#Troy is arrogant but pathetic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

smallrainclouds · 3 years ago

Text

Part six, I will be posting next part right this. This a two parter. This is all Hypnos' pov follow by reader. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Thanks for the likes and kind words. 💜

🌙💤💤🌙

*Hypnos' pov*

It was a peculiar experience, to be physically in one place and mentally in another place. But not one he minded, at times he even welcomed it.

Hypnos floated down the dirt road, the sleeping spell he casted was already showing its effect. In one of the many houses, he could hear a baby's cries turned into soft whimpers.

Hypnos hoped the mother may get some rest. He didn't care for most humans but he did have a soft spot for mothers, the good ones at least. He made a note to himself to return to check just in case.

Hypnos passed another house, and paused. He could hear the sounds of music and people chatting. He floated into the house; one perk of his powers, he wouldn't be seen unless he wished it.

Hypnos stood, amused as he watched the humans. He would hold off for now. He will just have to take a little extra from these humans later. He was about to leave when he saw the huge built-in bookcase.

Y/N's face flashed in his mind, and he huffed. He really was pathetic, Hypnos mused. Now he couldn't even get through a night's work without thinking about Y/N.

She had softened up to him though. Y/N had slowly been getting used to her new home, making friends and even talking to him the few minutes he allowed himself to get close to her.

Hypnos grimaced, he still couldn't believe his behavior that night. Y/N could have claimed to be the real goddess of beauty and he would have believed her especially with how the dress hugged her body.

Between her beautiful, concerned face and his own stupid lust, he had made a fool of himself.

He floated out into the dark road with a shake of his head. At least he could finally understand why so many fought over Helen of Troy.

If nothing else-

Hypnos didn't hear his brother's approach but he did feel the poke Thanatos's scythe gave him.

"Sleeping again?" Thanatos snapped. "Do you know how much work you have overdue?"

Hypnos groaned loudly, aggravated at his brother and pulled his eye mask up to glare at Thanatos.

He loved his twin,really he did. He knew cared more about their relationship than Thanatos did but he wouldn't let his brother just boss him around.

At times, he almost missed it when Thanatos didn't talk to him at all and acted like they weren't even brothers. What does it say about him that he would want his brother's anger over the silence? At least they were talking again, kind of.

"What's wrong? Zagreus said hi to Meg but not you? Or was it that he doesn't notice the cow eyes you make at him?" Hypnos mocked. He smiled at the even darker glare Thanatos gave him.

"Oh have you gotten around to killing all the humans by the way? Or are you still taking your sweet time with that? It's almost like you don't want to hang out, brother." Hypnos said with a fake pout. He knew Thanatos hated that look.

Thanatos growled. "I swear it's like you can't help but to act like a child, Hypnos, even now when you're married to whatever her name is-"

"Y/N. It's Y/N." Hypnos interrupted, anger rose up sharply inside him at Thanatos's tone. "And leave her out of this. You haven't even bothered to meet her yet."

Thanatos's eyes widened, then narrowed and Hypnos silently swore. Thanatos could always pick out Hypnos' weaknesses better than any one. And he just gave Thanatos another one on a silver platter.

Thanatos opened his mouth to respond but out of nowhere, Nyx appeared. She put her hands gently on their shoulders. Her mouth was tight in disapproval.

"My children. Let's have a word. Now." Nyx said calmly but her eyes revealed her displeasure.

Shit.

🌙💤💤🌙

Thanatos had vanished after the dressing-down their mother gave them.

"Coward." Hypnos mumbled. Nyx didn't even give Thanatos that hard of a time. Hypnos had gotten the worst of it like usual. He ignored the raised eyebrow Nyx gave him.

He rubbed his forehead, feeling the start of a headache.

Hypnos turned to his mom, his face not quite able to hide his exhaustion.

"You know I am doing both this job and the sleep thing at the same time, right? You know the thing I was born to do? It's not like I'm being lazy. I don't need to be the guy listing all the dead shades here. Any shade could do it. For bloody sake, let's just give it to Dusa."

Nyx just sighed, and it made Hypnos feel three inches high.

"You know why I can't do that, my child." Nyx said, a wry smile on her face. "I don't want you getting involved with another war. It's bad enough Thanatos has to be."

"I didn't say-"

Nyx's look shut him up. "You would get involved. You can't help yourself. The Olympians may choose to play with human lives but we're better than that."

Nyx paused, "Have you told Y/N about why she was here?"

Hypnos flinched and Nyx sighed. "No, of course not. My child, you need to tell her. Or I will. You can't have a marriage without totally honesty."

Hypnos jerked his head up, "What does it matter? It won't change anything."

Nyx's mouth tightens, "It does matter. You wanted this goddess as your wife. You even went about it in a way that she never even had a say in it."

"Technically, her mother offered her up." Hypnos said.

"And you took her up on it, that makes you just as guilty."

Hypnos opened his mouth but then closed it. His mother was right and he knew it.

Hera had seen the way Hypnos couldn't tear his eyes off Y/N the few times he had been to Olympus. And that he wouldn't be able to say no. But that was his own fault and Y/N had to pay the price.

Hypnos sighed, "I know. I know. I think I can hear Charon's boat coming in."

Nyx's face softened for a moment, "I know you're not happy, Hypnos but you will be someday. Just give it time. "

Hypnos didn't respond.

🌙💤💤🌙

Hours later, Hypnos was still fuming as he floated down the hallway. The second that he got done with the line of shades, he bailed.

He was just going to his chambers so he could get caught up on the work that was actually important. It was not like the dead were going to get any deader.

But as he passed the library, he stopped. He was tempted to go in, just to see her smile at him.

Hypnos didn't want Y/N to see his anger, he was trying to be a pleasant guy for her. To make this place bearable for her since he knew she didn't ask for any of this. She was stuck here because of Hypnos's youthful arrogance and greed.

He didn't want a repeat of that one night. And Hypnos didn't have in him right now to be thoughtful and polite.

Hypnos stared at the candle lights, and hated himself.

He was a selfish god at his core, always had been. He wanted Y/N. Whatever he could have even if just a smile.

With that, he pushed open the door.

#hypnos x reader #this fic had taken over my life #hades hypnos #marriage au #tangled starlight

76 notes · View notes

medeaodair · 3 years ago

Text

DANGER. // SELF-PARA

A conversation with death:

What to do if the earth starts eating you;

Step one, hope you don’t taste too good, so earth spits you out. Step two, just kidding! Step three, earth doesn’t care what you taste like.

Enjoy it.

It seemed, all his life Rio Odair had been rather insistent on combating beauty with horror.

He had no pretty words for anyone, other than ones coated in arrogance and certainty, cockiness and overconfidence that seemed to cling to his skin like sticky, sickly sweet honey. Yes, that was it. Sickly and insincere, even though he’d always thought that all of it had a purpose. After all, he tried. And the one thing he’d mastered all of his life, had been a disarming smile. One didn’t need words for smiles, they spoke for themselves. They all had a purpose, conveniently sent certain people’s ways to distract, deflect, charm, direct somewhere specific.

No one could say Rio Odair didn’t try. Sometimes a little too much, sometimes far too little, but he did try.

Rio tried his best to seem bored, nonchalant, while havoc wreaked around him like his own personal little concert, directed by subtly twitching fingers at his sides. Tried his best to remain unimpressed when Carol walked towards him with a bleeding head and clueless, damn near naive eyes that Rio had no idea how to look into without feeling horribly startled.

The past was catching up to him. Rapidly. Perhaps not within seconds, but old ghosts only rest for so long, and one of them was right by his side as he snapped the girl’s neck in the bloodbath. He didn’t even remember her name. Didn’t even remember where she was from. But did it matter, really? She was dead and he’d have someone to tell him who to direct his next smile towards. A weeping mother, a broken father, a devastated sibling, or no one at all. In the end, that was the only thing that mattered.

Rio Odair was trying, and no one could say he wasn’t.

This is just the fucking beginning. They’ll see what I can do soon enough.

He’d always been rather insistent on combatting beauty with horror, even if unintentionally. The urge lingered on his tongue in the grand lobby of the casino, coppery tang almost making him grimace with its intensity.

Well, Troy almost managed to punch it right out of his mouth. Almost. His jaw cracked but the spirit of it didn’t. Horror in beauty? There couldn’t have been anything more horrible than District Four’s golden boy be beaten in the bloodbath by a rebel from District Eight, all the while crystals twinkled overhead. And then, Troy escaped right from between his fingers, grabbed for the fucking thing under the glass covering and was gone. Away from the glitz, away from the glamour, away from Rio’s aching jaw.

About time then, that the bored, played up nonchalance made way for genuine anger. He knew how to deal with that, at the very least. Reach for something, and make it crumble to bits.

He’d forever mourn that he’d never taken that rebel boy’s hand on the reaping stage and felt him tremble in fear right under his skin.

He wanted to take his hand, pull him closer.

He wanted to take his hand and pull him closer and have his fingers find strands of hair and he wanted to wrap them around his fingers.

He wanted to take his hand and pull him closer and feel the strands wrap around his fingers like a noose around his neck and he wanted to smash his face into the glass covering on the column.

The action was the easiest part. The itch that the sentiment left behind the hardest to scratch.

Bones ached, bruises bloomed on his skin and Rio wanted to fucking scream at all of it. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right even in the slightest, possible way, and whoever was responsible for this joke of a bloodbath would suffer for it. Immensely.

Even those who weren’t, would. A girl barreled towards one of the columns, panicked and bleeding and wide eyed like a deer fleeing from its hunter. Rio trembled as well now, but there was no sign of pathetic fear like the one he’d been so intent on choking out of the rebel boy back in Four as soon as they’d gotten into the Arena. No, god no, he was just furious.

He got to his feet, clenched his jaw for good measure and put a good ten years of training to use in the most primal way the few seconds left him time for.

She reached out, a little triumphant glimmer in her eyes. She was so, so close to getting that little pack of matches under that glass covering. So, so close.

There must’ve been a goddamn joke in there somewhere. Missed it by that much. Missed was still missed, but when it was Rio reaching out, his hands always met their target. He grabbed her elbow and tugged her closer in one swift motion, before he hooked his arm around hers and grabbed for the hair at the back of her head.

If he was really being honest with himself, he had no idea what the rebel boy’s face looked like. It didn’t surprise him, that he didn’t know this girl either. Like it fucking mattered. Features meshed together, eyes melted into one color and hell, Rio had never been great at remembering faces that would cease to exist in any case. Ask him to pick out Primrose Everdeen’s wrinkly face out of a crowd and he’d have respectfully forfeited the challenge. It didn’t fucking matter.

What did matter, was that blood on glass looked all the same in the grand scheme of things. He grabbed a fistful of hair and listened for the satisfying crack and crunch as her face collided with the glass covering.

Then, a cannon.

Right.

Perfect.

It didn’t make a difference though, when he carelessly let go of the hair and let the body fall to the floor. He felt restless inside, past the way he left the bloodbath behind in favor of looking for Carol. He felt restless, even as he found the other tribute from Four passed out on a couch, most likely from his head-wound, and had to sit there and watch him rest like that wasn’t in any way fucking rude.

There were quite a few cannons from that point onwards, and none of them was his own. Every time it went off, it was music in his ears. He didn’t care for any of these fuckers. Every time it went off, it meant one less person to worry about killing. One less person in his way to the top.

His past caught up with him though, and he had no way to smash fates fucking face into a wall or something equally as satisfying as that.

He met the guy from One in the darkened casino, with cockiness in his step that Rio recognized far too well. Didn’t he walk the same way? Like the whole goddamn Arena, including the incredibly suspicious furniture, belonged to him already. He was just a visitor here. He’d be out soon enough.

His past caught up with him in its most simple form. It went without much of a fight, though, if deception was a fighting move, perhaps there’d been enough of it.

The nameless, faceless career from one died with his head pushed into thick, dark liquid.

Rio imagined someone weeping as he did it. A mother of a little boy, crying and screaming beside him like that had in any way been the same. Like he’d pushed that boys head under ocean water too, and watched him drown from up close instead of from the safety of the lifeguard seat.

He didn’t find much struggling under his hands before the cannon ended the disappointing act with an almost overeager bang.

Right.

Yes, thirteen down.

Halfway there.

His past caught up with him, and it was about as nice as he’d been.

It stumbled towards him in the dark, barely illuminated by a neon glow, and it shoved something right into his gut. Yes, his past caught up with him and it was being an absolute pain about it. The piece of sharpened bone sank right past the barrier of skin like it had any place to sit there among the rest, and Rio had no choice but to be an absolute fucking pain back.

How?

He didn’t die.

He stumbled out towards the lobby like he was retracing his steps right back to the beginning. Horror in the midst of all that beauty. Well, he’d never known anything different. Horror seemed to follow his every step, oozed out of his every word and smile and maybe, just maybe, he’d managed to poison himself too. Beauty covering up all that horror like a shroud, golden and expensive and cold and dead.

But, Rio Odair didn’t die.

Rio Odair watched a horribly wet Carol stroll through the door and he didn’t die. He wasn’t dead yet.

No, that would’ve been horribly disappointing.

Death and him hadn’t finished talking, after all.

“Don’t be all fucking bark and no bite, Eyre,” he sighed, pointed boredom laced in his tone. “What’s this?”

Carol Eyre threw a dagger at him, and joined the conversation.

#— rio; about.#— games; 127.#tw: death #murdurr #tw: drowning #tw: gore

3 notes · View notes

border-spam · 4 years ago

Text

Leech Lord AU short - It comes before a fall

The craggy landscape of Pandora raced by outside the tinted windows of Troy’s massive technical as the COV war machines that escorted the glossy black hulk thundered around it in a convoy, weaving between the billowing clouds of acrid dust that trailed behind the God’s chariot as they bounced and jostled along the dirt road that lead to their backwater destination.

Its deified passenger wasn’t enjoying the trip quite as much as his retinue, and was finding it difficult to deal with their raucous voices and blaring music audible over the roar of the vehicle’s engines as tires screeched over the rocky dirt road.

He rubbed at his temple, wincing quietly at each bump and grind of the car’s axles, and reminded himself why he was wasting his precious time driving to this nameless little shithole.

Pride.

(Incredible art by @lazulizard ) Troy had reluctantly added the town to his itinerary after noting how close it was to the cult-controlled Eridium plant he’d scheduled to inspect with his vanguard today, it had been an irritant under his skin for long enough, and it seemed fitting to gouge it out when he had a couple of hours to spare, regardless of how much he’d rather be in the Grand Cathedral right about now. The camp was a blip on the map he’d spent so long seeding across Pandora. An insignificant, pathetic speck of non COV land surrounded by the vast sprawl of the Twin’s territory, that had been in the back of his mind for months now. As his iron grip tightened on the region and the cult’s control had spread like a seeping cancer across the desert plains, the gaps had filled in piece by piece, all bar this dive. He’d figured it was time to scratch the itch, they were going to be nearby anyway, just a couple of extra hours drive in the padded luxury of his chauffeured technical and they’d still have time to be back in the Holy City by nightfall, so why not. Get it done. Make the cut.

He just wished his skull wasn’t splitting as the car lurched, or there was some company with him to lighten the mood, give him something to listen to bar the shrieks and throbbing music of his crusaders. The day had been tiring enough, the threats and sneering orders he’d snapped at the plant workers took more out of him than he’d ever feel comfortable admitting. The technical was air conditioned, comfortable, armored, and his driver pleasantly silent, but the migraine wouldn’t budge. He was tired, tired in his fucking bones, and he couldn’t even remember when the last time he hadn’t felt this way was.

Everything was changing, or had already changed. He wasn’t sure which, but what he did know was that this, riding passenger in a 6 million dollar custom war-machine with a bottle of champagne in the platinum holder next to him he couldn’t pronounce, driving towards a shanty town with a retinue of blood thirsty marauders who carved his name into their chests and performed rites of sacrifice in his image, this was not what he’d signed up for. This wasn’t becoming a star was it, Tyreen?

This had turned over time into something else, and he was clawing to try and keep it under control now, constantly. Scrabbling to placate the rot in his gut that whispered it was real, that he was a God, and that these people deserved what his cult did to them.

He rested his head against the blacked out glass of the window, watching the retinue belch fire and smoke from hood mounted exhausts while playfully attempting to push each other off road as they drove on, his guard’s excitement manifesting in triumphant yells and vicious warnings to “Keep your distance” - blasted from car-mounted stereo equipment that echoed out across the wastes. He wished for a moment he could still feel that level of adrenaline, that rush of carefree blood-thirst his crusader’s inebriated themselves with on runs like this. Everything was just.. grey now. Had been for a long time. He let his eyes fall closed, grounding himself. They’d arrive soon. He’d step out of this gilded cage of a car and into the spotlight. He needed to slip on the character. Place the mask. Play the part.

Time to have a nice little chat with them, an unannounced Holy visit. Find out why exactly they hadn’t accepted the COV’s gracious offer to join in all this time… give them a reason to believe.

As the town came into sight through the oily dust clouds in the distance ahead like a rusty blemish on the rocky horizon, he tensed, leaning to his side to get a straight view of it through the dark glass. A wave of disgust ran up his spine as they closed distance and the reality of its state came into focus, sharp eyes taking in the town’s condition while his retinue’s speakers turned toward it to blast an announcement of their God’s arrival.

It was tiny, filthy. Ramshackle junk housing stacked haphazardly on top of each other. Rusted cargo containers turned into homes for people with nothing else to call their own. The crudely cut windows and doors fluttered with rags and patched together clothing set out to dry in the parched desert wind, and they caught the red clouds of dust the convoy billowed into the air as the vehicles screeched to a stop in front of the shabbily constructed entrance to the village.

It made you feel grimy just being here, he thought with a scowl as he stepped down from the technical, watching with disgust as the polished metal of his boots instantly turned dull when they crunched into the red clay beneath him. The God King flipped his fur collar higher and lazily swiped his hair into place with practiced indifference as the crusaders on either side of him thundered forward into the village with weapons raised. His personal guard immediately began to establish a perimeter away from their King, herding and snapping at panicked townspeople with efficient, well trained, deadly ease. He took a moment to assess the terrified crowd of inhabitants that had collected in fearful groups. They were cowering in doorways and stumbling back over each other with hands raised in submissiveness as his vanguard roared orders to “Make way for Father Troy”, parents calling their scrawny children with frantic gestures to get inside their homes, no one giving even the slightest resistance to the demands of his retinue. These weren’t a threat.

Skinny. All of them. Malnourished, most in rags or barely clothed at all. Sickly kids stared at him from sunken eye-sockets over the jagged windows they peeked out of, this place was diseased. The few weapons he noted as he scanned across the crowd were rusted or poorly junked together out of scrap. These weren’t even bandits, bandits were more robust than this, these were just people. The forgotten of Pandora, the absolute bottom rung in the pecking order. People, trying to survive on a planet that you either sacrificed your morals to, or your life.

Something in his gut twisted in response to that. Something that he’d rather not think about as he strode into the village, his polished smile and immaculately clean outfit emphasising the wealth and power he held in stark contrast to the dust coated poverty he stalked into, he stood out like a wound here, twinkling jewelry and harsh metal spines of his cybernetics glinting in the evening sun. The commanding presence he emanated was amplified by the crusaders who flanked him on either side in their warped skull masks and dark leather armor, monochrome bar the neon splashed COV weapons and chrome spiked accessories they wore as uniform. No one kept God King Calypso waiting long, and the old woman stumbling towards him was clearly the town leader - considering the worried glances towards her from the rest of the villagers as they watched in nervous silence.

She stopped a couple of feet before him, not reacting to the weapons raised in unison by his vanguard, a tiny little woman, all pinprick brown eyes and brown craggy skin, who’s wispy white hair fluffs in the breeze like a cloud perched onto her scalp. She wasn’t remotely afraid, he could feel that straight away, but she bowed to him politely, spoke her crude little greeting respectfully through a dry old throat.

“Troy Calypso, welcome, majesty. Not sure why yer here, but what can we do for a God kind enough t’ grace us with his presence?”

He took the bait, sparkling smile spreading wider as his eyes narrowed , gesturing with a grand bow towards her to emphasise his reply:

“Oh, no, no ma'am, what can we do for you? That’s why I’m here. To get an answer to this tricky lil’ question at last.” he smarmed, standing to his full height again, golden fangs so clearly peeking out of the now wolf like grin as his eyes twinkled with mock kindness.

“The COV would love to welcome you into our family. Have wanted you to join for quite a while! I thought a… hah.. personal touch might help, came to have this polite chat with you myself, hope I wasn’t too forward.” he raised his mech fist slowly, counting off the bladed fingers theatrically as he continued.

“Food. Medicine. Safety. Guns. Protection, we offer the same benefits to all our followers, and we really do ask for so little in return - just your fealty, and that’s such a small th-”

“No thank you.” she croaked in reply, cutting him off mid sentence. The crowd behind her gasped in quiet shock at the rudeness, and the insult of her dismissal shot like a sniper round directly into the back of his brain. He reeled for a second, mouth souring out of the fake smile it had been locked into as he took a moment to scrutinise her wizened little face through a disapproving side-eye. The right panel of his maw twitched involuntarily - just quick enough for a flash of razor sharp teeth to catch the sunlight as it slid back into place.

He almost mouthed his thoughts, nearly warned her to not do this, not when there were people he had to maintain his reputation in front of, but he swallowed it down instead with an arrogant tilt of his head and flex of his lithe torso. Locked it deep in his belly and hoped she’d realise her mistake.

The old woman was expressionless, but wasn’t meeting his demanding stare. Her eyes were instead trained on the skull tattoo shifting across his chest with each controlled breath, was she aware of the knife-edge she was walking on? Did she know the danger she was really playing with? He closed the distance slowly, a subtle hand gesture commanding his guards to lower their weapons as he came close enough to her to hunch down, dropping his towering frame to bring his face closer to her eye level.

He said nothing for a moment, breathing in the smell of dust and old sweat she gave off in loud, deep huffs through his nose. She was shivering, not as stoic as he’d thought. He could see that now that he was so close to her throat.

Running his tongue over the front of his teeth, he sighed. Troy was tired. He wasn’t in the mood to play this game, even when he could see ten steps ahead and knew the direction she was making the terrible mistake of heading in. Letting the persona slip away, he lowered his voice, wanting to keep this between just them and out of range of the surrounding nearby crowd.

“Lady, help me out here... I’m confused. I’m fuckin’ insulted.” He muttered, jaw a little tighter than he wanted to acknowledge as he continued.. “Your town is too small to even tax, we ask nothing from a shanty this size. I waive tithes… ” Troy paused as he turned his mouth closer to her ear, close enough for the heat of his breath to prickle the hair on her neck, and lowered his voice further till it was barely a husky whisper.

“All the COV will ask from you is loyalty. You know I could level this shithole with a nod… right? You get that I could massacre aaalll these people with just a word? Why. Why would you deny us? These people, these kids are s-starving. These kids are sick. We- I can fix that, like this:”

He snapped his flesh fingers next to her ear, and bristled pleasurably at the wave of perverse satisfaction that rolled through his stomach when she jolted in response, her paper thin eyelids fluttering. Did she understand now, he wondered, flicking his piercing gaze to one of the skinny kids holding onto their mother’s leg nearby, and the look on their face as they stared at him, like they were realising the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t entirely make believe. Did she understand the out he was giving her, the genuine offer of charity hidden behind the God King’s sneer? That he couldn’t provide it unless she bowed and played along?

She shifted a little, her stiff old shoulders popping in complaint as she did, and finally raised those warm little brown eyes to meet his bitingly cold ice blue ones.

“I didn’t mean t’ insult his liege..” she breathed, and he waited for her to continue, waited to hear her out.

“Maybe you just got too big t’ understand. Maybe bein’ so strong can leave you soft in places you don’t know about anymore. Cuz’ starving to death? Bein’ sick?” she shrugged awkwardly, lowering her eyes to his chest again.

“We all die, but at least you’d still die free.”

That stab landed. He sucked in a jagged breath and held it, shaking. The moment of silence that followed felt like a millennia to the hundred people huddled around them, too far to hear what had been said, but close enough to see his reaction to it, see the jagged black metal spines of his vertebral implant raise and vent crackling red Siren energy in response to the berserk anger their leader’s muttered words had ignited in the King.

His fist tightened by her ear as his markings flared, and the pulse of scarlet light bathed them both in that moment, reflecting cruelly in the piercing eyes that bored into the side of her head as she refused to meet his stare.

The rage rolled off God King Calypso’s hulking frame in tangible waves... but the old woman did not waver.

He straightened slowly, maw clicking and twitching in fury as he rose. A stringy line of drool slavered from the split mandible and landed at her feet as his eyes narrowed, and Troy smiled at her, his jaw clipping together into a friendly grin so transparently hostile you could see the fangs snapping into place behind it. His eyes scanned the crowd rapidly, pausing imperceptibly on each of those scrawny kids that hid their faces from him now, terrified past their curiosity. OK. If this is the way she wanted to play..

Then he’d do the same. ”Fine”, he barked, voice clear and loud, making sure every villager would hear what he had to say, that all eyes were locked on him as he continued. “No problem ma’am. I’m not a man to push my kindness on others. Good luck with your..." he paused to crack a false laugh, shifting his eyes to the nearest family - “Your uh.. “dying free”.” He winked at them, and then his entire demeanor shifted purposefully, making a scene of dropping the playful act and warping into grim disgust as his gaze snapped back to her, still refusing to meet his eyes. He began to turn, and gestured for his retinue to follow, their boots crunching through the dirt as they stormed to his side. He made one final pause as the reached their vehicles and looked back, lifting his monstrous cybernetic arm to wave playfully at the gathered people, watching with satisfaction as a few cringed when the bladed fingers caught the dying sunlight. “By the way!” he bellowed, commanding their absolute attention again as his mouth split into a wolfish grin. “If you need any help with components for building all those little kid sized coffins, give us a call, yeah? We’ll cut you a good deal.” The looks they shared were a reassurance at least. Maybe someone would listen after all.

*******

"Fucking MOVE” he hissed at his driver as a crusader closed the car’s door after him, and they gassed it at his command, the hulking technical’s tires spinning a cloud of debris towards the town's inhabitants as they covered their eyes and coughed. He couldn’t get out of this shit-hole fast enough. Couldn’t get far enough from those *children* and the way they’d looked at him, he flicked his eyes to the rear view mirror and felt a cold chill through his burning chest as they faded into the dust behind the convoy. That stupid woman. That stubborn old bitch. She’d let them die rather than bend a fucking knee. He was disgusted, and not fully sure who with. Slamming his boot into the back of the partition in front of him and feeling the car swerve as the driver jolted, he screamed “Drop the DAMN DIVIDER, YOU MORON!!” - panting in anger as they fumbled in panic to hit the switch and activate the internal armor at his demand. He’d barely managed to keep the storm of emotion brewing inside him contained when they finally found it, and felt a wave of relief when the reinforced metal screen closed between them, giving him privacy at last. Troy hunched forward in his seat and pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes closed and desperately trying not to sob. What the fuck had just happened back there? He wanted to cry, his heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest and he couldn’t seem to get enough air, lungs heaving as he shuddered in gasps while trying to swallow down the panic. What had happened? In 6 years of recruiting, 6 years since the COV had reached a level of power where they were no longer told no, he’d never encountered anything like that situation. He wasn’t prepared for it, he’d never had to deal with this mix of completely opposing emotions before. Standing there looking at sick kids he knew could help so easily, but knowing that under the scrutiny of his vanguard and the terrified eyes of the villagers, he couldn’t break character to do it. He ran his flesh fist into his hair and gripped hard into the dark mess, pulling sharply at his scalp as he crumbled further forward, head nearly between his knees as he trembled. Trying to give that bitch an out, trying to be clear in his cunning, emphasising what he was offering, and being denied the only route he had to help them by a weak old woman too proud and stubborn to give the nothing he asked for in return. Nothing! Some COV propaganda plastered about the town would have been more than enough, it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t understand. No one said no. No one denied them. He hissed as the first tear spilled down his cheek, then threw himself back into the seat and *screamed*, bludgeoning the massive mech arm into the steel divider. Not caring if the driver heard him choking out tears. Not caring if they told the others, not caring about anything anymore bar those kids, and how sick he’d been, and how powerless he was now even when he paraded himself as a God, how much of a lie it was. He had no control. He had to act the part, always, even when it was something he hated, when it wasn’t what he wanted. Troy snarled as the hot wet slick under the bracer and the telltale burn along his delicate scarred shoulder became noticeable, but didn’t stop, hammering the metal over, and over, as the agonising jolts buckled the arms outer plating more with each blow. His voice was starting to crack between sobs, wheezing on the intake as his weak lungs began to fail, but he had to spew this bile out now, knowing he couldn’t risk trying to carry this level of emotional turmoil into the Holy City while hoping the mask didn’t slip in front of Saints, or his sister. He was a fake. No God would be sobbing like this, having a tantrum alone in the back of a damn car.

Nothing about him was fucking real. That woman had seen it, she’d looked right through him like he was glass. Straight past the bluster and fangs, to the stammering, sick, broken, weak man he’d thought he’d hidden, and known she could say no. Known straight away that she was stronger than him. He’d thought.. he’d hidden that person.. so well. Coughing a final sob as his ruined arm shuddered on damaged pistons and slid to his side, he lifted his left to cover his face, slumping back in his seat, silent now bar for the pained hiccups that followed. God. He didn’t know what to do.. Part of him wanted to say screw it, order an airdrop of supplies off the books. Food, medicine, some guns. Anything to give them a chance out there. He was in charge of finance, no one would need to know, maybe he could manage it and keep his reputation intact... But the other part of him wanted to send the command to have the fucking shit-hole razed to the ground. How’s your freedom taste now, while slag melts the flesh off your bones you stupid old bitch. Troy coughed quietly, sinking lower into the seat as he rested his sore neck against the curve of the headrest, trying to steady his breathing as he forced himself to calm. There was no longer any sound outside, no shouting or broadcasts, just the dull roar of the convoy’s engines, like white noise in the back of your mind. The same craggy Pandoran landscape raced past as before, but pitch dark now, the only light being what streamed from the vanguard vehicle’s headlamps. Suddenly, the technical bounced over a bump in the dirt track and he winced as he jolted forward, then nervously lifted the front of his coat as he felt a trickle down his right side, sighing in embarrassed defeat as he saw the blood seeping from under the bracer seam resting against his lower ribs. Perfect, he thought, banging his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes.

Wonderful, he’d really made the right choice with that breakdown, huh. The arm was junked, his shoulder was torn to pieces, and he’d probably lost his voice. Tyreen was going to eat him alive, if she even noticed, he reminded himself with a humorless snort, too tired to even manage a sneer. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his Echo, sniffing as he bent his head to rub his eyes on his forearm, too blurry with tears and mascara to see the display clearly. He didn’t know what to do. But she would, wouldn’t she. He slowly thumbed through the 2 years of unanswered messages, all read, over and over on nights when things were bad, but none responded to. All from her. Checking in if he was ok, repeating it hadn’t been all his fault, letting him know she was still right there if he ever needed her. She’d know. He could ask. He could ping her right now, and she’d know what to say straight away. She’d point him in the right direction, dig the worry out of his chest and slap the back of his head with a few blunt words of choice like she always managed. Seifa would know.. He didn’t realise how hard he was gripping the E-Dev till a straggling tear dropped to his bone white thumb knuckle, and he blanched, snapping out of his lost thoughts as he shook his head. With one last glance at her messages, he tapped the display button and dropped the Echo to his lap, then lifted his shaky hand to wipe at his eyes, feeling the oily shift of streaked eyeliner under his fingers. He needed a fucking shower. He was so tired. ****

Had so much fun writing this and appreciate any and all feedback and comments! If you’re interested in the Leech Lord Borderlands 3 AU, check out my pinned post and the tag on my feed for all the content.

#Borderlands #borderlands 3 #bl3 #troy calypso #tyreen calypso #calypso twins #seifa #leech lord #my hcs #my writing

59 notes · View notes

muffinwalloper · 4 years ago

Text

Book vs. Film

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) is the first film I enjoyed MORE than the book it's based on – and here's WHY (spoilers):

The Characters

First of all, I loved the cast! Especially Carey Mulligan, Michael Sheen and Matthias Schoenaerts, three actors talented beyond compare and simply PERFECT for their parts.

The costumes looked realistic and were in tune with the characters wearing them. Also, the dialogues were true to the book where necessary but also optimized so they didn't sound too aloof or too simple without losing the authenticity of dialogues written in the Victorian era.

Bathsheba

In the book, Hardy describes a heroine who is mainly characterized by her independence. However, she's still young (early 20s) and makes mistakes. Whereas Bathsheba in the book sometimes comes across as rash and even downright cruel (almost every time in regards to the men in her life), Mulligan's performance shows us a prideful woman who is also a bit naïve which makes her a more relatable character than in the book and also more likeable. There are explicit scenes of her doing hard work and also making tough decisions which is clearly not expected from a young woman at that time. Mulligan shows us a her determination to to make a living with her farm and bring back it's former glory days through efficiency but also her insecurities regarding her new role as head of a household. It's easy to identify with her in that matter. Furthermore, despite of all the things that happen to her (the fire, her husband, etc.) she's never portrayed as a victim but as a capable individual who faces anything that life throws at her, never giving up true to her headstrong nature. Apart from that, Bathsheba is never intentionally cruel in the film which shows mostly in her relationship to Mister Boldwood. For one, the valentine she sends him is much more harmless than it is in the book (she wrote the words 'Marry me'!). We understand that it was originally meant as a prank for a man who ignored her so profoundly. This reminds us once more of her youth and naivety for not even thinking about the possible consequences of her actions. In the book, the idea to prank a man like Boldwood seems to come out of nowhere and furthermore out of a very dark humoured, almost sadistic corner of her soul.

Even though, her behaviour can be irritating in the film as well, we understand exactly why she's doing what she's doing. Again, Mulligan's performance is FLAWLESS!

Gabriel

As for Gabriel Oak, he's portrayed exactly the way he was described in the book. He had a good, loyal and true nature. His advice to Bathsheba is never forced or arrogant and their friendship is shown wonderfully through the years. It's not a love at first sight story, at least not on her part. But Gabriel ends up to be the man any working woman would wish for. He's there whenever she needs him, he offers support in work as well as morally. By the end of the film it gets clear that he's become her most trusted companion and the only one she can talk to about anything, despite having a female friend, Liddy, at her disposal. Gabriel furthermore is no stranger to suffering both emotionally in regards to Bathsheba as well as existentially speaking (that sheep scene killed me!). With every passing moment between them we realise that he's exactly what she needs and is actually looking for without realising it. Gabriel never judges her and stays by her side until the end. However, in the film he's quite quickly made the obvious choice due to cinematic reasons which I thought wasn't necessary.

Boldwood

William Boldwood's character is easily the most changed one from book to film. At this point, HUGE credits to Michael Sheen whose performance single handedly saves the character! Boldwood is Weatherbury's most eligible bachelor, rich, handsome and respected, in other words: for a woman at that time he's the obvious choice. Boldwood, however ignores her at the beginning which is something new for Bathsheba. It's also why she decides to send a valentine with a classic rhyme of roses and violets to Boldwood, intended as a joke. But Boldwood, a lonely man as we learn reads much more into it and asks her to marry him. In the film, she lets him down gently, explaining that she made a mistake and does neither want nor need a husband. Still, she promises him to at least think about his proposal. In the book her actions are far more egoistic. She doesn't let him off the hook at all until she's accepted Troy's proposal. In the meantime, Boldwood has fallen madly in love with Bathsheba and is trying rather desperately to get her to change her mind. In the book he even goes so far as to find Troy and beg him not to marry Bathsheba, even offers him money. I hated this scene in the book for it's disrespectful towards Bathsheba and makes Boldwood much more pathetic than he is in the film. While Boldwood appears rather desperate in the film as well, he's not nearly as creepy as he is in the book where his behaviour gets almost stalkerish. In the film we see an older gentleman who's hopelessly in love and absolutely heartbroken by Bathsheba's rejection, however, he respects her decision. Also, there are some extra scenes between Boldwood and Gabriel which let us see that Boldwood is actually a man of good character but doesn't handle rejection well. What makes it even harder to watch on his behalf is the fact that the film gives us moments that indicate that there is something building between Bathsheba and Boldwood (or could be but she decides not to let it happen) whereas in the book their interactions consist of him turning up at her doorstep unannounced and unwanted with her being too polite to send him away. After Troy's disappearance, Bathsheba's farm falls into an existential crisis and Boldwood offers to help her out financially under the condition that she marries him. While this move is much closer to the Boldwood in the book it's somehow made understandable by what we've seen of him until this point. For Boldwood, Bathsheba represents his last chance at happiness or else, so he feels, he's going to die alone. I have no doubt that Sheen's Boldwood is just as obsessive as his book counterpart and therefore would have been the wrong choice for Bathsheba. But in contradiction to book Boldwood, I actually felt sorry for the man. His ending surprised me in the book, as well as in the film for I had originally anticipated that he was going to kill himself eventually. When he killed Troy I couldn't help but think, well, good riddance but Boldwood, in my opinion deserved better.

Troy

The film also does Francis Troy a lot of good. We get to see him suffer from bad timing and jumping to wrong conclusions in the film which makes him appear nothing but human. That doesn't change the fact that he's still the obvious WRONG choice but we get a better view on Frank's personality and his internal conflict. I still didn't like him but as with Boldwood, I felt sorry for him at some point. Also, in the book I failed completely to understand what Bathsheba saw in him of all men but watching the film I did. Her choice to marry Frank does not contradict with her independence and freedom because she thinks that she's in love and that's all she wants/needs. She's head over the hills for this daring soldier who doesn't court her like a gentleman (like Boldwood in the film) but openly pays her compliments and after a short while, to put it bluntly simply goes for it. Bathsheba is a stranger to such passion and it whisks her off her feet. The fact that Troy is a gambler and a drunk only comes to light after their wedding which is realistic as well as dramatic for it takes us (and Bathsheba) not long to realise that she made a mistake. In the end, Troy gets what he deserves, rightfully so in regards to Bathsheba, however, as with Boldwood, he appears more human in the film then the book and his actions are at least comprehensible. Again, I'm so grateful they left out the scene between him and Boldwood!

2. The feminist idea

I think for Hardy it was essential to let his heroines suffer which makes sense in a way that any woman who dares to swim against the current especially at that time is mostly met with criticism and rejection from society. After Tess of the d'Urbervilles I think he was rather mild on Bathsheba. Still, it seems logical that a feminist woman at that time would face the same obstacles as any woman but with a different focus. For one Bathsheba is described as an independent being who faces judgement because of that from the very beginning. Second, as she takes over her uncle's farm it seems that nobody expects her to do actual work. The same goes for business on the market, the man's world through and through which is shown perfectly as she enters the room and every man turns to stare at her as if her mere presence is a scandal. Her first day on the market is shown from her perspective and the reactions of her male competitors are just what you'd expect. When she names the price for her corn, her first customer immediately tries to beat down the price. It's Bathsheba's first test and she manages just as well as a man would by not backing down. I felt like the feminism came across better in the film because it was shown more explicitly, whereas in the book it works as an underlying theme which is not a bad way for a book but wouldn't work in a film. Instead, the film chose Bathsheba's independence as a theme, romanticising it a little bit but again, for a film this works rather well.

When it comes to marriage, Bathsheba seems to hold her own very well, too as she rejects two men's proposals regardless of how good a match they appear to be. With Gabriel she fears that he would not be able to handle her nature and “grow to despise [her]” which some see as a weakness but I felt it looked like a strength of a woman who knows herself. With Boldwood, she's in no need of a husband and makes clear (on several occasions) that she doesn't need a protector which Boldwood would very much like to be for her. Bathsheba is perfectly capable of looking out for herself and the men at that time (some still today) are not used to that. Through this theme, the film and the book show us that as soon as a woman doesn't NEED a man the man quickly runs out of reasons to convince her of marriage at all which underlines the fact that at that time it was mostly about tradition and standard and hardly ever about love but of women being dependent on men.

The film's theme is also beautifully laced into almost every scene, for example at her farm's gathering where Bathsheba plays a song which sums up her entire world view:

“Beware, beware keep your garden fair

Let no man steal your thime....”

However, in the end Bathsheba learns that she does indeed need help from time to time but is too proud to ask for it. It's Gabriel that makes her overcome said pride and in doing so, helps her to grow. Gabriel is the one man whose loyalty stays unwavering and yet he's also the man she runs after twice. Gabriel is the man she needs but it takes her a long time to realise that because she's actively fighting it as to accept it would mean the end of her freedom to her. It's ironic that she traps herself in an unloving marriage with Troy but she does so believing to make the right choice for herself which is realistic in my opinion for she's only in her early twenties. When Gabriel confronts her with her naivety she reacts angrily for she feels as if he's attacking her as a woman and therefore eroding her authority which she cannot stand. But here she's in the wrong because Gabriel is only worried for her well being which she doesn't recognise until the very end. In her fight for her independence and freedom Bathsheba has lost her way and sees attackers where there are none which is shockingly realistic. Therefore, I feel it's unfair to judge Bathsheba by her reactions which are when you keep her position in mind quite understandable. And yet, Gabriel stays without judging or belittling her which is why it had to be them in the end.

#i did a thing #book vs movie #far from the madding crowd #Carey Mulligan #michael sheen #matthias schoenaerts #feminism #femisim in books #thomas hardy #bathsheba everdene #gabriel oak #William Boldwood #frank troy

7 notes · View notes

dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years ago

Text

Dragon Dancer IV: Pas de Trois

The knife that had been hovering near against my throat retracted somewhat and I felt a growing numbness in the skin covering my windpipe. Ru’Yi, swaddled in my arms, had fallen fast asleep and I laid her carefully onto the floor and stood as well.

Across the room from me, Nono held the replica Tongzi and slowly turned to face her opponent while Chu Zihang dragged the naked, bloody and unconscious form of Mingfei Lu into the corner of the room as far away from them as he could.

“You arrived a while back. Isn’t that right? You waited until the right time to show yourself. We actually led you here.” Nono said, “They call your kind ‘Executioners’, don’t they?”

She stared gravely at the shadow. A hovering blade still threatened, pointing at her forehead, right between her eyes.

The shadow spoke, “Isabel and the others are too reckless. Why do things out in the open when we can do them quietly?”

Nono didn’t flinch as the blade drew closer. “I should have been more careful. No matter how arrogant those big shots at the College are, they wouldn’t send such low-rank hybrids after us without sending a properly train high-ranker to follow them.”

I recognized the voice in the shadow.

Susie!

The numbness in my throat now felt like a swelling, and when I tried to alert Nono, I coughed.

The sound of heels on a soft wood floors reached my ears. Susie’s slender figure stepped out of the shadows in a simple frilly summer dress. She looked ready to go for a refreshing stroll in the park.

Nono smirked. “You look good.”

“In Paris, a girl is supposed to dress up to meet her girlfriends just as well as she would to meet her lover.” Susie gently brushed her skirt. “If you want, I can introduce you to the designer.”

Every time I opened my mouth to say something my breath caught and I felt like I was going to choke. Nono looked back at me.

“Carli’s Soul Skill is troublesome.” Susie explained. “The Gear Department prepared a neurotoxin just for her.”

She was right. If I wanted to, I could temporarily incapacitate any hybrid within range by lowering their dragonblood purity with Release. While not a deadly skill like my spears of light, such a drastic degradation of dragon genes created severe weakness and cramping and could even render someone unconscious. Susie had remedied that by stopping me from speaking. I looked at Nono and shook my head, tapping my throat.

Nono’s expression stayed light. “And this is your Soul Skill I see. I thought you were like me and didn’t have one.”

“Scissor Dance. It’s not as common, but very suitable for assassination. The College doesn’t want too many people to know about it, so when they found this skill in me, they didn’t record it in the file.”

Despite that, I had experience with this sort of Soul Skill in Japan. In Tokyo Tower, standing next to Chisei Gen to face down Tachibana and Herzog. Sakura Yabuki had filled the air with spinning poison tipped blades that she had sent directly at Herzog. I didn’t understand the mechanism, but it was obviously a powerful skill.

In a moment, Susie had rendered me unable to end this battle as quickly as I could have, but she didn’t end the battle either.

“You didn’t even tell me about it, though?” Nono looked disappointed.

“People were saying you were a fake A-rank. So when you told me you had no Soul Skill, I said, neither do I. Because I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

I sighed, remembering how Susie had flown all the way to France to watch over me and Ru’Yi and stayed after the disaster on Christmas Eve that wiped the memory of Chu Zihang and made everyone believe I was a lunatic.

Even in my own memory, she had tutored me after Johann became very fond of me. It must have been painful for her to do that, but she did it anyway.

Susie was just that sort of person. Whatever you needed, she was there for you, rather it benefited her or not.

“Nono, Carli... please. Turn around before it’s too late.” Susie begged. “You’re different from Mingfei. You can choose not to be here. Carli...” She looked at me. “Think about your daughter. She’ll be an orphan if you die too. She’s still young enough. You can marry someone else. Someone else to be a father to her.”

“Nono, Caesar loves you. There’s no way he’d give you up to the School Board.”

“And what about Mingfei?” Nono shot back, suddenly tense.

“Institutionalized, minimal. While they see if he really harmed the principal or not...”

I opened my mouth but only a hoarse squeak emerged. Mingfei didn’t do it! Are they pursuing no other leads?

“They’ll probably exile him to the quarantine islands. That’s where they’ve held dangerous hybrids like him for centuries, no problem.”

“And if he turns out to be a Dragon King?” Nono tilted her head, eyes serious.

Susie was silent for a moment, “No one dares to keep a Dragon King around. Once they awake, they cease to remember who they once were. But they’ll be humane...”

“Humane?!” Nono laughed scornfully. “You talk about him like he’s a dog!” Her expression turned frigid.

“He’s not your dog!” Susie responded. “Even if he was, he’d be rabid. And there’s no cure!”

“You know, I’d like to say something mean but I don’t want to quarrel. He’s not my dog, and he’s not even really my little brother. I just cover for him because I want to.”

“Why?” Susie��s face fell, despairing and confused.

“When I was the saddest, I always wanted to have someone to encourage me...”

“What about Caesar?”

“After Caesar showed up I didn’t need anyone like that any more. I could handle my own problems.” Nono turned and looked at Lu Mingfei. ”I’m not talking about needing someone else for me. I’m talking about Mingfei needing me. I don't want to look at his sad, pathetic face! I have to fight the people who bully him. Got it?”

“So you’re doing it out of pity?” Susie sighed. “You’ve become the person he cares about most, and now you’re the person who can sadden him the most. It’s a catch-22.”

“Did I make a mistake? Maybe. If I don’t make this mistake though, who will? So I’ll deal with the consequences. Alright?” Nono’s voice relaxed again and she smiled.

Susie had to relent at that. “This is... just like you.” She gave a short little laugh. “Are... we still friends though?”

Nono nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

“Thanks.”

Even as a replica, the sword Tongzi was a powerful weapon, sharp enough to cut a horse in two with a single swing. Nono seemed to flash in front of Susie, swinging the blade in an upward cut.

Susie’s blade had retracted back to her hand in an instant to catch it in the air. It darted in like a snake, making a precise strike to cut the essential ligaments and tendons to render her unable to fight.

Like the poison tipped blade she’d used on me, her goal here was not to assassinate but to disable and capture.

When they separated, a piece of her skirt drifted to the floor.

Nono stayed on guard. Her hand felt that brush of cold metal against her skin. She’d only just escaped being wounded.

“You’ve gotten soft with domestic life Nono. I never used to be able to get that close...” Susie said. “While I’ve been killing since I got married. What have you been doing? Vacuuming drapes?”

I watched them carefully. Nono was an expert at profiling and while this soul skill was a surprise, Susie was someone Nono knew best. She would catch up quickly. I shifted my eyes to Chu Zihang who was watching the women slowly circle each other with an intense fascination.

He hadn’t learned the lesson that he taught yet. That the enemy would watch the eyes of their opponent.

So I lowered my eyes to Ru’Yi and pretended to be concerned with her while eying the fight in my peripheral vision.

“You charge me first. You want to target my weapon... but what is my real weapon?” Susie asked slowly. “I’m not going to come empty handed in a fight with you.”

“I know that anything metal in the room can become your weapon... but I just have to be fast enough right? You have unlimited ammunition, but it takes time to magnetize the objects you want to use,” said Nono. “I just have to knock you out and leave.”

Magnetism? Susie was like Magneto? I regretted that she wasn’t actually on our side.

“Let him go, Nono!” Susie gritted through her teeth. “It will be better for both of you!”

“How could I forgive myself in the future if I just let him die!”

“You want to talk about the future?!”

I suddenly shuddered as the whispered draconic seemed to come from all corners of the warehouse. The floor behind Nono shattered and lifted, the nails in the wooden planks in the floor had melted together to form a razor sharp disc, flying directly at her neck as Susie threw the blade in her hand.

I screamed but nothing came out.

Nono suddenly ducked down into a fetal position.

The magnetized disc behind her met the spinning blade in front of her. They collided almost silently, sticking together in mid air, before falling to the ground.

Nono smirked. “Two magnets will attract each other.”

Susie’s face changed color and then she scowled.

Already, Nono had identified the main weaknesses of her ability: the time it took to magnetize objects and the fact that the laws of magnetism applied to these flying objects. If they got too near to each other, they could be stick to each other.

It suddenly occurred to me: My blade Tongzi was no ordinary blade. It was a blade made from alchemy materials, specifically dead metal from the Nibelungen. This metal couldn’t be magnetized!

I ran forward, drew Tongzi and flung it like a javelin! The swooping sound of the blade soaring through the air was like an arrow in flight.

Susie directed her metal blade to block it, but the alchemy knife shattered it like glass. She dove to the floor at the last second and the blade cut into her shoulder before embedding into a metal barrel against the far wall. A clear brown liquid spilled out.

I kept running to get my sword back.

Before she could recover and retaliate, Nono pulled the blade from the disc on the ground and pinned Susie’s arm to the wood floor by her sleeve.

I pulled Tongzi from the barrel and backed away. It was kerosene fuel pouring out of it. I lamented Royal Fire being gone.

“Nono! Stop fighting! You don’t stand a chance!” Surrounded, Susie’s desperation grew as she grew aware that she’d underestimated us, particularly Nono’s stubbornness.

Susie’s eyes turned golden and her skirt was filled with blue electric light. Her long hair was flying due to ionization like a goddess of thunder. The floor shattered in a circle around her. Countless blades formed from the dark iron nails.

Nono backed away in shock, not realizing her Soul Skill had such a wide scope.

Tongzi in hand, I looked at Susie’s back. The alchemy sword would disable any Hybrid’s self curing ability. I could stab her and she would fall and this would be over. But Nono and Johann would never forgive me.

That second of hesitation lost me the opportunity. Countless blades flung at Nono from all directions!

Much to my dismay, Nono gripped her sword and ran directly at them!

"No!” Susie’s face filled with horror. If she expected Nono to retreat from her, she had miscalculated again.

I ran forward, even though I knew it was too late for me to stop what was happening either.

Tears were in my eyes, in Nono’s eyes, in Susie’s eyes.

Right then, a huge black shadow fell from above. A two meter high bookshelf descended, with book flying everywhere, blocking the way between Nono and the flying blades. Nono collided with it head first.

Two of the knives still made it through and cut into Nono but the rest were halted by the hardwood and the countless thick encyclopedias.

Susie’s relief was short lived.

Chu Zihang barreled forward with the eyes of a demon, swinging the replica Spider Fang with deadly intent.

His manner before was so diffident and child-like, she’d dismissed him as a civilian but now he’d become a combatant!

She scrambled away, as the blade arced perilously close to her chest and stomach! She desperately threw out metal blades in her defense but he cut them away as though swatting flies.

I could only stand still as my brain connected the dots. He’d thrown the bookshelf.

Susie staggered against the barrels of kerosene.

Nono had climbed out from under the pile of books. “Stop! She’s not someone you can deal with!”

Zihang, expressionless, held the sword in one hand and a lighter in the other.

My eyes widened and my lungs filled with air. I would have yelled, “Don’t!” But my voice was paralyzed.

He dropped the lit lighter at Susie’s feet. Fire spread instantly around her.

I ran as fast I as I could back to Ru’Yi. While Nono was yelling. “What the hell?! Why did you do that?!”

A wall of flame rose to the ceiling. I knew the warehouse would be filled with smoke in mere seconds. Nono was already grabbing Lu Mingfei. Susie had stood to hurry towards Nono, but Chu Zihang stood between them. My hand on the door, I watched as she asked him.

“Who are you?!”

I sighed to myself and whispered. “He was the love of your life.” And hurried outside.

#Chen Moutong #Nono #Chu Zihang #Johann Chu

1 note · View note

strechanadi · 6 years ago

Text

Swan Lake - no longer a fairy tale

Right, so... Nobody asked me to, but something so marginal cannot stop me, clearly, so I went and translated the longest, the trickiest, the most profound review I have ever written. (And that includes POB Giselle, Swan Lake and Onegin! OK. Maybe not Onegin. But since I’ve done this one I can almost make myself believe I could give translating Onegin a go as well.) (She said and then promptly kill herself before she could made another clearly, completely and utterly deranged decision.)

Half of the things don’t make sense, I’m sure. And I can only hope they made sense in the original. (Which they probably didn’t, let’s be real, but since when this matters to me anyway?) (God, I literally cannot stop babbling, somebody strangle me or something. Or at least take the keyboard from my grabby and apparently very high fingers, that decided to simply vomit words after words for no real reason and with no brain to mouth/fingers filter whatsoever!)

It’s in times like this I truly wish to be able to write in an actual English language. Or for my mother language to be a world language, not some beautiful, hot mess, but a mess nonetheless, from the middle of nowhere. A mess I despite of everything love dearly and even live in this illusion of me being really pretty good in using (or more like playing with) it.

What is also clear - I, for a reason not known to humans, love to write absurdly, ridiculously long sentences. Be it just up to me, I’d write a whole review in one obscure linguistic construction I call a perfectly normal sentence. I was told however, that English doesn’t really do or like such things, so I tried to shorten them. Or some of them. Was really unbelievably succesfull doing so...

No reason to prolong this now, I guess?

So just, please be patient. Or benevolent. Or try to laugh in private at least! Look, I tried and I know it’s actually rather pathetic to be so spectacularly bad in English grammar, that I supposedly learnt from the age of 5 (but then spent more than 15 years actively hating the whole language, which... doesn’t make sense, I admit, but maybe explain some things), but... I mean, it would be better than google translate, if anything else. It HAS TO be!

As always - I appologize for anything and everything I did to the poor English language. It doesn’t deserve such a poor treatment.

Were there anybody who would feel personally attacked by my sheer ignorance of the basics of language of Shakespeare, Byron or Shelley and would want to make this thing better, let me know! (Even though I am afraid there are so many mistakes, your eyes will be bleeding around the end of 2nd paragraph...)

Last one - I have no idea how in/definite articles work!

(Good thing I don’t write fiction of any sort, ANs would be longer than the actual thing.)

Swan Lake, no longer a fairy tale

Whenever the two words – Swan Lake – were mentioned, everybody had some universally shared idea of the final picture. Nothing has drastically changed with John Neumeier (1976, Illusionen – wie Schwanensee), who mixed the original fairy story with events from prince Ludwig II of Bavaria’s life, nor with Mats Ek (1987), whose prince was torn between imaginary princess Odette and real life Odile, nor with Jean-Christophe Maillot (2011, Le Lac) and new relations between his main characters, not even with Alexander Ekman (2014, A Swan Lake), who came back in time and took a look at the first premiere of said ballet in 1877 and tried to make a rather poetic story about what from certain point was started to be called a fiasco. As if the later Petipa/Ivanov version needs any more boost…

The unshakable certitude was irretrievably broken in 1995 by Matthew Bourne. His Swan Lake was new, daring, bold, with unexpected twists and one could not left theatre feeling indifferent after seeing it. Part of the ballet world turned its back to such profanity of beloved classic. The other part fell for its captivating charm, and since in 2018 Bourne’s Swan Lake came back to his New Adventure’s repertoire for umpteenth time, after hundreds of successful shows, many tours across the globe, adorned with every possible theatre and dance awards, it seems clear who were right then, 24 years ago.

The most common characteristic of Bourne’s Swan Lake is „the male one“. Prince is in the centre of attention, black swan Odile is changed into unknown Stranger, and most obviously – all the swans became purely men’s business. Which opens completely new perspective for male dancers and saying that this ballet has a major influence to whole generations of artists is hardly an overstatement.

Bourne follows the original structure and basic frame of Swan Lake. There are still four acts, act one follows the Prince, his character, the environment he’s living in, relations he has, act two is for the swans, act three still represents the ball, and in act four, where traditionally the Prince is coming back to the lake, here the swans appear in prince’s room. Many times even the formal structure is intact – the prince’s solo at the end of act one, pas de quatre of both little and big swans, or Bourne’s take on character dances in act three. Even the entrée of swans in second act follows the same space structure of the Ivanov’s original /aka swans are coming one after the other and crossing the stage from left to right (dancers‘ perspective)/.

Oedipal Complex, repressed sexuality, low self-esteem

Bourne’s Prince, his personality, is more than ever influenced by his upbringing, by the estrangement of aristocratic background, his world constantly controlled, constricted by rules and rituals, with no spaces for affection, understanding, empathy, every emotion being replaced by duty. Bond between son and mother the Queen (ice cold, distant Katrina Lyndon for whom one cannot feel an ounce of sympathy, or more emotional, but still dismissive Nicole Cabera) is minute, almost non-existent, which has such a strong impact on the introverted, socially inept, insecure Prince, who is on top of all that haunted by strange dreams about swans. The feeling of lacking something gets even worse when he clearly sees his mother is more than capable of showing emotions, particularly towards another young men.

During yet another military parade or boat christening or exhibition opening, the heir to the throne is met with a bit silly, ill-mannered and completely unsuitable girl for his royal life (incomparable Carrie Willis, whose interpretation makes her character pretty sweet with candid, open-hearted warmth), who shortly after became his girlfriend and went with the family to the opera house to watch a ballet performance. Staging theatre scenes within the actual production /we call it theatre on theatre, which probably doesn’t make sense in any other language then ours, sorry/ is always very rewarding. Bourne is on top of that master of choreographic punchline and this scene (to pas de trois from Act I music) combines all clichés from romantic sylphs, awaken Floras, forest beasts to well-built male heroes one could think of and is a joy to watch for its grotesqueness as well as for the subtle details in gestures, ballet quirky manner or choreographic pattern for those, who know where to look for them.

The prince is trying to find his freedom in a night club, but to no avail. He’s met there unexpectedly with his frolicking girlfriend, then he got himself into a fight with one of her suitors (or maybe rather clients) and at the end his soul is beaten for good, when he has to watch the royal secretary paying some money to the one girl, whose affections he believed were genuine. (And it kind of doesn’t matter they most probably truly were.)

The only logical solution for the prince is a suicide. But before he’s able to throw himself into waters of a small park lake, majestic Swan appears and everything is changed at once. Traditional swans‘ corps de ballet danced by women is often associated with delicate elegance, crystalline beauty, dreamy atmosphere and aesthetics of homogeneously moving bodies. Swan is becoming a pure ideal almost as if from ancient Greece. Bourne’s swans are first and foremost animals, he’s not denying their grace, but is showing their slight awkwardness and ridiculousness in some movements at the same time. His swans are wild, independent, fetterless. Looking sinister when lining up to attack the prince, their physical, natural power strengthened by additional slapping arms, stamping feet, hissing and dangerously sharp, audible breathing. The Swan alone is very wary of the prince, uncompromisingly harsh, defensive, with sharp edges of aggressiveness that serves as self-defence of this imposing, powerful creature from anybody who would think of causing any harm. The almost imperceptible gestures calling the prince towards him are even more meaningful then, the moment when he nuzzles prince’s chest indescribably intimate.

Next evening there’s a ball at the palace. And even though it may seem the main reason of it is prince’s engagement thanks to all the ladies present, it’s the queen in her bright crimson dress amongst all black gowns who is in the spotlight. While her son doesn’t even know, what he should be doing with all said ladies. Break from routine comes with mysterious Stranger, whose raw, animalistic charisma draws every female’s attention to him, which he welcomes with great satisfaction. At the same time it also affects, quite unintentionally, the utterly unprepared prince, because Stranger’s arrogant dominance has something from Swan’s animalistic fierce. /Dear English language, you have many words. More than my mother language. But you have exactly nothing that would or could match prchlivost. Or at least I am unable to find it./ As Odile in original libretto, the Stranger dances his way through character dances (the Neapolitan one stands out with its light-hearted fun it makes of cliché Italian relationships) and finds his dancing peak in duet with the queen (music of so called Black Swan Pas de Deux). It is when prince’s psyche breaks and he, in his imagination, is thrown in arms of unknown to be faced with intimacy, sensuality, sexual tension and even the most basic physical contact, everything so strong even person of sound mind would probably find it difficult to cope. Therefore, when the Stranger kisses the queen, prince is there with gun in his hands and complete madness in his eyes. In chaotic situation gunshot is heard (although not by prince’s pistol), prince’s girlfriend falls dead and terrified young man is drawn away.

The tragedy is inevitable. To padded cell, where the prince is held, come doctor with the queen followed by group of nurses with queen’s face, whose hairstyle and white uniform may resemble the demonic nurse Ratched from the Miloš Forman’s film Flew over the cuckoo’s nest. After certain medical procedure (just shy from lobotomy) the prince is taken to his room, where the miserable, wounded Swan emerges from his bed. Shortly after he is followed by irritated flock of other swans, that throw themselves unbridled on the young man and then even on their supposed leader, doing so with brutality growing with every Swan’s desperate attempt to save his prince. The Swan dies at the end after their fatal, almost fanatical attack. And with him die prince’s illusions, dreams, hopes and then he himself. So when the Queen comes in the morning, all she finds is her son’s dead body, the sight of the Swan embracing his prince behind the bed the only, yet bittersweet comfort for the audience.

As many other versions of this famous ballet, this too strengthens psychological aspect of the story and deepens characters‘ personalities. Here, more than ever, the contours of main characters are pretty blurry. The prince and the Swan are blending into one, they are reflected in the other, full of opposites they are complementing each other, one would say they are like two sides of the same coin. /Ha!/ Bourne on top of that let his characters to blend with different original ones. Where in traditional Swan Lakes it’s Odette weeping at the beginning of the last scene, here it’s the Prince, who is going through mental breakdown in striking resemblance to Giselle’s mad scene. The role of Rothbart, the sorcerer, is played by the royal secretary as well as prince’s own mother, who at the same time plays a part of original Siegfried during the act 3 ball, when being seduced by Stranger, who is Odile. What may seem as confusing chaos at first sight, makes perfect sense in the end and strengthens the unquestionably dark tones of Bourne’s choreographic vision.

Artistic approaches or One man’s meat is another man’s poison…

As it always is with story ballets, individual artistic interpretation is something that has the power to change the final image of said piece. In case of Bourne’s Swan Lake and its current stars, the outcome may be completely different with each cast.

Where Liam Mower was bored, annoyed, slightly defiant teenage Prince, Dominic North’s hero was more tired, depressed young man with no illusions, very well aware of all his flaws and inability to fulfil all expectations of his social role, while James Lovell, who seemed most out of touch with reality, emphasized prince’s childishly pure, honest naivety. If the suicide attempt of Mower’s prince was more than anything a dramatic gesture, North was simply resigned to its inevitability, and Lovell threw himself into the waters with absolute, desperate abandon, his mind not able to see any other solution. Each and every prince is then influenced by his Swan and Stranger (and every Swan and Stranger by his prince).

Matthew Ball, the newest principal of the Royal Ballet, can rely on his first-class technique as well as on his unquestionable elegant stage presence. His pliable body felt the music to its very last molecule, every movement full of regal charm and classical beauty, which in a way brought Ball closer to traditional, delicately soft, feminine portrayal of Odette. His Swan was untouchable in his impeccable perfection, icily confident, aware of every gesture he made, of every prince’s fascinated glance. Max Westwell, former soloist of English National Ballet, concentrated more on the raw temperament, natural animal distrust, physical power and ferocity combined with enigmatic magnificence. Dynamics of his movements escalated at all times, was full of unexpected turns and transitions from strong, energetic endings, to exhalation captured in casual, seemingly ordinary movement of hanging wrist.

As the Stranger Ball looked like smug dandy enjoying himself and all the attention, all too well aware of his own youth and beauty, that make everybody fall for him. Personally though I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t as in charge as it might look at the first sight. He was mocking his prince, showing off ostentatiously. Weswell on the other hand was the embodiment of pure, uncompromising charisma. Interactions between him and Mower’s prince, who was impressed by Stranger’s unconventional, rough manners at first, was quickly becoming a tense fight for power, the prince trying to prove himself worthy of Stranger’s attention, to prove he’s his equal. With Lovell’s prince the seducing, open flirting, blatant sexuality was much more evident, which combined with this prince’s ingenuous innocence made the final picture unpleasantly sinister.

Regardless of different casts, ending of the ballet became a real emotional roller-coaster. With Matthew Ball and Dominic North equal in their complete despair when being sure of the inevitable death of their partner. Ball’s total resignation the more palpable, the more he was stubbornly, despite his injuries trying to stay or at least look unaffected on the outside. Change of Westwell’s Swan, in act 2 so independent and powerful, was shocking. Now he was utterly, hopelessly, painfully broken. He was defending both his princes against furious swans with rabid determination, with no self-preservation whatsoever, with perfect, devoted abandon. Bond between him and James Lovell’s prince was then strengthened by certain feel of responsibility, by tenderness that felt almost motherly. He was not only trying to protect, but to sooth, to give some comfort to his prince as well with physical contact, with touches stronger, more frequent, more expressive, more meaningful. That was why prince’s positively hysterical, agonizing grief hurt almost physically then.

Bourne managed something extraordinary. His Swan Lake with costumes by Lez Brotherson is as iconic, as legendary as the original ballet. His vision as strong as let’s say Ek’s Giselle. What’s more, Bourne’s ballet doesn’t age, it hasn’t lost any of its impact – thanks to slight costume, dramaturgic and choreographic changes, that only strengthen its drive. Prince’s hinted homosexuality won‘t shock anyone anymore as well as men swans won’t provoke such controversy, true. But thanks to these examples it is evident, that Bourne’s ballet is so much more than just a gay version of one famous story…

For everybody who actually reach the end of this madness - congratulations. And I am sorry.

#ballet #review #swan lake #matthew bourne's swan lake #selfpromo

14 notes · View notes

ciel-bell · 3 years ago

Note

could you do DC comics for the fandom ask game?

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

Dick Grayson my boy, my son, the light of my life

He’s the best part of everything he appears in, and he was probably the first ‘mainstream’ superhero I ever liked. My main experience with DC is through The New Teen Titans, so that’s probably why I like him so much.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

I have Larry Trainor brainrot right now lol:

Dudddddde I would do anything for him. ABSOLUTE peak character design. I said this in the last ask about Marvin the Martian, but every character with an obscured or nonexistent face is perfect in my book. I have so many pictures of this guy on my laptop lol.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

DONNA TROY (!!!!)

Please, DC. where is she. where is she. why

She’s definitely not an obscure character, but she rarely appears in anything anymore :(. She might actually be my favorite character in New Teen Titans? (difficult choice, since I adore them all lol. I haven’t even started to rant about Cyborg, Starfire, Beast Boy, etc) She’s absolutely a joy to read about, and I love love love the way Pérez draws her.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

The Doom Patrol! I was introduced to them through the Teen Titans cartoon, and I’ve always liked them, but I didn’t really get into Doom Patrol stuff until this year. I just finished the show, and now I’m working through the comics. And I absolutely adore them! Rita, Cliff, and the aforementioned Larry are my absolute favorites. I’ve never read or watched something so delightfully weird.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

Harley Quinn probably! She’s so horrible lol. Can’t help but love her

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

Batman is my second fave after Dick BUT seeing him suffer is so fascinating lol. I loved seeing his thought process and his actions in Death in the Family.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

I was talking about how much I love the Doom Patrol BUT that love is not extended towards every character. There are very few fictional characters period that I despise more than Mento. This is a hatred that has existed for most of my life lol. I used to think I was being unfair by judging him from his brief appearances in Titans media. But holy cow i hate him more and more with every appearance. He’s a stupid arrogant POS, and horrible to both Rita and Garfield.

#ask

1 note · View note

sagiow · 3 years ago

Text

Yay, tag game, thanks @tortoisesshells !!.... oh no it's about music. My musicality is deplorable. This is why it took so long to answer.

Rules: answer 8 prompts with 8 songs, then tag 8 people!

1. Your favourite song at the moment:

OLEEEE oleoleoleeeeee ooooleeee oooleee !

Hearing that in the Bell Center for the first time in over a year, just as loud despite there being only 2500 people, was an emotional moment for this Habs fan. Hopefully we also soon get to hear the other playoff classic nananana NANANANA hey hey hey gooood byyyyye

2. A song you associate with a favourite character or ship:

Once upon a time, Baby Fic Reader Me read a Mulder/Scully fic based on Alanis Morissette's Head Over Heels and it's been associated with these two "platonic friends" ever since.

3. A song that could be about you:

I'd love to say Bitch by Meredith Brooks but probably more Drive by Incubus.

4. A song you think is overrated:

I love our dear homeboy Leonard Cohen as much as the next Montrealer, but I wish people would give Hallellujah covers a break already.

5. A good song that reminds you of a specific memory

Home by Michael Bublé. Storytime, friends!

In 2009, I was living my best young adult life and life-long dream of working abroad, in Southern Germany. Only damper was, I had just begun dating a guy a month or so before leaving, right when I was absolutely not looking for a relationship, because my life was finally Going Places. But we had hit it off, things were fun, so while I was away, we wrote and Skyped a few times a week, keeping some long-distance momentum going.

When I had about a month left to my internship, he took some vacation time to come and visit and... well, let’s just say that was some weekend. And with it came the Oh...oh. moment that this maybe wasn’t just a casual fling, but might actually be someone I might actually want to be with for the long run. But that was absolutely not in The Plans!

So after dropping him off at the airport, and the confusing, conflicting, soul-searching workweek that followed, off I go on my typical weekend daytrip to see the surrounding sights, but somehow, my heart’s really not into it anymore. Maybe it’s the late Fall foggy weather, maybe it's my pathetically stalled German learning progress, maybe it’s tourism “been there, done that” overload. But then That F-ing Song starts playing... and I’m bawling my eyes out at 150kph in a Fiat Panda on the Autobahn.

So that’s when I knew that for all my Big Plans, all I wanted was to come home and give this guy a shot.

And 12 years and 2 kids later, I still think I made the right choice (although after lockdowns and curfews and no travelling for close to 2 years, we are waaay past due on another one of those weekend trips).

6. The last song you listened to:

My daughter's heartfelt rendition of a popping bop she composed and wrote in gibberish English, of which the only intelligible words were "break it down" and "tonight yay!" But the interpretive dance that went along with it was truly inspired.

7. A song that makes you laugh:

We listened to a lot of The Arrogant Worms in university, but because St-Jean-Baptiste Day is right around the corner, I'm gonna rec two Quebec classics: Hawaienne des Trois Accords (this was their first hit so the video is boring but all their songs are equally funny, such as “J’aime ta grand-mère”, “Dans mon corps de jeune fille”, and “Tout nu sur la plage”) and even though it was drastically overplayed 2 years ago, Coton Ouaté by Bleu Jeans Bleu, which asks the critically important question for us Crazy Weather Folks: Is it warm enough outside for just a sweater?

8. A song you want your mutuals to listen to:

Lara Fabian's interpretation of Serge Lama's Je suis malade. Those reaction vids are not overreacting. Listen to all her stuff while you're there, she’s phenomenal.

Double-tagging @jomiddlemarch @broadwaybaggins @mercurygray

@treasureplanetsheep and anyone else who wants to do play!

#tag game #stop by the spice girls also pretty much fills all answers #another fun story there

2 notes · View notes

alexandria1448 · 7 years ago

Text

All the single ladies

Reading all, or most, of an author’s oeuvre, one discerns patterns: in themes, in the shapes and tendencies of plots, in sympathies and biases. Ngaio Marsh’s 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries reveal their creator’s attentiveness to the vagaries and peculiarities of human psychology; her lively appreciation for the complexities of the English class system; her admiration for actors and artists; and her ability to devise fiendish ways of killing people. The narrator of these mysteries is consistently good company, standing above and to the side of the action, wearing (one imagines) a bemused smile.

Another pattern emerges about halfway through the series and intensifies as it draws to its end. This pattern involves a stock character: the lonely, unattractive, and sex-starved single woman, the aging spinster attempting without notable success to make her way in a social world that finds her pathetic at best, ridiculous and disgusting at worst.

In Clutch of Constables, published in 1968 when Marsh herself was 73, Agatha “Troy” Alleyn has a visceral reaction to Hazel Rickerby-Carrick: “The more exasperating she became … the sorrier Troy felt for her and the less she desired her company.” Her mingled pity and repulsion are apparent to Miss Rickerby-Carrick herself, who laments in her diary her own tendency to “try too hard.” This poor creature follows a string of similar characters in the Alleyn books. In Overture to Death (1939), we meet Miss Campanula (“a large arrogant spinster with a firm bust, a high-coloured complexion, coarse grey hair, and enormous bony hands”) and Miss Prentice (“a thin, colourless woman of perhaps forty-nine years”); these two are close friends and bitter rivals. Miss Campanula flings herself at the local rector, who describes the incident as “the most awful thing that has ever happened to me” but ascribes it to her being one of a “rather common type of church worker”: “ladies who are not perhaps very young and who have no other interests.” In Dead Water (1963), there is Miss Elspeth Cost, “a lady with vague hair and a tentative smile,” who is described by another character as “a manhunter”: “In her quiet, mousy sort of fashion, she raged to and fro seeking whom she might devour. Which was not many.” There are the three title characters of Spinsters in Jeopardy (1955), whose interchangeability forms the basis of the plot; someone observes that “all English spinsters have teeth like mares.” Looking at one of them, Inspector Alleyn notices “the other stigmata of her kind: the small mole, the lines and pouches, the pathetic tufts of grey hair from which the skin had receded.” Between the descriptions of physical flaws and the implication that menopause brings with it an insatiable sexual appetite, between the pity and the scorn, the position of these women in the social world of the novels is clear, and by extension the position of women in general: valued only for their appearance and their connection with men.

There are counter-examples, to be sure. Miss Emily Pride, in Dead Water, is single and thoroughly admirable, an elderly lady who has made her living teaching French to diplomats. There is Troy herself, an accomplished painter, who only reluctantly agrees to give up her independence and marry Alleyn. Troy is a close parallel to Harriet Vane in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Wimsey novels, another self-supporting artistic woman who marries Lord Peter after a long, persistent courtship. Lord Peter occasionally collaborates with a Miss Climpson, a brisk businesslike lady who runs a kind of temp agency and who goes undercover in Unnatural Death (1927), finding herself back in a life she had escaped, a “long and melancholy experience of frustrated womanhood, observed in a dreary succession of cheap boarding-houses.”

There are three reasons why this preponderance of sadly single women interests me. One is the historical fact that there must have been quite a lot of them about during Marsh’s lifetime: the two world wars killed a huge number of young men, leaving two succeeding generations of European women with a depleted pool of marriageable men. The novels of Barbara Pym, younger than Marsh by eighteen years but a rough contemporary in literary terms, are full of single women; other characters look down on them, while they themselves face their situations with a mixture of stoicism and hopelessness. Without marriage and children, they’re considered worthless and purposeless; they’re expected to compete in demeaning ways for men; they dread the approach of old age and even greater marginalization. These authors are describing something they know and feel, something they dread and therefore can’t stop analyzing. The numbers of “redundant women” were officially a social problem in the nineteenth century and became one again when the world wars decimated the male population. Attention was certainly being paid to the situation. But the attention did little or nothing for individual women whose practical difficulties were exacerbated by relentless social disapproval and ridicule.

The second reason for my interest in these characters lies in Marsh’s own history and personality. She herself never married; some biographers have speculated that she was a lesbian, pointing to her long, loving friendship with Sylvia Fox and her rather brief and cryptic references to love affairs in her autobiography. I don’t think it’s necessary to resolve the question of her sexuality to address the matter of the single women in her fiction. Her choosing not to marry, and her portrayal of single women, together indicate a kind of determination to be different from them, to live as she chose and to avoid becoming ridiculous; she wanted to resemble Miss Pride or Miss Climpson in their self-sufficiency and competence. Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s unhappiness and awkwardness, after all, arise from her “trying too hard” – her attempts to please others (all of which fail), her seeming inability to be natural, her persistent sense that she is offending merely by existing. She proclaims in her diary that “the body is beautiful,” and then goes on: “Only mine isn’t so very”; so she sunbathes in a hidden corner of a boat deck. Her longing for connection with Troy only repulses the latter, as we have seen; she has no dignity, no sense of herself as a unique and valuable individual – no boundaries, as we would say now. Marsh portrays all of this with a kind of cool compassion – showing us this character’s faults, and showing us at the same time that she is to be pitied rather than condemned. But there is also an emphatic distance. Marsh herself would never behave this way, would never wear her vulnerability on her sleeve. She had a thriving career in the theater and dozens of friends; she travelled, she wrote, she socialized with fascinating people and nurtured many young careers. She was far from pitiable. Yet she must have been aware of how precarious her social place was, as a single woman living by her wits. She must also have been aware of the particular challenges facing women as they navigated through a double set of expectations: those of class, and those of sex. Her novels delineate the difficulties of this task and the resourcefulness it demanded from women even in seemingly innocuous circumstances.

The third reason has to do with the persistence in Western culture of the pressure on women to marry. See, for example, Lori Gottlieb’s article in the March 2008 issue of the Atlantic, “Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough.” (After you read that one, read Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article for the July/August 2012 issue of the same magazine, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”) To paraphrase a big part of feminist theory: Why would society feel the need to pressure us to do something, if we were naturally or innately inclined to do it anyway? Until very recently, marriage has not been a wonderful deal for women, even in the industrialized West. It’s no coincidence that the divorce rate in the US spiked in the 1970s, when women no longer needed to accept unequal or unhappy marriages in order to survive economically. Marriage as an institution has probably benefited from this; when people freely choose to enter and sustain a union, rather than doing so under coercion, the marriage in question is stronger and others are more likely to see it as an example worth following. Conversely, when marriage is a choice and not a mandate, those who choose not to marry are no longer seen as outliers or threats to the social order; they are simply individuals making their own choices. It’s a good thing that the pressure is fading, but it’s far from gone.

Perhaps we’re nearing the end (in certain places and groups, anyway) of the unmarried woman as a figure of fun. Perhaps when we meet one, we can start with the assumption that she freely chose that state and is happy in it, rather than supposing that her situation originated from a fault or failing of her own, or that she would do almost anything to escape it. And while we’re at it, we can extend this benign set of beliefs to everyone we meet, reserving our judgment about them until we know more about their individual characters, needs, and goals. We can treat a social interaction as a chance to observe and learn, rather than a reason to feel superior or to retreat further inside our own defenses. We can read other people the way we read fiction, with close attentiveness and an eagerness to find out what comes next.

#ngaio marsh #single women #feminism #dorothy l. sayers #barbara pym #mysteries #murder mysteries

1 note · View note