#Might have further more coherent thoughts later or after we get more material to work with lol

[thejolteonmastertj]

New chapter’s got more fuel for my ‘Wild is a cuddler but is awful at asking for it’ agenda! 🤭

See, aside from Wild giving a scant few of playful pats on the shoulder—or Twi’s face at one point—(usually either right after petting Wolfie, or not long after their hug in the Dawn arc)… it always seems to be Twilight to initiate contact.

This time is no exception.

Lookat that body language! Wild’s stiff & reserved at first, to the point that Twilight needs to reach out pretty far to put a hand on his shoulder.

Then Wild lights up & escalates it to full-on horseplay. Twilight even needs to push him away to get him back on track.

This isn’t the first time by far either (hence why Twilight knew his contact would be welcome in the first place).

They’re dorks & they’re brothers your honor. 😂 Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[nevertheless-moving]

Suicidal Misunderstanding IX

Star Wars Time Travel AU #27

Part I - - - - - Part II - - - - - Part III - - - - - Part IV  - - - Part V - - - - - Part VI - - - - - Part VII - - - - - Part VIII

Content Warning: This chapter contains potentially triggering material, particularly aftermath of attempted suicide as well as discussions of bodily injury.

Cody woke up the morning after the...drunken keldabe still feeling uneasy. He spent half an hour attempting to read over reports in preparation for the Umbaran campaign before giving it up as a lost cause. He distracted himself for a little while by pouring over last night’s cantina surveillance, before giving up on that as well and sending a message to General Skywalker.

‘Any updates on General Kenobi’s status?’

He watched the comms as communications from everyone besides the General trickled in. He answered a few requests for requisitions, forwarded some medical reports, and ignored an irritating handful of overly-personal questions. 

Agonizing over it the whole time, he opened a comm-text link to Obi-Wan. It took nearly an hour, but he managed to send two sentences. ‘Hope you’re recovering well. Look forward to upcoming mission discussion.’

He immediately wanted to retroactively delete the message, mortified by every word and deeply concerned at every second that passed without a reply.

He spent the next 30 minutes hunched over, quickly closing every incoming CT and CC communication, justifying the time to himself as ‘technically on leave.’

He lurched forward when he finally received a General’s comm code, but slumped in disappointment when it was Skywalker, not Kenobi.

‘Not as drunk but still seems a little high. He says he wasn’t drugged. He’s taking the rest of the day off. I’m monitoring.’

Taking the rest of the day off. Did that mean he wasn’t carrying around his comm? Kriff. Should he more or less concerned that the general was actually taking a day off?

He decided to be more concerned.

‘Thank you for the update. Respectfully request information on any changes.’

Hopefully that would encourage Skywalker to keep him informed even if he stopped freaking out over his vod’s behavior.

Stowing the remote comm, he stood up and exited the temporary planet-side office, throwing himself into cleaning up the mess that was nearly 20,000 clone troopers simultaneously attempting to get the most out of a very brief R&R. 

Shortly before mid-day, he received another update from Skywalker.

‘Just managed to get him to medical. Healer cleared him of drug interactions but Obi-Wan’s still acting strange (not crying, but a lot of hugging).’

Cody stared at that for a long while.

‘Any other verbal indications of upcoming danger?’ he finally asked. Skywalker didn’t reply. 

Shortly after nightfall, his incident reports were interrupted by a call from an unknown temple number. He quickly opened it, and a holo of an unfamiliar Mon Calamari female healer appeared in miniature on the desk.

“Commander Cody. Thank you for answering so quickly. Are you somewhere private?” she asked, voice deliberately neutral.

The Commander tensed up. “Yes, sir. I’m in CC office space, alone. The room and the channel are both secure. Is this regarding General Kenobi?”

“Yes.” She replied. “My name is Master Bant Eerin; I’m a temple healer as well as a personal friend of Obi-Wan’s. He’s...he’s in the healing halls right now. We’re still trying to understand exactly what happened- I’ll tell you what I can but first we need to rule out any possible drugs he may have contact with. I need you to describe in detail anything he may have been exposed to that could have possibly had mind-altering effects.”

The Commander was a professional. He swallowed back his fear, his questions, and his demands to know what was going on.

“Of course. Everything on the Negotiator was GAR Standard, and I was with him when we left the ship. We went directly to the lower levels. The first time he was exposed to anyone outside the 212th was when we left our transport on level 3915. I...actually have footage of him the whole time night after that point. I’m sending it over right now, sir.”

“That would be extremely helpful, thank you.” He watched as she pulled it up on a second comm, sound barely audible. 

He continued with his report: “One of the boys took it without permission. He didn’t mean anything by it, he’s just an idiot; I’ve already issued a severe reprimand. In any case, he brought it to me after I issued surveillance on the cantina, it tracks everything the General did- as far as I can tell, he had a glass of house grub wine, two shots of rancor blood, and an unnamed mixed cocktail ‘on the house.’ You can see everything the bartender added- as far as I can tell nothing was slipped in. He just... blacked out suddenly after the fourth drink, and quickly startled awake, confused by his surroundings.”

“I see.” Her tone was still carefully neutral and Cody didn’t know how to read her expression. He waited, wishing he was wearing his bucket so he didn’t have to keep schooling his face into professional patience.

“You brought him back to the temple...correct?” 

“Yes, sir.”

She let out a deep breath, gills fluttering slightly. “We’ll probably have more questions later, but please understand our inquires are entirely based around determining how we can best help Obi-Wan. This call and any future ones are not intended, and should absolutely not be interpreted, as indications of blame. He’s actually spoken to me about you before, I know he has the deepest respect for you, personally and professionally. Someone will likely be assigned to talk to everyone whose spent time with him recently, including myself.”

The sick feeling in his gut from last night returned full force. “I...believe I understand sir. His condition is serious, then?”

Her gills fluttered again.

“Even now, I think we can safely anticipate a full physical recovery. He...there’s no easy way to say this...it appears he attempted to end his own life. Knight Skywalker got to him just in time, and he received bacta within minutes of the initial burn. I...like I said...we’ll began work to figure out why-”

Her voice broke and she stared up, large tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. She hastily wiped them away.

“Rest assured commander, he’s getting the best treatment possible. Thank you for your assistance. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have right now. This is my personal comm link- please feel free to reach out to me at any point for updates.”

“I-” Cody cleared his throat. “Can I come to the temple? To...” he trailed off, not sure how to finish.

���Not tonight, I’m sorry. The healers need to focus; he’s not allowed any visitors until he’s out of Bacta, I’m afraid.”

“Skywalker must be throwing a fit at that” Cody remarked numbly.

The healer winced. “Knight Skywalker is currently sedated. He was...injured in the struggle to keep Obi-Wan from further harm. Master Windu witnessed part of it, but we’ll have to wait until its safe to wake him to get the full story. I’ll be notifying Captain Rex of the situation after we finish speaking.”

“I’ll do it.” Cody offered immediately. “Tell me what happened.”

Eerin hesitated. 

“Please, Sir. It will be better coming from me and...if he’s the only other trooper who’s being informed at the moment...”

“Of course,” she said quietly. “We don’t know the full circumstances, but at some point in performing emergency care for Master Kenobi, Knight Skywalker was stabbed in the lower abdomen with a vibroblade. It pierced his large intestine. The blade was pulled out shortly before healers arrived, causing some further damage and blood loss. He’s already finished surgery, and should only need a few hours of Bacta at most. Considering his extraordinary past recovery rates, he’ll likely be out of bed tomorrow and fully healed by the end of the week.”

“General Kenobi wouldn’t...” Cody trailed off again. He was having a hard time putting coherent sentences together.

Bant looked at the ceiling for a moment, seeming to collect her thoughts.

“Psychosis can have many manifestations. Even with- with conventional injuries, people can mistake help for harm. There’s just too much we don’t understand, and only so much we can learn before they wake up. Are you certain you wish to be the one to inform Captain Rex?”

“Yes.” That was about the only thing the Commander was certain of right now. “Is there anyone else in the GAR I should inform of...anything?”

“The military aspect of this isn’t my area of expertise. If there’s someone you trust who can be a support for you, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to tell them in confidence. Some form of what happened is going to get out eventually.” she replied. “Please use your discretion, I suppose. It’s...not really my speciality but I imagine you’ll receive further orders on how much to release to the GAR once Obi-Wan’s stable.”

Right. Discretion. Because Obi-Wan wasn’t just Obi-Wan- he was a high general in charge of nearly 1/3 of the republic’s forces. If word of this got out to the wrong ears it would cause mass panic, maybe even an emboldened separatist advance. It was an insane amount of responsibility for one person, no wonder - he deliberately didn’t finish the thought.

“I’ll comm the Captain immediately. Thank you for the information, General.” he said out loud.

“Feel free to contact me for further updates, and tell Captain Rex he’s welcome to do the same. I’ll message you when its clear to visit the halls.”

“Yes, Sir.” Cody responded, saluting automatically. 

“Take care of yourself, Commander Cody”

The hologram blinked out. Cody sat motionless for several long moment before sweeping his desk off, sending the assorted flimsies and redundant comm-units of various designations to the ground.

He stared at the empty desk, then tapped a button on his wrist comm, opening a private audio channel. “CT-7567, please come in” he said calmly.

“Cody?” came the alarmed reply. “I’m here, what’s going on?” Why did he sound so panicked? He had deliberately used his calmest voice. Oh well.

“Please report immediately to CC Office 12 in Guard Headquarters”

“I’ll be there in 10″

Cody hung up. He stared at the blank wall. He knew something was wrong with how the General said goodbye.

He opened the single desk drawer and dumped the odd wires and coins inside to the floor. Eerin had said burn. That could mean a lot of things, but lightsaber was the most likely. 

Cody puked profusely into the empty drawer. He stared at the vomit for a moment before carefully closing the drawer. He still felt a little sick. He hadn’t even said anything back to the General, he just stood there, frozen. 

He stared vaguely at the wall across, wondering if he was going to puke again.

Rex burst into the room. “Cody! What’s going on?! You- kark, what is that smell?”

“I puked in the desk drawer” Cody explained.

Rex shut the door behind him and slowly walked over. He knelt down next to the desk, gently taking Cody’s hands in this own. “Cody. Vod. Talk to to me.” 

“Obi-Wan tried to kill himself.”

Rex’s hands tightened over Cody’s compulsively and Cody squeezed back harder. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at Rex’s expression.

“Some of ghost company went out for drinks last night. Obi-Wan started acted oddly. We flew towards the temple. He started crying. We got to the temple. He Keldabe kissed me. He told me goodbye. I didn’t say anything back.”

“Oh, vod” Rex whispered. He gently pulled the slack Cody off the chair and onto his lap on the floor. Cody continued mechanically. “I did reports today. Skywalker said he was with him. I left Obi-Wan a message. I don’t think he saw it. He tried to kill himself. Skywalker must have left him alone. He saved him. Obi-Wan stabbed Skywalker.”

Rex froze, still holding on to Cody. 

“The healer called. Asked about drugs. They don’t think its drugs but they had to ask. She said they’re both going to heal completely fine. I have a link if you want to call the healer directly. That’s...it. I have reports to do now.”

Rex held Cody tighter. “Not right now”

“It’s war. People get hurt. People die. I have work to do”

“Not right now,” Rex repeated. “You have the right to be upset. You have the right to grieve. You’re a person, of course you have feelings.”

“Obi-Wan said that.” Cody whispered. Then he started crying. He continued to quietly sob for some time, hurt and bewildered and scared. They sat on the floor together; Rex barely moved, simply held on to his older brother as he fell apart.

Inevitably, Cody’s tears dried up and he pulled away. 

“I don’t know how to clean this,” he said gesturing at that closed drawer. 

“I’ll take care of it. Let’s just get you to bed. There’s CC bunks here, right? 

“Yes but...”

Cody didn’t really like sleeping so isolated, but he also couldn’t imagine facing the 212th right now. 

“I’ll stay here with you. We’ll go to the temple together in the morning.”

Rex shepherded Cody to the fresher. He stared at the mirror with a vague sense of recognition before automatically moving through a standard sanitation routine. By the time he finished, Rex had joined him in his room.

“What did you do with the vomit?” Cody asked, suddenly exhausted. They slipped into bed together.

“Swapped the whole desk with Pond’s. That bastard knows what he did.”

Cody let out a snort. Then, much to his surprise, he sank heavily into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Part X

[gretchensinister]

Little Souls and Careless Gods: An Exploration of Worldbuilding in Toy Story

Sid did nothing wrong.

Or, let me clarify. The things Sid did wrong were: taking his sister’s toys and modifying them without her permission. That’s it.

Hi, my name is gretchensinister and I have a lot of thoughts about the worldbuilding in Toy Story.

I should admit at this point that I haven’t seen Toy Story 4, only talked about it with someone who has, so if some of my questions are answered by that movie or if it torpedoes some of my speculations, that’s just—that’s just an imperfection of this essay.

I barely know where to begin, but, I started with Sid, so I’ll keep going with Sid. Sid is a kid. Sid is a jerk to his younger sister, but she’s freely yelling across the house tattling on him, so it doesn’t seem like she’s suffering irreparable damage from this. Other things Sid does: wins a squeaky toy for his dog in a claw machine game, blows up toys with fireworks, takes toys apart and joins them to other toys to make new toys. Burns a toy with a magnifying glass.

None of these things is an immoral action, for a person who, through all lived experience (until the toy attack) understands that toys are objects. It’s not bad to give your dog an object to chew on. It’s not bad (morally) to blow up an object with a firework. It’s not bad to take objects (that are yours) and make them into new, different objects. It’s not bad to burn an object with a magnifying glass. From the toys’ perspective, Sid is a sadistic mad scientist type, but from everything he could possibly know, his “torture” of Woody is messing around with an object! His object! That he got from a claw machine! The pretend torture as a choice of play is worth questioning, but it’s not so uncommon as a media trope that an average kid would never have seen anything like that in an action-adventure context. And it doesn’t predict how Sid will treat actual living beings!

(As an aside, I’m firmly of the belief that if you own an object, you should feel free to do whatever you want with it. Set it on fire, take it apart to see how it works, use it as raw materials in a craft project, etc. And yeah I would make exceptions to this rule for like, privately owned culturally significant art or scientifically significant artifacts…but if they’re that significant…they shouldn’t be privately owned.)

So yeah. Sid gets traumatized because he treats objects like objects, and the objects don’t like that. Because they’re actually alive and have now promised to constantly surveil him.

And let’s be clear: Andy doesn’t know toys are alive, either. He never does. He just has a different play style than Sid, and more of an interest in keeping his toys intact. Andy has no empathy with Woody and Buzz, because he is not aware that they are beings that he could empathize with.

All right. Beyond Sid, what I really want to talk about is the nature of a toy’s mind/soul in the Toy Story universe. I will call this the toy’s animus. Much like with the soul and mind of a human being, the animus raises several questions. How is the animus created? Where does the animus reside? Is the animus a tabula rasa, or does it possess innate knowledge? Where does this innate knowledge come from, if so? Is the animus mortal or immortal?

The Toy Story universe offers various pieces of evidence to answer these questions, and they are all extremely worrying if toys and humans are both morally significant beings, though humans do not know this about toys.

Is a toy mortal or immortal?

In the Toy Story movies it is clear that toys believe they can die. Sufficient destruction of the body would cause a toy’s death. Sid’s plan to blow up Buzz Lightyear with a firework threatens his life. In Toy Story 3, the toys in the trash incinerator clearly believe that burning/melting will kill them. But, short of catastrophic destruction of the body, toys are immortal. Jessie suffers, but does not die, from withdrawal of her owner’s love. Stinky Pete was never played with by a child, and he’s alive as any other toy. Additionally, human-mimicking toys are not killed even when damaged in ways that would kill a human, though this does affect their ability to communicate. In the tea party scene in Toy Story, the headless dolls wave when they are referred to. (This raises more questions—how does a headless doll experience the world? They can still hear, but how? Also, why doesn’t the headless teddy bear move? Perhaps they simply don’t want to get involved in whatever’s going on with Woody and Buzz.)

I think, according to what we see in the movies, the animus is divisible, and each part of the divided animus contains only a portion of the cognitive ability of the whole. Moreover, the animus is not centered in the head, but rather dispersed throughout the body. I would further argue that splitting the body/splitting the animus, is traumatic, even when reversible. Consider that Buzz’s mental breakdown coincides with the detachment of his arm.

What does this mean for Sid’s creations? Well, it would explain why they don’t talk. The baby-doll head with the spiderlike erector-set body (aside: is this a reference to The Thing (1982)?) really has no reason to be mute, if a toy simply must have a mouth to speak. Its form is unconventional, but, I would say, still “complete.” But if the head only carries an incomplete animus, and the erector set parts carry no animus of their own (an assumption which will be questioned later) then the whole toy would not have enough animus for verbal communication.

Janie the doll and the pterodactyl, with their switched heads, suffer significant disruption of their animi. Would their fractured animi eventually merge to form a new animus for each new body, with a different personality than Janie or pterodactyl? What part of the “Barbie” personality lingers in the animus of the toy crane with Barbie legs?

There is an exception to the concept of the fractured animus, however, and that is Mr. Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head exists in several parts to begin with, and mere separation does not fracture the animus. Curiously, though, some parts of Mr. Potato Head do not appear to contain any part of his animus, such as his plastic potato body. He retains all of his personality and ability to communicate when he has to put his features on a tortilla (?—don’t remember this part well) even though he is from an era of Mr. Potato Heads where his features are only meant to be put in the plastic potato body, not random foodstuffs. (Another question here: what would happen if an even amount of Mrs. Potato Head and Mr. Potato Head features were put on one plastic potato body? Do both animi retain coherence?) It is impossible not to wonder how far apart the features of Mr. Potato Head could be spread and the animus remain whole. At least as far apart as different buildings, as shown in Toy Story 3, but how much farther?

Creation of the animus and innate knowledge.

We are now about to embark on the specific topic that fills my thoughts now when I think about the Toy Story universe. I believe I will first fix myself a vodka cranberry (note: not just vodka and cranberry juice. To make it properly you must also add a splash each of orange juice and lime juice) and read a synopsis of Toy Story 4. Forky’s creation is a deep source of trouble here, and I must fortify myself to face it.

Where do I even begin? Okay. Bonnie, a kindergartner, creates Forky from items salvaged from the trash and names him. He comes to life after being named. According to the synopsis Forky then suffers an existential crisis because he believes he his trash and not a toy. So in this case, the animus appears to arrive after naming, and the animus is not a tabula rasa. The history of the materials appears to have some effect on the animus? (What this might mean for Rex or the plastic army men is especially concerning here.) It doesn’t make sense for Bonnie to think of Forky as trash, so this conviction has entered Forky’s animus from somewhere other than his creator. Also Bonnie has created sentient life without being aware of doing so, probably before being able to write a full sentence.

That’s troubling enough, because, to the eyes of adults or even older children, Forky is garbage. I project Forky’s lifespan of play to be that of months. And he won’t get passed onto other children. Depending on how Bonnie’s community disposes of trash, he may linger with an intact animus, at a landfill, for longer than Bonnie’s own life. It boggles the mind. (And invites hoarding in the empathetic.) However, despite all this, I would be cool with it if this was the only way toys became animate: being owned/named/played with by a child. That could be a complete worldbuilding conceit.

But that’s NOT how animi are generally formed in the Toy Story universe. Let’s back up to Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear has a personality and memories of his history as a space ranger right out of his box. And as we see in Toy Story 2, every Buzz Lightyear comes with that same initial personality. A commercial in Toy Story shows aisles upon aisles of Buzz Lightyears. Something has enabled the creation of thousands, if not millions, of identical animi. There is no direction this can go that isn’t kind of batshit.

Buzz Lightyear and the story that forms his memories were designed and created by adults. It was someone’s (and probably a team’s) job to design a toy that would be popular for a specific demographic, with (if I remember correctly) a cartoon that elaborates on the story and can basically serve as a long-running commercial for the toy. There were probably team meetings, and focus groups, and brand analysis to come up with the name “Buzz Lightyear.” And in such an endeavor, while I would like to imagine that there were some truly creative people involved who cared about the design and story, the people involved would not be the ones playing with the toys as toys want to be played with. And this is where every Buzz Lightyear animus comes from? But how? A manager or director approves the name and then…what? Is there a wellspring of animus that forms? Is it tied to the prototype? The factory workers in Taiwan don’t care about Buzz Lightyear the way Bonnie cares about Forky, and yet their actions in completing Buzz Lightyears call the animi to the plastic bodies. (And the animi are there, without a child’s touch. Stinky Pete was aware in his unopened box. Other toys opened a new Buzz Lightyear and got a living Buzz Lightyear.) And even leaving aside how the animi get into the Buzz Lightyears, the fact is that with millions of Buzz Lightyears out there, we have to conclude that the process that created his animus/animi is orders of magnitude more powerful than what Bonnie did to make Forky. Even assuming some personal care held by Buzz’s designers towards their design, it gets weird. The imaginations of adult toy designers are that much more powerful than a little girl creating and naming her own toy? NOT the way I would expect such a story-world to be set up, but the evidence is there.

And what if the designers of Buzz Lightyear weren’t particularly passionate? What if their boss just said “space is popular now, make me a space toy” and that’s the only reason why they did? That could very well be the case for a different type of toy in the series: the claw machine aliens. Those toys were not designed as a soulful passion project. I’m trying to write this to not be mean to designers who work in not-so-great places, but seriously. We have all seen generic toys in claw machine games before. They were not made to be immortally loved. (And yet! This is what the animus of a toy inherently desires!) Now, the claw machine aliens do seem to have much less backstory than Buzz Lightyear, and have personalities (or maybe just personality)/culture based on the nature of the claw machine. That makes sense, since they wouldn’t have been given a backstory with creation. The point is, though, that they still have animi. In the process of creating these cheap, cheap toys, by the dozens and hundreds and thousands, somehow their bodies were invested with full, identical animi. Adult, corporate creation somehow gives more life to toys than individual, child-led creation.

There are more questions to ask. If adults still have the power (and MASSIVELY MORE power) to invest toys with animi that they also possessed as children, then what can be invested with an animus? What are the limits of toy-ness in the Toy Story universe? Is it the name? I don’t think it’s the face, because there’s Woody merchandise in Toy Story 2 with Woody’s face on it that doesn’t talk. And I think that some faceless toys are shown to move independently/have an animus (possibly including things like LEGO—are the bricks a hivemind? Do the minifigs live inside sentient structures? Can they communicate with these structures? Also, if so, the erector set legs on Sid’s spider baby toy should have added to its total animus. But that’s not the corporate intent, so they’re still voiceless.). Christine (1983) could fit into this universe if the name is of primary importance (movie backstory for Christine, not book). But this would also mean that literally every boat and ship was sentient, but secretly so.*

If the name isn’t the important thing, is it the intent that the object be played with as a toy? In this case, that would mean that Bo Peep’s animus was not mass-produced, as she was originally part of a lamp if I remember correctly. Child-created animi would therefore be more common among non-toy objects than manufactured toys. I also want to bring The Brave Little Toaster (1987) up at this point. In this movie a group of appliances behave similarly to Toy Story toys in some ways, including being played with by their owner and then missing his attention to a high degree when he goes to college. However in this film all appliances and cars have animi, and I personally do not want my vacuum cleaner to feel any kind of way about me, or ever think I have played with it, because I hate vacuuming and would neglect it to death if feasible. (That being said…roombas in the Toy Story universe can hardly avoid being invested with animi, I imagine, no matter the details of the worldbuilding structure.) I bring this up, though, because Wikipedia notes that the original members of Pixar worked on The Brave Little Toaster. Toy Story was released in 1995 and was Pixar’s first feature length film. There is a connection, is what I am trying to say.

I think I have to go with: intent of the object to be a toy and/or being played with as a toy invests a toy with an animus. If it was the naming, then many, many public statues would be as alive as Woody and Buzz, and the people of Denver I’m sure have enough to worry about without Blucifer (Jiménez, 2008) galloping around. Bizarre to say that the least troubling option places mass production on a higher level of investing power than a child’s imagination. And I mean what I say about the mass produced animi being somehow more powerful than child-created animi.

Let’s go back to Sid’s creations. What is wrong with them? Why aren’t they able to communicate like Forky? Possibility 1: Sid just doesn’t have the creative power that Bonnie does. I don’t like this because, as I said at the beginning, Sid is not doing anything wrong by making these chimera toys. He’s treating objects as objects, and the difference between Sid’s chimera toys and Forky is that Forky’s component parts were not originally part of mass-produced toys. So, (from a worldbuilding/Watsonian perspective), I have to go with possibility 2, which goes like this: mass-produced toys are imbued with animi because they are toys. Sid’s chimera toys suffer from their animi being fractured when he alters them. But these fractured, mass-produced animi retain enough coherence and power that Sid, a child, cannot replace the fractured animus with whatever he imagines for his new creations. He’s an imaginative kid! But the corporate animus cannot be expelled. The factory animus is the underlying animus and cannot be removed once the toy is a toy. It can develop with memory and experience, but it will always be the toy making corporation that brought the spark of life, not the child that actually plays with the toy.

And this actually corresponds to Sid’s toys’ decision to rebel and help Woody and Buzz. Their animi are more loyal to the corporate intent that first created them. Sid made them into something new, presumably plays with them, and yet they are not Sid’s. They are meant to be read as broken and tortured (Sid has changed them from their factory-created wholeness), not as new beings. A factory-created, owned object, is meant to be held with the same level of care and maintenance of coherence as a living being in the Toy Story universe. What a child imagines about their own toys has less creative power than a distant designer who’s been told to come up with something appealing to put in a claw machine. Children only have animating power for their toys when they make them out of raw materials.

On the one hand, it’s tempting to say that of course the toys aren’t Sid’s, they’re their own people—isn’t that what having an animus means? But Woody, for example, find it very important that he’s Andy’s toy—a possession—“a child’s plaything.” Andy writes his name on him and this is very important to Woody, enough a part of his identity that when Andy’s name is painted over by the restorer in Toy Story 2 the scene reads as an erasure of something important to him, not as a restoration of his autonomy. Time and again we see that toys want to be owned by children.

This is another place where things get weird. First, I raise the question: What do toys need to keep animus and body together? Not much—only a certain baseline of bodily coherency. They don’t need to take in anything from their environment. More interesting, though, is that they don’t need anything from the children they bond to. Shelved, boxed, and forgotten toys suffer, but they don’t die from these states. No toy will ever find a toy’s corpse the way a human could find a human corpse—whole in every way except for the absence of the animating spirit.

So: toys as entities need little. The next question is then, what do toys want? Toys want to be owned and played with by a child (I say child and not children, because the communal state of the daycare in Toy Story 3 is clearly not desirable to the toys). Woody relishes his place as favorite and most played with toy at the beginning of Toy Story. In Toy Story 2 Jessie grieves when her child outgrows her. Stinky Pete was ignored by children for years, causing him to develop the abnormal belief that it would be better for the Woody’s Roundup toys to be preserved in a museum.

(At this point, I spot another thread to follow. It seems that for a toy, the most important relationship in their existence is meant to be toy + owner. In Toy Story Woody is very invested in making Buzz understand that Buzz is a toy and not a space ranger—Buzz is supposed to stay with Andy. In Toy Story 2 the consequences of not being owned by a child are grief and violence. But at the end Woody tells Buzz he’s not worried about Andy outgrowing him, since they’ll always have each other. Now, Toy Story 3 builds up Buzz/Jessie and in Toy Story 4 Bo Peep returns and Woody leaves Buzz and the other group of Andy’s toys for a life with her, but Woody also leaves the toy + owner life to be with Bo. Toys aren’t made to have an independent existence, yet this is how they end up, also acting as matchmakers to help lost toys find new owners and enter into new toy + owner relationships? THERE IS A WHOLE OTHER ESSAY HERE.)

To stay within just one rabbit hole here, however, I must focus on this: Toys want to be owned and played with by a child. They bond with child owners who do not deliberately alter their bodies (I add this because again, Sid’s toys do not appear to be bonded with him). But within this framework, there must be essential pain within a toy’s existence. Toys are immortal unless destroyed. Toys will experience actual play with a child for, let’s say, ten years, maximum, and that’s if the toy is given to the child when the child is very young and the toy is more classic/versatile than most. That’s way shorter than the best human friendships and familial relationships, and at least human beings can often reasonably hope to have lifespans that are of comparable lengths. Oh yeah, and among human beings people are usually AWARE of the relationship that’s taking place. So toys want to form deep bonds with their children and want to have these relationships last. But the relationships can’t last. I’ll gladly state that play, in some form, is necessary for humans to thrive throughout their lives, but the kind of play that the toys in Toy Story find ideal is a childhood phase of play that that most people naturally outgrow. And even if a human did engage in play ideal for toys throughout their entire life, toys are immortal unless destroyed. All toys will lose their owners, and usually after a pretty short handful of years.

The aftermath of the owner + toy relationship is always painful for the toy. What are the options? To remain owned, but not played with: perhaps the “best” option, but it still leaves the toy with only a memory of a full life. Is a shelf life really a life? This is what was facing Woody, I believe, if Andy had taken him with him to college. Another option: to be outgrown and forgotten. This is what happens to Jessie, and it is a deeply, deeply painful experience for her. She develops claustrophobia from being stored in a box. To be donated or sold at a garage sale: also a source of trauma and panic for the toys, but still better than the worst fate, to be thrown out. But toys that have been separated from their previous owners are so often grieving and/or bitter in the Toy Story series.

This is troubling, to say the least, but it also loops back to questions about the animus and memory. Toys are not tabula rasa. Buzz has a strong personality and memory set from his unboxing. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head do not need to court each other. Tour Guide Barbie will act as a tour guide in the absence of children. But with time, and accumulation of true memories as a toy, the toys will develop their own personalities, even if the animus starting point can often remain a strong influence. In Toy Story 3, however, we learn that certain toys, such as Buzz Lightyear, can be returned to the original animus state through a factory reset. I hardly know what to do with this. It wasn’t a permanent reset; Buzz’s memories and the personality he’s developed do come back. (But now he also has access to a “Spanish mode” that is…sexier (can such a word apply?) to Jessie than his English mode. Also other toys can put him into his mode against his will. There are so many worms in this can. Sexualization of Latinx people, can a toy expect bodily autonomy from other toys, etc.?) But not every toy has a reset button. Woody doesn’t. Slinky Dog, Rex, Mr. Potato Head, etc. don’t. Does the threat of a reset only affect toys with bodily components that could be considered brain analogues, i.e., microchips? But the animus is not the “brain” and neither does the “brain” store memories/personality. I really, really don’t know what to do with this, except it seems once again to assert the ultimate strength of the adult/corporate-created animus.

The point is, toys can lose their memories, but when we see that in the movies, it leads the toy to go back to their earliest state.

Now: a mystery. In Toy Story, Woody has developed enough memory and personality that he is well aware of being a toy and is involved with the life of Andy’s room in ways that neither his sheriff role or Andy’s imagination reasonably encompasses. (Consider the “Plastic Corrosion Awareness Meeting.”) All right. This would be of no concern if Woody was a generic wild west doll, but he’s not. He was made to represent a character on the Woody’s Roundup TV show in the 1950s. He would have had an animus strongly imprinted with that backstory just like Buzz Lightyear had his strongly imprinted space ranger backstory. Well, then maybe this means that Woody just never lost his memory. That would be the best explanation. That’s why he has a personality mostly free from this imprinted backstory, having been Andy’s favorite toy for some time. But Woody has lost his memory. In Toy Story 2, Woody learns (learns!) that he’s a representation of a TV character. He meets Jessie and Bullseye and Stinky Pete without knowing who they are at all. Woody has somehow completely forgotten his origins. He experienced memory loss that brought him farther away from his animus starting point.

Okay, so there are multiple kinds of amnesia for toys; I was wrong in my earlier assertion that memory loss tends to the origin animus. But I want to keep poking at Woody’s memory issues because of something else that Woody’s timeline leads me to conclude: Andy is not Woody’s first owner, OR Woody was boxed up and forgotten for DECADES before Andy. Actually, he’s probably spent a significant amount of time in storage or on a shelf regardless of whether Andy is his first owner or not.

Toy Story was released in 1995. If the story is set in the present, then Andy is very close to my age. Now, Woody is “an old family toy” according to Toy Story 2, and Al, as a toy collector, was so thrilled and astonished to find a Woody at a garage sale that he stole him when he learned he wasn’t actually for sale. This leads me to the conclusion that Woody toys aren’t in continuous production. Woody was probably only manufactured during the height of Woody’s Roundup’s popularity, in the 1950s. So there’s two options for Woody’s ownership history. I’m also going to presume in both cases that Andy’s father was the parent that previously owned him, though there’s no reason why his mother couldn’t have been the owner.

So, option one: the young parents/young grandparents option. If Andy’s grandparents had his father when they were about twenty, and then Andy’s parents had Andy when they were about twenty, then Andy’s grandfather could have gotten Woody at ideal playing age and then later passed him down to Andy’s father and then Andy’s father would have passed him to Andy. I don’t think this is the case, though, because Woody still has his incredibly rare hat and a functional voice box. If Woody had been played with by a child at ideal playing age at the height of the popularity of his character’s show, I think it’s likely that he would have gotten played with so much (and taken to places so much) that he would have lost his hat and his voice box would have worn out. Woody didn’t start off life as a collectible, and play causes wear and tear on toys. And if Woody was originally the grandfather’s toy, then he would have gone through another round of play with Andy’s father. Woody’s condition is too good for that. Unless, that is, Andy’s whole family is made up of people who are unusually careful with their toys? That’s sort of an intriguing idea, since it means that Sid’s actions look even more horrifying by contrast, and generations of “ideal owners” for Woody obscure the bizarre nature of the life of a thinking, feeling toy. However, the Toy Story universe keeps raising questions in Toy Story 2-4 about what it means to be a toy, so there doesn’t seem to be a motivation in the series for such obscuring. This is despite the fact that Woody’s amnesia does obscure some things about the nature of a toy’s life, at least in the original Toy Story. (I know the Doylist perspective answers all this easily—this isn’t what the audience is meant to think about, Woody’s backstory as a toy from a 1950s TV show isn’t important in Toy Story, and in fact this backstory didn’t exist until Toy Story 2 was created.)

Regardless, I don’t think the young parents/young grandparents option is the right one. Instead, I choose option 2: the slightly older parents option. Woody’s Roundup is a TV show from the 1950s. It was popular enough to lead to a lot of merchandise, not just the dolls of the main characters. Brief research shows that in the 1950s television Westerns were incredibly popular, and there were Westerns made for kids and Westerns made for adults. The question I’m trying to get at here is trying to figure out how Andy’s grandparents would have known about a kid’s Western show. But, it’s really not that difficult. In this timeline I’m building now, Andy’s father would have been born in the 1950s, making him in his early-mid thirties when he became Andy’s father. Given this timeline, it’s overwhelmingly likely that Andy’s father has siblings, including older siblings, that might already watch Woody’s Roundup. Or, even if Andy’s father was the oldest child, it’s also overwhelmingly likely that Andy’s grandparents’ friends had plenty of kids of their own and probably talked among themselves about what kids liked. The significant thing in this timeline is that Woody would have been given to Andy’s father when Andy’s father was very young. Perhaps too young for a Woody doll, but perhaps also with the assumption that Andy’s father would grow into the doll. So Woody is unboxed and waits on a shelf for a couple years while Andy’s father grows a little. My theory is that Woody’s Roundup was no longer on television by the time Andy’s father was at the right age to start playing with a doll of Woody’s type. This would have two consequences. One: Andy’s father would have been unguided by the TV show in regard of how to play with Woody, meaning that Woody would have formed many memories unrelated to his original animus in this early stage of his life. Two: even though Woody was played with, he never was Andy’s father’s favorite toy, which is why he was able to be passed down to Andy in good condition (and still with his hat).

In this option 2, which I feel is more likely, Woody has probably spent at least 25 years on a shelf or in storage. So why is this important? I think it’s important because Woody doesn’t act like he’s been through the decades-in-storage experience, or the experience of having an owner outgrow him. He sympathizes with Jessie after learning her story, but he says nothing about having experienced anything like it himself. And as far as the movies are concerned, his worries about Andy outgrowing him are new worries. But they can’t be new! He’s already been outgrown at least once before! I mean, with Andy he’s a favorite toy, so that’s a unique owner + toy relationship status that he (probably) didn’t have before. Maybe that amplifies what he’s going through this time?

But there’s another aspect to Woody’s experiences that I want to touch on. All the other toys he would have known as Andy’s father’s toy are gone. There are no other “heirloom” toys in Andy’s room, or at least there is no evidence of this. All of Andy’s other toys seem to have been purchased just for Andy, and purchased new. There is no reference to garage sale trauma, previous owners, or anything like that. And as we’ve seen from other toys throughout the series, toys remember that kind of thing! But Woody doesn’t. His animus is one that shows years of experience building over his character backstory, but he never acts like he’s experienced being outgrown or losing all his toy friends.

Or at least he never says anything about such experiences.

I think it makes sense to read Woody’s amnesia as genuine. But I also think it would be reasonable to read his character as one that has undergone traumatic experiences and has responded by burying them so deep within his mind that he has no conscious access to them, even though they influence his current personality and life. (It’s impossible to know, but do toys in every household respond to birthdays and Christmas with such intense monitoring—with the desire for even the slightest early warning of replacement? Woody is the one who worries most about these celebrations, extremely anxious of his own status as favorite toy.) That the ending of Toy Story 4 removes him from the cycle of ownership and outgrowing can’t be ignored. Better to not have an owner than to experience losing an owner again, and again, and again?

But I do think there is one other possibility: Andy’s ownership of Woody caused him to lose all his memories of Andy’s father. A child may not be able to give a manufactured toy a new animus, but by possessing a toy in a play relationship (as opposed to a collector relationship) a child may be able to overwrite any memories of the toy’s previous owner. The process doesn’t happen instantaneously, as Andy’s toys don’t immediately forget him upon being transferred to Bonnie, but it would certainly explain why Woody makes no reference ever to a previous owner, even though he was most likely manufactured at least 35 years before coming into Andy’s possession. However, Jessie’s story argues against this. While she is happy among Andy’s toys, there’s nothing to show that she is forgetting her own past.

The possibility of a new child owner driving out all thoughts of the previous one is interesting, as it puts some degree of power over the toy’s animus back with the child. However, in the Toy Story universe, it’s clear that if this is the case, it’s not an instantaneous process. And if it’s not an instantaneous process, then it becomes overly complex. What memories would be driven out? For toys less adventurous than the main characters of the Toy Story movies, their whole lives are centered on their owners. They live in their child’s room/house. Anything that took place there would have to be forgotten to not bring up thoughts of the previous owner, including conversations with other toys that were friends of that first toy. At this point we approach a state of complete memory loss before the claim by a new owner. A gradual process would at least allow continuity of personality, since new memories under the new owner would be continually being made. But then, some new memories would have to fade, also. For wouldn’t a toy talk about their past while they could still remember it? And wouldn’t their new friends maybe bring up their past in conversation sometimes? They might even talk about the process of forgetting. That process would be noticed and known among toys. No, after thinking about it, I would say that there is no inherent forgetting process. Memories will mostly tend to stay, with whatever pain and joy they bring. And there will never be any transition process that is easy for the toy.

Woody’s amnesia remains his own, and remains his best defense against the trauma of being outgrown and shelved or stored for many years.

Toys have a strange and painful lot in life, semi-immortals being made to be silent companions to the briefest stage of a mortal lifespan. They live because they are made for children, but for most, in this world of mass production, children do not create them. Their animi are the spawn of creators who have no intent to create thinking, feeling beings. Escaping the stamp of such thoughtless creation means living long enough to know the deepest loss a toy can experience. Sometimes the only way to move forward from such loss is to forget. And yet, there is little will for most toys to move beyond this cycle. Toys overwhelmingly retain their roles as objects. I’d like to say that maybe this means that play is worth it, that temporary joy is worth it. But maybe it’s just the nature of being a toy. After all, if there’s any intent in their creation, there was the intent that they should be objects.

*I would never leave a dangling asterisk. My previous point was about ships and boats, but, if seagoing vehicles live because they are named, then there’s no reason why land vehicles would not do the same. It might be possible to argue that the Cars universe came about after some cataclysm wiped out humans and left only named vehicles behind.

Other avenues of investigation that were beyond the scope of this essay:

1) The situation between the Diamonds and every other gem in Steven Universe is highly analogous to the situation between humans and toys in the Toy Story universe, save for the crucial difference that the Diamonds have no excuse to not know that the other gems are complete feeling, thinking beings and to treat them as such. It was actually parallels I saw between Spinel + Pink Diamond and Jessie + her owner that got me thinking about aspects of the Toy Story universe in ways that I know are meant to be ignored. Also Pink Diamond bringing all those little pebble people to life just by crying on them. That’s a lot of responsibility coming from a solitary expression of emotion!

2) I’d be curious to know if a hugely popular series based on the agency of objects has had an effect on fan culture at all. Or it might at least be a way to examine actions taken on behalf of characters. Fictional characters, after all, don’t feel any kind of way about the situations and relationships people envision them in. They’re mental objects like toys are physical objects. In the real world is anyone going to argue that putting the faces of dolls or action figures together and making kissing noises is something to worry about? Is anything about putting a naked Barbie on top of a naked Ken a harmful act? In the real world I would say no. Also, with full awareness that this is a can of worms, what is the impact of such things in the Toy Story universe? Obviously this wouldn’t be addressed in any canon. But the Toy Story universe is supposed to be like reality with one big secret so there are kids that are definitely using their toys to play out love stories and stories including a vague understanding of sex. And another aspect to all this…if you’ve seen Booksmart, consider one of the characters’ uses of her childhood stuffed animal. I understand that this is not uncommon.

All right. I think I’m done now. And that I will probably go get another drink.

(I had a few baby dolls as a child that included their own toys as accessories. H—how would THAT work?)

[notquitetwilight]

What are your headcanons about Alice's personality before vampirism? Once she became a vampire she was able to choose who she wanted to be, or maybe deep down she was able to recognize things she liked from her past and maybe built off of that? For example, if she liked helping her mother sew dresses (that didn't actually happen) then maybe that's why she has such a strong desire for fashion even if she doesn't know why. Something like that. I hope I'm making sense!

This makes perfect sense and I love this! Thank you for letting me fire up my actual brain cells lol. Smeyer is kinda contradictory when it comes to Alice — on one hand Alice only gets visions based on people’s decisions, but on the other she bases her whole vampire life on a vision of Jasper saying her name. Jasper would’ve only known her name from Alice telling him, but Alice only knows her name from the vision of Jasper calling her by it. That doesn’t make sense to me because she makes the decision to find Jasper and then the Cullens after her vision, not before it, so how’d she even have the vision of that happening in the first place if she hadn’t made that decision yet? Does that make sense? I don’t get it lol

I like to think she has some subconscious sense of her human self. Alice was her middle name after all so clearly she didn’t pull that out of the sky when it became her forename as a vampire. I can picture her human self being similarly spirited to how she is as a vampire, as well as her having a very strong sense of self or of trust in her own instinct. We know she had visions as a human and I’m sure when she woke as a vampire she knew to trust in those visions because of how her human self had been right about her mother’s murder etc, even if she had no conscious recollection of that. So, if we go with this theory, here are some possible aspects of her human life that might explain Alice’s current personality/interests:

- From the moment she was born, Alice shared a close bond with her mother, unlike her daddy’s girl of a sister. This is why Mrs. Brandon believed in her visions when nobody else did.

- Her mother was beautiful, and Alice inherited not only her pixie-like features, but her eye for fashion and beauty. She’d often be all dressed up with nowhere to go as she tended to the house while her husband travelled and worked.

- Mrs. Brandon would let her play dress-up in her wardrobe from a very young age, and little Alice would beg her to do her makeup so she could feel as beautiful as the woman she admired so much looked. She always eventually gave in, but told Alice she wasn’t allowed to look until she was finished. She’d then lead her over to the mirror, her hands over Alice’s eyes, and do a big reveal each time. Alice would always gasp and hug her in delight, and her mother would kiss the top of her head and say, “my beautiful little doll.”

- As Alice grew older, she loved helping out at her father’s jewellers so that she could people-watch. The shop was always filled with rich southern belles getting their husbands to buy them expensive jewellery. She loved fantasising about being able to afford what those whose style she admired bought, while also silently judging those she felt had more money than taste.

- Her father usually kicked her out after an hour or two of her starting work because she was so daydreamy, and he’d impatiently tell her she made the customers uncomfortable.

- But one regular, an elderly widow, would always request Alice’s assistance specifically. She’d have the girl trail around after her, accessorising a diamond necklace here with a diamond bracelet there. She had a rather harsh way of speaking, but she’d always shake Alice’s hand and slip her a $50 note after purchasing from her father at the register. The lady had very little time for Mr. Brandon, and when she came in and asked for “the short young lady” after Alice had been institutionalised, he told her she would not be returning but he’d be happy to assist. She gave him a long, hard look before leaving the store, and he never saw her again.

- Her mother taught her to sew. She’d stay up practicing until all hours, and eventually started sketching her own dress designs. The first piece of clothing Alice ever designed and made from scratch was a surprise dress for her mother, made from an expensive, pale blue fabric she had bought from the saved $50 bills. Her mother was in so much awe of her daughter’s talent and thoughtfulness that her eyes welled up as she ran her fingers over the garment.

- When others began speaking about Alice’s visions, accusing her of being a witch, a changeling or simply cursed, Mrs. Brandon would comfort her and tell her to ignore them. “You’ll never lead yourself wrong, Mary,” she told her firmly. “Always count on yourself.” Alice occasionally overheard her parents arguing about her throughout her childhood and teenage years, her father insisting she be sent away. But her mother always came to her defense, and the last time she heard them argue, the usually gentle woman was so infuriated she yelled that she would discuss it no further — that Alice would be sent away over her dead body.

- Alice was thereby sickened to forsee her mother’s murder, and was so hysterically panicked she struggled to tell her of what she saw in a coherent manner. Her mother tried to reassure her that she’d be cautious — that nothing would happen, that she’d never leave her — but the pit in the girl’s stomach never went away.

- Mrs. Brandon’s death left Alice feeling very strange. She took it hard, but it had also felt like a nightmare inevitable to come true. She imagined herself standing on a train platform, watching two trains headed for a collision and powerless to stop it. People whispered about how she wore a pale blue dress instead of black to the funeral, but she couldn’t hear them through her grief. She also foresaw that nobody would believe her when she claimed her mother had been murdered, but she tried to tell them anyway to no avail. For the first time, despite years of being mocked and ostracised for it, she began to hate her gift.

- She was grateful for it again just a few months later though, having envisioned her father and his new wife attempting to kill her. The vision gave her just enough time to make her escape, ultimately saving her life. She swore she’d only ever follow her late mother’s advice from then on and always trust in herself and what she saw.

- When she woke as a vampire, the first vision she had was Jasper saying her name. The next was of the pair of them surrounded by the rest of the Cullens. She was resolute that these visions were leading her to the life she was destined to live, despite having no recollection of her past.

- About a month after she joined the Cullens, Alice stood at the door of Esme’s studio, where her already maternal figure was painting inside. She didn’t know what had possessed her to do what she had done for this person she barely knew, but something about it felt right.

“Esme?” she called as she knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Esme said absentmindedly, concentrating on the landscape she was working on. Alice burst through the door excitedly, causing her to look up in alarm.

“I have something for you. And I’ve already seen: you’re going to love it!”

Esme’s shoulders relaxed. She smiled and set her paintbrush down. “I’m sure I will. What have you got there?” She gestured to the material folded over Alice’s arm. “Spoiling me already?”

Alice proudly held up her latest creation from its hanger. “I designed a dress, just for you.”

[eyezari]

math tutor (tsukki x f!reader)

you’ve been annoying tsukishima to be your math tutor considering he was the top student and he keeps rejecting you,, one day you finally give up and ask the second top student for help and he clearly was not happy about it

consider this!!!

→ gender-neutral y/n!  

→ little angst.... if you squint..

→ possessive tsukki?? is this even a warning

→ not punctuated correctly

“just this one question? surely...!” you plead, holding tightly onto your textbook. you were so close to failing this semester and you really needed your average to be lifted through the upcoming exams. when everyone thought it was the easiest subject, you found it the most difficult. 

so you’re back again, the next day. tsukki was used to you coming up to him every lesson to ask for help,, in fact its been going on since the beginning of the year. and he never helped. not once. 

you don’t know why you kept coming back and begging him when you knew damn well he was gonna give you the same harsh answer. he would say things like, ‘are you dumb? of course not.’ or ‘not in a million years.’ and his personal favourite, ‘please come back during business hours.” (you still don’t know when that is)

yamaguchi, who sat next to him looked at you two amused. “please! this is probably the most difficult one yet. khan academy didn’t help. i’ve tried everything.” tsukishima didn’t even bat an eye, he didn’t even spare a glance and his head down onto his page. you sigh. 

“y/n, who do you take me for?” he finally said and you sigh again. you were seriously lost and the math teacher is always out of the room doing whatever. the revision notes, you just didn’t understand. and your friends just gave you shallow explanations. 

the reason why you went to him in the first place is when you overheard him teaching another girl in class. she didn’t understand anything but it’s like he adapted her learning method and explained it to her like it was the easiest thing in the world. after that, that girl never failed to get good grades. ‘why doesn’t he wanna teach me?.. it’s just one question..’ you thought. 

to be honest, your heart would just ache whenever you thought about it. he decided to help someone else and they passed the whole year but couldn’t give you a single answer. you groan, scratching your head when you read the question again. then you turned to hinata, “hey, tsukishima has helped you guys out before right?”

“tsukishima? yeah but he gave up after and refused to teach us anymore, lol.” he smiles at you before going back to playing with his volleyball keychain. oh. so it was really just you who he refused to help. maybe it’s because you’re not close? no, you’ve known each other for quite sometime.. as.. friends. wait, no.. acquaintances? your jaw dropped as you realised, ‘does he not even think of me as a friend......bruh..’ 

you shook your head and just kept doing the rest of the practice test, skipping questions that you were unsure of.

the next week after you marked your practice test; you realised you were still way behind. you barely passed half of it, with an underwhelming score of 30 out of 58. you still didn’t understand most of it. not even photomath explained well. you sneak a peek at tsukki’s paper... 58 out of 58.. huh. interesting. he recently went on a training camp for volleyball club and still managed to study well. you stood up to stand in front of his desk which was next to yours. 

“tsukki.” you try and get his attention, but with his headphones on his head, it might be difficult. you repeated his name several times, nervously fidgeting with your fingers. you noticed he was in a sort of sour mood after his volleyball training camp and you couldn’t help but to feel bad you were disturbing him. 

with a scowl on his face, he removes his headphones. “what now?”

you became even more nervous now that his attention was on you. “um, can i just ask how you did the quadratic relations part.. i just don’t quite understand.” you said quietly. 

he only glared at you. “y/n, you must be fucking with me.” he said suddenly, catching you off guard. “how many times do i have to say no? it’s been too long. don’t you know how to give up? you’re so annoying honestly, get it through your brain. i’ll never teach you anything” those words hit you like a truck. especially because they came from tsukki. 

tears stung at your eyes and honestly, you were at a loss for words. you wanted to apologise and explain yourself but you couldn’t. a thought went through your head, ‘maybe it is annoying to constantly ask him for help..’ 

you muttered a “sorry” before quickly returning to your seat, not to mention that yamaguchi was quite shocked too and gave you an apologetic smile. you felt extremely embarrassed he just said that in front of the whole class. a few minutes later, you excused yourself from class and ran to the bathroom just to fix yourself up. somehow, you were choking on your tears.

it really shouldn’t have hurt you this much, but knowing you made tsukki dislike you even more just hit a different nerve. 

the next few days, you’ve been trying hard. but clearly not hard enough since you are still barely passing the revision. you were extremely disappointed in yourself since you did make an effort to learn but it simply wasn’t enough. you really wanted to apologise to tsukki but knew it would make things worse so you didn’t even try to talk to him. but you were hopeless, you just needed the explanation to the topic because you didn’t have anyone around you to ask. 

then you had an idea... the second top student named saiki came back from his trip. surely he’d help you just a little bit. you glance to your right, to where his desk was. and he did attend school! working up the courage to ask him, you turned to him. “welcome back.” and he smiled at you, waving at you. 

“how are your studies?” he said, resting his head on his palm. 

you groaned, “bad. i am literally hopeless at this. do you mind just explaining the parabola thing? i just don’t get it.” this caught the attention of many people around you. especially tsukki. your classmates suddenly thought it was weird you weren’t bugging tsukishima, maybe you have finally learnt your lesson. 

yamaguchi’s ears perked up as well, and suddenly everyone was lowkey trying to listen. “yeah!” and you smiled brightly. saiki moves his desk to get closer to you and he starts explaining the problem. at first it was confusing, but he tried to dumb it down for you as much as possible. you were seriously grateful because you understood most of it.

“thank you so much, jesus christ.” you sighed in relief. “so it opens downwards and the directrix is 2?” 

“yup. good job.” he pats you on the head. you smiled back. 

“wrong.” someone called out randomly, and you turned to your left to see it was tsukishima. “it’s 4.” he looked displeased. extremely.

saiki looked lost. “hm, i wonder where i made the error. do you mind explaning it to me then?” he asks tsukki.

his face darkened. “i do mind,,” and saiki just smiled awkwardly.

“y/n, it’s been a couple weeks. i’ll teach myself and i’ll get back to you later. is that fine with you?” saiki offered, returning his desk to the original position.

“yeah, thank you.” you grinned. you turned to your left again and saw tsukishima basically frowning.

why is he so rude today? what’s going on? is he okay? your head fills with random thoughts as you worry about him. 

the lesson seemed to go for hours and the heavy atmosphere between the two of you grew and it was excruciating. when you were finally dismissed, you had to stay back to clean the classroom. but you didn’t expect tsukki and yamaguchi to stay back too, considering they have club activities.

“hey yamaguchi, don’t you guys have club activities?” 

“yeah, we do but tsukki is on class duty. i’m about to leave soon.” he said sheepishly, grabbing his bag. 

so coincidentally you were on class duty with tsukishima. out of all days, you sighed heavily. 

you two were left in the class and he didn’t hesitate to start moving the desks. but you stood still, and stared at him. he was so pretty. 

heat rose to your cheeks as you recollected your thoughts and started packing up. it was an awkward silence as you two tidied the room. you were in the middle of wiping the board when he suddenly said, “open your textbook.” 

you were taken back. “what?” 

“you heard me.” he said bluntly. “open your textbook.”

“but why?” you stuttered a little bit.

“do you want me to teach you or not?” 

your face flushed. teach you? your mind blanked. “hnnn...” you couldn’t form coherent sentences “yes.. please.” 

he began to tutor you the study material. tsukki was obviously frustrated trying to teach you. it was like teaching a cat how to do dog tricks after all. you scratched your head at one question, still not getting it. 

you pursed your lips. it’s been 10 minutes and you’re not past the first half of the question. tsukki groans. “what you do is..” he explained it perfectly. but it went straight through your ears. you were too busy staring at his features, he was so close to you. 

this was the first time you realised how hard you fell for him, and tears pricked your eyes as your cheeks began to turn red. holy shit. i really like him. but chances are, i’m just a nobody to him. 

“y/n. are you even paying attention? this is why i didn’t wanna teach you.” he pinched his nose in stress. your heart sank. you didn’t want to inconvenience him any further.

“we can stop now, it’s getting late and you still have club activities right? i can buy you snacks tomorrow. thank you tsukishima.” you said with a sheepish smile. 

he furrowed his eyebrows. you just used his real name and not his nickname. he just found it odd how you wanted to stop so soon. you started packing up your things.

“it’s not even past 5. you need to learn this chapter.” he said abruptly. 

you stood up and grabbed your bag. “no, no seriously, it’s okay. i’ll just study tomorrow and-”

he grabbed your wrist and pulled you down. “and let you talk to saiki? no thanks.”

you were speechless once again, face red once more. “only i can teach you. understand?” he looks at you right in the eyes and all you wanted to do in that moment was to disappear. reluctantly, you nod. 

‎ ‏ ‐ ‑ ‒ – — ―

you can clearly tell my language is eu/au LMFAOO its the ‘surely’ for me GUYS COMMENT PLS ! I NEED INTERACTIONS 

[colonel-insomniac]

Wait

@my-blood-is-maple-syrup @pawsomelybuggy ive done it again, don’t be mad at me though :D. potential sorry in advance for what im about to do. OH listen to  this playlist but only if you want 

After landing on earth, Kai and Pon were instantaneously dazzled by the dizzying brightness. It was such a stark difference to the darkness of Azurelle that for a moment, everything seemed perfectly balanced, like a piece of glass saved from teetering off the edge of a table. 

But of course, as is the case, glass fragments and shatters. Ezra fell to the dirt, gasping for air, though he couldn’t be choking, because he wasn’t eating anything. He wrapped his hands around his neck, trying to convey his need for help. Kai didn’t realize at first, his mind dark and empty in response to the dazzling light, blinded by the beauty of it all. 

He turned his head at the continued sound of coughing, dropping to his knees when the situation registered. Pon had been kneeling by Ezra’s side, trying to help the boy, and Kai checked for breath exiting Ezra’s body, trying to narrow down what might be happening as he tried to push the rising panic and fear down, if only for Ezra’s sake. Unfortunately, no air was entering or exiting from Ezra, and Kai looked at Pon, frozen with horror. With Ezra rapidly turning a pale blue-purple shade, Pon began attempting to physically insert air into the other boy’s body through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation methods. 

Kai thinks it works for a bit, but doesn’t know how to contact emergency services. Does Earth have emergency services? 

Abandoning all care, he pats down Ezra in case he happens to have a phone on him, and thankfully finds one, which he flashes to Ezra, who grabs his hand and traces the following numbers: nine, one, and one. Kai dials and is bombarded with questions that he does his best to answer, eventually giving up when they ask for his location, opting to ask if they can instead trace the call, as he isn’t too sure of where he is at the moment. 

The lady on the other end of the line asks for him to stay on the line, and after a couple minutes tells him an ambulance, police officer, and fire truck being sent over. Kai pleads with them to hurry, unable to hide the fear in his voice anymore.

It seems they’re too late, though. By the time the medics arrive, Pon has reported the worst news that Kai thinks he could ever hear. There’s no breath, no pulse. 

Kai felt that his own breath and pulse were completely gone, his world shattered. It feels like it doesn’t matter whether he were on Azurelle or on Earth. What was the point of life if your lover was dead, taken by some unknown force? He found himself unable to convey the overwhelming sorrow, eyes dry and mouth glued shut. 

Kai watched as the medics loaded Ezra into an ambulance and had to be dragged by Pon to said vehicle. He felt stuck, like he would forever be rooted to this very spot, his heart shattered.

But later, it seems all is not necessarily lost, because somehow the doctor’s are able to locate the faintest of heartbeats with their fancy medical technology, and Kai desperately holds on to that sliver of hope. They are not allowed to visit Ezra, his condition to unstable and unique that they must put him in an intensive care unit to closely monitor him. Without any reason to be there, Pon throws an arm around Kai in nearly matched misery, and guides a still numb Kai out of said care facility, despite a nurse calling attention to Kai’s various wounds. 

He genuinely had forgotten about that, had been too consumed that his brain allowed him to bypass the cruel pain that was gradually settling back into his bones. Kai thought of both nothing and everything, his mind searching for answers, because something told him that Ezra wasn’t choking because of some typical medical thing. All he could think of was what if they had done something wrong, and Ezra was still somehow tethered to Azurelle? What if this was the Azurellian government metaphorically pulling the leash, reminding Pon and Kai that they won’t ever escape, not when they have this venomous grip on Ezra. 

The pair slowly make their way back to the spot they had landed on, now filled with memories of horrific events that had just taken place. Looking off into the distance, Kai can just barely make out a trail, for some reason, before the war, Ezra had wandered off the beaten path and ventured into raw nature instead. 

There had to be something poetic about that, but Kai’s mind didn’t have the capacity to consider that at the moment, still could barely form a coherent thought. The pair make their way back to the path, and looked both ways. One side led further into the forest, further into a mystery promising adventure, and the other back to society. They go back to society, not willing to embark on another journey after the hurt had still been so fresh. 

Kai kept a firm hold on Pon’s hand the whole time, fearing that the moment he let go, his best friend would disappear too. As they approach the cross section between nature and society, a couple that looks oddly familiar run up to the two boys. 

The woman, her voice watery asks if either of them have seen a boy “...named Ezra Watts.” A thousand memories flash in Kai’s mind in less than a second. “It’s hard to explain,” The man adds, “but he was supposed to be back today and we aren’t sure what’s happening.” Kai looks wide and watery eyed at Pon, who thinks for a moment, not sure how to order his words. 

“This is going to seem crazy, but we know your son. The rest would be easier if we were away from prying eyes and ears.” The man who Kai now assumes to be Ezra’s father nods, and wraps an arm around his wife, gesturing for Kai and Pon to follow.

They have a nice house. That’s all Kai can get through his brain, which is a slight improvement, tracing patterns on the couch he’s currently sitting on. He lets Pon do most of the explaining, but can’t miss the curious glances at him. 

“...from Azurelle,” He picks up on the spark of fear at the name of their home planet. “I’m Pon, and this is Kai. We managed to escape, but only thanks to the kindness of your son. He saw something in us that convinced him to help us out. If he hadn’t, execution is what we would have faced.” Pon places his hands in his lap, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. 

They nod, but look over to Kai, because the look of distraught that has been etched onto his face is a tad bit more concerning to them. Something more is going on there and he knows they know. Pon places a hand on Kai’s shoulder, “Kai and your son, they—well, that is to say that they mutually appreciate each other in the way that you guys do.” Pon then nods, happy with being able to dance around outright saying it, and despite his negative emotions, Kai can’t help snorting at his friend’s ridiculousness. 

Ezra’s mom blankly regards Kai, before nodding and smiling at him, and Kai can feel the heat rise in his cheeks. With a shaky breath, Kai opens his mouth, knowing that if he loves Ezra, he has to say something. “When we arrived here, your son began choking, we don’t know exactly why that happened, but we managed to get hiim to a hospital, and they put him in this thing called an intensive care unit. They found he was still alive so they’re monitoring him right now.” Kai inspects his hands, eyes stinging. 

The mom nods, standing and offering a hand that Kai takes. The dad gestures for Pon to follow, and remains seated himself, face sad and staring out a window into a sunny lawn. She opens a door, leading to a bedroom that’s decorated with foreign posters and objects. Kai realizes at once that this has to be Ezra’s room, and presses his hands to his face. Ezra’s mom tells them to take as long as they need before backing out and leaving them. Kai glances around the room, landing on the bed, with a blanket patterned with some sports ball. 

There’s a childlike air to his room, a messiness that comes from never resting and being in a rush. There’s a small squeak, and Kai finds Pon opening Ezra’s closet doors, peering at the different items stored within. He hesitantly walks over, fingers catching on a soft cotton material. He pulls it off its hanger and finds it to be a hoodie. He glances at Pon, cheeks burning when Pon smiles and nods, sliding the garment on. 

At once, he’s overwhelmed with the scent of Ezra, and he stumbles over to the bed, head in his hands and just cries. All this buildup, but it feels so good to let it all out, and Kai knows he needs to let himself just feel this pain and anger and sorrow. Pon sits beside him and hugs Kai, doesn’t move until Kai wipes his eyes and hugs his friend back. 

When he’s ready, they leave the room, Kai still wearing Ezra’s hoodie, and join Ezra’s parents, who don’t comment on the apparel change or his puffy eyes. They do, however, express a desire to see their son, even through glass windows, so they pile up in a car and drive around until Pon points out the building they had gone to. 

The doctor’s deliver a grim prognosis: there’s hope for Ezra, but due to the amount of time without oxygen, he’s in a coma. They aren’t too sure when—or if —he’ll wake up, or what his brain activity would look like. 

Exhausted and out of tears, Kai puts a shaky hand on the window, the cool glass serving as the barrier between them. Ezra’s mom cries quietly, turned with her face pressed into her husband’s shoulder. Pon’s quiet, as he typically is during times of grief and sorrow, and with his other hand, Kai grabs a hold of Pon’s hand. 

A month goes by, and Ezra still hasn’t woken, doctor’s determined to not give up on him. Kai visits every day, walking to the hospital on his own sometimes, and always asks for any updates from the doctor’s. They’ve begun to give him cookies when he visits, silently fearing that he isn’t eating. Which he is, but his appetite isn’t really there. 

But soon after that one month mark, Ezra has stabilized enough to be let out of the ICU, where they let Kai in to visit him. After a while the receptionist stops asking for information and lets him find his way to Ezra, for which he’s grateful. When he’s alone in the room with Ezra, he can almost pretend the wires aren’t there and their in a home all their own, with Pon, of course. 

And he just talks. About anything and everything. He discusses his found love for classical music, specifically a composer named Bach, he talks about the weather, he tells him how much he misses Ezra, how much he wishes that Ezra were awake so he could say all the things he didn’t realize he should have said back on Azurelle. 

Another two months pass, with Kai still visiting, Ezra still improving but not responsive. He still talks, or sits in silence, holding Ezra’s hand, sometimes places it against his cheek to feel the miniscule warmth. Today he just sits, nervous for some reason, his fingers at first fussing with the hem of his own shirt before moving to frantically comb through Ezra’s hair in an attempt to comb through it. It’s gotten longer than it had been when he first arrived on Azurelle, and something tells Kai that Ezra wouldn’t like it like that. Not that it’s extremely long or anything, but it’s something that he just feels within his heart of hearts. 

He misses the furrowing of Ezra’s brows, overtaken by an urge to do something. But when Ezra moves his head, Kai freezes, his eyes widening as he looks down at Ezra’s face. He holds his breath, heart beating frantically with hope. And then Ezra opens his eyes, looking slightly confused before turning his gaze to look at Kai, who’s pressing the button he was told to push if—when— Ezra woke up. Two nurses walk in, and after a minute of poking, prodding, and taking notes, they finally begin to remove the breathing tube. Ezra never takes his eyes off Kai, swimming with an unreadable emotion. He briefly looks away when the nurses ask him questions to assess any brain damage, but shortly after, the nurses leave, reminding the two boys they’re just outside, one of them intending to let Ezra’s parents—and by proxy, Pon— know. 

Ezra slides his gaze back to Kai, squinting as though he were thinking hard about something. After a moment, he whispers “Kai?” 

The shorter boy nods, and throws his arms around Ezra, sobbing with relief. Ezra pats his back, returning the embrace. “What happened?” He asks after a moment. Kai pulls away but doesn’t let go of Ezra. 

“When we got to Earth, you began to...choke, and we couldn’t figure out why or how to help, and you lost consciousness. I thought— you... it’s been three months and I’ve been so scared.” Ezra looks away, something like fear floating in his eyes. But he shakes his head and when he looks back to Kai, any sign of that is gone. 

“So, Bach? Not a Mozart fan?” Kai’s mouth falls open, and he’s not sure what Ezra’s getting at, at first. 

Then everything clicks when Ezra laughs at Kai’s stunned face. “Are you seriously talking to me about music right now?” Ezra shrugs in response. 

Kai can’t help feeling overwhelmed, so he blames what happens next solely on that. He places his hands one either side of Ezra’s face and closes his eyes, pressing his mouth to Ezra’s. His stomach churns in fear of being rejected, but then Ezra pushes back slightly, and Kai relaxes, his hands still on Ezra’s cheeks. 

When they pull away, Ezra’s quiet for a moment, looking closely at Kai’s red face. “Honestly,” he begins, “I have been wanting that to happen for a while now.” And Kai snorts, resisting the urge to be sarcastic. 

Not knowing when to stop, Ezra adds “Who knew it took me almost dying for that to happen.” And abandoning his morals, Kai slaps his arm, not lightly, but not hard.

“You need to shut up.” Is all he responds with, grabbing Ezra’s hand, placing it on his cheek. Outside, the sun glows golden, as though she is positively pleased, and Kai has to agree with her. 

[thegeekyzoologist]

My opinion on Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (SPOILERS)

Like many people interested in the Jurassic franchise, I binge-watched that show back in september and here are my thoughts.  First of all, I precise that I had no expectations for the series as the combo Jurassic World + kid show didn’t attracted me at all, and the trailers have done nothing but confirm my fears.

Let’s start by the positive: - Amidst the cringefest that the first episodes were, the scenes with Darius back home stand out from the rest by their quality as they are centred more on drama and character development and not on clumsy comedy like the scenes on Nublar. The idea of getting an access to Jurassic World and Camp Cretaceous as a reward for beating that virtual reality game reminded me the recruitment of Eli Wallace by the SGC at the very beginning of Stargate Universe. - Starting from the beginning of the season’s second half, the series gets better and a little more mature in its unfolding and writing, up to the point where it doesn’t seem targeted for young children but rather young teens. Some dumb scenes remain however (like the one of the geneticist Eddie, abandoned in the lab with the sole company of his birthday cake). - There is a few action and suspenseful scenes that aren’t bad in the second half with, among other things, a hide-and-seek game with the Indominus amidst the containers, a part in the tunnels that can remind some people of Telltale’s game, a monorail attack by the pteranodons which should have deserved a live-action treatment, and a climax in a storage area where the protagonists have to use their wits in order to defeat the carnotaur and escape from the underground network. On the matter of the carnotaur, one can note a nice paleontological reference with its difficulty to turn when it is chasing prey. - Of all of the characters, Roxie is the most realistic, responsible and reasonable one (and the only tolerable one in the first episodes). And let’s bring now the negative aspects: - On the matter of the original soundtrack, I don’t remember any of the original themes sadly. As I had the same problem when I viewed The Witcher though (I didn’t liked its first season but I rather well appreciated its soundtrack following a separated listening), I will wait for the release of the soundtrack before criticizing it further. - The first episodes are a total farce with a succession of all kinds of nonsenses with the bunch of stereotypical buffoons that the kids are that are involved in stupid acts by the night of their first day, acts that fall under Reversed Darwinism (the survival of the most idiotic like Grant would say in Jurassic Park 3) and that gave me the desire to give some slaps and send those Kennys to a firing squad (for the crimes of property destruction and, above all, endangering dinosaurs and employees); the infringements during the activities of hygiene and security rules that are applied in many theme parks and laboratories around the world (with the kids wandering around in the lab and touching to everything in a total dissidence; running down a zipline and brushing past brachiosaurs...); the counsellor Dave which talks to Wu like if he was an old pal of his while Wu is one of the highest corporate executive around and someone famous and respected in-universe; Wu being depicted with the subtlety of a fat beer-drunk sea lion (with his mannerisms and attitude worthy of a James Bond villain, we know right away that he is bad); cartoony action scenes (I mean bloody hell. Look at that Parasaurolophus that jumps off the jeep’s roof like he was a fookin’ kangaroo while the jeep itself wasn’t miraculously crushed under the hadrosaur’s weight); the employees and the park’s security being shitty (one enter so easily in the underground network that Biosyn could organise rave parties there right under InGen’s nose; Darius and Kenji being left with no supervision in the middle of the jungle while they are supposed to shovel shit as a punishment); the dinosaurs that passes too as incompetent for failing to kill the kids while such situations in real-life or in the first films would have unforgiving or barely forgiving but only at a certain cost. - Despite the ordeals they are going through, the kids seems to be never traumatised or at least shaken like the Murphys, Kelly Malcolm or Maisie were respectively in JP, TLW and FK since here, they seems to be in shock for a moment or two before starting again to squabble or quipping once they are away from danger. - At the end of the monorail attack scene, I thought that the writers had the balls to kill off Ben  and I would have tipped my hat to this narrative decision and give more credit to this kid show if we didn’t had the reveal at the end that he was still alive. At the end, we just got another Billy Brennan situation. - Bumby is useless in this season, aside from encouraging toy sales and being the show’s cute caution and still, it’s relative as her closeups along with Brooklynn’s rapy face in episode 2 have scared me more than the predators’ attacks in the season’s second half. And her growth rate is so fucked up as she hatch in episode 2 before reappearing in episode 5 I think which is supposed to be set two days later, where she is already the size of a bulldog. And the scene where she cries while the kids are being kicked off the lab (for understandable reasons) is so ridiculous... - Aside from in the action and suspenseful scenes mentioned above in the positive aspects, the use and depicting of dinosaurs is either anecdotal, either WTF with the Sinoceratops being almost as gentle as a lamb (try to do with a hippo or a rhino what the Kennys did with the sino, I wouldn’t mind some funny antics...). I’m not a fan of the bioluminescent Parasaurolophus and their scene either. It seems like they wanted to copy the Na’vi River Journey’s attraction from Animal Kingdom in Orlando, with semi-aquatic parasaurs worthy of some outdated depictions from the last century.   - Visually speaking, the universe and the artistic direction are poor. The jungle has the same look everywhere on the island (with trees of average height being relatively spaced from one another while the ground is covered with grass) and its scenery never seem foreboding or ominous while Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna were, in some way, entire characters in the films that sometimes aroused an eerie sense of mystery and danger, at east in the original trilogy and Fallen Kingdom. The park itself is quite empty too, even before the evacuation. There is only scene with a large amount of people and the latter seems to all share the same model and the same animation in addition of being blurred (probably as a camouflage for the lack of budget) and we don’t believe in this world as nothing grand comes out of the visited locations (aside from maybe the eponymous Camp Cretaceous) and that everything seems so bland, with even the employees being of the same corpulence, age group and behaviour except for a few exceptions. - Finally, let’s discuss about the coherence with the Jurassic World film, of which this show is supposed be a canon interquel. Even though if there is several nods to some of the latter’s events (Masrani’s helicopter is seen a couple of times; the Kennys take the ACU’s van; they walk past Zach and Gray’s destroyed gyrosphere and the killed ankylosaur’s body...)  as well as other materials of the franchise, including JP3 and Masrani Global website, like if the show wanted to tell us “Hey look! I did my homework!” in order to please the fans. It’s one thing to make references to the rest of the saga and it’s easy actually, but it’s another to use them for something else than just fan-service. Despite all this, Camp Cretaceous has its share of inconsistencies with Jurassic World. I won’t list them all since it wouldn’t be that interesting but among other things, we have the mention of fences falling apart across the entire island while nothing like this happened in JW (it seems they mixed up the JP and JW incidents) or at least not on this scale; the kids visit a lab somewhere north of the park whose existence seems a bit off as the Innovation Center’s lab can do everything that lab does, in addition of housing Wu’s secret lab; the surroundings of the mosasaur lagoon which seems empty by the end of the afternoon while chronologically speaking, the scene is supposed to happen just after the pterosaurs attack (and thus the area should be crawling with employees that are looking for eventual late visitors, or the still running security cameras could have spotted the kids) and why did those foolish Kennys didn’t thought of going to the nearby hotels right after the ordeal with the mosasaur instead of hanging around in the bleachers up until sunset, hotels where a large number of visitors are supposed to be found up until quite late in the night according to the Jurassic World film? Anyway, Camp Cretaceous might have got a kick up the backside halfway through and the quality of the episodes did increased little by little but the whole season stays nevertheless mediocre and the viewing of the series is honestly quite dispensable, especially if you were disappointed by the Jurassic World films. Some will probably tell me that I’m being too hard with a kids show but actually, the fact that it is targeted for kids is no excuse for some flaws like a lack of ambition in the artistic direction, the shitty humour or the wtf scenes. Whether a work is for adults, for all audiences, or for kids, the creative investment and the work quality should stay the same.

[veky1993]

Caught - Chapter 7 - Major Crimes Fanfic

And so the ogling series continues. :) You can read it below, or on AO3, or on ffnet. 

Have fun!

He watched, mesmerized and entirely at her mercy, as she straddled him, nothing if not determination in her movement as she flung her hair back over her shoulder in the process. She splayed one hand across the middle of his chest, then wrapped her other around him. She slowly adjusted her position atop him, deliberately dragged herself over him, getting them both ready, and all he could do was swallow hard, his heart pounding in agonizing anticipation.

She offered him a near wicked smile, then finally, finally, sank down on him, and he groaned. She let out a guttural moan in turn, then threw her head back in absolute pleasure.

He tried bucking into her, but she held him in place, her legs tightening around his hips as she simply remained still, intent on savoring the moment, even at his expense. But he could not take it. He palmed her still covered breast, kneading the flesh hard, and roughly grabbed her hip with his other hand. Sure enough her attention was drawn back to him, for she lifted her head and finally acknowledged him. She wiggled, engulfing the remaining inch of him safely within her walls, coaxing out another moan out of him, and then slumped down, her forehead ungracefully meeting his sternum. She moved on top of him, a sweet mewling sound leaving her, then mumbled into his skin, “Finally.”

His unexpected bark of laughter had her pause and look up at him, but when he only maintained his grin, not disagreeing with her statement, she planted a kiss on his lips and after only once clenching around him, as if in warning, started riding him. She set a relentless pace he only managed to interrupt by flipping them over to take over with equal abandon.

The next coherent utterance came from him, when once spent, sated and fighting for proper breath, he repeated into her shoulder, “Finally.”

She let out a light, airy laugh, and unable to resist the call of her flushed skin, he gently sank his teeth into the sensitive tendons of her shoulder, marveling at the way her laugh morphed into a moan when his tongue followed.

The feel of him becoming too much for her overheated body to handle, she reached for his face. Once at eye level, she gave him a wide, happy smile. Her tone was low, still filled with arousal as she told him, “You have no idea how desperately I needed this.”

He smirked at her in a way that said he had more than a vague idea, and kissed her before letting his gaze go over her, thoroughly appreciative. A thin sheen of sweat covered her forehead and her hair clung to the damp skin there, but she still looked absolutely stunning. She was trying to catch her breath and her heaving chest easily got his attention next. “Desperate looks hot on you,” he told her before kissing her breast.

“Oh, God,” she practically growled out, her low tone a mix of arousal over the way he touched her and amusement over his cheesy line.

He grinned into her skin when he felt her hand at the back of his head, this time pleading with him not to stop. Instead of heeding her plea, he looked up, and tucking her back into the bra neither bothered to properly take off when this steamy encounter started, asked, “You think we could actually undress for round two?”

She laughed, then ran a hand down his undershirt clad chest. It had ridden up, or she may have at some point bunched it up enough to reach naked skin, but in their frenzy neither had bothered with completely ridding him of the garment. “I don’t know,” she replied, her hand now creeping under the material. “You think you’re up for round two?”

“Ouch,” he said, then unceremoniously rolled off of her to soothe his wounded ego.

She was quickly at his side though to soothe it herself, and even though she was laughing at him, he wrapped an arm around her to pull her close. She kissed his cheek as soon as she reached it, then placed a more lingering kiss to his lips. On a happy sigh she slowly eased out of it, and nestled her head on the inside of his shoulder, her hand slipping under his shirt again.

Content to simply be, they lapsed into comfortable silence, Andy relaxing completely under her warm weight and the random pattern her fingertips gently drew over his skin. Eventually, he tried again, his tone humorful but also ever so slightly begrudging, “Well, how about round two for you at least?”

A short bubbly giggle burst out of Sharon. “Oh, I’ve missed you,” she said happily, wrapping herself around him even more.

He laughed as well. “Me, too,” he agreed, kissing her hair. “What’s it been, a week since we actually saw each other?”

She nodded and half sighed, half hummed in the affirmative.

That wasn’t an understatement. They worked together. They lived together. They were married to one another for crying out loud, and yet, they had barely seen each other that week. Not really anyway, not unless it was work related or just a brief few minutes prior to and after taking a quick break before heading out to work again.

Earlier that day though, as they were shuffling around the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee and a bite to eat, they had managed to steal a single, blissfully passionate moment that led to a breathless Sharon being trapped between Andy and a kitchen counter. Unfortunately, Andy’s phone unceremoniously interrupted, and turned their momentary bliss into instant frustration. Still, that stolen moment somehow also left them in much better spirits than they had been all week. They were relatively certain that the case would be wrapped up by the end of the day, so despite the rude interruption, they went to work optimistic, knowing they would soon pick up where they left off. When their case finally did close earlier that evening, Andy considered it a wondrous feat that round one hadn’t happened on the couch in Sharon’s office at the PAB.

Especially, since for once, it had been Sharon’s control and ever so present professionalism that had been slipping.

At the knock against her office door, she looked up from the stack of papers in her lap. She smiled a tired smile when she realized it was Andy, and he greeted her with a quiet, “Hey.”

“Hey,” she greeted back softly, turning around to peek into the murder room. Everyone was on their feet, collecting their things. “I see they’re done?”

“Yeah,” Andy said, waving the pile of folders he was holding at her, “I’ve been designated delivery boy for these.”

She chuckled, knowing he more likely volunteered. “You done, too?”

“I am,” he told her, finally stepping fully into her office, “was planning to wait up on you.”

She gave him a grateful smile, then looked back into the murder room, waving goodbye to the team as they slowly filed out. By the time the last one, Mike, left, throwing them a ‘Don’t stay too long,“ and 'See you Monday,’ Andy had taken a seat next to her on the couch.

”Is there an end in sight with those?“ he asked, indicating her own reports.

”Actually,“ she closed her folder, and proceeded to take the stack he’d brought, "once I look over these, I’m calling it a night as well.”

“Great,” he said eagerly, then made himself comfortable on the couch. “I’m looking forward to our weekend off, so hurry up,” he added, fishing his phone out to, in no doubt, help pass the time while Sharon finished up.

She laughed, leaning back into the couch as well. “Yes, Sir,” she said sarcastically.

Instead of focusing on his phone though, for a while Andy kept looking over her shoulder. Not only that, but he kept pointing out typos in his colleagues’ reports, complaining about missed commas, or even forgotten full stops. While she appreciated his effort to make this tedious task somewhat more interesting, and she found it amusing enough, she was unable to contain her eye roll, when he pointed a finger at a line on the page and asked, “Is that a double space I see there?”

She shot him a look, then shoved him into the opposite corner of the couch with instructions to hush until she was done.

Unfortunately, when he heeded her request, she instantly missed his proximity. If he was distracting earlier, he was positively detrimental to her ability to do her job now. She found herself having to re-read sections of the reports several times before comprehending them, her thoughts wandering more and more with each passing minute. If she kept this up, she might just have to give up, do it all over again later, maybe even ask Andy for help.

They have spent countless evenings like these, him just sitting there, waiting for her to be done, and whether they were seated next to each other on this couch, or across from each other with her desk between them, rarely had she been this poorly focused on her paperwork.

She chanced a look his way, and smiled sympathetically, when she saw him resting his eyes, his phone still clutched in a hand, and his head relaxed against the backrest.

Work had been so demanding the past several weeks, and if she were perfectly honest with herself, she would very much like to simply join him. In fact, that was precisely the reason for her lack of concentration. It didn’t help that she was also starting to regret relegating him to the other end of the couch.

This distance between them, small as it was, made her suddenly acutely aware of just how long it had been since last they really connected, just the two of them, alone and intimately, without the constant buzz of life interrupting or pulling them to more urgent matters.

She never made a conscious decision to do so, but she shuffled back closer to him, if only fractionally, and took a long, quiet breath. That was a simultaneously bad and good idea. On the one hand, the familiar scent of him filled her nostrils and only distracted her further. On the other, it gave way to far more pleasant thoughts. Thoughts of their interrupted morning, for example, and far more importantly, of the promises made after.

On that optimistic note, after signing Provenza’s report, she finally paused, and looked at Andy again. He seemed oblivious to her inner musings, and in fact had gone back to playing with his phone. He looked rather adorable, too, with his brow furrowed in concentration as he seemed to try to solve whatever problem his game had presented to him.

She must have been staring too long, for eventually his brow relaxed and he looked at her in slight surprise. “What? You done already?”

“Oh,” she said, somewhat startled, and even slightly embarrassed over being caught, “sadly, no.” Scrambling to say something that would draw attention from her distracted state, she added, “I’m just jealous you’re already done with your paperwork.”

Andy chuckled. “Well, if you actually worked on those reports,” the 'instead of staring at me’ was loudly implied by a knowing cock of his head, “you could have been long done by now.”

If not for her decades long professional experience, Sharon would have openly gawked at his (more than warranted) accusation. Instead, she threw him a mean, narrow-eyed look, then turned back to the folders in her lap. “Well, then I better get back to it,” she told him with a healthy amount of sarcasm.

Andy laughed. “Sounds like a plan.” And with that he was back to staring at the screen of his phone.

Sharon hummed her agreement, but felt more than a little disappointed that he was quite so happy to let her get back to work. She was seriously starting to consider just leaving the rest till Monday, even though she knew that if she did, she was risking getting called out on a case and postponing it even longer. She closed Provenza’s file finally, and moved on to Tao’s, deciding to just get this over with and then allow Andy to take her home and distract her properly. Only it was that particular moment that Andy chose to shift on his spot and in doing so inadvertently moved closer to her. Now, she felt positively assaulted by his scent, and it forced her to take another deep, pleasurable breath and this one nearly had her groaning in delight.

Unable to help herself now that he was so much closer to her, she closed the remaining distance, briefly leaned her head against the side of his arm, and hummed in a mixture of both melancholy and contentment.

Andy seemed surprised, and paused mid-tapping. “You okay?”

She briefly pressed her temple into his arm again, then straightened altogether. “Yes, yes, just looking forward to finally going home.”

“Tell me about it,” he agreed on a sigh, and she almost moaned when he dropped a quick kiss to the side of her head, “I feel like we haven’t been home in a week.”

“_We _haven’t been home in a week,” she said and looked at him.

But he was already back to his phone again, and only agreed with her on a sarcastic chuckle, “I guess not.”

She continued to look at his oblivious self, the folders in her lap now completely forgotten. He showed barely any sign of his usual impatience after a long workweek, no excitement at the prospect of getting to spend some time together. He offered no loaded incentive to hurry her along, no inappropriate looks that would earn him her amused reprimand. Nothing to hint at all that he might be sharing her current sentiments.

_Sharon found herself growing increasingly perplexed. Andy was always impatient, eager to make up for lost time when circumstances cut short their quality time together. In fact, on more than one occasion, after a long case, he had been playfully persistent in his attempts to incite her to leave paperwork for later, or bring it home to work on, _after they had had some fun. Just as often, her resolve had come dangerously close to breaking and giving into his charm. Part of her had started to anticipate, look forward to those moments. She had come to think of them as their own private little foreplay until they came home, took off their police force personas and properly relaxed. What was more, she enjoyed bringing out that side of him, she loved being desired by him, even to the point of irresponsibility.

To find Andy entirely too disinterested with their game tonight made her feel oddly irritated.

Even more so, considering that they had been struggling with that line between professional and personal all day. She had, quite unconsciously, lingered with a touch here and there, be it to get his attention by running a hand down between his shoulder blades slightly more slowly than propriety allowed, or by holding onto his arm for no particular reason and longer than necessary. Nothing had indicated to her that their interactions were any different than usual_－__although in hindsight, he had been a tad more tactile than she was normally comfortable with, and she had not minded it one bit－_until she caught that part startled, part amazed and part aroused look on his face and she realized she was having an effect on him that had no place in their work environment. She had been quick to curb her inadvertent teasing then, and to Andy’s great disappointment, made sure to keep a safe, professional distance between them for the rest of the day. That unfortunate necessity had only increased her already unbearable frustration, and based on the couple of wounded looks he had sent her way after that, she had been certain that Andy was doing no better.

To see him like this now…

It was absolutely preposterous. Being so content to waste his time on his phone, after such a long week, such a long month, mere hours from finally getting some well-deserved rest, and after barely keeping themselves in check today? It was simply not possible. Not her Andy. Now positively irked, she closed Tao’s untouched report, clipped her pen to the folder, and turned fully toward her husband.

In the most commanding voice she could summon, she said, “Andy.”

“Huh?” he said, somewhat stupidly, needing a couple of extra seconds to pry his eyes away from the device in his hands.

That was it for her. When he looked at her, so clueless and yet so adorable at the same time, which had been a number of times that day, she couldn’t help herself. She grabbed his face, forcefully, and before he could even begin to process what was happening, caught his lips in a kiss.

Bless him though for not needing even a millisecond to respond. He made a surprised sound in the back of his throat, but immediately kissed her back. She barely registered the sound of his phone clattering to the floor, because then his hand was slipping into her hair, and she was too busy moaning in delight.

For a moment, her mind went completely blank. She didn’t care that they were at work. She didn’t care that even though the murder room was long empty, anyone could just walk in and see into her office through the open blinds. All that mattered was that finally Andy was almost as close to her as he could possibly get. The feel of his lips against hers was heavenly. The scent of him finally surrounded her completely and she couldn’t get enough of it.

God, has it really been weeks?

When she finally released him, not out of want, but rather out of need for air, she couldn’t let him go completely. Instead, she rested her forehead against his, and closed her eyes, content to stay like that till Monday for all she cared.

“You’re supposed to be working,” Andy finally mumbled, sarcastic and teasing, but she could tell he was just as dazed as she was, and she felt more than a little proud of herself for being the cause of it.

“I don’t care,” she shot back petulantly, causing him to laugh. “I’ve missed you,” she added, pecking his lips once more before pulling back completely.

He gave her a lopsided smile, and she very nearly attacked him with another kiss because she found that smile irresistible and she was sure he very well knew that. “I’ve missed you, too.”

“I would never have guessed,” she said, making sure she sounded sufficiently accusatory.

“Well,” he shrugged, and the way he dragged the word out had her thinking that perhaps he had been playing that game of theirs all along, “I was gonna show you when we finally got home. Or escaped this goddamn building.” He made a show out of securing the report that had slipped between them back into her lap_. _“You just need to hurry up and finish these.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He was being entirely too nonchalant about this whole thing.

When her stare lasted long enough, he asked, “What?”

He sounded much too innocent for her liking, and then it suddenly hit her. This was payback. For putting up her impenetrable wall of professionalism halfway through their day. For leaving him hanging just as it was getting interesting. Oh, he was good, she decided, impressed, and let him have this moment of revenge. Not only had he been playing their usual little game, he had managed to play her, and put her in _his shoes for a change. Her realizations must have played across her face for he suddenly grinned, smug about her catching on only now. She should be furious with him, or herself, but this was only further proof that she had finally met her match. She could only marvel at that instead.

So she playfully rolled her eyes, offering no further acknowledgment of his little victory, even as his grin knowingly widened, and said, “Let me wrap this up then.” She planned to seal her decision with another quick kiss, but this time it was Andy who couldn’t control himself and whose hands landed on her cheeks, keeping her close while he gave her a deep, languid kiss.

He was grinning again when he pulled back and she opened her eyes. “I like it when you can’t contain yourself,” he told her, clearly not beyond gloating a little. “Especially at work,” he added, his voice loaded with what only moments ago she had been so sorely missing.

She felt her cheeks warming, and other parts of her tingling with renewed desire. “Don’t get used to it, Lieutenant,” she said, having to force herself to return to her pile of paperwork before she succumbed to her impulses again.

“I won’t,” he told her, casually enough, “but,” he paused, deliberately sliding a hand up her thigh, as he leaned in close, “should you change your mind, you know I’m always game.” With that, he gave her thigh a squeeze that instantly made her squirm, then abruptly pulled back.

“Andy,” she scolded, but sounded entirely too aroused for it to have the desired effect.

“Commander,” he mocked, unconcerned as he located his phone and checked if it was still in one piece.

She shot him a look, but said, “Give me 15 minutes.” It took effort not to just drop everything and take him home. “If I’m not done by then,” she elaborated, gracing him with a look that matched some of his best smirks, “feel free to go home and start without me.”

“Oh,” he started ominously, even as his eyes returned to his phone screen, “if you’re not done in 15 minutes, I’m starting alright.” He shot her a look that would have set a lesser woman on fire, and added, “And not at home either.”

She snort-laughed, and kept her eyes on him for a long moment as she contemplated just how much she adored this man and his sense of humor, but then she was startled into blushing, when without so much as sparing her a glance, in forced annoyance, he growled, “Eyes on the reports, Commander!”

Getting home after that had felt like an eternity for both of them. Their car ride home must have been the most tension filled in recorded history, and once they stumbled through the front door, it was no wonder they had barely gotten undressed or even made it to their bed.

“We should retire,” Sharon suddenly suggested.

“What?” he asked on a laugh. “You getting too old for all nighters and non-stop cases?”

She tickled his side in reprimand, making him squirm. “No,” she said at length. “But I would like to enjoy more of your company while I’m young enough to make the most of it.” As if to underline her point, she dragged her fingernails teasingly across his chest.

Even as he groaned, he was suddenly quick to agree. “Wanna put in our papers now, or tomorrow?”

She laughed, then slowly sat up, throwing her hair over her shoulder as she reached behind her back. Unclasping her bra, she said, “First things first.”

[ofravensandgenesis]

IT IS FINISHED no seriously, this took ages. First couple of days were fine and motoring along with progress, then I was laid out for a week-ish with health problems. Then once I was well enough again I was back to being fixated on finishing this piece of my lad Joshua here for another handful of days, so I’m super glad this is done now. More talk about the painting, details and process under the cut:

Art Entry 01, Joshua Rook, Junior Deputy of Hope County. Regarding the painting’s execution, stylistic choices, practiced methods, and speculation on further experimentation for skill and stylization. _____________________________ Honestly I thought that the uniform’s large swatches of green fabric would be more difficult than it actually was. Turns out that was the easier part compared to the shoulder patch and metal badge. x’D The metal badge design is based off of and inspired by a custom-ordered cosplay badge design I found while looking for references, in this post here (link,) from v-i-d-e-n-o-i-r’s blog and Far Cry 5 cosplay. There are some differences in the painting’s rendition above, namely I flattened the middle section and made it all concentric polished metal instead of painted and the great seal rendition in the middle doesn’t have silver lineart either. Those choices are as much for aesthetic reasons of eliminating the blue ring so it was all a fairly simple mono-material-looking surface as it was for simplifying having to forego painting the foreshortening that a spherical dome might entail. Also just because the rest of the metal turned out looking good enough that an additional bit of shiny metal seemed like it’d fit right in for this. That being said, the badge design that inspired this one is rad and awesome looking—and I totally didn’t realize it wasn’t quite like the badges from in-game assets until after I’d painted it. x’D So, I decided to stick with this one since it’s simpler and has cleaner lines, and less engraving to pick out highlights on. Metal is very hit or miss for me to get right, so I’m very pleased with how this one came out! :D I think I did well on that one. The shoulder patch originally I was looking at real world references and ended up changing the shape once I actually looked at in-game references on Staci and Joey—who I discovered have slightly different details on their uniforms, like the font for their name tags—Staci’s has an old-timey-looking-font with serifs, Joey’s is a non-serif more modern-style font. Some pictures have them having different buttons on their uniforms either in color or shape (the former being exported assets, the latter being in-game gifs/screenies/etc.) This is also how I learned that the little landscape with the shovel, pickaxe and plough/plow are part of the great seal of Montana. I had no flipping idea that was what it was, looking at the patches in-game. The cosplay community does some great work for that, for which I’m grateful. I ended up looking up references of what the state seal’s design was so as to see the smaller details, and to find out what the motto meant ”Oro y Plata,” meant, leading to etymology googling adventures from there, as usual. All important details to paint though I think here, since Joshua’s deputy uniform is symbolically significant to him and will remain so throughout his story as part of his internal conflict for a couple of reasons. One thing I knew I should’ve done from the start, and reminded myself to do, was the fact that I should paint all skin sections at the same time, so as to ensure they all came out the same shades. I did not do this. x’D I’ll have to actually try to do that next time honestly. Same with the hair sections, while I like how they came out, I do feel the differences between the three major segments in terms of brushwork is not as coherent as I’d like, even if beard hair is not necessarily similar in how it lays to scalp hair, particularly with length and such taken into consideration. Still, not bad. Could’ve used more refs for the backlighting and figuring out how the highlights would fit best on the ponytail, but I think the hair curves turned out nice there in particular. Overall, Joshua’s hair ended up messier than I’d thought with how the locks all end up looping this way and that across his head, but it does actually fit him well as a character for his hairstyle to be messy and loosely held together, but functional. It did end up longer than I’d intended, so we have him likely ending up with a nerdy Jesus hairstyle when it’s down. x’D (Thanks to @undead-gearhead​ for that mental imagery, I shall take great amusement in that should I get around to drawing Joshua with his hair down.) Aside from that, I think I’m slowly improving on figuring out how to paint glasses, though I’m thinking in the future I should test more layered reflective light on them or something where the frames are in contact or close to skin, particularly around the glasses’ bridge across the nose and such. Then there are the other deviation details added—like using dark green instead of the black for the uniform accents. The faded black looks great in-game, but I do think the buttons pop more against dark green instead for this painting. I’m a little bit surprised how well the button-placket section came out, Clip Studio Paint crashed when I painted the first rendition of it, sadly losing all that work. I thought it’d be okay but turns out it didn’t quite get to auto-save that recently enough, but the second go around turned out quite well I think, possibly better. I was originally planning to try to put more textured brushwork across the flat sections of the uniform material, but decided to skip it for speed—I’ll test that elsewhere perhaps, though I think it came out well with the watercolor brushes layered on top of one another like that as is. Among the other smaller details, there’s some tweaks and such for how Joshua’s eye shape, eyebrows, nose shape, hairline etc came out compared to references of Greg Bryk in his role as Joseph Seed. I think Joshua did come out looking like he’s obviously related to the Seeds as I was hoping for, but I’m kind of on the fence that people would look at him and automatically assume it’s Joseph specifically that he’s descended from. I hope so, but either way, that’s how he’s written in-fic. x’D Overall, I would consider this painting a success, though as usual I do wish it’d been faster to finish. I do think this was good practice for detail work, and metal shading, also: buttons. Still haven’t figured out how to paint lips with more pink or red tones, I don’t like the way they look when painted sadly, unless it’s lipstick. That may end up being a stylistic element perhaps, along with how I paint the lines for fingernails and other such details. Fun fact: I have to leave the shading on the eyes for last, or else my brain goes “The eyes are done! We’re done! Call it a day.” I’m not sure why, but so far, leaving them as flats until the end seems to work a treat for keeping me focused on finishing the rest of the work with less mental dissonance. Now if only I could figure out why despite knowing I should do all the exposed skin portions at the same time, I don’t follow through on that naturally as far as inclinations go. Maybe it’s a layer organization thing and perception of wanting, say, the cloth to be done first before working “down” to the hands and such in the sense of working from the head down? I’ll have to think on that some more and test things in the next painting. Perhaps color coding the order of layers to paint will help? CSP does have a nice layer-icon-color function that I’ve dabbled with here and there. There are so many brushes, I really do need to test out more of them, I use, what, four or five total, but primarily somewhere around two or three. Hm, but what to do with texture, and how to utilize it so? Hmmm, as far as personal appeal for methodology goes, I might prefer to use textures in select pieces for more emotional emphasis? If I can figure out how to do that in a messier speed-paint style of things. Rougher textures for conflict, for example. That sounds like an interesting idea to explore, I’ll have to remember that for a later piece. Maybe more heavily textured brushes will also help with the mental itch to refine things to a cleaner-level of refining instead of leaving it in a more organically rough state. Hm, maybe it’s a “mental texture” aversion or something, as far as an interplay between the brush’s texture and the flow of the linework/brushstroke. Perhaps more uneven brushes echo that in a complimentary fashion to better allow less mental discomfort for me personally when trying to paint in a faster, looser fashion? Honestly, very tempting to go try that out sooner rather than later on some art ideas I have, but I’ve been missing my writing very much of late with two time-demanding paintings back to back. So, ideas for a later time to experiment with.

[akusaiisreal-changemymind]

Chapter 4: Memory Plague and Catching Up  Fandom: Kingdom Hearts Rating: Mature Warnings: Underage Relationships: Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts), Axel/Saïx (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx/Ienzo (Kingdom Hearts), Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), implied Aqua/Terra (Kingdom Hearts) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Past Mpreg, de-aged character, Rating May Change, This is basically if Kingdom Hearts was a period novel, Slow Burn, Fluff and Angst, Mentions of past abuse, Non-Graphic Violence

The halls of Oscuro Castle were cold and silent, almost devoid of life. Xehanort had always remembered it being that way, even as a small boy. He paid the quiet no mind and instead listened to the rhythm of his boot heels thumping softly against the carpeted floors of the castle’s private upper levels.

A single guard stood by the door that led into a bed chamber. When she saw Xehanort approaching out of the corner of her eye, she immediately straightened her posture and greeted him formally.

Xehanort nodded at the guard as she let him into the room. When he stepped in, he was not at all surprised to see the lump on the bed hadn’t moved despite it being nearly noon. He walked over to a small table where a pitcher sat along with an untouched platter of bread and various fruits for breakfast. He lifted the pitcher and crossed back over to the bed, slowly pouring the contents of the pitcher all over the blankets.

He was glad that it turned out to just be iced water. It would have been a shame to have wasted good wine.

The sleeping figure jerked awake, sputtering when some of the liquid got into his mouth and up his nose. Xehanort stopped pouring and waited patiently for the younger boy to stop flailing around before greeting him. “Good day, Vanitas.”

“Fuck you.” Vanitas hissed. He was already a grumpy riser and being woken up so rudely didn’t help. “Why did you just walk in here and wake me up like you own the place?” When Xehanort raised an eyebrow at him, he rephrased. “I mean, like there’s a fire or something?”

“Xigbar has returned from home, so I’ve scheduled a family meeting in the council chamber that will take place three hours from now. I expect you to be there awake, fully dressed, and attentive.”

“Don’t you typically have to have a family for a family meeting?” Vanitas muttered darkly.

Xehanort ignored the jab and continued. “Ansem will be arriving today, so he’ll be there as well. There’s been some new development. It’s very important that we all discuss it together.”

“Yeah, fine, but can you get out now? I’m not exactly in a proper state of dress.” Vanitas gestured with the fist firmly gripping the blanket wrapped around his waist.

Xehanort didn’t outwardly react. Instead, he turned sharply on his heel and headed for the exit. “I’ve told you before you’ll catch a chill sleeping like that. Remember, the council chamber in three hours. I don’t want to have to come and get you again.”

~•~

Isa hoped against all hope that this new habit of blacking out and waking up in a strange location wouldn’t become a hobby.

This time he had awoken to the taste of something repulsively bitter being shoved into his mouth. He was tempted to spit it out the moment it touched his tongue, but he was prevented from doing so. All of his limbs felt like lead, leaving him unable to lift his arms and push against the slender fingers keeping whatever was in his mouth firmly in place.

“Don’t you dare spit this out. This fruit contains bismuth subsalicylate and it’s the only thing that’s been keeping you from vomiting up your innards for the past few weeks.” Someone leaning over him scolded him fiercely.

His vision was swimming and his mind was groggy, so the face of whom he assumed to be a doctor was obscured. Isa’s senses had even failed to let him know there was a cool towel laying over his forehead until the person’s other hand removed it to press a palm against him. “Good, your fever has finally gone down. Keep this in your mouth while I get my needle to replace your stitching.”

The voice of this person washed a wave of familiarity over Isa. Except, instead of feeling nostalgic, it instead gave him a prickling sense of annoyance. He remembered being nagged by this pitchy, nasally tone too many times to count in childhood – now again as an adult.

The blurriness of his gaze subsided after several seconds of blinking up at the light fixture dangling from the high ceiling; naturally, Isa chose that moment to rotate his head to the side just enough to watch as an older man shuffled around the room. His eyes widened the moment they took in the sight of blonde hair and a white coat.

“Lord Physician Even?” Isa queried, face scrunching in perplexity. Though his words were somewhat muffled by the medicine still stuffed into his mouth, the Court Physician spun around as soon as he was addressed.                                                                                

“Very good, Isa. It seems you’ve finally regained coherency which means you’re not long from recovery.”  Even crossed back over to where Isa lay on the bed, needle and stitching coil in hand. “Now, do you know where you are as of this moment?” He pulled up a stool and sat down beside Isa to begin his work.

Isa winced at the first signal of pain, but tried to refocus on his thoughts. He noted that this bedroom was different than the last one he’d woken up in, bigger with more lavish décor. It’s possible that he might have been moved to a guest chamber, but for what? He did a mental step by step of what led him up to this point.

He was on the ship with Xigbar and was rendered unconscious. He woke with an injury. He wandered around for a bit in the mansion until he found a secret passage to crawl into. He happened upon a hidden room where the air was stifled with the nauseating mixture of incense, candles, and white leaf tobacco. Then a man came into the room. He was –

“Lea!” Isa cried out at last, attempting to sit up. A hand immediately flew up to his chest to stabilize him and firmly push him back against the mattress. Isa went back down without a struggle. “I’m – I’m in his mansion, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.” Even answered and continued working on the stitching. “He sent for me to come and tend to you the moment he knew of your identity. Evidently, his young wards have been up to a bit of mischief and brought you here in secret – not that it’s a problem now, of course. If anything, Lea considers it a miracle and didn’t want to leave your side.”

Young wards? As tempted as Isa was to get him to elaborate further on that, there were more pressing matters that needed explanation.

“Where is Lea now?”

“I had to drag him away from here so that he could attend his meeting. His father is always less than amused when he strays away from his duties.”

Isa sighed. He had not been at all intending to meet Lea until he had had everything settled with King Ansem and his task. Now that Lea already knew it was only going to complicate things and create a distraction. He was already set back significantly due to catching ill.

“Speaking of the king, does he know that I’m here as well?”

“Now, that, I couldn’t tell you.” Even replied. “However, knowing his sources, it's likely he’s found his own ways of finding out by now.”

The implication of the King Ansem essentially being omniscient almost caused Isa to break out in a cold sweat. Simple task, his ass.  

Once the stitching was completed, Even gently pressed a finger against the tender skin to make sure it was secure.

“Well, I believe that’s all that needs tending to today.” Even stood up from the stool and began to put his materials away. “I have to be getting back to the clinic. I’ll have a messenger sent to the castle to inform the prince of your awakening. Until he arrives, I advise you get some rest.”

“Yes, I’ll be sure to. Thank you.”

~•~

Trapped .

That’s exactly what he was. All but pushed into a marriage with a man he didn’t know in a land he had no recollection of arriving to.  Isa had been living with the Lord of Dusky Province for several months now and it seemed at this point there was no chance of getting back home. Especially not in his current condition.

“The physicians tell me you’re about six weeks along now.” The lord entered the room with a saccharine smile on his chiseled face. He was very handsome, Isa couldn’t deny that; however, something about his smile was off-putting. It wasn’t like Lea’s. “Why did you hide this from me, mūnchairudo? Don’t you think I would like to know I am to be a father?”

“I wasn’t sure what to think of the news myself…” Isa muttered without turning away from the mirror. He pressed a palm into his belly. It was still a bit flat. He jumped slightly when he felt the alpha brush up behind him and tower over him.

“This is for you.” He slid something onto Isa’s neck before stepping away. Isa looked down and noticed that it was a silver necklace with a thick chain and a sapphire gem in the shape of a crescent moon attached. “It matches your hair. Isn’t it lovely?”

Lovely …lovely…

“It’s been lovely doing business with you, good sir.” Weeks later, Isa stood around a corner in secret and watched as his lord husband handed a pouch of coins to a rough looking individual. “Here’s your final payment, as promised. Though, I must say, the omega you delivered to me is more trouble than you had advertised. Very strong-willed.”

A cold feeling settled into the pit of Isa’s stomach.

“Told ya he was a fighter. It took a lot for us to get him off the ship to bring him here and it’s gonna take a lot to break him in. Good luck.”

“I won’t be needing it. I think I have him fairly under control by now.”

He heard the sound of movement heading in his direction and he fled. As he ran, he felt the cold feeling in his body twist and morph into something else. Something stronger.

Rage .

“You told me that I was found in debris from a shipwreck and you had no idea how I’d gotten here.” Isa stormed into the bedroom that night and confronted him with fury. “All this time, I thought I survived that raid because the Foretellers spared my life, but now I find out it was because I was kidnapped and sold! You made me think the death of my parents was just a tragedy!”

Rage …hatred…

“Well, that’s because it was, mūnchairudo.” The lord was propped in a chair with one leg crossed over the other as the valet poured more brandy into his glass. He was completely unfazed by Isa’s anger. “An orchestrated tragedy, but it was a tragedy nonetheless. All events of life are caused by man and the decisions we make. Destiny and those precious ‘Foretellers’ your people worship don’t exist.” He plastered a false smile onto his face, sweet enough to distract from the sinister man behind it. “Now be good and have a seat. Your stress can’t be good for the babe.”

The babe…that was no more.

“How pitiful.” Out of the corner of his eye, Isa saw the alpha standing with his back against the wall, arms folded and looking on without empathy. He watched Isa writhe in excruciating pain on the bedroom floor, occasionally coughing up black sludge. “You would rather do this to yourself than have my child?”

Isa lifted himself up as much as he could on shaking limbs. “I’d rather die!”

…Die.

A pause, a scoff, and then the sound of footsteps leaving the room was all that followed. Before the closing of the door, the lord replied in an amused tone, “Very well. Who am I to deny you the pleasure?”

Isa lived, of course. However, the price of life came with a deep feeling emptiness in his heart. The hollow feeling wasn’t because of the loss of a child he never had the chance to know. As horrible as it sounded, he wasn’t sure if he would have had the ability to love something created by the object of his burning ire.

He felt empty because the poison he ingested not only ensured that he would not birth that child, but also no others.

One of his biggest purposes in life, a purpose that had been instilled in him since he was twelve, had been stolen from him. All because he wanted to feed his animosity towards the monster who ripped his life away from him.

…Die.

But he wasn’t done feeding it.

Nights later, he met his lord husband in the bedroom again. The lord looked sickeningly serene as he told Isa that he forgave him for his stupidity while stroking his hair.

Die .

Isa lied to him. He told him that he had forgiven him, too, and they could put it behind them.

Die .

Isa brought wine, encouraged him to drink it as he pushed him to lay back on the bed. He wanted to get him loosened up, slow his reflexes.

Die …die…

A cocky look settled on the lord’s face when Isa moved to straddle his hips. His eyes slid closed as he waited for pleasure that would never come. Isa reached up and removed the necklace from his neck — the necklace that was given to him as a gift.

DIE NOW.

In one swift motion, Isa wrapped the necklace around the lord’s neck and twisted it tightly to cut off his air. His grip didn’t relent, no matter how much the other man thrashed and tried to claw at his face. Isa couldn’t even feel complete satisfaction at the gruesome sight: the man’s face purpling from oxygen deprivation and his eyes bulging out of the sockets. He only felt the emptiness in him grow in replacement of his unbridled hatred as he watched the soon-to-be late lord suffocate below him –

“Ow. Shit, that’s a strong grip.” Someone cursed from outside of his dream. The voice was low and tired, but still effective enough to pierce through his torturous dream haze.

When Isa cracked his eyes open, the room was dark. He could only make out the faintest outline of a figure by the bed. He looked down a little further and saw that he really was gripping the other person’s hand harshly with his own, inadvertently mimicking the actions of himself from the past. Despite this, he could feel alpha pheromones giving off a serene, comforting aura and didn’t even attempt to fight against his body as it was instinctively soothed into relaxing.

Isa slackened his hold with a murmured apology before he asked, “Lea? Is that you?”

“Yeah.” The response sounded relieved, as if he was waiting to hear him speak. “Hold on. Let me get the light.”

He moved away just enough to reach over to light the oil lamp on the stand by the head of the bed. It wasn’t enough light to flood the entire room, but he was able to see Lea much better and take in his appearance. He was supporting the upper half of his weight against a chair he was straddling, staring exhaustedly down at Isa with bags beneath his eyes.

He looked significantly older than the last time they saw each other. The same could be said about himself, of course. However, Isa felt as haggard and unkempt as a homeless pup and his current appearance was equivalent to this feeling, no doubt. Lea’s aging, though, seemed to improve his looks as he no longer possessed such boyish and rounded features. The light of the flames from the lamp danced across Lea’s sharp face and lit up the green of his eyes like gemstones.

For the first time in his life, Isa felt like he was in the presence of an actual prince rather than just a boy he grew up with. Something about this new feeling was disconcerting. Isa was going to tell him that, but stopped himself as he lost his nerve.

Why would he ever voice such a ridiculous thought out loud? Lea would think he was still spiraling from fever.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Isa muttered instead. He used his elbows to push himself up on the bed until he was leaning against the headboard. “I incurred quite a debt for your hospitality and am more than willing to rep–”

“Stop that.” Isa tensed at the sharpness of the tone immediately cutting into his attempt at conversation.

“Stop what?”

“You fucking know what.” Lea tired expression had morphed into an annoyed glower and he straightened himself up in the chair. “You’re doing that thing where you act like ‘the perfect man of class’ when you’re either really uncomfortable or trying get on someone’s good side. I know you wouldn’t try hard to win my favor of all people, so it’s got to be the first one.”

Isa ducked his head to stare down at his fists gripping the blankets. What Lea had said wasn’t exactly untrue; however, the tone he took wasn’t helpful. He was talking to him like a child. “I was trying not to make this awkward…”

“You’re making it awkward anyway by not talking like a normal human being.”

“Well, what would you have me do, Lea?” Raising his voice, he picked his head back up to settle his own glare onto Lea. “Pick up where we left off? Tell jokes and pretend like nothing has happened? Sorry, not everyone can be as charismatic as you under unfavorable circumstances.”

“Who said anything about pretending? Fuck, Isa, I just—” Lea cut off his own sentence with an aggravated huff. “I guess – I don’t know. I was hoping you would at least explain this.”

Lea reached into his vest and produced the letter that Isa had given to him. It was crinkled and creased from spending so much time shoved into pockets.

“You wrote this for me.”

“I did,” Isa said. “That should have been made clear when I wrote your name on it and gave it to you.”

“You can’t tell jokes, but you have no problem being a smartass, huh?” A slight smile tugged on Lea’s lips for a split second before he turned serious again. “I haven’t read it yet because I wanted to ask you about it first.”

“As I said before, I had always planned to write to you. I was keeping my promise.”

“Right, duh.” Lea averted his gaze and rubbed the back of his head. Isa noted that he, too, still had old habits of discomfort. “I guess I didn’t think that promise was still pending because…well, you know.”

“I had even started on a letter the day we disembarked to sail to Corona. It wasn’t as lengthy as that one because I never got to finish it when—” Isa’s voice caught in his throat and the indifference of his usual mien slipped as reality sank in for the first time since the incident. “When our ship was...”

All this time, he had forced himself not to think about any of it. The thought of how his parents were so brutally murdered for the gain of a corrupt noble and idiots who loved on conflict disgusted him. He refused to allow his captors, his tormentors, the pleasure of watching him grieve. Even now, Isa again fisted his hands into the unfamiliar sheets as he angrily tried to blink away the tears burning at the corners of his eyes.

Why did they even have to die? Maybe destiny was punishing Isa for being a stubborn youth and going against his set path, but his parents had done nothing wrong.

“We were attacked by pro-war activists from the Empire. Those bastards.” He hissed between stilted breaths. “One could only assume they saw the Paxian symbol on our vessel and decided to attack us. Perhaps to incite retaliation.”

“Well, it worked. The sad part is that they weren’t even proper Empirical soldiers, just a bunch of crazies with ships and weapons. Our navy took them down within a month.” Lea told him, and he wasn’t surprised. He had concluded for himself a long time ago that they were, as Lea put it, just ‘a bunch of crazies’.

Lea continued, “We were also told there weren’t any survivors. I guess they never found out you got away. It’s like a miracle.”

With the old wound now fresh again, Isa had to quickly bit his tongue before he could heatedly retort that he didn’t get away from anything. Though he himself knew the truth of his own fate shortly after the raid, it would do him absolutely no good to tell Lea or anyone else about it. It would only invite more questions that would eventually lead to his connection to Xehanort.

“Yes. A miracle, indeed.” He replied, sharply.

Lea, unaware of the reasoning behind such a clipped response, slowly slid his hand into Isa’s again. “Hey, Isa, listen. You’re alright now. I won’t ever let you out of my sight again, okay?”

“That wasn’t exactly something I was worried about, Lea.”

“Good, because I mean it.” Lea rubbed a thumb over Isa’s wrist. “See? You actually opened up to me a little bit. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Isa could sense the conversation was finally starting to move to a lighter atmosphere on Lea’s end. Even though Isa still hadn’t recovered enough emotionally, he knew answering with a snarky quip would ruin bring them back to square one.

He chose to humor Lea. “I suppose not. Ironically, though, I’d say it’s easier to get more expression from me when I write my words. Hence, that letter.” He gestured to the pages still folded in Lea’s grasp.

“Then I guess I better get reading – eventually,” he said, placing the letter back into his vest. “Now, I’m too busy. Father’s been killing me with paperwork and council meetings lately.”

“How unfair. Why he doesn’t just give that those tasks to his heir? Oh wait.”

Lea scoffed and pressed his palm to Isa’s forehead, easing him back down into the pillows. “Get some more rest. Geez, you’re somehow mouthier than the kids I live with. Can’t wait for you three to meet each other.”

“Oh, right. Even mentioned that you have ‘young wards’ now. I see that your obsession with fostering strays is still intact after all these years.”

“They’re good kids. You’re going to love them, I swear.”  Lea paused for a moment before reaching out to squeeze Isa’s hand again. “I’m…glad you’re home, Isa. I really did miss you.”

“Yes. Me too.”

Lea nodded once and stood up from the chair with a stretch. After he blew out oil lamp, he spared one final glance at Isa – who had already dozed off again – before closing the door and taking a long walk back to his own bed chambers.

[devnny]

CHAPTER TEN.

JTRM — THE “R” STANDS FOR RECOVERING!

PREVIOUSLY.

CHAPTER 10!!! THE BIG ONE-OH! this fic is officially classified “burn as slow as FUCK”

i hope the long awaited reveal is not disappointing. and coherent. this chapter’s a mess ghgnjdkagbj i’m laughing again GOD. and thank you all again for your kind comments and messages and sticking with me this long!!!

Johnny fidgeted his heels against the carpeted floor of Devi’s sedan, uncertain about why they were going on another outing so soon after their last. They had only returned home long enough to put away all of their newly acquired foodstuffs, then Devi had ushered him right back out to the car. He had intended to make dinner again – something more elaborate than instant meals or canned soup, as an apology for his severe misstep tonight – but Devi informed him that dinner could wait, with a rather content smile on her face, he noted.

And she did seem happy now, too, which made him very uneasy.

Devi wasn’t so quick to forgive, and yet she was driving and singing along with the music that she had on at a deafening volume, smirking at nothing from time to time. She looked very sure about something, and Johnny couldn’t imagine what it was.

As they pulled into the parking lot of All-Mart, he guessed that her smile was because she intended to torture him with a trip through a wretched DEPARTMENT STORE.

“Devi… why are we here? I don’t want to go into that revolting Hellhole.” Johnny hid halfway behind the frame of the door as he looked out the window at all the people that were still out shopping, even at this moderately late hour – moderately late for people that slept, anyway.

“Just wanted to look at a couple of things.” Devi answered smoothly as she clicked the engine off. Johnny’s frown warbled unconfidently, but he had little choice besides joining Devi as she exited the car.

He hunched slightly while they walked, moving ever-closer to Devi as they passed more and more people – awful, contemptable people! That has to be her intention; to punish him further for his outburst at the supermarket. And here he thought that he was the expert in inflicting agony.

The inside of the store was so bright and horrible, he couldn’t stand it. The intercom boasted a disgustingly sweet, fake-positive woman’s voice, that continuously repeated commercials for the store’s bargains and sales – what was the POINT of that? They were already IN the store, there was no need to advertise further!! It made Johnny twitch and glower in annoyance, which Devi took notice of, but then made no attempt to ease his nerves.

Devi hated department stores almost as much as Johnny did, but only felt giddiness from the idea that had hatched in her mind earlier. She turned them into the Baby section of the store, and resisted the urge to wrap her arm around Johnny’s neck to make sure he didn’t go far while she browsed. Johnny, now almost in a full crouch as he shuffled backwards beside her, had no intention of moving even an inch further from her side, out of fear and contempt for his surroundings. He hardly even registered that they were in an aisle coated with different options for teething rings and burb-bibs.

With her eyes moving back to watch Johnny every so often, Devi searched the shelves until she found what she so desired; a toddler harness. Johnny was so thin that one might actually fit on him, with the right adjustments. And if it cut into his underarms, that would be tough shit!

She plucked one off of a hook to examine it closer. It was a cute little piggy, and had the clasps and leash attachment that she was so very interested in. Even if she was certain that Johnny could figure out how to unbuckle it, she hoped that his spur-of-the-moment rush toward a target would alert her that he was up to something, and she could stop him before he did anything more. For once she was thankful that he was so single-minded when he was hungry for violence.

Devi had all but decided to buy the harness, until she turned it around and saw the price tag.

Thirty-five FUCKING dollars.

She recoiled her head back, as though it physically pained her to purchase something so stupid for such an equally stupid price. There was no way that she was going to drop that kind of cash on a dumbass little piggy-thing after she just had to blow a hundred or so dollars on groceries! It wasn’t like the freelance gigs were rolling in with a steady stream of money!

Surely there had to be a cheaper alternative, she thought, as she dug through the different brands of baby attachments. She was dismayed to find anything cheaper was made of material that looked like it could barely keep an infant subdued, let alone an adult maniac. Devi sighed in annoyance.

One of her fingers ticked away at the digits on her opposite hand as she mentally tallied the money that should be left in her checking account, debating if she had enough to spare for this and still make rent. Just as she was considering dipping into her cushion of “disaster fund” money – Johnny was arguably just as much of a disaster as a broken-down car, or an impromptu bone fracture – the glitter of metal clasps on the aisle across from them caught her eye.

Devi tilted her head towards the Pet section with renewed interest.

The new idea that her brain was constructing was almost too cruel, but she was beyond caring about if or how Johnny’s ego would suffer at this point. She waved her hand near Johnny’s face to rouse him from his paranoia, then walked across the aisle, slow enough that she could make certain Johnny was following her. Johnny jolted at being left behind for even a second, and scampered after her in a mild panic. He took his spot behind Devi again, and began ringing his hands together in an effort to ease himself, seeing as Devi wasn’t offering him any such kindness.

Devi nodded approvingly that he had stayed close, then went to work inspecting the various dog collars and leashes that decorated the wall. She took a sturdy looking leash off of its hook, and sprung the clasp a few times with her thumb. A smile grew on her face the more she played with it – this might offer even better control than a toddler harness. After all, this was supposed to be for a massive dog, not a little wobbly baby.

She flipped the packaging around, and was unbothered by the modest $8.99 price tag. While it was still more than Devi was willing to spend on pet supplies, for something as simple as this, she knew where to go to get it at a price that she could afford.

--

A LOCAL DOLLAR STORE:

“This is just as good.” Devi boasted, relishing in the rare sensation of triumph as she held up her choices; a black dog collar and its matching black leash. Johnny stood at her side, one finger on his lip in befuddlement.

“Do you have a dog?” He asked. They hadn’t lived together long, but he hadn’t seen nor heard any indications that Devi had a dog. He wondered if she was planning on getting one – a large one, by the looks of it – to keep him in check, or for some other nefarious plot to coerce him to comply with her wishes. Devi looked at him with a shine in her eyes and an excited smile that disturbed him slightly.

Johnny followed behind her as she bought the two items in question, puzzling all the way about what evil purpose she had in mind for them. Clearly there was nothing normal about this purchase, if her response was so bizarre. They walked out to the front of the store, and Devi stopped him before he could move out of the overhead lights’ reach. She was too eager to wait until they got home to fit the collar on him, and wanted to instead give the whole system a test run tonight.

“Come here.” She spoke with a smile, urging him to face her. Johnny did as he was told, and watched her unclasp the collar with the leash draped over her elbow. Devi adjusted the collar until it was as tight as she could make it, then moved to put it on him.

Johnny’s spine straightened with paralyzing static as Devi’s wrists brushed over each of his shoulders, and he stood taut and motionless while she worked to fasten the collar on his neck.

He could barely comprehend what she was doing when she was standing so painfully close, and his heart quickened in the confusion, able to do little else besides push hot blood to his face. As her hands moved to the front of his throat, Johnny arched his neck back and away, trying desperately to distance himself from the tantalizing proximity of Devi’s person to his. He kept his focus on the sky, begging anything up there to interest his mind more than the woman mere inches away.

Just as his turmoil felt like it was going to take him off the rails, a click! and soft tug distracted him, and he looked down to realize fully that Devi had just put a dog collar on him.

“WH—” Johnny baulked at his unwanted accessory. “DEVI, WHAT—”

“Oh, I don’t want to hear it from you, Captain of the Skull Bludgeoning Committee.” She pointed at him, though her smug smile remained.

Johnny scowled in embarrassment, but just as he was going to rant to her that he was not a fucking dog, and that he demanded more respect than this, and that this was completely humiliating, Devi brought a hand up and looped her finger into his collar, tugging him forward and unintentionally garbling any of the words that he had prearranged for her. She stuck her tongue out, pleased, as she clicked the leash’s clasp onto the ring of the collar.

“There we go.” Devi hummed. Johnny looked down to the black lead that now attached his neck firmly to Devi’s fist, and couldn’t help but find the observation both terrifying and comically befitting.

“Come, maniac.” Her voice caught his attention again. She chuffed and turned to walk down the sidewalk. “I think we deserve some tacos for this little excursion!”

“Oooh, tacos.” Johnny’s eyes grew shiny and wide, and he trailed after her eagerly at the prospect of a yummy, greasy dinner. He tucked away his lingering resentment, and vowed to bring it up later, once they were home and full of food. He might have a better shot at convincing her once she’s eaten something.

--

DAYS LATER:

“…Is this really Devi?” Tenna asked into her phone skeptically.

“What—yes, it’s me.”

“I don’t recall the Devi I know asking me to go outside WILLINGLY in at LEAST a year. Maybe LONGER.” Her voice grew even more incredulous, and she tumbled Spooky in her hands while she debated if her friend had been probed by aliens, or replaced by an android. Devi scoffed.

“You can just say you don’t want to go. I was just going to take Johnny… out. Y’know. Maybe go see a movie, eat among the masses. Something disgusting like that.” She replied.

“Is this a date thing?” Tenna asked. She could almost feel the cold aura expelling off of Devi through the receiver of her phone, and she snickered. “Ok, so not a date thing. What is it then?”

“Just a little test of his will again, that’s all.” Devi hummed, and one of Tenna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously at the rather happy tone in her voice. Very, very strange.

“Oo-okayyy…” Tenna drew out, then regathered her standard chipper attitude. “OKAY! I’ll be up in a little bit.”

“But… you’re closer to the ground floor. Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to meet you down—”

“SEE YA IN A BIT!” She laughed and hung up, leaving Devi with no option but to wait for her.

--

Devi stepped out of her room, newly dressed and rubbing a towel on her still-damp hair. Every time she had to wash it, she reminded herself that it would need to be cut soon – even with her hair barely past her jaw, it was still too long for her taste. Too annoying to manage.

She turned her attention to Johnny, who was sitting with his knees up on the couch, watching TV. Devi’s self-satisfied smile returned – she had been wearing it an awful lot lately. Johnny wasn’t too keen on going out tonight, besides the fact that they would be going to the Camera, but Devi was excited to put him through another trial-run with the leash.

Eating out at a taco shop was one thing, and she certainly felt more at ease with him tethered to her, but it was hardly enough to prove that it would work consistently. She hoped that some dumbass at the theater or on the street would give him a reason to lunge, and then she could really give this new mechanic a test.

Johnny looked up as she approached, and smiled against himself at how nice she looked. He liked all her outfits, but she dressed differently when she was leaving the house.

“Are you ready to go?” He asked casually.

“Almost, just need to tie up my hair.” Devi replied, then went to ask him the same, when a new, uneasy thought came to her.

There was only one bathroom in the apartment, and seeing as it was conjoined to her bedroom, Johnny was never in it when she was asleep. And she couldn’t recall, in all the times she was conscious with him at home, which was always now, Johnny ever using her bathroom to shower. Devi’s eyelid wiggled.

“Johnny… do you—” She didn’t know how to ask this gently. “Have you bathed since you moved in?”

Johnny stared at her incredulously.

“Yes, of course.” He shrugged her comment off. “I just wash my head in the kitchen sink. And then scrub my arms and things with a dish rag, or what-have-you.”

That’s how he preferred to bathe when he lived alone too, unless he was completely covered in some disgusting fluid like blood or mud. Being naked to shower was unpleasant, and he tried to avoid it as much as he could, preferring instead to meticulously scrub and scrape away dirt and dead skin with his hands – gloved hands, unless otherwise impossible.

Devi stared at him in horrified disgust.

“UP.” She yelled at him, and yanked him up into a standing position. Johnny barely had a chance to steady himself before Devi was rushing him toward her room. He panicked.

Her bedroom was the only part of the apartment that he was still unfamiliar with, and for good reason; it was Devi’s domain. It was the most ‘Devi’ room of all the rooms in the entire world, and it made him nervous and awed to be inside it. Every time he had to use the restroom, he hurried in and out as quickly as he could, and tried not to look at anything too long, as though Devi would be aware of him snooping in her personal things.

His body lurched a little as Devi pushed him past the threshold of her bedroom door, and he skidded on the carpet the rest of the way.

“WAIT, WAIT!” Johnny called, but his cries fell on repulsed, deaf ears.

“TAKE A SHOWER.” Devi ordered him and threw him inside, shutting the door as a loud ‘period’ at the end of her sentence. “UGH… Disgusting…!”

Johnny stood in a crouch with his wrists crossed, looking around unconfidently at the four walls of the bathroom as though they were his prison. A sharp knock startled him.

“I’ll leave your clothes to change into outside the door!”

He frowned, then frowned more when he heard her bedroom door close too. A grimace crawled over his mouth, but again, he was compelled to do as Devi said.

--

Devi slouched in her armchair, pigtails upright now, rolling her ankle over her knee in annoyance. She should have realized he hadn’t properly bathed in weeks, but why was that even up to her to handle? He should have asked her to use the shower! What kind of goblin was he that he didn’t shower?

The door to her room clicked open, and Johnny stepped out, a wide, moping frown on his face, like a child that had been forced to eat his broccoli. He was dressed in the outfit she picked out, and held his dirty clothes in a ball out in front of him with both hands.

“Where can I put these to dry?” Johnny asked. “Should I just leave them in the sink?”

Devi’s eyebrow twitched in disbelief as she realized that the wad of clothing was soaking wet.

“…WHY…” She took in a deep breath. “Why are your other clothes WET?”

“I showered with them on, and then changed into these.” Johnny replied, as thought it was obvious. Devi thought she might have a hernia.

“NNY you are the WEIRDEST FUCKER on EARTH, I swear to GOD!!” She exclaimed, fingers clutching the arms of her chair as she stared out across the other side of the room. Johnny frowned in surprise.

“I don’t see why that’s so WEIRD—”

“Don’t even… Do not.” Devi pinched her fingers closed on each hand, a gesture for him to shut his mouth. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Just… next time, try taking your clothes off… BEFORE getting in the shower.”

“If you’re worried I didn’t wash my body that’s not—” Johnny huffed.

“Ah. Ah.” Devi held up a hand and exhaled. “I don’t want to know, it’s fine. Just hang your clothes over the fucking… shower curtain. Thanks.”

Johnny’s brow creased in annoyance; he didn’t want her to think he was unhygienic! He was very clean! It’s not like she noticed he hadn’t ‘properly’ bathed because he smelled musty and gross; he couldn’t even bear the repugnant stench of B.O. himself.

He harrumphed, and returned to the bathroom to hang his damp clothes, leaving Devi alone to rub her forehead wearily. Her quiet was short-lived.

Devi could hear Tenna’s door slam even from two floors up, and rolled her eyes at her friend’s overexuberance. Hopefully Johnny didn’t filet someone and ruin all of her fun for the evening. She got up and moved to her room to grab her long coat, meeting Johnny halfway. He lingered, unsure if he should stay inside her room or not, but Devi didn’t seem to mind. She slid her jacket on, then turned to give him a once over.

“There, don’t you look all nice and polished.” Devi smiled at him, observing as she did that he’d bothered to comb his hair post-shower. Johnny’s mouth vanished at the sudden compliment, then slowly returned with a broad grin.

“Oh, thank you.” He felt himself relax some, and folded his hands behind his back. As long as Devi was pleased with his efforts, any annoyances he had with her requests paled in comparison to the reward.

The door shook to life with a series of energetic knocks, drawing their attention to it. Johnny stared at the door with minor hostility, but lowered his eyelids in boredom as Tenna’s voice resounded on the other side.

“DEVI-I-I, I’M HE-ERE!” She sung. Johnny grumbled, and Devi chuckled a little at his response.

“You’ll have to keep me sane.” She commented to him quietly as she moved to answer the door, and Johnny blinked in surprise from the tone of camaraderie in her voice. It made him feel strange; almost hopeful that their friendship could be stabilizing to some degree. Exciting!

“DEVI!” Tenna squealed as the door opened. “This is so EXCITING!”

Johnny watched Tenna’s dancing with more suspicion, and skulked behind Devi for safety. Devi laughed, and moved to fish Johnny’s collar out of the deep pocket of her coat.

“Relax, you’re scaring my maniac.” A snide chuckle, and she turned to Johnny to loop the constraint around his neck. He felt less anxious about the action now that he was expecting it, but it still overstimulated his being too much for his liking, and he tilted his chin up high to ignore it.

Tenna stared at the scene before her with wide, mildly terrified eyes.

“Okay.” Devi said as she clicked the collar shut. “Where’d I throw that leash?”

“It’s in the kitchen…” Johnny answered, a little begrudgingly. His attempts to convince her to not use this new restraint tactic of hers had gone absolutely nowhere. Devi thanked him and went to retrieve it.

“UM.” Tenna managed out of her shock. Johnny brought his shoulders up to his ears as he crossed his arms.

Devi returned with what Tenna was haunted to see was, as assumed, a literal dog leash. She attached it to Johnny’s collar and gave it a couple gentle tugs to make sure everything was secure.

“—WHAT AM I WATCHING HERE?” Tenna yelled, throwing her arms in the direction of the pair that was causing her so much emotional and mental distress. “IS THIS SOME KINDA BDSM THING?”

Devi and Johnny shot her matching looks of concern and disgust.

“NO. Jesus!” Devi wound the end of the leash around her knuckles. “This is how I’m keeping him in line when we go out now, since he can’t—” She threw Johnny a quick glare. “—CONTROL HIMSELF.”

Johnny sulked at the floor, but made no move to correct her. Tenna took a second to process what she was being told, looking between them and the leash a few times.

“…OOH.” She said finally. “THAT’S why you want to go out tonight, isn’t it!? To test… whatever this is!”

Internally, Devi cursed Tenna for her inability to be covert, but outwardly she smiled confidently.

“Not at all!” She spoke with a grin. “We’re just going to the movies. C’mon, Nny.”

Devi gave his leash a soft pull to urge him forward, and she led Johnny into the hallway with no resistance. Tenna poked her lips out curiously, but knew better than to try and figure out Devi’s convoluted plans at this point. She stepped outside and allowed Devi to lock the door, then enthusiastically led the way out of the building.

--

NEXT.

[platonicone]

Devotion - Story of the Oracle and her Shield

Chapter 25 - Break it to save it

How can you ever repay someone for their kindness and love? I wonder…

Everything started swirling again. The next image to stabilize was of a cave in Fociaugh Hollow.

[This is it. Time to find out what happened to you Leon in that cave?]

“I feel weak because of the covenant,” slurred her words as her eyes closed. “I am so sorr--” her eyes were shut close even before she could finish that sentence. Her body went completely numb. Leon gently tapped on her cheeks, but she was unresponsive. Her body felt cold. He sprinkled some water on her face, but elicited no response from her. He quickly checked her pulse and his heart sank. She had a very low pulse.

“Oh no. Last time she collapsed after the covenant, it took her weeks to recover. What do I do now?” he wrecked his brain for a solution.

‘She would need to be in the care of a doctor. However, the closest clinic from here is back at Lestallum, which might still be occupied by the Imperials. We would travel all the way there just to be captured by the Imperials. Even if Imperials are not there, it will take a while to arrange for a car and get to Lestallum. I need something immediate to help her. What can I do?’

As he was wondering suddenly, a radical idea sparked in his head, ‘What if she gets captured by Imperials? They would immediately take her back to Gralea. Judging by the quality of their airships, they are bound to have state-of-the-art medical facilities. I can infiltrate Gralea and break her free once she has recovered. I’d rather her be captured than be dead.’

It was a risky plan, but that was the most pragmatic solution he had at this point. It would give Luna her best chance to survive. With his heart set on turning over Luna to the Imperials, he kneeled next to her and carried her in his arms. It was then he saw her trident; he had a eureka moment. An instinctive smile came on his face. “This has to work,” he said with a new hope.

He placed Luna back on the ground and pick up her trident. He closed his eyes to clear his mind and focused his energy.

He kneeled next to Luna and gently took her head in his hands, making sure that the trident in his hand does not hurt her. He leaned closer to her until their forehead touched.

A golden light begins emanating from where their foreheads meet.

“Blessed Stars of life and light, deliver us from darkness’ blight,” he spoke, hoping for a miracle.

It felt strange and unreal. He felt the energy from his body leaving. He slowly backed away and opened his eyes, hoping that Luna would do the same.

Much to his dismay, Luna still remained unconscious.

He had seen Luna cure people of their ailment with her blessing. He rationalized that he should be able to do the same since he shared some of Luna's essence.

“This was supposed to work. Since I have Ramuh’s divine energy in me, this should have surely worked. Did I say it right? Was it blessed stars of life and light or was it light and life? No, I am sure it was life and light.” He looked like a madman just talking to himself. “Maybe I should try it again.”

Once again, he held Luna in his arms and touched his forehead. “Blessed Stars of life and light, deliver us from darkness’ blight.” A golden light emanates from where their foreheads meet, this time with stronger intensity.

He felt a wave of dizziness and let go of her. She did not wake up, which frustrated Leon.

“What am I doing wrong? Is my healing power not transferable? It must be doing something because every time I do it, I feel weaker. Also, every time I touch our forehead, the golden energy radiates between us, so something must be happening. Am I not doing it long enough?” he wondered endlessly.

While wondering his mind even went back to Dr. K’s suggestion. ‘No, I am not kissing her, that’s a stupid idea,’ he shut down that thought even before it materialized. He was all out of ideas now.

“Maybe the third time is the charm. If it doesn't work now, I am turning her over to the Empire.”

He took Luna into his arms again and once again the golden light immediately started emanating around them. “Blessed Stars of life and light, deliver us from darkness’ blight.”

The golden light around them burned bright like fire. Leon was battling waves of dizziness with each second he held on. Determined to wake her up, he held on to her for two minutes.

[No! You are not supposed to heal for so long. Anything beyond one minute could be fatal.]

He felt as if his very consciousness was quickly shutting down. By the time he decided to let go of her, he felt his body go numb. His consciousness faded as he collapsed next to Luna.

‘No, no, no. This is not good,’ was his last thought before everything blacked out.

For a brief moment, both Luna and Leon lay unconscious in this cave.

Luna bolted up with a sharp deep breath. Her heartbeat was racing, and she was sweating profusely. Her eyes were still dazed, and she felt like the room itself was swirling.

“Are you okay?” someone asked, holding her from her shoulders.

Once the dizziness subsided, she became more aware of her surroundings.

“Luna?” asked the same voice again.

She looked in the voice's direction and within seconds the blurriness in her eyes disappeared, revealing Aranea supporting her.

“Arae?” Luna said, weakly.

“Yes?” she said. Aranea grabbed a bottle of water and offered it to Luna, “Here, have some water, it might help you feel better.”

She drank the water and sat quietly. Her breathing was slowly getting normal .

“Arae, I know what happened. I know how to save him,” she spoke softly.

“I am glad you found the answers you were looking for,” Aranea said rubbing her back. “What did you see?”

“I saw his love, pain, devotion, and sacrifice for me,” she intoned, pausing after each word.

“Hmm.”

“Arae, I need some time alone. There is a lot to process.”

“Are you sure you will be okay on your own?” She asked with concern.

“Yes. I am just a bit overwhelmed with everything that I saw.” Luna reassured.

“What did you see?”

“I’ll tell you later. But for now, I need to be alone.” Luna requested.

Respecting Luna’s wish, Aranea got up and made her way towards the door. She stopped when Luna called out for her. “Arae, could you do me a favor, please?”

“Yes?”

“Can you please arrange for a different cabin for me?”

“What?”

“Once he wakes up, I shouldn’t be with him,” she said, looking down.

Not wanting to probe any further right now, Aranea decides to comply, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Arae.”

“I will be next door. Call me if you need something,” Aranea stated while sliding the door shut.

Luna made her way to Leon’s berth and sat beside him.

In an empty cabin, it was only Leon and Luna now. Though she sat next to him, she felt light-years away from him. She was looking at a person who had loved unconditionally and all she did in return was to abandon him at the time of his need.

No coherent sentence formulated in the head. Her heartfelt tears screamed everything she could not voice. The music on the overhead speaker masked the sound of her wailing. She hugged Leon and cried to her heart's content. The music faded away and a new song picked up: Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips.

The lyrics of the song resonated with the pain in her heart. As the song played the memories of their time together flashed in her mind. She recalled all the times they had fought, loved, cared and sacrificed for each other. She realized that in every instance he had always done more for her than she did for him.

According to Luna, her abandoning Leon for a covenant with Ramuh was the defining moment in their relationship. He had every right to hate her after that. But even after that, he gave up his own health to heal her. That is not love. That is devotion. For once in her life, she wasn’t sure she could have such devotion.

Through her tear-filled eyes, she was looking at one person who had loved her more than anyone else in the world.

She started in a broken voice. “Though the fates may not allow us, my heart will always beat for you. You showed me what love is, how wonderful it feels and how easy it is to lose it. When confronted with a choice between love and duty, I am sorry I choose my duty. Words may never express how sorry I am for abandoning you. I pray that you forgive me. No, that won’t be fair, I hope I get to suffer the pain I have caused you. If I cannot even stand for the one I love, then I am not worthy of such love. Although I’ll never say this again in person, for whatever it’s worth, I love you, Leon.”

She caressed his face gently as if he was made of glass and would shatter with the slightest pressure. “I know this is wrong, but this is the only chance I’ll ever have. So just add this one more thing to the list of things I shouldn’t be forgiven for.”

She leaned closer and kissed him as if her life depended on it. Her brain and body experienced euphoria and pain simultaneously.

She slowly and reluctantly got and grieved, “I wish I had freedom to love you.”

She wiped away her stubborn tears, who refused to stop flowing. She moved close to him and touched her forehead to his. A divine golden light started shimmering from the point of contact.

“Blessed Stars of life and light, deliver us from darkness’ blight.”

She stayed in that position until she felt Leon stir. It gave her heart immense relief to know that he was conscious again.

Knowing that he will be awake soon, she got up and made her way to the exit. She held on to the door as a wave of dizziness hit her. Before stepping out of the door when she turned around to look at him one last time. As she slid the door close, she quietly said, “Goodbye. Leon.”

As soon as Luna closed the door to Squall’s cabin, she called for one person who had some answering to do.

“Shiva!” Luna growled in anger. She rarely referred to Gentiana as Shiva.

“The Lady called?” asked Gentiana, appearing next to her. Her eyes were closed as usual.

“We need to talk.”

“What is it that the lady wishes to discuss?”

“I believe you have something that belongs to Squall, Stiria,” Luna uttered with unmatched fury.

“How does the lady know about that?” Gentiana asked, clearly taken aback. Her eyes were now fully open.

“He might not recognize all forms of you, but I do,” Luna revealed, staring straight into her eyes.

“How does the lady know about that?” she repeated. “Squall never told you of that.”

Luna knew that one way or the other, Gentiana would find out her means to get this information so she revealed the truth. “I used Umbra’s powers to look at Leon’s past.”

“Isn’t that a breach of his privacy?” Gentiana calmly pointed out.

“You no longer have a moral high ground to tell me what’s right or wrong, Stiria,” Luna retorted with hostility unbeknownst to her. “You deceived him.”

“So, have you,” Gentiana shot back with a coldness worthy of only Shiva.

“I-I...,” Luna was at the loss of words. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t be hostile towards you without knowing the truth,” she remarked, shaking her head.

“It’s okay. The lady has nothing to apologize for. Her fury is merely a reflection of her care for the visitor. I am aware of how it might look like a betrayal without proper context.”

“Then please help me understand what is going on? Why did you do it?” she pleaded.

“Rest assured, I want the same as you. To safeguard the future for the visitor.”

“And how is taking away his Griever doing that?”

“Though my actions may seem devious, my intent was to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Last time he summoned Griever and along with the Usurper waged a war against the Astrals. I am simply taking away his means to summon Griever so he does not repeat the same mistake.”

“What happened during Omen? I beg of you to please tell me,” she pleaded. “I ask you not as an Oracle but as a friend.”

“Friend, you said?” Gentiana clarified. “Why must you be so concerned with the past for you cannot change it?”

“Past may not be changed, but it can be learned from. You had said that our fates have been intertwined for eons. Which means the last time I must have been there too. Since Squall rebelled against the Gods and fell from their grace, it means I wasn’t able to guide him to the right path. I need to know what I must do to protect him this time.”

“I have been telling you the means to save him rather constantly. Have I not?”

“What do you mean?” Luna had a vague idea of what she meant but wanted further clarification.

“Walk on the chosen path and fulfill your duty, that shall serve as his redemption too. Walking on your path would give him the strength to fulfill his trial as well.”

“What trial does he have to go through?”

“The one which he failed last time: accepting the will of God. He was entrusted by the Astrals to lead the fight against the impending darkness. He was the chosen one. However, when his beloved Oracle Stella was drawing her last breath in his arms, he prayed to the Astrals to grant her a new life. Unfortunately, we could not grant his wish. To him she was his world, but to us the world was a lot bigger than just them. If we grant her life then how can we deny someone else of the same privilege? He could not accept her death as part of her fate.”

Luna could tell that there was more to this story than what she was letting on.

“His choice to try to protect the one he loved over his providence plunged the whole planet into eternal darkness.”

Luna recalled Ramuh’s words, “His heart desires not for the protection of the star but for only one. That makes sense now.”

“If you have seen his memories, then you must know how he feels about you. Should you fall, do you think he will accept it as God’s will or challenge it?”

“The history will repeat itself,” she drawled, as the gravity of the situation dawned on her. “Which also means that he loved me last time too and he couldn’t let me go?”

“Yes, he loved you dearly the last time and for many lives before that,” Gentiana revealed. Luna wasn’t sure why, but she felt a hit of sadness in Shiva’s tone. “So long his heart is bound to you, he won’t be able to move on. You must release his heart.”

“You mean to say break his heart further than I already have?”

“If that is what it takes to save him, then yes,” she replied with coldness befitting Shiva. "Make him hate you."

“I think he already does,” she remarked as sadness clouded her features.

“He wouldn't have tried to heal you in Fociaugh Hollow if he did. I have seen his thoughts and feelings. He still loves you.”

Her words were supposed to bring her comfort but it brought a stabbing pain for she could not love the one who loved her unconditionally.

“You would do well to keep your distance from him. Push him away. Show no emotions.” Gentiana suggested stoically.

“I've hurt him enough. I can't do that.” Tears shimmered in her eyes.

“Sometime you have to become a villain to protect the one you love.”

She squeezed her eyes shut to stop her tears.

“The choice is yours. The closer you are to him, the more chances of him turning against the Gods when the time comes.”

“Why even give me a choice when I have none,” she lamented with a sigh of resignation as tears stained her cheeks.

Gentiana remained silent.

“Why did you bring him here, Gentiana? Wasn’t my life hard enough already? Why make me go through this pain?” Luna broke down in tears.

Gentiana moved close to Luna and hugged her. “I’ve learned that when someone is distressed, hugging them ease their pain.”

Luna cried on her shoulder while Gentiana stroked her head gently like a mother would do to console a child. This was the most human-like behavior Luna had seen from Gentiana so far.

‘Oh Luna, how can I tell you that it was you who brought him here, not I.’ Gentiana closed her eyes and recalled the events of that fateful day.

Luna was tending to her garden as with Umbra in tow when Gentiana approached her.

“Lady Lunafreya,” she called.

“Gentiana, it is great to see you,” Luna greeted her.

“Happy birthday, my lady,” she said with her eyes closed as usual. A small smile played on her lips.

“Thank you,” she replied with a radiant smile. It was her 24th birthday.

“I’ve come to learn that it is a human tradition to offer a gift to someone on their birthday. I bear no materialistic objects, but I can grant you a boon. What might my lady wish?” she offered.

“Oh, that is very kind of you Gentiana. I have everything I need.”

“Perhaps you do, but what is it that you want? What does your heart desire?”

Luna picked a sylleblossom flower from nearby and spoke longingly, “My heart desires only to be united with my one true love.”

A strong squall blew through the area. Lunafreya let go of the sylleblossom flower in the wind and its pestles were scattered in all directions. Umbra ran after one of the pestles and disappeared from the sight.

“When the time is right, you will be united with your love,” Gentiana declared, finally opening her eyes. 'Fate always unites you before ripping you apart.'

Author's notes:

In my 230k+ words of writing various stories this is the FIRST time I've let the protagonist kiss in my story lol

*Happy Valentines day*

Now back to torturing my characters. In next chapter we go to beautiful Tenebrae.

The answers from the last chapter:

1) Which game is Stiria from? (I had mentioned about her in chapter 17. I am surprised no one picked up on it.) - FFXIII

2) Which game is the book Durai Papers from? - Final Fantasy Tactics (one of my favorite games)

3) Which game is the book LOVELESS from? (This one is super easy) - FFVII

4) Which game is the book The Song of the Savior from? - FFXIII-2

5) What is significance of number 41,269 in FFVIII? - This is Squall's student ID number in FFVIII

6) What is significance of 1,370,000 Gil? (If you can answer this one, without googling, then you should be crowned as FFVIII Champion. This is a hard one.) - If you go to Dollet after passing SeeD exam. You encounter NPC at Dollet-Beach Stairs. When you talk to him he recognizes Squall as one who ran away from the huge robot and demands 1,370,000 Gil for the repairs to the city.

Please leave a comment and brighten my day. Thanks :)

Author's corner:

I wanted to give a shout out to YuukiAsuna-Chan, Anonymous person on tumblr, vifame, and Animefan09 for your constant support in this journey. I sincerely appreciate your comments and feedback on this story. Thank you :)

[upontheshelfreviews]

Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

We open on snippets from the original Fantasia…IN SPAAAAAAAAACE!

It reminds me a little of the opening to Simply Mad About The Mouse, where bits of classic Disney nostalgia fly about to evoke the mood of this upcoming musical venture. In a clever conceit, snippets of Deems Taylor’s original opening narration explaining Fantasia’s intent and music types plays over the orchestra and animators materializing and gearing up for the first sequence, which jumps right into –

DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUN – I mean, Symphony #5 – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Here, a bunch of butterflies flee and then fight off swarms of bats with the power of light – I can’t be the only one who saw these things and thought it was butterflies vs. bats, right?

It does look cool with its waterfalls and splashes of light and color bursting through the clouds, but this brings me to a bit of contention I have with the movie.

When I planned this review I was going to do a new version of “Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing”, except there were only four major complaints I could think of that. On further introspection, I admit they are legitimate grievances worth addressing. I’m going to get them out of the way all at once in order to keep things rolling.

#1 – This Seems Familiar…

Certain sequences are noticeably derivative from the first movie. It’s as if they were afraid of trying too many new things that would alienate audiences so they borrowed from their predecessor in an effort to say “Hey, we can do this too!” Symphony #5 is clearly trying to be Tocatta and Fugue with its abstract geometric shapes swooping all over to kick things off. Though I love how much character the animators managed to give two pairs of triangles, Tocatta’s soaring subconscious flights of fancy leaves me more enthralled. Carnival of the Animals literally began as a sequel to Dance of the Hours until the ostriches became flamingoes. And Roy E. Disney openly stated he wanted the last sequence, The Firebird Suite to have the same death and rebirth theme as Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, which they got, right down to a terrifying symbol of destruction emerging from a mountain to wreak chaos.

‘Sup, witches?

#2 – Too Short

Speaking of repeating the past, the original idea for Fantasia 2000 was to follow Walt’s vision in that three favorite segments would make a return amongst the newer ones – the Nutcracker Suite, which was eventually cut for time, Dance of the Hours, which I’ve already stated morphed into Carnival of the Animals, and finally, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the obvious choice to keep since that’s the most popular piece out of any of them. Cutting things for time doesn’t make that much sense, however, when you realize that Fantasia 2000’s runtime is only 75 minutes. A very short animated film by today’s standards that lasts barely half as long as its previous installment. I don’t see why they couldn’t keep at least one other sequence from the first Fantasia to make things last a little longer and keep in the original idea’s spirit.

#3 – All Story, No Experimentation

Unlike the first Fantasia, all of the sequences have a linear narrative structure that’s easy to follow. Not a bad thing and kudos to you if you’re among that group who prefers Fantasia 2000 for because of that, but again, I admire how the original film didn’t stick to a coherent story the whole time; how it was unafraid to let the music, atmosphere, and visuals speak for itself without sticking to a three-act plot and designated protagonist for every piece.

#4 – The One You’ve Been Waiting For, The Host Segments

One of the things that turned Fantasia off for its detractors was Deems Taylor’s seemingly dry narration. But maybe Fantasia 2000 can fix that with some folks who are hip and with it, perhaps a wild and crazy guy or two…

Eh, he’ll do.

Now, the idea of varying segment hosts isn’t an altogether bad idea. Most of them work well: Angela Lansbury gives the lead-in to the Firebird Suite plenty of gravitas befitting the finale, as do Ithzak Perlman, Quincy Jones, and James Earl Jones, who build plenty of intrigue for Pines of Rome, Rhapsody in Blue and Carnival of the Animals respectively; this seriousness makes James’ reaction to what the Carnival segment is really about a successful comic subversion. Even Penn and Teller for all their obnoxiousness kind of works with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice due to the linking magic theme.

I suppose what turns people off is the self-congratulatory tone and seemingly forced attempts at comedy you get from Martin, Penn, Teller, and Bette Midler. But you know what? They still make me laugh after all these years (well, you have to laugh at Bette Midler’s antics or she’ll come after you when the Black Flame Candle is lit). In fact, I have to hand it to Midler’s intro in particular. Fantasia 2000 came out right around the time I began taking a keen interest in what animation really was and how it was made. For me, her preceding The Steadfast Tin Soldier piece with tidbits about Fantasia segments that didn’t make it past the drawing board was like the first free hit that turned me into an animation junkie (plus this was before you could look up anything on the topic in extraneous detail on the internet, so it had that going for it). If I have to nitpick, though, The Divine Miss M referring to Salvador Dalí as “the melting watches guy” is a bit reductive. That’d be like calling Babe Ruth “the baseball guy” or Walt Disney “the mouse and castle guy”. Plus, Dalí and Disney were close compadres with a layered history. They planned on many collaborations, though the fruit of their labors, Destino, would not be completed in either of their lifetimes. Couldn’t show just a modicum of respect there, Bette?

Ahhh! I take it back! Don’t steal my soul!

So, I wouldn’t say I hate or even completely dislike the host segments. Sorry to disappoint everyone who was hoping for me to rip into them. They’re not awful, just uneven. And if you think they ruin the movie for me, you’ve got another think coming.

Pines of Rome – Ottorino Respighi

The idea for Pines of Rome’s visuals came about due to an unusual detail in some concept art. Someone noticed that a particular cloud in a painting of the night sky heavily resembled a flying whale. So why make a short about flying whales? The better question would be why NOT make a short about flying whales? A supernova in the night sky miraculously gives some whales the ability to swim through the air over the icy seas. Again, seeing this in IMAX was incredible. There’s just one minor issue I have with. This and another segment were developed well before Pixar made its silver screen debut, and unfortunately, it shows twenty years later; the worst cases are the close-ups.

Okay, who put googly eyes on the moldy beanbag?

There are ways of blending CGI and hand-drawn animation well, and this isn’t one of them. I understand the necessity of having expressive eyes but simply dropping one on top of a CGI creature gives it a bit of an uncanny valley feel. They should have either stuck with traditional all the way or made the whales entirely CG. The CG animation of the whales themselves isn’t too shabby, so they could have pulled it off.

Because simply giving whales flight apparently isn’t enough to hold an audience’s interest, we have an adorable baby whale earning his wings, so to speak. Once he gets his bearings above the surface, he swoops ahead of his family and bothers a flock of seagulls. They chase him into a collapsing iceberg, leaving him trapped, alone and unable to fly. The quiet dip in the music combined with the image of this lost little calf adds some genuine emotional weight to this piece. The baby navigates the iceberg’s claustrophobic caverns until he finds a crevice that elevates him back to his worried parents. From there a whole pod of whales rises out of the ocean to join them as they fly upwards to the supernova’s source.

“So long, and thanks for all the krill!”

As the music reaches its brilliant crescendo, the whales plow through storm clouds until they reach the top of the world and breach through the stars like water. It’s an awe-inspiring climax of a short that, flaws and all, reminds you of what Fantasia is all about.

Majestic.

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

The music of jazz composer George Gershwin? Timeless. The art of renowned caricaturist Al Hirschfeld? Perfection. All this brought to life with the best animation Disney has to offer? It’s a match made in heaven. Eric Goldberg, who animated the Genie among other comedic characters, idolized Hirschfeld and drew plenty of inspiration from drawings, so getting to work alongside him while making this was nothing short of a dream come true. That attention to detail in rendering Hirschfeld’s trademark curvy two-dimensional style goes beyond mere homage. It is a love letter to a great artist that encapsulates everything about him and his craft, and to a great city that we both had the honor of calling home. The story goes that Goldberg screened the final product for Hirschfeld shortly before his 96th birthday and his wife told him after that it was the best gift he could have ever received.

All this to say I am quite fond of this particular short, thank you very much.

The piece follows four characters navigating 1930’s Manhattan and crossing paths over the course of a single day:

Duke, a construction worker torn between his steady, monotonous job and following his dream of drumming in a jazz band,

Joe, a victim of the Great Depression desperately looking for work,

Rachel, a little girl who wants to spend time with her parents but is forced to attend lesson after lesson by her strict governess,

and “Flying” John, a henpecked husband longing to be free from his overbearing wife –

And her little dog too!

By the way, John is modeled in name and in looks after Disney animation historian John Culhane, who also was the inspiration for The Rescuers’ Mr. Snoops, hence why the two look so similar. He’s not the only name who appears in this sequence: Gershwin himself makes a surprise cameo as he takes over Rachel’s piano solo halfway through the story.

Speaking of, my family used to compare me to Rachel because at that point in my young life I was doing or already did the same mandatory activities as she – swimming, ballet, music, sports, all with the same amount of speed and varying degrees of success.

No one can argue that art is where we both excelled, however.

The physical timing of Rhapsody in Blue’s animation is hilarious, though it doesn’t rely wholly on slapstick for its humor. The sight gags and clever character dynamics all weaved into the music milk plenty of laughs, and envelop you in this living, breathing island that is Manhattan.

I speak from experience, this is the most accurate depiction of commuting on the 1 train that there ever was.

Even with such a premise and two masters of combining comedy and art, there is still enough pathos to keep the story rooted. Take when all four characters are at their lowest point. They look down on some skaters in Rockefeller Center and picture themselves in their place fulfilling their deepest desires. Seeing their dreams so close in their minds and yet so far away while paired with the most stirring part of the score is heartwrenching.

In the end, things pick up as the characters unwittingly solve each other’s problems. Duke quits the construction site, leaving an opening for Joe to fill. Joe accidentally snags John’s wife on a hook and hauls her screaming into the air, allowing him one night of uninhibited fun at the club where Duke performs.

“Anyone hear something? Nah, it’s probably just me.”

Rachel loses her ball while fighting with her nanny, which Duke bounces off the window of her parents’ office, which in turn gets them to notice their daughter about to run into traffic and they save her. Everyone gets their happy ending and it ends on a spectacularly glamorous shot of Time Square lit up in all its frenetic neon glory.

And not a single knockoff costumed character hitting up tourists for photos. Those were the days, my friend.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I adore Rhapsody in Blue. It’s easily my favorite part of the movie; a blissful ménage-a-trois of art style, music and storytelling, and it’s so New York that the only New York things I could think of that are missing are Central Park and amazing bagels. This sequence is gut-busting, energized, emotional, and mesmerizing in its form. I don’t often say I love a piece of animation so much that I’d marry it, but when I do, it’s often directed at Rhapsody in Blue.

  Piano Concerto #2 – Dmitri Shostakovich (aka The One With The Steadfast Tin Soldier)

This piece has an interesting history attached to it. Disney wanted to do an animated film surrounding Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales – including The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier – as far back as the 30’s, but the project fell by the wayside. During Fantasia 2000’s production, Roy E. Disney asked if they could do something with Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #2 since he and his daughter were attached to that piece. He looked over sketches and storyboards made for the unrealized Tin Soldier sequence and discovered the music matched in perfect time with the story.

This is the second sequence that features CGI at the forefront. Unlike Pines of Rome, though, it works because the main characters are toys, and you can get away with your early CGI looking shiny and metallic and plastic-like when you’re animating toys.

Hell, it worked for Pixar.

The story centers on a tin soldier cast with only one leg who is shunned by his comrades for routinely throwing off their groove. He falls in love with a porcelain ballerina when he mistakes her standing en pointe as her also missing a limb. Despite his embarrassment when he learns the truth, the ballerina is enamored with him as well. This rouses the jealousy of an evil jack-in-the-box who I swear is a caricature of Jeffrey Katzenberg minus the glasses but with a goatee and Lord Farquaad wig.

“MUST. CHOP. EVERYTHING!!!”

The jack-in-the-box and the soldier duke it out for a bit before the former sends the latter flying out the window in a little wooden boat. The boat floats the soldier into the sewers and attracts a horde of angry rats who attack him, because animated rodents seem to have a natural hatred towards toy soldiers.

Case in point.

The soldier hurtles into the sea where he’s eaten by a fish – which is caught the following morning, packed up to be sold at market, bought by the cook who works at the very house he came from, and he falls out of the fish’s mouth on the floor where his owner finds him and places him back with the rest of the toys. Now the story this is based on hints that the jack-in-the-box is really a goblin who orchestrates the soldier’s misfortunes with his malicious magic. But based the extremely coincidental circumstances of his return home, I’d say the soldier’s the one who’s got some reality-warping tricks up his sleeve.

The soldier and jack-in-the-box duel again that evening, but this time the harlequin harasser falls into the fireplace and burns up. Our hero gets the girl and lives happily ever after. A nice conclusion, though a far cry from what happened in the original tale: the ballerina is knocked into the fire, the soldier jumps in after her, and all that remains of them by morning is some melted tin in the shape of a heart. I gotta say, for all my love of classic fairytales, Disney made the right call. Andersen’s life was far from magical and it reflected in his stories, making many of them depressing for no good reason. The triumphant note the music ends on also would have clashed horribly if they stuck with the original. Even the Queen of Denmark agreed with Disney’s decision to soften their adaptations of Andersen’s work. I don’t know if I’d call The Steadfast Tin Soldier one of my very favorite parts of Fantasia 2000, but in the end, s’all right.

  Carnival of the Animals: Finale – Camille Sant-Saëns

This shortest of shorts (clocking in at less than two minutes) kicks off with James Earl Jones asking with as much seriousness as he can muster from the situation, what would happen if you gave a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?

The answer –

Good answer!

Fie on those who dismiss this part as a silly one-off that doesn’t belong here. Fie, I say! It’s a pure delight full of fun expressions and fluid fast-paced action. Once again we have my man Eric Goldberg to thank for this, though this time he animated it entirely by himself. I’d call it a one-man show except for the fact that his wife Susan handpainted the entire thing with watercolor, making it look like it sprung to life straight from a paintbrush. It’s a simple diversion about a flamingo who wants to play with his yo-yo while the other snooty members of his flock try to force him to conform. As you can see from the still, they fail quite epically. Nothing beats the power of nonconformity and yo-yos (also every yo-yo move featured here is authentic; I love when animators go that extra mile).

  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice plays next, but since I already touched on that in the first Fantasia review, I’m skipping over it. The segment ends with Mickey congratulating Leopold Stokowski (again), then crossing the barriers of time and space to inform the conductor, James Levine, that he needs to track down the star of the next segment, Donald Duck. Levine stalls by explaining a bit about what’s to come while Mickey frantically searches for his errant costar. The surround sound sells the notion of him moving around the back of the theater accidentally causing mischief all the while. Thankfully, Donald is found and the sequence commences.

Pomp and Circumstance – Edward Elgar

This famous piece of music was included at the insistence of Michael Eisner after he attended his son’s graduation ceremony. He wanted to feature a song that everyone was already familiar with. Of course, since this was after Frank Well’s untimely passing and no one was bold enough to temper Eisner’s worst instincts with common sense, his original pitch had every animated couple Disney created up to that point marching on to Noah’s Ark – and then marching out with their babies.

Okay, A: Unless you’re doing a groin hit joke or are Ralph Bakshi or R. Crum, cartoon characters don’t have junk as a rule. And B, one of the unwritten rules of Disney animation is that barring kids that already exist like the titular 101 Dalmatians or Duchess’ kittens, the established canon couples do not in any official capacity have children.

To which Eisner laughed maniacally and vowed that they would.

But in order to placate Eisner’s desire to turn every branch of the Disney corporation into a commercial for itself, the animators compromised and agreed to do Pomp and Circumstance with the Noah’s Ark theme, BUT with only one couple – Donald and Daisy Duck. In this retelling of the biblical tale, Donald acts as Noah’s beleaguered assistant (I guess Shem, Ham, and Japheth were too busy rounding up the endangered species). Daisy provides emotional support while preparing to move on to the ark as well. It’s refreshing to see these two not losing their temper at each other for a change. I wish we got to see this side of their relationship more often. Donald returns Daisy’s easily lost plot device locket to her and as the rain rain rain comes down down down, he starts directing the animals on board; the lions, the tigers, the bears, the…ducks?

Anyway, all the animals and Donald get on board – well, most of them do.

The world’s first climate change deniers.

Donald realizes Daisy hasn’t arrived yet and runs out to look for her, unaware that she’s already boarded. Daisy sees Donald leaving but is too late to stop him before the first floodwaters hit their home. Donald made it back to the ark in time, however, though both of them believe that the other is forever lost to them. I find it astounding that they never run into each other not even once during the forty days and forty nights they’re cooped up on that boat. It’s the American Tail cliche all over again, and well, at least it’s happening in a short and not the entire movie.

Soon the ark lands atop Mount Ararat and the animals depart in greater numbers than when they embarked on their singles cruise. Daisy realizes halfway down the mountain that she’s lost her locket again, which Donald finds at that very moment while sweeping up, and the two are joyously reunited.

“I thought you were dead!” “I thought YOU were dead!”

I kid around, but I truly enjoy this short a lot. There’s so much warmth to Donald and Daisy’s relationship that makes their reunion at the end all the sweeter, and there’s plenty of great slapstick to offset the drama in the meantime. I will admit it’s nice to hear there’s more to Pomp And Circumstance than just the famous march, and the entire suite matches flawlessly with the visuals, though the main theme itself is so ingrained into the public consciousness that it’s difficult to extricate it from that what we’ve seen accompany it countless times.

Come on, you all know what I’m talking about.

“What? Don’t tell me YOU don’t think of heads exploding like fireworks when you hear Pomp and Circumstance! Name one other life-changing moment could you possibly associate it with…you weirdo.”

The Firebird Suite – Igor Stravinsky

Fantasia 2000 comes to a close with a piece that has some emotional resonance if you know your history. You might remember from my first Fantasia review that Igor Stravinsky was disappointed with how Rite of Spring turned out, especially since he was a big admirer of Walt Disney and really wanted to do more projects with him beforehand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they picked his premiere ballet to end the movie on decades later. After all these years, Disney worked hard to do right by Stravinsky – with a few twists, though. Instead of a balletic retelling of Russian folktales involving kidnapped princesses and immortal sorcerers, we have a fantastical allegory for the circle of life.

No, not that circle of life.

A lone elk who I’m fairly convinced is the Great Prince of the Forest walks through the forest in the dead of winter. With his breath, he awakens the spirit of the woods and one of the most beautiful characters Disney has ever created, the Spring Sprite.

I. Love. This character. Her design is gorgeous, shifting from a shimmery opalescent blue as she steps out of the water into an eternally flowing fount of live greenery spreading from her hair in her wake. Wherever she moves, grass, flowers, and trees blossom, fulfilling the idea of a springtime goddess more than Disney’s own Goddess of Spring ever did. The Sprite was a massive influence in developing my art style, particularly in her face and expressive eyes, and I used to draw her a lot. Visit any relative of mine and chances are you’ll find a picture of her by me hanging up on a wall somewhere in their house. Yet there’s far more to her character than just a pretty representation of nature; there’s plenty of curiosity, spunk, determination, and a drive for creativity. I love her frustrated expression when she’s dissatisfied with the tiny flower she sculpts out of the ground and how her face lights up when she morphs it into a buttercup as tall as she is.

The Sprite paints the forest with all the colors of the wind (mostly green) until she reaches a mountain that isn’t affected by her magic. Perplexed, she climbs it until she finds a large hunched over rock figure – or is it an egg? – standing inside. She reaches out to touch it and…

The Sprite has awakened her counterpart, the wrathful and deadly Firebird. Think giant evil phoenix made of smoke, flame and lava. And it goes without saying that seeing this on the biggest screen left quite the terrifying impact. One of the biggest inspirations for this sequence was the eruption of Mount St. Helens (though the shot of the Sprite surveying the breadth of the Firebird’s destruction reminds me far too much of the Australian bushfires going on) and the sheer horror of nature’s irrepressible chaos is fully captured here. But the Firebird refuses to settle for merely destroying the Sprite’s handiwork, oh no. It won’t rest until creation itself is consumed, and the Sprite is reduced to a powerless mite as she scrabbles to escape the Firebird’s relentless pursuit of her. Try as she might, however, the towering monster corners and devours her in one fell swoop.

The forest is reduced to gray ashes in the wake of the Firebird’s rampage, but the Great Prince has survived. Once again he brings the Sprite to life with his breath, only this time she is tiny and weak (the animation of her slowly developing from the ash into her huddled ragged form is breathtaking). Now, I didn’t think I’d get emotional revisiting a small part of a single movie I’ve rewatched countless times before but viewing this through a mature eye combined with the beauty of the Firebird Suite’s climax and its timely message has caused me to see it in a new light:

The Sprite is utterly broken by what she’s been through and the destruction she carelessly caused. She’s lost all faith in herself and in the idea of returning the forest to what it once was. Even so, the Prince gently insists on carrying her on his antlers to the remains of their favorite cherry blossom tree. Where her tears fall, grass shoots begin to sprout. This fills the Sprite with hope, and she soars into the air becoming one with the sky and rains life down on the forest. New trees burst from the earth. The air is filled with leaves and pollen and new life flowing from her essence. The Sprite’s joy and power grow so strong that she even encircles the Firebird’s mountain in all her verdant glory. Life and creation overcome death and destruction. It’s not Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria, but it’s close.

And unfortunately, that’s the biggest problem Fantasia 2000 has.

While working on the original Fantasia, a storyman made the mistake of referring to the work they were doing in “the cartoon medium” in Walt’s presence. Walt turned on him and snapped “This is NOT ‘the cartoon medium’. It should not be limited to cartoons. We have worlds to conquer.”

And conquer they did…just not the way Walt intended.

The point I’m trying to make is Walt was breaking new ground and experimenting with things nobody ever tried when it came to Fantasia. While those risks were initially deemed a failure, it eventually gained the recognition it deserved from the animation and filmmaking community. Any attempt to recreate the magic of Fantasia is no small feat. But rather than taking new risks that not even the first film dared, the studio opted to adhere to Fantasia’s formula with pieces that recall if not flat out copy from the original segments. I hesitate to call it a pale imitation or cash grab however because this was done for the art much more than the money (though Eisner was probably hoping it would bring in some bank). There’s even a little bit of depth to it: while the first Fantasia had themes of differing natures in conflict – light vs. dark, fire vs. water, etc. – Fantasia 2000’s theme is accidental but brilliantly meta: CGI vs. traditional animation, a conflict Disney would become very familiar with in the decade following the film’s release. In some ways, it reminds me of Epcot’s genesis. The driving force behind it was long gone, but the attempt to bring it to life as close to the original vision as possible is still much appreciated.

For all my gripes, I really do enjoy Fantasia 2000. Perhaps not on the same level as its predecessor, but it has its moments, oh yes. And believe me, as far as Disney sequels go, you could do far, far, far worse than this one. Fantasia 2000 is Fantasia’s kid sister mimicking its beloved older sibling in an attempt to show it can be cool like the big kids too. But hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this review, please consider supporting this misfit on Patreon. Patreon supporters receive great perks such as extra votes for movie reviews, movie requests, early sneak-peeks and more! If I can hit my goal of $100 a month, I can go back to weekly tv series reviews. As of now, I’m only $20 away! Special thanks to Amelia Jones, Gordhan Rajani and Sam Minden for their contributions! I’ll see you in a few weeks when I and review the 1959 Disney animated classic, Sleeping Beauty!

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Screencaps from animationscreencaps.com

Yes, I know The Lion King and Lady and the Tramp ended with the titular characters having babies, but was there anyone out there apart from Eisner who demanded there be sequels to those films that focused on their offspring?

January Review: Fantasia 2000 Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general.

[konan-supernova]

Falling for You (Literally) part 3

Words: 3000

Warnings: deceit mentioned (malice also mentioned)

Tagging: @roxinnaxu and @stormblessedcastiel (lemme know if you wanna be added/ removed)

part one / part two / part three (you are here)

HUGE thanks to @obsessedfanofmanythings for beta reading this chapter 💙

Logan had never been one for feelings.

They were just so confusing, so unnecessary, so ridiculous. Why force yourself to go through all those horrible stages of weakness and despair just for a tiny moment of happiness? There was no logical reason to indulge yourself in such awful mindsets, no reason to suffer through that if you had the choice to remain numb to such things.

Logan had always diluted his emotions, especially those such as fear, sadness, anger, and the like. He tried to let himself experience happiness more often though, especially after Patton found out what he was doing. It was their compromise - he got to be happy, feel real emotions, but dial down the ones he wasn’t comfortable with.

He was not surprised, however, that at this point in time, he was unable to hold back his terror. Tears streamed down his face and stuck to the lenses of his glasses, making the body in his arms no more than a black and purple blur. He could barely breathe, his mouth was open wide and pulling in sporadic, shuddering gasps of air. Virgil twitched in his arms, and Logan sobbed, lifting him closer to his chest. He leaned in, shaking and sobbing into Virgil’s hoodie.

Why couldn’t he stop? Why couldn’t he hold his tears back, like every time before this? What was wrong with him?

“Patton,” he gasped, feeling a sudden hand on his shoulder. The hand guided him, helped him to stand up, then pulled off his glasses. A moment later, they were slid carefully back into place, and he could now more or less see Patton standing in front of him, Roman strung over his shoulder fireman style.

“We need to get them somewhere safe,” Patton sniffled, biting his lip. Logan nodded, unsure that he would be able to form a coherent sentence in response. He turned around, doing a quick survey of the area, then turned back to Patton.

Wordlessly, he took a step forward, his legs shaking under him. All at once, he felt his energy leaving him, but his resolve was anything but weakened. He had to help them, had to get them to safety, had to make sure they were okay. Patton would not be able to carry three unconscious sides out of the imagination, especially not when two of them were badly injured. He would be stuck, forced to choose between leaving all of them behind to go get Thomas or taking them one at a time to safety. Logan couldn’t do that to him, wouldn’t do that to him, not after what had just happened.

So he took another step. Then another, then one more, over and over and over. This will be the last one, he thought to himself. You can stop after this one step. But he did not stop, all the way through the imagination.

Even hours later, when they had long since reached the main hub of the mindscape, when they had long since put the others to bed, when they had long since told Thomas about the day’s events, he did not stop.

His feet shuffled onwards in his sleep, and he woke up covered in sweat, the covers kicked off of his bed. He was barely awake for a minute before the dark tendrils of sleep took hold of him, pulling him back down into oblivion. Ghostly images of Roman unconscious in the dirt and Virgil falling from the sky filled his dreams, but he kept going.

He had to. He had to. He had to. He…

°•°

He woke up earlier than he was used to.

Sunlight filtered into his room the window, his thin colored curtains casting everything in a strange blue light. His head throbbed slightly, and in the back of his mind, there was a thought, an urgent reminder that he couldn't quite reach.

He furrowed his brow, concentrating on the thought as he reached for his glasses. As soon as he slid them onto his face, he noticed the odd smudges on the lenses - the insides of the lenses. Tears.

Virgil.

A shiver ran down his back and he leapt out of bed, his normal clothes already having replaced his pyjamas. He raced down the hall, the activity not doing his headache any favors, finally stopping in front of Patton's room. The two of them had summoned extra beds the night before so that Patton would know if they needed something in the night (he had assured Logan that he would okay taking care of the both of them, that things would be fine. Logan had eventually agreed and retired to bed).

Logan hesitated at the door, his fists hovering above the wood, prepared to knock. After a moment, he did, trying to keep it as soft as possible. A quiet “Come in,” answered him, so he slowly pushed the door open, relaxing when he saw Roman sitting up on his bed. He turned to Logan, wincing as he attempted to wave at him.

“Don't do that, you need to stay still for now,” Patton reprimanded, bringing over an ice pack to the injured side. He muttered a quick thanks before pressing it to his forehead and closing his eyes. He then shifted on the bed for a moment, his brows furrowing as the seconds ticked by.

“I've been sitting still for half an hour, shouldn't I stretch my muscles?” Roman groaned.

“Soon,” Patton said, not bothering to elaborate further. He walked towards the door, smiling wearily at Logan as he passed by. “Watch these two while I'm gone, would you?” he disappeared down the hall without giving Logan a chance to respond, so he just sighed and stepped into the room, taking a seat next to Roman on the bed.

“How is he?” he asked after a moment of silence. Roman just huffed.

“Patton or Virgil?” he asked, staring at the lump of covers and ruffled feathers laying on the bed across from him.

“Both,” Logan answered, his thumbs twitching as they rubbed up against one another over and over.

“Patton's been working himself to death since I woke up, trying to get me sorted out. He's been running all around the mindscape, grabbing medicine and juice boxes and ice packs and pillows and whatever else one of us needs,” Roman paused, holding out one of the aforementioned juice boxes to Logan. He took it, setting it down on the bed next to him before letting Roman continue. “Virgil hasn't woken up yet. Patton filled me in on what happened, and….”

Roman swallowed, and it did not go unnoticed by Logan how tightly his fists suddenly clenched, or how he had to close his eyes as if to bite back tears.

“I'm afraid for him,” he admitted, indeed sounding choked up. “He's been hiding this for so long, and then he got hurt because of me and now everyone knows and he's going to be so afraid when he wakes up,” he gasped, a few tears escaping his eyes. They ran down his face slowly, leaving Logan lots of time to wipe one away, tell Roman everything would be alright.

He didn't, though. Instead, he sat on the bed next to him, reaching a hand over to console him. Roman looked up, tear streaks on his face and fear shining in his eyes.

“It's going to be okay,” Logan said, but he really wasn't sure.

In front of them, Virgil shivered, letting out a long breath of air. His wings twitched, but other than that, he remained ghostly still, the only movement being the methodical rise and fall of his chest.

“Sorry,” Virgil slurred, and Logan felt his heart freeze.

“Yeah,” Roman said, taking a sip from his juice box. Logan knew enough about emotions to note the thick sarcasm in his voice. “It's all gonna be just peachy.”

°•°

There was a rushing in his ears, like he was falling, then a ringing sensation, then silence. Consciousness usually hit him like a mallet, striking once or twice in the night, then once more with maximum power come late morning. Today, though, it was a rushing sound, a ringing sounds, and then no sound at all.

He let out a large breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, his entire body relaxing from the action. Virgil realized quickly that he was quite sore, and a few parts of his body hardly had any feeling at all, just a faint tingling sensation and a feeling of being hot and cold all over all at once.

His wings were probably where he had the most feeling, although a lot of it was currently pins and needles. He tried moving them, to no avail, and was left floating in this awkward (yet somehow peaceful) state of semi numbness. He tried to relax, go back to sleep, but that wasn't happening either.

“Yeah,” someone said, the words coming from somewhere behind him. “It's all gonna be just peachy.”

Virgil froze. Who was that? Were they in the room with him? If they were, they must have seen his wings, right?

A truckload of memories hit him, and he could barely control his heavy breathing as he remembered the day prior. The fight with the dragon witch, the reveal of his wings, passing out in someone's arms… it all came back, washing over him like a rogue wave of headache material. How was he supposed to fix this?

He had really messed up this time, hadn't he?

Virgil groaned, forcing his eyes open, wincing as bright light assaulted his vision. He found himself facing a wall, the light blue color being quite familiar to him (he'd spent enough sleepless nights up talking with Patton to know what his room looked like). He took in a deep breath, grimacing as his chest began to regain feeling. His right shoulder and left wing began to throb in pain, though he noticed that it was much improved from what it had been during the fight.

He started to sit up, knowing that rolling over would just cause trouble - he really wasn't in the mood to roll onto his wings and damage them further. Once had pushed himself into a sitting position, he turned around, ready to face whoever was there. Might as well get it over with, right?

Surprisingly, he was met with two sides - Roman and Logan. Both of them stared at him with varying degrees of shock. Roman looked like he was about to drop his juice box, as it was hanging out of his mouth from the straw. A few bandages were wrapped around his chest, and Virgil couldn't help but wonder if that was his fault for not rescuing him sooner.

Logan sat next to him on a bed that Virgil didn't recognize (and, now that he thought about it, he must've been on a new bed too, since Patton's was across the room), looking somewhat frazzled but overall, just exhausted. He did smile after a moment, which was a heartwarming sight, seeing as Logan tended to be less expressive with his emotions.

“I'm glad you're awake,” he said softly, so sincere that Virgil almost believed him. In the back of his mind, though, he knew that it couldn't have been true. Everyone he'd known before had hated his wings, told him that they made him the worst out of all of them. Why would Logan just not care? Even he would have to admit that they were unnatural, ugly, useless.

“Yeah, I am too, I guess,” he muttered, clasping his hands together in his lap. When would they bring it up? Would they wait, let him heal before they shot him down? Maybe they would just let him come to his own conclusions, pretend that it hadn't even happened. He kind of hoped they would do that, it would certainly make things easier.

“Roman, how does your chest feel?” Patton burst into the room, surprising all three of its occupants. He didn't even notice Virgil (or maybe he just ignored him), moving past him to tend to Roman.

“It's already doing better, Patton, thank you,” he waved away Patton's hands, pointing to Virgil. Patton spun around, smiling wide as he noticed the winged side.

“Morning, kiddo. How're you feeling?”

“Fine,” Virgil lied, forcing a small smile onto his lips. It felt wrong, poisoned, but he had to make them believe him. It was no use worrying them over something that he could deal with on his own.

“You sure?” Patton asked, cocking his head to the side. “Your injuries were about three times worse than Roman, and even he's in pain - don't look at me like that, Ro, you know it's true!”

Virgil bit his lip, nodding.

“I'm fine, really,” he assured him, already summoning his hoodie to cover up his bruised chest. “I'm just a bit sore, that's all.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear it,” Patton beamed at him, and Virgil felt a bit bad about lying when he saw his smile.

“Cool, now I'm gonna-”

“Since you're feeling better, though, I think it's time we talked about,” Patton paused, glancing down at Logan for a second, “the wings.”

“Oh,” Virgil gulped, holding his hoodie in his lap. He looked down at the lump of black and purple fabric, running his thumbs over it. He took a deep breath, getting ready to tell them that he would understand if they didn't want him around anymore, or if they didn't want his wings out around them. He'd always hidden them anyway, he really wouldn't care if they wanted him to keep doing it.

(Well, he would care, but he wouldn't say that - it wasn't fair to them.)

“Why did you hide them?” Patton asked before he could say anything. He sat down next to Virgil, turning to face him. Virgil looked down at the floor, unable to answer.

“Don't know,” he managed, curling a fist around the fabric of his jacket. “I guess I thought you'd hate them.”

There was silence for a moment, thick, tense and consuming silence.

Then Roman laughed.

“Why would we hate them?” he asked, genuine amusement and confusion on his face. Virgil stared, unable to understand. Why wouldn't they hate them? Only Dark Sides had non-human attributes, like Deceit with his scales, Malice with his claws and Virgil, with his wings.

“I'm not like you,” he answered, brows furrowed with a frown on his face. “I never have been, and these stupid wings are just a reminder that I never will be.”

“None of us are like each other, Virgil,” Logan said softly, catching his eye from across the room. “I can't process feelings like Patton can, Patton can't create like Roman can, and Roman can't focus like I can. We're all different from each other, so why should we care if you are too?”

“But it's not like that!” Virgil shouted, tears threatening to spill out. He shook his head, forcing them down. He would not allow himself to cry. “You guys are all normal, you… You look like people do. Having strengths and weaknesses is not the same as having a pair of wings slapped onto your back to remind you that you're not normal. You guys are different because it's your job, but this doesn't relate to my job at all! I don't need these, and you don't deserve to have to look at them all the time,” Virgil finished, both fists balled in his lap. He shook, holding back years worth of tears and shame.

Patton reached a hand out, letting it hover over Virgil's for a moment. Virgil eventually opened one of his hands and let Patton grasp it, bringing it up to eye level.

“You do know that we could never hate you, right?” he spoke softly, looking hurt and concerned and just so full of love. Virgil didn't nod or shake his head or acknowledge the question in any way, just looked down at the floor again. Patton hummed softly, bringing his other hand up under Virgil's chin, lifting his face up again. Virgil bit his lip, trying to avoid looking in his eyes.

“But-”

“No 'buts’,” Roman chimed in, and Virgil turned to face him once more. “None of us could ever truly hate you, Virge, not ever. You're wonderful, absolutely wonderful.”

“And what you said about your wings and how they don't relate to your job?” Logan recalled, an eyebrow raised. “It's wrong. You used those wings to protect Roman yesterday when he was incapacitated, and again to protect us when Dragon Witch expressed will to harm us. As the protector of the group, wings would be an invaluable asset to all fight or flight situations.”

Virgil opened his mouth to retaliate, then paused, closing it again. How could this be? Did they really just not care, or were they being nice to let him down slowly later?

He closed his eyes, pushing away all of the nastier thoughts. He didn't have the time or the energy to worry about it anymore.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment silence. The world seemed to slow down as he opened his eyes, looked around the room at his friends. They each smiled at him, and he smiled back, a real (albeit shaky) smile. “I guess you're right.”

Later, he would tell Thomas about it, relive his doubts and fears as Thomas processed the story and his feelings. He would relax as Thomas wrapped him in a hug, laugh as the others popped up and joined in, careful not to press up against his injured wings. Eventually he would grow comfortable with them, showing them in videos without much explanation (the fandom freaked out after the first time he showed up with them out).

But for now, he would just sit, happy tears streaming down his face, sobbing his heart out with the friends he loved gathered around him. Things would be okay.

Everything would be okay.

[iseul2056-blog]

hiii everyone! i’m finally here. this is rosé bringing in my son, byun iseul, who’s also the biggest sponsor to damsu. tl;dr he’s a robin hood-esque slash masked vigilante that happened to have a superstitious father that foresaw a kind of incoming apocalypse, thus training him for survival. if you’d like to plot with him, i’m easily reachable via discord ( rosé.#6236 ) more than tumblr im, although i don’t mind the latter either. just like this plot and i’ll come running to you! without further ado, i’m going to dump information about iseul under the read more!

INTRODUCTION.

birthed in one of the richest families in south korea 5031, his father and mother used to be that quixotic couple with his father leading in a multitude of industries as both a stakeholder and in some, owner. both parents came from long lines of inherited money, legacies that only expanded in his father’s hands.

his father was rather unorthodox, predicting that the world would collapse soon with theories to back him up. survival of the fittest, so he trained iseul in terms of physical and material and mental advances. he was homeschooled until the end of primary school, attending various courses to support and enhance his physical and intellectual capabilities.

his friends as a child came from the same social circles, especially from his mother’s side as she is a socialite. when he started school in a public setting, he went along well with some people while remaining private for the most parts of himself. has a penchant for compartmentalization for sure. dishonest as a person in general, and in result of realizing this himself, has slight trust issues.

when he was twelve, his mother left the family due to not having enough attention from his father mostly — who was always busy with both work and thoughts. his mother remarried two years after the divorce, and her new husband is also within the same social status as them, so iseul did have a period where he would avoid attending galas and the likes.

he loved his father, and always does, but there are significant values that his father held which he couldn’t truly grasp, let alone practice. it enveloped the entire view of having their money for themselves, including preserving any means to survive the collapse. every man for himself was basically how his father drilled him, but he grew a good conscience that led him to feel internally conflicted.

unbeknownst to his father, he often stole from fellow influencers to give the money towards the poor. this was done out of slight malice, in which he believes that every rich person should be contributing to the cause. and when the great divide occurred, there was a huge rift between his father and him for the first time in forever. the difference in principles made him run away for approximately a few months, until his father summoned him during the last dying breath.

in 2054, he inherited his father’s wealth in its unadulterated form, including the bribes, the corruptions, the malpractices. he started understanding to what extent his father was willing to preserve their safety in a world where money rules. it touched him, yet startled him in a sense that he’s certain all the hates would be redirected towards him later on as the face of this extreme affluence.

he made a few changes to the companies his father previously had a power in, and started building and reaching out towards more ecosystemic endeavors. his money is mostly delegated to the greater good, spending so much to support the attempts to make seoul a better place. when he deemed it wasn’t enough anymore, he began to steal small, thanks to his father’s years of harnessing his abilities.

in 2055, he started adopting the alias zero, as both a masked vigilante and also a thief, a robber. he’s been creating a lattice of networks both inside and outside the borders, although it took a while for those in the outskirts to believe in his cause when he barely keeps in contact with them apart from dropping sums of necessities. his presence renders some dysphoria to happen, with some factions getting more fragmented seeing what he’s been doing for the poor.

his façade is definitely polished to perfection, parading accordingly to his status as a really wealthy man. he’s amicable, but he keeps his distance from most people, especially those who appear close to him. his lies are often coherent and cohesive, causing people to think it’s his actual self, when in fact, it’s somewhere far. he’s actually fairly private, constantly wedging a gap with others, although some managed to penetrate the barriers, getting to know him a tad deeper.

as his front in his daily lives, he has a dozen of bodyguards and k9 dogs to protect him. it makes him seem even more unreachable as it is, as it gets under his skin when plenty of people inquire over donation because of his status as damsu’s biggest sponsor. also, has enough servants for his old mansion, marbled with ivory walls.

actually distrustful towards the green party, and sides better with the poor since it’s whom he wants to protect. he has many underground channels as zero, helping him get his gears and technology, as well as other utilities he needs to perform his field thieveries. he’s not completely blank when it comes to hacking either, although he’d prefer allocating the work towards those more experienced than him.

he has a certain flair to his being zero, mixing various martial arts to concoct his own moves. parkour is a forte as well, with good instincts towards danger that he honed during his stay in the outskirts. will never show any fight as iseul seeing that people might be able to connect the dots if they notice his movement patterns.

CONNECTIONS.

the right hands ( 0 / 2 ): one person inside the border, and another in the outskirts to ensure that he can have backups sent to him as soon as he’s injured if necessary. they are the only ones who have discovered zero’s identity, and have been supporting iseul’s plans since he ran away from home. one of them might be a hacker and the other has connections with technological advancements.

rebel informants ( 0 / ? ): the outskirts people that happened to encounter him as zero — ones which exchange information with a sum of money, water, or sometimes with a deed. this is an underground channel that assists him in his endeavors; some of them would know his motives while some are there purely for the symbiosis.

the so-called social circle ( 0 / ? ): those who are of the well-off communities, meeting him as byun iseul. he’s one of the richest in the circle, and he’s always presenting himself well as his father’s successor. some of these connections could span from his childhood to adulthood. he tends to be charismatic, and oftentimes would refuse inebriating himself.

miscellaneous ( 0 / ? ): green party members, those working for the companies he’s sponsoring, also some journalists that make zero into news. also, victims of his stealing — especially stingy wealthy families.

INTERVIEWS.

what are your thoughts on the green party? are they really going to make a change?

❛ this might sound rather feigned to some, if not most, but i do want the best to occur for everyone’s benefits, even when it would cost me quite a fortune, and i urge for everyone else to do the same even when the price of a better world is not cheap. i understand that people will be in the sides they’ve chosen to be in, but we’re fighting for what we see as the better in any ways that we can. any ways that we see as… just. ❜ presses his lips into a thin line, as though he’s deep in thoughts. ❛ but i definitely want to believe that they would make a change, even if it has to come with various hurdles. in that sense, nonetheless, i wish that the next steps taken would bloom into something beneficial. ❜

on a scale from 1-10; how much have you suffered during the great divide and why?

❛ i didn’t deal with it entirely well when it comes to the psychological aspects, ❜ his syllables are almost too indifferent, edged with a distance set between him and the interviewer. ❛ however, compared to how the others outside our walls, physical and metaphorical, have suffered… i’d rate it as naught, almost. my battles were personal as they came, the great divide becoming nothing but an icing on top of it all… but i don’t suppose making this about myself is the right step to execute. suffering is, after all, relative… to rate it as a one, or a ten, they remain an illusionary perspective that i don’t think we can afford right now. material-wise, i did have no suffering to bear, but there were other aspects as well — ones which i don’t wish to disclose. ❜

what are your plans for the next few years? work? love? adopt an animal? any changes in your life?

❛ i’m not entirely sure. there are too many visions to be realized within a short span of this life that we have, with the crisis to be resolved. there are several plans in mind that i’d like to reap myself, of course, but my priorities lie in ensuring that there’s enough sustenance for everyone. ❜ a calm smile is splayed on his lips as he fixates his gaze. ❛ there’s a lot of worries, but as for me myself, i’d like to find more effective ways to maneuver around my line of work, distributing towards the better world than what we have now. as for love, i don’t think we’ll ever know when we’ll find the person that comprehends us best. it’s a matter of circumstances. animals, i don’t think i can divide my attention as of current, so the ones i have around me now have to suffice, even when i don’t take care of them personally. ❜

HEADCANONS.

circa survive, the world was never fractured for a boy that was prepared for when the structure would collapse. appa was a believer of anticlimactic armageddon, foreseeing the future just from the mere understandings in regards to the past and present. the fittest was destined to be a boy that shouldn’t be frail, and therefore, he was trained, groomed to the tallest skyscraper with a spine made of the strongest metal appa could get his hands on. appa lived in the paranoia that eventually killed him. there was no sustenance to a man that could never be sated; his lack of satisfaction led him to be one of the biggest giants in the industry. at home, appa was a figment of violent imagination, turning the only son malleable to seek delight from performing an open heart surgery on a nightly basis. there was knowledge poured into a casket too young, and iseul knew that when given a chance, appa would nail it shut with iseul alive inside. calculative, maladaptive, appa was everything that he was afraid of — the face of his night terrors, personified.

except appa eventually passed during the fall of the apocalypse. appa’s prediction was true, however: the world doesn’t come away with a bang. instead, it withers, slowly but surely. it’s been withering for a while now for a boy that grew into a man with too many teeth, and he’s been sinking all the canines into the core of this bereavement. appa paved a path that was too skewed for his liking, with the great divide erupting into a full-blown verbal argument between appa and him. there was an entire line that should’ve led to the head if he chased after the tail enough, and so, that’s what he did regardless of how appa disapproved. they should’ve utilized, exploited what they had as opposed to distributing it around the society. resources could be limited even when they probably were one of the wealthiest, their culture of affluence divided into too many strata. they fought, and he often walked away with anger. justice should’ve been preserved, but he wasn’t one to say a thing when he wasn’t one on the shorter end of the stick.

appa was his crux, still. the death did not do him well during the great divide, returning home to an open coffin ceremony. and so, for years he became complacent with what he inherited, trying to live off his legacy. when damsu came out unscathed, he was there first, believing that somewhat it was a compromise. and poured more into it until it became a bottomless well. he shouldn’t be the only one responsible when the rich still remained as the rich, the poor likewise. he began to steal, to lie, to cheat. everything that appa prepared him for in a world where there was no survival but through violence thrived in an environment that didn’t support justice. and so, he became the man in the myth, the modern robin hood with a supportive delegation with him as the head. he rebels against appa’s commitment towards selfishness, even if it costs him his sleep — a reminder that even after appa’s death, he still lives under appa’s shadows.

[monicadeola]

When the call came to say my mother had died, I was working on a jigsaw of Joan Miró’s painting The Tilled Field (1923-24). Like many others, I turned to jigsaws at the start of the pandemic as a way to manage stress, and symbolically reimpose order on a chaotic world. We take our consolations where we can and, as I continued with the puzzle in the days after mum’s death, its tactile qualities, the spicy smell of ink and card, and the small satisfactions of placing each piece where it belonged, grounded me when the world was in bits – both outside and within.

The Tilled Field is an elementally life-affirming painting. A view of Miró’s family farm in Mont-roig del Camp in Catalonia, it conjures a surreal collection of human, animal and vegetable forms, deconstructed and stylised, and heavily symbolic. Drawing on references from medieval Spanish tapestry to Catalan ceramics and cave paintings, the image is earthy, visceral and definitively a rural scene. Still, there’s something disquieting about the painting, as if it had emerged from a dream or the recesses of an unquiet mind. A tree grows a human ear and an eye; a cloud formation is also a weathervane; a piebald mare swishes her tail as her foal suckles at her teat. At its heart sits a tumbledown farmhouse straight from a dark folk tale. The smoke from its chimney suggests occupation, but the plaster walls are cracked and crumbling back to earth.

Since her diagnosis of dementia 15 years ago, my mother, too, had been disintegrating, as it were, piece by piece. At each of my fortnightly visits, some further part of her seemed to have newly dropped away, leaving gaps so raw and cruel that I sometimes had to remind myself to focus on what remained. COVID-19put a stop to my visiting the nursing home where she spent the final decade of her life. We tried FaceTime ‘get togethers’ but my mother was blind as well as in late-stage dementia, so these felt like one-way affairs – mum’s eyes half-closed, her face unresponsive, her body giving every impression of lifelessness. At the time of her death, I hadn’t seen her for four months, and her image had begun to fade in my mind.

Having a meaningful exchange with my mother involved delving into our shared narrative archive even as it shrank. In this way, we relived and remade the story of our life. We dipped toffee apples for bonfire night, rode donkeys on Llandudno beach, searched for the screech owl in the forest near my childhood home. Sometimes, my mother added to these memories as if they were lucid dreams she could shape at will. Meeting her where she was meant I had to map out the changing landscape of her dementia. Only there could we truly be together.

Three-year-oldswork by trial and error, but four-year-oldsuse the information in the picture to help them complete the puzzle

If maps are representations of a larger reality, then jigsaws are maps too. Indeed, they began life this way, as ‘dissected maps’. Invented by the British cartographer John Spilsbury in the 1760s, the earliest puzzles were designed to make geography lessons more fun for schoolchildren and, no doubt, inculcate them early into the cult of empire. They remained classroom aids until the 1800s, when their manufacture was made cheaper by lithographic printing techniques, the invention of plywood and the treadle jigsaw. Over the 19th century, what began as hand-coloured maps became printed images of monarchs and biblical illustrations, and by the fin de siècle, when the ideas of Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche and the ‘New Woman’ threatened to fragment the old reality entirely, jigsaws had become popular family entertainments.

Like childhood itself, the early dissected maps arrived without any paper picture to act as a guide. The puzzle historian Anne Williams notes that, in 1908, Parker Bros changed the game by adding a print of the complete image to the box. With uncertainty about the destination reduced, the path grew more enticing. By the early 1930s, with the Great Depression beginning to bite, sales of jigsaws in the United States topped 10 million a week. Enthusiasts queued at newsagents for new deliveries, much as modern lockdown puzzlers scoured the internet and traded in secondhand puzzles.

While there is evidence to suggest that jigsaws help older people retain visuospatial memory, a recent study led by the psychologist Martin Doherty at the University of East Anglia in the UK is the first to investigate how children use their understanding of pictures to complete jigsaw puzzles. The study found that three-year-olds work by trial and error, but four-year-olds use the information in the picture to help them complete the puzzle. Such an understanding of the language of pictorial representation is the foundation of the uniquely human ability to draw and create art.

It’s often said that old age is a second childhood. The similarity of the two states – the child immersed in their magic kingdom, the old person in their memory palace – isn’t lost on artists, scientists and thinkers. As the child emerges from the void, accumulating experience, making connections between things and people, so the old person divests themselves, or has taken from them, those same connections, before they return to the emptiness of nonexistence.

When cracks first began to appear in my mother’s memory, she frantically touched them up in a colour that never quite matched. Once touch-ups became insufficient, she began a programme of wholesale renovation in the form of confabulated memories, extending and reworking experiences that, had they been real, wouldn’t have passed building regulations. Though by now immobile, she’d insist that she had taken a long walk by the seaside, or run across my brother in a pear orchard, or just returned from holiday. The further her disease advanced, the less robust her attempts at repair became, as the supply of materials with which to build them dwindled. She once told me that her mind was falling to bits, which is what happens to everything and everyone eventually. We live with entropy. Yet how hard we resist it. Much of the human project is taken up with holding together things that will, eventually and inevitably, fall apart. Witnessing my mother labouring to put her brain back together was intensely moving. Her courage and resistance were flags planted in the territory of the living, and they deepened my love for her as she grew more frail. The lesson I learned is that it’s not memory that makes us human but meaning-making. That’s where the beauty and poignancy of human life is played out.

Slotting a familiar piece into its rightful place can feel almost as rewarding as returning a lost child to her mother

Art is a system of meaning-making too and, in the months since mum’s death, I have deepened my understanding of how it operates by ‘dissecting’ the map that is The Tilled Field. To complete the jigsaw of an artwork is to observe the artist’s work in a way that’s almost impossible to do in a gallery. You get to know it intimately, becoming familiar with every turn of the brush, each minute gradation of colour and tone. You develop an eye for certain patterns. Particularly ‘helpful’ or intriguing jigsaw pieces, that are vital sources of information, data points along the route to completion, take on the character of old friends. Slotting a familiar piece into its rightful place can feel almost as rewarding as returning a lost child to her mother. Over the weeks it takes me to complete The Tilled Field, its elements and some essence of the artist take up residence inside me, becoming, as the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein might have said, introjected internal objects.

This kind of dynamic encounter of projection and introjection with the world of people and objects is how Klein imagines the way an infant struggles to construct an integrated ego. If we’re lucky, Klein suggests, we develop from fragments of desire and need, frustrated or met, into coherent selves able to meet our own desires and needs. Whispering seductively in our ears all the while is Thanatos, the death instinct, willing us back towards the comforting psychic disintegration of not-feelingand unbeing. For Klein, coming into being is an existential battle. For some of us the drama returns, as it did for my mother, in the long, slow process of leaving life behind.

Klein’s one-time disciple Donald Winnicott had something interesting to say about becoming that seems important to me, standing as I am in the shadow of my mother’s death. For him, the mother is at the heart of everything – her willingness to hold, handle and ‘present objects’ to her baby, to lend him her ego for his own use, enabling him to see himself as a coherent being, separate from her (and thus able support a relationship with her). Only through her can he become whole and real. In the language of jigsaws, good-enough mothering is the guide-image that the infant requires to allow him to build an integrated self from the bits and pieces of his needs, his developing internal world and his body.

When, later, bereavement leaves us once more in pieces, when the mother who birthed us is no longer here, how do we put ourselves back together again? Where is the guide-picture to help us map loss when the world itself seems to be coming apart, exposing the insufficiency of the old rubrics for living?

The attachment theorist John Bowlby described mourning as a form of separation anxiety, akin to that felt by a child lost in a crowd. There is panic, disorientation, a shattering of reality. Freud thought that, in order to grieve healthily, we must sever our bonds with the dead, and establish new ones with the living. But even if that were desirable, cutting ties with the mother through whom one becomes a self seems to ask the impossible. Dennis Klass, an expert on bereavement, suggests a more compassionate model. In his view, there’s no ‘closure’, no turning away from the dead. The bereaved person doesn’t let go, but retains their bond with the dead by negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of their loss. This is the neverending task of grief, and it’s not without its consolations. My relationship with my mother remains alive for me, not simply as a fragment of the guide-picture I conjure of my life, but as a vibrant and evolving aspect of my internal world. When I speak to her, I’m addressing neither a ghost nor a memory, but the real mother who exists inside me, as all the versions of herself I ever knew. Death notwithstanding, our relationship continues to evolve.

And so back to The Tilled Field, and the making and remaking implicit in its creation – and also in my recreation of it as a jigsaw. To the decrepit farmhouse, the smoke rising from a cheerful fire, and to my image of my mother and me, warming our hands beside flames that, like us, are born and reformed in destruction and renewal. In The Tilled Field inside me, my mother and I talk quietly about our lives, or don’t talk but simply go-on-being, together, while beyond the crumbling walls, real life teems, strange and brilliant, as if in a dream.

- Melanie McGrath