#about three/four years before that so it seemed like a less absurd concept at the time

[homehauntsyou]

37 (optional) & 38!

37. share a secret

omgg idk how good of a secret this is but for several months when i was eleven every time i saw the clock was 11:11 or when we prayed at night i wished for another sibling because i thought that would fix my family 😭😭 needless to say that did not happen. the sibling or my family being fixed <3

38. favorite song at the moment

“vbs” by lucy dacus! I’ve been listening to this album (“home video”) on repeat recently and this is my favorite from it :)

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/7/2020

I missed THE GOLDEN GLOVE at Fantastic Fest last year. It was one of my only regrets of the whole experience, but it was basically mandatory since the available screenings were opposite the much-hyped PARASITE. As annoying as that sounds, it was actually a major compliment, since what could possibly serve as a consolation prize for the most hotly anticipated movie of the year? Needless to say, I heard great things, but I could never have imagined what it was actually like. I'm still wrapping my mind around it.

Between 1970 and 1975, an exceptionally depraved serial killer named Fritz Honka murdered at least four prostitutes in Hamburg's red light district. Today, we tend to think of the archetypal serial killer in terms of ironic contradictions: The public is attracted by Ted Bundy's dashing looks and suave manner, and John Wayne Gayce's dual careers as politician and party clown. Lacking anything so remarkable, we associate psychopathy with Norman Bates' boy-next-door charm, and repeat "It's always the quiet ones" with a smirk whenever a new Jeffrey Dahmer or Dennis Nilsen is exposed to the public. The popular conception of a bloodthirsty maniac is not the fairytale monster of yore, but a wolf in sheep's clothing, whose hygienic appearance and lifestyle belie his twisted desires. In our post-everything world, the ironic surprise has become the rule. In this light, THE GOLDEN GLOVE represents a refreshing return to naked truth.

To say that writer-director Fatih Akin's version of the Fritz Honka story is shocking, repulsive, and utterly degenerated would be a gross understatement. We first meet the killer frantically trying to dispose of a corpse in his filthy flat, wallpapered with porno pinups, strewn with broken toys, and virtually projecting smell lines off of the screen. One's sense of embodiment is oppressive, even claustrophobic, as the petite Honka tries and fails to collapse the full dead weight of a human corpse into a garbage bag, before giving up and dismembering it, with nearly equal difficulty. The scene is appalling, utterly debased, and yet nothing is as shocking as the killer's visage. When he finally turns to look into the camera, it's hard to believe he's even human: the rolling glass eye, the smashed and inflated nose, the tombstone teeth and cratered skin, are almost too extreme to bear. Actually, suffering from a touch of facial blindness, I had to stare intently at Honka's face for nearly half the movie before I could fully convince myself that I was, in fact, looking at an elaborate prosthetic operation used to transform 23 year old boy band candidate Jonas Dassler into the disfigured 35 year old serial murderer.

Though West Germany remained on a steady economic upturn beginning in the 1950s and throughout the 1970s, you wouldn't know it from THE GOLDEN GLOVE. If Honka's outsides match his insides, they are further matched by his stomping grounds in the Reeperbahn, a dirty, violent, booze-soaked repository for the dregs of humanity. Though its denizens may come from different walks of life, one thing is certain: Whoever winds up there, belongs there. Honka was the child of a communist and grew up in a concentration camp, yet he swills vodka side by side with an ex-SS officer, among other societal rejects, in a crumbling dive called The Golden Glove. The scene is an excellent source of hopeless prostitutes at the end of their career, who are Honka's prime victims, as he is too frightful-looking to ensnare an attractive young girl. These pitiful women all display a peculiarly hypnotic willingness to go along with Honka, no matter how sadistic he becomes; this seems to have less to do with money, which rarely comes up, and more to do with their shared awareness that for them, and for Honka too, it's been all over, for a long time.

Not to reduce someone’s performance to their physical appearance, but ???

To call Dassler's portrayal of Honka "sympathetic" would be a bridge too far, but it is undeniably compelling. He supports the startling impact of his facial prostheses with a performance of rare intensity, a full-body transformation into a person in so much pain that a normal life will never become an option. His physical vocabulary reminded me of the stage version of The Elephant Man, in which the lead actor wears no makeup, but conveys John Merrick's deformities using his body alone. Although there is an abundance of makeup in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, Dassler's silhouette and agonized movements would be recognizable from a mile away. In spite of his near-constant screaming rage, the actor manages to craft a rich and convincing persona. During a chapter in which Honka experiments with sobriety, we find a stunning image of him hunched in the corner of his ordinarily chaotic flat, now deathly still, his eyes gazing at nothing as cigarette smoke seeps from his pores, having no idea what to do with himself when he isn't in a rolling alcoholic rampage. The moment is brief but haunting in its contrast to the rest of the film, having everything to do with Dassler's quietly vibrating anxiety.

Performances are roundly excellent here, not that least of which are from Honka's victims. The cast of middle-aged actresses looking their most disastrous is hugely responsible for the film's impact. These are the kinds of performances people call "brave", which is a euphemism for making audiences uncomfortable with an uncompromising presentation of one's own self, unvarnished by any masturbatory solicitation. Among these women is Margarete Tiesel, herself no stranger to difficult cinema: She was the star of 2012's PARADISE: LOVE, a harrowing drama about a woman who copes with her midlife crisis by pursuing sex tourism in Kenya. Her brilliant, instinctive performance as one of Honka's only survivors--though she nearly meets a fate worse than death--makes her the leading lady of a movie that was never meant to have one.

So, what does all this unpleasantness add up to, you might be asking? It's hard to say. THE GOLDEN GLOVE is a film of enormous power, but it can be difficult to explain what the point of it is, in a world where most people feel that the purpose of art is to produce some form of pleasure. This is the challenge faced by difficult movies throughout history, like THE GOLDEN GLOVE's obvious ancestors, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, MANIAC and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Describing unremitting cruelty with relentless realism is not considered a worthy endeavor by many, even if there is real artistry in your execution; some people will even mistake you for advocating and enjoying violence and despair, as we live in a world where huge amount of movie and TV production is devoted to aspirational subjects. (The fact that people won't turn away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, no matter how monotonous and condescending they become, should tell you something) How do you justify to such people, that you want to make or see work that portrays ugliness and evil with as much commitment as other movies seek to portray love, beauty, and family values? Why isn't it enough to say that these things exist, and their existence alone makes them worth contemplation?

A rare, perhaps exclusive “beautiful image” in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, from Fritz Honka’s absurd fantasies.

You may detect that I have attempted to have this frustrating conversation with many people, strangers, enemies, and friends I love and respect. I find that for some, it is simply too hard to divorce themselves from the pleasure principle. I don't say this to demean them; some hold the philosophy that art be reserved for beauty, and others have a more literary feeling that it's ok to show characters in grim circumstances, as long as the ultimate goal is to uplift the human spirit. Even I draw the line somewhere; I appreciate the punk rebellion of Troma movies as a cultural force, but I do not enjoy watching them, because I dislike what I perceive as contempt for the audience and the aestheticization of laziness--making something shitty more or less on purpose. A step or three up from that, you land in Todd Solondz territory, where you find materially gorgeous movies whose explicit statement is that our collective reverence for a quality called "humanity" is based on nothing. I like some of those movies, and sometimes I even like them when I don't like them, because I'm entranced by Solondz's technical proficiency...and maybe, deep down, I'm not completely convinced about "humanity", either. However, I don't fight very hard in arguments about him; I understand the objections. Still, I've been surprised by peers who I think of as bright and tasteful, who absolutely hated movies I thought were unassailable, like OLDBOY and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. In both cases, the ultimate objection was that they accuse humans of being pretentious and self-deceptive, aspiring to heroism or bemoaning their victimhood while wallowing in their own cowardice and perversity. Ok, I get it...but, not really. Why isn't it ever wholly acceptable to discuss, honestly, what we do not like about ourselves?

The beguiling thing about THE GOLDEN GLOVE is that, although it is instantly horrifying, is it also an impeccable production. The director can't help showing you crime scene photos during the ending credits, and I can't really blame him, when his crew worked so hard to bring us a vision of Fritz Honka's world that approaches virtual reality. But it isn't just slavishly realistic; it is vivid, immersive, an experience of total sensory overload. Not a square inch of this movie has been left to chance, and the product of all this graceful control is totally spellbinding. I started to think to myself that, when you've achieved this level of artifice, what really differentiates a movie like THE GOLDEN GLOVE from something like THE RED SHOES? I mean, aside from their obvious narrative differences. Both films plunge the viewer into a world that is complete beyond imagination, crafted with a rigor and sincerity that is rarely paralleled. And, I will dare to say, both films penetrate to the depths of the human soul. What Fatih Akin finds there is not the same as what Powell and Pressburger found, of course, but I don't think that makes it any less real. Akin's film is adapted from a novel by Heinz Strunk, and apparently, some critics have accused Akin of leaving behind the depth and nuance of the book, to focus instead on all that is gruesome about it. This may be true, on some level; I wouldn't know. For now, I can only insist that on watching THE GOLDEN GLOVE, for all its grotesquerie, I still got the message.

[scoutception]

Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand review

The SNES was a console with many great RPGs. From popular classics like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Earthbound, to hidden gems like Live A Live, Terranigma, Secret of Evermore, and Shadowrun, it’s a library with a lot of enjoyment to offer. Of course, not every RPG on the system fared so well, with quite a few mediocre and forgettable games scattered about, and unfortunately, Ys V, Falcom’s second attempt at revamping their classic series, after Ys IV backtracked to using the original bump combat system, is among these. Even today, about the only notable thing about Ys V to a modern fan is the current lack of any remake, unlike IV, or the similarly flawed Ys III, which was enough to rouse my curiosity and drive me to give it a fair playthrough. While I did have some fun with it, there’s certainly a reason there were no new Ys games for nearly a decade afterwards, and the specifics on why that is is what we’ll be looking at today. Note that while Ys V was never released outside of Japan, it does have an English translation patch, courtesy of Aeon Genesis, in what was apparently one of their most difficult hacking jobs ever.

Story: About 4 years after the events of Ys I & II, Adol Christin, or, as he’s come to be known, Adol the Red, arrives at the port town of Xandria on the continent of Afroca (yes, literally just fantasy Alexandria and Africa), rather suspiciously without his constant companion Dogi, and on an intact ship, at that. The normally aimless Adol has been lured to Xandria by rumors of a mysterious Phantom City, said to contain amazing riches. After being contacted by a wealthy merchant named Dorman, however, Adol is given the truth: the so called Phantom City is actually the lost city of Kefin, a prosperous nation that wielded tremendous power five hundred years ago through the power of alchemy. Recently, the Kefin desert has been expanding, consuming many towns within the area, and monsters have become numerous and aggressive, leaving Xandria at threat of becoming a barren waste. Wishing to gain access to the secrets of Kefin’s alchemy in order to halt this desertification, Dorman hires Adol to find six elemental crystals that are said to have the power to unlock the way to Kefin. Unfortunately for Adol, he really has his work cut out for him this time; many of Afroca’s citizens are fearful of him, due to ancient legends telling of a red haired man that will bring great havoc upon his arrival, and he’s harassed by a band of thieves called the Ibur Gang, who are out to take all the crystals for themselves. Though Adol makes several allies as well, such as Niena, the adopted daughter of the great adventurer Stein, who disappeared three years ago looking for the crystals himself, Massea, a woman who possesses knowledge of alchemy matched by few others, and Stoker, the spirit of a man who lived five hundred years ago, he also comes to find that several other forces are conspiring to use Kefin’s alchemy for their own destructive purposes, and that his client may be less trustworthy than he initially seems.

While most of the classic Ys games had quite cliche stories, if understandably considering their age, Ys V is actually a fair bit more original, with some pretty decent moments toward the end of the game. Unfortunately, before that point, most of the story just consists of just wandering around finding all the crystals, with the random interferences Adol encounters being the only things spicing it up, such as being forced to undergo a series of trials, or being blown off a raft by a sandstorm and washing up in a different town, keeping the tradition of boating accidents in Ys alive and well. Despite the amount of important supporting characters around, most of them barely even show up for most of the story, which makes for a pretty underdeveloped and forgettable cast, with only Terra of the Ibur Gang sticking out thanks to reappearing in Ys VI. It also just feels very disconnected from the rest of the series, with Dogi completely missing, and a lot of plot elements that feel out of place for Ys. According to the book Ys Complete Works, a lot of plot elements had to be left out of V, which certainly explains why it feels so underbaked, and leaves a lot of potential for improvement if a remake ever materializes, but until then, while a neat step forward for the writing of the series, Ys V’s story ultimately just doesn’t fare very well overall.

Gameplay: Here’s where things really start falling apart. The bump combat system is gone once and for all now, with Ys V using a dedicated attack button like Ys III, a system that remains in place even today. Unlike Ys III, however, the general gameplay is still much more similar to the other titles, overhead perspective and all, with the change in combat instead feeling a lot more like the 2D Zelda titles. Along with swing his sword, Adol can also now use his shield to actively block attacks. There’s also a jump button, though there’s not much platforming to be done. In theory, this isn’t a bad change at all, but in practice, combat is extremely stiff and awkward feeling. Unlike in Zelda, where Link always swings with a nice, wide arc, Adol is stuck jabbing things for most of the game instead. Each sword has a different range, with exactly one that actually has a proper swing, and the ones you’ll use the most, the second and last swords, only being capable of stabs. Annoying as this is, it wouldn’t quite be a deal breaker, if it wasn’t for how frustratingly precise you need to be when attacking. If you’re even slightly off center, you’ll just whiff. Meanwhile, attacks from enemies are given far more leniency, and even using the shield, you need that same level of precision in order to block anything. Needless to say, this gets very frustrating.

Aside from just attacking physically, magic, or to be more accurate, alchemy, is also available, with spells being made by collecting elemental stones and having an alchemist combine three at a time, with six different elements and eighteen possible spells, which can then be attached to Adol’s weapon and slowly charged up until the magic meter reaches 100, at which point attacking will cast the spell and drain MP and spell charge. While a neat idea in concept, in practice, almost everything you can make is downright awful. Not only are many spells nearly identical to each other, but most of them are just really, really bad, with absurdly long casting animations, during which enemies are free to continue moving around and out of the spell’s range, wasting both your time and MP. About the only useful spells are the ones that hit everything on screen, which take an absurd amount of MP, and the basic fireball, which has no casting animation, and is mandatory to get anyway. Several enemies will also just absorb magic entirely and gain HP, so using it can often be an outright detriment. Even worse, the game basically forces you to use magic by separating EXP into two different types: physical EXP, obtained from defeating enemies with the sword, or from bosses, which boosts physical power and defense and magic EXP, which is gained from killing enemies with magic, and boosts magic power and defense, meaning if you ignore magic, any enemy using magic attacks will quickly wreck you. The stones needed to make the spells, along with a few other items like coins to be sold, are also mostly hidden across the different areas, and can only be found by rubbing up against every wall and object in sight, which is really annoying, and you really can’t afford to miss any of them if you want to make most of the available spells.

Bosses are pretty dumb too, with a lot of them just coming down to standing in one places and stabbing until they die, chugging heal potions until they die, and considering the most basic healing item heals 60% of Adol’s HP, it’s not hard to do, either. In general, the game is overly forgiving. While still pretty annoying, the level system means it is pretty easy to end up overleveled with physical and magic levels combined, and rather than just dropping a set amount of gold, enemies instead drop gems, which can be sold to merchants for varying amounts. While this wouldn’t make much of a difference on paper, the gems are worth so much, and certain merchants have high enough exchange rates, that you can make a lot of money pretty easily, and considering the third and second best weapons in the game are sold in the first two towns, it’s even easier to break the game wide open. Most areas are also really short, with several dungeons literally just consisting of three or four small rooms, so you’re rarely ever in serious danger traversing them, with most of their length just coming from forced backtracking. While an improvement from how grind heavy most of the early Ys games were, the easiness just makes the experience even less engaging, to the point Falcom had to make a second version of the game, titled Ys V Expert, due to complaints.

Graphics: The visuals of Ys V, to put it bluntly, barely even resemble the rest of the series, to the point it’s basically indistinguishable from any other SNES RPG. It doesn’t look outright bad, but whereas Ys usually uses a super deformed style with lots of colors, Ys V uses a more realistically proportioned style with really dark, dull colors, to the point that Adol’s usual distinctive bright red hair looks more brown than anything. Most areas are pretty forgettable, with pretty generic caves and ruins, but there are a few neat areas, like the rainy marshlands, which actually carry a pretty strong atmosphere, and the bosses look kinda cool, if a bit samey. You also get to customize Adol a bit, being able to change the color of his clothes and armor in the menu, along with his hair color, if you find a hidden NPC fairly late in the game, with the default option actually giving him his usual hair color. Overall, though, the visuals are still pretty unspectacular.

Music: In yet another change from series tradition, Ys V forgoes the usual rock style of the soundtrack, and instead takes a much more orchestral approach, again making it stand out even less from its competition, only retaining a few traditions like the item collection music and the Theme of Adol. In this case, however, I can’t complain that much about the change, because the resulting soundtrack, in usual Falcom fashion, is still fantastic. From the peaceful Foresta Village, to the melancholy Misty Lake, to the mysterious Oasis, to the dark Sand Castle, to the adventurous Wilderness, there are a lot of great tracks to be found, and it’s absolutely worth looking up the soundtrack even if the rest of the game would drive you away.

Conclusion: Overall, Ys V is not recommended. It’s not an outright bad game, and can still be decently fun. It’s short enough that it’s not much of an investment to play through, and it was still an important step that allowed Ys VI to fully modernize the gameplay of the series. As a whole though, it’s still a pretty underwhelming and clunky experience that’s almost completely divorced from the rest of the series. You’re not missing much by leaving it alone, and perhaps with the release of Ys IX, a remake of V could be next on the schedule. Either way, that’s about all I can even say about this game. Till next time. -Scout

[dancingkirby]

Azula Week Day 5: Smiles

Summary: Zuko decides to invite all of his and Azula’s illegitimate half-siblings to the brunch on his and Mai’s wedding day.  It goes less badly than Azula had feared.

Warnings/Notes: Multiple non-graphic references to past sexual abuse of multiple underage girls, leading to one death and one near-death in childbirth.  (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending!).  Classism, internalized misogyny, etc. on Azula’s part.  OC-heavy.  One GoT reference that sort of wormed its way in there under its own volition.  

Word count: 2667 (longer than I had been anticipating!)

After many, many delays, the day of Zuko and Mai’s wedding was finally imminent.  There, would, of course, be intense media coverage and a general holiday for the populace, as well as thousands of guests. However, Zuko had also come up with the idea to have a pre-wedding brunch for family and close friends only. This wouldn’t be so outlandish, except that to him, “family” included Ozai’s bastards…every single one that he could find.

“Even the commoners, Zuzu?” she had sighed when he broke the news.  “It’s not a good image.  People at court are already talking.  We ought not to remind everyone of our baggage.”

“They’re not baggage, Azula,” he retorted.  “They’re our siblings.”

���Half-siblings,” she corrected as she brushed a cherry blossom from her shoulder; they were sitting in the courtyard watching the decorations being put up.  

Azula,” her brother admonished.  He spent what seemed like an absurd length of time trying to figure out what to say next, looked to make sure the decorators weren’t eavesdropping, then added, “I’ve been to their houses, you know that.  I’ve spoken with them personally, and I know all of their names and their stories.  You don’t want to know what I found out.”

“Don’t I, brother?” Azula inquired in faux innocent tones.  Zuko rubbed a knuckle against his forehead.

“Fine.” He conceded. “Here’s just one of the stories. There was a girl.  Lian.  Her father died suddenly, and her mother was sick a lot.  So she and her older siblings had to find jobs in the palace so the family wouldn’t starve.  She wasn’t even old enough to legally be hired, but they found work for her in the laundry under the table.  Her job was to go from room to room, gathering the dirty clothes.  I think you can see where this is going.  And…she died giving birth.  She was just a child.”  Sparks flew out of his nose as he exhaled forcefully.

“You’re rambling, Zuzu.  And watch the volume,” Azula stated almost without thinking.  Internally, however, her mind was spinning.  As much as she hated to admit it, Azula had not been prepared for that last part.  Died? Five years ago, she would have dismissed Lian as not fit to live anyway.  But now…she knew that she herself had been near death in that same situation, no matter how much the doctors had tried to sugarcoat it.

She was able to remain expressionless, however, and asked, “And the baby?”

“His name is Chun. The youngest of the bunch; just turned four.  Cute kid.”

That would place his conception sometime in the weeks after the Day of Black Sun, during which Ozai had lost his last vestiges of self-control and everyone else in the palace suffered.  For all she knew, Lian could have been one of the ones Azula herself had witnessed; she’d never bothered to find out any of their names.

“Any other dead?” she queried.

“No, thankfully.  Many of the mothers have permanent medical problems, though.  Some have turned to alcohol.  A few of the kids were adopted out.  Acknowledging and welcoming them and their children...well, it’s the least we can do.  It’s the…”

Wait for it.

“honorable thing to do.”

And that was that.  Once the h-word was added to the equation, there was no changing her brother’s mind.

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It was the morning of the big day.  Zuko had decided to get the inevitable family photos done at the brunch, since Fire Nation weddings were lengthy and the smaller children would probably be tired after a long day of ceremonies.  Currently, he and Mai were standing at the entrance to the courtyard, greeting the guests as they walked in.  

There were twenty-one acknowledged bastards; everyone at court knew that.  Zuko had managed to track down an additional twenty-three, and he wasn’t even certain that he’d found them all.  This meant that their lord father had sired at least forty-six children…well, technically forty-seven, Azula thought as she fingered the footprint pendant on her necklace.  Twenty-eight of those had been born during his not quite six-year reign as Fire Lord.  Had she not known for herself how insatiable Ozai had been, she may have found the number mind-boggling.

What was more, their heretofore unacknowledged half-siblings tended to skew younger than the acknowledged ones.  The noblemen of the court who were actually decent people (or at least concerned about marriage prospects) had started keeping their young daughters home a couple of years into Ozai’s reign.  That meant a veritable flood of children ten and under, most of them having never come anywhere near the palace prior to this.

She nibbled on a green onion tartlet as she stood on a slight rise, surveying the goings-on in the courtyard.  Some children were wandering around, looking at their surroundings with big eyes.  A sizable group had been attracted by Ty Lee’s impromptu acrobatics performance.  Ursa was sitting by the pond, commiserating with some of the young mothers.  Kiyi had taken it upon herself to give people tours of the grounds whether they asked for it or not.

But…where was…?

Azula was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even fully register the timid tug on her sleeve until it was repeated a few seconds later.  She looked down for the source, and saw a small boy, wearing what must have passed for finery in whatever tiny village he came from.

“Bathrooms are that way,” she said for about the tenth time today as she pointed with her finger. But apparently that wasn’t the reason this child had sought her out.

“Are you the Princess?” he asked.  Except the “r” sounded more like a “w.”

“I am,” she confirmed. Then she watched, bemused, as the kid sank into a kowtow with surprisingly good form for a child of that age…not to mention a peasant.

Azula would not smile. She would not smile.

“You may rise,” she told him automatically, with all the solemnity she would give to an adult.  He sprang back up.

“Aunty said we have to do that if we see the Fire Lord or Fire Lady or Princess,” he explained in a rush.  “I saw the Fire Lord and he said don’t do it, but I wanted to do it because I practiced!”

Pwacticed.

She…was smiling, wasn’t she?  Damn.

“What is your name?” she asked him.

“Chun,” he answered. Azula had already had her suspicions when he had mentioned an aunt instead of a mother, and this confirmed them. This was the one Zuko had mentioned, whose mother had died.

“Well, Chun,” she said, “Your aunt was correct, generally speaking.  However, Zuzu does have his hangups about etiquette.  If you really want to pay obeisance, I would suggest a bow instead.  Would you like to learn the correct form for that?”

“Yeah!” he cheered.  Azula was quite sure that in the entire history of the world, no four-year-old had ever been as enthused about learning courtly manners.  

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Chun had the three different depths of bowing down in about five minutes.  Azula had always considered herself good at sniffing out potential, and this child had heaps of it.  Perhaps one day he could find work as a palace bureaucrat, and even ultimately be appointed to a seat on the Fire Lord’s council.  She supposed that Zuko’s incorrigible stubbornness had had some merit for once; otherwise, Chun’s talents would have been wasted among the riffraff.  He was also tremendously eager to please, and refused to leave her side.  Azula got the feeling that nobody paid much attention to him at home.  

It almost made her wish that she hadn’t been so harsh toward Mai’s younger brother a few weeks ago. For someone who continued to know nothing about children except that they liked gross stories, she sure seemed to attract a lot of children.  

As the two of them wandered back to where the main crowd was, Azula provided a running commentary about their various half-siblings.

“That woman in the glasses is Anshi, the oldest,” she informed Chun.  “Great with numbers, and even beat Iroh at Pai Sho once.  Very boring conversationalist, though.  The lady in that hideous gown next to her is Zhilan.  She can lightning bend, yet refuses to actually learn how to use it effectively because she prefers to spend her days arranging flowers and playing the erhu like a proper lady.”  She shook her head.  

“She’s fat!” Chun exclaimed brightly.  Azula chuckled.

“Sssh.  Well, to be fair, she doesn’t have my flawless physique, but actually she’s expecting her third child.  Perhaps she thought that people would be so blinded by that monstrosity of an outfit that they wouldn’t notice?” She pulled Chun along before her vision was permanently ruined by what even Ty Lee would likely reject as too over-the-top.  Although it was unclear how much of her gossip the child actually understood, he didn’t appear bored.

“There’s Ichiro; he’s skilled at archery and so aloof that he makes Mai seem warm and inviting. And…ugh, that’s Eri, stuck-up as ever. Do not go near her,” Azula cautioned. The girl apparently ruled over the Royal Fire Academy for Girls just as Azula herself had done a decade earlier, but unfortunately lacked the intellect to be anything more than a common bully. Best to give her a wide berth like Kiyi did.

“Who’s that?” Chun piped up while pointing at a pair of children dressed in bright red from head to toe.

“Those are Akane and Akemi.  Twins. They’re the youngest of the Acknowledged, and they’re…”

Azula never got to say exactly what it was that Akane and Akemi were, since just then, there was a commotion at the courtyard entrance.

“Sorry I’m late!” yelled the new arrival.  As she turned to greet the soon-to-be newlyweds, her face was somewhat obscured. However, Azula had no difficulty recognizing her.  She’d know that short haircut anywhere.

Ruanyu.  Azula’s breath caught in her throat.  They hadn’t seen each other in nearly five years.  After so long without any contact, she’d been starting to think that her half-sister was dead.

“How about you run over to the Fire Lord and show him your bow?” she asked Chun.  He scampered off happily enough.

Azula was not anticipating that this would be a happy reunion.  Once, they had been close, and Azula had even allowed Ruanyu to call her by her given name.  However, she really had treated the girl more like a pampered yet disposable pet than anything else, and had all but forgotten her in the events leading up to Sozin’s Comet.  In fact, she hadn’t remembered that she had left the girl to her own devices until months later, when she was in the hospital.  

Then Ruanyu looked her way, paused for a split second, and began running toward Azula at top speed. Azula steeled herself, her heart racing. She remembered that the feisty little girl had held her own in sparring matches, and she was prepared to repel any firebending that might come her way.

What she was not prepared for was being nearly knocked off her feet by the sheer enthusiasm of her half-sister’s embrace.  When they pulled apart, Azula attempted to remain stoic, but the sheer magnetism of Ruanyu’s famous ear-to-ear grin was too much for her to resist.

“I see you managed to escape,” she commented dryly.

“Yeah.  My mom smuggled us out after the whole Phoenix King thing,” Ruanyu answered while shrugging, as if it were of no great importance.

Azula became painfully aware that everyone in the courtyard was watching them.  In fact, Zuko was leading the spectators in some applause, Ty Lee ran over to get her hug, and Mai made a cough that sounded a lot like the word “Finally.”

“You knew about this, didn’t you?” Azula accused Zuko.

“We wanted it to be a surprise,” was all he said in response.

“It seems that you succeeded in something for once,” Azula remarked in as deadpan a tone as she could manage.  Then, to Ruanyu, “Let’s go talk somewhere more private.”  Ruanyu agreed, and they retreated to Azula’s favorite shady little enclave.  Once they were out of earshot, Azula decided to cut right to the chase, as she looked at the face that was almost like looking in a mirror.

“If you’re angry at me, then say so.  Don’t hold back on my regard.”

Ruanyu bit her lip as she considered.

“I was angry at you.  Really angry for a while,” she commented.  “But I decided to forgive you.  Zuko told me about what Ozai did to you.”  Her eyes hardened.  

“Did he do anything to you?”   Azula had to know.

“Nah.  Well, he kept saying all this creepy stuff, but I was always faster than him,” Ruanyu replied.  She was obviously trying to be casual, but not quite succeeding.  She was sixteen; old enough to know that she had only just dodged a lightning bolt, and that others had not been as fortunate.

“And just what have you been doing these past years?” she inquired.

“Mom took us back to the village where she grew up.  She wanted me to settle down with some boring man and raise a family.  But that’s…not me.  So I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, seeing the world,” Ruanyu explained. Yes, Azula remembered her half-sister’s thirst for adventure well.  In fact, she had briefly considered taking the girl to the Earth Kingdom, but had decided against it since she knew that Ruanyu would never have gone along with taking Zuko and Iroh prisoner.  

She asked, “Any plans for after the wedding?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Ruanyu answered.  “I think I might stay at the palace again for a bit, then set off again.  I’m interested in seeing that new city that Zuko and his friends are building; he told me that they’re looking for settlers.”

Someone cleared their throat behind them.  “Did someone say my name?”  Azula turned to see that Zuko was indeed present, with one twin hanging off each arm.

“Yeah, I was just telling Azula that I wanted to see Republic City.”

“Well, we’d be glad to have you there.  But, uh, anyway, I came up here to tell you two that the photographer’s setting up.  He has a prototype model of a new kind of camera; one that can take the picture instantly.  I thought the younger kids might find it harder to stand still.”

“Don’t get him started on that special camera,” Mai chimed in as she walked up with Chun trailing behind her.  “He’ll probably spend our entire wedding night talking about it.”

“Not the entire night,” Zuko protested.

“Oh, really?  I suppose I will just have to make sure that you keep your word.”

Azula said, “There are children here, you two!” in almost perfect synchrony with Ruanyu’s “I don’t think I wanna hear this…”  They must have pulled identical faces, since Akane exclaimed, “More twins!”

“Oops.  Forgot about the kids,” mumbled Zuko. “So…yeah.  Picture time.”

And so the soon-to-be-wed couple kissed as they temporarily parted; Mai had to leave to undergo the ordeal of getting dressed in her many-layered wedding outfit.  (“If I’m really lucky, maybe it’ll actually get done sometime this decade,” she said.)  Zuko eventually got the whole group of Ozai’s progeny rounded up.  As her brother enlisted Sokka’s help to explain how the camera worked to those children who had never been photographed before, and Azula snuck appraising glances at the latter, she felt oddly at peace. They made for an odd collection of individuals indeed, but Zuko had been right just this once.  That awful trial was behind them, and they were all stuck in this same recovery boat together.  

After some time, they were all arranged in a more or less organized manner, and Azula made sure that her necklace would be clearly visible in the picture.

“Smile!” the photographer ordered.

And, as they saw weeks later when the developed pictures were sent to them, nearly everyone had.  Even Azula.

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

@symbruary

favourite host: scott washington. the amount of clear-headed empathy he has for his symbiotes puts him in a category of his own. wade, gwen and alea may join him, perhaps. the symbiote sympathy society originated RIGHT HERE. 

scott was the first to affirm their personhood, even before bonding with them, and the first to figure out that they simply react to their experiences and develop their own thoughts and feelings like anyone else. they’re all huge woobies.

the first thing i EVER wrote about symbiotes, about a year ago, was a fluffy headcanon about scott and hybrid cuddling. so here is a slight revamp of that.

---

New Warriors business has landed them in a semi-nice hotel. They’re only spending the night before they return. They’re not on vacation. He’s never been on vacation, and the symbiotes are, at best, distrustful of the concept, seeing as it entails going somewhere we’re not needed which is somewhere we’re not wanted, so they avoid the concept altogether, throw up two or three safe degrees of separation, and think of it as a break.

Scott’s in bed, lying down, feeling every part of his body - the only sensory feedback from his legs is relayed through his symbiotes, it’s strange - feeling every part of his mind. One, two, three, four, five. He is included in no fewer than four head counts in return. One, two, three, four, five.

He feels like he could sleep, sleep well, even, and the symbiotes, they have a ritual for that, as they have rituals for most things. Just before he drifts off, they tend to let him know we’ll watch over you.

And he appreciates it, most of the time, but here and now?

“Nothing to watch out for,” he mumbles, “‘cept for room service, maybe.” Before they can evaluate the potential threat level of the items in the overpriced menu on the bedside table, Scott sighs, sits up, and pats the bed. The hybrid begins to pour out of him.

“Listen,” he says to the growing mass of goop, “I don’t want you guys on guard duty, I don’t want you to protect me - You’ve done a great job of that, but for now, I want all of us to rest.” The hybrid stares at him, blankly. “Relax.”

At the edge of their consciousness, there’s this stream of impressions, real and imagined, vague beyond a sense of pain and fear and alone. “I know it’s hard,” he says, “Believe me, I know.”

We know you know. We are part of you. We are together. We are one.

“We are, but-” That fearful little face still does entirely too much to Scott. Scared, scared, scared. Always. It’s what these symbiotes’ union was born of. Sheer desperation. It’s a comfort, but it’s also clinging, wound tight around each other.

“Could you separate, d’you think?” Scott says, and he is not prepared for the wave of terror he is suddenly dragged underneath. It’s not his own, he reminds himself, it’s not his own. He gasps. “Not- Not for real! Not permanently!” He might as well ask them to dissolve themselves in acid. “Just- We’re safe! We’re safe, right now. You could… You could try it.” He shakes his head, as if he could shake the shivering sensation out of it. “I won’t force you.”

The symbiotes consider this for a long while. Scott can’t always follow their conversations amongst themselves, too fast, too abstract, but eventually, a sense of trust emerges, a sense of him knowing best, a sense of not wanting to disappoint him. Then, a tendril.

Red, and then… shifting towards purple. Scott watches, fascinated, as it keeps pulling itself out of the hybrid, longer and longer, piling up… It’s like a sweater unravelling. The same thing happens on the other side, with a yellow strand… and a blue and a green one. Eventually, there’s four almost-separate symbiotes there, distinct entities that simply share some of their mass.

It’s been a long time since Scott’s last seen them like this. It doesn’t conjure up any good memories, either, but he doesn’t let them surface. He takes care to broadcast nothing but pride. “There you go,” he says. “Don’t need to huddle all the time. Not on the molecular level, at least, y’know.” The symbiotes look at each other, clearly unused to the split in their perceptions. “We’ll work better as a team if we just… stop being scared sometimes.” He brings up some of the memories of them acting in a panic, guided by instinct. “We’ll lash out less.”

You say that, but you struggle with your own fear.

Scott raises his hands, placating.

We worry for you- You worry for us-

“I know, I know. I don’t mean to lecture, I just-”

By the time he looks up, he’s surrounded. Symbiotes pressing up against him, against each other. Like when they first merged, but with him in the middle, as if they could simply absorb him into their bond. There’s pressure, but somehow, it doesn’t constrict his movements at all. He still freezes.

Huddling is not so bad.

He doesn’t even register it as a hug until then, but it is. It’s a strange, very strange… much more purposeful kind of touch than their joined form, not just an incidental kind of closeness. He’s not sure what to do with it.

Deep down, he can’t help feeling, all at once, that the warmth under his arm should go with something else. Ruffled hair and flashlights under blankets and playful jabs in the ribs. It’s familiar like asphalt dragged against skin. It makes them squeeze tighter.

“Well,” he starts, then chokes on it. 

The symbiotes radiate calmness. For him, he realises. Feeling dizzy, he lies back down, slowly. They don’t seem to mind, not even the one behind him.

Once he’s staring at the ceiling, he marvels at the absurdity of it all. He’s not making contact with the blanket or the mattress anymore, but he’s… warm, very warm. Comfortable. Wrapped up in some sort of soft symbiote cocoon. He blows a lock of hair out of his face.

“That’s still pretty clingy. Baby steps, I guess,” he says, with too much control to his voice to come off as effortlessly teasing, “for the babies.”

Immediately, a wave of indignation.

Not weak. Not helpless. Developing much faster than you.

The symbiote on his right, though, only wobbles and wibbles. Looks at him, distraught. Just a baby, it affirms.

Scott raises a hand to his mouth to stifle a snorting laugh. The symbiote is loudly embarrassed, just as loudly judged by its peers, and, on an overwhelmed whim, he leans over to quickly press his lips to its surface.

The symbiotes’ eyes go wide. Within milliseconds, all of them go through the process of discovering what a kiss is and that they desperately want one. They scramble over each other to reach his face - “okay, okay” - one for each of their… foreheads, he supposes, and they settle back down.

Scott sinks into the symbiotes surrounding him. Rolling reassuringly across him. They’re joined in gratitude, of the overwhelming, all-encompassing kind, and he’ll probably cry if he focuses on it, so he doesn’t.

He sleeps.

[the-light-followed]

WYRD SISTERS (1988) [DISC. #6; WITCHES #2]

“‘No one would come up here this time of night.’  Magrat peered around timidly.  Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.  ‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed.  ‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.”

Rating: 6/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: Yeah!

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x]

* * * * * * * * * *

I’m just going to jump right in with this one: the best part about the Witches sub-series of the Discworld is that they are all, in their own way, stories about stories.  They’re stories that follow other stories, the tropes and archetypes and established narrative structure, but they’re also stories that subvert that structure at just the right moment to make something that feels much more truthful, and often, much more real.

Stories about stories.

This is sometimes very literal: Wyrd Sisters, for example, has very obvious Shakespearean roots, notably from Hamlet and Macbeth, and seems to gleefully delight in throwing around references—three witches meeting to cast spells, blood on the murderer’s hands that won’t wash away, the ghost of a murdered father begging his son to seek revenge, a theater called The Dysk that mimics Shakespeare’s Globe, etc., etc., etc.—that then get turned over on their heads.  We’ll see it done again with the fairy tale elements of Witches Abroad, and the Phantom of the Opera parody that is Maskerade. These books are, in a very real sense, skipping the setup and instead using cultural touchstones as framework. The books starring the witches are literally new stories being told about stories we, the audience, already know and recognize.

But sometimes it isn’t literal at all: witches, after all, work magic most often through psychology and metaphor.  “Headology,” as the witches call it, is the basis of witchcraft, and it’s all about the stories being told.  It’s in the things the witches do for respect, like their hats and black outfits and their out-of-the-way cottages they pass down from one witch to the next, or the way they bow instead of curtsey.  It’s in the things they call magic even when it isn’t, like using real herbs and medicines to cure illnesses, or waving their hands over a pot of tea and chanting nonsense before ‘reading the future’ in the leaves, all of it only for the look of the thing from the outside.

And it’s also in the things they tell themselves. For example, when Magrat’s broomstick stops working in Wyrd Sisters, she does what she calls a Change spell—which simply means that the rest of the world remains the same, but she changes the way she sees herself.  Before, she was a young woman on a broom rapidly falling out of the sky, and now she’s a confident young witch who can deal with any disaster that comes her way, so she’s therefore a lot less worried about it.  

And it works.  That’s the thing: Magrat is just fine.  Witches do magic in and on themselves, it’s all nothing more than a thought, and yet it works.

None of the Witches books are particularly subtle about the point they’re trying to make with the whole deal, either.  In Wyrd Sisters, it seems like everyone is talking about the power of words and stories, the way that the things we tell ourselves and each other can shape the reality of the world we inhabit.  There are some negatives you can pull out of that message—history is malleable and written by the victors, propaganda triumphs over the truth, etc., etc.  But there are a lot of more interesting, thought-provoking ideas to consider, instead. For example: just because narrative structure has already delivered us the broad strokes of the plot (anyone who’s studied any Shakespeare, which can reasonably be assumed to be any native English speaker older than about sixteen, can probably guess the general course of Wyrd Sisters by about page twenty), it doesn’t mean there can’t be originality and meaning in the specifics.

And that originality and meaning is what makes all the Discworld books work so well.  Pratchett is parodying, sure, but he’s also creating something very new and earnest and sincere, and that just doesn’t work if the story is an exact beat-for-beat retelling of an already-told tale.

Wyrd Sisters agrees with that idea. Destiny is all well and good—it’s nice to think that what’s to come is pre-planned, easy to predict, and impossible to subvert—but the world just doesn’t work like that.  The story isn’t plotted out in advance.

As Pratchett says later in the book: “Destiny was funny stuff…You couldn’t trust it.  Often you couldn’t even see it.  Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence.  You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you.  Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.”

The witches certainly don’t truck with destiny.  Or, well, it may be a tool in their storytelling arsenal, but they don’t see it as a concrete thing.  Destiny is what you make of it, and Granny and Nanny are movers and shakers.  That makes it especially ironic that the book is called Wyrd Sisters—the word “wyrd” is an old Anglo-Saxon concept referring to fate or personal destiny, so the “wyrd sisters” themselves typically would be the three Fates, a la Greek mythology, rather than three women who tend to grab Fate and Destiny by the ears and twist until they decide to agree that the witches have the right of it.

Honestly, though, if Granny Weatherwax looked at me like that, I’d do whatever she wanted, too.

I just want to bring up something I really like about Pratchett’s writing style: despite the fantastical setting, despite how far from reality he can get, he’s not afraid to switch to Roundworld concepts or just flat-out break the fourth wall in exchange for better, more impactful descriptions.  I like to call this cinematic writing, and sometimes that’s actually very literal. There are quite a few passages in various Discworld books where he starts to write in an almost movie-script style.  After Moving Pictures, which is still a good four books away at this point, I think that becomes less notable.  Here, and in the previous few Discworld books (Mort, Sourcery, Equal Rites), when Discworld does not have any parallel equivalent to Roundworld’s Hollywood, it’s pretty damn unusual for an author to just outright throw aside their own fantasy setting to make a description in real-world terms.

My favorite example of this from Wyrd Sisters:

“It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words.  It’s a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off, or a clock with hands moving faster and faster until they blur, or trees bursting into blossom and fruiting in a matter of seconds… Well, you know.  Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and days and nights flicker past jerkily like a bad zoetrope, and the fashions visible in the clothes shop across the road whip on and off faster than a lunchtime stripper with five pubs to do. There are any amount of ways, but they won’t be required because, in fact, none of this happened.”

You can practically imagine the way that scene would look in a blockbuster movie, and it’s wonderful that Pratchett describes it crystal clear just to let us know that it is not, in fact, how it looked at all.

There’s a lot more to like about Wyrd Sisters, too, for all that it isn’t one of my favorite Discworld books.  It’s a far better introduction to the witches—specifically Granny Weatherwax—than Equal Rites is, even though Equal Rites is technically the first book in the Witches sub-series.  It introduces some characters we’ll see a lot more of later, like King Verence and the greater Ogg family, but also characters that will go on to become staples of the Discworld, like Nanny Ogg and Magrat.  We also have some lovely cameos from already established characters: notably Death and his interactions during the play at the castle, but there are some good Ankh-Morpork moments, like the Librarian’s appearance at a barfight.

And we get to see the good old Discworld humor really click—it’s all about that balance between absurdism and realism, or between established tropes and self-awareness.  One of my favorite examples of this comes right at the beginning of the book:

“As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’  There was a pause.  Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’”

Pratchett’s really got a sense for it by this point, and he can deliver zinger after unexpectedly delightful zinger.  Discworld books are always beautifully funny, of course, even though after a while you really get a feel for when a good joke is coming.  Some people might think that knowing the punchline is coming might make it less funny: it absolutely does not.  All it does is make the unexpected, sneaky moments—when the humor Pratchett has been secretly setting up for ages finally creeps up to smack you in the face—hit harder.  Maybe others disagree, but I can read Discworld novels again and again, and they always get me just as much as they did the first time through.  In my opinion, that’s real comedic talent.

Up next in the series we have Pyramids, our first unconnected one-off story, which is wonderfully weird even for a Discworld book!  Stay tuned!

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

Every time that oh-so popular Ankh-Morporkian dive bar, the Drum, pops up, it’s fun to note where it’s at these days: Mended Drum, Broken Drum, etc.  In Wyrd Sisters, Tomjon and Hwel go drinking in the Mended Drum.

There are several adaptations of Wyrd Sisters, including a 4-part BBC radio show, an animated film, and a stageplay.

As I go over my highlighted quotes and annotations from each book, putting these posts together, I learn more and more about myself.  What I like, what I find funny, what I care to notice.  For example, Vetinari shows up exactly ONCE in this book, and just in a footnote, and yet I still highlighted it and wrote a note next to it that contained mostly exclamation points.  There’s no real point to this; I just want everyone to know how much I love Vetinari.

Favorite Quotes:

“As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’ There was a pause.  Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’”

“Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders.  Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.”

“Now, just when a body would have been useful, it had let him down.  Or out.”

“‘No one would come up here this time of night.’ Magrat peered around timidly.  Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own.  She shivered.  ‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed.  ‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly.”

“‘How many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean and then, when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot for your tea, there it is?’ They considered this in silence. ‘Never,’ said Granny irritably. ‘And nor have you.’”

“His body was standing to attention.  Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.”

“Back down on the plains, when you kicked people they kicked back.  Up here, when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off.”

“The Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.”

“She gave the guards a nod as she went through.  It didn’t occur to either of them to stop her because witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked.  In any case, an elderly lady banging a bowl with a spoon was probably not the spearhead of an invasion force.”

“‘You’re wondering whether I really would cut your throat,’ panted Magrat.  ‘I don’t know either.  Think of the fun we could have together, finding out.’”

“Wizards assassinated each other in drafty corridors, witches just cut one another dead in the street.  And they were all as self-centered as a spinning top.  Even when they help other people, she thought, they’re secretly doing it for themselves.  Honestly, they’re just like big children.  Except for me, she thought smugly.”

“‘Man just went past with a cat on his head,’ one of them remarked, after a minute or two’s reflection.  ‘See who it was?’  ‘The Fool, I think.’  There was a thoughtful pause.  The second guard shifted his grip on his halberd.  ‘It’s a rotten job,’ he said.  ‘But I suppose someone’s got to do it.’”

“Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.”

“Only in our dreams are we free.  The rest of the time we need wages.”

“Words were indeed insubstantial.  They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.”

“‘Witches just aren’t like that,’ said Magrat.  ‘We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t.  We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.’”

“‘I shall haunt their corridors,’ he said, ‘and whisper under the doors on still nights.’ His voice grew fainter, almost lost in the ceaseless roar of the river.  ‘I shall make basket chairs creak most alarmingly, just you wait and see.’ Death grinned at him.  NOW YOU’RE TALKING.”

[drawlfoy]

Faux Diplomacy p.2

pairing: draco x mugglebornslytherinilvernmornyfem!reader (a mouthful i’m so sorry)

request: nah i’ve always always wanted to write this

warnings: draco malfoy being a class A dickwad, swearing

summary: reader is an ilvermorny student who was given an opportunity to travel abroad and spend a year at Hogwarts. At first she’s thrilled, but things start to get weird--why is everyone on the trip muggleborn? why were they all put into slytherin, no questions asked? and what is that draco malfoy kid doing? takes place during 6th year so peak angst

a/n: i apologize for the fact that i’m clearly favoring this story over Sound of....Magic? but it’s mostly because i’m writing what i know and i don’t know how to adult lol. also i hope you’re enjoying the slowburn! we might hate draco a little bit but i swear i’ll mend it soon!

music recs: i have a writing playlist specifically for this fic that i might share one day

word count: 2,240

The door was hard under Y/N’s fist, something that she should’ve guessed but the fact of which still managed to surprise her. Maybe she was more intoxicated than she originally assumed.

She knocked four times, slowly but loudly enough for anyone awake to hear her. The last thing she wanted to deal with was an angry racist. 

Three seconds passed by, each little mississippi begging her to run the other way before the door opened. She prayed that he was gone or at least deep in sleep. There was no telling what he’d do if he saw her. He couldn’t kill her, at least, but there were hundreds of other things that could happen to her if he was evil enough.

Her worst fear came true as the door flung open, revealing a very disgruntled and very pissed Draco. His pale hair was tousled with some pieces hanging in front of his forehead, breaking Y/N’s conception of his perfectly kept hair.

“What on earth do you want?” He hissed, his eyes burning with an intense emotion that Y/N couldn’t quite put a finger on. 

Y/N suddenly felt very silly standing outside his room with an outfit to rival Cher from Clueless as she took in his slightly rumpled silk suit. He was doing whatever important job he seemed so focused on while she was trying to get him to come out and join a party he was so clearly avoiding.

“Um,” she began rather lamely.

“Um,” Draco repeated back in a nasal voice clearly meant to mock her accent.

“Pansy uh..she wanted you to come out. It was a stupid game of truth or dare and she slipped Veritaserum into my drink so I can’t lie and say I did it when I didn’t-”

“You do realize that’s complete bullshit, right?” Draco interrupted. “The Veritaserum? Do you seriously believe that Snape would let us get out hands on that? First years fall for that every year. First time I’ve seen anyone over 12 believe it, though.”

Y/N’s cheeks grew hot as she realized he was probably completely right. Now that she actually thought about it, she couldn’t guess how Pansy could get her hands on something that dangerous much less spike drinks with it. 

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

Draco nodded with an “uh, yeah” look in his eyes and made his way to slam the door in his face when a glimmer caught her eye.

In her inebriated state, she told him point-blank, “Cool necklace. Who’s it for?”

Draco froze as he turned to look at his bed, the same one that had a very ornate necklace laying on it. He slowly turned back to Y/N with a terrifying expression on his face. 

Uh oh.

He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and dragged her inside his room, slamming the door shut behind her and shoving her against the wall.

“What the fuck dude-”

“What’s your allegiance?” he hissed, stepping in her eyeline so she couldn’t see the necklace anymore. Their proximity was uncomfortably close. Y/N could smell peppermint on his breath, no doubt remnants of a cup of tea he’d had earlier.

“My allegiance.....sheesh, I don’t know, I don’t know where I fall on the political spectrum, but I am really frustrated with the Senate for impeding any type of impeachment proceed-”

“No, you bloody idiot!” He cut in again. “I mean in the wizarding world. Not.. whatever the fuck you’re going on about.”

“Oh, you mean like... the issue with Death Eaters and everything? I dunno, I haven’t read enough about British politics to know but it’s so ridiculous, y’know? Like, someday all of them are gonna wake up and realize they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid and that they’re never gonna get rewarded the way the think. It’s really sad, they’re basically in a cult.”

Draco stared at her with wide eyes and a defensive expression on his face. He was still gripping both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them above Y/N’s head and making it impossible for her to weasel out of his grasp.

“I mean, pretty general stuff. American wizarding media is always like, ‘look at these idiots thinking that they’re gonna restore blood purity, aren’t they crazy? BLESS the fact that we left in 1776’ and whatnot. I don’t know, we all kind of chuckle at it and make memes about the fact that there’s even people out there that still buy into that shi...”

Y/N’s eyes managed to catch a quidditch uniform hung up on the bedpost with the name MALFOY printed across the back in silver letters. Suddenly it all made sense--she had just read about his father being incarcerated for being a Death Eater. She trailed off when the realization set in.

Oh no. 

“You know, with that thought, I think I’m just gonna go back to the party...I normally don’t get this political. Forget I said anything. Please!”

Draco’s face was the definition of fury. Now that Y/N knew he was Lucius Malfoy’s son, she had no clue what he could be capable of. She briefly wondered if he would kill her before immediately casting the thought aside.

That’d be absurd she reminded herself. He’s still just a teenager, just like you. He’s not gonna kill you.

He took a few moments to glare down at her before opening the door and pushing her out.

“You’re never speaking of this to anyone,” he snapped. “Go back to your party and fall for more of the pranks we like to pull on 11 year olds. Just don’t ever come back here. I mean it. Don’t ever.”

With that, Draco slammed the door in her face. Y/N stood in front of it for a few seconds as she regained her bearings. What had just happened? She was very tired, she realized suddenly. 

She was just turning around and walking away when his door cracked open just an inch. 

“Are you deaf? I said, go!”

Y/N turned to send Draco a dirty look before walking away for real. 

♥♥♥♥

Professor McGonagall was a complete sweetheart and the embodiment of what an empowered witch ought to be, but she had messed up one crucial point when it came to just how dining space would be available for the Slytherin table.

With all the new students, there was rarely a portion of the table empty enough to sit alone or even with a respectable amount of space between oneself and another person. 

Y/N suffered the consequences of this the most out of her classmates considering the fact that she was always late. By the time that she got to the Dining Hall for any meal, there was only one part of the table that was consistently open--spots next to Draco and his goons.

The rest of the house was wise enough to know to avoid them and did so well, but Y/N was not so lucky. Nearly every day she was forced to squeeze in next to either Draco, Pansy, or Blaise and was subject to listening to whatever drabble they wanted to discuss each day.

However annoyed she was, she couldn’t help but notice some interesting changes. As the fall days grew shorter, Draco’s appetite seemed to grow smaller. At one point, Y/N was taking portions nearly twice the size of his, and she was a rather light eater to begin with. She heard his irritatingly posh accent less and less, and slowly meals turned into conversations between Blaise and Pansy while Draco stared off into space. 

One of these days, Blaise turned to look Y/N straight in the eye, startling her enough to near drop her fork. They never looked at her.

“So,” he began awkwardly. “I hear that you played Quidditch as a seeker while you were at Ilvermorny.”

“Yeah, and what about it?” 

Y/N was not about to take any shit.

“Well, you see,” Blaise told her, a sincere look in his eyes, “Draco here is our seeker, and he’s a little busy, so he won’t be joining us this season.”

“Tragic.”

“And you were good, right? Like, really good? I saw your record. It was impressive.”

“Thanks. I didn’t suck.”

A tiny smile cracked on Pansy’s face. Had Y/N actually amused her?

“Okay, enough of the niceties,” she cut in. “Blaise wants you to play for us. Please?”

She batted her eyelashes in a way that Y/N prayed was ironic. 

“Well, I suppose,” Y/N answered. “What’s in it for me?”

“For starters,” Blaise told her, “Instant status. People like you if you play Quidditch.”

“So I’ve heard. Is that why Draco dropped out? People didn’t like him enough anymore?”

“You shut up,” Draco grumbled, refusing to look her in the eye.

“So you’re in?”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m dropping out the second either of you mess with me, though.”

Blaise grinned and Pansy kicked his foot under the table. Y/N immediately felt like she was witnessing something that she was not supposed to see.

“Get a room, you two,” Draco reprimanded them, rolling his eyes as he pushed his food around on his plate. 

♥♥♥♥

Y/N’s first Quidditch match came and went. The Slytherin team creamed the Hufflepuffs so badly that Y/N probably didn’t need to do any work at all, but regardless, she still caught the snitch. 

In Slytherin fashion, her team decided to throw a giant party in the common room. Everyone was permitted a plus one, which was ridiculous since Y/N wasn’t friends with anyone from any other houses. She jokingly extended the invite to Bella in a very dramatic gesture with roses and everything, and her best friend just as dramatically accepted, leaping into Y/N’s arms and requesting that she be carried away.

It was the biggest scene the dining hall had witnessed all year, enough so that when the news of Katie Bell being cursed and nearly killed broke, it took the dining hall a few moments to calm down. 

Everyone stared as Dumbledore addressed the student body.

“Students.” He cleared his throat wearily. “If you are not already aware, one of your fellow scholars has been cursed, presumably by a necklace that was gifted to her. Please do practice caution as you accept gifts going into the holiday season. These are dark times indeed.”

Nervous chatter filled the room back up with noise but did not distract Y/N from her pondering.

A cursed...necklace? Where had she heard that before?

♥♥♥♥

Y/N was never a perfect student, but she did enjoy potions and especially appreciated Slughorn’s teachings, so much so in fact that she was invited to join the Slug Club after a few weeks of classes.

Blaise was also there, and the two often sat together and joked about the overenthusiastic Gryffindors and the unresolved sexual tension between Harry and Ginny. It was hardly a secret that the two were into each other, but it seemed that the only people who weren’t aware of it were Ginny and Harry themselves.

“Pray for Dean, Y/N,” Blaise would often whisper to her as they observed the two flirt awkwardly with each other. 

The budding friendship between them was odd, but very platonic. Y/N knew he had no trouble excusing prejudice considering the fact that he put up with Draco’s nonsense, but he seemed to see some flaws in the practice.

The most shocking part of their newfound connection happened to be what Blaise confided in her about Draco. 

“He’s hardly sleeping anymore,” he told her one cold winter day. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s lost weight and he’s not talking to me. Have you heard anything?”

“No,” Y/N had told him. “Draco doesn’t particularly like me.”

♥♥♥♥

After a particularly energetic Quidditch party in December, Y/N exited the common room and decided she wanted to take a walk about the castle to clear her head.

The snow fell softly outside the window, flurrying about and blanketing the ground in a gentle pristine white. She climbed the stairs of a random tower slowly, savoring the brisk air and relishing the silence that came along with it. 

Y/N wasn’t the least bit afraid of getting reprimanded for curfew--she deserved a break, and she was nearly an adult, for Christ’s sake. There was less underage drinking outside than there was inside her current common room, so she could always pull that argument.

She prayed that the top of the tower would be one with an open side so she could be closer to the snowstorm, and as she climbed  higher, her desires seemed to be more likely. The breeze was becoming chillier by the second.

Reaching the top of the staircase, she was overjoyed to see a railing overlooking the campus. Y/N jogged up to the barrier, leaning over the edge and taking solace in the freezing air and the cold snowflakes coating her hair. 

“What’s it with you and your insistence on interrupting my alone time?”

Y/N turned to see Draco Malfoy curled up in the corner of the tower. His hair was slightly mussed from the wind and his suit crinkled from sitting down, and as Y/N drew closer to him, she came to the most shocking revelation.

His silver eyes were pools of salty liquid, rimmed red at the edges and puffier than she had ever seen them before. His cheeks were shining with dampness, doing nothing to hide the dark bags under his eyes.

Draco was crying. 

final a/n: i swear a new update will come soon! i’m sorry that it seems like i might be rushing it. i promise im gonna slow it down a little and focus on the *subtle* fluff

[tisthenightofthewitch]

AN INTERVIEW WITH TOBIAS FORGE.

The Swedish rock band Ghost will be performing at the TaxSlayer Center on October 8. Coming off a European stadium tour with Metallica, the group has headlined summer festivals and has embarked on a massive North America tour that includes New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Boston … and Moline.

Tobias Forge is Ghost's creative force, front man, singer, songwriter, musician, and architect of the storylines woven through the band's albums, videos, webisodes, and live shows. Although Ghost has been awarded a Grammy and had three consecutive number-one songs on the Billboard mainstream charts, it is the musicians' tongue-in-cheek anti-pope appearance that truly defines them. In a July 30 interview, Tobias spoke about developing the band's visual identity and his aspirations as a filmmaker.

Visuals define Ghost’s image. Are they as important as the music?

Oh, absolutely. Even though I don’t sit down and specifically draw and paint our album covers, I’ve always been very specific in what I wanted. And how I wanted the record sleeve to embody the record I made.

As a record collector, I am more than often compelled by the artwork of a record. I’m a firm believer in a really nice-looking record sleeve. And that makes me want to like the record more. Today, even though people might not consume a recording in the physical way we used to, it’s definitely a case of your visual presentation that accompanies whatever file they are going to listen to. If the graphic content is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, it opens up an avenue into people’s souls. I know this because I’m so easily charmed by record sleeves.

Are the album titles also important?

Absolutely. There needs to be a sort of a narrative between the artwork and the title of the record. And, of course, its content. In some way or form, it helps if the title summarizes a little what the record is about. Usually, most good records have some sort of theme – even though the songs might be about different things.

A lot of singer/songwriters go through phases: it’s the “divorce” album, it’s the “I’ve just gotten married” record. “I’ve just became a father or mother” record. And “now I’m older” record. And “the midnight crisis” record. And “the beard” record. In some way or form, it’s good to communication a little of what kind of state of mind you were in while making it or which state of mind you want the listener to think you were in. As opposed to just leaving it blank.

There’s a fascinating word play in your titles. Do you enjoy playing with words? Creating a sense of mystery through words?

Very much so. I’m also very much influenced by cinema. Even though I know there’s no film called Infestissuman (the title of Ghost’s second album), I also try to come up with a title for a record that could be a film as well. Like a big epic, three-hour mastodon matinée film. (Laughs). I’d like to make a film called Meliora (the title of Ghost's third album).

I understand that you have aspirations to be a filmmaker. That you’re working on a film. Could you speak about the film?

About a future Ghost film?

Yes.

I cannot speak about it in detail. But, yes, I’ve always been very fascinated with the art of filmmaking.

I definitely am in the process of exploring the possibilities of combining my musician career with a film project. Let’s put it that way. And as with anything cinematic, it takes a lot of time – and way more politics – than making a record.

In the process of this, I’m trying to vet my brain and my ideas into being super-sober about making a film that is actually needed and called for and will turn out really great – so that it doesn’t just became a really confusing project.

Over the course of rock history, there are a few films that have been made that are really cool. Even though many of them end up in more of a cult section because they are … weird. I don’t mind weird at all. I grew up watching a lot of films like that.

I would love to make a film. I would love to make it good-weird, but it needs to be good as well. It needs to be something that people can watch. I’m currently in the process of learning if I can.

The humor in your webisodes complements your albums, which sound epic. That’s a fascinating combination.

Yes. Just to give you a hint of what I spoke of in my previous answer about a possible film: a full-length film would be in that vein. Based on that sort of mythology. I believe that there is something more to tell within the storyline – within the concept of what we’ve outlined briefly – in those episodes.

Most of my favorite films have some sort of absurd humor in them.

I think it’s important for films, too. Just as with any dish at any restaurant, there are certain ingredients that you need to have. Even if its just a pinch of salt. Usually you need that. There are certain aspects in there that make it a consumable plate.

Even if you’re making a horror film or drama or thriller, there needs to be some sort of comic relief at some point. I guess what would change in a long format, is that it wouldn’t be as comedic every minute as it is in the short form.

As there is comedy in a horror film, your music has a unique dichotomy. You have metal riffs and an understated singing style. That’s very appealing to me. Was this natural to you? Is it something you developed?

Everything develops on the basis that it is being received. So I believe that to a certain degree if you’re an artist – be it a musical artist or a filmmaker or a writer or a painter – you need to be somewhat auditive when it comes to the needs and the wishes of your receiving part. As much as any aficionado of subculture, I like a lot of artists that just go against everything and make whatever that comes into his or her head regardless of what a public thinks. But most successful artists have in some way or form nurtured the relationship they have between themselves and their audience. The way that you would nurture any relationship with another part – be it a partner in life or a partner in work. There’s some sort of collaboration.

If you look at big bands that went from debutantes playing clubs to big arena acts, their first records are usually slightly more raunchy and maybe faster in tempo and might include a little bit more complicated arrangements. What you usually find over the course of time and further into their careers, they start making records that are more moderately paced. Or they are paced in a different way. Certain songs don’t really translate very well in a very, very big room in front of thousands and thousands of people. Common lingo among rock fans is that, “Oh, they sold out. They just want to sell records.”

No, they write music that will feel comfortable in the setting – in the forum in which they are performing these songs.

You do what you feel is good for both parties, and that’s how you develop your relationship with your crowd. You don’t do this 100 percent all the time. But you should be aware that if you start doing shit that your significant other – in this case the crowd – doesn't like, you’d be stupid if you continue doing it.

Coming out of a Swedish metal tradition, your music is surprisingly melodic. Sometimes hauntingly beautiful tunes with beautiful choirs. How did this sound emerge?

I have always listened to lots of different music styles. Everything more or less oriented in punk and rock. Except for my love for underground extreme metal from the '80s, most of the other types of music that I listen to are actually quite melodic. I’ve always been melody driven. Ninety-nine percent of the time, my way of listening to a song is to listen to the melodies. It doesn’t hurt if there’s a really good rhythm.

For me, melody is like the dialogue of a film. If you just make a film with just background, it might be an interesting idea. But if you want the film to be of value, you definitely need to have someone within frame saying something. And it’s important what he or she is saying. That, for me, is the melody of a song.

But then you can pimp the song out in so many ways and that’s part of the craft of songwriting. But without a melody, the likelihood of a song being good is not big.

On your first album, I understand that you played all of the instruments except the drumming. Is it hard to only be the front man in live performances?

No, I’ve learned how to deal with that. I just had to sort of disregard how I viewed myself. I always thought that I was going to be the lead guitar player of a band. A Keith Richards in the band. My intention with Ghost was the same. During the first four years – between 2006 and 2010 – up until the very last moment of recording the album, I still thought that, just before mixing the record, that we better find a singer. We never found a singer. So we kept my demo vocals basically. I re-sung them to get better takes. They were on the demos just to explain how the song goes.

That’s the way I’ve always worked. When I write a song I always play everything. So regardless of who might have executed it on a record or executed it on stage, it’s always my way of playing. If I were to play a bass in another band, that’s how the bass would sound. If I were to play drums in a band, the basics of how I arrange songs, that what you hear in Ghost. That’s how I play the drums. Then I get a really good drummer in to play really well, but that’s how I approach thought in all these different instruments. And that has become a signature thing for Ghost.

That makes writing records easier. That makes having a band together very hard. But that is just the nature of the beast. It’s just coming to terms with accepting and owning that. It has definitely taken some time.

Fame doesn’t seem to be your prime mover. What do you think of fame now that your identity has been revealed?

I have, as much as anyone who has any inclination to rock in a band, always wanted to be in a well-known rock band. What comes with that is fame. Up until I was probably 30 years old, I wanted to be very famous. And I wanted to be known. After I started working with Ghost, I was definitely enjoying … . I wouldn’t say anonymity. I was never anonymous. But Ghost and the visual side of Ghost was definitely overshadowing anything that I was. Over the years of being in a well-known band without being a very well-known person myself, I actually started to prefer that over being a recognized person myself. Despite having wished for that before, there are definitely two sides of being recognized. When you dream about it, you only see the upsides. It’s only about the perks of fame.

I don’t feel in any way or form that my so called “coming out” was negative. It was just a weird thing having to deal with a higher level of recognition so far into your career. That was a little bit weird because it usually comes gradually.

For example, for seven years I never took photos of people. If you ever saw a photo of me, it was always a friend of mine that took a photo and I thought it would never be posted online. Or it was someone taking a photo of me without me knowing it. So all of a sudden, when I was out of the closet, you couldn’t really tell people any more that you wouldn’t take a photo with them. All of a sudden, you can’t say no to anyone.

That is something I suddenly had to adopt to because it was very easy earlier to say no, no, no, no. You know how it is. Now if I say no, someone could be very offended. Which is a little sad because I might be on my way into a car that is leaving in 10 seconds and we’re in a hurry. And there are 10 people by the car and you’re like, “I really don’t want to do this to you but … .” And I can’t even finish that sentence before the door is closed. And people get offended. I don’t want people to be offended and sad.

Fame is something that sort of came overnight. But it’s a good problem to have.

All content owned by River Cities Reader

[pigeontheoneandonly]

Continuing my Dragon Age / Mass Effect crossover series.  Part 4 here.  Also on AO3. It’s coming in at the very last minute, but this is also my (belated) contribution to Kaidan Week 2019′s AU Theme Day.  (@spectrekaidanalenko)

Part 5: The High Seas

Nathaly folded her arms over the rail and closed her eyes, filling her nostrils with the fresh sea breeze.  Maker, but she’d missed this.  Ferelden would always be home, but she’d said her goodbyes, and had no longing left for an extended stay.  For some people home was more of a necessary idea than a real place.

Or maybe her concept of home had shifted over the years, from a place to people.  Garrus and Ash and Liara— all closer than her blood kin.  The rest of the company, currently on march through Nevarra, a kind of extended family. Crotchety old-timers in place of nagging aunts, and dozens of cousins more her age.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

She opened her eyes, smiling as she saw Ash standing beside her, arms crossed.  Armor packed away for the meantime.  Her strength was evident even in a plain linen tunic and breeches, brawny arms and a broad back, glossy brown hair tied a practical knot, but she also looked easier, less intimidating than when armored. Relaxed.  

Nathaly turned back to the water.  “Very nice.”

Ash lingered on the gray swells of the Waking Sea.  “The way you take to the water, you’d think you were  a fish, not a shepherd.”

Her laugh carried. A few of the nearest sailors paused in their duties, startled by the sound, though Nathaly took no notice. “My mother had to drag me out of the swimming hole by my ear in the summers.  Kaidan and I practically lived there from the time we could walk.”

The sidelong glance she got in return had more than a little subtext, and a hint of trepidation.  “How is that going?”

“Pardon?” She wiped a loose lock of hair off her face, whipped free by the wind.

She jerked her chin aft, where Kaidan sat chatting with Liara.  “With him.”

Nathaly snorted. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘with him’.”

“You built up this moment for ten years.  That’s a lot of anticipation.”  She cleared her throat.  “And I can’t help but notice he was pretty quiet on the way up to the coast.”

Nathaly folded her hands.  Looking off to the horizon.  “You remember your first kill?”

“Trust you to be that crass.”  Ash made a sound of mild offense, joining her at the rail.  “It wasn’t pretty.  Not one you want to hear about, or I want to tell.”

“But you remember it, is my point.  You always will.”  She shrugged, hunching down.  “My first was older than me.  Everyone was older than me, then.  I threw up hours later, when that battle was over.”

“Everyone does,” Ash said.

“Everyone,” she agreed.  Thinking about Kaidan, briefly, his head in those bushes.  “But the moment, that moment, when he fell and it was my pike sticking in him, was the worst moment of my life.  All around me people were still fighting.  Attacking, dying.  Screaming. And I told myself that if I didn’t pick up that pike and keep going, if I died here because I couldn’t, then Kaidan would stay in that tower forever.  It’s a kind of slavery, you know.”

Ash snorted, but refrained from comment.  They’d had this argument before.  And Nathaly continued, unperturbed, for the same reason.  “And I picked it up.  I turned into this.”

“You turned into a person who could waltz into a Circle of Magi and set one free with hardly any notice at all.”  Ash turned to her.  “I cannot emphasize how baffled they were.  They questioned that poor guard for hours, wondering how Kaidan snuck by. They looked at the window and determined there was no way up or down.”

Her turn to tch. “I’m supposed to be proud that they’re idiots?”

“They’re not. Keeping mages is what they do.” Her stare turned harder, and more curious.  “What’s this about?”

She straightened, flexed her fingers around the railing.  Looked down at the deck.  Wondering whether to speak, and finally just blurted it out.  “I turned into someone he doesn’t like.”

That just annoyed her.  “He doesn’t get to judge.  He took your help readily enough.”

Nathaly tendered her an exasperated look.  “Ash. Come on.”

“This is your problem, and you’re turning it into his.”  She turned around and folded her arms, looking at her pointedly.  “I’ve known you… four years now?  Five?”

“Something like that.”  She turned back to the water, grumpy.

“You’ve never been with anybody.”

“That’s not even a little true.”

“Sure it is.” Then, over her protests, “You spend a night.  Two, if you’re in one place long enough.  You never leave your name.  You never leave anything.  I think you may be the only one in the entire company that’s never had any kind of shield-mate thing��”

“I don’t want to shit where I eat, so there’s something wrong with me?”

“You don’t shit anywhere, is my point.”  Ash pressed onward as Nathaly rolled her eyes.  “You keep that particular shelf in your heart scrupulously empty.  Because whether or not you want to admit it, you’ve been harboring this bizarre fantasy about a person you last saw when you were eight years old, and how it was going to be when you finally met him again.”

“It’s not like that.”  And she meant it.  Ash’s accusation was absurd.  “I didn’t have any expectations beyond getting Kaidan out of that abyssal shithole.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “But you hoped.”

Nathaly had hoped. But not the way Ash meant.  “He was my closest friend, going back to before I have memories.  Our mothers used to quiet us as infants by sticking us in the same cradle.”

“So you’ve said, many times.”

“I just wanted that back.”  And a little bit of the forlorn way she’d felt since Kaidan looked at her with such revulsion as they fled Crestwood returned.  “But we both changed.  Too much, maybe.  The Chantry stole it.”

“You’re so bitter.”

“They can all get fucked.  From the Divine on down.”

“That’s one way to cure what ails them,” Ash said, mildly.

Nathaly held her cross look a moment longer, and then broke, chuckling despite herself.  “I don’t know, Ash.”

“Talk to him.” She uncrossed her arms and pushed away from the rail.  “You won’t get anywhere brooding.  And you haven’t given him an opportunity to understand.  He’s spent most of his life in a place where every hour was spoken for, and they didn’t even have funerals.  Anyone who died just disappeared.  It was sanitary, but not particularly educational.”

“You’re probably right.”  She glanced, again, at where he sat with Liara, their conversation still as animated as before.

Some of her ambivalence must have shown, because Ash cleared her throat.  “You know, I have three sisters in Lydes.  Two married.  One… well, wild, our mother would say.  Abby.  She’s like you, you’d enjoy her.”

She quirked eyebrow.  “Bitter?”

“Appreciative of swords, and tops you have to tie her into.”  Ash grinned at her bark of laughter.  “More Orlesian dueling than real work.  Still.  What I wanted to say is this.  Nobody understood, when I took my vows.  We’re devout, of course, most families are.  But giving up your life to the Chantry?  Something else entirely.”

Nathaly tilted her head.  “How’d you make them understand?”

“The first time I got a chance to visit, I’d been gone over two years.  And it was strange at first.  Awkward beyond belief.  And then something changed.”  

“What?”

Her smile broadened.  She touched her shoulder.  “They remembered I was their sister.  I hadn’t changed.  You haven’t, either, not in the ways that matter.  But it takes time.”

“Yeah.” Then, as Ash began to walk away, “And thanks.”

She gave her a nod, and disappeared back below decks.  Probably looking for lunch.

Nathaly took a breath, and steeled herself.  Regardless of what Kaidan thought of her, they had a bigger problem.  

He looked up as she sauntered over.  She tried not to take his guarded expression personally, but it twisted like a knife every time.  “We’ve got another week before we reach Ostwick.”

Liara sat back. The wind hadn’t bothered her hair at all, protected as it was in its thick braids.  “What then?  Do you still intend to head north?”

“Rivain is our best bet.  No other place in the world is friendlier to mages.”

“Excepting Tevinter,” she pointed out.

Nathaly waved that off.  “Tevinter cares about rich human mages.  Does that describe our bunch?”

“Not yet,” Kaidan said, overly bright.  It took Liara’s gentle laughter to make her realize he was telling a joke.  

She blushed, but soldiered on.  “It’s going to be a long trip.  We can’t count on that mess back in Crestwood being our only fight.  And no offense, but…”

“I’m a bit useless at combat?” he suggested, dryly.  

“In a nutshell.” She nodded at Liara.  “She can teach you something about real combat magic later, not the kind they teach that assumes you have an army to defend, away from all the prying eyes aboard ship.  But she also knows that a staff is a very sturdy, very heavy length of wood that can be quite useful for hitting people.  I hoped she might be willing to demonstrate.”

“Of course—” Liara began, but Kaidan interrupted her.  

“I don’t want to learn a quarterstaff,” he said.  

Nathaly blinked. “Then what?”

“The way you used that sword is pretty impressive.”

“You… want to learn sword fighting?”  She couldn’t have been more startled if he said he wanted to fly to the moons.

“It’s a little less conspicuous.  And I said I wanted to trade down to a focus that’s more discreet.”

Liara gestured towards her.  “You couldn’t ask for a better teacher.  It seems a shame not to take advantage.”

Kaidan looked at her.  “I’m already beholden, but I could stand to go a little deeper into debt.”

Nathaly was certain her face was burning.  She had a brown complexion, darkened further by the sun, and hoped it didn’t show.  “When do you want to start?”

He glanced at Liara.  “How about now?”

The deck was clear enough.  She swallowed.  “Alright. Let me just… go find a pair of blades.”

He cocked his head.  “What’s wrong with yours?”

Liara chuckled. “Are you joking?  Hers might hesitate when it hit your bones, but for certain nothing else about you will stop it.”  Then, at his confused expression, “It’s enchanted.  To help cut through armor.”

“I guess that explains why it cut mail like a hot knife through butter.”

“A necessary expense,” Nathaly said, as though it wasn’t worth more than all the rest of her worldly goods put together and then some.  “Templars are armored head to toe.  I can’t rely on gaps all the time.”

And then she regretted saying it, as his face clouded, overcast by shadows of their fight with the three templars on the road.  Probably recalling the one she stabbed through the neck.  That particular opening, where the helm ended, was just so exploitable.  Nathaly was frankly shocked the templar order had never corrected it.

But then, templars generally did not see a lot of non-magical action, respected as they were throughout Thedas.

Whatever images floated through his mind, Kaidan only asked, “Why not put the enchantment on your dagger?  Seemed like you attacked with that more.”

She blinked. “That’s the smartest question anyone’s ever asked me about it.  Maybe you’re a swordsman after all.”

He smiled. “I think you’ve got an answer, though.”

“Three reasons.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “First, the dagger takes a lot more abuse.  I’ve broken them clean off before and it’s too expensive to replace.  Sometimes I have to leave it behind, because I threw it, or wedged it into something, and so on.  And finally, when I do manage a hit with the long blade, it counts for a lot more.  A person can walk away from a shallow stab wound.”

Ash joined them. “And don’t get her started about the virtues of armor— or lack thereof.  Here.”  She handed Nathaly a pair of wooden tie rods, used to hold smaller sails in place, and about the length of a long sword.  “I couldn’t help but overhear about this little experiment.”

Nathaly swung one, experimentally.  “Sure, this’ll work.”

She handed the other to Kaidan, who turned it over, a bit uncertain now that they were about to begin.  Sure enough, he tried to delay.  “What about armor?  If you can afford an enchanted sword, plate surely can’t be a stretch.”

Her nose wrinkled. “There are only two weapons that worry me.”

“Here we go,” Ash muttered.  Liara swatted at her.

“A longbow, and a mace.”  Ignoring Ash entirely.  “Maces do not care about plate.  They are specifically designed to negate its advantages, which leaves only avoidance. And the best way to do that is to maintain full range of movement.”

But Ash could not keep silent.  “You get full range in plate.”

“Almost. Not good enough.  And the weight slows you down.”

“Properly fitted, you don’t even notice the weight.”

“But you do,” Nathaly insisted.  It was an old argument between them.  “It adds its weight to yours.  Makes it harder to start moving, or stop, or change direction.”

Kaidan interrupted the nascent argument.  Not knowing them well enough to understand its good nature.  “And the longbow?”

Liara answered. “It’s arrow-catcher armor.  Lots of layers.  Leather’s tough, and she’s got a tight-woven silk lining under it.”

“Shit,” Ash said. “Everyone who can afford it wears silk underneath.”

He looked Nathaly up and down.  “You’ve thought all this through.”

“Your mind is your most important combat asset.”  She raised her stick.  “Let’s see what we have to work with, here.”

Hefting his own stick, he frowned.  “Feels light. Not that I know what a sword weighs.”

“It’s too early to care about that.”  She moved several steps, circling around him.  “The most important factors in a swordfight are timing and distance. Control those, and you’ll win every time.”

Kaidan turned in place, following her.  “What am I supposed to do?”

“Try to hit me.” She grinned.  “Show me what bad habits I need to beat out of you.”

“Is that an order?”  Smirking slightly.

“A fact,” she said, and lunged towards him.  Just to get things started.

Nathaly wasn’t trying, not really.  She only wanted him to react.  And he did. Scuttling backwards and tripping over his own feet.

She closed easily, smacking his arm with the rod.  “See. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Yet,” said Ash, who was clearly enjoying this all too much.  

A hint of irritation flickered.  “I should thump you, too.  A little reminder.”

She held up her hands in surrender.  “I’m good.”

“So I can get on with this?”  She raised her eyebrows.

Ash crossed her arms, put out at having her fun spoiled, but held her silence.  Shepard returned her full attention to Kaidan, who swallowed.  She offered a little guidance.  “Try again. This time, close with me instead of retreating.”

Kaidan raised the rod half-heartedly.  Skittish. She sighed, and threw her stick to Ash, who caught it easily, and then spread her arms wide.  “Fine.  We’ll try it like this.”

He bit his lip. “I don’t want to hurt you…”

Ash barked a laugh.  Her hands clamped over her mouth.  Even Liara looked a amused.  Primly, she said, “If you manage to so much as tap her, I’ll be very impressed.”

“I’m getting bored,” Nathaly said.

That did the trick.  Kaidan swung the rod at her like a baton.  She stepped smartly out of the way.  “Slow.  Try a shorter swish.”

“Feels more powerful this way.”

“Sure, but it’s all wasted because you can see it coming three leagues awa—”

He took two quick steps forward and flicked the rod.  She leaned backwards reflexively, feeling it whoosh past, and grinned.  “Better.”

“I feel so stupid doing this.”

“It’ll feel that way.  And then one day, it won’t.  It’ll just be natural.”  She nodded at him.  “Again.”

Kaidan hefted the rod.  “Timing and distance.”

“Yep.”

He came forward, half-skipping in what he surely thought was an attempt to move lightly, flicking the rod back and forth.  She retreated, half her concentration on how he was driving her towards the rail ringing the deck.  And noticing he wasn’t paying it any mind at all.  All of his focus on trying to land any kind of blow.

So he was completely unprepared as she slowed.  Nathaly saw the hope brimming in his eyes.  Unsure at first, more assured with every small delay in her steps.  No idea she was luring him in.

His eyes told her exactly when his confidence reached a tipping point, a small fraction before the firm way he planted his foot confirmed it.  She was already spinning out of his path when he committed to the lunge.

And kept stumbling forward when his rod found only empty air.  He had so much momentum, in fact, that he carried on several paces and half-pitched over the rail.

She grabbed at his shirt.  Underneath it, he was shaking from the close call.  “Whoa.  Hey.”

Kaidan took a big breath.  Then whirled, coming in with an overhand strike.  She only just managed to dodge.  A burst of laughter escaping her, the maneuver beyond clumsy but so completely unexpected and enthusiastic that she couldn’t help but enjoy it.

And he kept going. Sufficiently embarrassed or motivated by her trick to forget all his earlier hesitation.  All but running at her.  But she was tired of being chased.  It was a good moment to teach him distance went in more than one direction.

So the next time he swung, she waited for it to complete, and stepped close in a blink. Blocking any further movement of his arm.  As expected he immediately tried to retreat, but she kept pace, until he stopped in some confusion.

“You’re dead,” she explained.  His eyebrows knit together.  So she demonstrated.  Stretched out one arm to touch the stick.  “I would hold your sword here, with my own long blade.”

Then she took her other hand and moved it to his side, just under the ribs.  “You’re not armored, and no mage I ever met wanted to be, so I’d slide my dagger here.  It would be over before you knew it had happened.”

She raised her head.  Found her face only inches from his.  He was still a little shorter, he always had been, and his eyes were the same warm brown. Her breath hitched.  Just once.

“That sounds like your style,” he said, quietly.  “It didn’t occur to me until a few weeks later, but you waited for just the right moment to come to Kinloch Hold.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”  She swallowed.  “I wanted to give it my best shot.”

“And then you closed the distance.”

Her mouth quirked into a half-smile.  “Exactly.”

He held her gaze a moment longer.  Then he stepped back and lifted the rod.  “Let’s try again.  I’ll get it this time.”

[note-katha]

Chapter Two: The Five Circles and The Four Rings

Welcome back! It’s time for...chapter two, right? Right. Okay, let me find my page again, let’s see.

There was a long silence….ah, no that’s too far ahead. We’re not ready for that yet, or at least you probably aren't.

Here’s chapter two! Let me tell you, this chapter is going to be filled with information. Classes and more classes and a few people that I recommend you take a moment to burn into your memory. Not literally though, I should point out. I can’t afford another literalism lawsuit. Well, let’s move on. We have a fresh pot of tea and an enthralling chapter to get too!

As entrancing as orientation can be, especially for new students, we, unfortunately, have to cut through all the chatter to focus! We’ll pick up right about here, where the professors smartly split the group into Witches and Nevermore-originating students. It’s just for ease of communication, I’m sure you understand, yes? There’s such a variety of different material to cover that it’s the only way they’d be able to get everything done.

We haven’t even gotten to the Rings!

Professor Maaya took the group not too far away, leaving Dr. Avali to deal with the Nevermore kids. Maaya, unlike Avali, was endlessly rational, a benefit when it came to describing magic to a few scores of people that hadn’t known magic existed until now.

“Shall we begin?” She asked with a warm smile. The professor turned to trace out the Five Circles of Magic in the air, illuminating it in Energy-based magic. Ah, you might want to see it, I’m sure my explanation wasn’t the most helpful, huh?

Here, hand me that paper, would you? I have a pen.

There we go! I haven’t been drawing this symbol for years to be bad at it. Now you have something to refer to while I keep going.

“The Five Circles of Magic are the most basic concept that as Witches, you all must understand,” Maaya explained. “The Fifth Circle is the most common, containing the spheres of Energy, Nature, Voice, Time, and Space. I’m sure most of you here are attuned to the Fifth Circle. I, myself, am an Energy Witch.”

Ardis and Jules shared a look, one that went “oh, that makes sense”. Ardis and Jules were both separately mildly relieved to know they’d have someone at least somewhat similar to them nearby. Aw, that’s so adorable, isn’t it?

As she spoke, the sigil lit up, starting at the very top and moving around in a clockwise pattern. Yes, this order is important, make a note of it.

“The Fourth Circle of Magic is less common but very important. The Fourth Circle contains the four basic elements, Wind, Fire, Earth, and Water.” The pattern repeated, showing where each one was placed with Wind at the top and Earth at the bottom. “While some countries choose to replace one or two of the elements with others which they feel works best, Evenfall has chosen to follow the Western Arcane theory for the Five Circles.”

She nodded to herself, eyeing the group to see if anyone was lost. No one was tired, though that was rather due to her energy spell currently covering the students. They’d sleep well tonight, luckily.

“Alright, moving onto the Third Circle of Magic, I hope you’re paying attention!” She clapped her hands together with a brilliant grin. Oh, right, did I forget to mention that Professor Suli Maaya was one of those kinds of people. The type that has a switch to flip and suddenly be a disconcerting vibrant (and mildly aggressive) person. “The Third Circle contains, from the top, Mind, Soul, and Emotion! This here is a very dangerous circle, as it relates to altering a person’s self but it’s not necessarily something to be feared,” she adds as a reassurance, “And Third Circle attunement is quite rare.”

Well, I hope that wasn’t too much for you, because we have a little more to go before we can get back into the fun stuff.

“Finally, the Second Circle of Magic, Creation and Destruction. This is the rarest and technically power circle to be a part of.” Professor Maaya scanned the group. Kal squirmed a bit, she was feeling guilty for some odd reason. It’s good to be unique! I would imagine she knew that but now, but she’s an odd one. “I want to preface one very important thing before I ask for questions,” Maaya said, “Despite how it may appear, you are all equal in power and strength. The Inner Circles often appear more powerful but are far more difficult to ever truly use. The Outer Circles may seem limited or small but they will provide you with undeniable abilities and skills. At Evenfall, we want everyone to thrive together and work as a group to hone your powers. Strength comes in multiples not singles.”

Oh my, that was quite cheesy. I told her once she should probably change that line, but it’s managed to make an impact every year. Judging by the baited breathes and silence, it worked once again!

“Any questions?”

There was a long silence, people don’t figure out things that quickly.

Fortunately, something did break the silence.

“Magic...MAGIC ISN’T REAL!” Someone unknown screamed from the back of the group. She’s one of those people I mentioned to remember. Her name is Mira and you’ll be hearing that statement and a variety of variations from her quite often. At least it broke the silence, sending the group into a crowd of laughter.

Kal bit her lip, unconfident. Originally, she was inclined to agree with Mira, but now? She was more unsure if she was capable of surviving at a school like this. Which, is absurd. She’s a main character! Well, she doesn’t know that, but that doesn’t make it not true. It looks like we’ll have to wait for the character development for the rest.

Someone raised their hand for a question, “What about the First Circle of Magic?”

All the energy seemed to drain as a quite deadly serious expression was now on Maaya’s face, “The First Circle of Magic is dangerous, so I beg you, please, do not look into it.”

“Isn’t that...just gonna encourage people to look into it?” Juli whispered quietly. These three were, in fact, the exact type to look into it.

“You could lose your life by doing so.”

“....Nevermind.”

There was far more to do in terms of “beginning”, but it was decided many years ago to place those in the first few days of classes.

All students being required to take their respective Circle Magic class gave a guaranteed spot for students to finish the final steps that would truly allow them to step into the world of Nevermore and Everless.

And allow those scared to run away. Don’t tell anyone I said that, I already got in trouble enough about it before, I would rather remain on good terms with the school.

Anyways, by the unfortunate thing called “organization”, all our wonderful students are all in separate classes.

Well, Kal was guaranteed to be separated but Ardis and Jules wound up in separate classes. Quite tragic, really.

Well, who’s first? Well, we started with Kal first so why not Ardis? He’s in for some, how would I put it, interesting company.

Ardis was humming lightly, as he tends to do, as he entered his class. He didn’t recognize anyone, which makes sense, Ardis you haven’t met anyone yet. Though, that’s probably because he’s in that dorm. A mostly empty place which people rarely actually lived in.

His luck was only evident of his main character status, don’t worry. He took a seat near the front of the class, hoping to be left mostly alone. He wanted to learn! Which, well, he hopefully will at Evenfall. That’s the point of college, isn’t it?

However, as unfortunate is it is for him, there was someone who recognized him.

“Hey, is this seat taken?” The voice of an obnoxiously flirtatious voice called out. Ardis glanced to his side, only to see Mary Sue, his suitemate.

“No?” Ardis answered quite unconfidently. Ardis wasn’t sure if he was relieved to see a familiar face or off-put by the girl’s odd behavior. He was fairly certain that getting involved with someone with a weird name like “Mary Sue” wouldn’t be a very good idea. Though, let me be honest, he’ll be doing far more than she will.

“Hey!” Mary Sue hissed, glaring as she looked around. “Who said that?”

“Who said what?” Ardis asked.

“That, uh,” she stopped. “Whatever it doesn’t matter, it’s just part of my fantastic destiny probably.” Oh dear, I think she can hear us. That shouldn’t be happening.

That’s quite a problem, but it doesn’t matter. We don’t see that much of her! So we can move onto discussing what happens during class. Personally, the Circle classes are always delightful to teach. They’re pass/fail classes and unless you miss all the classes or skip the final, you’ll pass. It’s education on how to use your magic, most students aren't inclined to miss the class.

Mary Sue plopped down with a huff, but caught Ardis’s confused staring.

“I’m sorry, uh, whatever you’re named, I’m not interested,” she said with a weird smile.

Ardis cocked his head to the side, very innocent, “What?”

“I’m not interested in you, so don’t even try.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean that look you’re giving me!” Mary Sue laughed. “You have something to say, right?”

“I was going to ask if you needed stomach medicine, you had a weird expression,” Ardis said simply. Ah, that’s what I love about this kid. Blunt and innocent, it’s a very fun combination to see. Especially now that that Mary Sue girl’s eye is twitching. Let’s hope that doesn’t become a habit.

“I don’t.”

Ardis gave a nod, finally being able to focus on his own stuff again. A delightful set of pens and paper to take notes with. Oh yes, he’s one of those people. He likely spent a few hours debating which of his colorful stationery he’d bring along.

Class began shortly afterward. Professor Zita Cavallo was teaching this class. I hate Professor Zita Cavallo, she owes me for an incident way back in ‘33. She’s a generally nice person, however, which prevents me from telling you to hate her.

Regardless of owed debts, she was teaching this class. Attuned to Space Magic, she was quite the interesting teacher.  Someone stood beside her, a glamour placed upon them. It seemed to be tied to Professor Cavallo but none of the students here were really talented enough to notice that.

“Good morning students,” Cavallo signed, accompanied by their assistant. “My name is Zita Cavallo, this person beside is Luna. This is the Introductory Fifth Circle Magic class,” she paused to cast a spell. The fifth circle emerging behind her. “That includes Energy, Nature, Voice, Time, and Space.” The corresponding points lit up as she signed. “I’m attuned to Space, personally. There’s a lot to discuss! So, we need to discuss and work on the assignment of Rings.”

“Rings?” Someone called out.

“Evenfall and the surrounding area is unfortunately not very safe. So, in order to protect our students, we have made pacts with ancient entities. These old and wise beings have protected our school and students since the beginning of the school’s life. Today, before any classes truly begin, we will be allowing the selection process to occur.”

That got Ardis’s attention. “What do you mean, allowing?” He asked, looking at the professor with confusion.

“You and I do not select your Ring. Their Guardian selects you.” Ah, yes, the stock line every Circle Magic professor uses. I mean, it’s not bad just not creative! “We’ll step outside for a few minutes for the process. It shouldn’t take long but we’re organized into times since there’s quite a few classes to get through and our guardians can’t stretch themselves too far trying to help all of us.”

There were murmurs through the class as Cavallo began to lead them out of the room. It was rather unexpected, after all. The Rings, however, are quite interesting and I always find it fun to watch students in their amazement for what goes on.

They filed out onto an open area, where Cavallo ordered them to circle around. She stepped into the center. The first step to the Ring ritual was the origin summoning.

Cavallo was good at this, she’s done it plenty of times. She stretched out slightly before beginning to cast a very specific spell.

Five circles, well, five rings were illuminated around Cavallo. They burned brightly for a long moment, even despite the sun shining above the students. They soon disappeared and Cavallo grinned. I swear, I hate her cockiness, she did a simple spell, not changing the world. I would know.

“Okay, students. So, the Selection process isn’t very glamorous, but that’s not the point here. This is important, so please listen well.”

Well, we’re not listening to her. I find that Cavallo’s explanations drag on and on and on. She’s the through type and we all know that through means boring.

The Five Rings each represent a Guardian. Fye, Brist, Mir, Sair, and Ravere.

Brist, who manifests as an owl, represents wisdom and creativity. She’s a sweet person but can be terrifying when upset. I don’t recommend making her upset. Mir, who manifests as a deer, represents nature and growth. They’re quite a nice being though a bit of boring. They’re very reliable.

Sair, who manifests as a fox, represents fire and trickery. He was once considered evil but if you give him pets, he melts. Don’t tell him I said that though. Then there’s Ravere, manifesting as a hawk, she represents wind and passion. She’s very strong and appears most frequently to her charges.

Finally, Fye, of ice and courage. A lone wolf, both in personality and form, they’re very selective in who they pick and rarely show kindness. They’re just shy, I think.

Anyways, with that explanation, let us return to the story.

Mary Sue, who had stuck near Ardis for some reason, leaned over. “Obviously, Fye will pick me. I’m the perfect choice!” Ardis nodded half-heartedly, far more curious in the ritual than the girl beside him.

“We’ll begin with…” Cavallo scanned the class. “You! Come here.” Ardis! Wonderful, this chapter was getting long.

Ardis walked over, curiosity suppressing any of his nervousness.

“So, quick explanation, you’ll stand in the center of where the circles were and with a bit of your own magic energy, the Guardians will appear for just a moment, before one selects you. Quick and simple, your magic carries part of yourself, allowing the Guardians to start to understand you.”

Ardis nodded, “How do I use my magic energy?”

“Ah! I forget, not all of you know. Just take a deep breath, focus on whatever it is you feel within you. Search for that energy and cling to it. That’s enough.”

Deciding that was enough of an explanation, mostly because he had been able to do some types of magic beforehand, Ardis figured it wouldn’t be hard.

He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the students around him. He could feel it, the energy and the magic that was there.

He jerked, opening his eyes to see the rings once again bright with light and animals in each one.

The Guardians.

There was only a short moment of tense deliberation before one ring, rimmed in orange with a fox at the center was the only one to remain. Sair, the fox of fire and trickery. He had been selected.

The fox seemed to bow before disappearing as well.

Cavallo clapped her hands to grab Ardis’s attention. “Good job! Let’s get to the next person. You?” She pointed at Mary Sue.

The two switched places as Mary Sue flipped her hair. She was confident, very confident.

Ardis was now able to watch the scene that had unfolded for him, yet slightly different. From the outside, you couldn’t see any of the Guardians, simply the light of the Rings.

For now, Ardis quietly wondered how Kal and Jules were getting along and what it meant for a being of trickery to select him of all people.

taglist: @falling-rivers @superwaywardangel @immawritethat @arynneva  @likeicarusifall @aschenink, @writing-for-the-batfam, @ekrizdis, @wiccanchester, @spacebrick3

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Ant-Man (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Four (22.22% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Fourteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

It’s delightful. 

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Maggie passes with Cassie as she puts her to bed.

Female characters:

Peggy Carter.

Hope Van Dyne.

Cassie.

Maggie.

Male characters:

Howard Stark.

Hank Pym.

Scott Lang.

Peachy.

Luis.

Dale.

Kurt.

Dave.

Darren Cross.

Frank.

Paxton.

Gale.

Mitchell Carson.

Sam Wilson.

OTHER NOTES:

Dave calls Scott a pussy, and Scott is not fussed at all about accepting the attempted insult.

Ah, the old ‘wish you’d call me dad’ cliche, the most worn-out lazy way to establish an antagonistic parent/child relationship. 

“a sustainable environment of well-being”, what an excellent fascist euphemism.

Maggie is very reasonable with Scott about the conditions for seeing Cassie; it’s refreshing to not have this played as ‘harpy ex-wife refuses to let man see his child because she’s just the worst!’ Maggie has a child to look after - and has been doing so for years now while Scott was in jail - and she has every right to impose rules on how things proceed, Scott doesn’t get to just march in and have things his way ‘because she’s my daughter!’ Children are not possessions or status symbols, and this movie does a nice job of recognising that and having the adult characters recognise that and behave in reasonable and understanding ways for Cassie’s benefit rather than their own egos. Other films should take note. Also, real people.

“Yeah man, it killed DiCaprio.”

Turning lambs into goo is worse than kicking puppies. What a monster.

They do a pretty solid job with the reason for Hope not being allowed to don the suit instead. It has strong potential for seeming like flat-out sexism, the idea that a woman can’t get the job done (in universe) and that a female hero won’t sell (out universe), and while that may indeed still be the core reason, they still pull off the reasoning as if it’s genuine.

Pym’s excuse for why he never told Hope the truth about her mother’s death, on the other hand, is pretty fuckin’ weak. Tell people to stop pretending ‘I was trying to protect you’ is a reasonable explanation for lies. It’s super-high - easily Top 5 - on my list of Worst and Most Tedious Cliche Lines.

Kurt suggests that the suit is the work of gypsies and it’s...not the best line they could have picked. Something less racist instead, maybe? No?

Cross is really fixated on Pym as a father figure. It’s different. I like different.

“That’s a messed-up looking dog.”

Scott and Paxton making peace is so great. Paxton peeing in all the corners and Scott being all jealous and threatened by Paxton ‘usurping his place in the family’ would have been such a predictable cliche for them to use, and this very palatable mature adult behaviour is sooo much better. This is how you stop normalising petty possessive rivalries. 

Luis is magical, and also, mad cultured. I love it, but I love even more that they don’t hang a lantern on it, they just let it be part of his character.

Ok, I confess, this is probably gonna be a weird sort of meandering review, because I’ve had this post sitting in my drafts for two months gathering dust while I deal with the mental and physical fatigue of the first trimester of a pregnancy (it’s FUN), and now the due date for this post (pun definitely intended) is right on the horizon, so...I’m just gonna get it done, and it’ll be whatever the heck it is in the end. This is not a complex film filled with deep nuance, it’s basically just an action-y heist movie with some hand-waved scifi on top. And there’s ants. It’s not a hard film to talk about, so you’ll excuse me if it doesn’t get my very best effort. I’m kinda busy growing a human over here.

I remember a lot of grumbling and even some outrage in fandom, back when this film was announced; a lot of people upset that the MCU was bringing in a comparatively little-known and perhaps little-loved superhero like Ant-Man when they still hadn’t bothered with a single female-led film yet, and various complaints about the problematic nature of the Ant-Man character from the comics (referring, I believe, to the Hank Pym version). And then, of course, there was the doubt about whether or not an Ant-Man story was just a fucking idiotic idea in the first place, what with the questionable application of science and the even more questionable appeal of a tiny little man running around playing with ants. Expectations were not high. And yet, Ant-Man pulls through, not just with a great fun romp, but with what I consider one of the more entertaining films the MCU has churned out to date.

I have made my fair share of sour comments about previous films in the MCU and their unimaginative paint-by-numbers plots, and so what I’d like to talk about with Ant-Man is how it manages to be such a success to me despite an essentially uncomplicated story that follows a predictable narrative arc the likes of which we’ve all seen a hundred times before. The basic tenets of a heist movie are all there; the basic tenets of a good vs evil story play straight, alongside a low-key but typical redemption plot, and some plight-of-the-regular-guy vs corporate greed and warmongering, and the leading man hooks up with the leading lady in the end and proves himself as a hero to his family and all that jazz. We know every one of these story and character beats. So. Why do they work?

Let me back this up a second to talk about a couple of major-league pet peeves of mine, the one a microcosmic version of the other: firstly, when people say ‘all Marvel films are basically the same’, and secondly, the Advanced Level Faux-Intellectual Douche version of that sentiment, when people declare that ‘there’s no such thing as originality anymore! There are only seven types of story in the world anyway! Everything is derivative!’ It’s an obnoxious absence of a viewpoint that betrays a lack of imagination and a use of such broad-strokes surface-level comprehension as to be essentially meaningless. Sure, if you break down story concepts to their most fundamental core drives, you can summarise their arcs in a relatively small number of ways, and familiarity with these core concepts can provide a degree of predictability in the way things play out. But that doesn’t mean that every single version of, say, the classic Hero’s Journey is the same damn story, and therefore a useless derivation from which no entertainment or message can be gleaned. If someone asks you to tell them the plot of a movie and you just go ‘oh, it’s a Hero’s Journey’ and leave it at that, you’ve told them almost nothing about what to actually expect. The Matrix is a very, very different Hero’s Journey to The Lord of the Rings, which is a very different Hero’s Journey to Finding Nemo, which is not at all the same as Iron Man. And which of them is closest to The Odyssey, anyway? One of the most obvious differences with all of those examples is genre, and the traditional trappings which often (but not always) follow from them. Sure, the MCU films tend to all fit superhero-comic genre conventions, and some of them (particularly origin stories, as with Iron Man and Thor) may employ a lot of the same tropes while they’re at it. But does anyone really, genuinely think that Ant-Man is ‘basically the same’ as Captain America: The First Avenger? Is Guardians of the Galaxy almost indistinguishable from Black Panther? Does anyone who says ‘Marvel movies are all basically the same’ actually believe the words out of their own mouth, or do they just hope it makes them sound smart if they imply that they’re ‘above’ enjoying mainstream popcorn action?

All of this is to say, what makes Ant-Man work where other trope-heavy films fall apart? The same thing that makes literally any story ever work, and be worthwhile, whether it ‘breaks barriers’ or ‘teaches something’ or is considered ‘high art’ or not: details. Some films are too light on details, which makes them boring because they never really bother to build anything on top of those core foundations we know so well. Sometimes, the details - numerous as they might be - are too generic to have an impact, and the dull result is the same. Sometimes the details are too absurd to land, or there are too many to keep track of, or they require too much extraneous qualification to fit into the flow of the rest of the story, or they’re irrelevant to the rest of the story anyway. The thing about details? There are countless options. People come up with new ideas all the time, through the exercise of imagination or through developments and innovations in the real world. Basic, core plot arcs may be distilled to a handful of options, but story details are limitless, and the possibility of fun new combinations is always there, whether you’re inventing something entirely never-before-seen or not. The idea that you have to be shocking and unexpected to be worthwhile is ridiculous, and shepherds illogical contrivances and gimmicks without narrative cohesion or purpose much more often than it achieves something genuinely surprising with merit (and storytelling that prioritises ‘shocking twists’ is usually so busy trying to look clever it forgets to actually be clever, but, that’s another conversation). The point is, Ant-Man being a delightful film isn’t rocket science. It’s as simple as just a little forethought in the construction of its details.

As noted back near the top, the whole Ant-Man concept and its wobbly science was something that drew some doubt regarding whether or not it could be pulled off in a convincing manner; the solution to achieving that is to do more than just lean in to the idea. The film throws itself whole-heartedly into its core conceit and its tropes, and it drags us along with it to gleefully delight in the act. The story is not embarrassed by itself, it doesn’t try to keep its distance; instead, it gives us a flying ant named Antony, and a dramatic death scene for that ant. What is the point of the Pym particle science conceit if we don’t enjoy the comedic potential of an epic battle inside a briefcase, or on a child’s train set? Relevant to this also is the subject of casting choices (as much a detail-of-interest as anything; a single casting choice can legitimately make or break a film). Paul Rudd has a perfect blend of leading-man charisma and affable comedic chops; he plays Scott as a beta-personality, which is always a refreshing change-up for a lead, and one which invites other refreshing changes around him. It avoids tedious masculine antics in his interactions with other men, while encouraging balanced and respectful interactions with women; Scott never asserts himself as the boss or leader in his relationship with Luis and the rest of his crew, allowing for a smoothly-cooperative dynamic; no time or plot is wasted on pointless jostling for control of the operation with Pym; the idea that Scott needs to prove himself to the three female characters in his life - Hope, Maggie, and Cassie, each for similar but different reasons - is given legitimate weight, instead of implying that Scott and his perspective is inherently superior and correct and the onus is on the other characters to realise that, rather than being on him to live up to other people’s reasonable expectations. It should come as no surprise that the latter element is especially interesting and heartening in the context of this blog.

This is particularly good news when it comes to the kinds of relatively minor details which can make a huge difference in whether or not one reflects on a film in a positive or negative manner; the fact that the narrative supports and validates Hope’s anger, her frustration and resentment and her all-business-no-fun attitude, is vital to keeping a viewer like myself on-side with the film. Hope is never presented as someone who should ‘just loosen up’, or ‘have faith in her father’s plan’, the fact that she is denied the Ant-Man technology because Pym ‘can’t bare to risk losing her’ is offered as a reason but not as an excuse for something deeply patronising, and Scott proving that he can get the job done despite Hope’s misgivings about him is not framed as her being ‘wrong’ - her concerns were legitimate, as all her emotions across the film are, and the story never compromises on that in order to bolster another character. Whether or not Hope is well-handled is not important to the operation of the central narrative plot in a technical sense, but it means a lot in terms of delivering strong characters with satisfying arcs, and a central plot can easily fall flat if the characters participating in it don’t work well, individually or together.

I’m trying to wrap this up coherently, but it’s just as well that I disclaimered myself in the beginning because all I’ve got are frayed pieces of, probably, five other paragraphs I could waffle about. It’s not a complex film, no, but it has a surprising amount of quality details, the more I think about it, even regarding aspects of the movie that I liked less than others (Pym, for example, I did not love, but I like that the movie never tried to pass off his ‘genius’ as an excuse for him being a significantly flawed figure in the lives of most people who encountered him, often with bitter consequences. I’m also a big fan of the fact that both he and Scott have complicated but loving relationships with their daughters, considering that Hollywood has a hyper-obsession with the idea of ‘A Man And His Son’ as the beating heart of family narratives). I’m going to close this out with what may be my personal favourite refreshing detail of this movie, and that’s the mature adult relationship between Scott, Maggie, and Paxton. I mentioned it already in the notes, but honestly, how many times have we seen that toxic cliche, with the shrewish ex-wife and the terrible new man in her life, where the main character (who is Doing His Best!) has to prove through [insert plot heroics] that ex-wife is WRONG and should have stayed with him, the father of her child(ren), because did we mention, her new man is terrible and the main character is always right and good and better! In the end, ex-wife almost certainly leaves her terrible new man to get back together with the main character, because he is Doing His Best and that’s more important than actually being a stable/responsible person! The American nuclear family is the ideal! Divorce is for heathens! Y’all know that toxic plot. I can think of three different examples of it in action right off the top of my head, with no effort required. Point is, the degree to which I was utterly thrilled by this movie subverting cliche at every turn of its family saga really cannot be overstated. Maggie is a reasonable person! Scott respects that Cassie’s needs are more important than his wants! Paxton cares about his family and genuinely wants Scott to land on his feet, for the benefit of everyone! There’s no jealous posturing and Scott acting all hurt about being ‘replaced’! HE LITERALLY THANKS PAXTON FOR EVERYTHING HE DOES, WHEN HAVE I EVER SEEN THAT BEFORE?! Honestly, you don’t have to tell the most original story in the world to tell a story that resonates. You don’t even have to avoid common tropes, you just have to think about what you want to do with them. It’s not rocket science. It’s just good honest storytelling.

With ants.

[greyhavensking]

Blackout (MCU Fanfic)

So this is me trying to hype up my own fanfiction, which I have posted on AO3 and am currently working on. It’s an OC story, featuring most of New York’s small-time heroes, like Daredevil and pre-Civil War Spider-Man. Any feedback would be appreciated, either here or on AO3!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20239192/chapters/47966818#main 

prologue | shocking beginnings 

The static shock is new.

Michaela isn’t an idiot (most days); static shock as a concept isn’t new. She’s been terrorizing the neighborhood with it since she was seven and her grandma knitted her a pair of incredibly ugly wool socks that she refused to take off, which were then forcibly removed after she’d gone two days without a bath. And she’s hardly a stranger to grabbing onto a pole on the subway and zapping the hell out of herself.

But this is… more. 

Tuesday morning dawns, presumably, bright and bitterly cold, though Michaela doesn’t open her eyes until 8:53, approximately seven minutes before her first class. The only comment she has about the weather is to declare it was too fucking cold as she hurriedly threw on a seasonally-inappropriate jacket on her way out of her apartment. Late as she is, she can’t grab breakfast from the cafe on campus, or even a coffee, which doesn’t bode well for her attitude for the rest of the day.

She snaps at a professor or two. Her next paper is probably going to get tanked. Oh fucking well.

The point is, though, that she wasn’t in any state of mind to notice it until well into the afternoon when she’s holed up behind the register at Cody’s, mindlessly greeting customers and desperately hoping none of them choose to mention her smudged makeup or the unavoidable stains under her arms. This wasn’t a clean shirt by any means, hadn’t been clean when she wore it last, either. Is it her fault that the washers in her apartment complex ate quarters like they were fucking caviar? 

A few regulars pass through — Diego and Carla, Tommy and Riley, Mr. Yang — but they don’t linger today like they might have otherwise. The shop isn’t busy, really, there are only a handful of people browsing, so apparently she’s giving off pretty strong don’t-engage-with-me-I’m-not-human-today vibes, which suits her fine. For the most part. 

The absence of friendly conversation is starting to wear on her the longer her shift drags on. Her leg shakes, knee bobbing against the row of drawers behind the register; she worries at a hangnail on her thumb, too chicken just to rip it off; the copper on her tongue comes from having her teeth planted a little viciously in her lower lip. God, she has so much homework for this week, and then finals are coming up, she’ll be swamped, how the hell is she going to come into work when she already knows she has three papers, two projects, and an oral presentation due in a few weeks—

Someone steps up to the register and Michaela straightens instinctively, whacking her knee against the drawers in her haste. She hisses out a strangled breath, fighting the urge to crouch down and cradle her leg; instead, she forces a brittle smile at the man in front of her and says, “Hope you found everything alright. Want me to ring you up?”

The man smiles in sympathy, his brows drawn together behind his red-tinted glasses. “Yeah, that’d be great.” He loads his things onto the counter and Michaela dutifully ignores them; she’s learned not to make assumptions based on what people bought, and more to the point, she doesn’t care to make a guessing game out of it, not when she has better things to waste brainpower on. She’s already started working his purchases into the register when he says, with a smidge of hesitation, “Are you alright? I heard a bang and it, uh, didn’t sound great.”

Michaela pauses, biting again at her lip. She doesn’t normally take notice of customers, aside from the ones that turn up on a daily basis, but — the guy smiles at her, sheepish but charming, and she drops her gaze to give him an absent once-over and—

Ah. Fuck.

His suit is nice, though she doesn’t really have an eye for expensive tastes. For all she knows he’d nicked it from a Good Will bin and it’s really thirty years old. But it looks good on him; charcoal jacket and pants, crisp white shirt, maroon tie that she thinks maybe matches his glasses? Short, dark-brown hair, stubble on his cheeks and chin. Cute, overall. And then there’s the cane.

She’d thought his phrasing had been a little odd. He’d heard her, didn’t mention the pained grimace that had undoubtedly flashed across her face before she schooled her features into reluctant professionalism. 

So. Cute and blind, if she isn’t being too presumptuous. Huh.

“I’m…” She waves a hand, mentally curses herself, then says, “You know. Banged my knee a little. Nothing to complain to HR about.” What HR? She works at a convenience store. Michaela squeezes her eyes shut, breathes out slowly, embarrassingly grateful he can’t see just how much of a fool she is. Awkward as fuck and caffeine-deficient, she isn’t at her best today, or. Well. She can’t remember the last time she’d been at her best. “I’m fine, really, but thanks for asking. This all for today?” she asks, grabbing at a subject change with both hands and yanking for all she was worth.

He probably sees— or, not sees, hell. He can probably tell what she was doing, but he doesn’t seem to mind, just gives an easy shrug and taps his cane lightly against the floor. “That’s all. I’m just on a snack run for my partner. We’ve been at the office all day, and he likes to remind me when I’ve gone too long without getting some fresh air.”

Aw, nice guy. Michaela could use someone like that, if she’s being honest with herself. Which she isn’t, not today anyway. Today is not a day for honesty. She needs more sleep for that, and like, at least one espresso. 

She grins, another reflex, and bags his snacks. “Not sure if the air here qualifies. Especially not after last week.”

The man’s brows twitch upwards, just a little. “Were you around for the attack?”

“Uh.” Way to go, Michaela. That’s a pleasant topic, very casual. “Yes? Technically?” Stop making everything a question, Jesus! “The, um, the blast, or whatever, I wasn’t all that close to it, but I got caught by the cloud of…” 

She trails off. Fuck if she knew what tragic-backstory-of-the-week exposed them to. The doctors at the hospital she’d woken up at didn’t know what it was, either, but they’d collectively decided that it hadn’t been toxic, so. Death isn’t on the horizon, apparently. 

What a pity. 

“I mean, I’m fine, obviously. Got kinda scraped up when I fell and all, but nothing serious.” That’s when she clocks the bandage wrapped around the guy’s hand, and since she’d already stuck her foot in her mouth, she might as well go for broke. “Did you… What about you?”

That gives him pause, only for a moment, before his injured hand flexes and then cinches tighter around the handle of his cane. He laughs, shakes his head. “Oh, no, I got lucky. I was visiting a friend when it happened, so I wasn’t in town.” Another smile. “But I’m glad to hear you’re alright.”

Right. Sure. This isn’t just two people exchanging niceties for a (nearly) awkward length of time. Michaela abruptly ducks her head and pushes his bag closer to the edge of the counter. “Yeah, good news for me,” she says, refusing to acknowledge her flushed cheeks. When is her shift over again? Not soon enough. “Here you go. That’ll be $8.37.”

He passes her a twenty, insists she keep the change (which is absurd, she doesn’t get tips, and she can’t be rude—) but when she makes  to press the bill back into his hands she yelps at the shock of their skin meeting. And for once she isn’t being dramatic, there was a literal shock, she could’ve sworn she’d seen a spark—

Glasses frowns as his hand spasms, then shakes out his fingers and tips his head, looking at her just a bit off-center, his gaze seemingly focused over her left shoulder. “That was…”

“Static,” she mutters, staring at her own hand. It doesn’t look— she doesn’t know, burned? She’s pale as ever, though, no blemishes or marks that she can see. “My fault, probably. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says graciously, like there was nothing out of the ordinary about what had just happened. And maybe there wasn’t anything strange there, maybe Michaela just needs someone to knock her the fuck out so she can move on from today. “Have a nice day!”

It takes her a solid fifteen minutes once he’s left to realize she hadn’t given him his change.

“Motherfucker.”

__________

She’d write it off as another product of her shitty, shitty day and care not at all about the significance of it, but it… keeps happening. 

Two more customers brush hands with her and two more times they both got shocked. Then, when she’s on her way out, so, so ready to bury her head in a pillow and possibly never emerge into the light of day again, she closes her hand around the door handle and — her whole hand this time, a bright burst of pain, electricity crackling over her skin, but now it isn’t quite pain. Or, it’s not as painful as before, like the shock has diffused across her hand, up her forearm, dissipating quicker. 

She doesn’t have the chance to dwell on it, because Emmett’s taking over her position at the register and she does not want to get sucked into a conversation with him, well-meaning as he is. (He’s in college, too, which he likes to remind her about whenever possible, but he can’t seem to grasp that he’s eighteen and she’s twenty-four and that their experiences weren’t really the same at all). So she shoves aside the prickle of worry at the back of her neck, decides very promptly that she’s imagining things and slips out onto the street, hands stuffed deep into her pockets and her breath crystallizing in the air as she makes her way home.

Then she’s inhaling a cup of ramen, speed reading (i.e., skimming) through an article for her modern graphics class tomorrow, and internally freaking out about no less than five separate and completely unrelated problems. It’s her greatest talent, and also the reason she averages four hours of sleep a night. Why had she wanted to go back to college again?

By the time Michaela is ready to start on the logo project that’s due Friday, it’s eleven at night and she’s drained three cups of absolutely disgusting coffee, so she’s looking at little to no sleep. Again. Hurray for her impulsive nature and inability to course-correct even when she knows she’s fucking herself over and careening right into a terrible decision. She’d always heard her twenties would be the best time of her life, and wow, so many people had lied to her, it’s not even funny.

Michaela drops heavily into her armchair (which she’d stolen off the sidewalk and felt no shame whatsoever about), dragging her laptop off the coffee table and into her lap. She’s buzzing, her skin too tight. Her mouth’s gone dry despite the coffee and she feels like the absolute last thing she should be doing is sitting down, but she isn’t going to go for a run at eleven o’clock at night in Hell’s Kitchen. Her brain betrays her on a nearly daily basis and she’s failed more tests than she can count, but she isn’t that stupid. Taking one year of karate when she was eight does not mean she has any business defending herself, so she isn’t going to stick her neck out just to run off the jitters, thanks. She’ll distract herself with schoolwork and maybe take a couple of laps around her tiny shithole of an apartment. 

That’s the plan, at least, until she sets her fingers down on the keyboard and the laptop abruptly goes up in smoke.

Michaela shrieks, her hands tingling as she tosses the laptop onto the ground, watching wide-eyed as it spits out sparks like she’d dumped a bucket of water over it. That… is not normal. Neither is whatever the hell is going on with her hands because they’re tingling, yeah, but it’s more than pins and needles; they feel charged, staticky in a way that’s far from the harmless zaps you prank people with. 

What the fucking fuck? 

The smoking laptop is a lost cause, or not one worth pursuing right now, anyway. And her hands, well — she could, uh, go to the emergency room? Would they even take her in for something like this, whatever this was? Does she need a therapist?

That’s a stupid question. Who doesn’t need a therapist? Michaela doesn’t want to meet that person, honestly.

Why is she daydreaming about the emergency room, anyway? She doesn’t have health insurance. Hell, she’d nearly had a panic attack when she woke up in the hospital in the wake of the Avengers bagging another bad guy; not because she was in a hospital, but because she’d have to pay for being in a hospital. Which was a nightmare worse than death, really, and god, can’t Tony Start just cover everyone who ends up bruised and broken after they save the day? She’s grateful the Avengers are around, she is, New York wouldn’t exist without them, but the man has literal billions of dollars. Hospital fees won’t even make a dent in his gold-plated wallet, or whatever. 

Focus, Michaela. Weird electrical shenanigans take precedence over lingering bitterness towards Tony Fucking Stark. 

Yeah, there would always be time for that. Just not right now.

Michaela jabs a toe at the laptop, which responds by coughing up another round of sparks, so she draws  her legs hastily onto the chair and cowers there for a minute, then flings her hands out away from her body. The tightness in her chest is a warning she doesn’t need, and she forces herself to breathe as evenly as she can, hoping to stave off the inevitable anxiety attack for a little while longer. 

She flips her hands over, fingers splayed wide. Her careful breathing hitches. She’s always been pale despite her more colorful heritage, but not to the point where her veins stand out glacial blue against her skin. And she’s kidding herself if she labels the blue, arcing lights beneath her skin as veins — that’s electricity, or something like it. Something almost… alive, right there, writhing even as she watches, snaking through her palms, and when it reaches her fingertips, sparks fizzle in the air just beyond her bitten-off nails.

That’s about when her panic hits the wall, too big for her chest, and she lets out a sharp, broken breath that coincidentally coincides with all of the lights in her apartment — and, she’ll learn later, her entire complex — blanking out with a high-pitched whine.

Somehow her awkward failure of an encounter with the cute office worker doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.

[douxreviews]

Charmed - Season Eight Review

"We've truly been Charmed."

And so we hit rock bottom. Charmed's final season is an abomination; a dull and lazy slough to the finish line, where budget cuts make the sets look almost as tired as the cast do, and the dialogue has sunk so low that even Holly Marie Combs struggles to make it work. Help.

After the explosive ending of Season Seven, the writers clumsily write themselves out of the hole they dug themselves into, with Leo and the sisters forced into assuming new identities. This concept is played out over the course of the first five episodes, before an absurd confrontation at the FBI allows them to step back into their old lives. Even side-stepping the plot holes that plague that whole development, the silliness of the girls playing the Halliwells’ "cousins", and attempting to resume their old lives is bizarre. Only 'Run Piper Run' tries to use this idea in a vaguely interesting way, with Piper's assumed identity baring resemblance to a girl on the run from the authorities. The episode itself is awful, but the idea isn't a total crock.

Aside from the awkward journey back to normality, the season's central focus is the introduction of novice witch Billie Jenkins (played by the woefully cast, but somewhat alright Kaley Cuoco) and her long-lost sister, Christy (played by Marnette Patterson, who seems to be sucking on a lemon every time she's on screen). We soon learn about the "prophecy" that pits the Jenkins against the Halliwells, something that Billie is wholly unaware of until her older sister returns and tries to sway the impressionable younger sister to her side. It's an arc that fails to truly ignite, though it has a few sparks of potential sprinkled throughout, notably the manipulation of Christy at the hands of the resurrected Triad. The moment she kills the last remaining member is an interesting turn that is never fully realized afterwards, with any subsequent Christy scenes painting her as a one-note wench.

Largely it's a total flop of an arc, one that was a bitter pill for some fans when it aired, since its inclusion meant the temporary exile of Brian Krause so the squashed budget could accommodate Kaley's salary. Since Leo was barely even a character at this point I personally wasn't bothered by his absence, and at least there's material with some depth when Piper has to say goodbye in 'Vaya Con Leos'. It was the missed opportunity of an all-out war between two sets of sisters that truly stung, especially since said war was a flashy staring contest that was lazily set-up by getting Piper to behave like an ignorant wagon, and forcing Billie to play the role of the most gullible fool in history. 'The Jung and the Restless' is a somewhat interesting hour that explores how "lost" the sisters have become and how their powers were being abused, giving Billie's eventual betrayal some sort of basis. Sadly, any interesting material is squashed in the following episode, 'Gone with the Witches', in which every magical creature we already hate decides to turn on the Halliwells, based on very flimsy evidence strung together by two nobody hacks.

Elsewhere, the beautiful sibling dynamic that elevated the early seasons is completely buried, with the sisters’ transformation into unrecognizable, whinging crones ruining any hope of ever truly engaging with them again. It's hard to discuss any narrative growth in terms of the sisters this season, since it's all so underwhelming and lazy. What's worse than their horrific behavior is the archaic idea that Piper, Phoebe and Paige could only ever get happy endings if they were to settle down with a man and pop out three babies a piece - which is the ending each of them got, by the way.

For a series that was once a great example of imperfect, relatable women kicking ass, it's a cold slap in the face to relegate them to such offensive stereotypes. Piper's ending is the least difficult to accept, since she was already half way there, and her eventually selling P3 and buying a restaurant of her own is nice, as is her finally having the adorable little girl she saw in the future. Paige falls in love with a detective named Henry this season, and though he's a perfectly likable guy, it doesn’t feel right to see her adapt to such basic ideals, especially when you look at how progressive she was back in her early season four days. Phoebe's ending is similarly contrived, with her eventual union with cupid Coop coinciding with her fully cemented transition from fun, life-loving wild child, to boy crazed, single-minded bimbo. All this character assassination is just so...disappointing. Even more disappointing is the complete eradication of the sisterly bond that anchored the show when it first started. By this point, the Power of Three is barely even a factor, and we get next to no moments that reflect the true meaning of the Charmed Ones power.

Potions and Notions

Daryl is completely written out of the show this season thanks to budget cuts, but his exit isn't all that sad since his character was tired by season three at a push.

The Source is temporarily resurrected in the 40 minute aneurysm that is 'Desperate Housewitches'. Such a waste of a truly imposing villain.

Alyssa phones it in this season, but it’s Rose who’s truly the worst of the established cast members, twitching her way through every scene. You can see how completely fed up she was throughout the entire season, a dissatisfaction that was evident from as early as Season Six. Who can blame her considering how awful Paige became. For those interested, Rose’s book spills some serious tea about how much she did not like her time on the show.

I wonder what possessed the producers to choose Kaley Cuoco for the role of Billie? Surely someone less sitcom-ey would have been a better fit? I honestly think she was fine as the baby witch, the problem was more the shoddy character writing than anything Kaley was doing, though it’s clear she wasn’t a good fit for the series. At least she's found her groove now?

Spells and Chants

Paige: "I've had it with the leprechauns." I'm already with you, Paige.

Phoebe: "So much has happened over the last 8 years. So much has been gained and lost. Still, in some ways I feel like my life is really just beginning... "

Piper: "We're a family of survivors and we always will be. Which is why we've truly been Charmed."

Best Episode: Vaya Con Leos.

Honorable Mention: The Jung and the Restless.

Worst Episode: Malice in Wonderland.

I will always remember Charmed fondly. It was the show that taught me how great television could be when it was created with heart and enthusiasm. It's a shame to see what was once a fun and uninhibited adventure turn into a trashy, embarrassing mess, but those initial seasons will always be there to get lost in, as will the beautiful family dynamics that helped to create the series Charmed was during its imperial phase. Its legacy may be tarnished by the three shitbags that were the Charmed Ones of the later seasons, but it’s a legacy that remains nonetheless. Isn't it enough to celebrate what this show (initially) represented and appreciate anything it inspires in its wake?

3 out of 10 Rose McGowan facial twitches.

Panda

[words-writ-in-starlight]

If you are ever in the mood I really, really want to know your feelings on Sky High. I love that movie and see so little about it ;_;

They still have to go back to school, is the thing.

Homecoming was the end of the world, sort of, and then it’s Monday and they get up and walk to the bus and get on board like it’s any other day.

“High school stops for no man, baby,” Meilin Peace had said on Sunday, for the handful of minutes that she was home before she had to get to work again, and she kissed Warren on the cheek, tentative.  “I’m so proud of you, Warren.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he’d said quietly, and she’d brushed his hair back from his face, combed her fingers through it to make the red strands fall evenly.  He’d held very still while she did it, sitting at the kitchen table, and she kissed him on the forehead before she walked away.  It’s the only way she’s ever able to do it, if she’s standing and he’s sitting, because Warren takes after his father, and not his petite mother.

But so now it’s Monday and Warren has been at school for all of about a minute, and he’s already tired of it.

A fair portion of the school is taped off for repairs--a classroom shredded by vines, lockers scorched or bent beyond hope of salvage--but honestly that’s not news.  The hole in the cafeteria wall took about three says to fix, and now it’s invisible, so Warren’s guessing that they prioritized other things, like, say, the anti-grav generator.  

No one can say, now, that the sidekick/hero class division is an entirely healthy one, but it’s also a month into the school year, a little late in the game to overhaul it completely.  Principal Powers has never let something like the limited number of hours in a day stop her, though.  Apparently she’s Figuring It Out.  (It will eventually come to light that she did not run a damn thing by the school board before rewriting the concept of Sky High, and she will hang onto her job by the skin of her teeth.)

There will also be an on-staff psychologist, apparently.  Warren feels like that’s a sound call, given the incidence of people going off the deep end in spectacular fashion with four years of training under their belts.  

Warren’s mostly been left alone, all day, by the time it gets to be lunch time.  He’s sat through his classes and been civil with his teachers--they’ve been civil with him, which is more surprising, even Medulla, although to be fair he did save them from infancy a few days ago, so he feels like he’s earned it--and by and large, nothing has changed.  A few eyes linger on the burn marks on lockers and walls, on the sleeves of his jacket where he keeps them pulled down over the pyrokinetic’s marks on his wrists, but no one yells anything at him or picks a fight.

Warren’s too tired to lose his temper, anyway, but he appreciates it.

He sits down at a table in the cafeteria and very much intends to continue being left alone for the rest of the day.

So obviously Stronghold comes up, claps Warren on the shoulder so hard that someone else might have broken a bone, and sits down with him.

“Hey, Warren,” Stronghold says cheerfully, and stuffs a slightly limp fry in his mouth.

Warren looks up from his book.  “Hey,” he says warily.  “What’d’you want?”

Stronghold blinks at him like he’s speaking a foreign language, while Layla drops down, pecks a kiss on her boyfriend’s cheek, and grins at Warren like this is normal.

“I’m so glad that Principal Powers is taking steps to merge the two classes,” Layla says without preamble, as if this is a conversation she’s already been having with Warren and Stronghold.  "It’s so absurd to think that no one saw the damaging effects of the way sidekicks are treated, but like, here we are, I guess.  I mean, Royal Pain did a lot of damage and all, but at least she got something done in the end.”

“We’ll remember to mention you for Most Likely To Become A Super Villain at the end of the year,” Ethan says as he and Zach join the table, bumping Warren companionably with their shoulders as they jockey for a seat.  “Hey, Warren, you passed Heroic History last year, right?”

“Yeah,” Zach echoes, looking at Warren with what he clearly thinks are puppy dog eyes, “you passed, right?  Because, like, I can’t memorize that many people, man, and my dad’s gonna kill me if I fail.  Can you believe Johnson’s still making us take a test this Friday?”

Warren feels like a deer in the headlights, past speechless.  The breaking point is when Magenta sits down on his other side and takes the apple off his tray, popping it into her mouth without looking up from the notebook in her hand.

“All right,” Warren says, cutting through Layla’s outburst about the unfairness of even having a Most Likely category for supervillainy and Zach’s moaning about Miss Johnson.  “Are you guys screwing with me?  Because seriously, Homecoming’s over, I’m not going on any more dates, and I’m too tired for this shit.”

Magenta crunches her bite of apple and swallows it, staring him dead in the eye.  “It’s called being friendly, dumbass,” she says, and crunches into another bite of apple.

“Yeah, man,” Zach says.  “You worry too much.  We got kinda used to hanging around.”

Layla smiles at him, and it’s a much more genuine thing than the slightly manic grin she kept pointing at him while they were ‘dating.’  He has to try not to twitch back when her hand reaches out to grab his arm and give him a little shake.

“We’re not screwing with you, Warren,” she says sincerely.  “We just want to be friends.”  She seems to realize that having her hand on his arm is freaking him out, and lets go, and Warren tries not to look frankly suspicious when she adds, “We really did get used to hanging out with you, before.”

“All right,” Warren says, failing to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

Stronghold squeaks and twitches like someone pinched him, and then he clears his throat, to get Warren’s attention.  “I’m, uh.  I’m having the others over for a study session tonight, since they’re having to take some hero classes now.  You want to come?”

Hell fucking no, Warren does not want to come and possibly has never wanted anything less.  Stronghold’s gift for stupid decisions is undimmed.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Warren says.

“It’ll be fine,” Stronghold says dismissively.

“It really, really won’t.”  No one seems to catch on and Warren presses a thumb into the curve of his eyebrow, against the ache that’s starting to settle there.  

“Do you have work tonight?” Layla wonders.

“You work?” Ethan asks.  “Where?”

“I don’t have work tonight,” Warren says, eyes closed.  “Stronghold, your parents are going to have a stroke if you bring me over.”

“They were fine when they met you the other night,” Stronghold says obstinately, and Christ, Warren doesn’t know if he’s just genuinely that oblivious or what, but it turns out he’s not too tired to get angry after all.  

Jetstream had thanked him that night, quietly, stepped aside and told him that she’d heard that he got the others out of the gym--and she’d been careful to do it while the Commander was talking to Mr. Boy, too, while the others were distracted looking at the award.  The word ‘hero’ had not been discussed.

Yeah, Warren’s pretty sure that helping to save the school doesn’t actually tip the scales very much in his favor, comparatively speaking.

Warren takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, counting to eight on both, and opens his eyes.

“Fine,” he says.  It’s a spiteful thing to do, really, agreeing.  It’s self-destructive and stupid and probably going to end with him getting thrown through another wall, sooner or later.  His mom will probably be disappointed in him.

He did kind of like having the others around during the disaster of Homecoming, having people to back him up for once, though.

“All right,” he says, and drops his hand.  “I guess we’ll see how it goes.”

[anisanews]

European Super League creation was obviously driven by money, but complaints are too little, too late, too lame

In 2008, a wealthy, soccer-loving gentleman by the name of Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan — better known now as simply Sheikh Mansour — invested a small portion of his vast fortune to purchase a mediocre English soccer club known as Manchester City.

Man City cost Sheikh Mansour about $293 million, which might seem like a lot, but given that his family is worth an estimated $1 trillion and his portion of that is estimated at $17 billion, it was a little more than tip money. Let’s put it this way: Sheik Mansour owns a boat worth roughly twice what he paid for City.

MORE: The European Super League, explained: What it all means

With the Sheik’s wealth at its disposal, Manchester City was transformed from a team that had won two England first division titles since its founding in 1880 and never qualified for the modern version of UEFA Champions League to one that claimed the Premier League title four times from 2012 to 2019 and qualified for Champions League 10 consecutive times.

So complaining about money’s influence on European soccer is about as late as declaring that rock ‘n roll will corrupt our youth.

The announcement Sunday of the Super League’s formation — an annual competition that effectively would supersede the UEFA Champions League — certainly promised a revolutionary change in the dynamics of European soccer. Those fretting it as an abdication of the “sporting merit” principle, however, missed the whole movie. Sporting merit has not been the guiding principle in the European game for more than two decades. Perhaps it once mattered; if so, it was before any of it was regularly televised in America.

“Sporting merit” now represents merely the annual rearranging of deck chairs that involves — in England’s Premier League, for instance — the promotion of three teams from its Championship competition to the EPL and the demotion of three others to the Championship.

Many fans of the European game long have fetishized the concept of promotion and relegation. Some Americans even have refused to accept Major League Soccer as this nation’s domestic league because it does not involve itself in such a process. Everyone gets their entertainment a little differently, but watching teams celebrating a 17th-place finish in the Premier League because it means “staying up” always has seemed absurd.

With the exception of Leicester City’s astonishing run from promotion in 2014 to longshot Premier League champions in 2016, the promotion/relegation concept has had little impact on the competition for the league title. Since 1996, every Premier League champion save that one was claimed by one of the six English clubs that chose to become founding members of the Super League. In Spain, every La Liga title going back to 2005 has been won by either FC Barcelona, Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid, the three Spanish clubs that jumped on to the Super League train. Super Leaguers AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus have won every Serie A title in Italy going back to 2001.

Where’s all the “sporting merit” in that?

Money has dictated everything that’s transpired in the modern era of world soccer. Every sport avoiding the implementation of a salary cap chooses to be foremost a competition of who can spend the most money wisely. That’s what the U.S. has in baseball, where teams in cities that do not generate abundant local broadcast revenue have far less involvement in championship competition. And it’s what has ruled all the top European soccer leagues for the past 20-plus years.

Real Madrid’s original collection of Galacticos — Zinedine Zidane, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo, Claude Makelele — was assembled through the club’s combination of wealth and brand appeal. Luis Figo, one of the most prominent members of that group, joined Real for a world-record $72 million transfer fee. He left Real’s fiercest rival, Barcelona. And yet there he was on Monday, bitterly complaining about the “greedy and callous” maneuver to start the Super League.

Sheikh Mansour was neither the only nor the first new Premier League owner to completely alter the chemistry of the club he purchased. Roman Abramovich, who primarily made his billions in the oil business, purchased Chelsea FC in 2003 and invested immediately in the acquisition of such players as Makelele, Joe Cole and Hernan Crespo. Chelsea finished second that season, won the league a year later and has added another four EPL titles and one Champons League trophy. 

Although Bayern Munich stood firm against the Super League concept at its formation, let’s not pretend that it hasn’t benefited almost obscenely from its stature and wealth. Although its front office has exhibited some keen soccer sense when locating Alphonso Davies with the Vancouver Whitecaps and reimagining him into a ferocious left back, Bayern has won eight consecutive Bundesliga titles in part by convincing the best players on other German teams to join the heavyweights. Goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, forward Robert Lewandowski and midfielders Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka all began their careers with less glamorous German clubs.

The best soccer players in the world are both rewarded and punished by the system. As Real Madrid’s Toni Kroos said in November, when the Super League was mentioned as a possibility, “We are just puppets of FIFA and UEFA. If there was a players’ union, we would not be playing the Nations League, or Supercopa de Espana in Saudi Arabia. … They don’t think about the players. The Nations League and the Club World Cup are competitions to make as much money as possible at the expense of the players.”

The Super League will expand the demands on the game’s best performers. The top domestic leagues in Europe generally play 38 games. Champions League, for those that reach the final, is a 10-game commitment. And then there are the various domestic cup competitions. Then there are the quadrennial month-long World Cup and Euro tournaments, and the lengthy qualifying procedures for each. Super League will take that Champions League demand and essentially double it.

Everyone will get paid, though. If Super League proves to be as profitable as its founders expect, the best players will continue to strive for positions with the clubs involved. And it is possible that holdouts such as Bayern and Borussia Dortmund will find the allure impossible to disregard.

It is not easy to invent prestige, but the involvement of the established best clubs and best players in the world indicates that the process will not be prolonged. The examples of college football’s BCS championship game and College Football Playoff demonstrate that a championship that even hints at legitimacy will be embraced by those who revere the sport involved.

Hey, if Manchester City can spend its way to the top of the European game, there’s every reason to believe that City and the other Super League founders can buy the affection of the world’s soccer fans.

from Anisa News https://ift.tt/3v3sUlU

[glittergummicandypeach]

Catholic Bishops’ Theological Mistakes on Abortion Come at a High Price | Religion Dispatches

The facts do not seem to be in dispute: a man from Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil raped his ten-year-old niece. By the time her pregnancy was discovered, her local jurisdiction declared that she was four days over the limit and the fetus was scant grams over the weight permitted for an abortion. She was transported 1000 miles to Recife, Pernambuco where she had an abortion as allowed under the circumstances by Brazilian law. 

In a decent, just world, the perpetrator of this morally reprehensible act of rape and incest would be tried, found guilty, and sent to prison for psychiatric help and personal rehabilitation. The child involved, who reported that her uncle had raped her repeatedly since she was six, would receive the medical treatment she needed, the psychological care she deserved, and the privacy to deal with it. Instead, the little girl was denied local medical attention on a technicality. She had to travel a great distance which meant that her pregnancy was further along by the time she actually had the abortion. 

People gathered outside the hospital to express their views in favor of and against the procedure. An anti-abortion advocate, who had worked in President Bolsonaro’s Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, revealed the child’s name in the press. Her young life, already turned upside down, was turned inside out. 

I observe this case from a distance. But it resonates with other such heinous examples of patriarchal thinking and doing that are common in the United States. The US is embroiled in deadly struggles because of systemic racism, a health crisis far beyond the magnitude of the virus in other developed countries because, like Brazil, the U.S. government’s response has been inadequate and absurd. Thirty million people are unemployed while the stock market is surging upward. So to hear Catholic religious leaders rail about abortion is to witness theological mistakes in the making. 

Three years into the Trump government, anti-choice rhetoric is baptized and confirmed by religious sycophants like Timothy Cardinal Dolan. U.S. Catholic bishops pass over Trump’s egregious immigration policies, economic injustice to people made poor, and racist rhetoric simply because the President professes to be anti-abortion. This singular focus on the fetus makes bad situations like that of the little girl in Brazil much worse. I’ve seen these dynamics play out repeatedly, with Catholic bishops intervening to fuel the fires rather than acting like pastors. Their suitability for ministry is in deep question. 

In the recent Brazilian case, Archbishop Walmor Oliveira de Azevedo Belo Horizonte, the president of National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), opined: “Sexual violence is terrible, but the violence of the abortion is unjustifiable, considering all existing resources available to guarantee the lives of both children.” I beg to differ with him. Sexual violence and all that surrounds it is so terrible that abortion is not only justified, but to be recommended in this case despite whatever resources might be available for the child (singular) involved. A grievous crime is only made worse by the theological analysis and priorities that extend the suffering and give the wrong message about what’s at stake.  

First, the primary ethical issue in this case isn’t abortion but sexual violence. It wasn’t a one-off thing, but, according to the child, the uncle sexually abused her for years. Where were the bishops then? The courts will decide guilt or innocence of the perpetrator, but the reality is that no ten-year-old should even know what sexual assault is, much less how long they’ve experienced it. What happened to her was evil. 

Pregnancy at age 10, which is at least a year before many girls even begin to menstruate, is a biological and psychological event for which no child is prepared. There aren’t enough resources in the world to justify burdening a child with that experience. The issue at hand is the well-being of a child who’s in a physical and psychological state of extreme vulnerability. Focus on that child helps to prioritize what to do and why. Recourse to abstract concepts like “right to life,” “abortion on demand,” and “fetus is a person” skew the theological conversation away from the pastoral reality at hand and toward a patriarchal parochial norm that violates the pregnant woman once again.

To be clear, there is only one child abused in this case, not two as the bishops would have it. The fetus is simply not a child no matter how much the bishops wish that were the case. There is no consensus on when life begins, but there is consensus that children are to be nurtured not violated. A fetus is part of the reality here, but it is not a person and there is an important difference. 

Second, contra the Archbishop and his fellows, abortion is more than justified in this instance. In fact, justification is not necessary, as ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters spells out clearly in her insightful book, Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice.   Women have been coerced into ‘justifying’ their reproductive choices for generations even when they’re raped. It’s the unpregnant Catholic bishops who need to justify having the nerve to do anything but support this child at her time of deep distress. Given that none of them will be involved in raising a child who would result from this crime, they have no right to proclaim what the person most deeply affected should do. 

Now that the girl’s name is public, it would simply be a matter of time before the offspring would be known publicly, an unspeakable burden to impose on any child and family. No one can say with certainty when human life begins. But we can say with absolute certainty when humane treatment ends. Forcing a child to bring a pregnancy to term against her wishes and well-being is clearly inhumane.

The bishops are the ones who need to ‘justify’ what moral standing they have to express an opinion, what ecclesial authority they possess to try to make their way normative. If they were to update their moral theology, they would learn that in postmodernity, when women are full and free members of society, women must evaluate and choose responses not in a vacuum but in the ravages of patriarchy. 

With a little study, the bishops would soon learn that abortion is viewed very differently when cast in contemporary scientific terms and in light of women’s oppression than when it’s seen in their medieval cosmology. A pregnancy is not a thing to be evaluated but a relationship to be respected in a family constellation of which bishops play no part. Poor, young women of color suffer abuse most often. There is no excuse to make it worse by ignoring the reality of women’s lives and the choices women make to survive. 

The bishops could learn a lot from SisterSong, women of color who advance a reproductive justice approach. Reproductive justice means “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” This would help the bishops understand that there are many good choices, including abortion, in hard situations. 

Third, child abuse is another factor in this case. I refer to the physical abuse of the young girl by her uncle. But I also refer to the abuse that anti-abortion activists heaped on her by revealing her name. They added stress to her young self by protesting the choice she, with her family, made. Those people abused her, forcing a private decision to be made public, a self-defense survival strategy cast as criminal activity. 

While these people act on their own, it is important to underscore that they’re informed and encouraged by Roman Catholic clergy who consider abortion the most important moral issue. The Brazilian bishops have a long history of this kind of rhetoric. But the U.S. bishops proclaimed abortion the “preeminent priority,” more important than economic injustice, racism, ecological disaster, war, and more. Such theological simplicity allows church officials to leave aside sexual violence, child abuse, racism, poverty, lack of healthcare and education, and so many other factors that go into a case like this. The bishops’ theology is missing an interstructured analysis which tough problems require. As a result, the bishops are complicit in the commission of grave mistakes. When governments and some in society take them seriously, their outdated approaches cost people dearly.

Finally, this tragic situation cannot be redeemed simply with analysis. Human care and compassion figure largely. Still, there are things we can learn going forward. One is that reproductive justice is a moral good. When further pain and suffering is avoided, when additional lives are spared devastating social stigmas, when men stop controlling women, justice accrues. When women are able to make choices that are best for themselves and their families, abortion and raising children are among the many ways women choose life. 

Theological mistakes are costly. The Brazilian bishops’ words ring hollow. They’ve perpetuated the ideology that abortion is worse than sexual assault, that it can never be justified, and that resources to raise children somehow mitigate the tragedy. In the real world, where young girls are raped, families are left to cope with the aftermath including another child to care for, and when children are abused, a theology of mercy, compassion, and justice grounded in the complex analysis of real social problems is required. 

A Portuguese version of this article was published by Católicas pelo Direito de Decidir (Catholics for Choice) in Brazil. 

This content was originally published here.