#almost entirely because its more rote i suppose

[soleilduveil]

Good morning fluff monsters, I'm just about now scampering and scattering around to set up our coming day together. It feels like it's going to be a beautiful week, and I'm so very blessed for the company you offer me - so do say you'll come along! I have one thousand little ones now and I made sure to get enough goldfish crackers for everyone. ☆

We're starting in this noon with (& I'll tell you, and only you) a cursory showcase of Baldur's Gate 1 due to all the excitement I've fed for upcoming BG3, and it'll share the time slot nicely with Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories ongoing. Well, they have comparable feelings for *me*, atleast. We also have Street Fighter 6 around lunchtime so I can continue to practice Chun-Li with everyone!

I'd call this a particularly rounded day ~ I'll set out the tea!

[newamsterdame]

a deadly education is tone-deaf at best and racist at worse; not the cure to jkr anyone was hoping for

Harry Potter’s massive cultural impact means that we haven’t seen the last of magic schools set in Britain, and we probably won’t for a long while. In some ways, the fantasy genre’s response to Rowling’s work is tiresome. In others, it’s exciting—because a generation of readers and writers have grown up to bring their own perspective to the limits of Rowling’s work and push it beyond the limits of its author. However, if you’re looking for a transgressive magic academy book that interrogates the limited morality, inclusivity, and perspective of Harry Potter, you should put Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education back on the shelf and keep looking.

A Deadly Education tells the story of Galadriel “El” Higgins, a half-British half-Indian sorcerer attending a magic school where the consequences of any mistake might mean sudden death. El is a loner by nature and circumstance, but walking alone in the halls of Scholomance might mean being attacked and devoured by one of the school’s monsters. This puts El on a crash course with Orion Lake, the shining hero of her year who takes it upon himself to save the lives of his fellow students, including a less-than-grateful El.

The set up honestly sounds pretty good—a prickly protagonist, a heroic rival-slash-love interest, a deadly setting, and the potential for deep lore in magic and world-building. Unfortunately, not only does Novik fail to deliver on any of the premises’ strengths, she also chooses to weigh her narrative down with reductive, tone-deaf, and downright racist details.

El’s particular class of magic relies on language. El speaks English and Marathi, and picks up Sanskrit, Hindi, Latin and Old English in her study of language-based spells. It’s a little uncomfortable that Novik lumps dead and defunct languages like Latin and Old English together with actively spoken ones like Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish, but that isn’t where Novik’s faux paus end. El approaches languages like computer programs to be downloaded onto her hard drive. Despite languages being the basis of her magic, she has no personal connections to the ones she’s speaking. She views other students and their languages the same way, identifying groups of students as “the Mandarin speakers”, “the Arabic speakers,” etc. Novik seems clueless about the relationships between the languages she’s building her world’s magic around, putting Sanskrit tombs in Baghdad and declaring that the Scholomance has a library aisle containing all of India’s languages. (About 800 individual languages are spoken in India, fyi.)

This clinical approach to diversity extends from language into character. El doesn’t try to make many friends, and honestly it’s not hard to see her classmates don’t try to befriend her, either. She doesn’t describe her classmates as people—she describes them as assets. And while that could be explained away by the premise that half her classmates won’t make it out of school alive, and El needs allies more than friends to survive, it doesn’t make it any better when El refers to others exclusively by the language knowledge they offer her. A character named Ibrahim has no personality or backstory, but he conveniently pops up when El needs someone who knows Arabic. A character named Kaito is thoughtlessly grouped in with the Mandarin speakers. An Argentine character exclaims in Spanish when she’s excited or relieved. There’s an uncomfortable distinction between the languages that get written out in the text—Spanish, French—and the ones that get narrated away—a character exclaims in Mandarin.

Novik goes out of her way to let us know that the population of Scholomance is diverse. There’s a group of South and West African students (only one of whom is named, and none of whom are important). There’s a “civilized” enclave of magicians in Toronto who value family and human life more than other groups. One character might graduate and go to Bangkok, but he’s looking to secure himself a place in Shanghai instead. Naomi Novik really knows the names of cities on at least four continents, and she’s not about to let you forget it!

But aside from names, languages, and cities, Novik has given no thought to what diversity means, or who these characters are if they come from diverse backgrounds. El calls on “Mandarin-speaker,” Yi Liu, exclusively by the name Liu. Is Liu meant to be this character’s first name? Or her surname? El doesn’t call anyone else by surname, but Liu is a Chinese surname, one of the most common in the world. El’s father is a Marathi-speaker from Mumbai, but El has no personal connection to Indian culture. Her father’s family prophesied that El would be a destroyer, and other than that rejection El has nothing to say about India or half of her culture. She refers to her Indian relatives in clinical English descriptors (my father’s mother, my great-grandmother, my uncles), even though she is purportedly fluent in Marathi and should know words like Panaji, Aaji and Kaka. El says that her Indian family is from an old Hindu enclave, and yet they have djinn as servants. (Djinn aren’t a typical part of Hindu cosmology, though they are a significant part of Islamic texts.)

Making El biracial seems like an afterthought, not something that affects her character in any way. It just creates some truly unfortunate optics, like when El goes on a three-paragraph description of how unnecessary she finds showers and how dirty she is at any given time. El’s father died making sure her pregnant mother (and therefore, El herself) would live, and yet El barely thinks about him. His name is mentioned once in the entire book. El complains that (presumably white) British people “assume she speaks Hindi” or call her the color of weak tea. But her Indian heritage is a veneer placed on top of a character who is otherwise just a default white protagonist.

All this adds up to a character (and a world), that reads as nothing so much as colonial. El feasts on the languages of others for her own edification, power, and survival, but she doesn’t see her classmates as people, and she doesn’t see language as a living thing related to real cultures. And I’m given to believe that Naomi Novik holds the same views, what with how she throws around the word “mana” as part of her world-building without considering its roots and real-life meaning to Polynesian and Melanesian peoples.

However, nothing makes the cultural tone-deafness of this book more evident than this passage:

Dreadlocks are unfortunately not a great idea thanks to lockleeches, which you can probably imagine, but in case you need help, the adult spindly thing comes quietly down at night and pokes an ovipositor into any big clumps of hair, lays an egg inside, and creeps away. A little while later the leech hatches inside its comfy nest, attaches itself to your scalp almost unnoticeably, and starts very gently sucking up your blood and mana while infiltrating further. If you don’t get it out within a week or two, it usually manages to work its way inside the skull, and you’ve got a window of a few days after that before you stop being able to move. On the bright side, something else usually finishes you off quickly at that point.

El’s pithy commentary about imminent death aside, I have a hard time reading anything but casual and thoughtless racism from this passage. The nefarious and deliberate myth of dreadlocks being unhygienic (and by extension, Black people being endemically dirty) is pervasive to this day. And Naomi Novik decides to include this passage in a book that has no major Black characters, in which dreadlocks never even come up in any meaningful way, just to remind us that in this magic world of hers, dreadlocks are dirty! Monster insects nest in them! The consequences are death! There was no good reason to include this passage, and all it does is draw on inaccurate and racist myths and perpetuate them into a world where anti-Black racism is never contended with. Although, I suppose, why would it? El never has need of any languages from the West or South Africans.

A Deadly Education bills itself as a subversive, even feminist, response to Harry Potter. But just like J. K. Rowling, Naomi Novik is a white author who uses other cultures thoughtlessly to build her own magic world. Other cultures and peoples exist, but only to serve the aims and needs of white (or mostly white-coded) characters. Novik has no empathy, no care and apparently no ability to Google anything about the cultures she wants to draw on. And the result isn’t just insulting—it’s boring. The world-building in this book is as dry and dusty as any history written by 19th century British colonizers.

Using some foreign names and making your protagonist biracial does not shield your work from racism. It does open you up to more pitfalls in depicting other peoples and cultures, if you don’t care to look out for them.

It would be nice to close by saying that despite its flaws, A Deadly Education is an enjoyable book. But it isn’t. It’s just a badly-researched, emotionless story told by rote.

[spell-cleaver]

Flash Fiction: Star Wars

Spoilers for the Mandalorian S2 finale but I had TOO MANY FEELINGS.

He’s in the middle of a call to Leia when he senses it. The Force chimes—like a commlink, he thinks, amused at how scandalised Yoda would be by that comparison—and he frowns, turning away from his sister to reach out.

“Luke, you need to focus, this is—” Leia cuts herself off. She senses it too. Even young Ben, babbling about something just beyond the holotransmitter, is silenced for a moment by the Force.

“What is that…?”

Luke reaches out.

An old presence. A… young, presence. Bright, powerful, and full of potential, made brighter and shimmering in its location—wherever it is, it’s a powerful place, and this powerful child is using it.

Where are the Jedi?

Are there others like me?

I was alone for so long, and he promised I would no longer be alone…

Then it’s cut off—naturally, but abruptly—and foreboding sweeps in.

“Sorry, Leia,” Luke says. “I’ll come visit you all on Coruscant some other time. For now there’s a youngling who needs help.”

*

“Incoming craft, identify yourself.”

He can sense the youngling on the cruiser, he’s reaching out to them—and they, he, is reaching back. Fear clouds him, the protectors and presences around him stark in the Force with it; whatever is happening, the child is in danger.

Luke doesn’t bother answering the hail; just switches the comms off, and lands. Artoo whistles from the back seat.

Luke laughs. “Yeah, me too, buddy. Let’s see what trouble we can get into today.”

He hops out of his X-wing and climbs down. Things are moving outside; it… leaves prickles up the backs of his arms and his spine, a fear too visceral to be the Force, born of human instinct instead. Thud, thud, thud echoes through the corridors.

He steps outside, Artoo close on his heels.

When his father died, he left him everything. Luke has visited Mustafar, Vjun, a thousand planets and bases with the codes and intel to access them all. It doesn’t take a moment to summon them to memory and hack into one of the consoles in the corridor, viewing—

Oh.

What are those?

Dark troopers, the monitor says, but they don’t seem to be troopers at all. They’re droids.

Droids with armour tougher than a blaster shot, enough force in their limbs to shatter transparisteel, enough strength to fight a gundark—

But not, he thinks grimly, enough to tackle a lightsaber.

Not enough to tackle a Jedi.

“Shut them down,” he says, hands flying over the console, “shut—”

ACCESS DENIED.

He lets out a breath. “Artoo, can you—”

Artoo plugs in, and a frustrated squeal sees the end of that.

He tries again.

REQUEST CLEARANCE FROM MOFF GIDEON.

“Father has clearance to control them but not shut them down entirely?” Luke snorts. “I suppose it makes sense Gideon would want to lock out as much as he could.” Artoo beeps. “You’re right.”

His fingers type out one last command—the foreboding and the threat is mounting in the Force, choking him.

“Come to me, not the youngling.”

And he almost senses the moment all the dark troopers turn away from their task… to face his direction.

Luke unhooks his lightsaber from his belt and smiles to Artoo. “See if you can keep up.” Artoo’s indignance makes him laugh.

He brings up his hood and strides forwards, his cape flaring behind him.

*

They come at him quickly: two corridors, one turn, and then one’s on his right, shooting—he raises the saber and bats it away with ease. The Force pings and he lets that movement glide into the next, carving up the one coming from the left.

He’s familiar with the layout of a Star Destroyer by now but a cruiser’s slightly different; he hesitates for half a moment before striding out onto a walkway over a docking bay. Troopers swarm from straight ahead but he deflects with ease, slashing through them. One grabs his shoulder; he swings; it lets go.

He keeps moving.

Into another room, full of crates stacked high and wide and shelves. Full of dark troopers; he shoves one against the wall, slashes through another, and it’s almost rote before he gets through.

They’re dangerous. But so, he supposes wryly, spinning his lightsaber to get a better grip—though Leia would accuse him of flair—is he.

Through the corridors—four more. He can feel the youngling’s presence reaching for him, watching him; he smiles under his hood and reaches back, like the first time he met Ben and he took his nephew’s proffered hand. I am coming. You are safe. Something coos.

Into the turbolift and up. Artoo has fallen behind—he’ll get an earful about that later—but Luke can’t let himself get distracted. There are still troopers…

The doors open on them: two rows, several deep. They’re facing him, away from the youngling—heh. Good.

He swings his saber before they can even fire, the Force bunching around him. One droid flies forwards into his slash, the other flies back before it can hit him; he spins and dodges, the cape swirling around him, barely blinking, drives his blade down through the head into the chest, beheading another—

If the Imperial Remnant designed their dark troopers so the main control was in the head, where any humanoid would think to strike, they were asking for this.

One left. He extends his hand and watches it crumple and spark. For a moment, staring at the chest controls head on, he’s reminded of a cyborg, not a droid, and the shape of the head morphs in his gaze into a mask more familiar—

Then he clenches his fist. It drops, destroyed.

And now the corridor is empty, and only the dented blast doors remain.

He takes a deep breath, lowering his saber at his side and stepping forwards. He closes his eyes. He can sense the youngling—Grogu, he hears—beyond, as well as tense, wary, afraid adults.

They have done so much to protect this child from the Empire.

He can only respect that immensely.

There’s shouting, arguing—and then one of the adults opens the blast door and lets him in.

He doesn’t realise how smoky it’s become until he can breathe more easily, stepping onto the bridge. Glancing up from under the rim of his hood, he clocks six presences. Four women, on the other side of the command table from him, all with blasters pointed his way: two Mandalorians, one hired mercenary and a stocky soldier with a Rebel starbird tattooed on her cheekbone. He turns his gaze to the left, where Grogu and his… protector… stand; also a Mandalorian, he’s looking at him with a complex mix of emotions Luke is too distracted and polite to unpick.

He deactivates his lightsaber and lowers his hood.

It doesn’t seem like any of them recognise him—which is not a novelty, considering how much time he’s spent travelling in the far Outer Rim recently, but it remains welcome even if he’s not sure how it’ll help the situation. He’s here for Grogu; will they give him up to a strange Jedi? Mandalorians have always hated Jedi.

He doesn’t know.

He’ll find out.

Grogu is sitting in a chair at one of the consoles—he leans out to peek a look, and Luke gives him a faint smile. He’s… not what he expected.

He looks like Yoda.

Luke really hadn’t been expecting that.

He can’t help but smile.

The protector draws his attention back with— “Are you a Jedi?”

He’s heard a lot of iterations of that question. This man’s wariness is not the first he’s encountered.

He tries to quash his smile back into something approaching stoicism when he answers, “I am.”

Grogu looks nervous. Luke can’t blame him.

Still, he reaches out a hand. “Come, little one.”

The term of affection sneaks out before he can stop it—Ben called him that, his father called him an iteration of that… Grogu seems to respond to it, though, and Luke senses it sounds familiar. It reminds him of a temple once destroyed, a home he lost, and masters who trained him.

Luke decides that Grogu’s age and backstory can wait for another time to unpick. He’s not sure how old he is—Yoda lived to nine hundred—but it looks like he’s younger than Ben.

But Grogu doesn’t respond to his hand. He looks to his protector.

His father figure, Luke realises, and tries not to feel emotional at that.

The man says, slightly defensively and slightly awkwardly, “He doesn’t wanna go with you.”

No. That isn’t it. “He wants your permission.”

He remembers a boy who didn’t want to follow a Jedi Knight to Alderaan because he couldn’t leave his uncle.

He remembers a boy who desperately wanted his father’s approval, even when he learnt his father was everything he wanted to destroy.

Grogu’s protector looks hesitant, and though Luke sympathises…

It is dangerous to let such a powerful Force-sensitive go untrained. Especially with the Empire after him.

He needs him to understand that.

“He is strong in the Force,” he says, almost apologetically. “But talent without training is nothing.”

Even if that training involved Grogu’s elder whacking Luke on the shins repeatedly. Again, he suppresses a smile.

“I will give my life to protect the child,” he promises, “but he will not be safe until he masters his abilities.”

That convinces him.

He lifts Grogu up, so gently it’s painful, and stares at him as he carries him over.

“Hey, go on,” he murmurs. “That’s who you belong with. He’s one of your kind.”

Grogu reaches up as if to touch his cheek—or rather, the helmet.

“I’ll see you again. I promise.”

Grogu’s hand drops from the helmet.

And after a moment’s hesitation, his protector reaches up to remove it.

Luke blinks fiercely, overcome by a fiercely familiar emotion—he looks away, not looking at his face or his tears, the way men on the second Death Star did for him and his father.

“Alright, pal,” he hears. “It’s time to go.”

Luke swallows.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Then he leans down to put Grogu on the ground and Luke looks back, meeting his gaze firmly and kindly. He’s tearing up, but Luke doesn’t acknowledge it.

It’s almost a surprise when Artoo rolls up behind him and beeps.

Grogu waddles towards him, cooing. Artoo whistles back. Luke lets himself smile, this time.

At Grogu’s lifted arms, he picks him up, as gentle as he was with Ben. He can feel his protector’s eyes on them.

After a moment of… connection, Luke looks up.

“May the Force be with you,” he says, and inclines his head.

Grogu’s protector just looks devastated.

Luke wants to say something to comfort him—wants to say that he knows how this feels. But he knows it wouldn’t help.

So he just cradles Grogu in his arms, as gently as he can, and walks away.

*

“Come on, little one,” he coos as they strap themselves into his X-wing. Grogu is perched on his lap, and it’s a struggle keeping his hands away from the controls. “You seem to have had a lot of adventures.

“Are you ready for one more?”

Artoo whistles something, Grogu coos, and hyperspace blurs the stars around them.

[thexgrayxlady]

Notes: This is a purely self-indulgent and very lighthearted AU and if I’m the only one who is enjoying themselves with it, that’s all that really matters. TBCH I’m not sure where I’m going with it and I know this isn’t very good or perfectly in character, but I’m having a good time and it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, so I’m okay with it if I’m just writing a messy little crash into hello.

The Universe Won’t Wait for You

Outside the ruined temple, dark clouds gathered and howling winds carried the metallic tang of summer storms. Heady incense drifted from inside, where the flicker of braziers cast statues of forgotten gods in stark chiaroscuro. Yet, under the wind and crackle of flames, the air hung still and silent, charged with the promise of lightning.

The jungle crept up around the ancient stones. Gnarled vines threatened to drag the crumbling archway back into its depths. Fragments of cracked and chipping mosaics peered through the leaves, their tiles scattered across the floor with the trees’ detritus.

The roof had long since caved in and the once gilt friezes lining the main hall were now washed almost smooth. The faceless figures posed in the uncanny silence, leading the way to the sanctuary.

At the altar, a group of very annoyed people stood over the unconscious leader of a dragon cult and his scattered cards, having narrowly averted the end of the world for the third time in as many months. The timing was inconvenient for everybody involved and it was universally agreed upon that it would have been better if these assholes had waited until next weekend to try and destroy the world.

“So if we beat the megalomaniac of the week, why isn’t the portal going away?” Tea asked, vaguely gesturing to the swirling silvery distortion above the altar.

“I keep telling you nerds it’s not a portal.” Although against his will and his better judgement, the geek squad had grown on Seto Kaiba like E. coli on room temperature meat, he would still sooner saw off his own hands with a rusty spoon than admit it.

“We could always leave it alone,” Bakura said, disdainfully looking over one of the cultist’s discarded scrolls before rerolling it. “His Latin was terrible. It probably won’t do anything.”

“It won’t do anything because it’s a not a portal.” Their group would have it found it infinitely more worrying if he didn’t insist that the latest near apocalypse had a logical explanation. As of late, he’d settled on saying that anything he couldn’t immediately explain wasn’t magic, just science they didn’t understand yet. Everyone might have appreciated this a bit more if not for how often they had to deal with the fallout of his attempts to understand the science. “Watch.”

He picked up one of the scattered cards (rare, but only good for niche dragon decks and he would notadmit that he would have found this clown’s cards useful) and tossed it towards the floating mass. It passed through without incident and collided with the back wall.

“Wheeler could make something more convincing.” He rolled his eyes. This entire escapade had been a nuisance. He still wasn’t sure how he’d been talked into it. The others certainly hadn’t just mentioned that they needed a ride.

“Yeah, these guys tried to take our dragons cards and dragged us out here to show us some crappy holograms,” Joey replied.

“You would believe a bunch of delusional lunatics.”

Yugi paused checking on the cult leader and decided to head this off before it became serious.

“Guys, stop fighting!” he said, his voice quiet and gentle, yet brokering very little argument. When he realized that Kaiba was gearing up for an argument, he added, “You’re wasting time and the sooner we figure this thing out, the sooner we can leave.”

“Whatever,” he said, turning dramatically, letting his coat flare behind him. “I’m going to figure out what’s going on because some of us have jobs to get back to.”

“You’re self-employed!” the blond shot after him.

While he examined a pile of rubble on the far wall for a projector or an off switch, the others looked over the altar and scrolls. He was just about to shift some stones out of the way when lightning split the sky.

The portal flared and spun wildly. Roaring thunder followed close behind and a glowing thing shot from the portal before it collapsed upon itself as if it had never existed.

“Kaiba look out!” Yugi shouted. “That thing’s headed straight for…”

“It’s a hologram,” he shouted back, gesturing dismissively at the thing barreling towards him without actually looking at it. “It’s not like it can hurt…”

The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, his ears ringing, and struggling for a full breath.

When he regained enough sense to figure out what was going on around him, he realized that his arms were wrapped around something warm and solid. The thing thrummed under his hands, like working on an ungrounded circuit. He came around to a curtain of white and a pair of horribly familiar blue eyes.

The woman shot back, her fingers splayed across his chest, her face contorting in stunned confusion. She started to speak, her voice raspy and quiet, stumbling over words in a language he didn’t understand. Yet even without knowing the words, he got the sentiment.

“What. The. Fuck.”

This couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be real. He must have cracked his head when he hit the ground. She had to be a hallucination or a hologram or…he didn’t know, he couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what specific kind of nonsense was going on.

Somewhere off in the distance, the nerds said something, but it was like listening under water. And as much as he wanted to shout at them to shut up so he could focus, the words stuck in his throat.

He knew her. From that trip to Egypt. Her name was…

No. No.

This wasn’t happening. The world didn’t work this way. People did not just fall out of holes in the sky. He’d been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting that maybe the supernatural bullshit that followed him around possibly had some merit, but thiswas a step too far.

None of this made any sense. Kis…She was impossible. You couldn’t just fling someone through space and time with badly mangled Latin. It took energy. It took machinery. Complex math, things that went beep, big red buttons that gave the nerds heart attacks when he pushed them.

(But these idiots were trying to summon a dragon, weren’t they?)

This violated so many different laws of physics. There must be another explanation. He just had to keep calm and think of it. His heart hammered against his chest. Every time he almost had a grasp on this, he caught her eyes, and any theory beyond rote denial slipped away.

She couldn’t be real. He’d barely thought of her since that trip. Whatever, whoever, she was, it was the past. It didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. He had to focus on figuring out how the hell some loser cultists managed time travel with some incense and dead lizards, no if they managed time travel some incense and dead lizards, when, despite his disregard for the laws of men and gods, even he was still mostly beholden to thermodynamics.

They probably hadn’t. There had to be something in the incense.

Still, the logical part of his brain told him that even his best holograms didn’t feel this real and there was no logical way they knew what she looked like. Her heartbeat fluttered under his hands. She smelled like prison grime and ozone and petrichor.

So a hallucination then. But everyone else kept talking. He still couldn’t really hear them, but maybe they could see her too. Or that was just another facet of his concussed delusion. But if this was a hallucination, then why couldn’t he understand her? He’d never hallucinated in a language he didn’t understand before.

Not a hologram. Not a hallucination. Where did that leave him? Flat on his back on a cold stone floor with a dead woman straddling his waist and the growing certainty that he would never live this down.

Again, she leaned in, her head tilted to the side. Time slowed as she brought a hand to his face and his heart beat too steady to be truly calm as she studied him. She was so small. He could easily throw her off and get away, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even look away as the world shrank down to just the two of them.

She didn’t look quite the same as in the memory. She didn’t seem half so fragile. Her long, pale hair was tangled and her face prematurely lined. Her dress was more a collection of mismatched patches than an actual garment. Bruises and scars bloomed along her arms and collarbone amid patches of thick, almost scaly looking skin.

He wondered if the memory, vision, whatever it was, was accurate. How much of what he knew about her was true? How much had been made up by someone who’d never met her to fit her role in the game? Did it even matter? He was his own person, why should he care about her just because of a supposed connection to the Blue Eyes White Dragon?

Yet despite everything going on, she seemed alert and curious, determined to figure out what exactly just happened, whereas he had to remind himself to keep breathing.

Just before her rough, calloused fingers brushed his jaw, a jolt of static leapt between them. She reeled back, her pupils snapping into narrow slits. Thin, cracking lips curled back over sharp teeth in an inhuman hiss. Her shoulders flexed and he half expected wings to unfurl from her back.

Then she must have caught sight of the others because she shrank back, trembling. A horrible charge built under his hands. He willed himself move just enough to let go.

She scrambled away, breathing in sharp, hissing gasps. Upon reaching the far wall, she shot up a crumbling pillar and crouched as far back on the bottom ledge of a frieze as she could manage and stared down in horror as the first few drops of rain fell through the broken ceiling.

He stared back, the concussed or drugged or shocked daze lifting just enough to drag himself to a sitting position.

She was impossible. But her eyes were electric bright and she’d felt like a damn live wire in his hands. He hadn’t figured out the physics behind this yet, but he understood one thing.

Kisara was very real.

[the-littlest-goblin]

Hey! For the WIP thing, e/c college au?

ooh this one’s fun. Shadowgast college/modern with magic au with a whole lot of academic magic talk. Caleb and Essek are research assistants to Yussa and Waccoh, respectively, who are forced to work together on a research project despite their long-standing rivalry. While their bosses go on an enemies-to-colleagues (to lovers, maybe???) journey, Caleb and Essek bond over dunamancy.

I really love this au but it lacks enough plot to justify the worldbuilding, and also parts of it got piecemeal-ed into other fics so it seems kind of redundant now. I haven’t totally given up on it, but it’s definitely on the back burner. since I’m so fond of it, you get a much longer excerpt than necessary: 

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard in my life!” Professor Waccoh announced her arrival by shoving the door open like it had wronged her in a very cruel and personal manner. Yussa stormed in behind her, his robes swishing aggressively, as if they too were possessed with a righteous fury.

“Your plan will never work!” he cried. “The experiment will be over before it begins, because all our materials will have melted.”

“They won’t if we get mithril sheets instead of steel!” Waccoh countered.

“And blow a third of our grant funds on day one? What lunacy!”

Caleb and Essek exchanged long-suffering looks. Their first day as co-lab assistants to the joint research team of Waccoh and Errenis was not looking to be a pleasant one.

“Are we still on for tutoring later tonight?” Essek whispered under the noise of their bosses’ continuing argument.

“Of course,” Caleb answered. They were both standing against the wall at the edge of the lab, awaiting instruction, writing utensils at the ready to take down notes, but neither Yussa nor Waccoh seemed to realize they were even in the room. They had eyes only for each other.

“Of course we have to enchant the materials first! It will be so much easier than waiting until everything is assembled!”

“So what am I supposed to do, just sit here twiddling my thumbs and wait an eternity for you to cast your stupid spells? No way! I’m building the engine first, then I can move on with my life while you spend another decade enchanting it.”

“If you would just listen to reason, Tuss…”

Essek leaned over to Caleb again. “Perhaps it would be more efficient if we start now?”

Caleb looked up from the cat he’d been doodling in the margins of his notebook. It looked more like a sausage with legs and a tail—he was no Jester.

“What do you mean?”

“Here.” Grabbing his bag in one hand, Essek put the other on Caleb’s elbow and guided him to the next table over. Neither professor commented.

Sitting down, Essek pulled a cinderblock of a textbook out of his bag. The front cover showed a galaxy of stars overlaid with geometric designs and bold, block letters reading: Fundamentals of Dunamancy. And under that, in slightly smaller letters: Leylas Kryn, PhD. It was littered with sticky notes poking out the side of nearly every page.

Essek flipped open to one marking about a fourth of the way through the book, labeled CALEB.

“So,” Essek began, and Caleb scrambled to turn his notebook to a fresh page. “We left off last time talking about dunamis, correct?”

“Yes,” Caleb confirmed. “And the beacons.”

“Right. So you understand the origins of dunamancy.”

“I am a little unclear,” Caleb admitted. Curious, he glanced over to the other side of the lab. Yussa and Waccoh had migrated to the chalkboard, where they appeared to be laying out their respective arguments in bullet-point form. They did not seem to be in need of any assistance. He turned back to Essek.

“The beacons are fonts of magic, but they are also religious relics, correct?”

Essek nodded.

“But dunamancy is an arcane subject,” Caleb continued. “It does not come from worship of this Luxon figure, the way clerical magic is derived from deities. It is a realm of academic study.” Essek nodded again. “So, where does the religious connection come in?”

“Well, you have stumbled upon a matter of great controversy,” Essek answered. “Personally, I believe religion has nothing to do with it. If you ask me, the beacons’ connection to the Luxon is a historical note, a misguided invention from a time with a more primitive understanding of magic. If we were wise, we would disregard any writings that talk of its divine origins and approach the subject from a fresh perspective. But,” Essek mouth twisted into a bitter smile, “if you ask Professor Kryn, you will get a very different answer.”

“I see,” said Caleb, mind whirring as it mulled over the new information.

“But that debate is not essential to our lessons. You don’t need to understand the depths of the beacons in order to practice basic dunamancy. Although, I appreciate your curiosity.” His smile softened as he surveyed Caleb. “You have an uncanny talent for getting directly to the heart of the matter.”

Don’t ask so many questions, Bren.

Caleb blinked hard against the voice echoing at the back of his mind.

“Have these beacons been studied very closely?”

Essek tilted his head to the side, considering. “A bit? It’s difficult, with them being such cherished cultural artifacts. Most of the examination that has been done was conducted by archeologists and historians. A handful of arcanists in recent years, including Leylas, have been permitted to study them, but it’s an extremely thorough vetting process.” He paused, jaw working as though he was unsure about whether to allow the next words past his lips.

“The vetting is mostly done by high level clerics within the worship. I imagine Leylas’ long history of devout practice made them more inclined to allow her access.”

Caleb noted the tinge of sadness—and was that resentment?—in his voice. But Essek was speaking again before he could comment.

“I can send you some articles on the topic, if you wish to investigate further,” he said. “In the meantime, we move forward.”

Though it remained open in front of them, Essek hardly consulted the textbook once as their lesson continued. It was difficult not to pay attention when he talked; the smooth timber of his voice paired with the undeniable enthusiasm he had for the subject kept Caleb enraptured, Even the most basic elements, clearly known by rote, Essek explained with a spark of passion in his eye, which grew brighter with every question or clarification Caleb parried back.

He was an excellent teacher.

They had almost entirely forgotten about the job they were meant to be doing, and their bickering superiors, until over an hour later. While Essek was guiding Caleb through a diagram of common somatic movements for dunamantic spells, Yussa called out,

“Caleb! I need you to go to my office and retrieve my copy of Otiluke’s Guide to Enchantment, Volume IV. I have a point to prove!”

ask game

[thosearentcrimes]

Intelligence

On a recent post I was pretty glib about the notion of intelligence, to the point of outright denying that it is measured by IQ, and even doubting its very existence. On reflection, this is a bit of an unusual position, since the existence of intelligence is almost self-evident, and certainly I routinely behave as if intelligence were both real and variable. As such, I feel like I should clarify my position a bit.

Intelligence is a term so vague as to be effectively meaningless, unless it is very precisely defined for a particular context. Intelligence research both does not precisely define intelligence, and contains mutually contradictory definitions. Because I really really hate Charles Murray (may his collaborator Herrnstein rest in piss) and his pile of racist and classist vitriol “The Bell Curve”, I will be picking on the Bell Curve apologetic letter to the Wall Street Journal (lol) “Mainstream Science on Intelligence“ which was signed by 52 (out of the 131 to whom it was sent) "experts in intelligence and allied fields". Fun fact: One of the signatories of this letter is Hans Eysenck, possibly the most monumental scientific fraud of all time, who claimed that lung cancer is not caused by smoking but by bad vibes. Other fun fact: He is by far not the worst person to have signed this tripe (that is, to my limited awareness, J. Philippe Rushton).

The first point made by the article is that intelligence is “A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.“ This definition is actually significantly more ambiguous than even it concedes. Apparently not satisfied with the lack of clarity in that sentence, the author of the letter later described intelligence as ”The ability to deal with cognitive complexity” which is frankly laughable. I will happily concede the central conceit, that these activities require roughly the same general qualities of a person, because it is at the very least plausible. Instead, I would like to note that this definition does not specify whether or not intelligence involves the ability to do any of these things (except for learning) quickly, which it really should, for reasons we will come back to. To address specific components of this “general mental capability”, is intelligence the ability to solve a wide range of problems in a satisfactory manner, or is it the ability to solve problems that few other people can solve, or is it the ability to find particularly good solutions for ordinary problems? If it is all three, then to what degree do you weight these things? Which problems are admissible here? “Physical dexterity” is largely the ability to estimate center of balance and calculate ballistic curves. Given that, is hitting a moving target with a ball “intelligence”, and if not, why not? We could claim that hitting moving targets with balls is something that is learned through experience, but learning from experience is a part of intelligence as well! If my complaints concern problem-solving, it is because it is the only one of these that can be assessed quantitatively and at scale, the others only being measurable by way of problem-solving itself if at all. Some of the others can be assessed individually and/or qualitatively, but that is incompatible with the theory and practice of intelligence research. Now, I believe all of the questions I posed can be answered both ways, depending on context. In fact, if all we want “intelligence” for is a contextually-dependent blob of generalized cognitive ability, then I have no objection, beyond its somewhat limited utility as a concept and tendency towards tautology.

The second point of the article is where it all really breaks down. "Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well.“ Intelligence tests basically means IQ, as far as I can tell. The article operates further as if it had said IQ here, and the Bell Curve operates using IQ as its test of choice (IQ being a test designed to produce the normal distribution whose shape gives the book its name). If we compare a popular IQ test like WAIS to the definition of intelligence we have already given, we find that it is inconceivable that it measures intelligence at all. The “vocabulary” section does not measure speed of learning, it measures total learning performed and memory, and memory isn’t even a component of intelligence as defined! Neither is it clear why general knowledge questions would reflect any of the components of intelligence as given. I am willing to grant that spatial reasoning is a component of intelligence but it is less clear to me why this section is timed, given that the only thing intelligence as defined explicitly requires us to do quickly is learn. There is an entire “working memory” section to the WAIS. Unless we count rote short-term memorization as learning, and we should not, then there is no reason to consider any of this relevant to intelligence as it has been defined. Additionally, at no point is the participant required to hit a moving target with a ball, or construct a stable structure of some sort. This would be reasonable if it had already been specified that these sorts of tasks do not fall under intelligence, but it wasn’t. As such, the claim the letter makes, that intelligence tests measure what they have defined as intelligence, is blatantly false. Intelligence tests measure familiarity with academic test-taking environments and strategies, compliance with test-giver commands, memorization, spatial reasoning, general knowledge, pattern identification, and mathematical problem-solving. Only a small component of that is what intelligence was defined as earlier, and entire fields of what intelligence was supposed to be are missing in this evaluation.

To get a good run-down of some of the many problems with The Bell Curve in particular, see Shaun’s excellent video. For more writing on the folly of intelligence measurement in general, criticisms of bioessentialism, excellent writing about biology in general, and also baseball, read basically anything by Stephen Jay Gould.

[justjessame]

Starting Over Chapter 12

“Brooke?”  I shook my head when I heard Connie’s voice on the other end, the sounds of cartoons playing in the background told me she was home.  “Are you alright?”  The worry in her voice made me feel guilty for not calling more often, or checking in at least.  

“I’m fine, worrywart.”  I settled into my spot on the couch, smiling as I caught a whiff of Bucky’s scent.  “I -”  I took a deep breath and bit my lip.  “I’m sorry I haven’t -”

Connie shushed me.  “Stop,” I closed my mouth, worried that she was going to tell me that she didn’t have time for fairweather friends and that she had a family to take care of now.  “You don’t have to explain anything to me, Brooke.”  It felt like my heart restarted.  “I can’t imagine how you must have felt coming back.”  I heard a rustling in the background and then the noise that had sounded like cartoons went away and it got quiet.  “Sorry about that, Bryn wanted to watch Tangled again.”

I smiled, my goddaughter, or she would have been if I’d been here to do the honors was three years old.  “Tangled is a good one.”  I was happy that Connie was willing to talk to me, that she was willing to make time, even if I’d pushed her away.  “Is that her favorite?”  

Connie laughed and I was happy to hear that it was as familiar to me as my own.  “She likes all of the princesses.  Joey is thinking we’re going to have to push up the trip to Disney by a year.”  I was grinning at the thought of Joey Amoruso playing girl daddy through the Magic Kingdom.  “Don’t worry, I made sure she got to see Beauty and the Beast, too.”  That got a laugh out of me.

“I can’t help loving Belle,” I argued, and listened to her snort.  “How’s your mom?”  Connie worked at her mom’s beauty salon, she’d started as soon as she was tall enough to reach around a customer’s head into the sink to wash their hair and after high school didn’t blink about going straight into cosmetology school.  

“You know Mertle,” her mom’s name was Ismerelda, but some hard of hearing old lady had misheard it once and called her ‘Mertle’ to our forever hilarity.  I laughed.  “She makes me do Mrs. McGillicutty’s hair now, every damn week, just because she got tired of doing the same style over and over.”  I remembered Mrs. McGillicutty, she was a sweet lady, but a little dotty.  “Today was my half day, Bryn’s preschool runs a half day every other day.”

“Who keeps her on the off days?”  I got up to grab a drink and listened as Connie told me all about the nightmares of finding childcare, even with an extended family like hers.  Falling back into the type of conversation that two friends have, if one had gone away for a while.  I grabbed a glass of water and my eyes landed on the flowers that Bucky brought me, a smile finding its home on my lips again, I sat down at the table and talked to Connie while I pulled the vase closer and played with the petals.  

Before we said our goodbyes, a good hour and a half after we’d started talking, Connie finally asked the question that I knew she had to have been burning with since she saw my name appear on her phone screen.  

“Not that I don’t LOVE hearing from you, Brooke, but what brought this on?  Why now?”  I’d wandered back to the living room, curling into the chair that Bucky sat in, letting the residual scent of him cradle me.  

“I met someone,” she squealed, causing a tiny mimic to happen from the background and I chuckled.  Good God, she had a mini me.  “You’d know him, actually -” I bit my lip.  “EVERYONE knows him or knows of him.”  I squinted, shit, should I tell anyone?  

“Tell me EVERYTHING.”  But then I heard a male voice, Joey her husband.  “Shit, the conquering man returns.”  I snorted.  “You are NOT off the hook, Brooke.  I expect details and a NAME.”  I promised she’d get both and then we said goodnight.  

I’d missed a text while I was on with Connie.  Another attempt at a selfie, this time it had part of another person that I found out was supposed to be Sam when I read the accompanying text message.  “See UR cuter.”  I was grinning, but the next message made me sigh.  “Stuck w/ Sam. :(“ 

Sad face emoji indeed, I thought.  Contemplating what type of reply I could send to a 106 year old without pushing him away or over a cliff, I went back to the kitchen where his flowers were still holding tight.  Thinking about how creative I felt like getting, I found the largest bloom, went to the bathroom and brushed out my hair. I tried to remember what the women from Bucky’s younger days might have done to look tempting.  Dramatic eye, red lip, then putting the flower behind my ear I hoped like hell that I didn’t look completely ridiculous before clicking off a shot and sending it.  

“Too bad. Sam’s a lucky guy. :*”  

I was washing off my work and thinking about reheating some more leftovers for dinner when my phone chirped.  Glancing down I was left smiling by his answer.

“No, I am.”  

Dinner, a shower, then bed.  Well, after a LONG staring contest in the mirror where I did my own personal pre-bedtime mantra.  It was rote, and I did it with the same vigor that I’d done it with every other time.  And I was just as certain that it would work as well.  

Without Bucky, I had my bed remade and I was settled back on my pillows.  The soft blue glow of the television had been a nice addition, so I flipped it on.  Turning the volume down so it was the same murmur that was soft enough to not keep me awake, I hoped it would work as a surrogate for the anchor that Bucky’s presence seemed to be.

The flashes came red, blue, unnameable colors. The feelings of pain and suffering, darkness and terror creeping closer and trying to pull me back.  I still couldn’t see what caused it, where the pain came from, what was so terrifying that I felt trapped by it.  What or who was trying to drag me back to wherever I’d been was still as unknown as it had been when Thanos snapped his gold encased fingers and after the Blip the answers were still unavailable.  I didn’t feel as pinned down or as in danger or being yanked away from home, so I was still tethered to reality.  I just had to wait through it, to survive the feelings that I couldn’t figure out, until the flashes of colors came to let me know the end was coming and I was waking up - coming home again.

I woke to a text from Connie.  

“It’s McGillcutty’s day. Come visit me. PLEASE.”  I shook my head at the plea, but it wasn’t like I had plans or a job to get to.  I hoped she knew I wasn’t planning on spilling ALL while she was cutting hair and styling the neighborhood ladies, because I hadn’t been gone so long that I’d forgotten how fast gossip travelled.  

“Fine.” I hit send.  I got ready and grabbed some toast and a bottle of water.  My bag with a book, my earbuds and a charger for my phone, just in case, and I was out the door and heading to Connie’s mom’s salon.  

I was at the salon by the time both slices of my toast were finished and most of my water was gone.  Tossing the napkin I’d wrapped my breakfast in in the trash when I walked in, I almost missed the hush that fell over the entire room when I entered.  Almost.  Shit.  Standing up I realized that all eyes were on me.  Great.

“Brooke!” Connie beckoned to me from her station at the back of the shop, one she’d picked out when she was still washing hair.  “Put your eyes back in your heads,” she rolled her eyes.  “It’s JUST Brooke.”  I shook my head, only Connie would try to brush off the fact that I just walked into the neighborhood hen coop after steering clear of it for a full six months, and I looked five years younger than I SHOULD.  

Her mom grinned at me and called out a “looking good, Brookie” as I passed, getting a little red added to my cheeks, but aside from that Connie had shamed most of the clucking hens into at least pretending that they weren’t amazed by the very sight of me.  I made it to Connie’s station and found that she’d prepared for my visit by grabbing one of the waiting area chairs and brought it back so I wasn’t stuck leaning against the wall or counter.

Plopping down, I watched as she went about styling Mrs. McGillicutty’s hair.  After I’d said a polite hello to the elderly woman, of course.  It was almost mesmerizing, watching Connie wrap each curler with the blue washed thinning hair of the bird thin woman.  And as she wrapped she talked.  

“You remember how Tawny and Sam were planning on getting married the year after we did, right?”  I told her I did, and she snorted.  “Yeah, that went south so quick.”  I heard Margaret Andrews pipe up from two chairs down that it wasn’t all that surprising.  

“They were on again and off again so much growing up, I’m surprised either of their mamas let them make that much of a plan.” She offered up.  I bit my lip, the hen house was raring to go.  

Connie’s eyes met mine and I could see them sparkling with mirth.  And we were off, the mission seemed to be to get me back in the swing of things and she’d brought the troops.

I got another ‘selfie’ in the middle of my visit with Connie and I glanced at it and bit my lip.  It was marginally better.  Bucky was at least visible and discernible this time.  I couldn’t tell where he was, but the message wasn’t optimistic about my odds of seeing him soon.  

“Baltimore w/Sam.”

A sigh escaped and Connie glanced up from where she was cutting Kelly Taggert’s hair.  Since Kelly was someone who wasn’t exactly in our sphere prior to leaving school, much less before the Snap, Connie held her curiosity at bay.  Too bad Kelly didn’t get the memo.

“Bad news, Brookie?”  I glanced up, thinking about reminding Kelly that very few people had the privilege to call me that, and she most definitely wasn’t one of them, but held back.  This was Connie’s place of business after all.  

“Not really.  Just spam.”  Fuck it, why give her any grist for the mill?  Connie could smell my bull from a mile away, but Kelly didn’t know me from Adam.  

“I hate that, there should be a way to input a block for those automatically -” and she was off.  I grinned at my phone as I typed a reply to Bucky. 

A selfie was out of the question, not with this crowd.  “I’m socializing. Willingly.”  

Kelly was still telling everyone, because her voice could pound a nail into a wall it was so fucking loud and annoying, all her ideas for dealing with spam texts, emails, telemarketing calls and on and on.  I almost felt bad about setting her loose.  Until my phone chirped and I got another selfie from Bucky looking shocked in answer to my text.  

Tucking my phone away, I set back and let Kelly rant until Connie finished her hair.  

I stayed until closing and it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be.  Connie told me that her sister-in-law was keeping Bryn after preschool, and we had some time to just relax and chat.  I had a feeling she made those specific plans after we talked on the phone, she was just that freaking curious.  

She grabbed two cans of soda from the breakroom and plopped into the swivel seat her customers usually sat in while she played fairy hair godmother.   “Spill.”  I rolled my eyes as I cracked open my can.  

“You only invited me to hang out today to ply me for information about my personal life, didn’t you?”  I squinted over the top of the can as I took my first drink.  She grinned and nodded, not the least bit shamed.  Swallowing, I dramatically sighed.  “Fine.” I couldn’t stop the smile that started growing at the thought of Bucky.  “Do you remember when Mom and Dad took us to the Smithsonian?”  

She was staring at me like I was crazy and didn’t know where I was going to go with the trip down memory lane, but she nodded as she opened her own drink.  “Yeah, we were like ten.”  

I bit my lip.  “We were,” it had been a fun trip, just Connie, me and my parents.  For Connie who had siblings and me as an only child - we both had a blast.  “We went to the Captain America exhibit.” 

“God we went to ALL of the exhibits it felt like, your dad was gaga over the Air and Space one -” she stopped, suddenly HEARING what I said.  “Wait, the -”  Her eyes met mine and went wide.  “NO.”  

“I bumped into him,” my hand went to my chest, still a little bit tender.  “He’s - he’s amazing.”  

Connie leaned forward and looked almost exactly like she had when we were 15 years old and I told her that Todd Garrison kissed me behind the bleachers during the pep rally.  Wide eyed and excited, she bit her lip.  “Is he -” she looked like she couldn’t quite decide what to ask first.  “Tell me EVERYTHING.”  So I did, within limits, sort of. 

[bibliocratic]

Soulmate au for jm prompts? Any kind you want

soul-identifying marks, jonmartin, episodes 158-160 spoilers

(this prompt came into my home and beat me over the brain.)(it might not be exactly what you were after, hope it’s ok!)

–

Martin’s waging a passive-aggressive one-man war against an excel spreadsheet when the temperature, risen to bearable by the grunting old radiator in the corner, swan-dives into shivery.

“Peter,” Martin says, not exactly a greeting, as frayingly cordial as he can manage. Not absolving Peter’s intrusion with his attention, triple-pressing the right mouse button and hissing an irate oh come on when the computer refuses to bend to his will and instead freezes again.

Peter will say whatever mysterious bollocks he’s come to imply and hint at and implicate, scattering his bloody breadcrumbs. Martin will be left just as pissed off and in the dark as he was before, so he might as well get it over with so Martin can actually get some work done.

Surprisingly, Peter doesn’t say anything. That’s actually what makes Martin turn round.

Peter’s slate-shingle eyes are observing Martin’s exposed lower arms. Sleeves rolled up haphazard out of his way, folded over in messy and unmatching bunches at his elbow.

He’s studying the designs that blemish the sun-ditched pale of his freckled arm with an interest Martin baulks at. Traces with his eyes the blocky wood-cut patterns in precise and abrupt black lines that start at the line of his watch, sprout up and under his clothes. Idly, he takes his time to let his gaze traverse over the open pages of tomes unfilled with words and unbroken by ink; the landscape of woodland and tree lines and shadowy hollows of roads mysterious or untaken that mar the faint curve of his lower arm. The lantern swinging on the bough of a wintry tree, its candle recently blown out.

The eye, thick and wide, staring out at the crease of his elbow.

Peter flicks a glance up, and Martin reads something like pity there. His face heats.

“The Archivist?” Peter Lukas asks. His voice isn’t mocking. Martin isn’t sure what it it.

He hates the tone of it.

“Do you want something?” Martin responds curtly. Frosty. Tugging his sleeves back down pointedly.

Peter’s expression is ever so proud.

–

When Jon wakes up, he charts the changes death has wrought on him. Sitting on the small bed he’s set up in document storage, swaddled in the uncomforting comfort of his archives, he chronicles the new damages done. The rough tissue of scars on his arms, upper legs, chest. Pitted marks from shrapnel and debris and being in the radius blast of an explosion.  He supposes it could be worse.

He thumbs at the faded, almost unrecognisable nazar just below his shoulder, the crossed compass and ruler nearby in the same state. The colour bleeding out of them like they’ve been left too long in the dark. He doesn’t think about his parents much. Not in a long time. His memories sanded down to an uncertain rote recollection that his brain is equally as likely to have invented as not. He doesn’t recall enough to miss them, but there must be something there for him to still bear them on his skin.

There’s a bleary shape splotched on his inner wrist. Forming like the build-up of sediment, the slow grind of tide, and it has been doing so for months, since before he died.

It’s almost fully realised now. He rubs at the shape of it tentatively  as though the colour might run if he’s too rough with it. The delicate fawn-brown of its wings, the beaded black circle of its eyes.

He knows who it represents. Impossible not to, really. It’s his representation after all. The complex understanding of a human being realised as imagery and flowering on his skin.

He stares at the nightingale for the longest time.

–

When Martin was nine, struck by the well-echo hollow in his chest, unable to articulate the shamed and hot tears his mother would scold with a cluck of disappointment, he tried to clean the clock off his right leg. Sitting in the bath with the water gagging with too many bubbles, he scrubbed at the cogs and mechanical intestines of the thing, seeing the lies of his father in how it was wound, not wanting it, because surely if his dad had loved him then he wouldn’t have left, and if he didn’t then why should Martin boast his love so obviously. He held and scrubbed until his skin was pink and scalded and he’d started to wince. But connection doesn’t work like that, and so the clock never disappeared, and Martin tried to ignore it every time he took a shower.

Turns out the Forsaken was good for something after all.

–

“How’s the poetry?” Jon stammers at him, so obviously, earnestly angling to drag out their impromptu meeting. Martin wants to be anywhere else but here.

“Jon, I really need to – ”

“Oh. Yeah. I – sorry, I-I know you’ve got… your thing with Peter Lukas.”

“It’s not like that – ”

“I-I know, I know, sorry, I didn’t mean…” Jon stops. His eyes – and were they always so gaunt, so hungry in his face? – have stopped trying to both catch and avoid Martin’s gaze apparently simultaneously, and they’ve snagged instead on Martin’s collar. For a moment, something too thirsty catalogues the pale and vacant skin of his throat, where the purple hooded bells of monkshood usually thronged. Their leaves had grown spikier as he’d aged, stretching out to his Adam’s apple in a bid to form a collar of choking vines.

“Martin…” Jon stares at empty skin, and his expression blooms into something comprehending and distraught.

“I have to go, Jon,” Martin says forcefully.  He doesn’t give Jon much of a chance to reply.

He doesn’t want Jon’s sorries. Doesn’t need his worries or his understanding.

He just wants him to be safe.

–

The nightingale sings entangled by coarse and insidious brambles. Jon’s taken to holding his hand over the pattern, like shielding with a careful hand a wind-tossed, guttering flame, when the hunger starts to gnaw though him like frostbite.

It doesn’t stop there. The emblems grow into iconography, twist into tableau. The pictures grow and spread simply as moss, and Jon doesn’t despair because he doesn’t have the space for it any more.

Jon’s evidence has always been discrete. The stamped shapes for his parents like memorial images were all he held for the longest time. Something started to flourish for his grandmother, when she took him in, and he tried to show her the blotched shape in a childish effort to bring them closer. She hadn’t needed to stay anything. She pursed her lip and strained an apologetic glance and he knew even at that age that there was nothing, would be nothing in kind, decorating her skin for him. That choked the image like weeds, and it faded quickly as the passing of inclement weather.

The space, at his jutting hip-bone, was only later taken up by Georgie’s mark. That one never faded quite like the image for his grandmother or for his parents, but it went sun-stained and overexposed long before they broke up.

Martin’s imagery is not so subtle.

It swallows up his arm, roils over his shoulder-blades, infects the untouched skin over his collar bone.

Jon takes to wearing longer sleeves.

–

Martin’s skin has always taken easily to marking. Some people do, he guesses. Wear their hearts on their sleeves, on their throat, on their stomach. Martin’s a scattered museum of loves that he’s tended to over the years, unrequited affections or spluttered out romances.

He’s pleased, in those early days, that nothing ever bruises on his skin for Jon. He likes Jon, even fancies him, for a long time. And it’s annoying, because Jon can be a real arse, but it’s manageable. Jon doesn’t make him go hot at the nape of his neck or make him stumble over his words. His presence encourages harmless daydreams and flights of fancy, but Martin’s under no illusions.

And then Jon listens to his statement. Sits him down, and believes him, and doesn’t break eye contact the whole time.

And Martin had felt, dazedly, Seen. For the first time in a long time.

The first eye had opened up around then like an unclenching fist under his ribs. He’d seen it a week later. Had thought oh and had quickly dressed to cover it.

It’s not the first mark this love leaves him. In time, it scores him with tooth marks and sailor’s knots of worry, and eyes, always eyes, blinking open over his flesh.

He loses the one on his ankle first. Scratches at the space where it was, touching the crease where his sock has dug a band around his skin, right where the line used to bisect the thick and dark pupil.

Then the one on his lower back. His upper thigh. His left wrist.

It’s for the best, Martin, Peter says when he catches him looking at the undamaged patch of skin these absences leave behind.

Martin doesn’t disagree.

By the time Lukas banishes him to the mercy of Forsaken, thwarted and cheated and feeling something almost human, Martin’s skin has already been entirely washed clean.

–

There’s a nightingale on Jon’s wrist. It’s one of the first things that catches his vision, that refocuses from blurry in this undemanding nothing. The colour is too vivid, lurid in this desaturated landscape.

The bird is nestled, or maybe caught, in a twisting of brambles but its beak is open in song.

“Look at me, and tell me what you See,” Jon asks him, and Martin wonders if maybe Jon’s been carrying around his own heart on his sleeve for a while now.

–

His mother’s flowers don’t grow back when he vacates the Lonely. His father’s clockwork finally cleansed from him. The leaves and keys and umbrellas of the numerous small loves and connections he’s now lost the taste of.

Martin’s skin remains unblemished and clear, and he wonders if the Lonely took this capacity from him.

Jon’s hand is dry in his. And nothing blooms on Martin’s arms but a sensation like prickling, like pins and needles, settles under his skin, and Martin holds on just as tightly.

–

There was a downpour on the way back to the safehouse. The sky splitting with a cascade of rain, sheets moving in waves and quickly transforming dewy grass into boggy swamp-land. Their waterproofs, such as they are, have done a poor job and failed to live up to their name, and Jon is dripping a cloud’s-worth of rainfall from his hair alone as he crosses the threshold. Martin, no different, water draining off him like guttering, tuts. Helps him strip the sucking, soaking outer layers off, frigid fingers fumbling with the pull of the zip. Jon awkwardly gets in the way in his efforts to return the gesture, making a face at the sodden slump of Martin’s waterlogged woollen jumper as it hits the floor. Martin catches his t-shirt on his nose as he tries to pull it over his head, trying to unbutton and kick off his clinging trousers in one motion. 

He doesn’t feel embarrassed. Doesn’t cross his mind to be. It’s hard, when Jon’s snickering as he nearly trips over his own legs in his efforts to shake his legs free, when they’ve been clung to each other like tethered buoys each night, coddled by the unbroken dark.

“I’ll get dry clothes,” Martin says, the first to have divested himself of most of his clothes, and he bounds upstairs, damp feet squeaking and slipping, longing for a hot shower as he trails puddles into the bedroom. He throws on thick pyjama bottoms, is half wrenching on an errant t-shirt before he realises it’s Jon’s and has to rifle around for a spare one of his own before he slips it on. He collects some clothes for Jon and rushes back.

Jon’s managed to get off his own trousers, slopped in a pile of fabric by his feet, the skin goosepimpling and dark hair standing stark from the chill. He’s pulling his sticking vest off over his head as Martin returns.

Martin sucks in a gasp. Jon blinks, confused for a moment before a reddening mark stripes across the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, splotches at the dip of his neckline.

“What…?” Martin starts, staring at the tapestry on his skin, and he can’t help it.

Before, Tim would joke that Jon loved his job more than he loved people. Was probably conservatively decorated in little stylisations of his perpetually present tape-recorders, probably had a library over his heart. It was something he said as a joke at the beginning and hissed as a recrimination by the end, and Martin and Sasha (and later only Martin) would tell him off, tell him to keep it down, that it wasn’t fair, that it wasn’t his business. But if Jon had been marked, they wouldn’t have known. They were hidden under crisp shirt sleeves and well-placed collars even in summer.

The nightingale, wings scratched by thorns, was the first image Martin had ever seen Jon wear. He’d expected that to be it, had hoped such an emblem was meant for him, but it, well, it is dwarfed in comparison to the harmony of colour struck over Jon’s body like a collage.

Every piece of skin that is not torn up and jagged with scars has been brought into the striking shock of deep blues and blacks that slide and ring over dark skin. A choir of imagery that Martin can’t decipher immediately, like a jigsaw he has to step back from, the artworks all wrapped up in each other, each feeding off the other. There are nightingales, some grounded on thin wind-touched branches, some held mid-flight; these become a stylised compass pointing north. There’s the solid structure of a lighthouse taking up most of his gangly upper arm, its lower levels painted in a sea bound mist, or it could be the curling wisps of inviting steam. His stomach, curving concave, is overwhelmed by the imperious crags of icy cliffs, the rocks dashed by high foaming waves, above which hangs the ribboning line of northern lights.  On the sea, a sturdy boat tipping on the water, its spinnaker puffed out and billowing in defiance.

There is so much, so much of Jon taken up, painted in testament, and for a long moment, Martin doesn’t understand.

Jon looks at his feet, and then glances, almost shyly, at Martin’s unpainted throat, his blank arms. Visibly steels himself, moves his gaze up to meet Martin’s.

“It…” he begins, before he breathes in, sets his spine straight. “You. It’s – it’s you. In case, in case you didn’t know.”

“Can – ?” Martin asks, and his fingers are twitching, yearning to trace the lines, to memorise their shapes, and Jon blinks again and then makes a nervy nodding motion.

Martin’s about to reach out before he remembers that Jon’s half-naked and dripping wet in the hallway, that the stone flags will be frozen on his feet, that now is perhaps not the ideal time.

Later. After they warm up, after they shower and the gas boiler grunts and complains and then near-burns them with hot water, after they dress in pyjamas warmed on the radiators, after they go upstairs. Martin runs his hand reverently, shakily over the lighthouse, the compass, the boat, the birds, wonders if this is how Jon sees him, how Jon understands him, wonders why he’s taken up so much space. Looks at all the pictures that are both isolation and sanctuary, song and sorrow and strength, tries to decipher what Jon sees in him.

“There’s so much,” he marvels softly, scarcely believing, hovering the pads of his fingers over the horizon line of a lightening sky, the peaking gleam of a sunrise at Jon’s lower back, the anchor bound in twisting rope around his ankle bone, the up shoots of snow-drops and lily-of-the-valley not far away. Most people get one image, maybe two or three, as proof of meaning to another person, as a tangible reflection of connection. Martin has an entire gallery exhibited across Jon’s body.

“You mean so much,” Jon says softly in response, like that explains it. Maybe for him, it does.

He charts the other bold designs he finds. Realising that for all his earlier pretences, Jon has not, and never has been an island. There’s Daisy’s faintly rusted golden chain caked in mud and blood around his other ankle, Gerard Keay’s thick leather-bound book, its open pages wreathed in fire, the near-vanished marks for his parents, for Georgie, the scant others who came into his life and left their mark.

There might have been an eye, wide and open and unyielding, and it would stare out at the bottom of Jon’s throat if it wasn’t for the rush of wild-flowers also grown there, snow-drops and holly-berries obscuring its vision.

Jon asks him, falteringly, as though unsure of forming the question in his mouth, what Martin had. Before the sea-salt wash of Forsaken cleaned them from him.

And Martin points to where his mum, his dad, his old loves left their remembrances on him. Carefully, honestly, he tells Jon about the tooth marks clamped around limbs like he’d been bitten, because it was not always a kind love Jon made him feel. The eyes that near the end had swarmed like frog-spawn around his middle, slashed across his back like a constellation. The forbidding forest on his arm, the lantern.

Jon strokes the places where he would have seen these things.

“If they don’t come back….” Martin says, and Jon hums.

“They might not,” he says. “That’s… that’s OK.”

“But…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jon says, and he touches at the space where he would have marked Martin ever so kindly. “Something new might show up. In time.”

“Yeah?” Martin croaks, and it’s not a question of if it will or not. Jon’s looking up at him, a smile on his face, his whole body inked with how much he feels, all the words he finds so difficult to express writ large on his body. Martin’s heart feels too big for his chest. And he wonders what meaning they might make of each other together.

[savvyblunders]

Personal Post: Imposter Syndrome, Reading Traditional Books, and thoughts about my own writing

{Just rambles regarding books, fanfiction and some of my thoughts therein.}

It’s been a terribly long time since I read any published books--aside from those written by fellow fanfiction authors. It has reached the point that I find them entirely too cringey. The plots are tame, the characters stiff, the language rote. I especially have a hard time caring if there is a supposed ‘romance’ involved. Forget about het romances, they’re so formulaic that they leave me cold. It isn’t that I have no interest in the portrayal of a relationship between a woman and man, it’s that by and large they might as well have been churned off of a factory production line. 

Part of my objection is to the tired old tropes and gender roles which authors (and readers) don’t seem to realize they’re not only falling prey to, but encouraging with their work. The world doesn’t have to be turned on its head to be interesting, but you shouldn’t know from the first few scenes between characters how it will play out--and further more, not care.

I did read a rather good psychological mystery a few days ago, however. I think perhaps it was successful in part because it was so different from the usual run of stories that people publish, but also because there wasn’t a romance shoe-horned into the storyline. The narrator wasn’t particularly sympathetic, but nor were they entirely unredeemed. I don’t want to give too much away, but it explored the themes of bullying, memory, redemption and revenge, with an enjoyable twist that I didn’t see coming--I was successfully led astray by red herrings, which isn’t always the case when I’m reading mysteries. The book, should anyone be interested, was Girl Gone Mad by Avery Bishop.

{I keep on rambling after the break ;)}

I also read another which was such a stinker I deleted it from my Kindle history and couldn’t tell you the title or author. This beauty had a somewhat interesting premise of a woman who wakes from a six month coma with full amnesia and throughout the book has to struggle with not remembering anything and depending on her husband, children and neighbors for the details of her life. Frustratingly, she finds parts of her personality and tastes have changed--at least as far as they all tell her. She begins to doubt that she is who they say--an issue further compounded when certain facets of her life pre-coma are revealed. Then when the ending arrives, there is a twist and a reveal which could have been pretty neat, only it arrived at the end of such a rote story, with such clunky storytelling and unimaginative language that I kind of didn’t care. It was clear, I might add, that the female protagonist was written by a man. Although blessedly he didn’t go into raptures over her perky breasts, long hair, or other physical attributes [insert vomiting]

My reading resulted in a two-fold feeling. One, traditionally published books are by and large crap. A few months ago I tried reading a book from a famous author whom I used to be quite a fan of. It was part of a series with which I used to be enamored. I settled in, expecting a very enjoyable read. After slogging through three chapters I gave it up. The writing was generic, the characters shallow and the ‘bad guy’ was so sketchily written as to be bewildering, not mysterious. 

That book left me frustrated and annoyed. But it also revealed something to me which I had somewhat accepted and understood prior to that, but not entirely absorbed. Just because a book is traditionally published doesn’t mean it’s any good. Just because an author is well known--or even on the best seller list--doesn’t mean they can write. There are more places to find interesting, funny, heartbreaking, sexy, fun, amazingly written, daring and wonderful stories than at a bookstore or through Kindle. 

The second part of my two-fold feeling was that while, as a writer, I may have much room to grow, I still have valuable skills to offer. My four years of writing fanfiction have honed my talent, refined my style, and influenced my voice, perspective and ability. A good beta, or editor, is invaluable. While I used to write solo and not show it to anyone, simply edit and post, I’ve come to understand the inherent value of feedback. It can be a tricky road, as you might find yourself influenced too much by a reader into trying to suit their tastes rather than your own, but a good beta (eternal thanks to @paialovespie & @hoomhum)--that is to say, a great beta, will not only see the nuts and bolts which might need tightening, but will offer insights which blow your story from ordinary to inspired. The same goes for a ‘personal cheerleader’ (the highest of praise to @mottlemoth) or someone who reminds you at your dark times that you are capable of far more than you can conceive of in that moment. Forget nasty comments online, most of us are our own worst enemies--after all, we know our weakest spots and can zero in on them mercilessly.

Even without a beta, I believe in myself as a writer enough these days (most days) to hope that one day, with hard work, skill, great editing, and some luck, I too could be published. Not a NYT best seller, perhaps, but then, I’m not entirely certain I’d like that. I don’t say this out of any sort of pretentiousness, but because, in essence, these days, I want to write the kind of things that appeal to a more niche audience. I’d like to point with pride at my small book, nestled there on a bookshelf, or available with one click of a button, as something that helps give a voice to a community which has, and still continues to be, marginalized, ignored, fetishized and pandered to, in equal measure. Perhaps it would be for the best if what I wrote wasn’t palatable to the greater reading public.

Of course, those days when I’m full of zest and confidence don’t always last. Like any creator, I fall prey to Imposter Syndrome. Lord, I can’t believe that a time used to exist when I didn’t know what that was! I knew the feeling (oh, how I did), but had no clue that a term existed to encapsulate it. The concept that I wasn’t alone in having days (weeks, months, years) of being cast into doubt that I had anything worth saying--a voice worth listening to--isn’t a new one, but to find out that I’m not alone was unutterably comforting. 

Since, like so many people, I’ve been suffering from a lack of ambition and ability to focus during this global pandemic, I haven’t written much at all, that inner voice rang loud and clear. I’m a fraud, a fake. Any ability I had was used up, clearly as shallow as a mud puddle if a little adversity was enough to dry it out. The struggle to get myself past that was, and is, one that swings from good to bad almost day by day. I had to finally give myself permission to be sad, scared, worried, tired, uninspired. Eventually I decided it was enough that I could find comfort and solace in other’s writing. And oh, how I have! Even though days and days would pass when I couldn’t even muster the interest to read, other times I would consume fanfiction fervently, feverishly. 

And there was so much out there! Adventure, sex, romance, comedy, crack, fluff, hurt/comfort. It seems funny that I can rail against the ‘formulaic’ writing of published books and then turn to ‘tags’ and ‘tropes’ for comfort. But I think the difference lies in the heart that is written into those fanfiction stories. Most of us, while being somewhat influenced by friends, mutuals and fans into writing for a hungry public, are, by and large, writing for ourselves. The old tried and true ‘write what you know’ advice seemed empty and meaningless to me for years. If we only ever write what we know, then how do sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, etc., get written? My brain went to the obvious and ignored the heart of the matter--it isn’t so much what you ‘know’ as writing what you need. What makes you passionate. Even if you’ve never been on a space ship, or been part of a polyamorous, platonic communal family group, if you write it with that yearning and spirit in your heart, it will reach out to someone else.

Fanfiction, at it’s core, is self-comfort.

In my estimation, looking at traditionally published books, it seems that what most of them lack is that heart. The writers aren’t writing because they need the story, or because they are compelled to tell it. It isn’t that they had a hell of a good time writing it, or that they made themselves laugh while doing so. They had a publishing deal to fulfil, a publisher to make happy, a reading public who had certain expectations. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but if it’s your only motivation...then the writing suffers the neglect and a percerptive reader will note the difference. 

By and large, the fandom, the ship, even the trope, aren’t what captivates me most. I’m a pretty eclectic reader. I enjoy a good story more than I do the fact that it is a particular pairing. The draw is how well it is written, any chances the author took, the indulgence into style, formatting, etc. that they allowed themselves. So why should published books be any different? I’ve heard (non-fandom) people dismiss fanfiction as niche. Perhaps it is. But it is also broad, vast, uncharted territory where we’re all having a lot of fun and enjoying the hell out of ourselves.

Maybe those published authors need to spend a little time with us. 

[cyb-by-lang]

Leaning On Each Other (Remix)

This is a while later than I expected to get it finished, but here is @writer-and-artist27‘s birthday gift. She asked for a Kei-style take on this minific she wrote a while ago, so I did a full remix.

Apologies for making it a remix instead of the requested Kei's POV of this exact scene.

“I’m telling you, the difference is all in the wrist,” Kei said, holding out a kunai as though it was a katana. She spun it between her fingers as soon as her demonstration was over. “I mean, imagine this about four times as long in the handle and with ten times as much blade, but the point still stands.” 

“You’d have to get me a bokken and show me directly if you want that to make sense,” said Obito, shaking his head slightly. “Rin?” 

Rin shrugged, though her eyes didn’t quite leave the blade. “The blades I deal with are even shorter. I don’t really use them to stab people outside of a medical context. If you’re stabbing someone with a scalpel, something’s gone wrong,” Rin said, even as Kei made the kunai disappear into the holster on her thigh. 

“Like in the flying clipboard story?” Obito asked. 

“I still don’t know the actual story behind that,” Kei said.

Rin nodded along, but only smiled mysteriously when both of her friends in this conversation turned interrogative stares her way. “It’s funnier if I don’t tell you.” 

On the opposite side of the couch, Kakashi made an agreeing noise, then flipped to the next page in his book. Kei didn’t know for sure what he was reading, other than noticing earlier that the cover art was entirely in grayscale and looked kind of gloomy. If Kei had been the one reading, she probably wouldn’t have paid enough attention to the conversation to know where she was supposed to make obligatory listening sounds. 

Tomoko emerged from the kitchen at this point, flopping down on the couch between Kei and Obito. Kei raised a hand to keep her head from hitting the wall, and the three of them shuffled around a bit to accommodate her. 

“So, done working for now?” Kei asked, silently making sure that all of her weapons were stowed. Sure, she’d left her sword at home, but no shinobi was ever fully unarmed. It was a truth universally acknowledged that a kunai somewhere unfortunate would ruin anyone’s day. 

“You know me,” Tomoko replied, not noticing the shinobi weapons-check or not saying so. She leaned against Kei’s shoulder without hesitation. “Just for now.” 

“That’s what you always say,” Obito said, leaning forward over his knees to get a better look at their faces. “You should’ve let us help.” 

“There was batter on the ceiling last time, wasn’t there?” Rin asked. She’d only heard this story second-hand and the details changed in the telling because no one wanted to admit they’d been the one to start shit. 

“That was Kakashi’s fault,” Obito said instantly. “And we were at Kei’s house, so we only got banned there, so it doesn’t count!” 

“Getting banned from any kitchen still disqualifies you from going into a professional one, I think.” 

“Focus, team,” Kakashi said, but mostly sounded like it was a wordier version of the iconic Uchiha “hn.” He certainly didn’t put any force behind the order. 

“Okay, okay.” Kei nudged Tomoko with her elbow. “So, what’s up? Besides a clear need for a nap.”

“Nothing but the ceiling,” Tomoko replied.

“No, really?” Kei drawled automatically. “Would’ve never guessed. Congrats on your first well-timed pun, though.” 

Tomoko pouted. “It got your attention, even if it’s a horrible one. So I’ll try to be punny more often.”

“Tomo-chan!” Obito said, shaking his head. 

“I don’t regret it. Fight me.”

Kei considered her options carefully. A bad pun used in verbal combat came with a number of acceptable responses, but Tomoko wasn’t Hayate—who Kei would have already shoved off the couch by this point. Possibly backflipped him over the top of it, trusting his combat training to handle the landing. Tomoko needed more delicate handling. 

Therefore, Kei said, “Obito wouldn’t fight you if you paid him, puns or otherwise.” 

“It was a joke!” Tomoko protested, half-sunk into a combination of Kei’s jacket and the plush back of the couch. Her voice was a little muffled and pouty as a result. 

And Kei occasionally pretended she didn’t know about those conversational ripostes solely to exasperate Tomoko. She wasn’t sure Tomoko had caught on yet. 

From cross the table, Rin leaned forward and said, “You need to work on your delivery, Tomo. That landed pretty flat.”

“And the Earth is round and rotating on a crooked axis, sue me,” Tomoko said childishly in return, refusing to raise her head from her new resting spot. “I’m trying and I don’t wanna move.”

“It’s almost like overworking has totally foreseeable consequences,” Kei mused, her voice lilting to take the sting out of her words. 

Tomoko paused, thinking on it for a second. “…Would you have me any other way?”

The answer was immediate. “Nope.”

“Good.” A smile replaced the pout. Tomoko’s habit of puffing her cheeks out to pout mostly made Kei want to poke her. “What’s up with you?”

“Not much.” Kei shrugged as best she could with Tomoko’s head on her shoulder. “To make a long story short, Kakashi doesn’t want to give input on my totally half-assed kenjutsu lesson. Obito and Rin are being good friends and pretending they know what the hell I’m talking about.”

There was a crinkle signaling the turning of a page as Kakashi went back to reading.

“Okay, just for that? Rin and I are going to talk about things that aren’t swords,” Obito said with a comically exaggerated huff. “See how you like it.” 

Kei rolled her eyes. “Oh no. Traitors, et cetera.”  

Rin’s smile was helplessly fond. “All right, all right. No more sniping until we get you both on a practice range.” She turned her head. “So, Obito, did I tell you what happened when Akihito-shishō caught the nurses smuggling candy—” 

Rin’s tempting gossip drew Obito’s attention wholly, which was a good indicator that everyone was indeed done with the sword story. 

Tomoko turned her head so that her face was finally angled up toward Kei’s. “You know I was asking about you, health-wise?”

There were times when it seemed as though Tomoko did little else. The life of a ninja was like riding a rollercoaster with a rickety, rusted track that didn’t deserve to have so many twists and turns. Especially for how unreliable it was. Their lifestyle was a major risk to life and limb. 

Kei didn’t say any of that. Instead: “Yeah, I know.”

Tomoko thumped her head against Kei’s shoulder. “You’re my best friend in the whole wide world, y’know.” 

“I know,” Kei said by rote. Reincarnation time buddies! Who hopefully weren’t going to destroy the universe by accidentally turning something into a paradox. 

Another bonk. “Nagareboshi Café will always be open for you, y’know.”

“I know, Tomo.” Mostly because Kei had enough people in her life that she’d never forget it now. Being able to find half her social group there on a given day made the place a landmark, even if it wasn’t also a homey spot on its own.  

Sounding a little strangled now, Tomoko added after a short pause, “So then, Kei?”

“Hm?”

“Whenever you need help, whenever you’re down, you can call me up, y’know. I don’t know how well I can fix things, but I’ll try. I’ll always try.” 

Kei sighed. It was half from fond exasperation, but half from genuine frustration. There was always a part of her that utterly rejected the idea of pushing any of her emotional burdens onto Tomoko. Kei had volunteered practically from the start to chase whatever means of gaining power she could, all so she could make sure her precious people were safe. That was not the choice Tomoko had made. She’d never needed to, and Kei almost needed her to stay out of the blast radius. 

“Tomo, you know I’m not good at asking for—” 

Bonk. 

Kei went silent, raising an eyebrow in a silent question as Tomoko stared back. 

“Just listen, okay?” Tomoko rarely demanded direct, sincere statements toward Kei, who was equipped with a bone-deep inclination to deflect and dismiss what she viewed as excessive verbal reassurance. “No matter what happens, no matter what you end up doing, I’ll stay with you. To the end of our days.”

Kei bit down on the urge to interrupt. 

“I care about you, y’know. So when you need it, let me help you like you help me. Just get that memorized.”

Kei sighed again, reaching up to pat Tomoko’s head. “I’ll remember that.” 

When she could. It wouldn’t be as easy as Tomoko made it sound, but perhaps it could be, eventually. 

And that was when Obito bounced onto the couch hard enough to make Tomoko briefly airborne. She landed with a surprised “eep” with her weight still mostly on Kei’s side, but turned to face Obito. 

“Obi?” Tomoko said, startled.

“Nice of you to drop in,” Kei said over Tomoko’s head. It was so much easier to downplay any surprises when she could track everyone’s location within the room. Also, she’d seen Obito move out of the corner of her eye because he definitely wasn’t being stealthy. 

“Your conversation looked like it needed crashing,” Obito said lightly. “It looked heavy even from where I was standing.” He tilted his head to one side, tucking his legs underneath him. “Tomo, is Kei influencing you? Are you gonna start all your conversations with puns now? Please say no.” 

“It was my first try, Obi,” Tomoko soothed, reaching over with her right hand to rest against the side of his scalp. “I can try a different joke.”

Kei shifted her weight so that Tomoko ended up leaning more Obito’s way. 

“I don’t know, I think the debut worked,” Rin said, settling back in at her spot. Whatever she and Obito had talked about must’ve scared him back into this conversation. She added to Tomoko specifically, “Just maybe relax a little and let them come naturally.” 

“Wordplay and swordplay are both about timing,” Kei offered, “so I could probably help.” 

“I can see you being a bad influence, you know,” Obito said. “Even if you’re trying to be all underhanded about it.” 

“You’re shinobi,” Tomoko said, “Everything’s sneaky and underhanded! I could’ve sworn bad puns are how eye roll considering the family-friend thing.”

Obito groaned, defeated.  “Kei, you had one job!”

“If she’s not making improvised bombs in her bedroom, I’m still coming out ahead,” Kei told him. “And she’s not. I think?” 

“I’m not!” Tomoko said, half-frantic at the turn. “Just baked goods, like usual!” 

“Oh, if that’s the breaking point,” Obito grumbled.

Tomoko frowned thoughtfully. She rested her hand against the side of Obito’s face in apology, then said, “I’ll hold off on the puns and you can have a batch of cupcakes later. Will that be better?” 

This time, there was a hum of approval. Obito closed his eyes and leaned into Tomoko’s hand like a cat, mollified for now. 

That’d probably last until the next time one of Kei’s friends opened their mouths. Peace reigned until the next half-joking argument in the life of Team Minato. And most of their associates.

“Can I join in?” Rin said, though she was already cramming herself into the space on Kei’s other side with a medical textbook in her lap. Kei didn’t bother wondering where she’d gotten it from; at some point, pulling a “nothing up my sleeve” routine felt like it was expected. “This looks like fun.”

“There’s cookies near the stove if you want to grab those first, Ricchan,” Tomoko said. Her chakra felt floaty with contentment. “Just to help with the studying you have there. The cookies are sugar and snickerdoodle.”

Rin’s smile widened. “Maybe later?” She still absently opened the front cover of her book, glancing at it before leaning against Kei’s other shoulder. “This feels nice right now.”

“Just make yourself at home, I guess,” Kei said with a toss of her head, settling farther down in the couch cushions. She shuffled to handle both hers and Rin’s weights before considering. “What about you, Kakashi?”

“Hn.” He instead disappeared briefly into the kitchen, out of easy spotting range thanks to the movement limitations of the human neck. “There’s not enough space for five people on that couch. There really wasn’t for four, but apparently we’re stacking like apartment blocks,” he judged when he returned, but he settled at the group’s feet and set the plate on the table in front of them all. “I brought the cookies.”

At this point, Tomoko started humming. 

Rin reached forward and retrieved her cookies, passing out others at random. Kakashi demurred, returning his attention to his book, and wrinkling his nose at the thought of eating such sweet things of his free will. He was content just basking in his friends’ company. 

“Just eat and relax?” Tomoko offered, passing a cookie from Rin to Obito. “We don’t have anything going on today, so let’s pass the time like this.”

Kei leaned her head back against the top of the couch, listening with half an ear to the world around her. With sight out of the way, she could focus on her friends’ contentment through her chakra sense and live in the moment. 

Tomoko’s voice rose over the impromptu cookie party: 

“Dream of anything; 

I’ll make it all come true.

Everything you need 

Is all I have for you. 

I’m forever 

Always by your side. 

Whenever you need a friend, 

I’m never far behind.” 

Obito shifted and the couch dipped under his weight. Felt like he was reaching for his next dose of sugar already. The plate scraped across the table. “Could you sing that a bit louder, Tomo-chan? I want to hear.”

“Eh?” A sudden wave of shyness swept through Tomoko. “You sure?”

“We’ve all heard you sing before, Tomo,” said Kei, keeping her eyes shut. “No pressure.” 

Rin’s sun-on-water chakra perked up along with her voice as she said, “You were the one to say we should relax, right?”

There was a brief back-and-forth between the boys—banter so played-out it was almost entirely fond. Amusement passed through each of them like an electric current. 

Tomoko’s voice rose again. 

“If the stars all fall,

When there’s no more light, 

And the moon should crumble, 

It will be alright.”

Being here, with these precious people, would tide Kei over through their next absence. With the life she and her friends lived, that separation was inevitable. There was always something else coming down the pipeline and eventually disturbing their peace, but that was the future. 

This was now. 

“Don’t you worry about the dark,

I will light up the night with the love in my heart.

I will burn like the sun,

I will keep you safe and warm.

Like the smell of a rose on a summer’s day,

I will be there to take all your fears away.

With a touch of my hand,

I will turn your life to gold.”

Kei seared the moment into her memory, to keep it like a light against the darkness still to come.

[cuddlytogas]

[ficlet] Again, and Again (The Magnus Archives)

have some jonmartin fluff in this trying time

EDIT: now new and improved and on Ao3!

Everything happens in a rush, once they get out of the Lonely. Jon and Martin make the long and arduous trek back through the tunnels, with – blissfully – no sign of Elias (Jonah), though the walls are spattered with blood, and Basira, when she meets them at the trapdoor in Jon’s office, seems bodily exhausted. She asks peremptory questions, and takes their answers with little in the way of visible responses: Martin? Returned safe, by Jon’s hand (a tight mouth); Lukas? Dead, by Jon’s powers (a satisfied nod); Jonah? Missing (one clenched fist). When they ask for updates on her end, she says nothing for a long moment, which neither Jon nor Martin has the strength to interrupt.

“They're all gone,” she eventually says, pushing past the crack in her voice. “Daisy – Daisy’s not herself anymore. I don’t know if she’s coming back.”

“Is anyone else hurt?” asks Jon. “The rest of the Institute, are they –”

“Yes,” says Basira, and gives no more details. “I think you two should leave. It’s not safe for you here.” She hands them a key, and a slip of paper with an address written on it – somewhere near an obscure Scottish village, by the name – and holds Jon’s hand for the briefest moment, tight and secure. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

With most of Jon’s things living in boxes in the archives, it isn’t hard for him to pack some toiletries and changes of clothes into a bag, and they’re out of the way before the police arrive. When they leave, Jon stubbornly keeps one hand always on Martin's elbow, or the back of his shoulder, or reaching to keep their fingers entangled as they navigate the teeming, bloodied crowd outside the Institute, and the Tube to Stockwell, because of course, in all of this, Martin never could afford to move house. He packs his own rucksack, digging through messy piles of clothes and sorting through the washed and unwashed with ease despite having left no visible distinctions. They book seats on the next train to Edinburgh as they head back towards London, checking their phones over and over again for news of the Institute, and by the time they arrive at King's Cross, they have just enough time to wolf down a couple of sandwiches and board the train, checking over their shoulders the whole way.

Jon and Martin barely talk as they travel, too afraid of being overheard, and don't stop when they reach Edinburgh, just before midnight. An overnight bus takes them to the nearest town to their destination, where they manage to find a taxi to take them to a nearby village, from which they walk, in the chill, dawning light, to the even smaller village further along, heels dragging and hands twined between them as they huddle close for warmth. From there, they find a map that leads them to the right field, and while the first farmhouse they try is occupied by some very baffled cattle breeders, the second one – a tiny little cottage in a dip behind the next hill – matches Basira’s description. There are planters full of miserable-looking daisies under the front windowsills.

“This is it,” Jon breathes, with the conviction of knowledge he shouldn’t quite have. “We made it.”

“Are we going to be safe?” Martin returns, just as quietly. It's the most either of them have spoken in many dreary, exhausted hours.

“As safe as we can be,” Jon answers. His voice is soft and hoarse. “Come on.”

They check all the doors and windows before they can relax, of course; test the taps, and wipe the dust off a number of surfaces. There is one, fairly large, bed piled with blankets, and Martin shakes the dust from the uppermost quilt as Jon lights a fire in the front room, and boils a saucepan of water for the dusty tea. They drink it while perched on stools in the kitchen, changed into t-shirts, jumpers, and tracksuits against the cold. Jon’s naked toes rest curled against the wooden strut of his seat; only Martin had the sense to pack thick socks, and then to put them on.

Finally, as the sun once more begins its descent from noon, Jon sets his half-finished mug on the counter behind them, and takes Martin's empty left hand between both of his own, a motion so steady it can only have been heavily planned.

“I realise,” he starts, haltingly, as Martin watches where they're connected. “That – that is, I feel I should say – Martin, I – it's no coincidence that we made it out of the Lonely, we – I –” At last, he raises his eyes, and Martin follows, gazing back at him, nonplussed, as Jon finally gives a little sigh, and says: “Martin, I love you.”

It pulls at one corner of Martin's mouth, tugging his dry lips into a smile. He forgot to bring a chapstick.

“I figured,” he says; then sobers, and swallows, before the warmth of happiness can bloom in Jon's chest. “But,” he adds – “how do you know?”

“What?”

“I'm not –” Martin sighs through his nose, and puts his mug down behind them, turning away from Jon but not extracting his hand. “I don't mean to sound morbid, but I'm not who you think I am,” he explains to the floor, and the crackling fire. “I'm not the same person you used to know. How can you be sure that you – that you love me, if – if you don't even know me anymore?” He raises his head again, just enough to meet Jon's eye, an apology behind his gaze. “I don't mean to sound morbid,” he says again, in a half-miserable, half-resigned mumble – “but it's true.”

For a moment, the only thing that moves is the fire, crackling low in the hearth, and each of their breaths, pushing and pulling at their chests, one sharp and skinny, the other broad and round. Then Jon smiles, with a small huff of laughter and a glimpse of stained teeth.

“Martin,” he croaks, almost pityingly, and swallows, glancing away. When he speaks again, it is steady, but slow, like every word is being chosen with utmost precision. “I have fallen in love with you,” he goes on – “over, and over again. For... two years now, I suppose, including the coma.” He looks almost embarrassed to admit it. “After Prentiss, and the tunnels, and Leitner, and when you believed in me, and – and your plan with Elias –”

“Jonah,” Martin mutters; a rote reminder. Jon nods.

“Well,” he says, in recognition. “The point is, when I woke up and you weren't around... I fell in love with you then, too. And no, you're not the same person you once were – but God knows, neither am I.” He says it with half a smile, rueful and forgiving, eyes back on Martin's face. “But Peter was wrong. Maybe we do create an image of the people we love, but that's not the end of it. It's just the beginning. Every time you make me adjust that image, I fall in love with you, and – well. You're seriously underestimating me if you think I won't be able to manage it again. And again, and again – for as long as you'll have me.”

Martin stares at him, at the open honesty on his face, gentling the lines and softening the eyes. It's one thing to feel love, to have it offered in a desolate place, to know that of course Jon loves him, or how did they ever escape? But it's quite another thing to hear it in so many words – to know that, while he was hopelessly crushing on his boss, maybe the process wasn't entirely one-way – and in that soft, quiet voice Jon seems to have reserved for a privileged few, tired but contented, and so very, very gentle. Martin can't find a response, for so long that Jon glances between his eyes, and falters, sitting back without unclasping their hands.

“Sorry,” he breathes out in a rush, looking away, “I'm sorry – that was too much, too fast. You only just got out of the Lonely, Peter was working on you f–”

He cuts off with a muffled sound as Martin places his free hand around his jaw and kisses him, the wood of their stools creaking, leaning a little awkwardly around to reach him. Martin doesn't push for anything, but his palm is warm and solid, and the pressure of his mouth is easy and insistent, two full lips slanted across his own, the space between them damp, and warm, and tempting with the promise of the taste of tea. Another strained, muted sound escapes Jon's throat, as his breath stutters through his nose and his brain tries to catch up; until, finally, he closes his eyes and sinks into the kiss, moving and pursing his lips so that they catch against the soft-dry and smooth-wet contradictions of Martin's mouth.

When Martin pulls away – far enough to breathe, but not so far that he has to remove his hand from where it is cupped around Jon's cheek – Jon finds himself following with open mouth and closed eyes, twisting in his seat to face him better. He blinks, and meets Martin's gaze, scrunched up a little by cheeks pushed up by a smile, and close enough that he's barely unfocused.

“Sorry,” Martin whispers into the space between them, Jon immediately breathing in the words. “Too much too fast?”

Jon shakes his head, then finally finds his voice to say, “Not at all.” He plucks one hand from the pile between them to trace his fingers along Martin's jaw, but they are both already leaning back in, meeting with a hush of clothing and breath. Jon's glasses are pressed into an angle, wedging into the bridge of his nose and his cheekbone on one side, but all that really matters is the stretch of his neck as he tries to reach for Martin's height this time, rather than let him bow to meet him, and Martin's loose, threadbare jumper collar under his fingers, tightening and loosening in turns according to the movements of Martin's lips, or pressing flat to the swell of his chest, yielding against him. The hands between them grip tighter, clinging to each other, as Jon awkwardly tries to mimic the parting of Martin's lips, and even more awkwardly yelps, eyes blinking open and closed, when he tastes Martin's tongue, wet and sour, as it smooths over the edge of his lower lip.

Martin doesn't withdraw from Jon, but his mouth retreats, and there's the start of a real apology in his teeth, so Jon silences him by pulling on his hand and lunging blindly forwards, with an urgent tongue that is soon gentled into languid pleasure. Martin pushes his hand into the waves of Jon's greying, greasy hair, too long untrimmed, and the pressure of his fingers against the base of his skull, carding through his hair, makes Jon want to purr.

The kissing doesn't go anywhere. Eventually, they nearly fall off their stools, Martin catching them both against the counter, and they laugh softly, surprised and out of breath. Half-delirious, Jon settles his glasses and tries to explain, tries to say that things could get complicated from here, that he's not really – he doesn't really –

But Martin just smooths back his travel-soiled hair, and breathes “I know,” and “We'll talk about it later,” and “Let's just go to bed,” as Jon nods his relieved agreement. They stumble past the fire, happy to let it wear itself out, and through to the cramped bedroom, to crawl in under the mountain of quilts and hold hands between them as they get comfortable, and the sun goes down, and they finally drift off to sleep. They'll have to see to the generator, in the morning, and figure out how to contact Basira, and deal with... everything. For now, however, they curl against each other on the surprisingly soft mattress, sharing warmth and breath, with Martin's head tucked into the crook of Jon's neck, and Jon's hand on his back, steady and sure in their closeness. The end of the world may be coming; but they have this. At least they have had this.

[thebluelemontree]

Why do you think Sandor wanted that song so much? What did it mean to him? Clearly the idea of her singing to him was on his mind for awhile. The song obviously carries symbolic meanings for the reader. But what was its in-universe significance to the man who demanded it? Why was it so important to him that she sing specifically?

It’s part of his childhood idealism and the knight he wanted to be.  The kind that saves fair maidens among other heroic deeds.  The day he saved her in the bread riot was a song come alive for him.  For the first time in his life, Sandor wasn’t just doing his job guarding and carrying out the commands of terrible people.  He was protecting an honest-to-goodness innocent person in need of saving, and Sansa is straight out of central casting as a fair maiden.  From Sansa’s recollection:     

The Hound leapt at them, his sword a blur of steel that trailed a red mist as it swung. When they broke and ran before him he had laughed, his terrible burned face for a moment transformed.  – Sansa IV, ACOK.  

You could read this as nothing more than bloodlust; however, it seems to me his expression was “transformed” from his normal anger into something else.  It’s the presence of anger that Sansa admits is what makes his burned face “terrible,” not so much the scars.  Now that Sansa has a chance to really think about it after some time has passed from the harrowing event, his face was different when he saved her.  I see it as Sandor having a brief moment of elation and pride.  This is what it feels like to be a hero.  This is what his grandfather did for Tytos Lannister.  It’s not all bullshit and children’s stories.  It also tells us Sandor is capable of romanticizing a terrible event, just as Sansa.  He will later fudge the retelling of events to make it seem like the song came as a result of saving Sansa’s life in the riot:  

“… I saved your sister’s life too. The day the mob pulled her off her horse, I cut through them and brought her back to the castle, else she would have gotten what Lollys Stokeworth got. And she sang for me. You didn’t know that, did you? Your sister sang me a sweet little song.“ – Arya IX, ASOS. 

Then later at his death, he will damn himself as no true hero because he failed to protect her from Joffrey.  He botched his own rescue attempt by scaring the daylights out of her.  Because of his frailty and fuck-ups, in his mind, he abandoned her to an even worse fate with Tyrion.  He is the “gutless fraud” he is talking about.  He never deserved that song after all and the way he actually got it shames him to the point he wants to die:

“I hate liars. I hate gutless frauds even worse. Go on, do it.” When Arya did not move, he said, “I killed your butcher’s boy. I cut him near in half, and laughed about it after.” He made a queer sound, and it took her a moment to realize he was sobbing. “And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it…”

Sandor tying Sansa’s song to the riot is important, but let’s back up a bit because the seed for the song idea was planted before that.

 . . . ah, you’re still a stupid little bird, aren’t you? Singing all the songs they taught you … sing me a song, why don’t you? Go on. Sing to me. Some song about knights and fair maids. You like knights, don’t you?“ 

He was scaring her. "T-true knights, my lord.”

“True knights,” he mocked. “And I’m no lord, no more than I’m a knight. Do I need to beat that into you?"  Clegane reeled and almost fell.  "Gods,” he swore, “too much wine.”    – Sansa II, ACOK.  [Real smooth there, Sandor]

The dot-dot-dots usually mean a character just had a gear-shifting thought.  This is from their meeting on the serpentine steps.  He’s just noticed she’s “almost a woman” then had to remind himself that no, she’s still too young and immature for that.  Sandor’s drunken, less-inhibited brain is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball between his just-awakened attraction and frantically trying to stomp it out.  He’s over-correcting by calling her a “stupid little bird” because (as reflected in his swaying) how off-balance he is thrown by interacting with her.  Not surprisingly, it’s Sandor who is actually showing his immaturity.  Those ellipses indicate a little light bulb has just turned on and it will become an idea that he really latches on to.  Oh, but he can’t just straight up ask for a song.  No way.  Better frame it as a halfhearted dare instead so she doesn’t think he’s actually interested in something so lame, stupid, and the antithesis of everything he’s preached at her.  She reminds him that it’s true knights that she likes, which he must then beat into his own head that he isn’t even a knight, let alone a true one at this point.  He couldn’t be further from the heroes she looks up to.  The song was a dumb idea anyway, right?  So why can’t he let it go?

I would point out just before Sandor brings up the song again, it’s Sansa that has coaxed a poetic “song” about a hero out of Sandor first without him realizing it (whether he willed it or no):

As they were winding their way up the steps, she said, "Why do you let people call you a dog? You won’t let anyone call you a knight.”

“I like dogs better than knights. My father’s father was kennelmaster at the Rock. One autumn year, Lord Tytos came between a lioness and her prey. The lioness didn’t give a shit that she was Lannister’s own sigil. Bitch tore into my lord’s horse and would have done for my lord too, but my grandfather came up with the hounds. Three of his dogs died running her off. My grandfather lost a leg, so Lannister paid him for it with lands and a towerhouse, and took his son to squire. The three dogs on our banner are the three that died, in the yellow of autumn grass. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he’ll look you straight in the face."  He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. "And that’s more than little birds can do, isn’t it? I never got my song.”

“I … I know a song about Florian and Jonquil.“

"Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt. Spare me. But one day I’ll have a song from you, whether you will it or no.”

“I will sing it for you gladly.”

Sandor Clegane snorted. “Pretty thing, and such a bad liar…”

Dot-dot-dot!!! Sansa doesn’t offer to sing about just any knight saving a maiden.  He never asked for a specific song.  It was her choice.  She offers to sing her favorite song, which makes it a deeply personal gift.  So this scene was actually about an exchange of songs, where Sandor gave one that was personal to him as well.  Sansa’s song is also a romantic one, specifically about a maiden who falls in love with an unconventional knight.  He wasn’t prepared for that, nor can he believe it, and as usual, reacts with knee-jerk cynicism.  She’s so pretty that she has to be lying that she’d ever “gladly” sing a song like that for him.  You might want to follow up with this post on those other connotations of the song too because Sansa dreaming of Sandor in her marriage bed gives another ironic twist on having a song from her whether she “wills it or no.”  Even without the sexual innuendo meaning, singing a song for a man is an intimate act which they are both aware of. It’s a piece of herself that she would give gladly to him “one day” in the future.

The problem that will prevent Sansa from being able to give the song gladly lies in Sandor’s immaturity, neediness, cynicism, and untreated PTSD.  Fast forward to the bread riot when he’s high on feeling like one of those true knights she holds in high regard.  He wanted that validation from her but feels deflated when he doesn’t get it in the way he hoped.

"The little bird still can’t bear to look at me, can she?” The Hound released her. “You were glad enough to see my face when the mob had you, though. Remember?”

…

“I … I should have come to you after,” she said haltingly. “To thank you, for … for saving me … you were so brave.”

“Brave?” His laugh was half a snarl. “A dog doesn’t need courage to chase off rats. They had me thirty to one, and not a man of them dared face me.”

So roughly two months have passed (according to the ASOIAF timeline) since the riot and this conversation.  Sansa never even attempted to thank Sandor for saving her, which she acknowledges after some thought that she should have.  For Sandor, it’s a twofold dud.  Not only does he have to remind her, but the thanks she gives is lukewarm and rote.  To be entirely fair, the riot was not a song for Sansa.  She was traumatized by it.  Even the manner in which she was rescued was rife with graphic violence that Sandor doesn’t seem to fully appreciate; however, I’m not sure Sansa would have been so negligent in thanking her rescuer if it had been Ser Loras.  In fact, her nightmare about the riot is an acknowledgment that it wasn’t one of her preferred heroes that saved her.  No one else put themselves between her and the mob.  She would not be alive if it weren’t for the rude asshole with the terrible face standing before her.  A little more gratitude was in order, but Sandor doesn’t make that easy either.  He can’t let on that he cared that much about being her hero or that he was hurt and disappointed by her oversight.  Again, he overcompensates by drastically downplaying it, acting like it’s dumb to make a big deal out of it, and just being an insufferable jerk about everything.  We can see from the way Sandor framed the story to Arya he had fantasized about Sansa reaching out to him post-riot to thank him with a song.  Florian and Jonquil, just like she promised.  It was supposed to be the icing on the cake for his very song-like heroic deed.  And maybe, just maybe, there was a little smidgeon of hope that she reciprocated his romantic feelings thrown in there as well.        

So that leads us to the Blackwater.  It’s always important to keep in mind that Sandor demanded the literal song.  He was never using the word as a euphemism.  He is also in the throes of a major PTSD episode and is not able to comprehend why his behavior is frightening to Sansa.  So why did he have to demand the song at knifepoint?  Why did he demand it at all?  Why was it that important to him at that moment?

“Why did you come here?”

“You promised me a song, little bird. Have you forgotten?”

She didn’t know what he meant. She couldn’t sing for him now, here, with the sky aswirl with fire and men dying in their hundreds and their thousands. “I can’t,” she said. “Let me go, you’re scaring me.”

…

“I could keep you safe,” he rasped. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.” He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. “Still can’t bear to look, can you?” she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. “I’ll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said.” His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."  – Sansa VII, ACOK.

Sandor has deserted during the battle after he could no longer go on fighting surrounded by wildfire. He’s been labeled a craven and desertion is a crime that can be punishable by death.  When he says he’s lost “all,” he means he’s lost his entire sense of self.  Sandor Clegane doesn’t know who he is anymore.  The fearsome Hound has been (in his eyes) unmanned by a half-man without any real martial ability.  His military career and reputation have been torpedoed.  He has no home or position anymore.  Gregor already took everything else.  Everything is crashing down around him, and he’s self-medicating the tidal wave of panic and humiliation with alcohol.  The one person he can go to for comfort and validation is Sansa.  If he can pledge himself to her, abscond from the city with her, be her hero again, then he still has an identity as a warrior and a man.

Sandor had been waiting for her in her room, lying on her bed like a scared little boy seeking some maternal solace.  The way he says “Little Bird, I knew you’d come” sounds more like he had been silently praying for her to rescue him from this place rather than the other way around.  To Sansa, the song is not only an inappropriate thing to ask for at this moment with all the chaos, violence, and uncertainty.  It sounds downright crazy.  He’s covered in blood, drunk, smelling of vomit, skulking around in the dark and grabbing her, but he accuses Sansa of being irrationally afraid as if she has no cause.  He thinks she’s carelessly forgotten the promised song as if that was an obvious and sane answer to her question of why he’s there.  All this suggests how greatly Sandor is disassociating from reality at this moment.     

Offering to protect her and kill anyone that tries to hurt her is as close as Sandor can come to articulating his feelings for her.  Some call it a declaration of love, which I agree that it is, albeit it’s a very misguided expression of love entwined with violence.  He interprets her response to that declaration as her still not being able to look at his disfigurement, even after all that he has done for her and still trying to do.  It makes him furious.  This is where Sandor’s severe PTSD, his desperation to reclaim a sense of self, and his perceived wrongful rejection by her cause him to take a sharp nosedive into his darkest and most cynical beliefs:  that Sansa has finally shown her true colors and she’s proven herself to be just another highborn brat.  All he wanted was just listen to a soft, dulcet voice spinning some beautiful imagery to drown out the sounds of all those screaming, burning men.  All he demanded asked for was to hear her sing about her favorite knight and recall a day when he felt brave and on top of the world.  But damn it, she denied him this one small thing that would help him feel better right now.  Even then he offers up everything he has to take her north, and she spurns it.  No real fair maiden of the songs would ever be so ungrateful and impossible to please.  When she said she’d sing for him gladly, she lied.  She’s a liar.  She saves her songs for handsome faces.  She never intended to keep her promise.  But fuck it, that song is owed to him.  Might as well just take it.  

Sandor is, of course, completely wrong and in the wrong here.  A fact that will dawn on him as soon as the Mother’s Hymn registers in his brain and he can see himself with clarity.  He came to her like a monster, not a hero.  Sansa was right to be afraid of him and to refuse him.  By Sansa touching his face, she is saying he did have her compassion and willingness to comfort him all along.  She even has the grace in her to give it to him now when he least deserves it, which makes her even more of a true lady than she was before.  It was the Hound she rejected, not him.  His anger, fear, and cynicism caused him to see fault in her when there was none. He hurt the person he cared for most in the world and for that he tears off his white cloak, leaving disgusted and ashamed.  The song then becomes a haunting reminder of his worst self rather than his greatest glory.  This is why he finds it so necessary to confess taking the song along with his other failures and bad acts.  To him, it was just as bad as letting Sansa be beaten if that gives you any indication of how seriously Sandor actually takes the meaning of the song.  It was a piece of her that he didn’t have a right to and wasn’t worthy of.  Songs from fair maidens are for heroes and true knights.  Not for a gutless fraud like himself.

[daughterofluthien]

Fictober - Day 27

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #16-18 Thoughts

Previous thoughts here. 

This arc is a mixed bag.

Previous arcs of RYV tended to give one of the family members more priority than the others. It wasn’t exactly that we’d have an MJ arc then a Peter arc then an Annie arc exactly, but which characters got more focus did shift around. The Venom arc for example was more MJ’s story with Peter playing support and Annie more in the background. The X-Men arc was more Annie’s arc with her parents splitting the second fiddle role.  The penultimate arc before the time skip was another more Annie centric storyline, actually probably the most Annie centric story since issue #3.

Houser’s opening arc put the spotlight on each family member culminating in Annie herself, but Annie was still being developed through Peter and MJ’s eyes in those issues. This made a lot of sense since she’d be the most important thing to either of them and we already know who Peter and MJ are. Even if they’re 8 years older that’s not going to amount to them being as significantly different as the now teenaged Annie whom we’d not yet met.

This arc is another Annie centric arc which initially seems like Peter is going to be an important backup player, sort of like how the Venom arc was MJ’s arc first and foremost but Peter still played an important role. This was indicated by us getting Peter and Annie’s thought captions in issue #16 and the story revolving around Peter working at Annie’s school.

Issue #17 drops Peter’s captions and point of view and the story becomes Annie’s totally now revolving around her two new friends abruptly introduced at the end of issue #16. Peter however had three poignant scenes in the book implying that going forward he would be an important character to the pay off the arc. This did not happen because issue #18 thrusts forward with the story about Annie and her new friends, now with Normie as an important player. Peter shows up but only as part of the ‘parental collective’ alongside MJ and gets just one scene with just him and Annie at the end of the book, which serves to simply reiterate the sentiments from the earlier scene with MJ and to payoff that Annie and him are more at ease about both being at Midtown High.

Now there are two ways of interpreting all this.

The optimistic and diplomatic way is that the arc is about Annie growing more independent via forming a new friendship group. Issue #16 nicely sets up that Annie, like many teenagers, is trying to find where she belongs in the high school jungle as she and her old friends have drifted apart as unfortunately happens as kids grow older. Her Dad’s continuously diminishing role across the issues as her relationships with her new friends (and old friend Normie, whom she reconnects with which is maybe pay off to what I just talked about) grows is symbolic of her becoming more independent as she grows up.

The more cynical view is that...this arc is just disjointed. That Houser wanted to set up the status quo of Peter at Midtown high and dedicated the first part of the arc to that but also had it half act as a transition into the meat of the arc, which is about Annie befriending Lacey and Reece...oh but Normie is also involved too.

Unfortunately I’m inclined to think the latter is more likely.

It almost feels like Houser was seeking to set up the general status quo for the family in her first arc running through issues #13-15, then was setting up Annie’s personal status quo with this arc.

Like imagine this was not a Spider-Man family title but a Spiderling title. You establish her school, her social situation, her Dad being a teacher, her older friend in Normie. The only thing you arguably don’t have set up here is her parents or the fact that they are superheroes but that’s because you’ve already read the previous issues. Heck issue #16 even has Annie swinging solo on the cover, almost like it could be the cover to a Spiderling solo book.

The focus upon Peter in issue #16 feels like I dunno...lip service to the fact that this supposed to be a team book and not an Annie solo book.  Feeling exacerbated as his presence diminishes as the arc goes on. It wouldn’t be that bad perhaps if the arc supplanted his presence with MJ’s but that doesn’t happen. MJ is a slightly more distant third fiddle in this arc.

Now conceptually having an arc so focused upon Annie isn’t all bad. If you looked at Houser’s run and the post time-skip era in isolation, dedicating a focus arc to her and her status quo makes a lot of sense. However considering the arc just before the time skip gave her the lion’s share of panel time and she’s also had a lot of play in the X-Men arc and Conway’s opening arc AND how Houser’s opening arc dedicated a lot of time to developing Annie...you see where I’m going with this.

She’s stealing too much lime light from Peter and MJ at this point, even if this arc was hypothetically afforded them more panel time.

But how does this connect with those two points I raised up top?

Connected with this is the issues raised from the time skip itself.

When the time skip was announced the big criticisms surrounding it mainly revolved around:

a)      The jump abandoned the status quo we’d been building for 12 issues b)      Making Annie a teen is derivative of Spider-Girl/Mayday Parker

Jameson and the Bugle are used organically for what little they show up. Jonah also looks noticeably aged, although that does raise the question of why nobody else does.

Annie is well characetrized and believable as a teenager who is both unreasonable about the cringe factor of her Dad teaching at her school and well over her head in getting mixed up with Lacey and Reece. Her growth in the story is also done well as she has to become more akin to a parent and grows to accept her Dad’s place at her school. Fundamentally Annie is played as a nice balance between trying to be responsible but tripped up by youthful arrogance and deep need for independence. Does that remind you of anyone Spider-Man fans?

·         Houser continues to play Peter Parker, out of touch Dad (complete with Dad jokes), believably

·         MJ as the mediator between Peter and Annie also feels very believable for the characters

·         The mugging scene was funny

·         Houser throws shade at Slott’s shitty Peter Parker paparazzi arc

·         Peter being a teacher again is lovely although it’s in a different field to what he was teaching in the JMS run. This is actually a good way of allowing something comfortingly familiar yet also unique for RYV, and is possibly set up for Houser to use going forward. Best of all it comes out of relatable financial problems that have been common to Spider-Man since day 1.

·         Annie adopting a tech role in the school drama club is an eloquent way of having her find something that’s both a reference to her mother and father’s passions

·         All of conversations between Peter and MJ and between Annie and her parents were done well...with one sort of exception but we will get there

·         Bringing Normie back into the picture, for all the problems I discussed, is an eloquent way of reinstating him into the post time-skip status quo and his reconnection with Annie brings things full circle from Annie’s other friends drifting away

·         The Normie flashbacks were adorable

I’ll get this out of the way...Mister Sinister. Let’s put aside how so far he’s done nothing in the book, his presence in a Spider title is just unwanted·         Peter, even in issue #16 where he is more present, feels rather...undermined. I’m trying to figure out a more political correct way of saying this besides ‘Peter is kind of a Beta here’ but off the top of my head I just can’t. It just doesn’t feel right when Peter is played as immature as his teenage daughter to the point where he ignores a crime in progress and is insulted along with his daughter by MJ, or where Annie is angrily telling him off when he’s in costume in school and he passively just agrees with it. This was something knocking around a little bit in the previous arc when Logan was telling him off in issue #13 too and was sort of there a little bit under Conway. Its never been as bad as here though, but I guess it’s a nitpick at the end of the day. Heck the MJ comedy bit was very funny for what it was.·         Stockman’s art isn’t bad and is pretty similar to Roche’s from the previous arc. But there is this unrefined quality to it. It’s not as good as his issue #5 art and of course such a major step down from Stegman. Also it dipped noticeably in issue #18·         The kids turning out to be if not bad then on the dangerous side was incredibly predictable·         The resolution was seriously not great. Reece having feelings for Lacey was not set up until the issue where it was going to become the key to resolving the plot, it should’ve been introduced earlier. In fact the entire Reece/Lacey plot shouldn’t have been brought up towards the end of issue #16 but played out throughout that issue. Similarly the end of the three issues randomly telling us that Lacey and Reece’s abilities had totally faded was trite and far too convenient. Throwing a line in earlier on, even the issue before, that the powers might be temporary would’ve alleviated things.·         Peter and MJ’s confronting Annie in part 3 was a nice scene but the ending where they just pat themselves on the back and say ‘we did good’ felt rote and not really true. A sign the arc was kind of falling apart a bit towards the end.

  Over all I’d give this arc a C-

[thesinglesjukebox]

LIZZO FT. MISSY ELLIOTT - TEMPO

[6.75]

I suppose this would be an Allegretto...

Alex Clifton: This is a dream combination -- not sure how these two hadn't worked together before. I now judge high-energy songs on whether or not they'd be good to run to (weird metric but it's been working so far) and the beat on "Tempo" is a winner -- easy to keep pace to, easy to dance to, easy to get stuck in your head. I'm also delighted that we have a song with the lyric "thick thighs save lives." I'm not as in love with this as I was with "Juice," but Lizzo continues to sound good as hell. [7]

Stephen Eisermann: At this point, I'm starting to wonder if Lizzo will ever release an objectively bad song; her track record is pretty flawless. I first heard "Tempo" in the car while dancing at my sister's wedding reception this past weekend. My sister has always been curvier, and it was a big concern for her on her wedding day, but she seemed as confident as I'd ever seen her Saturday -- that is, until this song came on. Gone was the quiet confidence of my sister dancing politely to "Suavemente," "El Sinaloense" and "La Negra Tiene Tumbao" and instead out came a whole new Liz, one who was twerking in the center of her dance floor while all of my Mexican Catholic family watched, shook, wondering what happened to the self-conscious girl of before. But that's what Lizzo does, constantly. She takes a hot beat and empowers you, either with some feel-good rap or, as is the case here, some good provocation. Even if Missy's verse feels incomplete, it doesn't matter, because Lizzo came to play and it's hard to hate on confidence that sounds, feels, and looks this good. [8]

Katherine St Asaph: I don't dance, and any confidence boost the lyrics might provide slams fatally against the fact that the external world views my body as a collection of misshapen, unsightly, useless parts, an awareness I can't just turn off. (Which is the case for every song like this.) This song isn't for me. It doesn't help that the "When Doves Cry" guitar squall and Missy's verse, where she turns into Chingy, completely overpower Lizzo's subdued verses, which isn't supposed to happen at all. [3]

David Moore: The way Missy Elliott finds a little flicker of an idea and kindles it into a blaze of inspired silliness is always a thrill, but here it serves the counter-productive purpose of revealing the weakness of the rest of the track -- Lizzo's enthusiasm and ebullience can't hold a candle to Missy's lark. [6]

Alfred Soto: It's not twenty seconds old before "Tempo" blasts us with a distorted funk riff and the too long gone Missy Elliott. Nothing's changed -- "twerk skills are legendary" you knew. The chorus flickers, disappears. Chorus? Who needs one when Lizzo and Missy compete for sound effect attention? [7]

Tobi Tella: This collaboration feels epic in the same way Christina Aguilera and Demi did, a symbolic torch passing from old-school to new-school from two similar artists. Lizzo has Missy's classic swagger and flair, and the fact that she hasn't lost any of her uniqueness as she becomes more and more mainstream is truly something to be commended. This bangs as hard as anything she's ever released, and hopefully it becomes our generation's body positivity anthem over some more questionable songs... [8]

Katie Gill: I am always here for a bonafide ass shaking song, especially when it starts off with such an amazingly fun guitar riff like this one. The song is a beautiful cacophony and plays with sound in such a fun way, shifting from that minimalist beat to air horns & sirens, only to almost IMMEDIATELY drop back to the beat. And it's clear that Missy is having a blast, making the most out of every 'r' she gets to roll. This song is pure unadulterated fun, an ass shaking song that knows exactly what it is and spends the right amount of time crafting everything to near perfection. [8]

Iris Xie: Never thought I'd be so happy to hear "Truffle Butter" again, but I like "Tempo" and its version of that pinging synth more. "Tempo" takes that initial synth and layers it underneath with a heavy bass and a stop-start militaristic rhythm that makes the atmosphere simultaneously warm and domineering, and Lizzo's command is ice cold, casual, and driven. She's absolutely done with anyone telling her she can't command the dance floor, and whoops, she now is! The verse that starts with "pitty-pat" and ends with "cat" winds up your dance moves and is pretty much twerk material. But Missy, that sweet deliverer of unflinching vision, sonically grabs the theme of the song and busts out all the 'rrrs~'. But then she becomes very rude in the best way, and creates her own equivalent of a feature stage at 2:05 by changing it to a melted stadium band that sounds like the equivalent of lightning charging, with a brief drum clatter solo that sits with you long after it comes back to Lizzo dictating you to fuck it up to the tempo. But most importantly? The entire sentiment of the song is for any big girls (and anyone who identifies with those sentiments) who have ever felt really bad about moving on the dance floor -- it was never your problem, it was always the boring-ass "slow songs." And if that's really not one of the best ways I've ever heard about taking up space in clubs that can be hostile to those who don't have normative bodies, I don't know what else is. [9]

Jonathan Bradley: Eight bars of Missy rhyming tongue trills is worth the admission, but this beat isn't fucking anything up: the bass knocks but it doesn't move. A modulating arpeggio sounds like a placeholder waiting for the finished edit. Lizzo matches the effort; her last appearance round here underserved her personality, but here it's like she's waiting for a reason to show up. What she does offer are some very rote verses and a chorus that isn't sure it's not a verse. It's quite demure, even if you don't start to think on how unrestrained Missy could be in her heyday. [5]

Joshua Copperman: You know that old friend you had in high school that was into the same kind of music you were into? You said you'd stay in touch but grew apart from them because they were in a different, faster crowd than you? That's Lizzo. Her BJ Burton "artsy-fartsy phase" spawned some stellar, aggressive music, but her major-label music is more fun and positive to somewhat mixed results. Oak (of "Pop &" fame) made a manic beat more reminiscent of those early days, but the actual content is light enough to make room for cat puns including "prrr me a glass." It's a shame she won't go back to that earlier, more raw music when rappers like Cupcakke balance the high-concept antics with brutal honesty, but it's clear that's not what Lizzo feels like doing. That artsy phase increasingly feels like something she overcame than something she plans on revisiting. You occasionally hear back from that high school friend, but it's clear that they were never going to be the person you wanted them to be. But it's better to accept that because they're happier and freer the way they are now. They should really put away the guitar, though. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Two overrated artists release a song that sounds exactly like you'd expect? I find the fireworks and beat switch fake-outs more exciting than the vocals. When the song ends, I'm left with... nothing, really. Lizzo's recent singles have all been ordinary crowd pleasers, the sort of standard we should have for solid stock music. "Juice" felt like Facetuned Prince. "Tempo" is similarly watered down. [3]

Nortey Dowuona: *incoherent babbling* Lizzo going in *MORE INCOHERENT SHRIEKING* Missy going in *GLEEFUL HOWLS OF TORMENT AND JOY* A small Afro was found on top of the MSNBC offices yesterday. *sounds of confusion and slight annoyance* [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[beboped1]

Pyramids

One of the first two Discworld books I ever read. Loaned to me by a high school friend along with Small Gods, I no longer recall which I read first. I've reread Small Gods before, but never Pyramids.

Pyramids

First read: High School

Verdict Then: This Pratchett guy is pretty funny! I should read more...

Verdict Now: Maybe the funniest book yet, though it could be because geometry & physics are 100% my bag. The human nature bits don't hit as hard as Wyrd Sisters. I suppose not every book can or should be a transcendent treatise on human nature. But I wanted more there all the same.

I wrote the top part of this days ago, but I keep putting off coming back to this one. Not too dissimilar to my progress through the back third of this book. On the surface, it’s a perfectly good Discworld book. We’re introduced to the Assassins guild and their training process, in a wonderfully rich and immersive section at the beginning - there are jokes here, but mostly, it’s just really well executed character setup. The terror and existential quandry into the slapstick release of the final test room was particularly well executed. The running gag of camels being the best mathematicians was excellent, and I loved the math & physics jokes sprinkled throughout the book.

I think what I’m missing here is the moral core. Pyramids is an engaging satire with some excellent world building, well sketched characters, good story fundamentals, and great running gags. Often, that’s just what one is in the mood for - but it’s not what I read Pratchett for. It doesn’t have the preachy tone or “tell, don’t show” of Sourcery, but in its place it has...nothing really. Characters don’t really grow or change - and indeed, that is part of the point of the book. I think he’s trying to make a point about the perils of conservatism and the insanity of expecting a society to remain unchanged. But that part just doesn’t land for me.

The whole book just feels unfocused. It’s a real step back from the tight focus of Wyrd Sisters. The stretch where he’s in Ephebe I think is a perfect example of this. It’s very funny, especially if you’re a bit familiar with pre-Roman Greek philosophy. But we don’t learn anything there. No one grows, it’s somehow both unclear why and tremendously obvious that Teppic will try to get back to Djelibeybi at the same time. Rote, plot-driven storytelling, with character emotion absent. The whole back third of the book is like that - not as much a slog as Mort, but definitely not a page-turner.

Ptraci was disappointing as well. She just doesn’t get enough screen time, and the final kiss scene at the end is early Pratchett at his most self-indulgent. Seriously, stop playing coy and cutting away from climactic emotional moments - there’s a fine line between encouraging the audience to engage by not laying everything out for them, and being so obtuse that all the drama is sucked out and the catharsis is lost. He’s on the wrong side of it here. There’s less repeated, annoying commentary on her body at least - that’s a step forward from Wyrd Sisters. But after the gentle lampooning of teenage love in Wyrd Sisters, this romance feels entirely by-the-numbers and, much like almost everything Teppic does, confused in motivation.

In the end, I understand why Pyramids isn’t a book I’ve ever felt the need to revisit. Light, fun, engaging, a decent way to spend a few hours, but nothing here that’s going to stick with a reader over the long haul.