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rainydawgradioblog · 2 years

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I want your M I D N I G H T S ✨

Dawg with a Blawg: Ed. 1

Taylor Alison Swift (she/her) was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania on December 13, 1989. But that’s a different story.

At midnight EST Oct 21, 2022, the 13-track album Midnights was released to fans worldwide. At 3am EST, Taylor swiftly dropped the 20-track LP Midnights (3am Edition) as a surprise. It gives insight to the sleepless nights of her life with that post-"reputation era” confidence. The weight of the anticipation for TS10 grew exponentially since its official name was released– during her acceptance speech for MTV's Best Longform Video "All Too Well: the Short Film". Do I think there’s an equally high amount of pressure for this album? Absolutely not. This year, she’s released the most personal music of her career with the support of fans (known as Swifties, despite being verbally referred to as such ~1.5 times). Having such a strong fanbase allows her to successfully re-record her masters, finish old song concepts, and release new music she’s made in the meantime. I’m definitely here for Taylor’s newfound confidence in releasing music for Swifties’ sake.

* Disclaimer: this review is intended for all that listened to the album, not just die-hard stans *

To celebrate new releases, normal fans throw album listening parties. I have to read the lyrics during and have ample time alone to contemplate after. I texted my mom the setup, projected the lyrics onto my living room wall, and made fruity “funny drinks” as we call them. A part of me did wish my Mahogany Edition vinyl record came in to complete the sacredness of waiting to flip it over and reading the lyrics. But listening to the album made me extremely grateful. Wearing my folklore cardigan, I thought back to room 515 in McCarty Hall where I listened to the lyrics “this dorm was once a madhouse” for the first time. Today, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on notable moments of select tracks. So let’s get into the tracklist. <3

Lavender Haze

I’m sorry but Track 1 is made for the girls, gays, and theys.

Zoë Kravitz writing credits.

Yes, I’ll take the lavender oat milk latte to go pls.

Maroon

The breakdown in the last chorus/outro really makes the song.

Lots of unique lines in this one.

Clever description of different shades of red felt in different circumstances.

Anti-hero

Playful, simple production from the bassline established in the beginning to the little chimes at the end.

The first part of the intro is a cry for help, then she sings in a more recognizable lower register.

At the end, it sounds like she’s singing to me, just as she did when I first heard “White Horse”. It sucks that she felt alone growing up. Whenever I did, I would listen to her records.

Fun fact: the lyrics “it’s me, hi” and “did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman?” both exist on this song.

You’re On Your Own, Kid

Has simple phrases and can be read as a poem telling the story of her life.

Places me in a time where she suffered from disordered eating, as detailed in the documentary Miss Americana.

Taylor is known for her turns of phrase, she often switches things up by repurposing common phrases and circling back to them through the song. The song ends with the nice thought that growing up means facing moments of aloneness but how independence can become a healthy state. It’s much like how leaving for college is a learning curve for many.

My case for Midnight Rain:

When asked after my first few listens, I thought Midnight Rain was my favorite. I love how she sings songs about the pain of a good relationship turning ugly. Each time I listen to this song, I get that familiarity and hear something new. “He wanted a bride, I was making my own name” relates to this album’s themes of others trying to get her to settle down before reaching her aspirations.

Question…?

Casually samples her own track.

I’m a fan of her experimentation with vocal effects, especially the reverb distortion in the line “do you wish you could still touch her?”.

My case for Vigilante Shit:

The first line of the song hits. In fact, hooks in essays or speeches rarely have to be elaborate. “Sharp enough to kill a man” is repeated right before the pre-chorus in “they say looks can kill and I might try” establishing a clear theme of fighting and metaphorical death. Her saying “the lady simply had enough” in that posh, poised voice is juxtaposed with arguably her first mention of Schedule I substance use. This leaves me with all sorts of questions. What were the “white-collar crimes” told to the FBI? Was it a true story? Do the Haim sisters know about it given their “No Body, No Crime feat. HAIM” collaboration? Will there be a Billie Eilish version of this song that is longer than 2:45? I’m hooked.

Bejeweled

To me, it’s about underestimation: how someone mistook her kindness for weakness and now she's over it.

Personally, I’d rather listen to Beyoncé’s Lemonade or Renaissance when I’m in that headspace, but I’m sure it’s all part of Her Plan.

In truth, I wish “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve” had a permanent spot on the tracklist and made this song a fun bonus track.

My case for Labyrinth:

This is the wild card. It’s also the golden song: track 10, album 10, released in the 10th month of 2022. This is exactly what I thought Midnights to be like. Sets up Karma and Sweet Nothing in a great way. The beginning is very hesitant and the second verse starts with “it only feels this raw right now” showing the growing pains of vulnerability following a traumatic time. It’s heartbreaking because, much like “Sweet Nothing”, it reveals the difficulty in moving forward again.

Sweet Nothing

I love how he kept the pseudonym William Bowery because it keeps the focus on her album, not the relationship she’s in. This is also important given how she used a pseudonym when she wrote the lyrics in her ex’s song “This is What You Came For feat. Rihanna”, detracting from her influence in the project.

It made me cry at the first listen. It was none other than the bridge that got me. After hearing about all the pressures she has, she says she’s “too soft for all of it” but that all he ever wanted from her was sweet nothing! Wedding reception DJs rejoice. Too cute.

Paris

My little sister was born in 2003 which makes the “2003, unbearable” line amusing.

I love her songs about escapism (“I’m Right Where You Left Me”) and keeping her relationship private.

Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve

Such an important song on the topic of unknowingly flying too close to the sun with manipulative abusers.

Given it’s sensitive content and how much I love the 10 min. version of All Too Well, you know why I don’t feel like defending my case for this song being my favorite on the album.

LIVING FOR THE THRILL OF HITTING YOU WHERE IT HURTS. GIVE ME BACK MY GIRLHOOD, IT WAS MINE FIRST!

My stepsister listening in Tennessee said she expected slow songs that one would write at midnight, rather than the “pop-y” songs she previewed. I, too had anticipated some sleepless night, staying up alone storytelling from this album. Not including this year’s re-recordings, we’ve heard heavy midnight in candlelight influences in recent sister albums folklore and evermore. Yet, the album’s lyrics insinuate Taylor’s lighter on the cover art is being used for recreational late-night activities rather than just lighting candles. Her saturated eye makeup also makes me think of midnights under a disco ball or the aftermath of an eventful night.

Honorable mentions:

Her middle part in the music video for “Bejeweled”

The voice crack when she said I really thought I lost you in “The Great War” and No one wanted to play with me as a little kid in “Mastermind”

No deal , the 1950s shit they want from me

Now that I’m grown , I’m scared of ghosts , memories feel like weapons

I searched ‘aurora borealis green’ , I’ve never seen someone lit from within

He stayed the same , all of me changed like midnight rain

Salt streams out of my eyes and into my ears

You said I was freeloading, I didn’t know you were keeping count

No one sees you lose when you’re playing solitaire

Karma takes all my friends to the summit

Xoxo, Millie

Musical notes from a budding musician

#no its becky #taylor nation #taylor swift #midnights #rainy dawg radio

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theseerasures · 3 years

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a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride

honestly there is just like. no point as of Witch (if not earlier) in thinking about Marrow and Winter as following along the same defection path, and downright facile to compare the two in terms of who is “closer” to defecting and therefore “less problematic” (even setting aside that making value judgments along those lines in fiction is...never that straightforward), when the narrative has emphasized REPEATEDLY how they are on entirely separate tracks in terms of character and role in the Atlas military.

seriously, it’s like saying “this orange is bad because you can’t eat the peel like you can eat an apple skin”

so like, yes, Marrow is the one who has verbally expressed his misgivings, and has clearly articulated scruples (as opposed to just the dial-up noise) and will blurt them out any second now as soon as he gets a word in edgewise. but also: Marrow HASN’T gotten a word in edgewise (except with Winter, fancy that), and has done approximately fuck all to actually subvert the system that he is growing to hate. both his theory and lack of praxis are tied into Marrow’s relatively low, overlooked position in the Atlas system, and feed into the fact that for Marrow the project of Atlas is not personal.

Marrow joined the military on ideological grounds. he clearly does want personal connection, but that has been denied him at every turn, largely by his teammates, largely by his partner, all of whom use him to enforce their own struggles with the clash between political duty and personal grief. he has been alienated by the system he upholds, which started even before we meet him. this makes it much harder for him to rebel in deed, because he doesn’t have a lot of power to begin with and he knows the system will not protect him if he does; at the same time, that relative powerlessness and isolation keeps his investment in Atlas abstract, uncomplicated, and much easier to dispel. Marrow is still with Atlas because he has a job to do, because it’s his duty, because he is still clinging to the Atlas military’s illusory altruism. he wants Penny to come with them so she can save Atlas. his protestations at seeing Team FNKI, that they are “just kids,” comes from the belief that it is categorically wrong to send children into battle. what is keeping Marrow from defecting is belief, and once the belief is shattered--like, say, when his boss’ new ingenious plan is to Nuke the Poors--there is nothing keeping him around.

and once his path is set he will not waver, because Atlas, by design, has no hold on him materially or personally (outside of his own life, which he was already happy to dedicate to a cause). Marrow then, is the limit case of Atlas being hoist with its own petard: an exemplar for how it gives its people nothing while demanding everything, but also an exemplar for how quickly the entire system folds in on itself when the veil is lifted. when Marrow defects (and it IS when) it will represent Atlas as a whole defecting from itself, even if we don’t see it visually--from the civilians, to the enlisted soldiers, to perhaps even members of Marrow’s own team.

NONE of the things i just mentioned really apply to Winter, because there is nothing about Atlas that is not personal for Winter.

i have no doubt that Winter is in some ways invested in same abstract principles that swayed Marrow, but that is constantly overridden by the fact that Winter has family at all sides of this, even before everything fell to shit, and the narrative will not stop reminding her.

“what about your sister?” “would you say the same thing if it was your sister inside?” her father was gunning for a seat on the Council. the man who took her in is essentially Head of State. Penny has made herself Public Enemy Number One, and Weiss is actively abetting her. even Whitley has now thrown himself into the fray, unbeknownst to her. and another person might be better at compartmentalizing all this the way Winter clearly wants to, and stick to the party line, but Winter cannot, because the more i watch her the more i’m convinced that the current crisis in Atlas is just a microcosm of the real issue, which is to say: everything is personal in Atlas for Winter, because everything is personal for Winter.

at a moment-to-moment level, and especially when backed into a corner, Winter defaults not to ideology but her tightly coiled lattice of personal relationships. and this makes perfect sense, because Winter grew up in a household where she had to perpetually crisis respond, and then she never stopped. Marrow does what he does because he believes in the dream, in making the world a better place, and therefore it is more difficult in some respects for him to defect, because it involves taking a long hard look at and then rejecting the structures he bought into and made himself complicit in. once lines are crossed and he DOES do that, though, he’s home free. for Winter, there are no lines to cross, because all Winter wants in the end is to throw her arms around everyone she cares about and drag them to safety. to keep them there, closely held, where she can see them and make sure that they stay safe.

but what’s tricky about Winter--what’s fascinating to me, what Jacques tried to beat out of her, what James alternately capitalizes on and tries to quash, what she resents about herself--is that in times of crisis (which for Winter is again ALL THE TIME), “everyone she cares about” becomes everyone, so that suddenly she takes a shine to the General’s war machine, so that she’s risking her life to give Penny and Fria a few more seconds of time, so that she’s stepping in front of Elm’s incoming fist, so that she’s letting JYR go rescue Oscar. Marrow has ideals he values, but at her core Winter has nothing but the people, who are real the moment she sees and feels them--real enough to defend, or defend against.

Winter jealously protects her web of people, but that web will also spiral out to infinity if she lets it--so she doesn’t. she has adamantly refused to move out of the mode where she lives present-by-present, only reacting to what is right in front of her, what she has been told, weighing her own life against the people who are closest, and no more. this is unquestionably a trauma response, but it’s also reinforced by 1) her choice to become a career soldier, and 2) the fact that Winter actually HAS quite a bit of power, and she knows that. but she has never trusted herself with any of it, largely because her hypervigilant response to situations has only ever been chastised instead of rehabilitated. Winter knows the weight of her name and her position, but she constantly tries to ignore it, or run away from it, so that she is only ever the heiress, the second-in-command, and never the Queen. she cannot be a leader until she is Good (that is to say, perfect and rational), so she tries to obliterate her power the same time she obliterates that pesky personhood: remaining still for as long as possible, avoiding situations that she knows will prompt action and choice, and when absolutely pushed to think through her power, moving the pieces around with extreme caution, hoping that the world won’t be burnt black by it.

Marrow and Winter are fundamentally at opposing ends of the personal-political bleed, and the story could NOT telegraph it any more clearly than their conversation in Witch, where Marrow makes a personal plea to Winter so that she can make a call far beyond just that, and she refutes him, by reminding him of his obligation to Atlas in the form of impersonal duty.

i’ll conclude by pointing out that there is something very interesting happening with Winter right now, that exceeds her power in-universe. because even as a Schnee, as Ironwood’s protege, what Winter can do is limited (partly because she limits herself), except for how the story has resolutely centered her actions and MADE them significant. in the course of this war Winter has let herself make exactly two choices--both of them noninterventionist, easily justifiable, and not meant to take any ideological stand--and they ended up altering the entire fabric of the war with Salem. all because she loved her sisters more than her duty. all because she was shown a slim chance to save the kingdom and a fourteen-year-old boy, and she thought just for an instant, what’s the harm

(and James Ironwood will never know. that even with his plan, his bomb, all his ships, all his soldiers...he was no match for her. his loyal lieutenant. the only child he will ever have, who has only ever called him “sir.”)

it is not about what Winter COULD have chosen in those moments, if she had the ability to stop Penny and Weiss from leaving, if JYR were even Oscar’s rescuers, in the conventional sense. it is about the fact that she DID make those choices, and the story has made them reverberate, in spite of the fact that she did not mean for them to. Marrow’s story is about being neglected and overlooked by the system, the moment of recognition that it needs you more than you need it, that there are so many more of you, and together you can stop chasing the dream and make your own. Winter’s story cleaves to the heart of not just Atlas, but the RWBY monomyth, which goes something like: stars are like us. the world was created because two brothers could not get along, and sundered because a woman could not cope with her grief. just because you move closer to the elite, to the center, to the top, to the sublime, it does not mean that you move farther from the fallible. we are all, at our deepest layer, people.

but the world does not tremble any less for it.

#winter schnee #marrow amin #rwby #helen writes meta #there is something like. gallingly poetic to the point where it's just shy of kitsch #about the throughline of winter letting penny go and then penny letting emerald go #(and then emerald helping free oscar with JYR and hitching a ride on the other strand winter left trailing behind)#it's not about causation. it's not that simple #it's about the ways that penny is both winter's apotheosis and (dare i say it) mirror #as maidens so often are for each other #so that winter's desperate compromise becomes in penny's hands a transcendent mercy #winter would not have spared emerald. and penny is not there solely because of winter #but they constitute and echo each other even apart in the kingdom of creation #winter might call that being 'human' but penny would call it something else #me yesterday: teehee i think i will make a leetle joke #about how winter has done more for the war effort than ironwood by basically doing fuck all #HOURS AND A ZILLION WORDS LATER #listen. do i regret it? yes. do i wish i'd done something more productive? absolutely. do i wish i could hyperfixate on anything else? ye

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sitp-recs · 3 years

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Far From The Tree by aideomai

Harry/Draco (2020, Explicit, 112k)

The arrival of Harry Potter’s children—snapped back in time, the children themselves guessed, twenty or so years—was the most interesting thing to happen at Hogwarts for years.

It was awful, there was going to be no pretending after this. The one good thing that had happened in years, falling into the palm of his hand like a gift from the gods, impossible to understand or earn and sure to be taken away, already slipping through his fingers.

My first 2021 rec was also the hardest one to write so far! Not only I had to check it 268453 times for spoilers, it was also difficult to find the right words to express aideomai’s pure genius without either losing objectivity, giving things away or making a complete mess out of myself. Choosing a quote was also a big challenge - there are so many brilliant, gut-punching lines and I had to find one that made sense out of context, without taking anything away from the reader’s experience. I’m not 100% pleased with this rec, but I hope it has as much heart and devotion as the fic itself!

First things first (and I’m aware I’m repeating myself here, but): aideomai’s superior storytelling skills deserve endless appreciation and praise. They have this unique, seemingly effortless way of exploring a fic concept that leaves me in awe; it’s heartfelt, sophisticated and accessible all at once, which I find very impressive. I was just telling @tackytigerfic how this feels like a 400k journey wrapped in 70k because everything happens so organically you don’t even notice 100k flying by. I could wax poetry about the peak world building, perfect atmosphere, exquisite characterization (including Harry’s kids who are so very charming they immediately stole my heart) or the hot, moving and otherworldly smut, so passionate and breathtaking I can’t think about it without tearing up (I’m serious). But you know what, I think my favorite thing about about this fic is that, despite having all these elements perfectly executed, it remains a love story, and it’s just... as simple as that.

Harry and Draco’s falling in love and evolving relationship are at the center of everything and the author takes their sweet time to present and develop their dynamics in a rich and detailed way, to make sure we realize the hows and the whys later on. The story is told from Draco’s POV and it’s such a privilege to witness his changes of heart, from getting bullied to falling for Harry. We get to see their individual arcs through his conflicted eyes and both took my breath away - their voices are intense, nuanced, and so full of character and emotion it still gives me goosebumps. I love how FFT combined that 8th year’s secretive, light-hearted and experimentative tone with a more mature atmosphere linked to the complications brought by the time travel plotline. These characters are very much 18yo (by that I mean horny, awkward, stupid, tentative and emotionally constipated) but aideomai has found a way to push them into moments of introspection and altruism, and I thought that was phenomenal.

In my humble opinion, this is a perfect fic. It has the perfect amount of angst, humor, mystery, action and romance; these characters grow up before our eyes and everything comes together in such an emotionally satisfying way. The gentle devastation pays off and will make you laugh, cry, cheer and fall in love with their love, which is all we ever want out of a fic. Some moments - especially the RoR scenes - still make me want to relive the joy and hurt I felt while reading them, until it becomes a small and sweet aching, safe inside my memory.

What a majestic author, what a powerful read. I felt so completely moved, then immersed, then transformed by it, and my emotional hangover is lasting a bit longer than expected, despite Tacky’s warnings. It’s been a few days and I still feel disoriented, attacked by the bittersweet feeling of knowing that I’ll never be able to read this for the first time ever again. This is a very late rec as I might have been the last person to read it, but if you haven’t yet you’re in luck! I invite you to jump in right now and read one of the best Drarry fics out there, an instant all-time fave that will stay in my mind for a long while. Enjoy!

PS for anyone wondering yes, the graphic is bigger this time because I found the perfect pic but this is the only format in which we get to see it properly - then again this is my first 2021 rec so I say let’s go big or go home 😎

Read on AO3

#drarry #drarry fic rec #fave

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sweetcurlyhaz · 3 years

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Percy Jackson is an Hufflepuff- Part 1

Yes. Percy is an Hufflepuff, and now I’ll explain why. First, some brief introductions: English isn’t my first language, so sorry for my grammar errors. Pls be kind. Second, this is MY opinion, but I’ll argue with solid proofs, taking scenes from the books, comparing characters and more. Let’s go step by step.

-Why Percy is not a Ravenclaw? I really have to explain this? I think we all agree that Percy could never be a Ravenclaw.

-Why Percy is not a Slytherin? Oh, here we go. A lot of ppl think Percy is a Slytherin and I’m always like “WHAT”. And now I’ll show you why Percy could never be a Slytherin.

1- I think the best proof is in the Sea of Monsters, where at the end Percy give the Golden Fleece to Clarisse. We all know that Percy save the situation, that HE take the Golden Fleece, that HE saved Clarisse’s ass. Despite that, he gave the G.F. to Clarisse, who took all the credit. A Slytherin would never do that, a true Slytherin, already wouldn’t help Clarisse (not because Slytherin can’t be kind, but surely they’re not with ppl they don’t like), and above all wouldn’t give his/her own glory to Clarisse. Percy’s altruism, kindness and true sense of justice overcome his pride, glory and power. Is it just me that think about of our lovely Cedric Diggory? I mean, is almost the exact thing that Cedric does with Harry: he says to him to take the goblet fire instead of him. Percy does the same.

2- When he refuses to be a god. THIS. I mean, how Hufflepuff is this? What kind of Slytherin refuses a thing like that? I’ll tell you, NONE. Percy thinks about how wonderful should be being almighty, powerful, and immortal. BUT, he can’t abandon his friends and family. He could never do that, and this is so Hufflepuff, right? For Percy, family and friends always come first. In reverse, a Slytherin would take this chance because they are AMBITIOUS and they want to be POWERFUL (hear me out, this is not a bad thing at all). PERCY IS NOT AMBITIOUS, or he would have accepted to be a god! Also, what Percy ask to the gods, instead of being one? “all demigods have to be recognized, and all the minor gods should have a cabin at CHB.” His request is SO humble and SO unselfish that only an Hufflepuff could ask that.

3- His fatal flaw: loyalty. We all know that a main characteristic of being an Hufflepuff is loyalty, and that’s said all. But I’m a good person so I’ll explain this even if there’s no need, and also I’m sure someone could say “EvEN SLyThERin cAN be LoYAl”. Yeah, you’re right. BUT Slytherin’s loyalty is a lot different. Their loyalty is limited only to a small group of friends, and also if their friends affect their goals, a Slytherin is no more loyal to them. Example: Regulus Black. At first he’s loyal to Voldemort, because he truly thinks he’s right. But when he realize the means Voldy uses, Regulus goes against him (we love you Reg). His no more loyal because Voldemort’s behavior go against Regulus’ beliefs. Now, Percy (thanks to the gods) is a good person and has a straight moral on what’s wrong and what’s right. But have you ever think how dangerous he could be if he was evil? I mean, if someone dare to touch an hair of Annabeth he could loose his freaking mind. Evil Percy could be really a problem because his loyalty goes first of his other beliefs. He would do anything to protect his friends, anything.

Another example: let’s analyze the relationship of Percy and Nico. We all agree that Nico is an ambiguous character. He tries to kill Percy, than helps him, the lies to him, and more. I mean, he is the last character to be loyal to, right? But Percy still have faith on him, he’s still loyal to him. Percy asks Nico to bring the seven at the other side, and never doubts on him. A Slytherin would never place such responsibility on a character like Nico (I love Nico, but that’s the true). This loyalty, deep and irrational, can only be of an Hufflepuff.

4-Another proof (there are A LOT) why Percy isn’t a Slytherin: he doesn’t want to be powerful. I write this before in the second point, but I have another proof from The House of Hades. Do you remember when he controls poison against the goddess of discord? Okay, at first he likes what that power makes him feel, he doesn’t want to stop. But when he sees Annabeth’s face he calms down. So, this thing with poison is a new power for him: but he never uses it. Remember when, under the sea with Jason, he says something like “I could have controlled the poison, but I didn’t. It was the goddess’ revenge and I deserve it.” A Slytherin wouldn’t have such problem, they would use this new power on their favor. But Percy’s sense of justice overcome the feeling of power, even if he likes it somehow.

5-I saw that a lot of ppl think Percy is a Slytherin because of the cunning thing. English is not my first language and I have never heard this word before. So I did some researches: cunning is another way to say “smart” “clever” “sly”. Is like being smart but in a malicious way (please correct me if I’m wrong!!). And they take as an example that part in the Mark of Athena, where’s Percy trick the enemy’s crew by inventing the story of the Diet Coke and Mister D. Or another one is Percy gets Luke to admit to all CHB that he poisoned Thalia’s tree. And others. All of this are valid proof but remember why Percy does it. We have to go deeper, not just looking on what he does but WHY he does it. And all the evidences I said to you above are connected to one point: his fatal flaw. He is cunning to protect his friends, he would do anything for them. Also, how long being cunning is a Slytherin thing? I think there’s a lot of misunderstandings about this. Being a Slytherin doesn’t mean you have to be cunning or whatever, and be an Hufflepuff doesn’t mean you have to be always kind. I’m really sad that we don’t have a GOOD Slytherin (Ik there’s Regulus, but we don't have so much informations about him) to compare with Percy, that would be awesome and constructive (J.K. take notes).

6- “He’s not patient, he can’t be an Hufflepuff.” Alright, so I assume who said this is because Percy has ADHD and dyslexia. Ehm...what? What’s this supposed to mean? Only because Percy is a trouble kid doesn’t mean he can’t be an Hufflepuff. I really hate this way of thinking. Now, patient is not just like “See the plant growing and never get boring or impatient because is too slow.” Being patient is more. Percy is patient? No, he isn’t. Due to his character, and his ADHD, Percy can’t be patient. But this is when it comes to manual and practical things, like fight, or when he plays on capture the flag or when he’s angry. Let’s analyse how is Percy in the relationships. Percy and Annabeth (I love them); at first it might seem that Percy isn’t patient with her: they argue a lot, they yell at each other and so on. But, in reality Percy is patient with her feelings (apart the Luke thing, Percy is so jealous), he never push her, he never ask to her anything on what she feels. Even when they’re engaged he says (in MoA) their relationship is like a little statue of glass and he was terrified of having scared her with his big (and lovely) plans. I think that being with Annabeth involves a LOT of patient.

His relationship with Nico: I mean, we all love Nico, but who doesn’t want to give him a slap after he lied to him in the SoN? I think Percy would love to do it (I’M KIDDING. NO DI ANGELO WILL BE HURT IN THIS BLOG). Percy is really patient with him, from the very start: remember all the questions Nico asks Percy? And he was so annoying, but Percy was patient with him. Another example: Percy and Tyson. We love Tyson, he’s like a big bear, but how annoying was with Percy and Grover? But Percy always stand by his side, never yell at him the way he really want, and he is really patient with him. I’m not saying that Percy is the perfect patient boy, but in some way Percy is patient too when he wants (Annabeth is less patient than him in my opinion).

Ok, I think I said all about this. I have a lot more to say but this is becoming a poem so i have to stop XD. I wish i could do just one post but it’d be extremely long so i will split in Part 1 and Part 2 this argument. In the next post I will say why Percy can’t be a Gryffindor :). There’s one more thing I want to say, and I think is really important. The house thing is sadly really restrictive. Rick Riordan’s characters have a complex psychology and are really well built. I think that see a character psychology only in relation to his house is wrong. For example, Percy is such more than what we said. But if we have to put him in a house we can’t look to all his peculiarities. It’s like a brainstorming: when I said Percy, I always think about his sarcasm, his loyalty, his bravery ecc. To put someone in a house of Hogwarts is necessary to go streight to the point, and analyze WHY he does something, not only what.

Thank you for reading this, I will appreciate it if you comment your opinion or if you reblog this. And remember: We’re not just a house. We’re more.

#percy jackson #hufflepuff #slytherin #hogwarts house #percy is an hufflepuff #percy hufflepuff #analysis #fatal flaw #argument

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iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid · 3 years

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endeavor character thots under the cut because it got really long and i just think his character arc is neat

(also i'm probably not saying anything that everybody doesn't already know but i need to collect my thoughts so here we are)

(spoilers up to ch290)

🔥🔥🔥

like, let me preface this with: yes, enji todoroki is a dickhead

i have very much enjoyed his character arc, but he is a dickhead

i think there’s a lot that goes into his behavior that we know about, and a lot that we don’t know about, but regardless it is my opinion that he is (or at least has been) a massive dickhead who was always way too obsessed with victory and being the best etc. etc. etc. and let it get in the way of him being, like, an actual decent human person. you know, like, the point of being a “hero” in the first place. he lost track of that at some point, WHICH is an excellent reflection of what the ~hero society~ does to warp the idea of heroism in the first place, and i think that was exactly hori’s intention. i mean, the man’s hero name, which we know in canon heroes come up with in their high school years, is fucking endeavor. nothing fire related. just endeavor. holy shit, dude, you have always been incapable of dialing it back, got it.

he is also (as all might pointed out) an excellent reflection of what an older bakugo could have been without intervention by the adults in his life: i.e., he has a rigid moral compass and a “fuck villains” mentality without an ounce of kindness to go with all that altruism, and in endeavor's case that spiraled down and down and down until you get to the shitshow that’s given us the current Keeping Up With The Todorokis story arc. his parallels with bakugo keep going right up to and including, of course, when the change started happening:

but anyway, the point is he lost track of what being a hero is actually supposed to be (if he ever knew in the first place because, again, growing up in this hypercompetitive atmosphere does a number on these heroes, man) and he’s only just starting to get it back now, as he goes through... what i hesitate to even call a redemption arc tbh? the narrative itself is doing nothing to “redeem” him, every action taken here is coming directly from the man himself as he tries to figure out how to do right by his family after all the garbage he put them through, with no thoughts about redeeming himself, which i think is the major factor that had me so on board for him swinging from “abusive shitheel” to “fumbling awkward and still kind-of-a-dick father who’s, like, at least trying to be better.” like, this bit:

THAT'S the good shit

anyway, so like, going back, when we first meet endeavor, we know three things: (1) he’s the number two hero after all might, (2) he essentially “bought” his wife and had several children before the todoroki we all know and love, all in an effort to combine their quirks into someone more powerful than either of them, and (3) todoroki haaates him, for good reason, partly because of the intense training he went through as a kid, but mostly because he views his mother’s deteriorating mental health -- and by extension his scar -- as being endeavor’s fault. that’s it, that’s all we got.

NOW we know a lot more

we know he specifically sought out rei for her ice quirk because his main weakness is overheating, we know he still to this day delivers her favorite flowers to her hospital room on a regular basis, we know he “put her in a hospital” (in the anime, not the manga, which was an excellent misdirection with the wording there BY the way) i.e. he admitted her into a hospital after she deliberately and horrifically injured their son, and we also have a whole lot more context for why rei’s mental health deteriorated so badly up to that point

it was a really cool way to reveal why this family is the way it is, in bits and pieces. you have enji, hyperdetermined to the point of being a dick sometimes (or all the time), who offers this woman a ton of money to marry him and have kids with him so their kids will be stronger than him. you have rei, who agrees, and after they have their first kid -- toya, who doesn’t get the ice quirk and can’t escape overheating -- enji still wants to train him to be the best he can be, and rei wants more kids so they can encourage each other. they love their kids! both of them! they may have even begun to love each other!

and then. aaaaaaand then,

toya burns himself to death (cough cough, allegedly), and it all falls apart. rei loses her firstborn son to the quirk that was passed onto him by the man that she agreed to have kids with, for the express purpose of passing on their quirks. in the beginning we think her disgust with shoto’s fire quirk is because of endeavor, because (and this was the assumption i made) he wasn’t just an emotionally abusive jerk, he was a physically abusive one, fire quirk and all. but it’s not endeavor’s quirk she’s disgusted by, it’s toya’s. she’s looking at her youngest son and seeing the power that gruesomely killed her oldest, and something breaks. she has a psychotic meltdown and dumps boiling water on her kid’s head, and she gets sent off to a mental hospital, for good reason.

i don’t know, man. i just. LOVE how much the extra context gives to all of these characters.

but yeah, so toya’s death sent rei into that downward spiral, and at the same time it took endeavor’s already kind of too-gung-ho attitude and dialed that shit to 11 because he needed to throw himself into something and he sure as hell wasn’t gonna let that happen to another one of his kids, hence: way too much training for poor little shoto. and he doesn’t even see it as a bad thing? what he’s doing to his kids? it feels like a necessary evil and he’s more or less at peace with it.

but then all this kids are almost grown, and shoto hates him to the point that he only began using his fire quirk, like, this year, and natsuo fucking despises him and says it'll be a cold day in hell before he forgives him, and fuyumi’s the only kid left that even wants to begin to give him a chance. he’s the number one hero and it literally does not matter, it changes nothing. shoto’s constantly in danger because he wants to be a hero, natsuo almost dies because some villain comes after them with the intention of hurting endeavor, and fuyumi’s miserable because their family is cracked apart, and like... shit, dude. the fact that enji turns around and decides, “they all deserve to be a family together, they deserve to be happy together, fuyumi deserves to have the happy family she wants to have, and if the only way that’s going to happen is without me, then that’s just how it’ll have to be,” is phenomenal

he is fully willing to remove himself from the picture if that’s what it takes to make his wife and kids happy! if that’s what it takes to give them some peace! holy shit. this is the polar opposite of how he has viewed heroism for his entire life up until that point

this? this is not flashy showbiz-worthy fights and villain beatdowns and glory, minus genuine altruism

this is genuine altruism, minus the flashy showbiz-worthy fights and villain beatdowns and glory

and the fact that it’s just, like... ah, yes, watch endeavor slowly and fumblingly trying to right his wrongs and be a better person, how lovely, surely nothing will happen to completely derail this and oh wait what’s that HERE COMES DABI WITH A STEEL CHAIR--

just. hoo buddy. brain full, many thoughts about enji todoroki today lads, VERY interested and very frightened to see how the aftermath of the dabi reveal hits everyone in this family. it's...... a Lot

#bnha #todoroki enji #endeavor #horikoshi is a very very good writer and i am continually impressed by him tbh #mha #manga spoilers #i mean only for the [REDACTED] reveal that everyone knew was coming anyway but still

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zrtranscripts · 3 years

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Home Front, Mission 30: Daddy Lessons

Necromancy

SAM YAO: Okay Five, you're outside Thurman's bunker. There's a... there's a lovely occult sigil of uh... a bleeding eye on the door. And we don't know what's inside, so warm up just in case. Stretch, jog on the spot, whatever you need. I want you ready for anything. [sighs] I wish I could say I'm not scared, but I know we're both scared. It doesn't feel like three days since you got out of the underground village, does it? It-it sort of like feels like-like a couple of hours and also about two years.

Okay, briefing Janine-style always seems to help me focus. I have carefully checked every single camera in Spectrum Mall, but there's been no sign of Thurman since he left you in the dumbwaiter. Zombies don't notice him, so maybe he went out into the horde? The point is this might be our only chance to find out more about him. Specifically, how he can be in two places at once. Oh, and oh yeah, the bunker's locked with a code. The tape you took from the longevity research lab says where it is. Give it another play.

DR. MCBRIDE: April 9th, 1991. Dr. McBride. I've heard keeping a diary can help one make sense of things, and I refuse to lose my mind. Seven months ago, Artemus Thurman fired me for excessive altruism. Weeks later, I watched on my sofa as he attempted the highest ski jump ever built. I was willing him to fail, but only so he'd embarrass himself. I still see his neck snap when I close my eyes. I saw his funeral on the BBC News. It felt like I’d killed him, somehow.

Except two weeks ago, Thurman turned up at my door in the middle of the night and forced me at gunpoint to come with him back to my old lab. It's deserted. He won't explain how he survived, only says, “Prepare the bunker for my son. He'll be here once the dust's cleared, and there are things inside that explain everything.” The gossip pages say his son hates him. He wasn't at the funeral. Maybe he knew it was fake, but I can't say that to Thurman. If I disagree with him on anything, it's like he doesn't even hear me. I'm too afraid to argue.

He's different now to how he was before, some sort of monomania, and he keeps talking about the occult, secret knowledge that will help the chosen to survive. He asked me more than once if I would participate in the ritual with him, and I'm too afraid to answer. There's something else I'm afraid of. Thurman left tins of food, but they're running low. If he doesn't bring some more soon, I'm opening the bunker myself. He told me often enough the code for the bunker is engraved on the frame of Brandon's portrait in the Thurmanville labs.

SAM YAO: Stop the tape, Five. It gets a bit grim once McBride realizes Thurman's locked her in the lab and all he's sending her is plastic fruit. Okay, I'm looking for a portrait. Mmm... Ah! Yeah, I can see it. Boy in a suit, but uh, the actual face has been cut out. That's creepy. Still, I've got the bunker code on cams. It's um, 1875. Oh, that didn't work. I'm missing something. Keep warming up, and I'll figure out how to get you in.

SAM YAO: Okay Five, I've worked it out. The bunker lock’s electronic and the power's down, but the door's hooked up to the generator, so you just need to crank it up with some bicep curls. So press your elbows into your sides, forearms down, palms facing forwards. Grab the bar with both hands. Now it looks heavy, about the weight of a couple of tin cans? Now bend your elbows to lift the crank to your shoulders, then lower it back down. Careful, don't hurt yourself. It should take a minute.

Janine's been looking into some occult stuff since McBride mentioned it. She says Thurman was probably using fear of the supernatural as a way to control and manipulate his employees. She also says 1875 is the year that occultist Aleister Crowley was born. The occult sigil on the door, I wonder if it was from one of Crowley's books. Apparently, Crowley wrote about being in two places at once via astral travel, but the occult isn't real. Janine says, "There will be a rational explanation, Mr. Yao," and she's right, obviously. But there's something seriously weird going on.

Okay, you've got the generator working, Five. Try the code again. 1875. Yes, the bunker's open, but you might want to crank the generator a little longer. Don't want the power going out while you're inside.

SAM YAO: All right, Five, time to enter Thurman's bunker.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Brandon! Here at last.

SAM YAO: That's a recording, Five. Brandon was Thurman's son. He obviously thought only Brandon would make it in here.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: I trust your journey to post-apocalyptic England wasn't too arduous. I'm serious. If it's still a nuclear wasteland, go to the decontamination suite for three weeks and reread my autobiography. You've got a lot to live up to. You can't just rely on your Thurman genes. They're diluted by your mother’s. Penelope raised you to be a sissy, mommy's boy.

You were almost six when I last saw you, and you didn't even know how to box. I hope that black eye taught you a lesson, and the wasteland has hardened you. Regardless, I've prepared tests so you can prove you're worthy of meeting me. If you fail, you'll die, and good riddance. I'd rather have a dead son than a weak one.

SAM YAO: Five, a dart just flew past your face! Another by your knees! Uh, quick, do some jumping jacks to avoid them. Uh, feet together, arms by your sides. Now jump, spreading your arms and legs in the air so you land in a star shape. That dart almost clipped your ear! Jump back to the starting position. Keep doing those and the darts will miss you.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Still alive, Brandon? These darts are tipped with poison, you know. Ever see The Running Man? Contestants fighting to the death on television, a marvelous idea! The weak are punished and their deaths set an example. Televised combat is just what this country needs. Gladiatorial battles for children, now that's an idea! Get rid of the weak early and stop them growing into giant wastes of resources.

SAM YAO: [sighs] It's over. What was wrong with Thurman? He's treating this like some kind of joke! I mean, it's one thing to prepare for the future, but this... ! [sighs] I hope wherever he is, Brandon never gives his dad a moment's thought. Head to the next chamber, Five. If any more darts fly at you, just keep jumping.

SAM YAO: There's an arcade cabinet in this chamber. Must be another test from Thurman for his son.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: With discipline, strength of mind, and secret knowledge, one can live forever. If you prove worthy, Brandon, I'll tell you about it.

SAM YAO: Oh, I hate to send you further into that... that bastard's lair, but we have to know what he knows, Five. He's too dangerous, and he's fixated on you. We've got to find out how to stop him.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Ever heard of The Grimoire of the Empyrean Oracle, Crowley's lost manuscript? Explains how to harness occult forces to make reality bend to your will. I bought it for millions, memorized it, then burned it. Couldn't have anyone else reading it. Sharing is for commies. Besides, they say the book is cursed. Everyone who owned it before me died horribly. Starving, thirsty, trapped and alone. You know why? Because they were unworthy!

You must prove you have the right values. Approach the arcade cabinets. Behold, a computer rendering of Karl Marx. Before you are two buttons, Hero and Parasite. Press the one you think describes Marx. Get it wrong, and the room fills with poison gas.

SAM YAO: [laughs] I'm pretty sure Thurman thinks Marx is a parasite, Five, but the buttons have corroded. The levers on the floor are all that's left. You can't stop looking at the screen, I need your head cam, so um... Okay, yep. Lunge and hit the lever with your knee instead. Stand with your feet together. Now step forward with your right leg and lower your back knee so that it almost touches the ground. And raise back up.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: That's right, Marx was a parasite, and you've exterminated him! Here's Ayn Rand.

SAM YAO: Ugh! Um, yeah, I think Rand wrote a book called The Virtue of Selfishness. Hit the hero button. Lunge with your left foot this time.

ARTEMUS THURMAN Keep going, Brandon! Here's Robin Hood.

SAM YAO: Looks like Thurman's alternating heroes and parasites, so keep lunging with alternate feet. Go!

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Ah, Henry Ford. Tore down 5,000 square miles of rainforest to build a private rubber production colony. Excellent man. Yes, Brandon, exterminate those parasites! Halfway there. Oh, Dickens. Reagan. If you become half the man he is, you'll almost be worth the time I've spent on you. You've done it, Brandon! If you'd made a single mistake, I'd have gassed you like a rodent.

SAM YAO: A door just opened, Five! If anyone else pops up on that screen, keep lunging. Otherwise, press on.

SAM YAO: Oh, there's an altar in this chamber, Five. I wonder what that's for.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: The Grimoire of the Empyrean Oracle explains how to harness animal spirits through ritual sacrifice.

SAM YAO: Of course. Yeah.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Your mother disapproved, Brandon. Called it torture. Well, now's your chance to prove you don't hold with the stupid ideas about animal rights. Release the hounds!

SAM YAO: Oh, well surely there aren’t live dogs here. Oh crap, Five, robotic dog heading right for you, glowing red eyes and razor blade teeth! Quick, punch it! Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, left foot back, fists up. Now punch with your right fist. Nice shot, Five! Keep hitting it with your right fist.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: "Save the whales!" Penelope used to say. Hogwash. What have the whales ever done for us? Ever wondered what happened to your gerbil? Rat poison. Taught you a lesson about wasting resources on useless creatures.

SAM YAO: You've taken down that robo-dog, Five, but there's another one! Right, switch stance so your right leg is behind and punch with your left fist. Go!

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Prove you have the stomach to continue Crowley's work. Show no mercy, Brandon!

SAM YAO: Five, I hope your knuckles are okay after that. Keep going, we've got to know what this grimoire actually did. And if you see any more robo-dogs, you know what to do.

SAM YAO: Right, I just searched for Brandon Thurman on ROFFLEnet, but nothing came up, not even gossip like McBride mentioned. It's like he never existed. Everything about this family is so... just twisted and wrong.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Getting my hands on that grimoire was no picnic, Brandon. Had to hold my nose and venture east of the Iron Curtain, spend a week in a basement in Bucharest getting a man who refused to eat or drink to tell me what he knew. There wasn't much I could threaten him with, but I found his weak spot in the end. [laughs] After he told me what he knew, I followed Crowley's trail to India. There are carvings under a temple in Hyderabad, tied all my research together.

Immortality is there for the taking, Brandon, you just have to work for it. You can exist in two places at once. Think about it, working twice as hard, making twice the money! I bulldozed the temple, of course. Full of stupid warnings. The grimoire states that to conquer death, you must overcome an attempt on your life, value strength over weakness, and sacrifice those less valuable than yourself. And at last, you have to be willing to kill.

You're nearly there, Brandon. I'm almost proud of you. I've been testing you all your life. Never sent your mother a penny. Wanted to see if you'd grow up self-reliant. And when I saw that article about you in the FT, “Teenager establishes paper route pyramid scheme,” I knew I'd been successful. There's only one thing left, Brandon.

The staircase ahead bears blood sigils. It is a shrine to the god Moloch. He demands the sacrifice of love, so as you ascend, you must renounce all that you love, as I have renounced you. Only then will you be granted power over death. Speak the words carved on the stairs as you ascend.

SAM YAO: “I vow to sacrifice to Moloch that which I love. To starve, kill and...” What the...? Don't say any of that stuff, Five. Don't even look at it. Just climb the stairs.

SAM YAO: Okay, you're outside the last chamber, Five. Almost there. And yeah, your way back is clear. You can get away if anything's... bad. There's a glass coffin inside.

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Well, Brandon, you've found me. I'll be taken here after my death. Of course, since I followed the grimoire's instructions, I won't really be dead, just sleeping.

SAM YAO: The coffin’s bristling with tubes leading to the machines beside it. Dr. McBride worked in longevity research. Maybe this equipment has been keeping Thurman alive all this time. Yeah, maybe he's um... uh, you know, zombie immune because he died, or-or something. Take a closer look.

There's a desiccated body in the coffin. It's uh... Yeah, I'm not imagining it, am I, Five? It's Thurman, but dead. Really, really dead. Oh Five, look at the machine. Every switch has been flipped to off. And is that a note? “See you in hell, dad. B.” Did Brandon come here to turn his dad off? Not that I... [sighs] not that I blame him, really, but... ugh. For his sake, I wish he hadn't cared this much.

Nothing makes sense, Five! If Thurman's really dead, then who's been chasing you? What was that noise? The whole bunker’s shaking!

ARTEMUS THURMAN: Oh Brandon, I've installed monitoring systems. If my state deteriorates too far for me to be revived, I have a contingency plan. See you soon, boy.

#zombies run #zr home front #zrhf 30 #daddy lessons #zr transcript

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noxtms · 3 years

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dear cherry & rachel; we are pleased to inform you that your applications for COLM O’DONNELL & MAUREEN O’DONNELL have been accepted to 𝐧𝐨𝐱 ! idris elba & jessica chastain are now taken. you have twenty four hours to submit your accounts, or else your roles will be reopened !

⧼ idris elba, cis male, he/him / home by edward sharpe & the magnetic zeroes + your mother says you were born with a smile and a bright bubble of laughter in your throat, glee an infectious disease that you cannot help but spread / your mother was right, darling boy of the bright eyes / gentle man with the sun-warm smile / they say true kindness is hard to come across, but yours is spread like birdseed, scattered across the pavement and tucked into nooks and crannies, for those that need it most. joy: like the sunrise, broad and golden. joy: like the way the brook babbles, mirthful laughter and comfort in its coursing pattern. joy: an ethos, a motto, something to syncopate the beating of your heart with. ( a good man, hard to find and harder to hold but you make yourself available. what a rarity it is, to give yourself away and smile like sunlight as you do it ! clarice lispector writes, ‘ hope was my greatest sin ’ --- - everything looks rose-coloured when you watch the world through optimism and helpless reverie. will you remake the world in your image, calloused and kind hands and something of the eternal lover ? ) your mother, she says you were born with the world in your palms and a preternatural altruism / of a bleeding heart, all charity and an arm extended so far for others you damn near dislocate your own shoulder. a proud mother’s son, an adoring husband, a doting father, a good man: what an honour it is, to bear these titles. what pride there is to be taken in love, in hope, in joy. ⧽ ━━ hey, isn’t that COLM DARRAGH O’DONNELL? i read a daily prophet article on them, once ; the FORTY SIX year old pureblood WIZARD is a GRYFFINDOR alumnus who has gone on to be a SELF-EMPLOYED LEGAL COUNSEL. i’ve heard they can be quite INDUBITABLE & ROSEATE, but i don’t know… they came off very SPECULATIVE & GAUCHE in that interview. it really is hard to know what to believe these days though, isn’t it? [ cherry, twenty2, aest, she/they. ]

⧼ jessica chastain, cis female, she & her / little talks by of monsters and men + your father says that you were born in grim faced silence, and he says it with a smile. he turns it into a joke. your father ( a pint of guinness clutched between two calloused hands, his cheeks a splotchy red ) told anyone who would listen that you were born with that worried little dip already pressed between your brows. your eyes were wide open to the world from the moment that you took your life affirming first breath, and with a laugh, he'll deliver the punch line : "and she was so disappointed with what she saw!" / relentless raindrops racing their way down a windowpane, the brown tinge infecting a floral arrangement that has been left to turn, the first grey hair to be plucked from that head of brilliant red. you are built of : ruin, freshly frayed edges, carefully bandaged wounds, and yes, that worried little dip between your brows. sombre : so shaded as to be dark and gloomy. of a serious mien. of a dismal or depressing character. grief was the slow killing disease that nestled itself deep within your heart, and your mother, dead before her time, never did have much to say on you. your father, among other things, among the little jokes of your born nature that grow less funny by the year, tells you that you look an awful lot like her. you will never escape the curse of your existence, but you can find small joys to make it all worthwhile : a tiny cottage, a soft bed, a warm embrace, a daughters love. richard siken writes, this is where the evening splits in half, henry. love or death. grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish. please, darling. choose love. ⧽ ━━ hey, isn’t that MAUREEN THERESE O’DONNELL? i read a daily prophet article on them, once ; the FORTY FOUR year old MUGGLE is a GENERAL PRACTICIONER. i’ve heard they can be quite ALTRUISTIC & PERSPICACIOUS, but i don’t know… they came off very ENIGMATIC & INTRANSIGENT in that interview. it really is hard to know what to believe these days though, isn’t it? [ rachel, 22, gmt, she / they ]

#accepted.#hp rp #harry potter rp #dark rp #war rp #magic rp #fandom rp #canon rp #oc rp #cherry says 1 time to do a joint acceptance and i said ok . of course . that sounds reasonable-

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chxmpionofjustice · 4 years

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STUDY : TSUKINO USAGI ♡

♡ BASICS.

♡ IS YOUR MUSE TALL / SHORT / AVERAGE? Usagi is the shortest of all of her friends. She’s 4′11″ or 150 cm and yes, she’s fun-sized.

♡ ARE THEY OKAY WITH THEIR HEIGHT? Yes and no. Her lack of height can come in handy sometimes, but it really is a pain in the butt to buy pants. She compensates with shorts and skirts and she can’t really complain because she’s looks amazing in them. And her boyfriend’s face is too far away from hers for her own liking, but standing on tip toe for a kiss feels like something out of a romance, so she can deal.

♡ WHAT’S THEIR HAIR LIKE? Long, blonde, and shiny. She tries to keep it cut to around knee/calf length but ever since she awoke as the Moon Princess, her hair seems to want to grow much farther than than of its own accord and... well it seems to get a little lighter over time. She keeps her hair up in her signature odango-and-pig-tail style on either side of her head. The hair style is held to together painstakingly with hair bands and bobby pins, all of which come out when she goes to sleep. Sometimes she’ll wear her hair in two low pigtails when she sleeps but more often than not, she lets her hair loose.

♡ DO THEY SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THEIR HAIR / GROOMING? Hahahahahahahhahaha. What do you think? YES. Usagi’s hair is one of the few things she puts real effort into. Her hairstyle itself takes a lot of time to do (She’s got the thing down to a science but it still takes her around 10 minutes and would take anyone else a LOT longer), not to mention what she does to keep her hair healthy. Usagi has a whole basket of hair products in her room, ranging from shampoos, conditioners, hair masks, and oils. Maintaining all that hair is hard, okay?

♡ DOES YOUR MUSE CARE ABOUT THEIR APPEARANCE / WHAT OTHERS THINK? Yes and no. She definitely cares what she looks like. She loves fashion and putting together outfits so she looks kawaii wherever she’s going (this also counts work as an adult, she will be the girl in the office wearing the cutest blouse and skirt combo with a pair of adorable kitten heels and this will clearly fool everyone into thinking she can adult). But she doesn’t really do that because she cares what others think. She does that for herself, to make herself happy. And if people happen to think she looks good, well that’s a plus. She can be a little vain like that, but who isn’t?

♡ PREFERENCES.

INDOORS OR OUTDOORS? outdoors

RAIN OR SUNSHINE? sunshine

FOREST OR BEACH? beach

PRECIOUS METALS OR GEMS? gems

FLOWERS OR PERFUMES? flowers

PERSONALITY OR APPEARANCE? personality

BEING ALONE OR BEING IN A CROWD? being in a crowd

ORDER OR ANARCHY? order

PAINFUL TRUTHS OR WHITE LIES? painful truths

SCIENCE OR MAGIC? magic

PEACE OR CONFLICT? peace

NIGHT OR DAY? day

DUSK OR DAWN? dusk

WARMTH OR COLD? warmth

MANY ACQUAINTANCES OR A FEW CLOSE FRIENDS? a few close friends

READING OR PLAYING A GAME? GIVE ME GAMES OR GIVE ME DEATH

♡ QUESTIONNAIRE.

♡ WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR MUSE’S BAD HABITS? HAHAHAHA. Okay do y’all even have TIME to read this? Seriously, there are a lot. To name the biggest bad habit of hers, it’s over-indulgence. Usagi shamelessly indulges in EVERYTHING she loves to the point of excess sometimes. She’s banned from a couple buffets because of her eating habits, the girl is a black hole for food, and will eat whatever she wants to eat. She wastes money on food, mostly junk food because she doesn’t cook.

Despite the fact that she can’t cook, she will buy ANY cute appliance available for the kitchen that she can. Hello Kitty Toaster? Got it. Sailor Senshi chopsticks? GOT THE WHOLE SET (of course for when everyone comes over, they can eat with their designated chopsticks, duh). Mickey Mouse Waffle Maker? BOUGHT (Girl doesn’t know how to make waffle batter). Every single cup she owns has a character on if from some anime, movie, or manga. She even has commemorative Sailor Senshi cups too. Oh you thought it ended with the chopsticks? NOPE. She spends money on plushies, pillows, pens, bags, etc, of her and her friends and does it QUITE HAPPILY. Of course, the thing she buys the most of (besides herself)? Tuxedo Mask. Tuxedo Mask plushies. A Tuxedo Mask pillow case for a body pillow (listen don’t judge her), the rare Tuxedo Mask action figure and the Tuxedo Mask vibr-.... Well let’s just say that she doesn’t only buy every day items with his brand.

A lot of her indulgence has to do with money because she has no impulse control. If she sees a cute thing, she wants it, she buys it. Be it items or clothes. And whatever she buys usually ends up... Well, not put away. Usagi can be pretty messy (it’s a system that works for her, okay), to put it simply. And she’s messy because, to put it quite frankly, she’s kind of lazy. She’s a queen procrastinator who prefers to play games, read manga, doodle, and SLEEP rather than do homework or chores. Usagi would rather do anything under the sun except her responsibilities and everyone who knows her knows this. Boy, do they know this.

That being said, when she is facing her responsibilities as Sailor Moon, she does almost a complete 180. The Earth is her responsibility to protect and she will do anything she has to to keep it safe. Even if it means sacrificing herself. Despite how selfish she can act with certain things (food mostly, she’s like Joey, JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD), Usagi will give herself to save a life in an instant. No hesitation. Because to her every life is precious. The world is precious. So if she has to use her crystal to the point where she has no life energy left to defeat someone evil or divert an asteroid, she will. If she has to throw herself into an abyss to defeat an enemy and save everyone else, she will.

You may be asking yourself why I wrote that all out. “Altruism is a good thing!” I did it because the level of altruism she displays is destructive. To herself. She is so willing to save everyone that if she sees her own demise as the only way to keep everyone else from dying, she will let herself die. And that’s not giving up. Giving up would be going without a fight. Usagi is gonna fight until her very last breath and that’s gonna be what takes her. Unless someone can come up with a way to save everyone where she won’t have to do that, there’s no stopping her, either.

♡ HAS YOUR MUSE LOST ANYONE CLOSE TO THEM? HOW HAS IT AFFECTED THEM? Yes and no. Usagi and her friends have all died more than once. Losing them and Mamoru the first time it happened was absolutely devastating to her. She still has nightmares of seeing their bodies lifelessly laying in the snow. Of watching Mamoru, her prince, die in her arms and then be taken away from her only to become a pawn for the enemy.

The first deaths are the hardest to get over.

And then watching one by one as her friends were taken by the Black Moon (she only BARELY saved Venus, if she didn’t have Mina-P with her, she doesn’t know if she would have been able to go on like she did), her future daughter was corrupted so heinously that she took her own father hostage for her own amusement, and then Sailor Pluto’s death.

I won’t even get into how Galaxia practically vaporized Mamoru in front of her and she was so traumatized that she wiped it from her own memory and was convinced he got on the plane to America. Or how Galaxia also did the same to her friends. There are nights Usagi wakes up in tears with the awful inability to breathe and the only thing that can calm her down is hearing their voices.

She clings tight to Mamoru when anyone gives him an all too appreciative lingering look (seriously, the man is too pretty for his own good, he attracts so many bad guys) because god forbid they end up turning out to be something evil and try to take him away from her.

The long and the short of it is that Usagi definitely has some form of PTSD. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

♡ WHAT ARE SOME FOND MEMORIES YOUR MUSE HAS? Usagi had a sunny life and continues to live wearing rose-tinted glasses even when she has to stop and save the world now and then. She has so many fond memories of growing up like playing dress up with her mom, meeting Naru in primary school, playing in parks and going to the beach with her family. She has even fonder memories of meeting her best friends, her sisters in arms, in middle school.

And, despite how it ended, sometimes Usagi likes to think on some of the memories from her past life in the Silver Millennium. How she and the senshi would spend day after day with each other. Memories of her mother doting on her and of extravagant balls held in opulent ballrooms. Memories of meeting the beautiful prince of Earth and of the first time she felt his lips on hers.

She has an awful lot to sort through.

♡ IS IT EASY FOR YOUR MUSE TO KILL? Hell no. She struggles with that idea. The only time she kills is when the enemy has shown their truest form and she has no choice. Otherwise, Usagi will do her damnedest to save everyone. The bad guy included. Because everyone deserves a second chance to do the right thing.

♡ WHAT’S IT LIKE WHEN YOUR MUSE BREAKS DOWN? Usagi is known for being a crybaby. We establish this early on when we meet her. So one would think her break downs are loud and dramatic because that’s how she is when she cries. That’s... Not strictly true though. When Usagi breaks down, really breaks down, its because she’s holding onto her pain quietly. Usagi breaks down with silent tears and full body sobs. She breaks down with trembling hands and their white knuckle grip on her pillow that she’s holding against her face to muffle when she can’t be quiet anymore.

She breaks down alone.

When someone finds her and tries to comfort her, it can go one of two ways, either she’ll just keep letting it out and allow herself to be comforted, or she’ll suck it all back in, put a stopper in it and assure whomever it is that she’s fine, really, she was just crying because Lawsons didn’t have any more red velvet cake, honestly.

When Usagi breaks down, she’s at her lowest emotionally, usually feeling horrible about herself. That’s a point that you’d think would be particularly difficult for her to get to right? Right?

♡ IS YOUR MUSE CAPABLE OF TRUSTING SOMEONE WITH THEIR LIFE? She literally does this all the time. Usagi is an amazing judge of character. Not counting her senshi, Usagi has put her life in the hands of people that her allies considered untrustworthy multiple times. And she was right to trust every single one of them. The first one being Tuxedo Mask, then the Outer Senshi. After that, Hotaru. Helios. The Starlights. Usagi knows when she can trust someone with her life and yes, yes, YES, she is very capable of doing it.

♡ WHAT’S YOUR MUSE LIKE WHEN THEY’RE IN LOVE? Haaaaaaaaaaaa, gosh. Usagi in love is... She loves with her whole self. Usagi is not good at hiding her emotions, even when she’s trying to hold them in. She’s the definition of ‘heart on your sleeve’ because she’s so very open with her emotions and she doesn’t know any other way to be.

When Usagi is in love, you can take one look at her with the person she loves and it’s obvious. We’re talkin’ heart eyes muthafucka. She’s clingy, likes to touch and be affectionate a lot. And, this goes back to her indulgence thing, she has no problem letting her person know she wants them when she wants them and indulging in that. She’s not subtle in anything with her love.

She is very physical in her love, but that’s because that’s how she is. But being in love is also tender. Kisses pressed into sleep warm skin, banter and giggles over breakfast (that the other person made because once again, ya girl cannot COOK), cuddling on the couch or in bed while having soft conversations or talking about their day, going out to spend the day at the park or where ever for a day date, romantic dinners in her favorite restaurants or, even better, at home. It’s secret smiles and softened eyes and soft brushes of skin. It’s being completely open and endlessly patient when the other person can’t be just yet. Usagi in love is both in-your-face and achingly tender.

And yes, I know that Usagi had heart eyes when she saw Rei. Listen. Usagi has a big heart. Like a humongous heart. She falls in love easily. She could say she’s in love with her ice cream and totally mean it, okay? Usagi loves with all of herself and that’s not just romantically. But the type of “in love” Usagi can be in, because of her heart, can seem fickle, even when it’s not to her. Just because she started loving one thing doesn’t mean she doesn’t love something else just as fiercely.

♡ TAGGED BY: @adversitybloomed ♡ TAGGING : WHO EVER WANTS TO TBH

#about usagi;;#dash games;;#GABBY THIS TOOK ME 3 HOURS #AND I DO NOT EVEN CARE ABOUT THE READ MORE AT THIS POINT #DEAL WITH THE LONG POST Y'ALL.

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chocochipbiscuit · 3 years

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Gonna make your head hurt; top five femslash ships. And an easy one, top five breakfast foods.

GONNA START WITH THE EASY ONE FIRST, BECAUSE HOW DARE YOU!

Top 5 breakfast foods!

Eggs! (Is this cheating?) There are just so many ways, though my favorite is over easy. A good scramble with garlic butter and some veg is also nice, or as a fluffy omelet...

Tea! Technically not a food, but an important beverage for me to start my day! I usually drink some variety of black tea (English breakfast or chai, though I occasionally drink a blend with bergamot or lavender) with a little bit of sugar and a splash of milk.

Waffles! These are my personal favorite, because the little grid holds syrup just SO WELL compared to pancakes!

Crepes! Another delicious option, I love them rolled up with fruit and powdered sugar, maybe a squeeze of lemon. I’ve enjoyed savory crepes before, but sweets are my fave.

Bacon! My breakfast meat of choice, when I eat meat at all! Om nom nom.

Top five femslash ships! With the standard caveat that these are not in order, and that I love them very much but admit that the love may change by the day or the week depending on which canon I’m fixated on. I am trying to limit it to one ship per canon, or I’ll never finish this list!

Jack/Miranda (Mass Effect) - I shipped them from the first time I played this game, hello!!!! Jack is just so full of anger and passion in contrast to Miranda’s glacial calm, but they’re both utterly devastating and I love all the contrasts in which they were ‘made’ into the women that they are (through experiments, through genetic engineering) and how that’s shaped them and asdfsdfds I fully admit it’s one of my stormier ships but I love that about them. FEELINGS.

Leliana/Morrigan (Dragon Age) - I didn’t actually ship them until my second playthrough on DAO, and I just love how we get to see them both change and grow over the years, and I like to think about how after all the changes they’ve both seen, they could potentially remain one of the few constants in each other’s lives. For a given value of constant, for a given value of love. I don’t think they’d ever want to settle down into a more traditional domesticity, but oh I can ache to imagine them figuring out how to make their relationship work.

Cait/Curie (Fallout) - I love these two, I love how different they are, and I love the idea of Curie gravitating towards Cait because Curie fundamentally wants to help people, and Cait’s so mistrustful of others’ attempts to ‘help’ but also so utterly reckless and capable of self-harm in other ways that they would keep swinging through each other’s orbits. A slow growth of mutual respect and wariness, Cait taking it upon herself to take care of this woman she sees as helplessly sheltered and naive (before realizing oh no, Curie actually is quite capable of taking care of herself, she just helps people ANYWAYS and altruism is not the same as naivete) while Curie sees the good in Cait that Cait herself doesn’t see. I love them!!!!

Claire/Ada (Resident Evil) - why hello yes I know they don’t even canonically intersect during RE2 but look!!! they SHOULD!!!! They’re both hot and cool and I would love to see Ada charmed by Claire’s idealism and Claire initially mistrustful of Ada’s polish (Because hello, who wears heels and a slinky red dress into the city of the dead) but bonding together as unlikely allies and BFFs and....*mumblemumble* look when a game gives you two adult and entirely shippable women who don’t get to interact with each other, sometimes a fan’s gotta step in!!!!

Amara/Tyreen (Borderlands) - look, I have finally realized that it’s not that I don’t like villains, but I only like lady villains and Tyreen’s an amazingly fun trash gremlin! I love the way she mocks or calls out to her ‘superfans,’ I love the idea that maybe, maybe, she’d be interested in Amara as not just another Siren and battery source but also because Amara’s one of the few people who can actually touch her without dying. And Amara’s whole thing about just wanting a fight? Just wanting someone who won’t run away for a change? LOOK IT’S A TINY SHIP BUT SOMEONE’S GOTTA PADDLE HERE!!!!

Thank you for the ask, trying to narrow down my favorite femslash ships was brutal!!!

#meme things #choco answers #commander-diomika

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elisaenglish · 3 years

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This is not a work of piety. Art, to be quite frank, never is. If there is worship in the processes of either creation or communion, it is less of God in the monotheistic sense and more of the core of human being. Absent are the stone pillars of conceptual dogma and archaic sight; instead there thrives a larger web, catalyst and conduit as one, a means to separate and connect ourselves as we foster understanding, philosophically as existence and tangibly as life.

Of course, that’s not to say that there’s no scope for belief. Only, to cite Simone de Beauvoir, “Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly [while] the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself.” Divine purpose, holy knowledge; in fact the entire spiritual mythos relies on the reactionary limitations of self – complicity to the cause, the disposition to lie, obedience to scripture that fundamentally cannot be questioned or denied. In essence, gospel as delusion.

So it is that we must temper this with thoughts of our own. Robust and rationalist humanism at the forefront, kindness as a central force, and love – genuine affinity and affection – underpinning the substance with light.

And no, this isn’t new. Wind your way back through history and you’ll find plenty of proponents for similar world views. But if I had to take one, it would be Olga Jacoby.

Born a little over a hundred years before my own debut and diagnosed as terminally ill in 1909, the elegant simplicity she left us in her letters is just that which defines the integrity of our being. “We always fear the unknown,” she writes. “I am not a coward and do not fear death, which to me means nothing more than sleep, but I cannot become resigned to leave this beautiful world with all the treasures it holds for me and for everyone who knows how to understand and appreciate them... To leave a good example to those I love [is] my only understanding of immortality.”

Held in the dual agony of knowing and not knowing, she turned her eyes inward as a source of expression and outward as a means of conveying it. On marched the “long nineteenth century” in those final years prior to the First World War; confidence in science, progress and human goodness distinct from the shackles of religion made for a poignant show no less powerful as we navigate the more apocalyptic trials of our own.

But she knew – not because she’d been successfully conditioned to think along orthodox lines, but by virtue of the fact that she hadn’t:

“More and more to me this simplest of thoughts seems right: Live, live keenly, live fully; make ample use of every power that has been given us to use, to use for the good end. Blind yourself to nothing; look straight at sadness, loss, evil; but at the same time look with such intense delight at all that is good and noble that quite naturally the heart’s longing will be to help the glory to triumph, and that to have been a strong fighter in that cause will appear the only end worth achieving. The length of life does not depend on us, but as long as we can look back to no waste of time we can face the end with a clear conscience, with cheerful if somewhat tired eyes and ready for the deserved rest with no hope or anxiety for what may come. To me all the effort of man seems vain, and his ideal thrown ruthlessly to the ground by himself, when, after a life of free and joyful effort, he stoops to pick up a reward he does not deserve for having simply done his duty.”

We aren’t here, then, to martyr ourselves to a cause; we’re here to do what’s right. For ourselves, for others. Who knows what happens after death? And anyway, that’s not the point when the point is now and we are here and yes, we have to be better. Give better, do better or, as Jacoby writes, take our cues from nature:

“Like you I believe in a higher power, but, unlike yours, mine is not a kind fatherly one. It is Nature, who with all its forces, beauties and necessary evils, rules our destinies according to its own irrevocable laws. I can love that power for the beauty it has brought into the world, and admire it for the strength that makes us understand how futile and useless it would be to appeal to it in prayer. But towards a kind and fatherly God, who, being almighty, prefers to leave us in misery, when by his mere wish he could obtain the same end without so much suffering, I feel a great revolt and bitterness. Nature makes us know that it cannot take into individual consideration the atoms we are, and for her I have no blame; no more than I could think of blaming you for having during your walks stepped on and killed many a worm (it was a pity the worm happened to be under your foot); but if during these walks your eyes were resting on the beauties of skies and trees, or your mind was solving some difficult problem, was that not a nobler occupation than had you walked eyes downwards, intent only on not killing. I think that Nature is striving towards perfection and that each human being has the duty to help towards it by making his life a fit example for others and by awaking ideals which will be more nearly approached by coming generations. In this way life itself offers enough explanation for living; and believing our existence to finish with death, we naturally make the most of our opportunities... Unable to appeal to a God for help, we find ourselves dependent only on our own strong will — not to overcome misfortune, but to try to bear it as bravely as possible. Religion having for an end the more perfect and moral condition of humanity, I truly think that these ideas are as religious as any dogmatic ones.”

Learn your lessons. Catch. Release. Love. Repeat. It runs in cyclic harmony. Not in falsity, fiction – or worse, the Pavlovian responses of an indoctrinated mind. As for the alternative, Jacoby presents the case for a shift towards clarity, reason:

“My idea is not a life without religion; it is a nobler religion I want. Of course, very good men have lived and are living, to whom your religion has been a help, but science is progressing daily, and in harmony with it our moral standard should be higher — high enough to do right simply because it is right. A religion that has helped mankind to get somewhat better should be resigned to let a still better one take its place. Like a growing child, humanity must outgrow its infancy, must stand alone one day and be able to stand straight without support.”

Rooted in reality, she advocates for good men, fallible men over perfect and indifferent gods. Truth as defined by the right to live freely; altruism based on happiness in the here and now, Jacoby’s “avalanche” is a perpetual one. As am I. As are you. As is art. And nature, and beauty, and all the flowing miracles. None of which are your fears reflected back at you, manipulation by way of ignorance or duplicity masquerading as heart.

“No one has the right to absorb the sun... without being willing to radiate it again,” Jacoby holds. Testament to a life well-lived is a life worth living; the same goes for love. Not subject to Providence or expectations brought to bear, but high on the list of how we fulfil our service. And so it is that we are of its making, balanced even as we constellate and manifest, eternal in the moment. So we are.

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pinkdogplushie · 4 years

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Sanders Sides Headcanons: animal traits and the concept of "darkening"

Anyone who likes Sanders Sides and doesn't live under a rock knows that the Dark Sides possess animal traits and motifs. Let's see:

Janus's animal is the snake. It's quite clear just by looking at him: half of his face is covered in scales, one of his eyes is snake-like, a two-headed snake is his symbol, etc.

Remus's animal is the octopus. This is not as obvious as with Janus, but his symbol features octopus tentacles and his costume has green octopus-like details.

Virgil is the spider. While this hasn't been shown on the show, it's a popular fanon, and there's plenty of fanart of Virgil with spider traits (multiple eyes, spider legs, fangs etc.). Aside from that, spider imagery tends to be seen around Virgil: his room is full of spider webs, he has a (toy) pet spider, his curtains have spiders printed on them, he hisses, etc.

However, recently we've seen that animal traits are not exclusive to Dark Sides: Patton, in a great moment of stress, transformed into a giant frog. While this was just to keep with the running gag of Patton's love for Frogger, it's also the first time we've seen a Light Side explicitly taking animal traits. Nevertheless, we must analyze the context where these traits were revealed.

Which takes us to the concept of "darkening".

To discuss darkening, we must see what exactly is a 'dark' Side.

Dark doesn't mean "evil", or at least not irredeemable evil. All Sides mean well and want to help Thomas or get more recognition. Yes, even trash boi Remus.

What dark means is "counterproductive". Even if they mean well, Dark Sides don't seem to help Thomas; or at least, not in an obvious way.

Janus wants Thomas to take care of himself, and that's a noble endeavor; but he still prefers sabotage and manipulation to being upfront with his intentions and helping straightforwardly, which led to Thomas making bad decisions and being confused by his actions. It was only when Janus was actually honest and worked with the other Sides instead of against them that Thomas finally understood what he was trying to do and the others (sans Roman and Virgil) felt more at ease with him around.

Remus wants Thomas to acknowledge the dark parts of himself and be more risqué with his creative content; but he doesn't understand that the reason Thomas doesn't want to acknowledge the thoughts Remus produces is because they disturb him, and it's not that he doesn't want to delve into more "edgy" stuff, but he'd rather approach them from a more serious and philosophical angle. Thomas (both Sanders Sides Thomas and real life Thomas) doesn't shy away from discussing mental health issues, showing the impact of a religious upbringing in a person's moral code, researching topics like intrusive thoughts and the ambiguity of selfishness, or even showing himself and his friends (and Leslie Odom Jr.) dying in the name of being 'altruistic'. Remus just doesn't understand that, and that probably has to do with the fact Roman took King Creativity's moral compass when the Moral Split happened, resulting in Roman being mindful of people's sensibilities and Remus being completely amoral.

Finally, Virgil, prior to reconciling with Thomas and the Light Sides, only wanted to protect his charge, and still does; but acting antagonistic and scaring all the others so they'd pay attention to him only worked against him: Logan didn't understand him, neither Janus nor Remus took him seriously, and Thomas and Roman resented him for doing his job. Sure, most of the blow came from the others not really appreciating Virgil or making the effort of understanding his actions, but part of it - as he himself admitted - was Virgil acting scary so he would be listened to. The moment Thomas actually understood his function and accepted him just the way he is, Virgil eased up and started to relax around the others, leading his input to be seen as helpful and he himself to try and keep a more friendly stance towards the others.

So, having established that, to Sides, being dark is being counterproductive towards the charge (Thomas), we can say that "darkening" is the process of a Side accidentally or deliberately being unhelpful to the point Thomas is badly hurt, at least from their perspective. Darkening is a corruption or bastardization of a Side's core function caused by incredible stress and confusion: when a Side doesn't know what to do anymore, when everything they do or say is wrong, their own domain of thought turns against them and transforms them into an extreme version of themselves.

Darkening is like a Steven Universe corruption or magical girls witching out: despair, stress and confusion warp a Side's mind until they don't know who they are anymore, and their state of mind is reflected in their physical form.

Which brings us back to animal traits.

Because what happens when Patton finally has enough and refuses to listen to more moral dilemmas?

He gains animal traits, just like 'dark' Sides have. He becomes unhelpful, useless (from his own perspective). Patton darkens in that moment. Darkening is a fall from grace.

You know who else become animal-like when they fall from grace?

Christian demons.

That's right, folks: Remus is not the only one who reflects Thomas's Catholic upbringing. Subconsciously, all Sides are bound by religious beliefs, and these affect them when they're at their lowest. Patton, being the one who received and internalized the Catholic moral code when Thomas was growing up, is the first to show how 'falling from grace' affects a Side's physical form.

When an angel falls and becomes a demon, they gain animal traits to reflect their more violent and primal nature (ignoring the fact many of these demons had actually been Pagan deities before Chistianity took them and turned them into incarnations of evil). This also comes (at least, according to Good Omens, I don't know much of real-life demonology) with a change of name. Fanon gives different names to Light Sides's dark versions: @parano-vigilant-snake-boy, in response to my "King Creativity Rex" theory, called dark! Roman Burnout.

So, in short, when a Side (again, and I cannot stress this enough, from their point of view) fails to live up to Thomas's needs, they fall from his grace. They turn from guardian angels to demons and adopt the traits of such. They darken. Those who never believed themselves to be angels in the first place, like Janus, Remus and Virgil, adopt the traits from the get-go. It must also be noted that the animals that the Sides adopt are regarded as demonic or spooky, such as snakes, octopuses and spiders.

With all this said, what would other Sides' dark forms be if they believed they've fallen from grace?

Patton, as seen, takes on frog traits. Frogs, or rather toads, have been regarded as demonic animals: one of demon king Bael's forms is that of a toad. It probably has to do with their rather unpleasant appearance. There's a post here on Tumblr (I don't remember the author, please tell me if you're it or know who it is) that says that some frogs have heart-shaped pupils, which suits our sweet boi Patton. His name, based on his extreme, insane altruism and to keep with the religious themes, would be something along the lines of Martyrdom.

Logan takes on owl traits. This has been already explored in @parano--vigilant reverse au. The owl is considered an animal of wisdom: one of the goddess Athena's atributes was the owl, and the character of Owl in Winnie the Pooh is supposed to be wise (but kinda falls short). However, the owl has also been considered a demonic animal: Great Prince of Hell Stolas was depicted in the Ars Goetia as a crowned owl with long legs. In the Middle Ages, certain types of knowledge, like medicine and astronomy (the latter of which Logan adores) were forbidden because they were 'demonic' in nature. So, in a certain way, the owl also represents forbidden knowledge, and being a creature of the night only adds to the spookyness. Logan would relate a lot to the owl, given the others often don't want to listen to him or don't like what he says because it's the cold, hard truth. His name would probably be something along the lines of Forbidden or Secret Knowledge, if anything to reflect an attitude of 'I know something that you don't' or 'I could tell you but I don't want to'. His owl imagery might also be related to Thomas's love of Disney and based on the character of Owl.

Roman takes on goat and/or ram traits. Not only are these common traits for demons (including Lucifer himself), but goats also represent the wild, untamed and lustful side of humanity. Fauns and satyrs, for example, were half-goat mythological creatures that spent their time chasing women and accompanying the god of hedonism himself, Dyonisus. Roman is Thomas's passionate and fanciful side who likes to indulge and enjoy the pleasures of life, as well as the most romantic and the most concerned with courting Thomas's crushes. Besides, you need to be pretty extra to give yourself goat and/or ram horns. His name would vary depending on how rejection affects him: he could turn into Wrath or Revenge if he lets his more fiery side take hold, or he could turn into Burnout if he finally gives up and refuses to help Thomas anymore after his charge seemingly betrayed him.

The Orange Side has been headcanonned around as a butterfly. Depending on his nature, this could go two ways: if he's an independent Side, then he would be a moth, keeping up with the spoopy theme; if he turns out to be King Creativity/Rex (please visit the post with my theory of who the orange Side will be), then he would probably be a butterfly, the animal of metamorphosis (reflects how Rex is the fusion of Roman and Remus) and a 'pretty', flashy counterpart to the rather drab moth, reflecting how extra the Creativitwins are and how detached from both the Dark and Light Sides he is (because he's a mix of both, he gets to pick an animal, like a Dark Side, but he gets a non-demonic or spooky one, suited for a non-darkened Light Side).

Hoo wee, that was a long one. This might be just baloney, but please tell me what you think. If you've made it this far, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I spent a lot of time in this theory.

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clansayeed · 4 years

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Bound by Choice ― V.i. Men Who March Away

PAIRING: OC x OC x OC (Valdas x Isseya x Cynbel) RATING: Mature (reader discretion advised)

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Choice ⥽

Before there were Clans and Councils, before the fate of the world rested in certain hands, before the rise and fall of a Shadow King ― there was the Trinity. Three souls intertwined in the early hands of the universe who came to define the concept of eternity together. Because that was how they began and how they hoped to end; together. For over 2,000 years Valdas, Cynbel, and Isseya have walked through histories both mortal and supernatural. But in the early years of the 20th century something happened―something terrible. Their story has a beginning, and this is the end.

Bound by Choice and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series. Find out more [HERE].

Note: Choice is the only book in the series not based on an existing Choices story. It is set in the Bloodbound universe and features many canon characters.

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Choice/series tag list!

⥼ PART V ⥽

— Belgium, 1918. She made him promise to bring their love home. This was not their first war, it would not be their last—or so they thought. Cynbel's demons have finally caught up with him as a familiar face plays judge, jury, and executioner.

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

“Just this one,” he promises them, “and I’ll have my fix of war for a long time to come.”

[READ IT ON AO3]

They kept him from the War as long as they possibly could.

They punished him for it to be sure. Physically, emotionally; he skirted along the very edges of his promises to them and worse he knew what he was doing. When he plotted and planned and incited a War to span continents, nations, and history.

And they know there is no altruism in the way he begs them to let him go off to the battlefield. “I deserve this as punishment,” he says but doesn’t really mean it, “what kind of man would I be if I watched others die for the conflict I started?”

“An alive one.” She had said. And he had agreed. They nearly didn’t let him because they knew forcing him to miss the entirety of his love letter to the twentieth century would be the final punishment to force him to get his act together.

But he shines so bright; their Golden love. And this time, like many times before, they are blinded.

They kept him from the War as long as they possibly could.

But it just wasn’t enough.

Belgium, 1918

They are supposed to be his regiment but they are strangers like any other. Food, cannon fodder; he’s called them so many things over the years and none of them pretty but they haven’t gotten any prettier so why should his words?

The poets say absence makes the heart grow fonder but the eyes a mite weaker. The poets can choke on their own tongues. As if he would not recognize a piece of his soul; even if he’s caked in layers of dirt so thick he can’t see a face.

But Valdas isn’t caked in dirt. The journey — and only by night as it’s been — shows in grime on his face but it’s so very clearly him that the noise he lets out is nothing at all like he planned.

Men who served together and have the incredible luck to have survived yet embrace as companions; as brothers. That’s what makes it all the more difficult for Cynbel to restrain himself as he runs towards the truck.

Aren’t you proud of me? Because he stands before Valdemaras towering over him like he always has but also so very different, so very changed. He’s been working on himself so they don’t regret letting him come to the front lines. Do you see what I do and all of it for you?

They cannot kiss here — and perhaps the older Cynbel would and just have peeled the eyes of the witnesses out for his trouble. So how they kiss it is with hands clasped together, soil from the leagues they have traveled apart folding into the lines on their palms. Heart line and fate line and all the other bullshit that has never kept them away from one another before. It certainly will not now.

Cynbel’s eyes flutter closed in euphoria. The hum of approval is low but Valdas knows he can hear it.

“When I got your letter…”

“You’ve taken too many hits, my love, if you think I would not come for you.”

Then those fingers are running through his hair — make him want to drop to his knees and pray as he has prayed every fucking day and every fucking night. Prayers old and righteous and to his God, his Valdemaras.

Who else to champion a battlefield if not the divinity of death?

When he opens his eyes it’s to the sight of his lover in strange reverence. “I joke of how war has changed you,” he answers of Cynbel’s unasked question, “but you have changed, Cynbel.”

It makes him hesitant. “Does it suit you still?”

“It makes me wish we’d shipped you off sooner.”

Just like that. Like no time has passed at all. Cynbel grins.

The War could end right there and neither of them might notice. Cynbel wants to reach up, to touch him; wipe the tears from his Lord’s cheeks even if it dirties him further because nothing else matters.

And judging by the misting in Valdas’ eyes he feels very much the same way.

“Oi, Claude!”

The jagged French accent jars them both out of the world of Him they had nearly been swallowed by. Cynbel is two thousand years old — he has the force of will to stop himself from shedding a damned tear, and thank the Made-God for that.

They don’t—won’t, physically can’t, they cannot please cruel world do not demand it of them they would rather lose those hands if they remained together still—break away even as Cynbel turns to the source of the voice.

Fucking Frenchmen. No doubt even miles away Isseya’s still having a laugh that the French were the only army they could forge him into.

“Have you got your new orders yet?” He’s been suffering the language for seven months now, and each month more he’ll torture his darling girl so divine.

Another jerks his thumb to the back of the supply truck steadily filling up with eager alcoholics. “A couple of us were going for drinks, Claude — should we save you a seat?”

He doesn’t miss Valdas’ stifled laughter behind him. “Later, maybe.”

“Oh come now, Claude,” purrs his lover’s voice low and decadent in his ear, “I could use a drink. All this travel has left me famished.” Of course he follows; as if he could deny his Divinity’s first request in months. And Valdas knows it.

They fall into familiar step. A quick glance is all it takes — has Cynbel reaching out the barest whisper of a touch to the inside of Valdas’ wrist. A touch he receives in kind.

He leans in to whisper low. “I would warn you of how much you’ll come to regret this but you’ll see it yourself soon enough.”

“Good to know you haven’t changed utterly.”

“You think I’m kidding.”

“I think you’re a touch dramatic.”

They are the last to step on and sit across the aisle facing one another. Valdas takes his opportunity when the truck’s heavy engine roars to life and fills the already acrid air with the choking perfume of industry; “I seem to recall a vehement hatred of the name Claude. Didn’t Iss’ set you up as Philip, or Percy? Something with a ‘P.’”

Cynbel nods reluctantly. “Yes, but when I got here I was… already missing the pair of you so much. You know I half thought about turning around and running back to the train?”

Good to know he can still surprise his beloved after all this time. “No, I… really? And after all the moaning and begging you did to get here in the first place?”

“What can I say? I stepped one foot in Paris and was filled with nostalgia.”

Valdas leans back on his side of the bench. Conversation in various regional French all about them and now with human ears more at ease with the rumbling of their vehicle towards town. They trade looks, certainly they don’t need words.

When his God answers it’s in a familiar albeit old tongue. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this has changed you more than our beloved or I could have thought possible.”

“You’re being vague on purpose. My question remains the same.” Please still want me. All of this — for you.

Their boots meet toe-to-toe on the plank floor. Another kiss only they share.

“Long gone, I think, are the days where change frightened me. I’m just glad to see they are gone from you as well.”

When he laughs Cynbel lets his head fall back against one of the canopy supports. That fear of progress did not go quietly; as they both well know. But of course he would if it would bring him back to them.

Preferably with spoils like the wars of old.

His regiment is familiar enough with the pub by now (though were there any word for something smaller they would readily give it such) that they have claimed seats. Which leaves very little option for the men now dissolved into their company — Valdas included.

“Best you find somewhere else to sit.” Cynbel’s hand falls heavy on a burly man’s shoulder beside his usual seat. From the meat of his muscle and the deep way his frown settles familiar in his features the man isn’t used to being the one asked to move.

His chair scrapes against the floor as he stands. A screeching noise that silences the rest of the company and leaves them waiting a little too eagerly for men who have their daily helping of violence.

But Cynbel is immobile, his smile unwavering and unnerving as he continues to look down. The burly man’s mistake isn’t new to him — and the entire room lets out a sigh of relief when the seat is given up without needing to come to blows.

Valdas gives him a chiding look as they settle in, but the Golden Son refuses to feel shame for it. “If I changed too much you wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Well your head makes it a challenge.”

Cynbel finds himself running his fingers through his close-cropped hair; grown out from the time gone but nothing like his lovers used to prefer.

By the time they get their drinks the pair have yet again found their own secret methods of intimacy. Lucky that the chairs are small but the tables are smaller. It makes the press of their legs from hip to toe reasonable — if excessive.

But they would risk everything for this.

Cynbel takes a long drink of the swill and watches carefully as Valdas does the same without hesitation. Only… he’s gotten used to the piss-water taste of the stuff. Forced his memories of finer liquors down in order to get through the ordeal of stomaching it. Valdas hasn’t.

He watches with no small amount of amusement; takes in the disgust as readily as he does the affection. And has the decency to wait until his Maker is finished choking on air he doesn’t need to ask the inevitable question.

“So… how is she?”

The Made-God is slow to answer and isn’t that enough to jump-start Cynbel’s long-stilled heart.

“She misses you.”

“As I miss her — as I’ve missed you both.” He does it without looking, without drawing attention. The creep of his hand over the sticky wooden surface to rest their littlest fingers together. Their smiles both wistful, wanting. “How have things been? I mean — the others get scarce letters from home and with such varied accounts of what the world is thinking, doing. Some are bleak, others hopeful.”

Valdas nods. “Sounds about right. The world is split down the middle. The more politicians and commanders-at-arms tout their new strategies and plans for a final confrontation the more foolhardy they sound.”

“You’ve both kept safe, though.”

“Safety is relative. Perhaps it has escaped your notice, darling, but the world is at war with itself.” With a scoff Cynbel shoves him by the shoulder; reaches out just as quickly to make sure the man doesn’t fall. This filthy floor could never be worthy of Him.

“We moved on about a month into your tour,” he continues, “to Zürich. The plan was to find a change of scenery in the Americas — somewhere near the equator, somewhere the nights were warm and calm. But we could not stomach the thought of such distance from you.”

Of course he feels as they do. Even the shadow of the thought—of a sea between them—ignites a jealous spark; selfishness. But it’s just that; selfish. And they didn’t. Valdas is right here. Isseya is closer now than she was in Tuscany.

“Cynbel,” Valdas risks more than he knows when he coaxes Cynbel’s chin up with a two-fingered touch; but he could care less, “You were right. The country becomes her.”

“And is she practicing?”

“She tries where she can. But most doctors still see only a woman—a nurse.”

“Isseya is to a nurse as a nurse is to a butcher!” exclaims Cynbel, bewildered. Valdas finally dares to gamble with his life and a second sip of his drink. It goes down about just as easy as the first.

They trade stories well through the night. Cynbel can’t help but wonder if Valdas, too, finds it incredible and strange just how much there is for them to share. What are mere months compared to the rest of their lives? What makes these more or less than any other?

He’s had ample opportunity in the trenches to think about this very thing, and has come to the conclusion that it must be how fast the world is turning now. Well, not literally, though there were now words, definitions, numbers for that sort of thing. But his eyes—their eyes—have seen much of human history and to deny it would be foolish.

Industry, innovation; mankind is using a new kind of imagination the likes of which their old blood has never seen.

The palm that cups his cheek is warm. The waning candlestick that once was on the other end of the bar now rests dangerously close to Valdas’ sleeve. He pushes it away with an absent finger but soaks in the unfamiliar feeling graciously.

“I travel all this way and you are still so far from me.” The longing drags out in his voice like a single note from a violin. Cynbel dares to hold that hand exactly where it is. He catches himself in a smile as the tips of Valdas’ nails tickle at what they can reach of his earring.

“I think I owe the two of you an apology.”

“Likely,” two fingers tug at Cynbel’s earlobe now and such a simple intimate touch thrills him utterly, “but what for this time?”

“It’s different this time —” —how can he put the feelings into words, he would have more luck composing them of raindrops or the miasma of death that lingers at every soldier’s back— “— or perhaps I’m the one who’s different.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m still determined to see this through.”

“I should hope so.”

“But I think… had Iss’ come with you — had the pair of you arrived together… I may very well have thrown it all aside and deserted with your hands in mine.”

Running is such a cowardly thing. And the Golden Son is no coward. So it’s completely understandable that he leaves the Made-God speechless at his confession. There’s a fragment of Cynbel that can’t quite believe it himself.

“Those are strong words from you, Cynbel,” Valdas admits, and at least one of them is steady enough to speak, “and I won’t say I’m not glad to hear them. She would be too. We’ve both long believed your eyes were bigger than your stomach when you set all this into motion.”

They share a laugh between them; not enough for two but they make do. They always have. Having something wholly to himself feels too gluttonous now.

“How many years do you think she’ll hold that over my head?”

Lips so very familiar curl into a smirk. “What, that we were right? Oh — the full century at least.” Anything less would be an insult. “But you deserve it.”

“Yeah, I do.”

They pull away slow at first; the magnetism of their hearts resisting the sanity of their heads. But the separation ends all at once to the grinding chair legs and rising steps uneven with drink and the headiest of drugs called respite.

Cynbel catches one by the arm before he can stumble out of reach. “So eager to return to the trenches?”

The soldier shakes his head. “Non, Claude. Patrick says he was solicited not five days ago. We’re gonna go see if we can find them.” The Frenchman drags his eyes to Valdas with great effort; focuses on him through the drink and it is suspicion, yes, but not the kind that worries him. He’s grown too used to humans and their funny notions.

“You two want to join us?”

“I don’t think my friend’s fiancée would like that very much.” Though she would wholeheartedly approve of the sharp kick Valdas gives to his shin.

But this is just another part of the ruse and Cynbel’s had months to build it well. Soldiers would always be soldiers would always find themselves wary of brothers-in-arms who don’t join them.

“Mother of Christ,” comes the hiccoughed reply, “another pious one?”

But Valdas takes his answer for his own; though his usual French eloquence is beset with a strange accent — makes it difficult for drunken ears to hear him proper. “Not at all. Unless you count my devotion to her inheritance as religion.”

The vampires watch the tiny wheels turn with shared amusement. Cynbel’s not altogether sure the slurred laughter and “Atta man!” of praise isn’t just to fill the space and carry on.

And there it is; that expectant look and single dark brow raised with it. Cynbel’s sigh is weary on the subject but, of course, his Maker can never be denied.

“I had to tell them something,” he fishes a handful of coins from the breast pocket of his coat and leaves them as payment, “since soldiers are as they’ve always been. They treat fidelity like social treason and only scrape together respect for those they’ve deemed surrogates for their own lack of faith.”

The Made-God and his firstborn walk out of the dingy building with arms linked. Most of the others are either gone or distracted with one another now and the lovers are more than happy for the chance. Even a second is better than not at all.

Though apparently Valdas doesn’t have an opinion on his unorthodox means of staying faithful to them — which, no, that’s utter bollocks; when has he never not had an opinion on anything — “Don’t give me that face. Technically I didn’t lie when I said I was given to my God. They just assumed their God and mine were one in the same; their fault, not mine.”

“I said nothing against it, beloved.”

“Your silence speaks volumes.”

“Good to know you can still listen.”

Listen, indeed. He can listen quite well as his Maker — his lover well knows. And though the warmth of the candle’s flame has left Valdas’ hand Cynbel still takes it in his own because he’s never needed warmth.

All he’s ever needed is the weight of them. Heat can linger but weight is proof something is present; that it exists.

“And it makes me feel like I exist for the first time in months.”

The dark-haired man realizes quickly that Cynbel hadn’t meant to speak his thoughts. Still he takes them just as hungry, just as craven, and refuses even a letter of them back.

That same weight tightens and they’ve moved; beheld to his Holy One’s will. Out of the open and near-abandoned cobbled streets and away from the gas-lit lamps and into a place darker than the night itself.

The brick catches, clings to his uniform. He couldn’t give less of a damn. Valdas could rip the fabric to shreds (and that’s quite the idea and visual that comes with it but practicality wins out) because he’s there. In person.

The weight of him is a sermon and prayer.

“Our darling girl sends her love.” Valdas’ breath croons wet against his ear — with the close-cut of his hair he feels it more. “She sends me.”

That weight shifts to a firmly pressed thumb on his hip. “What a perfect gift, belated from the Dark Solstice maybe?”

“There was a delay with the post —” he falls to his knees (and in that action all other gods, faiths, prophets are banished by the radiance of His humility) as he speaks; the mere sight leaves Cynbel breathless, “— It may have escaped your notice but there’s a war on.”

He throws his head back hard enough for the brick behind to crack. Stifling their laughter is a near-impossible task but somehow they manage. “I… I…”

It seems Valdas has had his fill of Cynbel’s words, though, and his appetite is left wanting.

But only for about as long as it takes for him to undo his progeny’s belt.

The rest of the world may weep for the events of the twentieth century but Cynbel simply cannot remember the last time he felt so much zest for life.

“And she really agreed to it? Surely she’ll miss you.”

Valdas huffs, certainly unamused. “You make me sound like an object to which you’ve shared custody.”

“You know what I mean.” Cynbel knocks their boots together against the aisle. Unlike the rest of the men they don’t need to shout to one another as the truck takes its sweet time trekking them out of town. “Just as you know I would rather you be with her safe and out of harms way.”

“She would rather I here in it — holding tight to that leash of yours.”

“You brought the leash?” Cynbel’s eyes immediately alight almost boyish and giddy. A sight that gladdens his Maker but definitely earns him a long-suffering sigh.

“The leash of your recklessness. Of course I’ll be staying by your side until this War is seen done. All the more swiftly we can get back to her. Oh, and Cynbel, watch your tongue, I won’t say it twice.”

But to say it is unlikely that any of the (very drunk, very boisterous) soldiers riding with them might recognize their tongue last put to print in Alexandria and last spoken on stranger’s tongues a century before that — well that’s giving the French far too much credit and that Cynbel will simply not abide.

He casts a look out into the darkness of the trees and sparse land. Can’t help himself in either his smirk or his wicked thoughts. “Glad I did not ask the same of you, my deliciously talented Divinity.” He braces himself for a blow that never comes — but if Valdas wishes to pretend he’s hiding his smile slowly growing, then pretend they both shall.

It’s such a rare and beautiful moment. Fleeting like youth and innocence but there’s always the potential of it. And Cynbel has missed that smile so much more than he ever thought he would, has taken the distance between them so much harder.

So he dares to allow himself a dangerous thought. Dangerous because the size of it eclipses everything else; the soldiers, the engine, the entire war around them.

I deserve this, Cynbel thinks.

And the war takes up the mantle and reminds him otherwise.

The first shell lands just shy of them; the boom so loud that Cynbel’s ears are ringing far too much for him to hear the cries of enemy soldiers, the firing of enemy guns. And now that they have gotten a decent measure of the distance the second shell doesn’t dare miss.

The first sends dirt and rocks raining down on them with the shots. Cynbel watches with a growing concern as suddenly Valdas is… lower than him? Then his side of the truck falls back to the earth and everything evens out. Until the metal stands on and looses its last legs in the same breath and sends the tire rolling into the dark oblivion of the night.

On the second Cynbel can’t tell if the blood that tacks up dirt on his face is a Frenchman’s or his own and he frankly doesn’t care. All he cares about is Valdas. Reaching for Valdas clawing for him sinking his grasp deep into bone if he must to keep him close and keep him safe.

To his horror there’s nothing on the other end of his hand. Just flesh packed tight under his nails and a blood-smeared palm.

“VALDAS!”

A blinding light suddenly pierces the darkness. A third shell lands lucky on the truck now tipped over. Sends shrapnel and shells and bone and dirt and blood flying out into the smoke-choked air.

Then the engine catches fire.

“VALDAS!”

There are no trenches here. They aren’t safe. And fuck if he will allow cowardly mortals who wait for the cover of midnight to attack.

One brave idiot fires at his back; drives the bullet through his body and makes the honorable sacrifice of being the sustenance he needs to close the hole it leaves. Cynbel isn’t so gracious in the holes he leaves. Another kicks one of the Frenchmen from the end of his bayonet and swings it so wild and unpracticed—amateur—that he feels a little bit like a bully when he shatters the metal in a single fist and shows him how to properly stab a man.

The next one has a brass pair; well he must — grabbing the Golden Son’s shoulder hard and desperate. Cynbel turns with fangs bared, the rest of the jagged bayonet in hand, and thank the fucking Made-God he stops himself before dragging it across Valdas’ throat.

Frozen they stand, each man holding a lover at arms’ length with the same frenzy and fear in his eyes. He feels the tentative touch of Valdas’ fingertips at his brow and sees them come back sticky with blood. Not his own. Cynbel brushes his thumb over a cut in his Maker’s lip and watches it heal before his eyes.

They are fed. They are alive. They are together.

And how many times has one or more or all of those things not been true? What the fuck were the doing out here exposed and in the line of fire — it didn’t matter what they wanted to do. Not when the reality was going to leave Isseya widowed and with no fucking word.

Cynbel grabs his lover and kisses him hard. Feels resistance only for a moment and only because they leave themselves vulnerable like this but the very thought of a quick peck of lips in a dirty Belgian alley being their last settles inside him about as well as acid.

Are Valdas’ ears still ringing? Cynbel’s are. His eardrums not yet healed and giving him cause to shout. Though perhaps he would have shouted it anyway. Perhaps it was just as much a proclamation to the world that would never stop trying to tear them apart as much as it is for his Lord and Light, his Divinity; his Valdas.

“I want to go home.”

He already had the face the idea of an existence without the man and for the sake of what little sanity he clings to Cynbel will never do so again. End this here and now. Before there is nothing left of us to love.

Valdas grips his hair until it hurts and further still. “As if I could ever deny you. My Golden Son.”

On a midnight much like this so very very far away — though not such in distance but in time — where locusts gave their choir to the air and to see the universe one need only look up to the heavens… Cynbel had found himself accosted by a peddler urchin boy.

“Domine so powerful and strong, but does he know his future?” And Cynbel had only humored him because his mind was not with his body or the starving hand that urged him along but in that very future he spoke of. His world ripped out from under him because his Made-God had not made himself at all, but had one he called Maker too. “My sister will know his future. Three sestertius, three sestertius Domine.”

If he’d known then what would come of it he might have commissioned the boy’s likeness in golden effigy.

He could smell death clinging to Nona from the moment they exchanged hellos. He did not feel pity or sympathy or affection at her. She was only as valuable to him as she was useful.

From her sickly bed Nona peddled her seer’s tricks. Things Cynbel had seen long ago in the shamans and envoys of the old tribes. Nothing so concrete as meeting true divinity and knowing it with intimacy.

“Enough of your sleights and suggestions,” he had snapped; because if he had been dragged all this way off the beaten path he would have expected something interesting from it at the least, “you cannot even fathom how little of my time you waste here yet still I am left feeling robbed from it!”

They needed his coin for bread. He didn’t care. Yet still she tried to grab him — one last chance to beg, perhaps — and that’s all it took.

“You slept under an apple tree. You did not know he watched you; the sunlight of you. You only knew the life you had carved into your bones. Some part of you knew he admired you from afar… it woke you — it destined you and he to meet. You asked for him. And like a long-time lover he came to you. Beheld you with his eyes and body even as they blistered for you.

“You blinded the Made-God and it made you weep. You offered yourself to him, pure hands that had spilled blood. And you have been his ever since. From that moment on — to now — to farther than I will ever see.”

At first he kept her company for the feeling of memories hazy with the passage of time. Of his death-into-rebirth; of Isseya’s too when the time came. He did not understand the like of her but there would always be things new and unknown to him. That was what made life worth living eternally.

Then long-ago memories became that which had passed a day before, or that very evening. Surely that, too, would progress. And it did.

And at first the idea of the future thrilled him. No one—not even the mighty Godmaker—could have imagined what civilization, culture, humanity would eventually become but he was so young and wide-eyed and had already seen so much that the Cynbel of that idyllic time was certain there could not have been anything greater than that moment.

And maybe there wasn’t.

“He Made you, named you, claimed you. And you gave—give—everything. But it isn’t enough. It won’t be enough.” She was frail, feeble; human. And he was terrified of her.

“It’ll be the death of you.”

Night after night he drilled her, dug into her, begged with tears in his eyes for the answer. “Why would my love kill me? When? How? Please, Nona, please. I beg of you. You promised. You promised.” But he never did get his answer. Not when Augustine happened, when Sayeed happened, when he had to sacrifice his only chance at knowing why his Beloved God was going to kill him to a bunch of fae folk masquerading as priestesses. Time kept urging them forward, backward; he hoped that if he loved them enough he could prove her wrong.

“Just once,” she said, “I hope I’m wrong just once. All it will take is once.”

So Cynbel finds it pretty fucking hilarious that only now — two thousand years, countless empires and nations, corpses they made high enough to drown in later — does it occur to him that Nona had never said Valdas would kill him. Not word for word. He just wouldn’t be enough.

It’s him. It’s Cynbel… Cynbel wouldn’t be enough.

Based on the uniforms that decorate the body count it’s unlikely that any of his regiment will survive the night. Cynbel intends to make himself among the dead — but that takes a little more these days than leaving a faceless body in his own bed.

“You said you would take me home.”

“Trust me, Cynbel my love. Trust me now more than you have ever trusted me in all our lives and all our years. Please… do that and I vow I will see us both home and whole with her again.”

That’s what had done it — sent him spiraling into all sorts of thoughts on old seers long dead and visions to which he was never given full understanding.

“Do you trust me?”

When a God is made vulnerable the very foundations of their faith are shaken. It shows in his hands and the glassy fear in his eyes and every muscle tense uncertain; unsure. Why does the Golden Son hesitate, asked in every tremor, what has changed?

He needed only see the question to know the answer.

“I’ve always trusted you. Now, and all our years remaining.”

Such silly creatures they were kissing in the middle of a massacre. Not the first time for the likes of them… and though normally Cynbel might find his thoughts wandering automatically to the next time it would be such he can’t say he would mind if it were not for a lifetime or more.

He trusts the Made-God. He trusts his Maker. He trusts Valdas. He trusts one of the pieces of his own soul that just happened to live in a different body.

They flee the ambush in opposite directions. I trust him. Valdas towards the town and supplies and Cynbel back to his station. Not for sentiments or material things but for stripes and colors; what little recognition he’s put effort for in seven months hiding in holes. I trust him.

But it was not that their enemy was lurking on the roads waiting for a truck of soldiers made complacent and easily picked-off.

Their station is burning. Alight with flames that seek to meet one another around corners and bends. Scattered remnants of shells, shots, bodies both together and pulled apart by the explosions and when he slows down in the spaces between leaping fires he can hear the wails of the ones unfortunate not to have died on impact.

He pities them only in that torture is only made enjoyable when there is someone there to enjoy it. But the enemy has moved on by now. This is their warning.

One fallen innocent is a message.

A slaughtered horde—that’s a warning.

Where has he heard that before? Those words sound uncannily familiar.

“They are familiar because you spoke them. Or wrote them, rather, in a letter of intent that should be known better as a declaration of war.”

Ah, yes. Now that strikes up his memory like the tolling bells of Notre Dame. Cynbel forces the recollection upon himself because that voice—too familiar—could not possibly be there with him now. In the middle of a trench station in Belgium where the only living are the souls not yet dead.

“I think I wrote it drunk,” yes, yes he’d definitely been hammered — it was the only way he’d humor the idea, “since we’d always preferred our fists to our words, mine enemy and me. The Order of the Dawn, the Holy Sacred Knights of the Rising Dawn, the Mars Tributa, and whatever other nonsense they called themselves… something-Ares. Funny to find something from before even my time.

“But it was the age of chivalry re-imagined wasn’t it? Frock coats and bogged-down brocades and fucking dainty little gloves and duels of honor. I wrote my letter and when I did not receive a swift and gentlemanly reply… I took matters into my own hands.”

Tumultuous; a good word to describe the evening. Isseya would be proud to hear him use it. She’s been nagging him since the turn of the century to try and be a little less… crass.

But the figure across the smoke, that takes up arms against him? Even in a tumultuous night Cynbel can’t say he expected this.

“I led them to the catacombs,” he continues; bats carelessly to smother any spark the embers hovering around the air might think to start, “I made sure they would feel their deluded righteousness and bring the best fight they could because I was bored of waiting around for their next big front. That night was my version of a gentlemen’s glove thrown down.

“And as I seem to recall, Mademoiselle Dupont, I saved your life. You’re welcome, by the way.”

In the middle of a trench station in Belgium, Cynbel wants so badly to be anywhere else. In front of a hearth in Zürich with his fingers tangled in Isseya’s hair. Hidden away in a dirty Belgian alley clinging desperately to Valdas’ coat. Because that Cynbel; he’s enough. But the one here, now?

He isn’t.

And it will be the death of him.

note: each of the titles of Part V is taken from a poem written about WWI read Men Who March Away by Thomas Hardy

#bloodbound fanfiction #playchoices fanfiction #bloodbound #choices bb #serafine dupont #oc: cynbel #oc: valdas #oblv: bound by choice #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

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brownskinsugarplum76 · 5 years

Text

The New Girl, Part 1

I'm going to hijack something else from you today, @m-faithfull. 😁 I saw you post this pic a little while back, and I was itching to write for it. Here you go, a leonine Robert going in for the kill. 😬 Just felt like making him a little more forward this time around.

Thanks to @starchild0985 for the argument idea a while ago, and thanks to @firethatgrewsolow for the sanity check on the emotional stuff. ❤️❤️❤️

Not smut yet, but there are "adult undertones." 😎

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You round the corner with the food cart and hear them before you see them: the blaring radio and the boisterous, British-accented speech. And then there's a fearsome, metallic crash--a large, glass something, likely hurled into trash can.

You park across from the doorway, look into the room, and take a deep breath. It's your first night on the job, your first time serving a bunch of rock stars and their entourage. You've heard the stories and know that anything is possible in the green room: arguments, fist fights, food fights, hasty sex, even musicians too drunk or high to perform. But it's not just anxiety about the possible mood in the room that gives you pause. You are a huge Led Zeppelin fan, and you are as ashamed about your pink polyester work dress as you are excited to meet the young legends. You've daydreamed about meeting Robert, in particular, but certainly never under these circumstances.

You're glad to have had time to pull your copy of Led Zeppelin IV out of your locker while no one was looking and stash it on the bottom shelf of the cart, hidden behind the long, white tablecloth. An autographed vinyl would be a happy memory of the night, even if everything else went crazy.

Bonzo starts talking, and you realize things are not as jovial as you'd hoped.

"All I'm saying, Perce, is less talk between songs!" Bonzo's voice is colored with exasperation. "We both know damn well that you're just scanning the crowd to skim the finest birds off the top for yourself, innit?"

You're not sure if you should make your way into the room or stay out of the fray for a while. Since no one has noticed you yet, you decide to watch what happens next.

"How do you mean, Bonzo?" Robert's voice has all of the charm you'd expect to hear, but you don't know if his soothing tone will be enough to defuse the situation.

"All I'm doing," Robert continues, "is showing love and gratitude to the audience and setting the scene for you lot to release the sturm und drang, as it were."

"Fucking hell, Robert. Admit it, that's not the release you're most worried about! The crowds are bigger than in Birmingham, but you haven't changed your horny bastard ways one bit, matey…"

"It seems the song does indeed remain the same," Jimmy muses with a chuckle.

"I'm just surprised he ain't have a knee trembler onstage yet. G, Pagey, you're really lucky he didn't hump a pillar when you came to check him out back then. That's the sort of bollocks that I don't miss from this one." He frowns and takes a huge sip of his beer.

It seems this story is new to Jimmy and G, the imposing man you understand to be the manager. Both men exchange glances and shake their heads.

"Fuck it all!" Robert uncrosses his arms and picks up a cigarette package and lighter from the table. "Don't believe me, then." He turns his back on his critics and lights a cigarette.

You get a glimpse of his pout and his elegant fingers, marveling at how cute he looks when he's upset. Somehow this vision has neutralized any red flags raised by Bonzo's stories. You don't know why you can excuse Robert for things that would make you cold to anyone else. You are a little wary, but you know any objections you have left could be swept away with something as light as his sinful whisper in your ear, the brush of his lips against your neck, and the feathery touch of his fingers on your bud.

You are in danger of slipping deep into fantasy and decide to enter the room now to save yourself. Part of you wants to get your work over with, get your autographs, stargaze at the band and leave, but part of you wants to offer whatever comfort you can to the grumpy Robert before your eyes--just about anything he'd ask for.

Everyone else has moved on in a few different conversations. This ends up being a lucky occurrence for Robert, who is still sulking alone and notices you first.

He drops the hand with the cigarette by his side while he familiarizes himself with you. Then he lets loose with a dazzling smile.

G, the rest of the band, and the others in the room focus on you a beat later, while Robert quickly stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray. "And food saves the day. Your timing is impeccable, darlin'. Allow me to be your knight in denim and help you with that cart." He sidles up to you and rests one hand on your shoulder and the other on top of your hand. He winks at you, and you step aside so he can move the cart.

You drink in the sparkly, mostly open button-down that is hanging off of his broad shoulders, thankful that it ends just above the bulge in his jeans that won't be denied, so you can sneak a peek.

He is every bit as flirtatious as you've gleaned from the radio interviews. You get the impression that he doesn't mind the uniform you're wearing, that he's looking way past it in his mind, that he'd still flirt with you if you were wearing a potato sack. It is both a relief and something that leaves your stomach jittery.

"Our wonderful caterer…" he stares for a long time at the general region of your name tag, licks his lips, and relays your name with a wicked grin, "has brought the real food. Orange juice for Jimmy? And sandwiches and crisps for the rest of us. No need to gorge on three-day-old bananas anymore… Although there's one aged almost 25 years that's highly recommended, if you're into that sort of thing…" Robert murmurs the last part for your ears only.

You blush and are stunned by his boldness, but you get your bearings quickly, realizing things will be as out of control as you anticipated. You can't deny that you would love to spend some time alone with Robert, and you're ready to see what other bold moves he has in store.

You steady yourself to throw some of your own boldness his way. "Well, they are good for you--delicious and incredibly filling… And I do like them ripe, personally, so…" You reply just as softly and gaze into his eyes.

Inside of the stare, the two of you are zapped by a mutual, high-voltage flash of interest. Your heart races, and your body throbs.

"Prime example, this is!" Bonzo interjects from the couch. "Percy Plant plucking another flower for himself!"

"Not now, Bonzo," Robert mutters, still looking into your eyes.

You blink rapidly, realizing all eyes are on you. "Sorry… It's my first night here… I-- I've got to set these things out," you stammer to Robert. You want him, but to have things so very obviously play out in front of so many people… A curtain of shame weighs heavy on the lust that has engulfed your body.

Before you can pick up the tray of sandwiches, Robert steps in. "Allow me, love." He notices your conflicting emotions and removes all of the food from the cart for you. You're glad for his help because you feel lightheaded. The last thing you need to do is drop a tray of food on your first night and draw the ire of the rambunctious group.

"What's this, then?" Robert has peeked under the tablecloth and has found your record. "Fancy some autographs from us heathens?" He holds up the album for everyone to see.

"One of my favorites. I must commend your good taste." Jimmy's tip of his glass to you and his friendly words lighten your tension. Your thank-you to him is for his compliment as much as it is for the lifeline to normalcy that he has thrown.

Robert places a hand on your shoulder. "You know what? I'll let the rest of the lads sign first. You look like you could use some help getting this cart back where it belongs, yeah?"

You get the sense that Robert genuinely wants to blot out your embarrassment, but you know that he has other, wolfish desires alongside his altruism. You're okay with that, and you don't question why.

"That would be great." A weak smile grows stronger on your face as you think of how exciting a stolen moment with Robert will be.

"Yes, allow me to drive this for you then?" He begins to push the cart to the door.

"Thirty minutes until showtime, Robert," G calls out, knowing he won't return right away.

Robert doesn't respond to G but does motion for you to join him in the hall. You tell him which way to turn. You're back to bursting with excitement again as you leave the room in the distance.

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The rest of my stories are here, or search for the hashtag #brownskinsugarplumlibrary.

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