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comradekatara · 3 months

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i am very curious about your thoughts on various utena/atla character parallels… every once in a while i see you offhandedly compare like.. korrasami and utenanthy and i’m like HOLD ON this is so true! if you have any further ideas about that i would LOVE to hear them. i honestly don’t know how big the audience is for rgu/atla analysis but i am definitely part of that audience. 😭

yesss i can't believe you're literally the first person to ask me this lately i've been making rgu references on like, every single post i'm shameless!!!!! over the summer i even wrote (like 95% of) an essay comparing sokka and nanami (tldr; they are meat) and i have yet to revisit it (bc i'm scared tbh) but i will post is eventually that is a PROMISE (for an audience of 5 people). also before we go any further my utena blog is @saionjeans and we have fun there. also, i have some utena/atla crossover art here and here, so check that out if you haven't already. the rest of this post will be scattered thoughts because my nanami-sokka essay will be doing a lot of the in-depth analytical work and i don't need to rehash that all now. but also, because i have never not once in my life heard of brevity, i did write a bunch of mini essays anyway, because of course i did.

korrasami and utenanthy: love and abuse

i compared utenanthy to korrasami a couple times, most notably in this post where i talk about how meaningful their relationship is despite being (arguably) underdeveloped, and then in the tags i still have to acknowledge that utena and anthy nonetheless did it better 17 years prior. but i do think that there is so much to be said for utena-korra and anthy-asami as two young women who are both set up to be "special" but in a way that denies and restricts them from their own humanity, cloistering them away from the outside world and making them more vulnerable to abuse. i talked pretty recently about how asami's abuse is really shrugged under the carpet in a way that pisses me off if i think about it for too long. rgu does such an incredible job of gradually exposing that abuse and its effects on society, not as a deviation from the norm (of the nuclear family, of the romance, of the school, etc.) but in fact a common symptom of it. lok does not critique the nuclear family in any meaningful way despite setting up so many different areas through which such a critique could be facilitated (made worse by the fact that atla sets such a fantastic precedent). but anyway, enough about lok (and how she disappoints me).

2. miki & kozue and katara & sokka: siblings and memory

in my sokka-nanami essay i talk about how various characters can be read to embody various analogues, but how my focus in that essay is primarily to draw a parallel between sokka and nanami by using the framework for gender/patriarchal logic rgu establishes. however, i also talk about how azula can be read as a nanami (or even an anthy) figure, as well as how katara and sokka can be read as miki and kozue (katara = miki and sokka = kozue, obviously) (and note that kozue and nanami are significant foils/mirrors too). i mean, they even have a similar light blue (to signify naïveté, innocence, childlike wonder) versus dark blue (to signify cynicism, jadedness, resigned subsumption into harmful norms) color scheme going on. the Special sibling and the afterthought. (although before going forward i do want to be clear that i am in no way alluding to any incestuous undertones wrt katara and sokka, and i would even argue that the allusions to incestuous desire between miki and kozue are more complex and nuanced than simply reducing it to mere perversion. but that's beyond the scope of this ask lol)

i know that some people might bristle at my comparing katara to miki (baby misogynist, little freak) but miki really exemplifies the trope of the "sunlit garden" in the same way that katara exemplifies that trope in atla. miki isn't the narrator of course (akio is), but the central motif of desire staked to an illusory formative memory since lost that defines a character's motivations and self-becoming is first properly introduced (not including the utena meeting dios intro) and defined through his obsession. in the same way, we are introduced to the world of atla through katara's formative memories, her desire that motivates her self-becoming also being an illusory formative memory, as well as a tale she longs to replicate ("the four nations living together in harmony"). katara, like miki, is defined by her naïveté and childlike innocence, her somewhat reductive desire to be noble and heroic, and her need to flatten everything into a clear-cut narrative wherein she is always its heroine. like miki, she resents her sibling for being transformed into a more cynical version of themselves in accordance with society's pressures (in kozue's case, it's the inescapability of patriarchy, whereas in sokka's case, it's... a lot of things), and longs for a time when they were "truly happy" and playing together (playing piano, playing in the snow, you get it).

both kozue and sokka heavily subscribe to patriarchal logic and comport and reduce themselves in accordance with the dictums of a world they consider truly inescapable. kozue seeks power within her limited frame, whereas sokka only seeks power insofar as it allows him to assume his very narrow role of protector, but they both assume those limitations to be ontological and fixed in a way that does not allow them to see past it. however, the lack of empathy both miki and katara refuse to attempt in understanding their worldviews, in no way making an effort to broach that misunderstanding instead of simply letting the chasm between them fester, nonetheless implicates them equally. after all, they too both adhere to their own limited worldviews, only in their worldviews they are fundamentally special and thus beyond reproach. sokka and kozue are both integral aspects of katara and miki's sunlit gardens, and their idealized return to a picturesque nostalgia involves a transformation (or regression) of sokka and kozue into their more innocent former selves. and sokka and kozue are in turn obsessed with katara and miki, the central figure around which their identity and actions revolve.

through this framework, aang thus becomes katara's anthy (aangthy, hehe), as the embodiment of katara's hopeful/nostalgic ideal of heroism, companionship, and the idealized promise of a distant irretrievable past. like anthy with kozue, aang "replaces" katara's longing for the softer, more innocent version of her brother with aang's friendship. like miki with anthy, katara possesses romantic feelings for aang despite his functioning as a replacement for sokka before he became a shell of his former self (or kozue before she became... sexually active). this is because katara, like miki, idealizes the patriarchal narratives that dictate that all significant relationships be either romantic or familial (or both). she wholeheartedly subscribes to this notion, hence why she attempts to subsume everyone who can meaningfully fit into her narrative framework as either a lover (aang, haru, jet, zuko for all of 2 seconds) or a pseudo family member (aunt wu, hama, pakku, toph, etc etc.), replicating those dynamics as many times as she needs to to make them fit within her two dimensional tapestry. and crucially, coming face to face with yon rha subverts that, because she recognizes the messy humanity spilling forth from the neat boxes she puts people in, and must thus contend with her own role in her narrative. of course miki, being a side character and not the narrator, certainly not the hero, does not get this luxury. and he must find a way to grow up anyway.

3. akio and ozai: patriarchy

there's something truly incredible about how both akio and ozai manage to inflict psychological harm upon every single character in their respective shows, even if they never interact with those characters directly. their reach is vast and spindly; it cannot be overestimated. and yet, ozai has only reigned for about six years. akio is only acting chairman of ohtori academy. they are not patriarchy itself, but merely its signifier. and obviously their modes of embodying patriarchy differ in many respects: a school is not a nation (despite the similarities), and a father is not a brother (despite akio being father-like). ozai is defeated by by being stripped of his technology of violence, whereas akio is not "defeated" in a literal sense (although i suppose anthy driving a car through his ghost and exploding him into a cloud of roses does make quite the statement), anthy merely leaves. and yet, in both instances, they are both forced to succumb to their own limited ideology regarding what constitutes power. if ozai lacks firepower, he lacks control over his subjects and the right to sovereignty. if akio's control is challenged, if people realize that they can just leave, that the ends of his world are entirely arbitrary, he no longer has the power to abuse and exploit and use others for his own ends.

the metonymic signification of patriarchy figured through both ozai and akio in dual ways further emphasizes their respective roles. ozai is both king and father, akio is both (acting) chairman and (acting) father. patriarchy dictates every aspect of [a patriarchal] society: from interpersonal dynamics to the nuclear family to the school to the state to the world. what makes both akio and ozai so brilliant in this regard is the fact that their influence is reflected in all these facets. ozai abuses every member of his family individually; controls them as a system; inflicts his (family's) propaganda onto the fn education system, rewriting history with (almost) no one to disprove him; inflicts his imperialist agenda both within the fire nation (ruining local economies through industrialization, forcing citizens to conform to restrictive roles, inflicting violence through occupation) and beyond it; he refers to the world as "my world," as if he is its creator, its owner, or its god. and in many ways, he is. akio similarly abuses everyone interpersonally (most notably anthy, touga, and utena); subsumes utena into his nuclear family system so that she cannot leave; uses the academy as a site of control in which adolescents are forced to comply with socially codified norms and thus made more vulnerable to the influence of adult authority figures (especially those who emphasize their individuality or inherent specialness when compared with the rest of the student body); operates ohtori as a sort of nation wherein patriotism is reified through the use of uniforms, affiliations, sociopolitical hierarchies, and an acting government (the student council); and defines himself as the creator/owner/god of his world. to be end of the world. to embody not an apocalypse, but a cage.

ozai and akio both fashion themselves the entire world, but it also makes them more vulnerable to resistance, to any mode of critique that points out the obvious: no, you're just one person, and the logic you use to dominate others is deeply, noticeably flawed. it's a logic that they exploit but that in turns exploits them, as they have so deeply internalized it that they can no longer immunize themselves against any kind of resistance. ozai claims that there is no room for an air nomad in his world, which is why aang defeating ozai through the pacifist values of his people and not through his greater power (which would nonetheless be subscribing to ozai's logic, and thus letting him win ideologically if not physically) is so crucial in shattering ozai's paradigm. just as utena, as someone who refuses to conform to the strict, arbitrary, and violently enforced norms of patriarchy, can so thoroughly disrupt akio's control by resisting him. just as anthy can by leaving. akio remains in his cozy little coffin, exerting meaningless control to uphold the hollow puppet of his ego.

people sometimes joke about how long it takes for zuko to recognize that the burning off of half his face was "cruel" and "wrong," but it's not that zuko didn't find it painful, it's not that zuko didn't fear his father, it's not that zuko idolized his father beyond reproach. he questioned his cruelty, in fact he did so constantly. he simply saw no other way to live. he had no conception of a world beyond ozai's defined limits, had no choice but to believe ozai's dogma and loathe himself for not sufficiently adhering to it. similarly, people often ask "if anthy could leave all along, then why didn't she?" because she, too, was trapped in a coffin of her own self-loathing. to leave an abuser is not as simple as simply stepping beyond the threshold and never looking back. first, you must locate the threshold. then, you must find the courage to look beyond it. i briefly touched on azula being an anthy figure before. well, i think that she is. just because she has yet to see beyond the threshold does not mean she does not find her limits. and yes, its not triumphant, and yes, her facade that masks her pain and fear is shattered, but ultimately, that breakdown is a good thing for her. because that's her first step to freedom.

4. the sunlit garden as mythmaking events

i talk previously in this post about the motif of "the sunlit garden" in rgu vs what i like to call "a mythmaking event" in atla, and i do want to elaborate on that slightly. i provided a link to a post on my utena blog going into what the sunlit garden "is" for each principal character, and atla has a similar mode of communicating these nostalgic desires and idealizations that motivate self-becoming, largely through flashbacks. for aang, it is quite obvious, as his memories of a before and after are (temporally, although not psychologically) fragmented by an entire century. that disconnect severs the two versions of himself quite neatly. those memories with gyatso and the other air nomads (as well as with child bumi, and with the mysterious kuzon) are his idealized past, his "sunlit garden," whereas the storm is his mythmaking event, the point in his life where his choices collide with his telos. there is no going back.

katara and sokka have a similar sunlit garden, their snowball fight being the last truly happy memory they have before the black snow falls and their childhood innocence is severed from them forever. kya's sacrifice and murder is katara's mythmaking event as she then chooses to assume the mantle of her mother who took her place, decides to become the greatest waterbender possible to compensate for surviving the genocide, and chooses to be a hero so that the collective memory and sacrifices of her people will not be in vain. like utena, she witnesses pain and suffering at a very young aged and is moved to become a hero so as to mitigate that suffering, even if her own formative tragedy can never be rectified. also like utena, she idealizes a seemingly utopian past wherein violence was more covert and thus presented itself as more ideal (the time of princes vs the time of harmony). her naïveté and persistent idealism are both her downfall and her greatest virtue. she refuses to accept the true state of the world to the point of blindness, but it is also that refusal to accept it that allows her to force the world into a kinder shape.

as for sokka, his mother's death was also a formative trauma, but his true mythmaking event is when hakoda leaves for war with all the other men of his tribe. hakoda tells him that "being a man is knowing where you're needed the most, and right now, that's here, protecting your sister." it's not a rose crest ring, but it may as well be. from that moment onward, sokka officially comports his identity into being his sister's protector, which is how he thus defines his manhood. and of course, being his sister's protector means being a martyr, because the precedent for "protecting katara" that has already been established is, well, dying for her. like aang being the avatar and the last airbender and katara being the last southern waterbender, sokka is thus defined by his necessity (ie, usefulness to others) as well as his isolation – not only the "last warrior/man" of the swt, but also via his own process of depersonalization and self-dehumanization as he attempts to fully embody his role as an eventual martyr.

zuko's mythmaking event is, of course, branded onto his face. in fact, zuko essentially assumes both katara and sokka's mythmaking events by first being irrevocably altered by his mother's sacrifice, and then being all the more transformed by his father's decree as he attempts to dictate what kind of man zuko needs to be. his "sunlit garden" is also shown to us in flashes: memories of a (literal!) sunlit garden, of turtleducks, of his mother's gentle guidance, of happier times on ember island, on his father's hand resting on his shoulder with pride instead of malice. it is unclear just how truthful these nostalgic memories are. obviously, his family was never actually happy. ozai had always been exerting control over them, even if his violence was once more obscured. we never see azula's sunlit garden, for instance (although i'd argue that she and zuko possess the same mythmaking events), and i cannot help but wonder whether it's because, like touga, she never actually had one.

finally, some honorable mentions must go to the following: toph, whose sunlit garden is also her mythmaking event, as she learns from badgermoles how to hone her gift and reject the rigid societal impositions that seek to limit, repress, and control her. hama, who never attempts to return to her sunlit garden in the swt with kanna, despite her freedom as established in her mythmaking event of teaching herself to bloodbend; she knows that she is irrevocably altered, and thus she can never go home again. appa, whose sunlit garden, of playing with the other bison at the southern air temple, occurs in conjunction with his mythmaking event of meeting aang and becoming the avatar's animal companion.

all of these events are depicted through flashbacks wherein the consecutive shots between flashback and present day mirror the character who is having the memory in the past and present, overlaying their younger face onto their current face with identical framing. i'm too lazy to compile a bunch of screenshots here, and i couldn't find the post i'd seen previously that had done so, but if you're as familiar with atla as i am, then you already know exactly what i'm talking about. this device is so effective particularly because it exercises restraint. every flashback in atla is crucial because it signifies either a sunlit garden or a mythmaking event that motivates the character its focalizing in the present day. atla is economical with its flashbacks, but not withholding. like with rgu, flashbacks in atla are used with a specificity of purpose, and illustrate their points in clear, precise ways. just because atla is not as overtly metatextual with its central themes of narrativization, nostalgia, idealization, bias, and storytelling, does not mean it is not present, and in fact, overt. ranging from katara's role as narrator to the fire nation propaganda aang attempts to correct in school, the use of memory and illusion is crucial in illustrating how atla functions as a narrative about heroism, legacy, and challenging dominant myths through preserving cultural memory under an imperialist regime.

5. final thoughts

obviously, i could go on forever. there is simply no limit to my ability to unpack and dissect these two shows (hence, my sideblogs dedicated to doing so). i haven't even talked about zuko as an analogue to saionji with regard to their latent homosexuality, misogyny, violence, and struggle to conform to a patriarchal ideal. and i barely touch on katara as an analogue to utena with regard to their naïveté, heroism, myopia, persistence, and somewhat misguided desire for justice (through her terms specifically), although like kozue and nanami as mirrors wrt sokka, her traits that i describe when comparing her to miki also map onto utena in many ways – except of course, utena, unlike miki, is also the "hero," and thus has the same destabilizing revelation regarding the banality of evil that katara undergoes in "the southern raiders." moreover, i only discuss one central motif in utena, because i think the sunlit garden is the trope that maps best onto the thematic work atla is doing, but i'm sure that there are many more frameworks i could compare. and yet, i only have so much time, and only so much space in which to ramble. so hopefully, for now, this suffices. however, if there any specific areas in which you would like me to elaborate, you know that i shall always be happy to do so.

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nateconnolly · 2 months

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I made a Patreon lol.

Here's the free sample post:

THE CREATION MYTH OF KILL 6 BILLION DEMONS

INTRODUCTION

I love fantasy religions. I love it when fictional humans try to understand worlds like Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere and Tolkein’s Middle Earth through a religious lens—especially because in those books and in many others, the fantasy religions are somewhat true, and somewhat false. It’s really fun to look at a fictional universe through the eyes of a character who might not see things objectively. Religion usually plays a role in that. But, if I’m being honest, a lot of fantasy religions are just Christianity wearing a fun hat. Don’t get me wrong, I am fascinated by Chrisitianity, and I really enjoy a lot of fantasy versions of Christianity. But it’s a great special treat when a fantasy story goes the extra mile and portrays another concept of the divine. That’s one of many reasons that I love the webcomic Kill 6 Billion Demons. The webcomic’s fictional religion Atru has parallels to Taoism, Gnosticism, Advaita Vedanta, theothanatology, Biblical divine nomenclature, the list goes on. I just threw a lot of big scary words at you, but I promise, this is a beginner level essay. I’ll break everything down into bite-sized pieces. I just wanted to list out some of K6BD’s religious influences to show that they are complicated, and diverse.

This is specifically a essay about the creation narratives. K6BD is an amazing comic—later on, it tackles questions about time, free will, and optimistic nihilism, but I won’t dig into that stuff here. Those things would require their own essays. Here, I’m going to try to explain how the seven-part world came to be. More specifically, I’ll examine the stories that White Chain, Cio, Michael, and the old devil’s tale tell us; then I’ll look at fictional holy texts found in the Concordance.

I’ll also compare and contrast with a lot of real world religion and philosophy. I want to be clear that the creator Abaddon and I have never spoken. I don’t know where he got most of his inspiration. I’m not revealing any information that wasn’t already available, I’m just compiling it and offering my own thoughts. Unless I specifically quote Abaddon, assume that I’m not even talking about his inspirations. I’m drawing parallels because it’s fun, even though it probably won’t give us new insight into how the text was created.

I promise I’m not trying to convert you! I genuinely don’t want to make other people believe the religion that I believe—or any religion at all. I’m just trying to show you how understanding some real world religious and philosophical concepts can deepen your appreciation of K6BD. Obviously, there will be tons of spoilers, so go read the webcomic if you haven’t already. It’s absolutely genius.

Lastly, I want to say I will discuss suicide and murder.

Ok, let’s get started.

PART ONE: THE FIRST AND GREATEST DIVISION

Let There Be No Genesis

White Chain begins the history of the universe with the words, “Let there be no Genesis,” closely echoing the in-universe fictional Psalm I. “For indeed, there was [no Genesis]. God has always existed and has never existed.” As White Chain tells her story, we are shown the god YISUN. This figure is sometimes described with it/its or she/her pronouns, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to follow the example of the fictional Psalm I, and use he/him. I might call him “YISUN” or “God” with a capital G depending on the context.

YISUN was eternal, and the “undisputed master of the entire omniverse.” He predates everything else, and without him, nothing would exist.

YISUN has at least twelve bodies, probably more. Some are smiling, some look mad; some resemble insects or animals; most hold weapons; and all are different colors. The central white body has four arms. Abaddon has said that YISUN’s appearance is directly inspired by the Hindu god Vishvarupa. Hindu gods are frequently depicted with multiple body parts, an artistic tradition that Doris Srinivasan calls “the multiplicity convention.” She explains some of the religious and artistic reasons that many Indian gods have multiple body parts in her book “Many Heads, Arms, and Eyes: Origin, Meaning, and Form of Multiplicity in Indian Art.” The tradition of Hinduism is long, and diverse, so the multiple limbs in one text can mean something very different from the multiple limbs elsewhere. Srinivasan closely examines a vast expanse of Indian history, and I don’t have time to present all her ideas. I would like to specifically focus on the interpretation that multiple limbs represent the manifestations of a singular godhead.

Srinivasan writes that “Multiple versions of a myth are facilitated by the idea that there exists multiple aspects or manifestations of a godhead.” Think of the difference between Greek and Hindu goddesses. Bruno Snell suggests “that these four women signalize the four aspects of all womanhood,” but Srinivasan qualifies his interpretation. The Olympian women “are not multiple forms of [one] Divine Woman, as is the case in Hinduism.” Artemis and Athena are different people who are both women, plural. Parvati, Sati, and Uma together are Woman, singular. Zeus, Demeter, and Poseidon are gods, plural. Shiva, Vishnu, and Krishna are God, singular. That’s not how all Hindus see things, but it is one Hindu perspective that I find especially comparable to K6BD.

Similarly, the multiple bodies are only manifestations of a single God: YISUN. All of his bodies are a single person. In Hinduism, the plurality of the divine can be seen as empowering and liberating. Multiple body parts signify that the god is a well-rounded entity. But Abaddon makes it look like a curse. He turns the artistic convention around. Using the same symbolism and metaphysics, he tells a radically different story. As White Chain says, “Being was only circular.” “YISUN had no equal… It was a wretched life, without meaning or perception. Imagine infinite stories to tell… and nobody to tell them to.” Perfection is lonely. At this point, YISUN is the only thing that exists, and that can’t be fun. All those arms and heads cannot satisfy YISUN’s need for companionship. It’s fascinating to me that when White Chain says YISUN had no one to whom it could tell its stories, Abaddon chose to illustrate multiple heads right next to each other. Even if those heads told each other stories, the speaker and the listener would still be the same person. Dissatisfaction with isolation is why YISUN created the world.

Although not all Hindus follow the school of Advaita Vedanta, in this case, I think it will be helpful to compare and contrast with Advaita. As Ram Shanker Misra writes in “The Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo,” “Brahman [ is] perfect, absolute, infinite, need[s] nothing, [and] desir[es] nothing…” Brahman is full of all perfections. And to say that Brahman has some purpose in creating the world will mean that [Brahman] wants to attain through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is impossible.”

But that’s exactly why YISUN created this world. He wants to gain something that he does not have: companionship.The universe is God’s escape from himself. There was no Genesis, but there was “the first and greatest division: division of self”: “God committed holy suicide.”

2. The Divine Suicide

White Chain’s story is similar to Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous claim that “God is dead,” but Nietzsche did not mean God was a real entity that had literally died. He meant that intellectually, it was impossible to continue believing in God, and that all intellectual achievements founded on belief in Him had to be abandoned. Nietzsche’s claim is a famous example of a philosophical school of thought called death of God theology, also called “theothanatology,” which means “the study of God’s death” in Greek.

“Death” can mean a lot of different things in this context. Sometimes it’s metaphorical, sometimes it’s literal, and usually, it’s a very confusing mixture of both.

Nietzsche proposed the death of God as a social claim about humans. He’s talking about what we can believe, what we should do, and what we need to accept. God never really existed, but as religion loses followers and influence, even the idea of God has begun to “die” because it no longer has power over the real world.

“Death” can also mean God exists, but in a way radically different from what people usually mean when they say “God.” The Rabbi and philosopher Richard L. Rubenstein thought God exists as a “ground of being,” but not as a supernatural entity that made a covenant with Abraham. Rubenstein proposed the death of God as an intellectual change in what humans think the word “God” means.

And, finally, “death” can just literally mean “death.” The Protestant theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer wrote “we shall understand the death of God as an historical event: God has died in our time, in

our history, in our existence.” This isn’t a social claim about humans—it’s a metaphysical claim about God.

Death of God theologians usually mean more than one thing when they say God is dead. Nietzsche wasn’t just trying to convince Christians to become atheists; he was also trying to convince many atheists that they disbelieved in God in the wrong way. Altizer had radical thoughts about what human beings are able to believe.

White Chain means that God is dead in the literal sense. She is proposing a metaphysical belief that God, as a historical figure, chose to actually kill himself. White Chain is not rejecting or critiquing religion—she’s asserting that her religion, in which God has died, is fact.

You can see slight parallels to Nietzsche, Rubenstein, Altizer, Hegel, Zizek, and Blake in White Chain’s version of the fictional religion Atru. But there is no better comparison than the king of sad philosophers Philipp Mainlander.

Mainlander was an atheist—but not in the sense that people usually mean when they say “atheist.” Mainlander believed that there was a God at some time, but that time is now over. There isn’t a God anymore. Mainlander is pretty unique among death of God theologians because he explicitly describes God’s death as a suicide. Whittaker explains that Mainlander thought “[a]ll things have their origin in what may be called… the ‘will’ of the absolute being… to annihilate itself.” Essentially, the cause of the universe is God’s suicidal desires.

God was a “real unity,” but his death caused a “collective unity”—that’s the universe where we live now. God had been a total and undivided One, but now the universe is made of distinct parts. God cut himself apart into the pieces of the universe. God created the world by becoming it, and he became the world by dying.

Mainlander said “the knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all human knowledge.” He thought suicide was desirable, and ultimately, he put his money where his mouth was. The biggest difference between Mainlander and White Chain is that she doesn’t seem to think ordinary people such as herself should follow God’s suicidal example. Even beyond the views of a specific character, the story of Kill 6 Billion Demons reads as an affirmation of life’s beauty and value.

But the webcomic clearly argues that making a better world is a bloody project. So it should come as no surprise that making the world itself involved bloodshed. First and foremost, the blood of God. What’s so interesting to me is that both White Chain and Mainlander equate God’s suicide to the creation of the world. Our life comes from God’s death. Creation and destruction aren’t opposites—they’re different ways of looking at the same process. At the end of Book 2, Allison destroys Mottom’s evil tree and a lot of her palace—but this destruction is also part of the creation of a more just and free world.

So, what did God’s destruction create? What came after YISUN?

3. The Duality of Un and Yis

The destruction of the total unity creates duality. I know that’s a little confusing because YISUN had many faces, but remember that behind all of those faces was one God, and only one. Not anymore. “From division was birthed duality. White Un, Lord of empty and still places, master of all that is not. Black Yis, infinite mother of the rampant flame. Master of all that is''

I cannot avoid comparing the White and Black gods to the Yin and Yang—a spinning black and white symbol usually associated with the religion Taoism. Yin and Yang represent a cosmic duality. Yin is associated with femininity, darkness, passivity, and even numbers, among other things. Yang is associated with masculinity, light, activity, and odd numbers, among other things. Mainstream Taoist philosophy asserts that the universe can be understood through duality. So, why are these pairs important? And why do things get paired together in the first place?

As is written in the foundational Taoist text the Tao Te Ching, “Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.” What’s so interesting about the pairs is they “create,” “support,” “define,” and “depend on” each other. Black can’t exist without white, and white cannot exist without black.

As the Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, “...yinyang is emblematic of valuational equality rooted in the unified, dynamic, and harmonized structure of the cosmos. As such, it has served as a heuristic mechanism for formulating a coherent view of the world…” Essentially, neither of these opposites are “dominant” or “truer.” Choosing one side won’t help you understand the universe because the universe is their partnership. Their equality gives “structure to the cosmos.” That structure is order, not chaos, but it is differentiated. There are two different things: Yin and Yang. They contradict each other, but at the same time, they make the universe. Yin and Yang are a productive paradox.

I’d like to return to the notion that “being and non-being create each other.” At this stage of creation in K6BD, UN and YIS could not exist without each other. Their very existence is the fact that they are not a unity. If there was only one of them, then there wouldn’t have been a division—and they are nothing more than the product of division. Just like how being and non-being create each other, the Master of All That Is and the Master of All That Is Not create each other. YISUN was characterized by his totality—he was the total sum of the omniverse, there was nothing else. After the division, Un and Yis experience otherness. The first otherness in the omniverse. It’s difficult for them to find balance—in fact, they immediately went to war for seven years. At the end of their seven-year war, Un and Yis made love for seven days.

I want to be very clear that this is not a depiction of actual Taoism. Yin and Yang are not gods with faces and minds. Notably, the Tao Te Ching asserts that yin and yang are “older than God.” so make of that what you will. But I think Taoism is thematically relevant to this era. Two opposites have to come into balance with each other. The whole universe is a duality of interconnected forces.

K6BD repeatedly emphasizes the need for community. As Allison says at the end of King of Swords, “I couldn’t have done this without any of you… We make mistakes. We learn from each other. We all still have so much to learn. Once I saw that as a weakness, now I’m certain it’s not. Someone who lives still thinking like that… struggling to do everything themselves… I can’t help but think how alone they must be.”

YISUN had to do everything all by himself, and we saw that Allison was right—isolation was a struggle, even for God. But the struggle is over, and in its place is duality. Partnership. The first community.

These are the first four parts of a fourteen-part critical essay. You can read the rest here.

Bibliography is on the free Patreon post.

#patreon #nate's writing #original post

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yersina · 7 months

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a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 4)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [x] [pt 5]

we're getting close to the end, guys!!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the fourth language and will contain spoilers! it also assumes that you know what the symbols mean already.

additional note: i went and added alt text to my previous posts in this series! sorry for not having them before :)

numbers!!!!!!!!

before i get into anything else, i think i might as well start with numbers, which are the most unique part of this language and really leans into the portrayal of this society as mathematical and scientific lol. like the arabic numeral system, this number system is base 10, which we can see from the ruler. whether it’s base 10 or not isn’t super relevant to the gameplay or the language, i think?? except that it mimics the arabic numeral system, so it’s familiar to us. i am not a mathematician or logician or what-have-you, so i wouldn’t know—my expertise does not lie in this area lol

we only have evidence in the game for numbers with up to 4 digits (one on each side and end of the center line) so we don't know how the alchemists would've represented really big numbers. however, the placement of the four numerical digits around the central line suggests to me that this language might have a system that counts by four digit placements, rather than three. (to clarify: in western cultures, we often count and represent numbers in groups of three: thousand (1,000), million (1,000,000), and so on, with a new word for each set of three digit places. in many east asian languages, large numbers are represented in groups of four instead (examples that came to mind were chinese, japanese, and korean, but that’s just what i’m personally familiar with; there certainly might be others). in chinese, we have 万 (10,000) and 亿 (100,000,000), single words instead of “ten thousand” and “hundred million”. the word for million is “hundred-ten thousand” (百万).) since this language naturally seems to represent numbers in groups of four, that's my suspicion. unfortunately, the addition-only calculator in lab 2 only goes up to 9999, so we don't know what happens at five digits; my best guess is that the center line changes (maybe becomes two lines instead of just one, since one line also represents 0?), but obv there's no guarantee.

moving on from numbers, this language is relatively consistent when it comes to visual representation of linguistic categories: verbs have an open circle, locations have the sideways u/semi-circle deal, and people have a triangle-plus-line element to them. interestingly, “fear” once again is more of a noun than a verb in this language in terms of appearance. at this point, i’m inclined to think that this a quirk of the developers, rather than the language; even though fear is often used as a verb in the language itself, its appearance denotes that it’s primarily a noun, which may indicate that the game developers also thought of it as a noun first and verb second.

other interesting combinations of elements/radicals in the language include “mine”, which combines the radical for location and the triangular feature of scientific elements/materials (i.e, “the location where you can find materials”). the word for “seek/want” and “laboratory” share a radical, which suggests that that radical means something like “answer” or “curiosity” or something like that. another fun thing i noted is that the word for “alchemist” shares a similar shape to “i/me”, which might be indicative of a thought like “i am an alchemist”, and that those two concepts are linked, culturally or historically. i also think it’s interesting that “fire” and “fear” visually look more similar to each other than the other nouns—again, could possibly indicate something about how the alchemists conceptualize them? they obviously live in an environment where they encountered monsters that were scared of fire, and they in turn were scared of the monsters—i wouldn’t be surprised if it were the case that these were connected in that way.

i’ve been trying to figure out if this language has a particular pattern when it comes to representing words with an open circle vs dot, but so far i can’t find anything. might just be random/artistic choice!

this language once again returns to the pattern of being SVO, with plural suffixes rather than prefixes like the warrior language. in fact, i would say that grammatically, especially in terms of sentence structure, the warriors and the alchemists seem to be the most similar. no verb-initial languages in this game i’m afraid, haha.

one more language to go!!

#sina rambles #sina plays chants of sennaar #chants of sennaar #linguistics #language

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she-is-juniper · 2 years

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Only Ones Who Know — an Elvis Presley x Reader slow burn series (chapter two)

Pairing: Austin Butler!Elvis Presley x f!Reader

Type: series (chapter 2 / ?)

Warnings: fluff, some angst, pining, long lost lovers, slow burn, a very intense sexy makeout, brief discussions of racial tensions

Prompt: You and Elvis grew up together; he was your best friend and first love, but he and his family moved away. Eight years later, Elvis walks into the diner where you work…and he doesn’t recognize you. But there’s an intense connection between the two of you. Should you let things between you play out organically, or should you tell him who you really are?

Word Count (by chapter): 5K

Rating (by chapter): M (mature)

A/N: Wow! I am so overwhelmed by the response to the first chapter of my new slowburn series! I wrote chapter two here in the car on a road trip with my family (lol) so excuse the typos. Things get pretty steamy here but actual smut to come, I promise y’all.

I wrote this fic visualizing Austin!Elvis, but you could also read it with real!Elvis as well if you prefer. The events of this series are kind of a combination of real life events from Elvis’ life and the events of the film; thus, it may not follow the outline of events exactly as they appear the film. Inspiration for the plot more closely but loosely resembles real life documentations of Elvis’ life in 1956.

Please for the love of all that is holy, comment/reblog/send asks if you want to see more of my writing—thank you in advance! ♡, Juni

~ Previous chapter ~

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My first kiss with Elvis Presley was on the roof of his family’s house in Tupelo, under the stars of the Mississippi sky.

We were both thirteen, and he was my first love. Before that, he was my best friend, and before even that, he was just the boy next door.

But as I grew up and learned about the ways of the world, all the good and the bad, he grew up right beside me. We grew closer and closer. And by that summer, the summer of 1948, the War finally over…he was my everything, and I was his.

But that was back then. Now, eight years later, he didn’t even recognize me.

So what?

I left the benefit concert in a daze, with Elvis’s last words to me still ringing in my ears. “‘Meet me at Beale Street, tonight. Club Handy.” I took the bus home and changed as fast as I could. And I made my way to Beale Street.

I was no stranger to Memphis’s famous Beale Street—or infamous, depending on who you asked. Rich with history and culture, the bustling street was fueled by the memory of what it used to be and the hopes of what it might become. Increasing racial pressures from local coalitions and government entities threatened the commerce of Beale Street and the security of its people, but that didn’t stop its shop owners and patrons from persevering as they always had.

Beale Street was alive tonight. Music sounded from nearly every joint. And it felt like home to me, for the music that was birthed there was the music I grew up surrounded by.

The Independence Day excitement in the central city, where the benefit concert had been, must have transcended to the southside, where flocks of men and women filled the streets with invigorating zeal and a hunger for excitement. Every club was full, packed to the brim with dancing bodies and the beat of the drumset or the crowing of brass. There were so many people on Beale Street that they spilled out of the clubs’ entrances, doting each other on their arms, sweating and laughing and dancing.

I shouldered my way past the crowds on the sidewalk, scanning left and right for a figure that stood out—because surely, a man like Elvis Presley would stick out like a sore thumb at a place like this, a place in which a white man became the minority. There was no sight of him yet, so I meandered my way to the entrance to Club Handy. It already had a long line of people waiting, who looked at me in annoyance as I pushed to the front.

“Back of the line,” the bouncer gruffed when I approached him.

“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” I said, trying to sound convincing with a sultry tone. “So I was wondering if there’s anything at all I can do to cut the line here to get in?”

The bouncer gave me a once over, but he shook his head. “No can do,” he said. “Special performance tonight.”

I wondered who was performing. “Anything I can do to change your mind?” I asked, despite the glaring eyes of the people I had cut in line boring into the back of my head.

“Wish I could for ya, miss. But if you’re not performing and you’re not on the list, I can’t let you in. Owner’s orders.”

I left the bouncer to stand by the wall under the enclave, feeling miffed. Of all the nights I was to meet up with Elvis, and it was the busiest night you’d ever seen on Beale Street. I had no way of knowing if Elvis were already inside or not, waiting for me. And if I didn’t see him again tonight, would I ever see him again?

I thought again about the way he’d kissed me in the crowd, and then again behind the stage. The yearning in his eyes. He had the same expression on his face as the one he’d had eight years ago when his family had left Tupelo. If he didn’t recognize me now, all grown up, he had to have felt the same soul connection that I felt.

As if to answer my own question, a commotion from down the way caught my eye. Onlookers were gazing out toward the street, chattering with excitement. Curious, I peered out in the direction of their line of interest.

A shiny Cadillac had just parked on the street. A crowd was already starting to form around it—mostly women, but a fair share of men, too, all of whom were buzzing with excitement about the man in the Cadillac.

Who was, of course, none other than Elvis Presley.

He stood out—and not just because of the crowd, or the color of his skin in contrast to the rest. He glowed with an exuberance that was simply indescribable, albeit a different sort of glow than the one he’d had onstage earlier that night. He had changed into a shirt made a collared pink shirt made of intricate lace that would have looked ostentatious on anyone else, but on him, it looked exquisite. His black hair was perfectly slicked back. He regarded the crowd of fans warmly, shaking their hands and signing books, but he was scanning the street, looking for something. Or for someone.

For me?

For me.

Elvis’s eyes locked on mine. His whole face lit up like I was the only person in the whole world he wanted to see—which didn’t make sense, because in his mind, we had just met today. But that didn’t make it any less meaningful. My cheeks flooded with heat as he came striding right over to me.

“Missy,” he said in that unmistakable Southern drawl as he approached. “You’re here.”

It felt surreal again to be so near to him. “I thought you might already be inside,” I said in a rush. “But it’s packed. I couldn’t get in.”

“Oh, we’ll find a way in, darlin’,” Elvis replied. His eyes painted a lavish brushstroke down and up my body, soaking in my appearance, and I felt like I might implode. “Should be against the law to look that gorgeous.”

I glanced down at my outfit—I had changed, too, into a fitted dress with a wrapped v-neck bodice and a circle skirt, my favorite dress to go dancing in. And then I looked back at him, in his lace shirt and thin black trousers.

“I could say the same to you.”

Elvis laughed, showing his white teeth, and the sound was so musical it could accentuate the sounds of the blues pouring out from every club. “We make a helluva pair, then, Missy.” His silly nickname sounded so good coming from his lips. I silently thanked Ray, the cook at the diner, for coming up with the nickname while in earshot of the rocker. It was a good cover for my real name, which Elvis would certainly have recognized.

It felt so strange, living this alternate identity around Elvis as Missy. I found myself oddly freed by the notion of starting with a blank slate with him. He didn’t recognize me—so what? Missy could be anyone I wanted her to be.

And Missy, I realized with a smile, wants to have a bit of fun with Elvis tonight.

His entourage of fans caught up to him then, forming a growing crowd on the sidewalk behind him. Elvis smiled graciously at them, but he was attracting a lot of attention. A few of them were squealing, reaching out to touch his arms—

“E.P.!” The voice came from the doors to Club Handy, which had swung open, and a man was peering his head out. He beamed at Elvis. “That’s my man! Miles, let the guy in.”

Elvis beamed back, and suddenly he was grabbing my hand and leading me down. Before I had time to revel at the feeling of his skin on mine, he was dragging me through the crowd and up to the doors of Club Handy. “Is there room for the two of us?” Elvis asked.

“Absolutely.” The man let us in, closing the door, and began to lead us up the narrow stairwell. “It’s so good to see you, man.”

“Always a pleasure, B.B.,” Elvis replied.

I gaped. B.B. as in… B.B. King?

“I’m so glad you’re here,” B.B. was saying as we approached the sounds from the club up the stairs. He then turned and extended a hand to me. “And to whom do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m—ah, call me Missy,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Missy, you and your date tonight are in for a real treat.”

Life was beginning to take on that same hazy, fantastical quality I had felt earlier that evening at the benefit concert. The kind of feeling you get when you feel completely disconnected from reality, at the whim of the world around you, and all you could do is just watch your feet move on their own and try to convince yourself you’re not dreaming. But when we finally reached the top and B.B. pushed open the door to the club, the feeling of complete unreality was set in for good.

The club was more packed as I’d ever seen it and nearly as hot as a sauna. But it was the kind of heat that made you feel energized, made you feel on fire with zeal. The ensemble of musicians at the front of the room amplified the heat with a sound like no other. The frontman was on fire, too, and once I spotted his makeup and attire, I immediately understood why Club Handy was so boisterous tonight; they were all here to see him perform. It was unmistakably Little Richard. I’d heard rumors of the flamboyant musician making the rounds through the bars of Memphis this summer, but seeing him in the flesh was a different level of Unreal.

Elvis turned and smiled at me. “You been here before?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the music and the crowd.

“Once or twice,” I replied. My roommates and I have come a couple of times prior for music and dancing. But never on a night like this.

B.B. led us to a reserved booth seat at the back of the venue. The air in the club was thick with heat and cigarette smoke and the smell of booze, but even sitting across from Elvis in the booth, all I could suddenly smell was his cologne.

“Who would have thought we’d have two of Memphis’s biggest stars gracing our presence on the same night?” B.B. King said.

Elvis waved him off. “I’m getting away from all that tonight.”

“Hardly. I saw all your fans out there, E.P. They love you.”

Inexplicably, Elvis’s expression became bashful. “If only I had half the talent as this guy,” he said, gesturing to Little Richard on the stage, who was putting on an enthralling show for the little club.

“A man like Little Richard could have your talent four times over, Elvis, and he’d still never become a big shot the way you have. All because of the color of his skin.”

I listened as Elvis and B.B. engaged in conversation about the performer. There was a pitcher of alcohol, containing something sweet and made of rum, and I poured myself a glass. But before long, B.B. was standing up and bidding us farewell.

“Enjoy your date,” he told me with a wink. “You know where to find me, E.P.”

As he departed, Elvis scooted down the booth so he was seated right next to me. “This guy up there,” he spoke in my ear so I could hear him over the noise. “He deserves all the money and fame in the world.”

“He’s amazing,” I said in awe. “I can’t believe we got in tonight.”

“I’ve got my connections,” he drawled.

“Clearly you do!”

We watched Little Richard, wailing his heart out as the band launches into a new tune, one you recognize as Tutti Frutti. “They’re calling him the Architect of Rock and Roll,” Elvis says after a while.

“They’re calling you The King,” I noted.

Elvis shook his head. “They have it all wrong. Guys like B.B. and Richard, they’re the real kings. If I could let them take my place, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

I studied his face. There was a layer of something new to his expression, something I hadn’t seen this afternoon at the diner or during the performance. Something must have happened after the show. I wondered what it was. Did he get flack from his manager about the benefit concert?

His face now reminded me so much of the Elvis Presley I’d once known. The scrawny, shy kid from Tupelo. The one who used to run to my house to bring me half of his dinner when my family couldn’t afford enough for a meal.

Such humble beginnings, and look at us now.

He saw me staring. And he smiled.

“I’m glad you’re here, with me,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because when I met you at that diner, I thought to myself that I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t try to see you again.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “You’ve only just met me, you know. You could have found any other girl to dote on your shoulder.” I said it derisively, but with a sly smirk, so he knew I was flirting.

And sure enough, it captured his attention like a moth to a light. He couldn’t take his eyes off my face, my smile. “Maybe so,” he drawled. “But I’m glad it’s you.”

“But you don’t even know me, Elvis Presley,” I accused him. “And I frankly don’t know you either.” Not anymore, at least.

He pursed his pretty lips. “That’s the thing,” he said, his voice suddenly husky against my ear. “I feel as though I’ve known you a long, long time.”

Hmm, I wonder why? I thought bitterly to myself. “I’m just a girl who works at a diner,” I dismissed him.

“But there’s just somethin’ about you…”

I couldn’t explain why, but the notion of Elvis’s attraction to me was equally as infuriating as it was compelling. Of course, I felt the same toward him, but for him to be drawn to me without a single thought in his daft head that he should remember who I am? I wanted to slap him. I wanted to kiss him. Instead, I just downed the rest of my glass with a big gulp and stood up.

“Where ya going?” he asked. I observed the fear in his eyes that I was leaving for good. But I just flashed my teeth at him.

“To dance.”

Emboldened by the alcohol, I sauntered to the center of the club, feeling the burn of his eyes on my back. What with the dim lights, the crowded bodies, and the haze of smoke, it didn’t take long to become completely engulfed by the crowd.

I joined them in movement with the beat of the music. The movement came like second nature, especially under the influence of the booze. I didn’t care who watched, although as I danced and danced, I hoped it wouldn’t be long until Elvis came to his senses and caught up with me.

Sure enough, after a while, I felt a tall presence from behind me, followed closely by the smell, a warm, sultry musk, and I knew he’d finally come to find me. I turned my head to look up at him through my periphery. He was tall, and by the sway of his body, I guessed that he’s had a couple of drinks of his own.

And suddenly, we were dancing together. At first, I felt just the slightest of brush of his body beside mine as he finds his rhythm, but as the music progresses and the press of the crowd gets closer and closer against us, he has no choice but to press his own body closer and closer to mine. Still facing away from him, the both of us watching Little Richard up by the stage in appreciation, we carefully avoided each other’s eyes. But I couldn’t ignore the feel of his hips against my backside. And then, the feel of his hands on my waist.

The tension between our bodes became so thick it was almost palpable. I rested my hands on his, giving him permission to press his fingers more firmly into my hips.

Before long, my back was flush against his chest while we danced. The band launched into a new song, something slower, heavier, sultrier. Elvis took the lead, then, pushing my body away only to grasp my hand and twirl me around so I’m facing him. The man’s eyes soaked me up, drew me up toward him, drew me in, held me captive. I soaked up the sight of him as well. He looked so undeniably handsome, even with—or perhaps, especially with—the way the sweat glistened on his brow and how a lock of his hair had fallen out of the neat pompadour.

And then Elvis was moving with me again, effortlessly keeping time with the sway of the music, the motion of my hips. He smirked at me, a cocky, enrapturing gesture, and I couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Looks like you don’t need a stage to make those hips move, cowboy,” I purred.

“Easy to dance when I’ve got a pretty gal to dance with,” he quipped back. His eyes, piercing blue and still lined with the residual blackness from his makeup from earlier, were hard to look away from. Not that I wanted to. He was easily the most charming, captivating man I’ve ever been near.

And he was very, very near, then, as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pressed his hand into my lower back, pulling my chest against his. I allowed my hands to snake up his arms, feeling his lean muscles beneath my fingertips. My heart hammered in my chest as he brought his other hand up to my face. His hand was so big that I could rest my cheek in the palm of it while his fingers curled against the hair at the nape of my neck. When I leaned into his touch, he tilted my body forward into a dip, exposing the skin of my neck and chest to the ceiling. He trailed his lips an inch away from my body, and then pulling me back upright, I felt his mouth against my earlobe. His hot breath sent a wave of chills across my body, despite the heat of the club.

“Tell me your real name,” he demanded in a low rasp.

“I’ll never tell,” I replied, my voice just as thick as his. I was suddenly aware of just how turned on I felt, with his hips against mine, his warm breath on my neck, his hands against me so surely. God, I suddenly wanted his hands all over me.

“Why not, darlin’?” Elvis squeezed my hip, ever so slightly, but enough to make me melt like chocolate in his arms.

“Because I like it when you call me Missy.” Surely, with the direction this was going, he’d be satisfied with at least that for a name to call me.

A name to call me when we…well…

Maybe the disorientation of my dissociation was slowly fading, because I suddenly had the delicious, terrifying realization of where this could go.

“If that’s what you want, then, Missy,” Elvis murmured, his hips still moving against mine with that sensual rhythm. “I’ll call you anything you want tonight.”

“And tomorrow?” I cooed.

He chuckled a bit. “What’s tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow can be whatever you want,” I said suggestively.

His eyes widened. “Well… Tomorrow, I’ll insist on your real name. But tonight, Missy will do.”

We couldn’t make it to the end of the song.

Elvis dragged me through the crowd, along a back corridor of the club I hadn’t seen at all when we first came in, which led to what looked like an emergency exit by the windows. It was dark and obscured from the view of the dance floor. And there was nobody here.

Elvis kissed me for a third time. But it was less of a kiss and more of an attack of his mouth against mine, an attack I was more than willing to endure. He pressed me roughly against the brick wall and I lost all sense of reason as his lips assailed me with a harshness and yet a simultaneous softness I’ve never experienced before. I let out a little squeak of surprise, which he consumed with a wanton growl of his own.

My silent wish from earlier came true, the wish to have Elvis’s hands all over my body. He touched me as if he were parched and desperate for the oasis of my body. I gripped at his hips, pressing him more firmly into me as he moved his lips to my neck. There was a shared feeling between the two of us, between our two bodies, partly the feeling of gratefulness for the sliver of privacy here in the dingy corridor, partly the feeling of intense and critical mutual need for the other. Whatever the feeling, it made me dizzy with desire.

“So gorgeous,” he groaned as he kissed my neck. I didn’t say anything back, couldn’t, the words seemingly caught in my throat where his lips were. They trailed up my neck to my ear, where his teeth brushed against my earlobe before he whispered, “You hear me, darlin’? You’re so beautiful.”

The only breathy response I could muster in return was his name.

He was pressed against me so intensely that I was practically sitting on the thigh he had me straddling against the wall. The movement of his leg elicited a steady warmth in my body that pooled between my legs. I arched into him and clawed at his body, my mind completely blank of any thoughts except right here, right now, and…

“Wanna get outta here, luv?”

The meaning behind his words was a defibrillator to my heart. Reality crashed upon me. Where I had been existing in a haze all night, I suddenly became aware of the world around me, aware of Elvis’s body, aware of my own again.

Aware of who he was, who he had once been.

I stiffened in his arms.

Elvis, readily listening to my body language, immediately leaned away. When he saw my expression, he took half a step away from the wall, and I regained my balance.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“I can’t,” I said. My heart was suddenly racing, and it wasn’t just from desire anymore.

Elvis’s face dropped. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable, darlin’,” he said softly.

I gulped. “I know, it’s just—“ I scanned for the exit. “I—I just can’t do this, Elvis.”

“What d’ya—?”

He didn’t have time to finish his sentence before I was pushing away from him and heading toward the exit in a rush. But he grabbed my hand, gently tugging me back to him, not in coercion or with mal intent, but in confusion, in an attempt to glean an answer.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said. “What happened? Was it something I said?”

“Thank you for the ticket to the concert,” I said, “but I can’t do this. I…I have to go.”

“Please,” he urged. “Don’t leave—Missy. Talk to me.” His scours my face for any semblance of an answer for what he’d done wrong.

In truth, he hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. I knew that, of course I did. But suddenly, I couldn’t bear to let him be with me under the l circumstances. I couldn’t ignore the pain that he didn’t recognize who I was.

I could tell him. I knew I could. I could tell him, and he would know. And even if he didn’t recognize me, he certainly hadn’t forgotten. How could he have forgotten the way I had professed my love to him like a stupid kid?

But once he knew who I was, how could I face him now after where we’d left things eight years ago?

Meeting Elvis organically was an act of serendipity. And the shared connection we had was unlike anything else. But how could I let this go further without him knowing who I really was?

Before, I had felt confident stepping into the mystere of the Missy identity. But now, it just felt disingenuous to him.

I couldn’t let myself give into the temptation. It wasn’t meant to be.

“I have to go,” I said again sadly.

It must have been something in my tone that led him to finally drop my hand.

I gave him one last, long look before I slowly turned and left the club, leaving him alone in the smoke and the haze.

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The Presleys were moving to Memphis.

Elvis didn’t even have the guts to tell me himself. I’d had to find out through our classmates, who whispered the news throughout the hallways like weeds spreading through a garden. I didn’t even have to confront him about it to know that the rumor was true; he had been avoiding me all week, and that alone spoke volumes.

I was thirteen. I was in love. And my heart was about to get broken.

On the day the Presleys were supposed to leave, I concocted a plan. When my parents had gone to bed for the night, I snuck into the hallway closet and took the one decent suitcase we owned. I took it back to my room and started packing my belongings.

I snuck out the dusty window in the kitchen. And I hauled myself and the suitcase down the dirt street to the Presley residence. Parked in front of their house, their 1939 Plymouth was already loaded up with their trunks of belongings.

The light to Elvis’s bedroom on the second floor was on. I gathered a handful of stones from the dirt road and threw them up to the window until he appeared in the frame, frowning down at me.

He was the most beautiful boy I had ever known. And he was leaving me.

When he finally emerged by the back door, the first thing he said to me after a whole week of silence was, “You can’t be here, Y/N.”

“Yes, I can,” I argued.

Elvis looked furtively back toward the house. “No, you can’t. If Mama saw me out here talkin’ with you, she’d kill me.”

“I don’t care.” I gripped the strap of my suitcase tighter. Elvis’s eyes tracked the movement.

“What are you doing with that?” he frowned.

I straightened my shoulders. “I’m coming with you to Memphis.”

“You’re—” Elvis stepped over to me and placed his hands on my shoulders degradingly. “No, Y/N. You can’t come with us.”

My name came out of his mouth like a disappointed sigh. But I just ground my heels and gritted my teeth.

“I’ll hitchhike to Memphis, then,” I insisted. “And then we can be together there.”

“You don’t understand, Y/N,” he said with a groan. He threw his hand to his forehead. “You have to stay here, with your family. And I have to go, with mine.”

“Yeah, but—”

“We can’t be together,” he said definitively. “Ever.”

As his words sunk in, fat tears welled in my eyes. “But I love you, Elvis. We’re meant to be together.”

Elvis just stared at me. “You…love me?” His mouth formed a hard line. But I saw his eyes glisten, too. “You can’t.”

“But I do!”

“Go home, Y/N,” was all he said.

I heard his Mama, then, calling for him from inside the house. He looked back nervously, and then he looked at me. He shook his head as he watched me cry, but it looked like he was trying not to cry, too. And then he turned and went back inside the house.

I sat behind the bush across from their house on top of my suitcase and cried as the Presleys loaded into their car that night, and without another goodbye, drove away to Tennessee, leaving their life in Tupelo behind forever.

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A/N: Hey babes ♥ How we doing? What are we all thinking!! Where will this go with Elvis and his childhood best friend?? Any predictions, thoughts, etc??

I’m dying to hear your thoughts about it! Please note that I write fanfiction for free; my only request for repayment is a genuine expression of your thoughts, opinions, likes/dislikes, and predictions about the story. Whether it’s simply a “Wow, I loved it!”, a keyboard smash, a series of convoluted thoughts in the tags, or even a full-out review, please know that any and all feedback is welcome!

Please send me asks because they make me smile so hard omg!

Much love ❤︎ from Juniper

Taglist: I’m on mobile rn so I hope to god this works

@dances-and-dolly-dresses @cozacorner @butlersbitxh @fangirlwithasweettooth @smckinney @shimmeringlights44 @kpopgalaxy28 @mamaspresley @deafeningpresley @felicityroth @callthedarknessdown @wonderlandlovelove @bobbykennedyfan @starry-night-20 @wild-rose-35 @alligator-person @lexthemess21 @pumkiinpasties @touchmetouchmetouchme @londonalozzy @treatmenice @cherryhoneybuns @g0ldenlush @megastar21 @bamitzzsam @smckinney @mirandastuckinthe80s @kittenlittle24 @x-earthangel @yeetfack-blog @sodonebruh @gemstone9 @hoedameronsworld @floralcyanide @likexthexplanet @tubble-wubble @pastelteabubbles @biafbunny

I’m probably missing a ton of y’all rip sorry just send me an ask to be added

#elvis 2022 #elvis presley #elvis #elvis presley headcanons #austin butler #elvis presley x reader #elvis presley imagine #elvis presley fanfiction #elvis fanfiction #austin buter x reader #austin butler imagine #fanfiction #fanfic #works by juniper #slow burn #reader insert #writing #music

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carma-tjol · 4 months

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Miscellaneous OPM Characters as Lady Gaga Songs

please read this oh my god I spent so much time... there's some meta scattered in there I promise.

Fubuki

Telephone

Bloody Mary

Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)

Telephone - because I watched an Instagram edit that used it and now I have it permanently associated with her. Fubuki has a fun and glamourous aesthetic and I feel like the song reflects that too Bloody Mary - because of the "I wont crucify the things you do" line. it reminds me of all the people she knows that are like. highly problematic but she's irremovably tied into their lives and ultimately accepts them. Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) - there are relationships she's had that fell tragically because of, while among other things, her own personal flaws and ego. It's tragic, but she really wasn't equipped to handle everything thrown at her at the time. there really is "nothing else [she] can say" anymore. Imagining her with this song puts a lighthearted twist on the woe of it.

Psykos

Summerboy

So Happy I Could Die

Teeth

MANiCURE

Summerboy - I like to imagine it as Psykos having the summerboy's POV. Feeling disposable and like she got played by Fubuki, she is left to sort of sourly reminisce on what could've been. So Happy I Could Die - for that INTENSE SAPPHIC ANGST. Also I like the concept of like. attempting to use sexuality to cope with severe internal turmoil. I love this song sooo much. Teeth - vibes I guess MANiCURE - "SHE WANNA BE MAN CURED!" so basically more sapphic stuff but campier and less gut wrenching this time lol.

Genos

(... god I initially struggled finding stuff for him HARD but ended up with 4 things. what.)

Replay

I Like It Rough

Shallow

Paparazzi (bonus)

Replay - Lady Gaga is talking about trauma and PTSD taking over and effecting every part of her life, which I feel like is relevant. "Every single day, yeah I dig a grave Then I sit inside it wondering if I'll behave" I Like It Rough - I've always interpreted this song as only ever experiencing harshness from people, not knowing how process kindness, and struggling to decipher sincerity. Which I feel like, removed from all the sex stuff, fits Genos pretty well thematically. Shallow - I don't really mean this in a ship way here (to be honest, one sided genos pining is my ideal! But that's not relevant here) but I can think of this song with Genos and Saitama's relationship and how at its core, One Punch Man revolves around them. They represent the central themes of companionship and how humanity is based on relationships with others. They try to "fill that void" with each other and Genos looks at Saitama worried, when will it be enough? (When will HE be enough?) Also I enjoy listening to songs where there is some form of disappearance or death and imagining the MA arc. I did that a tonnn with Sweet Talking Woman by ELO a while back, something about mixing the love song about chasing someone with the tragedy of the MA arc and how Genos became unattainable really clicked for me. (Fun fact, I had 182 listens for that song on my Spotify wrapped... pretty much all thinking of Genos) I'm supposed to be talking about Lady Gaga though oops. "Crash through the surface, where they cant hurt us We're far from the shallow now." They've experienced the same alienation, whether inflicted or self imposed and were able to drag each other out of it. Perhaps there's comfort in the similarity. Paparazzi (bonus lol) - If you enjoy leaning into Genos's weird obsession, this is the song for you! He's a little neurotic...

Flashy Flash and Sonic

I'm giving them the same song

Speechless

Speechless "In your tight jeans With your long hair and your cigarette stained lies Could we fix you if you broke? And is your punch line just a joke?" I connect it by thinking about how much weight their relationship held in their lives. Each of their dreams had the other in it. And I think that losing that was a bit worldshattering. "Would you give it all up If I promise, boy, to you?" Eyyyy we were left on a bit of a cliffhanger right? Flash was trying to ask sonic something but got cut off by the other ninjas. "We could-" we could what, Flash? we. could. what. (Team up again? Please I'm literally on my hands and knees begging, yet I know it's never that easy with OPM)

Amai Mask

Beautiful, Dirty Rich

The Fame

Beautiful, Dirty Rich - It's about fame! Living the high life! He's like a major celebrity and a diva so I think it works. Just ignore the bit where it says "but we've got no money" because he definitely has money. The Fame - similar thought process

Webigaza

Applause

Applause - She "lives for the applause!" The fame itself is empty without her fans.

Do-S (aka BONUS! other songs I like but had zero use for)

Love Game

Money Honey

Bad Romance

Poker Face

Government Hooker

Judas

not sexual enough for Do-S but I really like Americano too.

okay I'm done with these now I'm literally going insane

#opm #one punch man #opm meta #fubuki #psykos #genos #flashy flash #sonic opm #only tagging the more relevant characters lol #i listened to way too much lady gaga for this in the last 3 hours #i may have gotten in the top 0.05% for her in the wrapped this year but. imgonna die

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kittlesandbugs · 1 year

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Title: Breathe dammit Pairing: Chargestep Warnings: RETRIBUTION SPOILERS. Big fat ones for the end of the book. Also near-death experience, but not for the POV character (Ortega). Chucking the whole thing under a cut to be polite for people who haven’t gotten there yet lol. Word Count: 647

Prompt: @sidestepping prompted: write the car crash or the hospital waiting from the point of view of Ortega, or, alternatively, any of the main cast dealing with your Sidestep being injured.

"She's not breathing!"

The paramedic's words freeze your blood in its veins, sick dread heavy like lead in your gut.

no no no not again, not ever again, you just got her back, you can't—

Feet moving before you realize, shove the medic out of the way, only halfway done cutting through her layers. You fall to your knees beside her, finish the job.

What is that orange…? Spiraling out of central stripes in a pattern you can't recognize.

Not important now.

Hand over her heart, flesh still warm but no movement, no flutter that you've wanted to feel since she came back into your life.

nononono

"Sir you have to—"

"I'm not losing her again!" You shrug the hands away, normal strength of a person no match for your modded muscles.

Remember the training, elbows locked, thirty compressions. Eyes locked on her too-slack face for any sign of life. Tilt the chin, mouth to mouth, breathe the life back into her.

Once.

Twice.

nothing

"C'mon, Ry…"

Compressions again, harder this time. Like you can force your life into her. Should have been yours taken so many times, this is why, this is why, to bring her back again, rip her out of death's grasp again.

"Breathe, dammit…"

One breath.

Two.

She gasps, sucks air like a fish, and relief makes it easy for the paramedics to shove in again. They strap her to the gurney, mask to her face, compression bag assisting her breathing, lift her up, wheel her to the ambulance.

You stumble to your feet, follow after them, push your way in after them before they can shut you out and leave.

"Sir, you can't—"

"I'm a Ranger. Charge."

Flash the badge from your pocket. Been a long time since you've had to pull that card but it shuts them up and you settle in beside her.

You wipe sweat slick hands on your ruined sweats and gesture to the mask bag.

"I'm sorry." You're not, but it eases the glares. "She's my…" Can't say girlfriend, she'd yell at you, and it'd be so welcome you almost do. "May I…?"

He hands the bag over after a brief glance to the other. You follow their instructions carefully, so carefully, eyes glued to every rise and fall of her chest.

She'll pull through right?

She's so stubborn.

Too stubborn to die, right? Always too stubborn. Just needed a little help to get her feet back under her.

The ride is over too quickly and not fast enough and they take it back from you before you can move, wheel her out, you barely catch the words "respiratory failure" and "multiple complex fractures". You limp after them, your own injuries starting to catch up with you, but it doesn't matter.

All that matters is she pulls through and you have to be sure.

You're arguing with a nurse in the hall outside the operating theater when a heavy hand falls on your shoulder.

"Ricardo. You need to stop."

Wei. You almost wilt as you turn.

"But she almost— I can't—"

"She's in the best hands this city has to offer. I'll stand watch now." Hard eyes soften as he pushes you a few steps from the door, towards another nurse waiting to take you for examination. "I won't let anyone— won't let anything happen to her. I promise."

Anyone? Hollow Ground? But he doesn't believe in… What is he… ?

The nurse almost manhandles you into the wheelchair, interrupting your thoughts, and you spin to call back, "You'll let me know when she's out of surgery, right?"

"Yes. Now get yourself taken care of."

"You'll let me know if anything… if she gets…" The words die in your throat, you can't even bear to think about that now.

"I will. You need to rest."

"I… okay."

The nurse wheels you away and you suddenly remember.

What were those orange markings?

#kitbug writes things #fhr #retribution spoilers #chargestep #ricardo ortega #sidestep #riley owens #fhr flash prompt #GUESS WHAT NERDS #this starts the flood #i have been sitting on this since... december 2021 LOL #we have some catching up to do now that retri's out #anyway plz enjoy

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violetsiren90 · 8 months

Text

All Ye Need to Know

Pairing: idol!Yoongi/Reader ft. Namjoon/Reader (reader is ungendered)

Genre: One-shot; angst and comfort; strangers to lovers; idol au; canon-compliant

Word Count: 2261

Summary: You had no idea that you were what Yoongi had been looking for when he showed up at your café one rainy night - turns out he hadn't known either.

Warnings: Major character death (by mention only, though it is the central theme); heavy angst; grief and grieving; regret; brief panic attack symptoms; i promise it ends well guys lol

*Though this fic contains no mature content, all my fics, and my platform as a whole is 18+, and I respectfully ask that minors do not interact with or consume my work.

Author's Note: It was a gloomy day where I'm at, which turned into sad girl hours, which turned into this fic - on which, I hurt my own feelings. I have absolutely no idea why I consistently want to break my heart in half over Namgi, but is always the effect they have on me. If you stumbled onto this little rain cloud, thank you for reading, and I hope you find something for yourself in their world. <3

In case no one has told you today, you're loved and worthy of love. 🧜💜

Yoongi flexed his hands, placing them in his lap to quiet the urge to chew into his cuticles - the one that he always fought in situations such as these. He tracked your movements from where he sat at your small dining room table as you added dark loose leaves to the steeping bowl. A soft peal of thunder interrupted the silence amid the steady patter of rainfall. He hoped the tea was decaffeinated, though he was sure it wasn't. You returned to the table with a lovely little gongfu teapot, matching cups, and a small carafe of cream. You filled the cups, handing one to Yoongi, and he thanked you quietly with a slight bow.

"Do you take it with anything?" you asked, as you poured a bit of cream into yours.

Yoongi shook his head and waved a hand as he raised the small cup of deep, fragrant amber liquid to his lips. The first sip was a little too hot, scalding the tip of his tongue, but even so it was robust and earthy and comforting.

"What sort of tea is this," he asked, regarding the contents of the cup curiously as he stooped to draw in the aroma through his nose.

"It's Kenyan black tea," you remarked with a little smile, taking another sip of your own before placing the cup down in front of you, both of your hands encircling its warmth as your eyes raised up to his.

Yoongi's chest constricted a bit. It threw him off balance, the way you just looked right at him. It wasn't a scrutinizing gaze, or an expectant one - in fact, it was rather soft and warm, he thought - but it was steady, and receptive and thoughtful to the point of being keen. Yoongi couldn't remember ever having been looked at that way. Or maybe he had just forgotten what it felt like to be looked at without a specific sort of anticipation that accompanied his level of acclaim. He blinked and took another sip of his tea.

"I'm sorry about your friend," you remarked quietly, and in a way that said that you really were quite sorry.

Yoongi hummed.

"He was very fond of you," he said with a small sigh that he let out like a breath he'd been holding through his nose.

You tilted your head to the side, lifting an inquisitive brow. Yoongi glanced over at his sweater, soaked and dripping all over your hearth rug as it hung on a little drying rack near the crackling fire. The cold October rain poured down in torrents outside the front window of the small apartment.

Monsoon season had been particularly brutal this year, stretching into the later months as flash floods stole homes and businesses and lives. And then in September a downed plane, lost to the East Sea in a storm, had shaken the nation. Shaken the world. Seven had become six - six and a tiny cherry tree sapling in Seoul Memorial Park.

Yoongi had showed up at your little cafe on a Friday evening not knowing where else to go. He had been sitting in his studio, trying to work away the regrets and the anguish. Trying to dull the twist of the dagger now residing in his heart by just pressing on with what he knew. And maybe it would have worked, maybe he could have locked his sorrows outside on the unwelcome mat if he hadn't been in that very fucking place when picked up the call to Jin's shaking voice four weeks ago. So he tried and tried and tried and tried until tears splashed down onto his mixing board and he shut off his equipment and stumbled out into the night.

Yoongi's car had taken him to the little café where he and Namjoon had regularly met, for three years, until that June. What he would have done when he got there, he wasn't sure. He never got the chance to find out. When he trudged through the goddamned rain that had begun to pour down as soon as he parked the car, it had been only to pull on a door that wouldn't open - the dim, warm glow from within framing a sign in the window that had been flipped to "Closed". He had pressed himself up against the building, his cable-knit sweater already soaked, as he felt his chest constrict at the thought of driving back under the conditions. He couldn't. He had fumbled for his phone only to realize that his jacket wasn't the only thing he had left in his studio when he had rushed out in a desperate haze of grief. Yoongi had sagged against the wooden siding, tilting his head back helplessly as the familiar grip of anxiety began to tighten like a hand at this throat.

"Sir, I'm sorry, we're cl- are you alright?"

Your voice, though soft, had startled him, coming suddenly with your presence at the door. He had blinked the moisture from his lashes, recognizing you instantly, a fresh wave of emotions hitting him at the sight of your familiar features. You had taken in his wide, pain-stricken eyes and trembling chapped lips as he stood dripping by the door and reached for his arm, guiding him into the dry warmth of the small establishment. You had offered him shelter and the use of your phone only for him to discover there were no ride shares in the vicinity. You had insisted that he get warm and dry at your place, just down the street, and Yoongi had uncharacteristically agreed.

He had helped you close down the café in relative silence, and held your umbrella over the two of you as you had walked back to your small second-story apartment. Once inside you had taken his sweater, leaving him a bit self-conscious in his damp white undershirt and jeans. As you were asking him if you could make him a cup of tea you had realized that you had never introduced yourself. Yoongi had politely said that after seeing you so often it was nice to finally know your name, and you had responded with an air of confession that you already knew his - everyone did, after all - but that it was nice to meet him just the same.

Now you were sitting across the table with that look on your face that made him want to bare his soul as he struggled for the words he should, in fact, say to you now.

"Namjoon was half in love with you, I think," Yoongi murmured with a small wry smile.

You blinked in surprise, though he wasn't sure how you could have missed it. Over the last several years he had been meeting his friend at your coffee shop, Namjoon had spent most of his time sneaking less than clandestine glances at you, knocking over anything and everything when you ventured too near, and making remarks concerning the things he wondered about you in the middle of entirely unrelated conversations. Yoongi had told him in exasperation a dozen times to just talk to you. Namjoon had always dismissed him, insisting that he was waiting for the right moment. Yoongi had thought to himself that if the right moment was one where he hadn't just spilled coffee all over something, that it would very likely never arrive.

"Was he?" you asked softly, breaking Yoongi from his reverie.

Your eyes were filled with a gentle sadness and a sweet reverence, and Yoongi thought to himself that any man could find joy in death if only he knew a pair of eyes would soften in such a way at his memory. He nodded slowly.

"I kept telling him to just approach you. He always said he was waiting for the right moment. It just goes to show that you shouldn't put off the things you want to do in life, no matter what they are," he remarked a bit bitterly.

Yoongi believed that life was what you made it - reality a product of the choices of billions that you weathered as best you could. He wasn't one to romanticize cause and effect. Namjoon, on the other hand, had always maintained that life was inexplicable, its beauties and its sorrows, and that what mattered was seeing the beauty, believing in it - living by it - even when it was nowhere to be found. It was one of the hundred ways in which his and Namjoon's ideologies deviated.

"You'll be pleased to hear, then, that we did speak," you smiled at him, taking another sip of your tea. Yoongi looked surprised. "I noticed you hadn't been there for several weeks, and I asked him where you were, if you were alright."

Yoongi's expression darkened, his lips pinching with emotion. You watched him quietly.

"We...I...." he strained to find words as he fought to keep his composure.

"He told me," you unburdened him.

His broken eyes found your compassionate ones. Namjoon had been honest with you when you asked. He had told you about their falling out. And then he had told you about everything else. You had sat with him during slow hours and listened.

"I could tell he wanted to talk about lots of things...but he always came back to the same subject."

Yoongi's gaze was glassy and his brow creased in question.

"You," you revealed with a sad smile.

Yoongi's face twisted in anguish and he let out a sob, dropping his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking. You let tears track down your own face as you set your cup aside and reached out to wrap your hands around the weeping stranger's wrists. When Yoongi finally looked up again his pretty face was a snotty mess and his eyes were puffy and red. He apologized and apologized, but secretly hoped you would never let go of his arms, lest he be washed away. You didn't let go until it was time to pour him another cup of tea. Then you asked him if he would like to hear the stories and to which he had agreed.

You moved in front of the fire with a thick flannel blanket and told him every one. And then, Yoongi told you more of his own.

There were a few more tears, but mostly laughter. Yoongi thought your laugh was like music and your smile was like sunshine. How was it that while he was wrapped up in trying to translate the world into beats and bars, Namjoon had always been seeing it? To Yoongi, you had been someone who made coffee and poured it into cups. To Namjoon, you had been a flower. One that he had stopped and regarded amidst the chaos of the turning world. Undoubtedly, you were one of the loveliest flowers, and Yoongi had missed this because he never stopped at all. It was what had got him where he was, to all he had achieved. But as his eyes traced the lines of your face, he considered what it had cost him. Maybe Namjoon had been right, maybe there was more.

"So he came often, then," Yoongi asked, looking over at where you sat beside him on the ground in front of the couch - a strangely intimate posture befitting the strangely intimate evening.

You nodded, eyes not leaving the fire.

"Every Thursday at three."

You knew he wanted the truth but there were things you would spare him. How his friend would glance up hopefully every time someone jingled the entry bell. How he would stare out the window searchingly from time to time.

Yoongi's head dipped, as he cast his eyes away from you. You nudged his knee with yours.

"He knew you would come."

"But I didn't," Yoongi murmured miserably.

"Oh, yes you did. You came tonight. You were always going to come and you did."

Yoongi looked at you, his eyes searching yours.

"I wish that was true," he responded in a gravelly whisper.

He wanted to take every bit of the earnestness in your face and seal it inside of him.

"Then it is," you whispered back, squeezing his knee over the blanket you shared. Yoongi was quiet for a long moment, trying to form words that wouldn't come.

"He was my member, I should have been there for him. I shouldn't have...have..."

"Yoongi," you interrupted him gravely, "He was your friend. And friends know each other's hearts, like he knew yours. He knew you would come. You were just...waiting for the right moment."

Tears spilled down his soft cheeks again as he regarded you. You looked so certain and he wanted to believe you. He did believe you, he found.

Like a religion.

Like a sacred vow.

Like the damned foolish hope of something he would choose to live by.

Like the man who had loved you.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The days had been growing longer and warming as the year unfurled with all its pageantry into spring, as it had five times since the year of the great rainfall.

It was nearly too warm for second layers and hot drinks. Yoongi still found himself starting every morning with a cup of Kenyan black tea.

He looked over the top of the little green hill, sighing as he felt you slip your hand into his, and leaning over to kiss you gently before you gestured behind you, smirking, with a tilt of your head to the bottom of the grassy knoll. Your husband turned to follow your gaze toward a little boy, still quite small for a three-year-old, squatting to closely examine a daffodil.

"Yah," Yoongi called affectionately over his shoulder, "You can smell the flowers on the way back, right now we're going to see someone. He's waiting for us."

The little boy struggled to the top on short legs and took Yoongi's other hand, looking up at him with your lovely eyes.

"Who, Appa? Who is waiting for us?"

Yoongi smiled softly as he looked toward the little cherry tree standing on its own at the far end of the memorial park. He checked his watch. It was three o'clock on a Thursday.

"A friend, little Namjoon-ah," he whispered, squeezing the tiny hand in his, "A friend."

Life was inexplicable, in its beauties and its sorrows. The beauty was what Yoongi looked for - but even when it was nowhere to be found, Yoongi chose to believe.

-Fin-

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