#and not something that is usually chosen very specifically to get the most emotional impact

[hostilemuppet]

also also i see a lot of people saying that "mouthwashing should be a movie!" and i cannot begin to explain to you how mouthwashing wouldnt work in any other medium

[omarera]

I see a lot of confused comments on what “Sommarprat” is. Is it an interview? A podcast? Can you watch it? So, here is some info on what “Sommarprat” is.

It’s so much more than a podcast. It’s Swedish core and has a long tradition and is like it’s own prestigious institution. Sommarprat at the radio station P1 (no you can’t watch it) on Sveriges Radio is broadcasted during every summer on P1 starting at 1:00 p.m. The presenters are specially invited "summer hosts" (or "summer speakers"), who are responsible for each day. They introduce themselves, talk about freely chosen topics and play music of their own choice. The “talk” is 90 minutes including music of the “speakers” choice.

The first show was aired June 29th year 1959 so it has been aired for over 60 year’s. It is a show that I would say most Swedes are aware of and some listen to all episodes. It’s very honorable to be selected and some/many compare it to as it is almost like getting ennobled/knighted due to the honor.

All “talks” are not just aired but also reviewed in media. The ones that get most attention are usually very emotional or surprising showing new sides to a person or when people talk on specific important or fun topics. There is a mix of “speakers”and different storylines over the summer and some are more experts talking on their subject like climate change etc or people picking one topic that has impacted their life as Edvin talked about how YR. It can also be more of a light hearted humor talk people telling anecdotes from their career and life. It can be anything really, but people get to tell their story on something that is important to them in a way they have had the time to prepare to do.

All “speakers” gets a producer that they plan and create the Sommarprat with so they are all usually very well made. So glad Omar got Mark Levengood, perfect match.

[bookofmirth]

clothing in acotar

With all the talk about Elain’s appearance in the Court of Nightmares and how people think that either does or doesn’t imply something about her character, I started thinking about all of the other times that clothing is described in the series. This post is a collection of patterns in how different characters and their clothing are described, with the resulting argument that clothes don’t simply exist as a way to say “this character was wearing X”, but to show something about the character’s preferences and personality, their comfort, their emotional state, or where they were in their journey within the story.

I’m putting this under the cut because it will get very long! It’s not specific to ships, though different implications can be made by the evidence. I’m separating this analysis by character because... it makes sense to look at how different types of clothing are viewed by them as individuals. It’s not as if one type of clothing is universally viewed as positive or negative, but as I said above, it’s a reflection of that specific character.

First up: Feyre

The situation in which Feyre’s clothing had the most impact, and was the biggest sign of her state of mind, was her wedding dress. We all remember the struggle that she had with Ianthe, who wanted her to wear something that was much more ostentatious than she would have chosen herself. 

“Every element of this wedding sends a message to not only Prythian, but the world beyond,” [Ianthe] said. I stifled a sigh. I knew - she’d told me this before. “I know you are not fond of the dress-”

Understatement. I hated the monstrosity of tulle she’d selected.

In addition, Tamlin controlled Feyre’s clothing in the beginning of acowar. She was forced to wear bright dresses that, while perhaps pretty on their own, didn’t reflect Feyre’s personality and were far more restrictive than she preferred. 

I hated the bright dresses that had become my daily uniform, but didn’t have the heart to tell Tamlin - not when he’d bought so many, not when he looked so happy to see me wear them. Not when his words weren’t far from the truth. The day I put on my pants and tunics, the day I strapped weapons to myself like fine jewelry, it would send a message far and clear across the lands. So I wore the gowns, let Alis arrange my hair - if only so it would buy these people a measure of peace and comfort.

To contrast, when Feyre is taken by Rhys to the Night Court, she finds the clothing there much more comfortable. 

My high-waisted peach pants were loose and billowing, gathered at the ankles with velvet cuffs of bright gold. The long sleeves of the matching top were made of gossamer, also gathered at the wrists, and the top itself hung just to my navel, revealing a sliver of skin as I walked.

Comfortable, easy to move in – to run. Feminine. Exotic.

While there were many, many other reasons why Feyre was better off in the Night Court, the restrictiveness of clothing in Spring, along with the way it failed to suit her personality, reinforced her transition from a situation in which she was being stifled (and abused) to one where she had freedom and support.

Now Nesta

Nesta is an interesting example because she generally is comfortable in whatever clothing she has to wear. She looks equally at ease in dresses as she does Illyrian leathers. When Cassian goes to get Nesta from the townhouse, she is wearing someone else’s clothing and she doesn’t care if he sees her that way.

The main comment we have directly from Nesta to talk about how she feels about her clothing is that she isn’t as comfortable wearing revealing clothing as Mor and Feyre are.  

Nesta considered what Morrigan usually wore, and frowned. “I can’t wear something that revealing.” Both Morrigan and Feyre opted for less is more when it came to their Hewn City attire. Nesta had no issues with nudity before her bedroom partners, but in public… the human had not been ripped from her entirely.

When she goes to the Court of Nightmares in that now fandom-infamous scene, Nesta owns every bit of what she’s wearing – despite her plunging neckline, which seems counter to what we learned about her earlier.

Nesta in Night Court black threatened to bring [Cassian] to his knees. […]

Silver thread embroidered the skintight velvet bodice, the straps so narrow they might as well have been nothing against her moon-white skin. The neckline plunged nearly to her navel, where the silver thread gathered to hold a small sapphire that matched the ones on her crown.

Given Nesta’s previous statement to Mor about not wanting to wear anything revealing, it’s telling that she made this concession. The Court of Nightmares isn’t a place that any of the Archerons, the IC, or our other main protagonists want to be, but it is somewhere they can adapt to.

Nesta’s chin remained high, accentuating her long, lovely neck. Her red-painted lips cocked in a feline smirk as her kohl-lined eyes took in the room watching her every breath.

Nesta seemed to glow with the attention. Owned it. Commanded it.

Similarly to the first time that Feyre went to the Court of Nightmares, Nesta is able to adapt seamlessly. She not only wears that dress with the plunging neckline (now I’m wondering if she had boob tape because girl…) but she does so with complete confidence, to the point where everyone has their eyes on her – even after Feyre walks in with a pregnant belly.

Lucien

Lucien is always impeccably dressed, but his clothing remains politically relevant. (Thanks @tealnymph24 and @aionuel for helping me with quotes for his section!) His room in the Spring Court was very indicative of his home

…bedecked in hues of orange and red and gold, with faint traces of green and brown

He also dresses in autumnal colors reminiscent of foliage:

It wasn’t a formal dinner by any means – though Lucien, standing near the windows and watching the sun set over Velaris, was wearing a fine green jacket embroidered with gold, his cream-colored pants showing off muscled thighs, and his knee-high black boots polished enough that the chandeliers of faelight reflected off them.

He’d always had a casual grace about him, but here, tonight, with his hair tied back and jacket buttoned to his neck, he truly looked the part of a High Lord’s son. Handsome, powerful, a bit rakish – but well-mannered and elegant.

Lucien is always put-together, which we could say this is external order that hides internal conflict. While we know how he felt being around Elain, he is now estranged from Tamlin in addition to the Autumn Court, but his clothing never lets any of that uncertainty or intensity show. This is reinforced in acosf when Cassian remarks on Lucien’s various roles:

He had to give Lucien credit: the male was somehow able to move between his three roles – an emissary for the Night Court, ally to Jurian and Vassa, and liaison to Tamlin – and still dress immaculately.

Another situation in which his clothing is noticed by others is when Tamlin sees him dressed in Illyrian leathers in acowar.

“Tamlin-“

But Tamlin’s attention had gone to the clothes Lucien now wore. The Illyrian leathers.

He might as well have been wearing Night Court black.

It was an effort to keep my mouth shut, to not explain that Lucien didn’t have any other clothes with him, and that they weren’t a sign of his allegiance-

Tamlin just shook his head, loathing simmering in his green eyes, and walked past. Not a word.

Amren

Interestingly enough, we do have a moment where fashion is described as suiting Amren – with a ruby and diamond necklace. Feyre describes the necklace as being massive, and only a certain type of person being able to wear it. When Feyre first saw the necklace, she remarks,

A necklace of rubies was splayed on a velvet pillow – each of them the size of a robin’s egg. It’d take a tremendous female to wear that necklace, to dominate the gems and not the other way around.

Then later on, Feyre reiterates this when she sees Amren with the necklace.

Sprawled across the top like a snake lay a familiar necklace of diamonds and rubies. I’d seen it before – in Tarquin’s trove. “How… what?”

Amren smiled to herself. “Varian sent it to me. To soften Tarquin’s declaration of our blood feud.”

I’d thought the rubies would need to be worn by a mighty female – and I could think of no mightier female than the one before me. “Did you and Varian…?”

The idea that clothing or jewelry can be ill-suited to someone, or that someone can be dominated by their accoutrement, repeats itself later with Elain. But we will get there. It’s also not uncommon irl. Just watch any commentary on red carpet fashion.

Azriel

Az wears Illyrian fighting leathers almost 24/7, which makes sense given his job, but! I think that also indicates his loyalty to the Night Court and his willingness to be on duty all the time, avoiding anything resembling a personal life. However, there is one notable example of his clothing looking out of place, in acowar:

Azriel was sprawled on the chaise longue across the gray stones, sunning his wings and reading what looked like a stack of reports – likely information on the Autumn Court that he planned to present to Rhys once he’d sorted through it all. Already dressed for the Hewn City – the brutal, beautiful armor so at odds with the lovely garden. And my sister sitting within.

To my knowledge, no one’s clothing has indicated that they don’t look like they fit with another character. It’s far more often about the setting, which we do have here, or the character’s personality, or their mental state. It’s something to think about.

Elain 

Now Elain has a few more examples of how clothing reflects her personality and feelings. She is typically very feminine and wears dresses – but they have different impacts on her. She is described as being modest, as Nesta is. Elain is vulnerable after coming out of the Cauldron and it’s then that Lucien covers her with his jacket. Feyre remarks that she can’t remember the last time she had seen Elain’s bare legs – a feat, considering they lived in poverty and likely had very little privacy.

Elain in black was ridiculous. Yes, she was beautiful, but the color of her long-sleeved, modest gown leeched the brightness from her face. It wore her, rather than the other way around.

I’m cutting in here to emphasize that the dress is wearing her, in a way that Feyre thought Amren’s necklace would have looked odd on someone else and needed a woman who would dominate it, rather than it dominating her. It’s not that Elain looks less beautiful than usual, or that the dress itself is ugly, but that she looks out of place, ill at ease.

And [Cassian] knew the cruelty of the Hewn City troubled her. But she hadn’t hesitated to come. When Feyre had offered to let her remain home, Elain had squared her shoulders and declared she was part of this court – and would do whatever was needed.

Cutting in again to point out the fact that Elain’s efforts at fitting in at the Court of Nightmares were just that – efforts. She had to square her shoulders to put on airs that she was confident, and that compared to the way that Nesta and Feyre fit in without even trying.

So Elain had let her golden-brown hair down tonight, and pinned it back with twin combs of pearl. He’d never once in the two years he’d known her found Elain to be plain, but wearing black, no matter how much she claimed to be part of this court… It sucked the life from her.

I know her pearls have been pointed out before, but just to reiterate, her engagement ring was pearl, and Lucien gifted her with pearl earrings. We have a pattern of her preferring those to other, flashier gems.

I also want to point out that if we were to disregard Cassian’s thoughts about Elain here, though the perspective is third person close (meaning an objective narrator is telling us Cassian’s thoughts), then we would have no reason to trust his other thoughts about Elain, including this:

Nesta was wrong, Cassian realized, to think Elain as loyal and loving as a dog. Elain saw every single thing Nesta had done, and understood why.

Yes, this is Cassian’s opinion, but told to us through an omniscient narrator, and he has no reason to lie. If anything, he would paint Elain in the best light possible.

So what?

A clear pattern has been established. Almost every character’s taste in clothing is described from acotar on, with those tastes indicating something about their personality, their comfort, their current emotional state, and where they feel at home (or where they don’t).

Side note, but clothing is also described as indicating that someone belongs to a specific court. This isn’t just about personality, but politics. When Tamlin sees Lucien in Illyrian leathers (in acowar), he sees that as a betrayal. Feyre assumed that Rhys giving her Night Court clothing (in acomaf) was supposed to be a stab at Tamlin. In the Court of Nightmares (in acomaf and acosf), everyone dresses the part – black, sexy, slightly scary – and fits in more or less depending on their comfort level or if they “fit”. Since there isn’t as much evidence about that, I didn’t go into it in detail. However, it is worth pointing out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes up again.

As of right now, we know that sjm is excited to tell Mor, Az, and Elain’s stories. If people want to make theories that use clothing as evidence, that isn’t far-fetched because the above evidence proves that comments on a character’s clothing could potentially have a larger meaning; sjm isn’t just describing the scenery, she is using clothing to tell us more about the characters than their actions or words can say.

[jar-of-omegaverse]

Omegaverse Worldbuilding Starter Kit

Welcome to my beginner’s guide to writing Omegaverse! Here are some questions you can ask yourself while worldbuilding, but they are not all necessary! This is a pretty detailed guide, so pick and choose what applies to your omegaverse!

The first step I would recommend is doing some research! Look up basic guides. I put some links in this starter kit for examples and references. Now that you know a few things and are familiar with some common terms, you can start expanding and making it your own!

The Basics

How are omegas treated?

This is probably the most important question on the list.  Omegas are usually at the center of worldbuilding for omegaverse, even if writers do it unconsciously, so how omegas are treated often shapes all of society. Of course, this is not set in stone. If you want an alpha-shaped or beta-shaped society, go for it. Keep this in mind as you worldbuild.

What are some things you want to include in your omegaverse?

What are things that are not acceptable in your omegaverse?

Here is an example post of things I will never support (as a normal part of life) in omegaverse.

Do you want your omegaverse to be more non-traditional or traditional?

What’s the difference? 

What is your favorite thing about omegaverse?

Is your omegaverse NSFW heavy?

Are you more focused on the NSFW or SFW aspects?

What time period is your omegaverse set in?

Is your omegaverse based more on romance or platonic relationships?

When worldbuilding, I tend to be more invested in platonic relationships than romantic ones, so I have a lot more headcanons revolving around pack dynamics than mate headcanons.

Does your omegaverse have any special features? True Mates? Pack Bonds (mental links that packmates can feel and express emotion through)? Animal Shifters?

Who’s on top? What does the hierarchy look like?

For example, many people set their hierarchies either as Alphas on top or everyone as equal.

How much power do the dynamics have over each other?

For example, can Alphas control Omegas at will? This also ties into hierarchy.

What is the history of your omegaverse?

What is considered r*pe and consent?

Is there a difference between sex and dynamic?

Is primary gender (male, female, other) different from alpha, beta, omega or are they one in the same?

What does submission and domination look like? How does it impact day to day life?

Relationships

Is polyamory a part of your omegaverse? How are polyamorous relationships viewed?

Non-traditional pairings? Which pairings are looked down upon, if any?

For example, Beta x Alpha or Beta x Omega relationships are sometimes looked down upon in more traditional omegaverse set ups.

How do people become mates? Is there a mating bite? A ceremony? Do they spend a mating cycle together?

Are there mating traditions such as giving your partner a collar?

What does courting/dating behavior look like? Is it strict or more relaxed?

Do the packs of the parties involved need to consent to the courting beforehand? Is it arranged? Does it reflect modern society dating? Are interactions between parties supervised?

Society

What are problems in society specific to omegaverse?

In my omegaverse, the Omegas’ Rights Movement is a very large and pressing issue.

What is socially acceptable? What is not?

Disciplining mates in public? Forcing submission? Consent before heats?

How are education and jobs impacted by dynamic?

Can everyone work? Are there limits to what jobs people can hold?

What is considered appropriate and inappropriate behavior around strangers? Friends? Mates? Pack?

What is typical fashion of each dynamic, does it differ based on dynamic?

For example, Omegas may wear collars.

How do people rebel against stereotypes? What are the consequences?

How does presenting change social life?

How do people of the same dynamic interact with each other?

For example, sometimes, Omegas are best friends and need omega socialization, other times they hate each other and view each other as competition.

How is each dynamic treated in the workplace? Hospital? Restaurants?

How do people react if they don’t present as the secondary gender they thought they would be/wanted to be?

How are mating cycles viewed?

Opportunity to breed and have pups? Disgraceful and disgusting? Excuse for sex?

Health and Biology

How is health different (mental and physical)?

What medication is available? 

Suppressants? Is there a side effect of taking suppressants or other medication? 

Are there drugs that can send people into heat (often used at date r*pe drugs)?

How do scent glands work?

Anatomy in general?

Anatomy of male omegas and female alphas?

What are the ratios of the dynamics? Which is the most common?

A lot of omegaverses set Betas as the most common dynamic. Others put all of them as equal, or omegas as extremely rare, ect.

How do disabilities and mental health play into the dynamics and your omegaverse?

For example, here are my posts about gender dysphoria and ADHD in omegaverse.

How is trangender defined in your omegaverse? Is it even a part of your omegaverse? How is it viewed? Is it socially acceptable? What medications are available?

What about asexuality and aromanticism?

Are all heats and ruts sexual?

Here are some different types of heats and ruts.

How are mating cycles handled?

Who can help with mating cycles? What are people given/what do they do to help with mating cycles? For example, nests, pack’s clothes, etc.

Can betas experience mating cycles? If so, what are the conditions?

When do people present? Do they know their secondary gender from birth or find out later?

Who can get pregnant? Are babies delivered differently based on who is birthing them?

This would be dependent on anatomy.

Do Alphas have an Alpha Voice they can use to control others and make them submit? Who does the voice work on?

Packs

What defines a pack?

Are packs strictly blood-related? Are some packs blood-related and others not?

How are packs formed?

Can anyone become a pack leader?

How large are packs?

How are pack leaders chosen?

What does pack hierarchy look like?

What are roles in a pack?

Who are the most important members of the pack? The most protected? The most valued?

Can people be packless? Are there any side effects if they are?

Secondary Gender/Dynamics

What are the defining factors of each dynamic? Instincts? Scents? Other?

How do the dynamics differ?

What are the stereotypes of the dynamics in your omegaverse? Which are true, which are not?

Some Alpha and Omega stereotypes

What determines secondary gender? Genetics? Fate? Necessity based on pack?

Why and when do omegas nest? Do they only nest when they need comfort or are going into heat? Do they always have a nest?

Can alphas and betas nest or do something similar?

Do you include sub-genders/rare dynamics?

Here’s a post by @aboheadcannonsandmore which explains some rare dynamics.

Do omegas have rights?

Are omegas treated like their own people or viewed as property? Can omegas own things such as land? Do omegas need a legal guardian?

What role do betas fill?

Is there a double standard for Male Omegas and Female Alphas?

For example, female alphas are supposed to be strong and proper alphas but are also criticized if they are not feminine enough.

How does each dynamic soothe themselves and others? How do they react to dangerous situations?

There are a lot of things I didn’t address here, but worldbuilding is supposed to be fun and creative! Make it your own and don’t be afraid to be adventurous!

Happy writing!

[shihalyfie]

A meta and analysis on Takaishi Takeru

Of all of the Tokyo Chosen Children, Takeru is lucky enough to get significant attention for two full series from beginning to end, and his character also goes through some drastic changes in the process, especially through Adventure and 02. There’s so much going on with him that it makes it hard to give a short answer to the question “what is Takeru like?” because there’s so much you could say about him at so many different times.

Fortunately, that’s what we’re here to talk about today!

Takeru in Adventure

At first glance, Takeru seems to be the “tagalong kid” -- the obligatory “little kid character” you have whenever you have a party in a fantasy story. Generally, these “obligatory kid characters” are the kind constantly struggling to catch up with the older ones. Adventure being a series that loves to play with tropes and expectations, though, very quickly says no to that.

Seki: ...We also mixed up the children’s ages, for a bit of variety. Kakudou: The oldest one would be the most unreliable, and the smartest one would be one of the third youngest. Just a little to throw you off the usual, conventional track. Seki: The youngest one would feel too much like a burden to everyone else, and conversely would actually have himself together.

Takeru “doesn’t want to be a burden” -- meaning his feelings on this issue are actually rather much like Hikari’s. Unlike Hikari, though, Takeru reacts to this compulsion differently -- instead of simply repressing things and pretending the problem doesn’t exist, Takeru’s reaction to his own negative feelings is to “have himself together” and act as if he’s got everything under control.

Or, more accurately, pretend he has it together and has everything under control.

Takeru, for all intents and purposes, was not supposed to be on the camping trip the others were on, not having gone to everyone’s school -- he had to get special permission to go. Takeru’s family is very, very split harshly at this time, with his mother not even able to treat Yamato comfortably. Yamato deals with the familial estrangement badly -- alternating between approaching everyone awkwardly and exploding like an emotional fuse bomb -- but Takeru tries to take it as a sign  that he needs to be “responsible”. A lot of his actions in Adventure are him basically exuding this aura of “I can take care of myself!”, and in fact he works very hard to “assert” himself as if he were yet another peer. We even see him make the complaint directly in Adventure episode 43 -- while he is correct in calling out Yamato for coddling him and him only while recklessly disregarding the others, the fact he specifically complains about Yamato approaching him as someone holding them back if he’s not protected reveals a lot about his own mentality regarding the situation.

One of his first major scenes in episode 2 is him offering his own food for the pile of supplies everyone has, even though it’s just snacks. Which is, probably, a pretty accurate summary of Takeru’s character at this point: on the surface he’s responsible, well-behaved, and capable...but, in fact, he’s still about as immature as an average eight-year-old child would predictably be.

Yamato spends his Adventure character arc pretty openly angsting about his relationship to Takeru and how his family’s split has affected them, but throughout the entirety of Adventure (and, eventually, 02 as well), not only does Takeru rarely if ever touch on it, there are indications that Takeru deliberately tries to dodge the subject or not dwell on it too much. In Adventure episode 12, he actually outright lies to Patamon about his younger childhood memories, claiming he “probably doesn’t remember” anything about it despite the audience very clearly being shown that he very much did, and in episode 26 he comes very close to leaking his actual feelings about the group being separated being tied to what happened to his family, before quickly covering it up and trying to move on with the topic.

In other words, unlike Hikari, who knows exactly what she’s feeling but is compulsively unable to vocalize them, Takeru actively suppresses his negative feelings and tries not to dwell on them too much. Again, this comes from his desire to “not be a burden” on others -- he’s got this situation under control! Everything is fine!

And this has a very, very nasty payoff. While Yamato clearly deals with his emotional issues badly, tending to get very explosive about it, Takeru’s way of coping isn’t actually all that much better in the long run, because Yamato’s frustration and openness about his emotions at least lead him to being very straightforward about his feelings, incredibly self-aware and sometimes even self-conscious, and ultimately able to get at least some degree of catharsis from the situation. Takeru...not so much.

Takeru is a child, no matter how much he tries not to act like one, and it ultimately results in him reacting disastrously whenever something hits him too emotionally hard -- which results in Takeru suddenly becoming irrationally stubborn and even angry. We later see what it takes to actually break through Takeru’s facade of “totally having this together” in Adventure episode 22, which is also the first time he openly breaks down wailing in front of anyone besides Patamon -- and it’s, of course, when PicoDevimon convinces him that Yamato hates him. The interesting part is that this is so blatantly a lie that even Tokomon is able to quickly call bullshit on it, but Takeru, previously having worked so hard to maintain this facade of being responsible, falls for it completely with utter irrationality -- and it really does suggest that Takeru’s fear of losing yet another member of his family, and being a burden to Yamato, runs so deep that it causes that entire facade to shatter in one blow.

Which is where the problem lies: Takeru’s habit of suppression is so bad that once one of his triggers is hit, he completely loses all sense of rationality and blows up, and it becomes nearly impossible to reason with him because he locks down on becoming stubborn. It’s also dangerous because even he isn’t particularly self-aware of what he’s doing when he blows up like this; at least Hikari was very consciously aware of her suppression problem, but Takeru never really seems to have any awareness of the fact that his covering up of his feelings is directly related to some of his worst moments. We see it cause problems between him and Patamon again in Adventure episode 33, when Patamon asks a rather innocuous question about the brothers, and it hits Takeru’s trigger so badly that he snaps at him, resulting in the fight that kicks off the plot of the episode.

Adventure episode 52 is basically a major test for Takeru as to whether he really can hold himself together in a situation where everyone else older than him is gone, and “having himself together” is something he has to actually do instead of just have the surface facade of. He does, ultimately, pass, and this is why the Crest of Hope glows this episode -- but it’s also made clear that it wasn’t quite as easy for him as he would normally pretend it is. Of course, it also helps that Piemon is genuinely the scariest threat they’d faced during that time, but it also reveals that, yeah, ultimately, Takeru is an eight-year-old child who still has to struggle to put on a brave face so that Hikari doesn’t get impacted by his own fear.

For all it’s worth, although we get a ton of depth into his background and mentality, Takeru does not actually change that much as a character over the course of Adventure. This incident is probably what changes him the most in terms of him gaining a more solid core, and he also learns to accept the inevitability of fighting after his stubborn refusal to engage in it all the way back in Adventure episode 12 -- but for the most part he still does remain a bit naive about the world at large, and, more importantly, his issue with trying to cover up his problems with a confident smile never really gets addressed. At most, he’s willing to admit his grief over being separated from Patamon in Adventure episode 54, but even that is something Takeru tries to bounce back from quickly, much like with the first time he cried with Patamon in Adventure episode 12. But there’s nothing to indicate that his problem with emotional management isn’t going to continue being a problem from here on out if left unchecked.

That problem ends up taking another three more years to get addressed.

Takeru in 02

Takeru is one of the first people we meet in 02 (for reasons that end up revealed in the final episode), and right off the bat we learn that he’s a bit...evasive. He leaves a cryptic line to Daisuke about his goggles without coming even close to what we all know is the full extent of what’s on his mind (that the goggles specifically remind him of someone important to him), and later just...deflects Daisuke throwing accusations at him with a mild dismissal. In fact, even though Takeru pretty clearly understands very quickly what’s going on with Daisuke and how touchy he gets with the Hikari issue, he keeps dodging the question and constantly saying things that are evasive about it and therefore never truly helps his case until episode 17, when the circumstances between why Hikari and Takeru knew each other are finally properly clarified to Daisuke and he stops getting on their case about it on his own.

There were multiple points in time before this -- especially in episode 7, when Daisuke is practically at his worst in regards to approaching Takeru -- when Takeru could have easily said something to at least attempt to get Daisuke to stop bothering him, but Takeru never even asks him to cut it out! He simply continues to handle everything with a “yeah, okay, sure! :)” attitude, which of course confuses Daisuke (who’s rather allergic to people not being straightforward) rather thoroughly, and you wonder if he’s practically enjoying seeing Daisuke’s antics to the point he’s just enabling it further.

As a point of aside trivia, the official 02 website adds the fun detail that apparently he's popular with the girls at school but doesn't show much interest in them himself, and the Animedia audio commentary CD for Armor Evolution to the Unknown had his voice actor even express the opinion that he saw Takeru as someone who wasn’t really the type to think about romance at this age (adding in a separate interview for the 02 DVDs that he felt Takeru was respectful of girls primarily due to having been taught by his single mother to be such). The latter part of course isn’t something that comes from the writing, but given the website trivia I’m inclined to personally agree with it -- and, more importantly, the implication is that Takeru is at least aware of these kinds of things, but actively chooses to not think about it and deal with it when the time comes.

So in other words: That part about how Takeru actively suppresses things that are negative or inconvenient to think about, all for the sake of keeping a smile plastered on his face? Yup, still there.

In fact, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment from 02 episode 17 implies heavily that, even with their parents having developed a more cordial relationship after the events of Adventure, Takeru is now emotionally dealing with the aftermath of his parents’ divorce worse than Yamato is, since Yamato is at least able to speak about it casually and even joke about it openly, whereas Takeru keeps his mouth shut and the framing of the shot heavily implies he’s still extremely sensitive and unable to vocalize his feelings on it. Takeru never brings this up as something eating away at him for the entire series -- but BelialVamdemon uses it against him in episode 49, revealing that, yes, this is a problem that’s still tearing away at him, and yet he’s refusing to be open to anyone about it, even to Yamato himself. (Especially since, again, Yamato seems to be doing a great job trying to move forward; why kill his mood and thus be a “burden” to him?)

Even so, Takeru is very different in 02 partially because his circumstances are completely different. Adventure had him as the youngest in a group of older kids, so in terms of “being a responsible child”, that naturally meant being deferential and polite to everyone due to standards of propriety. 02 is where we learn a lot more about how Takeru interacts with peers his own age and people who are outright younger than him, when he has a bit more leeway to be more assertive.

On top of that, back in Adventure, Takeru was a young child who had a very small “range of periphery” -- as a young child still rather naive about the world, his emotional investment in things primarily pertained to loved ones and the people around him. But now that he’s a bit older, he’s gained a certain degree of strong feelings about “what’s the right thing to do”, and now has very strong opinions on it.

These things ultimately manifest in, unfortunately, Takeru losing his composure much more often than he did in Adventure, and for reasons that pertain to much wider things than just his brother. Still not having recovered from the trauma of losing Patamon back in Adventure episode 13, Takeru starts physically fighting Daisuke in 02 episode 11 because he perceives Daisuke as not doing enough to prevent Patamon from potentially becoming a slave to the Kaiser, and in 02 episode 13 he lashes out at Hikari in frustration about her refusal to do anything about her situation (which he of course ends up deeply regretting later in the episode).

Takeru’s infamous scene of suddenly switching modes on the Kaiser and punching him out in 02 episode 19 is basically the pinnacle of this -- because, yes, the Kaiser really did deserve it, but this really is not a good thing for Takeru either. This is Takeru getting the closest we ever see him to being a genuine sadist, and it’s basically everything to do with his emotional stuntedness coming out at once -- blowing up in anger out of nowhere with a passive-aggressive demeanor, succumbing to the weight of his trauma in the worst way possible, and mixing the ^^ front he puts on with his tendency to blow up angrily at anything that cuts him a little too emotionally close.

And for the first time, we see someone actually acknowledge how bad this is. Iori, one of the most consciously perceptive of the group, witnesses, for himself, the sheer jarringness of Takeru seeming to only really have two modes between “all smiles” and “unreasonably angry”. Sure, Takeru had shown a penchant for getting active as soon as there was something he needed to protect, but the moment it got personal, Takeru suddenly blew up in front of his eyes and almost turned into a completely different person. (Perhaps he’s not that different from Yamato after all...)

This is a very important moment because it sets up the base for what ultimately becomes the Jogress arc between Iori and Takeru. Daisuke ended up reaching out to Ken because Ken was someone who needed someone to accept him and teach him to move forward instead of drowning in the past; Miyako ended up reaching out to Hikari because Hikari knew herself to have a suppression problem but had difficulty doing anything about it, so the extremely in-your-face and aggressive Miyako could go in deep. But with Takeru, since his personality is genuinely volatile, and because Takeru goes out of his way to hide the fact he’s having emotional problems, personalities like Daisuke and Miyako wouldn’t help much because they’re too straightforward for someone like this who’s a bit unpredictable -- whereas Iori, who’s assertive but also methodical and thinks through everything consciously, is eventually much better able to reach out to him.

Once the relevant arc kicks in, in 02 episode 34, Iori continues to observe Takeru, and quietly notes the many “contradictions” in Takeru’s behavior -- since, after all, Takeru starts to sometimes violate what you’d think would be common sense whenever he gets too emotionally compromised. The fact that ostensibly one of the outwardly “nicest” kids in this group suddenly blows up in certain circumstances and basically goes “absolutely nope, needs to be killed!” in the midst of a few moral debates over killing sentient Digimon disturbs him deeply, and really, it’s not even about the killing part (after all, it’s later established in 02 episode 43 and after that Takeru and Hikari have a certain degree of acceptance of the inevitability that the others don’t) as much as Takeru’s being pretty gung-ho about it. Not “I don’t like it, but we have to” like he said earlier, but NOPE, GOTTA DO IT.

Iori refers directly to the duality of Takeru that he doesn’t quite understand multiple times in this episode (including in regards to the incident back in 02 episode 19), and it continues to torment him until the end, when Takeru only gives a very cryptic “clarification” that he doesn’t necessarily hate the darkness per se.

Iori, too intimidated to ask Takeru about it directly, goes to ask Yamato in 02 episode 35, and Yamato finally clarifies the background that we as the audience knew but Iori didn't: the story behind Takeru's trauma regarding the loss of Angemon back in Adventure episode 13. Yamato also makes a conjecture about why Takeru has been acting so ambivalent towards Ken -- you'd think he'd still be under Takeru's scorn after the events of 02 episode 19, but in fact Takeru's judgment of him in episode 25 was simply that he was certain something had changed, yet he couldn't tell what he was thinking (really rich coming from someone who refuses to tell anyone else what he's thinking himself!). Yamato guesses that Takeru is inclined to be a bit more forgiving of Ken due to understanding the feeling of losing a partner -- and the ultimate conclusion here is, basically, that Takeru's behavior is contradictory because he's acting based on what's personal to him, not necessarily via principles that make sense. After all, back in Adventure, it was clearly demonstrated that Takeru isn’t exactly rational when things hit too close to home.

The other important thing that happens this episode is that Takeru learns that Iori is actively trying to reach out to him, when Yamato drops him a line informing him that Iori asked. Despite complaining that Iori could have just asked him directly, after Takeru witnesses the face-off between Iori and BlackWarGreymon and a demonstration that Iori is clearly trying his best to make sense out of this entire mess, Takeru actively reaches out to Iori and says something to comfort him -- “a life is beautiful simply by existing.” It’s still cryptic as hell, but it’s not something he would have said in the midst of his anger in prior episodes.

It would be one thing if it were simply that by itself, but the following episodes further push the idea that Takeru really is starting to change after witnessing all of this. 02 episode 36 has him explicitly acknowledge what Iori’s been doing this whole time in trying to understand him for the sake of their Jogress, and, finally, during their meal later that episode, he says, very openly and honestly, that he thinks they’ll be able to do it now. After two instances of Jogress, these kids are very aware of what that entails -- so this is basically Takeru consciously acknowledging to Iori “yes, I understand that you’re trying to reach out to me, and I accept it and want to understand you.” Because Takeru is such a convoluted sort of person, this “understanding” ended up being something that didn’t span a single magical moment as much as it took several episodes and a diplomatic, conscious affirmation on both ends -- but it’s a fitting way to go for someone who had always indicated some pretty poor conscious awareness of where his feelings were taking him.

This is especially because, in 02 episode 37, his statements to comfort Ken are in pretty significant opposition to the sort of anger he’d displayed in earlier episodes, and are now a more pragmatic view of the issue in light of Iori’s efforts and everything he’d just witnessed with BlackWarGreymon -- and to drive the point home, the episode has, at the very end of it, Takeru making his first true explicit show of goodwill towards Ken after having been a bit touchy with him for so many episodes.

Iori himself, being the youngest of the 02 group, still has a lot to learn, and so Takeru, who had previously been one of the youngest in the Adventure group himself, now has his role inverted to effectively be a guiding mentor to Iori as he finds his own way. Basically, Takeru becomes responsible for the welfare of this young child, and so his way of treating Iori is markedly different from the more detached and playful way he would treat others from here on out. This is especially because, earlier, Yamato had informed him that Iori had taken a very roundabout way to help understand him better, and so Takeru probably understands that he scared the hell out of Iori earlier and needs to do better. While the Takeru of 02 episodes 38-50 still has a way of being playful, and while he still isn’t completely straightforward about his intentions, he is definitely much better about being open with the others, especially Iori, instead of doubling down on his “everything-is-fine” mode.

And perhaps this is what the other meaning of “hope” thus became in this situation -- learning to be forward-facing even in the midst of truly knowing and understanding everything that’s wrong with the situation.

Post-02

Although Takeru’s Spring 2003 track is addressed to no one in particular, meaning that it’s the most likely reason he’s so willing to be open about it, Takeru outright admits he’s having problems with his emotions -- especially those pertaining to Angemon’s death. We do, however, learn that Takeru’s started writing the early, early drafts of what’ll eventually end up becoming the novels he writes as a future career.

This being only a year after the events of 02, Takeru’s position is interesting. His decision to start writing is that he wants to have a record of everything before it’s forgotten -- because these things are very personal to him -- but he’s not emotionally ready for the huge task of finalizing everything in words, to the point he still hasn’t told his mother he’s started writing yet. After all, this is a book we eventually find out takes upwards of twenty years, and so this is the presumable reason why -- being able to get this down in a rational way that’s not emotionally compromising is going to be an upwards battle for him.

Even come Kizuna, there’s still a long way for him to go, because an actual line (in a very fast-paced movie) is dedicated to establishing that he’s still uncomfortable with his novel progress to the point he won’t even let Yamato see it. His official character profile and background details are revealing, too -- although he’s currently taking language classes in university and is even part of a children’s literature club, he still hasn’t actually decided on what to do with his future, meaning that he hasn’t determined that he’s going to be a full-time novelist with these yet. That means that even though he’s clearly still clacking away at his novel (multiple indications in the movie are given as such), his memoirs are still at the level of being so deeply personal, and not something he feels comfortable telling well, just yet.

I’ve pointed out before that despite not appearing directly with them in the movie, Takeru and Hikari have more in common with the others in the 02 group than they do with their Adventure seniors, and this is fully codified in the drama CD when Takeru is content to basically just “do whatever” with the rest of his friends instead of having any particular concerns about his future. And as someone who has a tendency to kind of just let his emotions take him wherever they’re going, this isn’t too surprising. Although he approximates as the closest to level-headed during most of the group’s antics during the CD, he’s still completely guilty of enabling them full-force, after all...

So, with the 02 epilogue, we get the massive meta reveal that the entire series was Takeru’s novels the whole time. This was planned to be the ending for Adventure before recording for the first episode had even started, but was postponed to the end of 02 when the second series was greenlit -- and if you’d followed the Japanese version, there are a ton of meta hints scattered around from day one:

The narrator of the series is Hirata Hiroaki, who played Takeru and Yamato’s father, and is revealed in this episode to voice him as an adult as well;

Episode 12 of Adventure is named “Adventure! Patamon and Me” and is the only episode title in Adventure or 02 to use a first-person pronoun -- and it’s of course a Takeru-centric episode, with the episode title using Takeru’s boku;

02′s first episode kicks off narrated by young Takeru opening the story, with Takeru himself suspiciously omitted from the opening vignettes;

02 episode 18 suddenly has the narration cut in when discussing Takeru’s trauma from Adventure episode 13, with the younger Takeru even filling in part of it himself;

02 episode 49′s “next episode” preview for 50 suddenly also starts using “we”, which also includes Takeru’s boku;

Finally, Takeru starts narrating right after Oikawa’s death, which fades into what’s revealed to be his adult voice.

In the context of Adventure, Takeru was “the youngest child”, so the idea makes sense that “the littlest one” would be the one to grow up and reflect on all of the adventures they had as kids -- and once 02 was added, it practically made sense that Takeru would be the one to recap both adventures, being the one person who was there to completely witness both (it also explains why Takeru and Hikari’s character arcs remain somewhat unresolved by the end of Adventure compared to others, since by this time it was apparent their story would be continued in the second series). So on a meta level, Takeru is, in a certain way, one of the most important characters in both groups.

On a level relevant to his personal character arc, on the other hand, the point here is that Takeru finally managed to put together his book and story in a way that he was comfortable telling the entire world about, to the point of choosing to make his entire career into it. That’s something that requires a lot of coming to terms with what happened, how he feels about it, how others feel about it, and everything about the whole ordeal in general, without compromise or (too much) bias.

And in the end, that’s really a lot!

[dai-bendu-conlang]

Qui-Gon’s Last Words in Dai-Bendu — a Meta/Explanation

So very early into this project, loosingletters and I (ghostwriter) watched The Phantom Menace together, and when Qui-Gon died, we looked at each other and were like “We can make this way sadder in translation, can’t we?” 

And so off we went, with that goal in mind. 

Because we went into this thinking “can we improve this interaction via language/translation?”  we need to first first explain why we don’t love Qui-Gon’s last words in canon, to then explain why we made the changes that we did.

The reasons are as follows:

Qui-Gon’s last words have nothing to do with Obi-Wan, the person he is saying goodbye to.

His last words being an order about Anakin left a weird taste in our mouths

We wanted this to feel more intimate and more emotional

So, we started with ways we could change the connotation of the words being used. We came at it from a lens of assuming that the dialogue was a classic “bad translation” of what was actually said; as in, someone translated the literal meanings of the words into English, and lost a lot of the social meanings that the words might have in their original contexts. 

Here are Qui-Gon’s original last words, in canon:

Obi-Wan: Master! Master! Qui-Gon: It’s too late. It’s too… Obi-Wan: No! Qui-Gon: Obi-Wan, promise...promise me you'll train the boy Obi-Wan: Yes, Master Qui-Gon: He is the chosen one...he will...bring balance...train him!

(Sidenote: upon actually looking up the dialogue, we were honestly shocked by how, like. Bare bones it is. And how pretty much all the emotion of that scene comes only from Neeson and McGregor acting their hearts out. So, kudos.)

When looking at this dialogue, we singled out the following things as points we could build on: 

Jedi cultural values regarding teaching (which we all have a lot of Feelings about)

The word “promise”

The whole idea of balance

And then we proceeded to go to town. 

The Dai Bendu translation of this dialogue is as follows:

Obi-Wan: Jaieh! Jaieh! Qui-Gon: Im enoh...nev forpai paikazah Obi-Wan: Shet. Qui-Gon: Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak. Obi-Wan: Haj dai, Jaieh. Qui-Gon: Enoah kar... daisha. Pauji... kar aimato’ak. Paden... karak.

Firstly, the things we didn’t change, ie: pretty much all of Obi-Wan’s dialogue.

Obi-Wan says, in order, “Master, Master!” (though he uses the Jedi-specific word for it, which also translates to “teacher”), “No.” and “Yes, Master,” just like in the original script. The most significant thing here is that the Dai Bendu word for “Yes” directly translates to “Force-Wills,” which could be read as some unintentional, ouchy subtext that both implies that Obi-Wan is agreeing with Qui-Gon’s point about Anakin being the Chosen One as a final act of comfort (because he’s expressed doubt about the possibility before), as well as conceding to both himself, Qui-Gon, and the universe that the Force has willed his Master’s death. 

Next, the things that changed from the script mostly as a symptom of the ways that Dai Bendu is different from English/Basic. For instance, Qui-Gon refers to Anakin as “the child” rather than “the boy,” because Dai Bendu does not express gender in that way. Instead of saying “it’s too late,” a more word-for-word direct translation of “Im enoh nev forpai paikazah” would be “no time is left,” which both lines up with how we imagine time works in Dai Bendu (link here), and is more natural to the way Dai Bendu handles sentence structure (“it’s too late” is a very English sentence construction). 

And now we get to the meaning changes. Other than changing the structure, “im enoh nev forpai paikazah” also adds “pai,” our consequential prefix, to “kazah,” which is the present-tense of the verb “kaza” or “to leave.” That makes the sentence mean something like “no time is left, and because of that the future has changed.” This is essentially Qui-Gon admitting to both himself and to Obi-Wan that his death is going to change, at the very least, Obi-Wan’s future forever, and also the future of the entire universe (though whether or not Qui-Gon knows this last part, in a Force-saturated moment right before death, is unclear in both the original version and our version). 

Qui-Gon’s next line is “Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak.” Again, we have the consequential prefix, this time attached to “paden,” which means “to guide/to teach,” here in the future tense. The implication of that being something like “teach him and it will alter the future.” Adding the consequential prefix to something which is already in the future tense is considered repetitive — comparable to saying something like “it is so enormously big” in English. A native speaker making the choice to add it here illustrates a conscious emphasis. Qui-Gon is really trying to express how important he thinks teaching Anakin is. 

We also have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about the Jedi as a people who are dedicated to teaching as a cultural value. On top of being archivists and having/keeping a vast collection of knowledge, Jedi do pretty much nothing but study/learn their entire lives. They are dedicated diplomats and so on, but outside of that they seem to want to foster understanding and that in-and-of itself is always a lesson. In TCW, for instance, everything is a teachable moment for someone. The fact that so much careful consideration is put into who you pick as your Padawan, and that you retain a deep connection to them even when the apprenticeship is over, shows that this connection and this act of teaching is immensely important. It is considered a standard part of each Jedi’s life to step into that teaching role at least once — nearly every Jedi takes on at least one apprentice. If you take Obi-Wan as an example, he spent half his time in the PT being a student, and then the other half being a teacher. So here, Qui-Gon is taking one of their culture’s most important values and handing it to Obi-Wan. 

Then we have the word for “promise” we used, “ikio.” While we have a standard word for promise, “aima,” the word that Qui-Gon uses here instead is one with more cultural meaning. “Ikio” refers to a very specific kind of promise, something like “promise me because you love me,” or “promise me because I trust you above all.”  The word dates back to the Jedi-Sith schism, where it was used as an oath to state that you trust this person to take your lightsaber and bring it back to your home temple, should you die in battle.

Which means that, holistically, the line “Obi-Wan, ikio… ikio fehl paipadenji keel nev paqorak” both places the highest amount of trust possible in Obi-Wan’s hands, while also stating that Qui-Gon believes him ready of preforming one of their most culturally important values, and trusts him implicitly to carry that out. 

Finally, the line “Enoah kar... daisha. Pauji... kar aimato’ak. Paden... karak.” Some of this is, again, just us having words in Dai Bendu which Basic doesn’t have. “Daisha” is the word for Chosen One, the one referred to as such specifically to that old prophecy Qui-Gon likes so much. It’s a word that all Jedi would be familiar with, but usually in the context of folk tales. It’s like calling someone “The Once and Future King.” (Which also makes Qui-Gon talking to the Council way funnier — “hey guys, I found King Arthur!” “what the fuck??”). Qui-Gon also uses the third person Jedi/in-community pronouns when referring to Anakin, showing that he already thinks of this kid as a Jedi. 

Then there is the concept of “aimato,” here in the accusative case as “aimato’ak.” Aimato is the word for “cosmic balance,” which is both a very important idea in Jedi philosophy, and also a very big and abstract concept. And like any other big and abstract concept which has a large impact on lives and culture, like Love or Brotherhood or Democracy or God, it’s something that individual people and individual Jedi have different conceptions of and ideas about. This is a culture of warrior-philosophers — pretty much everyone has a slightly different theory as to what aimato/”cosmic balance” is supposed to mean and what it will look like when it is achieved, or if it’s possible to achieve, from "it means that one day the Force shows itself to all people" to "it's about finding balance within only yourself" to "it means that evil will finally stand down" to "it means that all who strive for it will achieve peace" to "it's in tiny everyday moments." People sit around and debate this for hours. 

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan deeply disagree on it’s definition, given their specialties in the Living vs. Unifying Force, and have essentially had an ongoing debate about it for years. It’s an old, comfortable argument both of them know that neither is ever going to win. They could both probably recite the other’s points in their sleep. However, it’s something they end up going back to every time they have a spare moment with nothing else to do. 

Qui-Gon bringing it up here is not only referring to something very important in their culture, it’s almost like referencing an old, treasured inside joke between him and his student, which is something Obi-Wan would pick up on right away. 

So, to summarize; we attempted to modify this very... Anakin-focused last dialogue, and instead make it about Qui-Gon telling Obi-Wan he trusts him above all, specifically to teach (which, again, with Jedi and their teaching focused culture is a HUGE thing) and to continue their discussions and keep their traditions going with this child.

It’s also a fun thought experiment in translation studies — sometimes, things really can get lost in a one-for-one translation of something, when cultural and collaborative meaning aren’t considered and translated accordingly. 

Thank you for reading!

[xiaomomowrites]

act V

Genshin Impact | TartaLi/ZhongChi

Summary:  “Anyway, childhood dreams are all too easily shattered. Even if you just leave them be, they will fall to pieces all by themselves,” Childe had said ruefully to the traveler, “So someone has to protect them, right?” 

And what about your own, Zhongli questioned, who will protect you, Tartaglia, if not me?

Or, Zhongli is incredibly soft for a specific ginger.

A continuation of act IV; takes place a couple months from where act IV left off. Both stories can be read individually.

A/N: This fic is entirely self indulgent haha. I played Childe’s individual story and couldn’t help but feel obligated to write him being doted on. Seriously, the guy went through that much trouble to take care of his brother and preserve his innocence :( made me wonder if there was anyone to take care of him, too, you know? 

Umm if you wanna cry with me, listen to the song Everything I Wanted by Billie Eilish while or after you read. Please enjoy! - u.n

Spoiler alert: contains spoilers for Childe’s story, Monoceros Caeli.

--

The warmth of the morning sun’s rays always had a way of withering down even the strongest of soldiers. 

A morning not so different from yesterday’s gently pulls Zhongli from a restful slumber. He cracks an amber eye open to observe his surroundings and takes a calming breath, and feels his own chest rise and fall. The sun crept through the window and past the curtains, enveloping the entirety of one ivory wall and reflecting against Childe’s pale skin. Two bodies lay intertwined underneath the thick duvet, creasing every which way where their legs tangled and rose and fell with each breath they took. He glanced down to where Childe had an arm slung across his waist protectively, and allowed himself to bask in the way the weight felt against his body. For the first time in a long time, Zhongli woke with his heart full of peace and completely void of discourse. 

The ex-Archon glances down at his peaceful lover with the ghost of a smile on his face. 

He inches closer and pulls his hand away from where it was laced with Childe’s between their faces. The action released a soft, discontented grunt from the ginger. Zhongli bit his lip to hide a smile, and brought the offending hand up to his Childe’s cheek. He brushes his knuckles across the smooth skin, running his thumb across his cheekbone as he gently pulled away, only to reach back in to repeat the action. 

Childe sniffles in his sleep and subconsciously leans into his touch. 

Zhongli’s heart flutters.

At the heart of it all, he knows that Tartaglia is incredibly soft hearted. Buried beneath is a soul that is desperately clinging to the innocence of childhood that was lost in the abyss. He’s a man that carries burdens as heavy as the rocks he breaks with the flick of his wrist, a man that would sprint to the ends of the earth for his family and anyone he loved. A man that loves so deeply, yet so exclusively. He’s a man that is careful with his heart, a man that needs to be, but in the event that he should entrust another with his entire essence, it should be considered the highest honor. Zhongli’s chest swells. Childe truly is one of a kind. 

Sometimes, Zhongli finds it hard to believe that someone as magnificent as Childe has chosen an old man like him.

His ginger hair falls against his forehead playfully and tickles the bridge of his nose. The side of his head that’s pressed against soft satin pillows also has ginger locks splaying out in every direction, unlike his usual semi-neat hair style. His fingers twitch subconsciously where Zhongli once held them between his own. His breath rises and falls with each steady inhale and exhale, and fuck Zhongli is so in love. He’s really in for it, now. Oddly enough, it’s a familiar feeling. It’s an all consuming feeling that blooms within his chest before spreading like a wildfire down his arms and into his core, down to his legs and out to his arms; the warmth will spread up to his neck and make his head feel a thousand pounds lighter before the process repeats again. It’s akin to what he feels on the battlefield, except, instead of adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream, it’s more like a gentle wave of reassurance. It’s a feeling so unforgettable, even Zhongli in his densest moments has to be able to recognize it. 

Seeing that he roams the earth as a mortal, the only person who could truly be the cause of his downfall now lies in front of him, blissfully unaware of the world around him at the moment. 

What a beautiful feeling it must be, Zhongli ponders, to think of nothing but the luxuries that life has to offer. One of them being waking up next to the love of your unfortunately long life. 

Zhongli likes to think now more than ever, that Guizhong would be proud of him. Look at me now, old friend, he thinks proudly, look at what he’s taught me. Look at what you’ve opened my heart to.

Because even if Childe was a swirl reaction of multiple emotions at once, most of them chaotic, some of them malicious and some of them benevolent, he’s been one of the kindest teacher’s Zhongli has ever met. And the man is six thousand years old. 

It’s in his eyes, Zhongli concludes silently. 

Childe has never been one to be very open with his emotions, but like it or not, they constantly revealed themselves in his obnoxiously blue eyes. His eyes, ever cerulean, have led Zhongli through his heart and showed him the ropes, handling him with care. His eyes were the very reason Zhongli knew that he needed to make amends after the storm, three months ago. Because even if Childe’s posture and tone reflected but playful and meaningless feelings of betrayal, his eyes begged to differ. One look at him as he passed over his gnosis, and Zhongli knew he had hurt him more than he could imagine. More than he had ever expected he could. At the time, all Zhongli knew in him was a soldier. A Fatui Harbinger at the disposal of the Tsaritsa.

Oh, how he was wrong. 

As soon as the traveler, their floating companion, and Signora all but vacated the bank, he hauled ass to Wangshu Inn. Zhongli remembers the way his heart slammed against his chest as he pumped his legs as fast as they could go. It was Ekaterina that had informed him, vaguely, that Childe had plans to leave the next morning, if not earlier. He simply could not let that pass without saying his piece. Stubborn as a rock, Zhongli fled. There, he caught Childe at the last minute with his travel duffel already equipped and ready to go. He thought, for a terrifying second, that he had already lost him. 

And yet here they were, tangled together in a heap of limbs as the sun rose, ever upwards. 

I love him, Zhongli determines, I love him I love him I love him—

“Are you watching me sleep, old man?” 

Ah. He had been too caught up in his emotions to notice Childe’s obvious change in breathing. He had been awake for awhile. Zhongli’s hand, where it had once been running lovingly across his face, has stilled for quite some time and rested gently against Childe’s cheek. Still, Childe’s eyes remain closed.

Zhongli smiles, uninhibited. “I love you,” the words flowed out of him with such ease, he almost didn’t recognize his own voice. 

Both of Tartaglia’s eyes slam open. He doesn’t even get the chance to blink away the sleep the way he usually does in that infuriatingly cute manner. Instead, all he blinks once, nice and slow. Processing.

“Well,” the (former? It’s tentative) Harbinger starts dumbly, “good morning to you, too.”

Zhongli chuckles. “Good morning, my love.”

Tartaglia’s eyes widen once more. The ginger looks at the deity with disbelief, as if he were still processing the fact that the first confession was not a fluke. It truly is a comical sight for the ex-Archon. Another one of the simple pleasures in life, he deems, is bringing happiness to the one he loves most. 

The ginger sits up on one elbow and looks down at the man in confusion, tugging him closer in the process. “What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing is up with me,” Zhongli shrugs and looks up at the object of his affections with such nonchalance it makes Tartaglia’s head spin.

“You’re being all…” the sentence almost dies on his lips, “feely.” His head is too muddled with sleep to think of anything else to say.

“Feely?” He tilts his head in genuine confusion. Zhongli has never heard that word before. 

“Yes, feely!” Tartaglia shakes him restlessly, “what’s with the…” he waves a hand in the air aimlessly.

“I love you,” Zhongli states again, simple as breathing, “is it so wrong for me to tell you?”

“No!” He negates quickly, “I’ve just… you’ve never said it out loud before, I guess.”

Zhongli’s eyebrows pull together in slight distaste. “Have I done something that made you feel otherwise?”

At this, Tartaglia sighs and slumps forward. He lets his forehead thump against the other man’s collarbone and nuzzles closer. “No, you oaf, like I said, you’ve just never said it directly before. Caught me by surprise a little.”

Zhongli brings a free hand to tangle in red hair idly as he speaks. “I’ll be sure to say it more often, then.” And in a moment of insecurity, he follows with, “do you… share the sentiment?”

Tartaglia stills in his arms. Zhongli’s breath stutters for a moment. He wonders if he should drop the subject in its entirety when Ajax’s voice finally returns, albeit muffled by the sheets. 

“More than you could ever know,” he admits quietly. Zhongli ignores the quiver in his voice for Ajax’s sake. “So much so that it scares me.”

Zhongli’s heart soars. “You don’t need to be afraid, darling,” he assures him with confidence, “when was the last time you let someone take care of you?” 

There was a time, Zhongli recalls, when Tartaglia told him all about the day his little brother had visited him in Liyue. The little troublemaker took ten years off of Tartaglia’s life span when he rushed headfirst into a ruin guard factory with little regard to his own safety. Tartaglia, ever the family man, threw himself into danger and shifted into his Foul Legacy Form despite his slow recovery from the last instance. High on adrenaline was the excuse he had used when Zhongli looked at him sternly. He was left coughing and sputtering, a pathetic image of the Eleventh Harbinger that is usually so calm and collected, always looking for a fight. 

Had Zhongli been there, he would have scolded him endlessly. 

“Anyway, childhood dreams are all too easily shattered. Even if you just leave them be, they will fall to pieces all by themselves,” Childe had said ruefully to the traveler, “So someone has to protect them, right?” 

And what about your own, Zhongli questioned, who will protect you, Tartaglia, if not me?

“It’s been a long time, sensei,” Ajax admits into the sheets, “please be patient with me when I’m being difficult.”

Zhongli cradles his nape. “For you, my love, I’d wait another six thousand years.”

[tloujm]

Part I: Going Home

Author’s Notes: This is the first chapter of my first Joel Miller fic. As mentioned in an earlier post on my main page, my desire was to veer away from canon and it does...like a lot. It still keeps enough details to make it familiar, but I rearranged it to fit the plot that I had in my head. This takes place after the events of TLOU. It does utilize some scenes at the end of the first video game, but most of the plot is inspired by the second game. The reader, you, is replacing Ellie. Instead of a father/daughter relationship, there is a romantic relationship between Joel and a more age appropriate OC/reader. The reader is still younger than him but an adult. Its up to your imagination how much of an age difference there is. I try to keep things vague regarding the physical description of his romantic interest to make it easily relatable for a variety of readers. It’ll probably get more specific in later chapters to help with imagery of certain scenes *wink wink*. I’ve proof read it, but let me know if things don’t make sense. Please show love if you enjoyed reading it! Even if no one reads this, I enjoyed pouring out my love (and lust) for Joel. 

Genre: Fluff, Angst

Summary:  Joel drove you to Jackson to live a more stable and comfortable life. It was his best way to protect you; that and lie about what really happened at the Fireflies hospital. His goal was to move on from anything Fireflies related, but you couldn’t quite do that. So many questions ate at you which caused your emotions to conflict. You wanted to trust Joel; you felt something deep for him. Unbeknownst to you, he came to terms with his love for you when your life was threatened at the hospital. It was you or them and he chose you.  

Ship: JoelxReader

“They stopped looking for a cure. I’m taking us home.” Joel said before falling silent on the car ride to Jackson. 

It was a long ride from the hospital in Utah to Maria’s settlement in Wyoming. You would drift in and out of sleep in the back of the car Joel was driving. Home. He said it so naturally as if Jackson was the destination the whole time. A home felt comfortable. The word gave you warm feelings as it was something you hadn’t known for a very long time. That sense of content mingled with the anesthesia allowed you to push away any more questions you had. 

They were still there, however; popping up more frequently in your head. After the car ride, Joel was careful not to mention anything related to the Fireflies or the hospital around you. His lack of transparency caused you to be a bit hesitant. The words just wanted to roll off your tongue; it was so close, you could taste it. Tell me everything. What did the test results say? Where are the other immune? How could they have given up? You remember the look in the eyes of the Fireflies back east. They were so eager to find a cure. 

Just a week ago, there was no one in the world you trusted more than Joel. Being around a group of strangers in a state that you’d never been in, Joel was a crutch. He trusted the place because of Tommy, so you knew you should too, but it wasn’t that easy. At the same time, however, you had the instinct to keep your distance from Joel. He caused an inner conflict with you. 

The settlement itself was easy to love though. The running water, electricity, stable of horses, fresh food and the list went on. It wasn’t easy to maintain these resources, but it was damn better than hunting and gathering out there everyday. Joel picked out an empty house within the settlement walls large enough for the two of you. He fully expected you two to sleep in separate rooms but he did not expect you to reject the house altogether. He may have been your social crutch, but you just felt better being in your own four walls. Being protective, he preferred to have you close, so the two of you made a compromise by agreeing that you live in the garage. It was quite large as it was a two-car. After a little while, you were able to make it up in a way that suited you. Soon enough, the only thing you had to share with him in the main house was the bathroom. It wasn’t that you wanted to avoid him completely. In fact, he peaked a certain interest in you which furthered the inner conflict. 

Having space from Joel was difficult because you hadn’t yet made friends. Between the anesthesia weakening your body and Joel’s air of mystery, people tended to tread lightly around you.The only other people you really talked to outside of him were Maria and Tommy. It was surprisingly easy to fall into a domestic routine of sorts. The two of you ate together, walked around outside together, patrolled together. Watching Joel sit on the porch or relax on the couch after a long day gave you a glimpse into how he must have looked before the world went to shit. After all that he’d been through, watching him rest warmed your heart. He deserved it, you thought. He didn’t smile often, but you caught him smiling more since arriving home. 

Laying in your bed, you thought back to the period right before you arrived at the hospital. It was probably the best part of the whole journey. The weather was just starting to get warm again, the scenery was lush and most impactful of all, the two of you were getting along. Not just in a civil way, but in a ‘something more’ kind of way. At least that’s what you felt and you couldn’t help but tread across those waters. Joel became more open with you. He would play into your flirtatious antics as if he wanted more. Despite knowing that the journey was nearing its end, Joel allowed himself to enjoy your company as you did his. You remembered that he even asked if you wanted to continue the journey further, at one point. He said that the two of you could turn back now and head north to Jackson. Sometimes, you wish that you had chosen that option instead, but you know that you’d just regret not choosing the hospital even more. 

Seeing Joel’s guard fall down, slow as it was, still is sometimes, made you happy because you liked the person that you saw underneath it all. It was still a struggle some days, though. A hardened look would appear on Joel’s face at the mention of the Fireflies, even if it was unrelated to you. Moments like those reminded you of the questions that formed not too long ago in your head. Moments like those prompted you to form new questions. Why did he look so defensive? What was he hiding behind those darkened eyes? 

After a few months of living in Jackson, you had finally mustered up the courage to talk to Joel about that day back in Utah. What was the worst that could happen? You were comfortable around him and he cared about you. He never said those words, but you knew that he did. You wouldn’t be in Jackson if he didn’t. 

“Joel?” You shout from downstairs. You entered the house from the back door without knocking like you usually did. He wasn’t scheduled for patrols today so you were hoping that he was home. 

“M’up here.” His voice responded from upstairs. You walked up the steps until you reached the hallway. The only door open was that of his craft room. 

“You making something?” You gestured to the raw piece of wood in his hand. He looked up from his whittling knife and turned to face you standing in the doorway. 

He shook his head. “I dunno what I should make,” He offered up a half smile. “Just shavin’ off pieces ‘til I figure somethin’ out.” He sat the knife down onto the workbench. “What is it, (Y/N)?”

You shrug casually. “Just wanted to see what you were up to.” You moved into the room and found a place to sit. Joel scoffed at his dinged up piece of wood before setting that down too. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Shoot, darlin’.” His pet name for you always made the nerves that you had melt away, to an extent. You would constantly tell yourself that there was no reason to be nervous around him, but you saw the way he looked when he was triggered by certain words.

You let out a breath. “You know, back in Boston when I was bitten, I was not alone. My friend was there. She was my best friend actually.” You look down at the wooden floor. “Well, she got bitten too. We didn’t know what to do. We were scared. So she says, ‘Let’s just wait it out. We can be all poetic and just lose our minds together.’ She...I didn’t…” You shake your head. “I’m still waiting for my turn.”

“(Y/N)” Joel began before you cut him off.

“It was her, then everyone else I attempted to get close to after that. Why do I get to live when they don’t? Each time, others have had to take my turn for me and I don’t know why?” You pause. “Why am I immune?” It was the first question you had for the Fireflies but everything happened so quick and next thing you knew, everything went black. 

“(Y/N), that’s not on you.” Joel said gently. “I’ve struggled for a long time with survivin’.” He let out a sigh. “No matter what, you gotta keep finding somthin’ to fight for.” He made sure to look you in the eyes, even if you didn’t want to meet his.

“You don’t under---” You start.

Joel cuts in. “Now, I know that’s not what you wanna hear right now, but it’s---”

You speak up. “Back at the hospital...” You watched as his face began to harden. You contemplated what to say next. “Just swear to me. Swear that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.” He repositioned himself in the chair, never breaking eye contact with you.

His voice turned gruff. “I swear.” You stared at him for a long moment to read his face. He looked you dead in the eye and gave you his word. How much could you trust a man that would do that and still lie?

“Okay.” You nodded your head and left him alone in the room. Joel had half a mind to go after you, but decided best to give you space. You asked him to swear and he did.

*****

“(Y/N), You comin’?” Joel asked from the other side of the garage door after knocking. You didn’t forget that Tommy had invited the two of you over for dinner. After talking to Joel, however, you weren’t much in the mood.

“I’m coming.” You said with a huff.

You quickly threw on something nicer than what you usually wore and opened the door. You found him standing there waiting. He turned to you and smiled as if the most intense conversation you’ve had with him in months hadn’t just occurred. You offered a tight lined smile in return before walking off. The air was crisp and the temperature was just right. It didn’t take much for him to keep pace with you. Joel took glances at you every so often. You would only look back at him when he wasn’t. The thing was, you weren’t sure if he was actually lying. You could only translate the feeling in your gut. You stopped on the stoop of Tommy and Maria’s house as Joel lifted his knuckles to rasp the door. He waited a moment and glanced at you again.

“Hey!” Tommy exclaimed after opening the door. “Come on in.”

“Thanks, Tommy.” Joel muttered as he walked in. 

“Yeah, thanks for having us.” You followed. 

“Of course. It’s not often we all have a night off at the same time.” Maria chimed from the dining room. Joel grunted in agreement.

“C’mon, have a seat in here.” Tommy guided us out of the hallway. “Dinner’s just about ready, right hun?”

“I hope y’all like duck! I tried my best with it. I’ve never cooked duck before.” She brought a large roasting dish into the room and sat it in the middle of the table. “If not, there’s still mashed cauliflower and gravy right there and then some lima beans over there.”

“I’m sure it’ll taste really good, Maria.” You said.

“Now, where did y’all find a duck?” Joel inquired as a way to make conversation.

“I went hunting, brother mine.” Tommy replied, patting his older brother on the shoulder before sitting. Joel rolled his eyes and gave Tommy a pointed glare to which he chuckled. “Jesse told me about a new pond he discovered while out on patrol and well, you know, where there’s water, there’s life. So I decided to go see for myself and I took my rifle with me.”

“Shoulda told me. I would’ve gone with you.” Joel responded. He held out his glass as Maria came around with a pitcher of water. He nodded at her in gratitude.

“Nah. Wanted it to be a surprise for the dinner here. You ever had duck?” Tommy turned to you.

“No.” You shook your head. Tommy could sense there was something up between you two but he knew better than to bring it up at the dinner table. He wondered if Maria had caught on.

“Duck.” Tommy stated with a sigh, trying to think of something else to say. “Always thought it was a rich man’s food. Now look at us.” He carved into the breast of the roasted duck and began to serve portions.

“Next time, I’ll bring some caviar.” You spoke up. You saw what Tommy was trying to do, so you in turn tried your hand at comic relief. Luckily for you, it worked. The room broke out in laughter.

Maria sat down and grabbed her husband’s hand to her right and yours to her left. This prompted you to take Joel’s hand into yours. “We are rich in our blessings. We have food and we have each other.”

Maria quickly said grace before everyone at the table dug in. For something you’d never tasted before, it was good. It wasn’t your favorite meat but the dinner as a whole was delicious and fulfilling. You think back for a moment on how your full belly now contrasted to that of yours a year ago. The four of you sat at the table for an hour after finishing the meal. You had to admit that it was an awkward start but these were the people that you were most comfortable with in the whole town. That had to mean something. Even things with Joel subsided, if just for the evening.

The rest of the night was spent in the living room. The four of you caught up with each other. At times, the conversation included everybody and at others, it was just between Tommy and Joel which elicited Maria to spark up a conversation with you.

“How’s things going?” She gestured her head toward Joel. She caught on. “If you guys need anything, you know all you have to do is ask. We’re happy to do what we can.”

“Oh, we’re fine. I’m fine. I’m sure Joel’s fine but thank you.” You replied.

She looked at you for a moment. “Is there something going on between you two? I’ve seen the way Joel looks at you. Even the first time y’all came around to Jackson. I saw it back then and I know you live with him.”

You glanced up at him then shifted back to Maria. “Well technically I don’t...um no. There’s nothing between us. We’re friends.” You shrugged as if you had no idea what she was talking about. “I guess after traveling so far for so long, you just grow attached to each other, but that’s it.”

“I think he’s grown more than attached to you.” She shrugged as well. “But if he’s not who you want, then that’s fine. Just please don’t hurt him. Tommy has told me things about his past all the way down to their childhood. I don’t know what he’s shared with you, but he’s had it rough.” To this day, Joel hadn’t shared much with you, but you didn’t need to know exactly what happened in his past to know he’s had it rough. Everybody’s had it rough in different ways. 

“I could never hurt him.” You meant it. You just hoped that he could say the same about you. “I was wondering if I could ask you something.”

“Go ahead.” She replied.

“How do I go about changing my patrols? I don’t want to stop going out with Joel, but I would like to do it with other people. Make some new friends.”

She smiled. “I think that’s a good idea. Jesse is one of the patrol leaders as well as Tommy of course. Talk to one of them about it. They can pair you up with an experienced patroller to start you off. I know you’ve got experience patrolling with Joel, but it's just protocol when someone takes a different route than usual.” She paused for a moment to down the rest of her water. “Hell, Jesse might even take you out himself. He’s a good kid.”

“Thanks.” You replied.

[petalsmooth]

As for specific careers

I’m hesitant to begin this post because I’m not really passionate about most of the cast. I have some curiosity about the success of their projects but to be blunt...Cole is the only current cast member I would at least flirt with the idea of watching a project outside of my interests. This has always been the case and is not a result of any events in the past few months...no matter how irritating Amy’s meddling in fandom may be. If I had been interested in Lili’s projects before I wouldn’t allow her mother to ruin that.

When discussing the cast you have to recall they are at different stages in their careers. There are people who like to believe life began with Riverdale and all on level decks. Wrong. Therefore why a person takes a project is just as important as the project chosen.

On surface a person could dismiss FFA as an extension of playing to current type. Another angsty teenager and throw in a little romance. Playing it safe and riding Riverdale’s coattails. They’d be wrong. I may not have watched it but I read Baldoni’s interviews and saw some clips and it was a bit more than a YA adult romance. Not quite enough different I would watch, but different enough to be noted in critical reception. He was singled out specifically for his acting even if script a bit formulaic.Also note Riverdale pulls a small audience, certainly not enough to make a theatrical release near 100m dollars WW. With this project Cole was able to present proof to film studios he was worth taking a risk with to co-star in a new more well funded theatrical release with another tv turned film star. More to the point the studio sanctioned his casting as co-lead in a production without an established audience. It is one thing to be Brie Larsen and be cast unknown in the phenomenon that is a Marvel movie but trusting an actor with a property without an inbuilt security blanket? Really shouldn’t be understated in an era where studios are more afraid to take risks. It doesn’t mean it will be successful, but it does mean FFA gave Cole some cache that no other cast member has been gifted. However, Cole earned that fandom from 2-3 decades in the business. He is also trying to diversify/grow as an actor by his podcasts. It takes some skill to sell a story if people cannot see you, look at your eyes, watch your expressions. He is seeking to expand his audience and grow as a vocal actor rather than playing it safe.  

Next is KJ:

KJ may not be the most unpopular cast member for the core four but he is a distant third. I would say he is more popular than Mads or Cami despite never having won an award, but when frequently pitted against Cole that is a given. KJ does not tend to receive critical acclaim for his acting and he does not have a large enough fanbase to carry any project. This is why his team rather smartly imo sought him a lead role in that Christan theatrical film. The project had an inbuilt audience that would be more forgiving of flaws as an actor and potentially could have made a decent profit attracting notice for more mainstream roles. It wouldn’t have garnered him a lead role in any production but maybe gotten his foot in the door for an ensemble project, lesser role in a large production. I don’t fault his team for its failure. I fault KJ. See, if you are going to use this type of project to give you a lift to more mainstream fare then you have to play the part both during and outside of filming. KJ never did that. The audience noticed. COVID or no Covid that film was going to underperform and he was a big part of why. I highly doubt he gets another opportunity soon to be cast as lead in any film, particularly after his antics this summer. But I guess if I were going to attempt to still engineer a more popular career I’d campaign hard for something like the Scream remake. Ensemble cast and don’t have to particularly be good at emoting.

Next is Camilla:

I really don’t have a lot to say about her because she seems fairly self explanatory. KJ has flaws but his team at least seems to have smartly sought out selective opportunities for him. It is not their fault he has not made the most of them. Camilla’s plan of attack seems to be to play to type and take whatever is offered her. Usually projects with little acclaim, little financial backing. She is simply looking for a  paycheck and that is fine I guess but it’s very limited in presenting future opportunities for better roles or to grow as an actress.

Next is Lili:

Lili has perhaps grown the most as an actor on the show. I was not that impressed in the start when paired with KJ but taken out of that sl and placed with Cole, Skeet, Madchen etc...she blossomed and you can tell she worked worked hard and didn’t simply sit on her laurels. No, Lili fans, I don’t think she is better than Cole but she is GOOD and still growing and deserves praise received. She is  still largely dependent on a Riverdale fanbase though and stop bristling over that. She had a small role in Hustler’s. Her main exposure and therefore fanbase comes from a CW show with a small audience. It is not a slam on her to note that reality. This was her first big break, why do you think it is insulting to say the size of her fanbase is not that of a 2-3 decade actor in the business?  Be rational.

In Lili’s defense the movie made before Riverdale caught her a little critical notice that casting director's filed away and played a role in the Hustlers'. casting. I do think despite not seeing that movie either that she and Keke made an impact which is good. Because unlike Cole who perhaps used FFA has  a jump to co-starring in a film Lili’s objective needed to be different. Cole may have been a child at the time but he WAS successfully captured in film with Big Daddy. TV acting and movie acting are different, not everyone can make the transition. Actors have spoken about how  you have to moderate your responses on film as opposed to tv. In essence a little goes a long way. Lili showed she could make that transition. Now, for a future? I think she needs to work on building an audience beyond Riverdale and that requires success outside of Riverdale in a larger role. Personally I would be trying to book her for either a supporting role  with a strong cast headlining or a project with an established fanbase. Examples of that are popular comic franchises, books, broadway  productions...basically a project that has a built fanbase that wishes a project to succeed rather than starting from scratch. That Wicked production would be an example of this. I personally would have her steer clear of something like the Scream remake.

The other avenue is to pursue the Indie track for critical acclaim but many of the actors in that field have had a few mainstream successes to bolster their bonafides at the box office. Above all, even in indie track, box office matters and the prime goal as a working actor is to show you have that in your back pocket. That should be her team’s goal.

In any event as with my prior post I make no predictions about the future, I only note they are at different stages in their career and fans should stop pretending otherwise. I also note fame and opportunities can be ephemeral and need to take advantage when present before windows close. BUT that is for the actors themselves to chose FOR themselves not their fans OR their agents OR their families.

[bigskydreaming]

What do you think of dick hability to read the body language in new 52 People act as it doesn't exist and it really bugs me because thats one of the few things i really liked from new 52

I actually really like it, and it fits with some longtime headcanons of mine, but it hasn’t been touched on enough that I can understand it rubbing some people the wrong way, due to Cass.

But its like I said in that post earlier this week, about how I think its pointless to be ‘possessive’ of character traits…..I think Dick is an expert hacker himself, but I don’t think he’s on Babs’ level. Nobody is on Barbara’s level. But his own expertise isn’t diminished because he’s not on the level of the pretty much undisputed best hacker in the DC Universe. Neither is Barbara’s expertise lessened by virtue of Dick, as well as Tim, Bruce and most of the rest of the Batclan, all being damn good at it in their own right.

I see it as being the same thing here. I like the idea that Dick is intuitive and highly capable when it comes to reading body language, for a number of reasons, but I don’t think it suddenly makes him Cass, means he’s as good at it as Cass, or that Cass being on a whole other level with that, being like…lessened or threatened because Dick’s own capabilities in that regard are touched on every now and again.

I’ve actually said this many times before, but I think this insistence so many fans have about their faves being the only ones associated with certain traits, stories or characteristics actually does them a disservice, because when you stop viewing things as a competition and instead look at it as a chance for common ground, you unveil SO many possibilities.

For instance, I’ve always felt, long before the New 52, that it makes sense for Dick to have a strong, unconscious understanding of body language….as in, he’s at the upper levels of what humans are naturally capable of having in that regard, which of course still puts him at an entirely different level than Cass, whose mastery of it is deliberately BEYOND peak human levels because of her own backstory.

But if you think about it, Dick having skills in that direction makes sense for him AND opens up a lot of areas for Dick and Cass to bond more AND have occasional conflict.

Dick is one of the only other Batkids aside from Cass AND Damian, who knows what its like to be raised literally from the time he can walk, to be a proficient athlete with complete control of his body as like…a lifestyle. The kind of demands that makes of someone, the way that instills certain work ethics and instincts in someone practically from birth, to such a degree that it probably NEVER becomes something he can wrap his mind around, that for some people, these kinds of habits AREN’T second nature, practically built into him….that’s something that I don’t think even some of the other most highly capable athletes in the DC universe are fully capable of grasping…like Bruce, Tim, Jason, Dinah, etc. Obviously this doesn’t lessen any of their skills or proficiency as athletes, just as professional athletes who don’t start training in their chosen fields until later in childhood can be just as capable as ones who started in early childhood. But it makes I think, for a slightly different mindset.

I think this is part of why Dick understands Damian so much better or more easily than a lot of others do. Because Damian was raised this way too, just with different end goals than Dick. Dick can’t relate to being raised to kill, to stamp down on his urge to show affection, the specific training methods of the League with someone as young as Damian, no. But that unconscious, built in awareness of his own body in ways that even a lot of other athletes or fighters never develop just because they approach their bodies and training so differently…that I think Dick gets, and because of that he gets Damian and his own work ethic, and the way that telling him to not push himself so hard or take it easy at times….like is going to be totally wasted on Damian, FOR THE SAME REASONS those things have so often been wasted on Dick. 

Telling someone to be careful not to strain or overwork their body is not going to carry a whole lot of weight with a twelve year old kid who has spent ten of those twelve years being instilled with a greater awareness of his own body and capabilities than anyone else will EVER grasp….let alone someone who only met them a year or two ago (notice how this applies to both Damian AND Dick).

Similarly, causing people to worry when they go throw themselves into an extremely rigorous workout routine in the name of ‘relaxing or de-stressing’ is always going to be a thing, when other people just fundamentally don’t get that for someone raised from birth to eat, sleep and breathe their own physicality….this IS relaxing.

So IMO Dick and Damian have at least that much in common, which has given Dick particular insight into Damian that others don’t have, and helped him get further in reaching Damian and developing a bond with him. And extend this to Cass and her own backstory, and I think they all three have this in common, and thus could share this understanding between all three of them….thus giving Cass more opportunities and ways to bond with Dick and Damian in particular.

Continue on for ten thousand more words (lol, I wish I was exaggerating. Oh, me) of Dick Meta, Cass Meta, and Dick and Cass Meta, below the cut:

Now, add in the fact that Dick wasn’t just raised from birth to be a world-class athlete, like Cass was…..but as I often stress, just as important….he was raised from birth to be a PERFORMER. This is where I think his instinctive awareness of body language would have come from. Because he was raised to do all of his athletics with apparent ease, to show none of the strain it takes, to make it look like art, like the performance that it so usually was. And he was also raised to not just perform for a crowd, but to command their attention, to draw eyes, to feed off their energy and use that to tailor his own performances, his every action, to achieve maximum impact. 

Don’t forget Dick was a world-class acrobat as a CHILD. He was quite literally a child prodigy….and people LOVE meeting a child prodigy. Something like the encounter with the Drakes’ that’s part of Tim’s own backstory would have been an every day occurrence to Dick. Which means it was every bit as likely a part of his early training to be able to glean from the rich strangers that wanted a photo op with the young, exhausted child performer that probably just wanted to go to bed now….exactly what would go over best with those strangers, expedite this encounter, and enable Dick to move on to the next one or better yet, out of the tent ASAP.

I’ve talked about the classism Dick endures just by virtue of being a circus performer…its never been about how much money he and his parents did or didn’t have, its about the fact that most people look down on circus performers as like…an amusement to enjoy, not athletes to respect. You can’t deny that people summoning to mind an Olympic level gymnast would view that gymnast in an entirely different way than they would a Cirque de Soleil acrobat they called to mind, even if they had similar levels of athletic skill….because as a society, we regard something like the Olympics as a WORTHY pursuit for an athlete of that caliber….whereas one might sit in the audience of a circus and enjoy the performance, but that doesn’t mean most people walk out of that tent thinking of what they just saw in terms of the SKILL rather than their entertainment, because there’s this unconscious bias that like….if one wanted to actually be respected for their athletics, they’d aim for the Olympics, not to wear gaudy costumes and face paint and travel around in a caravan and never put up roots in any one place, etc. 

Our view of the circus goes well back before Dick’s creation, even, but its very much there. You simply can’t argue that most people give circus performers the respect their skillsets deserve and would merit in other situations…..and you bet your ass, someone like Dick who was raised as one, would have been instilled from a very young age with an awareness of how to glean when someone was treating him with disdain…and respond without offending them, but still not necessarily letting them impact him with their disdain.

Because one of the things I don’t think I’ve ever talked much about is how for as much as we talk about Dick’s self esteem issues and insecurities in regards to Bruce…..the boy Bruce first took in as an orphan was NOT overly insecure. If anything, Dick was the complete opposite. He knew EXACTLY what he was capable of, and was not shy about insisting upon it. I would say by all accounts and reading between the lines, the Graysons did a tremendous job in instilling in Dick from a young age an amazing degree of self-confidence….WHICH probably accounts for a LOT of the later conflict between Dick and Bruce, because it was never just a matter of Dick not getting the vocal or visible respect or appreciation from Bruce that he wanted….it was that Bruce wasn’t giving him it in the forms he’d been raised with, and grown accustomed to. 

Its that disconnect that I think Dick has always struggled with…where he KNOWS, on some level, that Bruce loves and respects him, and holds enormous appreciation for Dick’s own skills….but Dick only knows this because of….well, what he gleans from Bruce’s body language and his own awareness of Bruce and his nature. He has to read between the lines, and still be left guessing (since Bruce is himself pretty much a master of obscuring his own emotions and body language, in as much as anyone is, to the extent that only someone like Cass can willfully pierce that shroud). 

But my point is, there’s every reason in the world to think that Dick’s parents were very good at preparing their world-class prodigy son for the pressures of the spotlight he grew up in, and heavily prioritized making sure he wasn’t going to be diminished by the disdain of whatever snobs he encountered during the meet and greet portion of that lifestyle. And to be good at that, to know how to manage people who make you want to put your fist in their face while giving away nothing but a nod and smile, and still manage to seize enough control over the encounter to walk away with your head held high rather than feeling like you were just thrown to the wolves….that takes a high mastery of body language and an instinctive grasp of how to read people and put them at ease, to seize control of a conversation from someone who is used to having control at all times in all places. You have to know how to PERFORM, at all times. And in this regard, Dick was every bit as much a prodigy as he was in his acrobatics.

IMO Dick Grayson on his A-game could make Brucie weep in envy. I think this training, this ability to read people with just a look and adapt himself accordingly, to make the most of the encounter while giving up the least along the way….I think its absolutely nothing that Bruce himself taught him, that Dick already came to Gotham with, and its what ACTUALLY enabled Dick to survive the lifestyle and spotlight that Bruce’s lifestyle and spotlight made Dick grow up in. Its what enables Dick to handle the pressures of leadership and get along so well with his various teammates, coordinate dissenting personalities well enough to create teams that are famous for how well they gel and work together in battle no matter what they’re like when interacting in civilian arenas. Bruce, for all his skills, is notoriously not a people person. He knows how to manage people. He struggles with understanding them. And this has always been where in comparison to Bruce, Dick soars.

He didn’t learn any of what he knows about being a people person from Bruce. But he sure as hell learned it SOMEWHERE.

And I think that somewhere is in the circus, with his parents and whatever other various babysitters he picked up things along the way from. A kid as friendly and outgoing as Dick would have been soaking things up from all the circus performers like a sponge, I bet. Little tips and tricks of the trade from not just the knife-throwers, as is occasionally referenced….but also the fortune teller and ringmaster and clowns and magicians and escape artists. A couple dozen varieties of different masters of their own crafts, with one thing in common of all of them….all their crafts rely on performing. On reading an audience, even audiences of one. And selling that audience exactly what they’re looking for from that performance.

Let’s not forget that for all Dick’s insecurities and self-esteem issues as an adult….those almost unilaterally exist in regards to his family and closest friends. For the same reasons as he struggles with these things with Bruce….because they’re not great at showing Dick the respect and appreciation he needs from THEM, SPECIFICALLY….in the forms he would recognize, the forms he was raised since birth to receive and recognize as such, when his parents and circus family gave him these things.

Outside matters pertaining to just his family and closest friends, however, Dick is not remotely insecure. There’s a huge chasm between the former and the latter, in terms of how Dick acts and conducts himself. And its probably a large part of why Dick is so adept at not giving away to his family that he’s more in need of their acknowledgment and support than they realize….because Dick spends so MUCH of his life genuinely not giving a shit what most people think about him or say about him….he’s that much more proficient at wearing that as a mask when interacting even with his family of detectives, who are pretty good at reading even him in a lot of other aspects.

Because I maintain that Dick absolutely endured a hell of a lot of classism and racism growing up, and still does….which is not okay no matter how well he endures it….but he for the most part clearly doesn’t let this constant barrage effect his general self-esteem, and that is fairly important to note. Just as is the fact that like….he calls himself Dick, by his own choice, because its more important to him that he hold on to what he can of his parents, every last physical reminder he has available to him….and thus I think its especially shitty to write his second family using his parents’ fond nickname for him as a joke or insult, and probably hurts Dick when they do it….but the rest of the time? The general public making him a punchline for it? Dick could give a fuck. Same with general opinions of his costumes and what he looked like as Robin or early Nightwing, etc, etc.

Dick Grayson is not an insecure person overall….and that I credit entirely to his first parents, the Graysons.

All of this feeds into that overall awareness of body language, reading people for emotional cues and ways to survive a lifetime in the spotlight without being consumed by it…and without alienating people in the process, because a performer needs an audience, and growing up in a circus taught Dick early on that he had to find a way to end these encounters with asshole patrons in a way that kept his head held high but DIDN’T cost the circus - his family - their patronage in the future.

(Another reason I maintain Dick’s oh so infamous temper has been vastly more inflated than fits either canon evidence of it OR his overall characterization…..a man who has been raised from birth in the spotlight and constantly exposed to people who look down on him….like, KNOWS how to control his temper. I’m sorry, he just does, lol. This is basic understanding of human awareness. If your entire life is in one spotlight or another, be it the circus then Wayne Manor and Page Six, as well as being one of the most focused on superheroes in the entire cape community….and you’re somehow overall regarded in all public perceptions as charming….you do NOT have an infamous temper. You just don’t. People love to shove public figures off their pedestals whenever possible….and in both his civilian and superhero personas, Dick Grayson is on very high pedestals. There is no way in hell his general reputation in any of his communities would be anything close to what it is if he actually has as short and nasty of a temper as people love to spin him as having, because of a dozen scenes taken mostly out of context, over the course of 80 years as a high profile character. I’ll stop harping on this one when it stops being the first thing to come to mind when people cite a ‘flaw’ of his.)

Going back to reasons for him to have such a mastery of body language in his own right….Dick was also raised from birth to do his routines as part of a TROUPE, a group of athletes, not just singular by himself. Thus, a TON of what he was raised practicing every day….would have included reading his family’s body language for cues on what to do next. Watching for signs that something might be wrong or off even just by a second and requiring that he adjust his own movements to compensate for that, when they’re all fifty feet in the air and with the crowd cheering so loudly they couldn’t possibly communicate with words….this could literally be a matter of life and death for a troupe of performers whose reputation hinged on them being death-defying in their stunts. 

Yes, in most continuities its stressed that his parents didn’t let Dick perform the most dangerous routines with them yet, due to his age…..but that doesn’t mean they weren’t preparing him for them as early as humanly possible, given that its never too early to start working on various skills that are integral to these kinds of things. 

And with one of the most fundamental and essential skills needed to be part of a group of performers who excel at dangerous routines being communication, this is all the more reason to think they were probably teaching Dick from a very young age to pick up on body language and watch for even the slightest hints of different indicators of stress, fatigue, anxiety, fear, etc. 

Because compensating for something going wrong with a partner’s part of a routine can be essential in matters of teamwork. (Again, just gotta give a shout out to the Flying Graysons here, because its not stated enough that everything Dick knows about being a solo vigilante, he learned from Bruce, but everything he knows about teamwork is either instinctive or built in, OR learned from his parents, part of a team). And most of the time, when we’re talking about shifting position just enough while fifty feet above a crowd in order to make a catch of a partner that launched with not quite enough momentum or is overshooting their mark….compensating or cheating one’s own routine just enough to be there for your partner is the kind of thing that needs to happen in a SPLIT-SECOND…..like, with you making the adjustment the micro-second you realize its necessary….which means you have to be picking up the slightest hint of it the second it shows up in their body language, like a….what’s the word…oh yeah. A pro.

And given that these acrobats were all performers as much as athletes, with it being a given that their performances needed to appear as light and carefree at possible at all times, for the sake of the crowd….they couldn’t afford to give away obvious tells of anxiety, stress or exhaustion, had to keep a performer’s mask of total poise and control at all times throughout their routines….which makes it all the more likely Dick’s own ability to read body language and instinctive or hidden cues is exceptional….as he had to be trained from early on to be able to see behind those masks and read his parents and family for tells even while they were doing their professional best to keep those very tells hidden so that nobody would pick up on them…unless they were a master of reading such things.

So all in all, I believe that among however many languages Dick Grayson was taught from a very early age as part of a globe-trotting circus….one of those was body language itself, even if it was never actually couched in those terms, as though it were an actual language being taught the way it was regarded as such for Cass….as for Dick and his family, it was probably just regarded as tools of the trade, a necessary component of the performer and acrobat toolbox Dick was raised familiarizing himself with from as early as he began walking and talking.

Which brings us back to Cassandra…..as stated, I think Dick is exceptional at reading body language, with as much mastery of that as is possible at peak human potential…..but, that doesn’t make him the equal of Cass, whose own skills in that regard are beyond even that, due to the precise and comic book nature of her own origin. And how her father did something similar but for totally different reasons and no regard whatsoever for Cassandra’s well-being.

So I don’t think there’s any reason that Dick being the next best at reading and reacting to body language takes anything away from Cass being the undisputed master of that, and interpreter of the Batfamily’s hidden emotional cues.

In fact, allowing Dick to be acknowledged as adept at reading body language benefits her character….as she’s so often solely used as the interpreter of the emotionally stunted Batfamily’s attempted repression of their emotional cues. Basically just being treated as a plot device rather than a character in her own right.

As much as I project onto Dick and thus talk about fandom’s neglect of various facets of his character, it can’t be denied that the same is true of Cass….times ten.

Fanfics spend WAY more time using Cass to establish or well, tattle on various Batfamily members’ emotions than they spend on giving Cass emotions of her own in regards to whatever situation is going on in a given scene.

 And since Dick is so often used as the family mediator or peacemaker anyway, this doesn’t actually change anything about his own role in things….it merely supplies a concrete reason for why he so often is defaulted into that position, and so good at it, despite his family’s overall emotional constipation. He has to be amazing not just at teamwork, but reading hidden emotions as well, in order to manage his family and their various arguments even just as well as he does already.

(Just a quick clarification…earlier when I noted that Dick’s own insecurities largely stem from the Batfamily and not always knowing or trusting where he stands with them….its not that he has no ability to read them despite their own very well crafted performer masks. Its just that as good as he is, he’s still never going to be as good at this as Cassandra is, and there’s still going to be things he misses, or things he misinterprets. And additionally, the problem remains, that he shouldn’t HAVE to glean any hints of familial love, respect and appreciation from his family’s body language. When he’s constantly relying on subtext and body language to reassure himself that they really do love and appreciate him, its inevitable that sooner or later self-doubts and second guessing are going to start to creep in. So its not that Dick doesn’t ever see these things in his family’s body language. Its that over time, I believe this has progressed to the point where even when he sees these cues, he second guesses himself as to whether he’s actually seeing things that are there, or just seeing what he wants to see. And since none of them are exactly making a point to validate what he sees or thinks he sees with actual validation in indisputable forms, like verbal confirmation of this…eventually, Dick’s own skills reading body language become irrelevant here, since he himself is aware he’s an unreliable narrator when trying to narrate what his family’s body language is saying. He wants it to be saying all the things he uses to assuage whatever hurt he feels for not hearing them tell him these things…thus he’s too aware of his own bias when reading them for cues to actually trust any of the cues he reads, that could otherwise confirm this.)

Anyway. So acknowledging or even emphasizing Dick’s own exceptional abilities with body language would actually be to Cassandra’s benefit, I maintain. Because without expecting anything of Dick that isn’t already expected of him and his role in canon and fandom, it merely provides additional support for the idea he’s good at playing family mediator even with as emotionally repressed most of their family is. Thus freeing up Cass from constantly being looked to as the interpreter for all the things most of their family have trouble saying….and allowing for more focus to be paid to her own emotions. And letting her HAVE them, in the first place.

Because we have to talk about the elephant in the room here: racism in regards to Cass. The quiet, stoic, normally serene and beatific Asian martial arts master is a racist as hell trope, and its one that makes all too frequent an appearance when Cass is used at all in fics. AND canon.

Its not that Cass can’t be all those things at various times. Its that they can’t be ALL that she is. At ALL times. (And that, for the record, she’s not usually ANY of those things in canon that actually tries to develop her rather than use her as a one-note trope in its own right. Cassandra Cain…serene? LOLOL. Please, I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it ain’t the Cass I know and love).

First of all, give her a sense of humor, because she has one, and its amazing. You’ll note I make a point whenever I write her to emphasize her having a kind of dry, sardonic wit that is not at all opposed at being at her siblings’ expense, lol. I mean, its not like that’s the only take possible on her, or even just her sense of humor, I just mean…have one. Humor is one of the most telling representatives of a person’s characterization. By that I mean, a person’s sense of humor is one of the things we most initially associate with them in our mind, and a character having a distinct sense of humor is one of the easiest and best ways to develop them as having their own character voice, something that marks them as distinct in your awareness from other characters. Where if you close your eyes and picture them in a scene, what comes out when they talk, like, to make a joke….isn’t interchangeable with just any other character. It sounds or feels like them, specifically.

And just FYI, you might have an easier time writing Cass making jokes if you allow her to form full sentences. She can speak English, has been written speaking English quite well in the past, and the insistence on broken English when writing her that way in canon is shitty and racist in and of itself anyway, so those particular takes on her don’t need to be respected let alone emulated in fanfiction. Let Cass Speak English In Complete Sentences 2KForever. She’ll still be Cass, I promise you. But the changes made to her brain in canon that allowed her to finally learn spoken languages years after her brain had finished developing, like, that happened early enough after Cass’ debut that there’s really no excuse for writing fic where she’s been part of the family for years and still hasn’t picked up a strong grasp of English. 

Y’know how I’m always saying the entire Batfamily are ALL Mary Sues, they are a family of Mary Sues, that is pretty much their high concept as a group, that they’re a composite of the most otherwise competent people in the world and completely emotionally incompetent at the same time? Like, it applies here, because as I also harp on a lot about, I think all of the Batfamily are actual literal geniuses, and I do mean all. Cassandra included. She’s a master of her own many areas of expertise and thus IMO more than capable of picking up languages fairly quickly once the canon barrier to her doing that earlier in life is removed. It just looks and sounds weird and suspect, to insist on writing her as never moving past broken English, IMO. 

And also, like, she doesn’t need to ever be as talkative as Steph, nor do I think would it fit her to be written that way either, but there’s a very wide range of options between that and hardly ever talking at all. I do think she defaults to being one of the more quiet ones in a room, as in one of the last to speak….but give her reasons to be that way, instead of just more imitation of our media’s racist insistence on treating Asian characters as the quiet, all-knowing keepers of sage wisdom who only share their truths once you’ve made the trek up to their mountain top. 

So again just in terms of my own personal take, I tend to write Cass as being one of the last to speak up when around people she’s not as familiar with, because its her version of keeping her back to the wall of a room so no one can sneak up behind and surprise her. She’s only quiet at first in my stuff because focusing on using conversations to glean as much information as she can about the people in them before jumping in is just like, a form of intel-gathering for her and her past left her with a tendency to be as overly cautious in her own way as the rest of her family, and this is what her way looks like. 

(Dick puts on his performer’s mask, Jason blusters and leads with bravado, Damian adopts a position of superiority and will only climb down once you sufficiently peak his interest, Tim recites facts and trivia and likes to bore people he dislikes into submission so you give up and go away, Duke is the family member who really makes friends so easily that any time he makes enemies, his friends have already plotted to destroy you before Duke even gets around to trying to do that himself, Babs has already hacked your bank account and credit rating by the time you open your mouth and thus feels no social anxiety whatsoever as worst comes to worst, she can always just tank your credit score to make herself feel better, and upon meeting you for the first time, Steph either adopts you or punches you in the throat, depending on which way her gut is leaning. As for Bruce, well. He’s terrified of pretty much all social settings, but he’d have to actually admit to that for the first time in recorded human history before anyone could actually cite what ‘his way’ of dealing with social interactions he’s wary of might be. I mean, its basically just ‘Brucie’, but you get what I mean.)

So I mean, its not inherently bad to write Cass as being quieter than the rest of her siblings, and you don’t need her quoting Shakespeare back and forth with Jason in order to prove you’re not writing her speaking broken English. Its just. Do some digging in her head before settling in and writing what you’ve found there. Actually TRY getting in her head in the first place. Spruce it up a bit, redecorate your surroundings, make it feel lived in and homey. Give it CHARACTER. Whenever you write a character choice, in my personal opinion, you should, if asked, be able to back up that character choice by having a reason you feel the character would choose that. 

For me, I write Cass being the quietest of her siblings in social settings simply because she’s doing recon first, and of her various skillsets, spoken language is the one she’s mastered most recently and thus she has the least familiarity with….and thus is the last thing she turns to in any given situation, because she’d rather go down the list and run through every other skill she has to see if it could apply here, before resigning herself to having to converse with the person in front of her because she doesn’t think Bruce would accept “I didn’t know how else to change the subject” as a justification for stabbing someone in a non-vital and easily healed location that had the fringe benefit of rapid bloodloss leading to them passing out fairly quickly.

And of course, none of this applies with Batfamily, because she is comfortable with her family for the most part, and thus when I write her being the most quiet in those group scenes, its because she prefers listening their just purely because she finds her siblings’ antics entertaining. And also because I view her as being as batshit competitive as the rest of them, so IMO she’s always plotting the perfect conversational one-hit KO to have at the ready before she wades in. Because in the Batfamily, even ordinary conversations are something you can and should win. Otherwise, what’s even the point? LOL.

Also in terms of my own stuff, I tend to write Cass and Tim as having very similar forms of wit, and my personal take on them is that they both have just slightly different degrees of that same dry, sardonic kind of commentary, as their primary display of humor. This doesn’t necessarily always match their canon characterizations and how they display humor there - but its due to the fact that they’re two of the characters canon most rarely allows to show a sense of humor in recent years, and it tends to be all over the place more often than not. This is a major departure from how they both were portrayed in the 90s, where Tim’s humor was much more consistently in line with what I’m describing…and thus, so was Cassandra’s, when she debuted and developed her own primary characterization. 

So basically, I consider Tim to be a major influence on Cass’ humor….or more accurately, in the shape her own sense of humor more commonly takes. Because it was with and around Tim that Cass first started to pick up a lot of social cues and explore her own sense of self for pretty much the first time in her life. 

Stephanie’s humor, by contrast is a lot more loud and gregarious and in your face….which when you put the three of them in scene together as a trio, like they once spent a lot of time as, positions her as an extremely different version of the ‘straight man’ to their comedic duo. Because Steph doesn’t need anyone to back up or appreciate her own humor, she’s already landing the punchlines way before anyone else has even had time to think of any, and she doesn’t care what the reception is, the lovable loudmouth goof that she is. Which allows for Cass and Tim to sigh behind her and exchange sidelong glances and kinda….narrate her theatrics in that ‘faces the camera like they’re on The Office’ sort of way, which I mean, I personally find hilarious when they do it, and she’s not remotely bothered by, because like, she’s fucking hilarious and anyone who doesn’t get that is simply wrong and needs to be pitied, if you ask her.

Anyway, that’s just why my own depictions of Cass and Tim share a lot of their humor in common and some of their other characteristics….they’re the ones Cass either consciously or unconsciously picked up from Tim, as he was one of the first people for her to genuinely feel comfortable around and thus someone she trusted to both have knowledge of and mastery over the various social cues she was now finding she needed to learn because of her new environments. 

(Of course, this is one of the times where Cass was dead wrong about something, IMO, as she might have overestimated Tim’s mastery of certain specific social cues and her body-language reads have her aware people aren’t responding her own attempts at mimicking them in the way she’s fairly confident they should be, and she’s not sure what she’s doing wrong there. Oh well. She’s still better off than if she’d picked Bruce to emulate there. When she asked him, he’d stiffened and radiated such intense discomfort, even Steph froze in mid-ramble as she sensed it on even the complete opposite side of the Cave.)

ANYWAY. Wrapping up THAT particular tangent and cycling back around to Dick and Cass having skill with reading body language in common….I think this could also be a huge opportunity to write Dick having a dynamic with Cass that’s unique to just the two of them and distinct from the dynamics they have with the rest of their family. Not to give them a super special bond but just because I mean, all the sibling dynamics between the various individual Batkids should ideally have their own flavor, because nobody interacts with two different siblings in the same way. Each sibling is their own unique individual, and thus should have their own unique dynamic when interacting with them.

So I like to headcanon Dick and Cass in private being the family gossips. They love dishing on the rest of the family with just each other….and being the two most skilled at seeing behind their family’s masks (and thus what their family most wants to keep hidden, to varying degrees), they have more dirt on everyone else than most intelligence agencies have on their nations’ enemies. Of course, they’re both staunchly moral, so they would never ever use their powers here for evil, or to hurt or embarrass their family.

They would, however, occasionally indulge in snickers and giggles about it behind closed doors. Look, shut up, they’re BONDING, they have childhood trauma, its fine.

And if Cassandra’s superior skills with body language means she inevitably has more gossip to share with Dick than vice versa, that’s okay, she’s still more than happy to share. He’s the one who introduced her to the joys of gossip, after all, so if anyone’s entitled to it, its him.

I also headcanon that because they’re both the best at reading body language, there are occasions when in group environments or just at the dinner table with the whole family, they both happen to pick up on certain cues or be aware that a sibling is lying through their teeth about something or being full of shit, and then catch each other’s eye and give the faintest of eye rolls or ‘can you believe they’re falling for this.’ Which sometimes other siblings catch, because Cass and Dick have forgotten to be subtle about it. Or did they not forget anything, and are just being trolls and instigating shit for the giggles? Who can say. Probably just them, which they find quite fun.

In fact, its slightly possible that the rest of the family, ever since Cass joined them, have developed a slightly inflated estimation of Dick’s own skills with reading body language, and now credit him with more of a mastery of it than even he actually possesses. 

See, I have this one headcanon that every now and then, just to mess with their family, Dick and Cass make a point to hold a silent conversation in front of them. You know that thing people who know each other really well do with just their eyes, like managing to convey certain impressions to each other just by being expressive enough in ways and about things they’re pretty sure the other person will get and be on the same wavelength about?

Yeah, that, but Cass and Dick do it without exaggerated facial expressions. And for like. Ten whole minutes. Meanwhile, Tim’s like: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not buying any of this” and then determinedly ignoring them. Jason’s annoyed because he can’t actually ever seem to ignore them, and then this builds into something like: “You guys better not be talking about me behind my back. Or I mean, right in front of my face. Whatever. And you definitely better not be talking about Tim right in front of his face and not including me!” Steph just keeps continuing on with whatever she’s doing, entirely unbothered, because she knows if they’re actually communicating anything important (or even slightly of interest to her), she’s sure she can get Cass to tell her later. And she’s not wrong, of course. Duke just shakes his head and feels better about being slightly jealous due to how funny it is watching it get under everyone else’s skin, but in the name of not feeling left out, he joins in on shit-talking Dick and Cass in order to have Vengeance. “B, didn’t you ever teach them its rude to exclude people from your conversation? You know, some people would say its never to late to ground your children.”

Damian, by stark contrast to the rest, completely abandons whatever else he’s doing to watch them both as intently as he can for as long as they persist. As he’s probably third in line behind the two of them when it comes to instinctive grasp of body language, due to the whole ‘being raised to read/scan others for as much information as possible just from their movements. Y’know. In case you have to kill them.’ In his case, his full grasp of it was hindered by seemingly being taught to dismiss certain specific emotions as irrelevant or a weakness, and though Dick and the rest of the family have by now done a pretty good job at getting him slowly but surely past all of that, its like retraining himself, trying to consciously now pick up on cues that he spent a decade discarding and moving past the second he saw them. 

But he’s determined to become as adept at reading body language now as even Grayson is, at least, even if his implicit acceptness that he’ll never have the same mastery their sister does is fully internalized and something he’ll never admit to, even on pain of death. Both Dick and Cass have at various times offered to help him with it, but he refuses as a point of pride….he wants to do it himself. So every time they have one of these ‘conversations’ in front of the family, he drops everything else he does and scrutinizes them for the whole thing like he’s a codebreaker sure that in time, he’ll crack the code and all its secrets will be revealed. (Mostly, its more like he dreams of the day he’s become good enough at it that he and Dick can hold silent conversations like this and he can rub it in Drake’s face. Hah! It will be glorious, Internal Damian insists).

Even Bruce himself isn’t entirely sure whether or not Dick and Cass are fully communicating the whole time they converse like this, or just faking it for funsies. It frustrates him to no end that he’s yet to figure out a way to just…ask them, without giving away that he doesn’t actually already know the answer, and that’s BUGGING THE CRAP OUT OF HIM, C’MON!!

(Of course, both Dick and Cass have fully picked up on his frustration and thus realized he’s as clueless as the rest of the family, and its this precise thing that they spend most of these ‘conversations’ silently giggling about to each other).

And in terms of fleshing Cass out…..part of what frustrates me so much about the excuse people give for focusing on certain negative fanon takes on Dick, that its done to make him more interesting, because no one’s perfect….

Its never been that this claim, in and of itself, is untrue. The problem I’ve always had with it is they add in ‘flaws’ in the name of making Dick more realistic, while at the same time ignoring plenty of material that’s already present in Dick’s character…but which focusing on, would require people spend more time and insight on him than they want to. Just making Dick angry and ‘remind people he has a temper’ is quick and easy, in comparison.

However, the other part of why this claim bugs me so much is because it IS valid and applies to fanon’s two dimensional takes of two other characters….who are never written with any kind of flaws which is part of why they come across as fairly superficial in a lot of works. And that’s Duke and Cass. When they show up at all, their usage is VERY superficial, and like….I don’t think I’ve ever read something with either of them, where they were written having a conflict with another member of the family, other than just sometimes Cass not liking Jason because of his stance on killing. (And usually this is in Jason-centric fics, so its not really in the name of fleshing out Cass so much as making Jason more misunderstood and Cass the bad guy for not respecting that okay he kills people, but only because he’s very sad, she should be able to see that, ugh have a heart).

So, I also headcanon there is a slightly negative dynamic between Dick and Cass specifically, albeit one Dick himself is not aware of. 

(And also complicated by the fact that as much as I gripe about Dick being perceived as having negative dynamics with the rest of his siblings that are all his fault, Cass is the ONE sibling this is ACTUALLY true of, even if it was only really in one story, Redemption Road. I go into that in more depth in another meta, but long story short it was after she was brainwashed by Deathstroke and killed because he made her, and Dick was written as wary and untrusting of her return, not because he didn’t like her - they’d already spent a lot of time in years before this bonding - but rather because he didn’t trust that they could be totally sure the brainwashing was gone yet, and thought Bruce was being too relaxed about that. I maintain this is a callback to his own issues with that time he was brainwashed by Brother Blood and people were a lot less great at understanding in the aftermath that a lot of his choices hadn’t been his to actually make, and that there was bitterness here on his part for Cass getting the understanding and support from Bruce that we never saw Dick get when it was him in a similar position. Kinda a Prodigal Son type vibe. But point being, this was a brief period and it didn’t last, but it is there so there’s interesting potential to have Dick and Cass not DISLIKE each other by any means, but just at times be slightly uncomfortable around each other and trying their best to hide it...from the one other person in the family most capable of/likely to pick up on it).

So what I think it is on Cass’ part, the discomfort/slight ‘not quite sure how I feel about this’ aspect of things.... Like, its just a headcanon, and one where in my head she’s put a lot of effort into making sure he never ever picks up on this particular thing from her. Because she’s not proud of it. At all.

Even if pride is really the problem. 

See, I’ve long believed that out of the entire Batclan, Dick is the only person who can ever beat Cass in a fight. Even compared to Bruce.

And to be clear, its not like Dick can always beat Cass. Or even often. At most, its still maybe like, two fights out of ten. And its not deliberate, like something he can do or capitalize on consciously.

But for someone like Cass, who otherwise is pretty much undefeated unless she’s going up against her own mother, Lady Shiva….even two fights out of ten is a lot.

And it bugs her, more than she cares to admit.

Because she is as competitive in her own ways as the rest of her family. She does have her own ego about certain things, like everyone else does. And David Cain, monster that he was, raised her to be the best there is, at one thing and one thing only: fighting. As much as she hates him, as much as she hates her childhood and what was done to her, how much she missed out on and the things she still feels left out for not understanding or grasping the way she thinks she should…..alongside all that has always been at least an awareness that at least there is one thing that came out of it: she is the best. Absent her mother, who one day she will fully and consistently surpass, everyone including Lady Shiva believes…as much as Cass hates her father and everything he did to her and why, she’s still at times taken a certain sort of pride in her skills in fighting. At least in that one slight respect, even if its not something she would have chosen, had she ever been given a choice….at least it had worked, had done what it’d been intended to.

Except for when it comes to Dick. Who will probably always be able to beat her, maybe two times out of ten. No matter how much more she grows in her skills. There’s that one or two times every now and then, where it will always be a toss-up, as likely to go to him as to her.

And its not something that Dick’s even aware of giving him a specific edge when it comes to fighting her, and its not something he could capitalize on even if he were aware of it.

See, as much as fighting is second nature to Cass, as instinctive as breathing…it goes hand in hand with her ability to read body language. That’s her edge, the one variable that no one else can compete with or match her on, the thing that will always put her in a class of her own…..the one result of specific training that was crafted specifically to create this one result.

You can’t separate Cassandra’s fighting prowess from her ability to read body language. They are one and the same, even if she can use the latter for other things too, and even if her fighting prowess isn’t JUST due to her ability to read body language. Which its not, by any means. BUT, regardless, she can’t train herself out of a reliance on body language while fighting….especially not to fight one person in specific, her own brother, and even there pretty much just out of pride.

Because the slight advantage Dick has over everyone else when facing her, is that like her, he’s one of the only fighters out there who was trained from birth to have an almost inhuman mastery of his own body, to be at the peak of human capability in specific regards. Even though his training wasn’t at all in the arena of fighting, at least not before he was taken in by Bruce. For Dick as well as Cass, there are certain things that are so fundamental to him, so ingrained into his movements because they were taught to him at the same time as he was taught to walk, the one being every bit as natural as the other.

And acrobatics was only one of these things. Performing was the other.

Y’see, the one variable Cass can’t totally account for every single time she spars with Dick….is that Dick’s body lies.

Like I said earlier on….its not just reading body language that Dick was likely raised to do, albeit in different, less rigorous ways than Cass. He was also taught from an equally early age how to DISPLAY body language. Or rather, a specific kind of body language.

My headcanon is that because as early as he began learning acrobatics, Dick was taught acrobatics with an eye towards performing, specifically. Since that was what his family did. And the one thing performers like the Flying Graysons always, always have to do…is perform with a smile.

So it was probably drilled into Dick from an early age, even if it wasn’t couched in these terms or even consciously thought of in this specific way…..but while taught the fundamental components of a flip, breaking it down into each individual micro-movement expected of his body in order to achieve the optimal flip for performing in front of a crowd…..one of those micro-movements, for Dick…was a smile.

Its as fundamental to his acrobatics as every other command his conscious AND subconscious mind sends to the various muscle groups he uses in his routines and now in his fighting even. I think its a large part of why quips and banter and grins are so intrinsic to his fighting as well. He doesn’t KNOW how to be anything else. Bruce probably tried to train it out of him before realizing or accepting that focusing on just making Dick not smile while backflipping over an opponent was detrimental, if not merely just unnecessary. Its just second nature to Dick, as much as reading body language is to Cass. 

His own training from the time he could walk, put just as much emphasis on ensuring that no matter how he felt during a performance, no matter how exhausted he was or how stressed, whether he was having a bad day or was just cranky or mad at his parents or mad about something someone in the crowd said or just didn’t feel like practicing his routines today….he did it all with a smile, an easy, effortless grin, as though he was lighter than air and nothing he did was taking a toll on his body, it was all equally effortless.

Combine that with the fact that for Dick, because of what his training was FOR….because it was all done in the name of being with his family, being like his family, it was so he could do what nobody else could do, so he could fly….unlike Cass, Dick’s early training instilled in him an intrinsic pairing of movement and joy. To him, movement IS joy. Its essential to his core, to who he is. 

Where other people see him throwing in unnecessary flips to his fighting to show off, Dick’s always just grinned and shrugged his shoulders at this, unable to explain what’s not even a matter of conscious thought….to him, saying he added an unnecessary flip is like saying to someone else they took an unnecessary breath. He can understand what they’re saying….just like you can take note of taking an extra breath that you don’t really need…but he can’t link that to the ‘show off’ part of things anymore than you could understand someone accusing you of showing off for taking shorter, quicker breaths than you need to. 

Because Dick doesn’t throw in unnecessary acrobatics while fighting because he wants to show off, IMO. Who is he showing off for? The people he’s fighting? Why on earth would they be more impressed by him doing an extra fancy flip than they would just by virtue of knowing his reputation as a fighter and seeing it proven true as he kicked their ass? No, I think he does it because he’s not even thinking about it, and he certainly can’t think of a reason not to. Its just what he does. Flipping out of the way of an incoming punch in such a way as to make that flip as aesthetically appealing as it is functional, is every bit as instinctive to Dick as every other part of the flip.

Because that’s WHY he was trained to do all this. That’s what its for. Not fighting and superheroics. Those are what he adapted it to do. First and foremost, it was done, taught to him, perfected by him…..so he could fly. And show everybody just how much he loved doing that, when you get right down to it. Because he loves being able to do that. For Dick, the heights he can reach are his higher power, and every single movement he makes is like an individual prayer given in thanks of the gift given to him, that enables him to do that in ways nobody else can match.

But in terms of fighting, and in terms of body language that Cass reads on an equally unconscious level….this has the unexpected and accidental side effect where every so often…Dick’s body lies. At least, I imagine that’s how Cass would describe it, if she ever put it into words for someone. Because he links his joy, his happiness and pleasure at being able to do the acrobatics he does with the movements themselves, because its so ingrained in him to do it all with a smile, to sell for the crowd that its all done with the greatest of ease, and because its inevitable that on some basic level, there are some flips or techniques that the mere act of doing brings to mind - even just his subconscious - memories he associates with that movement, that are largely, more often than not, pleasurable memories….Dick’s body language every so often doesn’t quite read the way everyone else’s does. The way Cass expects it to, knows how to interpret.

And this is nothing deliberate on his part. Nothing he could capitalize on, even if Cass did ever tell him what it reads like from her perspective. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t train himself to use this to his advantage in fights against Cass, any more than Bruce for all his mastery of his body, can effectively train himself to not broadcast certain body language tells when sparring with Cass. Because Bruce’s training, as extensive and intense as it was, and as he commits himself to it, still only started later in life. When his movements and how they pair with each other and his emotional states, they were already set in stone. Because those things go deeper than conscious control….even if Bruce made an effort to hide his next punch from Cass, she’d see the indicators of him preparing to deceive and adapt just as instinctively.

But Dick, because his training began as early and was so 24/7 in its own way as Cassandra’s, when they were both just learning their basic fundamentals and their body was building connections between their muscle movements and emotions they felt when using each precise combination of each specific muscles to achieve each specific end result….with Dick, the times his body language misleads Cass is as unconscious as breathing to him, as instinctive as every other of these movements, and the urge to smile while doing it. He’s not aware of doing it, couldn’t consciously command himself to do it more without giving that away in micro-expressions in his face….but its there, nonetheless. Because its not like it was done or trained into him in order to lie to Cass or someone like her….that’s just an unanticipated side-effect. It was done for one reason only: to make even the most rigorous of efforts look as effortless as skipping.

And it being that instinctive is WHY Cass occasionally falls for it, every now and again. Even when she tries to prepare for it sometimes. Because its like a lie spoken in her own first language. Every so often, she misreads how exhausted or worn out he is while in the middle of a spar, because Dick’s body language while flipping around so often reads as easy, light-hearted, happy. None of the things associated with being on the verge of his legs giving out, even if they are. And every now and again, a punch catches her off guard, because its not telegraphed in any of the normal ways, his body language is too focused on what’s coming after the punch, the preparation to make a leap or a vault that its particularly excited for, that always paired with anticipation, from as early as he could attempt it. Every once in awhile she fails to capitalize on a moment of weakness he has or an injury he’s nursing…because she’s missed the signs for it, its so buried deep beneath the performance mask he was trained to wear specifically while continuing through a routine even while feeling an ache or pain in that particular muscle group.

Even if no one else entirely knows why, Dick can beat Cass every once in awhile, even more often than Bruce can. Because the LESS Dick focuses his conscious thoughts, the MORE instinctive he makes his movements, basically when he MOST relies on just muscle memory and lets his body take over on autopilot, trusting it to get him safely through a fight while his conscious mind and troubles might be otherwise distracting him…..that’s when Cass has the hardest time reading him reliably. Because when he gets like that, everything else vanishes. Its like no other emotions exist for him. Even while being otherwise miserable or unhappy or grieving or tired….when he just lets go and trusts his body to do what its been trained to do so often and extensively its just pure instinct at this point….all of her brother’s movements at that point just sing. The brutality of a fight gets lost in the beauty of his acrobatics, even on the very same level and in the very language she most relies on…because they were meant to be ‘spoken’ even that bone-deep, they were meant to look like and indicate pure joy of movement in even the most primal of languages.

On a certain level, Cassandra has always been the least surprised of any of their family, why people like Deathstroke and the Court of Owls and countless other villains have always been so intent, so focused on making Dick specifically turn to their side, become one of them…become a killer. She understands the draw they feel towards him perfectly, probably even better than they do. Because the language these villains speak most naturally is violence. And her eldest brother takes violence and makes it art.

And even villains are drawn to art that speaks to them in a language they can understand.

So, even though she doesn’t want it to, even though it shouldn’t bother her, even though it ultimately doesn’t even matter that much….it bothers Cass, a little bit. That Dick has just enough of an x-factor in sparrings specific to just the two of them, that no matter how much Cass tries to adjust for it, she can still be thrown or fooled as easily as anyone else can fall for a lie spoken in a shared language. Its actually probably for the best that her own unique form of Kryptonite belongs to none other than her very own big brother, protective to a fault. Someone who would never hurt her.

Except…

Even with all that, she can’t help herself. Every once in awhile, she looks at Dick and can’t help but be wary. She doesn’t like having a potential blindspot she knows full well is there and can’t do a damn thing about. She doesn’t like that it bugs her so much either, but it does. She doesn’t like that the fighting and body-language reading that are the end results of her father’s abuse have become in different ways just enough of points of pride that she finds her pride pricked at the reminder she’s still fallible. Still human. Can still be fooled, even if unintentionally, even if not that often. 

Because given the price she paid - that she never asked to pay, never was asked if she WANTED to pay it - to be so foolproof, at least where everyone else is concerned, she at least wished the damn training had worked as intended, instead of one specific monkey wrench her father hadn’t accounted for. All because who was prepared for an acrobatic vigilante who’s happy and gleeful on a primal level even when fighting for his life, because his body can’t help but be glad it can fly?

So she fights that feeling down any time it arises, becomes all the more determined for it not to create a wedge between her and the big brother she honestly adores and she knows honestly adores her too.

But sometimes when he smiles at her, Cass hates the way she is. What it makes her. Because all of them by now are used to people like the Court constantly trying to repurpose Dick, turn him against everything he holds dear. And each time everyone else is reminded of that, they turn to cast glances at Cass, without even thinking about it. They’re all just as aware of Dick’s own fighting prowess, after all. And how deadly he could be if he ever put his mind to it and set aside his morality.

She knows full well that if that ever happened, if any villain ever did manage to get their hooks in deep, she’s the one it would ultimately fall to. The Break Glass in Case of Emergency, Plan Z, final failsafe. She was who they would sic on the big brother that’s always drawn the darkness like moths to his flickering flame.

And she alone nurses the knowledge that if it ever came to that….she’s not quite as certain as the rest of their family, that she could infallibly win.

It bothers her more than she can say, more than she will ever dare say….that one of her greatest fears wears her doting eldest brother’s face.

Because if the Court of Owls ever did make a Talon of him for real, there’s no one who could sink a fatal blade past her guard more easily than he. She might never see it coming, too busy looking at him and seeing nothing but poetry instead.

Dick held her once while she came down from a lungful of Fear Toxin. Even as she shook the last of it from her system and looked at him with fresh, clear eyes again, she couldn’t help but flinch. He asked her what she’d seen while under its influence. She didn’t answer, and hated how sad he looked while covering up. No doubt thinking that it was because even now she didn’t trust him, her own family, wouldn’t let herself be completely vulnerable with them.

Still, she’s certain he would have looked far sadder if she’d told him the truth.

So each and every time her big brother’s body tells her a lie, she tells him one right back.

After all, the flip side of being the two best truthseers in the family, is there’s nobody better at being lie-tellers at the same time.

Who else is ever going to know?

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

Ring Shout. By P. Djèlí Clark. New York: Tor Dot Com, 2020.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Genre: horror, historical fantasy, novella

Part of a Series? No.

Summary: D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth. Luckily, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword and a head full of tales. When she's not running bootleg whiskey through Prohibition Georgia, she's fighting monsters she calls "Ku Kluxes." She's damn good at it, too. But to confront this ongoing evil, she must journey between worlds to face nightmares made flesh--and her own demons. Together with a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter, Maryse sets out to save a world from the hate that would consume it.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content/Trigger Warnings: violence, blood, body horror, torture, sexual content, racism, lynching

Overview: I forget exactly how this book fell under my radar, but the premise intrigued me, so I bought it pretty shortly after it came out. The blend of historical fiction and horror - especially through the eyes of a Black woman with a magic sword - was enough to get me hooked, and I was eager to get my hands on a copy. As I was reading, I definitely encountered things I enjoyed; Clark has a talent for horror, and his descriptions of the monsters were some of the best parts of the book. I also liked the climax of the narrative, when Maryse (our protagonist) faces the Big Bad. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give Ring Shout a full four or five stars because I felt a lot of the elements were underutilized, and the first person narration made the story feel clunky at times (not a fault of Clark specifically - this is a complaint I have of all first person). Still, I liked the monster fights, so this book gets a 3.5 from me.

Writing: Ring Shout is written in first person from Maryse’s point of view. On top of that, it’s also written in African American Vernacular English (or something close to it - I apologize if my terminology is wrong). While I did like the AAVE and it was a good choice for a story told through the eyes of a Black woman, the first person narration made the descriptions of some things feel clunky. As I mentioned earlier, this complaint is one I have of all first person POVs - in first person, characters have to articulate things that people usually aren’t conscious of, or else don’t process in a way that a reader could follow. First person always feels very unnatural to me unless it’s being framed as a witness testimony or reflection - something where a character is relating events after they happened to another person in the form of a written statement or something where it’s self-consciously shaped to make narrative sense (I’m thinking like A Conspiracy of Truths or The Magnus Archives). Clark falls into this trap, making Maryse state something about her emotions or surroundings in a way that felt unnatural, but I can hardly blame him for something that exists across all first person narratives.

I also think Clark could have done more with his prose to make emotional moments feel weightier. Often, the pace of a scene would be so fast that something which was supposed to have an emotional impact felt rushed, and sometimes, the language around the moment felt straightforward to the point where it bordered on telling over showing. I would have liked to see more showing in these moments, creating a more visceral response in the reader.

Plot: The majority of this book follows Maryse and her companions as they prepare to fight a great evil unleashed by the Ku Klux Klan. We learn that Maryse is a “chosen one,” gifted with a magical sword by three otherworldly figures called “Aunties,” and she must use the sword to battle demonic monsters known as “Ku Kluxes,” which feed off the hate generated by the Klansmen. Overall, I found this premise intriguing, and I really liked the way the final showdown between Maryse and the Big Bad touched on themes of hate versus justice.

However, I don’t think Clark did enough to make each scene build on each other, which made the narrative as a whole feel disjointed. Most of the scenes leading up to the final Boss Fight consisted of Maryse talking to people - her companions, the Aunties, a figure named Butcher Clyde - which mainly seemed to be how Clark communicated worldbuilding information. I didn’t get the sense that Maryse was uncovering a grand plot; instead, it felt like I was floating from scene to scene, gathering info that would inform my interpretation of the big showdown.

I also think Clark could have woven his themes into his narrative a bit better. There seem to be running themes of hate vs justice, the power of stories, and others running through his book, but not much is done with them until the final showdown. I would have liked to see more scenes touch on these themes more explicitly, rather than conversations about the N-word or the ethics of socialism, which were important, but not integral to the plot. For example, in the scene where she and her companions go to Frenchy’s (a bar/inn), I would have liked to see Maryse’s interactions with Frenchy (the owner and her love interest) reveal a bit more about her mental state. Maybe they could have talked about how she refuses to open up about her past, or they have a conversation about Maryse’s feelings about white people. Those small changes, I think, could have made the twist in the big showdown feel more weighty. Additionally, I think these changes could have made her strategy with the Night Doctors (another type of otherworldly figure) more interesting.

Characters: Maryse, our protagonist, is likeable in that she’s strong-willed and highly motivated to take on a threat. I liked that she cared about the people around her, and I liked that she had some vulnerability in the form of her traumatic past and the voice of her deceased brother in her head.

Maryse’s companions were also fun. Sadie, a sharpshooter, was full of life and spirit, always wanting to enjoy herself whether she was eating, dancing, or having romantic liaisons. Chef, a former soldier and explosives expert, was also interesting in that a lot of her actions and attitudes are informed by her experience in the war.

Other supporting characters were less well-developed, from the German socialists that seemed to only be present to provoke conversations about politics, to Frenchy, who does little besides be a love interest in danger. Nana Jean, an elderly “Gullah woman” who does magic, could have been more interesting if Maryse’s bootlegging was more consequential to the story, and though I found her dialect hard to understand, I don’t think that’s a knock on Clark (more a knock on me for being less well-read than I should be). The Aunties, while a creative twist on the “three crones” trope, also felt a little useless in that they never gave Maryse direct information that was particularly helpful (or that she couldn’t have gotten on her own). Even Butcher Clyde and Dr. Bisset, two threatening supernatural figures, seemed to be devoid of charisma and were less intimidating than annoyingly chatty. They talked and made threats, more than anything, and while they were appealing visually (or, as visual as you can get in a written work), they didn’t seem to do much other than monologue.

But even so, I think Clark has a real talent for creating monsters that get under the readers’ skin. For all their faults as characters, Butcher Clyde, the Ku Kluxes, Dr. Bisset, the Night Doctors, and the Grand Cyclops were genuinely creepy, and I loved the images that Clark’s prose evoked.

Other: I personally found Clark’s worldbuilding something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I loved the historical setting; historical horror is a genre I adore, and I love it when authors take on an era other than the Victorian period. I also really liked the idea of Maryse’s magic sword, which derives its power from the memory of the pain of enslaved Black people. On the other hand, I don’t think the way the supernatural world was organized made a lot of coherent sense. While we are told that  D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer and The Birth of a Nation is a spell, neither the man nor the film were really present, and I felt like they could have been removed without much change to the story. To make them feel more integral, I would have liked to see some commentary, perhaps, of the ability of movies or visual media to communicate ideas, and how the mass spread of racism or hate through visual media poses some danger.

I also thought the Aunties were useless, and they, too, could have been removed or their role expanded. Their main purpose seemed to be to drop bits of lore and background information, and they do little to actually help besides tell Maryse to look in her book of folktales. I also found their rationales for things kind of flimsy (”we couldn’t talk to you before because the veil was so thick” and “you can do X by wanting it enough”), and I wish they were more omnipresent, guiding voices than just figures who popped in and out at convenient moments.

TL;DR: Ring Shout is a novella with an intriguing premise and a host of creepy monsters that is sure to satisfy horror-lovers, even if it falls a little flat in narrative construction.

[snowregent]

I feel like there’s a lot of people that don’t know that much about this version of Elena and I wanted to share a look into who this character is and my own opinions on her and the way I write her on this blog. As a forewarning, this post is rather long. 

“Elena had been like a force of nature: take her or leave her for the passionate, cynical, idealistic, self-centered, generous-to-a-fault, girl that had been her mortal self. A wild tropical storm rising in a millpond. An orchid in a field of daisies; a gryphon in a herd of sheep. Elena had never been like anyone but herself.”

     Elena is the quintessential golden girl, the girl next door. Initially, she can come off as selfish, competitive, proud, and headstrong, however, that does not take away from the fact she can still be considered a good and decent person below the surface-- her general alignment being chaotic good. To this end, she has referred to certain students as ‘minions’ as they would readily do bidding for the most popular girl in the school and had been willing to spread rumors to further her own agendas. That said, Elena also showed a willingness to help her friends and protect others when various threats arose which would see them harmed. Some of Elena’s more positive traits are that she is: outgoing, confident, brave, optimistic, ambitious, loyal, protective, and strong-willed. She is a very good leader and as a result, is good at leading most situations that require solid leadership.

“Noblesse oblige”, Meredith said softly. “If you’re going to be queen of the school, you have to put up with the consequences.”

________________________________________________________

“Somewhere in the middle of it, Elena realized that she was going to be all right. She was herself again, not lost, not a stranger, but Elena Gilbert, the queen of Robert E. Lee.”

     Elena cares about her social status, willing to do research and find out details in order to use them against enemies if need be. At times, this means Elena may be willing to manipulate for what she deems is a greater good or to maintain her social standing, however, in most cases, she still has lines she will not cross to achieve these specific goals. Elena is a girl with a plan for everything, sometimes not as readily willing to accept other's motives as pure unless she knows them well. She is a Queen Bee, bossy at times even giving edicts from the grave. Still, she would never change herself or do something she did not think was right (by her definition of the term).

The girls in the senior class, even the ones that had been nastiest and most spiteful, were crying and holding hands. Girls Elena knew for a fact hated her were sniffling. Suddenly she was everybody’s best friend. 

There were boys crying, too. Shocked, Elena huddled closer to the railing. She couldn’t stop watching, even though it was the most horrible thing she had ever seen. 

Frances Decatur got up, her plain face plainer than ever with grief. “She went out of her way to be nice to me,” she said huskily. “She let me eat lunch with her.” Rubbish, Elena thought. I only spoke to you in the first place because you were useful in finding out information about Stefan. But it was the same with each person who went up to the pulpit; no one could find enough words to praise Elena.

________________________________________________________

“A lot of people weren’t nice to Elena after Halloween,” she said, wiping her eyes and going on. “And I know that hurt her. But Elena was strong. She never changed just to conform to what other people thought she should be. And I respected her for that, so much…” Sue’s voice wobbled. “When I was up for Homecoming Queen, I wanted to be chosen, but I knew I wouldn’t be and that was all right. Because if Robert E. Lee ever had a queen, it was Elena. And I think she always will be now, because that’s how we’ll all remember her. And I think that for years to come the girls who will go to our school might remember her and think about how she stuck by what she thought was right…” This time Sue couldn’t steady her voice and the reverend helped her back to her seat.

     In fact, Elena is intensely protective of her friends and town and will typically not betray a loyalty unless she has been betrayed first. Even then, as seen with Caroline, even though Caroline had stolen her diary, plotted against her, and even tried to turn the town against her and Stefan, Elena still was compassionate toward her and wanted to help her. Another example of Elena's ability to be compassionate can be found in the final book when Elena goes back in time and, knowing what will happen to Vicki, makes the choice to include her within her friend group as the girls get ready for the dance. When she goes back in time, she puts aside her popularity, she has matured and only seeks to make things better for everyone that had been doomed in the original timeline, even if it means she has to give up her connections with them. Elena also always fulfills her obligations, as Stefan has said ‘even to the undead’. She is fully aware of the dangerous game she plays at times, her being very emotion-driven can, at times, lead to her taking action without considering others or the fallout from her decisions. That said, she is usually willing to take responsibility for these actions and choices and she is not above admitting when she is wrong.

“…she had been a different person then. Ice-cold outside, manic inside—or was it the other way around? Still numb from the death of her parents so long ago. Jaded by the world and by anything to do with boys…A princess in an icy tower…with a lust only for conquest, for power…”

     While having been nicknamed “The Ice Princess”, “Ice Queen”, and “Snow Queen” by many, for she sometimes possesses the impression of appearing cold, distant and aloof towards those who do not know her well, as time goes on her character evolves, learning to sacrifice for those she cares about and becoming a warmer and more mature person as Elena and her friends face various trials. She demonstrates a willingness to put her life at risk to protect others though is also, at times, willing to risk the majority to save one. This was seen in the series more than once including when she threatened a guardian (angel) that she would not use her powers to save humanity if they didn’t change her mission (which had been to kill Damon). She is extremely stubborn, so much so that when presented with the doom of those she cared about and her own death, she literally refused it and convinced a guardian to allow her to go back in time and alter the chain of events which led to this, thus changing the entire course of the series and resetting the timeline.

“I’d better stop writing now. Stefan’s leaving, and Matt and Meredith and Alaric and I are going to see him off. I didn’t mean to get so into this; I’ve never kept a journal myself. But I want people to know the truth about Elena. She wasn’t a saint. She wasn’t always sweet and good and honest and agreeable. But she was strong and loving and loyal to her friends, and in the end she did the most unselfish thing anybody could do. Meredith says it means she chose light over darkness. I want people to know that so they’ll always remember. I always will.”

     While Elena has openly admitted at the beginning of the series that she always used boys and treated the opposite sex as if they were prizes and trophies to boost her confidence and self-esteem none of the boys that she has ever encountered, met, or dated (including Matthew Honeycutt) has ever had an enormous, unusual, life-changing or highly influential impact on her the way that Stefan Salvatore, in canon, and in other specifically featured verses on this blog, Archie ( @skeletcnkey ), who has drawn out more of Elena's kinder side, and Kol Mikaelson ( @psychotickol ), who has drawn out more of Elena's true nature and tempted her by her own darker traits, have had. While having developed on her own, it must be acknowledged that, at least in part, Stefan, Archie, and Kol have inspired her to become more open-minded and spiritually awakened.

“I wanted to ask you something and it’s a little embarrassing.  I remember one thing Elena told me, and that was that you used to—well, to take on her discarded boyfriends for a little while, to comfort them, before turning them lose in the world again.  And I was wondering—could you think of me that way?”

Meredith’s eyes flew open and her held breath exploded in laughter.  “You!”

“I fulfill all the requirements, I’m sure.  Low self-esteem.  Can’t sleep, can’t eat.  I think about Elena night and day.  I can’t picture myself—ever—wanting another girl—”

Meredith laughed and laughed and the tension that had been holding her rigid broke.  “All right, all right.  You’re an Elena’s-ex.  Join the very large club.  But what can I do for you?”  

     In respect to Elena's loves both in canon and on this blog, many are driven by a key concept of the novels: THE SOULMATE PRINCIPLE which is an ancient theory frequently used in most of L.J. Smith's trilogies and book series. "It is the theory that two people who are true destined soulmates are connected by a 'silver cord', only visible to the destined soulmates themselves." It does not always mean that your connection to that person will be a romantic one, but could be that of a friend as well. The key point is, they are destined to be a part of your life in some fashion, to challenge you and to impact you in a profound way. Your soulmate can awaken more of yourself through your interactions with them. "Through the silver cord, soulmates can often feel what each other are feeling if the person concentrates through the strength this connection and how long it takes to uncover may vary... Exchanging blood is one way for a person to find out they are soulmates. Soulmates can often enter each other's mind and see their memories, thoughts, and feelings. Thoughts and memories can be blocked, though this takes concentration-- if the concentration lapse during the time that one person is in someone else's mind, the blocks will fall down to allow the other person to see everything. It is the idea that for everyone in the world, there is ONE soulmate who is perfect for them. You don't have to look like your soulmate, act like them, be the same age as them; you don't even have to like them at first, but from the moment you meet them, you know that you'll never be completely happy without them."

“Involuntarily, Stefan glanced up.  Yes, he’d had the strong feeling of her presence here tonight, too.  Elena.  Still scheming from the spirit world.  Elena couldn’t help him any longer with her blood, but that wouldn’t matter to her.  She had three humans that she could still influence, and that was fine.  It wouldn’t matter to her that Meredith got a bit of a shock or that Bonnie might be playing with fire, or even—well, she wouldn’t have done anything to destroy his friendship with Matt, but he hadn’t known that before.”

     All in all, Elena is a complex character who many often misjudge both within the series and by readers. She may not be perfect, is not always agreeable, and she even may not be the character that everyone even roots for right off the bat, but she does evolve. And as it's often said, she is not anyone but herself. She does not apologize for being who she is but she does own up to who she is and the choices she makes. Elena is capable of making the hero’s choice but is not always the hero of the story. Elena knows loss and is challenging and daring and brave. She learns and grows and becomes a woman who can be vain but giving, who can be selfish, at times, but still willing to sacrifice.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Series Review Pt. 2/3

Part One

Part Three

Continuing the trend, lots to read under the cut.

In part one we established that the central conflict of the series as a whole is not so much a black and white “good guys side vs bad guys side” but of a much more complex societal problem stemming from individual choices and series of choices made by individual people and the impact those choices have on others. This is the heart of the current conflict between Hawks and Twice.

Twice and Hawks share many things in common and have been shown to develop a genuine friendship in their shared time in the PLF. This, however, has not changed the fact that they are still functioning from opposite sides of the central conflict - at least the institutional facet of it. Each of them has taken up a position fundamentally opposed to the other in attempts to bring about their prospective “big picture” futures, but that comes with the added emotional baggage each carries from the events that have happened to them in their respective pasts.

The visual direction of the scene enforces this concept. Each one is seeing the other literally from a different angle and in a different light. Twice is on the ground prone in a room where the only exit is blocked while Hawks stands alert and at attention over him, obscuring the only source of light entering the room. 

From Twice’s perspective Hawks’ face is obscured- the harsh light from behind casting a dark shadow across any features that would clue him into what Hawks is feeling - and he has to use the context clues he has available (posture, words, immediate events) through tears and adrenaline to interpret how to respond to Hawks. He’s been so suddenly thrust into this situation he literally and metaphorically can’t properly tell which way is up from where he lies. (Note how Hawks’ silhouette is sideways and looming over him in the same direction as Twice would be seeing from his place on the ground on page 13.)

From Hawks’ perspective Twice is knocked off balance and panicking like a cornered animal, completely unaware of the larger situation at hand and how they arrived here. When the perspective of the camera shifts and we can see his face again for the first time we get a completely different picture of what’s going on. Importantly, we can see in the change in perspective a closeup (usually used to highlight the key emotion) of Hawks’ face, complete with a somber and compassionate gaze that Twice is incapable of discerning right now.

Read this section through again twice. The first time use only the frame from Twice’s perspective and the second time read it with Hawks’. This is something I’m actually intrigued to see the anime handle because depending how deep the divergence in perspective goes, even the vocal performance may be different depending on the camera angle.

Twice sees a sociopathic, unempathetic monster who has used, abused, and thrown away his sincere offer of friendship to get what he wants and then has the audacity to try to convince him to play the fool again to get Twice to betray his friends for an easy way out. Hawks sees a person who feels betrayed and scared so Hawks is trying sincerely to explain to him what has been going on in order to be transparent because that’s the only way he can think to communicate the fact that he still values Twice, ending on the note that he believes that while Twice has crimes to answer for, he is still a good person who deserves to have a real shot at a happy life and that Hawks is personally invested in making that a reality if he’s willing to take the offer and trust him.

Hawks is operating as an enforcing tool of the law, but while he believes that law is set in place for general stability and safety it takes a human to human connection and cooperation to save someone to whom the law is blind. On page 16 when he says, “I don’t want to fight you, Bubaigawara!” he’s identifying with him not as the villain Twice, but as a person with an identity and will separate from the personae he’s crafted for himself over the years. Hawks would probably use his own real name to try to hammer this point home if there was a way to naturally do it. If Bubaigawara continues to resist and fight Hawks cannot make the case to others that he deserves a second chance. 

The exact memory that comes to Hawks’ mind is Twice’s words, “Anyone who helps his friends can’t be all bad.” Hawks is trying to say in this scene, “I’m your friend! I’m trying to help you! I know you see me as the bad guy, but I want to be your hero so please let me save you the only way I know how! Please trust me!”

He needs the cooperation, but Twice resists and Hawks has no other choice but to operate as law enforcement for the sake of the greater good. Twice has chosen to be a “villain,” so Hawks has to be a “hero.” All those feathers were for Twice in the case Hawks needed them, and now Hawks has to subdue the Sad Man’s Parade alone as well as Dabi whom neither knows is on the way.

That’s the bad news, but the good news is that hope is not lost. 

This is where I repeat my mantra of “we won’t know specific, individual fates until they happen." However, I think there are notable observations to keep in mind as we watch these final battles unfold.

Coming off of the discussion with Twice and Hawks, many including myself (and arguably even Twice) have gotten hung up on whether Hawks will choose to join the League eventually. Where we are now, I think it’s become a moot point almost not worth discussion anymore. If he does, we’ll see it soon; but Hawks seems to recognize that as long as the core complaints of the individual League members - and any of their sympathizers, for that matter - are not directly addressed, some other criminal force will come alongside and clash with them continuing the cycle of bloodshed and violence as influential leaders focus on gaining power until they are absorbed or achieve their end goal of complete anarchy and societal destruction. (Remember, he’s been following the League and their movements at least as far back as Kamino.) We saw it with the MLA, we saw it with the Shie Hassaikai, and even with Stain - along with the League of Villains, it began with a guerrilla group of revolutionists seeking to right a societal injustice; but if and when a separate opposing force of revolutionist outsiders cannot agree with them a battle ensues until one is subjugated and the strength of the loser is granted to the victor. Until the underlying issues are addressed, this cycle will only continue.

This is also to bring up the fact that the League of Villains is genuinely strong in terms of interpersonal loyalty but as an organization with foundational core values and a unified end goal has been fractured and shaky since the beginning. We saw those particular cracks most prominently just before the fight with Gigantomachia when lack of outer conflict began to highlight the inherent lack of unity in the LoV, only to be interrupted once again when some outside force stirred up a reason for them to work together for survival. Remember, all of the current members of the League of Villains were initially attracted and recruited because Shigaraki falsely appropriated Stain’s ideology. Dabi has stated he wants a world where heroes are obligated to their families first and that thinking of the misery he’s left the survivors of killed heroes “drives him crazy.” Toga wants a world where she has a network of unconditional support without feeling repressed. Twice wants a world in which he can trust others and be trusted and useful despite his bad luck and occasional mistakes. Spinner has clarified he needs a cause to believe in and fight for that supports outcasts like him, and Mr. Compress’s reasons for joining the League are simply to challenge the current status quo instead of mindlessly embracing it.

Shigaraki’s nihilistic dystopia of “burn everything to the ground” is not necessary to achieve any of these goals, and if enough confidence in alternative solutions and doubts in Shiguraki’s loyalty grows in the minds of each member of the League it could genuinely fall apart at the seams, though that isn’t to say that the League isn’t an incredibly tight knit and loyal group - quite the opposite, they’ve constantly shown to be willing to risk life and limb for each others’ sake - just that they’re more concerned with tearing down the current order than restructuring a cohesive new one. However, if the context around their unity has genuinely shifted to center around Shigaraki himself as a symbolic leader as it's been implied since the fight with Gigantomachia and the MLA, this will be clarified very quickly.

Even for most other villains we’ve encountered through the series this violence-first upheaval of society is not necessary to realize most of their goals. Gentle Criminal sought to shake up heroes’ apathy and overconfidence in their strength - La Brava following him closely because of her unwavering loyalty to him as a person - and even Stain was not opposed to the concept of heroes, just an institution of heroism that breeds greed and apathy instead of elevating the ideals of heroism. 

There have been exceptions like the Shie Hassaikai (who sought a complete erasure of quirks from the human genome) and the initial ideology of the Meta Liberation Army (a world ruled by the strong with completely unimpeded use of quirks) that would have required an entire shift in society on a cultural, governmental, legislative, and economic level; but for most the heart of their issues with society is an issue of the heart - that is, a cultural shift is necessary first and foremost to alleviate the problems each of these criticisms address.

This drastic but necessary change has been difficult to achieve up until this point because most of the mouthpieces for these cultural criticisms are either not weighty enough to carry traction without the threat of violence or are held by those motivated by personal vengeance who are not guaranteed to sit and talk  about peaceful options even if the opportunity was presented to them. The “outsiders” are so deeply ostracized in the current social and political climate that they can’t get a word in edgewise to those “inside” who go mostly unaffected by the shortcomings the outcasts are attempting to bring to light. This is where the series’ proposed solution enters the stage.

[daniharperdominant]

First Friday || Dani & Ash

Tagging: Dani Harper and Ash Clarington @ash-clarington​

Date: Friday, October 9

Location: Dani’s Room

Summary: Bondage, Impact, Sex and Cuddles

As far as scenes go, Dani had a hard time predicting what was going to happen with Ash.  The submissive was quiet and reserved, and not big on unnecessary words or conversation - which frightened her a little, because scenes required constant communication.  But she was a good Dominant, if her course work and scenes in her first year were any indication, and she knew that no matter whether Ash was talkative or not the scene would be safe and carefully executed.  Waiting beside the bed were the impact implements she'd chosen, as well as lengths of rope that she could tie into strict knots but undo or cut at a moment's notice. There was soft music filling her room, and she'd chosen a very simple outfit - a jade green bra paired with dark underwear, framed by a black robe.  The scene didn't have to include any sexual element, nor would it unless Ash asked, but Dani also wanted to be comfortable.  Dressing the way she had helped her feel even more Dominant. Perching on her bed, she played an idle game on her phone as she waited for Ash's knock.

The summer break and the emotional drudge of the end of Ash's last semester left her, putting it lightly, out of practice. On top of that, she was starting to sink a little too far into herself on campus. She walked around going unnoticed, speaking to no one, attending classes then tucking herself back into her room. It was getting depressing and Ash knew if she let it go on she'd probably pull herself deeper into more destructive behaviors left unchecked. So the submissive had seen an opportunity. And she went for it. Donning some of her best lingerie beneath a simple dress, Ash pulled on her coat to combat the evening chill and left early enough to take her time walking to the Dominant dorms. Ash paused before she knocked at Dani's door to take a few steadying breaths and steady herself. The anticipation building in her belly was specific and sorely, sorely missed.

Dani set her phone aside, silenced, and stood up to smooth out her robe.  She opened the door with a smile, wanting Ash to know that she was welcome and that she had no intention of doing anything that wasn't wanted or desired.  "Please, come inside."  Once Ash was clear of the door Dani turned with a gently chiding expression.  "In the future, please kneel at the door while you wait."  It wasn't a huge issue the first time, but she didn't want the submissive to make a habit of not kneeling.  "In the meantime, please step into the bedroom there and take a seat.  There are a few things we need to go over quickly." Stepping into the room after her, Dani shut the door.  "I'd like to hear your limits and safeword, Ash, and then I'd like to know one thing that you want out of this scene tonight.  Anything at all, just the first thing you can think of that you really want."

Ash felt the tips of her ears flash warm. There was no anger in Dani's voice, no contempt, barely even a hint of annoyance over the matter but Ash still felt her stomach swirl with unrest over it. It'd been a while since she had knelt for someone, she had quiet literally forgotten. She swallowed the disappointment in herself silently and complied with the given instructions, only pausing to shuck away her jacket to hang by the door. Ash cleared her throat before speaking, having not said much since being called on in an afternoon class, then began "My limits are small confined spaces, tickling, body fluids and," Ash winced slightly at the last one---"age play." The submissive sat where instructed, mentally reminding herself not to fidget. "My safe word is lavender, Miss, and... and well I guess..." Ash paused thoughtfully, attempting to draw up the most accurate response. "I want to feel less." It came out wrong but Ash just needed to transfer control for a while, be fully distracted, to not think.

Dani was patient and warm as she could be as she waited for Ash to give her what she'd asked for.  There was no rush when she did a scene, no urge to move faster or increase the pace, especially when it was with someone new.  That was only a recipe for disaster.  The submissive's list of limits was easy to comply with and wouldn't butt up against any of what she had in mind for the night.  "To feel less," Dani repeated.  "As in...to get out of your own head?  That's something I can definitely do." She kept her eyes on Ash.  "Thank you for all of that.  Let me explain my philosophy when I scene.  This should be fun for us both.  I will strive never to go too far, never to do anything you don't want, and never to make you feel unsafe.  Should any of those things happen, I will expect a safeword and honor it as sacrosanct.  No debate, no argument - if you safeword, we stop immediately.  No matter what."  Dani smiled.  "If all of that is acceptable to you, please strip down as far as you're comfortable with."

This Dominant was a little bit of an enigma, it was enticing to Ash. Usually she went for the overbearing and vocally stern types but the way Dani's voice flowed seamlessly between what seemed to be her normal speaking voice to something more succinct and direct for clarity. Dominance with a gentleness Ash wasn't accustom to.

The woman's inference was exactly what Ash meant and the submissive felt some of her apprehension melt away. The swirling  in her stomach faded and a spark of excitement began to take it's place. With no hesitation Ash reached for the zipper of her dress and then let it fall. She stepped away once it was pooling around her ankles and felt herself gravitating toward Dani. Ash did knee then, signifying her willingness to begin, and to submit.

"Good girl," Dani smiled.  The first moments of any scene were the most important to her mind - trust had to be established on both sides, guidelines and boundaries set to be sure that everyone involved was comfortable ans safe for what was to come.  "You're a very beautiful girl, Ash, and I appreciate you wearing such lovely things over for me."  Reaching out, she gently ran her fingers through the girl's dark hair.  Only then did she stand, shrugging out of her robe to leave them in similar states of undress. "I'd like you to lie down on the bed for me, please.  Face down, with your hands above your head.  I'm going to secure your hands and your feet, and then we'll begin some simple impact play."  It was only the warm up, but the warm up was important.  Once Ash was in position, Dani took a small length of the rope and began to securely knot it around the girl's ankles.  "You look very lovely in rope."

Ash held her shiver at bay. It was more the Dominant's words that the simple touch but both made her eyes drop closed for a moment and Ash had to reign in some of her focus just to lift herself off the floor and onto the bed as she was told. She kept her eyes low as she moved but lifted them just enough to catches glimpses of Dani as she moved around her, free of the robe she had been donning before. Ash's heart picked up as the rope brushed against her and tightened against her skin. "Thank you, Miss." She managed, reminding herself to be vocal.

"You're welcome," Dani smiled.  She'd known that Ash was quiet, and had expected it, which made it all the more important that she be cognizant of other nonverbal cues - the sound of her breathing, the tension in certain limbs and muscles, the way that she moved or didn't move.  They were all important, and she would do her best to watch for any and all of them. "Hands now," she instructed.  "Just keep them above your head, and we'll get them tied.  It was a quick series of simple knots, and she gave them an experimental tug when she was finished.  "Does that all feel okay?  Nothing pinching, no pain?"

For just a flash of a moment a voice in the back of Ash's mind told her to ball her fists at her sides and resist but her desire to bend willfully won out and she placed her hands above her head, face down, as told. Goosebumps broke out over the submissive's body as soon as the final rope was in place. Ash moved a little at first, simply opening and closing her hands and rotating her ankles to test for tightness and blood flow. She gave a few experimental tugs, admiring the Dominant's work as she realized how stuck she really was. The residual panic was set aside quickly Ash let Dani's earlier words ring again through her thoughts. She could stop this at any time. Ash stilled and took a steadying breath. "None, Miss."

Dani was impressed by the way that Ash moved, clearly knowing how to check her bonds without needing further instruction.  She watched carefully as well, making sure that the ropes were going to hold for what she had in mind but not dig in if there was a struggle.  "Very good girl, thank you.  We're going to start the impact portion of this scene using just an open hand.  Five spanks on each side, just to get your skin warmed up a little.  I'd like you to count out all ten for me, please - no need to thank me, just a count will be sufficient." Once there was confirmation, Dani began.  The spanks weren't designed to hurt or punish, they were simply a way to bring some blood to the surface of Ash's skin.  Good impact required a warmup, because without it there was too much chance of broken blood vessels and marks that would last a week instead of a couple of days.  Not to mention, of course, that she enjoyed the spanking immensely.

Ash knew the process, the way it should be done anyway. Not all Dominant's were quite as kind and if Ash were being honest she didn't always care if they were. In the past doing casual scenes she usual set a limit of no marks that would be lasting on her body but with her Mistress, that was a different story. Her Mistress could be reckless at times in a way Ash found thrilling, it was one of the destructive natures of their relationship. This was different and Ash liked the way Dani spoke aloud what she was doing, and furthermore, why. Ash gave her acknowledgment, the small bit of praise pushing her forward in her desire to hear it again. The brunette didn't flinch when the first blow landed, she counted out. Her body didn't recoil at the next, landing firmly, stinging but only slightly. The Dominant's strikes didn't rock Ash's body, it enticed it, and she felt herself warming. The places that had fallen beneath Dani's palm, her cheeks, her core. Ash was mindful of her breath between counting, stubbornly determined to stay grounded for as long as possible through their play. "Ten." Ash huffed out, mindful not to stutter, and paused for the last to land.

Thus far, Ash had been a perfect scene partner - willing, eager, and able to follow instructions without hesitation.  Knowing that let Dani lose herself in the scene a little, watching the way that her soft skin rippled with each impact and the way that her voice grew just a little bit more ragged as she counted.  "Very good," she praised at the halfway mark, and when her hand came down for the tenth and final time she repeated the praise again.  "Such a good girl for me." Dani ran a hand across pink skin, squeezing and rubbing in equal measure.  "Now that you're warmed up, I think we'll move on to something a bit more intense.  I have my favorite paddle here," she reached for one nearby, wrapped in red leather with her initials monogrammed on the handle, and ran it up and down Ash's spine.  "And I'm sure that you're going to enjoy it.  You don't need to count this time, just lie there and let yourself enjoy it." Once Ash had responded, Dani brought the paddle down with firmly, creating a slapping noise that seemed very loud in the quiet room.

The submissive was putty beneath Dani’s praise. It didn’t matter what the Dominant had pulled out, Ash would have accepted it eagerly. She turned her head to flip her air out of her eyes and get a look at Dani, with her blood pumping Ash took more time actually looking at the other woman. Her eyes dashed over the paddle, noting the initials, but they lingered on the curve of the Dominant’s hips. “Thank you, Miss.” she said, for the relief from counting and for each blow she hadn’t thanked along the way. The short pause before the paddle was put to use had Ash holding her breath and when it finally came down with a near crack, she inhaled loudly, her fists balling in the sheets. The bark was worse than it’s bite but the instant tingle that followed was addicting and Ash waiting intently for more, her breathing quickening.

When Ash turned to look at her, Dani let everything she was feeling show in her eyes.  The pride in the way she was taking the impact, the concern for Ash's well being, and the desire that she felt seeing a beautiful woman tied up with a reddened ass.  There was nothing held back, and nothing she wouldn't be open about. "You're welcome, my good girl.  You're doing so well for me."  As long as that continued she planned on making sure Ash was rewarded properly for her submission, so a small part of her brain went to work on what a good reward might be. "God, you look good," she grinned.  "Your ass is made for this."  Establishing a quick rhythm, Dani alternated spanks on each side.  The staccato pattern sounded like gunshots in the quiet, and when she reached fifteen she set the paddle down, wriggling slightly in excitement.  "How are you feeling, sweet girl?"

It didn’t take long for Ash to get lost in it. She had to work to find rhythm with her breath, to keep from gasping at every strike. She lost count in her head somewhere around ten and grounded herself in Dani’s voice as a distraction to the steadily growing sting of her reddened skin. The center of her body was burning, and through the movement sparked further irritation to her backside, Ash pressed her hips downward. Her body instinctively looking for relief from the building tension between her legs. The more it went on the less Ash found herself caught up on any worries and her focus began to dwindle. By the time Dani stopped the brunette hadn’t even realized she had been making sharp and small mewling noises along with the paddle. It was only when it was silent in the room again that the sounds caught up with Ash’s thoughts and her blush spread over her cheeks beneath long dark unruly hair, and across her chest. She didn’t want to speak but Ash found Dani’s eyes, expressing a certain calm in lidded blue eyes, despite her elevated heart rate. She pulled on the restraints annoyed that she couldn’t reach for Dani. Ash hummed and gave a nod, “Good, Miss.” was all she was willing to conjure.

As silence settled over the room and Ash's little needy noises reached her ears, Dani immediately wanted to hear more of them.  There was no mistaking the way that the submissive tried to grind into the bed, or the tension in the ropes as they were pulled at, and it left Dani with a decision to make.  She didn't want to push too hard, or too fast.  Ash had seemed almost skittish in their first few conversations.  But at the same time, if her body was craving touch then Dani would not deny that. "You're so gorgeous.  Ass all red for me, moving while you try to get some relief - absolutely gorgeous."  Dani licked her lips.  "With your permission, Ash, I'd like to touch you now.  Because good girls deserve rewards, and I think you've been a very good girl for me.  Is that something that you'd like?" Either answer would be okay with her - sex wasn't a necessary part of a scene for her, but she certainly enjoyed it with willing girls.  It was completely up to Ash what her next move would be, and she was comfortable sitting there waiting to find out.  In the meantime her hand moved idly across reddened skin, brushing it gently with her fingertips.

“Yes.” Ash slipped too quickly and she mentally scolded herself for being needy. “Yes, Miss.” She shifted, sinking lower on the bed to get a little more bend in her knees. Ash pulled again at the restraint, knowing over and over again that they wouldn’t give way. The submissive couldn’t keep herself from squirming. Every ‘good girl’ sent Ash reeling with delight and a smile, though devilish, pulled at her lips unchecked. Dani could keep her there all night if she wanted, as long as there was promise of this. The abundance of attention and praise after not feeling as fulfilled in quite some time bubbled emotions to the surface but Ash ignored them, keeping herself in the moment instead. “Please touch me.” She breathed out, arching her back to lift her body from the bed and raise her ass up higher against the restraints.

Dani's eyebrow quirked, but before she could think of correcting Ash she went ahead and took care of it herself to save her the trouble.  "You asked very nicely, gorgeous girl, so I'm going to give you what you asked for.  That's a promise."  God, there was nothing more beautiful than a girl struggling against her restraints in need. Dani took a moment to admire the view but not loosing her from the restraints.  For now, she would have to be content with the touches Dani was willing to give.  Only later, when she'd proven herself good, would she be allowed to to any touching of her own.  "It's hard to even know where to start," she mused playfully.  "This ass is beautiful."  Her hands ran over Ash's offered body.  "And these hips, and these thighs..." her fingers traced them as well. "But I think I know what you want.  I think you'd like it if I touched you here."  Dani's finger traced a path up one thigh, pausing between her legs before pressing oh so gently against her core.  "So wet for me already," she murmured.  "I do love a needy girl."

Ash let out a moan as soon as Dani’s touch grazed her inner thigh. She shivered beneath it in anticipation and nearly cried out when the slightest pressure was applied where she needed it. She breathed into the pillow, ragged and uneven, steadying herself. Ash was dizzy with it. The scene was enveloping her whole, she forgot they were even doing it because she had asked. Ash forgot about Devereux, about anyone else she had met there. Her past and failed claim slipped from her mind like it’d never even been there and all of Ash’s thoughts either dwindled away to blankness or settled with an intensity on the Dominant hovering above her.

Dani was intoxicated with Ash.  The way she moved, the way she breathed, the noises that slipped from her lips - everything about her just fed Dani's desire for more.  To see what other noises, what other gasps and quivers and cries she could wring from the submissive before their time was over.  Her hand moved away, but only so that she could quickly untie the rope that held her ankles together. "Much better," she murmured.  "Gives us some room to work."  She didn't expect an answer from Ash, nor would she demand one, and her finger quickly returned to the spot she'd just left.  This time she didn't settle for a touch, instead tracing the length of Ash's lips with one hand and gathering wetness on the tip of her finger before stopping to lick it languorously clean.  "You taste so very good, gorgeous girl. "

Ash wasted no time raising up on her knees once she was freed. The cool feel of the sheets dragging against the patterned indents the rope had left on her ankles brought her back a little. The sensation pulled her closer to the surface only to be immediately undone again by the sight of Dani tasting Ash from her fingertips. A guttural moan released past her lips at the sight and Ash closed her eyes as if it were too much to filter in at once. Her ass in the air and chest pressed to the bed, Ash waited with baited breath for what was next.

Each time Dani thought she'd heard the hottest noise that Ash could make, she found a way to make a better one.  The moan shot right through her, and she squeezed her legs together just a little in response.  "I think we're going to turn you over now," she instructed.  "I like this ass very much, but if I'm going to make you cum for me then I want to see it in your face."  Dani helped her over, taking Ash's leg and propping it on her shoulder as she settled between them. "I'm not going to tease right now.  It won't always be this easy, but you've been very good for me.  What I do want is for you to be vocal, with words or sounds, so that I know you're enjoying it.  You can cum when you get there, you don't have to stop to ask me.  I just want to watch." True to her word, Dani didn't hesitate.  She ran two fingers up and down the length of her slit before pushing them into her, fingers curling just a little on each thrust.  Her other hand moved closer and her thumb worked gently at Ash's clit; she didn't want to rush, just establish a slow and steady build.

Their movements were easy, sometimes Ash was following along and other times the Dominant was more manual. She was on her back quicker than she had time to process, arms now crossed above her head. The anticipation built with every word Dani spoke and Ash had to lend most of her attention to not writhing in the woman's arms to demand more. She heard most of what was said, most importantly the part about being allowed to climax. Ash hiccupped a groan as Dani set to work, the initial intrusion setting her skin alight with a cold flame of a chill. The submissive gave a helpless tug at her restraints, her body twisting and arching into the touch. Fleeting thoughts of being able to reach for Dani ran through Ash's clouding mind as she pulled, helpless to the Domme. Her breath was ragged and she could feel pressure building but Ash was trying to stay in the moment for as long as she could. Each stroke brought her closer and closer but when Ash rolled her hips she felt the sheets rub across her freshly reddened skin and the pain distracted her from her impending orgasm. Trying to hold onto the moment and stay beneath Dani's steady watch, the submissive put all her focus on the sting of the sheets against her ass. She forced herself to keep her eyes open, watching the Domme watch her, holding her gaze when she could as her body began to go into overdrive outside of her control.

Dani was in her element, and she loved it.  There was absolutely, positively nothing sexier to her than a girl who'd given herself over completely, and Ash had done that for her.  There was no hesitation in her now, none of the hesitance that she'd shown in conversation, just the beautifully simple reactions of a woman who was going to be fucked to a brilliant orgasm and was completely lost in the experience. "That's a good girl," she murmured as Ash tested the ropes yet again, still finding no give in Dani's knot work.  "Look at you," she praised, moving her hand away from Ash's clit to reach up and brush away the unruly dark hair that had fallen over her face.  Only when she could see her eyes properly did Dani's fingers return to their task.  "So very beautiful."  There was no rush in her movements, no urgency, just a simple steady pace of thrust and withdraw, thrust and withdraw.  With each thrust her fingers curled, dragging over Ash's g-spot, and with each pull back they straightened out once more. She was gloriously wet around Dani's fingers, and the Domme couldn't wait to taste her again - but it would wait until the task at hand was complete.  "God, you're fucking gorgeous," she grinned.  "I've got you, Ash.  I'll get you where you need to go, I promise you, and you're going to ride out every second for me.  Getting so close now."

Her orgasm seemed to fall over her slowly. Ash felt it coming and she slipped her way off the edge with her breath held and her pulse racing. The Dominants eyes trained on her only propelled its ferocity and her body shook as she rode out the drawn out climax. Ash cursed, losing herself in the moment. There was a slight ache in her arms, something she didn't notice until after the wave of her orgasm had begun to recede. It felt good, it all felt good. The submissive's body was still shuddering with post orgasmic flutters and her thoughts were slow to the forefront of her mind.

As slick walls tightened around her fingers, Dani couldn't hold back a proud smile.  This was her favorite moment - there was something so beautifully unguarded in a woman's face as she fell from the edge, and it always filled her with power to be the one to see it.  True to her word, Dani's fingers never ceased their movement until she was sure that Ash had wrung every ounce of pleasure from her climax - only then did she withdraw, bringing her fingers to her lips and sucking them gently clean.  "You were so good for me."  Leaning down, she gave Ash the rarest of her gifts - a long, slow kiss.  "You're such a good girl.  When you feel like you can, please tell me what you need from me for aftercare.  And whether you'd like to be untied yet or not."

Ash was winded and spent. She hummed away a flicker of arousal watching Dani taste her a second time but was quickly derailed by the unexpected kiss. Ash's brows nit together as she was pulled further into it, languidly following Dani's lead. It left her breathless and reeling. Her body was still thrumming from orgasm and her lips tingled in the wake of the kiss, blue eyes following the Dominant away with a glimmer of surprise still present. When Ash had caught her breath she rolled slightly to one side, trying to stretch some life back into her limbs. Then nodded, acknowledging that her selfcare was dependent on speaking up for herself, that she could handle. Pulling tension but not tugging the submissive nodded again, "Untie me please, Miss."

Ash's surprised expression only made Dani feel better about giving her such a rare present.  She wasn't romantic or anything of the sort, so a kiss was about the highest praise that she could offer a submissive who'd scened with her.  Sitting back a little, she watched the girl carefully as she rolled and stretched, glad to hear her voice speak clearly in response to her request. "Of course - good girl for asking politely."  Dani slowly undid the knots, taking each arm between her hands and rubbing feeling carefully back into them.  Then, gently and slowly, she moved away a little to give Ash room to sit up if that was what she chose to do.  "All untied now," she murmured, keeping her tone and words soft in the aftermath of the scene.

Ash sat up, feeling dazed. She rubbed at her wrists absently as she struggled to pull her thoughts fully in line, noting that her own fingers didn't feel half as soothing as the Dominant's had been. It had been exactly what Ash needed. Uncomplicated and straight forward. The scene hadn't been overwhelming and the submissive could feel that serene feeling she got after submitting begin to circle her. It wasn't as all encompassing as it was when she fully gave herself over but it was enough to feel satisfying and certainly scratched the itch. She felt okay, her bottom sore but nothing that wouldn't fade on its own through the night. There was always only one thing she craved after a scene, something so simple but perfectly soothing. "Can I just..." Ash hesitated, building herself up to asking. "Will you lay with me for a while, Miss? Until I go?"

Dani kept her gaze trained on Ash as she sat up and rubbed over the spot where the ropes had been, making sure that there was nothing bothering her or that needed any treatment.  That didn't seem to be the case, which made Dani happy - it meant she'd done her job properly and kept care of Ash.  The request made her smile, especially given how hesitantly it was made. "It would be my pleasure, sweet girl."  Dani pulled back the covers on her bed and took the big spoon position, patting the spot in front of her.  "Thank you for telling me what you needed.  Get comfortable, and you're welcome to stay as long as you want."

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

@trek-tracks

I'd read your rant! Also, you should see Beyond. I haven't seen ID, but I'm confident Beyond is WAY better than ST:2009 and, from what I've heard about ID (that it is a garbage fire), Beyond is not the one of the three to not see.

Yeah, I have heard that about Beyond, and I keep meaning to watch it. I’m not like actively avoiding it, it just sort of...hasn’t happened. I have a To Watch list about five miles long at this point that I just keep foregoing in favor of watching gaming videos on YouTube. It’s a sad life.

But here’s the rant (feel free to skip if you didn’t follow this blog to hear me complain about AOS):

My strong impression from the first two movies was that the writers misunderstood--or just, for whatever reason, chose to discard-- the dynamic that Kirk, Spock and Bones actually had in TOS.

In TOS there’s a very deliberate balance wherein Spock and Bones are on opposite ends of a spectrum of logic vs emotion/ lawful vs chaotic, and Kirk sits in the middle of that spectrum, getting the input from both ends and then turning that into balanced decision-making. (I know it’s deliberate because of that whole “I took one man and wrote him as three people” quote from Roddenberry.) It’s a great setup when it’s being used correctly because it gives you a built-in method of examining any situation that comes up in the show from multiple angles without sacrificing the drive of any of the characters.

Trying to write one single character covering the same total perspective as Spock, McCoy and Kirk can create combined would necessarily result in either a character who appears to be wildly indecisive at best and lacking in any consistent characterization at worst, or in paring down the range of that perspective to avoid the first thing happening. This is all especially important in a show with the set-up of Star Trek, where not only do you not have much time to deliberate because everything has to be solved in under 60 minutes and no we will NOT be revisiting any of it later, but your lead character is in a position of formal command, meaning you have very little room to allow him to be hesitant or indecisive in his decisions before he starts to look like he shouldn’t be in that job. Indeed, it’s made explicitly clear multiple times that any sign of hesitation on Kirk’s part will be taken by not just him but most of the crew and Starfleet as a sign that he’s losing ability to command. Because Spock and McCoy have different roles not just as characters but as crewmembers, they can give full attention to their respective angles in a way that Kirk alone could not without it looking like he was dithering, with the bonus that you can write it all as a natural (and entertaining) conversation rather than it coming off as forced exposition. You don’t need to have those kinds of discussions all the time--there are plenty of times when one or more of the trio is absent and things tick along just fine--but there are also times, IMO, when someone being missing or just poorly written makes things falter quite obviously, Where No Man Has Gone Before being the biggest example that comes to mind.

But instead of having Kirk be in the middle of this spectrum I may have just sort of made up, the AOS movies seem to take the tack of having Spock be at one end and Kirk at the other end. They’re portrayed as being complete opposites to such an extent that they’re at odds practically the minute they meet, and spend the entire first movie at each other’s throats because AOS!Kirk’s brash, reckless, emotion-driven, rules-ignoring personality clashes incompatibly with Spock being deliberate, logical, and law-abiding to the letter. There’s absolutely no indication in TOS that Kirk and Spock ever had that kind of relationship or that they had to get over any sense of rivalry before they became friends. Granted, TOS had such a lackadaisical approach to backstory that we don’t really know anything about how they did become friends, but we are told on more than one occasion (which, for TOS, is practically hammering the point in) that Kirk was himself was so serious and focused as a student (”positively grim”) that he attracted bullying for it. In other words, for as little solid backstory as we get, one thing TOS is clear on is that Kirk did not have an arc of being reckless and wild and having to learn some patience and sense--if anything he seems to have had an arc in the complete opposite direction, although not so much that he isn’t still a total workaholic.

So that of course very much impacts Kirk and Spock’s characterizations and dynamic, but it also impacts McCoy, because by sticking Kirk in McCoy’s usual role, McCoy himself is now left with very little to do but make snarky comments and stick hyposprays in people from time to time (which he does very well, but, still). Which is sort of both cause and effect, because the fact that the writers put Kirk in that position to begin with indicates to me that they didn’t understand and/or didn’t value the importance of McCoy, specifically, being in that spot in the first place. But it is important that McCoy is in that spot because I love him and he deserves it because McCoy as a character is in a much more natural position to serve that role than Kirk is.

This may seem like a tangent, but stick with me here: McCoy inherently has a different perspective towards Starfleet than Kirk. Than everyone in the main cast, really, but especially Kirk. Kirk’s character, his perspective, his role in life, his arc, his backstory, all are closely tied to his being in Starfleet. Kirk’s position in relation to Starfleet is so important that it’s part of if not the entirety of practically every bit of story or backstory he has. When we hear about Kirk’s history, we mostly hear about it in terms of where he was in Starfleet at the time: at the Academy, serving his first assignment as an ensign, being a lieutenant on the Farragut, etc. Kirk’s career is very much on his mind all the time and threats to it are the subject of conflict multiple times, not because he cares about climbing in rank for rank’s sake but because he needs that career, and that good relationship with Starfleet, to do the thing he is most meant to do in life: be a starship captain. It’s not a position he could have outside of Starfleet--maybe he could go command an independent ship of some kind, but it wouldn’t be the same thing, not really. Kirk’s not meant to be doing supply runs or carrying passengers or what have you; he wants to explore, he wants to be out there checking out the weirdest shit the universe has to offer, he wants to be doing something important. This is why it’s such a big deal that Kirk is willing to sacrifice his career to save Spock in the movies, because that career is his life.

Yes, Kirk doesn’t always agree with Starfleet, and he’s willing to break their rules if he really has to. But Kirk could never exist in the position he is in TOS, and he certainly couldn’t maintain that position, if he couldn’t agree with Starfleet on most things, and conduct himself in a way that they in turn found agreeable. You don’t get to be the captain of one of the most important ships in the fleet by fucking around. And he didn’t. He worked his ass off to get there! TOS Kirk might be a bit young to be a captain but not so much so that he didn’t have to climb up the ranks the old-fashioned way to get there. Meanwhile AOS had to have Kirk sneak onto a ship he wasn’t supposed to be on and then get rid of practically everyone else on said ship, right up to provoking the acting captain into a fistfight, to get Kirk into a position where it would be remotely plausible for him to be in command of the Enterprise. In AOS Kirk is characterized as being so at odds with Starfleet and the Starfleet way of doing things that it takes some very extreme circumstances to get him in a position to command the ship because there’s no way Starfleet would have actually chosen for him to do that.

The reason I’m putting all this emphasis on Starfleet is that in TOS, when it comes to questions of Following The Rules vs Doing What’s Right, Starfleet is the rules. If it’s a matter of Lawful vs Chaotic, Starfleet is going to be the law. Any time the characters are in a situation where they have to ask “Is it the right thing to do what the rules say we should be doing here? Could the rules be wrong?” the rules they’re debating are almost always going to be Starfleet rules. (When it comes to following non-Starfleet rules it’s usually not so much a moral matter as “okay following the rules might be the only way we’ll get this done but we’re not going to act like we like or agree with those rules.”)

So when it comes to putting a character in the position of being the one who’s emotional rather than logical, who’s the voice of Hang The Rules, I’m Doing The Right Thing, who’s there to say things that need to be said but aren’t really appropriate to just say in the societal rules we’re working under here--Kirk can do that to some degree, but it really doesn’t make sense for him to be the one on the far end of that spectrum. To have been in the Starfleet environment as long as he has, and to have been as successful in that environment as he has, he has to be someone who can thrive in that environment, who finds it more acceptable to work with than not, or at least can do a good job faking it.

But McCoy? McCoy’s coming at it from a completely different angle. McCoy didn’t join Starfleet out of any kind of lifelong pursuit, he basically did it on impulse because fuck it, he had nothing better to do with his life at the time. Being in Starfleet informs McCoy’s characterization far less than everyone else’s in the show; mostly it just informs his current physical location. His identity isn’t really wrapped up in being Starfleet personnel. His identity is wrapped up in being a doctor. He was a doctor long before he was Starfleet, and when being in Starfleet stops being a viable option he goes to be a doctor somewhere else (and to make regrettable fashion choices but that’s another topic entirely).

There’s a lot of little ways that McCoy shows that he doesn’t care a whole lot about the Starfleet way of doing things. He’s casually insubordinate to people who seriously outrank him. He inserts himself into situations and discussions that aren’t what his actual job calls for--there’s no real reason why the CMO would need to hang out on the bridge all the time but there he is. He complains about the dress uniforms. He usually forgoes referring to other crewmembers by their ranks if he can get away with using their first name instead. He doesn’t even sit right.

[ID: 1. McCoy sitting on the edge of Spock’s console on the bridge, 2. McCoy sitting on the edge of the briefing table with a cup of coffee, 3. McCoy sitting sideways in a shuttle chair while talking to Spock.]

And he has very little interest in his own rank, or in commanding anyone, or in generally behaving as if he’s a member of a military organization, something reflected in the fact that he in turn hardly ever gets referred to by his actual rank. McCoy is okay with ordering people around as a doctor--he’ll pull rank to get someone in for a physical, or make them sit down and rest when they’re injured, Jim, and since he has to he’ll run the rest of the medical department, whatever there is of it. But I think he sees that first and foremost as being a doctor, who just happens to have a few extra tools at his disposal to make his patients behave so hey, might as well use ‘em. But on the one occasion* when he’s called upon to actually act as a ranking officer in a completely non-doctoring-related matter, he gets so flustered about the whole thing that he has to ask the person he’s supposed to be ordering if he did it right. He’s not really interested in being in charge of anyone in any formal sense.

*The one occasion in the main show, at least, which doesn’t take into account Diane Duane’s extremely excellent novel Doctor’s Orders, in which McCoy winds up in charge of the Enterprise because Shenanigans, and spends the rest of the book having a massive extended anxiety attack about it. It’s so great.

So McCoy doesn’t look at things tactically in the same way that Kirk does. He doesn’t have to. It’s not his job. Not to say that McCoy never has to make any hard decisions, but as a character he functions much better than Kirk as the one who’s looking at the emotional aspect of things because most of the time, McCoy’s not the one who has to turn The Right Thing To Do into standing orders for 430 people that can actually be practically acted upon. He tends to have a more immediate, short-range focus, contrasting the way Spock tends to look at the biggest picture and Kirk, again, lands somewhere in the middle. McCoy thinks about individual people first and foremost. If the Enterprise is about to get into a skirmish with a Klingon ship, Kirk has to be thinking about what the outcome of that battle will mean for Federation-Klingon relations, about what he can do now that might save more lives down the road even if it puts some in danger right now, but McCoy will be thinking about the people who are about to be hurt, maybe killed, right now. Which is a great perspective for a doctor to have, and an important perspective for a captain to keep in mind, but it could never be the only perspective for a captain.

McCoy’s viewpoint is a very important one in the Watsonian sense that it’s useful for Kirk and in the Doylist sense that it contributes to the specific tone that TOS wanted to achieve. But it’s a viewpoint that has to be balanced for it to be effective both practically speaking and in story-telling terms. AOS missed that balance; by putting all their emphasis on Kirk and Spock being opposites they made McCoy more or less redundant. Which is a crying shame, because it’s an unforgivable waste of Karl Urban’s goddamn amazing performance. The thought of what he could have done if he’d had something more to work with is heartbreaking to me.

But McCoy goes unappreciated far too often in general. You know I once went looking for a TOS McCoy Funko Pop and they didn’t have one? They had a generic Andorian but they didn’t have McCoy. It’s an outrage! I had to make my own out of a Munny.

[vaguely-concerned]

I played Death of the Outsider finally and I have some Feelings about it

and most of them not very positive. nice stuff first tho!

THINGS I LIKED:

- billie is such a good character. still new to her old self and slightly tender from coming out of the protective shell of lies that was meagan foster, full of old scars and doubts and bitterness but trying for something better, something kinder even though she still doesn’t quite understand what she’s walking towards -- the genuine care and tenderness in her voice when she talks to daud or thinks about deidre. I love her.

all that and she effortlessly IS also the queer disabled woc the gamer bros refuse to believe could possibly exist. exquisite. 

- the idea of ‘killing’ the outsider is compelling, but it’s the sort of idea that needs a full length game to support it and its implications. cool idea, completely wrong execution.

- saying that: I love that the injustice of the outsider’s creation being righted is only made possible by a long unbroken line of mercy and kindness. daud saved billie from the streets, corvo spared daud, daud saved emily and spared billie after her betrayal, billie tried to save aramis stilton and became entangled in the void, emily spared billie, billie took this job in the first place partly because she loves her dad daud and wants him to find peace. that idea is so beautiful that I wish the rest of the narrative was strong enough to hold it up lol.

there’s also something going on here with other people holding on to the important pieces of you -- that billie is ‘all that is left’ of daud after he’s dead. once he saved a child from true loneliness and gave her a purpose, made her feel seen again, gave her the closest thing she had to a home, and when he’s completely lost himself in the void... that kindness is still alive in billie, and she helps him find his way. again that is really touching and thoughtful and plays wonderfully into the chaos system in these games thematically! too bad about all the stilted dialogue and characterization messes and uh. everything else. 

- most of all I love how clear it is that billie and daud love each other. it’s a quiet love that has nothing to prove anymore, it’s survived all the blood and the ugliness and everything they’ve done to each other and to the world, a love with no demands left. it’s not the sort of love you usually see, in all its unsentimentality, but it’s real. when daud tells her he’s proud of her and trusts her no matter what she chooses to do, you feel how much he means it. (making his insistence on trying to make her choice for her all the weirder -- see my long rant of lamentation about his characterization in doto below lol)

there’s something about daud’s undramatic yet complete acceptance of and respect for billie that... I didn’t know I needed this, but it was a nice gift nonetheless haha, thank you. (it’s similar to how good it feels in D2 when you realize corvo just likes emily a lot as a person, even aside from her being his daughter. a good series for father & daughter stories)

- this carries over from D2, but I think the journal/log entries are better written and more insightful than the stuff out in the world.  

- it cannot be overstated how much the gameplay loop of these games is just... pure crack cocaine for my brain haha, very few things give me this specific kind of brain tingle. I love the sound of looting and I love the art style and ambiance and I love planning out a strategy after finding all the options and I love never being spotted or killing anyone and I love the puzzle elements they put into exploration sections and I love the feeling of how you move through the environment. it’s one of the few games where I routinely get so into it I end up with a crick in the neck because I’ve been so focused for so long and never noticed I’ve been sitting in a way that makes my entire spine hate me. I needed something to get me through the last few days and it did deliver that, at least. karnaca is pretty enough that I didn’t even mind that most of the levels were recycled from D2 either. 

- I’m not quite sure whether I understood this right but there’s a woman standing behind daud in the void -- I wonder if that is actually his mother and he’s been so close this whole time? at first I thought maybe it was jessamine but god no I hope she’s finally at peace after All That Nonsense, she shouldn’t have to hang around there anymore. there’s also a figure near him I could swear was corvo with his mask on, but he’s not dead canonically so that would make very little sense. oh well I’ll take my feels where I can get them even if I have to make them up wholesale  

- the bankheist was cool as fuuuuuck, that and the emotional impact of daud dying was sadly the height of this game for me, after that it all went mediocre real quick     

- paul nakauchi as shan yun was, as I have said before, a blast. ‘ugh I cannot continue my throat is as raw as a plucked pheasant’ fsdkfhlsadjkhfas

- daud’s funeral is genuinely touching. she gave him the entirety of her old life for a sendoff, battered and worn and dear as they both were. someone hold me 

THINGS I  H A T E D:

- the stuff they did with daud’s characterization. I am so unreasonably angry over this haha, the more I think about it the more I hate it. I think there are paths you could go with his ACTUAL character to make this work, but this was not it. I’ve said this before, but his most iconic, most defining scene is him surrendering himself to corvo’s judgement without justifying himself or deflecting the blame for any of what he’s done. this isn’t even regression in his character, it’s just.. a different character altogether. they could have gone for the angle that delilah almost managed to end the world b/c daud showed mercy and that’s the reason he’s moved to action, I think that might be a more compelling motivation for him at least. OR have him be more conflicted about how to do things -- violence is still the only tool he knows how to use but it’s not what he wants to or even can be anymore and the conflict troubles him, ‘His hands do violence, but there is a different dream in his heart’. or even use a different character for the ‘kill kill kill’ angle, he didn’t need to be here for this dlc at all.   

also, just on a purely practical level... for all his flaws and longstanding moral shortsightedness daud is not a stupid man. why the FCK would he be so sure that killing the outsider will fix anything? if I, dumbass extraordinaire, could within half a minute wonder if maybe something even worse would take the outsider’s place if you removed him... why does that never occur to the Knife of Dunwall tm, a man about Void for like half a century or whatever?? ugh fuck this, I’m having a hard time explaining exactly why it all feels weird and wrong to me, but know that it does and that I Do Not Like It lol. I feel cheated out of something important I thought I had.  

- again, this should have been a full game. (I think it is sold as one already, but it just hm isn’t) there’s way too much shit of literal cosmic importance for the game’s universe being picked up here for something this short to cover. save this HUGE idea for a rainy day should you ever want to do another game in the series and do something else with the dlc, honestly. 

- god but the outsider is insufferable in this. I don’t know what happened, but by the end I was like ‘*thoughtfully strokes chin* maybe daud has a point billie keep that knife handy’. he’s annoying and boring, which is wild to me because he was always a lot of fun in the other games.

for real tho I don’t know if this is just my atheist-but-still-angry-at-god-somehow??? talking, but daud HAS a point. people are responsible for their own actions, but the outsider didn’t have to do any of what he did either. he could have chosen to be bored through the centuries instead of seeing what people would do if you gave them such ~*morally neutral*~ abilities as y’know summoning a bunch of rats to eat other people. the game wants me to buy the ‘but really this black eyed boy is woobie tho uwu’ so badly and no I’m not buying that give me my refund I want my chaotic neutral bastard back pls. I’d probably be more inclined to want to help him like that. where’s his salt gone, arkane. if you didn’t want him to be edgy why did you make him look like that.  

- this is the lamest possible version of the outsider’s backstory lol, it feels like the pearl clutching panic about satanic cults back in the day all over. listen if it’s this easy to make a god the thrill is sort of taken out of it, if these randos did it anyone could. also how the fuck are they just normal-ish people anyway? why do they follow modern fashions? haven’t they been hanging around for thousands of years, haven’t their culture changed in any meaningful way? (I realize these aren’t the same guys as back in the day but it’s just weird) why do they speak a language billie and the player can understand? why did anyone think ‘idk some cultists no one’s ever heard of before with no thematic significance whatsoever’ was the way to go world building wise? they’ve taken all the unknowable eldritchness out of the eldritch horror and we’re all poorer for it now haha 

relatedly the last level is... just not very good. you come down from the awesome bank heist and then there’s... whatever the fuck this was.

- while I do like billie finding daud in the void and him remembering her I hate that he goes out still full of self loathing and rage when you talk him into the nonlethal option, that he can’t forgive himself or find any sliver of hope or peace. I wish there had been a few more moments for the two of them to come to peace with themselves before he gave the outsider back his name, some real catharsis. as it is I was annoyed when the outsider ‘woke up’ or whatever b/c it felt like he was stealing attention from what I was actually emotionally invested in and not done with.    

they had  n o t  built up billie’s or my sympathy for the outsider well enough either. again this is something I think they could have done if they’d structured things differently, if they’d been more deliberate in making you understand he was basically a child and letting you dwell on it. because there is a parallell there between him and billie, and billie and daud, but I, how do I put this, did not give a fuck  

in short this was really similar to my experience with D2 in that there’s enough good there that it’s all the more painful when it fails to deliver on it again and again, and it ruined things I already liked about this story from the first game (daud’s arc and everything to do with the outsider, mostly). give me some months of denial and hard core headcanon work and I’ll probably be able to live with it