#and then liked my art so much that they repeatedly sought me out again for more

[horse-time-babey]

repeat clients i see you and i love you

[thankskenpenders]

Enerjak Reborn intermission: Who the hell is Enerjak?

Before we move on to the second half of the fun, thrilling, and exciting Enerjak Reborn arc, I think it’s a good idea to pause and take a look back at where we came from. Reading this arc, you may be asking yourself: where’d this Enerjak guy come from? It’s been over six years since I covered the comics featuring the original Enerjak, after all (and I tended to skim over stuff a lot more back then)

So here’s a crash course in Archie’s original nemesis for Knuckles. The big question today is... did the original Enerjak ever DO anything?

As has been established, the original Enerjak was a powered up form Dimitri took on. Even if you’re not following all this too closely, you’ll probably recognize Dimitri as the floating cyborg echidna head. He’s pretty memorable in that form

In his youth, though, Dimitri was a normal echidna scientist working alongside his brother Edmund on Angel Island. Together, the two of them found the legendary Zoot Chute

This, of course, led them to the chamber of the twelve Chaos Emeralds (yes, twelve--the lore was different back then) that were holding Angel Island up in the air. It had been generations since the echidnas had Brexited their capital city into the sky to dodge the White Comet, and they figured, hey, maybe we should land this thing. And so Edmund and Dimitri set out to slowly syphon away the power of the Emeralds to do just that, gently lowering the floating landmass back into the crater it had left behind. A reasonable idea!

Except then their proposal to land Angel Island was denied, so Dimitri got pissed and stole the Chaos Syphon to do it anyway. But then the machine went HAYWIRE and he absorbed the energy himself and it flipped his morality switch from good to EVIL!!!

Boy, that was sudden!

From there Dimitri’s plan was to enslave everyone on Angel Island and make them turn the whole island into one big airship, from which Dimitri would subjugate the surface world

(No, the pirate motif isn’t an artist taking liberties with the script--Ken drew these lore dump backup stories himself)

Boy, this guy sure does have big plans! And he’s got the power to back it up, too, since he absorbed eleven whole Chaos Emer--oh, whoops, the fire ants chewed through the base of his spooky tower and he was immediately crushed by rocks before he could do literally anything else with his new power

From here, Edmund and his allies “renounced technology” and “destroyed their city” (not really, but that’s how the story goes). His descendants would become the Brotherhood of Guardians, eventually including Locke and Knuckles. This part of the lore dump gave me some of my favorite panels. Meanwhile, Dimitri’s side of the family sought revenge and went full techno-fascist, forming the Dark Legion

Fast forward a few hundred years to the events of the three-issue Knuckles miniseries, and Dimitri's HP finally recharges and he manages to escape from the rubble, ready for his first face-off with Knuckles! Except he’s no longer just Dimitri... he’s apparently now Enerjak!

While the echidna lore dump stories published literally immediately before this miniseries that Ken drew himself depicted Dimitri as simply turning all green and glowy in his powered up state, the art in the recap pages of this miniseries seems to retcon the story and say that he had actually turned into Enerjak. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use Enerjak in the original stories to set the persona up more instead of just having Dimitri turn green. Here Archimedes also refers to Enerjak as “the great evil of legend” even though no one is supposed to know about Dimitri’s Enerjak persona yet. Actually, this little point of confusion was expanded upon by Ian, which is why in his version of the canon Enerjak is an entity that multiple people can become, rather than just a supervillain persona for Dimitri. Anyway!

In this first confrontation, Enerjak displayed a few of the signature moves Knuckles has been using in the Enerjak Reborn arc. He’s able to unleash blasts of Chaos energy, freeze his opponents in place, and teleport them elsewhere. He uses this to make short work of the Chaotix and teleport Knuckles and Archimedes out to die in the desert of Sandopolis Zone

From there, Enerjak made a new evil citadel (guy just LOVES making evil citadels), this time made to resemble Echidnaopolis... except evil. He christened it “Nekronopolis.” He also, like... made some robots for Knuckles to fight, apparently based on robots they used to have in Echidnaopolis? Okay

In their final confrontation of the miniseries, Enerjak mind controls the Chaotix to make them fight Knuckles. He then starts going on and on about his unlimited power while struggling to kill a teenager, only to be undone when--surprise!--the fire ants show up and sabotage his fortress again. This time, though, they launch him into space with help from Locke instead of just making the citadel collapse on top of him. Oh, and then his evil fortress disappears. He leaves no mark on the status quo of the series in his first appearance aside from adding one more guy to the list of characters Knuckles has fought

Later, in issue #7 of the full Knuckles series, Enerjak is summoned back to Angel Island and meets the Dark Legion. Since he’s their beloved Dimitri, he immediately becomes their new leader. And so Enerjak gets his rematch with Knuckles. This time he uses new tricks like making himself giant and teleporting himself and Knuckles to various inhospitable locations like the moon. (Admittedly, the moon thing is cool.)

Eventually he gets bored toying with Knuckles, though, and he decides to just disintegrate him

BUT Knuckles is immediately saved by God the Ancient Walkers, who won’t allow one of their Chosen Ones to die so easily. So he comes back right away

Enerjak then leads the Dark Legion on an all-out assault on Echidnaopolis. He doesn’t really do much even though he could probably singlehandedly disintegrate the entire Echidnaopolis defense force with the snap of his fingers

And then Mammoth fucking Mogul shows up and drains him of all his power with the Sword of Acorns and turns him into a prune

No, Knuckles wasn’t even the one who beat his supposed nemesis in either fight

And that’s it for Enerjak! No, really! He appears in two story arcs for a total of six issues, and that’s it. He’s just regular old Dimitri from this point forward, eventually becoming a cyborg and then a head. He has no powers and is just a fascist

As with just about every other element of Ken’s Knuckles comics, Enerjak was all hype and no substance. Dimitri is an important figure in The Lore, but as Enerjak he doesn’t actually do anything with his unlimited power that has any lasting impact on the story whatsoever. He just taunts Knuckles and then gets his power slurped out by a mid-tier villain. It’s clear that Ken wanted to paint this as Dimitri repeatedly suffering for his hubris, but it sure would’ve been nice if he actually did anything before he loses each time. Like, honestly? If you took the Enerjak persona out of the story entirely and instead just had the Dark Legion bring back regular old Dimitri with their technology, very little about the overarching story would change. He also has absolutely zero nuance as a character, going from a well-intentioned if headstrong scientist to a world-conquering tyrant demigod to the leader of the techno-fascists at the drop of a hat when the story requires it

Needless to say, it is VERY SATISFYING to have Knuckles become a version of Enerjak with way more nuance and to see him actually do stuff with that power in Ian’s run. Not just cool fighting moves (although he has those!), but also stuff that will have a lasting impact on the series

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hello there! First things first, I just wanted to say I love your posts! And I would like to ask something: if there ever was made an animated series adapting the books of "How to Train Your Dragon", what would be your thoughts? Like, how long do you think it should be? Who do you think should be a part of the voice cast?

Hello there! And thank you so much! :)

So I know I have a post, several years old, where I go through this topic. I can’t find it right now because 1). I just woke up half an hour ago and my mind is as alert as a broken-up brick, 2). I’m lazy, and 3). even with all my tricks of refinding my old posts, sometimes the internet doesn’t want to cooperate. Anyway! Never hurts to talk about again. ^.^ I don’t think my thoughts have changed much in the intervening years, but might as well “update” anyway. XD

I love the idea of the How to Train Your Dragon book series being faithfully adapted into a television show. Specifically, I believe that the HTTYD book series would make a wonderful single season 2D animated series.

---

I am very emphatic that the animation style be 2D animation. The book series has a glorious childish whimsy and charm to it. It screams for an adaptation where the animation style can be as whimsical and charming as it is.

Now. The movie series and the overarching DreamWorks Dragons franchise worked, yes. But while the DreamWorks Dragons franchise tried to thread the needle of whimsical dragon designs and 3D animated realism, ultimately the animation style and the storytelling constraints of a movie trilogy meant making changes to the source material. They made the right choice. Movies are a medium well-suited for certain types of narratives and not as well suited for other types of narratives. You have to sweep in quickly, hook the audience, rapidly stab a few themes in there, and sweep out. It only makes sense that, as DreamWorks sought to make a successful movie, they altered the source material to make higher stakes, more action, greater realism, story changes for succinct thematic material they could use, etc.

But when we’re talking about a faithful adaptation to the books, 3D animation wouldn’t evoke the right mood that the books’ story needs. Not as optimally, anyway, especially with the default stylistic trends we have in 3D animation today. 2D animation would better give us the vibe we want. Cressida Cowell herself made specific choices about how to illustrate the books. She intentionally started with simple, childish artwork. It matured and gained greater detail over the course of the book series, but that artwork never lost its youthful vibe. Now, I wouldn’t want the animators to draw the this hypothetical tv series like Cowell’s art, but I would want them to take inspiration from the heart of what she did. The HTTYD book series is the story of a small boy growing up in an enchanting fantastical world. That screams 2D animation use.

I would be immediately grumpy if someone tried for a live action remake instead.

I also would push for voice actors to come from the region HTTYD is supposed to take place. We’re not going to go back a thousand years and use dialects that were in use a thousand years ago. That’s too much. But the HTTYD books take place on Scottish islands. Make Hiccup’s English-speaking voice actor, make everyone’s voice actors (aside from like, the Romans, etc.) Scottish.

The DreamWorks movies intentionally created a dialectical division between generations. I understand the affect they were going for, but that affect relies on linguistic biases that need to be removed (why are North American voices considered “more modern”? why are we still in a world where Scottish actors get repeatedly passed over?). In truth, most linguistic shortcuts in movies rely on sociolinguistic stereotypes that perpetuate bias and crap, so I will always be in favor of removing those. Talk to me more about that later if you’d like. Plus, what DreamWorks did is highly unrealistic, and as a linguist, it’s hard for me to ignore, haha. I don’t care what Watsonian explanations you try to use, that’s not how languages work. Let’s get some good Scottish dialectical representation going instead!

I do not care as much what individual humans are part of the voice cast. I have headcanons for how each character sounds, but I can’t take what I imagine in my head and project that onto any real human beings I know about. If they’re good in the role, that’s what matters. I also think that, while there are marvelous VAs out there whose reputation is well-earned, who are working in their field of expertise, we need to get away from celebrity power impacting hiring choices, too. Some countries are better than others about this.

A television show for the HTTYD book series could be done in a single season. I am someone who believes that story should never be rushed, but it also should never be unnecessarily stretched. Good creators know how long a story should be and limit it to that. The majority of HTTYD books in the first half of the series could be adapted into single 30 minute episodes. Will that delete material? Of course. But that’s the name of the game of television show adaptations anyway. A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons would make a good single episode and a single episode is all we need. How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse would make a great single episode and a single episode is all we need.

For the latter half of the book series, the books get longer, and there’s more drama to cover. Some of these could be split into two episodes. Still, we’d be looking at what? A series of about 16 episodes, maybe? No more than 20. Do not make it more than 20.

---

I think that a faithful adaptation of the book series could be INCREDIBLE! But they’d have to make the right artistic choices to successfully adapt the heart.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Answers Found in Silence

Vincent licked his lips.

The blood tasted like iron, but the vision of the masterful painting before him absorbed his entire attention.

He loved paintings. He loved living vicariously through them. The rush it filled him with whenever his eyes followed every stroke of the brush, paint layered as passionate memories upon canvas, the sheer essence that the artist channeled into creating such masterpieces.

Seeing what they saw. Breathing what they breathed. Imagining what they must have heard at the time. Tasting what they sampled upon their tongues.

Absentmindedly, he licked his lips again, only now realizing how much blood must have sprayed his face upon bludgeoning a man to death. It took him out of his revelry. That taste of iron prevented him from embarking on another journey through the lens of the painting.

Vincent dabbed his lower lip, then inspected his fingertips, ensuring with a glance that it was indeed another man's blood.

He turned to the corpse splayed out on the marble floor behind him, in the middle of a pool of his own bodily fluids. Vincent scanned the dead body with silent contempt. His lip curled into a sneer. He shook his head in disbelief.

"Philistine," he muttered.

The knife that Sir Dorsey Dwyer had held now lay on the shiny floor beside him, underneath a reflective surface comprised of his own spilled lifeblood, pumped out to completion by his heart's merciless beating, throbbing until he had exhaled his last breath.

Dwyer had threatened to do harm with that knife. Not harm to Vincent—but to the painting. An act of aggression he could not tolerate. An act of spite which he would not suffer.

That they would not suffer.

"Yes," whispered his favorite voice. That sweetest voice. "You did well, my love. Revenge for a loved one he had lost, I can always fathom, but what he would have done to the painting never would have—"

"Brought him back," said Vincent, Lord of the Bailyview, seemingly to himself.

Nobody but him could hear the phantasmal companion whose sentence he had finished. He stood alone in that spacious hall, company only to his late colleague's corpse growing cold. Sparing little glance to the bent candelabra which had caved in Dwyer's skull, he turned to gaze at the painting again.

He said, "It is a bit of a bother though. I need to figure out how to get his sorry carcass out of here without getting caught red-handed, or our time together may just be spent in a cell in the Tower."

She stayed silent.

He rubbed thumb and bloodstained fingers together, marveling at the sensation of that warm slick fluid trapped between them. Though rare for him to take another person's life, he rarely felt anything even remotely related to remorse.

Like this painting.

A beautiful portrait of a quaintly handsome man. Staring off to the side through hazel eyes, head crowned by messy hair, garbed in a fancy dress likely donned just for the portrait's painter—or imagined, as it contrasted the rest of his appearance so.

The painter had clearly seen something in the motif of his masterpiece. Felt something for the man depicted on the canvas.

And the painter had been nobody less than the infamous Outer Wall Reaper. The murderer who had kept the city locked in a breathless fear, rendered masses afraid of the killer who stalked its streets by night, picking off people and making them disappear until only mangled bodies surfaced in the slums, organs missing.

And now, Vincent owned this painting, stolen from the Reaper's vandalized home by looters before an angry mob fully thrashed it. The piece of art had found its way into the private collection of this rich and handsome playboy.

"So fascinating," said she.

Orinrya.

"The painter? Or the subject?" he asked.

She rendered a whole aria, carried in the singsong of a single word as she replied, "Both."

He chuckled.

"So rare for us to glimpse what such a pure soul saw as attractive," she added.

"Pure soul?" scoffed Vincent. But he smiled.

"Yes. Just look at the way he painted every single hair on his head. What little attention he paid to the shirt's collar or the bow, while having slaved over the sheen he had seen on this man's skin. The hand that guided that brush also guided the needles and scalpels that took all those lives, in all those cold and dreary nights. The warmth of their blood, steaming in the snow—"

"You're right."

"Hm?"

"I see it," breathed Vincent.

He sighed. Shot another glance at the dead man on the floor, repeating his oath, "Philistine. To think—you almost robbed our world of this masterpiece. The single only painting the Reaper may have ever made."

Dwyer had been out of line; he had had no right to destroy it. Nobody did. The stupid fop had foolishly tried to put knife to the canvas, to slice it to ribbons in a fit of rage upon hearing who had painted the portrait. A petty act of revenge, as if it would have brought back his slain brother, the only wealthy victim whose life the Reaper claimed in his rampage through the slums. Caught with a night worker, no less, adding insult to injury.

And to imagine that a simple painting could have been the object of his impotent rage—no, they would never have suffered such petty revenge. After all, it was not the artwork that had taken his brother's life.

Snatching a gas lantern from the table, Vincent raised it in front of the painting and frowned. Though perfect for the simple sandalwood frame, this artificial light did not do the artwork itself any justice. The long, foggy night had swallowed the sun, and Vincent could not wait to behold the Reaper's artistry again in broad daylight.

In a way, the Outer Wall Reaper had just claimed another life. Even if only indirectly. Vincent smiled at that thought. That he had accidentally become the murderer's own instrument.

Almost as if on cue to disrupt his morbid amusement, someone knocked on the door.

Muffled through the entrance still closed, the butler spoke, "Milord, I heard—"

"It's fine, Perry. Brace yourself as you enter. Sir Dwyer had a," Vincent's words trailed off like these thoughts. He smiled again to himself before he finally finished the sentence. "He had an unfortunate accident."

He never turned around. The doors to the gallery opened and Perry entered. His shoes squeaked as he swiveled and froze in place, staring at the corpse.

"An accident with a candelabra, I see," said the butler with his usual measure of dripping sarcasm. "Looks like the poor chap fell backwards into it. Repeatedly."

Vincent chortled, still admiring the painting. He never understood how Perry found it in him to deliver such deadpan remarks without breaking out into laughter himself.

Their gazes met for a second, and as always, Vincent read no fear in Perry's eyes. They would never harm a hair on each other's heads, and knowing each other's dirty secrets assured mutual silence—or mutual destruction.

"What would you have me do about this mess, sir?"

Vincent clicked his tongue and shook his head.

"Pay no mind. Fetch me everything for some absinthe. I will take care of the late Sir Dwyer myself. And as you recall, he showed up here all drunk off his arse. I don't think anybody knows he even came here. And someone in the constabulary... still owes me a favor. I'll have it all sorted out soon, no worries."

"Despite the recent disaster at your party?"

"Oh, let them all talk. I love being the center of attention. Next thing you know, I'll be the headline of another lurid article," Vincent said, painting a picture in the air with a hand, fingers splayed as he envisioned the printed piece. "Painting me as the Outer Wall Reaper himself, while others rush to defend my name and trip over themselves in fabricating all the reasons why I would never harm a fly."

Vincent arched his brow as he flashed his loyal butler a twisted smile. The same involuntary expression to mark his face whenever he felt like he was winning a game. And he always won the games that people played in the rumor mill.

"I am less concerned about them, milord. And more about how difficult it will be to clean after the constabulary concludes their investigation." Perry raised his nose and stared down at it, gray cheeks reddening.

"Hm. I am terribly sorry about all that, Perry. You have my word; I'll hire someone to take care of it. Now—how about that absinthe?"

The butler emitted a grunt in recognition, bowed, and backed out of the gallery hall again, leaving Vincent alone with the corpse.

And Orinrya.

The door clicked as it shut completely.

"He's such a good friend of the family," she said. "Three generations, and now the old codger's stuck with handling your caprice."

She smiled through Vincent's own lips. He smiled to himself, as well.

"I'm sure he has his own share of amusements," he said. Focusing on the painting again, he asked, "Now, where do you think this one leads? It's just blank around the subject. Well, not entirely blank. There's some color, some suggestion of gloom. I'd wager he painted it just this same winter. But without background—no context. A blind journey. We've never done that before."

"And that's why we will, darling. You cannot resist."

He smiled even wider.

Orinrya was right. She knew his thoughts, reading them as clearly as if he had spoken them out loud, giving them air. She knew his capricious nature as well as he did, or perhaps even better. Knew he could not pass up on any opportunity to explore the unknown. He bored quickly of things familiar and always sought to visit a new horizon whenever it presented itself.

He flopped down onto the sofa with a heavy sigh, his velvety upholstered oasis in the middle of this opulent marble gallery. Surrounded by alabaster statues of ancient deities, and arrays of exquisite paintings that his family had amassed over all these years to plaster the high walls. The lights from gaslit lanterns cast pockets of eerie glow throughout the gigantic hall.

Vincent tapped his chiseled blood-splattered chin as he once more marveled at the craftsmanship that had gone into painting this portrait.

"What do think is his name? Or was?" he asked.

"Eric," she said. Giggled. "He looks like an Eric to me. And still alive, I feel."

Vincent chuckled.

"So, you're picking up on a name with an 'E'. Perhaps Egon? Egon. Hm. What a funny name," he mused.

"Edward. That must be it, for sure."

"How would you know?"

"Call it—intuition," she cooed.

"Or should I call it whispers? The things you hear from the beyond? You never answered, love. You never told me where you came from."

"And perhaps I never will," she breathed with melody, drawing out another smile from him.

The set of double doors opened into the gallery. The butler entered. Empty glasses and sugar cubes in a small metal cup tinkled and clattered until he arrived by the sofa's side. He set the contents of his tray down onto the table by the sofa, one by one, preparing everything for Vincent's ritual.

Before he could seize the bottle of green liquid to pour him a glass, Vincent raised a jewelry-clad hand to stop Perry.

"That'll be all. Thank you," he told him. "I'll take it from here."

Perry nodded, bowed again, and left the gallery, shedding not even a glance in the direction of Dwyer's corpse.

The doors clicked shut again.

"You know you don't need that, right?" asked Orinrya.

"Yes. But I just—I enjoy it too much. I like the taste. I associate it with our study of these pieces. With our journeys."

He chuckled again.

Perching a sugar cube atop the glass with the ornate spoon—and his family's crest of the eagle cut into the silver piece of specialized cutlery—he poured the sweet green spirit into his clear cup. The trickle of liquid tickled his senses.

And he lived for all manner of sensations.

"It is a lovely taste, I must concede," she said. "Particularly this bottle, this make. More than mere resemblance of licorice. Mint. Thyme? And a hint of other worlds. I do understand the appeal, don't get me wrong."

A delighted sigh escaped his throat as he cradled the glass between the fingers of one hand, swirling its contents like fine wine and sampling the drink's scent.

"Other worlds indeed," he said, the smile never fading from his face.

He sipped from the glass. Heat spread over his palate with a pleasant warmth, like a beautiful wildfire consuming the countryside, burning away every hint of iron and blood. He closed his eyes as he savored the aftertaste, and took another longing sip, kissing the glass like he would his many lovers, the men and women he consorted with behind closed doors at his many lavish parties.

"Drink, sweet prince," she said. "I long to see what lies beyond. I wish to meet this man for myself. To see what the Reaper saw."

"Taste what the Reaper tasted," breathed Vincent, licking his lips again, now only tasting the sweet sting of the green fairy, any tang of blood having been relegated into memory.

He focused on the painting. Drinking in the portrait's details. Warm tones made up the complexion of the artist's subject. Streaks and dabs of gray peppered dark hair despite the youthful and symmetrical face. A faint hint of stubble around the small and tender-looking lips and a soft chin.

And such kind eyes. So utterly kind.

What had the Reaper seen? Who was this mysterious subject?

"The killer became obsessed with him," Orinrya whispered. "Watched him from afar. But not like he watched the others."

Vincent sipped more from his cup; his sights fixed on the portrait. The spirit burned his throat on the way down and blood now rushed in his ears.

"Do you think he would have kept him for last? After torching down the entire world, would he have kept him around, do you think?"

"Not for long," she said. "Those kind eyes, he would not have been able to bear them for all eternity. Those eyes, painted thus, they knew not who watched him. What watched him. What monster—"

"Oh, my dear, let us not wield that word lightly," Vincent said.

His eyes fell shut as he drank more from the cup. The cool steel framing its glass made his silky palm tingle.

"Oh, but my dear, he is one of us," she sang.

"Was," said Vincent, breaking out into another chuckle.

Opening his eyes to continue gazing into the soft amber irises of the portrait's eyes, Vincent's vision blurred.

"Yes, was," she chimed in, joining him with melodious laughter in his mind.

"And this—Edward, you say—"

"Yes. Certainly Edward. I see a room. Orderly. Well-organized. Neatly arranged instruments. Cabinets filled with... medicine."

"A doctor?" asked Vincent with a lopsided smile, arching a brow.

"A doctor."

He drank more from the cup. Lost all sense of time as his senses dulled, losing track of how often he repeated the motion—the trickle of green spirit soaked up by the sugar cube, trailing down through the family crest into the cup, and burning in his throat as he sent it to cascade past his luscious lips and tongue.

"Here, in this very city, am I right?"

"Yes, dear. He is near. I feel it."

As his vision faded, his memory soon followed into the hazy mist.

Vincent cradled the bottle. Empty, save for a few droplets. They laughed as its glass shattered somewhere on the floor, no further mind paid to its breaking after jettisoning it away in a languid arc.

"I can almost taste it."

The lingering smell of the spirit occluded his senses further, but he began to smell another sharp substance.

Rubbing alcohol.

"We're getting closer, love," she whispered.

Every time he blinked, his eyelids grew heavier. His vision of the portrait turned into a blob of warm colors in dim light. The kind eyes of the mystery man in the painting—Edward—soon peeled away from that unseen something off to the right side of the image, and the doctor in the painting turned his head to look back at his spectators.

Then he looked out a window. His motions were slow, deliberate.

They felt that he felt watched.

"A busy street by day, just outside that window," Orinrya said.

"A foggy day," Vincent ventured. "A day not long ago."

"Only days around when the Reaper started his spree."

"Oh, how he cherished knowing how this beautiful man—this oblivious doctor—was unwittingly helping him."

"Did he provide the instruments?"

"Or drugs, perhaps?"

"No, just the thing to stab. A precise thing."

"A needle," they both said in unison, their voices blending until they matched. Orinrya spoke through his mouth. "A syringe."

Two voices. Not one.

The lantern's flame flickered but stayed alight. Turned bright blue. The world began to fade.

"Inspiration."

"He inspired him. Oh, he quaffed the nectar of this man's innocence—"

"Watched from afar, even before he started claiming lives—"

"Twisted it into something darker—"

"Something fierce—"

"Oh, the delicious transgression."

The lights throughout the gallery went out, one by one, until all but the lantern sitting on the floor between sofa and the lonesome painting remained lit. An orange-hued island in the middle of a sea of darkness. On one edge, the dapper lordling lounged, limbs drooping lazily off the sides. On the other, the painting.

The handsome man had disappeared from it.

Vincent brushed over his own lips and the numbness had set in. Unable to feel his own fingers, it felt like someone else caressed him, like she had planted there a gentle kiss.

They no longer saw a portrait, but another place. A window into that other location: a doctor's practice. Vacant of people, with shadows flitting about, hints of its owner leaping from one task to another chore, as day and night cycled rapidly, bouncing back and forth.

Meticulously washing his hands in the sink. Examining a sitting patient's eyes. Carefully bringing scalpel to an exposed arm. A laugh to defuse some fear. Blood, dabbed away with cloth in slender hands. A warm and kind smile to match the gaze from the painting, a patient calmed by his gentle disposition.

Oblivious of the darkness that watched him, reaching through past and present and now seeing that darkened room. A solid night, a roiling fog outside the windows. Like one monster once watched, spying from the outside, they now peered through painting, bridging time and space.

Vincent lurched up onto his feet and stumbled halfway on the infinitely long walk towards the painting. Glass shards crunched underneath his shoe, reminiscent of the blanket of snow outside, melting into the flurries of crystallized precipitation which he saw through the painting, falling softly to cobblestone-covered streets outside the practice's window.

Though numbed by stupor, the bumps and ridges of dried paint surfaced in a texture he traced with his fingertips, exploring the picture of the painting. No longer depicting the kind-faced doctor, but his practice, blanketed entirely by night.

"Push, my love. Let us explore."

And Vincent did. Pressed his palm against the painting, and ripples exploded outwards from it, as if he had disturbed the surface of a still pond. The image swallowed his hand and he pushed deeper, until he dove into that distorted image, neither place nor person, stepping entirely through.

As he stumbled again and blinked to orient himself, he stood inside that doctor's practice.

Rocked back and forth as the absinthe did its number on his coordination, barely able to read the handwriting on letters stacked on a desk.

Orinrya whispered through Vincent's lips, "Doctor Edward—"

"Carnaby," Vincent finished himself, slurring the surname in a drunken drawl, erupting into a stupid giggle.

He slapped the paper back down onto the desk and looked about, letting his eyes adjust.

"Do we truly travel to these places, love?"

"Or is it just a jaunt of the mind?" she countered.

"A little escape that leaves the flesh behind?"

He giggled another drunken giggle as he clumsily knocked over objects on the desk, causing them to clink and clatter and a small broken vial to gurgle out liquid. Something black, likely ink.

"Oh fairy, my green fairy," he murmured with the most melody that a positively drunken man could muster.

"This is all us, darling. No fairy needed. Just some added fun for your pleasure."

He pushed through a door, stumbling down dark corridors, and registering the softness of a carpet beneath his shoes.

"But it's so much fun, love—"

Vincent froze.

Bathed in a bright sliver of silver moonlight from a crack between the curtains, a woman lay in bed. A shapely face, heavily scarred, and peacefully resting, eyes closed.

"Oh, here we go again," mused Orinrya. "Be still, your beating heart."

Arms exposed above the sheets, wreathed in bandages, leaving just enough space for Vincent to take a seat at the sleeping woman's side. The mattress and bed creaked underneath his weight.

The scars on her cheek, as disfiguring they were, he saw past them and found a beauty he would have overlooked otherwise. But it was the scarring that captured his entire attention.

"Yet another fancy for you to entertain, love?"

He shushed Orinrya.

His fingers shook with the green fairy's tremors and an enamored fascination. He traced over the lines of those scars, an uneven drawing from a cut inflicted by a blade, that wandered over cheek to nose. Crisscrossing into another scar that ran across the nose, where ridge had broken once. Gingerly exploring the uneven surface of her warm skin where a hound's claw had raked her jaw. Her soft and shallow breath, he felt even with hands so numb.

So focused, so spellbound—

"Careful now," Orinrya whispered.

Vincent whispered back, "Sound asleep—"

"Look," she said. "Look away."

"No, I shall not."

"Look beside her, I say! Look. On the bedside table," Orinrya urged him. The singsong gone, her tone had fallen deathly serious.

That was when his blurry gaze finally came to rest upon it.

A leatherbound tome. Strange glyphs carved into its face.

Another gasp escaped Vincent's throat, all attention for the beautifully scarred woman now blown away.

An authentic tome of magick. He felt it. He felt its thrum. No ordinary book he had ever seen had ever looked like that. It had to be.

The prize he had sought for so long.

"Take me," Orinrya whispered.

No—the tome had whispered that. In his mind. Like her?

Right?

"Take it," she whispered in his mind. "Take it."

His hands trembled—hovered just above the cool leather surface of the book. How he yearned to rip it open and decipher its inscriptions. But his reverence weighed so heavily, the dread of what terrible secrets it may contain, it boggled his mind. His hesitation dragged on forever, mired in a swamp of lost time and a drunken haze.

"Take it," she hissed. Commanding.

His fingers trembled even more as they crept closer towards the edges of the book, keen on flipping the lid and perusing its mysterious pages.

He hesitated for too long.

"What are you doing in here?" a man blurted out behind them.

In the door to the room stood a dark silhouette. The squeak of metal and a clicking sound preceded a lantern going on.

The doctor. This Edward Carnaby. The kind face from the painting, kindness far from its current expression. Glaring at Vincent.

"Who in the blazes are you?" asked the doctor.

Brows furrowed; the moonlight twinkled with fear in the doctor's pupils.

Vincent rose to his feet and lurched towards him, tripping over a chair's leg. He caught himself against a dresser before he could fully plummet to the floor. Laughed, drunkenly.

"Should he see your face?" Orinrya asked. Another murmur in Vincent's thoughts. "Should he remember?"

"No. Yes!" Vincent said, followed by another clipped giggle.

Alibi, he thought. So convenient. If this was even real.

Doctor Carnaby cried, "Get out! Before I fetch a constable!"

The good doctor threatened, yet he took a timid step backwards, back into the hallway behind him. Frightened by the nightly invader in his home.

"Sorry good, sir," Vincent's words lurched as much as he did with his drunken gait. "I must have been confused. Long night—o-out drinking, you see."

"Get out!" repeated the doctor with more force. His voice trembled with terror.

Leaning against the dresser, sliding, and almost slipping as he propped himself up, Vincent eked out a theatrical gesture with his arm and bowed, nearly toppling over in the process. "I'm Lord Vincent Va—"

"I don't care who in the devil's name you are, you are bothering my patient, you drunken lout! Get! Out! " The doctor's fear audibly subsided. He cleared his throat and pointed a finger down the hallway, directing Vincent to leave that way.

He stepped aside demonstratively and waited for Vincent to follow his instructions.

"Yes, yes, yes. As I was saying, good sir, I must have taken the wrong turn—wrong door, you know, it happens," he said with a smile, growing aware of how much less charming he was whenever he was this heavily intoxicated. "Vincent Vance is the name, Lord of Bailyview. Terribly sorry if I broke anything on the way in—"

Doctor Carnaby's face fell through different stages. The dread dropped into fury, and the fury made way for confusion and mild annoyance, with a dash of pity.

"Just leave, please."

"Right," Vincent said, covering his mouth and feigning the urge to throw up, replete with a retching sound.

Carnaby waited patiently for him to step outside, and Vincent obliged. Stared over his shoulder as he turned into the hallway and stopped there—the scarred woman stirred, and more importantly, that leatherbound tome eyelessly stared back at him.

Beckoning him.

He wanted it so badly. Had to peel his gaze from the book. Had to tell himself he'd be back for it. Flashed a stupid grin at the doctor and stumbled forth.

The glow from the doctor's lantern made it easier to navigate the dark hallway, and in the blurry haze where time and space melted into one misty soup, he braced himself against a wall on the way until he pushed through a door that should have led outside. He slammed it shut behind him, more fiercely than he had intended.

But he did not find himself outside on the street, in the cold, where his breath condensed before his mouth, standing in the pale moonlight as it pierced a ring of clouds—but back in the gallery in front of the living painting of Doctor Edward Carnaby.

The doctor glared into the night outside his front door. Poked his head outside to see where his nightly intruder had staggered off to but paid it no more mind. Did not notice a lack of footprints in the thin layer of snow. He shut the door. The lock loudly fell into place.

Vincent leaned against the wall, watching through the painting.

The snowfall of flurries gently drifting down onto the cobblestone-covered streets made him sway again, made Vincent's legs buckle. Hypnotic as it was, it almost fully robbed him of his senses.

He crashed back down onto that comfortable sofa inside his opulent gallery.

"A fascinating jaunt, darling," said Orinrya.

"And a convenient alibi," he replied, shooting another glance at Sir Dwyer's body.

They laughed at the dead philistine.

The blur continued, as Vincent did not recall how he had gotten from the Reaper's painting of Doctor Carnaby in the main hall—to his private parlor.

Slumped into a different sofa, he peered up at the gigantic portrait of himself.

The renowned painter Léon Choffard had spent months completing this masterpiece. A stylized depiction of Vincent's likeness. Though already statuesque in the flesh, Choffard's artistry had lent the portrait a special something that portrayed Vincent as even more attractive than humanly possible—which Vincent regularly and smirkingly attributed to their brief and romantic tryst.

"It truly captures your pleasant face," Orinrya said.

"Thank you, dear."

Silence.

A large clock tick-tocked away from the edge of the room, with everything around him swamped in shadows, two lanterns shedding just enough light that he could study the rendition of his own portrait.

"I wonder," he suddenly said. "What would happen if we entered that picture? Where would it take us?"

Silence.

Orinrya stayed silent.

"Hm, I like that answer. It is intriguing, love. So mysterious. You say so much by saying nothing, you know that?"

She laughed inside his head. A sweet and seductive laugh. He smiled in response.

"Will you ever tell me what you are? Or is that destined to be our perpetual dance?"

She laughed more.

"In due time," she said.

"Like getting our hands on that book."

"Yes, in due time, darling."

"And the woman."

"The scarred one?"

"No. Yes. Her too," he said. He bit his lip, clamped his eyes shut and sighed. "I meant the lady from the new world, that witch-doctor. And all the others in her company. That bandaged inquisitor—oh, how I would like to peel his bandages away and hear all his stories. It's brilliant how all these fascinating people—and things—are all coming together here, all at once."

"Yes. You feel it," Orinrya said.

"Feel what?"

"The quickening."

"What do you mean?"

"Something new being born. Old dreams that are dying, and a new world being birthed before our eyes," she breathed.

Vincent shuddered with a chill running down his spine.

"And what is this new world you speak? You must know. You know so much. I know you know," Vincent whispered, erupting into a crazed cackle over how silly he found his own words.

She smiled. He felt it. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled as a soft breeze swept through his parlor like a ghostly presence. Like soft fingertips that brushed against his lips, not his own. Or perhaps his own, just numbed from the excess of strong spirits only slowly wearing off.

"The real question, darling—what will you do when you bear witness to the reckoning? Will you hold the reins? Or will you pass them off to see what spectacle others may unfold?" Orinrya asked.

The corners of his lips twitched. Both he and she, they smiled simultaneously.

Not gracing her questions with any straight answer, he only returned more questions.

"Are you angel? Or devil?"

Silence.

"Good answer."

He laughed a hollow laugh, eventually mounting into a long and wistful sigh.

Vincent drifted off into a dreamless sleep. And he never yearned for such, as he lived his dreams in every waking moment.

A lingering thought that swam atop the sea of oblivion.

Sputtering awake, the lanterns were no longer lit. Daylight flooded through open doors into the parlor. He still rested in the sofa, sprawled out across it like his own likeness in the gigantic portrait towering over him.

The air was cold and had left him with a painfully stiff neck.

As he shuffled lazily across shiny marble floors, he surveyed the damage he had wrought the night before. The glass shards scattered across the gallery, and the dead body of Sir Dwyer, still left in his own pool of blood.

Work to do. A body to be rid of. A chief to blackmail. A new slew of rumors to seed.

The rich lord took a deep breath and sighed again, rubbing the back of his neck.

He smiled.

"Oh, the woes of pleasure before business," he reckoned.

They both laughed at the thought.

"But that book—"

"Will be ours."

"Its magick—"

"We will wield it," they sang together, dulcet syllables spilling from Vincent's lips.

"Or will you be wielding it, while I soar to incredible heights on your back?" he asked.

And there was silence.

—Submitted by Wratts

[popculty]

52 Films by Women: 2020 Edition

Another annual challenge complete!

Last year, I focused on diversifying my list. This year I kept that intention but focused on watching more non-American films and films from the 20th century. Specifically, I sought out Agnès Varda’s entire filmography, after her death in 2019. (I was not disappointed - What a filmmaking legend we lost.) 

I also kept a film log for the first time and have included some of my thoughts on several films from that log. I made a point of including reviews both positive and negative, because I think it’s important to acknowledge the variability and breadth of the canon, so as not to put every film directed by a woman on a pedestal. (Although movies directed by women must clear a much higher bar to be greenlit, meaning generally higher quality...But that’s an essay for another day :)

* = directed by a woman of color

bold = fave

1. The Rhythm Section (2020) dir. Reed Morano - Not as good as it could have been, given Morano’s proven skill behind the camera, but also not nearly as bad as the critics made it out to be. And unbelievably refreshing to see a female revenge story not driven by sexual assault or the loss of a husband/child.

2. Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda - If you ever wanted to take a real-time tour of Paris circa 1960, this is the film for you.

3. Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig - Still my favorite Little Women adaptation. I will re-watch it every year and cry.

4. Varda by Agnès (2019) dir. Agnès Varda & Didier Rouget

5. Booksmart (2019) dir. Olivia Wilde - An instant classic high school comedy romp that subverts all the gross tropes of its 1980s predecessors.

6. Girls of the Sun (2018) dir. Eva Husson

7. Blue My Mind (2017) dir. Lisa Brühlmann

8. Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma - Believe the hype. This film is a master thesis on the female gaze, and also just really effing gorgeous.

9. Belle Epine (2010) dir. Rebecca Zlotowski

10. Vamps (2012) dir. Amy Heckerling - With Krysten Ritter and Alicia Silverstone as modern-day vampires, I was so ready for this movie. But it feels like a bad stage play or a sit-com that’s missing a laugh-track. Bummer.

11. *Birds of Prey (2020) dir. Cathy Yan - Where has this movie been all our lives?? Skip the next onslaught of Snyder-verse grim-darkery and give me two more of these STAT! 

12. She’s Missing (2019) dir. Alexandra McGuinness

13. The Mustang (2019) dir. Laure de Clermont-Tonnere - Trigger warning for the “protagonist” repeatedly punching a horse in the chest. I noped right out of there.

14. Monster (2003) dir. Patty Jenkins – I first watched this movie when I was probably too young and haven’t revisited it since. The rape scene traumatized me as a kid, but as an adult I appreciate how that trauma is not the center of the movie, or even of Aileen’s life. Everyone still talks about how Charlize “went ugly” for this role, but the biggest transformation here isn’t aesthetic, it’s physical – the way Theron replicates Wuernos’ mannerisms, way of speaking, and physicality. That’s why she won the Oscar. I also love that Jenkins calls the film “Monster” (which everyone labels Aileen), but then actually uses it to tell the story of how she fell in love with a woman when she was at her lowest, and that saved her. That’s kind of beautiful, and I’m glad I re-watched it so that I could see the story in that light, instead of the general memory I had of it being a good, feel-bad movie. It’s so much more than that.

15. Water Lilies (2007) dir. Céline Sciamma – Sciamma’s screenwriting and directorial debut, the first in her trilogy on youth, is as painfully beautiful as its sequels (Tomboy and Girlhood). It’s also one of the rare films that explores the overlap of queerness and girl friendships.

16. The Trouble with Angels (1966) dir. Ida Lupino – Movies about shenanigan-based female friendships are such rare delights. Rosalind Russel is divine as Mother Superior, and Hayley Mills as “scathingly brilliant” as the pranks she plays on her. Ida Lupino’s skill as an editor only enhances her directing, providing some truly iconic visual gags to complement dialogue snappy enough for Gilmore Girls. 

17. Vagabond (1985) dir. Agnès Varda – Shot with a haunting realism, this film has no qualms about its heroine’s inevitable, unceremonious death, which it opens with, matter-of-factly, before retracing her final (literal) steps to the road-side ditch she ends up in. (I’m partly convinced said heroine was the inspiration for Sarah Manning in Orphan Black.)

18. One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977) dir. Agnès Varda – Probably my favorite classic Varda, this film feels incredibly personal. It’s essentially a love story about two best friends with very different lives. For an indie made in the ‘70s, the diversity, scope, and themes of the film are impressive. Even if the second half a drags a bit, the first half is absolute perfection, engaging the viewer immediately, and clipping along, sprinkling in some great original songs that were way progressive for their time (about abortion, female bodily autonomy, etc) and could still be considered “bangers” today.

19. Emma (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

20. Black Panthers (1969) dir. Agnès Varda

21. Into the Forest (2016) dir. Patricia Rozema - When the world was ending (i.e. the pandemic hit) this was the first movie I turned to - a quiet, meditative story of two sisters (Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood) surviving off the land after a sudden global blackout. Four years later, it’s still one of my favorite book-to-screen adaptations. I fondly remember speaking with director Patricia Rozema at the 2016 Chicago Critics Film Festival after a screening, her love for the source material and desire to “get it right” so apparent. I assured her then, and reaffirm now, that she really did.

22. City of Trees (2019) dir. Alexandra Swarens

23. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) dir. Eliza Hittmann - To call this a harrowing and deeply personal journey of a sixteen-year-old who must cross state lines to get an abortion would be accurate, but incomplete. It is a story so much bigger than that, about the myriad ways women’s bodies and boundaries are constantly violated.

24. Paradise Hills (2019) dir. Alice Waddington

25. *Eve’s Bayou (1996) dir. Kasi Lemmons – I’ve been meaning to watch Kasi Lemmons’ directorial debut for many years now, and I’m so glad I finally have, because it fully deserves its icon status, beyond being one of the first major films directed by a black woman. Baby Jurnee Smollett's talent was immediately recognizable, and she has reminded us of it in Birds of Prey and Lovecraft Country this year. If merit was genuinely a factor for Oscar contenders, she would have taken home gold at eleven years old. Beasts of the Southern Wild has been one of my all-time favorites, but now I realize that most of my appreciation for that movie actually goes to Lemmons for blazing the trail with her story of a young black girl from the bayou first. It’s also a surprisingly dark story about memory and abuse and familial relationships that cross lines - really gutsy and surprising themes, especially for the ‘90s.

26. Blow the Man Down (2019) dir. Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy - Come and get your sea shanty fix!

27. Touchy Feely (2013) dir. Lynn Shelton - R.I.P. :(

28. Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (2020) dir. Madeleine Parry - If you thought Gadsby couldn’t follow up 2018′s sensational Nanette with a comedy special just as sharp and hilarious, you would have been sorely mistaken.

29. Girlhood (2013) dir. Céline Sciamma

30. Breathe (2014) dir. Mélanie Laurent

31. *A Dry White Season (1989) dir. Euzhan Palcy

32. Laggies (2014) dir. Lynn Shelton

33. *The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood – Everything I’ve ever wanted in an action movie: Immortal gays, Charlize Theron wielding a labrys (battle axe), kinetic fight choreography I haven’t seen since the last Bond movie…Watched it twice, then devoured the comics it was adapted from, and I gotta say: in the hands of black women, it eclipses the source material. Cannot wait for the just-announced sequel.

34. Morvern Callar (2002) dir. Lynn Ramsay

35. Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

36. *Radioactive (2019) dir. Marjane Satrapi – The story is obviously well worth telling and the narrative structure – weaving in the future consequences of Curie’s discoveries – is clever, but a bit awkwardly executed and overly manipulative. There are glimpses of real brilliance throughout, but it feels as if the director’s vision was not fully realized, to my great disappointment. Nonetheless, I appreciated seeing Marie Curie's story being told by a female director and embodied by the always wonderful Rosamund Pike.

37. *The Half of It (2020) dir. Alice Wu - I feel like a real scrooge for saying this, but this movie did nothing for me. Nothing about it felt fresh, authentic or relatable. A real disappointment from the filmmaker behind the wlw classic Saving Face.

38. Mouthpiece (2018) dir. Patricia Rozema - I am absolutely floored. One of those films that makes you fall in love with the art form all over again. Patricia Rozema continues to prove herself one of the most creatively ambitious and insightful directors of our time, with this melancholic meditation on maternal grief and a woman’s duality.

39. Summerland (2020) dir. Jessica Swale - The rare period wlw love story that is not a) all-white or b) tragedy porn. Just lovely.

40. *The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) dir. Dee Rees – As rumored, a mess. Even by the end, I still couldn’t tell you who any of the characters are. Dee, we know you’re so much better than this! (see: Mudbound, Pariah)

41. *Cuties (2020) dir. Maïmouna Doucouré – I watched this film to 1) support a black woman director who has been getting death threats for her work and 2) see what all the fuss is about. While I do think there were possibly some directorial choices that could have saved quite a bit of the pearl-clutching, overall, I didn’t find it overly-exploitative or gross, as many (who obviously haven’t actually watched the film) have labeled it. It certainly does give me pause, though, and makes me wonder whether children can ever be put in front of a camera without it exploiting or causing harm to them in some way. It also makes one consider the blurry line between being a critique versus being an example. File this one under complicated, for sure.

42. A Call to Spy (2019) Lydia Dean Pilcher – An incredible true story of female spies during WWII that perfectly satisfied my itch for British period drama/spy thriller and taught me so much herstory I didn’t know.

43. Kajillionaire (2020) dir. Miranda July - I was lucky enough to attend the (virtual) premiere of this film, followed by an insightful cast/director Q&A, which only made me appreciate it more. July's offbeat dark comedy about a family of con artists is queerer and more heartfelt than it has any right to be, and a needed reprieve in a year of almost entirely white wlw stories. The family's shenanigans are the hook, but it's the budding relationship between Old Dolio (an almost unrecognizable Evan Rachel Wood) and aspiring grifter Melanie (the luminous Gina Rodriguez) that is the heart of the story.

44. Misbehaviour (2020) dir. Philippa Lowthorpe – Again, teaching me herstory I didn’t know, about how the Women’s Liberation Movement stormed the 1970 Miss World Pageant. Keira Knightley and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s characters have a conversation in a bathroom at the end of the film that perfectly eviscerates well-meaning yet ignorant white feminism, without ever pitting women against each other - a feat I didn’t think was possible. I also didn’t think it was possible to critique the male gaze without showing it (*ahem Cuties, Bombshell, etc*), but this again, invents a way to do it. Bless women directors.

45. *All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020) dir. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes – 2020’s 13th. Thank god for Stacey Abrams, that is all.

46. *The 40-Year-Old Version (2020) dir. Radha Blank – This scene right here? I felt that in my soul. This whole film is so good and funny and heartfelt and relatable to any artist trying to walk that tightrope of “making it” while not selling their soul to make it. My only initial semi-note was that it’s a little long, but after hearing Radha Blank talk about how she fought for the two-hour run-time as a way of reclaiming space for older black women, I take it back. She’s right: Let black women take up space. Let her movie be as long as she wants it to be. GOOD FOR HER.

47. Happiest Season (2020) dir. Clea Duvall - Hoooo boy. What was marketed as the first lesbian Christmas rom-com is actually a horror movie for anyone who’s ever had to come out. Throw in casual racism and a toxic relationship treated as otp, and it’s YIKES on so many levels. Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, and an autistic-coded Jane are the only (underused) highlights.

48. *Monkey Beach (2020) dir. Loretta Todd

49. *Little Chief (2020) dir. Erica Tremblay – A short film part of the 2020 Red Nation Film Festival, it’s a perfect eleven minutes that I wish had gone on longer, if only to bask in Lily Gladstone in a leading role.

50. First Cow (2019) dir. Kelly Reichardt – I know Kelly Reichardt’s style, so I’ll admit-- even as I was preparing for an excellent film, I was also reaching for my phone, planning on only half paying attention during all the inevitable 30-second shots of grass blowing in the wind. (And yes, there are plenty of those.) But twenty minutes in, my phone was set aside and forgotten, as I am getting sucked into this beautiful story about two frontiersman trying to live their best domestic life.There is only one word to describe this film and that is: PURE. I’ve never seen such a tender platonic relationship between men on screen before, and it’s not lost on me that it took a woman to show us that tenderness. Reichardt gives us two men brought together by fate, and kept together by a shared dream and the simple pleasure of not being alone in such a hard world; two men who spend their days cooking, trapping, baking, and dreaming of a better life; two men who don’t say much, but feel everything for each other. The world would be a much better place if men showed us this kind of vulnerability and friendship toward each other. Oh, and it’s also a brutal take-down of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream!

51. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) dir. Patty Jenkins - My most-anticipated film for the past two years was...well, a mixed bag, to say the least. Too many thoughts on it for a blog post, so stay tuned for the upcoming podcast ep where we go all in ;)

52. *Selah and the Spades (2019) dir. Tayarisha Poe

I hope this gives you some ideas to kick off your new year with a resolution to support more female directors!

What were your favorite women-directed movies of last year? Let me know in the tags, comments, or asks!

[drsteggy]

Hey Stegg! I’m going around to some of my writer mutuals/favorite fic writers and asking about their favorite works! Just to spread a little fic writer hype :) Tell us about the best fic you’ve written and why it’s kickass! This could include anything, from developmental fun facts, to character stuff, to your writing process, to thematic-weaving coolness. Have at it! :D

I still think of myself as fairly new in this space, and while I try to write and post regularly, I definitely don’t have a big body of work just yet. I also don’t know if I’m a good judge of my own work. I did have a crappy relationship with my stats last summer, but I’ve mostly gotten over it and I really do try to write things that I want to write, so most of my stuff is pretty self indulgent.

Like. I did creative writing in high school, and undergrad, but it got set aside hard for a long time as I turned skills I had to written debates on blog posts and forums. I came to fic writing without much clue what to do-my studies were sciences and a lot of them, and whatever English classes I took were pretty much minimal. I did love to read, and I read a lot, but if you asked me how stories worked I really could not tell you very well. I still can’t. I recognize that I probably soaked up how I liked story arcs to go, and I knew when I felt cheated or baited and switched (looking at you, LOST and Game of Thrones) but I definitely feel like the dumb kid when I’m somewhere watching people talk about the nuts and bolts of things. So we are gonna go on about my favorite thing I’ve written, because it’s also almost all I’ve written.

So my favorite thing I’ve written is still Uneasy Lies the Chosen of Farore. When I started to really fixate on the Legend of Zelda, I first sought out fan art, and there’s so much gorgeous art. Art led to fic. I hadn’t read fanfic since the 90s when I was obsessing over The X Files.

I particularly liked how flexible canon seemed to be in the fandom. The story goes that the hero and the incarnation of Hylia reincarnate repeatedly, and not all of them got to be a game, right? That idea was so exciting. Surely, at some point, they were adults, maybe older adults, maybe characters I could relate to a bit better than teenagers. So I looked, and the best I could do was finding them in their early, maybe mid 20s. This was frustrating to me and I spent a lot of time wondering if I would be worthy, should I stumble upon a sword with a blue hilt and a strangely flipped cross guard and I decided that I was a lot more worthy than I would have been at sixteen or twenty-five and from there it was a pretty short journey to imagining what it would be like to take that hilt, and that’s pretty much the first chapter.

I’ve written about how the rest of the story came to be before, so I’ll try to not retread that ground. At the time this was going on, I was still sorting out a pretty turbulent and awful period of my own life, and while I was mostly on the other side, I was also still trying to fit it into the rest of my life and I dealt with a lot of it through that story. I half joke sometimes that this version of Link is very much a self insert. I feel like a lot of readers pick up on the parent stuff. But there’s other stuff too, because when I decided to turn my thousand word scene into an 88k fic, I decided to use the overall arc of the previous four or five years as a scaffold to hang stuff on.

I’m not gonna delve into personal stuff for me other than broad strokes. I think I generally made better choices in my life, for example, than Link does, but it did take a therapist to help me see why I made some choices the way I did. The Great Deku Tree and Impa both say things to Link that were said to me. Zelda does as well at some point. Each time that happens he does take a minute to think on it and changes a little bit, so that by the time he is at the end of the story, the guy he was at the beginning might not recognize him.

People often comment that they find this Link and Zelda very relatable and I’m glad they do. In the games, Link is supposed to be the slate your write your experience on as you go. He is supposed to just be an extension of the player, maybe more so in Breath of the Wild which was my intro to the franchise. I really love the journey he goes on from realizing he is a pretty hot mess, and how much his shit is not as together as he assumed, though he needed a big event to change things out of his control to see it, to where is much more emotionally grown up and has found a soft place to land with people he loves who love him back on equal footing.

I recognize my little AU seems a little weird at first, but I’ve enjoyed playing in it enough that I also ended up writing a series of side fics for it, and I still think about what might have happened before and after the sword, that I suspect there will probably be more. It’s definitely a work I’m really proud of, and it also helped bring me into a community of people I really like, too.

The art I commissioned for this fic is making rounds on Tumblr again today, for some reason. Someone reblogged it and a bunch of other people saw it for the first time. I like to think when someone reblog sit out of the blue it means than maybe they went and had a read, and I like having that thought. I’m glad I brought this thing into the world. 2020 sucked pretty hard but this fic probably would not exist if it hadn’t.

Thank you, @kittmoon for the ask. I really do like to talk about that fic.

[werevulvi]

Hi, could you tell me more about your autism and diagnosis and how you deal with it, how old you were diagnosed

I don't know a lot about my autism, tbh, as I never bothered to read up on it and I was never properly informed on it. But what I do know is that I learned slowly as a kid, learned to walk at age 3, was very clumsy (like medically abnormally clumsy physically, could barely run at all and couldn't climb, etc) required special treatment to learn how to eat as a toddler because I hated the sensory experience of solid food and chewing, I was incapable of understanding sarcasm, interpreted everything literally, I was stimming a lot, had monotone body language and speech, etc. I was very obviously "different" according to my parents already from around age 1 or 2, and required literally constant attention for the first 4 years of my life. Started daycare at age 4, in small groups.

Then as I started school at age 6, apparently the school nurse had told my parents that I'm probably autistic, so I consider that my "inofficial diagnosis" but they decided to ignore that and didn't tell me (until 10 years later.) I was bullied in school for being "the weird kid" by both classmates and teachers who thought I was a retard and annoying, basically, I guess. I was called a freak and weirdo a lot. But like I was proudly a weirdo, and resented normativity.

As I got up into ages 10-12 my depression and DID symptoms (alter) kinda took over and became more prominent than my autism symptoms, as I wasn't as physically clumsy anymore and started learning social cues. My mental health continued to decline over the next few years, until I sought out therapy on my own at age 16. It led me to doing my first few suicide attempts, which led me to ending up at a closed psychiatric ward.

While staying there for a few weeks, I got evaluated for autism (without knowing that's what I was tested for) as well as a few physical things, such as my hearing impairment and chronic headache. And those tests led to an official Asperger Syndrome diagnosis, when I was 16, by the very end of year 2005. I also got diagnosed with borderline psychosis and mild depression, and got pumped full of anti-depressants and anti-psychotic (neuroleptic) drugs. Then my mom finally told me that she basically always knew about my autism, and I was really pissed at her for not having told me before. I resented my autism diagnosis right from the start, and the older I got, the more I resented it. Never identified with it, only ever saw it as a huge burden.

Then throughout the rest of my teens, I went to a school for neurodivergent people (basically upper high school) but still flunked it. I was a complete and utter mess, and got little to no actual therapy. They just kept shoving me around from one psychiatric department to another, due to my comorbid issues, no one could help me, it seemed. Every once in a while I'd make another half assed suicide attempt to make them take me seriously, which only worked for a few months at a time. In total, I've made 19 suicide attemps over 12 years. Oh lord, psychiatry was so bad!

Adulthood came along and I got benefitted with sickness compensation, and got my first apartment at age 20. It didn't go great. I accidentally flooded it and had to move out, and didn't manage to keep it clean or anything while I lived there. I was barely functional and alcoholic, constantly self-harming, just to try to manage attending school. Despite getting help from caretakers offered by the state (?) weekly, I was really dysfunctional. I switched apartments several times, and kept flunking school while trying to live my miserable life, always hanging by a thread. Until I moved back to my parents at age 23. They had moved to a miserable island far away from all my friends. Got an apartment on that island close to my parents, but my issues continued being the same level of awful, up until about age 27.

What this has to do with my autism is that... uh, I basically understand it as that it impedes on my executive function really dramatically, and like although I can physically do pretty much anything, mentally I just somehow can't. Especially repeatedly, and often enough. Like I can't keep any routine for the life of me, not even simple shit like sleep cycle, eating habits, brushing my teeth, etc. Let alone school or a job, or even hobbies. Everything is infrequent and too seldom, if at all. So everything in my life keeps falling apart as I basically have no foundation to stand on, and I get sensory overload suuuuper easily. So like just going shopping/cleaning/laundry/hobbies/school/anything for half an hour can drain me significantly and make me incapable of managing doing anything else for the rest of that entire day. It's very hard for me to explain, but it's like I only ever have 3 spoons per day, but most things requitre 10+ spoons, so I go backwards on my energy resources a lot and end up having to rest for DAYS after just one hour's activity.

At age 27 I ditched the social service caretakers, as they were seriously depriving me of my privacy while being largely unhelpful, and I began to finally try to pull myself together. I still get a lot of help from my mom, with anything from paying my bills and grocery shopping, to driving me places and dealing with soul-sucking authorities for me. This takes off a lot of the burden and allows me to manage doing at least a few things on my own, like working out, cleaning (yay I manage keeping my apartment clean nowadays!), laundry, occasional shopping, art projects, online socialising, etc. I still go to therapy biweekly but it's still largely unhelpful. At least I managed to make them stop tossing me around between departments like a football though, and I'm still gonna try to get some proper trauma therapy, and maybe also look into that adhd group I was promised last year, if it'll ever resume again post-corona...

I've still never had a job in my life and still have incomplete grades. But I got permanent sickness compensation now, so that's neat. At least I don't have to worry financially. I'm also trying to get started with some "work training" stuff which is basically "pretend work" for people who can't work, just to have something to do. I'll most likely be granted acces to that. However, it seems irony is that most of those are located out in the middle of nowhere where no buses go, and I can't afford a fucking car or driver's licence because I can't work. Mom probably won't drive me several times a week for that. Fucking fantastic. Makes me almost wanna kill someone... argh! Those little things really piss me off.

Life is absolutely not going the way I want and I blame my autism for it, mostly. I am drowning in frustration, and my anger issues making me scream my lungs out in pure despair, shows that. I'm considered offically disabled due to my autism, and it just fucking sucks ass. How lonely, under-stimulated yet easily over-stimulated, bored, meaningless and unfulfilled my life is. There are far more severely autistic people out there who somehow manage to live far more functional lives, and I'm jealous of that. I dunno how to break free from this misery. It feels like the only thing I've ever managed to accomplish in life is transitioning genders, and making art that I don't wanna sell. I wanna have a "normal" job, a car and driver's licence, I wanna have cats and a social life, I want parties at night clubs again, I want hobbies outside of my home; hookups, friends and lovers; I want to be able to have a functional romantic life with someone I can marry and start a family with.

But is any of that ever gonna happen? I hope so, but it feels bleak. Because my autism feels like such a huge burden on my life, and a huge hindrence to my dreams and goals... like I'm over 30 already and still a disabled and having my mom living half my life for me, miserable mess and not given any useful therapy, I'm left to my own vices to figure out how to adult... Because of all that, I hate my autism and I wish there was a cure, I swear to fuck. So for your question, how I deal with it: not fantastically. Not sure if you wanted a relay of my entire life, but I hope that’s okay! Didn’t know how else to answer your questions.

[redantsunderneath]

On Analysis - Introduction (the “why” part)

“He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

Maybe some broader personal context would help understating why in god’s name I write shit about how Age of Ultron is a remake of Eraserhead and Marvel crossovers are inherently about self hating creatives going to war with editorial. Like everyone else, I love a well told story but want to be surprised - seeing Star Wars is still the single biggest event in my life in supercharging my interest in narrative art.  But from early on, I had this left brain/right brain conflict going on. I was super interested in details and loved anything that required getting all the pieces to understand (that one episode of Speed Racer where they explain all the buttons I only saw once but I must have excitedly told everyone in the schoolyard about it 2 or 3 times) and I’ve always been down for the even the shittiest world-building that makes you dig for details (maybe this why Star Wars’ gesturing at a larger canvas lit my fuse so hard and how my introduction to Marvel comics became the second stage rocket booster 3 years later - see my retropseudonostalgia post). This also is probably common, especially here.

But it’s the right brain impulse became an overriding unconscious attractor. I saw The Man with the X-Ray eyes very young and had some serious nightmares, but mostly remember actually wanting to recapture that dread.  This became a pattern.  Anything that unsettled me or made me feel weird, my brain interpreted as a good experience. 1977 was a real flashpoint for me: Star Wars, sure, and 8 is the right age for Thanatos to start haunting you, but I also got super fucking sucked in to the Prisoner and imprinted on BBC’s Dracula (especially the baby eating scene where I remembered the brides actually eating the baby on camera until the clip showed up on YouTube and, turns out, it was just a cut to a flame effect and the baby eating was all in my and Q anon’s head). The thing that unites these later two is a the feeling of Unheimliche, or something - a sort of out of body experience due to transgressive touching of something in the reptile brain, recognizable but hard to formulate in language.  

Again, not saying this is an unusual experience, but I sought after this diencephalonic impact aggressively and spent years chasing this particular dragon before I figured out what I was doing. Rank and file horror didn’t cut it because I wanted not only to feel it but to understand what it was telling me and doing to me, to wrestle with it, so needed to something resonant to be there. Kubrick’s one neat trick was having an entirely rational approach to relentlessly assembling this kind of ineffable experience… depth of meaning by design.  I think Christopher Nolan is only popular because we have so few architect directors today so we’ll take a B- stab at it (though the thematic waters he sails on are a bit shallow). This is what I was doing receptively, wanting to cognitively reverse engineer the texts that moved me and autopsy my reaction .  There were elements the things that got to me had in common - there was an existential abjection that felt like a kind of rapture, a transgressive daring in showing me something I shouldn’t see, a experience of Mark Fisher’s version of the weird and/or the eerie, but most of all a feeling that there was a story underneath there being told in an abstract language that I innately understood but my conscious mind couldn’t quite get to.

On the other side of my brain, I was sparring with narrative structure and was captivated by the way periodical narrative produced this fuzziness and that trashy or disreputable forms were better at doing some really complex things. After a late 70s of consuming everything I could, like sitcoms no-one remembers, 1930s and 40s franchise B movies, Godzilla, ABC hourlongs (it was the time that Fantasy Island and the Bionic Woman strode the airwaves), etc - just absolute garbage - Comics hit me in 1980 and hijacked my brain for half a decade.  This mostly satisfied that architectural impulse, though, and the need for the uncanny reasserted itself as a shifting obsession to pop/rock music, “hard” books, and catholic moviegoing (and I guess some of that right brain stuff is intrinsically libidinous and the pubertal timing seems right).  

My childhood book consumption till 77 was all atlases, history, and encyclopedias.  77 to 83 it was SF/Fantasy.  The one work of fiction I strongly remember as a small child was There’s a Monster at the End of this Book which is a work of absolute intersubjective terror that implicates the crap out you - I never bought the ending and saw it as a necessary contrivance to make it OK for kids but I repeatedly endangered Grover anyway, enjoying the transporting dread, and learned meta in Kindergarten as a bonus! But in 1984 (during the Sarajevo Olympics, that’s etched in my brain) I read Moby Dick, which was my first formative struggle with understanding subliminal story.  I was already in love with symbolism and conversant with nuts and bolts MFA program bullshit, as any ironically pretentious HS student would be, but reading that and writing about it and other “tough” books (especially the next year in Junior English where I learned to write, full stop) taught me I could think about this stuff and hold these abstractions in my head long enough to see what was happening under the waterline.

Movies really dominated the late 80s, though, and I became obsessed with everything from the Godfather to Die Hard, but I was only just peaking under the hood, until the left brain brought me back to TV and and thinking about narrative structure.  Twin peaks (and Wild at Heart) made me a real Lynch fan and I sensed what I sought was in that direction, but it wasn’t until I watched the whole show and movie in one weekend in 1997 that I had my conversion experience. Moby Dick opened the door a bit, but that weekend kicked it in.  My first real resource for understanding (other than HS English, a couple of hits of acid, and dorm room bull sessions with sort of smart people) was alt.tv.twin-peaks where there were many amateur scholars trying to understand the red room and above the convenience store scenes, complete with ascii maps.  

The final inciting event was Inland Empire.  The thing about David Lynch that is so perfect for my hobbyhorses is that he works within a scene entirely intuitively, connecting to really primordial stuff, and puts everything together by “painting” with feelings instead of paint, never thinking about it, just knowing when it’s right. But he usually works with a writer and editor who helps shape everything into something at least fitfully comprehensible for someone wanting to follow the surface story. You get the general idea and can meditate on the areas that are clearly not “real” in some sense and require either aesthetic surrender or a lot of thought and one hell of an interpretive toolkit - you can see the frame even if you don’t understand every bit of the picture.  Inland Empire, which he made with no other behind the camera people, is pretty much all the mind-blowing bits with very little skeleton, an abstract painting with no frame. This forces you, if you want to understand in any way beyond just enjoying the moments viscerally, to effort like hell.  The project of this for me, the reason I started this Tumblr, was using the internet for procuring and learning to use interpretive tools and, in so doing, writing my way to constructing an understanding of this one movie.  As a result, my approach to all narrative art was changed.  I figure it is time to unpack this into a framework and try to recall the specific things that helped me get here.

[lady-charinette]

Advice on how to write a death scene? Like say an akuma or hawkmoth or mayura or anyone kills off a certain hero?

I have writer's block since November last year, so this advice will probably suck big time but..

Create the right atmosphere

People tend to write about the one dying mostly, but I also found it's pretty impactful when you describe the reactions around them when it happens. If its Chat dying by Hawkmoth, show LB's reaction ("the sound of his lady's anguished cries stung worse than the hole in his chest") for example. Or if the rest of the heroes are there, do some of them go into a vengeful rage? (Imagine: Carapace rushing towards Hawkmoth to repeatedly slam his shield against him in rage, Rena moving to help LB stop Chat's bleeding, Queen B crying loudly on her knees...etc.)

Also: was it raining? Was it a long strained battle (the final fight with Hawkmoth? Up against Mayura and Hawkmoth?)

Actions/Plot

What had happened before the death? Again, was it in the middle of a fight/the big battle? Was Chat taking a blow for Ladybug? Saving a civilian? Fighting a swarm of akumas alone while LB is down, getting overwhelmed? Was he injured beforehand? How did he get injured? ("Damn, now I know why Plagg always felt so guilty about the dino's, my ribs are killing me." Getting stabbed by Hawkmoth's cain: "Just my luck, it wasn't a walking stick like I thought the old man used.")

Was it a slow death? (His breath was ragged, every breath felt like a fight for air and every spasm of his body made everything burn like he was on fire. Not even one of Ryuuko's misplaced lightning strikes had hurt as much as this.)

Or was it shocking, quick? (Chat Noir stared into the wide eyed gaze of Hawkmoth, those all too familiar steel eyes staring back at him in stunned silence. The sharp blade of the cane was embedded into his stomach, burst of warmth and liquid made him feel cold and hot at the same time. He was bleeding. Was he? He felt dizzy, lost, he sought the embrace of his mother. Of his lady. But before he could feel her touch one last time, his body hit the ground.)

Emotional toll

Who killed whom? Hawkmoth killing Chat Noir. Ugh. Do they know each-other's identities? Shock factors to consider: Gabriel knows who Chat Noir is, Adrien doesn't know who Hawkmoth is.(1) Both know. (2) They find out after Chat de-transforms from the impact of his wounds (3) Adrien doesn't know until the very end, when Hawkmoth collapses next to him and cries:"My dear son..." (4)

Flashbacks to his past life, thinking of Emilie, of them as a family, not knowing what's worse, his heart ripping in two or his stomach.

Chat trying to comfort Ladybug even while dying etc. Reminding her how her hands weren't used for taking life, but giving it. (yes that was a reference to Fullmetal Alchemist, watch it if you want tear jerking deaths T_T)

Was it LB that was killed?

How would Chat react? Would he break down? Would his mind shut down, go narrow minded and go on a feral killing spree? Would the other heroes try to hold him back in his grief? Would Chat stop himself right before committing the unthinkable and tell himself it wouldnt be what his lady wanted him to do?

The akuma

Okay, this one seems overkill, but it can also impact the death scene. Was the akuma a person Hawkmoth akumatized with the intent to kill both LB and CN? ("Playing nice hasn't worked so far for my plans, let me show you what happens when you anger me.")

The akuma can be brutal, someone well versed in the arts of torture/killing, the death can be pretty elaborate, or a quick merciful blow with LB/CN stubbornly fighting ("Not giving up without a fight, huh? I respect that, but you're just kids. It's time to go to sleep.")

The akuma can even be someone of their own.

Alya, Nino, Chloe, the other heroes. Maybe even Nathalie herself? What if they managed to akumatize LB? Chat Noir willingly sacrifices himself? ("If it means dying by my lady's gentle hand, death doesn't seem so bad.")

The Aftermath

What happens after? The reactions from everyone? Some would grieve (cry, scream), others might retaliate (defeat Hawkmoth, get him arrested, kill Hawkmoth/ akuma, handle the press...etc.) others may be in shock (just standing in the middle of what was once a battlefield, with the blood of her beloved on her hands)

Is it just silence? The scene is written from Chat Noir's view and everything just goes eerily silent when he takes his last breath and closes his eyes.

Also: on the scenario of killing the akuma: let's say, LB died and its CN killing the akuma after they dealt the finishing blow to his lady. The akumatization is lifted, and beneath the scary exterior was (insert innocent person: child, friend, a friendly neighbor who had a bad day...etc) Added trauma to Chat, thinking he is even worse than his father for killing an innocent person even if they killed Ladybug (while under Hawkmoth's influence, it was wrong).

I've kept talking about Chat dying, but what if its Ladybug?

Describe the impact of Ladybug dying. No miraculous cure to fix all the damage done to the city. To heal injuries.

No more Ladybug, beloved hero of Paris, to save the day. No more Ladybug alongside Chat Noir.

No more Marinette. Responsible class president, beloved daughter, sweet classmate who helped everyone and anyone, the funny clumsy girl, their every day Ladybug...

Writing emotions/mood:

Depending on the mood set for the scene, watch for the language (more dramatic: The tears stinging her eyes did little to wash away the blood on her cheek, but no amount of tears would be able to wash away the blood on her hands. More straightforward: He stuttered his last breath, hand falling limply to his side and Ladybug's chest quivered in despair before a wretched cry left the depths of her throat.)

Ah, sorry for the long paragraphs!! I didn't think it would be this long, ahem:

TL:TD: Include other people's reactions, not just the one being killed. Add more senses (more sense than just touch is impacted upon death, maybe describe the way someone loses their sense of hearing first before sight?) Detailed descriptions (a bit gory? Describe the sharp blade digging into the skin, blood leaving their mouth, rupture organs spilling out...etc.) Describe emotional and physical impact.

[spineofdeathwing]

So Here's The Thing

Some of you might already know me due to the post here on Spine. I want to clear that up. Hi I’m Zaerindar Sunlash of WrA. The rumor: I solicited nudes involving a minor The truth: Obviously I didn’t. I’m not an idiot, nor am I into the gender of the supposed minor. She also verified with me that she was 18 before I sent her my art which features erotic homosexual content. I verified that before sending anything like that exactly because of this kind of bullshit. The rumor: I was involved in romantic rp that included a character who was 17 The truth: I was involved, yes, but the character (Ayathalla) wasn’t mine. When we first met I was told the character was 19 in human years. Much later down the road (as you will see in the links) the player changed this to make the character younger of his own volition. (He would go on later to change it AGAIN to make the character younger!)This person also wanted to add in NPCs that were underage into the rp. This person was my friend. He had convinced me his life was shit and that I was one of only a handful of people that really understood him. I did not leave the rp nor feel it was appropriate to tell another how to do their character so I foolishly stayed involved. He later joined RAS with me. Earlier this year, I had a huge fight with this player and so they worked together with the person who was a supposed minor to try and slander me, because that’s how revenge works. And hoo boy it probably hasn’t disappointed them. I was removed from my guild because of these things, and then blacklisted for threatening to post about it on this very Tumblr! The screenshot submitted (the one the GM accepted without question) was tampered with, colored over, and cropped from the remaining conversation In Discord to make it look incredibly damning. Now I am being harassed repeatedly on a server I’ve been on since 2010, AND NOW on Spine here in part to my former guild, Royal Apothecary Society, blasting me on discord and likely in-game. As a matter of fact, I know who posted that post about me. (Heads up, it was the GM most likely. A toxic person, who admitted she was toxic to me in DMs. So.) Furthermore, I’ve lost an rp partner because I believe RAS forced her to not associate with me. They also will not rp with anyone associated with me, which is their own choice, but the harassment and lambasting over something I didn’t actually do has got to stop. As for types of rp being bad, we won’t get into how the RAS condones the murder of children in their rps. We won’t talk about how I witnessed an rp that featured initiated based on the murder of a child. Because, so long as its the RAS doing it, it’s alright. Right? Additionally, the RAS guild that I am in on MG? I didn’t start it. It was founded in 2012. I didn’t join it to annoy the members of the one on WrA and we are DEFINITELY NOT sister guilds, so. The Blacksail Company, my current guild, is not involved in any shape or form. This is not their fight. Further furthermore, here are the call outs and links to chat pictures. Characters involved- player who played the 17 year old: Ayathalla <Bloodstorm March> His irl boyfriend: Ordili <Bloodstorm March> Others who have also rp’d erotically with Ayathalla: Ordili’s alts, Abel Sunstride <Dark End Industries> Players involved in harassing me, either by not preventing rumors * or encouraging them; or by harassing others who choose to rp or have contact with me: Seenwood <Royal Apothecary Society> *Plagueguts <Royal Apothecary Society> *Maerlyn <Royal Apothecary Society> Korathel <Royal Apothecary Society> Delacreme <of The Den> (and on multiple alts confirmed through looking at armory pet slots)

Last but not least, the person who accused me of sending nudes: Crystallina (nightborne). She doesn’t play anymore and has deleted all her social media accounts after we exposed her horrible lies.

The nuts and bolts of it? I pissed Thalla off oocly and he sought to remove me as far from himself as possible, and thus this shitstorm happened. When in fact, my only flaw here was conforming to their whims out of a fear of wanting to not lose them as a friend. I was involved in the rps, yes, but I was reluctant, and in many ways felt forced into them. There are many things I am, people, but a pedophile is not one of them.

PS- I am NEVER leaving this server. And by the way to the person who tried to call out my location, it’s Evondre on WrA, Zaerindar on MG, you fucking idiot.

Links (in order): https://imgur.com/L3PZQ6w https://imgur.com/QqCEJux https://imgur.com/Fg8lWND https://imgur.com/hNV9lhE https://imgur.com/44cZMyA https://imgur.com/5fF3FQi

[littlejeanniebean]

KILL MY MIND

A/N: Prequel to KIWI. I just loved writing them so much and this damn good song is stuck in my head. ~1000 words of angst until it’s fluffier than cotton candy. More in my masterlist :) Art is by the talented @jorrisy​!! - J xx. TPWK.

i. nightmare on the dance floor

Kiwi was an atrocious dancer. He didn’t even need to be drunk. Puppy stood uncomfortably off to the side with the rest of his friend group, watching his former schoolmate whom he hadn’t seen in years repeatedly attempt a body roll. He was cute, sure, but not that cute that people wouldn’t stare in a very judgemental way.

“Hey, you’ve known this guy since sixth form, righ’?” Cake breathed smoke into Puppy’s face as he tried to talk over the music, “Can’t ya get ‘im to stop? Personally, I don’t care what he does, but he’s kinda ruining our chances if y’know wha’ I mean?”

“Shit, that sounds a lot like caring tuh me, Cakes,” despite his internal monologue, Puppy cut a perfectly nonchalant figure, tapping his cigarette lightly before taking it between his pink lips.

“Well, if ya don’t ‘ave a word wiv ‘im, Icing will sooner or later. And y’know ‘ow he gets -”

“Awrigh’, awrigh’,” he shoved himself off the wall he’d been leaning on and adjusted his red and black bomber jacket, “Hey, Ki!”

“Hey!” Kiwi spun around less than elegantly, teetering on his long legs that were almost deer-like, shapely, toned - no, Puppy, focus!

“Righ’, wha’ d’ya say we get us and the lads a couple drinks, yeah?” 

“Okay!”

The drinks made it worse. As far as Puppy could remember, alcohol always slowed Kiwi down, not hyped him up, but of course as luck would have it, tonight was the exception.

Kiwi was throwing himself to-and-fro with abandon on the dance floor, always within arms-length of Puppy, who sought the safety of his normal friend group and stood stoically by Cake and Icing, who were trying to chat up two girl friends while growing increasingly annoyed at the distraction that was long-haired and loud Kiwi.

Suddenly, Kiwi was grinding on Puppy, who was at a loss for what to do other than laugh nervously and gently nudge his shoulders to try to get him to back off. Puppy wasn’t exactly… out to his friends yet and he couldn’t stand the funny looks they and their dates were giving him. 

“Oi! Cut it out, will ya?” he shoved Kiwi harder, so he stumbled around a bit before finally righting himself, “Come with me, I think ya need tuh take a walk and sober up, yeh?”

Kiwi let himself be guided out into the empty two-a.m. street in a city he’d just moved into and that didn’t feel quite like home yet. That’s why he was so happy to see a familiar face. A very nice face, at that, but now his old friend’s jaw was clenched and he was cracking his knuckles like he used to when they were losing a footie game, which was usually Kiwi’s fault if he was being honest. He’d never been a great player.

“Wha’ was tha’?” Puppy asked quietly.

“Wha’ was wha’?”

“Tha’! In front of me mates!”

That boiling anger made Kiwi stand very still on the roadside while Puppy glared at him from where he stood up on the sidewalk so they were a little closer to eye-level. Then he realized he hadn’t given him an answer and managed a stiff shrug. 

“Bollocks, y’know what your problem is, Ki? You never talk unless you feel like it, well, that’s rather selfish, innit? Sometimes people need some kind of explanation, don’t ya think?”

“Well... unlike some people,” he spoke slower and lower than usual, “I’d rather not lie.” 

Puppy watched him leave in the general direction of the tube station and swallowed the urge to say more. 

ii. devil in my brain

“How’d you find out where I live?” Kiwi huffed.

“You left your locator on that night,” Puppy waved his iPhone carelessly before stepping across the threshold.

“You watched me on my way home?”

“You were drunk, but you wanted to be alone. I found a compromise.”

Kiwi gestured vaguely at his kitchen, “Can I get you something to -”

“I just need to get one thing straight with you,” Puppy was cracking his knuckles again, “I’m not a liar. I’m just careful.”

“You care too much about what people think -”

“Yes, and so wha’?” he challenged, “Maybe you could stand to live in that… that stupid little town longer than you had to, but I couldn’t! Go ahead, be the better person, bloody good for y-”

Kiwi was cupping his cheeks in his large, warm hands. Kiwi was pressing his lips to his. Kiwi was… was… a rather good kisser - focus, Puppy, dammit!

“Wha’ was tha’?” that came out quieter than he would’ve liked.

“Me not lyin’,” the whispered confession rumbled through both their bodies, “Puppy… say something? You’re tremblin’...”

“Ya can’t just… fuck, ya can’t just… lodge yourself in me brain and start… start… killin’ me with all your… your...” he grabbed Kiwi’s hands and chucked them off his face, “You’ve forgotten how much it… how much it hurts to get… get a little… just a little from someone and have them take it away because you’re… you’re too gay or your too straight - like what the fuck?” Puppy buried his face in his lithe hands.

“... And then... you start to hear this voice in your head,” Kiwi continued for him, “tellin’ yeh how to be and what to do before yeh even know what yeh actually want… It’s not something you can forget… no matter how many people you’ve told… Look, I just… I like you… but you don’t have to do anything with that if you don’t want -”

“I don’t want to,” Puppy said quickly and left just as fast.

iii. what i’d do without you

“Why, do I keep sayin’ shit like that, Jackie?” Puppy addressed his schlumbergera cactus, “Oh, don’t start, Alice - you too, Barb,” he pouted at the older cacti on his shelf, “He just kinda came outta nowhere with tha’, y’know? Wha’ was I supposed tuh do? … Well, if yeh must know, Nosy-Nancy… yes, he is a good kisser, but tha’ doesn’t mean I’m doin’ it again! … Yeah, and you’d know all about leaving pasts behind, wouldn’t ya, George? … Alrigh’! Alrigh’, yeh lot, I’ll call ‘im!”

Puppy mumbled to the dial tone, “Takin’ advice from cacti. You’ve really hit the bottom of the -”

“Puppy?”

“Yeah… hey.”

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry,” they said in unison, “Wha’ are you sorry for?”

“I shouldn’t say things I don’t mean,” said Puppy.

“I shouldn’t say things like tha’ too soo - wait, wha’?”

“You know what.”

“Mm, maybe, but while we’re getting practice sayin’ things -”

“Oh, up yours, Ki-ki.”

“Yes, please.”

“Wha’?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

Puppy paced, “No, it’s not proper doin’ this over the phone. I’ll come see ya -”

The doorbell rang.

Puppy stopped mid-step, “Are you -”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he opened the door, “I like you too.”

Kiwi smiled widely, still holding his phone to his ear, “Did you know your voice sounds deeper on the phone than in person?” 

Puppy shook his head, “You. You are killin’ me,” and then he kissed him.

[eriisaam]

Nobody: 

Me: Who wants moar streetracer AU crumbs? 8D

Road Wyvern (name tentative), owned by Camilla.

In a family fractured between streetracers and nons, she’s at odds with Xander between her passion as a racer and his massive concern for her safety, especially when as I mentioned last time for another sketch I did way back, Camilla was in a pretty bad wreck once before, and badly scarred the left side of her face while losing her left eye. (However, said accident wasn’t quite as “accidental” as it all seemed.) Occasionally, she hitches an additional seat for more mundane rides, but takes full advantage of her mostly dark palette during late night races not to be easily told in her daytime ongoings with the same bike. She’s a leader of a group of bike enthusiasts who may or may not be involved in lots of underground (probably) after dark streetrace circuits.

She is currently in a relationship with a budding med trainee, Erin, who found her at the scene of her accident and helped stabilize her long enough to go to the hospital. Because Erin can’t drive for crap, Camilla offered to drive for her, eventually easing her into outright drive dates together.

Silent Dragon, owned by Kamui (male Corrin). To Xander’s dismay, Kamui took up a bike and racing after heavy encouragement from Camilla, who similarly encouraged her other siblings. However, with Garon’s horribleness, combined with the increasingly high tension between Camilla and Xander, Kamui, at a loss of how not to make it so much worse, eventually runs away from home and rides off. In the time he disappeared, tensions broke so much that Camilla’s and Xander’s arguments eclipsed, they both said things they’ve soon regretted, and it all came to head when, while Xander was out trying and failing to find Kamui, Camilla was involved in  the aforementioned wreck.Although Kamui wasn’t personally involved in said wreck, he blamed himself for leaving and leading to said turn of events, so while he visited Camilla when she was too bad off to realize he was there, he avoided his family even worse so after the incident.

By complete chance, Kamui wound up being roomates in the college dorms with Erin, and Eclair, while neighbors with Dash, Sparrow and Lyon, and as Camilla eventually got close enough to Erin to find out Kamui lived with them. The accident didn’t even cross her mind in favor of her massive joy and relief to find him again where she then proceeded to blow the landline up to no end of their dorm thereafter for a long while. 

Happy Dream. Rider is Gunnthra.  Jokingly/mockingly, people also dubbed it “Hello Ktty” for how obnoxiously kawaii it is, but for the sake of not having my kneecaps busted by Sanrio, it’s officially Happy Dream.

Gunnthra is a budding racer who had aspirations to have a pretty bike and by gawd she’s gonna get it. After running into Teru in his garage shop, and with him humoring her request for Happy Dream to be modded in all its brightly colored glory, it turned out she’s terrifyingly good in races, despite how caught off guard most get to see her bike, and through her unbridled joy and thrill of getting the hang of streetracing, it reignites Teru’s own interest to help her and relive his glory days through proxy of her.

Falchion, owned by Chrom. Its initial name was supposed to be Falcon, but Chrom got nervous and typoed the name while registering it, so Falchion it is.

He’s the least experienced out of anyone in streetracing, and quite honestly has no business at it. The reason he got roped into it at all is cuz he thought Sparrow and Lyon were cute, wanted to find a way to get to know them and break the ice, and Camilla, being Camilla, swooped in all “well biking’s cool, they’ll probably dig bikers. :) “

By pure luck and happenstance, he’s thankfully enough of a natural not to seriously break himself, surprisingly won his first race, and it took all the nerves in his not-quite-as-ylissian-but-whatever-this-AU body to try to pretend like he knew what he’s doing (while screaming internally), and how he has to live his lie to save face.

Except Sparrow and Lyon were way easier to impress than he thought, and both would’ve liked him just as well if he had any remote interest in games and anime but shhhhh...

Demon King, owned by Lyon. Between him and Sparrow, he has more experience in streetracing than he initially lets on.

While normally, Lyon is just another student trying to get by, he’s secretly more of an adrenaline junkie than he lets on. Partially, he started off stressed to a point of falling sick (often and repeatedly) out of stress, tension, taking way too much of his studies all at once, and the heavy, heavy inferiority complex he has of whether or not he could ever hold a candle to the name Vigarde made for himself in the social network.

Turns out, however, Vigarde was not just a big name in the public eye, but in the underground as well in his prime, and he was the previous owner of Demon King before he forced himself to retire from the public eye due to his ailing health. While Vigarde was supportive of Lyon’s pursuits of knowledge, and was open to the idea of letting him one day inherit Demon King, he initially hesitated on the idea up until he tried his first streetrace with a different bike he borrowed and won.

Although initially trying to ground himself and swear off the idea, he unfortunately was overcome by the sheer thrill and energy from the adrenaline rush of such a reckless and chaotic sport, he eventually does end up taking Demon King after all, albeit not simply for commute as his father believed. Though he maintains a calm, fairly friendly and helpful demeanor in schoolwork, he is described as having a completely different personality in races he takes part in, being highly competitive and surprisingly terrifying, living up the reputation of a speed demon.

I’ll be honest, I have no crumbs for Dimitri, or any real plot thoughts about the Blue Lion, but someone requested a bike for Dimitri, and also this gives me a chance to share thoughts of the other people:

- Erin is a student studying medicine, and while it’s debatable how much of it is outright her job just yet, she’s a trainee, and she happened to be around when Camilla was in her wreck to stabilize her and call an ambulance for her, saving her life. When Camilla sought her out to find her again, the two got closer to a point of dating, and it’s through her that she eventually reunited with her estranged brother, Kamui. Though she doesn’t drive at all, and she harbors all manner of history that would imply she should be against biking and streetracing, she doesn’t get in Camilla’s way of her clear passion for riding bikes despite her experiences. She also is frenemies with Kyo, to a point her rivalry with him is bad enough to make her recognize when he pulls up on campus from the sound of his engine. She is just as familiar of Camilla’s engine to otherwise perk up at the sound of Camilla pulling up similarly.

-  Kyo is an on-again off-again biker who cycles through more bikes than clothes. He owns a penthouse to live elsewhere, he works as a charmer off-campus, and he initially catches the interest of Kamui and Eclair in trying to charm both of them, whom Erin and lightly so Sparrow are less than convinced of his virtues behind why, especially as they unfortunately got to know both have pretty big and powerful family connections (well, Lyon too, but still...) He made an enemy out of Thorr, so much so that she tried to task a hit against him, only for the hit to target Teru instead (who unfortunately looks similar) which caused Teru to be permanently stuck with crutches, was the cause of Camilla’s accident, and nearly killed the one doing the hit, all in one fell swoop, just on the vain attempt to get Kyo to stop coming near her son Eclair. To say she was infuriated to find out Kyo came out of it all unscathed and still trying to woo her son is an understatement.

- Sparrow, whose actual name is Jase, uses the handle of “Sparrow” this AU based on her online aliases as she works for commission on art, this also being her major. She tends to be the most keen on upkeep of keeping the place tidy and not on fire. She knows more than she lets on about Lyon’s underground antics and suspects Chrom’s doing far more than he could actually handle, but so long as they and Dash stay alive and well, that’s about as much as she has the spoons to care for. She’s slightly more accommodating to Kyo, but not as unsuspecting of him completely like Kamui of his intentions with him and Eclair.

- Eclair is actually named Magni, and is the son of Thorr and nephew of Loki, both of whom are powerful people with heavy social influence, including in the underground. He is, effectively, a son of a mafioso, and despite meaning well this time around and trying to have a more genuine mother-son relationship to him this time, Thorr is still too smothering, controlling, and too much of a helicopter parent to have a particularly healthy relationship with all the same (but at least this time around, the three aren’t so all powerful as to delete countries with a passing fart, so, yay.) This unfortunately left him bright-eyed, naive, and very babie-vibed of the world of college life, which he only got into because Loki happens to like to give him leeways, be it to have Cool Aunt dibs and/or to piss Thorr off on purpose otherwise. While he isn’t so hopeless as to not function in the normal world, he unfortunately is still hopelessly naive all the same, which led to Erin and Sparrow being much more protective of him and Kamui.

[artboitrash]

His Bloody Rose (Stefano Valentini fanfiction) Chapter 25 - Broken Hearted

Stefano grumbled to himself. He was enraged, completely furious as he wandered through the halls of his world.

"How dare he!" he shouted loudly. "He dare destroy my work!"

He passed the room I now resided in. I drooped my head slightly, hearing him enter as he threw something down on the ground. I looked around, seeing it was the last photo I had taken before the machine had turned on.

I hadn't been successful in stopping the man. I had really tried, really really tried, to stop him. He continuously shot me, and even if I started getting used to the pain, he still caused me to break my concentration. The pain broke up my thoughts, making the frozen machine resume, no matter how many times I stopped it.

Each time I got close, climbed along the wall, struck him with the barbed wire I had been given as a weapon... He continued to shoot me repeatedly.

"Ah... There you are..." Stefano said slowly.

I flinched, lowering my head to him. Even though I knew he wasn't angered with me, his thoughts were so violent that I was worried one wrong move would make him feel worse.

Once the machine, that I now know is called the Stable Field Emitter, rebooted completely, I felt a strange sense of agony surge through my body. It ached and felt like my skin was breaking apart. Just before I thought I would fall to pieces, my surroundings completely changed, and I was once again in Stefano's world. I didn't sense him within, and his gentle, soft voice was completely silent. As I realized what had happened, I felt an overwhelming sense of shame.

I walked around the gallery at first, developing the film I had taken, then hid myself in a darkened room. I didn't want to face him as I had failed the man I love, I had completely disappointed him. After a short while, I felt Stefano enter the world he oversaw and began looking for me. He knew exactly where I was, so he made his way straight to me.

He slid a hand over the side of my camera as he reached my sitting body. He hummed quietly as he thought, seemingly in thought while he was still annoyed.

"I made you to be indestructible..." He sighed. "But I did not expect you would not have the same durable power as me."

He leaned forward, pressing his lips gently to the box of my camera. It was almost like he kissed my cheek. He lingered there, as though to say he forgave me.

"I won't hold it against you, this time, my Obscura." He whispered as he withdrew. "Next time, however, I expect you to be able to finish him."

I moved my head once in agreement. His cross look faded, and his anger turned into a sweet smile.

"I do love you, my dear." he muttered, pressing his lips to my frame again. "And I will love you for all eternity... Once we have this world to ourselves, we can turn this into the most wonderful paradise for my work."

I moved my head against him, emitting that small purr I had begun to use. It made him chuckle, and a small gleam crossed his eye. I ached to hold him like I used to, feeling him using his influence to make me feel, it in a way.

"I know, my bella. But some things must be sacrificed for art."

Even that?

He frowned a little. "Yes, even physical affections, my dear."

I nodded a little, hearing the accordion stretching a little. He glanced over the fabric, sliding his fingers into the folds, and realized part of it was torn where I had been shot.

"Dio mio..." I heard him mumble. "(What are we going to do with you...?)"

I realized he had spoken in Italian, but I could understand him. The concept of what he said automatically translated it, surprising me. I nudged against him, feeling a want for his attention.

"Now, now. You don't need to be mournful, my dear. Unfortunately your first work was not finished. We will fix that next time."

He grasped onto one of my hands, helping me stand. My long, large legs extending up and holding my torso steady. His gloved hand slipped from mine, running ever so gently over one of my legs. He had a near passionate look in his eye, glancing into my lens as he took in my body.

"Come, follow me, my love. Let's fix your poor body, it is desperate for some care."

He turned, trailing his fingers from my skin, holding out his left hand slightly as he began walking away. He gestured me to follow him, mentally pushing me to move. I obliged, following him quietly. He led me into a new hallway where he wanted me to stay. He wanted me to watch the area where he held the little girl, to protect her at the very least.

He tended to the wounds the man had given me. "On the better side, I suppose, Theodore has told me the man's name. He is called Sebastian Castellanos. I think he would make a wonderful edition to the series of people who sought the core."

He chuckled, slipping the ribbons off my legs to change them. I hummed in agreement, closing my aperture and watching his imagination unfold. The image of him, a flower of blood bursting through his chest. The amount of blood spurting forth, the life being drained from his skin.

"It is beautiful, no?"

I nodded to him. Yes... Yes. It is so beautiful.

He looked up with a smile. "You have learned perfectly." He reached up and patted my casing.

I hummed quietly as he turned to sewing my skin back together. It was a little uncomfortable, feeling him bind parts of my skin together. What's left of my body was forgetting how to die; I could feel the flesh in a half-way point, wanting to decay yet holding on to life tightly.

He took care of me as time passed, and I took care of the core for him. I stayed by her side following her as she tried to find a way out of the loop she was in, walking along the hallways with as much strength as she had. I'm not sure, but I think his control over her makes her more tired with each passing hour, as she needs to sleep longer and longer.

-

Time here moves faster, I think. What felt like days began to pass, and I heard Stefano cursing and shouting about something a long time later. He burst into the room I was in, and I lifted my head from off the bed. The little girl - Lily, I think - was sleeping soundly in the bed he and I had shared before my body had changed.

"How dare he!!" He shouted.

I stood up and grabbed his hand, guiding him from the room. He grumbled lowly, but followed me. I pulled him into the hallway, nudging my head against his torso.

"He tore down my art and burned a finished photo!" he shouted angrily.

I held his hand in mine, kneeling down before him. He sat down, grabbing onto my hands, holding onto them too. His eye closed and he breathed deeply, as he had done when he usually got angry.

I could feel he was slightly knocked off his balance. I had been realizing that the longer we stayed here, the worse he's become. He refused that he was in the wrong each time I tried to bring it up to him. It was obvious, to me at least, the longer he had control over this world and how it was presented in its entirety, the more enraged, tired, and mad he continued to become. I wanted to show him he was going to hurt himself. I wanted him to listen to me, but he had begun writing off everything I said.

The logical side of me, as weak as she was, still fought and kicked. She wouldn't let me think he was right. She wouldn't let me love him unconditionally. She screamed and threw a fit inside of me, trying to get me to snap out of this unhealthy relationship.

I swore I would never be involved in a relationship like this! she chanted, over, and over, and over again.

The piece of control he had over me didn't like this side of me, constantly trying to affect me in a way that would kill that piece of the old me left. I wanted it to be simple, like switching off that logistical side of me. But she wouldn't give in.

I think he secretly enjoys it. Knowing that I will do as he says, but still have the part that resists him. I can only imagine how gratifying for him it would be to smother it eventually.

"Come, my dear." Stefano looked up at me, a dark smile staring back at me. "He shall see you next, he will face you, and he will fail. You will prove yourself once again."

I nodded, and he moved us through the world. Once the ground settled, I could see a hallway that lead to a maze of curtains and rooms.

"This is where I shall leave you, my dear." He laughed, his now manic and unkind smile settled on his face. "I'm afraid I do not have anything left for you if he manages to defeat you. I cannot keep you around me if you cannot continue my work."

That part hurt me. My heart hurt, and I felt his influence begin to leave me. I realized just how cruel he really had been to me these past few days I've spent after the man had restarted he emitter. He secluded me, and wouldn't let me near him unless he deemed it. He just kept enough influence over me to keep me loyal to him.

I could feel the pain of my skin now. He let go of me completely, and the searing pain of where my skin had been torn and cut by his hand was apparent. He had been acting as my anesthetic.

He had become tired of me. He still wished for me to succeed, that much I knew. But his care for me beyond being his living sculpture was now exceeded. Whatever he used to feel for me, if he ever really cared, was now faded and gone. Whether it was because of this madness that had begun setting in his mind, or because he just wanted to move onto a project that wasn't rotting before him, it didn't matter. He was going to leave me and let me go regardless of whether or not I managed to kill this man.

I knew that he didn't care anymore about me. He didn't care about Rose anymore. He never called me anything other than "Obscura." Not even when addressing my mind personally, did he ever call me by my name. Just the name he had given me after he changed me.

I watched him turn on his heel, and disappear in the blue smoke he produced when he teleported. I slid to my knees, realizing I had been completely under his control. He tried to get me to kill someone. Someone who really, truly deserved to have that girl over Stefano. The man that had come for her in the town hall was the girl's father. He was her father, and I still stood by Stefano despite that.

I pressed a hand against my tattered and empty stomach, feeling the metal cage underneath supporting my skin. He had said I would make a wonderful mother, trying to care for a child that wasn't mine. If we had even had children, I don't think I would be if he were the father. If I could cry again, I would. But instead, I'm just this abomination now. A camera for a face, and an extra leg made up of several other women's skin. Really, that's all my legs were, the connected and manipulated skin of women who were still partially aware of who they were.

I could understand now. How my fear had disappeared. How my paranoia had disappeared. They hadn't left because I was now a larger, stronger being. They hadn't left at all, he was just suppressing them so I could serve him better.

I heard a sound like metal protesting. I glanced up at the hallway, seeing a barely familiar figure lifting the metal gate that led to the hallway. I turned and began walking into the maze. I didn't care enough to face him, so I explored a small amount of it while he entered. I familiarized myself with the area, finding my way around the rooms that were now my cage.

After a short period of time, I heard the jingling of keys, and I decided to follow it. I entered a room, and saw Sebastian Castellanos aiming a gun at me. I didn't register which kind it was, just the pain of it's ammo meeting my skin.

I cried out in pain, beginning to move at him. It was similar to my fight before, but it hurt so much more. I was able to stand my ground more before, with the man I had loved helping. He kept shooting me, and I was unable to communicate I didn't want to hurt him at first. I flailed and moved away, trying to climb to the wall. I tried to combat him, trying to stop him as he kept shooting at me.

After some time, the tiredness overtook me. I couldn't fight him any longer. My body trembled, flailed one last time, and fell to the floor. I couldn't do anything, feeling my blood seep from my body. I didn't care anymore, feeling a twinge of sadness.

I had wanted him to love me. I had wanted to help him... But I... I've lost him.

With a shudder, I felt my body slip away.

[baixueagain]

All my emails with tumblr thus far. As you can see, they’ve been passing me between different members of staff (”Alfredo,” “Justin/Jay,” and “Carmen N.”), dodging my questions, copy-pasting from the easily accessible Help Center already on tumblr (as if I can’t look that up myself), and attempting to gaslight me about the fact that they falsely accused me of a very serious felony, not to mention that they terminated - not suspended - my last blog without a warning or an explanation. Please note that this is the first time in seven months (when my original blog bai-xue was terminated) that anyone at tumblr has responded to me at all, and that in that time two more of my blogs were terminated, one accompanied by a false accusation and the other with no explanation whatsoever. 

Additionally, in June, @bullet-farmer very kindly wrote to @support on my behalf. They responded to her emails almost immediately, and continued emailing back and forth with her until she cc’d me and I responded to the email chain. After that, they ceased speaking to bullet-farmer altogether.

@staff​ @support​ I’d really love to hear an explanation for all this, not to mention an apology and an assurance that this sort of unprofessional behaviour won’t be repeated.

Check under the cut below for transcripts of all the emails so far.

July 18, 2:38 PM GMT 

Me (Karen) to Tumblr Support:

Hello,

I am wondering if there is any way I can further verify my account with tumblr to keep from getting terminated.

I have been terminated three times due to harassment campaigns. It has impacted my business as an indie artist and writer, since I am trying to use tumblr to build a following. After ten successful years on this site, I have had to rebuild my account from scratch three times within the last six months.

I wish to continue using tumblr, but I can only assume that the trolls who have targeted me before will do so again, and will continue to submit false reports to get me terminated.

Please tell me, how can I avoid this and protect my account from this happening again? I am willing to provide whatever personal information is necessary.

Thank you,

Karen

July 18, 3:18 PM GMT

Tumblr Support (”Alfredo”) to Me

Hi Karen,

Thank you for writing in. Your email is already verified. Any blogs reported by Tumblr users are reviewed for validity by our Trust and Safety team before they are terminated. If you believe you are being harassed, we ask that you use our online Abuse forms located here:

https://www.tumblr.com/abuse

To report a post in the mobile apps, just click the share icon (that paper airplane) and choose "Report." That'll open the form and you can tell us what you're reporting from there. To report an entire blog, tap the blog's username to view their blog, then tap the little human icon, and then tap "Report."

Please select the form that most closely corresponds to the violation you’re reporting, which will help us correctly route your complaint.

We appreciate you taking the time to write in.

Tumblr Community Support

July 18, 6:21 PM GMT

Me to Tumblr Support (”Alferdo”)

Hi Alfredo,

Email verification is not what I am talking about. I am talking about how to protect my blog from being wrongfully terminated again. It has been terminated three times due to false mass reports from trolls. I have been using tumblr for years to build an audience for my artwork, and now, because I have been terminated so many times, that audience is gone and my art business is suffering. 

There has to be a way to protect myself from being terminated due to false accusations and false reports. How can I, as a professional and an artist, make sure that this stops happening to me? I am sure there is some way that professionals such as Neil Gaiman protect their blogs from being terminated due to trolling efforts. What information do I need to send you to keep this from happening to me again? I am happy to provide a passport or a residence permit.

Please, I have reached out for help so many times in the last six months, and you are the first person to ever answer me. Please help me.

Karen

July 18, 9:18 PM GMT

Tumblr Support (”Justin/Jay”) to Me

Hello,

Thanks for writing in again. Please take a look at our new Community Guidelines.

As of December 17, 2018, adult content is no longer permitted on Tumblr. Any newly uploaded content flagged as adult will be hidden from public view. We will also flag existing adult content, with the ultimate goal of removing as much of it as we can. This new policy negates the need for Safe Mode, so this feature no longer exists. These new policies are the same regardless of your age.

If any of your content is flagged as adult, we will notify you by email. The email will outline steps you can take to review the content in question. If you disagree with the classification of your flagged post, you will have a chance to appeal the decision.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks,

Jay,

Tumblr Community Support

July 18, 10:06 PM GMT

Me to Tumblr Support (”Justin/Jay”)

Hi Justin,

If you take a look at my terminated blogs bai-xue-lives and bai-xue-lives2, you will see that I never posted any adult content. I have followed community guidelines quite closely. Nevertheless, I was still reported by trolls, and I was still terminated because of those reports. In the case of my blog bai-xue-lives, two of my posts were flagged, and I successfully contested them. I was then terminated anyway weeks later. In the case of bai-xue-lives2, none of my posts were ever flagged, and it was terminated today without warning or explanation. 

Tell me, how am I to avoid being terminated again if I follow the rules and still get falsely reported by trolls anyway? I'm sure you can understand that I now find it very hard to trust that your staff will actually look into the reports, because despite following the rules I have still been repeatedly punished despite the fact that I'm the one being bullied by those falsely reporting me. 

As I said above, I am quite willing to send in any form of identification you need to ensure that my blog will not be terminated due to false reports again. I am genuinely concerned that someone with a grudge, possibly a disgruntled ex of mine, has been abusing the report function in order to get me repeatedly terminated. I have no doubt that this will continue unless I have some form of insurance that I can be safe from false accusations. 

As I have said before, these repeated terminations have cost me the fruits of the small part time art career that I spent over seven years building on tumblr. I like tumblr. I want to continue using it. But how am I to do so with any confidence, when I follow the rules and still get punished? 

I have sought every avenue of help that I can and received no answer for seven months. Today was the first time anyone ever answered me, but it has only been with rote suggestions that I have already tried.

Please help me. I want to be able to use your site with the confidence that I will not be punished for something I didn't do, and the assurance that the people who dislike me will not be able to use your report function to act out petty grudges. Please, I will do whatever is necessary to have this assurance. 

Karen

July 19, 7:57 AM GMT

Tumblr Support (”Carmen N.”) to Me

Hello Karen,

Thanks for following up.

I can assure you that every reported blog is verified by another department of our company which is carefully reviewing all your content. If you get suspended you receive an email in which the reasons for your suspension are mentioned.

As long as you stick to our Community Guidelines while posting, there shouldn't be any problem.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Have a nice day!

Carmen N Tumblr Community Support

July 19, 10:18 AM GMT

Me to Tumblr Support (”Carmen N.”)

Hi Carmen,

I am afraid that is very much untrue. When my blog bai-xue-lives was terminated, I received an email from your team accusing me of posting ch*ld p*rn*graphy, something which I have never done and which I consider a very serious accusation. When I asked for proof, I received none.

In the case of my most recent termination, I received no email whatsoever, and I was not "suspended," as you put it. My blog simply disappeared with no explanation, after I had broken no rules. No posts had been flagged, no warnings had been given. I had not even been on that account for a month (June 28-July 18).

Again, I ask you: how am I to continue to use your service when it is quite clear that I can be terminated at any minute, without warning, even when I have broken no rules? 

Karen

[Attached: The June 28 email sent to me when my blog bai-xue-lives got terminated, which accuses me of “inappropriate content involving minors” and “the possession and distribution of ch*ld p*rn*graphy” (censored for anti-bot safety purposes).]

[squirrelly831]

Confessions [Mark and Jaebum]

Hope you like it~

Enjoy

Mark

Addison and Mark had been best friends since elementary school. When Mark debut in Got7, Addison flew out to South Korea just to attend their debut stage. Their relationship was nothing more than a brother sister like relationship most of the time. However, it was Addison who noticed her feelings weren’t as sisterly as they had started out. She wanted more than being the kid sister. She tried to keep her feelings in a box, but when Mark asked her to be his pretend girlfriend for a week, she found it harder to keep control over them.

The day of their fake date, Addison could not keep her heart or emotions in check. Each time he took her hand into his, her cheeks burned as her pulse escalated. When he brushed her hair out of her face, his fingertips grazed her cheek and only made her crave his touch more. As they went on through the date, posting pictures on her Instagram, she found herself daydreaming of his lips on hers.

Her dazed expression didn’t go unnoticed either. Mark felt their fake date become a little more real a little more than he anticipated. He had blamed himself for the shift as he let his emotions fuel his actions on more than one occasion.

“Hey, look! There’s a festival” Addison pointed at the park. Booths set up on each side of the walk way that lead to the water fountain. People swarmed the area as a performance began near the fountain.

Mark watched how Addison’s eyes lit up, “You wanna check it out?” She nodded as she raced off. Mark fixed his hoodie as he followed after her into the swarm. Addison’s eyes went everywhere. Handmade art pieces were being sold at each booth. She stopped in front of one that had mini zodiac cartoon key chains, “Pretty.”

The artist noticed her admire the key chains, “Would you like to buy one?”

She stared at the rooster, “Do you take cards?” The artist shook her head sadly and Addison looked down dejectedly.

“Can I get the dog and rooster key chain?” Mark interrupted as he held out two 10 won. The artist handed him the two key chains and the left over money. He took it and put the money back in his wallet. “Come on” he took her hand with his free one and guided her away. “Just so you don’t get lost.” When he first took her hand in his, he watched his hand smoother hers. When had her hands become so small? The need to protect those small hands and the girl who owned those hands grew in him. He felt unsatisfied until he laced his fingers through hers. He lead her to a bench further from the crowds and let out an exasperated sigh. He looked at the two key chains before he held out the rooster, “I want to keep this one. You can have my zodiac, okay?”

She took the rooster key chain, “Thank you. This was the one I wanted. It’s your zodiac after all.”

Her words caused his lips to curve. She went to pulled her hand from his, but he pulled back and tightened his grip on her hand. She looked at him, her eyes sought some kind of answer to his action. He said nothing as he brushed the stray hair from her cheek. His eyes fluttered to her lips. Were they as soft as her hand felt? Were they as warm? He leaned down and took her first kiss. 

She was too stunned to break the kiss, but, with eyes shut tightly, she soon found herself kiss him back.

After the kiss, Addison avoided Mark as often as she could. Every call and text he sent her went ignored. Mark grew concerned. Had he pushed her? Did she not have the same feelings for him? Though she didn’t see him, Addison continued to stop by JYP and deliver food for Mark and the others. She met up with Yugyeom, as he was the youngest and wouldn’t tell her no when she needed something done.

Sick of the avoidance, Mark waited inside the building for her and on cue, she showed up. Yugyeom took the food and exchanged words with her just as Mark exited the building, “Addy.” She tensed, but didn’t meet his gaze. She muttered a quick apology before she fled. Mark ran after her, took her wrist, and pulled her out of the open public area. He pressed her against the brick building, his arm and leg trapped her. “Why are you avoiding me?” His eyes refused to let her look away. He held her gaze and she could see his pain. “If it was about the kiss I’m sorry. Just forget about it. I cornered you.”

Addison bit her lip as she tried to muster the courage to speak. She knew she couldn’t keep her secret any longer. “I don’t want to forget about it…. I jus–” Her eyes watered, “I knew it was just to keep with the fake date feelings, but I wanted you to kiss me.” She reached up and wiped the tears before they fell, “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have taken it to heart, but I can’t help it. I fell in love with my best friend and I didn’t know how to handle it.” She confessed.

Mark slumped on the wall beside her. His chest rose and fell as he took in her words. His eyes blinked unnaturally before he laughed. He doubled over and held his head in hand. “We’re stupid” he said in between words. Mark calmed himself and straightened up to face Addison’s confused face. He pulled her against his chest and held her tightly to prevent her from escaping, “I love you too.”

Jaebum

How the guys ever got Jackson’s little sister, Taylor, to agree to join their game of truth or dare was beyond Jaebum.

She was the polar opposite of Jackson. Where he shined in the spotlight prepared to do whatever it took to get attention, Taylor would make a beeline from it to stay hidden in the shadows where the light would not touch her. Jackson was the expressive in his words and dance whereas Taylor used her drawing as her expression and would barely speak over a whisper. However, no matter how quiet she spoke, Jaebum made sure to listen even if no one else did. Even if he had to strain himself, he listened. She was shrouded in mystery and maybe that was what attracted Jaebum to her, at least at first. As the group grew closed, so did their relationship with Taylor even though Jaebum and Jackson were closest to her.

As Jaebum analyzed his friends, he tried to figure them out. No matter how much pleading they did, Taylor would never agree to play a game like truth or dare. He was their leader, he knew them like the back of his hand. They were up to something. Jaebum was sure that the others begged and pleaded excessively for Taylor to play. Her squirming about and constant scratch on the back of her neck only furthered his suspicions.

She was trapped between her brother and BamBam, much to Jaebum’s dislike. Bambam looked up at Jaebum, the flash of mischief reflected in his eyes, as he gave Jaebum the most innocent smile he could muster. Jaebum’s eyes narrowed. He felt the need to protect Taylor from his members; he just knew they were up to something. The members knew of Jaebum’s attraction for Taylor. Though he’d deny it until he was blue in the face, Jaebum had feelings for Jackson’s little sister.

Throughout the game, when Taylor was picked, she’d ask for truth each time much to the member’s disappointment. However, Jaebum made up for it in turn as he only chose dare which the members took full advantage of each time. He didn’t care as long as they didn’t try to get her to do something she didn’t want to do with a dare.

It was Yugyeom’s turn. He exchanged a look with Jackson and Jackson gave him a nodded. Yugyeom grazed each face with his index rhythmically tapping against his chin. His eyes rested on Jaebum, “Hyung, truth or dare?”

Jaebum could see the deviousness in Yugyeom’s eyes, “Dare.” He challenged.

The corner of Yugyeom’s mouth twitched, but he let out a fake cough to conceal it, “I dare you to not smile for two turns. If you do, you have to do our laundry for a month.”

Jaebum grimaced at the thought, but her nodded with a solemn look. He earned a few laughs as he had already had a hard time with the dare. He heard a soft sweet giggle. His eyes flipped up to Taylor who had used her hoodie cuff to conceal her own smile. He inwardly cursed as he resisted the urge to smile. Her shy smile was contagious, but he didn’t give in even though it killed him not to.

Jackson pressed the side of his body against Taylor’s side. “Oh, little sister~” he sang. The smile Taylor desperately tried to hide fell the instant her brother spoke to her. “Truth or dare.”

Taylor craned her neck to get a better look at Jackson. She stared him down, her eyes narrowed as if to pry into his soul, “Truth.”

Jackson clicked his teeth as he dramatically put his hand to his forehead, “Well” he sighed, “if you insist.” The way he stretched out his words made Taylor sigh out an unpleasant word. She knew her brother had something planned and she stepped right into it. “Oh, language” he teased. “It’s a simple question, who do you have a crush on?”

The color drained from Taylor’s face. Her face looked as white as a ghost. Her stomach turned violently as her heart punched her chest repeatedly. Her throat went raw as she looked up at her brother with a silent plea to change the question, but he refused to budge. She looked around the room to see them all stare at her. She grabbed her hood and threw it over her head as she pulled her legs closer to protect herself. She could feel the tips of her ears burn as the color returned to her flesh.  

“…ae…um.”

Those are the only words any of them caught. Not even Jaebum could make out her words.

Jackson cupped his ear with his hand, “Sorry? Could you repeat that?”

Taylor shot him a murderous glare, “I said Jaebum.” She snapped loud enough for anyone who was out of the room could hear her. She buried her face in her knees as her face felt like it was on fire.

“HAH!” BamBam jumped from where he sat. “HYUNG LOST!”

All eyes, including Taylor’s, fell on Jaebum who tried to hide his growing smile behind his jacket. His eyes didn’t leave Taylor’s. He didn’t care if he had to do laundry for a month because he lost his dare, he just really wanted to hear Taylor say she liked him again. Just without the audience.

Part II || Part III

Credit to gif owners

Written & revamped by Squirrelly831

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[pizzas-will-rule-the-world]

Hi! I... love your writing so much? It makes me very happy asdfghjkls; 💕💕💕 Could I, um, request 19 for the prompts with Javid?

Thank you so much!!

Read on Archive of our own!

* * *

Title: Is this love?

Relationship: Javid

Genre: Fluff, so much fluff

Words: 1.2k

* * *

It was night, one of those warm summer nights when the day’s heat hadn’t yet disappeared entirely, despite the fact that the sun was setting. Jack and Davey both laid in bed, too tired from the day’s rushed schedule to keep up a conversation. Their day had been far too busy in Jack’s opinion - it was summer break after all, shouldn’t they relax? - filled with carrying boxes and sweating in the merciless sun while Mush and Blink ran around their new apartment like giddy children. The newly moved-in boyfriends had bought all of them pizza, as a thank you for the help with moving, so it could have been worse. And if Jack was honest with himself, the enthusiastic looks his friends had shared all day had been more than enough to make up for the soreness he would feel tomorrow. He had caught the two of them giggling together like schoolgirls a few times during the day, but hadn’t been able to find the heart to remind them to keep carrying boxes into the apartment. Walking around - and realizing that this is it, his friends are becoming adults and graduating college and buying apartments - had made him feel something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. Excited, sure. And happy for his friends. But also sort of longing for something.

He and Davey had walked home, idly chatting about nothing in particular, and Jack remembered how warm Davey’s hand had been in his, and how calming his presence had been beside him. A steady constance that he knew wouldn’t change, even if their friend’s were all growing up and getting jobs while he’s still slaving away for an art degree.

Their window was cracked opened, and a light breeze sought its way into the room and provided some relief to the clammy warmth in the room. Jack rolled over to his side and felt the covers twist around his torso as he did. Davey had his eyes closed, one hand under his pillow and the other stretched out beside him. There was a shine to his forehead - no doubt sweat - despite the fact that they had taken a cold shower right before going to bed. Jack’s fingers brushed over his cheek, almost without him meaning to. Then he retreated his treacherous hand, because he knew how much Davey loved sleeping and how annoyed he would be if he was woken in the middle of the night. Jack watched him for another moment, not really being able to tear his gaze away. Davey’s brow furrowed, as if he was having a nightmare, before smoothing out again after a second.

And there it was again, that pang of longing Jack couldn’t explain. A deep pull in his stomach aching, almost like a hunger he didn’t know how to still.

Was this love? Like an unyielding battle inside of him, tearing at his stomach, and heart, and lungs, fighting despite the fact that it was already won?

Jack knew he loved David, he had known it for a long time. The fact that they had known each other for years before they started dating had turned their whole relationship backwards. They had said they loved each other many time before they kissed for the first time, before even going on their first date. The words had been said so many times between them that some would argue they were losing their meaning.

But now, laying in the bed with Davey next to him, Jack was certain that wasn’t the case. How could something lose its meaning just because you said it many times? The words weren’t less true just because they were spoken repeatedly. And besides, it was something he couldn’t possibly keep to himself anyway, he wasn’t nearly strong enough for that.

He brushed his fingers over Davey’s face again, this time touching his nose and forehead, smoothing out invisible lines that could only be seen when Davey was very concentrated. His nose twitched and Jack could see a small pull at the corner of his lips. Then his eyes fluttered opened, and their eyes met.

“Why are you awake?” Davey asked. His voice was laced with sleep and kind of rough but also quiet and soft. The pull in Jack’s stomach intensified, urging him to move closer, to touch and to hold and to never let go, and to tell him…

“I love you.”

Davey yawned. “That’s nice. Is that why you’re awake?”

Jack moved closer and wrapped an arm around Davey’s side. It was way too warm to lay so close, but Davey didn’t complain. “I’m awake because I keep thinking about how much I love you.”

Davey closed his eyes, but smiled and nodded before resting his forehead against Jack’s. “Maybe you should sleep.”

Jack let out a breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “It feels like something inside of me is moving, and growing, and pulling at me to do something, but I can’t figure out what it wants me to do, until I see you. And then I… Understand. Because it’s you, it’s always you.”

“The thing inside of you wants you to do me?”

Jack shoved Davey, who laughed breathily. “I’m opening my heart to you, here, and you’re being an asshole.” But there was a smile in Jack’s voice, just to make sure Davey knew he wasn’t really upset.

“Sorry,” Davey mumbled into Jack’s neck. “It’s just that I’m only now realizing what a big mistake it was to date an artist. So many metaphors.”

“You’re a writer!”

Davey was smiling widely now. “Right, right…”

They were both quiet for a moment. Jack started tracing words and pictures with his finger on Davey’s arm. He bit his tongue for almost a whole minute, before feeling the creature inside of him urge him on again. He stilled his hand and looked up at Davey’s face. His eyes were still closed, mouth half opened, breathing slowly in and out.

“Hey, babe?”

“Yeah?”

“How much do you love me?”

Davey rolled over to his back. “A lot more if you let me sleep.”

Jack giggled and scooted closer. “Please.” He leaned over and placed a light kiss below Davey’s ear. “How much do you love me?”

Davey’s eyes fluttered opened again and he turned back. “You really want to know?”

Jack nodded. Davey’s gaze was hesitant now, not teasing like it had been a minute ago. It took him a long moment to say anything, and Jack could almost see the thoughts fly through Davey’s brain, trying to string words together.

“I…” Then Davey stopped and retreated back into himself for a couple of seconds before opening his mouth again. “I think… I think I love you more than, more than my mind and body can handle. I think that if I think too long or too hard about how much I love you, I might explode because a human can’t handle feeling this much at once.”

His gaze broke from Jack’s and instead moved to the open window, out of which a street lamp and a tree could be seen from the bed. Jack didn’t follow his gaze, however, as he was too busy watching his boyfriend breathe in and out at a steady pace. He smiled. “And you called me sappy.”

“I never called you sappy.”

“It was implied.”

Davey snorted softly and shook his head. There was another minute of silence before he turned back and looked at Jack. “What brought this on?” he asked.

Jack moved forward and kissed him softly. “You did.”

* * * 

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