the US press and Hollywood while the war was still ongoing, but rightists and anti-communists in the US were already in 1945 accusing Roosevelt of having lost Eastern Europe to the hated Reds, though the region was hardly America’s to lose. In any case Roosevelt died just as the war was ending and his place was taken by an inexperienced and easily manipulated, at least initially, Harry S. Truman, who was himself reflexively anti-communist and who almost immediately went on the political and ideological offensive against yesterday’s ally.

YESTERDAY’S ESSENTIAL ALLY BECOMES THE NEW THREAT

In short order the Truman Administration claimed that the Soviets had now replaced the Nazis as the principal threat to global order and American national security. Less than three months after Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945 the enormously influential Life magazine startled readers with graphic depictions of a Soviet atomic missile attack on US cities, though pointedly the Soviets did not possess an atomic bomb, and intercontinental missiles did not exist and would not until 1957. Most mainstream publications followed suit with lurid depictions of what the USSR could do to the US despite its obvious weakness. In 1946 Admiral Chester Nimitz, hero of the Pacific War, declared, with no evidence whatever, that the Soviets were preparing to bomb England and launch submarine attacks against American coastal cities. Presidential adviser Clark Clifford claimed that the communist threat was so dire ‘the United States must be prepared to wage atomic and biological warfare’. Only five months after Germany surrendered, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a report calling for the atomic bombing of 20 cities in the USSR if that country ‘developed either a means of defense against our attack or the capacity for an eventual attack on the United States’ (author’s emphasis). 

All this despite the fact that the USSR had suffered the greatest devastation to its national territory of any belligerent, worse even than atomically desolated Japan, and had not the remotest possibility of attacking the United States. Nor did it have such an intention.All of European Russia’s major cities and towns, estimated at 70,000, were destroyed, its roads, and railways in ruins, its crops and livestock dead or stolen, and at least 30 million of its soldiers and civilians dead. Though the Red Army was immense, and its soldiers extremely combat-hardened, it showed no signs of moving beyond the territories it had wrested from the Nazis with so much blood. Nor did it seek territorial gains in Western Europe or the Middle East. Yet, the American public was indoctrinated to believe that Soviet-led communism was on the march with the goal of ‘world conquest’. This was exactly the propaganda employed about the Nazis and Japanese. The permanent enemy required for a permanent war economy had miraculously materialized.

This is not to say that Soviet communism lived up to its promises, or functioned as a benevolent regime. Far from it. Russia was behaving as Russia had always behaved, and still does. The Soviet victory enabled Stalin to re-extend control over some of what had been lost to Russia’s empire during World War I and what he deemed Tsarist Russia’s natural sphere. After two devastating invasions in a quarter century the Soviet general staff obsessed over territorial security. The Yalta Accords of 1945 reflected the realities of war. The Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe as a result of its overwhelming victory over the Nazis. This enormous contribution to Nazi defeat had to be acknowledged. Yalta also accorded the Soviets territories in East Asia, some of which had been forcibly taken from Russia in its war against Japan from 1904 to 1905. At the time the accords were signed then Secretary of War Henry Stimson acknowledged they recognized the USSR’s vital concerns for future security. The same Joint Chiefs who planned a sneak attack on Russia out of fear of its military power also said in another position paper that the USSR’s policy was defensive in nature and aimed merely ‘to establish a Soviet Monroe Doctrine for the area under her shadow, primarily and urgently for security’.

Harry S. Truman’s ascension to the presidency on the sudden death of FDR in April 1945 brought about a sea change in the US’s relationship with the USSR. Demonizing the Soviets quickly became the major component in the campaign to assert the newfound power in Washington’s hand to reconstruct and stabilize the global capitalist economy. Therefore, in order to gain the American people’s support for the remilitarization and increased tax burden that would be required to confront this new enemy, the highly positive image of the Soviets, that portrayed Stalin and the Red Army as noble allies in the war against Nazism induced by American propaganda, had to be reversed.

A hopeful moment thus became a tragic one, yet entirely in keeping with the historical thrust of American development and foreign policy. Though the seeds of both world wars were planted in Europe, the United States entered each war knowing that European empires and Japan would be sapped, if not finished. By 1940 a golden opening had arisen for Washington to intervene at the right moment, replace many of its rivals at the pinnacle of global power and reconfi gure global order. Already, the phrase ‘American century’ had entered the public vocabulary.

The major problem for American post-war plans was that though the war had been a pyrrhic victory for Russia it still remained a great power, and it straddled much of Europe. Despite no navy to speak of and no airforce capable of crossing oceans, the USSR had the largest, most-bloodied, most combat experienced army on earth. Even so, though it occupied much of the very region the US had wanted freed from German rule and opened to American enterprise, it was not capable, nor did it desire, to occupy Western Europe.

Uppermost on Stalin’s agenda was rebuilding an utterly devastated nation and ensuring that invasion by a foreign enemy could never take place again. For Soviet foreign policy maintaining control of Eastern Europe as a bulwark, a cordon sanitaire, was indispensable against any possibility of incursion from the west. To safeguard their country and their rule the Soviets were more than willing to modify the doctrines of communism and world revolution. Had the Truman Administration been willing to acknowledge this profound need on the part of the Soviets, and to work with them to guarantee their security, the possibilities for subsequent cooperation might have proved invaluable to both nations. Genuinely frightened by American actions in the early Cold War, the Russians were goaded to intensify their own acquisition of atomic weapons, thereby ensuring that Soviet nuclear capabilities would become the very threat, and the only such threat, to American national security that propaganda had claimed but which had been utterly false (author’s emphasis).

THE ATOMIC ARMS RACE BEGINS

As American officials intended, the atomic bombings of Japan had badly unnerved the Soviets. Not only were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a warning that such destruction of entire cities and ruthlessness against helpless civilians could be visited elsewhere, they also ended the war abruptly on American terms, forestalling the USSR’s occupation of Japan, to prevent any repeat of the problems inherent in the division of Germany.

The future of atomic weapons thus lay at the center of both nations’ critical concerns. Many Americans, including leading atomic scientists who developed the bomb, had worried that nuclear weapons in the hands of one nation would induce a terrifying arms race that portended the annihilation of human civilization. The Soviets demanded the destruction of all existing atomic weapons, though no American offi cial believed they would stop their own program. To mollify domestic critics the Truman Administration created a special committee headed by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson to advance policies for the control of such armaments and atomic energy in general. When this committee’s proposals were deemed too soft, its recommendations were replaced by those of Wall Street baron, Barnard Baruch. The Baruch Plan demanded that the Soviets submit to international inspections and end their A-bomb project, then in its early stage, while the US would retain its atomic monopoly until satisfi ed no Soviet bomb would or could be created. Then, and only then, would the US reconsider whether or not to destroy its own bomb making capacity. It was, as a Baruch staff member conceded, ‘obviously unacceptable to the Soviets with the full realization that they would reject it’. Acheson himself said that the Baruch Plan would guarantee the failure of international control of atomic weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted only one dimension of control. ‘The bomb should continue to be at the heart of America’s arsenal, and a system of controls should be established that would prevent the Russians from developing the weapon.’ The nuclear arms race, that on more than one occasion would bring the world to the brink of Armageddon, was on.

SOVIETS WITHDRAW VOLUNTARILY FROM CONQUERED AREAS

In early 1946 Winston Churchill made his famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in the US in which he described what he termed the barbaric and illegitimate domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviets. Yet, as prime minister of Britain, and Stalin’s ally, he had cut a bargain with the Soviet dictator himself by which Britain would recognize Soviet mastery throughout the east in return for Stalin’s acknowl-edgement of Britain’s continued sphere in Greece, a bargain Stalin kept. The real record of Soviet actions in the immediate post-war period demonstrated a genuine willingness to cooperate with the US and its allies. Austria had been annexed by Germany in 1938 and so had also participated in the invasion of Russia. At war’s end the Red Army occupied about half of Austria, but it withdrew voluntarily.

Similarly, the Soviets also withdrew from Chinese territory occupied when the Red Army declared war on Japan in 1945. In 1947 Truman issued his famous doctrine in which he accused the Soviets of intervening in Greece’s civil war waged between native Greek communists and right-wing forces that had collaborated with the Nazis, and who were then also supported by Britain. But Stalin kept his word with Churchill and gave no aid to the Greek communists. That is precisely why the Greek communists were defeated.

In yet another case both Russia and Britain had occupied Iran and Azerbaijan in order to keep immense reserves of oil from Nazi control. FDR had assured Stalin that Russia could obtain Iranian oil for necessary reconstruction after the war. The Soviets agreed to withdraw from this area by March 1946, yet when the time came they balked; not because they wished to annex the region but to ensure that Iran would provide the USSR with oil. Initially the Truman Administration urged the Iranians to broker such an oil deal. At this early stage of American power Washington was already maneuvering to create a buffer between the USSR and Middle East oil, and saw Iran as pivotal. So, after the Soviets did withdraw Washington then told Iran to renege.

In every one of these cases there was nothing the US could have done had Russia actually behaved in the manner that American propaganda falsely claimed, that is, with military force. In the case of Iran even the A-bomb was useless since that would have irradiated and poisoned (or utterly destroyed) the oil wells. In fact, Russian actions belied the claim that they were relentlessly pursuing new conquests. No evidence existed of any Soviet desire to move militarily beyond the areas occupied during the rout of Nazi Germany. By contrast Britain still had its imperial armies all over the globe, as did the US. None of this meant that Stalin did not remain a despot; it meant that the Soviet leadership was committed to traditional Russian concerns of security and dominance within its perceived sphere. To ensure their security the Soviets were willing to meet the US approximately half way. George F. Kennan of the State Department, the very architect of early American Cold War policy of containing the Soviet Union, nevertheless continued to insist that ‘Our first aim with respect to Russia in time of peace, is to encourage and promote by means short of war the retraction of undue Russian power and influence from the present satellite area.’

Ever the pragmatist and realist FDR recognized that the Red Army occupied Eastern Europe and could not be removed, as did Churchill despite his later hypocrisy. The Yalta Accords, agreed in April 1945 between the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union, not only reflected the real balance of power at that moment but affi rmed the division of Europe with the possibility for future mutual cooperation. Months later the balance of power would be altered exponentially by the American atomic bomb.

It is true that communist parties in western Europe, especially in France and Italy, were very strong and posed an electoral threat to the American reconstruction agenda in that region. Communists could rise to power there democratically and showed every sign of doing so, owing to widespread dissatisfaction with the regimes that had brought on war and ruin. Certainly the Soviets aided such political movements where they could, but given the Soviets’ own domestic problems such assistance was minimal. The American response was to deploy the newly established Central Intelligence Agency to areas where electoral communist success was possible, there to employ every dirty trick available, including bribery, vote fraud and even assassination to prevent communist electoral success. In both France and Italy the CIA worked openly with organized crime to intimidate organized labor. Ironically the US accused the Soviets of thuggery. If democracy was to result in communist gains then democracy had to be jettisoned.

CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM VIE FOR THE LOYALTIES OF THE DEFEATED EMPIRES’ COLONIES

Americans are educated to take capitalism for granted as the only rational system of social and economic organization. The brutal and unjust history of capitalist evolution is all but censored. Indeed, while communist nations were usually derided as slave states, the fact that slavery and mass slaughter were indispensable ingredients of western capitalism’s rise is not open for discussion, at least in mainstream forums. When communist ideas began to percolate into  society they were both an intellectual and grass roots response to the very real depredations of capitalism. Clearly communist revolutions did not succeed in creating better societies for their peoples, as capitalist societies claim they do for their own. Soviet rule over its satellites was brutal. But if the capitalist west prospers greatly today it does so directly as an historical legacy of the early western conquest of much of the planet, a system erected as a result of genocide and slavery at its dawn and maintained by exploitation and war to this day. The west can and does vilify communist crimes. But there is nothing in the communist record not matched by capitalist societies in terms of crimes against humanity. The record of capitalist larceny is why so many colonized peoples struggling for independence from western rule turned toward communist and socialist ideas in the aftermath of World War II; that, and their recognition that the European empires, and Japan, were finished. As victims they had first hand knowledge of the west’s hypocrisy and its claims to bring the benefits of civilization to the benighted denizens of what was condescendingly termed the ‘Third World’. They knew that western nations prospered at their expense. Nationalists like Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh had seen first hand the beneficence of French capitalism and rejected it utterly. European colonizers employed noble rhetoric and platitudes but the realities involved plantations and mines that paid slave wages, a system backed by prisons and executions. The widely held notion that the US opposed communism on moral grounds is flatly contradicted by the fact that throughout the Cold War Washington overthrew numerous democracies because they pursued policies in opposition to US intentions. In many cases the US filled these power vacuums with bloody dictatorships every bit as brutish and criminal as anything to be found in the communist world.

American policy-makers understood that World War II’s costs in lives and treasure would all but bankrupt western Europe’s empires, and Japan’s, presenting the long anticipated opening to replace them, if not in exactly the same way. So the stage was set for a titanic struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for the loyalties of the former colonial subjects. This contest was one of the cardinal issues at the heart of American opposition to the communist world. Throughout the post-war era, until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, both sides would square off and on too many occasions would stand at the brink of nuclear war. At other times the two opponents would arm proxies such as Koreans, Vietnamese, Cubans, Angolans, Ethiopians and many others, and foster wars all over the planet such that by the end of the twentieth century almost as many people would die of these so-called ‘savage wars of peace’ as had been killed in World War II.

The Great Depression in the US had been caused by speculation in stock markets, overproduction, restriction of credit, collapsed purchasing power and the closure of overseas markets by countries reverting to economic nationalism, or autarky, especially Britain, Germany and Japan. The USSR already impeded capitalist penetration on American terms. In the decade before the war most foreign markets were off limits to American goods and services. Then the war itself shattered the global capitalist system. This was the deepest crisis facing American political, social and economic stability at home immediately in the post-war years. There was absolutely no military threat from any corner of the globe. American analysts reasoned that the only way to avert a return to stagnation was through the economic and financial reconstruction of the global order on American terms.

THE THREAT OF A CLOSED WORLD REMAINS: GERMANY BECOMES A NEW AXIS

American policy faced a four-pronged threat: the ruined nations of Europe and Asia – both friends and former foes – might revert to the economic nationalism and closure of markets that had characterized the pre-war years. Post-war impoverishment in these regions might lead populations toward communism and socialism. Ruined nations could not buy American goods owing to their lack of dollars. Finally, the colonies were in revolt, threatening to align themselves with Moscow, or in nationalist directions otherwise independent of US desires.

So the key to post-war American strategy focused fundamentally on economic security, not the claimed military threat from communism. The ‘closed world’ that had preceded the war, with restrictions on market access and discriminatory trade practices such as tariffs, was a major factor in the depth of the Great Depression. In order ‘to maintain a world economic order based on free trade and currency convertibility’ the US hosted the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 at which the American dollar was pegged as the standard, backed by the world’s greatest gold reserves, against which all other currencies would exchange. This gave the US economy preponderant leverage over the evolution of the new global system.

Germany was the key to reconstruction strategy as the new ‘axis’ of an integrated European market. At the end of the war Germany had been co-occupied by the US, Britain and the USSR. The issue of the shape of Germany’s reunification had been left open by the big three powers. Russia occupied about one-third of the nation, the largely agricultural eastern sector, while the US and Britain ruled the industrial west. This posed an immediate problem for US–Soviet cooperation since Russia wanted to carry off Germany’s remaining industrial plants as part of the exacting indemnity it desired and as a measure to cripple any future re-industrialization that could lead to Germany’s remilitarization. This came directly into conflict with American goals. As Stalin saw matters, the issue revolved around Russian need for security versus American desire for gain. The question of Germany’s future would ultimately be the root of Washington’s decision to militarize the Cold War.

US ambassador to the newly created United Nations, John Foster Dulles, said ‘a healthy Europe’ could not be ‘divided into small compartments’. It had to be organized into ‘an integrated market big enough to justify modern methods of mass production for mass consumption’. An early draft of the Truman Doctrine had declared that:

Two great wars and an intervening world depression have weakened the system almost everywhere except in the United States...if, by default, we permit free enterprise to disappear in other countries of the world, the very existence of our democracy will be gravely threatened.

Envisioning a global ‘America, Inc.’ Washington policy-makers would anoint defeated Germany and Japan as junior partners with management rights over many of the areas formerly comprising the very empires they had sought to rule. In order to renew capitalist prosperity the US would ally with its former enemies to thwart the opposition of both communists and any economic nationalists (any who put their national economic interests before American corporate interests) on the scene. What Truman, a Democrat, and Dulles, a Republican, feared above all was any return to self-contained economic blocs that would freeze American enterprise out. Whether this took the form of Stalinism, Chinese communism, state socialism or Arab nationalism, any type of economic autarky anywhere was unacceptable to official Washington. In 1904 Teddy Roosevelt had extended the Monroe Doctrine and American dominance throughout the western hemisphere; now Truman, in his famous doctrine of 1947, would extend it to the planet.

CONTROL OF OIL BECOMES THE LINCHPIN OF AMERICAN POLICY

Fundamental to American management of capitalist economies, and the military power to back it up, was control of the resource necessary to fuel the system. In the words of the US State Department oil had become ‘a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history’. James Forrestal, who had directed the Navy Department during the war and would soon become the nation’s first Secretary of Defense, put matters quite baldly. ‘Whoever sits on the valve of Middle East oil may control the destiny of Europe.’ George Kennan, architect of early anti-communist policy, wrote that ‘US control over Japanese oil imports would help provide “veto power” over Japan’s military and industrial policies.’ In another position paper the State Department declared:

Our petroleum policy is predicated on a mutual recognition of a very extensive joint interest and upon control...of the great bulk of the petroleum resources of the world...US–UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern of the development and utilization of petroleum resources under the control of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial importance. [author’s emphasis]

The inclusion of the British government in this proposed condominium was quite disingenuous, since American policy all along had been to displace Britain at the top of the system, to remake it on American terms: to play Rome to Britain’s Athens.

As we have seen, the Middle East had been cynically carved up and occupied by Britain and France after World War I. Owing to the shock and cost of World War II both nations were losing their empires. Having ascended to the pinnacle of the system that had evolved by conquest, the US would shortly, in the name of countering communists but really in order to maintain its new position, be forced to intervene in the Middle East for strategic reasons and to ensure its access to and control over the disposition of vital oil. Solving these problems would require outlays of US tax revenues that would dwarf the costs incurred by the war itself, and if not managed tightly could lead back to depression.

The Truman Doctrine of 1947 committed the US to provide assistance to any nation at risk from communist movements or insurgencies, but it was also a major response to the economic uncertainties facing reconstruction of the global system. The capitalist British Empire had been the greatest impediment to American hegemony in the pre-war system. In another of history’s ironies Prime Minister Churchill had allied with the US in order to save his nation’s empire, only to see it bankrupted by victory. Britain had succumbed to classic ‘imperial overstretch’, and the main beneficiary of this precipitous decline was its ally and rival. In desperate need of loans from the only nation with funds, London agreed to convert its currency, the pound sterling, to dollars, thereby transferring economic management at home and economic control of its dominions to the US. The imperial roles had been reversed, a goal sought by Washington and Wall Street for half a century. But the US had also now adopted Britain’s role as enforcer in the empire she was losing. The first stop was Greece, formerly London’s satellite, now in danger of succumbing to home-grown communists.

The anti-communist propaganda of the Truman Doctrine also prepared the American public and Congress for even greater outlays of American dollars. Truman’s message emphasized the communist threat to Greece, Turkey and the oil of the Middle East, but this was not entirely honest. Its deeper goal was to overcome political reluctance to extend massive loans for European recovery. As noted, Stalin was not interfering in the Greek civil war between communists and rightists. The aid thus extended by Truman defeated the Greek communists and lined the US up with a reactionary and dictatorial regime. There was no evidence that the Soviets were interfering in Turkey and that Muslim nations’ communists were a weak minority in any case. As Chairman Arthur Vandenburg of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Truman, if he wanted Congress to put up the money he would have ‘to scare hell out of the American people’. Thus an equally massive distortion and deception campaign about Russia’s proclaimed threat was set in motion to match the enormous outlays of funds that would be necessary to rebuild Europe’s shattered economies to suit the American agenda of a world open to American corporate penetration. Communism was on the march the public was told; only the United States stood in its path.

THE ‘MARTIAL PLAN’

Named after Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the European Recovery Program is often presented as an impeccable example of American generosity towards war-ruined nations, including former enemies. But the plan was crafted primarily as a measure to resolve the ‘dollar gap’ crisis and restore the US economy and international trade. Prior to the depression and war, Europe and Japan had exported their products to the US and been paid in dollars, which these nations then used to import American products. In the post-war period European currencies and the Japanese yen were essentially worthless. In the absence of dollars to buy American goods, global trade could not be re-established and the US was in danger of falling back into depression, mass unemployment and social instability. The plan envisioned ultimately an integrated European Common Market, with a re-industrialized Germany at its core and a common currency easily converted into dollars. Billions of tax dollars would be pumped into ruined Europe (with a similar plan for Japan) and then be re-circulated back into the US to purchase reconstruction services and materials from American companies. The war-devastated nations would be rebuilt and American prosperity would return.

The key to European recovery, said American analysts, was Germany. Secretary Marshall declared that ‘the restoration of Europe required the restoration of Germany. Without a revival of Germany’s production there can be no revival of Europe’s economy.’ The chairman of General Motors, then the largest corporation in the world, said that without German integration into a common European market ‘there is nothing that could convince us in General Motors that it was either sound or desirable or worthwhile to undertake an operation of any consequence in a country like France’.

France itself was adamantly opposed to re-industrializing the neighbor that had invaded it twice that century but was induced to accept the plan when it realized that the enormous reparations it desired from Germany could only be obtained if German industry was resurrected. France also fervently wanted to hold on to its empire, especially in North Africa and Indochina. To have any hope of success it would have to depend on the United States and would therefore be required to go along with the Marshall Plan.

Russia, however, was a very different case. Under no circumstances could the Soviet Union accept a reunified Germany reconstructed along the lines that had enabled its rise as a military power in the first place. Germany had also twice invaded Russian territory in one generation, with consequences far more extreme than for France. The USSR desperately needed aid, even more than the nations of western Europe, and at the final allied conference at Potsdam had asked Truman for a $10 billion loan, having previously been promised $6 billion by FDR. Stalin took measures to cooperate with the US, such as allowing non-communists to share rule in strategic Poland and Czechoslovakia, by withdrawing troops from Austria, Manchuria and Iran, and by refraining to support communist movements in China, Greece and elsewhere. Washington had continued to dangle the possibility of the loan to Moscow without making any concrete guarantees. It never did extend the money.

In 1948 the US offered Marshall Plan aid to Czechoslovakia which had fallen under Nazi rule during the war when its puppet government had allied with Hitler. Nevertheless, that nation was allowed by Stalin to have elections in which non-communists shared power. Czechoslovakia straddled east and west and sought good relations with both sides. But it was clear that acceptance of Marshall Plan aid would tie the small nation’s economy to the west and erode the cordon sanitaire that Soviet foreign policy saw as key to its national security. Rather than allow Czechoslovakia out of its orbit the Soviets ruthlessly toppled the non-communist government of Edward Benes and occupied the country. This was the first military foray conducted by the Soviets after World War II, and it occurred in a nation that had been an enemy, and had previously been occupied by the Red Army. This move against the Czechs hardly portended the global conquest that Washington’s propaganda insisted was the Soviet goal.

Had Italy at the time elected a communist government and showed signs of lining up with the USSR the United States would have overthrown that government (actually it would never have allowed any communists, elected or not, in the first place). Nevertheless, Washington seized upon the Czech overthrow as perfect evidence of its own propaganda. The Reds were relentlessly seeking world conquest and would have to be ‘contained’. The die was cast. The USSR would be denied reconstruction aid, it would be banned from the renewed global economic system and its proclaimed menace would be employed to justify rearmament in the US and Western Europe.

Critics of the European Recovery Plan in the US, like FDR’s former vice-president Henry Wallace, dubbed it the ‘Martial Plan’. Wallace, who was running for president in the 1948 election, argued strenuously that Truman’s policies were deliberately fostering mistrust, a dangerous arms race and potential future war. Like FDR he believed that mutual cooperation between Washington and Moscow could be worked out favorably to both nations, if only the US would take seriously Russia’s genuine security concerns. He and many others doubted Truman’s professed humanitarian motives for the plan, believing it was calculated primarily to profit large corporations, especially many war industries that had grown to gargantuan proportions as a result of wartime contracts with guaranteed profits. What would the workforce’s share be? If a new war should come who would do the dying?

In response to the dispute over the Marshall Plan big business established the Committee for the Marshall Plan. Massively funded by concerns like Chase Bank, General Motors, Westinghouse, Standard Oil and numerous Wall Street law firms and brokerage houses, the public was saturated with media ads touting the benefits the economy would reap. Simultaneously, critics were portrayed as communists or communist sympathizers. New epithets entered the political vocabulary. Opponents of the plan, or of Truman’s anti-communist policies in general, were now derided as ‘stalinoids’, ‘parlor pinkos’ and communist ‘fellow travelers’. The most conservative elements in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) were enlisted to line the unions up with corporate America. The Truman Administration also mandated the Federal Employee Loyalty Program requiring millions of federal employees to take a loyalty oath. This energized the extreme right wing in American politics since it more than implied that the administration had allowed itself to be infi ltrated by ‘subversives’ and fed the witch hunt against any critics of US foreign policy that followed. Wallace himself, whom FDR had trusted as he had never trusted Truman, was depicted in the popular press as Stalin’s ‘stooge’. The former Vice-President’s interest in eastern religions was ridiculed and condemned as a betrayal of America’s ‘Christian heritage’. The strongest political link to FDR’s New Deal, Wallace and his bid for the presidency, was derailed by such caricatures. An age of irrationality, intolerance, censorship and militarized anti-communism had dawned and would dominate American domestic politics almost for half a century.

HE FUTURE OF GERMANY FURTHER POLARIZES THE COLD WARThe years 1948–1950 were critical to the evolution of American Cold War policies and the future of American democracy. The crucial issue of Germany heated nearly to atomic warfare over the capital city of Berlin; the Chinese communists overthrew the regime the US had propped up against Japan; the Soviets exploded their fi rst atomic bomb; war in Korea broke out suddenly, and across the globe the colonies were in open revolt. Panic gripped the Truman Administration while its right-wing opponents mounted a hysterical condemnation of the government’s policies. Owing to its unpopularity, the draft laws of World War II had been allowed to lapse but on 24 June 1948 Congress instituted a new Selective Service Act that would conscript able-bodied males for compulsory military service, not to defend American shores but once again to be deployed thousands of miles from home.27 The militarization of the Cold War and the creation of the ‘permanent war economy’ was now becoming law. The National Security State, what President Dwight Eisenhower would later call the ‘military-industrial complex’, was now unremittingly fastened on to American life, adding new branches to the republican form of government, neither elected nor seemingly subordinate to the original three prescribed by the Constitution. (The Constitution prescribes a legislative branch, an executive and a judicial. The new National Security State involved the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council which effectively acted as new branches unelected by anyone.) Coupled with the rising power of the Central Intelligence Agency this ‘secret government’, operating behind the scenes and in the shadows of American political life, would maneuver ceaselessly to reduce government ‘by the people’ to political theater once and for all.The fate of Germany, split between the capitalist west and Soviet east, polarized the issues between the US and USSR. By 1948 it was clear that no compromise on Germany’s reunifi cation could be reached that satisfi ed either side. When the US announced that it had created a separate currency for West Germany the Soviets decided to close the border between their zone, East Germany, and the West, halting any progress toward reunifi cation. The American intent was to foster re-industrialization and economic stability in West Germany such that it could begin importing American and western European products. This fl atly rendered null the agreement made at Yalta for Russian reparations from the wealthier, industri

APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Atwood, P. L. (2010). War and Empire : The American Way of Life. Pluto Press.

#world war ii #world war 2 #wwii #ww2 #united states #us #soviet union #russia #cold war #communism #ussr #open door policy #militarism #military industrial complex #us aggression

[ivory-rabbit]

Introductory / Tag Post : 👁 Eden

Eden is a character I have developed for an Urban Fantasy Dungeons and Dragons campaign, using version 5e and Unearthed Arcana / Home-brew supplements. While certain aspects of this character are still in flux because his campaign is ongoing, having this version of him allows me to explore some other aspects of his personal canon that haven’t come up in-game yet. Additional information about his background and the universe he inhabits can be acquired from me, from the Player’s Handbook, or the Unearthed Arcana test materials.

Eden is a ghost? undead? recently reincarnated guardian angel in training, brought back by a powerful Archangel to continue to help and protect the living. While Eden appreciates this idea in concept, his patron’s desire for him to be a holy warrior rather than a healer sometimes puts the two at odds. Eden just wants to help people without being perceived, even if his methods for accomplishing his patron’s goals are somewhat unorthodox.

Background in Brief (So Far)

Brennan Muir died of gunshot wounds stranded in an unfamiliar city, taken far from home, in the middle of the night. Those last few moments were the final memories of what had otherwise been an uneventful twenty years of farm work and ordinary life. When the last breath left his lungs time stretched out infinitely before him, wrapping around him and pulling him onward into the afterlife.  What followed was neither rest nor bliss nor empty darkness  but pain beyond anything he had ever imagined possible - and then a bright, blinding light shrouding something beyond comprehension. Moments-turned-months-turned-endless-years of anguish fell away to a white void and a booming voice commanding him not to be afraid. That voice offered a deal: in exchange for escape from the anguish of death, he would give himself over fully to helping and protecting others as he had been helped. He panicked, he begged.

His earliest memory beyond that is waking up somewhere new, amongst unfamiliar trees with dirt under his nails. Brennan, now Eden as decided by his patron, has spent his last few months back amongst the living desperately trying to readjust to what is supposed to be business as usual. At least it would be, but it’s difficult to not be frightened of the fact that food now tastes like ash and turns his stomach, or the fact that he doesn’t seem to need to sleep any more. Could he truly be counted as alive if he sometimes caught himself not breathing? Living or dead, the sometimes intrusive voice of the Archangel inside his head was very, very real - like a knife cutting through the relentless assault on the senses the world had become. Nothing sounded the same; though his vision was much less clear, it was now so much easier to hear how much sadness people tended to keep to themselves, how scary it could be to simply be alive.

Though he would quickly prove himself far too soft-hearted and fearful for the warrior’s taste their mission became clear; the Angel’s guidance took him from town to town - learning to help people in small ways without being too intrusive. It became a kind of skill to practice, a way to not only help others but also to make the best of the strange things that he now seemed capable of after death. It almost became comfortingly predictable, until he accidentally stumbled into step with a group of of very peculiar people.

[Campaign Begins Here]

- - - - - - - - - - -

Name: Brennan Muir Eden Age: Aged 20 years; deceased 5 months, revived for 3 Gender: Enby [he/they] Stature: 152 cm [5’ 0"]  Delicate, diminutive build; seems perpetually on edge and uncomfortable, fidgety, death-warmed-over complexion. Has an incredibly light/quiet step, and won’t wear shoes unless forced. Hair: Fair / straw coloured; soft and fluffy Eyes: Pale and heavily cataracted, clouded from beholding an incredibly bright light Scars and Identifying Features: Significant burns on hands and soles of his feet - hand scars he covers with bandages and gloves; bullet scars on abdomen; three sets of small, flightless wings (in Eden’s campaign setting, all aasimar have visible wings that are only capable of flight when magic is used); faint freckles across the nose; missing a tooth on the upper left

Race: Undead Reincarnated(?) Aasimar Alignment: Lawful Neutral Background: Revenant Class: Mystic / Warlock Abilities:

Minor Invisibility and Teleportation - up to 30 feet

Blind Spot - can erase himself from the memories of others, the amount of time erased dependant on the amount of energy consumed. Currently, only a few minutes is manageable.

Empath - Eden has an uncanny level of insight when it comes to reading people‘s feelings, particularly when people are sad, hurt, or afraid. He uses this enhanced skill to try and help comfort people.

Limitations:

Lingering Death - food makes Eden sick / tastes terrible, sleep doesn’t happen, breathing is technically optional

Overall aura of undeath sometimes makes people (particularly those that see spirits) uncomfortable

Poor Vision - particularly at a distance, Eden’s vision is not great due to the damage to his eyes. In a modern setting, he would be classified as having low vision and would use an ID cane in some situations.

Inventory: 2 Daggers, 2 Books (Paradise Lost, Book of Pastoral Poems), 1 Mobile Phone, 1 Slightly Burnt Family Photo, 1 Component Pouch, 1 Healer’s Kit, SCREEN, 1 handheld video game, at least 2 blankets

Personality In Brief: | fearful | sensitive | meek | wants to help | eccentric | awkward |

Eden is a soft-spoken, gentle person currently confronting the often cruel and uncontrollable nature of his own existence. His sudden death and the pain that immediately followed have made him a much more cautious and fearful person than he was in his previous life, and that has carried over into how he chooses to interact with and help people. He is a pacifist and healer by choice, and will go well out of his way to make sure the people he’s travelling with are safe and happy. That being said, he is also easily overwhelmed or pushed around and can be bullied by his patron or other characters into situations where aggression/combat might be necessary.

Though his understanding of things and approaches to social interaction are sometimes unorthodox - especially now that his perspectives on mortality, morality, and faith are changing - Eden’s goal is always to help people deal with whatever is causing them discomfort or sadness. If he can do that without getting acknowledged, even better: some people react with fear when they encounter beings like the Archangel, so maybe it it’s best if they don’t ever see him either.

Miscellaneous  Notes:

Formerly human, not used to his new appearance - won’t immediately recognise his new face in mirrors, not used to having wings

Doesn’t have complete / clear memories immediately following his resurrection

The Archangel is severe and demands cooperation - as far as Eden is aware, it is either follow orders or go back to being dead

Eden’s patron is technically ‘good’, but is not above using fear, pain, or outright control over warlocks to achieve results

Eden’s senses are a lot different now than they were when he was alive. Everything has a sound or a voice - even feelings, ideas, and sensations. These tangle together so much that things can become kind of overwhelming.

#long post #👁 h e a l i n g s p i r i t :: [Eden] #👁 r e v e n a n t :: [self] #👁 m e e k :: [gestures] #👁 b u r i e d d e e p :: [headcanons] #👁 w h i s p e r e d p r a y e r s :: [thoughts] #👁 b e n e d i c t i o n s :: [words] #👁 s p i r i t u a l :: [aesthetic] #👁 r e l i c s :: [inventory] #👁 p a s t l i v e s :: [memories] #👁 t o b e s e e n :: [fears] #👁 f o r g e t a b o u t i t :: [abilities] #👁 h u m b l e :: [home] #👁 i h o p e i h e l p :: [friends] #👁 a n d G o d s a i d :: [visions] #👁 s w i n g a w a y :: [the Archangel] #👁 p r o f e s s i o n a l w e i r d o :: [crack tag] #👁 n e w g r o w t h a n d d e a t h t o g e t h e r :: [Rosie] #👁 c o l o u r f u l c a t a l y s t :: [Riley] #👁 s t a l w a r t p r o t e c t o r :: [Rook] #👁 f i s h o u t o f w a t e r :: [Menkar] #👁 h e r e t o h e l p ( ? ) :: [SCREEN] #death mention tw

[astralaces]

tagging @cradlesonanetwork ! I know the prompt was meant to show our cradlesonas as heroes but I just couldn’t help myself for this one! I made a playlist for the event and the story that goes with it is under the cut.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DFtEZHRlMjpfHBIzz1ku5

Angie, Goddess of Deceit, is up in the garden where all the gods and goddesses live, with a boredom that cannot be sated. Each and every day consists of the same tiresome routine that’s driving her out of her wits. She laments how she’d rather be doing something interesting and new as she runs through the garden in a game of make believe to try to stir up some excitement (Everything at Once). Suddenly, she reaches the garden’s edge and curiously looks down at the mortal world. In it, she sees a town in the midst of being destroyed by utter chaos. A battlefield claims the lives of several humans, fires engulf buildings without discrimination, and the mortal’s pleas for help fill the space. About a mile or so away from the chaos, desperate mothers file their children into carriages that will presumably take them away from this madness (Deliver Us). Suddenly, Angie comes up with a plan that will take away her boredom.

At the same time, a young boy named Oliver is ushered into one of carriages taking children away from the town. The inside was far too crowded and many of the children openly cried out from fear and confusion. Suddenly, the carriage hit a massive pothole and lurched forward, sending the children inside into a tumbling frenzy. The wooden structure fell apart, leaving several bodies bruised and battered on the floor. Oliver’s breath caught in his throat from the pain and he could see about six men on horseback approaching where he and the other children had landed. From the way they were dressed he instantly knew they were part of the group that was destroying the town. As the men on horseback got closer, the rest of the children grew aware of their presence and using all the strength they had they clumsily got to their feet and took off in different directions (Run Boy Run).

After letting the tragic events unfold a bit more, Angie slowly descended into the town. There was so much chaos and disarray that at first no one seemed to notice the goddess among them, but with a slight movement of her hand time began to still for those who were causing the panic. The townspeople stared in awe and confusion as Angie brought her hand up to her lips, blowing a white fog off from it. As she did this, every enemy of the town disappeared, leaving only the locals in the wake of destruction. Knowing that her plan was working Angie took a step forward, causing all the fires to go out. She let the mortals gawk for a few more moments before addressing them, saying that she was a goddess who had heard their pleas and came to help. The townspeople were overcome with emotion and quickly began to trust and revere her (Safe & Sound).

Within the shadows Edgar, the God of Death, watched Angie with calculating eyes. He had been drawn to this town from all the killings and bitter bile rose in his throat at the thought that his fun was coming to an end. It took him less than a second to figure out everything coming from the Goddess’ mouth was a lie. She was cold, cruel, and manipulative while trying to come off as benevolent. Still, he knew better than to expose her right away. He waited until she was alone to confront her head on, letting her know that he knew she was a fraud (Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing). Amused by his accusation, Angie tells him that they share many of the same qualities. In fact, she knows that under the guise of disdain he’s rather intrigued by her. Unable to deny this, Edgar points out that she appears to be just as intrigued by him. The two play this game of cat and mouse before agreeing to come to a compromise that will satisfy both their needs. Angie would continue to make the townsfolk worship and adore her and once she was bored of them Edgar had free reign to pick them off one by one (Dangerous Game).

A few days later, Oliver’s exhausted body collapsed in a small town several miles from his home. He was found by a group of men who took him to the local orphanage. It was then, among all the other orphaned and destitute children, that Oliver decided he wanted to make something of himself. Unwilling to let his tragic circumstances define him, he poured himself into his studies and used the pain of his past to fuel his success. Even after he was old enough to leave the orphanage, he continued to study for another decade until he mastered his chosen craft: inventing (Rise Like a Phoenix).

Meanwhile, Angie and Edgar spent the last several years traveling from place to place while playing their game. Several towns had fallen victim to them as every last citizen was stripped of their free will and life. As their list of potential new locations grew smaller and smaller, the pair found themselves in the town a now adult Oliver called home (Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This).

Oliver watched with the other townsfolk as Angie gave the usual speech of her being a goddess who’d come to help the town in its time of need. She promised to bring a surplus of food for the hungry, clothes for the cold, and shelter for the homeless. She swore to protect the people and to care for them as if they were her own. Looking around, Oliver could tell that the people were enraptured by her words, but he was skeptical. Not trusting Angie, he began to follow her until nightfall. Sure enough, once all the townspeople were asleep in their homes a man Oliver had never seen before came up to the goddess. While Oliver wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying, he watched as the goddess nodded her head. Gleefully, the man at her side pulled out a sword covered in a mist of shadows. His eyes were set on a homeless man sleeping several feet away and within the next second his sword pierced the man’s neck in a feat that shouldn’t have been possible. Stifling his gasp, Oliver realized that the man with the sword was Death. That meant there were two malicious gods that had the townsfolk wrapped around their fingers. Not knowing what else to do, Oliver raced home and began to work on a seemingly impossible weapon: a gun that could kill a god (My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark).

Several weeks passed from the day Edgar and Angie had first arrived. Dozens were now dead, but the gods were doing a good job of covering their tracks. They were professionals at this point so it was business as usual, except for one minor detail. After spending so much time together, the pair had developed true feelings for each other. Deciding to be the braver of the two, Edgar is the first to confess his feelings, pledging his loyalty to Angie who then confesses her feelings as well (I Will Be There).

Shortly after this, Oliver finally perfects his ultimate invention with one small problem: he was only able to create one bullet with the power to kill a god. Still, with more and more people being murdered by the day, he knows there isn’t any time to lose. Setting out into the town’s square he speaks out against Angie and Edgar, telling the people that they have all been deceived. He shows the people indisputable evidence that proves the two gods are the culprits of all the recent murders and disappearances while also revealing that he’s come up with a way to stop them. Roars of applause and anger rose from the deceived crowd as they all rallied with Oliver to kill the gods (Uprising).

The passion filled townspeople quickly track down and surround Angie and Oliver, who are amused by their display of defiance. Knowing full well that their power outweighs that of mortals, the two taunt the people, telling them that it is impossible for them to win. A fight breaks out with Angie and Oliver clearly having the upper hand. They kill several people at once and gain several feet of footing as they continue to laugh at the uprising. From the middle of the chaos, Oliver managed to sneak his way around the crowd. From his position he had a clear shot of both gods and, deciding her cunning ways made her the more immediate threat, he aimed at Angie. Right as his finger pulled the trigger, Edgar’s head whipped around. With inhuman speed he pushed Angie out of the way and the bullet lodged itself in his chest. True to its nature, the bullet managed to kill the God of Death (Partners in Crime).

Shocked, Angie dropped to her knees and cradled Edgar’s body in her arms. Although he now had no way to kill her, Oliver marched passed the handful of remaining townsfolk until he was standing right in front of the goddess. He called her out on her deplorable actions, and though he knew she felt no remorse he couldn’t contain the hatred in his voice as he dug into her (Don’t You Dare Forget The Sun). Unable to contain her rage, Angie sarcastically congratulates Oliver for killing Edgar before deciding to let him reap what he’s sewn. She uses her power to kill the remaining townspeople on the spot while sparing Oliver, knowing this will shake him up (Sarcasm).

Switching gears, she uses her powers of deceit to alter Oliver’s mind. She paints herself as a victim of the situation, making him believe that she had no choice in the killings and that she is not only remorseful, but seeking salvation. Unable to ward off her power, Oliver not only believes this, but takes pity on her, allowing her to return to her home in the garden (Off With Her Head).

Back home, Angie thinks back on the years she spent in the mortal world with Edgar. Memories of being the most powerful being in existence flashed through her mind as she thought about her lost love and power (Viva La Vida).

#me #cradlesona mythology #cradlesona event #its 1 am and my brain refused to let me sleep until i posted this #this event gave me life

[bnhafantasybigbang]

Wolf’s Fantasy Notes: Punk Fantasy

Hello all! I am back again with Punk fantasy. This one has a decent wealth of subcultures. So I decided to focus on some of the more popular ones that I know of! If anyone knows of others, please let us know in the comments!

Punk Fantasy

This is another fascinating category! Part of what makes it interesting is the same thing that makes it interesting is the same thing that makes it hard to define. Punk is usually created through what if scenarios that focus on a point in history, the present, or even the future that later lead to alternate universes shaped by the changes. In general terms, Punk often refers to the myriad of subculture genres that pop up in literature. This covers all forms of literature from action to romance to horror, even!

So some of the Punk types I wanna talk about today are: Steam, Cyber, and Diesel!

So first up on my list of potential fic fodder: Steampunk

Steampunk is probably one of of the punk genres that most people are familiar with. Usually carrying either a Victorian or Wild West flair there are airships running on steam instead of planes alongside cog and steam cyborgs/robots. Metallic prosthetic limbs made of gears! Top hats and feathers and brooches made of clock parts! Also, don’t leave your aviator googles at home! 

In simple terms, Steampunk is basically a what if scenario that joins the bridge between fantasy and sci fi (I will do a post on sci fi-fantasy as well). What if steam powered technology had flourished rather than being outrun by coal and electricity? What would the world look like and how would it run?

There are several examples of this, some blatant and some not so blatant.

Anime: Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle

While both definitely incorporate heaps of magic and mystery, the background tells a bit of a different story.

In Spirited Away, the bath house Chihiro becomes trapped in relies on magic as well as the water and steam that Kamaji provides. Pulley systems and the moving parts of the building rely on it the most.

In Howl’s Moving Castle, again the background has airships and some robotics, but it is far more subtle.

Television: Firefly

This short lived but well loved show featured a crew on an airship and is flagship when discussing steampunk.

Western Animation: Hullabaloo

Is an upcoming animated series about the daughter of an inventor that is set in a steampunk universe! Their website has more info.

Literature:

Works by Gail Carriger

For adults there is her Soulless series about a female assassin traversing a Victorian steampunk landscape that is not only inhabited by humans but vampires, werewolves, and other paranormal creatures.

For the younger crowd, there is her Finishing School series set in the same universe as Soulless. It focuses on a flagship school that trains female assassins like the main character in Soulless!

The Vampire Empire series by Clay and Susan Griffith

A princess has to team up with a vampire to save her people from their mortal enemies the vampires. It is based in a steampunk environment.

Next on the list: Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk can be thought of as the opposite of Steampunk. Where the inspiration for steam is taken from the past, cyberpunk heralds from the future. Steampunk is usually full of exploration and adventure, and a dash of hope for the future. Cyberpunk is usually bleak, bad end future dystopias. Steampunk usually encompasses vast worlds that are remakes of our own. Cyber usually takes place in the future with virtual reality being the setting rather than the real world. Although there are several that do take place beyond it.

Some popular examples are The Matrix series, The Fifth Element, Looper, and Blade Runner for movies. Ender’s Game, Time Cop, and Ready Player One for literature, although all three have film versions.

A recent serial example, would be Altered Carbon. It was a novel that was recently developed as a series for Netflix! It is wonderful series that explores what happens to humanity when they become practically immortal by being recorded onto discs that can be changed from one body to another. It is made for a mature audience, so viewer discretion is advisable.

Lastly: Dieselpunk

Dieselpunk can be thought of as the offspring of steam and cyberpunk if it had fuel running in its veins. This aesthetic is grungy and brutal like cyberpunk usually existing during a dystopic time period as well. However, it focuses on the real world and the environment created by it. Technology itself maybe dying out or still in its infancy during these stories. So, virtual reality and space settings are usually not present. Dieselpunk is also very present as in tied to the present time. They usually take place in dire circumstances like a war.

A couple of examples would be Mad Maxx and Death Race in terms of movies. Snowpiercer would be another.   

Again, please let us know of any other good examples to include in these categories if you know of any!

Functioning as an aesthetic and/or a genre

Another interesting thing about most punk cultures is that they are often considered sub-genres. This often means they can function as an aesthetic rather than a stand alone universe or story type like we typically think of with genres. They often serve to spice up a narrative rather than support it. But they can be used to support one, too.

What do I mean?

Let’s take Spirited Away as an example of punk as an aesthetic.

In Spirited Away, the story is about Chihiro having to save her parents after they stumble into the spirit realm and get turned into pigs. It is a standard hero’s journey story set in a fantasy world with its own ecosystems, politics, etc, etc.  If we want to classify it, we would call it a pseudo-iseikai of the high fantasy variety. See my post on high fantasy for more info.

Steam comes into play only when the story reaches the bathhouse. It is necessary there as a distinguishing element. It is meant to show how human’s modern industrialization is vastly different from the nature harmonious steam and simple physics driven bath house that the spirits have.

Outside of that, steampunk is not important… that idea is no longer important.

How can this be applied to your story?

-Distinguishing cultures or kingdoms

Perhaps give your dragon kingdom a diesel/iron punk feel while your fairy kingdom is more steampunkish in line with their connection to nature

-Use them as a basis for creating other kinds of power sources or culture

-Use them as obstacles to your character’s goals

They find an abandoned ship but it runs on a special fuel that only the dieselpunk dragon race you made can make

Now for a punk genre example.

In Altered Carbon, mentioned in my blurb about cyberpunk, the main character is a newly “spun up” prisoner (they took his chip and put it in a new body after he was “detained” for 200 years in chip form). He was released to investigate a murder. While he does so, we are given glimpses into his original life. Now this story is clearly a sci-fi murder mystery with a hint of romance and other messy human pathos. But it can easily be called a cyberpunk murder mystery, too!

Now what makes this different than Spirited Away? The cyberpunk elements are tightly woven into not only the setting but the culture and the people… and that makes all the difference.

They have their own terminology that is clearly linked to the cyberpunk nature of the story. Spun up is one such term. Another is sleeves. Sleeves, like sleeves on clothing? What makes this so special? In this universe human bodies are referred to as sleeves! This is because when a body dies the “human consciousness” is not lost it is literally backed up on a chip. This chip is located between two vertebrae in the neck and can be reinserted into another sleeve (body)! There is a whole industry built on creating all kinds of sleeves!

In other words, it shapes the very fabric of your story as a whole.

Let’s take the dragon example from before. Instead of your characters just needing the fuel to power a wrecked ship… the ship is theirs and they are actually water transport personnel that move water across a barren wasteland that has been stripped of all its natural resources. There are few places that have electricity or clean water. Your MC has to get this water to their hometown, a shanty village that is in dire straits, their final stop after a few months of running routes. The Dragon kingdom is one of the few kingdoms that can provide fuel and other necessities in this area. Dragons and humans don’t get along. But it is a confrontation that has to be had.

In this scenario, the crumbling society and scarceness that comes with dieselpunk is woven into your character’s and universe’s story. The Dragons have the upper hand because they have what other characters don’t but need. You can play with terminology and how things are made. Perhaps the fuel is made from their blood and scales diluted in some simple oil that the few tree species in the area give off in huge amounts. The ships are cobbled together shells running on simple combustion engines that work with that special fuel.   

Long story short, if you want to use the different punk genres as aesthetics sprinkle it in every now and again. But if you want this to be the backbone of your story… your story’s genre then make sure you treat it like a character. Or at least make it intrinsic to the story you are telling.

Have any questions about making use of punk genres or something you would like me to answer about fantasy in general? Hit me up in my ask box here!

See you soon and sorry for being late (again)! Next time we start talking about some of the more broad yet niche sections of fantasy starting with Dark Fantasy!

~Admin Wolf

#fantasy notes #BNHA Fantasy Big Bang #Fantasy Bang #FAQ #wolfwrites