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bibliocratic · 4 years ago

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I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are.

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team.

Some CWs apply, see tags.

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family – there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly, and that is the end of that.

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw. His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them, and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

#tma #the magnus archives #fic #alternative universe #mermaid!sasha #pheonix!tim #selkie!Martin #regularOGhuman!Jon #with added Beholding spicyness #cws for implied child mistreatment #cw fire #cw burning #cw canon typical violence #cw compulsion #ask to tag

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recreancyrpg · 2 years ago

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WELCOME TO RECREANCY, RACHIE!

You have been accepted for the role of DORCAS MEADOWES, with the FC change of Sierra Mcclain!

The way Dorcas lives her life is either going to end up with her helping them win the war, or with herself in an early grave. But she sees the worth in what she is doing, because there is no way she wants to live in a world where she is a second-class citizen. Not because of her skin colour. Not because of the purity of her blood. Not because of anything.

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME & PRONOUNS: Rachie. She/her

AGE: 30

TIMEZONE: GMT +1

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Same as my theo App XD I’ll generally be on every night, just maybe not replies every night.

ANYTHING ELSE: Nopee

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Dorcas “Doe” Meadowes

AGE: 24

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cis Woman. She/her. Bisexual

Dorcas has not really thought about her sexuality. She has way too much other things that she would say were important on her plate. She’s not really explored her sexuality in the slightest. She doesn’t want to be distracted by things like that, not when things like her entire existence are in question. If she did care to think about it, she’d probably describe herself as bisexual, in that she probably is attracted to both men and women. But she honestly hasn’t thought about it in any length.

BLOOD STATUS: Muggle Born

HOUSE ALUMNI: Ravenclaw

ANY CHANGES: FC change to Sierra Mcclain please. Also, her job is a Hit witch with the DMLE. This means that her connection to Gideon needs adjusting. I’ve included him in her relationships section about how I see Dorcas relationship towards him.

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Dorcas is a girl with a very overactive imagination. Or at least that was how her mother described her when she was little. She never sat still, and always wanted to be off exploring somewhere. This was not a bad thing, but it did make it a little hard to look after her. Dorcas had a habit of running off, not because she was naughty, but because She wanted to explore a new area. This was something her parents did not want to discourage her from doing, but they did somewhat need to control her. Or teach her to not run off as much. Even inside it was hard to contain Dorcas because she simply just managed to escape somehow. Of course, that was all explained when she turned 11, and a funny old lady turned up at her house.

Dorcas has never been afraid from being herself. She had always been a little odd when she was young. But as she had grown older, she realised it was more that she was odd when compared to other muggles. When she looked at herself with her Wixen friends in mind, well she wasn’t that odd at all. She was just like that were. Which made sense, since she was just like them. Or she was like some of them anyway.

Dorcas quickly learnt that she was not like a lot of the Wix in her class. Her blood wasn’t good enough apparently. That did not bother her. She’d grown up being the only black girl in her muggle school, so being one of only two muggleborn children was not that different. She was used to people not liking her because of the colour of her skin, so why would the pureness of her blood affect her? If anything, it was a little easier, because one could hide their blood status. She couldn’t hide the colour of her skin. Not that she would want too. Dorcas was proud of both being black and being a muggleborn.

Perhaps a little too proud, because her loud opinions on both matters would sometimes get her in trouble. She was, and still is, one that loudly protests against anything that she thinks is unfair. Her friend Lily is one of the best witches she knows, and she is a muggleborn, so Dorcas thinks it is pretty clear that blood purity does not mean one is necessarily great at magic.

And when she thinks about it, she’s a pretty decent witch too. That weird hat put her in Ravenclaw for a reason after all. When she wasn’t being vocal about her passions, Dorcas was learning instead. She had a whole 11 years to catch up on after starting Hogwarts after all. And she’d wanted to know everything. Of course, it led to some people thinking she was a know it all. But she took that on the chin too. Dorcas really did not think it was a bad thing to want to learn as much as she could about magic. It would all come in useful right?

Apparently, it would because Dorcas learnt more and more that a lot of the world around her did not want to her to be part of it. They cared enough about it that they wanted to go to war over the subject. And somehow Dorcas found herself involved too. She’d like to say that she’d joined the Order for all sorts of noble reasons. But the number one reason was that she wanted to prove that she was good enough. Apparently, they didn’t think her magic was good enough because of her blood. But Dorcas knew that was not the case. She and Lily proved that one didn’t need pure blood to be good at magic. And anyway, all of their blood ran red, so what difference did the level of purity really have?

If anything, the bullying and the discrimination that Dorcas faced just made her more determined than ever. It built a fierceness and a level of defiance in her. She wasn’t going to sit and allow people to put her into the box that they thought she belonged in. She was going to fight for the world she knew she had a right to be in. If she didn’t, surely, she wouldn’t have been so good at magic?

It was a good thing that Dorcas was also pretty brave, because she sometimes put herself into some awful positions. She struggled with saying no, and not putting herself into dangerous places. It was no wonder really, considering she was a hit witch. Her job put her into dangerous places. Of course, one could have supported that by not doing dangerous things in their spare time. But that was not something Dorcas could do. The things she saw happening at the ministry just proved that she needed to fight for a better world, both whilst she was at work, and when she was off duty.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

Dorcas grew up in a loving household. From the moment she was born Dorcas was odd. Or at least, that was what the muggle children said anyway. Her family never tried to change that though. Her parents accepted her the way she was. They didn’t try to downplay her oddness. And it was probably a good thing. For Dorcas wasn’t a girl that would change for the world. She was happy with who she was. And she wasn’t going to change that for the anyone or anything. She could take the taunting and teasing because she was proud of who she is.

Her parents raised her to be a person that was proud, and sure of oneself. They raised her to be headstrong and determined. She was born to a family that believed they could do anything they wanted, and that was a value that they passed onto each generation.

Of course, it was not easy. The Meadowes were the only Black family in their village. And the racism was high. At first, she didn’t notice it, and she didn’t notice that she was different. She still played the same way, she still spoke the same way, she still learnt the same way. But they were different, and she grew older she began to see this. She remembered distinctly when she was four years of age, on a holiday, her parents being refused entry to a public house because of they were coloured. She was young, but it was a significant memory that would stick with her.

Life got a little easier when the UK put anti-discriminatory civil laws in place in 1965, but that didn’t go far in changing how people felt about them. The people who disliked her might have been able to be charged for discriminating her now, but it didn’t change how they really felt about her. And she saw that. Dorcas saw the children who were not allowed to play with her, and she noticed when she didn’t get invited to birthday parties. Maybe it would have been easier if there had been another Black child in the village, but it was not to be.

The challenges that her family faced as she grew up shaped Dorcas into the woman she is today. The racism that they faced could have easily made her shy, and quiet. It had the opposite impact. A lot of this comes from the fact that her parents weren’t like that either. They believed that they deserved to be here, that their daughter deserved to go to school, and to be treated like any other child. Dorcas’ parents fought for all of her rights and watching this happen instilled the same set of beliefs in Dorcas.

Little changed when she went to Hogwarts. She went from being the only Black child, to being one of the only two Muggleborn children in her year. It didn’t change much, not really. If anything, she suddenly had peers that had a similar skin tone to her. They might not have necessarily been the same age as her, most were older or younger. But they looked more alike to her than her white peers. She was not used to this, and she remembered going home so excited to her parents. Dorcas felt a lot more at home here, both due to her race, and because she was among people that were like her.

Of course, then came the prejudice against her blood status. She hadn’t really understood it at first, but a girl that had grown up with racial discrimination and prejudice soon learnt. She noted how the Slytherin’s would avoid her, or people would laugh when she didn’t say a word quite right or couldn’t do a spell. They did not think that she belonged. But the values that she had gained because of her families fight for racial justice, were easily transferred to this situation too. Prejudice was prejudice, and she was not going to allow it to happen. Dorcas stood up for herself, she learnt all the strange words, and she learnt the wand movements. She proved that she was just as good as those who had the purist of pure blood. Secretly Dorcas thought that she was better than some of them, but she’d learnt that boasting too much could end up with one being hexed, and she was not for that life just yet.

Along with the blood purity troubles, Hogwarts also brought friendships. She found herself a second family at the school. People who didn’t care that she was Black or muggleborn. People that accepted her for who she was. She made quick friends with Lily Evans. It made sense; they were very alike after all. Of course, Lily didn’t really understand. Not to the extent that Dorcas did. Or, not in the same way at least. They could have hidden their blood status, lied about it, since it wasn’t something that could be seen on the outside. Not like the colour of her skin. And then there the fact that Lily had at least come to Hogwarts with some magical knowledge, thanks to that Snape boy. Dorcas had thought magic was not real for 11 years. And so, it had been a huge culture shock to her.

But Hogwarts and the Wixen world was her world. She had never felt like she’d truly fitted in anywhere. She was the odd ball, the person on the outskirts who never really had friends, or people that she had really felt a sense of belongingly. That all changed when she came to Hogwarts. She’d found her people. People that accepted her and wanted to her to succeed.

They were the reason why she decided to join the Order, and to fight. There were people in her world that didn’t want her there, that would rather she go back to the muggle world. Dorcas refused. She was a witch. She had magic running through her veins, and she was a pretty great witch. The fact that she’d got accepted into the Hit Witch program and passed the course with flying colours was proof enough of that. Secretly Dorcas wonders if some people are jealous that despite their pure blood, she is better at magic than them.

Everything that has happened in Dorcas life, both pre-hogwarts, during her schooling, and post-hogwarts have driven and shaped Dorcas into the girl she is today. She is determined to have a positive impact on the world, to make sure that no other little girls go through the same prejudices and struggles that she had. The struggles worked out for her, but she is determined that nobody else should go through that.

Her parents don’t quite understand the desire to fight, not when everything has worked out so well for her, but Dorcas knows that is not the case for anyone. And so, she wants to make sure the world changes, so that nobody has to hope things work out for them to allow them to have a good life.

OCCUPATION:

Dorcas is a hit witch. It took her a long time to decide what she wanted to do. To be honest by her fifth year some of the Wixen careers still confused her. She didn’t fully understand all of it, but she knew that she wanted to do a job that would enable her to continue to fight for her rights, and her right to belong in the Wixen World. That was what drew her to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Of course, it was strange to find herself desiring to work in the Department of Law Enforcement. She had learnt a long time ago that Law Enforcement departments were corrupt, generally from the inside. It was probably the last place she should work. Most of her life she had had to work twice as hard as everyone else to just get on an even playing field. So, to want to work in a department where she’d have to do just that, was strange.

But Dorcas also knew that the best way to make changes was sometimes from inside the very institute itself. The moment she stepped into the department Dorcas could see everything that needed changing. Of course, people would recognise some elements of the corruption. But Dorcas had a unique standing. She was both muggleborn and black. She was discriminated against due to her race and her blood status. She was in a position where she could call out people’s privilege.

It had been a close call between training to be an auror or a hit witch. But the hit wixen program won over. She liked being able to fight the dark wizards, but she had no patient to get involved with the criminal investigation side of things. She preferred to join the group that was more focused on the fighting and controlling side of things. Dorcas felt that her magical abilities could be of much more use there.

And so, Dorcas found herself as a Hit Witch. She does love her job. It gives her a sense of doing good, that goes beyond the actual fighting dark Wixen that she is doing. She feels like she is in a position where she can make changes. She is in a unique position where she can challenge the corruption she sees and use her voice to make it better. And Dorcas has never been one to be quiet, so she is very eager to point out each and every corruption that she sees.

LIVING SITUATION:

When she graduated Hogwarts, she at first lived with her parents. It was weird going back to her parents house, but she could not afford a place of her own yet. She lived with them whilst she was training to be a hit witch. Alongside the training she’d also gotten a part time job at a pub, to enable her to start saving enough to be able to afford to rent a house. Apparating from the Village in Devon, to London each day, was tiring. But she managed.

Just before she graduated Dorcas decided that she finally did need to start renting somewhere in London. When she got a job as a hit witch, she would need to be closer to her work location. And so, she eventually rented a small flat in central London. It’s small, but it is hers. She doesn’t own it, but that does not matter. She has still made it hers. And really, considering she spends so much time at either work, or one of the Order safe houses, there is not much point in having her own place.

ORDER OF THE PHOENIX:

Joining the Order made sense to Dorcas. She was already practically fighting the war because of her job anyway. And the cause, the idea of the Order made sense too. Of course, it did. She was a muggleborn. So, the cause was fighting for her very own rights. So, yes, that was part of the reasoning. But not the real one. Or at least, not all of her reasonings anyway. Fighting in the Order gave her yet another chance to prove her worth. Of course, Dorcas, now wiser with age, doesn’t think that she has to prove her worth anymore. But she still wants to make people believe that muggleborns are worth more than they first think. The Order has given her that opportunity.

When she first joined the Order, she hadn’t expected the war to go on that long. So long. Apparently it was hard to change people’s opinions. She supposes that she shouldn’t have thought that it would change so easily. But, when she’s in the Order she sees that there are so many talented Wixen, that she doesn’t really get why it is taking them so long. And then, it sometimes feels like they are losing too. It frustrates her to no end, and she finds herself having to hold her tongue a lot. She is technically still young after all and doesn’t want to find herself benched. Then she can prove nothing.

Her speciality in the Order is in the duellist Division, which makes sense given her extensive training for her job. And if she’s honest, it was the exact reason she wanted to be in the Order. If she’d been any other division, she’d probably have kicked up a fuss. Luckily, that has not happened, and she feels that her skills are being well used.

If only they could win the war a little faster, then she’d be completely happy.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Lily Evans: She’d probably describe Dorcas as her closest friend. It was bound to happen, considering they were the only two muggleborns in their class. Her friendship with Lily goes beyond this. It’s more than a friendship based on circumstances alone. Over the years Dorcas has grown to adore Lily and can’t imagine the world without her. In the years that they have been friends, they’ve grown beyond close, and if anything, Lily is like a sister to her. Dorcas would do anything to protect her.

Emma Vanity: Emma confuses Dorcas. Firstly, she doesn’t really get why so many purebloods suddenly want to fight, rather than talk to their families about changing their views. But Emma just does not seem useful. Dorcas remembers what a wet lettuce she was at school, and she really does not think the girl is that useful to them in the Order. But she knows that she herself is fighting to prove her worth, so she supposed she should give Emma the benefit of the doubt.

James Potter: Dorcas feels for James she really does. And they were pretty good friends before he’d been captured after all. She feels bad because it looks like she is choosing sides when she really is not. Dorcas just understands more about Lily’s point of view. And, when she looks at James, he still does have so much privilege regarding to his pureblood upbringing. He might not be a bad guy, but that privilege is still there.

Mary Macdonald: Mary was like her. She was a muggleborn, and now she’s dead. Dorcas knows she can do knowing; Mary was killed in her own home. But it terrified her to the bone. If something like that could happen to Mary, it could happen to her. It’s part of the reasoning why she spends so much time in the Order safe houses. Surely, she’s a little safer there? Mary was 2 years younger than she is, and Dorcas misses her immensely.

Dirk Cresswell: Keeping close to the Muggleborn members of the Order is something Dorcas has chosen to do. Even more so after Mary’s death. She wants to make sure that nothing happens to anyone else, especially her muggleborn friends. They are the biggest targets after all, and so it makes sense to her to keep close. Dirk is also pretty great, and she appreciates his friendship. Sometimes it’s helpful having someone that truly understands what it is like, and so Dorcas truly does appreciate her friendships with Dirk and Lily the most.

Severus Snape: Dorcas has never liked Snape. Now she knows it’s not fair to judge someone without really knowing them. But she disliked Severus before he was even a death eater. But apparently Dumbledore trusts him. Dorcas still doesn’t. But Dumbledore’s word is law, and so she begrudgingly has to go along with it. It doesn’t mean she has to like it though, and she can be pretty vocal about it. Dorcas worries Snape is going to hurt Lily, and she can’t watch her best friend go through pain again. Dorcas just worries about why Severus appears to have changed sides, and she doesn’t want to believe he truly wants to be on their side.

Alastor Moody: Technically her boss, but also technically not. Dorcas of course knows Alastor form their professional lives, the aurors and hit Wixen work quite closely together after all. But she feels like she’s gotten to know him better since the Order. She’s learnt quite a lot from him, even though she doesn’t sometimes understand his ways. But he’s older, and in charge, so he must now what he is doing right? And, she supposed, when it comes down to it, she trusts him more than she trusts Dumbledore.

Gideon Prewett: Dorcas hadn’t exactly planned on being friends with any of her colleagues. They were coppers, as was she. But most of them had their eyes closed to any of the corruption, or they simply ignored it’s very existence. It was frustrating to say the least. Gideon was different though and seemed to see who the real baddies were. He had seemed similar to Dorcas. Or at least he had. But he has been different since he returned. It worries Dorcas, but she’s sure that Gideon will be back to his usual self soon. Or at least she hopes he will be.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: Dorcas/Chemistry.

INTERPERSONAL STRUGGLES:

Dorcas is determined to fight for the world she feels like she belongs in, but she also knows that as a muggleborn she is a huge target. This hasn’t currently stopped her from doing what she believes is her part. This could be a big interpersonal struggle for her, especially as people start getting hurt. Mary’s death has had a huge impact on her. She’d settled with the fact that she might die, but to watch her friends die, she hadn’t exactly been expecting that. She probably should have, but she didn’t, and it kind of hit her unexpectedly. She hasn’t quite come to terms with the fact that more people are probably going to die, but it is something that when it is something that is probably going to tear her apart.

There are a lot of struggles Dorcas faces at work. She struggled enough mulling over whether she really should work in law enforcement in the first place. Knowing the ministry was corrupt was one thing, but knowingly working for that organisation, it was unthinkable. But somehow, she still ended up there anyway. She loves being in a position to catch the bad guys, and the only real reason she was there was because she believes that she can make the Law Enforcement Department, and the ministry a better, less corrupt place. Her desire to remain in the employment of the ministry always remains on a tight rope. One false move, then it all tumbles down. As much as she loves her job, she wouldn’t be able to stand by and allow too much corruption take place.

Dorcas is also very loud about her viewpoint, and her blood status. She wants people to know her opinion, and that her opinion matters. She doesn’t care who thinks differently, or if she should be quiet. This could lead to some interesting discussions, especially if people think she should be quiet about something. Dorcas feels that she deserves recognition due to the fact that she is a Muggleborn, and so is one of the biggest targets. Of course, she does understand that some of them are also risking a lot, especially the ones that have deserted their families. But she will not allow anyone to side line her, even if they do not like it.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? I already loved you guys, so you know…. that’s why I wanted to pick up another lovely character

PLOT DROP IDEAS (OPTIONAL):

Something that challenges her desire to continue working at the ministry would be fun. She’s only there because she wants and feels that she can make a difference from the inside, and that she can weed out some of the corruption. If that feeling ever changed, the well her desire to continue to be employed there would also change. So, something that challenges that would be fun to play.

ANYTHING ELSE? Nope. But I love you all.

#recreancyaccepted #dorcas meadowes app

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twothumbsandnostakeincanon · 5 years ago

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My brain apparently really likes the idea of wing!whump. How about: After the Nogitsune spits him out, Stiles' wings are wrong. He does his best to hide it, and them, but someone is going to notice sooner or later. Cue Peter being both more intrusive and more empathetic than expected (only one of those is actually a surprise).

Okay. Okay. Fuck, I love this. This is so good.

When the nogitsune split from Stiles, it took the original body and shoved Stiles into the new one. The new one was identical to the old one, down to the last mole, except for one thing: instead of dusty brown feathers, he had black. So black that they seem to suck in light, making it hard to distinguish individual feathers. The flat effect was so uncanny that some of the sillier students at the high school started a rumor that Stiles had his feather wings surgically replaced with bat wings.

That was ridiculous, of course, and most of the student body and townsfolk just assumed he was using powders or dyes. It’s his teenage right to have a goth phase, so no one looked twice after they’d taken in the new look. The pack looked even less, thinking that they already knew the secret of Stiles’ changed wings.

But Peter watched Stiles. He’s always watched Stiles, from the beginning, before he could even fully grasp why he was doing it. Because he watched, he’s the only one that noticed how Stiles’ wings do catch the light- but only sometimes. Only in spots, but never the same spot twice.

It happened at random times as well; after a day long research binge on the town’s latest irritant. During an argumentative pack meeting. Peter even saw it by happenstance at the grocery store. It tugged at Peter’s curiosity.

It couldn’t be a cosmetic product, or the effect would be more uniform. It might be magical in origin, but Stiles’s magic put off a specific scent since the nogitsune- not an unpleasant one, but consistently noticeable just the same.

He found the answer thanks to the manticore and his own violent streak.

Peter had been ready for a tussle- the unsolved mystery of Stiles’ wings left a simmering frustration on the back of his tongue, and he was fully prepared for a cathartic evening with his claws.

Scott, of course, had wanted to sedate the beast. Peter was even gracious enough to allow him to try all four vials of ketamine before flicking him out of the way and attacking. He deftly dodged the wings, spinning beneath the beasts claws before burying his own in its neck, ripping out its throat and sending arterial spray across the clearing.

A part of him reveled in the violence of the mess- the evidence of his abilities, the satisfaction of his base instincts.

The rest of him, however, had an aesthetic to maintain.

He took his handkerchief out and began to carefully wipe down his wings, ignoring the disgusted complaints of the rest of the pack. Well, the complaints of everyone but Stiles, who was too busy harvesting the spines from the manticore’s tail. Peter looked at him appraisingly, noticing that he hadn’t missed the spray of blood, but was simply more invested in taking advantage of the situation. He’d wiped his face clean, but still had blood spattered across his neck and shoulders, and presumably across his wings, although it was impossible to tell with how dark the feathers were.

Except.

Except, they caught the light. In exactly the way that baffled Peter so, in random spots. Spots briefly reflecting the moon.

Spots that were covered in blood.

Stiles finished gathering the spines, and did his part in calling up the earth to bury the animal. Everyone parted ways immediately afterward, eager to find the closest bath.

Peter, however, followed Stiles home.

He knew he was being allowed to; there was no way Stiles was unaware that he was being followed, and if he truly didn’t want Peter there then he had enough wards to keep him out.

Instead, Peter found himself easily allowed into Stiles’ room as he was putting away his new bounty.

“What do you want, Creeperwolf?” Stiles asked, looking up at Peter curiously. Peter shrugged casually.

“I made a bit of a mess back there-”

Stiles snorts, repeating “a bit” sarcastically under his breath.

“-so I thought it polite to help you groom your feathers.”

It was fascinating, to see the slight shifts in Stiles’ expression. The ones that mean nothing on his face was real. The ones that mean everyone else has been shut out.

“No thanks, Uncle Bad Touch-” Stiles said caustically, but Peter interrupted him.

“They’re quite a mess,” he said lightly, eyeing the wings critically. It’s not really true, the feathers he can see are mostly straight even after their busy night. But it does get the mask on Stiles’ face to drop slightly.

“My wings are fine. Did you honestly come here to act like a bitchier, cut-rate version of Jonathan Van Ness?”

“I’m not a bitchier cut-rate version of Jonathan Van Ness, Jonathan Van Ness is a less bitchy cut-rate version of me, and how would you even know if they’re a mess? You can’t see.”

Stiles opened his mouth to argue, but Peter was too fast. Too quick, and too determined.

He slid behind Stiles, ignoring the immediate buffeting of his wings, and peered closely at the coverts. More blood was obvious now that he was looking closely, but it was buried beneath the thick layers of matte black feathers, close to the skin. He carefully moved the top ones aside, stopping when Stiles let out a pained hiss and froze.

There was blood everywhere.

Broken pin feathers scattered his skin, the collection of calami much denser than normal. Bent rachis and torn vanes could be seen all over the place, once again hidden beneath the thick layer of top feathers.

A memory of burnt wings, and the pain that came from deformed feathers constantly breaking made him shudder.

“Christ,” he breathed out.

Stiles hunched a little, clearly bracing for more pain, babbling.

“I can’t- they just grow that way now. They’re so thick, there isn’t enough space for the new feathers to come in. They’re constantly breaking. Even if I had time to groom for hours every day-”

“This happened after the nogitsune?” Peter interrupted.

Stiles nodded, and then carefully pulled away, turning to look at Peter, who finally dropped his hands.

“Something about the- the way the nogitsune made this body… I heal faster now. I don’t need as much sleep.” He scoffed out a tiny laugh and looked away before turning his dry gaze back to Peter. “My hair is thicker too.” He sighed. “It’s not like it’s a real problem-”

“The blood on your feathers is evidence to the contrary,” Peter interrupted again, voice tight.

Stiles went silent.

“Let me help you with your wings,” Peter said. Insisted, really, even if Stiles’ didn’t know that yet.

“Peter-” Stiles sighed. “It’s not just that I don’t have time. It- it really fucking hurts, okay?” He grit his teeth. “The amount of time it would take to straighten everything out daily… I’d rather just bear the pain of some feathers breaking than spending hours trying not to scream.” He jut out his jaw, as if daring Peter to mock him for wanting to avoid the hurt.

As if there was anyone who understood the bearing and avoidance of pain more than Peter.

Instead, Peter lightly said, “If only you had someone offering to groom you who is also capable of taking away your pain.”

Stiles’ mouth fell open. He clearly hadn’t considered that.

“Lay down,” Peter demanded, only a little surprised when Stiles actually did so. He placed one hand on the small of Stiles’ back between his wings, rubbing his thumb back and forth as he began to drain the pain of the broken feathers.

It was difficult to stay calm in the face of evidence that Stiles had been bearing this much pain since the nogitsune without anyone in the pack noticing.

With his other hand, he began to clean and straighten feathers.

Stiles fell asleep almost immediately, as surprising as not beneath Peter’s hands, given the situation and their night. Peter continued to work for hours. He groomed as best he could under the onslaught of sharp quills and thick down, considering the various medical and magical options available that might help the problem.

By the time he finished, his own hands were beginning to ache. Stiles stirred just as he opened the window to leave.

“Peter?” he asked, voice rough, not quite fully awake.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Peter assured him. “I’ll groom you again and we can talk about how to fix the problem.”

Stiles stared at him for a moment, sleep rumpled and more relaxed than Peter had seen in months. Then he collapsed back down to his pillow.

“You’re weird,” he muttered, and then-

“Thank you, Creeperwolf.”

Peter smirked, and shut the window behind him.

#shey-elizabeth #this blog needs a tag for my bullshit #steter #1.5k words #wingfic #I'm having vague ideas about Stiles with iridescent dragonfly wings next #maybe with a stetopher kick 👀#featheruary #teen wolf #tumblr fic and kinda fic

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dagmartoons · 4 years ago

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A Detailed Discussion on Lupin's R.

So I put way more thought into my most recent animatic than I have for really any other video I’ve done so far and so I decided to make a post discussing all the visual and storytelling choices I made for it. Spoilers if you haven’t seen the video yet and also there will be mentions of suicide and death and things like that under the cut so you have been warned.

First a note about the song itself; I boarded this video specifically with Rachie’s lyrics in mind because they’re the ones I’m most familiar with with this song. As I was working on it I found a really pretty French cover which I debated also using (because, y’know, Lupin’s French) but decided not to because, again, the video was based around Rachie’s version.

Since I’ve wanted to make an animatic set to My R for ages now I thought a lot about how I wanted it to look, specifically in terms of composition and symbolism. There are a lot of rhyming shots, specifically during the choruses, the scenes where characters are being introduced and the scenes where they all walk away from Lupin. For these shots I used the same layout and basic template for all of them (unfortunately this resulted in me accidentally saving over the CSP file for Jigen’s chorus oh well). The three “girls” in the video (these being Jigen, Goemon and Zenigata) are introduced with their backs facing the audience, and at the end when Lupin is about to jump his back faces the audience too.

In fact, the final scene is meant to mirror the other verses as well, not just with the aforementioned Lupin’s back shot. Lupin holding the rail is a reference to Goemon holding the rail in his verse. Lupin holds a cigarette during the “watching my braids all come undone” shot, similar to Jigen as he’s “the girl with braided hair.” Lupin’s jacket is meant to mirror Zenigata’s “yellow cardigan.”

Originally the instrumental bit before Zenigata’s scene was just going to be pure white, but then I thought that would be too boring so I stuck in a shot of the rail instead.

Alright so let’s talk about the characters and why they’re all up on the roof! Each character represents a different struggle that Lupin has, and I’ll be going through each of them one by one.

First off, Jigen! Originally the person in his flashback was just going to be some random ex of his but then I decided to up the feels by making it Lupin. Jigen represents Lupin’s struggle with being abandoned; Jigen felt Lupin abandoned him for Fujiko, just as Lupin felt abandoned by his family. Lupin was “robbed” of his grandfather, mother and father/innocence (that shot of the rail is meant to represent the train bombing from the manga; it can be interpreted as either him losing his dad or him losing his innocence by forcing him to hide his real face to cover the scars. Or both, if you’re so inclined). The shots of the characters walking away all sort of mirror each other; when Jigen walks away, Lupin is upset at how much was stolen from him in his childhood.

Goemon’s bit gave me PROBLEMS because I didn’t really know what to do with him. I knew I wanted his struggle to be how he feels he’s disappointed his masters/ancestors, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the “everyone steals” line. But then I thought... GOEMON’S GRANDMA!! OF COURSE! His grandma could be the thing that was “stolen” from him! Goemon represents Lupin’s fear of failing to uphold his family’s legacy and disappointing his ancestors. Lupin’s flashback here details his father’s abuse of him as well as his struggle to live up to his and the rest of his family’s expectations of him. When Goemon looks back, it’s sort of meant to imply that he understands Lupin’s situation; here, Lupin laments how much he’s been ignored and treated as a disappointment by his family.

The three characters in the breakdown are Rebecca, Yata and Ami because I didn’t know who else to put. I had the thought to include Clarisse instead of Ami but decided against it for some reason. Also originally these shots were gonna be black with the characters’ outlines but then I thought that wouldn’t be in line with the rest of the video’s visuals so I decided against it.

And now we come to Zenigata. Oh, Zenigata...

(Side note: I completely forgot today is apparently his Miyazaki birthday.)

Zenigata’s bit was the first one I fully completed because it was the one I had thought the most about. His struggle is that of failing to protect those he cares about; those being Oscar and Toshiko. He couldn’t save Oscar and he failed Toshiko by not being a good enough dad. These two instances left “scars” on him that he can never truly be rid of.

And that’s what messes Lupin up so much; both he and Zenigata have had people in their lives that they couldn’t save, they couldn’t protect (Lupin more so than Zeni probably), and so he can’t do anything to stop Zenigata from wanting those “scars” to go away because he wants them to as well. He tries to stop him anyway even though he knows he can’t, and that’s what causes him to break down.

(Another side note: originally the “hey don’t do it please” part here was gonna show Lupin actually saying it, but then I thought that looked too close to a different animatic I saw and also the frames looked off to me so I replaced it with just text.)

Going back to the mirror shots I discussed earlier, the camera moving from Zeni to Lupin is meant to represent Zeni helping Lupin, not the other way round like it was with Jigen and Goemon. Zenigata smiling at Lupin during the “I guess today is just not my day” part is sorta meant to represent him trying to comfort Lupin by letting him know that he’s gonna press on, because he knows Lupin deals with the same insecurity he does. Lupin looks confused as Zenigata walks away because he thought that he wouldn’t be able to stop him but was.

Like I said earlier, the final shots are meant to parallel prior shots of the other characters. Originally Lupin was going to still have his jacket on, but I decided against that. There wasn’t really much behind Fujiko being the one to stop him; she was the only gang member who hadn’t already been in the video at that point and in my eyes she and Lupin have one of the more complex relationships in the series, so it made sense. (IIRC Fujiko was originally gonna be in Zenigata’s place before I thought Zenigata would be sadder.)

That’s basically everything I can think of! I put a lot of effort into making this and all day I’ve been getting really lovely comments from people about it so thank you all for that! Thank you for watching! Peace!

#lupin iii #lupin the third #lupin the 3rd #suicide mention #death mention #abuse mention #suicide tw #death tw #abuse tw #violence tw #tumblr's new post editor is weird #btw if anyone wants to offer up their own interpretations and whatnot that's totally cool too! i'd love to hear what you guys think!

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clumsyracconking · 4 years ago

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A villain

Ch.12 (1070 words)

Dabi and Hawks’ breakup playlist don’t worry the breakup isn't long, or is it? Anyways yeah Shigaraki and Hawks are bros because I can do what I want.

Tags: @rachi-roo-bnha @magical-girl-04 @imacowboy3

Toga came back from a ‘shopping’ spree to a quiet dark apartment and a human sized lump under her comforter that was sniffling slightly, so she did what most people would in this situation and dropped her haul by the door and went to go comfort her friend. “Wanna talk bout it Roki?” Toga asked, rubbing his back.

“Dabi’s my brother and I can’t help but feel conflicted. I’m mad he left but I know he had to.” Well that was a shock, Dabi was a Todoroki, how had she not noticed?

Before she knew it Shoto was asleep, he was probably emotionally exhausted as well as physically considering his sleeping habits.

Walking across the hallway to Dabi’s apartment once she knew Shoto was asleep was interesting, she was conflicted just about this she couldn't imagine how Shoto felt. “Knock knock bitch” Toga said walking into Dabi’s apartment noticing a distinct lack of feathers and winged man child around, she’d have to ask about that later.

“What is it with you kids doing that, first candy cane now you, who’s next God damn Twice?”

“That’s not what I’m here for Dabido, I’m here because your fucking brother apparently is upset and I need to know how to help.” Toga was going through Dabi’s fridge now because she knew he always had food, coincidentally enough he didn’t.

“Yeah, suppose I could have been a bit more articulate with that.” Dabi walked over to Toga and gently pushed her away from the fridge so he could start cooking, if he had to have this conversation with her then he would need something to divert his focus to at some point.

“So are we gonna talk about this or pretend everything is fine.” There was a myriad of things Toga could be talking about, ranging from a red feathered man to a past life.

“I’d prefer to pretend it’s all fine but you’ll pester the fuck out of meif I do that and I’m never in the mood for that. So ask away the kid.” Dabi went to cutting vegetables and putting a pot on the stove to get it ready to boil.

“I’ll ask my questions about Hawks later right now I’m worried about Roki, so how did this happen?”

“Fuck yeah! That is how you win!” Hawks yelled, throwing his hands and game controller into the air as the Mario kart victory screen emerged.

“That’s no fucking fair! You threw a shell at me right at the end you hypocritical whore!” Shigaraki yelled back, flopping down on his back and tossing his controller at Hawks who caught it.

“That was just rude. I know you don’t like losing but we don’t throw things we use our words.” Hawks was stifling giggles while speaking to Shigaraki and throwing not one but two controllers at him, “suffer bitch.” He could no longer hold in his laughter and doubled over laughing barely avoiding falling on his blue haired man child of a friend.

“The only bitch here is you bird brains.” Shigaraki said letting out a huff of air that almost resembled a sound of amusement and tossed some chips at Hawks in mock anger. “Should’ve left you on that street corner where we found you!”

“But cha didn’t!” And so began a vine off,

“Look at all those chickens!” Shigaraki raised his voice in mock anger and pointed at Hawks.

“It’s a avocado, fanks.” Hawks said trying to make a displeased face but it only cracked after a few seconds and he was laughing again, “why are we like this.”

“It’s the trauma.” Shigaraki said, actually letting out a quiet chuckle.

“Your right, the trauma does run strong here.” Hawks said plopping down next to Shigaraki still with a smile on his face.

“So are we gonna talk about what happened with Dabi and why you’ve been hiding out with me all day, don’t get me wrong I tolerate your company but I’m curious.” Shigaraki was flicking the chips he’d previously thrown off the couch while he spoke.

“I was an ass and said something about having the Todoroki bank account and then he had to tell Shoto why.” Hawks said, just letting all the words come out.

“Well that was an asshole move, you guys talk about it yet?” Shigaraki was still trying to clean up, he’s never been the best with emotions and eye contact and trying to put the two together is never the easiest and Hawks wouldn't dog on him for that.

“I’m well aware it was an asshole move. But no it was only yesterday so we haven't really talked yet, he asked me to leave cause he was pissed so I did then Toga Shoto and I went out.”

“I know you guys went out and I’ll let it slide because that guy was just another mindless pawn in my game, and he was annoying as hell. Aside from that, I know I’m the last person anyone should take relationship advice from but I think you should give him space till he want’s to work it out.”

“Thanks for the advice handy man, I’m thinkin I’ll actually take it for once.”

Shoto had gotten up while Toga was still out. He didn't know where she was and didn’t feel like looking for her, so he went out for a walk taking a pack of cigarettes he swiped from either Dabi or Hawks the other day with him. Within the last year he’d found that he liked the freedom of walking around through the alleyways, no one ever stopped him to ask him how old he was and who he was. Walking through the alleys was always interesting though, sometimes he would beat some would be mugger half to death and sometimes he would find stray cats to feed.

“Shoto?”

Shoto knew that hypnotic voice anywhere, it was a hard one to forget.

“What are you doing here in this part of town pretty boy you don’t wanna know what happens here.” Shoto heard him speak from behind him, so he dropped his cigarette butt in a puddle and turned to look at his ex peer.

Pointing to the shrouded body now in front of him he asked his question, “The better question is what are you doing here Hitoshi?”

#mha hawks #mha #mha fanfic #dabi #tw swearing

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thefakerachelray · 5 years ago

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Get to Know Me Ask Meme

Tagged by: @stark-park

Nicknames: I don’t really have one? Some people call me Rach or Rachie?

Zodiac: Aquarius

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff, obviously

Last thing I googled: on my laptop: Apparently it was Treasure Attic, this weird kids’ show someone on here said was made by a cult and I wanted to see if it was true

Favorite musician: hmmm, Walk the Moon is my fave band, has been for a while, I can’t really think of anyone else right now. I need some new music to listen to lol

Song stuck in my head: “Sucker” by the Jonas Brothers because I just watched their Carpool Karaoke video

Following: I’m in so many fandoms the people I follow are just a mix of everything - Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, Steven Universe, Miraculous....

Followers: 852, which is way more than I ever thought I would have

Do you get asks?: Sometimes, but not all that often.

Amount of sleep: I really need about 7 or 8 hours. Any less than that and I’m cranky all day.

Lucky number: 7 because i’m basic, and also 42

What are you wearing?: A t-shirt and jean shorts

Dream job: Hmm that’s hard. Either a doctor or a fiction writer (the former being the more realistic goal)

Dream trip: I’ve always wanted to go to Spain so I can really test my Spanish language skills

Instrument: I tried to learn guitar for like two days once. Does singing count?

Languages: English as my first language and Spanish, which I’ve been studying for several years and can speak fairly fluently

Current favorite song: I just discovered that the Backstreet Boys put out a new album this year (like literally learned this today) and also learned that Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is a bop

Random fact: I used to ride horses - I took lessons for years and even competed in a few shows (that and the fact that I have a special recipe for homemade sweet tea are the most stereotypically Kentucky things about me)

Aesthetic: soft blankets, bad jokes and puns, warm summer days by the pool, fuzzy sweaters with comfy boots, hot coffee

Tagging: @raylalas, @mynightfuryblr, @dearsayas, @whitneyrose98, @deletedthesun, @livingthewritelife-things

#ask meme

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divineberry-blog · 6 years ago

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We sat down with Rachel Berry, lead singer of Divine Influence, touring in a city near you! Does this young starlet turned soon to be Broadway star continue to enthuse us? The answer is a resounding yes.

My full name: Rachel Barbra Berry! Named after THE Rachel Green from friends. I’d like to think the ‘Barbra’ came from the talented, wonderful, heavenly Barbra Streisand, but unfortunately, it’s just a name they saw fit. I can pretend!

My nickname: Rach is apparently a lot easier than Rachel! For my band mates, at least. My dads call me a lot of names, though! Rachie is the least embarrassing, so I’ll give you that one.

I have a real weakness for… Jacuzzi tubs! Pair that with Lush’s intergalatic bath bomb, and I’m good to go. Also pickles.

Pet peeve: When people don’t give other people a chance or judge them before they get to know them. If we were all just a little nicer, the world would be a much better place!

Fave insta and/or twitter account: @lesmisofficial on twitter did a really cool write up of me before I start the show! And they have their performers give advice to aspiring performers, which I think is so awesome. The cat’s definitely out of the bag already, but I’m so excited to be on Broadway I could probably scream it from a mountain top.

My current #MCM: Can I have 2? It wouldn’t be fair at all to leave one of my dads out! They’re such amazing guys who would give the shirt off their backs even if it’s all they had to their name. They’ve supported me through so much and I can’t thank them enough.

My current #WCW: My cat, Miss Elphaba, AKA Elphie, AKA the cutest little thing in the world. But you probably want me to say a human so It’s obviously Mindy Kaling because I want to be her best friend.

I can’t resist someone who… Compliments me!

The sexiest thing that’s ever been done for me: You know, I’m not really the most experienced, which is probably not something you guys wanna hear, but no one’s wowed me yet. Can we please change that, though? I could always use some song inspiration!

I think everyone in their 20s should: Have a good support system of friends or family. Without my dads and Kitty, I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten this far.

Something people get wrong about me: I’m not confident 100 percent of the time. I don’t think anyone is!

My go-to snack: Dark chocolate with almonds. Any brand will do!

The last show I watched: Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Project. No other show has made me laugh so hard that I cry, and Dr. Lahiri is the epitome of relatable!

Place I’m most excited to visit: Being in New York is always a highlight of any trip, but I’m so excited to get out of the country eventually! I’ve never left America, so It’ll be so much fun to explore new places.

My guilty pleasure is… I take way too many selfies that just hoard up space on my phone because they’re too good to delete.

My favorite emoji is… 🌟

My favorite song to perform is…because… Stranger, for sure! Ballads are always so good to sing, and even though it’s a little depressing, I’m so proud of what I wrote and I really don’t get to be on the keys very often. From Afar will always have a special place in my heart, though! We all wrote it together and it really put things into place for us!

#pttask #these gifs are huge PLS IGNORE #//this is not as good as i wanted it to be

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sol-luminosus · 7 years ago

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Do you have any Rachad head canons? Care to share? :D

Yep, lots of ‘em! Let me section it out (to also help me recall ‘em. Also, this might be pretty long please bear with me)

Cadet Years

1. Chad and Rachel have been acquainted with each other since childhood. However, they weren’t actually close then. At some point, they’ve worked together under the same squad as shown in Operation: M.A.U.R.I.C.E. (I’m supposing this is an entire class of cadets belonging in the same batch)

2. It was apparent from the start that Chad was a promising prodigy and stood out amongst the others. From then on he’d been officially assigned on Moonbase. Meanwhile, Rachel discovered her knack in espionage and trained as a spy under KND’s intel gathering unit. In my head cannon, this is KND’s Intelligence Department and HQ is stationed on Moonbase.

So, their only connection then would have to be: Classmates –> Same Sector

Global Command Years

1. Whoop whoop, fast forward to being full-fledged operatives. After Numbuh 100′s reign, Chad eventually found his way up in the ranks and secured the spot of Supreme Leader. He doesn’t really interact much with Rachel until later on at this time, where she herself had been successful in her career path and is considered as the top spy of her time. So much so, that there were moments where she’d directly report to the Supreme Leader himself.

2. Their personalities and regard towards each other was much different at first. I’ve always seen Rachel as not being a people person in her run as a full-time spy. She was quiet, and preferred to work alone. She’d accomplish her tasks dutifully and especially hated it when things didn’t go as planned. (Something I derived from F.U.G.I.T.I.V.E. when she had a rage episode at Fanny) However, her general disposition is reserved. The only one who seemed to get under her skin though, is Chad.

Let’s just say she piqued his curiosity. (Tbh, I’ve always seen Chad as a curious person) It’s a Supreme Leader’s job to look out for his organization and the members within it but Rachel was specifically interesting for him. He’d make efforts to try and get close to her, but Rachel would often be rigid and preferred to keep things professional. But this doesn’t mean that his attempts at friendship annoyed her. In fact, she admired him and looked up to him like everyone else. It’s just how she really is with personal relationships.

Before they both knew it, they hit it off really well and being close was a given to them and an unspoken acknowledgment with their peers.

3. The first person to ever admit that they felt something more than friendship for the other was Rachel. Here we have 11 or 12 years old Rachy understanding for herself that she had a crush on the Supreme Leader and silently recognizing it. She doesn’t go over the episode of denial and just takes it in. (I doubt she’s one to do that tbh) But, it’s not something that she tells anyone and just kept it to herself.

4. In addition to item 3, the first person who does understand she has a thing for Chad is Abby.

5. Rachel’s personality drastically develops during this period. Being with, and working alongside Chad has taught her a lot of things. Rachel may sometimes come off as scarily stern but she’d always been someone who cared a hefty lot for her comrades, one of her golden traits. I like to think that it was Chad that encouraged her to believe in her potential as a leader, and later on this inspired her to strive for the position of Supreme Leader after his defection.

6. I don’t know if I’m the only one that’s noticed that Rachel often preferred to wear very muted colors with her either always seen wearing dark plums or blacks prior to being a Supreme Leader. (this could’ve been because she was under espionage however) Though, I’m fond of the thought of having Chad as the reason why she’d discarded the whole monochrome apparel and decided to go for bright and calming colors as a means to remember him by. (I’m thinking of writing out a fic for this head cannon btw ㅇ◡ㅇ)

7. Chad was the one that started calling her ‘Rach’. And since then, to Rachel, it’s become a very endearing way to call her.

Relationship Summary thus far: Classmates –> Same Sector –> Acquaintances –> Friends –> Close Friends

Defection

1. For one thing, this isn’t something Chad wanted as an outcome for himself. Assuming the role of an undercover operative and being treated as the enemy of the entire organization he’s worked blood and sweat to hold up was distasteful to him. But the possibility of being accepted into g:KND was also an enticing thought. So he’d grabbed the opportunity anyway. But that didn’t mean it was something he wanted to disclose to Rachel. For one thing, it would hurt her. But if doing so meant continuing being part of the KND then the consequences of his actions was something that he’d been willing to face. At the very least, he could still watch over her and protect her albeit from a distance.

2. Chad’s lack of explanations for his actions had always been something that hurt Rachel, yet she maintained professionalism anyway each time he’d report to her on Moonbase as a double agent. She understood things just couldn’t and wouldn’t be the same between them, especially with the fact that from then on, he’d always give her the cold shoulder. It’s a thought that Chad’s teenage angst isn’t just a mere act to keep up the ‘typical teenager attitude’. For one thing, he’s got a lot of resentment in his system towards the reality of growing up, the g:KND itself, and Numbuh 1. That then contributes a lot to his personal relationships.

Even so, it confuses her more that he never fails to look after her, even saving her countless times from her own missions had he been coincidentally on duty either as a Teen Ninja or a TND operative. Sometimes, she was beginning to think that he’d deliberately be there just to make sure that she was safe.

3. Basically, if it concerns Rachel’s safety, all forms of reason just instantly flies off and over his head and he rushes in right away just to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt.

I’ve always thought that Chad was rather impulsive and having to do that was characteristic of him.

4. I also like to think that Chad and Maurice become pretty close as teens despite their seemingly conflicting personalities. And it wasn’t too hard for Maurice to figure out that Chad definitely had feelings for Rachel. Other than that, it wasn’t a surprise for him to understand that Chad hasn’t fully realized his own feelings for himself. (He can get really dense on the love aspect.)

5. Rachel may be accepting of her relationship rift with Chad, but his undercover missions that involve flirting with different girls and even going out with them at times for intel gathering incessantly gets on her nerves. It’s during these times that her temper is shorter and tends to spend excessive hours honing her battle skills. (and imagining she was hitting his face with her staff instead of the training dummy)

6. Chad’s own understanding and coming into terms with his feelings for Rachel is gradual. Whereas it was a simple understanding on Rachel’s case, that wasn’t so for him.

Ok, actually this is going to overlap with my thoughts with him and Stacey although it’s part of the whole head cannon

So, where does Stacey come in? We do know that he’s depicted as being in a relationship with her. It’s a thought of mine that this is part of the image that he’s trying to keep up with. But while that’s the case, it doesn’t mean that that’s all she is to him. Underneath that jerk of a teen is still that boy that highly valued the people surrounding him, and she’s someone he deems as a friend and part of his new circle. However, he’s wondered for himself at times, why he just couldn’t see her in a different light despite Stacey being a nice girl and all with even a lot of admirers.

And more than once, he’s always found himself, looking forward on each of his trips to Moonbase so he could deliver his report to the Supreme Leader. It’s always something calming to him, and having just a glimpse of Rachel’s face immediately dispels the questions in his head. From here, he begins to understand.

This is also something that he looks back to later on in his older years, and without a doubt, would shake his head at with how silly he was that he just couldn’t get a clue.

Relationship Summary thus far: Classmates –> Same Sector –> Acquaintances –> Friends –> Close Friends –> It’s Complicated

g:KND Route

1. Chad doesn’t want her to know about it’s existence for the reason of wanting to keep her safe but well, that doesn’t exactly go as planned. We find Rachel’s status as a fugitive in this timeline. It’s a thought that her reason for vacating the position of Supreme Leader had nothing to do with age. Rather, it was during this time that she’d finally discovered the existence of the g:KND and the threat the organization posed. So when she went rouge, everything was pre-planned, and our runaway teen is furious and on the way to take matters into her own hands and to help stop the g:KND. Along with that, to rescue Chad and to actually give him a piece of her mind about the whole fiasco and secret keeping he’d been doing to her for years.

Relationship Summary thus far: Classmates –> Same Sector –> Acquaintances –> Friends –> Close Friends –> It’s Complicated –> It’s Still Complicated

Alternate Timeline: TND

1. Let’s say the whole g:KND deal didn’t happen. After her time as a Kids Next Door operative, Rachel gets picked out as one of the teens to remain affiliated with the KND under the TND sub-organization. She still has a strained past with Chad after his ascension as an undercover agent (only difference then is him having no goals of joining the g:KND) and tries to avoid him at all costs. But encountering each other is an unavoidable aspect since the TND is much smaller as compared to the KND.

2. He still has a habit of throwing all reason into the bin and looking after her to the extent of his capabilities. They often end up bickering due to this.

3. Much to Rachel’s discomfort, her family’s taken a liking to Chad. He didn’t have the best relationship with Harvey but eventually, learned to get along with each other. So, she’d often find him hanging around in her house and it irritates her to no end.

4. The reason for her irritation in item 3 is still linked with her confusion of him with his conflicting actions towards her. She’s not quite sure if he wants to rekindle their relationship or just plans to incessantly annoy her for some unknown reason.

5. For items 2 and 3, he has feelings for her, thus his actions. His 16 years old self still doesn’t understand this. Maurice often finds himself massaging his temples out of exasperation from him still not realizing after all the years that passed.

6. Chad’s parents have known Rachel as a child. At times even in their teen years, she’d wonder why they’d call her to check up on their son despite having a fallout with him in their adolescence. Nonetheless, she can’t seem to understand for herself why she’s happy they’d think of her when it comes to Chad.

7. Chad and Rachel have always belonged in different cliques, with Chad being with Maurice, Cree, and the other McClintock teens and Rachel with Patton and Fanny. Even then, their paths always seem to cross with Chad and Rachel often bickering that it becomes a habit for the 2 groups to encounter each other. At first, Fanny would glower at seeing Cree’s face, but Chad and Rachel’s banters become so routinal that the 2 girls would actually have the heart to exchange civil ‘heys’ and ‘hellos’ with each other, to Patton’s disbelieving horror.

8. It sets Chad off when a guy attempts to get cozy with Rachel especially when they have the nerve to refer to her as ‘Rach’. Nuh-uh, he’ll wreck havoc if he hears that.

Relationship Summary thus far: Classmates –> Same Sector –> Acquaintances –> Friends –> Close Friends –> It’s Complicated –> They’re together, like why can’t they realize it?

Latter Years

Overall, disregarding if we’re going with the g:KND or no g:KND timeline, I doubt that they’d really have it easy. Chad and Rachel’s relationship always seem to be stuck on that ‘it’s complicated’ category during their youth. They’re both very duty bound characters, whether the reason for it is riding on what people expect of them on the roles and responsibilities that they to fulfill or for the good of the majority of people. They’re each other’s soulmates, something which they may or may not understand later on.

At some point, it’s a thought that their paths might even completely drift away from one another with each of them growing up and maturing with the other completely absent from their lives.

In this head cannon however, when they do find each other again, they make no more hesitations. And although they’ve been through a lot, people aren’t surprised that they still ended up winding up together.

And their little blonde spitfire that’s the spitting image of Chad with Rachel’s indomitable spirit in him is a proof of this. ´･ᴗ･`

Phew, that was lengthy. I know I was only asked to share my head cannons but I swear, these were specifically categorized in my head from which timeline they came from.

These head cannons may also vary because at times for my fics, I’d also include head cannons exclusively reserved for whichever universe the story is set in.

Thank you for asking this! I really enjoyed answering this ask! (◑‿◐)

Also, here’s a little sketchy Rachad / 274/362 art I did some time ago when I was practicing my former art style (very manga / manhwa style inspired I know) prior to how I usually draw in now.

#ask me!#rachad #274/362 #knd #kids next door #all aboard the mother ship #head cannons #anonymous ask #chad dickson #rachel t. mckenzie #numuh 362 #numbuh 274

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doorfus · 6 years ago

Photo

[Image description: screenshot of a facebook post by "Rachie's Ratirement Home", a pun on "rats" and "retirement".

the post reads, "Storing rats: The Konmari Method / Tidying specialist Marie Kondo recommends maximizing your space for small items by neatly folding them into small balls, and storing them in containers so that each one is visible and easily accessed. This applies to socks, and apparently rats. It can be difficult to determine which rats to keep, because unlike most items, holding a rat in your hands and asking yourself "Does this spark joy?" will always be a resounding yes. #RatsDefinetlySparkJoy".

beneath the text is a photo of rats in a basket. they are facing away from the viewing and are neatly snuggling up next to each other in a row. very cute! /end image description]

Still making shit memes and doing animal rescue <3

#rats #pets #animals #happy tag #captioned #my captions #favorite #big tyler mood

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lightraker · 8 years ago

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Albada: Pigeons on pink

To understand this poem I think you need to know two things.

Firstly Don Jose Ruiz y Blasco was the father of Pablo Picasso. He was himself an artist and taught art. He painted lots of pictures of pigeons. So much that he was known as “El palomero” (the pigeon fancier). Legend has it that he saw young Picasso drawing some pigeons and they were so much better than anything he ever did that he gave Pablo all his painting materials and never painted again.

Eric’s dad, the poet R F Langley, (I was going to say famous, but maybe admired is the better word), wrote a poem called Jack’s Pigeon. In that poem, a coffee bowl breaks and a pigeon “thuds to the gutter in convulsions”. Jack, who is, I’m bit nervous of defining what Jack is, I think he might be a kind of alter ego for R F, and maybe like a Jack the Lad or man of mischief. Jack sees the probably dead pigeon and checks his “scratchcard”. There are lots of Hamlet references in the poem. I’m thinking there’s a link to the line about “there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”. Is God keeping an eye on even the smallest things?

Eric must have been pretty pleased with himself when he made this connection. He’s starting out as a poet, under his father’s shadow. His father wrote a poem about a pigeon. Picasso’s father painted pigeons until Picasso made a better version. Will Eric be Pablo to his father’s Don Jose? I think also, Don Jose’s pigeons look rather lovely. Eric seems to have specifically in mind the one that google throws up which is five pigeons on a pink background. You won’t be surprised that in the end, Eric/Pablo sees that his father’s stuff was better than his.

The Hamlet allusions also work brilliantly with this theme because of course Hamlet is all about a son and the ghost of his father.

Albada means a morning love song in Spanish. I didn’t know the word. But I do recognise Aubade, the French version. Eric says he’s riffing on a number of aubades / albadas in this poem but I can’t help you there. The only Aubade I know in any detail is the Philip Larkin poem. I wonder if there may be an allusion in the description of the blurry outlines in section 2, that become sharply defined in the last section, which remind me a bit of Larkin seeing the blurry outlines in his bedroom becoming sharper at the end. If so, there’s a hint about mortality and fears of death which would fit. Wikipedia tells me that Albada Finder is something in optics, which seems a nice link to themes of the collection.

Orpiment, masticot, Oker de Luce, lac of carmine are all painting materials. Don Jose in the morning is planning some painting.

“Rayleigh… Mei” this is something to do with scientific theories of how light scatters. Like me, you’ll presumably be cringing at the obvious error that the scientist Eric meant is Mie.

“Scumbles" - give a soft effect

“Envious” foreshadows how he’s going to feel about his son.

“civil” - this word sticks out to me. Does it mean polite, ordinary, from the city?

“Dimly” - keeping to the light.

“tender… extension” - Eric is obsessed with words with this root. It’s all to do with reaching out, connecting with another, making yourself vulnerable.

I think we can see that the dawn of the new day is mirroring the coming talent of his son.

“Maria” - is the name of Jose’s wife and Picasso’s mum.

“Jill” - this is the first inkling, I think, that the poem is alluding to Jack’s pigeon. Jill is Jack’s lady (of course).

“Croodling” isn’t this a great word! It means cooing.

“El Palomero” - the pigeon fancier. Apparently Spanish doesn’t have a different word for pigeon or dove. But Jose paints pigeons. However, Picasso as well as drawing pigeons has a famous painting much later in life of a dove of peace. And he called his daughter La Paloma which people seem to translate as “The Dove”. You can imagine she might have preferred it that way. I feel like there’s a lot going on with the idea that the workaday pigeon of the father becomes transformed into the symbolic, beautiful dove of the son.

“Spink” - brilliantly this word means “the cry of a finch”. I wonder how many other birds have a word just for their cry. Did Eric have a moment of serendipitous excitement when he found out it rhymed (hell, contained!) pink? Or did he know this all along?

Senna bush - my botany and the internet lets me down on the connotations of a senna bush, but there is one in “Jack’s Pigeon” by Langley senior, so we’re starting to get more references to that.

“Booby” - idiot, breasts, type of bird. (Also, tit!)

“Jug jug” is the noise a nightingale makes. Also, means breasts! Even I recognise this as a line in the Wasteland. But I’m not sure if it helps specifically to think of that poem, or just that both Eric and Eliot are referring to an earlier tradition of writing about nightingales going jug jug. Apparently it was big in the renaissance.

“full-throated.. god! o god!… shoot.. plum” Something something sex. Perhaps also a little Keats nod. In “Ode to a Nightingale” the bird sings with “full-throated ease”.

“Pomegranate tree” - this introduces, I think, a reference to the Song of Solomon. There’s something about Solomon and pomegranates. “My love, my dove, my fair…” is a quote from that.

“Ignition spark… apples’ pips”. Sex… babies.

“Piz piz” Apparently Picasso’s first words - short for “lapiz” - calling for a pencil. I hope you’re ready for some Freudian penis stuff. Father and son are going to be engaging in some willy waving.

“Pipion” - pigeon.  “Master at the Bellas Artes” - Jose’s job teaching art.

“Kids” childish / jokes.

“Plucks his nib” - masturbation / makes art. Who can tell the difference?

“Squab” - a young pigeon. The word is used in “Jack’s Pigeon”.

“real these really real pigeons” - it seems like we’re back to Zeuxis here. Picasso rivals Zeuxis’ achievement.

I’m not sure at what point we shift from Dad to Son. As of Section 5 we get first person not third. But this seems to be from the dad’s point of view. While I think by Section 7 we’re from the son’s. But I could be wrong.

“the shock that shook” - so this is the dad seeing his son is a better artist.

“Mummed me” - acted as me (mummer) / became my mum / shut me up.

“Barbels” - little beard hairs (on fish? - I got a bit confused by wikipedia here, do fish have beards? and I thought we were talking about pigeons). Anyway, appropriate for the developing youth.

“Crappers” - not sure about this. Is this just because pigeons do a lot of pooing?

“Jacobines” - Jacobins of course are the ruthless revolutionaries - is that the role the son takes? I’m not sure if there’s a reason it’s feminine plural. Obviously links us to Jack.

“gall-free” - I wondered if this removal of gall from the pigeons, suggested the transformation of pigeon to dove (symbolising peace)?

“cheaply” - what sound do birds make?

“blackjacked” - knocked out / gambled away / Jack is now Black.

“here come have them then” - this is when the dad gives away all his painting materials to his son.

“throbbing vanes” - “vane” is the flat part of a feather. It’s nice how the paint brush becomes like a wing - so that the young boy can take flight like the pigeons. This feels like an Icarus allusion. I’m not sure if it’s a direct quote from Ovid, but it sounds like the kind of thing you’d get in translations of Ovid. That’s another model for Father / Son relationships we’re presented with. Let’s hope Eric doesn’t get too carried away with his wings of poetry unlike his wise and crafty dad Daedalus. Also, masturbating.

“Big head” - the arrogance of Eric comparing himself to Picasso. And also, penis.

“Rachis” - stem of grass.

“Filoplume” - hair like feathers.

“Barbs” - suggesting insults / stings. Poor old dad.

“Erleben” - experience (German for having lived).

“Avitrol” a bird deterrent.

Section 6 describes favourably the early pigeon sketch by Picasso.

“Gutter” - this word crops up a couple of times. And strikingly near the end of the poem. A candle gutters meaning it goes out or is about to go out. Is Pablo a “gutter” because his dad is now “gutted”? And remember the pigeon in “Jack’s Pigeon” “thuds to the gutter”.

“This one’s for remembrance”. We’re now entering Hamlet rich territory. This line is from Ophelia. I feel like this marks the moment when the son/Eric/Pablo speaks. He’s remembering his dad. Who, like him, knew his Hamlet! (Ophelia’s the name of the pigeon who dies in “Jack’s Pigeon”).

“Old mole” is what Hamlet calls his father’s ghost.

“Sweet Lady” - “Sweet Lady Street” is where the pigeon dies in Jack’s Pigeon.

“Pau Gargallo” - sculpture friend of Picasso, art school in Barcelona.

“Wash Lane” - not sure of the relevance of this - it is a street in Birmingham sort of in the same part of Britain as where Eric grew up. But I’m probably missing something.

“Penfold” - I really really hope this is an allusion to Dangermouse’s helper. A keeper of pens, the tool the poet needs.

“where the two thousand sad souls go” - this is from Hamlet as he sees the army heading off for war - and Jack’s Pigeon has the bowl breaking like “twenty thousand souls”.

“Over-rounds” - this is something to do with gambling - and so I think is linking to Jack going to the betting shop.

“Polish day trip” - Hamlet reference - “Polack”. And in Jack’s Pigeon the coffee bowl called “Part of Poland”.

“eggshells” - Hamlet: “all that fortune, death and danger dare, Even for an eggshell”.

“Rosemary” - Ophelia gives this “for remembrance”.

“pyggion” - If you google this word, you get Eric’s poem and an academic book called “Bare Ruined Choirs” talking about the moat at Crowle. This seems like a cool coincidence. Shakespeare Sonnet talking about growing old. I think there’s something to do with language changing and in the next couplet we get squib instead of squab.

“An old man of Daulis”. Daulis is where Oedipus didn’t go to when he ended up killing Laius. So I think this is a reference to a key father / son rivalry. (Daulis is also where Tereus lived as in the Philomela, cutting out tongue, eating his own child, turning into a bird, Tereus, so maybe there’s a bird link too). But I think Eric is saying: I’m not killing my dad “this time”. It feels like we’ve got a long way into a poem about father/son rivalry without an Oedipus reference.

Pichon - Spanish for little pigeon

Pijon - French for pigeon.

Paloma - spanish dove / pigeon. I think again there’s something here about language changes, transitions between language like the transitions between generations.

“Haunts” - ghosts.

“How pale they glare” - Hamlet says of his dad’s ghost: “How pale he glares”.

“between the lines” - Looking for his father in his writings.

“street lamps, gas lamps” - again thinking of time passing.

“Clayton’s spirits” - I’ve come up a bit of a blank on what this means. Wikipedia has something about Clayton’s being Australian for fake.

Madeleine - think of Proust having his memory brought back.

“Reverbere” - French for streetlight. But also the idea of the memory reverberating.

“How strong is stillness?” - this quotes from RF Langley’s journal entry of April 1977. He talks about going to a church and the children playing, naming Ruth, Eric’s older sister. The line before is “Gestures of children must stay.”

“Conning” deceive or study carefully.

“Hundred good hellos” - this is a phrase from RF Langley’s poem “Il Redentore” which is a church Venice. I got excited by the thought that it sounds like the returner / reviens. But actually it’s Italian for Redeemer. But something about giving back, right? Giving back the paint brushes?

“Frame that”. Guilt. Painting. Setting.

“Attention… tentif” more of the ten…

“Complex feet” - is this a reference to Oedipus whose name means swollen foot? And has his own complex.

Towlines - a nautical rope.

“Pigeon-toed, dove-tailed”. This is clever, isn’t it!

“Da!” - dad, ta da! and maybe also Russian for Yes!

“Fetch” - bring back, grasp, trick, jerk off, resurrect.

“Mirrors… rage” - I can’t help but think of the rage of Caliban seeing himself in the mirror but that doesn’t seem very relevant here. Hamlet holds up a mirror. Eric reflects his dad. As a “compound compliment”.

“Bearded” - old men have beard, but also means “confronted”.

“Bound about” - jumping / tied up.

“Charged” - attacked, energised, accused.

“screwed in your bedclothes” - are we thinking of sex and Gertrude (Hamlet’s mum)?

“swipe” - rushing stroke / steal.

Here is where Eric / Pablo acknowledges the greater ability of his dad. “It’s all still yours, still yours to say”.

“Passing” - going by or pretending.

“Cyclist” - Eric rides a bike / he recycles poetry.

“Pillar” - a symbol of tradition? (Also penis).

“Well outlined” compare the blurred figure of the dad in the early dawn.

“plastic guttering” - see above. Dad becomes different parts of a building: chantlate- piece of wood holding rafters, in other words a protector. But also chant = sing and late = dead. “Flash line” - part of building or a fancy poem. “eavestrough” gutter.

“Bowl” now the broken bowl of Jack’s pigeon seems to be mended.

“Rings” - sounds out and comes round again.

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