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#oh god tumblr has been killing the quality on all of my images but this one especially since their faces are farther away and smaller noooo

roturo · 11 months

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Written All Over Your Face dick grayson x reader

→ summary: “Well, you know what they say, Love and Hate are two sides of a very, very thin line. For what I can see, you have a pent up sexual frustration written all over your face Dick.”

→ warnings: SMUT. p in v, unprotected sex (don't be dumb and wrap it), enemies to lovers, heroe!reader, breeding kink, bulge kink ¿?, not proof-read, possessive behavior, begging...

words: 2k

TUMBLR IS BASED ON A REBLOG SYSTEM. PLEASE REBLOG MY WORK. THANK YOU. ENJOY. SMUT BELOW THE CUT.

Being a heroe wasn't easy. Neither being considered a competition for Nightwing. The Ex-Robin. The Dick Grayson.

Both being ¨super-heroes¨ with no powers brought many controversial articles between you two, not only at the Gotham-Batman times, but also now at the new Titans times.

You never thought seeing him again and his boyish smile and attitude. No wonder why he has many girls falling for him, not only as Nightwing, but also as his real identity. But this rough times between the heroes, made the destiny bringing you together again.

Both of you had mutual friends, and when Dawn invited you to meet the new Titans, and asked you for help to train them, you never thought of seeing him again, neither of both of you training teenage kids how to become high quality-trained super heroes.

¨Sorry.¨ Were the last words you heard from Dawn, when she left you with bird boy at the training room, giving you an apologetic smile.

God bless her natural charm and being the trusting friend she is because you couldn't hit her face right now with the rage you're feeling.

¨Hi!¨ A green-haired boy said to you, he had the same, maybe not as pretty, boyish smile like Grayson. ¨Hello...?¨

¨Gar.¨ He told you, not putting down the smile.

With just a nod and a not so happy smile, your eyes moved into a purple-haired girl, who just smiled at you and said her name. ¨Rachel.¨ She hit the boy next to her with her elbow, murmuring his name.

¨Jason.¨ He said, ¨Is this your girlfriend Dick? Because she's pretty good looking for a guy like you. But yeah, what she's doing here anyways?¨

Oh. Yeah. Bird boy. He's here.

¨Yeah Grayson, what’s going on?¨ Completely ignoring the fact Dick was about to answer Jason’s question with furrowed brows and you obviously knowing why you're here since Dawn explained you. ¨And no, i'm not his girlfriend.¨ You looked at Jason with a smile which changed into a fake smile when your eyes returned to Dick. ¨He wishes.¨ You said, your head turning to the side, obviously trying to make him angry. At which he only scoffed, knowing you well enough to know what you were trying. ¨Yeah number two, maybe we can just pass at me explaining you why you´re here.¨

Number two? He WISHES.

¨I know why am I here. I don´t know if your little brain remembers you made Dawn bring me here to help you train this kids.¨ You got closer to him, not breaking eye contact. ¨And number two? pfft, If you were number one, maybe you wouldn't have been replaced by new Robin here.¨

That got him exactly where you wanted him. He might seem like a strong and rough guy, but behind all that image of big boy, there’s nothing else but trauma.

You couldn’t help but notice how his jaw clenched at the small giggle Jason let when you mentioned Dick being replaced. Side-eyeing him, Jason stopped. Dick sighed trying to calm himself down.

“First. I didn’t know Dawn brought you here, she just told me about bringing the perfect person to help me train them, I was not expecting you.” You could tell he was still angry at the remark, so he wanted to correct you. “Second. I didn’t got replaced. I left Wayne by choice of mine.”

“And third. I’m not longer Robin.”

It got into a really tense vibe between you and Dick trying to kill each-other with just your eyes, everyone in silence, clearly uncomfortable at this new encounter.

“Can both of you stop eye-fucking eachother and can we finally start the training?” Jason said, trying to bring both of you back to earth.

That clearly caught both of your attention to what Jason said, clearly annoyed at the wrong remark of how both of you were looking at each-other. “We’re not “eye-fucking” each-other Jason, stop getting into other’s people conversations.” With that, Dick started grabbing everything for the training of today, moving on. Jason just raised his arms at the air, (like when they’re showing they’re not armed), with a small smirk on his face.

“Well, you know what they say, Love and Hate are two sides of a very, very thin line. For what I can see, you have a pent up sexual frustration written all over your face Dick.”

That brought a hard, and big laugh to your face, how could Jason say that? This kids don’t even respect their “leader” This was going to be a funny training.

After what seemed like 1 hour of training, and getting to know the kids, you could get which were the flaws and weaknesses. Maybe you couldn’t understand quite well Rachel’s powers, but some time will do it.

You asked Gar where you could sleep the night, since it was already getting late and your most likely staying some days here, you'll also need some extra clothes at least for today.

Gar told you to stay in the spare room next's to Dick's, great, what a nice neighbor you have. He also gave you some clothes you could use tonight, tomorrow you could go back to your place and get some clothes, your skincare.... and I guess your super-hero suit.

When going out of the bathroom after a long shower (which you deserved), Dick was standing there, shirtless, all sweaty, and just with some grey sweatpants on... he looks.... nice, yeah. Obviously annoyed but when he saw you, his face turned into... panic?

He doesn't know what's happening to him right now, might be stress he needs to get relieved, yeah, sure, that's the reason he feels his pants getting tighter every-second he keeps looking at you right now.

¨Are you okay bird-boy why´re you just static over here, I know you have problems, but this a new one.¨ You looked up and down at Dick's figure, obviously checking him out, not like he needs to find out, noticing he´s quite handsome, not like you would tell him also, he's hot, and he knows it.

¨That´s... That´s my shirt¨ Was all that Dick could say, well, shit.

You knew the t-shirt had a distinct laundry soap scent which remind you of someone, and maybe a pint of perfume, but who could blame you?! Might be Gar's or Jason's!

¨And those... are my boxers.¨ double shit.

You could see he was obviously blushed and you're sure you are too, but what a coincide. It's like you could hear Rachel, Gar and Jason's laughing at the both of you.

¨Well... do want me to give them back at you?¨ You broke the tense silence, trying to take your, his, shirt-off, completely forgetting you're in front of him, you needed to find a way out of here.

¨No, no, no, stop! Leave it there, then you give it back to me.¨ He assured you, grabbing your hands and pulling them down with your, his? t-shirt. ¨And it looks better on you anyways.¨ That's all he said before speed entering to the bath-room.

¨Hey Dick!, Wait.¨ To say you couldn't feel the wetness of your pussy going out and asking for some relief, would be considered a crime. ¨What do you ne-¨ You cut him off by entering the bath-room closing the door in the process, both of your lips connecting in a perfect symphony like they were made for each-other. He left a sudden whine at the loss of the soft touch of your lips.

¨Oh.¨ Was all he could say, you don't understand what happened to you, it wasn't definitely a normal behavior between you two. ¨Oh my god. I'm so sorry Dick, I don't know what happened to me, i'm-¨ You couldn't finish the last sentence when you felt his lips in yous again. A little hesitant this time, he stops, unsure of his actions, but he lose it all. ¨Do it again.¨

That's all he needed to continue kissing you, hands caressing you neck, positioning them as a chocking posture, later going to trace your jaw as he continues kissing you.

He started giving you kisses trailing down your chin, making you moan at the specific spot that made your legs shake, he started leaving love bites between your chest, later going down on you, pulling your t-shirt upwards, getting between your breasts and marking them as his.

¨Please Dick... Please make me feel good.¨ It´s like something got into him when his hands started roaming your body like crazy, pulling your shirt off, your hand reaching his sweatpants, and later his cock, noticing he has no underwear under neat it. ¨It's like you were ready for this bird-boy, ah!-¨ Even when you try to tease him, he finds a way to tease you back even in a better way, his fingers playing with your nipple had you giddy and trembling. ¨Be a good girl if you want me to fuck you.¨

All you could do is nod and start stroking his hard cock, already leaking pre-cum which made the stroking easier, playing with the head had him as a moaning mess.

“Fuck, wait — shit. Mm— fuck. Wh-where did you learn to do that?” He left a whiny moan at the lose of your touch.

“Well, the noises you make are a pretty good indication of how you like it.” He man-handled you, turning you around, making you see yourself at the mirror.

“…God you sound so fucking cocky right now and it’s turning me on even more.” He ripped apart the boxers you were wearing. ¨Don't worry, I have plenty more.¨ Fuck him and his fucking pretty smile.

With no more waiting, he positioned himself, and started thrusting into you. He fits just right, and could touch all the places you couldn't reach.

“Let me know if I’m doing anything wrong, okay? I want to make you feel as good as possible.” Even when he's fucking your brains out, he finds a way to be that kind and nice guy he is.

“O-Okay.” Was all you could tell him, before & after some moans and whines from both of you, one specific thrust had you seeing stars.

His hand lingered down your tummy and he moaned at the bump he could feel, when he was going in and out with his thrusts. ¨Oh baby, I'm going to make you mine, fill you up.¨

He started playing with your clit, it had you crazy all the feelings of his body, his thrusts, him.

¨´You´re so good for me, all for me... 'm gonna' fill you up with my babies, 'm gonna make you a mommy, full of my cum every-day just to make sure.¨

That was all you needed to cum, with just some last thrusts he came inside you too, fulfilling his promise of keeping you full of his cum. He waited for you to calm down, before he inserted two of his fingers, recollecting the cum that was falling out your hole, inserting it inside you again, making you moan at the sudden intrusion.

He got the tub ready, and got you inside it, in front of him while he cleaned your sore body while kissing it.

¨I can't believe it took me all this years to realize how I feel about you.¨ Your heart was anxious at how your confession would be received.

¨Doesn't take an idiot to figure out. You couldn't tell I was and I am in love with you because you were too busy trying to beat all that rivalry. I was in love the moment you kicked my ass for the first time.¨

You chuckled at the confession, and laid your head on his shoulder where you could see his dumb smirk. ¨You have that stupid smirk on your face again, can't you have a serious conversation with me?, can we fight again?¨

He laughed at your comment ¨Not a possible thing for me when you look this cute all marked by me and confessing your feelings for me.¨ The small pecks he started leaving on your neck and back had you giggling.

¨I love you.¨

¨I love you too, bird-boy.¨

#dick grayson x reader smut #dick grayson smut #dick grayson #nightwing smut #nightwing x reader smut #dick grayson x reader #nightwing #nightwing x reader #titans x reader #titans smut #jason todd smut

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menlove · 2 months

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[image id: an ask from @harbingerofskulls that reads: "im gonna b real i only knew the jerking off i would love to hear you elaborate more if you want to go on the whole situation" /end id]

answering here so i can save as a draft without risking the ask disappearing bc tumblr's been doing that lately but

oh god </3 for everyone else- it's talking about this post. sooo i'm gonna go through each one bc i've been feeling insane for several weeks. i'll do my best to cite my sources lmao

i don't know (johnny johnny)

this is referring to this unreleased VERY early beatles track from 1960. the audio quality is absolute shit & as such unfortunately people love to put words to it that don't make much sense in either direction (i.e a lot of mclennon fans want to hear "you're in love with me" and a lot of people that hate mclennon will just make up the weirdest lyrics that make 0 sense so it's Not Gay). some of the lyrics that ARE clear make it obvious this song is about the two of them running away together- at one point i'm fairly certain paul says "how am i gonna tell my father that we're leaving town?" probably referring to them leaving to hamburg. which would be fine but some of the other lyrics areeeee..... very..... Hm. like multiple times paul refers to john as "my boy" and there's bits of them talking about not knowing what to tell their friends & wanting to just run off together alone. if i were the other members of the band having to record this i would have killed them with hammers <3 also the entire end is just paul going "oh johnny" like 1 million times. okay. sure. also since the lyrics ARE so garbled i mean i guess people could be right about it saying "how am i gonna tell my father you're in love with me" but i just don't hear it. still, a very gay song about running off together and getting away from everything and everyone, complete with moaning the other's name </3

2. paris

this one is a huge part of McLennon Fandom Lore lmao but for good reason. not citing sources on all this bc it's one of those that's just Fact & can be found in like any beatles biography or thebeatlesbible.com (my savior) but. for john's 21st birthday, he got 100 pounds from a rich relative. instead of taking his girlfriend or any of his other friends, he decided to use the money to take paul to spain. but they stopped in paris on the way and just decided to stay there. which i mean like. taking your best friend over your girlfriend to the city of love is a little weird but it's not THAT weird. it's everything else that makes people want to chew glass about it. including some of the other things on this list. like this audio of john just goofing around singing about paris and paul, with such hits as "my cheri, my pau pau my pau paul." which is :| okay best friend. and paul has this picture hung up in his house that he took of john sleeping in paris. okay. sure. why not. (although ig there's some doubt about if the photo is from paris? either way it's a picture paul took and has framed in his house which is incriminating enough my man). also NOT in the original post but may pang, a woman john had a brief affair with in the 70s, wrote a book called loving john. in it, there's this quote:

After a late lunch, Linda launched into a long paean to the joys of living in England. When she was finished, she turned to John and said, “Don’t you miss England?”

“Frankly,” John replied, “I miss Paris.”

okay! also in an interview once he said:

The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on in Paris. And it was so romantic, just to be there and see them, even though I was twenty-one and sort of not romantic. But I really loved it, the way the people would just stand under a tree kissing; and they weren’t mauling at each other, they were just kissing.

(interview with david scheff for playboy in september 1980)

3. if i fell

this one i already made an insane post on that started my spiral into posting about the beatles publicly </3 but, essentially, the song "if i fell" by john is..... well it's most likely about paul. he said it wasn't about his wife but that it was auto-biographical and he never really had any public affairs that weren't flings, certainly not a lover. but most damning is he wrote the complete lyrics for the first time on a valentine's day card addressed "to paul with love" with some hearts and arrows pointing to where the lyrics were written. absolutely insane. made me insane.

4. oh! darling

rawest paul song of all time if i do say so myself lmao. but it's just.... Highly Suspicious, that's what it is. a Lot of beatles fans/historians will admit this song is most likely about john but they won't admit that it's fucking romantic if it is. like.

like that is so blatantly romantic idk what to say other than that. also, in the official recording on abbey road, there's Several points where paul says "darling" that sound more like he's saying "johnny" which is what he called him. people brush it off by saying it's his accent, but there's a very clear difference between when he's saying "darling" and when he's saying "johnny". i mean the Lore behind this is that it was written right when things were splitting up between them (& the rest of the band) so it makes sense and it's why most people are willing to accept it's about john. it's just insane to me that they'll accept it's about john without considering the implications of that.

5. the real life demo

this one made me want to light myself on fire i won't lie to you. but here it is! john had a song called "real love" and this is a very early demo of it. but instead of the lyrics that came to actually be in the song (which are thought to be about yoko but let's not get into the fact that it was on a tape labeled "for paul" but whatever), it includes john fucking crying as he sings saying:

"was i just dreaming or was it only yesterday? i used to hold you in my arms. and now a baby and another on the way... la la la la farm..."

which can quite literally be about no one else but paul, as this demo was recorded when he'd just had two children with his wife linda and linda was pregnant with their third child. they'd moved to a farm in scotland. hearing this audio clip did genuinely make me want to lie down in the dirt for a week. also "i used to hold you in my arms" just... yeah. god. when people think it was unrequited idk what to say, really.

6. If Paul Were A Woman-

shoving these two together but. in april of 85, paul said in an interview about john and yoko's relationship:

"I mean, I couldn’t stand in the way of someone who’d fallen in love. You can’t say, 'Who’s this?' You can’t really do that. If I was a girl, maybe I could go out and…"

okay bestie <3 and what would make your relationship different if you were a woman? interesting! and yoko had something similar to say. in this audio, she says:

"I’m sure that if he had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat – because there’s something definitely very strong between John and Paul."

just reminds me of being a kid and telling my best friends "if i were a boy i'd date you" lol. incredible. does anyone here know about bisexuality.

7. stuart!

not much to say here except that john had a best friend, stu sutcliffe, who died young & before that had been the bassist in the band. paul fucking hated him sooo much oh he SEETHED. a lot has been written on that relationship but it was.... very interesting to say the least. it could have just been about the band, or just jealousy over john's friendship, but take that with a lot of john biographers suspecting john had feelings/even a sexual relationship with stuart and it paints a very Interesting picture to say the least

8. john's bisexuality

here's a compilation of quotes about it, but john was more than likely bisexual. which has nothing to do w paul, really, but more to do against people that like to claim they were both Heterosexual Men. although an interesting quote in this compilation is him saying he's "had paul" lmfao

9. paul's post-beatles work

there's just.... there is so so so much here i don't even know where to begin. @ringompreg has a good compilation of paul songs here. a lot of them do take a bit of Lore but like..... it comes down to the fact that both him and john have/had admitted many times to using their lyrics during The Breakup Years to talk to/reference each other and sooooo many of these lyrics are insanely blatant. the two i mentioned were tug of war and let me roll it, both of which are acknowledged to be about john by most people WITH NO ONE BOTHERING TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT which..... tug of war has this:

we could stand on top of the mountain with our flag unfurled? dancing to a beat played on a different drum? this is what gaylors think gaylor conspiracy is but paul mccartney is really out here saying this shit.

and let me roll it is so fucking blatantly romantic but every reviewer is like haha! what a cool song that's "making fun" of john and clearly in his style! like are straight people stupid genuinely. anyway:

bonus to that but about JOHN'S solo work :)))))) he wrote a song called "watching the wheels" and when you consider he very much responded to MANY of paul's solo stuff it's :)

which as a response to let me roll it would just be... so devestating but it may be a stretch idk if i'm onto anything there it's just worth Mentioning

and there's a lot of others, a lot of them in that post up there. like far too many where paul mentions falling in love with a friend like Alright.

10. paul's first lsd trip with john/"i know" "i know"

this one is less blatantly romantic but it is just insane. here's an article. and a quote from george martin about it. the first time paul tripped on acid w john was bc john accidentally took some and he took him home & then took acid w him bc he didn't want john to be alone on the trip :( but, notably:

"And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling. You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot," the singer recalled, "And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away."

he also apparently saw john as the, and i quote, "emperor of eternity" during this trip??????? okay

SOMEWHERE i can't find it rn and i'm getting lazy but somewhere they (i think paul?) talk about the fact that they used to just stare into each other's eyes and then say "i know" "i know" which. considering john's song "i know (i know)" makes me crazy

11. in my life/i will

these are really just some devastating songs with lyrics that make you really raise your eyebrows. for in my life, written by john, it's just an incredibly romantic & sweet song that is again, not about his wife. given that the lennon estate is still out here posting pictures of paul to those lyrics i have to say it's a liiiiittle suspicious. and i will is...... it's one that paul insists is not about his girlfriend at the time, jane asher. and when you look at the lyrics vs how him and john met.... like. the song goes:

and the story of how they met was that paul saw john repeatedly before they ever met, when he didn't know who john was other than that he thought he looked cool & admired his sideburns (lmfao). and when they did finally meet, it was when john was singing at a garden fete (party) and paul was in the crowd just Mesmerized. so. well. you can see.... you can see how fitting that is. makes me crazy makes me want to chew glass actually

12. "we were each other's intimates" and other insane quotes

"we were each other's intimates" is a paul quote about john which is just insane but that's not even the tip of the iceberg. here's a ton of quote compilations.

13. "literally everything else"/honorable mentions

some honorable mentions go out to: john going on stage w elton john & playing i saw her standing there and introducing it as "a song by an estranged fiance of mine" okay! the "just like starting over" demos. okay! which isn't even to MENTION the fact that paul locked himself away in the studio listening to "just like starting over" on repeat for DAYS after john died like???? john saying repeatedly that he considered paul & yoko to be his two major partners in life including in an interview the literal day he died. a whole ass rpf movie where they kiss & talk like they're ex-lovers and dance in central park (two of us) made by the same dude that made the let it be movie like. he knew them personally? he worked with them closely? and the only thing paul had to say about it was just essentially that it was what he wished would've happened like???????? i can't find a super reliable source for this so take it w a grain of salt, but apparently paul referred to mclennon fanfiction as "beautiful stories" and doesn't mind them being written. paul also had a cat that had kittens & he named two of the kittens pyramus and thisbe after fictional lovers he and john played and he gave pyramus (the character paul played) to john :|

and literally so much else like all of this and it's not even all of it. it's not even close to all of it. i didn't even get to talk about the way in "get back" the documentary, paul started talking about john leaving the band for yoko and how john would choose her over them and then he got teary eyed, started choke laughing, and then started singing "build me up buttercup" before looking at the cameras and stopping. what the FUCK was that about! IT'S NOT EVEN GETTING INTO THE SONG "TWO OF US" THAT'S SO OBVIOUSLY ABOUT JOHN THAT IT HURTS. it's. it's not even scratching the surface. they were just genuinely insane about each other.

#mclennon #this is long but it had to be to expand on every reference i made in that post FJADJFASDF

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cursedcola · 2 years

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Hello! I’m actually new to tumblr so please feel free to correct me if I have any errors during my request.

Do you know that one scene in Aladdin where Jasmine gets trapped in an hourglass that’s slowly filling up with sand? I’d like a scenario of that with the Jamil and Kalim, the reason can be because a student overblotted and wanted revenge or because of a spell gone wrong. Feel free to decide! Thank you :DD

A/N: Your wish is my command lol. I'm working on "quality over quantity," with my writing right now. Aka. trying to write short an meaningful works vs. long tangents. I hope that I did good with this one :) 2nd A/N: Oh my goodness, I think this is the best thing I have ever written for this blog. I actually started sweating from my brain not being able to keep up with the ideas.

Kalim Al' Asim

"Did you enjoy yourself? Son of House Asim,"

A decrepit voice sounds throughout the empty room. Wicked, laced with hatred and snapping at every vowel. Kalim can not pinpoint its origin from the echo, yet he does not want to. Does not want to see what is coming for him. Does not want to hear their taunts. Does not want to tear his eyes away from the sight in front of him, afraid the scene will change.

Bright gold sand trickles down from the ceiling and into a rose-stained hourglass connected to the floor. Rays of sunlight peer in from nearby windows, making the grains sparkle like doubloons worth millions. The sound of steady flow is deathly soothing, lulling those who enter into a false sense of security.

In the center of the glass sits Kalim's most valuable treasure. Something he can never truly own. A jewel no money could buy, yet he would give every last gold piece to call his own.

"Pretty things do not suit you, young heir. You are toxic. Poisonous. Yet you still have so much,"

So what. So what if the gods favored him in riches. Kalim has never taken that for granted. So what? Who are they to challenge his heart. To decide if he should be satisfied.

He has never been satisfied. Not fully. Not until the treasure of emotion entered his heart. That is what they should envy, not his gold.

Kalim approaches the looking glass and taps on the glass.

tap tap tap

The glass is thin. The noise echoes in the empty hall, and he sighs in relief, knowing what must come next.

"It is unfair, and so I will even the playing cards. I will take on the burden of humbling you,"

Kalim has always been humble. Always been altruistic. The voice echoing across the walls must know this deep down. With some convincing, they may relinquish Kalim's treasure on their own. He need only wait a bit more.

Yet the sand continues to fall, staining the skin of it's prisoner in comatose. Still as a statue, their chest rises and falls to the rhythm of Kalim's steady heart. Only when their eyes open will he feel calm enough for rationality.

The time has come for him to be selfish.

"Respite in the scalding sands, a never-ending party. Dance. Sing. Oasis Maker,"

A burst of water, the shatter of rose-stained glass, and a jewel.

One Kalim does not own, and all the more valuable for it.

Jamil Viper

"Kill them. You appear to have deluded yourself into thinking I have attachments. So, go ahead and kill them,"

Jamil observes the hourglass cage with disinterest. With a flick of his finger, a chime rings out into the corridor. The noise is delicate, a stark contrast to the heavy atmosphere.

A figure clad in black robes stands tall across the room. Their outfit is eerily similar to Jamil's own overblot form, and bile rises in the back of his throat at the thought.

Not only does this person hate him, but they hate him enough to become what he hates the most. Himself.

The image born of his repressed emotions. His overblot. The nausea grows as Jamil realizes that resemblance is an understatement - this person has been molded into an exact replica. In body and in mind.

"Not even going to think it over? I thought you had improved, Jamil Viper - or was your change of heart a façade?"

His gaze flickers to the imposter's leverage. An hourglass shaped like a viper. It's fang-filled jaw erects from the ground, with its body curving up to the ceiling. All made of glass, stained to look as if tinted grey and red scales decorate the bodice. Pitch black sand trickles from the top, falling through the hole to fall into the viper's awaiting maw.

At the base is it's prey, rooted to the tongue and staring at him with eyes full of fright. Each grain of sand bounces from their head, to their shoulders, and piles at the floor. What the hell are you doing, they appear to be thinking.

"No,"

Jamil's replica laughs, raising his scepter and bringing it down harshly on the floor. They shudder in disbelief, thinking they have won. Believing that Jamil bargained they were bluffing, and that he would undergo a heartbreak worthy of their revenge.

thump. thump

The ground begins to shake as the building begins to collapse. No longer does the sand slowly fall, as the glass easily gives away from the earthquake. With the cage broke, Jamil allows himself one last look at it's prisoner. They pry their feet loose from the maw, and he prepares himself for his biggest challenge yet.

"You seem to have forgotten one thing,"

The imposter placed their faith in replication. The only way to outsmart a genius is to become them. Yet what they did not account for -

"I am always in control,"

-is that Jamil should never be underestimated. He is not the same person as his overblot personification. He is better.

"Snake Charmer,"

It is one thing to take control of another person, and another to outwit a replica of yourself. Had they replicated his current mind, Jamil may have lost. He bet all his cards on their willingness to destroy and manipulate.

As the overblotted student drop to the floor in sleep, Jamil feels arms encase him tightly from behind. With one hand, he holds tight onto theirs and attempts to calm his pounding heart.

Had the student replicated his true self, these warm hands would not be holding him. They would not have been made collateral. Instead, they would be caged somewhere far far away in a place he could never reach. Belonging to a beating heart, forever manipulated to belong to another.

#twst scenarios #twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twst imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland imagines #kalim al' asim #jamil viper #kalim al' asim x reader #jamil viper x reader #twst jamil viper #twst kalim al' asim #scarabia #scarabia x reader

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gortrash · 11 months

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Been working on a basic height chart for all my TES characters, so here are my dysfunctional babies (and here’s to hoping tumblr doesn’t kill the image quality, but if it does, just click on it to see it better.)

From left to right, we have Ilyavanthra, Evelynn, Morganne, Delilah, Taka-Xil and Jacken.

More info on these guys under the cut!

Ilyavanthra Atyreni is my resident villain, a Thalmor superior who thinks she’s god and refuses to acknowledge the Divines out of spite— which won’t go down well with the rest of the Thalmor, but that’s fine, she’s got big plans for them along with the rest of the world. The pivotal point for her was when she went missing, lost her legs under mysterious circumstances, came back wrong, refused to elaborate. After that she began frantically planning some kind of ultimate design and built new legs as proof of her efficiency. She’s positively obsessed with the Dwemer, their ideologies and methods and studied them for a large part of her life. At some point she was married to Evelynn, but their relationship is… difficult. All in all, giant scary lesbian Altmer with religious trauma and one hell of a god complex about to make it everyone else’s problem.

Evelynn is my favourite child, she’s my Bosmer Vestige and has lived for a very long time after the events of ESO, in which she has spent the years going from outright saving the day to falling into the background and preferring to work on the preservation of Tamriel from behind the scenes, as she knows no other purpose. Super complicated bisexual disaster love life, let me tell you about it, sheesh. She’s been around to help put down Mannimarco whenever he pops up, but has been running from Molag Bal and the looming feeling of impending doom he carries— little does she know she’s in a rat trap. Because of her extended life, her mind has far outgrown her body and by the time the fourth era rolls around, she’s less than all there, susceptible to any forced that would wish to control her (she’s also the character I put through the Vicn Trilogy, because putting her back in Coldharbour sounded like the worlds sickest joke.) I love female characters who have been put through extreme tribulations and come out of it little bit off the rails RAHHH!!

Morganne is my Imperial Dragonborn who remembers absolutely nothing prior to the carriage ride except her name. She fulfils her destiny in not only slaying Alduin but also taking up the role of Konahrik, which only strengthens her power as Dovahkiin. But what does it mean about you if you managed to destroy the destroyer of worlds? Does that not make you just as, if not more, dangerous? Perhaps. She’s still young and pretty naive but by god, is she as stubborn as a dragon should be, and keeps doing impulsive dumb shit she gets in trouble with everyone for. She refuses to kill Paarthurnax, who she ends up considering her father figure, refuses to kill any more dragons considering it ‘kinslaying’, as well as arguing that she believes Odahviing and Durnehviir to be her most loyal brothers, and instead of killing him at the summit of Apocrypha, releases Miraak and keeps him on a leash. They hate each other’s guts (code for they are deeply in love and cannot resist one another but both won’t make the first move out of pride)

That tiny lass is Delilah, a Breton with big dreams of being a sorceress but unfortunately also sucks at magic. See that staff she’s holding? She doesn’t know how to use it aside from thwacking people. She does however have a mass aptitude for Restoration locked away, she just has to figure out how to harness it, because without control, her emotions dictate her powers in miraculous ways, even resulting in resurrecting the dead. See that big fella beside her? He’s proof of that. Also, don’t let her baby face fool you. She’ll bite your ankles and she has a thing for monster boys.

The big fella in question is named Taka-Xil, and oh boy, does he run on pure spite. He’s not had a very good start to life, despite being born under the Hist, he seemingly had no connection to it whatsoever and couldn’t properly read the social cues of his kin or fully understand them. For that reason, he was deemed soulless, and no matter how much sap he consumed he couldn’t connect to the Hist— the amount he drank only made his scales much tougher, his tongue golden and his height drastically taller than by Argonian standards. So he runs off to join the Dark Brotherhood and developed a great deal of reverence for Sithis. He becomes Listener and lets out all that steam on contracts, until he meets Delilah, who teaches him that being soft is just as important as being strong. She’s the only one he sees any light in and he adores her. Big gruff guy soft for sunshine girl plus dramatic height difference trope here.

Lastly, we have my most experimental OC, the wonderfully unhinged Jacken Archanymia, the very last Cyrodiilic bird person. He’s been alive all these years due to a curse bestowed upon him by Peryite, and has since dedicated his life to creating the cure to everything. Yes, everything. Beginning with his own terrible affliction. He’s a brilliant alchemist and doctor, and regardless of how spooky his attire is and how… rotten he is beneath it, he’s very charming and animated, and does his very best to act gentlemanly. Just don’t get too close or you might get sick. That mask is more for your protection than his.

#dunno if anyone will read all dat but those are my disaster babies #if the quality is bad just. pretend it isn’t #my ocs #oc: Ilyavanthra #oc: Evelynn #oc: Morganne #oc: Delilah #oc: Taka-Xil #oc: Jacken #the elder scrolls #Skyrim #dragonborn #vestige #Jade’s art

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spnfanficpond · 5 years

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October Angel Fish Awards

Every month all of you fantastic writers work your asses off to post some truly incredible stories. Our Angel Fish Awards are the way for all of us, as a community of writers and readers, to lift each other up and give praise to those who have captured our attention and deserve a few kind words.

The monthly Angel Fish Awards are peer-nominated, meaning ANYONE IN THE POND CAN NOMINATE ANY POND MEMBER’S FIC. While the Pond was founded to support the Guppies, everyone in this community deserves to be showered with love and feedback, and we hope that by opening this up as a Pond wide system, we’ll be able to share the love as far as it can go.

NOTE: WE’VE BEEN HAVING OCCASIONAL PROBLEMS WITH ASKS GOING MISSING. Please use the Submit button when submitting your nominations and make sure you’re signed into Tumblr or your URL won’t show. (If the form asks for your name and email address, then you’re not signed in.) If you like, you can also send a message to Michelle or Mana to check and make sure we got your submission.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, HERE ARE OCTOBER’S ANGEL FISH AWARDS!

Nominated by @impala-dreamer

Lay All Your Love on Me (oneshot) by @idabbleincrazy

Very very tasty Sam smut here. Love him just letting go and getting into it. Very good work!!

For Tonight (oneshot) by @dontshootmespence

Amazing. Simple yet beautiful and oh the sweet pain. I loved it.

Nominated by Anon

Ride with Me by @katehuntington

This story is amazing! Kate is weaving such an intricate little AU while still remaining true to the characters. Her descriptions are spot on and the dialogue just feels so…perfect. I adore the insight we are getting from Dean’s perspective too. This is such a unique story and now I just want to go on a trail ride (and find me a cowboy *winks*)!

Nominated by @manawhaat

Dessert Then Dinner (oneshot) by @atc74

HOLY SHITBALLS! I generally am not a slut for Rob, but this made me the absolute biggest slut for Rob. Oy vey. The inspiration was fucking there! That picture did things to me and the fic that followed definitely did things to me. It’s hot, it’s fucking ACCURATE representation of lust for the way a man is dressed. Ay ay ay, these words and image are just happen to be exactly what makes my brain explode.

Witches Fuckin’ Suck (oneshot) by @crashdevlin

This. Fic. Is. Fuckin’. Weird. It’s weird. It’s absolutely weird. IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY. OMG. I have never related to all parties in a fic so thoroughly. It’s hilarious. It’s ridiculous. There’s a funniness and curiosity that bleeds into sexiness in such a light and honest way. The way this scenario presents itself is so damn real within the realm of Jody and Donna and me. Fucking fantastic!

Nominated by @slytherkins

River (oneshot) by @thoughtslikeaminefield

Love me some Denny, but this one is almost better because it’s just implied. There are all sorts of references to Dean’s past, but they are subtle, and the fic itself is understated. It’s also hawt. :p And Dean is so in character. I just…I just like this. Is just good. Bittersweet and sexy.

Drabble #5 (oneshot) by @thegirlwhorunswithwinchesters

I loved this drabble. It’s so understated. Big responses in these types of situations are great and all, but I think the fact that they were so reserved made it all the more touching. And particularly in character for Dean, imho. Read it! Be moved. :p

A Dangerous Game ch.6 (series) by @risingphoenix761

Ooooooh Myyyyy Gaaaaaaawd. Y'all. New chapter. Smut…so hawt. Character dynamic…so fun. Crowley…so, so secksy. Magic…so magicy. :p Remusly, this series just blows me away.

Nominated by @thing-you-do-with-that-thing

About A Boy (series) by @percywinchester27

I would like to nominate Ana’s About a Boy series. It has me on the edge of my seat already. Ana is such an insanely smart writer and she really knows how to build a story. She also know her character super well and she is wicked at writing them as kids/young adults. It’s not a reader insert which I know turn a bunch of people off which is a huge shame cause this one really deserves a lot of love and attention.

Nominated by @lovetusk

A Little Hide and Seek (series) by @iflostreturntosteverogers

Can I nominate this new series that Carrie is working on? She’s really growing as a writer lately, and so far this series really showcases that.

Nominated by @princessmisery666

Blood In Bed (oneshot) by @slytherkins

So I don’t support @slytherkins as much as she supports me and my writing so I wanted to read something of hers, even though it’s not my ‘usual’ cup of tea!!

And god damn I’m so f******g happy, scrap that, ecstatic that I did. This was fun, engaging, funny, sweet and heart breaking. I know she knows Crowley, she quite literally is his Queen 👑. She gets him spot on and this could quite easily be canon. I can see it happening.

I wish I had the words to tell you how brilliant this is, how much I really like it. Demon Dean is perfectly portrayed and I just can’t express how good this is. Mark as my favourite and one I will return to, many times.

Not Always The Way (oneshot) by @kittenofdoomage

THIS WAS PERFECTION!! Yes I know I’m shouting but I need to!!!

Sweet, fluffy, smutty, perfectly Sam, cute and awkward and kind and patient and just yeah!

Nominated by @ellen-reincarnated1967

A New Fall (series) by @iwantthedean

It's autumn themed, full of the apple pie life, orchards, pumpkins, cinnamon rolls that you can eat as well as the human cinnaroll Jensen post season 15. The family history of the reader really puts you right at the farmer's market and you'll feel cozy. There's also a twist. Looking forward to the rest, but the chapters up now, are addicting like apple pie!

Nominated by @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish

Blood and Water (series) by @crashdevlin

This story is fan-freakin-tastic! I love everything about it. I’m all about Dark!chesters and Crash is killing it, especially since the boys still feel in character despite the whole ‘screwing their sisiter’ thing. Bravo Crash! Can’t wait to see what else is in store for these three.

His Property (series) by @negans-lucille-tblr

How do I begin to describe this amazing work of fanfic? Dirty? Kinky? Delicious? Dramatic? Angsty? Smutty? Surprise conflict? On point characters in a very very alternate universe? Yes, I think one of those is a good place to start. Bottom Line: READ THIS FIC (and its sequel Yours)!

Mr. Impala (mixed media) by @evansrogerskitten

I don’t even remember how I stumbled across this gem but I was shook! I totally thought I was looking at the real thing! And then I read the article, and I was absolutely reading the real AU thing! Such an awesome work of art and fic combined! I was blown away by the quality of it! Props to Ash (and all the other art people) for such an awesome piece and even more props for merging art and fic flawlessly!

Nominated by @stunudo

Smokestack Lightning (oneshot) by @thoughtslikeaminefield

I’m nominating MJ’s awesome Sam/Rowena fic because it was what we needed after The Rupture. It is real, but also fun and flirty. She is a master at layering the emotions into her fics, especially the smutty ones.

Nominated by @wi-deangirl77

Stages of Grief (drabble) by @plaidstiel-wormstache

I’m nominating this drabble by my gal Jessie because it’s so different than a lot of the fics out there. The way she coveys the pain and sorrow that the characters feel after such a loss is palpable. And the way she jumps forward to the future that neither of the remaining characters could have even thought possible at the beginning of the story is very bittersweet.

What’s Left of Me (drabble) by @waywardjoy

Once again the Queen of Angst (as I’ve so lovingly dubbed her) brings it to the next level. Writing it all from Sam’s POV she sets up this dark, DARK fic (heed the warnings peeps) for one hell of a ride. You can’t help but feel as confused, scared and out of control as our hero Sam does as she takes you down the spiraling track that is the plot of this fic. Well done, dear Joy…well done.

Thank you all for the awesome work and great feedback!

As with the BFAs, these are not actual awards! This system is set up so everyone in the pond has a chance to share the love and promote a fic/author that has grabbed your attention. The more people that participate, and the more everyone remembers to submit their own fics after posting, the better this will be :D

THANK YOU ALL AGAIN, KEEP UP THE AMAZING WORK, AND AS ALWAYS, HAPPY WRITING!

#angel fish awards #afa masterlist #spn fanfiction #spn fic rec #spnfanficpond #afas

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bondsmagii · 4 years

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Hi! So I just finished reading The Secret History after putting it off for ages (I put it down for nearly a year, but your blog helped me follow through). I was wondering if you could talk about why you like it? And just generally what your take is on it? (Particularly re. Julian??? Like he is such a significant figure that looms over everything yet he is actually in it less than random secondary characters and it blows my mind coz I haven't seen that done effectively before in other books)

[rubs hands together] I hope you’re prepared for something very disorganised but my god I have a lot of thoughts.

what I like about it is simple enough. I love the way it’s written, I love all the descriptions and the settings, I love all the characters even if they’re all absolutely insufferable, I think the moral questions the plot forces you to ask yourself are pretty intense. like deadass by the time they killed Bunny I was happy to see his ass go, but then Richard’s realisations at the funeral, where it really sunk in that they had actually honest to god killed a man? fucking harrowing tbh. I also loved how extra the book was, and how it didn’t take itself too seriously in a lot of places (it reads quite pretentiously, but under the veneer of classical studies and champagne in fine china teapots there’s like... snorting cocaine in a Burger King parking lot, and smoking weed at a wake -- not to mention its narrator is a character within the story who literally admits right away that his fatal flaw is that he romanticises absolutely everything). it’s just raw college student chaos, but like. taken to the extreme, and absolutely horrific. it really is an impossibly fun read, and the aesthetics are on point. I see a lot of people talk about how it apparently encourages people to think murder and drugs and alcoholism are cool or whatever, but I think that’s just Tumblr being Tumblr -- i.e., people clutching their pearls every time somebody likes a character or story that isn’t pure and 100% good. all the people I know who have been influenced by The Secret History’s totally extra aesthetic have just started dressing cooler and throwing themselves into deeper and more varied studies, which is only a good thing. I know it’s made me a lot more productive and really helped me just commit to being a little over the top here, a little dramatique there... and all with absolutely no drug abuse or murder!

my general take on the novel differs from most people’s. I’ve seen near everyone say (usually while ridiculing those who like the aesthetics of the book) that The Secret History is a satire... I disagree. I don’t think it’s satirising anything. I think it’s just a straightforward “here’s what would happen if...”, and the fact that it’s set at a rich, prestigious college isn’t because Tartt is trying to show how awful rich people are but rather because Tartt herself attended such a place, and the college is directly based on Bennington College right down to the layout and the surrounding grounds and the social atmosphere at the time. I mean, it’s literally the same place with the serial numbers filed off. she based all the characters on people she knew, and then I imagine she just went nuts with the plot. same as most authors, really -- I know many who say they think of a what if question and then just run with it. of course people are going to disagree and say it’s a deconstruction of how rich people get away with everything, blah blah blah, but really the fact that so many of the characters are rich is necessary to the setting. if I was going to write a story set in 1980s Cambridge University, most of my characters would be rich as well -- they’d have to be, or they wouldn’t even be there to begin with. then it’s just convenient to the plot, because they have money to make things happen, and you can’t murder people and throw a bacchanal if you have to do backshift at Burger King, you know? even if it was meant to read as a satire and Tartt herself was like “bro I literally wrote it as a satire” I’d have to say she didn’t do a very good job, because the only satire I saw was perhaps regarding the social climate and atmosphere at Bennington while she was there, and not a deconstruction of class and wealth. it’s just... a good story. with interesting, flawed characters. it doesn’t have to be any deeper than that, and to be honest I don’t read it as such.

as for Julian... oh man. Julian. this is another place where I differ from 90% of the opinions I see. a not-insignificant amount of people seem to think that Julian is this evil mastermind who’s pulling the strings and leading the group towards their doom, and then they seem undecided when it comes to Henry. some people think he’s just another person caught up in Julian’s manipulation; others seem to think he’s Julian’s man on the ground, working with him in order to ensure his dastardly plan comes to fruition. I, however, am of the opinion that Julian is an idealistic dumbass, who allowed himself to be caught up in the romantic, idealised version of things and did not realise half of what was going on. I think he’s a man in love with the image of himself -- self-centred, slightly narcissistic, and very charming as he is, he’s in love with being the centre of the show. The Secret History’s alternative title was something along the lines of The Master of Illusions (I believe that’s still its title in the French translation), which of course refers to Dionysus but could also refer to one of the characters. many people think Henry, but to me it’s quite clear it’s Julian. when is he ever not putting on a show? everything he does, from his elite classes to his strange stories about his past to his lavish dinners... it’s all a show that he’s the master of. he’s curating the image he gives to other people and he loves doing it. everything he does is carefully selected to fit into his idealised version of himself and his life, including surrounding himself with brilliant students who share the same passion as him -- and who lack any real parental figures for various reasons. is it appropriate behaviour? absolutely not. but is it malicious? I don’t think so. at times Julian can seem almost childishly naive -- he’s stuck in this pretend game and he’s quite happy to be there... so long as he’s in control. the second he’s no longer in control, he bolts. he was on board with the idea of the bacchanal because I sincerely think he didn’t believe it would actually work; he probably thought there would be some kind of strange experience, but I don’t think he thought it would summon a god/induce psychosis (whichever you believe happened during that scene). he encouraged Henry a) because he didn’t think there was a risk and b) because how cool that his students are trying to throw a bacchanal! that’s the exact kind of thing he loves! that commitment, that throwing oneself into one’s studies, that academic fervour -- he loves it. and he saw this as just part of that. then someone ends up dead and then another person ends up dead and Julian has to face real life consequences, and he’s scared. he never planned for this because he never saw it coming. and above all he’s a coward, and a vain one at that. all of these qualities that he so loved teaching about in his classes -- stoicism, responsibility, honour -- fall by the wayside, and he runs. and that’s why Henry kills himself -- because he has been let down by his mentor, and he feels like someone should uphold those values so lovingly, apparently sincerely taught to them over the last few years. without this interpretation of Julian, I wonder how anyone made sense of Henry’s death.

in some respects, I think people are trying to look a little too deeply into this book. perhaps its subject matter -- being all about dedicated, talented scholars -- makes people think they’re reading a highly intellectual book, but while it’s wonderfully written and absolutely captivating, it’s not difficult to interpret. at least in my opinion it seems straightforward -- it’s just a story about a lot of things going wrong because of a lot of decisions; it’s about how things can so quickly get out of control no matter how much a person tries to control themselves. a man has no influence over the world around him, and things are rarely what they seem.

#this got long sorry #the secret history #sainte foy #asks

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dying-suffering-french-stalkers · 5 years

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Katabasis Patterns in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Or, in which I make use of my official Classics minor (and my unofficial film nerd minor) while ignoring my French major altogether.

Howdy, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of Extremely On My Bullshit! Today we’re going to talk at length about how the trip to Davy Jones’ Locker in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End borrows elements from various classical narratives containing a katabasis, or a trip to the Underworld. This will be a slightly Tumblr-ified version of an actual paper I wrote for my Classical Antiquity On Screen final.

Shoutout to this post by @charlesdances, which allowed me to infodump about Hades/Persephone parallels in Barbossa and Elizabeth’s relationship across the trilogy, and to @aye-tortuga for requesting this longer post, which I teased at the end of the aforementioned meta.

Right then, let’s get started! Under a cut to spare your dashes from long post made longer still by screencaps and works cited (yep, it’s that kind of meta). For the purposes of this meta, only the first three Pirates films will be considered canon as the later sequels contradicted elements of the established lore.

I touched on this in the first paragraph, but I’ll begin by defining two words which will appear throughout this meta: katabasis and anabasis. Katabasis and anabasis are Ancient Greek terms which refer to “that narrative . . . that portrays the hero’s descent into, and ascent from, the underworld—the journey to hell” (Holtsmark 25). (If you want to get etymological about it, kata is down, ana is up, and baino comes from the verb meaning “to go [on foot].”)

This katabasis narrative takes place in the first act of At World’s End. If you’ll recall, Dead Man’s Chest ended with Elizabeth chaining Jack to the Black Pearl’s mast: she knew the Kraken was only interested in Jack, so she sacrificed him to give herself and the others a chance to escape. However, at the very end of the film, Elizabeth and the crew of the Pearl pledge to retrieve Jack from his resting place in Davy Jones’ Locker (the Underworld), and Tia Dalma offers both herself and Barbossa as guides to those “weird and haunted shores.”

So, after the cinematic fucking masterpiece that is the opening “Hoist the Colours” sequence (I also wrote a paper on that lol), we find ourselves in Singapore, where Elizabeth, Barbossa, and co. meet with the pirate lord Sao Feng in hopes of obtaining a map to the Locker. The Singapore segment opens with Elizabeth piloting a lone craft along a murky river, evoking images of Charon with his ferryman’s pole:

As she poles the boat along, she sings a pirate tune with decidedly death-centric lyrics, tuning us in to the symbolism and themes at play: “Some men have died and some are alive / Others sail on the sea / With the keys to the cage and the Devil to pay / We lay to Fiddler’s Green.* / The bell has been raised from its watery grave / Hear its sepulchral tone . . .” (*A form of afterlife from maritime folklore)

At the end of this scene, we see something odd: Tia Dalma dressed as a blind organ grinder.

Plot-wise, this serves to divert the colonial soldiers’ attention from the pirates’ activity, but metaphorically, here she represents the blind seer Tiresias, whom Odysseus encounters when he first enters the realm of Hades (Odyssey 11.187-149).

When the pirates meet Sao Feng, the imagery starts to mix a little. The filmmakers present Sao Feng in a somewhat Hades-esque (Hadean?) manner (steam, flames, and warm tones, with a skylight to imply subterranean depths):

However, while he is a powerful figure, he does not keep the Underworld itself (that duty falls to Jones); he merely keeps the knowledge of its entrance. Barbossa attempts to gain this knowledge by presenting Sao Feng with a silver coin: a reminder of his duty as Pirate Lord as well as another Charon parallel. Barbossa’s tactic does not work, but like in the previous scene, the imagery prepares viewers for the descent to come.

After getting Sao Feng’s navigational charts another way, the pirates’ journey to the underworld continues in earnest. When Will expresses doubt about their path, Barbossa nearly quotes the Aeneid outright: “Trust me, young Master Turner: it’s not gettin’ to the Land of the Dead that’s the problem; it’s gettin’ back.” This echoes the Cumaean Sibyl’s famous words to Aeneas: “Easy is the descent to [the Underworld]: night and day the door of gloomy Dis stands open; but to recall one’s steps and pass out to the upper air, this is the task, this the toil!” (Aeneid 6.126-129, tr. H.R. Fairclough). Aeneas, guided by the Sibyl, passes through the mouth of a cave as part of his descent (“A deep cave there was, yawning wide and vast, of jagged rock” (Aeneid 6.237-238, cf. 6.262-263, tr. Fairclough)); likewise the pirates, guided by Barbossa and the charts, pass through a cave as they travel into stranger climes:

(Buuuut to be fair, this one is possibly just incidental or else more of a reference to Gustave Doré’s art for Rime of the Ancient Mariner rather than a reference to any specific classical text. Doré’s artwork is used elsewhere in PotC, so it’s prolly just aesthetic. Also caves are cool and the ultimate symbolic doorway.)

Next they come to a distant, shadowy realm with a misty sky and a sea tranquil enough to reflect starlight:

Again, this could also be incidental (and/or just a really cool homage to the sailing-to-the-moon scene in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)), but it does have a classical counterpart: “The ship took us to the deep, outermost Ocean / And the land of the Cimmerians, a people / Shrouded in mist. The sun never shines there [...] Nor bathes them in the glow of its last golden rays; / Their wretched sky is always racked with night’s gloom” (Odyssey 11.14-19).

Both of these qualities—the cave and the darkness—fit Holtsmark’s observations on katabatic patterns: “The entryway to the other world is often conceived as lying in caves or grottoes or other openings in the earth’s crust into the nether regions, such as chasms or clefts. . . . The lower world is generally dank and dark, and the journey usually takes place at dusk or during the night” (Holtsmark 25).

At last, the pirates’ ship goes over the edge of an enormous waterfall and the screen fades to black. Voices from the original Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride echo over the dark screen, ending with the ominous phrase “Dead men tell no tales.” However, we shall soon see this proved very wrong, for the pirates encounter several souls with tales to tell. As for these nameless voices, they may represent multitudes of “bloodless shades” (Metamorphoses 10.42) left to languish in other parts of the Locker/Underworld.

At this point, the narrative cuts from the pirate band to Jack in Davy Jones’ Locker. Jack warrants special punishment from Jones for disobeying the rules of a bargain they’d once struck (*yells forever about the good parts of The Price of Freedom and the crimes wrought by the DMTNT retcons*). Jack’s own special hell, recalling the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus (Odyssey 11.611-629), does include his beloved Black Pearl (explicitly stated, by Jack himself, to be a symbol of personal freedom), but now it rests completely beached upon an endless, windless salt flat. Jack is utterly alone in this wasteland, save for a crew of his own imaginary doppelgängers.

(I’m gonna be real with y’all: I don’t care for this scene at all and it brings the narrative to a screeching halt, so let’s just take a moment to angstily reflect on how profoundly this affects Jack-the-character’s psyche/mental state for the rest of the film and move on to better things. God bless RPers and fic writers who deal with this scene and its effects in a deliciously Watsonian way.)

Tia Dalma/Calypso’s crabs eventually come to bear both captain and ship back to the sea. This could be seen as classical-type divine aid/favoritism (a semi-literal deus ex machina) or as awkward, oh-no-what-do-we-do-now screenwriting, take your pick. The crabs take Jack and the Pearl directly to the rest of the pirates, who have washed up on the Locker’s desolate shore. In a twist on the classical formula, Jack initially thinks his rescuers the dead ones as they recount their past experiences. Additionally, Jack represents a sort of Eurydice figure as the dead-in-need-of-rescuing, while his Orpheus, Elizabeth, is ironically the one who “killed” him in the first place. All the pirates (Jack included) finally set sail in the freed Black Pearl and attempt to escape this Underworld: the anabasis has begun.

On their way out, when the sky grows dark, the crew encounter scores upon scores of shades floating aimlessly upon the sea:

This parallels Odysseus’ experience (“Then out of Erebus / The souls of the dead gathered / . . . They drifted up to the pit from all sides / With an eerie cry, and pale fear seized me” (Odyssey 11.34-35, 40-41)) as well as that of Aeneas (“Hither rushed all the [ghostly] throng, streaming to the banks . . . They stood, pleading to be the first ferried across, and stretched out hands in yearning for the farther shore” (Aeneid 6.305, 313-314)). Tia Dalma reveals that long ago, Calypso had charged Davy Jones “to ferry those who died at sea to the Other Side,” but he has since abandoned his duty, hence his current eldritch appearance. This explicitly posits Jones as a failed psychopomp who has now left these souls stranded like the unburied men of the Odyssey and Aeneid.

The crew leave these shades in peace until Elizabeth spots a familiar face: her father.

At this point I must ask you to rewatch this scene so you can fully appreciate the parallels without me including a lengthy transcript in this already long post.

This scene comes directly from classical literature, as both Odysseus and Aeneas encountered dead parents in the Underworld. Odysseus saw his mother: “. . . At once / She knew me, and her words reached me on wings: / ‘My child, how did you come to the undergloom / While you are still alive? It is hard for the living / To reach these shores. There are many rivers to cross, / Great bodies of water, nightmarish streams, / And Ocean itself, which cannot be crossed on foot / But only in a well-built ship’” (Odyssey 11.151-158). Like Elizabeth, Odysseus had no prior knowledge of his mother’s passing (11.170). His mother warned him of the dangerous situation which had sprung up during his absence, just as Weatherby Swann warned the pirates of the dangers of Davy Jones’ Heart. Aeneas likewise encountered the spirit of his father, Anchises: “‘Have you come at last[?] . . . Over what lands, what wide seas have you journeyed to my welcome! What dangers have beset you, my son!’” (Aeneid 6.687-693). Anchises, too, offers some advice for the future, for he “tells of the wars that the hero next must wage . . . [and] how to face or flee each peril” (6.890-892). Having Elizabeth be the one to encounter a dead parent in the Underworld confirms her as the series’ protagonist, in case that wasn’t patently obvious from the rest of the trilogy (and the failure of Pirates 4 and 5). Weatherby Swann’s warning also serves to remind the audience of the stakes.

Finally, the pirates make their way out of the Locker. While the remainder of their journey takes more inspiration from Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Western European folklore than classical literature, the latter’s influence on the film remains quite clear. When the pirates return to the land of the living, it is daybreak:

(*Lawrence of Arabia theme, but on a cello*)

So, too, does Odysseus emerge from the Underworld into a new dawn: “Our ship left the River Ocean / And came to the swell of the open sea / . . . Where Dawn has her dancing grounds / And the Sun his risings” (Odyssey 12.1-5). The pirates thus complete their katabasis/anabasis, and with rather more luck than Orpheus.

In review: The pirates begin their katabasis in Singapore, which boasts a plethora of Underworld symbolism, including a death-centric song and images of Charon, Tiresias, and Hades. They cross various waters in their descent, mirroring locations from Homer and Vergil, and Barbossa quotes the Cumaean Sibyl. Elizabeth and the pirates retrieve Jack from the Locker’s punishments in a twist on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Like Odysseus and Aeneas, Elizabeth sees her dead parent in the Underworld, who warns her of things to come. In the end, the pirates emerge from the Underworld into the light of dawn, signalling their return to life. By borrowing from Homer, Vergil, and Ovid, At World’s End presents an Underworld narrative which is familiar in structure and yet easily incorporated into a new mythology: “Same story, different versions.”

(Please message me if you’d like to quote/reference this post in a paper and I can give you my name + details on the official version! Plagiarism is shitty and unnecessary!)

WORKS CITED

Crispin, A.C. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom. Disney Editions, 2011.

Fairclough, H.R., translator. The Aeneid. 1916. By Vergil. Theoi Project, www.theoi.com/Text/VirgilAeneid6.html. Accessed 4 May 2019.

Holtsmark, Erling B. “The Katabasis Theme in Modern Cinema.” Classical Myth & Culture in Modern Cinema, edited by Martin M. Winkler, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 23-50.

Homer. The Odyssey. The Essential Homer, translated and edited by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 241-482.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 2010.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Chow Yun-Fat, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2007.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2005.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Directed by Gore Verbinski, performances by Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce, Walt Disney Pictures, 2003.

#dear god i hope this posts #pirates of the caribbean #potc #tagamemnon #meta #classics #long post #loooooooong post #katabasis #my meta #if you steal this i will physically manifest in your home and hand you the black spot

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tassium · 5 years

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#TAYLOR SWIFT APPRECIATION LIFE

PART 6 - reputation

(part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5)

Listen. This was by far the hardest review for me to get going into properly. I love every single track on this album without exception, and it was SO HARD for me to come up with coherent comments to make on all of them.

But I think I managed alright, and we’re finally about to embark on the wild ride that is @taylorswift‘s 6th studio album, reputation.

Hang on tight, and please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times.

1. ...Ready For It?

No, Taylor, none of us were ready for this, not even a little bit.

Can we just talk about that introduction? like. What a way to kick off an album. This track grabs you by the hand and just pulls you along for the ride, like “get in losers”. That little throat clear at the beginning! the beat that drops off and lets her voice go all light and ethereal! This song is a wild ride from start to finish, and I love it. “Let the games begin” indeed.

And that MUSIC VIDEO!!! I want the rest of that movie, please.

I made a reaction video to this track/video and if you wanna check it out, click here

2. End Game

I love the synths at the beginning of this song, but I’ll be honest that Future’s verse took some time to grow on me. Ed’s verse and Taylor’s on the other hand? Boy. Those grabbed me from the start, as did the harmonies that are laced all through this track.

Is it just me or was this the first time she used the word enemies for the people she’s clashed with? I feel like that’s a new thing.

I also reacted to this one when the video dropped, click here to watch

3. I Did Something Bad

Okay so first and foremost. Taylor Alison Swift, in the year of our lord 2017, swearing on a track out there in front of god and everybody. I feel like if there was any remaining ‘oh she’s just a sweet young thing’ attitude from anyone, this album shattered it to pieces in the best way.

The production on this track, I can’t even. This is an explosive track, it just hits you like a train and drags you along for the ride. There’s a bit on the way out of the track where she says “I did something bad” in a straight spoken voice and it is. Too much for this weak swiftie!

4. Don’t Blame Me

This sacrilegious hymn of a track. I swear. That almost broken electronic wavering synth behind the chorus. The choir effect on her voice. The stripped down beat-driven verse. The lyrics in general? My dude. I can’t. Also anyone who still thinks she has no range can physically fight me after that note after the bridge. That’s power is what that is.

Also can we talk about that behind the scenes clip of her filming the angry distant vocals for the chorus? I’m weak.

5. Delicate

Another thing I’m weak for is use of vocoder. And that beat that comes in for the verse! AND THAT LITTLE ‘delicate’ IN THE CHORUS!! kills me every single time. I’ll be honest here and say that the video for Delicate didn’t really grab me as much as some of the others, but the song itself certainly did.

Can we just. Talk for a second about how sad it is to think about that concept of ‘wow. you must really actually like me if you’re hanging around through all this mess.’

One of my favorite things in this track is the descending harmony behind “sometimes when I look into your eyes”. I always want to sing along with the harmony instead of the melody on that part because I find it so compelling.

6. Look What You Made Me Do

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN! that building drumline is absolutely gorgeous and I can’t not air drum to it - I don’t even play drums!

Also, yes, I am fully aware that I JUST SAID on the 1989 review that Out of the Woods was too repetitive for me, and here I am raving about this song which... honestly. Is just as repetitive if not more so. But this song just grabs me so much more and so instantly that I really get into the repetition (And maybe that has something to do with the familiarity because of the sampled melody).

That plinking lead line thing, and oh my god, the percussion on the second chorus. I can’t.

The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now CAUSE SHE’S DEAD. And I feel like with lover about to come out, maybe we’re killing off yet another “old taylor”

click here for my reaction video

7. So It Goes...

I read somewhere that the tracks with the ellipses on them mark out the edges of the “side A” part of the album, and it’s the spot where things shift over to a different feeling, and I believe it.

Again, this track has absolutely outstanding production on it, the softness dropping into the driving beats, and the bridge. Oh my god. I’m still not over that whispered “1 2 3″. And that line “i’m not a bad girl but I do bad things with you’ reminds me of blank space and that “I can make the bad guys good for a weekend” it’s like the inverse of it.

Also welcome to the first track on this album that I refuse to let my dad listen to - “scratches down your back” indeed t a y l o r

8. Gorgeous

Adorable baby voice!! This song is so great, I love it to pieces. I love the sort of bitter quality about it and the way she’s taken how tumblr and twitter fandom talks about celebrities and made it just a mainstream piece of her song.

Also is that a bell like the kind they put on counters to get the attention of the person working? because I can’t help but hit the bell (air bell!) when it comes in and that’s what I always picture when I do so.

I can’t come up with anything more coherent so .... guess I’ll just stumble on home to my cats.... ;)

9. Getaway Car

More vocoder! I love. The wording in this song is so evocative and brings up such perfect, crisp mental images for me, and she applied that to perfect metaphors for the situation in question. I love the idea of how.... like. It’s a rebound relationship, right? but it’s the getaway car from the previous relationship. And really, you can’t be surprised when something like that doesn’t last as long.

Also that outro beat? Be still my heart!

10. King of My Heart

THIS SONG!!!! More gorgeous vocoder use, of course, but then also. So many little things about the lyrics that get me! “Salute to me, I’m your American queen” and “jag-u-ars” and the way she sings “luxury” and just!!! so much!

As for the musical side of things, I absolutely adore that really subtle acoustic guitar in the chorus, and the DRUMS in the post-chorus (or whatever you want to call that bit). They’re so full and almost feel-it-in-your-chest even just in headphones! (I’m still not sure I survived that concert)

11. Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Early on I had a half-baked theory that this song is about John Mayer, but the timeline doesn’t work at all, so... definitely not. Still though, think about it. “slow dancing in a burning room”/”swaying as the room burned down”

That aside, though, this song makes me think of the Halsey track Bad at Love if ONLY because of the theme of melancholy looking back at relationships that felt doomed from the start (or didn’t, as the case may be, I don’t know)

But also just. Taylor’s vocal performance on this song. Those ‘ad libs’ in the background of the final chorus have so much power in them.

12. Dress

And here we have the other Taylor song I won’t let my dad listen to. He would be scandalized to death by this song.

I love that lyric about the golden tattoo. I can’t really explain what it is about that line that gets me so much.

More beautiful production - something about the tracks on this album feels so grand for lack of better word. Plus there’s that moment in this song “say my name and everything just STOPS” and the whole thing goes silent... I will never forget the feeling of that line coming out and the way the whole stadium went dark.

13. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Ahhhhh I love this song. Gotta love a nice sassy Taylor style clapback, right? Beautiful.

“Feeling so Gatsby” is the best line for getting her point across. You don’t even have to be particularly familiar with the work that references, it just brings the opulence to mind effortlessly.

That laugh in the bridge though, and the tumbling low piano crash afterward, I love it so much. Again to reference the tour, it was such a great extended moment of laughter. So great.

14. Call It What You Want

This... Is probably my favorite track on the album, if I were pressed to name one. I adore this song so completely. I still get just emotionally overcome if I take the time to really pay attention to this song when it comes on. I love it so much, and it’s such a beautiful hopeful song. Like, yeah, my life’s been a right mess but it’s better now with you in it, and just.... this song fills me with feelings like that one animation in the lizzie mcguire movie. 90s kids, you know the one I mean. (lover, the song, gives me those same feelings, just amplified like 30x)

The smile in her voice on “yes” can almost bring me to tears all by itself.

my reaction video can be found here

15. New Year’s Day

Speaking of beautiful mushy-feelings-bringing tracks... The fact that these two are paired back to back like this is just bringing both barrels to my emotions. Gosh.

At the show, I’d taken my shoes off literally two songs prior - I was the girl carrying her shoes in the lobby.

I love so much that it’s just her with a piano and then a little bit of guitar, and those soft self-harmonies on some parts - “please don’t ever become a stranger” reminds me of Enchanted.

This song will without fail make me cry because it’s just so soft and I’m so happy for her. I can’t believe how long it’s been and she’s so happy and in love and. Even when this song came out. Gosh.

We did it, yall. We’ve made it up to date, and it’s almost time for Lover to come out! I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready. My emotions aren’t ready. Gosh.

Anyway, thanks for coming along with me on this ride. See you on the other side of the release!

#taylor swift #reputation #album review #Taylor Swift Appreciation Life #Our Lady and Savior Taylor Swift

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ragecandyfics · 6 years

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Archanea Week Day 3: Loyal/Heart

Characters: Ogma, Caeda, some Samuel Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, torture Word count: ~15K

Ogma is more than willing to put his life on the line for Princess Caeda; she did save him from a terrible fate, after all. But Caeda doesn’t want anyone’s life to be on the line; that’s why she saved his in the first place.

Notes: Due to Tumblr's ridiculous refusal to show posts with links in them in search results, I’m going to paste the whole thing here. Due to Tumblr’s inability to keep my formatting, italics and bold won’t be preserved, and, due to Tumblr mobiles disregard of read mores, mobile users are in for lots of scrolling. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll put the AO3 link in the notes for those who want to see the fic in its intended format.

Loyal

Ogma wasn’t a reckless fighter by any means. He wasn’t quite so cautious and guarded as many of the younger soldiers, either, but that was only because he had years of experience behind him and could usually judge danger very accurately. Besides, with his skill level, he could afford to throw some caution to the wind now and again. He rarely did, for fear of incurring Princess Caeda’s wrath―but he could, theoretically, afford to.

When he spotted the archer nocking an arrow towards the sky, though, he didn’t stop to think about it. The fear of his lady’s anger; his own instincts he’d honed over the years; the swarms of Macedonian soldiers around him―none of it even registered. Ogma moved. He plowed through their ranks, weaving between hulking suits of ebon armor and flashing lances that nipped at his heels, and the lucky few enemies who reacted quickly enough to step in front of him were only met with the edge of his sword.

By the time the archer heard his fellows’ screams and glanced away from the pegasus he’d been about to shoot down, his head was already toppling off his shoulders.

There. One less archer; one less potential threat.

Only then did Ogma stop to consider the situation. And he quickly came to the conclusion that, having accomplished his goal, he was now essentially trapped behind enemy lines, completely surrounded, and still riding a wave of adrenaline that made his hands shake and his vision go dark around the edges.

‘Princess Caeda is going to kill me,’ he found himself thinking as the Macedonians broke out of their stupor and turned their weapons towards him. ‘Or,’ he amended after a moment, ‘she’ll kill my ghost.’

Physically impossible, but she would find a way.

Then the soldiers fell upon him in a confused flurry of steel, and Ogma could do nothing but drop flat to the ground. One weapon whistled over his head―he couldn’t see it, but it sounded like an axe―and he sent it flying with a deft twist of his sword, clearing up just enough space to get his feet back underneath him.

Seeing little choice, he took three haphazard stabs at the soldiers nearest to him in quick succession, still crouching under the wild singing of various weapons overhead. All three men hit the ground, and he heard a fourth man scream as―Ogma risked a glance to check―the pinwheeling axe from earlier caught him in the shoulder, sending him stumbling into the mage behind him. Ah: a rare stroke of luck. Taking advantage of the brief confusion, Ogma rolled forward, barely evading what would’ve been a fatal stab to the neck, and skewered both the grunt and mage at once.

He allowed himself exactly half a second to marvel at the quality of his newest sword. Not many blades could pierce two bodies in one go, even with Ogma’s considerable strength behind them. Then he sprung back onto his feet, knocking aside a clumsy sword slash, and the fight began in earnest.

After that, he didn’t bother keeping tabs on each individual attack. The way he moved was mostly instinct, combined with some simple on-the-fly assessments―those halberdiers are a real problem; I should take care of those next. This swordmaster has no idea what he’s doing, so it’s probably safe to leave him alive for now. That archer might decide to go after Princess Caeda―there we go. Not anymore, he won’t. It was a tried and tested formula that he’d developed back in the gladiator days, and it had yet to fail him.

(But there was, of course, a first time for everything.)

Ogma couldn’t identify the attack which finally broke through his defenses. That was the nature of being attacked from behind: you either noticed it beforehand or you just wondered where that sudden stabbing pain had come from.

Whatever kind of wound it was, it hurt, and Ogma faltered, letting out a sort of choked growl that fell just short of a shout. Then something jostled inside of his newly-injured shoulder―the weapon hadn’t yet been removed, he supposed―sword? Axe? Too shallow to be a lance; too much movement to be an arrow―

He barely even realized that his own legs had buckled underneath him (the traitors), but that was definitely dirt beneath his knees. And a quick, bleary-eyed glance proved that, as he’d suspected, he was still completely surrounded. A dozen soldiers on their feet versus a wounded mercenary on his knees. It was a fool’s wager.

With one last burst of adrenaline, Ogma buried his sword up to the hilt in the closest target―some poor chump’s thigh―and then the weapon in his back twisted very deliberately and Ogma lost his grip, both palms hitting the ground.

Belatedly, he snarled in pain, fingers gouging into the dirt. The Macedonians tightened around him as if he wasn’t already hemmed in, hastily dragging away the swordsman he’d injured―and, with him, Ogma’s sword, still embedded in his leg. Even if he’d managed to keep his grip on the damn thing, he still would have been done for, but the added helplessness of being disarmed was enough to make his throat constrict in an uncharacteristic moment of panic.

‘Princess Caeda is going to turn to the dark arts,’ he found himself thinking nigh hysterically (and rather incongruously, given the circumstances). ‘Princess Caeda is going to defect, and have Gharnef teach her forbidden magic, and bring me back to life, solely for the purpose of killing me again, but slower.’

Then, as he began to lose coherence, his muddled brain added, somewhat more rationally and much more distressingly:

‘Caeda’s gonna cry.’

The weapon in his shoulder drove down until his vision went white and his ears rang, and Ogma screamed, slamming against the ground as his limbs crumpled uselessly underneath him. Blade scraped bone, pushing through flesh long since torn asunder, and a jolt of white-hot agony vibrated through his entire being, tearing another choked gasp from his lips.

He was dead. He was a corpse. His mind was already severed from his body, hovering on a separate plane of existence as he waited for his chance to pass into the afterlife. Waiting to see whether he would be admitted into paradise or consigned to a much less pleasant fate.

Perhaps, he thought, the gods would judge him kindly for his meager years of service to Princess Caeda. Surely, if they even spared a glance at his soul, they would find it sorely wanting for virtue. But perhaps the Princess’ overabundance of virtue would reflect well on him. She may yet manage to save him a third time.

Agony―a sudden burst of it, centered around his shoulder―and Ogma’s mind writhed even as his body remained inert and lifeless. No such luck, then―he’d already been found lacking. Understandably so, perhaps. Caeda’s command had been the best part of his life but, ultimately, the shortest part as well. It wouldn’t hold much weight in the value of his soul, even though it felt as if his life hadn’t truly begun until he’d looked up through bloodied eyelashes and seen a puny girl with deep blue hair standing over him.

Another jolt of pain, followed by the strange sensation of being moved. Ogma wondered why he could still feel his body if his soul had already abandoned ship. An incomprehensible cacophony of unintelligible noises wormed its way into his ears, overpowering the shrill ring that hadn’t yet faded, and he surprised himself by physically squirming. Was this Hell? Did the damned have bodies that they could move? Perhaps his corpse was simply still twitching.

He didn’t notice that the pain in his shoulder had receded somewhat until it came back again full-force. A sharp jab against his chest was all it took to jostle the wound, and he surprised himself again by groaning out loud. If this was Hell, then it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected―yet―but even this was probably enough to merit the title of “damnation”.

Another jab, another groan, and another squirm. Ogma wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know what was prodding him or not. It was too blunt to be a trident like the ones that demons traditionally carried, and, other than that, he didn’t have even a guess. But, when it pressed insistently into his chest, he decided that he probably had no choice―this would continue until he relented and looked.

With monumental effort, Ogma managed to pry his eyes open. He could barely see anyway, the light nearly blinding him, his vision blurry and unstable, but something about the few vague, pulsing colors he could make out gave him pause.

Finally, the world came into a shaky sort of focus. The colors solidified into something more tangible―shapes; figures; wings?―and Ogma wondered if this was an angel coming to spirit him away. Then the image sharpened―blue hair; red clothing; white wings―not on her, but a pegasus―and Ogma thought, ‘Oh, I was half right.’

Princess Caeda―it could be no other―was hovering over him, mounted atop Tempest, but they weren’t airborne. The butt of her wing spear was pressed lightly against his chest, pushing his wound into the ground, which explained why it hurt like hellfire. In her other hand was a blood-crusted axe.

Briefly, Ogma entertained the idea that Caeda had, in fact, resurrected him so that she could kill him herself. Then she tossed the axe aside, urged Tempest into a sharp turn, and thrust out her hand in a desperate grab for his arm. Ogma couldn’t really hear what she was saying, but he definitely saw his name cross her lips as she leaned further out of the saddle, still too far off the ground to reach him.

He wasn’t sure whether to classify the feeling that overtook him as nostalgia or deja vu, but, either way, it was intense enough to drive some of the cotton from his skull. Staring up at Princess Caeda, gritting his teeth against wave after wave of pain, trying to piece together the fact that he wasn’t yet dead as she stretched a hand towards him―it was all very familiar.

Well, his soul might still be forfeit, he mused to himself as comprehension finally dawned on him, but Caeda would get the chance to save him a third time, anyway.

Ogma forced a bit of feeling back into his numb extremities. He wished for all the world that he could just lay there until his shoulder stopped screaming for mercy, but that was no longer an option.

He was still alive.

Caeda had passed her judgment.

Clawing into the deepest chasms of his body, Ogma managed to scrounge up one last scrap of adrenaline. It was just enough for him to stifle the pain and throw out his arm in an inelegant grab for Caeda’s. Luckily, at the same time, Caeda lunged towards him, nearly unseating herself in the process, and they each managed to clumsily wrap a hand around the other’s forearm.

The Princess’ grip was bruising, and Ogma’s shoulder strained when she rocked back into the saddle, tugging him halfway off the ground. Tempest reared―he noticed, only now, that they were still encircled by Macedonian soldiers, albeit far fewer than before―and then Caeda jerked his arm with all the force of a killing blow, pulling his limp body off of the ground entirely.

For a split second, he was airborne. He spent most of that split-second on a strangled but vehement curse that he hoped wasn’t loud enough to sully the Princess’ ears. Despite his pained shout and Tempest’s distressed whinnies, though, the nauseating sound of his shoulder popping out of socket was still audible.

His forehead ricocheted off of Caeda’s pauldron with a clang that sent his head spinning, and the rest of his body made contact an instant later, his torso colliding with hers and his legs ramming up against Tempest’s side. All three yelped on impact, and the two humans immediately clung to each other as the pegasus underneath them reared once again. Ogma thoughtlessly scrambled for a foothold, boots scraping against Tempest’s hide, which only exacerbated the situation.

Caeda didn’t give them time to get situated. As soon as her grip on Ogma was secure enough that she could be reasonably sure he wouldn’t fall, she spurred her panicked pegasus off of the ground, and they took off. The Macedonians shouted, but Tempest was too fast for them to catch, even when she was throwing a fit.

Half-delirious with pain and panic, Ogma clawed for purchase against both Caeda’s armor and Tempest’s side. Already, he was beginning to slide dangerously downward, gravity doing its damnedest to pull him back to the ground, and Tempest’s desperate thrashing wasn’t exactly helping matters.

Before he could fall, Caeda tightened her grasp on his torso―he hissed in pain, but she wisely didn’t relent―and heaved him up, both of them teetering precariously. Through mostly dumb luck, Ogma’s kicking legs hooked over the side of the saddle, and, with a bit of flailing and a few near deaths, Caeda managed to settle him behind her on Tempest’s back.

Without his feet in the stirrups, and with Tempest still bucking and neighing, Ogma had no choice but cling to the Princess for dear life, stifling an agonized cry into her shoulder for lack of anywhere else to stifle it. For a moment, her hand alighted on his, and she turned to say something over her shoulder―Ogma thought he might have heard his name, and perhaps a ‘hang on tight’―before she leaned forward to take Tempest’s reigns in both hands.

A sharp yank had the pegasus whirling around, and Ogma seized the leather strap of Caeda’s breastplate between his teeth rather than letting himself scream. The wind was whistling past them, now, as Tempest picked up speed, and he was becoming progressively surer that Caeda had, in fact, warned him to hang on. It seemed to be sage advice.

The thought of tightening his grip―and therefore pulling at the wound on his back―was enough to make him flinch in breathless anticipation. Neither of his shoulders was in particularly good condition right now―one bleeding profusely, the other dislocated―and trying to ‘hold on’ with his arms injured like this would be... perilous, to say the least.

This was going to hurt, he acknowledged numbly. It was going to hurt far more than that petty little wound he’d gotten earlier. And he was fresh out of adrenaline to drown it out.

‘Rise, Sir Ogma of Talys. From this day forward, you will serve as my personal retainer.’

‘As you wish, Princess Caeda. This body is yours until it breaks.’

With the last of his strength, Ogma clung to Caeda as tightly as he could, instinctively taking two fistfuls of her shirt as his arms locked around her torso. As he’d expected, the motion made his back and shoulder scream like the souls of the damned, and he squeezed his eyes shut with a choked gasp. The more it hurt, the tighter he held. The tighter he held, the more it hurt. If he was even somewhat aware right now, he might worry that his grip would suffocate her.

But he was not, so he just held on, his eyes still tightly screwed shut, his entire body taut and trembling, his breaths coming fast and unsteady.

He maintained his tenuous grasp on consciousness just long enough for Tempest to land. Then, his duty completed, Ogma let his head loll forward against his liege lady's back and surrendered to the encroaching darkness.

Samuel had concocted the plan.

For all the kid’s faults, it was a pretty ingenious idea, and he’d already gathered all the information they would need before he made his proposal. They would slip out after tomorrow’s tournament ended; Samuel would lift the keys from one of the guards after his bout, which would be second-to-last. Once he’d been escorted back to his cell, he would free himself and the others. As always, Ogma would be given the last and toughest opponent; when the guards led him back to his cell, the other gladiators would ambush them and get Ogma unshackled. They would fight their way out to the back entrance, where they would close the gate and sever the ropes used to open it, effectively locking it shut. Once it was “locked”, they were home free―they’d simply split into small groups and vanish into the city.

Other than the obvious, unavoidable issues, such as the high likelihood that they’d stand out from the crowd here in Knorda and quickly be recaptured, it was a very solid plan. Samuel had taken almost everything into account, from the length of the patrol routes to the number of men who could feasibly go unnoticed in a crowd. He’d even managed to pilfer a weapon from the arena: a single iron sword, which, by unanimous vote, would be given to Ogma.

There was only one problem.

Not everyone could make it out.

No one else seemed to notice the fatal flaw in their little scheme―or, if they did, they didn’t point it out. Ogma, however, saw it immediately.

The plan called for Samuel himself to hold back any remaining guards while the others escaped, then quickly slide under the gate just before it could close. And, gods, the kid was good with a sword, but not that good. He was underestimating how quickly the guards would mobilize. One man couldn’t hold the lines on his own; he would be overcome quickly, and then the entire thing would fall apart. But they couldn’t afford for more than one person to stay inside; their plan revolved around as many men as possible making it into the trees before the gate was even shut.

The idea was good on paper, but putting it into practice would probably meet with failure. Sure, one or two people might escape, but the rest would be captured and punished severely for their rebellion―tortured, probably, and then executed for good measure.

But this was the best chance they were ever going to get.

So, as he and his co-conspirators sat in a tight circle, whispering amongst each other as they laid out each and every second of the escape in excruciating detail, Ogma placed a hand on Samuel’s shoulder and muttered, “You should stay with the rest and make sure everything goes smoothly. I’ll hold off the guards.”

He was fully aware that he was unlikely to survive that encounter―and, if he did, he would just find himself in the gallows―but it wasn’t as if he was likely to survive if someone else took up the job, anyway.

Besides, Ogma had only ever been good at one thing―fighting―and his years of nearly non-stop combat in the colosseum had destroyed what little conversational skill he’d had before. Even if he did make it out, he wasn’t sure what he would do with his newfound freedom. Probably just go looking for a fight. Samuel and the others were... different. Most of them were very young―teenagers, even―with some real talents and dreams. They had a whole life’s worth of possibilities ahead of them.

That was something worth dying for, he supposed.

To Samuel’s credit, up until the guards started pouring in, the plan went off without a hitch. After his unsurprising victory in the arena, Ogma allowed himself to be led back to his cell, only for Samuel to leap out from a dark corner and knock the guard out cold. Ogma’s wrists were freed and he took the proffered sword, and then they were off, their fellow gladiators quietly slipping out of their unlocked cells to join them. They encountered only the two patrols they’d expected to encounter, both of whom they dispatched of with ease, and, soon enough, they were working together to hastily raise the back gate. Freedom was just a short sprint away.

Then the first wave of guards surged around the corner.

Samuel cursed―he hadn’t expected anyone to realize they were gone―but Ogma just drew his sword and lunged, lopping off the first guard’s head before he could even raise his lance. “Hurry!” he snarled―as if that wasn’t a given―and the other gladiators frantically cranked the gate further up.

The first group of guards was small and unprepared, and Ogma cut them down effortlessly, like wheat at the harvest, though he quickly realized that the sword he’d been granted was incredibly dull and far too light. That would have been a problem, he suspected, if he was planning on surviving this battle. For his purposes, though, it would do just fine. Even a rusty old iron sword like this could at least last long enough for the others to escape, and, once the gate was jammed shut, Ogma couldn’t care less what became of the sword. He wouldn’t need it where he was going.

As the second wave poured in, followed closely by the third, the gate finally rose far enough for everyone to duck underneath, and Ogma shoved Samuel away when he stepped forward as if to help fend off the guards. “Go,” he urged, his voice deathly calm. Knowing with some certainty that you were about to die was strangely soothing. “Lead the others to safety. You’re the one with the plan.”

Samuel, for some gods-forsaken reason, actually hesitated. “But―but there are so many of them,” he stammered, gesturing to the guards who were almost upon them. “You can’t take them all on at once―you’ll die!”

A sweet sentiment, but ultimately meaningless; Ogma had already concluded that he was only leaving this room in chains or a coffin. Not that a rebel gladiator would be afforded a proper burial. “Go,” he repeated firmly, kicking Samuel one of the dead soldiers’ swords. “I’ll be alright.” A blatant lie. The kid would have to forgive him.

One more moment of hesitation; then, with a resolute nod, Samuel turned and released the mechanism holding the gate up, ducking through the door before it could fall down on his head. Just cut the ropes, Ogma wanted to say, but he doubted the fool would listen; he was still convinced that Ogma would be escaping with the rest. The gravity of the situation hadn’t quite hit him yet.

Ogma just hoped that, when he did figure it out, he wouldn’t make a scene. He preferred to die with as little pointless fanfare as possible.

Then the guards were upon him, and he couldn’t afford to watch any longer. He would just have to hope that Samuel would realize what was happening and cut the cables before he left. Ogma had his own things to cut―mainly throats and tendons―and he couldn’t waste time on the gate.

To their credit, the soldiers that patrolled this place weren’t exactly half-rate. More like... three-quarter-rate. Sure, Ogma sliced through their ranks easily enough, dodging clumsy thrusts of various weapons and aiming for the parts of the body which they foolishly left unprotected, but it wasn’t as effortless as it could’ve been. As the last of the second wave fell at his feet and the third wave crested over them, Ogma even found himself thinking that, under different circumstances, he might be proud to serve alongside men like these.

Circumstance was everything, though, so he still cut them down without hesitation.

It was only part-way through the third wave that Ogma felt himself begin to tire. He hadn’t taken any direct blows, but there had been several scrapes and brushes with various blades and spearheads, and his lungs were beginning to beg for air. It wouldn’t be long before he was overwhelmed and either killed or captured.

Numbly, as he ducked under a clumsy sword swing, Ogma decided that he should double-check to make sure that Samuel had cut the cables before he left. If he ended up pinned and the guards opened up the gates, then this would all be for naught; the others couldn’t outrun an entire arena of soldiers with only a minute-long head start. He would just have to wait for a good opportunity to turn around.

The choice was taken away from him almost immediately. “Ogma!” Samuel cried, way too close to be anywhere near the treeline, and, against his better judgment, Ogma risked a brief glance over his shoulder. Simultaneous waves of fondness and irritation crashed over him when he caught sight of the kid kneeling on the cobblestone, his shoulder braced against the underside of the gate, fists white-knuckled on the bars. He was holding the heavy cast-iron up on his own―keeping it propped open just enough for Ogma to, theoretically, take a running start and slide to freedom.

Of course, theory wasn’t always reality, and, in reality, several soldiers swerved around Ogma, using his distraction to their advantage, and made a beeline for Samuel with lances drawn. The kid hastily let go of the gate with one hand―the extra weight visibly bore down on his shoulder, and he grunted in pain―and unsheathed the sword that Ogma had tossed him. Any fool could see that the sword was useless, though. Half-a-dozen soldiers on their feet versus a burdened gladiator on his knees.

A fool’s wager.

Without pausing to think about it, Ogma knocked a man silly with the hilt of his sword, swept several off of their feet with a swing of his leg, then completely disregarded every ounce of combat instinct ingrained into his mind and threw his sword across the room. It pinwheeled clumsily through the air, not properly weighted as a throwing weapon, but his aim was true enough; the blade hit one of the soldiers across his shoulders, and he stumbled with a pained yelp, his comrades pausing and whirling around to face this new threat.

Ogma met Samuel’s wide, surprised eyes and bellowed, “Drop it!”

Naga be praised, the kid didn’t stop to argue; he let go of the bars and managed to get out just in time, the gate hitting the ground with a clang right as the first soldier’s lance pierced the space where his head had been seconds earlier.

Relief flooded Ogma, and he allowed himself a fleeting moment to be grateful to the gods for letting this crazy, harebrained scheme actually work. Everyone who had intended to escape had already escaped. The gate was closed. In a moment, it would be closed for good. They’d done it. Samuel had seen the plan through.

They were home free.

Then several guards piled on top of him, grabbing him around the neck and under the arms, hands twisting in his ragged clothes―boots kicking at his knees, fingers scrabbling at his throat―and Ogma could do very little but snarl like a caged animal as he was wrestled onto the ground.

Unfortunately, as intelligent as he was, Samuel apparently hadn’t foreseen this, because he gasped, lunging forward and wrapping both hands around the iron bars between them. “Ogma―!”

Gritting his teeth, Ogma braced himself against the floor and managed to throw one of the soldiers off of him, startling the kid into scrambling back. The guards’ lances slipped through the bars, and Samuel danced out of the way, but he didn’t run. Idiot―idiot, idiot, idiot― “Go!” Ogma snapped, even as two more soldiers took the last one’s place, weighing down on him as he struggled to get his feet underneath him.

Samuel, damn him, still hadn’t caught on. “Wh-what―?!” he spluttered, eyes wide and almost affronted; as if Ogma had just asked him to slaughter an infant in the cradle.

“Go!” he repeated without hesitation as another soldier jumped on top of him. Even his strength faltered under that much weight, and his knees banged painfully against the ground. The real agony, however, was watching two more guards rush towards the levers to reopen the gate while Samuel just stood there, staring like an idiot, mouth agape and sword limp at his side.

“But you―” the kid started.

Ogma didn’t give him a chance. “Go without me, you fool!” he practically screamed.

By now, the guards had managed to get him on his stomach, his cheek pressed flat against the cobblestone, but he could still see the shock and denial play across Samuel’s face. Damn it. “This was the plan!” he yelled, hoping that the admission would jar him into action. “I knew I wouldn’t make it out! I never planned to make it out! So stop playing the martyr and go!”

And, yes, Ogma did see the hypocrisy in that statement, but he was already functionally dead, and Samuel still had a fighting chance―a fighting chance that Ogma had essentially died to win for him―a fighting chance that dwindled with each passing second―

“Hurry!”

This damn kid and his bleeding heart―right at the verge of being home-free, yet he hesitated, eying the swarm of guards warily, as if he was sizing them up―as if he had any chance against them―as if saving Ogma was worth forfeiting all of their lives. One guard was working each crank, the ropes straining as the gate began to inch up again, and Ogma’s heart pounded. “Go, damn you!” he bellowed one last time, a rare note of desperation coloring his voice.

(Get out of here, you stupid kid, or else I’ll have died for nothing.)

For a moment, Ogma feared that his words, spoken and unspoken, would fall on deaf ears. Then, in one quick, fluid motion, Samuel unsheathed his sword, slashed the wrists grabbing at him through the gate, and severed both cables, sending the gate crashing back to the ground―this time, for good.

Ogma could just barely hear a quiet “I’m sorry,” over the clang of cast-iron bars hitting cobblestone and the myriad of curses as the wounded guards stumbled back. When the soldiers bent to the ground and frantically tried to lift the gate back up, Samuel was nowhere to be found.

‘Dumb kid,’ Ogma thought privately to himself, even as his shoulders slumped in both relief and resignation. ‘Say ‘thank you’, not ‘sorry’.’

Of course, the guards were trained well enough―they’d managed to overpower Ogma, which was impressive even given their vastly superior numbers―but they were no Samuel. They hadn’t been forced to fight for their lives nearly every day for years, and manually lifting the gate off of the ground was much more difficult than stopping it from closing, anyway. After a few minutes of futile heaving, they gave up.

“No use,” one of them grunted, letting go and clambering back his feet. “That thing’s right stuck.”

His fellows quickly followed his example, wiping the sweat from their foreheads. “Damn lowlives did well to jam it like that,” another admitted begrudgingly. “We’ll have to send scouts to sniff ‘em out.”

The first man snorted derisively. “Gimme a break―those mutts don’t stand a chance out there. Stick out like sore thumbs, they will. And no way they’ve got a plan on what they’re gonna do now. Bet they’ll come crawling right back here once they realize they got no place else to go.”

Ogma had stayed silent until then, but, at that, he couldn’t quite stifle a snort of his own. “Yeah, sure,” he rasped as the guards turned to scowl at him, “I bet they’ll give up a life of freedom and come back here to be beaten, imprisoned, and killed. That’d make sense, wouldn’t it?”

One of the guards gave him a warning kick with a newly-polished boot. “You’d be smart to shut your mouth, prisoner.”

Ogma shot the lot of them his most smug, condescending smirk―he was dead anyway; might as well raise their hackles for the hell of it. “Well,” he drawled, “I never was the brightest―”

“Clearly,” a deep voice cut in, and the soldiers snapped to attention.

Ogma refused to react on principle, but he couldn’t quite help the slight twinge of dread in his gut as the guards scrambled into some semblance of order. Only two stayed down to keep him pinned. It didn’t much matter to Ogma, but he was a bit insulted that they thought two men were enough to hold him―though he wasn’t exactly planning on proving them wrong. No point, really.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the now-silent corridor, and Ogma grit his teeth to keep from growling. “What happened here?” the voice continued in a heavy accent, and the soldiers visibly shrunk back.

After a moment of silence, one of them cleared his throat. “The prisoners mounted an escape attempt, sir!” he said with false certainty, despite the nearly imperceptible quiver in his voice. “They jammed the gate and ran into the forest! Sir!”

“Escape attempt?” The anger dripping from his voice was enough to make even the guards on top of Ogma squirm. “I think you mean ‘successful escape’. Unless you’ve already got them all back in their cells.”

There was a collective cringe from the room as a whole. “S-sir!” one of the guards cried after a moment, snapping to a sharp salute. “Most of the prisoners escaped, but we managed to catch this one, sir!”

At those words, the grunts who’d tackled him each grabbed an arm and hauled him to his feet, eager to prove that they hadn’t failed completely. Ogma grunted quietly, but didn’t bother struggling as they dragged him across the room; he could probably wrench himself free, but it wouldn’t last long. He would just end up on the floor again, this time with even more guards on top of him. Anyway, he’d known that he would lose; might as well take it gracefully.

With a well-placed kick, the guards forced Ogma onto his knees, though they didn’t release their grip on his arms. A boot landed between his jutting shoulder blades, pushing him into a deep bow, and his shoulders strained. Nevertheless, he craned his head back as far as it would go, meeting his captor’s eyes with fierce defiance.

“Oh,” the colosseum’s owner growled from above him. “It’s you.” He drew his thick eyebrows down in a glare, which only made his bulbous eyes seem to pop even further out of his head. “I should have known.”

Ogma grinned up at him like a wild dog and congratulated himself when the craven dastard cringed away, taking a reflexive step back. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “you should’ve known. But you didn’t, didja?” He tilted his head to the side, grin not wavering. “You got any idea how long I’ve been planning this? Months. Months, and you didn’t even notice.” Less than a week, actually, and Ogma had only been let in on the plan maybe thirty hours ago. But the enraged, humiliated look blooming across the owner’s puce-colored face was way too satisfying to pass up.

“You―” His word devolved into a growl, and Ogma had a moment to brace himself before a boot landed directly in his face. His head tried to snap back, but it was already craned as far as it could go, so it just fell forward; his pained grunt sprayed red-tinted saliva onto the ground. Quickly probing around with his tongue, he determined that the worst of the damage was his split lip and the small cut where his teeth had snapped shut around his cheek.

Before he could lift his head again, his owner’s foot pressed down on the back of his skull, pushing down until his already-aching neck strained. “Don’t pretend that you won,” the owner spat, grinding his foot down. “If your plan was so foolproof, then why are you here?”

It was hard to say whether he gave the guards a silent gesture or they were just following his lead, but, either way, a flurry of kicks suddenly rained down on Ogma from both sides, and he locked an elongated snarl behind his teeth. Nonetheless, he couldn’t stop his body from jerking in the soldiers’ hold, and his owner laughed at him, loud and mocking. “Not so clever now, are you?” he gloated, the tread of his boots rough as he leaned a little harder on Ogma’s head. “We foiled your little escape plan, prisoner.”

Ogma managed to crane his neck back just enough to grin at the bastard, blood dribbling sluggishly through his teeth. “Yes, good job,” he slurred; “You captured the decoy.”

A scowl crossed the corpulent man’s face, and he kicked Ogma hard enough that the guards holding him almost lost their grip. Another few seconds of pregnant silence followed as all the soldiers held their breath. Then― “Well, what are you waiting for?! You―alert the other guards! The rest of you, out through the front entrance and after them! Every prisoner that escapes, one of you idiots takes his place in the gallows!”

Immediately, there was a mad scramble to follow his order, the guards pouring out of the room at top speed. Some bent over to scoop up the discarded weapons that their friends had left behind; others just clutched their own weapons to their chests and ran. Within maybe ten or twenty seconds, only the owner, Ogma, and the two guards restraining him remained.

“Sir, what about him?” one of those guards asked tentatively, nudging Ogma with his foot as if it was unclear who he was referring to.

The owner looked down his long nose, curling his lip as if Ogma was something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe. “Call up a crowd and have him flogged out front,” he said simply after a moment of deliberation. “Hang him when you’re done.”

“How many lashes?”

“As many as it takes.” Neither Ogma nor his owner broke eye contact. “Don’t grant him death until he begs for it.”

To his credit, the guard cringed sympathetically. “And if he doesn’t?”

The owner grinned sickeningly down at Ogma, eyes sharp and borderline gleeful.

“Keep going,” he drawled, “until he does.”

Ogma just smiled grimly, having anticipated such a fate. “Your threats can’t touch me,” he rasped.

His owner―whose name Ogma had never bothered to learn―scowled. “We’ll see about that.” He huffed harshly through his nose, then snapped his fingers and waved the guards away. “Take this maggot out of my sight. I don’t want to see him again until he’s dying or dead.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldiers replied, and they immediately tugged Ogma off of his knees, though not quite all the way onto his feet. As his bare feet scrambled for purchase on the blood-splattered cobblestone floor, his arms were jerkily maneuvered in front of him, one guard holding him still while the other removed a set of iron manacles from his belt.

Cold metal closed around his arms with a clang and a click, and Ogma wasn’t sure whether the sinking feeling in his gut was dread of his impending death or just resigned acceptance at the familiar weight of shackles on his wrists.

Either way, he didn’t put up a struggle as they dragged him away. Might as well face death with what little dignity he had left.

The plan had worked; the others were safe. That was all that mattered.

Neither of the guards spoke a word as they led him through the winding corridors, still full of panicking soldiers trying to get ready for a manhunt. Ogma didn’t really mind. Nothing they could say would change the situation at all, so he was glad to be spared any further mockery―or, worse, meaningless sympathy.

Being dragged outside, however, was... strange. In a way, it was a good feeling―he imagined that, after years spent in dingy cells and death matches, anyone would be relieved to feel the open air on their face again. He was almost tempted to rip himself out of the guards’ hold just so that he could properly enjoy the grass beneath his feet and the wind in his hair, but... well, to be frank, he didn’t want to run and, therefore, seem afraid. No; he wouldn’t give his owner the satisfaction.

Still, Ogma decided as the sun warmed his face, this wasn’t a bad way to g0 at all. Out here, he could die with a lungful of fresh air, and his body would be quickly discarded, rather than being left to decay until the guards couldn’t stand the smell anymore. He had no intention of begging, so he would be whipped until his body gave out, which was significantly less pleasant, but it was better than bleeding to death in the colosseum or rotting alive in his cell.

He had a lot to thank Samuel for, he supposed, even if their plan hadn’t exactly proceeded flawlessly like he’d promised.

A crowd was already gathered around the raised platform used for public beatings and executions, and Ogma marveled at the speed with which they congregated when they were promised something juicy like a flogging. He wondered if any of them cared who he was and what he’d done to warrant this, or if they’d just come running at the word “scourged”. Probably the latter.

Then he was lifted onto the platform, his already tattered shirt roughly torn off of him, knees forced to the floor for the hundredth time today, and Ogma barely even registered the painful scrape of splintered wood against his chest as he was slung over an old, blood-stained block. Rusty chains were hastily hooked to his bound hands, stretching them out before him, and his legs were similarly shackled to the ground, keeping him pressed firmly against the block with his bare back fully exposed.

“This prisoner,” one of the guards announced to the restless crowd, “incited a riot that killed and injured dozens of innocent guards! In retribution, he shall be lashed until he repents for his crimes!”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd―everyone knew that “lashed until he repents” really just meant “lashed to death”―and, for the first time in this whole ordeal, Ogma felt his stomach turn. At the very least, some of the people watching seemed uncomfortable―he even saw a few leave, curiosity sated―but the majority were visibly enthusiastic.

This was just a show to them. Their weekly entertainment. A bit rarer than fights in the colosseum, and therefore significantly more exciting.

He wondered if any of them recognized him from the tournament that had just ended, less than an hour ago.

He wondered if such recognition would make them more or less excited to witness his last few agonized hours on this miserable earth.

Cold fingers clamped around his face, tugging it up until he was staring directly into the face of his executioner. The man already had a long, nasty-looking whip in one hand, though Ogma was at least relieved to notice that it was not the cat o’ nine tails. He still had some time to prepare himself for that particular torture.

“Any last words, cur?” the executioner asked, sounding distressingly sadistic and almost bored at the same time. As if this was an exciting but utterly mundane occurrence. Yes, a flogging: how fun, yet how truly unspectacular.

Ogma spat out a mouthful of blood. “My life is well-spent,” he croaked, “buying the freedom of my comrades-in-arms.” Then, eyes flickering down to the crowd, he added, “And this was no riot. It was a daring escape. If you plan to kill me, at least do so for the right reasons.”

The executioner released his chin, and his head flopped back down to hang between his bound arms. “The prisoner refuses to repent!” he shouted, and the crowd cheered. “He must be shown the error of his ways!”

Ogma closed his eyes and breathed deep. He’d known that this would happen. He’d chosen this. No sense struggling; these manacles offered very little slack. Besides, there was nothing to hold out for―no reinforcements were coming; no specific number of lashes would be deemed “enough”; there would certainly be no sudden mercy. The quicker he bled out, the better. Until then, he would just have to endure the pain to the best of his ability.

‘Everyone else made it out,’ he reminded himself as the executioner circled around him to loom over his vulnerable back. ‘They have their whole lives ahead of them,’ he reminded himself, even as his instincts bubbled up and his body jerked futilely against the chains keeping him laid out like an invitation.

‘You chose this,’ he reminded himself as the executioner raised the whip over his head, but the words rang hollow.

Then the crack of the whip rang throughout the clearing and Ogma’s body jolted.

‘You chose this.’

Through the first five lashes, each one its own distinct, sharp sting against his back, Ogma remained dead silent, his teeth clamping down tight on his lower lip. The sixth drew a low, stifled grunt from him before he quickly regained his composure and locked another noise deep in his throat.

‘You chose this.’

By the ninth, his silence ended for good; each subsequent lash dragged a sharp gasp from his lips. He grabbed onto his chains in an effort to ground himself, fingers white-knuckled against the cold, corroded metal, but his body still jerked every time the whip fell.

‘You chose this. You chose this. You chose this.’

He lost count at fifteen. They came so quickly and steadily that they were hard to distinguish from one another, each wound layering over the last, criss-crossing over his back from shoulder to shoulder, neck to hip. The endless firings of his nerve endings were beginning to lose coherence. The endless wave of blows was beginning to drown him.

‘You chose this you chose this you chose this you chose this you chose this you―’

He didn’t start screaming until at least lash number thirty.

His body was on fire. His skin was melting away. The fractured bones beneath his skin were shifting; poking up through his flesh like jagged teeth emerging from a beast’s mouth. The boiling blood inside him was solidifying into a sea of tiny needles, pressing out against his veins insistently; trying to destroy him from the inside. His mouth tasted like rust. The chains got tighter every time he thrashed.

He could hear the crowd go wild.

‘It’s almost over,’ he thought to himself, half-delirious with pain. ‘You’re almost dead. You’re almost dead. You can rest soon.’

Or, he acknowledged numbly as another lash landed on his flaming back, perhaps not. After all, if the gods spared even a glance at his soul, surely they would find it sorely wanting for virtue. He couldn’t possibly be worthy of paradise. Which meant he would be consigned to a much worse fate.

Or perhaps such a fate had already befallen him. Perhaps he was already dead and simply had yet to realize, because his eternal punishment would simply continue the punishment he’d been given in life. Whipped over and over, without rest, until he was blinded by the pain; until he couldn’t remember how to do anything with his mouth besides scream.

It would certainly explain why his back was writhing in multiple different layers of agony, as if someone had peeled back his tattered skin to whip his bare tendons, and then peeled back his tendons to whip right down to his bones.

It didn’t really matter, he supposed. If he was dead, then it made no difference. If he was alive, then he wouldn’t be for long. Whether he was still breathing or not, this would be the rest of his pitiable existence. Thrashing in the shackles holding him down, screaming his throat raw, and waiting for an end that would never come.

‘Kid,’ he found himself thinking in one last flicker of lucidity, ‘you’d better be enjoying your freedom, you hear me?’

It took him a long moment to realize that he’d stopped screaming. He’d long since stopped hearing his own voice, the ringing in his ears and the roaring of the crowd overwhelming all other sounds, so he only really noticed when he managed to suck in a deep breath without it hitching. Maybe ten seconds after that―or one second, or three years; he’d lost all grip of time however-long ago―he realized that the crowd wasn’t cheering quite so loudly anymore, and the agony painted all over his back wasn’t growing. There were no more cracks of the whip.

He felt fingers grab him by the hair, and he felt his head be yanked back, but he couldn’t see anything. His eyes were still closed, he realized after a moment, and it took another moment to remember how to open them.

The executioner swam into view. Ogma was cognizant enough to see his lips move, but the sounds jumbled together in his brain until they were unrecognizable, and he just stared blankly. A sharp smack to the cheek jolted him back to relative awareness, and he blinked away stars.

“Beg,” the executioner said gruffly, voice distant and quiet despite the closeness of his face. “Beg, and I’ll give you a quick death.”

Ah―still alive, then? Or just a ruse by the devil to lure him into a false sense of security before starting on another wave of torment?

Either way, his response was the same. Ogma licked his lips and, in absence of his trademark insolent grin, conjured up a pained grimace. “No,” he croaked, lacking the spare breath or brainpower for anything cleverer than that.

His hair was released, and he allowed his head to fall back down, chin bouncing against the edge of the block. “The prisoner refuses to repent!” the executioner said again, and the crowd cheered. Ogma blinked a few times in a futile effort to stabilize his vision, then just closed his eyes again. He could use this brief respite to collect his composure; steel himself for the next wave of lashes.

‘You chose this,’ he reminded himself one last time, breathing slowly.

The whip fell upon his shoulder this time, curling down to stretch down his back, and Ogma grunted, but didn’t scream. Another blow, on the other shoulder, earned a similar reaction. Ah―so his tormenter was switching it up a bit. Whipping him from the front, rather than the back. Flaying him alive vertically, rather than horizontally. Would the next blow land on his face?

The singing of the whip as it whistled through the air. The enthusiastic cheering of the crowd below. The loud clanking of Ogma’s chains as he flinched. The crack of the lash meeting skin.

A soft cry of pain. Not his.

A chorus of gasps and screams.

Ogma barely realized, at first, that the blow had never connected. A minute ago, he wouldn’t have noticed at all, but the brief lull had cleared his mind a bit; he could distinguish between each blow again, and there was no new pain this time. Just the throbbing welts on each shoulder and the absolute inferno that was his back.

Confused enough to be curious, Ogma sluggishly cleared the ringing out of his ears, trying to tune in to the sudden, strange silence around him. The crowd was no longer cheering; the whip was no longer singing; even Ogma’s chains had gone quiet as he held still and tried to listen.

There was a thunk as something hit the floor, followed by a few faint murmurs that were far too quiet for Ogma’s muddled brain to make out. He thought he heard the executioner stammer out, “My―my lady―”

Then the cotton in his ears finally cleared enough for Ogma to make out the soft, trembling breaths, bordering on sobs, right in front of him.

Caught off-guard, Ogma pried his eyes open and tilted his head back, blearily blinking up at the blob of colors standing before him.

There was some deep blue, but it was mostly pink and peach and white, vaguely arranged in the silhouette of a person, and Ogma wondered if this was an angel coming to spirit him away. Then his vision cleared a bit―enough for him to realize that those weren’t wings, merely a fluttery white gown of some sort―and he thought, ‘No, just a noble.’

Of course, that elucidated very little, in the grand scheme of things, so Ogma wearily glanced around for any other clues as to what was happening. The executioner was standing a few feet away, stock-still, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open; the whip was laying on the platform at his feet. Ogma couldn’t really make out the crowd, but they seemed to be similarly frozen, still dead silent.

After a moment, a couple of armored figures shouldered through the crowd and clambered up onto the platform, their movement so jarring in the otherwise still tableau that Ogma’s eyes snapped over to them immediately. “My lady, get away from there!” one of them cried, hurrying towards Ogma, while the other rounded on the executioner with an enraged “How dare you strike Her Highness?!”

The cogs in Ogma’s head turned very slowly. The executioner had... attacked someone else? The noble girl standing in front of him―was that who he had attacked? But why on Earth would he―?

Wait.

Her Highness?

At that moment, the noble girl took a step back from the armored man, putting Ogma’s face inches from her back, and shouted “No!” with such vehemence that everyone froze in place.

Ogma tilted his head up so he could see over her shoulder, his confusion only growing by the second, as the armored guards sputtered, disregarding the executioner entirely. “M-milady,” the woman stammered, “please, don’t be reckless―I know it’s scary, but executions are a necessary part of―”

“No!” the noble girl―the ‘highness’―cried again, and Ogma only then noticed that her arms were extended to either side, as if to shield him from harm. “I won’t move!”

“Princess Caeda―” one of the knights tried again, but the girl―the Princess; Princess Caeda―disregarded him completely, instead twisting around to meet Ogma’s unfocused gaze. He startled, and some instinct urged him to bow his head―not because he’d overheard that she was royalty; there was just something about her demeanor that made him think ‘important person’.

Naga only knew why; in that moment, she looked nothing like a princess and every bit a little girl. Her eyes were wide and misty, her lip quivering, and he even saw a bit of snot leaking from one nostril. Only her elegant pink and white clothing hinted towards her status.

It was then that Ogma saw the angry red welt that marred her otherwise pale skin, staring at her collarbone, slanting across her bare shoulder, and then curving around to trail down her back, where it vanished under her dress.

Finally, his mind pieced the puzzle together. Yet all that came out of his mouth was a faint, slurred, “You’re bleeding.”

That startled a laugh out of the girl―the Princess―Caeda, though she remained teary-eyed. “You’re bleeding more,” she whispered softly, as if it were some great secret.

Ogma stared for a moment, struggling to formulate his thoughts into words. “I’m supposed to bleed,” he eventually settled on.

At that, the Princess―Caeda―scowled. “You’re not,” she said fiercely. “No one is supposed to be hurt. Not ever.”

A pause; then she quietly added, “My blood, at least, is useful for one thing.”

With that, she turned back towards the executioner, her knights, and the crowd, and loudly announced, “I will not be moved until this man is freed!”

The executioner floundered. “Wha―but―Princess Caeda, you can’t―we can’t just... let him go!”

Princess Caeda glared at him until he shrunk back. “Will you disobey your Princess, then?” she demanded. “You can’t hurt him anymore! I won’t let you!” As if to prove her point, she spread her arms wider still, standing on her tiptoes to block his view of Ogma entirely. Their proximity was so close that her gauzy skirt draped across Ogma’s chained arms like a bedsheet, the fabric no doubt soaking up more blood and sweat and grime the longer it touched his absolutely filthy skin.

For a moment, the entire world seemed dumbstruck. Then the guards and knights began to whisper furiously amongst themselves, shooting the Princess uncertain glances every few words. Ogma saw them gesture towards him, and the female knight kept making aborted grabs for her sword, but he couldn’t make out a word they said over the persistent ringing in his ears and the low murmur of the crowd.

Princess Caeda, meanwhile, remained firmly planted before him, chin held high and arms still outstretched, even though he could see her teeter unsteadily on her toes as her wounded shoulder trembled with exertion.

Her dress was stained, now, he realized, and not just where it had come into contact with him; the welt on her collarbone was bleeding sluggishly, crimson trickling down her back to leave dark, ugly blots on her frilly silk collar, and, before he could stop himself, Ogma croaked out an incredulous “Why?”

For all intents and purposes, the question was completely meaningless―too vague to communicate much of anything other than general bafflement. Yet, somehow, Princess Caeda spared him the trouble of trying to articulate when she glanced down at him over her shoulder, her face not hesitant and helpless but sure and resolute.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked, with the tone of a statement. “Just let you die?”

Ogma had no response.

Luckily, the Princess didn’t prod him for one, and they both waited wordlessly for the guards and knights to come to an agreement, Caeda keeping rapt vigil over Ogma in case anyone worked up the nerve to attack him again. An eternity of heavy, pregnant silence seemed to pass before, at last, the executioner threw his hands in the air and gestured to the other soldiers, setting his weapon aside.

As the guards approached, the Princess moved with them, trying to keep her petite frame between them and Ogma. In the end, her knights ushered her aside, mollifying her with a whisper he couldn’t hear, but the gesture was enough to make his throat thicken with―something. Gratitude, perhaps, for the girl who’d tried to save his life. More than even that, respect―for the girl who’d faced down a squadron of trained soldiers unflinchingly, even after she’d gotten her first taste of the whip.

‘It would take balls of titanium to disobey a Princess like that,’ Ogma found himself thinking. Yet, somehow, he still managed to be surprised when the guards knelt, unhooked his arms from the block, cut his legs free, and heaved him to his feet.

The rough handling hurt like all hell, reigniting the agony etched into his back, and he let out a strangled cry without really meaning to. The reaction was immediate. “Stop! Be careful, or you’ll hurt him more!” the Princess snapped, and the guards hastened to comply, taking most of Ogma’s weight without jostling his wounded back. “And unchain him at once―all the way!”

Oh―he hadn’t even noticed that his wrists were still shackled before him, like usual. Clearly, this had been a conscious decision on the guards’ part, because they sputtered once again under her demands. “B-but―Your Highness, we can’t―”

“You can and will,” she interrupted before they could even try to make their case, a note of authority in her impossibly young voice. “I will hear no arguments. He has been pardoned, so he shall be freed.”

One of the knights―a tall, well-built woman with a wicked-looking scimitar at her hip―placed a cautious hand on Caeda’s shoulder. “Milady, it’s not that simple,” she said, not unkindly. “He was already a gladiator before he did any crime. The pardon of every princess in Archanea wouldn’t change that.” To the knight’s credit, Ogma detected a hint of righteous anger when she continued, “Pardon him, and he goes back to being property. And you can’t seize private property without a lawful reason.”

Ah. So that was the catch. He would return to the colosseum, the Princess would be appeased, and, in her absence, he would simply be dragged back to the block, once enough time had elapsed for this novel occurrence to fade from the public consciousness. As soon as he’d regained his relative anonymity, he would end up right back here again. Or, perhaps, he would simply be pitted up against opponents that he could not beat so that his death could be claimed “accidental”. With his back injured so heavily, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a foe who could best him.

‘Or,’ Ogma found himself thinking, ‘maybe I’ll survive. Live to die another day. Help some more people escape―maybe even manage to escape, myself.’

It was one hell of a long shot, but something about the gutted, distressed look on Princess Caeda’s face made him want to believe that her fears were unfounded. More than anything else, he wanted to reassure her; at the very least, she’d delayed his death significantly―but, somehow, he doubted she’d be happy to hear as much. It felt... wrong, though, to not even attempt to console her, after she’d given him some concrete hope to cling to in his dying breaths―not just hope for himself, but hope for the world to which Samuel and the others had escaped.

(Talys couldn’t be too bad with an heir apparent like this.)

Apparently, though, the heiress in question was perfectly capable of generating her own hope, because the despair in her eyes was short-lived. “Let’s say, then, that I don’t pardon him,” she said, her voice beginning to wear thin, unused to maintaining an air of importance for so long. “Instead, I find him guilty and sentence him to a lifetime of community service. This would not be considered seizing property, just claiming my natural right to...”

She glanced at the other knight―a short, burly man in heavy armor wielding an imposing polearm―for assistance, and he cleared his throat. “To ‘render the supreme judgment of the crown’, my lady,” he tentatively filled in, “but I’m afraid that criminals charged with murder and violence cannot be given community service.”

“Exactly!” the executioner cut in from the side, stepping forward with unwarranted confidence, only to immediately quail when both knights and their liege leveled him with icy glares. “I-it’s... that is to say... it’s just public safety, Your Highness. A mongrel like him could get somebody killed―somebody innocent.”

It was a perfectly reasonable argument, and it would have been perfectly reasonable for Princess Caeda to subside and send Ogma away to whatever gruesome fate awaited him―to save herself the trouble, if nothing else. At this point, though, Ogma was hardly surprised when she stood her ground without ceding a single inch. “But the... the reasoning is sound, yes?” she pressed, eyes darting back over to the burly knight. “I don’t have to pardon him, I can just... change his sentence?”

The burly knight considered this. “There is precedent for such a thing,” he said slowly, “but, in extreme cases such as this, the only appropriate sentence would be jail time, and he would still be considered property of the colosseum’s owner upon release. Unless you gave him a life sentence―”

Before he could finish that thought, the other knight pulled Princess Caeda a bit closer and stooped over, bending low to murmur in her ear, “Do you think life in prison would be a kindness, milady?”

The Princess visibly started, as if this question was a new and alarming thought that hadn’t occurred to her, and her eyes flickered over to Ogma, who couldn’t quite contain his own startled jolt. Watching the three interact, he’d almost forgotten that they were talking about him. Now, under the full weight of the Princess’ regard, he found himself wondering the same thing―which would be better: life as a gladiator with a probable execution incoming, or life as a prisoner with no end in sight until he eventually wasted away?

To her credit, Princess Caeda was only struck silent for the briefest of moments before she wiped the shock off of her face. “Very well,” she said, the slight tremor in her voice belying her stoic countenance. “What... what is your name, good sir?”

A strange question, if she was going to ask one, but he wasn’t complaining. “Ogma,” he answered simply, his voice rough with under- and overuse.

The Princess nodded her understanding. “And what are your charges, Ogma?”

Ah―a much more reasonable question. And, unfortunately, one with an answer that didn’t paint him in the best of lights. The correct response was “Inciting a riot”, but Ogma threw caution to the wind and instead replied, “I helped my fellow gladiators escape the arena. I was a diversion.” Then, because he might as well be completely honest if he was going to tell the truth: “I killed the guards to keep them from recapturing everyone.”

One of the guards made a triumphant noise. “You see―he admits it!” he tried, but immediately fell silent when the female knight shot him a warning look.

Princess Caeda didn’t react to either Ogma’s explanation or the soldier’s words; she just continued to stare at Ogma with such intense scrutiny that it was almost enough to make him squirm. After a long while that felt even longer, she nodded again, acknowledging his words as truth. “For these charges,” she began, her voice tender in sharp contrast to the hardness of her eyes, “what do you feel to be a fitting sentence?”

Shouts of protest arose from the guards and crowd alike, but the Princess quelled them with a wave of her hand and a responding brandish of her knights’ weapons. “I will hear his plea, then render my judgment,” she said firmly, leaving no room for complaint or compromise. With that, she returned her piercing gaze to Ogma. “Well?”

For a moment, he could summon no words. He had to remind himself to swallow, rather than letting the spit pool up in his mouth, and his stiff muscles strained against his throat.

Finally, he managed to string the syllables together as coherently as he could. “I had resigned myself to death when I decided to help the others escape,” he said simply. “Any other fate is preferable, but I’m not scared to face the block. If you want me to die, then I’ll die now, without regrets.”

Surprise flickered across the Princess’ face for only a moment before she hastily swallowed it down. She searched his face again, and, whatever she was looking for, she must have found it.

“What if...” Her tongue swiped across her lip, and she began again, her voice steadier this time. “What if I want you to live?”

She’d struck him speechless before with such frequency and in such quick succession that, this time, Ogma wasn’t even surprised so much as he was bemused. Still, he didn’t speak for a good long moment, taking the opportunity to scan her face as thoroughly as she’d scanned his.

Caeda’s eyes were fierce and unwavering, her posture impeccable and her shoulders thrown back, but there was a gentleness there; not naivete or clinical pity, but a genuine empathy that was rare to see in nobles―much less nobles with that kind of fire in their eyes.

He made his decision.

With some difficulty, Ogma wrested himself from the guards’ grip. The crowd gasped, and the Princess’ knights drew their weapons, but he didn’t lunge; he merely lowered himself slowly, his back screaming in protest, until one trembling, bruised knee was pressed against the floor. Then, breathing through the pain, he raised his head to meet Caeda’s wide eyes.

She looked even younger now, and Ogma allowed himself a moment to marvel at how strange it was―that this was the first person he’d willingly bent his knee to in years.

He swallowed a mouthful of dirt and blood and said, as clearly as he could, “Then I’ll live for as long as you want me to, if I can.”

(He was always thinking about how he needed a reason to live―a reason to fight―more than anything. And, well, she’d spared his life, anyway―it practically belonged to her, now.)

This time, there was no sudden determination that broke across Caeda’s face to cover her surprise; she remained wide-eyed and open-mouthed, even as she gulped and shakily nodded her understanding. “I see,” she said faintly. Then her eyebrows drew down and her lips thinned, though the rest of her expression remained guileless and stricken.

“Dame Aiveen.” Her voice no longer trembled. “Your sword, please.”

For all that he’d come to understand Caeda in the brief interactions they’d shared, Ogma still considered for a moment that maybe she’d decided to remove his head, after all. Then she accepted the sword her knight offered and nearly dropped it to the ground immediately, arms quivering under its weight as she struggled to lift it without losing her balance, and he felt like a fool for thinking, even for a moment, that she had a cruel bone in her body.

The sword wavered noticeably as Caeda raised it with both hands, shakily holding it before her, with the tip less than a foot from Ogma’s face. “In repentance for his crimes,” she declared, loud enough for all to hear, “Ogma shall serve the Crown of Talys until his dying breath.” She met his eyes. Her confident stare, which he had already come to think of as her “true” expression, was finally back. “He shall swear his fealty as my vassal and pledge eternal loyalty to me and me only.”

Ah. So that was her game. Swearing himself as a vassal to the crown would rid him of his status as ‘private property’ permanently. Vassals, after all, could own land, and you couldn’t own property if you, yourself, were ‘property’. What a simple solution. A truly elementary idea.

Ogma was certain that he was supposed to respond with some specific line, but he had no clue as to what such a line might entail, so he simply bowed his head and said, “Yes.”

No one seemed particularly concerned with the informality of his words―or, at the very least, no one stopped her from leaning forward and touching the flat of the sword to Ogma’s shoulder. It landed with a thunk as she failed to manage its weight, but he was able to completely smother his hiss of pain, so it was of no consequence. When it moved over to his opposite shoulder, though, it was much gentler, the blade’s quivers intensifying as Caeda struggled not to put too much of its weight on him, so she must have noticed his pain, anyway. Naga only knew how.

The sword withdrew from his shoulder, and Ogma raised his head on instinct, meeting his new liege’s eyes. Her expression was mostly blank, save for the certainty and confidence that she exuded as a default, but that was fine. Ogma couldn’t even wager a guess as to what his own face looked like right now, anyway, so he was in no position to judge.

Caeda took a deep breath and lowered the sword to the ground, placing both hands atop its pommel. “Rise, Sir Ogma of Talys.” Her voice rang loud and clear and certain, like a church bell’s toll. “From this day forward, you will serve as my personal retainer.”

Lacking the strength to stand on his own, Ogma just bowed again, even as the tattered skin on his back strained. “As you wish, Princess Caeda,” he replied, dead serious despite the near-giddy glee welling up in his chest. “This body is yours until it breaks.”

Without warning, her hand shot out and clamped down on his shoulder, nowhere near the welts but still tight enough to elicit a flinch. He looked up to find a teary glare bearing down on him.

“It best not break any time soon,” Caeda said, her tone threatening despite the thick emotion dripping from each word, “because breaking my heart is against your vows. Understand?”

Despite himself, Ogma let a small, sincere smile slip onto his face―and, against all odds, when he softly replied, “I understand,” he was telling the truth.

He awoke to a dry throat, a bone-deep grogginess that he couldn’t quite shake off, a faint but insistent pain in his back, and the familiar sounds of soft humming and metal scraping against stone.

Over the years, he’d grown to recognize the medical tent almost immediately by scent alone, and, by the time he’d managed to pry open his eyes, he already had a decent idea of what was happening. The sensation of a wound completely healed by magic, leaving huge patches of too-new skin that twitched and tingled at the slightest touch, was easy to recognize when you’d had so many wounds fixed in such a manner. A thin sleeping pad, damp with sweat but much cleaner than his usual cot; light sheets draped across his body, and a thick duvet on top, rather than his thin woolen blanket; bandages squeezing his torso, but only his trousers covering him otherwise.

He must have been badly injured, and the clerics must have narrowly saved him.

Once he reached that conclusion, his memories came rushing back to him. The archer; the Macedonians; the unseen injury; Princess Caeda’s intervention; the perilous flight back through enemy lines; losing consciousness just as they arrived.

It appeared that Princess Caeda, as always, had gone for the most daring save imaginable, and, as always, her harebrained scheme had succeeded.

Torn between a fond smile and a pained grimace as his freshly-fixed injury tingled uncomfortably, Ogma settled for a soft groan, slowly blinking his eyes open. Sure enough, the tan canvas of the medical tent swam into view, although it was far less crowded than it tended to be directly after a battle. He must’ve been out for a while, then. It made sense, he supposed; his wound had been bad enough to temporarily convince him that he was dead, so it must’ve taken a while for his body to recover. In that time, the rest of the wounded had evidently healed and returned to their own tents, leaving him seemingly alone in the middle of the tent.

That also meant that he’d either suffered the most grievous injury out of the Archanean troops, or else those who’d suffered worse injuries had passed away before he could wake. Given the sheer number of troops they’d faced, the latter seemed more likely, but Lord Marth was a cautious commander and the thought of his allies dying because he hadn’t been there to protect him made his stomach roll, so Ogma optimistically chose to believe the former.

Breathing out heavily through his nose, he experimentally rolled his shoulders, feeling his new scar tissue strain with the movement. Lena, Wrys, and/or Maria had done an admirable job; other than the obvious stiffness and aches, the pain was almost nonexistent. With a week or so of rest, it would likely fade entirely. He would have to remember to thank whoever had fixed him up at the first opportunity.

With that thought in mind, he breathed deep through his nose and slowly began to sit up, using his good arm to support himself and trying not to strain his injured back or shoulder too much.

“Ahem.”

Ogma startled, accidentally jostling his wound, and whirled around. Sitting a few feet behind him, with her back against the canvas tent wall and her legs crossed daintily beneath her, was Princess Caeda, wearing only her undershirt and an old pair of trousers, yet somehow twice as intimidating as a Macedonian soldier in full armor.

As he stared, instinctively shifting his legs underneath him so that he didn’t have to twist over his injured shoulder, she slowly looked up from the wing spear in her lap, which she appeared to be in the middle of sharpening. Or perhaps she’d been sharpening her eyes, instead, because the cold look on her face pierced Ogma with the ease of a ballista shot and the force of a rampaging wyvern.

“You’re awake,” she observed icily, and Ogma wondered how likely it was that she’d gone to the trouble of saving his life a third time just so she’d have the satisfaction of killing him herself.

That was a ridiculous thought only born of apprehension, though, so, rather than frantically try to explain himself, he just swallowed and warily responded, “So I am.”

Caeda made a noise that acknowledged she’d heard his words but imparted no other information about her thoughts or current level of anger. Slowly, she set her whetstone aside, though her grip on the wing spear didn’t falter as she leaned forward.

“How is your injury?” she asked, her voice still perfectly impassive, though the question seemed genuine, not just a way to fill time.

Ogma gratefully accepted the transition into a much easier conversational topic. “Much better,” he said, turning to face her fully so he could demonstrate his improved range of motion without letting on how strange and tight his skin felt. “Whoever healed me did a da―a good job.”

Caeda caught his cut-off curse and rolled her eyes, but didn’t comment. “Let me see,” she said instead, shuffling forward without waiting for a response. She sidled into his blind spot with complete nonchalance, and he allowed her to quickly and carefully unwind his bandages to get a better look at the afflicted area.

Of course, observant as Caeda was, there was no chance of her catching something that the healers had somehow missed, but he knew that it eased her fears to see the scar tissue with her own eyes, and who was he to deny her that paltry comfort?

After a brief moment, she hummed again and carefully redressed his wound, though Ogma seriously doubted that it was necessary at this point, since it was nearly completely healed. “Looks fine,” she said neutrally, without her usual relieved ‘I’m so glad you’re alright’ or ‘We should both count ourselves lucky’.

Right. It was easy to forget that she wasn’t pleased with him when he couldn’t see the clear signs of thinly-veiled anger in her body language. Clearing his throat, Ogma turned himself around once again to face her. “Yeah,” he began, “it doesn’t hurt any―”

Then he saw the bandages wrapped around her right shoulder, nearly blending in against her pale skin, and abruptly forgot what he was saying.

“Princess,” he interrupted himself, the urgency in his voice enough to make her look up at him immediately, “your arm―”

Understanding crossed her face, and she raised a hand to silence him―it didn’t escape his notice that she raised her left hand, rather than her dominant right, which stayed limp in her lap. “Peace―it’s already mostly healed.”

“Mostly?” With the extensive healing magic they had at their disposal, only grievous wounds like his would be only ‘mostly’ healed this long after the fact―and, even though she had to have used both hands to sharpen her spear or untie the bandages, Ogma couldn’t help but think, irrationally, that he hadn’t seen her right arm move yet.

Caeda simply shrugged, reaching up subconsciously to wrap her left hand around the bandaged area. “Arrow wound,” she explained. “Didn’t hit Tempest, thank the gods. Lena and Wrys got me patched up, but I wouldn’t let them waste their magic on such a minor injury―a vulnerary each morning for a week without strenuous activity, and I’ll be fine.”

Ogma had no good reason to feel like the breath had been knocked out of his lungs by those words, but, well. Here he was. ‘An arrow wound.’ Clearly, his efforts in clearing the battlefield of archers hadn’t been enough. Of course they hadn’t―one man alone couldn’t protect the Princess from harm when she often found herself on the front lines in the middle of a war―but some irrational part of him was still shocked that something had slipped past him.

Caeda snapped her fingers, and he startled back to attention. She frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”

Ogma opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap. He didn’t think it prudent to mention that the entire reason he’d nearly died in the first place was that he’d rushed into the middle of an enemy platoon just to take out a single archer. Nor had he ever admitted that he always targeted archers first, even when they weren’t currently taking aim at her.

Unfortunately for him, Caeda seemed to glean all of these things without being told. “Ogma,” she said dryly after a moment, her face frosting over again, “this may surprise you, but you are not physically capable of incapacitating every archer in Macedonia, no matter how many times you charge into a huge group of enemies without backup. Actually, as your liege lady, I’m afraid I’ll have to forbid you from doing so again, since this incident alone has already removed a good three years from my lifespan.”

Ogma winced. The rebuke hurt all the more for its accuracy―worrying aside, his recklessness had very nearly gotten his Princess killed. If Tempest had bucked just a bit harder while Caeda had both hands off of the reigns, busy trying to get Ogma situated, then they both would’ve fallen. And, if the impact hadn’t killed them, the Macedonians would have. Either way, these reckless charges had to stop.

“Of course, my lady,” was all he could say, bowing his head slightly, both in apology and recognition of her orders. “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, Caeda didn’t reply. When she did, it was uncharacteristically soft―a quiet, uncertain mutter of “As long as you don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” Ogma responded immediately, less as a conscious thought and more because he couldn’t stand to hear his liege sound like that. Raising his head, he tried to impart some of his sincerity through his eyes, but she wasn’t looking at him.

He hesitated for a moment, then gestured to her bandaged shoulder. “May I?”

She nodded her affirmative, brushing her hair back with her left hand, and he reached forward to undo the bandages as carefully as he could, just in case she’d exaggerated how much she’d already healed. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case: all that was left to indicate she’d been wounded was a dark scab. It must not have been a very deep injury, he supposed.

“Like I said, it wasn’t even worth the magic,” Caeda murmured after a moment, and Ogma quietly hummed his agreement, glancing over to see if she was still refusing to meet his gaze. Halfway there, though, his eyes caught on her collarbone, and his whole body stilled.

By this point, the scar had become faint with age, even harder to pick out against her naturally pale skin. It curved around from her collarbone to her back, thicker and bolder along the top of her shoulder where the whip had struck hardest, but thin enough in the back that it was almost difficult to see if you didn’t know what you were looking for. Mainly, though, it wasn’t the color that set it apart, but the slight puffiness of the scar tissue; the marks that the welt had left behind blatantly raised from the rest of her smooth skin.

Ogma swallowed thickly.

He still remembered how she’d refused to allow the clerics to attend her first. ‘Sir Ogma is hurt far worse,’ she’d said, stomping her feet petulantly even as she exerted her authority over the royal attendants with ease. ‘You can’t heal me until you heal him! That’s an order!’

They’d warned her, as they set to the nigh-impossible task of mending his back, that it was likely to scar quite noticeably if she didn’t allow them to see it at once. If anything, though, she’d taken that as a challenge. In the end, by the time she finally gave in and let the medics approach, at her knights’ and Ogma’s behest, it was too late to avert or even lessen the scarring.

She’d never seemed particularly ashamed of the scar, which Ogma was endlessly grateful for―it wasn’t something she should be ashamed of, by any means. If anything, it was a badge of honor that displayed her courage and sense of justice for all to see, and she was right to wear it as proudly as she did. Naga knew he held more respect for anyone who’d felt the whip before.

Still, every time he saw it, he couldn’t help the vague guilt that collected at the back of his throat.

Without thinking, he reached forward and touched the scar with the tips of his fingers. Caeda didn’t react, and he hastily yanked his hand back once he realized what he’d done, but there was no way she hadn’t noticed, and he coughed awkwardly into his fist. “Erm, sorry, Princess,” he muttered gruffly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

No response. After a moment, Caeda reached up herself and wrapped her hand around the mark, rubbing it like an old wound that still ached. Like Ogma sometimes caught himself rubbing his own shoulders, because he couldn’t reach far enough to rub his back in a useless attempt to sooth the scars that lay there, hidden under his shirt.

Ducking his head, Ogma deftly did up the Princess’ bandages again, carefully working around the slim fingers wrapped around her shoulder. When he moved to knot it off, though, Caeda’s hand suddenly slid down to cover his, grip tight enough to make him jump.

He glanced up, but she was still facing away from him, the small visible portion of her face unreadable. Shifting uneasily, he kept his hand carefully still underneath hers, even as he fumbled with the bandages. “Princess Caeda?”

“Do you remember what I told you that day?” she asked suddenly, voice not betraying her emotions.

Ogma couldn’t help but huff out a half-chuckle at that. “You’ll have to be a little more specific, Princess,” he replied, not unkindly, although he was reasonably certain that he remembered just about every sentence that left her mouth that fateful day―if not by word, then certainly in spirit.

The silence was fleeting. “I told you not to break your body,” Caeda elaborated after a moment, “because that would break my heart―”

“―and breaking your heart meant breaking my vows,” Ogma finished for her, matching her quiet, solemn tone. His eyes flickered down for a moment, and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “...Yeah. I remember, Princess.”

Abruptly, Caeda twisted to look over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his with a vehemence that was, at once, startling in its ferocity, completely incongruous with the mood in the room, and so typical of her that it was hardly surprising at all.

“Then act like it,” she ordered, her voice firm despite the unmistakable quiver of thick emotion.

At that, despite himself, Ogma really did laugh, his eyes squeezing shut and his free hand automatically rising to cover his mouth. When he regained himself and looked back, Caeda’s gaze hadn’t wavered, though her expression had softened considerably. She didn’t relinquish her hold on his hand.

Well, what was there to say? He couldn’t stay somber and downtrodden in the face of the girl he’d sworn his life to.

“As my lady commands,” Ogma said with a grin, and carefully knotted the bandage into place without wresting his hand from Caeda’s grip.

#Fire Emblem #FE Ogma #FE Caeda #Shadow Dragon #archanea week #FE11 #angst #hurt/comfort #Angst with a happy ending #but they have to earn their happy ending #oneshot #THE WORD COUNT GUYS #I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED #scene 2 somehow turned into 10k???#blood tw #violence tw #torture tw

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dewittsend · 5 years

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‘The Defenders’ Review [Episodes 5-8] {REPOST}

“Come as you are,” for better, and worse.

Something I neglected to fully delve into in my last review is the technical genius of episode four, easily the best episode of the series. Those color pallets I mentioned? Each of them is represented in this Chinese restaurant the foursome has escaped to. The bright neon lights both within and outside of the eatery are casting all sorts of beautiful shades onto our main characters and the colorful painted walls within, helping to create the perfect atmosphere for the delivery of some pretty A-game dialogue and performances. And the episode ends, as you might recall, with the Rolling Superstones getting ready to square off against Elektra. In fact, let’s look at that image again.

It’s a great moment. And one of the few this series has left to offer.

Well, crap.

It’s almost laughable how immediate the drop-off in quality is from the first four episodes, which are traditionally the ones screened ahead of time to critics. After the tantalizing cliffhanger of “Royal Dragon,” where we see Blink-MCU ready to take on Elektra, the fifth episode, “Take Shelter”...begins with classical music...and Madame Gao mobilizing her men...and Sowande (the “White Hat” Luke was tracking) in a van with HIS men...and oh, this dude Murakami is on the rooftop...and he jumps down and crashes into the middle of the fight, which has apparently been going on for some time.

We missed it.

It was such a sloppy way to open up an episode, and a total letdown for me, considering that throughout most of these fight scenes, the heroes are just knocking out randoms in black suits. It would’ve made a difference to see them take on a “mini-boss” like Elektra all on her own. This may seem like nitpicking but it’s merely a precursor to the other dropped balls in this second half.

Summarizing eps. 5-8 actually won’t be as hard as 1-4, because there isn’t a great deal of character or plot development. During all the chaos at the Royal Dragon, Matt of course tries to get through to Elektra, convinced that there’s still good in her because she’s hesitated on each of the multiple occasions she’s had to kill him, but she escapes before he can seal the deal. She does NOT, however, escape before Murakami can see them having a moment, and she attacks him for attempting to kill Matt, leading him to question her loyalty.

There’s an unnecessary side plot with Colleen that starts up when she gets her stomach sliced open by Bakuto (surprise! This asshole’s back!). She’s taken back to the police precinct, where all our supporting characters have been relegated for protection. After she gets patched up by Claire because I guess Iron Fist forgot he can heal people, she reveals a feeling of general uselessness to her friend. MIND YOU, she’s like a triple black belt in four Japanese martial arts and knows how to use a katana, which is kinda the same thing everyone else in this show is doing, yet she thinks she’s outclassed.

Though in Colleen’s defense, it seems that every single member of The Hand can teleport, because they all do the Batman disappearing trick, and I’m as SICK OF IT as she is.

After the skirmish at Royal, Luke captures Sowande. Now, they all try to get information out of him. Jessica Jones...punches him back INTO consciousness, which I don’t think is possible, but whatever. He taunts all of them, knowing there’s no pain they could put him through that would make him divulge any information about The Hand or their motives. “Cut off a finger,” he tells Stick, “and you can still use a hand.”

I guess HYDRA and The Hand had to flip a coin on sinister slogans at some point.

There’s a pretty great torture moment where Daredevil slings his billy club cord around Sowande’s throat and gradually tightens it, but of course, the hardcore nigh-immortal super ninja doesn’t give in. He’s actually able to escape his bonds and briefly takes Danny hostage, before Stick beheads him.

Ep. 6, “Ashes, Ashes” contains a standout in a show full of people flipping and punching each other in the face, and that is Daredevil vs. Iron Fist. Prefaced by a tense escalation of dialogue between them both, Matt and the rest try to explain that they think the best way to keep The Hand from getting to Danny is to keep him away from the fight. Essentially, he’s being grounded. Perhaps rightly so, Danny feels betrayed. His anger starts to boil, and despite efforts from Luke to keep him civil, he punches Matt right in the face. But we all know the Devil eats those for breakfast. So the fight begins, and I gotta say, I had a good time watching it! It’s well-choreographed, WELL-LIT (don’t. get. used to it.), and a bit more satisfying than Cage’s match with Blonde Ralph Macchio, if only because Murdock feels no need to hold back. And it’s interesting to see their fighting styles collide, with Matt being much more aggressive, and Danny’s wushu-inspired training favoring deflection and redirection. (((Except for the fact that he starts it.)))

*EDIT: I MADE GIFS OF THIS FIGHT SEQUENCE. ON GIPHY. AND THEY WERE REALLY NICE LOOKING, BUT THERE WAS A PROBLEM. KEEP READING TO SEE MY OTHER EDIT LATER ON AND GET DETAIL. SORRY.*

In the end, it takes the efforts of all the heroes to put Danny down (although again the show dodges an opportunity for a mini-boss moment, as for the majority of this fight, everyone else is just watching this happen). They tie him to a chair and try to formulate a strategy. While Jess and Matt reestablish contact with John Raymond’s family to gain information about exactly how much he knew, Stick and Luke keep watch over Danny. This allows the latter pair to try and act like they have chemistry.

Matt and Jess discover a map of the Midland Circle tower in John Raymond’s piano (after Matt...plays the theme song of the show...on the piano..?) and are on their way to bring it back when Matt senses some SHIT GOIN DOWN. Because while Luke and Danny were yuckin it up, Stick concocted some sort of sleeping inhalant. He uses it to knock out the Black man of steel and is about to kill Danny, because, of course, this is the only way he sees to completely deny The Hand. The other two hurry back, but it is actually Elektra who {somehow} finds their hideout and {somehow} is just in time to save Danny’s life by trying to kidnap him. She kills Stick before Matthew can stop her, and proceeds to knock the rest of them out one by one, managing to {S O M E H O W ?} PULL Luke Cage onto his back with some TV JUDO — I’m sorry. I am. But I have to address this.

This is another big issue. In her resurrection, Elektra is constantly referred to as the “Black Sky.” We’ve heard about these things beforehand. Apparently, they’re natural-born killers. And apparently apparently, they come with some form of enhanced strength and durability. At least, that’s what I’m forced to synthesize. Elektra is twice, two whole times, struck directly in the chest by Iron Fist’s iron fist in this show, and somehow doesn’t return with her ribs protruding through her back. Super-strong and actively remorseless Jessica Jones smacks her around numerous times, but she isn’t phased. And LEAST LOGICALLY OF ALL, she repeatedly manhandles Luke Cage, and it’s as if this dipshit forgot he shoulder-checked a van and tanked an RPG blast like two months ago! Her abilities as a Black Sky are completely ill-defined. ‘Well Justin don’t worry about it, because she’s, like, the best fighter ever probably,’ which, based on what the show demonstrates, translates into “She’s stronger than a man who can wring metal pipes like a towel, but when she punches Matthew Murdock in his de-helmeted face he’ll still {s...ome..how} keep all his teeth.”

So, whatever, Stick’s dead, and it almost means something, but then doesn’t. The only time it’s mentioned is when Matt tells Foggy in the precinct. And Charlie Cox acts the scene well because he’s phenomenal, but it doesn’t quite feel adequate.

Gee maybe if....you had made.....a little more than eight episodes.....you could’ve given some time.....to this major character’s departure....

Next, Elektra brings Iron Fist back to Alexandra. Yeah, remember her? This show sure doesn’t. Every time she shows up, it’s a surprise. To be accurate, it’s not like she totally disappears. There are scenes between her and the other Fingers of The Hand, but they’re all boring. These people have known each other since the dawn of time, but they can’t be bothered to say anything interesting to each other, or have some emotion when they find their brother with his head REMOVED from his body.

And yeah, I’ll say it — it doesn’t look good that the Black immortal was the first one to die.

After Finn Jones gives us some of his patented “I Am Vibrating With Anger!!!” acting and has brought his small face to peak punchability levels, he’s wheeled off to his episode wrap, and we get a closing moment that honestly made me shout.

Alexandra is confronting her dissident cohorts and putting her foot down about who’s in charge around here, damn it, when she gets shanked in the back with a sai.

*EDIT 2: YEAH SO I REALLY WENT INTO THE EFFORT TO USE GIPHY TO MAKE MY OWN GIFS AND I TRIED FOR HOURS BUT COULDN’T UPLOAD THEM PROPERLY OR AT ALL. I’M REAL SALTY AT TUMBLR RIGHT NOW. SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO RESOLVE THAT. UNTIL THEN, ENJOY THE CRAPPY GIF OF THIS MOMENT THAT TUMBLR DID HAVE AVAILABLE.*

^Sigourney isn’t even acting in this moment. She’s legitimately confused about why her time was wasted.

Yes, Elektra kills Alexandra, and I shouted because it was a shocking twist. But that didn’t mean it was a good one. I mean for God’s sake. You hire NATIONAL TREASURE and SCI-FI ICON SIGOURNEY “GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH” WEAVER AND ALL YOU DO IS MAKE HER A POSTER-CHILD SO THE CRITICS WILL GIVE YOU A NICE SCORE ON ROTTEN TOMATOES? This GREAT actress was PIMPED OUT for four episodes and then REAMED.

What are we DOING, Marvel?

That question is in my notes several times. Let’s hurry up and finish ep. 6 so I can tell you why.

The show has a fleeting chance to get interesting again after taking out its best performer by perhaps turning Elektra into a rogue agent of chaos. Perhaps she manages to kill ALL the “fingers” and assumes her place as The Hand’s leader, a position she does hold numerous times in the comics. Or, even the vanilla option of her trying to fight Alexandra’s siblings and fleeing, wounded, to find Matthew and restore their bond, eventually standing with The Defenders against The Hand — either of these would’ve been better than what actually happens, which is that she’s turned into a nonsensical and lazily-written sociopath with zero authentic motivation to be doing any of what she does in these last two episodes.

Penultimate chapter “Fish in the Jailhouse” opens with a flashback conversation between Elektra and Stick to remind you that he mattered at one point. It’s just a retroactive and very obvious attempt to make you understand the emotional weight of the fact that she killed him given the father-daughter dynamic they’re supposed to have.

Episode six ended with a big “RUH-ROH” moment because we were shown police lights flashing over the unconscious Matthew’s face. Our heroes wake up in the precinct, where the cops, namely Misty and her captain, are understandably perplexed as to why a lawyer would be found unconscious with two superheroes and two very dead bodies. It’s a nice way to generate conflict between Matt’s dual lives, but it ultimately leads nowhere. Jessica, Luke, and Matt all break out of the precinct to go find Danny.

Meanwhile, Elektra has The Hand’s balls in a vice. Bakuto, Gao, and Murakami are all like ‘Aye maybe you should chill out trick, cuz there are three of us and we all know how to pluck a chicken, nahmsayin?’ and Elektra is all ‘Nah fam cuz we ain’t got no more of that magic sludge to bring you back if I murk your ass so try me if you want to.’ And that’s enough to get them to listen to what she has to say, which is...nothing.

Seriously, Elektra’s arc makes no sense! Alexandra was the only person she listened to or took orders from, so she kills her, but we never find out why! It wasn’t FOR the good guys, even though she says “His name is Matthew” to Alexandra when she sticks her (Weaver’s character had earlier ordered Elektra to kill Daredevil, “whoever he is.”). Maybe she just did it to prove that she could, but again, if she’s feeling that bold, why not try to murder the rest of the leadership? It’s not as if you need them for anything! Clearly you can handle all four of The Defenders on your own!

Whatever. Elektra still wants to find out what’s trapped behind the wall at the bottom of the pit underneath Midland Circle oh, crap. I haven’t explained this part.

Iron Fist is the MacGuffin of this series because his chi can open the door to a secret passage buried hundreds of feet underneath New York. The Hand have been burrowing tunnels, and finally found the spot they needed. What’s behind the door? A giant F*%$#!G dragon skeleton, the reveal shot of which is pretty sick. I’ll update with a GIF or image if I can find one. But this is all that’s left of Shao Lao the not-so-Undying, the dragon who Danny Rand had to face in order to receive his power. Although there is no, no, zero, NEGATIVE reason for this incalculably powerful dragon to be buried underneath New York!!! How does that work? Isn’t K’un-Lun in another dimension? Oh, it doesn’t matter? We only have eight episodes to resolve this? Okay. My bad.

The insinuation is that it is from within the vestiges of this dragon and others like him that the Fingers of The Hand receive the substance that revives them. And that’s the setup for the finale. But before I can move on to episode 8, I have to talk about...the World’s Worst Thing.

There is a fight scene that occurs...between the Fingers of The Hand...and the three Defenders who come to rescue Danny...and....there’s no splitting hairs about it: this scene is atrocious.

It’s heinous. It’s an affront to fight scenes everywhere. Every fight scene ever made at least tried more than this one did. In 19 years of life, a huge chunk of which has been spent watching action and martial arts movies, I’ve almost never seen a comparable mess of close-ups, cuts, and crap choreography. Never mind that the entire encounter could’ve been filmed inside an elephant’s rectum it’s so dark, but when you CAN see something, it’s Mike Colter and Krysten Ritter pushing cinder-blocks back and forth with an ancient telekinetic Chinese woman and then pretending to punch her in the face or swing a car bumper into her. And then they replace that ancient telekinetic Chinese woman’s 73-year-old actress [Wai Ching Ho] with what can only be described as a digital bean bag so it looks like she can withstand that kind of force as she’s tossed into the cement floor. Meanwhile Charlie Cox is over on the other side busting his behind to make these stunts and strikes look good against the other two bad guys, who for what it’s worth also probably trained extensively, but you can’t appreciate ANY of their hard work because you’re just watching silhouettes bop around in an arena too cramped for MICE to wrestle. It’s so, so terrible. Easily the worst sequence in the whole of the MCU.

Episode 8 is called “The Defenders,” and it’s basically just a lotta punching. Colleen steals a ton of C4, confiscated from John Rayburn’s home, from the evidence room in the precinct. She brings it to the Defenders, along with Claire, who doesn’t need to be here, except if she was gonna die! She does not, and this is also the first time she interacts with Matt in the entire show’s run. I don’t even think either of them reacts to this fact.

🎵Whaaaat are we dooooiiiiiiing, Maaarveelll???🎵

They all decide they have to blow up the building to stop The Hand permanently, so while Colleen and Claire go to set the bombs, the rest of the team heads to help Danny. God knows he needs it.

Daredevil, Jess and Luke find a secret elevator to ride down to the bottom of the pit, where they haul off on the rest of The Hand, who seem to just be sprouting up from the ground at this point. Colleen and Claire are interrupted in planting the charges by Pretty Boy Bakuto. I wanted to see this slimy, second-rate Ra’s al Ghul actin, discount yet still older Orlando Bloom lookin fool get his spine pulled out through his nose, but his actual death is just a beheading. Not quite as satisfying. In the process of the battle, Misty shows up, and loses an arm protecting Claire. This is a setup for her to receive the bionic replacement she bears in the comics, and it’s honestly not the avenue I expected Marvel to trust itself in taking. I applaud them for it, even though Misty was otherwise useless in this show.

I’m really trying to finish the summary so I can get to my conclusion. It’s not that things are complicated, it’s just that there’s so much noise to cut through here. Once Bakuto is dead, Colleen realizes that “RUH-ROH,” the timed detonator was accidentally triggered. So down below, Luke, Jess, and Dan are all like ‘Ayo Double D, we gotta double-dip on outta here!’ and Daredevil’s all ‘Nah, I can’t. Iss mah shorty, she’s actin’ wiiiilllld, she won’t let me go out. But I think I can help her remember she’s good, nahmsayin?’ And the others are like ‘Nah you’re mad weird!’ But they leave him anyway because we really, really have to make sure that our fans think we’re killing Daredevil.

Matt and Elektra have an emotional sex-fight, wailing on each other and saying nonsense lines. Again, it would mean more to me if Elektra was indeed still brainwashed for sure, but I can no longer tell what her character is, so it’s just two hot people in red kicking each other. The bomb blows up, we see them embracing and then the screen is covered by an onslaught of dust.

The wrap-up of this finale is probably the best part. I don’t mean that cheekily in that it’s close to the end, but it feels more paced and well-planned than anything else in the last few episodes. Each character gets a pretty obvious setup for the next season of their respective shows, and then, surPRIIIIIIISSSSEEE, if you're a five year old—Matt wakes up in a nunnery, bandaged and badly bruised, and the nurse tending him tells someone to ‘Get Maggie. Tell her he’s awake.’ Or something to that effect. It’s a visual callback to the Frank Miller comic Born Again, if I’m not mistaken; a beautifully written graphic novel that takes Matt Murdock out of his element. Disbarred and living on the streets, Matt is reduced to his basest instincts, his rage ever-building while Kingpin rises to influence yet again, and Daredevil’s reputation is slandered. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Sister Maggie may share the most important link with Matthew yet. If season three is going to follow that storyline, I’m definitely intrigued for what’s coming.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was Marvel’s The Defenders. And, despite my tough tone, it’s not all bad. It’s just frustrating to see the pattern throughout these shows whereby all of the effort and funding is poured into the first few episodes so critics will give it a good grade and then the next six (or in this case, four) episodes are so clearly lackluster by comparison. There are some nice moments between the supporting cast while they wait on their super loved ones in the precinct, and there’s a stellar moment between Foggy and Karen when Matt doesn’t walk through the door with the others. But, like I said, Claire Temple, who we first met in Daredevil (where Rosario gave her best performance out of all these, if you ask me) has no time at all to spend with Matt. The lack of a scene between the two of them reflecting on how this all started was jarring! Or a moment for Jessica to realize that Luke is with Claire. The foundation is being well-paced for their eventual romance, but right now it just seems like that’s because Luke is omitting the mention of his relationship with Claire. I think with just two more episodes--scratch that, even just ONE more, we could’ve had time to do these things. We would all have watched it. Your investment would not have been in vain, Marvel.

I also found myself annoyed because while I understand we may never see Jessica Jones drink space bourbon with Rocket Raccoon, or watch Luke Cage arm-wrestle with Thor, I don’t understand how any conversation about “getting help” for this massive threat to New York City doesn’t at some point have someone say: “Oh what about Tony Stark who lives literally twenty blocks away in the tallest building on Earth? Maybe we can at least try to contact him? Maybe we can at least think about trying? Danny? Billionaire to billionaire? No?” Marvel keeps shoving “THE INCIDENT” down my throat, so we know that this is indeed the same universe where aliens attacked New York, but The Avengers came out five years ago and not one of these people can even say “Hey where’s Iron Man???” The joke is RIGHT. THERE! A RICH GUY on your team has the word IRON in his NAME! JUST MAKE THE JOKE! Give me a BREAK!

What ARE WE D--forget it.

Now, for some good reactions: although she was essentially robbed, Sigourney Weaver brought her absolute best to her part. And as far as the Defenders themselves, I think Krysten Ritter and Charlie Cox were really pulling their weight the most. Their scenes together were always the most entertaining to watch, and they just both have such a good grip on their characters. Not to speak ill of Mike Colter. I think at times he falls victim to what I like calling “the Superman Syndrome”: a character is indestructible, and therefore the writers make him unrelatable. He does have a number of good moments, though, especially when paired with Ritter. Plus, he’s charming, and looks so much like the Luke Cage on printed page that I don’t even need to suspend my disbelief. This man probably really is bulletproof. The cinematography and screenplay of the first four episodes is prime.

I can also appreciate the inverse to the threat the Avengers faced, which came from the skies above, where the Defenders are combating evil from beneath. If they even thought about it that much. And there is some really cool fighting. Aside from the end of episode seven, very little of the choreography is actually bad, it’s just that after watching people do handsprings into flip kicks for six hours your brain kind of turns it all off. The big battle in the pit at the climax of episode eight is #1. too damn dark, aGAIN, and #2. filled with more of the same we’ve seen these characters do aaalllllllll theeee tiiiime. Danny and Matt do a barrel roll. Luke and Jessica awkwardly shove folks. And, on that note, anyone remember the first time we saw Luke fight and he only needed to tap people’s foreheads to knock them out?

youtube

He was backhanding crackers into Limbo! But now he needs to cock his elbow to put someone to sleep? Just keep up with yourself, guys. Come on.

Personally, I would’ve liked more team-up super combos from them. Allow me this one childish desire to see Luke Cage and Danny Rand simultaneously pound the ground and send out a radial shockwave that puts everyone on their backs. Can you ALLOW ME THAT, WORLD?

In the end, I would still recommend this series, if only because we’ve been building to it for two years now and people should see what’s been offered to us. While it is an incomplete package, it’s still not the worst of the bunch.

However the finale doesn’t give me the impression these four people will ever team up again. And, honestly, that may not be the worst thing.

THANK YOU for reading if indeed you did read! Stay tuned for an unscheduled upload like this sometime in the indeterminate future. Keep watching, my friends. And as always, Blessings & Blexcellence!

#marvel #netflix #charliecox #krystenritter #mikecolter #finnjones #superheroes #thedefenders #review #analysis

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shark-myths · 7 years

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I was tagged by @beckettsthoughts, which, thank you. <3 <3 <3

RULES: Always post the rules. Answer the questions asked, then write 11 new ones. Tag 11 people to answer your questions, as well as the person who tagged you.

THEIR QUESTIONS

1. What is something you’ve seen in person that you never thought you’d see in person? (E.g. rare or bizarre wildlife, a dream destination, a celebrity)

Literally in a parking lot I saw a raven using salsa. It was dipping its fucking parking lot scavenge food in a little paper cup of SALSA. What the ACTUAL fuck???

2. What book/movie do you keep saying you want to read/watch but know you probably never will?

Let’s be real, I am never going to get through The Silmarillion, I am a low person of low quality

3. What song will you forever associate with school dances or discos?

GET LOW! And also, um, the Cha-Cha Slide. I’m old.

4. What’s your favourite supermarket to shop at? Why is it better than all the others?

Trader Joe’s. It is the fucking best in all ways. They have a lot of random delicious items that I’m in love with, they have the best chocolate, they have my favorite wine and it’s under $4 a bottle, they have dorky cute house brands like “Trader Jose’s” for their Mexican food, I like their red quinoa and dried pineapple and sweetened coconut chips and maple cookies, and there are always samples and you can get produce there that actually has flavor, is affordable, and is not ROTTEN like all the produce in Mississippi. Also a favorite is ALDI, which is super cheap and offers pantry staples $2-3 cheaper than anywhere else and has a lot of types of food that are no longer accessible to me now that we live somewhere without one—like, who can pay $8 for a pack of pancetta for her pizza sauce? Not this dude. At ALDI that shit was $3. The working poor need dried Italian meats too.

5. Do you have any local myths or legends?

CUBA ROAD. It was just this creepy road and if you went down it at midnight you would like, either not come back at all or come back horribly changed. It was Haunted. No one I know who braved it ever saw anything but I also only knew like, one person who dared try. I certainly didn’t.

6. How did you meet your best friend?

ON THE INTERNET READING FANFICTION, that’s actually how I meet almost all of my significant relationships. not even joking. I just give my home address and phone number to strangers on the internet, it’s been working out pretty well the past 14 years

7. Think of the best teacher you ever had at school, what were they like and why were they the best?

to be honest with you, I have completed 24 years of formal fucking education and I have had so many teachers, trying to pick the best one is shredding my heart! I had one teacher for Anatomy who was really passionate and gave us these embarrassing activities like doing autopsies on pickles (she had dressed them up and given them wounds, like toothpick splinters and ball-bearing bullets) and hypothesizing about cause of death; I had an amazing ball-buster history teacher who yelled at me in class once for working on homework for another teacher and from that moment on I adored her; I had a really intelligent professor with really high standards who taught psychopharmacology and I worked the hardest I ever have to do well in his class because I respected him so much; I had a really excitable professor from Luxemborg who I took a “gender benders” in lit and history class with who was amazing and kind to me even though at that point I was too anxious to ever speak; I recently took Medical Anthropology with a greek woman who shouted about politics and biomedicine daily and just thinks about things as a hobby and I want to be her when I grow up and she let me write my entire term paper on how mad I was at sexism in my field of study.

The trends in what I like are: passion/enthusiasm; having high standards; not being nice to me to try to get me to like them. because I’m broken in strange and interesting way the quickest thing a teacher can do to lose my respect is try to make me like them. Like, be kind of a dick to me and then praise me for killing myself on papers to win your approval, that’s all I want.

8. Have you ever had any funny holiday/vacation mishaps?

once when I was interviewing for a graduate school program I was given a hotel room by the school, which was pretty decent of them—they had this weird on-site hotel—and I was all prepared to settle in, had my shit spread all over both beds, when in came the OTHER APPLICANT I was apparently sharing the room with. This was terribly embarrassing. I had an anxiety disorder at the time, was easily embarrassed & soooooo behaviorally inhibited. Anyway, long story short, I forgot to pack pajamas so instead of saying that like a normal person, I just… pretended really casually like I always slept in the same sweater I’d worn all day and wormed out of my jeans under the covers

9. Speaking of holidays and vacations, what are the best and worst holidays you’ve ever been on?

best: the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for my honeymoon, a spring break trip to Toronto, a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard, going to Boulder for the first time and spending a week with @simplydalektable and the way everything was made of sunshine and gold and I didn’t need food or sleep or anything but her

worst: when I was 15 and my parents took me and my half-brothers to a remote cabin in the wilderness with no internet and it was during the days when texting and phone calls like, existed but you had to pay tremendously to enjoy them so they were Outlawed and everyone was tense and mad at each other and bored because like, we are not equipped to socialize who would think locking us all into one room was a good idea; once when I was depressed at Disney World with my mom and all I could think about was how I was supposed to enjoy it more and everyone was mad at me because I was an Angsty Adolescent; these are pretty mild horrors, my life is pretty good

10. Do you collect anything? Did you collect anything when you were younger?

I used to collect comic books with great seriousness! Now I collect band shit and copies of Lord of the Rings, my favorite anything ever. I have 4 editions currently, which is not nearly enough. I collect books in general with fervency.

11. What led you create a tumblr blog, however long ago that may be?

oh my god this is the most me thing ever, but there was an art festival in the town I was living in and some old fucking white dude entered a project that was Commentary On The Youths or some shit and used the selfies of young girls that he took from the internet to criticize millennials for being shallow???? Like, that is a form of cultural appropriation, these girls are growing up in a society that allows them some modicum of control over their own image and they’re using it to explore and define themselves and own their own selves for one fucking moment in their lives, and You, some Gross Old Dude, are just putting your slimy hands in there and like, trying to make a Point about something you can’t possibly understand????? And I was so angry I decided I was going to do my OWN selfie project (I’m in year 2 now; I was daily in year 1 but I’ve been slacking the last six months), so I made this blog, and for the first year I used it only for posting my daily selfies. like every fucking other thing in my life, I created this blog out of pure rage. (someday I will tell you the story of how I became so mad at the field of clinical psychology that I decided to become a clinical psychologist, and somehow powered through 8 years of torturous education on that anger alone)

And for the second part of this, I tag @xabjectlessonsx @crhiscornell @syndestruction @time-less @immoral-crow @we-are-the-weirdos-mister @oceanjade345 and any of you lovelies who would like to!

MY QUESTIONS

1. What is the sickest you’ve ever been and why?

2. What is your favorite thing to drink?

3. What song do you use to deal with your emotions? How does it work—does it suppress them or let you express them?

4. If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life, it would be:

5. Favorite myth, legend, or fairy tale?

6. If you had a perfectly self-centered wish you could make, what would you wish for?

7. Tell me about your pets.

8. In your opinion, what is the most perfect record ever made? (Doesn’t have to be your favorite)

9. What’s your favorite thing about space?

10. What are you nostalgic for?

11. List 5 words you think everyone should start using more.