#Less and Less Human O Savage Spirit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

raplinesmoon · 2 years ago

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The Modern Prometheus (KNJ x F!Reader)

Part of Undisclosed Desires: An Anthology

pairing: scientist!Namjoon x f!reader (feat. Jungkook), slight Namjoon x OC genre(s): smut, angst, some fluff, drama, mystery, slight horror au(s): based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley word count: 10.8k warnings: POV switches, unreliable narrator, mentions sickness, minor character death, grief, depictions of science experiments and anatomy, Namjoon is a questionable character, self-hatred, anxiety, jealousy, religious mentions, verbal altercations, implied infidelity, MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, plot twist!; smut warnings: voyeurism, manhandling, foreplay, fondling, dry humping rating: 18+

summary: Kim Namjoon had always been a curious child, with a strong desire to understand the world. After a tragedy strikes his family Namjoon is left heartbroken. Grieving, he seeks to create a companion in the most unorthodox way. But what happens when the very life he created turns against the master whom she was supposed to love?

a/n: hello to this fic, which kicked my ass and took a piece of my soul with it. I’ve been stuck on it for months, deleting and re-writing nearly 6k, but it’s finally done and I’m sad. This was by far one of the hardest things for me to write, simply because Frankenstein is one of my favorite books ever! I hope I did the story justice while keeping it original, please enjoy! And a couple of thank yous: the amazing @yoon2k for helping me come up with the hyung line series, the wonderful @kithtaehyung for beta’ing the first part of this and encouraging me to continue, and the lovely @jjksblackgf for letting me use her name for the story!

Taglist: @miscelunaaa @shameless-army @firesighgirl @sunshinerainbowsbts @seokjinger-ale

7th July, 17—

To my dearest sister,

My apologies for the hasty nature of this letter. First and foremost, you should know that I am well, and in good spirits. I do not know when this will reach you, but our shift drifts on, now floating somewhere in the Arctic. I’m very grateful to the powers above that no harm has befallen us, even though we are surrounded by sheets of ice. There have been small dangers here and there, such as a strong gust or leak in the vessel, but so far we have made friends with luck. And I endeavor to keep it that way. I shall see success, for who can stop the determination of a man, especially one who finds himself on a journey.

But I’m getting away from my purpose, I fear. You see, dear sister, I write to you today because a strange incident has befallen our crew. It was last week, you see, when the ship was floating through a dense fog, with nothing and no one to be seen for miles. The crew was in bad spirits, the greyness outside coloring their hearts, casting a cloud over their once jolly natures. However, by a stroke of luck, the fog cleared, and it was then we figured out we were surrounded. Ice locked us in an impasse, as far as the eye could see. And in the middle of it all, a strange sight – a sled, drawn and carried by dogs, dragging around the sorry shape of what looked like a man. The dogs approached us, closer and closer, and we laid our eyes upon the human for the first time.

If only you had seen the man, my dear sister! Thin as a rail, limbs nearly frozen into rods. It was a wonder he was alive, a miracle even more so that he was able to communicate with our crew. Never have I seen a man in a more wretched condition. Three days passed before he was even able to speak a word. He’s in rough spirits I’m afraid, seeming less like a man and more like a savage animal, gnashing and thrashing about, as though he’s been possessed by a spirit.

And yet, sister, I see something in his eyes. Those eyes stare at me, they haunt me. I feel as though I see a ghost in them, the ghost of who this man used to be. I can see a time when those eyes used to be warm and full of light. I see him stare outside sometimes, as though he’s looking, searching for something. Or someone. Though when I asked him who, this was all he said:

“The one who fled from me.”

What could it all possibly mean? I fear I cannot even begin to imagine the answer. I shall continue to provide you with more information about this new and curious man. I feel a strange sort of attachment to him, as though he were a friend or even a brother. Heaven bless you, my beloved sister!

Yours,

Captain Jeon Jungkook

13th August, 17—

Sister,

I come with more news about my beloved guest. A strange being he is, capable of inciting my curiosity, pity, and admiration all at one time! It is evident to me that he is a wise and cultured man, his words melting together and coming alive every time he speaks, as though they ran off the pages of a storybook.

Although he still stares out onto the deck every day, looking for that maddening sledge, he’s also begun to show an interest in the lives of our crew. Always going around, asking them about what their dreams are. We’ve had many a conversation about mine. I’m perplexed by this man, who seems so worldly and loquacious. For when I told him of my noble plan to explore the world, to reach beyond and expand our very boundaries of scientific thinking. He began to tremble. I reached for his figure, worried that he was having some sort of fit brought on by his illness, but was greeted with his dark countenance, grim as ever:

“Dear friend!! Do you also share my madness?”

It was a brief outburst, one that was followed by a change in his expression to something full of so much sorrow and grief, that I couldn’t help but be moved.

No sooner had he uttered the words than did calm overcome him, his eyes looking out to the vast sea that lay beyond, and then looking down at the floor. He excused himself, bidding me goodnight before he retired. Before he left though, he uttered the most peculiar thing.

“I have lost everything, and I cannot start again.”

19th August, 17—

Sister, I already know this tale is one beyond ordinary comprehension, its events seeming like the far-off makings of a daydream, but I assure you, they are very real.

“Captain Jeon,” he said to me. “A brief while back, I had made up my mind, had resolutely told myself that the memory of all my misfortunes should be lost when I perish. But you changed my mind.”

“My name is Kim Namjoon. I was once like you, Captain. I sought for knowledge and wisdom, the same way you are doing now, and it is my only sincere hope that you shall take a moral from my tale of caution, that it should not prick you and sting like the thorns of a rose. My fate is nearly sealed, once the one I am waiting for returns, I shall lie in peace.”

My eyes nearly bulged out of my head, my dear sister, urging him not to expend himself so greatly, telling him his tale of grief could wait until we found safe passage. But he refused, and here I am now. Nothing will ever replace the melancholy in his eyes, the animated nature of his performance, but I hope these notes and manuscript can serve some sort of purpose. Here is the tale of a most extraordinary man.

“Namjoon!” his eomma yells, causing her only son, her plaything and her idol, the innocent creature bestowed upon her by the angels from above, to perk up from his desk. He sets the magnifying glass down, marveling at the way it made the lines of the map covering the surface seem even more crisp and sharp, drawing him deeper into its intrigue, the promise of a wide world out there waiting for him to explore.

“Your Appa and I need to talk to you,” his mother calls out again. “Please come downstairs.”

Back straightening like a rod, Namjoon rushes down the stairs of the Italian villa, running as fast as his little feet would take him. His parents had a surprise for him! What was it? A new toy perhaps? Maybe a pet, as a new plaything? His curiosity, as usual, got the better of him, as he stumbled over the last few steps, free-falling into mid-air, his arms swinging around to brace him from a violent fall.

The pain was bearable this time, Namjoon thought. Sniffling as he rose to his feet, his knees ached, rubbed raw against the rough tile, and he silently prays his father wouldn’t notice them bleeding through his breeches. Brushing off the mishap, his steely grit and determination returned, as he skipped gaily towards the parlor, eager to see what his parents had in store.

Rushing through the doors, Namjoon finds himself coming to a crashing halt. There was someone else here. Gulping, his eyes happen upon another pair, as bright and as curious as his own. A little girl stares back at him, the sunlight bouncing off her hair.

“Namjoon,” his mother says softly, beckoning him with a wave of her gloved hand. “This is Lady Kyla. She will be staying with us for the summer.”

Namjoon’s lips set into a pout, and he swings his hands behind his back sheepishly. He’d never spent so much time around another human being his age before, let alone a girl. Something about Kyla made his face heat up. She reminded him of the beautiful flowers that often grew outside their villa, swaying gently in the breeze.

That summer was a fond one, perhaps one of the few in Namjoon’s entire life. How he longed for those sweet days, running around the villa, hiding in the gloomy corners of the villa, playing together. He hadn’t known it at the time, but Kyla’s presence had been a blessing, a ray of sunshine. How unfortunate that her feeble light could do little to shield him from the shadowy days that were yet to come.

Not even a year later, Namjoon and Kyla’s little cohort was joined by a curious lad, who went by the name of Jackson Wang. Jackson was nothing short of an adventurer, leading the trio on dangerous quests, Kyla the dazzling princess, protected by her two knights in shining armor. Jackson’s dream was to be remembered in history, as a hero like no other, one who upheld all the moral virtues of man.

All of that was well and good for many years, until one day, the play-acting of children no longer interested Namjoon. He realized more and more that men were no longer the proprietors of their own fate. They were mere toys, pawns in this vast, wide world, at the mercy of nature itself. Namjoon began to withdraw from these silly fantasies at the time, picking up a volume of Agrippa and indulging the fervent longing that had begun to brew within him, to study all the secrets of nature.

And yet, it was still not enough for him. To Namjoon, there were always little tears, little rips in the fabric of his understanding, ones that he’d pick up on after countless hours of studying the philosophy of these alchemists. He’d ponder upon these inconsistencies, ranting about them to Jackson and Kyla, who supported his deep-rooted passion but did not even come close to understanding it. And so he drove himself mad, wondering why if these scientists claimed to understand the world, there were still things with no explanation.

All of these violent frustrations came to a head one night, during a most wondrous and violent tempest, the thundering bellowing from the heavens until the sound reached Namjoon’s doorstep. Namjoon watched the storm rage on, the lightning casting an eerie glow over everything in the house. And that was when it happened. A singular crack of lightning, and suddenly he heard a great splinter — the towering oak which had stood upon the hill outside, turned into nothing but a stump.

“Electricity,” was what it was called. His father had explained it to him the next morning, the way currents were conducted and energy could be harnessed, and Namjoon knew at once that the speculations of the alchemists were something he must abandon immediately. Nature was strong, powerful even, but it could not be the master of man. There had to be more advanced science out there, a way to understand it, to control it, to prevent it from wreaking havoc and destruction like he’d seen last night. And he’d devote his life to finding it out.

But then, the greatest tragedy of them all struck.

“Namjoon,” his mother croaks, her pale and ghastly countenance rendering her nearly unrecognizable. “My dear boy, please come here.”

“Mother,” Namjoon says gently. “You must rest, and recover.

“There is no hope for my recovery now,” she coughs. “I regret that I am to be taken away from you so soon. But please, as my last wish, may you indulge my firmest hope of your union with another? And then I shall resign myself peacefully.”

And then she was gone.

Blinking back tears, Namjoon doesn’t know what else he can say, what else he can do. His mother, his dear mother, has wasted away before him. The woman who’d shown him love and safety throughout his childhood. He looks upon her sweet, tender face, and realizes that he shall never again see her smile, hear her laugh.

But the worst part had been the passage of time after her death. Time had indeed dealt his family its most evil blow, for while the Kims grieved for their lost matriarch, the world moved on around them. The gentle nudging of society soon became a nagging that pushed their grief to the side, shoving them back into the real world. Before he knew it, Namjoon found himself at university, his awkward, gangly frame clambering around the campus, stumbling into every lecture hall he could find, hoping that it would help guide him in his course of study.

Until one day, he stumbled upon a discourse given by an extraordinary professor - talking about the discipline known as chemistry. As he listened to the words of the man, Namjoon felt his hair stand up on end, enthralled by the limitless possibilities the subject provided. It made no false promises, like the alchemy he’d held onto for so many years. No, this was what Namjoon had been looking for – a way to unfold the deepest mysteries of creation, down to every atom. This was where his future lay.

Two years. Two years had gone by for Namjoon, raving like a madman, wholeheartedly throwing himself into his studies. His professors all commented on the soul and spirit with which he pursued learning, but the truth of the matter was, Namjoon had begun to feel out of sorts. The more and more he dove into his studies of atoms and molecules and elements, the more he had begun to feel out of touch with the world around him, one that was teeming with creation, and more importantly life. Living, breathing organisms that were more than a mere collection of matter.

Namjoon missed his mother. He ached to feel the loving touch of her arms once more, her soft kisses pressed into his hair. His father had withdrawn after her passing, locking himself inside the house, making a rare appearance once or twice a year. Namjoon had never returned, the current gloom and sadness of his childhood home that had once been so bright too much to bear for his heart. Jackson and Kyla wrote to him constantly, asking after his well-being. Kyla in particular wrote to him often, wishing to come and spend time with him, but he rebuffed her coldly. Love had only made his heart weaker, and his body more fragile.

And so, Namjoon pushed on, advancing in his studies, until he happened upon the study of the structure and organization of life itself. Anatomy. It fascinated him endlessly, how so many organized parts and cells could come together to form a whole.

But his fascination didn’t end there. Unlike his other classmates, Namjoon sought to understand the essence of life itself - what kept a human living, breathing, and thinking for as long as they lived. Perhaps if he had understood these secrets long ago, he would have been able to save his mother’s life.

In his study of life, Namjoon developed a strange and macabre fascination with death. He visited morgues and charnel houses. He saw, limb by limb, how the human body fell apart, revealing what lay underneath. And thus, he began to harbor a secret. One so vast and powerful, it could change the course of the world as we knew it. Like a magic scene, the mysteries of creation unfolded before him all at once, and Namjoon was spellbound, drawn into a trance, unaware of the dangers that lay ahead.

Propelled by the force of the maelstrom that wreaked havoc upon his mind, Namjoon toiled with the boundaries of life and death themselves, and in doing so, he felt his chest tighten with emotion. No longer would anyone have to live without light in a dark world, to live with the heaviness of grief upon their hearts. In his room, hidden from the world outside, his skin grew pale and his figure emaciated. The seasons changed, the leaves turning from green to gold, and then blossoming forth into petals of pink and white, but he paid them no mind.

The rain pummeled against the window, striking the glass panes with such brazen force that Namjoon thought his whole studio would shudder and splinter underneath the weight of tonight’s storm. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he lets out a deep breath, one he did not even know he’d been holding for the past few years. It was done.

A crack followed his sigh, like a bone being set into place, and then a great groan, and his creation sprung to life. Namjoon stood there, paralyzed, the awe beginning to melt away, and shock and horror set in as he took in the sight of this new being. It was a woman, and yet it was not. For every feature he’d selected, eyes, lips, nose, and everything that was beautiful in its own right, fit together in the most grotesque of ways, and instantly his heart plummets. This was no human. This was nothing worthy of his love, or the labor he’d undertaken for the past two years. The empty void that had settled in his chest after his mother’s passing grew wider and wider, and Namjoon watches all his hopes and dreams become swallowed by the gaping vortex.

A bead of sweat trickles down his neck, escaping underneath his shirt, and Namjoon turns on his heel, running out of the room.

Panicked, he closes the door behind him, rushing across the hall to his own bed, drawing the scratchy covers over his head. His eyes flutter, willing for sleep to claim his restless frame, but it never comes. Instead, he lies awake, the pounding of his heart melding with the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, creating a haunting rhythm to represent the doom that has begun to loom over the house.

A loud crack jolts Namjoon awake from his miserable sleep - the lightning illuminating the room in a silvery glow, and there, at the foot of his bed -– the figure of the being he’d created! Round eyes, if they could even be called so, staring at him curiously, like a lost child. Mouth moving as though it was trying to speak, but no sounds escaped.

Namjoon softens at the sight of the poor creature, looking lost and confused. He reaches out towards it, hands shaking, and nearly jumps when he feels two leathery palms take his hand in between them. His heart thrums at the gentle display, amazed at how soft-natured the creature was, despite its extraordinary appearance.

Tightening his hand in the creature’s, he realizes that he cannot give up now. This dream, this vision, it must be worth something. For the beauty of creation lay not in the dazzling appearance of things themselves, but in their ability to provide hope.

“I shall call you ___.”

Along the dark and rainy streets, Namjoon paces. He walks with no destination in mind, tormented by the shadows that seem to taunt him at every corner, springing forth into a malevolent dance. His heart thuds underneath his chest, skin ice-cold from the rain.

A week had passed since the strange miracle in his studio, and Namjoon had mostly kept to himself. ___ had roamed around his apartment, marveling at the strange and new world she found herself in. As clumsy as he was, ____ was clumsier. He’d had to pry many precious artifacts from her grasp, or make sure that she did not rip the pages from his chemistry books in order to read. Despite the astounding nature of his discovery, Namjoon couldn’t help but feel a sense of budding anxiety. He was afraid to show ____ to the world. What if they rejected her? Or worse, scorned him as a madman? Or a necromancer? People, as fickle and as proper as they were, wouldn’t be ready to accept something so different from the norm. He’d have to do some more finetuning.

His head churns with thoughts, the primary one being guilt. Fine-tuning? Had the experiment taken so much of his humanity that he’d forgotten that he’d created a life, one that he was now responsible for? It was his fault, his burden to bear for creating a being that he could not bring out into the world. ___ reminded him so much of an innocent child, smiling and laughing at the most mundane things, like a speck of dust floating in the air, or the wind ruffling the curtains.

He wished her childlike innocence would remain as such forever. That she’d never have to grow to experience the horrors of the world, full of pain and suffering. And so, he resolutely decided that she would have to be kept a secret.

“Namjoon!” A voice calls out to him in the rain, and he turns.

Jackson. There he was, bright-eyed and waving at him, and Namjoon felt color return to his cheeks at the sight of his old friend. Imbued with a sense of vigor, he rushes towards him.

“My dear friend! How have you been?” Jackson laughs, amused at the sight of Namjoon’s tall, lumbering frame pulling him into an embrace.

“Now you remember your old friends,” he teases.

“I am sorry,” Namjoon smiles, his dimples making a rare appearance. “I have much to share with you. Please come, I can make us some tea.”

The two of them walk together through the winding streets, back towards Namjoon’s apartment, when suddenly, Namjoon remembers his predicament.

“Jackson, please wait a moment outside,” he says. “I remembered that I’d been working until late last night, and need to arrange some things.”

“You think I don’t know how unruly you are?” Jackson teases, following Namjoon towards the door.

“Please,” Namjoon says harshly, turning, and his friend stops at the look of panic in his eyes.

Throwing the door open, Namjoon feels a cold shiver overtake him. Something was wrong. The wind whistled through the apartment, the shutters rattling along with the gusts. It was empty.

“Anything wrong?” Jackson’s voice asks him, and Namjoon feels a cold, clammy sweat overcome him. ___ was gone.

“No,” he shivers, not even daring to wonder about the disastrous consequences of his creation being unleashed on the world.

“Everything is fine.”

A nervous fever, the likes of which Namjoon had never experienced before, had taken over Namjoon’s body. He found himself prone to fits of madness, ones which had begun to concern Jackson, who had nursed him diligently. ___ was gone, unleashed out onto the world, and Namjoon was full of fear. Fear for himself, fear for others. What would they do if they happened upon her?

His only solace was a letter from Kyla. “Get well soon, my dear Namjoon, and return to us. To me.”

Soon, his father decided that enough was enough, calling for Namjoon to abandon the university and come home for a few weeks, back to the villa surrounded by nature that his family so loved. It was here that he tried to grapple with the happenings of his life over the past few months. How had he gone from achieving an extraordinary feat, one which men dared not dream of, to losing it all not even a week after? Sails set, he glided across the lake, hoping some signal of hope would find him amidst the murky waters below.

It was fitting then, that after uprooting the balance of the natural world, Namjoon should find a reprieve in the mountains. The river raging its course, carving a path through the rocks, the precipices dangling over his head - it reminded him how small he was in this great world, how foolish he’d been to try and master Nature itself. He could only hope that ___ had not fallen prey to the same mistakes he had. He shuddered, thinking of her all alone.

As he continued his trek, he occasionally stopped and took reprieve to enjoy the beauty that surrounded him. It was a different, more eerie kind. From above, a glacier loomed over his head, framed on either side by ravines of snow that looked serene and peaceful, but he knew that one wrong step could lead to his demise. The trees that grew here were barren and severe, lending an austerity to the scene.

Breathing heavily, Namjoon stumbled to the top, his chest constricting in pain. He failed to realize how much of his energy the ascent had taken, settling upon a large rock at the summit to catch his breath. His gaze shifted to the valley below, the barest hint of green peeking from underneath the sea of snow and rivers of ice.

Namjoon felt something wet splash onto his palm, looking down in surprise to see a few stray tears escape and run down his face. He bowed his head solemnly.

“Wandering spirits, please, wherever you are, allow me this brief moment of happiness in my wretched life.”

As he muttered the silent prayer, he heard a twig snap from behind him.

28th August, 17—

My dear sister,

As I write to continue this tale, I must also share some unfortunate news. It seems we have sailed into rough waters, left to the mercy of the mighty ocean current. I fear we shall be steered off course, and that our journey North will extend even longer than I had hoped. I did wish to return sooner, but I hope you can understand that I must continue on.

I fear for our guest. Namjoon seems even more uneasy the further we drift away, as though our rift with the land mirrors his own delicate temperament. After listening to his narration, I would have thought that the sea held a special sort of magic for him, being a man so irrevocably intertwined with our natural world, but it seems that is the opposite. We’ve come to a pause in the tale anyway, for Namjoon has stumbled into a fit, unsure if he can continue.

“I fear what you may think of me if I continue,” he said to me.

“Nonsense,” I reassured him. “Despite everything I’ve heard so far, my regard for you has not changed. My heart beats to know more. You have led a most amazing life, one that I would be honored to know about.”

“You may think me honorable,” he wails. “Yet I fear that it is all a lie. Nevertheless, I will indulge you. But a word of caution - let your reasonable mind be the judge of a miserable wretch such as I, and not anything as fragile and as fickle as a heart.”

Namjoon turns at the sound, and nearly topples over at the sight before him. In the dense fog, a figure approaches, one which he knows all too well.

“____,” he says, stumbling towards her, the wind knocked from his body. “____!”

She approaches him, the fog clearing to reveal her face, and Namjoon is shocked. While nothing has changed in terms of her makeup, there’s something inherently different within her spirit. The way she looks at him, it’s no longer like a child seeing the world for the first time, but he looks back to find a feeling of sorrow and anguish in her eyes that mirrors his own. It was so… human. Namjoon’s head spins in anger.

“How dare you?” he bellows. “How dare you leave my care, escape the safety of the home I so carefully crafted for you?”

He watches you flinch for a brief moment, hurt flashing in your eyes but it soon fades.

“I should have expected this,” you seethe, and he jumps back, in awe of your ability to articulate yourself. Where had you learned to speak?

“I should have expected,” you continue. “That you’d be angry with me for leaving. But Namjoon…”

A shiver runs down his spine at his name coming from your lips. Your voice is different, deep with a haunting lilt.

“Namjoon,” you breathe. “Your name is Namjoon. And you are my creator. I beg you please, as a man with this gift, fulfill your duty towards me. I have seen little of the world thus far, but from what I have learned, I yearn to know more. I want to be like you. I want to live peacefully like the rest of mankind.”

A hollow chuckle escapes Namjoon’s throat, and he’s shaken by the lack of emotion in it.

“Live peacefully?” he says. “What makes you think any of us live peacefully? What secret have you discovered that humanity knows nothing of? What, pray tell, was your plan to living happily, to living like someone, or something you could never be?”

Hurt flashes in your eyes at Namjoon’s sharp words and he clenches his jaw, defiant and unwilling to demonstrate how much your expression grates at his nerves,

“Listen to me,” you spoke to him, reaching for his hand like you had that very first night, but he pulled it away with a scowl. “Hear my story, and then you are free to judge or abandon me as you please. Let us build a fire. It is cold.”

You beckon him to follow you to rest under a tree, where various sticks and stones have been gathered. He follows, lips parted in awe as he watches you work, your once unwieldy limbs now moving diligently and swiftly to craft a blaze. At once, his mind is reminded of the various myths and legends he used to read through as a child. In the blazing afternoon sun, he watches you bring the flame to life, setting the scene for your own trial by fire. A modern Prometheus.

The flames flicker orange and blue, and then you begin to speak.

“For most people, even children, their creation is as natural and as fluid a process as taking a breath, or sipping water. But when I was created, everything was a blur. It was a strange phenomenon, being able to sense so many things at once. I saw, smelt, heard, felt, and yet, I didn’t know the world around me. The light hurt my eyes, and for a while, I wished I could return to the darkness I had known before. One that hadn’t known who I was.”

Namjoon’s throat bobs, thick with emotion. He’d never considered the circumstances of your creation from any perspective other than his own.

“You were kind to me,” you continue. “I knew you were scared. I knew I was strange and different from you. I supposed that’s why you would leave me every day to attend to your duties. The very first time, I came to regret that my countenance would drive you away in such a panic. But then you returned, and all seemed well and normal. The world outside made you happy, I could tell. You felt free, felt like you were a part of something. Unlike me, cast into the oppressive loneliness of your apartment.”

“So I ran away. At first, the light hurt my eyes and the stones cut my feet. I stole clothes from your closet, but soon realized that my body could not fit them the same way yours did. I should have felt more like a foolish child, one who strayed from her parents. But no, I felt free, and I felt hopeful. Hopeful that like you, the one who made me, there would be a place for me in this world.”

“I do not know how long I walked. People would run and flee at the mere sight of me, shrieking and pointing at my body, my face. I did not know why they didn’t warm up to me the same way that you had. It was at that point I began to understand that I was a different kind of creature, one that was not human.”

“Eventually, on the outskirts of your town, I happened upon a small hut. It was abandoned, much to my relief, for I resolved at that moment to stay away from humanity. Many of the people I observed seemed unhappy, and my presence only contributed to their prolonged unhappiness. In the hut, I began to learn how to use fire. I credit its discovery with saving my life, for it kept me warm and well-fed.”

“Try as hard as I did, I could not escape the presence of humanity forever. Many of them would walk by the hut, and I took it upon myself to learn the strange sounds they used to communicate with one another.”

It is at this point that you pause, taking in Namjoon’s wide eyes. There was a malevolent sort of glee contained within their depths, awe at what had come to be of his beloved creation.

“Truthfully,” his voice rumbles. “I am shocked. I did not think you were capable of such a feat.”

“Why would you?” you continue on. “If you had been left to your whims, I would have been abandoned in your apartment all alone, left to wither away of my own accord, or to be disposed of once you grew resentful of my presence.”

“Why did you return to me, then?” he asks. “I provided you with so little. I could not even fulfill the basic duties of a caretaker. Do you wish to mock me, to flood me with that guilt? I live with it every day.”

“I must continue,” you tell him. “You’ll learn everything in time.”

“Two of my human companions came to the woods surrounding the hut often. I looked at them, realizing they were like you and me. A man and a woman. I observed the most curious of relationships between them. The man would stroke the woman’s hair, putting flowers in it, and they would laugh and converse and eat during the day. At night, they would touch and embrace each other often, whispering words in the dark. I began to feel a surge of emotions inside this body of mine, ones with which I was previously unfamiliar”

Namjoon’s cheeks go pink, breath hitching at what you possibly could have witnessed between this couple.

“That is not for your knowledge,” he says, breath low, even though there was no one to be found for miles around.

“I feared you would say so,” you look into his eyes, a sad smile overtaking your malformed features. “But I learned of the thing you humans called love, and that is why I have come to you today.”

Namjoon’s face blanches, and his heart begins to race. What had you come to request from him?

“Please teach me about love, Namjoon,” you ask, bright eyes shining for the very first time with tears. “In my brief time in this world, I’ve seen so much pain, and sadness and suffering - among humans, among animals, even among the crops that are grown for harvest. The world is bleak and full of so much desolation, it’s a wonder to me that anyone wants to live in it. But they do, and love is what drives them to do so. I sincerely believe it is at the foundation of everything.”

Namjoon remains frozen, unable to speak, taunted by the ghost of his younger self, who’d been overcome with all the world had to offer, love being among it. What a fool he’d been.

“I cannot love anyone anymore,” he says, bitter with grief. His mother’s eyes flash in the back of his mind. “I will not let myself be capable of it.

“But you were capable of it,” you pester him, and his temple throbs. “You loved your parents. You love Kyla.”

At the mention of her name, Namjoon’s gaze shoots up to yours, face heating in anger.

“How do you know about her?”

“Why should only you be privy to all the whims and fancies that this life has to offer, Namjoon? Why can I not indulge in the same passions?”

He opens his mouth, ready to protest, but you beat him to it.

“Because I’m not human? Because I’m not a real woman?”

Your voice breaks on the last word, and tears spill from your eyes.

“Why did you create me then? Why did you make something you’d come to abhor, if you weren’t even going to try to love it? Or let it find love of its own.”

“One chance,” you issue the ultimatum. “Give yourself one chance to love me, in whatever way you can. That is all I ask from you.”

Pity burrows itself deep within Namjoon’s chest at your forlorn figure. Could he ever love you? He loved the idea of you, back when he was hard at work in his lab. But you weren't what he expected at all. Maybe, just maybe if he tried to give you the love that you so desperately craved, he could find the dream he had lost sight of. And be happy once more.

“I shall try.”

“Namjoon, are you okay? You look quite pale.”

Namjoon’s eyes shoot up, meeting Kyla’s from across the breakfast table. She decided to pay a visit, worried and fretting that Namjoon had replied to none of her letters. He finds himself blushing, noticing that she’d only grown more beautiful as the years passed by.

“I’m fine, just thinking,” he responds brusquely.

“About what?” Kyla asks him. “Your head is always in the clouds, Namjoon. You need to come back down.”

He could not reveal the truth of where his concerns lay to her. You’d asked to meet him in the woods surrounding the villa. Today, his trial would begin, and he prayed that whoever was watching over him above would lead him down the path of prosperity. He shivered to think what would happen if he could not keep his promise to you, how you would react.

“I’m going to go for a walk in the woods,” Namjoon stands, excusing himself from the table.

“May I come? Kyla asks.

He shakes his head, offering her a small smile as consolation.

“Not today, Kyla. I would like to be alone.”

. . .

You’re waiting for him, perched on top of a rock. He approaches nervously, unsure of what you have planned. How was one supposed to bring themselves to love someone just like that? That kind of love existed only in fairytales.

He scoffs to himself, making his way to the middle of the clearing. Eyes widening, he takes in the sight of books, scattered all around you. The covers are worn, pages battered from use, and he wonders how you happened upon so many at once. Skimming through the titles, he recognizes a few of the names. Poets.

“I thought you could teach me how to read,” you tell him, holding out one of the books. “We can start with this one.”

“Why poetry?” he asks, raising his eyebrows quizzically.

“I overheard the humans one day talking in strange rhymes,” you say. “He was reading her a book just like this, and she seemed to like it.”

A small smile makes its way onto Namjoon’s face. Your eyes, as strange as they look, light up with the same happiness he’s seen in a child discovering something new for the first time. He’s reminded of his summer days at the villa, discovering the world around him.

“Let’s start here,” he grabs the book, face blanching when he sees the cover. Milton’s Paradise Lost. His heart begins to race, wondering if you’d picked it out intentionally, whether it meant something to you. But you’re holding it out, a smile on your face, and his anxious spirit calms immediately.

He begins to read, his voice carrying melodiously against the wind, whistling through the branches of the trees. All the while, your eyes are on him, watching the way his mouth moves, his eyes widen, and his eyelashes flutter. The time passes by in an eerie silence, and he wishes you would say something, do something. But you just sit there and listen, focused on the story.

If the similarities between the text and your own entry into the world strike you, you say nothing, instead hanging off his every word. He finishes the chapter, closing the book.

“That will be all for today,” you tell him.

Namjoon’s mouth opens in shock. Nothing about the endeavor had been particularly romantic, or even stimulating in the way he’d expected. Were you playing tricks on him?

“You have a wonderful voice, Namjoon,” you whisper softly, and his heart freezes. “It sounds like what the humans call music.”

“I’ll meet you there in two days,” you tell him.

He watches you walk back into the forest, and his tongue feels as though it has been coated with lead. Where were you even staying? His entire being feels heavy, arms and legs weighed down with steel. He wishes to ask, but nothing comes out. Your figure disappears from his sight, and the burden of the questions he dared not speak presses heavy on his heart once more.

The days pass as such, Namjoon continuing through the pages of Paradise Lost one by one, with you hanging on to his every word. You don’t speak much during the sessions, stopping only to ask questions about a particular line, or repeat a passage that spoke to you. He’s grateful that you do not pressure his feelings to grow, simply asking to continue another time.

Instead, you leave him with small compliments, remarking on his hair, his outfit, or even the way his skin glows in the sunlight. They are but tiny, superficial, things, yet the endearing way you notice them causes strange feelings to churn within his heart.

In those formative years after his childhood had ended, Namjoon began to keep his heart under lock and key, building a glass castle around himself. He found himself partaking in the world around him, but no longer with any enthusiasm or investment. He often felt like a ghost, tormented by the guilt of his presence on this earth, wallowing in his unhappiness. Why did he live when his mother died? Was his empty, hollow soul truly of more value?

When you came into being, the emptiness and darkness only grew stronger. Namjoon felt as though he had tumbled into an abyss, one which he could never claw his way out of.

But being here, next to you, with the crisp air and birds singing, he felt the cracks in his heart start to heal. Reading Milton, exploring the story of creation again, made him finally feel as though his being was worth it. That he, Namjoon, had something to contribute to the world. He didn’t know if you were to credit, or he, for finally setting his mind straight from the madness.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost misses your question.

“The woman in this story, Eve,” you start. “She’s like me, isn’t she? She was created with the intention of being a gift, a form of salvation. But she turned out to be an abomination instead. That’s why they cast her out.”

“Can you ever forgive yourself for my creation, Namjoon?” you ask, shuffling closer to him on the rock. The warmth of your body moulds into his, sending sparks through his veins. “Will you forgive me, like God did Eve, for being so much less than you had hoped?”

Namjoon turns his face sharply towards you, panicking. The gnawing guilt had set in once more.

“I wish you could try,” you sob, voice breaking, a single tear falling from your eye and wetting the grey stone below.

Nostrils flaring, Namjoon feels a pain bloom within his chest. Something strikes within him at the listless and despondent tone with which you speak, and he snaps.

Lowering his face to yours, he watches your eyes widen in shock, nervously shrinking into yourself. He decides he wants none of that from you. His large palms come up to cup your cheeks, the skin devoid of warmth like his own, but he pays it no mind as he leans down, pressing his lips to yours.

You do nothing to respond, frozen in shock. The kiss is no more than a few brief seconds, Namjoon pulling away immediately after, but he swears you look dazed. If the same blood ran through your veins as did his, no doubt you would be flushed right now.

“You are not my Eve, nor a fallen angel,” he says, so quietly you almost don’t believe it at all. “You are ___.”

Namjoon knows that the visits in the forest should have stopped a long time ago, for they would not ever be fathomable, or palatable to anyone that were to find out. He had abandoned the idea of using ____ to further the achievements of science and medicine long ago. In her gentle presence, he learned that death, as much as life, was part of the cycle that kept the universe intact.

He knew nothing good could come out of the time he spent with her. It was dangerous to plant ideas in her head, to make her dare to dream that just because Namjoon had some semblance of acceptance in his heart, others would do the same. But, out there in the woods, he felt free. Free to be Namjoon, free to let his soul roam and wander, without the crippling feeling of being lost.

But human souls could never stray for too long, the iron shackles of society reining them in when they began to meander too far.

“Namjoon,” his father says sternly over the breakfast table one morning. “You should marry soon. I will not be around much longer.”

“Father, you are still young,” Namjoon admonishes him. “Don’t say such ridiculous things.”

“Everyday, I think about your mother’s last wish,” he responds. “Don’t you?”

It was guilt, Namjoon thinks. Guilt that brought him to tearfully say yes to his father’s proposition at the table. Guilt that made him put a ring on Kyla’s finger the very next day, the two of them dressed up and laughing along with his father, who beamed proudly.

He was a fraud. Namjoon would never become the son that his mother and father wanted him to be, for he harbored you, his biggest secret. He’d never be a loyal husband, nor a loving father. If he had any hope of becoming so, he had to let you go.

The stroll to the woods was a harsh one that day, he noticed. The wind howled, rustling the leaves, many of which had abandoned their brilliant hues of red and gold to become a muddy brown. A few of them detached, flying towards Namjoon’s face, and he shivered as the chill set in.

You’re sitting there, on the same rock you always are, but you’re not looking for him. Eyes trained on the ground, your figure casts a forlorn shadow, bent and broken, and he wonders if you already know.

“Sometimes, I think it would be easier if I were to tear up all the trees in the forest, to wreak havoc and destruction, like all you humans expect of me, and then to sit and watch the ruin unfold.”

Namjoon takes a step back, foot crunching on a fallen leaf, and you look up at him, devastation in your eyes.

“Maybe then a wretch like me could disappear.”

“I am sorry,” Namjoon stutters. “I did not wish for it to be like this, for things to turn out as they were—”.

You interrupt him with a harsh snarl.

“And yet, you were the one who said yes to her, Namjoon. You were the one who slipped the ring onto her finger, just like you were the one who created me. That type of responsibility is something you can never run from. It will torment you, haunt you to an early grave.”

A chill runs down his spine at your menacing threat, and fury sets in. He would not be pushed around by you like this.

“I fulfilled my end of the bargain,” he says coolly. “I tried to love you, in whatever way I was capable of. It is not my fault that I am a human, especially one who is weak to the follies and enjoyments of life, the pursuit of beauty and the act of procreation being among it.”

His words prick like thorns, and you wish you could bleed, bleed, bleed out, until you simply ceased to exist.

“You did not even try!” you scream, the sound ripping through the forest. “You were against me from the start! Why damn me to such a miserable existence?”

“It was a punishment!” he seethes, the vein in his temple throbbing. “I’ve been punished, and I will surely go to hell for this act of abomination.”

“Burn then! Rot!” you collapse into a heap on the forest floor. “But you will never find someone more loyal than I, someone who loves you more.”

“But I shall,” you rise, looking him directly in the eyes. “Make another like me, so that we may disappear together. Heed this final wish, and I promise I shall never leave my stain upon humanity again.”

Namjoon pales. Could he do it? Create another creature? His guilty conscience cracked into shards at the thought of how much danger the world could be in if you remained resentful. All because of him. He’d have to try.

As the days dwindled, and his wedding to Kyla approached, Namjoon felt the illness which had set in after your creation return. He tossed and turned every night in bed, prone to fits of coughing, and flinched at anything that dared to cross his path.

You had not contacted him again since the last time you’d spoken, but he felt your presence everywhere. At times, he would feel as though someone was watching him through the window, and Namjoon shuddered.

He’d returned to the university, assuring Kyla and his father that there was urgent work he needed to take care of. Carefully, he began to collect the parts, instantly transported back to those dark days of his first experiment. The madness that lingered dormant returned, but Namjoon pushed on.

As the being neared completion, Namjoon gave it a hard look. While you were gentle and submissive, he feared the consequences of unleashing a male creature onto the world. What if he rejected you, and gave into his baser desires? Men were wretched souls, delighting in murder and despair, and he felt his blood freeze.

Would the creature even be able to love you the way you desired? Would he be a shoulder to rest on after a hard day, reading you the great works of the poets? Would he be able to consummate a union with you, and bear children? The longer Namjoon thought about all these things, the more uneasy he became.

What you sought was not something the creation of another being could provide. Nor did Namjoon want another being to command your attention and affection. He wishes he could turn back time. All of his past mistakes swirl in his mind, and he realizes that he should have never thrown aside love for ambition. Maybe if he had stayed with Kyla after his mother’s passing, things would have been different. Greater yet, he should have never said yes to his father’s proposal. What kind of relationship could be built on lies?

In a fit of madness, Namjoon chooses the truth to set him free. A single flick of his wrist, and the match is lit. The flames flicker, their gleam reflecting in his eyes, and he throws it upon the half-finished being, sealing its destiny.

Taking in a deep breath, Namjoon pauses. Moments pass by, the ticking of his grandfather clock heard in the night. And then a knock. And another one.

The knocks grow louder and louder, yet Namjoon remains still, watching his breath release into the cold air. Behind him, he hears the door creak softly.

“You broke your promise,” your voice is but a whisper. Namjoon’s chest tightens when he hears how cold and listless it sounds.

“How dare you?” you continue. “How dare you take away my hope?”

Namjoon turns, stalking towards you, his tall figure caging you against the door. You shrink into yourself, glassy eyes boring into his.

“There was never any hope,” he whispers dangerously. “No one would ever be able to love you like you desire. No one would ever be able to fulfill your outrageous wishes. Except me. You are mine, and mine alone.”

He’s so close to you, he can feel your breath touch his lips, the curve of your neck extending outwards, your eyes never leaving his.

And then, Namjoon snaps, his full lips seeking yours, finally driven mad by the twisted passion that had burrowed itself inside him all along. He is not gentle, crushing you against him, tongue seeking entrance into your mouth.

A choked whine escapes your mouth, and Namjoon feels a tent form in his breeches. However, he doesn’t let up, detaching his lips from yours to leave more fervent kisses on the side of your face, the curve of your jaw, the slope of your neck.

You squirm underneath him, but Namjoon pins you underneath his weight, smirking when he feels your skin heat. His teeth graze the spot where your pulse should lie, and he bites down, rewarded with a sharp gasp from you.

“Could anyone else make you feel like this?” he taunts, licking a stripe against your neck, watching his saliva glisten on your skin in the dark. “Would anyone else kiss you here? Touch you here?”

He cups your heat in his hands, and you let out a broken moan, hips rutting against his warm palm.

“N-namjoon, please,” you sob, tears pricking your eyelashes. The burning inside of you was so unfamiliar, yet you craved more of it. You didn’t crave the touch of another such as yourself. You craved Namjoon.

“Say it!” he says, his own hips pushing wildly against your, cock throbbing underneath the heavy fabric. “Say you’re mine.”

Your breathing becomes shallow, stomach fluttering as the maddening pressure continues to build and build.

Namjoon groans, feeling your wetness seep into the fabric of his pants, when suddenly, he’s pushed away with a jolt.

Release never comes, your flushed and panting figure staring at him, tear tracks making their way across your solemn face.

“I’m no ragdoll,” you say through clenched teeth. “I am not yours to use and abuse as you wish. I’m not the meek creature you believe me to be anymore. Beware, Namjoon, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”

His heavy breaths echo in the room as he watches you leave, your dark figure running through the lamp lit streets, and he knows he’ll never be rid of you.

The reckoning comes weeks later, on his wedding day. All day, Namjoon is wracked with nerves, seeming to all the guests as a young man in anticipation of one of life’s great events. But only he knows the truth.

The ceremony passes by uneventfully. Kyla looks as beautiful as the fresh spring flowers that grew outside his childhood villa, her face beaming with love and pride. Namjoon feels sorry for her. She should have married Jackson instead. He was a man far more noble, far more honest than Namjoon could ever be. He could be her knight, while Namjoon could only be her undoing.

Their first night together passes by in quiet solitude, Kyla’s shyness making itself known once they escape the ceremony. Namjoon brews a cup of tea, tapping his foot anxiously. A scream breaks the silence.

Rushing towards their shared bedroom, Namjoon’s heart stops at the scene he finds. Kyla is sobbing, curled up into a ball in the corner, while you loom over her, a menacing grin distorting your features to make you seem even more frightening.

“I shall tell you the truth about the kind of man you married,” you taunt, and your eyes meet his wide ones.

Frozen in place, Namjoon is powerless to stop you. Truth was the most powerful weapon you had against him. You’d been right the last time he’d seen you. Namjoon was a coward, but you, you were fearless. And you’d use it to ruin him.

Namjoon doesn’t hesitate for a single moment. He speaks not a single word, turning on his heel. Then he runs.

1 September, 17–

My dear sister,

Having heard this strange and fascinating story of horror, does your mind not congeal with horror? Mine surely does. There were many moments during this narrative where Namjoon was seized with a sudden agony, as though he contained the rage of a volcano. I feared he would not be able to continue.

Namjoon has spent his entire life in exile. He tells me that he’s wanted in England for witchcraft, and that after his departure, his father’s heart broke tremendously, and he passed. I’ve never seen a more lonely man.

And yet, he seeks to end his torment. Wishing to be lonely no more, he only wishes to find ___, to speak to her one last time. And then he wishes to rest.

In speaking to him, I wonder if my own journey of lofty ambition will inevitably be the anchor that sinks our vessel. Many a time, I have seen our perilous condition, and wondered if all this was worth it. Will it be worth it to never set foot on land again, to never see my loved ones? To lose your presence forever would be something I could not bear.

The sailors feel the same way, I fear, for this morning, I was roused by a group of them, shouting in my ear that they demand a mutiny. They demanded that I direct my course back towards England, and that there should be no more rash dangers.

I opened my mouth to agree, but was suddenly interrupted by Namjoon, his cheeks flushed and eyes blazing.

“Is this how you treat your captain? The one who leads you through every danger, who celebrates your every triumph? The journey you undertake is not one of merit because of how calm the waters were, but because you have managed to surmount the most insurmountable of obstacles. Be brave men, men who are honorable, who lay their lives and their pride down for the betterment of humanity. Return home with your heads held high, proud that you did not submit to cowardice.”

As he finished his speech, I could see that he was flushed, struggling to breathe, and I braced myself for his imminent collapse. Among the crew, there were hushed whispers, but no visceral reaction, and I saw Namjoon’s shoulders slump, his sunken figure almost deprived of life itself.

12 September, 17–

Dear sister,

It is done. We shall start our journey to return in a few days. Namjoon’s condition worsened, and he pulled me to his bedside after his visit with the surgeon.

“I am dying,” he said. “I do not think I’ll ever find ___ again, or be able to say these sacred words that I’ve been keeping in my heart for so many years. And so, Jungkook, I entrust them to you. I regret that for the majority of my life, I’ve been torn in between a battle of head and heart for my entire life. I sought to develop a creation, one that could push the boundaries of science and humanity as we knew it. But I should have remembered that nothing, and no one, is perfect. I should have been prepared to accept my faults. Along the way, I forgot that ___ was not merely a pawn for my use, but someone who I owed a duty to. It was my duty to ensure her long lasting prosperity and happiness as her creator, but I eschewed my duty because I was scared. I was a coward, and even bigger of a fool for creating someone I could not love properly. I fear I have committed her, and myself, to a life of eternal despair. Seek happiness in your tranquility, Jungkook. Do not fall prey to ambition, for as many lives as you think you can change, you may also ruin.”

Half an hour later, Namjoon was gone. I mourned his loss deeply, sister, for he was an extraordinary soul. My heart aches for the cruel way he left the world, despairing and aching inside, forever doomed to restlessness.

Soon after his passing, I was watching the ice float around us on the deck, when I heard a rustling from the cabin, where the remains of Namjoon lay. Over him hung a form which I could not describe, but recognized instantly. A woman, but with uncouth and distorted proportions. Silent tears fell from her face onto Namjoon’s pale ghostly body. I took in a sharp intake of breath, and she turned, stopping at my presence, and the jolting to the window.

“Wait,” I called out to her. “Please stay, ___.”

“How do you know my name?” she says. “What did he tell you?”

“I know your story,” I said to her. “I know the circumstances of your entry into this world, and the misfortunes of your life.”

“You may know,” she responds. “But you shall never understand. You shall never understand how I roamed the earth, miserable and alone. So many times, I wished I could just give in and become the monster that Namjoon always saw me as. And he would watch, as his fallen angel became a malignant devil.”

She looked forlornly upon Namjoon’s still figure, and there was such a sad yet unbelievably tender expression on her face, that my heartstrings felt as though they were being tugged by the dogs on the sledge Namjoon kept looking for.

“Namjoon will never know how much I loved him,” she sobs. “He’ll never know how I would have given the world to become someone he could love back, the woman he wanted with his entire heart, and not the monster I am.”

She turns towards me, pointing her shaking index finger towards where her heart should lay.

“From now on, he won’t have to worry. I shall quit this vessel and become the architect of my own demise, disappearing to somewhere where I can perish alone.”

As I listened to her, I could not help but marvel at how these two disparate, wretched creatures had found one another. The story of their undoing caused my chest to tighten, and I thought of you then, dear sister. I thought of your smiling face, and the care you have shown to me, and I realized how unlucky these souls had been to live their lives without love. Namjoon had perished, losing the love of his mother, his fiancée, his creation, and most of all himself. His cowardice and abhorrence for his creation had turned him into a shell of a man, and he wasted away.

I could not let that happen again.

“Please wait,” I interrupted ___. “What if there was a way? What if you could live your life freely and bravely, and not be doomed to the same miserable existence as Namjoon? Would you take it?”

Her breath hitches, and she slumps against the wall, eyes devoid of emotion, as though she is lost in thought.

“There are no guarantees that I would be accepted by anyone,” she says. “Namjoon could not accept me for who I was.”

“Namjoon was but one wretched man on this earth. The world is full of many kind ones, including myself. Come stay with me and my sister. We can introduce to our world, and help you live a life that’s peaceful and content, one where you would be comfortable. We wouldn’t push you, of course, but be there to help you whenever you desire to experience something new.”

“I’m afraid,” she sobs.

“And that is understandable,” I said. “There are many things to be afraid of. Even I was afraid when I undertook this extraordinary journey. But when we cast our fears aside, we can discover wonderful things. We can discover new places, new ideas. We can find light, laughter, and maybe even love.”

“Love?” she said. “Do you think there could be someone who loves me out there?”

“I think you can try,” I said. “Now will you join me?”

Her cold palm enveloped my warm one, the fingers clutching on tightly to mine. I made a promise then that I would never let ___ go. And so now, we make our way back to you, sister, transversing the darkness and distance to be borne by the waves to our home.

Sincerely yours,

Captain Jeon Jungkook

fin.

A/N pt. 2: Thanks for reading! As always, any feedback or comments are much appreciated, but I appreciate you all anyway. Lots of love, Isi 💜

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apenitentialprayer · 3 years ago

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O almighty and eternal God, who throughout all the world made in blessed Pope John a living, radiant example of Christ the Good Shepherd, grant us, we ask, through his intercession, we may be enabled to pour out an abundance of Christian charity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

The Church is the Most Loving Mother of All (An Address In Solemn Inauguration of the Second Vatican Council)

Today, Venerable Brethren, is a day of joy for Mother Church: through God's most kindly providence the longed-for day has dawned for the solemn opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, here at St. Peter's shrine. And Mary, God's Virgin Mother, on this feast day of her noble motherhood, gives it her gracious protection. Certain it is that the critical issues, the thorny problems that wait upon man's solution, have remained the same for almost twenty centuries. And why? Because the whole of history and of life hinges on the person of Jesus Christ. Either men anchor themselves on Him and His Church, and thus enjoy the blessings of light and joy, right order and peace; or they live their lives apart from Him; many positively oppose Him, and deliberately exclude themselves from the Church. The result can only be confusion in their lives, bitterness in their relations with one another, and the savage threat of war. In these days, which mark the beginning of this Second Vatican Council, it is more obvious than ever before that the Lord's truth is indeed eternal. Human ideologies change. Successive generations give rise to varying errors, and these often vanish as quickly as they came, like mist before the sun. The Church has always opposed these errors, and often condemned them with the utmost severity. Today, however, Christ's Bride prefers the balm of mercy to the arm of severity. She believes that, present needs are best served by explaining more fully the purport of her doctrines, rather than by publishing condemnations. Not that the need to repudiate and guard against erroneous teaching and dangerous ideologies is less today than formerly. But all such error is so manifestly contrary to rightness and goodness, and produces such fatal results, that our contemporaries show every inclination to condemn it of their own accord—especially that way of life which repudiates God and His law, and which places excessive confidence in technical progress and an exclusively material prosperity. It is more and more widely understood that personal dignity and true self-realization are of vital importance and worth every effort to achieve. More important still, experience has at long last taught men that physical violence, armed might, and political domination are no help at all in providing a happy solution to the serious problems which affect them. The great desire, therefore, of the Catholic Church in raising aloft at this Council the torch of truth, is to show herself to the world as the loving mother of all mankind; gentle, patient, and full of tenderness and sympathy for her separated children. To the human race oppressed by so many difficulties, she says what Peter once said to the poor man who begged an alms: "Silver and gold I have none; but what I have, that I give thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk." (Acts 3:6) In other words it is not corruptible wealth, nor the promise of earthly happiness, that the Church offers the world today, but the gifts of divine grace which, since they raise men up to the dignity of being sons of God, are powerful assistance and support for the living of a more fully human life. She unseals the fountains of her life-giving doctrine, so that men, illumined by the light of Christ, will understand their true nature and dignity and purpose. Everywhere, through her children, she extends the frontiers of Christian love, the most powerful means of eradicating the seeds of discord, the most effective means of promoting concord, peace with justice, and universal brotherhood.

(emphases added)

#Catholicism #Christianity #Vatican II #Pope John XXIII #prayers #collects #Ecclesia

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natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk · 5 years ago

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This is from the anime “O Maidens in Your Savage Season” or “Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo”. Other notable works that they’ve mentioned in this anime is “The Idiot” by Ango Sakaguchi, “The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and “Run, Melos!” by Osamu Dazai.

The work referenced in this clip is The Morning of Last Farewell by Kenji Miyazawa. It highlights the greatest tragedy of Miyazawa’s life which was the death his younger sister, Toshiko. She died of tuberculosis at age 24 (He was two years her elder.)

The Japan Times reported:

One of the most famous Japanese poems of the 20th century is “The Morning of Last Farewell,” in which Miyazawa describes the journey that his beloved sister will be taking on this day . . . You are truly bidding farewell on this day O my brave little sister Burning up pale white and gentle

He rushes out of the sickroom to fetch her some snow, to cool her fever . . . I now will pray with all my heart That the snow you will eat from these two bowls Will be transformed into heaven’s ice cream

And be offered to you and everyone as material that will be holy On this wish I stake my every happiness

Why is there happiness associated with the death of a loved one whom he cherished, and nursed on her deathbed? Because the very snow that falls “out of pale red clouds cruel and gloomy” is the spirit of the deceased themselves. Our bodies may be lost in death, but our spirit remains as snow, as light, as trees . . . whatever anyone says.

In a number of poems written after Toshiko’s death, Miyazawa envisioned himself communicating with her while exploring nature.

[source]

Here are a couple of translations of the poem:

Adam Kuplowsky (with the original Japanese text)

Hiroaki Sato

The following is a translation by Adam Kuplowsky:

On the Morning of Our Last Farewell

Toshiko You are leaving today for a faraway place It’s raining - rain mixed with snow - the world seems oddly bright (Brother... will you bring me some?) Clouds, dark and menacing, tinged with red Sleet splashing on the cold, hard ground (Brother... will you bring me some?) Taking these two chipped bowls decorated with blue water-shields I have run into the dark falling sleet a magic bullet to bring you a bowl of rain and snow (Brother... will you bring me some?) Clouds the color of bismuth Falling sleet gobbled up by the earth Oh Toshiko you are dying and yet you want me to be happy so you sent me out for a bowl of fresh snow Thank you, my brave little sister You will keep me on the narrow path (Brother... will you bring me some?) In the midst of your suffering, feverish and short of breath you asked me for one last bowl of snow, fallen from the sky the galaxy, the sun, the atmosphere…… …...A lone puddle of sleet in a crevice of granite I stand precariously above reaching for the glistening pines heavy, cold, translucent trying to preserve the pure white mixture of snow and rain This is the last meal I will prepare for you, my dear little sister... Today you are also parting with the indigo pattern on our childhood bowls (Ora Orade Shitori egumo*) This is really it Oh! I can see the closed hospital room where you lie behind dark partitions, under netting your face pale, burning gently My brave little sister! Everywhere I turn the snow is so white so beautiful, and yet it fell from this terrible sky (The next time I am born a human I will try to be less selfish with my suffering) I say a prayer over these two bowls of snow... May this become the food of Tushita Heaven and bring to you, Toshiko, and all people, good fortune All of my happiness depends on this

*The roman script was used in the original. It is an expression spoken in the Tohoku dialect: “I... I am going alone.” Written by Kenji Miyazawa | Translation by Adam Kuplowsky

Yes, that’s what these kids are falling asleep to.

#miyazawa kenji #o maidens in your savage season #araburu kisetsu no otome domo yo #bsd authors

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prolapsarian · 5 years ago

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Notes to Sean Bonney (1969-2019)

The great ruse of our political epoch: Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, and their crows in press, scorched a set of oppositions in the minds of the people. The whole of society encapsulated in an image of “workers versus shirkers”, “strivers versus skivers.” The great tragedy of our political epoch: the Labour movement, the left, and the social democrats took the bait of these laminated ghouls. They responded simply by saying that there were no skivers: instead there was a worthy working class, labouring away ever harder, and getting ever poorer. They said the whole thing was a myth, that the shirkers were a phantom, a chimera, a scapegoat, an image invented by evil overlords to turn the working class against itself, leaving it prone to the ideologies of reaction. The labour movement talked instead only about the working poor, or the unemployed who wanted always to get back to a good job, on a good wage, forever and ever.

Few resisted the ruse, but Sean Bonney was one of them. Perhaps it was because Sean himself was a skiver, a drunk, a scoundrel, a villain, an addict, a down-and-out, a fuck up. More likely it was because of his deep political intuition and understanding. For him, the politics of class warfare was never about worthiness; it was never about what the working class deserve at the end of a hard day’s work, but instead its crucible was the hatred of the social conditions that pummelled people, silenced them, boxed them in, boxed them up, oppressed them, made them suffer. This politics was uncompromising because it understood that any compromise was a failure: there is no weekend that redeems the week, no pension that makes good on the life wrecked by the conformity and unfreedom of work.

I like to think of Sean as the thing that terrified those Tories most, as one of those beautiful creatures who so absolutely threatened them that they had to transfigure him into a phantom. His poetry too was one with this politics in this. Every line is written in solidarity with the shirking class, a class whose underground history crawls and stretches backwards, a perpetual dance, an unending squall, as anonymous as it is enormous. If Sean was a skiver he was also always hard at work, undertaking an immense labour of compression, in order to make that history heard. And this furious labour was quick and angular, because it always came with some sense that history was, already, ending. As a singular voice that resisted the ruse, his writing is one of the most important political efforts of our time.

o scroungers, o gasoline there’s a home for you here there’s a room for your things me, I like pills / o hell.

*** Since hearing of Sean’s death I have been thinking a lot about what I learnt from him. Learning is maybe a strange way to look at it. Because Sean’s poetry was not really so complicated. He stated unambiguous truths that we all knew and understood. Just like Brecht’s dictum in praise of communism: “It’s reasonable, and everyone understands it, it’s easy […] it is the simplicity, that’s hard to achieve.” This was the plane on which we met. All of us, Sean’s friends, comrades, loves, beloveds, others we did not know who all were invited, all in this common place where we know how simple these truths are, even if none of us were able to express them with such concision as Sean – even if we were all somehow less rehearsed, less prepared, less audacious. And suddenly I know it was a common place he made, wretched and hilarious.

*** So communism is simple. But running beneath all of Sean’s work was an unassuming argument, from which I have learned so much. Although argument was not his mode – his poems were always doing something, accusing but never prosecuting – an argument is there, even if it was exposed as a thesis in its own right. It is something so simple, easy, and so obvious that it barely seems worth saying. Sean’s poems made an argument for the enduring power of French symbolism – for a power that surged through history in the spirit of that movement. No surprise for a poet who rewrote Baudelaire and Rimbaud. But constantly a surprise to a world that thought that mode already dead, a world no longer animated by the literary symbol, nor transfixed by the resurrection any such symbols could herald. His writing followed the traces of this hyperhistory that wrapped around the world and back, from the high culture of decolonial revolutionism back in to cosmopolitan centre where bourgeois savages feast greedily on expropriated wares; into the dark sociality of the prison, and out again into every antisocial moment that we call “society”; sometimes making the earth small within a frozen cosmos ringing out noise as signal to nobody and everyone; sometimes bringing the whole cosmos in crystalline shape (sometimes perfect, sometimes fractured) as the sharpest interruption within the world - every poem charting a history stretched taut between uprisings and revolts. He knew the rites of symbols, the continuing practices with which their political power could be leveraged.

Sean was one of the few untimely symbolists of our time. His poems are full of these things: bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc - never quite concepts, never quite images, never quite objects, but pieces of the world to be taken up and arranged, half exploded, into accusations; treasured as partial and made for us to take as our own, a heritage of our own destruction, at once ready at hand, and scattered to the peripheries on a map of the universe, persistently spiralling, in points, back to the centre, some no place.

But if Sean was a symbolist, if he was attentive to its fugitive history, a slick and secret tradition of the oppressed, then this was also a symbolism without any luxuriant illusion. It is a symbolism in which all knowingness has been supplanted with fury and its movements. Sean’s poems are spleen without ideal. They have nothing of the pointed, almost screaming, eternal sarcasm of Baudelaire when he ever again finds the body of his beautiful muse as white and lifeless cold marble, utterly indifferent to the desirous gaze. There is no such muse, no callous petrified grimace, half terrified half laughing, ancient enough to unseat Hellenism itself - although there is beauty still but it exists otherwise, amid a crowd, darkened and lively. When I think of Sean’s monumental work I imagine an enormous bas-relief of black polished marble jutting out from some monstrously disproportioned body, angled between buildings. This great slab flashing black in the white noise of the city. This great slab as populous as the world. Flashing black and seen with the upturned gaze. There is no oppression without this terrified vision that sees in ever new sharpness the oppressor.

When you go to sleep, my gloomy beauty, below a black marble monument, when from alcove and manor you are reduced to damp vault and hollow grave; when the stone—pressing on your timorous chest and sides already lulled by a charmed indifference—halts your heart from beating, from willing, your feet from their bold adventuring, when the tomb, confidant to my infinite dream (since the tomb understands the poet always), through those long nights in which slumber is banished, will say to you: "What does it profit you, imperfect courtisan, not to have known what the dead weep for?" —And the worm will gnaw at your hide like remorse.

*** I haven’t explained what I learnt. I ask the question, What does it mean to find the late nineteenth century stillborn into the twenty-first? Why should these febrile years, from 1848 to the Commune have been so important? What was Sean leveraging when he recast our world with this moment of literary and political history? And what was he leveraging it against? I have a sense that what was important to Sean was a sense of mixedness. There were those who would read these years, after the defeat of revolution, as a dreadful winter of the world. There were those who saw only society in decline. “Jeremiads are the fashion”, Blanqui would say while counselling civil war. And then there were those for whom arcades first provided an extravagant ecstacy of distraction and glitz. These were the years of monstrocity, from Maldoror to Das Kapital. These years of the great machines that chewed up humans and spat out their remains across the city, of great humans who chewed up machines and made language anew. These years in which the fury of defeat burnt hot. These years of illumination. These years where gruesome metallic grinding and factory fire met the dandy. Few eras have been so mixed, so utterly undecided. No era so perfect to carve out the truly Dickensian physiognomy of Iain Duncan Smith. This was neither the stage of tragedy nor comedy, but of frivolous wickedness and hilarious turpitude. The world made into a barb, and no-one quite knowing who is caught on it. The great progress. The great stupidity. Street life. The symbol belonging to this undecided realm.

Marx was famously dismissive of that “social scum” the Lumpenproletariat, who he described at the beginning of this period as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.” Marx saw in these figures, in their Bonapartist, reactionary form, a bourgeois consciousness ripped from its class interest and thus nourished by purest political ideology. But if he could excoriate the drunkenness of beggars, Marx failed to appreciate its complement: the intoxication of sobriety of the working classes, the stupefaction in methodism, their imagined glory in progress. Wine, as the beggars already knew, was the only salve to the social anaesthetic of worthiness and the idiotic faith in work.

If Sean were here I’d want to talk to him about this learning in relation to a fragment by Benjamin, which he wrote as he thought about the world of Baudelaire; this world of mixedness of the city constructed and exploded, and the people within it subject to the same motion:

During the Baroque, a formerly incidental component of allegory, the emblem, undergoes extravagant development. If, for the materialist historian, the medieval origin of allegory still needs elucidation, Marx himself furnishes a clue for understanding its Baroque form. He writes in Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1922), vol. 1, p. 344: "The collective machine ... becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one — that is, the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected not only by the hand of man but by the machinery itself. In manufacture, the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labor, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative." Here may be found the key to the Baroque procedure whereby meanings are conferred on the set of fragments, on the pieces into which not so much the whole as the process of its production has disintegrated. Baroque emblems may be conceived as half finished products which, from the phases of a production process, have been converted into monuments to the process of destruction. During the Thirty Years' War, which, now at one point and now at another, immobilized production, the "interruption" that, according to Marx, characterizes each particular stage of this labor process could be protracted almost indefinitely. But the real triumph of the Baroque emblematic, the chief exhibit of which becomes the death's head, is the integration of man himself into the operation. The death's head of Baroque allegory is a half-finished product of the history of salvation, that process interrupted — so far as this is given him to realize — by Satan.

I won’t pretend to know all of what Benjamin means here but I have some idea. And those last sentences terrify me. Modernity begins with a war that is a strike, one that repeats through history. And the shape of this strike, this war, this repetition, is the shape of detritus of production interrupted. We shift perspective and the machine is revealed as other than it was once imagined: it is not some factory churning out commodities, but a world theatre of soteriology. An exchange takes place: the half-finished product for the half-destroyed body. Although what is created (albeit as a “monument to the process of destruction”) is some monstrous combination of the two. One and the same seen with two different perspectives, and the two perspectives separated by the distance between the promise that production will be interrupted, in rhythmic repetition, and the force of the machine that completes the product, kills the body into it, sealing death perfectly within the commodity, as its catastrophe. This distance, a tropic on the edge of the end of the world, is Hell.

This is a lot. But maybe it gets close to what I learnt. That all those bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc were for Sean the emblemata of our political times. These are the monsters, half-finished, half-human, half-machine, the bird interrupting itself with a scream a silent as the cosmos once seemed. I don’t know if they are to be taken up as weapons in the battle for salvation, or as mere co-ordinates on the map of hell. But they are certainly potent, and set here in commitment to redemption, for the work of raising the dead. Sean’s writing was always ready for this task, in constant preparation, and in constant interruption. Its angles quickly pacing between the two.

This has become theologically ornate. But perhaps something of the point is clear: that in the symbolic realm of Sean’s language are staked the great theological and materialist battles of our age. He had to deep dig into our time for that, furrow and dig so deep that he found the nineteenth century still there, crawling everywhere, right up to us. And all of this was set, furiously, against a more everyday view that production has all but disappeared from sight: society fully administered slips across screens with nothing but a sense of speed and gloss. His poetry decries, digs into, a laminated world with which we are supposed to play but in which we are never supposed to participate, never mind to get drunk, see the truth, raise the dead, even now as they slip away ever further through the mediatized glare.

*** Are we not surrounded by those who cast spells? Sorcery is the fashion, if only for the blighted, the meek, the poor, the oppressed. And it would be easy to mistake what Sean was writing for just another piece of subaltern superstition; promising mighty power for as long as it remains utterly powerless and otherworldly. But this is not right. Seans symbols are not just any old sign, or signal, or sigil. They are not arcana, but materials taken to hand out of the dereliction of the present. They are certainly magic, just as Sean was certainly a seer. But this is a materialist magic, a fury, a joy. They are not drawn from some other mystical world, but from this one. And his magic was to suspend them between this world and the next, between law made in the mouths of a class who hated him, and justice. He saw more deeply than most of us dare, and invited us along. Invited everyone along, including the dead who will rise, even if we have to dig and dig and drag them out of the ground and through the streets, to show the world what streets are really for. Here in this common place, between buildings, together. This is the place of magic, for riots, for burning cars; here a wall, there a blazing comet. Let his poetry dance on, and we will dance on too.

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

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Summer 2019 Anime, Ranked.

With the exception of Fire Force’s twelfth episode, we’ve wrapped up our coverage of the Summer 2019 season, which is just as well since we’re technically in the second week of Autumn.

Between Braverade, sesameacrylic and MagicalChurlSukui we watched and reviewed eleven shows in all (plus additional coverage from Oigakkosan, not detailed here), totaling 132 episodes, or approximately 53 hours. Without further math, here’s how we ranked those shows, and why.

11. HenSuki

RABUJOI Score: 7.00/10 MAL Score: 6.83/10

Pros: Novel premise, colorful pastel palette, likable characters, generally witty banter, risque ecchi situations that never cross hard lines of decency.

Cons: Uneven at best animation, silly central mystery that drags on too long, “twist” resolution feels like a cheat.

Verdict: An enjoyable, fluffy guilty pleasure. I try to watch one per season.

10. Lord El-Melloi II Case Files

RABUJOI Score: 7.77/10 MAL Score: 7.44/10

Pros: Built-in goodwill from Fate/Zero, always intriguing setup for cases, sumptuous setting, production, and mechanical design, stirring score, bonkers magical battles.

Cons: Excessive magical technobabble can be exhausting, conclusions to mysteries can feel contrived/arbitrary, non-Fate fanatics will end up hopelessly lost by most cameos or name-drops.

Verdict: A pale shadow of the classic upon which it’s based, but nonetheless a fun and moderately clever detective series.

9. Fire Force (Episodes 1-11 of 12)

RABUJOI Score: 7.82/10 MAL Score: 7.75/10

Pros: Gorgeously bizarre alternate-universe setting, elegant world-building, virtuoso action sequences, powerful orchestral soundtrack.

Cons: And MC who is dull and cliched within an inch of his life, Characters who go from evil-to-good (or vice versa) at the drop of a hat, a tedious central conspiracy, the potential for character bloat, frustratingly uneven gender balance, pathetic bouts of fanservice.

Verdict: A stylish show primarily about spontaneous human combustion might’ve weathered news of the horrific KyoAni arson attack, but isn’t quite good enough to watching following into the Fall.

7 (tie). How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift?

RABUJOI Score: 7.83/10 MAL Score: 7.68/10 Pros: A fresh, original premise to which it remains totally devoted, marvelous comic timing in the rapid-fire, self-deprecating, fourth-wall breaking dialogue, lovable and believable MC, decent animation, one hell of an earworm OP.

Cons: Ecchi elements and a superfluous Russian chick don’t add much, some parody bits are too on-the-nose, the show loses momentum in the final couple episodes.

Verdict: The show that inspired me to get off my skinny, underdeveloped backside and actually join a gym for the first time in my life!

7 (tie). Cop Craft

RABUJOI Score: 7.82/10 MAL Score: 6.94/10

Pros: Cool reverse-Isekai-lite premise, Range Murata character design, toe-tapping OP and lively soundtrack, entertaining buddy cop dynamic, engaging fights and chases.

Cons: Lame villains, some odd narrative choices, inconsistent/unfocused direction, disappointing animation, underutilized supporting cop cast, lots of loose ends.

Verdict: A show with some good parts to work with, mostly used badly. A wasted opportunity that’s not as good as our episodes ratings indicated.

6. DanMachi II

RABUJOI Score: 8.25/10 MAL Score: 7.45/10

Pros: Appealing, charismatic characters you love to root for, amusing romantic polygons, tremendous score, superb utilization of twelve episodes to tell a variety of engaging stories with a beginning, middle and oh-so-epic end, culminating in a quiet finale that doesn’t forget its core goddess-child dynamic.

Cons: Villains’ barks prove far worse than their bites, a couple slower episodes between mini-arcs don’t really distinguish themselves, and that huge Amazoness Phryne…what the hell?!

Verdict: After the very lame Sword Oratoria spinoff DanMachi got a proper sequel, focused on the characters we cared about, full of emotion, excitement, and good old-fashioned fantasy ass-kickin’.

5. Fruits Basket 1st Season (Episodes 14-25)

RABUJOI Score: 8.50/10 MAL Score: 8.36/10

Pros: Impeccably-rendered characters and depictions of their various psychological issues, dark and poignant flashbacks, exquisitely cozy slice-of-life, a good balance of the mundane and the mystic, and hard-hitting cathartic scenes.

Cons: Some members of the Souma family are more interesting (and tolerable) than others, but even the less interesting ones get plenty of screen time, Tooru’s saintly selflessness can wear thin at times.

Verdict: A beautifully-crafted second half that rewarded patience by delivering some of the strongest and most moving episodes of the year.

4. Master Teaser Takagi-san 2

RABUJOI Score: 8.58/10 MAL Score: 8.40/10 Pros: Truly magnetic chemistry in the central pair, Deft use of subtle facial expressions and body language in the animation, superb performances by Takahashi Rie and Kaji Yuki.

Cons: Like the first season, the various teasing games can grow repetitive, as can Nishikata’s denseness and inability to see more than one or two moves ahead, the side stories involving side characters often felt like padding.

Verdict: Continues and refines the brilliantly simple teasing formula of the first season, while ever-so-gradually blurring of the line between teasing and flirting. A sweet and touching, slow-burn portrayal of young, awkward first love.

2 (tie). Vinland Saga (Episodes 1-12)

RABUJOI Score: 8.67/10 MAL Score: 8.57/10

Pros: Flawed but rootable MC whose character is more complex than it initially seems, his multi-layered antihero mentor, exemplary action and battle sequences, powerful score, compelling exploration of the hard old world, with enticing glimmers of a brighter new one.

Cons: That said mentor would keep a kid dedicated to murdering him around so long stretches credulity at times, those battle sequences sometimes feature individuals or groups doing superhuman things that detract from the otherwise naturalistic milieu.

Verdict: While not quite as big, loud, epic, or bonkers as Attack on Titan, or Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Vinland Saga is arguably Wit Studio’s most balanced and human series. Looking forward to the second half.

2 (tie). Astra Lost in Space

RABUJOI Score: 7.77/10 MAL Score: 7.44/10

Pros: Very well done futuristic world- and space-building, a large-ish main cast that you steadily come to know and love, the sense of family that arises from the crewmembers’ experiences together, an optimistic spirit of exploration that isn’t constantly beset by mortal peril, creative planets and lifeforms, thankfully subverted expectations for a Lerche-style bloodbath.

Cons: “Character gets a backstory” formula to some episodes felt repetitive at times, the crew almost faces too little mortal peril considering their circumstances, they similarly rely on a lot of luck, some major plotlines and twists could have been left out and still resulted in a pretty strong show.

Verdict: Maybe the season’s biggest surprise hit, the ambitious Astra calls to mind some of the best of live-action shades-of-gray sci-fi (Firefly, Battlestar, Expanse) while maintaining an old school optimistic, exploratory outlook. It set out to do and say a lot, and was mostly successful in doing so.

1. O Maidens in Your Savage Season

RABUJOI Score: 8.58/10 MAL Score: 8.40/10 Pros: Fearlessly tackles tough social topics on adolescence, sexuality, gender roles, upbringing, and abuse, ably juggles multiple, diverse love stories and triangles at once, pleasingly drawn and animated, and despite all its serious themes, doesn’t leave out the comedy.

Cons: What seemed to be an irreversible dive into an abyss that would tear the five girls apart, they work almost everything out almost too easily for a tidier ending than expected; while the show dips a toe in LGBTQ themes through Momo’s awakening, her’s is one of the least developed arcs despite being one of the most interesting.

Verdict: A rare-for-anime honest and unblinking exploration of the awkward, painful, and sometimes savage emotional journey to adulthood all kids must face (and not always at the same speed). By the numbers, the best show I watched this Summer, and the one I looked forward too most from week to week.

Summer 2019 Big Board:

By: rabujoistaff

#Anime #News #RABUJOI – An Anime Blog

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lavideenrose · 2 years ago

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Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit by Wallace Stevens

If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the rooms and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlight, silently, as Plato’s ghost Or Aristotle’s skeleton. Let him hang out His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly. He must be incapable of speaking, closed, As those are: as light, for all its motion, is; As color, even the closest to us, is; As shapes, though they portend us, are. It is the human that is the alien, The human that has no cousin in the moon. It is the human that demands his speech From beasts or from the incommunicable mass. If there must be a god in the house, let him be one That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness, A vermilioned nothingness, any stick of the mass Of which we are too distantly a part.

#poem #poetry #god #theism #pantheism #atheism #antitheism #god is dead #god is one #he must dwell quietly #it is the human that demands his speech #depression #anxiety #poetry reading #savage spirit

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douglashonorscollege · 4 years ago

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Uncivilized and Colonized: Analyzing Caliban’s Character in The Tempest

essay by Anthony Krueger ⌂

Throughout the duration of Shakespeare’s The Tempest characters move through a single setting, a mysterious island populated with mystical creatures: witches, spirits, and magical beings to name a few. Yet perhaps the most difficult to understand character is not these mythical beings but the proclaimed half-man, half-monster Caliban.In The Tempest, readers witness consistently cruel actions inflicted upon Caliban by all those around him, yet the reading experience does very little to provoke any sense of empathy for his character and his hardships. Through a careful examination of Caliban’s character journey in The Tempest, this essay will propose the idea that although Caliban is a troubled and impulsive man, he is no monster; rather, he is an innocent and misunderstood character with poor ill luck that follows him through the play. His character is symbolic of the truest of misfortunes that can befall a man or woman: the imprisonment of colonialism. With an analysis of Caliban’s journey throughout the play, perhaps a greater understanding of his character’s true nature can arise, thus establishing an increased understanding of colonized people in the real world and their continued struggles.

Before delving into the colonized nature of Caliban’s character, one must first understand the Manifest-Destiny mindset of the colonizer; in The Tempest, the colonizer is none other than the protagonist, the man the audience follows throughout the play: Prospero. For context, Prospero held a high position of authority in his homeland, as he was the Duke of Milan; yet, upon a rebellion executed by his brother Antonio, Prospero found himself banished from his homeland and forced onto a long voyage. In his travels, Prospero ends up stuck on an island inhabited by Caliban and once inhabited by his magically gifted mother, Sycorax. Coming from a position of power, Prospero immediately takes control over the island, quickly ridding the land of any reminder of Sycorax’s rule. Caliban despises Prospero for taking power over the island; in fact, the readers’ introduction to his character begins with Caliban’s opening lines:

All the charms Of Sycorax—toads, beetles, bats—light on you, For I am all the subjects that you have, Which was first mine own king. And here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’ the island. (Act 1 Scene 2)

Prospero’s taking of the island without regard to its inhabitants closely resembles the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. According to ushistory.org, “At the heart of manifest destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial superiority. Native Americans had long been perceived as inferior.” The belief of superiority, a characteristic that Prospero undoubtedly demonstrates, enables colonizers to take control over lands without any sense of guilt for they view it as their right. Prospero, as said colonizer, embodies the philosophical assumptions of Manifest Destiny when he takes over the island, dehumanizing and enslaving Caliban, whom he views as inferior.

Being stripped of power on his own island is just the beginning of Caliban’s ill-fated storyline. Caliban’s is belittled to the point of being consider a literal monster by those around him, which further highlights the dehumanizing nature of the colonizer-colonized relationship. When Trinculo the jester first encounters Caliban, he declares the following infamous description of Caliban: “A fish, he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind of not-of-the-newest poor-john. A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday-fool there but would give a piece of silver.” (Act 2 Scene 2). Trinculo’s characterization of Caliban is just one of many cruel comments spit at Caliban throughout the play. These belittling comments are more than just spiteful as they work to dehumanize Caliban’s character, further drawing on the symbolic nature of Caliban as a colonized person. In the essay “White Americans’ Dehumanization Toward American Indians in John Steinbeck’s The Pearl,'' author Hening Wulandari Kadarsih defines dehumanization as “the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide” (Kadarsih). As Kadarsih’s definition explains, dehumanizing a human being or group of people allows those that see themselves as superior to act maliciously against said person or group. As Caliban is minimized to a monster by those around him, their callous treatment of him begins to feel justified in their eyes. The effect of Caliban’s dehumanization suggests that he is less than human, which further implies that he is in need of being civilized.

Deprecated to the extent of being characterized as an animal, it is suggested that Caliban’s character needs some form of saving in order to reach a civilized status. Initially, the task of ‘civilizing’ Caliban was taken on by Prospero and Miranda. In order to begin the process of civilizing Caliban, the father and daughter duo began with teaching Caliban their language. In response, Caliban declares: “You taught me language; and my profit on't is, I know how to curse. the red plague rid you for learning me your language” (Act 1 Scene 2). Miranda had implied that as a ‘savage’ Caliban should have held a sense of indebtment towards her; however, Caliban’s angered response highlights that the only thing of value he obtained from the foreigner’s language is the ability to curse his captors—the ability to exactly express how much he despises them in a means they understand. Language is a powerful tool and serves as a means of authority in the novel. The power of language is represented through Prospero’s books. In order to bring Prospero down, Caliban tells Stephano, “Remember first to possess his books...for without them he’s but a sot” (Act 3 Scene 2). Prospero’s immense power and persuasion comes from his books, with books being an important symbol of words, and words being the prime component of language. Caliban’s poor language abilities contrasted against Prospero’s boundless knowledge of the language suggests that Caliban is of minimal importance in the novel’s social hierarchy. Losing his language as language is a means of power highlights the acts of assimilation forced onto Caliban. Caliban’s forced assimilation mirrors that of indigenous people who were made to adapt to Western culture upon the invasion of westerners. For instance, in 1879, Richard H. Pratt created the model Indian school which promoted the philosophy “kill the man, save the indian.” According to digitalhistory.edu, the goal of the boarding school was “ to use education to uplift and assimilate into the mainstream of American culture,” as “Pratt trimmed their hair, required them to speak English, and prohibited any displays of tribal traditions.” The traditions of native peoples, including their language, was viewed as uncivilized compared to the traditions and language of white people. The effects of such assimilation was a loss of culture and loss of oneself. As with many indigenous people, Caliban was stripped of his accustomed way of life, viewed as too savage by Western measures, thus further justifying his anger towards his captors.

Caliban, as a symbol of the colonized person, not only lost his home, but also faced the emotional dilemmas that come with such displacement. Upon being condemned to a cave, Caliban in fact was also forced into slavery. As Prospero states, “We'll visit Caliban, my slave - he does make our fire, fetch in our wood and services in offices that profit us” (Act 1 Scene 2). Prospero’s suggested ownership of Caliban further strengthens the colonizer-colonized relationship between the two as Prospero is that of a slave-owner with Caliban being that of a slave. Caliban’s exploitation is no stranger to indigenous people as many were forced into slavery as well. Upon displacement, many natives found themselves forced into involuntary labor by their colonizers. The effects of such displacement and slavery was detrimental to the natives and these effects can be seen through Caliban’s anger, sadness, and impulsivity in the play, with all those emotions proven to be more and more validated as the play progresses.

By the end of the play, Caliban has been dehumanized, assimilated, displaced, and forced into slavery. In fact, by the second act, Caliban’s spirit has been broken and this is represented through his perceived need for a ruler. As the act begins, Stephano and Trinculo, two drunken jesters, wash upon shore with the preconceived notion that they are the sole survivors from the shipwreck. Upon discovering Caliban, the drunken duo degraded his appearance, which further weakens Caliban’s already poor stability; yet, Caliban views the two men as saviors. He vows to follow them, worship them, and tend to their needs:

I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts; Show thee a jay's nest and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee To clustering filberts and sometimes I'll get thee Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me? (Act 2 Scene 2)

Stephano and Trinculo are two unsympathetic, callous, and power-hungry characters that quickly discredit any humanity in Caliban; however, Caliban still views the two as God-like entities that he may follow to safety. In this quote, Caliban is vowing to tend to every one of the duo’s needs in a slave-like fashion. Caliban’s quickly made decision to offer himself to the duo highlights his broken spirit, for he believes at this point he needs a ruler. This showcases his tragic trajectory as a character: Caliban began as a free person ruling his own island, yet he now finds himself seeking some sort of authority figure even if that figure degrades him as a person. Caliban’s perceived self worth is now less than nothing; a disheartening character journey as a man who once held the strength to verbally fight back against his captors now has little strength left to give, thus leading to his worshipping of false deities as a way of obtaining false security and comfort, security and comfort he once found within himself on his island. Caliban’s tragic character journey highlights the real-world issues that colonized people face: a loss of autonomy comes with bewilderment in regards to what to do next.

Throughout Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Caliban’s character journey is representative of a colonized person who is stripped of all sense of self through his forced learning of a foreigner's language, his exile, his loss of autonomy, and overall dehumanization. The play does little to promote any sense of empathy for Caliban; rather, he is a character that the readers are supposed to look down upon. The play emphasizes his attempted rape of Miranda multiple times, his innocence is twisted into stupidity when he follows Trinculo and Stephano as leaders, and lastly his appearance is heavily dramatized to further the idea of Caliban being a monster. The Tempest silences Caliban’s voice as a colonized person through showcasing his wrong doings as opposed to highlighting his struggles. Caliban’s voice being silenced mirrors one of the most common struggles that indigenous people face: their voices aren’t heard when it comes to retelling history. In the essay “Historical Silences and the Enduring Power of Counter Storytelling,” author James Miles describes the issue of historical silencing: “unequal power structures work to create and reinforce historical narratives that contain ‘bundles of silences.’ He contends that these silences are found not just in academic histories, but in sources, archives, and more broadly in how societies remember the past.” Essentially, Miles is conveying the idea that history favors the voice of the victors, which leaves the once-perceived inferiors trailing behind as a side story. Caliban, considering his established symbolic nature of a colonized person, loses the power to tell his story through The Tempest, which greatly affects how he is perceived. In order to not only understand Caliban but indigenous and colonized people in general, one must hear their stories, empathize with their struggles, and allow their once-silenced voices to be heard. Through the process of listening and understanding the ones that history and stories have pushed to the margins, a bridge between those in power and those injured by that power begins to form, thus bringing people together in a way that matters. Throughout the duration of Shakespeare’s The Tempest characters move through a single setting, a mysterious island populated with mystical creatures: witches, spirits, and magical beings to name a few. Yet perhaps the most difficult to understand character is not these mythical beings but the proclaimed half-man, half-monster Caliban. In The Tempest, readers witness consistently cruel actions inflicted upon Caliban by all those around him, yet the reading experience does very little to provoke any sense of empathy for his character and his hardships. Through a careful examination of Caliban’s character journey in The Tempest, this essay will propose the idea that although Caliban is a troubled and impulsive man, he is no monster; rather, he is an innocent and misunderstood character with poor ill luck that follows him through the play. His character is symbolic of the truest of misfortunes that can befall a man or woman: the imprisonment of colonialism. With an analysis of Caliban’s journey throughout the play, perhaps a greater understanding of his character’s true nature can arise, thus establishing an increased understanding of colonized people in the real world and their continued struggles.

Cursing Prospero for taking control over the land that was his birthright, Caliban’s hatred for Prospero’s rule is showcased in full effect. Caliban rightly states how he was the king of his own island, but in true colonial fashion, Prospero tore this autonomy from Caliban with little regard, thus establishing a tense colonizer-colonized relationship that provides a source of conflict throughout the play. Prospero’s taking of the island without regard to its inhabitants closely resembles the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. According to ushistory.org, “At the heart of manifest destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial superiority. Native Americans had long been perceived as inferior.” The belief of superiority, a characteristic that Prospero undoubtedly demonstrates, enables colonizers to take control over lands without any sense of guilt for they view it as their right. Prospero, as said colonizer, embodies the philosophical assumptions of Manifest Destiny when he takes over the island, dehumanizing and enslaving Caliban, whom he views as inferior.

Forced to assimilate, Caliban loses his sense of self; however, breaking his spirits was just the beginning of the colonization process. Once free to roam his own island as he pleased, the arrival of Prospero resulted in Caliban’s exile, as he was condemned to live alone in a cave. Caliban’s forced exile closely resembles the exile that indigenous people found themselves in as well. According to history.com, reservations held the goal of trapping natives under government control, seeking to “minimize conflict between Indians and settlers and encourage Native Americans to take on the ways of the white man. But many Native Americans were forced onto reservations with catastrophic results and devastating, long-lasting effects.” The effects of such exile expand far beyond displacement, including immense stress and depression that falls onto the displaced. Caliban, as a symbol of the colonized person, not only lost his home, but also faced the emotional dilemmas that come with such displacement. Upon being condemned to a cave, Caliban in fact was also forced into slavery. As Prospero states, “We'll visit Caliban, my slave - he does make our fire, fetch in our wood and services in offices that profit us” (Act 1 Scene 2). Prospero’s suggested ownership of Caliban further strengthens the colonizer-colonized relationship between the two as Prospero is that of a slave-owner with Caliban being that of a slave. Caliban’s exploitation is no stranger to indigenous people as many were forced into slavery as well. Upon displacement, many natives found themselves forced into involuntary labor by their colonizers. The effects of such displacement and slavery was detrimental to the natives and these effects can be seen through Caliban’s anger, sadness, and impulsivity in the play, with all those emotions proven to be more and more validated as the play progresses.

Works Cited Digital History, www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3505#:~:text=In%201879%2C%20an%20army%20officer,the%20mainstream%20of%20American%20culture.&text=Pratt's%20motto%20was%20%22kill%20the%20Indian%20and%20save%20the%20man.%22. History.com Editors. “Indian Reservations.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 8 Dec. 2017, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/indian-reservations#:~:text=In%201851%2C%20Congress%20passed%20the,leave%20the%20reservations%20without%20permission. “Manifest Destiny.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp. Miles, James. “Historical Silences and the Enduring Power of Counter Storytelling.” Taylor & Francis, 17 July 2019, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2019.1633735. Shakespeare, William, and Frank Kermode. The Tempest. T. Nelson & Sons, 1998. ∎

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