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#leading roles in this version are closest to the novel
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终极笔记 ultimate note (adapted from daomu biji/the grave robbers' chronicles)
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thealogie · 1 month
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picture this. you're michael sheen, beloved queer-friendly welsh actor and recent twilight saga vampire. you want your favorite book to become a tv show, and you want to be the lead. so what do you do? you befriend the author. he wines and dines you, you become a confidant in the scriptwriting phase. and in the process of the GO script you decide you don't want to be crowley, actually, you want to be aziraphale. you put in the work for months to influence the author to the same conclusion. so when neil gaiman comes to you one day saying, "i know you joined on to be crowley... but how would you feel about playing aziraphale?" you say, what a novel idea! i was feeling the same way, i just didn't want to say anything! let's do it.
you're michael sheen, the lead in the adaptation of your favorite book. you meet david tennant as your leading man, a rising star (and vocal fan of yours) you've had a few vague interactions with in the past. on set you immediately find the closest friend you have ever and will ever find in your life, and you know this. the romance you have in your (yes, your) show is ambiguous, but you're michael sheen. you think that romance needs to be explicit. so what do you do? you become a nightmare on set. you get really hands-on; you make costume choices, you make story decisions, you tell your author friend at the very end of filming: aziraphale is in love with crowley and realizes it in 1941. now go do it again.
so the author goes and does it again. you get a season 2. you get 1941 part 2. you're michael sheen, and you are the lead of the adaptation of your favorite book, and the romance you littered into the character you built from the ground up has become unambiguous. everything goes according to plan. but, you see, you have a problem: the author you have baby trapped is acting a FIEND on twitter and tumblr. he's saying everything he can to imply aziraphale and crowley aren't sexually attracted to each other. he's getting a bit too bold with his character assumptions, is all i'm saying. so here's what you're going to do: you play it up with your pal david tennant. you made a show with him during lockdown. you're going to depict your lives as even more intertwined and homoerotically codependent as previously possible. you grow even closer. your wives become best friends, too, because how could they not? this has been the plan since the beginning, too. your lockdown show ends. it wasn't enough.
so you, michael sheen, of course you put in the work. if david tennant's there, you're damn sure you're there physically, spiritually, biblically, in whatever capacity you can be. it's not hard. david tennant is a big fan of yours, after all, so he MAKES SURE you're always in the conversation. you have him wrapped around your little finger, this lovely little boy, and so you know what you do next? you become neighbors. you make your directorial debut casting your best friend's wife watching her husband and male neighbor initiate sex with each other. you play into the swinging rumors (that you, michael sheen, had started). you create a narrative that you and david tennant are two homoerotic besties, and is there more going on in the background there? any deeper conspiracy? who really knows, but what you do know is that the world is talking about it.
and you, michael sheen, your entire acting career has led to this moment, your gay quips, your oscar wilde sex scene (and the interviews following), all of your queer roles, EVERYTHING has brought us to this conclusion. you have created the lab perfect conditions where season 3 must have an explicit gay sex scene. i'm sorry neil, my hands are tied! the people are clamoring for me and david tennant to have sex-- i mean aziraphale and crowley to have sex, the public decided this all on their own! i really don't think you have much choice. but of course, i would never deign to tell an author how to practice his veritable craft. i concede to whatever version of series 3 you create, and i will happy to bring this beloved character to his deserved ending.
and why do you say this? because you're michael sheen. you're just an actor who incidentally stumbled his way into leading the queer romance adaptation of your favorite book that wasn't a romance, and you just read the script the way that it was given to you. and if series 3 means an explicit sex scene between you and your best friend david tennant, then what a lovely coincidence that you had absolutely no part in making happen. because what power do you really have?
This is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. A rare occasion where the author pulls off use of the second person pov. I really felt like I was a beloved welsh actor crossed with Machiavelli when I read this
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philosophicalparadox · 6 months
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Hi! Non-native speaker, so I hope my English is not that bad. I really like your blog and especially your analyses on Mephisto. Fantastic!(read in his voice)
So my question.Have you read blue exorcist novel Bloody Fairy Tail? In the novel there is a part where little girl describes Mephisto as big void and the black wing towering over him. Do you think this could be a hint to his real form? Or perhaps his role as Angel of Death? Also there is part in the first chapters of the manga, when Mephisto meets with Amaimon and tells him that he took Rin under his wing. It might be just a translation though. Sorry for a long ask
After accidentally deleting this twice I’m going to try again! (New phone, still getting used to it)
I have not actually read the entire thing because finding any of the light novels in the US is really, really hard. Like, really hard. But I have actually read the part you’re talking about through fan pages here on Tumblr talking about that very thing! (And thanks to @facets-and-rainbows I’ve now been able to read more! Thank you.)
Here’s the thing: the only image that exists that depicts Mephistopheles in his pre-Goethe form is this one by Eugene Delacroix from the early 1800’s:
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This version of Mephistopheles is from Marlowe’s 1616 version, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. In it, (the B version) Mephistopheles is said to conjure wings in order to frighten the knights attacking him and Faustus, before turning said knights into demons (or animals in some translations) and giving them horns.
Mephistopheles is also a fallen angel, and uses that to both dissuade Faustus from forming a contract at the beginning, and later to help trick and torment the Pope in this version.
The inscription on it reads: De temps en temps j’aime a’voir le vieux Pére, Et me garde bien lui rompre en Visiére
Which roughly translates to (keeping in mind I’m still learning how to read older dialects of French) : “From time to time I like to see my old/winterly/ancient Father, and take care not to break off/sever with him in Person.” The caption probably is talking about the Pope scene, or maybe Faustsus’ separation from God, but to me it also speaks to the retribution of both.
Aaaaaanyway point is, it’s very popular to depict Mephistopheles as having black, feathery wings, partly because no matter what version he’s in he’s still a fallen angel lamenting his separation from God, (which isn’t especially relevant but it IS interesting) and also because the wings are mentioned directly in the earliest published version of the play.
What’s more, the original Mephistopheles from the late 1500’s (earliest record of the name was 1587) in the original Faustbuch was never a demon at all, but rather either an angel or a man that had been damned to serve Lucifer for all eternity by selling him his own soul, the reasons for which are never revealed. He does, however, from the very beginning, warn Faust about what he’s doing, and what that will lead to, presumably because he’s done the same thing and now regrets it. Fun stuff :)
As to whether I think it has anything to do with his true form, I would say yes, to a point. Samael is a shape-shifter after all, so not too many forms are out of bounds.
However, if he has wings (probable or at least possible) there’s some kind of reason why he doesn’t use them.
These are the closest we ever see to a demon form for him, and he’s… pretty formless, broadly speaking.
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He is kind of void-like, true, and warps the space around him. But, no visible wings.
In fact the only wings we see him with are not his own - they’re that of his familiar, which is likely Kin of Azazel.
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He can fly without any wings at all, (space timey levitation and all) so one would question why he’d need a familiar’s, never mind his own. Conservation of energy perhaps?
In any case I do think he CAN have wings, when he wants them, if that makes sense. Shape shifting is however tiresome, and flight requires a great deal of energy expenditure even if he’s not working against gravity in the traditional sense. So I imagine that he could use his own wings, or turn into a bird, but he doesn’t do so unless practical because it eats up his stamina, which he’s got little of comparatively.
Though honestly I’m more of the mind that he does shape shift all the time to observe things, (and what better form than a bird? He’s called The Raven too to boot) it’s just that turning into anything like that is going to terrify people, and unless that’s his aim, it’s not terribly reasonable. Similarly I am completely sure he has horns and a tail, but those things are very secretive to him, so he doesn’t show them hardly ever.
Why the girl sees wings may just be a reflection of her own fears; humans see what they want to, and fear-projecting wings into a creepy demonic aura would not be beyond a child.
As to why they might be secret, they’re probably very identifiable. In his current incarnation he thrives on secrecy and keeping his name, and infamy, on the down-low. He’s not trying to give Lucifer any more shit to throw back in his face, and he’s not trying to be a god and rule over people (not directly) he’s just trying to be a chairman and an arc knight keeping the world from literally gong up in flames, but doing so as close to anonymously as possible for himself. He doesn’t want people to fear him in the same way they used to (except when he wants them to of course) he just wants to do his own thing, and pretty much be left alone.
Not to get too speculative here, but I think perhaps he’s tired. Tired of being a god. Tired of being a demon. Tired of being Lucifer’s favorite scapegoat. (The irony of that) Tired of having to be a puppeteer and tired of having to serve the needs of others in order to just keep himself alive and sane. Tired of playing politics with Lucifer and tired of him never changing or being able to.
And who could blame him? Over and over and over and over. The monotony and pain are unimaginable. Perhaps that’s why Lucifer can’t understand him; surely if anyone could appreciate the suffering that comes from eternity and the pain of losing out over and over, it would be him, surely? Yet, Samael perseveres. He finds the smallest, most difficult things to cling to, like a desperate man panning for gold in a sea of sand, looking for specs of dust. He lives solely for those little moments, the butterfly wing that shapes a hurricane on the other side of the world. It’s monotonous, it’s tedious and it sucks, but rarely, ever rarely, it’s worth it. The world will never see perfection and he likes it that way - he doesn’t want perfection, only change.
And change is probably what drives his secrecy. He changes his face to suit the time, and in a time when demons supposedly don’t exist it makes sense to be discreet. There’s also advantages to the relative anonymity; if he does have to ever throw his weight around, he has to do far less to make a deep impression.
Thanks for the ask. I enjoyed answering even if I went a little off topic lol.
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yoodokjas · 8 months
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I saw someone talking about how with the scenes added in the ebook and with the scenes in the ongoing side story, with emphasis on that one scene where LHH talks about the heroine of ORV, DokSoo might become canon. And while they did mention that they read the side story, I thought that that particular scene pretty much sunk many ships?
oh boy ngl i was a bit reluctant answering this ask but imo this is just fans' wishful thinking rather than singshong walking through a doksoo route.
the doksoo scenes added to the ebook arent really so fundamental to the point that theyre the closest ship to become canon. in fact I'd say that the main reason to make them canon would be that it's a (well-developed) straight ship tbh. in the 1863rd turn, theres an added smoking-on-the-roof scene. kdj tries smoking and immediately has a coughing fit. hsy asks him if she did well in this round. this added scene is a direct parallel to kdj telling her that she did well during the enemy of the story arc
another scene is during kaizenix. yjh and kdj decide to try the romance route and bcs yuri was in love with ricardo, it's kdj who writes the letter "write a story that's for me and me alone" this is also a foreshadowing to what we learn in the epilogue lol. to expand more on kaizenix, we also have yjh telling kdj that his writing skills are terrible despite him reading so much, kdj tells him that with his face he certainly didnt have any problems with courting. yjh then goes on a thinking tangent about how he could not care less about the looks of someone he likes (and we know who is called ugly throughout the book)
as for the lhh part where he talks about orv's heroine (kdj's love interest in this context) he is 100% not referring to han sooyoung. he says that the character he had in mind didnt have as much screentime as the other leads. the main women in orv when it comes to screentime are hsy jhw uriel and ysa. going by lhh's logic and IF his words represent singshong's stance, then hsy is immediately ruled out. i also wouldn't consider jhw for the role either, not only bcs i didnt really see their scenes with a romantic undertone but also why would singshong write kdj's romantic interest love someone else (lhs) romantically?
with uriel, unless you consider kdj/uriel to be a direct parallel to 999yjh/999uriel then i dont think shes The candidate either. now for ysa, im a bit iffy when it comes to her bcs sure she doesnt have as much as screentime as lets say yoohankim but shes also not someone you would consider neglected (like lsh for example) also i genuinely think that romance would undermine doksang's bonds. i think theyre so good BECAUSE theyre platonic
singshong have told us in multiple ways that orv is not a story about a canon romance so you can interpret the ending however you want just dont mis-label the novel's genre (this includes both het and gay romance). plus i just dont think they would shoot themselves on the foot and risk "angering" the largest active part of the fandom (general statement). i dont want to sound arrogant but you cant deny that joongdok shippers are the backbone of orv fandom and joongdok artists have been the only ones to be recruited to promote orv. alter (the official artist before blackbox) is a danmei artist, blackbox is a joongdok shipper, haban (taiwanese release cover artist) has a danmei history, the artist of the simplified cn version release has jd porn on their twitter and so on. certainly singshong are aware that orv didn't get this big bcs some guy recommended it in solo leveling's comment sections
speaking of guys, not every dudebro out there ships doksoo anw, some like doksang, some dont ship anything. the same can be said about the female audience too. not everyone ships joongdok. some ship doksoo, some yoohankim, some nothing thats not canon. im not part of the latest group since i could not care less about a ship's canon status lol
this got WAY too long. if you want a TL;DR refer to the first paragraph
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By Steve Benen
By any fair measure, Justice Clarence Thomas was already one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most controversial members, even before this year got underway. But in recent months, the far-right jurist has faced a series of ethics questions that he and his allies have struggled to answer.
Over the last three months, ProPublica has taken the lead on exposing Thomas’ unusual and previously undisclosed ties to a Republican megadonor. Over the weekend, The New York Times took the story considerably further.
At the heart of the story is an organization with a name that’s probably unfamiliar to most Americans, but which counts among its members an exclusive group of powerful and wealthy elites:
“On Oct. 15, 1991, Clarence Thomas secured his seat on the Supreme Court, a narrow victory after a bruising confirmation fight that left him isolated and disillusioned. Within months, the new Justice enjoyed a far-warmer acceptance to a second exclusive club: the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, named for the Gilded Age author whose rags-to-riches novels represented an aspirational version of Justice Thomas’s own bootstraps origin story.”
According to the Times’ account, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, it was quite a pairing, as the Supreme Court Justice found a home alongside “a cluster of extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative members who lionized him.”
The non-profit organization, which awards scholarships and promotes members’ “economic opportunity” ideals, has benefited from the association with Thomas. From the article:
“While he has never held an official leadership position, in some ways he has become the association’s leading light. He has granted it unusual access to the Supreme Court, where every year he presides over the group’s signature event: a ceremony in the courtroom at which he places Horatio Alger medals around the necks of new lifetime members. One entrepreneur called it “the closest thing to being knighted in the United States.””
Just so we’re clear, when the Times mentioned “the courtroom,” it was referring specifically to the Supreme Court’s interior chamber where Justices sit and hear oral arguments.
“The association has used access to the court ceremony and related events in the annual gathering to raise money for scholarships and other programming, according to fund-raising records reviewed by The Times,” the report added.
As for Thomas, he’s received benefits of his own, beyond simply enjoying the camaraderie of like-minded allies who were eager to celebrate him. The Times’ account highlighted the degree to which the Justices’ associations with the association’s members “brought him proximity to a lifestyle of unimaginable material privilege.”
The result was relationships in which Thomas’ Horatio Alger friends “have welcomed him at their vacation retreats, arranged V.I.P. access to sporting events and invited him to their lavish parties.”
Remember, over the last few months, the Supreme Court Justices’ principal problem was his relationship with Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, and the generosity the GOP megadonor has shown Thomas. But what the Times appears to have uncovered is a similar problem multiplied several times: Thomas “has received benefits — many of them previously unreported — from a broader cohort of wealthy and powerful friends,” thanks to his connections established through the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.
Among the benefits: In 2016, an HBO film brought Anita Hill’s allegations against Thomas back to the fore. Soon after, a documentary titled “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” designed to defend the Justice, was released.
It was financed in part by Thomas’ Horatio Alger pals.
The Justice has not yet responded to the allegations raised by the Times.
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cpw-nyc · 4 months
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Reese Witherspoon to return as Tracy Flick in Election sequel
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Benjamin Lee Thu 8 Dec 2022
Reese Witherspoon is set to reunite with director Alexander Payne for an Election sequel.
The film will be an adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s Tracy Flick Can’t Win, his 2022 novel that follows the character of Tracy Flick as she battles to become the principal of a suburban high school. “She hasn’t fulfilled her dreams of a political career,” Perrotta said of Tracy in the book. “And she’s looking back and starting to realize that she wasn’t as extraordinary an individual as she believed. That she was a kind of representative woman rather than a unique superhero.”
Perrotta’s novel was released to acclaim this June with the New York Times’s Molly Young calling it “exquisitely drawn”.
Tracy Flick Can’t Win will be released on streaming platform Paramount+. Witherspoon will also produce while Payne will again write the screenplay with Jim Taylor.
The 1999 original was a breakout success, netting Payne and Taylor an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay and Witherspoon a Golden Globe nod for best actress in a musical or comedy. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it “a devastatingly clever and funny black comedy”.
Witherspoon has since gone on to win an Oscar for her role in Walk the Line and has most recently been seen in Apple TV’s drama series The Morning Show. She will next lead Netflix romantic comedy Your Place or Mine alongside Ashton Kutcher and Legally Blonde 3, co-written by Mindy Kaling.
In a USA Today interview from this summer, Witherspoon teased that out of the “dozen projects in various stages of development” she is handling, there was one that she “can’t really talk about”. She said she would be “reprising a character I played a long time ago”.
Payne’s last film was 2017’s high-concept satire Downsizing starring Matt Damon. The film received mixed reviews and was a commercial misfire. His next film The Holdovers stars Paul Giamatti was recently purchased by Focus Features for a worldwide deal that is estimated to be worth $30m and is expected to be released in 2023.
Tracy Flick Can’t Win is one of many projects heading to Paramount’s streaming network based on pre-existing studio property. Next year sees a TV remake of Fatal Attraction starring Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan and a Grease prequel.
Election at 20: assessing the high school satire's brutal politics
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Charles Bramesco Tue 23 Apr 2019
There’s a big M Night Shyamalan twist in the final minutes of Election, Alexander Payne’s searing 1999 high school satire. Tracy Flick, the irritating overachiever indelibly played by a breakout Reese Witherspoon, is a Republican.
Throughout the film, Payne prefers to think about politics in the abstract, as an illusory choice between interchangeable versions of the same bullshit. Odious civics teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) explains democracy as having the option to select either an apple or an orange, represented with two identical circles on his chalkboard. The closest thing that this comedy of bad morals has to a hero is Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell), who galvanizes the student body with a promise to dissolve the school government in toto if elected class president.
Office Space at 20: how the comedy spoke to an anxious workplace
Read more
Payne narrows his blanket contempt for the two-party system in only one moment, just short of the credits. After McAllister has torpedoed his professional and romantic lives by sabotaging Tracy’s campaign for office at Carver high, after the scandal’s dust has died down, he engineers a second act for himself in New York City as a museum guide. He encounters Tracy years later in Washington DC, where he glimpses her getting into a limo as a staffer to the fictitious Representative Mike Geiger, identified as a Nebraska Republican. A minor detail, perhaps, but for a character as invested in the trajectory of her own future as Tracy, it’s a significant one. Payne doesn’t like picking sides, he’d rather withdraw in disgust, so it stands out that he picks one for her.
In her school days, Tracy Flick is “political” in the same holistic, imprecise sense that Burning Man attendees can be “spiritual” without subscribing to any formal religion. She’s invigorated by the nuts and bolts of the voting process, and as is the case with all of her numerous extracurriculars, she throws her entire self into running for class president. But the dirty secret about résumé-padders like Tracy is that their only real commitment is to the act of staying involved. It’s not like dictating lunch block policy requires a nuanced platform, and still her stump speech goes heavy on upbeat vagaries over substance. She imitates the habits of studied politicians, hitting her cadences and singling out her working-class constituents to score pathos points.
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Which makes it all the more curious that posterity has cast Tracy Flick as an avatar for liberalism. At the time of the original release in 1999, audiences already knew to read Tracy as a stand-in for Hillary Clinton; Witherspoon herself has reinforced the comparison, claiming just last year that she would never portray Clinton in a movie because she already had. Clinton herself has told the star that even 20 years out, people still ask her about Election all the time. These details were foregrounded in essays around the 2016 lead-up to the Presidential vote, pieces with titles like The Very Uncomfortable Experience of Rewatching Election in 2016 and Hillary Clinton, Tracy Flick, and the Reclaiming of Female Ambition.
These articles identified Tracy Flick as a vessel for a determination and self-sufficiency that frightens men when not actively offending them, a reading more than borne out by the film’s active interest in exposing the ugliest, pettiest sides of the adults undermining and taking advantage of her. (She’s introduced mid-affair with a lecherous married teacher; later, McAllister fetishizes her severity during sex with his own wife.) Tracy’s been wronged, the argument goes, devolving into a cudgel that male commentators can use to trivialize preparedness and perfectionism in distaff candidates. Tracy’s only sin, by the ethical calculus of this reappraisal? “She cares, about her own interests and those of everybody else, so insistently, and so aggressively – indeed, so ambitiously – as to blur the line between the two.”
That’s a generous assessment of a character who thinks to herself: “Now that I have more life experience, I feel sorry for Mr McAllister. I mean, anyone who’s stuck in the same little room, wearing the same stupid clothes, saying the exact same things year after year for all of his life, while his students go on to good colleges and move to big cities and do great things and make loads of money – he’s gotta be at least a little jealous. It’s like my mom says, the weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.” She’s smug and annoying and surprisingly entitled for someone resentful of the upper class, and yet she has the upper hand by not being a serially dishonest pedophile. Tracy doesn’t have to be good for the men around her to be worse.
That’s the disillusioned soul of the film, entrenching it within the cynicism of the 90s and estranging it from the hopeful revisionism of modern discourse. Election hones itself into a war of attrition between an actively terrible person and one who is just obnoxious enough to keep an audience at arm’s length. A foil for Tracy arrived in the form of Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, another irrepressible go-getter with an eye for climbing the governmental ladder. Except that her always-on energy and tireless devotion to work earned her lots of friends as it boosted her up the chain of command, a fittingly optimistic rework for the hope-fueled Obama administration and Clinton candidacy. What makes Election special, and thoroughly alien to entertainment in 2019, is its refusal to give Tracy any leeway. If she’s going to gain the political foothold she so desperately craves, she will have to shack up with the neocons to do so. Bleak, sure, but at least Payne’s honest.
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tobermoriansass · 3 years
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i'm 1,000% here for your le carre feelings, i had no idea he wrote this self-insert novel and would love to hear more about it, or anything else about le carre
well i have to preface this with the fact that le carre wrote A LOT of self-insert novels: The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, Our Game, A Delicate Truth, are just a handful of these, but there are extremely biographical details scattered through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (allegedly his wife referred to Ann Smiley as proof he had no idea how to write women, not least because Ann shared her name and was. Well. That.)
But like The Naive and Sentimental Lover just kind of violently sweeps the table and knocks them all out of the park. This is the novel that Le Carre's father sued him over, for libel, even though A Perfect Spy is the one everyone picks out for portraits of the Ronnie and David Cornwell show.
Whatever is going on with the Ronnie and David Cornwell show in this has like, nothing on whatever the fuck is going on with the affair, which is a fictionalization of an affair he had with James Kennaway's wife Susan. James Kennaway being dubbed one of his closest friends at the time - planning movie scripts together (as in the novel) - a writer (as in the novel) and a serial philanderer (as in the novel). The fiction is barely fictional - it seems to more or less follow all the beats of the actual progression of friendship (Paris playing a big role) and the affair itself being a sort of revenge for all the philandering, culminating in a dramatic confrontation in Switzerland where beat for beat he repeats James Kennaway trying to force them into running off together and the entire collapse of everything.
It's also really fucking gay.
Like. Nightmarishly gay.
Like, I don't even know how to process anything that's going on in this! The first few chapters are all in this vein and then it just gets more. At some point his self-insert character goes with the best friend insert character to Paris, where they share rooms and even share beds, and go through the entire manic pixie dream girl in Paris romance arc and honestly, I can only really copy out the messages I sent to @chamerionwrites while reading the entire trainwreck, under the cut:
but especially the fact that the le carre expy character and the best friend whose wife he cheats on expy character go to paris and from what i can tell speedrun the manic pixie dream girl paris romance BUT male flavoured so not!le carre watches his friend fuck a prostitute and then they go to a church together and then his friend kisses him and then the rest of the night seems to feature well whatever this is
“Don’t worry,” said Cassidy consolingly. “You’ll go on for
Long embraces under the warm blankets.
“I wasn’t talking about me,” Shamus explained, kissing him. “I was talking about you. My cells get a lovely time. It’s yours we’re worried about. I’m writing that down too, if I remember it.”"
Like tbf it does veer into a kind of miserable toxicity but there's also stellar moments like le Carre's self insert finding a girl and getting a handjob from her while it's thoroughly implied he's thinking of the best friend character
And then it does end with him thinking of the best friend character telling him not to be late
His best friend character deciding he has difficulty and anxiety relating to women because his mother abandoned him when he was too young ANOTHER LITERAL LE CARRE BIOGRAPHY DETAIL
A scene where he angsts at the best friend about them being gay
"Well perhaps that’s it. Perhaps we are queer,” said Cassidy, still working on the false assumption that he would do best to rely on Shamus’ themes, and offer them as his own. “Zero,” said Shamus. “Did I ever once venture just the smallest finger up your skirts? Not the tiniest little digit, did I?”
Here Shamus, having now rejoined the ranks of the walking wounded, insisted on going alone to the bathroom, where Cassidy the preserver soon afterwards found him asleep on the floor. With a last heroic effort, Cassidy the passable rugger forward removed his sodden clothing, sponged down the naked body of his heterosexual friend and lifted, actually bore him to the double bed, where he was soon well enough to sit up and request a drink of whisky. “Lover,” Shamus said brightly, clapping his hands, “what a clever boy. You done it all alone!” A few hours, a few lives later the same preserver of life applied himself painstakingly to the urgent task of restoring to the bedraggled, naked figure in the bed the ideals, dimensions, and glory of his fallen familiar.
And then that quote leads on to this passage
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which like, choices were made!!! VERY SPECIFIC NARRATIVE CHOICES.
And then
He keeps fucking going. I don't even know man. From the lead up to the actual culmination of the affair:
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He fantasizes about spanking the best friend character, schoolboy style, because he's been immoral and horrible to the wife. The imaginary figment of the best friend character retorts that he's just as horrible so there won't be any spanking.
AGAIN. VERY SPECIFIC NARRATIVE CHOICES JOHN.
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this is from an entire section where the best friend/james kennaway character is fucking passed out on the floor and his wife is deliberately trying to provoke the le carre character into fucking her
then, they finally lie in bed together, while he has about sixty million feelings and imaginary conversations with his father and son and wife and the best friend. Finally! FINALLY we are getting to the adultery and we get:
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IT KEEPS ON KEEPING ON:
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Then, they finally DO FUCKING GO TO BED TOGETHER and he spends the entire beginning wishing devoutly that someone would come and save him from this, including imagining himself doing a boardroom speech to an entire audience about how terrible he has at sex, that eventually works up to him anxiously thinking about the husband and then freaking out because her skin feels WEIRD AND RUBBERY AND HE CAN'T GET IT UP
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Her: LETS SCREW ALREADY
Him: BUT WHAT IF INSTEAD WE CHECKED ON HIM???? WHAT IF I ASKED HIM IF I COULD FUCK YOU???? WHAT IF I WENT TO HIM???
Then he has an entire imaginary fucking conversation with his actual wife whom he's cheating on:
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FINALLY! FINALLY HE HAS SEX WITH HIS BEST FRIEND'S WIFE! and then promptly spends both her and his orgasm thinking of the best friend:
"I’d like to be with you now, Shamus, actually; she’s joined her own dark people, she’s out there with the deep feelers. Actually, Shamus, I want you back."
Later on, he'll fuck her again and think about how he can smell his best friend's sweat on her. COMPLETELY NORMAL HETEROSEXUAL SEX THOUGHTS.
But in the meanwhile, immediately after he screws her, this is what he does:
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Anyway, during the dramatic confrontation in Switzerland, the best friend tries to shotgun marry him to his wife and force them to run off together - essentially scripting their affair for them (which is how Kennaway fictionalizes it in his version of the affair). But first, the best friend makes him drag him up the hill in a tobogan and at some point halfway, stops him and then asks him to kiss him - which the le carre character does, only the best friend says more, and he obliges. Because ????? And anyway, you can see the conflict at play when you finally get to the "wedding"
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The Le Carre hesitates at this point.
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AND NOW TUMBLR TELLS ME I'VE RUN OUT OF IMAGES I CAN USE, SO I'M JUST GOING TO PUT IT ALL IN THE NEXT REBLOG
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schmergo · 2 years
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Regarding your very interesting and thorough post on the Jane Eyre films and unconventional beauty... I'm curious as to whether you believe the casting is at fault or the makeup/costume department? I think we could place some blame on both, but casting should be first & foremost about choosing the best performance not necessarily the appearance. If I were to choose the best representation so far, I agree with you 100% that the 2006 version came the closest to the novel's authenticity.
I actually think the makeup/costume team did a great job OTHER THAN they coulda made Rochester look WAY MORE INJURED at the end!
Some other versions of Jane Eyre have Jane in obvious eye makeup and stuff. In this one, she had a real clean, fresh-faced look even though I’m sure she must have been wearing makeup. Her dresses were very appropriate for the character, too (and I loved her cute simple wedding dress).
The hair extensions/dye for Toby Stephens and darkening his eyebrows were very well done. The dark hair also kinda washed him out in a way that made his freckled complexion look more rough and weathered rather than just typical fair-ginger-guy-freckles. His costuming was EXCELLENT- I really think his styling, his hair and facial hair, his physicality, his stupid hat, were all perfect for the character. The guy in them was just way too naturally pretty for the role.
All that said, I don’t want to necessarily complain that the casting team did a bad job. Like I said before, I think the actors really gave good performances and I enjoyed their chemistry very much. I don’t want to erase this movie from movie history or replace the actors. This is my favorite adaptation of the book I’ve seen.
But I feel like the next time this book is adapted to screen, I’d like to see them cast the net a little wider in casting. I’d love to see more plus-sized men playing romantic leads. I’d love to see more young women with visible acne and eye bags unhidden by makeup onscreen. I’d love to see more asymmetrical faces, imperfect teeth, scars, blotchy skin, all the little flaws that many people have and certainly had back then in the 19th century.
(Also, if I were directing or writing the 2006 movie, if I found that handsome Toby Stephens was the best choice for the role, I might have cut one or two of the lines about how ugly Rochester is or at least toned them down, though I would have kept that “Am I hideous, Jane?” “Very, sir. You always were, you know” exchange because it’s A++++)
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hellyeahheroes · 4 years
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Sunday Spotlight, Black History Month Character of the Day: Miles Morales
Arguably the most successful character created in the last decade, Miles has made his first appearance in Ultimate Fallout #4. He comes from Earth 1610 - so-called Ultimate Universe, which reimagined classic Marvel heroes as how they would look if the debuted in Turn of the Millenium. Ultimate Universe was known for taking ore risks to the point of not being afraid to kill their version of Peter Parker. And then promptly reveal the existence of Miles - a teenager who gained near-identical powers but didn’t feel the world needed him to be a superhero, already having one Spider-Man. When Peter died in action, Miles felt guilty, thinking if he was there, he could be able to stop that tragedy and that motivated him to become a new Spider-Man.
In 2015 Ultimate Universe was phased out in event Secret Wars, where all alternate worlds collapsed into one, ruled by Doctor Doom. When things were undone a reality warper Molecule Man, who took a liking to Miles, moved him and a number of his family and friends to the main Marvel Universe.
Miles is in a lot of books. Here is a quick guide:
Ultimate Universe:
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man - Miles first main solo series
Cataclysm: the Ultimates Last Stand and Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man - Ultimate Universe faces off against dimension-hopping Galactus from 616. Miles is featured in the main series but has more focus in his own miniseries.
All-New Ultimates - Following the Cataclysm Miles forms a new Ultimates team with various other teens of Ultimate Universe.
Spider-Men - a miniseries in which Miles meets Peter Parker of main Marvel Universe.
Spider-Verse - let the name not fool you, has jack shit to do with the story of the movie (it came out first and focuses on Peter, Otto Octavius and a bunch of interdimensional vampires) and Miles has a minuscule role. However, a story in Spider-Verse Team-Up #2 where Miles and Peter from Ultimate Spider-Man Animated Series go recruit Spider-man from 1963 cartoon is pretty funny.
All-New X-Men #31-36 - Miles teams-up with....time-travelling teenage versions of original X-Men from 616 when they jump to Ultimate Universe.
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man - Miles second series, leads directly into Secret Wars
Main Marvel Universe:
Secret Wars and Ultimate End #4-5 - Miles has a very minor role, read them if you have to know how he ended in the main Marvel Universe.
Spider-Man - Miles’ first series in the new world. 
All-New, All-Different Avengers #1-12 - Miles joins the Avengers. Notable for being where he first meets Kama Khan and Sam Alexander, a.k.a. Ms. Marvel and Nova, who will become among his closest friends in the superhero community.
Civil War II - Fuck this event. There is a big plot about a vision of Miles’ killing Captain America in the future but the story is shit. Read it only if you need to understand what the fuck is happening in issues of Miles’ main book that make a tie-in to it
Champions - Following Civil War II Miles, Kamala and Sam quit the Avengers and decide to start their own superhero team.
Spider-Men II - Miles and Peter team-up to discover who is Miles Morales of 616 Universe. Plot points from here come back in later series and it introduces Miles’s new love interest, Barbara Rodriguez.
Secret Empire - Fuck this event even harder, the subplot about Miles killing Captain America comes back and as much as fun it is to see Miles beat up HydraCap, they still fucked it up.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man - Miles’ first series under new writer Saladin Ahmed.
Spider-Geddon - Follow-up to original Spider-Verse, Miles actually gets stuff to do in this one.
Champions 2019 #1-6 and #9-10 - continuing from the first Champions series.
War of the Realms: Journey Into Mystery  - Read it between issues #6 and #9 of Champions, it has Miles as a part of a ragtag bunch of misfits tasked with protecting Odin’s baby daughter from Ares, Greek God of War. Notable for being written by McElroys from the Adventure Zone podcast.
Absolute Carnage - pair the course FUCK THIS EVENT! You can read Miles’ own miniseries but even then avoid the main miniseries, it doesn’t help you understand the context of events in Miles’ mini. In fact, it makes things make LESS sense. 
Marvel Rising - Miles teams-up with other heroes against Morgan LeFay
Spider-Verse 2019 - following from plot-lines of Spider-Geddon it has Miles fall into multiverse again when a new crisis threatens various Spiders.
Miles Morales: the End -  One-shot showing Miles possible “final tale” set in the far future.
Marvel Action: Spider-Man - a series aimed at younger audiences, starring Peter, Miles and Gwen in main roles.
Champions 2020 - Miles will be part of the upcoming Champions relaunch as a part of the Outlawed event in which government bans all superheroes below age of 21.
Guest Appearances
Ms. Marvel #7, #31 - Miles has guest appearances in Kamala’s book, they’re pretty neat.
Nova #3-4 - Set during All-new All-Different Avengers days, Miles and Kamala go on a patrol with Sam.
Totally Awesome Hulk #1-4 - Miles meets Amadeus Cho. Read it before Champions to know where Miles knows Amadeus when he recommends him for the team.
Gwenpool #5-6, #18-20 - #5-6 has main character trying to befriend Miles, #18-20 features adult Miles from the future.
Amazing Spider-Man #12-15 - a meh story that is notable for the fact that Peter Parker and Tony Stark LITERALLY GOT INTO A FISTFIGHT over who is Miles’ mentor.
Shuri #6-7 - Miles and Kamala team-up with Shuri, princess of Wakanda.
Ironheart #6 - Riri investigates Miles’ disappearance.
Other media: 
Miles appears in dozens of games and several cartoons, but two things that are truly about him are:
Miles Morales: Spider-Man prose novel by Jason Reynolds
And of course Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, an animated movie that is so freaking good it won 41 different awards, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar.
- Admin
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SP Influences: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Haunted Palace
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CONTENT WARNING FOR DISCUSSION OF RAPE (NOT JUST THE FANTASY METAPHOR KIND) AND SLAVERY. ALSO SPOILER WARNING FOR THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963), THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, AND BOTH THE FIRST AND FINAL ARC (INCLUDING THE ENDING) OF STRANGE PARADISE.
Although it never directly copied from other works, the 1969-70 soap opera Strange Paradise appears to have drawn inspiration from several classic works of Gothic fiction. Unlike its more famous cousin Dark Shadows (1966-71), which lifted most of its major plotlines from public-domain horror classics like Dracula and The Turn of the Screw with relatively few changes, the influence of other works on the plot and characters of Strange Paradise generally took a subtler form. Many of the early advertisements and articles promoting the serial compared its protagonist Jean Paul Desmond and villain Jacques Eloi des Mondes (both played by Colin Fox) to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, but--as Curt Ladnier has pointed out--there are only superficial similarities between the plot of the serial’s Maljardin arc and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, making the two works less similar than readers likely expected. Instead, the plot more closely resembles that of another, lesser-known story about a protagonist controlled by his evil counterpart: the 1963 Roger Corman/Vincent Price film The Haunted Palace, a loose adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
The plot and characters of Strange Paradise have too much in common with those of The Haunted Palace to be mere coincidence. In particular, the character of Joseph Curwen and his characterization in the film strongly resemble the portrayal of Jacques Eloi des Mondes, enough to conclude that Curwen must have inspired his backstory and his interactions with the other characters. While it is likely that Lovecraft’s original 1927 novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward also directly influenced the serial, there is stronger evidence for indirect influence by way of the film adaptation.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The plot of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward shares a common theme with the Maljardin arc: the evil ancestor from the seventeenth century who returns from beyond the grave and assumes the identity of his lookalike descendant. In both cases, the ancestor was involved in the occult during his lifetime and reviled for his rumored diabolical activities. During his lifetime--which he used magic to prolong--Curwen practiced necromancy, tortured knowledge out of the people he resurrected before murdering them again, experimented on living people, and summoned the god Yog-Sothoth for assistance in his occult activities using spells from the Necronomicon. Two fellow warlocks named Simon Orne and Edward Hutchinson assisted him with his occult studies, and were both still alive when his descendant Charles Dexter Ward brought him back to life. In the early episodes of Strange Paradise’s Maljardin arc written by Ian Martin, Jacques is portrayed as the literal Devil: an accusation about which he often jokes. He has many supernatural abilities, including possession, manipulation of electricity, telekinesis, the ability to magically alter messages written in sand, and--most importantly--the ability to resurrect Jean Paul’s dead wife Erica (Tudi Wiggins), which is why he frees his spirit in the pilot. He has an interest in voodoo, although he himself does not appear to practice it and instead fears its power. Unlike Curwen, no accomplices of Jacques’ return from the dead in the Maljardin arc, although it is possible that Martin intended for the seventeenth-century witch Tarasca, an earlier incarnation of wealthy widow Elizabeth Marshall (Paisley Maxwell), to fulfill this role after possessing Elizabeth.[1]
But these occult matters are not the only common interest that Joseph Curwen and Jacques Eloi des Mondes share. Both character were involved in the more earthly evils of the slave trade. A merchant by trade, Curwen also bought and sold slaves, importing enormous numbers of enslaved people from Guinea into his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island in 1766. He sold few of them, however, and Lovecraft heavily implies that he used most of them in his experiments. The televised version of Strange Paradise never explicitly references slavery (although Jean Paul’s immortal servants Raxl (Cosette Lee) and Quito (Kurt Schiegl) are implied to be Jacques’ former slaves), but the non-canonical book series by Dorothy Daniels does on occasion. In the second book Island of Evil, Jean Paul lists “black gold, another name for the importation of slaves” along with piracy and brigandage as one of the sources of the des Mondes’ family fortune.[2] A flashback sequence in Island of Evil confirms the past enslavement of Raxl and Quito, as well as an African voodoo priest whom Jacques forces to turn Quito into a zombie: the closest event in the Strange Paradise expanded universe to Curwen’s experiments.
Both Jacques and Curwen also met their ends at the hands of locals. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Ezra Weeden begins spying on Curwen because he suspects him of illegal activities including witchcraft. Eventually, he turns most of the prominent figures in Providence society against him and they band together to raid and destroy Curwen’s Pawtuxet farm. During the raid, Curwen dies for the first time, but only after devising a spell for his future resurrection. Likewise, in Strange Paradise, Jacques dies after the natives of Maljardin turn against him, although the trigger and cause of his death are different. When Jacques murders his wife, the princess Huaco, by pushing her off the island’s cliff, a group of natives including Raxl and the Conjure Man band together to kill Jacques using a conjure (voodoo) doll and silver pin. These weapons curse Jacques to throw himself from the cliff and keep his spirit "shackled to the Temple [of the Serpent, Raxl’s god]” until the day he tricks his descendant Jean Paul Desmond into removing the pin from the doll, thereby setting him free.
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Jacques’ disappearing portrait from Strange Paradise Episode 12.
Also significantly, both The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and Strange Paradise give the evil ancestor’s portrait a prominent role in the plot. In both cases, this portrait hangs at the ancestor’s former residence and disappears either temporarily or permanently when he takes control of the man who resembles him. When Charles Dexter Ward is researching the history of Joseph Curwen, his sources lead him to an eighteenth-century townhouse at Orney Court in Ward’s hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, where Curwen settled after fleeing Salem, Massachusetts. He hires a restorator to restore the painting, has it moved to his study, and discovers some documents of Curwen’s hidden in the wall behind it. When he finally succeeds in resurrecting Curwen, the painting disintegrates into dust: an end which Curwen himself later meets. On Strange Paradise, Jacques’ oil painting sometimes disappears when he possesses Jean Paul, but the show is inconsistent about this cue from episode to episode.[3] In contrast to Curwen’s painting, Jacques’ portrait always returns after he leaves Jean Paul’s body and appears to be indestructible: when Jean Paul sets fire to Maljardin in Episode 65, the portrait survives and later re-appears in the attic at Jean Paul’s childhood home Desmond Hall in Episode 131.
In spite of these similarities, I should note that the method of resurrection differs from one work to the other. In Strange Paradise, Jacques achieves this by possessing Jean Paul: after Jean Paul frees him by removing the silver pin from the head of his effigy, Jacques’ spirit can enter and exit Jean Paul’s body at will. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the title character literally resurrects Curwen, his great-great-great-grandfather, using his essential salts, after which Curwen murders him. Ward behaves as though Curwen has possessed him--he has the speech and manners of a man of the colonial period and knows extremely specific details about the history of Providence--but the pit above his right eye which Ward did not previously possess and the lack of the olive birthmark on Ward’s hip indicate a different body. When Jean Paul opens his casket in the pilot, he finds only the conjure doll and silver pin; the absence of Jacques’ body is never explained and could be for any number of reasons, which we shall not discuss here.
The Haunted Palace
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A lobby card for The Haunted Palace asking the question, “What was the terrifying thing in the PIT that wanted women?” (Source)
In 1963, American International Pictures released The Haunted Palace, a loose adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward written by Charles Beaumont and directed by Roger Corman. Due to alleged executive meddling (a theme which should already be familiar to regular readers of this blog), the film was marketed as an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the same name, which Vincent Price quotes throughout the film. In the adaptation process, Beaumont made many changes to the source material, the most notable of which was the decision to have Curwen breed human women with the elder god Yog-Sothoth, as alluded to on the lobby card above.[4]
Though an entertaining and visually enthralling film, most of the changes made to The Haunted Palace weaken the plot. In my opinion, Beaumont added too many Hollywood horror conventions during the adaptation process, which did not always work effectively considering the unconventional source material, not to mention left many plot holes unfilled. The dated and sleazy sexual angle which he added to the film makes the cosmic horror of Yog-Sothoth less cosmic and more carnal; whether this makes him more or less frightening depends on one’s personal opinion, but I feel it contradicts his otherworldly characterization in Lovecraft’s works. For the most part, the talents of the director and the actors (especially Price, who is fabulous as always) make up for these problems, but I prefer--and highly recommend--the far more faithful radio drama adaptation by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
The most notable influence of The Haunted Palace on Strange Paradise comes from its characterizations of Charles Dexter Ward and Joseph Curwen. Despite many similarities with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the characterizations of both Jean Paul Desmond and Jacques Eloi des Mondes owe far more to the portrayals of the protagonist and villain in the The Haunted Palace than in its source material. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, neither Ward nor Curwen shows any romantic or sexual interest in women whatsoever.  Lovecraft’s Ward only cares about antiquities, the local history of Providence, and the story of his ancestor; at twenty-six, he is unmarried and either asexual or simply too absorbed in his studies to pursue any romantic or sexual partner. The sexual orientation of Lovecraft’s Curwen is just as much of a mystery: although he took Eliza Tillinghast as a wife during his lifetime and their union produced a daughter, theirs was an arranged marriage for the sake of elevating Curwen’s social status within Providence society.
Both Price’s Ward and his Curwen, in contrast, show a marked interest in women. While their marriage is never outright stated to be a love match, Ward and his wife Ann (Debra Paget) appear to feel mutual love and devotion and have enough chemistry to imply a mutual sexual attraction. Like a dark mirror of Ward, Curwen shows a marked interest in the sexual and sexualized domination of women. In The Haunted Palace, the people of Arkham consider him a threat primarily because he lures local women to his palace to use in his rituals. While possessing Ward, Price’s Curwen rapes Ann--whom he later offers to Yog-Sothoth as well--and resurrects his former mistress, Hester Tillinghast (Cathie Merchant), who assists him in his sorcery in the film’s climax. If Lovecraft’s Curwen never did any similar actions, he does not mention them in his novella.
In Strange Paradise, romantic and sexual desire for women motivates both Jean Paul and Jacques. Jean Paul resurrects his ancestor neither out of an obsession with his history (as in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) nor by accident (as in The Haunted Palace), but because Jacques’ spirit promises that, if the recently widowed Jean Paul frees him, he will restore life to his beloved wife Erica (Tudi Wiggins). Many episodes show Jean Paul mourning her death and narrating a tape-recorded journal to her, and he obsesses over protecting her cryogenically-preserved corpse from danger. Jacques romantically pursues several female characters over the course of the Maljardin arc--including Erica, her sister Dr. Alison Carr (Dawn Greenhalgh), and the wealthy widow Elizabeth Marshall (Paisley Maxwell) and her 20-year-old daughter Holly (Sylvia Feigel)--and makes many sexual innuendos about them. After resurrecting Erica, she obeys Jacques as though he were her husband and assists him by murdering most of the guests on Maljardin. This makes her character’s role comparable to that of Hester in The Haunted Palace.[5]
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On a more superficial note, neither Jacques nor Curwen wears a costume appropriate to his era of origin. In his portrait and in flashbacks, Jacques wears a side-parted 1960s hairstyle and clothing, including a doublet and lace collar and cuffs, more appropriate for the 1630s than the late 17th century when he lived (1660-1689, according to the plaque beneath his portrait). Similarly out of place, Curwen has short hair and a beard and wears a historically inaccurate lace bib in his portrait and in the prologue at the beginning of the film. Unlike the others, this similarity is almost certainly coincidental.
An even greater similarity, however, can be found in the scene forty-five minutes into the film where Curwen speaks to Charles through his portrait.The scene occurs after the second instance of Curwen possessing him, during which he unearths Hester’s coffin and has his fellow warlocks Simon Orne (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and Jabez Hutchinson (Milton Parsons) deliver it to his cellar laboratory. Ann catches him down there and he sends her away, still possessed by Curwen. When Curwen leaves his body, they have this conversation:
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JC: (from painting) "Charles Dexter Ward…" CDW: "Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!" JC: "I will never leave you alone. Your blood is my blood, your mind is my mind, your body is my body. It will do you no good to resist me. Your efforts grow weaker every day." CDW: "No! NO!" JC: "You cannot keep me out, Ward. My will is too strong." (he possesses Ward again) "Too strong for you, Ward. Too strong for you."
Similarly, most episodes from the Maljardin arc of Strange Paradise feature at least one scene where Jean Paul communicates with Jacques’ disembodied spirit, represented by his portrait. In some scenes, they use a shot of the portrait hanging in the Great Hall; other times, they superimpose Jacques’ painted face over that of his identical descendant. One of the earliest examples of Jacques referring to them as one comes in Episode 5, when he taunts Jean Paul about his attraction to Alison. “She’s so delectable a woman. How could I--you--we--ever resist or let her go?” he says, snickering throughout. During another such conversation in Episode 27, Jacques refers to Jean Paul’s body as “our body” and commands him to rest because he is tired. In still another scene ten episodes later, he complains to Jean Paul that he is “waiting for the use of our body” as Jean Paul begs him not to “enter”; the dialogue in the scene has undertones suggestive of fantasy-metaphor rape, which Jacques’ sickeningly sweet tone of voice underscores. These are only a handful of examples of the recurring theme of Jacques viewing Jean Paul’s body as his own and seeking to dominate it completely.
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Comparison of a shot of Joseph Curwen glowering in front of his portrait with a similar one of Jean Paul glowering in front of the portrait of Jacques from Strange Paradise Episode 41.
Surprisingly, unlike in the novella, Curwen's portrait does not disintegrate when he possesses Ward. As Strange Paradise eventually started doing with Jacques’ portrait, Curwen’s portrait remains hanging until the end of the film, when it burns along with the rest of the palace (which begs the question of how it is even physically possible for stone to burn). Jacques’ portrait meets the same apparent end when Jean Paul sets fire to the château and flees Maljardin, but later returns to him at Desmond Hall, seemingly undamaged by the flames. It does not vanish for good until the final week of the show (Episodes 191-195), when a group of characters force him out of it by rubbing his brother’s ashes on his eyes and lips; this drives him out of the painting and into Jean Paul’s body, which he leaves at the end of the penultimate episode.[6]
Still another similarity comes from what is, in my opinion, Beaumont’s most ingenious change to the plot: the implication that all the human townspeople in 19th-century Arkham are reincarnations of identical people from the previous century, not just the necromancers. The same actors even portray their descendants: for example, Leo Gordon plays both Ezra and Edgar Weeden, and Frank Maxwell portrays both Dr. Marinus Willett and his ancestor Priam. Implied reincarnation figures heavily in the original outline for Strange Paradise, with Jean Paul, his sister-in-law Alison Carr, and the young heiress Holly Marshall all having dreams about previous lives on 17th-century Maljardin. Much like Jacques who possesses his descendant, Holly’s mother Elizabeth Marshall may have also been possessed by her previous incarnation, the native priestess Tarasca, under this outline, as foreshadowed in the clips in this video. The second Desmond Hall arc (Episodes 131-195), likewise, involves reincarnation from past ancestors (including the return of Jacques), but this final arc otherwise shares little in common with either The Case of Charles Dexter Ward or its adaptation.
Conclusion
There is strong evidence that Strange Paradise drew inspiration from both The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Haunted Palace for the story about Jean Paul Desmond’s possession by Jacques Eloi des Mondes. We see elements from both the book and its first film adaptation in the serial: Ian Martin’s characterization of Jacques, the possession, and the talking portrait owe more to the film, while the disappearing portrait and certain elements of Jacques’ backstory are more reminiscent of Lovecraft’s original novella. Despite this inspiration, Ian Martin added many other elements to the story of Maljardin that were not present in either work, including the conjure doll and silver pin, the strange circumstances surrounding Erica’s death, and secondary protagonist Holly’s pursuit by several male characters and victimization by a mysterious spirit. The result is a serial combining the plots of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and its adaptation with original ideas to create a unique and--yes--strange new story.
Notes
[1] For more information on the aborted Tarasca storyline, see “The Secret of Tarasca“ and the section of my review of Episode 40 titled “The Lost Episode 40.”
[2] Dorothy Daniels, Island of Evil (New York: Paperback Library, 1970), p. 45.
[3] The Paperback Library novels do not just portray this consistently, but portray the other characters as seeing an empty frame while Jacques is controlling Jean Paul’s body. See also my review of Episode 15.
[4] For an in-depth plot comparison, see the blog post “The Films of Charles Dexter Ward” by Fake Geek Boy.
[5] According to an early newspaper summary for Episode 35, Tarasca would have endangered the life of Jean Paul’s love interest Alison, also shows some signs of possible influence by this subplot. See also this video.
[6] Many of the events of the final month of Strange Paradise are unclear and/or unexplained, so this interpretation should be taken with a grain of salt.
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aw-laurendet · 3 years
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A book-related request
Dear Ms. Laurendet:
My name is Thomas Anthony DiMaggio. I am a 63-year old retired attorney (and non-retired writer, actor and teacher) who lives in York, Pennsylvania.
I recently began work on my second novel, "The Bell of Five Hundred Years". It is an alternative history of the 20th century, in which the Russian Imperial family secures asylum in Great Britain in 1917 (George V actually grows a spine in this version). The Tsarevich grows up to lead an international White Russian movement that ultimately restores the monarchy in Russia during World War II. A great many historical facts get revised during the story: Olga becomes the Queen of Greece, Tatiana the Queen of Yugoslavia, Anastasia marries the heir to the Mellon banking fortune, and Marie becomes the mother of Queen Elizabeth II !
The Tsarevich (ultimately Tsar Alexis II) is assisted in his work by Prince Vladimir Paley, the morganatic son of Grand Duke Paul. As you doubtlessly know, in real life Paley (known as "Volodia") was murdered at Alapayevsk in the Urals in July 1918, together with the Empress' sister Mother Elizabeth and several other Romanovs. He had already distinguished himself as a poet at 21 (in my story, he develops into a world-famous literary figure who serves as the voice of the true Russia, along the lines of Pasternak's Yuri Zhivago).
There has, to my knowledge, only been one biography of Prince Paley: a 2004 paperback entitled "A Poet Among the Romanovs", by Jorge Saenz. I have beaten the bushes trying to run a copy of this book to earth, without success.
I was wondering, in light of your interest in the last years of Imperial Russia, if you either have a copy of this book, or know where I could secure one. If either you or anyone else owns one, and does not wish to either sell or lend it, I would be glad to pay for a photocopy of the entire book.
Please let me know your feelings on this matter. My contact information is:
Thomas Anthony DiMaggio
14 Jean-Lo Way 
York, Pennsylvania 17406-6701
Telephone: 717.515.5726
E-mail (the best way to reach me): [email protected] 
Thank you for your time and attention to the above matters.
Very truly yours,
Thomas Anthony DiMaggio 
My apologies Mr DiMaggio.I am not sure when you messaged me.I normally do not go to my settings on Tumbler.I will post a page for you.A Poet Among the Romanovs: Prince Vladimir Paley 1897-1918
Prince Vladimir Paley, first cousin of the last tsar, was a poet among the Romanovs. The rules of the Imperial Family prevented him from being considered a member of the dynasty due to the unequal Prince Vladimir Paley, first cousin of the last tsar, was a poet among the Romanovs. The rules of the Imperial Family prevented him from being considered a member of the dynasty due to the unequal marriage of his parents. This circumstance could have saved his life. Instead, when he was requested by the Bolsheviks to denounce his father, Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia, young Prince Vladimir chose love, loyalty, honor, and affection. His only crime was being related to a dynasty of which he had not even been an official member. This is the compelling story of a young man, and a talented poet, who in different circumstances would have attained great heights. Destiny, however, played a sad role in bringing a brutal and early death to a promising life ... 
Jorge F. Sáenz brings to life the previously unknown figure of Prince Vladimir Paley. In doing so, Mr. Sáenz adds to a long and distinguished list of historical studies he has written over the last thirty years. His books number well over a dozen, most of them focusing on various aspects of Costa Rica’s history and unique democratic traditions, that make the country a bastion of democracy in Latin America. His study of the life of Prince Vladimir Paley was first published as a biographical essay in Eurohistory — The European Royal History Journal. The success of this essay led to the story of Vladimir Paley becoming a full-on book. Mr. Sáenz is a career diplomat for Costa Rica, as well as a distinguished law professor at the University of Costa Rica. 
This unique book, also containing many samples of the young poet's work, has a 24-page photo section depicting Vladimir Paley and those closest to him. We are exceedingly happy to be able to bring this excellent historical work to you in hardbound form.
A Poet Among the Romanovs will undoubtedly enrich your Romanov Collections!
The book is printing and will be available at the end of January 2021, the first Eurohistory book of the New Year!
EUROHISTORY
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Phone: 510.236.1730
http://www.eurohistory.com
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jinruihokankeikaku · 4 years
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Do you have any ideas on the potential character arcs that the classes may go through during Sburb?
Character arcs is a rather 8road term, which is fuckin sweet, cos as it just so happens I’m staying up all night. 8ut yeah!!! This is exactly the kinda thing I lovve to wwrite a8out wwhen it comes to classpectin, soooooooo here wwe go!! Wwe’ll start wwith the most Active classes, the Thief, the Prince, and the Witch.
Thief [Active Relocation/Appropriation]
The Thief begins with a lack of their Aspect, and spends much of their story trying to regain it. They likely feel as though they have been deprived of their Aspect, and see acquiring more of it as not only a desirable goal, but an all-consuming purpose. Simply getting more of what they don’t have isn’t their character arc, though; rather, their narrative proper begins when they have succeeded in acquiring their Aspect, and must learn to allow others to use it, to withhold from excessive consumption when necessary. When a Thief sets out on their Hero’s journey, they see the potential to get back that which has so long been denied them; when they return, they will have learned that they have gained something far more valuable than that which they initially sought.
Prince [Active Destruction]
The Prince begins with both an innate connection to their Aspect and a self-destructive inclination towards damaging or annihilating their Aspect within and around themselves. They begin by manifesting (or “ghosting”) a juvenile, underdeveloped, or malformed version of their opposite Aspect – similarly to Eridan’s own [Hope]lessness leading him to lash out against his teammates and ultimately (attempt to) doom his species, or Dirk’s [Heart]lessness leading him to behave in a cold, calculating, and unemotive manner despite his inner emotional turmoil. Indeed, Princes may initially sincerely despise their Aspect – a major part of their character arc is their path to accepting it, and understanding that it’s been in them all along. When a Prince sets out on their Hero’s journey, they see the potential to destroy that Aspect or those people who have wronged them; when they return, they will have learned that for a Prince to survive the crown, they must know when to strike and when to stay their hand.
Witch [Active Manipulation/Transformation]
The Witch has access to their Aspect from the beginning of their story, and as their story continues, becomes more and more skillful in the use and manipulation of that Aspect. They’re eager to embrace this path, perhaps to excess, and often have a strong visible and overt connection to their Aspect. Their path is not one of simply rising to power or practical training, however. Somewhat like the Prince, the Witch will need to learn to use their power in a dutiful manner – breaking the rules when it suits the needs of their team, their Aspect, or reality as a whole, but leaving well enough alone when it comes to meddling for meddling’s sake. Witches may become giddy or go on a power trip when they first begin mastering the transformation and manipulation of their Aspect, and this doesn’t usually end well for the Witch or those near them. When the Witch begins their Hero’s journey, they see the potential to wield untapped and nigh-infinite power; when they return, they will have learned that true power lies in the quiet and subtle shifts of infrastructure, not the grand, chaotic displays.
Maid [Active Creation]
The Maid will initially be comfortable and even complacent when it comes to their Aspect – they’ll have access to it, but their access will usually be conditional or even outright vacuous, as it will only be granted by the will of an authority figure or force of nature. Eventually, the complacency will reach a breaking point, leading to a burst of destructive creation that allows the Maid to realize that they’ve been stronger than their oppressors all along. Think about that one scene in Firestarter, the Stephen King novel, yknow the one? Like that. Anyways, the Maid can’t rely on destructive Creation forever, without risking total Role Inversion, so they need to learn how to truly create an identity independent of those who molded them. At the outset of their journey, immediately after crossing the threshold, the Maid will realize that they must build themselves anew; the Maid will, assuming nothing goes catastrophically wrong, return having formed a newer, happier, more self-aware version of themselves.
Knight [Active Defense/Service]
The Knight’s duty is to defend their Aspect and to make the most of what they have left of it. Knights almost always project their Aspect, even before realizing that they’re bound to it, in order to compensate for a perceived deficiency. Where the Princes excel in raw destruction, the Knights excel in skillful combat, and so a typical “warrior-in-training” arc a la Dagobah may also be an element of their story. The main challenge they have to overcome is their own struggle to find a balance between insecurity and overconfidence, with a secondary struggle to utilize/exploit their Aspect where very little of it exists. The Knight begins their Hero’s journey looking to prove themselves and knock from off their shoulder the proverbial chip; they return from their journey realizing that the best way to prove themselves is to realize that they already have what it takes to do their duty.
Mage [Active Interpretation/Comprehension]
The Mage is someone who comes to understand their Aspect through their completely experiencing it; their strengths and their weaknesses, their defeats and their victories, all manifest through their Aspect’s various domains. Because of this, they usually begin their journey unable to see beyond their Aspect, unable to acquire any perspective beyond that which is conferred them by their Aspect. The Mage must walk a path of exploration and suffering, learning the ways in which their Aspect effects not only them, but all the other Aspects, and the world as a whole. In doing so, they’ll grow in both resilience and versatility, discovering how to change their Aspect as much as they are themselves changed by it. As they set out on their Hero’s journey, they’ll be close-minded and wary of what’s to come, burdened by their past and fearful of the future; when they return, they will have explored so far as to see beyond their scars and accompanying prejudices to truly understand their Aspect within and without.
Heir [Passive Manipulation / Transformation]
The Heir “inherits” a vast supply of their Aspect; the task that falls to them is to learn how to channel, influence, and ultimately become one with that which is given to them. Their connection with their Aspect is extremely close, and they’ll likely feel an affinity for things associated with their Aspect’s domain before they’ve even entered the Game or discovered their Role. The Heir’s path is the path from naivete to leadership, and from inexperience to mastery. It’s one of the closest paths to the archetypical Hero’s Journey – they must enter into their Aspect and allow their Aspect to enter into them, confronting demons literal and metaphorical in the process. When they begin, they see before them a wellspring of untapped potential; when they return, they have become themselves that wellspring, carrying with them its power and influence.
Rogue [Passive Relocation/Appropriation]
The Rogue’s quest is to restore balance to domain that has fallen out of balance within their Aspect, thereby setting right the order of things, and toppling those who have seized more than they ought to. They are generally hesitant, at first, to meddle in this domain, usually out of a fear that they are inadequate or ill-equipped to do anything but harm. While they may be somewhat avoidant at first, it’s not so much out of fear or hatred of their Aspect as it is out of insecurity regarding their personal ability to handle their Aspect. They’ll have to first learn to be comfortable working within their Aspect’s domains in order to begin the work of balancing the Aspect itself. At the outset of their Hero’s journey, the Rogue will see an uncertain, chaotic landscape fallen into disorder; when they return, they will have so deep an understanding of their Aspect and its vagaries as to know exactly how such states of disorder might be fixed.
Bard [Passive Destruction]
The Bard is a force of chaos, rarely if ever in complete control of their Aspect, but their Aspect lingers around them as a force of change (and accompanying destruction) nonetheless. They’ll start out completely avoidant of their Aspect, likely having almost entirely negative feelings toward it – they may fear that it will harm them or those they love, or they may simply hate it due to some moral or aesthetic principle they have held that the Aspect stands in blatant defiance of. This extended period of avoidance or hiding-away is followed by what I like to call the Bardic Crisis, wherein the principle, fear, or belief that separates the Bard from their Aspect falls through, and their defense mechanisms against its influence collapse. The Crisis almost inevitably leads to an over-embracing of their Aspect and severe chaos or destruction wrought by the newly disillusioned Bard. The Bard begins their Hero’s(?) journey seeing something that they fear and loathe, and returns having done a 180-degree pivot and wholly embraced that from which they have fled for so long.
Seer [Passive Interpretation/Comprehension]
The Seer has a long-standing interest in their Aspect, and spends a great deal of time attempting (with little success) to understand it completely. They are first and foremost students of the Aspect, investigating all that has been written or said about its various domains, but lacking the aptitude or motivation to wield this knowledge effectively and safely. They may well meet a Mentor figure whose influence will prove at once transformative and dangerous – Seers are rather impressionable, and travelling too far too fast into the realm of their Aspect can have unfortunate consequences. They’ll begin their Hero’s Journey seeing a fascinating subject of research to be explored, but they’ll return having finally acquired not only the knowledge which they sought, but the ability to teach that knowledge to others, that they might apply it for the greater good.
Sylph [Passive Creation]
The Sylph is the class of healing, repairing, rectifying their Aspect, creating the parts of it that are absent and nurturing those present. Sylphs are, for this reason, often relied on by those in need of help, and they’re usually eager to provide it – but may eventually wind up feeling taken for granted, or unseen. They may also have a tendency to offer help where it’s not needed, causing problems despite their good intentions. In order to progress in their story, they have to (like the Witch) learn when to intervene and when not to, and when to assert themselves rather than simply act as an auxiliary to others (like the Page). They’ll begin their Hero’s journey seeing everything and everyone as in need of repair, and a belief that they must be the ones to do it; when they return, they will have realized that keeping themselves intact is just as important as fixing everybody else.
Page [Passive Defense/Service]
The Page begins incapable of working with their Aspect on their own, lacking the strength, assertiveness, and force of will to be a Hero in their own right. At least at first, they simply won’t believe that they’re capable of the things the Game is calling on them to do. In order to progress as a person and as a player, the Page has to become stronger, through ceaseless effort and quite possibly a good bit of pain. The effort is not without its rewards, however, for as they progress along this rocky and arduous path, they will develop a skill with and understanding of their Aspect that cannot be matched by innate talent. They’re the generals and rebel leaders of the Classes, arming their allies with weapons they could once hardly lift themselves. They’ll begin the journey needing someone to lead them forward; by the time they return, they will be the ones leading the masses behind them.
~
Wwell, that was certainly a fun (if lengthy) piece to wwrite!! I hope you enjoyed, and if you havve questions/corrections/alternate takes, please do share them!! Thanks for the ask ::::>
~ P L U R ~
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dradelcra · 4 years
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Aspect Analysis for the J&H boys (Novel)(Hyde is not a separate entity during this):
Summary:
Jekyll: Aspect-Heart player; Lunar Sway- Prospit
Utterson: Aspect- Doom player; Lunar Sway- Derse
Lanyon: Aspect- Void player; Lunar Sway- Prospit
Analysis down below for better reasoning and to save the non-homiestucks the trouble. (These are just basic stuff I pointed out).
Jekyll: Heart
Why: 
-Splintered himself into two selves (a common trait of heart players (except for Meulin but we barely know much about her, Nepeta role played, Dirk had a robot version of himself along with alt dirk in hstuck2 and mind dirk made by Jake)
-I wouldn't say mind (sorry hekyll) since those in the mind aspect aren't too concerned with how others perceive them, Jekyll himself is so concerned with how others view him that even even splits himself into two so that he can Hyde a version of himself.
-Despite being a scientist and splitting his neurology, he does a lot of things driven by feeling or in the moment, especially as Hyde, which he says is his true self (doped up on extra drugs of course). He exudes irrationality as he declares to Utterson that he can get rid of Hyde whenever he wants and absolutely refuses to speak to him any more on the matter.
-Extremely passionate in his science where he was willing to test upon himself without thinking much of reperccussions (i'm sure he factored in the possibility of death but what did he expect to happen to his body when he died? He had his will written up and planned the possibility of being stuck as Hyde after the transformation but after a while of bad things it makes you think that he didn't truly think ahead of what would happened if he stayed as Hyde, knowing all the things he had done. Friendships Relations, his position in society. How prepared was he to be disliked by everyone, including his friends and the society. His decisions were in the moment while he was on the high of being "evil".)
Lunar Sway: Prospit
Why: Jekyll didn't entirely care what happened to himself when he drank HJ-7. He saw it's effects and analyzed them in the moment, not thinking of the consequences of his actions too much until it became problematic (when he started changing without the concoction). He co-exists with society as he doubles himself, being the sweet dr. jekyll by day and rebellious Mr Hyde at nights, keeping a good persona of himself while he is able to release steam at another time as another person who he won't have to face the consequences as. He uses Hyde as a safety net so he doesn't experience the consequences of his actions, sumilar to prospit player. He isn't fighting against the system, he is working with the system in his own way. Worries about how others would perceive him, even those close to him.
Similar derse aspects he shows would be living in a constant state of dissatisfaction, shown when he drinks HJ-7 and fuels the bad within him, and is able to keep a good hiding of his true self from others but at the same time, the irony of it is that he couldn't hide his true self due to HJ-7 forcing his transformations. He doesn't entirely lock his true self away either with the transformations under control, he goes out as his true self thereby exposing it to the world. A dersite wouldn't show that side to anyone even strangers. Another derse shown thing is
-He is more a problem maker than problem solver as his next mode of action of getting out of his Hyde situation is killing himself and before that, locking himself away until the inevitable took him.
-When he's shown, he is quite optimistic (especially when he came to the conclusions how Hyde may affect him) and cheerful (y'know, until he wasn't)
Utterson: Doom
Why: Unable to change things, could only provide advice for Jekyll and despite trying to help Jekyll it all goes down hill. He couldn't prevent his friend's downfall.
-Utterson is forced to suffer with knowing the secret of his friend, along with having those closest to him (long time friends) all die.
-Those in the doom aspect don't have much of a choice with what happens and are more of a "vent to" type of person. (He was there when Lanyon was dying and had conversation with him, he attempted to get him to open up and talk to Jekyll but Lanyon is stubborn and all right refuses to even talk about him.)
-He was the of narrator of the story, reading out the gradual downfall of the scenario (common trait i notice of doom players). Despite interacting with the characters, his actions had not influenced the decisions of his friends, and had the least impact. When breaking into the lab, Jekyll had already planned to end his life due to his inability to face the consequences of his actions.
- He is also a lawyer, holding Jekyll's will (and others) which means he was holding onto papers of plans for people's inevitable deaths.
-(True Headcannon on the extended zodiac website also describes Doom players as wise, kind on non-judgemental which are traits Utterson has displayed throughout the book.)
Lunar Sway: Derse
Why: Reasons (I was literally going to just put this here but I went “no, I love this guy too much to do that” and so i did it)
- A bit of a skeptic as to Hyde's realtionship to Jekyll.
- Thinking about information from the past (like the will) and outlooks of the future (is Hyde blackmailing Jekyll).
- Has a hard time letting go of the Hyde issue despite Jekyll trying to reassure him and telling him to drop it.
- He's quite shy but was willing to confront Hyde for the betterment of his friend.
- He kind of did that "entered a person's place without permission" like twice.
- Lawyer peeps abide by the rules, sure. But they are more focused on finding the truth for their client in the court of law, or preventing them from being arrested to the best of their abilities.
- Introversion is a common trait of derse peeps, and as far as i am concerned (and read), that man is not extroverted in the slightest.
-I think they would look nice in the dark purple, can you blame me? (my utterson already has purple eyes, it just fits owo)
Lanyon:
Classpect: Void ( he avoids the situation haha)
Why: Despite the disruptions occuring around Jekyll, Lanyon preferred to have stayed away from all of it, not caring much about it due to his feelings towards it. He kept the Hyde thing a secret from Utterson until Jekyll died or went missing. A secret he was willing to take with him to his grave.
-While Utterson was trying to seek the truth, Lanyon didn't want to even think about it.
- Quote from Headcannon aspect: "At their best, Void-bound are wise, intuitive, and vibrant. At their worst they can be dismissive, indecisive, and apathetic.”
- During his introduction, Lanyon displayed vibrance and his warmth, he is wise (he's a doctor after all) enough to decide when to cut himself from negativity but that also adds to the negative aspects of the void player (we see more of the negatives than the positive with him) where he is apathetic towards the downfall of his friend, not even willing to make amends as he was dying (well it was Jekyll's fault that he is dying, can you really blame the guy?)
- He let the curiousity get the best of him in wondering what Hyde wanted to with those chemicals (leading to his mental trauma lmao).
- Not much is really heard about or from Lanyon through out the book, except from some plot points.
Lunar Sway: Prospit
Why:
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(I got lazy by Lanyon but I think it fits him; both Jekyll and Lanyon have similar personalities despite the difference in interests. Jekyll might be more collected and repressed though)
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Emma (1972)
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Doran Godwin, John Carson
Ah, the original 1970s BBC production! Truly a labour of love – six episodes running at forty-five minutes each, filled with minimalist sets, an ageing cast and drawn out scenes. Screenwriter Denis Costanduros and director John Glenister were old hands at churning out period dramas, but tastes have definitely changed. This is a very sluggish series, for the devoted fan only. Closest to the novel in dialogue and decorum, Janeites must be satisfied, but any Austen apprentices might be scared off by the stiff acting and slow pace.
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On rewatching the DVDs, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the four and a half hours flew by – only two sittings – and how enjoyable John Carson’s portrayal of Mr Knightley can be. My dislike of Doran Godwin in the role of Emma Woodhouse remains unaltered, however. She really brings the whole series down, with her forced elocution and rigid posture. I know certain amateur historians like to measure Austen adaptations by the ‘ladylike’ lack of natural expression and movement displayed by actresses, but Doran takes the Botox Method of acting to a whole new level. She delivers her lines like Lady Penelope and moves about the set like a dalek. Apparently, John Glenister saw Emma Woodhouse as being ‘disturbed/slightly unstable’, and cast Doran because she looked the part: ‘Slightly neurotic, a beautiful voice, and a natural grace’. (Well, two out of three ain’t bad.) Plus, Miss Godwin was only twenty-two at the time, the closest in age to Emma Woodhouse of all those who have played the character on screen, yet she looks at least ten years older. Helpfully for her, John Carson was forty-five, instead of Mr Knightley’s ‘seven and thirty’, and Meg Gleed, playing Isabella Knightley, looks older still! A most mature cast indeed.
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Plus points for me include John Carson, a most gentle, likeable and cheerful Mr Knightley, Fiona Walker owning the role of the very vulgar Mrs Elton, and a funny if rather frail Mr Woodhouse (Donald Eccles). Carson is far too old for the part, and thanks to the combination of his added eight years and Doran’s very proper portrayal of Emma, the romance between them never really catches on, but they have great screen chemistry on a purely platonic level. Mr Knightley is shown laughing with Emma (‘I wonder what you would do without someone like me to tease, Emma?’), joking with Mr Weston, and behaving like a gentleman with Miss Bates and Harriet Smith. Carson has a cheerful smile, sounds like James Mason, and carries off the Regency tailcoats and top hats with style. If only he were younger, he would be the perfect Mr Knightley! I know that some readers imagine the character to be a grumpy old man, but he’s really not – casting older actors like Carson, or dark, brooding types like Mark Strong, only serves to cement this common misconception about one of my favourite heroes. Fiona Walker is also perhaps slightly too old to play Augusta Elton, but who cares? She is fantastic, truly ill-mannered and ridiculous. I love the scene where she is playing up to Emma, offering her a plate of shortbread, then telling ‘Miss Smith’ to help herself from the tea tray with a dismissive sneer. In response, Doran’s haughty glare – possibly the one expression she truly mastered – is a sight to behold. Mr Woodhouse is perhaps more of a Dickensian caricature than Austen intended in this production, but Donald Eccles dodders and bleats for all his worth, and Costanduros gives old Mr Rumbleguts  a few classic lines too (‘Poor Mrs Churchill. Took cold, no doubt, moving from one room to another’). The only scene that jars is his reaction to Emma’s news of her engagement, which borders on a demented tantrum.
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Less inspired casting choices, apart from Doran, include Debbie Bowen, who turns Harriet into a gushing simpleton (‘Oh, Miss Woodhouse!’), Ellen Dryden as a buxom but far from maternal Mrs Weston, and Ania Marson’s exotic and angry Jane Fairfax, who actually bellows at her poor aunt in one scene.
Costanduros adheres fairly faithfully to Austen’s novel, but even this lengthy adaptation indulges in dramatic licence on occasion, trimming the edges and bending the characters to fit. Emma and Mr Knightley’s argument over Harriet Smith and Robert Martin is cut short, John Knightley is written out of Emma’s party for Mrs Elton, and both Mr Elton and, crucially, Jane are absent from the Box Hill picnic. One particularly unnecessary revision which baffled me is the background to Jane’s stay in Weymouth – suddenly Mr and Mrs Dixon are new acquaintances looking to hire a governess, instead of Jane’s best friend and her husband. Yet Frank still uses Mr Dixon’s name to tease Jane and throw Emma off the scent – only why would Jane be avoiding her potential employer? Another confusing scene is the pianoforte duel between Emma and Jane at the Coles’ party – Jane sings and plays badly, after having her arm twisted by Frank, and Emma does neither! Finally, after insulting Miss Bates at Box Hill, Emma apologises directly to her the next day, which would never happen. But hey, at least the line most beloved by the Janeites – ‘Brother and sister? No, indeed! – is paraphrased, even if ‘Badly done, Emma’ is cut instead.
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The scene in the nursery, with Emma and Mr Knightley making friends while holding Isabella’s baby, is well done, although the very lively child is more of a distraction than the patently fake dolls used in other versions. Harriet meeting the gypsies is also portrayed accurately, maintaining more of Austen’s ironic description than any other take I have seen – the gypsy children beg for money and frighten Harriet, but don’t physically attack her. Instead, she falls over while trying to run away, which is not very dramatic but far less offensive than a mob of feral gypsies manhandling a young woman and stealing her purse. Apart from these hidden gems, however, most of this adaptation is taken up with trivial scenes, like Frank Churchill buying gloves at Ford’s, and not the moments that really matter to the story. The ball is underplayed, cutting Mr Knightley’s strangely energetic choice of a dance with Emma, and the ‘proposal’ scene is very, very flat.
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Comparing adaptations, I found the 1972 and the 2009 series to be similar at times, from small details like Emma’s chintz gown and the exterior of the house used for Hartfield, to the added emphasis on Emma and Mr Knightley’s companionship. Perhaps Sandy Welch was influenced by the BBC’s previous production? If so, she did well to choose a livelier leading lady and a younger Mr Knightley! Austen herself warned that Emma Woodhouse would be ‘a heroine whom no one but myself will much like’, and Doran Godwin certainly chose to play her that way. Doran’s Emma is dismissive of Miss Bates and sharp with her father. She drones out the dialogue without expression, while speaking through clenched teeth in a clipped accent. There is absolutely no charm or humour to the character at all, to the point where Mr ‘Knight-e-ley’s reluctant declaration of love is quite understandable. Sorry, but she ruined the story for me.
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Would I recommend this adaptation? Yes, to those who have read the novel and seen all the other adaptations, but are still greedy for more, like myself.  No, to those who want a flavour of what the novel is about – try Gwyneth Paltrow’s film for a short and sweet summary, or the 2009 miniseries with Romola Garai for a longer but no less entertaining screen translation.
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cooltrainererika · 4 years
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Alt-talia x Evillious Chronicles: The Key to Zorn (Part 1 v. 2)
Sigh… there appears to have been a misunderstanding between the event holder and I. I just hope I hear back from them. 
Just in case, this is an alternate version of “Key to Zorn”, which I resubmitted for the Free Day prompt, but could also be considered to be one for Fate/Coincidence or By your side. It’s platonic at this point. You may read either version, as the differences are mostly superficial, but I thought this version may be more fitting considering how I write Alt-Germany. 
[Summary: Crossover with the Nemesis arc of the Evillious Chronicles. Everyone is searching for their very own Happy Ending... But where is his, if it exists at all?
Young Ludwig Beilshmidt lives alone in a cabin in the woods, waiting for the return of his mother. But one winter morning, a certain, seemingly chance encounter changes his life forever, leading his life to become increasingly entangled with much grander plans...]
(Yes, lame summary, but I didn’t know how to write it without spoilers. The same text as the original is copy-pasted below)
Couldn’t come up with a better title.
Okay… so… holy hell.
This is the longest fic I’ve ever written. And it isn’t even finished.
I thought “Superbia” was long. But… I outdid myself. Over FORTY FREAKIN’ PAGES IN GOOGLE DOCS. And again, this is not finished, I’m splitting it so I at least have the hope of releasing something! With two routes! This is a novel, folks!
I’m probably going to repost this for the Christmas event since I want as much people to see them as possible. Because there are some Christmas elements here. So yeah, you can take this as an early Christmas fic too.
This will be a movie, folks. Grab a seat and some popcorn.
Also, look, it’s goddamn Ludwig torment again! For the fourth time in the span of a month! And this might just be the most elaborate way I’ve tormented the poor guy yet. But I didn’t really have many options.
So I wanted to enter Mirror Week, but in the main canons write in, Alt-talia and Hetalia Emblem, I haven’t come up with any use for 2Ps, and in the former case I can’t see how I could use them.
However, there was one Alt-talia spin-off AU I had been thinking they would exist on; I didn’t know whether I wanted to release media to it so early, and due to a reason I will explain in a moment, I was reluctant to release media about it in general. But… I went with it.
This is my Evillious Chronicles AU. Yes, an AU of an AU. What about that.
Basically, the Evillious Chronicles is what started as a series of Vocaloid songs telling a much larger story; it has since ballooned into a vast, tangled network of light novels and other such media. It’s as confusing as it sounds. Some of you may have heard of the songs “Daughter of Evil” and “Servant of Evil”; those were the first songs to be released in that series. Those two songs weren’t self-contained, oh no.
The thing is, for this AU I wanted to write just based on the seven sin songs (and Servant of Evil), with accompanying Hetaloid covers, and leave the rest of the story up to the audience. I’m still planning on that. However, I still wanted to enter the event, so here I am presenting a version of events for one of the arcs; however, it is merely the route that hews closest to Evillious canon from what I can gather of it. So yeah, NONE OF THIS IS HARD CANON. Especially since I wasn’t sure on the roles of some characters here.
Also, if I somehow ever get to publishing my main Evillious x Hetalia fics sometime in the future; first of all, hi. But more importantly, please, I implore you, do not read this before reading The Muzzle of Ludwig. Especially the second half. I tried to avoid spoilers, but someone becomes extremely obvious with contextual clues.
Also… it’s not like I wanted to write Ludwig torment again. But he was basically my only option, since he was the only one whose sin most likely overlaps with… well, it’ll become clear as this goes on. Ludwig’s story here is based on Nemesis Sudou’s story. Though since Nemesis and Ludwig are vastly different characters, there may be some plot holes, unfortunately.
And THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: for those who have read none of my other works yet, Alt-talia has often vastly, vastly different characterizations. I based most of these characterizations off of their late 19th century to very early 20th century personalities in Alt-talia. Special OOC warning for the following characters: Austria, Hungary, and Prussia. Minor OOC warning for Germany. I used @askimperialludwig ‘s version of the character as a reference, along with my personal perception and research. may add more later.
Also, credit to my friend @tomboyjessie13 , my Evillious consultant, for helping me through this!
I can’t let this be too long, since the fic is long already. Let’s go!
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(Also... people who read my fics, please reblog them. I work hard on them, and want many to see them!)
And since I forgot to add this above the cut; this canon is also one of the few times Nyotalia characters canonically exist as their own entity in my works, if not the only one so far. It’s kind of necessary, since otherwise it’ll turn into a complete sausagefest. However, as I have no set personality for them in main Alt-talia canon, I basically write them the same way as I would their male counterparts, with maybe some minor changes. I do have some ideas for Nyotalia characters in “what if” stories for main Alt-talia canon, but since this would be an Alt-talia spinoff, most of my theoretical audience would be there for the Alt-talia characters who appear in most Alt-talia media. Not to mention male stereotypes for countries are usually more fun anyway. However, in this universe two counterparts of the same character can co-exist. I try to avoid that though.
Also, a character named “Arendt” is briefly mentioned; this is Brandenburg. He isn’t really that important though, and really I’ve barely fleshed him out, so that’s all you need to know.
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The Key To Zorn
Part 1: And Then The Boy Went Mad
In a certain continent, there was a forest.
A serene, peaceful forest, where inside one could almost feel mystical energy in the clear, unpolluted air.
Until, under the evening sky, a gunshot sounded.
Ludwig Beilschmidt, a boy of merely 8 with innocent, cornflower blue eyes, ran through the forest he knew so well, a basket of wild berries and herbs in his arms and a small sack over his back.
Soon, in his view, among the trees and wild cornflowers was the only place he had known all his life, the little wooden cottage he called home.
The boy immediately checked his old, somewhat rusted mailbox, a look of anxiousness on his face - one which immediately turned to disappointment upon finding there was nothing there.
He sighed.
“Nothing today either...”
He reached up somewhat, twisting the doorknob and opening the wooden door.
“I’m home!”
No one answered back.
As per usual.
He didn’t expect one anyway.
Ludwig went to the dining table, setting the basket and sack, as well as his small, old-model pistol, down on his side of the table. Inside the sack was a small rabbit; the poor little thing. He hoped it didn’t struggle for long after he had shot it.
He prepared dinner as he always did, the bubbling as the ingredients stewed the only sounds other than the cries of the wildlife outside.
And he ate in silence by the light of the lamp, staring at the empty, vacant other side of the table, the light of the sun dim and faint.
“Mutter, is it good?”
Nothing.
Ludwig sighed again, going back to shoving the stew into his mouth.
——-
Ludwig tucked himself into bed after a bath and a change of clothes, now in his old, almost too small pajamas, having finished the book in his hands an hour ago - while he had reread it and others several times already, it was a window into a world different from his, where friends supported each other and families told stories in front of the fire - but now that it was over, here he was, once again, stuck in loneliness, on his own, within the cold, dark walls of a small cabin.
Once again, it was quiet. All too quiet; except for the sounds of the forest.
Now as he had nothing to distract him, every rustling of the underbrush, every animal cry made him bristle. The forest was his comfort by day, almost a second mother, but by night, it was dark, feral.
He pulled his blankets up to his face, curling up, shaking like a leaf. He felt any moment, a beast could break through the walls and tear him to shreds.
He missed his mother so much, oh how he missed her. Her harsh but protective voice, her calloused hands squeezing his wrists. He missed his onkel Arendt, who told him stories of the battles he and Mutter had been through.
She’s dead. She’s dead, accept it.
No, no she wasn’t.
She couldn’t be. She had to be alive.
She was too strong to die.
She would come back. She always came back.
His mother wouldn’t want to see him like this anyway. He was being pathetic.
“Einz, zwei, drei...”
He took a deep breath. He was stronger than this.
Imagining his mother was standing by his bed, staring at him with disapproval at his fearful behavior, finally his shivering started to lessen ever so slightly.
He needed to make it so that when she came home with another medal shining on her chest, she could come home to a son she could be proud of, after all.
“Good night.”
He said to no one in particular, as he let the faint moonlight be his comfort, finally closing his eyes.
Lu li la la lu li la la la...
A soothing, calming melody played in his mind; Ludwig didn’t know where he knew it from, but as it surrounded him in soft, almost familiar gentleness, the shivering stopped, his muscles loosened, and he was finally lured into the welcome embrace of sleep.
Lu li la la lu li la la la…
Lu li la la lu li la la la...
———-
“FIRE!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Birds flew away in massive numbers, disturbed by the sudden noise.
Ludwig blew the steam off his pistol, seeing that the bullets had all landed near-target. Almost there.
Not bothered by the recoil anymore, he lined up the shot again, swearing he would get it right this time.
Every two days he did this, before 10 sets of running, marching, and every parallel bar routine; this wasn’t how most children his age passed their time, willingly anyway, if the books he read were any indication, and surely he felt sorry for the animals who had to hear such things, as they were the closest things to friends he had. But it broke the silence.
And most of all, he could almost sense his mother beside him during these practice drills; he could feel her hands on his arms guiding him in his aim, and hear her voice shouting in tandem with him as he shouted “FIRE!”. In fact, sometimes he swore she actually was there, by his side.
He took a deep breath and aimed again.
“FIRE!”
-----------------------
When he came home, he once again saw a basket of supplies.
They always puzzled him. They came at such random, unpredictable intervals, filled with food, a few bottles of milk, several cartridges of bullets, and even occasionally a book, toy, bar of soap, or other extra, but by the time he found them no one was ever there.
He should be grateful. Though he wished someone would explain to him.
Oh well.
-----------------------------
Days passed, then months.
Once again, on the night of his 9th birthday, Ludwig laid alone, the weak moonlight unable to brighten his gradually deepening pit of despair.
The silence was maddening. He craved for any touch, for any warmth of another person, for anything. But even that simple wish was too much to ask.
He bunched up the worn blanket, the cold, frigid winter air seeping into the cabin.
Every day, he wondered if he was slowly going mad.
Holding a cornflower and his mother’s black cross necklace to his chest, looked out into the moon, to the night sky peeking from a clearing in the trees.
A star shot through the night sky, and Ludwig was quick to make his wish.
I hope Mutter will answer my letters soon.
She had always told him that believing in such things was foolish.
But what was the pain in hanging onto the little light he could find?
-------------------
Now’s your time.
Alright. I’m going in. See you.
------------------
One cold, chilling day, towards the final days of the year he turned 9, Ludwig stepped outside to check his mailbox again.
Snow lightly dusted the ground, softly landing on his old, worn coat.
He had checked his homemade calendar; Sancbruma. Such a lovely holiday. But now, just yet another cold, freezing, lonely day. Oh well. He had known Pater Natalis wasn’t real for years to need confirmation.
But this day, after creaking the old thing open, he found something.
His heart almost stopped.
Immediately, he ripped the envelope often, his heart pounding in his ears, his breath quickening, and he immediately glued his focus to the words, written specially to be understandable to a child.
Ludwig Beilshmidt, we are sorry to inform you that…
Time seemed to stop. He swore his heart stopped.
Dread shot through his body like lightning.
He read on, clinging onto the little hope that still remained with him all those years as they escaped from him, flying away as he fell deeper.
Tears fell from his face.
She was gone.
She was really gone.
Finally, suppressed despair replaced dread, filling every corner of his mind and body, every nerve, every muscle.
But mixed with it, and eventually almost overpowering it in the concoction of emotion, was wrath.
Pure, unbridled wrath.
He tore the paper and screamed, his screams piercing the serene forest air.
Tears fell from his eyes like a burst dam as he cried into his hands, cursing whoever had killed her, her fate, the cruelty of the gods.
If only he could get his hands on whatever bastard killed her, he would strangle them, he would gouge out their eyes, he would shoot them in the leg and watch them bleed to death, how dare they take his mother away!
He had always been told the best came to those who were patient.
He was proven wrong that day.
All those years, waiting, hoping, hoping for nothing.
Nothing.
His mother was never going to come back. Ever.
Grief, anger, and sadness gripped his small frame as he shook, on the ground, his young brain besieged with intense emotions and reality, dreaded, painful reality.
Don’t cry. How pathetic. Is that how I raised you?
Ludwig forced himself to take deep breaths, desperately fighting his tears and holding back the flow of the concoction of emotions any further.
No, his mother wouldn’t want to see him like this. He couldn’t let her be honored like this.
“Einz, zwei, drei, einz, zwei, drei...”
He took a breath with every word, forcing his emotions back and attempting to lock them away, until finally once again he could think somewhat coherently.
It was here he noticed something perched on the mailbox. 
He looked up. 
An eagle.
A stark-black eagle, its yellow talons sharp enough to pierce skin, its bright, intelligent, fierce eyes a rare violet.
He didn’t notice it before in his panic, but now the dominant emotion in his mind was confusion.
As he sniffled, the eagle cocked its head, staring at Ludwig.
“...An eagle?”
Ludwig’s mind immediately jumped back to the beginning of the year.
I hope Mutter will answer my letters soon.
“Are… are you from my Mutter?”
Silence.
Immediately, he embraced the eagle, causing it to screech loudly and flap its powerful wings in shock.
“It’s adorable! I love it Mutter! Thank you!”
The boy’s short arms wrapped around the first living thing it had embraced, nay, touched, in years.
He was actually holding something living. Oh, it had been so long. Oh so long.
He had almost forgotten what it felt like to hold life in his arms, to feel its warmth, to feel its gentle rising and falling, to hear the subtle sounds of another’s breath in his ears.
For the first time in years, despite the unforgiving cold of the winter morning air, warmth reached Ludwig’s heart, happiness brewing with and overpowering now subdued despair and rage.
<Sure… Whatever makes you happy, kid.>
------------------------------------------
“Oy vey… I was too late again.
...This world is fucked.”
-------------------------------------
Ludwig put some meat in front of the raptor, which surely enough soon started picking it apart.
“It’s good right? What should I call you… I’ll have to give you a name.”
He stared at the eagle, deep in thought.
“Oh, I know… Schwarzchen!”
The eagle looked at him.
“You like it? Then Schwarzchen it is!”
<...I didn’t say anything. ’Blackie’? You cannot be serious.>
--------------------
That night was different from usual.
Ludwig pet the bird as it made a nest out of rags beside him, wishing it good night. It had seemed reluctant at first, clearly not used to such close contact but as Ludwig begged it to stay, as if it understood him, it decided to stay with him.
It’s fierce gaze felt protective in the silent darkness, as if his mother really had returned, watching for anything that could harm him. 
Oh, he almost forgot something.
He took his mother’s necklace from his bedside table, putting it around the eagle’s neck.
“There. Perfect. It suits you.”
It squawked. 
“Good night, Schwarzchen.”
That night, sleep came to Ludwig easier than usual, watched by the protective gaze of his new companion.
----------
“Hallo. Kid. Wake up.”
Ludwig awoke, his eyes fluttering open.
Once his eyes focused, he almost yelped in shock.
He was somewhere he didn’t recognize, some formless void; Schwarzchen was nowhere to be seen, nor were the walls of his cabin or even his forest, all that remained was his bed.
In front of him was a man clad in what seemed to be a long white lab coat and some type of mantle, or at least Ludwig assumed, his clothing style almost resembling that in illustrations in one of his novels, ostensibly chronicling ancient legends; but not just any man.
A man who looked almost exactly like how one would imagine Ludwig would look like when he was older, save for his unnatural purple, almost magenta eyes that shined with a calculating glint, a scar under his left.
“H… hallo?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you.”
“I… Who are you?”
The man smiled at him softly; despite his harsh features, it calmed some of Ludwig’s nerves, just a little.
“That isn’t important. But you’re lonely, right? And it’s causing you pain, yes?”
His voice was deep; much lower than Arendt’s, the only other reference he had for an adult man, surprising Ludwig a bit.
The boy nodded.
The man dug into one of his pockets, taking out a key.
“Here. I’ll be your friend; all you have to do is take the other end of this key, and you won’t feel any of that loneliness and pain any more…”
Tentatively, Ludwig took it.
The boy gasped as he suddenly felt something overwhelming and indescribable other than energy blitz between him and the strange man through the key; it was painless, in fact almost manic energy, bright lights flashing in his vision.
Ludwig woke up.
The boy laid there, his eyes wide, his mind mulling over what he had just seen.
“A dream… it was a dream… Who was that man?”
He turned, and there Schwarzchen was.
“Never mind… Good morning, Schwarzchen.”
<Are you really going with that name?>
Ludwig blinked.
“...Did you just…”
<I thought children were supposed to be creative?>
Ludwig’s eyes widened. He held his head; it seemed to be coming from within his head, like a thought, instead of from his ears.
“...Schwarzchen? Is that you?”
<Yes, this is the eagle. And I have a name.>
Ludwig took a few seconds to process the information.
“...What? ...Mein Gott, I’ve really gone crazy…”
<No. This is real. I’m speaking to you through something called telepathy. Speaking to you through your mind. I could explain all the intricate details but it would probably short-circuit your child brain.>
“I know what it is. But it’s just like in the stories! Wow! I didn’t know they really happened!”
<Well you could say that.>
Ludwig sat up on the side of his bed.
“You keep insulting my naming sense. So what is your name?”
“Schwarzchen” looked him directly in the eyes.
<Well, well, it’s the same as yours, funnily enough. Ludwig.>
“We have the same name? What a coincidence.”
<But I know that is confusing. Just call me Lutz. That is what everyone calls me.>
“Alright… Lutz it is. ...I liked ‘Schwarzchen’ though.”
<...Whatever, kid.>
---------------------------
Like that, Ludwig and Lutz became friends.
His 10th birthday had been the best birthday he had in years, even if it was just the two of them.
Over time, Lutz taught the boy how to use telepathy; and without him saying a word, he became a third hand to him, especially in hunting; more meats were amassed with every session, and fruits even from the highest trees were now accessible. 
...Sometimes. Other times, the eagle merely preened itself, telling him to “Do it on his own.”
Ludwig wondered if all eagles were like this. But even then, he didn’t mind. Even if Lutz was a cold, snarky jerk sometimes, it didn’t matter.
Every day, they ate together, went hunting together, bathed together, and at the end of the day slept together.
He could almost forget his loneliness, and the fact that his mother would never return.
Almost.
——————
As Ludwig braced himself on his bed, he once again counted his breaths.
The wrath he felt that day; it was coming back. From within, it seemed to spread to his entire body, to the point it was unbearable.
He would never forget that pain. He couldn’t. But mindless rage was for the foolish.
He wouldn’t forget. But he would remember, silently.
When he looked to Lutz, Lutz didn’t seem afraid at all. He merely stared at him with those violet eyes.
Ludwig embraced Lutz, not letting go.
-----------------
Lutz stared at the young boy as he slept, his chest rising and falling.
<How cute.>
It was easy.
A bit too easy.
What did he expect from a child though.
<Still, would have liked a bit more of a challenge.
Oh well. Sleep tight, kid.
...Though do I always have to be right next to you?>
--------------------
Over the next year, Ludwig grew. Now on the cusp of puberty, he became stronger, he could run faster and further, and he could shoot with more and more accuracy.
On the morning of his 11th birthday, Lutz presented him with a query.
<Kid.>
“Huh? What is it, Lutz?”
<Now that you know that your mother isn’t coming home…>
Ludwig froze.
<Don’t cry on me.>
“I wasn’t going to”
<Yes, yes. In anyway, since you know you mother isn’t coming home, what’s the point staying in this place anymore?>
The boy pondered it.
<I’m a bird and even I know it’s pointless waiting for someone if they’re clearly dead. Well maybe I’m not the one to talk here.>
He was right.
“But… This is all I have ever known.”
<Don’t worry about it. You’re smart. I think. You should find out what to do soon enough.>
“...Jawohl. I don’t know what my purpose is being here forever too… It’s not like this place will disappear either. And it’s not what Mutter would want me to do. ...We’re leaving tonight.”
————-
Ludwig opened his drawer.
There it was; the notice he had torn up all those years ago.
Why did he still have it?
Just so he would never forget, probably.
Ludwig sealed the notice into a pouch before the rage became too much to bear, stuffing it into his bag, going to fetch his clothing. He had a sailor suit saved up for “special occasions”; he hoped he hadn’t outgrown it already.
--------------
Ludwig looked behind his back one last time to the small cabin, the cornflowers, the trees he had known for his entire 11 years of living.
It felt so odd to know he would be away from it after so long 
He quickly ran back, Lutz grumbling behind him, and picked a few flowers, pressing them between the pages of a book.
<Are you done now?>
“Jawohl. Coming, coming!”
-----------
When Ludwig entered the capital, the little truly important belongings he had on his back, he was in awe.
It bustled with energy, with people, rickety, clanking automobiles and trolleys spewing steam or smoke that made him cough if he went to close, radio commercials resounding through the air, as well as delicious smells the likes of which he hadn’t known in years, some never before, but mixed in with the inexplicable smell of whatever was coming out of the automobiles.
Ludwig wasn’t quite sure whether he liked it or disliked it, but most accurately he would describe it as a strange mix of the two; but more than anything, everything was so new.
He marveled at the sight of a trolley passing by, when he heard honking behind him.
“Get out of the way brat!”
Ludwig stepped back, hopping back to the sidewalk, and an automobile clunked on, its driver looking at him irritated.
But its movements fascinated him, how the machine seemed to move magically, how it seemed to have a life of its own.
“...Where should I even start?”
<Well? Do you have any relatives?>
“Not that I know of.”
Lutz looked to the right. His light of sight led to a small group of children. 
<You could try living on the streets like them for a few days. See where it gets you.>
“...Oh.”
Ludwig sighed. He may as well.
————-
“Shoo! Shoo!”
“No money? We aren’t a charity, sorry.”
“Outta the way!”
————-
Ludwig slept in an alley that night, huddled in his old blanket.
He was so tired. He just remembered he hadn’t slept for an entire day, and it was finally catching up to him.
He had gotten some attention due to being cleaner-looking than the rest, though Lutz was far more charming in their eyes. But more often than not, the overwhelming message in the air was clear; he wasn’t welcome here.
“Lutz?”
<What is it, kid?>
“Why didn’t you tell me I needed money for everything?”
<Didn’t you read about it?>
“I didn’t know it was this necessary.”
<I can’t hold your hand all the time.>
“...Lutz?”
<...What now?>
“There’s so many people here. But I still feel so alone.”
<Well at least you got some to get through the night. Don’t be choosy.>
“Jawohl… Good night.”
————
Seeing no reason not to, Ludwig had decided to explore the city a bit more the next morning, after having helped himself and Lutz to a piece of bread and some beef jerky he had bought, plus the miscellaneous items he had been given the day before.  
After a long while of walking, taking in the different sights, from the historical landmarks and building to new projects, some even in the midst of being built, neatly separated or together, working in at times harmonious and at times chaotic tandem. Every so often he saw stray animals run about. After some time he started to see schoolchildren, some about his age, run to school with their friends, adults dressed in suits on their way to work.
Until, Ludwig started to feel the air change.
It felt somewhat... sticky? The breeze seemed stronger. And inexplicably salty.
For he had reached the city harbor. Birds, they were called seagulls he believed, cawed above. Fishermen had far since left the dock, and in the distance, trade ships were being loaded to go who knows where. And they were floating on a vast, open field of water, water, nothing but water.
“Lutz... is this...”
<The ocean? What, you don’t even know what the ocean is?>
He had heard his mother’s stories about the ocean; while she had never been a woman of the seas per se, she was in the army, not the navy after all, he had heard her describe growing up near it. It was odd thinking that she, too, had been a child once like him.
This ocean was to her like the forest was to him, quite possibly.
She had also spoken about a rumor; a rumor that a wish put into a bottle and cast into the sea would, eventually, be granted. She had dismissed it as childish of course. And she did say that she much preferred the land after growing up.
Though according to Onkel Arendt, she would at times, despite this, just go to her childhood home, staring out into the eternal ocean.  
He wondered what she had thought as her red eyes stared out into the distant horizon, the salty breeze flowing through her silver-white hair. 
It was strange, imagining his mother like that. The sea was so free, almost careless; the complete opposite of her. But maybe that was exactly what drew her to it.
Ludwig started running along the dock, letting Lutz chase him, the briny wind rushing past him and through his hair. People had started to come to swim, and the city was starting to fully come to life.
Even if life was hard, at least he had some way of entertaining himself when everything was so brand new.
--------------
One day, a duo of teenagers spotted Ludwig.
And being the thugs they were, Ludwig suddenly found himself in confrontation with two kids much larger, older, and stronger than he; even if Ludwig was tougher than most 11-year-olds, these two seemed to be about 14 at least, if not, and probably, 15.
“Hey street rat, where’s your mutti?!”
Ludwig tried not to pay them any heed, even if he bristled at the rude words.
“...What business do you have with me?”
The shorter one grabbed him by the collar.
“I asked you a question, shorty!”
After the initial shock and fear, Ludwig felt a flash of anger. His fists clenched as he tried to struggle his way out. And worst of all was that he couldn’t do anything.
<Kid. Listen.>
“What?!”
<Listen to me. Tell me to “Intimidate”. Now. Don’t ask questions.>
“Of course! ...Intimidate, Lutz!”
————-
Ludwig stood there, dumbfounded at what he had just witnessed, as the teenagers ran away, screaming “DEMON BIRD! DEMON BIRD!”
Lutz flew back and perched on his head, looking terribly bored, as if nothing had happened.
“How… how…”
<I’m a Very Amazing Bird, you could say.>
————
A week passed; Ludwig counted, as he always valued timekeeping, no matter what. The other street children left him alone, eyeing him strangely. Occasionally, he heard extortionists threatening some unfortunate soul.
That was when, however, Lutz told him something vital.
<Hey. Have you ever considered asking the police if you have any relatives?>
Ludwig looked at the eagle perched on his arm, puzzled.
“What?”
Lutz pointed a wing at a building.
<There. It says “POLIZEI”. Can’t you read?>
“...Why? Won’t they throw me in jail or something?”
<Actually they have records too. They might have your mother’s family on file.>
Lutz looked to see Ludwig’s dumbfounded face staring back at him.
“...Why didn’t you tell me that?!”
He took flight and landed on his head, preening himself. 
<Thought it would be interesting to observe you. Also don’t be too loud. Everyone will think you’re a crazy person.>
Ludwig took a look around, and indeed there were some passerbys staring at him.
Ludwig loudly sighed, his palm on his face.
“...Fine. Thanks anyway.”
--------------------------
“Your name?”
“Ludwig Beilshmidt.”
The officers looked at him for a few seconds.
“...As in Julia Beilshmidt? General Julia Beilshmidt?”
“Jawohl.”
They were in shock.
“...Excuse me? Is something wrong?”
“Erm… We apologize. Ja.”
“Do I have any relatives? I need some place to stay.”
“...Ja. We will search immediately. Please wait here. But it may take a while.”
————-
“Hallo? Is this the police? Why must you be calling?”
“Well, you see, sir… It appears that a relative of yours has suddenly shown up out of nowhere. ...He claims to be Beilshmidt’s son.”
“...Mein Gott. Julchen did say she had a son… I knew she wasn’t the type who should be able to take care of a child. I will be there as soon as I can.”
-------------
<This is boring.>
“I know, Lutz. Shut up.”
Lutz did something that resembled a yawn.
“He should be here soon-”
It was then that the door to the police station opened with just enough force to be noticeable without slamming.
Standing there was a dark brown-haired gentleman with a large, curly cowlick, probably in his thirties, most likely affluent from his clothing.
“Excuse me, I hear there was someone waiting for me here?”
Ludwig stood up, and their eyes met.
“Hallo. ...You are Ludwig?”
He adjusted his glasses, then his tie.
“Ja?”
He looked him over.
“Ah, I can see some of the resemblance. Though you’re actually somewhat adorable, unlike her.”
“...Is that an insult against her?”
Realizing his mistake, the man cleared his throat.
“Ah, sorry.”
He outstretched his hand.
“I am Herr Roderich Edelmann. Your mother’s cousin. Nice to meet you. I’ve heard about you, but it is nice being able to see you with my own two eyes.”
Ludwig took the hand, shaking it.
“Ludwig Beilshmidt. Nice to meet you, Sir.”
Then, suddenly, Roderich’s formal facade dropped and he pulled the boy into a hug.
“You’re so precious! You may call me Onkel Roderich! Don’t worry, we will take great care of you!”
Lutz looked on in amusement as Ludwig’s cries of shock became muffled in the man’s chest.
Ludwig was flabbergasted. It had been so long since he had been hugged. He only could relive them in his memories, and they weren’t frequent, but here he was, feeling it yet again, surrounded by warmth; he didn’t know how to process it.
But if there was one emotion he was certain about as the man smoothed his hair and cooed over him, it was that he felt loved.
————-
Ludwig held on tightly as the automobile rocked around them. Roderich didn’t seem to mind it whatsoever, but Ludwig had only heard of an automobile once, and had seen, much less ridden, none. Roderich was happy to make him comfortable next to him though, warning him whenever a bump or “pothole” was coming up.
“But really… What is such a magnificent eagle doing with you? A black Strix no less?”
<Someone called?>
“Black Strix?”
“You don’t know? They’re an exceedingly rare species! And this one is such a beautiful dark coal hue; I’ve always been partial to Black Strixes, they’re said to have a particularly strong mystical power.”
“I didn’t know he could be more special... His name is Lutz.”
“...Lutz? As in…”
“Jawohl.”
Roderich looked puzzled.
“Erm… Mutter named him.”
Roderich huffed.
“Ah, Julchen, of course...”
“He was my last Sancbruma present from her before she died.”
Roderich quieted for a few seconds.
“Oh… I see. We will accommodate him too. Do not worry. ...Also, no need to ‘jawohl’ around me.”
“Jawo… ja.”
—————
Onkel Roderich was a renowned musician; he was a master of many instruments and even knew how to compose, but his main forte was the piano. He was sought after for his talents across the land.  
And he had the house to show it as well.
“Welcome to your new home, Ludwig.”
Ludwig took it all in; the house was already larger than average compared to others in town, and as a boy who had grown up in a small log cabin all his life, it seemed especially enormous.
A woman with long, light brown hair came up to them, looking from Roderich to Ludwig.
“Ah, Erzsébet! This is my nephew, Ludwig. He will be staying with us from now on.”
Roderich bent his knees so he was at Ludwig’s level.
“Ludwig, this is Erzsébet, my wife.”
“H… hallo. Nice to meet you, Tante Erzsébet.”
Ludwig outstretched his hand.
The woman merely eyed him for a few seconds.
“Hallo. I guess.”
She said, gruffly, with a distinctly foreign accent.
Roderich sighed.
“Erzsébet, why do you have to be like this?”
“Why do we have to take in this ratty-looking kid?”
Ludwig scowled.
“Hey!”
Roderich held Ludwig closer, glaring at her.
“Erzsébet! He’s a child! Have you no heart?!”
“Fine, fine.”
She shook his hand, roughly.
“But wow, an eagle! A Strix no less?! I didn’t think I’d ever be able to see one!”
Lutz merely yawned.
Ludwig couldn’t help but snicker as an unamused frown crept across Erzsébet’s face.
“...Whatever. Make yourself at home I guess.”
She walked off.
“Prepare the bath and extra room for the boy! Come on now!”
Roderich commanded, and soon after servants bowed and quickly ran upstairs in single file.
“Don’t mind my wife. She wasn’t exactly enthusiastic to hear from you. But she will warm up to you eventually. Though… you are in need of new clothes, aren’t you?”
He gave the boy a once-over, making Ludwig look down to his old, beaten-up and washed out child-sized military uniform.
“Sadly, we do not have any clothes your size as of now. I will have a servant hire the tailor immediately. Meanwhile I will order them to wash what you have now.”
<He’s awfully happy to see you, isn’t he?>
“Ja… he seems like a nice person.”
————
That might, Ludwig had the best dinner he had ever had.
He could only marvel at the dishes in front of him; even those he had heard of before looked so refined. And there was so much of it! The variety of bread available in particular was amazing.
But he couldn’t let himself forget his discipline. Even if it took all his willpower not to start gorging himself on everything like he had been possessed by some demon of gluttony.
“Onkel, what is this?”
“A chocolate torte, you see. A type of cake.”
Ludwig remembered actually having a cake a grand total of once. He still remembered its sweetness so well and it was probably the best thing he ever had eaten. And then there were two other things he had only read about before.
...And Lutz seemed unusually interested in it.
He couldn’t blame him though, it’s aroma was mesmerizing to Ludwig’s senses.
“Chocolate? Is that what the brown is?”
“You have never had chocolate before?! Mein Gott, Julchen, What have you done?”
Ludwig was quick to take a bite, and he froze.
The mellow, deep sweetness melted on his tongue, spreading throughout his mouth in such an indescribably perfect way, a tinge of bitterness within that instead of detracting from the experience, somehow harmonized with the sweetness in such a heavenly way.
“...Ludwig?”
“...It’s amazing.”
Roderich seemed somewhat amused by how floored the boy was.
“Even your mother was quite a fan.”
<Hey, hey. Kid.>
Ludwig was surprised by the unusual agitation in Lutz’s thoughts. He didn’t think he had ever heard anything like it before.
“Lutz? What is-“
<I need it. Now. Don’t ask questions!>
Ludwig almost panicked, giving a piece to the impatient eagle.
“Ludwig!”
“I… erm… It was unfair to have it to myself!”
“...Is chocolate even safe for eagles?”
Erzsébet questioned.
“Wait wha-“
<Don’t worry. ... Ahh, bliss...>
Ludwig smiled nervously.
“He’ll be fine.”
The couple just stared, confused.
“Erm…”
“Trust me! I know him well. ...Can I have more? Please?”
“Absolutely.”
His face absolutely lit up at that, and in the corner of his vision Ludwig saw quite possibly the most genuine expression of joy he had seen from Lutz in all the time he knew him.
“Why’s it that everyone in your family loves chocolate so much?”
Erzsébet asked as her husband took another piece.
“Why don’t you is the better question.”
“...Actually, yup, you two definitely are related. Leave some for me though!”
————
Roderich doted on the boy; he made sure he had the nicest clothes and the nicest food that he could afford.
He had made sure the room was in absolute best condition, that his pillows were always fluffed and bed always made, even if Ludwig insisted he wanted to do it on his own.
He taught him everything about the basics of civilization, how to read more complex sentences, how to play the piano and the violin, even how to dance. He took him with him to work, across the city and sometimes even country to places he had at best read about and to meet so many new people.
His next Sanctbruma and 12th birthday were the most extravagant he had ever had.
Yet…
Yet something was missing.
Despite the man’s kindness, he felt something wasn’t right. Ludwig couldn’t put a finger on what, and he felt awful about it to be sure; he did so much for him, what more could a boy ask for?
But yet…
Sure, Erzsébet never completely warmed up to him; even if she wasn’t as cold to him, according to Lutz she was merely tolerating him. And the same was true for many of the servants.
But that didn’t change the fact that Roderich himself was nothing but loving towards him. Even if he had curfews and other such rules, he never had trouble with rules. His mother raised him to obey rules. And while he was often busy, he still tried his best to spend time with him.
Finally, he actually had someone who resembled a parent after all those years. He should have been thankful.
But he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Someone had to be doing something wrong.
At times, he still lay awake at night, those lonely days and nights and that fateful Sanctbruma playing back in his mind; as well as the accompanying emotions of pure hatred and wrath.
Once, Roderich has entered the room at an inopportune time to Ludwig curled up in his bed, seething, growling at him to leave him alone.
While he didn’t say anything about it at dinner, it was obvious he was disturbed by it.
“...Lutz. Why can’t I be happy? I still feel alone, but I don’t even know why.”
<Maybe you’ve been alone for too long. You’re past the point of return, kid. Maybe you should come to peace with it.>
“At least I have you.”
<Whatever.>
———
“Ludwig.”
“Ja, Onkel Roderich?”
The man sighed.
“It has been over a year since you started living with us. What is it with your standoffish behavior? Is something wrong? I will listen to it.”
“...I just can’t, Onkel.”
“Excuse me?”
“I… Something just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know why.”
The man looked so disappointed.
“I try my best to make you happy, Ludwig. I really do. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to satisfy your needs.”
“Nein. It isn’t that.”
Roderich shook his head.
“As I was saying… the chords for this piece are…”
—————
Ludwig continued to do his practice drills whenever possible, even if they had taken a different shape; makeshift targets became proper shooting galleries, improvised exercises became possible using an open space between buildings and proper equipment. And as he grew more and more by the day, his physical abilities took leaps and bounds above what he had been capable of before. He just wished he could go more than weekly. At first, Roderich objected, but it didn’t take long for him to cave in.
After all, he had to keep himself in shape, especially as he now had access to all the candy and chocolate that could be plausibly afforded.
After a while, Roderich started to continuously try to ask him to consider other options in this weekly time slot. He was never too forceful, however. And after a while, as Ludwig expressed his clear annoyance, it finally ceased just as it had begun.
There was another episode that irked Ludwig.
One night, as he went to get a glass of water, he had seen Roderich, seemingly sneaking away from his room.
“...Onkel?”
The man bristled as soon as he turned on the lights.
“Erm… Ludwig, I didn’t expect you to be awake..
Then, Ludwig saw it.
In his hands was his mother’s necklace.
“...What are you doing with Mutter’s necklace?”
He immediately stuffed it inside his pocket and turned around, a fake smile on his face.
“What necklace, my dear Ludwig?”
“I know you’re hiding it.”
The man sighed, taking it back out again.
“I… I wanted to put it in a place it will be safer in.”
Ludwig tried not to grill him further, even as he felt something fueled by doubt start to boil within him.
“I’m sure it will be safe with me. It’s been so for all the years I’ve had it. Can I have it back now?”
“...Ja.”
Ludwig swiftly took it back, going down to get his glass. He really needed one.
“You could tell a servant to get it for you?”
“No. I prefer to do it on my own.”
When Ludwig had returned to his room, he had quite the things to say to Lutz.
“Lutz. Why did you let him take it?”
<I was sleepy, kid. Why do you care about that thing so much?>
“It’s from Mutter. You should know. ...Lutz. If anything, protect this with your life.”
<Oh come on now.>
“I’m serious. It’ll be the last thing I ask of you.”
<Alright, alright. Whatever.>
“You aren’t sincere, are you?”
<What do you want from me? Good night.>
——————
One day, as Ludwig overheard some servants speaking to each other in hushed voices, glancing at him every so often.
He was able to catch two things; “...Mister Edelmann” and “barren”.
He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. But for whatever reason he didn’t like the sound of it.
That night, after some shouting, once again Roderich stormed out of the master bedroom, telling Erzsébet to “Get a hold of yourself already, you indecipherable woman!”, to his own separate room, as Erzsébet shouted some words back that sounded really angry and probably inappropriate.
<There goes the lovely couple.>
Lutz thought, as Ludwig tried to sleep. Lutz, meanwhile, had no trouble.
————
13-year-old Ludwig stood outside of the bar, alongside Lutz, as always, and other members of his gang.
It was in a seedy, rough part of town. And it was where their rival gang frequented most often.
It wasn’t the most well-to-do of bars, to say the least; as soon as they entered, the air smelt pungently of alcohol, and ambiently of various nasties.
<Ergh. What a dump.>
They immediately saw their target; the offending gang’s leader.
Their leader went up to confront her rival, fists clearly ready to fly.
“Hey! We know ya killed him!”
“Who?”
The rival boss said, with a cheeky grin.
“Ya know who!”
The two continued to escalate their argument, until they became close to blows.
“Enough yammerin’! Get ‘em, boys n’ girls!”
Suddenly, they were grabbed by the rival gang bangers, including Ludwig, who held back a yelp, Lutz flying into the air.
“Come back, ya stupid bird!”
“We didn’t kill one of yer ratpack, asshole! Now get out or we’re gonna force ya out!”
“...You better tell us.”
Ludwig said, tersely, utilizing his now lowering voice and copying his mother’s tone.
The rival boss laughed.
“Or what, kid? What are ya gonna do, huh? Man your recruiting standards have gone down!”
His boss smirked.
“Ya better listen to the kid.”
“Or what?”
They laughed uproariously.
“Lutz. Restrain.”
Their laughing instantly stopped, their faces going sheet white, all the other bar patrons, the bartender, and staff turning to gawk.
For they bore witness to the gang boss being pinned down, on the floor, between the talons of a giant, terrifying raptor straight out of hell, its eyes glowing, its beak as sharp as an ice pick, with which it screeched in the unfortunate gangster’s terrified face.
Ludwig walked up to the rival boss with measured steps, the gangsters holding him having let go out of sheer terror, the thumping of his feet the only sounds other than his companion’s breathing and the squeaks and sputtering from bystanders and rival gangsters, and pulled out his old pistol, aiming it at the thug’s head, glaring daggers so sharp that they could gouge eyes out.
Show your enemy no mercy.
Once again, he thought he heard his mother's voice in his ear.
“Tell us the truth.”
The rival boss sputtered, shaking like a leaf, looking awfully smaller than the much younger boy.
“We… we… d-d-di…”
Ludwig cocked his pistol.
“Speak in a real language!”
The rival boss flinched, and the rest of the rival gang huddled, terrified.
“W-we didn’t do anything! I-I swear! I swear!”
Ludwig lowered his pistol slightly.
“...Really?”
“J-ja! I swear! I swear by both the Heavenly and Hellish Yards! P-p-please let me go, Sir!”
“...Alright. Lutz, release.”
The eagle shrank back down to size, returning to his perch on Ludwig’s outstretched arm.
His boss grumbled.
“Whoop. That was pointless. Lud, let’s get outta this dump.”
They turned to leave, the other people in the bar still staring at them.
“W-Wait.”
Ludwig and his boss turned back to the humiliated rival boss.
“We might’ve not killed ‘im. But I-I have a good idea who might’ve.”
———-
“So, Lud. Good job today. We’ve got ourselves a lead.”
“Jawohl.”
Their boss patted Ludwig on the head and gave the group a once-over.
“Ok. You’re all dismissed.”
Ludwig was quick to leave, the others staring after him.
“What’s it with him? I swear, it’s like he doesn’t wanna be associated with us.”
“He said something about a curfew.”
“Really? Kid still follows curfews? What is he, 10?”
-----------------
When Ludwig came back, Roderich was waiting for him.
“Ludwig.”
“Onkel Roderich?”
Roderich’s expression was serious and stern.
“...What have you been doing?”
“What do you mean, Onkel Roderich?”
Roderich held Ludwig’s shoulders.
“Let me state this plainly.”
He took a deep breath.
“You’re involved in gang activity, aren’t you?”
Ludwig was in shock.
“How…”
Roderich shook his head, his hand on his forehead.
“Ludwig. I am sure even Julchen taught you to obey rules.”
“I… I don’t want to depend on you for everything. I feel like a leech.”
Roderich was shocked.
“You’re only 13, Ludwig! It is alright! It isn’t worth putting yourself at risk like this!”
“I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Roderich shook his head.
“Don’t say that. You could deliver newspapers, or use those piano skills I taught you-“
“And they’re my friends.”
“Friends?! I care for you, why do you need them?! Do you even know any of their names?!”
“...”
“You’re going to get into trouble eventually, young man.”
“I… I know!”
Roderich flinched.
Ludwig looked down and stormed back into the house, into his room, throwing himself onto his bed.
“Hmph, teenagers...”
Erzsébet mumbled.
—————-
“Ludwig?”
Roderich opened the door to Ludwig’s room that night, peeking in.
Ludwig couldn’t bare to look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry.”
Roderich sighed.
“Is it because I’m not Julchen?”
The boy felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m sorry! I don’t hate you, I’m thankful for what you’ve done, and-”
“I see. Just try to forget about her, alright?”
Ludwig froze. He felt like someone had stabbed his heart.
“But…”
“I do so much for you. I give you everything. What was it that she had that I don’t? I’ve been a far better parent than that stone-hearted, cruel, cold-”
<Oh no. You’ve done it now.>
“DON’T SAY THAT ABOUT MY MUTTER!”
His voice cracked terribly, but he didn’t care.
Roderich stumbled back, his face pale, horrified.
Silence.
“Ludwig… I’m sorry.”
Ludwig buried his face into his pillows.
“...I’ll tell the servants to bring you dinner. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Leave me alone!”
“...I’m happy with any path you want to take. Just please stay safe.”
Roderich sighed and closed the door.
From that day on, Roderich started informing Ludwig of where police may find him, and locations of stations across the city. Anything for his safety, he had said.
But from that day on Ludwig knew; he knew that his suspicions were true, that all this time he was trying to make him forget about his mother. He couldn’t let that happen. It was only confirmation when he heard him brutally disparage her one night in a drunken stupor during one of his binge-drinking sessions.
Once again, Ludwig could trust no one.
And once again, wrath simmered within him.
----------------
Their boss summoned Ludwig and the rest of the gang to a gathering; to sort out their clues, they had said.
Ludwig was appreciated for his abilities; but outside of the action, he sat somewhat removed from the rest. He couldn’t connect with them much either.
His mother had despised lawbreakers; “scum”, “rats”, she would call them. If she knew what he was doing now, she would have caned his palms until they were raw and bleeding. She would have told him he was better than this. He never would have imagined he could stoop this low too. After all, he was his mother’s only son. He should have been destined for greatness.
Quite honestly, he didn’t fully understand what he was doing here either. How did he even get here? Was it just a business affair? Were they really his friends? 
Maybe it was because this was the closest thing to military service he could find. Even if it were on the other side of the law.
A girl a year or so older than him, the second youngest in the gang, came up to him attempting to speak to him. Ludwig hesitated, but in the end continued to be fascinated with the clues they had and Lutz.
“Hey give up on Herr Stick-In-The-Mud already! Bet he’s never even kissed a girl!”
A gangster said, using the nickname they often used when ribbing him.
“What’s with him? He to good for us?” One of them muttered when Ludwig refused a drink.  
“Ja. Imagine being one of us and caring about drinking ages. Never can understand Herr Stick-In-The-Mud.”
“Ja. Where was he raised, His Majesty’s Elite Imperial Barracks?”
“Hey, hey, did you hear that Boss might have the hots for him too?”
“Why don’t you fuckwits shut the fuck up?” Their boss barked at the last one. “The kid’s basically an infant!”
<You’re the most rule-bound gangster I’ve ever seen.>
“Why do they treat it as a bad thing?”
<You’re the one who joined a street gang, genius. They’ve got different rules.>
Ludwig looked at the bottle of cheap moonshine he had been offered again, sighed, and took a gulp.
He immediately gagged.
The last time he’d had booze was when Roderich had allowed him to try beer, and even then he had basically diluted half of it with water and it definitely didn’t taste like... whatever this bottle of horse urine was.
“Ack! This is awful! ...I did it, are you happy now?”
“That’s the spirit!”
“Doesn’t count! He gagged!”
Ludwig took a deep breath.
“Let’s get back on topic. We are discussing the murder of a fellow comrade. This is no time for inane chatter.”
Finally, the air became solemn.
“Ja, reasonable, I guess…”
“Now, onto the information Scout 2 gathered...”
—————-
Ludwig, more than anything, considered himself a logical person.
He and his mother both despised vagueness. It seemed pointless, really, all the dancing around the true meaning of your words in the name of “politeness”. While apparently many in this part of the continent were considered similarly blunt and practical, it seemed even then he was exceptional.
So his own emotional turmoil, how he could never seem to explain himself, frustrated him more than anyone else. It angered him.
But one thing he knew for sure was that he looked forward to stopping by the library on the way home. Thank goodness Roderich had taught him to read to a level more appropriate for his age; it was difficult at first, but he was also fortunately a fast learner.
He always had taken a fascination with the sciences. They were at first glance unpredictable, but once broken down and observed, logical. They made sense, they were rational. Recently, he started finding them more investing than fiction, in fact. And his new reading skills finally made the higher levels of it beyond simplistic drawings attempting to explain the laws of physics and magic accessible.
Which was why today he sat outside the library in his usual spot, looking through a medical encyclopedia, munching on one of many bars of dark chocolate and a small loaf of bread.
Lutz nibbled on pieces of chocolate Ludwig had given him, peeking from above him.
“HERS?”
<Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome.>
Ludwig looked to Lutz in shock.
<A rare genetic, psychiatric disorder with no known cause. Those afflicted by Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome, a Hereditary Evil Raiser, or HER, is said to be at their core an incarnation of malice, "programmed" to destroy the gods, everything they created and everything related to them. Therefore, as a natural prerequisite, they typically show extreme cruelty and having the compulsion to increase their own kind and ensure the continuation of their "mission" to spread malice by any means necessary, taking immense pleasure in doing so. Currently there is no known cure, though in high-functioning individuals it may be managed, and manifest in lesser ways.>
“How…”
<I have my ways.>
He flew off, now by his side. 
“Though… Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome? Who names this stuff?”
<Hey. They probably had their reasons.>
“Why do you care? Did you come up with it?”
<Maybe. Plus, that’s rich coming from the kid who literally named me “Blackie”.>
Ludwig sighed.
“I... Fine. And wait... are you reading with me?”
<Yeah, I can read. I never told you?>
Ludwig continued to stare at him.
“I... I just didn’t think you would...”
<Turn the page already. I already know this.>
"Maybe you could try reading a novel, Lutz?”
<Don’t care. Why should I care about what you flesh-apes think, much less fake ones? No one in the world knows what I’m thinking anyway.>
Ludwig closed the encyclopedia.
“You mean you feel that no one understands you, right?”
Lutz stared at him. 
His words struck him like a spark of lightning.
“That makes two of us”
An awkward few moments passed. For once in his life, Lutz had nothing to retort back.
Why was he so shocked?
Ludwig blinked, confused.
“Lutz? What’s wrong?”
<...Nothing.>
Lutz didn’t know what he had just felt.
“That makes two of us” 
It should have meant nothing, coming from this brat.
But yet...
Whatever. It probably still meant nothing.
-------------------------
“We’ve got our guy! Rich bastard’s not gonna know what hit ‘im.”
Their boss said, confidently, gesturing to an assassin she had bought into their abandoned factory hideout.
The assassin looked across the crowd of gangsters.
“So. Which one of you brats wants to come?”
“Actually, we’ve got a good clue already for who’s gonna be a good fit for this mission.”
Ludwig waited, anxiously. He would gladly take the job of avenging his fallen comrade, of course.
“Ludwig!”
Ludwig stood to attention.
“...You’ll be providing nice clothes for us to blend in!”
Ludwig was speechless.
“How… Why?”
<Turns out you aren’t as tough as you thought. Better luck next time, kid.>
But when all had left, he went up to his boss. He needed answers.
“Why am I excluded?”
She looked at him as if he was stupid.
“I don’t think ‘Giant Enemy Bird’ is a viable weapon to use on a cruise ship.”
“But… I can shoot well too! You said I was a great marksman!”
“You’re good. Gotta say that. Still, don’t know about your skills in stealth yet. Can’t risk it. Now, see ya.”
Then, she abruptly cut him off and left.
-----------------
Three days later, Ludwig and the rest of the gang not chosen for the plot awaited at the dock.
Soon, they spotted the assassination party, coming towards them.
One person was clearly missing.
“Hey! Boss! ...Boss? And where’s...”
Her face was dire.
“Shot dead. ...He spotted us. He saw all our faces. All of you are fucked. We’re all fucked.”
More silence.
“...WHAT?!”
Silence immediately gave way to panic.
Ludwig stood, frozen.
“How… Why…”
He clutched his head, overwhelmed.
“But it can’t…”
Emotions swirled inside the boy, overpowering all of his senses, all of his thoughts.
What was going to happen to him? His friends?
“No, no, no, nonononononono…”
<You know what to do, kid.>
Suddenly, he bolted.
Along the harbor, he ran.
Then, in a burst of emotion and without much thought, as if on instinct, he acted immediately as Lutz took off high into the sky, preparing to dive.
“SIC ‘EM, LUTZ!”
He didn’t even bother with the telepathy.
Everyone could only look on in shock and horror as monstrous, pitch-black wings appeared in the sky, seemingly not completely solid and with a godlike glow; to those who were watching from afar, it would have looked as if a demon raptor had materialized out of thin air.
The ship was no match. Before anyone could fully comprehend what was going on, the ship was swooped up into the talons of the avian monstrosity, and crushed into pieces, every single person on it with it.
----------------
Ludwig walked back to the gang, who all stood staring at him, utterly horrified.
Finally, someone broke the silence.
“...Holy shit.”
Another turned to him, their eyes wide.
“...Lud? Did you just…”.
The boy’s mind was blank. What could he even say?
He had killed all of them. Every single one of them.
But in the end...
“Mission accomplished…?”
“Am I trippin’?”
“Did we just witness a massacre?”
“...What the fuck?”
Ludwig took a deep breath.
“But we accomplished our mission. ...I did what I had to do.”
“Ja, but… Holy shit.”
“In anyway…”
Their boss cleared her throat.
“Let’s… Let’s go with this loot before the cops find out.”
The rest could only muster a “Ja” in unison.
Lutz flew up to Ludwig, as unbothered as always.
“Lutz…”
<Just did as I was told. Don’t complain to me. Here.>
In the raptor’s talons was a doll; an eerily faceless, unusual, porcelain-ish doll of indeterminable gender.
<Here. I brought a present.>
“What is…”
<Have it. Since I can’t give you Sancbruma presents, here it is, months early.>
“It’s… it’s probably from a dead child, Lutz!”
<Don’t be ungrateful. Oh, and your buddies are waiting. You should go.>
“...Ja. I did what I had to do. We killed him. That’s all that should matter…”
————-
The news of the shipwreck was all over the radio. They had listened to it in their hideout, huddled around the device.
“The perpetrator is currently unknown. However, many claim to have heard the voice of a boy or young man scream for the bird to attack…”
————-
When Ludwig came home, Roderich was standing in front of the door, in shock.
“Ludwig…”
“Onkel?”
“...It was you wasn’t it?”
Ludwig looked down to his feet.
“Lutz, specifically…”
<Hey.>
Roderich pulled him into a protective embrace.
“You could have put yourself in so much danger! What if the police find out about you?! Don’t you dare do that again.”
"...”
Roderich pulled him in.
“Now, come in before someone recognizes you.”
—————
Roderich rarely ever let him join the rest of the gang since that day; it was too dangerous, he had said.
He went out mostly in a dark hood for a disguise, at times without Lutz, for over the radio, one expert had identified the terror bird as “a black Strix transformed with powerful magic.”
Later that year, a month before Sancbruma and two months before his 14th birthday, he had heard something unusual.
<Ludwig… Ludwig…>
“Huh?”
Telepathy. But Lutz wasn’t with him; it came from the doll in his bag.
Ever since that fateful day, Lutz had told him to carry it for some vague reason he couldn’t understand; his alleged simple explanation was “It’s amusing to see you carry around a girly doll like that.”
<Ludwig...>
He took the bag off his back and looked in. 
<Someone is after you. You have been found out. You must run.>
“What?! How do you…”
<Do not ask. Please, please run… you must.>
He slung it back over his shoulder.
“Lutz!”
He had to get Lutz. Now.
But by the time he had gotten home, it was too late.
“No, Sir, he is not here. You will not find him here…”
“There he is!”
Two figures stood with Roderich; two figures he didn’t recognize.
A tanned, hazel-eyed, otherwise unassuming man with his hair tied back and in a partially unbuttoned shirt, probably from the south of the continent, turned his attention away from Roderich, and pointed at Ludwig, gun in hand.
“Ludwig Beildshmidt! You’re under arrest!”
Ludwig’s eyes widened. Emotions and stress once again blitzed through him.
“Lutz! Restrain! ...Lutz? Lutz?!”
His eyes darted next to the man to the other figure, what Ludwig thought to be a long-haired, somewhat tall foreign woman in eastern attire, her dark, raven hair pulled back into a ponytail; seemingly holding Lutz back without touching the bird, but clearly struggling.
“Hurry!”
She shouted, in a foreign accent Ludwig didn’t recognize.
Ludwig bolted.
“Don’t you dare, you-“
“Herr Edelmann! Stop, you’re interfering with police procedure!”
“Don’t touch him!”
The mysterious man finally shoved the other man off him and gave chase, but Roderich grappling with him had given him some extra time...
“Ludwig! RUN! RUN!”
But before Ludwig could escape, all of a sudden he was blindsided by a third person, jumping on his back and pinning him down, the boy’s small body no match for the adult.
“LUDWIG!”
“Let me go, LET ME GO!”
That was the last thing he remembered saying before he had been slammed on the back of the head.
Ludwig blacked out.
To be continued in part 2...
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Author’s notes:
So I had to split this thing in half since it became much longer than I expected. Wow this is a monster. You will see the parts listed here after I write them. Parts, because this will have two different routes! Hopefully! Then again it seems like no one read this...
Also, the scene with the sea is even more ambiguous “canon” in this already ambiguously “canon” story, but I wanted to write it in because I liked it, having seen the idea that Prussia has some kind of connection to the sea before and liking it. I wish I could find it now. I think Alt-Prussia would have grown up with the sea when he was younger, and while he would stay very strictly a land fighter (in fact the Prussian navy was never all that good, being mostly a merchant fleet. Even the German navy, while it did go through a growth period in the 1880s in competition with Britain I believe, by WWII at least their Kriegsmarine kind of sucked. It’s why the invasion of Britain never happened, their navy would have been laughably curbstomped), and I still associate England, Netherlands, or Portugal way more with the ocean, maybe the North Sea has some kind of soothing effect on him.
Also adorable child!Germany is adorable. Why do I love this kid so much? Why is he so damn cute?!
(This is an alternate version of “Key to Zorn!”. You may read either version, as the differences are mostly superficial, but I thought this version may be more fitting considering how I write Alt-Germany)
[Summary: Crossover with the Wrath arc of the Evillious Chronicles. Everyone is searching for their very own Happy Ending... But where is his, if it exists at all?
Young Ludwig Beilshmidt lives alone in a cabin, waiting for the return of his mother. But one winter morning, a certain, seemingly chance encounter, changes his life forever, leading his life to become increasingly entangled with much larger plans...]
(Yes, lame summary, but I didn’t know how to write it without spoilers. The same text as the original is copy-pasted below)
Couldn’t come up with a better title.
Okay… so… holy hell.
This is the longest fic I’ve ever written. And it isn’t even finished.
I thought “Superbia” was long. But… I outdid myself. Over FORTY FREAKIN’ PAGES IN GOOGLE DOCS. And again, this is not finished, I’m splitting it so I at least have the hope of releasing something! With two routes! This is a novel, folks!
I’m probably going to repost this for the Christmas event since I want as much people to see them as possible. Because there are some Christmas elements here. So yeah, you can take this as an early Christmas fic too.
This will be a movie, folks. Grab a seat and some popcorn.
Also, look, it’s goddamn Ludwig torment again! For the fourth time in the span of a month! And this might just be the most elaborate way I’ve tormented the poor guy yet. But I didn’t really have many options.
So I wanted to enter Mirror Week, but in the main canons write in, Alt-talia and Hetalia Emblem, I haven’t come up with any use for 2Ps, and in the former case I can’t see how I could use them.
However, there was one Alt-talia spin-off AU I had been thinking they would exist on; I didn’t know whether I wanted to release media to it so early, and due to a reason I will explain in a moment, I was reluctant to release media about it in general. But… I went with it.
This is my Evillious Chronicles AU. Yes, an AU of an AU. What about that.
Basically, the Evillious Chronicles is what started as a series of Vocaloid songs telling a much larger story; it has since ballooned into a vast, tangled network of light novels and other such media. It’s as confusing as it sounds. Some of you may have heard of the songs “Daughter of Evil” and “Servant of Evil”; those were the first songs to be released in that series. Those two songs weren’t self-contained, oh no.
The thing is, for this AU I wanted to write just based on the seven sin songs (and Servant of Evil), with accompanying Hetaloid covers, and leave the rest of the story up to the audience. I’m still planning on that. However, I still wanted to enter the event, so here I am presenting a version of events for one of the arcs; however, it is merely the route that hews closest to Evillious canon from what I can gather of it. So yeah, NONE OF THIS IS HARD CANON. Especially since I wasn’t sure on the roles of some characters here.
Also, if I somehow ever get to publishing my main Evillious x Hetalia fics sometime in the future; first of all, hi. But more importantly, please, I implore you, do not read this before reading The Muzzle of Ludwig. Especially the second half. I tried to avoid spoilers, but someone becomes extremely obvious with contextual clues.
Also… it’s not like I wanted to write Ludwig torment again. But he was basically my only option, since he was the only one whose sin most likely overlaps with… well, it’ll become clear as this goes on. Ludwig’s story here is based on Nemesis Sudou’s story. Though since Nemesis and Ludwig are vastly different characters, there may be some plot holes, unfortunately.
And THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: for those who have read none of my other works yet, Alt-talia has often vastly, vastly different characterizations. I based most of these characterizations off of their late 19th century to very early 20th century personalities in Alt-talia. Special OOC warning for the following characters: Austria, Hungary, and Prussia. Minor OOC warning for Germany. I used @askimperialludwig ‘s version of the character as a reference, along with my personal perception and research. may add more later.
Also, credit to my friend @tomboyjessie13 , my Evillious consultant, for helping me through this!
I can’t let this be too long, since the fic is long already. Let’s go!
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(Also... people who read my fics, please reblog them. I work hard on them, and want many to see them!)
And since I forgot to add this above the cut; this canon is also one of the few times Nyotalia characters canonically exist as their own entity in my works, if not the only one so far. It’s kind of necessary, since otherwise it’ll turn into a complete sausagefest. However, as I have no set personality for them in main Alt-talia canon, I basically write them the same way as I would their male counterparts, with maybe some minor changes. I do have some ideas for Nyotalia characters in “what if” stories for main Alt-talia canon, but since this would be an Alt-talia spinoff, most of my theoretical audience would be there for the Alt-talia characters who appear in most Alt-talia media. Not to mention male stereotypes for countries are usually more fun anyway. However, in this universe two counterparts of the same character can co-exist. I try to avoid that though.
Also, a character named “Arendt” is briefly mentioned; this is Brandenburg. He isn’t really that important though, and really I’ve barely fleshed him out, so that’s all you need to know.
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The Key To Zorn
Part one: And Then The Boy Went Mad
In a certain continent, there was a forest.
A serene, peaceful forest, where inside one could almost feel mystical energy in the clear, unpolluted air.
Until, under the evening sky, a gunshot sounded.
Ludwig Beilschmidt, a boy of merely 8 with innocent, cornflower blue eyes, ran through the forest he knew so well, a basket of wild berries and herbs in his arms and a small sack over his back.
Soon, in his view, among the trees and wild cornflowers was the only place he had known all his life, the little wooden cottage he called home.
The boy immediately checked his old, somewhat rusted mailbox, a look of anxiousness on his face - one which immediately turned to disappointment upon finding there was nothing there.
He sighed.
“Nothing today either...”
He reached up somewhat, twisting the doorknob and opening the wooden door.
“I’m home!”
No one answered back.
As per usual.
He didn’t expect one anyway.
Ludwig went to the dining table, setting the basket and sack, as well as his small, old-model pistol, down on his side of the table. Inside the sack was a small rabbit; the poor little thing. He hoped it didn’t struggle for long after he had shot it.
He prepared dinner as he always did, the bubbling as the ingredients stewed the only sounds other than the cries of the wildlife outside.
And he ate in silence by the light of the lamp, staring at the empty, vacant other side of the table, the light of the sun dim and faint.
“Mutter, is it good?”
Nothing.
Ludwig sighed again, going back to shoving the stew into his mouth.
——-
Ludwig tucked himself into bed after a bath and a change of clothes, now in his old, almost too small pajamas, having finished the book in his hands an hour ago - while he had reread it and others several times already, it was a window into a world different from his, where friends supported each other and families told stories in front of the fire - but now that it was over, here he was, once again, stuck in loneliness, on his own, within the cold, dark walls of a small cabin.
Once again, it was quiet. All too quiet; except for the sounds of the forest.
Now as he had nothing to distract him, every rustling of the underbrush, every animal cry made him bristle. The forest was his comfort by day, almost a second mother, but by night, it was dark, feral.
He pulled his blankets up to his face, curling up, shaking like a leaf. He felt any moment, a beast could break through the walls and tear him to shreds.
He missed his mother so much, oh how he missed her. Her harsh but protective voice, her calloused hands squeezing his wrists. He missed his onkel Arendt, who told him stories of the battles he and Mutter had been through.
She’s dead. She’s dead, accept it.
No, no she wasn’t.
She couldn’t be. She had to be alive.
She was too strong to die.
She would come back. She always came back.
His mother wouldn’t want to see him like this anyway. He was being pathetic.
“Einz, zwei, drei...”
He took a deep breath. He was stronger than this.
Imagining his mother was standing by his bed, staring at him with disapproval at his fearful behavior, finally his shivering started to lessen ever so slightly.
He needed to make it so that when she came home with another medal shining on her chest, she could come home to a son she could be proud of, after all.
“Good night.”
He said to no one in particular, as he let the faint moonlight be his comfort, finally closing his eyes.
Lu li la la lu li la la la...
A soothing, calming melody played in his mind; Ludwig didn’t know where he knew it from, but as it surrounded him in soft, almost familiar gentleness, the shivering stopped, his muscles loosened, and he was finally lured into the welcome embrace of sleep.
Lu li la la lu li la la la…
Lu li la la lu li la la la...
———-
“FIRE!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Birds flew away in massive numbers, disturbed by the sudden noise.
Ludwig blew the steam off his pistol, seeing that the bullets had all landed near-target. Almost there.
Not bothered by the recoil anymore, he lined up the shot again, swearing he would get it right this time.
Every two days he did this, before 10 sets of running, marching, and every parallel bar routine; this wasn’t how most children his age passed their time, willingly anyway, if the books he read were any indication, and surely he felt sorry for the animals who had to hear such things, as they were the closest things to friends he had. But it broke the silence.
And most of all, he could almost sense his mother beside him during these practice drills; he could feel her hands on his arms guiding him in his aim, and hear her voice shouting in tandem with him as he shouted “FIRE!”. In fact, sometimes he swore she actually was there, by his side.
He took a deep breath and aimed again.
“FIRE!”
-----------------------
When he came home, he once again saw a basket of supplies.
They always puzzled him. They came at such random, unpredictable intervals, filled with food, a few bottles of milk, several cartridges of bullets, and even occasionally a book, toy, bar of soap, or other extra, but by the time he found them no one was ever there.
He should be grateful. Though he wished someone would explain to him.
Oh well.
-----------------------------
Days passed, then months.
Once again, on the night of his 9th birthday, Ludwig laid alone, the weak moonlight unable to brighten his gradually deepening pit of despair.
The silence was maddening. He craved for any touch, for any warmth of another person, for anything. But even that simple wish was too much to ask.
He bunched up the worn blanket, the cold, frigid winter air seeping into the cabin.
Every day, he wondered if he was slowly going mad.
Holding a cornflower and his mother’s black cross necklace to his chest, looked out into the moon, to the night sky peeking from a clearing in the trees.
A star shot through the night sky, and Ludwig was quick to make his wish.
I hope Mutter will answer my letters soon.
She had always told him that believing in such things was foolish.
But what was the pain in hanging onto the little light he could find?
-------------------
Now’s your time.
Alright. I’m going in. See you.
------------------
One cold, chilling day, towards the final days of the year he turned 9, Ludwig stepped outside to check his mailbox again.
Snow lightly dusted the ground, softly landing on his old, worn coat.
He had checked his homemade calendar; Sancbruma. Such a lovely holiday. But now, just yet another cold, freezing, lonely day. Oh well. He had known Pater Natalis wasn’t real for years to need confirmation.
But this day, after creaking the old thing open, he found something.
His heart almost stopped.
Immediately, he ripped the envelope often, his heart pounding in his ears, his breath quickening, and he immediately glued his focus to the words, written specially to be understandable to a child.
Ludwig Beilshmidt, we are sorry to inform you that…
Time seemed to stop. He swore his heart stopped.
Dread shot through his body like lightning.
He read on, clinging onto the little hope that still remained with him all those years as they escaped from him, flying away as he fell deeper.
Tears fell from his face.
She was gone.
She was really gone.
Finally, suppressed despair replaced dread, filling every corner of his mind and body, every nerve, every muscle.
But mixed with it, and eventually almost overpowering it in the concoction of emotion, was wrath.
Pure, unbridled wrath.
He tore the paper and screamed, his screams piercing the serene forest air.
Tears fell from his eyes like a burst dam as he cried into his hands, cursing whoever had killed her, her fate, the cruelty of the gods.
If only he could get his hands on whatever bastard killed her, he would strangle them, he would gouge out their eyes, he would shoot them in the leg and watch them bleed to death, how dare they take his mother away!
He had always been told the best came to those who were patient.
He was proven wrong that day.
All those years, waiting, hoping, hoping for nothing.
Nothing.
His mother was never going to come back. Ever.
Grief, anger, and sadness gripped his small frame as he shook, on the ground, his young brain besieged with intense emotions and reality, dreaded, painful reality.
Don’t cry. How pathetic. Is that how I raised you?
Ludwig forced himself to take deep breaths, desperately fighting his tears and holding back the flow of the concoction of emotions any further.
No, his mother wouldn’t want to see him like this. He couldn’t let her be honored like this.
“Einz, zwei, drei, einz, zwei, drei...”
He took a breath with every word, forcing his emotions back and attempting to lock them away, until finally once again he could think somewhat coherently.
It was here he noticed something perched on the mailbox.
An eagle.
A medium-large eagle with pointy, perky ears and snout; a magnificent, beautiful coal-black Fernirhund, its bright, intelligent eyes a rare violet.
He didn’t notice it before in his panic, but now the dominant emotion in his mind was confusion.
As he sniffled, the eagle nudged him again with its nose, looking up at him with its soulful eyes.
“...A eagle?”
The eagle stared at him back.
Ludwig’s mind immediately jumped back to the beginning of the year.
I hope Mutter will answer my letters soon.
“Are… are you from my Mutter?”
Silence.
Immediately, he embraced the eagle, making it yelp, crying into its fur.
“It’s adorable! I love it Mutter! Thank you!”
It let him cry into its fur, as the boy’s short arms wrapped around it in the first living thing it had embraced, nay, touched, in years.
He was actually holding something living. Oh, it had been so long. Oh so long.
He had almost forgotten what it felt like to hold life in his arms, to feel its warmth, to feel its gentle rising and falling, to hear the subtle sounds of another’s breath in his ears.
For the first time in years, despite the unforgiving cold of the winter morning air, warmth reached Ludwig’s heart, happiness brewing with and overpowering now subdued despair and rage.
<Sure… Whatever makes you happy, kid.>
------------------------------------------
“Oy vey… I was too late again.
...This world is fucked.”
-------------------------------------
Ludwig put a saucer of stew in front of the eagle, which surely enough it soon started lapping up.
“It’s good right? What should I call you… I’ll have to give you a name.”
He stared at the eagle, deep in thought.
“Oh, I know… Schwarzchen!”
The eagle looked at him.
“You like it? Then Schwarzchen it is!”
<...I didn’t say anything. ’Blackie’? You cannot be serious.>
--------------------
That night was different from usual.
Ludwig nestled his head in Schwarzchen’s fur, holding onto him like a stuffed animal, running his fingers through his soft coat. It had seemed reluctant at first, clearly not used to such close contact but as Ludwig begged it to stay, as if it understood him, it decided to stay with him.
The eagle’s breathing neutralized the deafening silence he had gotten so used to, its warmth protecting his small body from the frosty air.
It was like heaven.
Oh, he almost forgot something.
He took his mother’s necklace from his bedside table, putting it around the eagle’s neck like a collar.
“There. Perfect. It suits you.”
He barked.
“Good night, Schwarzchen.”
That night, sleep came to Ludwig easier than usual, as he was surrounded by his new companion’s soft breathing and warm fur.
----------
“Hallo. Kid. Wake up.”
Ludwig awoke, his eyes fluttering open.
Once his eyes focused, he almost yelped in shock.
He was somewhere he didn’t recognize, some formless void; Schwarzchen was nowhere to be seen, nor were the walls of his cabin or even his forest, all that remained was his bed.
In front of him was a man clad in what seemed to be a long white lab coat and some type of mantle, or at least Ludwig assumed, his clothing style almost resembling that in illustrations in one of his novels, ostensibly chronicling ancient legends; but not just any man.
A man who looked almost exactly like how one would imagine Ludwig would look like when he was older, save for his unnatural purple, almost magenta eyes that shined with a calculating glint, a scar under his left.
“H… hallo?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you.”
“I… Who are you?”
The man smiled at him softly; despite his harsh features, it calmed some of Ludwig’s nerves, just a little.
“That isn’t important. But you’re lonely, right? And it’s causing you pain, yes?”
His voice was deep; much lower than Arendt’s, the only other reference he had for an adult man, surprising Ludwig a bit.
The boy nodded.
The man dug into one of his pockets, taking out a key.
“Here. I’ll be your friend; all you have to do is take the other end of this key, and you won’t feel any of that loneliness and pain any more…”
Tentatively, Ludwig took it.
The boy gasped as he suddenly felt something overwhelming and indescribable other than energy blitz between him and the strange man through the key; it was painless, in fact almost manic energy, bright lights flashing in his vision.
Ludwig woke up.
The boy laid there, his eyes wide, his mind mulling over what he had just seen.
“A dream… it was a dream… Who was that man?”
He turned, and there Schwarzchen was.
“Never mind… Good morning, Schwarzchen.”
<Are you really going with that name?>
Ludwig blinked.
“...Did you just…”
<I thought children were supposed to be creative?>
Ludwig’s eyes widened. He held his head; it seemed to be coming from within his head, like a thought, instead of from his ears.
“...Schwarzchen? Is that you?”
<Yes, this is the eagle. And I have a name.>
Ludwig took a few seconds to process the information.
“...What? ...Mein Gott, I’ve really gone crazy…”
<No. This is real. I’m speaking to you through something called telepathy. Speaking to you through your mind. I could explain all the intricate details but it would probably short-circuit your child brain.>
“I know what it is. But it’s just like in the stories! Wow! I didn’t know they really happened!”
<Well you could say that.>
Ludwig sat up on the side of his bed.
“You keep insulting my naming sense. So what is your name?”
“Schwarzchen” looked him directly in the eyes.
<Well, well, it’s the same as yours, funnily enough. Ludwig.>
“We have the same name? What a coincidence.”
<But I know that is confusing. Just call me Lutz. That is what everyone calls me.>
“Alright… Lutz it is. ...I liked ‘Schwarzchen’ though.”
<...Whatever, kid.>
---------------------------
Like that, Ludwig and Lutz became friends.
His 10th birthday had been the best birthday he had in years, even if it was just the two of them.
Over time, Lutz taught the boy how to use telepathy; and without him saying a word, he became a third hand to him.
...Sometimes. Other times, the eagle merely yawned, telling him to “Do it on his own.”
Ludwig wondered if all eagles were like this. But even then, he didn’t mind. Even if Lutz was a cold, snarky jerk sometimes, it didn’t matter.
Every day, they ate together, went hunting together, bathed together, and at the end of the day slept together.
He could almost forget his loneliness, and the fact that his mother would never return.
Almost.
——————
As Ludwig braced himself on his bed, he once again counted his breaths.
The wrath he felt that day; it was coming back. From within, it seemed to spread to his entire body, to the point it was unbearable.
He would never forget that pain. He couldn’t. But mindless rage was for the foolish.
He wouldn’t forget. But he would remember, silently.
When he looked to Lutz, Lutz didn’t seem afraid at all. He merely stared at him with those violet eyes.
Ludwig embraced Lutz, not letting go.
-----------------
Lutz stared at the young boy as he slept, his chest rising and falling.
<How cute.>
It was easy.
A bit too easy.
What did he expect from a child though.
<Still, would have liked a bit more of a challenge.
Oh well. Sleep tight, kid.
...Though why do you have to use me as a pillow?>
--------------------
Over the next year, Ludwig grew. Now on the cusp of puberty, he became stronger, he could run faster and further, and he could shoot with more and more accuracy.
On the morning of his 11th birthday, Lutz presented him with a query.
<Kid.>
“Huh? What is it, Lutz?”
<Now that you know that your mother isn’t coming home…>
Ludwig froze.
<Don’t cry on me.>
“I wasn’t going to”
<Yes, yes. In anyway, since you know you mother isn’t coming home, what’s the point staying in this place anymore?>
The boy pondered it.
<I’m a eagle and even I think it’s pointless waiting for someone if they’re clearly dead. Well maybe I’m not the one to talk here.>
He was right.
“But… This is all I have ever known.”
<Don’t worry about it. You’re smart. I think. You should find out what to do soon enough.>
“...Jawohl. I don’t know what my purpose is being here forever too… It’s not like this place will disappear either. And it’s not what Mutter would want me to do. ...We’re leaving tonight.”
————-
Ludwig opened his drawer.
There it was; the notice he had torn up all those years ago.
Why did he still have it?
Just so he would never forget, probably.
Ludwig sealed the notice into a pouch before the rage became too much to bear, stuffing it into his bag, going to fetch his clothing. He had a sailor suit saved up for “special occasions”; he hoped he hadn’t outgrown it already.
--------------
Ludwig looked behind his back one last time to the small cabin, the cornflowers, the trees he had known for his entire 11 years of living.
It felt so odd to know he would be away from it.
He quickly ran back, Lutz grumbling behind him, and picked a few flowers, pressing them between the pages of a book.
<Are you done now?>
“Jawohl. Coming, coming!”
-----------
When Ludwig entered the capital, the little truly important belongings he had on his and Lutz’s backs, he was in awe.
It bustled with energy, with people, rickety, clanking automobiles and trolleys spewing steam or smoke that made him cough if he went to close, radio commercials resounding through the air, as well as delicious smells the likes of which he hadn’t known in years, some never before, but mixed in with the inexplicable smell of whatever was coming out of the automobiles.
Ludwig wasn’t quite sure whether he liked it or disliked it, but most accurately he would describe it as a strange mix of the two; but more than anything, everything was so new.
He marveled at the sight of a trolley passing by, when he heard honking behind him.
“Get out of the way brat!”
Ludwig stepped back, hopping back to the sidewalk, and an automobile clunked on, its driver looking at him irritated.
But its movements fascinated him, how the machine seemed to move magically, how it seemed to have a life of its own.
“...Where should I even start?”
<Well? Do you have any relatives?>
“Not that I know of.”
Lutz pointed in the direction of some other children, in a way much like how a pointer or setter eagle would.
<You could try living on the streets like them for a few days. See where it gets you.>
“...Oh.”
Ludwig sighed. He may as well.
————-
“Shoo! Shoo!”
“No money? We aren’t a charity, sorry.”
“Outta the way!”
————-
Ludwig slept in an alley that night, huddled in his old blanket, snuggling against Lutz, who had gotten used to the close contact years ago.
He was so tired. He just remembered he hadn’t slept for an entire day, and it was finally catching up to him.
He had gotten some attention due to being cleaner-looking than the rest, though Lutz was far more charming in their eyes. But more often than not, the overwhelming message in the air was clear; he wasn’t welcome here.
“Lutz?”
Lutz looked up.
<What is it, kid?>
“Why didn’t you tell me I needed money for everything?”
<Didn’t you read about it?>
“I didn’t know it was this necessary.”
<I can’t hold your hand all the time.>
“...Lutz?”
<...What now?>
“There’s so many people here. But I still feel so alone.”
<Well at least you got some to get through the night. Don’t be choosy.>
“Jawohl… Good night.”
————
Seeing no reason not to, Ludwig had decided to explore the city a bit more the next morning, after having helped himself and Lutz to a piece of bread and some beef jerky he had bought, plus the miscellaneous items he had been given the day before.  
After a long while of walking, taking in the different sights, from the historical landmarks and building to new projects, some even in the midst of being built, neatly separated or together, working in at times harmonious and at times chaotic tandem. Every so often he saw stray animals run about. After some time he started to see schoolchildren, some about his age, run to school with their friends, adults dressed in suits on their way to work.
Until, Ludwig started to feel the air change.
It felt somewhat... sticky? The breeze seemed stronger. And inexplicably salty.
For he had reached the city harbor. Birds, they were called seagulls he believed, cawed above. Fishermen had far since left the dock, and in the distance, trade ships were being loaded to go who knows where. And they were floating on a vast, open field of water, water, nothing but water.
“Lutz... is this...”
<The ocean? What, you don’t even know what the ocean is?>
He had heard his mother’s stories about the ocean; while she had never been a woman of the seas per se, she was in the army, not the navy after all, he had heard her describe growing up near it. It was odd thinking that she, too, had been a child once like him.
This ocean was to her like the forest was to him, quite possibly.
She had also spoken about a rumor; a rumor that a wish put into a bottle and cast into the sea would, eventually, be granted. She had dismissed it as childish of course. And she did say that she much preferred the land after growing up.
Though according to Onkel Arendt, she would at times, despite this, just go to her childhood home, staring out into the eternal ocean.  
He wondered what she had thought as her red eyes stared out into the distant horizon, the salty breeze flowing through her silver-white hair. 
It was strange, imagining his mother like that. The sea was so free, almost careless; the complete opposite of her. But maybe that was exactly what drew her to it.
Ludwig started running along the dock, letting Lutz chase him, the briny wind rushing past him and through his hair. People had started to come to swim, and the city was starting to fully come to life.
Even if life was hard, at least he had some way of entertaining himself when everything was so brand new.
--------------
One day, a duo of teenagers spotted Ludwig.
And being the thugs they were, Ludwig suddenly found himself in confrontation with two kids much larger, older, and stronger than he; even if Ludwig was tougher than most 11-year-olds, these two seemed to be about 14 at least, if not, and probably, 15.
“Hey street rat, where’s your mutti?!”
Ludwig tried not to pay them any heed, even if he bristled at the rude words.
“...What business do you have with me?”
The shorter one grabbed him by the collar.
“I asked you a question, shorty!”
After the initial shock and fear, Ludwig felt a flash of anger. His fists clenched as he tried to struggle his way out. And worst of all was that he couldn’t do anything.
<Kid. Listen.>
“What?!”
<Listen to me. Tell me to “Intimidate”. Now. Don’t ask questions.>
“Of course! ...Intimidate, Lutz!”
————-
Ludwig stood there, dumbfounded at what he had just witnessed, as the teenagers ran away, screaming “DEMON eagle! DEMON eagle!”.
And there Lutz was, looking terribly bored, as if nothing had happened.
————
A week passed; Ludwig counted, as he always valued timekeeping, no matter what. The other street children left him alone, eyeing him strangely. Occasionally, he heard extortionists threatening some unfortunate soul.
That was when, however, Lutz told him something vital.
<Hey. Have you ever considered asking the police if you have any relatives?>
Ludwig looked at the eagle, puzzled.
“What?”
Lutz pointed at a building.
<There. It says “POLIZEI”. Can’t you read?>
“...Why? Won’t they throw me in jail or something?”
<Actually they have records too. They might have your mother’s family on file.>
Lutz looked up to see Ludwig’s dumbfounded face staring back at him.
“...Why didn’t you tell me that, you mutt?!”
<Thought it would be interesting to observe you. Also don’t be too loud. Everyone will think you’re a crazy person.
Ludwig took a look around, and indeed there were some passerbys staring at him.
Ludwig loudly sighed, his palm on his face.
“...Fine. Thanks anyway.”
--------------------------
“Your name?”
“Ludwig Beilshmidt.”
The officers looked at him for a few seconds.
“...As in Julia Beilshmidt? General Julia Beilshmidt?”
“Jawohl.”
They were in shock.
“...Excuse me? Is something wrong?”
“Erm… We apologize. Ja.”
“Do I have any relatives? I need some place to stay.”
“...Ja. We will search immediately. Please wait here. But it may take a while.”
————-
“Hallo? Is this the police? Why must you be calling?”
“Well, you see, sir… It appears that a relative of yours has suddenly shown up out of nowhere. ...He claims to be Beilshmidt’s son.”
“...Mein Gott. Julchen did say she had a son… I knew she wasn’t the type who should be able to take care of a child. I will be there as soon as I can.”
-------------
<This is boring.>
“I know, Lutz. Shut up.”
Lutz yawned.
“He should be here soon-”
It was then that the door to the police station opened with just enough force to be noticeable without slamming.
Standing there was a dark brown-haired gentleman with a large, curly cowlick, probably in his thirties, most likely affluent from his clothing.
“Excuse me, I hear there was someone waiting for me here?”
Ludwig stood up, and their eyes met.
“Hallo. ...You are Ludwig?”
He adjusted his glasses, then his tie.
“Ja?”
He looked him over.
“Ah, I can see some of the resemblance. Though you’re actually somewhat adorable, unlike her.”
“...Is that an insult against her?”
Realizing his mistake, the man cleared his throat.
“Ah, sorry.”
He outstretched his hand.
“I am Herr Roderich Edelmann. Your mother’s cousin. Nice to meet you. I’ve heard about you, but it is nice being able to see you with my own two eyes.”
Ludwig took the hand, shaking it.
“Ludwig Beilshmidt. Nice to meet you, Sir.”
Then, suddenly, Roderich’s formal facade dropped and he pulled the boy into a hug.
“You’re so precious! You may call me Onkel Roderich! Don’t worry, we will take great care of you!”
Lutz looked on in amusement as Ludwig’s cries of shock became muffled in the man’s chest.
Ludwig was flabbergasted. It had been so long since he had been hugged. He only could relive them in his memories, and they weren’t frequent, but here he was, feeling it yet again, surrounded by warmth; he didn’t know how to process it.
But if there was one emotion he was certain about as the man smoothed his hair and cooed over him, it was that he felt loved.
————-
Ludwig held on tightly as the automobile rocked around them. Roderich didn’t seem to mind it whatsoever, but Ludwig had only heard of an automobile once, and had seen, much less ridden, none. Roderich was happy to make him comfortable next to him though, warning him whenever a bump or “pothole” was coming up.
“I forgot to ask… what is that eagle doing with you? A purebred Fenrir no less?”
Lutz was lazily sprawled out in the back seat behind them, his ears pricking somewhat at the mention of him.
“Oh, that’s Lutz.”
“...Lutz? As in…”
“Jawohl.”
Roderich looked puzzled.
“Erm… Mutter named him.”
Roderich huffed.
“Ah, Julchen, of course…”
“He was my last Sancbruma present from her before she died.”
Roderich quieted for a few seconds.
“Oh… I see. We will accommodate him too. Do not worry. ...Also, no need to ‘jawohl’ around me.”
“Jawo… ja.”
—————
Onkel Roderich was a renowned musician; he was a master of many instruments and even knew how to compose, but his main forte was the piano. He was sought after for his talents across the land.  
And he had the house to show it as well.
“Welcome to your new home, Ludwig.”
Ludwig took it all in; the house was already larger than average compared to others in town, and as a boy who had grown up in a small log cabin all his life, it seemed especially enormous.
A woman with long, light brown hair came up to them, looking from Roderich to Ludwig.
“Ah, Erzsébet! This is my nephew, Ludwig. He will be staying with us from now on.”
Roderich bent his knees so he was at Ludwig’s level.
“Ludwig, this is Erzsébet, my wife.”
“H… hallo. Nice to meet you, Tante Erzsébet.”
Ludwig outstretched his hand.
The woman merely eyed him for a few seconds.
“Hallo. I guess.”
She said, gruffly, with a distinctly foreign accent.
Roderich sighed.
“Erzsébet, why do you have to be like this?”
“Why do we have to take in this ratty-looking kid?”
Ludwig scowled.
“Hey!”
Roderich held Ludwig closer, glaring at her.
“Erzsébet! He’s a child! Have you no heart?!”
“Fine, fine.”
She shook his hand, roughly.
“But the eagle is cute though. And wow, a Fenrir?! Hallo, come here!”
Lutz merely yawned.
Ludwig couldn’t help but snicker as an unamused frown crept across Erzsébet’s face.
“...Whatever. Make yourself at home I guess.”
She walked off.
“Prepare the bath and extra room for the boy! Come on now!”
Roderich commanded, and soon after servants bowed and quickly ran upstairs in single file.
“Don’t mind my wife. She wasn’t exactly enthusiastic to hear from you. But she will warm up to you eventually. Though… you are in need of new clothes, aren’t you?”
He gave the boy a once-over, making Ludwig look down to his old, beaten-up and washed out child-sized military uniform.
“Sadly, we do not have any clothes your size as of now. I will have a servant hire the tailor immediately. Meanwhile I will order them to wash what you have now.”
<He’s awfully happy to see you, isn’t he?>
“Ja… he seems like a nice person.”
————
That might, Ludwig had the best dinner he had ever had.
He could only marvel at the dishes in front of him; even those he had heard of before looked so refined. And there was so much of it! The variety of bread available was amazing.
But he couldn’t let himself forget his discipline. Even if it took all his willpower not to start gorging himself on everything like he had been possessed by some demon of gluttony.
“Onkel, what is this?”
“A chocolate torte, you see. A type of cake.”
Ludwig remembered actually having a cake a grand total of once. He still remembered its sweetness so well and it was probably the best thing he ever had eaten. And then there were two other things he had only read about before.
...And Lutz seemed unusually interested in it.
He couldn’t blame him though, it’s aroma was mesmerizing to Ludwig’s senses.
“Chocolate? Is that what the brown is?”
“You have never had chocolate before?! Mein Gott, Julchen, What have you done?”
Ludwig was quick to take a bite, and he froze.
The mellow, deep sweetness melted on his tongue, spreading throughout his mouth in such an indescribably perfect way, a tinge of bitterness within that instead of detracting from the experience, somehow harmonized with the sweetness in such a heavenly way.
“...Ludwig?”
“...It’s amazing.”
Roderich seemed somewhat amused by how floored the boy was.
“Even your mother was quite a fan.”
<Hey, hey. Kid.>
Ludwig was surprised by the unusual agitation in Lutz’s thoughts. He didn’t think he had ever heard anything like it before.
“Lutz? What is-“
<I need it. Now. Don’t ask questions!>
Ludwig almost panicked, giving a piece to the impatient eagle.
“Ludwig!”
“I… erm… It was unfair to have it to myself!”
“...Wasn’t chocolate poisonous to eagles?”
Erzsébet questioned.
“Wait wha-“
<Don’t worry. ... Ahh, bliss...>
Ludwig smiled nervously.
“He’ll be fine.”
The couple just stared, confused.
“Erm…”
“Trust me! I know him well. ...Can I have more? Please?”
“Absolutely.”
His face absolutely lit up at that, and in the corner of his vision Ludwig saw quite possibly the most genuine expression of joy he had seen from Lutz in all the time he knew him.
“Why’s it that everyone in your family loves chocolate so much?”
Erzsébet asked as her husband took another piece.
“Why don’t you is the better question.”
“...Actually, yup, you two definitely are related. Leave some for me though!”
————
Roderich doted on the boy; he made sure he had the nicest clothes and the nicest food that he could afford.
He had made sure the room was in absolute best condition, that his pillows were always fluffed and bed always made, even if Ludwig insisted he wanted to do it on his own.
He taught him everything about the basics of civilization, how to read more complex sentences, how to play the piano and the violin, even how to dance. He took him with him to work, across the city and sometimes even country to places he had at best read about and to meet so many new people.
His next Sanctbruma and 12th birthday were the most extravagant he had ever had.
Yet…
Yet something was missing.
Despite the man’s kindness, he felt something wasn’t right. Ludwig couldn’t put a finger on what, and he felt awful about it to be sure; he did so much for him, what more could a boy ask for?
But yet…
Sure, Erzsébet never completely warmed up to him; even if she wasn’t as cold to him, according to Lutz she was merely tolerating him. And the same was true for many of the servants.
But that didn’t change the fact that Roderich himself was nothing but loving towards him. Even if he had curfews and other such rules, he never had trouble with rules. His mother raised him to obey rules. And while he was often busy, he still tried his best to spend time with him.
Finally, he actually had someone who resembled a parent after all those years. He should have been thankful.
But he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Someone had to be doing something wrong.
At times, he still lay awake at night, those lonely days and nights and that fateful Sanctbruma playing back in his mind; as well as the accompanying emotions of pure hatred and wrath.
Once, Roderich has entered the room at an inopportune time to Ludwig curled up in his bed, seething, growling at him to leave him alone.
While he didn’t say anything about it at dinner, it was obvious he was disturbed by it.
“...Lutz. Why can’t I be happy? I still feel alone, but I don’t even know why.”
<Maybe you’ve been alone for too long. You’re past the point of return, kid. Maybe you should come to peace with it.>
“At least I have you.”
<Whatever.>
———
“Ludwig.”
“Ja, Onkel Roderich?”
The man sighed.
“It has been over a year since you started living with us. What is it with your standoffish behavior? Is something wrong? I will listen to it.”
“...I just can’t, Onkel.”
“Excuse me?”
“I… Something just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know why.”
The man looked so disappointed.
“I try my best to make you happy, Ludwig. I really do. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to satisfy your needs.”
“Nein. It isn’t that.”
Roderich shook his head.
“As I was saying… the chords for this piece are…”
—————
Ludwig continued to do his practice drills whenever possible, even if they had taken a different shape; makeshift targets became proper shooting galleries, improvised exercises became possible using an open space between buildings and proper equipment. And as he grew more and more by the day, his physical abilities took leaps and bounds above what he had been capable of before. He just wished he could go more than weekly. At first, Roderich objected, but it didn’t take long for him to cave in.
After all, he had to keep himself in shape, especially as he now had access to all the candy and chocolate that could be plausibly afforded.
After a while, Roderich started to continuously try to ask him to consider other options in this weekly time slot. He was never too forceful, however. And after a while, as Ludwig expressed his clear annoyance, it finally ceased just as it had begun.
There was another episode that irked Ludwig.
One night, as he went to get a glass of water, he had seen Roderich, seemingly sneaking away from his room.
“...Onkel?”
The man bristled as soon as he turned on the lights.
“Erm… Ludwig, I didn’t expect you to be awake..
Then, Ludwig saw it.
In his hands was his mother’s necklace.
“...What are you doing with Mutter’s necklace?”
He immediately stuffed it inside his pocket and turned around, a fake smile on his face.
“What necklace, my dear Ludwig?”
“I know you’re hiding it.”
The man sighed, taking it back out again.
“I… I wanted to put it in a place it will be safer in.”
Ludwig tried not to grill him further, even as he felt something fueled by doubt start to boil within him.
“I’m sure it will be safe with me. It’s been so for all the years I’ve had it. Can I have it back now?”
“...Ja.”
Ludwig swiftly took it back, going down to get his glass. He really needed one.
“You could tell a servant to get it for you?”
“No. I prefer to do it on my own.”
When Ludwig had returned to his room, he had quite the things to say to Lutz.
“Lutz. Why did you let him take it?”
<I was sleepy, kid. Why do you care about that thing so much?>
“It’s from Mutter. You should know. ...Lutz. If anything, protect this with your life.”
<Oh come on now.>
“I’m serious. It’ll be the last thing I ask of you.”
<Alright, alright. Whatever.>
“You aren’t sincere, are you?”
<What do you want from me? Good night.>
——————
One day, as Ludwig overheard some servants speaking to each other in hushed voices, glancing at him every so often.
He was able to catch two things; “Miss Erzsébet” and “barren”.
He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. But for whatever reason he didn’t like the sound of it.
That night, after some shouting, once again Roderich stormed out of the master bedroom, telling Erzsébet to “Get a hold of yourself already, you indecipherable woman!”, to his own separate room, as Erzsébet shouted some words back that sounded really angry and probably inappropriate.
<There goes the lovely couple.>
Lutz thought, as Ludwig tried to sleep. Lutz, meanwhile, had no trouble.
————
13-year-old Ludwig stood outside of the bar, alongside Lutz, as always, and other members of his gang.
It was in a seedy, rough part of town. And it was where their rival gang frequented most often.
It wasn’t the most well-to-do of bars, to say the least; as soon as they entered, the air smelt pungently of alcohol, and ambiently of various nasties.
<Ergh. Try coming here as a eagle.>
They immediately saw their target; the offending gang’s leader.
Their leader went up to confront her rival, fists clearly ready to fly.
“Hey! We know ya killed him!”
“Who?”
The rival boss said, with a cheeky grin.
“Ya know who!”
The two continued to escalate their argument, until they became close to blows.
“Enough yammerin’! Get ‘em, boys n’ girls!”
Suddenly, they were grabbed by the rival gang bangers, including Ludwig, who held back a yelp.
“We didn’t kill one of yer ratpack, asshole! Now get out or we’re gonna force ya out!”
“...You better tell us.”
Ludwig said, tersely, utilizing his now lowering voice and copying his mother’s tone.
The rival boss laughed.
“Or what, kid? What are ya gonna do, huh? Man your recruiting standards have gone down!”
His boss smirked.
“Ya better listen to the kid.”
“Or what?”
They laughed uproariously.
“Lutz. Restrain.”
Their laughing instantly stopped, their faces going sheet white, all the other bar patrons, the bartender, and staff turning to gawk.
For they bore witness to the gang boss being pinned down, on the floor, between the claws of a giant, terrifying hellhound, its eyes glowing, its fangs bared, its breath in the unfortunate gangster’s terrified face.
Ludwig walked up to the rival boss with measured steps, the gangsters holding him having let go out of sheer terror, the thumping of his feet the only sounds other than his companion’s breathing and the squeaks and sputtering from bystanders and rival gangsters, and pulled out his old pistol, aiming it at the thug’s head, glaring daggers so sharp that they could gouge eyes out.
Show your enemy no mercy.
Once again, he thought he felt his mother voice in his ear.
“Tell us the truth.”
The rival boss sputtered, shaking like a leaf, looking awfully smaller than the much younger boy.
“We… we… d-d-di…”
Ludwig cocked his pistol.
“Speak in a real language!”
The rival boss flinched, and the rest of the rival gang huddled, terrified.
“W-we didn’t do anything! I-I swear! I swear!”
Ludwig lowered his pistol slightly.
“...Really?”
“J-ja! I swear! I swear by both the Heavenly and Hellish Yards! P-p-please let me go, Sir!”
“...Alright. Lutz, release.”
The eagle shrank back down to size, returning to his original, fluffy, cute self.
His boss grumbled.
“Whoop. That was pointless. Lud, let’s get outta this dump.”
They turned to leave, the other people in the bar still staring at them.
“W-Wait.”
Ludwig and his boss turned back to the humiliated rival boss.
“We might’ve not killed ‘im. But I-I have a good idea who might’ve.”
———-
“So, Lud. Good job today. We’ve got ourselves a lead.”
“Jawohl.”
Their boss patted Ludwig on the head and gave the group a once-over.
“Ok. You’re all dismissed.”
Ludwig was quick to leave, the others staring after him.
“What’s it with him? I swear, it’s like he doesn’t wanna be associated with us.”
“He said something about a curfew.”
“Really? Kid still follows curfews? What is he, 10?”
-----------------
When Ludwig came back, Roderich was waiting for him.
“Ludwig.”
“Onkel Roderich?”
Roderich’s expression was serious and stern.
“...What have you been doing?”
“What do you mean, Onkel Roderich?”
Roderich held Ludwig’s shoulders.
“Let me state this plainly.”
He took a deep breath.
“You’re involved in gang activity, aren’t you?”
Ludwig was in shock.
“How…”
Roderich shook his head, his hand on his forehead.
“Ludwig. I am sure even Julchen taught you to obey rules.”
“I… I don’t want to depend on you for everything. I feel like a leech.”
Roderich was shocked.
“You’re only 13, Ludwig! It is alright! It isn’t worth putting yourself at risk like this!”
“I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Roderich shook his head.
“Don’t say that. You could deliver newspapers, or use those piano skills I taught you-“
“And they’re my friends.”
“Friends?! I care for you, why do you need them?! Do you even know any of their names?!”
“...”
“You’re going to get into trouble eventually, young man.”
“I… I know!”
Roderich flinched.
Ludwig looked down and stormed back into the house, Lutz running behind him, into his room, throwing himself onto his bed.
“Hmph, teenagers...”
Erzsébet mumbled.
—————-
“Ludwig?”
Roderich opened the door to Ludwig’s room that night, peeking in.
Ludwig couldn’t bare to look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry.”
Roderich sighed.
“Is it because I’m not Julchen?”
The boy felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m sorry! I don’t hate you, I’m thankful for what you’ve done, and-”
“I see. Just try to forget about her, alright?”
Ludwig froze. He felt like someone had stabbed his heart.
“But…”
“I do so much for you. I give you everything. What was it that she had that I don’t? I’ve been a far better parent than that stone-hearted, cruel, cold-”
<Oh no. You’ve done it now.>
“DON’T SAY THAT ABOUT MY MUTTER!”
His voice cracked terribly, but he didn’t care.
Roderich stumbled back, his face pale, horrified.
Silence.
“Ludwig… I’m sorry.”
Ludwig buried his face into his pillows.
“...I’ll tell the servants to bring you dinner. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Leave me alone!”
“...I’m happy with any path you want to take. Just please stay safe.”
Roderich sighed and closed the door.
From that day on, Roderich started informing Ludwig of where police may find him, and locations of stations across the city. Anything for his safety, he had said.
But from that day on Ludwig knew; he knew that his suspicions were true, that all this time he was trying to make him forget about his mother. He couldn’t let that happen. It was only confirmation when he heard him brutally disparage her one night in a drunken stupor during one of his binge-drinking sessions.
Once again, Ludwig could trust no one.
And once again, wrath simmered within him.
----------------
Their boss summoned Ludwig and the rest of the gang to a gathering; to sort out their clues, they had said.
Ludwig was appreciated for his abilities; but outside of the action, he sat somewhat removed from the rest. He couldn’t connect with them much either.
His mother had despised lawbreakers; “scum”, “rats”, she would call them. If she knew what he was doing now, she would have caned his palms until they were raw and bleeding. She would have told him he was better than this. He never would have imagined he could stoop this low too. After all, he was his mother’s only son. He should have been destined for greatness.
Quite honestly, he didn’t fully understand what he was doing here either. How did he even get here? Was it just a business affair? Were they really his friends? 
Maybe it was because this was the closest thing to military service he could find. Even if it were on the other side of the law.
A girl a year or so older than him, the second youngest in the gang, came up to him attempting to speak to him. Ludwig hesitated, but in the end continued to be fascinated with the clues they had and Lutz.
“Hey give up on Herr Stick-In-The-Mud already! Bet he’s never even kissed a girl!”
A gangster said, using the nickname they often used when ribbing him.
“What’s with him? He to good for us?” One of them muttered when Ludwig refused a drink.  
“Ja. Imagine being one of us and caring about drinking ages. Never can understand Herr Stick-In-The-Mud.”
“Ja. Where was he raised, His Majesty’s Elite Imperial Barracks?”
“Hey, hey, did you hear that Boss might have the hots for him too?”
“Why don’t you fuckwits shut the fuck up?” Their boss barked at the last one. “The kid’s basically an infant!”
<You’re the most rule-bound gangster I’ve ever seen.>
“Why do they treat it as a bad thing?”
<You’re the one who joined a street gang, genius. They’ve got different rules.>
Ludwig looked at the bottle of cheap moonshine he had been offered again, sighed, and took a gulp.
He immediately gagged.
The last time he’d had booze was when Roderich had allowed him to try beer, and even then he had basically diluted half of it with water and it definitely didn’t taste like... whatever this bottle of horse urine was.
“Ack! This is awful! ...I did it, are you happy now?”
“That’s the spirit!”
“Doesn’t count! He gagged!”
Ludwig took a deep breath.
“Let’s get back on topic. We are discussing the murder of a fellow comrade. This is no time for inane chatter.”
Finally, the air became solemn.
“Ja, reasonable, I guess…”
“Now, onto the information Scout 2 gathered...”
—————-
Ludwig, more than anything, considered himself a logical person.
He and his mother both despised vagueness. It seemed pointless, really, all the dancing around the true meaning of your words in the name of “politeness”. While apparently many in this part of the continent were considered similarly blunt and practical, it seemed even then he was exceptional.
So his own emotional turmoil, how he could never seem to explain himself, frustrated him more than anyone else. It angered him.
But one thing he knew for sure was that he looked forward to stopping by the library on the way home. Thank goodness Roderich had taught him to read to a level more appropriate for his age; it was difficult at first, but he was also fortunately a fast learner.
He always had taken a fascination with the sciences. They were at first glance unpredictable, but once broken down and observed, logical. They made sense, they were rational. Recently, he started finding them more investing than fiction, in fact. And his new reading skills finally made the higher levels of it beyond simplistic drawings attempting to explain the laws of physics and magic accessible.
Which was why today he sat outside the library in his usual spot, looking through a medical encyclopedia, munching on one of many bars of dark chocolate and a small loaf of bread.
Lutz licked up pieces of chocolate Ludwig had given him, peeking from under him.
“HERS?”
<Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome.>
Ludwig looked to Lutz in shock.
<A rare genetic, psychiatric disorder with no known cause. Those afflicted by Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome, a Hereditary Evil Raiser, or HER, is said to be at their core an incarnation of malice, "programmed" to destroy the gods, everything they created and everything related to them. Therefore, as a natural prerequisite, they typically show extreme cruelty and having the compulsion to increase their own kind and ensure the continuation of their "mission" to spread malice by any means necessary, taking immense pleasure in doing so. Currently there is no known cure, though in high-functioning individuals it may be managed, and manifest in lesser ways.>
“How…”
<I have my ways.>
“Though… Hereditary Evil Raiser Syndrome? Who names this stuff?”
<Hey. They probably had their reasons.>
“Why do you care? Did you come up with it?”
<Maybe. Plus, that’s rich coming from the kid who literally named me “Blackie”.>
Ludwig sighed.
“I... Fine. And wait... are you reading with me?”
<Yeah, I can read. I never told you?>
Ludwig continue to stare at him.
“I... I just didn’t think you would...”
<Turn the page already. I already know this.>
"Maybe you could try reading a novel, Lutz?”
<Don’t care. Why should I care about what you flesh-apes think, much less fake ones? No one in the world knows what I’m thinking anyway.>
Ludwig closed the encyclopedia.
“You mean you feel that no one understands you, right?”
Lutz looked up, his ears erect.
His words struck him like a spark of lightning.
“That makes two of us”
An awkward few moments passed. For once in his life, Lutz had nothing to retort back.
Why was he so shocked?
Ludwig blinked, confused.
“Lutz? What’s wrong?”
<...Nothing.>
Lutz didn’t know what he had just felt.
“That makes two of us” 
It should have meant nothing, coming from this brat.
But yet...
Whatever. It probably still meant nothing.
-------------------------
“We’ve got our guy! Rich bastard’s not gonna know what hit ‘im.”
Their boss said, confidently, gesturing to an assassin she had bought into their abandoned factory hideout.
The assassin looked across the crowd of gangsters.
“So. Which one of you brats wants to come?”
“Actually, we’ve got a good clue already for who’s gonna be a good fit for this mission.”
Ludwig waited, anxiously. He would gladly take the job of avenging his fallen comrade, of course.
“Ludwig!”
Ludwig stood to attention.
“...You’ll be providing nice clothes for us to blend in!”
Ludwig was speechless.
“How… Why?”
<Turns out you aren’t as tough as you thought. Better luck next time, kid.>
But when all had left, he went up to his boss. He needed answers.
“Why am I excluded?”
She looked at him as if he was stupid.
“I don’t think ‘Giant Enemy eagle’ is a viable weapon to use on a cruise ship.”
“But… I can shoot well too! You said I was a great marksman!”
“You’re good. Gotta say that. Still, don’t know about your skills in stealth yet. Can’t risk it. Now, see ya.”
Then, she abruptly cut him off and left.
-----------------
Three days later, Ludwig and the rest of the gang not chosen for the plot awaited at the dock.
Soon, they spotted the assassination party, coming towards them.
One person was clearly missing.
“Hey! Boss! ...Boss? And where’s...”
Her face was dire.
“Shot dead. ...He spotted us.”
“He saw all our faces. All of you are fucked. We’re all fucked.”
More silence.
“...WHAT?!”
Silence immediately gave way to panic.
Ludwig stood, frozen.
“How… Why…”
He clutched his head, overwhelmed.
“But it can’t…”
Emotions swirled inside the boy, overpowering all of his senses, all of his thoughts.
What was going to happen to him? His friends?
“No, no, no, nonononononono…”
<You know what to do, kid.>
Suddenly, he bolted.
Along the harbor, he ran.
Then, in a burst of emotion and without much thought, as if on instinct, he acted immediately as Lutz took a running leap into the sea.
“SIC ‘EM, LUTZ!”
He didn’t even bother with the telepathy.
Everyone could only look on in shock and horror as Lutz became an utter behemoth of a beast, seemingly not completely solid and with a godlike glow, his tail alone twice the size of the ship; to those who were watching from afar, it would have looked as if a demon eagle had risen out of the sea itself.
The ship was no match for the beast. Before anyone could fully comprehend what was going on, the ship had been sunk, every single person on it with it.
----------------
Ludwig walked back to the gang, who all stood staring at him, utterly horrified.
Finally, someone broke the silence.
“...Holy shit.”
Another turned to him, their eyes wide.
“...Lud? Did you just…”.
The boy’s mind was blank. What could he even say?
He had killed all of them. Every single one of them.
But in the end...
“Mission accomplished…?”
“Am I trippin’?”
“Did we just witness a massacre?”
“...What the fuck?”
Ludwig took a deep breath.
“But we accomplished our mission. ...I did what I had to do.”
“Ja, but… Holy shit.”
“In anyway…”
Their boss cleared her throat.
“Let’s… Let’s go with this loot before the cops find out.”
The rest could only muster a “Ja” in unison.
Lutz trotted up to Ludwig, as unbothered as always.
“Lutz…”
<Just did as I was told. Don’t complain to me. Here.>
In the eagle’s jaws was a doll; an eerily faceless, unusual, porcelain-ish doll of indeterminable gender.
<Here. I brought a present.>
“What is…”
<Have it. Since I can’t give you Sancbruma presents, here it is, months early.>
“It’s… it’s probably from a dead child, Lutz!”
<Don’t be ungrateful. Oh, and your buddies are waiting. You should go.>
“...Ja. I did what I had to do. We killed him. That’s all that should matter…”
————-
The news of the shipwreck was all over the radio. They had listened to it in their hideout, huddled around the device.
“The perpetrator is currently unknown. However, many claim to have heard the voice of a boy or young man scream for the eagle to attack…”
————-
When Ludwig came home, Roderich was standing in front of the door, in shock.
“Ludwig…”
“Onkel?”
“...It was you wasn’t it?”
Ludwig looked down to his feet.
“Lutz, specifically…”
<Hey.>
Roderich pulled him into a protective embrace.
“You could have put yourself in so much danger! What if the police find out about you?! Don’t you dare do that again.”
"...”
Roderich pulled him in.
“Now, come in before someone recognizes you.”
—————
Roderich rarely ever let him join the rest of the gang since that day; it was too dangerous, he had said.
He went out in mostly in a dark hood for a disguise, at times without Lutz, for over the radio, one expert had identified the beast as “a black Fenrir transformed with powerful magic.”
Later that year, a month before Sancbruma and two months before his 14th birthday, he had heard something unusual.
<Ludwig… Ludwig…>
“Huh?”
Telepathy. But Lutz wasn’t with him; it came from the doll in his bag.
Ever since that fateful day, Lutz had told him to carry it for some vague reason he couldn’t understand; his alleged simple explanation was “It’s amusing to see you carry around a girly doll like that.”
<Ludwig...>
He took the bag off his back and looked in. 
<Someone is after you. You have been found out. You must run.>
“What?! How do you…”
<Do not ask. Please, please run… you must.>
He slung it back over his shoulder.
“Lutz!”
He had to get Lutz. Now.
But by the time he had gotten home, it was too late.
“No, Sir, he is not here. You will not find him here…”
“There he is!”
Two figures stood with Roderich; two figures he didn’t recognize.
A tanned, sturdy-looking man in a black suit, probably from the south of the continent, turned his attention away from Roderich, and pointed at Ludwig, gun in hand.
“Ludwig Beildshmidt! You are under arrest!”
Ludwig’s eyes widened. Emotions and stress once again blitzed through him.
“Lutz! Restrain! ...Lutz? Lutz?!”
His eyes darted next to the man to the other figure, what Ludwig thought to be a long-haired, somewhat tall foreign woman in eastern attire, her dark, raven hair pulled back into a ponytail; seemingly holding Lutz back without touching the eagle, but clearly struggling.
“Hurry!”
She shouted, in a foreign accent Ludwig didn’t recognize.
Ludwig bolted.
“Don’t you dare, you-“
“Herr Edelmann! Stop, or you will be arrested as well for interfering with police procedure!”
“Don’t touch him!”
The mysterious man finally shoved the weaker-looking man off him and gave chase, but Roderich grappling with him had given him some extra time...
“Ludwig! RUN! RUN!”
But before Ludwig could escape, all of a sudden he was blindsided by a third person, jumping on his back and pinning him down, the boy’s small body no match for the adult.
“LUDWIG!”
“Let me go, LET ME GO!”
That was the last thing he remembered saying before he had been slammed on the back of the head.
Ludwig blacked out.
To be continued in part 2...
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Author’s notes:
So I had to split this thing in half since it became much longer than I expected. Wow this is a monster. You will see the parts listed here after I write them. Parts, because this will have two different routes! Hopefully! Then again it seems like no one read this...
Also, the scene with the sea is even more ambiguous “canon” in this already ambiguously “canon” story, but I wanted to write it in because I liked it, having seen the idea that Prussia has some kind of connection to the sea before and liking it. I wish I could find it now. I think Alt-Prussia would have grown up with the sea when he was younger, and while he would stay very strictly a land fighter (in fact the Prussian navy was never all that good, being mostly a merchant fleet. Even the German navy, while it did go through a growth period in the 1880s in competition with Britain I believe, by WWII at least their Kriegsmarine kind of sucked. It’s why the invasion of Britain never happened, their navy would have been laughably curbstomped), and I still associate England, Netherlands, or Portugal way more with the ocean, maybe the North Sea has some kind of soothing effect on him.
Also adorable child!Germany is adorable. Why do I love this kid so much? Why is he so damn cute?!
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therookieking412 · 5 years
Text
Friday Spin Class II
Alright let’s get into it. 
Fair warning, this is a theory, a very far-fetched theory but one I kind of enjoy. In my last Friday Spin Class, I made a slight mention to Paulo and I am going to be writing an essay about him, however not the typical character analysis I have been promising, oh no. This is a theory I have cooked up about Paulo, Drosselmeyer, Fakir and Rue, buckle your seat belts, you ready?
Paulo is Fakir’s uncle.
Crazy, right? Well, not to crazy, I’ve scraped together some evidence that will hopefully bring some of you into my favor, or it may just not be strong enough proof for some of you, but here we go! 
First, let’s talk about the Drosselmeyer family tree, specifically the one Autor made. 
There are three rules he has made up for his tree, first: that descendants are connected through a line, if anyone doesn’t have children, the spot under their name is left bare, and if someone had a child, but they died or disappeared, they are crossed off with an X. 
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I will not acknowledge the dotted lines because those are either uncertainties or Autor’s personally theories about who some of the most recent generation are and how he’s connected. 
Drosselmeyer is at the top, he has three children - the middle children having no children themselves - we’ll just follow the line of the youngest, since that’s Fakir’s line. This child had two themselves, the eldest had two children, the eldest had two children, Fakir’s aunt/uncle and then his father (and as we all know, Rue was taken by the crows).
Now all this is to show that Fakir does have an uncle/aunt, so this isn’t entirely out of nowhere, ‘kay.
I’m not sure why Autor has Rue listed first before Fakir, but that might have just been a mistake. 
That does lead to my next bit of evidence - why Fakir went to Charon, the family friend, instead of his next closest relative. 
Out of all the characters on Princess Tutu, Paulo is the only one that is apart of a traveling troupe, meaning he can’t stay in one place to give a child a good home. 
It’s possible that Paulo wasn’t even there when any of this happened, when Fakir was born, when Rue was, and when she was taken, when their parents died, that he was away with his troupe writing ballets, and given that Kinkan is kind of trapped, it wouldn’t be easy to communicate with the outside world, no matter how advanced or modern the world is. 
This is the first time Paulo has come back to his hometown. 
Also why come to Kinkan? How would he have found out about it? 
It’s a small, strange little town, and obviously people can walk in and find it, “Was mom always an India Rhinoceros?” but what business does this bring? If you’re going to Germany with your ballet troupe, you’re going to Berlin, not some backwater town. 
And yes, Kinkan does have a ballet academy that seems rather prestigious, so maybe in the ballet world there’s Kinkan is a more respectable town. But I doubt it. 
Next, I want to talk about his face. 
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Like full offence, but that’s the exact same nose. 
And my friend made the excellent point that that’s just the stereotype they have for white men in Japan. 
(Not to mention their eyes; they’re both this weird bubble eye shape.)
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This guy’s nose is slimmer than both Paulo’s and Drosselmeyer’s, and it’s hard to tell here, but it’s not the straight nose both Paulo and Drosselmeyer sport. 
And Charon’s nose is perfect, look at it, ugh. I love big noses. 
Three of these noses are different noses, and two are the same. 
Maybe a coincidence, I don’t know, I mean Fakir has a regular anime nose, but Drosselmeyer telling Fakir that he looks like a younger version of Drosselmeyer sounds like a bold faced lie when I see Paulo and Drosselmeyer next to each other. 
I also realize that Paulo would be fourth generation, so unless every single kid got that nose (except Fakir) it might not be the strong connection I think it is. 
Now, let’s move on to what I think is the main event.
Paulo realizes his wife is upset, and he knows how to comfort her. 
In my previous essay, I made it known that Paulamoni is stepping into the wrong role. 
And what, pray tell is Paulo’s dream? 
“Sure, there are some dreams that can’t come true, but there is no rule that says you can have one dream. My dream is this: to enthrall people all over the world with your dancing. And to do that, I even thought up the perfect program for you.”
Not saying he’s a story spinner… but your boy’s a story spinner.
Okay, so let’s consider this logically, in my very first essay, I stated that the story spinners don’t start stories themselves, but stories happen, and it’s their job to finish them, the start of a story is a happy accident. 
Paulamoni’s perfect program has already started, this is the beginning of her story, her program, she has found her role and now Paulo with finish it for her, create for her a ballet and let her be the main character.  
So, the way, let’s say a novel, and a ballet are written are very different, a novel contains more words and uses those only to captivate an audience, while a program would have music, and stage directions, steps to take, etc. 
But, both are a story, but written and ended by someone. 
Whatever her program is, it will still be a story, just like the Prince and the Raven is a story, just like what Fakir writes for Ahiru is a story. 
Paulo is a story spinner, and Fakir has an uncle, out of both of them, Paulo looks a lot more like Drosselmeyer than Fakir ever has (thank you, Fakir’s mom), so whether Paulo is related to Fakir or not, if he is but from a different one of Drosselmeyer’s kids, or if he’s just his own story spinner, unrelated to all of this, these are the facts, presented to us by the show, I don’t think it’s so far fetched to string it all together. 
(Also, Paulo and Paulamoni definitely don’t want kids, and that’s fine, it’s also probably why they didn’t fight for custody over Fakir.)
So… ta-da.
Don’t kill me.
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