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sleepymccoy · 4 years

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Aziraphale’s demon aspect

As voted by 246 people!

The winner is

Owl

with nearly 26% of the primary vote

many people added in their free form answers that they were imagining a barn owl specifically

Owl was the front runner the whole way through this survey, but most of the time by a very beatable margin. The 40 or so people who voted in the last night really tipped it over, it was a tight race! And the results are crazy split imo, a quarter of votes constitutes a win! I love the different opinions and ideas we all have so so much

Ram/sheep came in a hearty second with 16.5% of the vote

A very regal demon there.

After that it gets a little murky, so I’m going to share the second graph I made when is every animal that got more than 1% of the vote. So it’s the top six animals

Magpie and Lion holding strong! Then Moth and Goat looking very good

The second question let you vote for as many options as you thought were appropriate for Aziraphale! So, there were a lot more write-ins! It’s crazy!

I’m using google sheets so I can’t get it to show you every name, but the raw data will be in a read more so you can scroll through everyone’s beautiful imagination there

Again, Owl winds with a solid 20% of the vote. Ram/Sheep coming in with about 15%, followed by Moth, Magpie, Goat, Lion, then Tortoise.

Tortoise was 11th in the first round, tied with Snake (but pale), and managed to surprise me by coming through so strong in the second. Slow and steady, baby.

Nearly everyone who wrote in about Magpies told me that Magpies hoard stuff, so it’s nice to see the hive mind at work there!

Five people told me they were voting goat because of that one piece of art by @hollow-head that shows Aziraphale scaling a bookshelf like goats do cliffs. As an artist myself I found it legitimately moving that this one image had stayed with people so strongly. That’s just beautiful. Here’s an example of just one person’s comment

idk dude i just remember one person posted art of him scaling the bookstore shelves like those goats scale mountains and just eating his clothes while he reads it was so fuckin funny but anyway goat eyes are great or he could have lil stubby horns that r covered by his hair

One moth enthusiast took the time to give me a short essay on their choice of moth. I have included a portion of it, cos it was so great

So if I had to choose an insect, it would be a moth, preferably a Megalopygidae, also known as the Flannel Moth. They are fluffy, white-beige and look innocent and fluffy, but their larvae can cause painful inflammations. A poodle moth would also fit because it's almost pure white.

Here’s a flannel moth for everyone

and a poodle moth, which i honestly thought was a hoax but i looked into it just now and it seems legit? There’s not a tonne of proof, but the og pictures are from a scientists who stands by them, so like, wow

And then a DIFFERENT PERSON put this in;

the moth i had in mind is Acherontia atropos, in polish called Zmierzchnica trupia główka (meaning more or less "dusk death's head"). i have a whole symbolism planned out and stuff

Fucking, moth fandom come through!!

I’m vaguely scared of moths, fun fact. I don’t like the thick thunking sound they make when they hit stuff.

Here is the second round but with all the animals that got four or less votes removed for ease of viewing

the one segment there at 12 o’clock that google hasn’t labeled for me is Swan at 0.9%

I cannot believe I didn’t put swan in as an option, that’s all write-ins

So, to summarise, I suggest you take a lot of this with a grain of salt. It is not meant as an instruction to fandom or to railroad creativity. I have a narrow corner of the Good Omens fandom that I interact with, and while this quiz was up for a week I’m not sure it reached a great variety of people. About 250 folks filled it out, which was tonnes more than I expected and I love each and every one of you for filling it out!! But I have noticed that Owl was first on my list and in the free form answers the example prompt I gave included, “such as a breed of owl that specifically speaks to you,“ so I think it’s possible I did that unknowing bias thing that practiced survey folk know now to do. So, grain of salt.

I also think that if animals like Swan and Cat were in the list of options they’d’ve gotten more votes because the people who voted for those were coming up with it fresh themselves. I suspect people would’ve voted for them, but it just didn’t occur to them in the moment. In much the same way it didn’t occur to me in the moment I was writing this survey.

So people know, I got the ten or so animals that I put in the survey from searching the demon!aziraphale tag on tumblr, so it was all stuff that other people had come up with. I was trying to avoid my own bias, but i think in hindsight i could’ve done better!

Having said all that, this was all so much fun and the results are clear!!! Love a good owl!aziraphale

Imma continue to draw my boy as a ram, though. Cos this was all just for a laugh <3

numbers and a few more things under the cut

So some of these have half a vote ascribed to them. That’s for people who in their freeform answer said things like this;

ngl, that one post about him being a swan still makes me laugh

Mourning Dove. Though that Scallop answer was fucking brilliant

And I kinda made a judgement call that that wasn’t a vote, but it was kind of a vote. So I gave them half a point.

There were a few situations where people would write in a specific species. If I got more than one vote for the root animal I just grouped them together, but if it stayed the only vote then it kept the species. Cat got the most specific species mentioned, and in the second vote Bat had a few species mentioned (albino bat being my fave), but I ended up grouping them all just under Cat and Bat to give them a better chance of getting on the graph. There were probably a few other examples but I can’t think of them. The one exception to this is the person who wrote-in Duolingo Owl specifically. For that one I figured Owl is already pretty solid, and that’s just fucking funny, man

I was also pretty generous about some stuff. So, this person didn’t vote for Moose but they clearly regretted it so I added a vote for Moose in the second one where you could vote for multiples. They kept their Ram and Goat votes, of course, but I added Moose for them

I get very bastard energy from my demon az headcanons. Like f-ing shit up for a laugh more than anything, but otherwise indifferent. That's kinda why I like the ram/sheep/goat thing so much because it reminds me of indifference and random chaos. Or a moose. Shit, I should have written in moose

So yeah, it’s hardly a double blind study that’d stand up to any real criticism, but it was fun and I think the essence of it is fun!! Scroll through and have a read. Imma pull a few more of my fave write-ins and put them down the bottom cos it’s great. Esp the ones that only got one vote, the reasonings were stellar on some of those

Here is the first vote results, where everyone could only vote for one animal each

Owl 63 Ram/Sheep 40 Magpie 28 Lion 26 Moth 21 Goat 17 Swan 4 Eagle 4 Dove 4 Cat 4 Tortoise 3 Snake 3 Scallop 2 Rat 2 Rabbit 2 Mongoose 2 Badger 2 Shima Enaga 1 Shark 1 Porcupine 1 Orangutan 1 Mouse 1 Long Furby 1 Hippopotomaus 1 Goose 1 Duck 1 Dragon 1 Cow 1 Cereberus 1 Boar 1 Bee 1 Bat 1 Alpaca 1

Second Vote results, where everyone could vote for as many as they wanted

Owl1 82 Ram/Sheep 136 Moth 108.5 Magpie 98 Goat 96 Lion 72 Tortoise 61 Snake 37 Eagle 33 Cat 9.5 Swan 7.5 Lizard 4 Rabbit 4 Badger 3 Mongoose 2 Dove 2 Mouse 2 Squirrel 2 Bear 2 Raccoon 2 Capybara 2 Dragon 2 Bat 1 Long Furby 1 Rat 1 Boar 1 Goose 1 Peacock 1 Pangolin 1 Lindworm 1 Moose 1 Chinchilla 1 Duolingo Owl 1 Cackatoo 1 Crow 1 Cow 1 Alpaca 1 Dodo 1 Shark 1 Big Dog 1 Snow Leopard 1 Scallop 0.5

All voting was optional. To help explain how scallop lost 1.5 votes from first to second, I believe the people who voted for it in the first question just skipped the second cos they’d said their bit.

In terms of how many people engaged with the questions, Q1 had 245 answers and one skip. Q2 had 241 answers and 5 skips, and Q3 where I just let people talk at me if they wanted to had 84 answers and 162 skips.

So please enjoy my selection of free form answers. They all made me smile but putting all 84 in seems excessive to me, so I’ve chosen the ones that are either full blown mini essays or that make me laugh. It’s still a lot, this project brought me so much joy

Shima enaga - It's the hair man

Cow (aka golden calf)

Scallop. He is a snack.

Swan. Elegant but very capable of fscking you up. Mates for life.

basically anything that is both gentle in nature and fiercely loyal, territorial and protective (but prone to anxiety). Also hedonistic esp. with food. For all of these reasons, I think a dog would be the best choice.

Dragon with his hoard of books

it’s about the teeth. just too sharp and too many to be human. (comment from op here, this person voted for shark, just for context)

Turkish Angora cat. Magnificently fluffy, incredibly intelligent, love heights and will jump off crazy high things and land on your head, gloriously dignified until they see a string and run into a wall, love one or maybe two persons to distraction and want everyone else to fuck off, will drape themselves over their person’s shoulders and go to sleep, range from “will jump in the sea to hunt fish and has a murder pit full of seagulls they’ve massacred” to “will fall over at the sight of a baby bird”, very particular about food and will yell at you if you get it wrong. Also the breed that some asshole took three cats from and bred parent to child to make Persians. The cautionary tale has been acknowledged and we love our crazy smart, single braincelled children.

I usually imagine him as an owl because they are nocturnal (and we know that Aziraphale can easily stay awake the whole night reading). Also the image of an owl puffed up is kind of ridiculous and reminds me of him, of how an annoyed Aziraphale would look. However the options above have made me think that a lion would suit him very well, too. A lion or just a very BIG cat. I mean, he makes pleading eyes to get what he wants, likes to be confortable, is a bit of a bastard and often puts himself in awkward situations from which he needs to be rescued. He just... acts very cat-like in my opinion. Also owls and cats are both predators, but are usually imagined (or, at least cats are) as cute little creatures, just like Aziraphale is an Angel of the Lord (a Warrior, actually) but looks all soft and cute and huggable. I dunno. Maybe I just want to pet an Aziracat.

I love all the other people's thoughts about demon!Aziraphale, but what about the honey badger? I try to explain why I have it in mind for demon!azi: its name (I think it's funny, expecially in English because 'honey' can make you imagine it's something sweet (it is for me), while the 'bad' in badger can be an alarm bell (like 'be careful! It is not like it seems!')); its face (ok, who can say its face isn't cute? I think, and hope, nobody can, and like the name, it is a misunderstanding: as always, be careful, it's not like it seems!, I think demons can say something about demon!azi as like "you don't seem like a 'good' demon, you can't be, your face (animal and human) is too f-ing disgusting sweet to be a demon!", I think maybe even angel!crowley, at the beginning, can think something like this ("how in the world somebody so cute like you can be a demon?"), then he discovered how demon!azi can be a very talented demon sometimes, but in Crowley's mind azi is still his little cutie angry furry); its furry's colour (black=demon, white/grey/silver/idkitsname= color of demon!azi's wings, because even if he fell, I can't say no to his white wings 😭); it is a snake's predator (and in my mind angel!crowley is still a snake); its solitary life (demon!aziraphale is alone and he doesn't mind it, unless it's angel!crowley we're talking about, then our cute demon minds it); its behaviour (demon!azi, even if he's cute, can be a really very talented demon: honey badger is fearless and dangerous, it can fight bigger animals if there aren't other chances and it can't escape); its skin is very tough (except for a soft/safe spot, behind its neck if I remember well, that only angel!Crowley knows and sometimes he uses it to calm demon!azi down or make azi do some good deeds); its diet (it has a sweet-thooth, for honey in primis, but it can eat everything it wants... Doesn't it resemble demon!azi?); it's smart (search for Stoffle on your browser if you don't know)... Ok,I think I finish, sorry for the novel 😅

I tend to think of animals that meet three criteria: (1) they exemplify “faults” in his character exaggerated to “sins”—gluttony, greed/hoarding, sloth, (2) they are species that favor fawning or flight as a defense mechanism but can also be bold on occasion, and (3) blend very well or have a keen affinity with human society, specifically thriving in urban (i.e., city) environments. This is mostly because I can’t see “Aziraphale” in a reverse AU that doesn’t preserve some of his core traits as an angel (a little hedonistic, hoarding, anxious, etc.). So I like city-dwelling bastard animals with bonus points for relation to scripture, like a rock dove or a fox or an owl.

Owls aren't smart, and the pedant in me says not an owl. But, thinking on it, demon aspect, owls are perceived as smart, but designed as deadly silent predators, patient and solitary. So actually demon Aziraphale could take on more owlish aspects. I just like cockatoo better, since they are smart, and showy. Or a crow, although that does amusing things with Crowleys name.

god imagining him as a chimera is !!! (comment from op, there was this odd flurry of mythical animals being voted for one night. i think the survey hit a corner of fandom that leans that way. there was also dragon, another chimera, a griffon, and a lindworm all at the same rough time)

Magpies are great because they’re cute and fluff themselves up (go look at Sophie the magpie) and like hoarding their favorite things but also I’ve watched one just straight up kill another bird before because corvids are sneaky little bastards with no lack of a mean streak if they’re crossed

It’s the duolingo owl, I’m so sorry op but it just is. I genuinely don’t mean to clown on your post, but this take was delivered to me in a sleep induced haze and I believe it’s the god given truth. Demon Aziraphale WOULD try to make you learn a dead language and he’d go about it in a vaguely threatening way (comment from op, you’re so fucking right dude. also, shit like this is made for clowning, i’m with you 100%)

When choosing a demon aspect for a Aziraphale, I usually tried to keep in mind the artistic tradition of which animals are linked with demons. The Good Omens team seems to have drawn inspiration from that source because all the animals we do see are either reptilian or insectoid. Those species were often shown inhabiting hellish landscapes in Renaissance and Baroque paintings. However, Aziraphale never struck me as cold or slimy or hard like an exoskeleton. So if I had to choose an insect, it would be a moth, preferably a Megalopygidae, also known as the Flannel Moth. They are fluffy, white-beige and look innocent and fluffy, but their larvae can cause painful inflammations. A poodle moth would also fit because it's almost pure white.

Ok so the only reason I pick magpie is because those bastards are smart as hell but also know how and when to inconvenience the shit out of you, and if you gain their trust then they're absolute darlings but if they decide "nah, dont like ya" then you're basically done and you'll wake up every morning with shit on your car window. I also chose sheep/ram cuz I mean... idk it suits him. I don't remember my other choice but I'm sure I had a good reason.

I feel like a barn owl would suit him well but I'm not really sure why, I also think that a moth would suit him really well because of the whole "moth to a flame" thing and as a demon he would have gotten burned because of that attitude.

I write a reverse AU fic called Lambs to the Slaughter where Aziraphale's demonic aspect is an albino sheep! I imagine him as a mix between a wild Argali ram and the first woolly domestics. I chose an Argali because they're the largest species of wild sheep, but I wanted him to have traits of a domestic breed because he obtains his animal aspect from a sheep in Abel's flock which would be several generations down from the original wild species in Eden. I really think a sheep suits Aziraphale! They're an incredibly common animal and have been since they were first domesticated. Likewise, since the start of human history, Aziraphale has been living side-by-side with humans, providing for them, and protecting them. Due to how common they are, sheep are often unnoticed, which Aziraphale leans into. Crowley wants to stand out. He has a dedicated aesthetic and an obsession with human invention, where Aziraphale leans more towards simpler, known things and creature comforts. He fades into the background, and that suits him fine. He doesn't have to be outstanding to Heaven or to humans or even to Crowley -- it's enough to do his part, to trust in a bigger plan. People associate sheep (especially lambs) with innocence or ignorance which foils nicely to Crowley as the serpent tempting with knowledge, as well as with Aziraphale's own sharp mind and ongoing embers of faith in a system that is failing him, Crowley, and all of humanity. Sheep are, like Aziraphale, soft, cute, and hiding a hard-headed stubbornness and a surprising strength that makes them absolutely fearsome. Aziraphale is very much the sort to put his head down and push relentlessly forward regardless of the pressure and strain. Rams in particular have thick skulls to withstand the brutal force of headbutting one another in displays of dominance. While Aziraphale is clever, he's not above rolling up his sleeves and getting the job done, as messy and unpleasant as it might be (see: pulling a gun on the Antichrist). Also sheep are associated with Pan, a god associated with food, music, theatre, and the criticism thereof, which hit many of Aziraphale's personal interests and hobbies! I like the idea that in a reverse AU, the demon formerly named Aziraphale might be the original basis for Pan!

I wrote in Orangutan for the first question because if I remember correctly they are some of the most violent apes. Although I'd accept bonobo for him too. They fuck alll the time.

mothman aziraphale,,,,, thats it

Snowy owl, speremint's tortoise, and I just adore the goat.

moth - dusty and eats books

Long Furby the way Loni-Capri draws it.

I keep thinking about that Black Philip quote "doest thou wish to live deliciously" because... it fits so much with the general epicurean/hedonism vibe the Fandom has for him ... but in a demonic way and also I think a lot abt that art piece (already referenced many times probably but what the hell) of him climbing his own bookshelves, it's just so good!!

Albino Lion/white lion (matches his hair). I feel like maybe I should explain why I think Lion would fit him best, lol. Lions actually are rather sedate, inactive for 20 hours of the day (see: Aziraphale reading and unmoving- yes I pulled wiki for this to make sure I didn't spout anything terribly wrong, shhh) but also there's nomad lions. Lions that range widely and move around sporadically either alone or in pairs (*looks at Crowley after apoconope*) (pairs are more frequent among males who have been excluded from their birth pride) but also I think of lions as protectors, defenders, and what is Aziraphale if not that? If not an angel who fiercely protects humans, crowley, earth? (When he finally overcomes heaven and it's abuse) lions don't hunt unless they're hungry, don't attack unless they're defending. They've been known to sit directly next to jeeps full of people and just watch them, not attacking or being aggresive.

I saw art once (I have no idea who the artist is) of Demon!Aziraphale climbing his bookcases like a goat and absentmindedly chewing on his sweater while he reads. I felt like the goat aspect suited him perfectly.

Honestly I wrote Az with a rat aspect because, well, it fits who I see demon Az as. He's not super powerful but he is very consequential, like rats carrying plague fleas (this also describes how I see Az tempting). He tries to blend into a crowd, which is arguably one way rats survive, and can get himself into places/situations that should be impossible or super difficult. Like snakes, rats have been unfairly maligned by our culture for a long time, even though they are very social with their colonies, smart, affectionate, and generally good beans. Finally, male pet rats are known far and wide as the lazier of the sexes while the girls are super curious and adventurous.

Somehow his tartan pattern becomes either his colour scheme or his coat/feather pattern.

Eurasian eagle owl. A big, unapologetic grump of an owl that is soft as soft can be underneath. Possessor of the glare to end all glares to be used in such dire situations as being interrupted when reading or being told one has "had enough cake".

#demon!aziraphale #reverse omens #sleepy speaks #fandom vote #aziraphale's demon aspect #this was so fucking fun you all

161 notes · View notes

yeoldontknow · 5 years

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Light Sakura

Author’s Note: welcome back to chanvember 2019! this is a much heavier offering. when i was in japan in april, i wrote some of my thoughts and feelings into notes. there werent many, but i decided to turn them into this beast a fic. this is a very personal story - personal and heavy, and is probably me at my most raw and honest. more than anything, this is me letting you in to watch me process life. i hope you can still appreciate it <3 Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader (oc; female) Genre: romance; angst; travel!au; fluff; light smut Summary: While taking your honeymoon in Tokyo, alone, you meet Chanyeol, a man who reminds you of the person you remember being long before you learned to forget yourself. After spending one full day together, you question if you could walk away from him - especially when it feels like walking away from yourself, again. Rating: R Warnings: some intense, adult angst; the most beautiful chanyeol ive ever written; and an explicit makeout session Word Count: 15K

Barely half nine in the morning and already the cherry blossom trees of the Shinjuku National Gardens have decided to whelm you.

Overhead, they sway in the breeze, elegant in their movements and peaceful in the way they seem to exist for no one and everyone, but most of all, themselves. You relate to them, in only this half-formed similarity, alone on the linen blanket you’ve spread across a soft patch of grass.

The blush pink of the petals puts the flavor of hope, faith, and healing on your tongue - you’re unsure if this is what they truly mean, if this is the ascribed symbolism to pretty, delicate things, but it feels like they matter. You feel strongly and passionately they mean something beyond the aesthetic of paradise, filtered and filtered again through Instagram as proof of experience.

To you, they are the herald of change, the transience of perfection contained neatly in the blossom, fading almost as soon as they appear. Always, they depart swiftly, detached and long missed yet remaining somewhere just beyond reach, a memory of perfect bliss; the wonder, and the healing, and the euphoria of existence, and the grief and melancholy of the inherent loss.

From the corner of your eye, you see it, a large mass of struggle and frustration. Intrigued, you look over to find a man, tall and gangly, battling with himself and the blossoms and the sun to take a selfie. On this cloudless day in April, the sun seems to find his eyes from every angle, even this early in the morning. Blinded yet, somehow, ignited, he becomes at once a man both at peace and at war with nature, challenged by the haze of morning to outshine the blossoms. Even under the sakura tree, the sun seeks his shapes, gives him a glow that speaks of reverence and admiration.

It’s entertaining to witness, though only serves to remind you that there is no one with you to laugh or to watch, to share in the delight of such a vision, and so you look away, having already seen enough for yourself.

Glancing down to your blanket, you see the array of items spread before you, gaze drifting to the sakura mochi. Your lips fall to a grimace, the humor of the morning dissipating on sight. Nothing about the confection tastes right, or truly like a confection at all. One bite, and all you could think was that some things are meant to be witnessed and admired, never consumed, their delicate lightness bitter on the tongue but sweet to the iris.

Lured by motion in the distance, you look up once more and find he is still there, spinning in circles beneath the trees. The longer you watch, the more you find he is somewhat familiar in his unfamiliarity, the strangeness of not knowing his name or personality or history its own sort of comfortable adventure, the thrill of it settling over your nerves in a way you had long abandoned. The sight of him overtakes you the same way he is overtaken by the sun, almost immediately and without escape. Though, for you, you know you are overtaken by the nostalgia of an imperfect youth and the mistakes that come from letting the wrong person in - not dangerous, not lethal, but deadly just the same and always just as reckless.

And so you don't know why you speak, why you even rise to a stand, allow yourself to disturb the peaceful solitude of your morning, wanting, rather suddenly, to ease his struggle. Even more, you don’t know what exactly it is about him that makes you reach out, giving yourself yourself away and over to the feeling of longed for and missed connections.

'Do you want help with that picture?'

A small noise of surprise leaves his chest as he turns to face you, seeking your voice with his lips set in a full pout. At once and against your better judgement, you swoon, transfixed by how arresting he truly is. Arresting, a word you’ve never really used for people or even art made after 1945, the term reserved for pain and poetry, but he becomes it, embodies it, in every sense of the meaning.

His smile take it time as his gaze walks over your features, taking you in, beguiled and amused and delighted for the help - relieved too, a grateful smile falling on his lips as though he'd been waiting for you, relaxing at once into the comfort of not knowing you at all. It strikes you how easy it is to connect when you aren’t really trying to, when you aren’t thinking or overthinking, and people can just be themselves.

The warmth in his smile remains, even as he speaks, the genuine contentment of it infectious. 'Do you mind?'

Taking a few cautious steps towards you, he runs a hand through his hair, anxious.

'Happy to.' You close the gap between you both, extending your hand, palm upwards, for his phone. 'It's funny, I thought this would have been easy given how long your arms are.'

The joy of his smile spills into his laugh as he hands you his phone, the sound boisterous and altogether too loud for the quiet stoicism of Japan, his unbridled energy turning the colours of the gardens into something far more rich than the human eye could bear.

'Sorry,’ you giggle, carried by the sound of his pleasure. ‘I don't mean that as an insult.' It’s amusing, you think, how awkward this exchange is. How terribly exciting it truly is to not be comfortable. ‘You just don’t realize how hard good selfies are until you’re short, like I am.’

'Well,' he concedes, 'the limbs are helpful for group photos but when you're perpetually under the sun and in the way and having to duck, it's just as difficult.'

Far more lightly than you would have imagined for someone of his size, he settles on the edge of the wooden bridge, the water of the pond glistening behind him, gleaming much like the cityscape in the distance. At once, he is radiant, another word you’d never used for a person until you saw him, the tips of his ears catching the light, the sunbeams finding him in a way they don’t seem to find other people. Or, perhaps, they don’t find him at all, and simply are born of him entirely, emerging from his core and lifted into the atmosphere.

A warm breeze moves through the air, rustling your hair, and he leans into it, almost imperceptibly. Eyes closed and expression soft, he lifts his head towards the sky and smiles, blissful in his quiet contentedness.

An image such as this, you think, is poetic, the kind of portrait that resonates throughout the city long after the person has left, adding weight to their photo collection and adding weight to all of those who witnessed its capture. But your finger hesitates, the slowness of your muscles taking its time to luxuriate in his expression. His delight, his happiness, his easy way of coming alive as though it were natural, and as though you could learn to do it, too.

And so you are slow, paused in your admiration long enough for it to dissipate altogether, his mercurial personality shifting his pose almost immediately into one of casual nonchalance.

'Let me know when you're ready,' he says, regarding you with a calm, yet detached smile.

'Okay.' You're unsure when you became so breathless, when the air left you and went in search of somewhere, or someone, else, but you're unsure it matters. Moments like this, of intense feeling and abrupt emotion, you know, usually do not last. 'Three. Two. One.'

The moment you press capture to take the picture, his expression changes. Eyes going cross-eyed, he sticks out his tongue and wrinkles his nose, making a mess of the scenery, and the image, altogether. And all at once, you laugh, overcome and overtaken by the shock. The abrupt force of it makes you sputter, your breath lurching forward in a cough as he rises to a stand, pleased with himself.

'How did it come out?' Pride drenches his words, smile wide and large and eyes glistening in victory, as you realize he meant it - he meant every detail of it.

Catching your breath, you study the picture, the absurdity of it, and turn it around to show him. 'You don't want me to delete this?'

He shakes his head, reaching for the phone and regarding the photo with a smirk. 'Absolutely not.'

‘Who is this picture for?' you question, confident a photo like that has a home, a purpose, a place. It’s not pretty, the expression and the energy tarnishing any hope of it living on social media.

'Just me,' he clarifies with a small shrug. 'But does it have to be for anyone?'

You fall silent, mind empty by the simplicity of this statement and mesmerized by his lightness of being. A talent, you are aware, you simply do not share. 'No,' you agree, voice soft, 'I suppose not.'

'Do you want me to take one of you?' he offers, pocketing his phone and cocking his head to the side.

In truth, you hadn’t considered it - hadn’t considered any part of this morning, likely would have come and gone with only pictures of the trees and none of you, your essence moving through the city without leaving a trace. It would be nice, you think. Something for your mother or, as he said, something for no one at all - something to remember yourself by.

'Do you mind?'

He nods, enthusiastically, offering his palm with eager fingers. 'It's the least I could do.'

Sitting on the bridge railing in the same place, the breeze moves through your hair once more, and you understand why he eased into the feel of it, almost tender in its smooth traverse between the strands. Sweetness lingers in the air, the smell of blossoms and food and a distinct characteristic, definitive to Tokyo, that you will never quite place. Hands gripping the wood, your mind wanders, seeming to forget there’s a purpose to your position here, a purpose for this crowd and a reason the petals move through the air, lifted much the same way the wind gives flight to wings.

Would you have wanted to share this moment, you think, with someone else, or share it at all? Are you truly sharing this moment, with the people around you and the man preparing to take your photo? Would another person have made it better - would he have made it better? Could it really have been more joyful than this?

Mostly, you think you would have been pressured, too aware of everything, especially he needs of another person. Aware, most distressingly, of the crippling necessity for plans and the way you are forever bound to the beginning and the end of an existence, all actions reduced from their experience to little more than a point A and a point B, with little room for the journey in between.

As if on cue, your new found partner coughs, approaching you with a placid expression.

'Sorry,’ he mumbles apologetically. ‘You're getting a facetime call.'

Gently, almost reproachfully, he hands you the phone and you look at the name, the iridescent letters making your stomach sink. Guilt overtakes you, mind racing even though it feels so impossibly empty, each glimmer of the name and the sad, almost solemn image of your face running your tongue dry. Briefly, you are reminded of the sakura mochi, and the way beautiful things so easily sour.

The shadow of your new, strange friend lingers, his own body taking on a sway that distracts you enough to decline the call with a tap of your finger.

'It's okay,' you say, handing your phone back to him with a smile you know is partially vacant. 'I can call him back.'

He simply nods, expression neutral, both somehow aware that you will not.

With only a few long strides, he returns to his original position just as swiftly as he returns to his original mood, jovial and easygoing all over again. 'Tell me when you're ready.'

'Ready,’ you announce, unsure if you’ve ever really meant it.

Loud with enthusiasm, he counts down the same way as you had, but you find you don’t carry the same playfulness to be as creative or amusing as he was. He was mesmerizing, and you are entirely uncertain how to attain that same radiant sense of optimism he seems to exude even beyond the frame of his picture. Instead, you simply look at him, trapped in a state of wonder and loss, a limbo that feels worthy of being captured.

It is not, you think, that this is a moment you’d like to return to, merely that you think you’d like to see how it looks. More than anything, you want to know how to capture and hold and maintain the fleeting experience of growth. Down to the depths of your marrow, you simply want to give permanence to the in between, your desire for control a habit you could never quite shake, regardless of how often you try.

Humming, he approaches you with your phone in hand, pleased with himself, though the corners of his mouth are downturned in pensive consideration.

'Who is this picture for?' he muses, parroting your earlier question and handing you the phone.

You meet his gaze for a single moment, mystified by the way his thoughts run wild in his irises, before looking down at the image. The person in the photo is you - she looks like you and wears your clothes, but you are aware that you are entirely absent from the image. Instead, you have been replaced with someone unfamiliar - neither hopeful nor resentful, she simply appears lost. Not lonely, not lacking, just learning, having neither retreated inward nor retreated at all, here and nowhere and delighted by the confusion of it.

'No one,' you say, proud with your success. This is not a beautiful picture, and you are glad for it, the ability to witness the discomfort of evolution. 'Everyone.'

Looking up at him once more, you finally offer him a smile you believe in, a smile you know is genuine.

'Does it matter?'

He shakes his head, returning your expression with childlike wonder. 'No, I suppose it doesn't.'

For a few, intangible moments, you remain like this, both regarding one another, a little unsure how to feel or what to say or what to even make of one another, smiling because it feels right and it feels good. He leans forward, inches closer as though pulled by a magnet, and the motion draws your attention to the queue that has started to form behind him. Each passing moment, more people arrive to the gardens, people wanting to view the blossoms and wanting the same photo as you, patient and yet hardly patient at all giving the bounce in their knees.

'Do you want to have breakfast with me?' You’re entirely unsure where the question comes from, and find yourself pointing in the direction of your blanket, the food and the bags still exactly where you left them.

You are unsure where the question came from but you are not upset that you asked, not even appalled. At this moment, the only thing you can truly fathom is that you want to remain in his company if only because it is spontaneous.

He glances to where you pointed, narrowing his eyes. 'Are you sure? I don't want to impose.'

'Do you have somewhere else to be?’ you press, allowing him a way out should he be too polite to take one for himself. ‘Plans?' The word feels heavy in your mouth, weight and severity of it unsuited for him entirety.

'Not really,’ he grins. ‘I'm just exploring today.'

You return his smile, glad that he gets it even if he does not. 'Me, too.'

'In that case, yeah, I'd love to join you.'

Together, you make your way to the blanket, his stride slightly unnatural as he adjusts to your pace. The kindness of it fills your chest with a heat long absent in your connections with others, and you welcome it, delighted for its return.

'I'm Chanyeol,’ he says, angling himself on the blanket so his shoes remain on the grass. He extends his hand towards you once more, friendly and personable.

'Y/N.'

The press of his palm into yours warms your nerves, a thrill of newness gliding up your arm and into the nodes of your lungs. Swallowing thickly, you maintain your smile, wondering if he can see that his presence threatens to send you floating, a too much too soon rush of blood to the head. His gaze remains on yours too long, the same way his hand remains twined with yours too long, and when he remembers himself, separating you, it does not escape your attention that he presses the flat of his hand to the blanket, knuckles tense.

It’s the same for you, the memory of his touch lingering long after he has left you, skin tingling and feeling tattooed.

Blinking, you avert your gaze and nudge the wooden box of sakura mochi towards him, gesturing for him to try it.

'Oh you got one of these?’ he begins, slowly, tentatively. ‘They're...'

'Awful?' you offer, hoping he agrees.

'Yeah,' he laughs. ‘It’s really surprisingly terrible. I didn’t want to say in case you love it.’

Your laugh joins his, the sound new and refreshing - yours in a way that it hasn’t been for a long time. You recognize the sound of it, the crystal ring and high echo a sound you made when you were nineteen and unafraid of the distant expanse of life. Back when you were fresh and bright and untarnished by the way a person can wake up and demand so much of you before the sunrise - demand parts that do not exist, and so you must create them, calling the shell of this action a compromise.

"I’ll give that up because you’re asking so nicely," you hear yourself say. "But be warned this is a slippery slope, and I don’t think you’re ready for the fallout."

He thinks you’re teasing. You know that you aren’t.

"One day," you hear yourself say, "I will give it all up for you and there will be nothing left of me for you to take."

Hours later, the linen blanket folded neatly into his backpack, Chanyeol joins you on the trip to teamLab Borderless. Because, you have two tickets and it would be a shame to waste them, a thing you said as a method of reasoning, a means to rationalize the fact that you felt good about asking him. Because, he had attempted to buy tickets and found he was too late, the day already sold out and the next available date after his departure. And you smiled, glad for his company and for the ability to make irrational choices, the magic of both these things making the tips of your fingers tingle with adrenaline.

And he smiled, you like to think, because he was glad to be with you, with someone, glad that you wanted him, continuing a conversation that never seemed to stop.

The art museum swallows you, takes you in and refuses to release your bones, turning you to carrion flowers. The dark shadows and blurred edges entrap you in a state of awe. At every corner, the impenetrable blackness looms but it is not foreboding, the contrast giving way to smears and arrays of colour so unlike the usual refractions your eyes choose to witness.

Even covered by this darkness, still, Chanyeol finds a way to glow. Through almost every room, the colours adorn his skin, craving contact with one they recognize as their own. Or, perhaps, it is you, learning to crave all over again and shedding the weight of responsibility, of choice over carnal desire, mind over matter, and the physicality of your wanting suddenly made manifest for all to see, staining him with the residue in the process.

He seems at peace in the falsehood of this magic, touching walls and touching lights with long fingers and delicate caresses. Standing behind him just enough to give him space, privacy, you watch as a light show animals, flowers blooming from their backs as they walk, passes along the wall. For a moment, you are transfixed, wondering where the lights are, how someone as tall as him doesn’t interrupt or break the lines of their imagined flesh, until he reaches one arm up and runs his fingers down the wall.

Slowly, gently, sweetly, he caresses these false animals, long fingers offering a gentle touch to the wall, and you step forwarding, moved by his bravery. Peering at his profile, you regard his serene smile and half-formed dimple at the corner of his cheek, softening for him as the seconds pass. Mirroring his actions, you do the same, running your hand down the wall and feeling the fabric, stroking the necks and limbs and arms of animals, the press of your fingers sending flower petals cascading to the floor, gathering, and not gathering at all, at your feet.

Chanyeol smiles at you, pleased with the entropy you have introduced, and walks down the hall with his hand still at the wall, touching and touching all he is allowed with the same tenderness he would provide a lover. It seems, to you, that he will never truly have his fill of the sensation of feeling, the smile he wears too satisfied with himself to really pull away, only doing so when the wall ends and he absolutely must. Standing in front of a new room, his hands clench into fists, wanting to touch but refraining from smearing his prints on the glass.

He leads you further into the museum, into a room full of lights and lights and lights, strung from the ceiling and glimmering not unlike diamonds. It takes you a moment to realize the lights are just that, and not refined quartz, natural pieces of the earth uprooted to display their shine. Chanyeol weaves away from you, looking at you over his shoulder with a playful, tempestuous grin, and you struggle to keep up with him, his long limbs carrying him away faster than you can move through the crowd.

Alone in an open expanse of light, you turn and turn, spinning in circles looking for him, rationalizing this sudden separation and wondering if abandonment always feels so abrupt; if you, and your over eager feet, did this to him, pushing beyond your limits out of righteous indignation. Was it always going to be this way? Would you always find yourself in solitude, just when things started to feel good?

From the distance, you hear Chanyeol’s voice and the noise of delight he releases, a sound that says he found what he’s looking for. You almost see his shadow, the length of him mirrored and rendered into an iridescent form behind the lights, a luminous mirage in an oasis of illusions.

‘Y/N,’ he calls, voice rippling through the room with some restraint, his efforts of being polite likely going unnoticed. ‘Watch this.’

At once, the lights change from soft hues of green and pink and purple to white, pure and endless white, the room igniting in a flash before turning blue and blue and blue, the sound of rain consuming the room. All at once and all over again, you feel weightless, as if the limits of nature and the limits of physics could no longer root you to the earth.

But then, you suppose, that is the point.

Limits don’t exist, likely never existed at all, your own mind creating the borders just to give structure and rules to things never meant to be thought through, only felt. Always felt and touched and bent by your hands and no one else's, and you find you thrive when there are no rules, just light and sound and art and Chanyeol; always Chanyeol, leading you into the light and ensuring you feel it.

The light hits you like a flood, shimmering in all the ways you wish you could. Your clothes and skin and hands become kindling for alchemy, granting you permission to glow, still differently than the holy way Chanyeol seems to smolder within the magic. On you, it attaches and pulls at you, breaking the boundaries of your flesh until you stand, palms up and regarding the ceiling, feeling a mist the sound of rain surely did not bring with it. But still, you are wet, wet with tears and relief and memory, emptying yourself of the things you keep buried within, letting them run free simply because Chanyeol gave you the aural, cosmic permission to do so.

He comes to stand before you as the lights turn to a shade of red, the glimmer making his dark hair appear auburn and putting a false flush at his cheeks. His very presence seems to change the atmosphere, molding the energy to fit and suit him, your own breath halting in your lungs, your blood, your heart, giving you pause to take him in, making room to fit him inside and never let him free.

‘Beautiful, wasn’t it?’ he asks, soft and thoughtful and the quietest he’s been all day. ‘That’s my favourite.’

You can only manage a slight nod, too vulnerable to give shape to words, fully aware the sound of your own voice would break you. Chanyeol steps closer, the lights behind and around you changing from red to purple, romantic in their shift, and the electric shock between you both looms, running down the light strings the same way it runs down your nerves.

‘Do you want to get some tea?’ he tries, keeping his tone even and soothing.

Once again, you nod, needing to be near him and needing to feel close, healed, and warmed by something other than the sight of his deep, affectionate eyes.

The pressure of your tea cup on the table causes flowers to bloom, a trick of light and science that makes it hard for you to speak for a long time. Your flowers are different from his, all pink and yellow and gold, where his swirl in deep shades of purple, the rich green of his leaves sprawling not unlike ivy, reaching, as best they can, towards your petals.

'This was meant to be my honeymoon,' you announce abruptly, keeping your eyes fixed on the foamy liquid and watching the petals bloom in your cup. Mentally, you compare them to the blossoms that line the street and the park, aware that these colours are too strong to be natural, but are equally as ephemeral.

Chanyeol doesn't say anything, just watches you patiently, expectant.

'I have two for everything,' you continue, running your finger over the petals and watching them bleed into your skin. 'It's cheaper to travel as two, in every sense. No one ever wants you to go alone, or go alone and feel good about it.'

'Why did it end?' As soon as he says it, he recoils, apologetic. 'I'm sorry if that's personal.'

Hissing through your teeth, you sigh. 'He didn't cheat on me, if that's what you're asking.'

'I don't really know what I should be asking,’ he counters, still so resolutely encouraging, ‘but I'm glad that's not true.'

'I wish he did,' you admit bitterly. 'It would have made sense. There would have been a reason.'

Chanyeol softens, hand coming to rest on the table, inching forward and back again. 'That's okay,' he reassures. 'Sometimes, things just don't work out.'

'He was perfect.’ You aren’t really sure why you say it, aware that you are announcing things you would share in a conversation with someone else. Perhaps that’s what this is, a conversation with no one, not even Chanyeol. 'Anyone would have loved him.'

Still, he smiles. 'But anyone doesn't have you be you.'

When you turn to face him, your expression feels cold, and you wait for him to reel back, shocked and pained, but he remains calm and patient. You love him, then, love him and hate him all at once.

'I could have.'

'So why didn't you?'

“Are we spending too much time together?” you asked, the sadness in your chest pulling at your lungs, tearing the nodes in the hopes of creating irreparable fissures.

“No?” he replied, also a question and sounding just as distressed as you.

You shook your head. “We are.” It was so obvious. Everything, to you, was so obvious. “We’re starting to sound like one another.”

It was such a silly thing to say, silly and cruel. You were so aware of it, of his crestfallen expression and the way you burdened him just by letting him know, by letting him see. Doubt painted his features, and you felt guilty for the thrill of watching him collapse.

“I just want to sound like me again.” This too, should have been obvious, but it crept up on you, slowly and when you absolutely didn’t want to look. “I don’t really don’t even understand my references, anymore.”

All you can do is look at him, look at him and smile in a way that feels hollow. But Chanyeol, for all his goodness and all his kindness, doesn’t seem to mind, he merely smiles back in a way that does not demand words. With him, there is no pressure, simply the understanding that not every question deserves or has ownership of an answer.

Chanyeol, for all his boyish charms, is the first to understand that, sometimes, questions just are and you cannot expect them to be solved.

Beside your glass teacup, your phone rings, silent and depicting the face of a person you’ve spent days trying to let down easily.

You decline the call.

The petals in your cup begin to fade.

Akihabara is his idea, silent suggestion tucked at the corner of his mouth, nestled behind his smile. A suggestion after a late lunch that leads you, seemingly aimlessly, to a train, an alley, and his outstretched hand, extended calmly and held in pause, waiting for you to take it and to not let go. It’s likely he does this to ensure you do not get lost in the throng of people, the tight crowd of commuters making their way home or simply making their way, shaking off the energy of a long shift - or, perhaps, still at work, likely in the last third of their work day, seeking a brief release in the form of distraction.

It’s likely he does this so that you do not get separated, but the tightness with which he holds you puts hope in your chest, a hope that he clings to you so desperately because the fear of separation runs deep and runs longer than either of you would like to admit. It’s nice to think this way, even if the sense of power it provides is fleeting.

But he offers you his hand, assumes that you will follow, assumes, beyond any measure of doubt, that you will be beside him, his mirror, and expects little else from you at all, undemanding of anything except your company.

At sunset, it's hard to fathom anything more golden - the river swallowing the sky and taking it whole, reflecting that which they consume like a jealous lover, proud and greedy. Chanyeol is all smiles and loud laughs, weaving through the people, the overwhelm, to show you everything - everything, yet conversely, nothing at all, at home with the chaos.

The city seems pregnant with potential, a gleam of untapped and just bloomed magic starting to unfurl within the lights, the rate of change a slow descent that eases you into another universe altogether - seen always without being seen until the totality of it is noticed all at once.

And when the sun disappears from view, the blue black of early night casting its protective shadow over the earth, Akihabara changes the sky. All at once, it is a metamorphosis of progress that eats the cosmos, transmutes the atoms and the clouds and the stars into fuel for its electric sheen. It's impossible to know where to look, if you should look anywhere at all apart from Chanyeol. The neon lighting of the signs puts shadows on his cheekbones, cuts his jaw into a rough shape that turns him from a boy into a man, his smile neither menacing nor tempting, simply alive and aware, a man in his element, brought to life by the electric current of energy.

It's a sensory overload, the city street and Chanyeol's protective, possessive grip. With his hand clasped tightly in yours, the light burrows beneath your skin, seeking the pores along your flesh and rooting itself down and down, into your inbetween. Every stroke of his thumb against your knuckles, every laugh, is an electric shock traversing your nerves and pushing you the edge of excitement.

You keep your eyes trained on the tips of his ears and the smooth line of his neck, his long legs always a few steps ahead of you - like he’s figured it out and like he’s lived this street hundreds and hundreds of times. Store signs pop on as you pass, and his ears catch the light, the tips taking on every shade of the rainbow, and your own heart struggling to memorize the person he becomes under each.

There’s something wild about this feeling, the admiration and the adoration of watching these asymmetrical pieces of him become beautiful and charming, that reminds you of craving, of the intensity of it, and, most of all, of the hunger that always seems to follow. It’s been years since you’ve wanted someone, wanted them beyond comfort and understanding, wanted someone and the mess of having to learn them all over again, aware that true intimacy follows and accumulates over time. But desire, desire always comes first, and it is always what makes you want to let a person in.

Chanyeol stops abruptly at a taiyaki vendor, eyes wide and full of fascination as he lingers by the window, watching the red bean paste rhythmically get dropped into dough molds. Still, he does not release your hand, only squeezes it twice, ensuring he has your attention, your touch, and your focus.

‘Have you ever had one of these?’ he asks, still watching the chefs and the mold press.

You hum. ‘Yeah, in New York there’s a place that makes them. Obviously, I’m sure these are better.’

He turns to you, wrapped in a state of pleasure and excitement, and everything about him is infectious. You smile at him, simply happy to be smiling with him, and he pulls you along, ordering one pastry in skilled Japanese. Blinking at him, you watch as he speaks with the cashier, wondering how you could have missed such a practiced accent or confident speech pattern, but quickly remember it was you with the tickets, you who spoke first, and even at lunch, you ordered separately, walking away from him to wait patiently at a table.

So much of him you’ve missed or glossed over, so much of the man he is rather than his heart escaping your attention, and when he holds his treat in his hand, you find it difficult to look away from him, watching him take a large, impressive bite.

Once again, a laugh erupts from your chest, and he pauses mid bite, regarding you with curious eyes.

‘Your mouth is so big,’ you clarify, and he smiles, proud and laughing with you as he continues to eat. ‘It’s just so impressive.’

Chanyeol closes his eyes happily as he eats, giggling in delight at your pleasure or the pastry, or maybe both, content with every detail of the moment. Smirking, he tilts the pastry towards you offering a bite, and the simple generosity of this action halts your breath in its path. This is intimate, should not be so intimate, especially when you are aware, so aware, of the true meaning of the word, but still it settles over you, like dust and the light and the acceptance that, again, you feel good about the risk you’ve taken.

Placing your lips where his have been, you wonder idly if the sweetness on your tongue is the dough, the sugar, or him, a residue left behind comprised of his laugh, his words, his soul filling your mouth and keeping it wet and wet, inspired to transform into someone else. Neither new nor different, just cleansed.

You chew slowly and he keeps his eyes on you, waiting for your reaction, and the intensity of his stare, the heat and the wonder sends you reeling.

You told him even though he said, clearly and repeatedly, that he didn’t want to know. He didn’t need to. Think of him what you will, he was smart, smarter than you ever gave him credit for, and he already knew. Saying it would just confirm his doubt, breaking him all over again in the most unnecessarily cruel way.

“I have something to tell you,” you announced, even though you both already knew.

“Not tonight.”

But you said it anyway, aware that every tomorrow hinged on his reaction, whether it would mean losing himself or losing you. You just wanted to know which he would choose, waiting to see which direction he’d take.

‘It’s sweet,’ you say, watching Chanyeol beam and nod and agree, delighted. ‘Sweeter than the one I had before.

He takes the pastry back and swallows the marks your teeth made whole, turning away to chew and watching as the cars pass along the street. Sugar lingers on the corner of his mouth as he eats, lips and cheeks sweet in a full pout as he savors the pastry, but you can’t really look away from. Tokyo is diverting and distracting, but you can’t fathom a better view.

'Hold on,' you laugh, his pause of confusion entirely too endearing for a man his age, however hold he is or is not. 'You have something on your...'

You might never know what compels you to reach up, your finger extended and your touch gentle, moving the sugar away with one slow, languid swipe. You decide it's another question that likely will never have an answer, because there is no answer, but just as quickly as you also decide it does not matter. Chanyeol's smile of gratitude is bewitching, the blue and green lights pulling the gold and red from his skin, and the reverent way he looks at you answer enough.

For several moments, you remain this way, silently regarding one another and letting thought, emotion, and need grow between you. A moment of silence in which there is no silence at all, the noise of the city a soundtrack of wanting that gets drowned out, stifled beneath the prism of affection that blooms and blossoms between your chests.

'Thank you,' he says, as though nothing at all had transpired, as though there was no pause, as though time did not stop at all. 'I'm a messy eater, sometimes.'

'I can be, too,' you muse, looking away and hoping for a distraction, a thing that should not be so difficult to find, yet still proves to be. 'He always hated that, my ex.'

Chanyeol snorts, finishing the desert with a large bite. 'I don't think that's something you can help,' he counters, mouth full.

You shrug. 'He would always laugh while he complained. I imagine he thought that made it better, like he found it endearing, but you can always tell, can't you? You can spend so long with a person you eventually can hear what they don't say, even if it's not in their tone.' Tugging your lip between your teeth, you wonder if you should continue, if it really matters. 'After so long with a person, I think your language changes, your sentences become the same, and it takes time and distance to unlearn it.'

He releases a long hum, eyebrows raised. 'I get that,' he nods, allowing you to speak without challenging anything at all.

It strikes you that he seems to understand so much of you, understands your motives, your solitude, and you imagine he would be happy with anyone. It strikes you that is is not with anyone, and you find it hard to fathom that he would be without a partner to join him.

'Why are you alone, Chanyeol?'

The question both sounds and feels abrupt, but he doesn't react unfavorably. Chanyeol pauses, crumpling the bag with one large fist, his earlier nod slowing but not halting.

'I'm sorry if that's too personal,' you clarify, reminding yourself not everyone is running or needs to. You and he are different people, even if it feels as though you have become bound together, a sensation that accumulated over time, the same way nondescript, vague senses of time do.

How long have you been together? A while.

How long have you known you love him? Not long.

'It's not,' he affirms, looking around for a bin before realizing there would not be one. Opening his bag, he licks his lips twice, wetting his mouth for the words he attempts to gather and drops the crumpled mess inside. 'It's not personal, it's just that there's no reason.' Raising his eyes to meet yours, he purses his lips in thought. 'I don't like waiting for adventure or waiting for someone to come with me. Maybe that's my flaw,' he suggests, resting his hands on the straps of his backpack as he straightens his spine. 'That I'm too impatient to properly share.'

'I don't think you need to have a flaw to want to be alone,' you reason, 'or that wanting to be alone is even a flaw at all.'

'Maybe,' he agrees, although passively. 'Come on. I want to show you the arcades.'

The game centers are a terrain you find impossible to imagine, to fathom, if you had not been given reference to start from. They pull you in from the street, yellow and red and blinding, luring you to them with the impossibly clear sheen of their glass containers. Chanyeol dives into a building, holding your hand once more and looking over his shoulder with a grin, leading you to a claw machine tucked towards the back of the room, away from heavy foot traffic.

Releasing your hand, he digs through his pockets for coins, gesturing towards a One Piece figurine he regards with competitive delight.

'I've been trying to get this since yesterday.'

The box stands tall, compressed between two plastic bars that grip it tightly, unforgiving in its hold. Your eyes narrow as you regard the stronghold the machine seems to have on the figurine, feeling confident that such a plight is futile, but he slides his coins in, lip caught between his teeth in thought as he aims the claw.

He takes great care in this process, hand delicately wrapped around the knob to guide and settle, calculated and focused. For a moment, you see him as an architect, an artist, a chemist, an alchemist, studied and careful, lovingly breathing life into things that currently do not exist. Triumphantly, he slaps the button to initiate contact, stepping back with eager interest as he watches the claw drop, the lights on the machine sparkling and playing music to maximize the tension.

He is unsuccessful.

'Damn,' he curses, but still his smile remains, reaching up to his cheeks and replacing the dimple you did not know you missed.

Eyeing him conspicuously, you cock your head to the side, gaze moving between him and the machine. 'Isn't this all just a cash grab? A way to waste your money?'

'Sure,' he agrees, sliding another coin into the slot. 'But it's nice to forget for a while, isn't it? It's the thrill, the tangibility of maybe, possibly. Gambling thrives because the odds never appear to be out of our favor, and we all like proving ourselves wrong.'

The last few syllables to his words take on a lilt of loneliness, and you are unsure how to argue with him or this feeling, given that he does not leave any space for it. But, for a while, you are content to watch him, watch the way his smile never seems to disappear, not even from his eyes as he tries and loses and tries, and loses again. Six rounds pass and still he is unsuccessful, and you wonder when you got so engaged with the rise and fall of a claw, but you know the real question is: when did you get so addicted to a stranger who promises the world but delivers the sun, a man who never really lets joy die?

When he leaves to go change a cash note for more coins, you depart too, in the opposite direction, the machine losing its glamour as soon as he disappears. Aimlessly, you wander, walking down aisles and rows, looking in without really looking, hoping to maybe find your own game to play.

Around the corner from Chanyeol's game, you find a claw machine with a set of towels trapped inside, something you don't need, but remember needing, wanting, and putting on your registry with a soft smile, finally feeling optimistic about your future.

"We don't need these," he countered. "We've lived together for two years. Shouldn't we ask for money for the honeymoon? Something we can’t buy everyday?"

"That's practical, sure, but these are nice." They were so lovely. When you were young, you imagined having towels just like these once your got married - adult towels, wedding towels you sometimes called them - towels that proved you were Of Age and ready, but for what you did not know.

Even now, you do not know.

You do not need these, but they're sweet, the characters of My Neighbor Totoro woven into the fabric and a silk lotus leaf shimmering in the light. You do not need these, much the same way Chanyeol likely does not need an anime figurine, but they are nice and they are charming, and there's something about the possibility of winning something, even if it is useless, that makes you slide a coin into the slot.

Time disappears around you, much the same as your money, but you don't think about that. Not truly. It's the first time you don't think about the loss or gain of money in years, mind falling back in time once more.

"Why don't we leave the list on the refrigerator?" he suggested, as though he were talking about a shopping list, a list of needs for the apartment, a bucket list.

"Do you want to?" you asked. But what what you meant to say was: I don't want people seeing how much I owe you. I don't want anyone to know how much we've invested in one another.

There's a nostalgia to the claw machine, something that feels like a regression and resulting in little else than making you feel young, as though you never really grew up at all. Somewhere along the way, you buried the child in your heart, tucked her deep inside and left her in the shadows, abandoning the sense of play that came with living. You're not sure how long you stand there, sliding coins and sliding the claw, focused and diligent, buying happiness rather than buying towels.

And when they fall into the slot, the thrill of success runs through your fingers, eyes wide in amazement because, yes, this was far easier than you thought it would be, and you stand still, shocked and pink with the joy of it. You blink a few times, lips parted in a daze, catching up with reality and yourself, remembering both the you you've become and the you you lost precisely at the same moment.

'Did you win?'

Chanyeol's voice resonates around the room, enthusiastically encouraging and sounding pleased as the machine plays celebratory music.

Glancing up at him, you're aware your expression appears torn, wanting to celebrate and wanting to return the towels, likely having paid far more than they were worth. But he beams at you, proud and happy, and you find that you are happy too. They are not adult towels, not even wedding towels, but they are yours - the first frivolous thing you've bought in years and the lack of consideration you gave to them feels impossibly, delightfully refreshing.

'Yeah,' you laugh, unable to look away from the ecstasy that adorns his smile, 'I did.'

Chanyeol releases a yell and lifts his hand, demanding a high five, acting as though these towels are an award and offering you more praise than you deserve. 'Let me see.'

Pulling them from the slot, he leans over your shoulder, inadvertently tucking you against his chest, and sharing his warmth, his breath, his radiance. You settle against him, holding the box in your hands and admiring the neat stitching, wondering if you too could learn to embroider. But it feels natural, you think, to smile this much and to feel this warm and to win so easily, even if these experiences are transient at best. It feels natural under his chin and against his heartbeat, your hands clutching the plastic as a means of keeping them to yourself, wishing instead it was his hands you had won.

It feels natural, hearing how vital he is and feeling how alive he is and knowing, with all of you, that underneath your years of pretend and experience and regret, you are exactly the same as him: enraptured by the beauty of the universe and demanding you hold it in your palms, never letting it go.

'These are so you,' he announces, breaking your thoughts with a low whisper.

You swallow thickly, always caught off guard when he's quiet and his voice takes on a rasp that makes him sound aged, beyond time. Looking up at him, you let yourself become awed by his soft expression, curious and enamoured. 'How do you know?'

Again, your voice is breathless when speaking with him, and you wonder if this is truly his habit. If maybe, more than anything, his talent is taking your breath away.

'You're like Satsuki,' he says simply, as though this is answer enough. 'You're Satsuki and I'm Totoro.'

It's not an answer you expected, mind falling through the layers of such a statement as he departs from you. Is it his height that makes him Totoro? His propensity for cute, magical things? His service to you? Or, perhaps, his heart, his devotion and loyalty and awareness that you are alone, by choice but not really by desire, not anymore you think, his heart able to see straight to your core before you could grant yourself permission.

Chanyeol returns before you can decide what he means, shaking a bag with the word WINNER printed over and over on the plastic. Wordlessly, he takes your towels and drops them inside, handing you the bag looking pleased.

'I wasn't nearly as successful,' he says with a small pout. 'But, I did get this.'

Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a plush Rilakkuma keychain, the item almost dwarfed in his large palm. Immediately, you erupt into laughter.

'That's absolutely hideous.'

Chanyeol laughs too, giggling at the poorly sewn face and unsettling clown pattern. 'I know,' he says, happily. 'It's horrendous. I don't want it.'

'Then why did you bother?' you ask, laughter fading while your cheeks still ache from the force of your smile.

'Why wouldn't I?'

He simply shrugs, as elated with his success as he is yours, proud and proud and moving through the arcade back into the street, and taking the light with him.

Half past midnight and karaoke feels like the only logical thing to do, the only place you think you'd truly be welcome at this hour - the hour late, your body tired, but still unwilling to leave Chanyeol.

Throughout the day and all over the city, you'd seen the signs for a place called Big Echo, their sprawl and reach, white sign looming from the corner of some of the most menacing sky scrapers, enough to lure you in. Their contrast keeps you curious, office buildings standing above you, higher than most buildings you remember seeing in other cities, windows black and impenetrable with a sign that heralds hours of karaoke. It's impossible to understand, and you are glad for this incongruity.

Most of all, you find you are hungry. Chanyeol kept you out in Akihabara well past dinner, dining on street food and winding from arcade to arcade, and now, emerging from Shibuya station, you are looking for something more to fill your stomach. He pulls you along, links your arms together as you walk, bound and united and happy, holding you against him as though it is where you belong.

This late at night, Shibuya makes your eyes hurt, the colours and signs frenetic and fractious in their vibrancy, demanding your attention, your focus, perhaps even your soul. Chanyeol's eyes sparkle as he looks from sign to sign, smiling upwards at nothing at all while you smile directly at him, keeping your gaze trained on his ecstatic pleasure in the effort of ensuring your heart gets used to it.

You know that it won't, that no matter how long you spend with him you will always be caught off guard by his beauty, by the way even his dark hair appears illuminated in these lights. He seems to eat the stars while the light feasts on him, a give and take of reciprocal lumosity and, somehow, you have been selected to watch. Even in a crowd as immense as this, you know you'd find him, drawn to him, heart seeking its magnet.

Standing on Shibuya crossing, Chanyeol pulls you close, rests his free hand on your arm and leans gingerly to your ear, close enough to feel his breath move through your hair. Naturally and instinct, you lean into him, positive that you will likely never be close enough, hoping and wishing that his lips will graze your skin, thinking you might finally know the true definition of bliss in the wake of such a happy accident.

'When we cross,' he says, close enough to rest his head against yours, lips kissing at the shell of your ear as he speaks and your heart breaking and reshaping in one single instant, 'don't let go of me. Don't let go but make sure you watch.'

'I won't,' you say, tightening your grip even though a crowd like this does not phase you, Times Square at Christmas an entirely different sort of test. But you tighten anyway, keeping him close, certain that he will try to rush ahead of you and, for just this once, you want him to be yours. 'I won't.'

The crossing sign turns green and all at once you are taken by it, moving forward as though something as simple as this has purpose, meaning, a symbolism of initiation you will bear as a cross. A smile pulls at your lips, widening with each step, feeling anonymous and feeling terribly insignificant, drowning in a sea of people with Chanyeol as your oar.

Someone laughs. You think it might be you. Another takes a picture. You know it is not Chanyeol. Lifetimes and stories pass you by, and you are drunk on it, wired into obsession simply because you feel as though you've crossed the world again and again, forty steps and still more angles to traverse the same path, new ways to witness the same thing. Different people, the same shape, nothing ever really the same again.

The Big Echo is tucked inside a dark amber building housing offices, stores, and restaurants. The elevator to the eighth floor seems far too elegant to be taking you to karaoke, a place where most people drink to celebrate or drink to forget or simply drink, aware that it is Friday or Sunday and the weekend has passed by with the same unyielding speed as life itself. Comprised of floor to ceiling mirrors, you and Chanyeol, standing side by side, are eternally, endlessly refracted into infinity.

Yet, in every reflection, every angle, all you can truly see is him.

At such close proximity, the closest you've ever really been - with no way out and only one way in - and the most alone you've ever been, you are suddenly aware of his strength and magnitude. Eyes drawn to the length of his arms, you regard the veins that rise as canyons down to his hands, keeping the secret of his power within his knuckles and joints. The tattoos adorning the skin captivate you, their pointillism blackness so rich and detailed, standing out on him better than you've ever seen on anyone else, the darkness resting on him with the same pride as the light.

Lifting your gaze, you study the regal line of his posture, the confidence rooted in his spine and shoulders, and feel your fingers twitch. You have held men before, held a lover in your arms and against your body, aware of the weight and aware of the heat, but never have you wanted to hold anyone quite so solidly, or quite so physically.

You wait for him to stop you, so obvious in focus you devote to his features, but he does not, simply inches closer, wordlessly encouraging your stare. And you do, letting yourself become haunted by the slope of his lips, the false phantom memory of their touch igniting along your skin. Perhaps it is your awareness of his dimples, the clandestine softness he keeps nestled at the corner of his mouth, that keeps you on the edge of anticipation, hoping and hoping to see them again.

Like this, you drink him in, admiring the tips of his ears and the thick, softness of his hair that makes your fingers begin to ache. How would it feel to card your fingers through the strands? Would he smile and lean into the touch? Would he watch you, eyes wide and speechless at the gentleness you'd provide? Would he ask you to do it again and again, craving your hand and your warmth, as badly as you seem to be craving his?

This was always your biggest flaw, you think, hyper aware of your detachment and the way your mind would always wander. During sex, during dinner, during long drives, or even during conversation. Always, he would find you looking away, looking nowhere, hearing without listening, seeing without witnessing, and he would call you back, asking where you went.

But you always wanted to say the most important thing was that you looked back. Always, you would return to him.

With Chanyeol, it’s impossible to be anywhere other than absolutely with him, resolutely and down to your core. To look away from him would mean pain; to break away from him would hurt, sever parts of you long buried but still connected, still whole, still vital, just neglected. And the same way you refuse to depart from him, so too does your skin refuse to truly let him go. The press of his body against yours is a preview to all the wishes that settle on you like a fever, sending a flush of heat up your chest and neck, and down to your thighs, wanting to be full of him.

And so you don’t look away. You simply won’t, aware and waiting, feeling his touch before and without it happening, imagination running wild while your heart battles against your sternum.

Feeling your gaze on him, he turns to look at you, on floor six when there's so little time to truly have all of him, but he blushes, receptive to the ferocity of you. Bags have taken root under his eyes, exhausted by a day of sightseeing, and giving him a puffy, purple hue, but he’s glorious in the mess of it, unable to be anything but majestic.

He keeps his eyes on you, unwavering and demanding, the most demanding he's been since you met him, turning his chest towards yours hardening, not in cruelty but with a sensuality you did not expect to see. Like this, he makes you aware that he does not only feel your gaze but relishes it, feels it deeper than you mean it to go. With one hand, he clenches the evaluator railing, leaning closer and closer while his other clenches into a fist before straightening, touching while touching nothing.

And with his eyes on you, your body wanting his body, the air in the elevator becomes thick, elevating your heart rate the same way it elevates you.

When the elevator dings, he breaks from you, lips parted and eyes searching, pupils dilated for a different kind of light and a different kind of relief. His strides are quick where yours are sluggish, wanting to remain in the bubble of desire that cradled you. But he looks back, lips wet from where his tongue has just been, knowing you are there and unable to look away.

You smile, rolling your shoulders back to lift your breasts, following blindly while not really following at all.

Settled in your private room, Chanyeol orders more food than you know what to do with, his only explanation that you said you were hungry before he takes a skewer of yakitori into his mouth, consuming it all in one go as he chooses a list of songs. His fingers are quick, selecting a number of songs and creating a queue before you even read the titles.

'I've only ever done this when I was drunk,' you admit, eyeing the digital pad with apprehension before you find the button that says ENGLISH.

'Really?' He adds a second songs, not lifting his gaze to you in the process. 'It's the most fun when you're sober.'

'It's the most embarrassing, I think you mean.' Looking up, you see he has already added nine songs. ‘How often do you do this?’

‘All the time,’ he beams. 'You just need to do it with people you trust.'

Chanyeol hits start, rising to a stand before taking another skewer into his mouth. Grabbing both microphones, he keeps his eyes trained on you and winks as Time of My Life Starts to play. The absurdity of it patterned with the sudden darkness of the room and the glow of a disco ball makes you laugh, watching him with a grin you know to be adoring, but don’t bother to mask.

'God, this song?' you laugh, rooting yourself to the floor. ‘Shall I be Jennifer and you be Bill?’

Refusing to let you sit still and hide in the shadows, he offers you the second microphone, eyeing you in earnest.

'Come on,’ he says, flicking the microphone in a gesture of lifting and delivering you to him.

'You're serious.’

You’ve done karaoke countless times, watched drunk friends and bad friends sing off key, or on no key, demanding attention and turning the evening into a concert about their pain, their nostalgia, their childhood, simply themselves. Any silliness or playfulness is always overrun by the desire to be seen, but Chanyeol holds the microphone, totally sober and fully prepared to abandon himself and his ego.

'Deadly.' The melody begins to play, yellow words turning pink, and he pouts. 'Look, you made me miss my cue.'

He doesn’t wait for your response, just places the mic in your hand and walks backwards towards the center of the room, keeping his eyes locked on yours. His eyes remain on yours as he starts to sing, exuding the kind of energy that says he could command a room if he so chose, and is aware of it. Walking into a bar with him would be like watching into a bar and watching every head turn, all eyes on him and you knowing the eyes are their eyes are there, challenging you to feel doubtful.

Chanyeol is talented, voice rich and warm, chocolate that drips down into your soul, nestling inside your blood to bring you comfort. You almost keep silent, content to spend the night listening to the way his mouth gives shape to words, the way his voice handles syllables with a tonality that speaks of unpracticed, natural ability. But he eyes you, expectant, and when you finally join him you regret not having done so sooner.

The smile he offers you is blinding, warm enough to combat the dawn, content, just as you were, to watch you for the rest of the evening. At the end of your first verse, he claps against the mic, delighted and proud, watching you with a focus he had not devoted to anything else throughout the day.

For you, karaoke comes as a relief. Having spent the majority of your life singing, it hits you, abruptly, that it has been years since you last did it freely. Moving in with a roommate boxed you in, kept you quiet in ways you weren’t sure you wanted to be, afraid of being annoying, inconvenient, or of judgement, and so you stopped. Moving in with a partner, making a home and a life, rather than a room, you tried again, only to find that this desire, too, soon began to fade.

Did he ask you to? Did he ever demand you keep quiet? You can't remember. Perhaps you just did so, returning from the shower one night to find his greeting and welcome cool, so unlike the way his smiles used to feel like champagne. You thought, then, it was your singing, a distraction from late night emails or work, but now, with Chanyeol, you think maybe it was something more, something not about you, taking on his anguish just because you thought you should.

From the start, he makes it easy and fun, song after song of terrible pop music, several you’ve never heard and others you know, and wish, secretly, that you did not. But it does not matter if the music is good or bad or even music at all because, with him, every sound is a work of art. And, with him, everything is easy. He doesn’t mention if a note is wrong and does not cringe or skip a song if he does not like it, he simply cheers, drinking and eating and laughing, joining when he knows the words and watching when he doesn’t.

Somewhere around 2AM, the alcohol refuses to leave you, your limbs heavy and restless, eager for hands and for touch, and eager to be held. At some point, he curled into you and over you, tucking you under his arm, light hearted and light headed, his nose pressed into your hair and yours into you his chest, breathing the bergamot musk into your lungs, deep enough for them to ache.

'It's going to hurt to leave you,' you announce, staring blankly at the screen.

An old woman reaches through her window to stoke the head of a yellow sparrow. The scene changes, a school girl running for her train. It changes again, none of the scenes depicted cohesive or coherent, but they bring you comfort, a confirmation that life is little more than a series of impressions.

Chanyeol moves away from you briefly, looking down at you with a small frown, lips red and wet with sake. He appears hurt, pained that you’d bring up such a suggestion, as though the alcohol has removed him from time entirely.

It would be so easy to giggle, but such a feeling is hard when you’re this drunk and this afraid of losing him. 'Don't look at me like that,' you hiss. 'It will make me want to kiss you.'

He only blinks once before he takes your face between your palms, firm and commanding, and kisses you, pulling you close against him as though he’d been waiting all day to feel you. Your hands wind around his neck, pressing against him as much as you can, ensuring that he has to tilt to keep kissing you, angling himself in the accommodating way that comprises all of the best kisses. A small noise of pleasure leaves his chest, and you smile against him, sucking his bottom lip between your teeth, invigorated.

Lifting his head, the heat in his gaze is threatening, jaw set and unwavering in the knowledge that he will not let you go so easily. A hand on your hip glides up your spine, sending a shiver up into your shoulders, as he fists a hand in your hair and tugs it, exposing the full length of your neck to him. Chanyeol latches his tongue and teeth to the tendon, rubbing circles into your hip with the same pressure his tongue provides your skin. Your hands clutch at his shoulders, grinding down into him once more for a reprieve, but he bites, hard enough to leave teeth marks and moans, a roll of thunder in his chest that makes your thighs clench.

At your core, Chanyeol's cock strains, the hard thickness of it causing wetness to pool at your underwear, eyes rolling back and vision hazy as he sucks and sucks at you, refusing to let you be free of him.

When he pulls away, your pulse quakes, blood rushing hot and heavy as you watch him, mouth wet and eyes dark, memory forever etched with the way he looks at you - certain you are the epitome of craving, and you, certain that he is all of your desires made manifest.

His gaze falls to your neck once more, a prideful grin pulling at his lips.

'Don't cover that mark tomorrow,' he demands, voice full of gravel. 'I want everyone to see it.'

Tomorrow. Today. Now. Time catching up with you all at once, shattering the drunken eternity you've created in this room. You think about waking up without him. You think of who you will be when he is not there. You feel yourself sober up, and hate it. Perhaps, you hate yourself, the feeling sickly and full of regret.

You lean down to kiss him once more, wanting to feel sheltered, but he leans away from you, eyes sensitive and scared.

'Are you still with him?' he whispers, nervous but unafraid of the question’s inherent weight, the edge of uncertainty falling in the spaces between the words.

Keeping silent, you blink at him, feeling your stomach drop.

'Your fiancé,' he presses, as though there is someone else you could have been with. 'Are you still together?'

Still you do not speak, unsure of the answer or if there is anyone apart from Chanyeol. In truth, had you ever actually been with anyone else?

'You're not wearing a ring.'

Chanyeol's voice is small, withering beneath your silence and coming up with reasons he should not be so scared. His eyes search your face, hoping for an affirmation or a confirmation, anything that would give him permission and you watch, once again, as you become a vicious thing, leaving men crestfallen in your wake.

'No, I don't want to be with him,' you murmur, aware, beyond any shadow of doubt that this statement is true. 'I know that I don't - '

Chanyeol interrupts you, the hope in his voice sharp as glass. 'So I can keep kissing you?'

You furrow your brow, feeling yourself sober up, and wishing for the warm bubble of pretend to return. 'What do you want out of this?' you ask anyway, shattering your sense of idealism.

He flinches at your question, the words sending him reeling as though they are an act of betrayal. 'Just you.'

You snort, the natural humor of the sound absent. 'You're drunk.'

He narrows his eyes, defensive. 'I'm not that drunk.'

'What will you do tomorrow?' you counter. 'It's just one night, Chanyeol.'

'Does it have to be?' he tries, the optimism he carries making acid rise in your chest.

For a moment, you try to picture it - another day with him, another day holding his hand and laughing, making noise, making a mess, making something. It's hard to fathom you'd be the only one he'd choose to do this with, and so you mirror his expression, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed.

'Do you have a girlfriend?' You don't mean for the words to sound so biting, but you feel possessive, hating yourself for it, knowing you don't have the right but letting it move through your blood, regardless. 'A boyfriend?'

'No?' he says quickly, offended. 'Do you think I'd be here if I did?'

'I don't know,' you shrug.

It's hard to imagine he wouldn't have someone wanting to follow him, someone impatient to share things with him, to see as he sees and to laugh and cry and yell as loud as he does. Impossible, you think, to imagine him alone, and so you justify your questions with the sense that he deserves someone, even if you don't deserve him.

But Chanyeol still sees through you, does not let you escape or make it about him, his expression becoming hard. 'Not everyone is running, Y/N.'

Leaning back, you frown. 'I didn't say you'd be running.'

Sliding off his hips, you settle back on the couch, facing the screen and not him, neither afraid nor unwilling to look at him, mostly uncertain what it would mean for you if you did. All day, his eyes on you have been pretty. You're not sure you can handle another cold stare.

'Is it so hard to fathom that I could want to spend all day with you, because I want to?' he demands, words curt and tone clipped.

Bristling, you look at him, falling back into a pattern of control and detachment, heart breaking all over again, this time infinitely, indescribably worse. 'I don't know. Maybe? Strangers don't do this.'

He laughs, the sound empty. 'This is how a lot of people meet. You're just so used to your boxed structure.'

It happens quickly, the firing of your nerves that tell you to leave, the motions of your hands as you gather your things, messy and disorganized. You did this before, not long ago, mind vacant and body acting in its own reaction, but this time, you are present. This time, you are aware of the hurtful experience of running, hurting yourself, for the first time, in the process.

'This was a bad idea,' you mumble, hearing yourself say it and hating that you do.

Chanyeol stands, moving to stop you before stopping himself, the boundaries suddenly drawn and nowhere for him to fit. 'No, please don't -'

You cut him off, moving past him towards the door. 'I'll pay for my share at the till.'

Chanyeol reaches for you, but you're already too far, far beyond the length of his arms. 'No, please - '

The sound of his voice echoes, even after the door shuts.

Shibuya without Chanyeol is cold, more shades of blue than you had noticed before, and you shiver, dropping your bag to put on your coat. Even with it wrapped tightly around you, you still shiver, missing him but, mostly, missing yourself.

The trains are no longer running - you remember reading this before you came, preparing for a city that only pretends to sleep - but Shibuya is still busy. The faces surrounding you are no longer fascinating or full of stories, but the gaunt faces of the lost and lonely, the tired and groups of people too social to notice they are actually alone.

You're not sure how long you stand on the sidewalk, watching people pass and wondering where you fit with them. Do their eyes follow you too, the sake still warm on your cheeks but your eyes alive with rage and frustration and sadness? Do they watch you cry? It's strange, you think, to feel parts of yourself become damp with emotion while the rest of you remains still and expressionless.

Strange, you think, to remember the person you were when you were drunk, drunk on Chanyeol, drunk since 9AM, at the same time as you remember and relearn this you, the sober you, who misses Chanyeol more than the man you signed a lease with.

'Please don't run away from me like that again.'

Chanyeol's voice emerges behind you, sounding breathless and terrified, but commanding. In this, he is unwavering, delivering an order as though he as the right.

Turning to face him, you crumble, seeing the wetness at his cheeks that mirrors your own, the mess of his hair, and the change you've brought onto him. Now, he does not smile. Now, he does not glow, the light stolen by your hands and your words, reducing him to an ashen state of grief.

'Isn't that dangerous, Chanyeol?' you try, focusing on keeping your voice calm. 'That you don't want me to? We don't know each other.'

He takes several steps closer, not letting you get away. 'I'm telling you I want to get to know you.'

'I leave everyone first.' You're not sure what it is about him that makes you say this, his eyes and his desperation pulling your greatest anxiety from your chest, but you keep talking, hoping he didn't hear and hoping he's still too drunk to care. 'I'm not worth this and I have a mess back home. I don't even know where you live?'

He laughs, looking past you momentarily, patronizing were it not for the shimmer of tears on his cheeks. 'Geography doesn't really matter when you have technology.'

'So, what?' you counter, bewildered. 'You want to date me? After a day?'

'No!' he says, looking back at you, running a hand through his hair. 'I don't know!'

'That's the point, Chanyeol!' Hearing your voice echo through the air, you look around, silently apologizing for interrupting the conversations of those around you, but there is no one, just you and him, and the eyes of everyone else not on you. 'You're so used to just going through it alone and making a fantasy out of everything. That's not real! There's nothing about that mindset that lasts!'

'And what about you?' he counters without hesitation. 'Acting like you know me when you've been too selfish to ask anything all day, talking about yourself even when you're trying to talk about me?'

Blinking at him, you regard him in silence, thinking back on the day and the words you've shared and the questions you've asked and realize he's right. Throughout the day, Chanyeol has been nothing but himself, unapologetically forthcoming when the question is asked, honest and supportive, and completely unselfish. Now, with him standing before you, looking empowered and looking violent in his need to be understood, you realize you'd only let yourself see half of him.

And this part, this new, emboldened part, excites you even more than the softness he carries.

'You got hurt,' he finishes, jaw set and tense, 'but you and I both know you hurt yourself.'

It's the fury in Chanyeol's eyes that ignites you, the raw and vulnerable tether to the totality of human emotion that puts a flame in the center of your chest, warming you and waking you. You cannot recall the last time you've seen someone mad, or had an argument that felt just as wild and passionate and important as you needed it be. Years have passed in which you were never allowed to be angry, only sad, the fire in your chest deemed dangerous, and brutal, and cruel, and absolutely never meant to be shared.

Years where every expression of emotion went against the way you needed it to feel - productive and intense and whole - reduced and belittled to just the embers of grief.

'You're right,' you admit, honest in your concession but still unforgiving in your honesty. 'I unmade myself for someone totally wrong for me. But you can't tell me you think you can be that hero. Don't be naive enough to think you can heal me. You know nothing about me.'

"I am constantly saving you from yourself!" you shouted, smiling at the way your voice sounded, beautiful in its natural timber of loudness.

The paradoxical contrast of how it sounded to how you felt - exhausted, burdened - made you want to laugh, but you held back, aware that one battle cry was enough for the evening.

"Why are you so angry?" he pleaded, the shallow edge to his voice infuriating you. “Why do you always resort to anger?”

"I can't be your wife and also be your hero. I don’t have that in me."

A death sentence. A gesture that would permanently be yours.

'I've been watching you put yourself back together all day,' Chanyeol retorts, matching the volume of your voice. 'All day it's been you, doing things because you want to, not because you had to. I know, with confidence, that you don't need me. But I'm saying I still want to be here. For you. I had too good of a time with you for it to mean nothing.'

The passion and raw veracity in his tone sends you reeling, and you sway, at once unsteady in this feeling. In one day, just one day, Chanyeol has proved he knows how to fight for you, the way you always needed someone to - with violence and impatience and a blunt, almost menacing honesty. You'd softened yourself for someone, surrendered pieces of yourself in the acceptance of comfort, neither love nor desire nor attraction, just safety, assuming this is what it meant to feel secure.

In one fell swoop, Chanyeol had unmade you, unmade these falsehoods and rendered you back together, somehow already having learned the map and the truth of you.

And as you watch him, chest heaving as though he had been to war and won; arms crossed over his chest, in victory rather than defense, you agree, smiling, aware that you haven't felt this good about anyone, not once, not in your whole life.

'I know what you mean,' you murmur, knowing that he hears you, would likely always hear you.

As if he's had enough of being apart from you, he steps forward, unfurling his arms and reaching for your hand, twining your fingers together. Whole conversations live and die between you, conversations that don't require words, the understanding that there is no requirement to have your plans defined, the mess of learning one another and learning your way through connection infinitely more exciting. Forehead resting against yours, he closes his eyes and breathes deep, his inhale uneven and warped with emotion.

'Come back to my hotel with me,' he whispers, keeping his eyes closed.

Closing your own eyes, you smile. 'Okay.' It feels good to take this risk, to be uncertain and to be passionate and keep him for as long as you are allowed. 'I have to go back to mine for clothes.'

Pulling away from you, he extends his hand, impatient. 'Let me see your phone.'

When you hand it to him, he opens the camera and leans down for a selfie, and this time, you make a face you haven't made since you were twenty-six and standing on the precipice of choosing security - you cross your eyes and stick out your tongue.

Chanyeol laughs, a messy uneven sound that makes you blush as you watch him stare at the picture.

Returning to the home screen, he presses the home button and turns it to face you. 'Unlock this for me?'

Pulling out his own phone, he calls himself and adds the numbers to both, intently focused on this task as though it is his lifeline. You remember getting the number of your ex - the man you left behind and have no desire to return to - and how getting that number felt practical, a need in order to coordinate rides to work or rides to mutual friends houses. A passionless exchange that grew into the pretense of passion, empty of chemistry from the moment you typed the digits.

'There,' he says, handing your phone back. 'Now we won't lose each other.'

Staring at his number, his name, the sakura flower emoji on either side of the letters, you smile, feeling twitterpated. 'You're serious about this, aren't you?'

'There's so much about me you don't know.' His smile is devilish, possessive. 'I'm greedy and impulsive, and right now I'm selfish. I want you to myself. I never make promises, but I promise you right now I believe there's something here.'

It's the kind of things you would have said before you had to change or settle for someone who kept you comfortable, safe but entirely not yourself. Long ago, at a bar or in bed or on a street with someone who made you feel wanted, you would have said these same things.

Had the tables been turned, you would have said them to Chanyeol - you imagine you will say them to him, different words with the same impact.

'Let me get my things.' A statement with no direction, your eyes wandering over the streets looking for a taxi or a landmark to center your location in relation to your hotel. 'I gave you breakfast yesterday,' you say, glancing at him with a coy grin. 'It's your turn.'

Chanyeol laughs. 'You got it.'

Unable to contain it, he leans down to kiss you once more, pulling you flush against him and kissing you first with his soul and then with his mouth. Now, you are completely sober, the cool night breeze and Chanyeol's rough words having dissolved the alcohol and your light sense of affection, replacing it with the fervor of ardor you'd been aching for. With his hands on you, pressing into the muscles of your back, and his lips moving against yours, smiling and laughing and kissing you over and over, you realize it's the first time you've ever felt anything from a kiss.

Now, you let him swallow your breath whole, willingly and without protest. He kisses you until you feel dizzy. He kisses you until you both are gasping, until you remember these sorts of displays are unfit for Japanese streets, and you break apart laughing at the thrill of breaking rules.

'I've never wanted to do that with anyone as much as I want to with you,' he admits, resting his forehead against yours once more, looking bashful.

You hum, attempting to prolong your absence from him. 'Me too.'

Slowly, you pull away from him, separating only when you absolutely must, Chanyeol holding into your hand until he absolutely cannot anymore. You walk backwards, much like he did at karaoke and much like you think you will always do, never wanting to look away from him.

When you finally do, you pull out your phone, walking in a direction you assume to be correct while you open the map on your phone.

Your phone rings.

A laugh erupts from your chest.

You pick up the call.

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stygiantarot · 4 years

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Modern Divination Methods

(originally taught in The Alexandria Archives on 4/9/2020)

Divination is most certainly one of the oldest practices of witchcraft. Reading omens, trancing for prophecy/scrying, and using tools to read symbols or patterns have all been used in some form for practically as long as society has existed. Many people are familiar with the mainstream ones: Tarot, runes, tea leaves, scrying, etc. Last time I went over some more unusual methods. Today, in light of the current global situation having many person’s stuck in limited spaces with limited supplies, I thought we could touch on some modern methods. Most require nothing more than what you already have at your fingertips!

We will explore in some detail:

Shufflemancy: divination using randomized songs

Stichomancy: divination using passages in a volume of writing

Traffic omens: Modernizing weather style omen reading using things like cars, stoplights, types of buildings passed, etc.

We’ll also touch on a couple other ideas you might try expanding on:

Online Randomizer: Think like the old web extension Stumble upon or even those websites that give you random quotes, images, names, etc.

Social Media Image Scrying: using a collection of images online to select a particular one for interpretation.

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Shufflemancy

Many of you have probably heard of this method, likely even tried it! Shufflemancy is the method of divination that uses a platform or application to randomize a selection/playlist of songs for interpretation. You can either just hit the shuffle button once and go with that initial song or you can incorporate a more personalized experience by having the querent choose a number of skips to hit. It can also be tailored by using specific playlists you’ve compiled or certain genre options on applications like Spotify or Pandora.

You can expand on this with applications like Youtube to include videos. It’s my fantasy that platforms like Netflix or Hulu will come up with a “randomizer” or shuffle type option someday. It would be such a blast to play a random video and then use that for divination!

It’s important to take into account both the lyrics and the melody/mood of the music when your selection is being interpreted. If you aren’t sure if you’d be comfortable with that initially, I recommend building a “beginner’s” sort of playlist that is filled with songs you know very well and have personal feelings about. It makes the interpretation that much easier. Much like using a Tarot or Oracle deck that has art styles or characters you’re familiar with. You may also incorporate the visuals of a music video if there is one for the song. Shufflemancy usually works better for more expansive readings rather than just yes/no questions. Although you can sometimes get that sort of immediately “positive” or “negative” impression from many songs, assuming it doesn’t have both!  

This method is a therapeutic way to delve into some modern divination. The emotional and cathartic aspect can be soothing for both the reader and the querent. Not to mention the connection it builds as you share music between you. A feel good way to practice some divination with no physical tools beyond some technology access.

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Stichomancy

This method of divination, sometimes called bibliomancy, uses a book or similar volume of writing to select passages from to interpret. Most people use the page number as the way to select, telling the querent to select a number between the first and last page (and what the highest number possible is). But there are intuitive methods as well. Using the physical shuffling of pages until it feels right to stop rather than a selected number. I find the latter method more useful when reading for myself and the former method more cooperative when I’m reading for others.

Like with shufflemancy, stichomancy is much affected by your personalizing of the tool. Use books you love! Use books that have specific genres for specific queries (a romance book for a relationship reading?). Use anthologies (short story or poetry collections) to get a variety of styles and language to work with.    

You can also use books that are more visual, like my headstone symbolism book pictured above. It makes the reading more akin to Tarot, but you can use captions to help expand on the interpretation. Practice trial and error with multiple books until you feel comfortable and confident that the results are accurate enough. The books I have in the photo I shared are the five I’m comfortable using in regular readings. I play with others for myself or specific queries for friends or family but often I’m not comfortable adding them to my regular repertoire. I have a series of dimestore style paperback mysteries that love to give readings for a dear friend but are useless in accuracy for anyone else. Books have personalities- if you didn’t already know that this method will teach you that fact quickly. You can also create your own specific stichomancy book using a notebook with numbered short passages and poems of that have significance to you. It can be an enriching process to collect all the passages to add to your own book and you can give them more specific and more easily remembered associations when compiling them yourself. Do remember to give proper credit/sourcing to all your collected passages though! 

You don’t need the largest book possible to be effective with this method of divination. “Desperation” and “Chilling Ghost Short Stories” are my thickest books, but honestly I’ve gotten more insightful readings from my two slim fairy tale volumes. It’s truly a method you make your own. I have friends who prefer to exclusively use books of poetry rather than fictional prose. That is good too!

A note: don’t feel like you need to have a physical book- I’ve had some success with ebooks! It can be trickier to do the flip-through for sure, but not impossible. 

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Traffic Omens

I was probably about 8 years old when I first played the “If, Then” game. “If this next light turns green before we reach it, then I’ll get McDonalds for lunch.” A simple and almost childish game of course. But essentially, traffic omens. I expanded on it as I got older to include seeing certain makes and colors of cars during my commute. Or a certain number of common buildings like churches or banks. A type of architecture or statues featuring certain things. It can be as common or uncommon as your needs require.

This is a method that’s a little trickier to lay out for others in step-by-step ways because it is omen based and therefore requires you to select what works for your specific area/region, what type of commute based omens you feel comfortable noticing, what meanings they have for you, etc. And since this is omen-based, it isn’t exactly ideal for actively standard divination reading. It’s more ideal for a passive style, or personal predictions in your own life.

You can build a system that works for you and could predict luck in a career, prosperity in the home, or a new friend. I recommend starting a journal of the sort of “omens” you notice on your commute. Follow up with a short blurb about how your day went and how you felt. Then you can refer back to it and create the personal system from there. You can vary the more common with uncommon omens- just remember to ascribe the appropriate association. Seeing a certain number of bank buildings can be good for meaning an increase in general finances but you’d likely want something more uncommon like an usual make and model of a single car for snagging a dream job. You can also create variations for when you’re walking during your day instead of commuting! 

 A bit more involved but something interesting to experiment with in our modern society. And keep a bit of that childlike wonder!

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Online Randomizer

Did you ever play with the web extension “Stumble Upon” back when it existed? The idea was that you installed it in whatever web browser you happened to be using and then clicked it to get directed to an entirely random website. Though it’s intention was obviously to curb boredom, it is definitely something interesting to try as a divination tool. Stumble Upon no longer exists (as far as I know), however there are similar extensions or webpages that let you do the same thing (this one comes to mind: https://theuselessweb.com). There is also options like Wikipedia’s “random article” ability that works along the same lines. This method is similar to stichomancy in that you’ll likely be working with text a lot of the time. But be aware of the medium you’re working with- a webpage is more than just a page in a book. What is its purpose? How well is it designed? What sort of visuals does it use? What emotional impressions do you get from it? It can start simple, but you can see the options are there for expanding an interpretation pretty elaborately. And again, a number of clicks can be incorporated if you like.

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Multi-Image Scrying (Social Media Image Scrying)   

It’s hard for me to come up with a concise name for this. But it’s possible you’ve come across persons doing this on various platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc. There is a selection of images in a format similar to a moldboard to view. The reader has a querent select an image that stands out to them and builds a reading based on the selection. Similar to a random draw from a Tarot or Oracle card with symbolism and art imagery lending itself to the interpretation. This can be great to try if you are into color symbolism or can easily see how certain artwork evokes certain emotions. Similar to what websites like Buzzfeed or the astro.com color chart quiz is! Almost like an alternative horoscope based on visual selections you are drawn to.

Be sure to ethically collect images for something like this if you plan on offering it to others. There are many websites that have royalty free images you can use for projects like this. Or you can even use ones you have yourself! These don’t have to be high art photographs, simple ones on your phone can absolutely work. The biggest goal is to make sure they are varied so a large amount of interpretation is possible.

There is a version of this using face down Tarot (or oracle) cards as well. You take a photo (or have video) of them face down and then have your querent select one at random without either of you knowing what it is. Then once you flip it over you can giving a reading based on that. It’s not especially different from a standard long distance Tarot reading except it can be used on a mass scale. For example, I’ve done this for my business Facebook or Instagram where I have a grid of numbered face down cards. Then I put the meanings of each card in the comments so someone can select the card before reading the comments and get a low-tech daily reading without an app.

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Even though many of these methods evoke playful games of childhood, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have potential as a valid form of divination. Many forms of divination in the past started as games or ways to pass time before they were built into the forms of divination we know today. A modern technique may seem “sillier” to traditionalists but just like younger generations are proving the further reaching use of modern technology to previous generations; it is time to prove the modern forms of divination as valid to the traditionalists!

#divination #stichomancy #shufflemancy #types of divination #witchblr #TAA #fortune telling #witchcraft class #witchcraft 101 #modern divination #modern witchcraft #witchy #modern omens

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sophieakatz · 4 years

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Thursday Thoughts: We Made It All Up

This morning, I went grocery shopping. I was all out of bread; even when I’m not packing lunches, sandwiches are my go-to midday meal.

Aldi had pretty much everything you could want today, as long as you were looking for food and not toilet paper. It also had signs taped on the walls and on the floor near the registers, advising people to stand six feet apart. These blue signs had little figures on them, like you’d see on a restroom sign, with a helpful “6ft” arrow between them.

But what did six feet mean, really?

I am five foot eight, give or take a fraction of an inch. It’s not quite six feet, but it’s close, and I soon caught myself thinking about the space around me in terms of whether I could lie down on the ground between me and the man who’d parked his cart in front of the deli meat. A Sophie is now a unit of measurement for social distancing. Though a more useful unit would be an Elie – my brother, who is actually over six feet tall.

When I was little, I read a picture book which explained that we call this unit of measurement a “foot” because in the old days, whoever was king at the time would decree that his foot length was the kingdom’s official unit of length measurement. So, whenever there was a new king, the “foot” was redefined. Everyone just had to be flexible and go along with it.

What I found interesting about this story as a child was the revelation that there was nothing inherent about the “foot” unit itself. We might as well have drawn a line on the ground and said “stop” at an arbitrary point – and we probably did, in the end, now that we aren’t measuring our leaders’ feet as a construction standard. We could have decided to divide the foot into any number of inches, as well. But we chose twelve, and we all agreed, and continue to agree, to use it, though other countries support the equally arbitrary meter.

I think we forget sometimes that we invented the foot, and the inch, and pretty much everything else we use to understand the world and interact in it.

In college I learned that it costs two cents to create a penny, which is worth one cent of purchasing power. I realized then that, like the foot and the inch, there is nothing inherent about money at all. We made it up.

We’ve all agreed that this little silver coin means this amount of money, and this other little silver coin means a different amount of money. And we’ve all agreed that this specific product is worth this amount of money, and we agree that that “worth” can change from time to time.

And now – because of convenience, because of how much we buy, because physical coins transmit disease – we are more likely to use a number on a computer as money, instead of anything actually physical. Money exists more as an idea, a concept, than as a thing. Money is a form of playing make-believe which is socially sanctioned – required, even – for adults to participate in. When I hear people on the news talking about the economy, how we need to make sacrifices for the economy, how if we don’t get people working and buying and spending again like we always have (even though we currently are unable to) then the economy will collapse, it confuses me.

Has everyone forgotten that we made up the economy? Why are we talking about it like an inherent, immutable, unchangeable force of nature?

A few months back, I overheard one of my coworkers at the Disney parks having a bit of an existential crisis. She had seen a small child running up to his mother after the boat ride, shouting, “That was beautiful!” And it had occurred to her that the child didn’t really know what “beautiful” was. He was just saying what he had overheard the adults around him say. He was just making noises.

Where, she wondered, did meaning come from? Did words truly mean anything? Did anything truly mean anything or was it all made up?

She’s right – words are just noises. We have all agreed that this sound means this thing. And in different parts of the world, people looked at the same things and came up with different sounds to agree upon. There is nothing inherent about language, and it occurred to me for the hundredth time, that this is all made up.

But it still matters.

When we talk about things that were “made up,” there’s a connotation that the thing doesn’t matter. Things that are real, true, concrete, inherent matter. You can draw people into theatres by calling a film “based on a true story,” even if the only part of it that’s remotely “true” is the main character’s name. (As if all stories, all fiction, is not somehow based on reality.)

There’s a dog which uses a soundboard to communicate with her owner. You can find videos on Instagram on the account hunger4words. This dog has been taught since puppyhood that this sound, on this button, means this thing.

One of the buttons on the dog’s board is for “beach.” It’s clearly one of her favorite buttons to press – what dog doesn’t like the beach? One day, the button broke, and the owners took it off the board. Later they posted a video of the dog sniffing at the spot where the “beach” button used to be. Then the dog moved across the board, pressing the buttons for “water” and “outside.”

Sometimes people comment on these videos referring to this as miraculous, ascribing a level of human cognition to the dog. Others call bullshit and say that the dog has no idea what words are, and this is just mimicry or coincidence.

I don’t claim to know how self-aware this animal is, whether or not she understands the concept of a word. But she is obviously communicating. Where other dogs would bark to get what they want, this dog has been taught that she gets what she wants when she presses a specific button, making a specific sound.

This dog and her owner have agreed that this sound – “beach” – means this thing – “let’s go outside to that place with the water.” Another dog and her owner might agree that this specific bark means “let’s go outside.” It’s the same thing. It’s all made up, and it matters.

There’s nothing inherent about words or language. What is inherent is the basic drive to communicate, to create symbolic meaning so that we can understand each other and work together as a society. The fact that we make all this up matters! The fact that we put these symbols and systems to use matters!

And maybe if we recognize that we did make all this up – money and words and the way we measure the world – then maybe we can free ourselves up to re-make it up, to change things in ways that help more people improve their lives, rather than feeling enslaved to the way things have “always” been.

#thursday thoughts #philosophical #language #money #covid19 #covid 19 #hunger4words #hunger for words #communication #coronavirus #society #measurement #meaning #introspective #nonfiction #social distancing

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clairen45 · 6 years

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Cracking the Mirror

The mirror scene in Ahch-To is probably the most puzzling we have ever had in Star Wars, the one we keep on getting back to, commenting, critiquing. I have seen many fascinating metas on Tumblr about this scene, usually wondering what Rey sees in there, what she should see, and what we, the audience, think we did see there. Maybe, we can less focus on what’s in there and really pause at the mirror itself and what it stands for. Because, come to think of it, mirrors in this franchise are a rare commodity, and since we are finally given one, let’s wonder what it brings to the story.

A story is a mirror that one carries along the way... Stendhal

The mirror is first and foremost a device, a tool, created by men that testifies to the many ways man has been trying to appropriate and define his own identity and image. Before mirrors were engineered and become quite a casual commodity, people could only get glimpses of themselves in a fleeting reflection in the water or in the eyes of people looking at them. You had no idea of what you looked like except as defined by the gaze of the others. The gaze of the others is still very much present today, but, thanks to mirrors (and cameras), we can get firsthand an idea of what we look like, and sometimes take control of our own image (hello selfie!). This is huge. At the same time, how truthful can a mirror be? We still look at our reflection through the prism of our own expectations, desires, fears, and insecurities, and a mirror in itself can be warped or broken, or photoshopped (I see you Instagram filters) . It is sometimes partial, and limited. At any rate, it is always a frame, and an inverted image of who we are.

Novelists and writers were quick at seizing the analogy between their work and that of a mirror. It is quite cliché to consider that most of the works of art, and that also include the visual arts, are more than often meant to be a reflection of our cultures, societies, and of individuals. We can easily project ourselves onto characters and stories, because they, one way or another, reflect ourselves, our feelings, our desires, our fears, our expectations, and our insecurities. And like real loooking glasses, these works of art, whether fiction or documentaries, can be warped, broken, partial, and limited. And they are always a frame. They don’t even have to be realistic. Through the Looking Glass is actually a good example to keep in mind because there again, it was very much a story about stories, with Alice going through the looking glass of fiction, and entering a world that is all about exploring the imaginary and the creative power of words. Fairy tales and nonsensical works have a lot to say about ourselves. There are many ways to view Lewis Carroll’s looking glass, but I will keep that notion for now.

So what a genius stroke to have us, puzzled audience, going back to that Ahch-To mirror to look for answers about our story. Like Rey, what do we see in there, and how much does that tell us about our expectations and about ourselves? And what is true of this scene in particular is true of the whole franchise as a whole. RJ has been pretty clever in the way he portrays his characters. Like Luke, we project much of ourselves into this story, maybe sometimes to the point of losing ourselves. And like Rey, we come to look for answers. And thus, like Rey, we are bound to be disappointed. For what we get, after all, is always shadows on a screen.

This movie is metafiction in its very essence: a story that tells us about stories, the way fiction is created, and our ambivalent relationship with it. The infinity of Rey is like the infinity of versions of the same story we could have had, variations, retelling, rewriting. But also the infinity of interpretations we can ascribe to a story. And when we finally demand ONE, one legitimate version that will answer our questions about “what is that story? what is it about?”, what we get eventually is just the fiction itself. Nothing more, nothing else. Remember Luke in the cave? That scene is afer all the pendant, the mirror image of this one. What is Yoda’s answer when Luke asks about what he will find in the cave? “Only what you take with you”. If we apply this again to metafiction, this is just as relevant as to what Rey sees in there: what you find in a fiction is always about yourself, what you bring in there, what you take with you and project onto a story. Which is why we never get to watch the same movie or read the same book as the others in the end... Because, Narcissus that we are, we will only and always read about ourselves between the lines.

To be honest, the mirror as a metafictional device is a common trope. It is often used by painters with their self-portraits, and even sometimes as a trick inside the painting to provide with an image of the painter reflected inside the painting. For instance, this one by Dutch painter Peter Claesz

And this is obviously not one of those infamous goofs that people look for in movies, when you happen to see a cameraman reflected in a mirror or a window... In a way, this device works a bit like a mise en abyme, a literary term that I like to refer to as the laughing cow effect: a picture within a picture within a picture.... Or a text within a text within a text... A movie within a movie... Well you get the picture!

And as far as Star Wars goes, you can talk about mise en abyme, in the sense that, as we have so often discussed, the ST keeps on mirroring themes, shots, scenes, lines of dialogue, costumes, characters of the ST and the OT. The use of this device can be interpreted as a homage, as a critique, or a subversion. Mirrors, no matter what, are always an inversion of something. So the ST, in many ways, is a mise en abyme of previous Star Wars movies. That was obvious in TFA, but it is still true in TLJ. TFA was very much looking inside a mirror at the OT, TLJ is very much about going through the looking glass. Which mirrors (ahah) what Rey does in there.

What? A mirror in my Star Wars? !!!!

Let’s pause there. Yes, a mirror in Star Wars. Unheard of. I insist. You would think that with the amount of intricate over the top dresses and hairdos, you will get Leia and Padmé prepping in front of a mirror? Nope. Nada. No mirror in Padmé’s apartment. I checked. The one time she is styling her hair (that is to say, languidly brushing her curls on a balcony in ROTS), she is enjoying the view and not her reflection. When Leia fixes her buns on the Death Star post trash compactor mess, no pocket mirror in view. Do we get Leia in her apartments? Nope. What about reflections in water? Nope. In windows? N-O to the no.

Enjoying the view, my friends, not looking at ourselves. Our gaze is on a galaxy far far away (or the green screen). The closer we got a mirror image of a character in the OT and PT is that:

Feast your eyes on your face in .... the cave, Luke. Coincidence that it happened in a cave? Shall I venture, probably not?

So why so shy on the mirrors, guys? What gives? So we have lightsabers, hyperdrive, blasters, and countless trickets that serve whatever purpose, but no one has a mirror in this galaxy? Like really? Didn’t bother inventing one? Ummm? Let’s apply theories.

1.Leia and Padmé probably do not style their hair themselves and have handmaiden and droids to help with that. Sure, but that doesn’t mean they would not enjoy a look at the final product. Check for the pesky piece of parsley between the teeth, the smear of blue milk around the mouth...gee, I don’t know.

2.this is a noble story with a big picture in mind, mmmokay. It is about the fight between good and evil, not about the petty satisfaction of checking oneself out in a mirror. Ummm.... I’ll come back to that. There are a lot of meanings you can ascribe to looking at yourself in a mirror. And believe you me it would have done Padmé or Anakin good to have one long go at the looking-glass before making most of their galaxy-shattering decisions. Just saying... Especially in a story that is so much about duality, fearing to become someone else, and so forth and so on.

3.Well so far, it’s a story about boys. Boys do NOT check themselves in mirror. As a reminder: Narcissus, Dorian Gray, and just for the heck of it, 3 pictures from Disney movies...

Ok, granted, there is one little boy (not a man) and two lions. And they are NOT using a looking glass, just water. Like Narcissus. And they are not checking out themselves to see if they look good, they are asking important questions about identity. Because that’s what boys do! Dammit! Like, you will seriously make me believe that Lando or Poe would never check themselves out in mirror? Well, there is that dude in Disney, just so you know...and other peacocks I am sure.

What about reflective surfaces in the PT and the OT? We are bound to have some. Well, here they are:

C3P0, Padmé’s Naboo Royal Starship, and Vader’s helmet: shiny, mirror-like surfaces that always lead back to Vader.THE Darth. Interesting connection, because, in the end, Luke, as we saw in the cave, is afraid to find Vader’s face looking back at him “in the mirror” (so to speak): he is afraid of becoming like his father. The three examples I suggest are reflective but they are not mirrors. They do not reflect anything or anyone in the movie. They still function as symbolic mirrors though. Vader is the mirror that Obi-Wan and Yoda show Luke as a cautionary tale: do not become like him, do not turn to the dark side! Which is even more ironic since Luke keeps on saying he wants to be like his father, that is his final answer to the Emperor after all: “ You have failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me”. From the audience’s perspective, faceless Vader is also the mirror on which we are projecting our fears. As for Luke, he is what we fear, what we don’t want to see in ourselves. What about C3P0? What does he reflect? As the comic relief, golden mirror to Vader’s dark mirror, he helps us face our fears, he voices our concerns, he helps us go through the trials very time we laugh at him. A blundering fool, he is also very much us, a twisted mirror of ourselves we can laugh at.

And what about Padmé’s ship? Ah, well, that is after all the only looking-glass that Padmé will have, a very symbolic and very significant one. It is the ship that takes her to her future husband after all. In folk tales, you have numerous superstitions about mirrors and finding your future husbands. One is about putting a mirror under your pillow to dream about your future husband, others include an apple and a brush, and Padmé will share a fruit with Anakin and will be brushing her hair, so she does end up having the three (though she is already very much wedded and bedded when we see her with the brush!). This ship plays an important part in the story in each move of the PT: first it allows Padmé to meet Anakin and allows Anakin to follow his destiny as a Jedi by leaving servitude and his home planet; in AOTC, it plays a part in Anakin and Padmé’s coming together, but it is also linked with the death of Anakin’s mother and his first outburst of sheer violence; in ROTS, it is central in the final tragedy of the story when Padmé flies to meet Anakin on Mustafar, with Obi-Wan hiding onboard, and it will finally carry away a dying Padmé in labour. So the ship/mirror is a vessel of love and a vessel of death (also materialized with the glass coffin).

And what do we get in Claudia Gray’s Bloodline, another ship, Leia’s ship, which is, revalingly named Mirrorbright. So a ship as a mirror. Again... But then, Claudia Gray’s novel belong to a different part of the story. It is part of the path to the ST. And that is indeed the crux of the problem why we did not have so many mirrors before. It is indeed because the OT and the PT were boy’s journeys, where mirrors traditionally do not play an important part. Whereas in girl’s journeys, well, they are unavoidable. Enters Rey... enters the mirror. And also, in the process, let’s not forget that Disney is in the wings, and, oh boy, Mr Mouse knows a thing or two about mirrors. Let’s give a peek at what they usually stand for.

Mirrors of power and the power of mirrors

Because mirrors were so rare and precious they soon became associated with power and magic. So, most often, mirrors will be associated with a figure of power, a king, a queen, a wizard, a witch or a sorceress. But most of the time, because of the notion of the mirror as a vanity piece, it is associated with a female figure. Examples of note: Galadriel’s mirror in The Lord of the Rings, the queen’s magic mirror ins Snow White, the Snow Queen’s distorting mirror in Andersen’s tale, or Circe’s transforming mirror in The Odyssey.

A mirror gives to its owner a very important power indeed, the power to see. And if you are talking about seeing, you might as well be talking about seers. A seer has a power of divination, he can see the past, the present, the future, “things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be” to quote from LOTR. This is linked to another important magic propriety of the mirror: the mirror is a portal, a vessel, that can carry your gaze to somewhere or someone else, that can reveal the truth of things, what lies beneath, that gives access to the hidden nature of things and of people. Most of the time it is associated with evil powers. It can reveal what people are truly like, as with Ursula in Little Mermaid,

or accentuate flaws and what is bad within people’s hearts as in Andersen’s tale of the Snow Queen, or reveal the way the owner of the mirror sees the people, as it is the case for Circe, for whom all men are pigs and animals.

Which is why the mirror scene almost always features in scenes of transformation or changes, either physical or psychological, whenever the characters are about to make life-altering decisions, and question their identities. Examples:

It can be an actual looking glass, or any other symbolic reflecting surface, usually water, like in Galadriel’s case, but think also in The Black Cauldron, of the pig Hen Wen which can create visions through water.

In the case of divination, it is a portal through time, but it can also become a portal through space and become an entryway to another place, or another dimension. It is the case for Alice, for example.In Star Wars particular universe, this resonates through three different examples: Padmé’s ship that has a mirror like surface, Leia’s ship in Bloodline which is named Mirrorbright, and the recent Star Wars Rebels episode, A world Between Worlds, that actually features a portal onto other dimensions. This, in my mind, underlines the crucial part played by mirrors in this new trilogy and how mirrors can tie in the different episodes together, literally, or symbolically.

Now, let’s look more particularly at the relationship between women and mirrors in classical stories.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall... you know the drill

Well, the first idea is not very positive. Many feminist studies have brought forth and underline the idea of the mirror as symbolic of the patriarchic discourse that frames, reifies, and stifles women’s agency. Through representations of women with and within mirrors, women become solely objects of desire and beauty, subjected to the male gaze. hence countless and countless of paintings of women looking at themselves in mirrors... Women entrapped by their own beauty, vain, and often oblivious to what is going on around them, preferring the mirror to the open window. Do they have an agency, do they own themselves, does their beauty belong to them? No they don’t. No it doesn’t. The mirror is always a frame, and like the genie’s bottle, it gives less powers to the genie that it actually binds it to the owner of the bottle, aka here, the beholder. A woman exists solely in the male’s appreciative gaze , otherwise she doesn’t exist. Mirrors in paintings are here more than often both to multiply and highlight attractive parts of the woman, or to give access to parts that are not seen. The female subjects is even sometimes trapped within different mirrors, not to mention the one that is the painting itself, the gaze of the painter or the audience.

Mirrors are normally there to guide about desire, and teach you a lesson about what and who should be desired, and considered desirable. Narcissus’s story is supposed to tell a story about how auto-erotic desire is not considered ok: loving yourself too much will be the death of you, so to speak. But, revealingly, in this particular cautionary tale, the hero is male. I am not sure whether the morality of the tale would have been the same had the example been female.Vanity, as attested by countless paintings and women’s magazines, is more than encouraged in women, as long as they make themselves desirable to the gauging male gaze.

It is very revealing that in Snow White, the most famous tale featuring a mirror, the voice in the mirror is always interpreted as male.

An older and a young woman are not competing in order to be the most powerful, but to be the prettiest, to the point of killing themseves, either literally because they do not qualify anymore (the evil queen turned old hag must be ditched and put away), or symbolically by turning into inanimate objects. Snow White, dead in her coffin, is still a prize for the young prince who is ready to take her home and add to his collection of trophies and knick-knacks. And it is a Glass Coffin after all. Same difference. These women are framed in the mirror, and framed by the mirror. The Queen’s looking glass is a coffin in the end for both women. It is lethal and poisonous. The evil queen may well be the designated bitch of the story, but she is as much a victim as Snow White of the infectious discourse of the mirror (see for instance Gubar and Gilbert’s wonderful work about it).

The patriarchal voice in the mirror is very normative about what the “good girl” should be, look like, or act as.The good girl is for instance, the angel in the house of Victorian times. See for instance Jane Eyre, when Jane, preparing for her wedding day with Edward Rochester, gets a nightmarish vision in a mirror, a female creature who plays with her wedding veil, and tears it in two. As many critiques have argued, Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic, is very much a double for Jane Eyre, the angry soul within herself that she must tame, but who sometimes escapes and lashes out, for instance at the beginning of the novel in the infamous crimson room.So Bertha’s apparition right before the wedding might be a manifestation of Jane’s unconscious who rebels at the idea of being “framed” by the very possessive Edward Rochester. It is as if the woman walks out of the patriarchal mirror (and attic) that usually confine her to act out for Jane and expose some of her fears.

The male discourse in the mirror is also eminently present in the concept of The Phantom of the Opera. In Leroux’s novel, as transcribed also in the wonderful musical, Erik’s voice is the voice in the mirror.

It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to stand up and come to it. It retreated and I followed. ‘Come! And believe in me!’ I believed in it, I came . . . I came and — this was the extraordinary thing — my dressing-room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out . . . to lengthen out . . . Evidently, it must have been an effect of mirrors . . . for I had the mirror in front of me . . .

In the musical: “Look at your face in the mirror -I am there inside!”. You can easily argue that Erik is not a patriarchal voice, which I totally agree with. He is still a voice though that is robbing Christine of her agency, and that manipulates her, that turns her into a vessel for his own desires and needs.

Besides, the patriarchal voice does not necessarily have to be male, as Disney has reminded us again and again. Women are more than complacent in this framing of other women, mostly because they have internalized the patriarchal voice. Look at Disney’s Tangled, that normally does not revolve around a mirror in the original tale. The young girl is also “framed”, imprisoned for real, but also by a woman’s speech. Mother Gothel’s motives are not too far from the evil queen’s in a way. Just like her, she fears growing old and less beautiful, aka less desirable, less valued as a woman. Because a woman’s power does not, in most tales, go further than her desirability in the male view. Rapunzel wants to go out, get some agency, but instead she is maintained, inside, as an object who is valuable only for her long hair. Long hair is not very practical, but it is sure valued as something appealing.

Or look at these other framed girls. Mulan is transformed so as to fit male expectation of what a desirable young bride must look like.

And as for Aurora, this is moments before marrying the Prince... and symbolically dying. Symbolism not lost here, for a tale that is normally about menstruation. This will be Maleficent that she hears calling her on the other side of the mirror, but her status as a bride and her death come really with great timing in the way the themes are interwined... Needless to say I am not so thrilled by the prospect of Cinderella’s glass slippers (even less so when you consider that shoes are the punishment of choice i the traditional tale for the evil queen in Snow White).

The ultimate framed girl is maybe the Lady of Shallott, in Tennyson’s poem. Like Rapunzel she is trapped in a tower. But she is also denied her own gaze on the world. She can never look outside, for fear of being cursed. The only gaze she is allowed on the world is through the medium of a looking glass. So, she is symbolically trapped in a mirror.To what does she owe this curse and what is this curse in question? We do not know, neither does she. Probably just the curse of being female.

Can the voice in the mirror be tamed?

Well, yes, so to speak, and that is perfectly illustrated in the Disney linguistics under the trope of “girl in love looks into a mirror”. Like that one:

Who has evolved from: Gee, I can’t stand the way the patriarchal discourse is keeping me in prison and depriving me on any agency. Exhibit A:

To being reflected in the water alongside love interest during a magic carpet flight, Exhibit B:

Oops, wrong one, but you will remember from the movie.

That type of framing fits the pattern of girl must fall in love, girl must marry, at least she marries someone who is looking positively at her and sends her back a good reflection on to herself and her own agency. So yes, the voice in the mirror can be tamed, that means choosing the right partner.

The Case for Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast, in particular Disney’s version is a particular case, and is much more interesting and further developed than Jasmine’s example, because in the end Jasmine is featured in the mirror in the typical vanity piece: she is looking lovingly at herself as the object of Aladdin’s love, while making herself pretty. Belle’s case is another pickle altogether. Like Jasmine, it starts with patriarchal discourse and framing, with not one but two male voices trying to frame her: Gaston who wants to marry her because she fits the perfect picture he has in mind, and the Beast... Gaston needs Belle to satisfy his own vanity, and the Beast needs Belle to turn back into a prince. So in both cases, at the beginning of the story, it is a matter of selfishness and appearance. But in Gaston’s case, the framing is quite emphasized.Gaston is also both a prisoner of the mirror (his narcissism) AND the voice in the mirror. Look at the ways Gaston is framing Belle in a storyline as well as visually on the screen:

Gaston loves mirrors... the Beast not so much. Enters the magic mirror. The first time we see it it is between the Beast’s hands. The magic mirror does what a mirror symbolically always does: show you the object of your desire. When Gaston looks in a mirror he sees himself. When the Beast looks inside his magic mirror, he sees Belle. And he realizes that she is too good for him, and that, as he now stands, he is unworthy of her love. By seeing the object of his desire, he first truly takes a good look at himself, something he fiercely refused to do all these years by destroying the mirrors in the castle or his portrait.He also gently puts the mirror down, refusing thus to frame her or define her as solely the object of his desire.

Then Belle gets to see another mirror when she starts roaming the castle: it is broken and reflects multiple facets of her. This is already something interesting, because the Beast is the one that broke the mirror. So for a male to break the symbol of patriarchal discourse, this is rather good omen for the way their relationship can develop. Symbolically, it also means that Belle is multi-faceted, that she is not the prisoner of one discourse, one image; that she has the potential for different identities, adventures, and choices; that she is not confined purely within one frame.The mirror is open.There are also some missing pieces, it is like a puzzle. And the way it is fragmented echoes the puzzle created by the Beast about his own portrait, which foretells that these two are made for each other, that they complete each other.

Next time we get the magic mirror, the Beast gives it away, on his own free will, to Belle. Which symbolically means that he is relinquishing some of his power, ready to share his agency, and the patriarchal discourse with her. He also relinquishes ownership of her image: he gives her image back to her. She has sole custody of her image. She is not confined within the looking glass, as, say,Snow White in her glass coffin, or Cinderella in her glass slippers. Just saying.

And Belle gets to choose what she wants to see in there. She is not imposed a given image or just her own reflection. The object of her desire is her father: she is not ready for womanhood and a relationship, she is still looking back into the past and not forward into the future.

Belle gets to keep the mirror. So she has power inside her hands, she is very much her own agent. When Gaston, the symbol for limiting patriarchal discourse, threatens to put his father into an asylum in order to get her to be his wife, she uses her agency by brandishing the mirror. Gaston was calling her discourse bullshit, he was denying her words, she will show him. And now appears the Beast, that she now looks at most tenderly and lovingly. The Beast has become the object of her desire and she still hardly understands at this point. But, more importantly, the magical object, the mirror has come full circle between the hands of Belle. She used to be framed in it, now she is the one framing the object of her desire in it.

Gaston of course snatches it away from her, and uses it as a weapon. He is the ferocious “wounded in his pride” patriarchal voice. He will try one last time to “frame” what love and desire should stand for, what Belle’s place and fate should be, so he locks her up and plans to kill the Beast who has relinquished all power. But, at this point, Belle and the Beast are beyond the frames of the mirror. They have acknowledged who they love and desire, and accepted each other as they are.

This is a very interesting use of mirror in a story, I must say. And it already probably raises lots of parallels in your mind with Reylo... as it should.

From the Mirror to the Speculum: know thyself and the broken glass

So, what about Rey and mirrors in TLJ? Revealingly, A LOT of the stories that I have tried to recall in the scope of this mirror study are usually matched up with the ST themes and storyline. Snow White, for instance and her glass coffin like Rey’s pod (and Padmé’s own coffin admittedly), Beauty and the Beast, Jane Eyre, or the Phantom of the Opera. A lot of reflections too in The Lion King 2, a movie that has a lot of possible parallels with the ST thematically speaking. I am pretty sure the connections are not lost there. And there is this particular art design realized for TFA, but omitted (why?) from the book The Art of The Force Awakens.

They used a photoshoot that Adam Driver had done with a model for a magazine to imagine a concept art that prominently features a mirror, on the right. This was in the developing stages for the new ST, and I think a good reason why they would not include this specific picture is because it was letting too much out on what they were trying to achieve, or what they had in mind for these two. But the mirror is there, and, if it played no part in TFA, it does play a big one in TLJ.

But before looking at this particular mirror, let’s look again at the “path” that leads us there, and at other possible reflections. There is first the Mirrorbright lullaby, a traditional song from Alderaan, that Claudia Gray uses in Bloodline, which centers around the moment when Leia’s true lineage is revealed and thus when Ben learns the truth about his connection to Vader.

Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember

When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember

Those you have loved but are gone

Those who kept you so safe and warm

The mirrorbright moon lets you see

Those who have ceased to be

Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers

Those you loved are with you still—

The moon will help you remember

The combination of lullaby as a genre and moon as a theme screams motherhood. The moon is linked with fertility, and rebirth. The theme of the song is that people who are now long gone are still with us through the love we bear them. In Bloodline, the song can remind Leia of the loved ones she lost on Alderaan, but in the context of the ST it resonates in her loss of Han, Luke, and how she grieves for her lost son. As a path to the ST it is important, because it ties in with previous dead ones: Anakin and Padmé, especially in the context of embers... See for instance @fluffycakeistainted’s great meta about ashes and embers, and the comparison between Reylo and Anidala. And in the aftermath of TLJ, it is also interesting because Rey and Kylo parted amid embers, and are last seen grieving for what could have been. Could we get a moon or moonlit scenes in episode ix?

Another interesting item from “path” to the ST, is in Claudia Gray’s Leia Princess of Alderaan, and comes from Holdo. I think there is much to make of Holdo’s cryptic lines and their influence on the fates of the characters in the ST, between “the spark that will ignite the fire” and this specific line: “Mirrors bend light”. I am unsure what to make out of this at this point, but I really want to keep this idea in mind for episode ix possibly.

Now in TLJ itself, there are three important points I want to underline before tackling THE mirror from Ahch-To cave.

Phasma as a mirror. Sure, as a chrome dome, her shining uniform is supposed to look super cool and super badass. Contrary to Vader and C3P0, you can actually see items and people reflected in her armor. I wonder if it might mean something else. Especially since she is usually positioned as Finn’s antagonist. She is Finn’s mirror, the image that he left behind, what he does not want to be. She is his particular foil and nemesis. She is the mirror in Finn’s own storyline.

The “oculus” in Snoke’s throne room. This is akin to the wizard’s magic glass. It is not a looking-glass but a magnifying glass. Like a Devil’s Mirror, the purpose it serves in TLJ is emphasizing bad things, here the destruction of the Resistance fleet.

The many reflecting surfaces in the scenes where Kylo appears. In the throne room or on the deck before Force bond 2. They are revealing of the duality of the character. In this particular scene, what I find particularly interesting, is that when he will turn he will indeed see his image reflected... in Rey, through the Force bond. I will not develop this particular point because I think it has been done before, but the way they fight and move mirror each other...

Ok, so, thank you for indulging me and having read that far. So, what about that mirror scene? The pièce de résistance... It appears to Rey at the moment when she has given up on Luke being the hero that will save the day and help her find answers about herself, and right after Kylo tells her what happened between Luke and him. All the truths she was holding on to are shattered: the hero and the monster. So she turns back to herself and what she has always wanted: the truth about her parents, and to have her parents back. If the Light had no answers, maybe the Dark will.

Of course, the first degree of the analysis is very much about the classical “know thyself”, the quest for identity. She first gets an infinity of replicas of herself, before asking the mirror to “show them” to her, fingers barely touching the surface. Then, two dark figures walk towards her, gasp, fuse, re-gasp, somewhat look like someone that could be Kylo, major gasp, and then turn into her own reflection. Disappointment. For everone and not just Rey.The story is very much about herself. To come back to previous references, she is like Belle roaming the castle: the mirror is cracked, reflecting many possible identities and lives for her.

And hell breaks loose because the whole story is a flashback she tells Kylo, who becomes her mirror image in the flesh, sitting on the same terracota stools, holding out the hand, fingers barely touching the surface, her tear mirroring the scar on his face. As itself, the first degree is revealing enough. What she has come to find in the mirror is Kylo himself, whether we see him or not reflected there. Here he is, minutes later, and the scene speaks for itself. We also get another added power associated with the mirror, when they both get visions through the encounter, apparently of the past for him, and of the future for her.

The second degree is not that far from the mark either. The entrance to the cave is, as many have pointed before, very reminiscent of female genitalia. So for Rey looking and gaping at the entrance of the cave is pretty much like using a speculum. She is taking interest in her sexuality, in her womanhood, with a visual imagery that is VERY reminiscent of the way Caravaggio painted Narcissus looking at himself. I can’t include the clip for now, I will as soon as I can, but seriously, compare the way she bends over the entrance with that:

Down the hole, she falls, you would say much like Alice, and like Alice and Narcissus she almost drowns. Inside the cave, traditionally the image of the womb, a mirror. Replicas and reproductions could point to the fact that Rey, as a mother, has the potential to replicate herself, to live through the generations out of the children she can bear. It is also that laughing cow effect again... Something of the matriochka doll concept: even in her mother’s womb, a baby girl already holds within herself all the eggs that represent potential new babies, so a girl within a girl within a girl...

As I have pointed out before, mirrors are also supposed to reflect the object of desire. It is very significant that this mirror scene happens RIGHT AFTER the half-naked encounter with Kylo, and the flustered reaction she gets from the sight. But Rey is, at this point, unable to understand or process this desire. Just like Beauty when she gets the Beast’s magic mirror, she asks to get a peek at the past, her parents. She mistakes what she really wants. The same mistake that she did before and that Maz highlighted on Takodana: “the belonging you seek is not behind you”. She did not ask for what she really desired because she was unable to identify it yet, and so she did not get the right answer to her question, just a blurred vision. Through the Force vision, she gets something that changes her perspective though, since she throws herself with wild abandon at the mercy of Kylo and Snoke, so sure she is of what may happen.

Ok, so, guilty as charged, I also “speculated” a bit about what appears in the mirror. That’s what we are expected to do: the whole point of the mirror scene is to have us speculate after all. I will argue that it is awesome that we didn’t get any clear vision in this mirror. Just Rey’s face. For all the reasons that I have listed above in my detailed exposé on mirror scenes.

No patriarchal voice or discourse, Rey is the agent and the narrator of her own story: hurray!

No framing as the good girl, many different possibilities

No foil images: her opposite, her antagonist, an alien or corrupted version of herself, nothing hidden is revealed

If we had seen Kylo for sure in the mirror people might have still been tempted to interpret it as a clear sign that they are meant to fight, that he is her enemy in the mirror, since the image is prompted by fear and the Dark side

Cracked mirror is always a better option for a heroine, it leaves ways of escaping the frame, of not remaining a prisoner

Going through the mirror for Rey does equal in her journey accessing the truth, the path to reality. She is the heroine of her story and not the footnote to someone else’s story, she is a message and not just a messenger. She acknowledges that Kylo and her share something unique. She has a more nuanced approach to the whole picture. It is key in the letting go of her search for idealized parents.

Because she failed to find the appropriate reflection in the mirror, she goes and seeks the one that she needs.We DON’T NEED to get Ben/Kylo in the scene. We shouldn’t get Kylo in the scene because it is much better that she goes identifying him as the true object of her need and desire on her own, outside of the mirror. This is a great subversion of the mirror trope in the heroine’s journey. It is not in the mirror that she really learns to know herself, what she needs, what she wants or who she is meant to be with. It is not in a mirror that she gets visions of her fate, her future, or any access to power. She gets ALL THAT when she touches fingers with Kylo: that’s her real mirror scene. And it’s one that she chooses, initiates, provokes: she is the one looking for him after the cave scene (from the novelization), she is the one talking and framing the discussion, she is the one initiating the touch, and dragging him inside HER frame, and not the other way around.

I leave it there for now. This was quite a long one and I fear a bit rough because as a process it got interrupted many times. I hope it can spark discussions.

#reylo #reylo fandom #reylo meta #reylo fam #mirrors in star wars #disney parallels #star wars meta #themes in star wars

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