#No but really the Wall of the Faithless makes no fucking sense

[y-rhywbeth2]

Random realmslore I enjoy:

Gunpowder and other explosives exist in the Realms, but the god of innovation, Gond keeps them magically inert because inventors kept blowing themselves up trying to play with it. Gond did however teach the gnomes of Lantan an alternative in the form of smokepowder, and now the gnomes have guns (spelled gunne, in the Realms). -

While trying to win a drinking contest against a dwarf is an obvious way to end up in the morgue, trying it against an elf or gnome will also land you in the ER. Elves drink wine with every meal, and their wine will put humans and halfings on their ass. Gnomes can keep up and Dwarves think elven wine is basically funny tasting water. (Do not get drunk with moon elves, or you will have nobody but yourself to blame for whatever hedonistic chaos ensues. Do not drink with rock gnomes either, for similar - but probably more explosive - reasons.) -

Dwarves used to not like druidry, then they found a bunch of dwarves had become druids and immediately demanded to know what in the hells all this tree-hugging elfy shite was. Turns out it was apiculture, and that honey is great. Dwarves fucking love honey so much they've invented giant bees. Bees the size of small ponies to ride into battle! Anyway, bees and honey are important in the mountain homes. -

How strict a punishment being False or Faithless is varies by writer. According to Ed Greenwood, the only way to get judged Faithless is to actively piss off every single god you're compatible with. Otherwise the god whose portfolio your life best aligned with is the god who picks your soul up. -

Elven music concerts would be familiar affairs to the modern Earthling. They have the big screens and the fancy effects (via magic); elven vocal chords can do weird special effects; their instruments are capable of sustain and they're in the early stages of inventing rock music, they just haven't invented the electric guitar yet.

[trickfootpike]

OKAYOKAYOKAY now that i've had a few nights to Ruminate here are way too many thoughts from 9/16's show -- fair warning that they aren't *super* coherent as a lot of this i just tried to loosely organize from dms i threw at folks night-of, but it is most of what i remember sticking out to me!

GENERAL THOUGHTS --

last saw the show in august of 2019 - back then i saw it up in the mezzanine, this time i was 7 rows back dead center in the middle of the orchestra. watching the show from the mezzanine feels like a god's eye view of the show while sitting up close in the orchestra is much more like being in the world of men, and how it hits in hadestown particularly is just nuts bc you really do feel like you're on the factory floor.

back in the London production i remember eva playing eurydice with more youth and hope to her, and when the show came to Broadway eurydice hardened. in a world with a pandemic eva seems to have actually shifted this back! Eurydice is still holding tightly onto Orpheus Knowing that the world is unlikely to be kind enough to let them have each other for long but she starts off less faithless than she used to, I suppose I would describe it? she's definitely played more open with others from the beginning rather than having it be something she has to really work towards!

WAIT FOR ME IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT FEELING FROM THE ORCHESTRA THAN THE MEZZANINE AND NOT JUST THE LAMPS. the lamps really only swing out to over the first 2 rows, speaking very generously, anyway. what i remember being most impactful from last time was how the whole theater rumbled as the walls of the set split to reveal hadestown. what i couldn't see and afaik no boot's been able to pick up is the the set ALSO SPLITS AND STRETCHES OPEN AT THE TOP. that awning that covers the balcony lifts and the wall of hadestown is revealed to stretch floor to ceiling and it is just so much, so fucking much oh my god i could not stop hysterically blubbering to myself watching hadestown stretch open like it is absolutely here to devour you whole. it makes you feel the immensity of The Wall. I've linked ig videos of the set pre act 1 and post intermission to give like the best perspective on it i can and tried to film them so they were zoomed as closely as to what my eyes were seeing as I could, but here are also some pictures!

PRE ACT ONE

INTERMISSION

after our lady of the underground when eurydice comes back from hades' office and Persephone is finishing with her show, me being closer this time i was actually able to see amber's face during way down hadestown ii and flowers. and how she portrays seph's feelings re eurydice, it's like : genuine concern and watching over her when she first starts on the line, Quiet Seething and Jealous Rage as the fates' tattle "Hades put his hands on ya" that sticks for a While including the first half of flowers, but as soon as eurydice remembers the meadow her and Orpheus visited her heart just b r e a k s and you can see her wiping away tears. seph's just so caught in her own feelings of helplessness in hadestown. when hades tells her to stay out of him dealing with Orpheus all the fight just deflates out of her and the direct accusing look Orpheus gives her at the end of if it's true mixed with seeing his effect on the workers makes her physically rear back like she's gotten the fight slapped back into her

even with this audience who almost for sure has all seen ht before, there was still the loudest heartbroken gasp when orpheus turned. i know everyone calls this out but it still hit me hard that with a greater percentage of previous viewers in the audience it still hit us all like a fucking brick

and ofc. road to hell ii. it's a millions times more impactful than it already was what with the pandemic, making it through hard times and how they could be hard again but making the best of them even if it doesn't turn out well this time either. i was crying so hard last time but this time i was crying harder but also feeling like a huge weight was being like, very softly cradled in my chest to take some of the burden away

TOM'S HADES/HADES AND PERSEPHONE SPECIFIC THOUGHTS --

Tom's Hades whole tl;dr could be that Hades is a Performance. all those descriptions of him beign "jazzy" and "egodriven" are correct, but there is also this massive vibe he gives off that all his showmanship is there as a cover up for the very pessimistic man at the core of him. when him and persephone are getting along the jazziness is there for genuine playfulness with her, but apart from seph it is a purposeful exaggeration on hades' part to get Whatever it is that he wants. he is playing up aggression as king (see papers) and what he thinks as being suave (see hey little songbird) to maintain his throne and his marriage, and Epic III is the Destruction of that performance. Tom's Hades at the end of Epic III isn't trying to sell anyone anything, you just get to see the suddenly very scared and unsure heart of the man behind the performance of foreman and king. And oh boy is Tom's Hades at his heart unsure. He is so fucking pessimistic; back in Act 1 when Orpheus starts to sing Epic I he turns from Persephone even before she gets reminded of the world above and starts longing for it, because he already expects to see it coming and he doesn't turn back to her Ever Again, literally until he comes to get her in Way Down Hadestown. Not even when she gives him a kiss on the cheek goodbye. His Kiss, The Riot is him trying to figure out how the hell he's gonna be able to rebuild his performance after his whole kingdom saw through it, but he also ends it being so very certain that the deal he figures out for Orpheus Will end with Orpheus failing somehow. There is no doubt in this very pessimistic Hades that doubt will come in, whereas Patrick used the end of His Kiss The Riot almost like he was desperately trying to justify that his doubt came to him only in Persephone's absence

road to hell i: tom's hades loves cheering on the band so much he is Part Of The Problem that Hermes has to get to chill out and it makes so much sense for this jazzy dramatic motherfucker

balcony time (road to hell i until livin' it up on top): when they were upstairs playing dominoes they kept laying their tiles with these overexaggerated movements.. Like when they actually getting along they are so damn flirty and trying so hard to make each other smile and laugh and it is TOO CUTE

way down hadestown: Once Again "I missed ya" gives me no rest, mostly because Tom delivered it with this super coy and cocky grin and Amber immediately smiled back at him like Persephone couldn't help herself

chant i: is spent with him looking up proud into his creation while persephone is looking down with heartbreak and disgust seeing the workers as people in suffering and the ugliness of hadestown. as the song goes on he gets increasingly frustrated like a child who's super proud of the drawing he brought home from school that Persephone has nothing but terrible things to say about. when eurydice starts singing about her suffering seph throws out her arm and points to her like "see! See what you're doing!!" while hades is more in himself processing his disappointment, frustration, heartbreak, but over the next minute you start to see him Formulating A Plan as he watches eurydice. but he doesn't look entirely sold on going through with it until seph throws out her last verse in disgust. it was absolutely the straw that broke the camel's back.

hey little songbird: THO IT SOUNDS SO SEDUCTIVE ON AUDIO. OML DOES IT LEAN INTO EURYDICE'S "STRANGE MAN" DESCRIPTOR. HADES IS LIKE THE CREEPY SALESMAN ON THE CORNER WITH WATCHES AND A TRENCHCOAT. BUT HE'S SELLING HIS SHIT WELL, HE'S JUST ALSO A WEIRDO

Why We Build The Wall/"Behind Closed Doors": That followup on hades' threat when eurydice arrives in hadestown. as hades goes to the stairs he like not whacks, but definitely nudges seph's arm harder than Patrick does to get her attention. when he did she Startled and laid her hand over her arm where he'd tapped her like she was overwhelmed by just that touch........ but then she turns around and watches him take Eurydice up and when he opens his coat and she Realizes you see her whole body go slack. once eurydice goes past the office doors hades turns and lingers staring pointedly down at seph, for *seconds* whereas with patrick i remember it being more of a pointed glance. it drills home that hades is doing this specifically to spite seph and he wants her to know it. and you can see amber discreetly wipe her face before she turns back to "does anybody want a DRINK." there's less direct seduction between hades and eurydice but more explicit threat between hades and seph about eurydice

papers: actually isn't too much Bastärde as it is his Performance. HOWEVER, the way he directs the workers to beat Orpheus is chilling. Like patrick he hangs around, but he's watching until the last 10 seconds so it's way longer. And he makes like the smallest gestures with his hand to direct the workers to the different stages of beating Orpheus, fuck it was twisted

how long: how long actually starts with seph and hades seemingly coming to each other on a similar page - hades came out pensively fiddling with his wedding ring and Amber delivered "I know" like seph was already past the eurydice situation. this also could have been a product of time and seeing how actually little he did "seducing" eurydice lmao

chant ii: very much Hades Sees Orpheus As A Threat™️ (more on this further below) , also dare i say it but tom kills I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY

epic iii: oh man oh man. he looks so untouched until Orpheus starts the lalas and he goes from completely passive unimpressed face to like. his body unfolds on his stool and his hands go slack and he looked between Orpheus and Persephone when he asked where Orpheus had gotten his melody. he asked it a lot softer than I expected him too as well. a big part of the audience actually laughed when Hades sang his lala because Tom cracks his voice during it but it petered off into sniffling when they realized why and then we were all just crying together as persephone placed the flower in his vest.

lovers desire: SOME VERY CUTE STUFF. hades' performance is broken but tom's hades is still a Jazzy Jazzy Man at heart and they're like 100 times more playful with each other - they're both giggling and grinning their asses off while they dance together and give each other these like nudges to the next series of steps and it was adorable and I was discretely sobbing. they both played it like they knew how to do this dance with each other better than they knew anything, the little nudges were like..... them playing inside this dance they already knew so well? Like more overexaggeration to make each other laugh and just revel in this wonderful thing they've rediscovered- specifically I remember that Amber raised her skirt soooooo high when she was doing the curtsey and Tom was like waggling his eyebrows at her and adding extra flourishes with his hands and widening his eyes super big everytime he pulled off a move (the funniest ones were when they do like the two-step where they move one after another in sequence and he's copying her moves in reverse and oml it was just adorable). When Seph had the move where she pulls their linked arms over his head to tuck him into her I remember that was the one part where he wasn't doing this goofy act but his expression straight up melted and he looked so smitten. and when it's the last bit of the dance and he spins her across the stage, seph's face breaks open with tears his expression responds with like this mix of heartbreak and "ohhhhh no baby please don't cry" as he moved across the stage to quickly take her into his arms for the dip at the end

AFTER this when orphydice has finished promises and right before Orpheus turns to ask Hades if they can go, they come out of slow dancing to the side but are still super wrapped up in each other - seph wraps herself around one of his arms and presses herself super close and Tom leaned down with this little smile like Hades was gonna try and steal a quick kiss, but then he hears/sees out of the corner of his eye/senses or something Orpheus approaching and pulls himself up and formal to be the king. When he says I don't know and seph wrenches herself away from him to the other side of the stage to firmly stand behind Orphydice he gets this look of Extreme Frustration on that she's still not standing with him and these damn kids are still more important, bc even with character growth he still is a petty selfish bitch who does not like to share lmao, he's just getting that he Has To now

wait for me ii: Hades stays onstage by the microphone stand to the left to watch Hermes deliver his judgement to orphydice/seph/the workers and watching Tom during this was a Treat. this is the first time he's seeing how orphydice and esp Orpheus function when he's not involved to terrify them. they're so sweet and so good, and they have what looks like so much unwavering faith in each other unlike him and seph, maybe they really could... so when he delivers "i let them try" that last word is stretched with so much wonder. he's getting this first glimpse into feeling how everyone else felt when orpheus sang of how the world could be that isn't just focused in about how he feels about persephone, which always drives him - now he's having to deal with the Greater Implications and orpheus' seemingly unbreakable faith in a better world rocks him to his core. that certainty that orpheus would fail gets shaken as he watches them and when Seph asks him if he thinks they'll make it, his I Don't Know is 1/2 defensive and 1/2 actual uncertainty. he still hates to be wrong but he's wondering if his beliefs about doubt will turn out differently this time. he isn't optimistic about it by any means but orpheus, eurydice, and the workers' response to them both does give him pause

meanwhile in hades and persephone's section, on a personal level they deliver their lines to each other like they're a great deal more nervous about what next fall will bring than i've seen and heard before - something I'm thinking stems from hades' worldview being so suddenly shaken and seph too being a little more vulnerable?

MISC THOUGHTS

Tom seems to be leaning into Hades not having done anything with Eurydice other than tempt her down - once she's in Hadestown even during Why We Build The Wall he drops the salesman croon entirely and when he does rarely speak to her/about her it's commanding as a king who sees her just as another object under his possession, with very little interest in her for anything at all beyond that. he was just going after the goal of making sure Seph knew he had Options whether or not he actually pursued them

tom is super dedicated to how power-hungry hades is. I remember when I saw Patrick during chant ii he was playing hades as more affected by how much seph seemed to care about the workers now and desperately trying to get her attention back (even negatively), Tom was more consumed in seeing Orpheus as a threat because of how effectively he had turned his "children" on him. He knocks Seph down in those "shackle her from wrist to wrist" less as a personal petty attack to her like Patrick does and more like to try and destabilize her as someone backing Orpheus up. Tom's Hades perceives Orpheus as a Threat no matter how much he plays up his Performance as Nonchalant Jazzy King. he really emphasizes Hades' relationship to Orpheus whereas Patrick played more into his relationship with Eurydice, which makes so much sense what with Tom's Hades being a pettier more egotistical messy bitch obsessed with his kingdom and Patrick's Hades' obsession being his wife and Hadestown being like, this side-effect of being a god that he just couldn't help, he Had to build and strive for power whereas Tom's Hades reveled in it and wanted it. Instinct versus drive I guess. one of my buds put it super well as: "Patrick!Hades sees everything as a threat to his power Tom!Hades is so certain of his power that he can afford to be somewhat nonchalant but the fact that Orpheus alone is his main genuine threat is fucking brilliant"

and ok for now, that's what I've got! if anyone wants any clarification or wants to ask details about specific moments I didn't put in here feel free to shoot me an ask!

[cargopantsman]

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

Trigger warnings: All of them, because I am lazy. Also none of this is sensical.

Utter, hyper-caffeinated brain noise.

The problem with the concept of a "sense of self" is it already tries to concretize an amorphous abstract. It makes us want to point at some thing and say "Well... that's me." Whether it is a set of ideals that we try to live by, a set of activities that brings us a sense of joy or fulfillment, or, gods forbid, and entirely different and other person that "completes us."

I've always had an affinity for trickster figures and shapeshifters. The wearers of masks, the truthful liars, the artisans of duality, yada, yada. Since I was a child my first instinct has always been to blend in. If into the background, great, but if need be, if I needed to blend into the social fabric around me, I could do that too. To throw this into the high school backdrop; I wasn't a social butterfly, I was shy as could be, but I got along with the jocks, the goths, the nerds, the art freaks, the band kids, the preps, the whatever. Where ever I was I could fake that I belonged there. I was comfortable drifting in between worlds. (Looking back, I could have caused a lot more chaos with the information I was privy to at the time...[Oh, there's a constant point. I'm good at keeping secrets, keeping confidence. I'll lie my ass off to keep a secret.]) Does any of that really help drive a sense of self though? When your natural instinct is to mirror, to blend, to fade? When your point of pride is walking into a room unnoticed and, even better, leaving a party unseen? Does being a ghost count as an identity?

"Expression of Will" comes to mind... what does that mean? Ok, so some abstract thing is inside of you and you manifest it objectly outwardly. I was an artist. I made images in my head and "kind of" manifest them on paper. Some times people see that paper...  I was a writer... images in my head "became" words and some people saw that. I combined them into comics. Some people Saw that. Is that a lasting affect? Maybe the fights I've been into?! That time in 2nd grade someone was picking on a friend and I laid them out... the time in 8th grade someone was picking on me and clocked them down. Or in high school when someone decided to start some rumors and I held them up by their throat in the air until they turned blue? That was an inward thing that manifested outwardly. Nevermind good or bad, but was any of that... me?

Hmm. The beast. The primal... come back to that later.

"Expression of Will," "Expression of Will," "Expression of Will" ... What the fuck even is "Will"? Is this why philosophers get their heads so far up their ass? Is it a desire? The will to live.... living requires eating and the amount of times I forget to even do that... Maybe been looking at the phrase all wrong...

Will to Live (noun) It isn't a thing.

Will (verb) to (preposition) Live (verb)

Why does that sound better?

Desire to Live (noun)

Desire (verb) to (preposition) Live (verb)

Okay, that feels better even, but still... Sense of self, will, desire, expressions thereof. Are these just the aimless desires and wills? The fleeting flights of frivolous fancies festering forlornly in frontal cortices?

The self with the will can direct the desires towards living. "Get in the fucking robot Shinji!" "I don't wanna"

The (ghost) with the (strength) can direct the (impulses) towards (being). Getting too close to a concept of a soul on that one huh?

Forget self. It's a useless moniker right now. There is no self. It's just this mind alone for the first time in its entire life. (Not alone alone, there are friends, but they've learned more about me in the past two weeks than the past 6 years so...) "What did they learn?" asked the projection of self that defines itself by interactions with other.

I thought we were forgetting self.... not an option really. Sentience is a bitch like that. But they've learned I'll put up with a lot of bullshit under the guise of strength and integrity when I should've callously called this whole thing ages ago. That I can shut myself down completely in the interest of bodily-self preservation. (Not Self-self preservation, fuck the English language). What did I sacrifice? What did I shut down?

Everything.

That is less than helpful.

The Beast. Vince. Your Shadow.

My Shadow...

What do you desire?

Blood in the cut, tears in their eyes, power over someone that wants that power over them...

Do you want that? I don't want it, I just need it. No... I want it.

Is that all you are? A sadist? An animal?

Maybe... probably not though. A caretaker, and a sparring partner. A trickster and a shapeshifter. A crafter whose tools are destruction.

Next problem, grandeur. Mythologizing everything. But how to see a thing if you don't blow it up/magnify it?

You lack a sense of self because no one ever tested your sense of self. No one actually fought you for who you are. To find out who you are. The ex didn't. An old friend did until she got scared by what she found there.

You don't want to be yourself because it's not nice is it? You were raised to be nice.

College. I controlled the group. Never hit anyone after high school aside from set matches in classes or sparring for funsies. They all saw my eyes and stopped if they were getting out of hand.

The Dom-Friend.

Don't use the d-word on me.

Destroyer? Yeah, that one's fine. That one fits. He says as he carelessly tosses lit matches around his entire life. Can we bring up the phoenix or is that too grandiose? Why shouldn't it be grandiose? We spend every day of our lives going through the same kind of tedious bullshit all the time why not make our inner lives a bit bigger, a bit richer?

A bit darker.

Why do you want them to bleed? Hurt and comfort. That's a big theme, a trope if you will. Why not have both at the same? Why not let her think that I'm about to kill her but let her rest in the trust that I won't? Why not let me think that I'm about to break her while believing she is the most precious thing in the world?

Caretaker. A caretaker kills all the time. Tearing out weeds, uprooting the prized plant to move it to a better place for its growth.

Growth.

The self isn't going to be found just in ones self... not in another either. No, the self has to be found in everything. The things one wants to run to and run from. The soul (oops) is formed by what it crashes into right? The mind recoils from traumas races towards panaceas, why not, if one can, flip the polarity on the two. Bring the darkness screaming into the light so you can see it, bring the light quivering into the darkness so it can loose its terrifying brillance. Balance in all things right?

You're not a very positive person, they say. No... I'm not. It lashes out in bad ways sometimes, sure. Control, control, you must learn control. But being negative isn't bad. Not if you can grow from it. No plant can survive the sun for 24 hours. Trees sleep in the winter. We sleep, we heal, we grow.

Self-Destruction!! That's a fun one... seven fucking months downing a bottle of whisky a night. Whooo boy. Do Not Recommend.

Got a nice stay in the underworld though and trudged up a lot of shit. Now I'm sitting here with my ears ringing because I finally hit the personal limit on Monsters and my brain is overclocked enough I can finally see shit at 4 angles at the same time. I am a god damned quantum supercomputer of emotions right now.

Faith and faithlessness are the same thing. Have faith, trust the future, don't expect anything, don't plan your now for your future. Sounds sadly like live in the moment type bullshit, but life is weird and people are complex. Shifting drifting clueless animals that want to be safe but don't want to get stuck in anothers arms even when there is one whose arms are so safe.

The damage runs deep... and two people with damage running that deep. Hmm. How much healing can falling do? The other just puts a bandage over a puncture wound and both try to ignore it, but then the blood gets pumping, the heart pounds and poisons surge to the surface. It's neither one's fault really. Life is a trial of knives and we don't always have time or concern to tend the wounds properly. There's always something else that needs to be taken care of first.

Divorce is a helluva drug. It is maddening, the freedom to finally to be yourself is line having the lineart stripped off, there is a terrifying infinity in front of you and the only thing to do for awhile is melt. Let the slings and arrows just pierce and sink in. Anyone else tries to push the sludge of you into a shape might get hurt when they find the arrows. I want to go absolutely feral in a way. In a way the whole COVID mess is keeping me under lock and key so I'm just prowling around the empty house like I always have been, but now there's some sense... of purpose.

I'm raging against any depression, the executive dysfunction is going to have a talking to. The sense of self is going to be found in stripping this house down to bare walls and making a blank canvas. Bring everything down, ruin it all, start again.

My self is emptiness, it always has been. I can be anything, but I should be wary of ever wanting to be something. (My career options are AWESOME). But this is a different emptiness than before. Before I pulled the trigger and splattered the brains of the marriage across the floor I was just a void, and inky black pit of nothingness. Somehow, having the Shadow rise up and finally start getting along with the rest of me, the emptiness isn't.... void. It's just nascent possibility and that shouldn't scare me.

It does, of course, terrify me. First time in 40 years being legitimately alone is terrifying, should have done this kinda thing when I was 20, but... I was an idiot back then (60 year old me laughs from the future). But I think I can get a grip on the concept that "I" don't exist, but I'm real... ever changing ever dynamic, not who I was while I was married, but a mix of the me before, a angry beast now, and something yet unseen in the future.

[youreonyourown-kid]

a list of all my favorite lyrics from folklore

the 1

In my defense, I have none For digging up the grave another time

cardigan

And when I felt like I was an old cardigan Under someone's bed You put me on and said I was your favorite

I knew you Tried to change the ending Peter losing Wendy, I I knew you Leavin' like a father Running like water

The smell of smoke would hang around this long 'Cause I knew everything when I was young

the last great american dynasty

There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen She had a marvelous time ruining everything

exile

You're not my homeland anymore So what am I defending now?

Like he's just your understudy Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me Second, third, and hundredth chances Balancin' on breaking branches Those eyes add insult to injury

I'm not your problem anymore So who am I offending now?

my tears ricochet 

I didn't have it in myself to go with grace

You know I didn't want to have to haunt you But what a ghostly scene You wear the same jewels that I gave you As you bury me

'Cause when I'd fight, you used to tell me I was brave

And I can go anywhere I want Anywhere I want, just not home

mirrorball 

And I'm still a believer, but I don't know why I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try

seven (okay this one is hard not to jut paste the whole song)

But I, I was high in the sky With Pennsylvania under me

And though I can’t recall your face I still got love for you

Love you to the Moon and to Saturn Passed down like folk songs The love lasts so long

And I've been meaning to tell you I think your house is haunted Your dad is always mad and that must be why

And I think you should come live with me And we can be pirates Then you won't have to cry Or hide in the closet

Please picture me in the weeds Before I learned civility I used to scream ferociously Any time I wanted

august

And I can see us twisted in bedsheets August sipped away like a bottle of wine 'Cause you were never mine

So much for summer love and saying "us"

Back when I was livin' for the hope of it all (For the hope of it all)

this is me trying 

I didn't know if you'd care if I came back I have a lot of regrets about that

They told me all of my cages were mental So I got wasted like all my potential

And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad I have a lot of regrets about that

illicit affairs

Tell yourself you can always stop What started in beautiful rooms Ends with meetings in parking lots

And you know damn well For you, I would ruin myself A million little times

invisible string 

Green was the color of the grass Where I used to read at Centennial Park I used to think I would meet somebody there

And isn't it just so pretty to think All along there was some Invisible string Tying you to me?

Bad was the blood of the song in the cab On your first trip to LA

Time, mystical time Cutting me open, then healing me fine

Cold was the steel of my axe to grind For the boys who broke my heart

Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven

mad woman (another one where i just want the whole song)

Does a scorpion sting when fighting back? They strike to kill, and you know I will

Does she smile? Or does she mouth, "Fuck you forever"?

Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy What about that? And when you say I seem angry, I get more angry 

Now I breathe flames each time I talk My cannons all firin' at your yacht They say "move on," but you know I won't

It's obvious that wanting me dead Has really brought you two together

epiphany

Just one single glimpse of relief To make some sense of what you've seen

betty 

Just thinking of you when she pulled up like A figment of my worst intentions  (i love this song as a whole but there aren’t any gut punch lines for me)

peace

All these people think love's for show But I would die for you in secret

Your integrity makes me seem small You paint dreamscapes on the wall

hoax

Stood on the cliffside screaming, "Give me a reason" Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in Don't want no other shade of blue but you No other sadness in the world would do

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars From when they pulled me apart

[vesuviannights]

The halls of Vesuvia’s Palace are shrouded in shadow and barely-there flickering candlelight. The sound of laughter and dancing from the party having long faded, a lone shadow stalks through the eastern corridors, her heeled footsteps silent as she watches her target through a narrowed gaze. 

Lucio x Ariana (My apprentice). Lemon.

**

This is something a little different for you to read, if it tickles your pickle! I’ve always got ideas for my own MCs floating around, and this one with Ariana (my assassin) and Lucio has always been an interesting one that I wanted to bring to life.

I won’t tell you much about her, as you will quite quickly gather what type of a person she is from reading this, but if you do have any questions after just hit me up.

This was really just an excuse for me to play around more with her character, write in 3rd person (which I’ve been really missing), and y’know, write some more ~lemony shenannigans~.

**

The halls of Vesuvia’s Palace are shrouded in shadow and barely-there flickering candlelight. The late hour has instilled them with a chill that seeps into every stone wall and tapestry, and has sent the guests still lingering outside of the grand hall back into the party in search of liquor and laughter.

The hall, in all its warmth and riotous glory, is packed with every guest the Count could dare to imagine welcoming into his palace, and not a single soul would dare besmirch their reputation and good rapport with him by turning down such an honourable invite.

Well, not a soul, with the exception of Vesuvia’s Assassin.

The sound of laughter and dancing having long faded, a lone shadow stalks through the eastern corridors, her heeled footsteps silent as she watches her target through a narrowed gaze.

A long blade spins slowly between her lithe fingers, its twin tucked into the holster at her thigh, the action careful but almost bored, the movement of too long spent in the one place—though perhaps the restlessness wasn’t in standing still, but simply in spending too long waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

The target in question, the one she was waiting to leave twitching and gasping in a puddle of their own blood while the assassin skipped over her with a delighted hum and headed back to the party for more schnapps, was a positively vile creature, perhaps the worst she had ever had to do away with.

From what the assassin had seen earlier at the party—the woman’s genuine laugh, her eye for fine liquor, the way people gravitated toward her—it seemed almost a shame to kill her. The woman was a true beauty, charismatic and manipulative in a way that the assassin almost admired, and seemed genuinely well liked.

But almost as soon as that mildly disappointed thought enters the assassin’s mind, it is followed the image of that scene, the atrocities she had been forced to witness, those acts that would be driving the hilt of her blade as she slashed its edge through the woman’s throat and sprayed her blood in a wondrous pattern all over the palace walls.

The memory of having to witness those very atrocities immediately banishes any thought the assassin had of mercy or lenience or admiration. Indeed, it would have been such a shame to take her from the world, if she did not have to atone for her crimes against the city and humanity.

With a soft if not exasperated sight, the assassin turns her attentions back to her hit. The woman, accompanied by two of her twittering friends, has stopped to converse with some servants, and they appear to know each other well.

Very well. Painfully well.

So well that they have been here for 15 whole minutes with absolutely no gods damn signs of fucking leaving.

The assassin growls from her position just beyond the corner, pressed into the shadows in wait.

Would the woman not move?!

She needed her alone. She couldn’t very well off her if she was in front of people, could she? It would be awful for business, look terrible for her flawless track record, would mean extra bodies that were completely innocent, and not to mention that—and this really was perhaps the first concern she should have had, above her own image and kill count—by bearing or risking witnesses of any sort, people might actually realise the palace magician and the Assassin of Vesuvia were the very same person.

Well, they probably wouldn’t—people were insanely dumb no matter the corner of the world you were in—but she wasn’t one of them, and she wouldn’t be leaving evidence or witnesses.

Just a single twitching, bloodless, lifeless body of a faithless heathen on the palace’s polished floors.

The woman laughs, the sound echoing down the corridor, immediately echoed by her twittering friends. With a roll of her eyes the assassin mimics her, moving her mouth with a silent scoff before turning away and—

“Now what, my dearest kitten, would you be doing so very far from my party?”

Before her, and in a very alarming proximity considering her skillset, is the Count of Vesuvia himself, accompanied by his trademark crooked smile and glinting jewel at his canine tooth.

The smile, as glorious as it is, tells her that he doesn’t realise there was only a fraction of a moment between her snapping his neck in her default response, and the assassin actually recognising him for who he is.

And despite knowing her lethal senses quite intimately, Lucio is already so close, pressed right up against her side. His golden arm is resting against the wall, the claws lazily tapping against it as he observes her. 

Had she not been so distracted by his closeness, by the shock of being caught out, she might have snapped at him to keep it down.

But she does not. Instead, she watches as his eyes rake, so so slowly, down her body. Her knife is already stashed safely back in its hilt at her thigh, the movement but a wisp of her sheer dress the moment she had spied him. He would not have seen, too distracted by his own crooning and purring, by his own focus on wasting no time getting as close to her as possible.

But despite not having seen, he is clearly still looking for something specific on her person, even though his bedroom eyes and pointed canines tell her it is merely a root.

Crooking an eyebrow and one corner of her lips to match his own, she doubles down in her efforts to distract him, rolling her lip between her teeth because she knows he loves it so.

“I was getting some air,” she answers, her voice low, sultry.

He makes a quiet noise of agreement, tilting his head to watch the roll of her lip. “We have much of it back in the ballroom. Perhaps you encountered it?”

“The people there were boring me. You know I can never sit still for very long.”

And despite how well her distraction is working, how very easy it is to manipulate him with a few bites of her lip and a low purr in her throat, it is such a fucking battle not to let her eyes wander to her periphery, to not turn her head a fraction to try and spy the woman she had been waiting to see leave, but she can’t risk him realising exactly why she’s so far from the party.

A screech of frustration echoes through her mind when she hears the familiar sounds of departure, the sounds of laughter and of the woman wishing whoever she was speaking to a fair night, promising that she would see them in the morning for brunch in the square.

And even though her eyes are locked on Lucio’s lips, and even though she has not been paying attention to a word he has said since she told him of her boredom, she can’t help but let a wicked little turn appear at the corner of her lips as a sly little thought crosses her mind.

You are a liar, too, my lady. You won’t be making it anywhere beyond a puddle of your own blood in this very palace.

“Daydreaming, are we?” Lucio croons.

“Only about you,” she answers smoothly, not missing a beat. As she speaks, she walks her fingers up the exposed part of his chest, her nails raking lightly over his collarbones.

And he takes the bait, like a horny little moth to the prettiest flame in the desert.

“Oh no, kitten,” he purrs to her. “You make a very different face when you are daydreaming about what I can do to you. Perhaps you just need reminding.”

He presses a little closer, and before she has her chance to argue or slip away, he has her completely against the wall, his lips sliding along hers with an intoxicating groan.

And despite all of her best instincts, her lethal training, her practised choices, her manipulative ways, she melts immediately into his touch, into the gentle rocking of his hips as he pins each wrist to the wall and slowly pushes them above her head.

His lips suckle gently at every one of her favourite spots, making spots of light pop in her vision, making her swallow back groan after groan as she tries so desperately to listen for the woman’s retreating footsteps, to discern the exact direction she went in so that she can continue after her hit as soon as she breaks free from the devil’s grasp.

And when she finally does catch those footsteps, she squirms and curses under her breath, the sound almost pitiful in its frustration. She is caught, pinned, ensnared in a trap of her own making with no way out.

And he must think it’s all for him, the frustrated groans and the squirming and pouting, because he chuckles and tuts into her neck, and then—

“Now what do we have here?”

She swipes out, but some things are a little too clouded by her frustration of her hit getting away, and everything else is too hazy with lust from the feel of Lucio’s lips on her neck, his wandering lithe fingers, his cock pressing into her hip.

She misses her grab by mere millimetres, and Lucio steps back from her and into the light of the corridor. 

He holds Saeren in his palm, the blade glinting as he twirls the gold-inlaid hilt in his hand. The movement is smooth, easy, practiced, and only serves to infuriate her all the more as he cocks a sly eyebrow at her, waiting for her response.

She growls. “Give it back.”

“You know I prefer my knife play to be behind locked doors.”

“Give it back!”

Lucio laughs, and he’s clearly having such a great time, and she’s still so frazzled and frustrated. She growls at him and shoves at his chest.

Fucking count. Fucking cunt. How dare he—

She takes two tremulous steps in the direction the woman had gone, her furious words and curses rushing around in her lust-addled mind, and then spins around to point at him, hair whipping around her body in the rush of the movement.

“You said you would never interfere with my work,” she growls, almost choked. “You promised. It was all I asked of you.”

“And I keep my promises to you, my love. Each and every one.”

She scoffs and looks away. Tutting almost inaudibly, he steps up to her, takes her chin between his fingertips, forces her gaze to his.

And she gives it to him, but the look that comes with it says she also hopes it burns a hole in his pretty fucking face.

“I happen to be very aware that your hit list never includes the innocent,” he murmurs to her, cocking his head just a fraction.

“She was hardly innocent!”

“Since when is flirting a crime?”

Her jaw goes tight at his words, and she literally has to bite down on her tongue to stop herself from spitting venom at him. She looks off once more, and so he leans in—Saeren still well out of reach and white-knuckle tight in his grip—and kisses her jaw, all the while murmuring to her, crooning.

“Use your words, my little wraith.”

She says nothing. Refuses to heed, to cave, to concede. Instead, she pushes out at him again, but it’s half-hearted and he doesn’t even stumble, merely presses her against the wall a little more.

“Go on,” he murmurs. “I happen to know you have many of them, not merely just curses for my delighted ears, or for people who flirt with me at parties in front of you.”

She rolls her tongue between her teeth, the movement slow and seemingly distracted, before she takes her chance to snap and pounce. 

She swipes out for Saeren again with a growl, but he still holds it a little too high for her, twisting it in his grip and away from her body, still pinned by his weight.

If it were any other man she would have had him on the floor already. Wouldn’t have let herself be so distracted by his pretty words and manipulative touches. Wouldn’t have even given him the chance to steal her favourite blade from her.

No.

If he were any other man, she would have snapped his fucking neck, taken Saeren from his still-twitching fingers and skipped down the hall to finish her hit.

But he is not any other man. 

He is Lucio, and his lips are so wonderful, and do such delicious things that in a matter of moments he has softened her escape attempts once more, as has the feel of his cock rocking into her aching pussy.

She finally gives with an audible huff and murmurs, her glance pointedly off toward the other end of the corridor. “I was only going to make her scream a little.”

At this, he chuckles softly into her jaw. “Oh, my sweet little shadow.”

And then his fingertips are caressing her inner thigh as they lift her dress, the sheer fabric shifting up her skin until it exposes Saeren’s empty sheath. He slips the blade in with a soft nip to her jaw before he speaks again.

“Perhaps you would benefit from taking that jealousy out in healthier ways—ones that encourage stability?”

She smirks, shivering a little as her dress slivers back down her bare legs. “Are those Julian’s ‘therapy words’ words I hear?”

“My doctor no longer has any say in our bedroom antics.”

“So you were lying the other day when you said you wanted him to come back and pl—”

To shut her up in one of the only successful ways he seems to know, Lucio drags his teeth, his sharp little fox canines, right along the curve of her jaw.

And like a needy little puppet she keens and presses her entire body into his, her hands smoothing around his shoulders to grasp at the hair at the back of his head. He rocks into her, groaning and grunting into her neck, while she whispers a furious little chant of yes yes yes.

And it quickly becomes not enough, and the hand still twisted in the fabric of her dress pulls and pushes it to her waist and then delves in between her legs to find her already bare in her usual party fashion. He groans, his shoulders rolling in delight as he wastes no time slipping a finger into her and crooking it forward, making her sigh out.

And he loves her noises, every sigh and cry and whimper and moan, and he is greedy for more. He slips a second finger in and sinks his teeth into her shoulder, just over the scar she received when she’d fallen through the roof trying to stalk him through the city all that time ago, when her memories and body had been new again and she had struggled to gain those skills and muscle memories back.

It was his favourite place to sink his teeth into, and unlike the other places he liked to do it, he never drew blood and always took care to sweep his tongue over to sooth her skin.

“Fuck—Lucio—”

“Yes, my little shadow, my glorious wraith?”

She whines, pulls his hair a little harder until she can yank his head back to spy his eyes, hazed with lust and absolutely ravenous and wild. His cock is hard against her thigh, twitching at the sight of her parted lips and heaving chest.

“I swear to the gods if you don’t give me what I want—”

“What you want is a very lovely and very married woman very dead and my cock stretching that needy little cunt of yours to assure you she’s not a threat, and I’m sorry to say that you can only have one of those things.”

He nudges her thighs apart with his knee and presses it against the wall, lifting her up so that she is eye level. She rocks her hips against it, trying to get herself off on his thigh like a fucking horny adolescent, and he watches her with a glint that says he could honestly do so for hours.

In her desperate movements, she vaguely hears the sound of his zipper shifting, the heat of his cock escaping as he takes it in his hand and moves on it with long, firm pulls as he waits for her.

“So which will it be, wraith?” He asks, his voice with a lethal edge that says she might not get a choice in the matter, and for Lucio—only for Lucio—she will let him take that choice away.

“Fuck me!” She gasps out. “Just—fuck me, please!”

He slams his lips to hers as he slams her thighs apart, the length of him pressing along her aching cunt. He rolls his hips, his cock sliding up her wetness, making her keen and whimper and babble, all of her wicked little sounds echoing off the walls and hitting his ears, causing him to groan in delight.

“Yes—give me all of your wonderful noises, let the palace hear how I make my wraith scream in delight—”

He sinks his teeth into her neck, closes his lips to suckle on the skin he has caught as he lines the head of his cock up with her entrance.

He thrusts into her in one movement, buried to the hilt in a fraction of a moment. She cries out, her nails sinking into his shoulders, hard enough to be felt through the fabric of his dress shirt, so close to dragging blood as they pull along it, causing him to hiss her name into the shadowed night.

His thrusts are brutal and unforgiving, bruising her almost instantly, causing her back to scratch and graze against the cobble behind her, ripping and ruining the sheer fabric of her dress.

The carnal noises he makes into her throat, the wet sounds of his cock as it thrusts into her over and over, have her grappling with reality, shoving his shirt open so she can drag her fingernails down the centre of his chest, rest little marks criss-crossed for the world to see.

“YES! Yes, oh gods—”

She buries her hand in his hair and yanks his mouth up to hers, biting down on his bottom lip, pulling the coppery tang of blood from it. The pain makes him shudder, his fingertips pressing a little harder into her hips, bruising her in every way she was marking him.

And she starts to come apart all too quickly, the taste of his blood, the bruising of her lips and her hips and her inner walls, the feel of his sharp little canines against her pulse when she finally releases his lip from her gnawing hold.

She screams out, a song for every corner of the palace to revel in, the sound starting low in her throat and becoming a choked sob, a prayer to the highest gods on the mountain as her body shudders and convulses.

Lucio hisses into her neck, encouraging her, adoring her, his teeth sinking into a new patch of flesh every few seconds in an attempt to draw newer and longer sounds from her. His orgasm follows soon after with only a moment’s notice, his thighs quaking, the tips of his claws sinking into her hips, causing pinpricks of sharp pain as he groans into her neck and spills his seed into her.

He sags against her, the two breathing hard and heavy as the world comes back to them. The palace is oddly quiet around them, though it has nothing to do with the ringing silence after her screams and everything to do with the fact that they had, as usual, chased away every servant and courtier and guest within a 100ft radius as soon as they had picked up on what was happening.

Her thighs still quivering with the aftermath of her orgasm, Lucio gently lowers her to the ground, pressing a soft, open-mouthed kiss to her cheek as he leans his entire body into hers. His lips move slowly downward, leaving wet little patches wherever they go, until they settle just below her ear.

He sighs softly into her, murmurs something to her before saying a little louder, “Are you still plotting murder?”

“I’m certainly contemplating plotting it.”

Lucio chuckles into her neck, gives her another open-mouthed kiss that smacks a little when he pulls away, leaving a wet patch that instantly cools her heated skin.

“Perhaps I am not doing my job well enough, then,” he answers. “My second favourite version of you is the one who can’t remember her own name, let alone the name of the woman she’s plotting to do away with.”

She rolls her bottom lip between her teeth as he pulls back to eye her over. “And your favourite version of me?”

“The one with her eyes alight from the thrill of a kill and covered in the blood of wrongdoers.”

She rolls her eyes and looks off, his last word killing the last of her temptations to sneak away and do away with the woman anyway. She supposed, as insolent and vulgar and obvious as the woman’s attempts had been to snake her way into the Count’s bed, she did not deserve to die for it.

Yet.

Lucio takes her hand and steps her away from the wall, looking her over with an appreciative hiss. She glances down to spy her dress—completely obliterated—and the bruises on her inner thighs from where he had been gripping her—already yellowing—along with the 5 pinpricks of blood just barely showing through the sheer fabric at her hip from where his claws had sunk into her.

“What a mess I’ve made of you,” Lucio says. His expression is innocent, but his tone is anything but. “Perhaps I should say goodbye to my guests early so I can improve on it.”

“I’ll meet you upstairs, then.”

“Alri—” Lucio cuts himself off, his eyebrows high before he shakes his head and sighs at her. There’s an amused lilt there at her last-ditch attempt to be left alone, and he seems to find so much delight in it that he pulls her in for another kiss, hands tangled in her hair, lips bruising hers.

“Sometimes, my dearest wraith,” Lucio murmurs into her lips, pushing the hair from her face. “I think you might be the devil.”

“Sometimes,” she returns, the corners of her lips flicking up to match the glint in her eyes. “I think I might be too.”

[cuthie]

Omru: Fabled City of Gold?

  A mild cyclone of sand and wind ran across the entrance of a small rocky burrow, masking the sounds of a dozen people chatting, bartering and playing games within. A trio of black furred vulpera were making the most noise, a middle aged woman squeezing a young man hard enough to make his eyes bulge. This, naturally, was followed by ten to fifteen squishy mushy loud wet kisses, “Mwua mwua mwuah!”

Omru gasped for air, “Leggo, leggo!”

  Finally, his mother released him from their embrace, “It’s been too long, Omru. I’m just glad you came to see us before going off on this grand adventure to Django or wherever.”

“It’s Durotar. Lush tropical paradise home of the Orcs.”

  A snarky teenage girl’s voice cut in, “More like Uratard. Cause you’d have to be some kind of stupid to follow those brutes home. They probably spend all day smashing their heads with rocks- Actually Om, you’ll fit right in.

  Om rolled his eyes at his younger sister. This had been his reception for the last hour or so. They’d chat, catch up on things, say hi to nosy vulpera who continuously interrupted their reunion, then his mother would grab him and start kissing and hugging. To be fair, he hadn’t seen her in a few years. In fact, he hadn’t recognized his sister initially. It was almost like looking into a gender bending mirror. Before he always had a height advantage, but now she had finally caught up to him. “Yeeeah. Of course I had to come visit. Oh, where did you say Pops was again?”

  Om’s sister, Elni, pitched in again, “Oh, he went out to get some candles for my birthday cake mom made.”

Om winced, “Oh. Uh, happy birthday El!”

Elni’s face dropped, “Are you serious? That was seven months ago.”

  Mom placed a hand on either side of Om’s face, squishing it, “I’m so glad you came. I was worried that those awful Faithless might have got you. You know there’s a curse on this family, so I never know when we’ll see one another again.”

“A curse on the -men- in this family.” El stuck her tongue out before giving a cheeky grin. “Us women don’t get lost when we get up from bed to pee. Only the boys.”

  Om scratched at the back of his head. He had every intention of reaching Dazar’alor when he had last left Keni and the ‘babes’. Yet somehow he had found himself here, surrounded by family and friends. Heh, there definitely was a family curse; it was the only thing that made sense. It all went back to his no good, dirty, rotten pig stealing great great grandfather. And if his mother found out that the Faithless actually -had- captured him, he’d never hear the end of it. “Yeah, well, curse or no curse, I’ve got a life debt to a goblin that I need to repay.”

“A life debt?” Mom raised a single brow.

“Yeah, I uh, I got trapped in a chasm. And, uh, you know, if it wasn’t for him, I would have died of dehydration.”

El leaned in closer, her eyes squinting with suspicion, “Are you suure that’s what happened?”

“Yes, I’m sure!”

  El pulled her left eyelid down, sticking out her tongue as Omru made the same expression right back at her, “Nyah!” Their mother wasn’t even annoyed by the childishness. It was an expression of fondness for one another, so far as she was concerned. As the pair continued poking at one another, she took the opportunity to host a rare family dinner. It really was a shame their father was out there in the dunes, lost, but it really had been a recurring theme for several generations now.

  Om and El had long quit squabbling by the time food was roasting over the fire pit. The scent of the buzzard meat had the whole cavernous hideaway bringing out their plates and utensils. People would offer their seasonings, wines, desserts, you name it. That was one beautiful aspect of caravan life. People always seemed to come together at the end of the day. One didn’t just have a mother and father. They had a host of ‘aunts’, ‘uncles’ and ‘cousins’, a whole network of friends and family who bonded over the trials and tribulations of the sands.

  For Omru, it was the last such caravan night he would experience in Vol’dun.

--

  Shit shit shit shit shit.

  Omru pressed his back against the cold stone wall, shivers coursing down his spine. His breath rose in a fog before him as he tried to quiet his breathing, his large ears twitching, listening. For a moment there was nothing, only silence. Then came the jagged clattering steps of the skeletal troll, searching for the little fox that had dared defile the resting place of kings and queens with his presence.

  Not that Omru had disturbed the tombs intentionally. At long last he had made it out of the desert, had climbed literal mountains of vivid green moss and vines, and made it to a Zandalari city of gold. It was beautiful, but it was also kind of a shithole. A city made of pure gold, with the bodies of trolls, dinosaurs and oozing puddles of shadow, decay and vomit. Exploded spiders clung to steps with their still attached legs twitching, and as Om descended golden step after step, not a single sign of life stirred.

  That should have been a wake up call, but how many golden cities could there be in the jungle, right? And so the vulpera had explored, poked and prodded. Some of these corpses weren’t native to Zandalar. Large horned bipedal beast men with hooves, slack jawed soldiers that had been dead for ten years at least, and the odd orc or goblin were scattered throughout the streets. Eventually Om found himself deeper and deeper within the city, the temperatures dropping despite lit fires in each room. Cobwebs hung from ceilings and spilled ink blacker than any darkness Omru had ever seen threatened to swallow the entire floor.

  The pacing of the long dead Zandalari echoed through the corridors like the slow rattled ticking of an old clock. Somewhere behind the rotted creature, Omru’s pack lay on the floor ripe for the taking. It mattered only slightly less than his own life did, but what meaning would his life hold if all his stuff was gone, left behind for any passing grave robber to collect?

  A shimmer caught his attention, light dancing atop something long, flat and sharpened, risen and resting atop a stone pedestal. A steel sword with emerald baked into its center. Two feet long, a peculiar shape curving in four different slices, two on the top, two on the bottom. The blade seemed to emit a purple aura around it’s sharpened edges, and like any good Trader slash Explorer, Omru knew exactly what that meant. Magic. Enchanted or cursed? Did it really matter? Would it really make sense to store a cursed sword in a tomb of emperors though?

  The clunky clinking steps seemed to grow louder and louder, perhaps only a few feet away from Omru as he debated. He knew that his stealth magic was no good here. This thing had spotted him an hour ago and he had barely gotten away with his life. What had happened to this city that had risen the dead to unlife? What were those shadowy pools, what was that dark ink? Om shook the questions from his mind as the towering skeleton stepped in front of him, dwarfing him three times over.

  A rusted blade clanged, biting into stone as Omru disappeared from his hiding spot. Somewhere in a realm between worlds, voices called out, shrieking in eternal torment. Those voices were muted and forgotten in the nano seconds between the fox’s disappearing reappearing trick. In a little poof, Omru was behind the skeleton, kicking at the back of it’s kneecap with a furry foot. The skeleton did not even buckle.

“Shit!”

  A trio of small throwing knives were sent into the rib cage of Omru’s enemy. Literally, slipping right through the bones, bouncing within the sloshing interior of bones and guts. Wait, guts? No, this thing was too dead to have any guts. Why would- Omru barely ducked out of the way of another sword slash. No time for thinking here, only doing.

  Running as fast as his paws would take him, Omru ran to the shining enchanted-or-cursed sword, gripping it by the hilt with two hands and pulling it free.

‘You wield de dagger of Isgi, daughter of de Assassin Queen o’Zandalar. Continue my work an slice de troats of de unworthy.’

  Omru’s eyes widened. Continue the work of, wait, dagger? This thing was almost as big as him, how was it a dagger? Still, it was light enough to be held in a single hand comfortably. As the skeletal troll rushed forward, Omru squinted his eyes at his enemy and concentrated. His legs bent at the knee, then shot him up forward with the slight aid of supernatural force. The skeleton attempted to parry, only for Omru to disappear, reappearing behind the creature, airborne.

  In a series of attacks, Om would strike the skeleton with his new glowing weapon, then disappear, four, five, six times in a row. Each attack hit harder than the last, emphasized by vulgarity, “Fuck.”

“You,”

“You”

“Piece”

“Of”

“Shit!”

  The last strike sent the skeleton sprawling onto the ground, falling apart. Literally, with no muscles, ligaments or fibers connecting anything, all the bones just kind of clattered to the ground, the skull landing upside down with broken tusks digging into the dusty stone floor.

  Omru rotated his right shoulder backwards, making a popping sound, as he caught his breath. For good measure he kicked at the skull with his foot, half expecting it to levitate or explode or something. Nope, nothing. Bright orange eyes fixated on his new enchanted weapon. There was something here, alright. He didn’t know what, but he could feel it in his gut. He hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary during the fight. He was, after all, an experienced scavenger of Vol’dun. Staying alive was an art form there, and he had picked up a dozen tricks. Perhaps the magic was just in how light the blade seemed to be. Sometimes magick was just that obvious and simple. Purple glowing aura? Makes the blade a quarter of its original weight. Boom, easy. To be certain, he would have to call on an expert. Before he could do that, he had to grab his stuff and find the -REAL- city of Dazar’alor.

[scripted-dalliances]

Rest In Peace: Chapter Six

Title: Rest In Peace

Chapter: 6

Summary: A part of Faithless Fairy Tale, a more in depth look at how they brought Laura back to life. Appearance of old faces, creation of new ones and if you’re looking for canon, it left a long, long time ago. If you squint you might be able to see some pieces from the book.

“No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story." -Catherynne M. Valente

+

“I can't believe I'm doing this.” Laura tells herself, looking at the open deep freezer before her. What had started as a seedling of a threat from Sweeney, had now become a reality of her own making because she could feel herself getting squishy.

She had moved what she could, shoving it into a different freezer across the way. Piling things that wouldn't matter next to it. If Ostara really cared about the damp bag of peas, she would buy her a new bag. Correction, she would make someone who was tall and ginger buy a new bag. This was technically his idea.

With help from an overturned bucket, Laura climbs in and lays down. The deep freezer is wide and long enough that it's an easy feat if she curls on her side. She can't really feel the cold any more, but she does relax a bit. No longer feeling like she's about to melt, or worse, start dropping limbs like a break dancing leaper.

-but the silence becomes an issue. And the darkness.

Laura forces herself to fake breathe in deep and out, twice before accepting defeat and pushing the freezer back open.

With renewed energy, she climbs out and rushes up the stairs, back into the massive kitchen where she finds Sweeney about to bite into a sandwich.

“I need your help.” She admits, and it pains her, it really does. The last time she asked for help...shit she doesn't even remember. Its like taking a knife to her own guts. But somehow, in the after math of his little story time, she finds the words slip out easy as a sin.

Sweeney looks angrily at her, then to the sandwich in his hands. Then back again, clearly struggling to make a choice.

“You can bring the damned sandwich. I don't care.” She tells him, only to promptly turn back down the stairs so she doesn't have to argue with him.  She waits on top of the bucket until he shows up. He takes one glance at the freezer then at her and frowns.

“I thought we were good.”

“We are.” As good as either of them could get. Her being dead, him her killer and the god that decided to fuck with them both gone. Obviously there was remaining issues but they were working on them. “I need you to talk to me while I chill in here. So I don't feel like I'm about to melt into a goo.”

“...You want me to talk?”

“Yup.” She chirps. Opening the freezer once more to climb in, back into the winter darkness that awaited. This time, when it shuts closed, she waits to hear his voice.

Finally after a beat, she hears him.

“What exactly do you want me to say?”

“I don't care.”

She can't see it, but she knows he's rolling his eyes.

“How about I tell you of the time some undeserving bastard stole my coin and how I met the smallest, bitterest dead bitch in the world?”

Laura grins widely, knowing he can't see.

“Yeah. Okay. Tell me that one.”

+

He tells her tales. Some from his past, now that she knows, he can tell her the bits and pieces that aren't important. That only he knows, that only matter to him. He tells her of the Gods and Goddesses he has met, working for the man she knows as Wednesday who would later be revealed as Odin. He tells her how some of them are doing just fine, how others live in the gutter. Which ones he likes. Which ones he hates with a passion.

Who chased him from their doorsteps and who tried to eat him.

He tells her about the time he went on a drunken rampage and burned down a Lucky Charms factory.

About the time he got into a fist fight with an Irish nun in New York because she wouldn't stop bad mouthing his kind. He had been young and bitter, and following some young lad who still believed.

“Who won?” Laura's voice echoes out from the deep freezer.

Sweeney grins, “I fuckin' did. Cops saw her throw the first punch, hauled her away.”

Laura laughs, and he decides to tell her about the time in Las Vegas, he saw three strippers of various stages of undress bitch slap Odin. How when he went to defend the old dirty bastard, they kneed him in the junk and stole his wallet.

All because they were all sisters of Lady Luck.

That one makes her laugh hard enough to pop her jaw out of its alignment.

+

“Your turn.” Sweeney proclaims hours later. The night is nearly over, and he's not slept but it's not a problem. He doesn't feel tired.

“My turn?”

“Tell me a tale.”

“Nah,” She drawls, “I mean, the dead tell no tales, remember?”

“Cop out.” He tells her, throwing a pea he found on the floor at her freezer.

A whole minute passes in silence before she speaks again.

“How about I tell you about the time some asshole leprechaun tried to bully me?”

“Aye, tell me that one then. He sounds like a handsome lad.”

+

Laura isn't the best story teller, but she manages to spin a web of interest. More than once getting distracted by a minor twist that she has to explain. Or to defend her choice, because Sweeney isn't a good listener and he wants to argue with her just to drive her up the wall. There are points in stories where she has to raise her voice just to keep it going over him.

She has to fight to tell her tales.

She tells him of the time her mother had an affair with her Sunday school teacher, and that's probably what jump started her apathy for religion. He mocks that maybe that's just how her mother choose to pray to her god.

She tells him about meeting Shadow, and he complains how lame of a meeting it is. She argues that it's a lot more interesting than most.

Finally she tells him about the world of sand, the God judging her and the feather instead.

“...Shit. That sounds like Mr.Jacquel. Or Anubis if you’re dead. Cheerful bugger was he? Haughty as the Pope and twice as judgmental? Wears a black smock like a granny at a funeral?”

“That doesn't make sense...but yeah. Why, he on Odin's side too?”

“No. He doesn't pick sides. Death gods don't have troubles like the rest of us do as much. They just get bored, go mad with it before they fade. Grimnir was friendly enough with ‘em, but only because they owed him a favor or two. What did you do?”

Laura thinks about lying, of telling him that she was drawn back before anything could be done.

Instead, she finds herself telling him the truth, “He tried to reach for my heart and I smacked his fucking hand. Then told me he had to weigh my heart against a fucking feather of all things.”

“That's how they do it, I hear there was one that ate your sins or something like it. Was he there?”

“Never got that far. I slammed my hand down on his stupid little scale. Good or bad, I lived my life and it sure as fuck wasn't light as a feather.” Laura recalls the god's stunned expression, that quickly turned into simmering anger at her attitude. “He told me I was to go to darkness. Not peaceful nothingness, darkness. To be crammed into a hot tub like the one I attempted to killed myself, complete with bug spray. So I told him to go fuck himself.” She still remembers how she felt. Pissed off and cheated.

Maybe she didn't believe in a fluffy cloud heaven, and more over knows she doesn't meet the requirements to get through those particular pearly gates but it had seem unfair regardless. If she hadn't believed, if she had simply vanished from the world that would have been better. Easier to accept.

Instead she felt insulted and punished for not believing at all, in anything. For not making a choice. And that wasn't even mentioning she wasn't even suppose to die, that gods had interfered with the course of her life for their own personal gain.

“Oh, I bet he was pissed. No one likes disorder like Mr. Jacquel.”

“He was fine with it last time I saw him.”

The lid of the freezer is lifted, Sweeney peers down at her, “You saw him again?”

Laura leans up onto her elbows, “Yeah. After I punched the shit out of those guys for hurting Shadow. I tore my arm off, and was trying to piece it back together with Aubrey’s crafting supplies. Next thing I know I’m bumping into him and his brother. They offered to stitch me up and give me a make over.”

His face contorts into clear confusion.

“The gods of death gave you a bloody make over.”

“You got a hearing problem? Yes. Why?” Laura stood up, only mildly annoyed with the fact that even in the box she was hardly reaching his neck. “I got the impression they didn't care what I did. So what does it matter? You said yourself they don't really pick sides.”

“Aye, when it comes to Grimnir and his war, no. They keep to themselves, on occasion they help out for a favor but that doesn't mean they ain’t got their own agendas. That's every god, dead girl. Not a single damn one of them does something for nothing. Not even Jesus Christ himself.”

He has a point.

“All he said was that I had a heavy heart, and oh man, didn't that suck. Oh, and some bullshit about vowing to return me to darkness.”

“Well it is the man's job.”

Something clicks, “Why is that?”

Sweeney sucks in a deep breath and rolls his eyes, “If I have to fuckin’ explain the ins and outs of what it means to be a god of death, I will cut my own throat with a fuckin' butter knife. His real name is Anubis, surely you took an ancient history class once or twice. Or has the American educational system become that bad?”

“It has, but not my question. I meant why him. I didn't believe in anything, that's what he told me himself. So why the hell was Anubis the Egyptian god of death in charge of my, clearly not Egyptian ass?”

It's a good enough question to stump the leprechaun for a moment or two, eventually offering a hesitant, “Coulda been the ol one eyed bastard again.”

“Question is still why, numb nuts. I was dead, super buried and all that jazz. No way in hell he accounts for Shadow getting your coin and him dropping it on my grave. What would have been the point of him going the extra mile of hiring Anubis to deal with me. I mean, if we are going by that logic, wouldn't it be easier to send one of the Jesus Christ super stars, someone I would have easily recognize and maybe not question if he just kick me down to hell?”

“I've only met the brothers twice, all I know is that they have a crazy cat sister and a crazier missing brother. Rest of the family is either rumors or gone. They've been running that funeral home for ages, neither of them have a taste for trouble or war. All they really seem to care about is hearing a good story and getting a good nibble on the dead.”

Which, holy shit why did no one mention that had to be something she worried about now.

“You mean they could have eaten me?”

“Not you, dead girl. To them you are a questionable chicken salad sandwich from the gas station gone bad. They like their meat a bit fresher.”

“Thanks.” She glowers, debating whether or not to punch him but when she goes to peer over the edge of the freezer, finds that something is missing. “Where's my bucket?”

“Oh, you mean my bucket? The one I had to sit on so my arse didn't go numb as fuck, sitting on the ground down here, talkin to you? Aye, that bucket is over there.” His joy evident as he points to said bucket,  which is a clear distance away from where she needs it to be. If she doesn't want to attempt to climb out of this damn thing like a toddler out of a crib.

“Go get my bucket.”

“My bucket, you mean.”

Laura feels the anger in her bubble up, “Either you get that bucket for me or I will stand up on this ledge, fling myself up at your stupid head and rip out every single strand of ugly hair you have. Including your fucking nose hair!”

“You can’t reach, cunt!”

“Wanna fucking bet?”

Laura makes a false pinching attempt towards him, and he steps back so quick he almost trips over his own feet. She smiles, satisfied at his growl until he stomps over and picks her up. Massive, strong hands wrap around her waist and for a second she is weightless.

She has always been a tiny woman, shorter than most, and that meant she was used to people; mostly men hauling her up. She didn't hate it, and even enjoyed the action with Shadow but normally it was just the sensation of being carried up. Of her toes leaving the ground and her weight being rested against someone's chest or arms.

Like she's something to carried, luggage turned burden because that's what happens. They pick her up, twirl her around and only then, realize slowly she is heavy in different ways.

She isn't what they expect hidden under her appearance, of a slim girl with no scars to see. She is dense bones and tense muscle, lacking sweetness and kindness, with a heavier heart than most. That’s when they put her down. Or let her down. Which ever comes first.

It's different with Sweeney, in his grasp she feels lighter. Like she's made up of something soft and airy, like spun cotton candy from a carnival. All because his strength completely envelops her, forcing her to realize this is him weak. This is him without his luck that currently rest in her belly, and yet it's still enough to make her feel as though she was floating.

Shit, if this is half of what people felt in the arms of their patron of worship, she could understand.

Unconsciously, she reaches out before he can let her go. Touching his wrists where they rest on her waist, making him go still. Obviously he had meant to just help her out, but she isn't ready to let this feeling go, not  just yet.

It's nothing like kissing Shadow, where she felt her heart beat, like she was drinking down a new born star and would happily implode if she could have just consumed her fill of him and his warmth; his love, she had wrongly assumed.

This, makes her lungs expand and draw in air. She exhales slowly, sharper than before. Like for once she needs to breath.

“What is this? What's happening?” She feels rather than sees his shrug, the bunching of his arms the way his pulse jumps under her thumbs.

“Your guess is good as mine, dead girl.”

Laura’s mind races. Nothing makes sense. Sure they swapped some stories, and she did her best to keep an open mind but surely it's not that easy? Getting an oil change is harder.

“It feels…” She can't explain.

Sweeney shifts subtly, enough for her to look up at him and gauges his guilty expression.

“Don't make this weird.”

“I ain't!”

“You so are.”

-and just like that, he is dropping her completely. Pulling his hands away and stalking back up the stairs. Muttering darkly under his breath.

Before he can shut the door, Laura shouts.

“That was a weird reaction, by the way.”

He slams the door so hard it cracks.

>

[tervacious]

Thoughts on Movies about Marie Antoinette

While on the one hand Marie Antoinette was portrayed as most women of her era were, simultaneously helpless children in need of lordship while also all-powerful vixens, when she was neither of those things, on the other hand we never get to read the tragic story of the unnamed peasent woman who starved and watched her own children die of hunger one by one as she begged for anything to save them or sold her body in the streets.

And this is one of the problems of history, and the relentlessly male authorship we have been subjected to over and over.  They are fascinated with the rich and famous, the beautiful young queen, the possibility of her lechery and faithlessness, the ease with which they can blame her for the hundreds of years worth of decay and corruption she was married into as a teenager.  They don’t give a shit about the impoverished girl, faceless, her desires, her possibilities, how easily she was crushed down under the same hundreds of years she was born into, as surely as Marie Antoinette.

Neither one of them had choices in some fundamental, crucial sense.

And in the movies, as in books, lush as they are, cast with lovely young women, entrancing costumes, beautiful sets, when it all comes crashing down, the drama, the children, the separations, the deaths-- when you see all that you are encouraged to feel only sympathy, empathy really, with the things the men feel sympathy for.  And you see swarms of unwashed, outraged, irrational, bloodthirsty, violent people, women not at all pretty and elegant, and you think how terrible for this lovely woman, this mother, this wife, and you don’t think, oh how she partied, and spent money, and lived so lavishly and thoughtlessly, while the woman facing her watched her children starve to death.

And even more cleverly, since there are no men on the stage at all, or none worth caring about, or none except a silly king and his lock fetish, it all looks like an accident somehow, a spontaneous tragedy.  How could this happen?  How did it happen?  They don’t show decades of walls carefully constructed between people, and they don’t show anyone on the other side of that wall.  They are just foaming at the mouth out there, those crazy Others, but inside here is this beauty, maybe she is brave yet always fashionable, maybe she is feckless but always sympathetic.  And of course you can look at all that pretty shit and think “There are people out there starving to death, this can’t end well”, and you know how the story ends anyway.

And maybe your leftwing class analysis can give you an edge here, but mainly the edge you need is to see this charade for what it is.  Men, authoring a story they want you see, using a woman, long dead, to make you see it their way.

Very fucking pretty though, isn’t it.

[ceejay1163]

The Salem Bitch

A little fic I decided to work on. May end up tying into Creation but unsure as of now. Not edited but enjoy.

Warnings: Swearing, Blood and Gore, Rituals.

Part 1

Nyssa couldn’t believe that this was happening to her. That they were doing this to her. After all she’d been through. She came to them for help. And they’d betrayed her trust.

The cool marble of the alter made her shiver. Her wrists and ankles hurt from being bound too tightly. The dim lighting made it hard to see the faces of the cloaked figures in the pews. She shivered looking at the red walls. Nyssa knew why they were painted that deep shade of red. It was to hide the blood stains that once lingered on those grey walls.

After all she’d done for them. She’d shown them the way. Given them the secret to reaching their god. For getting whatever their hearts desired. Wealth, fame, sex, power, influence, knowledge. All of it. Theirs because of her. And now they were throwing her out with the garbage. For some new guy’s black mass. 

And let's be honest the only reason he was because his incompetent, impotent ass couldn’t hold onto a steady job or get a girlfriend because he wouldn’t stop whinging about some video game he was playing. Nyssa had met guys like him before, pathetic really. Always having something to complain about, nothing ever being their fault, always someone else to blame. And he’d asked for a woman to sacrifice. Typical. Nyssa knew it was so he could jerk off when he got home. He’d probably ask for something stupid, like women never rejecting his advances, little did he know it doesn’t actually mean they want him, it just means they can’t say no to him. At least Nyssa knew she wouldn’t have to be one of those poor souls who couldn’t say no to the disgusting slob about to slit her throat.

It made her sick. All of these people only thinking of their own personal whims. Never looking at the bigger picture. Such selfish creatures. Nyssa on the other hand. Nyssa saw the big picture. The be all and the end all. The end of all. The end of all of this selfishness and disregard for anything but oneself. It’s why she was here. To end it all. 

But would they listen to her? No. It’s not like she had centuries of experience. Nyssa couldn’t believe that she’d lived through the witch trials, been burned at the stake and rotted in hell for almost 400 years only to have some grubby asshole get hard while he slit her throat. On the plus side when she returned to hell she’d eventually have a chance to torture this ungrateful fuck in hell. And with that thought she calmed her mind and a peak of a smile slid onto her face.

All the members were assembled and the mass was starting. Nyssa laid on the white marble alter, surrounded by black and red candles all giving off an ominous glow to her half naked body. The choir in the background, getting louder, more high pitched, vibrating through the hall. A man stepped forward from the front pew walking towards the alter, cloak over his head. The head of the church, a blonde woman named Hannah, led the cloaked figure to a table to the side of the alter where an assortment of weapons were kept. He ran his hands along the weapons opting for a ceremonial looking knife. He looked at the woman on the alter with hunger in his eyes. The way she was strapped down to the alter, stretched out on the marble in nothing but her dark red lingerie. She didn’t look scared which annoyed him, in fact she almost looked peaceful. 

Hannah and the man approached the alter going to stand behind it. She began her long winded speech about the rites of the black mass and what an honour it was to serve their lord. She looked towards the man as he held the knife above Nyssa’s chest near where her heart would be.

“Anything else to say sweetness?” The man whispered to Nyssa, his breath smelling like stale cigarettes. 

“Yeah actually. I do. I’m going to enjoy ripping your organs out from your chest when you get to hell.” Nyssa hissed at the man as she lent into the knife he was holding. He spat at her and raised the knife above his head ready to strike.

“Wait! This sacrifice belongs to another!” Madelyn yelled as she ran down the aisle, her cloak billowing behind her. 

“What is the meaning of this? What do you mean this sacrifice belongs to another?” Hannah projected in her distinct voice while signalling the man to stop. 

Madelyn stopped before the alter and turned to the man at the back of the room. A young man with shoulder length slightly curled blond hair and the most striking blue eyes Nyssa had ever seen. His eyes widened seeing the sight before him, almost shocked, before his eyes darkened with what Nyssa could only describe as lust and envy.

“He is the chosen one. The one we’ve been waiting for.” Announced Madelyn almost giddy. The man strode up the aisle with confidence and an allure of power. He stood next to Madelyn and Hannah approached him cautiously. They spoke quietly for a moment before he turned to show her something behind his ear. Hannah gasped as she took a step back. 

“It’s true. He is the one.” She murmured. Hushed whispers encompassed the room as Nyssa’s smile grew and her laugh echoed through the room. She turned to look at the stunned man who now held the knife at his side. 

“Better luck next time asshole.” Anastasia hissed at the man.

“No!! It’s my turn! I get to be in charge now! You can’t stop me.” He growled as he moved to plunge the knife into Anastasia.

Crack. The man went flying into the wall as the knife dropped onto Nyssa’s torso. The blond man was holding his arm out towards where the man was. He walked up to Nyssa studying her as he did. He gently took the knife from her torso and cut free her wrists before gliding the knife down her torso, slowly making Nyssa gasp at the cool feel of the blade. He moved past her, still slowly gliding the knife down her thighs before releasing Nyssa from the last of her restraints. He ran his hand up her body as he moved towards her face. He grabbed her bloodied wrist to help her up into a sitting position.

“You must be Michael Langdon. It’s about time.” Nyssa purred at the man who was currently lifting her wrist to kiss her hand and taste her blood. At the mention of his name, he paused, his tongue pressed against her wrist, feeling the pulsing of her heart. He raised his head, tilting it ever so slightly a light smile gliding onto his lips.

“How do you know who I am?” He questioned. Still holding onto her hand.

“I know who you are because you were prophesied. I struck a deal with your father. To be able to meet you. I served him for many centuries. I struck more bargains for him than any demon. I taught these people what it was to serve their god. To worship him. To kill for him. To fulfil their darkest desires.” 

She raised herself from the alter moving behind it to bring up the man in the cloak by his hair. He was whimpering and bleeding from the back of his head. 

“I am one of your father’s best soldier’s. While these pathetic excuses asked him for wealth or sex or fame. Futile things. Not able to see the big picture. I asked him if I could be there. To help him and his son. To reward the world for what it did to me and my coven. For burning us.” 

She swiftly grabbed the knife and ran it across the man’s neck, deeply slicing through the muscles and arteries. She lifted him up and onto the alter, blood spurting everywhere. Nyssa gripped the knife and plunged it below his sternum running the knife down deeply. She removed the knife and dug her hand into the now dead mans torso, grunting and reaching deeper into his chest. Michael watched with fascination as this woman looked at him and slowly removed her hand from the chest cavity of the man who had tried to kill her. He looked down at her bloodied hand and the heart that was still oozing blood. 

“For you Michael, a peace offering from a witch to the son of satan. The heart of a faithless believer, someone who only wanted to take from your father. I can sense how much you hate the witches and I don’t blame you. But I want to show you that I can be an ally. That I can help you fulfil your destiny.” Michael took the heart from her and turned to look at his congregation before taking a large bite from the muscle savouring the sounds of the gasps of the Satanists.

“I will let you consider my offer Mr Langdon. Madelyn knows where to find me when you have an answer.” And with that Nyssa walked out of the church, stealing a spare cloak to hide the blood dripping from her arm and hailing a cab.

[kouros-herc]

Sunday, November 6 — Soundtrack to Your Life: Create a playlist that reflects a significant story moment for your character (a past thread, a childhood memory, etc). 10 songs with descriptions.

One Step Closer - The Soundtrack of the build up, and aftermath of Hercules moving to Swynlake, told through conversations Hercules overheard. [Listen Here]

A warning in advance I make NO apology for the complete lack of genre or cohesion we’re doing lyric vibes fam.

Trigger Warnings: References to bullying, and depression.

1. Aretha, Rumer

I got Aretha in the morning High on my headphones and walking to school I got the blues in springtime 'cause I know that I'll never have the right shoes Momma she'd notice but she's always crying I got no one to confide in, Aretha nobody but you

“Kssssht. Why does Kouros never take those stupid headphones off?” “Probably ‘cause he’s not got any actual friends to talk to?” “Jesus he’s pathetic.”

2. One Step Closer, Linkin Park

I cannot take this anymore I'm saying everything I've said before All these words they make no sense

...

Everything you say to me Takes me one step closer to the edge And I'm about to break

“Oi Kouros are you ignooooooring me? Why you being so fucking rude Dorkules?” “Well maybe he just can’t understand it when normal people talk, yeah, with all his special Maaaaaaaaagic.” “Or he’s just fucking stupid.” “Yeah probably that one, he’s thick as shit.”

3. The Mess I Made, Parachute

But oh, I'm staring at the mess I made I'm staring at the mess I made I'm staring at the mess I made As you turn, you take your heart and walk away

“I’m sorry Mrs Kouros but you should have seen the state of the science lab. It was downright dangerous to the other students!” “Our son is not dangerous! He’s being bullied!” “Regardless, his reaction was simply not appropriate!” 

4. CORALINE, Maneskin

And Coraline cries, Coraline is anxious, Coraline wants the sea but she’s afraid of the water, And maybe sea is inside her, And every word is an axe, a wound on the back, Like a raft sailing on a swollen river, And maybe the river is inside her, inside her

“Violent. Violent! That’s what they’re calling out son, Tasso! They think he’s dangerous.” “I know, I know.” “He’s not dangerous! He’s our son!”

5. Uncomfortably Slow, Newton Faulkner

So, don't take my photograph 'Cause I don't wanna know How it looks to feel like this

As cars and people pass It feels like standing still but I know I'm just moving uncomfortably slow, yeah, slow

“’Erco, you’re sure you don’t want to see any of your friends before we move? Sweetheart?”

“He says he doesn’t want to see anyone... he just keeps staring at the wall. I don’t like it.”

6. Morning Elvis, Florence & The Machine

If I make it to the morning I should've come with a warning And if I make it to the stage I'll show you what it means to be sad

Oh, you know I'm still afraid I'm still crazy and I'm still scared

“Ok, well can you pop these boxes in your room, ‘Erco. I have to get to work on time, ok?”

“New neighbour. Nice lady, got a son too, quiet kid though, haven’t heard him say a word yet actually.”

7. This is on me, Ben Abraham & Sara Bareilles

How a silence can be so deceiving And so we've begun the crawl trying to break the fall Some kind of wrecking ball we turned out to be This is on me Caught at the ending and all I have is the hurt

“I miss you too Tasso my darling. But it’s nearly the holidays, and we can come home for a week, can’t we. That’ll be fun, right Hercules?”

“He hasn’t made any friends you know... not a single one. I don’t know if we did the right thing... well I know we didn’t really have a choice but...”

8. Numb, Linkin Park

Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface Don't know what you're expecting of me Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes

Every step that I take is another mistake to you I've become so numb I can't feel you there Become so tired

“Mrs Kouros, hi. We were wondering if we could have a word about Hercules actually... yeah, it just doesn’t really seem like he’s settled very well. Has he talked to you about anything?”

“I... I know. He never - I’m sorry - he never even smiles at home any more. I don’t know what to do.”

9. I Need Something to Believe in, Newton Faulkner 

I need something to believe in 'Cause I don't believe in myself And I'm sick and tired of getting nowhere Guess it'll all work out

And I don't mind anymore And I don't mind anymore

And I need someone to put my trust in 'Cause I ain't trusting myself I'm scared of failure, so scared of success I guess, it'll all work out

“Maybe he just needs something else? You know? Right now he’s trapped in his head, maybe doing something instead of just sitting around being miserable would help?”

“It’s like he’s not even our son anymore, Tasso. I know he was always struggled a bit with people but...”

10. Proud of Your Boy, Adam Jacobs

I've wasted time I've wasted me So say I'm slow for my age A late bloomer, okay, I agree

That I've been one rotten kid Some son, some pride and some joy But I'll get over these lousin' up Messin' up, screwin' up times

You'll see, ma, now comes the better part Someone's gonna make good cross his stupid heart Make good and finally make you Proud of your boy

“I think, I think actually he’s really enjoying this athletics stuff? And did you know he’s looking for jobs?”

[gurguliare]

CONGRATS @vardasvapors​​ YOU’VE UNLOCKED UNASKED-FOR FOURTH OPTION ‘liveblog the entire Wanderings of Húrin, because I haven’t read it in nearly two years’

Twenty-eight years Hurin was captive in Angband, and at his release was in his sixtieth year, but great strength was in him still, in spite of the weight of his grief, for it suited the purpose of Morgoth that this should be so. He was sent under guard as far as the east-marches of Hithlum, and there he was let go free.

None that had known him [in] youth could mistake him still, though he had grown grim to look on: his hair and beard were white and long, but there was a fell light in his eyes. He walked unbowed, and yet carried a great black staff; but he was girt with his sword. Great wonder and dread fell on the land when it was noised in Hithlum that the Lord Hurin had returned. The Easterlings were dismayed, fearing that their Master would prove faithless again and give back the land to the Westrons, and that they would be enslaved in their turn. For watchmen had reported that Hurin came out of Angband.

'There was a great riding,' they said, 'of the black soldiers of Thangorodrim over the Anfauglith, and with them came this man, as one that was held in honour.'

Hey do you think the flamelike spirit that burns in Maedhros and makes him heal rapidly is ALSO a Morgoth bequest. Like does he heal super fast because his strength was of the ancient world or because Morgoth just unlocked that key in his genome before hanging him up on the wall and never got a chance to turn it off

...anyway how great is hot indelibly recognizable 60yo Húrin, forever. He has exactly his dashing younger self’s button nose.

Also I can’t believe he left Angband with an escort of hundreds of orc riders. After going into Angband still plastered in the orc hands he lopped off. Hey? Remember that? What’s up, Húrin? Do you think when they left him outside Dor-lomin one turned around and waved

Thus freedom only increased the bitterness of Hurin's heart; for even had he so wished, he could not have roused any rebellion against the new lords of the land. All the following that he gathered was a small company of the homeless men and outlaws chat lurked in the hills; but they had done no great deed against the Incomers since the passing of Turin, some five years before.

Of Turin's deeds in Brodda's hall Hurin now learned from the outlaws the true tale, and he looked on Asgon {3} and his men, and he said: 'Men are changed here. In thraldom they have found thrall hearts.'

God I just. cannot. believe. Hurin picks up the refugees that Turin fucking ditched in the mountains, and that they’ve now been downgraded from the bravest survivors of the Dor-lomin occupation to, meh, outlaws. No great deeds since Turin went off. Gotta love that Hurin’s-eye-view: well, what use to me?

'Fear not!' he said. 'I should have needed no companions, if I had come to fight with you. I am come only to take leave of the lord of the land. I have no liking for it any more, since you have defiled it. Hold it while you may, until your Master recalls you to the slave-tasks that fit you better.'

Then Lorgan was not ill-pleased to think that he would so soon and easily be rid of the fear of Hurin, without crossing the will of Angband; and he came forward.

'As you will, friend,' he said. 'I have done you no ill, and have let you be, and of this I hope you will bring a true tale, if you come again to the Master.'

Hurin eyed him in wrath. 'Friend me not, thrall and churl!' he said.

FB FRIEND REQUEST DECLINED. Also I love Lorgan, um, instantly recognizing the cocktail of tsundere threats characteristic of normal Angband introductions. sigh.

‘Fare you ill!'

'Tol acharn!' said Hurin. 'Vengeance comes. I am not the last of the Edain, whether I fare ill or well.' And with that he departed, and left the land of Hithlum.

HAHAHAHA I LOVE HURIN GETTING IT RIGHT... KIND OF... but unfortunately “I am not the last of the Edain, whether I fare ill or well” goes both ways. vengeance will come whatever happens to him but. whatever happens to him will still be awful and unchanged regardless of the survival of his peopleeeeee

[Some have said that] maybe he knew not that Glaurung was dead, and hoped in his heart distraught to take vengeance on this evil thing - for Morgoth would conceal the death of Glaurung, if he could, both because the loss was a grief to him and a hurt to his pride, and because (from Hurin especially) he would conceal all that was most valiant or successful of Turin's deeds. Yet this can scarce be so, since the death of Glaurung was so bound up with the death of his children and revelation of their evil case; while the rumour of the assault of Glaurung upon Brethil went far and wide. Certainly Morgoth fenced men in Hithlum, as he was able, and little news came to them of events in other lands; but so soon as Hurin passed southward or met any wanderers in the wild he would hear tidings of the battle in the ravine of Taiglin.

ahahahahahaha of course part of Húrin hopes that Glaurung survives. I mean I agree it makes no sense but: Of Course He Does. He’s Húrin Thalion, greatest warrior of the Edain! Why else was he released?

His heart is hot against Thingol. He passes it [Doriath] by and goes on to Nargothrond. Why? To seek news, plunder, --- he had been an admirer of Felagund.

w h a t  t h e  f u c k

Sorry nothing to say here just. AN ADMIRER OF FELAGUND? EXCUSE ME? OH MY GOD... DO YOU THINK TURGON TOLD HIM (EXPURGATED) STORIES

When Hurin stood again in the high places he descried far away amid the clouds the peaks of the Crisaegrim, and he remembered Turgon; and his heart desired to come again to the Hidden Realm, if he could, for there at least he would be remembered with honour. He had heard naught of the things that had come to pass in Gondolin, and knew not that Turgon now hardened his heart against wisdom and pity, and allowed no one either to enter or to go forth for any cause whatsoever. Therefore, unaware that all ways were shut beyond hope, he resolved to turn his steps towards the Crisaegrim; but he said nothing of his purpose to his companions, for he was still bound by his oath to reveal to no one that he knew even in what region Turgon abode.

Nonetheless he had need of help; for he had never lived in the wild, whereas the outlaws were long inured to the hard life of hunters and gatherers, and they brought with them such food as they could, though the Fell Winter had much diminished their store. Therefore Hurin said to them: 'We must leave this land now; for Lorgan will leave me in peace no longer. Let us go down into the vales of Sirion, where Spring has come at last!'

I love: Húrin constantly half-consciously aping ‘human capable of hope’ speech patterns just so he can better lie to people. He’s good at lying now. He spent thirty years thinking Morgoth’s hand-me-downs, why wouldn’t he be. Also I love how explicitly negative earlier drafts are about Gondolin and “at least he would be remembered with honor,” another relatively normal human desire among the many parading ostentatiously in Húrin’s surface thoughts, and I love Húrin not able to cook OR farm. Amazing. Sucks to have social stratification, huh, honey.

Also the fact that he has this company of people following him and then he just ditches them to go find Gondolin adds SO MUCH RICHNESS to his plea outside Gondolin? Like whoa oh oh I’m so alone in the world all have spurned me and btw I basically catfished six guys until THEY would teach me how to fish

'The old man's wits are wild. He speaks with strange voices to shadows in his sleep.'

'Little wonder if it were so,' said Asgon. 'But who else could stand as straight as he, after such woe? Nay, he is our right lord, do as he may, and I have sworn to follow him.'

'Even east over the ford?' said the others.

'Nay, there is small hope in that way,' said Asgon, 'and I do not think that Hurin will go far upon it. All we know of his purpose was to go soon to Brethil, and that he has an errand there. We are on the very border. Let us seek him there.'

'By whose leave?' said Ragnir. 'Men there do not love strangers.'

'Good men dwell there,' said Asgon, 'and the [Master >] Lord of Brethil is kin to our old lords.' Nonetheless the others were doubtful, for no tidings had come out of Brethil for some years. 'It may be ruled by Orcs for all we know,' they said.

'We shall soon find what way things go,' said Asgon. 'Orcs are little worse than Eastrons, I guess. If outlaws we must remain, I would rather lurk in the fair woods than in the cold hills.'

The Rohan/Lothlorien/Fangorn mix with Brethil is real intense, though I mostly feel the Rohan parallels. But I also like the reminder that the Hadorians and the people in Dor-lomin really have the most human-centric existence of any society in Beleriand. The Haladin don’t necessary have close ties to particular elves but they’re tangled up in Orcs and a front line of defense against Orcs from the moment of their introduction, and they therefore feel more meshed into the fantastic wild of Beleriand as a whole, whereas the Hadorians really, almost, sorta had a self-contained fortified society from which to look out at the uncanny world, for a while there. Anyway, then with “Orcs are little worse than Eastrons” you got that simultaneous tasty racism and hard-to-resist humanization of Orcs from back at the beginning of time before Species Divisions were formalized beyond hope of unlearning, so, \o_o/ I guess

'To those of proved faith,' said Hardang. 'To be Edain is not enough alone.'

[...]

'This is my judgement. Here Turin son of Hurin dwelt for a time, and he delivered the land from the Serpent of Angband. For this I give you your lives. But he scorned Brandir, right Chieftain of Brethil, and he slew him without justice or pity. Therefore I will not harbour you here.'

LOL REVERSE OF Húrin’s propaganda machine “I am not the last of the Edain, whether I fare ill or well.” idk that I have much to say about the completely unstable shifting identities here but <3

Asgon, therefore, turned and went back towards Brethil; and the others followed him, for he had a stout heart and men said that he was born with good luck.

[...]

'Well, thy luck has held,' said Ragnir, 'for at least we are not slain, though we came nigh it. Now what shall we do?’

Rasgir/Asgon is a good ship I hope they had a nice time being lost in the woods forever

Thus Turin was the second cousin of Brandir on the 'Hadorian' side, and he was also his second cousin on the Haladin side; while in the 'Beorian' line he was Brandir's second cousin once removed - a genealogical situation to delight the heart of Hamfast Gamgee. Pointing out these relationships in an isolated note of this time, my father observed that 'Turin would be more readily accepted by the Haladin when his true name and lineage were known or guessed', since he was akin to their lords in these ways.

I’m very ... Emotion ... about Brandir being this barely-tolerated lord, son of a Beorian mother with a great big polarizing Hadorian strain as well, alternately prized by the other anxious part-Hadorians and viewed as an outsider by scared, bitter Haladin rival branches. Do I headcanon that Beldis put him on the Wise track at all?? I don’t know! I think I do! I don’t think she was a Wise-woman though she probably just gave him like, five poison berries once and a pat on the head

The only obscure point concerns the failure of Asgon's party to encounter Hurin on his return. My father was in two minds about this. The rejected fourth paragraph in C (p. 267) shows him (having decided that Asgorn and his men were not imprisoned) taking the view that they were ejected from Brethil near the Crossings: it is 'the captain of the Taiglin-guard' who restores their weapons; and they remain lurking in that neighbourhood. Thus they missed Hurin, 'who entered out of Dimbar' (i.e. came into Brethil from the north after crossing the Brithiach, as Asgorn had done). Hurin, he wrote, must not enter Brethil at the Crossings and be found lying beside the Haud-en-Elleth (as the story was already in the draft manuscript).

But he at once, and understandably, thought better of this, and (in the fifth paragraph) retained the existing story that Hurin was found by the guards near the Crossings; he said now that Asgorn and his men were put out of Brethil in the same region as they entered, and that they lurked 'near the eaves in that region' - hence their failure to meet with Hurin. But in the replacement passage B 2 (p. 265) he has them decide not to stay near the north eaves of the forest, and they go down towards the Crossings.

Tbh this. impossible continuity fuckup is my FAVORITE and instantly enshrined as Fairy-tale Meaningful in my mind, for no particular reason. Hurin went to the Crossings! Asgorn and his men headed down to the Crossings! HURIN IS TAKEN CAPTIVE AND THEY NEVER MEET AGAIN. Thanks, Connie Willis.

...he halted and looked about him in little hope. He stood now at the foot of a great fall of stones beneath a sheer rock-wall, and he did not know that this was all that was now left to see of the old Way of Escape: the Dry River was blocked and the arched gate was buried.(28)

Then Hurin looked up to the grey sky, thinking that by fortune he might once more descry the Eagles, as he had done long ago in his youth.(29) But he saw only the shadows blown from the East, and clouds swirling about the inaccessible peaks; and wind hissed over the stones. But the watch of the Great Eagles was now redoubled, and they marked Hurin well, far below, forlorn in the failing light. And straightaway Sorontar himself, since the tidings seemed great, brought word to Turgon.

But Turgon said: 'Nay! This is past belief! Unless Morgoth sleeps. Ye were mistaken.'

Obviously this is all in the Silm-silm but man the... stereoscopic movement from Húrin staring up at the mountains from way down below the cloud layer TO THE EAGLES, watching from ABOVE the clouds, seeing everything illuminated. What the fuck. Also I love the repeated “Unless Morgoth sleeps” phrase, ha ha ha ha, like Morgoth is a dragon and Húrin is his FAVORITE goblet (tru)

As darkness fell Hurin stumbled from the stone, and fell, as one aswoon, into a deep sleep of grief. But in his sleep he heard the voice of Morwen lamenting, and often she spoke his name; and it seemed to him that her voice came out of Brethil.

//

The waters of Cabed Naeramarth roared on, but he heard no sound and saw nothing, and he felt nothing, for his heart was stone within him, and he thought that he would sit there until he too died.

But there came a chill wind that drove sharp rain into his face; and he was roused, and anger rose in him like smoke, mastering reason, so that all his desire was to seek vengeance for his wrongs and for the wrongs of his kin, accusing in his anguish all those who ever had dealings with them.

He arose and lifted Morwen up; and suddenly he knew that it was beyond his strength to bear her. He was hungry and old, and weary as winter. Slowly he laid her down again beside the standing stone. 'Lie there a little longer, Edelwen,' he said, 'until I return. Not even a wolf would do you more hurt. But the folk of this hard land shall rue the day that you died here!'

So of course the “anger rose in him like smoke, mastering reason” passage is the only rival for Fingolfin’s last ride in my affections, I should have listed it as an alternative because they really are just, The Two Favs, but anyway: other things I’m into here include the... kind of... the relatively innocent-seeming childlike oblivion of grief, interrupted by a perhaps braver (?) and more adult/heroic (??) impulse to answer Morwen’s call---his love! that takes priority!---and then the same process happening again after she dies, except now all that’s summoning him is his grief, and it’s soured completely in his absence. But like, the repeated habit of ‘shaking himself awake,’ the shape is the same, the feelings that fill it are the reverse

Also I can’t. can’t. BELIEVE the ... seamless transition from the factual, wrenching, sweet gallows humor of “Not even a wolf would do you more hurt” --- he’s looking at her, he’s flirting a little, he sees her clearly, she’s a corpse! --- STRAIGHT into “But the folk of this hard land shall rue the day that you died here.” He was calm for as long as he’s talking directly to his dead wife, it occurs to him he can hurt someone, it’s time to hurt someone. No one can hurt her now. What does that have to do with it? He wants to hurt someone!

'Shame upon you!' cried Manthor the captain, who coming behind had heard what they said. 'And upon you most, Avranc, young though you are! At least you have heard of the deeds of Hurin of Hithlum, or did you hold them only fireside fables? What is to be done, indeed! So, slay him in his sleep is your counsel. Out of hell comes the thought! '

'And so does he,' answered Avranc. 'If indeed he is Hurin. Who knows? '

'It can soon be known,' said Manthor; and coming to Hurin as he lay he knelt and raised his hand and kissed it. 'Awake!' he cried. 'Help is near. And if you are Hurin, there is no help that I would think enough.'

'And no help that he will not repay with evil,' said Avranc. 'He comes from Angband, I say.'

'What he may do is unknown,' said Manthor. 'What he has done we know, and our debt is unpaid.'

God Manthor you male feminist. I mean, uh, I, ‘out of hell comes the thought’ / ‘ and so does he’ put this on my .... portfolio website, also... the hand kiss.... the unintentional brain-cleaving accuracy of ‘and if you are Hurin, there is no help that I would think enough’ ... I do legit love What he may do is unknown. What he has done we know, and our debt is unpaid. Manthor is a good, rationalizing, sleazy kid who has already had TWO prophetic dreams :(

Then Manthor gave him a little bread and meat and water; but they seemed to choke him, and he spat them forth. 'How far is it to the house of your lord?' he asked. 'Until I have seen him the food that you denied to my beloved will not go down my throat.'

[Húrin after having his mouth scalded by a bite of lembas] ‘Hmm, must be because THINGOL and MELIAN mistreated my WIFE’

the food that you denied to my beloved. holy shit. he’s an evil slam poet.

Then he turned towards Hurin, who sat meanwhile bent on the low stool; his eyes were closed, and he seemed to take no heed of what was said.

LOVE HÚRIN’S FUCKING... SHITTY-ASS COMBINATION THEODEN-DENETHOR-GANDALF VIBE... WHATS UP. IM A HARMLESS OLD MAN. BUT I HATE YOU. BUT IM CRAZY MAGIC SO

Then Hurin looked at him and the wrath left his eyes; and together they drank and ate in silence. And when all was finished, Hurin said: 'By your voice you have overcome me. Never since the Day of Dread have I heard any man's voice so fair. Alas! alas! it calls to my mind the voices in my father's house, long ago when the shadow seemed far away.'

'That may well be,' said Manthor. 'Hiril my foremother was sister of thy mother, Hareth.'

'Then thou art both kin and friend,' said Hurin.

'But not I alone,' said Manthor. 'We are few and have little wealth, but we too are Edain, and bound by many ties to your people. Your name has long been held in honour here; but no news of your deeds would have reached us, if Haldir and Hundar had not marched to the Nirnaeth. There they fell, but three of their company returned, for they were succoured by Mablung of Doriath and healed of their wounds.’

1) Seriously the amount of time Húrin spends on offhand, awful, overwhelming flattery 2) I REMEMBER BEING EXACTLY AS WOWED BY THE MABLUNG CAMEO LAST TIME. “Oh, shit, they got healed by Doctor Who!” Fuck I just realized Mablung visited again ~2 weeks ago and probably talked to none of those people. Amazing.

Soon all the Moot-ring was filled. This was shaped as a great crescent, with seven tiers of turf-banks rising up from a smooth floor delved back into the hillside. A high fence was set all about it, and the only entry was by a heavy gate in the stockade that closed the open end of the crescent. In the middle of the lowest tier of seats was set the Angbor or Doom-rock, a great flat stone upon which the Halad (40) would sit. Those who were brought to judgement stood before the stone and faced the assembly.

... Then he stood facing the assembly and hallowed the Moot according to custom. First he named Manwe and Mandos, after the manner which the Edain had learned from the Eldar, and then, speaking the old tongue of the Folk which was now out of daily use, he declared that the Moot was duly set, being the three hundred and first Moot of Brethil, called to give judgement in a grave matter.

I don’t have anything to say about this it’s just the best and I regret not including it in my Nienor fic. Take me to turf ampitheater. Btw Niniel definitely spoke on that doom-rock right, that’s where she convinced the folk of Brethil to go rubberneck with her, right

also NAMED MANWE AND MANDOS AFTER THE MANNER WHICH THE EDAIN LEARNED FROM THE ELDAR and then goes straight to the old largely-ceremonial human language I. just. I love it so much. I love Beleriand.

The horn sounded twice, but for some time no one entered, and the sound of angry voices could be heard outside the fence. At length the gate was thrust open, and six men came in bearing Hurin between them.

'I am brought by violence and misuse,' he cried. 'I will not walk slave-fettered to any Moot upon earth, not though Elven-kings should sit there. And while I am bound thus I deny all authority and justice to your dooms.' But the men set him on the ground before the Stone and held him there by force.

Sorry I included a lot of Húrin quotes that I don’t even have anything to say about I Just... the vision... Húrin’s slightly fake flailing and perfect enunciation/projection techniques....

But when Hardang stepped down and Avranc came to the Stone there was a loud murmuring like the rumour of a coming storm. Avranc was a young man, not long wedded, and his youth was taken ill by all the elder headmen that sat there. And he was not loved for himself; for though he was bold, he was scornful, as was Dorlas his father before him. And dark tales were whispered concerning Dorlas; for though naught was known for certain, he was found slain far from the battle with Glaurung, and the reddened sword that lay by him had been the sword of Brandir.

But Avranc took no heed of the murmur, and bore himself airily, as if it were a light matter soon to be dealt with.

My secret favorite WoH thing is not even the Hurin garbage, it’s just the indiscriminate revengelike murder mystery consequences of Brandir’s death on This Entire Small Community. Also, Avranc is cute. Cuter than Dorlas because I cannot imagine Dorlas behind the bench in an Ace Attorney game. Pats.

‘We gave him food and he spat on it. I have seen Orcs do so, if any were fools enough to show them mercy.’

[vs Manthor:] ‘Yet as for despising our food: he took it from my hands, and he did not spit upon it. He spat it forth, for it choked him. Have you never, my masters, seen a man half-starved who could not swallow food in haste though he needed it? And this man was in great grief also and full of anger.’

Anyway okay I joked earlier but obviously the moment with Húrin spitting out the food/these successive interpretive frames are just... so... again like, this is as close as we get to textual acknowledgment of like... the HORROR of those scenes where Gollum is burned by the elf-rope and the moon, the fact that what’s spoken of in the abstract as a sure sign of evil reads on the page as just this terrible, wasteful injustice, that no one’s actively inflicting but that people have some duty to correct. And like. come on. the only explanation for orcish allergies that makes sense is that they’ve been deprived for so long that they just can’t handle [radiance/nutrients/silky touches of elf-hair]. Avranc and Manthor, I have great news, you think you’re making different arguments and through my sciences I have discovered, it’s ONE argument

'Prisoner, will you not speak?' said Avranc, and still Hurin gave no answer. 'So be it,' said Avranc. 'If he will not speak, not even to deny the charge, then there is no more to do. The charge is made good, and the one that is appointed to the Stone must propound to the Moot a penalty that seems just.'

But now Manthor stood up and said: ‘First he should at least be asked why he will not speak. And to that question reply may be made by his friend.'

'The question is put,' said Avranc with a shrug. 'If you know the answer give it.'

'Because he is fettered hand and foot,' said Manthor. 'Never before have we dragged to the Moot in fetters a man yet uncondemned. Still less one of the Edain whose name deserves honour, whatsoever may have happened since. Yes, "uncondemned" I say; for the accuser has left much unsaid that this Moot must hear before judgement is given.'

'But this is foolishness,' said Avranc. 'Adan or no, and whatever his name, the prisoner is ungovernable and malicious. The bonds are a needed precaution. Those who come near him must be protected from his violence.'

Sorry I just... really like Avranc...

Hmm I was going to put this observation somewhere else but I don’t really feel like attaching a quote: it is always soothing to me when Tolkien doesn’t quite know how to translate his ideas into an archaic register either. Like with the whole subplot of Hurin’s food being drugged. “IDK, HIS FOOD WAS DRUGGED.” Or when he tries to backdate idioms? “Third time shall thrive best!” mmhmmm

But the gathering and counting would take much time, and meanwhile Manthor saw that with each moment the mood of Hurin grew worse.

'There is another way more simple,' he said. 'There is no danger here to justify the bonds, and so think all who have used their voice. The Halad is in the Moot-ring, and he can remit his own order, if he will.'

'He will,' said Hardang, for it seemed to him that the mood of the assembly was restive, and he hoped by this stroke to regain its favour. 'Let the prisoner be released, and stand up before you!'

Hardang also a pretty great prototype of other doomed Tolkien politicians :[ from chilling in his chair with a bleeding headwound to bursting out petulantly about REMEMBER MY HEADWOUND? DO YOU THINK THIS IS A FANCY HAT? in court. He’s just... “trying his best”... I, too, suck at catering to the crowd while wishing to do nothing except cater to the crowd, Hardang.

'Ashamed ye may be. But this is not my charge. I do not ask that any in this land should match the son of Hurin in valour. But if I forgive those griefs, shall I forgive this? Hear me, Men of Brethil! There lies by the Standing Stone that you raised an old beggar-woman. Long she sat in your land, without fire, without food, without pity. Now she is dead. Dead. She was Morwen my wife. Morwen Edelwen, the lady elven-fair who bore Turin the slayer of Glaurung. She is dead.

[...]

Now Hardang was aghast at this turn, and his face went white with fear and amazement. But before he could speak, Hurin pointed a long hand at him. 'See!' he cried. 'There he stands with a sneer on his mouth! Does he deem himself safe? For I am robbed of my sword; and I am old and weary, he thinks. Nay, too often has he called me a wild man. He shall see one! Only hands, hands, are needed to wring his throat full of lies.'

With that Hurin left the Stone and strode towards Hardang; but he gave back before him, calling his household-men about him; and they drew off towards the gate. Thus it appeared to many that Hardang admitted his guilt, and they drew their weapons, and came down from the banks, crying out upon him.

Now there was peril of battle within the hallowed Ring. For others joined themselves to Hardang, some without love for him or his deeds, who nonetheless held to their loyalty and would at least defend him from violence, until he could answer before the Moot.

L M A O I JUST FUCKIN. THE NEGGING. “Not that I expected you to be braver than my son!” The as if just-remembered other detail: you killed my wife, though. Remember when you totally killed my wife, as I decided when I realized I needed someone to have killed her, because I wanted a reason to live? Remember that? Oh, okay, I’m walking forward now. No rush. I’m just briskly walking forward to strangle your leader. Everybody with m---oh look, he’s running away. After him! On your own time.

Now she is dead. Dead. She was Morwen my wife.

'Out of the dark days of our past it comes,' he said, 'before we turned our faces west. A shadow is upon us.' And he felt one lay a hand on his shoulder, and he turned and saw Hurin who stood behind him, with a grim face watching the kindling of the fires; and Hurin laughed.

'A strange folk are ye,' he said. 'Now cold, now hot. First wrath, then ruth. Under your chieftain's feet or at his throat. Down with Hardang! Up with Manthor! Wilt thou go up?'

'The Folk must choose,' said Manthor. 'And Hardang still lives.'

'Not for long, I hope,' said Hurin.

a. strange. folk. are ye. now cold. now hot. down with hardang! up with manthor! wilt thou go up? Hurin, I know you can’t, but listen to me, I have to ask: can you control your jollies for even a second. Until the house is ashes? If you recall, your wife is dead and not here and can’t unsmilingly appreciate your shit

'You are a mightier man than I, Hurin of Hithlum,' he said. 'I had such fear of your shadow that all wisdom and largesse forsook me. But now I do not think that any wisdom or mercy would have saved me from you, for you have none. You came to destroy me, and you at least have not denied it. But your last lie against me I cast back upon you ere I die. Never' - but with that blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell back, and said no more.

I know you haven’t read ASOIAF and you are the only person who might conceivably have scrolled this far down, but, god when people claim GRRM is more grimdark in his interest in deflating backhanded anticlimax than Tolkien, I ... I just...

‘I must go to the Field of the Worm and the Stone of the Hapless, where Morwen their mother lies untended. Will any come with me?'

Then ruth smote the hearts of those that heard him; and though some drew back in fear, many were willing to go, but among these there were more women than men.

<33 <3 they loved Nienor

But Hurin said: 'Nay, Nienor is not here, but it is fitter that she should lie here near her son than with any strangers. So she would have chosen.'

[...] But it is said that after that day fear left that place, though sorrow remained, and it was ever leafless and bare. But until the end of Beleriand women of Brethil would come with flowers in spring and berries in autumn and sing there a while of the Grey Lady who sought in vain for her son.

I have to single out every time someone mentions “Nienor is not there,” also the implication that obviously Morwen would MOST want to be buried where Nienor is, um, soothing to me. Personally. Not because I don’t care a ton about Morwen and Turin, it’s just, the Morwen-Nienor relationship is like... you know. Anyway I can’t believe how lovely and unqualified this is even though Brethil is on fire in another tab.

Now Manthor sat gasping with his back to a tree. 'It is a poor archer that will miss his mark at the third aim,' he said.

Hurin leaned on his staff and looked down at Manthor. 'But thou hast missed thy mark, kinsman,' he said. 'Thou hast been a valiant friend, and yet I think thou wert so hot in the cause for thyself also. Manthor would have sat more worthily in the chair of the Chieftains.'

'Thou hast a hard eye, Hurin, to pierce all hearts but thine own,' said Manthor.

THANKS HURIN. THANKS FOR THE SOFTWARE UPDATE. THANKS FOR RUNNING A DIAGNOSTIC ON THIS DECEASED MAN. great job leaning on your staff for effect, you maniac

‘...I would weep for thee, Manthor; for thou hast saved me from dishonour, and thou hadst love for my son.'

'Then, lord, use in peace the little more life that I have won for thee,' said Manthor. 'Do not bring your shadow upon others!'

'Why, must I not still walk in the world?' said Hurin. 'I will go on till the shadow overtakes me. Farewell!'

Final thoughts on Wanderings of Húrin: it’s super weird how Homer wrote the softcore flanderizing fix-it AU of Morwen/Húrin thousands of years before Morwen/Húrin ok ok it doesn’t actually bear that much resemblance to the Odyssey/the slaying of the suitors, I just think I’m funny

[ruffoverthinksthings]

God Loves You, Which Is Why You’ll Burn In Hell (Part 2): A “Good, Christian Child,” Claudine Frollo Is Not

All Frollo ever truly wanted from his daughter was for her to become a “good, Christian child” in the midst of all the sin, the debauchery, and the faithlessness that is life on the Isle of the Lost.

As mentioned in part 1, Claudine Frollo was the product of a very brief, tumultuous marriage between Frollo and a woman whose name is lost to time and even his memory, whom he only ever refers to as “Not Esmerelda.”

Even more so than the other VKs, the deck was stacked heavily against Claudine: the infamy Frollo had already accrued over the past four years and the overzealous behaviour of his flock made her a social pariah by association, the strict and rigid standards for good behaviour imposed on her were even more inflexible than her peers’ and the punishment all the more severe, and the fact that the parents of everyone else were praising them for sinning, misbehaving, and generally being very bad, un-Christian like children made for a very difficult life.

But still, she persisted, abstaining from pranks and parties, casual kissing and cruelty, stealing and sex (the sinful, pre-marital kind), being bullied, picked on, and victimized relentlessly, but never lashing back, always taking her lot in life with a smile, comforting herself at night with prayers and the thought that when Judgment day comes, she will be taken away from this Hell and to an eternal Paradise.

Unlike the rest of the Isle parents, Frollo also loved her truly, supporting her, praising her, and doing his damndest to care for her despite his ever failing health and the fact that the Isle was not kind to such “pure, holy people” as them.

Then, puberty came, and all of that went into a hand-basket headed straight down.

The problems all started when Claudine got her first period, and Frollo insisted that she had to deal with her “private shame” all by herself, while also reminding her about all the many things she couldn’t do whenever she was “unclean.”

Her body began to change, from a little cherubic angel to a devilish succubus in the making, and Frollo began to rant and beg her to cover up lest she unwittingly lead others to temptation, or rile up the “slavering dogs” (teenage boys, and some of the girls) even more than they usually are—never mind that Claudine could literally cover herself head to toe in a sack, and Frollo would still complain that her “piercing eyes” were still too much temptation.

New, confusing, interesting but dangerous feelings started to stir inside of her, and the only things she got from Frollo were violent, fiery admonitions that she ever let herself be overcome by such temptation, before being ordered to pray to God for mercy, that through His divine will she may become stronger and overcome the shortcomings of her flawed, mortal body.

And things sure didn’t improve when she confessed she was feeling them for girls, not boys.

Still, Claudine persisted, refusing the advances and temptation of her peers, dedicating so much time to patching up and sewing clothes to make sure she was covering up where everyone else was starting to intentionally bear more and more skin than usual, and continuing her nightly prayers, though they were now recited while she scrubbed menstrual blood off everything she owned, and cleaning the things she had turned “unclean.”

It was around this time that the little, obedient girl was starting to question her faith, all the things Frollo had told her were true and infallible, of the value of eternal Paradise some far-off, vague time in the future when God declared her stay on this plane over, VS earthly pleasures now that everyone else was enjoying and seeking.

Still, she trusted her father, her faith, and God more than anything else.

So inspired was Frollo by his daughter’s devotion amidst this tumultuous time that he started a convent, a section of his church renovated and dedicated to the proper education of the young girls of the Isle, so they may know how to serve God for the rest of their lives, or become good, Christian wives to the wholesome men they would find in the future.

(The boys were on their own; in his wisdom as a man himself, Frollo declared them truly lost causes that was beyond even Saint Jude.)

Never mind that the prayer services Claudine was assisting with was oftentimes an extra hour to nap, or gossip in the pews. Never mind that her fellow “nuns” were constantly sneaking out, partying, and staying long enough to sleep and enjoy a free breakfast before going straight back to sinning. Never mind that within the walls of the holy ground, sacrilegious things were happening between the other girls who found they weren’t very interested in boys, like the Good Book said they were supposed to be.

Then along came CJ, the herald of the beginning of the end.

Frollo had never liked CJ, thinking her the worst of Hook’s children, the very epitome of everything that is wrong with the Isle, all the sin, the evil, and the selfishness of the world given form as a teenaged girl—and for the few times in her life, CJ actually sincerely thanked someone for saying that.

Claudine didn’t either, thinking her her ultimate project, what was going to be the true test of her faith, the one thing that would prove to herself and everyone on the Isle that God was Great, God was Good, God was Almighty, that she would convert this wild child going around serving no one but herself, bring her to the light and the joy of serving God and others.

Never mind all the “unholy” things CJ had initiated and that she went along with, flawed as she was and prone to temptation.

Never mind that the “lies” coming from her mouth were starting to sound more true than anything Frollo had ever told her—though her growing suspicions that he was turning senile might have been part of that.

Never mind that for all the “wrong” feelings she had for her felt—as the cliché went—so right.

The convent dwindled, until it was just the two of them plus a handful of the children of Frollo’s flock. Suddenly there were no services to distract herself with, no other people to try and save and get a break from CJ, no excuses for not seeing her and interacting with her. No busying herself and avoiding all the things she’d tried not to think, tried not to feel, the things she prayed and prayed to God to please take away, that she’d listed when she asked if she’d already suffered enough, that He thought she should still endure as part of her “test.”

All of it came to a head in the storeroom of the convent, where CJ had finally managed to break into the locked cabinet containing the (tarnished, but still) silver candlesticks Frollo had lent for the convent’s services.

“Put those back,” Claudine growled.

CJ chuckled as she casually stuffed the sacred artifacts down her dress, along with her other ill-gotten treasures. “Why? Going to tell me off to Father Frollo? Ooh, ooh, oh wait: I’m going to incite the wrath of the Big Man Upstairs, and He’s going to strike me dead where I stand, isn’t He?!”

Claudine’s scowl grew deeper as CJ threw her head back and laughed. “CJ, I have been patient with you all this time, spending all of my precious time and effort, trying my damndest to save your soul--”

“And why have you been doing all this, exactly?” CJ asked. “It’s definitely not because I won’t make-out with you if you weren’t all high and holy on me, though I must admit, the Old Boys talking about the joys of making women of the cloth ‘fall into temptation’ certainly had it right~” she said, licking her lips.

Claudine blushed. “Is it really so unbelievable to you that I just want to save your soul, CJ?”

“Yes, actually, considering we’re all damned here!” CJ replied. “Have you looked around you, Claudine, or have you just been blind all this time and none of us have noticed? We’re the dregs of Auradon, their forsaken, their outcasts—we have literally been cast out to die and rot in our own filth just because their Big Guy Upstairs decided we didn’t belong in their world.”

“That was King Beast, not God!” Claudine said, fuming and shaking now.

“God, Beast, what’s the difference?” CJ asked. “They’re both powerful men who just decide on a whim who lives a luxurious, comfortable life and who deserves to suffer and struggle, reassuring the former that they did something to deserve it, and the latter that if they obey, don’t complain until the day they die, and keep on praying and praising them and calling them the Best Thing Ever for all of eternity, they’ll go to some magical place where everything is all well and good.

“Oh, what’s that, you say? You can’t see this Paradise? No one knows for sure if it exists, because you have to die naturally to go there, and no one that’s ever died has ever returned to tell us mortals about how great and how worth it is, because Paradise is just that good, so we have to rely on wrinkly old men in dresses asking us to believe them when they say it is?”

CJ scowled. “Admit it, Claudine, this is all because of your father, isn’t it?”

Claudine had no words, only unintelligible fuming and sputtering.

“He’ll never love you like he did when you were still his ‘sweet little angel,’ Claudine,” CJ said flatly. “Look at yourself: you’re just like that ‘Esmeralda’ woman he despises and hungers for so much, temptation on legs—and I should know! Do you really think that if you try hard enough, that if you pray hard enough, that if you rely on that ‘God’ of yours to swoop down and use His ‘mysterious magical powers’ on you that it will change the fact that you’re going to get fucked every single day, and not in the fun sense?

“Your fate was sealed when you were born a girl, Claudine.”

Claudine stared at her, her hands balled into fists, her knuckles white and her nails digging into her palms, already starting to draw blood.

“What’s going on down there?!” Frollo cried.

CJ sighed. “Well, fuck, there goes my nice, clean escape plan!” she said as she picked up a box of matches on the side. “I hope you’re happy, Claudine, you’re directly responsible for what’s about to happen.”

Claudine blinked. “Wait—what in God’s name are you doing?!”

CJ’s eyes twinkled like the lit head of the match in her hand. “Making myself a distraction, is what~!”

She flicked it onto the meticulously dried and cleaned cloths for the altar.

Frollo’s convent burned that day, that section of his church rendered permanently uninhabitable for the acrid stench, the collapsed brickwork, and the superstition surrounding that forced his flock into inaction.

Claudine herself barely escaped the flames, screaming like a banshee as her long hair and her ankle-length skirt had caught fire.

They say the old her died there, burned to death and reborn anew in the ashes, for the very next day, the Isle saw a very different Claudine Frollo:

One with her formerly long, luxurious locks savagely cut short into a bob; the foulest and filthiest of words coming from her mouth, almost always taking the Lord’s name in vain; and all too eager to drink, smoke, and fuck till her body gave out.

She still wore a long, white coat, pristine and pure by the Isle’s standards, but once she’s out of sight from her church and her home, she sheds it to reveal a shirt a size too small and the top row of buttons conspicuously undone; a plaid skirt from Auradon’s many academies, cut dangerously, scandalously short; and high, spiked heels that force her to sway her hips with every step.

Frollo still believes Claudine is a good, Christian child like he always wanted her to be, unfailing in his support of her in spite of the evidence, always assuming the best of her, and the worst of everyone else, “sinners, sycophants, and heathens that they are.”

But everyone else knows the truth.

[eirabach]

This Be the Verse

Angsty modern AU Lieutenant Duckling for a CS Writers’ Hub prompt. Probably the most pretentious thing I’ve ever written, and that really is saying something.

With apologies to Philip Larkin and dedicated to Sascha, wherever he may be.

1.8k. T for language.

She doesn’t really notice him until he starts bleeding.

She’s used to keeping her head down, always the new kid, always the weird kid with the hand me down clothes and a permanent scowl.

She’s never had time to worry about the other weird kids, not when her own school career has been punctuated by cruelty and laughter, and bruises that bloom like flowers, hidden under too long sleeves.

He’s probably the weirdest of them all. Scrawny and pale, with lank dark hair that hangs in his face and eyes like shards of glass. Nobody seems to know where he’s come from - not from round here and that’s for sure - his accent sharp and bitter and different, just like him.

The kids see difference and they sneer at it. Some half-wild feral boy, unloved and unwanted, his clothes half rags and his cheeks hollow; easy pickings for the gangs of roving jocks with their sly, piggy eyes and their whey protein muscles.

It only takes one of them to hold him, class rings digging into thin shoulders, while three more thump and pound and laugh and holler.

It only takes one punch back to stop them laughing.

So it is that the first time Emma Swan really notices Killian Jones, he’s bleeding from a slash on his cheek and sporting a split lip, his eye purpling as his chest heaves and he spits bile on the floor at his feet.

But more than that, more than gore and bravery and sheer stupidity against the odds, she notices fury.

After all, she knows what it’s like to be angry.

–

“Why’d you do it?” she asks afterwards as she dabs blood from his chin, his tormentors dispatched with the careful placement of her knees and dire warnings about being beaten by a girl. “Did you think it would make them respect you? Cause let me tell you, kid. It doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asks, teeth gritted as she reaches the cut on his lip. “They didn’t appear keen to suffer your disapproval.”

“I’ve been around longer,” she says with a shrug, leaning back to admire her handiwork. “They know I can handle myself.”

“I can handle myself,” he says petulantly.

Emma hands him the bloodied tissue, her mouth twisting into a smile.

“Funny way of showing it,” she says.

He stares at her, his eyes blue as cornflowers now they’re not narrowed in anger, and she thinks she sees his lips twitch as if he’s considering a smile of his own.

When he leaves, he doesn’t say thank you, and she doesn’t say goodbye.

–

She notices him more after that, even though he rarely looks her way. Rarely looks anyone’s way, as far as she can tell, instead wandering the halls like a rain cloud, only stopping to scrawl furiously in some dog eared notebook or start fights he never seems to win.

She’s never sure if he really wants to, but then she’s not in a position to ask. Not when she’s got her head down just as far, her own personal cloud always threatening to burst just over her head.

When he does look her way, he’s bleeding again.

“What are you in for?” he asks as they sit side by side outside the principal’s office, the knuckles of his left hand swollen and bloody. “You look pretty good - should I see the other guy?”

She shrugs, leaning her head back against the wall to examine a water stain on the ceiling.

(Looks like Michigan, she thinks. She’s never been there. Maybe that’s next. Maybe it’s a sign.

Maybe it’s just a burst pipe.

Maybe that’s the sign.)

“Katie MacVee lost her cellphone.”

His eyebrow ticks up.

“And you’re accused of stealing it?”

She smiles, rolling her head to the side to look at him.

“Not yet.”

“Do you get accused of theft a lot?” he asks, sounding almost affronted on her behalf.

“Only sometimes,” she sighs, and then laughs shortly. “Sometimes I just get caught.”

When he smiles, he’s almost beautiful, and when he’s called through, she almost misses him.

–

He writes poetry, the type that doesn’t rhyme, and she pretends to scoff - he hasn’t been to class in a month, he’s not fooling her with his tortured intellectual act - but it speaks to her in a way she can’t express except through the crumpling of the paper when he tries to pull it back, the smudges of ink on her fingertips as she refuses to let go.

They’re like that, the two of them. Drawn together although they’ve only ever known how to be alone. She, quite literally abandoned and unwanted from the off, and he the feckless, useless second son of a yet more feckless father.

They curl up under the bleachers, rain dripping down the backs of their necks, taking damp puffs on clove cigarettes as they hide from a world that doesn’t care to look.

He’s quiet, mainly, so she bitches about her foster father and picks at the scabs on her forearms. He um‘s and ah’s and threatens to kill him in all the right places, until eventually she’s staring up at him, her face slack from shock.

“No one’s ever done that before.”

“Done what?”

“Listened.”

He takes a deep drag, blowing rings that rise above their heads, sooty halos for nobody’s angels.

“Nobody ever does,” he says.

“Except you.”

When she kisses him he tastes like smoke, and she wonders what it feels like to burn.

–

She knows it’s his birthday, finds out when she’s stuck in the principal’s office again, abandoned while her case worker pleads for another chance, another semester, that she already knows she won’t get.

The file isn’t even hidden, lying out on the desk like that so if she peeks - Killian and troubled and alone and just like her - if she peeks no one can blame her.

(They always do, anyway, so why does it matter?)

There’s no time and there’s never money, so the best she can manage is sneaking through the library stacks, keeping half an eye on the librarian as she runs her finger down the spines of books only he’d ever checked out. She finds her prize, tucking it under her jumper with its security tag hanging limply from the underside of the shelf, and wraps it in the bathroom with two sheets of an assignment she’s never going to hand in.

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad,” she tells him when she meets him by the lockers, thrusting the package into his hand with a hasty, half cocked smile. “That’s how it goes isn’t it?”

He catches sight of her caseworker hovering over her shoulder, the cardboard box at her feet and her sour expression, and let’s his fingers linger on hers, pressing them down into the book as though she might yet leave an imprint behind.

(She never does.)

“That’s how it goes,” he says.

It always is. It always, always is.

When she leaves, he doesn’t say thank you, and she doesn’t say goodbye.

–

She doesn’t think of poetry for years.

Not during the next move, nor the one after that. Not even when Ruth Nolan finally makes her her own, giving her a new name and a new brother and an education she actually cares about.

She think about him, though. He’s a hazy memory in damp leather who escorts her through smoky bars. The invisible presence by whom she judges a bad boyfriend whose kisses never taste right. Two bad boyfriends. Six. Ten.

She mentions it one night to her brother’s wife - the teenage crush with the bloody knuckles and a mind like quicksilver.

“Can’t you find him?” Mary Margaret asks, her romantic soul soaring at the thought of a reunion that fills Emma with dread.

“Can’t remember his name,” she answers, shrugging off the lie and sipping her wine.

Killian, she remembers, Killian Jones. Killian Jones who was perfect when no one else was, who thought she was perfect when the world crumbled at her feet. How many could there be? How hard could he be to find?

(How much would it hurt to fail. How much would it hurt to see him turn away.)

She finds people for a living, but she never finds him.

–

The library is an accident.

She’s chasing a skip through slicing rain  when she slips and falls, leaving half the skin of her kneecap on the sidewalk. She hobbles through the nearest open door, spitting invectives as she drips onto the marble floors.

“Are you alright?” somebody whispers, and she looks up to meet the soft brown eyes of a young woman who sits behind the huge mahogany desk, tiny on her upholstered throne.

“I’m alright,” Emma says, still favouring her uninjured leg. “Could I?”

She gestures towards one of the long tables set between the stacks, and the woman smiles, nodding her permission as Emma gingerly settles herself to examine her knee.

“Yeah, but did you see him?”

“Of course I saw him, I thought I was going to faint.”

“That neck!”

“That face!”

“I wanted to bite it!”

She can hear the glare the librarian is sending the gang of high school girls who are gathered at the end of the long table, their faces flushed pink as they squeak over some likely unsuspecting boy, and it’s enough to send her limping away through the stacks looking for a quieter spot to lick her wounds.

Little puffs of dust appear at her feet as she wanders deeper, led by some sense she can’t name to where anthology and collected works rising around her, their leather bound spines warm under her fingertips.

It grows darker, gloomier, the books older and thicker and mustier, until she’s swallowed up by the strange unreality of it all, her heart beating faster and faster until she’s almost ready to run - run back to the gossiping girls and the prim librarian, some nameless, faithless ghost at her heels -

And then the ghost looks up from his sea of words, catches her in the snare of his too blue eyes, and she knows that she’s doomed.

“This seat taken?” she says, but it sounds like I missed you.

He pulls out her chair with ink stained fingers, and it sounds like I know.

–

He still smells like leather and cigarettes and rain, still writes in the same looping cursive, still calls her Swan in that accent that’s only grown rougher with age even though she tells him “It’s Nolan now.”

“No wonder I couldn’t find you,” he says to that, smiling as he presses a tissue gently against her bleeding knee. “He’s a lucky man.”

“There’s no man, lucky or otherwise,” she says, and his smile grows, creasing the corners of his eyes and reminding her just how very many years have passed while they’ve lived their separate lives - marginalia in each others biographies.

He tells her about reform school, the navy, the dishonourable discharge and the hand that’s not quite right. He tells her about how his perfect brother died an ignoble death on foreign soil, how his father bled out in a bar fight - a hundred thousand grazes she wasn’t there to salve.

“There hasn’t been a day go by I haven’t thought of you,” he tells her earnestly, and what can she say in reply but the truth?

“Good.”

(They don’t say goodbye.)

[ravel-puzzlewell]

Okay but do you ever think about how the main theme of Mask of the Betrayer is how love is the most powerful thing in the world and not in a sense of “redeeming” or “making you a better person” or any other saccharine shit. Instead it’s a litmus test that shows your real colors, even if these colors are horrible.

Like, the main plotline is driven by love of two HORRIBLE people. Morally speaking, they are the worst. Akachi was the priest of the evil god of Death, so he was not only ok with the Wall of Faithless, he factually *supported* it. We can also comfortably assume that being a priest of the evil god of death, he was doing a lot of fucked up shit, it was literally his job. But when the Founder died, he was forced to confront himself - and yes, turned out that he’s a hypocrite. He raised an army - of angels and monsters and abominations, of anyone he could get, he lied and promised and paid them, he did anything he had to get their allegiance, and he raised banners - beautiful, pure banners of freedom and mercy, that will inspire Kaelyn centuries after, - but he didn’t care about them himself.  

And the Founder not only experimented on and ruined countless souls, not only bound a stranger’s soul with the curse of soul-hunger, but also split her own soul into pieces. And it’s really, really tragically ironic. She split her soul to keep “the best” part of her untarnished, to keep “everything that Akachi loved” intact. But, Founder, how could you sell him so short, how could you think he loved a *part* of you after he stormed the realm of his own god to get you back? Even when he’s nothing but hunger and rage, and been so for centuries, even when he doesn’t remember his own name or what being human feels like, even then he will know you, - the *worst*, the “tarnished” part of you, - and he will refuse to harm you even though it’s against all he is right now. Akachi was a bad man, a liar, a hypocrite, but he was brave enough to love you *whole*. Even though he would destroy the worlds without hesitation, it takes literally a soul of god to force him to devour the Founder and then he suffers - with nothing but a black twisted scrap of his soul left, he grieves for her still.

This love is a violent revelation that brings out both the worst and best of you, and in a world so unjust, unfair, stacked against you it gives you someone who will know you, with all you glory and shame and dirt, and love everything of it and want to keep learning more, and for this reason it is worth to burn as bright as you can, to be as whole as you can, not even the “best”, but the “fullest” version of yourself,  to grow into the most you can be and see your loved one do the same.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Vol. 3, No. 1

Robert Millis

We begin our third year of Dust with, as usual, more good music than we can hope to write about, making the difficult transition from albums we were unable to get to in 2016 to albums that we really ought to say something about in early 2017.  There’s a little of everything here -- artists as well known as Justin Broadrick and as little celebrated as Philadelphia lo-fi outsider Brandon Ayers, albums that are coming out for the first time next week and albums that have moldered undeservedly in obscurity for decades, music of many genres from free jazz to Iranian-flavored electronics to vintage Ohio fuzz.  Contributors this time include Bill Meyer, Patrick Masterson, Jennifer Kelly and Ian Mathers.  Happy new year, and onward to whatever music 2017 brings. 

Robert Millis—The Lonesome High (Abduction) 

Some people can sum up their lives on a business card; Robert Millis needs a whole deck, full sized, both faces of each playing card, and you’re still liable to miss something while he shuffles. Filmmaker, photographer, guerilla ethnographer, collector and sharer of 78 RPM records, weaver of multi-layered ambiences, improviser, annotator, jokester, traveler — and now comes The Lonesome High.

It turns out that Millis is also a sardonic troubadour, quite capable of bending verse/chorus song forms to his will. While he’s definitely played plenty of tunes with Climax Golden Twins and AFCGT (that’s the A-Frames + Climax Golden Twins), his commitment to working within that form sets this record apart from anything else he’s done. Millis sings them with a gruff and knowing delivery that effectively imparts the faithlessness, guilt, and befuddlement of his protagonists. He sounds like Howe Gelb might if he weren’t so comfortable with desert spaces. There’s something rather claustrophobic about these tunes, a sense that the characters are closed in, and even the guitar solos that punch through the songs’ walls can’t knock them down.

The record’s production plays up the entrapment described in the lyrics. Millis uses Foley artistry, musique concrete backdrops, and some good old-fashioned echo to imply that beyond his character’s myopic enactments, there’s a lot of less-bounded action going down. But the people in the songs don’t know that; they’re as trapped as some mope in a Twilight Zone episode.

Bill Meyer

Waldemar — Visions (Self-Release)

Another missive from the northern woods that produced Bon Iver, Gabe Larson’s Waldemar builds big anthemic songs around personal reveries. This four-song EP is mainly about his grandpa, and yet, its layered vocals hint at shared euphoria, its giant rock crescendos lift off towards universality. “Brotherly” stirs to life in misty threads of drone, cymbal rolls, silence and Larson’s voice cresting upward with a Jonsi-ish mix of religious chant and pop. Folksy jangle intersects with mysticism, a la fellow Wisconsites in Megafaun, and, as you may have come to expect from Eau Claire outfits, there are infusions of brass and band instruments from the jazz talent nearby. “Visions” is, maybe, the most striking of these four cuts and the one that will remind you most of Justin Vernon. It takes shape slowly and sparely, mostly mournful vocals at first, then bursts into locomotive life with drumming, guitars, counterpoints and brass. This is the biggest, most fully realized, most ready for prime time self-release I’ve heard in a while.

Jennifer Kelly   

John Lindberg Raptor Trio—Western Edges (Clean Feed) 

Despite the album’s name, this trio has deep roots in New York City. Bassist John Lindberg first encountered baritone saxophonist Pablo Calogero in the 1970s when they were both teenagers eager to break into New York’s loft jazz scene. Lindberg has gone on to accompany Billy Bang, Anthony Braxton and Wadada Leo Smith, as well as lead his own ensembles, but he hasn’t forgotten his old mate. Calogero moved to Southern California, so when he moved to San Diego to teach at CalArts he called up his old buddy and the drummer who played next office over from his. The combination of 40+ years of friendship between two members and utter newness between Calogero and drummer Joe LaBarbera likely contributed to this session’s combination of empathy and freshness. Both old buddies contribute compositions, and they cover a fair bit of ground. On “Ashoka” the trio adopts an early 60s Coltrane stance, stately and heavy; “Twixt D and E” is an intricately tied post-bop knot; and “Raptors” flies free, but with oft-glimpsed melodic intent.

Bill Meyer 

Pari San – Frozen Time (Pari San) 

“Pari San symbolize [sic] a collision of two worlds.” This is how Iranian-born, Düsseldorf-raised vocalist Pari Eskandari and Berlin synth hound Paul Brenning collectively describe the Pari San project; the worlds presumably colliding here are Eskandari’s rural singing styles and Brenning’s thoroughly urban European electro influences, though it’s also worth mentioning the contrast between Berlin and Parisan, a town that consisted of 37 people for the 2006 Iranian census. Working in the capital for their self-released Frozen Time EP – the duo’s first official release as best I can tell – Eskandari and Brenning revive a strain of mid-2000s electronic music almost singularly cornered by The Knife’s Silent Shout. This shouldn’t feel noteworthy in 2016-17 given the wide-open landscape FKA Twigs, Aïsha Devi and even The Knife’s own Shaking the Habitual have pillaged since, but Pari San succeeds in part because its two members aim for a more pop-oriented sound – each of Frozen Time’s five songs is in the three-minute neighborhood and the hooks are plainly evident, even addicting, despite the substantial electronic gimmickry. “In the Smoke” is the most brazen Silent Shout descendent and “Polyhorns” features co-production from Bpitch Control and Monkeytown Recs vet Robert Koch (aka Jahcoozi’s Robot Koch) for a spot of relative star power, but “Two Perfect Lovers” is the duet to die for here, a slow-moving serenade gracefully threading the needle between 1960s teenage love ballad and contemporary electronic abstraction. Extremely promising EP from a group mining territory you might’ve previously thought exhausted.

Patrick Masterson

Hexa — Factory Photographs (Room40)  

FACTORY PHOTOGRAPHS by HEXA

Hexa is Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Lawrence English, who after meeting in 2009 decided to collaborate in ways which would take them beyond their usual musical practices (which, yes, means this sounds little like Xiu Xiu or English’s drone work); Factory Photographs sees them issue a “sonic response” to David Lynch’s photographs of, well, factories. All three artists have distinct enough oeuvres that you can pretty much tell whether you’re interested just from the resumes, but Stewart and English have definitely offered a distinctive and worthwhile slate of roiling industrial noise, whether it’s the more overtly aggressive likes of “Ring Bark” or the slower building waves of “Sledge.”Factory Photographs is consistently bracing but climaxes with the best and most interesting tracks here; first the restless, anxious washes of “Over Horizontal Plains” and then “Body”, which just barely lets some sort of brighter melody peek out from behind the relentless grinding of the rest of the song. 

Ian Mathers  

Warhaus — We Fucked a Flame into Being (Self-release) 

We Fucked A Flame Into Being by Warhaus

Arch, urbane, a bit decadent, here’s an album that slithers in on the scent of foreign cigarettes, insinuates sex, betrayal, bare shoulders and drunken tangos to late-night jazz combos. It’s an album that makes you feel like a blockheaded rube who’s been let in on a joke, still hopelessly literal and stupid but for once seeing irony and ambiguity and the primacy of style over sincerity. Warhaus, you should know, is the solo project of one Maarten Devoldere whose main gig, the band Balthazar, has sold a surprising number of records in Belgium (without raising much of a ripple outside Northern Europe). Here he sings in a voice that makes everything sound like an indecent proposal (and honestly, some of it is). A younger, less whispery Leonard Cohen with a slightly wider range might be the best point of reference, and like Cohen, he’s found of spare yet varied accompaniments, a Sinatra band pared down to essentials, a choir of bored girls singing something like gospel. The single “The Good Lie” with its twitchy guitars, tense hand drums and murmured imprecations is good, sexy stuff, but my favorite remains “Against the Rich,” which both is and isn’t a rallying cry contra income inequality. Instead it finds ambiguity in a life that has acquired the trappings of success, an accountant, a nutritionist, a girlfriend with a law degree, and asks, “When my friend did I make this switch, how I tried to be against the rich.”

Jennifer Kelly

Council Estate Electronics – Arktika (Glacial Movements)  

Arktika by COUNCIL ESTATE ELECTRONICS

Riddled with implication, Godflesh and Jesu lifer Justin Broadrick teamed up with frequent collaborator and Jesu bassist Diarmuid Dalton under the Council Estate Electronics banner for the first time in four years this past October to pay tribute to the Russian nuclear-powered Arktika class of icebreaker (helpfully, the liner notes clarify that this is for the new LK-60YA Arktika class rather than the outgoing Arktika ships first launched in the 1970s). The eight songs herein are a rusting hulk of open arms for crudely constructed boats in two halves – “Urals” opens with nearly 11 minutes of minimal dub-techno throbbing and the kind of immersive (submersive?) white noise with which Jesu fans will no doubt be accustomed. It continues through songs like “567 foot 33,500 ton” and “Rosatom,” which could easily double as field recordings of the vessels’ construction from inside the hull. Reminiscent of material you’d find on Blackest Ever Black or Janushoved rather than Milan’s Glacial Movements, a label that’s served up Loscil and (most recently) the celestial sonic icescapes of Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist, this seems headed for a dark, industrial turn into the far reaches of the frigid north... But with “50 Let Pobody,” the vibe of the record suddenly shifts to a still-unsettling yet considerably more subdued tone. By the end of “60 megawatts,” you’re left thinking this release is most in line with the eerie, engrossing electronics of Pye Corner Audio. Chilly and chilling, Glacial Movements has hit another one out of the dry docks.

Patrick Masterson 

Tommy Jay—Tommy Jay’s Tall Tales of Trauma (Assophon) 

You can’t live down the past, so you might as well blow it up, and in the case of Tommy Jay’s Tall Tales Of Trauma, more turns out to be more. Harrisburgh OH resident Jay is a longtime mate of Mike Rep and Nudge Squidfish, and he shares with them a contradictory aesthetic. On the one hand, his homemade recording and unexpurgated song writing are serious barriers to any sort of mainstream success. But his reference points, as indicated by covers of Joni Mitchell’s “Dreamland” and Lou Reed’s “The Ocean,” are ambitious ones, and he does his best not to dishonor them. Sometimes, anyway — Jay’s muse might inspire him to make a low-rent, early Who-style epic about the Battle of Fredericksburg one moment (“I Was There”) and a cheap rhyme-stocked portrait of a “Village Idiot” the next. If early 1990s Guided By Voices tended more towards finished songs and uncomfortable truths, they might have made a record like this one, but James made it instead. In 1986 he could only get it out on tape, and it took two decades for it to make it to LP. That first pressing is long gone, so Assophon has stepped in with a 30th anniversary edition that includes thirteen more songs close enough to the first 12 that collectors sitting on an early copy will probably want  this one too.

Bill Meyer             

Brandon Can’t Dance — Graveyard of Good Times (Lucky Number) 

Graveyard of Good Times by BRANDON CAN'T DANCE

Brandon Ayers is the classic lone wolf bedroom troubadour, a Philadelphian who works nights as a security guard, cares for an elderly relative during the day and lives a rich creative life within his own head and home recording space. Brandon Can’t Dance dabbles in fuzz-rock, lo-fi disco, anti-folk, regular folk, synth pop and noise, refusing to settle anywhere, yet all reflecting a highly individual talent that has not been sanded down too much by contact with other people. Sequencing feels a little haphazard, so that the superlative shoegaze romantic blare of “Headspace” sits right alongside an excruciating dance-pop falsetto cut called “Smoke-Drive Around” (which, weirdly, is one of two downloadable singles, so it’s probably not a parody). Much of the album gives off a 1990s lo-fi aura – GBV is the obvious reference, though “Fuck Off and We’ll Get Along,” has the undercooked poetry of certain Sic Alps songs, the synthier bits recall Blank Dogs and “Freak of the Freaks,” sounds fragile and surreal like a Tobin Sprout off-track. “Angelina,” the other single, has a country swagger to it, a brash, abrasive acoustic vamp with a fuzz guitar solo bursting through it. It feels like the most finished, structured song on the disc, and so stands as a highlight. That’s not to disparage the beautiful fragments, half-pursued ventures and jotted messy impressions that surround it; these are integral to experiencing Ayers’ alienated, discontinuous but intermittently lovely world. If you flipped over Car Seat Headrest or just harbor a fondness for melodic hiss and fuzz, you’ll like this.

Jennifer Kelly 

Andrew Pekler — Tristes Tropiques (Faitiche) 

Tristes Tropiques by Andrew Pekler

Pekler’s work here feels like some deliberately uneasy mix of remix, field recording, the kind of ethnographic forgery that Can used to do, and abstract electronic music. Certainly the cultural history of white people playing/homaging/being fascinated by the music of other cultures, whether it’s called exotica or ethnography or anything else, is a tricky one. Pekler titling this album of original compositions (which just sounds like it’s maybe the products of aliens messing with and bouncing back various jungle-based music and natural sounds, although it’s really just him working with what he calls “the electronic means that I have at hand”) after Claude Levi-Strauss’s ambivalent and searching book that’s as much about the author’s own methods and engagement with the natives he’s studying as it is about the study indicates that he’s aware of that, even if the work doesn’t directly engage with that history. Pekler’s more interested in getting something interesting and evocative and he’s constructed a rich, broadly constituted stew to do so with (as a song title like “Humidity Index/Khao Sok (Chopped and Screwed)” indicates).

 Ian Mathers 

 Greg Kelley/Bill Nace —Live At Disjecta (Open Mouth)

Now here’s a name we don’t see enough these days. When trumpeter Greg Kelley (nmperign, Heathen Shame, and Cold Bleak Heat) moved from Massachusetts to Washington State a couple years ago his touring profile east of the Mississippi took a hit. But this proved to be the West coast’s gain, since this record is an artifact of an eight-date tour, which is a substantial number for any noise combo these days. His partner here is guitarist Bill Nace (Vampire Belt, Body/Head), and the zones of broad amp protest and brittle brass fatigue that they explore together will likely awaken pleasant memories of Heathen Shame’s hellish squalls. But while the sound is similar, the dynamic is very different; where even the Shame’s most free-falling moments embraced rock gesture, this set’s energy is more elemental. At some points the two men’s waves of sound attract and repel like magnetic fields, at others they arc like two bolts of lightning headed for the same weathervane. The jolts are welcome indeed.

Bill Meyer