Aside from the obvious, Wayne was showing me a side of himself that he probably doesn't reveal to many people. He is a cloistered man driven by gigantic -- almost supernatural forces, not simply greed as I always thought. [...] That night I began to appreciate Wayne's misanthropy. To him, everyone was an enemy of one kind or another. His partners, his competitors, his lawyer, the cops, and even his girlfriend... He was the classic paranoid that everyone actually was after! Maybe being Batman made sense in his world. "I had to do it as someone else -- something else," he'd said.

Batman: Nine Lives (2002) #1

(Dean Motter, Michael Lark)

I think you mentioned listening to podcasts? Do you have any favorites to reccommend? I've run out of content :(

that i do !

im not entirely sure what kind of podcast you'd be interested in but i'll throw out a few of the goodies in my huge library of stuff , i'll miss out a few of the HUGE podcasts that have been all over tumblr though

a LOT of it is true crime or human interest stuff , or history because im nerd ,, and a few of these dont have nearly enough attention so [shrug] i'll try to keep this short i guess lol this isnt EVERYTHING ive got in my library or listened series' by any measure

i AM gonna pop a shout to both Stuff You Missed in History Class and Stuff You Should Know from iHeartRadio because their HUGE archives have kept me from losing my mind many times over , and they cover a wide range of both important and wacky topics

BomBARDed (ongoing) this is the only fiction podcast i have happening right now really but its DAMN GOOD ONE .... it's an actual-play D&D 5E podcast in the DMs own musically-inspired world, focussed on a group of multiclass bards going to music school !! and all players (+DM) are members of the Texas band Lindby !! and they actually use and play music in the show with one original song an episode !! Kyle's worldbuilding and storycraft are truly incredible, and (Nick) Goodrich, (also Nick) Spurrier, and Ali's characters are in depth and interesting as well as an absolute powerhouse :') i actually made a piece for its first fanzine, Bardic Dreaming, which published earlier this year and is free to view now, all the players and the community are super wholesome its just very good overall 💙

History & Humans;

Fall of Civilisations (ongoing) legit one of my favourite podcast finds, im so glad my youtube autoplayed one of these ... it took me like 2 hours to realise it was 1) not the same as what was playing before and 2) had been on for 2 hours and wasnt near finished lmao. anyway, this is a series by historical fiction writer Paul Cooper, and is honest to all thats good one of the best documentary series ive encountered in years - and ive consumed a LOT of documentaries. it covered the downfall of various civilisations through history, and the episodes run from an hour to FOUR hours depending on the topic. its so chill to listen to and just get done, but over the pandemic all of the episodes have been given full movie-quality video versions too on youtube if youre more of a visual person.

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast (on series break) yeah that says that lol ... its a SUPER niche topic but its very interesting and treated very well despite being kind of comical at times, the hosts are just naturally funny lol ... it delves around from the history of cannibalism in whole regions to specific incidents as recently as the 1970s, and of course the first episode is about the Donner Party, and it covers things ive never heard of despite being kind of important ?? anyway Alix and Carmella are good eggs

Sawbones (ongoing) i probably dont need to mention much here other than say that Justin and Sydnee saved me from being SO BORED sooo often, the history of medicine is wacky as hell and its what most of my history GCSE was on so [shrugs]

Cautionary Tales (on series break) this was a wild-card find lol ... it's by Tim Harford "the undercover economist" who writes for the Financial Times, and its topics kind of weave modern topics and science with how to learn from historical errors ... its a bit weird but well worth a go, also each series has a few celebrity guest voice actors which is pretty awesome

Ephemeral (ongoing) this is a very strange but thought provoking series about sounds and other things just barely saved. topics include the last castrato, the hello girls, hand-stamped records, the spread of kīkā kila music, and acoustic fossils of wild places.

Neat! The Boozecast (ongoing) history and bartending whats not to like lol ... hosted by Teylor Smirl and now their dad Tommy, they're just digging around in how important booze is to human culture

True Crime (white collar and weirdness);

Swindled (ongoing) this is an amazing show full stop. A Concerned Citizen details some of the most impactful and unruly things to happen in white collar and corporate crime. very factually accurate but given the sheer bullshit of the topics the deadpan snarking is [chefs kiss] absolutely warranted ..

American Scandal (on series break) this one is a series within a series type, and spends a few episodes at a time poking holes in some of America's biggest scandals, from a dramatised but fact-based point of view. such as what the hell was going on with Enron, how big tobacco was forced to own up to covering its own ass, how Iran-Contra happened, etc. it also now has a sister show called British Scandal, which does the same thing for British cases but with a slightly different format.

Missing in Alaska (finished) this was a fascinating series, a deep dive into what happened to two US government officials who disappeared on a small chartered flight in Alaska in 1972. it goes some really strange places, but it actually turned up a lot of previously unknown information through the audience. John Walczak's new series in a new feed is Missing on 9/11 which looks into what happened to Dr Sneha Philip.

Pretend (ongoing) Host Javier Leiva holds interviews with anyone living a lie, or who have been touched by them. con artists, snake oil salesmen, former cult members, catfishing victims, anyone and everyone.

Power: The Maxwells (finished) hosted by journalist Tara Palmeri, the story of media tycoon Robert Maxwell from nothing to empire to mysterious death and the scandals uncovered after he was gone.

Lets Talk About Sects (ongoing) Sarah Steele covering cults from around the world, in particular those in Australia - where she is from. She often has former members on the show to share their stories, and share knowledge of how they left. each story has the relevant content warnings at the start of each episode.

Brainwashed (finished) investigation of the CIA's covert mind control experiments, centred on the experiments performed at a hospital in Montreal, and its cultural impact.

Dr Death (2 series finished) two series investigating huge cases of fraud and medical malpractice, and how they were brought to a stop. series 1 covers Dr Duntsch and his horribly butchered neurosurgery, series 2 covers Dr Fata and his fraudulent cancer clinic

The Immaculate Deception (finished) untangling the weird and disturbing fertility fraud of Dr Jan Karbaat, who fathered children himself through his fertility clinic, and the impact of his deception. later episodes also touch on other similar cases.

True Crime (Violent/General);

The Casual Criminalist (ongoing) Simon Whistler of-the-many-youtube-channels cold reads a script about the case of the day, with some of his daft commentary thrown in.

Southern Fried True Crime (ongoing) Crimes from the American South hosted by Erica Kelley, she puts all the facts out there but refreshingly for true crime she doesnt hesitate to tell you if she thinks someone is human garbage lol

They Walk Among Us (ongoing) probably one of the most popular UK crime podcasts, very measured and well put together, not weird or annoying about it either.

All Crime No Cattle (ongoing, feed slowed down for now) specifically about crimes from Texas, hosted by Erin and Shay, they're very sensitive hosts and a lot of the cases they cover shed light on why the Texas criminal system is how it is or show an impact at a national level

Canadian True Crime (ongoing) Canadian crime from an Aussie who's lived there for a decade, Kristi is again a sensitive and measured host covering some important topics

True Crime (Violent/Deep Dive);

Hitman (finished) journalist Jasmyn Morris digs around in the sticky tangle around a book published by fringe publisher Paladin Press, and its apparent use as a blueprint in the killing of a mother, her friend and her 8 year old boy for financial gain.

Camp Hell: Anneewakee (ongoing) this series is exploring how a wilderness camp "correctional facility" was endorsed by the Georgia care and juvenile reform system, despite widespread abuses and shady practices the whole time. warning for csa and child cruelty throughout.

True Crime Bullshit (on series break) this one is a huge huge rabbithole but a very interesting one where the host Josh Hallmark has spent years digging into the life and potential crimes of Israel Keyes. Keyes is often mentioned as a serial killer with no pattern, but in picking it apart thats not quite true, and has sparked some re-evaluations of missing persons cases and stumbling upon information the FBI has redacted organically. there's also a series in the middle looking into the crimes of Kelly Cochran

Forgotten: Women of Juárez (finished) this series looks into the huge numbers of missing women of Ciudad Juárez, the strange circumstances surrounding them, and the potential cover-ups and corruptions on both sides of the border, trying to give a voice to all of the forgotten women and girls and their families without answers. the series itself is finished, but a spanish language edition is being released every week now.

aaaaaand i'll call it there before i list everything lol, i hope you find something to plug your boredom hole with !!

u have advanced??????? wow. tips to qualify mains please??? help me with my modules.how do i solve them?????????

hnnng idk bestie here's some short tips n like if u want something more specific u can send another ask or dm me?

pay attention in class. sit in the front. listen out for what things the teacher puts an emphasis on. ask questions. yes, even the stupid ones. especially the stupid ones bc those are fundamentals u cannot miss bc a shaky foundation leads to a shaky building. also pay attention to ur teachers. theyve been doing this since before u even knew about jee they know what theyre doing. most of them want whats best for u, and if not specifically that, whats best for them n their institute which are usually similar things. im not saying blindly trust them without criticism but have some faith. dont dismiss them they prolly know better than u. if id followed my teachers instructions i prolly wouldnt have had to drop (but thats a discussion for another day lol).

revise notes on a regular basis. like. the day u studied it in class. then the next day. then a week later. then 2 weeks later. then a month later. google the curve of forgetting for more accurate time stamps. use flashcards for formulae n stuff that u have to memorise like inorganic chem.

analyse past papers. recognise the most important topics. but also there are some small chapters that are quite easy and some people skip them thinking there wont be any questions from them. ive given 4 papers of mains, and i can confirm that is utter bullshit. 1 question each from units and measurements, mathematical reasoning, stats, chemistry in everyday life, polymers, are guaranteed. u can easily secure at least those marks by spending just a little bit of time on them. esp for jee mains its relatively better to cover a wide range of topics with medium depth instead of just some but with deep understanding (the latter works well for advanced tho).

make a friend or two whos in the same boat as u, preparing for jee n try to keep each other accountable. tell each other everyday what ure going to study that day n then check back the next day. remind each other hlep each other out. also be friendly with the class toppers sometimes they can solve ur doubts better than teachers just bc something they explain clicks better. whenever i get confused about logarithms i think back to what my 9th grade classmate told me when i asked him to explain in 1 sentence n had him repeat it slowly to me multiple times. its burned in my memory and helped me so much. 

practice tests. set the proper 3 hour limit and solve them. be honest w urself ure doing this for u. no point scoring 256/300 to impress ur teacher if u cheated bc on the day of the exam ure going to be screwed. in the beginning try out different strategies, different ones work for different ppl. like for me, math is my favourite and i find it easier than the other 2 so i do it first and it gives me confidence. then i move on to physics and then chem. some people look over the entire paper n solve the easiest from every section first, then the medium ones, then the tough ones. experiment in ur practice tests n figure out whats best for u n ur test taking. after the test, analyse. see what u got wrong, why u got it wrong. clarify doubts. mark problem questions to revise and solve again later. no point in solving more n more questions if theres no retention or learning.

for solving books specifically under the cut bc this is getting too long lol:

stick to 1 or 2 books max per subject. make them ur holy books and swear by them. if ure doing coaching then the modules provided by them are a very good option bc theyre specifically for jee and will cover what u need. coaching teachers will have a lot of experience with them too so u'll have an easy time with doubts clarification. if u choose other books tho, still consult with ur teacher and ask them to tell u what's relevant and what isnt and dont waste ur time on whats not. it might make u look or feel smarter to be solving questions on stuff thats beyond the scope of the exam but u literally dont need it and the syllabus is already very vast so ure just going to waste time and brainspace. like sure if ure interested study it in ur own time but dont make it an Important Must Do thing.

ok now that u have ur book with everything relevant to jee, make sure u devour them. study the theory alongside ur class notes. solve a few questions of corresponding topics the day they are covered so u dont have so many questions lined up at the end of the chapter. like if i studied friction in newton's laws of motion today, i'll solve the questions relevant to friction today itself. or u know this week. like,, keep it current. then while solving, speak out loud and explain the problem to urself like ure teaching someone else (or better yet, find someone to teach them to. stuffed toys, younger siblings, ur classmate, grandparents, online friend, whichever works). mark all the questions that took u longer than 5 mins or u cant solve at all. dog ear the pages. try them again the next day. then again a few days later. take the ones u still cant solve to ur teacher. try n ask for just a hint once and try again. and then if u cant then ask for the solution. DO NOT go on the internet. ur brain doesnt have to work for it then n u think u got it but u dont got it. make ur brain work for the solution so it'll remember. 

now that uve given a good shot to every question and figured out where u stumble. analyse a bit. find a pattern if theres any: like a certain concept that is weak or something ure not understanding. read the theory for it if u have to n ask questions to clarify. then solve these problem questions again and again until u know every question well enough to be able to explain to someone. skip over the easy ones u dont gotta do them again n again, focus on the ones u stumbled on. theyre the weak spots. no use strengthening whats already strong enough.

and uh keep a notebook of the solutions of the questions u solve so that u dont have to go crazy searching for them in an emergency. like ur paper is tomorrow and u cant figure out this question that uve been trying for 1 hour then its a good time to review ur previous solution and refresh ur memory. often if uve practiced enough n its just exam stress etc thats making ur mind go blank then just a hint will be enough to remind u.

also this is more general but just. be consistent. small consistent efforts over multiple days instead of a big one in 1 day. u’ll retain better and ur brain does better with multiple small chunks spread out over an interval than a lot of stuff in a small one. and its ok to to have an off day dont kill urself over academics ur health is more important always. not getting into ur dream college might fuck u up but itll heal but ur health is more precarious and not getting enough sleep or food will def fuck u up and the consequences are a lot harder to deal with. dont think about the big picture or u’ll freak urself out just think about the next small step u can take. getting 99 percentile feels impossible but solving 10 questions for it does not. dont get disheartened by test results if ure working hard n smart u wont fail. even if u dont get into ur dream college u’ll have an excellent work ethic that’ll take u places u never thought of in ur wildest dreams. more than anything, be kind to urself and work n play hard.

Teyvat’s School for the Gifted

Summary: He's cruel, mean, and sadistic. Lumine cannot fathom why he has the  followers he does, but she won't fall into his hands like the rest of  them.  It was unknown to her at that time how such a stance would cause the biggest uproar the schools ever seen.

This is the silly drama filled high school/college parody AU nobody  asked for filled with Lumine not giving a shit and Childe trying to buy  his way out of problems.

Ship: Lumine/Childe

Tags: Highschool AU, Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Jealousy, lots of side ships.

Status: 10/? on Ao3

Chapter 2

She had two options to think about after that ‘encounter’ or whatever you want to call it. Get in line like the rest of the students and eventually ‘hopefully’ her new toy status wears off and she fades into the sea of students. But that would depend on how HE acts after the dinner encounter. And something told Lumine from the way Amber and Barbara reacted to even speaking of the red headed devil he was a force to be reckoned with.

She tossed and turned in the night thinking of different scenarios for the morning.

There were boys like him back home. Maybe not filthy rich, sons of local shop owners, that acted like him. None of them possessed the same air as he did. Being able to part a sea of students just by walking has to be a superpower in itself.

Come to think of it she didn’t even find out where he was from, perhaps she should ask. The more info the better when it comes to defending herself.

She was never one to sit down and take abuse. When she was just in grade school the local boys knew not to mess with her after a few unfortunate incidents. Her mother always told her it was her blonde hair and honey eyes that made her stand out.

It always starts with them testing you. Small things to annoy you, just to see how you react. She would not be able to keep her temper down if that happened. She already had an issue with her mouth as it is.

She turned one final time in the plush bed she had been provided with. The school had made sure even the scholarship students were treated above average. It was impressive, but did little to dampen her jitters.

-

First day, which means new people and new teachers. Lumine was walked by Amber and Barbara to the faculty building. Razor was found sitting on a bench halfway there. It brought a smile to her face.

Razor had never left Amber’s side the entire night they sat talking. It was girl gossip that Lumine was never into, but enjoyed now that she had some people to actually talk to. Not many people are willing to come to a run-down farm for a sleepover back home. Razor himself didn’t talk much, but Lumine was observant. He sat on her bed and watched her, every action, smile, glance. Lumine was quite interested in understanding what Ambers reservations about him were. She seemed to like him from her perspective.

More questions for later.

A plump woman greeted her at the front desk. She was cheerful, but not like Mrs. Lee was, instead giving off warm motherly tones. Lumine could imagine her doting on all the students she came in contact with.

“Here you are dear.” She handed her a slip of paper with her classes.

“Thanks,” Lumine said quietly as she read the sheet. Alchemy, ancient runes, adventuring 101, history, then finally vision training. She internally laughed at the last class, perhaps they were going to rename it. She pulled on the collar of her school issued cardigan as it threatened to slide off one shoulder.

“Just head out to the academics building Mrs. Lee showed you yesterday and a student will be waiting to guide you to your classes,” The woman told her. Lumine nodded and gave back a genuine smile before turning to leave.

It was easy to pick out the student waiting for her in front of the buildings doors despite the crowds entering and exiting. It was a green haired girl nervously fisting her skirt between fidgeting with her glasses. Two small animal ears poked out from under her main of messy hair. She wore her skirt long, unlike the rest of the student body (and Lumine herself), and covered up with a baggy school issued cardigan like Lumine’s.

“Are you the one waiting for the new girl?” Lumine asked. The girl snapped out of a nervous trance and a blush covered her features.

“Ah! Y-yes,” She stuttered before taking a breath, “Sorry I get nervous easily, my names Sucrose,” she extended a hand.

“Thats a pretty name, I like it,” Lumine said as she returned the handshake. She hoped it might calm her down but Sucrose turned scarlet instead.

“I-I'll walk you to your class,” She mumbled and walked inside. Lumine followed silently, deciding the best course of action was to not embarrass her further.

She led her to a decently sized class of students with a portly teacher standing in the front. He wore robes and a ridiculously oversized wizards' hat. The site was an oddity in Lumines eyes, having only ever had exceptionally plain teachers back home. Sucrose left Lumine at the front of the class as she shuffled over to the teacher, managing to get his attention with a simple clearing of her throat. Lumine decided to inspect the chalk board instead of the students. She didn’t want to know if the red headed asshole was in here yet.

“Ah yes Lumine!” The teacher bellowed and waved her over. She stepped lightly up onto his raised platform as sucrose scurried to her seat in the front row. “My name is professor Rasmodius, take a seat next to Zhongli back there,” He pointed off into the right of the room. Lumines stomach sank at the mention of a familiar name. She dragged herself to the back of the class and slid into the empty stool next to him.

They made eye contact and she swore she could see the gears turning in his mind before he spoke.

“He’s not in this class,” He said in monotone.

Lumine choked on her own spit, “w-what?” she asked him.

“He’s not here, if that is what you are worried about,” He smiled down at her sweetly. Lumine felt her face heat up.

“I don’t care if he's here or not,” She quickly recovered and crossed her arms.

“Hm,” He put a hand on his chin, “You had the same gaze as most other new females.”

“Yes, well sorry for being nervous.”

“Perhaps I have made a wrong assumption, I apologize,” He turned his body to her, “Zhongli of the Wangsheng funeral parlor.”

Lumine fumbled a bit at his words. Was it normal to greet someone with your name and what company you hail from? She eyed him wearily for a moment then decided to screw it. Not like they wouldn’t find out if she lies.

“Lumine of a very poor farm outside of Mondstadt.”

He chuckled in a low deep tone. Lumine felt her façade falling as her heart sped up.

“Sorry, perhaps too formal?” He asked.

“You talk like you are speaking to a business partner,” she told him honestly.

“Ive been told that before, even by my friends,” He admitted. For the first time Lumine’s lips quirked into a teasing smile.

“Alright class today we will be looking into the mythical potions of Esteria! page 103!” The teacher commanded. The room filled with the sounds of turning pages.

“I didn’t get a book?” Lumine questioned.

“You will more than likely get them at some point today,” Zhongli told her as he slid his book over between them, “here share mine.”

“Thanks,” She mumbled, dipping behind her hair to hide her blush. Perhaps her friends were right, most of the group wasn’t that bad.

-

Okay maybe they were wrong, at least two out of the four were very very bad. She had not seen the infamous Childe today, but after alchemy Zhongli was very kind to walk her to the next class. Relieving a very thankful, yet worried, sucrose from her job.

They talked about small things, mostly how the school was going, what she thought of it, what kind of things she did back in Mondstadt. To her surprise Zhongli seemed genuinely interested in the day to day life of a poor person. He was awkwardly polite with everything, but had a sincerity to him that he wore on his sleeve.

There was just one sneaking suspicion she had regarding the man. How on earth does a funeral parlor have enough money to send their son to this school AND be the top of the food chain. Surely these boys were flooded with money otherwise the attention wouldn’t be as drastic. There were even glares tossed her way as they walked to the next class.

It was nice to have the attention, he had a smooth deep voice that sent her insides into a flurry. That was until they came upon Xiao. The boy was shorter than his tall geo counterpart and crossed his arms at their arrival. He glared at her as Zhongli added another sentence to their conversation. The words fell on deaf ears as Lumine tried to fight back a snarky remark. She had done nothing to earn this glare from him and it was irking her.

“Keep glaring like that and your face will freeze that way,” She blurted out.

“What?” He hissed at her.

“Ah,” Lumine back tracked, she didn’t mean to speak her thoughts like that, “you just look awfully peeved is all,” she decided on. He narrowed his eyes at her.

Day one, mouth already got her in trouble, nice.

They had a standoff for a few moments before Xiao conceded with a huff and turned into the room.

“Don't worry about him, he's weary of newcomers,” Zhongli said from besides her. She looked up to him for reassurance and was once again met with an honest gaze and smile.

“I-” She began to say and stopped to think about it, “I trust you.”

Even if he was lieing, what harm would come of it? She loses a friend she never even had?

Ancient runes was a snooze fest as expected. She sat next to an incredibly ordinary looking girl who should have hissed like a cat when Lumine sat down. It would have made the look she gave her less comical.

But things perked up in Adventuring 101. The class was useless to someone like her. It was basically preaching about basic safety the entire time. Don’t touch pryo slimes, they hurt. Don’t go off fighting electro monsters in the rain, that also hurts. Always have food rations and medical potions on you!

Blah.

She didn’t need this info, but it was a required class. Get a taste of everything before heading off to the college and decide what classifications you want. Stupid rules some adult made to torture the youngins.

It was fifteen minutes into the class. There was a saving grace, she had a seat next to Zhongli. He shared his book with her again and was polite and overly cordial as always. She assumed the class was full with everyone in attendance. There were a few empty desks but students could be sick or the class could have fewer students than desks.

Then HE walked in, opening the door without a care in the world, loudly. There was this beaming, disgustingly fake, smile plastered to him. A girl followed him inside, checking her makeup on a small compact mirror. They seated themselves in the empty spots adjacent to herself and Zhongli.

The teacher scolded him as he walked, but he ignored it with a shrug. His entire demeanor made her want to mop the floor with his pretty face. Just like the boys back home. She made a point to keep her eyes forwards or at the text in front of her. Not wanting to give him any ideas. There was a cold chill crawling up her spine again, he was staring.

The class continued onwards. The teacher quickly dropped the subject of publicly shaming Childe for walking in to class late. They were moving on to something at least slightly interesting she didn’t know too much about. How to read the stars and sun for location and time. It was something she never needed as she stayed close to home.

It was useful to her so she took out her notepad and began to scribble down some text out of the book as she teacher lectured. She made it a few words in before the girl next to Childe giggled in that high pitch way girls do when they are trying to impress a man.

She dared a side glance over to the table and noticed the girl enamored by him. Getting a full view of the back of her head as Childe whispered sweet nothings to her. He sensed her gaze and looked up, making eye contact. She went back to her work before the girl could turn, clearing her throat.

He was testing her; she could feel it. Between yesterday's stare down and this there was no mistaking it.

“Something wrong?” Zhongli asked her in a low whisper.

“Just a little difficult to get work done with so many distractions,” She growled.

“You will grow accustom soon,” He told her. She laughed quietly at his choice of words. Someone needed to remind him he was still a teenager.

The entire period passed with flirtatious whispers and laughs flying.

And not, one. God. Damn. Time, did the teacher say anything to the two culprits. Although something told her Childe was the true mastermind behind the distraction. She tried her best, she really did, but Lumine was never great at keeping her temper in control. Not when it came to completely asinine males making a side show out of a class.

Her pencil lead snapped on her paper.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“It seems you have snapped your lead,” Zhongli murmured. She refrained from calling him captain obvious. There was a chuckle to her right, this time clearly mocking and directed at her, she herself snapped. She turned and with pin point accuracy threw the pencil at her tormentor. The eraser bounced off his forehead, sending the object into an unknown destination in the room.

The smile fell from his features and they traded deadly glares. The girl sitting with him was busying herself cooing over him asking what's wrong. Oblivious to the events that just unfolded. Zhongli of all people fucking laughed.

She turned her glare into a smug grin reading ‘what are you gunna do about it? now shut the hell up’ and turned back to her work. She leaned back and crossed her arms.

“Well played young lady,” Zhongli whispered to her.

The option of fading into the background had vanished.

The World Is Not Enough: Isekai and the Hope for More

When it comes to anime and light novels, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an isekai series or six. Countless stories spanning many genres have used the person-travels-to-another-world premise. To borrow language from the infamous TV Tropes, the isekai concept has been played straight, played with, inverted, subverted, parodied, deconstructed, reconstructed, and more.

People must like isekai stories (I know I do!), otherwise there wouldn’t be approximately 47 million of them, with new ones coming out all the time. Regarding this topic, I recently actually-a-while-ago-but-it-took-me-a-long-time-to-write-this happened to see a post by Twitter user Sashimi Princess Maddie which was retweeted by J-Novel Club:

This post struck a chord with me because I’m fascinated by the connection between fantasy and faith. J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” is of course required reading on this topic, as is Chapter IV — “The Ethics of Elfland” — in G.K. Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy. They discussed fantasy generally, and logically what is true of all fantasy is also true of the specific subset of fantasy we call isekai. Now, the tweet is obviously partly humorous, so it would be unjust to respond to or critique it as if it were a serious essay. However, I do want to highlight one point of possible disagreement that I believe is relevant to my own thoughts. (I say “possible” because without a full-fledged essay from  Maddie, I may be overlooking or misunderstanding points that a more complete argument would resolve.)

Japan is ground zero for isekai. The isekai stories we consume overwhelmingly originate in Japan, and are written by Japanese people for Japanese people. And Japan is a place where Christianity’s influence has been meager, at best, since the Tokugawa period. Meanwhile, the religions with any sizeable footprint in Japan, namely Shinto and Buddhism, don’t contain a concept of heaven comparable to that found in the teachings of, say, Christianity or Islam. Christians make up 1% to 2% of Japan’s population (depending on which estimate you read), which means many Japanese people have probably never even met a Christian! Thus the appeal of isekai in Japan cannot be explained in terms of filling in a gap left behind by the decline of traditional religious hope for heaven.

The OP’s argument would work better if the vast majority of isekai came from, say, western Europe or the United States. Throughout much of the west, Christianity formerly held immense cultural influence. However, Christianity’s influence in these places has declined greatly in the past century or three. If such places produced most isekai stories, we could make a more plausible case that isekai draws upon lingering notions of heavenly reward, relics of a discarded traditional religion whose notions permeated society, in order to fill the hope-deficit created by that religion’s decline.

I believe while Maddie is correct to find conceptual connections between isekai and religion, I just find the specific relationship posited by the OP inadequate, especially with regard to Japanese people. Thus I invite you, dear reader, to consider other Bible teachings that do more to explain the appeal of isekai even in a culture where Christianity (including its notions of heaven) never held much sway. The picture of our world and human nature painted in the Old Testament provides a partial explanation for why we like isekai, an explanation that is not contingent on lingering cultural debris left behind by Christianity.

Let’s look “In the beginning” — yes, the one where “God created the heavens and the earth.” As God completes his creative work in Genesis 1, we read “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” *That* is the world in which God intended us to live. And all this “very good” stuff includes humans, too, who the text says God created in his own image. Alas, we humans ruined things. To put it another way, long ago God and man lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation sin attacked.

Yeah, after God created all this good stuff (including we humans!), Genesis 3 introduces a slew of bad things that weren’t supposed to be part of this world: sin, death, the curse. Of course, God knew this would happen, and already had a plan in place. That plan reached its climax in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but in some respects it is (at least from our point of view) not yet completed. For now, we still live in a cursed and corrupted post-Genesis 3 world, a place where sin and death run rampant. We ourselves are broken by sin, and we must endure in a world unlike the one God originally created for humans.

The entire Bible is stories of humans sinning, which goes a long way toward showing what mess this world is, but the Bible also contains an entire treatise specifically exploring how awful our post-Genesis 3 world really is. Speaking of our world as “under the sun,” Ecclesiastes incessantly hammers home the “vanity” of this life. “Under the sun” is an unreasonable, unjust, and oppressive place that we can’t understand or fix. “Under the sun” is a place where bad things *will* happen to us no matter how hard we try to avoid them. “Under the sun,” all our labors will accomplish nothing of lasting value. “Under the sun,” we’re all gonna die just like dumb animals, no matter how we lived. And then the cherry on top is that after we die, no one “under the sun” will even remember us, and any stuff we had will be misused by people who don’t deserve to have it.

Our own experiences validate this picture of pointlessness. I had an abusive childhood; I’ve faced a slew of physical and mental health issues; I’m presently almost 35 and I’ve never so much as gone on a date, let alone gotten married or had a family; I’m unemployed and living with my parents because I’m failing so hard at adulting. I’m not hopelessly miserable–God has abundantly blessed me in certain respects–but that doesn’t negate the reality that in some meaningful ways, my life is a big huge disappointment. You, O reader mine, will have different points of sadness and frustration and failure than I do, but I suspect most of us, if we’re honest, would have to concede that our lives are painfully disappointing, or at the very least have not followed the tracks we dreamed they would.

This image of the incomparable Kanami from the isekai series Log Horizon serves no purpose except to break up my wall of text and make me (you?) laugh.

Creation and the Fall provide the starting point for the appeal of isekai. God wanted us to be good and to live in a good world, but thanks to our sin, both we and this world are in far worse shape than he originally intended. Since we weren’t made for a cursed world, it is entirely natural that on some level we long for a place that is somehow more, or better, than the one we inhabit. Likewise, since we weren’t created so sin and death could dominate our lives, it is entirely natural that on some level we long to be somehow more, or better, than who we are. Even if we don’t have a clear idea of what exactly we really want, we still long for a vague something beyond our present existence.

We intuitively sense that something is off about both ourselves and our world, and this leaves us wanting a world and selves that are different from the world and selves we know. In the beginning, we were made for more, and now our existence isn’t quite right. Isekai appeals to this nebulous desire for something better that stems from our latent awareness of the Fall. Isekai stories give more concrete form to the desire to be different than who and what we are, and to live in a reality that isn’t entirely like ours. We may not want to live in the setting of every isekai story, but even grimdark isekai is still isekai, and thus shares the inherent appeal of the idea of other worlds.

Ecclesiastes is again relevant at this point. Perhaps the most hopeful part the book’s message is unstated. As noted above, Ecclesiastes keeps emphasizing how everything “under the sun” is terrible. This raises a question: Is “under the sun” all there is? And here we find the implicit note of hope: the one thing mentioned in Ecclesiastes that isn’t “under the sun” is God. Throughout the Bible, God is consistently depicted as up above. So when Ecclesiastes mentions God, this gloomy book is hinting that there is more to reality than just our world “under the sun.” There might be a chance to escape the utter vanity of this life, if we seek somewhere–and more importantly, Someone–outside and beyond the world we know.

“Now let me be clear,” God is an almighty spirit unbound by the constraints of space and time. Thus, the Bible’s references to God dwelling in the heavens are obviously metaphorical and do not affirm some sort of literal spatial relationship between God and any celestial bodies or astronomical coordinates. That said, the Bible regularly pictures God as being in heaven, and if we follow the logic of that metaphor, then God is not “under the sun.” This is supported by one of the titles repeatedly ascribed to God throughout the scriptures (most often in the Psalms and the book of Daniel): “the Most High.” Again, this superlative is metaphorical,  not a literal claim about physical altitude, but to be “the Most High,” God is, in a conceptual sense, above everything else — the sun included.

The core premise of isekai stories is the idea that other worlds exist and that it’s possible to pass between them. Since we already desire something more, better, different than our present existence, isekai has a natural appeal. What distinguishes isekai from other fantasy / sci-fi stories is how directly it addresses this innate post-Fall desire for a different world. Non-isekai stories offer the possibility implicitly, not unlike Ecclesiastes: They ask us to imagine a reality different from our lived experience, but don’t necessarily give any indication that we can do more than imagine. Contrariwise, isekai takes as its explicit premise the idea that a person just like us, from the very world in which you and I live, can somehow go to a different world, and there experience significant personal changes of some kind.

All fantasy / sci-fi stories at least touch on the notion of a world unlike ours. Even if their setting is very much based on our world, by their very nature they include phenomena never seen here. Arthur C. Clarke famously captured the overlap between sorcery and science: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” All fantasy / sci-fi stories occur in a world where mechanical or supernatural forces beyond our experience or comprehension offer new possibilities. Isekai stories not only show us such worlds, they depict these worlds as existing in addition to (rather than instead of) our own, and as being possible for us to visit.

All of this ultimately brings us to the New Testament’s teachings about hope and resurrection and heaven. I think the OP was correct to see a connection between the appeal of isekai and the Christian hope of heaven. But heaven is only the fulfillment of our longing, not the origin of it. The Bible’s depiction of the Fall and its consequences explains better why we would find the idea of heaven, and isekai, appealing in the first place. We wouldn’t need heaven—or isekai—if we were perfectly satisfied with this world. But we aren’t satisfied, and the Bible’s account of the Fall and its effects explains why we find our present state dissatisfying. And so, reading isekai stories is really about hope for something beyond the reality we know. We feel rightly disappointed with our lives and with this world. We desire something else, and isekai supplies our imagination with more concrete ideas about other worlds.

For now, heaven is an incomprehensible wonderfulness. We know almost nothing about heaven, after all. Given how light on specifics the Bible is, even the most devout Christian is still limited to an amorphous notion of hope. But isekai stories are something I can wrap my mind around. The heroism, the adventure, the romance, the supernatural creatures—all of it speaks to my desire to be more, to experience more. The worlds I can imagine through isekai help strengthen my longing for the even better world I can’t yet imagine. Isekai stories help bridge the gap between the unsatisfactory reality I live with and the heavenly realm so glorious that human language can’t describe it. While we can’t really imagine heaven, isekai at least helps us envision something beyond our lives under the sun. Isekai cannot truly satiate our desire our desire to go somewhere different and be something different (that’s what heaven is for), but it does help us explore and understand our sense of longing.

People can enjoy isekai stories regardless of how much they accept or know anything about Christianity, which makes sense if our desire for an existence that is more, better, different than what we know far predates even Christianity. Isekai has not “taken the place of traditional religion as a promise that our suffering will be worthwhile” in a chronological or causal sense (e.g., religion held sway, and it declined, and that decline contributed to the popularity of isekai as a substitute). I believe it is more accurate to see isekai and the Bible’s teaching on heaven as parallel responses to the Fall. We can choose either or both, but they aren’t in competition. Isekai can be an expression of hope and longing both for those who believe in heaven as a religious doctrine, and also for people in places (e.g., Japan) where Christianity’s impact is minimal.

“In the beginning,” God intended for us to be better and to live in a better world, but sin broke the world and broke us, and now we’re all coping with this disappointing life under the sun and desiring something more. Thankfully, God promises that this world and our present condition are not final. He encourages us to hope for a world and a self that is perfect. We don’t know what that will be like, but isekai grants our imaginations a glimpse of possibilities beyond this world. Depending on isekai alone for hope, apart from Jesus, is not unlike eating a ton of junk food before supper and being unable to enjoy the real meal, but isekai can also be an hors d’oeuvre that whets our appetite for the heavenly banquet to come. To me, reading and watching isekai stories is an act of hope, helping me endure this present world by reminding me that I really do have hope of living in another world as a perfected version of myself.

Im the list anon again and boy do I have more for you but this time I also have some questions as well if your time allows and you are willing to answer of course. First with the other things I loved:

1) the fact that Ron warmed up to Draco so quickly! I genuinely think thats so much in character. Ron is not a distrustful person and as a middle child as they come is very easygoing and would for sure make stupid jokes at Draco

2) The patronus. My god the Patronus. I seriously put the phone down and made a small slow clap during that chapter. At first I was like hmmmm *insert unsure kombucha girl face* because almost all fanfics have him with a dragon patronus and leave it at that (and lets be honest at this point my expectations of you were quite high dont blame me blame your bloody brilliant writing) but then, and I dont know if you did this on purpose or not (I have a feeling you did) but the fact that the dragon was the same (pale white) wounded but still feral dragon that Hermione FREEED (!) from a bank (£££) dungeon, malnourished and used for its nature, surrounded by darkness, wealth and misery!! And it was Hermione who broke its chains!!!!! Is just *chefs fucking kiss* slow clap*

3) the way you describe sex scenes are so natural! Ive never read a fanfic or book that doesnt make me gag a little bit (I am not a fan of smut at all but ill go with it because of a good story) until I read yours. Its so simple but yet intricate and you make the entire act so intriguing and normal and intimate. Bravo.

4) I LOVE SASHA. I love that Theo fell for her head over heels and the way you portrayd her reminded me of a friend of mine who works as a sous-chef in London so I always pictured her when reading it!

5) Dracos inner voice is ON POINT. Like I genuinely think you shoud own the rights to that character now.

6) Ill say it again. I love Ginny. You should also own the rights to her character too.

7) my interest for Quiddich (even when reading the books/wathcing the movies) was on par, if not lower than Hermiones. You managed to get me interested in that too so yes another slow clap to you

7.1) Also such a clever career for Draco!! Made si much sense!

Now to some questions

A) What was the deal with Malfoy referring to Ginny as Weasly and refusing to aknowledge her Potter surname. And why did everyone kept correcting him? It was hilarious granted but I wanted to know whether the reason you included this time and time again had to do wih something deeper? Or was this included as just a funny recurring joke?

B) Why did you choose for Draco to have a “fantasy” to produce a patronus and not for example for him to have had to do that after theyd exchanged “i love yous”. Very interesting angle and i liked that it was sort of a loophole to all the ‘death eaters cant have patronuses’ but quite curious on the thought process

C) Why did you opt for Draco to remove his mark? Do you think that stands as reward for him more or for Hermione? Very smart solution by the way

D) if you have the time- Could you please elaborate a tad more on what the soul-bonding means? Why was it so taboo? At furst hand it seems like a very romantic/amazing thing to do with your partner right?

Lastly- Do you ever itch to make a second part to this? And in the most acceptable case that you dont, I always wondered what you had in mind for them in the future- because of the soul bonding thing, you mentioned that the generational curses will be erased, which means I guess that the Malfoys can have more than one child now, and girls as well. (I cannot believe im asking for this as I am the one to avoid any pregnancy fanfics but) do you imagine them with children and if yes, how many? How do they integrate muggle devices(I know youd agree wit me that Hermione would definitively bring some muggle stuff over!) and which devices would Draco really secretly like?

Pleasewriteasecondpartwhereyouelaborateyourthoughtsonthisthankyou.

Ok rant done. :D

List anon! You’re back with another amazing ask. I’ll do my best!

1.) I like to think Ron matured a lot post-war (not enough to stop making terrible jokes, though.)

2.) Regarding your beautiful analysis of my specific dragon breed for Draco’s patronus: How many points would you like for your Hogwarts house of choice? I will add that according to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Ironbelly’s scales are normally a metallic grey. I will also add that I subscribe more to book canon than movie canon. In the book version of events of the Gringotts escape, Harry breaks the chains and Hermione (with eventual help once the boys catch on) destroys the ceiling so it can have a way out. The partially blind dragon does the rest of the work on its own.

3.) Thank you, that’s very flattering.

4.) Does your friend also get you into fancy restaurants and can they make salted caramel bread pudding???

5.) Thank you, it was one of my favorite aspects of writing this story.

6.) Thank you, she’s so fun to write and flesh out from her book portrayal.

7.) Haha, I felt so validated by that line of dialogue in Cursed Child when Draco tells Harry he wanted to play quidditch professionally, but wasn’t good enough.

Now to some answers:

A.) It’s definitely a recurring joke. It’s up to the reader to interpret Draco’s actions here: is he doing it to be a massive troll? Or is he genuinely not retaining the information of her married name because he considers this fact so unimportant that he does not bother to keep it in his brain? Troll, snob, or both, you can decide!

B.) I’ll address the second part of this first, because it was not intended as a loophole. I 1000% do not understand the “death eaters can’t have patronuses” thing. It makes absolutely no sense. Snape has a Patronus. But beyond that… Umbridge has a Patronus (a cat). If we’re letting that woman have a Patronus, then yeah, I think Draco can cast one. As for the vision that Draco used to conjure it… up to you whether that’s a fantasy or a glimpse of a certain ritual actually working. Draco’s thoughts on the matter: “An image of such striking tangibility that he might have already lived it, or perhaps experienced time in such a way that he lived it now.”

C.) I wanted Draco to have a choice, obviously a recurring theme for him in RN. For my characterization of him, that symbol on his arm causes him nothing but shame and self-loathing (see the end of chapter 36 during his heart-to-heart with Hermione). He’d already exercised almost every known avenue to rid himself of it before Hermione entered his life (he lists these in chapter 44). Hermione already loved him (and has told him so) by the time she’s figured out how to remove it: “I love the man you are today and I will love that man tomorrow, bare forearm or not. I simply wanted you, for once, to have the choice. It’s your body.”

D.) Ooh anon, you are tempting me here. I really hate to be coy, but you might see some future writing on this very topic.

I can at least answer the taboo part: I think soul magic in general (horcruxes, the use of unicorn blood) is quite taboo in the HP universe. As no one knows what happens after death (not even ghosts, Nearly Headless Nick says as much when Harry asks him point-blank in OoTP) I think most magical folk would think the intense ritual (blending magical cores) an unnecessary thing anyway. As Draco explains in chapter 48, since no one actually knows the effects or if it works, it’s considered a bit over-the-top since it’s probably futile anyway. It is also not a Vow with a death component; Narcissa is obviously alive in this story even though Lucius is already dead. I wrote the generational curse protection theory in as a dig at Cursed Child for the way they handled Astoria’s character.

The idea of it I think is romantic, but I will stress it is very dependent upon the intent of the two participants. To quote Draco in chapter 48 again: “To twine one’s soul to another showed a willingness to not only physically tether one’s self during your time here on earth, but to commit to a blending of your magical cores, putting faith in your magic to recognize its bonded counterpart in another life. Should other lives even exist.”

If you re-read Draco’s experience during the bonding ceremony in chapter 51 (starting from this bit: “The cognizance of his own powers never felt sharper, more familiar, but suddenly another power pulsed within to join with his.”) you might find it bears a resemblance to the trajectory of their relationship.

Lastly- I’ve left Draco and Hermione to their wedded bliss. I’ve got nothing planned for them beyond where they are in the final lines of chapter 51. I don’t have that itch to write more into their future because it would feel forced. Draco laid out his two envisioned futures with Hermione in chapter 48 when they discuss having or not having children. They are happy and content in the life they chose together. That’s all I ever wanted for them.

You will see more from this story though. I have an entire series of one-shots and outtakes from the published Remain Nameless timeline that I’ll start posting soon.

Thank you so much list anon! These were fun to answer!

Castle - Henry IV x Reader (The King)

Hail To The King  - but if it wasn’t at all platonic

...? Do the Mendo tag squad even want in on this? I’ll tag ya’ll anyway... @mandy23b​ @happyskywhale​ @wltz-bby​

Author’s Note: I caved. I caved. But also the discord server thread for him had the subject line “Bed Me Your Majesty” So I don’t think you can blame me. ALSO - As this film was pretty much fanficition of fanfiction of what really happened... I’m writing fanficition, of fanfiction, of fanfiction...! 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️  Honestly, it’s literally just artistic licence! 

It’s more a talked about relationship; I didn’t go too detail heavy.

TL;DR: If Shakespeare wrote fanfiction on history, so can I!

Disclaimer: Following The King on plot here / gif not mine / lyrics not mine

Premise: Too many people in this Kingdom have big, big plans - but you just want things to stay as they are. You can’t ask for more than you have, considering for your entire life you’ve never wanted anything else but him.

Words: 4985

Warnings: sexual connotations / mild swearing

______

Sick of all these people talking, sick of all this noise Tired of all these cameras flashing, sick of being poised Now my neck is open wide, begging for a fist around it Already choking on my pride, so there's no use crying about it

Oh, all these minutes passing, sick of feeling used If you wanna break these walls down, you're gonna get bruised Now my neck is open wide, begging for a fist around it Already choking on my pride, so there's no use crying about it

I'm headed straight for the castle They wanna make me their queen And there's an old man sitting on the throne That's saying that I probably shouldn't be so mean I'm headed straight for the castle They've got the kingdom locked up And there's an old man sitting on the throne That's saying I should probably keep my pretty mouth shut Straight for the castle

---

You couldn’t quite believe what you were hearing. Well you could – you supposed your parents had never had anything but blind ambition for you; as their only child. But you thought your father ought to have known better than to push such an agenda. He’d been a King’s Guard before you, and been proud to see you – as his daughter no less! – take the mantle from him as Henry ascended the throne. And it wasn’t like you hadn’t seen combat before that – Henry’s insistence to drag you around the Kingdom had seen you in many a battle. To him there was none more worthy. To your parents, since his wife had died, they clearly saw an opportunity; swapping your armour for dresses and your sword for children. As if he didn’t have six already. You wouldn’t have it. “I am his King’s Guard – forgoodnessake! Do you have any idea how much Mary meant to him – to ME!? I cannot take her place and nor WILL I!” “Y/N, please, he needs a Queen.” It would sound better if they were on their knees begging you, instead your parents’ tone was more coercive. “Henry doesn’t need a queen – and even if he did, the council would never class me as suitable for him!” “There are ways and means of getting what you want.” “What you want!!!” You shook your head, taking a few significant steps back, “I won’t become a pawn in some political manoeuvring for you-!” You shot an accusatory look to your father, “And YOU ought to know better.” “As if he would mind, you’ve known each other nearly your entire lives, you grew up together-” Your hand moved over the hilt of your sword – and half of you wished you were meeting them in amour and not something so casual. A mistake on your part. “Stop. Before you even think another word stop.” You gritted your teeth, “I will not be party to this. I will not allow you to solicit it to him. And both of you should be careful talking about this here! People have been executed for less.” Your mother placed her hand on your father’s shoulder; “You would threaten us, Y/N?” “If I must.” You turned your body defensively, “I’m leaving – and you should too. I will have the guards escort you from the castle.” Then, because you should, you bowed, “Good day.” You supposed what you were really most scared of happening was people finding out that you and the King weren’t just close friends anymore. You’d been interested in him your entire life; and your parents were right, you had grown up together. You knew about as much about Henry as it was possible to know – and a lot you wished you didn’t. A feeling you believed was probably mutual. People were coming in and out of your life constantly – in no small part due to battlefield deaths.  And you were up here in the Castle now. You’d moved around with him for years before the idea of ‘King’ came to mind. And now here he was – but you also knew your place, and it was not as his wife. That thought alone was preposterous; and you would have thought his entire family to forbid it – and he’d been told as such, right around the time you possibly could have fallen in love. You’d both been much younger then. You scoffed, pulling your sword from its sheath as you reached the training ground – about the best way to let off steam right now – it wasn’t ever a fantasy you indulged in. One of those stupid early-20s conversations when Henry asked when the hell you’d give it up and get married – and you’d punch his arm and say ‘Marriage? Me? Really? I thought we knew each other!’ You planted your feet in a solid stance, balancing the blade correctly in your hands, you took a deep breath and cut through the air – before long you were moving in step and sparring with yourself. Your look probably couldn’t have read more angry. It wasn’t just that your parents had suggested it; it was how much you knew such a suggestion would play with your feelings, and they knew too. There was a moment once where you thought you were over him. And then again when you had to be over him. Maybe you’d just conditioned yourself – but there was no better conditioning than loving her too. Mary was his whole world, and she was a literal angel. If there was anyone in this world that could calm him down, and be a good influence, and stand by his side, and be suitable then it was her. You’d met your fair share of women who had wanted to be in her position – but they all had a major problem with you; she never had. Your presence in his life didn’t scare her – and in fact your love for him didn’t either, because she knew that alone would have you keep Henry safe. He was your best friend, and a lot of the time you felt your only friend; with time she became that too – but a couple of years ago Mary had passed away. And your King was now a single man. That had never factored into things for you; suddenly six children didn’t have a mother – and a fairly absent father. King first, father second. That sometimes left you, as King’s Guard, trailing around after 6 growing children. And where at first you’d found them shadowing your every step annoying, and your skills with kids awkward at best – now you loved them as if they were your own. The eldest boys were old enough to begin swordsmanship lessons too – and if you were honest with yourself those points in your week might just have been the ones you looked forward to the most. The problem was, her death had added a new element to your relationship with Henry – and you didn’t know what or whom had started it, yet you did know it was dangerous. An affair? With your King? In your position? The number of men you were surrounded by daily, constantly looking for just such ammunition to throw you to the streets – or worse, were insurmountable. Which almost made it exciting. But you weren’t so sure exactly what it was… he was hurting, and you were a comfort – you supposed. You got to live out your wildest fantasy as a (dangerous) dream come true. Still, you thought to yourself, rather you than anyone else – and constant female companionship kept those you would deem less worthy out of his bed. Before you even started on those trying to find him a suitable second wife. He wasn’t one for having it – and you wouldn’t trust to hope that it had anything to do with you; but that he simply could never marry again after her. Still, your face often said it all when people tried to present their daughters to him. And you were sure the way Henry and yourself glanced to each other sometimes did you no favours in getting in anyone’s good books. That wasn’t something you particularly cared about either. Truth was, you liked where you were, right now. You didn’t want to marry him, you didn’t want to be Queen (for a start a list of conspirators against you would be longer than your arm from the very second Henry slipped a ring onto your finger, if not before), you didn’t want children and you didn’t want to bare him children. If you could help it. That was always an outside possibility – probably about the only thing that that kept you out of his bed as often as you’d quite like to be there. That and knowing your duty came first – not only would pregnancy make what was happening fairly obvious, but it’d lose you your position as King’s Guard – and they’d have to take that from your dead body. The sound of your blade slicing through the air caught you a little off guard as your swings became vicious. Now you were just letting your emotion get the better of you, taking a deep breath you tried to reign it back in; but that only made things worse. Afterall – hadn’t you come here to vent a little? You turned into your next strike, power to your overhead cut. But you struck steel and not air. Henry’s arm didn’t buckle despite the way he was holding the training sword; although you could already tell the quality of yours had put a nick in it. “What did the air ever do to you-!?” You backed up, and inclined your head to him; he was still your King after all. “Nothing. There’s just a lot on my mind.” You kept your eyes to the floor for a moment, and sheathed your sword. “I see you dismissed your parents without so much as a welcome from me.” You raised your eyes to his curiosity, how did he even know they were here? Who had gone ahead and told him? “Yes. For good reason.” “Oh. What could that possibly be?” You folded your arms, confident enough to say it to Henry’s face, “They want to cook up some convoluted plot with the council, which ends with me marrying you.” Not one emotion crossed his features for a number of seconds before he blinked, and then laughed; “I’m sure the court would enjoy hearing such a proposal.” “Do not give them any excuse to come back here and attempt it!” He twisted the steel through his fingers, “Would that be my decision, I cannot stop them from coming to court – and if they would so propose such a thing,” You cut across him; “Very well, but I would like to attest I want no part in it.” “…It wouldn’t exactly be un-agreeable.” He finished. “Henry.” Your look was sharp, “I cannot marry you. This is ridiculous, I don’t know why I even mentioned it.” You covered your eyes for a moment and sighed “Forgive me. It’s just…” He shook his head, “I understand your sentiment. Although with my council perhaps you should speak softer.” But the King looked amused, “I believe you are due a meeting today, are you not?” “That’ll make everything better.” You fell in step with him as you exited the training field; “But yes. We are. I’m sure I’ll have much to report on.” “I’d trust yours over anyone else’s…” That made you roll your eyes, “Then I might ask why you have them around.” “You know very well I don’t have a choice in that.” Though you offered no comment, your smirk probably told him everything. “As long as your mind is sound, your Majesty.” He nudged you, which only made you laugh “My mind? You’re the one that needed to clear her head.” “Indeed. I should check in with the children at some point before the meeting also…” “Yes.” Henry nodded, turning to you again – his mouth opened, but you held your hand up; “Please, I know what you’re thinking. But I cannot be a mother to them – I will not replace Mary. I cannot replace her. It would feel too much like betrayal…” you subtly glanced about to check you were indeed alone as your voice lowered, “Whatever we have, it is not marriage material, and you should not opt to see it as such just because it might get the council off your back. This is me, Henry, they are not my biggest advocates. And besides I would rather your children didn’t hate me for it too-!” “So you will not even consider it.” “NO…” You backed away, prepared to run off to your next engagement, “And neither should you.” But he reached out and caught your wrist before you could, because he could read all over your face that your emotional attachment to the situation was causing your thoughts to run wild; “Then it will never transpire. You should not have to worry about such a thing. Or marriage in general. In truth, you know that I am still grieving her… If what you are really worried about is anyone discovering us, that’s foolish. We’re careful – and you more so than me. Everything will be as it is meant, Y/N. Now…” He let you go, “Please, I wish for you to enjoy the rest of you day – even with your meeting – and we shall discuss this later.” You bowed again; “Yes, your majesty, as soon as my duties for today are done, I shall return to you.” Henry smiled gently, turning away from you to walk in the opposite direction, “See that you do.” Then paused and called you back; “Oh, Y/N.” “Yes?” You immediately paused your jog to twist back to him. “There are a great number of country estates that I could move your parents to. I believe that would alleviate the situation. A barter, if you will. Put a stop to this before it begins. As you may imagine, I would not want this weighing on the mind of my King’s Guard any more than it should.” You nodded, “It… sounds agreeable.” “Then you will not mind me summoning them back?” “No.” “Very well. Then we need not talk of it any longer.” He nodded, and then continued on as if he had never turned back. You smiled shaking your head gently – sometimes he was quite unfathomable. “Thank you!” But Henry held his hand up with a wave – don’t mention it. ***

There was once a time, when he was a little younger, before marriage and children, and becoming a King, when even you allowed the thought of you and he becoming more than fantasy to linger around. Yet even after those things, when he actually spent time on a physical battlefield, rather than the political battlefield he now found himself on, it wasn’t a feeling easily shaken; maybe kicked to the side but never truly gone. The problem was the line between friends and almost/never lovers had always been blurred. Back when you were kids you didn’t know what you were feeling. He was your best friend, sometimes he was the brother you never had, sometimes all Henry was to you was your King – and you the one charged with protecting his life. Maybe he was all of them – but even being intimate with him now you never felt that it was meant to be. Quite the opposite, and yet it was somehow allowed to happen… But sometimes all you could think about was praying together before these battles; hands entwined in prayer in front of you, eyes closed, foreheads touching – whispering well recited Latin. in nomine patris et fili et spiritus sancti And the apparent scandal, or not scandal, of sharing his tent. That was really to make sure he slept – you were one for staying awake and listening to his breathing. Still were. But you didn’t really trust anyone – his life was more important to you than anything else. But you’d never really told Henry that, outside of making it sound like a duty-bound sentence. As far as sleeping with him went, the closest you thought you’d ever get was on the hard ground next to his makeshift camp bed. When his hand would dangle over the edge and you’d have to resist the temptation to reach out and hold it. When your light sleep was burdened with strange vivid dreams, and you were always anxious that you’d wake with his name on your lips. You could probably both brush that off – but the embarrassment of why would have always weighed on your mind.

But he knew. He must have. For Henry to even contemplate ruining what you had by making it more than it ever had to be. He was alone and hurting, and you had always loved him. You had a feeling he loved you too; perhaps not in the same way – perhaps he didn’t feel the desperate yearning you always did. The need to repress everything on something that would never work. But he did. Henry must have; that first kiss wasn’t an accident – and maybe you should have pushed him back and told him that it wasn’t proper and never would be. But you were weak, and you craved him and you were desperate to feel his lips on yours once. Just once! So you didn’t, and with his hands in your hair the words out of your mouth would never have been stop. Henry never used his position over you – but you knew that it wouldn’t even matter if he did.

“Bed me your majesty” was never a phrase that spilled from your lips, but you knew you felt it. You knew you stared at him sometimes and thought it – and you thought Henry probably knew that too, because sometimes all it took was the way you looked at him. Maybe you should whisper it to him, when you felt so fragile and you trembled under his fingertips. It was at least exciting to think of the way he’d react to it. Not another soul in this castle had ever seen you look so delicate as he now had, and that was something Henry liked to keep to himself with a little smirk. But, obviously, he’d be wrong to think that would be normal – you’d always been the very definition of strong woman. Better believe that extended to every facet of your life. Apparently, that was even more exciting.

**

The morning light wasn’t pale when you awoke. That already meant problems; usually you’d slip out of his room as soon as you could. Not for want of actually wanting to leave him, but needing to. Safety first. You were greeted by the brush of his lips to your forehead and without any walls up, you allowed yourself to smile. You didn’t want to say words yet, just lay together like this. Everything was calm this morning – the only sounds from outside, bird calls and dogs barking. And you almost allowed yourself to fall back to sleep – before what you knew would happen if you were found here panicked you, and you sat up. “Shit, I really should go.” He reached out for your wrist and you found yourself immediately dragged back into the sheets. Henry wound his arms around you, pressing kisses into your skin; shoulders, neck, down your arms and to your hands. You couldn’t help but giggle gently to yourself – but you also knew better. “No no…” You rolled over, lips to his, “I’ll be late for the pre-council meeting… And the servants will be along to bathe and dress you soon, I cannot be here!” His sigh was grumpy as he opened his crystal blue eyes; narrowing them against the harsh light – “Damn your meetings.” “Occasionally I would like to…” You breathed, kissing him again, before grazing your lips to his shoulder and stumbling from the bed, pulling on your breeches, boots and shirt – tightening the cord across your chest, and threading your sword belt around yourself. Doing your best to neaten your hair before pulling it back and off your face once more. “I will see you later, at your side, when we all assemble to hear from the Archbishop.” Henry groaned; “Again!?” “I’m afraid so!” You grinned, moving back around the bed to kiss his face once more – to which he chuckled. “Go. Leave me!” “I’m afraid I must, my King. Until later!” Although you didn’t miss his call of; “You look so beautiful when you’re flushed!” and you could have cursed him right then. By the time you reached the chambers in which the council gathered, they’d already started and you were red for two reasons. It earned many questions, that you could quickly dismiss. After all, you had run all the way here. And you were a swords master – what did they think you did all day, stand around in ceremony like they did? You had to practice if you were to defend him properly! That at least shut the majority of them up, leaving a few suspicious.  It hardly mattered to you though; perhaps they knew, perhaps they’d guessed, you were the only female here and certainly the only one that Henry kept consistent companionship with… But you’d been around long enough to know everyone’s secrets – heck, their secrets had secrets. At least you only had one. Although it was a big one. Still you sat around in armour on occasion, and a sword constantly. So you’d like to see anyone try to say anything about it. They might just find the blade at your hip run through them. You were capable, and they already knew you liked to threaten… If they came for you you highly doubted they would be kept around, or even alive if Henry so happened to get word (he would, you’d make sure).

 **

If you’d ever thought there would be something to worry about, you were there now. His children were grown up, and a few of them off and married themselves. Thomas was on the council, and damn good at it – you were always impressed by his level headed judgements. Hal… wasn’t, but had been. And he was off wherever he wanted to be – you hoped he was just being a young, reckless and rebellious teenager. Half of you wasn’t sure it’d wear off; it certainly didn’t stand him in his father’s good graces. Hal became Henry’s new favourite thing to grumble about. There were times that you’d dragged him back to the castle kicking and screaming just keep the King quiet. That didn’t earn you a whole lot of love – but Hal at least still respected you, and that helped you get between them and cool them both off when necessary. Henry’s health was waning – it had been for a while, and he’d been through just about every major illness you could get, but had survived. You wanted to be around him now to look after him, as much as you did anything else. That instinct made you a lot sharper, he didn’t have a lot of time to waste and there were plenty in the Kingdom who wanted to waste it. Standing beside him and giving them filthy looks, or scoffing, or rolling your eyes; sometimes just unable to keep harsh statements from coming off your lips. And you were sarcastic too, especially to the council. Truth was you’d had enough of the bullshit and deceit. The decent thing would be for them to stop manipulating Henry and his thought process; people thought he was out of his mind at the best of times, the council only served to make it worse and pretend that it was all your King’s doing. You saw right through all that in various stages of contempt. Thomas and yourself were walking the corridors of the castle after one such meeting and as the sweetest of Henry’s children (and perhaps the most apt), often chided you for the kind of comments that you made to unsuspecting subjects, or the council. (Though you were sure he might understand why you’d make them to the council.)   “Oh, Y/N, why are you so cruel and mean and sarcastic all the time? It doesn’t make you friends!” You would only ever laugh though; “Thomas you’re so sweet-! And I don’t do it to make friends, I do it to protect your father, especially NOW!” “Well, I certainly worry about it!” “No need. I’ve been doing it a long time.” In fact only his entire life. “I’m not sure that excuses doing it worse. I’m concerned for your wellbeing.” You sighed softly and smiled; “Okay… If it makes you feel better, I will tone it down.” “Thank you. It would.” “…Only for you mind.” You raised your finger to let him know you were deadly serious about that. “Well. I’m sure others would also appreciate it.” But he beamed, and you thought that maybe for that alone, you could probably tone down your scoffing at everyone else’s ludicrous decisions on what to do next. Though, you were sure on occasion Henry and yourself would still catch each other’s eyes thinking exactly the same thing. Idiots-! So you couldn’t help but smile back at that; “I’m proud of you, you know? You’ve come so far in such a short space of time, you’re responsible, you’re not yet that old. You’ll go far Thomas; I hope you realise that... and I hope you’re proud of yourself.” He acted bashful for a second; “Oh it’s… nothing really. Not like you.” “Oh yeah?” You leant back slightly and folded your arms, “And what, pray tell, is the difference between you and I?” “You’re on the council… and you have seen and won many a battle. You’re… as close to my father as it’s possible to get.” You inclined your head; “My prowess on the battlefield is really the only reason I am here…” You touched the hilt of your sword, “I am only on the council because I am King’s Guard, I have very little input into everything, and…” you paused, knowing for fact that Henry had always been an arms-length sort of father, “…I’ve known your father since we were both very small. He trusts you as much as he does me – I know this to be true.” And you did, the King often talked of how proud he was of Thomas. You thought it was an all-around good sign, but how exactly you got him to show the affection that came with it, you weren’t sure yet. “Thank you…” He also paused for a second, before hugging you, it was a warm, tight hug. And considering the very nearly professional context of your attire, it caught you off guard. You stiffened for a minute, eyes wide, before returning his arms around you. You tried desperately hard not to be overcome with emotion, but you almost welled up; remembering vividly back to when the best Thomas could do was cling to your leg, begging you not to go to a meeting that he himself was now avidly involved with. He let you go, still smiling, “I bid you good day, Y/N.” “And you, Thomas.” As you would for his father, you bowed gently to the Prince and watched him take off down the corridor, smile still on your face. You only turned around when you heard the clearing of a throat behind you. Standing leaning against an entrance way to a higher corridor, was Henry himself. You had no doubt he’d probably heard that entire exchange. But you couldn’t help but smile at him too, and jogged up the set of steps to join him. “Are you waiting for me?” “I was watching the world go by, but I heard the two of you and decided I best collect you, after this morning’s escapades.” Henry gave you a hard look and you hoped he might be joking. “Thomas does a good job of chiding me himself, I don’t need it from you also.” “Ah, but I am the King. And therefore…” You leant against the other side of the doorframe with a scoff, indicating he wasn’t about to get away with saying such a thing. From here you could see through the high windows into the gardens below, and as Thomas crossed the grass several of the dogs chased around his feet. Henry watched your smile grow with a shake of his head; “He’s probably right. You should tone it down.” “Oh? Are you only saying that now because you’re older and wiser? Because there was a time when you used to not only agree with me, Sire, but laugh along.” “Yes, well. Older – perhaps wiser. But I feel that I should probably mention it.” “Save your words, I’ve been like this for years – Best believe I wouldn’t stop now. Force of habit.” “Well if you’re around, and I no longer am, you may well have to change.” “I believe my reactions save you from endless boredom. And, hush - don’t say things like that… How am I supposed to live my life without you!?” It was something you considered, obviously, but never ever wanted mentioned. “I rather think you’ll manage quite well… They depend on you, Y/N. They may not say it but they do.” “Whom? Your council? Your sons?” “The Kingdom.” “Oh.” You hesitated, with a blush, “I… see.” Although currently you weren’t sure how much the Kingdom would really be thanking you for that – considering their views on their King. Afterall, it was not just your job to defend him – you would lay down your life for Henry no matter who he was. He leant across the about foot gap between you and held your chin between his fingers before brushing his lips to yours. You blinked a couple of times; “That was… unprofessional. Especially out here!” “Don’t you ever get tired of worrying?” “No. Especially not now they’re so grown up.” Still, you stole a second kiss before he pulled away. He looked back to the castle grounds; “Thought that would make it more exciting.” “Well, if I would be so bold as to suggest something to entice you away from your duties today, my King.” Henry turned to you, eyebrow raised – but his smile turned into a gentle smirk, and instead of asking what you meant he simply said; “Entice me.” You smirked, a little more seductive, as you claimed that gap back, face so close to his you could feel his breath, and body almost touching his you could hear his heartbeat. Your eyes flicked slowly from his lips to his eyes and back. And for once you decided to brave the sentence you’d been dying to say for a long time. “Bed me, your majesty.”

---

Thank you for reading!! 💙🙏💜

Dany considering, threatening to take and/or taking violent measures

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

*Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is no guarantee that the effort was perfectly executed, but I did my best.

Also, people could interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

I listed the passages back to front because I felt doing so highlighted Dany's evolution better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

It's just time that we acknowledge that Daenerys' behavior over the past few seasons has been more of someone with an overinflated ego and an limitless sense of entitlement than that of a ruler with the well-being of their subjects and land in mind. If I can really spill the tea, she's acting a lot like the Mad King as well as Cersei, who's currently acting all type of the fool on the Iron Throne. Violence may be a necessary evil, but like...do we really have to burn everybody alive? Is that really what we want for Westeros? (x)

~

[S]he’d rather slaughter her enemies than use them to her advantage. Sure, sometimes you need a good slaughter, but you have to be willing to try diplomacy, too. (x)

~

The issue isn’t whether it’s better if the slave cities remained slave cities — it goes without saying, that’s reprehensible. But her most striking moments ruling Meereen are quite sadistic in nature. In season four, when the Meereenese crucify slave children as a threat to Dany, she responds by crucifying an equal number of noblemen once she takes over the city, despite Ser Barristan’s pleas for mercy; “I will answer injustice with justice,” she coolly responds. Revisiting that scene, it’s pretty disturbing. What starts out as a moment of joyous liberation — and the slaves chanting “Mhysa!” her way — ends with the anguished screams of the newly crucified Meereenese across the city.

Fast forward to season five, when Ser Barristan is unceremoniously murdered in an alley by the Sons of the Harpy, Dany rounds up Meereen’s elected leaders to interrogate them and find out who among them could be a secret Harpy. To establish she’s not fucking around, she picks one of them at random to be burned alive and subsequently eaten by two of her dragons. She’s not just content with her decision; despite not getting any answers, Dany’s entranced by the sight of her dragons and the burning fire.

Dany’s fascination with fire — not to mention her nonchalant attitude toward violence — bears an uncomfortable resemblance to her father, the “Mad King” Aerys Targaryen. (x)

Are Dany's acts of violence supposed to make you wonder if she's going to "burn everybody alive"? Are her acts of violence "quite sadistic in nature"? Does she feel "entranced by the sight of her dragons and the burning fire" and has a "fascination with fire"?

I would argue GRRM has written a character who only chooses violence either for humanitarian reasons or for political goals (which are often intertwined), and even in the latter case, she seeks to avoid collateral damage (ASOS Dany III, ASOS Dany IV). She's not immune to acting on vengeance, but so far it's always been motivated by the injustices perpetrated upon others (ASOS Dany VI, ADWD Dany II); you can argue that "harsh justice", as she puts it, is not justice, but you can't argue that she's doing it for them. The one exception to this is her burning of Mirri Maz Duur, but even then, it is not because she is "sadistic", she explicitly recognizes the futility of vengeance. She kills her because she needs her life for the ritual that culminates with the birth of the dragons. You could argue Mirri didn't deserve it, but Mirri also killed her child and left Drogo in a comatose state. And she lives in a society that largely normalizes violence. Dany's entire characterization must be taken into consideration.

With that in mind, there is no textual evidence to suggest she will decide to burn every noncombatant she can find because she was unhappy about their reception. None. She fights to be queen because she wants to protect the ones who can't protect themselves and it is her duty towards her lost family. She carries unbearable guilt over her mistakes (or ramifications that had nothing to do with her). She treats her achievements and inheritances as a duty rather than as something that elevates her beyond others. She wants a home for herself and peace for everyone.

I should also add that the list about the moments showcasing her empathy and compassion is more than four times bigger than this one. One can argue I'm being biased, but it says something that passages showing instances when she does take violent measures would not fill a whole list. I also had to look for moments when she considers or threatens to in order to fill this one. And even then, her positive aspects greatly surpass her "negative" ones. Why would GRRM focus so much more on her sympathy towards others rather than on her ruthlessness? Must be because Daenerys Targaryen is ultimately meant to be a sympathetic character who is not supposed to turn into a mass murderer of her own volition, ever.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys VIII

The hall rang to Yunkish laughter, Yunkish songs, Yunkish prayers. Dancers danced; musicians played queer tunes with bells and squeaks and bladders; singers sang ancient love songs in the incomprehensible tongue of Old Ghis. Wine flowed—not the thin pale stuff of Slaver’s Bay but rich sweet vintages from the Arbor and dreamwine from Qarth, flavored with strange spices. The Yunkai’i had come at King Hizdahr’s invitation, to sign the peace and witness the rebirth of Meereen’s far-famed fighting pits. Her noble husband had opened the Great Pyramid to fete them.

I hate this, thought Daenerys Targaryen. How did this happen, that I am drinking and smiling with men I’d sooner flay?

~

“You don’t never want to trust a sellsword, m’lady.”

“I have learned that much. One day I must be sure to thank you for the lesson.”

~

“Is there some man in the Second Sons who might be persuaded to … remove … Brown Ben?”

“As Daario Naharis once removed the other captains of the Stormcrows?” The old knight looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps. I would not know, Your Grace.”

No, she thought, you are too honest and too honorable. “If not, the Yunkai’i employ three other companies.”

“Rogues and cutthroats, scum of a hundred battlefields,” Ser Barristan warned, “with captains full as treacherous as Plumm.”

“I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but it seems to me that we want them to be treacherous. Once, you’ll recall, I convinced the Second Sons and Stormcrows to join us.”

“If Your Grace wishes a privy word with Gylo Rhegan or the Tattered Prince, I could bring them up to your apartments.”

“This is not the time. Too many eyes, too many ears. Their absence would be noted even if you could separate them discreetly from the Yunkai’i. We must find some quieter way of reaching out to them … not tonight, but soon.”

“As you command. Though I fear this is not a task for which I am well suited. In King’s Landing work of this sort was left to Lord Littlefinger or the Spider. We old knights are simple men, only good for fighting.” He patted his sword hilt.

“Our prisoners,” suggested Dany. “The Westerosi who came over from the Windblown with the three Dornishmen. We still have them in cells, do we not? Use them.”

“Free them, you mean? Is that wise? They were sent here to worm their way into your trust, so they might betray Your Grace at the first chance.”

“Then they failed. I do not trust them. I will never trust them.” If truth be told, Dany was forgetting how to trust. “We can still use them. One was a woman. Meris. Send her back, as a … a gesture of my regard. If their captain is a clever man, he will understand.”

“The woman is the worst of all.”

“All the better.” Dany considered a moment. “We should sound out the Long Lances too. And the Company of the Cat.”

“Bloodbeard.” Ser Barristan’s frown deepened. “If it please Your Grace, we want no part of him. Your Grace is too young to remember the Ninepenny Kings, but this Bloodbeard is cut from the same savage cloth. There is no honor in him, only hunger … for gold, for glory, for blood.”

“You know more of such men than me, ser.” If Bloodbeard might be truly the most dishonorable and greedy of the sellswords, he might be the easiest to sway, but she was loath to go against Ser Barristan’s counsel in such matters. “Do as you think best. But do it soon. If Hizdahr’s peace should break, I want to be ready. I do not trust the slavers.” I do not trust my husband. “They will turn on us at the first sign of weakness.”

“The Yunkai’i grow weaker as well. The bloody flux has taken hold amongst the Tolosi, it is said, and spread across the river to the third Ghiscari legion.”

The pale mare. Daenerys sighed. Quaithe warned me of the pale mare’s coming. She told me of the Dornish prince as well, the sun’s son. She told me much and more, but all in riddles. “I cannot rely on plague to save me from my enemies. Set Pretty Meris free. At once.”

ADWD Daenerys VI

“If we should wed by Westerosi rites …”

“The gods of Ghis would deem it no true union.” Galazza Galare’s face was hidden behind a veil of green silk. Only her eyes showed, green and wise and sad. “In the eyes of the city you would be the noble Hizdahr’s concubine, not his lawful wedded wife. Your children would be bastards. Your Worship must marry Hizdahr in the Temple of the Graces, with all the nobility of Meereen on hand to bear witness to your union.”

Get the heads of all the noble houses out of their pyramids on some pretext, Daario had said. The dragon’s words are fire and blood. Dany pushed the thought aside. It was not worthy of her. “As you wish,” she sighed.

~

Dany filled his wine cup again, wanting nothing so much as to pour the flagon over his head and drown his complacent smile.

~

She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now.

ADWD Daenerys IV

“The Shavepate has ways of finding the truth.”

“I do not doubt that Skahaz would soon have me confessing. A day with him, and I will be one of the Harpy’s Sons. Two days, and I will be the Harpy. Three, and it will turn out I slew your father too, back in the Sunset Kingdoms when I was yet a boy. Then he will impale me on a stake and you can watch me die … but afterward the killings will go on.”

ADWD Daenerys III

“The Wise Masters should follow their example. I spared Yunkai before, but I will not make that mistake again. If they should dare attack me, this time I shall raze their Yellow City to the ground.”

~

“Have you forgotten? I have dragons.” [...]

“My dragons have grown, my shoulders have not. They range far afield, hunting.” Hazzea, forgive me. She wondered how much Xaro knew, what whispers he had heard. “Ask the Good Masters of Astapor about my dragons if you doubt them.” I saw a slaver’s eyes melt and go running down his cheeks.

~

Westeros. Home. But if she left, what would happen to her city? Meereen was never your city, her brother’s voice seemed to whisper. Your cities are across the sea. Your Seven Kingdoms, where your enemies await you. You were born to serve them blood and fire.

~

“Xaro Xhoan Daxos does not threaten. He promises.”

Her sadness turned to fury. “And I promise you that if you are not gone before the sun comes up, we will learn how well a liar’s tears can quench dragonfire. Leave me, Xaro. Quickly.”

ADWD Daenerys II

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.”

“I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.”

“Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly.

~

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons. But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain. And who would ever dare to love a dragon?

~

She sniffed suspiciously at Reznak mo Reznak. I could command the Shavepate to arrest him and put him to the question. Would that forestall the prophecy? Or would some other betrayer take his place?

ADWD Daenerys I

Dany said a silent prayer that somewhere one of the Harpy’s Sons was dying even now, clutching at his belly and writhing in pain.

~

Daenerys pushed her hair back. “Find these cowards for me. Find them, so that I might teach the Harpy’s Sons what it means to wake the dragon.”

~

She had not forgotten the slave children the Great Masters had nailed up along the road from Yunkai. They had numbered one hundred sixty-three, a child every mile, nailed to mileposts with one arm outstretched to point her way. After Meereen had fallen, Dany had nailed up a like number of Great Masters. Swarms of flies had attended their slow dying, and the stench had lingered long in the plaza. Yet some days she feared that she had not gone far enough. These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who resisted her at every turn.

~

“...Women do not forget. Women do not forgive.”

No, Dany thought, and the Usurper’s dogs will learn that, when I return to Westeros.

~

There were times when Dany wondered if that razor might not be better saved for Reznak’s throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

“I want your leaders,” Dany told them. “Give them up, and the rest of you shall be spared.”

“How many?” one old woman had asked, sobbing. “How many must you have to spare us?”

“One hundred and sixty-three,” she answered.

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood ...

Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.

~

Dany remembered the horror she had felt when she had seen the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor. I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice.

~

“Do not ever presume to touch me again, or to speak my name. You have until dawn to collect your things and leave this city. If you’re found in Meereen past break of day, I will have Strong Belwas twist your head off. I will. Believe that.”

ASOS Daenerys V

Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. [...] “I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

ASOS Daenerys IV

“I say, you are mad.”

“Am I?” Dany shrugged, and said, “Dracarys.”

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan’s tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. Golden marks spilled across the carpets as the envoy stumbled over the chest, shouting curses and beating at his arm until Whitebeard flung a flagon of water over him to douse the flames. “You swore I should have safe conduct! “ the Yunkish envoy wailed.

“Do all the Yunkai’i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one ... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss.”

ASOS Daenerys III

“He will not come,” Kraznys said.

“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. “Dracarys.”

The black dragon spread his wings and roared.

[...] “Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air ... and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire.

ASOS Daenerys I

[“]The warlocks said the second treason would be for gold. What does Illyrio Mopatis love more than gold?”

“His skin.” Across the cabin Drogon stirred restlessly, steam rising from his snout. “Mirri Maz Duur betrayed me. I burned her for it.”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys III

“I mean to sail to Westeros, and drink the wine of vengeance from the skull of the Usurper.”

[...] “Will nothing turn you from this madness?”

“Nothing,” she said, wishing she was as certain as she sounded.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

“I am tired of the maegi’s braying,” Dany told Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after that the godswife kept silent.

~

As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur watching her. “You are mad,” the godswife said hoarsely.

“Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” Dany asked. “Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the pyre.”

“To the ... my queen, no, hear me ...”

“Do as I say.” Still he hesitated, until her anger flared. “You swore to obey me, whatever might come. Rakharo, help him.”

[...] “I thank you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you have taught me.”

“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing.

“I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only death can pay for life.”

AGOT Daenerys IX

“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.

“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.”

“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo.


If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”

The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,” the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”

She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”

~

Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and bind her hand and foot, but the maegi smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany could have her head off ... yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?

AGOT Daenerys VIII

“You do not command me, Khaleesi,” Qotho said.

“Find Mirri Maz Duur,” she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves. “Bring her to me, with her chest.”

Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. “The maegi.” He spat. “This I will not do.”

“You will,” Dany said, “or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me.”

~

Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. “He dies,” she whispered.

Dany slapped her. “The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who mounts the world. His hair has never been cut. He still wears the bells his father gave him.”

“Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “he fell from his horse.”

Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them.

~

Only a horse, Dany thought. If she could buy Drogo’s life with the death of a horse, she would pay a thousand times over.

~

She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within. “Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.”

AGOT Daenerys VII

“I will not have her harmed,” Dany said. “I claim her. Do as I command you, or Khal Drogo will know the reason why.”

AGOT Daenerys VI

“You will drink,” Dany said, cold as ice. “Empty the cup, or I will tell them to hold you down while Ser Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat.”

~

His khalasar left Vaes Dothrak two days later, striking south and west across the plains. Khal Drogo led them on his great red stallion, with Daenerys beside him on her silver. The wineseller hurried behind them, naked, on foot, chained at throat and wrists. His chains were fastened to the halter of Dany’s silver. As she rode, he ran after her, barefoot and stumbling. No harm would come to him ... so long as he kept up.

AGOT Daenerys IV

“I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”

Beautiful Disaster: Chapter 5 (Pynch Soulmate AU)

Alrighty my loves, this chapter has been a labor of love from the beginning. As you continue reading you will see art pieces and each is correlated with a song (those will be at the end), and references yet again will be made to the EMFS playlist (Ronan’s rehab playlist- I’ve actually made it on spotify! you can find it here)

As usual you can find this story on Ao3 @ glam_reaper 2 if you’re interested <3

TW: Mention of suicide attempt, a panic attack though not super descriptive, cannon typical language.

Iv.

You,

I made a friend last week.

I know for most people that wouldn’t be a big deal, but I assume by now You understand what that means for someone like me. I guess “friend” may be a generous term? I don’t know if we are there yet, Blue definitely disagrees with him “on principle.” 

You see, President Cellphone as she calls him, or Richard Campbell Gansey III (I know, what a douchey fucking name) is all boat shoes and privledge and perfect teeth. Gansey isn’t someone I’d normally associate with mind you, Henry kind of met my quota for rich extroverts in the inner circle, and yet…

So, here’s the story. I’m writing my last letter right? And I was so fucking lost. I decided to walk home from Nino’s- I thought maybe it would help me settle. And there, right around the corner is this fucking ‘73 camero. It should have been beautiful, really.. A classic like that? It’s a dream to look at. Only this fucking thing is the UGLIEST color of candy orange you could ever imagine… And it’s blowing smoke all over the damn place. I was honestly going to leave boat-shoes to call his daddy or mechanic or what have you, but he looked so confused. I offered to help him out and was able to get it running long enough to get to Boyd’s.

I expected him to just drop off “The Pig” (the car) like any normal person and come back for it, only I apparently made “quite the impression.”

Gansey ended up staying with me, prattling on about his Masters History program and some welsh king the ENTIRE time I worked on the damn car. At first I was tuning him out, but without realizing it I became completely entranced by the whole story. I’ve never seen such passion for anything, and I have VERY spirited friends.

He has one of those voices you know? The kind that can stop a room, raise an army, lead a nation. The kind that demands to be heard without ever having to raise itself.

That’s Gansey though.

I think he’ll be good for me, I don’t think he’d give me much of a choice in the matter though to be honest. He kind of adopted me this week? That should bother me and yet, being around him is just… It’s being included. It’s a sense of purpose.

I think he needs it too, he doesn’t seem to talk about negative things but you can tell, he’s haunted by something. That’s what solidified it for me really. He may be a senator’s son but he’s seen some shit. 

I wish you could have met him, I wonder if you would have been as intrigued by him as I find myself. 

Blue is being a total idiot about him, but I’m about 82% sure it’s because she is into him. I know for sure the feeling is mutual. It took Gans approximately 15 minutes after meeting Blue to ask me for her life story, offend her beyond measure, and then haul ass out of Nino’s. It was the first time I’d seriously laughed in so long. Have you ever been second-hand embarrassed for someone? It was that. 

I’m going to wrap this up now though, I need to head to Nino’s for my shift, Blue’s working so of course Gans is stopping by. He said he’s bringing one of his best friends with him, some dude named Noah. Apparently he’s pretty cool, so I’m moderately less apprehensive. He said he wished he could bring his other best friend/ his and Noah’s third roommate but the guy is staying with family for a few months or something. Idk? He doesn’t talk about the other roommate much. I honestly don’t even think he’s ever said his name. Who gives a shit though, I can barely handle one new friend, let alone a 3-pack of Ganseys. Good God… I hope Noah isn’t another Gansey…. Fuck.

Welp.

Here goes nothing.

*****

It started with a not-so-subtle idea from the esteemed Dr. Allen. “Show me what happened.” Ronan was never great with words before all this, and since… When he spoke it was usually a litany of curse words. So Dr. Allen had suggested art. In the weeks since his entombment in this fine rehabilitation center, Ronan had kind of already been doing what he was being asked to do now. Though, he didn’t mention it to Allen. He’d spent countless hours sketching his life, the whole thing, in snapshots inside that beautiful leather sketchbook Gansey had given him. 

He started at the beginning, pictures of Aurora and his brothers, the Barns, his father playing guitar by the fire. He drew their family vacations, the cows he used to sneak out and sleep beside when he was a child, the feeling of winning the Tennis State Championship when he was 15. He drew the bad things too, his nightmares, his drug-trips, that old stained couch in the basement of Kavinsky’s house. He put every piece of himself, all 22 years of memories down in that book, woven together with song lyrics in the margins. 

So when Dr. Allen asked him to look specifically to his addiction and create, he didn’t see a problem. He needed to return to school with a series anyways, Declan had called to inform him that strings had been pulled to allow him to finish his final semester at Georgetown, but he needed to walk in with something to show at the January exhibition. Two birds, and all that.

He settled on 7 pieces, each done in oils on canvas, each accompanied by a song. 7 moments in the life of his battle with addiction, from the beginning to now. With each stroke of his brush he felt infinesmally lighter, pouring his grief into the images before him. 

It started with “The Fall.” His father’s murder in reds and greys; fracturing lines and deep shadows. He mixed his paints with tears and used his heart to drag color across the canvas. For the first time in years, Ronan allowed the memory to consume him. He’d re-lived it plenty of times in his nightmares, but this was different. His hands shook, jagged strokes of anger and confusion bleeding through. He painted the brief moment, the final moment, when his world was whole before his teenage mind finally realized what it was he was looking at. His last free breath. And he painted his screams, the cacophony of pain, endlessly mixing with sirens until his vocal chords gave out. 

He drowned the canvas in un-kept promises and hung it out to dry with childhood dreams.

Then came “Chasing the Void.” It was a story told in stark lighting. High beams on a backroad, swirling smoke and broken bottles. It was white glasses and white-powder lines on shark-nosed hood. It was going 115mph, bones rattling with the beat of the bass in his sound system. Ronan painted a black tattoo, used the blood on his knuckles to tint bloodshot eyes. His brush moved with his mother’s disappointment and his brother’s anger. Whimsical lines and Gansey’s head shaking when he found Ronan passed out yet again. He painted the highs and lows when sobriety reminded him that he hated the face that stared back at him in the mirror. 

Each new piece he added to the collection was brought to Dr. Allen’s office. Together they worked through each memory associated with the piece and slowly Ronan felt the weight on his chest lighten. 

Gansey visited every Monday and Friday like clockwork. He kept Ronan apprised to all the goings on of Monmouth and updates on Matthew and Declan. Ronan never asked for them, but he appreciated it regardless. His current obsession though seemed to be a new friend, Adam something. He had been going on for 30 minutes now about how this man single-handedly raised the Pig from the dead. Ronan tuned out most of the conversation, but nodded at what he assumed were appropriate moments while sketching.

“Ronan, are you even paying attention?” Gansey asked, irritation only slightly evident.

“Mmm?” Ronan hummed. “For sure. Pig. Smoke. Some new guy.”

“Essentially. I was saying that Noah and I are heading to his second job, the man works 2 jobs and is getting a masters can you believe it? Anyways Nino’s, so Noah can finally meet him and Blue. Have I mentioned her yet?” 

Blue? He thought. Who the fuck names their kid Blue. “Once or twice.”

“Well they both work this afternoon, so I assume we’ll just hang there until they get off. Then maybe grab a bite. I wish you could come, I’m sure you’d get along nicely with Adam.” Gansey said, choosing to ignore the previous sarcasm and barrell on. Excelsior. 

“Doubt it.” Guy sounds like a douche.

“On that note, thank you for another lovely visit. I’ll see you Monday, Ronan.” Gansey gathered his coat and made his way to the door with a final wave.

Ronan waved back with a single finger and a saccharine “Bye, Dick.” Then shoved his Airpods back into his ears and lost himself in the EMFS playlist.

*****

As Adam gathered the tub of dirty dishes from above the trash and made his way back to wash them, he was lost in thought. These last two weeks, recent events, had been so much and yet he strangely was beginning to feel some semblance of peace. He knew that Blue had wanted him to write letters to help him cope. If he was admitting to it helping, he also needed to be honest with himself in noting that it may have been hurting just as much. He was falling in love with a ghost. A figment of his imagination that he could tell his every secret too, someone who listened without judgment; Someone who never asked more of him than he could handle. It wasn’t healthy, wasn’t what Blue had intended, of that he was sure. But, if it brought him peace and allowed him to sleep without seeing cold, dead eyes, then what was the harm?

He rinsed the mugs and plates loading them efficiently into the dishwasher, and dried his hands. As he moved to toss the towel into the bin, he heard the bell chime above the cafe door. He made his way slowly to the front, knowing that Blue was currently handling the register meant that he didn’t need to rush. On his way down the hallway he stopped to straighten a missing cat flier on the community bulletin board, taking a moment to snap a picture of the cat in question so he could be on the lookout, then continued toward the front; eyes glued to his phone.

He rounded the corner towards the coffee bar to the tune of laughter, it seemed Gansey had arrived. His eyes found Blue first. For all her insistance that she loathed the man in question, she was positively glowing, head tossed back in a hearty laugh. Lost in the bubble of charm Gansey operated in. 

“-And so I asked him, mind you I’ve had a lot to drink at this point, ‘Hey senator, why do you fucking hate poor peo-‘ Oh! Adam” Ganseys story of embarrassing his mother at one of her Republican fundraisers interrupted, as he caught sight of Adam sliding behind the bar.

“Hey Gans,” He smiled. 

“My apologies, this is Noah.” Gansey stepped to the side to reveal the man in question, and Adam’s breath stopped. 

There, eyes blue and wide with shock, mouth agape stood the man from the alley. The one whose scream still haunted Adam in the dark, solitary hours of sleep. The one that began his every nightmare of that night.

He was different now, tears weren’t pouring from his eyes to dance across the plains of his smudgey face. His blonde hair free of blood was slightly tousled, and his clothes were clean, albeit a little disheveled. 

“No,” the word was a broken noise, barely a word at all, closer to a sob. Gansey and Blue looked frantically between the two for what seemed like an eternity before Noah spoke.

“It’s you…” 

“Who? Noah, you know Adam?” Gansey’s voice was quietly confused.

Adam began to shake his head slowly, increasing with speed as his breath finally returned to him; Erratic and wild. Crocodile tears blurred his vision, and he finally croaked a simple question, “What… What was his name?”

“Ronan.”

“Oh, god” Blue breathed. 

Adam ran, desperately fleeing the scene and chorus of his name called from the front. Ronan, his name was Ronan. Adam couldn’t breathe. His pain fresh, an un-mendable wound reopened now that he had a name to grieve. He paused, only long enough to grab his messenger bag from the back, and took the alley door. 

Then he ran, faster than he’d ever remembered running. Tears turning the colors of the world around him to a haunting watercolor. His breath came in painful stabs, each beat of his bleeding heart an excruciating truth.

He somehow made it back to his apartment. The moment the door closed behind him he fell against it and slid to the floor. Ronan Ronan Ronan-

“R-Ronan.” He spoke the name the first time aloud, the feeling of its weight on his tongue was an answer to a question he’d been asking for a month. For a lifetime.

Adam didn’t know how long he sat on the floor, grief taking time and twisting it in on itself. An amalgam of pain, hopelessness, and questions. Gansey, Gansey knew Ronan, knew Noah. Noah the boy he’d last seen carted away in the back of an ambulance covered in red red red. Noah, who’d screamed for help like the world was shattering. Noah, who’d clung tightly to the shredded arms of a bleeding man in a dark alley.

Help me, his mind screamed, his internal voice morphing into Noah’s from that night. 

Help me, I’m not okay…

A key twisting in the lock above his head brought his attention to the present. Adam pushed away from the door, and waited as Blue made her way into his dark apartment. Night had fallen sometime since he’d been here, on the floor, lost in the alley. Lost in a name.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Th-that was-”

“I know. Noah told us after you left. Adam, there’s… Adam. I need to tell you something.”

It was a concentrated effort to drag his gaze from the space between their bodies on the floor to meet her eyes. Lights from the street poured through the window in the living room, painting Blue’s honey warm skin in a haunting glow. He couldn’t bring himself to ask, so he waited. He watched. She brought a trembling hand to his, her brown eyes lined with silver, she squeezed.

“Adam, he’s alive.” 

A sob born of heartbreak and pain tore from his chest, he couldn’t form words. He broke then, completely and wholly. Blue came to cradle his head against her chest as he cried. Every hope he’d killed since the alley came barreling to the surface; All the pain and confusion, love and questions, beating like waves against the shores of his mind. Some minutes later he finally raised his head and met Blue’s eyes, her smile was wet and broken. He dragged his hand under his nose, across his eyes, and finally found the word to the question he needed to ask. “How?”

So Blue told him. Apparently, him finding Noah and Ronan in that alley, the tourniquet he’d made of his scarf, that extra minute he’d bought him had been enough. The doctors were able to stitch his wounds, and though it had been a close call, he’d pulled through. She explained that he’d had a hard life, though Gansey wouldn’t give details because he insisted those were Ronan’s to share when he was ready. He did however give her basic facts. Ronan Niall Lynch is an artist, a senior at Georgetown. He’s an orphan, and a brother. He’s an addict in recovery at a facility in Arlington, and Gansey’s third roommate. 

Blue explained that, when Adam was ready Gansey and Noah wanted to meet with him, to talk more. She offered to accompany him when that time came, but they all agreed they wouldn’t push him until he was ready. “Thank you,” he’d said to Blue. For getting the information. For telling him. For allowing him space. She understood that his history made this difficult, an addict for a soulmate was something he would need time to process. She eventually asked if he wanted to be alone and when he’d told her “yes” she kissed his forehead, and made her way to the door.

“Adam,” she paused, and he looked up. “We’ll wait on your text okay? Whenever you’re ready. But please check in so I know you’re safe.”

“I will.”

With a perfunctory nod she slid back out the door. 

Adam spent another minute in silence before dragging himself from the floor. He made his way in a daze to his desk and he collapsed into his chair. Slowly, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper. 

His hand shook.

He took a deep breath.

He wrote.

V

Ronan,

You’re alive…

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

Art Pieces and their correlating songs (linked):

“The Fall”  The War- SYML

“Chase The Void”  For What It’s Worth- Malia J

THE CONFIDENCE CHRONICLES IV - CONFIDENCE IN YOUR CRAFT

This is post 4/5 of my “Confidence Chronicles” series, in which I discuss the mindsets, actions and thought processes I’ve applied to build/rebuild my confidence in different aspects of my life. The goal of these 5 posts is for you readers to be able to apply relevant points to your own insecurities in order to combat them, and hopefully aid in building your own confidence over time.

_____________

Oooh, check me out with the post consistency. That’s how you know it’s a new year and decade, baby!

I’d like to start off by saying that I have been excited to write this post in particular for quite a long while now - literally since about July last year. However, my life was a bit of a mess at the time, and I didn’t want to put the previous post on hold, so it had to wait until now. 

Maybe this was for the best, though - this post is going to be about confidence in your craft and the projects you put out into the world. Although I was literally planning on writing this post around 7 months ago, I can honestly say that my confidence levels in my own projects have never been higher than right now, so writing about it now makes more sense. See, procrastination helps!

Anyways. To kick this post off, I want to take some time to acknowledge my many talents. Besides my *impeccable* blogging skills, not many people know that I’ve dabbled in acting and drumming in the past, and I am currently also writing a book (more about that in a future post) and getting back into interior design, learning new languages and drawing. These are my current favourite pastimes, and what I say to people whenever I’m asked what my “hobbies” are. 

The reason why I’m sharing this is because I want people to understand that unless you are vocal about your passions, how the hell are other people meant to be able to support and appreciate your work? It goes without saying that bigging yourself up and showing off your talents can feel extremely vain if you are a naturally reserved/humble person - but my hope is that this post will teach you how to be more confident in your work.

I am very excited to share this post because I am blessed to have friends of what feels like millions of different talents. Actors, musicians, podcasters, poets, youtubers, models, MUA’s, chefs, hair stylists… the list goes on, and it makes me so proud to see that they are all in their respective creative bags right now - so this post is somewhat dedicated to them as well if they ever have feelings of insecurity in their talents.

I will be talking about what I have found to be the most important factors of being confident in your creativity, not letting criticism (constructive or otherwise) make you want to give up, and getting over the initial fear of putting something you’ve created out into the world, because let’s face it; sharing something you’ve created can be incredibly vulnerable. You are essentially sharing a private aspect of yourself for the world to critically analyse, and it’s normal to find this daunting - however, it’s all about how you handle it.

Based on my own experiences and anonymous examples from my friends, I will try my best to explain how best to develop a deep sense of confidence and pride in your creative endeavours.

1. Ensure that you are doing your craft out of passion.

Regardless of if you are creating content solely for your own enjoyment or to capitalise on it, I definitely think that it is imperative that what you are doing fills you with joy and that you are excited to do the activity. This may sound like a no-brainer, but I feel like I see a lot of people nowadays forcing themselves to pursue certain endeavours due to influences from social media, or are forcing themselves to capitalise off a hobby they used to love, but now hate because of the added pressure of having to create content/products for the target audience. 

This is partly why I am apprehensive about ways of monetising this blog - or any of my other creative projects, for that matter. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t crossed my mind, but my biggest fear is starting to resent an activity I once loved because of external pressure such as deadlines, not having full creative control and having to “tread carefully” with the messages I put out, if that makes sense.

Pursuing a hobby for the sole purpose of others is never going to make you feel that what you’re creating is good. Constantly trying to please the masses as opposed to just doing whatever makes you feel happy is always going to make you feel anxious and scared of the reception, I think. Instead, I’d suggest that you evaluate what is more important to you: approval or enjoyment. If it’s the former, then by all means… keep forcing yourself to pursue hobbies that may or may not give you recognition. Who knows - maybe you’ll blow up and get the sponsorships, money and fans that you want, and I don’t even mean this in a petty or sarcastic way. If that’s what you set out to do, then I’d be very happy for you.

However, I reiterate: pursuing a hobby for anyone other than yourself runs a great risk of becoming a burden in the long run, as well as a risk of losing your self confidence when you don’t get the attention or accolades that you believe that you deserve. 

I think I have an issue with the above because it relates back to past posts in which I’ve discussed humans’ desperation to be approved and acknowledged by their peers. It alludes to a deeply rooted insecurity in yourself, your abilities and your belief in said abilities - I only say this because this literally used to be me before deciding to sack everyone off and do whatever the f*ck I wanted.

Personally, my dream scenario would be for people to find a hobby that they are truly passionate about and that they can capitalise off in a way that doesn’t restrict their creative process and that is on their own terms. Because, let’s be honest - receiving money and accolades doing something that you truly love is a major confidence boost… regardless of if the money and recognition motivates you or not. But the bottom line is that your confidence in your creativity should not be rooted in anything else but your own joy.

2. Appoint a/some constructive critic(s).

It goes without saying that true confidence comes from ~*wItHiN*~, but there is nothing wrong with looking to friends and/or family for opinions and support. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying that having someone who understands your vision and wants you to achieve your goals is a must. 

This someone is a crucial part of the creative process, because they will ideally motivate (aka bully...exactly like the gif above) you into meeting the deadlines you set for yourself, give you honest feedback and give you a kick up the arse on the days where you don’t really feel like doing anything. They will remind you of the reason why you started your project when you feel like giving up - and having someone like this in your corner that unconditionally believes in you is a massive ego boost. 

Something that’s even better than having one person in your corner is having multiple people in your corner. And something that’s even better than having multiple people in your corner, is having multiple people in your corner that are also creative and have their own projects going on. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a group of people with the exact same hobby as you (although this definitely helps too!), but surrounding yourself with people that are also making things happen for themselves gives you a beautiful sense of community. I can only speak for myself, but forming friendships with other creatives has definitely helped me come out of my shell. I still remember when I first “pitched” my blog idea to my friends - thinking that I’d get a lukewarm response (because let’s face it… a lot of people unfortunately don’t enjoy reading anymore) - but the positive feedback and support I got is what gave me the confidence to actually start. And when I was on my hiatus, I’d be harassed for updates on when my next post was coming, and brutally dragged when I didn’t post on the days I had promised. The same goes for their projects as well - it was only recently that we had to bully someone for not releasing their podcast when they said they would.

Another aspect of having a group of critics that believe in you is the motivation you get from seeing them putting their plans into action. Honestly. Seeing my friends’ work ethics and how hard they grind makes me want to be better - not only to keep up, but for myself in general.

The bottom line is that although you don’t need people in your corner to get started, it is definitely a major asset to have. You should be confident that your work is great by your own accord, but getting it confirmed - or receiving feedback for improvements - is just another key to improving your confidence.

3. Do not be afraid of vulnerability (if your craft requires you to do so).

Believe me… I get it. Putting out something you’ve created for the entire planet to see can be incredibly daunting, especially if a lot of emotion has gone into it. It feels like you’re putting a very dainty and vulnerable part of you out on a perilous battlefield, out in the open where nowhere to take cover. This is where a lot of us (myself included) tend to overthink sharing our work, or in some cases chose not to share it at all. If only you guys knew how many draft posts have ended up in the bin because I was worried about being judged (they’re being revived though, fear not!)... it’s mad how much fear and anxiety can hold you back from being great.

This is where it’s important to understand the power of being able to be vulnerable, honest and open through your selected medium. As cringe as it sounds, opening your heart to the world and letting people see your insecurities, unresolved issues and things you’d much rather hide leads to the situations power over you significantly diminishing. And the more you do it, the closer you get to the situation no longer being able to hurt you anymore - because once it’s out in the open, nothing or no one can actually tell you sh*t. Once you get to the point of no longer caring who knows what your internal struggles are, I promise that you feel insanely confident and empowered, because you are no longer living in fear.

 Another beautiful aspect of vulnerability in relation to self-confidence is that ever so often, you get to hear that your work has genuinely helped, inspired or motivated someone. I know I said that validation and approval from others isn’t the best reason for pursuing a hobby, but this is different in the sense that you’re doing your thing regardless of if you get positive feedback for it - the recognition is truly just a bonus, but a contributor to increased confidence all the same.

Hopefully, utilising these three methods will make you feel a great deal more confident about your creative projects/side hustles for the following reasons:

You’re doing this project primarily because it brings you joy.

The way I see it, taking time out of your day to do something that makes you genuinely happy is an act of self-care and incredibly empowering, in the sense that we are choosing to not be distracted and led astray by the infinite amount of garbage media that is constantly in our faces due to social media. Being able to make time on a project - whatever it may be - that brings you happiness and engages your right brain is a massive blessing in our age group, as we take on more and more responsibilities that eat up our time and drain us.

A cute metaphor for this could be that your day to day routine is a desert. Going to work/uni, doing work/uni related projects, doing chores around the house and all your other responsibilities is walking around for hours in the sun, making us drained, famished and parched. Our hobbies should be like a much-welcomed oasis, providing us with water, food, shade and somewhere to recharge (joy, inspiration, motivation and a well-deserved break for the brain).

 Okay, that was a bit cringe. But you get the point - allowing ourselves to have something in this hard life to enjoy is a confidence boost in itself.

After paying attention to the feedback you get, you’ll become even more skilled at your craft over time.

It’s no conundrum that experience equals expertise, and that constantly improving your creative process in accordance with feedback from someone you know understands your vision will make you more sure of yourself in the long run.

Think about it: if you’re already doing something you genuinely love, and you have a trusted person/trusted people in your life to turn to for genuine opinions, how can you not win? 

By “winning”, I mean your work getting progressively better over time, combined with a feeling of security and support from your peers. I mean becoming more emotionally, mentally, spiritually and maybe even financially (if you’re so inclined) stable through doing something you genuinely love. The prize is peace of mind, feeling supported, and full creative control of your work - and I honestly can’t think of anything more satisfying.

You’re taking control of your doubts and insecurities and flipping them into assets.

For me, this is a no brainer. What could possibly be more confidence-boosting than overcoming insecurities and being able to use them to your advantage in your creative endeavours? It’s literally what my entire blog is based upon, and writing about things that have caused me a great deal of pain in the past has ended up being a very therapeutic and cathartic experience, as well as extremely empowering - in the sense that I don’t allow certain situations have control over me anymore. I can now focus on continuing to heal, and help others who may come across my work in the meantime.

Having a personal project that challenges you to face and overcome your insecurities is something that I think everyone should try to have. It might get hard at times and extremely tempting to quit, but once your work is ready for the world to see I promise you that you’ll get a boost in confidence. 

By keeping these three points in mind, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll feel infinitely more confident in your creative projects. Knowing that you’re putting your entire heart into a project that you are sharing with the whole world, knowing that you have supporters that you can trust with honest opinions and feedback and knowing that you’ve stayed true to yourself regardless of if the norm enjoys is an ideal state of mind to be in.

On a final note, I want to reiterate that there is no “wrong” or “right” way to have a hobby and gain confidence from it. This post is just general guidelines that really helped me come out of my shell creatively, and I’d like to think it’d work for others too. However, you know best how comfortable you are with exposing your work and what your existing confidence levels are like, so please proceed accordingly (and don’t blame me if things go tits up because you decided not to take the time to listen to yourself!).

Love,

Liv

Loudmouth

(I wrote some statement fic. It’s been a heck of a while since I wrote anything for fandom.)

Statement of Ulla Ness, regarding, um... a peculiar transformation. Original statement given March 14th, 1999. Audio recording by Christopher Peake, in an… unprofessional capacity. Statement begins.

I still don’t see why I had to come to you. I know you have an email address, so wouldn’t it have been easier to just scan the form and send it to me? Hell, I would have taken a physical copy sent to me in the post. It would have been slower, but it would have meant I could have stayed at home. But no. I asked, and you just gave me a lot of waffle about how you have ‘strict acquisition policies’, alongside directions that had been copied from google maps. Which I know, because I checked.

It’s not that I’m lazy, you understand, far from it. I used to have what I regarded as quite the active social life. But recently that’s become impossible for me to maintain, for a number of reasons. Which are also the reasons that I’ve come to talk to you.

I used to be quite a religious person. Still am, I suppose. I’m not entirely sure. I was a member of the congregation of Saint Mary’s, a small anglican church in a small, anglican village up in Lincolnshire. Not everybody there was particularly devout, but it wasn’t one of those places where it especially mattered. It was more about the sense of community we had. Catching up with each other after communion on Thursdays, singing in the choir, arranging cake sales or coffee mornings as fundraisers for whatever bit of the building had fallen off now. I’ve been attending since I was little, and more or less grew up with the congregation.

I miss it quite badly, if I’m being honest. I’ve always been the sort to need other people, but I didn’t realise quite how much losing them would affect me. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and all that, I suppose.

It started with another fundraiser, a jumble sale this time. I had volunteered to help manage the event, so I was in charge of sorting through the items that people had brought in for us to sell. Like I said, not everyone there was strictly devout, and didn’t always take care with what they decided to donate. Some people seemed to use it as more of an excuse to toss legitimate junk in our direction and call it a good deed.

This was definitely the case with Mister Ashley. He attended purely because his mother was too old to walk by herself, and I rather think that she insisted that he stay with her throughout the service. It was definitely at her behest that he took part in any communal activities. She would always announce that he would be happy to run stalls or make tea or some other menial duty, while he sat by her side, stony-faced, and saying nothing at all.

The only time I remember him giving any sort of reaction was when when his mother announced that her Jamie would be happy to donate some of his shop’s excess stock for the jumble sale. I remember, he turned to her with the strangest look on his face. At the time, I thought it was one of badly suppressed outrage. I assumed that she had simply gone a bit too far in volunteering his services; Mister Ashley was a second hand book seller, and owned the Jabberwock Bookshop just off from Memorial Square. It can’t have been all that easy to turn a profit. Thinking back on it now, though, and I wonder if his expression was something sharper than just anger. If it could have been alarmed, almost panicked. But I believe that is likely be nothing more than hindsight colouring my memories. If he had had some way of knowing, had been frightened of something like that which came to pass, then… well. I cannot honestly say I ever truly liked James Ashley, but neither can I believe that he would be as cruel or as cowardly as to not have said or done anything.

As it was, he brought the books to the side room the next day, where I was going through the donations and sorting the sellable items from those things too broken, torn, stained, or just plain unusable. I had just set aside yet another jigsaw- this one with almost two thirds of the pieces obviously missing- when he knocked on the outer door. In spite of the heavy rain, he wasn’t wearing a coat, hat, or boots. He didn’t say a word to me when I opened it, just shouldered his way in, dropped a heavy cardboard box on the floor by the unsorted donations, and walked out again. He did this three more times, leaving the door swinging behind him, letting in strong gusts of wind and rain, and reinscribing a damp trail of rainwater on the carpeted floor. Then he was gone as abruptly as he had arrived.

Ashley had taken better care to protect the books from the rain than himself. The cardboard was soaked through, but the books inside had been wrapped in several layers of plastic sheeting. They were stacked upright, and had been fitted in without any attempt to force too many into a single space. They were all, without exception, worn, faded, and almost completely without interest. Paperback romances long since out of print, old text books, children’s encyclopedias. It was rather a relief, if I’m honest. I could just reach into the boxes, grab a book, give it a flick through, and place it on the “for sale” pile.

I was about halfway through the last box when my fingers brushed something that did not feel at all like paper. It was dense and yielding, and ever so slightly damp. I recoiled, shock and disgust crawling their prickling way up my arm. My fingers looked clean, but the ghost feeling of something sticky still clung to them.

My first thought that it was some nasty practical joke. That Ashley, stung by his mother’s willingness to give away his stock, had put something disgusting in there by way of relieving his feelings. But that would have been ridiculous- he was a grown man, for goodness sakes, not a slighted child. It was more likely that the plastic keeping the books wrapped up had slipped, and allowed the rain to seep in through the sides. That was the more likely explanation.

It seemed as though I was right when I looked into the box properly, and saw nothing there but more books. But when I reached in again, all I felt was rough, dry paper. Confused, I went through the contents more slowly, looking where I placed my hand and at the books I chose.

I didn’t feel it again until the fifth book I picked up, that same almost-damp feeling. It was broad and set in landscape, almost like a sketchbook. It was dense with pages all jammed together- dense and heavy. It flopped bonelessly in my hand, and I needed to support it from underneath before I could read the title.

Hymnal, it read. The gold letters gleamed wetly on the slick cover.

It appeared to be full of sheet music. No titles or lyrics, just scratched staves and notes that meandered up and down the lines as though drunk. The smell that rose from the pages as I turned them was odd and unpleasant. I wondered if the leather binding them hadn’t been properly cured. Those areas of page that weren’t covered in music were full of sketches, but so dense and overlapping that I couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be. And, I realised with an unpleasant start, the cover beneath my hands was warm, as though I was touching a live thing.

Suddenly, I’d had enough. I was sitting here, working myself up over an old, graffitied book for no good reason. I shut the thing hurriedly, and it snapped closed with a heavy slithering of pages. I caught the soft part of my forefinger on one of them, and a tiny bead of scarlet began to well from the wound. The stinging was welcome- it gave me something to focus on, mundane annoyance drowning out the confusion that had been threatening to become fear.

I dropped the book onto the discard pile. I couldn’t sell something like that, that much was obvious. Then I picked it up again, and dashed through the rain to the rubbish bins outside. I tossed it in, and followed it up with as much of the discard pile as I could bag up in one go, burying the thing underneath threadbare scarves, broken plastic dolls, and half used art supplies.

I felt a little better when it was done, but not much. Whatever those hymns were praising, I don’t think it was Our Lord.

The cut on my finger didn’t heal like it should. It stopped bleeding without any trouble, but the edges became raised, reddened and sensitive to the touch. I dabbed at it with antiseptic and did my best to put it out of my mind. I succeeded at first. I had plenty to keep me busy, both at church and at my workplace, and for a day or two, I completely forgot about it.

At least until it opened up again.

I don’t remember what caused it, or if anything caused it at all. Just that I was reaching for something, and there was the feeling of… unpeeling, almost, the cold feeling of fresh air on wet skin. I checked to see if the cut was bleeding again.

Instead of a cut, I found myself looking at a tiny, fully formed mouth.

The raised, reddened edges I had thought were a sign of infection had become minute lips. They were slightly parted, and behind them I could see the tiniest slivers of white. And behind that, a dark space where something wet shifted.

I didn’t look at it for long. Already I was reaching for the first aid kit, hastily covering the cut- the mouth- with a plaster. I was already convincing myself that what I’d just seen was some kind of infection I was too squeamish to look at, and that since I couldn’t feel any pain, I should probably go to the doctors, in case it was nerve damage or something. The impression of having seen a mouth rather than a cut was an unpleasant trick my mind had played on me, and one I didn’t feel like closely examining. I told myself I had imagined it.

I hadn’t, though. I could taste the soft fabric patch on the plaster.

I really did mean to go to the doctors. Mouth or no mouth, whatever was happening to the cut on my finger worried me. I even got as far as making an appointment. But the next day I went into work, and there was an accident involving a slippery patch of floor and a very, very sharp knife that I was carrying at the time. I ended up with a nasty slice parallel with the underside of my ribcage.

This time, it was obvious how quickly it stopped bleeding, how it was practically dry before I even changed the gauze once. How the scabs began to flake before I even touched them, leaving nothing but those raised, reddening edges around the cut itself.

I didn’t go to that doctor’s appointment. I don’t think it would have helped me if I had.

It took longer for the second cut to open, but when it did, I could stand in front of the mirror to properly see the flat, white, human teeth, and the tongue that moved behind them.

It didn’t feel alien. That’s what surprised me most. I was scared, of course I was scared, I was growing new bits, opening up in places that I shouldn’t- but that was just it. It was my body doing this, not some… weird infection or surgery. Whatever was happening, it felt like an extension of myself.

I could move them, I found. Not as consciously as I could my original mouth, the one in its proper position on my face, but sort of like moving a limb after it’s fallen asleep. It took concentration, like I was working through partial numbness. Like I needed to focus to wake them up.

I didn’t spend very long doing that, though. I would realise with a start that what I was doing wasn’t normal, it wasn’t sane. I would pull my shirt back down or re-plaster my finger with a feeling almost like shame. I wasn’t as scared as I should have been, and that in itself was somehow a lot more frightening.

I’m not clumsy. I can’t be, considering the sharp tools I have to handle at work. But I started to accumulate injuries. Innocuous things at first. Paper cuts from the prayer books during mass, scrapes from the edges of the metal benches at work. And then other things. Pushing down a door-handle would lay my palm open as though I’d been struck with a metal ruler. The pressure of my jacket across my shoulders would tear the skin. I woke in bed one morning to discover that the folded sheets around me had left cuts going from my hip to my collar bone.

Every single one of them bled, reddened, and opened.

The mouths started to become restless as their number grew. They tried to chew on the clothes I wore to cover them, and if I didn’t focus, they would let out soft, but audible moans or sighs. I tried to quiet them. I even tried feeding them, though I only did that once. It seemed to help, but the mangled sensation of swallowing with a throat that seemed to be lodged under my right kidney was so disorienting I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.

I hadn’t stopped going out altogether. I left the house less, certainly, but as uncertain and uncomfortable as my changing existence was, I didn’t want to give up the company of other people altogether. I get lonely easily.

So, one Friday, when when there was so little skin left under my clothes and gloves that no new mouths could easily form, I patched my face and neck with gauze, and went to take my place in the choir again.

Nobody really seemed to notice anything different about me. I had all the right stories lined up for when I was asked about what had happened to my face, but almost nobody did. A few condolences, a few jokes, and that was it. People apparently preferred to gossip about the death of Mrs Ashley, and how her James had stopped coming to church now, and how they had known his heart wasn’t in it all along.

It felt awful. There I was, standing in the middle of them, skin to skin almost, with the most fragile disguise imaginable hiding a secret that would ruin their perception of the world for good- and they were too wrapped up in their own smug assurance of their own piety to notice. I offered up a brief prayer for patience, but like all my prayers lately, I don’t think I was offering it to the God whose praises we’d all gathered to sing.

And when we raised our voices together for All Things Bright And Beautiful, and I opened my mouth to join in, and then opened my mouth again, and opened my mouth again, and opened my mouth again- I wasn’t singing praises to that God either.

I didn’t realise that the others had stopped at first. It wasn’t until I glanced to one side, and saw Julie Wright staring at me with her powerless mouth open and unmoving, that I realised I was singing in harmony with myself.

I broke off, suddenly embarrassed and frightened by the way that they were all looking at me. There was something like awe in their expressions, but there was something else there too. Something that shuddered and recoiled. I desperately tried to remember the words I’d been singing, if I had gotten them right. I had the horrible sense that I might have subverted something holy.

Adam Bromley was the one to break the silence.

“Well now. You never told us you were getting private training!”

And just like that, the spell was broken. The unexpressed disgust sank back beneath their faces, and the others took up the idea almost with relief. A beautiful voice, they told me, what trick did they teach me to make it resonate like that? I forced a smile and said something non-committal and when we took up the tune again, I was careful to sing only the words that were on the page in front of me.

My own relief was short-lived. When I got home, I found the skin I had left was being pulled apart by the restless movements of the mouths. Blood stained the underside of my shirt, and I couldn’t stop the moans and hissings any more than I could have controlled a spasm or a muscular tic.

I didn’t sleep that night, and called in sick to work the next day. I lay on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying very hard not to move.

It wasn’t any use. My skin had become so fragile that even getting up and walking to the kitchen caused it to split, the blood barely having time to dry before the wound began to twitch and whisper. All my fascination was gone now, as were all my attempts to ignore what was happening. All I did was lie on the bed, and let myself slowly drown in my own body. I lived like that for a week.

When next Friday evening came, my entire body burst into song.

I writhed and moaned and hummed without will, without choice, throwing out snatches of hymn before discarding them as not what I wanted, not right. And for the first time, the indistinct murmurs and whispers grew louder, began to form words. Prayers that had been chewed out of shape, pleas for more, more mouths, more brothers and sisters, to come out of hiding and join the great curdling of flesh.

This went on for the entire night.

That was when I decided that I needed to do something. I’d let… whatever this was go on for too long, long beyond the point of saving myself. But I wanted to tell someone first. So I dragged myself to my computer, and searched as best I could. It’s difficult to type with only a confusion of tongues.

And that’s where you came in. You aren’t special. You were just the closest place that didn’t either ignore my emails, or reply with not so gentle suggestions that I see a psychologist.

I don’t think I’ll be leaving my home again, once I get back. I doubt I’ll even bother uncovering, although there’s no-one there to see me. For all that I wanted to let someone know, I don’t want to be seen.

The cupboard below the stairs locks from the inside. I can push the key out from underneath the crack in the door.

Whatever is happening to me, I won’t allow it come to fruition.

Post-statement follow-up: There wasn’t anyone under the stairs when I went to check. The lock on cupboard door was broken, and so was the one on the back door. Either Ms Ness was, um… successful in her attempts to… halt her transformation, and a housebreaker with some seriously questionable motives took what was- what was left of her. Or she wasn’t. And her resolve either waned or the situation was, um. Taken out of her hands. Or. Whatever she had instead of hands.

I wasn’t… going to record this. It’s not my job, strictly speaking, but I was reading some of the old statements, and this one just… sort of caught my eye. And I’ve seen the Archivist and some of the others do recordings, and it just looked so… I wanted to try it out. I’ll be taking the tape with me, though. None of the others need to know about this.

Flight Risk - Part VIII

Author’s note: Part VIII is here! I’m so behind on reading fics and getting back to you all with responses to all of your beautiful support even if I haven’t responded to you directly. I’ll get to it I promise. I also understand I’m woefully behind on prompts, that I promise to get caught up with once July comes around and I’m done with this and working on my first crossover (OMG seriously guys) for Camp NaNoWriMo! Catch up here if you’re just finding Flight Risk or if Tumblr decided it didn’t care about tagging you for previous parts.

Prologue - Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V - Part VI - Part VII

Summary: Cordonia gets news of Riley’s statement and the continued fallout of Liam’s departure is a mess that perhaps even his return can’t clean up.

Perma-tags: @madaraism, @mfackenthal, @blackcatkita, @darley1101, @pbchoicesobsessed, @never-ending-choices, @flyawayblue56

Tags for Flight Risk: @theroyalweisme, @viktoriapetit, @hopefulmoonobject, @shirtlessbenpark, @captain-kingliamsqueen, @syltti78, @queencatherynerhys, @jamielea81, @bobasheebaby, @ranishajay, @jlouise88, @choiceswreckedme, @hamulau, @umccall71, @gardeningourmet, @ayo-minty-jess, @drakelover78, @jayjay879, @ehkw1989, @barbaravalentino, @speedyoperarascalparty, @lynn1214, @starstruckzonkoperatorbat, @choicesfanatic86, @mrsdrakewalkerblog

“Are you ready?”

She nods and fidgets with her hands. Her face is set, serious, and she takes a deep breath. Being this nervous was so unlike her and she almost felt like it was unbecoming of someone who was to become Queen.

She looks down at her hands in her lap and closes her eyes for a moment.

“Your story, your opinion, you deserve to be heard by the people of Cordonia.”

She nods again and her green eyes meet his and look around at the newsdesk around her. The lights, the cameras, the sheer number of people in the studio. It all started to close in around her. She supposed it didn’t matter if she was nervous visibly on camera, she would never be Queen now.

She’d always been told it was warm in television studios, under all the lights, but she didn’t know it would be stifling. The air is thick and hot as the lights shine down on her and the others at the desk. The thick layer of makeup they’d put on her for the cameras felt less like a part of her and more like a mask, threatening to slip off of her face under the blazing lights. She presses her lips together as the countdown begins to when they’d be live.

“4… 3…,” Madeleine’s red lips fix themselves into a tiny smile, only allowing her cheeks to perk up slightly. “2,” the producer mouths one then zero and steps back, to the side of the camera man.

“Good Afternoon, Cordonia. Today we have a very special guest to help us with deciphering the latest messages from King Liam, Countess Madeleine of Fydelia. We hope she can provide a unique perspective on what exactly occurred in the lead up to His Majesty’s coronation and subsequent engagement tour.”

“Your Grace, you were chosen by Prince Liam at the end of the social season before his Coronation. If we’re to believe His Majesty’s statements, this was all part of a plot against Lady Riley. What can you say to this?”

Madeleine takes a deep breath and squares up with the host. “At the time, I was unaware.” She pauses, gathering her thoughts. “Yes, the circumstances under which I was brought into the competition for Prince Liam’s hand were unusual. The royal family, the prince or princess’s own parents do not sponsor a suitor but there I was. It was suspicious from the beginning.”

“So you’re saying the King and Queen sponsored you themselves? Not your own family Duke Karlington and Duchess Krona?”

“Yes, my parents did not want to see me go through what I went through with the former Crown Prince again. My family opted out of sending a suitor at all. Not that they didn’t have faith in Liam, but that the competition in itself is quite rigorous and can be more damaging to one’s reputation than helpful.”

“But still you agreed to join it once again.”

“When Queen Regina came to me personally, she asked me where I saw myself. I told her on the throne. I know how that sounds, very manipulative and like I’m prepared to stab someone in the back.”

“It’s almost like something out of The Crown and The Flame,” the host laughs.

“I suppose so. But in reality, I only want what is best for Cordonia. I love this country so much. The lands, the ruby, and especially the people. After years of training in diplomacy, world politics, courtly etiquette, traditions, and customs, I thought I was best suited for the station of Queen next to Liam- His Majesty,” she quickly corrects herself. “I thought love could come later, or if it never did, that duty would supersede it. I hadn’t thought it possible that the king could be so irreversibly in love with someone else when Regina invited me to join the competition at Applewood.”

“Looking back on it all, being named Queen-to-be, the worldwide Engagement Tour, the subsequent cancellation of all those plans, do you regret anything?”

Her phone buzzes next to her on the desk, a message from Regina.

‘How could you.’

Madeleine glances down briefly and the message does little more than spur her on even more. She needed to set the record straight. She had done horrible things to the competition and to Lady Riley, but if she was going to come out of this unharmed and in a position to work on improving the country she so loved, she had to be honest.

“I should have not underestimated Lady Riley or even His Majesty. I thought I had it figured out on the Engagement Tour. They could carry out a secret relationship and be happy. I was blind to what was brewing right under my nose. King Liam’s love for Lady Riley outweighed anything I had to offer. You can teach her to be Queen and she’ll be a fantastic Queen, but you can’t teach him to love another-” Madeleine wants to continue, but is cut short by the host interrupting her.

“-Countess, I must apologize, but we have to cut this interview short. I do hope you’ll stick around as His Majesty has just released another statement and it features Lady Riley.”

Madeleine feels the blood fall from her face. She inhales deeply. She could do this, she could keep herself from completely losing it on live television.

“We’d love your reaction. And now, the statement and a quick break after which we’ll return to you with reactions from our analysts and if her schedule permits, Countess Madeleine.”

She was the master of the spin, she had to do this. Madeleine’s mind begins working over the possibilities in her mind. The gears spin and click into place as she feels her life shifting into the place it was meant to be all her life. If she could keep this together, perhaps she wasn’t meant to help Cordonia from the throne. Perhaps she was meant to be in politics. In parliament. The minister of the state department. The prime minister. Her red lips fix into a small smile as she nods to the host and the producer waiting beside the desk as the statement airs.

Madeleine flips her phone so the screen faces down into the desk.

—

"Lovely, inspiring. All the film people in the world if they had scoured the globe could not have found anyone so suited to the part."

-Sir Winston Churchill, on Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

--

“Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them.”

-David Cannadine, History in our Time

--

Regina paces the common room in the suite her and Constantine shared. Over the past days, Constantine had grown increasingly distant and withdrawn, only taking time to speak on his son’s departure when Bastien came with the daily report. He’d fallen from the calculated and intense king she’d known to a shell of a man, bitter and angry at the betrayal of his only sons. She’d presented him with the idea of calling his cousin sooner. To talk to him about bringing his eldest son on board. He was next in line of course. But time and time again, Constantine had refused. He insisted that it was his own blood that would continue the monarchy, not some cousin with Nevrakis ties.

“They’re related to traitors, ones I had to extinguish myself and if I had half a mind then I would’ve imprisoned the lot.” He told her over and over when she’d bring it up.

This state of limbo, however, was not healthy for the country. The people were lining up ready for their king to return and they were entirely swept up in the love story they were watching play out. Even despite all the optimism, they were still reeling from the attack on he palace; one of the journalists was still hospitalized. They needed the voice from the head of state. They needed a guiding hand. Liam, despite how well loved he was, couldn’t do that from a run down apartment in New York. If Madeleine hadn’t been so meddlesome and even advocating for Liam on his absence, Regina could’ve gotten her hastily engaged to the eldest son and insisted Constantine have the two of them crowned as soon as possible. Madeleine could’ve handled whatever rebellious and harsh Nevrakis spirit lay dormant in the next in line to the throne. This absent king situation had the potential to be a crisis.

Regina paces and decides to broach the subject with Constantine again.

“Constantine, Liam might be thinking of coming back, but when? The people need a king. And if he does return, what does that mean for us?”

He turns to her, his eyes narrow in anger, he had made it quite clear that the subject was closed for discussion.

“Do you want to be thrown out of the palace? Banished like some sort of criminals? Exiled from our home? That’s where this is going if we give Liam the chance.”

Constantine turned back to his book. If he was going to try and ignore her this time, she would continue talking and make it impossible to.

“Bring Roger to the palace. You know he’s waiting for the call.”

She moves beside his leather arm chair. “He’s severe but smart. They need a king. I understand you want it to be your own blood to continue the line but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.”

“He could be crowned in a matter of a day. All this would end, and we would know where we stand.”

“Is that all you care about now? Where we stand? I never allow for someone with even a drop of Nevrakis blood to sit on the throne. They’re traitors, the lot of them. You can call Roger over my cold, dead body.”

Regina was taken aback at his harshness. Constantine rarely spoke to her like this, often turning to her as an equal in times like this. This was not the man she married. The illness had taken ahold of his soul and torn him apart, the departure of his son had broken him. She looks him over and thinks on her next plea.

“So that’s it then? We wait for Liam to come and throw us out, perhaps put us on trial?”

“What do I care, I’m dying anyway.”

“So you’re ready to just let Cordonia burn, the moment you die, you don’t care any longer.”

“I thought I had my legacy planned out, a son on the throne with a capable queen by his side. I thought I had orchestrated it perfectly. When Liam returns, it’s what is best for the country.”

“When?” Regina scoffs. “He’s taking his sweet time. If he’s so meant to be king, why isn’t he here with his people when they need him?”

—

Roger was tired of being toyed with. The press had been camped outside of his estate the moment they’d learned of Liam’s unofficial abdication. It was unconventional to say the least the way he left the country hanging. Then the attack happened and still the people were stuck, pining for a king who didn’t care. When Liam started releasing statements Roger forced himself to stay at his estate when what he wanted most of all was to barge into the palace and take what was rightfully his. He was the next in line after all.

Roger was an imposing man, tall and broad. His features were dark and severe. His hair was a deep walnut color. His eyes so brown they were nearly black. He had warm olive skin. Many compared him to Diavolos Nevrakis in his looks. He saw the resemblance in the portraits that hung around his old estate. They didn’t realize just how much he was the absolute opposite of him in his personality. He was bold like him yes, but he could be cruel and vengeful.

He bides his time at his estate until the whole thing reaches a fever pitch with Riley’s statement. He hears the tail end of it playing over the television in the servant’s quarters for the third time since it was released.

“King Liam’s father made it seem like he was supportive of his sons desires on the exterior. But behind the curtains he attempted to blackmail myself and other ladies of the court when it came time for Liam to choose. He involved members of the guard and others in his plot to keep Liam from following his heart. He’s destroyed many lives. I believe it’s no coincidence that some members have not returned to court after the scandal broke.

“I love your king and I love your country. I only wish you can see past my lack of experience and see to my qualifications. I want with every beat of my heart to help bring Cordonia past the recent tragedies of the attack on the palace and the natural disaster in Portavira.” Riley pauses and looks stoically at the camera, she might not have experience, but she was good.

“The people of Cordonia deserve an honest king for once. I think my husband has proven that he will stop at nothing to be open with his people. The people of Cordonia deserve a Queen who was more than born and bred for the role, but one who has the heart and compassion to change the country for the better.”

He could never allow a foreigner, a commoner, to take up the place of Queen. It was unspeakable.

It is at this moment that Roger decides he is done with this waiting game, he is going to the palace to take what is his.

—

“Liam and Riley are headed to the airport in New York. My agents report that they should be arriving late tomorrow morning,” Bastien reports to mainly Constantine and Regina and not to the third man in the room.

“Should I make sure there is a car there to collect them?” Bastien asks, exhausted but grateful this was finally starting to come to an end. With Liam returning, he could finally breathe and resume his normal duties instead of coordinating an entire department of secret espionage. Keeping track of Liam and Riley on another continent, seven hours ahead of theirs, while also heading up security at the palace was exhausting. He couldn’t remember if he’d slept last night or the night before.

“You and a couple members of the royal guard will be going there to collect him,” Roger says from his spot at the far end of the common room in Constantine and Regina’s suite. “You’ll bring him and his little wife back here, in cuffs.”

“I am not sure I follow Your Grace.” Bastien turns to Roger for the first time since arriving.

“A country cannot have two kings,” he says cooly. “Anyone who comes to this country claiming to be king is a traitor to the crown and will be treated as such. And tomorrow, it’ll behoove you to call me Your Majesty.”

“Yes sir.”

Bastien sighs. He hadn’t prepared for this, but Roger was exercising his right as the next in line to force himself to be crowned. Liam had been gone too long with no official explanation, it created a constitutional crisis to not have a monarch for this long. He’d miss the deadline by mere hours to return before his crown would be up for grabs by the next in line, Roger.

He should’ve seen it coming the moment Roger walked in and did everything in his power to keep him from taking up residence in the palace.

Rules were rules and now that Roger was here, there was little Bastien could do to stop it. It would take a vote from the parliament to stop it and they were never quick on anything. Bastien decides to reach out to Madeleine the moment he leaves this room to get her on the case, she had many connections and was better at talking to politicians than he was.

Bastien looks at Regina then Constantine. The former king appears to be livid, it was a face Bastien was familiar with, but after all the years serving in his guard he had seen it in only on rare occasions. When Liam’s mother was killed, the assassination attempt on Liam himself, and the coup attempt by the Nevrakis family so many years ago.

He’d been the one who received the orders to dispose of the Duke and Duchess of Lythikos once their involvement in the coup had been revealed.

“You are dismissed Bastien,” Constantine says.

Roger follows him from the room. When he clears his throat, Bastien turns to him. “Could you make sure the maids prepare the Royal Suite for me tomorrow.”

“My apologies Your Grace, but that isn’t part of my job description,” he says before turning on his heel and walking down the hall. The moment he turns the corner despite his exhaustion from being overworked and sleep deprived, he breaks into a run back to this office. There had to be a way to stop this.

The Hard-Hitting Questions

So, I found this posted on a blog I was following and thought I might break it all down and answer these questions as honestly as I could.

1: Do you try to stay away from walkthroughs?

It depends on the game. Usually, I do try to play through blind but in games where it is best to max stats/ relationships/ unlock codex entries, I will often use a walkthrough so that I won’t miss out on certain scenes or events. Otherwise, the only time I would use a walkthrough is if I were stuck.

2: Company you're always loyal to?

I would say that rather than a company, I am far more loyal to a franchise. Whether that is Kingdom Hearts or Assassin’s Creed. 

3: Best game you've ever played?

This is a difficult question as there are many things that make up an excellent game. For me, the best game that I’ve currently played is the Witcher 3. It has all the hallmarks that I adore: from being a role-playing game with active combat, as well as a thrilling story to tell. The runner-up would be the Uncharted franchise that drew me in even when I had yet to own a Playstation 3. The bombastic set pieces and the effective story seemed like a must play for me.

4: Worst game you've ever played?

I can’t quite say that I’ve played many ‘bad’ games. The one game that I could not invest in was Soul Sacrifice. Despite my best efforts, it simply was not the type of game that caught my eye.

5: A popular series/game you just can't get into no matter how much you try?

Oh, let me list the many popular game series in the world that I have yet to try. First and foremost would be the Monster Hunter franchise, followed by Metal Gear Solid, Dark Souls and Resident Evil. 

6: A game that's changed you the most?

I doubt that there was a game that changed me the most. There have been games that have made me pause and reflect on the nature of things such as Bioshock Infinite and Prey. Though the most influential game that hooked me on a type of gaming would have been the Shadowrun revivals. I never thought crpgs (computer role playing games) with their asymmetric gameplay would have drawn me in but the mixture of strategy and role-playing statistics slowly but surely drew me in.

7: A game you'll never forget?

The game that I will never forget is Kingdom Hearts. It was one of the first games that I played and it was the one that had me salivating with anticipation. The union of Disney with these strange JRPG tropes was a match made in heaven that I could not help but crave. Most likely due to the fact that I have always been a lover of Disney films.

8: Best soundtrack?

Is it cheating if I simply say Final Fantasy? As in the entire franchise? However, if I had to choose a singular soundtrack, it would have to go to Child of Light. I adored the soundtrack found therein.

9: A game you turn your volume off every time you play it?

After a while, I tune out the music from arpgs (action role-playing games) with its endless clicking and loot drops to lure you further down the track. Some examples would include Diablo 3 and Victor Vran.

10: A game you've completely given up on?

The best example that comes to mind is Soul Sacrifice. After a while, I simply could not click with how the game played. The endless grind for better loot and items based on an ephemeral scoring of performance was more than I could bear and in the end, I traded the game in.

That and Codename STEAM. Mostly due to the fact that there was no tangible reward in the game and the enemies you faced only became more difficult. 

11: Hardest game you've played?

I do not often play hard games but the two games that I have yet to complete are Jak 2 and Jak 3. 

12: Shortest time you've beaten a game in?

I would say roughly eight to ten hours. It was either the first Uncharted or The Order 1866. 

13: A game you were the most excited for when it wasn't released yet?

Back when I was younger and quite impressionable, the game I was most excited for was Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. I told everyone that I met how hyped I was for the game (only to later learn it was on the Gameboy Advance and I would not be able to play it until I managed to sneakily download an emulator), going into clear and crisp detail when I went to Disneyland near the end of 2004.

14: A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting?

This wouldn’t be a game per se but I thought it would be cool if Link had a proper voice instead of his usual grunts. Most games these days have voice acting so it’s hard to peg one down.

Perhaps Pokemon? We have yet to hear the voices of the characters running around.

15: Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover?

I never much thought about it but it might be interesting to see a crossover between the Uncharted franchise and the rebooted version of Tomb Raider. Lara Croft and Nathan Drake heading on an adventure together, each trying to one-up each other when it came to their knowledge on ancient civilisations. That or perhaps even bringing in a little Assassin’s Creed. 

16: Character you've hated most? From what game?

There hasn’t been a character I’ve truly hated in a game. While the Luxord battle in Kingdom Hearts 2 gave me the most grief, I did like that buttery British accent and his stylistic leanings. 

Now if we were talking about novel protagonists, I have one clear answer: Quentin Coldwater from The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman. If the book series were ever adapted to game form, be sure to find that on the top of my most hated character list.

17: What game do you never tell people you play?

I don’t think there’s a game that I have played that would warrant it being a secret. Gaming itself is almost a guilty pleasure when it comes to conversation and only comes up in conversation with people I know that are fellow gamers or who I know actually dip their toe into the hobby. Otherwise, I keep quiet about my interests.

In saying that, there was a Barbie adventure game on the original Playstation that one of my friends had. We played it together but it was nothing to write home about.

18: A game you wish your friends knew about?

Most of my friends know all about the games that I play since I now post impressions and reviews on my tumblr. But I do think Child of Light and the Danganronpa games are deserving of a shameless plug every now and then.

19: Which game do you think deserves a revival?

Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. 

20: What was the first video game you ever played?

I would have to say Pokemon. The first gaming ‘console’ I received was the Gameboy Colour along with Pokemon Blue. I simply had to ‘catch ‘em all.’

21: How old were you when you first played a video game?

Roughly five or six? I don’t quite remember.

22: If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do?

That’s a difficult question. I never much thought about immersing myself in a game but rather living in the world of a game. It’s a debate I’ve often had with myself - whether it should be in a far-flung fantasy world or in one couched in reality. 

I would say it would have to be a game either in the Mass Effect universe or perhaps the more recent titles of Final Fantasy. I would like to see myself as a mercenary or a soldier but truth be told, I would be out exploring the new world I found myself in or in a menial position out of danger.

But if I could immerse myself in any game for a day, it would have to be an MMORPG where I could focus on the social aspects of it, as well as dive into enjoying the joys of freedom found therein.

23: Biggest disappointment you've had in gaming?

Most of the time I shy away from games that would prove to be disappointing. As a gamer, I like to be informed and so I try to read as many reviews as I can. The biggest disappointment I found came through in my first time playing through Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I had high expectations after ploughing through Skyrim. 

Another game that proved to be quite disappointing was Kingdom Hearts re: Coded. The worlds were almost an exact copy from the original title on Playstation 2 and even the plot felt recycled. 

24: Casual, Hardcore, or in the middle?

I like to think I sit somewhere in the middle. I’m not extremely hardcore but I do like some of my games to have a little challenge (even though I much prefer story to being pounded into dirt by enemies).

25: Be honest; have you ever used cheats (like ActionReplay or Gameshark)?

Back when I first discovered real-time strategy games such as Starcraft  and Warcraft, I also picked up a number of cheats to make my life easier. I was not very good at micromanaging when I was eight and the stories seemed to sparkle with an intoxicating allure.

26: Handheld or console?

Despite my numerous handheld devices, I would have to say I am a console player at heart. Most of the time, my Nintendo 3DS and Playstation Vita are played whilst plugged into the power supply. I like to go on gaming binges if there’s ample time.

27: Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry?

There have been a couple of moments. One in my immediate memory came from Tales of Berseria. I felt a strong connection to Velvet Crowe and the struggles she faced throughout the game touched a part of me I had never known.

The first moment when I had the urge to cry came in the ending moments of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. It was only ruined by the terrible line (but after much hewing and hawing over it, it actually made sense in context). Still, I would have rather it have been far more poignant and heartfelt than what it had been.

28: Which character's clothes do you wish you owned the most?

The first thought that came to mind was Roxas. But really, I like most of the clothes that can be found in the Kingdom Hearts series. 

29: Which is more important, gameplay or story?

Story is the most important aspect of a game (at least in my opinion). It’s the one thing that keeps me going as I usually find my interest flagging when story is not the main hook. Tetris is good for a couple of minutes but it is not something I would be able to play for eight hours on end.

30: A game that hasn't been localized in your country that you think should be localized?

Obviously the Dai Gyakuten Saiban series. I was severely disappointed to hear that we won’t be seeing a Western release and I sincerely adore all the games that involve table slamming, finger pointing and strange twists on actual legislation.

8 questions tag

tagged by the lovely @jaetennys ^~^ thank you, darling 💖

1) What are your favourite mvs?

Oooo, my favorite music videos. Hmmm... I really like ‘don’t fight’ by ants, ‘사랑해줘요’ by mind u, and ‘take you home’ by baekhyun. Im not really a fan of busy (if that is the right word to use) mvs, ahaha. I like them simple with nice lighting, and telling a short story.

2) do you have like a to-do-list before you die?? (like a bucket list) if so, can you list them down? (im really curious)

Ohhh, yes i do!! Haha, i actually have one written down in one of my notebooks, and its quite long so ill just name a few things. Some things id like to do would be going to tokyo with my friends, go on an endless shopping spree with my friends, have our fashion blog be eminent, and to finish writing an entire novel one day (this would be a dream, ehehe).

A lot of the things in my bucket list include activities my friends, haha, because, for me, the best things in my life are never done alone *~*

3) which one do you prefer; romantic love or platonic love? why?

Hmmm...  honestly, romantic love. In my opinion, of course, its more fun in my opinion and i enjoy the whirlwind of emotions that come from it. From being physically close and cuddling, hand-holding, the narrow focus to them solely in a specific admirable perception—just being intimate and having the deep feeling that is created form romantic love—piques my interest more.

 Though, there isnt anything wrong with platonic love either! I enjoy that as well, but i prefer romantic love.

4) who is the person you look up the most? why?

Prepare for absolute cheese, lmao. I look up to taeyong a lot—no surprise here. But its because of what he went through and how he dealt with it. He went through a lot of fire when he finally debuted, and witnessing the crumble of the pillars that held him up confidently made my heart break. I really admire how he handled the drama. It exhibits a growth he has gone through amid that arduous time period. And, honestly, i related to some fractions of it—of him as a person.

But it is not only that factor alone that makes me look up to him; it is also his drive to become a better dancer, rapper—person. I also enjoy how he takes care of all of his members ;~; he makes it so prominent that he cares for his friends and its very respectful. Hes just always thankful for his members and for everything, its aksdjgfh aghhhh.

What always sticks with me about him is the episode (i dont remember which) in ‘nct life: pep rally’ to which he talks about the controversy that surrounded him. What he says really sparked something in me—dunno, i think im just rambling at this point so ill cut this off here lmaoo.

5) favourite songs of all time?

Aaaah, this really is a difficult one. My favorite songs probably are ‘icarus’ by jj project, ‘what i want to say’ by acourve, ‘i smile’ by day6, and ‘the lovely song when we parted’ by mind u.

I wonder if i make it obvious enough, but i really love listening to k-indie/k-acoustic :) my true list of all-time favorites are on my spotify playlist thats filled with them, ahaha.

6) who is/are your bias? why?

Oh boy... My biases are taeyong and sicheng—as if this information is not written on the walls already, haha.

I literally dedicated a huge passage to a fraction of my love for taeyong earlier, and that heavily contributes to why. But pushing that to the side, i admire him for his talent in dancing, rapping, and everything. He is so resilient and that is a favorable quality in my eyes, aaah. His personality is really laudable as well :)

Sicheng... because he is equally meritorious. He traveled over to korea and had to learn an entirely new language, try his hardest to debut, and so much more. He is doing is best and, just like taeyong, he is putting his best effort out there and is growing :’) i also love how he treats his members too; he is just so lovable to everyone, its almost unbelievable.

7) list of things/people that makes you happy?

- Writing is an obvious answer for me to include, haha. Its a great way to start off my day and a good way to calm myself down from a taxing day. I also enjoy sharing the content i create with others, ahaha;

- Reading is also another element. Every morning i read for a good hour or two before i begin writing. I just sit there with my coffee and leaf through my book. It would be an even more perfect day if the weather is nice and warm;

- Going out with my friends. To be honest, i used to never leave the ensconcement of my bedroom; i would say inside and read, write, or just organize my books and closet. It isnt until around a month and a half ago (i think) where my friends have finally egged me to go out with them (i also believe i posted pictures on this blog of it ahaha) and i enjoyed it wholeheartedly. Now, i go out almost every single day with them, and sometimes on my own. I feel like the complete opposite!!! But it makes me really happy, huhu;

- The friends i made on this website makes me really happy. I mean i dont have much but i appreciate the couple that i do have with my entire heart. Knowing them for a short amount of time is unbelievable because it feels like ive known them for years, and everything has been compacted within the month or two we all started to talk. The closeness is really astonishing, but extremely refreshing! I can go on for a while about how appreciative i am and how happy they make me, especially on days where i feel a little down and talking to them normally uplifts my spirits, but i think this will suffice;

- Coffee. The root of my energy tbh. Keeps me going throughout the day and keeps me on my feet during dance, even though i might be too off-the-walls.

8) what are your fondest memories? (it can be anything! about your pet or your friends etc)

Oh boy, this can go on forever too so ill just write the first one that came to my mind.

It was thanksgiving night with my cousins and we snuck out. Skipping over the minor, stupid particulars, we were being chased by one of the neighbors and we started running away for a good five minutes, which resulted in us becoming lost (because we were at our uncle’s city [and we never visit that town]) at a park.

Afterwards, we sat around on the grass for a long while and started to talk for a long while. It was strange at first since we were never really close to one another, but that night was such a table turner. It was one in the morning and we were all sitting or laying on the grass, talking as we stared at the stars—surprisingly, because i havent seen a clear night sky in the city since i lived over at the country side—and we learned a lot about each other and why we differed, which made us argue a lot. Talking it over for hours, our relationship with each other substantially changed and it was like there was never thick air between us to begin with.

Im not sure if this is adequate enough to be an extremely fond memory; but in my book, it is :D i frequently recall this moment despite it occurring many years ago—because it is that life-changing for me. It sort of made me think that despite the negativity i face with others, the other party always has their own reason to why.

I hope this tag is okay! ^~^ i feel like i revealed a larger fraction of myself than what i usually do, ahahaha //profoundly sweats//.

Im tagging @urbanjohnny @writenct @heartachetosing @hey-uta @thenctcults!  I hope its okay to tag you guys, please dont feel obligated to do this if you feel zero desire to ^~^  

My questions for you:

1. Whats your favorite book, and why?

2. What is a good, life changing moment that always sticks with you?

3. Do you believe in astrology? Why?

4. What’s something you have been forced into (like an activity or class) in the belief you would hate it, but actually love it to this day?

5. Name three things you’re proud of in your life and why :D

6. What is the root of your happiness? How did you discover it?

7. Do you prefer clear, serene starry nights within a forest, or an ocean view during golden hours?

8. What’s one thing that not many people know about you?

Again, you dont have to do this if you have zero desire to!! Ehehe

Full House pt 5

It’s been three months. You’ve been here for three months, and you’ve learned quite a lot since that first day. Like how Darks room is filled books and he’ll sit there and read when he’s not running the house,  Or how Wilford sings while cooking, sometimes he will grab you when you’re walking past and swing you around while singing obnoxiously. Host seems to have grown fond of you and will let you sit is his room while he broadcasts, sometimes letting you join in (Something that shocked everyone else in the house), Bing is still very kind to you and makes sure you eat properly, Google has come around since the first time you two met, and likes to ask you questions about how you perceive the world around you. Light will take you out of a room if he feels like a fight is about to occur so you don’t get hurt.  Anti will force you into the living room to watch some movie that he’d chosen and leaves you out of his pranks ever since you convinced Wilford not to shoot him when Anti ruined his favourite tie.

All the members of the house have seemed to grown fond of you, some of them namely Dark and Anti, get increasingly jealous when you spend too much time with someone else. Both have dragged you away from Light because, “The damned feather duster is gonna turn you against the rest of us” Or “I need you to help me, mortal, be grateful I acknowledge you at all”. Everyone takes a different approach to get your attention, Light will tap your shoulder and wait politely, Wilford asks you to help him polish his guns or knifes, Bing and Google will ask for help on a “Human problem”, and the Host will send you into a story and narrate you through it.

Currently, you were lying on a couch, you couldn’t be sure which room you were in, Wilford likes to changes them around on you. In your hands you held a book from Darks room, it was about some backwards romance. Wuthering heights or something. To be honest you weren’t surprised that Dark enjoyed this book. You were finally getting to a good part when there was a loud crash from upstairs and multiple people yelling, Sighing you stood up and made your way towards the noise.

Upon reaching the commotion you were greeted with almost the entire household yelling at each other in what you assumed was the dining room. When you entered the room everyone went a deadly silent, You glanced around the room at all the men staring at you and you sighed, “What is going on? One second i’m peacefully reading, the next all of you are getting into a massive fight” You asked, your eyes going from person to person. Wilford, being he was the closest to you, got your attention first, “Willy, explain please” You addressed him, he smiled, “Nothing my dear, just a simple debate among us friends” He said, elbowing Anti (a bit too harshly), Who nodded franticly. You sighed and turned to Bing, “Bing, will you tell me what you guys are doing?” You asked, Bing froze as everyone turned to look at him, all of them knew he had the worst time lying to you, You put your hands on your hips and gave him what the guys call your “mom look”. he looked away, “N-nothing, like Wilford said, Just a friendly debate” He stammered, You huffed and turned to face Dark, “why do I feel like you have something to do with this?” You asked, he raised his hands innocently, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Y/N” He said calmly.

You frowned, “You’re all up to something. And now every one in this room cannot be trusted until I figure out what it is” You said crossing your arms, everyone’s faces dropped suddenly, Bing looked crushed, Wilford and Anti froze, Google looked like he had to reboot, Dark was forced into stony silence, and Hosts mouth hung open mid narration. You turned on your heel and spotted Light in the corner, no doubt trying to hide from your view, you looked at him for a moment and sighed, “Even you Light” You said  walking out from the room to go back to your book.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning you were in the kitchen making breakfast when the doorbell rang. You grinned and ran to the door, swinging it open and hugging the man on the other side, “Mare! Ive missed you, you freak of nature you!” You screeched, he chuckled and hugged you back, “What’s up, buttercup! Hows life with the so called secretive ass holes?” He asked, You laughed And dragged him inside where a group of The guys had gathered to see who the unexpected visitor was. You pushed  past them holding Mares hand, leading him into the kitchen. “Is this the pancake recipe I taught you? You still use it!” He exclaimed excitedly, you laughed, “Of course, you nerd. These are the best Pancakes ever. I know Nate loves them” you laughed.

Wilford was the first to brave the kitchen, sticking his head in to look at the two of you, “So…whos the guy” he asked coldly looking Mare up and down. You frowned and glared at the pink haired man, “His Name is Natemare and he’s my best friend. We used to do everything together, and after last night I thought I’d invite him over.” You replied coldly, You left the room for a moment and Mare let out a low whistle, “What did you do to set her off this bad?” He laughed, Wilford glared at the entity, “We won’t tell her what we were talking about last night…stupid reason honestly” He grumbled, Mare laughed. “You’re lying?! To Y/N! Oh god, no wonder she’s so pissed! Last time someone lied to her she basically shunned him for months.” he explained leaning against the counter, Wilford opened his mouth to say something but shut it as you walked in.

Wilford walked out after a few minutes of your glaring and Mare laughed. You smiled and started on the pancakes, “So Mare, how’s Nate doing?” you asked glancing at the entity, he shrugged, “Fine I guess. Stubborn as always. He misses you” he said, you smiled sadly at him. “I had to leave, you know that” you said he nodded, “Yeah. I know”.  You piled the finished pancakes on to 9 plates and had Mare help set them at the table, when the table was set you went to the doorway to call the guys down, “FOODS READY YOU ANIMALS!” You exclaimed, you sat down as the guys began filing in and sitting down, you sat at one side of the table and Mare next to you, Dark and Wilford sat at either head of the table as usual and everyone else sat wherever. You could feel the entire table staring at the two of you, when you looked up everyone looked away. You frowned and looked back to Mare who looked amused by the entire situation. Breakfast went on silently until Google finally broke it, “How do you know our human?” he asked bluntly, you stared at him as Mare answered, “Your human? “ he questioned, you shook your head “It’s fine, he doesn’t understand the concept of possession” you muttered, Mare nodded. “I’ve known Y/N since I was created, she was Dating my counterpart Nate at the time” he said, the entire table went silent. “She was dating him?” Light spoke up, Mare nodded, “Yeah, after they split she spent more and more time with me, we fooled around a bit and- OW!” he was cut off by you slamming your foot on his. The guys were all glaring daggers at Mare. You sighed and rolled your eyes before standing and taking your plate to the sink.

Mare followed you into the kitchen, snatching your wrist pulling you to him, “Hey, what’s up?” he asked wrapping his arms around your waist, you huffed “You know I don’t like that being brought up. And with all of them in there, I’m surprised Wilford hasn’t killed anyone. And no doubt Dark is Furious” you sighed, Mare rolled his eyes, “Who cares? Come on, I know you remember how much…. /Fun/ we had when Nate was gone. Hmm? I certainly remember how much you liked this…” he trailed off, head ducking as he nipped below your ear, you sucked in a breath and put your hands on his chest pushing him off, “Mare. We can’t. I can’t do that anymore. We had our run and we didn’t fit…” you said Mare sighed, and hugged you burying his face in your neck you smiled and hugged him back, “Mare, you’re my best friend, and I know you could make me love you with only your voice, so thanks for you know, not doing that” You smiled  and pulled away from him, he grinned, “You’re very welcome, now, how about we play some Mario kart?” he asked, you laughed, “you’re on pretty boy” you said leading him to the game room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And that’s another chapter done! Natemare dropped by, hope you like that little tidbit! Anyway I’m working on 6 right now and don’t forget, criticism and requests are welcome!

i found this lesbian survey and decided to fill it out!

Femme or butch? is this what do i prefer or which i am? im a femme and i have no preference in dating, i’ve been wildly attracted to both and any in between

Do you have a “type”? If so, describe it. the only nearly completely common denominator though my exes are having brown eyes? i have dated only one person who did not have brown eyes. i always feel safer looking into brown eyes then blue. i woudl say i have often gone after the romantic artsy type with good music taste and some kind of signature style about them, ironically none of which drew me to my current girlfriend who i believe is probably defintiely the love of my life

Plaid button-ups or leather jackets? leather jackets! i will swoon over smartly dressed gals in button downs as well as a chill gal in some plaid unbuttoned flannel but the two together make me think of a lumberjack

Describe your style. i usually go for one of two styles- softly dressed forest wanderer, or slightly sassy soft grunge. both include my doc martens, but one is more natural colours and old fashioned dresses and the other is sassy tshirts and 90sish thrift store finds like denim and dark florals

Describe your aesthetic.pressed flowers between the pages of a book on forest spirits, rose milk tea, silver rainy downpours, curly baby hairs, white peaches, a cat sleeping in a library, custard pastries, a circle of mushrooms in moss, opals and furry moths

Favorite article of clothing? my one forever 21 dress ive had since like junior year that i can wear without a bra and it has like a cool cross back i just looooveee ittt, then also my embroidered minty 1930s style qipao sort of dress

Favorite pair of shoes? my doc martens and green chinese embroidered lace up slippers

Current haircut? currently blonde (ugh) and currently my hair falls just past my breasts, the goal is to grow it to my bellybutton!

Any haircut goals for the future? i really wanna get on the thick fluffy bangs bandwagon but i dont think i have the stamina to put up with growing them out again smh

Describe the best date you’ve been on. there was this one date i went on with one of my high school girlfriends where we went to a bookstore and hung out and then stuck googly eyes all over my city on random monuments and street signs, and we also ate thai food and listened to music and it was still one of the most lovely dates. BUT my girlfriend recently visited me in taiwan and we went in a glass bottom gondola ride up a mountain and drank from coconuts and wandered through old streets and had the most amazing tea food with a spectacular view and it was heaven

Describe the worst date you’ve been on. probably the one where i went on a picnic with my first girlfriend who then broke up with me that same day and even though our entire relationship was so awkward and not what is should have been it still hurt so bad

Single? Taken? taken!

If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife! where do i begin! my girlfriend is a slightly shorter than me girl named lynn who loved korean variety shows, drinking coca cola, listening to cheesy love songs, and playing tricks on people (especially me). she used to be a major tomboy in middle and high school and date all the girls and get slapped a lot, as well as mess with teachers and play pranks on them and steal things from their lunchboxes. more than half of her birthchart including sun, rising, and venus are scorpio, and she wants to start her own streetstyle online brand but has not yet found a catchy brand name!

If single, what are you looking for in a potential girlfriend/wife? :)

Describe your dream wedding my girlfriend says if we get married we need two, a traditional chinese wedding (she is from china) and a western one with a priest since i am catholic, and i couldnt agree more. my dream wedding includes just very close friends and family, extravagant lights and flowers and a reception party playlist chosen by me, catered by the teahouse we went to in taiwan. i know its so silly and superficial but i want the dreamiest dress that i design, wisteria everywhere, and most of all i just want lynn at the end of the alter looking stunning in whatever it is she decides to wear

Do you want kids? YES me and lynn talk about this a lot because we both love kids and both agree on at least 4, no more than 8. and we will share who carries the kids so not just one of us is having our uteruses worn out

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? guilin, china. but its a fantasy. guilin is real and beautiful but chinese laws make it so that even if we settle down there and build a house it cant truly belong to us, and in china you cant have a private business and it jsut sucks because the drema is to live in the quiet countryside with a simple life and beautiful scenery to explore together and with our children

Favorite lesbian movie? i love so many but im gonna go with the handmaiden!

Favorite lesbian novel/story? i havent read nearly enough, but  adore all things by malinda lo and julie anne peters! ash by malinda lo is probably my favourite. i have to still read sarah waters though, i hear she reigns supreme

Favorite lesbian song? don’t pull away by milosh ft jviews (the music video is gay at least, i also love hayley kiyoko)

Favorite lesbian musician? hayley kiyoko probably

What lesbian stereotypes do you fit into, if any? mmmm i dont like softball so that doesnt work...i read a lot of sappho though! and i have short nails? and love buffy? are these stereotypes?

Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal? ugh yes

If a woman wanted to woo you, what would a surefire way to accomplish that? write me a love letter or make me a mixtape about your feleings something cheesy

Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian? girls!!!!

Are you more of a cat person or a dog person? cat but i also love pups!

Turn ons? a musical wonderful voice i could listen to and listen to, easy and stimulating conversations, passion for something that lights up their eyes

Turn offs? rudeness in any shape or form, indecisiveness or feigning indecisiveness because you think i want to make the decisions, despicable movie and music taste, smell

Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you? mmmm in the past it has been pretty even. i have learned though that with women it really is a waiting game more than with guys so with my current girlfriend the tension was killing me so much i had to straight up ask her if something was going on and when she said yes she did like me too i was so relieved because she admitted to having not dated anyone since high school (5 years ago for her) and not asking anyone out while at college so if i had kept waiting for her who knows if we would have gotten together!

What is your dream career? i want to be a stay at home mom and author and perhaps an art teacher or preschool teacher on the side if the books dont pa the bills!

Talk about your interests or hobbies! writing and reading and drawing and singing and hiking and listening to music and watching korean dramas and making lists and studying languages

What is the most attractive quality a woman can have? passion, not necessarily in the sexual wya, but passion for something in general. like if she is an actress you see her on the stage and see how into it she is, and offstage she talks about it in a way that shows she is capable of truly loving something so much and seeing wonder in life. or a girl who seems quiet but then when she starts to show you the music she likes she closes her eyes and knows every lyric and has this expression of true passion and love for the music, i am captivated by women who are captivated by the purest elements of life from music to dance to nature

Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone? for women, i fall in infatuation quite easily. i was always more cautious with men of course and now i avoid them altogether. but love is something i’ve been becoming more conservative of somehow. i think because i was so hurt by someone before and gave and gave without receiving and im scared of that happening again. i have to be receiving love to give it, thats something i finally can control my impulses over and protect myself from.

Ever fallen for your best-friend? HA

Ever fallen for a straight girl? HAHA

The L-Word: yes or no? (love it or hate it?) heck to the no i couldnt make it past two episodes 

Favorite comfort food? macaroni and cheese

Coffee or tea? tea

Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above? none but i have tried vegetarian before

Do you have any pets? a chinchilla and a cat!

Early-riser or night-owl? night owl 

What is your sign? gemini sun, sag moon, sag rising

What is your Myers-Briggs type? INFP

Who was your first lesbian crush? my first serious lesbian crush was on a girl at my middle school who dressed to the nines every day in vintage dresses and sweaters and she flirted with practically everyone just joking around and always had a boyfriend but was just charming in every way. my whoel day would eb ruined if i couldn’t just see her or say hello once, and i thought i was just obsessed until i was like ‘wait what if she kissed me’ and BAM i knew it was a real life crush

At what age did you know you were a lesbian? im not really sure. i identified as bi/pan from freshman year to junior year i think, but then was realizing i definitely had a preference and didn’t want to be with guys in a relationship at all to be honest but even up until last summer i was really questioning if i was asexual, so its been a journey but i think i finally fully realized i am a happy happy lesbian after meeting lynn

At what age did you come out (if you have)? i was 14 when i first told my parents i was bi, 18 when i said im a lesbian 

Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)? just my girly friend

Talk about how your day went i worked this morning 7-11 after only sleeping 4 hours since i got hooked on ‘tipping the velvet’ the bbc miniseries, said goodbye to a friend, had school and did a presentation on how to make rosemilk bubble tea, i ate at a moomin cafe with my coworker, and now am working on homework and doing this survey and putting off my night cleaning duties eheh

Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future  i just want to have a family and to have my books published, thats all i really need. a loving wife, my sister still by my side as my partner in crime, so many children, so many stories finally told that people are reading. i really want to build a lovely house for my family like my grandparents did once upon a time, with secret rooms and unique hiding places, a house they can pass down as they grow up and it can have our lineage. i want to live by the mountains and trees and water, i want to be able to speak mandarin, cantonese, korean, japanese, icelandic, italian, arabic, and polish fluently