#scapegoat for over a hundred years at this point

[owl-bones]

Hey, I got a question for ya.Who THA HECK ARE EOS AND HELIOS?! I tried to found their story but I didn’t managed to find it…And since you’re their creator…could you explain ??? 👁️👄👁️

Thanks for your time (if you founded the time to read this) and (in any cases) have a good day ✌︎('ω')✌︎

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backstory/lore/personalities below the cut! it's. longgggg. VERY long. slkdfjlsdk like over 3k words

Backstory (personalities at the bottom)

Nim was a goddess of emotions, tasked with protecting the worlds made by creators throughout the multiverse. Eventually she yearned to create something of her own, but couldn't make something out of nothing-- so she used herself. She made two beings to keep each other company when she was gone, and used what remained of herself to become a tree to give them shelter.

The beings she made were too young and weak to harness her power in its entirety, so she sealed her power away in the fruits of the tree she became so they could grow into her strength slowly.

The beings were Dream and Nightmare, two halves of her whole.

It continues similarly to Dreamtale-- overtime the tree flourishes and the skeletons slowly grow up together. A village is built nearby and, over decades, becomes a busy town. The child guardians are mostly left alone as the people don't understand them and they keep to themselves, but there are many rumors and myths that develop about the tree they guard. One such rumor is that the tree is the reason the town develops so successfully and quickly. Over generations the guardians are a constant, never aging (truthfully just very slowly) and the mythos surrounding them slowly begins to warp.

People get used to their presence and seek them out more often, and as the details about their guardianship and abilities begins to spread more and more rumors develop.

Dream is outgoing and cheery. He's personable and warm and easy to get along with. The townspeople quickly adopt him like a stray cat, and he's given gifts when he visits and treated kindly. He's called things like "little guardian" and "angel" and the like. He soaks up this attention and praise like a plant hungry for the sun's light and, over time, visits more and more often.

Nightmare is more wary and shy, but strikingly intelligent. He's incredibly protective of the tree of emotions, and rarely leaves. It's more than a magic tree; it's their home and history. A hidden library, the sum of all of Nim's knowledge and life experiences, rests within the tree's broad hollow trunk. There's room enough for dozens, if not hundreds of books, and a place for the twins to sleep and hide away. He's dedicated his life to knowing as much as he can about their long-silent mother and their duties as guardians and is very protective of the knowledge. This makes him more enigmatic to the townsfolk, and people are known to be afraid of the unknown. He's quickly dismissed as the ruder sibling, and shunned. Not that he minds.

Dream isn't as concerned with their history-- he's far more interested in the present and future. He's found himself enamored with the town and how it develops; how he's watched children age and have families of their own, how more buildings are built to spread the town further and further. He knows everyone and everyone knows him.

They are young teens at this point. A couple hundred years old but still maturing and growing. As they've aged the tree has lost fruit; the apples drop to the ground and disappear when they're picked up as the twins absorb them to age into their powers.

But prosperity doesn't last forever, and the tree held no real power over the town's success. Soon the town finds itself in trouble-- a drought, an oncoming war, it's not important. What's important is they cling to their superstitions and fears and try to find a scapegoat. Nightmare is that scapegoat, keeping their salvation from them. They haven't been taking proper care of the tree, that's why there's fewer fruit. It's their fault.

If the town can get to the apples the twins protect, maybe they can use them to help themselves. Maybe they can plant more magic trees to increase their prosperity, or their warriors can eat them and gain their strength. They don't know anything about the tree's true nature and don't care to listen to either Dream or Nightmare when they ask for the guardians' boons.

The townspeople aren't dissuaded, and instead turn to manipulation. If Dream and Nightmare won't give them their blessing, they will simply have to take what they need. The guardians are children, anyway. What do they know about the world and politics of adults?

They know they can't get Nightmare away from the tree, but they can at least lure Dream away. He's offered tea and treats by a trusted villager, unaware it contains a sedative. He falls asleep and they go to work-- dozens of villagers go to the tree and start picking the golden apples. They ignore the black apples, not interested in something appearing 'tainted'. Nightmare tries to stop them but things get violent and he's downed with a blow to his skull. He's still young, weak, inexperienced, and hopelessly outnumbered. He's pinned and forced to watch as his mother's body, his home, is defiled.

The townsfolk didn't count on Dream being resistant to the sedative, however. Despite the amount of sleep-inducing herbs he consumed he's awake within a few minutes. He's groggy and aware something is wrong, but he's up.

Concerned and distraught he's been poisoned by someone he trusted, he returns home to find his brother injured and restrained and the tree devoid of golden apples.

The townspeople have decided to cut down the tree without removing the black apples, thinking that will remove the problematic negativity and they can replant the golden ones to only have positive trees. They're already partway through the trunk, and that's what spurs Dream into action.

They haven't noticed him yet and he starts picking up the apples to protect them-- but they disappear as soon as they're in his arms. They're his power by birthright, and absorbing them is what he's meant to do. It's only natural that his power would want to go where it belongs. At first it's warm and he feels stronger and more aware of what's going on, but the more apples he picks up the more his body aches and starts to burn.

His vessel was never meant to contain this much power this quickly, and as he desperately tries to save the apples it starts to break at the seems. His bones crack, the injuries filling with golden light holding him together, but he doesn't stop.

The townsfolk notice him, finally, and stop cutting at the tree to stop him. But it's too late. He's 'consumed' enough now that he's strong enough to keep them back with a magic barrier. He could stop now, talk them down from their frenzy, but... he doesn't want to. Despite the pain of his body breaking and barely keeping itself together, the power he now burns with is... good. His senses feel sharper, he's stronger, and he's brimming with energy. He keeps absorbing the apples.

His power overflows and can't be contained within him anymore, and golden light seeps out of his spine. The people always called him an 'angel', and this moment is where that myth solidifies itself. They aren't wings, not yet, but the amorphous magic light at his back is enough to make the villagers back away. This is the divine salvation they've been waiting for, right? An angel come down to lead them to safety?

But Dream isn't feeling like the happy-go-lucky child they knew him as. He's feeling an all consuming rage like he has never felt before. His emotions are much stronger than they've ever been, burning inside him. And not only that-- the vague impressions of people's emotions he could always feel are clear as day now. He can see exactly what the people are feeling.

Fear. Anxiety. Anger. And... hope.

That hope stands out to him. It doesn't sting like the other feelings steeped around the tree right now. It's warm and comforting and he wants more.

But first he needs to free his brother. Nightmare is falling unconscious and his vision is blurry, but he recognizes Dream. Dream does his best to heal him, a skill he's been practicing as his magic slowly got stronger. Now, though, his magic is much more powerful. It's raw and out of control and the positivity burns Nightmare with its force, scorching his armrs. Dream stops almost immediately, but the damage is done.

Nightmare was already weak, but now he's on the brink of dusting. The faint wisps of Nim left in the tree uses the very last bit of her magic to turn him to stone to help him recover.

Confronted by the loss of his brother, convinced it was his fault and his magic that did it, Dream shuts down. He goes fully into denial. Nightmare is just resting, he's fine, everything's fine. He can fix everything.

He needs to get rid of the townspeople. They're crowding him and his brother and they need to leave immediately. Shockingly, they obey. Dream is left alone with the statue of his brother.

It's not long before he gets a craving for more of that positivity he sensed. When he returns to the town, suspicious and still angry, he finds everything strikingly normal. Everyone is going about their business as if nothing had happened and he's greeted warmly (if a little nervously). There's more hope coming from everyone and it soothes the ache in his chest.

Dream overhears people whispering about him, calling him the angel again, and he starts putting the pieces together. The head of the town meets with him and suddenly he's not treated like a petulant child, but he's given information.

The town's issues are explained to him. The people are putting their hopes and dreams on his shoulders. There's expectations and they want things from him despite what they have done. And Dream finds himself answering the call, drunk on the power and feeling seen for the first time.

The people weren't acting maliciously, he tells himself. They were just misguided. They didn't know what they were doing, just like how they thought he didn't know what he was doing. He's the guardian of positivity. If they want prosperity and joy again, he can help them. He can guide them to what they want. They just have to stay away from the half-felled tree and do as he says.

As it turns out, the people are more than willing to stay far away from the negativity-steeped tree and follow his orders. They very quickly fall into line and worship him. He has no idea how to lead or manage a town, but nobody dares speak a word against him. Not that they need to. Despite the continuing issues they face, no townsperson can say that they're unhappy with Dream in charge. The opposite, in fact.

Since he came to be with them permanently everyone has found themselves filled with nothing but hope and happiness. They work tirelessly without complaint. Under his guidance the town expands even further over the decades until it's a fortified, bustling kingdom.

But Dream grows bored managing the mortals. He still ages slowly, and now an adult and having overseen a kingdom and its silly politics for generations, he wants more. He's grown properly into his powers and the magic at his back is now properly shaped like wings, like the 'angel' he is.

Nightmare used to speak of the other worlds the books within the tree would describe, and Dream for the first time in centuries seeks out his old home. He finds the books, worn but still intact, and learns of the multiverse and the balance.

It's then that he decides, like the expansion of the kingdom and his influence, to bring his light and positivity to other worlds.

It's another century or two after Dream leaves that Nightmare's petrification wears off. The apples have all fallen from the tree over the years, and he's slowly come into his powers himself. And yet he's still so... fatigued. Like something is sapping his strength no matter how much he rests.

The incident feels like it only happened moments ago for him, and yet he's alone. The library of his childhood is decrepit and the books are in poor condition and barely salvageable. His brother is gone, and when he goes looking for him... the town is a massive kingdom. White and gold and successful, flying golden banners and proclaiming Dream as their patron guardian.

But he's not there, either. Nightmare spends time in the kingdom working as a farmhand just trying to understand what exactly has happened and changed in the time he's been away. It's not easy finding information about his brother that's not glorified, and being an 'outsider' makes it even harder. The myth of the guardian of negativity has faded with time, his status as Dream's brother merely a footnote in the story, and for the first time in his life Nightmare is treated rather... normally by those around him.

It's a couple years later that Nightmare finally comes into his own and realizes the extent of Dream's control over both their original home, and the worlds he's visited since. He remembers reading about the careful balance he and Dream were meant to preserve... but he can tell that something isn't right. Somewhere along the way, growing up alone and worshipped and corrupted by the positivity he was meant to guard, Dream has lost himself. He's 'fixing' every AU he can, making them positive and trying to drive the balance as far in his favor as possible.

Nightmare leaves his home, alone and unsure of himself, and quickly finds himself lost in a sea of worlds that hate him. Due to his efforts to right the balance, he is painted a villain. He's used to it, and yet it still hurts. The hope that it was just that village that hated him quickly turns into the realization he is doomed to be hated wherever he goes, no matter how correct his actions.

The first time he runs into Dream, it seems like everything is going to be okay. They're together again, nothing bad can happen to them now that they're both powerful. But Dream's aura is draining to Nightmare, and their goals are too far apart. Dream's joy at the realization his brother isn't dead quickly turns to petulance when Nightmare insists he stops disrupting the balance and returns the AUs he's altered to their proper states.

They argue, and despite how much it hurts they go their separate ways. Nightmare continues to try and fix things, coming into conflict with Dream every so often, but he's outnumbered again. Dream has hundreds of people in his employ, sent out to AUs constantly to help put them on track to be positive. Nightmare is alone and weakened. Despite working tirelessly, there is nothing he can do to fix things. The balance shifts ever further, and Nightmare grows weaker.

It's years into their conflict that Dream hurts his brother again. He's used to them being on relatively even footing. He holds back against his disadvantaged brother, and Nightmare escapes before things get too bad. It's a song and dance they've done countless times at this point. But eventually, the time comes that Nightmare doesn't dodge in time. An arrow pierces his chest.

He's alive, the wound not enough to outright kill him, but he's comatose. Dream takes him back to his home, an opulent palace in an empty AU he's transformed to his liking. Nightmare can't get hurt anymore like this. Dream can protect him, and when he wakes up he'll convince him to see things his way. Everything will be okay. He always fixes things.

(Nightmare does eventually wake up and more things happen, but i'll save the how and why for later ;) )

Dream / Helios

Hundreds of years old, massively powerful, and incredibly influential. Dream has (peacefully) conquered most major AUs and solved their conflicts. Beloved by all and he knows it, he's egotistical and used to getting what he wants. And if he doesn't get what he wants... he finds a way. He's entitled and arrogant but also completely assured in his power. He has no need to gloat, he's quite confident in his status and abilities. But that isn't to say he doesn't like praise; he lives for it.

He's generous and well-intentioned, but also fully capable of justifying the means to get his end. If an AU can't be fixed it's either cordoned off or allowed to be destroyed. He employs many many people from many AUs to do his bidding, including those from AUs that would be considered 'negative'. If there's only one person left in the AU, removing them and giving them a better life is the next best way to fix it.

He doesn't have friends, not really, but his close confidants are Blue and Strike. He collects injured mythological creatures from AUs and rehabilitates them at his palace. He considers himself a patron of the arts, and aside from hiring people to help spread positivity he also hires artisans to live in his palace and fill it with art of all kinds. Tailors, sculptors, painters, writers, singers/musicians, and more.

He has many hobbies he's picked up over the years, but enjoys singing the most. He can fly with his wings, and is strong enough to carry someone along with him. He can change their size and shape depending on need.

He's very self conscious about the golden cracks all over his body, considering it a symbol of his weakness when he was young. He wears full coverings at all times (except his skull), and would only show the cracks to someone he truly trusts and cares for.

He's very skilled with a bow and rapier, but prefers to leave the fighting to his guards. He's very clever with his words and can be a skilled manipulator, but is equally capable of lacing his words with magic and forcing people to follow his will. He's very in-tune with souls and can manipulate even the slightest bit of positivity he senses, and there's a few people around his castle that are effectively his puppets due to their disobedience.

Nightmare / Eos

Cynical and exhausted. He's a workaholic; he doesn't have time to rest, he has to live up to his responsibilities. He rested enough as a statue and he can't afford to stop for even a moment. He wants nothing more than to have everything go back to the way it was and be close with Dream again, but worries the passage of time and what happened when they were young has put an irreparable crack in their relationship. The Dream he fights now is nothing like the Dream he knew when they were young, and he struggles to grasp that disparity.

Dream however can't help but recognize that Nightmare has barely changed. He's still shy and a bookworm. He's vilified and despised by most around him despite his good intentions, and continues to stand up for what he believes in in spite of it. He knows he will never be the hero of the story, but fights anyway.

He's slow to make friends and even slower to fully trust someone. He yearns to be understood and treated like a full person and not as a scapegoat for fears and misunderstandings. He's fighting to right the balance as is his responsibility, but all he really wants is to settle down and rest. He gets easily attached to people that make him feel safe and comforted.

He grew into his magic slowly as a statue, but is still adjusting to the changes even years later. When he's overwhelmed by negativity it can result in him leaking corruption from his sockets and mouth.

He's weakened from the balance being disrupted, but makes up for it with alternative magic he's learned from books. He has a passion for bookbinding and book restoration and has lovingly recreated and repaired what he could from the tree's library. He thinks it's very important to preserve Nim's history and live up to his responsibility as a guardian.

Not as skilled with a bow as his brother, but a decent swordsman with a sickle or scythe. He fights his own battles and eventually gains a team of close friends to support him.

#rayne's art #swapdream!totality #helios!dream #eos!nightmare

[takerfoxx]

(After)Life: Why the Evangelion Pilots Should Be Left Alone

Hey, throwing this up here before I officially publish it in a couple days as both of a sort of preview and also for feedback. This is the first installment of that Evangelion story that I've been talking about, a sort of in-universe opinion piece to introduce the premise and themes and whatnot. But basically, here's the general idea: it takes place over the course of about a century and a half after End of Evangelion, where Third Impact turned everyone into orange juice (LCL, whatever) and made humanity into a hivemind. Shinji and Asuka emerge onto that beach in a post-apocalyptic landscape like in the movie, Rei herself later returns under very odd circumstances, and after many trials and tribulations they eventually form a throuple. However, as more and more people also emerge from Instrumentality and society begins to rebuild, they find themselves needing someone to blame, and the Eva pilots seem the perfect fit. And since Shinji, Asuka, and Rei are afflicted with a somewhat modified version of the Eva's curse from the Rebuild films (basically, can't age, can't die), they're stuck with it for a long time.

So, basically the idea is for it to be a series of short stories released out-of-order, each of them taking place at a random point of time and touching in with how the trio are doing at that particular moment and keeping track of how society is reacting to them, and vice-versa. So, this will be very different than the more serialized stuff I've done in the past, and a lot more manageable as a result. Any installments will come out whenever I feel like working on this. Anyway, here's the first installment. Let me know what you think.

Why the Evangelion Pilots Should Be Left Alone, by Alice Glocke

One-hundred and twelve years ago, the world died, and ever since then, we have been seeking someone to blame.

A world still reeling from the horrors of Second Impact. A world under constant invasion by extraterrestrial monsters beyond comprehension. A world fighting desperately against increasingly hopeless odds not just to recover, but to survive, to not go quietly into that good night, to plant its feet and declare into the face of God himself that it not only existed, but would continue to exist, and woe be to all that would seek its destruction.

In this, it failed, and the world died.

In many ways, the horrors of Third Impact are less of a scar and more of an open wound, one bleeding LCL into our waters. Yes, we continue to rebuild, and life continues to repopulate and flourish. But though the brief moment in which humanity ceased to exist was now over a century ago, we still have those among us who were forced to take part in Instrumentality, only regaining their thoughts, bodies, and sense of personal identity through sheer force of will, and who had to eke out any means of survival that they could on a dead planet.

In the years following Third Impact, as society finally began to reconstruct itself and climb out of the muck into something that was at least functional, humanity has had to grapple with how to respond to the collective trauma that every person on the planet now shared. There was a great deal of righteous anger and a cry for justice, but with the entire SEELE Council still out of reach within Instrumentality, those cries went unfulfilled. Yes, a small number of NERV employees were found and taken into custody, but those were found to have nothing to do with Third Impact, with only that organization’s highest-ranking members working in cohorts with SEELE. And those individuals also remained out of reach.

And then, everything changed. Fourteen years after Third Impact, we finally had someone to blame. The surviving Evangelion Pilots had been found.

In a way, finding them had been a relief. So much bottled-up anger, so much unresolved pain, and those responsible were beyond justice. Now, humanity had the perfect scapegoats. Essential key components of SEELE’s Instrumentality Project, masquerading as fearless defenders of Earth while working the whole time to destroy it. Shinji Ikari, known as the Third Child, and son of NERV’s infamous commander Gendo Ikari, the man perhaps the most responsible for enacting Third Impact. And Asuka Soryu Langley, Second Child, daughter of one of the Human Instrumentality Project’s designers. And while there had been many to decry pinning the blame on those two, that it was unfair to place the sins of the parents on their hapless children, all of those protests faded away when Shinji Ikari made his fateful confession. It had been he that had been given the choice whether or not to allow Third Impact to take place. And it had been he who had made the decision to end the world.

Everyone knows that image of two young teenagers being led from the UN Council by their lawyers and bodyguards, being pelted with garbage from an angry crowd. Whether they saw it in textbooks, had it sent to them by friends as a meme, or even were one of those that watched it live, this is perhaps the most infamous image of the New World. And for a time, most felt that the anger directed at those two was fully justified. Certainly, the UN Council seemed to agree, finding them both guilty of aiding and abetting in SEELE’s schemes to end the world, Shinji intentionally and Asuka unintentionally. The two were then incarcerated in a “secure facility,” and that was that.

Since then, the condition of the two pilots has mostly fallen out of the public’s consciousness. No appeals, no interviews, no word as to what they were up to or how they were doing. Every single “Where are they now?” op-ed has always ended up as a rewritten version of the same events, with each one ending with “Shinji and Asuka: still locked up,” with the only significant change being the number of years between the trial and the newest article’s publication.

Which isn’t to say that they’ve disappeared completely, but rather they seemed to have ceased to become actual public figures and become more of caricatures. They appear in comic strips and cartoons as grossly exaggerated versions of themselves, usually with the destruction of the world as the punchline. They’ve become symbols, memes, representations of the guilt laid upon their shoulders, little more than villains straight out of a children’s story.

Which isn’t to say there haven’t been voices of support over the years. Asuka especially seems to have garnered a small but vocal following, pointing out that she actually had nothing to do with the implementation of Third Impact, and so forcing her to share Shinji’s fate was perhaps unfair. The phrase “Asuka did nothing wrong” has come in and out of vogue, and in time it seems that she has become something of a symbol of the unjustly persecuted. Even Shinji himself, who for so long shouldered the majority of the blame for Third Impact, has seen a turnaround in how the public has treated him, pointing out that perhaps placing the full blame for what had happened upon a child soldier indoctrinated by an evil organization of adult men is a bit unfair.

However, none of these voices ever gained much traction. Once the trial was over, most of humanity’s attention was directed toward just trying to heal, and there was little room for the Evangelion Pilots.

But then, nine months ago, all of that changed.

The hacking of the UN security files and the subsequent leaks of not only their own data on the pilots, but also all of the files that they had managed to recover from NERV, has been nothing less than earth-shaking. Granted, little had been revealed about the Human Instrumentality Project and SEELE’s designs that the public didn’t already know, though the full extent of their machinations had been troubling. However, it was the data on the pilots that had been the most troubling, and revealed how little we truly understood about the Earth’s murderers.

For decades, Shinji Ikari had been painted as a willing participant in his father’s schemes, Gendo Ikari’s heir anointed and trusted lieutenant. But now we knew the truth. He was little more than a child forced into taking part in a war that he wanted no part in and suffered greatly for. We listened to the recordings of his screams of agony, his enraged curses and threats, and his pleas for help on behalf of himself and his fellow pilots. We read the psychological evaluations of his frequent depressive states, his attempts to run away, and the lack of support that he received. We learned of his own father’s cold treatment of him, and how Gendo Ikari would psychologically torture his son to get him back into the cockpit of his Evangelion.

And with all of this came the truth. Shinji and the other pilots were deliberately abused. Evangelions were at their most effective when bonded with a broken soul. The pilots were traumatized time and time again in order to increase their effectiveness in combat and denied help afterward. In light of this new information, we ourselves were forced to confront an uncomfortable truth. Shinji Ikari’s decision to cause Third Impact was less the act of megalomaniac enacting his father’s master scheme as it was that of a suffering child drowning in a sea of rage and torment, desperate to escape the Hell that his life had become.

Who among us as children has not wished that the world would end at one time or another? Shinji was simply unfortunate enough to have the means to do so thrust into his hands when at his lowest, and he had far more reason to do so than anyone ever could have imagined. And by all accounts, he regretted it immediately afterward.

There is no justifying what he did, no taking back the suffering that he caused. But at least now, people have come to understand why, and feel that he had been unfairly mischaracterized by history.

But that was far from the biggest bombshell to come out of that leak. Just as everyone was coming to terms with what we had learned about someone so long believed to be a monster, we discovered something that pushed almost all discussion of Shinji Ikari out of everyone’s minds.

Rei Ayanami had survived.

If there is anyone among the Evangelion Pilots subject to more discussion, demonization, and blame for what had happened, it is her. And why wouldn’t she be? An artificial human, created by a combination of human DNA and genetic material gathered from Lilith, the secretly imprisoned second Angel, literally created to serve as Lilith’s resurrection and the one to carry out the Third Impact.

Rei had fulfilled her purpose. She had bonded with Adam, the first Angel, and transformed into an abomination. Those who witnessed Third Impact spoke of a monster, an enormous pale-skinned woman embracing the Earth. And there was little reason to doubt this, as her gigantic corpse had been found just offshore of the ruins of Tokyo-3 and sits in the Human Instrumentality Research Center to this day, alongside the recovered remains of the Evangelions themselves, the corpses of the Angels, and the last remaining pool of LCL, containing the souls of those who decided to remain in Instrumentality. Surely, if anyone deserves to be painted as a monster, it is her. And it wasn’t as if she were around to protest how the history books characterized her, as she had perished immediately after destroying the world.

Except she hadn’t, at least not permanently. She had come back, and had been found alongside Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley. The whole time when the UN had been making scapegoats of those poor children, the actual monster had been in their hands, and they said nothing.

However, calling even Rei a monster had proven to be more complicated than anyone could have expected.

The topic of Rei Ayanami’s rebirth is woven into the enigma of her existence. Much has been made of her reincarnation as Lilith, while next to nothing has ever been discussed about Rei Ayanami the person, Rei Ayanami the human. And why would there be? All accounts of her painted her as a cold, emotionless being, as befitting her alien origins. What more is there to discuss?

As it turns out, there is plenty.

We have long known of NERV’s barbaric and, dare I say, downright blasphemous experiments involving the human soul, how each of the Evangelions literally had the soul of a person close to its chosen pilot embedded into its neural network. For Shinji and Asuka, it was their mothers. But what of Rei? What of this artificial person, created from a test tube, born from a vat? What person could possibly fill that role?

As it turns out, it was herself.

Three years after her creation, Rei was accidentally killed by Dr. Akagi, one of the scientists working on the Human Instrumentality Project. Her soul was preserved, thanks to its artificial nature. However, with her death, NERV saw an opportunity. Only half of her soul was implanted within a fresh clone body, while the other served as the core of Unit 00, the first of the Evangelions.

With only half a human soul, Rei’s capacity to experience normal emotions and form human connections was severely stunted, resulting in the passive, almost robotic individual described by those who knew her. She was likewise groomed to be utterly obedient, valuing little for her own life while carrying out her orders with no hesitation. And yet, despite these handicaps, connections did form. Notes from her handlers speak of a growing friendship between herself and Shinji Ikari, one that had NERV’s command concerned. After all, should she somehow break free from their programming, it could threaten all of their carefully laid plans.

This was further complicated by her second death, when Eva 00 became infected by Armisael, the Sixteenth Angel, and was forced to self-destruct before the infection could spread. Again, Rei’s soul was retrieved, but with no Eva to implant half of it into, the entire thing was placed within her new body. And unwilling to risk having a Rei Ayanami suddenly experiencing the full range of human emotions with no prior experience controlling them in such a critical stage, NERV using psychiatric drugs, tranquilizers, and mental conditioning to keep her confined within her customary passive and pliable state, right up until the end.

The topic of Rei’s latest resurrection has also been heavily debated. Certainly, her own recounting of the event has been less than helpful. We know that NERV had a number of clone bodies in reserve should she die in battle, but they were all destroyed leading up to Third Impact. According to Rei herself, a new body was formed by a “her,” presumably Lilith. Another time she claimed to have created the new body herself. But regardless of the body’s origin, following Lilith’s death, her human soul somehow found its way back into the final clone body, where she was later found by Shinji and Asuka, and remained with them for the next fourteen.

Part of the reason that the outrage against the UN has found it difficult to be sustained is that there is a lack of agreement on what exactly to be outraged about, as so much was revealed that turned everything that we thought to be true on its head, causing more confusion than anger. But perhaps the most revealing aspect of the leaks were what has since been dubbed the Pilot Interviews, recordings of the interrogations of the Evangelion Pilots following their capture.

Shinji Ikari’s were certainly eye-opening. Throughout his questioning, he was revealed to be a man haunted by his actions, someone who spent years drowning in guilt and who had only just begun to break the surface. He spoke of his many failed suicide attempts, of begging both Rei and Asuka to put him out of his misery, and seemed completely resigned to whatever justice he was to be sentenced to, though at times a passive-aggressive streak would surface, especially whenever the topic of his infamous father came up. Still, if anything, it was these series of tapes that did the most to rehabilitate his image.

Asuka’s, on the other hand, were anything but passive. If anything, she was downright hostile. It was clear that she did not feel that her and her companion’s capture was in any way justified, and felt compelled to explain her disdain to her interrogators in full, and often very colorful, detail. Nor did she feel the slightest bit remorseful for any part that she had to play in NERV’s atrocities.

There has been some debate if her attitude was warranted, with her defenders pointing out that she was correct, that she hadn’t actually had anything to do directly with Third Impact, while others claim that given the circumstances, her behavior reeked of haughty entitlement.

However, all of that was completely overshadowed by the third set of interview sessions, that of Rei Ayanami.

If Shinji’s were regretful and Asuka’s volatile, then Rei’s were downright unhinged. A far cry from the serene, almost emotionless person that she was said to be, this Rei was fully out of control, at times exploding with anger, screaming curses and profanities and death threats so detailed that they seemed less threats as they were expressed intentions that she would have carried out were she able. Other times she would collapse into a blubbering mess, wailing and pleading for forgiveness. Other times she would enter into a catatonic state, seeming to retreat within herself and not respond to any stimuli whatsoever. And still others times she would sink into a full depressive state, unable to respond with anything more than a few whispered, one-word answers, while frequently asking for death.

Certainly, the tapes of Rei’s sessions were disturbing, and to this day no one seems to know what to make of them. Is she truly the monster that she’s made out to be? An innocent victim? Nothing on those tapes seemed to indicate either way.

However, Dr. Anno of London-2 University seems to have what I feel to be the most likely answer. Rei was someone who grew up as an incomplete person. With half of her soul locked away in a gigantic bio-mechanical abomination, she was kept from experiencing the full range of human emotions, and thus never learned how to control her feelings when those emotions were returned to her. She then spent the next fourteen years thrust into a harrowing survival situation, where her only two points of human contact weren’t exactly the finest examples of emotional stability either.

However, as different as the three pilots’ reactions to their interrogators were, there is one thing that united all three: a fervent, almost desperate concern for the well-being of the other two. Rei was the most overt, with her episodes of rage especially largely spent demanding to see Shinji and Asuka and making graphic threats should any harm befall them, but Shinji and Asuka also frequently pleaded to be reunited with each other and Rei. It is clear that whatever their relationship had been during their time actually piloting the Evangelions, the fourteen years that they had spent together had formed an extremely close bond.

What followed next, we all know. Shinji and Asuka’s capture was made public, with no mention of Rei. Those two were then put on trial before the UN Council and found guilty, with the last time that the world saw them was them being led through a jeering crowd toward the waiting transports. And from there, they were to be taken away, never to see the light of day again.

However, we now know that the trial was, at least in part, a façade. An act. Almost a stage play. A deal had been struck with Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley: take the fall for the Third Impact, and you will be reunited with Rei. And then the three of you will be taken somewhere safe to live out your days in peace. The world needed a scapegoat, and it was to be them. Naturally, they agreed.

At this point, the tide had fully turned in favor of the unfairly maligned Evangelion Pilots. Even Rei was starting to be treated with some measure of sympathy. But it was what happened next that fully won over people’s hearts.

As I said, we all have the image of Shinji and Asuka being led away from the trial burned into our minds. The sorrow on Shinji’s face and the resentment on Asuka’s. The featureless helmets of their bodyguards. The trash flying through the air, hurled by the angry crowd. But what nobody knew until now was what happened when they reached their destination, and when they were finally reunited with Rei.

The nature of the relationship between Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley has, like everything else about them, been hotly debated, though it has been commonly accepted that they were lovers. And it was this moment that definitively proved that assertion, but with a new wrinkle: not only were Shinji and Asuka romantically tied, but Rei was equally involved with both of them.

It feels horribly gauche to comment on such an intimate moment, especially since it was no doubt intended to be private, but I feel that it was this moment that the world fully realized how cruel those grossly exaggerated portrayals in our media have been. These were not monsters. These were not villainous masterminds. These were people. People that loved one another, people that were willing to shoulder the blame for history’s greatest tragedy in order to protect one another, people that gave up everything just to be with each other. Yes, they had done terrible things, and yes, they should bear that responsibility. However, it is now clear that they are far from the monsters that history has deliberately painted them out to be.

But of course, it was not enough to completely upend everything that we had thought that we had known the Eva Pilots. It was not enough to smack us with the truth of Rei’s existence or her humanity. We were then confronted with perhaps the strangest revelations of them all.

And that was that the Evangelion Pilots were almost certainly still alive.

One hundred and twelve years have passed since Third Impact, and though people living past a hundred is not unheard of, it is still exceptionally rare. However, even before the leaks, people have pointed that despite the fourteen-year gap between Third Impact and the pilots’ capture, Shinji and Asuka still looked fourteen, when they ought to be in their late twenties. Was this the result of piloting an Evangelion? Some Faustian deal made with Lilith? A result of NERV’s experiments, perhaps?

Whatever it was that kept their youth, it persisted even after their incarceration. Shinji, Asuka, and Rei lived on under the watch of the United Nations for another eight years, and none of them so much as aged a day. What is more, tests ran on the pilots showed that their cells lacked any sort of molecular decay. Quite the contrary, their bodies stalwartly resisted any sort of damage at all. Any wounds were swiftly healed, any diseases immediately snuffed out, with even complete brain death being nothing more than a temporary inconvenience. A rather disturbing but revealing file revealed that all three pilots had attempted suicide a number of different times during the first few years following Third Impact, with Rei Ayanami especially taking painstaking notes on the various methods that she employed and their effectiveness, which was none. There was some speculation as to whether this strange regeneration would persist in the face of total disintegration, but no one was willing to give the go-ahead to check.

Regardless, the case was clear. Whether it be an undeserved blessing or an ironic curse, the three Eva pilots had been afflicted with some sort of immortality, frozen forever in time from the moment of Third Impact. As such, despite the decades since, they are no doubt living today, unchanged from those historical photos.

Unfortunately, there seems no way to actually check, as they are very much gone. As stated before, eight years into their incarceration, they simply vanished without a trace. A thorough, yet discrete investigation into the matter took place, during which a conspiracy sympathetic to the pilots’ plight was uncovered, with a number of UN staffers close to the pilots found to be complicit. However, no one could say where the pilots were now, as their point of release was known only to a small few, and deliberate effort was made not to keep track of them after they had been released.

Which means that Shinji Ikari, Asuka Soryu Langley, and, perhaps most unsettling, Rei Ayanami, the three most controversial figures of the last century, are currently loose somewhere in the world. Perhaps they are wandering the forests of the Americas, the deserts of Africa, or perhaps even returned home to Japan. Perhaps they took on new names, disguised their appearances, and are now living in some suburban home somewhere, or returned their old life from before incarceration and joined one of the many refugee camps in one of the cities slow to recover. They could be in a small Swedish village, in a cabin in the Australian outback, in a treehouse in the Amazon jungle, or any one of the literally millions of other points on the map.

Naturally, there has been much talk about finding them again, some wishing to make amends and publicly make up for the blame that they had been forced to shoulder, others feeling that they still had not repaid their debt to society and should be returned to imprisonment. And there are still others that do not care for either side, but instead insist that they remain a clear and present danger, that more was changed about them than granting them eternal life, that they are inhuman monsters fully capable of ending the world again and need to be stopped. But whatever the motive, something almost everyone agrees on is that they do need to be found.

And I am here to offer up a dissenting opinion. Regardless of whether you love them, hate them, feel bad for them, or feel threatened by them, the Evangelion Pilots should be left alone. This, I feel, would be best for everyone.

Whenever the exploits, positive or negative, of the pilots are brought up, there seems to be a sort of hierarchy to the degree each one is discussed. Shinji seems to be the one brought up the most, as he is still unquestionably the trigger-man of Third Impact. Asuka comes next, given everyone’s complicated feelings toward her and her swaths of supporters. After that is Rei, who, even before her survival was discovered, still occupied a very contentious place in history as the monster who directly ended the world. And then there is Kaworu Nagisa, perhaps the greatest enigma of them all, a half-Angel/half-human artificial being like Rei, created specifically by SEELE as a countermeasure to any possible treachery on NERV’s part, but was killed by Shinji Ikari before his plans could come about, and yet seems to have played as vital a part in Third Impact as Rei, but by the same token, apparently did not see resurrection like she did.

But there is a fifth name that is often forgotten in those discussions, a fifth Evangelion Pilot. And that is none other than Touji Suzuhara the Fourth Child.

It is not that Touji is totally unknown, but he exists in the public consciousness as a sort of footnote, a trivia question at best. Though he was selected as a pilot and given an Evangelion of his own, his Evangelion became possessed by Bardiel, the Thirteenth Angel, during its first test run, leading to its destruction. And though he survived, Touji was critically injured in the process, and with no Evangelion to pilot, he quietly left the program to fade out of history.

In a way, Touji was perhaps the luckiest one of them all. The early destruction of his Evangelion protected him from having to participate in the mentally harrowing battles against the Angels, and he was spared of being an active participant in Third Impact. Even afterward, he was part of the first wave of people to emerge from Instrumentality, even reuniting with most of his family and many of his friends, going on to live about as full of a life as one could in those desolate circumstances. And while the tides of history have mostly washed over him, some effort was made to locate him. During Shinji and Asuka’s trials, once it was discovered that he was among the refugees recovered from Tokyo-3, there were multiple news outlets attempting to seek him out for interviews. However, they were far too late, as he and his family were long gone.

And I know all of this, as Touji Suzuhara was my great-grandfather.

I have very little memory of Touji. Though he lived much longer than most, he at least was spared the immortality that afflicted the other pilots and passed away when I was six, and what little I do recall about him paints a picture of a quiet, reserved old man. However, in interviewing various members of my family, I was told of someone who made every effort to flee his past but was unable to fully shake its shadow. I heard stories of bullying and harassment in those early refugee camps, of the other survivors trying to blame him and his family for what had happened, much as Shinji and Asuka would be publicly blamed later. It got to the point that as soon as they were rescued and carried away from Tokyo-3, his whole family changed their names and fled, disappearing into a still-chaotic world to find a place where nobody knew them.

In time, they succeeded, eventually settling in Austria. Though they had nothing and did not even know the language, that mattered little as very few of their neighbors had much either, and they were far from the only immigrants wandering in. There, they were able to blend in, carving out a niche for themselves and building something resembling a life, and no one ever discovered their connection to history’s so-called greatest monsters.

But even so, my great-grandfather never forgot. Though he never neglected his family and tried his best to provide for them, everyone that I spoke to made him out to be a broken man, someone who had lost the light in his eyes, who would smile very little and always seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. It was forbidden to speak to him of the time before Third Impact, and the very few times he did talk of it, it was from the viewpoint of someone who never truly left Tokyo-3, haunted by ghosts.

Touji might have been forgotten by history, but he bore his scars. Unfair blame was placed upon my family’s shoulders for what had happened, and we know all too well what it is like to be made scapegoats by the those who need someone to blame for their suffering. And though I have never met Shinji Ikari, Asuka Soryu Langley, or Rei Ayanami, and know about as much about them as everyone else, I at least have some measure of understanding of how unfairly they’ve been characterized. And I am sure that they desire validation about as much as they deserve further condemnation, which is to say, not at all. As such, I feel that the kindest thing to do would be to just let them be. Wherever they are, leave them alone to seek their own peace. Because I assure you, they have paid for their sins in full. They pay every day, remembering their part in the previous world’s death.

And to those who still think them a threat, who still believe that they possess the power to once again end the world despite no evidence to back that up, consider this: they have had ample opportunity and reason to wield that power, and yet never have. As such, perhaps it would be best not to provoke them?

No matter how you feel about the Evangelion Pilots, I see little that can be gained by seeking them out. They have taken more than their fair punishment, and would likely shun any reward. And as the descendant of one of their number, I say, let my great-grandfather’s companions be and move on. We have all suffered enough.

#neon genesis evangelion #(after)life #fanfic #shinji ikari #asuka langley soryu #rei ayanami #toji suzuhara #asurei #asushin #reishin #asureishin

[indigos-stardust]

Flicker

Hundreds of years ago the fire moth people, or Nari'shi, lived on volcanic Islands to the South. Unfortunately, there was a catastrophic period of forest fires in the nearby lands that spread from the wild, to crops, and finally villages.

The Nari'shi contain the ability to generate enough heat to create flames. This is because they naturally have a sixth sense to read energy through their antennae and have a much higher resistance to the natural heat from the volcano's they live nearby and depend on. Due to these factors, they can use their own stores of energy and release that through the friction their thick fur creates in fast movement. They even had group dances that would create sparks from the fast movements and touches.

However, that ability to create flame is why they were blamed for the tragedies that continued, even if they was no real evidence they had done those things. Due to complicated politics of the time, including the greed and power tactics of many leaders, they were used as scapegoats for not just the fires but many other things.

During their season of Dormancy And Rest, or Winter, many attacks were made against them using cruel techniques. IN the end their rule was dismantled and they were forced to pay for "retributions." Having no home and no wealth, they agreed to contracts that essentially trapped them and their families in generations of forced labor, abusive surveillance, and working conditions that violated many human rights.

Most work in the Fire Works, where their energy is used either to forge weapons with their fire or create magical energy capsules for a variety of purposes. It's a grim and gruesome reality. Schooling and any method for empowerment or escape from that lifestyle are banned using racist ideas to back it up.

Red, or rather Flicker in this au, worked and lived in those horrible conditions. One day, an older man who had taken care of him, was being yelled at by one of the surveyors. He was too slow. It didn't matter that he was overworked, exhausted, and slowed down by the years of intense labor. He'd be punished for his slowness anyways. Most of the time, the only reason it happened was just to make an example.

At a certain point, everyone reaches a limit. Even though it was stupid, and the elder man begged him not too, Flicker tried to defend him. Tried to make an excuse or aid him in some way, to make the pain less. Things only escalated unfortunately. Then other people were roped into it. More serious threats were made.

Flicker, well, he ended up determined to defend him. And with his own temper his own flame flared up. So hot it broke his own restraints. Apparently, he was "gifted" with a strong fire. People like that were sent down to the Tartarus Plant. No one ever came back from there. No one that ever went there saw the sky again. The beautiful sun would be a dead memory.

So he ran. Sure, it was a rather explosive escape. Sure, if he was caught he'd face a fate worse than death itself. Maybe he accidentally did cause several fires because of the adrenaline and lack of restraint paired with this "gift" (more like a curse.) Miraculously he manages to escape on a raft. Or well, he would've been shot down if Flicker did that. The Island was full of guards.

It's more accurate that they thought he died and then he thought he died when the small boat exploded around him. Flicker wasn't exactly sure what happened. A selkie folk, who knew the ocean and its depths, wouldv've realized that he'd been dragged off by a vicious rip current. And managed to survive purely because he was entangled in a boyyant piece of the small boat he stole.

As for the whole "drowning" issue? No clue on that, for all anyone would ever guess is that either some guardian spirit was watching over him or maybe he just was so near death and hot that he just created an air bubble from all the water he was heating up. Who knows honestly.

Of course, when he washed up in some small cave on the cliff side of some foreign land, he had to admit he was relieved. Sure, there was no way out due to the tides that blocked the exit of the cave. Perhaps, he'd never leave this place and he'd just starve inside, it wasn't like he could swim. Honestly, it was better than whatever fate was awaiting him at the Fire Works.

But then he noticed a frozen chunk of ice near the corner of the cave. At first, he thought it was a strange rock, he'd never seen ice before. There was even clams growing around it as well. He felt droplets melt as he touched it. While he observed the strange thing, he noticed a strange shape inside. So, he melted through it. And then...

A MEAL- Okay, it was probably some dead disease infested animal that died some unfortunate death- But cmon! It PROBABLY wouldn't kill him and honestly- Maybe he could make this work! He'd get enough energy from eating that weird freaky looking animal and maybe he'd learn how to fish! He could just- Drink the water dripping from the stalactites above! He'd survive!!

Well, that's what he thought before he was about to try to cook the dead thawed thing and then it suddenly opened its eyes and shrieked and bit him. Oh, and then it turned into a whole freaking man with weird white hair and crap.

Then the guy started screaming more! Sure, maybe it was because Flicker was screaming too- But in his defense he didn't expect his dead meal to just BECOME A RANDOM GUY?

Things calmed down and they established that they didn't want to kill each other. Then they both demanded what the hell was up with the other dude in the cave. Apparently "Buwe" was trapped in ice or cursed or something. He seemed strangely concerned for Flicker though, Flicker couldn't really understand why.

After a bit of peace and making up for the "accidentally trying to eat/bite you" scenario with some fish that Buwe had caught they chatted some more. Buwe was determined to take Flicker home with him. But the more Buwe talked.. Yeah, Flicker wasn't exactly schooled, but he started to realize everything this guy was describing.. From money and the state of the kingdoms and whatever else? He sounded like he was alive when the Nari'shi were free.

So, they started to put together that Buwe's entire family and tribe were probably dead because apparently he'd been frozen in ice for over two hundred years.

Buwe, brilliant man that he is, decides he's going to cope by adopting Flicker. Flicker, who doesn't want to die and is appreciative of this strange man who has provided food and protection find's himself accepting this agreement. Even though he's literally an adult but apparently, "Smol brother is smol brother" was enough reasoning for Buwe so this was just his life now.

They tried to go back to Buwe's old village, but after seeing the way the grief absolutely wrecked Buwe, Flicker encouraged them to find a new life elsewhere together. Buwe agreed and they set off.

#fs #fs au #four keys #four keys flicker #my art #four swords #four swords au

[mimisempai]

It was always there

Summary

After each encounter with his stranger, since the very first one, a mysterious black cat waits for Hob near the inn and gives him a listening ear and sometimes a little comfort.

Notes

Prompt #17- “I wish I’d never met you.” - “No…you don’t mean that.”  Prompt #22- “Was I just an easy scapegoat to you? Is that it?”  Prompt #23- “No! Stay away from me! Stay back!”

For @marvelmywaydowntown and @eldritch-teacup

On AO3

Rating G - 4308 words

June 7, 1389

The black cat approached the man who was staggering out of the inn.

"Haha... let me laugh. Stupid stranger. Not only are you interfering in a friendly conversation, but you're challenging me with that smug smile."

The cat continued to follow him from a distance, curious to continue hearing what the man had to say.

"Besides you knew my full name, not Hob or Hobsie, but Robert Gadling. Robert, no one ever called me that except my mother -peace her soul- when she was angry. And from the way you look, we're not from the same background, so what do you want from me? Why did you come to hang out in such a place? Just to have fun with a poor peasant, huh?"

The cat continued to stroll behind the man who turned around abruptly and asked, "Who's following me?"

"Meow?"

The man approached him and crouching down in front of the cat, said in a gentle tone, contrasting with the one he had just before, "Awe, you’re such a sweet little thing." 

He stroked the top of his head and the black cat purred with pleasure.

The man continued, "Well, I'm going to prove to this stranger who I am. He'll see who Hob Gadling is. I'll be here in a hundred years."

After a final pat, the man stood up and walked away. As he was leaving, he turned to the cat and, waving his hand, said, "They say cats have nine lives, so who knows, buddy, maybe we'll meet again in a hundred years."

The cat watched as the man disappeared into the night and then, regaining his human form, he whispered, "Count on it Robert Gadling. We'll meet again."

June 7, 1489

The black cat waited under a street lamp, staring at the door of the tavern.

Suddenly Hob Gadling came out and started walking, smiling. The moment his gaze fell on the cat, his eyes widened and his mouth formed an "oh" of surprise.

He walked toward the black cat, who also began to trot toward him.

The man leaned over and scratched his head.

He said softly, still with a smile on his face, "So you're here too and you survived all this time, if you're the same cat of course."

"Meow."

Hob's smile became a bit self-deprecating as he continued, "You know it's really strange. That weird man from a hundred years ago, he was here tonight. He told me that all he wanted was to see me every hundred years and know what it felt like not to die. He got one of those faces when I told him it was brilliant!"

Hob laughed before continuing, once he calmed down, "I must have looked like an idiot bragging about all the changes since the last time, but at the same time how could you not appreciate the new chimneys? I'm sure that when you sleep in front of them you must appreciate not being full of smoke and soot anymore, right?"

The cat pretended to leave and Hob protested, "Oh I see, even you, I bother you, eh? But I can't help it, in a hundred years I've learned even more than before to enjoy the little things, you know."

He resumed his petting to convince the cat to stay before continuing, "Anyway, the stranger seemed a little happier when I told him about my printing project. But it seems that after he found out I wanted to go on living, he couldn't wait to leave. However, I'll tell you a secret my little friend, at one point he smiled and it was like he was lit up from the inside. Well, you know what? I swear to you that next time he'll smile again! "

He stroked the cat's head once more and then a few times his back before standing up.

"Well, my mysterious furry friend, it's time for me to go home. I'm an honest hard working man now, so I need some sleep. I hope you still have all your lives and that we meet again in a hundred years!"

The man walked away whistling and the cat watched him go.

When he regained his human form, he grumbled, "I wasn't lit from within." 

But as he walked away in the opposite direction of where Hob had gone, he couldn't stop a slight smile from blooming on his lips.

June 7, 1589

The black cat walked towards the entrance of the inn and after waiting for half an hour, he took advantage of the fact that someone was coming out to sneak in through the door. Once inside, he headed for the table at the back of the tavern. 

Hob saw him coming and patted the seat next to him saying, "Hey, my little furry friend, you're here again!"

The cat jumped up to take a seat next to the man and what struck him was the look of sadness on his face. Even though he was smiling at him, his smile did not reach his eyes.

The black cat tried to comfort him and poked his hand with his head.

The man smiled a little more, "Ah, at least you don't give me the cold shoulder."

He brought his two hands up to the black cat and stopped just short of touching him to ask, "You're not afraid of me, are you? Would you let me hold you?"

The cat meowed his agreement and moved himself to the outstretched hands to show the man that he wasn't indeed not afraid.

Hob whispered, "Thank you." then gently grabbed him in his arms and held him close while scratching his head.

The cat began to purr to show his delight.

Hob said softly, a touch of melancholy in his voice, "You know, I was looking forward to meeting him today. I had all this prepared, not to show him what I have become, but to be able to offer him this banquet as a kind of thanks for this life given. Because by persevering, I had finally accomplished something. But he hardly considered me, and finally left with this Shaxberd. He smiled at him and in an instant I no longer existed."

The church bell rang in the distance and Hob exclaimed, "Oh, it's so late already!" He scratched the cat's neck and continued, "I'll have to leave you my faithful friend, my wife and son are waiting for my return."

He placed the cat carefully on the ground and after a last caress, he got up and asked the innkeeper to hail a carriage before heading for the door.

The cat followed him out and stayed in front of the tavern until the carriage disappeared in the distance. Then, in an alleyway a little further on, he shifted and, with a hint of remorse in his heart, he whispered to himself, "Next time, Hob Gadling, you'll have my full attention and I'll make it up to you."

June 7, 1689

The black cat was about to approach the man in rags when suddenly he saw him being grabbed by the collar by the same guard who had prevented him from entering before. 

He spat in Hob's face, "You filthy vermin, don't let me see your lousy ass hanging around here again. Go back to your own kind!"

Then he shoved Hob roughly toward the road and the man pulled his rags tighter around him before walking away with his head down.

The cat trotted to catch up with him and when he reached his level, he meowed to be noticed. 

The man stopped immediately and turned to the cat, then exclaimed, a smile of joy lighting up his miserable appearance, "My four-legged friend. How happy I am to see you!"

His smile turned sheepish as he added, "I don't want to hug you, because I'll probably give you fleas."

But the cat didn't want that and jumped into the man's arms, who had no choice but to grab him and hold him tight.

"Little brigand, don't come and complain next time!"

He stroked the cat under the neck and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "As you can see I've had a pretty rough ride back, but in all this unhappiness, today for the first time in so many years, I feel happy. My stranger didn't seem indifferent at all today. Although I am in a worse predicament than all the times we have seen each other. I told him about all the years of misery and he looked incredibly compassionate, like he was going to cry on my behalf, especially when I told him about the loss of my wife and children. Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but I got the impression that he was afraid I was going to tell him I wanted to die and was both relieved and happy when I told him I wanted to keep living. He saw me at the worst time of my life and yet for the first time I felt like I had his full attention."

He stroked the cat again under the chin and added, "You know they say black cats bring bad luck, well, I'm sure you bring me good luck."

The cat purred with pleasure and let himself be caressed for a few more moments. 

Then Hob put him down and said softly, "Although it's very nice, sweetie, I mustn't stay here too long, as the other idiot said, I have to get back to the filth I belong to."

"Meow," protested the cat.

But Hob, still with a smile on his face replied, "Don't worry, I'm not going to stay like this for long, between you and my stranger, I have twice as much reason to hang on and turn things around."

He fondled the cat's head, stood up and left to join an alleyway a few meters away. As he did so he waved his hand and said, "Take care of yourself my friend. See you in a hundred years."

The cat watched him go, then turned and couldn't help but worry about the man's condition, haunted by what he had shared with him.

He whispered, "Hang on Hob Gadling. Whatever your condition, I'll be glad to see you again in a hundred years. Whatever your condition."

June 7, 1789

The black cat watched as the man, now looking like an elegant dandy, left the inn with a slightly disappointed expression on his face.

As if he was looking for the cat with his eyes, he immediately spotted it and walked towards him, his face lighting up with a smile.

He bent down and took the little feline in his arms.

One of the inn's servants said to him, "My lord, you shouldn't, it's a wild cat, who knows where it's been."

The black cat felt the man's arms tighten around him protectively as he replied in a cold tone, "This cat is my friend, you had better measure your words." 

Then, ignoring the dumbfounded look on the servant's face, Hob turned away and walked down the street, the black cat in his arms, purring with pleasure.

Hob looked down at him and said, "You don't speak ill of my friends. I know you're not a wild cat even though I don't know what you are. But I'm happy to have gained two friends in addition to my immortality."

He chuckled softly, "That was an impressive meeting tonight, you know. It started off badly because my stranger pointed out that my way of making money was more than a little objectionable to him and I must say that he gave me a lot to think about. The problem is, you see, when you live longer you have even more opportunity to make mistakes and also even more opportunity to be a complete idiot." He sighed and remained silent for a moment before resuming, "This mistake I'm going to try to fix as best I can and maybe find a way for people not to make it again. Anyway, after that I tried to divert the conversation by talking about Shakespeare and trying to find out more about my mysterious companion. I thought I was getting somewhere when we were interrupted by a lady. I'll skip the details, but after an epic fight and the discovery of some of my stranger's extraordinary abilities, we had to part ways. He was afraid for me."

Hob sighed again, "My little one, I'm a bit confused you see, on the one hand I'm touched that he was so protective of me, but on the other hand I would have liked the evening to have gone on. Anyway, here we are, we'll meet again in a hundred years. Just like you and me. You know, I'll miss you. I'd take you home with me, but I get the feeling that's not what you want, right?"

He scratched the cat's head and gently put him down, then standing up, he said gently, "See you in a hundred years my dear friend."

"Meow."

The cat watched the man leave once more and when he turned, he whispered, "Don't think I wanted to leave Hob Gadling, this is the first time it has been so hard for me to be reasonable. But you have become too precious to me to risk losing you."

June 7, 1889

Dream had hesitated for a long time before returning to the inn in his cat form, but now that his anger had subsided, he wanted to go and see the man, if only to see how he was doing.

The rain had just stopped falling and he took advantage of this moment to go towards the inn.

Suddenly, he stopped, shocked.

In the middle of the street, at the place where he had left him when he had left in a fury, stood Hob dripping with rain, a desperate expression on his face.

Then the cat didn't hesitate, he ran towards the man who, seeing him coming, took a step back and shouted, "No! Stay away from me! Stay back!"

The cat stopped dead in his tracks. Had he ruined everything?

He meowed plaintively.

The man shook his head and, kneeling down, he sighed, "Haa... forgive me. I seem to be doing everything wrong tonight. I'm soaked, it won't be pleasant for you, that's why I don't want to touch you. After all, cats don't like water."

The black cat, relieved, didn't hesitate to run towards the man and clung to the man's legs to show him that he didn't care if he got wet. The man exhaled with relief and, with a clear sadness in his voice, said softly, "Thank God you're here. I figured with this rain you wouldn't come."

He took him in his arms and walked to a sheltered corner saying, "At least we'll be protected if the rain starts again."

The man stroked his head for long minutes, as if lost in thought, and the cat began to purr, hoping to bring him some comfort.

Suddenly, Hob murmured, his voice slightly hoarse, "You know I have this strange feeling of having made a mistake but also of having been right to do it. Weird, isn't it? Our meeting had started so well. For the first time I felt on equal footing. So I dared to suggest that the stranger wanted more from our meeting than whether I wished to continue living or not. I mean... already the last time, he didn't even ask me. You know..." The man paused and swallowed before resuming, "You know, we shared an intense moment, this is going to sound ridiculous to you probably, but it was like a moment of sweet tenderness, a smile exchanged, a recognition. And then..." He paused again and the cat gave him a nudge to encourage him to continue.

Hob resumed, "And then I couldn't keep my mouth shut, and I tried to dig further. Obviously too far, because my stranger clammed up and worse, was so offended that he left without looking back. And the terrible thing is that I think I've lost him. I'm sure he won't be back in a hundred years. However, at the same time, he seemed to be so lonely and I felt like we were friends. Even though I don't know anything about him, he knows everything about me. Everything, and despite everything he kept meeting me, smiling at me so I believed it. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just a loophole. Was I just an easy scapegoat to him? Is that it? Damn it!"

In his anger, he squeezed the cat a little too hard, causing the feline to meow in protest. 

Hob's face softened and he said sheepishly, "Oh, sorry, little one. Forgive me."

He loosened his grip and gently stroked the cat to soothe him as he said again in a voice whose sadness had replaced the anger, "I wish I'd never met him."

The cat felt a great chill come over him.

No... you don't mean that. Please.

Dream hesitated, should he shift? Should he reveal the truth? 

Should he try to fix it? Could he?

When suddenly the man said, in a surprisingly quiet voice, "No, that's not true. I don't mean what I just said. I'm still Hob Gadling. He told me a hundred years ago, the great stories will always return to their original forms. So even though I've changed like he said, I still believe I have so much to live for and most importantly, I want to live to see him call me his friend. That's why I'll keep my promise, I'll be around in a hundred years!"

He picked up the cat under his front legs and lifted him up to put his nose against his muzzle.

The cat saw with relief the smile on the man's face and the return of the fighting spirit in his eyes as he said, "And you, my loyal friend, will be there too, and I'll tell you how he and I have finally become friends. And who knows? Maybe I can even introduce you to each other?"

Hob rubbed his nose against the cat's muzzle before putting him down on the floor.

A shiver went through him so he stroked the cat's chin and said, "It's time for me to go home, before I catch a cold. So little one, take good care of yourself and see you in a hundred years!"

The cat watched him and was surprised to see the man enter the inn again. 

Curious, he waited a few moments to see if he would come out and was surprised to see the man walk through the door, wearing Dream's cloak and hat which he had forgotten in his anger. 

The cat hid in the shadows and when the man passed by, he saw Hob put on his gloves that he had also forgotten in the inn.

Then the man brought his hands to his face and inhaled deeply, before chuckling softly, "Now I know your fragrance, mysterious stranger." Then he tightened the cloak around him and walked away, his step almost bouncing.

Dream, reverting to his human form, still stunned from the scene he had just witnessed, murmured, "I can't wait to be a hundred years Hob Gadling, by then I will have become the friend you deserve. I promise you that."

June 7, 1989

Hob had waited until the inn closed, but his stranger had not come. 

He felt the hope and confidence that had carried him through the long years wane a little.

The cool air hit him in the face as he walked out and he was relieved to see that the rain had stopped.

Hob went to lean on the railing that ran along the river that passed in front of the inn and waited.

He hoped that his feline friend would show up soon, because he only wanted to go home, wrap himself in his stranger's cloak and not think about tomorrow.

After a few minutes, he called softly, "Kitty, kitty!"

He did so several times but his furry friend didn't show up.

What a coincidence that his only two immortal friends were not here tonight.

The throat tightened, he hoped that nothing had happened to the cat.

Coincidence...

Wait...

It was quite odd that the cat had appeared on the same night he had met his stranger for the first time. 

Hob had been so happy with this bond with the little animal that he had never realized how unusual it was. He had never sought to know more.

What if?

Hob shook his head, he had probably had too much to drink and was imagining things.

Yes, but after all, extraordinary things did exist, he had lived for over six hundred years, could not die, and had been meeting the same person all that time who also did not seem to age.

He had seen this man blow sand and bewitch a lady.

So why be surprised if...

If this man and the cat were the same entity!

His excitement died down quickly because he figured that if they both didn't show up tonight, it meant that his stranger didn't want to see him at all.

He walked over to his car and as he kicked a pebble, he muttered, in a disgusted way, "Well done Hob, well done..."

He sat down behind the wheel and dropped his head on it.

After a few moments he raised his head and, turning the key, he murmured, "Well, I'll have to find a way to buy and or build a new inn and let my stranger know where it is, just in case..."

He ran a hand over his face and continued, as he started the car, "I won't give up or my name isn't Hob Gadling."

Nowadays

Once outside, Hobband Dream stood in silence for a few moments in front of the door, neither of them ready to say the words that would really end the meeting. 

"A hundred years, then?"

"A hundred years."

Hob was the first to break the silence, "After so many years of thinking I had lost you...er I mean your friendship, I am so happy now that I could kiss you. " 

Dream looked at him with a half smile on his lips and replied, "Why don't you?"

Hob chuckled and retorted, "Not until the first date."

Dream murmured, "Well you almost did it in a way?"

Hob looked at him quizzically, "What?"

Dream shook his head and said, "Forget it." before looking away.

He didn't see Hob's expression and they remained in silence for a few moments.

Then Hob said, a glint of mischief in his eye, "I guess I won't be seeing my furry friend tonight either."

Dream turned his head sharply toward him and exclaimed, "You knew?"

Hob shook his head, "No, it was just a hunch I had on the date you missed. Too much of a coincidence."

Dream replied, sheepishly, "I'm sor-"

Hob gave a little pat on Dream's nose, "Don't be, I was pretty happy to have this particular friend over the centuries." Then he pouted, "But that's not fair, you know so much about me and I know almost nothing."

It was Dream's turn to pat Hob's nose, "Well the good thing is that now you have eternity to learn everything from me and you don't have to wait a hundred years for it."

Hob chuckled and then challenged him with his eyes before replying softly, "How about twenty-four hours from now?"

He didn't wait for an answer and turned on his heels to head for his house.

"Hob?"

He stopped and turned to Dream, who had not moved. His friend gauged him with his eyes as he so often did and said softly, almost in a whisper, "See you tomorrow. "

Hob tried to hide his surprise, but couldn't, then nodded and replied, "See you tomorrow... Dream."

He walked a few meters and took a last look back, but Dream had already disappeared. Hob smiled and shrugged before continuing on his way.

"Meow?" 

He looked down and saw with delight his furry friend pressing against his legs.

He bent down and took him in his arms. His nose in the silky black fur, "Now I know what your name is."

Dream tucked his head into Hob's neck and began to purr.

Hob chuckled, "We do a lot of things before the first official date. If it's like that, I'm going to take you home with me, you know?"

Dream merely purred even louder against Hob's neck as the man laughed lightly, "You're really adorable in your cat form, but..."

He set him down on the ground and continued, "We have eternity ahead of us and I don't want to waste anything by cutting corners."

He scratched Dream's chin and, rising to his feet, he said softly, "See you tomorrow, my beautiful stranger."

He had not finished his sentence when he saw in wonder as Dream shifted into human form. 

Then the Lord of Dreams took his hand and, raising it to his lips, kissed it gently before whispering, "You, Hob Gadling, are truly amazing."

After these words, he gently released the man's hand and Hob, after a last lingering glance, turned around and went on his way.

He couldn't resist taking one last look at Dream who was watching him with a smile on his lips and an indescribable emotion in his eyes. 

A promise of much more to come.

As he continued on his way, Hob felt that gaze on him for a long moment.

He could not wait for the next day to see Dream again.

Hob Gadling, the embodiment of hope, had never been as hopeful as he was right now.

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story  🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Dreamling Masterlist here

#the sandman #the sandman netflix #dream of the endless #hob gadling #dreamling #dreamling fic #centennial husbands #centennial boyfriends #morpheus #morpheus x hob #hob x morpheus #dream x hob #hob x dream

[moviemuncherao3]

It's been a little bit of time now since Rishi Sunak's speech in which he spouts off his transphobia, and I was waiting to see the response more than anything because I don't put much stock in conservatives or what they say anyway, but I do worry about their ability to sway the population, it's why they won the last few elections after all.

I am utterly, utterly disheartened. A multi-layered kind of disappointed.

We have had people commenting that finally Sunak says something that makes sense etc and that he's got their vote which is utterly absurd. Let's face facts here, transgenderism isn't something to be refuted, it exists and trans people deserve the same love and respect you would grant anybody else. Except, Tories aren't good at that either. Replace transgender with women, black, Asian, gay, foreign, poor, you'll see the pattern.

He is using them as a scapegoat and a smokescreen so can continue to fuck up our country without consequence.

People are so quick to indulge in their hatred that they've completely forgotten what the Tories have done in the past 4 years alone, never mind what they've done since coming in to power.

Partygate, Hancock affair, rocketing inflation (don't forget Sunak promised to halve inflation in January 2023), the persecution of immigrants and transgender people, their lacksadaisical approach to COVID-19 lockdowns and treatment which saw us seeing 27k+ deaths a day at its peak and hundred of millions of quid wasted on contracts for their old rich chums. They support Suella Braverman, a notoriously self-hating bigot who all but cackled with glee when they painted over the mural at the children's asylum centre alongside Robert Jenrick.

If you choose to forget that so you can stick it to around 0.05% (2021, census results for England and Wales- gender identity not matching sex at birth poll result) of the population then I very, very sincerely hope that it comes back to bite you in the arse. You are despicable, you are despisable, and I have nothing more to say to transphobes. Fuck all the way off.

As for the other layer of disappointment, all this sympathy seeking online where they'll stick a young Tory in front of a camera and this 18-25 year old still sucking on their platinum dummy will complain about losing friends because they revealed they were a conservative.

"Why can't we be friends if our politics are different? So much for the tolerant left 🙄".

I don't know about you, but I base my politics around my moral beliefs, so I will vote for a party that best represents those when elections come so long as I can do so tactically. So far I have only voted Labour to my chagrin as they are not any better, especially under Starmer (Tory-lite), but I live in a Labour stronghold where the competition is the Tories, and there's no chance I'm wasting my vote to shorten the gap between them.

Back to my original point, I cannot be friends with you if you support a party that is perfectly fine with its citizens starving and freezing to death whilst blaming everything on LGBT+ and "wokeness". I'd rather be woke than fast a fucking sleep you delusional, priviledged pricks. You don't get to turn around and cry about it because you cannot be bothered to give a rat's arse about anyone beyond yourself and the poor little rich people who might actually have to pay their share in taxes.

My heart bleeds for you (extremely caustic sarcasm here if you cannot tell), you can't make and keep friends but my transgender friend can't leave the house without fearing for their safety and even their life.

I'm not the tolerant left, I will very happily tell you to get lost and get fucked.

Final note, I'm not interested in hearing you defend yourself so don't bother. Just leave my blog and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

#tories out #fuck the tories #transphobia #british government #british politics #partygate #inflation uk #conservative party #labour party #rishi sunak #suella braverman

[ultra-creepy-fucker-things]

So, the situation on Mewni from the septarian PoV is roughly

-The Queen explodes their home, killing millions

-The survivors are forced to live in the woods at an incredibly low standard of living(essentially pawning the task of getting these people fed/sheltered/settled onto the monsters, setting off hostility between the groups from the start, but also setting them up to work together, hostilities may be mostly from upper class monsters)

-Right when they'd gotten settled, one of the aforementioned queen's successors decided to expand by clear cutting the woods and destroying any villages she came across, not all septarians lived here, but quite a few did, and they ended up either entombed or displaced. Again.

-Her immediate successor would attempt to kill every monster, which by this point has included them for over a hundred years. Her reign would overlap with the septarian mating season(the first on Mewni) and subsequent laying of eggs, many of which were destroyed, and hatching of infants, many of which were killed. More displacement.

-When they fight back against this bullshit, their leaders are villainized and they get framed as "dangerous radicals holding onto the grudges of their forefathers"(they haven't been on Mewni long enough for their forefathers to have grudges there)

-Septarians end up eternally framed as the scapegoats, when other monsters revolt, their blamed for it, when mewmen peasants revolt, their blamed for it, when a blight strikes mewmen crops, their blamed for it.

And from the septarian point of view, this all happens over the course of probably around 30-40 years, tops.

#svtfoe

[deqdyke]

Cw: race, genocide denial, antiblackness

Just working through some thoughts after seeing the millionth annoying "Are x group white? Discuss" tweets.

Honestly I think like 90% of discourse around race and whiteness in leftist spaces could be solved by people saying "I don't know that history well enough". Like, people when they discuss race, have these competing internal desires to treat race as solely defined by current social standings, and also point to historical oppression as evidence. Neither works. If you go purely by current social standings, then we have absolutely nothing to build off of besides personal lived experiences. I've met Italians who have had old white people call them wops. Does that mean Italians aren't white? Are Polish people not white because of the existence of anti-polish sentiments? Are Russians not white because of how often they're portrayed as villains? Are Armenians white universally bc of the Kardashians?

But then if you base it entirely off history, then you have to accept that no Jewish person has ever attained whiteness. That race is a permanent and immutable aspect of someone's character - something that just... That's just racial ideology, same as it ever was.

The reality is whiteness is nebulous and difficult to pin down because it serves a social function. It needs to be fluid, but it needs to justify itself by appearing as if it's immutable. It also props up European nation-building myths. Like, if the question is "Are Italians white" the question should be "Well, who's an Italian?". Who's a Russian? I know Black Russians, and Black Ashkenazim. Is the understanding they're somehow less part of those groups due to their Blackness? Because I know they would take serious issue with that. Romans (as in, Italians from Rome) are a core part of the Western nation-building myth. You can't exclude them from whiteness without whiteness collapsing. But Sicilians were ruled by North African Muslims for hundreds of years - they're noticeably darker, and their culture is distinct. So Sicilians were denied whiteness, and they were used as a scapegoat for xenophobic sentiments during waves of Italian immigration. When they had sufficiently assimilated, then suddenly Sicilians were "Italians" and Italians are white, so Sicilians are white. So you've now managed to redefine whiteness across an era of immigration to build white unity and maintain a white supremacist majority.

White Fascism is self-destructive and suicidal because it maintains rigid immutable boundaries and requires constant expansion, which means eventually whiteness WILL be a minority. Liberalism upholds whiteness by redefining whiteness over time to maintain a White social majority. When whiteness needs to be mutable, there needs to be a population that can be used as the scapegoat. (Which is also why anti-Blackness is a core component of White supremacist racial ideology - it functions as a permanent fixed class to pivot other groups' whiteness around).

That's how it functions in America. But the rules of whiteness ARE mutable, and they change based on time and region. So the question of "Is x person white" really depends on time AND location, and how their identities exist in relation to nation-building myths. And it reaches a point where asking a question like "Are Armenians white?" or "Are Balkan Muslims white?" or "Are Jews white?" stops being useful, because the point shouldn't be to reify race, it should be to point out that people who fail to fit neatly within these national racial narratives are the best possible example to show how Whiteness contradicts itself. Is an Arab white? Is a Jew white? Is a North African white? It depends, when, where, and who are we talking about?

#this was prompted by the billionth annoying arab #posting about how al anfal was about purging whiteness from thr middle east #like my brother in Allah you ARE THE MAJORITY HERE #you are the whiteness here #we'll both be not white in Louisiana but you'll still have the money and backing of Arab nationalism #and if you fail and Kurds somehow form a nationstate we will inevitably become the whiteness of that state #and also like one of the most famous Kurds in history was a Black man freed from the Arab slave trade #you did it because your nationalism fails to account for the falsity of racial ideology #and you need to justify your continued existence and power #This is also why I've stopped really fully IDing as Kurdish bc like #im Shabak and a Kurdish Jew #both things ive seen the KRG fail to account for #so even if Kurdistan somehow becomes a nation state my family will still be SOL and stranded #also I only touched on it but it does need to be made clear that antiblackness is a core part of white ideology #even in supposedly post-racial ideologies like Anzaldua's Mestizx ideology #Blackness is positioned as something that needs to be solved to resolve the contradictions in post-racial nationalisms #the only people who have given me kindness about my complex familial history in the US are other nationless minorities and Black folks #and being allowed to sit in on an Anakarta reading group changed my life #if anyone is curious for more about the discussion of racial construction in the Middle East #read Nesting Orientalisms and The White Turkish Man's Burden #this is basically just me processing how coexist with my experiences + the knowledge I've gained from loved ones #also if anyone has issues with anything I've said here feel free to DM me but dont reblog this #I'm def open to discussing things and having my understanding corrected or challenged #but if you do it via reblogs ur getting blocked lmao

[cat-denied]

i think the best fire emblem game names are the jugdral ones, i.e. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. let’s break this down.

1. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

this one rules firstly because it’s really long and weird. in a series with game names that evoke fantasy tropes and magic (like “blazing blade” and “shadow dragon” and “sacred stones”, or even something like “path of radiance,” or “mystery of the emblem,” which could be a nancy drew novel title), this game name easily stands out the most in the list. like okay, fantasy, fantasy, mystery, magic, artefacts...Genealogy. you know what i associate genealogy with?? my mom looking at ancestry dot com for fun and trying to collate our family history a few years back. i do NOT associate it with magic boys with swords and tragedy and pseudo-medieval political machinations. too bad that’s what you get!

secondly? it’s fully accurate. i mean i know game names are usually relevant to their games (because otherwise whats the fuckin point) but like. “shadow dragon and the blade of light” specifically calls out 1 character (the shadow dragon) and 1 magic artifact (the blade of light). three houses is about 3 houses but you only pick one of them and the only relevance it has to the story is “you pick between 3 groups” and “there are 3 groups in the game that fight each other.” big deal. that’s also true of, like, arguments i have with my family over what game we want to play at thanksgiving.

genealogy of the holy war? you cannot escape the fact that this game is a genealogy of a holy war. 100% of the game is dedicated to being a genealogy of a holy war. (if you’re not familiar: the first half of the game follows a dude named Sigurd as he gets embroiled in political conspiracy as a scapegoat by an evil cult that’s manipulating the government. the second half follows his son (and the kids of all his friends from the first generation) some ~20 years later as they go and fight the evil cult that’s now fully taken over the government.) you wield weapons blessed by your gods and use them to defeat a cult that wields dark magic and a weapon blessed by their (evil) god. this war is really fuckin holy. and hey two generations (AND the pairings in the first generation alter the stats of kids in the second) where it matters who your parents are - thats a genealogy baby! we did it! that’s the name of the game! and it’s Everywhere.

2. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

what the fuck. what the fuck is this. “thracia”?? that isn’t a real word. all the other fire emblem titles are real words. why is 776 there?? is it seven hundred seventy six?? is it 7:76, the worst time of the day?? is it like 7.76?? it’s the fifth game in the series!! not the 776th one!! no other fire emblem games have numbers in the titles!! what the fuck is going on!?!?

10/10. no notes.

#fire emblem #fire emblem genealogy of the holy war #fire emblem thracia 776 #roadtriptalks #fire emblem jugdral #jugdral #i seriously do love this shit

[blue-kyber]

How quickly people can turn on one another when one of their own is attacked by another group, and that group wants a target to focus their emotions on. When the source of their pain is something they can't fight, they find an avatar to paint its face on, and take that anger out on them, then come up with lies to justify their brutality. They then believe their own lies in a heartbeat. That avatar, that scapegoat, is often an innocent person or group that has nothing to do with the originator of the attack group's pain.

All because they can't punch the face of what caused their pain in the first place into the ground and destroy it.

It wound up in my book as a topic we need to face. One we need to see the evil and futility in, and stop it in reality.

------------------------------------------------

Their beloved Princess Siffon Nirenthi Giniviette Kala, the Sunlight of Ilthall, and heir to the Kala dynasty, was dead. Murdered by a human. Fights between the two species - yondi and human - broke out among small groups who had no outlet upon which to direct their anger and grief. Lines of discord formed through glares, heated arguments, and aggression, even among those who were friends, and those who married into a yondi family.  A handful of humans used that added betrayal to group up to protect each other and fight back.  This fueled the accusation from the irrational yondi - and some aliens easily swayed by the loudest rage-filled idiots - that humans were less evolved pack animals. ‘Justice for the Princess!’ they shouted.  The cry to avenge Siffon’s death by taking it out on the humans steadily gained traction to the point where those of other species stood up with the yondi and humans who could still think clearly. They defended the innocents of both species, with numerous people attempting to quell the fire of hatred before it could spread.   The local security forces were called in to break up brawls all over town. By nightfall, small pockets of anti-human sentiment peppered both major cities of Cos Besta and Cos Arda. Most understood that the rioters were wrong, angry, and already looking for a reason to fight, and that they could do better.  Leaders of various spiritual groups, and the magistrates of different sectors urged those starting the fights to consider the impact their actions had on the Light of Ilthall - a fragment of which all born on the planet had within them. The yondi had stopped warring among each other long ago due to how it hurt the planet and thus each other.  They brought up the Hundred Year Isolation that occurred four thousand years ago, where the suffering became so bad that Ilthall cut off anyone fanning the flames of war as punishment. The loss of that connection among so many plunged their society into chaos. Those who retained their connection figured out how to use Ilthall's Light to protect themselves against the Isolated. It took a century for them to learn how integral that connection was to their well being.  They reminded the rioters that the actions of those in the past are the reason Ilthall blinded the yondi people to the beauty of her Light. One day, she would return that sight to her children. They reminded them that those they attacked now were their friends, families, and neighbors, and to not judge a group by the actions of a few. They were all hurting. They should mourn together and be united. Not divided by hatred.  But the angriest and loudest of the yondi didn’t care. They didn't believe in those stories, calling them fantasy tales to frighten children. Only those who had been offworld believed in that connection after having experienced it. Being away wasn't enough to hinder their lives, but it was enough for them to notice how much better they felt once they returned. The rest discounted it. All of them wanted a target. And all humans - native Ilthallans or not - were it. Fortunately, the majority of citizens were smart enough to not join in, but the damage was done.  The humans - who made up about thirty percent of a populace of mostly yondi on the small, sparsely populated world - now lived in a state of heightened anxiety.  The Alliance forces along with the local planetary law enforcement made it their priority to handle the instigators, and protect all innocents of all species caught up in their mire.

#writing #writeblr #original work #We use stories bring attention to real world issues. We always have. And we always will. #This scapegoat mindset found a place in my novel #when people have nowhere to focus their anger they will find something #completely unrelated and blame that #because it's something physical they can attack in the name of revenge. #The two species were coexisting perfectly fine before hand.

[masschase]

▼ ∇ for casey for the headcanon meme!

Headcanon meme

▼ - childhood headcanon

Ooh now I have a lot of these but I'm trying to think what I've not shared yet, haha. I don't know how much I've talked about how much Casey's mom used her as a scapegoat for why she needed extra pills all the time. I usually talk about the lies being stuff like her flushing them down the toilet or hiding them or taking them to school and getting them confiscated, but as she got older this evolved into stuff like taking them and selling them or trying to use them recreationally herself. Whether any of that would actually fly in the 00s without someone getting involved is debatable but the point is, this view of Casey being a bit of a problem child by her teens was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As a side note, the one thing I find really hard to convey is that Casey's mom as a character is not a judgement on addiction, or even on religion. Her homophobia, ableism etc. are the qualities that paint her as unpleasant, and I still like to think she's a realistic character, just a deeply flawed one.

∇ - old age/aging headcanon Hmm since old is very subjective I'll focus on ageing? Casey retires as leader of the Saints in her mid-60s, specifically because at that point she deems Victory (in her early 30s) experienced and mature enough to take over. Vic comes across as a lot more calm and thoughtful than her mother overall but she's also very ambitious, if anything she needs reigning in a little when it comes to leading. I feel like as Matt stays a few years longer to help support his daughter with that, but he has no intentions of taking over by this stage.

I've said this before but I'm of the view that the Saints have always kind of run on nepotism, and that although most of the Saints with kids didn't necessarily want them following the same path as them, it was kind of inevitable some would and really? The Saints have been more government than gang for decades by this point and are well respected overall so it's not horrifically unsafe.

Of course Casey will continue fighting in Matt's ("brain safe") simulations, as she has been doing for over 30 years, but she's already well adapted to stepping back from real life fights when needed by this point. In her own words, and one of my favourite quotes:

"I've fought hundreds of fights with you. I've died a whole handful of deaths with you. But after all I've been through... after all we've been through... there is nothing I cherish more than waking up every morning alive with you."

#i feel like johnny had to be forced to retire around the same time as case 🤣 #saints row #sr boss: casey clark #saints row boss #post-sriv #asks #thanks for the ask!

[whatsonmedia]

New Era of “Global Boiling” Amid Hottest Month in Human History!

New climate data show July is on track to become the hottest month in human history, with global temperatures rising to about 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels. On Thursday, the head of the World Meteorological Organization said, “Climate action is not a luxury but a must,” while U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres scolded world leaders over inaction on the climate. Since the climate is changing rapidly, it is terrifying. The era of global warming has ended; he era of global boiling has arrived. The air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable, and the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable.” What is the condition in other countries? The U.N.’s warning came as hundreds of wildfires fueled by record heat continued to burn out of control around the Mediterranean — in Algeria, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey. In China, Typhoon Doksuri made landfall today in the southeastern Fujian province, sparking fires, downing power lines and shuttering schools and businesses. On Thursday, the storm lashed southern Taiwan after battering the northern Philippines, where it killed at least 39 people. New Era of “Global Boiling” Amid Hottest Month in Human History! What is the reason of this warming? The world is not moving quickly enough to phase out fossil fuels. And even some of the progress that has been made is easily erased by massive wildfires. Like those burning in Canada right now. We also speak with Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian US, who wrote an exposé on “Project 2025,” a right-wing plan to dismantle environmental policies. Who are to be blamed? Humans are to blame. All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings. The only surprise is the speed of the change. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived. The air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable, and the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable. There is simply no more time for that. It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the very worst of climate change, but only with dramatic, immediate climate action. New Era of “Global Boiling” Amid Hottest Month in Human History! What has Biden done? Americans are living with some amount of climate fear, 170 million Americans under extreme heat advisories. And what the president offered was a pretty meek rhetorical gesture mixed with some very small policy gestures. He didn’t really say anything about the need to end the fossil fuel economy. Biden certainly did not declare a climate emergency, which is something that activists have been pushing him to do for years at this point and could unlock a number of powers to help him take on the crisis without congressional approval. Biden was, you know, really awareness raising and some kind of modest policies, but nothing that takes on the scale of the crisis that we’re seeing right now. The capitalist in building their saga forgets the nature in longer run. The policies that they form only benefit them and their clans. The poor people become the scapegoat of everything that the capitalist do. Thus it is inevitable that people need to stand up against all the odds to protect the nature.   Read the full article

[mr-ig]

On Bogshed

Yes, the name. Yes. Unavoidable, so let's get it over with. No band has ever conquered the world, or even small parts of it, with a name like 'Bogshed'. Aware of that obstacle themselves, there's an entertaining anecdote, re-told in the notes accompanying a splendid 'Bog-set' reissue of their back catalogue on CD, in which the foursome head to the pub to thrash out a better moniker. After many hours and many pints, they manage nothing better than 'Tarty Lad'. They couldn't help themselves, that's the thing.

And they were widely reviled for it, more's the pity. I do wonder, in passing, if they'd have been quite so thoroughly sneered at if they'd hailed from somewhere less unfashionable (then, if not now) than Hebden Bridge, but they were frequently held up as a scapegoat for all that was wrong with mid-eighties indie: a miserable lack of ambition dressed up as bold independence, a dearth of skill masquerading as an artistic choice. They weren't helped in that by John Peel, who despite being an ardent admirer of the band, hung the word "shambling" around their necks. History insists on telling us that they'd have been long forgotten were it not for an appearance on the NME's C86 cassette.

None of that seems terribly fair, really. Along with Peel, and regardless of the C86 legend, and in spite of there now only being one member still alive, some of us have continued to remember Bogshed with huge fondness as the years have passed. They were an oddity then, they're an oddity now.

What they weren't, however, was wilfully obscure: the mis-labelling of their sound seems particularly frustrating given that, actually, it was remarkably easy to grasp if you bothered to try. Repetitive to the point of making the Fall sound like a free-jazz experiment, the beauty of the perfect Bogshed song is in establishing a simple and entirely logical riff, often led by Mike Bryson's chunky bass and then filled in with Mark McQuaid's spindly guitar before Tris King's drums pin it all to the floor, and then not changing it very much at all for three minutes. If you don't like the first ten seconds, there's nothing for you here. If, on the other hand, those seconds get your foot a-tapping, you're in for a right old treat, my friend.

Pretty much every Bogshed song is a joyous interlocking of those functional drum-bass-guitar parts, a firm-but-fun rhythm section which merrily barrels along underneath Phil Hartley's vocals. Those vocals are bold, sometimes squawky; they're distinguished from the post-punk crowd by a vague air of vaudeville, a whiff of end-of-the-pier entertainment. Even at his shoutiest, you knew that Hartley could be a crooner if he felt so inclined. The lyrics were odd, full of curious characters and surreal references, nostalgic and a bit parochial and occasionally somewhat bawdy, always loaded with Hartley's personality. Even when you didn't know what on earth he was banging on about, there was much to enjoy.

Viewed from the right angle, ignoring the warts and the boils, their essential jauntiness, their geniality, was inescapable. There are very few songs in their catalogue which won't leave you feeling just a little merrier than when they began. Bogshed wrote pop songs for singing in the shower, played them as if people would shake a leg on the dancefloor. Not their fault - name aside - if nobody did either.

Of the box set contents, the disk of Peel sessions is of particular academic interest. As so often, the Maida Vale recordings appear to capture the band as they actually wanted to sound; the rest of their output captures how they could afford to sound. There must be hundreds of bands of whom that's true. The first session, from 1985, finds a band clearly indebted to the muscular sound of the Membranes, on whose label they released a clattering first EP, also included; each subsequent session refines it just a little, fencing off their own patch amid a scene crowded with potential rivals. The different elements become clearer, the intentions less febrile.

Elsewhere, the first album, "Step On It", continues to be a personal favourite, even if its production only seems to have got thinner over the years. Even the cheapest studio can't suck the life out of these wonderful songs entirely, though: the scurrying absurdity of "Fastest Legs", the preposterous glam strut of "Mechanical Nun", the seesaw saaandwiiich-baar lurch of "Adventure Of Dog". A particular soft spot has always been occupied by "Tommy Steele Record", with its gentle trundling bassline and nostalgic tales of chip papers and childhood bed times; no other band of that era would've come up with something so unapologetically warm, so lacking in devilment. It's just a charming song, and it appears to aspire no higher (or lower).

"Brutal", its 1987 follow-up, broadens the palette considerably, but too late to win the wider attention it deserved. There are moments of genuine darkness; there's a punkish anger at play too; Hartley has diversified his range of accents; the differences of opinion that'd make it their last record are pretty easy to spot. And yet there's still a lightness too: "Loaf" releases Hartley's inner crooner to curiously touching effect, "No To Lemon Mash" is knowingly and gleefully ridiculous even by their standards. When they stick with the tried and tested formula, they've rarely been better: "Excellent Girl" is a riotous hoedown of a song, while album opener "Raise The Girl", thrust forward by a relentless chin-jutting riff which just gets more and more insistent for four minutes, would surely have been an indie disco staple if it'd belonged to a cooler band. They never were that band, though. When push came to shove, I'm not sure that they really wanted to be. Not enough, anyway. All four of them came up with that name, none of the four came up with something more sensible to replace it. They were Bogshed, they lived in a cottage on a hillside, they made a jovial racket that you'd never mistake for anyone else. If you succumbed to their charms, you took them warts and boils and all. 

#bogshed #bog-set

[this-whole-situation]

It really fucking frustrates and angers me that so many people can look at a show like Bridgerton and be like “aside from the MARITAL RAPE SCENE I’d give the show an (insert score here)” or is like “you can still support it even if it has RAPE in it!” That screams to me that the people writing that shit are fucking white and or nonblack.I don’t care if the RAPE was in the book! I ain’t reading no rape book! Fuck that! I don’t give a shit if they made a black woman queen, I don’t fucking care about any sort of semblance of representation, the RAPE is still in it regardless. The RAPE sours it for me, the RAPE is the reason I’ll never watch it, and the reason I feel so many people aren’t just fucking ripping this show to shreds about it is because the victim is a black man.

 I swear to God, if little miss Daphne got raped by Simon, all y’all going ‘it's fine otherwise’ would’ve thrown your fucking pitchforks at the show runners. But because the victim is a. black and b. a man, y’all could care less. I also don’t care if “Daphne didn’t know how babies work so she didn’t get full consent either!” Simon licherally says to her point blank again and again, I. do not. want. to. be. a. father. I do NOT want kids. That, regardless of how y’all want to spin it was not a lie, and doesn’t excuse her giving him obvious trauma that according to people who watched it says he acts like he was sexually assaulted; he’s in shock and horror because he was! 

NOW, the reason why I make a point of people being nonblack saying ‘it’s good besides it’ is because of the racial tones of the RAPE. A white woman raping a black man. Black men have been lynched, murdered horrifically, and thrown into prison over white women for hundreds of YEARS. White women have consistently used black men as their sexual scapegoats and then go on to be the direct causes of their deaths later on. Emmett Till died because a white woman lied. The Scottsboro boys, the Exonerated Five, Pervis Payne, the list goes on.  

So the fact that Daphne RAPES her husband and faces NO consequences and expects the audience to side with HER and not SIMON just uh....really rubs me the wrong fucking way. Plus the fact that the show spins it so that SIMON has to beg Daphne for HER forgiveness???? Fuck. That.  Add to the fact that every single time I open Netflix it gives me ads about it doesn’t lessen my anger. 

TLDR: I will never watch Bridgerton and if you haven’t you shouldn’t because of episode 6′s martial rape scene that has extremely negative racial undertones because of who is sexually assaulted and who assaulted them being a black man and a white woman, respectively.

#bridgerton #tw rape #tw rape mention #racism #tw martial rape #anti bridgerton #antiblackness tw #antiblackness

[crossdressingdeath]

I'm actually surprised at people saying JGY manipulated JC. WHEN? Because JGS sure, he manipulated JC that one time (very easily) and used what JC was already doing other times. But I can't remember any time in the novel that JGY manipulates JC, unless we are talking about how he tells JC that JL was so worried/scared that he wasn't eating, and in that case I don't think that trying to manipulate him into being less of an asshole to their nephew is in any way a bad thing.

Yeah, the closest we ever see JGY get to manipulating JC is when he uses JC's obsession with being the best in an attempt to get him to stop abusing their mutual nephew, at least temporarily. That's when we get into the "Oh, everyone knows you're A-Ling's favourite uncle" (he's not), "He was so worried about what he said that he wasn't eating" (read: scared JC was going to beat him, plus if memory serves the novel explicitly states JGY was overselling it somewhat), that sort of thing. And yes, that's manipulation, but he's doing it so that JC won't hurt a child, and all evidence suggests that he (and JL, who it's important to keep in mind very clearly deliberately went to JGY to get protection from JC) had good reason to be worried about that. Seriously, JL is literally hiding behind JGY and tugging on his sleeve to get him to talk to JC and protect him! Going on a bit of a tangent, but I hate the way the fandom acts like JC was the superior uncle based on one interaction that probably took less than one hour as if that completely erases the rest of JL's life. Seriously, JC defends JL one time (I was originally going to say "saves", but uh... he doesn't, he tells JGY to take him instead and then if memory serves WWX and LWJ do the actual work) and JGY hurts JL one time and the fans act like that single moment of reversing the set dynamic among the three of them undoes years of abuse from JC and years of support from JGY. Like... seriously, fuck off with that!

Okay, tangent over. Yeah, JGY is never shown to be manipulating JC at any point. JGS yes, JGY no. And again, all their "manipulation" is either blatant lies that anyone with half a brain and access to the information JC had would've seen through in a second or stuff JC already knew. Either he's so insanely easy to manipulate that he shouldn't be let within a hundred miles of politics or he already wanted to do the shit he does. Neither option reflects well on him! It really is like... the stans try to insist that JC's a super smart political genius and that he was manipulated by the Jins so nothing that happened was his fault, and it's like... one or the other, guys. The Jins half-assed their "manipulation" of JC so hard. Seriously, they really just said things sometimes and JC, knowing they were lying through their teeth, just went with it. He was quite possibly the one person they weren't actively manipulating by the time of the siege, because they didn't have to manipulate him. It is time for the fandom at large to acknowledge that JC murdered a bunch of civilians because... JC wanted to murder a bunch of civilians. They were from the wrong family, that was his only reason. JGS was basically like "Hey, we should slaughter a bunch of Wen civilians" and JC was like "Excellent, please let me lead this murder fest". And JGS agreed, presumably so he'd have a readily available scapegoat if the other sects ever found out just who the Wen remnants were. Also, we need more fics where JC faces some actual consequences for helping the Jins manipulate all the other sects into taking part in the murder of civilians. And also for all the serial killing because how the fuck did he get away with this thing that literally everyone knew he was doing. ...Don't answer that, I know why. But some vigilante justice at least, come on.

#mdzs #grapehate #jin guangyao #asks #anon

[guardianofthedawn]

A Trial Of Sorts

(So it's been a while since I posted anything. Here's a short story that I wrote one day last year as a word vomit exercise. I really need to do more of these...)

It had never been the intention of the faculty for a student to die during their Orientation. Now they faced the task of having to explain themselves to the Board.

Seven people sat in front of the scapegoat, some with paper in front of them and some with simply nothing. Three had glasses that had been partially filled with water, two had steaming mugs, and two had one of each. Four of them wore glasses. One of them had their pen poised above their piece of paper, ready and (if the stillness of the pen was anything to go by) more than willing to record as much detail as possible about this meeting. The scapegoat frowned; surely it would’ve been easier to enchant the pen?

“You have been brought before the Board to answer to the charges of reckless endangerment, causing the loss of a life,” said the Board member sitting in the middle of the long table. They peered over their glasses at the scapegoat. “Do you have any opening remarks?”

“I…” The scapegoat swallowed past the tightness of their throat and shifted a little in their seat. “I only wish to say that I was but an onlooker to the crime that I and my fellow faculty are accused of.”

“So, you are not denying the charge?” Out of the corner of their eye, the scapegoat watched as the pen flew across the page it rested on. So that’s why it was not enchanted…

“Why deny that which has already happened?” they replied. “The Orientation had remained unchanged since the beginning of the school.”

“Yet it has taken two hundred years for the faculty to see that their methods are becoming outdated?” The scapegoat swallowed past the tightness in their throat again. Perhaps it was time to update the Orientation…no! The method had worked for two hundred years; why change something that proved itself to be flawless?

“The student’s death is truly lamentable; however, it is the only student death as a result of the Orientation in two hundred years,” they said, smugness lining their sentence.

“Upon your initiation into the faculty, were you shown into the Archives?” The pen halted, awaiting the answer. The scapegoat frowned. “Come now, it is a simple question. Were you shown into the Archives upon your initiation into the faculty?”

“I was not.”

“So then you are unaware that there seems to be a trend in the Orientation?”

“A trend?”

“Indeed, since the Orientation was devised, eighty students have passed away and close to one hundred students received wounds that they were unable to fully recover from. You cannot tell me that senior members of your faculty did not warn you of such trends?” The scapegoat’s eyes twitched. One hundred injured? That didn’t seem right. Those were numbers that they should’ve known. Why did the senior staff not say anything?

“The senior members of the faculty did not divulge that information to me.” The pen had picked up speed. If the scapegoat looked close enough, tiny wisps of smoke could be seen emanating from the nib where it joined to the paper. The Board member in the centre of the long table peered over their glasses again at the scapegoat; they looked as if they were waiting for another sentence or something incriminating to be said at any time.

The scapegoat stiffened in their chair. “I am failing to see how these questions will encourage me to change my stance on the use of the Orientation. Was that not the point of inviting me to this meeting?”

“You were the most recent initiate into the faculty, and therefore would have been an appropriate candidate for implementing change. But we of the Board can see that, much like your senior members, you stand with no remorse over the situation that has unfolded,” replied the Board member in the middle of the long table. The scapegoat shifted in their chair again, uneasy at the veiled accusation that was levelled against them. The Board were not present at the Orientation; they did not know the preparation and safeguards that had been put in place prior to the event. As far as the scapegoat was concerned, the Board could go back the void where they came from.

“Again, the events that have transpired are lamentable, but-” they began.

“We have heard enough. The faculty will be placed into lockdown and all students will be transferred to other living arrangements until they are able to be collected by their families and guardians.” The Board had clearly had enough; the scapegoat had seen the light glinting dangerously off all four pairs of glasses. Even the mugs and filled glasses seemed to be sharp in their sounds. “All members of the faculty are to immediately return to their private quarters and await further instruction. The Board will oversee the welfare of the students in the interim; do not attempt to put yourself in contempt.” The scapegoat closed their mouth. “It is time for change. May we never see another student die as a result of another poorly operated Orientation again.” The Board murmured a prayer in unison, then stood from their chairs.

The scapegoat stood also. “What about me?!”

“You are to follow the instructions that have been given. Return to your private quarters and await further instruction.” With the scraping of chairs, the meeting was signalled to be over. The scapegoat let out an indignant huff and stalked their way out of the room, making sure to show their displeasure of the situation by slamming the door behind them.

“A shame,” said the Board member who had sat in the middle of the long table. “I had thought that they showed some promise in their ability to be diplomatic.”

“It’s always the ones that seem to be made of stone that are revealed to be only gilded in gold,” replied the Board member that had held the pen.

#creative writing #the guardian's writing #storywriting #writing #original work

[staringatthesky11]

Some (not really spoilery or in depth) thoughts on Midnight Sun...

Edward. So pompous and dramatic and emo and angst-ridden and all just so gloriously Edward! He’s utterly ridiculous, and for a mind reader he is mind bogglingly imperceptive. I will never see him the way I think SM wants me to. 

LOVED the Alice and Jasper content. So much more clarity on her visions and what she sees and how they work and how they fail! Same for Jasper’s gift and how he is seen by others - whole new insight into him for me and I’m intrigued. Already wanting to be inspired with plots because I’d love to explore this in my writing at some point. Totally did not expect to love those two in this book the way I did.

Esme...ugh. We all know Edward’s her favourite, but seriously? She seemed to revere him to level that was disturbingly creepy in this book. He is not the second coming.

I did appreciate all the flashbacks and Cullen history bits that came into it - I’ve always been here for that. The family, the vampirism, the complex history...it’s always grabbed me more than the romance. 

Rosalie and Emmett....well.

Look, we all know I was never that likely to LIKE it. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words of fanfic basically saying that when it comes to Rosalie, Edward has it WRONG - I half didn’t even want to read this book because I just wasn’t sure that I wanted 700+ pages of Edward shitting all over my girl. 

And to be fair, there was some good bits. A couple of conversations. She lets go with some good insults. 

But I am definitely left with the same frustrations as always. Rosalie is demonised for the same things that others are praised for. Her focus is Emmett, and whether he is going to be hurt in the whole situation, and Edward is scathing about her selfishness. Never mind that he’s putting everyone else in danger because BELLA’S safety is the only thing HE cares about. Jasper would sacrifice anything to keep Alice safe and that’s honourable, but Rosalie feels that way for Emmett and she’s vilified for it. Rosalie sees so much value in humanity over vampirism that grief over losing it has coloured her whole unlife and she’s viewed as being bitter and a harpy, but Edward values humanity over vampirism so much that he would deny Bella her wish and let her die an old woman before killing himself and he’s the great romantic hero?

I have always been deeply uncomfortable with the anti-sex bent towards Rosalie and Emmett, and that was definitely there in this book. Rosalie and Emmett’s relationship can be obnoxious (and yes, that part I agree with - no one necessarily wants to be around other people’s public displays of affection!) but it is very clear that Edward sees it as somehow lesser, somewhat icky and dirty and distasteful that sex is a big part of the way they are together. (And yet BELLA being physically attracted to him, physically reacting to him, physically WANTING him...that’s different???) Nothing is said about Carlisle/Esme and Alice/Jasper and what they do or don’t get up together physically - we only get told that Rosalie and Emmett do it a lot and Edward finds that repugnant. 

Tangentially related (it’s about sex, but not the good kind) but Edward’s rage and fury about what almost happened to Bella in Port Angeles also plays into this. Bella’s innocence was nearly besmirched and he’s gone berserk, but does he ever actually think that all those things he saw happening to her, all that horror and brutality and violation....Rosalie LIVED it. IT HAPPENED TO HER. No one showed up in a shiny Volvo to rescue her. And she lives with that trauma every single day of her unlife, and Edward gives her no quarter for how that might affect her. 

The relationship of Rosalie with both Emmett and the rest of their family is something else that has always bothered me, and Midnight Sun did not make me feel any better about it. Midnight Sun’s Emmett is a good brother to Edward, but he is also basically presented as a simpleton. All we see of his relationship with Rosalie is him being the long suffering husband putting up with her hysterics and temper. There was even that very telling switch in something Emmett says to Rosalie, where in the leaked version he called her ‘baby’ and in this new version he calls her ‘gorgeous’. It’s a single word, changing it shouldn’t have any real impact, and yet it does. ‘Baby’ in that context is playful, it’s affectionate, it’s personal, it’s loving...and yet we now get ‘gorgeous’, which once again reduces Rosalie to nothing more than her appearance and their relationship back to the superficial.   

And sorry, but you’re not with someone for seventy years because you think they’re hot and good in bed...there HAS to be more to it than that, but Edward doesn’t seem to think so.

Rosalie also goes against the rest of the family a lot in this one, and we see her being the scapegoat. It is repeatedly shown that her feelings, her opinions, her personal agency, all rank FAR below Edward’s in the family hierarchy and everyone supports that disparity. (And yes okay, when her opinion is that murdering a child is a good way forward she probably *should* be the one to give in! But why is Bella watching the family baseball game more important than Rosalie playing in it? Why, when Edward throws the family all into danger and breaks all the rules is ROSALIE the unreasonable one when she points out the potential for harm?) 

It is made abundantly clear by Edward that no one in the family particularly likes Rosalie, that they all just put up with her temper (mostly for Emmett’s sake? Because of Carlisle’s guilt?)...it really seems like they tolerate her being part of the family at best. And for someone whose characterisation has them breathing admiration like air, would that ever be bearable? To spend the vast majority of your time with a family who would be perfectly content without you? I can’t see it. 

Okay, that was more depth than i meant to go into! But what can I say? I have FEELINGS here! 

Oh, and maybe I’m the only one but quite honestly I am digging that pomegranate cover. It is almost nauseating but just the visual of it so perfectly sums up Twilight vampirism for me...this ghastly thread of unavoidably grotesque horror hidden under the veneer of exquisite beauty and civility!

And also because in the medieval Twilight/ New Moon combo rewrite I did, the only time I’ve ever written Edward and Bella, a fucking POMEGRANATE was the central object of my plot! It was the pomegranate that led to the alternate birthday scene (where Jasper tries to kill her) and Edward leaves her and everything unravels in a different way and and and.... 

And when I wrote that I read all this pomegranate symbolism and was like oh yeah, it’s got to be one of those. I didn’t even write any of the symbolism in, it was one of those things that I thought no one except me would ever even think about and yet here I am, and EDWARD FUCKING CULLEN is rambling on about pomegranates and symbolism and how it relates to his life and I feel like a goddess, lmao. 

#midnight sun #Rosalie #Rosalie Hale #allow me to introduce you to my work #this is where fanfic comes in #yikes i can ramble when I get going