#and would mostly just be my desire to write gratuitous violence so

[rxmanticdevil]

Drabble/Short Fic #1 - Cutting Ties

((Characters: Josiah Trelawny (& his family), Arthur Morgan Spoilers: Yes, through Ch. 4 Words: ~982 Trigger warnings: Robbery Explanation for this abomination: Just a “what if” babble imagining if in the escape from the Saint Denis’ bank robbery gone horribly wrong Arthur ended up accidentally breaking into Trelawny’s house. He takes the opportunity to deliver Trelawny news and advice. 

I just got this scene in my head and I wanted to write it, okay? Hahaha. I might write another version from the perspective of Arthur, and then a darker version for it were Dutch instead of Arthur.))

Those eyes were colder than Trelawny could have ever imagined.

There were a million ways he saw this same situation play out in his mind over the years. It was far from a possibility he hadn’t entertained before. And yet, actually being in the predicament was certainly jarring. Not only that, but there was a larger cast here than he had imagined there would be.

His hands were raised in surrender, he was standing stiff, acutely aware that his wife and young sons were trembling behind him. He was between them and the predator before them. In all those imagined scenarios, he couldn’t have imagined the relief in his heart that the barrel of the gun he was staring down was aimed at him. That meant his family was safe. The sound of the gun clicking seemed to echo in his family’s Saint Denis home.

“Josiah, no!” his wife was frantic.

“Go into that room and shut the door. Don’t make a sound, or I’ll kill him,�� the voice of his opposition was low, gruff, pointed at his wife and kids. He could hear as they scrambled to follow the orders.

And Trelawny’s only regret in the moment was that he couldn’t tell them he would be unharmed.

Well, so he thought.

The narrowed eyes, furrowed brows, they were familiar. Dirty blonde hair tumbling over ears. The rest of the face hidden under the brim of a hat and the black fabric of a bandana was something he could easily paint in his mind. The man may be pointing a gun at him, but Josiah still trusted him.

“Arthur,” he whispered, not wanting his wife to know the connection between the man robbing their home (and from the gunshots earlier, he suspected the city too) and her husband.

“Quiet you.” And Trelawny could imagine the terror he’d fear should this be more than a farce. An act. An attempt at ensuring Trelawny’s reputation of an upstanding man remained untainted, and Arthur’s reputation as a ruthless outlaw remained intact, “Your valuables.”

It was a demand.

“I don’t have anything you’d want-”

Arthur closed the distance between them, boots crunching the shards of glass from the broken window that had provided entry. A large, rough hand went to Trelawny’s shirt collar while the gun was pressed to his head, “Bullshit. This house’s got jewelry don’t it? You’re fancy, I know you got money.”

Now Arthur’s face was close to his, and Trelawny felt for the first time in the encounter real fear. The world around them vanished into the background. Arthur’s body, although smaller than it had been in the past (a point of concern, if Trelawny was thinking straight) was still hulking over his own. They both knew Josiah was far from a fighter, and at this proximity was completely at Arthur’s mercy. Something he had previously thought he had, but now with the gun to his head and hand at his neck, he wasn’t sure.

“Don’t come back,” the whisper was quiet, pointed. A stark contrast to the man’s violent actions.

The words were hardly registering.

“We lost Hosea. And Lenny.”

“What? Arthur? What’s going-”

Josiah had no time to process what was said. A fist came at him, “Ah!” he yelped in pain as it made contact with his cheek- though he knew from watching the outlaw fight in the past it wasn’t Arthur’s worst.

“I said your valuables. I can take your life instead if that’s more convenient,” It was back to the show.

“A-a-ah yes,” his mind was still racing, and now his head aching from the punch, “That drawer, it should- should have some jewelry in it. Maybe some money.”

He was shoved roughly into the wall behind him as Arthur moved over to the designated drawer, opening it and pocketing pearl earrings and a necklace, along with a small billfold. He turned back to Trelawny, “Thanks for the donation. You know, you’re lucky you ran into me. My friend would’a killed you.”

There was something in how that had been said that brought a chill to Trelawny’s spine. Friend? Which one? That Micah character? Well, Trelawny could have told anyone that if one of the Van der Linde gang would kill him it would be-

“A Dutch fellow.”  

Dutch? There was so much that Arthur was telling him, he needed a moment with all of it. But before he could focus on even one of the threads, Arthur had once again closed the distance between them.

“Guess this is good-bye,” and with a quick hit with the butt of a pistol, Trelawny collapsed to the ground.

______

“Josiah?! Josiah! Dear! Wake up, please!”

Head aching with each word, his eyes fluttered open. Pain was coursing through his body as he struggled to focus on the world.

“Oh, thank God!” His wife wrapped her arms around him, bringing him close to her chest.

“Daddy!” his sons rushed to his side, clinging onto him.

She pulled away from him just enough to check his face, her sweet eyes lingering on his bruises, “Are you okay?” 

“Yes, yes, don’t worry about a thing, darling, I’m alright,” he held his family, but his mind was still on the encounter. Arthur said so much: Hosea and Lenny… dead? Dutch was a danger now? Don’t return?

There were countless questions. But from the sound of it, none of them would be answered. And honestly, as long as his family was safe – he supposed the answers weren’t important.

Though his heart ached, for Hosea- the wise man, for Lenny- the young, bright spirit. Gone like sweet, playful Sean. How many more deaths in the gang would there be?

He wasn’t even upset about the robbery, if what Arthur said was true – and he trusted the outlaw more than one probably should trust such a degenerate – then it was a small price to pay to be protected from Dutch’s wrath.

He had been playing with fire for long enough, it seemed. This had just been a small singe from the flames, and it was probably best he quit before he became engulfed in them.

[foilfreak]

Beauty and Her Beast: Chapter 4

Warning: This fic is rated NSFW and contains graphic depictions of things some people may find disturbing or alarming, including, but not limited to: violence, gore, unhealthy family relationships, Oedipus complexes, gratuitous amount of pornographic literature, ableist language, physical, mental, and emotional abuse, etc. If you are someone who does not enjoy fiction with these elements in them, then I suggest you refrain from reading this, because this fic will have all that, and probably a lot more. So, this is your first and final warning to turn around and go somewhere else if stuff like this just isn't your vibe, because from this point forward, your emotional wellbeing is in your own hands, and I will not be accepting blame if you disregarded my warnings and ended up reading something you didn't like. Idk why I feel compelled to write one of these despite this being Resident Evil fanfic, but I figured I'd cover my ass just in case.

(Link to ao3 version in comments below)

Upon returning to the surface again, Mother Miranda seems confused, but mostly relieved, that Salvatore did not show interest in lingering in the village any longer than necessary. Though Salvatore did end up needing to stay for one last brief conversation, in which he and Mother Miranda discussed various parts of Nadine’s file, as well as finalized the date and approximate time in which Salvatore could expect the villagers to arrive at the reservoir gate with his gift in tow.

2 days from now, was the final agreement, as it would ensure that Salvatore would be the first of the Lords to receive his gift, making up for the fact that he was the last of them to pick. It also permitted him the luxury of some spare time to prepare a new permanent living environment of some kind for his gift. Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

Regardless, Once their conversation finally concluded, Salvatore bid his beloved Mother a quick, but appropriately appreciative thank you and goodbye, before closing the large wooden door to the meeting room and trudging back out into the cold, harsh winter snow. Despite a lack of improvement in the weather since Salvatore’s initial journey into the village, the mutant man maintained a solid pace through the snowy paths, seemingly uninhibited by the forceful winds attempting to throw him from his course.

With little time remaining, Salvatore wanted to return to his reservoir as quickly as possible to begin making preparations; though, what exactly it was he was supposed to do in order to prepare for a tiny, beautiful, and apparently violent cadou-mutant woman to begin living in his reservoir with him, once again, Salvatore still had no idea.

Grimacing in frustration, the hooded man wracked his brain for something to do, some way for him to make a good “first” impression with his new gift when she finally arrives. Something that would catch her fancy and hopefully convince her that, despite his terrifying appearance, he wouldn’t harm her and merely wanted to be friends.

Well… technically speaking Salvatore wanted a great deal more than just friendship from the young woman, however given how low his chances are of ever achieving the former, the mutant man decided that he’d happily squash his vile and disgusting desires down deep within himself if it meant he’d gain at least something similar to a friendship with Nadine.

He’d been doing the same with Mother for all these years, so it wasn’t like it was going to be difficult… hopefully.

Upon returning to his reservoir finally, Salvatore retreated from the harsh weather, deciding that he’d likely have a much easier time cleaning if he waited the snowstorm out and got started in the morning, instead. Once the skies had cleared and the sun had just begun to peak over the mountaintop horizon however, Salvatore immediately set to work cleaning up the areas surrounding the reservoir.

It wasn’t until after several hours of diligent gathering and disposing of the numerous unsightly piles of rotting wood and garbage lying around, that the unusually bright and hopeful atmosphere surrounding the reservoir was rudely disrupted by a surprise visitor Salvatore would have never seen coming in a million years.

“HEY, FISHFACE, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? I gotta talk to you about something, so hurry up and crawl out of your sewer system so we can get this over with, already” Karl’s rough and booming voice echoed out from somewhere within the reservoir.

Salvatore flinches in fearful surprise at the demanding voice, wondering what on earth could possibly have brought Karl, the notorious recluse of the family who never left his factory unless bribed or threatened, all the way out here to the reservoir. And to speak to HIM, on top of all that too.

Despite not feeling like subjecting himself to Karl’s recent tendency toward physical abuse disguised as “brotherly affection”, Salvatore sighs and swims his way toward his younger brother’s voice anyways, knowing that ignoring Karl would only prompt the younger man to actually enter the reservoir in search of him, which was the absolute last thing Salvatore needed right now.

“Mornin’, brother! It’s about fuckin’ time you answered the door. You were taking so long I was beginning to wonder if you’d finally decided to run away and live out the rest of your life as an actual fish, like I suggested to you at the last “family” meeting” Karl says bluntly, clad his characteristic attire of green sunglasses, a brown hat atop his head, a long tan trench coat covering his day clothes, various items strung around his neck, and large titanium hammer.

“H-hello, Karl... W-why is it th-that you’re h-here for?” Salvatore asks slowly, peering at the younger, but taller man from behind the only partially opened gate.

“Hey, hey, come on now, Sal, what’s with the cold welcome? Am I not allowed to visit my favorite older brother without a specific rhyme or reason. I think you’ll be surprised to know that I was actually already in the area, and wanted to stop by and see if you were in the mood for a chat. You know, like old times?” Karl says defensively, placing both his hands up as Salvatore narrows his eyes at the younger man.

Salvatore was a lot of things, but stupid most certainly wasn’t one of them, regardless of what other people thought. While it might be true that, when Karl was first introduced to the family as a child following his successful cadou mutation, they had something of a positive older-younger brother relationship that lasted a good many years into Karl’s adulthood, that relationship has been growing progressively shakier and unstable over the past few years, at least it has during the times Karl has acted like Salvatore wasn’t the only one to reach out and attempt to connect with the emotionally volatile, but secretly terrified young boy, when he first arrived.

Deep down, Salvatore still had something of a soft spot for Karl, a soft spot that he occasionally allowed himself to indulge in whenever Karl wasn’t acting like a royal asshole, but those moments of peace and solidarity between oldest and youngest brother had been few and far in between recently. Not to mention that Salvatore would be lying if he said he wasn’t growing increasingly more suspicious and distrustful of Karl and whatever secrets the younger man was hiding in that factory of his. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he could be up to, but something told Salvatore that Karl had more reason to be here than just pure coincidence.

“P-perhaps… what i-is it that you w-want to t-talk about?” Salvatore replies curtly, not wanting to just go along with whatever Karl wanted, but for some reason still willing to give the younger man a chance to prove himself.

Taking a brief moment to look over both his shoulders, Karl places the heavy end of his hammer on the ground and leans inward toward Salvatore, lowering his voice as he whispers, “You see your gift from Mother yet?”

This question took Salvatore by surprise, not expecting the gifts Mother Miranda had given them to be the reason why Karl was here.

“I… I h-have… why?” The disfigured man asks curiously, pushing the gate open a little further so that Karl, despite Salvatore’s earlier reservations toward the younger man, could squeeze his way inside.

Upon entering through the gate, Karl immediately takes 2 cigars out of his back pocket and lights the first one. “Curiosity mostly… but also cuz I think there’s more to this whole “gift” thing than Miranda wants us to believe,” the bespeckled man says, blowing a lungful of smoke out his nose as he offers Salvatore the second cigar. “You still smoke, old man?”

“I-I… I r-really shouldn’t” Salvatore says, turning his back toward Karl’s outstretched hand, even as the wonderfully woody scent fills his nose and his mouth begins to water.

“Oooooh, but something tells me you want to” Karl teases, sauntering over to the older man so that he could wave the fresh cigar in Salvatore’s face, chuckling in amusement when the fish mutant’s gaze locked onto and followed the unlit stick like a dog would a slab of meat.

“B-but it… M-Mother has s-said… m-many times… th-that she d-doesn’t like… doesn’t like when we s-smoke… because… uh, b-because...” Salvatore trails off, trying to remain strong for Mother Miranda, even as his self-control slowly continues to crack.

“Come on, lighten up a little bit, old man. It’s just one cigar. You smoked a pack of these things a day, like they were the only things keeping you going, both throughout my whole adolescence and, if what Duke says is to be trusted which we both know it is, well after I left for my factory, too. When the hell did you start being such a stick in the mud? No wonder I stopped hanging out with you, you’re like a fuckin’ parrot that repeats everything than goddamn woman says, it’s like I can’t escape her no matter where I fuckin’ go” Karl groans in a slightly childish tone of voice as he trudges forward to sit on one of the docks overlooking the calm water below.

Salvatore slowly moves to join him as he says, “S-she’s right th-though… it r-really isn’t good… f-for you… I smoked e-everyday for m-many years... an-and now I’m p-paying for my i-ignorance… Mother o-only nags at you… b-because she c-cares… and s-she’s always r-right… in the e-end...”

“Oh, fuck what Miranda says, I’m tired of that woman. Always telling us what to do and then thinking that pushing a couple of failed experiments onto us as “gifts” will make up for the fact that she’s disappearing off the face of the planet without a single trace and not telling us when she’ll be back. As far as I’m concerned, when Miranda’s not here, she’s not the boss of me. And the same goes for you, too” Karl says, roughly punching Salvatore in the shoulder.

“I-I don’t… I don’t think th-that’s how this w-works, Karl” Salvatore counters. “Even w-with Mother l-leaving us… f-for a t-time... we still h-have to make s-sure that th-things c-continue on… continue on as p-planned… or e-else we’ll really b-be in trouble… w-when she g-gets back.”

“Maybe,” Karl says thoughtfully, before taking another drag of his cigar. “I don’t know… I just have a sinking feeling that there’s something weird going on behind the scenes and these “gifts”, that she’s giving us, are nothing more than distractions to keep us entertained while she goes and does… whatever the fuck it is she plans on doing while she’s gone.”

Salvatore pauses for a moment, briefly remembering back to when Mother first told him that she’d be leaving the village to go “visit someone”, who she believed could be very important to their mission of reviving Mother’s long lost baby, Eva. Although he hadn’t thought very much of it at the time, the mutant man also remembers Mother saying something about how well Nadine would do at “keeping him occupied” until she finally returned, and maybe even after that, too. But why would Mother Miranda want or need him to be “occupied” when she got back? Wouldn’t she want to share her findings with him so they could work toward creating a vessel to revive Eva in? Wouldn’t she want to see and speak to him again after being away for so long?

Or maybe… could… could Karl actually be onto something here? Salvatore felt terrible doubting Mother Miranda, but he’d be lying if he said that Karl didn’t have a point about Mother’s behavior seeming odd, now that he was in the proper headspace to go back and analyze the memory properly, at least.

“B-but… if Mother h-has gone o-out of her w-way… to make sure that w-we won’t be l-lonely... w-while she’s away… isn’t th-that a… a good th-thing… doesn’t that m-mean she c-cares a-bout us... enough to… e-enough to do something l-like this?” Salvatore asks nervously, watching the younger man intently as he contemplates his response.

“I guess so, at least when you word it like that, it does. But something tells me there’s more to this than she’s led us to believe. She’s got something planned, and she’s definitely after something, and once she gets her hands on it, who the hell knows what’ll happen… whatever it is though, I doubt it’ll be very good, for any of us.”

“D-don’t say th-things l-like that… I-I’m sure M-Mother has a-a reason… a reason w-why she’s leaving… an-and if she d-doesn’t tell us w-what it is… b-before she leaves… th-then Im sure… I’m sure sh-she’ll tell u-us when she g-gets back… she’ll l-let us in o-on her p-plan… wh-when she’s ready… an-and then… once e-everything is… said a-and done… we c-can revive… r-revive Eva… and b-be a real f-family… a-at long l-last… isn’t th-that what w-we a-all want, after a-all… a f-family?” Salvatore asks, hoping this was doing something to ease the younger man’s clearly agitated mind.

What on earth it was that was causing so much turmoil as it flew around inside Karl’s head, Salvatore had no idea. But something about the bespectacled man’s unusually contemplative and concerned mood, coupled with the fact that he’d only punched Salvatore once since his arrival, was beginning to leave an acidic taste in the deformed man’s mouth.

Karl really and truly thought something was wrong, and the younger man’s continued insistence upon this fact was beginning to make Salvatore very very anxious.

Perhaps it was the unusually good and excited mood that Salvatore was in due to the near arrival of his gift, or maybe it was that soft spot for Karl I mentioned earlier, but regardless of the reason, Salvatore felt the odd need to help alleviate the younger man’s bad mood, just like he used to do for him back when Karl was still barely taller than his shoulder.

Mother Miranda certainly wouldn’t be pleased if she found out that Salvatore had broken his mandatory sobriety despite her explicit orders to avoid smoking so his experiment results wouldn't be hindered. That being said however, Miranda always seemed to want her 4 children to get along and be close, like real siblings, so Salvatore supposed that he could allow himself a break from his smoking break so long as, if Miranda did manage to find out somehow, he could get himself out of trouble by spinning it as a rare moment of sibling bonding between the oldest and youngest siblings, rather than the reality of the situation.

“I… I’ll t-take that cigar… if you’re n-not gonna smoke it… th-that is” Salvatore says, a small chuckle escaping him when Karl cheers in delight, practically throwing both the lighter and the cigar into the deformed man’s hands.

Salvatore’s first breath of the cigar is nothing short of heavenly once he finally lights it and takes a drag, and its moments like these when the mutant man finds himself secretly grateful that Karl hasn’t listened to a goddamn word Mother Miranda has said in nearly 4 decades.

A long period of silence passes as both brothers merely sit beside one another and secretly enjoy each other’s company.

“Miranda let me pick my gift first, so I didn’t get to see where the others went. Who did you end up with?” Karl asks, finally breaking the silence.

“T-the… the sh-short one,” Salvatore replies, “with b-blue skin, black h-hair, a-and, uh… oh, an-and white d-dots… all o-over her… l-like freckles… fins t-too”

“Oh ya, I remember that one. Gorgeous little thing, she was” Karl says, nodding his head in appreciation as a devilish smile spreads across his unshaven lips. “With quite the… voluptuous figure too, if I remember correctly.”

“I… well… I-I don’t know i-if��� I d-didn’t... shut up...” Salvatore mumbles under his breath, taking a long drag from his cigar as Karl throws his head back laughing like a hyena at his older brother’s sudden bashfulness.

“Ah, come on, Sal, don’t be such a downer all the fuckin’ time, I’m just teasing. I know you still think about shit like that, too, even if you’ve managed to convince Alcina and everybody else that you’re just an innocent little follower who hasn’t had an independent, or dirty thought of his own since the cadou took hold. You used to be a fuckin’ doctor for crying out loud, and you’re still annoyingly the person Miranda goes to first whenever she has a new experiment in mind, cuz you’re smart AND she can trust you. You might look like you fell off the truck that was taking you and your fishy friends to market, but I’ve known you too long for that bullshit act of yours to work on me.”

“Act?” Salvatore asks, genuinely confused by what Karl means.

“You know, that stupid fuckin’ “moronic freak” act you do whenever Miranda’s around. The one where you act like you don’t know what the fuck is going on or what something is so that she’ll take pity on how stupid and childish you’re acting and give you more attention. It’s pathetic to watch and I’m gettin’ sick of seeing you do it all the time. Knock it off, you’re better than that.”

“I’ll… um… b-be sure not to… to m-make it s-seem as… uh… I’ll k-keep that in m-mind” Salvatore finally says, casting his gaze down to his pants for a moment, unsure how to feel about how… friendly and kind Karl was being all of a sudden. Salvatore knew Karl secretly cared about him, the brat does far too many conveniently nice things for him throughout the year for him not to, but hearing the younger man voice his surprisingly high opinion of him was definitely shocking, though still quite touching, all the while.

“W-which gift… d-did you end u-up… getting, Karl? I d-didn’t get t-the chance to… to s-see the others… M-Mother only showed me Nadi-er… my g-gift” Salvatore asks, deciding, at the last second, against using his gift’s real name lest Karl be given even more artillery to tease and riddle him with.

“Eh, just some tall dark haired broad. I think Miranda said something about her being Indian, or something along those lines.”

“O-oh… d-did Mother say a-anything about… whether she’s actually f-from here… o-or did she immigrate… f-from India?” Salvatore asks, tilting his head curiously as this new information about Karl’s gift piques his interest.

Karl stares at Salvatore with a look of confusion for a moment, his mouth opening and closing silently like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the words for it. Until, “Aren’t Indians from America?”

The sound of Salvatore’s right palm making firm and painful contact with the back of Karl’s head echoes across the reservoir almost as loudly as the following cry of pain from the man himself.

“OW! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?” Karl roars angrily, pushing himself to his feet while he rubs at the back of his head, hat lopsided and barely hanging on to his head and green glasses no longer perched upon his nose, likely sinking to the murky lake floor just below the docks they were sitting on.

“I d-didn’t spend… th-the better part o-of 15 years… p-pounding an education... i-into y-your th-thick head... for you t-to say… f-for you to b-be spouting dumb shit… l-like that” Salvatore growls in annoyance, eying the taller man with a look that even he wouldn’t dare argue against, at least not with Sal he wouldn’t.

It’s moments like these when Salvatore is very happy that Karl, for as strong and fearless as he is now as a fully grown adult, is still just a little bit afraid of him after all these years. Not because of anything bad or horrifically traumatic of course, especially considering how often Salvatore had gone out of his way to ensure Karl had the least traumatic upbringing he could possibly provide the young boy, given both their situations. As much as he hated to admit it, even Karl would agree that Salvatore had done a pretty decent job of not fucking him up anymore than he already was, which the younger man would secretly always be thankful for. However, even a person as naively patient and serving toward others as Salvatore had his breaking point, and all it took was one especially bad day, resulting in the one and only time Salvatore has ever left a mark upon the younger man’s skin, for Karl to realize that Salvatore was the last person in this godforsaken village he wanted to purposefully make an enemy out of.

Thankfully, their relationship never suffered negatively from that one-off event, but it did force the two to come to a mostly unspoken agreement that has remained present and active, if slightly ignored at certain times, from that point forward. Agreement or not however, Salvatore could never bring himself to harm Karl like that again, even if he wanted to, which was probably the main reason why Karl was still the most comfortable around him, even after all these years. It was a secret they shared between them, and them alone, and it would be one that he would cherish for the rest of his life, as Karl would secretly cherish the kindness and brotherly love Salvatore had treated him with for all these years. They were brothers, regardless of whether they got along or not, and nothing in the would world would be able to change that.

That being said however, Karl was about to be in for a very rude awakening if he thought he could just do and say whatever the hell he wanted around Salvatore without there being any consequences.

“‘A-aren’t Indians f-from A-America?’ G-good grief... I o-oughta throttle y-you for th-that one” Salvatore grumbles through another drag of his cigar, shaking his head in utter disbelief and disappointment. Karl was so intelligent, and yet he could be so stupid sometimes that it physically hurt Salvatore to think about.

“But there ARE Indians in America, aren’t there? I know I’m not wrong here” Karl defends aggressively, his anger quickly giving way to embarrassment when Salvatore raises his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration and annoyance.

“Th-they’re called N-Native Americans... f-first of all... they w-were only c-called I-Indians... b-because the g-guy... the moron who f-first sailed t-to the A-Americas... w-was actually... looking for I-India... the r-real India... b-but back th-then... you h-had to go all th-the way... a-around Africa... to g-get there... but he th-thought h-he could do... d-do it a d-different w-way... he thought h-he could f-find India... by s-sailing straight f-from S-Spain... and g-going around the whole w-world... until h-he came b-back around... an-and hit Asia” Salvatore explained slowly, hoping to maintain his delusion that Karl had, in fact, paid attention to at least some of the lessons he gave the boy throughout their time together, even if it wasn’t actually true.

“But he didn’t. He hit the Americas and started calling the locals Indians cuz the guy, what’s-his-face... Columbine... Columbus... whatever, was dumb enough to think he was in India and not a totally different landmass” Karl finishes, looking like he at least remembered hearing about his information before, which was good enough for Salvatore.

Despite the grimace still etched onto his face, Karl groans in annoyed defeat and slinks back down to sit next to Salvatore, still cradling the back of his head.

“Anyways, as i was saying before I was so rudely interrupted with a goddamn history lesson-”

“You w-want another s-smack?” Salvatore threatens, mildly amused when Karl pauses his dramatic retelling, before sliding just a few inches to the right, away from Salvatore’s preferred disciplining hand.

Coughing slightly, Karl continues. “Anyways… going back to my “finding the silver lining” idea, or whatever the fuck its called. This whole “gift” thing might actually work out kinda nice for me in the long run, especially since the one I got looked like she was strong and could handle herself in a rough and tumble environment. If she proves herself, I’m planning on turning her into my assistant” Karl explains casually. “As much as I hate working with other people, normally, I’ve got some projects that would really benefit from a second pair of hands, so I’m attempting to make a “silver lining” moment out of this bullshit “gift” thing Miranda’s tryin to do and just hope and pray that things work out in my favor. Though, to be fair, if things with this girl don’t go well, I could always use her body for a cool idea I’ve had cooked up for a while now. What about you? What are you planning on doing with your new little toy once it finally arrives?”

Salvatore merely shrugs his shoulders. “It w-would be nice… i-if we c-could be f-friends… somehow… but…”

“Ya… you’re not exactly working with the latest and greatest set up, huh? Even a mutant girl might need a little bit to get adjusted to a face like that” Karl says.

“That’s c-certainly one way o-of p-putting it” Salvatore replies dejectedly.

Karl flinches slightly, which surprises Salvatore, since the younger man has a habit of caring very little for how his words affect those around him. Why on earth was he being so considerate, all of a sudden?

“Look, uh… what I meant to say was that… ok, so maybe you’re not like, the best looking guy ever, but like…” Karl stammers and stutters, trying desperately to figure out what he wants to say but seemingly coming up short every time.

Salvatore narrows his eyes again, suspicion returning. “You’re h-hiding something f-from me… w-what are you a-after, Karl?” Salvatore asks seriously, fixing the younger man with a stern look that he knows Karl recognizes.

“Hey, don’t you give me that fuckin’ look. I am too fuckin’ old for you to be looking at me like that, what am I, 12?” Karl asks.

“You c-certainly act l-like it… most of th-the time” Salvatore grumbles under his breath.

Karl clearly heard him, but knew better than to argue with the water not even a foot below where the two were currently sitting, his sunglasses having already taken a nice little dive as punishment for his big mouth. Salvatore might have only agreed to speak with Karl because the latter had demanded it, but they were still very much in Salvatore’s territory, and it wasn’t even a question of who had the topographical advantage should an “argument” actually break out between them.

Karl is strong, nobody can deny that. But Salvatore has the home advantage, and they both know it.

After a moment of tense staring, Karl finally breaks first, sighing heavily before tossing his finished cigar cap into the water below them, a crime Salvatore briefly contemplates knocking the younger man in for, before deciding against it, knowing, with his luck, that it would only come back to bite him in the ass later.

“Alright look,” Karl finally says, a look of frustrated determination on his face, “I don’t know what Miranda really has planned past her whole “get a suitable vessel for Eva” obsession, or what she’s really after on this mission of hers… but something about this whole situation going on recently just doesn’t feel right to me, and I think we need to do something about it before something bad happens and we all somehow end up dead. Now, I'm not 100% sure why I’m talking about this with the head of Miranda’s fuckin’ fanclub, but considering what my other 2 options were it wasn’t like I had much of a damn choice. My only saving grace right now is the fact that you’ll at least occasionally listen to fuckin’ reason, given your gaping maw can be yanked from Miranda’s tit long enough to hear me out, that is. It’s certainly better than my chances with Lady Super-sized Bitch and Crazy Psycho Doll, over there.”

“Are you s-sure you’re n-not just being p-paranoid?” Salvatore asks slowly, not wanting to offend Karl by outright stating he didn’t believe the younger man’s hunch, but also trying to figure out if Karl actually has something to be concerned about, or if he’s just looking for an excuse to badmouth Miranda.

“No, no no no, don’t you do this to me too, Sal” Karl begs in frustration. “You can go about the rest of your life loving the absolute shit out of that crazy woman if you want to and I won’t say a goddamn thing about it, but I need you to promise me, and I mean promise me, that if you see or hear something weird regarding Miranda and this little “trip” she’s about to go on, you come tell me so that we can at least make sure our own asses are covered when shit hits the fan.”

“Well… I-I uh…”

“Come on, Sal. None of these psychotic assholes have ever had my back like you, and that’s exactly the reason why I’m telling you all this” Karl says honestly, catching Salvatore off guard with the oddly familiar wording.

“I know I can be a royal fucking pain in the ass most of the time and that I’m not always the… nicest to you… even though you did kinda do... a bit for me here and there when I was a little tyke... But none of that matters now, because even if Miranda isn’t trying to hide something from us, with the two of us banded together, we could do whatever the hell we wanted while she’s gone, and neither of the other shitheads would be able to tell us otherwise. What do you say, Sal? Come on, you and me, together, just like when I was a kid, remember?” Karl asked excitedly, his eyes shimmering in boyish glee as he spouts off all the things they’d be able to get away with when Miranda finally left, the torment they’d be able to unleash upon Alcina being a particular favorite of Karl’s, it would seem.

Salvatore remained silent for a moment, contemplating the deal he’d just been given.

It’s… not a terrible deal, at least compared to some of the previous deals Salvatore has been offered in the past. It wasn’t like him agreeing to “ally” himself with Karl was a direct declaration of war against Mother Miranda or anything like that, merely a mutual effort that would guarantee safety for both him and Karl should Mother’s plan not go exactly as she wanted, which scientific experiments were known to do. Not to mention that giving Alcina a good messing with did sound like quite a bit of fun.

Maybe… maybe Karl was right. Maybe Salvatore was being a bit too much of a stick in the mud. It was just Karl after all, who Salvatore had practically raised, starting from the boy’s arrival into the family at 6 years old and more or less up until his factory was completed just after his 22nd birthday. Karl could certainly be a handful for even the most powerful individuals, but even on his worst days, he always found some backwards, convoluted way to apologize for his behavior.

“W-well… I-I’m not s-sure… I d-don’t know how I f-feel about… about d-doing things th-that Mother… wouldn’t a-approve of… just b-because sh-she’s gone...”

“But...” Karl continued for him.

“B-but I suppose… k-keeping each other u-updated… when we f-find… or h-hear s-something weird is… wouldn’t be… wouldn’t be th-the worst idea… in th-the world… e-even if it just t-turns out that… we w-were just being p-paranoid.”

“Excellent! That’s just what I was hoping to hear” Karl says triumphantly, standing up.

“A-are you l-leaving, already?”

“Ya” Karl affirms, “I’ve got work to do at the factory, and based on the look of things here, you were busy with a project of your own it looks like.”

Salvatore nods, pocketing his freshly finished cigar cap for later, proper, disposal. “I c-can’t even remember… the l-last time I… p-properly cleaned this p-place… it l-looks so m-much nicer… even w-without being f-fully finished…”

“Good for you. My own property could probably do with a good cleaning of its own now that you mention it. If nothing else though, I’m sure your new little lady friend will appreciate that you picked up the place for her arrival.”

“Y-you think s-so?” Salvatore asks.

Karl shrugs his shoulders. “Who knows with chicks, they’re unpredictable, but I suppose it’s possible. Then again, maybe not considering who you ended up with. I don’t know the full story or anything like that, but based on what I heard from Miranda, that blue bitch you went with was the craziest one of them all. Practically tore her pod apart the first time Miranda tried to put her in it, and caused all sorts of other damage throughout her mutation phase too, not that I blame the poor girl. I’d tear that whole lab right out from under the surface and set it ablaze if I could. Going back down there after so many years… I was puking like you for the rest of the fuckin’ day when I finally got out of that hellhole. Stomach still feels a little nauseous if I’m being honest...”

“I-I’m sorry… to h-hear that” Salvatore says, though Karl is quick to brush him off.

“Eh, don’t worry about it. I’m a big boy and I can handle myself. But do we have a deal? Keep each other in the loop whenever we hear anything… strange or abnormal about Mother Miranda or her special little mission?”

Salvatore pauses for a moment, thinking one last time about whether this was a good idea, before finally shrugging his shoulders and nodding. “Y-yes, we h-have a deal… b-but just remember something, Karl… 40 years d-didnt do… nearly as m-much for your p-poker face as i-it did for your s-smart mouth. If I c-catch you lying to m-me-”

“Ya, ya, ya, you’ll chop up my body and toss my remains in the lake to feed the fishes, I’ve heard that one a million times before” Karl interrupts. “Don’t worry, Sal, if I was planning on lying to you at any point throughout this process, you’d have already caught me by now. Even I know better than to try pulling a fast one over the walking fuckin’ lie detector.”

“I’m h-holding you to th-that, Karl” Salvatore calls over his shoulder as the younger man stands and begins heading toward the gate to return to his factory, chuckling lightly when Karl returns his warning with a middle finger.

“Take it easy, old man. And let me know how that crazy fish bitch you ended up with turns out. If all else fails I’ll turn her into a nice stuffed pillow for you” the bespeckled man says, throwing his head back in laughter as though he’d told a funny joke, before adding, “And I’d better get my sunglasses back within the week, or else I’m draining the whole fucking reservoir so I can find them myself. Don’t think I won’t do it, old man.”

Salvatore merely returns the middle finger, a response that Karl seems to appreciate, if the wolfish howl of laughter the younger man let's out says anything, at least.

‘Cheeky brat. Always plotting something’ Salvatore thinks fondly to himself as he slips back into the water to continue cleaning the reservoir, quickly grabbing the green sunglasses that had sunk to the bottom and pocketing them to return to Karl later. He pauses for a moment when a thought crosses his mind.

Within the past 24 hours, both Mother Miranda and Karl had been… unusually kind and affectionate toward Salvatore, which pleased but also confused the twisted man.

Karl was easy enough to explain away, the younger man has been flip flopping between periods where he likes and spends time with Salvatore, and periods where he’d sooner set himself on fire than be in the same room as his older brother, since the day they met, so as far as Salvatore was concerned, Karl’s behavior was hardly breaking news, though perhaps a bit surprising given everything going on with Mother’s gifts. Mother Miranda, however, was a different story.

Usually more distant and hands-off in her parenting ways, Miranda had been uncharacteristically affectionate toward the disfigured man the night before, going as far as to openly praise Salvatore for all his hard work and even hold him without being asked to. It had been such a wonderful experience at the time and yet, the more Salvatore thought about it, the stranger and stranger the behavior seemed, especially now that Karl had confronted him.

Speaking of Karl… Mother seemed quite upset with him when she spoke of him the night before. Going as far as to badmouth him specifically, calling him a ‘conniving little snake’, despite the younger man usually being her favorite by a country mile. Had Karl done something to incur Mother’s wrath? Is that why Karl came all the way over here to make that deal with him? Is he trying to rally the 4 lords to rebel against Mother Miranda?

No... No, no no no, that couldn’t be true, there’s no way.

Even Karl, for all his incredible intellect and hunger for power, was too afraid of Mother Miranda to ever try anything as drastic as that. That being said however, even though Salvatore doubted that Karl would ever try to rebel against Mother Miranda, it did seem like the younger man was trying very hard to get Salvatore onto his side for some reason. In fact, both Karl AND Mother Miranda appeared to be trying to sway the eldest Lord in their favor, though for what reason, he still had no idea.

It was definitely something that made Salvatore slightly wary of the both of them, though.

There’s nothing in this world that Salvatore hates more than doubting his beloved Mother, but even he couldn’t write this oddity of a situation off as a mere one-off incident or sudden change of Miranda’s tune. Mother has been acting very strangely recently, doing things she wouldn’t normally do and acting overly affectionate as if to try and throw everyone off her tracks, and the longer Salvatore thought about it, the more he couldn’t help but wonder, as painful as it was to admit, if maybe Karl was actually onto something.

Logically, he knows that Karl is just being Karl, looking to stir up some trouble for his own, and supposedly Salvatore’s, amusement, and that Mother Miranda is likely just trying to enjoy the time she has left with her children before she leaves on her mission. However, something in the back of Salvatore’s mind can’t help but wonder if maybe there’s more going on than he’s been led to believe by either of them. And as if this situation couldn’t get any more confusing for the deformed man, now his overly anxious and analytical mind was beginning to understand what Karl meant when he said there was something strange going on, no matter how much the rest of him practically screamed to just listen to Miranda like he always has.

Shaking his head of his scrambled thoughts and turning his focus back to his work, Salvatore decides that the best thing he can do right now is keep an ear to the ground on both Mother Miranda AND Karl, just to be fair. He still isn't sure if he plans on being 100% honest with Karl regarding their deal, but he supposes that maintaining a good relationship with the younger man wouldn’t hurt in the event he turned out to be right and Mother’s plan backfired on all of them.

Besides, if Karl did turn out to be right, and Salvatore was ready for if things took a bad turn, he could still be there to rescue Mother Miranda and ensure she’s brought to safety along with them. He’ll have successfully fulfilled his family duties to both Karl and Mother Miranda, without ever having to actually choose which side he was definitively on. A perfect plan if the mutant man says so himself. Now the only thing left to do between now and whenever things started getting interesting was work on the reservoir and wait for his gift to finally arrive, his mood regarding this whole situation greatly improved thanks to Karl’s visit.

Hopefully, if things went well, he’d have some exciting news to tell the younger man the next time they met up.

Maybe he’d even have a new friend to introduce.

[littlesystems]

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King's It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a trans man? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the trans men who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

[vanimeldes]

what annoys me ab GRRM is that he’s a good (enough) writer who understands moral complexity and is (relatively) good at world building. he’s created some amazing iconic characters that stick w ppl for a reason (Jon, Dany, Cersei, Arya etc). and when he does critique misogyny (Cersei’s walk of shame) he does it right. it’s just a shame that his books are marred by authorial gratuitous sexism and racism, it feels like such a waste if you know what I mean ...

Totally. I would lie if I said that he isn’t a good writer, because he is. He tried a different approach to the fantasy genre and his concept — namely the moral complexity and the questioning of heroism and honor — was innovative. And rest is below cut because you made me ramble, anon… 

The world-building is excellent, IMO, he does know how to write well-rounded characters, he knows how to twist certain tropes (although admittedly, this specific technique borders on annoying at one point, rendering some arcs as wholly useless, see Quentyn. Like, I know guy was meant to represent the failed trope of young hero who goes after the beautiful queen, I know the reason of his existence, but in the same time, I can’t help but think of those 200 pages dedicated to his chapters that were utterly pointless). Other tropes, on the other hand, aren’t subverted that much, especially that tropes that I usually don’t like.

Look…I’ll probably get some hate because of this statememt, but I never felt like Jon was particularily interesting, simply because so far, I didn’t feel like he is that much of a subversion of a trope that…it’s so generic for me. Like, he is a good boy and such, but for me — I insist on this — he is still the secret bastard son of the former heir to the throne, sad and broody, but so good and smart and idk why I never felt connected to or intrigued by him. He feels like the same generic fantasy tale that I read when I was young. Same with Sam, whom I really don’t like simply because he represents the nerdy self-insert of the author. This is a tired trope IMO. I appreciate that GRRM gave him an arc and allowed him to shine and find his strength beyond what the society demanded from him, but for me, he is still way too tropey to hold my interest. But again, this is my own personal opinion, I’m not saying that Jon and Sam are not really good boys and that they deserve a happy ending, but they are not a type of characters that appeals to me. Furthermore, if the books’ ending will be like the show’s, with the woman Dany ending up like the hysterical crazed Queen, while Jon will be the reluctant tragic hero who must end her life to save the world….sorry, but I won’t be able to like him, you know?

Dany, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime and Cersei, to name a few, are characters and arcs that really highlight GRRM’s talent in crafting characters. You can tell that they have their own voice and I can’t not help admiring GRRM for ending a different voice and mindset for each of these characters. The way he writes the children’s POV vs. The way he writes the adults’ is just great.

But.

But.

He seems to think that gritty realism means a very unrealistically stark patriarchy, gratuitous violence against women and rape cultures, which he depicts in a very gross manner and he seems to enjoy depicting these very gross aspects. Furthermore many apparently realistic aspects of the Westerosi society are not realistic at all. An adulterous woman was never paraded naked on streets, she only had her head shaved and walked barefoot. Noble girls were engaged and/or married at young ages, but in most cases, the spouses waited for a time until the girl reached a decent age to consummate the mariage. Daenerys was a victime of statutory rape, since, even though her first night with Drogo was consensual, she was well under the age of consent — and this is something GRRM had never adressed. On a similar note, he seems to romanticise S/andor Cl/egane’s creepy obsession towards Sansa, apparently unaware of the fact that he wrote a 20 yr old something man pining for a 12 yr old girl. Dany’s sex life can be very uncomfortable and there was no reason for him not to make her at least 16-17 at the start of the series. He never bothered to explore the many dead women he killed off merely for plot convenience and manpain™️ and are mostly tired tropes (Lyanna - “the object of desire between two men who fought a war for her; Joanna - "desired by two men whose friendship would later develop into bitter rivalry and the only one who brought a bit of humanity in Tywin; Rhaella - exists soley to be raped and give birth to the Targ siblings; Unnamed Princess of Dorne - the only female ruler during the pre-Rebellion era, but she is unnamed; Ashara - the beautiful suicidal maiden, herself most likely and object of desire for at least two men; Elia - don’t get me started). Third — and the worst, IMO — he seems to favour the redemption of the male characters over the female characters. For example, I am supposed to accept the redemption of a disgusting rapist such as Theon, whereas Cersei will most likely end up strangled to death by her lover/brother. Fourth, reading lines such as "Ladies die in childbirth. No one sings songs about them” and “Is there any creature as unfortunate as an ugly woman?” and reading about Catelyn examining her future daughter-in-law’s breasts and hips to figure out if she is able to have children, as in to read about Catelyn thinking about women just in relation to how they can be of use to a man, is sometimes depressing. This is why I can’t like Catelyn and Sansa. Whereas other women defy, willingly or unwillingly (Arya, Brienne) or fight against the restrictions imposed on them by the society (Cersei, Arianne) or to gain and stay power in their society (Daenerys, Margaery), they just sit and accept things as they are and are stucked in their limited classist mindset because they were born in privilege.

So, in conclusion, do I think GRRM is a bad writer or that AS0IAF are bad books? No way. Do I think his treatment to certain aspects is bad? Yes.

[jkl-fff]

OOOHHH!!! GET READY!! 40 questions: 1 2 3 5 9 10 20 24 26 27 30 31 32 33 34 38 and 39!! 💚

Yama, as always, you are a never-endingsource of delight for me. Thanks for the asks!

1. Describe your comfort zone—atypical you-fic.

Well, based off of what I’vewritten up this point, my comfort zone appears to include: A) one-sided pining from a character who isn’t exactly closeted but isn’texactly out, either … and/or a character who isn’t comfortable with their queersexuality; either way, some existential and romantic angst ensues as a resultB) supernatural shenanigans are a major plot point (magic or curses, ghosts orspirits, monsters, etc.)C) occasional philosophical ramblings and messages about friendship and helpingothersD) attempts to think outside the box in terms of plot pointsE) Lots of bantering repartee

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet totry your hand at, but really want to?

Not that I can think of … Maybe something like “enemies to friends” or “friendsto enemies”, and possibly also “enemies to lovers”.I could also enjoy doing some more “friends to lovers” for Dipper and Norman …

3. Is there a trope you wouldn’ttouch with a ten foot pole?

Given the sheer volume of tropes which exist, probably. Though I can’t say Ireally know what any of them are called. But, basically, anything that hingesupon homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. I absolutely loathe, and therefore try toavoid. Heck, I do my best to subvert and supplant such ideas where I can.

Apropos, if anyone feels I’ve failed in that—feels I’ve written or said somethingthat marginalizes a group of people as a whole—*please* let me now when, where,and how; I try not to be complacent about such things, and want to correct themwhen they happen.

5. Share one of your strengths.I believe myself to be quite adept at consistent characterization. Certainlynearly all of my reviewers have mentioned this specifically in my fanfics.

9. Which fic has been the hardestto write?

Hands down, it’s “Through a Slender Opening”. In part because of its length andcomplexity; in part because of various personal and professional issues that I’vehad to combat while writing it.

But I’m almost done! I’ve written the climaxes, and am now working through thedenouements to tie up the loose ends and give conclusions and closures to allof plots and subplots! With any luck, I’ll be able to resume uninterruptedposting in April until all the story is online for any and all to read and enjoy.

10. Which fic has been the easiestto write?Already answered this one here: http://jkl-fff.tumblr.com/post/172058768464/for-the-fic-meme-10-13-14-15-and-19

20. Describe your perfect writingconditions.

For creative writing, I *must* havenear absolute silence. Like, any background noise at all (TV, conversations,etc.) is incredibly distracting for me. It’s less of an issue for writingthings that I’m not obsessively trying to make artistic (answering asks or emails,for example, or proofreading someone else’s work), but for my own stories, itis a prerequisite that I have quiet. Also, a comfy chair with straight and firmback support definitely helps, as does having a cold drink (diet coke on ice) for sipping on hand.

24. Have you ever deleted one ofyour published fics?

Nope, and I doubt I ever shall. The fics ought to remain out there, faults andall, for any and all to see.

26. Do you beta yourself? If so,what kind of beta are you?

Assuming that “beta” is synonymous with “proofread”, then yes, I do betamyself. Obsessively and perhaps even excessively. Like, I reread sentences as Iwrite them, paragraphs when I finish them, then whole scenes after I’vefinished them to make sure *everything* feels/sounds right from start to finish. To make sure everything is cohesive, etc.

When I beta for others, it depends on what kind of input they desire of me, howmuch and how deeply. But generally, I try to be an encouraging and supportivebeta—someone who comes up with constructive and concrete comments which helppeople tell their stories more engagingly,and feel good about themselves while doing it.

27. How do you feel aboutcollaborations?

Depends on the collaborator in question. If they have an entertaining or movingidea, and I feel they can be counted on to actually partner with someone (listento ideas which aren’t their own, contribute ideas to someone else,establishand respect creative boundaries when necessary, and do their share of thecollaboration), then I’m usually gung-ho for it!

I’ve actually been doing that with @tysonoffire and @reynaruina for some timenow, and both are a ton of fun to work with!

30. Do you accept prompts?

On occasion, yeah, but not very frequently. Since I’ve got plenty of my ownideas to keep me busy as is, I seldom need to solicit additional ones.

But they’re always welcome. Never know when something will tickle my fancy, oreven spark my fervor.

31. Do you take liberties withcanon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

Generally, I try to remain true to the canon’s broad strokes (settings, forexample, and *especially* characterizations), and even true to canon’s lightertouches. Mostly because I feel that enhances the richness of the fic itself. However, I will diverge from it when necessary (kinda can’t avoid diverging itwhen you primarily write a crossover), but ONLY after having provided a reasonablebuild up to the changes. Y’know, something that accounts for the characters orplotlines acting otherwise than they would in canon.

32. How do you feel about smut?

If well written and gay as balls touching, I’m all for reading it! And even notopposed to writing it. Though, personally, I prefer it serve a purpose in theplot, and *not* just be something that’s gratuitously added for tits and goggles—somethingthat shows how much the characters’ relationship has developed, for example.

Though I will admit I am also startingto get a little bored with writing smut.Mostly because there are only so manyways you can describe sex before it starts to feel repetitive, and even kinda tedious. (I wonder if this is, in part, because writing something sexualalways takesso long that the sexual rush of smut ebbs long before the scene is complete?)

33. How do you feel about crack?

Don’t smoke it, kids.

Seriously, though, I don’t see any problems with crack ships. If they maketheir shippers happy, then what could be more important or wonderful than that? That being said, they’re unlikely to appeal to me simply because I won’t beable to see a “realistic” possibility for their relationship dynamics. Theiruniverses would have to be fairly similar for me to get into one (likeParaPines and PinesCone are, I reckon).

34. What are your thoughts onnon-con and dub-con?

They are not at all my thing. I see them as inherently being acts of violence—ofone person taking from another by force.So the idea of that combining with sex, whichI see as inherently being an act of mutual affection and mutual gratification—of two people giving to each other by choice … Well, it rather offputs me, to say theleast.

Now, I confess that I do have kinks that involve power play (bondage, dom andsub, pet play, and especially hypnosis/mind control), but for me, they *always*involve either roles willing played, or (in the case of hypno/m.c.) acts ofseduction which convince a person they want it so that they do consent andenjoy it.For me, those are extremely crucial differences.

38. Talk about a review that madeyour day?

Heh. So that they can always brighten my mood whenever I’m feeling down, I’vekept 13 of them in my tumblr inbox and 8 more in my deviantart inbox.They’reso kind, so motivating, and I’m eternally grateful to the people who sent themto me!

39. Do you ever get rude reviewsand how do you deal with them?

Luck is with me, for I’ve only evergotten, like, two or three rude reviews. They were swiftly deleted, as therewas nothing to be gained from wasting time on them.

Thanks again, Yama! This was fun!

[physticuffs]

Thoughts on Male Fantasy Authors Writing Female Characters*

*(mostly. it digresses. this is specifically a comparison among Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, George R. R. Martin, and Guy Gavriel Kay--possibility of minor spoilers, although I’ve tried to avoid them. any plot details given should be unspoilery.)

You know, because this wasn’t already written about enough, or something.

I’ll start by saying this: I actually don’t care very much when male authors don’t write women the way I prefer to see women portrayed. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors ever, due to his word-smithing and world-building, and I haven’t found his match for evoking a feeling of eeriness like he’s writing about a world more true than our own. On the other hand, he definitely is a little weird in his descriptions of female characters. I particularly noticed this with the way the witches in Stardust swear by their sexual organs and the attention Shadow pays to Zorya Polunochnaya’s breasts in American Gods. (Shadow. Chill. FFS.) I’m probably forgetting other instances, because I’ve felt this way multiple times in Gaiman’s writing--it makes me go why the fuck is this relevant? and jolts me out of the story. (Some of his short stories get even more bizarrely sexual; there’s one about an STD that changes your personality. It was pretty uncomfortable, but it was probably supposed to be.) Another complaint I’ve seen is that his female characters aren’t that well fleshed-out, but honestly, neither are his male characters. And Gaiman is aware he’s doing it. I’ve read interviews and essays where he clearly states his love for established bodies of myth and stock characters. That’s fine; it’s the way he prefers to write, and in my eyes he’s a damn fine writer. (I love his poetry too.) Heck, the fact that I love it so much despite my preference for non-stock characters (and fewer interjections about breasts) says a lot. Gaiman, good job for doing exactly what you were trying to do.

Also, I felt more able to forgive Gaiman for the female character sexualization after a discussion with a friend of mine who introduced me to Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. I like the speculative nature of urban fantasy but Harry describes the sex appeal of literally every woman he encounters. And in the first few books, there’s a lot of ~sexy evil~ going on. I was telling my friend how uncomfortable it made me and how I thought it was a major flaw, taking me out of the story, and essentially my friend’s response was “I’m sorry it makes you feel that way, but Butcher isn’t writing these books specifically for you. And remember, Harry’s a straight guy and you’re not. I can see why it would take you out of the story, but these books are from Harry’s perspective, and that seems pretty realistic and in-character to me.” (The conversation was a lot longer than that, but that was the main point.) And you know...yeah. I do have to remember when critiquing any author that, whatever my opinion, they’re not writing specifically for me. (Except my queen Shannon Hale, who probably couldn’t have written better books for my 12-year-old self if she tried.) The continual rehashing of sexiness in Butcher’s books is boring and uncomfortable for me personally, and feels kind of lazy. But Jim Butcher isn’t trying to be a Great Author writing the deepest and cleverest books in the world--he’s trying to write somewhat pulpy genre fiction, and that’s fine. The man turned out one 300-page book a year for 14 years straight. He has his thing and he sticks to it. Butcher, good job for doing exactly what you were trying to do.

What I find way, way more annoying is when an author thinks they’re doing a great job and they’re...not. George R. R. Martin, I’m looking at you. Actually, this isn’t just about women, it’s everything you do to make your books so lurid and gratuitous. But women come into it, because sexual violence is good for shock. I remember that interview a while back when the interviewer told Martin he wrote women “really well and really different” and Martin said, “I’ve always considered women to be people.” Everyone loved it and was like “Tell ‘em!” and I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen, because everything in Martin’s writing is about trauma and shock value. To be fair, my problem with Martin’s writing is sort of beyond the women alone. His characterization, the way he writes their personalities, I’m fine with that. I don’t think Martin would be any worse than most authors about writing women if he didn’t go for the cheap shock, but he does. Here’s the question I asked myself when I started thinking about why Daenerys’s storyline bothered me (since she’s a major favorite with fans): why is she thirteen? No, really, why does she have to be thirteen? It changes nothing important about the story if she’s aged a few years, except that the reader doesn’t go “Oh my god she’s having sex with Khal Drogo!” Viserys groping his own sister and telling her he’d let an army rape her, just to be a jerk? Shock value. Yeah, Martin is trying to show us how evil Viserys is, but it’s pretty lazy writing. I do believe that Martin considers women to be people--it’s just that his desire to make everything worse overrides that. 

None of this stood out in such sharp relief to me until I read Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. Halfway in, I knew I was going to devour every other book by Kay that had a similar style, the same way I felt after first reading a Gaiman novel. Like Martin, Kay writes fantasy stories based on real historical places/events, albeit a little more on the history side than Martin does. (I haven’t read any of his other books yet, but Under Heaven is much closer to the An Lushan Rebellion than ASOIAF is to the War of the Roses.) Like Martin, Kay loves political details and visual descriptions, both things that I love to read. Like Martin, Kay writes about violent events and characters going through incredibly hard journeys. And Kay is far more subtle than Martin. Kay doesn’t need Martin’s almost fetishistic details of violence. Kay sketches it for you, but the focus is on the characters’ reactions. Kay has bad things happen to female characters without making me feel like the bad thing is The Whole Point. One of the things that particularly struck me was when a young woman is sent by her family to marry a foreign stranger, whom her people consider grassland barbarians, in order to secure a political alliance. So basically, the way her story starts is very similar to Daenerys’s, and you feel very sympathetic for her on her journey. But she’s twenty-two. Oh, and the family member who arranges the marriage for her is a lot more complex than Viserys and, y’know, doesn’t violently grope anyone. In another scene, a city is attacked and overrun by enemy soldiers. The reader learns that women are raped and send as slaves to the army, and characters react to that knowledge, but it’s not portrayed firsthand or given graphic details. It’s just enough to know that it happened. Then the focus is on the characters. People excuse Martin because he’s trying to portray a realistically harsh world, but Kay is writing about a world just as harsh and difficult to navigate as the world of Westeros, and he does it without the gratuitous violence, both sexual and otherwise, that Martin uses. I think Martin really does just enjoy writing about violence, and making his characters very young, and it’s disingenuous to pretend that it has to be that way in order to make you understand. We don’t need to see all that. 

I think in a way, it’s also telling how Kay reacted when asked a very similar question to Martin, about how he wrote female characters so well. In an interview I read, Kay said he was uncomfortable with the question, because it implied that everyone should only be expected to write people who matched their demographics, and that was going above and beyond by writing interesting female characters. But Kay didn’t want to pat himself on the back, he wanted other authors to demonstrate a similar level of empathy toward characters. Martin...Martin’s work I wouldn’t struggle with quite as much if he were as up-front as Gaiman and Butcher about the way he writes. But when his answer to “how do you write women so well?” is “I think women are people,” it gives me the sense that he thinks he has the focus just right no matter the audience. The way Butcher writes about women frustrates me because I don’t like hearing the character describe how sexy women are before I know anything else about them, but there’s still a level of self-awareness about it that enables me to take a step back. But the way Martin writes about women frustrates me because he thinks it has to be that way. He writes women just fine! They’ve got personalities and everything! Depicting that level of rape is just necessary for the world-building, okay?

Kay has lots of female characters that are cool and interesting and complex and occupy different roles in the story, and when they undergo pain and trauma directly on the page, it truly is necessary. It’s genuinely part of the story. (As is true for the pain of all the characters, to be clear.) One of the most touching and well-written scenes in Under Heaven contains the death of a major female character. She dies because she has to. It is what the story requires, and it is better for being as understated as it is.

[alxndre-0001]

Alex’s Literary Reads of 2019 (from the months of June to September)

Caution: Bad, unedited writing ahead. Alex is a lazy person

Being a law student is an exhausting line of self-inflicted harm. Your life becomes an onslaught of reading materials and even more reading materials to catch up to. Now, reading has been second nature to me since I was four years old, so you can just imagine the sheer amount of readings my law professors have given us for me to consider detesting reading. 

I’ve managed to keep my sobriety from purely academic books by inserting novels, short stories and some poetry along the way. In all my four years in law school, this is the only year that I read as much as I wanted to. Mostly, short stories and essays that could be finished in one sitting. I had summer classes and wasn’t able to go home at all since January or February so I kept myself preoccupied by reading leisurely ( I know, gasp! Is that even possible for Alex in this economy?).

So here they are ++ some reviews and thoughts on the books.

1. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

I read this book at the same time as a friend of mine. It was my first time diving into erotica considered to hold literary merit, the ones I had before were utterly terrible, by the way. But we are talking of Anais Nin anyway, so there’s that. It’s actually a collection of erotic short stories involving different, unconnected characters although a few of them were referenced in other stories. As someone who’s always been fine with sex in plots, this one left me feeling visibly unsettled. I realized how truly romanticized sex can be in popular books (e.g Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy). The outpouring of feminine pleasure on those books was strictly gratuitous and self-indulgent. Delta of Venus was an uncomfortable experience because it fleshed out several discomfiting realities of sex and titillation – violence is often an element of power play in the bedroom, voyeuristic tendencies of everyone, depraved fantasies which are almost immoral in their insistence. 

Of particular impressions were ‘The Hungarian Adventurer’ and ‘Boarding School’ which explored themes of rape, incest, and even bestiality at one point.  It wasn’t the fact of preference that appalled me, it was the simple exposition of the truth – sex is all things good and bad, inexplicable and sensual. I have a problem with how media portrays sex, especially in popular culture which is partial with idealistic notions of sexual roles apparent in concepts like the male gaze and fantasy in porn. You see, these things eventually become damaging. When we glamorize something as common as sex, it either becomes fodder for taboo or fantasy, which incidentally what occurs with conversations of sex. Either it is a subject much condemned for its alleged impurity or a dirty little secret which encourages unrealistic expectations for both sexes. 

Nin’s style of writing borders on the absurd, but it is done intentionally. In one interview, she narrated how a client wanted her to write erotica which was basically porn and just skip the poetry. She refused as any self-respecting and intelligent woman would.  And well, we need to appreciate her for that. If she let the client have his way, then what we’d have is an exaggerated image of sex instead of the unnerving stories of Delta. In a sense, we can consider Delta as a commentary on sex literature which caters to a male audience. The stories were rife with feeling, of emotion, which feminized a genre so overtly masculine, pandering to the male gaze.

There were quite a number of jibes at the male gaze as well with stories like ‘Marianne’ and the ‘The Veiled Woman’. My favorite was when Marianne (Marianne) met a man who felt erotic pleasure by only being looked at, like an object of desire. It appeared to me as a reverse of the male gaze, which often portrayed women as the object of desire, effacing her human qualities to turn her into just a vessel to express lust, infatuation or even love. But here, the object of desire is a man and we are made privy into his thoughts and actions, humanizing him instead of treating him as just an object. 

Overall, Delta of Venus was a fine starter for anyone who wished to know more of Anais Nin. The prose flowed well, even lyrically so, despite sex being a subject which can easily turn stale if not carefully written. 

2. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

My first experience with Poe was when I was around nine or ten years old. I was a nosy child when it came to other people’s books and one day I found printed copies of short stories of my cousin’s in his room. One of them was A Tell-Tale Heart.  I still remember feeling on edge as I read the slightly blurred lines in cheap brown paper, it was utterly thrilling. The horror of the story comes less from the almost supernatural obsession of the unnamed character with the eye of the old man. It was more on his slipping attempts of overcoming the inhuman desire to kill the man for his eye. 

There’s always something that fascinates me with horror that is internally driven. More than the hostility of vampires, the looming threats of an apocalypse, the real horror for me lies in the deep recesses of the human heart, that inscrutable machine that throbs inextricably within all of us. And I feel like that’s what always impressed me with Poe. He had the excellent ability to articulate darkness that is motivated by the self and that is a feat for writers. Stephen King, for example, is great at understanding that his monsters are metaphors for his inner demons but he relates them into tangible forms be it demon dogs, telekinetic teenagers to give them an external existence. 

Poe has a clear grasp of fear and all its friends. And though some critics would lend an idea that Poe writes well with supernatural elements, I beg to disagree. He uses, for one, unreliable narrators (Berenice, William Williamson, Fall of the House of Usher). The thing with unreliable narrators is they warp the sense of reality of the stories, an indication to the reader that everything is not what it seems. And if one pays enough attention, then they could ask the all-important question: Is this the real-life or is this just fantasy? If you’re playing with those two possibilities, then you’d be less scared with the supernatural/ external world than the worldview of the narrator. You start to scrutinize him more closely, dog his steps, intimate his intentions, etc like some fixated lover. In doing so, in peering into the mind of another, you stumble into your own inner motivations, your thoughts and who knows you might mirror the darkness the narrator is struggling with? 

And there is the true gift of Poe – he reads everyone like how he reads himself. He doesn’t do this by getting acquainted with thousands of people with innumerable different lives. No, sir. He forces readers to examine themselves and the darkness inherent in men but constantly, through our self-delusion denied as present in others but not in ourselves. I need not belabor that this kind of writer is my favorite, the ones with a very vivid understanding of humanity, no matter how bleak the answers that arrive to them.

I went at liberties with Poe (lol) but some favorites inside the collection of stories are The Case of M. Valdemar, Black Cat, Descent into the Maelstrom and Pit of the Pendulum. My only issue is Poe’s tendency to philosophize in protracted terms that I was afraid I was going to get bored to death ( Domain of Arnheim, The Island of the Fay) with the possible exception of ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’ since I like the ideas presented there. 

3. Slapstick! or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut

I was supposed to start with Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions or Cat’s Cradle but the only available copy of the writer’s work in the book fair (thanks BBW!!) was this one. It seemed like a light read, a stark contrast from Poe’s grim, verbose collection, so I decided to give it a go. The last time I read a sci-fi novel was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 ( a real shame since I planned on reading more sci-fi this year). I finished it in less than a day and I wouldn’t say it left me with any remarkable opinion as much as the other books have had on me except that Vonnegut seemed like that fun, carefree uncle in reunions who has an alcohol abuse problem, is unmarried, and eats grapefruit for breakfast.

It’s not a very long novel and Vonnegut kept ending every part with ‘Hi, ho’. There’s a deeper sadness that is thinly veiled in the book as well, yeah slapstick, which reminded me of David Wallace’s Infinite Jest except the latter presents a more serious nod to its humor. 

It tells the story of Wilbur and Eliza, twins who are considered conventionally horrendous and abnormal in physical qualities. They are tall, too tall in fact. But thank god for rich parents who secretly dislike them, that they lived a sheltered existence away from everyone else other than their servants and a doctor who checks them every day. Unbeknownst to the parents and everyone else, the twins are super smart but only if they are allowed to share their intelligence by being close to each other. 

Long story made short, it’s a light read and perhaps a good overview of Vonnegut’s style of writing. I did want to read Slaughterhouse-Five after this one, so maybe that’s a good start. 

4. Dubliners by James Joyce

I’m having a hard time deciding whether this is my favorite out of everything else in this list or not. James Joyce was actually one of the writers I wanted to read very closely and understand his style better. He had such status and influence in modernism, plus the mythic reputations of both Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses for their wrought complexity and ingenuity in style that I felt drawn to his works.  You should have seen my face when I got a copy of this book at the BBW Fair last August – think of a kid in a candy store for an accurate depiction. 

Let’s cut right down to the chase. What do I really think of this book? To sum up my thoughts about it: If there is a master class for short story writing, Dubliners should be a required reading. I am by no means a writer or journalist but as someone who reads short stories often (more often than novels or poetry) for the last two or three years, Dubliners was a standout. 

Dubliners is actually a collection of short stories (hell I’ve only been having collections, is this a pattern? lol). They are set in Ireland mediated through the simplicity of daily life.  I admired the craftsmanship of Joyce in this one, the prose was written so concisely, dispensing with the arduous descriptions that lead nowhere.  

The characters, too, were forged from the circumstances of ordinariness – a dead priest, an abused woman, a boy about to come of age and so on. The characters themselves feel like semblances of a collective consciousness – that of Ireland during a tumultuous time in the  20th century.  In a way, the mundane, individual aspects of a character’s life was a mirror to the social conditions Joyce wanted to portray emphatically in the stories. The style was polished in a way that one is made to occupy the places mentioned in Dublin through the familiarity of an old friend, a returning local into the arms of unchanged memories. There hung in each story, a great atmosphere of nostalgia and I suspect it is because Joyce knows how to excavate sentiments for places which we haven’t even visited or seen but that somehow we recognize as phantoms of our very own lives. 

There is indeed great beauty in the most ordinary things and it takes the eye of an artist to take the uneventful and reveal its exquisiteness. Joyce made me grasp a show of that ability in the days that I pored through his collection. Whatever he intended while writing Dubliners, whether as a mirror of a conflicted Irish society or as a commentary to the social context borne through those times, it is his style that won me over. The plots were as simplistic as possible and there was no way to harness more meaning from the events of a character’s life rather than to take them at face value and coming to the understanding of just how nuanced and visceral our daily lives can be if only we looked hard enough, paid attention enough.

Dubliners reminded me of what I look for most in a book. It really is less of the plot or even it’s overarching theme and more of the style. Language as an art form has always been my standard in saying if a book has taken me in or not.  The great writer, Vladimir Nabokov is similarly convinced that language can elevate a story into an art form. There is artistic merit in a writer’s style just by itself and I would rather read a book with a weak plot but with a sound use of language than a novel plot with a severely exploited and copied style. 

5. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Perhaps the other strong contender for favorite in this list is Heart of Darkness. To be fair, it was less a book and more of an experience. An experience of what literature can do when it goes beyond style and narration to get to the bottom of the writer’s innermost motivations for writing the book. I ended Heart of Darkness, perplexed and in much quandary. There are only two possible explanations: First either the book was beyond me and my mediocre mind that try as I might, meaning of any sort would only elude me. Second, it was so condensed with significance that reading it once simply didn’t qualify as reading it at all. By the end of maybe two days, I realized it was the latter. For the lack of any other time, I’m going to try and process its entirety with the sum of my reading it only once.

I confess I looked up a video review off YouTube before getting to the book, mostly because classics have a way of being exhaustively discussed without losing their ability to sustain a reader’s interest. In my case, spoilers don’t do any damage or if there is any, of only negligible consequence since I look for other things other than the stream of events.

According to the video review, the book is an example of darkness as a location. To put context to this description, it would be good to tell a bit of the story. This is about an English man named Marlow who went to Congo to take on greener chances in the trade therein and for which the backdrop is meant to replicate the inhuman conditions of the slave trade. Amidst all this is another man named Kurtz, who was quite illustrious as a prodigious ivory trader and who was steeped in so much mystery. Upon arriving at the Congo, Marlow witnesses the cruel treatment of the ‘slaves’ under the supervision of the Europeans. 

[pseudocitrus]

it’s been a while since i did a book shout-out mostly because it’s been a while since i’ve actually had the desire to read books but...here are some shout-outs for books i’ve read in the past 6 months :)

Life and I: A Story about Death, Elisabeth Helland Larsen. it’s a children’s book. but it’s pretty sweet. basically about. uh. death.

Ms. Marvel, G. Willow Wilson. i’ve been working my way slowly through these. US comics are generally not my thing for some reason (i think the colors really distract me...and i really don’t like the constant emphases in the speech bubbles) but i really like how this one has a muslim MC.

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, Lundy Bancroft. i happened to see this book on the shelf of a new acquaintance and picked it up randomly and WOW. it’s really, truly incredible. it actually is about abusive relationships, and the author is very open to how “women can also be abusive, and abuse can also exist in LGBTQ relationships, but in my experience, you often have to watch out for abusive men.” it put in a new light a lot of behaviors and mentalities that i’ve witnessed before. parts of it were completely new to me but made sense, ex. the idea that “when trying to do therapy for an abusive relationship, it does NOT help to put the focus of conversations on emotions, because this actually feeds the abuser’s selfish focus on himself, which is an important force driving his abusiveness.” basically like, if you get into therapy with an abusive person and end up focusing on emotions, then you get situations where the abusive person is like, “well, when you don’t do exactly what i say, then i feel weak and frustrated,” and what’s the victim to do in this case? continue following instructions precisely? .....more clinically, i feel like this book is maybe a good resource for how to write antagonists, haha.

Itoshi no Nekokke, KUMOTA Haruko. lol this is a manga but i REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY like it. i think kumotasensei is one of my new favorite manga-ka, i like a lot of her stuff and her super cute art style.

Uprooted, Naomi Novik. I LOVED THIS BOOK. it’s a YA fantasy based on polish/russian myth. i also have to admit that i really have a weakness for tsundere men though. i also saw criticism that the MC was pretty mary sue-ish but i didn’t personally feel that way. or maybe, i just personally enjoyed it anyway, idk. i want to be critical of the stuff i read but sometimes i just. like it for what it is. also, "the Woods” was terrifying and SUCH a good antagonist.

Monstress, Lysley Tenorio. i’ve like never never NEVER encountered short stories featuring filipino-americans BUT HERE WE ARE!! i really loved all of these, especially the title story.

Saga (Vol. 7), Brian K. Vaughan. idk what really to say about saga, it just keeps getting gooder and gooder and more wonderful and AMAZING.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay. i’ve been dying to read something by her and this book was fantastic, but also agonizing. content warning: Roxane Gay was a victim of sexual assault and she describes it. i know that this book isn’t “for me” and my personal body type but the way that she described parts of the way that standards of beauty work in our world, was like water in a desert.

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn. flynn is like amazing because reading her characters is like PRECISELY like hearing the juiciest gossip about someone that you absolutely despise. it’s illicit and DELICIOUS. i feel like i need to recommend this book because i burned through it with such hunger, but i also hated how the main character would constantly spear other women, like calling them fat or ugly or big-breasted or just terrible. i thought maybe at first that the main character was supposed to be really cruel on purpose but then other characters would tell the MC, “you’re so decent, you’re the most decent person i know,” and i’d be like, ......???? what???! also, some of the gory stuff felt a little too ham-fisted to me. but. i burned through it man.

An Ember in the Ashes, Sabaa Tahir. honestly? world-building and plot and other parts that could be considered very cheesy. sort of dystopian, with a lot of like, slavery and violence and gratuitously talented people and, somehow, more than one love triangle. also, completely loved it, read it as fast as possible & am on the second book now 😬🌞

[haldora]

Five Fics Meme?

So @amatara tagged me for this ‘Five Fics’ thing. I’m not exactly the most prolific author and I wrote exclusively original stuff up until about three years ago, so five fics is actually, uh… the majority of my work on AO3. But I still think this is fun, and I like having an excuse to talk about my fics, so here we go. Under a readmore because it got kinda long.

1. Every Shining Thing You know, it’s not often when the story an author considers an example of their best work ends up becoming their most popular fic. In my experience, those things don’t usually coincide, so I feel really lucky for that, which is one more reason why this fic holds a place in my heart. I wrote this shortly after ‘Suffer Your Excess’, which, though it had some good moments, was mostly a practice exercise for writing these characters and portraying their relationship. ‘Every Shining Thing’ is definitely the more polished work. It deals with a lot of themes that the series touched on, but that I feel went underdeveloped, particularly relating to Centauri precognition and their unique spirituality. I’ve gathered that I take a rather severe and unforgiving reading of the precog business, but I support that reading because I think it presents a fascinating lens through which to interpret Londo’s character, and also because, wherever possible, I like to draw attention to and preserve what’s truly alien about the alien characters I write—and of all the alien civilizations in B5, I maintain that the Centauri are probably the most alien, despite their superficial similarities. I find it very interesting to explore how a society would function with an inescapable sense of crushing inevitability, how they’d conceptualize things like time and mortality, and what forms of subjectivity that would produce. Unsurprisingly, I think Londo stands as an illustrative example of the kind of mentality that might develop out of that.

I’m not sure how much of that made it into the fic itself, since the focus was really on the character interaction, but I guess one thing I’m proud of is the resolution? As I said before, I like to highlight difference, which is a desire that often runs up against the competing urge to depict situations where two characters come to understand and respect one another. I think in this fic, I at least sorta-successfully managed to strike a balance in which G’Kar comes to recognize and accept the vast gulf of experience separating him and Londo, but still manages to provide Londo with a new way of understanding their relationship—one that offers comfort and reassurance, even if there can be no hope.

2. Accidents of Gesture Oh early S5, truly a fic-writer’s dream. I’ve written two stories set after The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari, this one and ’Suffer Your Excess’, but I think this is the better of the two. Let’s get it out of the way that this fic is tropey as hell. I ramped up the hurt/comfort element, contrasting Londo’s physical fragility and newfound peace against G’Kar’s combination of physical strength and emotional turmoil. There are a lot of little moments of intimacy in this fic, from the piggyback ride at the end (which I’ve wanted an excuse to write for a long time) to G’Kar grudgingly stepping in to help Londo with his clothes.

Apart from the gratuitous tropes, the substance of the story is in how close Londo and G’Kar come to addressing the source of their conflict and figuring out how to move forward. I wanted to explore what kind of significance Londo’s apology (as well as G’Kar’s forgiveness) could really achieve given the fact that they’re both, first and foremost, survivors of Londo’s mistakes. Londo can never truly apologize to the people his choices affected, and G’Kar is in no position to absolve him on their behalf. What can an apology mean in that context? In what way does it present a resolution? That’s what I wanted to explore and the answer suggested at the end is, well… kind of ambiguous and unsatisfying, I imagine. But the idea of G’Kar’s forgiveness as a personal means of releasing Londo from the weight of his deeds, thereby allowing him to become a good emperor rather than continuing to languish in his own misery—that resonated with me.

Also, he’s got a big stupid crush on him. So there’s that.

3. Prosody I think I worked longer on this fic than any other, even though I knew it wouldn’t have much of an audience. It’s long and introspective for one, contains a lot of headcanon that might conflict with other fans’ interpretations, and it features a pairing where both participants are more often shipped with different characters. But that’s the reason why I’m proud of myself for finishing it and putting as much into it as I did. It’s an idea I was pretty sure appealed to nobody else but me and I still decided to put it out there. It came as a pleasant surprise to find there were a couple other people who liked it, too! It was also my first serious attempt at writing poetry and playing with language construction, so that was a welcome challenge.

4. Last Drops Okay, this one was just fun. As much as I love Londo and G’Kar’s later dynamic, I’m also fascinated by the violence between them and how that’s expressed in the early seasons. It isn’t really made explicit until season 3 just how badly G’Kar could wreck Londo’s shit if he really wanted to and how much he’s holding back is something you notice a lot better on a rewatch. I find that a really fascinating aspect of their power dynamic, so I wanted to show what might happen if Londo ever succeeded in pushing him over the edge.

Of course, the way he goes about that doesn’t exactly have the intended effect, given the nature of Londo’s weird preoccupation with G’Kar and how provoking any reaction from him just affirms his beliefs and feeds into his masturbatory self-loathing. This fic gave me opportunity to write a lot of fun kinks, some I’m personally into, and others I just appreciate on an aesthetic level. The largely positive reaction it got made me more confident about writing more blatantly kinky stuff with this pairing, too.

5. Open Wound It was a hard choice between this and ‘False Dawn’ because I think the latter is technically a better story, and there are a few things I’d change about ‘Open Wound’ if I were writing it now. Nevertheless,  it was a bigger challenge and I’m proud of the parts of it that work. Until I finish the fic I’m currently working on, this is my only story to date where I’m writing from Londo’s POV and it was an interesting experience. I find G’Kar an easier character to write because, for the most part, he tends to be fairly honest with himself and doesn’t hold back his feelings. Londo, on the other hand, bottles everything up so deep to the point where it literally destroys him from the inside out. Whatever sorrows and insecurities he does try to express get converted into anger and frustration that he unleashes on everyone around him. I find that a lot more challenging to write and it forces me to come up with creative ways to show the reader what’s really going on, though the character has yet to admit it to himself.

Honourable Mention: The Monster (aka: the fic I’m writing right now—real title pending). I don’t know how happy I’ll be with this until I’m finished, but I’m currently putting together the last chapter of another fic set in my post-canon AU verse, and I’ve been enjoying it a lot so far. It’s a fairly involved look at some of the domestic political conflicts that I think might crop up in the early years of Londo’s reign… as well as a dirty dirty kinkfic. It’s shaping up to be a delightful car-crash of power dynamics, so if you’re into that (and extensive discussion of trade reform), look out for it. :D

If anyone else wants to do this, feel free! But in particular, I’ll tag @emblazonet, @largebisexual, @ibenholt, and @oldpuppetfingal

[foilfreak]

Beauty and Her Beast: Chapter 2

Warning: This fic is rated NSFW and contains graphic depictions of things some people may find disturbing or alarming, including, but not limited to: violence, gore, unhealthy family relationships, Oedipus complexes, gratuitous amount of pornographic literature, ableist language, physical, mental, and emotional abuse, etc. If you are someone who does not enjoy fiction with these elements in them, then I suggest you refrain from reading this, because this fic will have all that, and probably a lot more. So, this is your first and final warning to turn around and go somewhere else if stuff like this just isn't your vibe, because from this point forward, your emotional wellbeing is in your own hands, and I will not be accepting blame if you disregarded my warnings and ended up reading something you didn't like. Idk why I feel compelled to write one of these despite this being Resident Evil fanfic, but I figured I'd cover my ass just in case.

(Link to ao3 version in comments below)

Chapter 2:

The journey to Mother Miranda’s personal laboratory was much shorter and more enjoyable than the original walk to the meeting site, in Salvatore’s humble opinion.

Mother Miranda was mostly quiet, distant, and preoccupied throughout the duration of the walk, even more so than normal. That being said however, while this sort of behavior would usually spell disaster for whichever one of the 4 lords was forced to be in her presence during these sorts of moods, in this situation, Mother Miranda did not appear tense or agitated or hostile like she usually would be. Just lost in thought. As though she were only quiet because she was too busy thinking about something else to speak. She didn’t even seem to mind his various attempts at starting conversation, which surprised, but endlessly delighted, the mutant man.

‘Mother must be in a very good mood today. She hasn’t hit me or told me to shut up the whole time we’ve been together. Maybe she’s made another breakthrough with the cadou? I’d certainly be very happy if I were in her shoes’ Salvatore excitedly thought to himself as the woman in question stepped forward to unlock and open the large steel door of her personal laboratory, allowing Salvatore to step into the facility before closing and locking it again behind her.

“Moreau, do you recall the set of mutation experiments I began at the beginning of last year?” The raven mother asked, turning around and beginning to quickly make her way down the long, dark corridor.

“Y-you mean… the o-ones with the new c-cadou strain th-that I… that I d-developed… f-for you?” Salvatore stutters, breath labored and body struggling to keep up with the taller woman’s vastly larger steps.

“Correct” Mother Miranda says, turning a corner. “As impressed as I was with the final results of this particular strain, I’m afraid it still isn’t good enough. None of the subjects I implanted with cadou last year turned out to be favorable candidates.”

Salvatore stops in his tracks, a look of horror and agony on his face as news that he’d failed mother once again practically tears him apart from the inside out. “O-oh Mother… I-im so s-s-sorry to h-hear that… b-but don’t w-worry… I’ll-I’ll try h-harder next t-time… I w-won’t fail y-you again Mother, so p-please… please j-just give me a-another chance to get it r-right… i b-beg of y-you…”

Mother Miranda stops and turns toward the mutated lord, staring at him in silence as he drops to his knees and grovels at her feet, begging desperately for his failures to be forgiven.

“Off your knees, Moreau, this behavior is unbecoming of a Lord such as yourself. Besides, I never said that you were the one to blame for the lack of successful results, nor am I necessarily displeased by the fact that these experiments yielded failed vessels.”

Salvatore allows his gaze to rise to his mother’s face, where, true to her words, the parts of Miranda’s face that Salvatore could make out from behind her mask did not appear marred with the familiar expressions of anger and disappointment that the 4 lords were usually met with after another round of failed vessels.

“Y-you’re… you’re not upset with m-me?” The deformed man asks, his voice laced with shock and disbelief.

“No, my child, I’m not upset with you. While these experiments may have ended in failure, they did provide me with useful information that may prove to be pertinent to our mission in the near future. In fact, as I said earlier, the reason why I’ve brought you here is because I want to give you a gift, as a reward for all your incredible work. Did you expect me to be upset with you simply because this round proved unsuccessful as well? Do you really think so poorly of your loving mother, who works tirelessly to ensure her children are happy and rewarded for all their faith and trust in me?” Mother Miranda sniveled pitifully, turning her gaze away in mock dejection as Salvatore, horrified that he’d insulted and hurt her somehow, scrambles to his feet, gently taking both of Miranda’s hands into his own and holding the supple skin to his bloated and deformed face, desperately hoping this would comfort her.

“No no no no, o-of course n-not, Mother… I-I’d never expect s-something like th-that from y-you… and-and I k-know better… b-better than a-anyone… just h-how h-hard you w-work… not j-just on y-your experiments… but f-for all o-of us… too… you l-l-love us… you… love ME… I-I’ll always love y-you, Mother… always” Salvatore blurts, stumbling over his words as he tries desperately to comfort Mother Miranda, an effort he’s seemingly rewarded for, when Miranda takes one of her hands away and brings it back to the top of Salvatore’s head, once again gently brushing her hand against it.

Salvatore’s knees nearly give out from under him as the heavenly sensation washes throughout his body like a raging typhoon, leaving him feeling tired and weak yet hungry and wanting for more, though whatever that “more” was, Salvatore was quick to beat it back down deep within himself, knowing this was neither the time nor the place for him to be entertaining such… primal desires about someone like Mother Miranda, no matter how little he intends to act on them.

“Thank you, Moreau. You always know exactly what to say to make Mother feel better. You’re such a good boy” Mother Miranda says, making sure to put extra emphasis onto the last two words as she reaches forward and pulls Salvatore closer to her.

“G-g-g-gggg… good… boy… me?” Salvatore chokes, tears beginning to fill his eyes as Mother Miranda’s arms come to wrap around him, pushing the deformed man’s face to lean against the soft, feathery material of her bosom.

“Yes, Moreau. You’ve always been very special to me. From the day I met you, you’ve been such a good, well-behaved boy that I never have to worry about” Miranda begins, her face blank and expressionless as she passionlessly strokes Salvatore’s face. “No matter how simple the task, those 3 are always making mistakes of some kind and forcing me to come and clean up their messes after them, especially that snake Heisenberg. But you? No, never you, Moreau, not my special, perfect little boy who always tries his best to make Mother happy. Do you enjoy making Mother happy, Moreau?”

“Y-y-yES! Of-of c-course I do” Salvatore moans, his voice slightly muffled by Miranda’s chest as he violently nods his head in affirmation, tears freely falling from his eyes as his head swims deliriously from the endless wave of kind words and gentle touches.

“Good! I always knew you did. And for that, I'm going to reward you with something very special. Something to… keep you busy... while I’m away for a little while” The raven mother coos again.

Salvatore stops for a moment when the meaning of Miranda’s words finally registers in his brain. “While… w-while you’re… away? You’re l-leaving us?” Salvatore asks, his voice growing increasingly distressed with each word.

“Only for a short time, hopefully,” Mother Miranda answers, “but yes, at the end of this month, I will be leaving the village in order to attend to some very important business I have. I’m not sure how my journey will fare, however I'm optimistic that it will be the key necessary to finally getting my Ev- uh… pardon me; the key to finally achieving our goal of creating a perfect vessel. Doesn’t that sound nice, Moreau?”

“It-it does” the deformed man says quietly, still put off by the mention of Mother leaving, but not wanting to put a damper on his mother’s incredibly rare good mood. “But… where is i-it… th-that you’ll be g-going… an-and for h-how long?”

“Just down the mountain to pay someone a visit, however I have no idea when I'll be back. That will depend on how successful my mission goes, I suppose.”

Silence falls over the two as Salvatore, still upset by the news that Mother Miranda would be leaving, continues to take in the comfort and warmth of his Mother’s arms for just a moment longer, selfishly wishing that Mother held him more often. Eventually however, Mother Miranda does pull back from the superficial embrace, gesturing for Salvatore to follow her once more, which the deformed man begins to do without question.

“Of the 4 of you, you’re the last one to come and pick your gift,” Miranda says, unaware of the visible slump that Salvatore’s shoulders take on upon hearing this. “However, despite there only being one option left, it would appear as though your siblings have decided to spare you their usual games of trickery this time around. If anything, I think you might be the one to have ended up with the best deal after everything is said and done.”

Salvatore looks up at Mother Miranda with an expression of mild confusion, wondering what on earth she could mean by that. His musings are quickly interrupted however, when the two enter a large room filled with various pods.

“Of the 22 test subjects we started with last year, only 13 were genetically compatible with the cadou parasite, and even then, only 4 ended up surviving the full mutation phase. Despite their impressively stable conditions, they still aren’t suitable vessels for my purposes, however I felt as though it would be such a waste to just do away with them. So, with that in mind, I’ve decided that my gift to you all, before I must leave you for a time, is to give one test subject to each of you.”

“G-give? You’re… y-you’re giving us t-test subjects?” Salvatore repeats dumbly, not certain he understood where this was going.

“Correct” Mother Miranda affirms. “This is easily the most successful batch of mutations we’ve seen to date, and given the amount of time and effort I poured into making sure these last 4 survived until now, I’d at least like to see some use gotten out of them before they die or suddenly lose control of their mutations and go rogue.”

“Like… l-like what?” The hooded man asks nervously.

Miranda merely shrugs her shoulders, uncaring. “Anything you like. Housekeeper. Playmate. Labrat. Partner in Crime. Whatever it is you desire of your gift, you may have without question. And in the event they refuse you… well, you’ll at least have a fun little toy to chase after for a little while.”

“I... see...” Salvatore says quietly, growing less and less excited about this whole “gift” thing, now that he knows that his gift is just another person.

Another person to scream and wail at how unbelievably hideous and disgusting of a monster he looks, no doubt.

Without another word, Miranda heads over to the large control table located in the middle of the room, pressing a few buttons before 4 of the many identical pods begin moving toward them. Steam pours out the tops and bottoms of the metal pods as the large capsules slowly finish lowering themselves from their hung pedestals, displaying them directly in front of Miranda and Salvatore.  The man in question stands anxiously in front of the still sealed door, nervously fidgeting with his fingers as he waits for Mother to show him his gift, a myriad of thoughts and fears and worries flying throughout the mutant man’s mind.

“The first 3 have already been chosen by your siblings, but the one on the far right is all yours” Miranda says, pushing another button that causes the singular pod in question to click open, its door slowly beginning to rise upward toward the ceiling.

Salvatore nods in understanding as he tries to avoid watching the door of the pod open, instead hyper focusing on what Miranda is saying as the tension in the room becomes so thick it feels as if it could be cut with a dull knife.

After what felt like an eternity and a half of waiting, the pod door finally finished opening, and in that exact moment, as the disfigured man’s gaze finally fell upon the sight of his gift for the first time, his eyes went wide in shock, his mouth dropped open in disbelief, and his hands fell limply to his side in complete and utter bewilderment at the sight that stood before him.

“That… th-that’s… for me?” Salvatore manages to croak out, his throat suddenly dry as a desert and the air from his lungs having left him the second before.

Raising his hand up toward the creature wired into the pod, the hooded man finds himself unable to look away, feeling almost mesmerized as his mind struggles to figure out whether all this is really happening, or if he’d finally succumbed to the insanity of his condition and dreamt all this up as a sick and twisted way of coping with his soul crushing loneliness. Either one was just as likely at this point.

“I’m sure you’ll still be quite pitiful on the day I have to leave, but at least this way you’ll have something to keep yourself occupied with until I return, yes?” Mother Miranda says smugly, clearly pleased by his reaction. “So, what do you think, Moreau? Do you like the gift I’ve gotten for you?”

It wasn't until after several moments of silence that Salvatore finally responded. After stuttering and slurring unintelligibly over several sentences worth of responses, 2 words, and 2 words alone, finally managed to tumble from the mutant man’s lips, his eyes shining as he finally reached forward enough to slowly and carefully intertwine his fingers with the small and delicate hand of the beautiful young woman that slept peacefully inside the pod.

“She’s perfect!”

[foilfreak]

Beauty and Her Beast: Chapter 5

WARNING PLZ READ BEFORE CONTINUING: This fic is rated NSFW and contains graphic depictions of things some people may find disturbing or alarming, including, but not limited to: violence, gore, unhealthy family relationships, Oedipus complexes, gratuitous amount of pornographic literature, ableist language, physical, mental, and emotional abuse, etc. If you are someone who does not enjoy fiction with these elements in them, then I suggest you refrain from reading this, because this fic will have all that, and probably a lot more. So, this is your first and final warning to turn around and go somewhere else if stuff like this just isn't your vibe, because from this point forward, your emotional wellbeing is in your own hands, and I will not be accepting blame if you disregarded my warnings and ended up reading something you didn't like. Idk why I feel compelled to write one of these despite this being Resident Evil fanfic, but I figured I'd cover my ass just in case.

(AO3 Link below)

This was a bad idea... no, actually, scratch that. This wasn’t just a bad idea...

‘THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA’ Salvatore thought to himself, as he frantically hid beneath a large blue tarp covering a couple of old, rotting shipping crates, his body trembling uncontrollably and his shoulders heaving from the terrified and panicked state Salvatore had managed to work himself into.

Now, for those of you who may be wondering why Salvatore was currently hiding behind a bunch of crates like prey hiding from the hunter, despite being in the safety of his own reservoir-

“Hello?”

-that would be why.

Yes, the 2 days that Salvatore had been given to prepare for his gift’s arrival had come and gone faster than the disfigured man could have ever imagined. And while he’d done a marvelous job of cleaning up the reservoir to make it suitable for the beautiful young lady who’d now be calling this place ‘home’, what he hadn’t anticipated having to deal with was the full blown panic attack he got the second the villagers arrived to release her into his custody. Thankfully, his anxiety grew more manageable when one of the villagers explained that, due to Nadine’s tendency toward violent behavior, combined with her superhuman strength, Mother Miranda had gone ahead and given the young woman a nice heavy dose of sedative to keep her asleep throughout the journey to the reservoir, as well as for a couple of hours afterwards, too.

You know… just in case.

After the villagers finally left, Salvatore closed and locked the gate behind them before turning his attention to the large wooden coffin that, according to the men who’d carried it here, contained his long awaited gift from Mother Miranda.

Taking a few tentative steps forward, Salvatore takes the metal key the villagers had given him and slowly, but eagerly, unlocked and opened the wooden vessel, gasping in shock and awe as the sight of Nadine’s perfectly angelic face finally came into the light. He wasn’t sure how this was possible, but somehow the young woman looked even more perfect than the first time he saw her, the soft glow of the early morning sun reflecting off her blue scaly skin in a way that gives her a gorgeous, almost iridescent shine.

The continued nudeness of Nadine’s body, while mesmerizing to look at, did unfortunately make the act of keeping his hands to himself rather difficult, and Salvatore quickly found himself grappling with his inner demons as he contemplated reaching in and taking a quick feel, just a quick one, if only for the sake of finally figuring out what on earth her skin was made out of.

Was it smooth and silky to allow for rapid aquatic maneuverability, like that of an eel, or did her soft, feminine exterior hide a rougher, more textured sort of skin, like that of a shark or a whale?

Oh how Salvatore longed, with every fiber of his disgusting, twisted being, to reach inside that wooden carrier and run his hands over the mutant woman’s perfect little body, every atom in him aching to touch, hold, kiss, lick, bite, and devour every square millimeter of this gorgeous specimen, blurring and melting the lines of reality that once separated them until you couldn’t tell where beast ended and where beauty began.

But he refrained.

As much as Salvatore desperately wanted to give in to the primal desires of his still-human mind and mostly-human body, he instead decided to give the young woman some time to wake up first, guessing that she probably wouldn’t want some random stranger, much less one that looks like him, touching her without her permission. So with a deep breath, and a strong swallowing of his raging libido, Salvatore stepped away from the crate Nadine was sleeping in, pocketing the key in case Mother wanted it back later, before turning around and beginning to hobble back toward the lake to complete the few minor tasks he hadn’t managed to get to before the villagers arrived earlier.

It would be well into the afternoon, nearly evening by this point, before Salvatore heard so much as a peep from Nadine. Mother Miranda must not have been kidding when she said she’d given the young woman enough sedative to knock her out for hours. If it weren’t for the fact that she was still breathing, Salvatore might have thought her dead after this amount of time.

Unfortunately for Salvatore, it would appear as though Nadine taking ages to awaken from her drug induced slumber would be the least of the deformed man’s concerns, quickly overrun and forgotten about in the blind panic Salvatore went into once the young woman’s voice, soft and slightly high pitched, though a bit scratchy from lack of use, calls out from, presumably, the spot where Salvatore had left her by the front gate.

The heavenly tone bounces and echoes off the wood and water of the surrounding area, filling the reservoir with a song-like magic that made Salvatore’s knees buckle weakly in reverence, and his stomach want to turn itself inside out from complete and utter terror. Hit with the sudden realization that Salvatore was going to have to actually look at AND speak to Nadine now that she’d awoken, and at the same time no less, immediately sends the mutant man tumbling into a full blown panic, resulting in Salvatore locating the nearest solid structure, the tarp and crates in this case, and throwing himself underneath it, hoping and praying that if he remained quiet for long enough, Nadine would lose interest and go somewhere else-

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

-Unfortunately Salvatore wasn’t a man who had his hopes and prayers answered terribly often, and today seemed to be no different than usual.

Despite being given extra security due to the rapid approach of nightfall, Salvatore didn’t even dare breathe as the sound of footsteps passed by his hiding spot, his heart pounding uncontrollably in his chest as Nadine came within just inches of finding him. This is it, the jig is up, there was absolutely no doubt in Salvatore’s mind that Nadine was mere seconds away from pulling the tarp back to reveal his horrible and disgusting self, scrunched up into the tightest little ball between the narrow spaces of the crates.

Closing his teary eyes and accepting his fate, Salvatore merely sat and waited for the inevitable moment of shocked silence after the tarp had been lifted, followed by the sound of Nadine’s smooth and rich voice bursting his eardrums with a piercingly shrill and terrified shriek, as well the heavy booming of feet against wood as she ran away from him, disgusted, horrified, and appalled by so much as having to look at the monster that Salvatore was, much less do anything else.

“Ah man, I could have sworn I saw someone around here, earlier,” the low but feminine voice of Nadine said aloud, sounding quite dejected as she leaned against the blue tarp covering Salvatore’s hiding spot.

“Maybe they just went out to look for food, and will be back later?” Nadine says to herself, sounding more optimistic than before, though her hopefulness fades as quickly as it arrived when she continues with, “Then again… maybe the poor bastard caught a glimpse of me as I stumbled around and took off in terror at the sight of me. I suppose I can't really blame him… not with the way I look now, at least.”

Nadine pauses, trailing off for a moment as Salvatore remains rooted in his spot, hands clamped firmly over his mouth and nose to prevent any noise from escaping, despite the increasing burning sensation from his human lungs, which, despite their somewhat shaky ability to do their prescribed role ever since the cadou mutations screwed him up, still very much needed air going in and out of them if Salvatore wanted them to continue functioning at all.

The young woman remained in that spot leaning against the tarp-covered crates for a few more moments, not saying or doing anything as far as Salvatore could tell, before the sound of shuffling and more footsteps, softer and less hurried than the ones he’d heard earlier, caught his attention.

Silence persists for another moment, causing Salvatore to grow curious the longer he waits. And so, despite his earlier reservations, Salvatore can’t help but shift his position slightly so that he could peek through a narrow space between the wall of crates, just enough to give him a solid view of Nadine, who currently stood with her back to him just a few feet away from where the mutated man was hiding. Her gaze seemed transfixed on the lake’s surface, or perhaps it was less the water that held her gaze, but the reflection staring back at her from the mirror-like surface.

Even without seeing her face, Salvatore could tell that the young woman was afraid and in pain, and his heart wrenched agonizingly as he watched her beautiful form shrink in on itself. Her arms curled around her body defensively, as if trying to hide herself shamefully from any potential onlookers, while her torso slumped limply forward, shoulders shaking heavily as she sobbed quietly to herself in the ever growing darkness of evening time.

“Whatever, it’s not like it matters anyways,” the young woman sobs dejectedly after a while, pointlessly rubbing the tears from her face away, only for them to be quickly replaced as new ones fell. “Even if somebody did actually live here, it’s not like anyone would even want to help a disgusting abomination like me... much less have anything else to do with me.”

The sound of Nadine jumping off the dock and into the cold lake water below pales in comparison to the sound of Salvatore’s whole world turning itself upside down from beneath the large blue tarp under which he was hidden.

Disgusting abomination?

Nadine?

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!

Of all the things Salvatore has ever heard in his entire life, this one has to be the most ridiculous thing by far.

Salvatore was a disgusting abomination, that much he was more than aware of and had long since accepted, as painful as it still was to admit from time to time. But Nadine… Why Nadine was quite easily the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on, save for perhaps Mother Miranda herself maybe, which was certainly a very high standard to be compared to in Salvatore’s book. While the young woman did indeed have several mutations that would make going back to her previous life almost impossible, that didn’t mean she was disgusting, or an abomination.

Not to Salvatore she wasn’t, at least.

The fact that the poor young woman thought this of herself sent a sharp, stabbing pain directly into his heart, practically tearing him apart from the inside out as he frantically thought of something, anything he could do to make the tiny woman feel better.

Thinking back to when he’d watched her just moments ago, he remembers the way in which her arms and hands curled around herself as she sobbed, looking like they were attempting to cover as much exposed skin as physically possible. How Nadine could call herself an abomination when she looked like the picture perfect definition of beauty, Salvatore didn’t know, but what he did know was that women, at least the women he was used to, always enjoyed receiving pretty things with which they could cover and decorate themselves, like dresses and jewelry.

And luckily for Salvatore, he just so happens to know of a few places where he might be able to acquire both of those things.

With a quick peek from beneath the tarp before taking off, Salvatore quickly makes his way toward the exit gate, barely managing to close the gate behind him and pull his cloak over himself before sprinting, as much as his mangled body would allow anyways, down the snowy path that would lead him to the estates of the only two people Salvatore can think of to help him in this messy situation.

Hopefully Alcina and Donna won’t be terribly upset with him for stopping by unannounced.