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ammocharis · 3 years

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Writing Tag Game

Thanks for the tag @cleverblackcat and @tejaswrites!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

12 as of now, though some of them are parts of the same story and I might weave them all in a single work one day, but I decided to split them due to time skips and changes in tone. I don’t know when I’ll be able to bridge all the gaps but I still wanted to share what I wrote, so I ended up creating a series with a couple of installments.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

140 699 words

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Watch the Skies - 125 kudos

Vatna of Two Falcon Hold as a companion in Dragon Age - 8 kudos

Mirrors and Braids ex aequo Rattle the bars if you like, but I chose to enter this cage - 7 kudos

Aval'var, it means - our journey ex aequo Avvar History Reconstruction - 5 kudos

4. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes, I do respond to almost every comment and I really appreciate receiving them. When someone comments on certain aspects of the story, I usually try to explain some of my choices, like why I decided for that character to react in such a way, why I deviated from the canonical storyline, or why I included those lore tidbits. It allows me to share my perspective, my reasons for writing the story in the first place.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Well, I have started writing an alternative storyline for my Avvar Inquisitor, Vatna, in which she becomes a part of the Jaws of Hakkon, which ought to be super angsty, but it has no ending yet.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Do limericks count? They’re fun but each is five verses long.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I had, in fact, the first fic that I wrote was a crossover between Dragon Age and Puella Magi - it’s just not published on AO3 and probably never will. It's pretty crazy, that’s for sure, given how wildly different those two pieces of media are, though strangely, I found a few of thematic parallels that compelled me to explore them for a while.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No, and I hope I’ll be spared from it. My writing is not perfect by any means, and I do welcome constructive criticism and corrections, but I probably wouldn’t deal well with hate comments. Mustering motivation to write fics is hard enough as it is.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

No, not really. I have written some scenes that focused on sexual interactions, but they weren’t quite smutty, if that makes sense, as the POV character is a sex-indifferent asexual.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No. I write in English, even though it isn’t my native tongue, so I could probably translate my own fics if I wanted, but I didn’t feel like it so far. If someone approached me with an offer to translate my fic into a language I don’t speak, I’m not sure what my reaction would be, as I’d like to know how they present my characters in the translated version. Translation is a tricky craft, and there are many ways to express a single concept. Sometimes, a translated work has a completely different tone from the original.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yeah, I wrote Fool's Gold with Toshi Nama as a part of Discord server collaboration, in which her Warden, Farin Brosca, and my Inquisitor, Vatna Einarsdotten, meet up to investigate a red lyrium smuggling operation in the Frostback Mountains. It was a fun challenge!

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I’m not sure, I don’t focus on shipping that much.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I probably won’t get back to finish my unpublished crossover xD But I enjoyed thinking about the possibilities, and I did have the general storyline thought out, but I don’t think I could finish it. For one, it would take a lot of time and motivation that I don’t have, and if I ought to pick a project I would like to see till the end, it’s the story of my Avvar girl.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told my worldbuilding is well-thought out. I do have the benefit of writing fanfiction, so there’s no need to built a world from ground up, but I do expand upon what’s presented in the original work, and I greatly enjoy it. I wonder a lot about the unexplored details, like when I’m writing about the Avvar, I imagine what kind of holidays they could celebrate, what cultural taboos they might observe, what is their main source of food, how their families could be structured, little things like that, which, hopefully, create a compelling picture together.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

My pacing is probably not that great, when I think about what I’d like to write, I don’t really ensure that each story beat is nicely spaced out, that there are no sudden accelerations or decelarations of plot. I do have a general plotline in my head, for the most part, but when it comes to writing, I focus on individual chapters.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I think it has its time and place, but I believe it should be done sparingly. I wouldn’t be excited to read a super long dialogue in a language different from the one that the work is written in, and I won’t include such things in my fic. It disrupts the flow and doesn’t benefit the story very much, in my opinion. If it’s necessary for the plot or characterization to show that someone speaks in another language, I think it’s enough to use a foreign word or a phrase from time to time, hint at its meaning through context, and describe how the communication barrier affects the characters.

My main character, Vatna, does alternate between her native tongue (Avvar, which is I represent as Icelandic/Old Norse) and a second language (Common Tongue, which for all my intents and purposes is equivalent to English) so I do include some lines in a different language, but I keep them short. Usually, it’s just a single word whose meaning can be easily inferred from the surrounding text. More often than not, I signify the language barrier through other means. Sometimes, Vatna slips into her native tongue for a longer moment, and she may even have conversations with her fellow Avvar, but the actual dialogue remains in English (i.e. Common) - instead, I use the narration to show that the language barrier is ever present, like describing the reaction of accompanying characters.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Dragon Age

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

My favourite is Mirrors and Braids, a part of the Saga of the Avvar-Daughter series, which focuses on Vatna’s reaction to the loss of her arm. Though it’s not really a “fun” story by any means, I am quite fond of it. It was somewhat cathartic to write.

Tag list under the cut

@samuraisaucefrites @dreadfutures @crackinglamb

#tag game #writing tag game

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crazy-loca-blog · 3 years

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Personal thoughts on… 2020 releases (Part II)

Note: As the title says, these are just personal opinions on Choices books and chapters. Of course, you may agree or disagree with them, I only use this platform to express my thoughts on what I read every week.

Welcome to the second post! Sorry for the delay, but it took me a little while to finish it for two main reasons: I wanted to have one extra chapter of Foreign Affairs before giving an opinion on the book and I realized I had a lot of catching up to do with My Two First Loves... but here I am!

Remember that this is a three-part post (you may find the first one here) and that I will include current releases and books that were released during 2019 but were finished in 2020. The list is organized in alphabetical order, and it doesn’t include the VIP Books (as I’ll talk about them in a fourth post). The only books I will be skipping will be Desire & Decorum: First Winter and Bloodbound: Dark Solstice, as they’re seasonal books that I fully covered in the 2019 review.

Foreign Affairs (December 30, 2020 - present): It’s hard to talk about a book after only three chapters, but I have to admit I really, really like what I’ve seen so far. My favorite thing is how the writers approach the characters. All these people have some serious reputation to keep and they all are trying to balance it with the fact that they’re young adults who want to have fun and are discovering themselves as individuals. Growing up in the spotlight is hard, and I guess it must be harder when it’s not your choice, as you’re not allowed to make mistakes and your life path seems to be already decided without even asking what do you want for you. I don’t know if you noticed it, but none of the students seems to be attending Vancross because they want, they all attend the institute because they must. In the end, it looks like we’ll have a great story about people with very different backgrounds who have much more in common than they believe. High School Story: Class Act, Book 3 (October 30, 2019 - March 11, 2020): I know that the original High School Story series was way too popular, and that made things hard for HSSCA since the very beginning. However, and even though this is probably the weakest book in the series, I feel like there were certain things we didn’t appreciate enough when it was originally released. The third book not only addressed Skye’s issues with her abusive family, but it also took our twins back to their roots. It was nice to discover that they are actually British and that they still have an aunt who is alive (and who was glad to meet them). However, I think the writers wasted a great opportunity to give an amazing closure to this series, especially because we knew this was the very last adventure of our Berry High students. The characters did have to face some serious stuff in all three books (more than the OG cast) and I felt that PB could have used that to make our kids grow up faster than expected or to translate the experiences in their personal lives to their final performance at the festival in London. Instead, they gave us a fight with another drama club and a mix of characters of both HSS and HSSCA that personally didn’t convince me that much.

Hot Couture (VIP release: December 19, 2019 / General release: December 16, 2020): When it comes to the first three fully released VIP books, there is no doubt for me that Hot Couture is the weakest one. However, this doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, not at all! It is well-written, it has interesting LI’s and it’s definitely what I like to call a “romance with substance” book: that is, there is a love story, but the main focus of the plot is not on the romance. We have a MC who works hard for what she wants, who is aware of what she can do and who doesn’t need a LI to blossom. The romance is only one added element to the main story. I still think they should have gone deeper into the issues that models must face (eating disorders, rivalries, the stress of feeling that you’re “disposable” for the industry, salary breaches, etc.) but overall, I ended up being super invested in the book, to the point it was the first full release in a long time that only took me a few days to complete. It’s not what I would consider a masterpiece, but it is a great, fun and enjoyable standalone book. My Two First Loves (July 27, 2020 - present): I think there is a lot to be said about this book… and I don’t even know where to begin with. MTFL is not only the very first daily release in the app (and I think it will be the only one), it also introduced us to a different concept when it comes to romance books: exploring. Yeah, because when it seems like most players tend to choose one LI and stick to them, My Two First Loves leaves us no choice but to romance or to have very close relationships with all three LIs in the book as part of its plot, something that made a lot of players uncomfortable and/or upset. My main problem with the book is its extension: there are so many little chapters that there are two or three days when it seems like nothing happens. This became a problem to the point that it’s been hard to appreciate how the story has actually evolved or how much the characters have grown (I’m seriously loving Mason and Ava’s growth, and I think Noah got stuck at some point in the middle of the story and he hasn’t been as interesting as he was in the first half of the book). As a reader, I think my biggest mistake was trying to read the story every day after the chapter release. This actually led to a “lack of fluency” to me. Now I wait a few days and read four or five chapters at once, and trust me, the story is way more enjoyable this way. Open Heart, Second Year (February 29, 2020 – November 7, 2020): Sorry guys… I try not to, but I can’t help being completely biased when it comes to Open Heart, as this is my absolute favorite series in the app. And even though a lot of people think OH2 is a mess, I have to disagree with you. From my point of view, one of the things that makes Open Heart a different series is that it is meant to be a slow story, where every chapter is a little piece of something bigger that ends up being solved at the very end of the book (it’s like having a big puzzle where we have very different pieces that don’t seem to have much sense individually, but in the end they all fit in and create some beautiful image), so it plays a lot with our patience as players because nothing is instant. This is also another book that I consider as a “romance with substance”, as the main focus of the story is on the medical cases, not on the romance. Would I change things about this book? Of course I would! More time with our friends, similar time with our LIs, Zaid and Ines finally assuming that they’re a couple… but overall, the book delivered, especially because it takes talent to give closure to the insane amount of subplots this book had. Kudos to the writers for it! Queen B (June 26, 2020 - October 2, 2020): I have mixed emotions about one of the most popular releases of 2020. It doesn’t matter if you like Queen B or not, I think there are a few things no one can’t deny: the plot is consistent, the book is easy to read, there is always something going on, and it keeps you wanting more during most chapters. All of these things make the book a very, very attractive and likeable release. However, at some point, the level of bullying in the story was too much for me to handle. I couldn’t care less about the popularity contest after a few chapters, basically because it made my MC change and become a person I could barely recognize, and because what Poppy did to Zoey (who is the real Queen B in my opinion!) and Ian/Ina (threatening to destroy their career “because she can”) is plain EVIL! Also, the fact that Ian/Ina became so possessive of the MC at the end of the book was kind of scary, to the point that I’m seriously considering replaying Book 1 before Book 2 is released just to remain single.

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hatari-translations · 4 years

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Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga - Icelandic review

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is a Netflix-produced affectionate parody film about Eurovision starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams. This wouldn't qualify it for coverage on this blog by itself - but as it happens, the main characters are Icelandic, Icelandic is spoken in it, and a significant portion of the film takes place in Iceland. So I think it's close enough to being of interest to readers of this blog!

As a film, my feelings on it were mixed - the Eurovision parodies were incredibly spot-on, I liked Dan Stevens' character and the amount of Eurovision cameos, and it definitely had some pretty funny moments - but it was far longer than it needed to be and wildly inconsistent in tone, flitting between utter ridiculousness and emotional melodrama played completely straight. However, this won't be a review of the film - instead, I'll be going over the portrayal of Iceland and its culture and language and sprinkling in some related trivia.

The Icelandic Opening

The film opens with a montage and a song that the subtitles identify as an "Icelandic folk song". The song is Sá ég spóa, which is indeed a genuine Icelandic folk song. The lyrics of the song go:

Sá ég spóa suður í flóa, syngur lóa úti í móa, bí bí bí bí, vorið er komið víst á ný

which translates to:

I saw a whimbrel in the bay to the south, a plover sings in the dry grassland, cheep cheep cheep cheep, spring is surely here again

The song references the common folk belief that the migratory European golden plover brings spring with it; we still have newspaper headlines when the first plover is spotted (or heard) every spring. The song is largely notable for being suitable for canon singing, which unfortunately can't be heard well in the movie, since the most audible part is the beginning, and the song kind of fades out before the other voices come in. I think this YouTube video is the same recording the movie uses, only you can hear all of it properly!

From there, the first chunk of the movie takes place in Iceland, in both the capital Reykjavík and Húsavík, a town in northern Iceland (the Húsavík scenes were genuinely filmed there). These scenes feature Icelandic extras and some actual spoken Icelandic, with English subtitles. Their lines are grammatically accurate and natural, clearly translated by a native speaker; however, when you're actually Icelandic, it's incredibly obvious that Pierce Brosnan (playing the main character's father) does not actually know the language. He tries, but it's only kind of intelligible, and when he's surrounded by actually Icelandic extras and the film wholly acts like he's just another one of them, it's pretty glaring.

The Names

The first really major issue to tackle about this movie is the character names.

The main characters are named Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdóttir. First of all, I understand that "Erickssong" is meant to be a pun because he's a musician - but it simply makes no sense to make a pun like this, any more than it would make any sense as a joke in English to consistently refer to somebody as someone's song instead of their son. You can absolutely make up punny Icelandic patronyms - but the part you make the pun out of has to be the name part, not the son/dóttir part, or it just doesn't register as a name at all.

But let's put that aside. Lars is an accepted first name in Iceland - but Sigrit is not, nor is Erick, and Lars is not a common name - it's pretty distinctly foreign-sounding. In general, nearly all of the Icelandic characters' names are not actual Icelandic names, and don't sound like they might be Icelandic names, either.

You might say, well, this is a comedy film, it's not supposed to be accurate. And there is some truth to that, sure. But the thing is that most of the names used in the movie aren't really humourous or systematically inaccurate in a deliberate-seeming way. Instead, they largely just sound like they're playing to your average American's idea of what generic Scandinavian names sound like, but with patronymic suffixes slapped on, and I expect the primary American audience would assume these are realistic Icelandic names.

This is unfortunate, because Icelandic names broadly really don't sound like generic Scandinavian names! We have a different alphabet from our Nordic neighbors: in particular, we don't have the letter c. And the overall sound of Icelandic is pretty different, such that the names in this movie sound distinctly foreign to us. The actual Icelandic equivalent to Sigrit Ericksdóttir would be something like Sigríður Eiríksdóttir, and in fact some of the Icelandic extras just went ahead and pronounced her last name "Eiríksdóttir". Naming her Sigrit Ericksdóttir instead isn't a joke; it's just inaccurate, and I don't think the film being a comedy really excuses stubbornly insisting on not doing the research here, especially when you involve a bunch of Icelanders who would definitely have pointed this out.

Húsavík and On-Screen Text

While Húsavík is a real place, the way it's pronounced and spelled is all over the place. I think the subtitles sometimes included the accents and sometimes not; on-screen text usually didn't include accents. It's important to note that u and ú are two different letters in Icelandic, pronounced differently; not using the accent is wrong, so although not including accents is acceptable for regular people typing in a medium where it'd be difficult or tedious to use them, on-screen text does not really have any excuse, especially in a movie that significantly takes place in Iceland rather than simply being a throwaway scene; they have plenty of time to spell the words correctly.

It's also a little frustrating that Húsavík is actually pretty easy to pronounce for English-speakers! It's just HOO-sah-veek - no sounds that don't exist in English at all. Despite this, the last syllable gets pronounced 'vick' sometimes, and in the song during the climax, Rachel McAdams' Swedish singing double Molly Sandén makes it sound Swedish and like it actually has a u instead of an ú.

Elves and Folklore

Elves are a plot point in the movie, with Sigrit being a true believer in elves but Lars not. She leaves food at a little 'dollhouse' built into a hill while asking the elves for favors. Needless to say, this is a comedic element, and the way it's used is pretty fun - nonetheless, however, I feel obliged to say that no, Icelanders do not do this. Even the true believers (who are few and far between) don't leave them offerings or pray to them for favors - and in Icelandic folklore, elves are not tiny! They're thought to live in actual rocks - no little houses necessary - and they're pretty intimidating and vengeful as described in folklore; if you were to give them offerings or ask them anything, it'd be more along the lines of pleading with them to please tolerate something you're about to do without taking bloody vengeance on you, not asking them to do something nice for you.

(The movie's use of elves was actually ultimately more accurate than it seemed; I won't spoil the details, but it's pretty good.)

Another plot point involves Sigrit's inability to sing a "speorg note", which is stated to be from Icelandic folklore. There is no such folklore, "speorg" would actually be pronounced spee-org with a hard g if it were an Icelandic word, and the way they're pronouncing it is once again something that sounds more vaguely Swedish than like Icelandic of any kind. Obviously this is a pure joke concept not to be taken very seriously.

The Problem With Winning

A major plot point in the movie is a businessman, "Victor Karlosson", who points out early in the film that if Iceland won Eurovision, it'd practically bankrupt the country. This is a genuine concern that Icelanders talk about any time we seem to have a chance of doing well. However, that scene also features someone suggesting hosting the contest in Keflavík, a town about 45 minutes outside of Reykjavík, which causes him to respond that a town of 15,000 wouldn't be able to do that. The joke here is obviously meant to be that hosting it in such a small town (actually pretty big on an Icelandic scale) is especially obviously absurd. However, I'm pretty sure I remember it being actually seriously suggested that if we won Eurovision we might have to host it in one of the aircraft hangars at the US army base that used to be in (near) Keflavík! We don't actually have any Eurovision-sized stadiums in the country, so that was legitimately one of the more realistic possibilities.

Perceptions of the Contest in Iceland

In the movie, while Lars is absolutely obsessed with Eurovision, this is implied to be pretty weird. There's a recurring joke of nobody wanting to hear Eurovision songs, and a lengthy scene in a Húsavík bar where the TV is showing a football game and one of the inhabitants makes an impassioned speech about how they should switch to Eurovision to see Iceland's entry because the contestants are from Húsavík! This is pretty hilarious, because man, Icelanders who don't like Eurovision have a hard time getting away from it when it's on! Potentially you might have a bar making a point of showing something else on Eurovision night and advertising itself specifically to Eurovision-haters, but the idea of no one in a full bar of random Icelanders wanting to watch Eurovision, especially when Iceland is competing, is pretty absurd. We're obsessed with this contest!

The bit where the teenage boy who plays drums in their band doesn't accompany them abroad because "my friends think the song contest is for losers" is valid, though; I can absolutely believe in a friend group of musically-inclined teenagers who think it's trash and they're too cool for it.

A Song in Icelandic Would Never Win

Sigrit says before the Icelandic semifinal that she wishes she could sing in Icelandic, and Lars counters by saying a song in Icelandic would never win. It's true that after Eurovision dropped the rule about all contestants singing in one of their country's official languages, most of Iceland's Eurovision entries have been in English, largely because of the perception that nobody will understand Icelandic lyrics ("Hatrið mun sigra" was only the second entry to be in Icelandic since the change).

However, a lot of songs are still sung in Icelandic in the Icelandic contest - in fact, the last couple years have required it! So technically this should not have stopped the characters from singing in Icelandic there and just translating it to English for the main event. This is a minor nitpick, though, and can be considered merely one of the many pieces of artistic license taken with the contest rules in the movie.

"Semen and Garfunkel"

There is a scene where Lars tells Sigrit that romance ruins bands, and he lists off a few supposed examples, including "Semen and Garfunkel". This probably seems like a really weird, random joke to everyone else, but it's actually kind of enjoyable when you do know Icelandic, because the Icelandic equivalent of the name Simon, Símon, is actually pronounced very similarly to "semen". It's a joke about them being Icelandic and therefore pronouncing his name that way, only probably nobody outside of Iceland would actually get it. I enjoy this.

Some Transcripts/Translations

There are a couple of pieces of unsubtitled Icelandic in the film. At the end of Ólafur Darri Ólafsson presenting the points from the Icelandic jury in the semifinal (yes, they have public jury points in the semifinal; another one of those bits of artistic license), after he says thanks, he adds in Icelandic: "Takk fyrir. Fyrirgefið þið aftur." This just means "Thanks. Sorry again [about the technical mishaps during Iceland's entry]."

During the climax of the film, Sigrit sings a song about her hometown, which has a couple of lines of Icelandic in the chorus. Our initial reaction to the [sings in Icelandic] subtitle was actually "Thaaaaat's not Icelandic," but when the chorus came on again I just about managed to make out that yes, it was in fact supposed to be Icelandic, which Molly Sandén was just pronouncing in a pretty Swedish way. The main line goes "Eina sem ég þrái er að vera með þér í Húsavík," or "only thing I long for is to be with you in Húsavík." There is another line after that, but I can't make out what she's trying to sing there at all, even after going back and rewinding it a few times.

License Plate Trivia

This is only barely relevant, but the license plate on Fire Saga's Eurovision tour bus is R 373. This is one of the old-fashioned black license plates that were in use before 1987; the R stands for Reykjavík, as license plate numbers were allocated by county. In 1987, we switched to white license plates independent of county with two letters followed by three numbers; later, when they ran out of numbers, it was tweaked so that the first number slot could also be a letter. However, some cars that had the old license plates are still on the roads today. I can't imagine why they'd put an old license plate on the bus unless it's genuinely just an old Icelandic bus with pre-1987 license plates.

The Reaction

The most realistic portrayal of Iceland in this movie is when Lars and Sigrit return from Eurovision to a crowd of extremely enthusiastic people waving Icelandic flags. Icelanders who accomplish anything cool abroad tend to be treated as heroes on their return; when our handball team won a silver at the Olympics, there was a whole sea of people and a ceremony to welcome them back, and they were all awarded with the Order of the Falcon. This is absolutely what Icelanders would do, accurate Iceland, A+.

#eurovision the story of fire saga #will ferrell #iceland #icelandic #icelandic names

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that-banana-headed-bovine · 4 years

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Knight Rider 2000

WARNING

This post contains spoilers for Knight Rider 2000, the 1991 film which attempts to expand on the canonical universe of Knight Rider (1982-1986). Key word, attempts. I know that this film came out almost 30 years ago at this point, but I also know that this fandom grows a little bit every day, and there will ALWAYS be people who haven’t seen every episode (myself included), let alone every movie! I happened to catch it on Charge! for Hoff's birthday (yes I'm hella late posting this LOL) with my good friend @trust-doesnt-oxidize, and boy let me tell you, it was… Something.

From here on out, I’m not holding back from sharing my impression of the film based on specific details from it, so if you want a spoiler-free viewing, go watch it and come back!! Or… don’t, it’s kind of awful. I can only think of one thing in canon that it may spoil, and even that appears in early Season 2 and is fairly minor, so if you are curious about it, I HIGHLY recommend watching it BEFORE reading this. The scenes with the most impact are touching because they come as a surprise, so even if you know the general plot of the film, I would recommend watching it first.

Also this is really rambley because I have a lot of emotions about this series and, by extension, this movie. I really don’t blame you if you click away here, but if you DO read it all the way through, I would love to hear anything you would like to add, agree or disagree!

OKAY! Knight Rider 2000 is a movie that exists! And I hate it!

The film sets up an interesting argument between two groups of people whose names I don’t remember because they were boring (except for Devon, I know his name at this point). In this interpretation of the “future,” gun control has been implemented to,,, some extent, I can’t entirely tell if there have been some policies implemented across the country or if it is all localized in this one city that even the Wikipedia page for this movie doesn’t bother to mention. And no, this city is NOT in California for once! Usually I would be happy to see a change of setting, but considering that everything in this film felt so foreign to the Knight Rider that we know, it would have been nice to at least have a familiar setting. Anyway, gun control stuff. The debate between whether these gun control policies are ethical or not is very interesting. Innocent people are dying because the wrong people have guns and the police are rendered useless when they themselves don’t have access to weapons. This argument happens to support my perspective on the issue, so I appreciated how it took a look at that side WITHOUT it sounding like we are crazy murderer people, but I digress. It makes sense that the ban happened in the first place, because much like how the main conflict in Pixar’s latest film Incredibles 2 revolves around society’s over-reliance on superheroes, I could see Knight Rider’s society becoming dependent on technology to save them. It can be easy to seem like the most advanced tech in that society is present only in KITT and KIFT, and to SOME extent that is true. However, Shawn does say that it is relatively common in this society for people to have memory chips in their brain. That counts for something. And the police DO have a defense mechanism according to the Wikipedia page for this movie, it’s just nonlethal.

So as you can see, I am very interested in the conflict this world sets up. I sure hope they expand on these conflicting ideologies throughout the film, giving us a clearer idea of why the bans were set in place AND giving us insight into what exactly has caused some revolt against it. That subject is seemingly timeless, and with how decently the introduction tackled it, I have some confidence that this film could pull it off in a tasteful way. Wouldn’t that be amazing? It’s some of the most serious subject matter Knight Rider has ever tackled. It’s so interesting!

Yeah they pretty much abandon that plot in place of a very, very bad copy of the original show’s “Hearts of Stone” (season 1, episode 14). Illegal guns exist and are bad, but we don’t really know why. I may know a little better if I had been listening closer, but I was trying to not get so bored that I missed Kitt’s parts!

At some point during this sequence, we are introduced to Shawn, a happy police officer who is happy to have a family on a happy birthday. And then she gets shot! Due to head force trauma rendering her unconscious, she’s sent to the hospital. She goes in for a risky operation that miraculously saves her life against all odds.

Then, Michael wakes up with Garthe Knight’s face and hears a great story about how one man CAN make a difference!… I mean what?

Jokes aside, it’s kind of amazing how much this very Michael-esque sequence comes across very differently. It’s almost the perfect example of why I don’t like this movie. The surgery is weirdly realistic for a Knight Rider entity. There’s blood and screens and surgeons and a sterile white room for operations. Michael woke up in a Medieval castle with one doctor and two random people he’d never met at his side. Shawn’s situation clearly makes more sense, but is it half as fun and whimsical? No, no it’s not. This whole film comes across as depressing to me, and it’s only worsened by what’s to come. Apparently, she had KITT’s CPU/Microprocessor/something sciencey implanted into her brain. That’s especially strange since all that I saw was a yellow liquid being injected directly into her skull! That’s a lovely image, and definitely gave me the idea that there was a full computer chip going in there??? (It may have actually been explained more clearly, and I just looked away because eek weirdly bloody operation scene) This caused her personality to do a full 180. So, Shawn is going to be fun, snarky, and full of personality like KITT is because they share memories now! Right? Right???

I think they tried to do that, but it came across flat. So flat. She speaks in a purposefully monotone, robotic voice and delivers downright mean comments that leave Michael and KITT scratching their heads. She seems to lack basic empathy until her own memories start flooding back, and at that point, the emotions she show seem so foreign to the character we see that it’s not remotely believable. You want me to believe that this robotic woman with -10 personality points started nearly crying after one string of memories, albeit a very traumatic one, entered her mind? This would have been believable if she was entirely changed afterwards, coming across as far more human, but that was only the case sometimes. It also would have been believable if the film had the same energy that the original Knight Rider show does, where suspending one’s disbelief is necessary to make it past the opening credits. However, this movie tries to be so grounded that the kind of dramatic beats that would work in the original seem forced here.

Shawn is not the only character who I take issue with, though. Let’s start with the most potentially problematic change from the usual canon in the entire film: KITT’s personality. I have very mixed feelings on how he is portrayed. If you’ve seen as much as a spattering of quotes from this movie, you probably could sense that KITT was… off. When KITT first comes on screen, he slams Michael with a wave of insults, and none of them come off as their normal joking around. However, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that because he has the proper motivation to be very, very upset. He is sitting on a desk as a heap of loosely connected parts that have just enough power to make the signature red scanner whir and make an oddly terrifying red light eyeball thing (Hal???) move. The first thing he hears is Devon nonchalantly saying something along the lines of, “I’m afraid he was recycled” to explain why KITT has been deactivated for OVER A DECADE and is not currently in anything that moves (my Charge! stream thing lagged at this point but @trust-doesnt-oxidize has since told me that Devon DID appear upset about KITT's being sold, but KITT likely wouldn't have heard that and what Devon said seemed to be moreso directed at HOW the chip was sold and not the fact that it was sold in the first place). KITT is justifiably mad, and if they had kept KITT’s actions in character while his emotions said otherwise, I would have no problem with it at all.

However, once KITT’s CPU is somehow implanted into Michael’s Chevrolet, KITT does not act in character. Shawn drives, not Michael, so it stands to reason that he would not necessarily listen to her. She stole his CPU, his life for over a decade. KITT does tend to listen to human companions, regardless of whether he is programmed to or not, but I can see where this would be an exception. However, Michael soon intercedes and essentially tells him to cut it out. Based on everything that the original Knight Rider told us, KITT no longer has a choice of whether to listen or not. Michael is ultimately the one who calls the shots because of KITT’s very programming. And yet, in this scene, KITT doesn’t listen to Michael and apparently gets so angry that he downright stops functioning. Because that happens all the time in the original series!

And if you’re wondering where I got the conclusion that KITT frustrated his circuits to the point where they could no longer work, he said that. KITT. Admitted to having feelings. In fact, he did not just admit to being angry in the moment. He told Michael that, while it may seem like he is an emotionless robot, he does have a “feelings chip.” A FEELINGS CHIP-

I am for recognizing KITT’s obvious emotions as much as the next guy. I think they are often overlooked when discussing his character. While I don’t think that real artificial intelligence will ever reach the level of human consciousness, the entire energy of Knight Rider comes from playing with this concept by portraying an AI character who clearly emotes interacting with a human who doesn’t seem to know that. But the thing that makes this show feel so sincere is that neither character plays too heavily into that trope. While not always knowing how much KITT feels and by extension hurting those feelings alarmingly often, Michael recognizes it enough to work in concert with KITT, apologize for his more major flubs, and consider KITT a friend. And KITT subverts the trope by never recognizing that he has feelings to begin with. He will say that he cannot feel sadness but, in the next breath, say that something upset him. He will say he cannot hold a grudge only to immediately rattle off a string of insults directed at the person he clearly has a grudge on. The show is magic in how these two characters display a subtle chemistry that always has room to grow because both characters are slowly coming to see each other for who they truly are and supporting one another along the way. From what I can tell, the original show never fully concludes that arc, and it may even start regressing after Season 1. However, we can feasibly see how Michael could slowly come to understand that KITT really does feel things just as much as he does. And we can imagine the relief KITT would feel knowing that Michael was never bothered by that possibility.

So, you can see where I have a big problem with KITT spelling it out so plainly. The audience gets full confirmation about what has been displayed to us through nuanced hints throughout the series, which sounds a lot more satisfying than it really ends up being in this film. But worse than an underwhelming conclusion to a thrilling story, Michael knows it plain as day. There is very little buildup to KITT admitting this. He barely even sounds moved. Instead, in this movie, the “feelings chip” is a fact of life that does not need to be covered up in the slightest. Michael himself doesn’t really… react. He just kind of nods along, as if he’s saying, “Huh, makes sense, alright.” After everything these two have been through, if there really was such a simple explanation for why KITT is the way he is… why arguments went south, why the mere mention of a Chevrolet was enough to get a seemingly jealous response, why inconsequential things like music taste and gambling were subjects of debate, why KITT had always acted so exaggeratedly dismissive when topics of emotional significance struck a chord, why every little sarcastic banter had a hint of happiness until it didn’t… don’t you think Michael would do something? Whether that something would be a gentle, “I always knew that, pal”; a shocked, “Why didn’tchya tell me sooner?!”; or even a sarcastic, disbelieving, “Yeah, right” is up to interpretation. But there would be something.

And yet, even that concept is flawed. We learn a lot from KARR’s inclusion in the original series, and what I take away from it boils down to a simple sentiment. FLAG never meant for their AIs to be human. I do realize that directly contradicts what Devon says within this film, but I see that as another way for the film to steer the plot in this direction, not as a tie in to the original. When Wilton says that one man CAN make a difference, he means that.�� He isn’t considering that KITT is just as much a person as Michael. He’s not seeing that, at the end of the day, teamwork is what makes the show work, even if Michael is the glue that holds it together. So, I think that to say that there is a “feelings chip” is to disregard the entire point of the original, that in this world life finds a way of inserting itself and that KITT’s (and KARR’s for that matter) humanity is an anomaly, not the rule. At the end of the day, KITT’s humanity can’t be explained away with science. And really, I don’t think it should be explained away at all. The show has had an amazing trend of showing us how KITT feels, in all its unorthodox glory, alongside private moments that had me sobbing like a baby. The movie should just be like a longer, more complex episode of Knight Rider… Although I cannot pinpoint exactly how it should be done in the context of this film, I know there are ways that Michael could have been shown that KITT feels rather than being told.

One last complaint, albeit a more minor one, is the idea that he has to listen to what Shawn says over Michael's authority. I have spent a decent amount of time thinking about this one point, which has caused a lot of the delay in posting this. There's multiple reasons why this flies right in the face of what is canon in the original series. Perhaps the most obvious of these problems is the fact that, in the original pilot episode, it's made very clear that KITT can't assume control of the Knight 2000 without Michael's express permission unless Michael is unconcious. Devon makes it quite clear in this episode that KITT is programmed specifically to listen to Michael, not just anyone who happens to be piloting the vehicle at the time. In case there was any doubt about this, KITT ejects two people who are attempting to steal him later in the episode (well, ok, later in the two-parter, I don't know if it was the same episode or not). The show isn't SUPER strict about this in future episodes, but it does at least acknowledge Michael's authority in a few pivotal moments throughout Season 1 (I can't comment on episodes that I haven't seen yet, but I suspect that this pattern continues). Of all the rules set up throughout the series, it actually seems to be the most loyal to this one. One moment that stands out to me is in Trust Doesn't Rust when KITT attempts to stop Michael from causing a head-on collision with KARR, but Michael then overrides him and the climax unfolds. If one of the most iconic moments in the series is caused by this one bit of programming, to throw it out in the film is to disrespect the basis of the original series.

Speaking of KARR, he provides yet another reason niglecting this detail is such a big problem. From what we can tell, KARR isn't programmed to one specific driver (at least, not anymore[?]), and so he can override anyone in the pilot's seat. This is something they seem to highlight in TDR as well, although not so plainly as the previous point. KARR ends up ditching Tony to gain speed and get an upper hand in the chase with Michael and KITT (although a scene they deleted would have made this a mUCH MORE SENSIBLE ACTION THAT R E A L L Y ISN'T A BETRAYAL but y'know what this post isn't about that) whereas KITT has to listen to Michael even to his own detriment. If this one feature is indeed one of the major things that separates KITT from KARR, the idea that Shawn can override all of that cheapens the original conflict between KITT and KARR.

...Well okay, let's be real, KARR was never that compelling as an antagonist to begin with because he's a LOYAL SWEETIEPIE-- I'll stop.

And finally, we have the biggest, most bizarre reason that this is a problem:

If Shawn can override Michael's authority, that means KITT can override Michael's authority.

Why? This would be the first time (outside of episodes where some sort of reprogramming or mind control was involved) in the series that KITT had not only listened to another human instead of Michael, but also listened to that person OVER Michael. The only difference I can see between Shawn and quite literally anyone else in the show's history is that Shawn has KITT's chip implant thing. If that's the reason her opinion has more credence than Michael's, then wouldn't that mean KITT's own opinion has that authority? If that is the case, literally every example I've gone through in the last couple of paragraphs is not just challenged but rather negated entirely.

The most frustrating thing about this scene is that it simply didn't have to happen. Michael could have gone along with KITT's plan, showing him (and us) that he does trust his former partner even after all these years. Shawn could have convinced Michael to go along with it using her... feelings chip. Blegh. Or we could have had a stubborn Michael force this scene to be delayed, likely improving the pacing overall. Maybe we could have even seen a frustrated and emotionally exhausted Shawn wait until Michael is not in the car and then plead KITT to give her the truth, no matter what Michael says. We have seen KITT control his actions without Michael's input plenty of times, and we could have seen some more of his humanity show through if he could relate to Shawn's struggles... after all, he too has missing memories because she has his chip. They're both going through a bit of an identity crisis. I'm sure that he could find some workaround in his programming to help her if Michael wasn't there insisting that he does not take this course of action.

But even after all of that fussing over what has been done wrong with KITT, I can’t deny that he is the heart and soul of this film. There was only one scene in this film that brought me near tears. I got more of an emotional impact from this one clip than I have from a lot of movies that are undeniably much better. Michael’s old-fashioned Chevrolet does not hold up in the year 2000, and it is clear that the usual car chase sequence won’t work as police vehicles quickly creep up on them. I was personally very curious what they would do here. I figured that KITT would find some way to outsmart the drivers of the police cars, maybe by ending up on an elevated mountain road that trips up the other drivers and causes them to waste time turning around and hopping on that same path. Or, maybe, KITT would access a road that’s too narrow for the relatively bulky police cars. However, it quickly becomes clear that this city is made up of wide roads on the ground. As KITT veers off the road and tells Michael to trust him, the I found myself having to trust him. This isn’t the way Knight Rider chases usually go, and with all these odds stacked against him, the only thing we can do is hold our breath. The way this scene is staged to send us into this just as blind as Michael is, frankly, genius. Water slowly creeps into the frame as a feeling of dread builds at the thought of what KITT might do.

Surely, we are led to think, he will knock into some boxes and turn right back around. Right? We’re reminded of the fact that this is not the Knight 2000, that there is no chance of this car floating. That if KITT does what he really seems to be doing, there’s no chance… but he wouldn’t, would he? This is the only action sequence in the film that had me at the edge of my seat, staring wide eyed at the screen. And then, the turn that you want so badly to come doesn’t, and you have to wonder what’s about to happen. What was KITT thinking? Won’t Michael and Shawn drown? And, most prominently in my mind, won’t KITT drown?

For a moment, this scene plays us into believing that, because magic FLAG science that is pretty par for the course, everything is fine. KITT explains that they have an airtight cab and over 20 minutes of oxygen. Everyone lets out a collective breath of relief. We see it in Michael and Shawn, and I know I felt myself relax.

And then there’s a flicker in the screen, and that pit in the bottom of my stomach came right back. Michael is confused, and KITT explains what we should have realized was inevitable. This is KITT sacrificing himself. He even goes as far as to let Shawn know that she can use any of his computer chips that she may need. This comes off as strange at first, but it goes to show that KITT is, at his core, the same kind soul we always knew. He acts angry because he feels betrayed, but given the choice, he will chose another person’s life over his own, always. Even the microprocessor that he is most frustrated over, the thing that seems to drive a wedge between him and Shawn, is just how he is expressing his hurt. Now, thinking it is the end, he offers it up freely, and Shawn doesn’t seem to know how to respond. KITT is calm as he says his final goodbyes. And this is the first place in the film that we get to hear the amazingly nuanced voice acting that William Daniels is so great at. KITT sounds collected and at peace with what is to come, but there are also subtle hints that he is at least a bit nervous, a bit sad. “I know. I guess this is goodbye.” He doesn’t want to leave his friends, but he knows that he has to for them to be safe. Even if the pacing of the film seems to actively try to undermine this moment, it stands out to me as an amazing scene, even if the reaction from Michael is underwhelming at best and the reaction from Shawn is… as much as can be expected from Shawn, but that’s not saying much. As far as KITT knows in that moment, these are his last words: “Michael, take care of yourself.” Down to the last moment, Michael is everything to him.

IjustwannamakeitclearquicklythatIthinktheirrelationshipisentirelyplatonicokthankyou

And I felt sad, big time sad. The movie up until that point was unbelievably boring to me, and this wasn’t a turning point where the movie suddenly became great. It was a moment so darn good that I almost don’t think the movie deserved for it to have as big of an impact as it did. But that shows just how powerful this universe is, how wonderfully honest these characters are. Even after being butchered practically beyond recognition, one scene in-character can still bring you to tears because you have connected with them so deeply throughout the TV series.

AND THEN DEVON DIED IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS :D

I don’t like Devon.

Devon was actually more tolerable in this movie than normal, and I can see where people who don’t hate him could be sad that he died I just,,, he has hurt or talked down to KITT and KARR so many times that I actually could not sympathize. What’s even more frustrating about that is that Devon’s death is the one that Michael got all sad over when KITT sacrificed his life for him and Devon got kidnapped randomly but okay go off movie you can’t ruin that scene for me. I knew going in that Devon died, but I was expecting them to spend a lot more time setting it up and making it as dramatic as possible. Nope, he just got a shot to the old air tanks I guess? My view of it is nothing more than that it’s a thing that happened.

OH AND DEVON DID PULL ONE HEINOUS ACT. He said that KIFT was better than KITT in every way other than that KITT has humanity. SINCE WHEN HAS DEVON GIVEN ONE SINGULAR HOOT ABOUT THE AI’S BEING ALIVE??? TELL KARR THAT??? HECK, TELL DEACTIVATED KITT THAT YOU WERE JUST FINE SELLING OFF AT AUCTION THAT?!?! Also also, KIFT DOES NOT C O M P A R E TO KITT. We are coming back to KIFT in a moment, don’t you worry. For now, I just. Low blow, Devon, low blow.

Michael was fine too, he played a weirdly small part and that felt off but everything he said seemed pretty in character. The most out of character parts were when he said nothing at all. OH AND WHERE HE WAS REPLACING BONNIE but that’s besides the point, no Bonnie OR April… no Bonnie OR April… I’m fine…

…

It feels like this movie wants you to forget that Michael exists because Shawn is here she’s more interesting, right? Right???

She’s really not.

So back to KIFT. My favorite part of KIFT is that pronouncing KIFT in your head sounds funny. It’s like “gift” but if the gift were actually an underwhelming villain of sorts that is overtaken in a garage, parked, by Michael either removing his microprocessor entirely or moving it to a Chevrolet.

I was surprised how not bad KIFT looked. I had seen stills from the movie that looked really uninteresting compared to the regular designs, and while I still agree to some extent, it was a lot more epic than I would have thought. Something about how the paint shines on it is captivating. I was genuinely happy when KITT was moved to the snazzy red vehicle, although a big part of that could have been how disgusting mint green looks with red. Seriously, including the red scanner on that bizarre seafoamy-bluey car (and yes, I do think it is a very pretty car by itself) was like when people say movies were “inspired” but in the opposite direction. And the scanner looked weirdly small? Was it just me?

Am I the only one who feels w e i r d just looking at this??

I think this is the most normal thing to be categorized as being in uncanny valley but there we go, I did it. It’s not right.

Anyway, as neat as KIFT looks, it is no comparison to the classic Knight 2000 or even Season 3 KARR. Red can be striking, but not when the classic scanner is also red. No contrast!

KIFT is absurdly easy to forget, and I don’t think that the car’s design has anything to do with it. KITT spends most of the movie piloting that car, and while it is not what we are used to, it doesn’t come across as super lame to me, either…or at least, not because of the design. The biggest problem with KIFT is, I think, simply his voice. His voice feels so out of place in the movie, and it’s so strange to me considering that Daniels’ voice is integrated just fine. The recording sounds too crisp, too clean. KITT’s voice always has a great deal of character, a very Earthy-sounding voice for an AI character. I actually think that this incongruity is purposeful, and it’s a very clever concept. We are supposed to recognize that KIFT isn’t human like KITT is. KIFT sounds out of place in the real world among real people; he’s too neat around the edges. It’s especially obvious when KITT and KIFT talk to each other. This is also mirrored by how KITT occupies a well-loved Chevrolet that has little imperfections that make it feel real whereas KIFT is in this red… whatever it is that feels like it comes out of a sci-fi film. This effect would have really worked if we had enough time with KIFT to understand his personality–or, more aptly, his lack of personality. What makes this not work is the fact that we spend practically no time with KIFT. We don’t get to hear what he feels he is programmed to do, we don’t get to hear him deliver the sort of lifeless lines that Shawn did that made her so unlikable, and we don’t even get to hear his voice more than 4-5 times. Every time comes as a shock, taking us out of the moment of the film. We could have gotten used to his crisp sound if he had spoken more, and we may have seen the actual plot significance of it. Instead, it pulls you right out of the movie.

Oh yeah, and the only line(s?) that KIFT delivers to KITT are full-on taunting… that’s not very lifeless of you KIFT.

Alright, just one last thing to really hammer home a point from earlier and conclude this whole thing. You know what I was saying about this movie lacking the whimsical nature of the TV show? Well, the final chase puts the icing on this oddly sullen crab cake.

Yes, crab cake.

Because the pinchy crab that is Shawn makes it quite painful to get this particular cake and icing doesn’t even belong on it anyway.

KITT is racing down the street in this bright red car that I just explained is thematically wrong for him to be driving tbh but whatever, he’s racing in it and comes up to a barricade of randomly stacked up cars.

Oh Yeah, we all know what is coming.

The music swells. Michael looks at the upcoming barricade with furrowed eyebrows and quietly asks KITT what the heck they’re going to do now.

OH YEAH, we definitely know what is coming.

And at last, for the first time in the film…

KITT veers off to the right and they drive on water. “It’s really sink or swim with you, isn’t it?” Michael asks, pretending that’s funny as if I am not still emotionally raw from that scene that happened an hour ago.

Apparently, KIFT had that one obscure feature from “Return to Cadiz,” the Season 2 episode where April forces KITT to follow KARR into the ocean on the hopes that waterproof wheels might work maybe, directly ignoring his many attempts to get out of it. Yay. I love references to That Episode. That Episode which baited me with an opening that looked like KARR could have been discovered underwater only to show me that not only was there no KARR, but KITT was going to be bullied into repeating what his brother did when he died. Wholesome. Lovely. Fantastic. And how did KITT know for sure that would work? KITT clearly still has some technical hiccups in his own CPU from Michael tampering with it, that was an awful lot of confidence to place in a maybe.

AND MORE IMPORTANTLY…

THIS MOVIE DID NOT HAVE A TURBO BOOST

A TURBO BOOST

I cannot believe that a movie based around Knight Rider did not have a turbo boost (or for that matter, the THEMESONG???). Like I am honestly still surprised by it. Almost every episode of the original show had at least one turbo boost, and there is a reason. The idea of a talking car jumping in midair, sometimes with Michael “WOO!”-ing like a girl, is so fantastically fun that nobody even tries to question how impossible it is. I think we all know how impossible it is, and that doesn’t matter, it is yet another thing that embodies the heart of this show.

And… not even one.

…

So yeah, that just happened. I think this is technically a small novel. Wow.

I know that I'm still missing a lot... I have a lot of thoughts about this movie, and if you for some reason want more please ask! I would also love to hear your thoughts on this! Do you agree with my analysis? Do you disagree entirely? Did you notice something that I failed to mention entirely? Pleasepleaseplease send ideas, I would love to hear them! Also know that, no matter how much I was disappointed by the movie itself, I am fully open to hearing your ideas about how to improve or expand upon it. I truly believe that this film introduced some great concepts, and I would absolutely adore seeing them reworked in a way that's more true to the original. Thank you for reading! :D

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star-anise · 5 years

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why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?

I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.

“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.

800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.

But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.

Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.

The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”

She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.

Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.

So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.

But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day.

This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.

There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.

But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence.

And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)

Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.

So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.

Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.

But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.

And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.

So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.

And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.

And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.

And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.

I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.

TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”

Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.

I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.)

I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.

#staranise original #lgbt discourse

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horsepriest · 3 years

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I did this OC meme on Twitter and got “Do all 40 and ramble on” as a response. Here is the entire questionnaire and character sheet for Warlord Gresham. This is fairly spoiler-free for Glimpse and is a snapshot of who he is now. Content warning for sadism, torture, and Gresham basically being a sick fuck overall.

Warlord Gresham

Basic stats:

Name: Gresham, AKA The TwinHorn

Serial Number: W.03-c.017

Gender/Pronouns: Cis Male He/Him

Height: Approx. 15ft at shoulder. Nearly 20ft standing.

Species: Heavily modified Liberated Vactyr with signs of Other corruption

Size Class: Titan (Does not meet 20,000lbs requirement for Colossus Size Class)

Sexuality: Undefined

Romance: Undefined

Birthday: Jan. 17

Age: 42

Occupation: Warlord of the Firmament-Highest rank of the Off-world Military and direct servant of Adelie.

Weapons: Gresham is a pack hunter with a constantly rotating squad of Lost under his direct command. He keeps a few contained within the large metal pack upon his back, some strapped with weaponry and explosives for the rare times he’s in a pinch. He is heavily armoured and has a wide range of attack with his long sweeping horns. Not many are willing to fight him. He is rarely taken out of battle for long- no one’s quite sure what he keeps in his medic bag. Personality: Overbearing, proud, and sadistic. He is the spoiled pet of a capricious “goddess” who encouraged every depraved impulse from a young age. For his twisted sense of loyalty to Adelie, he was gifted the title of Warlord, and thus dominion over a massive slice of the Liberated hordes. Despite his quadrupedal stance and bestial appearance, Gresham is smarter than one would think. This makes him a dangerous adversary as he can manage his pack with ease.

OC Question Meme

1. How easy is it to make them angry? Do they show their anger or hide it? It is difficult to make Gresham legitimately angry. Disobedience would probably be the best way to anger him, except it grants him the ability to dole out punishment as he deems fit. If anything, he gets giddy when one would expect him to be angry. If someone manages to piss him off, he would not be able to hide it and that person will have a fight on their hands.

2. Do they believe in soulmates? The idea of soulmates is a foreign concept to him. Love does not mean much to him due to his unique upbringing. Of course, he has seen other Liberated pair off to be mates but the rationalizes it as purely a mutually selfish interaction that has shaky longevity at best (and he goes out of his way to ruin the relationship, if possible.).

3. Do they have any pet peeves? Laziness, weakness, and sneakiness irritate him. He picks on the lazy and those he views as weak through forcing them into training and hard labour. He’ll focus intensely on subordinates that show signs of sneakiness or insubordination.

4. Do they have a happy place? Somewhere to go to in their heads when they need to relax? His happy place is his room and the memories of his activities there keep him relaxed and generally happy. Gresham is also happy when around Adelie. She showers him with attention and praise which he drinks up. Gresham is a good boy. In her soulless pits she calls eyes anyways.

5. At what stage of their life were they the happiest? Right after he killed his brother in public combat and proved he was the best and strongest out of the two. His secondary set of horns were torn from his brother’s corpse as trophies. He could stand somewhat normally at this stage and still could see. He looked like a normal, but exceptionally large Liberated.

6. At what stage of their life were they the least happy? Same stage of life as “Glimpse Beyond the Illusion.” His life is painful- trouble breathing and generally functioning as his body has mostly broken down. He relies on his pack for basic needs like getting dressed and keeping clean. He is also suffering from the effects of █████ ██████████ which is different from Mortus’s knowledge of ██████████. Lastly, Adelie takes frequent control of his Liberation to form him to her liking, on top of the changes from █████ ██████████. Due to both of these, he has been barred from ever receiving a breeding permit.

7. At a bar/tavern/pub are they more likely to buy someone a drink, or have someone buy them a drink? He would buy someone a drink, but it’s a trap. Don’t ever accept a drink from Gresham.

8. Have they ever broken any bones? If yes, how? Oh definitely. The guy’s a living tank that takes joy in brutalizing beings on foreign planets and has most definitely broken more bones than your average peaceful human. Due to his medic kit, there isn’t much sign of this on his body. The most obvious broken bone is his docked tail, taken when he reached adulthood.

9. Do they have any memories/experiences they’d rather forget? Not really. Most of the painful memories are washed over by the rewards he has been given as a result of being a twisted ghoul of a being. There are probably quiet moments where he ponders how his life would have been if he were never taken under Adelie’s wing, but they are shoved back down into the dark abyss he dares not look into.

10. What is their favourite memory from their childhood? Earning his first pack of Lost. Little and loyal and they tended to his needs without question. Free friends, captive to him and too stupid to disobey. At first, he regarded them as tools and took good care of them. Once he accidentally killed one (maybe not accidentally), it was replaced. Now they are regarded as intelligent playthings and extensions of himself.

11. Do they have a “type” they are usually attracted to? No explicit type. Any form of love that Gresham is capable of experiencing is extremely toxic and sickening. He is an abject abuser and sadist; he doesn’t understand love. Gresham is capable of obsession and his main obsession is Adelie.

12. Do they have any favourite possessions? His survival knife, his jar of Flow, and his pack of Lost.

13. Do they have any tattoos? If no, would they ever consider getting one? They are not traditional tattoos, but he has faint stripes down his back. They are short and function like Rictus’s, just without most of Rictus’s extra abilities. For instance, Gresham cannot rebuild objects with them.

14. Do they have any piercings? If no, would they ever consider getting one? The thought hasn’t occurred to him, so no piercings. He might not get one, but I could see him forcing them on others in uncomfortable places.

15. What is their dream house like? He would live closer to Adelie with more space to be able to move around comfortably. A space that’s easy to clean and sort his pack into their own cubbies. A much more robust torture chamber with more tools would also be nice.

16. What is something about them that people would not expect just by looking at them? He is intelligent. Gresham is calculated in how he handles his affairs and prepares for most situations ahead of time. For instance, he’ll set out his Lost to lead his quarry to him-typically in a pretty narrow place to discourage retreat.

17. How good are they at choosing gifts for others? Don’t ever take a gift from Gresham, it’s a trap.

18. Do they have a certain skill that they’re particularly proud of? He is insanely gifted with his knife work and butchery. He is proud that he hasn’t yet broken the “Warlord W.03-c.017 is not entitled to cull stud XXX-XXXX” part of his special permits, despite getting his “playthings” very, very, very close to that point. He is also proud of how easily he can take what he wants.

19. How would a stranger they just met describe them? Creepy, pushy, off-putting. They may complain of the smell of his breath and body odour.

20. How would a close friend they’ve known for a long time describe them? A sweet, loyal dog. Trustworthy and cute, in an ugly way. (Adelie)

21. Do they have any personal insecurities? Being caught in a vulnerable position by someone that can then gossip about it. There are a few pilots that lack tongues for this reason. Others (presumably because their mouths were too damned small) are just tortured into silence.

22. What is their highest physical stat? (strength, stamina, defense, speed, etc.) and their highest non-physical stat? (intelligence, perception, charisma, luck, etc)? Easily strength and intelligence. Defense and Perception are second highest. Gresham lacks Stamina or Charisma.

23. How would they react to finding out someone lied to them, even if it was for their own safety/well-being? Gresham wouldn’t like it as it would be a form of insubordination, but insubordination also leads to punishment which is fun for him. He’d let the person lie, then set a trap to catch them.

24. Do they prefer cold weather or warm weather? For █████ ██████████ reasons, he isn’t too bothered by temperature extremes. If given the option, he’d pick colder.

25. How easy is it for them to say “I love you”? See number 2. Any proclamation of love isn’t actual love: Gresham doesn’t understand it. Though, he probably tells his playthings that he loves them.

26. How easy is it for them to tell someone about their worries? He would not be close enough to most beings to talk about his worries, but he monologues with the Lost about his thoughts. Much like number 21, those that have caught him in these monologues suffer grave consequences.

27. Have they ever witnessed someone die? Yes, and he takes a perverse joy in it each time.

28. Are they ticklish? No. If he ever was, he got desensitized to it by the Lost climbing him.

29. How high/low is their pain tolerance? Very high. Even before he started developing chronic pain from his many augments, he is still a Vactyr in the Titan size-class.

30. Is there something they secretly wish they could do, but are too afraid to? Getting closer to Adelie.

31. Are they a messy eater or a neat eater? Due to his lack of cheeks and stretched snout, he is a very messy eater. Thankfully, the most common food available to him is the same soylent available to all Liberated. However, when he has access to problematic meat, he eats like a T-Rex. Large chunks swallowed whole.

32. What moment of their life made them feel most unloved? When he’s reminded of his place in the universe. While he is one of the few top-ranked Liberated, he is below every Hirudian. Forgetting this disappoints Adelie who forces him back into his place through her ability to utterly control his Liberation. She is willing to loan that control to other Hirudians, including Hivemind (but never Argiope), much to his great humiliation and shame.

33. What moment of their made them feel most loved? The time leading up to and after getting his augments. Yes, he lost his vision at this point, but he had Adelie’s entire attention as he was prepared for and eventually recovered from the surgery.

34. Which of the senses would they hate to lose the most: vision, hearing, smell, taste, or touch? Gresham already cannot see, and his sense of smell is affected by his helmet. He relies mostly on hearing and the secondary Flow-sense that is boosted by his augments and █████ ██████████ - he can sense where organic and Other beings are.

35. Are they good at small talk? No, not really. He’s a bit too busy to socialize and lacks the ability to fit in with the Liberated Ranks for socialization. His off-putting personality and sadistic nature also pushed them away, many of the pilots carry some trauma from being targeted by him and thus naturally avoid him.

36. If they could ask anyone one question and get the absolute truth, who and what would they ask? To some all-knowing being (so maybe Hivemind): “Am I good?”

37. If they had the chance, would they prefer to travel to the past or to the future? The past. Killing his brother again sounds fun and potentially going back to just before his augment so he can be close to Adelie again.

38. Who had the biggest impact in their life, both positive and negative? Elite Adelie, for obvious reasons. But, Mortus comes to a close second in the next chapter of Glimpse.

39. Would they rather life a life always surrounded by people, or always alone? He requires his Lost to live and takes a perverse joy in ruining other beings’ lives. So, while he could potentially find happiness in a life of solitude if he ever had a chance at a normal upbringing… he would pick having others around.

40. Is there anyone or anything that immediately instills fear in them? He fears a loss of control to a being not worthy of his loyalty. He is purely loyal to Adelie and enjoys his rule over others. Gresham is aware of how easily Adelie can abandon him, he has witnessed her throwing away her other experiments for petty reasons. In some cases, he was how she threw them away. He eventually develops a skittishness around electricity.

#oc meme #the moonlit path #sadism cw #torture cw #violence cw #Gresham is toxic so keep that in mind.

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covrtofnightmares · 4 years

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&&. cauldron above, ( henryk wolfe ) was just spotted in the fae lands — word has it ( he ) is affiliated with ( the spring court ). ( he ) is a ( 519 / physically 35 ) year old ( warrior fae ). it’s been said that ( he ) resembles ( henry cavill ). ( he ) has been said to be ( reckless & confident ) but also quite ( arrogant & promiscuous ). ( he ) is currently serving as ( the general of the spring court ).

— ❝ sex is about power.❞

name: henryk matthias wolfe

birthday: september 12th | virgo

scent: mint oil, italian lemon, green apple, geranium flower, amber, vanilla, vetiver, moss, cedarwood, spices + ( SIGNATURE COLOGNE: eros - versace )

appearance: 6′3″ with a strong, muscular build honed from centuries of priming his body for power, battle, and sex. luca has spent much of his immortality physically and mentally pushing himself to impossible limits in order to be the best of the best, and as such, his physique is a strong reflection of that. as one of the warrior fae, his body demands to be consistently tested; his endurance and strength is proof enough of that. luca has dark brown hair with a tendency to grow wavy and curly if not properly cared for. he can go with or without a beard, but prefers to keep one nice and groomed for personal preference.

current familial / relationship status: henryk never knew if he had any family; he was cast out as a young child, bastardized by both of his parents and tossed into the brutality of the warrior race. he fit right in with the rest of them. the closest thing to family henryk has ever had is the high ruler’s family of the spring court; ares is the closest thing to a brother henryk will ever know, and arielle the closest to a sister.

biography: henryk was born in the hills of the night court as the bastard son of two warrior fae--a sweet, docile nymph-like creature named arabella and a soldier named perseus. henryk’s mother, arabella, was something akin to an angel of light--a faerie who had descended from a long line of respectable warrior fae who began an affair with a poor warrior soldier. she was the daughter of a great war general among their dispersed clans, while henryk’s father was a soldier who worked under her father’s ranks. the two warrior fae fell passionately in love, but by the time henryk was conceived, arabella’s family had disowned her and she and perseus were left to fend for themselves in a cold and unforgiving world. the warrior race of fae were particularly brutal and ruthless, so the idea of being left to their own devices was hardly the most traumatic thing either arabella or her lover could dread to encounter. still, the jarring loss of family proved to be a hefty burden, and arabella felt herself physically waste away as her pregnancy progressed.

unfortunately, these tragic circumstances resulted in a painful and difficult childbirth–one she did not manage to live through. overwhelmed with grief and misplaced hatred towards his son for “causing” the death of his beloved, henryk’s father cast him out and abandoned the boy to the streets, abandoning his son to one of the orphanages that littered the fae realms--a special workhouse for warrior fae who were to be raised by their own kind. and so, henryk burst into the world not unlike many other warrior fae who came before him: tossed into violence, danger, and a sense of isolation so complete that the mere thought of the term “famly” was a decidedly foreign concept to him.

after that, the streets raised henryk. tossed around through workhouses and apprenticeships to afford room and board for much of his young life, henryk had to learn how to take care of himself. it was through the negligence of adults surrounding him that henryk grew reckless and selfish; he was crafty and intelligent, innovative and careless. he took what he wanted when he wanted it, causing friction and tension with those who took him in over the years. henryk cared very little for his schooling and apprenticeships, wishing instead to use his insight and intelligence to apply directly to life itself. he became a bit of a bully in many regards, using his brute strength and natural combat skills to hone himself into a ruthless, trained warrior.

along the way, he found ares deerling--a high fae whose mannerisms and behavior mirrored henryk’s in more ways than one. they were kindred spirits, tied together by common interests an similar personalities. ares was not a warrior fae by nature, but henryk still considered the high spring court fae to be like a member of his pack--the only family henryk had ever truly known, come to think of it. due to henryk’s relationship with ares, he fell into good graces with the spring court, eventually meshing in with the high lord’s family. he thinks of princess arielle as his younger sister and ares not just as his brother, but as his closest friend and confidante; it’s a relationship that no one can rival if he has anything to say about it. eventually, henryk worked himself up to serving as the spring court’s general, dealing in matters of war and military affairs. and with the growing tensions and newborn alliances emerging between the fae courts, henryk finds that his position in the spring court is now more important than ever before.

of course, the one snag in henryk’s concentration comes in the form of the tiny, pixie-like princess of the winter court. henryk wishes he could say he had uncomplicated feelings about ares’ arranged betrothal to princess tatiana valentina, but that would be a lie. one he isn’t ready to confront, particularly if it means upsetting the two people who mean the most to him in the entire world. tatiana will go on to marry ares, and together the two will produce some of the strongest heirs the realm of astralis has ever known. it’s something henryk has forced himself to come to terms with, even if it leaves a strange ache in the pit of his stomach. it’s something henryk has learned to deal with...

but that doesn’t mean he has to like it, does he?

affinity: wind and ice, though his strength is almost exclusively in his combat abilities

wings: as is typical with the warrior race, henryk has durable wings perfect for flight and combat. his are large, black wings similar to that of a hawk, marking him as a strong predator in the sky. henryk’s wings are built for endurance, battle, and instilling fear into those who dare to oppose him.

#HENRYK //#bonebreaker: ( intro )#parent death mention #parent death tw #childbirth tw

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samgwrites · 4 years

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Locked Doors

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Chapter 1 of 2 What happens when your who is returned to your what. Written for the TMA Season 5 Countdown day 3: Spiral, @pilesofnonsense

Read on AO3

“It’s locked,” The archivist said, sounding uncertain and scared.

“It’s not,” It laughed, softly and terribly. It enjoyed the archivist’s confusion, even if it was slightly annoyed at the fledgling avatar for wasting time. Even if such a concept did not apply to it.

“Why is it locked?” The archivist spat, and the lie could tell that he was not lying.

“It can’t be!” It said, tension seeping into its voice.

“Well you try it!” The archivist stepped away from the door, motioning for the entity to try for itself.

“That- that’s not-” Something clicked. After years of spirals and distortion and broken minds, something clicked inside of Michael. “Oh. Oh no.”

And then he was screaming. He hadn’t felt this sort of pain in so long, or perhaps he had never stopped feeling it and the twisting in his mind had simply caused him to forget. He was unwinding, separating. Was he still holding on to the door knob? He couldn't turn the handle, but that couldn’t be right. The handle was part of him, as was the door, and his ending twisting corridors. But were they?

When did he become himself again?

With that thought, he let go of the handle, tears streaming down from eyes that no longer saw impossible colors, and he was gone.

Michael Shelley woke up on a sidewalk in the middle of London with a splitting headache and a broken hand. The sky was overcast as he looked up from where he was lying, the gray clouds twisting and rolling above him like the sea. Laughter bubbled up inside him, but fizzled and died as a strange choking sound. A few passers by seemed to notice the sound and went from simply avoiding or ignoring him to glancing down worriedly and hurrying quickly along.

Michael sat up, groaning slightly as he did so, clutching his hand that could no longer pierce through flesh and bone. He stood slowly, before quickly making his way over to the steady brick wall on the other side of the path and leaning against it, taking deep breaths. The world had stopped spinning. The world was still and hard and constant, and all the people around looked like people, and for a single moment Michael could almost convince himself that his memories had simply come from a drunken nightmare. But he had spent so long lying to himself and to deny himself the reality that he hadn’t experienced in so long felt like a betrayal.

He needed to figure out where he was. Yes, yes, that was it. He could figure out where he was, and then try to find his way home.

He realized, however, as he had this thought, that it would be impossible. He had been gone for so long. He had certainly been declared dead, his flat sold, his dog adopted. Gertrude was never one to forget to tie up loose ends. And even if he hadn’t been confirmed dead, he had at least been missing for nearly a decade! Nothing would be the same. Hell, everything would’ve been gone if he’d been missing one month, much less seven years. No one was there to look for him; no partner, an estranged family. It’s not like Elias would call Gertrude out on what she’d done. Even if he hated her too, he’d become such a bastard after becoming head of the Magnus Institute.

When he realized he would need to go back to the institute, he almost started crying. He didn’t want to go back to the institute. He loathed the place. In fact, he’d hated it so much that the hatred had stayed with him while he’d been an unfeeling eldritch horror.

He supposed it was why the spiral had finally seen fit to spit him out.To many feelings unrelated to its own goals. To much clear hatred burning through the haze of being a living distortion, it almost made sense that he was evicted by someone better. Like being sacrificed to for being an annoying employee.

He had seen Gertrude again while he was Michael. She hadn’t been alive, but it had seen her corpse in that dark room in the tunnels. And it had laughed and laughed and laughed, unendingly pleased that the woman that made it had finally gotten her due.

Now he just felt sick. And confused. And so restless and irritated that he didn’t even realize that he had been walking until he looked up and saw that bloody owl looking down on him.

Oh how he hated the eye.

He introduced himself as Michael to the woman at the front desk. She hadn’t worked here when he had, and it was a common enough name that he doubted it would automatically be related back to a mysterious figure that occasionally terrorized archive employees.

“I’m here to see Jon,” He said with a nervous smile, one that he’d worn thousands of times in the past but felt foreign in this context. She returned the expression, but it looked odd. Like she couldn’t quite believe him. That, or she assumed it was a prank.

“Jon?” She asked. “Really?”

“Yes?” He replied, cocking his head to the side, “I’m sorry, is there an issue? I- I haven’t heard from him in awhile, he said I was free to come visit his work. He’s not too busy, is he?” The lie slid easily off his tongue, but not as easily as it once would have.

“No, no, of course,” She said, waving her hands in the air gently, as if trying to placate him. “Jon doesn’t get a ton of people coming to visit him at work is all. And he has been gone for awhile, some bad sickness or other. You can head down now no problem, I’ll just have to give you a visitor’s pass. What did you say your name was?”

“Michael.”

“Last name?” He almost hesitated.

“Shelley. Michael Shelley.” She just nodded and typed it in, before smiling and handing him a name tag.

“Have a nice visit,” She said cheerily, and Michael headed down.

It was amazing what he remembered, both from being a monster and working here. Michael the distortion never really had a need for directions or a good memory of proper turns. Michael Shelley on the other hand, was great when it came to navigating the twisting halls of the institute. Perhaps that’s why the spiral had become him instead of digesting him.

But he clearly remembered how to find the stairwell leading down to the archives, and from there the way to the head archivist’s office. He didn’t pass many people in the halls, which wasn’t too surprising. By the time Gertrude had seen fit to be rid of him he’d really been the only one to make any noise down here. Even if Jon had more assistants, he doubted they would want to be wandering the halls. Not alone anyway.

He came upon the door leading to Jon’s office. Boring some unknown piece of him laughed. He reached for the handle.

“Hey!” He flinched, his hand falling to his side. He took a deep breath, before turning to meet whoever had discovered him and smiling his nervous crooked smile.

“Hello, um I’m sorry I’m just here to talk to your archi- Jon. I’m here to talk to…” Michael could hear his own voice fading into nothing as the man who had been locked in the distortion’s corridors for a few hours (or weeks, depending who you asked) stormed toward him.

He really should have seen the punch coming, but damn did it hurt.

Tim was shouting something at him, but it just sounded like noise. Michael waved a hand at him, the other being used to hold his now bloody nose.

“I just need to talk to Jon,” Michael bit out, interrupting the other man in the middle of his tirade.

“Yeah? And why are you going this way, huh? Don’t you have your own fucked up methods of travel?” Michael shook his head almost sheepishly.

“I don’t anymore, and I really need to talk to your archivist so if you’ll just let me-“ it was Tim’s turn to cut him off.

“Oh what so you just decided to stop being a monster, that it?” In the past Michael had rarely been one to get annoyed, but the longer he stood, bloody in the hall of the Magnus Institute, the closer he felt to snapping.

“Not exactly, though honestly I wouldn’t say that’s exactly a negative development, and if you want to punch me again or yell at me for the things that it- I- we did to you feel free but can you please wait just ten minutes?”

Tim looked pissed. Michael realized that, and he let out a deep say, fully accepting that after surviving becoming the muscle of an otherworldly being of fear he was now going to die at the hands of a ticked off library science major.

And then the door opened.

“Tim I thought I heard…” Michael stared at the archivist. He looked different then he did the last time he’d seen him. Less beat to hell, obviously, though his skin still looked relatively great. He had different clothes on, ones that weren’t torn and bloody from a month in a demented wax museum.

But more than that he just looked… normal. When the spiral had looked at Jon, it had seen twisting thoughts, confusion and doubt. Fear wrapped in a tight package of green jumpers and too many eyes. But to Michael the man just looked human. Tired sure, with his eyes still a bit too bright to be normal but not really enough to be noticeable.

For a second he almost felt jealous that the man’s beholding characteristics were so concealed, but he tamped that feeling down and locked it away. Jon spoke first.

“Michael?” He asked softly, as if talking to a scared child or a rabid dog, “Michael Shelley?” Michael didn’t know how else to respond to the question other than to nod. He noticed Tim looking rapidly between them, so he decided to speak.

“Can I come in? Is that alright?” There was a moment when no one said anything, but soon Jon was opening the door to the office wide, ushering him inside.

“Ah Tim, I’m not sure you should…” Michael heard Jon say once he was in the room and out of harm's way, so to speak.

“You can’t keep doing this, Jon, you need to tell me what is happening. It doesn’t matter to me what happens to you, but I’m not going to be blamed for you getting snatched by another monster!” Michael couldn’t make out Jon’s response, but he couldn’t find him to involve himself in the conversation. He glanced around the office.

It had been here recently, a few months ago at the most, pestering the archivist about something or other. He couldn’t remember what it looked like. Surely it hadn’t changed much, it’s not like Jon was suddenly inclined to change the decorations, but it seemed so much less… colorful. Like a strobe light had been turned off. The last time he had been in this office with it looking anything close to how it did now had been when he had excitedly come to inform Gertrude that the cab was here to take them to the airport. How thrilled he had been to be of assistance, how excited to have been going on his first ever international trip, and with a woman who he respected so much no less. What an honor, what an opportunity, what a… mistake.

He’d been so focused staring holes in the desk chair that he hadn’t noticed Jon saying something. When the other man gently laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder, he spun around, causing Jon to jerk back as a look of panic overtook his features before being schooled into academic normalcy once again.

Michael supposed some fear was to be expected. After all, something with his mind and body had threatened to kill Jon not too far in the past.

“Would you like to sit down?” Jon asked, gesturing to one of the chairs. Michael suddenly remembered how tired and sore he felt, nodding and collapsing into the chair, careful not to hurt his injured hand. Michael smiled at the archivist, even if it felt a bit forced.

“I would say it’s nice to meet you, but I’m afraid that would just add to the current confusion.” Jon went over to sit in his own chair, watching Michael, but not exactly meeting his eyes. Tim was inside the now closed door, with his arms crossed. A poor imitation of a security guard.

“How are you… here? The distortion said you were gone.”

“The distortion isn’t exactly the most truthful of beings, don’t you think?” Jon made a noise of affirmation. Michael watched as the archivist glanced quickly over to Tim, the door, and then back to Michael.

“Michael, I… I want to help you, but I need to ask you first… do you still want to kill me?” Michael shifted in his chair. No was the obvious answer, and it was the truth, he didn’t want to kill Jon. But he would be lying if he said he could no longer feel the writhing thing in his stomach urging him to leave the archives, lock the doors, and burn it down with everyone still inside.

“No. When I was… merged with the distortion, the only thing I could recall was the betrayal I felt from Gertrude. The Michael you knew was aware that she was dead, but saw you as only The Archivist. Her replacement. The small piece of me in control could only see you as connected to the person who didn’t care about me. I was angry. I am… really sorry.” Michael let out a nervous laugh, but stopped when he saw both Jon and Tim freeze at the sound. He felt cold.

“And are you still connected with the distortion? Can you still feel it?” There came a slight buzz with the archivist’s word and Michael’s nervous expression quickly transformed into a frown.

“I do not know, archivist,” He said the word with some contempt, “and while I respect you and your assistance, I do not appreciate being Beheld, Jon.” In response to this, Jon jerked slightly, shaking his head and bringing a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, like he was trying to shake off a headache. Tim was now staring at him with something akin to disgust.

“I apologize, it’s hard to tell when I’m doing it or when it’s… nevermind, this is not about me. Is there anything that you think is important regarding your recently regained humanity?”

Michael thought for a moment.

What an odd question. What he thought was important, what a subjective thing. What he thought. He was just getting used to thinking linearly again.

“It’s hard to say… I feel... fuzzy. You know when you’ve just woken from being sick? You’re warm and confused and there's a jittery feeling in your fingertips. I feel like I am fully here for the first time in years, but I’m afraid that in a moment I will fall back into that… twisting. Isn’t that terrible?” He giggled on the last word again and choked on the sound. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying not to laugh. It’s not funny and I’m not that thing, I promise I…” Tears had sprung from his eyes, and through his cloudy vision he could see the discomfort clearly on the two men’s faces, and he looked down, and suddenly he stopped, “Oh right,” Jon straightened in concern.

“What?” He asked seriously. Michael glanced up sheepishly.

“I think my hand is broken.”

#tmas5countdown #tma #the magnus archives #michael shelley #michael tma #My writing #fan fiction #jonathan sims #tim stoker

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nxelethe · 5 years

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Has anyone wondered how Cradle is governed?

Now, you’ve got to bear with me here, I haven’t played all the routes so maybe we get more information later, but seriously, how the fuck is this place governed?

Probably the first issue is that Cradle is a single country, but divided into distinct zones based on military presence and the demilitarised Central Quarter. The entire premise of the game hinges on the concept of imminent war between the Red and Black Armies, that’s fine. Neither side however is fighting for independence, so the concept of Cradle attempting split based on something like distinct state ethnicity seems out of the question. Everyone seems fairly comfortable with being a Cradle citizen. Although people living in red and black territories seem to support the corresponding army, I believe it would be a stretch to call the different parts of Cradle separate states.

Adding to this motivational confusion, what are the motives of the Red and Black Armies? Red’s ambitions are made clear from the very beginning—absorb the Black Army and rule over Cradle. However, we all know this to be a ploy by the Magic Tower (we’ll get onto this in a moment) and after Amon is defeated, both armies continue to coexist with their territories intact. This has been the case for centuries apparently. The Black Army itself displays no ambition beyond securing their existence; they don’t intend to absorb the Red army, rule Cradle, or anything of the sort.

So, who runs this country? The naming system is obviously based on playing cards, but you can’t get away from the connotations that titles such as ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ entail, and through various events we’ve seen that the people of cradle turn to these armies for leadership—especially Lancelot (who, given that he inherits the title, would be most reminiscent of a King in the sense that Alice and we are familiar with).

Typically, a country will have a military force, but in order for this to work and for the force to exist, they most be funded by a government to tackle domestic and foreign concerns of said government—in most cases. Cradle’s hypothetical government, should be officially funding a military force, though that by no means excludes the possibility of a legitimate paramilitary force. Yet, Cradle’s government, the Cradle state, or anything of the sort, plays no role in its military actions. Even if the two armies were engaged in a civil war for Cradle’s governance (which the game loosely claims that they are) then the government would be expected to support one of the two armies. These armies wage war on the whims of their lead commanders, no government influence as far as the eye can see.

So what is Cradle doesn’t have a government?

OK, that’s a bit unfair; what if Cradle has a government but it’s not distinguishable, or indeed different, to the armies? With all the evidence provided, Cradle seems to be ruled via military dictatorship, a khakistrocracy, if you will (it’s very rare that I get to use fun portmanteaus so I always jump at the opportunity). Even in that case, Cradle’s governance still isn’t that simple to decipher.

Officially, there have been ‘tensions’ between the Red and Black armies, though I don’t believe them to be a prolonged ceasefire, given that the armies “declare war” in the various routes and don’t issue a ceasefire revocation. Admittedly, this is arguing technicalities, and one could similarly say that the “peace talks” that Alice interrupts when she first appears in Cradle would have been to end hostilities. I’m hesitant to approach the issue this way, because peace talks don’t NECESSARILY mean that they are terminating physical conflict and the interactions between army officers like Luka and Edgar certainly don’t seem to suggest that they are technically still at war.

Regardless, the issue of the two armies coexisting in such a way remains. Even if Cradle is ruled via military dictatorship then the Central Quarter becomes a big issue. Officially demilitarised and not allied with either army, the Central Quarter also houses the majority of the businesses in Cradle—businesses which, even back in the 19th century, would have faced some legal restrictions or at the very least recognition allowing them to exist. What power is doing this?

It can be neither the Red nor the Black army as they have no influence over the area, so who governs the Central Quarter? It has no police force, we’ve seen the armies leap in to protect citizens numerous times without external aid and it isn’t presented as a problem or violation of a demilitarisation agreement.

Enter, the Magic Tower; a civic agency and possibly the key to the entire issue.

The Magic Tower, the Big Bad of the game, has clear intentions and those are to rule Cradle through the Red army, which would at least make this question easier to answer. If this were to occur, the government would be a military dictatorship, albeit controlled by a shadow agency before eventually being overtly controlled by Amon (I would assume) leading us to a personalist dictatorship.

Where the Magic Tower truly helps in answering this question is in its nature—a civic agency. Civic agencies can be assembled by groups of individuals looking to perform a specific task for the benefit of society and don’t necessarily require the existence of governments. They are merely characterised by the ability of citizens to work collaboratively to solve common societal issues. Do they exist in areas with governments in reality? Yes. Could they exist independent of said government? Unlikely, but possible in theory.

Cradle is a small country, we’re told this from the very beginning of the game, so what if it actually doesn’t have a government?

It’s almost certain that Cradle had a centralised government once, more specifically, whilst the Red and Black armies were actually one and the same. My memory is sfoggy, I believe it was orginally a monarchy? I can’t remember, whatever the case though, it is extremely likely that Cradle was governed by SOMETHING at this point in time.

Even in our reality, countries existing without governments isn’t completely unheard of, though it is almost always well-established countries with stable economics that can trundle on without heads of state or governments. If Cradle was a relatively stable state at the time, then it is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility that Cradle could be in such a lovely stable state without a government.

We could even entertain the notion that various civic organisations assumed control of the essentials for the state’s continued function. Obviously, it’s not foolproof (*cough* Magic Tower *cough*) but theoretically it could function.

This would typically be where I call it a day and tell you that I think that Cradle is maybe a weird example of Mutualism or Collective Anarchism, except for a teeny tiny problem, or should I say two teeny tiny problems.

The Red Army would certainly be one, but really that just brings us to the broader issue at hand: the aristocracy.

Anarchism is fundamentally the rejection of unjust hierarchies so the Red Army’s arbitrary and hereditary hierarchy is basically entirely contrary to the very ideology I’m trying to marry it to. Furthermore, the mere existence of the aristocracy is basically indicative that if any anarchist systems had tried to take route they’d have fundamentally failed.

So what else is there?

I would like to propose a very oxymoronic ideology: Anarcho-capitalism.

Now I will go ahead and do the work for you here, this is also not the case because it’s shown to actually work, which is honestly the last thing anyone believes anarcho-capitalism can do. I’d also like to clarify, that this ideology is hardly anarchy, but we’ll use this classification for the sake of convenience.

We clearly see the use of money in the game, classes and, most damning of all, private property. However, no government. Perhaps a better defined description, would be a state entirely driven by free market economics without state intervention.

But, the Magic Tower is an obvious monopoly for the distribution of magic crystals, therefore clashing head-first with the concept of free market competition.

The possibility of a Night-Watchman State exists, which would also excuse the excessive military presence for such a tiny country, but this would also require the existence of a state to justify interventions by these bodies. A state which I cannot find sufficient evidence to claim exists.

So conclusion?

I haven’t a FUCKING CLUE and boy am I mad about it.

I have written a long-ass text post that my few followers are going to justifiably unfollow me for only to conclude that I have no idea how Cradle works and that Cybird didn’t give it enough thought or I would have found this slightly easier. Maybe Cradle is a nice place, so that it honestly becomes a no-brainer that Alice would want to leave the political shambles Britain, romance or no (I wouldn’t blame her).

Does anyone have any idea what could be going on? I’m borderline dying to find out at this point.

Sorry again, and thank to anyone who tolerated my nonsense until the end.

#ikerev #ikemen revolution #cybird #confused #i tried #amon please succeed so i can call this a military dictatorship and finally sleep #i haven't checked this for typos i literally do not even want to read it

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sarinataylor · 5 years

Text

the beginnings of a soulmate au that may, one day, eventuate.

So, here’s the thing.

John didn’t notice.

When his soulmate died? John didn’t notice. It hadn’t been anything like all the stories he’d heard over the years: the colour didn’t leave his life, his heart didn’t skip a beat, and he didn’t fall to the ground as grief overwhelmed him. He’d gone to school with a soulmate, the words dark against his skin as he’d gotten dressed in the bathroom with steam from the shower curling the hair at the nape of his neck, and come back without one and he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t know when his soulmate died, didn’t have a time that made the breath catch in the back of his throat each day as it passed by agonisingly slow. He’d gone to school with a soulmate, a future, and come back home without one.

Or, perhaps, he’d still had one when he’d come home. He wasn’t sure. He’d come home and watched TV for a bit, fucked about on his Xbox while ignoring both his math homework and his little sister who insisted on chattering on at him about her day even when he snapped at her that he didn’t fucking care, Julie, Jesus Christ. He’d come home and for all he’d known he’d still had a soulmate waiting for him right up until the moment Julie had spilled her milk at dinner, splashing down his school top that he’d been rather hoping to stretch out for another day before washing. He was grateful, later, that she had — it was difficult enough, even after years of the fucking things, to sit amongst his peers in the Deceased Soulmate support groups and admit that, no, he didn’t know when his soulmate had died right down to the bloody second, let alone how difficult it would be to admit he didn’t know the day.

If she hadn’t of spilled her milk… well. The thing about soulmarks is: you sort of take them for granted. They spill out over your skin for your entire life and they don’t change. The don’t change unless your soulmate dies and when you’re fifteen years old death is a foreign concept. Death is for old people, or sick people, or people in different countries. Death isn’t for you or the people you care about; death isn’t for the person who is meant to be the other half of who you are. The act of obsessively checking your soulmark was considered a symptom of a multitude of mental illnesses and it was frowned upon to actively seek them out — they just were. If Julie hadn’t of spilled her milk he couldn’t say he would have realised until his shower the next morning. His soulmark sat low on his hip, just below the waistband of his boxers that he usually slept in and…

John’s soulmate died somewhere between 7:30 in the morning and 8:15 at night on the 12th June, 2012. He was fifteen years old, stood naked in his family bathroom with milk growing tacky on the skin of his belly when he found out. He’d been confused at first. He was pale, so the words usually stood out in dark contrast against his skin: You’re better than I ever imagined.

That was what got him, really. When he sat in the support groups and he talked about his experience. He didn’t have a generic soulmark. He didn’t have one of the Common Marks. There was no ‘Hello’ for him; no ‘Sorry, do you have the time?’ or ‘Nice to meet you, I’m—” No, John had the soulmark of a fucking fairytale. John had a soulmark just begging to be sold off to a major Hollywood studio and turned into a three part saga about the enduring nature of true, instantaneous love. John had You’re better than I ever imagined and he never got to find out what he would have said to deserve such praise.

He was pale, so the words usually stood out in dark contrast against his skin but as he peeled himself out of his pants, one hand stuck absently under the spray of the shower to test the water temperature and grumbling under his breath about Julie’s clumsiness, the contrast he was so used to seeing wasn’t there. He’d been confused, staring down at himself, and it had taken him a good thirty seconds to realise what was wrong. Staring down at himself, his pants pooled around his ankles and his hand still under the water, he hadn’t understood straight away that his soulmate was dead. The words had gone a dull, dirty colour — grey and purple and blue and not black. The words hadn’t been black because his soulmate had died.

His first support group, a week later after school at the local YMCA centre, please, do sit down, we only have an hour before the Alcoholics Anonymous get here, had been terrifying. Surrounded by others who had been just like him and yet so fucking different. It was like a strange badge of honour: who had the worst soulmate death. A lady had put her hand up and introduced herself, Suzie, apologising for not being able to stand. She was sorry, she had said, but her soulmate’s death had caused her to pass out as she drove to the shops and she’d be in a cast for another three months. It was unfair, she had said, that she hadn’t died too.

That was a common theme.

Suzie passed out from the pain of her soulmate dying and John didn’t even fucking notice.

(“I think, sometimes, about what it would have been like to meet them,” Suzie had said, a wistful smile on her face as she traced an absent minded pattern on her cast. “With words like God, they take their time I just know it would have been so romantic.”

John had sat opposite her with his eyes darting to the others in their circle, all nodding sympathetically as if her words had been a declaration of love, and wondered if this circle jerk of self pity actually helped anyone.)

It had been explained to him over the years, so many times that he’d lost count, that he had noticed. He had noticed that his soulmate had died but his brain wouldn’t let him remember to protect him. He had noticed that his soulmate had died but that his brain had waited until he was naked in his bathroom, half covered in milk, to let him come to terms with it. On some days this made more sense than others. On some days John just thought that he had been broken, been left behind, long before his soulmate had died.

Because the thing was that even when he’d noticed, even when he was sitting in a badly lit YMCA hall surrounded by his grief stricken peers… John hadn’t felt grief for his soulmate. He’d felt confused. He’d felt confused because this wasn’t how his life was supposed to go, how anyone’s life was supposed to go. You had a soulmate and then you found them. You had a soulmate, you found them, and you got married. You had a soulmate who you married and no matter what everything else would work out because you had your soulmate. He’d felt confused because his entire idea of what his future held was built around the idea that he had someone he was fated to spend that future with and all of a sudden he didn’t.

John was fifteen when his soulmate died. He was fifteen and he didn’t notice.

John was fifteen when his soulmate died, and sometimes he felt like that was the only thing anyone ever needed to know about him. It was one of the most common ice breakers: so have you met your soulmate yet? He lied, sometimes. Demurred with a shake of his head, eyes on the ground as his new acquaintance eagerly told him about their own soulmate, or attempted to commiserate about how difficult it was to wait for your one. Usually he told the truth in all its ugly glory.

There were cultures in which the soulmates of the dead were killed once they were left behind, John had learned in school. This was a barbaric practice, his teacher had intoned, praising the civilised nature of the Western world. There were cultures in which the soulmates of the dead were killed once they were left behind, but that was not a practice followed in England. No, in England they merely treated you as if you were already dead. This was supposed to be somehow better.

Usually he told the truth in all its ugly glory and he got to watch his new acquaintance recoil minutely, flinching away from him as if the death of his soulmate was somehow contagious. He got to watch as they stammered out their consolations as if their lukewarm apologies for his sorrow, his pain, his anger would have any effect on him now, years after the fact. He got to watch as the words formed on their lips: “I’ve heard there are support groups and dating sites—”

And there were. Support groups, of course, past the initial mandatory ones that GP’s were required to send patients to in the event of a soulmate death. The support groups got more bearable as time went on, the leaders referring him to ones filled with people whose experiences aligned better with his own. People who had become jaded by their experiences, who looked at coupled soulmates and wondered: would you have felt it if the other had died before you’d met? There were dating sites as well but John found them horrendously depressing.

If you were of the left behind, you had to options: your peers, or the soulmated who hadn’t met their one yet. The other left behind tended to be… depressing as all hell. It was an accepted opinion that any relationship post soulmate death was merely settling because you didn’t want to be lonely, and it was expected that any relationship pre soulmate meeting was a placeholder to be abandoned posthaste when the one was met. Neither options appealed to John all that greatly.

He’d dated, of course. Had a relationship or two which had fizzled out for one reason or another: they hadn’t been able to look past their own faded mark, let alone his; the chemistry simply hadn’t lasted; he’d felt as if he was competing with the ghost of a sentence that had never so much as been spoken.

(“Well, darling,” his mum had said, spooning another serving of roast potatoes onto his plate as Julie canoodled opposite him with her soulmate. “You can’t afford to be pi— I mean—”)

#john deacon #if it did it would be #joger #dealor #idk #my writing #this was writen about four months ago lmao #joger hc's

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ashtheshortstack · 5 years

Text

Garlic in the Cauldron - Ch 3

Garlic in the Cauldron

Adrien Agreste learned from a young age that witches were the enemies to vampires. He was taught to kill on sight, drink them dry, and never look back… however, meeting a witch named Marinette threw his entire world off balance.

Ch 3 - Drops of Sunlight

Read on ao3

<-Previous Chapter/Next Chapter –>

I’ll remember to update this on tumblr eventually.

“So, what’s your family like?” Adrien asked.

The pair sat together beneath the tree where Marinette had crashed her broom all those weeks ago. They’d begun meeting up there on a regular basis. Adrien informed Marinette of their hunting schedule, so he could sneak out to see her. After a few days, she decided to start bringing a blanket for the two of them to share. She’d lay it out like the two of them were having a picnic.

It was nice. Something so simple. He hadn’t ever experienced something like this. There were many times when they were out there, he was tempted to make a move. Wrap an arm around her shoulders. Hold her hand. Something… But he never got the guts.

Marinette hummed, gazing up at the stars above. “My parents are wonderful. They’re my coven’s bakers. They bake bread and sweets. They’re just… very warm, loving. They are attentive and supportive.”

Adrien couldn’t help but notice the way her eyes lit up when she spoke of her parents. He remembered his mother being warm like that. They used to spend so much time together. So many emotions swirled inside his chest. He desperately longed to feel that love again. The way Marinette described her parents sounded so wonderful. Why couldn’t he have that? Why didn’t his father love him like that? His throat felt tight, eyes glazing over. He sat up, sniffling and wiping his eyes quickly.

She followed, rubbing a hand gently on his shoulder. “Adrien?” she asked, voice full of concern.

“I wish… I wish I knew what that felt like,” he confessed. His groveled tone of his voice felt foreign. He’d never heard himself sound so raw with emotion when speaking. It scared him. He didn’t know how to talk about what he felt.

Marinette’s eyes were wide. Those bluebells looking at him with so much pity. She squeezed his shoulder. He’d never been comforted like this before. Not since he was young and his mother was with him.

She gave him a reassuring smile. “I’m so sorry.”

Forcing a smile, he shook his head. “Thank you. B-But you don’t need to worry about me. I’m okay. I’m glad you have a happy family. What about friends? Do you have friends?”

Marinette seemed cautious when she spoke this time. “Y-Yes. My best friend Alya, and I hang out with her boyfriend too. His name is Nino.”

Swallowing, Adrien nodded. “I-I see. Sooo… how does that work here? Courting, I mean.”

She snorted at him. “Vampires call it ‘courting?’ We call it ‘dating.’”

He’d been under the presumption that vampires were a little older fashioned. Not that he knew much about his own society, let alone the rest of the world. Just from what he gathered from talking to Marinette the last few weeks, it told him how… dated vampire traditions were. Maybe, it was because their society was so old. Who knew?

“How do you date people, then?” he asked.

“Well, we just like someone and date them? Why? Is that not how you do it?”

Laughing nervously, he fiddled with his hair. “We do that too, but if we’re not married by twenty-five then we’re forced into an arranged marriage.”

Marinette seemed surprised by the admission. Another emotion crossed her face, but Adrien couldn’t seem to decipher her. His instincts seemed to fail him at times. He was supposed to be able to sense strong emotions, but Adrien couldn’t seem to pick hers up often.

“You have a few years, right?”

Adrien nodded. “Yeah, I do. Knowing my luck, my father would stick me with someone awful. He doesn’t really care about how I feel about others too much.”

“The more you talk about your dad, the more I hate him.”

Snickering, Adrien jabbed his thumb in Plagg’s direction. “Join the club. Plagg’s the leader. There might be an initiation, so you’ll have to ask.”

Marinette grinned. “Is Plagg going to haze me?”

“He may just make you buy him camembert. It’s his new favorite food,” he joked.

“A cat who likes cheese… Huh. That makes sense though. Familiars aren’t like normal pets. They take on traits of their owners,” she said.

Tilting his head, the blonde gave her a puzzled look. “Really?”

She hummed and nodded. “Mmmhm! If it’s not you that likes camembert, then it’s probably a trait left over from his previous owner. Even if Plagg didn’t know his owner liked camembert. The—The warlock that Plagg was a familiar of… Tikki told me the kid was young. Sometimes, if a familiar has a super close bond with their owners, the familiar dies with them. But since Plagg and his owner didn’t get the chance to bond, he didn’t have that consequence,” she explained. There was a wavering in her voice.

He could tell she was sparing him the details of whatever his clan did to this kid. Probably killed his whole family. Adrien wouldn’t doubt that. Vampires could be ruthless when it came to getting what they wanted.

Adrien sat silently, mulling over the conversation. “What age do you get your familiars?”

“We’re matched with a familiar at the age of ten. It’s like our coming of age gift when turn double digits,” she told him. She paused a moment, licking her lips in thought. “D-Don’t feel guilty for what happened, okay? Plagg is clearly forming a bond with you. He couldn’t do that if there wasn’t something he liked about you.”

“I knew it,” Adrien murmured. He perked up calling up to Plagg in the tree above them. “I knew you liked me, Plagg!”

He hissed, tail bristling. “Whatever she told you, it’s a lie!”

Marinette laughed at the exchange. God, he loved her laugh. It sounded like chimes on a windy day. He wanted nothing but to hear that sound for the rest of his life.

Adrien fell back onto the blanket, curling his arms beneath his head. Marinette followed suit, lying down beside him. They sat in a comfortable silent for a few moments. Plagg glowered at him before turning his attention back to Tikki, making Marinette let out a soft giggle again. He was so happy with her. He didn’t know it was possible to feel this warm inside. This was friendship… and he was so grateful to experience it. Even if it was taboo, he didn’t care.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when her fingers pinched at his ear. Glancing sideways at her, he noticed her amused smile. Adrien cocked a brow, eyeing her curiously. “Uh… Something wrong?”

Marinette yelped, jerking her hand back. “Sorry! I just… Your ears are cute.”

He sucked in a breath, lips going into a flat line as his cheeks warmed. Oh, God. She was going to be the death of him… and he was supposed to have like another hundred and eighty years on his life.

“You think so?” he squeaked.

She laughed. “Yeah. I do.”

“Well,” he cleared his throat. “That’s not fair. Vampires have all types of stereotypical quirks. But you don’t have warts or a green skin.”

Marinette sat back up, leaning over him with a smile. “Maybe, you’re not looking close enough.”

Adrien pushed himself up. Leaning towards her, he made a show of squinting and searching her face. He pretending to look for any bumps or blemishes, but instead he noticed she had a dusting of adorable freckles sprinkled along the bridge of her nose. He gulped. She was too cute. Heart beating quickly, his eyes dared to glance at her leaps before he retreated. His cheeks felt so hot.

“W-Well, you lied. I didn’t see anything,” he murmured, pouting.

Marinette smiled, giggling at his expense. “Sorry,” she teased, shrugging with using her hands in the gesture.

Swallowing, Adrien gathered his courage. “You know… I’ve never felt so comfortable talking to someone like I do with you. I can joke around with you, and we make each other laugh. It’s nice…”

She ruffled his hair affectionately. “That’s what friends are for, silly. We’re supposed to enjoy each other’s company.”

He smiled. “I’m glad I met you, Marinette.”

She gaped, a little stunned at his admission before nodding in agreement. “Yeah, I’m glad I met you too, Adrien,” she smirked. “Even if it was a rough start.”

He groaned. Marinette loved joking about this far too much. Rubbing his temples, he frowned. “Jeez, don’t remind me.”

“Hey,” she patted his shoulder. “It’s alright. You didn’t eat me. I forgive you.”

Adrien gave her a sideways look. “I’d hope so. Considering you spend time with me every other day.”

“Which I also enjoy. It’s nice having someone to talk to about anything.”

He chuckled, flashing his fangs in a purely grin. “I agree. We talk about some wild things.”

“We do. And we’ve learned a lot about each other. Even though we’re pretty different, witches and vampires do have a lot in common too. I think… I think our kinds could get along again someday.”

Smiling, he nodded. Oh, how he wished. He wanted to be able to walk hand in hand with her without being judged. Without worrying for her safety. Adrien had avoided admitting it before… but he was falling for Marinette…

Hard.

______________________________________________________________

A few nights later, he beat Marinette there. He wanted to get out of his home asap. Adrien hated being cooped up in that dark mansion. The witch came traipsing into woods, their usual blanket strewn along one arm, and a large basket hanging off the other. It’s the most like a fairy-tale character she’d ever looked.

She wore a cute dress. It was red with black spots littered around on the top near her chest. The red was a lacy black that stopped at her knees. And, to his surprise, she actually wore a pointed witch hat. She shouldn’t be so cute. He thought the concept of witches hats never made sense but seeing Marinette wear one changed his mind. He was so lucky to know her.

Pulling his dark hoodie off his head, he tilted his head at her. “Hello, little red ladybug, bringing some treats to your grandmother?”

Marinette rolled her eyes, setting down the basket. “No, I was bringing some treats for a smartass vampire. I’m questioning now if he deserves them.”

“Oh, he does. He’ll wolf them down.”

She paused, blinking at him. “Was… Was that a pun?”

Adrien grinned, giving a lopsided shrug.

Marinette laughed. “You’re definitely not getting any sweets now.”

Dejected, he puffed out his bottom lip, giving the best puppy pout he could muster. She flicked him on the forehead. Adrien yelped, rubbing the sore spot. “That was rude.”

Marinette began to unfold the blanket. Adrien eyed the basket of goodies. "You didn't spike those with garlic, did you? I don't want to go into anaphylactic shock and keel over before I even get to truly live."

"You really are allergic to almost everything, huh?"

Adrien shrugged. "It's a gift."

He couldn't help but search her. Eyes wandering along the pompously poofy dress she wore. The sleeves were big on her arms, and the outfit flared out at her hips. Marinette seemed to notice his stare as she looked down at her choice of clothing. "We had a festival today, okay? We’re supposed wear traditional clothing that embodies familiars,” she quickly explained.

Ohhh. So, that’s why she was dressed like that. The red and black was to represent Tikki. That made sense. Witches had pretty interesting traditions.

His recognition must’ve been clear on his face when she gave him a shy smile. Adrien glanced away shyly, before giving her a sideways look and shifting awkwardly. “Do you… Do you think I’ll be able to see a festival sometime?”

Marinette seemed stumped by his question. Clearing her throat, she went back to laying out the blanket as she spoke. “M-Maybe. I hope there’s a day when vampires and witches get along again. But—uh—right now, no. Familiars can smell vampires from a mile away.”

Confused, Adrien felt his ears perk. “What? Really? Did Tikki smell me the first time I came here?”

She smoothed the blanket out, patting for him to come sit. Adrien did so, crawling over to take the spot next to her. Marinette reached into the picnic basket, taking out two eclairs. One for each of them. When she handed him the treat, her fingers brushed his. Adrien’s fingertips tingled at the touch.

“Tikki was sick the first time you came. I was flying us back home from the healer when I crashed. She still wasn’t in tip-top shape yet. She wanted me to do a big spell on you to protect myself, but I chose not to. For her safety… and the fact that you didn’t seem like a blood thirsty monster.”

He watched as Marinette took a bite of the treat. As if she hadn’t just told him she’s capable of powerful magic. Adrien followed suit, taking a bite of the sweet. Jesus… okay. Anything Marinette made was officially the greatest thing he’d ever tasted. He hadn’t even had chocolate since he was a kid.

Licking some of the chocolate off his lips, he looked at her. “If you don’t mind me asking, how powerful are you?”

Marinette smiled, placing a finger to her lips. “That’s a secret.”

“Aw, c’mon… You can’t tell me?”

“Sorry, family disclosed secret.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

There was a pause. Something in that admission had his mind whirling. Marinette must’ve felt it too. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes were wide. She seemed stunned that those words left her mouth. Adrien had to admit, he was a bit surprised too. Sure, they’d known each other close to a month now. But for a witch to openly say she trusted a vampire sounded unbelievable.

“Do you—Do you mean that?” Adrien asked a little too hopefully.

She glanced away, nodding shyly. “Yes. You’re my friend, Adrien. And I trust you.”

“Wow. No one has ever said that to me before.”

Marinette’s eyes shot back up, boring into his. “Now, someone has.”

She held out her fist. Adrien smiled, bumping his knuckle to hers. It’d been something they’d started. Anytime the moment got serious, Marinette would give him a fist bump to break the tension. He thought it was cute.

He took another bite of the éclair, a little too much. Maybe, he was just trying to compensate for the tenderness by being funny. Marinette never seemed to mind. He enjoyed being a comic relief in their serious moments. Whether it was dropping a pun, or now shoving too much pastry in his mouth.

Marinette gawked him. “Don’t eat it like that! You can’t even appreciate at it,” she laughed.

“I do appreciate it,” he retorted with his mouth full.

She scoffed at him. “You’re going to make yourself sick if you eat too much of it.”

Adrien waved a hand. He chewed, finally. And swallowed the pastry. “I didn’t eat before I came. I’m on an empty stomach.”

Marinette eyed him. “You’re not going to frenzy on me, are you?”

He snorted. “No. Takes about three days without blood for that to happen.”

“Did you drink some last night?”

“Yes.”

Her shoulders deflated in relief. “Okay. Fine. I’ll lay off.”

“Jeez, Ladybug, I can take care of myself,” he teased in a mocking tone.

She glowered at him. “Quit calling me that.”

“What about Bugaboo?”

“Even worse.”

“My lady?”

“…Acceptable on occasions.”

“Nice.”

They both sputtered with laughter. Adrien was so elated to have someone to talk to like this. Even if Marinette didn’t feel for him the way he felt for her, it didn’t matter. He was just glad to have someone to talk to. Someone to call a friend. You know, that wasn’t a talking cat.

Adrien took the last bite of the éclair. Chewing soundly like he was a starving man. So, maybe he’d neglected enough human food than normal. Marinette was right. He needed to be careful. If he skipped one too many meals or didn’t drink enough blood, he could hurt her. And that was the last thing he wanted to do.

It was funny, he realized. Marinette was basically teaching him what it was like to be a normal teenager. To have a crush. To have a friend. To sneak out to go be with said person. Pigging out on sweets that his father would have his ass for. It made him so happy. And that was a feeling he hadn’t experience in a long time. His mother made him happy, but she wasn’t here anymore. Granted, he wasn’t sure if she’d be too happy with him for having a crush on a witch either, but Adrien just didn’t care. His mother would be thrilled that he was feeling joyful again, wouldn’t she?

When he felt a thumb at the corner of his mouth, he almost lost his shit. He yelped, blinking stupidly as Marinette rubbed her thumb across him.

She gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry, you had chocolate on your mouth.”

“Oh.”

Marinette smudge the chocolate away, before bringing her thumb to her mouth and having the audacity to lick it off her skin. Adrien gulped. The slight made him way too warm.

She gazed at him. Scooting closer, her thigh pressed to him. Adrien was just trying not to tent his pants at that point. Any self-control he had was waning at the feeling of her thigh touching his. Suddenly, her thumb was back to his mouth. But this time, he doubted she was rubbing chocolate off. The pad brushed across his top lip before she lifted it at the corner, exposing his fang. Why was she studying it so closely? He assumed she was just curious. But was she scared?

Ugh, he wanted to be able to feel what she felt. So badly.

Maybe… Maybe he could? They were close. She trusted him. There was a slight possibility they were close enough for him to use that ability. His hand cupped hers. Marinette’s thumb left his lips, and her fingers splayed out against his cheek. Adrien couldn’t stop himself from leaning into her touch.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Her cheeks were pink, but she made no motion to retreat. “Yeah, sorry. I just—I just started wondering what they really looked like. But, you have chocolate all over your fangs,” she said with a smile.

He laughed. Taking her hand from his cheek, he pulled her knuckle to his lips, and pressed a kiss there. He traveled upward, giving one more peck to the back of her palm. Suddenly, the new feeling was overwhelming. He could sense her giddiness. Adrien took that as a good sign. He placed their hands on each of their thighs. His fingers intertwined between hers.

When Marinette didn’t let go of his hand for the rest of the evening… he took that as a good sign.

____________________________________________________________

Adrien was itchy. Why was he so itchy? He felt a paw poking at his cheek. He swatted at the cat. “Plagg, not now.”

“Kid. You have to wake up or else you’re going to be covered head to toe in a rash,” Plagg said sternly.

Groggily, Adrien rubbed his eye. “Wah…?”

He went to reach up with his other arm, only to find it resting beneath Marinette’s head. Oh shit. They’d fallen asleep!? He never slept during the night. How’d he…? What the fuck!?

Suddenly, he understood. The sun was peaking out from the horizon. He panicked. His father was probably sleeping at home. Hopefully, Nathalie hadn’t peaked into his room to check on him yet. If she had, he needed an excuse and fast.

He gently shook her awake. Marinette’s eyes were half lidded and groggy as she looked at him. “Adrien…? What are you doing in my room?”

“I’m not,” he said quickly. “We’re outside. We fell asleep. I have to get home… fast.”

Realization seemed to hit her, her eyes went wide as she rocketed to sit straight up. She began floundering and flailing her arms. “Oh my God, Adrien! This is all my fault! You have to go! I’ll clean this up and get back home before my parents wake up. You have to get back or else you’re going to be in trouble. I’m so sorry!”

“Hey! Hey…” he cooed, rubbing her shoulders. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine. Just get home safely, okay?”

Marinette nodded.

Adrien quickly turned into a bat, flying as fast as he could in the direction of his home.

When he finally arrived, he flew into the bathroom window. He immediately turned on the shower with cold water. He had cool his skin from the sun. The last thing he needed was to get caught with a rash. Then Nathalie and his father would know he hadn’t been home. All of the windows in the mansion are tinted. He wouldn’t have any sun access unless it was directly from outside.

Plagg stood on his bathroom counter as Adrien shucked off his clothes. The cat familiar snickered, earning a glare from Adrien.

“Why didn’t you wake us up sooner?” Adrien growled.

“You guys were so cute, how could we?” he joked, a clear edge in his voice. Adrien knew damn well that Plagg thought their romance was gross. “And Tikki fell asleep too… so I just didn’t want to wake anyone.”

“Tikki is going to kill you,” he said as he jumped into the cool shower.

Plagg sounded noncommittal as he spoke. “Yeah, sure. She’ll forgive me. So will you. Pretty sure you liked waking up with Marinette beside you.”

Adrien huffed as the cool water hit his skin. “Maybe.”

“Someone is sooo in love,” the cat cooed with a laugh.

“Shut up.”

“It’s true.”

“She doesn’t feel that way about me, okay?”

“Have you asked?”

Adrien snorted. “Why would I? Who wants to get turned down by the girl they like?”

“Who said she’d turn you down?”

“Plagg, stop with the mind games.”

“I’m just saying. You don’t know until you try.”

Adrien didn’t want to admit that he hoped Plagg was right. He hoped that he’d gather the courage to tell Marinette how he felt. And hoped she felt the same. No matter how taboo their romance was… it didn’t matter. They would be two beings in love, regardless of vampire or witch.

There was a rapping at the door.

“Uh, yes?” he called out.

“Adrien,” it was Nathalie’s voice. “What are you doing taking a shower at this time of the day?”

“I was having trouble sleeping, so I decided to try to take a shower and see if it’d help.”

Thank, God. That’d meant that Nathalie hadn’t checked in on him yet. So, he hadn’t gotten caught. She probably got back from the hunt and took a nap before coming to check on him.

“Okay. Get to back to bed soon.”

Adrien breathed a sigh of relief when he heard her footsteps walk away. He thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t gotten himself royally fucked by being out with Marinette last night. They’d have to be much more careful next time.

He just hoped Marinette didn’t get caught…

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dcarevu · 5 years

Text

Batman TAS: Vendetta

“Alfred! You’re beautiful!”

Episode: 23 Robin: No Writer: Michael Reaves Director: Frank Paur Animator: Spectrum Airdate: October 5, 1992 Grade: B

I love it when in Batman media, we get to see Batman solving mysteries. Particularly when it’s a little bit more involved than Batman simply putting something into his computer and having it shit out an automatic answer for him. I like to see him investigating a crime-scene, interrogating thugs, and exploring new areas. That is exactly what we got to see in the episode Vendetta, as Batman tries to figure out who is seemingly axing off different convicts that share some dark connections with Harvey Bullock. Because of these connections, along with some framing and some false evidence, Batman suspects that Harvey himself could be the one causing trouble, a concept that I feel was begging to be done. Bullock often suspects Batman as not only being untrustworthy, but sometimes even having a hand in specific crimes (see On Leather Wings). Here it is a reverse situation. Harvey didn’t do anything wrong (as Commissioner Gordon insisted to Batman, letting him know that Bullock is a good cop), so Batman, instead of immediately blaming him and going after him, takes his time, trying to make sure that he has the mystery solved. This highlights one of Bullock’s flaws, and that is his pride (which we have mentioned before). Once he suspects something, he has too much pride to consider other possibilities. And sometimes, these suspicions of his can get him into a lot of trouble like in the episode P.O.V. Batman, on the other hand, is much more unbiased when he is at work. And even though he heavily suspected Bullock, in the end, he was willing to admit that he was mistaken to Bullock’s face. Bullock, obviously foreign to this respectable behavior, seemed confused, but perhaps it was enough to maybe teach him a thing or two. Batman’s little speech at the end was really nice too, and it shows that even though he feels similar about Bullock to how Commissioner Gordon feels, that he’s stubborn and hard to work with, he still respects him on some level. He knows that Bullock wants what is best for the city, and that he believes in keeping crime down while keeping innocent people safe. They both have questionable ways of working with the law too. Bullock can be slimy, sneaky, and willing to break some of the rules. So can Batman. But one major difference is that Bullock is an official employee, while Batman isn’t. Yet another thing that he is incredibly proud of. He also seemed to assume that Batman wouldn’t ever bother helping out someone like him, as if they were enemies. He didn’t seem to understand that Batman wants the same basic things that he does. The two could probably work pretty well together if they tried. And I’m not going to pretend that Batman can’t be just as stubborn as Bullock. He’s the protagonist, so we may not notice it as much (we get more insight on him), but we are sure to notice a lot of Bullock-like qualities that he possesses as we move much further into the DCAU, when he meets up with some future protagonists. Batman can be a dick, guys. But that’s a discussion for another day. I’ll just leave it with saying that I think as Batman gets more jaded and as things around him start changing, he gets much more disgruntled.

“Why’d you stick your neck out like that to help me?”

“We may have different ways of enforcing the law, but we both believe in it.”

Speaking of disgruntled, Killer Croc makes his first appearance here, and it is pretty satisfactory. When I first saw this episode (my dad watched it with me, by the way, alleviating the pain of him only seeing I’ve Got Batman in My Basement and The Forgotten prior), I already knew who Croc was, and had already seen an episode with him, so the buildup was not nearly as strong. For Char, I think it was more elevated, as I don’t think she was expecting him. She was familiar with his Suicide Squad design, though, so it was hard for her not to compare it with this more ugly one. Yeah, I don’t know about Croc’s design. I’m pretty used to it, so it doesn’t bother me, but I have heard others say that they’re not really a fan. He only kinda looks crocodile-like, and I think that is because of the more subdued, realistic approach that this show was initially going for. I tend to prefer the hulking mass that we get to see in Arkham Asylum, which is significantly scarier. In this episode, we see the fear in the convicts’ eyes as they witness the strange-looking, reptilian man, and I think that it ends up being a little anticlimactic, especially since he doesn’t kill them or anything (on top of looking the way he does). Taking all that into consideration, the episode would have gotten an A most likely if the issue was fixed. Buuuut, I do like Croc as a villain, despite this. He has an interesting enough backstory, he creates a challenge for Batman, he has a cool habitat, and his personality is fine. He’s definitely not a sympathetic villain like Freeze or Two-Face, but Harvey Bullock was the one with the focus this time. It makes sense that Killer Croc would serve more as that scary, mysterious threat which lurks around in the water, stalking and capturing him. Too much insight can take away from the intimidation. Also, not every villain in real life has all that much depth to them. As long as the episode is still entertaining and has other qualities to take the place of the intense feels (and this episode does indeed), then it’s perfectly reasonable that not every villain in Gotham would either. Sometimes you just need an evil guy, with an evil plan, and a cool gimmick.

Oh, Spectrum is back with the animation. This is weird because, again, I thought they went under after Heart of Ice which was a handful of episodes back now. Also, this episode isn’t quite up to snuff with a lot of the things that they’ve done. I noticed some recycled animation, some weird models, and overall a cheaper-feeling quality. But it’s not Akom-level stuff either, it’s closer to Dong Yang, which is 100% fine by me. I’m trying not to be spoiled. This is a 90’s television show, aimed at kids, which had an accompanying toy line. How much can I really expect? So while not very recognizable as Spectrum, it is still beyond passable, and the directing/storyboarding was a highlight (take a look at some of the below screenshots).

Do these look like Spectrum drawings to you?

This one is a little more like it.

I like the bit where Commissioner Gordon dumps out his nasty coffee. Another little bit of character.

Croc’s hand reaching out of the water. “Hayyyy, guys! Can I get a lift?”

This still doesn’t do the intensity of this guy’s fear any justice. His sudden gasp was one of pure panic.

These types of blue colors are incredibly common in Batman TAS. The team couldn’t always use the variety in colors that they wanted. They were pushing the budget as it was.

This section confused me a little bit. We see Bullock toss a toothpick to the ground. But later, the toothpick is treated as though Croc planted it to frame him. It must have been a different toothpick, right? This is not communicated very clearly. And I don’t know, how would Croc have known that Bullock would have a toothpick on him? How would he know that others would notice? And how well known for carrying a toothpick around is Bullock, exactly?

A great shot.

The planted toothpick. Or maybe it’s actually the one Bullock dropped. I’m not entirely sure.

We see lightning flash, engulfing Bullock in light. It looks awesome in motion because we don’t linger on it. Although one thing that bugs me about cartoons is that we always hear the thunder boom at the exact time that the lightning strikes, which is generally not what we experience.

Look at those reflections. Another cool use of lightning. We need a Top 10 Lightning Strikes post eventually I think. Hmm...

There was nothing like this on TV at the time.

Just an s short of being a Psycho reference.

This might be the first time that we see how the entrance to the Batcave works? Oddly, we hear the clock ticking in this scene. I wonder if the hands move. And if they do, there has to be some function to prevent the door from opening when it reaches 12 normally. I’ll bet that Alfred is the one who has to fix the time.

I love how the camera slowly pans as we see them coming down the stairs, with the computer system in view. I’d love to hang out in the Batcave.

Another scary Croc entrance. Fitting that this episode aired in October.

“Ah, turnips.”

Awesome shadow work. For no other reason than that it looks awesome and makes Batman look hella intimidating. This is why people fear him.

Batman smacks the plant out of his hands. Get the gross vegetables out of his face!

“I’ve got plenty of answers. .38 caliber answers.”

“You’d better hope your men are very good shots.” I’m sure you guys can come up with many alternative captions for this screenshot.

Batman’s nose is a little crazy here. He’d look more like a bird if the ears were missing.

This scene made me chuckle. A false Harvey Dent walks in, dropping wet. Like, yup, that’s him alright. Nothing nefarious going on at all.

Gotta feel a little bad for him, even if you don’t like him.

“Alfred! You’re beautiful!” Best moment.

See, I mean, he looks okay. Just not the best Croc design out there.

Hmmm.. Recycled segment.

Now these are some Spectrum shots!

A really cool Batman entrance.

Char’s grade: B

Next time: Fear of Victory Full episode list here!

#dcau #batman tas #vendetta #killer croc #batman the animated series #dc animated universe #croc #batman

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leoofredkeep · 5 years

Photo

Rooting for Cersei

From the outset, the story has disguised its villains as the good guys and the other way around. The author claims he writes "grey" characters with both qualities and flaws but a closer look shows that the "nice guys" or those who claim to be "rightful" are consciously causing the most horrendous things while the "selfish villains" are doing minor direct damage when they are not merely defending themselves. The audience is consistently misled into accepting "heroes" whose decisions unleash the most evil activities like war, human sacrifice or foreign invasion, all under seemingly "honest" or justified pretexts, hiding a blatant disregard for life or freedom of choice.

Ned Stark is the first of these disguised villains. Presented with a genetic secret of no consequence, he decides to reveal it to the world in full understanding of the war it is about to start. He says "there is no other choice", denying himself and the world any freedom in the matter, not showing a second thought about the cost in utterly innocent lives and the disruption it is bound to represent. By the time this happens, it has become obvious that Joffrey is a dubious candidate for the throne but so was Robert before him and the realm was peaceful and prosperous. Ned will never take this into consideration anyway, Joffrey's personality plays no role in his decision. Ned Stark values principles more than the people they are meant to benefit. He has the cart before the horse and the result is a war no one needs. "Winter is coming", we'll hear the fool mumble a few times, but righting a petty wrong is more important to him than preparing for it.

Learning his father was arrested, Robb reacts by "calling the banners". The Starks are implicitly presented as good people and good rulers but the son reacts just as his father would and immediately calls the armies of the whole North to serve his personal family matters. He doesn't question his father nor does he attempts at negotiating anything. He marches south with battle plans and his first one involves sacrificing 2000 of his own men in a decoy move. Conscious of the price, he will prepare the rest for more and consciously send terms he knows are unacceptable. He will tell his mother once he only means to apply pressure to get his sisters back but will never act on this.

When he meets a nurse on the battlefield, his only plan is to kill Joffrey and he needs her to open his eyes on the misery he causes. Robb wil remain blind to danger and common sense, though. His last plan will be to get help from the man to whom he made a false promise in order to attack a psychological objective. "Show them how it feels to lose what they love" will be his mother's words and he'll go for it.

Stannis thinks of himself as "the rightful king". He doesn't really want the position but thinks he has to take it because he dislikes choices. His ideal world is one of regulated certainties in which people do what they must, not what they want. He will deal "justice" rigidly, without compromises, will not ally with anyone not fitting his views. He will bend them by force instead, fighting the world if he has to and sacrifice his own daughter for a purpose which is not his or anyone's, really. Stannis values nothing more than his own concept of order. As Ned Stark, he fails to see it as a means to an end and will always prefer the rules to the ruled.

Renly does not like his brothers, does not think they should be king. He thinks he should be because he is a nicer person, because he is more popular. As nice as it is for people to like their rulers, it is a serious stretch to present war as a justifiable price for them. Renly does this, however, and abuses his popularity to start a war of his own. He will be king because he can, because his lover's family is rich enough to provide him with a large army and sustain the war effort. There is no telling how he will rule, this is not part of his program. His only promise is to offer a nicer smile than the fat drunk before him. We see him reproach Robert his taste for war then start his own. Renly is a certified hypocrite.

Margaery is Renly's queen and all about business. After he dies, she'll want to be Joffrey's queen, even though her former husband wanted Joffrey's head. At this point, it is safe to say she will do whatever it takes to get where she wants. Cersei married Robert after he became king and their union helped keep the realm at peace. Margaery married a pretender in order to better fuel his private war effort. But Margaery smiles at people and pretends to care for them so people like her more. She knows how to use people's desires or beliefs and will do so whenever she gets a chance. That doesn't make her a villain, after all she is not the one initiating aggression. She willingly sides with it without much scruple, whether it is Renly's war or Joffrey's urges. Of the various potential rulers this story proposes, and Margaery is one in that she attempts at taking over to some extent, she remains one of the most acceptable.

Starting off as sold, abused and kind, Daenerys takes her brother's role when he dies and turns into the epitome of power seen as personal property. What once belonged to her mad father, she will take back whatever the cost, even if it means bringing savage hordes and weapons of mass destruction to the place she calls "home" but really considers as nothing else but her private backyard. "I will take what is mine. With fire and blood!" This is what Daenerys really is about and she only stops on her way to practise the skills she knows she will need, abandoning the people of Meereen to the hands of a sellsword without scruples once she thinks she's done. Like Stannis, she is all about getting people to "bend the knee" to her but where he felt he was following some universal rule, she does it out of pure sense of entitlement. Trying to listen to advice at first she later admits she never wanted to. She is "the Dragon" and will take what dragons take, the way they do: by burning it down first. Realising her "property" is about to be invaded by some undead army, she turns to defend it as anyone else would. Daenerys is the classical tyrant: someone who decides to take power unasked and wield it entirely based on personal judgement.

Jon Snow is a good guy. He is even a conciliator, one who finds reasons to unite opposites rather than choosing sides but he is tragically incompetent. He was surprised by Craster, captured by wildlings, failed to convince anyone but Maester Aemon or those he saved from something. Elected Commander, he was such a terrible leader he was assassinated by his own men. Warned of Ramsay's personality, he ran head on into is trap. Finally, his last blunder gave the Night King a dragon and the means to bring down the Wall. Without it, White Walkers and their army of dead men would have remained confined to the empty spaces north of the Wall as some weird tourist attraction.

So seriously, who would want to root for the man who always makes a mess of everything?

Cersei is not a nice person. She is not loveable, she does not care for others and will occasionally over-react to threats, like direwolves around her children or manipulation attempts on her sons. Yet, she never actively tried to take advantage of people, advised her son against going to war against the North and objected to Jaime giving the Dornish cause for conflict. She is utterly reactive, married the king to become queen after rebellion had ended and put up with him for 17 long unhappy years for the sake of peace. She is not a conqueror taking armies of slaves and savages to a place she calls hers together with tyrannical demands. Threatened of denunciation by Ned Stark, she still found the nerve to offer him a way out twice, again for the sake of stability in the realm. She has made a few mistakes on the way, of which she has learned, and remains the most realistic ruler at hand. Of all the proposed "solutions" to the question of power, she is by far the least problematic choice.

#Game of Thrones #Cersei Lannister #Daenerys Targaryen #Ned Stark #Robb Stark #Stannis Baratheon #Jon Snow #Renly Baratheon #Margaery Tyrell

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emmamorsmorde · 5 years

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Emma Persephone Vanity was born on a warm spring day on March 25th and is from Germany. She is cisfemale who identifies as heteromantic bisexual. She aligns herself with the Death Eaters but is a double agent for the Order of the Phoneix. She was arranged to Regulus. She currently doesn’t have a job and is living off her wealth.

Wand: 12 ½ inches Chestnut with Dragon Heartstring, unyielding

Patronus: Lion; able to cast

Knows: English / German

[ APPEARANCE ]

Standing at 5’2’’ and just over a hundred pounds, Emma is a small girl. She has pale skin and vibrant brown eyes and straight dark black hair that goes past her shoulder though with magic it’s usually in perfect braids. She has often been compared to a porcelain doll with how perfectly and composed she always looks and is often thought of as looking scary. She has light freckles on her nose and cheeks but they’re not very apparent at first glance.

Emma wears a lot of dresses and a lot of white and black, always something classic. She likes traditional wizard clothes but on occasion has worn muggle clothes. Her mother has a fashion line called Vanity that she often dresses in as well, very fashion oriented.

Emma is portrayed by Camila Mendes.

[ HER PARENTS ]

Otranto and Aphrodite were arranged earlier than most, with Aphrodite’s parents fearing that Aphrodite’s rebellious nature would get the better of her and she’d do something that she’d regret. Aphrodite was too tactical for that and Otranto and Aphrodite made fast friends and decided early on that they could cultivate a facade of them as two people who are in love which Otranto believed would further his advancement in Foreign Affairs, which it did, as he became Head of Foreign Affairs and Sports while Aphrodite created a very high fashion brand of clothing under the brand name, “Vanity.” So after getting over their disappoint of having a girl, they decided to raise her to be the perfect pureblood wife and lead her in the direction of being a prize any pureblood male would love to be arranged to.

[ CHILDHOOD / JAMES ]

Emma had always been one to follow the rules; even at a young age, rules weren’t questioned. She knew she should be seen and not heard and she tried her very best to appease her parents in any way that she could, and because of this, a few words of kindness that she could tell were true would go a long way to her. She learned all the ways to be a proper little girl, the ways she was expected to be a proper lady, and all the laws and traditions, making sure it was clear that she should listen to her parents but one day her husband would be her life. That seemed to be the only thing that mattered to her parents, so she became obsessed with trying to be able to control that in some way without directly asking her parents who she wanted. She decided she would try her hardest to impress everyone at balls and galas and that when she was finally in Hogwarts she would make sure that any guy would want her and she would marry the best last name to make her family (who she knew wished she were a boy) proud. She had read in books that love made this difficult, so she denounced it quickly and dismissed the concept, and that kept with her through her Hogwarts years. She was taken to foreign countries frequently but left alone and knew not to disturb her parents. She had private dance lessons, private tutors and learned a few instruments and even two other languages but never with other children. Her father would talk to her when she asked for another hobby, and then for however long it took to set up some arrangements for her (which was never long) or when she got him talking about Quidditch which she started to do in a vain attempt to gain attention from him which didn’t work very well but she quickly fell in love with it.

Her only friend was James Potter. Her parents didn’t exactly approve. The Potters came from a different kind of family but still pureblood and still had that sense of traditionalism and that was seen as acceptable.

She and James became fast friends but wouldn’t consider themselves friends at all because they were “arch enemies” or “rivals;” they were competitive and way too much. When she wasn’t with him she became that perfect little angel for her parents, proper and good but with him it was like you couldn’t get Emma to stay still. Chasing each other through the ballroom - trying to see how much milk one of them could chug - a blink and Emma was completely different.

[ HOGWARTS ]

James THRIVED in Gryffindor.

Emma, however, did not. She was very close to being very popular, but in her early years she lacked an off switch which was off putting, her voice was deemed annoyed, her know it all attitude too much and her traditionalism was lost on her young housemates. None of them cared that she could do a perfect waltz, or sing in three languages, or stitch a dress. They ignored her and it caused Emma a lot of tears. Talking to James was now impossible, her classmates already hated her and she knew it be worse if she was seen talking to the “enemy” that was Gryffindor she had no one. She’d write to him frequently and that’s how they stayed close.

Emma did get on the Quidditch team in her second year, and made Captain the third year. She was the first female Slytherin Captain in a long time and she finally felt herself coming out. She dove into this and her studies, she carried a playbook wherever she went, pouring into it and making her team practice endlessly. Her and James were able to speak again but it was like the old days with arguing and being competitive and even though she still wasn’t particularly liked, she was well respected because the Slytherin team was good and they kept winning with her. Emma decided that she didn’t need friends at all - she was just going to marry well and be the keeper for her favorite team.

Years progressed and she became the weird one from Slytherin. Usually thought of as cold, she and Severus almost became friends with how much others in their own house ignored them and teased them, but they never grew close, they just understood each other. Both liked to be left alone.

Whispers began in her year, and while Emma agreed that pureblood tradition should be upheld and that muggleborns shouldn’t erase that, she felt uneasy with what they were saying and how harsh they were. She began writing to James again, questioning, unsure if it was okay if she felt this way and that and he, as always, wrote back with an open mind. She was still unsure about her feelings.

Like a switch, everything changed when she came back the summer of 7th year. The Slytherin boys wouldn’t stop talking to her, everyone was a bit more careful with her and she became suspicious. It was too late for their niceties, she was over everyone and she had already felt wronged even though 11 year old her would have eaten this up. It became apparent that all of Emma’s teaching and grace made her an ideal candidate for marriage, and with how she attractive she seemed to have become, the guys were much more interested in her. She smiled, she did the dance, and she knew her parents would arrange her with someone and she would live through that marriage, but was praying for it not to be someone who was going to be heavily involved in the war effort. She would have dreams about marrying someone proper, having a kid with them and taking her baby and leaving. She played her part and got arranged to the best prospect any girl her age could- the only real heir of the black family, Regulus.

[ REGULUS ]

Her and Regulus got arranged and immediately things were being planned. She had signed the very large parcel that was delivered to her by two owls (because it was so heavy) about how important it was to be a Black, the sort of rituals and spells that Regulus would be allowed to put on her and of course all the rules she’d have to follow once she had married into the name. Emma was, for once, over joyed. Regulus was amazing and Emma always knew that she was going to be arranged and that she’d have to follow his command to the T and that didn’t bother her at all, she had been preparing for it her whole and his mother was even astonished at how many ancient cleaning spells she knew. ( They just don’t teach that at Hogwarts anymore, it’s a real shame she had said and Emma agreed. ) The amazing part was that Regulus was sweet and kind to her, he kind of always looked up to her as her Captain and getting married to him would have been perfect. He didn’t believe in the dark lord he told her one night in hushed tones and she agreed, he was the first person in Slytherin she told her feelings to and he would talk to her about how they should run away together once all of this was over and just how incredible nice it would be. Sure, they weren’t in love but they would have been happy and when Regulus died, Emma felt her life crumble around her, she slept for days, sometimes waking up to eat a little as her house elf Bitsy would come and feed her and luckily everyone had enough sense to leave her alone.

However because of all this drama, this made her free not to be married and still be in the dark lord’s ranks, the Black sisters consider her almost family and have given her a small manor in appreciation of what could have been. Knowing that the dark lord took away her future with Regulus however made her want to be in the order even more. So when Bellatrix welcomed her with open arms since she saw Emma as useful- she jumped at the chance.

[ HOW SHE FEELS ABOUT THE WAR ]

She really did enjoy being in Slytherin - she felt like it was a home. The common room was beautiful and comforting, she loved the green glow from the lake, the cozy place she was able to usually snag in the common room, her bed and dark green drapes. She felt like a Slytherin; she knew that the older Slytherins who were more wise tried to get her peers to play nicer and she knew that these were her people. At the same time she hated everyone in her whole house. She couldn’t stand that once she became pretty and they realized she had some value, they began being fake nice and acting like nothing happened over the past six years. She felt like an object or a pawn - but she didn’t want to be a pawn, she wanted to be a Queen. And while she thought pureblood traditions were important and should be upheld and she did want to be a housewife, she didn’t think this war was going right at all. They were killing people in the streets, they were using spells without consent to make wizards and witches do things they would be horrified to do for fun. If there was a purpose, she could understand the use of a unforgivable but they were being reckless and frankly undignified. The most confusing point was that they were killing purebloods - like the McKinnons - and vilifying others and the whole point was to keep pureblood sacred. She knew they were wrong, she knew she wanted to stop them but she couldn’t do it alone. She knew she had to do it slowly. She knew she had to be dignified. And she knew that the death eaters wouldn’t expect her.

#emmamorsmorde

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shimmershaewrites · 6 years

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Random bits and lines from Caryl fics that could have been. Still maybe could be, if I ever get rid of this big ball of hurt and disappointment in the pit of my belly.

Merle's all hyped up when he busts through the trailer door. Dumps the six pack in his arms on the lumpy sofa and just grins at him.

It's not the coat hanger grin Daryl's so used to suffering when his brother's at his most obnoxious or the manic baring of teeth that usually accompanies one of his drug-fueled spirals. No. This one's full of...wonder? "Hell's wrong with you?"

"Ask me what I just saw off Mile Marker 73. Go 'head. Ask me," he all but begs, bending down to free a beer from its plastic necklace. Liberates another one and tosses it at him with no warning.

Daryl grunts. Rubs at the sore spot on his chest through the sweat-dampened cotton of his wife-beater. Scowls at the asshole as he pops the tab. Shit ain't even cold. It's lukewarm at best and goddammit do they need a better place. A place with a working air conditioning unit and a couch that doesn't try to probe him in the ass every time he has a lapse in judgment and sits down in it. To be honest, he could really care less what Merle saw and he tells him so. Plain to his face. "Fuck do I care?" His brother cares even less that he doesn't care, though. Just blurts it all out like Daryl didn't even say nothing.

"Just saw Julia Fucking Roberts with a baby hanging off her tit. Right there on the side of the road."

Daryl scoffs into his beer. Looks up and peers into his brother's eyes, his earlier assumptions in doubt. They're bright and his pupils are normal, but still. "You high?"

"That any kind of question to ask your big brother?"

"Merle!" Daryl barks.

"Tomorrow isn't a promise, Daryl. It's a wish. A dream. And those? They don't always come true."

"Been watching tv with your ball busting daughter. Kid's 14 going on 40."

He hesitates again and her fingers curl into her palm. Press until she can feel the little crescent moons branded on her skin. She tries to bite her tongue--she really does--but the part of her that came roaring back to painful life seeing him there on her doorstep the first time, so much loss mixed with longing in his blue eyes, it rushes headlong into salvation or Hell. She doesn't know which. She can't say she even cares anymore.

He’s got her panties stripped down to her ankles, her tee shirt shoved up around her neck, and his greedy mouth mapping out each rib beneath her satin skin, two fingers buried knuckle deep when the bedroom door opens without warning, and it’s every parent’s nightmare; not that he

a parent, but Carol is, and she does what he figures any rational, self-respecting parent would do in this particular panicked situation: she shoves his head further down her body and yanks the comforter they’d kicked to the foot of the bed during their

extracurricular

activities over his bare ass all the way up to her chin, calls out her little girl’s name in a voice that’s a little higher pitched than normal but welcoming all the same. “Sophia.”

Kid’s eyes get bigger with each swirl of the butter knife through the bowl of chocolate icing and Daryl don’t blame her one bit because it’s the good stuff. Thick and rich, enough cocoa in it to jumpstart a dead man’s heart, and

damn

. 7.

Daryl eats his fill of pasta. Soaks it all up with a little too much wine because the company’s good but he ain’t used to the talking no more or the carefree laughs. The shared looks between the two men are too much. Too happy in the middle of this hell on earth, too intimate, and eventually, well. It starts to get to him—being the third wheel.

Aaron doesn’t even seem surprised when he pushes back from the table and mumbles his goodbyes.

He sees himself out. Stumbles just the slightest bit on the next to last step before he grabs the railing, looks up at the Virginia moon so big and so bright and lets the crisp night air wash over his flushed cheeks while he gathers his thoughts and his equilibrium.

Really not sure if I posted this one or not. Anyway, it's an unfinished challenge fic, so.

Off your rocker

“Draw the short end of the stick again, Son?”

Hitching the worn strap of his crossbow higher over the round of his shoulder, Daryl merely grunts in response. It’s neither an affirmation nor a denial, but if the old man is bothered by it, he doesn’t let it show. It certainly doesn’t shut him up anyway. Ain’t much of anything can do

that,

he reckons. Might’ve taken the retired vet a while to warm up to the whole lot of them—warm, weren’t that a nice, fine, foreign concept these days—but now that he has? He hasn’t looked back.

Unperturbed, Hershel steers the one-sided conversation forward in his rambling drawl. “While I appreciate the continued pleasure of your company, I’m perfectly capable of handling such delicate matters on my own.”

Daryl snorts. Ain’t nothing delicate ‘bout these trips just beyond the tree line and they both know it.

Still

. Could be worse. Could be partnered up with Dog if he hadn’t developed a predilection for playing nanny to that little shit Carl in the misguided notion that he was going to keep the boy out of trouble. You ask him, the kid’s middle name started with a big ass T. “Ain’t my rule. Rick’s. Think I wanna…”

“Play babysitter to an old man?”

Daryl huffs. “Now you’re just puttin’ words in my mouth.” Briefly glancing back, he shakes his head. “Y’ain’t old.” Without missing a beat, he mutters a clarification, one corner of his mouth turning up so slightly even

wasn’t sure if it was a smile or not. “You’re ancient. Bit of a difference.”

Far from being offended, Hershel chuckles. “That so?”

With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Daryl nods. “Way I see it, you got experience.”

“Experience?”

“Life experience. Lots of it. Them assholes back at camp? Don’t have much if they have any. Least not the kind that’s going to help them survive in this world. You do.” He might lack in table-taught manners—he’s a Dixon, after all—but he’s got common sense in spades, and he don’t ever say something he don’t mean. Following in his wake, the old man falls uncharacteristically silent, likely digesting his words. It ain’t often Daryl doles out words of praise and they both know it.

Nearing a fallen log, Hershel slows. “Here.”

Scanning their immediate surroundings for any hint of unwanted company and finding none, Daryl looks up and squints into the pale Winter sun. With much of their food source in hibernation or holed up in whatever bit of shelter to found, the dead were decaying and sluggish in this dick-shrinking cold.

Still

. “Here?”

“Here.”

“Alright. Good a place as any.” Putting his back to the nearest tree and averting his narrowed gaze, he shoulders his crossbow and tries not to cringe at the telltale clink of the old man’s belt. Ain’t no such thing as privacy anymore and it’s a damn shame because he can think of a hundred and one other things he’d rather be doing right about now. Like hunting. Too bad the only squirrel he sees, skittering from tree to spindly tree, is too scrawny to be worth the effort. Knowing Carol, she’d probably fork it over to the little parasite taking up residence in Lori’s womb anyway. Thoughts of the woman’s foolish disregard for her own well-being over others make him shake his head to himself. He wonders would it have been different. If he had walked out of those woods with her little girl, would she treat herself with as much care as strangers not even worth half her salt? He’s pulled from that line of thinking by the old man’s nonchalant request.

“Mind handing me some of them leaves over there, Son?”

Carefully avoiding any eye contact, Daryl doesn’t draw out the task. That would only make the situation even more embarrassing. He hands over the leaves and straightens, clearing his throat uncomfortably as he delves beneath the cover of his poncho for a pack of cigarettes he knows isn’t there. Smokes might not be a necessity for survival, but fuck if he don’t miss them.

Damn

meddling

woman

, he thinks, peering through the trees at the way they’d come, barely able to make out Beth and the woman in question. Course, the gesture doesn’t go unnoticed. Old man’s smart enough not to poke a stick at a bear, though. Least Daryl thinks he is, ‘til he hears what comes out of his mouth next and nearly swallows his own tongue because of it.

“Girl’s sweet on you.”

He says it like they’re two coworkers enjoying a smoke break. Not two would-be strangers doing what they’re…doing and hackles raised, Daryl sputters. Because it’s easier to spit outrage at an unmade accusation than admit a truth that’s too close for comfort. He might not be well-versed in the ways of women, but like he’d once told Andrea, he’s observant and Carol’s got a soft way ‘bout her anyhow. Been more than once the look in her pretty blue eyes made him ache for something he ain’t never had. “The hell. Ain’t into kids.”

“Good to know,” Hershel says conversationally. “Wasn’t talking about my daughter, Son. Neither one of them. But we both know

that

. Besides. You walk this earth long enough, anybody younger than you becomes a kid.”

Daryl lifts his thumbnail to his mouth and gnaws, piercing the abused skin with blunt teeth. “Off your rocker, Old Man.” The quip he gets in return is quick and expected.

“Comes with the territory of being ancient, I imagine.”

“Man, you got your pasty white ass hangin’ out in the wind and you wanna gossip?” Flustered as he is, he keeps his voice low, his agitated footfall just as quiet as he whirls around to jab his finger right beneath the old man’s nose. He hasn’t made it this far being a dumbass. “You don’t know nothin’.”

Taking a moment to rezip his fly and wipe his hands on a rag, Hershel calmly stands to his full height and looks down at him. He doesn’t bother to hide his smirk when he uses Daryl’s own words against him or the knowing twinkle in his eyes. “Said it yourself, Son. I’m old

and

experienced. Been around the block a time or two. Might even say I’ve picked up a few things. I stand by my word. That girl’s sweet on you. Judging from your reaction? The feeling’s mutual.” Parting shot fired, he walks away.

It takes Daryl but a few seconds to match his easy, deliberate stride. “Naw.

Naw

. The hell you think you’re goin’?”

“We really doing this silent treatment shit?” Daryl grumbled. Carol’d been giving him the cold shoulder for the better part of the evening, and fuck if he knew why exactly. Sure, he might have gotten them (just a little) lost—playing cross country navigator in his brother’s borrowed truck wasn’t exactly the same as tracking a buck in the Georgia woods. And wasn’t she, as a Lit-loving nerd, always preaching that the best roads weren’t always the most traveled ones anyway? No. He was reasonably sure the hundred-mile detour from their actual destination point wasn’t the cause of her black mood, and that led him back to square one. “S’not my fault they only had one room.”

She didn’t bother answering him. She just huffed and marched across the room, heaving her overstuffed duffel bag on top of the dingy bed and starting to dig through it like it held the secrets of the fuckin’ universe.

wished

because he was floundering. Some last hurrah this was turning out to be. Stuck in Bumfuck, Nowheresville in this Bates Motel wannabe with a best friend who’d sooner rip his nuts off than utter a civil word. Tired and working against developing a foul mood of his own, he tossed his own pack to the foot of the mattress and sighed. “Got a beer in there?”

Carol only paused long enough to roll her eyes at him and glare.

“Guessing not,” he muttered. “Shit.” When her only reaction was to continue to freeze him out, he sighed again, even deeper than the last time, and dropped to the hard, lumpy mattress. If she thought he was going to be all chivalrous and shit and offer to sleep on the floor, she had another thing coming. The carpet was filthy, half the stains defying categorization. Besides. Weren’t like they hadn’t shared a bed before. Course, all those times had predated puberty, but still. “Sorry, alright?” She softened for about a second before he unwisely tried to choke himself with his own foot in a dick, Dixon move. “

Jesus

. What crawled up your ass?” 10. Carol hadn’t taken much with her when she’d packed up and left home. Ed hadn’t allowed it. Hindsight being 20/20 and all, she should have dug her heels in and demanded an annulment right then, right there. But she hadn’t. She’d been numb. Mired in the fog of a broken heart. She let her new husband drag her clear across the state of Georgia, hundreds of miles from her mama, her friends,

Daryl

, and she hadn’t said a blessed word. Didn’t utter a word of protest ‘til her baby girl was born and it became clear that she had fallen

head over heels, hopelessly

in love for the second time in her life, and by then it was too late.

Story

her

life

, she thought, recalling Daryl’s frozen, unreadable expression in

Mary’s

, Jessie’s awkward split-lip smile as the children were formally introduced to each other. Nanny Sarah always

did

tell her she’d be late to her own funeral.

#The Walking Dead #Caryl fanfiction #Caryl #Carol x Daryl #stuff that I write #snippets from unposted stories and chapters

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littleredroseonthevalley · 6 years

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Red Rose - Chapter 1

Prologue CH. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6 Ch. 7 Ch. 8 Ch. 9 Ch. 10 Ch. 11 Ch. 12 Ch. 13 Ch. 14 Ch. 15 Ch. 16

Summary: Riley, a simpleton waitress from New York, meets a strange group of men. An unwelcome presence lurks, however, and they don’t seem very content in just watching.

Rating: T - Content not suitable for children. Suitable for teens, 13 years and older, with minor suggestive adult themes.

Notes: As promised, here it is chapter 1. I wonder who you think Theodora is. Send me your thoughts, I’ll be glad to hear them. No spoilers, though!

Vienna, Spring 2006

Liam stared blankly to the canvas in front of him, trying to get some sense out of it. Up so far, he failed miserably.

To be fair, he didn’t think many people his age would even bother to try, much less achieve, to understand the painting. It was a sickly green, with some reddish shadows that he couldn’t quite manage to place what they were. The title, Schadenfreude, was of not much help. Not only was in German, a language no tutor quite managed to instill in him, it referred to a concept rather… mismatched with the image he currently saw in front of him.

Let’s face it, Liam is pants in art appreciation.

“What have this painting done for you to frown so much at it?” A red-haired girl about his age asked him in French.

He was taken by surprise by the girl’s approach. He got stiff for a second, but with a discreet nod by an inconspicuous man a few meters away, he relaxed again. “How come you know I speak French?” He asked, curious.

“I make a point in being observant. You don’t look Austrian, you’re way too tanned. You don’t look Italian, with all that blonde hair of yours. My first guess was French, but you don’t quite sound like one either.”

He smiled despite himself. He supposed he could humor the girl for a while. “You’re right. I’m Cordonian.”

“A beautiful land.” She said, in a heavily accented Greek. “What brings you to Austria?”, she asked, back to French.

“I’m visiting a friend.” He said, simple.

“But you seem to have come alone.”

“He’s not into art.”

“Ah! So, it’s a he!” She exclaimed, and he laughed. “You’re a tough nut to crack, mister. And I’m Germanic.”

“I suppose I’m a little shy. Or have something to hide.”

“I guess it’s the second one. You’re not into art either, are you?”

He smiled. “Busted. I’m really not. But that painting out in the front was much too beautiful, I got curious.”

She smiled. “Yeah, Hagia Sophia in Purple. It’s one of my favorites, too. You’re out of luck, though… That’s from an early collection by the artist. Now we’re doing abstract art.”

“So I’ve noticed… I never really got those, you know? It seems to me a little… I don’t know, childlike? Chicken scratch?”

She laughed softly, like a violin. “Oh, if I had a dime for every time I heard that! You’re not really wrong, those are very strange images. But the thing is, it isn’t about what you see, but what you feel, what comes to your mind.”

He raised an eyebrow, confused. He had heard that quite a lot at his art lessons, but never quite comprehended what that meant.

“Look, let me help you,” She motioned to him to face the painting. “What do you see?”

“Green?”

“I can work with that. What does green mean to you?”

“Apples? Forests? Grass?” He guessed, but faced the patient negative from his master.

“No, I mean, what remind you of? Something intimate, deep.”

“I guess, sickness… Jealousy…” Yeah, definitely that. He could feel himself getting nauseated from watching it.

“And what does the title mean?”

“To be happy for one’s misery.”

She hummed. “And how do you relate what you feel to that concept?”

“That the artist is glad to make me sick?”

She once again laughed, this time more hysterically. “Perhaps. She could be a bitch.”

It was his time to snort. “Hey… I never really got your name.”

“Pardon me. I am Linda Rosa Valois, enchanted.”

He froze in shock. “Valois? As in...”

The redhead cut him off. “As in the artist of the childlike painting, yeah.”

Liam started to stutter. “Lord, I am so sorry! I did not mean to...”

“Don’t worry. It’s art! The beauty of it is that all viewpoints coexist peacefully.”

“That’s wise, I suppose… I’m Liam.” He extended his hand. As she handed him hers, he kissed the top of it.

“Now, if you excuse me,” She said, softly, “I must get back to work. I am here every afternoon, should your guy-friend decide he’s not into coffee either.”

“He despises it.” He laughed. As Linda Rosa turned to leave, Liam calls her back. “Miss Valois?”

“Yes?”

“What do you want to say with your painting?”

“Perhaps I’ll tell you someday.”

New York City, Fall 2015

The winds started changing in New York, signaling the end of Summer. Riley couldn’t say she wasn’t glad. The heat has been suffocating that year, never before have the season felt that hot.

She passed by a mean-faced guy in black, hanging in front of a car. The street was rather empty, she could see four or five people around. Almost nothing, considering it was New York, and still kind of early.

The graying skies predicted rain that evening. She pulled her jacket closer to her carboniferous hair, in an attempt to cover her neck and shoulders, exposed by the waitress’ bun and her cleaved uniform.

To be a waitress in a dingy watering hole in Brooklyn is far from being Riley’s dream, but, given the circumstances, it was her only choice. It paid well for a blue-collar job, and if she could manage not to punch anyone, the tips weren’t that bad either.

A block or so from the bar she saw another man dressed in black. She noticed the red button in his clothes. Her breath hitched in her throat.

Trying to pass unnoticed, she pulled the jacket, looked down and kept walking, hurriedly. She believes she wasn’t seen, but to be sure, she took a few wrong turns in her way to work.

A few too much, it would appear, as, when she arrived, Frank, her lovely boss, was waiting for her.

“You’re late!” He screamed, or rather, spoke in his indoor voice. Frank couldn’t be bothered to lower his tone.

Ignoring him, she went on to work her shift.

A few hours into the night, she was close to be finished with it all.

“Ah, the glamour of New York, taking out the trash in a Saturday night!”

One of her co-workers, Daniel, was helping her. She liked Daniel, she supposed. Even though he was a little lazy, he entertained her with his tales from the ship he used to work.

“It could be worse.” He said, “There could be…”

A mouse jumped out of one of the dumpsters.

“RATS! Riley! Save me!”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of this adorable little mouse! He’s a survivor, just like us!”

Back inside, she noticed an entourage just got in. Frank said they were a bachelor party. Nice.

“Waitress!” Said one of the three guys, a middle-eastern looking young man. “We need your best table!”

“Forget the table!” Said another, a jean-clad man. “Just bring us whiskey, and lots of it.”

Yay. Rowdy drunkards.

Daniel paled looking at them. Riley could just foresee what he was about to do.

“I’ve got a date tonight!” He said, “I’ll never make it out of here on time!”

“You really want me to take the bachelor party?” Riley said. “Why do I always get the rowdy tables?”

“Because you’re way better at this than I am.” Cheeky bastard.

Riley facepalmed, but smiled kindly, despite her deep displeasure. “Fine. But you owe me one.”

Saying her goodbyes, she walks over the table.

“Hello, gentlemen!” She mustered her best smile. “I’ll be taking care of you this evening!”

She wasn’t quite finished when yet-another man, dressed in a designer shirt, ordered steaks. If the accent wasn’t a dead give-away, that would be her first clue that they were foreigners.

“The closest thing we have to a steak is the burger.”

“Dare I ask for your wine list?” Asked the middle-easterner, dejected.

“We’ve got an excellent vintage house red. And it also comes in white!”

The jean-guy, with common sense, ordered whiskey and four burgers. Counting only three clients, she wonders why four meals. Turning for the kitchen, she only just bumps into the fourth party-goer.

“Sorry I’m late,” He says. “Thank you for your patience, miss…?”

“Riley. No trouble at all.”

“Charmed to make your acquaintance, Riley.”

“It’s really nice to meet you too. Now, excuse me, I’ll be back with your order shortly. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

Riley was wiping the bar and emptying the tip jar. The place has only just closed, but the party was still around. Lost in some pop lyrics, she was surprised by the tap on her shoulder.

“I think we’re about to head out.” The blond, Liam, told her. “I just wanted to thank you… and apologize. I know we kept you late, and my friends can be… demanding.”

Well, back when she was only but a kid and her mother took her to church, the clergyman used to say there was no sin big enough to be unforgivable if a truly regretful heart asked, sincere, for pardon.

Besides, they could have been jerks and just left.

Feeling the irritation evaporate, she answered: “Demanding? Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

As it seems, Liam found humor in her words. “I got the feeling that you could take care of yourself.” As an afterthought, he added: “If you don’t have any plans tonight, maybe I can make it up to you by buying you a drink. We’re about to go to a club.”

“Oh,” She said. “Which one?”

“We’re hoping you might have some advice about that. We’re not from around here.”

No, really?

Figuring from the outlandish requests and the thickness the check had acquired while in their table, she believed they were wealthy, if not well-connected. Going into clubs shouldn’t be a hassle for them.

“In which case,” She said to herself and for Liam. “I recommend going to the hottest club in town this season, Kismet.”

“That sounds perfect. Lead the way!” He said, with a smile.

Making use of a dress she had in her locker due to an event a few weeks before in the bar, and perfectly refreshed, she stepped outside to meet the others.

Receiving a round of compliments due to her look, she must admit she wears green well.

Liam, however, was a little less than amused. “I doubt she appreciates you talking about her like that.”

Maxwell, she finds the guy in the shirt is called, apologizes for all the catcalling. “Now let’s get this party started!”

“So, she’s our tour guide now?” The jeans, Drake, surly asked.

“Riley” Liam emphasizes. “Was kind enough to agree to show us around. She’s doing us a favor, so play nice.”

A short and somewhat awkward cab ride later and they were in the club. She blinked and found herself alone with Liam, as the others went to the dancefloor.

“Thank you for bringing us here.” The blond said. “The guys are having fun already.”

Taking in consideration that statement, Riley says: “I bet you’re used to putting everyone else first.”

Humoring her, he says: “And why would you say that?”

“I can tell. I’m good at reading people.”

A memory flashes in Liam’s mind for a second, but he soon represses it.

“Now,” She said. “Forget your friends. How do you like it here?”

“What I enjoy the most is the company.” He says, in a somewhat flirtatious smile. “And I believe I am in your debt. What will the lady have?”

“Surprise me.” She said.

A minute later they were toasting with some flaming cocktails.

“A funny choice,” She teases.

“Careful.” He says, blowing the fire. “We’re playing it hot.”

“That’s what makes it fun!” Downing hers, she finished with a “Thanks. I guess we’re even now.”

He hummed. “I guess you’re right. Now I’ll have to find some other excuse to get you to stay.”

“Better think of something fast.”

“Well… the guys are really warming up to you.” She doubted. “If you stick around, you can keep them in line.”

“Oh, yeah?” She said. “I’m pretty sure I just saw a girl dump her drink on Maxwell.”

“See? You’re needed more now than ever.”

“Yeah.” She tutted. “But I’m no babysitter.”

“And what if I buy you another drink? Does that work for you?”

She tucked a rebel strand of hair behind her right ear. “Now you’re not even trying to persuade me.”

“Okay. You got me.” He raised his hand and fake-sighted. In a more serious tone, though, he added: “Hanging out with you is the most fun I’ve had this entire vacation.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know quite how to respond. “That’s… sweet. I suppose you haven’t been enjoying yourself all that much, then.”

“It’s…” He wrestled the words. “Been wonderful, but there’s something missing. I really wanted to…”

“To?”

“It’s… Well… You might think it’s silly, but I’ve always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t in the guys’ plan, so we never got around to it. And now it’s my last day here…” He real-sighed now. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It has been thoughtful of them to throw me this bachelor party. They’ve done their best, but I’m not in a celebratory mood.”

In her most neutral tone of voice she could muster, Riley said: “I thought it was Tariq’s bachelor party.” Tariq would be the middle-easterner. “Congratulations, Liam.”

In truth, she was kind of annoyed. It wasn’t cool of his part to go out with a girl while his fiancée waited for him an ocean away.

Liam was downcast. “If you knew the whole story, you might not congratulate me so quickly.”

“Oh?” She quipped her ears.

“I actually don’t know who I’m going to marry just yet… Only that I have to pick her before the winter is over.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“The truth is, Riley…” He twists his face in a displeased scowl, as the word is hard to pronounce. “I’m the Crown Prince of Cordonia. That is, a country just across the sea from Italy, to the east.”

Crown Prince of Cordonia? Riley knows of the Bonaparte-Valona-Rys, but as far as she remembered, the Crown Prince was Leo. So are the broadcasters, such a small, somewhat backwater country never makes the news.

Trying to ease him, and herself, into it, she says: “I kinda had a feeling.”

She didn’t have much success. “You did?!”

“You’ve got a bunch of fancy guys in your bachelor party who tried to order fillet mignon at a bar.”

Wordlessly, he conceded they were an eyesore. “And you don’t care? Not everyone takes in stride.”

“It takes more than that to intimidate me.”

He scoffs at his own foolishness. “You’re fearless. I admire that in you. You decide who you are. You could be anything, do anything. What drives you?”

That’s a statement one step too close to home. Thinking about what he said, she answers: “To live every day to the fullest. I long to make every day an adventure! You only get one chance in life, and I want to make mine count.”

“That’s beautiful, Riley.”

Hearing the commotion behind her, Riley uses it as a chance to change subjects. “Your friends seem to be having the time of their lives.”

“I’m happy for them. They deserve to have fun.”

Riley takes notice of the rehearsed answers. It’s like interviewing a Miss Universe.

“Tomorrow,” He adds, with a little more sentiment. “It’s back to Cordonia for the start of the social season.”

She looks, passingly, to the bar. Tariq seemed to be ordering yet another bottle of champagne. As it was Saturday, the club was packed with people. Men, women, all single and ready to mingle. But, in a first look, there was someone who dissents from that trend. A man in black. God, it was the man from earlier today!

Riley got scared. She needed an escape plan.

“But it’s not tomorrow yet.” Riley said.

“What are you suggesting?” Liam asked, curious.

“You said you want to see the Statue of Liberty. Let’s do it! I know a place where we can catch a boat.”

“A boat? How will you manage a boat?”

She laughs. “Ye of little faith! I’ll call in a favor, don’t worry.”

“A favor? Just like that, you can get us on a boat after midnight to see the Statue of Liberty?”

“I have some friends who owe me. Come on! I know it’s important to you, so let’s go!”

“Right now?”

“No, next week! Of course, it’s now. Your friends look busy, they won’t notice we’re gone.”

“You’re not taking no as an answer, are you?”

“No.”

He flashes the happiest smile she has seen all night. “Then I happily surrender to your demands.”

Down at the marina, boarding the boat, Liam admires the view of the city.

“Not a bad scenario.” He says.

She smiles at him and says: “Now I’m dying to know why you’re so eager to see the Statue of Liberty.”

“Can’t you guess?” He said, half lame, half joking.

“I’d say it’s because it symbolizes freedom.” She mockingly scratched her chin, as an upscale psychologist.

“Freedom is something I always wanted.” Liam said, in excitement. “But I’ve always known that my role would require me to give up much of what I desire.”

Something was really off. Always? As she got home, she’d investigate that statement better.

“You are the Prince. Can’t you do what you want at least some of the time?”

“As a member of the Royal House, my actions reflect in all of Cordonia. That is a lesson I’ve never been allowed to forget, no matter how badly I want to.”

The last part of that sentence was said staring longing at Riley’s figure, who was looking at the sky, philosophically. The driver calls for her, she pays for his services discreetly.

“Let’s go!” As she said, the ship started running.

They get quiet for a moment, up until Liam says: “I don’t think you’d be able to pull this off.”

“You just don’t know me very well.”

He’s amused by that answer. “You’re right. But I’d like to change that. You’re fascinating, Riley!” He thinks for a second, and then asks: “Why are you doing all this for me?”

She smiles, and gives a somewhat true answer: “You seemed like you needed it.” She sure knows she needed it.

“That’s… so sweet of you. No one has ever done something like that for me before.”

“You’re a prince, Liam.” She said. “People do things for you all the time.”

“I do get all the perks that come with being royalty, but no one ever seen me as me. No one ever listened to me the way you listen. No one come up with a spur-of-the-moment plan to make my dream come true.”

“Oh, Liam…” She was sincerely touched. “What else do you dream about?”

“Finding someone. Someone who can be the Queen Cordonia needs.”

It seems sad to her that even his dreams are grounded by a harsh reality. Seems hopeless, even.

“And…” She tries to amend. “Someone who you fall in love with, right?”

“That’s never been part of the criteria that the Cordonian Council uses.”

Riley may be an adult, her princess pink dreams from infancy may be long gone, but it does bring a wave of disappointment to her heart.

As she contemplates her feelings on the matter, the mist dissipates, and they get their first good look into the Statue.

“So,” Riley asks. “What do you think?”

Liam looks stargazed to the great, green woman. The definite embodiment of freedom holding a torch above her head – the northern star for all people in the world. He sees the broken chains at her feet, half-hidden by her robes, close as they are from the island. The symbol of a foreign nation, ironically, means something so opposite to him as a symbol of his own homeland.

“Magnificent.” Liam breathes. “I’ve heard that art has meaning because of how it makes the viewer feel. It only matters if it moves you.”

Riley smiles, sweetly. “And?”

“And right now, looking at this view with you, I feel like anything is possible. Thank you for this moment, Riley. This feeling… this mean more to me than you could ever know.”

“Liam…”

“I want you to know I admire you. Your adventurous spirit. The way you follow your heart.”

“You can live that way too, you know?”

“If only. My whole life I’ve prepared myself to do what’s best for Cordonia.”

“Well, we’re not in Cordonia now.”

Liam watches those seemingly-familiar onyx eyes as he draws close. He puts his hands to her sides, pulling her in and kissing her deeply. As she goes out of breath, they pant in a rhythm, with their foreheads against each other’s.

“I’m glad to have met you, Riley. I’ll never forget this night.”

In between kisses, they soon are brought back to the shore.

As the reality comes down at Liam, they have a lovers’ farewell, as he hops in the cab.

Happy with how her night turned out, Riley had a skip on her step walking her way home.

As she unlocked the door and turned on the light, there he was. The man who has been stalking her all day.

“I have finally found you.”

She screams in terror.

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