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ariainstars · 5 years ago

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Skywalker Men - The „X“ Factor in the Equation

Recently I have heard and read quite a few interpretations of the Star Wars sequels; and regarding its conclusion, there seem to be two major theories.

1. Kylo Ren will pay for what he did and end in a terrible way, making the way free for Rey as the heroine who will save the galaxy, and who maybe also will turn out to be a Skywalker / Solo / Kenobi after all. 2. Kylo will be Ben Solo again and Rey will be the one who brings him back to the light.

But we know that this is the Skywalker saga. As Luke himself said, “This is not going to go the way you think.”

The two above-mentioned developments are, each in its own way, the most logical and straightforward ones, depending on whether you see the protagonist as Kylo Ren the villain due to his crimes, or as Ben Solo the hero undercover / the victim due to his uncle’s betrayal and Snoke’s manipulation.

But when you are dealing with a Skywalker, you can be certain only of one thing: the unexpected. Because the Skywalker is always the X factor in the equation.

Every Skywalker man is a hot emotional mess. Their impulsiveness is one of the major factors of the saga, urging the plot on. And that’s not wrong in itself: if they make a spontaneous decision reaching out to someone, it turns to be the right thing in the end. It’s when they make things only about themselves that they fail.

With characters like Obi-Wan, Yoda, Han or Leia to name a few, you usually know where you’re at. Their personalities are well-defined and you can foresee what they will do from a mile away. Han sometimes is spontaneous too, but his actions are dictated by slyness, not by rushed emotions. Being Anakin’s daughter, Leia is hot-headed too, but due to having been raised a princess even if she takes sudden action, she never loses her sense of responsibility and always thinks of the common good.

With a Skywalker, you are definitively always in for surprises. They often don’t do what they are expected to do, whether from us viewers or from the characters around them.

Skywalkers usually do not explain or justify themselves. They do not speak about these spontaneous acts, which leads both viewers and the figures around them wonder about their motivations and to judge them, depending on whether we or they see them as the heroes or the villains (or, occasionally, as the fools) of the story.

Prequels

Anakin Skywalker’s very existence is a mystery. He is the most powerful Jedi of all and comes from the humblest beginnings. His mother is not even aware of how she got pregnant with him.

It is 9-year-old Anakin who brings the Naboo Battle to a closure, destroying the droid’s control station which was orbiting the planet. All he did was to “stay in the cockpit”.

On his mother’s death, Anakin lashes out for the first time. His anger and grief are understandable, however it is as terrible as it is unexpected that it will push him so far as to kill the entire tusken village.

Knowing the original story we were of course aware that Anakin would marry Padmé; however to the Jedi, this was unthinkable because they would never have guessed that a Jedi would dare to oppose their strict code. Even Obi-Wan did not know for years, until on realizing that Padmé was pregnant he finally put two and two together.

Anakin’s marriage may seem foolish, immoral or romantic depending on your point of view. In any case, it’s crucially important because without this marriage, the two children who will later bring down the Empire would not have been born.

Again, as viewers we did know that Anakin would turn to the Sith. But the Jedi did not see it coming and they could not stop him. Obi-Wan was shocked on finding out that the one who had killed the Jedi younglings was indeed his former apprentice, saying over and over to Yoda that he could not believe it.

On Mustafar, Padmé almost succeeded in convincing Anakin to leave everything behind him and come back with her. It is interesting that she still had the power to do that (thus proving that there still was good in him) despite the horrible things he had done.

Would Obi-Wan have suspected that Anakin would survive Mustafar, a quadruple amputee burning in the lava? Assuredly not. That’s why he left him behind. We can only imagine his reaction on finding out that Lord Vader, Palpatine’s right hand and the scourge of the galaxy, had been built from Anakin’s miserable remainders.

Classics

Luke proves right away to be a true Skywalker when he learns that Leia is about to be executed. He is in terrible danger on an unknown space station and he has never met the girl in person, but he immediately feels that he has to rescue her.

Darth Vader is Moff Tarkin’s subordinate. But the suggestion to let the rebels leave the Death Star in order to track them down comes from him - a risky tactic that proves to be fatal. Not being a Skywalker, Tarkin would certainly never have come up with such an unexpected idea.

Despite the protests of both his mentors, Luke rushes to Bespine because he feels Han’s and Leia’s distress. To Obi-Wan and Yoda, both straightforward characters, the obvious thing for him to do would be to stay on Dagobah and complete his training. But as usual, Luke follows his heart.

The probably most unexpected plot twist in movie history: “I am your father.”

Not only is the fact in itself totally unpredicted, it’s that Vader does tell Luke at all, in an attempt to keep his son with him. Knowing the truth, Luke can no longer hate Vader. From this moment on, he is lost to the Dark Side.

When the Falcon first escapes, Vader does what everybody would have expected him to do: he chokes captain Needa to death. On its second escape, he just exits the bridge wordlessly. The encounter with his son seems to have shaken him more than he thought.

Why is Return of the Jedi the quintessential Skywalker film, the peak of the classic trilogy? Because so many things happen that no one would have foreseen.

Luke tries to solve matters with Jabba the Hutt diplomatically. Any kick-ass action hero would have entered his cave showing his strength and skills right from the start. Luke only grabs his light sabre at the very last moment.

Darth Vader, the cold-blooded killer, the most iconic villain, is still salvageable? “There is still good in him, Leia.” No one but his son could have realized this unexpected truth.

A decision that is controversial in the eyes of many fans to this day: Luke’s decision to give up fighting.

Palpatine has done his utmost to corrupt Luke, trying over and over to create enmity between father and son. Luke refuses to be separated from his father once more: he proclaims himself to be a Jedi “like my father before me.”

His loyalty is ultimately what brings the Empire down.

Although it costs him his life, Vader destroys Palpatine in order to rescue his son - another spontaneous decision taken at the very last moment, so unexpected that even Palpatine, who knew him so well and for so long, did not see it coming.

Sequels

Adult Luke is normally a calm and self-controlled person. But on sensing his nephew’s power, he is overwhelmed by a sudden moment of panic, and he draws his light sabre because he fears the loss of everything he loves.

Kylo Ren has no qualms killing innocents and torturing prisoners. But as he interrogates Rey, he is surprisingly gentle.

We see Kylo interact with Han on the bridge: his words to Snoke “He means nothing to me” were obviously false, he does feel something for his father. Yet he commits the patricide. He does the unthinkable, believing in Snoke’s words that this will finally end the conflict inside of him pushing him to the Dark Side for good.

Kylo would have had the opportunity to kill both Finn and Rey who are untrained with the light sabre. But he only wounds Finn (despite calling him a traitor, too) and lets Rey go unscathed.

After his terrible deed, we would expect Kylo to now be the ultimate villain. But as we see his face again a few days after the patricide, he is obviously deeply traumatized.

On her visit in the cave, Rey is confronted with her loneliness. The only person who offers her companionship and empathy is the alleged villain.

Ben does not speak with Rey about his intentions. He kills Snoke when he was least expecting it, taking both Snoke and Rey entirely by surprise.

Again, surprise: Luke is not really on Crait, he’s a Force projection. He uses his nephew’s anger against him in order to save his sister and her resistance, and to end the battle on Crait without spilling one drop of blood. A move that is as cunning as it is compassionate.

After the battle, Kylo would still have the time to send someone to go after the Falcon and shoot it down. But despite his assertion to destroy everything he just remains back, crying silently.

Now about the theories for Episode IX.

Being the last of the Skywalker family Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is, again, the X factor in the saga’s equation. Like with his grandfather before him, we know too little about his background to really know what we’re at. We see the sequels more through Rey’s eyes, which is why we tend to mistake her as the protagonist; hence the above mentioned two main theories for the saga’s conclusion.

Kylo is not predictable. He will most certainly make a few decisions no one would have reckoned with. As Lor San Tekka said right from the start, he cannot deny the truth that is his family. All we can do is hope that he will act for the right reasons.

What makes everybody wonder about the Skywalker men, is the same over and over: what do they want after all?

One would expect the protagonist of an action saga, of a hero’s journey, to do what action heroes usually pursue: save the world, kill the villain, get the girl. One would expect a Jedi to always do the right thing and a villain always to do evil. It is admittedly irritating when the protagonist takes unexpected turns over and over.

Knowing the Skywalkers, what I believe they ultimately want is belonging. They are fiercely loyal, but it can literally drive them out of their minds if their loyalty is not requited. And unfortunately, their power often makes people mistrust them, using them at times, but not really requiting their services with trust and appreciation. Snoke’s downfall came due to the fact that he showed his apprentice lack of respect, a huge mistake Palpatine never made with Vader.

Anakin had to give up his mother and his wish of becoming a pilot. He did all he could to suppress his emotions in order to find belonging with the Jedi, to no avail: they never trusted him. When he feared to lose the only ones he did belong to - his wife and unborn children - he lost himself. Only when his son proclaimed his loyalty to him did he turn and find belonging again.

Ben Solo, too, originally had the wish of becoming a pilot. He did struggle to become a Jedi, but he got unsettled when his parents sent him away from home and pushed over the edge when his own uncle seemed to give up on him.

Luke is the exception because he is so deeply human, and so accepting of other people’s humanness, that people can’t help but trust him. Luke is always more a human being than a Jedi. He does employ his powers but they do not define him as a person.

So, if we try to guess how the saga will end, we must not ask ourselves what Rey will do.

Will she kill Kylo Ren, making him pay for his crimes?

Will she save him with love and forgiveness?

I don’t think that’s the right question to make. The question is: what will he do?

Kylo committing some other horrible, unpardonable crime? No actual surprise there after the patricide.

Ben helping / saving / joining Rey? No surprise there either, after all the times he reached out for her.

If the Skywalkers were not the way they are, their saga would not be half as captivating and the plot twists not half as fascinating. Who wants to follow a story where most everything goes as expected?

With a Skywalker guy, the only thing to be expected is the unexpected.

Let’s keep our hopes up and tuned.

P.S. I did write a few meta’s about my own theories for Episode IX, you may want to check them out. Yes, I know, I’m a bloody tease. Guilty as charged. 😉

#star wars #skywalker family #luke skywalker #anakin skywalker #ben solo #kylo ren #princess leia #obi-wan kenobi #yoda #Jedi council #padme amidala #bendepmtion #rey #darth vader #episode IX #read more

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ichigo777666 · 5 years ago

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FE3H Parents...

I know, I should be finishing the previous post but, did you ever notice how just about ALL the parents in FE3H are basically shit or dead?! Spoilers ahead, obviously.

Oh boy, just about everyone has some abusive/neglectful parents or dead ones. For quite a few the mother isn’t mentioned so I’m assuming she either (A) is dead or (B) is in agreement with the father or (C) opposes the father but will not speak up. So yeah, here’s the giant list.

Blue Lion House

Let’s start with one of the biggest offenders: the BL!

Dimitri - mom, dad, and stepmom all dead. this makes for ttrauma...

Dedue - mom and dad and sister dead

Ashe - mom, dad, and adoptive father all dead. while Lonato was kind enough to allow ashe and his siblings to live with him, he also chose to not tell ashe the truth about what happened to his adoptive brother and then sacrificed himself for the sake of trying to avenge his true son instead of continuing to care for the children he’d taken in...

Felix - brother dead, father all but abandons/ignores him to tend to Dimitri

Sylvain - father views him as a studhorse and that his crest is the only good thing about him - cannot see Sylvain as an actual person; brother disowned and likely abusive towards him

Ingrid - father views her as a tool for furthering their family / solving the problem of the family debt and is willing to marry her off against her will for this cause

Annette / Gilbert - father literally abandons his daughter and wife due to own depression. he’s totally alive and out there but just can’t bring himself to give a crap about either...Annette’s mother sounds like an actual OK parent though. Oh and her uncle wanted her to be “perfect” and would get angry and scream at her if she made any mistakes...

Mercedes - father’s dead and her new stepfather viewed her as expendable and then, wanting to expand his influence, decided that he could just sleep with her, his own stepdaughter, to get what he wanted. Mercedes’ mom seem to be an okay person though. then the man that adopted her adopted her only for her crest and to try and use her to advance himself...

....so yeah, some possible parents in Annette’s and Mercedes’s mothers but otherwise all shit fathers....

Golden Deer

it’s harder to tell here in some cases due to lack of info...but....

Claude - messed up family tree and early life due to prejudice. Who knows if either mom or dad ever stood up for him. Claude recounts on multiple times how he stood up from himself (which begets the question why mom or dad didn’t). Also grandfather is a racist.

Lorentz - father taught him that all that is important is being nobility and Lorenz ate it up, willing to even give up someone he loves if they happen to be a commoner. Also his father wanted to murder people...so yeah

Raphael - dead parents

Ignatz - from what little I can find about them, they might actually somewhat OK parents...barring the whole they want him to be a knight for their own gain and thus abandon his own dreams... but they are part of the reason Raphael has none of his own anymore.

Leonie - her father’s a hunter and she runs into Jeralt as a child who she hangs around with....what father lets his child hang around with a strange mercenary?!

Marianne - adopted so originally parents did not want her / could not keep her. Adopted dad might be OK but then again, look at how Marianne is....

Hilda - younger sister of a brother so she was likely ignored as a child, given the family already had an heir. her laziness has to come from somewhere and I suspect it’s neglect.

Lysithea - oh boy, well this is the horror story isn’t it. In a way, the whole thing that happened to her is sorta the fault of her family for helping out with Hrym’s revolt....and the consequences fell onto their kids. Although they were obviously against what happened, if they had stayed out of the whole Hrym thing, this would have never happened....also after this whole incident, they let their daughter, the only one left, be burdened with the task of trying to advance their low-standing house instead of comforting her...

Black Eagles

and here’s another edition of very shiity parents, BE edition!

Edelgard - well, anyone who’s played 3H knows how shitty HER childhood was...so, i’ll just leave it at that...

Ferdinand - father is a creep, literally working with TWSITD and responsible for what happened to Edelgard. For having such a shit father, it’s a wonder Ferdinand is so normal.

Hubert - implied to have bee the person who assassinated his own father...so yeah, imagine how shitty he must have been

Caspar - overshadowed by his older brother and ignored by his family due to being not the eldest child...

Linhardt - not much is known about his family but looking at how lazy and unmotivated Linhardt himself is, they can’t have done a good job

Dorothea - orphan. to add to this, her mom was a maid and her dad a noble. he kicked them out when doro didn’t get a crest...and then HIT ON HER while she was a singer years later, unaware she was his kid....

Petra - father was killed and her grandfather is seemingly her only family. he seems to be okay.

Bernadetta - oh boy, do I even need to say here? tying her to a chair and forcing her to remain quiet and submissive for hours. beating to near death a boy she made friends with b/c he was a commoner. at least Bernie’s mom seemed to have a little sense and smuggled her out but this is only AFTER she allows this stuff to go on for years....

yeah, more shitty parents!

Church of Seiros

of couse, we gotta add more in!

Byleth - mother dies and father is killed in front of them, although Jeralt was a good dad.

Rhea - her issues with her mother are the root of a LOT of the problems here!

Jeritza - see mercedes under BL

Alois - an orphan. then taken in by jeralt since his face “looked like the dead squires”. also the whole ‘bar’ incident where jeralt threw a hatchet at him...

Catherine - exiled as a young girl due to PLOT. she was protected by the church but after how many years, neither has found her apparently...

Shamir - partner and likely her parents killed during the issues with Dagda...

Hannerman - parents neglected his sister for not having a crest

Seteth / Flayn - well, Seteth is the opposite of most of the parents as he’s not neglectful but rather overbearing due to the events from the past...which makes him not the best dad for Flayn (given his constant bothering and sheltering). But unlike most of the other parents on the list, Seteth is doing what he’s doing to PROTECT his child (unwilling to see her to come to harm), even if he’s going about it in the incorrect way.

so, apparently the unifying theme for almost all the characters in FE3H is dead/abusive/neglectful parents...yeah...

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commentaryvorg · 6 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 1.3

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, Kaito’s adventures in nearly getting himself killed had totally saved everyone until it turned out they really really hadn’t, Monokuma announced the time limit motive, and Shuichi (and by extension Kaede) fell right into the mastermind’s trap due to the lack of any visible cameras monitoring them.

Now, it’s finally Free Time! I am going to be covering some FTEs in this commentary, but only as many as I can get in a normal playthrough. I’ll be trying to keep things as close as possible to what might have potentially happened “canonically”. So I’m going to be going for characters whom the protagonists would be most likely to willingly choose to hang out with if they didn’t have a player controlling them on the other side of the fourth wall.

I’m also going to make it a regular thing to ask around all of the characters before actually initiating an FTE with the one I’m planning on doing, just to see what thoughts people have on the current situation so that I can mention any if they seem relevant. There can be quite a lot of interesting stuff going on in the pre-FTE dialogue sometimes.

Speaking of, Rantaro happens to be hanging out in the library, suspiciously close to the moving bookcase, so there’s that.

Keebo: “I cannot believe we’re being subjected to this purely for the entertainment value!”

…whoa, Keebo, you actually hit the nail on the head there. Of all people to make that assumption, it’s interesting that it’s him specifically. I wonder if he has slightly more of a sense that that’s the case because of his inner voice? Hm.

Anyway, obviously the first person that Kaede would choose to hang out with would be Shuichi! He’s in the warehouse right now. I wonder if he’s checking out what kind of stuff it’s got to see what he can use for his plan. If only he’d taken the things he needed now while he was here instead of bringing Kaede here to get them with him tomorrow, she might never have grabbed a shot put ball. Or perhaps the fact that I’m about to make Kaede hang out with him now is what’s going to prevent him from doing that, at least in this particular version of events.

Also, while almost all the sports equipment is examinable right now, the box of shot put balls isn’t.

Kaede: “Do you wear a cap, smoke a pipe, and use a magnifying glass to investigate crime scenes? Do you say stuff like, ‘Indeed, most intriguing!’?”

Kaede is such a goof. I love her.

Shuichi: “A lot of those cases are small jobs… Infidelity cases, background checks…”

Shuichi is not normally a homicide detective except for that one murder case he accidentally solved. Still, I imagine that the Ultimate Initiative also looked into all of these more routine cases when deciding to name him the Ultimate Detective; just because the cases he’s solving aren’t murders doesn’t mean he can’t be talented at solving them.

That said, this kind of case is also not necessarily the most glamorous in terms of painting detectives in a positive light. Much later on in the story, Shuichi laments that all detectives do is uncover people’s secrets for money, and it’s probably these cases that make him think that.

Kaede: “Yeah, I guess it’d be bad if flashy murder cases kept happening around you!”

Yeah that’s definitely not going to happen at all now that he’s in a killing game.

Shuichi: “The other cases are just stuff like… finding runaways and stuff.”

This kind of case, however, does show a positive role for detectives. Shuichi’s saving people by finding the truth!

He goes on to explain that he and his uncle have a policy of following up on runaway cases to resolve the reason the person ran away in the first place, which is a lovely policy to have.

Kaede: (I didn’t know detectives were so considerate. Or is Shuichi just a special case?)

It depends on the detective, apparently. Shuichi’s a very different kind of Ultimate Detective from Kyoko – she was very cold and impersonal, whereas Shuichi has a much more compassionate and human approach, but both kinds are good in different ways.

I’m also going to include all of the bonus item-dependent scenes, since there’s no reason to assume they’re not canon. Well, with one certain exception, but I still have a few things to say about how that one is initiated, so I’ll still talk about it when we get to that point. That said, half of them aren’t super interesting and I won’t have that much to say about them, and this nail brush scene here is one of those. Still, it’s cute – Kaede gets so excited about it! – and it’s probably not a coincidence on the writers’ part that it happens to involve the true mastermind and the person whom Kaede ends up killing because she thinks they’re the mastermind.

Also, Tsumugi, if you didn’t want Rantaro upstaging you at nail art, maybe you shouldn’t have written his character to have twelve younger sisters. Or, actually, did Tsumugi write Rantaro’s character? Because he was written for season 52, so it’s entirely possible she wasn’t involved in that. Maybe that’s why Tsumugi is so inexplicably disdainful towards Rantaro in this scene – because he’s not her character, unlike everyone else there.

Moving on, Kaede can “max out” two people’s FTEs while she’s the protagonist, so she should hang out with a second person besides Shuichi. It’s a little less obvious who else she might choose to spend time with, but… yep, you guessed it, I’m going with Kaito. It’s pretty reasonable Kaede might want to hang out with him since he’s been so supportive of her, but aside from that, he’s a very important character and doing his FTEs here will give me more chance to talk about his similarities to Kaede and what makes him tick in general. Whenever it’s more ambiguous who the protagonist might choose to hang out with, I reserve the right to go with my favourite and/or the most story-relevant out of the most plausible options.

But first, while asking around…

Rantaro: “Oh, sorry. I was just… thinking about something. You wanna go to the library? I feel like reading.”

…not convinced that’s the real reason you want to go to the library, Rantaro.

Maki: “It feels like we were just given our Ultimate talents on a whim…”

Whoa, Maki, that is very perceptive of you. And I guess she would be the one to think that, since she hates her true talent more than anyone else here.

Maki: “…And if there’s time to complain, I’d rather spend it being productive.”

Don’t tell Maki right now, but this is her being pretty similar to Kaito in this particular way.

Kaito: “What’s wrong? You got something you want to talk to me about?”

Kaede: (Should I spend time with Kaito?) [Yes]

Kaito: “Yeah, you can tell me anything! I may not look like it, but I’m a great listener!”

Kaede: (I spent some time listening to Kaito, despite him telling me he was a good listener…)

This is a very meaningful exchange! On a first time through this would look like yet another supposed example of Kaito not being able to back up his own words, but it’s not that at all. Anyone who’s seen the rest of the game knows that Kaito really is a good listener when people need him to be. The reason he doesn’t end up being a good listener to Kaede here is because she doesn’t need him to be right now. The thing that’s bothering her the most is the knowledge of a mastermind and whether her and Shuichi’s plan will work, but she can’t tell him that. And maybe she could express more general worries about whether they’re really going to be able to survive the time limit, but she’s too optimistic a person to want to admit to things like that, especially to other people whom she’s trying to be an encouraging influence on. You know, kind of exactly like Kaito himself doesn’t either.

But I also like how the conversation started off with Kaito assuming she had something to vent to him about and offering to listen. This is an early sign of Kaito’s determination to support people. He may be totally at a loss in terms of coming up with a plan to deal with the time limit, but he knows that he’s good at providing emotional support for others. So he’s offering to do that here in an attempt to feel like he’s still making a difference, even though Kaede is probably the least likely person to need it.

What we have here is a clash of two people who focus far too much on helping others with their problems and never like to admit to their own, so the conversation that both of them initially thought of as an attempt to help the other relax got derailed and probably ended up as something along the lines of Kaito excitedly telling Kaede facts about space instead. Because there is absolutely no way that Kaede ending up listening to Kaito was the same unloading-your-problems kind of “listening” that Kaito was originally offering to do for her.

Getting into the actual FTE, Kaito wants Kaede to teach him to play piano.

Kaede: “Playing the piano is gonna help you when you go to space…?”

Kaito: “Of course! What if I meet an alien?”

I love how Kaito just says this like it makes perfect sense when it makes anything but to anyone except him.

Kaito: “Well, we haven’t confirmed any, but… It’s silly to think that humans are alone in this vast universe. Plus, isn’t it more exciting to think they’re out there somewhere?”

Of course Kaito would think this, not just because it’s mathematically likely given how huge the universe is, but also simply because it’s fun to imagine it. It’s what he wants to believe!

Kaede: “So, if there are aliens, do you want to try to communicate using the piano?”

Kaito: “Not just piano, any music! Even singing would work.”

Then just sing to them, you doofus. Don’t you realise how much extra fuel it would cost to carry a piano on a spaceship.

Kaito: “I think it’s totally possible to communicate with music.”

Even so, this is still great. He doesn’t just want aliens to exist, he wants to be able to meet them and communicate with them, and he understands that music is one of best forms of communication that works despite language barriers. This is already establishing Kaito’s belief in the importance of communication, even before he talks about it some more in one of his FTEs with Shuichi.

(He is making the rather human-centric assumption that any aliens he meets would communicate using sound, but still.)

Kaito goes on to talk about the Voyager Golden Record, which is a real thing that I hadn’t heard of until I saw this FTE.

Kaito: “It was put on a spacecraft called the Voyager. It was a message to any aliens that found it. It had greetings in a bunch of languages, images of landscapes… and also music.”

It’s really cool that humanity did this and so like Kaito to be invested in this kind of thing!

Kaito: “In the not-too-distant future, in fact! I, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, will be the first human to ever come in contact with an alien!”

Kaede: (…Where does he get this confidence from?)

What a dork. Aliens existing: mathematically likely. Aliens being encountered by humanity within Kaito’s lifetime: extremely mathematically unlikely. But that’s not going to stop him!!! He is so ridiculously determined.

Kaede: (I know well that music can transcend words and language to unite hearts as one. Oh god, I’m starting to sound like a hopeless romantic like Kaito! Hahaha…)

They are both so idealistic and so focused in different ways on communicating feelings to others and it’s great.

Kaede: (But I won’t lose… I won’t give up. Because I want to see everyone’s smiles just a little longer.)

Guh, Kaede just wants to make everyone smile and that’s why she’s going to do what she’s going to do.

In the morning, Monokuma shows up at the door when she’s expecting Shuichi, to tell her her lab is open.

Monokuma: “Now, go to the Ultimate Pianist’s Lab right away and compose a murderous melody!”

Ha. Ha ha. Oh dear.

And then she does the cliché of assuming it’s still Monokuma the second time the doorbell rings.

Kaede: “Geez, enough already! You’re bothering me!”

Shuichi: “Ah, I’m sorry! Should I come back later?”

Kaede: “Oh, Shuichi! Sorry, just ignore what I said!”

Come on, Kaede, you could at least tell him you thought it was Monokuma so he doesn’t spend the rest of today anxiously wondering why you yelled at him and whether you secretly hate him.

I randomly decided to examine Kaede’s closet before leaving and…

Kaede: (It even comes with my pink vest…)

Well that sure is a suspiciously specific detail that isn’t ever going to be relevant later or anything.

Kokichi: “C’mon! I wanna see you fly! Robots have jet packs or whatever under their feet, right?”

This is some brief foreshadowing that also highlights how little of a damn Kokichi ever gives about saving everyone. If he’s apparently so enamoured with the idea of Keebo flying, when Keebo’s lab opens up in chapter 4, he could have tried to persuade Keebo to use his jetpack and laser gun sooner.

Rantaro: “Look, like I told you before, I was just a little confused. Not being able to remember my own talent is… stressing me out. Really, I would appreciate it if you didn’t ask me about it anymore.”

This is after Shuichi tries to ask Rantaro again what he meant regarding the Ultimate Hunt, which Rantaro sees as an “interrogation”. He really must be horribly lost and confused, just like Shuichi remarks in chapter 6. He doesn’t feel like he can trust anyone, and he’s terrified that Shuichi and Kaede don’t trust him and that if he tells them the truth of how he knows about the Ultimate Hunt that’ll just make them trust him even less. Guh. If only he did trust them and tell them everything, then the tragedy that’s about to occur wouldn’t happen, but it’s so, so understandable why he doesn’t.

He also leaves after the conversation is over, making it clear that he really doesn’t want to talk about this at all.

Maki: “…Heading to the dining hall? You guys better brace yourselves, then.”

Shuichi: “Wh-What? Why?”

Maki: “…Because Miu’s there.”

I absolutely adore how 1000% done Maki always is with the most annoying members of the cast. It’s very refreshing.

Maki: “…And what about you?”

Shuichi: “No, not yet… I suppose only Miu and Kaede’s labs have been prepared…”

Maki: “…I see.”

[Maki leaves]

Shuichi: “…It sounded like Maki was in a bad mood.”

Kaede: “I think Miu was bragging about her lab being open. But I don’t think that would bother Maki, since she seems so level-headed.”

The way Maki asks about other labs, and their observation that Maki seems uncharacteristically bothered by something that isn’t just Miu being Miu, makes me think that this is Maki being afraid of the possibility of her lab being open now. Like she’s thinking that it’s already accessible somewhere in the school and she just hasn’t found it yet, and now that it might have opened up, someone else could find it before she can stop them and learn her secret that she’s so afraid of having anyone know.

In the dining hall, Kaede starts begging to Miu because she’s just that open and straightforward of a person, but it’s sweet that Shuichi is inspired by this and joins in, even though that’s very much not the kind of thing he would have been comfortable doing if he’d been on his own.

Kaede: “Thank you, I owe you! Even after we escape, I’ll owe you forever and ever and ever!”

Miu does not deserve Kaede being this pure and good at her.

I’m not sure why Shuichi doesn’t have Kaede come with him to the back of the warehouse to get the sensors and instead asks her to wait there by the sports equipment. I mean, obviously from an out-universe writing perspective I do, but man, that on-a-whim decision of his made all the difference.

It’s a little odd that the only photo-taking cameras the warehouse has are disposable ones, but as we learn in chapter 5, it also has video cameras as well. Kind of makes you wonder why Shuichi didn’t try asking Miu to modify one of those instead. That wouldn’t have had the problem with intervals.

Kaede: (Will these cameras really work? Even if we take pictures of the mastermind and persuade everyone… What will we do after that? The mastermind could just smirk and order the Exisals to attack everyone. Can we really protect everyone with this plan? Will we really be able to escape this place?)

And right here is the moment where Kaede resolves to murder the mastermind instead of just capture them. She hasn’t got the whole Rube Goldberg setup in mind yet, but she grabs herself a murder weapon all the same, despite not being sure how she’s going to use it.

I’ve been talking a lot about Kaede and Kaito’s similarities and the ways in which Kaede is a better leader than Kaito, but this is one of the situations in which Kaito would have been better than her. Had it been Kaito instead who was helping Shuichi with his plan, his ridiculously stubborn optimism wouldn’t have allowed him to think this thought all the way through. He’d have stuck to Shuichi’s plan, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that it might not work. Kaede is also very optimistic, but she’s more capable of acknowledging negative possibilities than Kaito is. While that can often be a good thing, in this situation that works against her to make her conclude that her only option is murder.

Kaede: (I shoved the things I was holding into my backpack, and ran after him.)

Everyone knows what’s up with this line since it’s referred back to during the trial, but it’s still really good. The game can no longer afford to be completely truthful with Kaede’s thoughts and actions, but it never tells an outright lie. It merely omits certain details, leaving just enough there for you to figure out what’s really happening when you know what to look for. And while there are probably a few of Kaede’s thoughts about her murderous intent that we’re not seeing, it does make sense that she would mostly try to avoid thinking about it in the first place.

Kaede: “I was just thinking how amazing you are for coming up with this plan, Shuichi.”

Aww, look at Kaede admiring Shuichi for his talent even though he doesn’t believe in it himself. They really are a great team. Shuichi’s detective skills make him able to come up with this plan which at least on the surface looks pretty solid, but he doesn’t have the confidence or courage to carry it out on his own. Meanwhile Kaede is so great at encouraging people but doesn’t have the skills to come up with a plan like this, so she needs to team up with Shuichi for her ability to encourage people to actually be useful. If only Kaede had been able to truly believe that simply capturing the mastermind would be enough to save them.

(And, you know, if only Shuichi had been aware of the several pieces of information he’s missing that indicate the plan won’t actually work to capture the mastermind in the first place. But he’s still doing a really impressive job with what he has.)

During free time, I took Kaede to look at her newly-opened lab, because I could.

Kaede: (Smiling, I ran toward it and lifted the cover. Beneath it, a clean row of black-and-white keys smiled back at me. I haven’t touched a piano in a couple days, but it feels like it’s been forever since I played.) “Hahaha… I really am the Piano Freak…”

Kaede being so excited about seeing the piano is adorable. I love how she describes it as “smiling back at her”, like every piano is a friend of hers.

Also, it really has been forever since she played. Since, you know, she didn’t exist until a few days ago and has literally never played before. The previous owner of her body might have done, but not her.

It’s a shame there isn’t an option to, like, have Kaede pass the free time slot by just playing the piano. I feel like she totally would have considered that instead of hanging out with someone. (She does actually end up playing the piano in Angie’s second FTE with her, but it sucks that that’s the only way to allow her to play it before she dies.)

Shuichi: “You giving me something this wonderful… I wish I could give you something in return.”

Don’t worry, Shuichi, it’ll be your turn to give everybody presents soon.

(Does Kaede just, like, bequeath Shuichi the giant stack of presents she’s amassed from the Monomono Machine, so that he can continue her wish of making friends with everyone?)

Shuichi talks about how he lives with his uncle and aunt right now because his parents work overseas.

Shuichi: “Well, for me, they’re just a mom and dad who have a… hands-off approach to parenting.”

Ouch. Seems like Shuichi’s uncle is more of a parent to him than his actual parents.

Kaede: (Shuichi’s smile seems bitter. I wonder if his parents jerk him around a lot…) “Oh, we got off-topic! Um, there’s something I wanted to ask you about, Shuichi…”

I feel like Kaede is partly changing the topic here because she doesn’t want to make Shuichi think about his not-great parents. Look at her being considerate.

Shuichi’s first case was to find a classmate’s pet alligator.

Shuichi: “I researched alligator behavior and spent a long time preparing the tools to capture it… I had to climb around mountains and swim up rivers… It was a lot of work.”

It’s things like this that make it all the more believable that their backstories were made up by someone who was trying to write cool exciting characters and not necessarily the most realistic ones.

Shuichi: “The knowledge it took to solve that case… became the foundation for my detective work.”

Um, are you sure, Shuichi? I guess the more general skills you practiced were useful, but alligator behaviour?

Shuichi: “And… I was so happy to be of use to someone. I can still hear her ‘thank you’ to this day.”

Aww, Shuichi. He laments a lot later on that detectives can’t help people because all they can do is solve murders once the tragedy has already happened. But even aside from how he’s ignoring the fact that in this killing game he’s directly saving everyone else’s lives by solving the murder, that’s still not true! The kind of work he and his uncle do to find missing people (or pets) is all about helping people!

Kaede: “It never once occurred to me that detectives could show that kind of compassion. Compassion makes people trust you. If you offer them your hand, they'll reach for it... The world needs more detectives like you.”

And Kaede thinks so too!

Shuichi: “Because… that’s the first time someone has ever said that to me. I’ll never forget this moment. I’ll be able to believe in myself and be proud of being a detective.”

On the one hand, it’s adorable how much Shuichi needed to hear something like this. On the other hand, it’s a little awkward that he seems to be acting like his issues are all solved now, when they’re very decidedly not and he’s going to continue to be ashamed and afraid of his talent for quite a bit longer.

One of Shuichi’s lines here is fully voiced. Anyone who’s maxed out a character’s FTEs in DR2 (although I don’t think this was a thing in DR1?) might remember that someone usually only gets a fully voiced line on their very final FTE. Which might raise suspicions as to Shuichi’s mortality here on a first time through, making someone think that surely he’d only apparently have so few events if he’s going to die soon, right?

Except that this happens for the second FTE of anyone Kaede hangs out with. So a first-time player who happens to hang out with the same character twice in chapter 1 might end up assuming that that specific character only has two FTEs (especially if they go on to try and hang out with them more times and not get an event regardless of the presents they give), no matter who it is. And because of that, they might think that they just happened to choose to hang out with one of the two characters who’s therefore blatantly going to die this chapter, even though actually this would have happened for literally anyone. It’s like a Schroedinger’s Death Flag.

I dunno; I didn’t get this feeling myself because I first experienced this game by watching a playthrough that barely did any FTEs, but I have to wonder how many players had different experiences of being convinced that a completely different character was going to die than most other players would, based solely on who they chose to hang out with.

This last free time slot is a good one for asking around everyone before actually initiating an event. It’s the last slot before the time limit, and most people are starting to feel nervous about it.

Angie: “Hmmmm, I feel like cloistering myself away right now. Atua’s not feeling lively, either.”

Even Angie seems to actually be worried, for once.

Shuichi: “… There’s a whole day left… but I’m starting to get nervous. …I’m sorry I said something so pathetic. I’ll drink some tea and try to calm down…

Even though Shuichi has a plan to survive the time limit, he’s nervous too. He’s hanging out in the lookout classroom, probably because he’s already feeling antsy about the plan.

Meanwhile, Rantaro is in the library standing close to the moving bookcase again.

Kokichi: “When tomorrow night comes… and we all die… I wonder what Monokuma is gonna do? Will he end it… or just start a new one…?”

Here’s a neat hint that Kokichi has already figured out what’s up with Monokuma’s time limit. He realises that what Monokuma really wants isn’t to kill everyone but to have an entertaining killing game, so Kokichi’s wondering if Monokuma would really be satisfied with killing them all. He also seems aware of the fact that if the mastermind could kidnap all of them for this so easily, maybe they’re pretty expendable and the mastermind could just kidnap another bunch of kids and try again if this killing game fails.

All very intelligent, perceptive, useful observations that it would be really nice if he shared with everyone. The fact that he doesn’t very much indicates that he only cares about himself.

…Tsumugi, what are you doing hanging out in the Flashback Light classroom? I wonder if that’s just a coincidence, or if she was already preparing the Flashback Light for next chapter – wouldn’t be surprising, since that one is already there when they get to the next floors.

Maki: “…Hey. Your research lab is open, right? Can you… show me?”

Meanwhile Maki seems more preoccupied with the labs than the fact she’s going to die tomorrow. She probably wants to see Kaede’s lab to get a sense of how obvious a person’s talent is from the inside of their lab, so that she knows how worried to be about her own opening up. Plus, it’s not like she actually needs Kaede’s permission to check out her lab, but maybe Maki’s asking because she knows she would hate someone going into her lab without permission.

But of course, our hangout partner of choice this time…

Kaito: “There’s only one day until the time limit… Don’t worry, I’m not panicking. I’m an astronaut, after all!”

…is not remotely nervous what are you talking about. Astronauts are always fine!

Kaito: “Oh, you wanna learn how to have peace of mind, like me? Alright, I’ll show you how!”

Kaede: (I spent some time learning how to have some peace of mind from Kaito… But he told me stories that made me question his definition of peace of mind…)

Hee. Probably exciting, adventurous stories of effortlessly surviving ridiculous dangers despite seemingly-impossible odds, knowing him. It’s fun how oblivious he is to the fact that other people’s minds don’t work like his and maybe this kind of thing wouldn’t be anyone else’s idea of peace of mind.

Kaito: “I’ve been thinking this for a while, but, Kaede, you’d make a pretty good astronaut.”

Didn’t I say Kaito has noticed how similar Kaede is to him? He’s been thinking about that a lot, apparently!

Kaito: “First off, you’re able to both cooperate with people and lead them.”

Again showing how Kaito considers co-operation one of the most important qualities due to his astronaut training, and therefore values it so much in non-space-related people and situations too!

Kaito: “I haven’t even had to rally everyone here together yet because you’ve beat me to it.”

I see you leaving out the reason why she beat you to it, Kaito. But this supports what I was saying before that he absolutely would have done if Kaede hadn’t done it first!

Kaito: “But you do tend to go ahead on your own sometimes.”

Look who’s talking. Kaito, who out of the two of you nearly got themselves killed two days ago because they acted without thinking?

Kaede: “That’s true…”

…Then again, Kaede’s not denying it. After all, she is doing something on her own without telling anyone, which is precisely what’s going to end up getting her killed, so really Kaito is right to be worried.

Kaito: “How about I make you my sidekick?”

Oh, Kaito. This must sound ridiculous on a first playthrough but makes so much more sense when you’ve seen the whole story and understand that Kaito literally does this with people all the time.

But it’s also very interesting, because when Kaito considers someone his sidekick, he thinks of them as a person who needs his support and whom he’s now going to devote his efforts to helping… and that’s not Kaede. Kaede is just as emotionally strong and capable of managing on her own as Kaito is – possibly even more so. Kaito knows this. So what I think he’s really doing here is trying to make himself feel just as good as Kaede by pretending that she’s someone who might need his support, to hide from the reality that Kaede’s been leading and encouraging everyone and seemingly working on a plan to get them all out of here while Kaito has done nothing except nearly get himself killed.

Kaede tells him she’s not interested in being an astronaut (or his sidekick), but Kaito’s still planning on using his job to make it easier for normal people, including artists like her, to get into space one day too.

Kaito: “I’m going to take the culture that grew on Earth and spread it across the universe!”

He’s so good! He cares so much about communication that he wants to let all those aliens out there know exactly what humanity is all about!

Kaito: “There isn’t any unnecessary art or technology in this whole world!”

I love this. Even though he’s personally most enthusiastic about space, he thinks everyone and everything is important. He might have a seemingly inflated view of his own importance, but he truly believes that everybody else is just as incredibly important, too!

Kaede: “I thought you just wanted to travel to space, and that’s it. But you’re already thinking about what you’ll do afterward.”

Kaede realises she underestimated him! There’s a lot more to Kaito being an astronaut than just thinking space is cool.

Kaito: “Of course! I’ll create a path for the people who come after me! That’s my role!”

Even when it’s him being an astronaut, the thing that’s supposed to be the most about himself, Kaito is still thinking of it as something to help everyone else as much as possible and not just as his own personal achievement. He’s so, so good.

Kaito: “I promise I’ll make a path out of here too, so don’t worry!”

This is his fully-voiced line for this event – because of course it is. He really, genuinely wants to be able to do that, even though he has no idea how. And in the end, he does manage to play an important role in getting everyone else out of there.

Kaede: (He tried to convince me of his goals, despite having no way to pull them off… Only Kaito could be this confident without a plan…)

…Pretty much, Kaede, pretty much.

This is one of my favourite FTEs – they could have just made it about why Kaito wants to go into space, but instead they present it in a way which makes it also about Kaito’s similarity to Kaede and what he admires in her, which is so interesting and relevant and I’m really happy they had a whole thing about it here.

Kaede: (No, it won’t be our last nighttime ever… Just our last night in this horrible place.)

Kaede is so determined. (To kill the mastermind.)

Kaede: (Yeah… We promised we would all be friends once we got out.) “…”

That ellipsis implies there are some thoughts she’s having here that we’re not privy to. Probably about the fact that no-one would want to be friends with her if they knew she killed someone. This might be when she starts thinking about disguising her crime.

Kaede: (The time limit was set to expire tonight… but weirdly enough, I was looking forward to it.)

Looking forward to saving everyone and getting out of here, of course! (Probably looking considerably less forward to becoming a murderer.)

Kaede: (Even then… I barely slept the whole night.)

Yeah, plotting a murder can’t be good for your ability to get to sleep.

---

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#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 1 #daily life #free time events #commentary

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jolynreblogs · 6 years ago

Text

Lost and Found

Ehhhh not much to say about this one, other than it was a small concept that became a really looooong fic. Enjoy! tags @mcdomii and runs away (Masterpost: https://mcdomii.tumblr.com/post/180578210717/insomniascrooge-au-master-post don't kill me)

"Movie Night!" Louie exclaimed, holding up a tape that he found in Scrooge's garage. After days of persuasion, he had finally convinced his Uncles for a day staying up together to watch a movie. Scrooge agreed readily, having nothing else to do at night besides staring at the ceiling, but Donald was a hard one, mostly because he was against the idea of the kids staying up late. Everyone gathered around the living room for their first movie night in months, except Dewey. Wondering where he went, Scrooge left halfway through the movie.

Dewey was in his room, gazing at the stars longingly, before unpacking the bag he and his brothers found at Castle McDuck. "I miss you so much, Mom…" He said, hugging Della's clothes. Closing his eyes as tears formed in his eyes, he tried to enjoy the time alone he had to grief. Everything had been so hectic lately, he didn't know what to feel about it anymore. A tear dropped, landing on a cracked camera lens in the bag. Opening his eyes again, he found it at a discrete corner of the bag. 'This is new?' Dewey thought, as he wiped away the tears on his eyes, carefully picking it up. Imprint on the lens was the camera's brand number, OP131000.

"Wait, I've seen that number before, but where?" Dewey questioned aloud, rubbing the stray tear that landed on it. After staring for a while, a sudden realisation came to him, causing him to run out of his bedroom.

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

Meanwhile, Scrooge was turning the mansion upside down trying to look for Dewey. He had already checked the kitchen, where they would usually go for snacks, the dinning room even though he have no idea why Dewey would be in there, and even his own room! In case Dewey was snooping around trying to look for something, but to no avail.

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

Opening the creaking door, Dewey found himself back in the place where Scrooge first locked him up, the attic. It was as dusty and old as he remembered, with sheets covering any object that was there. Curiosity driving him, Dewey looked under the sheets, throwing them off if he could, though it often ended up with the sheet above him. The room had more to what it seemed, there was even a piano under one! Getting distracted, he wiped off the dust around it, playing a few notes, before jumping off to search under the other covers.

After a few minutes, he had uncovered everything, except the one beside him. Coughing the dust out he had accumulated, he angrily kicked his leg in defeat, frustrated that he couldn't find what he was looking for. What he didn't expect was a shearing pain as his leg hit something hard. Holding the urge to scream, Dewey looked down, finding a small part of a video camera exposed beneath the sheets. The imprint on the camera lens was the same as the one he was holding.

'Is this Mom's one?' He thought to himself, bringing the sheet up high enough just for himself. Behind it, he found the rest of the video camera, and a box containing old fashion tapes with one titled 'The Golden Chicken.' Intrigued, Dewey pulled out the camera and the box of tapes, carrying it down to the garage to watch them.

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

The television flicked a couple of times, emitting white noise as the tape was put in, showing how old it is. Once it stopped, a temple that was seemingly in the middle of a forest was in the background. "Is this thing working?" A voice, seemigly female, echoed around the place. The camera was then panned to the foreground where three ducks, one carrying a heavy backpack was seen.

Della: Donald it's on!

Donald: Great, now help me with these please!

The female duck ran towards her brother, carrying some of the weight for him. An old duck with glasses moved closer, inspecting the camera.

Scrooge: I never knew I would see this running again, how did you do it, Lass?

"I have my ways." The female duck answered, as she carried the camera up. It was now facing front, focusing on the little features of the temple.

Della: Mind telling our viewers what this temple is, Uncle Scrooge?

Scrooge: Well, according to this book, they had a civilization with chocolate and rubber, as well as corns, avocados and tomatoes. It was the magnificent capital that the mighty monteplumage ruled. I've read everything about it but the book never told me how wonderful the temple structure is though!

Donald: They should've built escalators...

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

Walking around aimlessly through the hallways, Scrooge was still trying to find Dewey. With his insomnia kicking in once again, he no longer knew where he was, and thought he was hallucinating when he saw light emitting from the garage at the corner of his eye. Nevertheless, Scrooge went to check it out, hoping that Dewey would be in there.

"Lad, what are you doing in there, it's time for movie night-!" Scrooge asked, opening the door. He found Dewey blocking the tv, innocently looking at him. Annoyed, he snatched the tape Dewey was holding, reading it.

Della: These people were no strangers to gold, but… a chicken?

SQWAK

A wave of uncertainty and confusion hit Scrooge as soon as he knew that the tape on and the one he was holding was one of Della's tapes. Holding himself together, he nervously asked his nephew, "…It's movie night.., you coming, Lad?"

Dewey: I'm.. not really in the mood..

"That's alright, though if you change your mind…?" Scrooge offered, solemnly walking out of the room. He knew nothing will ever be the same after the rest of the family knew **that**, but sometimes, he wished everything was back to normal, he wished his family was the same.., he wished he was the same old, smart, adventuring uncle they knew.. He sighed, tired of feeling this way.

Dewey: Wait.. Uncle Scrooge, do you want to watch these with me?

Scrooge's face brightened up at the question. 'Did he?' He wondered, he had never watched any of his niece's tapes before and after all, he had nothing else to do at 12:35am other than chug more redbulls. He didn't know if he could stand seeing Della again, bearing the blame of what happened to her but then again, guilt and grief was a common and normal emotion to have around. Finally deciding to accept the offer, he walked back into the room, taking a seat beside Dewey.

Donald: Della you reckless akdbskbekdhdg will you two stop catching up on your reading and get this chicken offa me before it starts its own airline?! Put it back in a cage or something!

Della: Donald will you can it? It's not going back in any cage unless there's one that's a size of a hanger!

The screen moved up and down, shaken by the vibration the chicken made when chasing Donald. Occasionally, there were blurred images of the beast and Donald running around, due to how old the camera was.

Scrooge: That's not totally true.

Della: Huh, what do you mean, Uncle Scrooge?

The camera was seemingly suddenly picked up and now, it was facing the old duck.

Scrooge: According to these inscriptions, if we follow these instructions, we can get a bigger cage to contain it!

The screen moved, focusing on the inscriptions that were mentioned beforehand, moving as Della and Scrooge follow where they lead. Given how late it was, Dewey was starting to fall asleep, leaning on his Uncle. Noticing this, Scrooge shook him awake. "Lad, wake up, this is one of the best parts." The screen was now showing a wall with ancient shapes.

Della: Uncle Scrooge, can you take this for me? I know I can solve this.

Scrooge: Alright, good luck, Lass!

Dewey jolted awake, "Uhh…?" seeing his mom on tape, solving the puzzle in a few minutes. He couldn't believe his eyes, 'She was that fast?' he thought. He always knew his mom was great but this, this was a new level. "Is she always this good?" He asked, wondering if this was normal.

Scrooge: Yup, she had the ability to read the situation and see all the shortcuts and possibilities. Ya know… I think a brother of yours inherited that trait.

Dewey immediately knew who he was talking about, Louie. He was the first to realise something was up with his Uncle Scrooge and in the previous adventures they had, he had a nack of figuring out the pattern every adventure had. It was a trait he got from being lazy, but still, a really neat skill to have.

The camera was now panned to the floor, as Della was using the light from the camera to search for her brother. Dewey smiled at the sight, his mom was so amazingly smart and practical, it would've been amazing to meet her.

Della: Donald where are you? What did those cacao beans do to you?!

Donald: Down here- GIANT CHICKEN! BEHIND YOU DELLA!

"Huh?" Confused, Della turned around, causing the camera to pan to an image of a giant chicken 50 times her size. The chicken towered over her, ready to eat. Terrified, she ran, slipping on the cacao beans in front of her, dropping the camera, causing the screen to go static.

Dewey: MOM!

The white noise and the deafening silence that followed after it as the tape ended echoed around the room. Dewey walked towards the tv, grabbing the tape that was ejected out. "That was mom, huh." He said aloud, tears once again falling from his face. He didn't know what to feel, happy to see his mother, even if it's on tape, or be sad that she wasn't here. Scrooge walked over, kneeling beside him.

"I miss her.." Dewey stammered, crying and hugging the tape. He couldn't be bothered he was crying in front of his Uncle, he just wanted his mother back! Scrooge placed his hand on his nephew's shoulder, trying his best to comfort him.

Scrooge: Lad, you know I miss her too..

Dewey: Yeah.. I do.

"You're actually lucky you found that box, most of the tapes, like the one you played, were damaged or missing, or both." Scrooge said off-handedly, bringing the box of tapes over.

'So that's why it was cut off halfway.' Dewey thought, head inside the box, digging through it. "That.. may not be true." He said, holding up a tape. It was in perfect condition, titled For The Kids.

Scrooge: I think you should watch this one.

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

Static filled the screen again as the tape started, then it showed a background of the mansion. It slowly panned towards the car Scrooge uses for his business trips. He was about to get in, when he realise his niece was filming again.

Scrooge: Hey Della, what you doing?

Della: Just making another video, nothing much. You?

Scrooge: I'm going overboard to find business opportunities. Don't burn the house down while I'm gone!

"We won't!" Della answered back as Scrooge got into the car. Beside him, Donald was talking to his old college buddies who had paid a visit to the mansion. Like Scrooge, Donald immediately realised he was being filmed.

Donald: Filming again, sister?

Della: Yep

Panchito: Oo oo! Do we have time for one song? Whoever's watching it needs to hear this.

Donald rolled his eyes as he saw his buddy grabbing his guitar, playing a random tune, before keeping it again. "Experiment with the effects, Della!" Donald called out, halfway through the song.

Della: Hmm… what does this one do?

A flurry of blue gradients suddenly flashed past the screen when a button was pressed.

Della: This one?

The screen transitions into a rocket shape closing on static. A second later, it was showing the background of the mansion again.

"Isn't this amazing, kids? This world is full of so many possibilities, from the day to day basis in the mansion, to the advantures we have, to having you all! Each living thing has an entirely unique experience, the sights they see, the sounds they hear, the lives they live, are so complicated, and so simple! I can't wait for you all to join us." Della said in the background, moving to the horizon as Scrooge's car drove off, and then moving it back to The Three Caballeros while Donald was saying his goodbyes to Josè and Panchito.

Unexpectedly, Della moved the camera such that it was facing herself.

Della: Kids, I… I'm going to space. I know, its a bad idea, there's a lot of risks, and I'll probably never hear the end of it from Donald when I tell him. I won't be gone forever, but I just want you all to know that every moment you love being yourself, that's me, loving you! Because you all are something extraordinary. Take care of them for me, kids.

Donald: Della, wanna play gengar? I found a old box of it earlier today!

"Coming! I bet 10 bucks I'll beat you again!" Della answered back, winking at the camera as she stopped the recording, ending the tape.

Instead of walking towards the television to grab the tape, Dewey sat there, motionless, with tears bluring his vision. He slowly turn to faced his uncle, who was also staring at the screen blankly, before hugging him, sobbing on his shirt. Scrooge embraced it, hugging his nephew back as they enjoyed the silence they had in the room.

Headcannons used (from Domii's 50 insomnia au thing part 2)

#ducktales #ducktales 2017 #insomnia!scrooge au #dt insomnia au #insomnia!scrooge #scrooge mcduck #dewey duck #della duck #lion 3 straight to video #I uhhhh exceeded my usual word count #dunno whether i should be proud or not #this took 4 damm days #cause I'm dumb and got stuck a lot -_-#and times where I should be writing I wasn't writing #drew art too here you go #jol's okay writing #jol's trashy art

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devilsward · 6 years ago

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byronic hero / crazy sane / tall, dark, and snarky

@murderclubhq

NAME.

FULL NAME: Jameson Ward PREFERRED NAME/NICKNAMES: James, Jamie GENERALLY REFERRED TO AS: Jamie

APPEARANCE.

FACECLAIM: Cole Sprouse SEX: Cismale HEIGHT: 6′0, almost 6′1 WEIGHT: He’s like 160lbs wet, maybe. BUILD: He has an average male body. Slightly malnourished. Skinny. Delicate. 80% legs. HAIR: He has a lot of it. It’s floppy, wavy, black as night. Long on top, short in the back. When it’s styled, he looks like a storybook prince. Unfortunately, he doesn’t wash it that often now. HANDS: Beautiful, unmarred hands. Long, slender, a little bony, covered in silver rings. SCARS: He has a multitude of self-harm scars up the insides of his arms/wrists that he puts bracelets over. Scars and nicks all over his body from being beaten/hurt by various means, but very noticeable slashes on his back. CLOTHES: Goodwill chic. He wears a lot of plaid and band tees. Comfy sweaters. Ratty jeans. Button-ups. He has a trademark denim sherpa jacket he always wears on top of everything and suspenders that he wears up or down, depending on the day. OTHER FEATURES: He’s covered in beauty marks. Has 3 very noticeable ones on his cheek. OTHER NOTEABLE FEATURES: Jamie’s pretty unremarkable without a shower. At Alberione Jamie looked like he belonged there. Delicate, sharp, unconventionally handsome but handsome nonetheless. Jamie in the Murder club just looks like a dirty bootleg of the boy he used to be but much livelier. The only constant between the two are the black eyes and bloody noses since he’s almost always injured.

SPEECH.

VOICECLAIM: Cole Sprouse if he was a redneck ACCENT: Since he’s from Normal, he grew up with a very thick accent but tries to squash it. Alberione helped kill the accent a little but he probably still uses ‘reckon’ more than I’m willing to write it. LANGUAGE: English and Latin. Very good at English. He learned Latin in school and his obsession with the occult only made him better at it. ARTICULATION: He’s very articulate. Scholarly. Regal. EDUCATION: Jamie put a lot of weight in education since it’s the one thing everyone emphasized as a class marker as he was growing up. He talks like he belongs in a Shakespearean play and while some of it is laid on, he actually just comfortably uses big words when he converses. It’s the weirdest thing about him. He sounds like an old person trapped in a teenager’s body. He’s also very poetic and uses a lot of metaphors and similes. LAUGHTER: He does laugh sometimes but it sounds sarcastic and dry. When he laughs genuinely, it’s rarely and often behind a hand because he’s self-conscious about his teeth.

MANNERISMS.

FACE: He doesn’t emote very often but that’s mostly because he’s always alone. Jamie has a very expressive face for someone who exudes broodiness and stoicsm. You can always tell when he’s upset but it’s easy to see when he’s happy too, even if he tries to crush his smiles often. It’s all in his eyes. They’re very bright. HANDS: He talks with his hands. Points at stuff. He’s got beautiful hands so who even cares what he’s doing with them, really. He thumbs at his mouth when he thinks. Generally touches his own mouth a lot. LEGS/FEET: He climbs on things and sits with his legs open and splayed everywhere like a whore on sale. He takes up a lot of space. EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS: He’s full of feelings but often just pushes them down. Very unlikely to lose control of himself but he can get overwhelmed with sadness and/or frustration. HABITS: He licks his lips when he’s about to do something wild. He looks like the Cheshire cat. Gives literal meaning to tongue-in-cheek. POSTURE: He slouches but it doesn’t look lazy, it just looks like he’s too good for the air he’s in. Walks a bit like a marionette trying to get by with no strings. He’s generally relaxed but like a majestic lion laying in the Savannah in the way that he could definitely murder you if you look at him weird but is kinda enjoying where he is. PERSONAL SPACE: He minds his own space because he knows impeding on other people’s space is a dominance thing. After dealing with his uncle and bullies stepping into his zone all the time, he’ll only cross that boundary when he wants to scare somebody. Would not recommend getting into Jamie’s personal space. OTHER: If he fits, he sits. Always sitting on stuff that he probably shouldn’t be sitting on.

HEALTH:

DIET: He eats very often though considering how little he gets fed at home, it’s not a surprise. He’ll eat anything whether it’s good or bad and values all sustenance, except for carrots. Has trouble gaining weight even though his diet consists of mostly junk food. SLEEP: He has the normal sleeping habits of a teenager; stays up all night sometimes and sleeps all day others. Very vigilant when he’s sleeping so he needs to peace and quiet or else he’ll just keep waking up. Jamie shares a bed with his uncle at home so he tries to not sleep there very often now that he’s 16 and kinda big to get snuggled by a grown ass man. EXERCISE: Unless you count running his mouth, Jamie doesn’t really exercise. He gets most of his workouts from running from the cops and crawling into places he’s not supposed to go but you’re not gonna find him doing push-ups. ACTIVITY: Jamie is an extremely hard-worker when it comes to his hyper-focuses. Will rarely complain about his workload even if he has too much. He likes to keep his mind occupied and gets restless easily if he doesn’t have things to do. For other things though, he’s a complete slob. If he doesn’t care, you can’t make him. CLEANLINESS: Due to trauma and an unreliable household, Jamie doesn’t bathe as often as he'd like to. He’s not opposed to primping since he did well grooming himself while he went to Alberione but the effort and payoff wasn’t enough for him to keep doing it. ODOR: Kind of boyish and like laundry soap on a good day. Motor grease sometimes, depending on where he spent the night. Like pine trees and nature. MEDICINAL DRUGS: No drugs. Good luck getting him to take ibuprofen. NARCOTICS: He’s a clean boy and has zero interest in partaking in anything that could make his mind a worse place to live in. ILLNESS: He’s depressed, fam. (And probably has PTSD.) INJURIES: Mama broke his heart and it never healed.

PERSONAL.

INTROVERT/EXTROVERT?: Extremely introverted. He gets exhausted in club meetings but he has a responsibility to solve the cases so he sticks around and does what needs to be done. Mostly keeps to himself unless someone provokes him. He’ll generally just walk away if you antagonize him too much. OPTIMIST/PESSIMIST: Surprisingly, he is an optimist. The depression makes him pretty dreary but the underlying current of what he does is pure optimism for a good result. GENDER: Jamie’s a cismale but often breaks the binary. He really does not care about society so it’s less of a personal identity statement and more of a ‘stick it to the man’ statement when he does trivial things like use the girl’s bathroom or wear their clothes. He also doesn’t fit macho and masculine so he’s pretty salty about that too. SEXUALITY: Jamie is asexual and slightly sex repulsed* but he’d have sex with someone he’s in love with if they say it’s important to them and even be glad to do it. He isn’t aware that he falls on the ace spectrum and would deny it, for it’d be one more thing that makes him different from everyone else but his libido is pretty lacking for a teen boy. Sexually, he could probably think of a lot of things people wouldn’t due to extensive research on the subject manner. (*This doesn’t apply if he’s trying to be a dick.) ROMANTIC: He’d be considered along the lines of demiromantic since deeply bonding with him is the only way he’s gonna consider you not a threat. He doesn’t feel the excessive need for a romantic relationship and is very skeptical about the validity of it but he is curious about what the big hullabaloo is about. Despite how difficult it is to romance him, he’s very genuine when it comes to someone he likes and isn’t afraid to talk about them, cherish them openly and do things that’ll make them happy. MEMORY: His mind is a steel trap. Good luck making him forget something. PLANNING: Jamie is a master schemer. He can scheme his way through anything. His brain is a loaded gun. He’ll think of everything. Almost too much. INTUITION: Yes, he’s clued in about some things. And then others, he’s incredibly stupid. Jamie gets hyper-focused and therefore, all his brainpower gets poured into whatever he’s paying attention to. Not always a good thing because he misses out on much of the big picture. PROBLEM SOLVING: Extremely good at. He’s very logical, contrary to popular belief. He has an IQ of 142 and often thinks five steps ahead. He gets frustrated when others don’t keep up even though he hasn’t explained how he got there. GOALS: Short-term goals include wanting to figure out the town mysteries and help the people who have come to him. Long term-wise, Jamie’s personal aspirations have been totally dunked after he got expelled from Alberione and he’s running on low battery for himself. While he’s not selfless, him hanging onto myths and demons is a way to trying to find a reason to keep going. He’s incredibly depressed and downtrodden without magic and monsters so dying before graduation would be his ultimate goal without it. He hasn’t come to terms with being stuck in Normal and doesn’t want to. INSECURITIES: Mostly about his status in town and his skinny legs. He doesn’t care enough nor is he self-aware enough these days to let them impact him too hard. ACHIEVEMENTS: Getting into Alberione. ANXIETY: Everything gives him anxiety which is why he’s so good at planning. Thinking ahead and predicting issues helps him cope with crippling teenage anxiety. SELF-HELP: Escapism and demons, arguably the same thing. Jamie’s infatuations are all distractions from his morbid reality. Without it, he’s just a sad sack of shit. COMFORTS: Food, warmth, shelter, kindness. Soft, gentle things/people. Understanding. Jamie’s lives a rough life so anything that doesn’t bring him conflict is comfort. BAD HABITS: Arguably everything he does. Jamie doesn’t do any drugs but he essentially goes through life with a big ‘FUCK ME UP’ neon sign blazing overhead just daring something to snuff him out once and for all. He’s not brave, he just doesn’t care about living. A dare devil. PHILOSOPHY: Satanism in both regards. He believes the devil is out there to be found but he also values the philosophies of actual Satanism where one belongs to themselves to be free. He used to be a devout Catholic, hence the holes in his theories. The origins of his beliefs are all Christian but he won’t admit that. TRIGGERS: Getting submerged in water. The real reason he avoids showering.

THE PAST.

PARENTS/GUARDIANS: Jamie loves his mom but more in a ‘if i love you more, will you love me back’ kind of way. She barely took care of him but not in a malicious way, just a neglectful one since she had so many kids and was often chasing a boyfriend for love. When Jamie got given to his uncle, things went south. LIFE EVENTS: The big change in his life happened when Jamie moved into his uncle’s trailer and he was faced with worse abuse than having nothing to eat. After that, he realized that the abuse was relentless like all of Normal was doing its best to keep him punched into the ground and he couldn’t figure out any other reason than demons. WORST DAY OF THEIR LIFE: The day he got expelled from Alberione and condemned to live in Normal for the rest of his life. Jamie doesn’t actually remember the event that caused it in great detail but he was so viciously bullied at the school that he’s not shocked it happened. He is, however, sad. It’s bittersweet because he’s both freed and trapped by the verdict. BEST DAY OF THEIR LIFE: When Abby and Kaz first asked him to help them, making them the first people to put stock in his theories.

RELATIONSHIPS.

FAMILY: Bad relationships with everyone he shares blood with. His brothers bully him, his mother neglects him and his uncle beats the ever-loving shit out of him. Because he had to fend for himself growing up, he doesn’t feel a sense of guardianship or brotherhood with his younger siblings. NEEDING A FRIEND: Since he grew up with none, it’s unlikely that he’ll go ahead and share his problems out of his own volition, instead choosing to angst over them on his own. Jamie often bull rushes past his problems because he is a bad friend to himself and perpetuates a cycle of repressing his negative feelings. (That’s how he got so tall) ANNOYANCES: He is always ready for a fight. He’s an extremely defensive person and easily spooked by literally everything. It’s best to just walk away because he probably will eventually. ROMANCE: Jamie is pretty subtle so he would just try to invite the person he likes to do things with him like read books and investigate corpses, leave them nice things he’d made and just loiter around their presence. Jamie’s not picky about people. The only requirement for a partner is kindness because he is a very sensitive boy. An interest in the morbid and tragic stories of dead people is a plus. ADVERSARIES: Rich people, dispassion, abusers and loud mouths. Alcoholics. Injustice. People who talk in movie theaters. ENEMIES: Bible-thumpers, Alberione Boys, Norman Normal, the Sheriff STRANGERS: Jamie’s not gonna be a dick to a stranger on the street unless he senses danger but he is pretty cautious about who hes willing to get to know. FUN STUFF: Ghostbustin’ DATING: Jamie’s a basic fella. He just likes to be around the people he likes so it doesn’t matter what they do, though an ideal date with be into the morgue or on an adventure through the cemetery, looking for spooky stuff.

INTERACTIONS.

MINGLING: No, he has no interest in that. Bad at small talk. Generally aloof. Does not care. COMFORT LEVELS: Depends. Jamie gets shy if you call him out on anything nice but he’s generally fine talking to people. He’s rather clinical and detached from most situations where he’s not discussing the case of the week. As long as it’s not a personal conversation, he’s okay. PHYSICAL: Unless he thinks you’re a real good pal and you’re already sharing everything, Jamie would not touch anyone or enjoy being touched by them. He already gets his personal space impeded on so much from living in a small space and getting abused that grazing him without his permission could easily set him off. GROUPS: He likes to be by himself but he wouldn’t mind hanging out with maybe one other person every now and again. He’s not really a group guy despite being the leader and generally sits back when he doesn’t have to participate. He likes to observe and exist in the same space as others but doesn’t always like to interact. Prone to coming and going as he likes. OPENNESS: It’s a long and arduous process where he comes and goes as he likes. Jamie’s pretty guarded/distracted from himself and one-track minded. He won’t bite you for asking but he’s unlikely to divulge anything personal. He is, however, very nosy about other people. GENEROSITY: Not at all. Despite offering help to those who are looking for it, Jamie’s one of the least generous people out there. He’s very selfish and all for himself when it comes to physical items and food. Considering that he had a survivalist mindset, he’s hesitant to share the things that are his since he doesn’t have much. JEALOUSY: Jamie is generally unwilling to give up sex or put out so it’ll always come down to a sex thing. He’s not jealous of his friends having it but he gets prickly about having his worth in someone’s life substituted or replaced by a sexual encounter. i.e his mother choosing her boyfriends over their family, his best friends fucking, his brother choosing his girlfriend instead of the family, etc. TEMPER: He has a pretty big threshold for nonsense but none at the same time. Prone to snapping/lashing out in a cold and calculated manner if you get on his nerves. He tends to take one shot and makes it a killing blow.

EMPATHY: He’s not the most empathetic person. He’s always had a solitary life and found that people simply can’t empathize with him so he sees no need to be the bigger man. He logically understands similarities, but refuses to let himself delve further than that because he doesn’t think anyone can really understand him. AFFECTION: Jamie’s love language is acts of service and quality time. You know he likes you if he spends a lot of time around you and does things for you (namely advises you since his brain is his most valuable asset) since he doesn’t do either of those things out of his own volition if he can help it. DISTASTE: Ignores them, belittles and mocks them, is condescending towards them. So, basically his personality. ETIQUETTE: Jamie doesn’t care about social norms if the way he eats says anything about him. He’s pretty rude and straightforward but nothing unexpected of him. RESPONSIBILITY: Jamie takes full accountability for the things he’s done however, he’s not above arguing their validity, even if it’s bad. He takes responsibility for so much bad shit that he’s incredibly offended when someone accuses him of doing something he didn’t do. SELF ESTEEM: Jamie’s self-esteem is in the gutter but with the help of depression, its overwhelming apathy and an unyielding need to be contrary, he’s capable of acting like a complete arrogant dickhead. CONFIDENCE: Fake it ‘til you make it. Jamie is really good at feigning utmost confidence in most situations. He’s super weird for one and not very self-aware. He’s also really smart which adds to the whole pretentious air. Whether he really believes he’s better than everyone else is another story but he sure does a good job of acting like it. HONESTY: Jamie is incredibly honest and upfront about everything except for his own life. LEADER OR FOLLOWER: Well, it’s in the title. PRAISE: They make him uncomfortable if they’re about what he looks like due to the fact that he knows it’s because of Johnnie but he enjoys being praised for his accomplishments. A little acknowledgment goes a long way with Jamie since he’s never had it. Jamie is also fair in his praise for others if they’ve done a good job. He has a lot of pride but he can admit when someone is better than him if they are. (Unless he hates them, then he can’t.) FAILURES: Existing CRITICISM: Poorly INSULTS: Jamie’s been called everything under the sun so he doesn’t really care. He prefers them to be interesting but very few things get under his skin. EMBARRASSMENT: He gets flustered if you refer to him as good-looking in any way or consider him a nice/good person to his face. FLIRTING: Jamie doesn’t flirt, he just sends autopsy photos of bodies he’s found on Reddit. Jamie would also not notice if someone was flirting with him either, more likely to become suspicious of their motives than flustered. ATTENTION SPAN: He gets hyper-focused on multiple things at a time if they all fall into the same morbid category but otherwise, he’s not really paying attention to much. SITUATIONS: Jamie is the weird situation.

LIFE.

DUTY: Self-appointed duty to purge Normal of the evils he’s confident are there. “Bookkeeper” for Frank’s chop shop. TECH: He’s more than adequate but he’s no tech whiz. POLITICS: He’s the resident anarchist, so yes. Jamie’s very stick-it-to-the-man if his relationship with the Sheriff says anything about it lol COMBAT SKILLS: For someone who gets beat up as often as he does, Jamie’s only notable combat skill is incredible resilience, otherwise he’s not the strongest or most capable physically. He is incredibly smart, though, and will likely use other means of disarming his enemies. HOME: He lives at the mouth of the woods by a junkyard and the inside of the trailer isn’t much different than what’s around it. Jamie doesn’t like it and prefers cleanliness but he’s also very absentminded when it comes to his surroundings when he’s always busy sleuthing. DAILY LIFE: If Jamie felt out of his depth, no one would know it. He’s pretty good at keeping it all locked down. INDEPENDENCE: Incredibly independent. Jamie basically raised himself while fighting his siblings for a place to sleep and food o eat. He can take care of himself fine. COOKING: Tragically, he can’t. Most of his food comes prepackaged. CLEANING: He used to take care of his mother’s trailer as a kid, and tried it with Frank too but since he’s found it useless, he doesn’t anymore. This expands to his work spaces which are disastrous also. SHOPPING: Jamie is broke so the only shopping he does includes a five-finger discount. He’s very good at it but rarely takes more than he needs. DRIVING: Whether Jamie actually has a driver’s license or if he just shares one with Johnnie is up for debate but he can drive and has driven for a long time considering his family’s business is snatching cars and reselling the parts. He can drive automatic and stick but he does not have a car. He rides a bicycle since Johnnie refuses to share his mustang. FINANCES: Sometimes Jamie has money and sometimes he doesn’t. He tries to make it stretch but he’s so occupied with spooky shit now that he doesn’t hustle/work as much. As a consequence, Frank often keeps his pay when he does. For work, Jamie cooks the books for Frank and his taxes so he’s very good with finances. PETS: He would love pets but he can barely feed himself. LAW: Breaking and entering, grand theft auto, trespassing, arson-- you name it. MEDICAL: Jamie avoids going to the doctor if he can which often leads him to getting infections for all the things he’s been punctured upon or untreated illnesses getting worse. The hospital bills for the Ward boys will probably keep them stuck under Frank’s thumb for as long as they live. ILLNESS: Depression, PTSD WORRIES: Continuing to live the rest of his life in pain and continuing the cycle of his family PARTYING: He doesn’t like them but he knows they’re good places for information and gossip so he’ll hit those up like a professional wallflower HOBBIES: Sleuthing, reading, eavesdropping on gossip, harassing the adults in town

#suicide tw #selfharm tw #abuse tw #about #normal:task1 #normal:task

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cristinablackthornkingson · 7 years ago

Text

Shadowhunters Short Story #23.

“Christopher, what on earth are you doing?” Anna asks, a hint of worry in her tone, as she walks into the drawing room to find Christopher mixing two brightly colored liquids together.

Ever since Christopher could walk and talk, he’d been highly interested in science and inventing. When he was a toddler and Cecily and Gabriel took he and Anna to the library, Christopher was always looking for something to do with science, or mathematics, he had always been wonderful at mathematics. When Anna was born, Cecily and Gabriel decided that they would teach her and any other children they had, at home themselves, the basics at least, until they were old enough to go to Shadowhunter Academy. One day when Anna was 8 and Christopher was 5, while Gabriel worked on reading with Anna, Cecily began to teach her son the basics of mathematics. She left Christopher to solve a few questions, when she came back 5 minutes later, he had them completed the questions and they were all correct. He didn’t solve the mathematics problems in the traditional way, and Cecily couldn’t really understand his method, but he solved the questions easily, and that was all that mattered. It was then Cecily and Gabriel realized they had a little Genius on their hands.

Christopher had always been very quiet and withdrawn, in a world of his own, unlike his big sister, who was a whirlwind of energy and noise. Christopher had also always been very scatter brained, and bad at focusing on anything but his science and inventions. Even now at 13, he was often thinking about science and mathematics and zoned out of conversations, stopped talking in the middle of a sentence, he often forgot if he’d made a sandwich or some other snack, and leave it lying around for weeks, their maid Clara,found this extremely frustrating and though she understood Christopher never meant any harm, she often found it hard not to loose her temper with him when reminding him to please not leave food lying around. The one rule Cecily and Gabriel had for their son and his science and inventions, was that he only perform experiments and such in the basement, where he was less likely to destroy anything. That is why Anna is so surprised and also worried, to see her brother mixing two odd looking liquids together, in the drawing room filled with flammable objects and many valuable things that could easily be broken.

“Experimenting.” Christopher calmly says, continuing to mix the liquids.

“You know you are not suppose to do that anywhere but the basement Christopher, if you damage anything in here, mama and papa will be furious.” Anna gently says, not wanting her brother to think she was going to get him in trouble with their parents, that is exactly what she is trying to avoid right now. Anna was never usually so gentle with anyone, but her brother was different. When he came along when Anna was 3, at first she was very jealous, she wasn’t use to sharing her parents attention, and she especially wasn’t use to sharing her Uncle Will’s attention. She absolutely adored her Uncle Will, she saw him as one of the greatest men in the world. She adored reading books with him and playing hide and seek in The Institute with he and Aunt Tessa, there were so many great hiding spaces in The Institute, once she had been playing hide and seek with Jamie and Lucie and they didn’t find her for almost an hour, she was still proud of that to this day. Shortly after Christopher was born though, and Anna got to know him and bond with him, she fell totally in love with him and became fiercely protective of him, and she still felt that way toward him today. She was extremely protective of her cousins Jamie and Thomas too, and Jamie’s parabatia Matthew Fairchild. They were all sweet boys who Anna adored, she knew Jamie often got teased for his unusual eyes, Christopher was often made fun of for his aloofness, without him even realizing, Thomas was often bullied for being shy and quiet, as well as for being the son of a former mundane maid, and Matthew was often mocked and made fun of, for his joyful, care-free, over-dramatic personality, he wasn’t like most boys his age, and teenagers were so cruel to those who were different. Anna herself had often been the brunt of many jokes, for dressing in men’s clothes more than she dressed in women’s clothes, and for being so open and honest about her attraction to women, not men, so she felt a fierce need to protect her brother and cousins from going through the pain and ridicule of bullying.

“Mama and papa are not here.” Christopher states.

“Be that as it may, you still cannot experiment in here, or anywhere but the basement, in case something blows up or the likes, and you ruin something or hurt someone or your self.” Anna gently explains.

“Oh, yes I forgot about that, Aunt Lottie asks Uncle Henry to only work in his crypt, for the same reason.” Christopher says, sitting up and setting the beakers down.

“Exactly, it’s not just you.” Anna softly says.

“Anna, do you suppose mama and papa would let me set up a laboratory in the basement?” Christopher asks in a tone full of excitement, his lavender eyes lighting up with hope.

“Perhaps, I cannot see why not.” Anna says, smiling at her little brother.

“Would you help me make into a proper laboratory?” Christopher brightly asks.

“I would love to Christopher. Did mama and papa say where they were going?” Anna asks.

“They did... but.. I cannot recall where they said they were going.” Christopher says, furrowing his eyebrows together in confusion.

“Ah, well, that’s alright, come along, let me help you clean up here, then perhaps we could do some training together?” Anna hopefully asks her brother. Christopher didn’t train very much, at least not with Anna, but they once had been the only sparring partners the other had, and Anna missed spending time with her brother.

“Alright. Anna, why do you think you are attracted to women and not men?” Christopher asks in tone full of curiously. Anna tensed immediately, she did not like discussing this topic, many people did not understand that she did not choose to be attracted to women, that it was simply how she was born. A lot of people were cruel to her about it, and told her Raziel did not love her, that she shamed Raziel, and that she was unclean and unworthy, and damned.

“There is no real reason, Christopher, this is simply how I was born, I did not choose to be this way, but I would not change if I could, liking women is a part of who I am.” Anna calmly explains.

“Do you suppose Uncle Henry and I could carry out experiments on you to find out why you like women? I know you say there is no real reason, but perhaps we could find one, and then everyone would understand you!” Christopher exclaims. Anna didn’t know whether to be touched or annoyed. She knew Christopher meant no harm at all, but it still hurt that he didn’t seem to think she was normal.

“No Christopher, you cannot, and please do not ask again.” Anna gently says.

*That evening*

“Anna, Christopher, before you leave, there is something your mother and I would like to tell you.” Gabriel calmly says, as Clara clears away the plates after a wonderful dinner.

“What is it, papa?” Anna asks, sitting back in her chair and looking at her parents questioningly.

“Have you decided to let me have a laboratory in the basement?” Christopher excitedly asks. Cecily smiles softly and says

“No cariad, we have not made a decision on that just yet.”

“Then what is it?” Christopher asks, turning from excited to confused.

Cecily smiles broadly at her children and lets out a breathy laugh.

“I’m pregnant!” Cecily exclaims, her tone full of excitement. She and Gabriel never planned on having a third child, especially now Christopher was 13 and Anna was 16, they had taken all the precautions to prevent another pregnancy, but non the less, during the last month, Cecily began to feel ill in the mornings, tire easily, and suffer from back and stomach pain. She almost immediately realized they were the same symptoms she had when carrying Anna and Christopher. She did not believe she was pregnant though, but after weeks of the same symptoms, she told Gabriel and together they went to The Silent City, where Brother Zachariah confirmed that Cecily was almost 2 months pregnant. She and Gabriel were shocked to say the least, but they were also delighted and asked to know the sex. Brother Zachariah told them they were expecting a healthy baby boy. Cecily and Gabriel sincerely hoped Anna and Christopher would be as happy as they are.

“Oh mama! This is wonderful!” Anna exclaims, leaning over to embrace her mother.

“I’m glad you’re happy my love.” Cecily softly says.

“Christopher, how do you feel?” Gabriel gently asks his son.

“Huh?” Christopher asks, turning to look at his father. Christopher had obviously been in a world of his own again and did not hear his parents announcement.

“Your mother and I are going to have a baby, how do you feel about that?” Gabriel asks in an amused tone. Some found Christopher’s lack of concentration frustrating, but Gabriel found it very amusing, and was glad his son had passion.

“Will I have to change any dirty diapers?” Christopher cautiously asks.

“No Chris, you won’t.” Gabriel says, trying to hold back a laugh.

“I think it will be nice then, babies are like puppies in a way, they are cute and dependent on us, and can be very funny, I like puppies, so I think I shall like my little brother or sister.” Christopher says, a smile playing on his thin lips.

“Well you will be getting a little brother.” Cecily softly says, running her hand down her still-flat stomach.

“Do you have any idea what you will call him?” Anna asks. She had not been expecting to hear that she was going to be a big sister again, but she was delighted, she could not wait to meet her baby brother and cuddle him and keep him safe.

“No, we’re not sure yet, but we are considering Benedict after your father’s father.” Cecily quietly says, laying her hand on top of Gabriel’s, who had gone very quiet at the mention of his late father. Although Benedict had not been a good person, he was still Gabriel’s father, the man who raised him and made him into the man he is, who he was when he fell in love with Cecily. It had never been easy remembering his father and how he died, but having a beautiful family of his own, made things a lot easier.

Over the next 9 months, things were extremely busy in the Lightwood household, Cecily and Gabriel agreed to allow Christopher to turn the basement into a proper laboratory, and they had never seen him so happy, and he was making amazing progress with some of his inventions, especially for a 13 year old. Gideon and William helped Gabriel to revamp the nursery and get it ready for the new baby, since it has not been used in about 10 years. Cecily was extremely grateful and thankful for another smooth pregnancy, she had no complications and felt well throughout the whole pregnancy. She had regular check ups from Brother Zachariah and she and Gabriel had once again hired a Clave Midwife to deliver the baby. When Cecily was 7 months pregnant, they decided to name their son Alexander William Lightwood. They had thought about naming him Alexander Benedict Lightwood, but William had done so much more for both of them and Christopher and Anna, Benedict was simply a bad person, whereas Will was under the impression he was under a curse, and pushed everyone out for their own sake, though the moment he realized the curse was not real, he began to let others in, and to help others and love others, their son deserved to be named after a strong, wonderful, loving man like William, and not a weak, selfish person like Benedict.

One day when Cecily was 9 months pregnant and having tea with Tessa, Sophie and Charlotte, she went into labor very unexpectedly, despite the fact that she was a week overdue. Her three friends stayed by her side through the whole labor, while Brother Zachariah stood quietly in the corner, witnessing the birth of little Alexander, as he had Anna and Christopher before him. Cecily’s labor was long and painful, but it was all so worth it when Alexander was placed in her arms, a head full of thick black hair, his little eyes squeezed tightly shut, his tiny mouth open in a wail, that stopped the second he came in contact with his mother. He was absolutely perfect, just like his sister and brother.

It had been a few hours now since Alexander’s birth, and Cecily had gotten a chance to wash, change, sleep and feed and bond with Alexander in those few hours. Gabriel took every opportunity he got to snuggle his beautiful new son, and pour all his love into him, being a father was his greatest joy and his daughter and sons were his greatest achievement.

Anna had been the first to meet her little brother, and she adored him, she was so calm and relaxed when she held him, Cecily and Gabriel knew she would continue to be a wonderful big sister.

Now it was time for Christopher to meet his little brother, and time for Matthew, James and Thomas to meet their cousin. Christopher and the other boys and not been here when Anna had come in to meet Alexander, they had all gone for a walk since they had been stuffed up in the Lightwood’s kitchen all day, waiting for the baby’s arrival.

“Before we go in, I think it best we set some ground rules.” Thomas firmly says, standing in front of his friends, knowing that if he didn’t keep on eye them, chaos would ensue, and that would be very unfair to Uncle Gabriel and Aunt Cecily.

“Whatever do you mean Tom? We just want to meet the baby, well I do anyway, I always wanted a little brother or sister, maybe then Charlie would not boss me around so much and I would certainly not boss my little brother or sister around!” Matthew says, his green eyes bright with joy.

“I mean we must establish what is and what is not appropriate behavior. James, I beg of you, please do not take your book in and have your nose stuck in it the entire time, it will not kill you to socialize for five minutes, especially with your own Aunt and Uncle! Christopher, if you hold your brother, please concentrate on holding him and do not drop him, and do not ask about experimenting on him. Matthew, no flirting, with anyone, not us, not Uncle Gabriel, not Aunt Cecily, not Anna, no one!” Thomas calmly yet firmly says. He did not know if Matthew was a bit like Anna and liked both men and women, but he suspected it. He did not care one bit of course, and would not say anything to anyone, but he knew what Matthew was like. Often Matthew flirted with he and James as a joke and sometimes even Christopher, who was always delighted to accept a compliment, not realizing Matthew was flirting. Matthew would flirt with anything that walked, Thomas did not doubt he would flirt with an Iron Sister or Silent Brother.

“You are no fun Tom, just like Charlie.” Matthew says in a teasing tone. Everyone else found Matthew’s elder brother boring, but Thomas admired him for working so hard and never letting anything distract him.

“Yes well, when I am in charge of you lot, sometimes I cannot be.” Thomas replies. Though his friends could be childish and hard to handle sometimes, he adored them nonetheless, they were all harmless and innocent and liked Thomas for who he was, they never made fun of him for his mother’s past or his father’s for that matter. They loved him, and he loved them.

Of course, his friends did not abide by the rules he set for them before they met little Alexander. Thankfully Christopher did not drop his brother, but sadly he did talk about experimenting on him, though Aunt Cecily and Uncle Gabriel handled it very well. James had in fact took his book in and kept his nose stuck in it for the majority of the visit. Uncle Gabriel did persuade him to hold Alexander for a few minutes, but the entire time, James read his book aloud to the baby. Matthew of course flirted with pretty much everyone in the room, but Aunt Cecily and Uncle Gabriel found it hilarious, they adored Matthew and clearly had no issues with him seeming to have a preference for both sexes.

Though the visit did not go as planned, Thomas would not change it for anything, nor would he change anything about his friends, they were perfect.

#anna lightwood #Cecily Herondale #christopher lightwood #gabriel lightwood #alexander lightwood #thomas lightwood #Matthew Fairchild #william herondale #shadowhunters #the last hours #cassandra clare

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acertaincritic · 7 years ago

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Writer’s Rambling - Foreshadowing

Ha! You did not expect that I’d write another one of these so out of the blue, did you? Well, that’s because I gave no indication that I would, and obviously you cannot see the future. The same thing can happen in a book - the plot seems to be going in a certain direction, but then a totally unannounced event changes everything. Worse even, perhaps there’s a mystery to solve, and the final culprit turns to be the one character that never betrayed any clues that it might be them.

This means that there was no foreshadowing, and while it doesn’t matter when you write a personal blog, it does matter when you’re writing a book. So today we’re going to take a closer look at what foreshadowing is, and how to do it well.

Spoilers for “The Exiled Queen” by Cinda Chima Williams and “The Rithmatist” by Brandon Sanderson.

Foreshadowing is, simply put, letting the reader know that something will happen. Thanks to it the sudden changes of the plot’s direction don’t come across as willy-nilly, and the clever reveals seem actually clever. It makes the story appear planned and orderly... That is, if it’s done right. If it’s done wrong, it can make your plot predictable and boring, and your characters stupid for not figuring out what the reader had many chapters ago.

Then should I even foreshadow?

Yes.

OK, long answer. Yes. Foreshadowing comes with a risk, but a total lack of it makes the plot contrived and chaotic. It leaves the reader unsatisfied with the conclusion, because it never had the proper build-up.

This isn’t to say that every plot point has to be foreshadowed. Particularly in the first half of the book, readers tend to be more forgiving of unexpected plot twists. For instance, if the protagonist is attacked by bandits and then saved by a stranger who traveled the same road, it doesn’t require any foreshadowing. The reader will understand that the scene was the stranger’s introduction and will accept it. Problems would arise only if the stranger later vanished with no explanation, and never reappeared in the same book. However, if the skirmish with bandits happened near the end of the story, and was considered a serious obstacle, an unknown character coming to the hero’s aid feels like a cheap way out.

There are also stories that simply don’t require much foreshadowing. Perhaps there aren’t many unexpected reveals, no mystery or plot twists. While it might sound like too simplistic a plot, I cannot exclude that such books exist, or even that they may be entertaining (the same as books with failed foreshadowing can be entertaining too).

Now that we decided that foreshadowing is generally desired, let’s take a look on how to foreshadow, shall we?

Overt foreshadowing

This is the first type of foreshadowing, one that most writers can do by instinct. It’s simply telling the reader that something will happen. Rather than trying to hide it, we pound them with it in the head. This is useful near the beginning, when we want to let the reader know what plot points they should look forward to or promise an interesting conflict when there isn’t one yet.

A simple sentence like, The monsters crept up the perimeter of the village, but so far, none was able to cross the barrier can foreshadow a) that the monsters are going to eventually break the magical protection and attack the village, or b) that the hero will have to face the monsters once they leave their home, whether they are banished or decide to travel on their own accord.

Mind you, this wasn’t a super overt foreshadowing. Foreshadowing can be overt, covert, and the many shades in between. Some readers will notice more than most, and some won’t notice even the most blatant hints; you should measure it so it works for the majority, not for every single person.

A more overt case of foreshadowing would be something like, Liza didn’t know yet that her life would completely change after she borrowed her uncle’s ancient-looking book. It leaves no room for doubt, and clearly sets what the reader should expect from the plot. While ‘change’ in itself is vague, the fact that Liza will take her uncle’s book and that the said book is somehow special is obvious long before it happens in the plot proper.

Now, while this type of foreshadowing is generally easy, there are two pitfalls to be mindful of:

1. It’s too vague.

This is especially important if we rely on the said foreshadowing to pull the reader through the slow beginning. I’d first advise not to write slow beginnings at all, but if you decide you need the long paragraphs of exposition for some reason, a solid promise of interesting plot can serve as a patch. However, just saying that John didn’t know how his life was going to take a turn for the worse is simply too vague to hold the reader’s attention for long.

This takes me back to “The Shamer’s Daughter” by Lene Kaaberbøl, which opens with the main character saying, Strictly speaking, it wasn’t really Cilla’s fault that I was bitten by a dragon. This promises us that she will be beaten by a dragon, an adventure much more interesting than watching Diana’s normal life which we get at the beginning. Of course, that the said normal life is written well, filled with conflict, and doesn’t linger for too long, is a huge help too.

2. The book doesn’t deliver/delivers too late.

What would you think if the main character constantly had bad feelings about the future, some ominous fear creeping up her spine, yet until the end of the book nothing happens? At the very least it would be a letdown. And while I don’t see such a thing often - most writers feel that they should deliver what they had promised, weather straight or subverted - I do see it sometimes.

An example can be found in Cinda Chima William’s “The Exiled Queen”. Throughout the book, there are mentions of a big ball near the end of the academic year, one that the heroine, Raisa, claims she won’t go to. Of course, then she falls in love with a guy (Han), and eventually is maneuvered by her friends to go to the ball with him.

Except, the ball never happens. Or rather, before it happens, she gets kidnapped by Micah. Han also leaves the school to search for her, and that’s how the book ends. Bah, the kidnapping itself is a case for too vague foreshadowing and too late delivery. The fact that Micah Bayar is a danger to Raisa was brought up very early in the story. As it was never touched upon again throughout the book, the reader already wrote this danger off from their ‘foreshadowed plot points’ list long before the kidnapping actually happened. Then, shortly before the deed, Raisa has a feeling that something bad is going on - but it’s too vague, and so the reader still feels like this ending came completely out of nowhere, and even worse, trampling over the ball, which they were looking forward to.

What particularly irks me about this case is that it was so easy to add a little more foreshadowing - enough to justify the kidnapping without making it obvious. See, Micah was a constant character in Han’s POV. All the author had to do was have Han notice, shortly before the kidnapping, that his rival is strangely agitated, or nervous, or perhaps the opposite - too quiet and distracted as he sits through his classes.

Ehh, I could write a whole essay on Cinda Chima Williams. She’s an author who balances at the edge of ‘average’ and ‘good’, and never takes the one step up to reach excellency. How little she’s lacking seriously drives me nuts when I read her books. But, let’s not dwell on that.

Covert foreshadowing

The second type of foreshadowing. This is foreshadowing that we want the reader to notice only after the foreshadowed plot point comes to fruition. The reader should facepalm, thinking, How could I have not seen it! after the big reveal or plot twist.

This is, naturally, the difficult type of foreshadowing. Anybody who’s book savvy will immediately recognize some obvious tropes that many less experienced writers may think will be a surprise. For instance, when a character is presumed dead, but they never found the body... Unless it’s A Song of Ice and Fire, you can be pretty certain that the ‘dead’ character is very much alive and will come to save the day later (or try to spoil the day, if it was a villain). The first example from the top of my head is Murtagh’s ‘death’ in the sequel to “Eragon” - though picking on “Eragon” feels like picking on a toddler, so maybe let’s leave it that.

Even when the trope is not an obvious one, most readers will still see the obvious clues. So, what can we do to hide our foreshadowing?

1. Redirect.

Simply put, we want the reader to believe that the piece of foreshadowing we’re giving is about something else than it really is about. Let’s look at what I proposed above about “The Exiled Queen” and the foreshadowing for the kidnapping. If Han only notices that Micah is readying for something, the reader may link it to Raisa’s bad feelings and guess the plot twist. However, if Han also worries that Micah is planning an attack on him again, we may just successfully divert the reader’s attention away from Raisa. They will look out for Han and any sign of danger in his POV, so when Micah comes to kidnap Raisa instead, they’ll still be surprised - but not irritated that the author pulled it out of nowhere.

2. Dress it up as something else.

One of the reason I love Sanderson is that he is a master of covert foreshadowing, and non obvious resolution of his plot. “The Rithmatist” is a great example - it has a big detective plot line. There’s a series of kidnappings of children, and at one point the inspector leading investigation complains how the culprits are bold, that they kidnap from the area just when the police moves into it. He seems like a detective truly determined to catch the kidnappers, frustrated that they keep eluding him.

Then it turns out it was actually him who kidnapped the children. Brilliant.

To be fair, it wasn’t the only thing Sanderson did. He also diverted the reader’s attention by pointing to two other possible culprits. And he failed at foreshadowing another major plot point - that the inspector was being possessed, and so he himself didn’t know he was responsible. I feel like the reveal would’ve been more satisfying if the man was doing it of his own volition, but nevertheless, I loved the book.

3. Give information backward.

This is a little trick I learned, and I was actually surprised that it worked. It turns out that if you give pieces of information backward, the reader is less likely to link them together. For instance, if you first have your hero learn about powerful artifacts that look like jewelry, and then describe a particular pendant on another character’s neck... Well, most readers will realize that the pendant is a magical artifact. However, if you first introduce the character with the pendant, and then have the hero learn about magical artifacts, chances are that most people won’t notice.

Now, I advise caution. This technique works best with minor plot points rather than big reveals. It won’t work with something too tropical and big, and it requires a good instinct when it comes to timing. Put the two pieces too close, and the reader will see through your ruse; put them too far away, and they’ll never see the connection even looking back. Overall, it’s a supplementary technique rather than the main one.

4. Use the readers’ expectations against them.

Last but not least, you can use tropes that readers will project onto your book. For instance, you know how there’s this idea that the king’s brother is always power-thirsty, and murders the ruler to take his place? Well, if your book has a king’s assassination as an important plot line, and you put a seemingly fishy brother on the scene, the reader is less likely to notice the servant in the background who maybe had a grudge against the murdered ruler.

The trick here is not to overdo it. If you make the royal brother appear straight-out evil, the reader will realize that it’s too obvious and probably not the real culprit. On the contrary, you should make it appear as if you’re trying to hide that the brother is the real killer - show him displaying remorse, perhaps give money to charity or otherwise do good deeds. Again, balance is needed; if he’s a saint, it may completely throw the reader off and they’ll look for other culprits - and spot the real one.

When it’s done right, once the big reveals comes, the reader should realize that all the little things they thought were you trying to hide the brother’s evil nature, were actually signs that he is indeed innocent. Basically, they should realize that they had played themselves.

If you’re interested to see how it can be done in practice, I recommend Brandon Sanderson. I always recommend Brandon Sanderson

That’s all for today. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to storm my ask box. Thank you for reading ‘till the end, and salty writing :)

#writer's rambling #writing advice #writing

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artikgato · 7 years ago

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Souyowrimo Day 20

Prompt list here, other completed prompts in this tag.

I DEFINITELY didn’t straight-up rip off The Ancient Magus’ Bride, an excellent anime/manga series that you should totally watch/read. (Don’t worry if you haven’t seen it, you don’t actually need to know anything about it to understand this!)

Day 20 - Fantasy

“A church grim?” Souji asked, his cool silver eyes looking over the small tea table at his guest with a great deal of confusion. “I’m being requested all the way out in Inaba just to take care of a church grim?”

“That is only the first,” the silver-haired man sitting opposite him sighed. “Not many are willing to travel out to Inaba, so they’ve let quite a number of other requests pile up.”

“How long do you expect I’ll be there for?” Souji asked. He got nothing from the older man but a shake of his head.

“There is no telling. You’d better pack warm clothing, as winter is approaching,” he replied. Souji blinked.

“I haven’t said I’ll accept the requests,” he said.

“I’ve accepted them for you,” the older man replied. “Requests here in the city have been dwindling. You need to restore the Seta name to something to be proud of.”

“B-but, I-” Souji started to protest, but the other man simply stood up.

“I’ve arranged for your train fare as well. You leave tomorrow morning. Is that clear?” he asked, and his silver eyes bored down on Souji, so cold and commanding, that all Souji could do was nod.

“Yes, father,” he replied, trying not to sound bitter.

“Good. And while you’re in Inaba, perhaps you’d like to learn how to make a decent cup of tea?” his father suggested, coldly, before turning and leaving. Souji kept his head bowed as he left, not daring to let his father see the anger burning on his face. He’d just started to get used to his life here in Tokyo, and now he was being sent out to a tiny town like Inaba? Where he’d be taking care of small, unimportant cases like exterminating church grims? He let his rage seethe out as soon as his father had left, shutting the door behind him.

Luckily, Souji’s father had also arranged for lodging in Inaba, so that he didn’t have to struggle to find an open house in the small town. Ryoutaro Dojima, come to find out, was actually Souji’s uncle on his mother’s side. He had been none the wiser until the gruff-looking man introduced himself as such. He would later find out that his parents were ashamed of their Inaba heritage and had hidden it from Souji for his entire life. It didn’t come as much of a shock as it should have to him, to be honest. (As time went by, he would find that he greatly preferred the outwardly cold but inwardly warm Dojima, and he would end up adoring his young cousin, Nanako.)

Dojima was also the police detective in charge of supernatural cases in the Yasoinaba area, which was extremely convenient. The huge stack of requests that he plunked down on Souji’s desk, however, was not.

“These are all requests for the Magus Order?” Souji asked, incredulously, and Dojima just nodded, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Yes. A lot of them are probably old enough that they’ve resolved naturally, and...I still haven’t caught them, but there are non-mages around here that seem to go around solving these cases on their own,” Dojima replied.

“But that’s dangerous,” Souji replied, and Dojima sighed.

“They’re probably teenagers. Amateur witches or whatnot. I can’t say this officially, but they’ve actually been very helpful. Getting a mage out here is, well…” Dojima trailed off, and Souji nodded.

“Yeah. I had to be forced to come out here myself but…” a sigh, “now that I’m here, I might as well get started.” He picked up the paper on the top of the stack and, sure enough, it was the request made about the church grim. As much as he wanted to try to do the older requests first, as they would probably already be resolved...he knew he needed to do some actual work. If nothing else, he needed to get paid.

And so, he found himself in the local graveyard at 3am, huddled in his mages’ robes with only a small lantern for light. It was...surprisingly cold. He had (begrudgingly) taken his father’s advice and packed warm clothing, but he hadn’t thought he’d need it just yet. He let out a small sigh, careful not to make any noise, and resisted checking the time for what felt like the thousandth time.

He hoped the stupid grim showed up tonight - if it didn’t he’d be out here tomorrow night, again. And again after that, until he found the grim.

Just when he had started to doze off a little - he wasn’t even sure how, as he was both cold and uncomfortable, kneeling on the hard dirt - he heard a distant sound. It sounded like crying. And, predictably, it was coming closer. Good, it looked like the grim was going to show up after all. The crying got steadily louder, going from a faint just barely-there sound and rising to an audible level, like that of a human sobbing loudly. And then the grim appeared...or maybe not.

What did appear was a man, which was definitely not a normal church grim thing, but not entirely unheard of. What was weird was the fact that the man didn’t have a scrap of black anywhere on him. Between the light of the almost-full moon and the lanterns set up around the graveyard in intervals, Souji could tell for certain that this man was most definitely not wearing black clothing, nor was his hair black. He had slightly tan skin and light brown hair, and he was wearing a white shirt and red pants. Not how a grim would look by any stretch of the imagination, but-

He was definitely not human. He’d walked out of thin air, for starters. He was also crying a name, and to the average person he might just look like a distressed person who’d lost their lover or relative, but the cries had that specific tininess to them that suggested that he was somehow supernatural.

Still, this was very odd. The reports had said that the church grim was haunting the grave of a recently deceased woman by the name of Saki Konishi. And, indeed, the crying man was calling her name, and kneeling down at her grave, clutching the stone in bare hands and sobbing. Dressed for the part or not this being had to be the church grim... or whatever was being mistaken for one, at the very least.

Making as little noise as possible, Souji dropped the bundle of bamboo and eucalyptus he had been holding, as he decided that this being was more of a threat than he’d initially thought it would be. He very carefully reached down to his thigh and started to loosen the bindings on the mage’s rod he had strapped to his leg, pulling it free and unsheathing a dagger from his belt with his opposite hand. He didn’t want to fight, but if he had to…

Just as he was getting ready to stand up and calmly announce his presence, he sensed something… else. So did the not-grim, as the man immediately froze and started to look around in a panic. Maybe he really was just a normal person, and the actual grim was going to arrive soon? But, no, the sudden dark chill in the air was definitely not a grim. It was something much, much more sinister.

“I thought I’d find you here if I waited long enough,” a voice cut through the air, and both Souji and the not-grim froze, wide-eyed. Souji felt fear climb up his back and settle in his throat for the first time in years, fighting down a full-body shiver.

The voice had come from behind him.

Footsteps started to sound, the soft crunching of leaves underneath boots, as someone - no, something approached, and all Souji could do was fight to remain as still as possible, dagger at the ready. The way he was wearing his cloak made it so that he couldn’t easily see behind him without turning his head.

“Wh-who are you?” the not-grim asked, and Souji’s eyes flicked back to him, his face a mask of fear, as he stared at whatever was approaching from behind Souji. Souji heard a chuckle, and every nerve in his body wanted him to run away as fast as possible as the being spoke again.

“That doesn’t matter, does it? You won’t be alive long enough to care,” the voice said, and to Souji’s intense, momentary relief, the being stepped past him, missing him only by a few feet, and continued walking towards the not-grim. It hadn’t seen him at all. Its true target was the not-grim, who was starting to back away in fear. From the angle he was crouched at, Souji couldn’t see much of the newcomer’s features, but he could tell that he at least had the form of a man with short, black hair. And to Souji’s utter confusion, he was dressed like...a normal person. He was wearing what looked like a casual suit - black pants, black coat, red tie, white shirt, with a yellow coat over that. He wasn’t even holding any kind of weapon. Just who - or more accurately, what, was he?

“What do you want?” the not-grim asked, panicked, and Souji realized that he was being very carefully steered back towards a large tree. Whatever this strange being was, it was a very seasoned hunter. Souji didn’t want to get involved - he really didn’t - but this was his first assignment, damn it all, and he needed to get paid. And the look on the brown-haired man’s face was absolutely destroying his self-restraint.

“That’s far enough,” Souji said, voice clear and cutting through the night, and the newcomer stopped, slowly turning his head to peer over his shoulder at Souji. He had normal enough looking features, but his eyes were bright red and even seemed to be glowing, and the sinister look on his face was enough to make Souji’s blood run cold.

“Ehhh? What’s this? Did a Mage finally deign to grace our little town with his presence?” the newcomer asked, with a big, cold smirk. “I’ll bet you thought it would be easy out here, like shooting fish in a barrel. Heheh.”

“Who are you?” Souji asked, slowly but calmly lifting his hand to reveal the dagger he was holding. The newcomer laughed again.

“Like I told this guy, you won’t live long enough for it to matter,” the black-haired man said, turning back to the not-grim just in time to see him trying to sneak away. “Oh no you don’t.”

The newcomer made to lunge at the terrified brown-haired man, but Souji quickly lifted his rod and fired off a small fire spell, making sure that it impacted on the ground directly between them. The not-grim yelped, and the newcomer turned back to him with a glare.

“Hey now, little mage. Wait your turn, I’ll eat you once I’m done with him,” he said, his tone a warning. Souji repressed a shudder - eat him? What was this guy? He brandished his rod anyway, making a show of charging another spell.

“Not on my watch,” he said, and the black-haired man turned to face him fully, his back to the not-grim, with a big, chilling smirk.

“Oho, you’ve got spunk. I like it - gives you an interesting flavor when I’m eating your intestines. Not as good as fear, though,” he replied, and Souji once again repressed the urge to panic. Instead he looked over the black-haired man’s shoulder, very briefly, and made eye contact with the brown-haired man, hoping he’d get the message to run while he could.

“I’ll only warn you once, monster,” Souji said, fire spell at the ready. “Leave now, or you won’t live to regret it.”

“You know, Mages are so rare around here, I consider them a delicacy,” the man replied, totally ignoring Souji’s warning. He took a step forward and started to speak again, but Souji simply unleashed his fire spell instead of letting him talk. The man was instantly engulfed in a pillar of flames that shot up into the sky. He heard the not-grim gasp and saw him turn tail and run, and thought that was probably a great idea. He glanced back to make sure his path was clear, and then took off running. He let his hood fall back against his shoulders, making it all the easier to look back and make sure the monster hadn’t escaped the fire somehow. He saw a hand shoot out of the flames, clutching a gun, and he couldn’t react fast enough. Metal pierced one of his legs and he went down hard on the cold ground.

“That was a high-level fire spell,” the cold voice said, and Souji managed to roll himself onto his back and sit up, dagger and rod at the ready in front of him. The black-haired man was calmly approaching him, gun in front of him and trained at Souji’s head. He appeared to be a little singed, smoke rising off of his form. He’d managed to overpower Souji’s fire spell, somehow, and all Souji could think was that he’d at least damaged him. The man came to a stop a few feet away from him, never lowering the gun, red eyes glaring down at him with unmasked hatred.

“Just for that, I won’t eat you. I’m going to tear you limb-from-limb, and rip your soul apart! How does that sound, brat?” he seethed, and Souji tried to get his thoughts in order enough to at least prepare a shield spell to stop the bullet, but his leg hurt so much and he was losing blood.

All of a sudden, a gigantic brown dog leapt from the trees nearby and barrelled straight into the black-haired man, knocking the gun out of his hands and pushing him to the ground. The dog went straight for the black-haired man’s throat, intent on ripping it out, but the black-haired man shoved him back. The dog landed in a heap on the ground nearby with a yelp, and he was somehow covered in huge, bloody gashes. Souji didn’t even realize why until he looked back and the black-haired man, whose hands had seemed to sprout huge black claws, now dripping red with the dog’s blood. The black-haired man snarled, and Souji saw his window of opportunity. He’d been avoiding using this spell, but this was life-or-death, and he didn’t know if the man’s boast about ripping apart his soul was true or not, but he didn’t want to take chances.

“Hamaon!” he shouted, and he saw the black-haired man’s eyes widen just before a huge burst of white light engulfed him and lit up the surrounding area. Souji felt his energy drain to almost nothing, felt his skin go cold, and barely kept himself from passing out, but when the light faded the black-haired man was gone. Souji honestly didn’t have enough awareness to tell if he’d been vaporized by the spell or simply fled, but the important part was that he was gone. A ring of soft golden light was around both Souji and the dog, and nothing could enter the ring and harm them as long as the light didn’t go out.

And he’d found his church grim. He was certain of it - even though it wasn’t a black dog, it was still the grim. He just needed to keep it alive or...wait, maybe he should let it die? The request had only been to stop the grim from making noise at night and keeping the surrounding houses awake. In any case, he needed to take care of himself first. He didn’t even have enough energy left to heal his own bullet wound, after all. He struggled into a sitting position and, with a sigh of regret, ripped a long strip of fabric of of the bottom of his now ruined robe, wrapping it tightly around the wound. When he looked up from that task, the dog had somehow gotten up and shuffled closer to him, because he found himself face-to-face with it. He flinched back, startled, and tried to back away only to get the painful reminder that, oh yeah, he’d been shot.

“Oh, sorry,” the voice of the brunette from earlier rang out, and the dog’s form shifted into the form of the man from earlier. He looked like he was in even worse shape in this form, blood running down the side of his head from a cut in his hair and clothes nearly torn to shreds. But he gave a cheerful smile anyway, and sat down in front of Souji. “Guess I was a little scary in that other form, huh? Sorry about that,” he said, as if he wasn’t literally bleeding to death. “Name’s Jiraiya and...we’re both in kind of a tight spot, aren’t we?”

“Souji Seta,” Souji replied, as if he wasn’t also bleeding to death, holding out his hand to shake. Jiraiya held his hands up, palms out, to show Souji that they were both absolutely covered in blood and dirt.

“Prolly not a good idea,” he said, and Souji nodded. “Anyway, I don’t want to die here, and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do too.”

“Yes,” Souji replied, somewhat baffled at the fact that this guy - Jiraiya, he amended - could be so cheerful when they were both literally bleeding to death.

“So...and I know this is kind of a ‘last resort’ type of thing, but I want to make a deal with you,” Jiraiya continued. Souji raised an eyebrow, but he doubted that Jiraiya could see it, as he wore his bangs so long they covered them.

“Go on,” Souji prompted. Making a deal with a fairy could be dangerous, he knew that of course. But Jiraiya was very badly injured, and Souji was less so - and Souji had far more magical ability than Jiraiya did. It might at least be worth hearing him out.

“You don’t have a familiar, do you?” Jiraiya asked, looking somewhat hesitant, and Souji’s shock must have shown on his face, because Jiraiya laughed, nervously. “Well?”

“I don’t...but you do realize that if you became my familiar, your life would be in my hands, right? You would die when I die. You’d have to go where I go and do what I say,” Souji answered, and Jiraiya laughed.

“Of course I know that,” he replied. “But does it look like I have a lot of options? I’m dying, here. And even if I managed to make it out of this magical ring alive, that guy would just come again another night and try to eat me. I don’t want to get eaten, especially by someone like him.”

“What is he?” Souji asked.

“I heard stories about him all the time when I was a kid, but I never thought he was actually real…” Jiraiya started, looking terrified. “He’s a ghoul. But like, not a normal ghoul that eats humans. He likes to eat fairies, and ghosts, and all kinds of supernatural stuff.”

A ghoul that could eat fairies, huh? Souji shivered. He really had only barely escaped with his life and soul intact, then. If he was going to have to deal with something like that, he’d need all the help he could get. He might even have to contact his father...if he made it out of this forest alive, at any rate.

But would his father even talk to him, if he knew he’d taken on a fairy for a familiar…?

“Alright,” Souji said, finally. “If you’re sure it’s what you want, then you can become my familiar.” He saw the grim visibly relax and breathe out a sigh of relief.

“Thanks man, you’re a lifesaver. Literally, heh,” Jiraiya replied. Then he held out his right hand, palm up, and Souji nodded. He carefully unwrapped part of his leg and swiped his right hand through the blood, taking time to re-bandage the wound. Then he lifted his hand toward Jiraiya’s, threading his fingers with the brunette’s before pressing their palms together.

“Hey, Hana-chan!” a voice called. It was a warm voice, a nice voice, and it belonged to a girl that was just as warm and nice as the voice implied. She had long, wavy blonde hair and a big, gorgeous smile. Souji could tell right away that this was Saki Konishi, and he could see why Jiraiya had been so attached to her that he’d come to cry at her grave every night.

“Hana-chan, here boy!” Souji turned to look at where she was looking, and a dog came bounding over a nearby hill. The dog wasn’t as big as Jiraiya’s grim form was, and instead of the darker brown color it was a lighter, almost golden brown. Saki laughed as the dog - Jiraiya - bounded toward her and stopped short of pouncing on her, rising up on his hind legs to lick at her face before she wrapped her arms around him, laughing all the way.

Souji turned to see Jiraiya beside him, in human form. He was wearing a long robe made of brown fur, and his eyes were sad, but hopeful at the same time.

“I was just a normal dog,” Jiraiya explained, turning to look over at the scene playing out - one of his memories. Souji noticed that the cloak had a hood, and there were two ears on the top of the hood, and a bushy tail on the back. Cute. “I always wanted a human form, so I could comfort her. She got bullied a lot, y’know.” The scene faded as Saki settled down on the grassy hilltop, the dog’s head in her lap as she petted him. “...and then she died. I didn’t know what to do. The police think it was suicide, but Saki was murdered, damn it.”

“So that’s why you became a grim?” Souji asked, and Jiraiya nodded. They appeared to be standing in a void of blackness now. Jiraiya turned to face him fully, ducking his head a little.

“I know I already asked you for a lot, becoming your familiar, but...do you think you could help me find Saki’s killer, and bring him to justice? After that, I’ll be content to do whatever you want me to, for as long as you want me to.”

Souji sighed. As if he didn’t have enough work to do. But...he just couldn’t say no.

“Sure,” he said, and Jiraiya looked up with a huge grin. The tail on his cloak was wagging, which was a little weird, but Souji had seen weirder.

“Okay then,” the grim said, reaching out and grabbing both of Souji’s hands. “All that’s left is to give me a name. I can’t go by Jiraiya anymore.”

The name ‘Hana-chan’ came to mind, but Souji dismissed it immediately - he didn’t exactly know the rules, but he couldn’t pick a name that the familiar would have any connection to. He stared at the grim, thinking about the brown grim form and the golden dog form, and noticed that he had a splash of freckles across his cheeks. Cute.

Was it bad to fall for your familiar? Probably.

“Yosuke,” Souji named, and Yosuke’s eyes slid closed, his grin fading to a pleased smile. The black void turned white around them.

“Yosuke,” he said, as if tasting the name. “I like it.”

#souyowrimo 2017 #souyo hell #souyo #i could so easily write like 5000 more chapters of this but this is all #for now at least #gotta write the rest of the prompts

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corynm · 7 years ago

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“True Crime Addict” by James Renner: A Review

February 9th, 2004: a nursing student at UMass Amherst packs all of her belongings into boxes, emails her teachers to let them know of a “death in the family” that never happened, gets into her car, and leaves. She stops at an ATM, withdrawing nearly all of its contents, before stopping again at a liquor store, purchasing a substantial amount of alcohol. She gets back into her car, and sets off for New Hampshire, telling no one of her strange trip or the true reasons behind it. Hours later, she crashes into a snowbank in Haverhill. Locals offer their help, but she refuses, claiming to have already contacted AAA despite the nonexistent cell service. Police are called, but by the time they arrive, she’s gone-vanished. It’s been thirteen years, and Maura Murray has yet to be found. Was she abducted, taken from the side of the road and killed at the hands of a deranged lunatic? Did she see no point in living after the revelation that her boyfriend had cheated on her, and decided to just end it all? Or did she run away, starting a new life for herself in Canada to escape the one that was falling to pieces?

As someone from Maura’s hometown, a sleepy little place on the south shore where things like this rarely happen, I found myself posing these questions often as the evidence became more and more confusing. Eventually, I turned to James Renner’s study, “True Crime Addict,” hoping that the insights of an outsider would provide some sort of answer, or maybe new evidence that could help me reach my own personal conclusion. What I found instead was a complete mess of a book filled to the brim with false accusations, unnecessary autobiographical anecdotes, and utter nonsense. Halfway through the torture of reading this book, I began making a list- yes, a list- of everything I found wrong with it. This list ended up being a page and a half long, all for a book consisting of a mere two hundred and eighty pages.

The first chapter in this book consists of a story detailing Renner’s run in with a stripper with a dragon tattoo, and no mention of Maura, the subject of the text, anywhere.

In the second chapter, it is mentioned that on a psychological evaluation test, Renner scored similar to Ted Bundy, the infamous serial killer, and labels himself as a sociopath.

At one point, maybe a third of the way through the book, the author mentions how, during his research, he was so obsessed with the case that he was scaring the people he was interviewing.

When Renner retraces Maura’s drive to Haverhill, he details the simulation theory and fleetingly mentions that he was partly hoping for his drive to cause a “glitch in the simulation” showing him what happened that night. A few sentences later, he cites aliens as a possible culprit behind the disappearance.

It was mentioned that as part of his research, Renner used Reddit as a source of information. It was also said that he posted new findings and data online before the release of the book. This is a good way to spread and receive false information, making research confusing and much more difficult than it already is.

Not only is Renner’s treatment of the Murray family near harassment, but after they refused his requests for interviews, he bad mouthed and trash talked them to insane levels, making false accusations of abuse on Fred Murray’s part in the process, citing that as a reason for Maura to run away.

As part of the previous point, Renner used three pages to paint Kathleen Murray in a bad light, detailing her current situation in an unnecessary fashion without making any links to Maura’s case.

There were some instances in the text where Renner made assumptions based on information he never bothered to look into further. A prime example of this would be when he states that he believes that Maura was pregnant due to her looking up the effects of alcohol on a baby. If he had bothered to dig deeper, he would have seen that those searches were for a homework assignment for the class’s maternity section.

To make an estimate, I would say that only about 60-70% of the book is actually about Maura- the rest consisting of unneeded anecdotes from the author’s personal life.

As part of these anecdotes, Renner shamefully promoted his other works multiple times, his book about Amy Mihaljevic being mentioned most often. He also boasts about the cases he’s solved or come close to solving.

A little over halfway through the book, Renner admits to smoking weed during the research process.

Renner has a tendency to overanalyze every little detail. Normally, I wouldn’t see this as a particularly bad thing, but when he tries connecting unrelated murders to Maura’s disappearance based on a string of completely random numbers, it’s gone too far.

Near “True Crime Addict”’s end, Renner makes the completely obvious claim that serial killers have different thought processes, making them “outliers,” and he presents this as if it were a groundbreaking new discovery.

During one of his anecdotes, he makes the claim that his son is a telepath.

The book is dedicated to a man named Keith. In the text, it is stated, through yet another unnecessary personal story, that “Keith” was Renner’s grandfather, who got away with sexually assaulting and raping Renner’s aunts and uncles. That is not a man to dedicate a book to.

If you have any interest in Maura Murray’s story and the odd circumstances surrounding the case, I implore you, please avoid this book at all costs. It is, plain and simply, a total waste of time. Look instead to the family run websites, the news reports, family interviews, the new documentary series on Oxygen. Anything but this book. James Renner is a man who wants so desperately to be a hero that he cuts corners and fabricates information in order to paint himself as such. After reading this wreck of a study, I finally understand why everyone in my town hates him, and I think it’s a real shame that his book is the only one that has been written on this case thus far.

#Maura Murray #THe Disappearance of Maura Murray #Book review #TRue Crime Addict #My Thoughts #This is brutal #not gonna lie #Scathing review #mystery #missing person #weird

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winchestersplusone · 8 years ago

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Chapter 91: Tough Decisions

Summary: Ellie is once again in the middle of a Winchester disagreement.

Wordcount: 5709

Warnings: Show-level violence. Lots of blood.

A/N: So, I TRY and keep episode length down, and then I stop trying and just roll with it. Oops.

Episode Guide: This chapter takes place during 3x15

Chapter 91: Tough Decisions

“I think I finally got a bead on Bela,” Dad said.

Good thing I was on the other side of the room. The boys didn’t see my involuntary little jump of excitement. “Thank God, where?”

“I don’t know. But Rufus does.”

“Uncle Rufus?” I asked. He and Dad hadn’t spoken in what, fifteen years? He’d taught Dad about hunting, but they had some kind of falling out. Just like with John Winchester, and the Howard family. But the Howards deserved it and I never liked John Winchester, so probably Uncle Rufus was in the wrong too.

“Yeah. I put the word out on Bela months ago. Rufus just called, said a woman got in touch, wanted to buy some things.”

I decided not to comment on Rufus actually choosing to call Dad and speak to him. They had a real important history and I was sure Dad had feelings about it, but he’d never tell me. “So, he thinks this woman is Bela?”

“British accent,” Dad said. “Went by the name Mina Chandler.”

“That’s one of hers,” I said. We had uncovered a whole lot of aliases over the course of our search for her. “So, he tell you anything else?”

“Nope. He wasn’t exactly chatty. Probably only called cos I’ve been saying it’s you that’s looking for Bela. Doubt he’d help me if you weren’t involved.”

Good move, suggesting it was me that wanted help. I tended to alienate people less than Dad did. Though it isn’t hard to be less alienating than my father.

“We’ll go check it out. Thanks. Where?”

“He’s in Canaan, Vermont. I’ll text you the address.”

“Great! This’ll cheer the boys up so much. We’ll get on the road and I’ll call you soon, okay?”

“Okay, sweetie. Oh. Take a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.”

Wow. That’s some serious bribery. I hoped I didn’t have to drink it with him, cos whiskey and I are not buddies. I hadn’t had any whiskey since that time I tried to kiss Sam. I’d banned myself for life.

“Alright! Thanks Dad. Bye.”

“Bye. I’ll text you.”

I hung up and went back over to the guys, who were still leaning over the maps we’d laid out on the bed.

“Bobby got something for us?” asked Sam.

“Yeah. He’s got a guy might know where Bela is. An old friend of his, Rufus. They’re not pals anymore, but apparently he thinks it’s me asking, so he’ll help us out.”

“Rufus?” asked Sam. “Isn’t that the guy who found you when…”

When I was being sacrificed to some weird demonic ritual. Yes.

“Yeah,” I said, quick and dismissive. “Apparently Bela wants to buy something from him.”

“Great!” Dean said, heading straight for his duffle, and ready to start packing. “Where is he?”

“Canaan. In Vermont.”

“Sweet, we can make that by morning. Come on Sam.”

Sam looked up from the maps at last. “What? Whoa, whoa whoa hold on a second.”

“We gotta go,” I told him. “Who knows how long Bela will wait for whatever she’s buying?”

I was moving past Sam to get into the bathroom for my toothbrush and stuff. He grabbed hold of my arm, as I went, not hard enough to hurt, but stopping me.

“Look, I think we should stay here and finish the case.” Sam’s tone and agitated movements suggested he thought that was obvious and was stunned that we did not agree.

Dean looked up. “You insane?”

Sam’s hand tensed, tightening around my forearm, but he didn’t intend it. He was just reacting reflexively, and I knew it the next moment.

“Dean, there is no way she still has the Colt! That was months ago! She probably sold it the second she got it.”

“Well, then I’ll kill her,” his brother replied, casually. “Win-win.”

I hoped he was not serious. Whatever Bela had done, and however awful she was, killing humans was not a thing we did. Well… maybe if they were a creepy immortal doctor who stole organs. But not people who were guilty only of robbing us and pissing us off. Not even people who shot Sam.

I’d happily have kicked her in the face, though.

I kept my mouth shut. This was not a moment to give my opinion. They probably wouldn’t hear me anyway.

“Dean…” Sam began, but he was cut off before he could get any further.

“Sam. We’re going!”

“No!” He let go of my arm, leaving me to take a step back and stand in the middle of the room and look from brother to brother and pray they didn’t ask for my opinion.

“Why the hell not?” Dean demanded.

“Dean!” Sam was incredulous, like Dean was deranged and maybe me too. “This, this here. Now. This is what’s gonna save you!”

“What? Chasing some Frankenstein?”

“Chasing immortality!”

No! Oh no Sam, no! Don’t go down that road. I prayed to whatever might listen that Sam was not going where I thought he was.

“Look, Benton can’t die,” he went on. And the hope and passion in his beautiful eyes horrified me. He looked that way when he was talking about his faith in God. Or his faith in his brother. “We find out how he did it, we can do it to you.”

I was about to open my mouth and remind Sam that this guy’s secret involved stealing innocent people’s organs. But I didn’t, cos I’m a pathetic coward. Not that he’d have listened anyhow.

“What are you talking about?” asked Dean.

“You have to die before you go to hell, right?” Sam asked. “So, if you can never die, then…”

“Wait wait wait.” Dean had lowered his voice, but it was even more urgent, as he stepped towards Sam, coming face to face with him. “Wait a second, did… did you know that this was Doc Benton from the jump?”

“No,” Sam said. And I imagined the look Dean was giving him was pretty close to my own face. Because really? “Look, I was hoping…” he clarified.

“So the whole zombie thing, it was lying to me?” Dean asked.

Lying wasn’t the issue here. Dean didn’t have a leg to stand on, there. He lied to Sam plenty. Like the time he pretended Sam had never died and been resurrected. No… lying was not the issue. The issue was the idea that Dean’s life should be preserved indefinitely, and potentially at the expense of others.

“I didn’t wanna say anything until I was sure, Dean. All I’m trying to do is find an answer here.”

I sat down on Sam’s bed, too afraid to get involved. On the one hand, I thought Dean was right. This was not an option we ought to be exploring. No good would come of it. Not for Dean and not for Sam.

On the other hand, I didn’t think yelling at Sam was going to solve anything. Dean’s approach was too confrontational. This was so out of character for Sam, who would normally be totally repelled by Doc Benton’s whole organ stealing MO. He was desperate and clutching at straws - clearly not entirely in his right mind. He needed compassion, not shouting.

So, not knowing what to say to either side, I just sat there, with a sick feeling lying heavy in my stomach.

“No,” Dean said. “What you’re trying to do is chase Slicey McHackey here. And to kill him? No. You wanna buy him a freakin’ beer. You wanna study him.”

“I was just trying to help,” Sam insisted.

“You’re not helping! You forget that if I welch on this deal, you die. Guess what! Living forever is welching.”

“Fine! Then, whatever the magic pill is, I’ll take it too!”

“No,” I gasped, and they both turned to look, maybe remembering for the first time that I was there. “Oh no...”

“What is this? Sid and Nancy?” Dean asked. Then he pointed at me. “What about Ellie, huh? You just gonna leave her? And Bobby?”

That was enough to make Sam pause. He was still looking at me, his eyes that dark brown of his deepest sorrows. I tried to speak, but found I couldn’t even open my mouth, I was so upset. I tried to communicate with my face that I loved him and would be there for him, but who knew if he understood? There were tears in his eyes.

“It’s like Bobby’s been saying,” Dean continued, as Sam continued to stare at me. “We kill the demon who owns the contract and this whole damn thing wipes clean. That’s our best shot.”

That I did not agree with. Killing the demon holding the contract seemed like welching to me, even more than finding immortality. How did we know there wasn’t someone else around to ensure both died, in accordance with the contract? Maybe if the contract-holding demon died, the whole thing shifted to someone else. We didn’t know enough to risk that.

Unfortunately, I was still unable to make my voice work, though I could at least open my mouth.

But Sam could speak, and he turned away from me, crossing the room, closer to his brother, and turning his back towards me for some reason.

“Even if you had the Colt, Dean, who are you gonna shoot? We have no idea who holds the ticket.”

“Well, I’ll shoot the hellhounds before they slash me up!” Dean said, all gruff and bluster. “Now are you coming or not?”

I couldn’t see his face anymore, but I could see from behind that Sam was raising his head and looking his brother in the face. “I’m staying here,” he said, comparatively softly.

Dean’s voice was still at his agitated pitch. Just below a yell. “No you’re not. Cause I’m not gonna let you wander out in the woods alone to track some organ stealing freak!”

“You’re not gonna let me?” Sam asked, his own volume going up again.

“No I’m not gonna let you,” his brother repeated.

“How are you gonna stop me?”

Dean was facing me, so I could see his face and his body language. He wasn’t intimidated or afraid, but it was like he was noticing, for the very first time, that Sam was bigger than him. He’d always had a little brother, and they’d had their differences, fought physically even, apparently. But Dean looked up at his brother, four inches taller, and broad shouldered, muscular torso. And he realised that he actually couldn’t stop him doing shit. He couldn’t physically restrain Sam, or at least, not without potentially causing injury to one or both of them.

“Look man,” Sam said. “We’re trying to do the same thing here.”

There was a long pause, as Dean looked at his brother, keeping his eyes fixed on him even as he walked sideways towards his packed duffle. “I know. But I’m going. So if you wanna stay… stay.”

Sam had turned away, but not all the way. He still wouldn’t look at me. He was just looking at the wall. He stayed that way as Dean walked past, towards the door, and then stopping beside me.

“You coming or staying, Ellie?”

Oh God. I didn’t know. Both. Neither. I didn’t want Sam to follow through on this whole Doc Benton plan. But I was in even less of a position to stop him than Dean was. So, maybe I shouldn’t let him do it alone. But what about Dean? Rufus had only agreed to help because he thought the request was coming from me. He’d known me as a little girl and he wanted to help me out. If I wasn’t there, what would happen?

Sam was a well-built, strong, fit man, and this Doc Benton was a very unpleasant character. Supposing he decided he wanted some of Sam’s organs? Safety in numbers. But still there was Dean, and his potentially more helpful plan. If Rufus wouldn’t talk to him and tell him about Bela, then we were just as stuck as before.

“I… I don’t… wait!” I said, hitting upon an idea. I stood up and hurried over to the little desk. There was one of those motel notepads and a pen there. I grabbed the pen and quickly wrote.

Dear Uncle Rufus,

I’m so sorry I can’t come to meet you. It’s been so long and it means so much to me that you’re offering your help after all this time. This hunt is a bitch and I’m needed. This guy is my dear friend Dean Winchester. He’s the one who needs to find Bela. It could save his life. Please help him. If you’re in doubt, you can call me. I can vouch for him, he’s a good guy. And he might even match you drink for drink. ;)

Thankyou and love,

Ellie S.

I folded it up and handed it to Dean. “I’ll forward you the text with the address. Get a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, and give it to him as a gift from me. Tell him now I know where he is, I’ll come see him some time. Do NOT try to outdrink him. Pace yourself.”

Dean smiled. “Thanks, Princess.”

And I knew. He wasn’t thanking me for the note and the address. He was thanking me because as much as he could use my help breaking the ice with Rufus, he knew Sam needed me more. He had a tendency to be overprotective, of course… hence us being in this mess.

Dean wasn’t one to sit with his brother and talk him through his feelings. But he could tell when there were feelings that needed to be talked through. And he knew I was the gal for the job.

He got his hand on the doorknob, but then turned back to us. “Sammy… be careful.”

And that was what made Sam finally turn and look at his brother. “You too.”

Then Dean turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped out of the room. He looked back in at us for a brief moment, before shutting the door behind him.

And it was just Sam and me. I watched the closed door for a moment, but it wasn’t going to make a difference. I couldn’t go with him, however much I wanted to. Maybe I should have gone, and left him to stay with Sam?

No. Dean was made for drinking whiskey with a crotchety old hunter. I was made for holding Sam and talking him down from… from whatever the hell this was.

I watched him drop down onto his bed, sitting suddenly and with enough force to make him bounce back up slightly. He exhaled so loudly as he did, I thought the neighbours might hear it. But when I came over to sit beside him, he got right up again.

“Sam…” I started.

Without even looking at me, he walked away, towards the bathroom. “I can’t… I just can’t right now, okay,” he said, grabbing the door to the bathroom and starting to close it behind him. “I can’t.” I just overheard his next bizarre sentence, though I’m sure I wasn’t meant to. “Not with you.”

What the hell did that mean?

After forwarding the address from Dad to Dean, I looked over the maps again. Sam was still shut away with his (doubtless agonised) thoughts. Listening to the sound of water running, I started figuring out a route we could take, in order to get around to all the different cabins and shacks that were potential hideaways for our creepy quarry.

It made sense to check the places closest to the water first, although that was problematic, because the roads and tracks didn’t line up along the river. So to check every location down beside the river meant driving past the turnoffs and trails that led to other possible candidates. Then we’d have to go back around and get those too.

I did my best to put together a route that combined prioritising the most likely sites and minimising the need to backtrack or repeat ourselves. Still with one ear out, I got a blue marker to draw out the path. I was halfway done when I heard the water switch off inside the bathroom.

Hesitating, I tried to decide what demeanour I should adopt when Sam came out. He didn’t want to talk to me about what had just happened. He’d made that very clear to me, though I didn’t at all understand why.

Maybe because Dad and I hadn’t looked after Dean properly? He’d been aggressive in his grief, and told us to leave so we did. We should have refused, stuck around with him to make sure he was okay, whether he wanted us or not. Then he couldn’t have done that stupid deal. Sam did get kinda testy with me one time, but then he’d apologised and said he knew it wasn’t my fault. But maybe, with things getting so dire, his mind had been going down that way again?

Perhaps Sam needed someone to blame, and I was easier than Dean?

Deciding to go with the professional, all business approach, I was just finishing off my route. When the door opened, I glanced up at Sam and then down at my map again.

“Okay, so you marked thirteen potential hideouts. I’ve figured out a route that lets us check the first eleven as efficiently as possible. The other two are more isolated, so we can either take a chance and check them first, or leave them for last.”

Obviously picking up on the mood I was putting down, Sam came straight over to look at the map, spread out on the table in front of me.

“Well, that one,” he pointed to one of the two remote huts, “looks like a hell of a climb. Doesn’t seem likely he’s dragging unconscious victims up that kind of incline.”

“And bringing them back down after,” I agreed. “It’d be more efficient to go somewhere off road, so no one would stumble on him, but still easy enough for him to access.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed.

“And the other one is so far out, it’s technically over the county line. There’s two other towns closer than here, see? So I don’t think that’s likely, either.”

He nodded. “Good point. So, what are you thinking, start up here?” I nodded, as he pointed to the big X I’d drawn over the first stop. “And then around, along the ridge and back up?”

“Yep. What do you think, though? If we leave now, we won’t get them all before dark. So, do you think we should swing over just this half, and then start again in the morning? Or keep searching all night?”

“How about we start now and make a decision when it starts getting dark?”

I agreed, and grabbed my water bottle, as he started to shrug his jacket on. There was a rental car place two blocks over, so we could easily walk there. We’d have to use one of my fake credit cards, though. Unlike Sam, I could actually use my real name without showing up in police databases. But I always kept fake cards, because you don’t want to be paying for stuff in your own name if shit’s gonna go down. Fake cards are dishonest but they’re untraceable.

Our first five stops were no-go. Except for a family camping at the fourth one. They were nice people, but like… super nice. Like a horror movie robot family who almost have the hang of impersonating humans. It was getting dark, and they said we could stay the night in their cabin. There would even be smores and ghost stories.

Personally, I didn’t think I’d invite two shady-looking strangers to stay overnight in my cabin, but maybe I’m just a cynic with trust issues…

But anyway, by the time we got to the sixth stop, it was fully dark. The trek from the road to the cabin was comparatively short compared to the others. It was less than twenty minutes before my torch light shone onto the beams of the roof.

“This doesn’t look remote enough,” Sam said.

“Yeah, but the stream runs right beside,” I replied, moving my torch to show him. “Besides… the guy’s what, like two hundred years old? I’m guessing he doesn’t do that much cardio. Maybe this is all the walking he can handle.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re… what was that?”

“What?” I whispered.

Sam had stopped walking, eliminating the crunch of twigs under his heavy frame. I stopped too, and listened with him.

“I thought I heard… Never mind let’s just… be careful, okay?”

We were getting close to the little cabin. Maybe Sam had just heard the rustle of some animal in the undergrowth. But also, maybe Doc Benton was up the hill, about to head out and hunt him some new body parts. I thought Sam would be a pretty tantalising prospect. Guy as big and athletic as him would probably have a good strong heart. And who wouldn’t want his beautiful eyes?

What part of me would someone want to harvest for their personal use? One time, I had found some extremely risque jean shorts and tried them out to get one up on Dean. He told me to put some damn pants on, because my thighs were “obscene” and equivalent to nuclear warfare.

How often did the Doc get hold of a good pair of thighs? How often did he need new thighs? Was it just organs he needed to replace? Skin should just regenerate, right? What about muscle? Did it last forever, or would it eventually just die and need replacing?

This guy was super sick, and I needed to get Sam the hell away from him and his gross dream of immortality. Dean was right. It wasn’t worth saving him - not this way.

It was your classic creepy cabin in the woods sorta scenario. If we weren’t being stealthy I would have bet Sam fifty bucks that we’d found the right place. The other places had been rustic and simple, but they looked nice. They were mostly in good repair, they were clean, and the areas around them were maintained. They were owned and rented. This cabin was for sure abandoned. There were large gaps between the slats, the wood was rotting in places, and everything was overgrown. Another twenty years and the whole building would have been reclaimed by the woods.

It made me think of Sleeping Beauty, sleeping in her castle, as the forest grew up around her. And of awful horror movies, I guess.

I stopped, looking at the overgrowth. There were bushes and brown twigs and rocks all over the place, but someone had made a path. Not on purpose, I didn’t think, but like somebody had walked the same route repeatedly, kicking up the roots and crumbling the leaves. Or… maybe dragged someone?

Sam was behind me, so when I stopped, so did he. I pointed to the track and mimed myself dragging a body along it. He understood me immediately, and nodded.

When we were alone, Sam and I had our own system. I would be in front, because I’m quick, while he would walk behind. That way, he could see over my head. If Doc Benton (or anything else) jumped out at us, my reflexes would deliver a brutal kick to the chest before my brain even registered his presence. Then Sam had an extra second to get his gun.

I went up to the door and tried to see through the almost-disintegrated mesh window. The room inside was dark, but with Sam’s torchlight shining over my shoulder, I could just about see inside. There was definitely a couch shape and what looked like a solid surface or two. Our light didn’t appear to rouse anyone inside. At least, I couldn’t see or hear anyone moving.

With Sam’s warm bulk directly behind me, I pushed the door open and stepped inside. We did a quick torch sweep, me low, him high, to make sure the room was empty.

My initial view had been right. There was some furniture, all of it in disrepair, and only slightly more together than the dangerously unsound building. It looked like someone was for sure living there. I stepped away from Sam to look at a little bureau thing. The drawers were collapsing, but the dust along the top was disturbed. Someone had been putting things on top of it, and then moving them, sweeping dust away as they did.

Sam, meanwhile, was looking at the contents of a desk. I watched him grab something and put it in the pocket on the inside of his jacket.

I didn’t want him to keep any of this organ harvesting lunatic’s belongings. But it wasn’t a good time to argue or confront him about it. Especially not since the next thing caught in my torchlight was the clear outline of a door flap built into the floor. Surely that led to a cellar. And that’s where I’d do my sick non-consensual surgeries. In a creepy cellar.

I shone my torch towards Sam’s face, to get his attention. It worked, and when he turned to face me, his own light fell on the door, just as mine had. He came over to join me immediately.

We lifted the door together, and I had to crouch down to see past the floorboards in front of me. There were steps leading downward, but no headroom. I had to get onto the ground and take each step while in a squat. Thank god for my offensive thighs! They were good for more than just frustrating Dean.

It was so squished I wasn’t sure I’d make it down, let alone Sam. But then I saw what was down there.

The ceiling eventually levelled out into a low room. There were weird chains and broken shelves. There were so many vials, and those big round glass bottles that look like they should hold magic potions. Also, I thought I saw tools of some kind, but I was too distracted to take them in properly.

There was a bed. With wheels. It looked like an old fashioned kind of hospital gurney. Someone was lying on it, their head and shoulders visible under the blood soaked white sheet draped over them.

I straightened up and crept closer, able to hear Sam’s breath as he made his way down the cramped steps too. The man on the table wasn’t moving, and my hopes weren’t high that I’d feel a pulse. There was so much blood.

When I reached out to his neck, there was no movement. He was cold and still. Dead. I looked over at Sam, as he finished the stairs and straightened himself back out. I shook my head.

His brow crinkled, and his tongue moved inside his mouth as he took in the gory, macabre scene. It was sickening, even for me. I’d seen plenty of monsters, but there was something about the place. The old fashioned bottles, the man with the white sheet - so clinical. And the anatomic sketches I was only just noticing pinned to the walls. I could see by subtle movements of his face that Sam found it just as unnerving.

I was happy about that, even as I was scared and grossed out. That poor dead man, lying abandoned in a creepy makeshift surgery… that was what trying to live forever would cost.

There was a noise. Just the lightest exhalation of breath that had me gripping tighter to my torch and reconsidering my decision not to carry a gun. The Doctor was in.

But as I whirled around to look back at the stairs, leg muscles twitching, Sam nudged me. He had his torch beam directed across more bloodsoaked white sheets. They were hanging down, like curtains. We could see through a gap that another figure was within, lying down. That was the source of the quiet moaning.

I moved back into formation, holding back the sheet to go through first.

This victim was a woman, lying prone just like the poor dead man. She was alive, and she wasn’t the only thing in the room that was. Maggots were crawling over her arm. Beneath them, a large patch of skin had been removed. Skillfully, and with surgical precision, the poor woman had been robbed of her own skin. What Sam had told us earlier made some sense of it. Doc Benton obviously kept using maggots as a way of getting rid of dead tissue, but keeping the good stuff intact. Sam had even told me that apparently this was being revived as a treatment for the twenty-first century. In sterile, clinical conditions, of course. Not in a disgusting old cabin in the middle of nowhere.

She was tied down - arms, legs and even a thick strap across her forehead. The moans were definitely hers, but she was unconscious. Probably better off that way, let’s be real. I put down my torch and reached out to check her pulse, so I could get some idea of her condition. She was much less injured than the man on the other side of the curtain.

As soon as I touched her, she opened her eyes and started to whimper, struggling at her binds as she did. It sounded like she was trying to scream, but didn’t have the breath for it.

“Hey, it’s alright,” I told her, petting her hair with one hand, while I used my other to put a finger to my lips. If the Doc was still around, she needed to stay quiet. He didn’t seem to be in the cabin, but he might well have been nearby. “Shh… shh. It’s okay. We’re here to help. It’s alright.”

It wasn’t alright. I mean, a creepy mad scientist had started to flay her alive, but that’s just what you gotta say in these situations.

I kept stroking her hair and miming quiet, while Sam had the quick thinking to grab a towel from the bench beside us. It was probably dirty and germ-ridden, but we needed something to protect her arm. It was open down to the muscle. She started to scream louder as he used it to brush off the maggots. Just the contact with her open flesh must have been agony for her. He started to wrap it around her arm, while I tried to keep her quiet and undo the strap holding her head down.

But no amount of miming and reassuring noises was going to make it hurt her any less.

The floorboards above us creaked, and she wailed. She was even trying to be quiet. I could see it in her eyes, and hear her straining herself, desperate not to make a noise, but she just couldn’t help it.

The creaking was louder. I looked up through the boards above my head, and saw a light.

So I did the only thing I could think of and put my hand over her mouth. I kept my eyes on hers, hoping she’d be able to see my intention through them, and understand that I wasn’t trying to suffocate her. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she thought I was. Not after what she’d been through.

The light moved the other way, and Sam reached across us both to get at the straps holding her arms down. The floorboards were still creaking and unless Dean had suddenly changed his mind and decided to rescue us, it had to be Doc Benton.

Looking up to check Sam’s progress, I saw it. There was a window. It was boarded over, but I could see the moonlight through the cracks. It wasn’t a huge opening, but it was big enough for Sam. If he could get through, I could help the victim up after him and then climb up. But quickly.

I nudged Sam and pointed. He looked up too, and stood beside the boarded hole in the wall. At least the low ceiling meant the window was easy to access. He reached up, and as a very loud creak screeched above us, he used it to cover the sound of his elbow cracking the wood.

It took him two more carefully timed hits before he had the boards broken and the hole accessible.

I gestured at him to go through, while I helped our poor victim onto her feet. Now that no one was putting any pressure on her arm, she had gotten used to the pain level enough to stop screaming, but with every step it was obvious she was in agony.

Sam was already up there and reaching his hands back through the window, as we made it to him. She’d have to go through head first. I boosted her up so that Sam could get his hands up under her armpits and hoist her through. With me to hold her up on my end, he managed it easily.

And just as her legs were disappearing, I heard the door to the cellar.

“Run,” I hissed.

“Ellie…” Sam tried to object, but he was cut off by the woman’s moan of pain.

“Go,” I insisted. Wasn’t any point in me climbing up now. There were footsteps on the stairs and I was caught either way. No sense in everyone getting caught. Sam would be able to come back for me.

It’s not heroism. It’s just common sense.

I could hear him hesitating, as a soft light fell on the white sheets surrounding me.

Sam’s arm came through the window, like he was ready to boost me up.

Fine then.

I ran out from behind the curtain, heavy torch in hand.

And that’s when I saw his face. Patches of skin sewn together like leather. All slightly different skin tones, so he looked like he was wearing part of a mask like the phantom of the opera. His silver hair was back behind his ears, and so I could see where they’d been stitched on. The eyes were the worst. Dark and cold.

“Yep I’m here!” I screamed as I ran towards him. “Come at me, ya freak!”

#spn #spn fanfic #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural au #sam winchester #dean winchester #sam and dean #original character #see description is my weakness #i've always been weak on description in my writing #apparently i always leave it out #BUT LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DON'T?#it ends up twice as long #in other news...#dean is gonna regret he missed this #you know how he loves ellie's really stupid plans

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ebenvt · 5 years ago

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Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The quest to understand how great bacon is made takes me around the world and through epic adventures. I tell the story by changing the setting from the 2000s to the late 1800s when much of the technology behind bacon curing was unraveled. I weave into the mix beautiful stories of Cape Town and use mostly my family as the other characters besides me and Oscar and Uncle Jeppe from Denmark, a good friend and someone to whom I owe much gratitude! A man who knows bacon! Most other characters have a real basis in history and I describe actual events and personal experiences set in a different historical context.

The cast I use to mould the story into is letters I wrote home during my travels.

The Direct Addition of Nitrites to Curing Brines – the Spoils of War

September 1959

Dear Tristan,

I thought I would write your sister this time around but then realised that I have to finish my tale of how sodium nitrite became the most popular way to add nitrite to curing brines. The story is epic and I don’t want you to lose the thread.

From a scientific standpoint, using sodium nitrite as the source of nitrite is an important progression of the technology of bacon curing but there was a problem. The general public saw sodium nitrite as a poison and the cost was exorbitant. It would require more than just an energetic and brilliant Master Butcher from Prague to convince the world that it is an improvement in curing technology.

Early Public Perception about Nitrite

Between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, industry and informed members of the public knew nitrite as an ingredient in medication [8] (Vaughn E, et al.;2010; Jul–Aug; 18(4): 190–197) and sodium nitrite as an intermediary in the chemicals dye industry. (Concerning Chemical Synthesis and Food Additives) Most people, however, knew nitrite as a toxic chemical that kills livestock and people if the drinking water has even small traces of it. Such was the concern that nitrite levels in drinking water were reported in local newspapers every week to alert the public to possible contamination. It is, therefore, no wonder that the public and authorities were very skeptical about its use in food.

At the beginning of the 1900s, scientists developed a detailed understanding of the chemistry of curing which clearly showed the priority of nitrites in the process. In contrast to this, the general public and their elected officials were against the direct use of nitrites in food. As is many times the case, the scientific understanding was not general knowledge yet.

We now delve deeper into the story and zoom in on developments in three parts of the world, Prague, Germany and in the USA, Chicago. Events, dates, and places will start to overlap and two processes will become very important, the electric arc method of extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere and the Haber process.

As we do so, it is important to understand one more point in chemistry namely the close proximity of nitric oxide (), nitrous acid (), nitric acid (), nitrite (), nitrate () and ammonia (). All have a nitrogen atom as part of either the molecule or the ion. The Haber process yields ammonia () and the electric arc process, either nitrous acid () or nitric acid (). From any of these, nitrite () can be formed. (Webb, H. W.; 1923)

Germany 1910 – 1920 – the Race to Access Atmospheric Nitrogen

Austerity for the middle class in Germany during the Great War.

By the end of the war, the largest stockpiles of nitrite in the history of humanity were in Germany. It was created by the most productive chemicals industry in the world. How this happened is fascinating!

By the late 1800s, it was apparent that the world’s growing populations will not be fed unless atmospheric nitrogen can be harvested. Solving the problem of how to do this became one of the biggest priorities of science. After an intense search and various processes tested on an industrial scale, including the electric arc method, the German chemist, Fritz Harber finally solved the problem with the help of Robert Le Rossignol who developed and build the required high-pressure device to create ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen.

The process was first demonstrated in 1909. The German dyes manufacturer, BASF acquired the technology and under the leadership of Carl Bosch, the first Haber-process factory went into operation in Oppau, Germany in 1913. (Concerning the direct addition of nitrite to curing brine),

As a direct consequence of this development, Germany was no longer reliant on saltpeter from Chili (sodium nitrate) as fertilizer to feed its massive agriculture industry. Another consequence of the Haber-process is that it made World War One possible on an industrial scale. Nitrogen is key in ammunition production. Germany and its allies could escalate the war to a never before seen level.

When ammonia is made from atmospheric nitrogen, it was possible to produce nitrates and nitrites. The concept of using nitrites as a preservative in food was not something new. There are good examples of Germans toying with the use of nitrite in food, even before the war. The German scientist, Glage (1909) wrote a pamphlet where he outlines the practical methods for obtaining the best results from the use of saltpeter in the curing of meats and in the manufacture of sausages. (Hoagland, Ralph, 1914: 212, 213)

Glage gives for the partial reduction of the saltpeter to nitrites by heating the dry salt in a kettle before it is used. It is stated that this partially reduced saltpeter is much more efficient in the production of color in the manufacture of sausage than is the untreated saltpeter (Hoagland, Ralph, 1914: 212, 213), pointing to the fact that nitrite was being considered as a preservative and for its effect of meat colour, from the earliest times.

This means that by the 1910s, German scientists tried to solve the problem by still using saltpeter as a starting point to the reaction but getting to a reduced state faster. The line of thinking of using nitrate as the starting point was finally perfected by the Irish, Danes, and British who allowed the reduction to take place at the normal pace through bacterial means.

It was however not before BASF’s new Haber process came into operation that sodium nitrite became generally and cheaply available which meant for curing of meat that it could be added directly without allowing a bacterial reduction of nitrate to nitrite first. Solving the problem by using sodium nitrite was now a serious possibility. The Great War provided the environment to “motivate” the entire meat-curing industry to change from saltpeter to sodium nitrite when saltpeter was suddenly not available for curing, survival was linked to speed of curing and public perceptions were put aside.

A document from the University of Vienna would fill out the story. According to it, saltpeter was reserved for the war effort and was consequently no longer available as curing agent for meat during World War One. (University of Vienna). It was reserved for the manufacturing of explosives, and for example, the important industry of manufacturing nitrocellulose, used as a base for the production of photographic film, to be employed in war photography. (Vaupel, E., 2014: 462) It gets even better. The prohibition on the use of saltpeter gives us the background of why people started using sodium nitrite as curing salt instead of saltpeter in Germany.

In August 1914, the War Raw Materials Department (Kriegsrohstoffabteilung or KRA) was set up under the leadership of Walther Rathenau. It was Rathenau who was directly responsible for the prohibition on the use of saltpeter. (11) He, therefore, is the person in large part responsible creating the motivation for the meat industry in Germany to change from saltpeter to sodium nitrite as curing medium of choice for the German meat industry during World War One. It was the vision and leadership of Walther Rathenau, the man responsible for restricting the use of saltpeter, which drove Germany to produce synthesized Chilean Saltpeter. He saw this as one of the most important tasks of his KRA. He said: “I initiated the construction of large saltpeter factories, which will be built by private industries with the help of governmental subsidies and will take advantage of recent technological developments to make the import of saltpeter entirely unnecessary in just few months“. (Lesch, J. E., 2000: 1)

Fritz Harber was one of the experts appointed by Rathenau to evaluate a study on the local production of nitric acid. During World War One production was shifted from fertilizer to explosives, particularly through the conversion of ammonia into a synthetic form of Chile saltpeter, which could then be changed into other substances for the production of gunpowder and high explosives (the Allies had access to large amounts of saltpeter from natural nitrate deposits in Chile that belonged almost totally to British industries; Germany had to produce its own). It has been suggested that without this process, Germany would not have fought in the war, or would have had to surrender years earlier.” (www.princeton.edu)

So it happened that Germany became the leader in the world in synthesised sodium nitrate production and it effectively replaced its reliance on saltpeter from Chile with synthesised sodium nitrate, produced by BASF and other factories. As a result of the First World War, sodium nitrite was produced at levels not seen previously in the world and in large factories that were built, using the latest processing techniques and technology. Sodium nitrite, like sodium nitrate, was being used in the production of explosives. Nitroglycerin is an example of an explosive used extensively by Germany in World War One that uses sodium nitrite in its production.

Ball-and-stick model of Amyl nitrite used in the production of nitroglycerin. Amyl nitrite is produced from sodium nitrite. The diagram shows the amyl group attached to the nitrite functional group.

Sodium nitrite and the coal-tar dye industry

The importance of the manufacturing cost of nitrite and the matter surrounding availability can be seen in the fact that sodium nitrite has been around since well before the war. Despite the fact that it was known that nitrite is the curing agent and not nitrate, and despite the fact that sodium nitrite has been tested in meat curing agents, probably well before a clandestine 1905 test in the USA, it did not replace saltpeter as the curing agent of choice. is was due to cost restrictions as much as public opinion.

The technology that ultimately is responsible for synthesising Chilean Saltpeter and made low-cost sodium nitrite possible was incubated in the coal-tar dye and textile industry and in the medical field. The lucrative textiles and dye industry was the primary reason for German institutions of education, both in science and engineering to link with industry, resulting in strong, well-organised skills driven German economy. For example, “Bayer had close ties with the University of Göttingen, AGFA was linked to Hofmann at Berlin, and Hoechst and BASF worked with Adolph Baeyer who taught chemists in Berlin, Strasbourg, and Munich.” (Baptista, R. J.. 2012: 6)

“In the late 1870s, this knowledge allowed the firms to develop the azo class of dyes, discovered by German chemist Peter Griess, working at an English brewery, in 1858. Aromatic amines react with nitrous acid to form a diazo compound, which can react, or couple, with other aromatic compounds.” (Baptista, R. J.. 2012: 6)

Nitrous acid (HONO) is to nitrite (NO2-) what nitric acid (NO3) is to nitrate (NO3-). According to K. H. Saunders, a chemist at Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., Martius was the chemist to whom the introduction of sodium nitrite as the source of nitrous acid was due. (Saunders, K. H., 1936: 26)

The Economic Imperative

The simple fact is that ammonia can be synthesized through the direct synthesis ammonia method at prices below what can be offered through Chilean Saltpeter. (Ernst, FA. 1928: 92 and 100) Sodium Nitrite can be supplied at prices below Chilean saltpeter and this made sodium nitrite the most effective curing agent at the lowest price since World War One.

As an example of the cost differences, the price of Nitric Acid (HNO3) from direct synthesis in 1928 was $23.60 per ton HNO3 plus the cost of 606 lb. of NH3 by-product and from Chilean Nitrate at $32.00 per ton of HNO3, plus the cost of 2840 N NO3 by-product. (Ernst, FA. 1928: 112)

The Advantage of Scale and Technology

By 1927, Germany was still by far the world’s largest direct syntheses ammonia producer. Production figures for the year 1926/ 1927 exceeded Chilean saltpeter exports even if compared with the highest levels of exports that Chilean saltpeter ever had in 1917. A total of 593 000 tons of nitrogen was fixed around the world in 1926/27. Of this figure, Germany produced 440 000 tons or 74%. The closest competitor was England through the Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates Ltd. with a total capacity of 53 000 tons of nitrogen per year. (Ernst, FA. 1928: 119, 120)

In the USA, seven direct synthesis plants were in operation with a combined capacity of 28 500 tons of nitrogen per year. (Ernst, FA. 1928: 120)

Supporting Evidence from the USA

The thesis that before the war, the production of sodium nitrite was not advanced enough for its application in the meat industry (resulting in high prices and low availability) is confirmed when we consider the situation in the USA.

The first US plant for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen was build in 1917 by the American Nitrogen Products Company at Le Grande, Washington. It could produce about one ton of nitrogen per day. In 1927 it was destroyed by a fire and was never rebuild. (Ernst, FA, 1928: 14)

An article in the Cincinnati Enquirer of 27 September 1923 reports that as a result of cheap German imports of sodium nitrite following the war, the American Nitrogen Products Company was forced to close its doors four years before the factory burned down. The imports referred to, was as a result of Germany selling their enormous stockpiles of sodium nitrite at “below market prices” and not directly linked to a lower production price in Germany, even though this was probably the case in any event. ( The Cincinnati Enquirer ( Cincinnati, Ohio), 27 September 1923. Page 14.)

The meat curers initially used sodium nitrite directly (i.e. not mixed with sodium chloride). It looks similar to regular table salt. Several cases of poisoning were reported including the mass poisoning of 34 people including a child who died in Leipzig. The Government promptly banned its use (Hans Marquardt , et al, 1999: 21), but in the prevailing war conditions, and with the Government’s inability to stamp out the massive black market in foods, there can be no doubt that this practice persisted throughout the war.

The practice of colouring curing salt containing sodium nitrite pink, probably stems from this indecent of incidents like this, in order to prevent people from confusing sodium nitrite with table salt. The practice became law in most countries in subsequent years and the remains to this day. The Vienna University document indicates that the fast curing of sodium nitrite was recognised and after the war, the ban was lifted.

Walter Rathenau’s actions may have motivated the change, but it was the developments in synthesizing ammonia, sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite which provided the price point for the compound to remain the curing agent of choice, even after the war and after the prohibition on the use of saltpeter was lifted.

By 1909, the world production of inorganic nitrogen by the electric arc method and some miscellaneous processes were standing at a combined 3000 metric tons. The Haber process was not invented yet. One year after Ladic started working as a meat curer, by 1913, the arc and miscellaneous processes yielded 18 000 metric tons and the Haber process, 7000 metric tons.

By 1917, the arc and miscellaneous processes delivered 30 000 metric tons and the Haber process, 100 000 metric tons. This was 5 years after Ladic learned the art of curing and possibly started using sodium nitrite in meat curing. Over these five years, he has seen a dramatic increase in the availability of nitrite and therefore a reduction in nitrite prices. In 1920, the Haber process delivered a staggering 308 000 metric ton of nitrogen, compared to the 33 600 metric tons of the arc and miscellaneous processes. (Scott, E. Kilburn. 1923; : 859–76)

World War One broke out on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. When the war ended, Germany had huge stockpiles of sodium nitrite (along with many other war-chemicals). They had to pay a massive war debt and raise the German economy from the dead. These were desperate times and Germany threw its full energy and industriousness behind this effort. The effort focused on the lucrative market of the USA.

The USA – 1910’s – Nitrite on Trial

The drama of the sale of German nitrites played itself off in the USA and particularly in Chicago. This directly led to the creation of a legendary curing salt, Prague Salt, which later became Prague Powder. We used Prague Powder all the years that I was with Woodys. These events played off in America.

We begin our US story by looking at public and government views on nitrite. During the 1910s, the USA wrestled with the question of whether nitrites in food constitute adulteration and it’s consideration created its own epic drama.

Vastly opposing views were held in relation to preservatives and colourants generally. Prof. Julius Hortvet, a chemist at the Minnesota Dairy and Food Commission said in an address delivered on 16 July 1907, at the Eleventh Annual Convention of the Association of State and National Food and Dairy Departments, in Jamestown, “Some state laws go so far as to inflict fine and imprisonment for making an article appear better than it really is.” He presented the opposing view when he said that he believes that “if we must have legislation in regards to this, it would be wiser to reserve it and punish the man who did not make his food product as attractive as possible.” (American Food Journal; 1907)

In his speech, he made the following prophetic comment about saltpeter which in years to come would become one of the dominant arguments for the use of nitrite in foods. He said that “we know..that certain substances, as salt and saltpeter, have caused death from the effects of large doses.” He then draws a brilliant comparison between these products and alcohol when he said that “alcohol is classed as a poison.” His point was that what is good for alcohol, which is a poison if consumed in high concentrations and large volumes, should be good for saltpeter (i.e. limit the amount of nitrate and nitrite in foods instead of banning it altogether, as is the case with alcohol). “In short,” he said, “the whole question sometimes is relative.” (American Food Journal; 1907)

He was “not contending that certain articles commonly used in…food may or may not under certain circumstances act as a poison.” He was “simply defending… against two possible evils: first, the addition to…food of any substances that will tend to augment the possibilities of harm arising from our daily diet.” His second point sounds like one directed to the use of nitrite and its medicinal use when he said that “he is secondly defending against,” the addition to … foods of substances having therapeutic or even toxic properties by persons unqualified to prescribe such substances.” (American Food Journal; 1907) He is possibly tripped up by a lack of scientific understanding about nitrites at the time, but both cautionary notes are commended and points that I have for years lived by.

In the 1910s, the US Department of Agriculture had the right to promulgate “standards of purity for food products and to determine what is regarded as adulteration therein.” (American Food Journal; 1907 vol 2 no 2, 15 Feb 1907, p43 ) Whether these standards would become law was an open question at this stage. If there was a dispute about a substance, it was heard by a special organ of the US Department of Agriculture, the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts, created in 1908.

The battleground about the use of nitrites itself was not the meat industry. It seems that the meat industry considered and possibly used it in secret. The battle played out in its use as a bleaching agent in flour. The controversy came to a head in a landmark court case in 1910 related to flour.

The millers were infuriated because the attorney general opted for a jury trial instead of referring the matter to the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts. (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 July 1910; Page 15) I can only suspect that he was himself against the use of nitrites in food and probably did not want scientists to decide.

A court case was brought by the US Federal Government against the Mill and Elevator Company of Lexington, Nebraska. The charge was that they adulterated and misbranded flour and sold it to a grocer in Castle, Missouri. The government seized as evidence 625 sacks of flour from the grocer. The court case lasted five weeks. The case was brought by the government under the pure food and drug act of 1906. (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 July 1910; Page 15) This is an act “for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes.” (www.fda.gov)

The government contended that “poisonous nitrites are produced in the flour by bleaching.” They did not share the view of Prof. Julius Hortvet that we looked at earlier who said that these matters are relative to the amount of the substance used since alcohol is also a poison if used in the right quantity. The Federal Government said that “any amount of poison introduced into food is an adulteration.” (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 July 1910; Page 15)

The issue was that as much as 80% of the flour produced in the USA during that time was bleached with a nitrogen peroxide process. Flour naturally has a creamy tint. The cheaper the grade, the more creamy it is. In ages past, flour was bleached simply by age. The chemical bleaching process with nitrogen peroxide instantly changes the yellowest flour whiter than the highest grade. The process results in residue traces of nitrous and nitric acid being left in the flour which produce nitrites and nitrates. (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 July 1910; Page 15)

The defense argued that “nitrates (and nitrites) were present in such small quantities that no man could eat enough bread at one time to be poisoned by them.” (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 Jul 1910; Page 15) The government contended that “if this view were upheld by the courts all foodstuffs manufactured could introduce quantities of poison into their products, infinitely small in each case, but devastating in their cumulative effect.” (Chicago Daily Tribune, 7 Jul 1910, Thu, Page 15) (I will look at the arguments and provide an overview of how the international food industry answered it in the years following 1910 in a separate letter)

This was a case of huge importance to the industry as can be seen from the list of people called upon by the defense. Pierce Butler of St Paul acted as a special attorney for the defense. (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 Jul 1910; Page 15) Whether he still had the position in 1910 when the case was heard must be verified, but he was a lawyer of such stature that in 1908, Butler was elected President of the Minnesota State Bar Association. From 1923 to 1939 he served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. (saintpaulhistorical.com)

Apart from Butler, “a large staff of distinguished lawyers fought for the company who’s flour was seized, and for the millers of Nebraska, the millers of Kansas, and the company who makes the bleaching machines. Among the experts who testified were all the toxicologists who testified in a previous landmark case (the Swope case), professors of chemistry and medicine from twenty universities, doctors, bakers, millers, and housewives.” (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 Jul 1910; Thu, Page 15) After seven hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict in favour of the government upholding the charge that the bleached flour was both adulterated and misbranded. (Chicago Daily Tribune; 7 Jul 1910; Thu, Page 15) It is fair to conclude that by 1910, nothing was more sensitive in food production than the presence of nitrites and the use of sodium nitrite in food was highly controversial.

Sodium Nitrite Tested in Meat Curing in Chicago

In the early 1900s, in Chicago, the powerful meatpacking companies set up by Phil Armour, Gustav Swift, and Edward Morris were all looking for ways to reduce steers to beef and hogs to pork in the quickest, most economical and the most serviceable manner.” (The Indiana Gazette. 28 March 1924). The earliest reference to a test of meat curing with sodium nitrite in the USA places a secret experiment conducted where sodium nitrite was used to cure meat in 1905. [11] This was probably done in Chicago. When the “Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act” of 1906 was promulgated, it made the use of sodium nitrite in food illegal. It was not specifically forbidden, but the act was applied, for example in the 1910 court case we just looked at, in such a way that it was seen as making its use in food illegal.

During the 1910s a very interesting article appeared in Chicago that places a company with the technology to produce sodium nitrite in the same city. It appeared in the American Food Journal of 15 February 1907 entitled “Cheap Nitrogen.” It said that a Chicago-based company was producing nitric acid by the electric arc method invented by Prof. Mościcki of the University of Freiburg, Switzerland, that we looked at before. The method, in reality, was able to produce both nitric and nitrous acid (US patent US1097870) and dates back to 1901. (cesa-project.eu) The article states that the process made its production “cheap enough to be commercially applicable.” (American Food Journal. Vol 2. No 2. 15 Feb 1907, p29) The entrepreneur behind this company was William M. Thomas, who set an experimental plant up in Marshfield Avenue, Chicago. His main goal was probably to produce fertilizer. (Chicago Sunday Tribune, Nov 10, 1907)

We have already referred to the electric arc method several times. Mościcki, the inventor of the process was the former assistant to Józef Wierusz-Kowalski (1896), professor of physics, and rector (provost) at Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Switzerland. Prof Mościcki was an interesting person. After a very successful academic career and a career as an inventor, he became the 3rd president of the second Polish Republic. He was in office from 4 June 1926 to 30 September 1939. Another interesting fact relates directly to his invention is that in Bern, Switzerland, his patent application was handled by none other than Albert Einstein.

“In 1905 Einstein evaluated Prof Mościcki’s special arc furnace which employed a rotating electric arc and was used for the production of nitric (and nitrous) acid…” ” The field generated by an electromagnet was used to rotate the arc. The 26-year-old physicist (Einstein) and the still young (38) but already renowned inventor and scholar (Prof Mościcki’s) met and discussed the patented idea. Einstein was curious to know why an electric arc changed its orientation in a magnetic field.” Prof Mościcki’s became a successful businessman in Switzerland. (Zofia Gołąb-Meyer Marian. 2006) [12]

When we looked at the career of Ladic Nachtmullner, we have seen that the first production of nitrous acid in Switzerland was in 1910, during World War One based on the invention of Prof Mościcki. This happened “immediately after his procedure was patented.” “A factory was opened in Chippis in Wallis canton, Switzerland.” “In the subsequent years, this procedure was substantially perfected and nitrous acid could be supplied not only to Switzerland but also to neighbouring countries.” (cesa-project.eu)

What is interesting in relation to Chicago is that the American Food Journal article says that the Chicago company was already in production by 1907 manufacturing nitric acid “in a small way” from free nitrogen, using the technology invented by Mościcki’s. (American Food Journal. Vol 2. No 2. 15 Feb 1907, p29)

In the USA the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen was a priority and they knew the lagged behind Germany. The first US plant for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen was built in 1917 by the American Nitrogen Products Company at Le Grande, Washington. It could produce about one ton of nitrogen per day. In 1927 it was destroyed by a fire and was never rebuild. (Ernst, FA, 1928: 14)

We can conclude then with great certainty that there was at least one company in Chicago by 1907 that could produce sodium nitrite. Was this venture funded by the meatpacking companies? It is a question for further discovery. A much larger project got underway in 1917, but by 1923, the USA was not in a position to supply material quantities of sodium nitrite.

Nitrite Curing Known in the USA Pre-1925

A document, published in the USA in 1925 shows that sodium nitrite as a curing agent has been known well before 1925. The document was prepared by the Chicago based organisation, The Institute American Meat Packers and published in December 1925. The Institute started as an alignment of the meatpacking companies set up by Phil Armour, Gustavus Swift, Nelson Morris, Michael Cudahy, Jacob Dold and others with the University of Chicago.

A newspaper article about the Institute sets its goal, apart from educating meat industry professionals and new recruits, “to find out how to reduce steers to beef and hogs to pork in the quickest, most economical and the most serviceable manner.” (The Indiana Gazette. 28 March 1924). The document is entitled, “Use of Sodium Nitrite in Curing Meats“, and it is clear that the direct use of nitrites in curing brines has been practiced from earlier than 1925. (Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, December 1925: 1243) The article begins “The authorization of the use of sodium nitrite in curing meat by the Bureau of Animal Industry on October 19, 1925, through Amendment 4 to B. A. I. Order 211 (revised), gives increased interest to past and current work on the subject.” Sodium Nitrite curing brines would therefore have arrived in the USA, well before 1925.

It continues in the opening paragraph, “It is now generally accepted that the salpteter added in curing meat must first be reduced to nitrite, probably by bacteria, before becoming available as an agent in producing the desirable red color in the cured product. This reduction is the first step in the ultimate formation of nitrosohemoglobin, the color principle. The change of nitrate to nitrite is by no means complete and varies within considerable limits under operating conditions. Accordingly, the elimination of this step by the direct addition of smaller amounts of nitrite means the use of less agent and a more exact control.”

Aftermath of the Great War

At the end of World War One, England had its own stockpiles of nitrite to dispose of. Sodium nitrite in the UK appeared for sale in an advertisement in the Times of London on 1 May 1919, 6 months after the armistice. (The Times, London)

The stockpile of the English was dwarfed by what was available from Germany. The German Government did not wait long before they started selling their war stockpile. An article appeared in The Watchman and Southron on 19 Feb 1921 and shows that German goods, especially chemicals have been making its way to the USA in such quantities that it was seen as a threat to the local industry.

Restrictions on German Sodium Nitrite in the USA

Our three worlds of Germany, Prague, and the USA now merge. The Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) reported on 14 Jan 1921 that “large stocks of imported sodium nitrite are offered at extremely low prices by agents of German manufacturers.”

Some of the tactics used by Germany to get goods into the USA, including goods subjected to presidential restrictions, were to import goods through the “concealment of the origin of shipment.” German chemicals, subject to such restrictions have been making their way into the USA “appearing as having been shipped from Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere. “Also, there has been extensive smuggling.” The article states that the German plans to sell their products in the USA and economic domination have been made as early as May 1919. (The Watchman and Southron, 19 Feb 1921, page 3)

Great emphasis is placed on sodium nitrite. The author of an article that appeared in The Watchman and Southron, 19 Feb 1921, misread its importance when it was reported that “sodium nitrite would seem to be of minor importance.” “Since the first of the year (Jan 1921), the Germans have glutted the American sodium nitrite market, threatening to destroy the hitherto prosperous American industry, and no relief has yet been obtained through the war trade board.” (The Watchman and Southron, 19 Feb 1921, page 3)

In April 1921, the call made in February for greater control over the import of sodium nitrite was answered when the war trade board in the USA placed an embargo on the importation of sodium nitrite. In the future, it could only be imported under license.

An article that appeared in the Detroit Free Press, 22 April 1921, reported that the goal of the embargo was to “check the heavy imports from Germany and Norway which have swamped the market in the country and reduced prices to a level below the cost of manufacture in the United States. (Detroit Free Press, 22 Apr 1921, Page 18)

On 7 May 1924, The Indianapolis News, reports that the tariff for importing sodium nitrite was increased by a massive 50% from 3 cents a pound to 4.5 cents per pound. This was the maximum duty permitted under the Fordney-MacCumber tariff act. The additional duty was levied in response to a petition filed by the American Nitrogen Products Company of Seattle, Washington. (Detroit Free Press, 22 Apr 1921, Page 18) In June it is reported that the measures were effective and that sodium nitrite prices were increasing. (Detroit Free Press, Detroit, Michigan, 11 June 1921, p4)

German Sodium Nitrite Appears as Curing Agent in the USA – Ingredients for Deceit.

Union Stock Yard, Chicago, USA, C 1920

Then arrived 1925 and everything seems to change as sodium nitrite became available through the Griffith Laboratories in a curing mix for the meat industry. They described Prague Salt and how they came upon the concept in official company documents as follows, “The mid-twenties were significant to Griffith as it had been studying closely a German technique of quick-curing meats. Short on manpower and time, German meat processors began curing meats using Nitrite with salt instead of slow-acting saltpeter, potassium nitrate. This popular curing compound was known as “Prague Salt.” (Griffith Laboratories Worldwide, Inc.)

In Canada, Prague Salt was classified as food adulteration. A progress report from the Canadian department of agriculture in 1925 lists the fact that “one sample of Prague salt” was tested and it was found to contain “5.87 % of potassium nitrite.” It calls it an adulteration. (Progress Report for the Years Canada. Dept. of Agriculture. Division of Chemistry, 1912)

In 1925 in the USA however, the fortunes of nitrite seem to change overnight. If the courts continue to find against the use of an ingredient in food that is seen as a food adulteration, the easiest way to solve the problem is to change the law. In Oct 1925 the American Bureau of Animal Industries legalised the use of sodium nitrite as a curing agent for meat. In December of the same year (1925) the Institute of American Meat Packers document appeared which we already referenced, “created by the large packing plants in Chicago”, entitles “The use of sodium Nitrite in Curing Meats.”

A key player suddenly emerges onto the scene in the Griffith Laboratories, based in Chicago and very closely associated with the powerful meatpacking industry. In that same year (1925) Hall was appointed as chief chemist by the Griffith Laboratories and Griffith started to import a mechanically mixed salt from Germany consisting of sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite and sodium chloride, which they called “Prague Salt.”

Probably the biggest of the powerful meat packers was the company created by Phil Armour. You will recall that Phil was the mentor who set David de Villiers Graaff on his course of to build refrigerated railway cars to transport meat which became the backbone of his Anglo Boer War supply to the English forces. More than any other company at that time, Armour’s reach was global. It was said that Phil had an eye on developments in every part of the globe. (The Saint Paul Daily Globe, 10 May 1896, p2) He passed away in 1901 (The Weekly Gazette, 9 Jan 1901), but the business empire and network that he created endured long enough to have been aware of developments in Prague in the 1910s and early ’20s.

Could one of the offers of employment that Ladislav received before 1926 have been from Armour or one of the other meatpackers in Chicago? Griffith Laboratories is formed in the year following the armistice in 1919. This is the same year when the United Kingdom starts selling its sodium nitrite stockpile. Two years later, even cheaper German and Norwegian sodium nitrite start arriving in the USA. In response to this, import duties are levied against German sodium nitrite.

By April 1921, the import duties have been bolstered by a blanket embargo on importing sodium nitrite, except where a special permit is granted. In 1924, the tariffs on sodium nitrite are increased by 50% to the maximum allowed level permitted under the law. By this time, the use of sodium nitrite in curing brines were in all likelihood the norm in Chicago and the 50% increase would have impacted the bottom line of these companies.

Is it possible that by calling it the curing mix from Germany, Prague Salt (as opposed to German Salt or German Nitrites), did Griffith sidestep the import tariff and the required permit for importing sodium nitrite completely? My thesis is that it is entirely possible. Even probable. It probably misrepresented the content in Prague Powder (mislabeling) as well as misrepresenting the country of origin.

Just as a side note, I have over the years seen the same trend returning to the meat industry. More and more companies pack their products without declaring the ingredients and apart from protecting the exact composition, I have seen many illegal ingredients going into meat curing in this way.

When Phil Armour passed away, his personal fortune was estimated at $50 000 000. This is almost $1,500,000,000 in 2016. So powerful were the packing companies that US anti-trust legislation was created to break these companies up. The point is that big money was at stake and a big influence on parts of the American government.

Prague Salt

Is it possible that Prague Salt is no more than a clever name given to a curing brine? Taking the full weight of the historical context of events in Prague, Germany, and the USA into account in the 1910s and 1920s; particularly the severe measures to keep German sodium nitrite out of the USA, with the last blow being dealt, in 1924; understanding the extreme pressure on the packing houses to deliver huge volumes of bacon faster, I seriously doubt it. The name was probably deliberate in referring to the salt invented by Ladic in Prague but instead of giving him credit for the invention, it was in all likelihood a ruse to distract the attention from the real issue that German sodium nitrite was still coming into the USA despite a ban.

It seems that the name, Prague Salt was crafted to misrepresent the country of origin and possibly its real composition. Importing salt was no problem. There is a possibility, of course, based on the popularity of salt from Bohemia, and the fact that we know it was widely exported, including to Germany, that the original mix done in Germany, could even have contained salt from Prague, mixed with German sodium nitrites. Whether this was so or not, the name had enough of a basis in reality in Ladislav Nachtmullner, Praganda and the famous salts from Prague to get it past the customs officers at the American harbours and into the meatpacking plants of Chicago and later, around the world. The fact that it was tested in Canada and found to contain nitrite shows that this was not declared at borders, at least in one of the events of the import into Canada and even though this does not prove that it was done in the US also, it builds the case for the theory that it was imported into the US without a disclosure of its nitrite content at the borders.

Prof. Julius Hortvet, in his address in Pittsburgh, had these prophetic concluding remarks about the future of science in the food industry. He said that “…it is imperative that the use of colouring matter should be kept under intelligent control. Regulations of the food industries will in future depend more than ever before on the results of scientific investigations, and the laboratory will become the dominant factor in the shaping of food standards and food laws.” (American Food Journal; 1907)

The legal status of nitrites as food additive was clarified in 1925 through proper legislation, based on Prof. Hortvet’s principle of “intelligent control” when science decided the matter and it was taken out of the hands of “the court of popular opinion.” However, the involvement of the packing plants and Griffith in everything that happened in 1925 raises suspicion of collusion with the US government.

The real hero in the story is the master butcher from Prague who through practical application and the exact scientific inquiry that Prof Hortvet spoke about, developed the first commercially successful curing mix, Praganda. Unknowingly, he became the central figure in the saga about the naming of Prague Powder and the worldwide phenomena of the direct addition of nitrites to curing brines.

Finally, there is Griffith Laboratories. The way in which Prague Salt came into the USA was probably not above board. They did, however, became pivotal around the world in making the direct addition of sodium nitrite through Prague Salt and later, Prague Powder a worldwide phenomenon. If Ladislav was the messiah to the bacon industry with his nitrite containing curing mix, Griffith was his St. Paul, the evangelist to the gentiles!

They preached the gospel of a new curing brine that swept the world. So much so that today, it is universally used as the curing brine of choice and only a handful of artisan curing operations still use the tank curing method. One of the largest operations in the world that retain this as at least one of their curing methods is Direct Table Foods from Bury St Edmunds, United Kingdom.

This was one of the most significant developments in the world of bacon curing. As I have said many times before, understanding the limitations and the mechanics of the system is very important to the modern-day curing plant manager. The tale of nitrite and how sodium nitrite became the curing salt of choice is riveting and involves some of the most important names in scientific history.

Well, my son, there you have it. A story of suspense, intrigue, and risk-taking! Remarkable! I am excited to see you soon during your upcoming vacation. There is a chance that Lauren may come home over the same time. What a blessing that will be to Minette and me. Liam is finishing school this year as Luan is going to Grade 1. We can all go up in Kirstenbosch with Skeleton Gorge one morning and spend the day in the Botanical Gardens in Cape Town. I can not wait to see you!

Lots of love from Cape Town,

Dad and Minette.