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sparxwrites · 4 years ago

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(written to “american love” by smallpools, which is a bit of a nadi anthem tbqh. neidyasset ainseelie is my character from a dnd campaign by @ladyofrosefire. for my fellow players: beware, there are Minor Spoilers here for the much-hyped eventual Meeting Of Nadi’s Family, in that this fic is primarily about nadi’s family. if you don’t care about that, then feel free to read on!!)

cw for shitty/manipulative parenting, a dubiously healthy relationship with alcohol, and an excess of teenage angst

[ao3]

The butler let Nadi in, as always. A new one, since the last time she’d visited – a young man, either an unusually pale Drow or half-Elven, smartly dressed in the Ainseelie livery of ivory and gold and already looking tired of his job.

She kept her eyes down, mumbling a thank you as he let her through the heavy wood-and-wrought-iron front door. No sense getting too friendly, all things considered. Her mother’d never been too good at keeping butlers – or any kind of serving staff for that matter. It rankled, she knew, just one of the many pricks at her mother’s noble pride.

He took her bags, too, foisting them off onto a more junior staff member moments later. She kept her satchel, one hand clutched around the strap across her chest, but the rest were spirited away before she had time to take more than two steps into the entrance hall. Quite how the butler thought he could get them to her room before she got there, she wasn’t sure, but–

“Neidyasset!” Lady Luarine Ainseelie’s voice rang out through the large entrance hall.

Nadi froze, eyes still on the pale, veined marble of the floor. That was how, apparently. Relying on a little family reunion. Unfortunate.

She’d assumed her parents would be out, given her deliberately-awkward mid-afternoon arrival, but apparently not. There was her mother on the stairs – in an elegant, understated dress of pale silk to compliment the deep purple of her skin, gold-set diamonds hung around her throat in thin, dripping strings, and a perfect smile pasted on her perfectly made-up face.

Her father stood a full two meters to the side, one step down, in starched cotton dress pants and a shirt rolled up to his elbows, both in a shade of ivory to tone with his wife’s gown and accented with gold buttons. His expression was as flat and unreadable as ever, lips pulled into a thin line and his eyes hard and cold.

“Lady Luarine Ainseelie,” said Nadi, forcing a smile onto her face that was somehow even more fake than her mother’s own painted-on one. “Lord Istas Ainseelie. It’s good to see you.” She offered a clumsy attempt at a curtsey, then gave up on it half way through as a bad deal and segued into a stiff bow.

Istas snorted, softly and humourlessly, at the graceless display.

The look his wife gave him out the corner of her eye was positively glacial, though her smile never wavered. “Neidyasset, darling, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Mother?” she said, expansive generosity in every word. A lie. They’d been through this little script enough times for Nadi to know the reaction if she opened with Mother. “Honestly. So formal!”

“Mother. Of course. ” Nadi straightened up, carefully correcting her posture and ensuring her shoulders weren’t up around her pointed ears, clasping one hand around the other wrist at the small of her back. “I… had assumed you would be out making social calls, given the hour and the season. I would have sent ahead to inform you of my arrival, otherwise.”

Luarine smile widened, though it still didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, water under the bridge,” she demurred. “The servants will sort everything, regardless. It’s just good to have you home, Neidyasset. How have your studies been?”

“They’re going well.” Nadi’s fingers tightened around her wrist, trying to remember this particular bit of the script, what lie she’d used last time. “It’s– you know. Business as usual. Research, reading, experiments… my supervisor’s hopeful that I’m very close to a breakthrough, but it’s always a little slow going when you’re on the cutting edge of arcane research.” She shrugged, dipped her gaze in what she hoped was a modest gesture, not a suspicious one. “I won’t bore you with the technical details, but it’s groundbreaking work. We’re taking mathemagics and philoarcanosophy to previously-unconceived-of heights. Very exciting.”

It was a lie, but mostly a white lie. Nad reassured herself with that, even as the nape of her neck prickled at the deception, even as she fought to keep from breaking out into a guilty cold sweat.

There was absolutely no need for her family to know about her missing supervisor, after all. About the faculty’s ambivalence towards finding her a new one. About her stagnating research, in light of her recent academic suspension. And definitely no need for them to know about the impromptu Feywild trip. The mere thought of her mother learning that little tidbit was almost enough to make her shudder.

Though if Professor Egreth was gone for much longer… well. She’d burn that bridge when she got to it.

“Oh, how exciting!” Luarine turned to Istas, with a smile that showed too many teeth. “Our own little Neidyasset, on the cutting edge of arcane research. Aren’t you just so proud?”

“I am indeed,” said, Istas, drilly, looking as though he couldn’t care less. As though he would prefer to be literally anywhere else, having literally any other conversation. His gaze was fixed in the middle distance, on a point on the far wall somewhere well over the top of Nadi’s head.

For perhaps the first time in her life, Nadi felt a fleeting sense of kinship with her father.

“We’re both very proud,” said Luarine, fussily smoothing her hands over an imagined crease in her skirt, not so much as batting an eyelid at her husband’s lack of enthusiasm. “I can’t wait for your graduation, Neidyasset. I’m sure you’ll be the talk of the town.”

Nadi, not sure what to say to that particular little performance-cum-threat, offered a respectful half-bow in response.

She was rewarded with a high, insincere laugh from Luarine. Istas gave no response whatsoever, save for crossing his arms, as though he were also waiting for the rigmarole to be over – though far more blatantly than Nadi was.

“So formal! Always so formal, our little Neidyasset.” Luarine eyed her up and down, taking in the mismatched boots, the scuffed trousers and oversized jumper, the goggles still perched atop Nadi’s head. “Though not so formally dressed, unfortunately. You’ll want to clean up before dinner.”

“Why? Do we have company?” Nadi fidgeted absently with the strap of her satchel, trying to not grind her teeth at the extended eye contact, the extended pantomime of politeness. She wanted nothing more than to disappear to her room, but her desire was subsumed beneath familial duty, beneath her mother’s pointed stare.

Like a butterfly on a board, she was pinned in place until Luarine decided otherwise.

“Though Talice will, unfortunately, not be joining us this Heartsease – she’s been asked to play a vital part in the ceremonies at the temple, can you imagine! Our Talice! – but the Lord Ainseelie has kindly lent us Veyris back for the holiday.” She failed to hide the note of distaste in her voice, despite the smile still firmly in place. “So she will be joining us. And I’ve invited the Lady Sabine’s family to dinner tonight. She, unfortunately, is otherwise engaged, but her sister and brother-in-law will be joining us! And their daughter, too – who I’m quite sure I told you about in my last letter.”

The letter had, if Nadi remembered correctly, made much of exactly how eligible Lady Sabine’s niece was. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from groaning. Yet another futile matchmaking dinner – and on her first evening home, too. What fun.

“So we must all be dressed appropriately, and on our best behaviour,” concluded Luarine, with a singularly pointed look at her daughter. “It’s very important to make a good impression. And, of course, we’ll be having family over for the next few nights after that – the Lord Ainseelie and some of his entourage,” again, the ill-hidden distaste, “tomorrow, I believe, and the Arganans the day after, And then, of course, it’s the family ball. I’ve taken the liberty of acquiring a suitable outfit for you, since I assume that you have failed to do so.”

Nadi ground her teeth a little harder, her mother’s tone sliding between her ribs more effectively than any dagger. “Thank you, Mother,” she managed after a moment, her voice perfectly flat. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Yes, I thought so too. Anyway. Busy busy busy! An exciting few days ahead of us. And it’s lovely that you could join us. Finally. After your absence, the last few holidays.” There was no missing the icy note in Luarine’s voice. No missing her pointed disapproval, even buried as it was beneath layers of courtly courtesy.

“Mmh. Well. Academia’s time consuming, unfortunately,” lied Nadi, through her teeth. She’d spent Silver Night drinking copious amounts of sweet, spiced rum and doing shots of brightwine with the other Starspire postgrads in her student flat’s kitchen, until she’d passed out at the table in the wee hours of the morning. She’d spent King’s Day before that in the bed of some mathematics undergraduate, half-drunk and drowning her worries in easy, meaningless sex. “I’m glad I could return home for Heartsease, though.”

Another lie. Nadi felt sure her mother must know, because she’d never been much good at lying – but the polite, insincere smile pasted onto Luarine’s immaculately painted face never faltered.

Perhaps her mother hadn’t noticed. Perhaps Luarine just didn’t care, so long as the pretense at happy families was maintained.

“Luarine, dear,” interrupted Istas, before Luarine could launch into more barbed platitudes. “As thrilling as your entrance hall interrogation of our daughter is, perhaps you could save it for dinner? I’m sure she’d prefer to run along and get… cleaned up.” He, too, eyed her well-worn lab outfit, and the corner of one lip curled up in distaste. “She looks sorely in need of a bath, after all. And a change of clothes.”

Nadi tightened the hand around her wrist until she felt sure she must be cutting the circulation off, and dug the blunt nails of her other hand into her palm until it ached.

For a split second, Luarine’s expression cracked, and a look of frustrated loathing flashed across her face – though Nadi missed it, busy sinking nails into her own skin and staring into the middle distance. Then it was gone, tucked neatly behind her near-flawless mask once more. “Oh! Of course. Quite right, husband dearest. She must be quite desperate to refresh herself.” She regarded Nadi for a long moment, and then flapped a dismissive hand at her. “You are excused. I look forward to continuing our conversation at dinner.”

“Mother. Father.” Nadi bowed once more, a little more gracefully this time, and then fled.

She didn’t run, but she did walk faster than was probably seemly, her boots echoing against the marble in the cavernous entrance hall and the hallway leading out of it. Down a corridor to the right, a turn to the left, up a staircase spiralling hidden behind an innocuous door, out into another hallway on the second floor, a sharp right turn–

The door to her bedroom clicked shut behind her, and Nadi inhaled properly for the first time since setting foot in the house as she turned the lock.

It took a long moment of just remembering to breathe, her slumped against the solid wood of her door, before she found the energy to pull herself up. She wandered into the centre of the room and, looking around. It was exactly as she’d left it, last time she was home – the furniture lavish and elegant, dark wood and lacquer and metal, but sparse.

The four-poster bed dominated the room, draped with deep purple silks and beautifully embroidered linens. A writing desk sat under one silk-curtained window, along with a high-backed chair and her bags. In the corner was a tall, thin armoire, and a capacious chest of drawers.

Otherwise, the room was empty – no rugs on the flagstone floors, no personal effects, no artwork. What little clutter she’d had was currently occupying every available surface in her student room, leaving her bedroom at home looking distinctly un-lived-in. Which was appropriate, really, given how rarely she returned to it

Nadi sighed, and set her satchel down on the desk, with a dull thump that echoed in the empty, high-ceilinged room. With a flick of her wrist, she summoned her familiar to her shoulder.

An irritated-looking raven popped into being with an angry squawk, nearly sliding off her shoulder before righted himself – hitting her in the face with one large wing, and grabbing at one of her many earrings with his beak for balance. Even once he was settled, he kept tugging on it, nibbling at the point of one long, obsidian ear until Nadi swatted him off her shoulder.

“Vyrrd,” Nadi chided, without any sort of heat in her voice. She tugged her goggles off her head, setting them down on the desk beside her bag, and dragged a hand over the close-cropped fuzz of her glittering, silvery hair. “Fucking hells, though, right? Fucking hells. Encounter one survived. Fifteen minutes down, four days to go.”

Vyrrd ruffled his wings at her, indignantly, from his new perch on the footboard of her four-poster bed.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Mother bitches terribly when you’re a rat, though, so, you know. Suck it up for a few days. We’re both making sacrifices here. I’ll give you pizza after.” A suspicious croak. “Loads of pizza. I promise.” A less suspicious croak. “As much pizza as you want. Which is gonna be like half a slice, because rats have super tiny stomachs. Dumbass.”

She toed her mismatched boots off and left them by the end of the bed, padding over in her socks to the old, elaborately-carved wardrobe in the corner. When she opened it, it was already full of the clothes she’d brought home for her visit – the staff must have at least partially unpacked for her. The thought sent her stomach into an uncomfortable curl. She wasn’t a fan of other people touching her stuff.

Hanging on the far right of the rail, though, was the outfit her mother had mentioned. Nadi took it out, and held it up to the refracted light of the crystalline chandelier, appraising it with a critical eye.

The shirt was thin, bordering on sheer, a deep, cool charcoal that highlighted the blue undertones of her obsidian skin. It was unadorned, so as not to detract from the suit it was designed to accompany – a darkly iridescent, exquisitely tailored waistcoat and trousers. The fabric of the slim trousers caught the light in unusual ways as Nadi twisted the hanger back and forth, the dark fabric picking up oil-slick hints of green, blue, purple, and pink in every crease and fold. The waistcoat went a step further, the front covered entirely in exquisite, carefully-arranged raven feathers, sleek and gorgeous, its fastenings disguised beneath the plumage.

Hung next to it was a jacket, no doubt also carefully tailored to her measurements, made of the same iridescent fabric as the pants and the back of the waistcoat. It was lined with a silk so deeply purple-blue it was almost black, and buttoned up to the throat with silver buttons stamped with the Ainseelie crest.

“The bitch’s got good taste in clothes, if nothing else,” murmured Nadi, running a finger down the front of the waistcoat and sighing at the texture of feathers against skin. “And you’ll match beautifully, Vyrrd, huh? Lucky you.”

Vyrrd, now underneath the bed and undoubtedly hunting for months-old crumbs, communicated his disinterest in Drow fashion with a half-hearted croak.

A cursory check of the wardrobe floor found a new pair boots, sturdy and ankle-high, polished to a mirror shine. There was new jewellery in the jewellery box on her desk, too, as Nadi had known there would be. No new earrings or rings – her mother had given up on that particular battle a while ago, irritably resigned to Nadi’s assortment of diamond studs and platinum hoops and mismatched finger jewellery – but there was a new string of diamonds, so small they’d do little more than catch the light in a fine sparkle, long enough to wrap several times around one wrist.

“Pretty,” she murmured, absently, testing the drape of it over her fingers and tilting her hand back and forth to make it catch the light. It glittered, beautifully, like a line of tiny stars across the inky darkness of her skin. It would turn into a constellation when worn, she had no doubt, throwing delicate points of light across the oily darkness of her clothing.

She dropped it back in the jewellery box, pleased but disinterested, and wandered over to join Vyrrd in poking around under the bed.

There, directly under where her pillow would lie on the mattress above, was her faithful old loose flagstone. Or rather, loosened flagstone. She’d rather deliberately cracked one corner of the enormous slab in her youth, and pried it up to carve out a small hollow beneath in which to stash anything she didn’t want her mother’s prying eyes to find.

She was pleased to discover it as undisturbed as ever – though she had no doubts that if her Luarine had found it, it would have been the first thing out her mouth the minute Nadi walked through the door.

Nudging aside a couple of books, a sheaf of papers, and a small pouch, she pulled free a heavy bottle of amber liquid. Dwarvish whiskey, old and extortionately expensive, pilfered unnoticed from her father’s collection several years earlier. It was still half-full, and Nadi hummed happily, standing up and letting it swing idly by the neck from her fingertips as she padded over to the ensuite bathroom door.

The bath had been filled, no doubt by the same attentive servants who had feverishly unpacked her belongings whilst she’d been waylaid by her parents. The water in the claw-footed tub steamed faintly. It was probably hot enough to nearly scald, just the way she liked it. It was both gratifying and uncomfortable to realise that someone in this godforsaken house knew her tastes well enough to hew so closely to them, down to even her bathing preferences.

After several years of an – admittedly high-class – student lifestyle, such luxuries seemed both foreign and awkward, an unexpected and delightful-yet-discomforting indulgence.

Nadi set the bottle of spirits gently down on the floor by the edge of the tub, and considered the water for a moment. Her gaze settled on the slow curls of steam from the surface, unfocusing as she tracked the random, meandering path of the vapour. Another increment of tension eased from her shoulders at the minor dissociation, and she exhaled slowly, letting her eyes fall shut.

Her internal deliberation about whether to strip off there and then and climb straight into the hot water, however, was interrupted by an insistent knocking at her bedroom door.

Eyes snapping open, Nadi stifled a groan, shoulders hunching up once more. “Coming!” she called, loudly, making sure to kick the door to the bathroom closed behind her as she left to answer. “Gimmie a moment!”

A cursory glance around her room confirmed nothing offensive in view – the flagstone section had been replaced, Vyrrd was still busy beneath the bed, and the bottle of illicit whiskey was out of sight behind the door of the en-suite. Satisfied within reason, Nadi braced herself, and unlocked the door to her room before pulling it open.

She needn’t have bothered with the pre-emptive stress. No sooner had she opened the door, than Veryris had thrown herself through it, dragging her younger sister into a tight embrace. “Nadi! You’re back! Finally. It’s so good to see you.”

Her vision was, abruptly, filled with the lower quarter of her sister’s head – a deep purple-charcoal cheek and long, silvery braids twisted into an immaculately elegant hairstyle. Her elder sister was everything she wasn’t; long-haired where she was close-cropped, tall where she was short, willowy where she was stocky, sociable where she was awkward.

Sometimes it seemed hard to believe they were genetically related, with the differences as stark as they were.

Nadi tolerated the embrace for a polite, painful count of five, before disentangling herself. “Vey,” she said, voice soft and uncharacteristically warm, despite the lingering discomfort of unanticipated physical contact still prickling across her skin. “It’s good to see you too. How’ve you been? Surviving under the watchful eye of the dread Lord Ainseelie?”

Veyris laughed, a light, high-pitched sound that was significantly more sincere than her mother’s. “I’ve got my townhouse, thank you very much, so I’m hardly under his eye. Or anyone’s, for that matter. And Uncle Rhyldyn is far more interesting to be around than Mother and Father, so you needn’t worry about me. The internship is a dream. I’m learning more about politics than I could ever have dreamed– and I’m almost starting to believe Mother’s theories about him handing off the Ainseelie title to me. I mean, he’s still unmarried, well into middle age, and the kind of duties he’s having me perform–”

She cut herself off, eyes bright with obvious excitement. “Ahem..” Her cheeks darkened a little, clearly embarrassed with herself at such an enthusiastic, unseemly outpouring – enough so that even Nadi could spot it. “Anyway, enough about me. How’re you? How’s school been? You must tell me everything! I’ve been surviving on Mother’s gossip and parliamentary intrigue for months and, I must say, it’s not half as interesting as the stories you come back with.”

For a moment, Nadi considered spilling her guts to her big sister. About Professor Egreth, about the academic suspension, about the Feywild and the strange people in it. About the tiefling coming to crash at her dorm. Or even about just some of it, just the funny bits, just about her brief and bizarre trip to the Feywild in all its improbability and alien beauty.

Veyris would have loved the it, she knew, if only for the drama and high elegance of it all. Her sister had always loved the fey. Or had, at least, loved the romanticised, fairy-tale version of what the fey could be, learned through childhood books and second-hand stories.

In the end, though, Nadi bit her tongue. “Still haven’t got Jazreth expelled,” she said instead, with a toothy grin and a slight pang in her ribs at the lie-by-omission. “I accidentally set a water elemental loose in the lab about a month ago, so. That’s a thing. The vice-provost just loves me, right now.”

“Oh, gods.” Veyris made a hand gesture commonly used to ask for Bahamut’s protection, only half-jokingly. “You’re going to give me grey hairs, Nadi. Grey hairs. Uncle Rhyldyn will ask me where my beautiful white hair has gone, and I shall have to blame you.” Her lips, though, curled into a co-conspiratorial smile. “You’ve got to tell me all about it. After dinner. And over some kind of alcohol, since I know you’re good at swindling that from the serving staff – so I’ve something to look forward to, after Mother’s no doubt extensive interrogation of us both..”

“I’ll bother the cook into giving us some of the good wine. Assuming Mother’s managed to keep same cook as the last time I was here. And assuming I survive dinner,” grumbled Nadi, her good mood soured by the reminder of what was to come. “Mother’s trying to set me up with some nice, eligible Drow heir, again. Because gods forbid I be allowed to finish my fucking doctoral studies without the promise of wedding bells at the end.” She rolled her eyes so hard it hurt.

“Bahamut’s balls, Nadi,” groaned Veyris. Sympathetic as she was to her sister’s exasperation at their mother’s machinations, she found the endless whining more than a little wearing. “Yes, Mother’s endless matchmaking gets a little tiring, but do stop complaining. Or– I don’t know! Do an Aunt Vierayema, or something! Take a year studying abroad, find someone to marry who’s wealthy but just disreputable enough that you stop getting invited to dinner other every week, and then settle down in that ivory tower of yours for the rest of your life, blissfully free of familial bothering. Honestly.”

Nadi’s lips twitched, somewhere between amusement and irritation. “Or find someone very disreputable, and do an Uncle Tobith, and stop getting invited to any dinners, family or otherwise, ever.”

“Absolutely not.” Veyris levelled a finger at her sister, abruptly deadly serious. “Absolutely, under no circumstances, do an Uncle Tobith. Because you’re my sister, and I love you, and I do not want to deal with the enormous mess that would be you getting disinherited and then me trying to re-inherit you when I’m Lady Ainseelie.” Her lips twisted with distaste. “And also because if you run off with a tiefling called Delirium, of all the gods-awfully tacky names to choose, I’m not sure I’ll want to re-inherit you.”

“I was joking!” Nadi raised her hands in a gesture of truce. “I was joking, Vey. I’m not planning on running off with a tiefling any time soon. Or getting disinherited.” She pursed her lips, expression turning bitter. “The family fortune is an excellent incentive to stay on Mother’s good side. Trust me.”

She was abruptly glad, though, that she hadn’t mentioned the Feywild, or any of the people she’d met in it, to Vey. An elf with more knives than manners, a tiefling with entirely the wrong sort of manners, a halfling in the employ of the Baba Jaga, and a half-elven bastard… She could imagine what Veyris might have said about them and, though she couldn’t say why, her sister’s imagined disapproval left her feeling– unbalanced. She’d met this bizarre group of strangers once, unwillingly, in deeply awkward circumstances, and had left with no debt towards them whatsoever. And yet…

And yet.

“Anyway,” Nadi said, her mood abruptly soured for no reason she could put her finger on. “Given I haven’t pulled a Vierayema yet, I should get ready for dinner. I guess. Brace myself for whatever new idiot Mother’s found for me. No point getting myself mildly to moderately disowned if I’m not going to do it in style.”

Veyris sighed. “Yes,” she agreed, with a tired flap of her fingers. “Go– I don’t know. Have a soak in the bath, or something.” She was familiar with her sister’s sharp tongue and mercurial temper, but that didn’t make it any less wearing to deal with – especially when she’d clearly stumbled across some conversational pitfall so well-hidden she hadn’t even known it existed. “And, Nadi? Cheer up, for the love of Bahamut. It’s a few days of dinners and parties, not a bloody death sentence.”

“Not for you, maybe,” said Nadi, darkly, but the corner of her lip twitched all the same. Veyris stuck her tongue out, and Nadi responded in kind, her poor mood lifting for a heartbeat at the childish display of fondness. “Anyway. Fuck off, Vey, I want a bath.”

“As her highness demands,” demurred Veyris, sweeping out of the bedroom door with a grace Nadi had never seen in her before. Clearly, hanging around Uncle Rhyldon had been rubbing off on her mannerisms. “See you at dinner, sister dearest!”

The door clicked shut behind Veyris before Nadi could respond. She was left standing by her desk, in silence, staring at the satchel and the stack of books upon it.

She was seized, suddenly, by the urge to push them off – to sweep everything off, the bag, the books, the papers, the quill and ink, the candles, in a single violent motion, send it all crashing to the ground. To turn it all into a ruined heap on the floor, to scream and not stop screaming–

She picked up the book atop the stack, instead, and padded absently back into to the bathroom. The muscles in her jaw and neck were so tight they hurt, a dull ache at the edge of her senses. Her shoulders were up around her ears once more, and no amount of willing would push them down again.

The bath was still hot, at least. She set the book down on the tiled bathroom floor, next to the bottle of whiskey, shedding her clothes in a graceless heap. The water burned her feet a little, as she stepped in, but she ignored it, gritting her teeth against the bite and sinking her entire body down into it until she was submerged deep enough to scream.

It was only when her lungs started to ache, oxygen-starved, that she resurfaced, gasping for air through the near-scalding water rolling down her face.

Tilting her head back until it was resting on the rim of the tub, she stuck an arm over the edge, groping for the neck of the bottle of Dwarvish whiskey. She needed a drink, clearly. Being so tense hat she was already resorting to screaming where no one could hear was a poor omen for the long weekend ahead.

No, what she needed was clearly a long soak in an obscenely hot bath, and a drink. Or two. Or three. And perhaps a chapter or two of dense arcane theory, as well. That ought to be enough to numb her to the dinner ahead, to leech the tension out of her shoulders and the building headache out the base of her skull.

Her questing fingers found the whiskey, and she grasped it, thumbing the cap off without looking. Sitting up just enough that she wouldn’t choke on it, she took a generous sip, exhaling slowly as the burn of it worked its way down her throat to the pit of her belly. The combination of heat and alcohol began turning her muscles to soft clay, and she let her eyes slip closed for a second – luxuriating in the sensation, trying to grasp at the singular moment of thoughtless peace and keep it.

The moment lingered for a heartbeat, and then it slipped through her grasping fingers, ephemeral.

Sighing in disappointment, Nadi took another sip of the whiskey, and traced the glyph for Mage Hand in the air. She murmured the activation word, and hummed satisfaction as the spectral fingers grasped the book, lifting it up over the bath and flipping to the page she’d last left off. Dense arcane theory it was, then – or rather, it was that or masturbation, and she really wasn’t in the mood.

Arranging herself a little more comfortably in the bath, the heat of the water seeping into her bones and the whiskey turning her head pleasantly numb, she exhaled slowly, and began to read.

#dungeons and dragons #original #ocs #dnd #misfit toys #(the joke here is that she just acquired a tiefling boy-toy (if you ask her)/boyfriend (if you ask the tiefling) kdjfhs)#(what could possibly go wrong...........)#god i love her........ my best girl. my asshole girl.

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ncfan-1 · 6 years ago

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ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives: S1 EP022 (’Colony’), EP023 (’Schwartzwald’), & EP024 (’Strange Music’)

In which a lot of plot material is dropped on us.

No spoilers past Season 1, please!

EP 022: ‘Colony’

- So we’re back from where ‘Freefall’ left off, with Martin retelling his close encounter with Jane Prentiss. What happened with the container full of worms that he presumably brought into the Archives, I don’t know.

- Jonathan’s silence after Martin says he can vouch for his sanity is so awful it winds up being hilarious.

- Martin picked up on the same thing that I picked up on the first time I listened to ‘Arachnophobia’—namely that the description of the worms rings a bell.

- It says something about how sketchy the Archives has become to me even at this point that I didn’t bat an eye that Martin regarded breaking and entering an acceptable part of “due diligence.”

- “I get closer, and I see that it looks more like a worm of some sort, maybe an inch long, with a silver, segmented body that goes black at one end, almost like it’s been burned.” This is a description of the worm. It stood out to me, and I’ll explain why at the end of the section.

- I wonder—did the edges of Martin’s shadow move because worms were moving in it, or does proximity to the Flesh Hive (or a host of the Flesh Hive) by itself have that effect?

- Oh, Martin, Jonathan didn’t once think about it in terms of you having disappeared.

- Because I have a slightly dirty mind, I assume Jane Prentiss was naked under that coat. Obviously, the holes in her body and the general state of decay her body was in would have distracted from that. Those images from Planet Earth of different species of cordyceps growing out of different species of animal corpses is firmly impressed upon my mind.

- I wonder how much of Jane’s mind is even left at this point. Like, by the season finale, I can only assume that she’s dead and the Flesh Hive is running around with her corpse, but was she even properly alive anymore at this point? I honestly don’t know.

- If I’d been trapped in my home by Jane Prentiss and the worms for thirteen days, I would have been screwed. Like Martin, I keep upwards of a week’s worth of food on hand, but a lot of my stuff is frozen. Also, since we live out in the middle of nowhere, if we lose power, we also lose running water, and about the only thing I drink anymore is water.

- I imagine Martin doesn’t want to think about it (and who could blame him?), but I wonder if, while Jane and the worms were stalking Martin’s home, any of his neighbors tried to stop by. Or any of their pets. Does Martin have pets? (Did he have pets?)

- It’s a testament to how seriously Jon takes Jane Prentiss that he isn’t nasty to Martin at all after he’s done making his statement, that he volunteers to ask Elias to hire extra security, and goes so far as to offer Martin the use of a room in the Archives until the danger’s passed.

- Martin’s stunned stammering when Jon says all this is kinda heartbreaking.

- “Keep him. We have had our fun.” Y I K E S.

- Now, I talk about the worms—namely, the description of the worms, and why it stood out to me that these worms, the manifestation of an entity that hates the Magnus Institute, look the way they do.

Let me tell you about the silverfish. The silverfish is a small insect, ranging in size from half an inch to one inch long. It has a silver, segmented body that’s darker at the head, and it looks like this:

It doesn’t look exactly like the worms. It has legs and antennae; it’s not a worm at all. The funny thing about the silverfish, however, is that it’s the bane of many an archive in a humid climate, because among other things, one of its favorite things to eat is paper. I wonder if this was an intentional choice on Jonny Sims’s (the writer’s) part.

EP 023: ‘Schwartzwald’

- This is my favorite of the set I’m doing today, and it’s one of my favorites of Season 1. It’s just so lovely.

- So, was Jonah Magnus of German descent? Von Closen remarks upon his very strong opinions about the German confederation, and I get the impression that it is (or was, or possibly still is) much in use as a Germanic and a Scandinavian given name and surname.

- I listen to von Closen’s description of the Black Forest, and I wonder how it compares to the forests I know. I’d believe that the trees are taller, but the forests here are very dense, and the undergrowth can make them very difficult to navigate.

- I’d say finding a cemetery in the middle of the woods is incredibly creepy, but old, small family burial plots are so common in the South that it’s not out of the question that you’d stumble across one if you started walking across the backwoods in a really rural area. You can see a lot of them in farmland, far from the road at the tree line. My family’s old burial plot is in a cow pasture. One of the raised tombs is broken.

- Okay, I’ve read enough ghost stories to know that when a creepy old man tells you it’s dangerous to do the thing, that’s your signal to turn right back around and forget about doing the thing. From a more practical standpoint, even discounting supernatural elements, you shouldn’t do exploration of the kind von Closen is doing by yourself, because of the risk of being injured so far from civilization is a very real one, and it’s worse if you’re by yourself.

- And we have an intermission with Martin! And it turns out that Jonathan has been coming to the Archive well before seven in the morning for a while. Yeah, that’s not unhealthy at all.

- I would not be surprised if the books von Closen found in the mausoleum are of the same class of book as Jurgen Leitner’s stuff. Most of them were damaged past the capacity to read them, and the world is a better place for it. The fact that the one book he took away from the mausoleum is unaccounted for is… worrisome.

- A wall seemingly made of (probably evil) books molded together is a nice, evocative image.

- More eye imagery.

- The fact that the book von Closen found was probably in Arabic is kinda funny to me, because in Lovecraftian lore, the author of the Necronomicon was Arabic, and I think that’s the original language of the text.

- The text on the coin von Closen found, “Für de stille,” made the recording go staticky. It’s German for ‘For the silence’, if Google Translate can be trusted, and yeah, I know that’s a tall order.

- The date on the coin, 1279, is the year Ulrich II, Count of Württemberg, died. He was twenty-five.

- And now we get a story behind the creepy mausoleum. ‘Johann’s steps’ seems to carry on a long tradition of egregiously risky childhood games. And, indeed, what was it they were seen by?

- I can’t tell if Johann von Württemberg is supposed to be a historical figure or not.

- I love the detail about the old man being able to see despite having no eyes, and his head jerking up like a hunting dog’s responding to a signal. It so effectively signals that the only human thing about him is his appearance.

- The stinger is great—apparently this friend of Jonah Magnus’s nephew is the ancestor of another collector of the arcane, Mary Keay, and her son, Gerard Keay. Mary’s birth date struck me, though, the fact that she was born in 1924. Gerard was described as being in his late teens, so somewhere between seventeen and nineteen, in 2002 (‘Old Passages’)—I’d assume the reason Dominic Swain assumed him to be in his late thirties ten years later in ‘Page Turner’ was down to rough living. That means that Mary would have had to have been in her late fifties or even her early sixties when Gerard was born. It’s not impossible for a woman to have a child (and apparently her first) at that age, it’s just extremely rare.

EP 024: ‘Strange Music’

- I’m like Leanne; I’m not scared of clowns, but I don’t think they’re all that funny, either. Dolls can occasionally be creepy, but for the most part, they’re not—at least, not by themselves.

- Budel is a town in the Netherlands, it turns out.

- A loft is an… interesting place to keep something like a calliope organ. The fact that the organ and the steamer trunk full of mutilated dolls are the only things in the loft makes me think that Nikolai was hiding them there, like he couldn’t get rid of them but wanted to forget they were there.

- One does wonder how exactly the broken calliope organ played.

- The clown doll sounds like a Pierrot-style doll. I think the clown doll from Poltergeist was like that as well.

- The only way I have ever heard Calliope pronounced is “Cuh-LIE-oh-pee.” I’ve never heard it pronounced “Call-ee-OH-pee,” and I’ve certainly never heard it pronounced “Call-ee-ohp.” Who exactly pronounces it “Call-ee-ohp?”

- “Faster, faster” sounds vaguely demonic in origin. Just something about how frantically fast it is and how completely carried away Leanne gets while playing it, how lost in the music she gets. That and the fact that playing it immediately gets the clown doll’s attention.

- Wonder what Josh did that proved him to be “just another asshole.” From the context, it sounds like he cheated on Leanne or stole from her or something like that.

- I also wonder what it was that made the entity of the episode decide to target Josh and not Leanne. I really doubt it respects the fact that she’s the granddaughter of the person who owned the calliope organ.

- And some sinister delivery men (gee, I wonder who it could be, she says sarcastically) broke into Leanne’s house just to get at the organ and the trunk.

- And it turns out Leanne’s grandfather Nikolai Dennikin was an organist for a creepy circus called the Circus of the Other. Given that name, ‘Circus of the Other’, I expect that to come up again.

- And the stinger of this episode is that the sinister calliope organ has somehow ended up in the Archives’ artifact storage room. Which is a good stinger, I’ll admit.

#ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives

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ayankun · 6 years ago

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GOTHAM

insanely rambley HUGE spoiler-ridden seasons 1-4 thoughts under cut

FIRST OFF LET ME TELL YOU I GOT CHILLS

Secondly, let’s think back to how I felt about season one. A little loose in the narrative, not so much weaving threads as having threads, ones that you keep expecting to pull tight but more often than not just get dropped for other, shinier threads. All leading to a surprisingly effective character-driven season finale that hopes to prove to you that a few meandering plot points can still add to a sum greater than the parts.

(Oswald goes from umbrella boy to King of Gotham, Bruce Wayne starts at the site of his parents’ murder and ends up taking his first steps into the Batcave, Jim enters as this black-and-white idealist and winds learning from a mob boss that even good men sometimes get their hands dirty to get the job done. A socially awkward unrecognized genius has a psychic break, leading ultimately to the fall of Edward Nygma and the rise of the Riddler.)

Season two is a blur. A period of transition from Jim “Good Cop” Gordon Fistfighting Corruption into... Gotham City: Arkham Asylum’s Backyard. Think how much season one was about only Fish Mooney vs Falcone vs the GCPD and Cobblepot doublecrossing everyone he meets, and how much seasons two and three and four were about the Riddler and Valeska and Tetch and Ra’s al Ghul (and Valeska). We have the bring-everyone-back-to-life at Indian Hill period to thank for the sudden left turn into the Strange.

WHICH IS NOT A COMPLAINT.

There are so many types of Batman stories, and there’s a time and a place for both Joe Chill and Killer Croc. Gotham started in one and always knew it was headed for the other.

And B.D. Wong as Strange is a DELIGHT and I really appreciated his dynamic with Miss Peabody. Speaking of, the bomb defusing scene was a real gem omg lololol give the woman some damn water already.

At the same time, the Fish storyline was like WHOA what EVEN is haPPENINg at any given moment. And it ultimately didn’t amount to much? There’s so much waffling between the surviving gang camps where everyone’s either got a kill-on-sight order or a owed-life-debt to each other and the pendulum swings back and forth so quickly it’s not really worth holding onto how anyone feels about anyone else. That dead/MIA character will come back or the rivalry will be revived or the long-held grudge will be recalled if and when that plot point is going to be drafted, but other than that everyone’s friends and that’s ok.

And like. Ivy??? Ivy Pepper??????? Why is that ride so wild??? There is no cause and effect, only next next next. It’s insane. Maybe watching this all at once rather than over the course of four years lends a different perspective, but holy cow. Such a ballsy way to do whatever with a character you never had a plan for.

Which brings us to Barbara Kean?! Season one she was there because they knew she was a Mythos Character but then they were like, wait, whateven is she for though? Which is a fair question, since having her be the Little Lady Trophy Fiance meant she was a boring and needless character wasting space, not standing on her own and hardly informing Jim’s character either. So what to do, what to do. How about we kidnap her, put her through some insanely cruel physical and psychological abuse, make her a psycho-revenge-bride, put her in a coma, have her come back as a 100% Arkham Villain, give her a hench(wo)man, have the henchman KILL HER, have Ra’s al Ghul waltz up out of literally nowhere and say “lol, borrow this arcane mojo for a minute, I’ll want it back later or will I” and now she’s a kingpin of Gotham’s underworld with her own mini League of Assassin?!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like. Even if they never had a plan going into it, I’m pretty okay with most of what they came up with. Better than the lil wifey hanging out at home and having one passing remark about curating a gallery that we never saw and was never mentioned again.

Better off a once-crazy, once-dead mafiosa than the less inspired handling of Miss Kringle. I won’t even get into that trainwreck I-only-exist-to-validate-manpain-of-my-murderer wait I said I wasn’t going to get into it.

So Nygma! Like I said when I got started with the show, the season one Edward Nygma was crafted as this painfully unsympathetic offbeat loser and I think they fully succeeded with that characterization. The emergence of the Riddler persona was a welcome change, an upgrade, a spit-shine into something clean cut and confident and stylish. But I like that, compared to the Penguin, the posterchild for evil-psychotic-villain!Protaganist, for example, they held on to a lot of Nygma’s unlikeablilty in that he’s still an ass, even more of an insufferable egoist, and SO CRAZY he can’t even read himself (which was a big thing about the character before he split in half, so in itself that’s pretty great).

I don’t know. Maybe you like him and I’m supposed to like him. I think he’s exactly what he ought to be, and while I'd never want to see him marched off a peer with a bullet in his back, I’m more than happy to see his fellow villain-Protagonists knock him around once in a while. Penguin and Mooney and now Lee (?!) and Zsasz even are the kind of villan!Protagonist you really root for. But if it’s any one of them vs. the Riddler, they’re definitely not going to lose. Nygma’s like in his own category of villain!Protagonist Antagonist.

Of course, the post-Arkham-proto-Riddler who was running Oswald’s mayoral campaign, now HOT DAMN that was a storyline I could get behind. I almost actually believed they were going to do something great in the Nygmobblepot arena and that was a magical moment. I think the resulting blood feud, as painful of a 360 as they come, was a sounder storytelling decision and more in line with the show’s Schroedinger’s Frenemies mentality.

And his season four storyline with the Ed Nygma persona challenging the Riddler was a nice full circle. Sort of closing the gap between this raging banana nutball and the razor-sharp criminal mastermind he could be if tried. Not SUPER THRILLED with his creeping on Lee but, with all due respect, that’s par for the character so again I say I don’t think I’m meant to like him??

I just spent half this rant on the Riddler so I guess they’re doing something right.

Ok so Cameron Monaghan’s VALESKA TWINS. Let’s get right into it, shall we.

Holy smokes they did everything right on this one. Loved the Primal Fear treatment of his introduction, and the way this random circus kid just so happens to start displaying jokey traits that astute viewers will start to suspect that this could be the big bad we’ve all been waiting for --

and then they kill him.

WOW

I was so ready for this kid to grow up to be the Joker, and they rip that dream away and replace it with an idea that anyone can grow up to be the Joker, and damn if that isn’t the nicest treatment of the character’s fractured and obfuscated origin story. But. THEN!

THEY BRING HIM BACK and it’s everything you wanted him to be. He’s just so good. There’s just the right amount of (IMO, anyway) Hamill-homage in what is otherwise a fully imagined Character who is instantly recognizable as one of many iterations but at the same time outclasses them all. The high-level narrative and dialogue stuff, the stuff they create for him to do, I mean, is all great. And then Monaghan brings this manic A++ game to the table and blows it out of the water. Best Joker performance? Arguably so, especially when you consider

JEREMIAH VELASKA because this kid can’t stop having stellar Joker performances. He’s like, two and a half, three of the best Joker performances on the books. Jeremiah’s distinct visual style, the characterization, AGAIN with the obfuscated we-are-legion origin story hocow. NO COMPLAINTS HERE.

Anyway so if that’s what we get in return for sending Fish Mooney through a narrative meat grinder, then I guess it’s an even trade.

Pengiun. What to say about Penguin. I loved what they gave him in season two, a ton of character stuff because his plot stuff of rags to riches had played itself out. I felt real bad for his mom, but I really liked that he went and made himself mayor, and even while his story arcs tend to go riches to rags and back again, it’s never not a pleasure watching him claw his way up to where he thinks he ought to be.

For the most part they do a good job stringing together these different Protagonist story-groups, keeping in mind that most of these groups serve mainly as antagonists amongst themselves (when they’re not being buddy-buddy to serve some winding end). So when you get the villain!Antagonists you can really tell the difference. I got a little yawny while we were setting up Fries, and by the time we finally locked Tetch up for good I was very grateful. These will never be main characters and the show knows it and wants you to know it, too. So while they’re the main on-screen villain, it can get a little stale because the same effort isn’t being put into their lasting appeal.

Um. Jim Gordon. Another thing I liked about season four was a strong return to GCPD bidniss. Season two there was a lot of GCPD, but with Captain Barnes and the strike force and Galavan, so it was a completely different narrative animal than what Gordon was throwing down with in season one. Then Gordon goes to prison and after that he doesn’t go back to GCPD until well into season three, and by then the story’s about Mario and Tetch and Lee and omg I forgot about Valerie Vale until this very moment whoops.

As was hinted in the season one finale, Jim Gordon went on a very twisty path through the mud before he figured himself out again. Killing Galavan was like WHAT JIMBOY and that wasn’t even the worst of it. What I liked most about his stint as a PI was the character’s eventual acceptance that the law isn’t the be all and end all of righteousness, and that there are other means available when enforcing peace and justice. Not necessarily by killing every evil mayor you come across with your own two hands, but the eye-opening to the virtues of vigilantism is super important when you realize he’s going to be Batman’s main ally down the line and this time in his life is going to be what ultimately allows the future police commissioner to legitimize this kind of shadowy ninja behavior.

Anyway, in season four, Jim kind of comes back to roost at the GCPD, and finally ousting Bullock as Captain was rough but obviously warranted, and with only one season left that was a good time to do it. Harper was a nice addition and I’d like to see more of her as a standalone character. (Similarly, Fox has fit in nicely with the cops, but I’m not overly hankering to see more of his day to day antics.)

What was my real point? I really liked the Gordon vs the GCPD dynamics of season one, and while obviously that’s not a story you can tell forever, it did inform the sense that the police force is a living entity that can serve you very well if it trusts you, but before that can happen you really have to jump on its back and break its will LOL.

Also, remember Renee Montoya and Harvey Dent? Yeah, I don’t either.

SO BRUCE WAYNE, MY FRIENDS.

Gotham is my very most favorite Bruce Wayne story, and much as Batman: TAS is my forever-reference for most Batmany things, Gotham is going to be my heart-canon for Bruce Wayne origins.

It’s one thing to say, “ok so this rich kid watches his parents get murdered in an alley, and from this moment on he vows to do something about it and makes himself a master detective/martial artist who puts on a mask and a cape and runs around at night smashing thugs’ heads in for justice” like it’s a foregone conclusion, a straight-forward A-to-B process, and a wholly other thing to show us, step by step, how he learns to become the thing we all know he’s going to become.

In season one he was this quiet, morose but driven child who didn’t know what to do with this crisis he’d been handed. He’s a kid who sits in a pool with his whole clothes on, trying to hold his breath for as long as possible because he has no idea how else to become better prepared for handling his issues. But he has Selina and he has Alfred and he has Fox and he has Jim Gordon, and he will have the Court of Owls and the Valeskas and Ra’s al Ghul who will all play a part in handing him pieces of himself until he has a full set.

He started with this strong sense of right and wrong, a deeply seated desire to put his talents and his money to some sort of use, an earnest diligence towards bettering himself in all ways, and little by little he gets shown just how much of a fragile and defenseless baby he is. That time Alfred accidentally-on-purpose clobbered him in the eye -- that was the moment Bruce found out they’d all been pulling their punches with him and that he still had so so so far to go.

Of course, at the particular moment, he was going through a well-earned rebel without a cause phase (which will do him well when he calls on those behaviors for the benefit of a wider audience), so I don’t think that realization hit him at the time. BUT I NOTICED. Sure he’s got a bulletproof suit and he can look Jim Gordon straight in the eye now and he can fling himself off rooftops like a champ (and when Alfred gave him the keys to the Batmobile I cried a little), but he’s no Batman. Not yet. Not quite yet.

But you can see without a shadow of a doubt that he’s gonna be! Instead of this “Bruce Wayne woke up as Batman” story, we get a look at all the day by day choices and experiences that inform, shape, and depend on Bruce Wayne’s core identity and the way that they will collectively create Batman.

Now, David Mazouz may not have the character acting chops of a Pinkett-Smith or a Taylor or a Monaghan, and he may not be as comfortable living in a everyday character like Pertwee and Logue do so effortlessly, but there’s a steeliness a Bruce Wayne should have, a hauntedness, an idealistness, that Mazouz emotes in spades. Sometimes his Bruce Wayne does a stunt or pulls a pose that Mazouz KNOWS is Batman territory, and while his awareness of “I’m doing a cool thing look at me doing it” is a little distracting--it’s also SUPER EFFECTIVE and I fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

I’ve always been one of those fans who’s way more interested in the lives and characters of the secret identities (compared to the heroics of the super identities) so hot diggity dog is this the show for me. All Bruce Wayne all the time. When we he does put on the mask, it’s all the more powerful for knowing who exactly is wearing it and what’s driving him to do these borderline insane things.

Not 100% sold on Ra’s’ “I saw this in a dream” strong-arm prophecy, feeling like it steps on four years of Bruce Wayne’s self-determination. Not 100% on how they introduced him and his aims and his baffling reincarnation(s). But I am 100% on the pronunciation of “Ra’s” because I’m aware that Kevin Conroy et al figured it out somewhere between TAS and Arkham Asylum, but it’s something that they never quite got in Arrow. (Oliver consistently uses “raysh” but everyone else is a grab bag between that and “rawz”.)

For that matter, David Mazouz consistently pronounces Ra’s with two syllables, so there’s also that. Wait, hold on. In Gotham they also draw a hard line between Ra’s al Ghul, the man, and “the demon’s head,” some sort of mystical power of time travel and flashlightiness. Give one point to Arrow for not being that bizarre.

Long story short, the shot at the finale where Gordon’s waiting on the GCPD rooftop with the spot light and Bruce Wayne stalks up behind him was BEAUTIFUL. (They also did the thing some episodes earlier where Bruce peaces out on Gordon when Gordon’s mid-sentence with his back turned and I laughed a lot)

Looking forward to their take on No Man’s Land. Here’s a short story for you at the end of this long story:

One time I was reading No Man’s Land volume by volume from the library. It was tough because I checked the first time and they had the full set, but then you never knew that the next one was going to be available when you went in for it.

So I get out of the car one day and look there’s a quarter on the ground. Neat. It’s mine now!

Going into the library, there was a cart of used books for sale by the door. 25 cents each. Hell, I’ve got a quarter now, let’s see what they got.

What they got is the No Man’s Land novelization. For 25 cents, or, in my case, free.

So I read that instead, and turned out I liked it way better than the source comics. I have a hard time reading comics? I tend to not look at the pictures, and certain art styles aren’t my jam. Also when it comes to narrative capabilities, there are different tools and effects inherent to each form, and I appreciated the literary treatment and the internal voice it brought to the table that the comics couldn’t.

Also the author said in the note that his method was to sit down and jam out minimum 2000 words a day and that’s still a feat I admire.

Anyway, that’s my long winded take on Gotham. Not perfection, but certainly a respectable and authoritative representation of a subject matter we all know and love. I give it my second favorite Batman portrayal (behind Kevin Conroy and above Adam West) and my absolute favorite live-action Bruce Wayne, hands down.

#Gotham

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