#Anyways (drowns him in religious metaphors) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ghostaholics · 1 year

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ᴄᴀᴛᴀʟʏsᴛ ( ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴᴇ )

SUMMARY: (au only mildly inspire by the original tv/game timeline since I started writing this before ep. 2 came out; honestly not very canon-compliant) After reaching Colorado – the Fireflies' former backdrop for failed vaccine trials – you and Joel get ambushed in the science lab by people who have since then, made their new home at the abandoned university; during the scuffle, one of the attackers stabs you with a syringe containing unknown contents. PAIRING: Joel Miller x fem!Reader WARNING(S) FOR LATER: pining (mutual) sex pollen; dub-con; p-in-v unprotected sex; use of a mouth gag and a rope during sex but it's for safety assurances not because Joel's a dark guy; still angst even though I left in 50% of it; religious references and lots of metaphors that don't make sense; unbeta'd - expect mistakes; characterization is based on second half of the game and I may have accidentally made him too soft oops idc, ooc for sure WORD COUNT: 2 k A/N: PT. 1; this is already over 10k words in my drafts and I still don't even have like half of it done yet but I'll put out this small part for now I guess

IT'S A GODDAMN SICKNESS – THIS FEELING, festering, like skin stripped raw and every nerve lit on fire. There’s nothing left of you – only flesh and bone knitted together by gnawing hunger.

He should put you out of your misery.

You would welcome death over this: it would be faster, easier, not each excruciating second prolonging your suffering as time bleeds, drawn-out, stretching at an unbearably sluggish pace. This won't pass over. It's only been getting worse the longer you try to ignore it, to let it snuff out on its own. The craving is bad. It surges through your veins, leaves your blood boiling as if it’s burning you alive from the inside-out. Insatiable need devours your body like an all-consuming disease; your mind is scrambled, thoughts as good as ash at this point aside from the surviving idea that you know that this will swallow you whole.

Here's how it happened.

HE'S A KILLER; The leftover carnage is a gut-wrenching testament to that – a breadcrumb trail of carcasses deserted along the westbound, beaten track to Colorado that’s rivaled only by the number of skeletons in his closet.

Not that he's had much choice. It's this very concept that every single media outlet had kept pushing, what had plagued the top headlines, breaking news, and morning segments leading up to Outbreak Day in a concerted effort to capitalize on a little something called sensationalism. The public had wolfed it down, too – had gorged themselves on the idea of it even after all the grocery stores had been raided bare and there'd been zero food left on the shelves; TVs as their place settings with radios emerging as their proxies not long after the power had gone out – because the drama of it all had been more satisfying than the shitty scraps they'd been getting by on: survival of the fittest, who'd get wiped out by the infection first? And Joel Miller is a living legacy that continues to push the limits of natural selection with every poor bastard that he manages to sink a shiny fucking bullet into.

Adaptation. The end of the world has chewed him up, teeth gnashing – razor-sharp incisors; no leftover bones, no remains like the majority of the people who’ve met a collective demise, but a man spit out in one intact piece (physically, anyways – mentally, that’s probably another story). Now, he’s a stone-cold terror. Cutthroat – all jagged edges and mistrust leaching into his pores. Someone who’s had to acclimatize, because the way he sees it, there’s a million different choices to make that only ever lead to two outcomes. And Joel always picks whichever option affords him the best opportunity to stay alive, but it’s the reason he’s got a ledger drowning in red.

Before, that had meant late mortgage payments and loan sharks hunting him down, risky wagers with shady figures to get Sarah new clothes in time for the upcoming school because she’d been outgrowing them every damn year, and also don’t forget the shady business ventures he’d invested in until he’d learnt his lesson the hard way and had decided to throw himself headfirst into work – day in and day out to save up for his own construction company, something stable and honest; maybe then he wouldn’t have to lie about forgetting to pick up the milk or the pancake mix because the reality had been that he was struggling to put food on the table, and maybe he’d get to spend more time with his daughter and pay the soccer club fees that he couldn’t afford so she could make more friends outside of him and the Adlers, and maybe his blood pressure would level out so his pockets wouldn’t dry up with the cost of his medicine because his insurance had been shit, and maybe he wouldn’t have to go to bed every night crunching numbers behind his eyelids to figure out if he had enough to get through the next month’s round of bills, and fuck, maybe things would finally start to look up for once in his life.

Then it had all stopped mattering in an instant.

So now, it means shooting someone dead without a second thought – a past full of necessary evils: ruthlessness, cynicism, and a death toll second to none. Anybody coming up against him? Shit out of luck. He’s never had a problem with having to pull the trigger, and being caught on the wrong end of his gun always promises a grim fate.

Except Columbus, Ohio.

It would’ve been another blight, another wicked deed buried underneath the growing mountain of awfulness that he's responsible for. There are a lot of things that keep Joel up at night, but as bad as it is to say, this definitely wouldn’t have been one of them.

And then, the impossible – first person to break the cycle: a scavenger combing through the tipped over stands of North Market, kneeling under the dusty Penny's Meats cleaver sign at a basket filled with plastic bags of twenty-year-old beef jerky. And Joel would kill (quite literally) for that if it meant securing his next meal; hell, the next week's worth of them. The only thing standing in between him and food security could be taken care of with an easy shot to the back of your skull at point blank range.

A target.

An inconvenience.

— but that's another story.

Since then, it’s been a road paved with affliction. Ohio. Indiana. Illinois. Iowa. (Nebraska's a sensitive topic.) Wyoming.

Joel grasps your hand firmly in his: dried blood over split knuckles and calluses that have stayed around forever because now he wields a gun 24/7 instead of a carpentry tool from his blue-collar days; he helps you navigate the terrain so you don't misstep – a sprained ankle can slow us down in more ways than one, he always says. Cautious, trigger-sensitive, because he needs to be. The action is meant to be practical, shepherding you over the terrain. So you opt to neglect how his fingers slotted between yours shoos the bitter cold from making a home out of your body and thaws the ice from the crevices chiseled in your bones.

The feeling is nice.

The thought is dangerous.

Because, Nebraska: a hellish nightmare in the flesh.

(Let's not talk about it).

(But circling around the topic doesn’t help. You don't bring it up, and yet it still takes center stage, occupying your mind. Always. How could it not?)

Hordes of cordyceps-ridden pieces-of-shit on your heels until you'd been driven into a corner, back against the wall – odds in the negative as infected after infected had zeroed in on your position and converged like a putrid swarm, a writhing mass of rotten bodies, all of them clambering over each other for their own share of pulpy, human meat to tear into; it'd reminded you of the same way people had been after the outbreak had reached critical mass.

Ravenous.

(This is what had been a difficult pill for you to swallow in the beginning – before you'd started sleeping with a machete along the edge of your bedroll, before the sound of a person choking on their own blood had gone from something that had cursed your hands with a 'round-the-clock tremor to nothing but fucking white noise, and before you'd learned everything there is to know about how to survive amongst societal collapse where 'every man for himself' has never been a more true statement than it is now: the hunger doesn't stop when you turn into one of them.)

As the two of you weave through dense foliage overrunning anything in its path and past man-sized slabs of concrete that form a serrated pattern of the very ground you're currently forced to scale, Joel rumbles a low, "Easy, now,"; you can see how in the dead of winter a plume of air leaves his mouth whenever he talks. He's nice to look at, better than your surroundings by a long shot. Boulder is just another wasteland that offers nothing new in your trek across the country because underneath the whalebone-white quilt of snow smothering everything, it's the same old shit that you saw when you'd cut through the never-ending stretch of land that used to be the Bible Belt to get out of the Atlanta Q.Z. It'd been ghost towns dotting the map between miles and miles of infestation: the walking dead had been piloted by the impulse to tear you apart alongside their living counterparts – the survivors with rootless hearts that stalked in the shadows like vultures waiting to pick your corpse clean of supplies.

But, for as on guard as you have to be, you'd rather focus your attention on Joel, because the snowflakes burying themselves in his beard are far more interesting than the decaying buildings and jigsaw-puzzled pavement that paint Colorado with an apocalyptic finish. He's a welcome distraction. Maybe, too good. The toe of your boot catches on the uneven landscape while you're lost in thought so you brace yourself to strike the ground as it gives out from under you, hands flying out in reflex. Instead, sturdy arms secure themselves around your waist before you can fall. You’re hauled flat against the solid wall of Joel's chest, something akin to an embrace that shouldn’t feel as nice as he is to look at. Even through layers of clothes, even through the frigid temperatures during this time of the year, his heat manages to bleed into you.

"Told you to watch your step there'," he murmurs in that long Texan drawl. Whiskey on his breath. Caramel. Ethanol. Burning alcohol-sweet, it greets you alongside the usual smoky and metallic smell of gunpowder and blood; the kind he'd pilfered from a liquor store back in Omaha – makin' sure it's good enough to the Molotov cocktails with, he'll comment before taking a swig. Brings it up like clockwork, as if it gets funnier the longer he keeps trying to wear the joke out even worse than the soles of his boots. It doesn’t. Just short of being a jack of all trades. Certainly no comedian.

Not a drunk, either – isn't stupid enough to put himself in jeopardy around these parts. You'd seen it before, once: cheeks flushed red and eyes glazed over; couldn't walk a straight line for five feet, much less aim a gun (September 26th, you remember). This isn't that. The whiskey's stronger now, though. You can tell when he stands nearby, face inches away.

(He's been drinking more lately. Not a lot, but the right amount to drown out the memory of... well, ever since—)

He's the closest thing to home that you know.

(—he almost lost you.)

You find yourself latched onto the sleeves of his jacket for stability, and even though you should push Joel away – a voice in your head that warns you to put distance between you and him – your fingers curl tighter into the coarse fabric to keep yourself upright as you regain your footing. “You see that thing? Swear it came outta nowhere."

He huffs out a small laugh, not one of those full-bodied ones that you’ve only heard probably twice since you met him (both of them at your expense and God, do you miss his smile), but it’s still a rich, little sound that comes off as something pleasant to your ears all the same – breaks up the monotony of the snow crunching under your heels and teeth chattering during the occasional bouts when you shiver. "Sure," he says, because he knows you can't lie for shit.

You untangle yourself from him with some reluctance. Homesick – a feeling that you attempt to shake off with more mindless conversation to make the time slip by faster. "Out of every place we've been to, Colorado definitely makes bottom three."

There's faint amusement coloring Joel's face. It makes him look years younger. "We haven't even gotten to UEC yet." He tilts his chin in the general direction that the two of you had already been heading towards. "Over there. Just across the way."

Skepticism stains your voice. "You know, something tells me that I won't have a change of heart."

ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴛᴡᴏ - ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #unfortunately i have the smut just not the action~#this will very likely not be done until i finish the term #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #tlou #the last of us

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rainyraisin · 8 months

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OKAY TIME TO GO ABSOLUTELY FERAL OVER AMANE’S SEASON 2 SONG (CW/TW for Child abuse, cults/religious stuff and murder) Massive Milgram Season 1 and 2 Spoilers, specifically for Amane’s songs and her section of the Season 1 results report! Also this is gonna be such a mess I’m sorry I’m really bad at organising my thoughts fbsjcbjebf (breaking this up cause it’s SO long)

Quick context if you’re not aware of this series (if you’re not then I’m unsure why you’re reading this but go off!!! 💪💪‼️‼️💖💖💖), in Milgram everyone is a murder. Guilty and forgiven votes aren’t if they should be forgiven or not for the murder itself, it’s if they should be forgiven for their reasons. Honestly everyone is so tragic that there’s very few people I don’t forgive for their actions (except for Yuno and Mahiru I don’t forgive those two at ALL, along with Kazui, because I’m still not sure of his reasons). NOW. Why the FUCK did the fandom vote her guilty oh my GOD we’ve gen broken this poor girl- Jackalope seems to think it was the right to vote her guilty during the Season 1 report but Es seems to have only done it so she realises what she has done is wrong which I assume is due to her young age? So she doesn’t just assume murder is right due to being forgiven. It’s not as much of a punishment as it is a lesson. Whilst yes, sounds a little harsh, but she literally killed someone (I FORGIVE HER WAY MORE FOR WHAT SHE DID THAN ANYONE ELSE THOUGH DUE TO THE CONTEXT WE GOT IN HER NEW SONG). Now, I don’t think the cult theory from Season 1 is wrong, especially due to the lyrics of this song and also her interrogation questions that featured answers such as “This is a trial from God” and her father being on an honorable journey (which I presume is a pilgrimage?), but it’s not as present here. This is much more focused on the abuse she received rather than both the abuse and the cult itself.

Now, I’m assuming the mascots from Magic are maybe associated with the cult? Given that her abuser has allowed them to be displayed on the front door I very much doubt they’re purely associated with an educational show like was originally presumed. They also appear in the marching section, which shows that they’re most likely associated with what’s being said in this section which uses phrases that most would associate with religion. I’m assuming Magic was more about indoctrination and Amane learning the Do’s and Dont’s of the cult through the physical abuse she went through when making a mistake. It’s shown she internalised that she can’t make any mistakes as in The Purge March, when she makes a small mistake in her flag throwing, she punishes herself (the march itself is purely a metaphor, she’s shown putting herself through something involving the shower in real life following drowning in the march section). However, she doesn’t only afflict abuse upon herself. Oh my *god* that taser when she walks into the apartment is gonna HAUNT me. I’m not entirely sure if the man watching her tend to the cat is her abuser as he’s holding the hand of another little girl with an umbrella, and it was revealed in her interrogation questions that her family only consisted of her, her mother and her father, so that can’t be her father because she doesn’t have a sister. The girl does have very similar features to Amane though so it could be like what he expected of her compared to what she’s actually doing? And then when she goes home she’s punished for not following expectations, not for saving the cat (although I’m 100% certain that does play into an aspect of it due to the whole medicine vs prayer thing in Magic). Although, her father couldn’t be on an “honourable journey” if he was her abuser anyway because she would’ve killed him before going in to Milgram. Although she does say it *was* my father, mother and I.

A theory I have is that the honourable journey is possibly his death? The chorus of the song is “I disavow you, eyes corrupted must be crushed. So nary a sound can be uttered a second time, I’ll crush your throat too. It’s now your turn to say that hopeless ‘I’m sorry’”. I’m assuming that she views him as corrupted due to him abusing her and that must be amended through dying for his sins, as they’re so great at this point that punishment is no longer an option, nor is repenting through apologies. She clearly views him as a monster due to the line “If you become a bad girl, monsters will come out”, so I doubt she sees him as someone who can be saved through more humane means (or at least humane by her cult’s standards). The line “This is the magic that stops that from happening” whilst she’s tending to the cat’s wound might be a case of her rebelling away from the prying eyes of her abuser in order for her to act perfect in front of him, which obiviously backfires when he sees her doing it whilst looking for her. She wants to be praised by him which is shown through the answers in her interrogation such as “Do you think that your family is proud of you?” “Of course. No daughter is as exemplary as I.” and “Who do you want to meet right now?” “My father. I want him to praise me for working hard.” and through her viewing her only talent/hobby as studying (which I assume she only partakes in in order to receive praise) but she can’t remain perfect all the time. She just doesn’t show that in front of her family and tries to keep it to the small amount of free time she has in order to avoid punishment and them being disappointed in her.

One of the lines she says is “‘Tis ordained, thou shall stay thine course, then perish” so she’s expected to stay in line until she passes, which is obviously an insane expectation that she can’t follow up until her demise, so it makes sense that she acts out now and then, even if it ends up being to her own detriment (I hate how taking care of a cat is seen as acting out by her father but yeah :(((( ). Also the line “Despite this, the “It can’t be helped”, from the scum that can’t be helped” shows that her father views the punishments as something that are necessary and can’t be helped, whilst Amane sees him as someone who can’t be helped (which is why she eventually kills him). This partially contradicts her punishing herself but I’m assuming she thinks her own punishments are nowhere near as bad as her father’s , which given as how it just seems like she gave herself a freezing shower (along with crying, repenting and kneeling as she mentions later on) whilst her father TASED HER, yeah I see what she means (although I’m still sad she thinks she has to punish herself :( ). ALSO WHAT THE FUCK DID HER FATHER DO TO THE CAT. Her looking up to the sky after seeing the cat is gone hurts so much due to her religious views :( The lines following that are “If you’re going to break your vow, here and now it’s my turn to tear you apart” which seems like she’s now punishing her father for breaking the rules rather than being punished herself (I’m not certain which rule he has broken at the moment as I’m not sure what the rules of the cult exactly are? None of the ones mentioned in this video seem to fit expect for “thou shall discard vulgarity”, but I’m gonna scan through Magic at some point to see if there are any hints).

“So there is no second time, I’ll give back the judgement you gave me” yeah she is 100% punishing him for breaking the rules so he doesn’t do it again like he did to her. “After you cry, repent and kneel, it’s now your turn to say that hopeless ‘I’m sorry’” MORE PROOF THAT SHE’S GONNA GET BACK AT HIM- There’s gen no way the person she kills at the end isn’t her father (or just another abuser if my ‘honourable journey being his death’ theory is wrong), possibly her mother but there’s only been one mention of her throughout the entirety of Milgram so I very much doubt that). “You’re sorry? I don’t care! Please, go ahead and die already” supports my earlier statement that she views him as too far gone to simply apologise and repent, that further measures must be taken (it’s clearly not for revenge rather than it is following the rules that he himself set as she says that it was a “natural obligation” when asked if she regrets her murder). “Remember MY cries, MY repents, MY words of ‘Im sorry’ that I said to you?” aka her telling him that she’s going to hold him to the same expectations that he has of her (I know this can have a few different meanings but I’m choosing the ones that seem to align the closest with her/the cult’s ideals). I’m unsure if the end is her mother discovering that she killed her father or not? I’m pretty sure that shot is just to show that she killed him but her looking at the camera seems to indicate that someone is there. I’m also unsure why she’s in her marching outfit? I’m presuming it’s to show that her intentions were associated with the cult’s ideals and views as whenever she wears that outfit in the video the wording is very… idk how to describe it but it sounds like smth you’d read in the bible, and yes while that sort of stuff is said in different parts of the video where the marching theme isn’t present, it’s basically the only way she’ll say stuff during the marching section. Also small analysis of why she’s marching, she’s meant to be marching in a straight line to her death, never to stray unless she wants to be punished, not until “The Purge March” is complete.

ANYWAY YEAH I HOPE YOU HAD FUN READING THIS IDK WHY YOU DID THOUGH CAUSE ITS LIKE SO LONG???? I just love Milgram sm I had to analyse this MV as soon as possible even though the last time I did this was for All Knowing and All Agony last year- this might not be right at ALL, I’m not the best at theorising and I may have missed a lot of context due to not being super knowledgeable about the subject matter (maybe I’ll hunt down some video essays to listen to whilst drawing) and also not being able to read kanji or katakana so I missed out on some background details as well but I hope at least a bit of this is right???? We’ll hopefully see when her Season 3 MV is released! (I also realised I didn’t even talk about how her guilty verdict may have affected this video but honestly I’m unsure how to touch on that as of now so I may make a follow up to this after looking over Magic again and having a bit more time to think about what was revealed here rather than immediately jotting down all my thoughts)

Link to the Milgram YouTube channel if you want to check it out!

#tw religion #tw cult #tw child abuse #tw murder #rai rambles #milgram #milgram spoilers #milgram amane #amane milgram #the purge march #momose amane #amane momose #amane #infodump

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auth-moid · 2 years

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Top 10 Funniest Jesus Moments from the Gospel of Matthew. In chronological order.

1. Jesus chills out the storm, but not his attitude.

Matthew 8:23-27. Jesus' followers are freaking out trying to survive a terrifying storm and Jesus is ASLEEP, and when they wake him up, he instantly calms the storm and then makes fun of them for being scardy-cats.

2. Jesus makes a deal with some demons and grants their request to possess a whole ass herd of pigs, which they promptly drown.

Matthew 8:28-34. What's more chaotic than Jesus by himself? Jesus and the demons. Two old guys that nobody cared about are now free of demons, but the townspeople are also free of all their pigs and they beg Jesus to leave them alone.

3. Nobody likes their parents' friends telling them about how they changed their diapers. Not even the Lord.

Matthew 13:54-58. Jesus returns to Nazareth, but decides not to show off his cool tricks because those people won't take him seriously as a legit son of God anyway.

4. "It is I! Not a ghost."

Matthew 14:22-27. Little known fact, extreme introvert Jesus sometimes just wanted to go solo camping, but crowds kept following him everywhere. After feeding 5 thousand of them one day cause the guy doesn't know how to say no, Jesus managed to disappear to a mountain and his followers dipped out. Instead of taking another boat at a reasonable hour, Jesus goes looking for them by hiking on the lake in the middle of the night, freaking them all out into thinking he's a ghost. Because seriously, who does that??

5. "For the last time, you idiots, I'm not talking about bread! Why does no one understand my metaphors? I work hard on those!"

Matthew 16:5-12. The longer he teaches, the more frustrated Jesus gets when nobody understands his elaborate metaphors, especially after his dumbass disciples forgot the bread. "Jesus said to them, “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” They said to one another, “It is because we have brought no bread.” And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, “You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread?"

6. Jesus calls Peter the devil for being overprotective :/

Matthew 16:21-23. Peter gets a bad rap, but honestly he didn't deserve to be called Satan just because when Jesus started getting suicidal Peter told him, "Hey! Don't talk about my friend like that."

7. Jesus makes a fish pay his taxes for him

Matthew 17:24-27. When called out on not paying his taxes, after passive aggressively making his case for why he SHOULDN'T be paying taxes at the temple, Jesus manifests a fish that swallowed a coin and sends Peter to go get it. Again with the Peter abuse too.

8. Hangry Jesus and the fig tree

Matthew 21:18-21. Jesus gets mad at a fig tree because doesn't have fruit when he was hungry, and curses it. And when his disciples question it, he turns it into an object lesson.

9. Jesus doesn't want to talk about his lack of teaching license

Matthew 21:23-27. The religious leaders attempt to question Jesus about his authority to teach, but in his obnoxious way, Jesus turns it around on them and manages to not answer.

10. Jesus' best insults

Matthew 23. The whole chapter is a beautiful rant in his ideological enemies, with truly inspirational insults such as, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves,"

"You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!"

"whitewashed tombs"

And "You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?"

#jesus fandom #ex christian memes #ex catholic #ex christian #ex bible student #honestly could have made this a lot shorter.#but its my first easter as an apostate and thus was therapeutic.#proably gonna do more #jesus was a brat

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jaynovz · 3 years

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tell us more abt the hannibal and black sails parallels pls

Okay, first off, I am so sorry this took so long!! I’ve been moving and shit has been so busy.

Second, yay!! This question. Now I have an excuse to ramble.

Okay so, the two shows do have a lot of similarities. The big one you notice right off the bat is that both have an extremely codependent relationship at the center.

There are a ton of ways the Flint-Silver and Hannibal-Will relationships parallel, like, they both talk about melding minds with another person, being monstrous, reveling in being monstrous, being made complete by an unlikely source, personas/playing roles/person suits, knowing yourself more completely next to another person, darkness as a source of freedom, something beyond choice/being drawn inexorably into a person’s destructive orbit and being forever changed by it. They deal with the nature of truth, both have supernatural elements, both have religious imagery connected to one half of the ship (Flint and Hannibal both compared to god).

Also, both shows end with an impossible choice and, ostensibly, tragedy; and they both have open endings that are interpretable based on what you want to believe.

But at a certain point, the similarities end and the two shows veer off from each other. Namely, the dynamics between the two ships are fundamentally different in a lot of ways, and it's more interesting to look at the ways in which they don't parallel. At the end of the day, the biggest one is that Silverflint is not anywhere near as destructive, whereas for Hannigram, mutual self-destruction is sort of the name of the game. Silverflint may be as codependent but I think the important addition of either Madi or Thomas or (ideally) both, helps make the relationship a lot healthier. If they would actually just talk to each other and work some shit out, it could be great. This is of course contingent on whether you think one or the other could compromise. (The compromise being that they come to some middle ground between Flint giving up the big picture Cause for personal happiness, or Silver throwing in genuinely with the idea of revolution and it being worth the risk of the people most important to him.) The end tragedy of Black Sails sets us in a spot where it doesn’t seem like either Flint or Silver are willing to do so, but perhaps one or the other could grow and change (with helpful mediation, as stated.)

Whereas Hannigram, well. It’s rooted from the very beginning in gaslighting, manipulation, and a completely skewed power balance. It’s absolutely like, this person has done so much bad shit to you, they’ve killed people you love, they’ve sent people to kill you, they’ve lied to you, isolated you, made you fundamentally doubt what kind of person you are etc. But still, you literally can’t cut them out of your life because nothing is ever going to compare to the experience of having them around even if it’s, most often, largely a negative influence. Like, damn. So dark, so unhealthy. They’re the zero-sum game.

For Will it’s: you love this terrible, terrible thing and you hate yourself for loving it, but also can’t deny it and it makes you feel alive. And for Hannibal, Will’s really the only person who can understand and accept him, but also is uniquely positioned to be able to lie to him, manipulate him in return, and be his utter ruin. They both tried to cut each other out and it didn’t work. So, can’t live with him and can’t live without him. That’s why we end with a cliff dive (impossible choice), Will can’t abide the thought that this thing that is objectively terrible, this ugly thing, is the thing he wants desperately, but he also can’t give it up. So it’s like, “let me try to do my last little bit to society by throwing both our asses off of this cliff b/c we’re both terrible.” Will is so interesting b/c he is at all times living in both the dark and the light and has trouble reconciling these opposing drives. It’s a function of his magic empathy.

(I think they’re metaphorical cliffs also b/c like.... there are no cliffs in Maryland jsyk. What is it with these shows that I like and Metaphorical Cliffs. Edit: I have been corrected there are some cliffs in Maryland but they're not as absurdly high as the ones in Hannibal.)

Anyway, let’s do the one-to-one and talk about Empathy and my Mirrorball boys first. Silver and Will are both extremely good at reading people, seeing what they most need to be, and shapeshifting into it. They both have the ability to shrug on different personas as easy as changing clothes. HOWEVER, the way in which they view this ability is very different. For Will, it’s a curse, he literally cannot turn it off, can’t stop himself from doing it, and it torments him. And I think for Silver, he also does it unconsciously and can’t help himself, but it’s not a torment in the same way. It’s rooted in survival and is an acquired skill that a very intelligent mind learned in order to stay alive. Though I would say they could commiserate on their mirrorball tendencies getting them into trouble/in over their heads.

As for Flint and Hannibal parallels? Well Hannibal is the unrepentant monster who revels in wickedness and largely views the rest of humanity as inferior. He’s having an absolutely excellent time murdering and cannibalizing folks, and the only real thorn in his side is Will Graham and his inability to kill Will b/c Hannibal loves him.

I think Hannibal is the absolute beast that Flint fears himself to be. And though both are presented as the “destructive orbit” or “intoxicating presence” and both perpetrate great violence... well they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as how they view those behaviors. Flint is drowning in guilt constantly, hates that he has to be this monster, the persona of the dread pirate Captain, and that he’s losing more and more of his humanity every time he does some heinous shit. Whereas Hannibal is a “happy little duckling,” literally feels zero guilt about his heinous acts. Hannibal’s playacting a real man in a lot of ways while Flint is playacting a monster. So, Flint wears a monster suit and Hannibal wears a person suit.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this. The way they use supernatural elements, the way characters embed multiple meanings in subtextual dialogue, how well quotes from Silverflint can transfer to Hannigram and vice versa. Oh the way each show deals with like, queer issues, disability issues. etc etc ad infinitum

But I’ll let this be it for now, lol. If you wanna hear me ramble more, let me know~

THANKS AGAIN FOR ASKING.

#fictionandmusic #thoughts #hannibal #black sails #hannibal spoilers #black sails spoilers #hannibal/blacksails

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dreamersleeps · 3 years

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Todoroki Enji and the Egyptian Sun God Ra

(Part Four: Mythological Influences in Boku no Hero Academia)

Note: ok, so I’m kinda nervous to post this. . . but here we are

So how did I get to comparing the Egyptian sun god Ra to Endeavor? To sum it up, this is the fourth post in a set of analysis and meta about mythological influences in BNHA, so a lot of this builds on top of the info and connections I’ve made previously.

There are quite a few references and influences to Greek mythology in BNHA and personally I was very intrigued with the Hawks and Icarus parallels that kept popping up. In the myth of Icarus, the sun melts the wax off of Icarus’ artificial wings which causes him to fall and drown in the ocean. I saw Endeavor as one of Hawks’ metaphorical “suns”. While I sat on that, I began looking at Tokoyami, since he has a mentor-student relationship with Hawks, and found how he has Egyptian influences in his character design which I wrote about in a post here.

I began researching and reading through ancient Egyptian myths and information. One of the figures that caught my attention was the ancient Egyptian’s most important god: Ra, the sun god. (He is the falcon headed figure depicted below.) I quickly found some similarities between Ra and Endeavor.

This image is from the expereince-ancient-egypt website.

Before I begin, I’d like to say I am very much aware that BNHA is a Japanese manga series and that the story is greatly influenced by Japanese culture and society. Unless there are very explicit examples (such as the case of Tokoyami) this post is not me saying that Horikoshi intentionally wrote certain characters and aspects inspired by Egyptian mythology. I just like like finding interesting similarities whether they were intentional or coincidental and writing about it.

That being stated, let’s begin.

Ra: The Egyptian God of the Sun

The original source of the image above is unknown.

So, who exactly is Ra?

Ra was the Ancient Egyptian sun god. The sun had a special place among the ancient Egyptians, they considered it the source of life. He was... the creator of the universe, one of the most famous deities...

Ancient Egyptians believed that Ra created himself, and his tears created humans. The setting of the sun means the beginning of the daily journey by Ra, in which he travels by his holy boat to the underworld every evening, to fight the forces of evil represented in a big snake called Apophis, and then returns to a brilliant triumph in the heights of the sky every morning on a new day. The ancient Egyptian saw this as a sign of human resurrection, and also evidence of Ra’s victory over the forces of chaos and evil (cleopatraegypttours).

Throughout all the websites I went through, Ra was very closely associated with the themes of the sun, life, the underworld, resurrection and victory over chaos and evil.

Let’s focus more on Ra’s journey through the underworld.

During his life he was required, as the incarnation and representative of the sun god, to maintain the cosmic and social order (ma’at) established by the god of creation. He had to repel the forces of chaos which constantly threatened the order of the world.

After his d/eath, the king united with the sun disk and his divine body merged with his creator. In his new role he continued to perform the task of subduing the powers of chaos. This active role of the king and sun god necessitated a detailed description of the d/amned, who represent the forces of evil.

Perhaps you may be starting to see the similarities and connections I began to form between Ra and Endeavor. If not, it’s okay. Sometimes II have to sit on a lot of the information I’m taking in before I see anything.

Endeavor’s Powers

Endeavor’s fire-based quirk is called “Hellflame.” The list of his named moves are: Flashfire Fist (Jet Burn, Hell Spider, Hell’s Curtain), Karmic Raze - Hellfire Storm, Raging Assault - Hell Minefield, Vanishing Fist, and Prominence Burn. As you can see, there’s a lot of mentions of the word: Hell.

While we can connect the “hell theme” back to Ra’s connections to the underworld, I would first like to point out what the Egyptian underworld was. We associate fire, suffering and other things with hell, however, this is a depiction that comes from the Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian religions.

The image above depicts a section of the Egyptian Book of the D/ead with Osiris on the left and the Weighting of the Heart taking place on the right.

There were many sources that described the extensive processes of the underworld and afterlife so I’m keeping it simple here. Anyways, the ancient Egyptians did not really have a concept of this sort of hell. Instead, after death, a part of the soul would travel through the underworld which was also known as Duat for judgement. They underwent a judgement process that had two parts and if they passed, they moved on to the Reed Fields which was Paradise. Those who failed simply ceased to be.

The “hell” that is probably being referred back to with Endeavor’s quirk and powers most likely was influenced with other cultures, again more specifically those with Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian religions. Despite this difference I do still think that there are other interesting similarities between Endeavor and Ra.

For example, I’ve already established in a previous post that I like to associate Endeavor to the sun. A lot of this post will rely heavily on what happened during the High End vs Endeavor fight. The move he is using above is called “Prominence Burn.” According to NASA:

a solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere

This is the finishing move that helps Endeavor defeat the High End and this is very significant because it is the only move with a name that relates back to the sun.

In Chapter 188 during the High End fight, Endeavor is even depicted as a fiery sphere of fire and light high up in the sky, very visually similar to the sun.

If you need more evidence for sun related themes surrounding Endeavor, Ending, the criminal who kidnaps Natsuo describes him as “A fierce solar flare that shines bright.”

One of Ra’s main duties is to keep order and defeat the “forces of chaos and evil.” Endeavor and the heroes in general sort of view themselves as this force of good and see the “villains” as enemies that have to be taken care of. I don’t agree with the ideas that “all heroes are good, and all villains are bad” and that is definitely not the message that Horikoshi is trying to send. It is because that sort of belief exists that hero society is flawed. Typically, when reading through mythology or religious texts, the themes of absolute good and absolute evil are common. Those are the contexts in which gods and other figures that exist. Humans are flawed and tend to stand somewhere in the in between.

That being stated, Ra and Endeavor are similar in their ties to the sun, underworld and sense of duty that they must defeat the “forces of chaos and evil” for the sake of everyone else.

High End vs Endeavor

Endeavor greatest ambition in life was to become the number one hero. He may act like a hero in the public’s eye but he does not have a “heroic nature” or “character.” He failed and broke his own family for the sake of his ambitions, and arguably, the Todoroki family came in to existence to serve a certain purpose. If he could not become the number one, then he’d make sure that someone with his blood and name would achieve that one day. However the unexpected happened. All Might had to retire and Endeavor was given the title as number one hero. He didn’t earn it. He was given it purely because he was the number two hero.

Let’s revisit the High End fight. This conflict happens shortly after the Hero Billboard Chart event. Japan is uneasy as their symbol of peace has retired and they do not know whether they can rely on the new number one hero. His family also is conflicted with his new position and how it was given to him. Throughout the fight we take a step in to Endeavor’s thoughts and inner monologue.

The manga panel above is from Chapter 188.

The High End is incredibly powerful and even with his powerful Hellflame quirk, Endeavor is having a hard time fighting against it. One of the weaknesses with having a fire related quirk is that it overheats his body so he’s had to rely on using his flames properly and cooling down afterwards. Because of this, he thinks about his family. The family that began because of this very weakness. His memory goes back to Rei when she is young, perhaps at the beginning of their arranged marriage or shortly before. Touya, Natsuo and Fuyumi are young as well. Standing far away and unhappy, maybe even nervous. And lastly, Shouto, the child he wanted to continue his legacy in, activating both his ice and hellflame quirks. He is the only one depicted in his actual current age.

On top of the very next page we get a scene with the High End Nomu speaking as seen below.

This Nomu came to fight and defeat whoever was the strongest. Despite it’s ability to speak, it is still mindless, declaring on and on about its power and strength. It does not care about who it is fighting and the destruction that is occuring along the way. The High End has multiple quirks that were chosen specifically to make it as powerful as it could be. Perhaps it was in this moment that something clicked in Endeavor’s mind.

Soon after, the High End strikes Endeavor multiple times, with one strike later leaving him with the scar that runs down the left side of his face. He falls to the ground and in to the rubble. Chapter 188 ends on this page with the manga panel seen below and everyone is left to wonder whether Endeavor is dead or alive.

In Chapter 189 we see the effects of the void All Might left due to his retirement.

If the “villains” can’t be kept in check the public becomes chaotic with fear. A quiet night fell over Japan after All Might retired. People felt like the light was taken away. Then Endeavor gets up. With Hawks’ help he rises in to the air with wings on fire.

And in Chapter 190 he defeats the High End Nomu with Prominence Burn.

Endeavor and the Dawning Sun

There’s a lot of things going on here. Endeavor basically follows the journey Ra takes every single day to complete his duty. Similar to how Ra “dies” as he travels through the underworld, at one point we are led to believe that Endeavor has been killed by. As most of the battle took place up in the air, Endeavor physically falls when he “dies.” Leading up to the fall, he is thinking about his family and the past.

While Ra and Endeavor “resurrect” at different points in their journey, they both rise back again in order to fulfill their duty to bring back “order and balance.”

I’ve already written about the falcon/hawk headed Egyptian god Horus and Hawks, however I have yet to address the relationship between Ra and Horus. At some point, Ra was combined with Horus and became known as Ra-Horakhty which means “Ra, Horus of the Horizon.” Ra-Horakhty is most often thought of as the god of the rising sun. It is in this form that Ra rises in the sky to bring the dawn when he arises from the underworld.

The original source of this image is unknown.

There is a deity (seen above) that appears a lot throughout architecture from ancient Egypt called “Horus-Behdity” who is depicted as a winged sun disc:

The winged sun disc is highly symbolic representing the Union of Horus the falcon God, and Ra the sun god, the union of the Two-Lands of Egypt, and becomes a symbol of rebirth for the kings (British Museum).

Although it is Endeavor who ultimately defeats the High End, it is with the aid of Hawks’ quirk that he is able to land the finishing blow. He rises in to the sky like the winged sun disc: Endeavor as the sun, and Hawks as the wings. I think the depiction of Hawks with his back towards he audience and Endeavor burning them with his flames on the cover of Volume 21 says a lot of things (including the Icarus parallels!).

Taking a couple steps back, the wording on the pages where Endeavor addresses the nomu and then before uses the finishing move Prominence Burn on the High End is important.

“Modified human... Noumu! Manufactured one. . . Holder of multiple quirks. . . Obesessed with the pursuit of strength!” (Chapter 190)

“You are... Just like me! From the past, or perhaps from an alternate future. Now burn, and rest for all eternity!” (Chapter 190)

Endeavor is a controversial character that because of his past and the horrible things he did to his family. However, we can not ignore what has been written in the manga. I’m not going to argue or talk too much about my own thoughts and opinions here, but I think it is important to address what happened during this High End fight.

He identifies himself with the Nomu: the power hungry and mindless creature. It’s interesting that he uses the phrases of “manufactured” and “holder of multiple quirks,” and “pursuit of strength” which are words that are heavy with meaning to him: the arranged marriage he purchased, the children he neglected and the “perfect” child he sought after for the sake of strength.

The train of thoughts that had begun in his mind is expressed outwards. He shouts them out in to the sky. He acknowledges the past (however to what extent is debatable), and even addresses the future. I’m not sure if he’s acknowledging that he may fail to change or that he hopes that he can change what he can.

He then defeats the High End. Endeavor had been given the number on hero position but this victory is what “establishes” him with the title in the eyes of the public. With the bright light of All Might gone, the public is inspired by a new light, the sun that Endeavor represents bringing a dawn to the night. His victory pose is reminiscent of All Might’s however it is with his other arm that is in the air, he’s slumped over and his legs are barely keeping him up. The flames that usually cover his face and body are gone as well. This is the victory of Endeavor the hero but it could also be Todoroki Enji as a father making a statement.

I’m not sure if this is him symbolically k/illing the monster he was, or if this is symbolic as to where Endeavor’s journey will ultimately head towards, or if its a representation of hopes that never come true later on. I’m not trying to paint this piece from a pro-Endeavor stance or an anti-Endeavor stance but merely trying to explain how I interpreted the events of the High End fight and the thematic meanings it had as it unfolded. At the end of the day, we all have different opinions and interpretations and you have all the right to disagree with everything I’m writing in this post.

(The case with Endeavor is very complicated and I don’t want to get to deep in to it here however) We definitely should not forget what Endeavor did in the past but at the same time we should not ignore the efforts and progress he has tried to make. While we must hold people accountable for their actions, it is not wrong for someone to want to change or become better. Endeavor may “fail” or he may be able to “succeed,” whatever either entails or looks like. However even though we do get the depiction of a rising sun, you have to remember that the sun also sets.

Anyways, what has been established was that this fight is where Endeavor explicitly expressed his acknowledgement of the past (maybe not in its entirety but it is a big first step). And it is directly after this step that we take a deep dive in to what facing the past will look like for Endeavor.

#endeavor #todoroki enji #hawks #takami keigo #bnha analysis #mha analysis #mythological influences #bnha meta #mha meta #dabi #todoroki touya #todoroki family #todoroki shouto #luna writes #my post

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five-rivers · 3 years

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Long Night in the Valley Chapter 11

“Where are you going?” demanded Shigaraki, scratching his neck in agitation.

Touya Dabi looked lazily over his shoulder. “I’ve got something to do in town. Might as well avoid a second trip, right? You all go on back.”

“Aw, Dabi, you’re ditching us?” asked Toga.

“Yup. See you back at base. Let me know if you manage to wear down the giant, ‘kay?”

“Wait, wait, does that mean—Does that mean he has a way to get out past all these guys unnoticed? Pfft that guy doesn’t know anything! What are you talking about? You’re gonna get caught, Dabi!”

Dabi ignored Twice, just giving the League of Villains a lazy wave over his shoulder before making his way down off the roof via the fire escape.

Yeah. He had a way out. More importantly, he had some curiosity to satisfy and chaos to sow.

Time to bother a certain little birdy…

Hawks was in the middle of directing the clean-up team when he got a text. From a contact labeled ‘boyfriend.’

The person in question was not, in fact his boyfriend. Why, then, did he have him labeled thusly?

Because the person calling him was, in fact, the villain he was milking for information, and that did not fit well into a contact list. On top of being suspicious.

(Oh, and he lived in anticipation of the moment someone noticed the name of the contact and reported it to the press, causing his expensive commission-funded PR team to drown in delusional fangirls. It was the little things in life that made it worth living…)

(In his opinion, they deserved it for making him go through with that frankly traumatic series of photoshoots right after he turned eighteen.)

Hawks… Considered ignoring the call. Today, to be honest, had sucked. He’d been informed the former #1 hero had been kidnapped, ordered to hunt down a (questionably innocent) teenager, and lost a fight with said teenager. Adding pretend terrorism to that might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Except… People’s lives depended on the intelligence he was collecting. He retreated to the shadows of a nearby alley and answered the phone.

“I’m sort of busy right now,” he said.

“Yeah? Busy getting your teeth kicked in by All Might Junior?” Dabi cackled.

“If you called just to make fun of me, I’m hanging up.”

“Do you really think I’m that petty?”

“Yes,” said Hawks.

“Aww, that burns, chicken wing. What if I told you I had a tip?”

“Oh, yeah?” asked Hawks. “About what?”

“C’mon, you know you have to pay for it.”

Hawks covered the phone receiver while he sighed. “What do you want?” he asked, more composed.

“Just a ride out of town. Didn’t think you guys would be this antsy today. Did the kid kick your hill over, too?”

If Hawks had been religious, he’d be praying for patience.

“Just you, or are your friends here, too?” asked Hawks as he tapped in a Heronet request for everyone to be on the lookout for the league of villains on his other phone. “I can give everyone a ride.”

“Nah, just l’il ol’ me,” said Dabi.

Yeah. Hawks hadn’t expected Dabi to own up to his crew being in town. Even if they were.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Hawks, texting the hero commission. Maybe they’d see fit to cut their losses as far as the spy gig went and—Nope, they were approving his request regarding Dabi. “What about that tip?”

“Here’s half of it,” said Dabi. “Get your guys to scrape some of the runt’s blood off the sidewalk and run a DNA test on it. I hear he’s related to someone interesting.”

Hawks closed his eyes. If Midoriya was related to All for One, it would be the metaphorical nail in the coffin for him. Having your life and future ruined because of who your parents were… Hawks hadn’t exactly experienced something like that, but he’d felt the fear of it for quite some time.

(Despite everything, he still wanted to be a hero.)

“Thanks, for the heads up, dude. Where should I pick you up?”

“You really need to check in on your safehouses more often,” said Izuku as Toshinori reapplied the bandages around his ankle.

“I know. I was busy. I’m sorry. I haven’t exactly been helpful in all of this, have I?”

“I would have been caught within the hour, if you didn’t pick me up,” said Izuku. “I wasn’t in my right mind. But what now?”

“We can still go to Deika, I suppose,” said Toshinori. “We just, ah…” He looked up at Gigantomachia and Izuku followed his gaze with a wince.

Yeah. That wasn’t going to fly in any reasonably populous area.

As he watched, Machia pulled a small box out from beneath his shirt. Izuku blinked. That was a two-way radio.

Wait.

Gigantomachia pressed a button, and the radio crackled to life. “DOCTOR!” shouted Gigantomachia. “I HAVE FOUND THE LITTLE LORD AND HIS FRIEND. WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

Izuku tensed. He and Toshinori should have realized Machia would have some way of communicating with the doctor. After all, he’d said something along the lines of ‘call the doctor’ earlier.

Sure, both Izuku and Toshinori were injured, exhausted, and distracted by events playing out inside their heads, but just because a mistake was understandable didn’t mean it was forgivable. Or survivable.

The radio crackled with static. No response.

Izuku let out a sigh of relief as Machia repeatedly tried to raise the doctor on the other end of the line before breaking down in tears.

“Are- Are you sure we shouldn’t pull over, Dr. Tsubasa? Your phone is going off an awful lot.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of prank calls lately,” said Garaki, knuckles white around the steering wheel. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

He was, in fact, quite sure it wasn’t nothing. But he couldn’t take a call from the League of Villains, or even Machia, with Midoriya Inko in the car.

He checked his GPS. Yes, Machia was staying still, which probably meant that he had Midoriya Izuku. Hopefully, he had already disposed of All Might, and could, therefore, devote his energy to keeping the Midoriyas from escaping and Midoriya Inko from attempting to kill Garaki once they arrived. And—

No, he was moving again. Curse the creature. How hard could it be to keep one teenager in place?

True, the teenager was the son of All for One and starting to grow into his terrifying legacy, but really.

“And you’re sure your friend will help us keep Izuku from being arrested?” asked Inko. She had been asking him some version of this question every few minutes since they got in the car.

“Quite sure,” said Garaki. He had been giving some version of this answer every few minutes since they got in the car.

“Is he… a lawyer of some kind?”

The picture of Gigantomachia as a lawyer was so incongruous that Garaki flinched and nearly drove off the road.

“No,” he said, perfectly calmly, not at all freaking out over what All for One would do to him if he involved Inko in a car accident. He laughed nervously. Oh, he’d better hope the accident killed him. Goodness.

“You have your driver’s license, right?” asked Inko.

“Yes,” said Garaki. His phone started buzzing again. He ignored it in favor of checking the GPS again.

Oh, dear. He knew where Machia was going.

This could be… interesting. He glanced at Inko. Very interesting.

At least he knew how to get there.

“I’m just saying,” said Izuku, who had been relieved far too early in the game. “I really, really don’t get along with Shigaraki Tomura. I think we should probably not go anywhere near him. It’s a really bad idea.”

“But he can call the doctor for you!” said Machia, excitedly as he bounded through the forest. “Then you can be better, Little Lord! All fixed up!”

Again, that did not make Izuku feel better. He squirmed against Machia’s arms.

None of the League of Villains were bad at sneaking. In fact, they were all quite good at it.

However, they’d come into the city with the expectation that they would have a quick getaway courtesy of the doctor if anything went wrong. Which they no longer had. Because he was ‘not in his lab’ and ‘busy.’ Self-important NPC… until the noumu got up and running, his whole point was to provide fast travel.

Anyway. Between being unexpectedly stranded and the stupidly huge numbers of heroes out looking for the cauliflower brat aka player two (Tomura didn’t have any proof he was actually Sensei’s kid, and until then…), they were going into this stealth mission with serious handicaps.

(With Dabi gone something like ninety-nine percent of that handicap was Twice and his inability to walk around like a normal person. Tomura had left his hands at home and Compress just had to take off his mask. Toga would have the easiest time of it, Tomura could admit, because she just had to shank someone.)

“I hate to say it,” said Mr. Compress, “but I think our burnt friend might have the right idea. Splitting up will give us better chances.”

“No way,” whined Toga. “We’ve got to stick together. Right, boss man?” She hugged Tomura’s arm until he pushed her off with his knuckles.

“There’s a car down there with the keys still in the ignition,” said Twice, pointing down into an alley.

They all leaned over the side of the roof to look at the car. It was old-fashioned. Antique, even. Someone clearly put a lot of care into keeping it clean and running.

The keys were, indeed, still in the ignition.

“A sting?” suggested Mr. Compress, uncertainly.

“Nah, they don’t use cars like that for stings in this city,” said Tomura, revising his opinion on whether or not Twice was a handicap. “They use, like, sports cars. Who here can drive?”

“I don’t have a license,” said Toga. “I was too young when I ran away from home.”

“I didn’t ask who had a license. I asked who can drive.”

“I can drive—Badly!—I drive fine. Hardly ever crashed—depends what you mean by ‘crash.’”

Tomura scratched his neck. He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. “Compress, tell me you can drive.”

“I never learned how to use a stick shift.”

He pulled his bloody fingernails away from his neck. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Twice, if you crash us, I’ll kill you.”

“Sure thing, boss!” said Twice, saluting. “Not if I kill you first, jerkface!”

This was going to be a long drive.

“We’ve got a new message from the HSPC,” said the producer, sliding a piece of paper onto the presenter’s desk. “Read that as soon as we come off the commercials, okay?”

“Got it,” said the presenter, putting her headphones back on. She read the notice.

Members of the league of villains have been sighted in Musutafu and are believed to be present in connection with the kidnapping of Yagi Toshinori, also known as All Might. Please exercise caution…

The commission investigators had been waiting for at least half an hour before any of the UA staff even deigned to greet them.

“It’s about time,” said Abe.

“Sorry,” said the teacher waving. “You can’t come in.”

“Excuse me?”

“The campus is on lockdown because of what happened at the testing center,” explained the teacher. “We can’t open the gates without Nezu’s authorization, and he was called away to deal with an emergency.”

“What,” said Ito, dropping his cigarette and grind it under his heel. “Seriously? This is the emergency. One of your own teachers got kidnapped. All Might got kidnapped. Don’t you care?”

The teacher snorted. Abe and Ito stared at him through the bars of the fence, taken aback.

“I’m sorry, it’s just—” The man snickered again. “Midoriya kidnapping Yagi. That’s certainly an image.”

“Midoriya is a trained in combat and has three dangerous quirks. All Might can’t even use his one anymore.”

“Yes, yes, I’m not saying it’s physically impossible. But—” He started laughing. “Possible and likely are two different things. Excuse me. I never introduced myself. I’m Lunch Rush, and if you ever saw those two at lunch time together, you’d have a very clear picture of why this whole situation is absurd.”

“Maybe you can show us the tapes, then,” said Abe. “After you let us in.”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I can’t. Even if I had access to them, there are students in those videos!”

“So?”

“Minors, you see. Without written parental permission or a court order we can’t show them to anyone not affiliated with the school. Now, I must be going. I have a culinary arts class to teach!”

He was still chuckling as he walked away. “Midoriya kidnapping Yagi, oh ho, I knew I’d get a kick out of actually hearing someone say that seriously…”

“Wow,” said Twice, “this car gets terrible gas mileage.”

“Are we going to run out?” asked Toga. “That’ll be exciting! I’ll have to flag down some generous motorist to give us a lift~”

“Yes! Not soon!”

Compress leaned forward from the back seat and started fiddling with the radio, barely staying on each channel long enough to tell if they were playing music or news.

Tomura groaned and covered his face with his hand. He contemplated whether it was worth letting his pinky drop just to escape this.

“… League of Villains?”

Compress stopped changing channels.

“They’ve been saying it all along. I know it’s hard to believe that UA could miss something like this, something like a traitor, but it’s just facts. The League’s presence in Musutafu confirms it. He kidnapped All Might for them”

“It all seems awfully coincidental, though, and the commission isn’t showing us any pictures—How do we know for sure the League is in the city? For that matter, if the League is really involved, how do we know Midoriya Izuku isn’t just another victim? We never got a full tally of their members. They could have someone with a, I don’t know, a brainwashing quirk.”

“Yumi, you really need to lay off the late-night conspiracy theories. We can trust the hero commissioookkkhhh—”

The radio died horribly as Tomura decayed it out of console.

“I am going to commit murder,” said Tomura. How did this always happen? How was it always this attention-grabbing, kill-stealing little—

“I guess we have time for a pit stop. No, we don’t!”

“Don’t you dare stop this car until we’re back at base,” growled Tomura. He took a deep breath that really wasn’t calming at all.

“I kind of have, to, I mean, road signs and all… Uh.”

“We’re villains, dude,” said Spinner. “You can break a few traffic laws.”

“Hell ye—Not if we want to live.”

“You can follow the traffic signs,” allowed Tomura. He leaned back his seat, ignoring Mr. Compress’s complaint about squished legs.

Player two. Finishing the tutorial and then blazing through a quest like that. Crazy OP character build.

He still wanted player two in his party. He also wanted to knock the brat so far off the leaderboard that he’d never play the game again.

These were, Tomura acknowledged, somewhat conflicting desires. He was, at the moment, leaning toward the second, but the first would give him ongoing dominance which would be incredibly satisfying.

If player two really was Sensei’s kid…

Then Tomura… He’d be like… a big brother. An older sibling.

That felt… weird. But also weirdly like something he wanted. Ugh, it sounded like a pain. Stupid story-mode side quest with garbage rewards, except the garbage rewards were the best rewards.

He hadn’t built his character for social interactions. He was combat class, high DPS.

Why couldn’t things just be simple? Why couldn’t he just destroy what he wanted?

“Heyyyy!” squealed Toga. “It’s a McDonalds! We could get murder and fries.”

“Do. Not. Stop. The car.”

Machia thundered into the abandoned quarry with all the enthusiasm of a deranged puppy.

“This is Shigaraki Tomura’s secret hide out!” proclaimed the giant, setting a windswept Izuku and Toshinori down in front of a crumbling, half-collapsed building. He beamed proudly. “SHIGARAKI TOMURA!” he screamed at the building, frightening away the few brave birds in the quarry that had yet to leave.

No one came out. Machia sniffed the air.

“Oh,” he said. “They aren’t home.”

“That’s fine,” said Izuku, patting Machia. He didn’t elaborate. Most of his brainpower was currently tied up in preventing his legs from folding underneath him.

“Why don’t we,” began Toshinori before hacking up a large quantity of blood. “Why don’t we just show ourselves in? I’m sure it will be more comfortable for young—For the little lord to wait inside. And perhaps one of them left a phone we can use.”

“The last time you went into a building by yourselves, you were attacked,” rumbled Machia.

“That is true,” said Toshinori, “but there’s no one in this building. You’d be able to smell them.”

“Not if they were invisible.”

Izuku blinked slowly. “That,” he said, “doesn’t sound right.”

He continued to blink as Toshinori convinced Machia that he would, in fact, be able to smell invisible people. He must have missed something, though, because next thing he knew, Toshinori was steering him into what passed as the building’s door.

“Alright,” said Toshinori, voice low. “We’re going to get you cleaned up as best we can, then we’re going to take everything that looks useful and sneak out.”

“Like… food and stuff?”

“Yes. And we’re also going to see if we can break enough things that they’ll have to take care of that instead of following us.”

“We could just set some things on fire,” said Izuku, who had never considered himself a pyromaniac of any kind, but who had also grown up alongside Kacchan.

“Good idea,” said Toshinori, who had been the type of fifth grader who made jokes about setting things on fire but had only ever burned his workbook at the end of the school year. “Let’s see if these guys have running water.”

“You know,” said Izuku, carefully avoiding a bunch of old food wrappers. “I sort of expected a more impressive evil lair, all things considered.”

“This is average for high-level fugitives, actually,” said Toshinori. “Especially if they don’t have a lot of connections or cash.”

“Huh,” said Izuku, cautiously opening a door. “Here’s the bathroom. Huh.”

There were a lot of hair products in the bathroom. A lot a lot.

It’s like the candles budget chart, snickered Six in the back of Izuku’s head. Help, I’m trying to balance my evil lair budget. This is what I’ve got so far: Electricity, 100 yen, building, 1100 yen, furniture, 200 yen, hair styling products, 9,000,000 yen.

Izuku wheezed.

But, seriously. Why did they need this much hair stuff? Shigaraki obviously hadn’t ever even heard of personal grooming. Toga had her natural hair color. Compress didn’t show his face or his hair. Spinner had a lizard mutation. Dabi—

It was totally Dabi.

Oh gosh, based on how most of the hair dye boxes were labeled for temporary use and quick removal… Haha, was Dabi just… just waiting… just waiting for an opportune moment to dramatically reveal himself?

Izuku started wheezing again.

“Are you alright, my boy?” asked Toshinori confused.

“This is Dabi’s hair dye,” said Izuku.

“Hm. I hadn’t realized he dyed it.”

“I want this hair dye,” said Izuku.

“I suppose we can try to find the brand once we get to a supermarket,” said Toshinori, confused.

“No, no,” said Izuku, still gazing down at the box sitting next to the sink. “I don’t want to use this brand of hair dye. I want to use this hair dye.”

“Oh. Oh,” said Toshinori. “This hair dye. Dabi’s hair dye.”

“Yes,” said Izuku.

“To be petty.”

“Yes,” confirmed Izuku again.

“It has been a long time since I was… petty,” said Toshinori.

“Vlad-sensei’s car?”

“That was convenience, not pettiness.”

“Well,” said Izuku, picking up the box. “We are sort of… you know… villains, now. Since we fought Hawks. I am anyway.”

“You’re not a villain,” protested Toshinori.

“I mean, from a legal standpoint,” said Izuku. “Not a moral one. And, well. Villains are petty, right?”

“I do not believe pettiness is an exclusively villainous trait, my boy. In any case, I wasn’t condemning you.” He put his hands on his hips and looked up at the cracked and crumbling ceiling. “If we had more time here, we could set up some things that would really annoy them.”

“More than stealing their food, their money, their clothes, and their hair dye before setting their house on fire?” asked Izuku.

Toshinori scratched his head. “You know, now that I think about it, probably not. But does this really qualify as a house?”

“Hey,” said Hawks. “So, about the other half of that tip.”

“Huh? There isn’t a second half. That was just to keep you from ditching me.”

Hawks had met villains who were civilized professionals. Why couldn’t he be trying to infiltrate a society made up of those types, and not one that included the racoon currently filling his car (technically the commission’s car) with the scent of smoke and charred flesh?

“Well, what about that ‘interesting parentage’ you were alluding to?”

“Oh. Shigaraki thinks Midoriya is his sensei’s kid.” Dabi shrugged. “Honestly… yeah. I kind of see it. But you’d think he’d get his kid to work with us instead of whatever is going on between him and Shigaraki, on the other hand…” Dabi trailed off.

Hawks momentarily glanced away from the road to see Dabi with an uncharacteristically pensive expression.

“I mean,” continued Dabi, leaning on his hand as he stared out the window, “the whole hero thing could be sticking it to his old man. I can respect that.”

“You sound like you’re talking from experience,” observed Hawks.

“You still talk to your parents?” asked Dabi.

“Nope.”

“Heh, you wouldn’t tell me even if you did, would you?”

“Hey, you are a villain. I’ve got to keep my soft spots covered, right?”

“Right,” drawled Dabi. “Kid held up pretty well against you, didn’t he?”

“He did okay,” said Hawks. “He got away, after all.”

“Wonder how he’d do against Endeavor. One-on-one. What d’you think?”

Hawks couldn’t help but swallow. If it were one-on-one, and Midoriya could still use Erasure… He hated to think it, but Endeavor might lose. A man with no quirk against a strong enhancer and that black tentacle emitter…

He wondered how long it would be before Midoriya got put on the S-rank villain list. The paperwork had to be in progress.

(After all, he’d defeated the number two hero – or near enough – while holding off three others.)

(On the other hand… that building…)

“It’d certainly be a fight,” said Hawks, neutrally. “Is Midoriya really not working with you?”

“Nope,” said Dabi, not quite managing to pop the ‘p’ with his burnt lips. “Not saying he isn’t a villain or whatever. That’s up to you guys after all.”

“Not me,” said Hawks. “I’m on your side, remember?”

“I remember,” said Dabi. “Anyway, I only was face-to-face with him that one time in the forest, last summer. He had a great expression. Not as great as – Well. That part doesn’t matter.”

Ugh… Hawks hadn’t taken Dabi for the kind of killer who’d reminisce about his kills. Maybe he could – No. Lose Dabi and he’d lose his lead on the League, and who knew how many more people would end up dead.

He just wished the commission would give him backup on this. Someone who actually worked with infiltration. Someone who could help him minimize the damage the League was doing.

“Pull over,” said Dabi. “This is my stop.”

“You live around here?”

Dabi snorted. “Not a chance. You get to see our base once we’re sure you won’t tattle.”

“Come on, you can’t blame a guy for curiosity,” said Hawks.

“Sure can,” said Dabi opening the door and jumping out onto the gravel margin. “I’ll call you.” He walked off the side of the road into the scruffy tree cover and disappeared.

“Well,” mumbled Hawks, deliberately ignoring all the elocution lessons the commission had stuffed him with. “That was useless.”

Except for the tiny feathers he’d snuck into the lining of Dabi’s coat. But those had limited range and Hawks wasn’t good enough at stealth to follow Dabi without making an idiot (a potentially dead one on top of that) out of himself.

His phone began to ring, the bugs in the car having shown the commission that Dabi was gone. Hawks sighed and answered. Time for new marching orders.

The landscape was much more intact, now. It was still a battlefield. Four was dodging bullets and catching grenades to sling them back at his attackers. He dove to the ground right before a cheerily painted building exploded into splinters.

Danger Sense, Aizawa concluded. Some kind of limited precognition?

“Shigaraki?” said Iida. “He’s a Shigaraki? He’s related to—to him? To Shigaraki?”

“Sensei,” said Uraraka, tugging on his sleeve, “that other man, you don’t think that was, you know, the man from Kamino? All for One?”

“Midoriya thinks that All Might is related to All for One?” muttered Todoroki, just load enough to hear. “That – no, that does make sense. Their quirks are wrong, though, but if there are enough generations, you can’t really predict… Does that make Midoriya and Shigaraki cousins?”

Todoroki paused. Aizawa braced himself, both for the violence he was sure he was about to see, and the torture Todoroki was about to inflict on him.

“Midoriya is related to All for One,” whispered Todoroki.

Shouto didn’t blame Midoriya for trying to hide it. If at all possibly, he would have hidden the fact that he was related to Endeavor. Sure, he might have lost some privileges, but he also would have gotten rid of the constant comparisons between himself and his father.

Much like Shimura Souma had to face.

It must have been terrible for a young Midoriya to learn that he was related to a man who had so injured his father.

To learn that he was related to this man.

(No wonder he based this shade on Shouto, although Shouto didn’t think that Endeavor was quite as bad as All for One.)

There was a sound like cymbals being brought together, then—

Light.

And—

Sound.

A group of soldiers who had been sneaking up on Four were obliterated by a lightning strike that left behind fire and glassed soil.

Four got up and did a sort of awkward bunny hop away from the strike zone, blinking dazedly and covering his ears. Shouto knew he’d be behaving similarly if his dream body behaved at all realistically. Especially given the risk of being electrocuted due to the charge in the ground… Or was that just for downed power lines and Kaminari? He didn’t remember, and apparently neither did Four.

There was another crash of the cymbals, like thunder before the lightning and the lightning struck again, farther off.

And then a woman, a few years older than Four ran out from between two of the buildings, cymbals in her hands. Her graying hair was worn in tiny braids and her skin was dark. Mixed race – That would have been rarer back then. She had other musical instruments (drumsticks, some kind of flute, what looked like maracas) attached to her belt, but was otherwise dressed in generic military surplus gear. There was a massive surgical scar stretching across her throat.

“Haruna,” said Four. “What, what are you doing here?”

‘Haruna’ tucked one of the cymbals under her arm and began signing aggressively at Four.

“Ye-yes. But – Your children, they need you.”

More signing. “I’m not being hypocritical.” He gestured to the mark over his eye. “I’m dying anyway. You aren’t.”

Her face twists, then twists again as she notices more armed men approaching. She claps her hands, metal sewn into the palms flashing before a slender bolt of lightning cracks across the sky.

This is when Shouto realizes who she is. He’d learned about her in art class, of all things. Thunderclap. One half of one of the first villain duo to be marked as S-rank, active during the dawn of heroics. Her birth name was widely believed to be Harmony Trey, and she’d used the alias Miura, but records from back then, even for something that important, were sketchy, and criminals were never good at keeping paperwork up to date in the first place.

Her quirk was sound-based weather manipulation. No one knew what had happened to her throat, but the public of the past had been grateful for it. She could cause lightning strikes with a clap. What could she do with her own voice?

Something like twenty percent of the early propaganda pieces for the Hero Practices and Standards Commission had her and her partner on them, being defeated or held off by various newly licensed heroes.

Neither of them had ever been caught.

Was she ‘Three?’ If so, Shouto could understand why Six didn’t want to say anything, although All for One was much more jarring and—

Hold up. Thunderclap had been active over a hundred years ago. If All for One was here, too, then that meant that either:

Midoriya’s subconscious was terrible at timelines (and so was Shouto’s because he’d just accepted all this without question until a split second ago). Or—

All for One had an immortality quirk on top of all the other terrifying things he could do.

The fact that the second one was more plausible was unfair of reality.

(Shouto liked ‘conspiracy’ theories, but his theories were, for the most part, well, not things that would keep him up at night for fear of nightmares.)

Except she didn’t seem to see them at all, so maybe not. The rules in the dreamscape had, appropriately, a dreamlike consistency. That is to say, hardly any.

“Please,” said Four. “We don’t both need to die.”

Thunderclap looked like she was about to cry. But she nodded. Four turned to face the rest of the small army bearing down on him.

The house looked cozy, thought Tenya. Sort of like that cabin his family had rented in the countryside a few years back. The lights were dim but warm. The smell of food and spices permeated the air. Children and teens of various ages were draped over furniture.

In the kitchen, four adults sat around a table. Four, Thunderclap, a man who was entirely green, and woman with hair so golden it literally glowed.

As a middle schooler, Tenya had done a lot of research into discrimination against people with mutation quirks and vestigial or tangential mutations. It had branched off into research into quirk-based discrimination in general. If this scene was truly set near the dawn of heroics, the green man and the golden-haired woman would have risked being attacked just walking on the street in most cities.

He looked back through the doorway at the children in the other room.

Both the yellow hair and the green curls were painfully familiar.

Did Midoriya really think he was related to Thunderclap of all people? The idea was preposterous.

Except—

Oh, he was getting just as bad as Todoroki. Not to mention, even if Midoriya did have a terrorist in his family tree a hundred years ago, it didn’t change anything about Midoriya. Goodness, Tenya most likely had some less than savory characters in his own family tree, even if he didn’t know about them.

Four doubled over clutching his head, interrupting the apparently light-hearted story the green man was telling.

“They’re coming,” gasped Four. “They’re coming. Go bags – phone tree – we have to.”

“I’ll get the kids,” said the golden-haired woman.

“Your body is shutting down,” said a man in a doctor’s coat. “These cracks, they aren’t just on your skin, they’re on your organs, too. I can’t find any reason for it. Maybe if we had access to genetic testing…” he shook his head. “Maybe you can still get it. Your quirk is concealable. Not like most of us here.” He took a moment to tug on one of his long, sheeplike ears.

Four shook his head. “Too big a risk.”

“Mhm, it’s up to you,” said the doctor, dubiously. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more, Yagi-san.”

“It’s still Shimura. Yagi is my wife.”

“That’s still confusing.”

“The name change thing is western,” said Four, “and I picked Shimura for a reason.”

Aizawa steadied himself against a wall. The last two shifts had been disorienting.

“Is there anything else I can do?” asked the doctor.

“Can you help me tell my wife?”

Four was screaming and holding his face. In front of him was a huge boulder, split in half.

“Hoshino,” said Four, leaning down so that his head rested on top of the golden-haired woman’s. “I gave it away. I gave it away.”

“Lariat worked out, then?” asked Hoshino. Yagi Hoshino, Aizawa had to presume.

“He’s a good person,” said Four, hoarsely. “I like working with him.”

“You don’t have to stop.”

Four closed his eyes. “I think… without it… I might be able to live here. At least, visit more often.”

“I’d like that. I think the kids would, too.”

Four, hunched over, clutching his head.

Four, in an alley, fighting men with knives, standing in front of a young woman with clawed hands. He’d been stabbed in the side.

They were back in the house, watching a news program. A trainline had been hit by a villain attack. A ticker on the bottom read ‘mutant metahuman train under attack by Evolutionary gang.’ The reporter’s voiceover was saying something along the lines of this is why mutants shouldn’t be allowed on public transport, they bring their gang wars with them.

Lariat was on the scene. A man recognizable only by his green skin at this distance fell out of one of the train cars. Lariat grabbed him with one of his black energy whips and put him back.

Thunderclap relaxed her death grip on Four’s arm by just an iota.

“He saved him,” said Four.

A much younger Four leaned against a wooden wall. He was splattered with blood, his clothing torn.

“I couldn’t save her,” he whispered. His hands were shaking. “Shimura-san—” His breath caught.

A woman with her hair gathered into a curly gray ponytail sat at a desk, blankly staring at the content. She wore a grey cardigan and could have been Thunderclap’s sister. Her eyes were obscured.

Which meant she probably was, all things considered.

Which meant that she was the other half of that S-rank villain pair.

Tempest.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Four.

“I do. You don’t understand how many people he’s killed. You don’t understand what he’s done. He has Haruna. I can’t—”

The scene sheered away as Tempest turned to face Four.

Do you remember when I first met you?

“Oh, this isn’t a pleasant one,” said Four, voice deceptively mild.

They were in an underground facility. The walls were concrete and metal, covered in pipes. The sounds of footsteps echoed down the hallway, starting and stopping.

“Although,” said Four, “there were certainly some good points as well.”

A teenage version of Four ran down the hall, frequently looking over his shoulder. His hands clutched a ring of keys by their blades and a pair of ID cards. His long, shaggy hair hung in his face, and he kept having to push it out of the way.

He reached a door at the end of the hall, and started fumbling with the keys, muttering under his breath. He slid one of the cards through a scanner near the door. It clicked open.

First contact.

There were definitely fewer voices involved in the proclamation, now. Two men, one woman. The woman had an American accent.

Beyond the door, a woman was strapped to the bed, unconscious. No, not a woman, the same woman who had been at the desk.

Tempest. Storm-caller. A villain who had been responsible for bringing so many storms to bear against Japan that they had permanently changed the coastline.

“Got to get you out of here before Dad comes back,” muttered the younger Four, untying the straps. “You need to wake up. Ah, Narcan.” He started rifling through a cabinet. “Narcan, Narcan… Narcan. Found you.”

“Don’t look for Three,” said Four. “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Or anyone. Do you know where Jinoshi Lake Camp is?”

“My class went there on a history field trip, once,” said Uraraka.

“Yeah,” said Aizawa, not liking where this was going at all. “I know the place.”

‘The place’ being what amounted to a concentration camp for quirked people in the early days of the quirk boom. How bad it was tended to be glossed over in history lessons, but Aizawa had long been able to read between the lines.

In the earliest days, the government had tried surgically removing quirks. Typically by removing the relevant body parts.

“That’s her contact point. Don’t look too closely.”

Aizawa supposed he knew how Thunderclap got her scars.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fanfic #my fic #long night in the valley

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rosexknight · 3 years

Text

@arceusfan493 Here’s that Dragon Age 2 rant you wanted.

Because I am still not over it.

Under the Read More, I have for you: - Lore Context - How Dragon Age 2 is Amazing - How it Hurt Me Enjoy~!

Oh yeah and major spoiler warning for Dragon Age 2 and minor spoiler warning for Dragon Age Origins and Awakening.

Lore Context ((Note: It is way more in-depth than this, I am simplifying ALOT))

Okay so. In the Dragon Age universe, magic is seen as super dangerous, because mages and those who have magical abilities are connected what is called the Fade, which is like a world that mirrors ours. It is also known as the Dream World, and every race but dwarves dream, but Mages specifically are connected to it in a way that lets them manipulate it for magic. In the Fade there are spirits and demons that can be brought into the real world by a mage or take over a mage’s body to enter our world. When this happens the mage becomes what is called an “Abomination” and loses all semblance of themselves. Demons are dangerous, spirits not so much, and demons are actually just spirits that have been twisted from their original purpose, usually by desire/pride/rage/etc. Spirits are the embodiment of virtues, where as demons are usually the embodiment of sins. There’s also Blood Magic which is hella powerful but corrupting and usually links back to demons.

There is also some religious reasons why magic is so feared, as it’s basically said that mages that got too close to God caused all the bad shit happening in the world (specifically a literal and metaphorical plague called the Blight) and also there are political reasons since there is a country/kingdom that’s all mage-run and it’s not great.

So for the protection of all the non-mages, they lock all mages in these towers called Circles so that they can study, hone their skills, etc. But they're essentially prisons, and the mages are watched over by Templars, which are like anti-magic paladins. And all this is ran by the church called the Chantry (there's a shit ton of lore and all these fears are linked back to that religion I mentioned earlier.) In order to become full mages, you have to pass a test where they put you against a demon in the Fade to prove you can handle your magic. If you fail you become an abomination. If the Circle thinks you will fail this test, they will (literally) brand you Tranquil, which cuts off a mage from the Fade but ALSO makes them 100% emotionless. Also if you get too good, they might also brand you a Blood Mage and kill you anyway.

Also, there is no escape. You can try to escape, but when you come to the Circle, the Chantry takes your blood and puts it in a vial. They then use this blood to track you down if you slip away.

Now, in the games we have seen that SOMETIMES the Circles are not that bad. Mages can get special permission to live outside the Circles as long as they can get jobs. Some mages are perfectly content there, while others aren’t. The mages might be governed by the Chantry and Templars but usually each Circle is kind of given its own freedoms to have its own politics, etc. HOWEVER, whether or not you're put in a good Circle is a toss-up, completely dependent on where you are, who is in charge, etc. And also the Templars can call upon the Right of Annulment if they feel the things in the tower are getting out of control, which essentially nukes the tower and destroys it and all the mages. OH and you are sent to the Circles when your magic starts manifesting (between the ages of 4-14) with no say from you or your family. Just “Oh you got magic? Time to lock you in this tower.” SO needless to say, things between Mages and Templars are fucking tense, and the game is not shy about giving this whole thing a prison feel. The mages are very obviously the oppressed class here (elves are also oppressed but in a different way and I’m not going into that.)

Also you can play as a mage in-game, which makes this all hit especially home if you do since you as the player both see and experience it.

OKAY that should be all the lore context you need.

How Dragon Age 2 is Amazing

DA2 takes place in a town with one of the bad Circles. The Commander of the Templars, Meredith, has basically gone insane. She’s become paranoid, and is turning mages Tranquil (illegally btw because we know that she turns some Tranquil even after they passed that test I mentioned earlier,) or killing them left and right. However, in conjunction to that, there's ALOT of shit that happens that are all mages fault. Blood magic, demons, your mom (basically the only family you have left at that point btw) gets killed by a crazy necromancer, etc.

So it puts you, the player and your PC Hawke, in this situation where you clearly see magic is HELLA DANGEROUS, but you also see that the mages are being pushed too hard by the Templars and are taking drastic measures to escape or fight back. And again, it hits doubly hard if you play as a mage. The game also takes place over the span of 7 years, so you see it all build up and get worse and worse as you play.

So it presents the conundrum: Do all mages suck or is it because of what is happening? It's fucking brilliant. Especially coming from the first game, Origins, where you see a good Tower that's super chill until one crazy mage fucks it up. You see what horrors magic can bring but also see and hear how crazy Templars can be when they face such horrors (this is clear with both Meredith herself AND a recurring character named Cullen but if I talk about him we’ll be here all day.)

Anyway, point is there's clearly no right answer to which side is right or wrong, and the game builds up on it alot. It gives you all the perspectives with Meredith, the paranoid Templar Commander, Orsino, the leader of the Circle who is just trying to keep the peace and defend the mages, and the Grand Cleric in the Chantry Elthina, who refuses to take a side even though she has the power to basically end it all. Your companions also have opinions on all of it as it unfolds. And it puts you right in the middle of it all. And you experience all of it.

Like I said, fucking brilliant.

How it Hurt Me

One of your companions is Anders, who is a mage that has run away from the Circle you know of from Origins. He's a healer that is helping people from an underground (free) clinic, and has also been helping mages escape the city. He's all about freedom for mages, and has fused with a Justice spirit that he became friends with. The spirit saw the injustice that was happening to the mages and wanted to further help. Both Anders and Justice are from Dragon Age Awakening, which comes after Origins. They are companions in that game and you see how their friendship grows and how they come to be able to help each other.

Now I LOVED Anders and Justice in Awakening. I was ALL FOR seeing them again seeing how the years had changed them, and helping them. I also played as a mage in both games so I was also all for mage freedom. It’s also worth noting that in Awakening you learn the Circle was NOT kind to Anders. He’s a free spirit, a lover not a fighter, and he was suffocated. He tried to escape like 7 times and after the last one they put him IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR A FUCKING YEAR. He was 100% expecting to be killed every time he was caught. “Oh but couldn’t he have used those methods you mentioned earlier to live outside the Circle?” you may ask. And like, yeah maybe. But also...No one should have to do that?

I romanced Anders because I adore him. He’s a bit of a broody boy in DA2 that tries to push you away, but he’s hella sweet and supportive. Funny. Small hint of danger with Justice. He's great. And it was great to romance him in DA2 since I was playing Awakening going “No please why can I not romance YOU?”

Well throughout the game you see that due to the anger Anders has, Justice is getting morphed into something more akin to a spirit of Vengeance as things are pushed more, and that Anders is having trouble controlling him. Depending on what route you take with the romance, he and Justice can either fuse into something like only one being, or Justice can be turned fully into a demon of Vengeance. Both of these are heavily implied more than confirmed, so it’s kind of ambiguous, but the ending is the same. Anders becomes consumed by this, and everything else is drowned out.

Eventually, towards the end of the game, when Meredith has sent off for permission to the Right of Annulment, and Orsino can’t control the many other mages wanting to fight back, and things between mages and Templars are coming to a head, Anders asks you to come with him to get some ingredients that will make a potion to separate he and Justice. Then that turns out to be a lie and he asks you to distract Elthina in the Chantry so he can do...a thing. And he won’t tell you what. And you know he's up to something. BUT in DA2 and Awakening he's ALWAYS said that violence isn't the answer and that we have to show people mages can be good by example, and been against blood magic, etc. So you have the option to help him or not.

I helped him because SURELY he wouldn't do anything crazy. And SURELY he wouldn't ask/trick me, the woman he loves, to do something crazy. He simply asks you to trust him, and I did.

Aaaaaaand then I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

He blew up the Chantry in that town. Confirmed death toll from game lore is 100, but people estimate it could be more. This was the second time I had to walk away from this game due to emotions, the first being when your mom dies.

The Chantry runs the Templars, and the Templars watch the mages. Things were coming to a head. It had been a silent war raging. The Knight-Commander of the Templars was seeing shadows, threatening to basically rip the tower apart to find Blood Mages where there weren't. The leader of the Mages supported the Circle but was doing little to lead the mages against the Templars, and if the mages snapped all hell would break loose. The Cleric in the chantry refused to take sides, even though her word would essentially sway the masses into siding with someone. But she had to stay neutral because she couldn't choose as it wasn't her place, and she agreed there was no right answer both sides had a point. He blew up the Chantry, and forced people to take sides. Change had to come, and he decided he had to take the matter into his own hands to do it. And whether or not it was him or Justice or both is ambiguous and dependant on the route taken.

And I fucking helped him.

The game at this point forces you to choose a side, and I chose to side with the Mages because I WAS one and also Meredith wanted to kill every mage there for what Anders did.

I was betrayed by this character I had loved for two games, who my Hawke fell in love with, who I trusted, etc. And THAT hurt worse than anything else ever. You then had the option to kill him, which was the third point I had to walk away and agonize over a decision. Whether or not Anders was right is a topic still viscerally debated in the Dragon Age community too and it gets ROUGH.

So yeah. That is why I’m not over it and why I love this game so much but also how fucking dare it do this to me.

#dragon age #da2 #dammit anders #dragon age 2 #i still love him tho

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thenightling · 3 years

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The Dreaming (2018) in a nut shell

Full plot of The Dreaming (2018 run). This is copied and pasted from a Discord conversation because I didn’t feel like repeating myself... That’s also why it’s a bit disjointed.

I'll explain the whole plot as best I can, bear with me. There's this monstress named Dora living in The Dreaming, and she's got a chip on her shoulder since Morpheus had once promised her she'd never have to be afraid ever again and that was shortly before The Kindly Ones. Anyway, she's been haunting the dream of this woman dying of throat cancer (revealed to be Rose's mother). Daniel goes MIA and doesn't seem to want to be found.

Suddenly these "blanks" generic looking humanoid enterities start pouring in from cracks in the dreaming. Mervyn invents a racial slur for them of Soggies (totally not "wet backs").

While Daniel is gone Judge Gallows (another old DC horror host) takes over The Dreaming and promises to make The dreaming great again.

Dora befriends one of the blanks who is very child-like and names him Ziggy. Merv starts penning them up on behalf of Judge Gallows and even attempts to lynch Ziggy.

Merv has a grudge. Shortly before Judge Gallows took over Lucien used the helm to un-create Merv's friends right on the steps of the caslte and it was implied to be out of spite

("I did warn you." - said by Lucien). It's a "They took our jobs" thing, apparently. The blanks are more efficient. No immigration metaphors here, nope.

Lucien is apparently slowly losing his mind / going senile. He can't remember anything. Eventually Judge Gallows gets defeated and replaced with this weird AI, yes an AI named Wan. WAN, as it turns out was created by this character who looks suspiciously like Steve Jobs. Actual character name: Hyperion Keter.

Totally not Steve Jobs had a nightmare decades before where Dora was attacking him. he had confronted her in the dream and told her she's not real. This caused her to have an existential crisis and flee into The Dreaming where Morpheus had tended to her and sealed her own memories to protect her mind. He also hid the newly re-created ruby dreamstone inside her to aid her until she no longer needed it.

Steve Jobs-Knock-off guy creates Wan with the intention of invading and conquering The dreaming. He thinks all the ills of humanity come from dreams. Greed, superstition, religious zealousness. Oh, by the way, Judge Gallows heavily indicates that Morpheus caused the civil war and holocaust by creating him (Judge Gallows) to prey on man's fear of "The other". So anyway, while that was going on Daniel was playing human and dating Ivy. Steve Jobs sends some occultists to steal a lock of Ivy's hair to control her. Ivy gets upset when Daniel won't let her tattoo him since she's a tattoo artist. (that's where I grew to hate her). She doesn’t accept no means no with his bodily autonomy. Daniel apologizes to her and proposes marriage. He gives her an emerald ring.

The occultists (working out of Fawny Rig) control Ivy and she gives Daniel a dream catcher / tree of life tattoo that works as a geas to bar him from The Dreaming and prevent him from calling out for help.

Ivy tries to "apologize" by giving him a cup of tea but it turns out to be poisoned. Desire (or what appears to be Desire, it might be posthumous Morpheus in disguise, the face is always partly hidden and he's very thin) warns Rose of what's going on and Rose slaps the drink from Daniel's hand but he's already had a taste. Daniel, freaks the f--k out.

A dog walker eats his own fingers right there on the beach. Someone screams until their vocal chords burst in their throat. Daniel is maming and mutilating right and left (and this is NOT where those partiers were killed, that was earlier and said very nonchalantly during the dating montage. Daniel made some drunk bachelor party guys who cat called Ivy walk into the ocean and drown... I think he killed the entire party...)

Daniel finds the occultists and traps them all in terrible nightmare half-concious states but still weakened and unable to return to The Dreaming he goes to apologize to Ivy, knowing she was being controlled but it's too late, she's ODed and brain dead.

He takes her soul with him to flee to another universe.

Dora, meanwhile, gets a hold of Destruction's sword, briefly meets up with Nuala (who has learned Titania's true name thanks to Daniel stopping by for help with the fae). Daniel gets the egg that Titania has from back during the original Books of Magic, this is the "Mundane Egg" able to open or create another universe.

Anyway, back in The Dreaming Wan (the AI) is trying to run things and doesn't know it has a secret dark side programming to destroy the place.

Wan legitimately wants to do good and blacks out when the other side takes over. An AI with a split personality. Wan talks Abel into taking the initiative and kill Cain...

Cain does not revive. Wan also digitizes the entire dreaming library because of Lucien's memory problems. Lucien decides he wants to die.

Abel scooped out Matthew's eyes with a spoon and gives him his own eyes so Matthew can see what he sses, the secret that Wan is destroying The Dreaming. Matthew with giant human eyes sticking out of his tiny raven head, Abel (whose eyes grow back), and Dora, head out to save the dreaming.

Cain, meanwhile, his soul was uploaded into an AI at the home of Not-Steve Jobs. So he's there. The heroes make their way there and learn the story of why things are happening. Poor not-Steve Jobs was dying of cancer (this was really tasteless to model him after Steve jobs). And Daniel briefly came to him, showing him what he was destroying in destroying The Dreaming, Hyperion tried to set things right but his own minion stopped him.

Dora shows up and accidentally shuts down Steve's life support system. Rose gets told more exposition dump from "Desire" (I'm telling you, there are clues it's actually Morpheus) She hijacks a bus to get to Steve Jobs' place. Here we discover the re-created ruby dream stone was inside Dora the whole time. Lucien, meanwhile, had tried to be re-abosrbed into The Dreaming with the help of his dream friends (eve, Merv, etc). And he has a brief visit with Death who introduces him to Steve Jobs and gives him a special book that has all of Lucien's lost memories. Dora returns to The dreaming with the dream stone, and her, Lucien, and the other dream folk are able to summon Daniel back, breaking the geas spell he was under (Ivy is left behind).

Dora is a Night Hag, by the way. That was her big secret besides having the ruby in her. They kept harping on how special she was, that she wasn't like the others in the Dreaming. ...she was a Night hag, that's it. They kept going on about her being special, this big secret, she's a night hag. Eve delviers a line I cannot forgive. She says something like "We were worried he only kept us around out of laziness or loneliness. We were wrong." They were HAPPY they were there as a failsafe, as tools in case he got captured again in the waking world. They would rather be tools than for someone to want them around out of loneliness?! Daniel uncreates Wan but as Wan begns to fade the good side of Wan helps Daniel set things right and apologizes for its other personality. Daniel erases Rose's memory of the entire adventure (which I think is bullshit). She lost her f--king daughter, you asshole! And Lucien learns to be 'More assertive" and when Daniel requests he come to the throne room so he can thank them formally Lucien says no, because he's drinking with Dora.

"character growth" TM

hated Simon's run of The Dreaming but not as much as I hate Caitlin R. Kiernan's.

Dreaming Waking Hours is about a Nightmare named Ruin who escapes to the waking world because he's fallen in love with a mortal. It's so much better but all the events of Simon's Dreaming are still canon so that's a problem. The villain being modeled after Steve Jobs even if he sees the error of his ways in the end was totally tasteless. My hands ache from writing all that out...

Oh, and Cain is back to normal (for him) he and Abel took turns in a sort of tag team tormenting the tech support for Wan, via nightmares. So they couldn't intervene in stopping the destruction of the AI. That was actually a fun scene. "There will be no tech support today." Cain shows up with a chainsaw.

Also the reason "not Steve Jobs" knew about Dream was because he found a journal from an occultist at a garage sale that described Morpheus' capture.

I think I'm still traumatized from reading it, especially the early issues where Merv was used as a Trump supporter allegory. And Abel did give Matthew back his normal raven eyes while they were in Steve Job's house. Though don't ask me how Abel even did the initial eye surgery of putting his eyes in Matthew while he was blinded.

Someone tried telling me Simon Spurrier wasn't trying for a Republican metaphor, he was making a commentary on the Tories How is that better?!?

It's still a very dated political reference.

#The Dreaming #The Sandman Universe

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catandguitarsnugglingonthecouch · 4 years

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The legend of the Roggenbuk

As you may know, I live near the Baltic Sea, at the coast of Northwestmecklenburg, which is a part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany. The land is rich with Castles and Churches, and with tales of dragons, mermen, mermaids, nymphs, trolls, knights and witty fishermen. But it takes some digging to actually find those stories. The Brothers Grimm did collect a huge amount of legends but sadly did they miss our coast.

The legend of the Roggenbuk plays at the shore where I live, right before Travemünde. In 'de ole times' people worshipped their old gods and strange creatures. The people of the then small settlement by Travemünde were haunted by a merman (Wassermann) with green hair and ugly fangs. He lulled his victims into the water by playing a magic harp made of human bones. But as he was never quite satisfied with the sound he constantly needed new material. The poor bastards couldn't help themselves, the sound of the harp held them in thrall until they were deep in the water, Roggenbuk then grabbed them with his claws and ripped their arms and legs off. The rest did he give to his army of sea monsters. (nice guy, I know) This went on for a long time, and nobody would go fishing anymore or even near the water. People left the land and the remaining few were poor and lived in despair. They went to an old, wise woman to get her advice. She went to the waterfront and called for Roggenbuk to show himself. Before he could begin to play his harp she called out to him, asking him if he would be willing to compromise. The village would give one of theirs each year, and he wouldn't bother them for the rest of the time. Roggenbuk needed new bones for his harp and of course he noticed that no one came near the water anymore. So he said he wanted the most beautiful maid each year, in May, and he would let the village live in peace. So the deal was made. This they did, for years and years. But the village was still bathed in sadness. They loved their children as anyone does, and it killed their spirit to give one of them to a cruel and cold death.

But what could they do?

So each May a crying procession slowly went to the coast, in their midst the maid, afraid and trembling, bound like an animal for the slaughter. But one year a young knight on his horse came by, stopped and asked what the villagers were up to. They told him the gruesome tale and he couldn't believe it. 'Stop this now!' he said, 'go home, I will talk to this Roggenbruk and free you of its presence.' The villagers were sceptical, but they were willing to give it a chance. If the knight was drowned by Roggenbruk, they would just leave the land and start elsewhere anew. They were tired of all the sadness anyway. They asked him after his name: 'Jürgen', he told them.

So knight Jürgen rode right into the shallow water at the beach and banged his lance against his shield, shouting 'Roggenbruk, you green-haired, ugly monster, show yourself!' and Roggenbruk rose out of the deep, asking in his hypnotic voice 'Who are you? Where is my maid? I'm waiting.' But the knight kept on mocking him and calling for a fight. Roggenbruk got angry, turned himself into a dragon and attacked Jürgen. The knight wasn't afraid, he wielded his shining lance and stabbed Roggenbruk between the gaping jaws, killing the monster instantly. The villagers, who watched the fight from a distance, came to say their thanks and asked the knight, what he wanted for his deed. He just wanted them to promise to never make their children into victims again. And off he rode. The villagers loaded Roggenbruk's dead body onto a big raft and paddled it as far off into the deep sea as they could. There they sank the body and it turned to stone.

And there it lies still today, the Roggenbruk, a big stone, vaguely in the shape of a gigantic snake, close under the water. Legend says, that if one day the stone touches the sands of the beach, Roggenbruk will come alive and sing again.

Of course, this is one of the tales told by missionaries to coax the then Slavic people of the coast to convert to Christianity. Young Jürgen rode under the sign of the cross, therefore he was able to kill the beast so easily. It's a metaphor, the good (Christianity) is victorious over the evil (the old Gods) in the form of a dragon (snake). Anybody who does know something about the Old Testament will recognize what that stands for: Snake = Demon/Satan

The name Jürgen is a German variation of Georg (George), which means "peasant" deriving from the Greek: ge = earth and ergo = working. That a knight has such a name seems peculiar, but as the Holy George (3rd/4th century, England) was a legendary Dragon slayer, not so much.

But even so, the whole thing is dam interesting. That the merman is playing a harp had me thinking, that of course some of the oldest refined instruments in northern lands were harps, played by Druids for example. All in all this is religious propaganda, dissing the older religions as cruel, monstrous and ugly. My oldest daughter asked the logical question: "What did he play on, before he caught his first victim?" Errrm... She is six by the way, and wasn't impressed by this story at all. Poof!

An Illustrator turned the story into a short graphic story. It's very well done. It may be in German, but you already know the story if you read the text till here ;)

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cdyssey · 5 years

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Hadestown (7/14/19), Act II

The second half of my thoughts and incoherent rambling from Hadestown! Act I is here.

“Our Lady of the Underground” —

A.K.A. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, but Amber Gray is the love of my life.

She comes out with a flask in her hand, which she surreptitiously sticks into her bra, so she can dance, lololol.

Her energy and vitality are just so infectious. When she smiles, you can't help but smile. When she start giving shout-outs to the musicians, the rumble of pride in her voice echoes throughout Walter Kerr.

Hermes escorts her at the beginning of the song and then stands off to the side as she sings. He eventually gives her her bouquet of flowers, and she gives him her flask.

“There’s a crack in the WALLLLLLLLLLLLL.” She lifts her flowers into the air as bright [sun]light shines down upon her. It’s an amazing, joyous moment.

“She’s right here waiting in my pay-per-view.” Smirking, Persephone taps her noggin.

“What the boss don’t know, the boss won’t mind.” Having retrieved her flask again, she takes a sip. I got major Prohibition vibes from this line, which is to say that as far as Persephone’s character development goes, you get the sense that she’s ready to rebel against her husband to help our heroes. It’s a big leap from Orpheus’s line about how Persephone is drowning in wine and oblivion.

“Way Down Hadestown (Reprise)” —

OH, this song. THIS SONG MADE ME WEEPY.

So in this one, Eurydice comes out of Hades’s office dressed in worker clothes. She watches in horror as the company workers toil around her, repeating the refrain, “Keep your head low.”

The dichotomy between Persephone looking up at the “crack in the wall,” and the workers keeping their heads low in order to avoid trouble is incredible. Their spirits have been entirely broken, and Eurydice is up next.

She tries to get the workers to acknowledge her, but the Fates mock her for the futility of the action. They’re obviously taking glee at Eurydice’s situation.

Another incredible dichotomy: the jauntiness of “Way Down Hadestown,” which Eurydice once smiled at, and the sinister spin the reprise puts on the chorus. Hermes and Persephone did try to warn her after all.

“Hades laid his hands on you and gave you everlasting life.” HOO BOY—this subversion of religious language was INCREDIBLE.

“Flowers” —

;-;

In “Flowers,” all of the workers except for Eurydice are collapsed on the ground, exhausted and dead to the world. She’s on floor as well, the lone figure lit by light.

“I remember someone / Someone by my side / Turned his face to mine / And then I turned away.” Okay, after I stopped tearing up over these lines, I immediately started tearing up again when I realized that Eurydice doesn’t remember Orpheus’s name.

She doesn’t even know her own.

“Papers” / “Nothing Changes” / “If It’s True”

“Papers” is Hades confronting Orpheus about sneaking into Hadestown.

When Persephone tries to vouch for Orpheus and Hades tell her, “You stay out of this,” Patrick doesn’t say it as softly as he does on the OBC—he practically yells it at her, and she flinches into silence.

ALSO, GOD, Patrick’s EVIL ENERGY is wiiiiiiild in this one. I love him????

In the “Papers (Instrumental), Hades directs the workers to attack Orpheus, and they, like, beat him up. This is the scene where Timothy lifts him!!

At the end of “Papers,” Orpheus is collapsed on the ground holding his side. He stays like this through “Nothing Changes.”

“Nothing Changes” reminds me of how much the Fates sound like a choir. I love them.

Plot wise, it’s them sowing the first seeds of doubt and defeat into Orpheus’s head. While he initially overcomes their temptations, I think he’s never fully able to shake them away after this, a struggle which carries into “If It’s True.”

Ugh, another song I wish I had the OBC track to listen to for reference, but this one is largely Orpheus’s doubt and idealism warring against each other. If it’s true what the Fates and Hades are saying, he wants to leave, but he’s also not entirely ready to give up. I think this is also the one where he and Eurydice start to rouse the workers’ spirits, showing them that there is hope.

“How Long” —

I love “How Long” so, so much. It might be a contender for my favorite.

Incredible and moving and vulnerable and tragic. Hades is. Persephone is. They are.

For large parts of the song, they stand on opposite sides of the elevator, which has been lowered so it looks like a pit, a chasm—obviously symbolic of the breach that divides them.

Again, for almost the entire song, Hades never takes his eyes off Persephone, while Persephone turns her head away from him after she’s done singing her verses. I’m so tender for them.

When Hades sings, the lighting changes into a fiery amber, while when Persephone sings, the lighting dulls to a cool blue. It’s an interesting dichotomy. Hades’s makes sense because of his anger and general association with the color red, but I took the blue to symbolize Persephone’s deep sadness. It seeps from her; it pervades the stage.

Lively and joyful she may be most of the time, but deep down on the inside, Persephone is sad.

At one point, they both make it to front stage and stand side by side. Watch their shadows on the floor at this point. It’s a marvelous effect. (Also, watch the shadows on the walls and floor in general! The workers circling the platform in “Chant” especially comes to mind. The lighting in this show is INSANE.)

When they share their final verse, half of the stage is orange, and the other half is blue.

I was emo, y’all.

“Chant” (Reprise) —

In “Chant II,” Hades realizes that Orpheus is rallying his workers. He pulls a lever or something, which signals that they should get back to work, and they do for a couple of “Keep your head lows” until they go into the new refrain of asking why people turn their backs on each other.

GOD, what a joyous change. Orpheus and Eurydice’s light has given them the courage to question the system for themselves. “Why do we build a wall and then call it freedom?”

Hades grows increasingly angry throughout the reprise. You get the feeling that he’s losing control of his kingdom, and he not only knows it but fears it. He’s frantically trying to grasp onto whatever some semblance of authority he has left.

The thesis of this song is just powerful. If we raise our voices and raise our heads, we can effect change.

“I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY.” First of all, I LOVE PATRICK PAGE, AND HE ABSOLUTELY DID NOT HAVE TO GO THIS HARD, BUT HE DID BECAUSE HE’S AMAZING, AND DID I MENTION THAT I LOVE HIM??? Secondly, when he sings this line, the lights flash bright before flickering out for a couple of seconds.

While he’s counting down (1... 2... 3...), he angrily stomps down the staircase and crosses over to the side of the stage where Hermes gives him a barstool. He takes it and slams it on the ground to wait for “Epic III.”

“Epic III” —

Not 2 belabor the point, but this entire damn musical made me an emotional wreck, and “Epic III” was no exception. It was a religious experience, at once both simple and sublime.

Right before it starts, Hades slowly snaps his fingers twice in expectation.

Hades doesn't really react to the song until the moment Orpheus sings his first “la, la, las.” At those, he immediately gets up and crosses over to Orpheus, shocked and enraged, fully intending to interrupt him: “Where did you get(?) that melody?” Persephone stops him before he can do anything and implores him to let Orpheus finish.

Of course, he recognizes the melody because it used to be his and Persephone’s once upon a time.

(Hgjkahgjkskjnksjfkjhkashfkj—I was tender.)

Orpheus falters after the interruption, but Hermes, placing a hand on his shoulder, encourages him to keep going.

Anyway, REEVE CARNEY DESERVED A DAMN TONY, PART TWO.

If Hades was spellbound, then the entire theater was, too. A boy and a lyre and a song—it doesn’t seem like much, but it was quite literally everything.

Right before Hades echoes Orpheus, there’s a poignant pause in which Persephone turns to fully face him—she hadn’t quite been looking at him before.

Very softly, very gently, she extends her hands to him... and as soon as they touch, Hades finds his song again: “La la la la la la la.”

My God, I cried.

At the end of Epic III, the carnation “appears” in Hades’s hand. (Holy hell—I don’t know how he did it; it was really quite like it magically appeared.)

Persephone wipes tears from her eyes as she holds on to her husband, as they hold on to each other.

Also, this isn’t on the soundtrack, but there’s a brief instrumental between “Epic III” and “Promises” where Hades and Persephone dance. They hold each other so tenderly. Their eyes never leave each other’s faces. The flower is in Hades’s lapel.

It honest to God made me believe in love again.

“Promises” / “Word to the Wise” / “His Kiss, The Riot” —

This is awful, but unfortunately, I don’t remember that much of how “Promises” was staged. ;-; I was still being emo over Hades and Persephone because “Epic III” ruined me.

While Eurydice and Orpheus sing, they stand still on the corner of the stage holding each other, her head buried in his shoulder, and his head tucked against her neck. They don’t move. They never let each other go.

Towards the end of “Promises,” Orpheus or Eurydice one convince the other that the king will let them go now that he’s rediscovered his love again, which takes us into “Word to the Wise.”

As soon as Hades admits that he doesn’t know whether he’ll let them go, Persephone violently parts from him, repulsed that he still hasn’t made up his mind in the right direction.

Just as the Fates had teased and mocked Eurydice during “When the Chips Are Down,” they do the same to Hades here. Their impartial wickedness is so good.

“Give him a rope, and he’ll hang himself.” This advice is definitely the seed for the compromise Hades ends up giving Orpheus. Also, ooooh, fun fact: in Greek mythology, death by hanging has metaphoric resonances of extinguishing one’s voice, which, of course, is a tragedy for a poet, a singer, an artist.

And in the end, he does just as the Fates predicted, doesn’t he?

Ugh, the dark orchestration for “His Kiss, The Riot” is chilling. That accordion??? Incredible.

After the brief instrumental section, he addresses Hermes and conveys his plan to him. This is why Hermes is the one who tells Orpheus, Eurydice, and the workers what’s up in “Wait For Me (Reprise)”.

“Nothing makes a man so bold as a woman’s smile and a hand to hold.” He glances over Persephone as he sings this.

For the most part, Hades sits on his barstool for this one; it really reminded me of a Shakespearean soliloquy!

“Wait For Me (Reprise)” / “Doubt Comes In” —

The intro to the reprise is so heavy. Hermes is just weary. He knows what Hades is up to. “Divide and conquer is what it’s called.”

“It’s a trap.” / “It’s a trial.” Orpheus’s newfound skepticism really makes itself apparent in this one. He thinks the world’s out to get him, he doesn’t particularly trust himself or Eurydice anymore. The writing’s on the wall, and Hermes knows it better than anyone: “The dog you really gotta dread is the one that howls inside your head.”

Eurydice and Orpheus singing the “Wait For Me” chorus together is so unbelievably powerful. God, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house through these last few songs.

“Show the way so we can see. Show the way the world could be.” The company repeats this refrain because they’re literally following Orpheus and Eurydice, too. ;-; I didn’t realize this until I saw it staged.

“Wait for me.” / “I will.” Hades and Persephone stare at each other and grasp hands. He gives her the carnation, and for the rest of the reprise, she holds it up—a small beacon of hope, a vivid pop of color against a woman clothed in black. Bye. I’m crying again.

And then, when Eurydice ends “Wait For Me”—JESSIE SLAYED THESE VERSES—you can see the hope and belief in her face as she begins to follow Orpheus. She has no doubt that he’ll lead her home.

The light shines bright on Eurydice one last time before the entire stage is plunged into darkness for “Doubt Comes In.”

The staging for “Doubt Comes In” is absolutely incredible. Wow. So there are rings on the stage that rotate—various characters utilize them for walking during songs, and they’re used to brilliant effect here.

Orpheus walks along the outer ring in the darkness; it’s so dark that you can’t see Eurydice and the workers behind him, which adds to the notion that he’s alone, entirely alone. When Eurydice or the workers sing, they’re briefly illuminated only to be plunged into the darkness once again.

Orpheus tries to comfort himself by singing his song, but the doubt and the darkness are too much, too overwhelming. He makes it to the final staircase, and the light signifying the outside is the most vivid location onstage.

When the final note rings out, he turns around, and there Eurydice is. She was there all along.

The elevator takes her back to Hadestown as Orpheus collapses to his knees.

“Road to Hell (Reprise)” / Ovation / “We Raise Our Cups” —

You know how I mentioned that Hermes’s footsteps were the only sounds audible at the beginning of “Road to Hell”? The same holds true here as he walks back onto stage, slowly and wearily. He’s sung this song before, but by the gods, as this song tells us, he’ll sing it again and again.

I never realized that they did this until I saw it live, but as the music ascends into a more hopeful mood, the cast members reset the stage, so that it’s almost exactly as it was at the beginning of the musical. They even go through the same scene of Eurydice entering from the cold and lighting her candle. (OH, and I meant to mention this in my Act I write up, but right after Eurydice descends to Hadestown in “Gone, I’m Gone,” Hermes blows her candle out. 😭)

When the cast lined up on the stage for the bows, the whole theater stood up and clapped for at least ten minutes. I was so overwhelmed with pride and love for every single performer on that stage, that I couldn’t help but tear up.

And then, Persephone and Eurydice sing “We Raise Our Cups.” Orpheus is the only one who doesn’t join in, watching silently as the entirety of Hadestown raises their cups to him.

To the world we dream about and the world we live in... this musical was a life-changing experience, and I’m so thankful that I could inhabit Orpheus’s world, even if just for a brief fraction of this eternity.

Stagedoor: —

This was my first stagedoor, and it was so much fun!! The cast was so lovely and nice and obliging.

My friend and I got a picture with Reeve; he’s really good at stagedoor. He took his time with everyone and made sure everyone who wanted a signature or a picture got one!

I didn’t quite know what to say to anyone because I was just so in awe of them, but I had an amazing interaction with Kay! I told her that it was really important to me to see Asian representation on Broadway, and her face lit up! I love her.

#hadestown #persephone #eurydice #orpheus #hades #broadway #reginianwrites #p: hadestown

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easilydistractedbyfanfic · 5 years

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Facing Your Demons - Season 6 Character Speculation: MURPHY

Well, we’re down three episodes of the season so far, and if I’m remembering correctly, somewhere JRoth has said that the real story of the season doesn’t really show itself until episode 4. Or something like that. But that even though the eclipse-induced psychosis may not be an ongoing thing, that “facing your demons” is still going to be an issue.

So that’s made me think a lot about my faves and what their demons are or could be, and how that may play into what I see S6 being about. As a whole, I think that S6 is going to give us a lot of callbacks to past issues that our Earthkru have previously faced and we’ll see if they choose to right their mistakes or if they handle things differently now that they are older - and presumably - wiser. Obvious parallel here - Mt. Weather and the factions on Sanctum. But also Octavia being linked to the Grounders in S1 and Gabriel’s Children now in S6. And plenty more!

Lemme dive deeper and let’s start with MURPHY!

Oh, this could be so good. So he died in 6x03 - Abby tells him his heart stopped. I think Murphy going through this is actually super deliberate. Let me preface this to say that I'm a big Murven shipper (lmao duh) and absolutely believe that Raven and Murphy are on similar journeys through this series and are opposite sides of the same coin. They have countless parallels and similar experiences in their lives (I’ve made past posts about it) and here’s another.

Who else died like this? Raven - she did it to herself in order to get ALIE out of her head in S4. She drowns herself and stops her heart - what a coincidence. And what else did Raven experience in this process - hallucinations. Brought on by ALIE yes, and resulted in her manifesting Sinclair (good angel?) and ALIE (bad demon?) where she ultimately had a choice to make about living or dying. She never says anything in canon about whether she experienced any visions of an afterlife, but that doesn't mean she didn't.

Anyway, Murphy's arc in this entire show has actually had him bumping up against religious plots. The entire saga with Jaha, searching for the COL was a religious journey on Jaha's part, obviously, but the argument is there that Murphy was searching for something too. I mean - they went through the desert, what a religious metaphor! And they are on a journey for (en)LIGHT(enment). And I'd venture to say that in a way he found it - when faced with personal crisis (being stuck in the Lighthouse), he chooses not to commit suicide (same as Raven).

But he sees this religious fervor on Jaha's part and refuses it - doesn't buy it, won't swallow it (literally won't take the chip). Murphy chooses to fight for rationality and freedom, ultimately helping in Polis to defeat ALIE and the religious crusade of the COL. I also note that it's interesting to me that in 3x06, Jaha lies to Raven about something in front of ALIE (Raven has taken the chip here). ALIE asks Jaha why he lies to Raven, and Jaha replies that Murphy knew the truth and they lost him - insinuating that if Raven knows the truth, they will lose her too (which they do).

(and on a complete side note but related - John Murphy gets banished and isolated on an island in canon. Biblical references suggest that a man named John of Patmos wrote the Revelations section of the Bible while he was isolated on an island, and believe me when I say I got a million theories about this)

Murphy gets out of the COL mess but is stuck in Polis, and what happens then? He comes to the attention of Titus, the Flamekeeper and Lexa's advisor - aka another run in with religion. It goes even deeper for him when he pretends to be Ontari's Flamekeeper and is in and out of the Temple in Polis. Murphy actually knows quite a bit about Becca and her origins from his time with the videos in the Lighthouse bunker AND his time in the temple at Polis with all the drawings and history of her.

So how does this tie in to FACING HIS DEMONS and the belief that he’s going to hell? First of all, I think it's realistic for him to be freaked out that he "died". He's a survivor and takes pride in that - it's his identity. But is that identity gone now? Maybe he doesn't feel like a survivor any more? Maybe he feels like it's too late, maybe he wants an out, maybe the pain of his past and his actions is too much for him... and maybe he thinks religion or what the Under-the-Dome people represent will help him, can calm him. What does this sound like to me? Oh, the arc where Raven decided she was in so much pain that she took the 'out' of the chip? Oh, the one where ultimately she realized it was false and she fought her way out of it because even though it was painful, she wanted her own life and memories and feelings back? Hmmm...... interesting. Are we going to see Murphy have to accept his life as-is? Is he going to suck it up and build a brace for his own shortcomings? I guess we’ll see.

On the flip side, to throw out another possibility - Murphy is a lot smarter than people give him credit for. I would truly not put it past him to act interested in religious salvation in order to learn more about this society. Remember - he tells Ontari that it's better to lie your way out of something than to kill your way out (3x11).

In addition, if we tie it all in to facing your demons, I think there's an easy argument to be made that Murphy doesn't think he's worthy, that he's 'bad' in comparison to others or shouldn't have survived this long while other (better?) people have died (His Dad? Monty? Harper?). He's ALWAYS been about guilt, always. It's not a jump for him to think he needs to be punished. A dive into escapism via alcoholism or religion to numb his thoughts is absolutely an in-character thing for him. Although of course I’d really like to see Raven having a chat with him at some point about how he’s better than their mothers and should knock it off with the drinking.

Blah blah blah, too long, sorry. I get carried away with Raven & Murphy! Regardless of what happens next, I’ll be watching. And also writing Murven fic!

#the 100 season 6 #the 100 season 6 speculation #the 100 season 6 theories #john murphy #my meta #murven #raven reyes

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loganscarborough · 5 years

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Heads up to the reader. I understand that not everyone is religious or believes in a God. World power to you and I respect you!! Whoever decides to read this long statement I hope that you would keep a open mind and be respectful of my story/beliefs.

The ocean is filled with the unknown, it’s dark, it’s mysterious, and once pulled under it is hard to reach back to the surface. It’s the perfect metaphor for everything I was experiencing these past few years and everything I’ve been trying to work through in my life since my traumas occurred in college. Many of you have seen this poster hanging in my apartment but few know the actual inspiration behind it.

After college I experienced a series of tragic events which in turn caused some trauma in my life. After the experiences I faced in college, it was hard to build relationships with others and it was hard to simply exist even with myself. I avoided photography after moving back home because taking photographs brought about a lot of negative feelings that I had never felt before. The anxiety, the sadness, the doubts, and the darkness in my life was very real and I didn’t know what to do with these feelings. Gods presence was very quiet during those years and because of this I had doubts about its existence in my life and in the world. Honestly, I didn’t even know if I wanted to believe in God anymore.

After much frustration I decided to seek help from a counselor to figure out what was wrong with me. It was in that time of my life that I prayed God would reveal itself to me in a way that I would understand, in a way I couldn’t deny it’s existence. I felt I was drowning and no one could understand or help me understand the things I was experiencing.

The idea for this poster flooded my mind immediately one day while emotionally listening to a song called “Here Am I” by Mercy Me. Honestly I couldn’t believe I was giving this Christian thing a try again.. When I came up with the idea for the poster, “God Keep Me Above The Waves”, it was a visual expression of the pain I felt but also my way of sending a visual prayer to God, which was something I had never thought to do.

Bout to get preachy y’all…

Whoever is reading this I want you to know God never abandons his children. God loves you no matter what sins you have or will commit in your life. Once you are his you are his forever, he will follow you till the end. This is what I believe… His love and grace is so stupid that I even have a hard time understanding. This feeling that I consider God has followed me through it all, even when I didn’t know it. Feelings of understanding, love, and acceptance. All the things that where missing in my life. No one in this life is good enough to know him or to enter his kingdom. But he wants to know us anyways and thats beautiful to think about. I believe God answered my prayers and is still answering them as I continue to search for the answers and continue to ask tough questions about his existence and why there is so much pain and injustice in the world.

The Divine’s existence was self-evident through the fleeting experiences of my life. Through the moments I felt God in church, or when I was in my car listening to music or when I had sleepless nights because I kept reliving my traumas over and over again like a tape. Let me just state that I cannot prove Gods existence scientifically, I can’t prove everything in the Bible is the word of a Divine being. However that’s not what’s it’s about. On a personal level his existence is self evident to me. Regardless, it’s about searching for God, it’s about discovering him in the storm. Discovering him on a personal level in a way that only your heart can understand. I choose to believe, to have faith, that God will help steer me in the right direction as I walk this life until the end.

I hope that this poster brings inspiration to others that where like me. God is not too big for your doubts and he won’t abandon you no matter what your going through. God wants to know you intimately. Wether you identify as gay, lesbian, trans, or straight. It doesn’t matter. Whether you where a drug abuser or whether or continue to abuse drugs. Whether you struggle with alcoholism or have wronged people in your life. God sees you and he understands you on a intimate level. God knows we aren’t perfect and that we have faults.

After everything I am certain of one thing, that I a child of God. I believe god will walk with me throughout my life as I grow and learn.

There is nothing to fear for I control the oceans that plague you and I allow what I allow to better you and never to harm you.

PRINTS COMING SOON!!!

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hufflepuff-ravenclaw-reviews · 5 years

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Proven Innocent Season 1 Episode 4

This review contains discussion of abortion and miscarriage/loss of a baby

We begin with some old news footage, of a Muslim woman wearing her hijab, walking into court through a hoard of protesters screaming about abortion. Somebody dumps something red all over her, and the poor woman is made to sit in court, covered in the substance.

In the present, Madeline watches this footage with disgust over how the judge could make the poor woman sit in court like that. The lady's lawyer says that the judge wanted to go out of his way to show how much of a monster that the woman was. He asks that Easy and Madeline take over her case, because he doesn't think that he can continue to do a good job.

Our client du jour is a Muslim woman who was charged both with feticide, but also the murder of her baby. What doesn't help with this is that she had bought “abortion pills” from Mexico, although she insists that she never took them because she'd changed her mind. Her story remains that she went into premature labor, and the baby was delivered as a stillborn. But then she panicked and threw the dead baby away in a construction site dumpster.

As Madeline and Easy drive away from the prison, they fight about the case. Madeline is obviously on the side of their client, as she always is. But it's not exactly black and white for Easy. He's pro-life, and eventually decides that he doesn't want anything to do with this case.

Meanwhile, Bellows talks with the talk-show host. She knows that “Rosemary's Law” to ensure the rights of the victims, and to ensure that literally nobody ever gets out from jail, even if they never committed a crime, is a fat load of bullshit and will literally never EVER pass. However, they kind of gloat over the idea of Madeline taking on the “Muslim babykiller” case. Ugh.

Later, a senator, Isabel, and Bellows watch the talk show lady talking about “Rosemary's Law”. The senator also knows that Bellows is full of shit. However, Isabel quickly says that she'll go to the press and say that the senator won't endorse crime bills! She also says that she'll run against him... and that she'll probably win because she young, female, and Hispanic. Ugh. The entire thing makes my skin crawl.

Even later, Bellows dramatically burns a picture of Rosemary. No, I don't know what that's about. But I just thought that I'd mention it, in case it becomes relevant later.

Madeline and that reporter have sex. He's surprised the next morning to find her asleep on the floor at the foot of the bed, which is something that we've seen her doing from time to time. He also takes a look at her Rosemary's Murder Wall.

In court, Madeline argues that feticide laws were used to protect mothers, not to punish those who wish to harm their own unborn child. The judge doesn't see it that way, which seem fair, I suppose. However, this opens the door for Madeline to get one of the two thrown out, because either the client murdered her fetus, or she murdered her child. It cannot be both, because that's physically impossible. The judge is reluctant, but grants her this.

Later, Madeline explains to Violet about the “lung float test”. It's a test that's used to determine if an infant took a breath outside of the womb or not by dropping it into water. However, as Bodie is quick to point out: it's about as reliable as dunking young women in the lake to see if they'll float or drown to determine if they're a witch or not. He also comes with good news: he has an expert witness who'll testify that the float test is junk science.

Violet and Madeline go meet the man who is... er... an aging hippie. He's literally just a tinfoil hat away from being a crackpot. However, he agrees with their assessment that the float test is a load of garbage, and should never have been used in the first place. However, before he can appear in court, he needs a... make over. Violet gets a super flaming homosexual friend of hers to help give the guy a haircut and shave, and Madeline puts him into a suit.

He testifies in court about how easy it is to get a false positive on the float test. However, the judge thinks that it's just as likely that the test was correct. He also doesn't give the prosecutor any chance to ask questions of her own, because he asked them after Madeline presented her witness. Madeline is steamed about the judge's obvious bias towards her client.

Madeline then goes to visit Rosemary's dad. He's exceptionally pleased to see her, and acts like a proud uncle about all of the work that she's been doing. Madeline then asks about reopening Rosemary's case. He tells her that he hired a PI to try and crack it open, but the guy came up with nothing. However, he feels like it's too painful for him to deal with now. Madeline understands, and leaves.

However, he changes his mind a few days later, and calls Madeline up again. They go to a storage locker where some of Rosemary's things are. While looking through a box, Madeline finds a bottle of adderall “hidden” in a sock. Mr. Lynch is surprised over this, and even more so because the prescribing doctor is Heather's dad, who was treating Mr. Lynch for... something. In short, he's not the kind of doctor who would have prescribed something like adderall to a teenager.

Madeline then goes to find Heather, who denies knowing anything about any of that.

Bodie, meanwhile, goes to pick up his detective girlfriend, who's undercover as a prostitute. After they have sex (off screen; this isn't freaking HBO), they get into a fight because Bodie wants more than just casual sex, and she's... afraid of something.

Easy goes to speak with his pastor about the case. He was in court to support Madeline, even if he was just watching the trial and not asking questions or helping to find evidence. The pastor asks why Easy is so upset by the case, and then argues: even if she did have an abortion, does she really deserve 25 years for it? He then reminds Easy of Jesus's teachings of kindness, compassion, and mercy. Their client deserves all three.

Easy goes back to the office, where he says that they need to figure out what was going through their client's mind at the time. This leads them to find her parents, who weren't at the trial, and they sure haven't visited their daughter in prison. However, they tell Madeline and Easy that they'd stopped talking with their daughter some time before she became pregnant, so they wouldn't know what her state of mind was during her pregnancy.

However, this raises some questions, because during initial interviews with their client, she said that she'd hid her pregnancy because she was ashamed of what her parents might think. This leads them to the conclusion that, not only had she had premarital sex, but it had been with a non-Muslim, white man. They ask their client who he was, but she says that they'd broken up before everything happened. She doesn't want to ruin his life, and doesn't want him to go through this.

Bodie tracks the guy down, where he works at a gun range. He refuses to testify about everything at first, and offers up his fiancee as more evidence that his life is great. However, Bodie says that he'll leak to the press about the “Muslim Babykiller's” dad, so either way, this is getting out.

He goes to testify, where he says that even though his girlfriend bought the abortion pills, she was upset over the entire thing. He flushed them down the toilet. However, much like with the expert witness earlier, the judge asks all of the questions, rather than the prosecutor. He asks if the client couldn't have bought more abortion pills later, which the boyfriend can't say either way. Despite the fact that the only reason why he flushed the first pills down the toilet was only because he had said that he wanted the baby, and that he'd wanted to be with his girlfriend. So at this point, I feel like it's pretty safe to say that it's a wanted baby.

Later, Bodie is in bed with his detective girlfriend, when he brings up the issue of them being in a relationship again via a metaphor for their client and her ex-boyfriend. This leads to how imperfect that the police department can be at times. She's so upset over the entire thing, even though she clearly knows exactly what he does for a living. She storms off in a huff.

However, she later pulls him over, and invites him back to her place. So she'd clearly missed him, and reconsidered having ended their arrangement.

Back in prison, their client says that she didn't want for her ex-boyfriend to testify, because she didn't want to ruin his life. (He said as much on the stand, that his fiancee broke up with him after this came out. Which... she sounds like a piece of shit anyway.) She keeps insisting over and over that all of this is God's way of punishing her. However, Easy then turns the tables on her religious talk. He asks her if God is punishing her... or testing her. He also mentions this phrase: The Lord works in mysterious ways. She responds by saying that they have their own saying: God knowith. This convinces her to keep on fighting.

She takes the stand on her own behalf, but, as you might imagine, the judge made up his mind over what had happened a long time ago. It doesn't do any good. After court recesses for the day, Madeline catches up with the prosecutor. Both of them know that the judge is a piece of shit who shouldn't be on the bench. Madeline asks to cut a deal, but the prosecutor refuses, saying that Madeline will go back to Chicago when this is over, but the lady still has to work with the judge.

Later, Madeline gives closing statements. However, as I keep mentioning, the judge has already made up his mind long before it got to this point. He hates the client on principal, and refuses to listen to facts. The prosecutor stands up and says that she's filing for “improper disposal of a fetus”, which is what Madeline wanted, and wants to let the client off with time served. Madeline then says that she'll push this all the way to the supreme court if she has to. The judge doesn't want to continue this nonsense with Madeline, so he agrees to the plea, and releases the client.

Finally, Madeline goes to prison, where she meets up with her former prison girlfriend. They were together for a long time, clearly, and obviously once madly in love. Or at least, their options were limited because they were in prison. Madeline tells the woman about how she's dating a man, and she really likes him. There's a lot of hand touching, and then they kiss.

#Proven Innocent #The Ravenclaw mod

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caphayzardous · 5 years

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*taps idly* ... well, upon request of no one, I wrote out 1,460 words explaining some of the reasoning behind the songs on Vasraen’s playlist (LINK), excluding the Elton John ones because I’ll admit that was just a pretty brief phase and they don’t really suit it anymore. Read if ya want. No pressure.

Vasraen’s Playlist – Caution to the Wind

Tangled Angel by Coda

Lilting strings and plucks, this song embodies its title. Delicate, fluttering, and despairing; swooning, swooping, and falling. I think the mood of this piece really suits Vasraen. I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s angelic, but I also wouldn’t say angels are innocent. The song captures naivety, airy and loving, thrown into turmoil by fate of one’s own carelessness. Tumbling on down.

Love Over Gold [Live] by Dire Straits

Lyrically, this song is just perfect for him. I personally love the lyrics and it has some beautiful lines that have always stood out to me. From the start, there’s dance – and.I have always interpreted that as literal rather than metaphorical, have always imagined Love Over Gold as a song to and about a dancer or performer,

You walk out on the high wire, You’re a dancer on thin ice. You pay no heed to the danger, And less to advice.

With the context of the song I take this to mean personal danger (including emotional). The safety of Vasraen’s companions is paramount to him – but his own safety can be an afterthought, mostly because he often has full faith that he will succeed through diplomacy (and he’s not the best judge of how he may endanger others should he fail). Love Over Gold also follows Tangled Angel in the theme of naivety; Vasraen knows bad people exist, but often believes that he can still sway them with kindness alone, and this belief definitely persists against the advice of others.

Your footsteps are forbidden, But with the knowledge of your sin You throw your love to all the strangers And caution to the wind.

Didn’t I say it was perfect? This works very literally for Vasraen. Be it from Lolth or Vhaeraun, Vasraen has gone off course, and his every step away from his home in the Underdark is ‘sin’. So, knowing this, what does he do? Throws his love to all the strangers, and caution to the wind…

It takes love over gold, And mind over matter, To do what you do that you must. When the things that you hold Can fall and be shattered They can run through your fingers like dust.

I’ll admit, in both a regular interpretation and a Vasraen-specific interpretation, that I deviate into metaphor for this one. The song is even called Love Over Gold and should cement that the final lines refer to the fleetingness of material – alas, not how I hear it. I always imagine it not as the shattering of material things, but rather, memories and relationships and whole swathes of the life you have known, lost, changed, gone forever. And Vasraen, well…

Creature Lives by Mastodon

And now, something almost lyrically irrelevant. This was chosen more for the mood of it, as well as the blunt empathy, and the hopefulness. The friend who introduced me to this song said it was something like his ‘you’re gonna be alright, kid’ song, something that could make him feel better.

I saw the creature fall, Into the swamp from which he spawned I heard them laugh and say They never liked him anyway

I tried to talk to them To help you on your feet again They laughed and said to me The swamp is right where I should be

The creature lives The creature lives The creature lives The creature lives

Make Love by Daft Punk

Just a relaxing synthy song for someone who likes to make out.

Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen

This was chosen for Vasraen by the DM, and it’s basically in the title. This song is spectacularly candid and endearing, so unabashed and light-hearted. Makes some disgustingly clichéd and capitalized romance tropes seem fun.

Heart Upon My Sleeve by Avicii

The titular phrase suits Vasraen, but otherwise I can’t explain why this instrumental tracks stands out to be me as a fit. I think it adds some bass and depth to playlist, and so can allude to that in his character. Heart Upon My Sleeve doesn’t strike me as any kind of ‘happy go lucky’ song, either. It sounds a little tumultuous or desperate, a bit like striving or trying.

Baby We’ll Be Fine by The National

Again, I’m already a big fan of this song, it really strikes a chord with me. It speaks of a whole-hearted and desperate façade, it’s trying really hard to be okay, it’s trying really hard to convince yourself and others that you’re okay, it’s a near-manic energy pulled taut over something broken and tired and ready to fall apart at any moment. Projecting outwards and refusing to turn inwards lest you cave in entirely – and you do cave entirely.

Green Theme by Baroness

I’ve already spoken before about Baroness’ double album Yellow & Green, “drowning in brine”, “bile, tides, and resignation”, “shallow waves”. Green Theme is on the calm shallows and resignation side of things. Nothing too deep to this one in terms of Vasraen, just a calm song for him.

Sexy Boy by Air

I removed this from the playlist for a time, but felt it’s absence. Musically it just sits so perfectly adjacent to the other songs. The lyrics are mostly in French; I’ve looked up a translation before, but forgot. The key idea is ‘Sexy Boy’. That’s about it.

Wake Up Your Saints by Tha National

I’ve seen this song interpreted as not, in fact, about any such faith in saints, but faith in a partner. From the bridge and chorus:

It’s easy to lose your grip It’s easy

So I walk through the streets I love And I’m led to the house I built So I walk through the streets I love And I lay in your bed again

Wake up your saints, Jenny, I need them Jenny, I need them Today

Kind of like having faith in a person’s practical nature, rather than any practice itself. That context aside: For Vasraen, I mostly just love the jaunty pep, and candid and practical voice of it. “Wake up your saints” as a phrase just seems very parallel to his candid (if still awestruck) relation to Eilistraee and his clerical powers in general. As a bonus, there are some other select lines that are appropriate, including this opening,

I had a hole in the middle, where the lightning went through,

Vasraen of course has a Lichtenberg scar right over his heart. And later,

She said you’re right, it’s a living, but you’re wrong for the life, You know you never should’ve listened to my father’s advice.

Vasraen was perfectly successful at his pursuits and mission before leaving the Underdark and running away. The second line is less relevant, but depending on the voice, or by changing the relation, it could fit. (Eilistraee – my brother’s advice. Perhaps Vas himself, his own father’s advice. Perhaps Yterra, her mothers advice.) It doesn’t need to be exact to communicate that Vasraen had a lot of influences to deviate from.

with love by Elbow

This song is just a bit nice, though my feelings toward Elbow can change now and then (at times they are utterly boring to me). Put simply, with love is just about friendship:

When your dentures prevent your smile These adventures will fill your eyes With love

Les Champs-Elysées by Joe Dassin

What can I say, this song is about fun and love along The Avenue des Champs-Élysées, in Paris. It’s got nothing to do with him. It’s just a fun song.

Gramofón as performed by the Symphony Orchestra of the National State Teleradio Company of the Republic of Belarus

The DM played this song during a dream/dance/religious vision sequence Vasraen had with the goddess Eilistraee.

Vienna by Ultravox

This means nothing to me This means nothing to me

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Wham!

I just think he’d like it. I think he’d like George Michael. What I mean is that I love this song and George Michael and it suits Vasraen and his playlist because I say so. I can’t yet dance like George Michael does in this video, but Vasraen could.

I Am Sound by The Dandy Warhols

Less so the chorus, the verses in this song are all extremely fitting. I also like the vibe of it.

For have I, I’ve built a castle Upon believing before I doubt. I have suffered but my friends say I have learned from it. And for have I believed the snow could Not be freezing upon the ground Now my ass is blue and black, but I am sound.

And for have I belonged to no one More than fleetingly and in doubt, I have had what now is gone, But still I’ve known them.

#vasraen #vasraen ma'aun #goblinsquad dnd #caphaytext #sorry if you open this to my blog on desktop the tiny font is night unreadable sorry sorry #nigh*

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