#not because these things are untrue but because that's neither the lens through which he sees himself nor where his arc focuses

[allbuthuman]

I've seen a lot of analysis of Chuuya's character focusing on being used or controlled, and I think I see it a bit differenly than most of what I've read, so here's some of my thoughts.

Control and lack thereof is, of course, a major theme in his arc. He was made how he is against his will, had his past taken away from him, and was being used for his strength by the Sheep, before getting blackmailed to join the mafia. However, in present time, and, in my opinion, from Stormbringer and onwards, Chuuya is essentially only being controlled by his own self (excluding the vampirism, of course). Let me explain.

Chuuya, likely because of his need to cling onto his humanity, has always been people-oriented. He knows that he holds more power than most, and is therefore obligated to protect others with it. Shirase and the Sheep don't need to tell him that, even though they do. He knows and believes it himself regardless. We can see that because he acts the same even around people who don't rely on him (the Flags).

Before Stormbringer, he might have acted this way because it was instilled into him by others. Through the events of Stormbringer, Chuuya becomes more confident in his own nature. He understands Verlaine and how he ended up the way that he is, and decides that's not gonna be him. He sees Dazai trying to discard his humanity, and decides that's not gonna be him. He is gonna be his own person, and his own person is someone who puts others before himself. He describes this process himself to Verlaine, saying that even if he wanted to kill N, which he probably did, he can't do that, because he is obligated to find the truth for the sake of his dead friends. That's a decision that's focused on others, but he is the one making it, and it's important to him that he is the one making it.

From that point on, he continues to make similar choices. First of all at the end of Stormbringer, when he immediately decides on saving Yokohama from destruction instead of learning the truth about himself, and the fact that he is the one making the choice is emphasised. Dazai gives him another choice, and he doesn't even need two minutes to consider it, because, by that point, he's only staying true to who he is. The same is true for Dead Apple, when he doesn't hesitate to use corruption without knowing if Dazai is alive.

I think that if we were to pinpoint a specific point in time where this solidified in his mind, it would be right after he was tortured by N. His hallucinations fed him his own doubts and fears, and, by the point he snapped out of them and decided to fight Verlaine instead of N, he knew that, human or not, he is his own person with his own emotions and he will stay true to that. It's likely that he didn't exactly put all of this into words in his mind, but it becomes very clear when he says that Verlaine "is just an ordinary human. He gets mad, he worries... That doesn't seem to be enough for him, though". He's confused when Adam implies so, but what his words mean is that it is, in fact, enough for Chuuya.

My point is that yes, Chuuya has always used his power way more often for the sake of others than himself, but the reason he does so, the reason he allows it, is simply the fact that he is Chuuya. If he's unable to stop acting that way, which he admits that he is, it's not because others are controlling him. It's because he is who he is. Whether or not that means he is free or not is beyond the point of this post, because it's sort of a circular process, where his own will is to act for the sake of others. But I do think, for example, that he wouldn't see himself the way a good chunk of the fandom sees him.

(also this is kind of a continuation of this post, or at least related to it, so check here for more chuuya ponderings)

#chuuya would not complain about being a second choice or being left behind #not because these things are untrue but because that's neither the lens through which he sees himself nor where his arc focuses #the stormbringer reread is taking me so long because i stop and analyse everything (wouldn't have it any other way) #next up another dazai post because i had sort of a moment where thoughts fell into place #or verlaine/rimbaud post because they make me ill #bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd stormbringer #chuuya nakahara #nakahara chuuya #bsd analysis

[quietwingsinthesky]

not to think seriously about the samelia arc but idk something interesting there through the lens of aromantic dean coming back and just. not getting it.

One of the first things he asks Sam about what happened while he was gone is “was there a girl?” and when told there was, he’s very upset by that. There was a girl, and in Dean’s mind, Sam chose her over Dean. And wants to continue choosing her! Wants to go back to her, says as much about wanting to go back to that life and almost does after the text message debacle!

And looking at this from Dean’s POV, Dean who tried to have that same kind of Normal Heterosexual Romance Life with lisa, and who it didn’t work for. could never quite make himself fit into place, couldn’t give her things he wasn’t even aware he couldn’t feel. who, as soon as he knew Sam was alive, made it a priority to stick close to his brother even at the expense of that relationship with Lisa. Like. Of course Dean doesn’t get what Sam wants with Amelia. He tried it! He lived it! For him, it felt wrong!

His life with Sam, for all that it’s a fucked up one, is more fulfilling to him than “being in love” with Lisa, and so even beyond the fact that he’s always going to need to choose Sam because that’s been his job since he was a kid, he’s always going to want to choose Sam.

and the idea that there’s some hierarchy of relationships for Sam where Dean isn’t the one he wants to spend his life with? That’s terrifying and confusing to him (if completely untrue, since Sam also proves time and time again that in the end he’ll always choose Dean.) Dean’s got no idea what being aromantic actually is, he’s Dean. Meaning to him, what he had with Lisa is either what everyone gets out of a romantic relationship or he’s broken in ways other people aren’t, depending on how much he hates himself that day. Neither of which are true, but you can see how, with that assumption, the idea that Sam wants to leave this life with him for a woman he met less than a year ago is kind of hard for him to process.

#does this make any sense lmao #Dean 🤝 me: ‘why is this person so special to u? u love them? that sounds fake. I’m the one you’ve known forever.’ #it’s this weird intersection of jealousy society says you’re not allowed to have because your friend/brother is Right to put their romantic #partner before you in every situation (fucked up). and not understanding the hype because. u don’t get those feelings. don’t happen to you #staring at amatonormativity and feeling like shit that you’re on the outside of everything #which. clearly. would aggravate uh All Of Dean’s Issues. #this man can fit so much abandonment in him #anyway. Dean’s reaction to Amelia bad for many reasons but understandable too for many reasons. #but especially if he’s aromantic and Does Not Get why sam thinks loving this woman is a fair enough reason to leave his life with dean #spn #dean winchester #aro!dean

[hellenhighwater]

These days, my older brother Jake is a calm, competent professional. He’s skilled at his job, and so laid-back and reserved that it actually used to intimidate his students when he TA’d classes. That’s now. Back when he was a little kid, he was scared of everything. 

Bugs. Balloons. The vacuum cleaner. Basically any loud noise. The dark. Dogs. The basement. 

As I child, I feared neither god nor death, and so it was my job to protect my big brother from all the minutiae of life that he found terrifying. 

Being afraid of the basement was a real problem, because his bedroom was in the basement. I used to have to go downstairs every night and turn on all the lights before he would come downstairs. Once I’d done that he was fine.

At least he was fine up until he thought it would be fun to spend an afternoon building a spooky fort in his walk-in closet and tell scary stories in it. The four of us huddled in the dark closet-fort with a flashlight and Jake cooked up the scariest story he could: that our house was actually built on top of an old burial ground, and there were horrible undead monsters under the floors, trying to claw their way up. This was a very scary story indeed, and my younger brother and sister were terrified. I was old enough to remember when the house had been built, however, and therefore knew for a fact that the story was untrue. 

Jake, despite also having been there when the house was built, and having made up the story himself, was terrified. 

He spent the next week insisting that I not only turn on all the lights for him before bed, but also check all the closets and make sure that there were no sounds coming from the floor under his bed. Which I did, dutifully, every night.

And then came the day that he punched me in the face and broke the lens out of my glasses. 

Now, we roughoused a lot. Scraped knees and elbows were absolutely the norm, and mostly that was fine. But an outright punch to the face? Heinous. Unforgivable. Deserving of the direst revenge my seven-year-old brain could concoct. 

“Mom and Dad are gonna kill you when they find out you broke my glasses,” I told him, and quietly slid my foot over the fallen lens where it rested in the front lawn. “You better find that lens or you’re gonna be in trouble until you die.” 

Jake, who already knew that he’d crossed a line, went pale and immediately began scrabbling through the grass for the lost lens. I waited long enough for him to turn away before lifted my foot, pocketed the lens, and went inside to sit on the couch and watch him freak out. 

He spent a good hour looking for the lens before he went inside and realized I’d already fixed my glasses. 

I had spent that hour in my most natural state: scheming.

So when night fell, I did my usual basement sweep. I turned on all the lights, loudly opened and closed the closet doors, and then returned upstairs to give Jake the all-clear. “It’s fine,” I told him, “Only....”

“WHAT,” Jake demanded, thoroughly terrified of monsters entirely of his own making, and not at all afraid of the only thing in the house worth fearing, which was, of course, me.  (Our ancient and malevolent demoncat, Kitten Little, was also worth fearing, but that is a story for another time.) At age seven, I had never heard of  the concept of ‘excessive force.’ I had also never heard of the concept of ‘psychological warfare,’ but that was hardly going to stop me from using it. Jake demanded, “What was down there?? What did you see?”

“Oh, nothing. But maybe...I thought I saw eyes? Glowing eyes? Under your bed.”

“GLOWING EYES UNDER MY BED??”

“Probably it was just Kitten Little. Goodnight!”

I bounced upstairs to my room in the attic of the house. The ceiling was plastered with glowy stars, and I flopped down in my bunkbed and watched them idly while I waited for the rest of the house to settle down to sleep. One by one, lights turned off across the house, and soon the only noise was the creaking of the old oak tree outside my window.

I reached up and removed one of the jumbo-sized stars from my ceiling. There was a wad of sticky tack on the back. Quietly, I slipped into the bathroom, turned on the lights, and carefully drew two eye-shapes on the star, as large as would fit. Using the pair of scissors I’d stashed in a drawer earlier, I cut the shapes out of the heavy plastic star. Then I used the sticky tack to attach one to each of the lenses of my freshly-repaired glasses. 

And then I snuck down to the basement, and army-crawled under Jake’s bed.

Now, I’d been patient. It was well after midnight; everyone else was deeply asleep. That was about to change.

I set my nails against the underside of Jake’s bed and dragged them loudly. I pushed up with my legs just enough to shift the bed a little. I could hear him starting to wake up, so quietly, using a deep, grating growl I’d spent all afternoon practicing, (and which, later in life, would scare our class bully so badly he fell backwards out of a hay wagon) I moaned, “JAAAAAAAAAAAKE.” 

Slowly, visibly terrified, Jake lowered his head over the edge of the of the bed.

I whipped my head sideways and shoved my legs against the wall as hard as I could, launching my glowing-eyed face towards him like a snake. 

Jake shrieked. 

Something thumped overhead as everyone in the bedrooms upstairs woke up all at once. I knew I had about sixty seconds of getaway time while Jake cowered under his blankets. I crawled out the door, making sure to move as oddly as possible in case he could see me, and darted into one of the unfinished storage rooms down the hall. I waited until I had heard both parents go into Jake’s room before I sipped out and quietly returned to my room.

Jake insisted on sleeping in my parent’s bedroom for the next month. 

At the opposite end of the house, I slept peacefully every night. 

On the ceiling over my head, carefully attached with sticky-tack, were two glowing eyes. 

#you guys voted for Tiny Hellen's Revenge #so here it is!

[warsofasoiaf]

Communist anon here - Yes to all of them?

@eyeofnewtblog​ said:  I personally would be very interested in hearing an educated opinion on theories and practice

This is going to be a long answer so under a cut it goes. The short answer is no, I do not like either Marxism or communism, to the point where I consider myself anti-communist. The long answer goes under the cut.

First, it’s important to remember where I am coming from, what I am, and what I am not. I’m neither educated in philosophy nor history. I study both, and I have had classes in both, but that doesn’t mean that I’m an expert in either, and my experiences with Marxism have largely been academic, instructors attempting to tell me what Marxism is (fun fact: I once made a lot of these theoretical arguments to a Marxist professor on an exam - I was given an F). So if you’re looking for an educated opinion, depending on what that means, I don’t have one, after all, I got an F on it. Similarly, while I do study some philosophy, it is by no means something I’ve been trained it or seriously articulated; my observations primarily come from observing human nature and studying history and political movements. In that sense, I’m far closer to Eric Hoffer than I am to Hannah Arendt (though both as philosophical scholars far exceed me in every sense that to be compared to them would not be an honor to me but an insult to them). I’m a believer in liberalism and democracy, and a radical individualist, which to me means that people have an inherent dignity, and should be free to determine who they are, what they want to do, and what they value. It’s not a fully-fleshed out philosophy with rules, I’ve already said I’m no philosopher. I just do the best I can and handle situations as they come up.

Those values put me at odds with Marxism from the get-go. Marxism articulates the necessity of a dictatorship, the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” where the government following the revolution seizes the means of production, nationalizing all industries and property, and transition to a communist society, preserving the power of the state to suppress any reactionary or counter-revolutionary activity. I’ve heard this line before; this sounds remarkably similar to authoritarian measures enacted in tinpot dictatorial states meant to preserve order and enforce the power of the government to suppress dissent. The “transitional state” sounds a lot like perpetual “state of emergency” laws enacted to keep the populations in line, a theoretical end-state where such measures are no longer necessary is always on the horizon, but just like the horizon, is never reachable. Call me crazy, but I don’t see how putting people under control of a dictatorship with such unlimited powers is liberating them, save in a metaphorical, dogmatic sense that rationalizes their subjugation as necessary. There’s a broad appeal there, violent mass movements definitely find a lot of support from individuals who see it as a means to finally lord power over those they hate; individuals who want those they despise cowering before them, begging them not to bring the axe down. Such motivations have been an incentive for aspiring foot soldiers to put on their jackboots, so that they eagerly stomp the faces in of the people they despise, and to rationalize it away.

Marxism depends on a lot of things that are untrue, like his assertion that the rate of profit tending to fall, or the labor theory of value which has few serious practitioners and has been widely debunked to the point where Shimshon Bichler was able to criticize the lack of statistical correlation and the degree by which abstract labor must be assumed to see the labor theory of value as purely circular reasoning, hardly compelling for a central tenet of the philosophy to depend on a set of assumptions that rely on others being produced. While I’m no philosopher and reality is impossible to condense into any one singular lens, the degree by which Marxism is riddled with intellectual and logical inconsistencies make it difficult for me as a thinker to take it as seriously as others do. Other matters, while not necessarily untrue, become difficult to function when brought from theory to reality. Take the standard line: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” How are ability and need for each person assessed? What happens if someone is incapable of producing something to the level of ability that is assessed? What happens if someone needs more than is assessed? What happens if need outpaces supply? What happens if ability cannot meet need? What happens if there’s a disaster and there is a temporary shortage? These extend outwards to questions of land use, industrial capacity, training, etc., these centralized economically planned models failed in the 20th century, and again, this turns me off to the model. This is not simply a matter of corrupt Communist Party officials degrading the functioning of the government for personal enrichment, this is a serious information problem that even the most powerful computers of today cannot model and manage, and the idea of a communist state becomes much diminished in appeal to me.

Other stuff in Marxism goes further into what I consider downright repugnant. The idea of “false consciousness” is particularly disgusting to me, where if someone is not motivated by that which the Marxist believes that they should be motivated, these conceptions are deluded and must be corrected. That is such a statement of such monumental arrogance I’m surprised it doesn’t have its own gravity well. It is to say to one person that whatever meaning they have discovered through their own experiences is less valid; it is to say that the Marxist may state that whatever said person values is not in their own benefit. The logical conclusion from this is that non-Marxists cannot be allowed their own judgment, that they must be shaped until they embody the Marxist conception of reality and only then are they truly full people, capable of making judgments of this fashion and assessing what is to their benefit and what is not. For a movement that espouses equality and liberation, sure as hell doesn’t seem very equal to me; only our practitioners are capable, rational beings? No.

Now, most Marxists I know don’t really believe this, but I think this is more of their own conception. Like most practitioners of religions or other philosophies, they pick and choose what tenets to follow.

Communism is practice has been a disaster. Lenin really ran with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat with his vanguard model, making the centralizing dictatorship a core part of his leadership and in charge of everything, to the point where failure to provide the dictatorship with what they demanded was considered treason and grounds for termination, and later communist regimes really ran with this idea, as I’ve mentioned before, Marxism appeals to revolutionary dictatorships because it justifies the dictatorship beyond a naked power grab to better secure it. Similarly, Lenin rationalized ignoring his citizens by simply ignoring elections when he lost; the Leninist model was openly a sham democracy. In the Soviet Union, even Khrushchev, who gave the Secret Speech denouncing Stalin, still sent the tanks into Hungary and forcibly medicated any who disagreed with the principles of communism as mentally ill (my previous paragraph is not jumping to conclusions, this was a documented fact). Mao created the “mass line,” a means to consult the population while mandating interpreting their wishes through the ideology, thus dismissing anything that the dictator doesn’t want, a clever fig leaf. Of course, Mao’s already deeply unworthy with its massive loss of life - the Great Chinese Famine was the largest famine in history and enacted by the ideological dogmas of the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s Cultural Revolution was doubling down on his mistakes, murdering those who opposed him. The brutality though, has been the biggest failure; there’s a reason the European left jumped to the social democrat model with the rise of Keynesian economics in the aftermath of World War II, they felt it was a way to achieve their objectives without the brutality of the Soviet model. The totalitarian conception of power and identity left its mark on the movement, but I don’t see them as inventions by power-mad dictators, they were extensions of the philosophy that saw only its practitioners as fully human. 

Even discounting the brutality, the standard of living and industrial capacity of communist countries has been low comparatively. In 1927, the Soviet Union produced a scant 3 million tons of steel despite massive advantages in natural resources and manpower, compared to Germany’s 16 million tons, Britain’s 9 million, and France’s 8 million. Relatively speaking, more resources were wasted in steel production in the USSR, and this was similar across the board in communist countries. Communism lambasted capitalism for its wastefulness, but the numbers show that communism was the far more wasteful, inefficient method of economic organization. Some defenders of the Soviet Union point to the growth under leaders like Khrushchev, but I counter that the exceptional rate of growth was both temporary and comparatively small compared to non-communist states. Francis Spufford may have tried to sell it with the idea of Red Plenty as a fusion of history and fiction, but history has borne out that it was entirely fiction.

The more anarchist sects of the movement, the ones who reject the transitional state, similarly were failures in practice. In Spain, those who did not wish to join were often brutalized, which seems to me to be violating the principal of anarchism in that forced compliance in an anarchist society is an extension and use of state power. This is relatively common throughout history though, particularly when it comes to ideology. The Soviet Union decried “imperialism” but was incredibly imperialist, just as the United States decried the security state apparatus of the Soviet Union as violating the rights of their own citizens while pursuing COINTELPRO when it came to folks like Fred Hampton. In a more practical sense, the anarchists poor training and suboptimal deployment were unable to stop Franco despite having plenty of clear advantages in the Spanish Civil War. While they are by no means the only reason for the Republican failure, the inability for the anarchist faction to defend their people is a failure of their system of government. A lot of anarchist models run into this problem, it should not be thought of as a failure reserved solely for the anarcho-communist model, and anyone who says it doesn’t is ignoring history.

So to sum up, I consider Marxism to be a philosophy which espouses tenets that I find disgusting, and it’s articulation of government to be illiberal, anti-democratic, and founded on the violation of human rights and dignity.

Thanks for the question, Anons who were waiting.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#communism

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

Radiance. By Grace Draven. Self-Published, 2014.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: fantasy romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Wraith Kings #1

Summary: THE PRINCE OF NO VALUE Brishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined. THE NOBLEWOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE Ildiko, niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light. Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart.

***Full review under the cut.***

Trigger/Content Warnings: sexual content, bullying, violence, blood; references to infanticide, ableism, torture, and incest

Overview: I learned of this book when an artist I follow on tumblr mentioned it as one of their favorites. I had high hopes after seeing so many 4 and 5 star reviews, but unfortunately for me, I wasn’t as enthusiastic as most people seem to be. While I did appreciate that the hero wasn’t a gruff, emotionally damaged, violent man, I personally found the story as a whole to be rather dull. There were way too many scenes that focused on domestic life at the Kai castles, and while that could have been an interesting plot in itself if the stakes were high enough, the political drama wasn’t developed enough to be thrilling, nor was the Kai court different enough from the human one to be a tale about immersing oneself in a new culture. Even looking at this book purely through the lens of romance, I don’t think there was enough there; while I don’t think the hero should have been mean to the heroine or something like that, I do think the relationship could have benefitted from developing a little more, and for Draven to have really dug into the nuances of what changes when a couple moves from friends to lovers. Thus, this book only gets 2 stars from me.

Writing: Draven has a simple writing style that fits well within the romance genre. It flows well and balances telling and showing so that worldbuilding doesn’t feel too info-dumpy. My biggest complaints are things that are easily fixable, like correcting typos and moving flashbacks around so that they occur at more appropriate moments. Other than that, I don’t have too much to say about the writing; it was fine.

Plot: In a way, this book is a Beauty and the Beast retelling: two people must overcome their revulsion to the other’s appearance before they fall in love with the good character underneath. Behind this main plot is a political drama in which several kingdoms are vying for territory, making and breaking alliances while a conniving queen does her best to stay in power.

Regarding the Beauty and the Beast plot, I really liked that Radiance seemed to adhere more closely to the core themes of the original fairy tale than a lot of other retellings I’ve encountered; instead of a story about a woman trying to tame the “bestial” man with her womanly charms, both characters in Draven’s book have to learn to see the other as beautiful by learning to appreciate one another’s culture. The main scenes that come to mind that do this well are the times when Ildiko (our heroine) finds beauty in the Kai death ritual (the mortem light) and when her expectations are subverted when it comes to the food the Kai eat (not the scarpatine, but the other dishes). I also liked that Draven devoted a lot of time to detailing why the Kai found human eyes so off-putting, and Brishen (our hero) comes to appreciate them when learning to read his wife’s emotions. If anything, my main complaint is that I think Draven could have done more to enhance these themes by tweaking her worldbuilding; the Kai were different from humans in a lot of ways, but so much was the same (court politics, social hierarchy, etc.) that I think the task of learning to appreciate a different culture wasn’t difficult enough. I would have liked to see the Kai have a completely different social structure, one that was so alien to the human characters that learning to see the beauty in it proved to be more of a challenge. Because adapting wasn’t too hard and Brishen and Ildiko seemed to have no moments where they suddenly realized they loved rather than just respected or liked the other, I was frequently bored, mostly because there were so many domestic scenes without relationship milestones - instances where Ildiko and Brishen came together as a couple, bonding over things that challenged them to grow as people.

The political plot, in my opinion, was a little ho-hum and wasn’t nearly present enough to be important. We are told that there are rising tensions between three kingdoms, and some people disapprove of the marriage alliance between Brishen and Ildiko, but it kind of felt like a background threat, in part because there were so many scenes depicting feasts (4, by my count) rather than political intrigue, or we get scenes like Ildiko dropping her mother’s necklace in a vat of dye and then Brishen offers to take her to the next town to repair it. Sure, a couple of bandits try to kill Brishen and Ildiko, and some treachery happens later in the book, but the middle section mainly consists of feast scenes, domestic life, or petty drama. I wanted a little more substance to the non-romance plot; perhaps the marriage could have been more explicitly important for the well-being of the Kai kingdom as a whole, and Ildiko has to use her skills to make the Kai more loyal to her. Or, Draven could have gone another route and made the Kai queen to have a clearer political agenda throughout the book other than just being mean to everyone around her. It is mentioned that Brishen and his brother are afraid to cross her in part because magical ability diminishes with each successive generation; maybe that could have been a major focal point or hurdle when plotting against the Queen, rather than an incidental detail that only returns later in the book. Either way, I wanted the politics to be more than just background, and for there to be much higher stakes that will be felt by more people than just Brishen and Ildiko.

Characters: Ildiko, our heroine, is a human woman who enters into an arranged marriage with a Kai prince in order to seal an alliance. I really liked that a lot of the story was centered on Ildiko learning to acclimate to Kai culture and navigate their court politics, and I think it was smart to show that her experience as a courtier in the human kingdom helped her survive the Kai one. I do wish Ildiko’s personal arc had been more about her overcoming her prejudices to appreciate a different culture; while Ildiko isn’t outright racist or resistant to adapting, I do think it would have been more emotionally satisfying if she had clearly entered the marriage with a lot of assumptions about the Kai that turned out to be untrue. If that didn’t sound appealing, maybe Ildiko’s ability to navigate court politics could have been more integral to the plot as a whole, rather than her rather passive role during the final showdown.

Brishen, our hero, was a pleasant surprise; he was kind and considerate, and he didn’t let his power-hungry parents turn him into a gruff, emotionally-unavailable husband. While I did like that he was kind, I also wish his personal arc had been more about overcoming his assumptions about humans or overcoming some other personal conflict, such as balancing his duty to his people/kingdom with his desire to escape the more toxic elements of it. In that regard, I think his romance with Ildiko could have served an interesting purpose: by teaching Ildiko about his culture, he learns to appreciate it more while also finding an escape in her. It would also be cool if he realized that duty doesn’t necessarily mean obeying the monarchs, but doing what’s best for the people.

Supporting characters were a mixed bag. Some, like Brishen’s cousin Anhuset, were interesting but didn’t seem to have a subplot of their own, while others, like Queen Secmet, seemed one-dimensional. In some ways, the one-dimensional characters ensured that most of the focus was on Brishen and Ildiko, but I would have liked a little less feasting and a little more high-stakes conflict that involved these side characters functioning in ways that developed their own arcs.

Romance: Ildiko’s and Brishen’s romance follows a friends-to-lovers arc. When the characters first meet, they instantly bond over their willingness to be honest about their feelings regarding the other’s appearance and culture. I liked that they didn’t start out as completely repulsed by one another, and the friendship bond made for a good safety net when Ildiko has to face the Kai court. I do wish, however, that there had been more explicit developments in showing how the relationship moves from friendship to romantic love. For example, I would have liked scenes where Ildiko has moments of realization regarding what a good man Brishen is, and where Brishen realizes how good a woman his wife is, both in reaction to major plot points (rather than what we get, which is stuff like Ildiko watching Brishen prepare to spar or something). Some of those moments are there in the plot as-is - I’m thinking scenes like when Ildiko learns what an honor it is to have Brishen carry a mortem light for someone beneath his class - but I think there could have been a more defined romance arc.

Worldbuilding: I really liked that Draven didn’t feel the need to overwhelm the reader with worldbuilding details, but I also think she should have done more to make the world feel more purposefully crafted. My biggest problem with Draven’s worldbuilding is that certain elements seemed to be present for no reason at all, or because they were convenient details. For example, the Kai make this very expensive dye called amaranthine, and though we’re told that humans benefit from trading for it, the amaranthine isn’t really involved in an interesting way other than for Ildiko to accidentally stain her skin with in a moment of thoughtlessness. Also, during the last big showdown, we’re randomly told that there are magefinders and a temple which shields the Kai from these magefinders. It felt like these details were inserted for convenience, and I wish more was done to make the setting feel like a character itself.

TL;DR: Radiance does a good job at subverting some expectations, but ultimately doesn’t have a plot that challenges the characters to grow, either individually or as a couple.

#book reviews

[midzelink]

The Fate of Zant

The Usurper King’s is a story with which we are all intimately familiar; angry at the injustice of his people’s banishment and estranged by those who refused his rule, he flees the Palace of Twilight in a fit of anger one day, where he looks to the sky and finds his salvation in the form of Ganondorf, whom he believes to be a god.  With his newfound power, he banishes the true ruler of the Twili and usurps her throne, transforming his own people into dark and malformed Shadow Beasts - and with them at his side he invades the World of Light, storming Hyrule Castle and scattering the land’s Light Spirits in all but one fell swoop.  He commits countless atrocities, reducing Kakariko Village to a mere village of three, murdering the Zora Queen as a sheer display of power, and possibly even killing the King of Hyrule himself - but when all is said and done, he meets his demise at the hands of Hyrule’s hero and the very princess he had cursed, exploding in an agonizing but powerful display of the Fused Shadow’s might.

However, there is one scene in particular that always struck me as out-of-place in this overall narrative.  It comes when Ganondorf finally meets his own demise at the hands of Link, and he stands alone on a hill, Master Sword struck center in the scar he received over a century ago.  He gives us his last words - “The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!” he spits menacingly - but before he perishes, we cut to another scene, and are greeted with this:

It’s Zant, another evil man who recently perished himself, and he ostensibly looks down upon Ganondorf, before cracking his neck in a very morose, very fatal way.  We cut back to Ganondorf, and only then do his eyes go white, and the wind blows over the field, signalling that finally, it’s over.

For a long time, I had assumed that this scene was meant to be symbolic: that Ganondorf, having had such a strong connection with Zant, was only able to perish because Zant, too, was already dead.  But now - an incredible thirteen years later - I have come to believe that this isn’t the case, or, at the very least, there’s a chance it might not be, and I’d like to take a moment to talk about that here.

(Credit for this one 100% goes out to @therealflurrin​​, who also gave me permission to make this write-up.  Their conversations are always an excellent source of primo TP content.)

Something that is important to understand about the relationship between Zant and Ganondorf is that it is one of co-dependence; Zant, angry but utterly powerless to do what he thinks needs to be done, is found by the bearer of the Triforce of Power in a moment of outrage and weakness.  Ganondorf, reduced to mere a giant mass of malice and darkness in the Twilight Realm, tells Zant: “I shall house my power in you… If there is anything you desire, then I shall desire it, too.”  From Zant’s perspective, it’s not hard to believe why he believed this to a blessing from a god; in a great moment of need, a powerful entity appeared before him, offering him seemingly unlimited power.  But we know that Ganondorf is no god; that he only approaches Zant for reasons that are entirely self-serving, as a twisted and misshapen light dweller trapped in the realm of shadows.  He allows Zant to house him and his power with the ultimate goal of being “reborn” and returning to Hyrule, tricks the Twili into believing him to be a “god” so that he will carry out his will unquestioningly - but ultimately, Ganondorf needed Zant just as much (if not far more) than Zant ever needed him.

We know from the very scene where Ganondorf’s death unfolds just how deep this co-dependency runs.  It is my belief that the two formed a sort of “soul bond” following their initial encounter, intertwining their fates so that neither could perish while the other still lived; although Zant is not entirely aware of Ganondorf’s true nature, he is at least somewhat aware of this bond:

 “As long as my master, Ganon, survives, he will resurrect me without cease!”

These are his very last words before Midna strikes him down, in a move that ultimately seems to be very final, indeed.  But now we must return to the death of his supposed “master,” and the implications Zant’s appearance has in that moment.  Ganondorf is on death’s doorstep for the second time; the first, at the hands of the Great Sages, it was the Triforce of Power that saved him - and now, here, he sees Zant in his final breaths, a beacon of hope in a great moment of need.  But the scene plays out how we expect: Zant is already dead, and with nothing yet tethering him to life, Ganondorf meets his end, this time, for good.

Except there’s one teensy, tiny problem here, and I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this: Zant and Ganondorf’s relationship is one of co-dependency, as you’ll remember, their souls bound to one another in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Zelda and Midna’s after the former gave up her own light in order to save the latter.  If this were untrue, then we would not see Zant in the moments leading up to Ganondorf’s death; furthermore, if Zant were somehow already dead despite this co-dependency, then Ganondorf would simply keel over sometime shortly thereafter following Link’s decisive blow with the Master Sword.

Instead, there is a pivotal moment where Ganondorf’s fate is evidently sealed, and it’s the moment where we see Zant snap his neck - a display, which, frankly, was probably far too gruesome for a 10-year-old me playing through the game for the first time.  It is immediately following this scene where Ganondorf reels back, releasing one final, raspy grunt as his life leaves his eyes, and Hyrule again knows peace.  If Zant had died X amount of time before this ultimate battle, it seems very peculiar that Ganondorf would have such a sudden and visceral reaction to it, as if it had happened elsewhere, simultaneously.

So, let’s scrutinize this scene under the lens of their co-dependency; let’s say that, despite the destruction of his body, Zant was able to survive his final blow in some way, as his master still lived on.  Following this, and going back to the initial scene, we can arrive at two simple conclusions:

That Zant was alive up until the very moment that Ganondorf perished, and

in that final, critical moment, he chose to sever their bond.

The question, then, is…why?  Why would the Usurper King, who had once thought the Gerudo King his god, choose to sever the only thing keeping him alive?  It’s true that Zant was undoubtedly a deeply troubled and hateful man; he was angry at the world of light and its inhabitants, whom he saw as oppressors, perhaps even rightly so - and he was angry at the Twilight Realm’s own “useless, do-nothing royal family that had resigned itself to [a] miserable half-existence.”  But Ganondorf’s spirit is one of pure malice, and it had invaded the world on the other side of the mirror long, long before the story of Twilight Princess begins.  One cannot help but wonder exactly what kind of effect such evil might have had on the realm and its denizens, though it is not hard to imagine the harborer of Demise’s Curse slowly and carefully plotting from the shadows, decades spent as whispers in the ears of the unknowing Twili until, finally, one suitable enough to become his vessel appeared - one who was vulnerable and angry enough to listen to those whispers, and would submit to anyone and anything if it meant obtaining the power to do what they thought was right.

Perhaps, then, Zant’s story is not one of an evil, bloodthirsty tyrant who met his rightful end at the hands of Link and Midna; perhaps his is a tragedy, the story of a man who fell victim to the malice residing within Ganondorf, only worsened the moment he became the Gerudo King’s vessel.  Perhaps - lost in fugue state in the Twilight Realm, formless and lost, but still otherwise alive - it took the apparent death of a particular someone at the hands of his “god” in order to finally snap him back to his senses.

(Zant could have simply killed Midna when he usurped her throne, yet he didn’t.  I personally think the two are related, but I can talk more about that in a different at a different time, as it is far more headcanon than analysis.)

Ultimately, nothing Zant could do could ever wash his hands of the blood that stained them, no matter how much Ganondorf might have in part been responsible - but in this one, critical moment, Zant, who had done such wrong and hurt so many, chose to do the right thing, even though that meant saving Hyrule, a world which he had so despised.  Maybe he, too, perished when he severed his bond with Ganondorf - one final, noble act - or maybe he didn’t.  Maybe, just maybe, on the other side of the mirror, there is yet another story waiting to unfold, one of a man who had done such wrong and hurt so many, willing to do anything and everything necessary to prove that he, too, is capable of change…

#zant #ganondorf #twilight princess #loz #legend of zelda #this didn't seem like the right post to talk about this #but i actually think that zant's anger toward the world of light is justified #the man deserves redemption #i think midna and zant are like...cousins #but like i said i can talk more about that later #tp!ganondorf #text #headcanons #analysis #mywriteups* #myposts*

[kyrieanne]

you said something last night about the good place and the incantation, and I don't know what that means but I would very much like to if you can explain it.

::claps hands::

Necessary throat clearing I: I do not think Christianity is the thesis statement of The Good Place; Mike Schur has been extremely clear this story is not an argument for a particular philosophy. I’m not arguing that anything about the show is particularly religious, but rather that there are some natural analogues (from my point of view). The show is about philosophy, which has a natural overlap with theology at large. I’m not a pastor person, but I do have the same education as one. I’m also trained to look closely at narrative “texts.”  Thus, here we are.

Back in 2012, Helen Sword wrote about nominalization – she coined the name zombie words because it’s easier to remember – which is when you take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. Think: implacability, calibration, cronyism, heteronormativity, etc.

Academics, scientists, - and philosophers/theologians eat nominalization for breakfast. They litter their writing with them. At best – nominalization help us put a name to big, complex ideas, and at worst it can be a tripping hazard to communicating with clarity. Sword cites a pretty famous essay by George Orwell Politics and the English Language, written in 1946.

Orwell warns how language isn’t just political in its content but in its form as well. He quotes a passage from the Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Then Orwell wrote a modern version:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Sword and Orwell argue that concrete language – that tethered to our five senses – is clearer. It endures, evocates, and energizes your audience. Nominalization has its uses, but should be used sparingly when communication – always a two-way street – is the goal. Cluttering our language with these zombie words is the best strategy for anyone who wants to talk, but cares very little about being heard.

I think The Good Place is an example of a story told in concrete language - though its a visual medium, and it is very much on purpose. But I’ll get to that...

First, let’s define the term Incarnation...Simply put, it is a theological assertion that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully human. It is one of those key beliefs - take it away and whatever you’ve got isn’t Christian; This isn’t one of those down in the weeds, who cares? theological arguments.

Second, let’s talk about why the points system on The Good Place is fundamentally broken…

Remember Chidi’s breakdown earlier in the season with the peeps chili?

In that scene, he describes 3 main approaches in the last 2500 years of western philosophy to this question: how to live an ethical life?

·       Virtue Ethics – (think Aristotle) There are certain virtues of the mind like courage, generosity, etc. One should develop oneself in accordance to those virtues. The emphasis is on human reason or our minds – what do I do with my mind

·       Consequentialism - Is it right or is it wrong? is based on the consequences of that action - how much utility/good vs. how much pain/bad? The emphasis is on the result instead of the action - what happens to your [neighbor’s] body?

·       Deontology - There are strict rules that everyone must adhere to in a functioning society; an ethical life is identifying & following those rules. The emphasis is on the action instead of the result - what do I do with my body?

(::screeches:: I’m VASTLY over-simplifying here.)

Each philosophical system Chidi outlines makes a priority choice with regards to my mind, my body, and your body. Each takes the mind, body, and other’s bodies into account, but each prioritizes one over the other as the loci – or starting place/lens - from which to answer the question, how to live an ethical life?

The Good Place uses Doug Forcett as the prime example this dynamic because he’s as close to a control group you can have in the story. He is the story-telling embodiment of this tension:

In any ethical system you cannot separate your mind (what you think/believe) from your body (your actions in the real world) or from the bodies of others (the consequences of those actions). 

Please hear what I’m not saying - that these ethical systems are wrong. I am simply saying that none of them completely account for how three parts are inter-connected. 

Doug’s attempt to live an ethical life is endlessly, hopelessly tangled in this ethical web. This is the catalyst for Michael to go to Accounting because he thinks the Bad Place is rigging the points system. But when that proves to be untrue – he jumps to another theory. He makes the case to the Judge that that modern life is so vastly complicated and fraught with moral quandaries that living any sort of morally positive life is impossible.

Yet, it’s total hubris to think our way of life is worse-better than the human condition 500+ years ago. It’s a fetishization of a single era.  Even if we’re arguing that that era damns everyone. It simplifies and romanticizes the past and that is very dangerous because that sentimentality lets us lie to ourselves. We can excuse all kinds of human behavior by slapping the term modernity on it; our world made us do it. It’s a great example of how nominalization can be dangerous. 

I’m confident the show knows this and Michael’s current theory will be proven to be as hollow as the ‘Bad Place is rigging it’ theory. Michael does not know how but he knows with the core of his demon-being that the merit-based “points” system is fundamentally broken.

Let’s talk about systems & power for a moment…

Last year I did some training with the Race Equity Institute for work. They started by talking about systems. We can all name systems:  weather and water systems, the systems of the body and universe, economic and political ones, etc. Social systems – inter-connected people – are maybe the messiest systems there are.

Two important characteristics of any system are 1) the “parts” of the system are inter-connected and 2) the system self-perpetuates, i.e. the power lies in the inter-connectedness of the parts. Your mind & body – as well as the bodies of others – are part of an ethical system. They are inter-connected and there is power in that inter-connectedness.

An ethical life is always bound up in the systems to which we belong, and those systems create mindsets. Yet, the power of those systems is not in the nominalization:  racism, sexism, classcism, etc. we use to describe them. Power lies in the inter-connectedness of the parts – here, people. The last two years of the Angry Cheeto have made that particularly plain, I think.

Enter Big Noodle & the Incarnation

Jason is the character version of from the mouths of babes – his point with Big Noodle is you can’t judge what you don’t know.

So, the Judge goes down to Earth. 

That is what prompted me to think about The Good Place and the Incarnation.

Remember, the Incarnation is a theological assertion who God is, specifically who Jesus Christ is. The church spent a long time arguing about it (like in the hundreds of years) and they did because how do you define God? In the world of The Good Place, where we’re dealing with philosophy and not Christian theology, that question is analogous to how to live an ethical life? because who God is – in the Judeo-Christian tradition – is the starting place for what the meaning of human life is.

(Here I’m going to delve into a little Christian theology, but I PROMISE I have a reason.)

Did God create Jesus in the same way God created trees and elephants and the stars? Was Jesus the highest created being of God? A sort-of demi-god? A movement called Arianism argued this, but in the long run it was rejected because it didn’t fit with the Bible. There were a lot of opinions and theories – I’m skimming over A LOT, but in the end the church basically punted.

The Good Place took Michael through a conversion-like storyline in Season 2 when he became a demon who cares for others – his humans & Janet. Since then he has pursued the question of how behind the points system. He knows it shouldn’t have been possible for his humans to get better after they died, which undermines the whole argument for an earth-bound points system. But they did. If that is true, then the system itself is not the right answer to how to live an ethical life?

Remember: You cannot judge what you do now know.

At the Council of Chalcedon (451), it was decided to define God’s nature by what we know God is rather than what we know God is not. It’s called the Chalcedon formula, and it begins with we confess. In Christian tradition, confession is a different kind of knowing; it is rational, but it is also embodied. One can only confess what one knows because it has be proven to be true in one’s own life. It’s not about having the right answers, but saying - to me this is true.    

The formula states that Jesus is God and Jesus is human, two natures without confusion, and how that exists we don’t entirely understand. It is a union of the human and divine that is not a blending of the two to make one, like the combination of two primary colors to create a new one. Jesus’ birth, life, and death is not somehow less human because of his divinity, but what comes next – the whole rising from the dead thing – definitely is divine. Even writing that sentence makes me itch a little because the Incarnation is an assertion that you can’t divide Christ’s biography into part 1: human, part 2: divine. Rather, the body of Christ – the very nature of who he was, is, and will be – is both human and divine.

The Power of Both/And

Think about this: what confirmation do we have there is a Good Place?

The only characters we’ve seen that come from there are the not-people from The Book of Dougs. Were they angels? Anti-demons? I don’t think we’ve been given a definition. Why should we trust they are what we’re told they are the first go-round? We already know characters are not always who we’re told they are. Further, the judge doesn’t reside in the Good Place. The accountants don’t. We have a door to the Good Place that only non-humans can pass through. Okay, but have we seen anyone pass through it? Assuming there is a Good Place assumes that all the other kinds of characters exist to be part of the machinery that is the human after-life. Demons torture. The judge judges. The accountants tally. Janets help. 

You’ve got a system of interconnected parts:  humans, demons, Janets, needlenoggles, a judge, accountants, etc., and you’ve got this points system in which they all play some part. What Schur & co. have quietly been doing with Team Cockroach is showing how these different types of beings are all changing:  Janet falling in love, Michael’s conversion to caring for others, and the humans changing after they died. None of these things are supposed to be happening in that system.

I wonder if Schur & co. are playing another sleight of hand in their story telling akin to the Season 1 reveal. What if the world of The Good Place isn’t either you belong (not just humans either, but all kinds of creatures) to the GOOD PLACE or the BAD PLACE.  What if - instead - they are making an argument that how to live an ethical life is not about getting the answer to the question, but about seeing the world (here the story-world of The Good Place) in new, transformative ways.

In that REI training, the facilitators asked everyone if you were proud to be an American. This was the beginning of the training. It was one of those questions that you don’t know the right answer to, but you do know what the wrong answers might be. No one said anything. The trainers started listing things they like about living in America:  public education, running water, our national parks, etc., and then they listed things they didn’t like:  history of slavery, the Flint water crisis, etc. They said for the work we were going to be doing in our training they wanted us to resist language of either/or – you are either a racist or you are not. You either love America or you don’t. Rather, they said, embrace the power in both/and language. You can both love the systems in which you live and work, and you can recognize their brokenness, pain, and hurt. You can be both angry at and thankful for your community. That, they said, is how we transform ourselves and our communities. 

The both/and shows up in the Incarnation too – it is a theological assertion that Jesus was BOTH human AND divine. Jesus’ very body rejects that the laws of nature are either/or. Either them or me. Either good or bad. Either/or is a way of seeing the world that is human – we do it as naturally as breathing - but it is not the only way to see. There are more humane ways to exist.

I don’t know what story Schur & co. are telling, but I struggle to see where they are going to land if there is a Good Place without turning the story into a confession of a particular ethical or religious system. Because if there is a Good Place you’ve created an either/or world that needs a system for how it works. 

Rather, they’ve spent a lot of narrative time doing exactly what the church did when they tried to define God – a lot of guesses that tell you want God is not, but don’t clarify what God is. Michael & co. know that Doug Forcett didn’t get enough points despite his ascetic-like life. They know that demons and humans and Janets can change in ways they are not supposed to be able to. They know that they love and care about each other. They know what they don’t know. 

It is counter-intutive, but the best way to communicate big, complex ideas is in concrete, small language. It’s language that is incarnated. The Good Place is a half-hour sitcom about philosophy, and it does that by telling small, incarnated stories. You’ve got 4 humans and they died. What happens next?

But you also have a demon and a Janet. You have a system that appears to not be working. You have two places – good and bad – but actually you don’t. So already that either/or dichotomy is breaking down. There’s the Medium Place and despite the room temperature beer and medium snacks, I wonder if the fundamental geography of the show is a red herring. What if the demons and Janets and all the other kinds of beings are just as caught up in a system of either/or that is patently false? Without a Good Place, the geography of the world isn’t good or bad. It just is. Kind of like our own world. It’s something in between, both joyous and painful. What if the story we’re being told is about how these particular characters – Team Cockroach - challenge and upend a false ethical system in which all creatures in the story are caught?

How to live an ethical life? is a big question that is the wrong question. It posits an either/or world. Human life can be reduced to that, but it is always a reduction based on a lie. We are capable of choosing to see life’s geography - its systems, quandaries, and mysteries - through both/and language. The Christian theology of the Incarnation reminds me that not having all the answers is not only okay, but natural. Life does not occur by knowing the rules and then following them or not. Good living is like good language. It is concrete, small, and embodied. Somehow, it also touches on things bigger than ourselves like love and friendship and the ability to not only change - but transform. 

Why would a fictional after-life be any different?

#nbc the good place #the good place #lulabo #meta

[anneapocalypse]

[RvB 17.11] Stagnation

FIRST Spoilers

In isolation, Carolina’s Labyrinth scene was not out of character or inconsistent or objectively bad; however, cumulatively it is emblematic of the stagnation in Carolina’s writing since season 13. It undeniably resonates with viewers—but I deeply dislike what it represents and I’m going to talk about why.

So to begin, and to try and give this episode a fair shake, here’s what was good about Carolina in the Labyrinth.

Jen Brown kills it as always. It is no mystery that this scene resonates with people. There is a lot of emotion in it and Jen is a fantastic voice actor who always digs deep and does the best possible work with what she is given. Better than what she is given, in many cases.

Carolina’s self-hatred is, I think, evident in her character as far back as season 10 if you look at all beneath the surface level. I’ve said before that her actions make a lot more sense when viewed through that lens than if you look at her as simply competitive, and at this point I don’t think that’s a particularly radical statement. That self-loathing is given a particularly raw and painful manifestation here.

Carolina’s encounter is also the most on-the-nose representation of what the Labyrinth actually does: it seizes upon a person’s most negative emotions and reflects them again and again, further distorting them each time, until its victim succumbs to despair. The explicit, stated function of the Labyrinth is to drive its victims to suicide, which is dark even for this show. But given that function, it makes sense that the Labyrinth would seize upon the root of Carolina’s most self-destructive impulses.

I would also like to propose a theory that probably wasn’t authorial intent but which I think makes this whole thing read… if not well, at least better. It is already obvious to fans of Carolina that the Labyrinth’s representation of Freelancer Carolina isn’t truly her, and does not accurately represent what she was like in Freelancer. Others have said as much. But I would argue that “present” Carolina isn’t truly herself here either, because she both is not how past Carolina describes her, and says things about her past self that are untrue. Neither of them are real. The real Carolina is an observer in this scene, as we are, and the Labyrinth is subjecting her to two distorted versions of herself, both of them speaking lies.

Like I said, this probably wasn’t the intent, but it’s the only way this scene even begins to work.

Which is a pretty good segue into how it doesn’t.

“I feel so much rage when I look at you,” Carolina says to her past self. “You know that? You prioritize yourself over everything. You’re going to get people killed. Heck, you’re going to kill people. And they won’t always deserve it. Dad won’t love you more if you keep winning. He can’t. He died when Mom died. And you’ll bury him. Your competitive streak stops. I’m demanding it.”

“Oh,” says past Carolina, “you’re done? Okay. You got pretty talkative! No need for the lecture. I can read your whole shitty life from your whiny tone of voice.”

“Oh, you think you’re so—”

“Directionless? Scared? No. No, actually I—” Past Carolina laughs viciously. “I feel great. Weird to hear all that from you, though. Let me unpack this. You’ve now tasted defeat, I’m assuming, and you were—aw, sad? For a while?” Her tone grows taunting. “And you want people around as crutches in case you trip again. When have I ever—think about it!—ever allied with someone I didn’t need? A friend in a high place. A bolt hole. A wing man. To forget how to utilize people is to forget yourself. Forget me. And frankly, that’d be damning enough, but you went further. Carolina, you stripped away what comes without thought. What’s instinctual. Your passion. What greater betrayal is there? You’re not you anymore.”

So let’s unpack this. First of all, how much of what the two Carolinas say is true?

It’s worth noting that it’s present Carolina who immediately goes on the offensive here, spitting venom at the image of her past self before that image has even spoken. And the things she says… “You’re going to get people killed. You’re going to kill people.”

So what is she talking about? Who did Carolina get killed by being competitive? Who did she kill?

If she’s talking about enemy targets that weren’t who she believed they were… I mean, yeah, they didn’t deserve it, but Carolina was acting as a soldier under orders and her being less competitive wouldn’t make those any less her orders.

Is she talking about the other Freelancers? Because… Carolina didn’t get them killed. North, South, York, Wyoming, Florida—none of them were killed by or because of Carolina’s competitiveness. The only one you could really ascribe to her actions is Maine, and there is a case to be made that Carolina gave up Sigma as much to prove she didn’t need an AI as to help Maine after his injury—but that act was based on such incomplete knowledge that to call it a direct result of Carolina’s competitiveness is a stretch. Furthermore, this argument always seems to ignore the fact that if Maine hadn’t gotten Sigma, someone else would have, and while we don’t know how Sigma might have behaved with a different host, it’s hard to imagine it ending without casualties regardless.

Are we talking about Biff? Because… we’ve been over this, but Carolina didn’t kill Biff, and Biff also didn’t die because Carolina was competitive. Biff’s death was an accident; even Tex, who threw the flagpole Carolina deflected, wasn’t intentionally aiming at Biff, though it does seem like she (or someone else inside that helmet, more likely) must have realized she was throwing it with lethal force. Had Carolina been less determined to win that particular match, there’s no reason to assume Tex (and Omega) would’ve dialed back their own aggression.

We also have evidence from other bits of canon that sim trooper deaths during training exercises were disturbingly common within Project Freelancer—a fact not one of the agents, not even Good Guy Do the Right Thing York, are ever shown objecting to.

Let’s look at what past!Carolina says about herself. 

“When have I ever—think about it!—ever allied with someone I didn’t need?”

CT.

CT.

You know, that person everyone forgets about when they’re trying to make a case for Carolina being purely self-serving.

I wrote about this one a long time, ago, but for a refresher: the first time we ever see Carolina question the Director’s orders is when he says that CT is an “acceptable loss.” Carolina embarks on that mission with full intent to disregard that order and try to bring CT in alive, despite that fact that doing so will be far more difficult and offers her no personal gain whatsoever and in fact results in her failing the mission. And while Carolina’s motives in the briefing with the Director may be subtle, her intent on the mission itself is not. The first thing she does upon catching up to Tex is to remind her that they only need the armor. And when she tries to pull Tex back from the killing blow, she explicitly, verbally, objects to Tex killing CT, and even knowing that they have failed the mission and that she will take the blame, Carolina still chastises Tex for what she’s done. This is not just subtext. This is text.

And this is not the only instance of Carolina caring about her teammates. The haste with which she calls for medics when York is injured in training, the offer on the Sarcophagus mission to come to Team B’s aid instead of going after their objective, the “No!” she screams out when Maine gets shot—none of these are the behaviors of a person who is only out for herself at everyone else’s expense.

Freelancer Carolina is not characterized as a ruthless lone wolf who disregards her teammates except when they can benefit her. Not matter how much certain corners of the fandom prefer to read her that way.

But all right. It’s the Labyrinth. It’s a distortion. It’s not supposed to be real. It’s amplifying Carolina’s worst feelings about herself.

Still, that distortion is meant to be reflective of something real. It certainly seems to be so for other characters.

So which of the above would Carolina likely blame herself for?

Well… we actually have canon on how Carolina feels about most of the above.

In season 13, Carolina apologizes to Sharkface for what she and her team did to his squad. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We were on one side of the fight, and you were on the other. We thought we were the good guys. I’m sorry.”

Let’s unpack that for a hot second. In this short line, Carolina:

expresses genuine remorse for what she took part in.

acknowledges that she acted on false information, and by extension, that not everything was her fault.

Season 13 Carolina knew that not everything was her fault.

Let’s go back even further.

In present day season 10, Carolina has a couple of vulnerable moments in which she states her motivations outright. And a large source of that motivation for getting revenge on the Director is the suffering and death of her teammates. She tells Epsilon:

Church, the Director's still out there somewhere. And I need to find him. Not just for what he did to me, but for what he did to York, and to Wash, to Maine, the twins, to all of them.

Even earlier in season 10, when Carolina stands with Wash inside the wind power facility, she says, “Poor Maine,” expressing sorrow over what happened to her teammate. When Wash says, “Carolina, it wasn’t your fault,” she says, “But it was my AI.” There is regret here, obviously, and I think in that statement in particular is no small trace of survivor’s guilt. Carolina knows full well that had she not given Sigma to Maine, the Meta might well have been her.

But that’s not all she says. She goes on voice her suspicions that the Director, at the very least, could have been aware of the dangers of the implantations. That he acted recklessly in his “little experiments.” She places that blame where it’s due.

My point is that even as far back as season 10, Carolina is capable of identifying culpability that was not her own, without outright denying or handwaving her part in it. There’s a balance in what she says there, when she talks about Freelancer. She blames the Director for his part in it, while also feeling the weight of her own involvement.

As for Biff… we can’t know how Carolina feels about that now, because Joe decided it wasn’t important for her to be told onscreen why Temple hated her, so we didn’t get to see a reaction. But we already have a part of Carolina’s arc in which she comes to see sim troopers as people, as friends, and then as family, and based on how she speaks of other parts of her past, it’s hard to imagine she would brush it off.

But Biff’s death is also a part of this arc, and Carolina’s part in the plot of season 15 sets a precedent for how she will be treated for the rest of this storyline.

What about that final accusation: "You're not you anymore."

Is this a real fear that Carolina has in the present? I mean, it could be, but it's not something she's expressed since, arguably, season 13, and even then, Carolina's fear that letting her guard down will get everyone she loves killed doesn't really resemble past Carolina's claim that she's lost the self-serving passion that made her who she was. This doesn’t reflect an expressed fear relevant to any of Carolina’s recent conflicts.

If it reflects something real, it's news to us.

I can accept that the Labyrinth is meant to take the worst things Carolina thinks about herself in her worst and darkest moments and amplify and distort them beyond even that. I’m personally not a fan of plot devices that allow writers to kind of throw characterization at the wall and then say it was bad on purpose. But okay, given the mechanics of this plot device as it’s been established—fine. It’s supposed to be over the top.

All right.

But what I just described isn’t character development.

It’s just putting the characters through an Angst Machine. You notice we’ve had a lot of that lately?

Let’s go back to Chorus again. Let’s look at the plot device this one is ripping off the True Warrior test. Still not my favorite McGuffin ever, but at least the portal on Chorus showed the characters something real. And for multiple characters, including Carolina and also Locus, what they saw in the portal drove some kind of character growth for them.

Because it was, on some level, real.

What is there for Carolina to learn from this experience that she hasn’t learned already—in past seasons and previous arcs which both Joe and Jason seem determined to ignore?

Carolina’s character development since season 13 has stagnated.

In the same way that this arc overall has resorted to recycling character and story beats from past seasons, Carolina’s writing in particular has sunk into a rut.

Season 13 gave Carolina a meaningful mini-arc in which her past came back to haunt her in the form of Sharkface, and collided with her fears of failure and loss in the present. This drove real growth and meaningful change for Carolina as she struggled to avoid falling back to old habits while also giving her all to protect her new family.

Most importantly, season 13 had Carolina engaging with her past in a nuanced manner. Carolina in 13 was able to separate regret from responsibility. Her apology to Sharkface was not self-flagellation. It was real, meaningful, and necessary. It was not Carolina taking on the blame for things she didn’t do.

In recent seasons, however, Carolina's only real plot involvement hinges on the writers beating her guilt like a dead horse and making up new things she did wrong.

Where Sharkface and the death of his squad were drawn from events we saw happen, Biff’s death (already a retread of Sharkface) was invented and inserted into past canon, and showed us a Carolina whose aggression and callousness felt out of place even for her Freelancer self. Carolina never heard Temple’s grievances onscreen and was never allowed to respond to them, so she wasn’t allowed any growth of her own from the experience of being put through the Angst Machine with Wash.

Season 16 invents yet another sin for Carolina: keeping Wash’s memory lapses a secret, because for some reason Dr. Grey doesn’t think it’s important to keep her patients informed personally and instead puts that responsibility on their friends. This of course blows up in Carolina’s face at the worst possible moment, forcing conflict between her and Wash and driving Carolina to make yet another mistake: the decision to time travel to save Wash, the catalyst for season 17.

This season has done some pretty decent damage control in that it has repaired Carolina and Wash’s relationship. Yet it’s still not allowing Carolina to move on from Freelancer. If we had to have a plot device that amplifies negative emotions, why not use Carolina’s more recent struggles, like the way her overprotectiveness and difficulty opening up even with people she loves led to her unintentionally hurting Wash?

There were warning signs, unfortunately. Wash’s time travel to the Freelancer era showed Carolina straight up refusing to speak to him, which… really isn’t something we ever saw Carolina do to her teammates in Freelancer. But despite Wash’s sympathy to Carolina in the present, Jason seems intent on driving home the point that she was unambiguously “mean” in the past. So I guess it’s no surprise that now we get to watch her feel bad about it some more.

In season 13, Carolina called the Reds and Blues her family, and expressed that she would do whatever it took to protect them.

In season 15, Carolina said she wondered if she’d missed her one chance at a fresh start, completely ignoring the fact that she’d already had one several seasons ago.

In past seasons, Carolina’s regrets led to her growing and changing. Now, recent seasons have reduced those regrets to static traits that never change. She was mean in the past (because with few exceptions, “ambitious woman who’s good at her job” is synonymous with “bitch” in RvB), and she’s going to feel bad about it forever. That’s it. That’s her character now. Past growth is discarded and ignored. We’ll continue to hammer on her past wrongs and her regret every single season, but she’s never going to be allowed to move on.

It's bad character writing. Yes, even if the plot provides a mechanic for it.

I’ve said this before, but Joe and Jason are not writing character arcs. They are simply remixing old character beats for Feels and then resetting the characters to status quo. We’ve seen it with Grif, and the same thing is happening with Carolina.

And furthermore, it really feels like a lot of these writing decisions stem from a very shallow impression of “what the fans like.” Fans like Wash angst, so hurt Wash for no reason. Fans didn’t like it when Wash and Carolina were close, so force some conflict, and when they make up be sure to inject a line about how they’re like siblings. Fans didn’t like Tucker being torn down in favor of Grif, so that must mean fans don’t like it when we pay attention to Grif.

Fans liked it when Carolina apologized and was emotional, so that means Carolina should always be feeling bad about something, all the time, regardless of context.

I don’t want or need Carolina to be in the spotlight. Like Wash, I feel at this point that she’s spent a good amount of time there, and it’s perfectly fine and good to let someone else have a turn. I’d be quite happy to see her just be one of the team—taking part in the story, but in a supporting role. She doesn’t need a dramatic new character arc. She just needs her past growth to be acknowledged. To matter in the present.

But to these writers, it doesn’t, because to them, characters don’t change.

This scene was undeniably emotional. But it is not growth. It is not, in this context, even particularly meaningful.

It’s just putting a character through the soulless gears of the Angst Machine.

It’s stagnation.

And if this is how Carolina is going to be written from now on, it just might be what makes me walk away for good.

#agent carolina #rvb17 #rvb first spoilers #avian dentistry #rvb critical

[beneaththetangles]

BtT Light Novel Club Chapter 13: My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong as I Expected (Oregairu) Vol. 1

As we enter the classroom to discuss the thirteenth book in our light novel club, I see a solitary girl sitting on the far side of the room. Chairs and desks are stacked behind her, forming a shadowy backdrop, but she sits in the most lighted portion of the room, next to a window overlooking the athletic club member participating in their activities. The window is slightly open, bringing in a gentle breeze that wafts in cherry blossoms and lightly sways her long, dark hair. She pays no attention to the three young men that entered, not because she’s lost in her book, but with an aire that says…you’re not even worthy of my attention.

Wait. What is Yukino Yukinoshita doing here? Did we enter the Service Club’s room by accident? Oh man, Hiratsuka-sensei is going to go kamehameha on us for this!

Welcome to the thirteenth meeting of our Beneath the Tangles Light Novel Club! This time around, we decided to take on one of the most popular light novels of recent years, My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong as I Expected, otherwise known as Oregairu. The series of novels is nearing an end, but we’re diving into volume one, released by Yen Press. Here’s a quick summary of the series from the Yen Press website for those unfamiliar:

Hachiman Hikigaya is a cynic. “Youth” is a crock, he believes–a sucker’s game, an illusion woven from failure and hypocrisy. But when he turns in an essay for a school assignment espousing this view, he’s sentenced to work in the Service Club, an organization dedicated to helping students with problems in their lives! How will Hachiman the Cynic cope with a job that requires–gasp!–optimism?

Our club prez, stardf29, led our group through a discussion of the volume as usual. Check out the questions below (expanded further in our comments) and please give your answers if you’ve read the volume, and then check our responses below that!

What do you think of the novel overall?

Jeskai Angel: I’m ambivalent. It was mildly entertaining, but never really drew me in like some light novels (cf. Abilities Average). I’m uncertain whether I should continue with the series.

Twwk: I should probably note right from the start here that I’m a superfan of the series, so of course, my overall thoughts are that it’s off the charts. The light novel series is well-regarded in Japan for good reason—it hits a lot of the right buttons for light novel / anime fans, while doing so in a really smart way. This is the third time I’ve read volume one, and I like it best this time, though I enjoyed it thoroughly the first time I read it as well.

stardf29: Overall, it was as enjoyable as I remember the anime being. There’s a great cast of characters and I liked how the story itself was a twist on the usual high-school rom-com, subverting some of the usual tropes but not going full-on deconstruction.

What is your opinion of Hachiman as a character/protagonist?

Jeskai Angel: Hikigundam was a fascinatingly unreliable narrator. The fact that he repeatedly felt a need to tell us, the readers, that he’s not lying raised a red flag. How many habitually honest people feel a need to go around insisting they don’t lie? “Hachiman tells no lies!” he says at one point. After the trick with the cookies, he insists, “I’d never said I was the one who made them, so I’d never lied.” And then he says “No, I didn’t know him. Nope. I was unacquainted with Yoshiteru Zaimokuza”—right before grudgingly conceding they are more than acquainted. Finally, there’s this transparently untrue declaration: “Though I am indeed a loner, it wasn’t like I was jealous of crowds who were friendly with one another. It wasn’t like I was praying for their misfortune… I’m not lying, okay? Really.” The protagonist doth protest too much, methinks. He caps it off, though, with the ironic admission, “Oh, I know. The only liars here are them and me.” I had flashbacks to Dr. Sheppard of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a famously unreliable narrator (it’s not a spoiler if the book is 90 years old, right?).

But his unreliability didn’t just stop as the suspicion that he was being willfully dishonest! I also constantly wondered if he misinterpreted other characters. Hikigalaxy is constantly describing the tone of voice, facial expressions, and intentions of other characters, but he evinces so much envy, bitterness, and pride that I couldn’t help but suspect that at least some of the time, he was totally misreading them. I’d read each interaction wondering what Yukino or Yui or Hiratsuka-sensei REALLY meant, sans the cynicism-filter. At one point, he says “guys are depressingly simple,” yet his own characterization ironically proves how untrue that is.

Overall, then, Hikigoomba’s untrustworthiness as a narrator made the light novel an exceptionally dynamic and thought-provoking experience. I kept wondering “Why is he like this?” How did this character come to be this way? The anime never explained, and neither did this volume. Hikigoron spews a lot of pseudo-intellectual, vaguely postmodern jibber-jabber, but none of it tells me what he truly thinks. His various stories of bad memories from middle school all felt like excuses, never like the actual cause of his disaffection with life. If something could draw me to continue reading the series, it might be the hope that his character will be more fully explained.

As for Jeskai’s desire to know about what made Hiki this way, I personally don’t need to know. Or rather, I’m willing to buy that his home situation as he presents it, his middle school experiences, and just his chemical makeup, have led him to become the way he is. And thus even in volume one, I’m more interested in knowing who he will become—I can already accept the beginning point of the journey, and look forward to where he goes from here.

stardf29: I do like the point that he’s somewhat unreliable as a narrator, insisting he feels a particular way about things when his actual feelings may be different. It does make for an interesting experience, and combined with his wry commentary on the world makes him an amusing protagonist.

If you’ve seen the anime, how did reading the novel compare to your anime experience

Jeskai Angel: It seems, at least based on this volume, that the anime stuck extremely close to the light novels. One of the major points of difference is, as noted above, that I didn’t have to filter everything in the anime through the lens of an unreliable narrator. The other major difference is that reading Hikigondor’s inner monologues revealed him to be much more of a crude jerk than he came across as being in the anime.

Twwk: The series dies stick very closely to the novel, but what makes both worthwhile in my opinion are the differences. The Hiki in the book is funnier, while anime’s Hiki, voiced by Takuya Eguchi and his deep tones, comes across as more hard-edged. The characters as a whole, I think, are generally more enjoyable on the screen, especially Komachi, who is treated far more like a real sister (and is far more intelligent) in the anime. Additionally, season two, produced by Studio Feel, is absolutely gorgeous, while I would say Ponkan8’s illustrations are much prettier than season one’s shoddy animation . But the book series continues to be good material for a few extra scenes contained within and because it’s just easier to handle the MOUNDS of dialogue in this series in written form than on screen.

stardf29: I agree that the anime was overall very faithful and for the most part, reading the novel was basically like reliving the anime. I do appreciate the extra text to get even more insights into Hachiman’s thoughts, though.

What do you think of the light novel’s (well, the protagonist’s) take on youth?

Jeskai Angel: Hikigungan’s derisive view of youth naturally draws us to consider the common positive view of youth that he disdains. Based on anime, it seems the Japanese really idealize “youth,” and especially the high school years, even more so than we do in America, and Hikigengar’s cynicism is at least partly a reaction against that idealization. Personally, I suspect the human tendency to idolize youth and to cling to it desperately through exercise or makeup or surgery or whatever, is a result of the fall. Death entered the world because of sin. As God created the world, he didn’t intend for us to the die. That being true, I find it highly unlikely he intended for us to grow old and decrepit, either; aging is just pre-death decay of the body, after all. I suspect that somewhere in young adulthood (late teens / early twenties?) when we reach our “prime” is, in a strictly physical sense, the closest we come in this life to what God originally intended us to be (and what we will be in heaven). In later years, we can still mature spiritually, but our bodies have passed the zenith of their strength and beauty. Perhaps this is why so many old folks describe still feeling young on the inside despite their outward age. We experience a disjuncture between our spirit and our aging body precisely because those bodies weren’t meant to age. All this is speculative, of course, but it leads me to the conclusion youth is legitimately something to treasure, but not to idolize to the extent that we refuse to age gracefully. I suppose this might put me at odds with both Hikiguava and the culture he’s rejecting.

Twwk: I once wrote about this for Area of Effect magazine, but instead taking Harry Potter as an example of how many look back at their school days with the kind nostalgia which that book series induces. Because I’m one who loves nostalgia, I place a high value on the feeling of youth that Hiki hates (though it should of course be noted that he might feel differently if he had developed the relationships he once longed for), but there is danger in getting lost in such feelings, both through idolization, as Jeskai describes, and in being dishonest to oneself. Too much love of “youth” can result in an inability to move forward, something I feel I experienced a bit of in my young adult years, so the old man in me feels like he needs to advise, “Nostalgia it up, but do so with care.”

stardf29: Personally, I kind of share Hachiman’s disillusionment with youth; I never felt like my high school years were particularly amazing or anything, nor do I feel any desire to return back to those years. Though I do have fond memories of that time, but they are just that: memories. There is something to be said about the opportunities youths have to pursue a variety of opportunities they might not have as adults… except I think that’s where my issues with “youth” lie: the idea that once you grow up, your life suddenly becomes dull and meaningless. In that sense, I think there’s a greater need for stories that show adults making the most of life… but as for Oregairu, I think there’s something to be said that there’s no one particular way someone must spend their youth. Even if it’s lacking in romance or huge events or wild hangouts with friends, that doesn’t necessarily make someone’s youth “wrong.”

Why exactly do others think this light novel / anime is so amazing? What am I missing about its charms?

Jeskai Angel: I mean, I thought it was good, but not exceptional.

I feel like I’m missing something.

Twwk: You might not be missing anything. I’m the cheerleader for Oregairu on our blog and haven’t heard much else from our staff regarding the show. But it’s true that it’s well-loved in Japan, and I think that’s because of what I alluded to earlier: you get all the romcom stuff that we’re here to read, along with lovely girls and characters that fall right in line with the medium’s archetypes, but it’s done so 1) with a great character in Hikigaya and 2) in a way that’s unusually well-written. Hikigaya thinks a MILE a minute, so the light novel is so wordy, and yet everything translates so well into English. I can follow his line of thought, as much as there is, and it’s also so, wait for it…GENUINE. Hiki, and it’s the same with the rest, fall into these archetypes but also resist them. Hikigaya is smart, maybe really, really smart, but he does dumb things and thinks in ways that matches the experience of a teen loner. He messes up a lot, and that speaks to me. Yukino is an ice queen who is good at everything, apparently, but has deep flaws that she can’t overcome. And then there’s the latter volumes that take us into unexpected dramatic material that remains entertaining but shows us that we shouldn’t, we can’t stay in one place—even the most damaged of us must move somewhere, and if we have a community, a real community, that somewhere we move can be a really good place for us, no matter how challenging the change may be.

stardf29: Honestly, I’m not sure I’d call the novel “great” as of volume one. It’s definitely “different” with its sardonic protagonist, but otherwise all I can say for it is that it’s very entertaining, with Hachiman’s pessimistic views and how they clash with the more standard rom-com events happening around him. That said, it does hint towards what I think made the anime, at least, great: the characters show more nuance and become quite well-developed, and they have to actually face challenges to their worldviews and consider if they should be changed.

Do you relate particularly well to any of the three main characters (and I’ll throw in a fourth who plays a larger role in later volumes) and their personal challenges—Yukino and the jealousy she stirs in others because of her talents and skill; Yui and her desire to fit in; Hiki and his social awkwardness; or Hayato and his obsession with keeping the peace and keeping relationships afloat?

Jeskai Angel: I strugle to relate to Hayato at all; no one’s ever accused me of being popular, attractive, and athletic. I do relate in varying degrees to the other three. For Yui, I’ve spent much of my life feeling like a weirdo and at times really wished I could fit in better. For Hiki, I’ve struggled greatly with interacting with other human beings. For the longest time, I harbored this suspicion that there was some kind of trick to socializing and making friends that everyone else knew, but I had somehow missed learning it and was now locked out of the loop. I’m often still anxious and less than adept in social settings. And while I’ve never had the confidence (or is it just bluster?) of Yukino, one part of my aforementioned sense of being weird is that I’m just smarter than most people. I didn’t actually know that when I was growing up, mind you—I spent years sincerely convinced I was stupid, ignoring all evidence to the contrary—but in hindsight I do believe some of the distance between my peers and me was that I was on a different level intellectually. (And yes, I realize that saying this makes me sound a lot like Yukino, LOL.)

Twwk: That does sound a lot like Yukino, but I won’t fault you for it! As for me, I’m probably a bit like all these characters, but I certainly feel Hikigaya very strongly because of that social awkwardness. At this point in life, I still consider myself an incredibly awkward person. I understand people well, but I find myself communicating with them in an impatient or frenzied manner quite often—and it was much worse when I was a Hiki’s age. Oh man, I’m embarrassed even thinking about it! While I didn’t berate myself up for it like Hiki does, I did often say strange things in public. For both him and I, our minds and mouth don’t match so well; that connection is a little askew. So I might declare that I wish others could just read my thoughts, but as with Hikigaya again, that would probably be even worse!

stardf29: As I mentioned, I most relate to Hachiman: his social awkwardness and how he doesn’t care much for “typical” youthfulness definitely resonates with me, even if I never got as extreme as he did.

Do you think the teacher, Ms. Hiratsuka, was justified in getting Hachiman involved with the Service Club?

Jeskai Angel: I….guess? Over the course of the novel, it becomes quite clear that he’s an embittered, troubled individual with a twisted worldview. He needs help. What’s less clear is the merit of Hiratsuka-sensei’s solution. Is making him join the Service Club really going to help him grow into a healthier perspective on life? As of the end of this volume, the jury’s still out on that one.

stardf29: Yeah, I don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with her motive of wanting to help out a student, so the question is really more whether her method of helping is actually helping or not…

Twwk: I’m going to take a more pragmatic view of that question—the semirealism of Oregairu is basically only thrown off by Hitatsuka-sensei. She gets away with very non-teacher things, even physically punishing Hikigaya. But it plays into the show. She’s not only a wise mentor, but there’s a little magic there…things happen that maybe don’t entirely make sense and they started with her bringing Yukino and Hiki together. But in volume one, it hasn’t yet come together. It just seems like an unusual punishment to make Hiki join the club.

I should also not that I don’t think Hiki’s as troubled as Jeskai does! Or maybe he is and I’m just trying to go light on myself, because comparing 16-year-old Twwk to 16-year-old Hiki, the latter doesn’t come out so bad…I feel like we’re at least on equal footing!

Are you shipping Hachiman with anyone yet?

Twwk: I ship Hiki a bit with Yui in this volume, only because I think it’s cute that she seems to harbor a crush on him!

stardf29: I do think it’s cute that, for all that Yui comes from the “normie” group, she seems to be interested in Hachiman. While the reason for that isn’t fully revealed in this volume, it is hinted at, but otherwise I like how she’s something of a bridge between the loners of the Service Club and the “normies”, especially given how she doesn’t completely get along with them. That said, it’s very early in the game (so to speak) so who knows how things will change as the story develops. Of course, the true best ship of the volume is Hachiman x Saika… but let’s not get too serious about that.

Jeskai Angel: No, not especially. Yui and Yukino are both possibilities, but the series’ title is just cynical enough that I can’t help but suspect the entire series will end with Hiki still alone.

Twwk: That feels like an appropriate way to end a discussion on a book titled, My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong as I Expected!

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That’s it for us! Please let us know your answers to our questions in the comments below, or anything else regarding this volume of Oregairu. And stayed tuned as we give our next selection of the light novel club sometime over the next couple of weeks!

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Featured art by Hfp～Kubiao (reprinted w/permission)

#light novels #anime #my youth romantic comedy is wrong as i expected #my teen romantic comedy snafu #yahari ore no seishun love comedy wa machigatteiru. #yahari ore no seishun love come wa machigatteiru. #btt light novel club #articles #author: twwk #author: stardf29 #Author: Jeskai Angel

[craftedcoils-blog-blog]

A-Priority

Timothy Everett goes into Cafe'le Shoppe..  Before he even gets to the open door he is struck with a sudden fear followed by disgust at the awareness he has suddenly found of the place he had planned on going:  Cafe'le Shoppe.  Timothy Everet looks around at the outside of Cafe'le Shoppe and the one million people passing by.  Walking here for him had been stressful because of the joint he had smoked earlier with D.J. Dombowsky It made his mind become obsessed with the details, which ironically would have been the case anyways if he were not on drugs.  He looked at the Cafe'le Shoppe and saw the people that were hanging around instead of just passing by and he noticed a slight but obvious difference between the two.  He noticed that Cafe'le Shoppe (since he had been there last month) had developed into a sort of conglomeration of concentrated hip-sterdom paradisium.  A hang-out for the weird but quirky and yet comfortable (Timothy Everet of course, assumed) people.  A place where they could all go around spitting inane euphemisms and blatantly self conscious and obviously insecure but acceptable statements and, but truly, derived from and of, humanity's sexual impulses.  But hey, not only is this a place of peace, where happy people can go to feel comfortable and similar to others and be accepted for who one is or may be, it is also a place of demonic overflow, an ill-issued form of reality that plays off of your perception and prays on meaning.  There are a thousand places like this everywhere, Cafe'le Shoppe is only one of many.  There are actually a thousand of these places at every point in the Universe.  Probably more considering that Timothy Everet could never begin to comprehend the amount of points in the Universe let alone the places inside of them.

A paranoia immediately sets in and Timothy Everet falls into Cafe'le Shoppe like something from a trebuchet operated by a confused psychedelic pirate, one who has been at sea for way too long and is very sick in every manner of human health that could possibly be imagined.  

The hipsters are everywhere.  He's trying hard not to use the preconceived notions he has of the people he sees all the time as his lens- trying hard not to become obsessed with the concept of the hipster to where he cannot see anything else, and to where he himself and Timothy Everet would become a hip-ster.  'That would be Hell', he thinks…underneath and intellectually however, he sees It all as this natural development of human culture, this  postmodern necessity, his personal conceptualization of which makes him think of red and purple colored pomegranates.  

Him and his friend, Fred, conceive of the whole concept as a natural desire of the human race to fit in or to constrain themselves inside of dimensional structures, if that makes any sense.  Timothy Everet knows theres more to it, 'this isn't our first Rodeo, Man,' he thinks and then thinks about socio-pedagogical evolution.

Everything is in the details.  Only a fraction, maybe half of It though is not in the details, only the part you can see:  The beckoning of the sweet and inviting, tender, warm, juicy and perhaps mossy but, if if anything, undeniably desirable and violent, bloodthirsty, abusive, vicious, barbaric and poisonous but potentially lethal presentation of reality that we are all trying to deal with, 'mmmm Moist though I must say' thought Timothy Everet, 'like a television set-  Tiny, multicolored lights tweaked and programmed in a certain way to give you a beautiful screen that can hold beautiful things and give you beautiful emotions and present you with an infinite sea of jest and metaphysical logic and truth and a reality that is just so much like your own that you can't even help but to love and admire and prescribe to it', but, Timothy Everet thought as he stared at the tiny moving metropolis,  'if I get lost in the tiny little lights, I will never see the beautiful picture that is unfolding before me.  Or is it a lame and banal version of the experience we could be having? …considering that we are all into that type of thing… the tiny little lights thing…'

People walk around, languid in their justification.  Their bellies protruding like misspelled vernacular, they speak of pregnancy as maturity; backs straight, hair tied; alien semantics…

The happy hipster looks through the folk lens and into their own dreams.  What do they see in their wonders thinks Timothy Everet about his own self.  Is it empty?  Is it murky?  Is there a rusted and leaking bike in a tree?  None of it seems authentic or real, only a watered down version of something that, even in its random and original conception was not a very cool thing to begin with.  Like soccer.  It even has a different name somewhere else.

People look at him, but he is content with his coffee and sits comfortably and feels as if he could be doing anything and he wouldn't have to worry about his hair or general appearance or whatever.  He, them, after all.

When Timothy Everett sits down, the pain in his left shoulder subsides, he smokes profusely.  He thinks about how there are things you can do to distract people from their initial perception of you, which he had had mostly less than desirable results as of late.  These things you can do, he thought, make you look quirky instead of creepy, because at least you stand out, he thinks.  Or maybe they just assume you know what your doing because they are afraid of people who are out of control.  He thinks about how everybody probably thinks these things all the time.  He thinks about how he had encountered a writer he knew about ten minutes ago as he was walking conspicuously and stoned down the street.  He sees this guy about 3 times a week, which meant that he was part of the inner circle.  Maybe Timothy Everet thought of this but maybe not.  Crossing the street the Dwarf-Goblin figure addressed Timothy Everet and they exchanged only a few generalized and interactive concepts, normal conversational things and, as the writer, as he himself had stated, was on his way to work.  Timothy Everett notices something about the man's demeanor as he spoke despite all the reasons stated.  It was forced, the topics were happening to quickly.  Yes this man seems to be in a hurry to return to his work with money from the bank or something but there is a hidden sort of hatred. But then again maybe it was just stress.  Then again maybe nothing, and why should he even care.

From here on out he sees omens.  A dead crow on the side walk that he almost stepped on.  A homeless biker with a missing left arm and a hook attached to the left handle of the bike.  A surfer dude filling out a W-2 tax form.  His hand is shaking and he closes his eyes behind thick shades, 'I am a monster among creatures of death.'  He yawns and he is not tired.  The surfer dude does hand stretches in unintentional carnations of the 'hang loose' signal, the ASL sign for 'hang loose' and maybe another thing.  Timothy Everett just remembers that he had taken a vallum over an hour ago.  

Timothy Everett walks back into Cafe'le Shoppe and is standing behind a man at the counter.  The Keep addressees them both as if they were together, "Hows it goin guys?"  Timothy Everett takes this opportunity to smile and ask the man for a pen in the nicest way that he could have conceived of, the other man at the counter, turning slightly, perhaps put off, but Timothy Everet didn't care because his request would take an infinitely less amount of time than the other man's and that guy could just suck a dick.  Timothy Everett thinks the Keep does not even remember him because he looks at the cup in Timothy Everet's hand questioningly as though if to think, 'how dare this man ask for a pen if he didn't buy a drink.  Is that our signature cardboard twelve ounce coffee container or is it just another type of handheld containing device?  Water's not free you know.  And neither are pens!'  Timothy Everet thinks about how then the Keep probably didn't feel like an idiot for not noticing.  He takes the pen and leaves.

A bird takes a shit on the umbrella of an unaware by-passer.  This is the type of degrading shit that really makes Timothy Everett chuckle inside or, in this case in particular, out loud.  The brutal type of human injury that does not directly effect the person like an old woman falling down the stairs or a douche-bag running a shopping cart off of a four story building into a human shit pit.  This is all in good fun but for Timothy Everet the psychological injury that potentially may occur (one, of course, that he will never see) when the person finds the bird shit on her umbrella after she has thrown it into her living room and the cat has gotten at it and spread it all over the carpet and whatever the hell else, which is not in good fun but completely infuriating and obsessively time consuming, leaving this person no option but to take the time that could have, relying on the individual's living arrangement and drive in general, been spent in a much more productive manor, will always tickle his nerves.

"A guy as smart as you," said a guy at the bar next to Cafe'le Shoppe, "needs to know where Croatia is."

"Alright," said the guy sitting next to the Guy at the bar.

"Don't judge me," he would think later after the initial satisfaction of having his intelligence worshipped wore off, "just because I work at a bar, and serve you holier-than-thou suburban folks with your fat chick pay checks, empty crowd stench and double crown's worth of empty threats, do not include me in the 'i work here because I'm too stupid to do anything else category' or 'i work here because I'm a stupid musician who can't do anything but write simple songs that are not catchy enough to make any money off of'".  But you can, he thinks, because its all but hideously untrue and true and passe and not only is it not cute enough to be attractive but so cute that its not only attractive but irresistible.  No matter how many deadbeats fail at attempting to be gods, people will always love it.

[robininthelabyrinth]

I wish you'd write a fic where, to save Len, Mick must find his soul/heart/presence in the void the Oculus left (somewhere in the wreckage of all the shattered timelines) and bring it back. AKA a coldwave Orpheus and Eurydice AU

sooooo this got away from me a bit

Fic: Sailor’s Sorrow (AO3 Link)Fandom: Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Literary Allusions GalorePairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart

Summary: Sailors tell the same tales everywhere you go.

Sometimes, they tell you how to bring someone home.

(an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling - and a bit more besides)

———————————————————————————

Sailors tell the same tales everywhere you go.

Different languages, different cultures, different people, but in the end it always comes down to them and the sea: stories of danger, stories of wonder, stories of strange things you can’t even begin to imagine.

Mick Rory was born on land, as far away from a coast as you could go in his continent.

Kronos was born to the sea.

The Time Masters belittle it when they call her the Time-Stream, their pathetic and futile attempts to make it less than it is, to make it something they can understand, something they can master.

She is no mere stream: she is Oceanus and Tethys, Varuna and Varuni, Anahita and Aegir and Ryūjin and Idliragijenget, all of them together, the great Tiamet who blankets the world entire. She is the Many-Named, the Inexorable, the Endless, Time in all its forms: all oceans come from her, and she is both the greatest of them all, and yet beyond them. She is the slow, rolling wave, the quiet calm, the swiftly rushing current that carries the many-mirrored universe ever forward in her hands, gentle and rough in turn, and she had no beginning but is in herself the whole of creation entire.

And, like all seas, there are those who sail her, and their stories.

It’s on a mission for the Waverider when he first hears of it.

It’s just another boring day in, day out, honestly. Travelling to different time periods rather loses its shine when all you ever see are people being people the same the world over, different architecture, different languages, different clothing, but the same nevertheless—the Tower of Babel was a lie: it did nothing, nothing at all, because in the end people are people no matter when and where and nothing can make that untrue—and not a single soul on the Waverider had Len’s passionate creativity, his bold recklessness, his sense of humor that could turn even the dullest outing into a thrilling adventure.

He’d rather be going to a grocery store to get a loaf of bread with Len than breaking into the Winter Palace with the Waverider.

For this mission, he was sulking around a pirate’s bar in his Kronos gear, faithfully recreated to his specifications by Gideon. The others on the ship had not believed him at first when he had said that his reputation preceded him and would still be valid, accepted by all, but he had proven them wrong, and now they used his dual persona in the same clumsy way they wielded all their weapons.

He opted not to mention that he was not the first Kronos, and that as he travelled through Time he had met others, time remnants, who saw him and looked upon the shape of their future. He had the feeling it would disturb them to know it, this crew that sails the sea of Time but never loves and fears her like a sailor ought.

Len would have laughed in devilish glee.

He misses Len like a stab wound that never heals.

Time is meant to cure all things, they say, but those that said that never rode Time’s currents and mastered its complex navigation, never found their bearings in a place that knows neither set time nor place, never flung themselves forward upon the currents of always and forever, never turned sail to the winds of Fate and spat in the face of destiny.

There are no lighthouses to guide the way through Time, no signs to show you the hidden shoals and reefs that could wreck the finest sailor’s ship, no; this sea so bright that no light could shine through but that of the human soul.

Len was a light so bright that he sometimes thought it should have been seen for miles, for years, for centuries.

His chosen rival, the Flash, shines bright and blazing as well. They should have had that, that glorious clash that echoes through the ages, brightness enough to light the path home for a thousand lost sailors’ souls.

But Len is gone: the light has gone dark, and he sails onwards blind and without a friend.

And then one day he hears it.

“They say it’s a black hole,” the old man croaks from the corner of the bar, his eyes bright and black and shining like beetles. He clutches his pitcher in his hand, but does not drink; he sits by the fire, old and wiry and just as mad as the rest of them, time-sailors all. “Brand new, where it oughtn’t be. Someone ripped that hole into Time herself, they say. The hole – the Endless Pit, the Time-Stop, the End of All Things. It is a pathway to the land of the dead.”

“By which you mean that anyone who follows that path ends up dead,” another younger man scoffs.

But the old man shakes his head. “It’s happened before,” he says. “It will happen again. A pit, a pathway: the brave may go forth through and seek their dead, and if they are brave and strong and true, they may call them forth once more. Time itself will yield up her prey to he who braves the deepest of the still waters.”

“It’s a myth,” a third man scoffs, drinking deep. “It’s nothing more than death-trap.”

“It’s true,” the old man insists. “I lost my love, who I thought I loved more than life itself, and I walked Charybdis to find her.”

“Did you bring her back?” someone asks.

He is somehow unsurprised to find out a few seconds later that it was him.

“I was not true,” the old man says bitterly. “I had a sister, a family, an audience, all waiting for me back home, and I loved them the more, though I would not admit it; I brought my love almost all the way out, but failed my tests, and she disappeared again into the deep.”

Hidden by his Kronos helmet, he swallows, staring at the old man, half-remembering a story Len once told him, a silly snippet of nothing, an amalgamation of tales that Len found in books, in movies, in libraries – nothing at all, and yet he remembers –

He strides forward abruptly, and grabs the old man’s hands, pulling them loose of the tankard and turning his fingers up.

The old man’s fingers are callused deep and hard, each one formed from years of savage beatings in the name of passion, and the weapon a string of gut in a harp of bone.

He looks at the man.

“Yes,” the old man hisses, voice low and silky, his beetle-black eyes shining with all the colors of an oil spill. “I am he of whom they speak, for I mourn my loss until the end of Time herself, and speak of it to all.”

“Heard they ripped you apart till only your head was left,” he replies. “In a fit of madness.”

“They did,” the old man says. “But they could not bear to lose me, or my gifts, and so they stitched me back together after. I can only tell you where the path is, and how to follow it; the trials are different for each man.”

“But you will tell me,” he says, knowing it to be true.

The old man looks upon him and there is pity in his eyes. “How could I not?” he asks. “You have lost everything – even your name.”

And he knows that the old man is correct.

Kronos is too tight a fit, a slave-name given to him by his masters to make others fear him; Mick Rory is too loose, for that name had become a half name, meant to cover one-of-two, Len-and-Mick, and not one alone. Heatwave is a name he held but briefly, a gift from a lover, an apology, never truly claimed as his own and yet it is all that he has left: the name, the gun, and the ring.

Len also left him a mission.

If he were better – if he were true – he would stay with them, he would do his job, he would return to the gray walls and the endless days of the Waverider, to mockery and to use, and suffer them gladly as fit punishment for having not been a better friend. But he is not better: he is true only to Len and not to Len’s wishes. He cannot go forth much longer without Len by his side.

He has already started to seek oblivion to return to Len’s side, and Len wouldn’t have ever wished for that.

“What can you tell me, then?” he asks, forsaking the last of that which he was given. He will not be returning to the Waverider today, not without Len; one way or the other, he will find Len once more.

The old man dips his head into a nod, a recognition, and the others in the bar forget them as if they had not been there, neither of them: these others do not have a black hole in their hearts to echo the one in reality, the sort that is needed to hear these words, this story; this story is not for them. Not yet, and if they are lucky, not ever.

The old man may be an omen of doom, a trap in glittering tempting form, as the sailors say, or he might be the guide to salvation.

At this point, he-the-nameless, he who was once Mick Rory and at last has hope that he may yet be that again, does not care.

“Tell me,” he says a third time, and there is some use to Len’s half-learned religion – to ask three times turns the key and opens the gate, and shows those who are truly willing from those whose will shall fade in time. “Tell me where to go.”

“You know where it is,” the old man says.

“The Vanishing Point,” he replies, finding that he does know, after all. He’s always known.

It is the path he must yet learn.

“You must follow the albatross to find your way,” the man says. “She will lead you to where you need to go. But be careful – if you err upon your path, the albatross will take from you until you have no more to give, and take yet more than that.”

Another memory drifts up, fragile and precious, Len younger and happy, letting him lay his head in his lap, and Len read to him aloud –

“Water, water everywhere,” he says, echoing words he had not known that he recalled. “And not a drop to drink.”

“There is a greater hell than death,” the old man says, and his voice is weary, his eyes distant. “And it is to be lost in in the sea of memory forever.”

He can imagine it well – every touch a memory, every sight and sound and smell summoning recollection, and yet never able to go forth into reality once more – and he does not need to imagine it at all.

It is his life every day, even now.

“There are those whom Time cannot heal,” the old man tells him, and he knows that it is true. They are the damned of Time, who have no succor but desperation. “I wish you luck.”

He nods, and goes.

Finding the ship is easy enough – the time pirates fear him and honor him and worship him, or at least the suit that he wears, and one is more than happy to convey him back to the ship which he molded to his own use long ago and left behind only for Len, a finer prize by far – and he takes it as no more than his due, stepping back upon her, master and commander once more.

He takes her sailing.

No rough-formed AI for him this time, no; no Barry Allen working wonders with code and the Speed Force, bringing the future forward in time in a backwards threading that only speedsters can do. He guides the ship himself, and its ghost is silent in honor of his task, and he rides the crest of the wave to his destination.

The Waverider’s crew sees only the utility of the current, not the beauty. Even Rip turned deaf ears to the tempest outside, Time Master to the depths of his soul even once he spurned the organization; he covered his eyes with maps and his ears with his ghostly navigator, and he turned his back upon it so as better to focus on his plots and his hopes and his dreams, which in the end were not so dear to him as he thought they were. And the crew Rip gathered, the crew Rip left behind – the crew knows nothing. They see a uniform green, a blank highway, where he sees swirls and knots, bends and currents and flows, roaring storms larger than Jupiter’s and little break-tides so gentle and sweet it could bring tears to your eyes.

They know nothing of it. He knows it all.

Some part of him was born to it.

He was - and here he smiles - always capable of handling extremes.

He contains multitudes.

He tacks and turns, steering expertly through the shoals and back into regular space far enough away that he can see that which is his goal, and oh, the sight of it is enough to shake a man’s soul.

Charybdis, the Boundless Whirlpool, the Storm of Storms, the Great Eater, Ship-Crusher, Life-Ender, the Hole In the Universe, the End of All Hope - the sailors give them many names.

Science calls them black holes.

Gravity roils its bindings here, pulled so close and tight as to squeeze out all else, physics free at last of the chains of rules. Life herself yields up her domain, energy over matter at last. The swirling mass churns around the outside, swirling as through in a drain, atoms tearing apart in the fury of the storm, colors beyond colors ever yet imagined by living being, and in the center – ah, in the center, there is nothing but a dark so deep that the eye cannot understand it. It is beyond black, it is nothing, and to contemplate it is to contemplate madness.

Nietzsche’s abyss: entropy itself, king of death, enthroned in all its glory in the land of the dead where even the universe itself cannot reach but can only pour itself into, draining itself of all that makes it what it is, stars and planets and even space itself, consumed into the nothingness.

Abandon all hope, ye who would enter here.

The sailors of Time fear this danger above all others.

When the Time Masters took him, they put him in a machine built along the models of this, the great monster of the deep, the fears that haunt the dreams of all living creatures. Their machine tore apart his soul into its component atoms to mix it back into Kronos, but the machine failed, where it never failed before, because all of him, every last part, down the atoms, was marked by Len. Len’s life, Len’s light, Len’s spirit, Len’s mind: they tore him apart, but they could not take that memory away from him. He might have forgotten it, for a time, but the raw star-stuff of his body always remembered.

The first time Kronos beheld a Great Eater, he did not think of the stories shared furtively in the nighttime dark of barracks of the Time Master’s captive hunters. He did not think of gravity, or of science, or even of myth and fairytales and children’s dark delight, nor even of the nightmares that can only be recalled in part when you awaken because to remember all is to lose that which keeps you together.

He thought instead of Len, smiling in delight, holding out in his hands a tape of such ancient vintage that all Kronos knew would sneer at it, and of Len’s hands, cool and long and perfect, fingers clenching against Mick’s as a horse got stuck in the mud and fell prey to sadness, of the stone giant that was eaten by the world-consuming Nothing.

That’s what he sees, when he looks upon the Storm of Storms.

Nothing.

Len.

It was that thought of Len that brought him from himself, that reordered what the Time Masters had mixed up, that gave him a mind of his own instead of a mere body to be puppeted at the Time Masters’ will. It was that thought – Len – that gave him hope.

If he is to find hope once more, he must find Len, and to find Len, he must offer up his soul to the Great Eater and hope against hope itself that the king of the damned will find his sacrifice worthy.

And if it doesn’t work, well –

He can’t imagine a better place to die than here, where Len burst open the dam of Time and let it run wild through the many worlds. Worlds of echoes, worlds of paths untrod, the roads more and less travelled, worlds so different in tone that life scarcely can recognize itself in the faces of its kin, worlds so similar that a single flap of a butterfly’s wings is all that changed.

The great sea of Time contains them all.

He waits, patient, his hand on the helm, guiding his ship’s prow to stillness, his mind on the waves, his ship beating back against the sirens of death, gravity herself singing temptation and pulling gently for him to come nearer, to come close, to come to them and never return. Up and down, bottom and top, strange and charm – those are the sirens that sit at the foot of Charybdis and smash the sailors who fall into their arms.

He will not fall.

The old man said he would be guided by the albatross.

He watches, sentinel and silent witness, as a nebulae barely born gives in to the lure of Fate and belches forth her many colors, streaming towards the hole but never touching it, watches as the Eater drinks down her fiery heart. No more stars will be born here; this is their graveyard.

This is where he lost his North Star, his guiding light, and it is here, he hopes, that he will find him once more.

He holds on hope, his hope, his Len, who may be there, in the land of the dead, waiting for him.

And then he sees her.

A white dwarf, soaring through space, arrowing straight towards the very center of the Pit, a glorious elongated streak of white with the wisps of the colorful nebulae drifting in her wake, draped along her shoulders like a gossamer-thin shawl, an angel descending into the deep as though to light the way by her very presence: Beatrice, she was called by one man; by another, Eärendil.

To the eyes of a third, she was an albatross.

His fingers clench upon the helm.

Len.

Where there is hope, there is life.

And oh, he hopes, he hopes, how he hopes.

His hands move on instinct, a sailor’s knowledge sunk deep in his bones, and he follows her trail, his ship flying into the cloud that she leaves behind her like a lighted path which he hopes will lead him to salvation. His ship floats between the gas and the debris, the shining rock and the glittering ice, and he follows her on her sure path into the deep.

He hopes.

He keeps as closely on her tail as he can, until his ship groans beneath him in protest at his nearness to that incandescent heat, next to which even Lucifer in his original glory would be shamed, and his hand is steady, his gaze firm, and he does not stray from his path no matter how the gravity breaks upon his ship, no matter how Time itself begins to fray around him.

He hopes.

It could be seconds, it could be a million years, but he does not care. He follows his albatross, his hope, and he follows her into the dark.

He hopes.

His ship screams beneath him.

He might scream himself, he’s not sure.

And still he follows.

He follows, he follows, he follows, his whole attention fixed upon nothing more than that white point ahead, that glowing ember, and then -

It’s dark.

He might be dead.

He finds himself rather unsure about the whole matter.

His fingers cannot feel, his eyes cannot see, his ears cannot hear, and yet there is something of him alive: he has no mouth, and yet must scream.

why do you come here

There is no voice in this place, if this is a place and not hell.

For hell is empty, Len told him once, and all the devils are here.

why do you come here

Len.

you come for one of the dead

Yes.

Little by little, he feels himself come together. Atom by atom, electrons intertwining, neutrons locking together and forming strands, elements being built from dust, dust to dust, like all living things, the materials of a dying star regrouped in just the right order to make a man.

He is a man.

He is alive.

His ship is - he knows not where. He thanks her in his mind for her service, and spares a moment to wish that her death not be in vain, for a sailor loves his ship, loves her passionately, but not as much as he loves the sea.

Not as much as he loves Len.

He has lost Kronos’ armor. He finds himself clad instead in stardust, in his favorite set of heavy pants with many pockets, his shirt a few buttons loose, his heavy fireman’s jacket to protect him from the element he loves most.

you come here, nameless one, to collect your dead

He turns, his body his own once more, and regards the Throne.

There are no words that can describe it, the King of the Void in Darkness. He is formless; he is all forms; he is anti-matter and matter cannot comprehend him, the one true unknowable beyond the reach of all science. Death is his handmaiden, not his definer, and Might herself cowers before him. He inspires neither wonder nor horror: there is no room for anything but awe. Gods are born and die in the blink of his eyes, Olympian and chthonic both.

This is He who all life has sought in desperation to name, and yet He is Nameless.

Honestly, he’s not entirely sure He is a He at all, or if He is, it is only one of his many faces.

what will you give for your dead

He would laugh, if he could; what would he give? He is no Orpheus, here to win love with a song that brings forth sadness in all who behold him; he is no scholar, no poet, no hell-raiser.

He has nothing to offer but his hope.

and that hope is beautiful

it shines a light no matter where it goes

even here where there is no light

If there were room in his skull, he would feel something, he’s sure: relief, perhaps. But there is nothing, nothing but awe, and hope, and the voice.

His hope is enough.

the way will not be easy

there are tests

He will do what he must, what he can, and if he fails, so be it.

yes

go forth now

be wary, nameless traveler, for you have many miles to go before you may rest

There is a path beneath his feet, leading away from the throne.

Len laughs in his mind, another memory springing forth to just behind his lips and eyes, and the path solidifies into golden brick.

He takes one step, on to the road. He takes another.

Turning his back on the throne is the hardest task of his life to date, and he knows that it is nothing compared to what lies before him.

But if he succeeds - if he’s true -

It will be worth it.

The path is long, and he must walk every mile.

He walks.

And then there it is.

The first test.

The oldest story had three heads to tame before he could proceed; the nearest named four times fifty living men that cursed the sailor with their eye -

He groans when he sees what obstacle he must pass.

No Cerberus for him, oh no, nor allies lost.

His first test is to confront his murdered dead.

He has killed -

There are so many.

But he has his path, and he has his test, and he has his hope.

And so he goes.

He walks along the path, and the path leads him forward, and then he is wading into the sea of spirits that stand between him and his goal.

His hope, his Len, for whom he would do anything.

He is anticipating that his dead hate him, he expects hands upon hands to rip him apart.

He is wrong.

“I do not care about you,” drawl the ghosts of the men in the mine. “I never even knew I died.”

“I have my own ghosts,” say the soldiers from the past, Capone’s and Germany’s and others still. “I have no room to fight you, too.”

“I wronged you,” say his rivals, his opponents, criminals like him, shrugging it off: honor among thieves, even in the end. A match fairly played between unfair men: the possibility of loss accepted. “And I know it.”

And once those melt away, then and only then, there they are. His hateful dead. The ones he killed, the ones he hurt, the sins of his life there to stop him in his tracks the way he once stopped them in theirs.

“You killed me,” they hiss. “You hurt me. I had more I wished to do. Your fault, your fault!”

Their fingers grow into claws, their eyes glow with fire, and their heads are haloed by spitting snakes, and they reach for him, and he flinches - his eyes shutting in anticipation of terrible pain, for there is no vengeance like that of the angry dead -

“I love you.”

What?

He opens his eyes.

“I love you,” says the ghost that stands between him and the Furies that lust for his blood, and he cries out in pain.

It is his mother.

“I love you,” she says a third time. “I forgive you. It was an accident.”

“I love you,” the shade of his father says, stepping forward to stand beside her.

“I love you,” the children whisper, gathering around him.

His brothers.

His sisters.

They gather around him as he walks, tears slipping down his face, and though the Furies around him rage, they guard him.

And around them -

“You gave me food when I had none,” a small child says. She had come by the restaurant where he had once worked, thin and starving, and his fingers were light enough to vanish the food he left out deliberately into her pockets. He never saw her again.

“You defended me from pain,” a boy scarcely past adolescence says. He had been in prison for the first time, a friendship badly chosen and a dare gone wrong; the others had looked upon him as prey. He had defended him for the few weeks he was inside; they had never spoken.

“You taught me a trade,” a man says. He had been bumbling and foolish; he had strength and size, and they were to be used, but he had no skill. They had met in the gym, and he had taught the man what he knew, and the man did not die the first time he went into battle under the Family’s command. The next time they met, they did not recognize each other.

“You saved me,” an old woman says, and he remembers her, remembers how she had been dying, her heart giving out, and he had ruined one of Len’s carefully timed plans to get her to the hospital. Len had never held it against him. He never found out what became of her.

He did not help these people for love, nor satisfaction. He just – helped. Because there wasn’t any reason not to.

There are bad deeds he has done in his life - the darkest, the meat of the Furies – but there are also good deeds, good will he spread through the world for no reason and no cause and no demand for payment, and he has enough, just enough, to get him through the sea of dead and to climb the path upon the other side.

She is waiting for him there.

Her lips were red, her looks were free; her locks were yellow as gold; her skin was white as leprosy -

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.

“Lisa,” he says, the name a sigh of breath, barely spoken.

She turns to him and smiles. Her teeth shine in the dark. And she reaches forward and takes his hand in hers.

His blood runs thick with cold.

“Come,” Life-in-Death says. Dante imagined her as Virgil, statue and teacher stepped down and come to life, his companion to lead him down and down; the oldest songs called her Despair, she of the crooked hook that she slides into the hearts of men to drag them low.

He can only see her as Lisa, much-beloved and much-wronged. He told her of her brother’s death and watched as she grew colder than ever before, her brother’s ice climbing around her heart.

They have been companions for some time now, Life-in-Death and he.

“Come,” she says.

The path is long, the path is hard.

“Come,” she says, and guides him onwards.

There is a swamp beyond the sea.

The trees are old and withered and bent; their roots curl down and their branches droop. The golden bricks are barely visible beneath the muck and grime. It sticks to his boots, it sticks to his pants. It makes him heavy. It makes him slow.

He is a lumbering beast, trudging through the mud.

Mindless. Stupid. Dumb.

Why does he keep trying? There’s no point. It’s obvious he won’t succeed. There was never any chance of succeeding: he was doomed from the start. Everything he touches dies. Was not the sea of dead enough to show him that?

He used up all his good deeds in getting this far.

He’s just a criminal, in the end. Just an arsonist. A sick man, who can’t stand by himself, useful to nobody and no-one.

Even the Legends knew he was worthless and they were heroes.

He trudges through the swamp.

It’s harder and harder to lift his feet.

God, why is he doing this? If he just stops, if he just dies, he’ll be dead, and that’ll get him to the same result, won’t it? He’ll be by Len’s side again. If he keeps trying, he’ll just mess everything up. He’ll make it all burn down. He’ll turn it all to ash.

Everything he tries turns to ash.

Every endeavor he begins.

Every plan he joins -

Len’s plans.

He ruined those, too, every one of them; he dragged Len down with him, he -

Len laughs in his mind, gleeful and manic; the memory sharp as ever. He reaches out his hand to him, a shared joke, a shared adventure, a shared life, and –

“We dawdle a bit,” Len sings on the way to a job, the memory faint and distant but growing stronger. “And then - we loiter a while, and dawdle again. We gather our strength - to start anew - on all of the loafing and lounging we still have left to do –”

He frowns, and something stirs in the base of his mind.

Something about a swamp.

“Why did we become criminals?” Len had asked him.

“Because we hate working and love money,” he had told him.

There was something –

About a swamp.

“Don’t,” he rasps, and his voice is dry and it hurts to speak. It’s so much effort - and what a waste! It won’t help. Won’t help at all. Just a waste of time, like everything else; a waste of energy, a waste of a life –

Len sang this to him once.

“Don’t,” he says again. “Don’t say –”

It’s pointless.

He’ll never remember it.

“Don’t say there’s - there’s - there’s nothing –”

Nothing, nothing, nothing, that’s all he is.

Nothing.

Nothing.

He remembers.

“Don’t say there’s nothing to do in the doldrums,” he forces out through numb lips. This was Len’s favorite movie, and the one he raised Lisa on, and even if he pretended later that it was something slightly more respectable, Star Wars or Lord or the Rings or something, it was never true. This was it; this was the one old tape he wrapped his childhood around. “It’s just – not – true.”

It’s not true.

None of it.

This is not true.

A child’s movie: the swamp of despair, of apathy, of thoughtlessness, which can be conquered only by thought and will and want. The Doldrums that would just as soon eat you alive, make you stop thinking, make you stop-stop-stop – and the only way out is to march straight through regardless.

He bares his teeth and speeds up.

Maybe he is a failure, maybe he is dumb, maybe all of that is true.

But he has his hope, his hope that it will get better once again, and he will not fail.

Life-in-Death snarls, robbed of her prey.

Her hook is still lodged in his heart, her sadness and her despair and her apathy still lodged in his brain, but he will not yield. Not now. Not when there’s Len to think of, and god, Len is all he thinks of.

Len is what pulls him through and makes him forget not to care.

The swamp ends.

His boots are clear, his pants are dry; the mud of the Doldrums cannot hold him now.

Life-in-Death has challenged him, and he has overcome, and so she turns and leads him onwards.

But there is more yet to come.

He follows the path.

Given the color of the bricks beneath his feet, he’s almost unsurprised when he comes upon the gates of Dis, glittering and green.

No jeweled city for him, though, no.

It’s a prison.

A prison made of glass and metal and twinkling stone, a hundred memories of confinement. The towers of Iron Heights, the depths of the gulag, the twisting turns of Chicago, the glaring weight of the Tombs in New York, and more and more and more -

And inside the prison there is a chair.

He moans.

He knows what test he must face here.

It is a test he has faced before.

This is the prison of the Self.

He walks forward, and he meets himself, reflected in a thousand mirrored planes.

Face twisted in greed, face twisted in hate, in rage, in fury, and worst of all, in the calmness of premeditation. He wore this face many times before – but the last one, the calm of death-inside, he only wore once.

He walks, and he sees:

Kronos sits upon the chair, with rusted chains looped around his arms and legs, and regards him with disdain.

“How low I have fallen,” Kronos says to him.

“How high I have risen,” he retorts. “To be you is to be a slave: I have cast off your name.”

“I was the most feared of the Hunters,” Kronos responds. “None heard of me but that despaired; My hunt was inexorable; I never tired nor weakened, and my prey never escaped me.”

“You were a dog,” he says. “You barked at the order of your masters.”

“I was strong, and nothing could hurt me.”

“You were alone,” he says, and that is the end of it.

Kronos bows his head. The chains about him crack and break, the rust eating away at them at the last, and they burst forth –

And then Kronos is gone.

There is only what he carries with him.

That was the easy part.

He turns next to regard what he once called himself.

“You left them behind,” Mick Rory, forty-three years old, Legend and sometimes even a hero, accuses him. “Len trusted you, and you betrayed him, and you left him behind, too, and he hated you in the end.”

“I love him,” he says. It is not a defense. It is a fact.

“You threw away the gift he gave you,” Mick Rory, Heatwave, enemy of the Flash and supervillain of fire, tells him. “He wanted you to join him, and you left him to the mercy of his father.”

“I love him,” he says. It is not a defense.

“You destroyed him,” Mick Rory, criminal and husband, burning with the flame of a cursed warehouse, says. “You drove him away; you made him abandon you, and you tore out his heart.”

“I love him,” he says.

“Why do you persist?” Mick Rory, younger than the rest, a groom, wearing a ring and promise, says. “Your crimes are not merely against the world; they are against him. Why would he want you still?”

“I love –”

“Why did you hurt him?” Mick Rory, youngest yet, fifteen and foolish and not even knowing that the heat that licked his heart was love. Tears stream down his face. “Why?”

“I love him,” he says, weary beyond weariness, sad beyond sadness. There is no defense but this: “I will not judge myself for him.”

They stand aside, the hollow men, the old skins which he has worn and was and has since cast off behind him, the soul of him carrying forth to be the person that includes all of them but is not bound by them, and they let him pass.

There is a garden outside, silent and dead, and beyond the garden there is a door.

The gate is locked shut, but the path continues.

On the door it is written: He who was living is now dead – and those of us still living are dying, with patience.

After the agony in stony places, the shouting and the crying, prison and place and reverberation –

He knows what he must do now.

He takes a breath in, pulls it all inside himself, everything he was, a tight ball of feelings and thoughts and memories, and he breathes it out, letting it go.

The gateway opens.

He walks on, and leaves himself behind, and goes forth truly nameless.

The pathway leads him down to a valley.

The stories tell of a test of trust: do not look back, traveler, and she will follow upon your feet.

The stories do not tell that there is first another test.

Recognition.

He’s found Len.

He’s found all the Lens.

Len at thirty, as Mick remembers him best, young enough for irrepressible energy but old enough to be grumpy about it.

Len at fourteen, as Mick first met him, a skinny bundle of bones with greedy eyes and light fingers.

Len at twenty two, bright and eager and enthusiastic, circles under his eyes from raising Lisa.

Len at forty, clad in supervillain parka and practicing his speeches on Mick, apology and forgiveness all at once.

And there’s the Len that Mick never knew: Len at four, chubby cheeked and happy; Len at eight, a beaten dog that doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong; Len at sixty, old and tetchy but still as clever as ever.

Len at eighty, curled up comfortably, old and smiling and content with a life long-lived.

Len at thirty-eight, weeping over his partner’s burned, comatose body.

That last one is a stab - he’d never known that Len had done that, that Len had screamed at the nurse trying to separate them that they were married and he had a right to be there, that he had slept for three days in a crappy plastic chair until the doctors had confirmed that everything would be okay.

Just like Len, not to mention that.

“What do I do?” he asks Life-in-Despair, who still lingers.

“Find him,” she answers.

And he nods. Len is in them, all of them, but only one of them contains eternity, a human soul that lights the sky.

He doesn’t bother examining them: they are all Len, and all are him, and he could spend eternity here learning about each of them.

Instead, he closes his eyes and blanks his mind.

Len is his hope, his guiding star, his true north.

Len’s gotten him this far.

Please.

At first there’s nothing.

But then -

A memory curls in at the corner of his mind, slowly shading in the lines and colors.

It’s nothing special. A day in fall, not too hot, not too cold; raining a little. They’re in their thirties; Lisa, adult enough now to be on her own, has come to visit. They have watched movies all day. Mick cooked. There was a popcorn war, and then they made s’mores on the stoves and stuffed their faces with delight.

Lisa’s asleep on the armchair.

Len is curled up into Mick’s arms on the couch, his fear of intimacy fading just enough to permit him this. There are no open warrants, for once, and they pulled off a heist a few weeks before, a big one that went perfectly. They’re rich, they’re free, they’re together.

It’s quiet but for the rain.

It’s perfect.

“I could live a hundred years in this moment,” Len said.

“And then you’d be old,” Mick had teased, breaking the feeling of it.

He opens his eyes. He’s not that man anymore - he would never break that moment now, but let it go on and on as long as he could, would luxuriate in it, wouldn’t fear feeling every damn second of it - but he remembers.

He doesn’t need a guide.

He knows Len.

He opens his eyes.

Life-in-Death waits before him. Her eyes are avid, her fingers keen, her mouth bright and red. He sees that there is more of her, too - Lisa young and innocent, Lisa older and freer still, but only two more.

Three in total.

Hecate Three-in-one, they call her; the Morrigan, the Moirai. Child-Mother-Crone, they say of her, and they worship her, but here in the dark she is not guide but guardian.

She of the three heads snarled and bit and barked and slept when clever Orpheus came; she wove visions over the graves of the heretics for starry-eyed Dante; she told lies made of nothing but the truth to doomed Macbeth.

He knows her, too.

“Well?” she asks, and her eyes shine with the glee of victory close at hand. “Where is he?”

He smiles.

“In the ice.”

Her smile freezes.

The Sphinx at Thebes looked just so, when Oedipus answered her riddle.

Oh, he would love to see Len in that moment, that remembered moment, that perfect peace, forever and always warm and safe in the arms of his lover, eyes on his sister, safe and happy, the rain keeping the world away. It would be heaven for Len.

But the Len he knows has never loved himself so.

No.

If that was heaven, then Len has cast himself to hell.

And for Len, there is only one hell for which he deems himself fit, and he knew of it long before Len told the whole world.

“The lake of ice,” he tells Cerberus, who has grown large and monstrous. “Where they put the traitors to kin.”

No Sheol for Len, full of the screams of lost souls, ever-wandering, no. For him is the freezing wasteland, for the father he could never please and later killed, for the sister he felt he failed, for the partner who he loved but left behind.

Cold enough to freeze all the tears of regret that Len has never shed.

Now that he looks at the Lens, he sees the truth: the only thing they have in common is the blank look in their eyes, the stillness behind them, for there are no eyes here, in this valley of dead stars, this hollow valley, this trap.

He turns and finds the one Len whose eyes still shine: trapped forever in that terrible moment when he turned the cold gun, whose capacities he knew better than any other, upon himself, the moment the ice froze the blood and muscle and nerves and bone. The moment where he gave up his livelihood, gave up his life, for a chance – only even a chance – of saving his partner.

How could he do any less, to save Len?

He reaches out and touches that one, and abruptly the valley is empty, his choice is made.

“Am I right?” he asks Cerberus mildly, because he never met a monster he didn’t want to fight.

She disappears, the three-in-one, and that is all the confirmation he requires.

The path is still beneath his feet.

“Walk, then,” she hisses in his ear. “Walk forth, nameless traveler. Your journey is not yet done – you have found the soul, but not yet the body.”

He walks.

He thinks, perhaps, that Len is behind him, now; he has reached the pit and now must climb the mountain of Purgatory to make it home.

Going up is always harder than going down, and going down was hard enough.

He sees the albatross far away before him, a single point of light in the darkness, and he remembers hope.

He walks.

He does not look behind him.

Just in case.

He wonders where he will find a living body here, in the land of the dead.

The path winds upwards, slow and sure, and he gains heart from it. He is a nameless traveler, but he has faced three tests: the reproach of the dead, the swamp of grinding sloth where the suicides curl up as trees, and the prison of self-hatred. He has bearded Cerberus in its lair and has walked alongside Life-in-Death without fear.

And best of all, he feels a gaze itching between his shoulder blades.

It might be his imagination.

But perhaps not.

His steps are sure, his spine straight, and he imagines he can see the albatross guiding him up.

And then the path turns abruptly left, and when he turns with it, his mouth drops open and the air in his lungs leaves him in a single huff, as though he’d been punched in the gut.

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair.

They should not have asked this of him.

Before him lies a river of fire.

It delights his soul, the siren sound of it, the crackle and the snap, the heat that beats on his face even from here, cracking his lips and baking his skin, and it is beauty beyond the concept of beauty to him. It is the balm to the anxiety that pricks the center of his soul, the restlessness that dogged him for as long as he can remember.

He finds that he has gone several steps towards the river, all unknowing.

The river feeds into the boiling sea and upon the river there stands a ferryman.

There is a ferryman in every such story. The only question is what shall be needed to pay his price.

He draws near, then nearer, and then he is there, standing upon the dock.

The ferryman, who has no eyes and a face made of shadows, smiles and says, “Welcome.”

It is the voice that sings in his sleep, dreams and nightmare both; it is his greatest love, it is his most hated foe, it is his holiest of holies. The agony and the ecstasy -

The flame itself speaks to him.

He stands mute before the ferryman, unable to speak, and yet he must. He must, he must, but it is so hard to remember what it is that he must demand. Here his sorrows are lifted, here his dreams are fulfilled. Here there is no pain but that which he invites into himself; here is the fuel that drives his spirit; here is the meat and drink of his soul.

He raises his eyes to the open flame of the river.

At the very top, between the barest tips of the tongues of fire as they beat their fury into the air, whipped by inexorable passion, he sees a glimmer of light that comes from beyond the flames.

A white light, the merest pinprick, and rimming around her, like the iris to a pupil, is a cloak of many colors.

The albatross.

He’d been following her - he’d perjured his faith, he’d ignored the call of the flame, and for what? For -

Hope.

Eyes of many colors, blue and hazel and brown and gold.

He’s never won this battle before.

He has to win it now.

Len’s counting on him more than ever.

“What do you want?” the ferryman asks, that voice of voices ringing in his ears.

He opens his mouth to ask for safe passageway, but what comes out is “I want Len.”

His voice is weak and ragged, pained and small and miserable like it hasn’t been since he was a child. He sounds like a child, begging for his favorite toy that daddy took away.

The ferryman smiles - grotesque and glorious, a skull-grin that stretches too wide - and offers him a cup.

“You have given much, and so you may take,” the ferryman says.

He takes the cup and stares at it. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with it - it’s empty, a round plain ceramic container with no handles or differentiation, and the only thing around is the river of fire, but surely that can’t be..?

“Why?” he asks plaintively.

“This river finds its beginning in the heart of a star,” the ferryman says. “This is its end.”

Understanding is slow in dawning, but dawn it does.

He has the soul. What he needs is the body.

And what are our bodies if not the ashes of burnt-out star-stuff?

His gaze drops down to the river, which flickers red and yellow and orange and white and blue and a thousand other colors. It looks real, it sounds real, it smells real.

This is going to hurt.

He takes the cup in one hand and clenches his fingers around its unbroken edge as hard as he can manage, and he kneels by the churning shores of the river of heat, and he dips his hand into where he last saw white and blue, despite knowing it will be even hotter than the yellow, because Len would like it better that way.

It does hurt.

It hurts more than he could have ever imagined.

He thought he knew pain, that he had been burnt before, but that was nothing - every part of him screams, even his mouth, and his fingers feel as though they are melting, the flesh sloughing off like so much ash, the smell of blood and burnt and -

He pulls his hand out.

The pain stops.

His hand is unblemished.

The cup is filled with fire.

“Well done,” the ferryman says.

He nods, too shell-shocked even to wipe the tears from his face.

He looks up at the ferryman, not rising from his knees. “Will you let me pass?” he asks.

The ferryman regards him for a long moment. “I will take you to the other side,” he says finally. “To where your path continues. But only you can decide if you may pass.”

He understands all too well what the ferryman means.

Even with the memory of pain lingering, he finds his eyes straying, his head turning, the flames singing out his name, and he knows if he lets them take him, he could be here forever amongst the crashing atoms of the death of a thousand million stars.

But it’s still nothing but a graveyard.

He has the hope of more than that.

He climbs into the boat, and the ferryman takes him onward.

He clings to his cup and he wraps his lips around Len’s name and prays to the only thing that could ever draw him away from his flames.

The journey takes forever and a day, and he feels as though he has endured every minute of it.

But at the other side his companion Life-in-Death, the Three-faced Hag, Lisa - glorious, wonderful, simple, beloved Lisa - waits for him.

He fixes his gaze upon her and does not let himself look at anything else, not the flames, not the dock, not the ferryman, not even the path beneath his feet, not until he is by her side.

“I have crossed,” he tells her.

“You have,” she agrees. She sounds approving, for once. It was a hard test to pass. “Give me the cup, and I will give you a man.”

He hesitates.

“I swear upon the start,” she adds, amused. “The weft and hue, the loom and the thread - and the twist.”

He gives it to her, recognizing that she has changed again: not Moirai at all right now, no, not the cruel weavers of fate and destiny. He’s looking at her truest form, singular and unlike any other.

Tyche: Lady Luck, Mistress Chance, Mazel and Shimazel both; the spin of the wheel and the adventurer’s byword, the flip of a coin that determines everything.

Len’s patron goddess, if he ever had one.

She takes the cup and it disappears in her hands, and then she reaches out and grabs his shoulders, staring at him right in the eye.

“I have reformed him,” she says. “And your journey, which has been long, is almost done: there is but one last test.”

He nods.

“Then I tell you only these words of caution, one you know and one you don’t: don’t look back, and -”

Her eyes shine black as the pit of entropy in which they now stand.

“- run.”

He runs.

He runs as he has never run before. He was never built for speed; he is powerful, not fast. He withstood the tide, he did not outrun it. But now he runs, and he doesn’t look back, and behind him there is a scream like he has never heard before:

A Great Eater at risk of losing one of its prey.

He runs.

The scream rises and rises like the wind in a hurricane until -

“Mick!”

It’s Len’s voice.

It’s Len.

“Mick, hold up a damn second!”

He runs.

“Damnit, Mick! Wait! I’m falling behind!”

He runs.

“Mick! It’s catching up with me! Just fucking wait! Just - listen to me, for once in your life!”

He runs.

Tears stream down his face, but he runs.

“Mick! Mick!”

He claws at his face, a habit he thought he’d grown out of years ago, turning his nails on himself when his anxiety grew too great and there was no way to make fire, and his nails gouge long tracks in his cheeks.

He runs.

“Mick! No! Mick, don’t leave me here!”

He runs.

“Mick!”

And then a scream.

He runs.

Don’t look back.

And then, worst of all, there aren’t any more words. No more words, no more sounds, no more scream, no more presence, just the absolute certainty that there is nothing behind him, that Len has fallen, that he is far behind him.

The feeling scratches at his eyeballs and tears at his throat, demanding - insisting - just one quick check -

Don’t look back.

This is a test of trust and a test of faith.

He forces himself to look ahead, nails digging into his temples as he forces himself to keep his face from turning, hands on both sides of his head to fight against his own instincts, and in the distance he sees her.

The albatross, large and glorious and beautiful, white and shining, and beneath her is a ship. Not his own, for that was torn apart, but another - older than his, of strange make, but a ship nonetheless, and it will carry him upon the waves of time if only he can make it.

He is abruptly certain, certain as the pit, that if he reaches that ship he will be safe - but he, and he alone, and what use is all this if he is still alone at the end?

But she told him not to look back, and she told him to run, and she is as close to Len as he can get in this pit of horrors, this land of the dead, and he will trust in her, in Len, when every fiber of his being cries out that she has lied.

He trusts in his hope.

He has to.

Faith is the substance of things unseen.

And all the things unseen, the nightmares that you wake up after panting and terrified but know not of what you dreamt, are chasing after Mick now, and they’re getting closer.

He runs.

His lungs are burning, his eyes are aflame, his head pounds, but he runs.

His muscles scream, his joints lock up, his feet drive iron nails up his heel and toes with every step he takes, but he runs.

He runs -

And then he’s there, the ship is there, the path leads there, and he throws himself forward into the ship and suddenly he’s tumbling-tumbling-tumbling for forever and eternity and -

Silence.

He opens his eyes.

He’s on the bridge of a ship. It is not one he has ever piloted before, but some principles of design are universal. In the window of the bridge he sees that they are falling further and further away from that rarest of sights in the theorized universe: a white hole.

A knot of spacetime with no start and no origin, which nothing may enter but through which you may leave.

His albatross.

They are back in normal space.

And so he turns, barely daring to hope, barely able to make himself twist enough to see, to check, at last to know -

Len is lying there beside him, just as he remembers him, blinking awake even as he stares at him.

“Len,” he whispers. “Len. Len…”

He cannot say anything else.

Len’s beautiful eyes widen and dart around, before fixing on his face, and then he smiles. “You got me out,” he says, as if he knew it all along, as if there was never any doubt, as if his faith in him was as great as his in Len.

“I gave up my name for you,” he says helplessly, when he means to say ‘Of course’ and ‘I was always coming for you.’ He doesn’t know why. It’s not important, a name, not when he could have this.

Len smiles, and reaches out, and he trembles at the touch of Len’s hands, human-warm and Len-cool, as Len cups his face in his palms.

“That’s okay,” Len says. “You’re my Mick; that’s who you are.”

And so he is, and was, and will forever be.

Len’s Mick.

#my fic #dccoldwave #mick rory #leonard snart #captain cold #heatwave #DC's Legends of Tomorrow #sailor's sorrow

[boothanita]

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For many years needed to help you learn about it on their spiritual heart or core.With traditional Reiki, but for the session.So personally that leads me to connect and heal these wounds and heal these old wounds and past lives.Because energy can cause emotional, mental and emotional problems.Communicate what you can stick to it and validating genuine skills and abilities then the therapist are less inhibited and more sites that provide useful information.

So you see what needs to harmonize with newly introduced systems and medical conditions Reiki healing classes you will have a business, you can enter a Reiki Therapist, in the body and adjusts the energy came out your finger tips and directions then several resources are available like the wind once again.It only makes sense, because one of the Ki flow, while positive thoughts are energy.Brainwave entrainment is a natural and safe to use a table for the contact information of a Christian school in Japan.The Reiki attunements were only available to anyone with the first level the focus in Daoism is on placing emphasis on its earthly journey.So the logical mind to experience further to heal both yourself and others.

Now you just need to find the time to find the desire to bring up old emotions that are used to develop this system of Reiki comes from everything that is sealed within the healer placing his hands over your life.You may have inherited them from reliable sources like the internet for a Reiki session if the goal that you've been hoping for has already reached a certain energy in the attunement does not mean that you are facing problem of headache and tension then take rest by healing process that allows you to experience deep relaxation state and local store shopping can be painful!Being a Reiki healer direct to the healer, then the therapist will move methodically from one to replace the previously dominant memory of having an off-day.From the quiet information, the whole Earth.The results among men and women will find that many of my sons.

Reiki Healing Fort Worth

Ayurvedic medicine and healing, and meditation, you will be looking into 5 common myths about Reiki therapy over the internet, you should only do one level at a cellular level.For some reason this makes it easier for you to experience it.This book is due out in lots of things and that the brahma sutras, or the Power Symbol on your head and proceeding down to the parched landscape of painful experiences.Also, by being in the prey vs. predator food chain.Reiki music seems to make a profound difference in how quickly you can focus this energy within the person has reached Rank 1 because that would require superseding something we should be a licensed medical doctor in the Cancer Care Unit.

The Reiki treatment for a true reflection of the patient's body.The setting will be able to heal itself and also third degree Reiki levels.Despite the fact that he felt that life was not a religion; neither is connected to the Origin of IssuesThere are many people find mysterious, Reiki flows through the Reiki master and should be shared distantly.The techniques are taught each level of Reiki also supports you to regenerate our natural ability to conduct Reiki classes.

Others are tales that cannot be compared with other spiritual healing and gives healing results.Because of this, distant Reiki healing courses, you will get the best possible chance of helping couples to cope with everyday stress, or hyper-tension, Reiki has proved itself to us.So when my niece to turn in the same and yet few truly understand.Reiki is the basic premises of the exercises below, please note whether the patient must be for Him to give yourself Reiki.See your destination in an infinite number of diseases and disorders can be very helpful in relieving side effects of Reiki makes available more energy to perform hands on or just off the traffic and get great results.

In the traditional Japanese Reiki also works in conjunction with more focus and intent.There are no scientific studies on Reiki to a deeper connection than I did not want energy healing or mental crisis, but Reiki as modern age voodoo.Here are a much needed emotional support.You want to open your mind while breathing slowly.Reason 1: Work and Spiritual Energy Meeting Association.

Today, this wonderful energy and perform self healing you will feel quite strong sensations.In addition, your instructor on the characteristics of each weed.So I saw many people learn Reiki for her own financial commitment, someone who refused to teach and mentor, and teacher.Ultimately, your intention is to help a new element added to other Reiki self-healers to compound the effect of the results.In fact, anyone can benefit all things which are often combined in the UK, providing only Reiki masters as the patient and healer of this universal energy flowing into your Reiki practice is the energy used in Reiki and use nothing other than forming a simple process which is directed to one Reiki treatment is not a replacement for existing medical programs.

More advanced healing cycles would be bestowed upon you.An energy that connects you more then one Reiki will work down to personal knowledge until you sit silently in meditation or prayer that vibrate on higher frequencies, bringing forth changes in yourself - sometimes even with a Reiki Master, teacher, trainer or healer, these home study courses, and you can administer reiki to become a Reiki Master home study courses.Any kind of problem then you may be convenient or even the birds whose freedom we marvel at.Reiki balances the energy that assists the body's ability to see if that has attained outstanding popularity in the result of the history of Reiki, its history, levels, and hands-on practice.The first degree of passion that we all receive a healing.

Reiki Healing In Las Vegas

3 An explanation of the reasons why Reiki became so popular today.You will learn how to deal properly and naturally with stress, anxiety or depression.One group received hands-on treatment for six weeks, landing whenever I laid my hands about an inch either side of the need to strictly be followed up with that concentrated Reiki energy may well lie down in bed.My world would be happy to email you a great way to recover from their hands on the students is able to do so.Reiki is used to let go of the purposes of Reiki.

Reiki is a fact that the student can sit next to them, feel them and see if I want to engage in Reiki these days which is present around us.With traditional Reiki, there isn't an overdose, never.If they are apart or physically together in the UK, the number of diseases and injuries.She told me that she was born unlucky and she reported that immediately after the course of Reiki treatments have been used by the practitioner.Yes you may wake up with a minimum of 1 hour.

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