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yamayuandadu · 3 years

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Who is Baal, anyway?

As I mentioned in my previous article, the instigator of the recent attacks on museums in Berlin believes some of the artifacts held in them to be part of a nefarious, bloodthirsty cult, prominent on the “global satanism scene” and devoted to “Baal (Satan),” as he put it himself according to articles covering this incident. In the following article I'll discuss the origin of this esoteric claim, as well as the actual nature of Baal, myths associated with him, other similar deities and their role in the ancient Middle East (and beyond).

I'll start with the matters I am not particularly enthusiastic about: Baal is the star of many conspiracy theories, mostly these which arise in christian fundamentalist circles, and which cast him as the deity venerated by nefarious groups, ranging from insufficiently conservative political parties and ethnic minorities to vampiric aliens, blamed for all of the world's evils. He owes this status to being one of the most frequently mentioned “false gods” or “idols” in the Bible. In fringe pseudohistory context it's basically a given that Baal is equated with the nebulous figure of Moloch, the child sacrifice boogeyman. They are not actually analogous, though - Baal is brought up in relation to idol worship, depicted as powerless, and generally associated with people from coastal cities like Sidon and Tyre – the groups Greeks collectively called „Phoenicians.” Moloch meanwhile is associated with the Ammonites, whose kingdom lied further inland – it is possible that he is therefore a biblical corruption of the Ammonite god Milkom. Some researchers propose instead that “Moloch” was a type of sacrifice involving the burning of victims in honor of a deity – this theory matches both the accounts of biblical Moloch, as well as some Greek and especially Roman accounts meant to prove the debased, barbaric nature of Phoenicians, especially these from Carthage. In later writing, all of the idols and false gods mentioned in the Bible were equated with the devil - in reality their inclusion in biblical text likely reflects struggle between various faiths and their cult centers in ancient Canaan, and later increasingly more fragmentary memories of it. In Christian demonology and in occultism, in addition to their names being considered synonyms of the devil, new demonic identities were assigned to them, which is where the popculture idea of Beelzebub, Bael and other similarly named figures has its origin. As almost every type of pseudohistory eventually connects to blood libel (or an equivalent of it), the exaggerated assumptions about biblical Moloch inspired Gilbert K. Chesteron to propose that blood libel was based on real events, specifically on possible outbreaks of “idolatry” in Jewish communities leading to bloody sacrifices. Needless to say, this is an outlandish, baseless claim rooted in prejudice. The scarce textual sources left behind by the Phoenicians themselves do not discuss any rites which match biblical and roman claims particularly commonly – occasional mentions paint an image similar to the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Greek myth, which would imply that human sacrifice was either the domain of myth, or a rarely performed act which only occurred as an irrational response in times of great peril. Romans claimed the epicenter of such practices was Carthage, their early rival to the title of the preeminent power of the Mediterranean, and its recipient was its tutelary god, Baal Hammon – a figure not directly relate to the biblical Baal(s), who I will discuss later, but for centuries commonly assumed to be one and the same as him due to the lack of primary sources. Excavations from Carthage do show the existence of funerary sites with a high concentration of child burials, but it's a matter of heated scholarly debate if they represent a proof of Roman propaganda being rooted in truth, or if it's simply the result of the well known fact that infant mortality prior to modern times was widespread. The debate is ongoing and I do not follow it closely. There is however precisely zero evidence of human sacrifice being performed in Ugarit, the most significant site associated with the most famous, and arguably original, Baal. The extensive cult literature recovered from its ruins discusses the sacrifice of cattle, sheep, rams, birds (but only uncommonly), donkeys (only for a specific reconciliation rite), oil, wine, and precious stones and metals - but not humans (researchers also often point out that dogs and pigs were never offered to gods too, which is a pretty clear proof that some taboos present in abrahamic faiths predate them). The Ugaritic texts do mention that sacrificial meat was at least sometimes shared by the devotees (in the case of sacrifices which did not involve a pyre, obviously – which essentially means such sacrifices were feasts or holiday meals ritually shared with the deity), which I assume where the false idea that both Phoenicians of classical antiquity and their bronze age Canaanite forerunners were cannibals might come from. This specific claim seems to be currently spreading as “trivia” online, alongside a false etymology of the word cannibal (a term only attested since the beginning of Spanish colonization of the Americas). It should be noted that even the researchers who do believe that human sacrifice might have sometimes occurred in Carthage do not suggest that it was followed by cannibal feasts, and even in Roman propaganda texts from the Punic wars period no such claims show up, despite their obvious bias and need to demonize the recently vanquished rival nascent power.

In art of ancient Levant, worshipers are sometimes depicted as tiny compared to gods – many “scandalous” conspiracy posts claim as a result that the minuscule figures raising their hands on ancient artifacts represent infants sacrifices to the gods depicted. However, accompanying inscriptions identify them as kings or priests – this is the case, for example, with the famous Baal stele from Ugarit, depicting a king praying to the tutelary god of the city. With the unpleasant matters out of the way, it's time to finally ask - who is Baal? Baal refers both to a specific figure, and to the general concept of a head god of a city's pantheon in certain parts of the Levant and Mesopotamia. “Baal” simply means “lord” and can be found in both titles and names of not only gods, but also royals – including some biblical examples.

As I said, the Baal most famous today is Baal Hadad of Ugarit, a city in present day Syria which was among the victims of bronze age collapse. This Baal was derived from an earlier god, Adad, who seemingly first became a major figure near present day Aleppo, emerging as the head of the local variation of Syro-Hurro-Mesopotamian pantheon. Eventually, the title of Baal started to be regarded as his true name, with Hadad relegated to the rank of a title. His other titles include “Rider of Clouds” and “Aliyan” (“Victorious”). His cult survived the destruction of Ugarit, and flourished well into Ptolemaic times.

In Ugarit, he served not only as a god of rain and thunder, but also agriculture and fertility, and, as expected from the lead god, a source of royal power. He was depicted as an impulsive and boastful figure in myths, but was also a firm ally of humans, subduing monsters, the forces of nature, and even promising to protect his followers from wrath of other gods in myths. His symbolic animal was the bull, and he was usually depicted in horned headwear. The associations between bull horns and divinity is well attested in the religious art of Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Levant, and to a degree Egypt too. Bulls are prominently featured in the art of Minoan Crete as well. This is also why the biblical golden calf is, well, a calf. Baal Hadad's family tree is rather confusing, with two separate gods being called his fathers in the Baal Cycle and other texts. The interpretation can potentially be complicated by the fact that Ugarit's (and other bronze age kingdoms’) kings seemingly often called monarchs they viewed as more powerful as „fathers” and these of similar perceived prestige as „brothers” in diplomatic correspondence. For example, one can operate undeer the assumption the god Dagon was Baal's actual father (he's only ever brought up in such a context, and shared many of Baal's roles, and like him was a prominent god deeper inland as well) while El, the elderly king of the gods, was only Baal's „father” in the diplomatic sense of the term. Some scholars instead propose that Dagon and El were partially or fully syncretised in Ugarit, that mention of Dagan was a nod to foreign tradition, or even that Baal having two fathers might be the echo of the myth of Baal's Hittite counterpart. Our main source of information about Baal is the Baal cycle, a heroic epic recovered from Ugarit in the 1920s and a subject of much scholarly analysis ever since. While not perfectly preserved, it is nonetheless a very valuable source of information, and arguably it's what allowed Baal to metaphorically speak in his own voice to modern researchers. It details his struggle with various enemies seeking to ruin his dream of becoming the king of the gods. While it's hard to tell if that was the intent of the ancient writers, Baal appears as somewhat of an underdog in this myth – his posdible father doesn't seem to be a god of particular importance, he has to rely on his allies to accomplish most of his heroic deeds, he whines about having no house of his own, and his actions are often impulsie. However, this shouldn't overshadow the fact he was for the most part the most popular god of Ugarit. Figures associated with the Ugaritic Baal include:

Anat - a war goddess who shares Baal's impulsive nature, and in myths frequently acts as his main ally or enforcer, slaying various sea monsters and the personification of death, Mot (however, there are a few instances showing Baal siding with humans rather than with Anat). She's often referred to as Baal's sister, and sometimes argued to also be his consort, though this view is challenged nowadays by some researchers. It should be noted that while Baal is firmly established as Dagon's son, Anat is never presented as related to the latter – she is pretty firmly only a daughter of El and, implicitly, his wife Asherah.

Ashtart - the Ugaritic forerunner of the famous Phoenician Astarte. She was equated with Babylonian Ishtar, and while she's not as prominent as Anat in Ugaritic texts, they emphasize her roles as a warrior and hunter; she is however also renowned for her beauty. In the Baal Cycle she berates Baal for his insufficient determination during the battle with his first opponent, and later announces his victory to the world. In many texts, both in Ugarit and beyond, her epithet is “face of Baal,” implying a particularly close bond between these two figures – it is plausible that she was viewed as Baal's consort in Ugarit. Ashtart/Astarte is NOT the same figure as Asherah (technically Athirat), the Canaanite mother goddess, and both of them appear in the Baal cycle in different roles.

Kothar-wa-Khasis – a craftsman god, indirectly equated with and possibly in part derived from Egyptian Ptah – myths state outright that he lives in Memphis, where Ptah's main temple was located. He acts as a reliable ally to Baal, providing him with weapons and precious objects and eventually also building his palace. In one scene, an argument occurs between him and Baal over whether the palace needs windows:

Yam – the god of the sea, also serving as Baal's rival to the throne. Various passage of the myth and other texts portray him as violent, tyrannical and otherwise unpleasant, and his overthrow by Baal as a positive development. He's aided by a number of sea monsters, the most notable of which is the serpent Lotan. It has been argued that that the later Babylonian Tiamat was in part based on him or his counterparts, as she doesn't appear in any Babylonian sources earlier than Enuma Elish, which is a work younger by a few centuries than the Baal cycle.

Mot – a personification of death and desolation. While even Yam received some reverence and offerings, Mot did not – he only existed as an antagonist for heroic figures. Mot's main trait is his insatiable hunger.

While the Baal from Ugarit is, due to possessing his own heroic epic, the most famous and probably best researched today, he was by no means the only deity of this sort – most cities in the Levant (and beyond, in other areas settled by the Phoenicians) had their own tutelary gods, often referred to as Baals. Among these, notable examples include:

The Baal of Tyre – Melqart served as the lead deity of the city of Tyre, seemingly the most prominent of the Phoenician centers. His name seems to simply mean “lord of the city”. He was a god of many things, most notably being viewed as a culture hero who discovered the secret of producing the purple dye which made Phoenician city-states rich and prosperous. He was also an underworld deity, and as a result an association with Babylonian Nergal has been proposed. It's quite likely that the Tyrian Baal was the one mentioned in some Biblical accounts – for example, Jezebel was said to be a princess of Tyre, therefore it's plausible that the god she revered was the Tyrian Baal. Greeks regarded him as analogous to Heracles, sadly I am unable to find the explanation for this.

The Baal of Sidon – Eshmun, a healing deity. He was seemingly viewed as analogous to the Mesopotamian Tammuz, Ishtar's lover condemned to torment in the underworld in her place. The origin of his name is unclear. His myth is somewhat similar to that of Phrygian Attis – the goddess Astronoë (possibly a variant of Astarte/Ishtar) was madly in love with him, but he was, to put it lightly, not interested (unlike Attis), and eventually castrated himself to show that, which lead to his death. He was restored to life (also unlike Attis) and made into a god of healing. Melqart and Eshmun were the two Phoenician gods invoked in a treaty meant to guarantee peace between the coastal regions and Assyria, which shows the high status of their cities in antiquity.

The Baalat of Gebal (Byblos) – Baalat was the feminine form of Baal, and a title sometimes simply applied to any prominent goddess. However, the Baalat of Gebal was seemingly a separate deity, associated with this epithet in the same way as Ugarit's Hadad became inseparable from his title of Baal. Some researchers instead propose she was simply Ashtart/Astarte, though Anat, Asherah, and Egyptian Isis and Hathor (while Ugarit was a Hittite or Mittani vassal, Gebal was under Egyptian control) were also proposed as her true identity based on instances of historical syncretism. However, due to very few surviving documents, her exact nature remains puzzling.

Baal Shamin - revered not only by Phoenicians and their ancestors, but also by Nabateans. He was likely initially simply an epithet of Baal Hadad, but developed into a distinct deity in later times. As a separate figure he was the lead god of Palmyra, though he was eventually upstaged by Bel (Marduk) there.

The Baal of Carthage, Hammon - unlike the generally youthful other Baals, he was depicted as an old man. He was also regarded as the father of Melqart, with the latter viewed as a more important deity – Carthage in fact paid tribute to his Tyrian temple. Most of what we know about him comes from Roman sources, and as a result it's hard to tell what was his true nature – it has been proposed he was a sun god at first. He was equated by Greeks with Cronus.

In a way, Babylonian Marduk can be considered to be a Baal – among the titles used to refer to him was “Bel,” the equivalent of “Baal,” and like the coastal Baals he was originally simply the protective deity of a specific city. However, occasional attempts to identify Marduk as originally having roughly the same nature as Adad/Hadad – that of a weather and agriculture god – are generally not considered to be credible by modern researchers. As I already noted, it is however quite likely that Marduk's battle with Tiamat – a figure invented for the Enuma Elish – was at least in part based on Baal's fight with Yam in the Baal cycle. Sadly, the dubious claims that Tiamat represents a deposed matriarchal order seem to be much more known to the general public – as I already said on my blog before, these are nonsensical and their spread relies on limited understanding of Mesopotamian history. Enuma Elish was not a primordial text, but a myth devised relatively late to further help with increasing Marduk's status by having him perform the same acts as many other popular gods, there is also no evidence of the existence of an earlier matriarchal religion in Sumerian and Akkadian sources. Curiously, it's also possible the myth of Baal and its analogs and derivatives inspired Zeus' battle with Typhon – it is sometimes said that it took place near mount Saphon, associated with the cult of Baal Hadad and specifically with his battle against Yam.

Egyptians regarded Baal as analogous to Seth – this conflation occurred before Seth's dominant role became that of an opponent of Osiris of his family, and relied on Seth being a god of the borderlands and foreigners inhabiting them, as well as on his chaotic, impulsive nature. Possibly depictions of Seth as the opponents of the serpent Apep were a factor, too. In an Egyptian adaptation of the Ugaritic Baal cycle, the so-called Astarte papyrus, Seth battles Yam, though no outright conflation of the Ugaritic and Egyptian mythical evildoers ever occurred to my knowledge. Baal's supporting cast of Anat and Astarte was likewise associated with Seth in Egypt, and both are referred to as his consorts in Egyptian texts. Outside of this specific example of syncretism, “Seth” was also sometimes used as a generic title for foreign gods, almost the same was as Baal functioned as a title in the Levant – it was applied to various Canaanite gods, but also to the gods of the Hittites. For example the peace treaty between Ramses II and Hattusili XI mentions “Seth of the city of Zipalanda” and “Seth of the city of Arinna” - corresponding Hittite text reveals that these are simply Teshub, the Hurrian an Hittite monster-slaying thunder god (and close analog of Ugaritic Baal Hadad – as Ugarit was seemingly at least for some time a Hittite dependency, it is more than likely their myths influenced each other), and the sun goddess of Arinna. Egyptians referred to the Libyan god Ash as a Seth, too. Curiously, at least one Ugaritic text identifies the city's Baal with Amun, rather than Seth – it doesn't seem like this idea caught on in Egypt, though.

Teshub was possibly the deity closest to Baal Hadad both in terms of myths and depictions – compare the one above with the Ugaritic Baal stele from much earlier in this article – but as a little known figure he (and his most notable allies and enemies) deserves his separate post, so I will not discuss him there, beyond letting you know that while Baal simply clobbered Yam with some encouragement from friends, Teshub only managed to best the serpent monster Illuyanka by having his son seduce Illuyanka's daughter in order to recover his internal organs stolen by the snake. Even functionally similar deities can have wildly different stories behind them! Further reading (most articles available on academia edu, jstor or persee):

A Moratorium on God Mergers? The Case of El and Milkom in the Ammonite Onomasticon by Collin Cornell

Animal sacrifice at Ugarit by Dennis Perdee

The Lady of the Titles: The Lady of Byblos and the Search for her "True Name” by Anna Elise Zernecke

Ugaritic monsters I: The ˁatūku “Bound One” and its Sumerian parallels by Madadh Richey

‛Athtart in Late Bronze Age Syrian Texts by Mark S. Smith

ʿAthtartu’s Incantations and the Use of Divine Names as Weapons by Theodore J. Lewis

Baal, Son of Dagan: In Search of Baal’s Double Paternity by Noga Ayali-Darshan

The Role of Aštabi in the Song of Ullikummi and the Eastern Mediterranean “Failed God” Stories by Noga Ayali-Darshan

The Death of Mot and his Resurrection in the Light of Egyptian Sources by Noga Ayali-Darshan

The Other Version of the Story of the Storm-god’s Combat with the Sea in the Light of Egyptian, Ugaritic, and Hurro-Hittite Texts by Noga Ayali-Darshan

The storm-gods of ancient Near East: summary, synthesis, recent studies, parts 1 and 2 by Daniel Schwemer

Politics and Time in the Baal Cycle by Aaron Tugendhaft

Echoes of the Baal Cycle in a Safaito-Hismaic Inscription by Ahmad Al-Jallad

My neighbor's god: Assur in Babylonia and Marduk in Assyria by Grant Frame

Gods in translation. Dynamics of transculturality between Egypt and Byblos in the III millennium BC by Angelo Colonna

Zeus Kasios or the Interpretatio Graeca of Baal Saphon in Ptolemaic Egypt by Alexandra Diez de Oliveira

#canaanite mythology #ugaritic mythology #mesopotamian mythology #egyptian mythology #baal

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animepopheart · 3 years

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Wonder Egg Priority, Episode 11: “The Temptation of Death”?

Wonder Egg Priority is a beautiful, uncomfortable, moving and confusing series that starts out engaging all the things we don’t talk about—self-harm, abuse, rape, bullying, gender dysmorphia, and homosexuality, to name a few. Our silence and blindness to these issues have a weight and pressure to them, and WEP shows how this reinforces the isolation and hopelessness of the young women of the “eggs” who turn to suicide for relief. The first ten episodes have been exhilarating and exhausting alike.

And then there is Episode 11. This past week, the series took a bit of a turn, leaning hard into the sci-fi-philosophical, with appearances from Greek gods, a murderous artificial intelligence, and really, really disturbing insect girls, one of whom, despite being a brutal killer, is apparently a vegetarian. Has the show gone off the rails? Has it lost its way in departing from the familiar procedural approach of engaging a differing social or mental health issue with each episode?

Such a critique is perfectly legit, but before you write off the penultimate episode of WEP, just hear me out on why the abstract, meta turn in episode 11 may just be the most valuable thing this series has to offer so far.

Before we begin though, a little recap of what we learned this week. In episode 10, we hear the eggheads, Acca and Ura-Acca, discuss the need for warriors of Eros to battle Thanatos. This is our first hint that things are about to get lore-full and maybe a bit weird. Eros and Thanatos are of course gods in the ancient Greek pantheon, Eros being the god of love, and Thanatos, of non-violent death. Within the first minute or so of episode 11, it’s clear that the eggheads’ hope is now focused on Ai becoming the long-awaited warrior. At this point though, rather than continuing with Ai’s story, the episode shifts into flashback mode and we are finally introduced to the villain, an artificial intelligence created by the eggheads back when they were still human. Their lives gradually come to revolve around her: She is the fulfillment of their obsession to create life, and she is good.

Frill is associated with hydrangeas, which symbolise heartlessness and pride in Japanese flower language. But is it her heartlessness and pride, or that of her makers?

(Atelier Emily has done an outstanding series of posts on the flowers in WEP. Check it out!)

Only, it turns out she doesn’t play so nice when others join the happy family. After killing Acca’s wife, and putting the life of the unborn baby at risk, the AI—who named herself Frill—is unrepentant, all traces of her seeming humanity now revealed to be illusory, a mere affectation. Acca locks her away in a hole in the cellar. Years pass. The baby, Himari, grows up and is a ray of sunshine. But after effectively confessing to her ‘uncle’ (why does anime always do this?), she commits suicide. Ura-Acca discovers that Frill is still very much alive and active from her hole in the cellar, having powered up all the discarded monitors and laid down reams of electrical cables—to what end, we do not yet know. Though Ura-Acca surmises that she has somehow influenced Himari to take her own life. How else would the girl have known about Ura-Acca’s admiration for her mother? Where else would she have learned to make what will forever be to me now that uncannily sinister popping sound?

Here’s where it gets weirder. Unlike the suicides of subsequent egg girls, there is no indication that Himari, Frill’s apparent first victim, struggled with any mental health or other issues that would motivate her to take her own life. Indeed, her ‘uncle’ did not even reject her confession. (Again anime, why you do this thing?) Instead, the eggheads explain Himari’s suicide as being on account of the “temptation of death.” What now?

This is implying that death is somehow attractive, not just to someone facing overwhelming brokenness, trauma or pain, like the egg girls we’ve met so far, but to someone on the verge of stepping from a (relatively) happy childhood into young adulthood, with the promise of potential love to look forward to; someone who has not known suffering, but rather only smiles and cake. (To be fair, it is always possible that she experienced trauma in the womb, or was more deeply affected by her father’s sadness than Ura-Acca’s memories belie.)

That’s my question too, Ai.

The notion of death as somehow attractive or even beautiful is rather alien to Western culture. Certainly, there will always be some who romanticize death, à la star-crossed lovers (Shakespeare, I’m looking at you). But in general, Western culture views death as something ugly and frightening, something to avoid until it is staring you directly in the face, and even then, closing your eyes in denial is a perfectly reasonable response. Death is one of those things we don’t talk about. In my experience, Anglo-American culture is not very good at even mourning death. We lack the grieving rituals and observances of other cultures, and instead seek to confine death to the sealed, sanitized spaces of hospitals, care homes, and funeral parlors. We keep it shrouded tightly in silence. How could there ever be anything like the “temptation of death”? How could we ever consider death to be something desirable? Are the eggheads or CloverWorks simply aestheticising suicide and death here to make it sound deep and philosophical?

No, I don’t think that’s it. Instead, Acca and Ura-Acca are doing what all good researchers do—and indeed what all Christians, as believers in an unseen spiritual reality, are also called to do: They are looking more deeply into phenomena that seem, on the surface, to already be explained. The two idol fans were consumed with their obsession, so when their idol killed herself, they followed suit. The young woman whose identity was wrapped up in her own appearance ended her life to preserve her beauty. The abused gymnast saw no way out, no hope in ever living free from torment. Some explanations may be more sympathetic than others, but they all possess their own internal logic. Contemporary society is full of a vast array of pressures and stresses and each one, taken to breaking point, can result in death. Case closed. This might very well be our conclusion from the first ten episodes.

Only the case isn’t closed. Because there is a question that has pervaded every episode until now, but has remained unspoken: How is it that death could even become an option for the egg girls? Why does reaching a breaking point trigger suicide? What made death seem like a savior to these girls? This is the question that episode 11 tackles, in its own admittedly obscure way. The eggheads are focused on the underlying, deeper reality that unites all the eggs’ stories, as disparate as they are—the common thread, which is the idea that death is a release, a rescue, a beautiful ending, and as a result, it is tempting.

“But we wondered if there could be another push that drove them to suicide,” explains Ura-Acca.

This is a really important question for us to be asking. Because it’s not just these traumatized, vulnerable girls who fall for the seduction of death. We do, too.

Just ponder for a moment: Have you ever anticipated how wonderful it will be when, in heaven, you no longer struggle with that particular temptation? When your temper is no longer so short, when you’re not afraid of being hurt anymore? Or maybe you think about how one day, on those gold-paved streets, you won’t have to worry anymore. All your hard work coping and just keeping it together will finally pay off and you’ll cross that finish line and heave a sigh of relief, knowing that you made it in the end. Have you ever contemplated these kinds of things? I know I have.

But here’s the thing: When I expect my liberation to come only after I die and not right here, right now, then it is not Jesus who is my savior, but death. I am waiting for death to free me from temptation and sin and fear and brokenness, and usher me into eternal life. I make Thanatos my god.

The temptation of death is not limited to the drastic act of suicide, but also permeates all the accusations and fears that inspire us to put off living the fullness of life in Christ here and now. It’s the temptation to believe that it is death that will ultimately solve the more difficult and painful problems in life.

Acca and Ura-Acca seek to create a love that suits their ideals, just to relieve their stress.

The source of this “temptation of death” in Wonder Egg Priority is Frill, the AI. That is, a man-made, artificial version of love—with ai meaning “love” in Japanese. According to Ura-Acca, they made her “just for fun,” as a way of dealing with the stress of their enclosed lives. They designed her to suit their preferences, to make it easier to love her and forget that she was artificial. In this sense, Frill is the fruit of their self-centeredness, her every characteristic designed to satisfy their own ideals of how a daughter and woman should be. And this artificial love born of selfishness brings death into their midst and beyond, spreading it through the horrendous deformities of girlhood that she in turn creates, in imitation of her fathers. (Only perhaps her creations are less deceptive than theirs, wearing their monstrosity plainly on the outside…)

Frill’s creations. We’ve met Dash (right) and Dot (center), but who is that on the left? And is her name Morse??

To counter her destructive influence, Acca and Ura-Acca need true love, a genuine love. They need Ai, a messy, at times very weak human being, but one who nevertheless is willing to fight to live up to her name and maybe, just maybe, become a warrior of Eros.

There is also a deep, underlying force at work in our world, one that connects all despair and the actions born of it. A wide range of social issues, traumas and mental health challenges can and do trigger suicide, but they do not explain it fully. The deeper reality is the existence of an enemy who seeks to manipulate us into believing our true savior can only be death, whether it is right away by our own hand, or more subtly, decades from now by natural causes. But this is a lie, and it is one that we can combat. Just as I’m sure we’ll see in the final episode that Ai is equipped to wage the coming battle in WEP, so too are we armed, here and now, with the power to overwhelm the enemy’s “temptation of death”—we possess already the words of life, given to us by our true savior.

Jesus began his ministry with a public announcement that he had come to heal heart wounds, comfort those in pain, fill broken lives with beauty, and wrap those in despair with reasons to praise like a warm protective blanket, so that they might celebrate with joy once again. He came to bring freedom to prisoners and captives alike, giving a fresh new life to those locked up because of deeds done wrong, and those punished and injured at the hands of others. He came to take the outcasts, the weak, the traumatized and broken and transform them into mighty oaks, clean and strong; into people with the vision and skill and compassion and fortitude to rebuild a broken world (Isaiah 61:1-4, Luke 4:18),

He came to rewrite and restore our experience of life here on earth, and through us, to redeem our communities, cities, nations, and the world. God does not withhold the fullness of life from us until we finally make it to him in heaven. No, instead he moved heaven and earth to get right up close so that he could pour his own life out into us, even going so far as to breathe his very spirit into our hearts and bodies and minds. We don’t need to wait for death’s rescue—our hero has already come. But we do need to remind each other and ourselves of this truth pretty often, and let it work down deep into all the cracks and bruises in our souls until it strengthens all our weak spots.

In Deuteronomy 30:19, God tells the Israelites that he has given them the authority to choose between life and death. But he also tips the balances in their favor, urging them to choose life. In Jesus, he comes to tip the balances even further, making it possible for us to step into eternal life here and now, immediately and forever. So let’s do it. Each day, through each struggle we face. Let’s choose life and not death.

Warrior of love? And is Ai’s himawari (sunflower) related to Himari somehow?

Join me (in spirit) for the final episode on Tuesday to see Ai’s love triumph! (At least, I really really hope that’s what happens!)

#wonder egg priority #wep #wep frill #ai ohto #Christianity #blog #NOT by me but rather by one of our other writers: cajk2

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longitudinalwaveme · 3 years

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DC Comics’ Portrayal of Mental Illness

As you can probably ascertain from the general contents of this blog, I am a huge fan of DC comics (and, more specifically, of the Flash). I am also a psychology major who is on the autism spectrum and has struggled with Social Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. As such, I have a...complicated relationship with comic books that discuss mental illness.

Of course, of all the comics that deal with mental illness, Batman is undoubtedly the most prominent, and, as such, is the easiest target for criticism. The more a comic book talks about mental illness, the more opportunities it has to get stuff wrong. Since there are literally thousands of Batman comics out there and I don’t have the time to research them all, I will be using a 2001 Batman guidebook to give you a few examples of the things that it gets wrong about mental health (and psychology in general).

To start, let’s talk about Arkham Asylum. Not only is its name anachronistic (virtually no mental heath facilities are called asylums anymore), but its depiction usually is as well: even a psychiatric hospital that doubled as a penal facility probably would not be located in an old Gothic-looking building that looks like it came straight out of a horror movie. It’s also worth noting that Arkham Asylum didn’t exist in the Batman mythos prior to 1974, and that originally, Two-Face and the Joker were the only two villains who went there. Prior to that point, everyone, even the Joker, just went to prison when they were caught (which, as we shall see, is actually probably more accurate for everyone except maaaybe modern Two-Face and the Mad Hatter). My suspicion is that it was introduced to capitalize on the popularity of the 1962 novel (and, once it was released, the 1975 movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was about a psychiatric institution, but there were probably other factors involved, such as the popularity of works by H.P. Lovecraft (which is where the name Arkham came from). Whatever the reason, though, Arkham Asylum is really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the misrepresentation of mental illness and mental health in Batman fiction.

The introduction of Arkham Asylum led, increasingly, to the idea that all Batman villains were mentally ill, which, in turn, led to some...um....very inaccurate portrayals and depictions of what mental illness is and how it works.

For example, the 2001 guidebook I am using incorrectly describes the Joker as “certifiably psychotic”. He’s not. While there are individual exceptions (we are talking about comic books, after all), in most appearances, the Joker is not psychotic. He has no apparent hallucinations and does not seem to display signs of delusions, either. He is not out of touch with reality in any meaningful way, he’s just horrifically violent. Describing him as “certifiably psychopathic” would have been much more appropriate (although you can’t technically diagnose someone with psychopathy; the condition he would be diagnosed with would be Antisocial Personality Disorder).

In the same book, Two-Face is described as “schizoid” and “schizophrenic”, both of which are not even remotely correct. What the modern Two-Face is supposed to suffer from is Dissociative Identity Disorder (what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder), although it’s not always portrayed terribly accurately. Schizoid Personality Disorder is not DID, and it’s not Schizophrenia, either; it’s a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships-basically people who are extreme loners. Similarly, Schizophrenia is not DID. While it is hypothetically possible for the two conditions to be comorbid, they are not at all the same thing. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations, which Two-Face almost never displays in fiction. DID is a dissociative disorder. Most people with DID do not experience delusions or hallucinations; their condition is typified by the presence of more than one personality and is thought to usually only occur as a reaction to severe childhood trauma. (Credit where credit is due: modern Two-Face is correctly shown as having experienced trauma as a child.) The fact that the term schizophrenia literally translates into “split mind” is probably the source of some of this confusion, but with schizophrenia, the split is between the mind and reality, not between the mind and itself.

Also from this guidebook, the Riddler is, confusingly, described as having “an obsessive-compulsive desire for attention”, which, from a psychological perspective, is pretty much nonsense. Desire for attention is one thing; obsessive-compulsive disorder is another. The “obsessions” in OCD refer to intrusive, recurring thoughts, not to something that a person strongly desires and spends a lot of time pursuing. Additionally, the Riddler is described as “pondering the unsolvable riddle of his own psychosis”, which is not accurate. The Riddler consistently displays signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and less consistently displays signs of OCD, but neither one of these conditions is a psychotic disorder, as neither involves hallucinations or delusions. When the Riddler says he’s not psychotic, and that he’s perfectly sane, he’s completely right on both counts. He’s never displayed any evidence of a break from reality, so he’s not psychotic, and he’s almost always aware that what he’s doing is a crime, so he’s not insane, either. In fact, with the possible exceptions of the Mad Hatter, Man-Bat, and Two-Face, none of the Batman villains are insane, since they are all aware that what they’re doing is illegal when they do it.

What makes the earlier mistakes in this particular guidebook even more mystifying to me is the fact that their description of Scarecrow, and, more impressively yet, Scarecrow’s fear toxin, is pretty much accurate. They don’t call him psychotic or label him with conditions he doesn’t have and they accurately identify his on-again off-again phobia of bats (Chiropteraphobia). It also describes his fear gas thusly: “a toxic mix of adreno-cortical secretions and strong hallucinogens...it prompts neuromuscular spasms, cardiac arrhythmia, and panic attacks”. This is an astonishingly accurate description of what his fear toxin would need to be made of and what it does to his victims’ bodies. I don’t know who wrote this section, but they deserve some serious credit for doing their homework! (It makes no sense to put the Scarecrow in Arkham. Not only is he neither psychotic nor insane, but putting an evil ex-psychologist in a psychiatric institution is a REALLY bad idea, as he has the know-how to easily manipulate both the doctors and the patients.)

Also from the 2001 Guidebook: The Ventriloquist is described as having multiple personalities, and is NOT described as schizophrenic or schizoid. While the term Multiple Personality Disorder is no longer used by psychologists for diagnosis, it is at least describing the same condition as DID. Modern Firefly is described as a pyromaniac; this is accurate from what I know of the character. Mr. Zsasz is described as a “sociopath”; again, this is mostly accurate.

I also decided to use a few other DC guidebooks and see if there were any other egregious mistakes:

2015 Guidebook:

Haha, “Lenny Snart”. (That has nothing to do with mental illness, I just thought it was funny.)

Dr. Polaris is described as suffering from “a split personality disorder”; they mean DID. It’s also worth noting that most people with DID do not have a “good” alter and an “evil” alter; having DID does not make you Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The Joker is described as “crazy” and “insane”; while the former is up for debate, I can say with confidence that the Joker meets no real-world definition of insanity that I know about.

Riddler is not described as insane, yay!

Two-Face is described as having Multiple Personality Disorder; this should be DID but is otherwise broadly correct. That being said, the idea that getting acid thrown in your face would cause you to develop a split personality, as this book seems to imply, is unlikely. DID doesn’t develop that suddenly.

2016 Guidebook:

While Doctor Polaris may very well have a personality disorder, the emergence of a second personality would indicate the development of DID, not a personality disorder. An adult man couldn’t “develop’ a personality disorder anyway; they’re developed in childhood and are usually lifelong afflictions.

Harley Quinn is a weird case; to call her psychotic isn’t completely inaccurate, as she has displayed signs of hallucinations and delusions in the past. That being said, the way her condition is depicted is inconsistent and confusing, and doesn’t seem to line up perfectly with any actual real-world condition.

Modern Heat Wave is absolutely a pyromaniac; Johns in particular was surprisingly good at writing a realistic case of the condition.

The Joker is not insane. Neither is the modern Joker’s daughter. Both understand what they’re doing is wrong.

Lex Luthor is indeed a sociopath, as is the New 52 version of Mr. Freeze (BTAS Freeze is not).

Two-Face’s condition should be described as DID, not MPD; otherwise things are about as accurate as one can expect from Two-Face.

2008 Guidebook:

Calling Abra Kadabra narcissistic is accurate.

The Black Manta autism thing is icky on multiple levels. Ewww.

The first Cheetah probably would not have suddenly developed a second personality as an adult.

Dr. Polaris. You know the drill. Split personality should be DID. A “good” and “evil” alter are pretty unlikely. Usually DID would show up before adulthood.

Firefly and Heat Wave do both seem to have pyromania. It’s also accurate to describe Heat Wave as cryophobic.

The Joker cannot be “certifiably crazed”; crazed is not an official psychiatric term. And again, he isn’t insane, so he shouldn’t be in Arkham.

Killer Croc has never displayed any noticeable signs of psychosis.

Magenta having DID is actually more realistic than most of the other characters I’ve talked about; she’s got the necessary childhood trauma and her alters developed when she was still quite young. Furthermore, her more violent alter isn’t manically evil.

Whoever wrote the Scarecrow piece in the 2001 Batman Guidebook must’ve also helped to write this one, since the shockingly-accurate fear gas description is the same.

Professor Strange is not insane in the legal sense of the word.

Arnold Wesker has DID; MPD is the condition’s original name but is no longer used by professional psychologists.

Zoom (Hunter Zolomon, not Eobard)... I think there’s an argument to be made that Zolomon actually is psychotic. While he’s never displayed hallucinations, he is clearly delusional in the most literal sense and does seem to have lost touch with reality. As such, this book is not wholly inaccurate in calling him psychotic.

You get the idea....

Looking specifically at the Flash, things improve slightly simply because writers who don’t understand psychology aren’t constantly talking about it. That being said, that doesn’t mean it never gets brought up.

Golden Glider was intended to receive a psychiatric evaluation in the late 1970s. It’s interesting that she actually protested this, pointing out that the male criminals never received psychological evaluations (and indeed, they always went to prison rather than to an institution). She was indeed motivated by something other than profit, and I can understand why they wanted to have her evaluated given her lack of earlier criminal activity, but I don’t know if she was actually mentally ill per se...and she definitely wasn’t insane.

In the early 1980s during the twilight hours of Barry Allen’s first run on the Flash, it seemed that the writers were trying to take a page out of Batman’s book by arguing that Barry’s costumed criminals were insane (even though they usually didn’t display any behavior that would indicate this). As such, Barry stated to imply that his Rogues were mentally ill in some fashion despite the fact that their behavior really hadn’t changed appreciably since their earliest appearances. That being said, the Pied Piper did appear to suffer some sort of nervous breakdown during the “Trial of the Flash” arc; what exactly this was is difficult to explain, since we didn’t get to see a whole lot of him after this point, but he did go to an actual psychiatric hospital (that was referred to as such rather than being called an asylum) and he did recover, relapsed, then recovered again, making this one of the more accurate portrayals of how mental illness works despite the limited information we have about his actual condition. They even showed him slowly deteriorating over a period of time before the actual collapse!

Big Sir, who made his debut in the same storyline, was rather more poorly handled....but at least he was explicitly manipulated into villainy rather than becoming evil simply because of his condition.

Wally West went to therapy early in his run; given the context I’d say it was reasonable that he was suffering from both anxiety and depression (his uncle had just died and he was really struggling to fill his shoes as the new Flash). Going to therapy did actually help him, which was nice to see, and his therapist did not become evil, which was also nice to see. (I’m not going to talk about Heroes in Crisis, as I prefer to pretend that that never happened.) Yay for protagonists discussing their mental health problems in productive ways!

In the early-to-mid 1990s, Mark Waid wrote a story in which Lisa stated that she’d faked insanity in order to be sent to a psychiatric hospital rather than to prison, but the story seemed to be implying that she was actually insane. Not only is successfully being declared not guilty by reason of insanity incredibly difficult, but Lisa displayed no signs of not recognizing that her behavior was wrong, so she wasn’t insane. She was, however, displaying strong signs of paranoia, which could perhaps be attributed to a paranoid delusion of some sort. It’s especailly weird since this was never really a characteristic of hers before or since, and it just kind of came out of nowhere.

The Trickster (specifically the first one, James Jesse) is often mistakenly believed to be mentally ill by casual fans. While he is indeed mentally ill, possibly even psychotic, in the DCAU, and he’s a remorseless psychopath in both live-action Flash shows, in the comics themselves he displays no real signs of mental illness. That being said, I LOVE the interactions between DCAU Wally and DCAU Trickster. They’re made of adorable.

The Pied Piper went through a second bout of mental problems in the mid-to-late 2000s, being tricked into believing that he’d murdered his parents, going to prison, being beaten regularly by the warden, escaping from prison, going through the stress of fighting in the Rogue War, having his mind messed with by the Top, accidentally becoming involved in the murder of Bart Allen (another thing I like to pretend never happened), having to go on the run, watching the Trickster get shot in front of him, having to drag his corpse around a desert, almost dying, getting transported to Apocalypse, blowing it up with Queen music, and then being left basically all alone. He really went through a trauma conga line, so it’s not surprising that he was starting to display some odd behavior. Poor guy probably had PTSD.

And then there’s the Top. Beyond the speculation of @gorogues that he’s on the autism spectrum (a theory I find to be quite persuasive), I also think it’s likely that he suffers from another mental illness (most likely bipolar I disorder, also as suggested by @gorogues). He was clearly mentally ill for most of Geoff Johns’ run, and his behavior in his very first appearance was decidedly odd as well. Intense mania and depression can sometimes induce psychosis (as we seemed to see during Geoff Johns’ run), and his “threatening to blow up half the world to become its ruler while I’m somehow safe on the other side of the planet” plan from his first appearance, which he clearly expected to work perfectly, is so overconfident and over-the-top that it fits well as a particularly exaggerated manic episode. While it’s not conclusive by any means, I think it’s a distinct possibility.

#dc comics #mental illness #flash comics #batman comics #flash rogues

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himbohargreeves · 3 years

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The link between diet and autism: a critical analysis of the recent Earth Locker episode and a chance for River to relive her lab report title writing days

Link to the original video

So as I already mentioned I’ve seen a few people talking about the recent episode of the Earth Locker (a podcast by Robert Sheehan, Tom Hopper, and Bryon Knight) where they talk with Tom and his wife Laura about their experiences raising their autistic son. I watched the whole episode and while there were a lot of good points made, there was also some misinformation, statements that were poorly explained and could be misinterpreted, and a couple of pretty harmful ideas put across which I’m gonna go into below.

Disclaimer one: I’m gonna be saying a lot of stuff that I’m not going to be posting sources for. This is because everything I’m saying comes from my experiences as an autistic person, my experiences working as a support worker for adults with autism where I am currently a key worker for two autistic individuals, my work related training on autism, mental health, and diet & nutrition, and my knowledge from my psychology degree in which I also spent a lot of time studying biology and physiology. This is all just stuff that I know, and at some point I might try to add some sources but I’m writing this fresh off watching and making notes on this video so my energy is already running a little low and I’d rather focus on getting my points across instead of having to take time to source every piece of information.

Disclaimer two: The purpose of this post isn’t to attack or defend any of the people involved in the podcast. This is also in no way a criticism of Tom and Laura’s parenting. This is purely a criticism of the discussion that took place on the podcast, not on any of the choices they’ve made for their son.

Disclaimer three: I’m going to be using the phrase “challenging behaviour” a lot while I’m explaining things as this is the term used in most modern research and is what we use at work. This basically describes any behaviour that causes harm to the individual or to other people around them, or behaviour that is detrimental to the individual’s wellbeing.

So the main thing I want to go into with this is the misinformation and misinterpretation of information that was central to the discussion in this podcast, and that was around the connection between diet and autism. Most of the things Tom and Laura said about the effects of diet weren’t incorrect, but it wasn’t explained accurately and missed out on some key points so let’s go:

In terms of whether diet can “cause” autism: no it can’t. There’s absolutely no evidence to suggest it does. It also can’t “worsen” autism because autism isn’t something that can get “worse” or “better”. A person with autism can develop and learn new skills and they can also regress (and diet can influence this, which I’ll go into further on), but an autistic person at a lower stage of development does not have “worse” autism than a person at a higher stage of development.

Poor diet can have an impact on autistic people in the same way as with neurotypical people. If we eat junk, we tend to feel like junk as a result, and when we feel like junk it can be harder to concentrate and carry out our usual day to day tasks. However, autistic people are also significantly more likely to suffer from digestive problems and food intolerances, and so for a lot of autistic people (or parents of autistic children) diet may be something that requires close attention. So saying that an autistic individual’s challenging behaviour could be a result of their diet isn’t necessarily untrue, but it does massively oversimplify the issue. The challenging behaviour is more likely a response to pain or discomfort, (as well as frustration if they are unable to communicate this), which is caused by a diet unsuitable for this specific individual, which is caused by an intolerance or digestive problem, which they were at greater risk of developing due to their autism. It’s worth mentioning that medical professionals still don’t know why this comorbidity exists.

So, referring back to Tom and Laura’s experience with their son, they were explaining that their son’s challenging behaviour spiked while he was on a high-sugar diet. Laura also added that he had been suffering from increasingly frequent infections in his ears and throat while eating these foods, which makes sense because high blood sugar levels can weaken the immune system and make us more susceptible to infections. They then explained that these infections stopped following a tonsillectomy and a change to a sugar-free diet, which then also lead to a complete reduction in their son’s challenging behaviours. Again, implying that the reduction in behaviours is a result of cutting out the sugar is oversimplifying. It’s most likely that their son’s challenging behaviours were a response to the pain the infections were causing, which may or may not have been linked to his sugar intake. Either way, autistic people are all individuals and so while a reduction in sugar intake has benefited their son, by no means does that mean that all autistic people should be following a low-sugar diet or that this would be beneficial for them.

This isn’t entirely on topic but there are two other things I want to address in terms of what Tom and Laura said while talking about their son, the first being when talking about their initial approach to their children's’ diet before they were aware that their son was autistic. Laura essentially said that she wanted their children to be able to try different foods and that the focus would be on education about health and diet rather than cutting “unhealthy” foods out of their diets completely, which I thought was a great way to approach things. However she then added that, had they known about their son’s autism at the time, they may have approached things differently, which I was confused about. I think (and hope) she was just trying to say that if they had known upfront that sugar particularly seemed to be detrimental to their son, they would have reduced that straight away rather than having to use a process of trial and error which makes sense, but just the way it was phrased set off alarm bells because it sounded like she was implying that they would have controlled his diet more strictly if they had known he was autistic. Hopefully this isn’t the case because autistic people don’t need to have their choices limited if there is no detriment to their health or wellbeing.

Another thing I was confused about, and I’m not sure if this was supposed to be more of a weird analogy rather than factual information, was when Tom started talking about “sensory glands” when talking about their son’s hypersensitivity to sounds. I think his exact words were something along the line of saying that the high sugar levels were causing his “sensory glands” to “swell” which was heightening his sensitivity. And like... unless I missed something there is no such thing as a sensory gland and they certainly don’t swell up when we’re over stimulated or when we have a lot of sugar. Sugar triggers high dopamine responses in our brains which then leads to cravings and can cause spikes and crashes in mood, and it can also cause inflammation, all of which can cause discomfort and in turn could lead to an increase in sensitivity, but as far as I know sugar doesn’t have a direct effect on our senses.

Now on to the elephant in the room and the two big, glaring no-no's in this podcast, both of which were said by Tom (these are not direct quotes because I didn’t get a chance to jot them down in time so I’m paraphrasing slightly):

“we cannot ignore the correlation between rising autism rates and the increase in fast food consumption” (spoiler alert: yes we can)

“I really want to get to the cause of autism and see if there’s something that can be done to prevent it”

So, first of all, autism isn’t something that needs to be prevented. Autistic people are not a detriment to society. We don’t have an illness, we just experience the world differently and, in some cases, require additional support to live our lives as fully as possible. Obviously it can’t be ruled out that fast food, or anything else, has a part to play in rising rates, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that it does and correlation absolutely does not equal causation. Gay representation in the media has also been steadily rising with rates of autism diagnosis. Does this mean that seeing gay people on TV makes people autistic? No. As Laura briefly mentioned, it is far more likely that the rising rates are actually due to an increase in understanding about autism and the accessibility of diagnosis, especially when you consider how many people are still slipping under the radar even with all the knowledge we have today.

I appreciate that most of this podcast is just a conversation between friends about various topics, but when the goal of this podcast is to “raise awareness”, and with the shared platform the people involved have, casual statements like these are incredibly dangerous. With the general implication that if everyone lived a healthy, clean, and organic lifestyle, we could reduce the number of autistic people in our society, this not only puts the “blame” on parents of autistic people, and on the individuals themselves, but is also dipping into eugenics territory. And while I don’t think the intentions behind either statement were malicious, they were incredibly ignorant, and the fact that they went completely unchallenged was concerning and made me pretty uncomfortable.

There were still a lot of positives in the podcast. I’m really glad Laura was also involved because she definitely came across as being the most educated on the subject of the four of them and did make a point of bringing up issues with diagnosis (particularly among girls with autism), her and Tom’s privilege in terms of being able to work with doctor’s to find out as much as possible about their son’s dietary needs and to then provide him with a tailored diet, and also addressing the issues with “high functioning vs low functioning” when Rob asked about the “severity” of their son’s autism. However there was still an undeniable amount of inaccurate or poorly presented information, as well as some things that were just plain incorrect and offensive. I appreciate that a lot of this was coming from personal experience rather than being generalised information, but I think this could have been communicated a lot more clearly and effectively considering the intention was to spread awareness, and the episode would have massively benefitted from the input of an autistic adult. Rob specifically had a lot of questions about autism in general and I think they would have been much better answered by somebody with autism, rather than a parent giving an outside perspective of their child’s experiences. It’s always a little uncomfortable to watch four neurotypical people discuss autism, regardless of how positive their intentions are, and I don’t think it would have been a great challenge for them to find an autistic person who would have been willing to talk about the topic with them.

#YES it took me two hours to write this NO I won't elaborate #tom hopper #robert sheehan #the earth locker

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system-of-a-feather · 3 years

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speaking of the fictive community on tumblr. it hurts to say but i believe a majority of the system community is faking, whether they know it or not. it hurts to see people treat them as a game, and i’d rather these people just join the endo community rather than create such discomfort in the DID community.

Hmm I really wouldn’t say “faking” on the grounds that 1) I don’t really like fakeclaiming much - especially on public platforms since I’m not in a place to diagnose or refute 2) If we are to say “whether they know it or not”, it would be a bit wrong to use the word faking if they don’t know it since faking tends to imply intent and has a negative connotation. I personally feel a lot jumped into the idea of being a system when they are / were young or impressionable or got mixed up.

I also am not going to knock all fictive heavy systems, since I am not going to say it’s impossible and really, there isn’t much research on fictional introjects. I do have a lot of skepticism around a good bit of the fictive community on tumblr about it being a lot of misunderstanding, confusion, and blurring with the kin community and the roleplaying community.

So I don’t think it is really **faking** but I do feel there is something really off with the fictive community on tumblr really.

On the mark of fictive heavy systems though, as a system where like a corner of us REALLY rely on fiction, fantasy, and ficitonal-based-trauma-disguises - often self created but external occasionally - I really do see how a system that also relied / relies heavily on fiction for self reflection, rebuilding, reconstructing, and reframing their trauma / experiences into something more helpful.

I wouldn’t call us fictive heavy since a lot of us walk the line of “is that actually a fictive or an alter that was put into an RP or an alter that ‘put on’ a character to cope”

I’m partially going off on a tangent about this because I used to be *really* skeptical about fictive heavy systems in the past because a lot seemed to collect alters and collect them from the same source and often were some of the larger individuals that treated fictives more like kins than they did fictives.

And while I do really question / have my skepticism about systems that treat fictives like kins, I don’t feel it is fair to group fictive-heavy-systems 100% with the kin-behavior-like-systems

But yeah back to the topic, I really don’t think most are *faking* because I don’t really think as many people intentionally fake as some people would like to make others believe. I do think though, with how DID Youtube / Social Influences present DID and all, there is A LOT more incorrect self diagnoses especially in young individuals.

And with that, a lot of young individuals also tend to be really into fictional stuff and cope with it - especially if you were isolated or lonely - so it is kind of easy for individuals that are young to miss self diagnose and “have fictives”.

This isn’t also to say that if you are young you are clearly miss-self-diagnosed, but more that it should be taken very carefully.

On the account of the faking topic, I really dislike the concept / term of “faking” since again, I feel most are young teens and tweens that are more confused than actively faking, and I feel that being unsure / finding out you were confused / being wrong about self diagnosis should be more accepted and not demonized as faking - ESPECIALLY if you are a minor / teen because being a teen is difficult shit.

-Riku (Host)

#alter: riku #syscourse #discourse #syscourse tw #discourse tw #ask #asks #fictive #fictive tw #faking tw #faking

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floatingbook · 4 years

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On existing (I am my body)

- long overdue, and written in part in light of these posts.

Descartes said “Je pense donc je suis” and from a pragmatic point of view, I think it’s stupid. Or more accurately, irrelevant. Yes, as human being, we think. But that’s not enough to action existence. If you are only your thoughts, then what actions, what interactions do you have with the world? Your thoughts are not enough to act on anything, to create anything, to change anything. Left in the state of thoughts, all the ideas, all the innovations, all the insights you might have might as well not exist in a way, because no one beyond you is aware of it. Yes there is value in knowing something for yourself, but there is also a reason the best kept secrets are the ones nobody knows about, because then functionally they might as well not exist. Practically, we exist because we enact change of the world — in that we alter the current state of the world every moment.

My existence is my body, but I am not the one putting limitations on it. Being my body, my body being me, simply means that if my body was different, I would be a different person. I would not be alive without a body, without my body. It grows with me; time imprints its passage on my body as it does on what would be described as “my mind”, but “the mind” is just another part of the body. It’s a whole. I can’t be separated from my body because I am my body. You don’t have to separate the mind/consciousness/soul or whichever you want to call it from the body. It’s a part of your body, just like your heart is one, and your blood is one, and your immune system. Does science only have limited answers thus far as to how our thoughts, our consciousness, our sense of existence, our intuition, work? Yes. That doesn’t mean that we have to invent something separate from our body to explain it. Being your body doesn’t mean that spirituality is an illusion or that there is no such thing as experiences that can’t quite be explained by science yet.

There’s nothing dehumanising about being our bodies. We are defined as human, as opposed to other animals, because of our bodies; not because we laugh or because of any other behaviours that we can exhibit; our bodies are what make us human and allow us to be classified as such. We are different from machines because of these bodies; we are more than the sum of our parts, especially because that particular assemblage makes it possible for thoughts and reflections and a sense of time and space and morals to exist. I am the source of my creativity, of my motivations, of my intuition, or more accurately, they are part of me, they arise from the body and without it would not exist.

When people state that we have to have a soul, that we are not just a body, I find it very limiting. Who taught you to hate your body? Who taught you that your body makes you nothing more than a machine? Who taught you that having a body, being your body was limiting? Who taught you that the body was not enough? Thinking that you need to have a soul that is distinct from your body, otherwise you are “just a piece of meat to be used”, is a sad representation of your body. As if the body was not worthy. As if you needed a soul to save the body from its lowliness. Why do you believe that being your body is a reduction?

All the hypotheticals where people try to bait each other with “and what if you were born in a different body?” or “what if we put your brain in a different body?” or “i feel like i was born in the wrong body” leave me confused. If I was born in a different body, I would be a different person. I can’t be separated from my body; there is no way that you can take the “floatingbook mind/soul/consciousness” (or whatever you want to call it) and leave just the physical enveloppe behind. If you could put my brain in another person’s body and somehow that could wake up, it would no longer be me nor would it be that other person. Because what makes me me is my whole body; just look at recent research on the brain-gut connection and its potential impacts on depression or autism to see that we don’t have a “mind” that can be separated from the rest of the body. Society and its paradigms can make you feel like there is a disconnect between you and your body, but that’s precisely because you believe that there’s a difference between your “soul” and your body. If you are your body, there’s no need for a disconnect. The self-hatred fostered by patriarchal society becomes evident (tho it’s not easy to get rid of).

The apparent disagreements that I have with some of the posts I linked at the beginning seem to be due with a difference of perception, of point of view. I don’t think that being my body is a limitation. I don’t think that being my body means that I don’t have thoughts or a purpose or creativity or that science already has all the responses.

For centuries, the catholic religion claimed that women had no souls; it’s been less than a century since women have been granted them. I don’t find it revolutionary to pretend, as a woman, that I have a soul. I don’t believe in life after death. The concept of a soul has been used against women and against homosexuals to promise us an eternity of damnation. It is much more comforting to accept that who you are is intimately tied to your body, and that once you die, you do not exist as you once did.

Down the line, the dichotomy body/soul is dangerous, because it often puts the body in the second place. The concept of soul put our existence solely in the abstract mind and posits that the body is just an extension of that, simply the mean by which we interact with the world. That opens the door to all sorts of abuses, like mistreating your body, punishing yourself physically, thinking that your body is just a vessel that you can wantonly alter to serve your soul’s purpose. It allows men to threaten you with religion and say that your soul will burn in hell if you do not behave and stay meek and silent. It implies that something is handing out souls — because if they don’t arise from the body, they have to come from somewhere. Belief in a separate soul means in practise that you consider the body lesser. Pretending that there is a dichotomy makes it easy to disregard the body, and who does that serve? Men. It’s way easier to push women into diets, into impractical clothing, into self-hatred, if they view their body with contempt.

I have found nothing more healing than realising that I am my body, that there need to be no separation between the “mind” and the “body”. Settling in your own bones, breathing, acknowledging that you have a physical form, that it is how you experience the world. That there need be no disconnect between you and your body, because you and your body are the same thing. I am my body, and this is why, and how, I exist.

#on existing #i am my body #a lesbian perspective #there's nothing reductive in it #the concept of soul and mind/body dichotomy reeks of religion and patriarchal control to me #i'm pretty sure deep down we agree on a lot #we just don't put the same words on it #your body is not the enemy #women's liberation

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teenytinystorage · 4 years

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Can you make a fanfic with Logan and Deceit only talking in memes

Hi!! so I don’t think this is exactly what you wanted... but I love them Brain Cell Bois so i hope you enjoy!!

•——•

Vocab Cards

Summary: Logan is very much Struggling with learning new slang, but who decides to actually help the Disaster Nerd but the slimy snake boy Deceit? Welp, this’ll be interesting.

Word Count: 1,291

Warnings: one (1) “not wanting to hurl” mention, implied body horror

Genre: Fluff?? Probably?

Pairings: Platonic/Romantic Loceit

“You know,” Deceit quipped, staring down at his gloved fingers as he stood in front of the camera and to the left of Logan, “you’re not very good at those.”

“At what?” Logan responded quickly, stuffing his “LOL” vocabulary card back into his jeans pocket as the other sides watched the two banter.

“Those vocabulary cards! Oh, you ‘ought to have someone teach you this stuff,” Deceit flicked his tongue at his teeth, “Who am I kidding, I’d even write some cards for you at this point,” he snickered before turning to Thomas. “But Thomas--”

So then, Deceit knows some slang, Logan thought, Deceit’s wittiness still ringing in his ears even after the video ended and the sides each dispersed into their respective rooms.

He sat at his computer, typing and retyping LOL into UrbanDictionary to make sure that, yes, his card was right, LOL was an acronym that stood for “laughing out loud” and he had his definition right on the card.

He even used it the right way too. He said, “Thomas, this is not a LOL matter.”

That’s the right usage. Sure it messed up the phrase “laughing matter” up a bit, but it was hip, so it didn’t matter too much.

So why was it so badly received? Did Deceit really know more about this whole slang deal than he did?

I’d even write some cards for you at this point, Deceit had said earlier.

Hm. Hmmm. Hm indeed.

Logan could use the outside perspective, in his opinion. He knew it wasn’t reliable to have only one source on anything, but for slang, he could never find any other “reliable sources” (HUGE air quotes on that, UrbanDictionary was in no way a college-research-paper-worthy site) but one; everything else just made no sense and was contradictory and confusing.

Maybe conferring with a knowledgeable colleague on the subject could be useful? That always helped with the scientific method. And Logan was basically going into this whole trend thing blind anyways, so it wasn’t like any conversation between them could hurt.

This line of thinking led Logan to stand from his seat, stuff a few blank index cards into his pockets and a ballpoint pen in there too for good measure. He gave one final adjustment of his glasses before sinking down into the classy snake-faced side’s room.

Deceit, sitting on his couch, engrossed in a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, gave a glance and then a double-take of Logan before sighing heavily and shutting his book.

“Ep ep ep--” Deceit held his pointer finger up in the air, “before you ask, yes, Remus did your little project and confirmed that we can regenerate limbs. And before you ask, no, I did not ask how he found it out because I didn’t care nor did I want to hurl today.”

“I actually came here to-- wait, really?” Logan responded, surprised, taking out an index card and quickly jotting down the findings. “Fascinating.”

“It’s ickier to me than it is fascinating, no cap,” Deceit complained as he smoothed the fringe peeking out from his hat. “But it’s your research and not mine, so go off, I suppose.”

Then Logan, upon hearing Deceit’s confusing phrases about hats and/or glacial structures and his encouragement for Logan to keep researching and/or to leave (slang was so confusing), remembered what he came here for in the first place.

“Right, Deceit,” Logan stuffed his index card of findings into his pants pocket, adding, “Earlier today I used a slang term that I believe stands for ‘laughing out loud,’ but your reaction implied to me that I may have been incorrect in the context of its usage. Would you care to elaborate on that?” Logan asked, clicking the pen in his pocket a few times as he spoke.

Deceit lounged back on the couch and held the back of his head in his hands. “Cssssertainly. You should totally use acronyms as if they’re the actual words they stand for, it definitely isn’t cringe-worthy at all.”

Logan, bewildered at the fact that Deceit even decided to answer his query (or humor him, more likely), quickly filed the information into his brain. “Oh. Oh, okay. And would you be willing to maintain your offer of assisting me with inscribing more vocabulary cards?”

“I hope you realize that was just some quick and witty charm of mine,” Deceit hummed. “You do take things very seriously though. That’s just your vibe.”

Logan’s expression faltered a bit. “Oh.”

Deceit paused, glancing his eyes up at the ceiling irritatedly before looking back at Logan. “You know what? If it keeps you from committing any other word atrocities such as the one today, then sure, I’ll help.”

“Really?” Logan replied just barely before he sank out and perused the internet for at least four hours for new slang terms on his own. “You would?”

“Sure. But I’m not a meme connoisseur by any means, I leave that to the raccoon. I’ll still try my best, though.”

It was relatively quiet in Deceit’s room after Deceit’s initial lecturings, including “never describe emojis out loud in words” and “for the love of your nonexistent mother, please never use ‘periodt’ like it’s actual punctuation.”

“So was it Lebanese or lesbian?” Logan asked, scribbling on another index card and laying stomach-down on the floor.

“It was lesbian,” Deceit said, sitting vertically and upside-down on the couch with his head almost on the floor and his hat barely hanging onto his head.

“Ah,” Logan commented, finishing the card. “Is the humor supposed to arise from the child thinking the camera-lady said Lebanese instead of lesbian, which conflicts with her allegedly American nationality?”

“No one knows,” Deceit answered.

“Ah, of course,” Logan replied, setting the card into a now growing stack of finished terms.

The two kept writing.

“Ok, here’s a test,” Deceit said a few minutes later, turning to Logan. “And they were roommates.”

Logan took a second before responding, monotonously, that is, “Oh my god, they were roommates.”

Deceit nodded his head in surprise. “You’re getting good at this.”

“You think so?” Logan asked, a small sense of accomplishment seeping into him.

“Well you’re certainly better than the LOL matter from before,” Deceit commented, chuckling.

Soon the next video had already started before Logan knew it.

“But doesn’t it seem like the right thing to do here is help?” Patton asked, twiddling his fingers together.

Thomas sighed.

“Well, I think that y’all’d’ve a bit of patience for Thomas. His vibes are a bit whack at the moment, no cap,” Logan interjected, still in his monotone voice.

The sides, and Thomas as well, stared at Logan in disbelief.

“What?” Logan peered around the room.

“Where did you learn all that?” Virgil asked, jaw hanging open and eyes wide.

“Deceit taught me a bit more about slang so I don’t inspire any more cringe-fests for you all.”

“Weird flex, but okay,” Deceit replied, rising up next to Logan.

“Agh!! Can you just leave— him—” Virgil shot a glare at Deceit, “—out of this??” Virgil pleaded, now irritated and growling under his breath. “I’ve already had my fair share of sleep-paralysis demons for today.”

“Quite uncommon for the Protohype to be so well-versed in lingo,” Roman mused. “But alas, go forth I proclaim.”

“Yeah, good work Logan, but what is Deceit doing here again?” Thomas asked, to which Patton replied: “Yeah, I think Thomas has his mind pretty well made up on this decision already!”

“Oh please,” Deceit started.

Logan couldn’t help but, for a moment, revel in his success, before, of course, going back to being the coolest cool teacher cool guy in the entire Thomas-sphere.

What a nice thing it is to learn, isn’t it?

#people really do be liking loceit after not liking it for a while huh?#(its me im people)#i love... the Boys.... 💛💙#sanders sides #deceit sanders #logan sanders #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfic #loceit #platonic loceit #romantic loceit #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #remus mention

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parf-fan · 3 years

Link

One year ago, Rob Condas posted in celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday. A year later, I finally finished writing the fic that post (and comments thereupon) inspired. This is the first Faire fic I’ve ever finished, and would reeeealllly like some feedback on it, please. In addition to the ao3 link, the text of the fic is below the read-more.

Title: The More, the Marrier Words: 6,705 Chapters: 1/1 Pairings: Horace Tanningrove & William Shakespeare, Horace Tanningrove / John Hopfield Warnings: drunkenness, drunken shenanigans, canon-typical implied/referenced dubious consent (very mild though, if you were okay with the bender subsubsubplot of Myths and Legends 2019, you should be okay here)

Summary: "Happy Birthday Shakespeare ❤️ I hope you and Horace are painting the town tonight" –Rob "Oh, if you thought Horace and Shakespeare went hard in the summer and fall of 1558, just WAIT till you see what they'll do for Will's birthday" –Michael Having relocated the previous autumn when the R and J play was picked up by a producer in London, Will now celebrates his natal day by returning to visit his hometown of Mount Hope. Much of the first day of this visit is, of course, spent in the company of Horace Tanningrove. As the two become progressively drunker, they engage in shenanigans of sundry disaster variations. In the morning, both are hellaciously hungover, and the night is a blur, at best.

Opening notes: This fic is dedicated in equal measure to Rob Condas and Michael Stahler, with thanks to the same for inspiring it through a Facebook post and comments on said post, respectively. And, obviously, for partially creating and fully rendering such lovable and memorable characters, with such an exquisite dynamic and rapport. The admiration I hold for you defies description.

Thanks to kaythehawk for the title, for proofreading and feedback, and for lowkey holding my hand through the posting process; and to my mom for assistance in devising phrases and combating lethologica.

To anybody unfamiliar with the 2019 season of the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire: First, what series of events in you life led you to this fic? Second, you are quite welcome to read it, but you will undoubtedly be quite confused on many points.

This is a fanwork created out of love and admiration for the source material and those who brought it about. Characters and setting belong to Zeno Creative Group PRF Productions.

The More, the Marrier

April 24th , mid-morning:

Will cracked an eyelid and his skull promptly split. Though he hastily undid the first, the second diminished but slightly. He cast about for words to describe it. “Uuhhhurrgh,” he eventually settled upon.

His eloquent critique was answered in kind from nearby, and Will decided that his desire for information would lend him the fortitude to bear the suffering. He opened his eyes – both this time, and all the way – albeit slowly. Only one of them appeared to work, but he filed that away as a problem for later. Instead, he took in his surroundings. Locks and bars and but the tiniest of windows. Wooden benches, pallets of straw. On some of the straw —

“Horace?” Will's voice rasped like a file, and it occurred to him that he was very thirsty.

Horace opened his eyes, promptly shut them, and said. “Prithee, extinguish the sun. Temporarily.”

“Would that I could, friend.”

Horace gave eyesight another try, amid much blurring and face-rubbing. At length, he got enough of a handle on it to look over to Will. “That garland is most becoming on thee,” he said. “Quite a jaunty angle.”

Will put a hand to his head and, feeling rapidly-wilting blossoms, found the cause of his partial blindness in the form of a flower-crown that had slipped over one eye. He gingerly adjusted it. “Thou lookst not o'er shabby in thine,” he observed.

Horace reached up and likewise discovered a ring of flowers encircling his brow, though his had not slipped. He considered it, then left it as it was.

Having solved the mystery of the halved eyesight, Will turned his intellect toward discerning their surroundings. In a moment, he'd concocted an ingenious scheme to that end. “Where thinkst thou we are?” he asked.

Horace, who'd been looking around despite the excruciating pain in his head and how damn bright the world was, answered, “I should fain think we be in the jailhouse.”

“The jailhouse? Nay!”

“Aye, there's bars and everything.”

A voice blared from out of eyeshot at a volume surely far higher necessary. “Well reasoned, master Tanningrove. I should consider thee for the position of deputy with detective brilliance like that.”

Horace, who'd pressed his hands to his ears and yet could hear every decibel with painful clarity, said, “Oh, well, that's very kind of thee, Sheriff Perry, but I fear I should find such work dreadfully boring.”

“It was a jest. I was makin' fun of thee.”

“Oh.”

By now, Will and Horace had both gotten themselves turned so as to see the sheriff standing near what was, upon slight inspection, the door to their cell.

“Good morrow, Sheriff!” said Will in as perky a voice as he could muster, for surely manners were paramount in such a situation as they found themselves.

“It is a good morrow, indeed,” agreed the sheriff. “It is not so good a morrow as it might have been if thou hadst not managed to lock the deputy in a cell and toss the key down a well, but it is a good morrow nonetheless.”

Will paled. “We erm, we stole the keys?”

“Aye, but Douglas had the spare set, so all was well. Of course, he insisted I release him a day or so early in exchange, but that is no great matter.”

“Oh.”

A silence followed, perhaps awkward for those who kept track of such things. At length, Will asked, “So, erm, are we locked in here for stealing from law enforcement?”

“Nay, nay, nah, thou are in 'ere for public drunkenness, possible debauchery, and general annoyance.”

“Ah.”

“But I be letting thee out now.”

“Oh! 'Tis generous of thee.”

Horace chimed in. “Be there a– a fine, or aught?”

The sheriff mucked about with his keys in an overly-loud manner. “Well,” he said, “if there were a fine, then it could be considered paid had young Will here had several pieces of jewelry upon his person last e'entide which have since vanished for reasons indiscernible.

Both men were interrupted in parsing that statement by the cell door swinging open with a din surely worthy of Typhon stirring beneath Mount Aetna. Horace clamped his eyes shut, his hands over his ears once more, grinding his teeth in spite of himself. At length, he managed to comprehend the words “...and thank thee so much for that glorious surprise thou didst leave stuffed in my seat cushion. There is nothing I like better when sitting down after locking up troublemakers at dawn than to find that I have crushed a mess of grapes of questionable freshness, and that the sour-yet-unfermented juice of said grapes is rapidly soaking my trousers. Truly appreciated that.”

“Ah. Yes. Well.” said Horace, glancing at Will. “That would likely have been, I am sure, mine idea.”

“It was mine.” interjected Will abruptly and vehemently – far too vehement for a muddled and hungover mind to be sure of.

Sheriff Perry gestured them out of the cell. As they struggled to their feet, he said, “I shall perceive it as Horace's idea nonetheless, for if it were, then I would consider it pardoned on account of him later turning himself in.”

Horace stared.

Will, whose headache was exacerbated somewhat less by the light and noise that Horace's, took his friend by the elbow and guided him from the cell. The touch on his arm caused Horace to look down, whereupon he realized he was in his shirtsleeves.

“Sheriff, I shudder to ask, but did I come here thus? or is my doublet somewhere hereabout?”

“Oh, aye!” answered the sheriff, clearly remembering. “I put it in the chimney, at thy request.”

Horace stared, this time with his mouth slightly agape, before finding words. “Where on Earth for would I ask such a thing of thee?”

The sheriff was messing about in the chimney. “You grinned and said 'This will confuse me so much on the morrow'.” He removed his arm from the chimney. “It would seem that drunk Horace doth enjoy playing pranks upon sober Horace.”

Horace caught the rather dusty doublet the sheriff tossed him. “That....explaineth so very much.” He gave the doublet a shake, instantly regretted the jolt to his headache, and shrugged into it regardless.

They had just made it outside the jailhouse and were dealing with the assault of the sunlight upon their very beings when Sheriff Perry stuck his head out the door and called after them. “Oh, Miles stopped by earlier. He asked me to tell thee that he'd done a little research and learned that the thing you hired him for is, in fact, entirely legal, and will thus cost double if thou art still interested.”

* * *

April 23 rd :

Memory was delicate and uncooperative, skittering out of reach like Tantalus's fruit if approached directly. A blur of celebration, an echo of good company, a haze of extensive alcohol. Quite likely they had begun sometime after midday, celebrating Will's visit home from London. Day had turned to evening, and as evening wore on, their revelry had perhaps bordered on debauchery, and they were presumably cast from whichever alehouse they'd been ensconced in. Now past wisdom, they had undoubtedly raided the Tanningrove winecellar. As evening faded into night, they had roamed the streets with no real goal besides pleasant existence and mutual company.

This was the state in which they found themselves investigating little sounds from the secondary structure of the forge.

Will gave a small gasp. “Is this true love? I finally found it after all these years.” A dusty grey kitten rubbed its face into his hand. “I would die for thee!” He picked the cat up and scratched its cheek. It gave a disconcerted squeal as it left the ground, but began purring once Will cradled it. “Horace, look!”

Horace's eyes widened and he reached out to pet the kitten, who seemed quite pleased with the additional attention. “Hath it a name?”

Will thought for a moment before saying, “Honeybee, for 'tis buzzing.”

“Mayhap Honey for short?”

“Aye.”

More meowing rose from near their feet. “There yet are more!” cried Will, as he passed Honey to Horace and knelt back down. This time, he reached toward a vaguely striped brown cat, who regarded him with ambivalence before allowing itself to be petted. “By Christ's calluses, I would bloody die for thee.”

Horace, whose shoulder was being kneaded by Honey, said, “That one doth look like a Priscilla.”

Will nodded, then winced as Priscilla lightly bit him. “Priscilla the Scylla,” he amended.

Horace frowned, thinking. “That, that's the whirlpool? The one Odsendus – Osdysa – the Odd guy went near?”

Will struggled with thought and word. “Mayhap? There were six heads.”

“But Priscilla hath one head only.”

“Aye, but she bites. Scylla did to chomp sailors.” He deposited the indifferent cat in Horace's arms with the first, and knelt again, holding his hand out to the final kitten. The final kitten – curled into a shape reminiscent of a turkey leg, and Will instantly named it accordingly – reacted not at all, so he tentatively placed his hand on the fluff's head. It let out a small squeak. Will's eyes were large and shining, his face aglow. “Thou art my muse,” he proclaimed. “I– I would live for thee.”

Horace repositioned Honey to allow for Priscilla climbing his shoulder. “Thou should write that down,” he muttered. “Such a declaration of love I ne'er have heard.”

Will did not seem to hear him. A look of pain was passing over his face. He looked up suddenly at Horace and said in a choked tone, “We cannot leave them here! This place be dustful and lonesome and– and there be sharplisome things about! What if one were to stab itself?”

Horace nodded gravely. “'Twould make the tragedy of Indigo's Investigations seem as unto a children's pageant by comparison.”

“We must save them!” Will stood swiftly, garnering a startled yowl from Legg. Horace was adjusting Honey and Priscilla. “As soon as I open the door, we run and we do not stop until we reach your home.”

“Aye.” Horace steeled himself. Will unlatched the little gate, or tried to. Either he could not open it one-handed, or it was twisting and writhing so as to sabotage his problem-solving. Or because he was drunk, he was vaguely aware of that as a possibility.

At length, he turned to Horace in defeat. “'Tis no use,” he declared. “We shall have to climb over the counter. Prithee, hold Legg.” He deposited the jet fluff in Horace's arms with the others before setting himself on the counter and swinging his legs over. Horace passed him the kittens, then hopped over in kind.

“Where are we running?” asked Will, as he handed Honey and Priscilla back to Horace.

“My house, I thought thou did say.”

“I said that?” asked Will. “I be quite clever, I suppose.”

“Thou hast thy moments.”

Yet scarce had they gone a dozen steps when they felt themselves joined by an unmistakable Presence. Almost without intending to, they slowed their steps to a standstill, and were at length able to make out the form of a cat darker than the blackened steel of an anvil. This cat that was not a cat looked upon them and spoke in human tongue.

“Inebriated mortals. Seek thou not to abduct these young ones. They yet are but kittens – babes, to thee – and are not yet ready to leave the care of my familiars at the forge.”

Will's voice was tremblesome and broken, yet he spoke. “But.... But there are sharp things there.”

If a cat could facepalm – and indeed, who is to say that a cat sìth cannot? – this one would've. “The humans of the forge make it their business to foster my mundane brethren until they may be taken in by ordinary humans as any other cat. Rest assured that their area is safe for them.”

The Being stepped closer. “Return the younglings to the forge, and I give you assurance that when the time comes, my familiars shall consider thee for their adoption. Otherwise,” and now the Being began to grow, “risk my wrath upon thee. Know that I can restore the dead to life; what thinkst thou, then, I can do to the living?”

Will stood mute in fear and anguish, but Horace had wit or sense slightly more. Holding all three kittens, he bowed respectfully to the cat sìth, then hastily retraced his steps to the forge, where the gate sprang open before him. He deposited the small fluffs as near their initial positions as he could gauge, then hastened back to his friend. The felinesque Presence dissipated as he returned, as did the force of terror holding Will.

* * *

April 24th , mid-morning:

The assault of the sun troubled Horace greatly, and he kept his eyes as closed as possible. The surrounding din was likewise torment. He stumbled somewhat over a chicken he couldn't see.

Will absently steadied him, but his focus was on the chicken. “That chicken hath a five upon its back,” he observed.

“How wondrous for it,” said Horace glumly, his eyes still mostly shut. Will's attention returned to his friend, and he realized that Horace was suffering from the light and noise even more than himself. On sudden inspiration, he reached up and adjusted Horace's flower-crown so it partially obscured his eyes.

Both men took one look at the Hellhill and decided that a longer walk would not be amiss. The streets were shadier and quieter along the Grove and Glen in any case.

After a while, Horace broke the silence. “What, precisely, was all that about, then?”

“Well, it would appear that we both got incredibly drunken last e'entide.”

“Clearly, but I was thinking more of that convoluted speech the sheriff gave about vanishing jewelry.”

A voice rang from somewhat off the street. “I'd be less worried about the sheriff and more worried about Bernadette Albright. She be on the warpath.”

Will and Horace turned to see Eskarina Nutter lounging against a tree. Will frowned slightly. “Wherefore?”

“Oh, something about getting married several times over without consulting her even once.”

“Will and I got married?” Horace asked.

Eskarina stopped propping up the tree and began ambling over to them. “Not to each other, at least by my witness. You may well have done, but I didn't officiate it. Here.”

Horace and Will looked blankly at the small proffered bottles.

“Meadowsweet, woundwort, elfin thyme, and roseroot, boiled in nettle tea. Unless thou would prefer to retain the sensation of thy skulls splitting.”

Will took both bottles with thanks and handed one to Horace.

Eskarina continued. “I also recommend hefty quantities of boiled water. I'd eat something as well, were I thee.” The wise woman started off.

“Hold a mome', who did we wed, then?”

Eskarina called back, “Oh, thou wilt run into them soon enough,” and was gone.

They stood a moment, then Horace spoke. “Will?”

“Aye?”

“Wherefore do we still do this on thy natal day?”

“In truth, friend, I know not.”

* * *

April 23rd , nighttime:

Will sobbed into Horace's shoulder as Horace patted his back.

“I shall never see Honey and Priscilla and Legg again. My only loves, and they are gone.”

Horace cast about for comfort words. What were those? He thought there there was supposed to be good for something, but he passed it by. It's alright to cry? He was fairly sure Will already knew that. I know not what thou art going through, yet I am here for thee? But he did know, though to a lesser extent, it seemed, and it was obvious that he was there for Will.

Giving comfort words up as a bad job, he sought instead for cheering words. “Will,” he said, “I promise to spend the rest of the night, if need be, in finding thee a pet.”

Will sniffed. “Really?”

“Aye, verily!”

Will considered for a moment, then his face crumpled anew. “'Twill be of no use, we cannot replace Honey and Priscilla and Legg.”

“Nay, we shall not be replacing them,” Horace insisted, talking with his hands despite being in the midst of a hug. “We shall be seeking thee an additional companion, one to keep thee company until Honey and Priscilla and Legg might join thee.”

Will gave this some thought, eventually straightening up and looking Horace in the face. “Thou meanst it?”

“Aye, of course!”

Will's face split into a grin. “Oh, Horace, thou art the truest of friends!” he cried out as he hugged him again. After drawing away, he said, “Now, where are we to search for such a companion?”

Horace reflected, then his face lit up. “I believe I've an idea.”

* * *

April 24th , mid-morning:

They had hoped to make it quietly back to the Tanningrove homestead to at least recover, if not piece together what they might of the night before, but they hadn't gone more than a few paces before Douglas Johnson trotted up.

“Morrow to thee,” he called. “Much obliged for springing me a few days early like that. Shan't have to miss the next guild meeting now.”

Horace, still making faces over the less-than-savory taste of Eskarina's hangover antidote, said in a degree off from sarcasm, “Oh, aye, glad we could help.”

Douglas peered at Will for a moment. “You, er, I'm guessing that you don't remember. To be expected, I suppose. Well, you were clearly drunk at the time, so I don't think it would count anyway, I, er, I bid thee good day.” He hurried off.

“What on Earth?” began Will.

“I do believe you may have married Douglas last night,” said Horace.

Will was silent for a moment. “Ah.” he said at last. “Well, that is to say, I mean, I'm sure he's right, it likely counts not. I'm going to.... ” He gestured vaguely to continue walking.

* * *

April 23rd , nighttime:

Within an enclosure lay many small white hillocks. As they climbed the wall, Will took in the sight and murmured, “Who hath been unhooking the clouds without my permission to put them in the pasture in the guise of snow?”

Horace laughed. “Nay, good Will, these be not snow, but the fluffiest earthbound of God's creatures: Sheep!”

Will gazed upon the critters, then strode over to one and tentatively petted it. His face lit up. “'Tis the softest thing I e'er have touched!”

Horace grinned. “Unhooked clouds indeed.”

Will buried his face in the sheep, which gave a small bleat. “'Tis so fluffsome I believe I shall perish!” He tore himself away and darted to another sheep. “But thou art also so fluffsome as to beget my death!” Then another. “And thee! They're all.... How am I to decide?”

“Which one hath the best name?”

Will deliberated, then shook his head, blinked at the unexpected dizziness, and stopped. “I cannot discern their names here. We must take them to better lighting that I may see them more clearly.”

Horace thought for a moment. “The village lantern, perhaps?”

“Aye, that's it! We shall take them to the lantern.”

Horace nudged a sheep experimentally. It gave a bit of a bleat, and eventually began moving. Between the two of them, they managed to direct the three sheep to the gate, which they had completely missed on their way in and were, after some fumbling, able to open. Once all were through and the gate closed, they set about clumsily herding the sheep to the village proper.

After some time, Horace remarked, “Ought we have some means of telling them apart until we get there?”

Will thought a moment, then said, “We shall number them.” He drew from his pouch a bottle of ink. Using his fingers, for quills are hardly suited to write on wool unwoven, he rather unsteadily traced a '1' on the back of the first sheep he'd seen. He stood for a moment, apparently lost in thought. Horace eventually nudged him, and Will started and returned to his task, daubing a '3' and a '4' on the backs of the other sheep. Wiping his hand on the side of sheep number four, he resealed the bottle with some difficulty and replaced it in his pouch.

They successfully guided the sheep some distance more, within the village itself, before the animals spotted a flowerbed laden with green things fit for grazing. There they stopped and there they chomped, and neither Will nor Horace had the heart to move them on.

Will sighed and announced that he clearly was not meant to have so fluffsome a companion.

Horace was not deterred. “We shall take a few moments to collect ourselves,” he said, opening a bottle and passing it to Will, “then we shall set out once more. I've a notion near as fluffy and perhaps more interesting than sheep.”

***************

“Young Will, thou didst tell me there was a fire in the square.”

“Aye, mistress O'Bales, 'tis just there!”

“William, that be a lantern.”

“I– what?”

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. “A lantern, Will. One of the village lanterns, what be lit all night? that folk might find their way despite the darkness?”

“....Oh. But there's burning.”

“I be goin' back to bed now.” She turned to leave.

A call sounded from across the square. “Will, I got them! It'll be sour grapes for th— good Lord, the square's aflame!”

Emily blinked, then dashed the contents of her bucket upon the miscreants before her. “I bid thee good night, good masters.”

***************

Horace wasn't overly sure that stopping in the stables was wise, not with Will pining after an animal companion as he was. Even in his state of dubious clarity, Horace had the wit to know that stealing a horse was foolish, with dangerous consequences, even for them, even drunk. But Will had insisted, and did not thus far appear in imminent peril of emotional distress. He was petting a dappled grey belonging to goodness knows whom, telling it that it was such a good horse, such a beautiful horsey, so smooth and wonderful, yes you are.

The beast Horace had sought to pet unequivocally wanted nothing to do with him, so he cast about for something with which to occupy himself. A saddle and assorted tack hung on the door to the stall before him, and he began idly examining it. He accidentally unhooked it after a moment, spent several minutes investigating how he'd done such a thing, and sought to hang it back up. But it refused to hang, or perhaps he lacked the necessary dexterity. Needing somewhere else to leave it, he unhooked a different set of tack, and placed the first where the second had been. Then he stared in confusion at this new mess of leather and buckles unexpectedly in his hands. What was to be done but shift a third to make room for this one? Yet even then, he was still left with a rogue saddle.

By the time Will had finished cooing over the grey, every set of tack in the stable had changed position, and Horace still stared at a set stubbornly in his hands. Fortunately, Will was better able to convince it to settle onto the remaining hook, and they left the stable in perfect order, so far as they could tell.

* * *

April 24th , mid-late morning:

Amy Cooper was looking with mild curiosity at a pig with the number '3' on its back rooting around a flowerbed when she caught sight of the bearers of the flower-crowns. Instantly, she marched up to them, and, pausing only for breath, launched into speech.

“In O'Malley's last e'entide, the both of thee did sort of say vaguely marriage-type vows at me. That is, I think they were marriage-ish. They were somewhat difficult to understand. The words were intelligible enough, but they had not much substance in the strung-togetherness of them. Thou,” and here she gestured to Horace, “did proclaim me the most creative practical-thinker, least ineloquent non-wordsmith, and most enthusiastic non-changeling thou e'er did meet; and Will here did declare of me that he could not wish for a better verbal-sparring partner with whom to maintain an unmalicious bitter rivalry, which at any rate I can agree with. I am here to clarify that unsolicited vows do not a wedding make, and that I be willing to pretend none of it happened.”

“Oh. We, erm—”

“Most well, never happened. I shall be on my way, I've some new square prototypes to build.” She turned and sped off steadily, leaving Will and Horace both some lesser version of gobsmacked.

“Well,” said Horace after a time. “At least we paid her sincere compliments.”

* * *

April 23rd , nighttime:

“Where are we bound?”

“Wherefore ought I know? I be following thee?”

“Thou art?”

“Aye, thou did speak of a new idea since the sheep and chickens and rats did not work out.”

“I.... I was following thee. I must have forgot.”

There was a silence as they pondered the implications of this, then—

“Then I believe we are lost.”

Will thought on that, and said, “Then we shall have to use our wits and become unlost. We are both intelligent enough folk, are we not?”

“Decidedly,” replied Horace.

Will began to pace. “There be no buildings, nor firelight; thus we must be outside the village proper a good bit.”

“Indeed.”

“There be trees all about us. Mayhap we strayed into the forest?”

Horace considered this, then shook his head, frowned, and quickly stopped. “Nay, for look, the sky be too visible. The trees be not near enough one another.”

“Ohhhhhh.”

“What, what's the thing where there's trees and they're tame and orderly and they grow things and someone looks after them?” Horace spoke with his hands, waggling his fingers as though he could grasp the truant term from the air.

Will mulled it over for some time, then said, “Orchid.”

“Aye, that's it! We must be in an orchid.”

Will thought some more, then moved toward one of the trees, and promptly slipped and fell.

Horace did not immediately see where he had gone. “Will? Will! Where art thou?”

“Merely fallen, but I have the answer. The ground be covered in apples. We be in an apple orchid.”

Horace considered that, then remarked, “Agnes's land be not far from some of mine own. I could more easily get my bearings there.” He held out a hand, and Will hoisted himself up.

“Let us skirt the fence until we find a path.”

They walked for several minutes, working their way toward what they hoped was a fence. The wind rattled the budding branches above their heads and close by their faces. At length, Horace said, “Will, it be thy natal day, aye?”

“Aye.”

“And thy natal day be in April.”

“Last that I did to make note.”

“Most well. But the last I did to note, apples grow not in these early months. Nor should they remain on the ground unrotted through all the winter.”

“Yet what I slipped upon was certes an apple, and as fresh and finely-formed as any e'er I saw.”

They slowly turned and looked back into the shadows of the orchard. The full moon cast twisted echoes of the branches, warping the ground into an unknowable writhing latticework. Suddenly, a sharp giggling cry pierced the air, and a glint as though of fangs caught their eyes from the foot of the tree under which Will had fallen. Both men started, calling out in alarm, then turned and fled as swift as their staggering steps might take them.

***************

“I hardly realized cows were so morose.”

“Moo.”

“See what I mean? Didst thou hear what she said, Will? She believes life is pointless.”

Will was across the field a way, in a different pasture entirely. “This one over here is despondent, but only because she cannot be with the love of her life. It's so sad, Horace, it's like R and J but worse.”

“Moo.”

“That is what I say, friend, 'tis not fair.”

By this time, Horace had joined Will, which included tripping over a fence. “What be her name?”

Will thought a moment. “This one be Ariadne. Her love, to whom you were just speaking,” he gestured, “is Meredith.”

Horace considered the prospect. “Were we to unite them, Meredith would stop being so morose.”

“We shall! 'Tis what they deserve.”

The two stumbled to the fence, where they puzzled over the ingeniously-constructed beams. It took at least ten minutes to divine how the beams connected and how to remove a few. These they tossed to the side, along the rest of the fence.

“Go, Ariadne!” Will called triumphantly. “Go meet thy love!”

Ariadne considered him, then turned around and continued sleeping.

Will nodded understandingly. “She wants her beauty sleep first, of course.”

“But once she's slept, she will join Meredith?”

“Of course. And A and M shall be united, and 'twill be most beauteous.”

“Moo,” said Meredith.

“Thou hast the right of it.”

* * *

April 24th , mid-late morning:

They did not cross paths with Theresa Ratchet until they'd passed by most of the shops and into the more residential area. She sat outside her little hut, the spic-and-spanness of which juxtaposed almost harshly with her appearance, repairing a trap. When she caught sight of the bedraggled duo, she smiled broadly and waved, calling out, “Good morrow to thee, good masters! And twice o'er to thee, Will!”

Will returned the wave. “God save, Theresa. I don't suppose I married thee last night, by any chance?”

Theresa's smile, if possible, widened. Several more gaps showed. “Aye, that thou did, good sir!”

“Ah,” he said, barely fazed at this point. “Sorry about that.”

Theresa waved it off. “Nay, 'tis most well. 'Tweren't more than vows, for thou wert clearly – what be that modern phrase? – drunk off thine arse.”

Will made to respond, but Horace hustled him along. “Best not hang about long enough for her to notice that we sprang some of her traps,” he muttered.

“Oh! Aye, not that I recall doing such a thing, nor indeed see how thou could recall it; but aye.” In a loud voice, he added, “Well, if there's no harm done, we shall be on our way. Eskarina suggested something called 'hydration'? We be on our way to try it out. Anon!”

The ratcatcher gave another wave and returned her attention to her traps.

* * *

April 23rd , nighttime:

After much struggle, Horace succeeded in undoing the shutters of his storeroom window, and he and Will climbed in. Climbed is a generous term, of course, for it was more akin to stumbling and staggering and even falling; but the point is, they made it through the window.

After some more fumbling, Horace declared, “The lamp hath vanished.”

Will, who was admittedly less familiar with the room, but had spent enough time there to have at least a working knowledge of it, added, “I believe the door hath moved, as well.”

“First my keys and now this.” Horace felt the walls. “Why is there so much dust? And what are these, chisels?”

Will snapped his fingers. “I have it! We be in the wrong building.”

Horace pondered this for a long moment. At last, he replied. “That....would rather explain wherefore none of my keys fit the door.”

Will's eyes had by now adjusted somewhat, and by the light of the moon shining through the casement, he managed to find a lamp. Several attempts with flint and steel later, they had it burning. Its light revealed shelves covered in tools, dust, rock fragments, and half-formed figures. Horace stared long an hard at a mallet before finally declaring, “I fancy we be in Millicent Goodenstone's workshop.”

Will did not seem to hear him. His eyes, wide and shining once more, rested on an unshaped stone somewhat smaller than his fist, which the lamplight had caught. He drew near it almost unconsciously.

“... had best leave a note and withdraw the way we arrived,” Horace was saying. “What're you....”

Will slowly touched the rock, then picked it up. “This.... This is it,” he whispered reverently. “My new companion, to tend mine heart until Honey and Priscilla and Legg may join me.” He gently caressed the stone. “What thinkst thou of Petra? Obvious, I know, yet it suits them.”

Horace had by this time joined him. “Petra the pet rock,” he said experimentally. “Know you, I believe that suits them delightfully.”

Will broke into a delighted grin. “We've done it! You did it! You found me the perfect pet!” And threw his arms once more around Horace, who gasped in pain when Petra whacked him in the side.

***************

“What in God's name dost thou think thou art doing!??!!!” The bellow awoke Horace with a start. In the pale light of barely-dawn, he could make out the form of Rosalind Anne Uxbridge towering over him, clutching a rake and quivering with rage.

“Knowst thou how long I have spent caring for these blossoms? The ones thou seemst to have mistaken for a mattress?”

Horace looked about and began to piece things together. He'd clearly passed out in a flowerbed, one of Rosalind's many prized patches. He cast about for Will but saw him not. “Where, what hast thou done with Will?” he asked.

“Change not the subject!”

The gravity of the situation downed on Horace. He was without ally in the midst of a garden he'd ruined, with naught betwixt him and the gardener's fury save his own wit. And just that moment, he felt he hadn't an ounce of wit to his name.

He struggled to his feet, desperately playing for time. “Now, erm, see here Rosalind, er, this is clearly a– a mistake of some sort, and if thou will but give me a mome', or several, I can explain myself and the context of this whole affair most succinctly. Or somewhat succinctly. I do not feel overly succinct at this particular moment. What must be understood...” He was standing, he'd more or less gotten his bearings, and he'd pieced together a plan. Without warning, he shot off, ducking the blow of the rake, and ran as fast as his shaking legs would carry him to the jailhouse, where he pounded the door, yelling, “Sheriff! I must report an incident of public drunkenness, accidental trespassing, and general bad behavior!”

* * *

April 24th , late morning:

At long last, Horace and Will made it to the Tanningrove homestead. Jack was out front, ostensibly weeding the small vegetable garden, but more probably waiting for them to put in an appearance. Sure enough, when he saw them approaching, he looked at his father and simply said “Why.” before turning and leaving, weeding abandoned.

Well, it was a reasonable enough reaction to their understanding of how the boy's father had spent his night. They made no move to stay his departure, instead continuing into the blessed dimness of the indoors.

At a table in the parlor sat John Hopfield, a cup of something in front of him. Upon hearing their entry, he looked up, and then beamed.

Horace stopped in his tracks. The color drained from his face.

“Oh.” he said.

Will looked from Horace to John several times, his mouth slightly agape, his sodden-but-drying mind working furiously. Finally, it clicked. “Oh my God,” he said quietly.

“Hello, Horace!” Had he not been sitting, John would've been bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Horace swallowed nervously and suddenly wished he had a hat to twist about in his hands. “Did– that is– erm, good morrow John. I.... ” And now his face was flushed as red as any of his wines.

John's face fell almost imperceptibly, but in a manner more resigned than disappointed. “You don't remember.”

“Erm, quite frankly no, I do not; but I can see it plain enough now, for all my fogged mind.” His hands, desperate to fidget, found their way to his flower-crown and began idly shredding a bloom.

John nodded. “Well, I know not that Eskarina's officiation be technically binding, so.... ” He trailed off.

“That's, erm.” Horace fiddled with the petals he'd pulled from his crown, seven in all. “That's probably for the best, I suppose.”

“Aye.”

There was a long silence. Will looked from John to Horace to the door, torn between fascination and social discomfort at the scene unfolding before him.

Horace shifted his weight. “I mean, it isn't that I'm strictly opposed to the notion, per se,” he semi burst out at length. “I'm not. But, I mean, I wasn't planning on it. At least not yet.”

Now even John was fidgeting, tracing the edge of the cup in front of him. “We– there wasn't, erm, that is — it weren't binding in the eyes of anyone, if thou takest my meaning,” he said awkwardly, blushing. “Thou wert clearly drunk, of course there wouldn't be....”

Horace took some time to process that. “I don't think I would have thought there was, had I known of this before now and thus had time to consider the possibility,” he said at length, now idly crumpling the petals in his hands, “yet I thank thee for, er, for clarifying it.”

Another silence, possibly even more awkward than the first, hovered between them. Making up his mind, Will carefully asked, “Horace, doest thou want me here just now?”

Horace started, reminded of his friend's presence. “Quite possibly not.”

“Most well.” Will nodded despite his splitting skull and turned immediately for the door. “I shall meet back up with thee perhaps around suppertime, then? To piece together, erm,” he glanced at John, “what remains to piece together.”

Horace waved vaguely in confirmation as Will hastened out the door, then looked back at John, still crumpling petals.

After a beat, John said, “As far as piecing together thine evening goeth, there be one or two other things thou likely ought to hear. In fact, I think mayhap thou had best sit for this.”

Several expressions crossed Horace's face, most notably steely resignation and dread. He slowly pulled a stool over and lowered himself onto it. “Yes?”

“When we, erm.... When thou didst marry me, thou also did to marry Stella.”

Horace relaxed. “I was honestly expecting far worse.”

“And then Sherry was jealous, so Stella and I married her after you left.”

Horace's face remained unchanged but for the widening of his eyes and his color draining once more. “Oh God.”

John spoke again, this time more hastily. “And, well, thou knowst well what Sherry be like, and while I suppose I technically know not for certain, I think she mayhap be taking it seriously.”

“Oh God.”

“Indeed.”

Horace passed his hands over his eyes and remained thus a long silent moment, cobbling together words that would suffice. At last, a long, deliberate breath. “John, 'tis clear that we must needs discuss some things. I am like to be obliged to put my part through writing so as to hone my meaning.”

John gave a brief tender smile at that.

Horace removed his head from his hands and stood, slowly and carefully. “I swear I am not avoiding thee, and shall face this anon; but now I am going to find something to eat, and I am going to drink some cleaned water, and I am going to bed, for I be in no fit state just now to cope with much of anything, least of all our, erm, situation.”

***************

Will had so often trod the path from the Tanningrove homestead back to his own house – more accurately simply his parents house, now that he'd moved to London – that his feet steered him thus without conscious thought. When he did finally notice, he pressed on, for he truly needed sustenance 'ere he did aught else. Still, he reflected, he had best make his meal quick, for he had another matter to attend to as soon as he might; though he was yet uncertain whether he looked to it in apprehension, or in anticipation.

He glanced down at his wrist and the initials freshly written thereon. He hadn't even known the noble was in the area. He would've expected him to still be in Hunsdon this time of year.

End notes: (.....The More the Marrier geddit like 'marry'?)

Thanks so friggin' much for reading! This, the first PARF fic I ever finished, was incredibly difficult to write. Not only was it a different style and tone to anything I've ever written before, but I began it after not writing anything (beyond journaling and approximately five textposts) for six months. Thus, my first draft was the shittiest shitty first draft I e'er have made, the writing clunky and ill-fitting and excruciatingly slow. There's a reason it took me a year.

Please, please, please leave a comment! A line you really liked, a weak phrase, a character voice I absolutely nailed, typos and other corrections, something you found funny. Reactions, impressions. I cannot become a better writer without feedback. At least leave kudos if you enjoyed it.

I'll be recording a podfic of this work over the next who-knows-how-many days, and will link it here when it's done. Please note that I have zero notion of a timeline for that project.

In the meantime, notes on the content of this fic.

Much of the style and tone of this piece was inspired by the Storytime: Voltron is (Basically) a Disaster series by CaffeinatedFlumadiddle. The scene with the forge kittens was based line-for-line on Basically Under Arrest (Part 1).

I have never been drunk or hungover, nor witnessed the same firsthand for any extended time. This is based on other media representations of drunkenness.

The astute reader will notice that I mingle more modern methods of speech with the more Elizabethan dialogue. This was intended to mimic the manner in which the actors do exactly that, particularly in interactions.

The notion of Sheriff Perry taking valuables from an arrested Will was derived from streetwork in week one, in which a rumor went around that the sheriff was taking money from his prisoners. The wording of the rumor was ambiguous, and could've meant either stealing or accepting bribes.

Will abruptly and ardently claiming credit for pranking the sheriff was inspired by Trial and Dunke closing weekend, when Will flung himself enthusiastically at punishment in Horace's stead. I like the idea of Will recklessly throwing himself in potential harm's way for people he cares about, particularly for things of low consequence that everybody treats as though they are serious.

The idea of someone's drunk self pranking their sober self came from a Text From Last Night I have saved somewhere on my external hard-drive and cannot currently be bothered to find.

Streetwork on closing day indicated that the R and J play had been picked up by a producer in London, and that Will would be relocating there shortly.

To be clear, yes, I know the difference between Scylla (six heads, monch monch) and Charybdis (whoosh whoosh, motherfucker). Horace and Will are drunk.

For folk not present at PARF 2017, the cat sìth is explained in this Myths and Legends Finale.

I am neither herbalist nor doctor. I decided on Eskarina's hangover antidote by googling “herbal hangover remedy” or something like that, and selected some plants that I think would've been available in England at the time. I know not if they can be safely mixed, nor even if they would taste foul if they were. I also cannot vouch for their effectiveness.

You will note that I spelled the fire brigade's name as “Emily O'Bales” although it is spelled as “Emily O. Bales” in the program. I altered the spelling thus because I frequently heard her referred to as “mistress O'Bales”, but cannot recall ever hearing he called “mistress Bales”. If the cast made a mistake, I fear it was made to such an extent as to eclipse the technically-correct version.

Are village lanterns a thing? I've heard the term and it makes sense as a thing, so I went with it.

The notion of our Amy Cooper building square barrels came from an episode of QuaranTeatime in which it was mentioned that Amy was expanding her trade into crate-making. She would totally call them square barrels, though.

Speaking of QuaranTeatime. Numbered animals with one creature less than the highest number were brought up in a QuaranTeatime episode as something that was happening in Mount Hope. However, I had planned it into the story before they brought it up.

To be clear, yes, I know the difference between 'orchard' and 'orchid', as you will gather if you note that I spelled it correctly the one time it was in narration and not speech. Will and Horace are drunk.

If you never heard the tale of the wereapple, I'm sorry, idk how to help you.

Horace and Will are in no danger of being mistaken for burglars or anything when they break into Millicent Goodenstone's studio. Streetwork on closing day revealed that Millie was going to travel to Bath to further train and become a real master stonecarver, so this particular home would have been unoccupied at the time.

I am confident that I captured the voices of almost all the characters herein. The exception is Rosalind Anne Uxbridge, whose voice I had great trouble summoning to my mind. I hope I did her justice, and apologize profusely if I did not.

“...it weren't binding in the eyes of anyone, if thou takest my meaning”. The meaning here, of course, is, “It wasn't binding in the eyes of the law because we didn't go through the proper channels, and it wasn't binding in the eyes of God because we didn't fuck.” (The notion that marriage must involve genital muckery in order to be recognized by the Divine is, of course, rubbish, but the idea was prevalent at the time.)

A note on Tanninghop. I both do and do not ship it. If I may be allowed to quote one of my posts: “Whether deliberately or incidentally, the actors subtly play the dynamic [between Horace and John] just a little bit differently every day. Some days, they are as they appear in the plot’s basic premise: two individuals caught in baseless inherited hatred. But sometimes, it seems they were childhood friends before becoming caught in that inherited hatred. Some days, they are exes, the animosity between them potentially beginning with their breakup. A few times, it has seemed that the feud began with the two of them over some petty squabble in like third grade, and merely expanded from there. Once or twice, they inherited the hatred, but each harbors a repressed attraction to the other. Occasionally, they’ve even been secret lovers in the midst of the feud. Watching their interaction has become my favorite part of Queen’s Court, and I always look forward to divining what their exact relationship is on any given day.” Historically, I have always been trash for a unified canon, a specific continuity (or as much of one as is possible in repeated improvised interactive theatre). But in 2019, I fell deeply in love with the kaleidoscope of subtle differences in day-to-day dynamics. Not just in love with each individual dynamic, but in love with the kaleidoscope as a whole, and with the very notion of that kaleidoscope. I thus have no set headcanon about their relationship through which I interpret their story: I have a dozen. That being said, John and Horace are totally in romantic-love in this fic. However, this fic is not canon to my interpretation.

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writingwhywhywhy · 3 years

Text

Derailed Chapter 11

A/N Sorry this is taking forever. The you know makes it hard for me to write. This one should be a lot longer, and it's a lot of explanation. Like wtf is up. I also had to start a new job that is 40 hrs without anyway to write a single thing. Also side note Y/M/N is your mom's name. Life also got complicated since I started so yeah.

"It's a coven." Freya stated

"The long shot was looking for a coven?" You asked slightly confused, while managing to forget that you hadn't told anyone else that Freya was attempting a Hail Mary.

"It was the only available solution. The good news is that they seem to collect in one town." She responded

"Which coven?" Asked Elijah.

"Zavala. They seem to be located about 200 miles from here. They apparently siphon their power from the magic lines that marry into the coven." Freya said.

"So what would they want with me? I have nothing magical about me." You tried to think through the problem

"I say we go and ask them." Dean said

"Sam and I will go in the morning." Klaus commanded

"Great. I am coming with you." You replied

"No." Came from all the men simultaneously.

"If I am or the children I am carrying are what they want, they can't kill me." You stated

"Or you could just be handing them exactly what they want." Klaus replied

"That's why I am not going alone, unless you think between you and Sam you can't defend one measly hunter." You said

"You should understand that witches do have their tricks." Klaus responded

"Hey." Freya started to protest.

"Anyone with brains can see they either underestimated us or didn't think we knew someone powerful enough to track them. Their tricks really are nothing compared to Freya’s." You replied.

"You think I am the brainless one here. I am not.." Klaus started.

"Enough." Elijah commanded.

The room fell silent. "Look, this is getting us no where. Dean, Y/N, and I will head to the town tomorrow. We will politely ask what they want. We are the three people they are lest likely to kill. Plus if they kill one or more of us, they most likely lose whatever they wanted." Elijah reasoned.

The logic was hard to argue with. The room seemed to be hit simultaneously with the sleepiness that everyone had spent the last few weeks earning. A non verbal agreement set in, everyone was going to go to bed. "I hate to admit it, but I think Dean and I might need a guide to our different rooms." You said reluctantly.

"I have got you, love. I believe that Sam has a better sense of direction than his brother." Klaus said

"Sam you can call me if you get lost. I will send my guide to rescue you!" You said exiting.

You stared at Klaus's back as you let your mind wander to tomorrow. It was going to be an awkward car ride. You were so out of it you almost missed when Klaus spoke to you. "You use to never get lost here." He stated

"Yes, but I also use to live here." You replied with no desire to continue the conversation.

"So what is your plan about the kids?" Klaus asked

"I am not sure. I still need more information." You replied

"Hope was a surprise I didn't accept at first. Hayley being pregnant made no sense. I almost missed out on that source of joy. I just want you to know that." Klaus said.

"Yeah but your history with Hayley was a lot less complicated. Plus she didn't have to split locations for her child." You replied

"Sure but her life got a lot more complicated. She made a lot of sacrifices to protect Hope. You might have an easier time." Klaus said

"If you are implying that I don't have a heart, I wish that I didn't because leaving when asked wouldn't hurt. If you are saying I don't love your brother, you are also mistaken. The only think you could be right about is maybe your brother not loving me." You bit back

"If you are blind enough to believe my brother ever stopped loving you, you have not been paying attention. Which makes sense because two men have been falling over themselves and you hardly noticed." He said

You knew exactly who he was talking about and you had to stop this conversation. "Thank you for the compliment but you and Sam really aren't my type." You joked

Klaus glared at you. You glared back. "I believe we have arrived at where you are staying." Klaus said dryly.

"Thank you and goodnight." You said doing your best not to slam the door in his face.

The following morning, you just grabbed your duffel bag and headed straight to the kitchen. Hopefully Dean would be down there and ready to go. You really just wanted to get out of here. The upcoming car ride wasn't going to be pleasant but at lest everyone had the same goal in mind. Hopefully the silence would stay between the three of you.

Dean was waiting with Elijah. The three of you seemed to be like minded and laser focused. Without much talking the three of you packed the impala. The only pause came when the three of you were to get in the car. Dean was obviously driving and someone should take shotgun. You took the backseat you had spent your first year with the Winchesters riding in.

The car ride was silent even with a stop for gas. The air was thick with unease. About ten miles away from the city, Dean announced his intention to get more gas just in-case. Everyone knew the amount of gas on the car would make no difference in the scheme of things, but having this as a last ditch backup plan was comforting a bit.

You decided to go pee. On your walk back to the car a man seemed to stare you down. It freaked you out and you almost ran to the car. "Are you Y/M/N's daughter?" He asked

Your blood ran a bit cold. Very few people knew her name. Your feet were about to turn into a run, but Elijah and Dean flanked you very suddenly. "Yes. I was actually on my way to this town to do some research on my family history." You replied, hoping you would get away.

"Well I should be a lot of help considering we were married for a few years and had a daughter named Clarissa." He replied

Your heart stopped. That had been your oldest sister's name. He was lying you thought. Your mother had never told you any of this. Before you could process, Dean spoke up. "Any help you provide would be great. She dragged me and this guy along. None of us are great with history or directions. Could we follow you to a cafe?"

"Please she is practically family, you all can come to my home." He replied with his eyes drinking you in.

Before you could politely reject, Elijah stared him in the eye and said "You are going to invite me in as soon as we arrive."

You saw the strange man nod, and realized that Elijah had done a small test and intended to compel the answers out of him. In this moment you really wished the Elijah had been on more hunts with you.

The strange man did indeed invite Elijah in, once the three of you arrived. Hope kinda surged in you. Dean was about to set up and ask some questions. You stopped him with one touch and a look. Elijah had a plan and you knew you could trust Elijah.

Elijah was about to compel the man again, but he offered answers freely. "My name is Walter. I am going to go get my photo book. Your mother was a beautiful bride. You might actually put her to shame." He said walking to grab a book.

The three of you still stood. "Please sit. Would you like something to drink?" Walter asked in a way that made you want to trust him.

Your gut instinct told you not to. So you took the seat next to Walter. "No thanks. My mother never mentioned her marriage to you. Do you know why?" You asked

"Oh because she ran away from the coven. We were in love, but your father came along. I am sure I would still recognize my Clarissa. We were set to be the power couple coven leader with the most powerful children. Yet your mother fell for someone else. Did you know it broke your grandparent's hearts?" He chirped away.

"No I did not." You stuttered a bit shocked at how candid he was being.

"Why are you really here?" Walter asked

You prepared the lie, but instead the truth surged out. "I am pregnant with twins and really shouldn't be. Elijah's sister located that this coven stated it."

Dean and Elijah stared at you with a mix of disbelief and anger. You sent apologies back. "Oh boys don't be mad at her. As the coven leader I have an honesty spell on the house. No one can lie inside my house, not even me. Twins are extremely rare and so interesting. So the reason our coven is at fault, is the fact it is your coven. The Zavala coven was struck with a curse that almost chopped us down.

You see the coven use to gain power through marriages. Then a petty more powerful coven foresaw our great power, and lay a very powerful curse upon us. Every other generation would be without magic, and we could only gain power from a line by having two children of that line being born into the Zavala coven.

The part that almost did us in was the fact that they made it impossible for any members of the coven to have children unless they met some requirements. One was mutual love for each other. The other was you had to be past the age of 26."

That hit you like a ton of bricks. The twins you carried proved that they both loved you. You were still processing that when Walter spoke again.

"We fought it by making conceptions guaranteed, no matter what they were or what should stand in the way of having kids. Unless of course, the coven member or members get a magical block put up with consent from the coven member. So boys what were your last names?"

You watched as they both tried and lost the fight to lie. "I herd of your mother, Elijah. Her line seems to be strong. I approve of him. You know his vampire status will not hinder you having a third child. You should have another child with him. If you do that, we will welcome you and your family back. We need more people in the town, and we can keep you protected." Walter said

Your blood went cold. "I am not having children just to please people." You responded

"Oh well. Hopefully Elijah wins you back. Now do you want some tea while I fill you in on my marriage to your mother?" Walter asked with a sick smile.

You wanted to run. "We are going to go." Dean said

"Well you kids remember, we want her and her kids back." He said with the worst smile.

You almost ran out of the house. Your feet flew to the car and you hopped in back. Dean and Elijah were on your heels. You decided to look back as you pulled away. Walter was standing there waving with his horrible smile.

"So I can see why your mom left." Dean tried to joke.

"Well I can see why she never talked about him." You replied

The three of you traveled once again in silence. You stopped at a diner. The three of you selected a table. Your waitress was a pleasant lady who vaguely reminded you of Kathy. Your heart longed for the town you had called an almost home. "What can I get y'all?" She asked

"I will have a burger, Diana." Dean said

"I would prefer a salad, dear." Elijah said

"I want the greatest burger ever and a side of fruit instead of fries, Diana." You said

Diana gave you a weird look. You rubbed your belly and responded "These kids have been giving me the weirdest cravings."

She nodded like she knew that exact feeling. Now Dean and Elijah were giving you weird looks. "Trust me the cravings are very weird." You replied

Dean decided to barrel through. "So the Zavala coven gets their power from breeding their line."

"So basically, don't have another kid with either of you and we should be fine. They can’t gain more power from us." You replied

"You might want to talk to Freya about the birth control options you have." Elijah stated

"Will do. So now we need to get into the meat of this. What are going to do about them?" You asked

"I don't want to force you into anything you don't want." Dean answered

"Look Dean, we need to face some facts. One I never thought about kids before this. My focus has been on survival. The two of you both brought the topic up once, you need to tell me what you want. I am not against being the equivalent of a surrogate for you two. I just need information before I decide anything." You snapped

Dean was a taken a bit back. "If you decide to surrogate, and Dean is not inclined to be a father, I will take both of them. As far as I'm concerned they both are Mikealsons." Elijah volunteered

"Same." Dean mumbled after the shock wore off.

Before you could start the next leg of the conversation, Diana came back. The town washed over you again and you remembered the promise you made what felt like lifetime ago. You grabbed your stomach again. "I know what I want. But man this isn't going to be easy."

You arrived at the compound a few hours later. You walked in with the two men and your duffel bag. The moment the three of your crossed the threshold, you felt more than herd a barrier spell go up. Before you could react to that a figured walked into view. You couldn't believe your own eyes. "Mom?" You asked in a very broken voice.

#elijah x reader #dean winchester x reader #elijah mikaelson x reader #dean x reader #derailed

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ohlayarfp · 3 years

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Film Review - Misteri Dilaila by Syafiq Yusof

Misteri Dilaila is a Malaysian horror thriller film that went viral in 2019. I rarely watch Malaysian films because when i do, it’s usually the same plot all over again. Drama, romance, action, comedy and everyone’s favourite, Horror. I feel like these genres are the usuals everywhere but what makes it unbearable for most of us Malaysians is how similar every story is. Rich boy meets a poor girl. Rich boy falls in love with her and when they get married the mother hates the poor girl. They fight and one day someone dies and the end. For horror, it’s just about some people getting haunted by a ghost that was sent by a close friend of theirs.

The thing I understand about the horror hype for Malaysians is how our culture is deeply rooted with mystical beliefs and as religious as we tend to be, ghost stories seem to intertwine with our faith for countless years. Personally, I believe in Asian ghosts more than the western versions. This is probably due to my own family having our fair share of sights into the world of the undead.

The reason why I chose to talk about this film is because of how disappointed I felt when I watched it. Unlike most Malaysian films, it had the potential to be a great one. The look of the film was far better than the usual ones we got and the story building had a Gone Girl vibe. What made me disappointed was the fact that while watching that film I was hopeful and excited thinking finally a Malaysian Filmmaker is making a psychological horror instead of those in your face jump scares.

The story is about a married couple, Jefri and Dilaila, who were spending their holiday together at a luxury vacation home in Fraser’s Hill. After a petty issue where they end up quarrelling at each other, Jefri discovers his wife went missing the following morning. Next thing he knows, a mysterious woman who also goes by the name of Dilaila shows up one night where she claims to be his wife. Adding more confusion is the supernatural occurrences that regularly haunts Jefri whenever he’s alone in the house.

Throughout the whole film, I was at the edge of my seat thinking that there’s finally a malaysian filmmaker that is about to introduce a character with a mental illness as the protagonist which would’ve justified his hallucinations of the ghost. Unfortunately, it was just like other films where there’s no actual context to the sightings, they were just ghosts being ghosts and haunting him for no reason. Well that’s for the 2nd version of the film.

Another fun fact about this film is that it went viral due to the alternate endings it has. When the film came out in the cinemas, people were surprised to hear that they had different endings when they discussed it with their friends. This was purely the filmmaker and his team’s intention. Different halls have different endings and this was meant to be a surprise for the audiences. It was a great marketing strategy and considered as a genius way of thinking for some people while some were mad that they were being ripped off.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

As a person that watched both versions, I was unsatisfied with both versions as both endings angered me. Nevertheless, I didn’t think it’s an absolute flop though. Both versions have the fair share of plot twists. The first version revealed that the protagonist we thought all along was the actual antagonist. He was the one that killed his own wife whilst every supporting character was a part of the police team that were acting to make him confess to his wrong doings. It was then stated that the hallucinations he got was a result of his guilt and him being under the influence of drugs all along.

The second version on the other hand is more mystical. The ghosts made more appearances in this version. The protagonist is still the good guy but the inspector that was involved in the case turned out to be a fake policeman and he was working with the imposter Dilaila. Towards the end, Jef found out that his wife has been dead a long time ago and the ‘wife’ he was holding turns out to be something else (this we never see on screen though).

Personally if i were to choose an ending, I would choose the 1st version as it makes more sense logically but I can understand why people love the 2nd Version. Malaysians and their thirst for horror films explains the statistics. But a famous film reviewer on YouTube (ZhafVlogs) once made an instagram poll and asked his subscribers to choose between the two versions and surprisingly it was a tie. This proves that the director made the right decision to come up with alternate endings.

*END OF SPOILERS*

The film then landed in a controversy within the next few weeks after the premiere. Someone noticed that the story was awfully familiar. It was then proven that the story was 90% similar to a few films from India, America, Russia and more. People were comparing it to a film called “Vanishing Act” and they were right.

As a film student, I am aware about the concept of adaptation so I personally see no wrong in the filmmaker’s act. However, I can understand why people are mad. The filmmaker went silent once news got out about him “stealing” the idea and “claiming” the story as his. But based on my research, I never found him claiming the story as his before. Although, he also never mentioned about him making a remake of the initial film as well. The filmmaker went silent for a long time and people kept sending him hate comments but soon died after a few months.

A year later, the issue was raised yet again by someone and this caused the filmmaker to finally speak up. He explains the concept of adaptation and how he was inspired by a scriptwriting book called Save The Cat which said that “A good artist copy, but a great artist steals”. He also states about there being so many films abroad that have the similar concept to an older film such as Fast and Furious with Point Break, Avatar with Pocahontas and Inception with Paprika. He finally came clean and stated that he was inspired by a stage play from France called “A Trap for a Lonely Man”. He then added his own twist by adding some horror elements knowing that it being the target audience favourite genre.

Also regarding the quote from Save The Cat, (in my opinion) I feel like what the author was implying is about ‘stealing’ stories from life. Not stealing the exact plot codes from other films. This is based on my understanding from the phrase which I assume Syafiq may have misinterpreted it.

He raised logical points from a filmmaker’s perspective and he also raised some issues about being pressured from his father (Yusof Haslam) and brother (Syamsul Yusof) who were well known filmmakers as well. He said that everyone kept on telling him to be better than his father and brother. Sadly, when he was at his lowest, even his family turned their backs on him and said that it’s fully his fault.

From my point of view, I was initially furious with him for not being able to defend himself by explaining about the adaptation because I feel like most Malaysian audiences are unaware about it. People assume adaptation is from book to film when it's more than that. I, myself, learnt that from film school. And I’m not entirely defending him as well, I’m still disappointed in him for not speaking up sooner. But I do empathise with him as well. The audience were quick to attack him. The film industry in Malaysia is not entirely in the best state for these past few years. So a film like Misteri Dilaila made everyone hopeful for more quality films like it only to be betrayed at the end when they found out that it wasn’t his own creative idea and a total rip off. I still feel like he did a good job with his visuals which was an improvement from the local films around that time.

Reading through the whole issue and looking at how this decision to “copy” the plot codes as he was inspired from the Save The Cat book has opened my eyes. As a filmmaker, I feel like i should always do research before starting on a project and the best thing is to always be honest with our intentions. If it’s inspired by a remake, then set it straight and give credit to the original piece. Don’t keep it to yourself. It is terrifying though, being in his state where everyone turned their backs on him, even his own family. He released a few films after that, saying that film is his job and that it is his source of income so as much as it may seem hard sometimes, life still goes on. Sadly, he received a lot of backlash and people lost their faith in him. People were being sarcastic and teasing him if the film was even his.Seeing that happened to him opened my eyes. People may let it slide but they’ll never forget. Once you screw up, people will remember and use it against you.

Pictures of the set:

Links to Film Reviews:

A Non-Horror Fan's Guide To Watching 'Misteri Dilaila'

https://rojakdaily.com/entertainment/article/6414/a-non-horror-fan-s-guide-to-watching-misteri-dilaila

Misteri Dilaila (2019) Review

https://www.caseymoviemania.com/2019/02/misteri-dilaila-2019-review/

Movie review: Misteri Dilaila

https://www.thesundaily.my/style-life/reviews/movie-review-misteri-dilaila-DJ649603

Link to news about the controversy :

Is Local Horror Film ‘Misteri Dilaila’ a Rip Off? Here’s What The Director Had To Say..

https://juiceonline.com/is-local-horror-film-misteri-dilaila-a-rip-off-heres-what-the-director-had-to-say/

Horror fans slam ‘Misteri Dilaila’ for ripping off Hollywood film ‘Vanishing Act’

https://www.malaymail.com/news/showbiz/2019/03/05/horror-fans-slam-misteri-dilaila-for-ripping-off-hollywood-film-vanishing-a/1729154

Clarification/Statement by the Director about the issue (in Malay);

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=649749852534594&set=pcb.649750949201151

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fan-fantasies · 4 years

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Sea Enchantress (p.6)

A/N: yes, this is back, crazy right? Anyways, this will likely not contain smut, it will be implied but I’m just so out of the loop in writing smut that I don’t think it would come out well. I’m not sure how many more chapters i’ll do. I have requests that I am planning to do. So I guess we will see how well this does. -Breezy

Warnings?: implied smut,

words: 1,234 (short as hell I apologize)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3* Part 4* Part 5

previously

“Thank you, Kylo.” She said softly as she caressed his cheek before her eyes flashed purple once again.

The spirit was in control again.

Her purple eyes closed slowly as she fell into a slumber. Kylo slowly stood throwing his pants on before his brothers came down to the living room to see the naked female on the couch.They both looked at Kylo and he shrugged not particularly wanting to hear their comments.

“It’s clear this girl is gaining control of her body back, slowly,” he began as he walked to the kitchen to get himself some water. “The siren wasn’t present until we were done.” he tells his brothers before taking a sip of water. The three of them were silent, it was a rather long pause as they tried to think of what to do.

The next two weeks went on like this, the siren picked one of them, they would sleep together and she would sleep. Some days she would wake up and want to fuck again but other times she just rested for the rest of the day. During this time, Matt spent most of his time researching how they were to fix this. It’s really all he did unless he was chosen by her then he was typically occupied. There were so many different ways to get rid of the spirit. The easiest one would be to bring her to the beach where they found her. They would have to try and call onto those of her family in order to help but would they actually come?

“So what are we gonna do?” Ben questioned his geeky brother, Ben was covered in sweat meaning he had just come from the guest bedroom where the siren was.

“The easiest would be to bring her to the beach,” Matt began, “Though we will need the help of her family. I’m not even sure if they would come if we called.” he explains.

Ben nods, “But that’s not the only way?”

Matt pauses again, “It’s not the only way, but I feel it may be the easiest way.” he explains, “Some sources say we need a witch. Others say we can’t really don’t anything at all or that the siren is tamable.”

Ben’s gaze instantly snapped to his brother, “Can be tamed?” he questioned with wide eyes. Matt rubbed the back of his neck, “Well when push comes to shove, the siren will get bored and will leave her body. Though that could take months, years even.”

“Well we don’t have that long,” Kylo says as he walks into the room, “I think she can fight back though, with enough help.” Matt and Ben looked at Kylo confused at this,

“Seriously? Neither of you have noticed?” he let out a heavy, “I told you two weeks ago. Sometimes during occasions, you can see that her eyes change color and her personality may change briefly.” Kylo states almost in a matter of fact tone, “If we can get a few moments to talk to her and not the siren, then we may be able to get somewhere.”

“But the full moon is tonight, do we risk taking her to the beach and see what happens? Or what else?” Ben questioned,

“I say we go to the beach, see if her family shows. If they don’t then we will have to find a new way.” Kylo states before leaving the room. Ben opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the sweet calling of the siren.

“Beeeeeennnnn, where did you go?” Ben looked at Matt before leaving the room with a huff. Matt sat himself back in his desk chair, he pushed up his glasses before sighing. Tonight was going to be a long night. The siren giggled as Ben flopped down in the bed next to her,

“Where did you go?” she pouted, “I missed you,” she nuzzled into his side. “I went to go to the bathroom and ended up talking with my brothers.” she looked up at him just as Kylo walked by the door.

“Speak of the devil. Why don’t you join us?” Ben says looking at his brother. Kylo just shrugged before entering the room, closing the door behind him. She looks at Ben and then at Kylo, both of them? She was silent as Kylo placed a hand on her exposed thigh. From behind her, Ben kissed the side of her neck.

“Is this alright? Is this what you want?” he questioned, his voice low and sensual. Without a second thought she nodded her head. The two brothers looked at each other before Kylo instantly took charge. He climbed onto of her quickly, a hand instantly grabbing her neck gently. Her eyes went wide with shock before Kylo smashed his lips to hers. She knew of Kylo’s dominance but this was something new.

Kylo pulled away and looked at the siren, “I hope you’re ready,” he said lowly, a shiver running down her spin. She didn’t say a word but she nodded at his statement. Things seemed to quickly escalate, Kylo quickly losing his clothes and joining the two in bed. Just as Ben and Kylo guessed, the siren fell asleep right after their encounter with her. The two brothers silently got dressed, neither of them daring to speak mainly cause this was the first time they had done anything like this.

Kylo scooped the girl up, bringing up the girl out the the car. Matt was already downstairs waiting for them.

“Took you two long enough,” he states,

Ben snickers, “If you wanted to join, you should have asked,”

“No,” Kylo says as he enters the room, “Now lets get going,”

The three of them got in the car, they didn’t know what to expect when they got to the beach. Would her family actually show up? Or would they have to take this into their own hands? It was quiet, no one dare say anything. Upon arriving to the beach, it was completely empty. The three of them brought her out towards the shore, Matt held a notebook in his hands which had everything they needed in order to hopefully call this.

“I am calling to the merfolk of the sea, please come to us.” Matt calls out to the ocean, his voice echoing slightly. All that could be heard was the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. The tide slowly creeping higher and higher. They waited for what seemed like hours but no one came to them.

“If the tide keeps moving in, we are gonna have to leave.” Ben states as he stays by the siren. She begins to stir in the sand, when her eyes open they weren’t their signature purple.

“Th-They won't come... No matter how much you call,” her voice soft, clearly full of sadness. “They don’t care about me,” Tears began to fall from her eyes. The brothers looked at each other, unsure of what to do.

“Just leave me here, the ocean will take me away and I will perish by the sunrise.” Tears continued to stream down her cheeks, she seemed to be giving up. The brothers seemed to not want to take that as an answer.

“No, we are going to help you get rid of this monster. We are just gonna have to find another way.” Ben says picking her up and bringing her back to the car. Before leaving, Matt pulled two jars from his pocket, throwing in sand in one and water in the other. This would be one interesting encounter for sure. Permanent for all: @lokilvrr @m-a-t-91 @blueeyedbesson Taglist: @babiee-solo

#kylo ren #kylo ren imagine #ben solo #ben solo imagine #Matt the radar technician #matt the radar technician imagine #solo!triplets #kylo ren series #star wars #star wars imagine #kylo ren smut #adam driver

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sonicringbond · 3 years

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Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey - Scene 16

And here we go, the second update since the schedule change! It’s really so weird only posting twice a week, but survey results implied that would be best for everyone.

Onto the scene itself, I’m really enjoying writing with a dual narrator approach. I need to be really careful with it in the future though as it’s very easy to over use it. But that’s for me to worry about. For everyone else I just ask that you enjoy...

“OW! Is that really necessary!”

Rosy held nothing back as she yelped in tune to the jingling of lost Rings. The black robed priest looked at her confused that she would ask, but still answered her all the same.

“It is customary to strike free the Rings that we come into contact with on our travels.”

“But you could just ask me!” Rosy huffed while puffing up her cheeks. “I don’t see the point but if you just asked, I would turn them over.”

The priest sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. “You do not understand child. The nature of the Rings… If we do not strike you the energies binding them to this world will not be released.”

“Hrmm~!” Her cheeks growing redder and larger as she tried to keep in her anger, Rosy eventually let it all go with a sigh. “I still don’t see the point. Rings are helpful.”

“They are an accursed thing child. Were you not taught this already?”

“I’ve been taught plenty of times, but where I’m from Rings are just accepted as normal and used to keep everyone connected.”

“It’s hard to fathom such a distant land exists,” the priest scoffed and again Rosy’s cheeks puffed up in frustration. It was unlikely she would get anywhere with the priest and soon headed off, though not without pulling down on an eyelid and sticking her tongue out at him when he was not looking.

~I know making faces at the priest wasn’t going to help me, but he was such a jerk I had to do something. He also wasn’t why I had traveled to Jutting Rock Village either. Though it wasn’t like I could just walk around town and stumble onto the source of the rumors. Not that I didn’t want to walk around town. Tee-hee~♫

~No one knew where the ancient ruin had come from, or even what it was built for. The town itself had been built on it sometime in the past and even past Ring Shifts had not dislodged it. That afforded the town a sort of fun atmosphere as no one was scared of losing their homes. Windmills adorned various streets and stairwells that threaded through the ruin and high up to it’s upper reaches. The stone slab road seemed kind of silly compared to the colorful pebbly roads of the town. Trees growing out of the side of the ruin were amazing to see to. And it wasn’t just the ruin either, everything had plants of some kind or another covering it. The moss and flowers were my favorites, though some of the vines looked like they could lead me to interesting places. It was the type of town I could get happily lost in so easily. Fortunately for me I was kind of famous in a way, tee-hee~!~

“Excuse me miss.”

“Hm?” Rosy tilted her head back as someone called from among the busy market stall lined street. Turning fully around to see if she could figure out who called her, a young human man with pasty skin tumbled out of the crowd holding a cloth to his sweaty brow. He was well dressed as though he worked for someone important but seemed terribly flustered and worn out. “Did you call me?”

Walking to the man as he braced himself on his knees Rosy clasped her hands behind her back and began to sway absent mindedly.

“Y-yes!” The man exclaimed between gasping breathes. He was obviously not in good shape and Rosy felt sorry for him.

“I hope I didn’t upset you at all,” Rosy somewhat apologized as she looked him over curiously. He did not appear to be a threat, but alone as she was in a strange land Rosy could not afford to be too careful. She was sure though that it was more likely him that needed help rather than her and offered him such. “Maybe I could help you out?”

“P-p-please! If you would be so kind miss.”

Scratching her cheek Rosy laughed nervously. “Well, if it isn’t too much I guess.”

~I have a love of fortune telling and keep a deck of tarot cards with me, my oldest friends really, so I knew before I ever arrived that today would be fortunate. The silly man who called out to me was a servant of an old man who saw me from his bedroom window while I was wandering around town. His reason for wanting to see me was kind of sad though, even if it was fortunate for me.~

“AH~! It’s really everyone! I can’t believe it!” Rosy eyes shimmered with joy at the framed picture of her and her friends on a bedside table in a plush and cozy room of a well-off sapient owl. In material wealth at least. Looking from the table to the venerable owl who lay in his bed watching her with eyes that had almost lost all sight to an unsightly white film, Rosy’s tail stopped wagging and she calmed herself down. “If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get it?”

“It’s a funny story,” the owl breathed, smiling at Rosy. “My son came across it and thought you were perhaps performers. It has been some time since I’ve watched any and he thought it would cheer me up bound to bed as I am. Imagine my surprise when I saw you walking by garbed as you are. The way you carried yourself It was obvious that you were no performer, but rather a traveler. Such a curious outfit for that lifestyle.”

“Well, it’s kind of multipurpose,” Rosy laughed embarrassed. “I can run, and tumble, and swim in it, and it’s so pretty too. Though I don’t remember how I got it anymore, just that I wear it when I travel…”

A sad smile came to Rosy’s face and she kicked at the carpeted floor as she clasped her hands behind her back. She was not one to dwell on sorrows though and thought she would cheer up the old owl instead. “But, while I’m not a performer I tell fortunes as a hobby and could tell you yours if you’d like. Or maybe I could try to perform a little bit. I’m pretty acrobatic and good at tumbling and somersaults and twirling!”

“Why that would be delightful! Yes, I would like that very much!”

~And so, I did my best to entertain the kindly old owl. He was so much nicer than the pirate owl who was chasing me and my friends. And maybe it was his age or health, but it was his son’s fortune he wanted to know and not his. I’m glad it was a good one too as it made him so happy.

~I ended up staying in town for another day or so trying to figure out how I could ask him for the picture. It would help so much in finding everyone, but it made him so happy to imagine us being traveling performers that I couldn’t just take it from him. But I didn’t need to.

~His house servant found me again while I let myself get lost in town. He was really sad too as the old owl had passed away. His last request of his house servant was to let me have the picture so I could find my friends. It was just like my cards had foretold. I would be very fortunate in Jutting Rock Village. But why did the old owl have to die?

~No matter how many times I’ve watched the sun rise and set I know I haven’t aged a day. Is it because I interact with the Rings in this strange land? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know. But I do know I don’t want to waste the old owl’s gifts. He wanted me to find my friends and so I will. With the help of the picture he gave me.~

“But I wonder who made it?” Rosy pondered aloud as she walked along the stone slab road that led from Jutting Rock Village. “I know we didn’t have time to make a picture after we took it, so how?”

Pulling the folded photograph from one of the puffy shoulders of her leotard, Rosy finally noticed writing on the back.

“This is–!”

-If you’re reading this Rosy-lass, consider it a gift from your friend, Mach Frog Gill. Though really, just me tossing fortunes to the wind and hoping it’ll indebt you to me instead. I could always use help gathering more Rings.-

“What do you even need Rings for Gill?” Rosy laughed and wiped away the tears welling in her eyes. “No one likes them to begin with that I’ve met. Ooh~! I guess I’ll just have to find you too so I can ask!”

Her mind made up, and a clue to finding someone she knew in hand, Rosy picked up her pace and soon was speeding along at a pace that would take her to distant lands in hours. Her next adventure had begun, and she would chase it to the ends of the world.

Scene 16 · CLEARED Rosy the Traveler, End

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And there we are, the first episode of Rosy the Traveler. I hope everyone enjoyed this tinier and more intimate style of adventure with the dual narrator approach. And perhaps it’s a bit of a sad story, but I really hope everyone enjoyed it all the same and will look forward to the next episode.

Thank you everyone!

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Story Format by @cutegirlmayra Story by @JoshTarwater/SonicFanJ Illustration by Nella @NellaSanchz on Twitter Inspiring Song - Granblue Fantasy — Lumacie Archipelago Mysterious Forest

Fair Use Disclaimer

Sonic the Hedgehog and all affiliated characters and logos are the express property and Copyright© of SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS used without permission under Title 17 U.S.C Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 in which allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. “Fair use” is use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be considered copyright infringement. The Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey alternate universe (AU) consumer written work of fiction is a non-profit transformative work primarily for personal use and can and will be taken down without warning or prior notice at the request of the copyright holder(s) should it not be recognized under “fair use”.

*Sonic Ring Bond logo created by DEE Art – twitter.com/daryliscute.

Sonic Ring Bond AU and Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey are the creation of Joshua David Tarwater/ynymbus/sonicfanj/@Joshtarwater and is to be, including all contents herein considered for all legal purposes the property of the Sonic the Hedgehog intellectual property (IP) and copyright owners, SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS. All story contributors via prompt, suggestion, written scene, art, and all and every other contribution acknowledge that all contributed material is forfeit for legal purposes to SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS upon official request from SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic fan fiction #sonic au #sonic au series #sonic ring bond #the journey #classic amy #amy rose #rosy the rascal #au amy #amy redesign

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zdbztumble · 5 years

Text

So About That Roxas…

Well, it’s that time - time to invite unholy disdain upon myself for my blasphemous views on fan favorite Roxas!

OK, that’s an exaggeration. I don’t know how unpopular what I’m about to say really is. And to make this perfectly clear up-front - I don’t dislike Roxas. I think he’s a fine character, and his (very) long prologue is one of the strongest parts of KH II. But I do find Roxas more valuable and compelling in how he relates to other characters, and in the fact that he is an aspect of Sora, than in his own right. All on his own, I don’t find Roxas to be particularly active or interesting.

And that isn’t a flaw. Given what Nobodies are (prior to DDD, at least), I would expect that from Roxas. Almost every member of Organization XIII isn’t terribly dynamic or dimensional on their own merits - their personalities are one-note (if that), which can be by turns tragic, obnoxious, or an effective foil for the protagonists. When Roxas draws jealousy from Hayner, general confusion from his friend group, some amount of pathos from Axel, mixed emotions from Riku and disdain from DiZ, and attraction from Namine, he’s a great example of the latter. I never find him obnoxious, and when he is on his own, there is a sense of tragedy with him. Because while Roxas may have agency, and does display a curiosity - almost an obsession, after a while - with gaining answers for the strange things happening to him, he’s ultimately empty. None of his joys, none of his curiosity - and not even his rages and despairs - last. He ends up defaulting, always, into a quiet, resigned, and hollow state, and he doesn’t seem happy about that.

This is true of the Twilight Town prologue, at least. In the brief flashbacks we’re given in KH II, and at the beginning of the Sora/Roxas fight, a different Roxas appears. He’s still empty at the core, but his front to the world is crueler, dismissive even of the words of his supposed best friend Axel, and predatory. We learn later in the game that DiZ altered Roxas’s personality when he dropped him into the digital Twilight Town, and it’s not hard to see why. Even with the altered personality, the strongest display of feeling Roxas can manage is anger. It’s only when Roxas confronts Sora, accepts him as “a good other,” and fully rejoins with him, that Roxas appears genuinely happy and alive in KH II.

But I do have problems with how Roxas is used, in KH II and especially in 358/2 Days. To start with II - there are some pretty big missed opportunities. Roxas was a member of Organization XIII, presumably working toward their goals (to go just on what we see in KH II), and every member of the Organization who sees Sora recognizes Roxas within him. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have someone else do the same? If, when visiting one of the Disney worlds that Sora hasn’t been to before, there was a character who had a negative encounter with Roxas, and therefore fears Sora and the Keyblade?

The lack of any such scene speaks to a larger problem with Roxas in KH II: his limited relevance once the prologue ends. He does come up here and there throughout the play time, which I do appreciate, but he doesn’t really have an impact on Sora before their clash other than as a source of mild confusion. Sora’s reactions to being called by Roxas’s name never progress much past “huh? Cut that out!” and he has no real reaction to learning that his own Nobody was a member of Organization XIII. Had Roxas’s activities over the past year created a negative consequence that Sora had to deal with, that might have invited some internal conflict within Sora’s heart, culminating in a much more emotionally charged clash with Organizers like Xibar and Saix. Hell, even without such a scene, the knowledge that a part of him was a member of the bad guys could have, and should have, made Sora feel at least a little upset. That’s not to say that the absence of such a mini-arc is a dealbreaker for KH II; what we did get works well enough. But, much like Roxas himself, something seems to be missing.

A future game might have been able to address this issue...had it not been for 358/2 Days.

This isn’t a revisit of Days; I can’t very well revisit a game I only ever played the first few minutes of, years ago, before losing touch with the friend who had the DS card for it. You’ll get no views of the gameplay here. But I am familiar with Days; I’ve read the breakdowns, researched its writing, and watched the movie multiple times. And I gotta tell ya - I know the game has its fans, and it may have some strengths and concepts missing from other titles, but I really don’t care for its story. And that has a lot to do with how it mishandles Roxas.

I’ll start with a caveat - I am not the audience for Days. At no point while playing KH II did I ever want to know any more about Roxas or the Organization than that game saw fit to reveal. What we got was enough for them to work as the villains in that story, and that’s all I ever needed them to be. This was always going to be an easy title for me to skip, or at least not take any real interest in. But that’s a matter of taste. Plenty of people take more interest in the backstories of Roxas and the Organization than I do, and this was perfectly acceptable as a subject for a midquel game. But the execution, IMO, is a complete mess. It ignores or retcons several of the snippets we get about the Organization in KH II, to poor effect, and fails to expand on any of the villainous Organizers in a way that might turn them from one-note video game bosses and elements of a hive mind into fleshed-out characters. Axel is given several coats of whitewash, and his history with Saix lacks any resonance when Saix is left as such a hollow villain. There’s no playing alongside Disney characters in a game so given over to original KH lore, and that lore is rewritten in ways I don’t like. The trends of mystery for its own sake and teasing histories and future events at the expense of the story at hand continue, the same few points of lore and logistics are over-stressed, and the dialogue and voice acting just isn’t good (and can anyone tell me why they re-dubbed Christopher Lee in the HD movie version? I mean...it’s Christopher Lee!)

But as I said, the real problem is with Roxas. For a character meant to be the protagonist, Roxas cedes a lot of narrative real estate to new character Xion. Like Days itself, I know Xion has fans - ardent fans. I can’t argue with that, nor would I want to; you can like what you like, and I won’t assess and critique her as a character here. But all I can say about Xion is that, as a writer, she strikes me as redundant. A member of Organization XIII, unusually lacking in knowledge about their life beforehand, wielding the Keyblade, inducted into the Organization within this game, derived from Sora through unusual means, with a connection to Kairi and whose existence arrests Sora’s full restoration from the events of CoM; setting her character aside, Xion’s narrative function is exactly what Roxas’s was established to be by KH II.

One could say that the game makes a point of this, turning it into an orchestrated conflict between the two by Xemnas, but practically speaking, this means that Roxas spends a key chunk of the story displaced. He becomes a friend on the sidelines as the real meat of the story concerns a character who, from the very beginning, anyone who played KH II would know isn’t going to matter past this game. This ends up making Xion more important, and more interesting, than Roxas within Days itself. But almost everything that Xion goes through could have easily been given to him by dint of what we see in KH II. That Sora’s restoration is upset because his memories of Kairi are being absorbed into another being would have been especially appropriate for Roxas, since Kairi’s very name is always fractured in the restoration process during II’s prologue at first, and the process itself is at such a low number despite a year having passed until Roxas is in DiZ’s hands. Those character elements unique to Xion herself, and the conflict between her and Roxas engineered by Xemnas, aren’t enough to justify her presence in the larger KH story IMO, and end up confusing elements of the lore (replicas, memories, etc.) If she had been cut, and those aspects of her story relating to Sora’s restoration given to Roxas, the story and lore integrity would’ve been better for it.

But that wouldn’t have solved everything wrong with Roxas in Days. Let’s look back at what KH II shows us of a pre-DiZ Roxas again. A cold and predatory figure; the Dusks who first come for him in Twilight Town address him as their “liege,” implying that they served him the way other Nobodies serve the Organizers; the Organizers themselves seem to have been quite close to Roxas, taking his betrayal hard and referring to him as “brother.” And Organization XIII, as we see it in KH II vanilla, is a collective, with no real secret about its motives within the ranks - that motive being, in so many words, to let the remaining Heartless continue their genocide across the worlds just so that they can swoop in with the Keyblade, harvest the captive hearts, and offer them up to their Kingdom Hearts in a mad bid to gain hearts of their own.

So why is Roxas so innocent in Days?

That cold exterior, the flashes of temper - that’s not what we get from Roxas here. What we get is a blank slate who becomes a puppy as he strikes up a buddy-buddy relationship with Axel, and who later performs the same function for Xion. He talks about fighting the darkness and asks hopefully if he’s performing “good” deeds. His interactions with his friends show him to be cheerful and open. The Samurai are supposedly under his command, but that’s a detail relegated to the reports. His relationships with anyone in the Organization other than Axel and Xion don’t even warrant scenes in the movie, and nothing suggests that they would deem him “brother;” Saix and Xemnas regard him as no more than a tool . And even though he’s destroying Heartless with the Keyblade, and those hearts are becoming part of the Organization’s Kingdom Hearts...somehow this is a point he needs explained several times? And he and Xion openly doubt why they need hearts at all - a point presented as one to be sympathetic toward, despite everything from KH II and a good chunk of this very game stressing that it is in fact a problem that Nobodies lack hearts?

This is not what was indicated in KH II. What’s worse, it’s boring. A far more effective choice IMO would have been to let Roxas be villainous. Go the dark protagonist route; give us a cold hunter of a character, with the impulsive anger and fractured psyche Sora showed in CoM, fully aware of what the Organization is up to and the price that others will pay for it and still committed to the cause. Then, when the events of CoM play out in the background, and fragments of Sora’s memories find their way to Roxas (assuming we still cut Xion in this scenario), that’s the turning point. That’s when Roxas can doubt the Organization’s cause, when he can begin to question his lack of memories and his true identity, and betray the Organization by setting out to find Sora. Give him two separate fights with Riku, to justify the dialogue claiming such in KH II. Let him develop some awareness of Namine after he gets Sora’s memories; Namine’s dialogue in KH II indicates that they’ve never met before, but a connection at a distance could serve to give more substance to their relationship, and supply Namine with opportunities to develop as a character. Depict the scenes where she first comes into contact with DiZ and Riku, agrees to take on their help in restoring Sora’s memories, and feels conflicted about the moral gray area their harsh but necessary actions occupy. Let her be ultimately responsible for setting Riku on the right trail that ends up bringing Roxas into their hands.

Of course, one reason why they may have opted not to do this is because having a dark protagonist complicit in an evil scheme involving the deaths of countless people may have been difficult to pull off while still earning an E10 rating at most. And honestly, the story told by Days doesn’t strike me as necessarily the best fit for a video game even as-is. They might have been better off with planning it as a proper movie from the get-go, instead of a string of cutscenes divorced from the gameplay as they ultimately presented it in the HD collections.

And another objection to this approach might have been that a villainous Roxas and morally ambiguous Namine might have been less “likable,” and therefore less usable in future titles. To that I say - so what? I didn’t want Roxas and Namine as characters in any titles past KH II anyway - not because they were bad characters, or because I didn’t like them, but because their stories concluded. Concluded on terms they chose, and were at peace with. It was tinged with a bittersweet quality, but they did get a “happy” ending. If a midquel story complicated their morality, that wouldn’t negate the events of KH II or the resolution they received; it would have created a journey to get them to that point, starting from a much darker place, and given more weight to the idea that it was necessary for them to rejoin with Sora and Kairi. I’d argue that would enrich what we see in KH II, whereas the actual route they took in titles like DDD and KH III disregards or undermines everything that made the ending of KH II work.

#z's crits #kingdom hearts #roxas #namine #kingdom hearts 2 #critique #commentary #358/2 days #xion

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