#or maybe we misremembered it from our childhoods
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CORRECT TAGS‼️‼️‼️‼️ @rn0na-lizard you are so so so correct….. my favorite ‘Normal Girl’ in hmds…….i almost never see anyone talk about these aspects of her let alone also love her for them as they should.
i feel like Leona/ DS lumina gets mischaracterized super often which is understandable bc out of all the DS candidates leona is the least like her ancestor (who i also love, for different reasons).
in AWL lumina was the only kid in the valley for a very long time, but many of the DS residents have lived in the valley their whole lives. while lumina had accepted her role as a proper young heiress by chapter 3 of AWL— and when DS begins Leona already at this point of her life— lumina still had a lingering sense of uncertainty and angst and loneliness and doubt, and unresolved worries about her parents. absolutely none of this is present with leona
in this world leona starts with Lumina’s 22 year old appearance, she’s just rich as hell and living her best life (as she deserves), she’s unabashedly shallow, puts herself first always, speaks so politely and affably yet she can be so casually cruel in the most genuine cute way and out of touch with reality and and i fucking love her and i’d die for her. my beloved girlboss girlkeep girlypop
more iconic Leona Moments
when muu/muffy asks for beauty advice leona’s recommendation is “this brand of mail order beauty cream is simply divine! and it was quite inexpensive too, just 100,000 G 🥰” everyone else looks uncomfortable and muu is like “you’re as frivolous as always….”
aside from the 3 who take literally half your money (Witch💖, moi, and thomas) leona and panama (romana) take the most money from you if they carry you home when you faint. just a couple of girl bosses holding on to their girlpire (btw shout out to sebastian, the only resident in the entire valley who carries you home for free)
neither panama nor leona attend the harvest festival, they send sebastian there by himself to test the food first lmao (if you poison it like the witch they’re harboring on their property requires you to do, sebastian is just like “i can’t serve this to Mistress Panama…”)
once again sebastian attacks mukumuku for her sake, this time not to make her a paintbrush but she told him to get her the best slippers and this was apparently the easiest way. sebastian gets fucking mauled btw
leona has hands down the best romance route in hmds. all her scenes are incredible but god the slow burn friends to lovers with your DVD player….
in her purple heart event she shows up at your house because she heard you have a DVD player, asks you to show her how it works, and then just leaves after she’s done playing with it
in her yellow heart event she has sebastian fetch van so she can buy a DVD player for herself but van’s like “i’m so sorry …. Pete… bought the last one….”
leona is so unable to stomach the idea of other people having things she doesn’t that she starts to cry and the only way to placate her is to tell her she can go to your house anytime she wants just so she can use your DVD player. that’s not a setup to a budding romance that’s her final heart event
it’s the most incredible romance arc in the world like girl you have infinite money you can just. buy a DVD player somewhere else?? “i want to watch DVDs at my house just like you!” leona you have three entire bedrooms
“rich girl love interest who has everything except love, win her heart by having genuine conversation with her”: done to death, tired, i don’t have time for that
“rich girl love interest who has everything except a fucking DVD player, win her heart by giving her expensive stuff and ‘relax tea’ and access to your DVD player”: audacious, intriguing, never been done before, innovative
if you deny her god-given right to access your DVD player she is like “Is that so……………Just let me be alone for a little bit.” incredible tragedy i understand. take as much time as you need to grieve darling
oh but her first heart event asks you to pick a side in an argument she’s having with panama and the correct answer is to say “sebastian is the one who’s wrong” (sebastian has said nothing wrong this whole time and yet both of them have just been yelling at him to shut up)
and her blue heart event is “help me find this heirloom necklace… boohoo…” and when you find it she’s like “perfect! now grandma won’t get mad at me. hmm, you seem pretty dependable…♡” augh she’s way too good at this…….!!! i’ll do anything for you!
when you propose she says “of course, i always dreamed of having a romance and a wedding♡” and says nothing abt how she feels about you <3
also if you marry her, once a week she goes to hang out at her ex love interest’s place for 6 hours straight and comes home saying “whew… i had so much fun that i must have lost track of time… i’ll hurry on home”
if you marry another girl she starts flirting with you like “I’m so envious of your wife, having such a fine husband… Pete.” (or whatever your name is)
i’ve become obsessed with her and romeo’s horrible trainwreck soap opera marriage since replaying cute in jp… it’s SO… i have so much to say about them that it should be its own post but i’ll just give the cliffnotes
shotgun wedding vibes. romeo is surprised by his own wedding. they’re childhood friends but he himself has never considered marrying her. her words to him at their wedding are “Make me happy♡” (command)
she understandably can’t stand his terrible table manners or his clothes or anything about him (except that she wants to watch him surf and have his child. but he instead walks in circles all day. coward) and he’s both really good at accidentally stepping on landmines and just ever so slightly majorly terrified of her after marriage (“but surely her angry outbursts are just her way of showing love hahahahaha” you’re going to die. she’s going to kill you). the only positive things they say about their marriage are extremely shallow. they can’t communicate with each other because romeo always says the Dumbest Shit obliviously and leona always responds by cutting him out of her life forever!!!!!! (for 5 seconds) while he has no idea what happened
they are both so melodramatic and they both just do nothing except make each other worse and run away from each other and push each other away but they can’t escape each other. neither of them ever has to grow or change if they marry each other because an elderly overworked man is sustaining both of their existences and neither of them can take care of themselves and i love them your honor
also romeo’s first crush as a kid was apparently her mom, and if leona falls for YOU she flirts by mentioning that sebastian says you look like the spitting image of her dead father. dear fucking god
they’re the epitome of “You're both just enabling each other's mental illnesses. You're both perfect for each other. Never change. Just never involve anybody else in what you've got going on.”
romeo really does feel like her stupid lackey. like the karen to her regina. they even had this dynamic in the games they played as kids… she was the Harvest Goddess and he was Servant A/Minion A (they might still be playing this game as adults…he calls her lady/mistress sometimes after marriage…)
btw leona’s best friend (wife) marivia is also just as… there’s an event where they just gossip about all the mineral town ppl and marivia says ann would win a gluttony contest and they both giggle
there’s also an event where marivia casually walks into Witch’s hut and just interviews her so she can write her into a novel. witch is left completely drained by this exchange. leona and marivia both are so chill about the horrible cruel villainess living in leona’s shed who wants the town poisoned and rewards you for killing animals and hurting yourself and is putting curses on everyone (and they’re right. she’s never done anything wrong in her life)
#i also feel like leona and marivia summoned Witch (just girlypop things summoning hot evil ladies from hell)#i’m a marivia x leona x witch truther. the evidence is out there. evil yuri triad (real)#i also love to believe that witch is fucking with all the rival couples in the valley but ESPECIALLY romeo x leona#since she’s petty about her crush (leona) choosing the village idiot of all people#she can’t affect gustafa and nami because gustafa is like a garden gnome type that wards away evil#leona would make coquette edits of phantom skye/steiner#man i really have a lot of overlapping ships but i just like thinking about everyone together in some way#marivia was interviewing witch for a girls love leona x witch sequel in that series she wrote that has the main character based on leona#(this was revealed to me in a dream)#bokumono#harvest moon ds#hmds#harvest moon#story of seasons#hmds leona#hmds lumina#i’m sorry for going ham about your tags i promise i’m normal#^_−☆#hmds cute#i feel like everyone collectively forgot what hmds was like which is understandable because it’s a fever dream#or maybe we misremembered it from our childhoods#but replaying the girl and boy versions in english and japanese has really refreshed my views on the characters#i have so much to say about everyone mostly the rival couples#love the dysfunction and bad vibes in this game#poisoned water supply type of townsfolk#girls hour (meet up in the mines to beat each other up and slaughter various animals and humanoids to eat)#it’s such an evil game#haunted by natsume malware ghosts
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I feel like I'm going insane or just misremembering something from my childhood, but I remember this book that I read for like 3rd or 4th grade ela. and the plot of the book just made no sense at all. like, it was this little book that was part of a much bigger textbook and we read it together as a class. but the plot was absolutely insane.
so I don't actually remember any of the characters. but I know that there were two boys that were like both ten, and maybe some other characters too. I don't remember names, so I'm calling the main character Mike and the other guy Jim. so Mike is playing baseball or something in Jim's yard with friends or whatever. and I guess something happens and he leaves for five minutes. and when he comes back everyone has left and a window on the house is broken. I think no one gets in trouble for it at first because no one can prove it. so the next day he's trying to be a detective, and him and Jim are asking people what happened. eventually, Jim calls the fucking police and there's a cop outside of Jim's house when Mike shows up and Jim is all "I think when we were all playing baseball outside your house and you left, that's when you broke the window" and Mike is like "uh no, I didn't break it. and also I'm the main character and the story has been from my point of view so the audience reading knows I didn't break it". and then the cop is like "uh okay. now what" and Jim is like "oh I don't want Mike to get in trouble. I just want to forgive and forget" even though he called the fucking cops. and then Mike is like "but I didn't break it. I think you did" and Jim is like "oh shit you caught me! I broke it by throwing a ball at it after everyone left" and then the story ends.
and like, even as a 3rd grader I remember this story making no sense at all. like, why would Jim call the cops over something he did, try to blame someone else, and then defend them and say they shouldn't be punished? like, the cop is the only adult that appears in the story, I'm pretty sure. so I don't think he's trying to avoid getting in trouble with his parents or something. and like, Mike and Jim were looking for clues together even though Jim did it and was gonna pin the blame on Mike anyway. so like why even bother looking for clues.
like, the moral of the story was supposed to be about owning up for your own mistakes, but all of us had already learned that stuff in kindergarten. and the plot was so confusing and convoluted, and the ending was so rushed that "own up to your own mistakes" doesn't even accurately describe the morals of the story.
and like, me and the rest of the people at my table told the teacher "hey this makes no sense at all. why would he call the cops but not want his friend that he framed to get in trouble?" and the teacher just said "you didn't pay attention while reading. the story is about doing the right thing and taking responsibility for your actions" and we were all like "yeah we got that. we just don't understand Jim's motivation" and she was all "read the story again" and stopped answering our questions.
I have no idea if I'm just misremembering the plot of the book or merging ideas together in my head, but I'm pretty sure I got the basic idea down. I have no idea what text book it was in, but it was filled with a bunch of other short stories for elementary school kids for ela. I could not tell you the publisher, title, date, or anything else about it. all I know is that we used that book for the entirety of my 3rd or 4th grade year.
I would try and research this, but I can't be bothered and I honestly don't care enough to spend all that time working towards a mediocre at best resolution.
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A memory from childhood
I think I must have been dreaming about this, or maybe I'm just old and thinking too much about my past and my future, but this mildly formative memory came back to me. It might explain certain things about my obsessions, but then again, not entirely.
In kindergarten I was five years old. I could read, but I still loved being read to, and every so often our class would take a little trip downstairs to the school library. The librarian, a very sweet woman (I remember she wore a different colorful dress with a matching pin every day, which fascinated me), would read aloud to the class. Sometimes she got a little fancy and treated us to a short film adaptation of a children's book (once it was "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss), or she projected slides of the book illustrations on the opposite wall of the reading room for us to follow along. I know this dates me somewhat; slide projectors, and even 16mm filmstrips were still a thing even in the early 90s.
This reading tradition continued for all the years I attended that elementary school, but I was quite young when this happened. I really do think it was kindergarten, or at the very latest in first grade when I was six. Anyway Mrs. Librarian (I have forgotten her real name, alas) had a set of slides for us that day, from a rather beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales (I think). The pictures were like richly detailed paintings almost, with very warm colors. The story, to the best of my faulty memory, involved a jolly king of some realm or another. He was always attending a sumptuous feast--I tell you that illustrated food on the banquet table looked mighty good--and as you can guess he was quite rotund indeed. But the funniest part that made the whole class go into hysterics was when the king took a bath in a wooden tub, which he barely fit into. I think the illustration showed all the displaced water splashing all over the floor, and the servants running around in a tizzy while the king laughed. We thought this was hilarious because "tee hee, naked bathtime" is peak humor to kindergarteners, I guess, but all you could really see of the bathing king was his impressively round gut.
If you know me, you know exactly where this is going. Yes, even at five years of age, fat bellies always gave me an excited tingle that I had no word for, nor explanation. Believe it or not, this was not even my first memory of such a thing. The connection of food/bellies/pleasure was already well established in tiny me's brain, sadly enough, and I treated it like my own shameful secret. In any case, I remember blushing quite a lot during that slide, even as I was laughing. Mrs. Librarian didn't help matters by encouraging the hilarity: "oh look at that tummy!" she says. "I'm gonna pat his big tummy." And she reached over to do just that, and patted the projected image on the wall.
Welp. This event happily short-circuited my thoughts for the rest of the day, and evidently for the next thirty-some years, because I still remember it!!
I want to say this story was called "The Laughing King," or something like that? But a cursory search didn't turn anything up, so I might be misremembering entirely.
#childhood memory#storytime#bellies#it's funny I haven't thought about this in some time but I still remember it with reasonable clarity
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For the meme, 8 and 13 for FFT!
8. The character with the greatest wasted/unexplored potential
There are a lot of characters in FFT who go unexplored, but that doesn't surprise me since the plot is fairly tight and focused in. As for wasted potential... I feel like Alma's a gimme, since she is critical to the plot but we don't see very much of her at all and she's kidnapped for like at least a year. Teta also, I wish we'd gotten more from her outside of "Delita's sister and she's sweet."
But there's one particular character (& relationship) that I feel was really wasted, and it's Malak/Marach. One of FFT's most important themes is family and that, for better or worse, you can't change where you come from. There are so many rich and complicated familial relationships in FFT, and even the ones I wish we'd seen more of, like Meliadoul & Izlude, have these important emotional arcs. Rapha & Marach have that, sort of, but we mostly see it from Rapha's side, and Marach's side issss....
Look, I just really didn't like that our understanding of their relationship opened with him hitting her. That sucks. I'm not saying that he couldn't have picked up the language of violence from Duke Barrington--I think that's maybe exactly what this plot is getting at--but uh. In terms of like... Greater narrative themes. Not a lot of family members hit each other, in this game. I can't remember if Folmarv hits Izlude or not, I might be misremembering, but if he does, that happens shortly before he kills him. Marach and Rapha are our recruitable protagonists who are notably darker skinned than the rest of the main cast, so the fact that their sibling relationship opens with an act of direct, intentional violence does not sit well with me. I don't even think the idea of that plot is terrible on its own, i.e. a family relationship marked by deliberate violence instead of subtle and implied (in contrast to say the Beoulves), but I honestly don't think Marach was the right character to do this with. Rapha's backstory is already SO violent (which I have mixed feelings about for similar reasons) that I don't think Marach needed to add to it outside of the innate conflict of brother hunting down sister. I wish his attitude towards her had been softer, I guess. Something like "don't leave, I need you here"--which tbh I think is what's actually communicated in this plot, but there were other ways to do that with him, I feel.
That being said, the moment where Rapha revives him with the stone is still one of the most moving scenes in the game.
13. The non-canon pairing I find the most intriguing
Lmao well ever since I suggested it to Zoe I've been thinking about Valmafra/Meliadoul an awful lot. There isn't a lot of FFT femslash that really works for me (I'm one of the few FFT lesbians who is not a fan of Ovelia/Agrias outside of "Ovelia has a baby gay crush on lesbian Agrias," I'm more of a childhood Ovelia/Alma person) but the more I think about Valmafra/Meliadoul the more I feel like there's something really interesting there. I had a thing I wanted to write that was like, how they're introduced at Mullonde, and then a series of letters between them over the events of the game, and then some epilogue stuff... I still really like the idea of it a lot but I struggle to write complete stories on my own so I'm not sure I'll ever get to it. BUT STILL. Meliadoul is a deeply repressed Catholic and Valmafra is a sexy witch. I'm just saying. It could be a lot of fun.
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She moved closer to him on the bed. Did he have any memories of sleepovers? From what she knew of Marc's childhood, she imagined not. Still, maybe there was one friend that he could have gone over to. Maybe there was an...implanted memory? Those were a bit sad, if she thought too hard about them. But then again, she'd also read something Ali had sent her, about how many of anyone's memories were fake. Misremembered. Layla didn't dwell on these thoughts too long, though she didn't want to thing about the other things too much, either. Naked gave her all sorts of ideas again. "No jumping then," She said. "We don't want any complaints from the neighbors." She put a hand on his knee, seeing his nerves resurface. "We can have our own sleepover, if you like. Though I think being naked might improve it. I meant that I wanted to just...cuddle."
Steven watched as she moved towards him, smiling at her, admiring her with a loving gaze that sparkled in his eyes.
"Yeah...deffo no jumping..." He murmured, his skin shifting into goose flesh as she touched it.
"...Sounds nice actually, love. Naked Cuddle..." He replied, almost shyly, meeting her eyes and noticing once again, just how beautiful she looked with her t-shirt turban, her freckled nose, her beautiful lips.
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my family were talking about how perfect our childhood is and how lucky we were
my dad talked about how he’s glad he wasn’t an absent father
am i misremembering things ? did i just have a naturally extremely sensitive temperament ? was it my CSA that fucked me up ? i don’t remember my childhood as fondly
maybe it’s because by time i was a teen, my parents had separated and it was just me and my mum moving from house to house to avoid homelessness. whereas my brothers had my mum and dad present able to buy them things as teens (when my dad wasn’t leaving us every 5 business days to go cheat and give up on us)
when everyone talked about their good experiences i just disconnected. cos how do i say ‘well i faced a lot of trauma that left me with a personality disorder so i can’t relate’
i just feel like i made my trauma up. because how does everyone pretend we were happy families? we weren’t ?
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random memory from my childhood, that my brain decided to show me because it's bored at work and for some reason, boredom leads to my brain trauma dumping on itself I guess. I dunno.
I don't remember how old I was, I want to say maybe 11? my class did a camp thing? I think it was 6th grade camp because I recall that being a thing 6th grade class did every year at my school. some of the parents could volunteer to join so the teacher had extra adult backup for looking after like 35 kids.
anyway, we were all in the bathrooms getting ready for bed. some were showering or brushing teeth and whatnot. my friend E was showering and I was waiting for her to finish so I could shower after. our other friend M was nearby somewhere. E was being silly and playing around while showering. she also had shampoo in her hair while doing this. we ended up basically playing peekaboo with the shower curtain. she'd stick her head out or open the curtain and i'd pull the curtain closed. the shower sprayed outward toward the curtain for some reason so every time she did it, I got soaked, and she made a mess and got the dry clothes and towels on the bench wet too. I was trying to stop that from happening.
we did that for a while until she suddenly stopped, and I realized she was crying. I asked what's wrong and if she got shampoo in her eye. she said yeah and our other friend M heard her and asked what was wrong and I told her she got shampoo in her eye. M said she'd get E's mom for her, who was one of the volunteer parents. I told her to try to open her eye in the water to rinse it and she just kept crying saying it hurt so she couldn't and wants her mom. I said M was getting her, it's ok.
E's mom comes in asking what happened and I tried to say she got soap in her eye and can't wash it out and needs help. but before I could finish my sentence, her mom started screaming at ME?????? blaming me for hurting E???? saying I punched her or something? (I may be misremembering what she said but i clearly remember her blaming me for it) I was in shock. I didn't know what I did or why I was being screamed at. I thought maybe I accidentally did something and didn't know. but when why would E say it was shampoo? I tried to explain the shampoo and just got screamed at because I punched her apparently? obviously M lied to her.
I don't remember what happened after that. pretty sure I cried harder than E and went into one of my autistic meltdowns, from getting screamed at suddenly and not knowing why. the whole bathroom area went quiet and everyone stared at me. it ruined my weekend.
i recall E apologized for her mom yelling at me and confirmed the shampoo ran into her eye. her mom never apologized. M never apologized for lying.
M was always like this. always doing things against me like this. I never figured out why nor got an apology. I hate that I was too dumb and naieve to realize she was a bully, not a friend. but when you go to a tiny school with 30-40 people in your class and 99% of them bully you, you kinds have to take what friends you can get....especially when all the adults literally punish you for not talking or trying to make friends :/
#lee rambles#lee rants#being autistic and clueless yet for some reason ALWAYS GETTING IN TROUBLE AND SCREAMED AT WHILE AND NOT KNOWING WHY#was how a lot of my childhood went and all ot did was make me feel like im always unknowingly doing things wrong#which i apparently still do and no one fucking tells me what i did wrong or why and just skip to anger and blaming#cool! thanks! youre soooooo helpful!
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Dear NM,
I’ve been reflecting on our romantic relationship and I wanted to take the time to recognize that you were a place of security for me for so long. I think I understand what you mean by pressure. I felt so safely attached to you, and in a way that I didn’t get from my own parents. That’s really heavy.
The stability you provided for me during our relationship allowed me to dig deep and heal some parts of my life that spent so much time running away from. I was able to reprocess the incident with XYZ, neglect and some violence I saw as a kid. I did the hard work of reprocessing but you helped build a safe place for me to do that. Thank you.
I made you my rock. And that wore you down… or at least I remember you vocalizing these feelings but they had different words. And if I am totally incorrect and misremembering, I’m sorry. This is how I’ve encoded the memory in my brain at this point after some time.
I am healing an attachment wound. Romantic relationships ending can cause this. Or at least, that’s how it’s been explained to me and it is the reason why it is so painful.
You know, I grew up pretty poor, and you planed a trip to X for me… which was a childhood dream of mine. Every detail and every second of that trip… it’s like gold to me. I tear up just thinking about it. I felt so loved, cherished that looking back it’s almost euphoric. We did so much and were so tired but wow, was it amazing. When I feel really low I replay it in my head and remind myself that I was once happy and can get there again.
I am not writing this to ask for you back. I’m just writing to acknowledge all that you did for me and how these reflections only solidify how special you will always be to me.
I will put myself back together and learn to be my own rock. I am working on building a secure attachment to myself. It’ll take time, and I’m really scared.. and really frustrated. So far, it’s an arduous process. I have a lot of parts of myself working against me right now and I pray I get through this rough patch to prove it to myself.
All in all, thank you. And I’m sorry I made you carry so much.
I know at one point you did it because you wanted to and because you loved me too. Overtime, it got too heavy and I think you realized it’s not yours to carry. If that’s true, it’s rightfully so.
I’m still incredibly sad and sometimes get stuck thinking that I didn’t nurture our connection better, or that we met while I still not healed in a way to be ready for that kind of love and connection.
If multiverses are real (I’m a dork and a sap, I know), there’s another timeline where you and I are still best friends, where I’m healed and whole, and we are still kicking ass as a team. There’s a song about this. It’s called “Multiverse” by Maya Manuela and Pembrooke. Listen to it if you don’t know it already. I think you’ll like it. The lyrics are simple but they really hit me. If this timeline isn’t for us, then I’m really happy for the one where it’s reality.
In the back of my mind, you saying “if things change then things change” still rings in my head.
Maybe your opinion on this has changed.
I can’t ask you that question directly right now, because I have to to be prepared for whatever the answer is. Right now I’m not. I’ll keep rooting for you from here and loving from afar by respecting your decisions. The romantic love I have for you is hard for me to just do away with and/or transform it into purely platonic love. Not being able to give all my love to you makes me feel like I’m bursting at the seams. But maybe that just means it was genuine? I don’t know.
What I do know is, heartbreak sucks.
You’re so measured. With me at least, since the break up. I interpret your responses of “I hear you” as you setting a boundary. It’s smart on your behalf. I imagine you get the feeling that I can’t handle you expressing your true feelings or that it will cause me to latch on and never do the internal work I have to do for myself. I feel selfish that I just pour my heart out like this but I can’t offer you that same support. I also imagine that you would be hurt while reading this, just how hurt when I write them. That’s also why I’ve been holding off on sending you this.
My friends and my therapist tell me to journal but I find my reflections pointless unless I have someone to share them with. Especially you.
I still think you’re the only person that gets me, or gets the most genuine parts of me. I’ve been grieving that loss of being fully understood by someone pretty hard.
You’ll always be my first love and this special person to me. Take great care of yourself.
I love you.
Sincerely yours,
Luna
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Maybe all I wanted to say was "I'm sorry."
I'm sorry we've had to go through all of this and still find no meaning in our suffering. I'm sorry we don't have the comfort of a healthy family. I'm sorry you had to console yourself every night because you don't have anyone to talk to or, if you do, you can't open up because you don't want to bother them.
I'm sorry you had to bottle up your emotions because when you were younger, people would tell you how to act, but because you didn't have a role model to look up to, you ended up dodging their bullets just so they wouldn't notice you.
I'm sorry you have trouble controlling yourself from overeating because when you were younger, you rarely had delicious food on your plate, and now that you can afford them, you can't stop eating because you're afraid your luck will change and you won't be able to eat those food anymore.
I'm sorry you're having trouble starting anything, whether it's writing a story or drawing, because you might commit a mistake and ruin all your efforts because growing up, you only have a limited amount of resources and you have to do everything perfectly since you don't have the luxury of making missteps. It was exhausting, but you can't get the thought out of your head, and it's now affecting your life so much that you're afraid to start anything because you're worried you'll ruin everything.
I'm sorry you weren't able to attend your dream course or university because we couldn't afford the tuition and fees. I'm sorry you have to decline all invitations because you have social anxiety and being around people drains you to the point where you wish you didn't have to go out anymore.
I'm sorry you didn't have a good childhood and wish people would forget or misremember you. I sincerely apologize; I apologize for making you read this.
Even so, I notice you. You will be fine.
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Tell me more about Wen Yuan as Wen Ruohan's son. Does he remember his father? One day draw him? Go: Hey I remembered what my dad looks like.
Lan Wangji: *sweats*
Or something else. How would Sizhui feel about Ruohan being his father? Would Wen Ning reveal it? If he is forced to? Etc?
After becoming sick in the Burial Mounds, Wen Yuan forgets all about the Wens and Wei WuXian, but considering he remembers them all later, the memories are still there somewhere. All is not lost!
Which means we deserve Wen-turned-Lan Yuan having Rapunzel-like moments during his temporary amnesia where he draws suns on everything. Very bright yet innocent suns drudged up from forgotten places. And maybe one day he draws a man! A man wearing white robes just like the Lans--Oh..
Oh, it is not a Lan. Lan Yuan has drawn some suns on the white robe... A golden guan? Wait, is that a sun on the guan, too...?
Lan Yuan, happily: "Yes! I saw it in my dream!"
Lan WangJi: *sweats*
Now we time jump thirteen years after he was adopted as a Lan to when he regains his memories at ~eighteen years old. Suddenly he remembers Wei WuXian! He remembers the Burial Mounds and the Wen Remnants! He remembers he was a Wen!
He remembers... everything down to when he was three years old. He might remember Qiongqi Path because it was traumatic and on the borderline, but...
He has forgotten Wen RuoHan. He has forgotten his mother. He has forgotten Nightless City. Because there is a quirk in the human brain that results in a phenomenon called Childhood Amnesia: we all forget our memories from when when we were three and under by the time we are an adult.
Which means only Wen Ning alone would know the whole truth of Wen Yuan's birth parents. Not even Wei WuXian knew the truth, much less Lan WangJi. Wen Ning is just a treasure trove of reveals in MDZS! (Bless him!)
Important canon to remember (from ch. 111, in case I forget): after Lan SiZhui reveals he remembers he is a Wen to Wangxian, he already had plans to go immediately with Wen Ning to bury the ashes of the Wens in Qishan. Wen Ning also tells Wei WuXian he plans to build a cenotaph for Wen Qing. Wei WuXian offers to go with them, but Wen Ning turns him down and tells him to go with Lan WangJi instead.
Now a consideration: Wen Qing was important to both Wen Ning and Wei WuXian, so why would Wen Ning basically turn Wei WuXian away? Perhaps it is because there are even more memories and stories Wen Ning wants to tell Lan SiZhui in privacy: namely, the truth of his father and his origins in Nightless City!
Once Lan SiZhui remembers he is a Wen, I don't think there would be harm in telling him Wen RuoHan was his father. He is happy with his Lan family and Lan WangJi has been a great brother/father figure, of course, but I think it would be important to him culturally and personally to know everything and reconnect with those roots.
Plus Wen Ning and Lan SiZhui bonding time!
Lan SiZhui finding out Wen Chao and Wen Xu were his brothers, and considering what they did to Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi respectively, might actually be the worst part as those crimes hit so close to home. His brothers treated Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi cruelly, but Wangxian both treated Lan SiZhui kindly.
Lan SiZhui grew up kind because being cruel is not what makes a Wen. There are good people and bad people, good Wen and bad Wen.
And the stories say Wen RuoHan was bad...
But the one telling him about his family and their past is Wen Ning! Wen Ning at one point believed he was the last Wen, and yet he never criticized or blamed Wen RuoHan for anything that had happened. Not once does he ever describe or treat Wen RuoHan like a person to be feared. Wen Ning even undermined Wen Chao without a second thought! Wen Qing, a hero to all the Wen Remnants, was a favorite of Wen RuoHan's, too, and she never said anything bad about Wen RuoHan, either. Regardless of whatever picture the world has painted of him, Wen RuoHan was good to his family and Wen Ning would know!
Wen Ning could describe to Lan SiZhui what it was like to live in Nightless City and what the people and culture were like at home. Events, festivities, competitions! New faces and old!
But Wen Ning was shy and he often got lost in the background. He wouldn't speak up so sometimes he was left behind and ignored. So his stories are full of gaps and missing pieces. Many of his stories are supplemented by what Wen Qing told him. Maybe he has forgotten or misremembered many things.
All too soon Lan SiZhui might long to have actually lived in Nightless City and have known Wen RuoHan himself, as children so often long to know their birth parents. Would he have been comfortable growing up in Nightless City? Would he have liked Wen RuoHan? Would Wen RuoHan have liked him? Wen Ning reveals how Wen RuoHan wasn't just a great cultivator, but enjoyed encouraging the talents of others, such as Wen Qing and (regrettably) Meng Yao. What talent in Lan SiZhui would Wen RuoHan have recognized? Lan SiZhui learned the guqin because Lan WangJi knew the guqin, but what cultivation technique would he use if he grew up as Wen Yuan in Nightless City?
Lan SiZhui and Wen Ning arrive in Qishan and stand on an empty, deserted road. A road where Wen cultivators used to walk about and gossip, because gossip was not forbidden here. A road where Wen cultivators used to talk in loud voices and laugh, because there were no rules about silence here.
Everything is silent now. Everything is quiet. Surely a part of Lan SiZhui's thoughts would weigh heavily on the family and home he never got to know, and the father who had, by all means, made him feel safe and loved once upon a time that he cried out to him for help when lost on the busy streets of Yiling.
After all, "SiZhui" means "to long for" and it would be nice if he was allowed to embrace his own new identity by longing for what he himself has lost.
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Unpacking Rebirth!Talia’s Upbringing
Okay so…. Can we talk about Rebirth Talia al Ghul?
People who aren’t familiar with her history, her almost 50 year history at this point, and more importantly aren’t familiar with it in depth often have no idea why it is that Talia fans think that her treatment post Morrison, but even moreso post-Rebirth, is a radical rebranding of the character they’ve known for so long. And I could talk about that, and maybe one day I will, but today I’m going to talk about something different, but related.
I’m going to talk about Talia’s background in Rebirth, how it accounts for her being a dramatically different character than she was in her classic form and whether she’s still salvageable as anything other than a mustache-twirler.
I. The Demon’s Daughter
Let’s be clear: the little we know of Talia’s rebirth childhood is absolutely horrific. Pure nightmare fuel. While their traditional dynamic was troubling and problematic, it was also loving in its way, and Ra’s was controlling of her, while also protective of her. Now, instead, we have this:
This issue has been out for a while, but I haven’t seen anyone really unpack what it is Talia is saying here, because we’re all focused on the stupid swordfight with Selina. But look at what it is Talia is saying and what it means about her upbringing.
Talia is saying that, basically since she was a toddler, she has been physically abused, and forced to fight, by her centuries old swordmaster father. In fact, her very first memory is bleeding from wounds caused by her father. From then on, her life is a fight to survive against her own father, which I’m guessing was pretty damn difficult especially when she was an actual child. And often, when she loses?
She dies. Or rather, she is murdered. Repeatedly. By her father.
And then he resurrects her and starts over.
And about those resurrections? It’s not like he just picks her newly killed body and immediately brings her back - check out that first panel on the second row. Not only is she killed and revived countless times, he lets her corpse at least partially rot before resurrecting her, so that when she returns to life, she is treated to the sight of her skin regrowing over her rotted flesh. And as soon as Ra’s notices she’s alive again… they start again.
How long did that go on? Unclear, but she’s still fighting him as a grown woman in the equivalent of this time period in The Gift...
...so I’m guessing the answer is “it didn’t stop until she left him.”
To be honest, I’m not really sure what the Rebirth version of Ra’s and Talia’s dynamic even was. The classic relationship doesn’t work at all with this backstory, and we’ve never really seen a lot of what the new paradigm might be since they’ve been out of contact since well before Rebirth. But what we do know is, she was an active assassin from a young age.
Unlike Classic Talia who was actually never an active assassin at all:
We can also glean bits and pieces of information regarding her Rebirth upbringing from other appearances. Over in Silencer, we find out that despite her brilliance, the fact that she was carrying out assassinations for him, and the fact that she could defeat her ancient swordmaster father even as a child, she was never good enough for him:
He was dissatisfied with her, and so he created metahumans using his genes to replace her. Ultimately, this drives her to plot against Ra’s because... who wouldn’t?
It’s not entirely clear what her ambitions were, specifically but judging from this bit of Batman and Robin (New52, but seemingly still canon for Damian’s backstory):
It involved winning Batman over to her side and ruling the world through Damian. This is further confirmed by her comment to Honor in Silencer Annual #1 here:
Where she indicates that Bruce is family to her, and still features in her future plans. What’s strange here is that she also says later that she intends to kill him personally, which is. Weird and out of nowhere, but what else is new. As a sidenote, Silencer is just strange because it ignores everything about Talia’s history not just in terms of changing her personality but in terms of ignoring the timeline of events, but... moving along...
Talia intends to form Leviathan to break free of him and pursue her own agenda. But, while apparently finding her insufficient, Ra’s cannot let her go. Not only that, he actively works to destroy everything she is trying to accomplish, including trying to kill Batman just because she desires him. In fact, he also tries to have Talia herself assassinated:
Another thing is, Rebirth Talia is rather older than she looks, as evidenced by her having been an adult when she met Honor.
Which means, in the end, we have a woman who was abused and repeatedly killed by her father, then thrown in a Lazarus Pit (but only after her body has lain around long enough to partially decompose!) and forced to repeat the cycle for who knows how long, but apparently quite a long time - decades, maybe centuries. Who even knows. She’s been working as an assassin since her teens. Despite her excelling and even surpassing him in various ways, he considers her inferior, and begins seeking to replace her with artificially created metahuman heirs. Eventually, Talia decides she wants to break with him, and he responds by first trying to destroy everything she cares about and then trying to have her killed.
OKAY, SO. Nightmare fuel. I genuinely can’t begin to imagine what it would be like growing up in that environment, and under the circumstances it’s certainly no shock that Rebirth Talia is warped.
Even so, what stands out to me in the B&R issue is that, initially, even her wildest ambitions required her to exercise power through a man – it’s just her son instead of her father or her potential husband. This says a good deal about how her upbringing, as well as her father’s fixation on marrying her off, has affected her self-image. And for those who say Talia evidences arrogance and self-importance… yes she does. Which is often a symptom of low self-esteem. In fact even Narcissistic Personality Disorder typically stems from overcompensation for a feeling of worthlessness.
The traditional/original Ra’s/Talia dynamic had some elements of this story, but not all and not nearly to the same extent. Furthermore, Classic Talia had something else - someone else - to love and look to for hope. Rebirth Talia does not. Because as far as I can tell, in Rebirth, Talia and Batman’s relationship has very little in common with the conflicted romance they shared in their original stories. And that’s how we transition to...
II. Beloved of the Bat?
So, Bruce Wayne.
Again, the extent of their relationship in Rebirth is unclear, but it definitely isn’t what it was pre-Rebirth.
The original Bruce/Talia story is basically as such: Talia meets him when she’s kidnapped by Dr. Daark, and falls in love with him. Bruce is also drawn and attracted to her. This results in Ra’s deciding to test Bruce for suitability as Talia’s husband and his own heir. Bruce passes, but unsurprisingly has no interest in running a criminal empire, though he does fall in love with Talia. This leads to a rather intense on/off romance that ultimately results in Damian Wayne, and continues until Tower of Babylon when Talia finally tires of being stuck between her father and her lover and breaks away from both of them. With Bruce and Talia’s relationship having been called to an end (by her, mind you – one day I may do a writeup on Bruce/Talia and how often what happened between them is misremembered by writers and readers alike), Bruce becomes involved with Catwoman in Hush. Even so, we see in Death and the Maidens that Bruce does still love Talia.
Meanwhile, Talia’s previously unknown sister Nyssa kidnaps and repeatedly murders and resurrects her (sound familiar?) until she more or less goes mad. By the end of the ordeal, she can barely speak, and she willing to do anything for Nyssa to avoid being killed again. This results in Talia disavowing her love for Bruce, which seems to be the catalyst for him to finally move on from her, though not without considerable pain.
Okay this is important to run down, because the Rebirth story has changed everything about their relationship.
Gotta love those evil expressions. It helps us remember that she’s a heartless monster.
Anyway so, In Silencer Annual #1, Silencer does note that Talia had previously said she was in love with Batman, so we know that she loved him, okay. But what does love mean to Rebirth Talia? We can find the answer to that if we go back to Roles of Engagement:
She “loved” him because she considered him a potential equal. That’s not really a bad basis for loving someone initially – and even Classic Talia’s love for Bruce was initially sparked from a place of admiration. But while Classic Talia eventually grew into a more complete love for him, it seems like Rebirth Talia is still stuck on objective: seek worthy mate. In fact, once it’s clear that she and Bruce are not coming back together, she just goes ahead and propositions Slade Wilson because she figures he can give her strong children, too:
Notably, this obsession with strong offspring sort of comes out of nowhere when Morrison takes over, but anyway, from that perspective it’s not hard to understand why Bruce’s feelings for her would also be somewhat muted in Rebirth:
Because while Classic Bruce/Talia was a love story that stretched for over 30 years in our time, and most of their adult lives in canon… Rebirth Bruce/Talia is repeatedly presented as a short infatuation on his end, and a dangerous obsession with genetics on hers. The above panel is from Batman #66, and is part of the Knightmares arc, which is important because while it appears to be Selina saying it… it’s actually Bruce’s thoughts about the women in his life coming out through his imagined version of Selina. And to him, those women amount to nothing much – none of them even warrant a direct callout. Everyone besides Selina is a “whoever.”
Interlude and Sum I
So... Classic Ra’s was controlling, possessive and dismissive of her at times, but he was also devoted, protective and genuinely loving. The relationship was complicated and problematic but affectionate.
Rebirth Ra’s is an abusive tyrant who repeatedly murders and belittles his daughter and, when she decides to break from him, attempts to systematically destroy everything she cares about and then have her killed.
Classic Bruce/Talia was a complicated romance between two people who genuinely loved each other, but were always separated by circumstances. He loved her for years, and she loved him unconditionally, and they struggled over that from the day they met until they permanently separated as a result of her being brainwashed.
Rebirth!Talia went in search of someone she considered worthy of her so they could have a genetically perfect child to conquer the world with. Bruce briefly had feelings for her in a moment between romantic rounds with Catwoman.
My point is this: Rebirth Talia has never experienced genuine love or support from anyone in her life, or for anyone in her life. Her relationship with the two men she traditionally loved, and whose love for her has imprisoned, empowered and defined her for much of her existence as a character, was utterly gutted in Rebirth, leaving Rebirth Talia’s life as a prolonged emotional void. Which makes what comes next remarkable in some ways… and predictable in others.
Because this is where we talk about Damian.
III. Olympias to his Alexander
Now, I’m not going to get into the circumstances behind Damian’s conception because what the whole hell, there is absolutely no consistency there. Various people are very invested in one or another of the myriad versions of his conception that DC has repeatedly retconned and revised, generally leaning to whichever one fits their preferred personal narrative, and that’s fine but objectively? Absolutely no consistency, situation unclear. So let’s just go with “Damian resulted from this mess.”
In Batman and Robin #0 we see that Talia basically raised him the way Ra’s raised her… with some major deviations. She used his desire to know his heritage and know his father’s name as the carrot to motivate him to succeed, rather than the fear of death and pain as a stick to punish him for failure.
Talia does not kill her son, whom she duels with wooden blades rather than steel. And she is not shown to physically abuse him… aside from the swordfights, which of course is already bad.
Mind you, I’m not denying that his upbringing is still brutal. What I’m saying is, placed in the context of her own upbringing we can see that she was trying to raise him with more kindness and greater love than her father had her – an improved parental style, but still reflective of the only style she, herself, has ever known.
So it’s predictable that he’s essentially mistreated… because she literally has never encountered an emotionally healthy relationship and wouldn’t know how to raise him any differently even if she wanted to.
But it’s also remarkable because despite that, you can see she is trying to be a better mother than Ra’s was a father, and not let Damian grow up feeling unwanted and unworthy the way she did, herself.
Unlike Ra’s, she never tells Damian he is insufficient – on the contrary, she holds him up as the chosen, a conqueror, and dreams of a future when he will lead with both parents at his back. Remember, this is a woman who was never seen as worthy of inheriting Ra’s al Ghul’s organization, and she wants to make sure Damian knows the world is his to hold. The bit about having both parents is important, too, because per Batman Inc, Talia felt deprived of her mother, whom Ra’s had discarded as soon as she was no longer useful to him.
In short, she does for Damian everything she wished Ra’s had done for her.
But, in so doing, she falls into many of the same traps that Ra’s had fallen into: she doesn’t provide what Damian wants, or even what he actually needs. Instead, she gives him what he asks for, and what she thinks he needs. But for someone who grew up without love, trying to understand how to provide it is complicated, and difficult.
Anyway, when Damian finally defeats her, she fulfills her promise and brings him to meet Bruce. This involves a last ditch effort to unite their family: she offers to reform.
But not only does Bruce reject her, ultimately Damian does, as well.
This is, from Damian’s perspective, completely understandable. Who wants to live that kind of life? But from Talia’s perspective she has now been rejected by her own child, in addition to her father and the man she hoped to spend her life with. You can see the raw hurt this causes her clearly, as a woman who had always yearned for family starts having exchanges like this:
And while we’re at it, count Honor as another person who left her.
And to be clear here, I’m not saying they were wrong to leave her. Rebirth Talia is not a good person, not a kind person, not really anyone I’d want to willingly hang around. And yes, she’s clearly manipulating Honor with her affectionate words, although I’d argue this is largely because manipulation is all she's ever experienced and all she knows how to do.
So, what am I saying?
Interlude and Sum II - Why Is She Like That?
Just to catch it all up, we have a woman who was abused by her father, including being repeatedly murdered and resurrected, treated as inferior and insufficient despite being Ra’s’ equal or superior in many ways, who spent her young life performing assassinations and otherwise conforming her behavior to her father’s demands only to discover he was creating alternate heirs because she’s somehow still not enough for him. She has never experienced love, seemingly has no real understanding of what it is.
When she settles on someone she believes that she loves, she is ultimately nothing to him but a “whoever” - a temporary respite from the yo-yo relationship he has with another woman.
Then Damian happens and, from her perspective, she raises him with all the love, pride and approval that she herself never had. In an effort to unite the family, she also attempts to do what would please Ra’s - conform her behavior to Bruce’s preferences - but he still rejects her.
Meanwhile, she has “adopted” Honor Guest, whom she also shows favor to, but who also wants to leave her, and ultimately does just that, without even saying goodbye.
And then we have some. Quirks in her story - some specifics that really bear looking at in greater detail.
Repeated murder and resurrection: So how bad is that? It’s bad. The first time Talia experiences this kind of thing is in Death and the Maidens, which is probably no longer canon. But okay this was Classic Talia and for comparison, this breaks Talia’s spirit so completely that she essentially becomes Nyssa’s puppet.
She is literally never the same again, even after Nyssa is killed. In fact, it’s this that turned her into the monstrous Talia that we meet in Morrison’s run to begin with, so we already know she can be broken by this kind of treatment… but let’s use another example.
Let’s use… Batman.
He’s got one of the strongest wills in DC, right? Well, lets rewind to a story called Emperor Joker, where the Joker attained Mr. Mxyzpltck’s omnipotent powers which he uses to repeatedly torture and murder Batman and resurrect him every day.
This completely destroys Bruce to the point where the Spectre has to erase his memory of it in order to make Bruce functional as a person again.
So imagine that happening to Talia, as a child, at her own father’s hands. And not for days, for years. And that’s without even considering the method of resurrection, which brings us to…
Lazarus Madness: Let’s talk about the Lazarus Pit. It’s a magical mystical ley line-powered bath that resurrects and heals. We all know that. But the thing is, that’s not all it does: it also drives the one bathed or healed mad. For a short time, they become superhumanly strong, and also overtaken with violent bloodlust. The first Lazarus pit was used to resurrect a sultan’s son, who promptly murdered Ra’s al Ghul’s wife Sora. Since then, Ra’s himself has been the primary beneficiary of its benefits, with interesting results… namely that Ra’s has been slowly going mad for centuries.
Because even though the intensity of the bloodlust and madness fades, it never completely disappears, and cumulative effect eventually twists a person’s nature beyond recognition. In his first life, Ra’s was a good-natured doctor, but over the many exposures he has found himself becoming progressively worse.
A quote from Denny O’Neil, Ra’s’s creator:
“...we gave Ra’s a benevolent motivation. You can certainly quarrel with his methods ... But Ra's is a loony bird. He’s been alive for 400 years and he’s become a maniacal sociopath.”
Dick Grayson concurs, and acknowledges its cause:
Even Ra’s himself is aware of it – this is why he didn’t want Jason bathed in the Lazarus Pit, because he is all too aware of the demons it stirs in a person.
So, what is the impact on Talia, who is quickly and repeatedly tortured and killed, and then resurrected using a method that is known to drive people insane? I’m going with “not the best.” It’s frankly astounding that she still resembles a human, psychologically.
Assassin work at a young age: While there has been a long-standing debate about the effects of exposure to violence on all people and children in particular, in general the consensus is, yes, exposure does cause desensitization. Obviously this doesn’t mean people are going to generally become serial killers because they played a violent video game, but it does have a numbing effect – just think about how people who watch enough horror films are harder to scare with horror films.
Now imagine that, instead of watching people murder and commit violent acts on television or on film, a child is instead expected to perform said acts themselves. How desensitizing would that be?
Frankly, to see all we need to do is look at Damian, who grew up under similar circumstances and, as a result, initially exhibits what I can only call red flag behavior.
The thing is, Damian isn’t so dissimilar from his mother in this regard. Like Talia, he becomes morally twisted, emotionally empty and ultimately tethered not to his own sense of morality or self but to other people’s perceptions and demands of him and who he should be. Before he meets Bruce, he adheres to the League’s expectations, and when he meets Bruce, he instead aligns himself with Bruce’s code of behavior, even though he does not actually believe in it. It takes a good deal of time and work for him to begin developing his own beliefs and boundaries. The difference between Damian and Talia is that he had Bruce and Bruce, despite his flaws, loved Damian enough to try for his sake.
Arguably, this is a defining difference between Classic and Rebirth Talia, as well. Classic Talia also viewed Bruce as her beacon and her path to salvation and hope.
But if, in Rebirth, Bruce never really loved her, and in fact she barely loved him, then there is no catalyst for her to begin seeking another path. Rebirth Talia didn’t have anything but the League, and even Ra’s barely cared for her. As a result, she was boxed into her role by fate, which she acknowledges in Teen Titans, as she wishes better for her son than she had herself.
Anyway, obviously, there are no studies on the effect of taking assassin work as a child, but my general guess here is that she has a twisted understanding of the value of life and the significance of death. Which brings me to another massive issue that permeates the character and may even help explain her choice to put a hit on Damian at one point.
Death as Optional: Death is an inevitability, right? Like taxes. Nothing you do can prevent it, or reverse it, so all you can do is live with it, and make the most of what you have. It’s said that the existence of death is what lends meaning to life, and while I’m not sure I’m quite on board with that, the fact that death is permanent certainly does lend a certain gravitas to it. It’s also the reason we fear death and what lies beyond it.
Unless you’re an al Ghul.
For an al Ghul, death is opt in. Because Ra’s is essentially immortal (which is also a new thing, by the way) and because Talia herself has been repeatedly resurrected, as has her brother Dusan (assuming he’s still in continuity post-Rebirth), to Talia death has no weight to it. No gravitas. It is easily doled out, and just as easily forced into retreat.
Given that, it becomes exceptionally easy to threaten death, even to those she loves, because there’s nothing to say she can’t change her mind and take it back.
Now to be clear, my argument is not that she had the intention of taking it back – she didn’t really intend for Damian to die to begin with for one thing. It’s just that, because of who she is and what she has experienced, Talia would always act with the knowledge that she can choose to endanger someone’s life and think about whether she’s comfortable with the result (their being dead) later.
This is evident in both Ra’s and Talia, each of whom are willing to use death and resurrection as a tool to restructure people they don’t even want dead, as Ra’s attempts to do with Damian and Talia, and as Talia does with Honor Guest.
…as a sidenote can I just say that the Lazarus Pit’s effects are so weird. In some stories it can’t resurrect at all, and in others it can resurrect after decades without a problem. In some it just reduces age, and in some it also heals memories. Here it’s being used to erase memories, which makes no sense since a Pit his how Jason Todd got his memories back. Also, this is the first I’ve ever heard of al Ghuls having especially strong resistance to the Pit’s corrosive effects on personality. Considering it’s just a bunch of chemicals on a ley line, I’m not sure how that would work, but now I’m just imagining Ra’s with a book of Lazarus recipes like, Well, I’m needing one that restores memories today so Ima add an extra pinch of ginko.
ANYWAY.
V. “R” Stands for Redemption
There was a time, a few years back, when Damian had his own series, Robin: Son of Batman. And therein, you see one of the few efforts to explain and redeem Talia’s character. There, while she was still presented as colder and more aggressive than her Classic counterpart, she was still capable of compassion, protectiveness and love.
It was essentially explained as a result of her being cleansed of the toxin that was Ra’s al Ghul’s influence, via having darkness physically removed from her body.
Now, to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about that particular route – I feel like it would have been more honest to have her resurrection heal the Lazarus damage, for example, but it’s a start. And, in the end, Damian left her with the chance to redeem herself and earn back his and Bruce’s trust.
Aaaand she has failed. Or more precisely, writers have failed to follow up on this thread, and have instead doubled down on her as the evil Dragon Mother. I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what’s going on with DC’s fixation on evil Asian ninja moms but I’m just going to… pretend that isn’t a thing in order to suggest some paths that could salvage her character.
I’ve seen it said that she’s been too evil for too long to be redeemed, but honestly that’s pretty silly. First of all these are comic books, anyone can be redeemed. The same writer who wreaked havoc on Talia also had Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, going full Nazi on humans, which was incredibly out of character, and Marvel basically fixed it by saying “guess who that wasn’t? Magneto. It wasn’t Magneto.” Technically DC could just Hal Jordan her, or let the rumored upcoming continuity shuffle bring her previous history back. As for the “been this way too long” argument, I mean she was Original Flavor Talia for more than twice as long and that wasn’t too long for DC to flip her entire motivation and personality. Catwoman was a villain for decades, and yet here she is, protecting people, making out with Batman on rooftops and leaving him at the alter for altruistic reasons. Same with Ivy, except for the parts about Batman, soooo… you know….
Anyway. I’m going to work with the assumption that we have to use what we have, and that we’re trying to get her to something like her pre-Morrison personality.
The first thing she would need is the experience of love. Someone to anchor her, who won’t judge her or abandon her even when she’s in a dark mood. Even when she’s showing her pain and her anger. Someone who recognizes how broken she is, but decides to try to help her rather than rejecting her. Someone who, in essence, will do for her what Bruce did for Classic Talia, and what he does for Damian in his flawed way.
Now, I’m a massive Bruce/Talia shipper, no lie. However, I do not think Rebirth Bruce and Talia have the kind of connection that could provide her this essential first need. Someone like Superman or Wonder Woman would probably be a better choice, simply because they have greater warmth of character and a drive toward helping lost souls.
After that, she would need some good old fashioned redemption time. Maybe a miniseries where she goes Xena on the world: a redemption quest. Maybe joining a team like the Outsiders or the Suicide Squad where she can earn her way back from the brink. The Outsiders would be cool, especially, because it would allow Bruce and Damian to monitor her and judge her as she progresses.
…and I mean, from a character perspective that’s all she really needs. From a writing perspective, she needs a writer who will nail down things like where Damian came from without going back to the drug-and-rape well, which was a retcon to begin with and has been retconned out and then back in over and over again. And most importantly, she needs a writer who has the interest in exploring her internal world to the point where they can actually draw these things out of her instead of just ignoring the fridge-horror implications of things like… the way she was raised.
If we could get these things to coincide, then Talia, too, can be saved!
Or we could just reboot the timeline again, whatever.
Anyway, that’s all folks, thanks for reading this far, I have no idea how you did. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, feel free to drop me a line and ask me… whatever, because God knows I have plenty to say about Talia and about comics in general.
In closing, something to remind us of the character we’ve lost.
Until next time!
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how time travel works in the MCU
endgame spoilers!
SO i’ve been seeing a lot of people expressing confusion about wtf was going on in endgame, and since this is, like, my jam, allow me to illustrate the MCU’s apparent theory of time travel. (this isn’t officially confirmed or anything (ETA: it kind of is!) – just me elaborating on what other fans have said as well, which appears to be internally consistent in the movie.)
Avengers: Endgame uses a different mechanism than most time travel media (which Rhodey and Scott helpfully list for us, lol): it is impossible to change the past of your personal timeline in the MCU.
(fig. 1: a blurry and not-to-scale timeline for the MCU with data points for 1970, 2012, 2013, 2014, and Endgame)
their “time travel” is more like “time and dimension travel”: as soon as they use the quantum realm to go to an earlier date, it splits off* an identical parallel universe (or leg of the trousers of time). we simultaneously have canon and officially-licensed canon-divergence AUs. time travelers can never affect their own pasts; they can only change things in an AU for another version of themselves.
* or maybe this universe which was completely identical up to the point where they are visiting time travelers always existed and they just arrived, who knows ~wibbley wobbley~
(fig. 2: equally blurry and not-to-scale timelines plural: the MCU timeline and four AU timelines, splitting off from 1970, 2012, 2013, and 2014.)
note: i’m just guessing about the number of relevant AU timelines, because I’ve only seen the movie once. the avengers’ initial plan has teams going to NYC in 2012 during The Avengers, to Asgard in 2013 during Thor 2: Electric Boogaloo, and to the planets Morag and Vormir (sp?) in 2014 during Guardians of the Galaxy. Team 2012 messes up and tries again by going to New Jersey in 1970.
hence the Ancient One’s concern about Bruce taking the time stone: up to that point, things were on track to proceed exactly like the MCU timeline. now that’s off the table. if bruce doesn’t return the time stone, the events of doctor strange can’t happen and dormammu will destroy this 2012!AU timeline. the MCU timeline will be unaffected, but it still sucks for everyone in the 2012!AU. (i don’t think it’s necessary in each AU for events to go EXACTLY like the MCU timeline, but considering the MCU timeline consists of our heroes defeating challenges and saving the world/galaxy by the skin of their teeth, not changing too much is a good idea.)
however! there are definite changes keeping these AUs separate from the MCU timeline. 2012!AU Steve has been told by a suspicious double that Bucky is alive, and will probably get Hail HYDRA’d by Strike. it’s entirely possible that events in 2013!Asgard will happen completely differently due to Frigga’s knowledge of shit going down. And 2014!AU Thanos hops on over to the MCU timeline and attacks, ultimately resulting in the 2014!AU losing him, his followers, and Gamora.
essentially, we now know there are multiple copies of all the characters, but not clones or evil-bearded-mirror counterparts, because they share the same experiences... up to a certain point. 2014!AU Gamora is in the MCU timeline now, but she doesn’t have any of MCU Gamora’s experiences from the time of GotG to her death in Infinity War. However, she and MCU Nebula would still share their horrible childhood. If 2012!AU Loki pops up in the MCU timeline, he and MCU Thor would have had the same interactions all the way through The Avengers. (I personally find this delightful, because it’s a time travel crossover between canon-divergence AUs complete with character doubles and that’s like... all of my favorite things together.)
as for MCU Steve: he was hanging out in one of the AUs with Peggy (with whom he would have shared exactly the same version of the past in the 40s) for a whole bunch of decades. the movie vaguely implies that this really did happen in the MCU timeline by having him appear on a park bench instead of using their quantum realm tech, but this would require:
steve ‘civil war’ rogers just chilling for decades as Bucky runs around as the Winter Soldier and HYDRA infiltrates SHIELD, not to mention refraining from weighing in on countless other issues he cares deeply about
peggy ‘fight me’ carter, AN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE, not noticing her husband’s extreme lack of chill re 1. and cottoning on
us to forget literally the whole rest of the movie
so this, frankly, is nonsense. also, the obvious place to meet up with peggy was in his trip to 1970, but unless someone on her street had an old-ass car, they’re definitely dancing together in the 40s/50s; this means he didn’t just go back and stay, but went back to the 1970 AU, dropped off the tesseract and stole more of hank pym’s research, and then made yet another trip to the 40s/50s.
using this AU theory, MCU Steve was only present in the MCU timeline as a Capsicle between the 40s and the 2010s and you don’t have to worry about the canonicity of Agents of Carter. Endgame-era MCU Steve went to a 1940s AU, where he and Peggy almost certainly made beautiful Nazi punching as they cleared HYDRA out of SHIELD. stuff like that would make events unspool differently than Steve was familiar with from the MCU timeline, making his knowledge of his future less and less relevant, so he wouldn’t have too much of an advantage. (as a side note, I think there’s a practical aspect to him hanging around: it means he has plenty of time to observe the consequences of the MCU Avengers interfering and make sure there’s no, like, universal catastrophes. hell yeah longitudinal studies of scientific data.)
we already know from 2014!AU Thanos’ appearance in the MCU timeline that you don’t need to use the MCU portal to hop between timelines [ETA: whoops, i misremembered that part.] Steve knew where he was returning to, so between his MCU tech and everything he potentially could have stolen from hank pym over the years (or, you know, everything he was given by 1940!AU hank and janet van dyne, whom he could have just worked with) he had the ability to stroll back to the MCU timeline for the very end of endgame in a sufficiently dramatic fashion to troll everyone. or maybe he DID use that portal, but was the size of an ant just to be a dick. steve rogers: man out of time.
[ETA: as per this post: bruce DID detect him in the portal, so he definitely quantum leaped back instead of taking the slow path.]
[ETA: as per the Russos themselves: “If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality. The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?” source )
anyway, unlike other kinds of time travel, AU theory lacks issues like erasing your own personal history or stepping on bugs and causing fascism. but i think it DOES have some serious consequences:
- if you visit/create an AU, the people from the AU can now come and dick around in YOUR timeline (c.f. 2014!AU Thanos and the entire end of the movie). they got rid of 2014!AU Thanos, but that leaves at least three other Thanoi who they HAVEN’T defeated, plus multiple versions of every other baddie they’ve ever fought.
- having so many similar-but-not-identical timelines clustered together might have bad long-term consequences on reality, like events bleeding through
- HOW are these AUs created and/or maintained? if there’s a finite amount of energy for them, connecting to too many might cause some to collapse
- headaches
it’s possible we will see some negative consequences in future MCU movies, if only to eliminate “time travel through the quantum realm” as a solution to every single one of their problems.
(@autumn-drifts also pointed out that the MCU Avengers are doing all their time travel shenanigans after the MCU infinity stones have been destroyed, so potentially the time stone (and maybe others) play a role in PREVENTING time travel, which is why we haven’t seen it before.)
(ETA: the energy from the infinity stones Thanos destroyed had to go SOMEWHERE; maybe that’s what creates the AUs?)
speaking of the time stone: this maaaaaay have a completely different set of rules. it’s possible that using it also spawns a whole bunch of AUs, which is why the Ancient One chewed out Dr Strange about playing with it. (do you want 20 different AUs whose only difference is Dr Strange’s fucked-up apple in the magic library? because this is how you get 20 different AUs whose only difference is Dr Strange’s fucked-up apple in the magic library.)
but it’s also possible the time stone is the only thing that have an effect on your personal timeline. i don’t think we ever see it used to jump directly from one point of time to another, so who knows if it CAN. but it can definitely rewind (MCU Thanos undoing Wanda’s decision to kill Vision and stealing the mind stone in Infinity War) and/or create time loops (the end of Doctor Strange).
(fig. 3: blurry timeline of the MCU showing a whole bunch of loops in Doctor Strange from his trap, labelled “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain”, and a single loop in Infinity War labelled “Wanda kills Vision” and “Thanos unkills Vision”)
i’ve drawn them as loops because those events definitely happen, so they’re part of a timeline that everyone(?) experiences, but they all circle back to one particular point from whence only one line of events continues. you don’t have a million different versions of Dr Strange getting creatively killed by Dormammu, you have one Dr Strange getting creatively killed by Dormammu a million times; both he and Dormammu remember all of them.
one final observation: we still haven’t seen proper time travel forward through time. we know from Infinity War that the time stone can let you look at all the potential futures and use that knowledge to aim in your chosen direction, but it can’t show you “the” future. (and as to whether that’s looking at events playing forward then rewinding back to the save point, or just scoping out all the relevant AUs, I have no idea.) Scott technically skips five years forward from the snappening to Endgame, but he was pulled there by a rat activating the tech during Endgame, as opposed to him selecting a point five years in the future and choosing to go there. (we also don’t know when Steve left his 1940!AU timeline, but he was returning to the point in the MCU immediately after he left, not going farther forward than he had already been.) so it will be interesting to see how/if time travel into THE FUTURE! happens and what delightful problems it can cause.
in conclusion:
#endgame spoilers#the avengers: endgame#time travel#wibbley wobbley timey wimey#mcu#the avengers: infinity war#doctor strange#guardians of the galaxy#long post
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Part of a journal entry I just wrote because this plagues my mind every time I'm nearing sleep:
March 12th 2020
Sometimes when I close my eyes I see something akin to memories. I see Easter baskets of varying colors in a garage. It is night and when I look out from the dimly light garage, I see stars and hear the breeze.
I can see it right now despite it being day.
Other times, it is still night, but I'm on a porch where orange streetlights shine ahead. I am not alone. My family is talking, familiarity flooding their words. I don't know what they are saying, but I hear laughter.
It is daytime now and I see a face and everything looks grainy. Like a VHS tape. There is gray carpet beneath our feet. A long, square rug in the center. The table on the rug is low, so low that sitting on the floor is the only way to use it for doing homework or eating meals. It is beautiful. Black. Flowers green and yellow decorate it. It's a table we still have to this day, its brother and sister are a vanity and a cabinet.
But the face. A boy. Older than me with black hair, a smile, and tan skin. Asian. He doesn't look like my brother. Or maybe I am misremembering.
He is smiling and saying something as he outstretches his arms, waiting for a hug. He is excited
Who is this boy?
Part of me knows these are not memories so why does my mind conjure them up? Maybe I have created a fragment of memories stitched together like a quilt.
They're familiar, but more like a homage to my early childhood.
Now I feel restless and disconcerted. I can't pinpoint what it is, but it makes me wanna scream.
#writing#my writing#nonfiction#memories#childhood#journal entry#the reason i wrote the very last section is bc i reread what i wrote and i just felt weird#prose ig??#its such a weird feeling#and like i want someone to identify it bc its just really strange#its probably my imagination or nostalgia#a story maybe??#idk#ok to rb!!#spring break is coming up soon fam#my english class was cancelled so i just went to the library to do the test and sat down at a desk and wrote this#almost time to go#have a wondeful day!!
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Stick around a while
Summary: The de Rolo’s aren’t aging like regular people. Maybe all the magic and horror of their lives is catching up to them?
Writer’s note: This is a something I’ve worked on for a bit, and just wanted to get out of my head to clear space for other dumb things.
It isn’t until years after they have stopped adventuring that they notice anything is amiss with Percy and Cassandra. There is an accident during construction of what will one day be the new indoor marketplace while Percy and Vex are away from Whitestone. Luckily, no one is gravely injured, but there are some broken bones.
When they return, Percy checks in with the acting foreman. The regular foreman, Desmond, has had his leg broken by falling timber. Percy speaks with the man for quite some time before realizing that he knew him as a child - the man of late-middle age, grizzled and weathered, had been the son of the stablemaster at the castle.
Reassured from their discussion that the accident was a pure incident of materials failing under a heavy load, and not a flaw in his design, Percy tells Vex about the man, as they walk hand-in-hand to the castle.
Vex takes a brief look over her shoulder and remarks, “It’s nice that you remember him so fondly. Was he friendly with your older brother?”
“Julius? No, he was close to Ludwig and Cassandra, seeing as they were around the same age.”
Vex takes another glance back, and pats him on the forearm with the hand that isn’t currently holding his. “Darling, than you must be misremembering. That man looks to be ten years older than you, not some years younger. Perhaps you have the wrong man altogether, or he’s an older brother of the boy your recall?”
He walks silently with her for a few steps, letting her lead the way as he tries to remember more of his life before the Briarwoods. Some things have returned to him with total clarity that had been shrouded bits before, but others still hurt too much to examine too closely, or are still hazy with memories of blood, chains and unnatural smoke.
This is not one of them, he hadn’t thought. As he spoke with the man, he saw him clearly as a boy in his mind’s eye, sword-fighting with sticks in the courtyard with Cassandra, while Ludwig, playing the princeling in need of rescue, cheered her on.
But Vex must be right. The man just now had been beginning to stoop with age, his hairline had receded far back on his forehead, and his beard was laced with gray. His memory must be playing tricks on him.
-
Vex doesn’t think anything odd about the encounter with the acting foreman. She isn’t troubled by gaps in Percy’s memory from before. She’s grown used to some inconsistencies and some things that he just can’t recall at all. She knows as well that some memories and feelings hurt too much to dredge up or face head-on. Her thoughts run to the surprise flood of grief she feels every now and then, when she catches a sidelong glance at her reflection in a window and thinks it’s him, only to have everything flow back into her all at once, before she can steel herself against it.
That is, until she mentions it casually to Cassandra some days later. They watch from the walkway atop the interior wall as Percy and the children play in the snow. The younger ones have asked their father to help try to build a snow-bear, while the older ones, closing in on their teenage years, are attempting to bombard each other with high, arcing snowballs from opposite sides of the courtyard.
Cassandra gets the same far-away look in her eyes that Percival gets when searching his memory of his childhood. Vex is pleased to see the accompanying smile, hopefully as she remembers her victories over her playmate in their youthful sparring matches.
Cassandra, so much less guarded with her now, shares more detailed recollections of the man as a boy, and doesn’t seem overly concerned at Vex’ disbelief that a man who should be Cass’ age looks so much older.
“Life in Whitestone may be as good as it has ever been, but it is still hard, and takes a toll on those less fortunate than we.” As Vex nods, Cassandra adds,” Besides, Percival and I were white-haired before hitting our twenties,” She smiles with a mock-conceit that Vex, recognizes as one of the mannerisms that led her to fall madly in love with Percy, “and we de Rolo’s have always managed to age rather gracefully.”
-
More time passes. Percival and Cassandra enter their fifth decade of life. Brother and sister show the signs of human aging - a slowing metabolism adds a bit of weight to both, and their complexion gains some color from all the time in the Northern sun and cold. Friends use the more accurate descriptors of “healthy”, “no longer see-through”, “less, you know, ghostly?” or “not looking like they could be knocked over with a lil’ flick of me finger”.
Despite these signs, however, none can ignore that the de Rolo siblings are barely aging. Percy still has the reflexes and vitality that he possessed when he adventured across the world and the planes of existence. Cassandra is just as dedicated and sharp a guardian of her city as she was when forced into responsibility in her teens.
Vex’ahlia certainly appreciates every moment of her husband’s life, and begrudges none of his professional, or personal, vigor. She rarely flashes to the horror scenes of her memory - Percival, bloodied and stilled on the ground of Glintshore, or eviscerated at the feet of a slain green dragon. Cass in black armor, with Vex’s own arrow though her chest - but she will never forget them. She just prays that this is not another horror to be visited upon this poor family, her poor family.
-
The siblings and their family, friends and advisors cannot and do not ignore the situation. In private conversations with the few they trust, the de Rolo’s express their worries that some of the darkness they have battled in their lives has made them unnatural. Percy and Cassandra mull their encounters with the Briarwoods and their dark god-ling, and Percy frets anew on the possibility that he still carries some taint of the shadow-demon on his soul. Over months, visits from clerics, arcanists, scholars and priests give no indication of evil lingering on the siblings, putting most minds at ease.
The subjects of all this poking and prodding, however, are still de Rolo’s, and as such, they continue to carry this weight of worry with them. At the next Winter’s Crest, celebrated together this year in Westrun, mostly in the home Pike has inherited from her great-grandfather, Percy asks a favor of his diminutive friend.
They are sitting together, all but the children, in a familiar, magically-appropriately sized dining room on the last night of the trip when he asks. “Pike? Could you ask the Everlight if Cassandra and I could have an audience, if Keyleth were to agree to try to bring us to her?” He no longer hides his worries from his family, from any of them.
Unlike much of the family, Pike isn’t as taken aback by the suggestion as he expects her to be. He sometimes forgets how long he has known her, and how well she knows the way his thoughts can run. “I can ask, Percy, and I don’t mind trying. But we know there isn’t anything wrong with you two, if that’s what you want to ask her.”
“I know that’s what all the magic and holy prayers have said, but it isn’t normal, not that abnormal hasn’t been part of my life since ...” he doesn’t mention all the things that Pike knows he is thinking of saying.
Pike sits up somewhat from where she had been reclining by the fireplace. “Percy, I’m going to ask you and Cass a question. I have some experience with the Everlight and I have an idea of what she might ask you if we were to see her. Is that alright?”
“Of course.”
“Are you happy?”
“Very much so.” His answer is immediate, without mulling it over or choosing his words carefully. That shows, more than the words themselves, how very far this Percy has come from the scared, secretive young man he was when they all first met; he has grown confident, trusting, open. His hand, on Vex’s shoulder as she rests against him in the armchair they share, pulls her closer.
“And is Cassandra happy?”
As focus turns to where Cassandra sits, Grog, who is sitting on the floor, brings his hand next to his mouth in an attempt to cover his lips. It is maneuver that is impossibly obvious, even for him. He whispers far too loudly to be considered whispering “Scanlan, is it even possible for that priss to ever be happy?”
The words barely leave his mouth before he reacts to a sharp elbow in his side. He bends to in fake pain and surprise over Cassandra, who has been leaning her back against his flank. Grog promptly receives a face-full of ale as the Lady of Whitestone’s other arm arcs up to toss the liquid in her cup over her shoulder at him.
“Apologies. I appear to have spilled my drink.” She says flatly as Grog sputters and the rest of the assembled group laughs.
The laughs die down a little, and Grog wipes his face, Percy returns his look to Pike and answers her “Yes, Pike, I believe my sister is happy.” Cassandra is nodding as she receives a refill.
Pike gather herself for a short speech, which is still not her usual style “I’m so happy for you both. You deserve to be happy. And after all that you two have been through, and all that we have seen and done together, do we need to particularly know why we will have you with us for longer than we initially thought?
“If it’s due to the number of times we revived the two of you, or some weird result of being near the ziggurat, or blessing from the Dawnfather, or the Everlight or the Raven Queen” She breaks from looking at Percy to scan the faces of the rest of them “Does it matter, that you’ll have more happy years with our family?”
This time, Percy does pause a few moments to consider. Not too long though, as he pulls Vex closer again against him, holds his cup out for a refill, and cracks a smile. “No it does not. You have always been the wisest of us. Thank you Pike.”
“My pleasure, Percy”
#critical role#critfic#percival de rolo#Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski De Rolo III#perc'ahlia#percahlia#cassandra de rolo#pike trickfoot#vex'ahlia#grog strongjaw
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☪(bonus for ot3 nonsense, maybe? 8])
Symbol Meme (Closed)
@antimundi & @reiivusu
☪ five times our muses almost hold hands, and the one time they do.
i.
Will there ever come a time, Ignis wonders, when he’ll feel as though he isn’t intruding whenever he walks into a room and Noctis and Ravus are already there? He hopes so, but this transition from never having had a lover to suddenly having two is taking some getting used to, and there may well forever be a part of him which suspects he’s only there due to his closeness to Noctis. A package deal, as it were. But that’s not to say he’s made to feel unwelcome. On the contrary, both Noctis and Ravus beckon him over, placing dual kisses on his cheeks and making all the right noises to suggest that they’re pleased to see him.
Yet he still cannot bring himself to initiate anything. Perhaps it’s his lack of sight that makes Ignis so sensitive to the atmosphere. Even Ravus is taking bigger steps these days, openly voicing his affection for his lovers. Noctis is typically Noctis; what he wants, he gets, even if it means pushing one or other of them onto the couch to straddle them and pin them into submission. How Ignis wishes he had that sort of freedom with his wants and desires.
All he really wants is to act upon his needs but whenever he imagines himself walking up to Noctis and Ravus, taking one each of their hands in his and leading them towards the bedroom, it feels so beyond his capabilities that he doesn’t even bother to try out of fear of failure.
Or rejection.
ii.
As much as Ignis enjoys time spent with both of his lovers, there’s still something very special about having a one-on-one moment with Noctis. They reminisce about the old days, about their teenage years and how much of a brat Noctis was. Everything’s so different now; with all their experiences behind them it feels very much like they’re discussing another world altogether. Although confident in his strides, Ignis walks close to Noctis, almost shoulder to shoulder, just in case there are any pitfalls in the path ahead, and as they walk, Noctis describes the scenery as best he can. He puts so much effort into painting a verbal picture of the sights around them that it’s almost as if Noctis recites poetry.
The backs of their hands brush together, and Ignis can feel the twitch of Noctis’ fingers, as if they’re crying out to be held. But Noctis hangs back and allows Ignis the opportunity to make the decision of whether to expand upon that contact or not. The compulsion is strong, but what if someone sees them? Public displays of affection are contrary to Ignis’ sensibilities and he talks himself out of it before he really has the chance to consider it. Noctis’ disappointment is almost palpable, even though he does his best to keep it out of his voice.
The walk home is much quieter than Ignis would like.
iii.
It’s long overdue, but since they’re in Tenebrae, Ignis finally decides it’s time to show Noctis the home in which he spent many happy childhood days. His grandmother’s estate is still in good shape. Although, technically, Ignis owns the land and buildings upon it, he donated it to the staff his grandmother had, allowing them, and their descendants, to reside rent-free within their homes in perpetuity, with only one condition - that he be allowed to visit on occasion, to take in the ambiance of her vast library or to walk in the gardens of which she was so proud.
This is the first time he’s done so. Until now, it’s never felt right, but with Noctis at his side, Ignis feels able to walk those familiar halls once more. He might not be able to see, but in his mind, he can visualise the layout and he gives Noctis a tour, never once faltering nor misremembering a detail. There’s the kitchen, where he learned to bake under his grandmother’s expert tutelage. The study, where he learned about the history of his Tenebraen family. The lounge, where his grandmother would read to him extracts from the Cosmogony.
Finally, he takes Noctis to the room where he slept and while Ignis sits on the bed, Noctis pokes around, apparently enjoying this insight into his lifelong friend’s unknown early years.
“I never knew you collected these,” Noctis says, pressing a small wooden cactuar into Ignis’ hand. As his fingers close around it, Ignis smiles both at the feeling of the toy and the sensation of Noctis’ fingers skimming his palm. He hesitates, and by the time he closes his hand, Noctis’ is gone.
iv.
Lazy mornings are something Ignis has come to enjoy, much to his surprise. He’s always been an early riser, and it used to be that he’d get everything he needed done for himself completed before turning to his official duties. Nowadays, there are fewer duties to take care of, but he still likes to get up and get busy. But lately, he’s been persuaded by his lovers to tarry awhile, and languish in the comfort of a large, soft bed, with legs tangled around his and two sets of soft lips to kiss.
As pleasurable as their intimacy is, Ignis does feel a pang of guilt. He could be preparing breakfast, or at the very least, making coffee and cleaning any dishes from the night before. Could be, but isn’t. Instead, he trails fingertips over taut muscles and tilts his head back as teeth graze his throat. Noctis croons into his ear, vocalising what they should be doing and it’s nothing close to brewing coffee or frying bacon. To demonstrate his agreement with Noctis’ suggestions, Ravus pulls Ignis closer, the sharp tips of his metallic fingers digging into soft flesh.
Ignis gasps, and Ravus withdraws immediately; the magic of the moment disappears in an instant. Shaking his head, Ignis tries to reassure Ravus that it wasn’t a gasp of pain, but of something akin to pleasure. It didn’t feel bad in the last. But they each have their own insecurities. Noctis worries that he’s clingy sometimes and Ignis worries that he’s too reserved. What Ravus worries about is that he’ll somehow hurt one or other of his lovers. Each must work through their fears so that they may come out the other side, stronger, but reassurance helps. Tenderly, Ignis reaches for Ravus’ prosthetic but stops short, lifting his hand to cup his lover’s cheek instead.
“Please,” he murmurs, head bowing slightly. “Continue with what you were doing…”
v.
Having known Noctis for practically their entire lives, Ignis knows the signs and he can tell when Noctis is up to something. What that something is, Ignis doesn’t yet know, but he will find out. He has to, because if it’s something terrible, like Noctis having second thoughts about their unconventional relationship, he wants the opportunity to put things right. Somehow.
Despite all the signs, Ravus claims to not have noticed anything amiss, which Ignis finds hard to believe. He tells Ignis not to worry and that maybe Noctis is having an off day, which is feasible, Ignis supposes, but still sounds unlikely. There’s something far deeper going on and it preys on his mind until he finally cracks. Cornering Noctis, much to Ravus’ background amusement, Ignis demands the truth; if Noctis wishes to break up their little group then he should say so. It might hurt, but in the long run, it’s better to be honest than to string someone along.
Whatever Ignis expects, it’s not laughter, but that’s exactly what he gets. Even Ravus joins in and as much as that should be a good thing, Ignis feels the heat of humiliation creeping over his face.
“It’s not what you think!” Noctis says quickly, subduing his mirth the best he can. “It was meant to be a surprise, but… Come on. Come with me.”
Unconvinced and sullenly following the sound of Noctis’ footsteps, with Ravus trailing along behind, Ignis is led to the lounge and told to sit down with his hands held out. He’s obedient, if sceptical, and obliges, only to feel a sudden weight in his grasp.
“My guitar!” How Noctis even managed to find it is beyond Ignis’ comprehension but he recognises it as his own, right down to the minute scratches on the fretboard which he carved to help learn chords. Setting the guitar to one side, Ignis grabs hold of Noctis, getting him around the wrist to tug him forwards into a very grateful, very relieved kiss.
vi.
Noctis and Ravus have been withdrawn for days, and Ignis knows why: the date of Lady Lunafreya’s birthday approaches, bringing with it melancholy for both. No matter what Ignis says or does, he cannot seem to cut through the fog which envelops them, but that doesn’t stop him trying. He cooks their favourite dishes, which they obediently eat but without their usual enthusiasm, and he recites poetry, which they receive with politeness, but he knows that there aren’t really any words which can truly salve their feelings.
Actions do speak louder than words, and Ignis has one final gambit. He finds his two lovers sitting together in mournful silence, each feeding off the other’s woe. The aura surrounding them is thick and oppressive and while Ignis fully comprehends the reason for it, he’s absolutely positive that this isn’t what Lunafreya would want for either of them. They deserve to be happy, and it’s up to Ignis to remind them of that fact.
Ignis isn’t subtle about it. He marches straight over to where they sit and, with dazzling accuracy, squeezes himself in between the two men, wiggling his backside to force them to move over and let him in. The fact that he imposes his presence upon them is a testament to how far he’s come in his confidence. Not so long ago, he’d have taken a vacant seat instead. But his position is important. He needs to be precisely where he is so he can take Noctis’ hand in his left, and Ravus’ hand in his right to give them a comforting squeeze.
“I hope you know that I love you both very much,” he says. “And although I cannot and would not tell either of you to snap out of it, but will remind you that you have each other and you have me. Perhaps rather than making this a solemn time, we ought to celebrate life. Ours and Lunafreya’s.”
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Indian apple
Every year around this time Sharon begins lacing our salads with pomegranate - a nice addition, which always reminds me of one day in my early childhood when my father, for reasons I can’t imagine, brought home a couple of “Indian apples.”
As I said, I have no idea why he bought them; they were way too exotic for Penrod Street cuisine and my father was by no means an adventurous eater.
I remember him ceremoniously cutting the pomegranates open on our kitchen table. We marveled at the strange seedy pulp revealed by his knife. Then we ate it.
My father, who could never resist telling a story, whether he had any facts to work with or not, explained to us kids that American Indians plucked this fruit from trees the way we picked regular apples. Hence, their name.
When Sharon told me she had never heard of pomegranates being referred to as Indian apples, I thought maybe I had misremembered the incident. But the Internet informed me that “Indian apple” is, indeed, a common name for the pomegranate.
In fact, I found a blog called, “Lets Call The Pomegranate An Indian Apple Again,” which may, or may not, be a political statement.
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