#I love folklore and the little ways people explain natural events | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dcwnthercbbithcle · 11 months ago

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@dollhidden asked for a 'Plot's Please!' for their characters, BUT TUMBLR ATE THE MESSAGE AFTER I TRIED TO SAVE THE DRAFT! Very Sadge!

send me “plots please” and I’ll respond with 3 (or more) interesting plots / relationships / connections I can think of for our muses! | ACCEPTING

HEY LADYBUG!! Happy New Year! How've you been doing? I hope it's been well! I won't lie to you; I went a little hard with these ones, and the major reason I made Doe multi-verse and more inspired by Dead By Daylight was because of you and your muses, or more specifically, wanting to roleplay with you in your verses!! ASDASDSADH

POTENTIAL INTERACTION COMBINATIONS / INTERESTING DYNAMIC IDEAS

Okay, so, straight off the bat, given how long we've been mutual and all the convos we've had, I don't think I really need to spend the time selling you on my muses and explaining their entire deals and instead focus on the many potentially interesting combinations with a couple bits of explanations for them while completely VIBRATING with excitement! ASDHASDHASD

So first, Fíadh, now I THINK I've told you about Fíadh before, but just in case, this is a bun memory moment, let me rewind. In the broadest sense, she is an Inscryption based oc that takes notes from the entity known as Leshy for her background. She's a mix of folklore, classically dark fairy tales, gods that hold humans to the exact bestial nature as all other animals, sacrifice, bloodshed and the brutal beauty of nature. Now, she isn't CONSTRAINED to Inscryption; it's just an important context for understanding both the sort of woman and character that she is! She is my not-so-feral, malevolent, formerly human mountain-dwelling monster that will eat people alive! She's fun and sassy, like a goat, but also an apex predator who knows that about herself.

NOW THIS IN MIND: Fíadh would be FASCINATING to watch and interact with any of the RE: Village muses. Now, this is partially because being confronted with the fact that she's not the most dangerous beast in the woods would be a startling revelation. But also, more like her but not like her, ones that left their humanity behind, who gave it up for 'family' and duty in exchange for this feeling of belonging and love.

Especially Lady D or any of the daughters, because, like, Fíadh isn't feral feral but she is so unacquainted with 'proper' 1910s+ manners that I think it would be funny for the girls to have a 'WHY IS SHE ALLOWED TO DO IT?' and Lady D having a minor coronary because HER HOUSE, her nice, clean house is getting HOOF PRINTS PUT EVERYWHERE AND SNOW!! NO YOU GIRLS CAN'T KEEP HER!!

NOW SALLY, SALLY, MY BELOVED, my mean ghost lady who will adopt 90% of your muses. You know Sally, I don't need to explain Sally but like, hear me out:

Sally adopts Rosie inside the fog or in Sally's post-fog AU. Now, in the fog, the AU is pretty obvious, the Entity is feeding on the tragedy that's befallen everyone's favorite mold baby and the lycan monsters that have hunted her father in his endless quest to rescue her.

BUT POST-FOG AU?? Rosie is in recovery from the events of the DLC that have had an obviously traumatizing effect on her. Sally, who herself has been a victim to very similar circumstances in the fog both BEING the murder ghost and being eternally tormented and torn apart by the ghosts of her patients reaching out for help, is trying to take her underwing and help her step forward in a way that Best DadTM Chris can't fully help because he's never lived through a hell comparable to them.

Also, Sally and Ellie <3. Ellie reminds her so much of a boy (Frank) she used to be the social worker in charge of, per her modern-ish AU. Being driven both by guilt and the ghost (metaphorical) of the little boy, she failed to stop from slipping through the cracks to go full in on trying to correct and model healthiness for her when she isn't healthy at all.

AND DOOOOOOE, oh my god, where could I even begin to start with Doe?? She's my ghost girl, but less murder and anger and hatred and more depression and confusion and fear!! Please DM me for more information about her and the card so I don't completely spam and overwhelm this meme! We can do so many non-DBD AU things with her, though!!

Your Until Dawn muses, for instance, she is a PERFECT character to interact with any and or all of them within either the events of the game's narrative or in a kind of aftermath 'revisiting the old trauma and confronting it' AU.

HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE MUSES??? It's more of a stretch to insert Doe into that Universe, BUT HELLO!!! Ghost ladies who die miserable deaths throughout their lives NEED to stick together! Let Doe, my strange little creature, go in there and befriend the other ghosties.

THE LAST OF US TOO! Doe is usually depicted as dead for obvious reasons per her narrative, but I am SO OPEN to a living Last of Us / Apocalypse-style AU! It would be hilarious to see her little quiet spitfire self with Tess or any other girls her age!

PLOTS

OKAY, THERE ARE A LOT, AND I DON'T WANT TO SUBJECT YOU TO AN EVEN LONGER TEXT WALL, SO I'll LIMIT MYSELF TO ONE TERM THREAD IDEA, message me though!!! because I had ones for ALL of the ones I mentioned above and I am more than willing to elaborate in the dms or on my discord!

Fíadh and the Dimitrescu sisters!!! I know I said Alcina may be one of the most interesting because she fully stands above Fíadh's height, even with Fiadh's horns, and has the most extreme personality differences but HEAR me out!!

Let's set the stage: it's a standard pre-Ethan Winters storming in after baby Rosie, while Mother Miranda is still doing her plotting to bring back her daughter after the 'failures' of the lords and the Lycanthropes start to overrun villages left, right and center while the experiments continue.

The Lycan has worked well, or rather a tad too well, in driving away most life from the isolated, crumbling eastern European mountainsides that used to encompass the formerly expansive kingdom under Mother Miranda's reign. Except for Fíadh, the Lycans have proved to be largely pests for many of the other lords, especially Alcina, who is now finding difficulty in securing new, continuous virgin blood sources for her wines. They have DRAWN Fíadh closer and closer to the village boundaries.

You see, Fíadh is a being of the hunt and bloodlust by extension; she craves a challenge in her own domain to make the act of her feedings (entirely exsanguinating a being and drinking all of the blood from them while leaving most flesh untouched in a semi-vampiric fashion) less of a chore and more of an enriching exercise of cleverness, trickery and/or brute strength.

Humans are clever, so they often make appetizing prey in terms of entertainment, albeit frustrating and not physically enriching. They'll sometimes bypass her entirely, paying tribute to her leader so she cannot harm them, or, in the foolish case, will require a bit of disguise and environmental manipulation to trap them before they can leave her domain and thus enter into the blessed domains of maintained towns or past running water where she can't follow, but physically? No challenge; they are far smaller & far, far weaker. It takes little for her to tear them asunder, and the fun ends when she isn't following and plotting how to trap them like hares.

BUT THESE LYCANS? They are a HUNT for her in all aspects, fueling the bloodlust more than the limited game of unmutated humans. Many Lycans are smart enough to see the massive 7ft+ woman with goat horns and run, but not intelligent enough to remember how their previous unmutated human selves warded her away or escaped her pursuit. Instead, they will group up, stand and charge, and physically? This is a major threat, especially if they bring out their leaders or the most mutated. They stand a chance against her physically; she can't simply trap and run them down.

She has to remain clever, pick them away from each other and prepare for a real fight with the chance of her being HURT. Which is fun! It's a REAL hunt that she often craves but can't get from human prey. Combined with their blood functioning to feed and sustain her, just as the blood of any other humans can, without much in the way of brutal side effects other than it tasting less palatable to her. She is hooked on this new game and will follow the food source back to the source, expanding her territory in the forest as there is less of a need to remain at the high peaks of the mountains.

Which brings her directly toward and through the domain of Castle Dimitrescu and Alcinia. Their neck of the woods overlaps significantly with Fíadh's range, and with Fíadh's boldness expanding, the chances of them running into each other only grow while he ventures further for her hunts. But it's not a matter of inherent hostility. Fíadh isn't a creature that is murder on sight; she's often benign until she considers you food or an annoyance.

So, I have some ideas of where it could go from there!

MUTUAL CURIOUSITY, similar to introducing two cats from opposite sides of a window. Intense winter weather would deliberately keep the girls separated and isolated, allowing Fíadh to become familiarized with the sight and presumed roles of the girls within the castle. Perhaps they're curious enough to release Moroaicǎ from the dungeonous cellars and crypts of the castles or shoo Samcă from the uppermost areas of the castle. Providing her game and fun and forming a kind of rapport between the girls until the spring and summer warming could allow them to interact physically.

MAYBE THEY DECIDE TO HUNT EACH OTHER A LITTLE BIT, perhaps when the girls finally come into contact with Fíadh, who, to that point, has come to view and respect their place as residents in the area and thus 'not to be messed with' they decide to test her, just as anyone would a new toy. Trying to push the boundaries to see how much they can get away with, how long until she fights back against them, and eventually how much it takes until she breaks, given the girls have never been too great at preserving their toys. However, to the girl's delight and perhaps frustration, Fíadh doesn't break and die. Not like the humans they usually gain as staff and toys from Alcina. Something, something the curse, something, something being a supernatural creature, it's neither here nor there. In any case, the girls would eventually need a mutual cease-fire as once aggravated, Fíadh is BRUTAL and won't let up. Fíadh heals fast as long as she has blood, and between her size, the girls would have trouble attempting to overwhelm her, especially compared to a person like Ethan. She's a big target that would force them to attempt at their human forms, which, given her size advantage, would result in blows for Fíadh, but not enough to take her down.

Either way, they're separated; Fíadh is licking her wounds but recognizing well that the girls aren't to be hunted and instead wholly respected, not just cause they live there but because they put up a good fight and can hold her off well enough.

From there, things could either go down as an enemies-to-friends route, rather standardly. Perhaps the girl would delight in watching Fíadh hunt and feed in her own way. Maybe they want all the flesh left over from one of her kills, and they have a slow burn warming up to each other in that way. OR OR we could go with one of your ideas of Cass finding a hunting buddy who is willing to follow her in the sadistic hunts.

OR OR OR we could go an entirely different direction!! I'm open to any suggestions!!

But I will give you this image to play with: it's early spring, it's warming, but the temperatures at night still dip down dangerously low for the girls. But stir craziness is what it is, even in an estate as large as the Dimitrescu's. They're released for fun during the day under a strict curfew for their own safety, all return... but where's Daniela? Fuuuuck, she's being irresponsible again. All staff are being sent out en mass looking for her. The other girls are panicked & angry, but largely out of concern for Daniela. There doesn't seem to be much sign of her, could she lost?? It gets colder, but a stranger approaches the castle on a mission. It's Fíadh, and she has something massive wrapped up tightly in her arisaid and held to her furred and insulated chest. It's Daniela, burrito'd, warm and toasty, but now the Dimitrescu's are indebted to a fairy. (maybe, not actually; Fíadh isn't out for prices; the hilarity of Daniela getting stranded and needing to be wrapped up and returned home is enough payment)

RELATIONSHIPS + CONNECTIONS

Now, HEAR ME OUT: I love romance, and I could definitely see something that could develop with Fíadh and your RE: Village muses, most especially Cass, but I would not brush anyone out of possibilities. And same for Doe and either you Until Dawn or TLOU muses, though I will warn you, there is no happy endings with that gay ghost girl! Haha

In terms of non-romance though, FRIENDS!!! I love friends and I love enemies!! I am open and happy to do all of it, including slow burns that go from enemies to friends to enemies again! Relationships are MESSY but so am I! Haha

Also Sally would kill, murder and maim for Rosie, Ellie or little Sarah. Do you want to see why they feared her so terribly as the nurse?? Cause if you mess with the girlies, SHE WILL SHOW YOU AND THEN SOME! Haha

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mallowstep · 4 years ago

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the nature of folklore

today, i want to talk about the nature of folklore.

we're not divorced from it in the modern day by any means: the nature of folklore is that it is always there.

after all, how many times have you heard that if your roommate dies, you get an a? or listened eagerly to someone's tale of an impossible encounter with an impossible stranger?

folklore is omnipresent. it is woven into us.

that said, we don't have a ton of folklore via stories, oral history, and songs anymore. if i could singlehandedly change that, i would. i grew up telling stories, keeping the history of my family in vignettes i taught to my brother, making up comforting fables for my younger cousins when they couldn't sleep.

my mother sang me lullabies, amazing grace, you are my sunshine, tula tula, melodies i can no longer name but would recognize in a heartbeat.

i went to a summer camp where you were never too old for a bedtime story, where the greatest reward, even for a pack of sixteen year olds, desperately vieing for independence, was to hear another story. i can still tell you the story of the invisible prince, of how such and such and so and so met and married, recount the little prince or hatchet or my side of the mountain in impeccable detail.

unfortunately, i am but one voice, and i don't think i really want to change us back. let culture progress, it is the way of the world.

but i have so many stories for cats. trust me, i have about 20 drafts sitting of stories for these murder cats. but i want to take a moment to talk about how folklore works, what it does, and why it's important.

[3.7k words. 20 minute read. section headers, minimal formatting changes.]

oral history: a written explanation

i'm feeling a bit punny.

anyway, i'm not qualified to talk about oral history. what i am qualfied to do is talk about the broadest sense of it.

oral history is not an accurate way of keeping records. stories change, people forget things, the tales become exaggerated and tweaked.

but...it's not the worst way. it's a real, sincere, history.

for example, in my full moon, it's unlikely that one individual really mastermined this plan. especially not the same individual who sorted out some other important part of skyclan business, which in it of itself is a tall-tale.

realistically, the clans realized they had an error, decided on when they would meet, and just went with it.

but briarleap is one of skyclan's heroes. she's not the only one: rushfoot and dovestar are also important heroes. she fills a particular type of archetype: she's the young hero, who sees the world more clearly than those around her and comes up with a solution.

so it makes sense to assign her to the problems which are clever and had no obvious solution. she's not really a trickster archetype, but she is clever, young, and has no real power within the clan.

in other words, she's a ya novel protagonist.

likewise, the yet-unwritten story of briarleap and swallowpaw definitely didn't happen as it's told. that's just a nice box to put it in, a nice cover for an important lesson: mark unstable branches.

all the clans probably have a similar version of briarleap's story. i can't tell you for sure who the equivalent is, because i don't know, but it's worth remembering that almost none of these cats existed.

i think riverclan's will be a cat named briarstream.

you see what i mean, they're both named briar- because briarleap belongs to no cat. they just have a suffix that corresponds with common clan names.

now, i can't speak for anyone else, but in come back to you one by one, by solacefruit, there's a cautionary tale about catching koi. we get this line:

The koi were left alone because the tall folk loved them. That was the truth of the story. The real truth, not Linnetleaf’s version.

that confirms it, the story is a warning that's been polished into something kinder and more forgiving. (i highly recommend come back to you one by one btw.)

that's how oral history works.

it's not good for having a factual understanding of historical events, but...that's not really the point.

shared stories

another thing is, a lot of clans share the same stories.

i already talked about briarleap/stream/??? for the other clans, but it's more than just that.

every clan is going to claim that they have the right, correct story, that the other clans don't tell it well, etc., but with the exception of clan specific stories, that's not generally true.

okay this is hard to explain bc i'm still drafting/editing a lot of what i'm talking about right now and full moon is kind of a boring story for this. so i'm going to use the story of the long night, because that's the closest to finished and most likely to have been published by the time i finish this.

cw: the long night is a story that involves infanticide and cannibalism. i'm not graphic about it, but it's featured very heavily. we move into discussion at "STORY COMPLETE," and i move on entirely at "SAFE"

okay, so to summarize very briefly, the long night is a story about the seasons and about queen madness. it's one piece of clan creation mythos.

basically, before there were seasons, the night and day just took turns. during the night, everyone slept, but during the day, everything woke. one night, the night doesn't end. i'm telling the thunderclan version, because that's the version i'm working on, but this is a tale from before there were clans, so while every clan says their version is universal, it's definitely not.

there's a queen, slateflower, who has six kits (pigeonkit, harekit, fallowkit, dewkit, ripplekit, and muddykit), who are very young. her mate, silvershadow, has been hunting for her, because there was no clan to provide.

he's able to catch a small amount of prey, but as the night goes on, slateflower just doesn't have enough milk. she knows her kits are going to starve, so she picks the weakest one, kills it, and eats it. when silvershadow returns and asks what happens, she says that muddykit died and she buried her. this repeats itself until only pigeonkit and harekit are left.

silvershadow fails to catch anything, so he comes back, and sees slateflower try to decide who's weaker. he realizes what's happening, takes harekit from slateflower so she doesn't have to decide, and brings the kit into a clearing. he begs the moon to end the night so he can feed his family again.

it takes him a couple times, and he also is searching for another nursing queen. he finds a queen named flamepuddle, who also had a litter of six kits (silentkit, webkit, wildkit, dustykit, beetlekit, and talonkit), as well as taking in the kits of her sister, echofur, (heatherkit, redkit, goldkit, leafkit, cricketkit, and graykit), and right now, only redkit, leafkit, talonkit, goldkit, and cricketkit had survived. (the rest, and her sister, died of starvation.)

flamepuddle agrees to take in harekit, and the night eventually ends.

silvershadow decides that he, flamepuddle, and slateflower will live together. this isn't a thunderclan origin story, mind, just the beginning of collective cat behavior. but one of the reasons it is a distinctly thunderclan edition is because the implication is that later on, the other clans are all splinter groups.

there's also an implication that such large litters used to be more common, à la how in the bible, people used to be more fertile.

so anyway, because all cats are said to be descendents of these nine cats (silvershadow, flamepuddle, slateflower, redkit, talonkit, goldkit, cricketkit, harekit, and pigeonkit — leafkit dies later on), it's said they all carry the trauma of the long night and queens, feeling unsafe, will choose the strongest of their litter.

STORY COMPLETE

so.

in thunderclan's telling, flamepuddle and silvershadow are made to be the heroes, and slateflower is the villain. notice that slate is a windclan name, and the kits who die don't have very thunderclan prefixes. the implication is that this is because the other clans are weaker.

in a riverclan telling, instead of flamepuddle and slateflower, we might have puddlefeather and tallsong, and the kits who survive might be fallowkit and dewkit.

in skyclan, we might have mothpetal and nightstep, with surviving kits echokit and maplekit.

and so on. silvershadow usually keeps his name, tho. or at least half of it.

the 10th cat who dies is also variable. in thunderclan, it's another kit. slateflower is understood to not have intended her actions. in shadowclan, it's the slateflower analogy who dies. in riverclan, silvershadow dies and puddlefeather and tallsong have to work together.

so we always have the same story, but the details of it change, and there's a lot about the clan in that.

it might even be that the reason puddlefeather is able to keep five out of twelve kits alive is because she can fish for herself. tallsong can't.

and this is a story that's supposed to be universal, before the time of clans.

imagine how differnt briarleap and briarstream are. no, seriously, i don't have it in me to do five versions of every folk tale i write, so y'all have to live with one.

anyway, i could go on here, but wow, this section is...much longer than i meant as it is whoops.

SAFE

morals, protagonists, and antagonists

i'm not going to lie, i'm somewhat exhausted from the last section.

basically, the "protagonists" are often the ones who make mistakes. this is because that's a common theme for parables. you want the protagonist, who listeners relate to, to understand the mistakes and learn from them.

there's almost always a moral in these stories. they're not told just to entertain. they're ritualistic, nigh religious, tied in deeply with their culture.

finally, when an opposing clan is needed, (a) the clan telling the story is nearly always in the right, and (b) it tends to shift to whoever the clan is most antagonistic with.

a lot of my stories are shadowclan v skyclan because they have the strongest story-telling development and i don't have any aus planned for shadowclan and (old) skyclan, but i really like what i've developed for them.

in the case a friendly clan is needed, that also tends to shift, but it's less likely to change. it's significantly more likely to change if they're fighting with the clan in the tale.

for this reason, clans tend to be allies with cross territory clans in stories. you're just less likely to fight with someone who's territory you're across from, and you get fun flanking if you gang up on someone in the middle.

characters and archetypes

so i mentioned how briarleap is a certain kind of archetype, and that's pretty common in folklore. you've got your tricksters, witches, wise elders, w/e. i could do a bunch of research into folklore and find a canonized list but i'm approximately 90% sure it's going to tell me it varies by culture so. instead of doing that, i'm going to talk through some of the character archetypes i've been using.

please keep in mind that this is highly suspect to change. also, i'm referring to a lot of cats in my lore posts, so i'm sorry, because if you don't keep up with that, you might be a little bit lost. if you want to check out my folklore, it's here. maybe one day i'll make a kit simulation list that gives them to you in the order a kit would be told them.

the young warrior — characters like briarleap. smart, creative, and willing to speak up when something is wrong. they're who young kits should aspire to be. they're the most common protagonist in stories for young kits, and they're one of the only protagonists for stories with a "good" lead.

cassandra — prophetic characters who struggle to act on their prophecies. goosefeather types. they're cautionary tales, warnings about who not to be, because these are true seers who failed. sometimes, it is framed as the clan being wrong (e.g., berrymoon's main story is about this), but usually it's because the character said too much/too little, at the wrong time, etc.

impulsive apprentice — another warning. characters like swallowpaw. their actions are usually not actually wrong, but they end up being wrong with hindsight. they're tragic characters, and their warnings are usually about the rules established because of them, rather than not being like them.

wise leader/deputy — it's exactly what it sounds like lmao. usually, this is going to be the deputy more than the leader, because the deputy is a far more relatable position than the leader. these are your rushfoots and lilytails, deputies who make quick decisions on the behalf of their clan.

foolish/selfish warrior — warriors who take actions selfishly, which wrap back around to hurt themselves. these are the "protagonists" of the tales about feeding elders and kits first, and so on. they're actually the most common protagonist in stories over all. it's kind of a wide category, including everything from slateflower from "the long night" to lightningcall from "full moon." you know, a queen who only escaped the dark forest because it didn't exist, and a tom whose "mistake" was not showing up to a deputy meeting he was physically unable to attend.

there are, naturally, many more archetypes. there are archetypes for every role in the clan, often many. there's probably some amount of symbolism in the names — perhaps "-leap" is a skyclan indicator of a young warrior, etc., but at least right now, i'm not interested in that. i have more fun naming characters than worrying about the symbolism behind it, because i'm trying to also provide an understanding of clanlife, and that requires bending the rules.

(i mean, for what it's worth, this is true of many things. "the long night" as thrushpelt tells it is not the full version. usually, you wouldn't separate it from "the four seasons," but also, he glazes over the infanticide and cannibalism because he's talking to, like, four-year-olds, explaining how their mother had inherited a trait from slateflower.)

overall, though, i think these five are enough to give you an idea of what the archetypes look like.

interestingly, i also want to call attention to the fact that there's no specific trickster archetype. i mean, there is, because it's (a) one of the most common, and (b) it needs to exist for what i'm about to say, but it doesn't properly count.

see, cats are good at being sneaky and smart and clever. you know this if you have a cat.

clan cats also have to be good at following rules.

so basically every protagonist and antagonist in a story is some permutation of the trickster. the young warrior is the trickster but with less pointless trickery. the impulsive apprentice is probably the closest to straight-up trickster, but there's usually no associated deception. etc.

but in general, all cats should be clever and smart and finding new solutions, so there isn't a specific trickster.

names and times

on a related note, one that's significantly harder to demonstrate, the names of cats get repeated a lot.

in the real world, this is because the names are approximately 75% generated and 25% tweaked, and i have a bias towards certain names.

in the context of lore and worldbuilding, and why i'm not doublechecking against my database of every cat i've ever mentioned, this is because, well, it should make sense for certain elders to tell multiple stories, or, logically, for a kit to grow into a warrior grow into an elder and tell a story.

i mean, dovestar's nine lives are a huge part of skyclan, because each life is supposed to demonstrate some fundamental principle, and they're told over the nine moons of a kit's life (again, cats count kits' lives from the season before they're born for the purpose of holy nine, and from their actual birth for every other purpose, which is how brokenstar got around the warrior code fun fact), so yeah, i'll probably have some repetition in there.

likewise, there's no timeline for these. we don't know what happens when at all, except that the cats telling a story are younger than the cats in the story, and any "book cats" are younger than any other mentioned cat.

(that last point is because exactly one story is told by thrushpelt.)

so anyway, really hazy times and names because...that's how things go m8.

impact of the great journey

so as you can imagine, the great journey is a pretty big deal.

first of all, we're running out of cats who can remember the forest. in thunderclan, according to moonkitti, who i trust in this, birchfall is the youngest cat who can remember it. so considering birchfall could have great grandchildren in the next book or two, i'd say that we're pretty much done with cats who lived there.

even among the other cats, squirrelflight was an apprentice, and she went on the first journey, so there's that. cloudtail and brightheart won't be around for much longer, and graystripe might be immortal, but if he isn't, he'll be gone soon too.

i mean, i know there are non-thunderclan cats, but do you know their names? do you?

yeah. that's what i thought.

anyway, my point is, right now, in canon time, all of the stories are set in the forest. but like, that's kind of not helpful.

who knows, there's probably a story about sunningrocks that just doesn't make sense anymore.

i don't know for sure how the great journey impacts the folklore. this is because there's not an easy way for me to write it. my elders' den stuff is specifically set before tbp, so i don't have to think about adding in the villains of tbp.

why only tbp? because we have 3 wonderful, fantastic, folklore worthy villains. in tnp, we have the journey, in po3, we have interpersonal drama, in oots, we have rehashings of old villains, in dotc nothing matters, in avos, we have weird fuzziness i don't really remember what happened after darktail tbh, and tbc is ongoing. but wait! i hear you saying, what about hawkfrost? and darktail himself? and... no. shut up. they don't matter. just. they're not. they don't. they're not lore villains is what i'm saying very poorly. they're not the kind of villains who inspire lore. maaaaybe darktail? but he was far too recent for folklore.

anyway.

i'm sure in all of the po3 stuff i have on the horizon, i'll explore this more. dovefeather lore is in the awkward middle ground — everything is from the perspective of cats who never knew the old forest, but pretty much everyone older than them does, so it's unlikely anything substantive has changed.

but i have a lot of po3 extended universe plans that might dip in to this?

but for spitballing purposes, what probably happens is that most stories are just reskinned.

things like stories about sunningrocks are going to be repurposed. maybe about that weird strip of territory that they fought over? i'm not sure.

some stories will get to stay in the old forest, like the battle with bloodclan. and some stories will fade out, just as they always do. but for the most part, once the elders didn't live in the forest, they're just going to start plopping stories in the lake.

also, the great journey itself is 100% already folklore. i don't have to do that part, canon actually does it for me. kits are constantly being told about the great journey, or apprentices are telling us they were told about it, or someone is having a weird dream sequence that involves it.

the great journey is a major part of folklore, and that's cool. maybe if i run out of old stories, i'll do some post-canon elders' den stuff. we'll see, i'm definitely not feeling it right now, but that could change.

speaking of great...

this is a minor thing, but like, what's up with all the greats?

the great journey, okay, yeah, sure, makes sense.

and then we have the great battle.

also legit. it had been a while.

and then...the great storm?

look, i understand the storm in bramblestar's storm was a big deal. i have a lot of thoughts about bramblestar's storm as a book and this isn't that. but...

can we compare how many cats died in the great journey and the great battle? and we lost, like, three cats in the great storm

don't get me wrong, i sobbed like a baby when briarlight died.

oh hold on i lied that wasn't this book. never mind never mind.

i just, like, it's very strange IMO to have this great being a thing. or at least, i don't now, i guess it's evolution of culutre?

bluh okay i'm hungry and i do not focus well so i'm going to finish up but just. great. interesting.

conclusion

folklore is a topic i'm really interested in, and i try really hard to think through the consequences of, well, everything i can.

i'm definitely missing a lot of details — specifically, i scratched out my plans for a specific creation myth — but i like the general shape of the lore i'm building up.

#warriors au #warriors culture #warrior cats #warriors worldbuilding #warriors #q #mine #txt #26th #March #2021 #March 26th 2021 #cloudtail's daughter #jaywing #dovefeather #essay #long

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tlbodine · 4 years ago

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A Horror History of Werewolves

As far as horror icons are concerned, werewolves are among the oldest of all monsters. References to man-to-wolf transformations show up as early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, making them pretty much as old as storytelling itself. And, unlike many other movie monsters, werewolves trace their folkloric roots to a time when people truly believed in and feared these creatures.

But for a creature with such a storied past, the modern werewolf has quite the crisis of identity. Thanks to an absolute deluge of romance novels featuring sometimes-furry love interests, the contemporary idea of “werewolf” is decidedly de-fanged. So how did we get here? Where did they come from, where are they going, and can werewolves ever be terrifying again?

Werewolves in Folklore and Legend

Ancient Greece was full of werewolf stories. Herodotus wrote of a nomadic tribe from Scythia (part of modern-day Russia) who changed into wolves for a portion of the year. This was most likely a response to the Proto-Indo-European societies living in that region at the time -- a group whose warrior class would sometimes don animal pelts and were said to call on the spirit of animals to aid them in battle (the concept of the berserker has the same roots -- just bears rather than wolves).

In Arcadia, there was a local legend about King Lycaon, who was turned to a wolf as punishment for serving human meat to Zeus (exact details of the event vary between accounts, but cannibalism and crimes-against-the-gods are a common theme). Pliny the Elder wrote of werewolves as well, explaining that those who make a sacrifice to Zeus Lycaeus would be turned to wolves but could resume human form years later if they abstained from eating human meat in that time.

By the time we reach the Medieval period in Europe, werewolf stories were widespread and frequently associated with witchcraft. Lycanthropy could be either a curse laid upon someone or a transformation undergone by someone practicing witchcraft, but either way was bad news in the eyes of the church. For several centuries, witch-hunts would aggressively seek out anyone suspected of transforming into a wolf.

One particularly well-known werewolf trial was for Peter Stumpp in 1589. Stumpp, known as "The Werewolf of Bedburg," confessed to killing and eating fourteen children and two pregnant women while in the form of a wolf after donning a belt given to him by the Devil. Granted, this confession came on the tail-end of extensive public torture, so it may not be precisely reliable. His daughter and mistress were also executed in a public and brutal way during the same trial.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

The thing you have to understand when studying folklore is that, for many centuries, wolves were the apex predator of Europe. While wolf attacks on humans have been exceedingly rare in North America, wolves in Europe have historically been much bolder -- or, at least, there are more numerous reports of man-eating wolves in those regions. Between 1362 and 1918, roughly 7,600 people were reportedly killed by wolves in France alone, which may have some bearing on the local werewolf tradition of the loup-garou.

For people living in rural areas, subsisting as farmers or hunters, wolves posed a genuine existential threat. Large, intelligent, utilizing teamwork and more than capable of outwitting the average human, wolves are a compelling villain. Which is probably why they show up so frequently in fairytales, from Little Red Riding Hood to Peter and the Wolf to The Three Little Pigs.

Early Werewolf Fiction

Vampires have Dracula and zombies have I Am Legend, but there really is no clear singular book to point to as the "First Great Werewolf Novel." Perhaps by the time the novel was really taking off as an artform, werewolves had lost some of their appeal. After all, widespread literacy and reading-for-pleasure went hand-in-hand with advancements in civilization. For city-dwellers in Victorian England, for example, the threat of a wolf eating you alive probably seemed quite remote.

Don't get me wrong -- there were some Gothic novels featuring werewolves, like Sutherland Menzies' Hugues, The Wer-Wolf, or G.W.M. Reynolds' Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, or even The Wolf Leader by Alexandre Dumas. But these are not books that have entered the popular conscience by any means. I doubt most people have ever heard of them, much less read them.

No -- I would argue that the closest thing we have, thematically, to a Great Werewolf Novel is in fact The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Written in 1886, the Gothic novella tells the story of a scientist who, wanting to engage in certain unnamed vices without detection, created a serum that would allow him to transform into another person. That alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, was selfish, violent, and ultimately uncontrollable -- and after taking over the body on its own terms and committing a murder or two, the only way to stop Hyde’s re-emergence was suicide.

Although not about werewolves, per se, Jekyll & Hyde touches on many themes that we'll see come up time and again in werewolf media up through the present day: toxic masculinity, the dual nature of man, leading a double life, and the ultimate tragedy of allowing one's base instincts/animal nature to run wild. Against a backdrop of Victorian sexual repression and a rapidly shifting concept of humanity's relationship to nature, it makes sense that these themes would resonate deeply (and find a new home in werewolf media).

It is also worth mentioning Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, published in 1933. Set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian war and subsequent military battles, the book utilizes a werewolf as a plot device for exploring political turmoil. A #1 bestseller in its day, the book was a big influence on the sci-fi and mystery pulp scene of the 1940s and 50s, and is still considered one of the best werewolf novels of its ilk.

From Silver Bullets to Silver Screens

What werewolf representation lacks in novels, it makes up for in film. Werewolves have been a surprisingly enduring feature of film from its early days, due perhaps to just how much fun transformation sequences are to film. From camera tricks to makeup crews and animatronics design, werewolf movies create a lot of unique opportunities for special effects -- and for early film audiences especially (who were not yet jaded to movie magic), these on-screen metamorphoses must have elicited true awe.

The Wolf Man (1941) really kicked off the trend. Featuring Lon Chaney Jr. as the titular wolf-man, the film was cutting-edge for its time in the special effects department. The creature design is the most memorable thing about the film, which has an otherwise forgettable plot -- but it captured viewer attention enough to bring Chaney back many times over for sequels and Universal Monster mash-ups.

The Wolf Man and 1944's Cry of the Werewolf draw on that problematic Hollywood staple, "The Gypsy Curse(tm)" for their world-building. Fortunately, werewolf media would drift away from that trope pretty quickly; curses lost their appeal, but “bite as mode of transmission” would remain an essential part of werewolf mythos.

In 1957, I Was a Teenage Werewolf was released as a classic double-header drive-in flick that's nevertheless worth a watch for its parallels between werewolfism and male aggression (a theme we'll see come up again and again). Guy Endore's novel got the Hammer Film treatment for 1961's The Curse of the Werewolf, but it wasn't until the 1970s when werewolf media really exploded: The Beast Must Die, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Fury of the Wolfman, Scream of the Wolf, Werewolves on Wheels and many more besides.

Hmmm, werewolves exploding in popularity around the same time as women's liberation was dramatically redefining gender roles and threatening the cultural concept of masculinity? Nah, must be a coincidence.

The 1980s brought with it even more werewolf movies, including some of the best-known in the genre: The Howling (1981), Teen Wolf (1985), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and The Company of Wolves (1984). Differing widely in their tone and treatment of werewolf canon, the films would establish more of a spiderweb than a linear taxonomy.

That spilled over into the 1990s as well. The Howling franchise went deep, with at least seven films that I can think of. Wolf, a 1994 release starring Jack Nicholson is especially worth a watch for its themes of dark romantic horror.

By the 2000s, we get a proper grab-bag of werewolf options. There is of course the Underworld series, with its overwrought "vampires vs lycans" world-building. There's also Skin Walkers, which tries very hard to be Underworld (and fails miserably at even that low bar). But there's also Dog Soldiers and Ginger Snaps, arguably two of the finest werewolf movies of all time -- albeit in extremely different ways and for very different reasons.

Dog Soldiers is a straightforward monster movie pitting soldiers against ravenous werewolves. The wolves could just as easily have been subbed out with vampires or zombies -- there is nothing uniquely wolfish about them on a thematic level -- but the creature design is unique and the film itself is mastefully made and entertaining.

Ginger Snaps is the first werewolf movie I can think of that tackles lycanthropy from a female point of view. Although The Company of Wolves has a strong feminist angle, it is still very much a film about male sexuality and aggression. Ginger Snaps, on the other hand, likens werewolfism to female puberty -- a comparison that frankly makes a lot of sense.

The Werewolf as Sex Object

There are quite literally thousands of werewolf romance novels on the market, with more coming in each day. But the origins of this trend are a bit fuzzier to make out (no pun intended).

Everyone can mostly agree that Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire was the turning-point for sympathetic vampires -- and paranormal romance as a whole. But where do werewolves enter the mix? Possibly with Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books, which feature the titular character in a relationship with a werewolf (and some vampires, and were-leopards, and...many other things). With the first book released in 1993, the Anita Blake series seems to pre-date similar books in its ilk.

Blood and Chocolate (1997) by Annette Curtis Klause delivers a YA-focused version of the classic “I’m a werewolf in high school crushing on a mortal boy”; that same year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit the small screen, and although the primary focus was vampires, there is a main werewolf character (and romancing him around the challenges of his wolfishness is a big plot point for the characters involved). And Buffy, of course, paved the way for Twilight in 2005. From there, werewolves were poised to become a staple of the ever-more-popular urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre.

“Sexy werewolf” as a trope may have its roots in other traditions like the beastly bridegroom (eg, Beauty and the Beast) and the demon lover (eg, Labyrinth), which we can talk about another time. But there’s one other ingredient in this recipe that needs to be discussed. And, oh yes, we’re going there.

youtube

Alpha/Beta/Omegaverse

By now you might be familiar with the concept of the Omegaverse thanks to the illuminating Lindsay Ellis video on the topic (and the current ongoing lawsuit). If not, well, just watch the video. It’ll be easier than trying to explain it all. (Warning for NSFW topics).

But the tl;dr is that A/B/O or Omegaverse is a genre of (generally erotic) romance utilizing the classical understanding of wolf pack hierarchy. Never mind that science has long since disproven the stratification of authority in wolf packs; the popular conscious is still intrigued by the concept of a society where some people are powerful alphas and some people are timid omegas and that’s just The Way Things Are.

What’s interesting about the Omegaverse in regards to werewolf fiction is that, as near as I’ve been able to discover, it’s actually a case of convergent evolution. A/B/O as a genre seems to trace its roots to Star Trek fanfiction in the 1960s, where Kirk/Spock couplings popularized ideas like heat cycles. From there, the trope seems to weave its way through various fandoms, exploding in popularity in the Supernatural fandom.

What seems to have happened is that the confluence of A/B/O kink dynamics merging with urban fantasy werewolf social structure set off a popular niche for werewolf romance to truly thrive.

It’s important to remember that, throughout folklore, werewolves were not viewed as being part of werewolf societies. Werewolves were humans who achieved wolf form through a curse or witchcraft, causing them to transform into murderous monsters -- but there was no “werewolf pack,” and certainly no social hierarchy involving werewolf alphas exerting their dominance over weaker pack members. That element is a purely modern one rooted as much in our misunderstanding of wolf pack dynamics as in our very human desire for power hierarchies.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

I don’t think sexy werewolf stories are going anywhere anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room left in horror for werewolves to resume their monstrous roots.

Thematically, werewolves have done a lot of heavy lifting over the centuries. They hold up a mirror to humanity to represent our own animal nature. They embody themes of toxic masculinity, aggression, primal sexuality, and the struggle of the id and ego. Werewolf attack as sexual violence is an obvious but powerful metaphor for trauma, leaving the victim transformed. Werewolves as predators hiding in plain sight among civilization have never been more relevant than in our #MeToo moment of history.

Can werewolves still be frightening? Absolutely.

As long as human nature remains conflicted, there will always be room at the table for man-beasts and horrifying transfigurations.

This blog topic was chosen by my Patreon supporters, who got to see it one week before it went live. If you too would enjoy early access to my blog posts, want to vote for next month’s topic, or just want to support the work I do, come be a patron at https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine

#horror history #werewolves #horror #werewolf #long post

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ammocharis · 3 years ago

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100 days of writing

I'm super late for this but I'd like to take a shot at a couple of questions provided by @the-wip-project (check it out, it's awesome!) and blabber about my Avvar headcanons and worldbuilding ideas. I want to flesh out their culture as much as possible in my fics.

Day 14

Do you have figures/creatures of folklore in your WIP? If not, can you think of something that would fit?

Day 15

Does your WIP have fairytales? Do your characters tell mythical stories to each other?

I'll tackle both of these prompts at the same time since they cover related topics. I think that coming up with fairytales, legends, mythical creatures, etc., is vital for a work of fiction that focuses on worldbuilding. From the dawn of times, people have tried to explain the world around them through tales - the laws of nature, the migration of tribes, the behaviour of animals, everything was given meaning.

These stories were exchanged between cultures, transforming as they passed from mouth to mouth, but the common elements can still be recognized. I believe that this human need for making sense of the world through stories is worth exploring, either in original fiction or fanfiction. One of my favourite parts of learning about a new fictional universe is discovering what kind of stories formed among its cultures. Do they prefer one style over another? What are the common themes? And so on, and so on.

In the case of Dragon Age, I already have the groundwork laid before me, but there's always so much more that can be done. The Avvar lore contains some beautiful examples of fictional mythology, and I want to build upon that.

Now let's move to the actual headcanons.

An idea I took further is the existence of a Great Serpent. According to one Avvar legend, when the serpent Nathramar engaged in a battle with Korth, they destroyed Mount Belenas, living only a vast crater behind, which the Lady of the Skies filled with her tears, creating a lake that eventually became known as Lake Calenhad. I wondered: "Why not include more of these gigantic serpents in Avvar legends?" So I went ahead and thought up a few more of them. They are large, snake-like creatures whose powers relate to water, storm, and lightning. I took some inspirations from the Slavic żmij/zmey.

"When the world was in its infancy, the Great Serpents still roamed the vast skies and deep waters. Hreggamar, the most boisterous of all creatures, decided to challenge a mighty dragon-mother to a duel. He was certain he would win, for he had learned her weakness while he was wandering through the clouds one day. Hidden by mist and rain, he entered the Mother's territory and sneaked upon the dragon-lair to eavesdrop on her plans…”

(The rest is under the cut because I have a lot of HCs.)

I find it compelling to imagine that the Avvar would tell stories in which the Great Serpents are responsible (in one way or another) for the creation of lake and seas.

It happened countless moons ago, before any human tribe wandered into the south. The time had come for Sundramar, one of the Great Serpents, to shed his skin. He rested his head at the coast of the ocean and stretched his long body across the earth. The end of his tail reached the land of many rivers, far away from the salt waters. Sundramar was eager to leave his old skin behind and emerge even greater than he already was. The sun would rise and set many times before his labour was over.

These Great Serpents are also supposed to hint at elven lore, which mentions some curious "giants of the sea" and Mythal transforming into a serpent to fight Andruil (the latter is probably an intentional parallel to Nathramar).

Another aspect of Avvar mythology I'd like to explore is the astronomical myths. The Astrariums presented a couple of brilliant stories, like the legend of Sindri Sky-Breaker, but I need more. Sun, moon, and star constellations are popular subjects of tales, and there's a very good reason for it. Their movements in the sky used to be the main way of tracking time and location, so they would often be anthropomorphized.

Were you ever disappointed that the two moons of Thedas receive so little spotlight? None, to be precise. There's just one offhand comment in The World of Thedas, stating that the holiday of Satinalia gets its name from the second moon, and that's it. Thedas could as well have only one moon because it's never shown again, neither in graphics nor in text. Well, I'm convinced that having two moons in the sky would have a huge impact on cultures forming in such a setting, so I decided to address it. In my headcanon, the second, smaller Thedosian moon is only visible for a part of the year. It appears in the sky at the beginning of the 11th month and vanishes a month later.

The Avvar myth that I came up with explains this phenomenon in the following way: the two moons are siblings, Hjuki and Bil. Hjuki is the older brother, and he provides illuminations for the world throughout the entire year. His younger sister, Bil, is just a child, so she needs more rest, but she joins her sibling in the sky each year, just before the winter settles in for good. Their joined effort helps make final preparations for the season of ice, such as protecting one's shelter from cold. In exchange for more light, every creature gains an additional shadow, which is associated with several superstitions.

(Side note: Yes, I borrowed the names for Hjuki and Bil from Norse mythology, but the legend is brand new, made to fit the two moons situation.)

I'm planning to invent some new constellation patterns, putting the stars from astrariums into different shapes. The constellations are arbitrary after all, and I'm pretty sure the Avvar came up with their own patterns before they were subjugated by the Tevinter Imperium.

Speaking of astronomy and time-tracking, there's another crucial aspect I aim to explore in my writing - the celebrations of solstices and equinoxes. For each of these events, I'd like to come up with a legend explaining why it occurs and what makes this time of the year unique. For example, the summer solstice is the day when the Lady of the Skies becomes the closest to the Mountains. Her light almost touches the ground. It's a moment of great joy, honouring life, warmth, and love. During the celebrations of Summer Solstice, it's customary to perform a dance telling the tale of how the first two creatures met - a beast of the sky and a beast of the earth - as it could've happened only when the Sky and the Land were close to each other.

I also used this opportunity and included yet another element of Slavic folklore - a parallel to the fern-flower, a magic flower which blooms only one night in the year, on the summer solstice. For the Avvar setting, I reimagined it as a fire-bloom, a plant connected to the goddess of fertility, Rilla of the Fireside.

An ancient legend said that Rilla of the Fireside cherished red foxes, for they reminded her of a burning hearth. One day, another god, Ahren Eagle-Eyed, wished to catch Rilla’s attention, but the goddess refused to abandon the woman who requested her help as she had wished to become pregnant. The patron of fertility turned a deaf ear to Ahren’s pestering and remained inside. She had promised she wouldn’t leave the fireside until her purpose had been fulfilled. After many unsuccessful attempts, Ahren thought of another approach. He decided to lure Rilla away with trickstery. He took the shape of a fox and arrived at the doorstep of the household that Rilla was protecting. Despite her fondness for red foxes, the goddess wouldn’t be fooled. She didn’t let the Eagle-Eyed hunter inside the house. She said that she would only open the door for him if he offered his aid to the mortal woman she took under her wings.

In the Avvar culture, there are skalds, professional keepers of stories who make sure that oral tradition is preserved, but of course, they're not the only ones sharing stories. On a long winter night, what better way to pass the time than exchange a tale or two?

#100daysofwriting #wip #worldbuilding #avvar #my avvar headcanons #dragon age

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thanksjro · 4 years ago

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“Bullets”, a Last Stand of the Wreckers prose story- Ironfist Solves a Murder Mystery

Now that Overlord and Rewind have been exploded horribly in the vacuum of space, multiple people have died, and Chromedome’s horrifically single, let’s take a look at all those Last Stand of the Wreckers extras, yeah?

We more or less start with a Furmanism, as is tradition.

One day Furmanisms won’t be nearly as prevalent within the comic publications, and that is a day that I cannot wait to see. Forget politics, forget misogyny, forget basically NEEDING Death of the Author in effect to enjoy anything the man’s done- Furmanisms are a crutch that everybody in this franchise uses, but nobody needs. They never feel natural, in my opinion. It’s like a literary obligation at this point, and you can tell, because it never quite meshes with any writer’s style.

Anyway, this is the setup for what would happen on Pova- the Wreckers have been watching Squadron X fix up their ship, and now that the thing’s airborne again they’ve gotten itchy trigger fingers. Well, some of them, anyway. Rack n Ruin aren’t so sure about this whole thing, seeing as there are eight of them and an entire battalion up there. Impactor’s working the crowd though, as a leader of such a high turnover rate group is required to do, and that’s the point where First Aid stops reading.

Yep, this is one of Fisitron’s datalog entries, of which First Aid is a fan.

This isn’t First Aid’s first appearance within the IDW continuity- he played a role in Spotlight: Jazz, where he lived up to his name, and in Transformers: Ironhide #1, where he was in the background. This IS his premiere as a major player in a story, however, and it’s here that he’s revealed to be a bit of a slacker- he should be making the rounds at Delphi right now, but instead he’s reading entry logs about the wartime equivalent of a boyband.

He hits a key to quicktab to something at least somewhat medically-related as he feels someone approaching from behind. It’s the CMO, and he is in no way fooled by First Aid’s attempt to hide his shame. He gets back to work, but that particular entry- 113, because of course it is- is still on his mind. Hope he never finds out it’s a load of bunk.

I REALLY hope he never finds out this is all bunk. We all need something, you know?

Of course, First Aid- y’know, not to brag or anything- personally met one of the Wreckers. Roughly five years ago, Springer had approached him at a medical conference on Kimia. Why a medical conference was being held on Kimia of all places isn’t addressed, but it was probably because half the folks stationed there are doctors. First Aid, being a classy guy, fucking ogles Springer the entire time they’re talking.

You’ve heard of “Men Writing Women”, now it’s time for “Roberts Writing Robots”. Yes, this is THAT scene, and it’s on the first goddamn page.

First Aid, wanting to be of use to his idol, offers his medical expertise, completely willing to fix Springer’s nose, give him a breast reduction, and even update the circuit dampeners he doesn’t have. Springer, while flattered, isn’t looking for that sort of help. He’s looking for folks who have a lot to give.

The phrasing he uses makes First Aid think that he’s about to be recruited to the Wreckers- in other words, about to be put in line for a slow and awful death- but Springer clarifies that he’s looking more for eyes and ears to help him, not so much bodies. He hands First Aid a card with his number, and says to give him a call sometime.

Cutting back to the present, First Aid is walking through the rows of patient slabs, where we see an honestly horrifying practice in play- every patient in Delphi has their non-essential functions turned off to conserve power. This includes things like the ability to move, and speak.

Because that couldn’t possibly have any negative repercussions.

He checks in on the Fader he’s been assigned, confirms that, yes, his head IS still missing from his neck, then makes to walk out of the room, only to be startled by the sudden entry of a stretcher and Ambulon. Here, Ambulon is identified as a chief paramedic, as opposed to being a ward manager. Whether this is early installment weirdness or a simple mistake isn’t clear.

Ambulon is quickly followed by Dogfight, Dodger, and Backstreet(’s back, alright!) First Aid gets to work, by checking the three of them for injuries, paying special attention to their Autobot badges.

This is the reason Rung had to call in at the beginning of MTMTE #4, though it might be more because First Aid can’t act like a professional of five friggin’ minutes.

Oh, Delphi’s HR department is getting a call for sure.

First Aid, while a known fondler of badges, has never had this exact reaction. He runs off to make a phone call, leaving the injured Dodger to wait for the surgery he’s going to undergo the moment First Aid gets back.

Meanwhile, somewhere else- I’m guessing Kimia- Rung has an appointment underway with a dude named Flattop.

Flattop’s TFWiki article is one of the most depressing on the entire site, and it’s completely “Bullets”’s fault.

You see, Flattop’s attempting to talk through his trauma, but it’s difficult.

This level of insight is why they pay Rung the big bucks.

The war, while terrible for everyone’s mental health, has given Rung a slew of patients to handle.

Gee, wonder who that medic was.

Anyway, so Flattop’s deal- he was at Babu Yar, which was an event that was apparently so terrible, everyone involved was offered brand new bodies as compensation. He’s currently hiding underneath a table, which Rung identifies as “playing to type”. Flattop isn’t even here to talk about Babu Yar, but it’s good to know that war is still hell.

The reason Flattop’s actually here is this: he was serving under Silverstreak- another one of Rung’s patients, and someone who I’m convinced might actually be a Warrior cat given the name- and was going to check something out when he saw something utterly terrifying.

Rung gets Flattop out from under the table, and they talk about what the Shimmer means. Flattop is convinced that since he’s seen the thing, he’s going to die. You see, folklore in space is very similar to its counterpart on Earth, in that it’s a warning swathed in story to make it easily digestible.

Rung, who tries to keep things rational, offers to give Flattop a few possible explanations for what he saw. Because Flattop had only recently gotten his hot new bod a short while before he saw the Shimmer, it’s completely possible he had had a hallucination due to the adjustment period. Another theory is that Flattop has PTSD. Which, I mean, yeah.

While Rung was busy trying to explain what had happened, Flattop friggin’ died.

Awkward.

Over with Ironfist- because “Bullets” is a prequel- we’re in the middle of a meeting with the Ethics Committee. Xaaron, Animus, and Trailbreaker of all people, have come together to pass judgement on Ironfist’s cerebro-sensitive bullets. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, and Ironfist reflects on how they got to this moment, while fiddling with a data slug to burn off the nerves.

This is just after the Surge happened, an event kicked off by the betrayal of the Autobot cause allowed Megatron to seize a majority of the Autobot outposts. It was a huge deal, a lot of shit was stolen, including the Weak Anthropic Principle, and it left everyone a little twitchy towards one another. Trust is not in vogue at present.

Kimia’s in a mess of trouble anyway, however, due to the events of Babu Yar, where Gideon’s Glue had rained down on the Autobot troops under Flame’s command, eaten to Swiss cheese by something eerily similar to something being developed on the station.

So an investigation was established. Brainstorm, who’s apparently big man on campus here at Kimia, is questioned, as is everyone else. Of course, no one cops to having invented Gideon’s Glue, because that’s a big ol’ war crime, so the questioning goes nowhere, but now there’s a precedent for mistrust on this science station.

Anyway, back to the bullet thing.

Ironfist’s cerebro-sensitive bullets are designed to hit the head, every single time, ignoring trajectory, ballistic physics, what you think is possible, and the Geneva Convention. It’s fired, it hits the first brain it identifies. Brutal stuff. Effective, but brutal.

Trailbreaker’s not a fan.

I mean, maybe? I guess it depends how gray your morality is. I bet Prowl would like them.

After telling Trailbreaker to keep it professional, Xaaron tells Ironfist that using these bullets would be a literal war crime, and he’s got a little over a day to hand them over to the Committee for destruction. Meeting adjourned!

Ironfist is left standing there until his good buddy Skyfall checks in on him. Ironfist is kind of bummed out, but Skyfall knows how to cheer him up- by comparing him to Impactor, former leader of the Wreckers, and one of Ironfist’s fan-crushes.

Man, this makes the Pova reveal a little harsher in hindsight, huh?

Skyfall invites Ironfist to the Exit Rooms, a place where the Kimia employees can drink and no one will give a shit, and as they make their way over they run into Brainstorm.

Brainstorm gets some interesting development in this story.

That’s right, not only are his weapons completely insane, and in some cases literally abstract, they’re apparently often so incredibly dangerous that the Ethics Committee loses sleep over the fact that they exist.

And Brainstorm loves it.

No wonder Trailbreaker was so annoyed in his Spotlight.

Skyfall asks about what’s in Brainstorm’s briefcase, gets an answer that’s likely a lie, then the boys head over to the Exit Rooms.

Over on Hydrus 5, it’s raining cats and dogs, and this is somehow the Transformers fault. I guess the universe bends to the will of what would be the most dramatic, as everyone takes a break from warmongering to soul-search.

Or ego-stroking. That works too.

Here is our dear Pyro, reveling in the aftermath of a battle that destroyed the natural ecosystem of the land, but at least they kicked those ‘Cons’ asses!

Pyro, who’s revealed to be maybe perhaps not the best at coming up with one-liners, is left alone for a bit as Afterburner goes to check on the rest of their men. As he tries to piece together a speech to deliver, he sees a green something- they’re always green, aren’t they?- and that something is the Shimmer.

Well, heck.

Over on the dilapidated space station of Debris (wow, that’s even less subtle than usual for this franchise) Springer’s holding a bullet. I mean, it’s not really a bullet, and the Decepticon who fired it wasn’t really a Decepticon.

I want you to know that I keep track of how many times 113 comes up in these stories, and for “Bullets" it’s a LOT.

Today’s letter from Agent 113 foreshadows/hindshadows the events of Last Stand, claiming that the DJD hasn’t heard anything from Garrus-9 since the Surge happened. Prowl’s concerned that Fortress Maximus is still alive in there and fighting off the Decepticons while waiting for backup, so he recently called Springer and invited the Wreckers on a mission.

All Springer has to do is pick some sorry sons of guns to die.

Over with Guzzle, who is romanticizing a weapon, comparing his gun to a religious artifact, our dear little bastard man has realized that he does, in fact, have emotions, and is in mourning over his lost comrades, who died rescuing Kup from Tsiehshi. Guzzle doesn’t much appreciate this whole “feeling” thing, and would rather it didn’t get in the way of him shooting statues for no other reason than him wanting to. Then he sees the Shimmer, and feels fear. He doesn’t much care for that, either.

Even Nick Roche is powerless to stop this madness.

We reconfirm the fact that Ironfist is a massive nerd, then are shown that the bullet accident that will have killed him by the end of Last Stand #5 has already happened. Ever so slowly, the bullet is heading for Ironfist’s brain. Every time it hits a new layer of his noggin, he blacks out.

Ironfist is going to leave on his super-fun, not-at-all-traumatizing Wrecker adventure soon, and he’s promised Skyfall his workshop. Skyfall was at Grindcore for a while, and that kind of gave him PTSD, so when Ironfist had gotten accepted to Kimia, he’d brought him along for the ride.

I like to call Grindcore Eugenesis-lite.

Because Skyfall is a reckless son of a gun with access to Ironfist’s workshop, he inadvertently caused a major incident with something called Black Phosphex, which resulted in the deaths of several Autobots because it wasn’t properly tested. This landed him in Garrus-9 for a bit, in a temporary career-path deviation, until it was time to come home to Kimia, just in time for the Inquiry.

Are stans always this intense? Because good lord, Ironfist.

Over at Karashi Delta, in the aftermath of a fierce battle, Rotorstorm is hyping himself the fuck up.

But does he buy it himself?

Hmm, survey says no.

Of course, verbal abuse isn’t the only thing we’ll be getting here. No, things begin to escalate pretty rapidly with Jetstream, who moves from shoving to almost beating Rotorstorm to death in a matter of months, before disappearing from the station forever.

Dang, this Jetstream fella kinda sucks. What’s his friggin’ problem?

Ah.

Again, I can’t stress this enough, Whirl’s awful flipper claws from back during his time as a cop do not make a nice fist. He was basically stabbing Rotorstorm. Who let this man be a teacher?

Rotorstorm is snapped out of his self-deprecating flashbacks by the sight of something on the canyon lip up ahead. It’s the gotdang Shimmer. Rotorstorm books it, not wanting to be caught by a harbinger of death. It doesn’t work, but points for trying.

Back on Debris, Springer’s picked his new recruits. Now all he has to do is call them up. Hey, isn’t Springer green? Green like the Shimmer? How about that.

Back on Kimia, Skyfall’s wandered into Ironfist’s workshop to share the gossip on Fisitron’s latest Wreckers: Declassified. Folks are a bit critical of his writing style, it would seem.

Of course Swerve knows what fan-fiction is. He seems like exactly the type to make fun of it, then read a 43,000 word fic in a single sitting, under cover of darkness, burning with shame all the while.

After making a note on his current Wreckers: Declassified document to ease up on the adverbs, Ironfist switches gears and gets busy on his other project: an Unofficial Wreckers’ Training Guide. I wonder when the switch from Primal Vanguard to Wreckers as a hyperfixation happened for him.

Ironfist asks Skyfall what entry he’s currently on, and the answer is a ways away from the latest one. Skyfall’s a slow reader, but he doesn’t want to just beam it all into his brain because it feels like cheating. He asks Ironfist when he’s going to cover the Wreckers’ mission to Garrus-9, the one that happened while he was there being not-imprisoned. Ironfist gives a non-answer, then asks if Skyfall wants to help with packing up the war-crime guns. Skyfall most certainly does not.

Ironfist starts breaking everything down when he gets a call from Prowl, as happened in Last Stand #4.

Back with Springer, we’re giving our dad a hug, as he greets Kup. It’s here we find out who Ironfist replaced on the Wrecker team for Operation: Retrieval- it was Skyfall. Skyfall had impressed Springer during their last Garrus-9 excursion, and thought that he’d be a good fit for the team, despite the Black Phosphex incident.

Kup goes full old man story time mode about how insanely boring Prowl is, while Springer gets the door. On the other side is Twin Twist, Top Spin, and Perceptor. They hold the vote, Ironfist given immunity due to unmentioned Prowl reasons, and Springer gets ready to call all their new pals.

Back at Ironfist’s workshop, Ironfist reflects on just how his life got to this point. He’s going to join the Wreckers! Never mind the fact that he’ll be going to die, and that’s if the bullet crawling around in his skull doesn’t get him first. Never mind the very likely possibility that he’s being exploited by Prowl. Nah, he’s gonna go on an adventure! It’s gonna be awesome! Yaaaaay!

It doesn’t pay to be blue and naive when Roberts is handling the story. Just ask Pipes.

Or don’t. You won’t get an answer.

Called it.

Ironfist, starstruck, bumbles his way through the conversation we saw in the Mosaic, and so it was that he became a Wrecker. All he has to do is pop on over to Rung’s office, get his head examined, then get his butt on over to Babu Yar.

Telecon work completed, Springer reflects on the fact that Guzzle turned him down. It’s not often someone turns down the chance to be a Wrecker.

Oh, well, never mind then.

Ironfist immediately tells Skyfall about what’s happened, because he’s just so jazzed to be a Wrecker. Skyfall isn’t quite as thrilled, but does his best to be supportive.

And by that I mean he’s not listening in the slightest as he’s already planning out the interior design for the workshop once Ironfist is gone. I bet he’ll get Atomizer to help him, the tacky bastard.

Skyfall runs off to go look at paint swatches or whatever, and Ironfist finalizes the stuff for the Ethics Committee pickup.

Oh, so that appointment wasn’t on Kimia after all. Can we please get some sort of fast-track program for the mental health specific degrees? We can’t keep using Rung for everybody, he’s only one person.

Oh heavens, Ironfist, be careful.

Ironfist gets another call, and we jump scenes before we can figure out just who rang or why.

Brief timeskip, and we find ourselves at Babu Yar, as Ironfist introduces himself to Guzzle and his gun.

Ironfist is about as smooth as coarse-grit sandpaper.

While Ironfist is busy revealing his nerd shame to Guzzle, someone’s decided to be a cocky little asshole.

Oh, dramatic irony. Always a delightful sort of pain.

Rotorstorm cranks up the “I’m hot shit” act to 11.5, doing completely unnecessary flips and talking himself up like he will literally die if he doesn’t.

Off in the distance, something disingenuously impressive comes up over the hill.

Of course, it’s not Optimus Prime, but it is someone who would very much like to be him. Such is the nature of primus apotheosis. Gang’s all here!

This is going to turn out fan-fucking-tastic.

Rotorstorm and Guzzle want to play with the big gun Ironfist brought along, and since Ironfist is going to die anyway, he lets them go for it. This would be why everything was on fire at the start of the miniseries.

Yep. Just gotta make it hurt just a little more, doncha Roberts? Just gotta twist the knife.

Nine months after the events of the Garrus-9 mission, Skyfall is upset. He’s gone and played himself by not attending the Ethics Committee hearings, and they’ve taken all his toys away as a result. He tries to mask his lack of concern for safety precautions behind a facade of missing Ironfist, but it doesn’t get him the weapons back.

Feeling cross, he decides it’s about time he made a visit to the Exit Rooms to blow off a little steam.

Later, he gets a call. Worried that his lack of ethics and/or his drunken squabbling has gotten him in trouble yet again, he’s loathe to answer, but does anyway.

Ghost call!

No, it’s actually a prerecorded message, one that claims that Skyfall killed Ironfist. Ironfist had asked Brainstorm to take a gander at the gun after he got shot, and found that it had been tampered with, set to go off on its own when held a certain way. That’s who was calling before he left for his Wrecker mission.

Skyfall starts to panic, expecting the security detail for Kimia to bust into the workshop at any second.

Ironfist knows that only Skyfall could have done this to him, but he doesn’t know the exact motive. Was it because he was jealous of how good a weapons expert he was? A chip on his shoulder about Grindcore? Whatever the reason, Ironfist isn’t terribly concerned at the time of the recording. What he is concerned about is Gideon’s Glue.

Ironfist had, in fact, invented Gideon’s Glue, but he’d been so horrified by what the shit actually did, he flushed it into space and destroyed all research before the Ethics Committee even knew about it. It still got to the Decepticons, though, didn’t it? How could such a thing happen?

Probably not, considering what happens next.

Ironfist is a smart guy, but more importantly, he knows how to reach his audience. Literally, in this case, as Skyfall finds out, when the Enforcement Squad starts trying to break down the door. Ironfist had the message that Skyfall is currently listening to primed for beaming into all of Fisitron’s reader’s brains. Everyone knows what happened. Swerve. Atomizer. Ratchet, who’s over on Earth right now. First Aid, who has enough bullshit to worry about on Delphi without this nonsense. You. Me. Everyone.

Skyfall, in a mad attempt to save himself, throws some of Ironfist’s Wrecker memorabilia at the door, and out pops that last tube of Gideon’s Glue.

There’s only one way out of this one.

This got really intense at the end, didn’t it?

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #last stand of the wreckers #bullets #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #prose writing #wreckers trilogy

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otherworldlybooksgoddess · 4 years ago

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Five Exceptional Fantasy Books Based in Non-European Myth

Photo by Josh Hild

Don’t misunderstand me: I love reading well-written fantasy with roots in the familiar Celtic and English folklore of my childhood, but with the vast majority of High Fantasy being set in worlds closely akin to Medieval Europe, and a large amount of of Mythic Fiction drawing on legends of similar origin, sometimes the ground begins to feel too well trodden. There is, after all, an entire world of lore out there to draw from. That’s why I’m always thrilled to find excellent works of what I call “the Realistic Sub-Genres of Fantasy” based in or inspired by myths from other cultures. Such books not only support inclusiveness, but also expand readers’ experiences with lore and provide a wide range of new, exciting realities to explore. So, if you are looking for something different in the realm of Fantasy, the following novels will provide a breath of fresh air.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wrecker

In this beautifully written novel, Wrecker draws on both Middle-Eastern and Jewish mythology to tell the stories of two unwilling immigrants in Edwardian New York and the unlikely friendship that springs up between them. Chava, an unusually lifelike golem created for peculiar purposes, has only days worth of memories and is practically childlike in her innocence. Ahmad the Jinni has lived for centuries, but is trying to reclaim his forgotten past. The former is as steady and calm as the earth she’s made from while the latter is as volatile and free-spirited as the fire within him. Both must learn to live in an unfamiliar new culture and find their places in a city too modern for myths even as they hide their true natures. It’s a wonderful metaphor for the experiences of immigrants everywhere, who often find themselves feeling like outsiders—isolated and even overwhelmed— as they struggle to adapt to life in an alien society.

Full of memorable characters, vivid descriptions, and interesting twists, The Golem and the Jinni takes readers on a journey that is driven as much by internal conflict as external action. The setting of 1900’s Manhattan is well-researched and spectacular in its detail. Wrecker blends two old-world mythologies into the relatively modern Edwardian world with a deft hand. The result is not only fascinating, but also serves to illustrate the common early-twentieth-century experience of an immigrant past colliding with an American future.

The Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

One part Detective Mystery and one part Magical Realism, this novel invites readers to experience modern-day Ghana in a way that is both authentic and profound. When Kayo, a forensic pathologist just beginning his career, is pushed into investigating a suspected murder in the rural village of Sonokrom, the last thing he expects is to have a life-changing experience. Soon, however, he gets the acute sense that the villagers may know more than they’re letting on. When all of the latest scientific and investigative techniques fail him, even as odd occurrences keep dogging his steps, Kayo is finally forced to accept that there is something stranger than he thought about this case. Solving the crime will require more than intelligence and deduction; it will require setting his disbelief aside and taking the traditional tales and folklore of an old hunter seriously. Because whatever is happening in Sonokrom, it isn’t entirely natural.

This novel is brilliant not only because of its deep understanding of Ghanaian society and realistic setting, but also because of Parkes writing style. The narrative is gorgeously lyrical and everything within it is described with a keen, insightful eye. The dialogue is full of local color, and while some may find the pidgin English and native colloquialisms difficult to follow, I found that the context was usually enough to explain any unfamiliar terms. Sometimes the narrative feels a little dreamlike, but that is exactly the way great Magical Realism should be. The Tail of the Blue Bird insistently tugs readers to a place where reality intertwines with myth and magic, all while providing an authentic taste of Ghanaian culture.

The Deer and the Cauldron by Jin Yong

During the reign of Manchu Emperor Kang Xi, China is in a state of barely-controlled sociopolitical unrest. Many of the older generation remember the previous dynasty, and there still remain vestiges of a resistance movement hidden among the populace. As his forces continue to hunt down the malefactors, called the Triad Societies, the boy-emperor turns to his unlikely friend and ally: a young rascal known only as Trinket. This protagonist is a study in contrasts: lazy yet ambitious, cunning yet humorous, roguish yet likable, foul-mouthed yet persuasive. Born in a brothel, Trinket has made his way by his wits alone. At age twelve, he accidentally sneaked into the Forbidden City—a bizarre occurrence in itself—afterward befriending Kang Xi. Now, rising quickly through the ranks, he is on a mission to (ostensibly) find and weed out the Triad Societies, and he uses the opportunity to infiltrate various organizations, playing their leaders against one another for his own gain. With a dangerous conspiracy brewing in the Forbidden City itself, however, he is forced to choose sides and decide what is most important to him: friendship, fortune, or freedom. Supernatural occurrences, daring escapades, and moments of deep introspection abound as Trinket struggles to navigate the perilous maze his life has become.

This novel is like a gemstone: bright, alluring, and many faceted. At times it may seem somewhat simple on the surface, but looking closer reveals new depths and multiple layers. Full of intrigue, action, horror, and even laughs, The Deer and the Cauldron mirrors not only the complexities of its setting, but those of the China the author himself knew during the Communist revolution. By blending together history, fantasy, realism, humor, and subtle political commentary, Yong not only beautifully captures these social intricacies but also creates a narrative that is as thoroughly engaging as it is unapologetically unique.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Magical realism related to food has almost become a movement in itself, with novels like Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Joanne Harris’ Chocolat, and Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells all finding their places in readers’ hearts. Originally published in 1992, Like Water for Chocolate helped create this fascinating trend, and it has become something of a modern classic in the fantasy genre.

The narrative centers around Tita de la Garza, a mid-twentieth century Mexican woman possessing deep sensitivity, a strong will, and a special talent for cooking. Born prematurely, Tita arrived in her family’s kitchen, tears already in her eyes. It is in that room where she spends most of her childhood, being nurtured and taught by the elderly cook, Nacha. The relationship that flourishes between Tita and her caregiver is a special gift, as it provides the girl not only with the compassion and support her own mother denies, but also with a passion and skill for creating incredible, mouth-watering dishes. At Nacha’s side, Tita learns the secrets of life and cookery, but she also learns one terrible fact: thanks to a family tradition, she is destined never to have love, marriage, or a child of her own. Her fate, rather, is to care for her tyrannical widowed mother, Mama Elena, until the day the older woman dies. With a vibrant, independent spirit, sixteen-year-old Tita flouts this rule, falling deeply in love with a man named Pedro who asks for, and is denied, her hand in marriage. Undaunted, the young man agrees to wed one of Tita’s older sisters, Rosaura, instead, as he believes this to be the only way he can be close to the woman he loves. Thus begins a life-long struggle between freedom and tradition, love and duty, which is peppered throughout with supernatural events and delicious cuisine. So great is her skill in cooking that the meals Tita prepares take on magical qualities all their own, reflecting and amplifying her emotions upon everyone who enjoys them. Controlled and confined for much of her existence, food becomes her outlet for all the things she cannot say or do. The narrative itself echoes this, by turns as spicy, sweet, and bitter as the flavors Tita combines. At its heart, this is as much a tale about how important the simple things, like a good meal, can be as it is a story about a woman determined to be her own person and choose her own fate.

Cuisine is fundamental to this novel, with recipes woven throughout the narrative, but that is only a part of its charm. In the English translation, the language is beautiful in its simplicity. The characters often reveal hidden depths, especially as Tita grows up and is able to better understand the people around her. Heartfelt in its joys and sorrows, Like Water for Chocolate glows with cultural flavor and a sense of wonder. It’s a feast for the spirit, and like an exquisite meal, it never fails to surprise those who enjoy it.

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

When I first read this novel, I found the early chapters enjoyable and engaging, but felt the story was no more than a typical, if especially well-written, work of mythic fiction. The deeper I got into the narrative, however, the more wrong I was proven. The City of Brass is anything but ordinary. While basing her work in Middle-Eastern lore and history, Chakraborty nonetheless manages to create a setting and story that are both wonderfully unique. Lush, detailed, and bursting with magic and intrigue, this book spans the lines between several sub-genres of fantasy without ever losing its balance.

Beginning in eighteenth-century Egypt, the narrative follows a quick-witted antiheroine. Nahri doesn’t live by the rules of her society. She doesn’t believe in magic or fate or even religion. Orphaned for most of her life, survival has required her to become a con artist and a thief. As a result, she is practical and pragmatic, a realist who has never even considered donning rose-colored glasses, and the last person who would ever expect anything supernatural to occur. Which, of course, means that it does, but the way in which it is handled is intricate and interesting enough not to feel trite. When Nahri’s latest con—a ceremony she is pretending to perform and doesn’t believe in even slightly—goes awry, and the cynical young woman finds herself face to face with a Daeva. Magical beings, it transpires, are real after all, and this one is furious. To both of their dismay, he’s also bound to Nahri, who soon realizes that he has an agenda of his own. In return for rescuing her (and refraining from killing her himself) Dara, the Daeva warrior Nahri accidentally summoned, wants her to pull of the biggest con of her life: pretending to be the half-human heir to the throne of his people. Worse still, she soon realizes that Dara, whose mentality sometimes seems a little less-than-stable, actually believes she may be exactly who he claims. He has something planned, and his intentions may not be in her best interest. Dragged unwillingly into a strange world of court intrigue, danger, social upheaval, and magic, Nahri quickly discovers that some things remain familiar. People are ruled by prejudices, the strong prey on the weak, and she can’t fully trust anyone. The stakes, however, are higher than ever, and Nahri will need all of her wits, cunning, and audacity if she wants to survive.

This novel was thoroughly enjoyable, and in fact prompted me to buy the following books in the trilogy as they became available. Chakraborty’s style is lyrical, her world building is superb, her plot is intricate, and her characters are well-developed. She not only frames unfamiliar words and ideas is easily-comprehensible contexts, but weaves those explanations smoothly into the narrative. The culture, mythology, and history surrounding her tale are all carefully researched, but the tale itself is nonetheless unique. What begins feeling like a fairly ordinary mythic fiction novel will pleasantly exceed readers’ expectations.

So, while we, as fantasy readers, love the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Charles de Lint, there is also a plethora of other enchanting books to enjoy. Exploring magical realism and mythic fiction based in cultures and folklore from all around the globe ensures that our to-read lists will always hold something unexpected and exciting to surprise us. So, if you’re starting to feel like you’re in a bit of a reading rut, or if you’re simply looking to expand your horizons, open up new realms of imagination by opening up one of the novels above. Who knows see where it will lead you? You may just discover a new favorite to add to your bookshelf. Happy reading!

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heat0death0of0the0universe · 4 years ago

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i gotta talk about Narrative Telephone

I. Fucking. Love. It.

when my extreme dislike of second-hand embarrassment takes a loud backseat i can fin so much that i love about it.

but what i love most isn't the humor. or even the continued critical role content. no, i love the allegory and the metaphor of the whole concept.

all my life i loved the concept of watching time move forward. seeing evolution, hearing language change, watching cultures rise and fall. but what i dont like is time and the fact that im along for the ride. id rather watch evolution, not be step 48801 of a process with no end. and sadly most media and general public doesn't like watching time change. no one wants too see how the English language evolves with a rise in Spanish speaking folks and pop culture creating new idioms and words. everyone would much rather watch something with the same animals with the same people walking the same cities speaking the same language, albeit maybe with a few more neon lights and holograms to make you feel like its in some vague ~future~. but narrative telephone gives me the change i like to see. i can finally feel like im watching a story going through the times and changes of a culture.

im gonna need to explain a little more. what better way than to show off all the current episodes.

episode one is simple, pumat and the big bad wolf. the sorry starts with pumat on a stroll through the woods. he finds a talking wolf and they fight. the story ends with the pumat eating a nice mushroom and wolf stew. but the changes to the story are what get to me. i love ashley, trust me i really do. but in this context, she’s basically the dark ages. everything crumbles and the story follows in the crash. this point is when the more brothers grimm tales and nonsense folklore are added in. people dont like the night, so the seen changes to match. suddenly the wolf not only speaks, but has a beak! the fighting through being somewhat vague in the original story now is lost to time and is none existent. taliesin builds off it, changing it ever so slightly from a garbled to a more of a warning story. a story that reflects a change in a cultures thoughts on the woods. when everything was all writings and giant building the woods where just a place to rule over and harvest, but after the fall now its returned to the unexplored. the place of fey and monsters that should never be explored at night. marisha adds winter and gives it just the smallest bit of added context. a man in the woods during night before might have been seen as mad or crazy, but a man scrounging for some mushrooms in a dead forest in winter isnt tempting fate, he’s struggling to live. a shift in view also makes it so that the beaked magic wolf is just as weakened by the winter, and is easily turned away by just a voice. sam is..something. if ashley is the dark ages than id say sam is like a renaissance. specifically a very drunk renaissance. the kingdom was risen and is filled with hubris and pride.its gained a very “man falls for his hubris” greek vibe to it. pumat has gone from scavenging to walking unbothered by cold dead winter. the kingdom has lost its enjoyment of strange creatures, monsters are still around in legend, but most have been replaced with magical people, with a clear rise in “person in an animals skin” tropes. the original fight has been mostly lost, now the story is that of a magic hunter who eyes the mushrooms taken by pumat and gives a chuckle and permission to continue exploring the woods unimpeded. pumat eats just the mushrooms, which now have gained the lupine taste, and the vague description of “he became something more” giving the idea of some sort of curse for his nature. Laura has added back the wolfs anger, but removed the suspicion of pumat. the curse is still in the end of the story though. this could be a change into more of a forbidden fruit trope. because pumat still trusted strange mushrooms in a dead forest with a magic guardian, he paid the price. travis is a sort of close to modernization of the story. its the point in time when its nonsensical nature and magic was viewed as weird and convoluted. similar to when we look at older myths with long intricate plans and think “nice story, but poor pacing”. liam goes for the “granddad telling stories by the fire” vibe. the tale has died down and is being co-opted for new use. now the rather dark tale has turned into more of a children's storybook with messages like not to trust strangers and to not do drugs being tagged on.

ep. 2: jesters ability to say 1000 words a second. pickadors plume is a story in a story. a story about gaining a treasure through a complex and detailed series of events with lots of loaded lore about the world with no clear description of what the treasure truly is. liam is the first few generations. the generation close enough to the original to try and remember, but not enough to keep every detail. the best example is of the ending, where the treasure should be. humans love rewards, so a story with a vague reward isnt enough for people. in liams generation transition to the griffon, travel, and fruit specifically being the treasure begins to lay its foundations. since this is already so long i will also mention that the transition from stone shaped like a heart ---to----> stone shaped like a hut could be an example of a changing dialect and language. sam, travis, and marisha are clear evidence of a shift in culture. jesters complete backstory wasnt introduced till now. and in it comes the cultures want to explain this event. humans love simplifying, but we also love to describe things. if we want to, we will add words just as much as we remove them. the dialect changes just as much. the new word of “schtupping." has either replaced or become a synonym of the word fucking, the name of the plum as even changed too. the treasure has gone from “lost to time” to “there is treasure, i just wont name it”. but fret not, for the mystery aspect is still in the story. for now everything will disappear like it never happened, or did it? though travis specifically specifies that you keep the treasure. humans love rewards, it was gonna come back eventually. matt is the sorta an enlightening moment in the society. at the very least its the point in time where people who know geography and history say “wait, that layout doesnt make any sense”. taelisan and ashley are the beginning of the end. the slow fall into the dark ages. the story becomes vague and small. slowly becoming more of a statement and less of a story. the society is forgetting large chunks and its bleeding out into other legends. there maybe a sort of thanksgiving/ christmas sort of event spawned from or because of the myth, but the story itself isnt going to live every far (hence why its ending in a dark age and not somewhen else)

Ep. 3: boy do humans enjoy rich’s, love, and drama. sam’s story comes from a society that warns against wanting what you wish for without expecting some strings attached and features a evil ruler to boot, just so they can date the legend. the story of a delivery boy who invents a pair of glasses to see through objects and uses them to win rewards and gives them all to a rich woman that only loves him for the money, and really loves the prince. matt changes the story so the two are already in love. but also changed it so that it was the greed of the prince and the wife that lead to the heartbreak rather than the delivery boys naivety. travis changes delivery boy from a clever inventor to just already owning the glasses. both matt and travis with there respective fictional cultures are showing how humans like to remember the stuff they liked in a story, so when they forget when something specifically came in, they just fill in the blank and assume its always been there. travis specificaly begins the stories slow march to a less heartbreaking story by adding a joke to help give the couple a more flushed out relationship. this is also the shift in cultural perspective. the antagonist began his life as a evil prince, but now is simply a rotten neighbor. this could mean the myth was co-opted to fit a better role, possibly after the removal of monarchy or just of a specific bloodline.the rich wife becomes just the wife, no money involved. this is also the beginning of what a full fledged re-write of the story. now the delivery man has gone from giving up to still being in love with the wife and now even standing up for himself. (possibly a mix of when the story was of a prince and used to promote the common folk to rise up against the kings, leading to the theory of a removal of the crown). ashely...oh ashely. this moment in history atleast solidifies the love between them, and even brings back delivery husbands inventor skills. liam is the slow clawing climb back up out of the collapse. he’s still very much in the collapse of the kingdom. but aleast its just before when begin to solidify into the new meta of the era. laura and taelisin’s era is a complete re-write after the collapse of the society. the focus has moved to more of a folk-hero style legend about rising above through theft and cheating (could mean that after the collapse the culture around theft changed from crime to fighting to survive. the antagonist has really changed from being the bad guy to just in the love triangle. the society seems to agree with every polyamourous person when we all say “this how drama triangle could have been avoided if you guys all just got together”. marisha’s only real change a more modernization from “specticals” to “goggles” and that the culture either wants to make half-orcs feel more inclusive or just really dont like goliaths and changed it.

ep. 4: deargodfinallyigottheneedtowritethisoutofmysystemsoletsspeedrunthisshit. liams story is an analogy for the horrors, pointlessness, and sacrifics of war. but over time the story shifts from a “we did this to ourselves” narrative to a “an outside force did this to use”. this shifts the goal from a need for peace to a need to protect everyone for the sake of the many. ill write more later but dear god i my hand might fall off soon

#cr #critical role #narrative telephone #telephone

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what-is-your-plan-today · 5 years ago

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Stark Spangled Banner One Shot: Arrows, Gods and Dogs

Intro: Thor is intrigued about these little things called Urban Legends, but after a night spent with the rest of the Avengers discussing them, one of them in particular becomes a little too real…

Pairings. Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

Warnings: Bad language.A bit of very light smut, if you squint hard enough…no under 18s.

A/N: This takes place in the SSB universe in early 2015 just before the events of AOU. You don’t have to have read that series to understand or enjoy this but feel free to check it out: Stark Spangle Banner Masterlist

This is written for @waiting4inspiration ‘s Myths and Legends Writing Challenge.

My prompt was no.6- The Licked Hand- urban legend of a killer who spends the night under a girl’s bed pretending to be her dog.

“What the fuck…” Tony mumbled as he walked into the common room, glancing around. 3 faces peered back at him, one of which was dark green, from the chairs and sofas that surrounded the coffee table.

“Hey Tone…” his sister grinned up at him. “Nat and I were giving Thor a Seaweed Mask…”

Tony looked at the God who was sat in the chair, the dark green slop slapped all over his face. “It is stupendously beneficial Stark.” he said, grinning at him, his teeth sparkled white against the dark colour of the mask on his face “Anti-inflammatory, moisturises, increases skin metabolism and is anti-aging.” “Well considering you’re over a thousand years old that could be useful…” he said, and as he spoke Steve walked into the room “Oh, and speaking of old, you got any left for Spangles?”

“You ever gonna get tired of that joke?” Steve said, not even looking at Tony or Thor as he passed.

Tony shook his head “No.”

With a sigh Steve dropped onto the floor in between Katie’s legs, his back resting against the sofa.

“Hey…” she said softly, her hands reaching to his shoulders, as her lips softly kissed his cheek. He let out a soft noise of acknowledgement as his eyes closed and he simply let her hands work out some of the tension he was feeling, her fingers expertly dancing across his muscles. “You’re really knotty.” she mused.

He cracked his head side to side, still not opening his eyes “Feels good…” he said softly and she smiled, looking up as Clint walked into the room.

“You giving out massages to anyone Nova?” he looked over as he dropped onto the sofa, swinging his legs over the arm. “Because my back is killing me.” “Book an appointment with a chiropractor then.” she said, her hands still working at Steve’s shoulders. He was blissed out, she could tell from his body language now. His head was hanging forward slightly and his breathing was even.

“C’mon don’t be mean!” Clint pouted.

“Sorry, only Stevie gets my hands all over him.” she winked back. Steve let out a soft huff of a laugh as Tony groaned from across the room where he was stood behind the bar placing several types of snacks into bowls.

The elevator opened again and Bruce stepped out, completing the Friday Night Film Club assembly, something the Avengers did weekly providing their search for the sceptre permitted. Bruce headed over to the seating and stopped as he saw Natasha now wiping the mask from Thor’s face with cotton pads.

“Ok so this is weird…” He said.

“Aren’t you the one that turns green when you get angry?” Tony looked at him, dropping a bowl of popcorn onto the table in the middle of the seats “Because some people might say that’s a little strange too.”

“Touche…” Bruce shrugged, sitting down.

“He has a point though…” Clint said, “I mean he reminds me of that Pittsburgh Green Man dude…the Urban Legend…what was his name?”

“Charlie No-Face” Tony said.

“Charlie No-Face?” Steve asked, opening his eyes and fixing Tony with a sceptical stare.

“Yeah, the tale has it he was disfigured in an accident and could be seen at night, blowing cigarette smoke through the holes in his cheek, lurking by the roadside, trying to stay out of sight. Classic boogie man story”

“Total load of bullshit.” Banner shook his head.

“Actually, there’s some truth to it.” Katie said, her hands still working on Steve’s shoulders “It was a guy called Raymond Robinson who was so severely disfigured as a kid in an electrical accident that he couldn’t go out in public without creating panic. Instead he took to taking long walks at night. Local tourists would drive along the roads hoping to catch sight of him.”

Steve paused, how the fuck did she know that? She was a font of utter useless knowledge, his time at SHIELD with her had shown him that, but still…

“What?” she asked, suddenly aware everyone was looking at her, including Steve “It was part of my degree…” “What, Urban Legends?” Clint frowned.

“I did English Lit and Mythology.” she said, her hands laying still on Steve’s shoulders. “One of my papers was on Urban Legends and the true stories that inspired them.”

“Wait, what is an Urban Legend?” Thor asked, sitting forward, curiosity piqued.

“Exactly what they say on the tin Thunder God.” Katie looked at him “It’s a modern genre of folklore and consists of fictional stories associated with the macabre, superstitions blab la bla. and more often than not rooted in local history and popular culture.”

“But they have elements of truth?” The God asked.

“Some do.” she nodded “But some of them are total myth.”

“So some are Urban Myths, some are Urban Legends?” Thor pressed, eagerly.

“Aint that the same thing?” Clint asked “A myth and a legend? At least that’s what I heard.” Thor and Katie both shook their heads.

“You heard wrong.” Katie looked at him “A legend is a collection of stories about a person or significant event and whilst unverifiable they are handed down and accepted as historical. So, things like King Arthur. It’s accepted there WAS a King called Arthur and he had a set of Knights, but the stories about his Wizard friend, Merlin, Excalibur… no way of proving.”

“And a Myth is bullshit?” Clint asked.

“It’s a made up story, an idea or a concept. Sometimes an imaginary thing, or person. Mythical stories often contain heroes or deities and explain a practice, rite or natural phenomenon.” Katie said, “Mind you, until Thor arrived on Earth Norse Gods were a Myth in themselves so who knows…” “Well that’s not confusing.” Clint mumbled, snatching a handful of popcorn.

“I had this exact conversation with Fury a few years back” Katie chuckled “You re-wrote our entire History books Thor.” The God grinned. “I would very much like to hear some of these Urban Legends or Myths.” he said eagerly.

“Or we could go one better.” Natasha suggested “It is movie night and there’s a film called Urban Legend…” Tony groaned “I was gonna suggest watching Point Break.” “Watch me do what?” Thor asked, puzzled.

“No, the film.” Tony sighed. “It’s about surfers who rob a bank.”

“Why would surfers want to rob a bank?” Thor asked. “Same reason anyone wants to rob a bank I suppose.” Steve said, pushing himself up off the floor and reaching for the beer Tony had placed on the table, before settling next to Katie on the sofa “Money.” “It’s quite a good film actually.” Katie mused “Plus Keanu Reeves looks hot in it…” “Yeah well I belive it is my turn to choose so…” Thor clapped his hands together. “I would very much like to see this Urban Legends…”

“Alright…” Tony sighed, settling down “Prepare to have your mind rotted into nothingness…JARVIS, play the movie…”

***** “God I forgot how crap that film is.” Natasha grumbled as the credits started rolling.

“It’s not so bad.” Clint said.

“Only because you fancy Tara Reid.” she shot back.

Clint shrugged and Katie glanced up from where she was snuggled under Steve’s arm to see her fiancé had fallen asleep, his head lolling against the back of the sofa. She smiled and took a second to just watch how relaxed he looked. It had taken him a while to get this comfortable around the other members of their team, but over the last few months especially, it was as if something had just twigged within him. And the relaxed, tactile, cheeky boy from Brooklyn she knew and loved seemed to bust free more often in front of everyone else. She reached up to give him a kiss on the cheek and he stirred slightly, blinking down at her and gave a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

“It’s ok.” she chuckled, rubbing his chest “You weren’t snoring. How much did you see?”

“Erm…” he pondered, his hand curling round the one that was rubbing over his T-shirt, fingers gently playing with hers. “The bit where the girl was strangled in her bed when her room mate thinks she’s having sex.”

“I thought that was the best bit.” Tony said, wiping his face “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights…”

“Yes.” Thor agreed eagerly “A real legend, something that could easily be true.” “You know, I remember when I was a kid, some guy in Oklahoma got arrested for trying to enact the whole headlight one.” Banner mused “He pursued the first guy who flashed him for not having his lights on but ended up crashing into a tree. Suppose that’s Karma.”

“But he re-enacted that legend…” Natasha said, “He wasn’t the cause of it, surely?”

Bruce shrugged “I assume so, isn’t that the point though? You can’t trace half of these stories to an origin?”

“I was always convinced that the crazy cat lady who lived next door to us killed one of her kittens in the microwave when she tried to dry it after it fell into our swimming pool” Katie said, looking at Tony and raising her eyebrow “Mind you, that’s because you told me she did.” Tony laughed. “You were so gullible.” “I was 6.” she shook her head before she snorted, “Dad kicked your ass because you gave me nightmares for a week.”

“There is one that wasn’t in the film that I know for a FACT is true.” Clint said, and everyone turned to face him. Katie moved so she was sat up and looked at him, frowning and he gave her a soft wink. Steve gave a little whine at the fact she had moved and she turned to look at him as he held his arms out. She smiled, he was always clingy when he was tired, like a giant, oversized baby. She shuffled over onto his lap and he wrapped his left arm around her waist, laying his head against her chest as she looped her right arm over his shoulder. He loved snuggling up to her. The normality of being able to do and enjoy these type of moments was something he adored. His right hand dropped to her thigh, thumb gently skating over her leggings.

“Truly?” Thor sat forward, listening intently.

Clint nodded. “It happened in one of the towns I visited when I was part of the circus. There was a young girl, left home alone for the first time with only her dog for company. She’s sat watching the news and there’s an urgent report of a killer on the loose in her neighbourhood.”

Tony and Banner exchanged a look, the pair of them rolling their eyes. Katie glanced down at Steve who was listening intently. Biting her lip she looked back at Clint as he continued.

“Terrified, she locks all the doors and windows, but she forgets about the basement window…”

Thor gave a gasp and at that point Katie had to look away as the God’s face was utterly horrified. Natasha was suddenly focusing on her beer bottle, trying not to laugh. But Clint carried on, deadly serious, and Katie had to hand it to him. His poker face was impeccable.

“So she goes to bed, taking her dog to her room with her and letting it sleep under her bed, coz you know, she’s scared. Anyway, she wakes in the night to hear a dripping sound coming from the bathroom. It’s disturbing her a little but she’s too scared to get out of bed and find out what it is. Instead, for comfort, she reaches a hand toward the floor for the dog and is rewarded by a reassuring lick on her hand.”

“Good, good…” Thor said, nodding along “Man’s best friend after all.” “Exactly” Clint said, and in the corner of her eye Katie could see Tony and Banner both shaking with silent laughter. Looking at Steve again, she suppressed a snort of her own as the Soldier was frowning slightly, his eyes focused on Clint as he sat up.

“Anyway, the next morning when she wakes, she goes to the bathroom for a drink of water only to find her dead, mutilated dog hanging in the shower with his blood slowly dripping onto the tiles. On the shower wall, written in the dog’s blood, are the words “HUMANS CAN LICK, TOO.”

There was a pause for a beat before Steve let out a snort “What a load of crap.”

Tony and Banner began to laugh and Natasha grinned, but Thor was completely and utterly serious when he looked at Clint.

“So there was a killer, in her house…under her bed?” Clint nodded, a small smile on his face.

“Hey Thor…” Tony quipped, “Did you know they’re taking the word gullible out of the dictionary?”

Thor looked at him, frowning “Why?” ***** “Want me check under the bed for any serial killers?” Steve asked as he emerged from the en-suite in his boxers, top half bare.

Katie grinned “I’m sure if there’s one hiding you’ll keep me safe Soldier…” He frowned playfully as he pulled back the duvet and crawled onto the bed so he was hovering over her “Does that make me your dog?”

“Down boy.” she smirked as grabbed her wrist and licked her palm. She shrieked, laughing as she wiped it on his back “That’s disgusting…” “You don’t usually complain when I’m using my tongue.” he quipped cheekily.

“Steven Grant Rogers…” she said in a mock tone of shock. He chuckled slightly, pressing his lips to hers. The kiss quickly grew heated and his hands dropped to her hips, clutching at the hem of his shirt she was wearing, as ever.

“I don’t know why you bother wearing anything to bed…” he grinned as he pulled it over her head “It always comes off…” “That’s because you’re a sex fiend.” she smirked as he kissed her again, his hands tracing up her ribs. She tipped her pelvis up to meet his and he let out a soft groan as she pressed against his groin, his arousal becoming more and more evident as he took over, grinding up against her spot, his lips moving across her jawline and to her neck.

Then, all at once there was a huge crash of what sounded like thunder, and the alarm began to ring out through their apartment.

Steve stilled, and he glanced at Katie for a second.

“Are you fucking kidding me…” She groaned as he jumped off her, pulling on a pair of sweats, tossing her the shirt she had been in. She pulled it on and grabbed a pair of shorts to cover her underwear clad bottom half before she reached under the dresser for her gun and they darted into the living room.

“JARVIS?” Steve spoke as he grabbed his shield which, ever since the whole incident with Hydra the previous year stayed in their apartment.

“Disturbance detected on residential floor 29.” The AI offered as called the elevator.

“That’s Clint and Thor’s floor…” Katie muttered as the elevator doors opened and Tony was already in there, his iron man gauntlets on his hand.

“Precaution…”he muttered as Steve looked at him. “There’s no way anyone could get in here…”

The elevator stopped and the doors opened onto the floor. The three of them stepped out to see Clint sprawled on the floor surrounded by bits of plaster and breezeblock, groaning, Natasha bent over him. Thor stood a few feet away by a huge hole in the wall to their right. The door to the stairs flew open and Banner emerged, frowning as he took in the scene in front of him.

“What the fuck?” he asked as Katie’s eyes diverted to Thor who was panting, hammer in his hand, his bare chest heaving.

“I’m sorry…” Thor said, bending over to help Clint to his feet “But you scared me Barton.” “Scared you?” Steve looked at him, frowning. “How did he scare you so much that you put him through the wall?

“He’s done A Barton” Nat smirked as Clint doubled over, groaning, clutching at his side whilst the rest of the team smirked or let out a chuckle. A Barton was a term Nat had coined ages ago for when Clint did something utterly stupid, like taking out a full horde of hostiles only to then go and knock himself out by colliding with a tree branch when running back to the jet, or managing to spill boiling hot coffee all down his front when the lid to his cup wasn’t on properly.

“So what did he do this time?” Steve asked as the arm holding his shield dropped to his side.

“He led under my bed.” Thor said, “And licked my hand.” There was a pause before Katie and Tony both let out huge snorts of laughter, as Steve rolled his eyes, a smile tugging on his face.

“I think you broke my ribs.” Clint groaned, and Thor looked devastated.

“Serves you right.” Tony said, glancing at the hole in the wall, shaking his head. “JARVIS, arrange someone to fix this in the morning. I’m going back to bed…”

“Do you need medical?” Steve asked, looking at Clint. He shook his head. “Well looks like you just made an Urban Legend of your own Hawkeye.” Katie said, grinning. “The story of the dumbass Archer who thought it was a good idea to scare the shit out of the God of Thunder.”

@the-omni-princess @momobaby227 @geekofmanythings16 @angelofhell-666 @thewackywriter @marvelfansworld @cobalt-gear @asgardlover75 @jennmurawski13 @jtargaryen18 @saiyanprincessswanie @navispalace @patzammit @joannaliceevans-fanficblog @icanfeelastormbrewing @djeniiscorner @ayamenimthiriel @coldmuffinbanditshoe @disneylovingal @madzmilllz @sgtjaamesbaarnes @waiting4inspiration

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citylightsbooks · 4 years ago

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Exclusive Interview with Sheree Renée Thomas, Author of Nine Bar Blues

One of our booksellers, Caitlyn Wild, had the amazing opportunity to conduct this longform interview with author Sheree Renée Thomas. Her newest book is Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future, published by Third Man Books. Sheree is celebrating her book along with her Third Man “label mates” Alison Mosshart and Robert Gordon (who also have new books out) in our City Lights LIVE events series on Wednesday, October 21.

***

Caitlyn: This book is gorgeous on the inside AND the outside. This is one of my favorite covers of 2020, have to say. As I'm gazing wistfully at it here I see the subtitle, "Stories from an Ancient Future". Could you speak about what that phrase holds and conjures for you? Sheree Renée Thomas: Thank you! I wanted the cover for Nine Bar Blues to offer a visual clue to some of the characters, natural (and unnatural) landscapes, and themes in the stories. Third Man Books did a wonderful job of creating that sense of wonder and the verdant richness (cicadas, Egyptian gods, the moon, aliens, vines!) I was hoping for.

The subtitle, “Stories from an Ancient Future” is my riff on the idea that if humanity continues onward, we’ll someday reach a point where even our imagined futures are ancient. Some of the stories in the collection are set in the near future, alternate futures, the present, and the past. What would life be like if you existed in an ancient future? If time is relative, there is always a place where we can look back at ourselves (or our imagined selves) and see the grand sweep of time. What things remains the same, what falls away, is erased and remade again? The ancient future contains some of the wisdom of our past and some of our hopes for the future. It also contains our mistakes and fears. Will we be better off then, in this imagined future? Perhaps, at least I hope so. But that depends on what we carry with us and how well we learn from the lessons of the past. For me, it’s a blending of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and the West African philosophy of Sankofa.

The story that really stayed with me in this collection was "Head Static". It put me in an altered state! I felt like I was watching the earth as it was being created, the deep gods and archetypes of our psyches emerging from the hum of the universe before my eyes, but in reverse. In short, I loved it! Could you tell us about the inception of the character in that story, Claire, and explain how she came to be in your mind and then on the page? That makes me so happy because Claire was one of those characters whose journey really haunted me. When I began writing her, I knew who she was but not why she was, or rather, how she had come to feel the way she did. Music became a way of thinking about the things that people share in common, around the world, throughout time. It is one of our greatest forms of expression. And music contains our deepest thoughts and observations on the world. But our culture is so obsessed with the cult of celebrity, in search of the next great thing. We worship youth and novelty, often at youth’s expense. There’s this constant drive for innovation and acceleration, while holding onto the dream of an endless life span. At what cost? To what end? Writing “Head Static” was a way for me to think about some of these ideas while exploring that deep musical connection. On October 21 we are excited to host you and two of your fellow Third Man Books authors, Alison Mosshart and Robert Gordon. Third Man also publishes another of my favorites, Janaka Stucky. As a reader I'm consistently enraptured with the authors and books they publish. I'm curious as to what the Third Man experience is like from the author's side? It’s been pretty exciting! First of all, if you ever get a chance to visit Third Man Records, go immediately because the space is just amazing. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a cross between Tim Burton and Ed Wood with a little Willy Wonka mixed in there? Fantastic design throughout and um, Jack White. Yeah, Jack White! Working with Chet Weise and the Third Man Books/Records team has been as close as my non-musical self has ever been to being in a rock band! There is a lot of good energy, great ideas, and collaboration, and the team is insanely supportive and creative. Between the kickass writers—poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction—there’s a great deal of talent to just vibe with and connect. My fellow press mates are always working on new wonders, the kind of work that impacts the world—and that’s inspiring.

You are the first Black author to receive a World Fantasy Award for the groundbreaking collection you edited, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, which was published in 2000. (HELL YES). In another interview, you said you were inspired to put the book together because you were shocked it didn't exist yet. In 2020, is there a book you are shocked that has yet to be published? What books that have come along since 2001 are you glad about? There is at least one marvelous book that I do hope to see in the world before I roll out, and there are a couple of others that seem like their time has come, industry-wise, so we shall see. Back in ’98 when I was thinking on what would eventually become the first volume of Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, I didn’t set out to create a groundbreaking project. I literally was just looking for more Black speculative fiction to read for fun, and when I didn’t find it in the bookstores, its absence puzzled me. With as many different anthologies that make up the genre, I was surprised that it hadn’t been done before. I’m really grateful I had the chance (and the courage) to do it. It’s been quite a journey! Since that first volume and the second one, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, that came out in 2004, there have been many, many wonderful amazing books that pretty much put away the old arguments about Black writers not reading or writing this work. One book that I reviewed around the time I was working on the anthology was Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring. That novel felt like a game changer to me, because Nalo’s writing got us all so excited about the cultures and worlds we had not seen often in science fiction. She achieved this in a magical way that, while offering all the things we love about speculative fiction, rang true with a rootedness in Afrodiasporic culture. It didn’t feel like she was translating to us. Her writing, storytelling, and world building felt natural and true to itself. Today you could have a whole library of Black speculative fiction (and the scholarship that examines it), and that is beyond thrilling for me.

Between the diverse works of N.K. Jemisin, Andrea Hairston, Tananarive Due, P. Djèlí Clark—they cover a lot of imaginative ground--and a ton of exciting YA authors I cannot even begin to name, readers have a lot of new work and new voices to explore. It’s just an exciting time.

Finally, if you owned a bookstore or small press, what would it be called and what would your bestseller or focus be? I’ve been jotting down bookstore names for years! Here are a few: Beloved Books (this was invented during my Toni Morrison phase), focusing on the books people can’t stop discussing and all of our childhood favorites, too. Echo Tree Books (named after one of my favorite short story writers and poets, Henry Dumas, featuring all fantasy, science fiction, horror, and such).

Haint Blue Books (so I can paint every single wall the most stunning shades of blue, focusing on excellent fiction and world folklore with tons of poetry because sometimes, sadly, people be sleeping on the poetry, lol. Don’t sleep on the poets!). And my favorite, All Y’all Books (Southern lit and more! Plus a healthy selection of regional lit from other parts).

I love the last one the best because I can just hear folks saying, “You know you can get it at All Y’all Books!” or asking, “Where did you get that?” “Girl, at All Y’all’s Books. They have out of print and rare books, too!” Authors can say, “I’m going to be reading at All Y’all’s Books.” You can’t help but smile when you say that!

#sharee renee thomas #nine bar blues #5 questions #third man books #speculative fiction #Black authors

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jordanalane · 5 years ago

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Zuki Week Day 3: Modern AU, Or...

The Yakuza

First Part: Highly recommend you start there. Even if you’ve read it before a refresher is always good! After all, I first posted this 4 years ago.

Six Months Ago

The exact number of people that had been killed by Iroh Kasai was unknown to almost everyone. It was lost to time and folklore, but most estimated it in the dozens. The government that put him away for life put it at 17. But to most the figure was simply unknown.

The people who knew him the best knew the true number though: Zero. It was a long story.

He was Zuko’s favorite relative. He’d not seen him in anything other than the worn out teal of his prison clothes since he was five, not talked to via anything other than a glass partition. It didn’t seem to matter though, as each visit seemed to bring a sense of peace and fulfillment. He made a trip out here every few months, and always looked forward to them.

“What did you have for breakfast?” Iroh asked with a soft smile. It was the same thing he always asked. He missed the food on the outside and always wanted to know what it is that Zuko was eating. Which always made Zuko laugh.

They caught up with one another, talking about Iroh’s life in prison, about what was going on with the family. Talking about the family was naturally dangerous, as everything they said was being recorded, so they talked in generalities and often in code, not using anyone by their name.

There was one person that uncle always wanted to hear about, who Zuko always had a smile on his face while talking about.

“How is the Mrs.?”

“She’s good.” Zuko said with a content look on his face. “She’s doing well at work and I’m getting to spend more time with her.”

“Excellent. I know how important she is to you.”

“Yeah. There is one thing though. She won’t talk about the possibility of another baby. She’s still so hurt over what happened.”

“It must be hard.”

“It is. I love her and I want to try again but there is so much pain there.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to him, Zuko. I wish I could have done more.”

Zuko shrugged. “There is nothing that anyone could have done. It was just fate.”

“Hardly.” Iroh snorted. “What happened to that baby was cruel.”

“SIDS is cruel I suppose, Uncle.”

“SIDS?” Uncle Iroh asked, tilting his head a bit. “You think the baby died of crib death?”

“Well of course.”

Iroh shook his head with a heavy sigh. “Zuko… People in our family don’t die of natural causes.”

---

Present

“Suki.”

It wasn’t the fact that Zuko Kasai had said her name, but more the way he said it that told Ayamu he was about to die.

“What the hell is going on?!” He barked up at her. “You’re one of them?! How long?!”

“Always.” She said simply, naturally like she’d never hidden anything.

“And you’re willing to throw your life away for them?”

“No, not for them.” She said quickly. “For him.” She motioned to Zuko who was still cuffed, looking up at her helplessly.

“You…” Ayamu breathed. “That baby…”

“Was mine. My father saw to it that there was no record of it, but yes, he was my son. My son that was murdered by his own grandfather.”

“And so Ozai was killed for it.”

Suki didn’t answer, but he knew that is what happened. Everything was starting to make sense now; her odd behavior at the graveyard, curiosity over his intentions, the fact that she would commonly drop out of contact on her days off. He felt like a fool. A few feet away Azula Kasai was running over the events of the past few months in her head, also feeling like she should have known better.

Ayamu sighed heavily, looking around at the others on the ground, the warehouse, the guns. “You really think you’re going to get away with this?”

“I do.” Suki said with a little smile. “And I want you to know that you’re a good man and I’ve always respected you for that.”

“But you’re still going to kill me?”

“Yes. And I’m not sorry.”

With that she pulled the trigger, a bullet hitting Ayamu between his deep brown eyes. He fell over dead before the echoing sound of the shot had dissipated from the vast warehouse. Suki froze, looking as his blood ran from his head, pooling on the concrete floor.

Azula jumped to her feet, her hands never having been fully handcuffed. “I told you not to do anything stupid!”

“What the fuck was she supposed to do?!” Zuko barked back, trying to roll himself over so he could get up, his legs flailing around a bit. “He found out and she protected herself!”

“She killed a cop! This isn’t like killing another family member or a street thug. This is a COP!”

Suki was still and silent as the brother and sister argued back and forth. She looked down at Ayamu’s limp body, thinking about the fact that she really had just ended his life. She’d meant what she said about respecting him. She liked the guy, and trusted him with her life. A twinge of guilt sank into her gut as she realized that up until a few moments ago he could have said the same thing about her. She didn’t regret what she did. But she was starting to feel like it was too sloppy, that this wasn’t just going to be as simple as blowing off his head.

“Azula!” She called out, making the bickering siblings stop arguing. Zuko was on his feet finally, Azula having undone his cuffs and helped him to his feet. Suki handed Ayamu’s gun to the sister, who took it unknowing. “Shoot me.” Suki told her.

Zuko looked at them both confused,“What?”

Azula seemed to know more than him however, raising the gun and placing a shot in the fleshy part of Suki’s right shoulder.

“What the fuck!?” Zuko yelled as Suki screamed, falling down into a heap only a few feet from Ayamu.

“Let her bleed a bit.” Azula said with a flat, almost venomous voice, turning her attention to a clearly confused Sokka who was still on the floor.

“Suki!” Zuko called out, kneeling by her as she held her injured arm, looking at the bleeding wound. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah.” She breathed. “Actually no.”

Zuko chuckled at her comment, taking off his button down and applying it as a tourniquet for her arm. “Thank you for that.” He mumbled.

“Don’t say thank you yet.” She told him, motioning to a still very pissed off looking Azula.

“Who knew that you were coming here?” She asked.

“No one.” Suki insisted, wincing as Zuko tightened his shirt around her shoulder, “I didn’t even know that we were till we got here.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive! I had no idea.”

“Right.” Azula sighed. “We have to get her out of here.”

Zuko nodded, scooping Suki up in his arms and starting to carry her out to the car they’d arrived in.

Sokka watched them walk away before turning to Azula. “I take it that was his source.”

Azula nodded, looking down at the body of Ayamu. She’d taken care to remove or clean anything that might carry evidence of them being there, and was checking around more to see if there were anything else she might miss. They would call in the clean up crew to disinfect the area, to dispose of the body, but she still liked taking things into her own hands as much as possible.

“Are we gonna talk about what she said about your father?” He asked in a soft voice.

“Later.” She hissed, her face hardening.

---

Katara’s healed Suki as best she could and tucked her away in Zuko’s bed, saying that she needed to rest. The wound wasn’t bad and would heal well. Suki had been given some pain pills and Katara had instructed that no one was to brother her as she rested. It was the only way she was going to get better.

Zuko reluctantly agreed, but kept looking up towards his bedroom door, thinking that he should go check on her.

“I still don’t understand why she needed to get shot.” He mumbled at no one in particular.

“Because if they find that crime scene and find her blood mixed in with Ayamu, they will think they are both dead.” Azula explained. “Plus she needed to suffer a bit.”

“Suffer? Why?! She didn’t do anything wrong!”

Azula rolled her eyes, “Let’s recount how badly Suki fucked up today. One, had that damn phone on her when she shouldn't have. Awfully sloppy for someone who’s supposed to be ‘good’ like you always say she is. She then shot and killed her partner, a cop, who everyone is going to be looking for, along with her. They are going to be all over the news, and every law enforcement in the nation is going to be looking for her. That shouldn’t be too hard to combat, right? I guess she won’t be able to leave your bed like you always wanted.

“And lest we forget that she blew her very, VERY important cover. This entire plan of your’s with the other families hinged on her feeding you information. She’s not exactly a cop anymore so she can’t exactly get information to give to you and for you to give to the others. So basically, because of your girlfriend we’re fucked and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it!”

Aang, Katara and Sokka were standing nearby, unsure looks on their faces as they looked from Azula to Zuko, expecting an answer from him.

"Don't... don't be mad at her for this." Zuko mumbled. "She acted like she did for me. So it's not her fault it's mine, if anything."

"So then it's your fucking fault!" Azula barked. "So now you have to deal with this AND you still have to give an answer to Hakoda and you don't have ANY idea."

"I know." Zuko mumbled. "I'll figure it out."

"Stop saying that! You won't figure it out! You just keep buying time and then fucking yourself over!"

"So then what the hell should I do!? Give up!?"

"YES!"

Aang had heard enough from both Zuko and Azula. They were still talking, yelling really, with no end or resolution in sight. It was useless and he he didn't wanna hear it anymore. He left them behind, climbing the stairs of Zuko's loft that overlooked the main room. He knocked on the bedroom door twice before walking in, finding Suki laying on the bed.

"I'm not interpreting, am I?" He asked.

Suki looked up at him with a soft smile on her face. "I’m as busy as I look." She leaned her head back against the headboard. There were pillows all around her, placed there by an over-attentive Zuko. She had one of Zuko's robes half on, her bandaged shoulder exposed.

Aang closed the door behind him, closing them off from the arguing downstairs. "How are you feeling?"

"Well... I did just get shot. And everyone hates me so I guess I'm doing ok."

Aang chuckled, pulling a chair up next to the bed and sitting. "I suppose that was a stupid question."

"No, you were just being polite. I appreciate it."

"It's nothing." He flashed her a grin. "You know I don't hate you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You did what you did to protect Zuko. I would have done the same thing so I'm the last person who would be upset about it."

She nodded slowly, "But you have to admit that I didn't make things easier on him."

"I don't think he'll really care about that." Aang mumbled, motioning downstairs. "He'd do anything to protect you, including taking all the heat for this."

"I know." Suki whispered, using her good arm to pull her blanket close. "I don't why I feel so crummy then?"

Aang stood up, pulling one of the pillows away and sitting next to Suki where it had been. "Well try and put it into words… Why are you upset?”

"Cause I fucked up." Her eyes started to well up with tears. "He counted on me and I messed up and now I can't help him anymore. And because of that I might get him, you, me, all of us killed. So yeah I'm gonna be upset! And I think I’m pretty damned well allowed to be.”

After saying her name in a soft, comforting voice Aang reached out, taking her good hand into his. She resisted for a moment, stuff against him. After a few moments she sighed heavily, allowing herself to relax against him, her head laying on his shoulder. He kissed the side of her head, laying his head on her’s.

They could still hear the arguing from downstairs, Azula and Zuko yelling at one another. They just sat together in the stillness of the bedroom, holding one another for a little while.

“I think I have an idea.” She whispered finally. “I’m not sure it it’ll work but....”

“But it’s worth trying.” He said with a smile, turning towards her. “And I believe in you, I think that we can make it work.”

Suki gave him a small smile and a nod, “Alright. I’ll… need some help getting dressed.”

Aang nodded, “I think I can help with that.” He flashed a grin, “You know you’re much prettier in real life than you are in pictures.”

This made her giggle, cheeks tinting pink. “Here I was thinking the same thing about you.”

Aang chuckled, reaching out and taking her chin into his hand gently, placing a soft kiss on her lips.

---

They'd taken a break from arguing to get something to drink. If they kept going like this they would lose their voices and they wouldn't be able to yell. Azula was drinking water, as was customary for her. Zuko opted for something stronger, pouring a stiff mixed drink for himself.

Katara and Sokka were sitting around the small table in Zuko's kitchen area, talking about what the next move. However this talk was cut short by Suki and Aang walking down the steps from the loft and into the big, main room.

"You should be resting." Katara scolded. "You'll never heal unless you do."

"I know." Suki mumbled. "But this couldn't wait."

"Suki has an idea on how to make your father happy and fix everything." Aang said in Sokka and Katara's direction.

"Oh?"

Suki nodded as she walked to them slowly. Zuko noticed how he was handling her delicately, a hand placed at the small of her back as he sat her down at the table, a content and loving smile on his face.

"So what's the idea?" Sokka asked, arms crossing over his chest.

"The BeiFongs."

Azula damn ear spat out the water that she was drinking when she heard the name.

"You're joking, right?" Sokka laughed.

"You'd think I shot her in the head." Azula mumbled from by the kitchen sink.

"I think it'll work." Suki defended. "There is no one else who'd want the Ishida out as much as they would."

"Wait." Katara cut in, "Who are the BeiFongs?"

"They are an old Chinese crime family. They were big a generation or two ago, but haven't done much of anything in the past 50 years." Sokka explained. "I assumed that they were all dead."

"Close but not all." Suki said. "The daughter is looking to get back into the game and I think that if you give her the chance to take out the Ishida she'd jump on it."

"What even makes you think that the Ishida CAN be taken down?" Sokka asked.

Suki gave a small smile, like she was divulging a hidden gem of information. "Cause they're broke."

"Broke?"

She nodded, "The move away from the mainland has cost more than they expected or planned for. They are pouring money into this new territory while ignoring their existing businesses. They have no money in reserves and can't even pay their underlings.

"You take out Long Feng and the other heads and the rank and file will flock to whoever's willing to give them a paycheck, no matter who the family is. They are all hired goons anyways. No one is related by blood unlike the other families, so the loyalty is shaky at best. It'll remove them from Japan and then the Beifongs can take over their dealings in China.

"And then your family can work the drug market here in Japan. They will supply you and you can use the new members to help with the dirty work. You’ll get rid of the Ishida and make more money, what’s not to love?”

Katara and Sokka looked at one another with an impressed shrug, “I suppose it’s something.”

“We should at least bring it to our father. I think he’ll be down for the idea.”

“And the story checks out.” Zuko added. “We were thinking that the Ishida had something to hide. Now we know what. If Bato got in he’d find out that they were all bark and no bite. No wonder they shut him out.”

“But then why kill him?”

“Ayamu thought it was in part to cover up that they were out of money. But he mostly thought it was a message the the other families."

"What kind of message?"

"A declaration of war. That he saw the writing on the wall and took a preemptive strike."

"But we weren't planning on going to war with him, so Bato died for nothing."

Suki nodded slowly, "I'm sorry to say." She gave them a sad smile.

Katara's head hung, "Damn." She mumbled.

"So... where do we go from here?" Zuko asked.

"Wait." Azula interjected, having not said anything in awhile. "Are you guys buying this?"

"Yeah." Katara told her.

"Why wouldn't we?"

“Because this is the same girl who blew away a cop like three hours ago! She started this entire damn mess with her cover and now it’s her that’s in charge?!”

“I never said I was in charge.” Suki barked. “I just had an idea and it seems to be the best one that anyone can come up with. Unless you have something else in mind, Azula?”

Azula didn’t have anything to say and she knew it, so she kept her mouth shut.

Zuko stood tall, the serious look covering his face, “Then it’s agreed.”

“Agreed.” Sokka and Katara echoed.

“Whatever.” Azula mumbled. For the first time in recent memory she wasn’t happy that Zuko’s plan worked out.

---

“We have to get you out of the country.” Zuko told Suki as he put her back in bed. “They will be looking for you.”

“I know.” She sighed, settling herself back amongst the pillows and blankets. “I hate it that I can’t go to my house and get my things.”

“What do you need?” Aang asked as he sat at the foot of the bed, “We can replace it.”

She shook her head, “It’s momentos and stuff, nothing that can be replaced.”

Zuko gave a heavy frown, “I’m sorry.”

Suki shrugged, “It’s nothing. I lived light anyways. I had the feeling that this would happen sooner or later so I didn’t get attached to things.”

Aang and Zuko exchanged sad looks before turning their attention when back to Suki. “We can make new memories with new momentos.” Aang said with a soft grin. “Together.”

“Yeah.” Suki breathed, relaxing against her pillows “I’d like that.”

“You can stay with me at the temple until we can get you out of the country.” Aang offered to her. “The police won’t look there and there is plenty of room.”

“That’ll work.”

“We can get you all the new clothes and things that you need.” Zuko offered. “Just think about what you’ll need and we’ll get it.”

“Thank you.” Suki said with a sleepy smile. “Both of you.”

They all exchanged smiles, Zuko finding a seat between Aang and Suki on the edge of the bed. “Sooo.” Zuko said, an unsure look on his face. “How are we gonna, you know, do this.”

“Do what?” Suki asked, tilting her head a bit.

“This.” Zuko motioned to the three of them. “I mean I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with the two of you and-”

“You can’t be in a monogamous relationship with two people.” Aang pointed out.

“It’s true.” Suki added with a grin.

Zuko rolled his eyes, “You guys know what I’m talking about.”

“We know.” Suki smiled. “We just like to mess with you.”

Aang nodded in agreement, “It’s so much fun. It’s like you’re hot AND entertaining.”

“Here, here.” Suki said with a soft giggle, the action drawing a blush to Zuko’s face.

“Well thank you but we still don’t have an answer to this.”

“To what?” Aang asked. “I don’t see anything that needs an answer.”

“Same.” Suki said with a smile.

Zuko looked back and forth between the two of them, his face gathering in confusion. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

Aang gave Zuko a smile, climbing to his knees and crawling towards Zuko on the bed. He kissed him quickly on the cheek before moving past him and to Suki. He settled himself in next to her, cuddling up against her sweetly. Suki bit her lip, her head laying against Aang’s shoulder. Aang took her hand into his, his eyebrows raising at Zuko.

It took him a few moments to realize what what going on, what they were saying. His face lit up when he realized it, an actual, real laugh rolling from him. “Hot damn.” He mumbled.

“Any questions?” Suki asked in a soft, distinctly sultry voice.

“None.” Zuko said, joining them in their embrace.

---

He's moved from the cot in the closet to her bed, giving her the space that she needed in the morning. Azula no longer cared if he slept in either. In fact after all the action that happened during the night she felt like letting him sleep in. He needed it.

Azula also needed the time alone. She was busy punching the hanging bag in a rhythmic pattern, each time she hit the bag it feeling like part of her worries and anxiety were leaving her. She figured that if she hit hard enough and enough times that she'd stop feeling like this.

Feeling like a fool, like she'd been a willing participant in scam that'd been committed at the expense of her own family, her own father. Feeling like she should have known, that she did know and did nothing about it.

"Did I know?" She asked her bag.

It didn't answer, it didn't have to, she already knew.

It was known that the Aihara family was behind the death of Ozai, her father. While they didn't take credit for the death, the style of the excitation had them written all over it, there was no need to take credit. Normally Azula would have nothing to connect her brother with the death, except for the fact that her brother just so happened to be the lover of the family's heir-apparent. She knew deep in her that Zuko must have had something to do with Ozai's death. He simply MUST have. She just didn't know why.

Until yesterday.

She'd been 14 when she held her nephew, and only seen him twice before his death. Even though she was an oddly un-emotional girl, she couldn't deny the strong connection she felt to him. He had red hair like his mother, but there was something that reminded her of photos she'd seen of her and Zuko as babies. He'd been such a sweet thing, and even though he was a big baby, he still seemed so tiny and fragile to her. So perfect.

Azula mourned him, privately of course. She hated that his life had been taken so soon, before it even got a chance to start. He didn't deserve the short life he had, nor did the family deserve the lingering pain that his death caused.

So when she'd heard that Ryo's death had been murder and not crib death like she's always been told, she really did feel like the air had been momentarily sucked out of her lungs. The fact that all that pain she felt, both them and since had been artificially, inflicted by her own father, was like losing the baby all over again.

There was another lingering feeling that she was having issues with, and was hoping that with each punch of her bag it would go away.

She hit it until she felt like her hands would start bleeding. She lunged against the bag, holding onto it with a weak hug head resting on it.

"You know you're gonna break your hands doing that."

She growled to herself, remembering for a moment that part of having a room mate was that they talked sometimes when you didn't want them too. Boyfriend or not.

"I'm fine." She mumbled to herself, pulling herself up off the bag.

"Why are you upset?" He asked, reading the hard lines in her chin and shoulders.

"It's nothing." She turned towards Sokka who was standing in the door, going to walk past him.

"Hey." He said in a soft voice, hands going to her shoulders. "You know you can talk to me about stuff that's bothering you, right?"

"I know. But nothing's wrong with me."

Sokka sighed, giving her a sad little smile. "But we both know that's not the case." This made Azula roll her eyes, but only made Sokka more insistent. "We're together now Azula, for better and worse. And part of that is that you get to talk to someone else about what it is what's bothering you. That's what I'm here for."

Azula looked down, nodding slowly. "I know."

"I love you." He told her with a soft smile, brushing some sweat covered hair out of her face. "And I'm here for you."

"Thank you." She breathed.

"So?" He asked with a smile, "What's on your mind?"

Azula swallowed hard, looking into his deep blue eyes. "It's all fucked up, ya know? About my dad and my brother and the baby."

"It's very fucked up."

"What's worse is that... If what Suki said yesterday was true, that Ozai really did kill Ryo, then.... he deserved to die. I would have done the same thing if I were Zuko."

Sokka frowned heavily, but nodded slowly. "Anyone would have."

"Then why am I so angry at him?" Azula whispered in a harsh voice, tears swelling up on the bottom of her eyes.

Sokka sighed, wrapping her arms around him and holding her close, lips pressing to the side of her head.

---

His scar vanished, the red light that flooded the hallway almost matching the color of the abused skin. He walked with a proud swagger that you didn’t see with many japanese men, let alone Yakuza. Most of his peers in the underworld were older men. Grizzled by years of the war between the families, and they acted as such. But not Zuko. He walked and acted more like a soft spoken rock star than a Family boss. He had no idea of any of this, which more or less added to the appeal.

Behind him, in the crimson coated hallway, walked two men who knew this better than anyone. Azula wasn’t the only muscle in the family. Mak was a distant cousin and had been around all of Zuko’s life, and been in his corner all the while. He was Zuko’s closest ally outside his sister and lovers.

When Zuko was unreachable, or otherwise busy, Mak was in charge of things. Not only did he do the dirty work, but he was trusted like few others in the family were. He was the only one outside the siblings who knew about Suki. Not only her true identity but aided Zuko is his visits to her.

Mak was a keen and powerful ally, however it was the last man in the line that arguably was the most powerful and useful. Almost no one knew his real name or where he'd come from, even Zuko just knew him by his moniker, Damien. He was one of the few known Combustion benders.

He'd been trained by the Aihara family in his youth, for his rare Fire Bending ability was powerful but hard to control. Even under Gyatso's tutelage he was uncontrollable, always problematic in nature and attitude. He was on the verge of either being kicked out, killing himself, or leaving. That's when Aang introduced Damien to the Kasai son, Zuko.

They understood one another. Damian carried many scars on him, results from his failed attempts at combustion bending. And much like Zuko's own scar they were reminders of his past, both for better and worse. Zuko had helped him before a better bender. He no longer hurt himself by mistake, and had a much keener use of his ability. He owed his life to Zuko, and he'd been devoted to him and the family ever since.

Aang had asked Zuko once if he'd befriended Damien for the sake of the friendship, or to have a combustion bender on his side. Zuko thought about it for a moment, then simply smiled behind a lightly clenched fist.

He always took Damien on things like these, things that he knew would require some back up. And Mak was the one who brought the issue up in the first place, so he was naturally going to be there.

The effect was specific and powerful, as apparent by the woman in her 20s scampering away from the front desk.

"Where is she?" Zuko baked at her, not adding anymore context, not needing to. The woman coward, pointing in the direction of a back room. Zuko nodded to Damien, silently giving the man his orders. The almost seven foot man nodded, dipping down another hall way with no further explanation.

Zuko and Mak disappeared into the room the woman had told them about, going through a few more doors till they arrived at a back office. They meet an older woman, dresses sharply with her hair pulled back in a tight bun. Zuko needed to say nothing as he walked in, she knew what was about to happen.

"I will pay you!" She barked, standing.

Zuko and Mak stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at the woman.

"Things have been slow! The girls are lazy! I can pay you now!" She continued, clearly frantic. "Double what I owe!"

Mak was the first to move, reaching into his breast pocket to pull out a small notebook, reading over it for a few more long moments where the woman pleaded for another chance.

"You're three months behind." Mak finally said, interrupting. "And, as if that wasn't enough, you recently bought a new car for yourself. A new BMW, if my notes are right."

Zuko broke from his potion beside Mak, starting to circle the room, observing the area but still listening to his cousin.

"A new Audi for your husband too, and a holiday in Hawaii for the both of you and some of your girls."

"Always wanted to visit." Zuko mused to himself, flipping over some papers on her desk.

"Seemed to enjoy herself too. A two week holiday turned into six."

Zuko nodded, picking up a framed picture of her husband.

"Boss!" A deep voice yelled, rolling back into the office. Zuko looked up, knowing Damien's voice anywhere. He hardly ever spoke, and when he did there was a good reason. He left the office, following the voice to another room towards the back. Damien was standing in the door, and motioned for Zuko to enter.

There was a room like this and everyone of these establishments. The girls usually stayed in the back rooms, huddled together, living together in a small space while they were not actively working. It was to be expected. However what Zuko saw had nothing to do with the room, and everything to do with the women in it.

"Take any you want!" The madame called from behind Mak and Damien. "Free of charge!"

All of the girls were standing in a line, as if waiting to be presented to him. Zuko walked to one of them, taking her face into his hand. He studied her intently, the girl flinching at the contact. He looked over over, finding a smooth face covered with skin that was fresh, young, too young. He frowned.

"How old are you?" He asked, knowing the answer, even though she wouldn't say it.

"They are all LEGAL!" The madame yelled.

Zuko let go of the one, moving onto the next and then the next, finding that each one looked just as young, if not younger than the next.

"All of them?" Mak asked, his voice not sad but matter-of-factly.

"Enough of them." Zuko replied. He stepped back, looking over all of them with his arms crossed over his chest.

He saw Suki in them. Not the Suki that was back at the temple that he wanted to get back to desperately, but the one he'd known tucked away in the home of their tutor, with flushed cheeks and skin too young to know the kind of touch he'd given her. Years ago when she told him that they’d been victims of one another he hadn’t believed her. How could he when all he felt was love? But now, over the years, looking back on it as an adult, his mind had changed, and he believed what she had said.

Without another thought he reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a switchblade. He went back to the first girl, taking his knife to her face.

The girls all screamed, including the one in his hand. Because of her movement his cut wasn't perfect, but it was there. It wasn't deep enough that it would need medical attention, but deep enough that it would scar, deep enough that they would never lose her mark.

The action was repeated one by one to all the girls. It didn't matter if they were of age or not to Zuko, he knew what needed to be done. Damien had to restrain a few, even Mak held one that was crying hysterically as Zuko cut her. But in the end they were all done, all marked.

"Listen to me." Zuko told them all, standing before them as he wiped his knife clean with his silk kerchief. "I've marked you today for one simple reason. If I ever see you, or your mark, in a place like this, ever again, I will kill you." They all shrieked a bit. "I will not hesitate. I will not show mercy."

He held his blade and kerchief in his hand loosely a he spoke to them. "Go home to your mother. Marry a man who works hard. Have children. And never let me see your mark again."

He turned on his heels and quickly made his way to the Madame. He held her face with one hand, the other taking the blade to her throat where he slit it in one quick motion. She gasped, but not quickly enough to stop blood from spitting out her lips.

The girls screamed in horror as she hit the floor, dead. Zuko looked back to them, eyes fixated on all of them and none of them at once. With that he turned and left, stepping over the body of the Madame in the process. Mak and Damien followed, leaving the girls alone with the madame. Zuko's blame was once again cleaned and tucked away before they reached the car.

"I thought you weren't going to kill her." Mak asked Zuko, sitting in the backseat with him as Damien drove.

"I wasn't." Zuko admitted. "The plan was to rough her up a bit, send a message. But then..."

"The girls."

Zuko fell silent, but nodded. He wanted to get to the temple, where he knew Aang and Suki were waiting, where things made sense, even as fucked up as they were.

---

She was the last piece of her mother that he had, and much like the water she bent her presence was cooling and calm to him. He didn’t care about her past, or about how many she killed, all he cared about was the smile she wore every time they saw one another.

The loss of Bato had been hard on him and the presence of his beloved daughter helped to calm him, even if the news she bore wasn’t the best.

“I don’t understand why Zuko let her blow her cover. For a man that seems to in control it feels sloppy.”

“I agree.” Katara shrugged, sitting on the lush chair of the sunroom of her father’s house next to him. “He can’t even control his own woman.”

“Right.” Hakoda shrugged, looking over at Katara with a sheepish grin. “But then again, I can’t control you, does that make me a bad leader?”

Katara chuckled, “That’s hardly the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Hakoda smiled. “I also can’t be too mad about it. It seems like she was protecting him, and in this business it pays to have people who are willing to protect you.”

“Even at the cost of losing a cover like that?”

“A cover, a life, a future.” Hakoda nodded slowly, “Sounds like love.”

Katara rolled her eyes, looking at the glass of water she was holding on her knee. “Whatever. I have to go shopping for her after I leave here. She has nothing so I need to go and get some things for her.”

“That should be fun, I know how much you like to shop. Just don’t go crazy with all that fancy stuff.” He made a motion to her clothing.

“Fancy stuff?”

“Yeah, fancy stuff. I get the credit card bill you know.” He laughed.

“You’ve never had to problem with it before.” Katara smiled,

“Well I don’t have a problem with it. I want you to have those things after all. But it might be a little much for a woman who’s not as fancy as you.”

“You know I’m not sure if you’re insulting me or not.”

Hakoda reached over, patting her on the shoulder. “You know I love you, Katara.”

“I know.” She mumbled. “So I guess I need an answer for what to do with Zuko’s plan.”

Hakoda looked out through the open walls of the sun room, eyes scanning the horizon. The house was placed on a large land area that he and Kya had bought before the kids were born. It was away from the hustle and bustle of the city, of the Yakuza. He had an apartment in the city that he stayed in, but he mostly stayed here in the estate. It made him happy, it brought him peace, it helped him think.

“If I say no… then the alliance will be broken and we will be thrown back into war. You’re brother is involved with a Kasai, who I happen to like even though you don’t trust her.”

This drew a groan from Katara, but another dry chuckle from Hakoda.

“I like her killer edge.” His lips curled into a smile, tone light. “Reminds me of someone else I know.”

“If you say so.” Katara mumbled, lips twisting in an annoyed frown. “Go on…”

“I can’t see your brother throwing her to the side at this point in time. So even if we go back into war, he’s not likely to choose a side. Doing so would alienate her and he won’t have it. I don’t think Azula would be so idealistic. She won’t turn her back on her brother, but that’s not to say she’ll stay out of the fight. She’ll offer him support, that much I know.”

“Which would be problematic.”

“To say the least. The biggest problem lies not with the Kasai’s, but with the Aihara’s. They are and have always been the most dangerous of the families and I was always personally grateful for their neutrality. I had been under the hopeful assumption that Ozai’s death was an anti-Kasai movement, retribution towards the family. However knowing what we know now, about Zuko and Aang’s relationship and the baby that was supposedly murdered, I see now that it was a pro-Kasai, a pro-Zuko move. He may not control the family, but he might as well.

“So fact of the matter is that if we say no, we go to war against the Aihara and Kasais, as well as the Ishidas, all without your brother.”

Katara nodded, “And the other option…”

Hakoda nodded. “We accept their offer. We work with the Bei Fongs. Expand our business. Make more money.”

“Seems cut and dry. But It may not pan out though. The Bei Fongs may get cold feet, may not be interested.”

Hakoda shrugged, “And if those things happen we’re back where we are now. So what do we have to lose?”

Katara sighed, “I suppose you’re right…”

“I know I’m right.” He smiled.

“Right.” She groaned again. “I’ll let them know…”

---

“Come mer’ you!” Aang growled, lunging for her.

“Stop it!” She laughed as he tackled her softly, pressing her down on the bed before placing a string of kisses along her collarbone.

“Come on, you know you like it.” He mumbled into her skin.

“Yeah.” Suki sighed, wrapping her legs around his hips. “I think I’m partial to it.”

His kisses lead a trail up her neck, hand groping and caressing her as he did so. He’d never get over how good she felt. He’d only been with Zuko for the past decade or so, and had grown used to the hardness of his body, the lines that jut and cut against his own. So to hold Suki, who was flesh and curves, was a refreshing change to him. He saw the benefits of having two lovers, really.

“I just got dressed.” She sighed into his lips.

Aang withdrew the hand he’d placed in her shorts, a disappointed pout on his face. “But these are my clothes.”

“You’re point?” She pushed him off her so that they were both in a sitting position. Aang kissed her again, this time with a sad little sigh. “I’m gonna get new clothes today anyways, so then you won’t have anything to hold over my head. Even though I don’t think I’ll like what she picks out for me. She’s much too… frilly for me.”

“Well I think you could also be frilly if you wanted to.” Aang kissed her on the shoulder. “Frilly would look nice on you.” Aang looked at the clothes she had on; a pair of his old shorts, and a ripped t-shirt that was one of the one’s Zuko left here at the Temple for himself. She’d been wearing more or less the same thing since she’d gotten here a few days ago. He thought she looked so beautiful, so perfect.

With daily healing sessions from Katara her shoulder was healing well. She was resting comfortably in Aang’s room, with him constantly checking on her. She slept mostly, watching TV between naps. Truth be told she felt like she’d gone through a mental and emotional marathon. Killing her partner was never something she thought about doing, let alone planned to. She mourned for not only him but for her old life and everything that she’d worked for. She took pride in being a cop, and now it was all gone.

It was a lot to take in and a short amount of time to do it. It’s why she’d spend most of her time at the temple curled up in Aang’s bed, crying from time to time.

Zuko was taking care of things around town, coming back to the temple when he could. He, along with Aang, soothed Suki’s fears and dries her tears. They both supported her, doing everything they could to make her feel better. They’d make love, the three of them, and kiss away all the fears that they could. The best thing for her to was just to be held by them, her body lovingly cradled between their strong figures. It was the only time that she felt right, that she truly felt things would be ok.

“You’re beautiful no matter what.” Aang whispered to her, kissing her on the cheek softly.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Me and my frizzy hair and loose morals.”

“Hey.” He scolded gently, kissing her on the lips softly. “I think you’re great. And I don’t care about those things.”

“I know.” She said with a soft smile. “It doesn't matter to you.”

“No.” He took the side of her face into his hand, turning her to face him. “The only thing that matters to me is that you’re here, and that you’re safe. And you’re both those things, right?”

“I am.”

“So I know that things kinda suck right now. I know that you’re frustrated. But things will be ok, they will work out. I know it.”

Suki leaned in and kissed him quickly, pulling away with a soft smile. “Thank you.” She breathed.

“You’re welcome…” Aang nodded. “We should have sex again.”

Suki let out a roar of laughter, falling back down on the bed with Aang following her down, kissing her as many times as he could manage before there was a knocking at the door.

“Yes?” Aang yelled back at the door.

Katara’s voice replied, “It’s me. I have clothes.”

Suki snarled, looking at Aang. He gave her another kiss, lifting himself up off the bed and to the door. Suki sat up in the middle of their mussed up bed, legs crossing in front of her. Aang opened to door and Katara came through it, huffing as she carried a half dozen large bags. Suki knew right away that her fears had been founded. The bags read Burberry, Guuchi, Christian Louboutin, Michael Kors and Barney’s, all not the kind of places that Suki would even think about shopping at.

“Are those my clothes?”

Katara nodded, sitting them on the bed by her. “I wasn’t sure what to get you, so I got you things that I would wear.”

“I was worried about that.” Suki mumbled, opening one of the bags and finding a shoe box. She popped it open, pulling out a pair of insanely high, white heels with red soles. “Well these would be good for self defence.” Aang had sat next to her on the bed, Suki pretending to jab the heel in his neck. Aang laughed, pulling out another shoebox that housed an equally impractical pair of heels.

“Well they will add a few inches to you.”

Suki put them back in the box with a shake of the head, “You’ll have to return these. I can’t wear them.”

“Why not?” Katara asked, popping a hip. “Those are great shoes.”

“Yeah for you. I can’t do anything with a heel.” Suki started inspecting the rest of her new things, each thing worse and more impractical than the next. The things were frilly and delicate, the kinds of things that she’d never be able to move around in. Sure the things were pretty, lovely even. But they weren't for her. “All of these have to go back.”

“Even the jewelry?”

Suki looked at the bag from Barney’s, looking at the few pieces that she’d been given. Suki sat a few aside, but put most of them back in the bag. “They just aren't for me.” Suki said with a shrug. “What the hell am I gonna do with a diamond studded choker?”

“You wear it.” Katara snapped, pulling the bags away from her. “At least normal people do.”

“Well then I guess I’m not normal.”

“I’ll say.” Katara snarled. "At least tell me that the underwear and bras are ok." She gave Suki a pink bag which the women looked at.

"These might be..." Suki pulled out a very small, very lacy thong. "What the hell?"

"Now those I like." Aang said with a grin. "As one of your boyfriends I say you should keep them."

Suki gave a soft smile, looking through the other things. "They are nice and fancy but... didn't you get me anything normal?"

Katara reached into the bag, pulling out a lace see-through bra. "This is everyday."

Suki rolled her eyes, looking at Aang. "These will work for... special occasions." She blushed a little bit. "But I will need some other things. I'll make you a list before you go out again."

"You ok to go shopping again?" Aang asked Katara.

"I'm always up to go shopping." She said. "Oh, and I have some good news. My father is good with the new course of action."

"He was alright with it? I thought it would take some convincing."

"Well, he had to convince me." She shrugged. "I still don't think it'll work but he's convinced."

"I'm sorry you feel like that, but I'm glad that the family is onboard."

"Whatever." Katara said with a sigh. "I guess we'll see what happens." She was packing the clothes and shoes up in the bags. "I suppose I have to go back and return these things."

"I'll make a list of things for you to get." She looked at Katara, lifting herself off the bed. "And stores that you can find them."

Katara cut a glare as Suki walked from the bed room and into Aang's small sitting room. Aang closed the door behind her, saying that he needed to talk to Katara.

"Leave the underwear." He told her. "And that one blue-green dress with all the shimmery stuff on it. It'll look nice on her."

"But she hated it."

"Yeah I know. She's just preening her feathers."

"She's what?"

"You're more glamorous than her and you come in with clothes that are above her and she got defensive. She’s… wanting to reject that." He gave a shrug. "It happens."

"Sure." Katara looked at the door where Suki was sitting behind. "Do you really love her?"

Aang blinked at the question. "I... never said I did? I just meet her."

"Then why are you doing this with her and Zuko? I mean you could be with anyone and you choose to have to share your lover with someone else."

He shook his head, "I don't see it like that. It’s true I just meet Suki, but I still feel like I have a connection with her, through of Zuko. I love him and have gladly shared my life with him for the past decade and want to be with him forever. She'd part of him and has been long before I was. I couldn't think about asking him to leave her for me. What kind of partner would I be if I did that? And I care about her, I know her through him and I have a connection that's not something to be taken lightly." Aang smiled to himself. "And I know that I'll love her in time, I have no doubt of that." He hadn’t expressed his feelings on the matter out loud yet. Doing so banished any relinquishing fears and reservations that he had.

“Sounds dumb.” Katara sighed. “But… as long as you’re happy.”

“I am.” He grinned. “And the sex is… unique.”

Katara fought a blush, letting her curiosity taking control of her mouth. “Do you all kinda... “ She made a motion with her hand to the bed. “Pile on and go for it?”

Aang laughed, running his fingers through his thick hair. “It’s a bit more…. Elegant than that but yeah.”

“Weird.” She mumbled.

Aang shrugged, "If I put in a good word for you you might be able to watch." He wiggled his eye brows, turning on his heels and walking though the door and back to Suki. He, oddly enough had started to miss her and wanted to be near her again.

----

"I'm gonna show you what's up so hard." Sokka snarled down. "When I'm done with you, you're going to be BEGGING for me to stop."

Azula tilted her head, looking at him with narrowed eyes. "What?"

"Oh. You heard me." He smirked again.

"You're so strange."

Sokka let out a menacing laugh, attacking the plate he had in his hand with the scrub brush, mania in his eyes.

"There is something kinda sexy about it." Azula said to herself, watching her boyfriend do the dishes. He had light blue on gloves on as he cleaned, the textures finger tips of the gloves tight around his own fingers. Except for the two pinky fingers, those hung loose, the rubber grips having lost their usefulness.

"Can I ask you about them?"

"About what, babe?" Sokka asked, glancing over at her.

"Your fingers."

Sokka looked over at her surprised. It was a common thing for members, mostly males, of most families to have these wounds. It started back with the old Samurai families, when masters would order their students to cut off tips of their fingers as a way to be punished for a transgression. The idea was that the shorter your finger was, the less powerful grip you’d have on your weapon, the more dependent you would be on your master, the less likely you’d be to leave the group. As times changed and the elegant katana was replaced by a brass knuckles and pistols, the tradition stuck. Hakoda had the tips of his own small fingers missing, more so than Sokka did in fact.

"Why do you wanna know?” He asked. “I thought you'd be used to this kinda thing."

Azula shook her head, "Kasai's don't cut fingers, they burn."

"Ah… That explains your brother's face.”

Azula leaned against the counter, facing him. “That was a whole thing. Usually the punishment will be something minor, a burn on the arm or the like. But my father...” She swallowed hard. “He went overboard with it. Burnt half of his face off, nearly killed him, no one was ever the same.” She rolled her eyes, batting away the onslaught of honesty with a sarcastic brush of the hand. “Ozai Never gave Zuko a punishment after that.”

“Makes cutting off fingers seem a bit more reasonable.” Sokka mumbled from the cup he was washing. “I actually think of them as a badge of honor. If not for them I wouldn't have grown as a man and as a leader. I would never have gotten the respect that I have.” His strong shoulders shrugged. "Much like your tattoos."

Azula had on a tank top, and looked down at her heavily tattooed arms. She had never really thought of the correlation. For her the tattoos were expected and natural for her. Her own father had them, had her entire life. Zuko started getting his when he was only 15, boys were usually allowed to get them young after all. So by the time Azula turned 16 she was eager and ready to get her’s. She’d been so excited to get her first ink.

However the sight of the grouping of needles going into the skin on her arm proved to be too much for her. She passed out cold.

She woke up after a while, the female tattoo artist tending to her. Azula was annoyed with herself actually. She’d been all excited for this tattoo, for years even. And she passed out like a bitch. She told the tattoo artist to keep going, even if she passed out under her. It was a weird tattoo session to say the least. The sessions after that were better, and Azula had arms, shoulders and a back to show for it.

“Did you pass out when you got your fingers chopped?” Azula asked. She’d told Sokka about her tattoo experience the other day, which he’d listed to but laughed at a little bit. He found it cute and endearing, in an Azula kinda way.

“I didn’t.” He told her with a sott smile. “I didn’t cry or anything. I actually watched it happen.”

She squirmed, imaging the thought of watching an appendage being cut off like that, “Did you have to?”

“Watch it?”

“Your finger being cut?”

“Nah.” He shrugged. “Just wanted to.”

“So you’ve always been into pain.”

��It’s not so much about the pain as it is the thrill.” Sokka chuckled, taking his gloves off and sitting them to the side. “Well in a way. When I was a kid it came out in risk driven behaviors. Fast cars, guns, fighting, you know the like. But as I’ve gotten older it’s become more… established you could say.”

Azula raised an eyebrow, “Is that so?”

Sokka nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. “They are very… specific in nature.”

Azula moved towards him, slowly picking up a towel that was sitting nearby, twisting it into a rope. “I see.” He purred, going to stand behind him. Sokka turned away from her and towards the sink, glancing back at her with a smile. “I wonder whatever it is.” She took the rag, ying it around Sokka’s wrists. She wasn’t gentle, she didn’t need to be, never with him.

“We shall just have to find out.” Sokka mused, smiling almost slyly.

Azula tighten the bounds, smiling as she put a hand on his back, bending him over the sink. She followed him, leaning in and nipping at his earlobe playfully, “We shall.”

----

The next day Suki was in normal, respectable clothes, and she'd never been happy to be so. She would have been in her fitted jeans and hoodie, lounging in bed and eating ice cream, but today there was a mission to be had. She smoothed her green lace top over her fit figure, stealing a glance from Zuko who was fixing at his tie.

"You look nice." He said over to her, smiling softly. "You look like yourself."

"I feel like myself." She said, looking over at him, "In many ways."

"Oh?"

She nodded, her eyes soft as she looked at him. "I feel like I belong here, by your side."

Zuko reached out, taking her hand into his and kissing her on the side of her head. "You do belong here, you always have."

Her entire body sighed, grinning happily.

"You guys ready?" Aang asked, walking in the door to the small side room that they'd changed in.

"We are." Suki said with a sure nod.

Aang nodded, walking to them and taking each of their hands into his. They stood together, the three of them linked. "I want you both to know that no matter what happens out there we will have one another. And we will figure this out together, no matter what “it” happens to be."

They all nodded in agreement, knowing before he said that that it was in fact the truth. They dropped hands, but walked through the door together, as one.

They meet Sokka, Azula and Katara already in the room. They were all dressed in their suits and ties, proper attire for a meeting of this caliber, of this importance. This was after all not just about the current alliance, but about the future for everyone involved in their world.

“Is she here?” Azula asked, tone impatient. “She was supposed to be here half an hour ago.”

“She’ll be here when she’s here.” Suki assured her, standing between Zuko and Aang. “She’s a bit of a…”

“A free spirt.” Aang added, smiling over at Suki. They were the only two that knew anything about her, the only two who knew what to expect.

She eventually arrived, only being introduced to the group after surrendering her weapons and being searched by some of Sokka’s men. She came in escorted on the arm of a man looking much larger and powerful than many in the room. Toph Bei Fong was tiny, and rather unassuming because of her size, statue and dress. In fact Sokka had to hold back a laugh upon seeing her. Azula cut him a glare for it.

Zuko took the lead, as he usually did. “Toph Beifong.” He bowed. “My name is Zuko Kasai, thank you for agreeing to meet with me and my associates.”

She just gave a shallow bow, her eyes wide and blank, evidence of her blindness. She pulled herself away from her escort, just enough to be able to take a step forward on her own, the escort leaving the room with a bow. “You should be thanking me. After all you have found yourself in quite a predicament and I seem to be the only person that can help you.”

Zuko made a small noise of consideration, his brows creasing. It was true, in a way, but it wasn’t the ony side of the story.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. But you find yourself in an equally problematic position. Yes, we need your help. However you need us as well.”

“Oh?” She tilted her head just so, her expression curious but amused. “I do?”

“No one gives a shit about the Beifongs.” The statement rang in the quiet room. The gathered group looked between Zuko and Toph, tension clear and quickly mounting. “Your family hasn’t been anything in decades and now suddenly you want to be part of this? You don’t juet get to walk into everything that we’ve worked towards for years without being invited. Without being allowed in. So yes, Ms. Beifong, we need you, but you need us even more.”

Things held still in the hair for a long moment, no one sure of what was going to happen.

It was Toph who first laughed, first broke the silence. “Normally I kill people who disrespect me like that... “

“But you’re not going to kill me.” Zuko said quickly.

“No, unfortuniatly not this time” She sighed, “I can read the room better than that even if I am blind.” She motioned to the gathered crowd. “And if anything I’d say you are well on your way to your goal, even without my help. So I will be glad to add to it.”

“How so?” Zuko asked.

“Well… As far as I can tell this is the first time, in a long time, all the families have been under the same roof with no hostilities or threats of violence. And I would hate to break up such a love fest.” She said this with a bit of a dramatic flair and roll of her pale eyes.

Zuko cleared his throat, bringing the conversation back to himself, “Well… I welcome you to our alliance then.”

“Whatever.” Toph sighed, pulling her hand away. “Who’s got the booze?” She asked. “I don’t trust anyone till I’ve drank with them.”

Zuko let out a break he didn’t even know he’s been holding, turning to Suki and Aang, who both assured him with small smiles and nods of approval.

#zuki week #zuki #zuko #suki #aang #yakuza #yakuza AU #avatar yakuza #Sokkla #zuaang #Zuking #I think it's the only Zuking ship ever?#sokka #azula #ozail

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ionizedyeast · 5 years ago

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Title: 0180304 - Workplace Relationship Part 1/2 “Statement of Nelson Briar, Head of Folklore and Legend Research of the Magnus Institute, and his relationship and events surrounding Michael Shelley prior to becoming the Distortion. Statement given --.”

“That’s enough, let’s get right to it, Jon. You know, I’m the reason Elias had to start being more lax about employee relationships within the Institute. It’s not like we had been keeping anything secret, though. Gertrude knew before anyone else and then Diane did. And as far as I know, we were close to being the primary reason for gossip. But you’re not here to listen to me talk about the watercooler chatter of the Magnus Institute. You want to know what happened with me and Michael before well. . . Before I lost him.

I came here from the States back in late 2006. I had just started a Master’s program and had been working in the Usher Foundation back in DC since I was an undergrad. My area of study was well received by the Foundation and thankfully the Institute was more than willing to have me as a grad student in residence. I would have the chance to utilize any of their resources for my studies. Well, not any. It’s funny, knowing what I know now about the Institute, I’ve got to say there were loads of red flags about me coming out here. Probably starting with the fact the Lukas family funded my transfer and were going to cover my education. But I didn’t know anything about the Lukases back then. We have our own cryptic families back in Washington and as far as we were concerned, the Institute had a keen grasp on whatever the Lukases were doing, and weren’t our problem.

You had just started around that time too, hadn’t you, Jon? Wasn’t I your immediate superior for a while? I forget, I still can’t quite figure out the hierarchy here. You’re Head Archivist. I’m Head of Folklore -- are we equals in the Institute or are were on completely different levels. Ah, nevermind, we can talk about that outside of the recording. Reminiscing can wait.

I was, I think I was the third in residence student-employee the Institute had taken in. My predecessors had long since finished their studies and moved on elsewhere. South Africa and Russia, if I recall. I never had the chance to meet them, but as far as what Elias had told me in during my orientation, that’s what I had gathered about them. Wonder what they’re up to. . . But I digress. I was the third, but I was the first that was actively using the archive statements as fodder for my research. See, my focus area was in covering unifying themes throughout world cultures through the means of folklore. Obviously we’ve got the standards -- creation myths, the afterlife, explanations of nature, harvest -- the usual. But my studies were taking me elsewhere. To concepts that overlapped and had uncanny similarities, even when the cultures were worlds away. Some could be explained as just the natural need for humans to find comfort in what they didn’t understand. Death and the dark were most common. I could always figure out ways to connect these points, even if the cultures were wildly different. What was the geography like? The weather during this time period. How were their relations with nearby enemy and ally communities? I could usually pinpoint what needed to be explained and tied together. But some things I never could quite get a grasp on.

You see, Jon, in my decade plus at the Institute, I’ve probably dug too deep for just a simple scholar. I don’t study to know things for a sense of omniscience. I study to satisfy my own curiosity. While it’s always a thrill to share my academic findings with anyone who will listen, it’s always been primarily a personal gain. So I suppose that was one reason why Elias ended up granting me permission to study the archives. With limitations of course. Gertrude wasn’t the most thrilled about it. But I was not prying through with the intentions of exposing the secrets I uncovered to the world. No, it was for myself. And somewhere down the line, well, I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means. But I did find myself very familiar with some common trends. Of course this wouldn’t all come in to play until some time after Michael, er, vanished.

Michael and I met sometime in early 2007. I had been here for a few months and I was bouncing between working as a shelver in the library and a research assistant -- we briefly were colleagues at this time, though back then we never really spoke to one another. What a shame. Imagine how close we’d be now if we had.

It wasn’t exactly what I would call a remarkable meeting. Gertrude had sent him to the library to have access to our private records for some sort of report but we didn’t have anyone to accompany him at the time so we just talked. I called him enormous or something to that extent -- I’m a small guy, Jon. I’m easily astounded at tall people -- he found my reaction funny. Somehow or another he mentioned the kind of research he was conducting for Gertrude and it was actually something I had quite a bit of experience in. I’d just had an article get published about the topic, so I talked his ear off for a bit before Diane came to take him to the back. Michael came back to the library at the end of the day and asked I’d like to get a coffee with him sometime. Didn’t realize it was a date until the third time we’d gone out for coffee and he started buying. It was casual dating, you know what I mean? The kind where you spend the first few dates just getting to know one another. Talking about what you had in common. What hobbies you had. Your friends. Family. Rather commonplace stuff just to test the waters. And while we had a few disagreements in interests, we kept coming back to the things we did have in common. You’ll have to forgive me, but when it comes to other people’s perceptions of me, I am very dense. Beyond the surface level of ‘this person likes me’, ‘this person tolerates me’ and ‘this person dislikes me’ I have an incredibly difficult time reading people. Even when Michael was holding my hand on our forth date, I still kept telling myself, “Oh Nel, he’s one of those people that uses physical contact to show he’s engaged in conversation.” And frankly it wasn’t until I started sleeping with him -- oh, christ, too much? Sorry, not really the right sort of content to be sharing. But you see my point. I didn’t realize Michael and I had been legitimately dating for nearly eight months. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I’d realized sooner, he wouldn’t have -- you know what, nevermind. There’s no use dwelling on it. Michael is dead. He gave himself up to stop the Spiral’s ritual and that’s all that matters. He did us a service but well, it put me into a bind. Kind of literally. I’ll fast forward through our relationship -- we were all but short of living together. My apartment was too small. Would you believe it was Lukas housing? And he was living too far for me to comfortably be able to commute after my longer days. He was something of a rock for me on my rough days where I’d be at the Institute well into the night. I didn’t like being there late. Always felt like someone was watching me. Heh, well, it wasn’t paranoia. And present me is glad to reassure past Nelson that no, he was not being an anxious mess. He really was being watched. Some nights Michael would stay with me until I finished what I had been working on. Other nights he’d make a point of coming back later in the evening to check on me only to have to wake me up and send me home. Sometimes I wonder if he had ever actually gone home those days. He’d become wrapped up in his own studies under Gertrude. It wasn’t my business so I never asked unless he chose to share.

That’s a lie, and you know it, don’t you? I was a snoop. I would hear Michael mentioning things some nights when I stayed at his place. Whatever it was Gertrude was having him do, it was eating at him. He talked about always being afraid he was taking the wrong door when he was going places. He’d started taking photographs of the doors he used most often. Told me to make sure it was so he wouldn’t get lost. He didn’t want to go somewhere he couldn’t leave. I suggested he put something on the doors he used most so he wouldn’t get confused. But it didn’t seem to reassure him. Some nights he didn’t sleep at all. He’d either just lay in bed with me until the sun came up. Some mornings I’d wake up to find him facing a wall, hand outstretched as if he were taking a doorknob. He would always be so relieved when I called out to him. He’d always settle into bed next to me and he wouldn’t speak. He would just hang tight on to me and just remain still and silent. Now, trust me, Michael was not mentally ill. I mean, your standard depression and anxiety like nearly everyone our age, but he wasn’t unmedicated, nor was he struggling with anything else. Or maybe he was and he just didn’t know. But I genuinely believe -- no, I know -- that how he was acting was not a sign of mental illness. Something had him. I can only say now that I know something had him, because I know what happened now. He only started acting himself again in the days before he and Gertrude left. He was excited. Talked about how thrilled he was to be needed for something so important. He loved his work and he was very dedicated to aiding Gertrude in her work as well. And he was himself again for a short while. We’d been together I think a little over two years at this point. Longest I’ve ever been with a man. Most men get turned off by me being trans so early in the relationship, but Michael didn’t mind. He just liked me and I have to say, hiccups in his health aside, I think we were very happy together. He was so optimistic that week before -- said that he thought that it was time that we moved in together properly. He said he’d seen some places for rent a bit closer to the Institute that on our combined income would be a walk in the park. He wanted to know if my parents were ever going to be visiting London again because he felt he was ready to meet them. After two years together of us being content in our stations, suddenly he was ready to make more of these commitments with me and honestly. . .I couldn’t have been happier. I was half expecting him to mention marriage at some point, but it still seemed a bit soon for that. But I wouldn’t have said no. We were happy. And when he woke me up before leaving for his flight, kissed me and told me he loved me -- I was sure I had such a bright future to look forward to. I was absolutely in love with Michael Shelley, and. . .

You know how the Spiral is the concept of the fear of lies and deception? You know how it alters your perception of reality? You know how it twists and writhes and fills you with doubt and frustration? With how it makes you question anything and everything in your life? Imagine all of that culminating at once. Imagine suddenly being stricken by the anger and betrayal of whether or not this man you absolutely adored was lying to you. Betrayal of ones feelings I think might be the absolute worst thing you could ever experience.

I had eagerly counted down the days of Michael’s return. It was all I could hope for. I had found a few places I wanted to look at with him. I’d even called my parents back in Massachusetts to tell them the good news. And when Gertrude came back alone? She pulled me aside and told me at the very least she owed me some sort of answer. I had thought Michael maybe had just gone straight home and gone to bed. He probably had some sort of jetlag and needed to rest. But all she told me was that Michael would not be coming back. And she wouldn’t say anything more.

I found out what happened on my own. Though I think Elias may have had something to do with it. Who am I kidding, I know he had something, maybe everything to do with it. My access to the archives was cut off after Michael left. I wasn’t allowed in unless Gertrude saw it absolutely necessary and I was under strict supervision. In the past she’d noticed that I’d swipe the occasional statement for a few days before returning it and she wasn’t...too fond of that. Or me in general. I think her general dislike of me is half the reason, if not all the reason I never joined the archives team, despite being a perfect fit for the position. No, it wasn’t just Elias. Michael I think left me hints too. I had gone to his apartment after a week thinking maybe he might have actually needed some space before we moved in together and that’s why Gertrude was being cryptic because she didn’t know herself. But when I got there, the apartment had been untouched since I’d left for work the morning of Michael’s departure. Everything was in its place. I spoke to his landlord, mentioned that he had disappeared and that the place needed to be cleaned out. But as it were, before he left he’d put my name on the lease somehow. It had seemed he might have actually prepared for this. I mean, I know now that he had. But back then I was so angry. But I couldn’t just express it. I felt like nothing made sense. I felt like he had abandoned me, but in such a way where he wanted me to be taken care of in his absence. I didn’t understand any of it. Rent had been paid up for the next few months and I was able to use this time to take care of my own affairs. I moved in to Michael’s apartment. I kept his name on the least just in case. I decided I’d rather have a longer nightly commute home than live in that lonely apartment of mine. I’d like some sort of company even if it was in the form of Michael’s belongings. The unfortunate side was that the apartment now had twice as much stuff and I had to do some cleaning. It was while I was cleaning, I found some of Michael’s hints. Statements that I had never laid my eyes on. Photocopies of ones that were likely still in the archive. In truth, Michael had been lying to me. More than he let on. But now I realize it had been a lie to protect me. He could only do so much for me while he was around though, ‘cause before you knew it, I was absorbing as much information as I possibly could about what he’d left behind for me to read. It was astounding. What he’d left for me perfectly summed up so many of the connections in the study I’d been finishing for my grad studies. Who would have guessed that my own boyfriends disappearance would have led to me completing my degree! I say this happily, but it’s breaking my heart to do so. I really loved Michael, you know. I couldn’t really bear the idea of being without him. Maybe that’s what pushed me to start breaking into the archives late at night. Maybe that’s how and why Elias started watching me. I don’t know if it was because he disapproved of what I was doing, or if he was just curious. I, uh, I don’t know if you’ve caught on. But Elias doesn’t watch all of us. Just those he thinks have some sort of weight. It probably had to do with how much I buried myself in what Michael left behind for me. After I obtained my degree all I could do was start researching. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have signed the proper employment contract. 20/20 as they say. I was obsessed, Jon. The moment I found out Sannikov Land wasn’t real, I lost myself. I tore apart the myths and legends I’d been studying my entire life to find some sort of hint or connections between what Michael left for me and the truth of it all. You’ll um, have to forgive me a bit if the rest sounds a little disjointed. Between Michael’s disappearance and Gertrude’s death, my grasp on reality started to. Slip? None of my memories connect smoothly. There’s patches. Blanks in time. I can only take a guess that these were from periods where I was lost in my own mania.

I wouldn’t say the Spiral had me yet. But it was definitely effecting my daily life. Like Michael, I started to see the doors. I started to find myself caught in lies and deception and doing whatever I could to find answers. I was living to deceive as long as it benefited me and my search. And like it had always been. They were selfish pursuits. It was knowledge I had to know for myself. It was knowledge I needed to obtain because I needed to find out what happened to Michael. Elias never intervened. He never tried to stop me. I have a couple memories of him pulling me aside and supplying me with some information that might help steer me on the right path. Or maybe the wrong one. I don’t know. Like I said. Those years were hazy. But he always seemed so pleased by my progress. He knew then. He had to know. This is Elias we’re talking about. He had to have known where I was headed. Jackass... I don’t have much clarify until shortly after Gertrude died. I had been in the halls. I was staring at something on the wall -- probably a door. I passed Elias. He didn’t look right. He looked like he was staring through me. Said something about how someone should lock the archives. Gertrude had passed away and he needed to make sure the room was locked up until someone new was hired. He handed me a key and sent me on my way. I think he was telling me to take what I needed if it would help me in my search for Michael. Whatever it is I had found, that was when I think I had finally succumbed to the Spiral’s influence over me.

You know the funny part about this. . .We didn’t hear that Gertrude passed away for another three days. I suppose that’s the funny thing about being touched by the Spiral. You just accept the falsehoods, even when you know they’re falsehoods. And in the end? It benefited me. Just as I always wanted.

Since I’m being honest here. Being in that labyrinth was the first time in years I actually didn’t feel like I was losing my mind. I wasn’t scared. In fact it felt like taking a walk in the park. I held a large armful of folders of statements in my arms. And all I did was walk. I passed countless doors and passages and turned through winding corners and corridors and nothing about it filled me with any dread or unease. It felt like I belonged there. I say this knowing full well that my comfort likely had something to do with being in the domain of what had been driving me those past few years. I don’t think the Distortion liked my reaction, though. At one point, I found a dead end. There was only one door, and when I opened it, I was back in my office. I didn’t imagine it, of course. That wouldn’t be the first time I ventured there. I usually went in of my own volition. I don’t know if the Distortion found me to be a nuisance or not. But whenever I saw a new door, I simply would knock first and announce I was coming in. And whenever I went in, it was just the same. An odd comfort like I belonged there. I felt like a visitor in someone’s home. It was like when I first started to spend the night at Michael’s. It was as if the halls were no harm to me, even though it was not my dwelling. I was allowed to be there. Perhaps I was even being invited. But if the Spiral disliked my presence, it never did so in such a way that caused me any fear or harm.

It was my third time within the Spiral that I started calling out.

I had done enough research by now and learned enough to know what the Spiral was. What it could do. Where it was leading me. And to know all about Michael’s connection to it. And I started to call his name, hoping I might hear him respond. I didn’t want to believe he was dead yet. I wanted to believe he was somewhere within these halls and he needed to be found. Even at the cost of myself, I wasn’t going to leave him. And then, it hit me. The more I called for him, the more welcoming the halls became. The more I began to find that I wasn’t just comfortable. I was welcome. I was able to spend more and more time in the Spiral each time. I knew quite well that I was likely losing more and more of myself with each trip. I would talk to no one, or perhaps someone, whenever I was there. I would have conversations with whatever was residing in the halls. Like I was spending my time with a friend. Like I was talking to Michael. Maybe it was something I did to keep myself grounded the deeper I ventured. When I came out, I often could not sleep. I wouldn’t show up to work for days at a time, either due to the passage of time itself in the Spiral, or just because I couldn’t find the strength. My visits only began to slow when I started to notice the door in Michael’s apartment. It had stopped appearing anywhere else. Just Michael’s place. There had been something etched into the door. The method I had given Michael about how to be sure the doors he used in his regular life were the right ones. There had been a slight carving around the doorknob. I had etched it into the door of Michael’s apartment back when he first started to show signs of concern. It was his door. But he was not here to open it. It sat across from our bed, like it was waiting for me. It wanted me to open it. But this time, I was not invited to come inside. So I did something else. I just opened it. I opened the door and I left it open wide. And I said that whatever was in there that wanted to see me so badly could come out. This was a new behavior. And I welcomed it, just as it had welcomed me. That was when I met the Distortion.

It didn’t look like Michael when I first met with it. It looked like a young woman, maybe late teens. Dark skin and hair but her shoulders were unnaturally hunched up and her hands. They were so long and spindly. She was dressed in gym wear, a loose, cut up t-shirt and yoga pants. And she sat on the bed in front of me. I left the door open. Day in, day out. I had left an invitation for the Spiral to come in to my residence and it took a week or so before it took form and visited me. I had managed to be sleeping that night, but something stirred in me and caused me to wake up. And I found it sitting cross legged on the bed. Just staring at me. I don’t think the Spiral had decided to use Michael’s form yet when it came to mingling with people yet. Maybe I was the reason it started to, but I wasn’t sure. Still not.

It asked me a question. It’s voice unnerved me and it smiled at me as it spoke and there was something so wholly unsettling about that smile. Like my head was aching from just looking at it. And it asked what was so important that I was always coming in its doors. It told me it was quite bothered by my coming in and making no means of trying to escape, or find its center. It didn’t like that I was searching for someone rather than something. I told it that I was looking for my boyfriend. He was inside there somewhere and I was going to bring him out. I’m not sure if it liked that response but it left after that. Not for good, because a few nights later the same thing happened. But this time, it sat in the form of a man. He was about forty or so, olive skin, light hair with a stern, crooked nose and a scruffy beard. It asked if this was the person I had been looking for. And I said no. And it was gone again. This went on every few nights for, god, close to a year. Each time I would give it another bit about how Michael looked. I tried to show it a photograph before but when it looked at my phone, the screen just went fuzzy and I had to restarted it in order for it to work right again.

Until one night it got it right. It spoke in the same voice, although there was a different, almost feedback like twang to the way it spoke to me. And when I awoke, the Spiral had gotten it right. I saw my Michael sitting on the bed in front of me and the sight of him was enough to get me to throw off my covers and kneel in front of him, hands upon his face. I must have been crying or maybe it was looking straight at the Spiral, but I couldn’t get a clear look at him. I told it that it was right and this was the person I was looking for. And I needed him back.

And you know what it said?

‘No, I don’t think so.’

I don’t think I had ever been so scared to see Michael’s smile. It just smiled at me and it ran the tip of one of those long, spindly fingers under my chin and I hadn’t even registered that it had made me bleed. And it just said ‘No, I think I shall keep this one a little more. See how far you’re willing to go to get him back.’

And it went into the door again. This time it smiled the whole way. And when the door closed. I was immediately on my feet to run at it to chase it down. But the door was gone.

I took something equivalent to a sabbatical a few weeks later, Jon -- it was around the time you started as archivist. Tim had been working beneath me before my sabbatical and I think that’s part of what drove him to join your team. I was going to be gone for a few months and I wouldn’t have the chance to give him any work to do. Elias was more than happy to give me the time off, but he did something to me. I think as assurance I wouldn’t go running away forever. I think I had started to become a threat to him in some way. Not sure how. Still not. Part of me is somewhat convinced that Elias was planning on using me to get the Spiral to touch you, but I don’t things went exactly as he expected. Especially considering the Spiral had plans of its own.

I was on leave for about three months. I took a few weeks to fly back to the States to visit my parents and check in with the Foundation. I checked in with the archive staff there to see if I could scour some of their resources for what I had been experiencing. But we were never as well equipped with statements as the Magnus Institute. I found a lot of my efforts there weren’t really worth my time. Although I did learn a little about a few groups in North America that had their eye -- Jon, keep an eye out on the Codley family of New York. They’re a cult family, but I wasn’t able to pinpoint of what exactly. If I find out more, I’ll let you know. I only met one person back at the Usher Foundation that knew anything that might help me. In fact, it was their own archivist, man by the name of Warren Chase. I’m actually still in touch with him, if you ever want to meet him. He seems to be following your accounts pretty intensely. Said that he’s been having duplicates of your statements and recordings sent to him. We know who’s to blame for that, obviously. Truth be told, he’d asked me to come back to the Foundation. He wanted me to join his team, but I had to decline. Work here is far too time consuming. But, you see, Warren hadn’t been touched by the Spiral, but he’d been touched by the Stranger. Stranger apparently is very tied in with the Foundation. Something to do with the number of secret organization and secret government activities happening back in the States that there are people within our own organizations that are not what they seem to be. Now, Warren seemed to be far more optimistic about my situation than I was. Told me that if one can keep their head when dealing with these entities, you can retrieve someone lost to them. I mean...you were able to bring back Daisy. I’ve had no such luck.

Jon, I know Michael’s gone now. The Spiral swaps its forms whenever it so chooses and I know it discarded Michael’s form when I. . .When I took too long. I’ve met it as it is now. Helen is the name of the woman it appears as. It’s told me that I knows me, but it has no attachment for me now like it had when it was Michael. It knows Michael had loved me.

But it was the time that the Distortion was Michael that was what ultimately brought me to where I am. I’m just one foray or so away from becoming its next avatar at this point and I mean it when I say that I am absolutely fine with that. I spent the time of my leave looking for those doors. Looking for how to get into the Spiral from other entrance ways and other methods to get myself lost in those halls again. This time from a new vantage point, from a new perspective. I was going to find Michael and I was going to bring him home! And I like to think that I nearly succeeded. It might sound absurd to you but, I think I had become something like friends with the Spiral by the time I had figured some things out. It probably started when I had encountered it behind a bar during my last few days in the States before returning to London. It was preying on this young woman who was trying to tell her friends about this store she’d kept passing each day on her home from work, and each time she would try to take someone there it was always an old butcher’s shop, long since closed down. I had noticed the Spiral lurking around and when I found myself in the men’s room looking at what appeared to be a door to the outside, I stepped out of the room and found the actual entrance to the back of the bar. The Spiral had been waiting for me, wearing Michael’s face as it had grown fond of doing. And I told it that I had figured one thing out. I knew that just because it looked like Michael, it was not Michael. And I think that curried my favor with it a bit. It liked that I was playing its game and calling its bluff. And it became just that with me and the Distortion. A game between the two of us. The Spiral in its own way was entertained by my dedication. And somewhere down the line, I think we became, well, I like to think we had become friends. Or as close to friends as you can be wit the entity of Deceit.” And Nelson stops, and he stands up and smiles at Jon. “I think this is where you say ‘Statement ends’ isn’t it?” The recording does not stop, but Jon looks up at the researcher who has now raised to his feet and offered a smirk to the archivist. “You’d be surprised how many of us can be touched by our host without losing our wits. Maybe I’ll indulge you with the rest sometime. Take care, Jon.”

#tma #the magnus archives #OC fanfition #evan talks his ocs #nelsoncore

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leonawriter · 5 years ago

Text

Foxes and Spirits and Office Chairs

Read it on AO3

Fandom: Bungo Stray Dogs, Mononoke

Characters: Atsushi, Kunikida, Dazai, various others mentioned and appearing.

Pairings: Dazai/Chuuya (background).

Summary: There's a fox sitting in Kunikida's chair when Atsushi arrives at work that morning. This would be far stranger if Atsushi didn't have a very concrete suspicion of who that fox was.

...

The day after it's all over, Kunikida is mad that Dazai is late for work, which isn't exactly a rare thing to happen, but neither is Kunikida getting mad over it when they have so much more work to do than normal. The events of the past few days had certainly created enough of a backlog.

He's also, Atsushi notes as he and Kyouka go through the Agency's door, yelling about the fact that somehow, a red fox has managed to sit itself - no, it turns out, not sit, more like curl up - in the middle of Kunikida's chair, so he can't sit down unless he uses a different chair entirely.

Atsushi takes one look at the fox, its ears twitching, and one of its eyes slowly opens. A brown eye.

He blinks.

The fox blinks right back, and then seems to smile, which is really just its - his - eyes closing into crescents, and his ears twitching again.

Kyouka gives him a curious look when he sighs, but he doesn't know how to explain, and where he'd start even if he did. All he can do is wonder if what he's about to do is going to break any unspoken rules. Although if it does, Ranpo is looking over his way and just looks amused rather than worried, so he can only assume that things are going to be fine.

He walks through the office, over to Kunikida's chair (which is right next to a temporary replacement, which is just like Kunikida to say that it isn't ideal to have to switch chairs or something like that, and reaches out to put his hands around the fox, which he knows isn't sleeping, or dangerous at all.

Well, perhaps the last one isn't so much- it's a point of view thing. And even if the fox has fangs and claws, he's fairly sure he won't use them here, and that's all that matters, really.

"Come on, Dazai-san," he says, already resigned to the fact that this is going to be his life from here on, that the entire office will have to get used to this, "you can't pretend you aren't here all day."

Kunikida stops his tirade and turns to stare at Atsushi, and the fox now dangling in Atsushi's arms, which is likewise staring balefully up at both of them now. His legs are hanging from Atsushi's arms, mostly because he still isn't sure what the accepted way of carrying a fox is, especially when they aren't commonly accepted pets in most parts of the world.

"Atsushi," Kunikida says, "did you just call that fox Dazai?" He blinks, and freezes at the whine coming from said fox, and glances over at Ranpo, who is still looking like this is all great fun. "I can understand that it's doing a very good job of interrupting my schedule in that idiot's absence, but-"

"...actually," he says, before Kunikida can go any further, "I'm calling him Dazai because this is Dazai. I- you weren't there? But-"

He's interrupted by laughter - Ranpo's laughter, in fact.

Kunikida just continues to stare at Dazai, the Dazai in his arms, as if the statement is too difficult to put together in his head after hearing it heard said aloud.

"That- that doesn't make any sense," Kunikida says eventually. "Abilities don't work on Dazai. There isn't any ability that should work on that waste of space, and there's no reason why such a ridiculous one as the sort to turn people into animals should work where others have failed!"

Ranpo just keeps laughing. Dazai squirms in his arms, but Atsushi isn't about to trust him not to jump right back onto Kunikida's chair, or worse, cause other sorts of trouble around the office. Like this, it might wind up worse than what they usually have to deal with from him.

"That'd be because it isn't an ability," he finally says, which makes Dazai whine again. Kyouka comes up next to them, looking at both him and the fox and Kunikida and the laughing Ranpo, and seems to be debating just how odd this all is. She'd been involved in things recently more than Kunikida had, toward the end, but hadn't been there for everything. "Though... come to think, why are you like this?" He finally puts his coworker down but makes sure to not let go. "Did you... forget how to turn back again?"

The way Dazai's ears flick and the way he immediately seems to want to not look Atsushi in the eye says a lot. Everything, really.

"...Kitsune?"

Kyouka only says the one word, but it's what gains the attention of several of the others.

Atsushi nods, biting his lip a little as he does so.

He can still remember the previous evening, having been only one of two people to have been able to reach through the illusions and find his way through to the source of it all, only one of two people who had seen and heard things that no one else could see or hear, or should, for that matter. Things Dazai would never have wanted anyone else to know, except that something had happened to bring it all up again, raw as Atsushi's own memories of the orphanage had been when those had been brought up during the case covering the headmaster's death.

They'd had help. A stranger in odd traditional clothes and marks on his face who had seemed to know what was going on, the same stranger who had been there during the entire rest of their case, before any of the illusions had begun showing themselves in the city streets at all.

The man had acted as if seeing such personal things that Dazai would never have intentionally shared with anyone was completely normal. Stood or sat calmly through it all. Even though he was someone who didn't exactly have any right to any of what he'd walked into-

As if Atsushi himself had that right, when Nakahara- when Chuuya-san had made it plain how uncomfortable he had felt, too.

Then again, there had been a gentleness to the man when he had dealt with Dazai in person that had eased his mind somewhat about that. As well as the way Dazai himself hadn't exactly pushed him away either. In fact, Dazai had seemed oddly curious, both during the worst of it, and when it was all cooling down.

"My mother," Dazai had said, still caught by his own illusions, still needing to pull at the threads of them so that he could figure out who he was again. "She used to live with us, and I think I was almost happy. My father would tell her those three words each night, and she would go to him. But then one day he didn't, and she never came back. Not to him... and not to me."

And what were those three words, the strange man had asked.

"I don't know," Dazai had said. "I've forgotten. I don't even- I don't even remember her face-"

Which was something that Atsushi could sympathise with. He himself couldn't remember the faces - or anything else, for that matter - about his own parents. He'd always assumed somehow that Dazai had had... something, something more, but somehow this feels worse, in a way that he can't quite describe.

Something about having had, and forgetting. Knowing what you've lost.

Atsushi had been there when Dazai had been struggling and vulnerable. He had been there when Chuuya-san had said that everything was reminding him of a story he'd read once, when reading up on folklore, and the man with the gold hair and the markings on his face had smiled, and asked Chuuya-san this time, what those three words were.

He'd been there when Chuuya-san had said, absently at first-

"Come, love. Sleep."

He'd been there when the four of them - or perhaps the three, considering the way that the strange man had just been smiling - had come to the realisation that the words weren't just an invitation, but a single word, a name, the word kitsune. The word fox.

Dazai's mother had been a kitsune. One that had left her son behind, who had grown up to not know who or what he was, and Atsushi had been the one to thank the strange man after all was said and done, no matter that he said that he hadn't done anything, and had been the one to see Dazai collapsed in the small mafia executive's arms, with two pointed ears and a tail poking out from underneath his coat, and he had also been the one to offer to take him home to the dorms, to tell him that none of what he'd learned would go beyond the three of them, none of it, if Dazai himself didn't want it.

Dazai had just stared at him, wide-eyed, and said rather simply that Chuuya was the one to tell me to come home first, so he gets dibs.

But now Dazai was on four legs in the Agency office, and he was just whining about everything rather than actually being upset, and...

"I thought kitsune tended to have nine tails...?"

"No, that's only when they've lived long enough. Right?"

"Why are you asking me? I'm not the one talking to the fox, here."

"R-right..."

All of which, although perfectly natural questions to be asking, were maybe not the best to bring up there and then, especially not with the potential direction they might go in, which he really hoped didn't happen.

"Given that I still don't believe in anything more supernatural than the extent of our own abilities, I find it hard to think of any of this as anything other than an elaborate prank by someone who still hasn't arrived at work!"

Kunikida's glare is almost enough to make Atsushi begin to apologise without even thinking, even if he isn't doing anything wrong, and it wasn't a prank. In fact, the only thing that stops him from saying sorry even just for the fact that Dazai was being frustrating like he normally was, was the bark that came from the fox - from Dazai - and that was followed up by another, and then another, fox-barks that sounded out loudly in the small space of the office, kon kon kon, just like that.

And then the barks turned into laughter, and Atsushi could hear clapping from over where Ranpo was - Ranpo, who had revealed himself at some point during the entire debacle of the past few days to not be entirely human himself - and Kunikida made an odd whimpering noise before sitting down hard into his seat, which Atsushi vaguely noted still had fox hairs on it.

Because Dazai had turned back into a human-shaped person, albeit sat on his backside on the floor.

Because Dazai was laughing, and something in Atsushi's chest lightened at the sound of it, now knowing for sure that at least he hadn't done anything wrong by saying what Dazai was, when he himself couldn't.

Because Dazai was currently human enough to laugh like one, but just like the previous evening, two pointed ears stuck up from his head, and an white-tipped orange tail could be seen sticking out from underneath his brown coat, both moving perfectly in time with his moods and responses and not in any way even plausibly some sort of costume.

Knowing Dazai, for all Atsushi knew the only reason he'd been able to shift back when he still wasn't used to this being what he was at all was that he'd been so caught up in laughing at Kunikida, that he'd stopped thinking about it, and had forgotten he didn't know how.

The ears and tail wouldn't budge for most of the rest of the day, however, which was a problem all of its own, considering how they could hardly let Dazai out on cases when he was looking like that, and Dazai himself spent most of the time complaining of how loud everyone was being, and how his chair didn't have nearly enough space for his tail.

...

AN: As said, a lot of those flashback events are part of a crossover story that I keep thinking to myself that I'll write, but put off because I'm not confident enough in how to write the Mononoke side. In short, however-

The Medicine Seller came to Yokohama, and wound up dealing with an Ayakashi that was tied to a case that the ADA was investigating, which triggered off some repressed memories for Dazai, which caused a second case for the Medicine Seller to deal with - until Chuuya basically cooled Dazai down effectively with those three words, because he wasn't just remembering them, but he meant them, too. And yes, Dazai did spend the night over with Chuuya (though probably just sleeping, mostly because of reawakened trauma and the exhaustion that brings, put together with actually feeling safe and comfortable).

I might well write more for this, even if it's not the backstory, to be honest, because as much as I love white-furred nine-tailed fox Dazai that's old as hell, I also love the red-furred Dazai that's still a cub, really, just a tiny cub compared to all those kyuubis.

The myth is based on one I've seen around (and that I saw someone use in an old fic of theirs, somewhere).

#bsd #bsd stuff #bsd dazai #bsd atsushi #kitsune dazai #Leona fic #bsd mnnk fic

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elliepassmore · 5 years ago

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A Thousand Beginnings and Endings Anthology Review

5/5 stars Recommended for people who like: anthologies, fantasy, sci-fi, female-led stories, South-East Asian folklore, Indian folklore, Chinese folklore, Middle Eastern folklore, Japanese folklore, Korean folklore, Hmong folklore Forbidden Fruit: Roshani Chokshi 5/5 stars Filipino Chokshi's story is based on the Maria Makiling folktale based around the spirit of Mount Makiling. The style of writing feels like a traditional folktale, the ones that include morals at the end and cautionary warnings (which is perhaps a redundant statement), and is set in fantasy. I like how Chokshi included cautions about the tale "do not trust the fruits of Maria Makiling. If you find your pockets full of thorny fruit, throw it out the window" (5) as bookends to the tale. In this story, the spirit of the mountain is in the form of a girl, and since it's a love story, she of course falls in love with a human boy. The story is only 12 pages, but Chokshi develops the emotions of the mountain so she goes from curious and solitary to someone who would risk losing her heart, and though we don't really see the village or know what's going to happen, Chokshi also weaves suspense and the development of greed and jealousy within the pages as well. Olivia's Table: Alyssa Wong 5/5 stars Chinese Wong's story is based on the Hungry Ghost Festival, and is set in a mix between modern-day Arizona and the Old West. In this story, our MC Olivia has taken up her late mother's task of feeding the ghosts in an, pun intended, Arizona ghost town during the Hungry Ghost Festival. I really enjoyed Wong's interplay between loss and family and helping others. Olivia's mom died about one or two years before the story began, though she still keenly feels her loss and reveals that it's what led to her girlfriend breaking up with her. Going back to the Ghost Festival to cook the food is Olivia's way of getting closer to her mom--both a figurative and literal attempt, as Olivia hopes her mom will show up as a ghost. As Olivia helps the ghosts find peace and closure through her food, Olivia begins to heal by helping a forgotten ghost and a lady ghost she had a crush on as a kid. I'm not explaining it well here, but it's one of my favorite stories in the collection. Steel Skin: Lori M. Lee 5/5 stars Hmong This is one of the sci-fi stories in the collection, and it's the one that goes the deepest into the realm of sci-fi. Based on the tale The Woman and the Tiger wherein a tiger kills a hunter and sneaks into the home of his family, killing most of them, only to get killed by the remaining family in turn. Lee flips this on its head a little, and even after reading it twice I'm still not sure who's the tiger in the story. Yer is the main character of this story, and she lives with her father and memories of a mother who was killed in an android uprising. Yer's father starts acting strangely and seems to be working in a now-illegal field of technology. The story starts out kind of slow and slowly builds as Yer's dad starts acting stranger and stranger until Yer tells her neighbor/boyfriend she thinks her father's been replaced by an android and the two decide to finally find out what's going on with her dad. Still Star-Crossed: Sona Charaipotra 3/5 stars Punjabi Based on the Indian folktale of Mirza and Sahiba, two star-crossed lovers who end the way most of them do--with one of them dead. This story is a modern reimagining of the original tale, set in New Dehli, New Jersey. This one is mostly just creepy. At first, I thought it was going to be a reincarnating story, where the star-crossed lovers knew each other from a past life and they'd both remember and it wouldn't be quite as creepy. Not entirely the case, though Charaipotra hints throughout the story (and in the afterword) that it's kind of reincarnation for the both of them. However, it mostly seems like the guy remembers the girl and keeps 'finding' (read: stalking) her in hopes she'll agree to hang out or enter into a relationship with him. The twist toward the end makes it even creepier. The Counting of Vermillion Beads: Aliette De Bodard 4.5/5 stars Vietnamese Bodard's story is a reimagining of the Vietnamese tale Tam Cam, which is about two sisters engaged in a jealous rivalry. Bodard turned it on its head and made it so the two sisters are loyal to one another, but have different ideas of what they want and can do in life. Set in fantasy Vietnam, the two sisters are census takers for the emperor. The elder sister, Tam believes they can escape and be free and go back to their home, while the younger sister, Cam, believes that the only way to freedom is through the system. Tam and Cam both tug their own direction, leading to a rift between the two for a bit, until they realize they can reconcile their ideas of freedom into something new. Cam is the narrator and is more passive than Tam, unwilling to view the system they've been a part of and the walls that surround them as a cage for most of the story, which is why the half star was dropped. The Land of the Morning Calm: E.C. Myers 5/5 stars Korean This one is a meld of sci-fi and contemporary, as it is technically set in modern-times, but also deals with a computer game that may or may not have real elements...okay, so it's also technically fantasy as well, since the game centers largely around magical, ancient Korea. Based on the Chasa Bonpuli epic that follows the main players of death: the god of the underworld, a grim reaper, and a guide to the underworld. Sunny, the main character, lost her mom five years prior while playing a computer game beloved by the whole family. Since then, none of them have touched the game. As the story opens, the grandfather is convinced the mother is back as a gwisin, or a ghost/spirit, and is trying to tell them something. Both Sunny and her dad brush it off, though Sunny decides to play the game one last time before it's shut down forever, and is thus transported into the land of fantasy and sci-fi. During the story, Sunny struggles to reconcile the death of her mother and the difference between clinging to the past and honoring it. The Smile: Aisha Saeed 4/5 stars South Asian A retelling of the legend of Anarkali, a girl who danced for the king and purportedly fell in love with one of his sons. I liked the story at first, though there were creepy undertones in this one as well. It's in a more historical setting than a fantasy one, and I enjoyed the way Saeed built the world and the people in it. I also like how Saeed explored consent in a relationship where one is royalty and the other is a servant/dancer of the palace. I mostly docked a star because of the creepy factor and the anger of the prince. Girls Who Twirl and Other Dangers: Preeti Chhibber 4/5 stars Gujarati A contemporary reimagining of Navratri, a Hinu holiday about community and dancing and being good to people. The story intertwines the actions of the main characters in the contemporary, magic-free world with the events happening that create the origin of Navratri. Three friends go to a Navratri celebration together and come into contact with the infamous (to them) Dinesh, who's sloppy dancing on Navratri years ago led to one of them having their skirt come unwrapped. In the spirit of the holiday, they decide to get revenge. It's a funny, lighthearted story and the star drop is mostly just me being unable to handle people being embarrassed, which both the girls and Dinesh end up being, to varying degrees. Nothing Into All: Renee Ahdieh 5/5 stars Korean This is another story about siblings and jealousy, this time based on the Korean story The Goblin Treasure, where goblins give two siblings the chance to gain treasure beyond what they know. Ahdieh is one of my favorite fantasy authors and I really enjoyed her contribution to this anthology. In this one, two siblings venture into the woods in search of the goblins they saw one year. The elder sibling, the sister, still feels guilty for something that occurred in childhood and thus attempts to hide her successes from her brother for fear they'll upset him. The brother has since grown up to be jealous and angry over his sister and what he views as his sister's selfish wishes. Naturally, one finds the goblins and the magic and the other does not and an argument ensues. The story is an interesting exploration through guilt, forgiveness, selfishness, and what one will do for family, even when said family has done wrong. Spear Carrier: Rahul Kanakia 3/5 stars South Asian This is a take on the Mahabharata, a famous Indian epic and, I believe, the longest epic that's ever been written. In the Mahabharata there's a huge battle toward the end of the story, and Kanakia has retold a portion of this battle from the perspective of one of the millions of people/creatures that have shown up to fight. It's another mix between contemporary, fantasy, and sci-fi. This is a story that I'm disappointed I didn't like better, especially since I generally like retellings of Mahabharata stories. I thought this was a really interesting take on the kinds of massive, all-out war we so often see in epics and high-fantasy books, even if I didn't necessarily like the story itself. The narrator of the story seems to be a high school- or college-aged guy who basically ends up accidentally agreeing to be a part of the battle and spends the time thinking of heroism and who we consider heroes and brings up the rather good question of why people were even fighting in the battle to begin with. I think this question, which is what the author says inspired the story, is really what saved this one for me. Let's face it, when we read stories of epic battles, we don't really ask where every soldier came from and why they decided to fight, we just role with it. Spear Carrier offers the answer that people came from all over, from all times, some for good and some for bad reasons, to fight in a war that needs corpses. If the narrator had been less....I don't even know, less preachy and less like the kind of person who thinks that just because they think deeply has few friends it means everyone else is shallow. Other than that, it's a great concept. Code of Honor: Melissa de la Cruz 3/5 stars Filipino This story is based on the aswangs, which de la Cruz describes as "banshee-like beings" (237) in Filipino folklore, and from what I've gathered from research for one of my books, can also be thought of like a cross between vampires and witches. Basically, they're awesome, oft-forgotten in the West, mythological creatures, which is why I'm so disappointed I didn't like this story better. The premise of the story is a good one: an aswang who's been orphaned and is searching for the rest of her bloodline. Unfortunately, this comes through by the aswang attending a prestigious high-school in contemporary New York and then being discovered by the bratty popular girl. With the undelivered promise of the story, the fight in the bathroom scene, and the not-quite-answered questions still left at the end of the story I had to drop two of the stars. Bullet, Butterfly: Elsie Chapman 5/5 stars Chinese Chapman's story is based on the Chinese folktale of Liang Zhu, translated as The Butterfly Lovers, where class and duty keep apart two lovers who, again, like most star-crossed lovers do, end up dying. In the original, these two lovers end up being resurrected (reincarnated?) as butterflies. This is the only dystopian/sci-fi story in here and it actually makes me wish there was more of them. Chapman flips the original on its head a little and instead of having the girl dress up as a guy to go to school, the guy dresses up as a girl to go to the factory. In this world, the girls are the only ones to work in factories until they're old enough to go to war while the guys are stuck at war or in training for longer (unsure how long, I don't think it's specified, but the guys go off first). Viruses keep ravaging the country, which is why the main character isn't off fighting in the war at the moment, he's in recovery. So, he dresses up as a girl and goes to the factory and befriends Zhu. I like the realness of the two of them as they work and get to know each other, the little details Chapman adds, such as the corner they eat lunch in where no one thinks to look. I also like the metaphors she weaves throughout the story, such as the butterfly bullet that's been invented and the gun smoke choking out parts of the country. It's a very metaphorical story based in tragedy, but the characters and their relationships make it worth any heartache. Daughter of the Sun: Shveta Thakrar 4/5 South Asian I believe this one is set in a urban fantasy (or rural fantasy??) setting, though I'm not entirely sure. It retells the story of Savitri and Satyavan from the larger Mahabharata epic as well as the story of the goddess Gangu and King Shantanu. In this story, Savitri is born with a sun heart, and because her parents worry for her, they remain mostly isolated on a large museum-estate. One day, Savitri finds a boy with a moon heart standing by the lake being coaxed into the water by a swan. She saves the boy from drowning and brings him back to shore, and the two become fast friends and lovers, only, Savitri is hiding from him what the swan said and why she was luring him to the water--an incident which he has no memory of. As the story goes on, Savitri realizes that the swan, and the goddess she meets, is correct and she cannot make decisions for Satyavan, even if it means letting him 'die,' and thus she gifts him back his choices. I like the story and I like the characters, but I'm a huge fan of choice, so Savitri's decision to take Satyavan's choices without thenletting him know is a hard no for me, hence the dropped star on an otherwise fantastic story. The Crimson Cloak: Cindy Pon 5/5 stars Chinese Set in a fantasy world with a golden ox, Pon's story is a retelling of the Chinese legend The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, which tells the tale of a cowherd whose talking ox tells him to steal the red cloak of a fairy girl because it will mean she must marry him. The two marry, have some kids, and then are separated by the fairy's mother who makes the Milky Way to keep them apart, only allowing them to visit on the seventh day of seventh moon. Pon makes the girl the narrator and a goddess in this one. In it, the girl, Hongyun, sees the cowherd and sets out to trick him into meeting her because she's curious. The two become friends and then lovers, and then realizing that she cannot give him what he wants, Hongyun tries to let him go. It's a story of loving and letting go and coming back together again and how we remember in parts even if we love whole. One of the things I particularly like about this story is how Hongyun directly addresses the reader "despite how the legend goes, the truth of the matter is, Dear Reader, I saw him first" (282). I think it adds a clever dimension to the story, and even in short stories I feel like it's not something that happens a lot. Eyes Like Candlelight: Julie Kagawa 3/5 stars Japanese Based on the Japanese myth of the kitsune, trickster fox creatures that have the ability to manipulate the mind and transform into humans. The premise of the story is good, it's set in feudal Japan and centers around a young man, Takeo, as he tries to find a way to meet the rice quote for the daimyo's tax. He comes into contact with a kitsune...which is sort of where I stop liking the story. I'm going to be 100% honest, I think this story has some rapey undertones to it. While the kitsune family helps Takeo and gives him the rice he needs to in turn help his family and town, the girl kitsune also heavily manipulates his mind and at the end there's hints that the two of them have had a kid even though they only meet as humans once and Takeo doesn't even seem to fully remembers what happened during that time, despite literally being the third person narrator.

#book #books #book recommendations #book review #anthology #fantasy #scifi #contemporary fiction #chinese folklore #japanese folklore #korean folklore #indian mythology #south asian folklore #characters of color #lesbian characters #own voices

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