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holybagelsstuff · 2 months ago

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The Backstory Of Aloysius O'Hare (A Theory + Character Analysis)

The 2012 Lorax adaptation has obviously messed up the main message of the book and there are a lot of reasons for me to criticize it, but there's one thing Illumination did right. They presented a completely new character who wasn't in the original story, and he turned out to be a valid and even essential addition to the plot.

The main reason why O'Hare exists is to show how one bad action leads to another. It would be fair to call him the Once-ler's successor – after his business was ruined, a different one appeared in its place. However, the only difference is the product being sold. It's not thneeds now, it's clean air, but nature abuse didn't go anywhere.

It is, or course, immoral, and O'Hare being considered a villain is justified, but let's stop and think about what we know about him. We know nothing about what he was like before the whole "selling air" campaign started. His motive is similar to the Once-ler's (or, to be more precise, his family's, because they are the ones pulling the strings in this adaptation), which is greed, but was it always greed?

In the flashback near the end of the movie, we see young Aloysius doing his job alongside the street cleaner. When he notices a torn advertising poster of a thneed and hears the street cleaner saying that he wonders what the next great invention will be, as well as him coughing, a bulb goes off in his head. He comes up with the familiar idea of selling fresh air, which is something the local people lost access to thanks to the Once-ler. There's this little detail, though.

See the logo on his chest? It looks awfully similar to "O'Hare Air" one, excluding the colour. I'm 100% sure it's a logo and not his name badge, because if it was, it would have said "Aloysius". Since he's not a CEO yet and there is his last name in the logo, it's safe to assume that the person, or even two people who owned the company back then were his parents.

It's common for wealthy people to get the best positions for their children when it comes to job, especially if they own the company/organization/etc., but it seems like Al's parents were better than this. They gave him a very low position and possibly wanted him to reach the top himself when the time comes. The time did come when Aloysius introduced his idea, and I think everything went downhill after it.

Returning to the Once-ler and his family, they are the very people responsible for changing the future Thneedville residents' attitude towards both money and nature, but since the Once-ler was the one vocalizing the ideas he was fed to since childhood, I'm going to use only his name for explanation. A thneed was advertised as "something that all people need", even if the reason why a person should buy this particular product remained unclear, and the fact that it could do literally anything didn't help. Consequently, consumerism became a lifestyle, with the customers buying, PR people lying, the lawyers denying etc. Nobody paid attention to the forest being destroyed right next to them anymore. They had a thneed, a thing that could magically solve all the problems, according to the advertisement. The Once-ler's public image was also appealing to the masses, him donating to charity and such, so no one questioned his actions, and no one cared as well. Aloysius was there when the Once-ler built his empire, his parents' company probably working for the Once-ler and being behind the Thneedville project, so he had a picture of an ideal businessman in front of his eyes, and was obviously fascinated by the idea of becoming one himself.

When the Once-ler went bankrupt, Thneedville was practically left to die due to pollution, and it was Al's time to shine. He knew it was possible to help the town, and he shared his thoughts with his parents who eagerly accepted them. The public soon found out who came up with such a brilliant idea, and Aloysius because famous. Needless to say he was admired by literally everyone because he saved Thneedville from its doom. Also, keep in mind that he was a teenager when this happened, and not a spoiled one despite being a 'rich kid', so such fame went to his head.

Later, Aloysius finally inherited the company and renamed it to "O'Hare Air" as we all know it now, and became the mayor. He was a national hero, providing Thneedville with clean air all those years. But, since the lesson was never learned after the Once-ler's disappearance, everything remained the same, including pollution (except for the air one, naturally), mass consumption and overall total ignorance of the state Thneedville was actually in. The town's flaws were covered by entertainment, and everyone was happy about it, just like before.

Aloysius' fame gradually made a possessive man out of him, forming a personality cult, and then came the almighty greed. Despite being among those who still remembered what trees were like, he did his best to cover it up in order not to lose his enterprise. The Truffula valley was hidden from the people of Thneedville and no one was allowed to go outside. Not like anyone was interested in doing so, though.

What we have here is a villain who had good intentions from the start but, thanks to the environment he was growing up in, he messed it all up and became the worst version of himself. I don't think that O'Hare deserved to be kicked out by the townsfolk in the end, though. Sure, he was a manipulative liar, but he did save Thneedville many years ago. Besides, it takes several decades for a tree to fully grow, so bottled oxygen is the only source of air available before a whole new forest appears. Can we really blame O'Hare for monetizing air when there's absolutely no other way to receive it? I don't think so. Can we blame him for being a cold, arrogant and rude man? Definitely, but even he has his own reasons to act this way.

#the lorax #the lorax 2012 #aloysius o'hare

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lovethewayyoudoso · 8 months ago

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Rousseau Family History

A rough outline. Note that this is a very rough draft of their story and there may be inconsistencies with the timeline yet. However, I came up with this several weeks ago and have tried to edit some bits to be more historically/geographically accurate but also lore accurate to my blurbs/characters. (~2600 words/4.5 pages)

Back in the halcyon days of the 60s, Kouassi Rousseau took advantage of his country’s (Côte d'Ivoire) new independence and strong alliance with France to start a little business. He and his friends began running errands and carrying loads of goods and parcels for people/businesses and they were good at it. He was good at managing the group, especially, and the little side business grew and grew. Eventually he named the company after himself officially and got an actual business license and everything was looking amazing. He had a son, Moussa, who he ensured from a very young age knew what to do and how to take over the business when he eventually passed.

The family quickly became wealthy and grew a small empire within the Côte d'Ivoire and nearby countries, as much as they could. The real money came from France. When Moussa was a teen in the early 80s, they relocated the business’s headquarters to Bordeaux and brought a small community with them; Ivorians who wanted to immigrate to stay with the business. There was still a location in the C d’I, keeping that branch running and those who didn’t want to leave their home country employed.

France in the mid-eighties offered Moussa a whole new slice of life. He was young, rich, and very handsome. He was tall and built well, had beautiful dark skin and traditionally handsome, chiseled features that the locals adored. The locals being the men and drag queens, no doubt. By day he was his father’s perfect little protégé, by night he was living it up in the gay discotheques without a care in the world. He was exotic, afterall, and a prize choice for many others.

Once his father caught wind of this the abuse began-- the verbal abuse was beyond words and the physical abuse only ramped up with every passing month. Until his son literally straightened up and got away from that disgusting, heretical lifestyle, the abuse was promised to continue. He was threatened with being cut off, but Moussa was no fool-- he was the only heir, after all. So, he kept going, and kept accepting his fate. He had a favorite drag queen that he was obsessed with, and a ‘friend’ from his university that offered him shelter during the worst of his father’s tirades (assuming he could escape).

The late 80's approached and something spooked Moussa-- he stopped going to the clubs, he broke things off with his queen and his friend. His own father was getting up there in years and his health wasn’t ideal. Moussa took a wife, another Ivorian immigrant who was meek and naive and thought this handsome man truly loved her. He was a bit of a conman at this point, at least in his personal life; after all those years of deceiving his father he had learned how to lie like the best of them. As planned, she was quickly made pregnant, but their child was not born before Kouassi Rousseau passed away.

The family hardly mourned; his original employees and business partners were more broken up over the loss than his son was. At first it was because they lost a friend, but then they realize what sort of tyrant Moussa had become. He was everything his father was in terms of business sense and leadership, but so very bitter and cold.

In September of 1990 Moussa Rosaire Rousseau was born in the most blessed life. He was a very fat baby and was heralded to be so big and strong as to overshadow his own father, truly a king amongst men! By that time the family business had become a small empire, absorbing other business in the same industry and growing into several other related, but niche, corners of the market. He was to be the eldest son and take over the business, but it turned out he would be the only son.

Moussa (Sr.) had little interest in his wife, and they never had another child; partly because he simply did not care for her and could hardly bring himself to be with her. She passed away when her son was nearly 4 after a very short, very intense fight against metastatic breast cancer. She was relatively young and quite healthy; how it took her so quickly was a mystery to those outside the hospital, but Moussa knew, and she learned the sickening truth when she was mere days from death. The man, once so handsome, strong and perfect, had become infected with HIV at some point during his galivanting. What spooked him into marrying was the fear that he would develop AIDS and neglect having an heir of his own. Knowing this, but keeping it secret of course, he married the woman, infected her as they tried for a child, and left her in the dark. Her body was weakened and its own efforts to stave off the earliest stages of her initial cancer were thwarted by the disease as it worsened far faster than her husband’s case.

She was grateful her son was not born with the disease; when she found out that she was positive she demanded he be tested. It was a relief to hear he was healthy, hours before her own passing.

Rosaire [roʊzaɪir], and he was lovingly called his mother, was the apple of her eye for those four years. They looked alike, acted quite similar (as much as a young child can), and were very much attached at the hip. He had a nanny who aided his mother, a woman who would become his mother figure once his birth mother passed, and the three of them lived an absolutely wonderful life while Moussa was busy with his empire.

As soon as that woman passed, though, it would signal a complete shift in Rosaire’s life. Sharp blue eyes, petite frame and sweet voice: he could have been his mother reincarnate and Moussa loathed that. Where was his kingly son? Where was the young man, born in his image, that would take over his companies and grow their wealth and dominate all around him? Who was this slight waif of a boy that enjoyed his studies and playing dolls with the nanny? The nanny was instructed, in no uncertain terms, to cease all such behaviors-- teach Rosaire to be a man or lose your employment.

The years did not treat the elder Moussa well-- he was growing more and more thin and sick, but kept his verbal whip at the ready whenever his son was around. He never referred to the young boy by his preferred name, never gave any of his interests the time of day. He never laid a hand on his son, but the verbal and emotional abuse was through the roof.

Due to booming business and the company president's desire for more and more money and power, the Rousseau Corporation branched out and went global. Around the year 2000, Rosaire turning ten years old, a significant amount of market research yielded the advice to open up a second headquarters (as in for a sister company or a major subsidiary) in... Japan. The child did not understand and was completely distraught; he would much, much later learn that there were substantial financial incentives to do so. His father barely spoke passable English and had strong ties to France at this point in his adult life, but it was worth the upheaval. They would make do, of course they would... they were the Rousseau family!

Afterall, there was an excellent academy in the city they were relocating too; one that catered to businessmen and a local military base and other immigrants to the area. Moussa assured his son-- well, informed him-- that he would do well to keep at his studies at this academy and perfect his English and learn the local language because they were here to stay.

The stress of the move, the not-so-casual racism the family faced, and adolescence about to hit like a sledgehammer… Rosaire was not happy. He hated this new place; everything about it was wrong. He couldn’t even find peace at home because there he would have abuse hailed down on him for not being exactly what his father had wanted out of an heir. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t handsome by his father’s standards, and he certainly wasn’t much of a man. He was constantly torn down and disparaged while at the exact same time being told he was an extremely important person and had to be perfect. He was the sole heir and had to act as such, had to be that king amongst men, as his father withered away with his hidden disease.

The fear of his father turned into pure hate and disgust as Rosaire struggled with his once-beloved studies as a teen. He barely passed the entrance exams to get into senior high school, and only did so under a very severe threat of being disowned by his father. (And his father was not the empty-threat type.) All the while he was exploring himself, his budding sexuality and his true personality in secret. He would swear his chauffeur/assistant to secrecy, he would swear his nanny to secrecy, he would swear Fabienne (his absolute closest friend in the whole world, and basically his sister) to secrecy, and he was damned lucky that they were loyal and sympathetic to the young man.

Once his father caught wind and had proof-positive that his son was engaging in such atrocious, filthy behavior, the hammer came down. Rosaire’s life became a nightmare and he was walking on the thinnest of ice, toeing the sharpest of lines, in order to try to find balance between his father’s abuse and what he wanted and needed from life. He couldn’t be himself, couldn’t find love or pursue interests that were outside the boundaries of his family’s estate. He was constantly followed by a ‘security associate’ as well as his chauffeur and while neither would divulge anything they happened to witness to Moussa they wouldn’t encourage it of the boy either. The chauffeur especially knew the full truth -- he had been in the family’s employ for many years and saw first hand how the boy’s father was in his own youth. It was a sickening display of incredibly abusive hypocrisy, but what was he supposed to do about it?

Cut your fucking hair! Keep it short, like a real man! I’ll rip those extensions right out, get over here! I found another blouse in your wardrobe; you’ll find it shredded on your bed. If I catch you with another piece of jewelry, you are done for! Why do you insist on looking like some kind of fag?

Near the end of Rosaire’s first year at a very impressive university, Moussa Rousseau finally died. It was unceremonious and while his staff and his family paid lip service to the man, none were too distraught. His business partners, especially those back in France, were upset and didn’t really know what to do. Afterall, Rosaire was too young to inherit the company (though he inherited everything else), and it seemed that in the wake of his father’s death the young man was too busy celebrating to care.

He was free to do what he wanted with whomever he wanted and lived that life exclusively while just barely keeping afloat in school. He began to fail classes and lose touch with reality as, really, he had little else left to lose. It’s not like he was going to run out of money-- his father’s second-in-command in the country had taken over and was running the empire just fine. There was a stipulation in Moussa’s iron-clad will that his son would have nothing to do with running the business in more than a learning sense until he had acquired specific levels of education and was of a certain age.

Though she did attend university, Fabienne was always at Rosaire's side. She was his rock emotionally, whether she wanted to be or not, and served as his personal assistant. It allowed her to have a highly paid job with the man who was basically her brother, and plenty of free time to pursue her own interests while Rosaire was either in class or off doing god-knows-what. Being the opposite of him in terms of personality served their relationship well over their lives, but his antics were starting to wear her thin.

And Fabienne was the one who finally talked some sense into Rosaire, making him see the mess that his life was becoming after some big to-do (as-of-yet undetermined in nature!). She was grateful that horrible man, that tormentor, was gone; it was a huge relief for her best friend. However, this was not the way to celebrate, not the path in life to take, and it took a year and a half but she finally got her friend to realize what he was doing. Using his body, however he pleased and however his string of lovers pleased, was not the solution to his problem.

It took a very hard metaphorical slap from Fabienne (and maybe a real one) for Rosaire to realize that he was not the worst person in the history of the world-- the most disappointing person to exist. A failure, both in personality and nature as well as physically, and absolutely out of his mind if he thought that living like that was the right thing to do. That metaphorical slap also cleared him on his father’s obvious manipulations: that Rosaire was meant to be perfect and had to be perfect. The perfect disappointment was sent to oration classes and etiquette lessons, fit into the perfect clothes and fed a diet to try and bulk his muscles; he was sent to the gym, to a personal trainer, and chastised and verbally whipped when results were far from apparent. (Unfortunately, a lot of this was normalized as it was mirrored in how Fabienne was treated, but any progress the girl made was met with praise and applause.)

Rosaire has really only the one one true friend in Fabienne. They are attached at the hip throughout most of their youth, separated only during travel and during the turbulent couple years after Moussa’s death. He has an incredible spread of acquaintances and of networking contacts, and of course business contacts from apprenticing with his father and his associates. He is very charismatic, partly by nature and partly from the endless lessons his father had him take on how to present himself. Despite that charisma and his business sense, he’s quite cold and very, very straightforward with people. He does not tell lies, not even little white ones, as he was too terrified to do so after his upbringing. Besides, what’s the point? Be who you are and you’ll get what you want. Once he regains control of the Rousseau Corporation from the business partner (after an amazingly pointless legal battle fought in three different countries) he grows the business, expands it, and before he’s in his late twenties he’s shooting up the list of the wealthiest in his country. He’s an oddity-- a dark-skinned black man who dresses very femme, rules his company with an iron fist yet has given an insurmountable sum of money to various charitable organizations (starting in his youth, behind his father's back); he’s fair to his household employees and is strict with his directors and upper management teams to be fair to their employees. He firmly believes that fairness and generosity will breed strong bonds and loyalty. Things he never had from a family; he turns his business into his family. He treats the Louissants (Fabienne and her parents) as if they were his family.

Now, would the Rousseau family line ever continue?

#worldbuilding #world building #lovethewayyoudoso #original characters #rough draft #original writing #rosaire rousseau #fabienne louissant

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invcntions · 11 months ago

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✏️ + banks!

SEND ME “✏️ + a muse“ or “headcanon + a muse” for three ( or more ) random headcanons I have for that muse!

#1 - deep down he's very much an old soul, both in his personality and through his interests. he's a big fan of old movies, most his favorites involve cary grant (even if he's also fond of a cheap modern day disaster film). he's also a big believer in small acts like holding open a door, or pulling out a chair for a date. he'd pick up the check every time if he could too but it never feels that straightforward. #2 - he's always pushed himself hard to over achieve, from school through to his professional life. some of the pressure comes from his family and yet a lot of it's self-inflicted when he hopes to work hard enough that his parents forgive him for the threat his lifestyle poses to the traditional / conservative image the family and therefore business have built themselves on. when he is overworking it tends to become obvious in the fact he starts to forget about meals, not having the time to think about it until he starts to lose weight. #3 - he can speak almost fluent french. he learnt while in school and would love to of learnt a few more languages but has never found the time since. it helps a lot when he spends time in paris for fashion week every year, working with clients and other brands, and he occasionally considers just moving there for a while if it gets him away from his parents. #4 - his family own a ranch out in the middle of the countryside, and it's truly banks' favorite place. he prefers spending time with the horses to most people and in an ideal world it's where he'd choose live, spending his time looking after the animals and being outside in nature. he doesn't get to visit as much now he works full time but he's definitely dragged kendall out there at least once to introduce him to all the animals and just that side of himself that he tends to compartmentalize away from the rest of his life.

#horrorphase #* - isms; banks #ily for sending this #i know it said three but i can talk about banks for actual days ops #i miss the boys pretending they aren't madly in love w/ each other

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seokjinsonlyone · 4 years ago

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Not My Type | 2

pairing: jungkook x female reader

summary: ‘He wasn’t sure what it all meant, but the one thing he knew was that he was in trouble.’

genre: friends to lovers

warnings: none

rating: pg

wc: ~1.5k

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

Jungkook himself wasn’t quite sure where all this was coming from. He’d never had any interest in being more than friends with Y/N. He still didn’t think he was necessarily interested in being more than friends with her. But, the thought of him being last on her list didn’t sit right with him. She was right in saying she wasn’t exactly on top of his list in terms of his ideal type, however she surely wasn’t on the bottom either. If they were in some sort of post apocalyptic situation, he wouldn’t mind having her at his side.

They were friends. Even though they didn’t always see things the same way or have all the same interests, they got along well. She claimed his health conscious lifestyle was a turnoff, but he’d gotten her to go to the gym with him once or twice when he felt like having company. And, the only reason she even knew that she disliked kombucha was because she tried some while with him. She said him being good at everything was annoying, but she always complimented him on his voice or his art or whatever it was that he was supposedly good at. She made him feel good. Even when she told him his head was built like a bowling ball or he had the same nose as Mr. Potato Head. He liked that.

Maybe she wasn’t getting as much from their friendship as he was? He wasn’t as close to her as she was with Jimin, but maybe he needed to be. He wanted to make her feel good too. Wanted to prove his worth as a man. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint the reason why, but he needed to move his way up her list. So, he set out on a mission to do just that.

He remembered her complaining about working mornings and not having enough time to meal prep, so he thought he could start by making sure she was fed. He didn’t know what she liked, but you couldn’t go wrong with burgers and fries. It didn’t occur to him that it might be a little weird showing up at her job unexpectedly until he was already pulling up. Too late to turn back now. He walked around the store for a bit until he found her section. Her back was turned away from him. “Hiii,” he called out, attempting to grab her attention.

“Hello, sir! I’ll be with you in just one moment!” she replied, still facing away from him. She turned around a few seconds later. “Okay, sorry. How may I help you? Oh.”

He chuckled at her reaction. “Hi,” he said again.

“Hey.” She looked around confused. It was safe to say he didn’t casually visit her often. “Can I actually help you or are you just like… ?”

“Did you- did you already take your break?” he stuttered. This was sort of uncharted territory for them. They usually had some sort of buffer person.

“Not yet. No.”

“I bought food. If you wanna take it now. We can, um, eat together?” His palms were getting sweaty.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “One sec.” She walked away and a minute later came back with her purse. “Lead the way.”

He placed his hands in his pockets as he led her to his car to fight off the urge to link their arms together or something. She always did that with Jimin. It’d probably be weird if he tried it though. Jungkook was a fairly physically affectionate person when it came to his friends. Y/N… not so much. It was clear that she could be eased into it, but they weren’t at that level yet. They were at the ‘hug each other as a greeting and sometimes lean on each other when sitting together’ level. She’d probably bite his head off if he did it. “So, what’s all this then?” she asked, sliding into the passenger seat.

“I got burgers from the place across the street. You like that place right?” He handed her a sandwich from the bag.

“Mhm. I didn’t mean the food, though. I meant, like, you. Why are you here?”

“Oh.” Why was he here? It was a question he still hadn’t figured out himself. “I just wanted to hang out.”

“We hung out Wednesday.”

“We can hang out more than once a week.”

“We can, but we don’t.”

“Maybe we should.” He could feel the heat rushing to his face. He’s sure his ears were reddening the longer this interrogation continued. She turned to face him simply staring for a few moments but said nothing. He used the pause in questioning to try to change the subject. “If we were the last two people on earth, would you be okay with it?”

“I don’t think I’d have a choice,” she mumbled between bites.

“Yeah, but like,” he took another bite of his burger, “do you think we’d work well together?”

“Jungkook. You have got to be kidding me.”

“What?” His voice shot up at least two octaves.

“Is all this because I said I don’t think we’re compatible the other day?” she asked, pursing her lips.

“Huh?”

Her head tilted to the side. “Don’t play dumb with me. Especially because you know it’s true.” She launched into a rant about him beating around the bush and why they’re not compatible, and Jungkook honestly felt like he was about to have a stroke. His heart was racing and it’s like he became hyper aware of her presence, focusing less on the content of her impromptu speech and more on the way she was animatedly throwing her hands around and the sparkle in her eyes as she made her points. Had her eyes always sparkled?

He was equal parts terrified and amused as always when it came to her. He tried to hide his smile though. Didn’t want to get scolded anymore than he already was. “I just think anyone could be compatible if they want it and work hard enough,” he mumbled once she finished her spiel.

She furrowed her brows at him, but chose not to say anything further even though she really could’ve. He knew she had no qualms about speaking her mind. Or calling people out. But, she didn’t do that to him and he appreciated it. He needed time to figure out what was going on first. He could tell that she saw that too by how she was looking at him. So, instead of continuing to lay into him or interrogating him, she sighed and said “I guess.”

An awkward silence settled over them. She still had 15 minutes left of her break. Jungkook opened and closed his mouth several times trying and failing to come up with something to say.

“We can just listen to music, you know? We don’t have to talk.”

He regarded her for a moment. This was what he meant. She made him feel good. She understood him. It was nice. She was nice. He quickly turned on his vehicle, allowing his phone to connect to the bluetooth audio. As he began scrolling through his music, she leant over the center console. Her hair smelled so nice. It always did. His goal for the day had been to get closer to her, and she’d already been so considerate of him that he felt comfortable being a little weird with her. So, he pressed his nose into her head.

“Are you sniffing me?”

“Mhm.”

“Weirdo.”

“Smells so good. What is it?”

“I use like five different products in my hair chieftain.”

“I love it.”

She snatched his phone from his hands. “Time is of the essence. We can play like four or five songs. What mood are we in? Are we head banging, vibing, or the long lost members of migos?”

“All of the above?”

“I like the way you think,” she said, a wicked grin spreading across her face as the opening notes to Welcome to the Black Parade sounded through his car. She queued up a few more songs and dropped his phone down in the cup holder, beginning the head banging session. Anyone who walked past their car would probably think they were crazy, but if she didn’t care he didn’t either.

As the songs ended, he watched as she fixed her hair in the mirror, his own laughter finally dying down. “This was fun,” she declared.

“You scolded me for like five minutes.”

“I know. Fun.”

“So, can we do it again sometime?” he tried, wincing slightly.

“Yeah, sure. Just let me know.” She smiled, beginning to slide out the car. “My treat,” she added, lightly swiping her hand underneath his chin. “See you.”

He waved as he watched her walk back into the store, dreamy smile plastered on his face, stomach fluttering in her wake. He wasn’t sure what it all meant, but the one thing he knew was that he was in trouble.

#bts fic #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts fluff #jungkook fluff #jungkook fic #jeon jungkook fluff #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook fanfic

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lostsoulaltair · 3 years ago

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OnS Theories (23S). First Theory and Analsys - Urd and Rigr. The past and the future. Forgotten Present

Hello everyone, after so long, I welcome you to a new theory, I must say that after a long break, it feels nice to return to update theories. (To be honest, I’ve been busy with stuff, this time I wish it was slacking but it comes between getting busy along a bit of feeling not so motivated, but anyways, let’s pull through these theories to the very end!)

I hope everyone’s alright, make sure to stay healthy dear readers!

P.S: Theories are held within a neutral view and ships are excluded.

“People lament that there is always a precedent for trying something new. But everything that the future brings will be similar to something from the past. But nothing like the present will ever come again, nor has it ever existed “

-Kouhei Kadono, Inside the Apocalypse Castle

Back in the chapter analysis, I focused on the characters that made its appearance after so long, which of course, are the vampire Progenitors; of course, within this, there’s such a quote that truthfully applies to the main two Progenitors that took different paths, who do I mean?

Correct. Those are Rigr Stafford and Urd Geales.

But, what does the quote above have to do with them?

It’s well known that humans alone seek progress, they envision the future as promising, but, within the story, this is something that it’s not only applied to humans but vampires too, what do I mean?

Rigr Stafford - Saito: Vampire living in the future

Rigr Stafford who is better known as Saito is a fine example of that and that’s heavily reflected on the latest chapter:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 105

The very first thing Rigr understood within the amount of time he spent with Urd as the remaining two Progenitors that sticked together was, “what was the purpose of staying?”

The question alone seems like a rebellious phase even to some extend, but in fact, there’s something else behind; just like he stated after this panel, he envisioned an Utopia for vampires, but why?

That’s because the First Progenitor, by the time he sired the very first vampires, he made illusions for them, promising dreams that were a possibility but just like the phrase “Sometime it snows in April”, when a possibility is presented, it depends a lot how it’s handled down; in this case, all the vampires believed there would be an endless dream, a perfect world that is labeled as Utopia which at the very end, it ended up disappearing without notice.

But now, you might wonder, what does this have to do with him seeing the “future”?

Rigr didn’t want to stay behind and remain stuck with the old times, he wanted a change, he wanted answers; he wasn’t satisfied with the current life he had; and thus, he decided to leave, but within this, there’s something curious, what do I mean?

Among all the vampires that don’t know why they exist, that question their existance, Rigr technically bestowed his brother, another second Progenitor the key to what defined a human, what could it be?

Correct:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 105

Indeed, Rigr gave Urd a reason to live even if it meant making him have a negative view towards him for abandoning him after the First did. And thus, this was the first stone Rigr set into the future, and with the flow of time, he reached the current self, the one that diistortioned its own body in order to defeat the threat of the world, which is no less than the First Progenitor.

But why do I state that even between the two Progenitors there’s a forgotten present?

Before that, let’s talk about Urd.

Urd Geales: Vampire living in the past

Urd is well known to represent order which is something considered by many such as @black-sapphire57 , @mikaisyuudere, and @sonali6661.

But even still, even if Urd is a figure that decided to take care of the vampires, that decided to shoulder the responsibility the First had:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 105

There’s something rather interesting within Urd, what do I mean?

Urd Geales despite being a character that shows discipline, along the authority figure he is towards the Vampire Society, Urd is the type that doesn’t accept changes well, what do I mean?

After the First Progenitor decided to leave the Vampire Council along with his Apostles or chosen ones, the vampire society he managed to create entered in a phase of negation, expecting the First to eventually return and take them with him, but even with such dream, the First Progenitor never came back until 1 000 years later when he gave away his presence:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 74

Urd Geales took full responsibility of the Vampires that eventually left by their own, he might have designed them which territory to rule underground, without the sight of humans along the laws that were made by him and Rigr many years ago; and, within this, it wasn’t needed to say that many vampires thought the same as Urd; they were afraid of changes, they treasured a lot the past that used to be their lifestyle, even if it was a different path from humanity, they enjoyed their carefree life, that time wasn’t something that could worry them, the fact they had their sire with them to guide them against the world.

And the very fact that an opportunity of “change” presents, it has been reflected with doubt and a discret fear:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 68

Back in the old chapters when Urd, Ky and Lest attempted to interrogate Krul Tepes, they had a small clash of ideals, what do I mean?

Correct. For Krul, the ways and methods they dealt with the problems were obsolete to the point that even if they tried to find a solution, in fact, they wouldn’t; which, to surprise of many, the first one to take the step of taking action was Ky Luc.

This only allowed the other Progenitors to proceed into knowing what exactly happened in the past that was unkonwn to them along the actions they could take for the future that was bound to come.

But now, what do I mean by statingthat both Urd and Rigr have forgotten the present?

This question might seem to some point confusing but in fact, it’s rather simple; what do I mean?

Both Urd and Rigr decided to stay or choose their respective ideals; they decided what it was best for their own.

In Urd’s case, he considered that remaining the same way as the Vampire Council was made, was the best way to keep order, to keep old traditions and costumes in order; but, time never forgives, time keeps flowing despite inmortality, everything changes around the world, and this was something the Vampire Progenitors that decided to abide the Rules noticed.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 68

They noticed that the World made a drastic change; that humans weren’t the same compared to those they met millenia ago; in contrast, they entered to forbidden zones, they even touched taboos that which for them were considered acts of violation of the rules made by the First, Urd and Rigr.

In Rigr’s case, he considered that the First Progenitor didn’t leave just out of interest, but rather, he discovered the secrets he hid from the Progenitors, what he considered to do, his goals and ambitions that would eventually affect the World he once knew but, why did he take the risk if he was a vampire?

Despite being a vampire, and just like Ferid:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 91

Indeed, he was seeking for an answer to the same question most vampires ask, which is their reason to live and the meaning of life.

Furthermore, this discovery of how the world was dancing in the palm of the First was revealed in the World Resurrection at 19 LNs, when Guren finally had a time to speak with Rigr Stafford, along learning facts of how the First Progenitor dealt with the world and chose what would prevail and fall; all together with the fact on how Rigr himself altered the Ichinose DNA.

But once again, why is it that both forgot the present when they’re living it?

Forgetting the present isn’t something literal but rahter, if the mind aims for the future and dismisses everything that’s going around, then the answers for what the present beholds are eternally lost, what do I mean?

The Vampire Progenitors and Rigr Stafford have an enemy in common to some extend; in Rigr’s case, his main target is the First Progenitor yet he dismisses the fact that the JIDA has self awareness that the monster they’re fighting is the very same enemy Rigr pursuits; so it applies with the squad and the duo of Mahiru and Guren along the integration of Krul, Ferid and Crowley.

In Urd’s case, he still can’t acknowledge the very fact that the threat is the First Progenitor and this is, to some levels understandable, he was fond of something that was built millenia ago, he treasured what was built at such time until everything was laid on his shoulders.

Urd considers as threat humankind and depending on the answer, the First Progenitor along Rigr Stafford for walking into the forbidden, for abandoning his duties from the Vampire Council and most of all, for all the things he has done, altering many things such as his body along those who decided to follow him.

It is to say that this lack of visualization of the Present isn’t something that’ll be permanent, in fact, it can be said that chapters will escalate sooner or later, they’ll make the world reach its peak and breakdown which only leaves for a future truce between those who want to keep seeing a tomorrow and possibily, a goodbye for the everlasting lifespan they were granted.

What do you think dear readers?

Let me know!

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perfectlytinyworkspace · 3 years ago

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Mitchell: The World as Exhibition

"The four Egyptians spent several days in the French capital, climbing twice the height (they were told) of the Great Pyramid in Alexandre Eiffel's new tower..."

"The Egyptian exhibit had been built by the French to represent a street of medieval Cairo...'It was intended,' one of the Egyptians wrote, 'to resemble the old aspect of Cairo.' So carefully was this done, he noted, that 'even the paint on the buildings was made dirty.'"

To the West, the rest of the world is archaic, antiquated spectacle – a curious view of the past, an antithesis to Western progress "in the right direction"

"The Egyptian visitors were disgusted by all this...Their final embarrassment had been to enter the door of the mosque and discover that...it had been erected as what the Europeans called a façade."

"Together with other non-European delegates, the Egyptians were received with hospitality–and a great curiosity...they found themselves something of an exhibit."

"What [can] this process of exhibiting tell us about the modern West[?]"

modernity as defined by the West positions its own culture as the norm and the mundane, from which "the ordering up of the world itself as an endless exhibition" can be procured as entertainment, curiosity, and an object of "interested study, intellectual analysis"

how can Islam's relationship with modernity be a positive one, defined as it is by this sort of cheapened commodification of its premises as entertainment for the "civilized West"?

Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens posits that one of the key reasons for Western/European dominance is 'curiosity' and 'the cultural backing to question tradition/history.' Does the "curiosity of the European [encountered] in almost every subsequent Middle Eastern account" following the first Arabic description of 1800s Europe then become a defining factor/formidable strong suit of Western modernity?

Does the "[demonstration of] the history of human labor by means of 'objects and things themselves'" espoused by the European exhibitions of the latter 1800s speak to the beginnings of an increased focus on the "hardware" and "observable, empirical data" of any one subject of study?

Marr's 1982 argument in computational social science: any informational system can be analyzed via 1) problem/computation 2) algorithm 3) physical system hardware; science and especially neuroscience today emphasizes (3) and thus comes away, as argued by some, as an incomplete understanding of the way the brain works

i.e., a bird's mechanisms and purposes for flight cannot be deduced from the study of its physical hardware components alone (feather)

in the same way, an "object lesson" is not the definitive experience of another culture/lifestyle as imagined by the "Histoire du Travail" display of the 1889 Exhibition but rather an overemphasis on the "physical hardware" and material of that culture and European imaginations and (mis)interpretations of its computational/algorithmic functions and purposes

One major Arabic response to Western creations of spectacle is heavy documentation, "[devoting] hundreds of pages to describing the peculiar order and technique of these events–the curious crowds of spectators, the scholarly exhibit and the model...the systems of classifications...the lectures, the plans and the guide books–in short the entire machinery of what we think of as representation."

"They were taken to the theater, a place where Europeans represented their history to themselves..." – non-Western cultures are represented in the same fashion, as spectacle, as traditions and culture from the West's own history. In unifying their systems of representation the West has relegated the rest of the world, including the Arab world and Islam, to the same status as its own history

Is a society's/culture's own history also a form of subjugated knowledge? i.e., when history is remembered as tragic and painted as a negative, primitive state rather than a series of traditions and stories to be revered, does that indicate the modern knowledge vanquishing/subjugating the past knowledge?

"The Europe in Arabic accounts was a place of spectacle and visual arrangement, of the organization of everything, and everything organized to represent...some larger meaning."

"intizam al-manzar, the organization of the view" – is this...the panopticon? Western visual organization of spaces, spectacles, and symbols to convey their interpretations of non-Western cultures feels very much akin to a disciplinary technique to exercise power subtly over the bodies and <souls> of non-Western individuals/populations.

the spectator role holds no power – the spectator can only witness and be complicit to his own objectification

'objectification' in the sense that the individual becomes a material representation of 'the Orient' or 'the East' and all of his actions, thoughts, speech, mannerisms are subsequently first filtered through the lens of this representation to fit to the Western idea of 'his culture and people' before they are attributed to him, and the resulting communication of his identity and actions is so garbled and perverted that it really only serves to reinforce the West's perception of them.

"First, there was the apparent realism of the representation. The model or display always seemed to stand in perfect correspondence to the external world...Second, the model, however realistic, always remained distinguishable from the reality it claimed to represent...the medieval Egyptian street at the Paris Exhibition remained only a Parisian copy of the Oriental original."

Is this an example of Baudrillard's hyperreality? And if it is, does that mean that, as he states, 'neither the representation nor the real remains, just the hyperreal'?

furthermore, if only the hyperreal remains, what is the hyperreal? we know that the representation is the Parisian perception of the non-Western world, and that the real is the non-Western world itself (but is that world in the past or the present?)

so in this instance I suppose neither of them remain and the strangely perfect-but-not "Parisian copy of the Oriental original" is the only thing present – the "effect called the real world"

"...the world of representation is being admired for its dazzling order, yet the suspicion remains that all this reality is only an effect."

Is the "search for a pictorial certainty of representation" unique to the West?

was the creation of hyperreality uniquely borne of Western society? The argument is that the East is "...a world where, unlike the West, such 'objectivity' was not yet build in"

does Western hyperreality alone fall between Islam and an understanding reached with Western Judeo-Christian societies?

can the obstacle of exhibition/spectacle be overcome? Who needs to make the first step to overcome it, the West or the East? What does this first step look like, and it is actually possible to achieve given the nature of media coverage and social media in the modern era that creates a new hyperreality with regards to our understanding of the outside world?

The only objects and locations of value to Western modernity are those whose "pictorial certainties of representation" can inspire awe, wonder, marvel – or fit in with the overall Western representation of non-Western cultures as an exhibition of interest.

"The ability to see without being seen confirmed one's separation from the world, and constituted, at the same time, a position of power." – the panopticon guard!!

"To establish the objectness of the Orient, as a picture-reality containing no sign of the increasingly pervasive European presence required that the presence itself, ideally, become invisible." – this harkens to covert US support of Middle Eastern regimes that benefitted its own oil interests in the area while at the same time performing espousal of the area's "democratic rule" and "self-governance," "autonomy"

in pursuing an "authentic experience" as an outsider, the European spectator necessarily creates his flawed, hyperrealistic representation of the non-Western individual by appropriating "the dress and [feigning] the religious belief of the local Muslim inhabitants" as his disguise of invisibility and non-perception, despite "...being a person who had no right to intrude among them."

"Unaware that the Orient has not been arranged as an exhibition, the visitor nevertheless attempts to carry out the characteristic cognitive maneuver of the modern subject, separating himself from an object-world and observing it from a position that is invisible and set apart."

Western modernity is the European pursuit and implementation of a hyperreal representation of Islam with the underlying desire to both observe the true nature of the spectacle within and remain unobserved (thus holding onto a position of power)

"This, then, was the contradiction of Orientalism. Europeans brought to the Middle East the cognitive habits of the world-as-exhibition, and tried to grasp the Orient as a picture."

I'm not sure if this is still the prevalent world-view, or if it is one example of the Western tendency to impose its own perspective of the Middle East onto the reality of issues in Arab and non-Western countries

i.e., the viewpoint that democratization is the best and inevitable system of governance and steps away from it are 'regression' towards 'the archaic past'

when the Orient that is not created as an exhibition fails to meet the European spectator's expectations, that reality is 1) dismissed as inferior or 2) painted as corrupted by non-Western modernity, which is always 'straying away from the true form of the Orient,' which can now only be found in European definitions of the non-Western world in the eyes of the European tourist/scholar

very similar to Christian scholars stating that they 'saved Buddhism' by 'rediscovering the pure, original form of the religion' beneath 'idolatry and other corruptions of the core Buddhism'

#modern #notes

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movedto-erodasghosts · 4 years ago

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cardigan | harry styles

moved blogs - @erodasghosts

Description: somewhat poorly written fic where they missed out on their opportunity when y/n returned Harry’s cardigan

Warnings: none?

Word count: ~3.6k

a/n: this was written for @harrysleftchelseaboot’s writer appreciation prompt list using the prompts “I never meant for it to happen like this.” And “I love you. I’ll love you for the rest of my life. Even if you don’t love me back, and even if we both move on, there will always be a part of me that will always love you no matter what.”

masterlist

————

“You can’t just keep stealing all of them,” Harry laughed, searching through your closet and finding many of his missing cardigans.

You were grinning as you watched him from your bed, currently wearing the cardigan he wore to your house that day over your shoulders, preparing to take it too. He really didn’t mind but his closet was lacking too many now.

“You’re the one that leaves them here all the time.” You sat up, “Besides, you get them back.”

“I leave them because you are wearing them every time I get ready to go,” he defended himself. “And I get them back in piles like this. It’s not ideal.”

You shrugged and teased, “They look better on me anyway, you should just leave them.”

He chuckled and shook his head, turning around to put his gatherings on your bed. He agreed with what you said, he also just thought you looked better in everything of his in general, even if the clothing was stolen. You were so often wearing his stuff it was like you hardly owned your own wardrobe.

“You’re taking my shirts now too, don’t think I haven’t noticed,” he held up a shirt he found within the mess.

He had no idea that that was where his shirt ended up, he should’ve guessed it though.

“I’ve had that one for months and you didn’t even notice!” You took it from him. “C’mon, just leave this one?”

“That one?” His gaze followed you, “There are more shirts?!”

You bit your lip and stood to put the shirt away. “I mean, maybe a few? They’re being cleaned though so you’ll have to get them next time.”

So you actually wore them around? And you had recently, most likely while he was just gone on tour. He would have guessed you did wear his stuff from time to time, considering you took and kept so much of it, but having it confirmed was different. The thought made him happy, though he couldn’t say why.

“At least you’re getting use out of them,” he sighed and sat at the end of your bed.

Harry smiled to himself, seeing you had on his cardigan despite the conversation. He knew he’d leave it there again, just to have this conversation another time. You wondered to yourself what he’d think when he found out you had stolen a pair of his gloves too, among who knows what else.

You were known for borrowing his clothes, seeing as it started when you were teenagers. There came a point where he wasn’t really sure how or when you started to steal his clothes, it was going on for so many years at this point that he lost track. The first time you ever borrowed something of his it was just his jacket. It was a very movie cliché moment where he gave it to you because you were cold. And, yes, it made your heart skip a beat, you were young. While you did tend to be colder than him, you didn’t always take his stuff for that reason.

One reason you took his stuff was because he did have a good taste, you loved most stuff he owned. You had even gone on shopping trips with him so he could help you pick out some new favorites. Another reason you would wear it was to get that feeling of closeness when he was gone, or even while he was there. Wearing his stuff, and him occasionally wearing yours, was another way you would try to express your feelings to one another in hopes that the other might notice.

A lot of your friends would call you out on it, along with all of the other things you and Harry did that was more than just friendly behavior. Yet, you continued to deny it.

Maybe you denied it out of fear, fear of confronting your feelings after dancing around them for so many years. You were never really sure how Harry felt for you and you didn’t want to risk the close knit relationship you had already built with him, the same reason he never said anything to you either.

But small moments like this made Harry regret never telling you. It was simple and not really special since you had a very similar conversation at least once a month, but that was just why he found some joy in it.

“They do look better on you, y’know.” He sighed, “Which makes me hate to have to put it on myself after seeing you in it.”

You laughed and turned to face him, “Liar. You’re so cocky when you wear these.”

“Maybe it’s because I know you’ve worn them. That would be reason enough,” He grinned.

“Uh huh,” you scoffed. “Or maybe because you know how good you look in them.”

“But I know I’ll never look as good as you.”

You rolled your eyes, gently pushing on his shoulder as he laughed. He wasn’t joking, though he was trying to be a bit dramatic. Of course he knew he looked good in them, he was too full of himself not to, but that wasn’t his biggest motivation.

Wearing your things, or his own clothes that you had worn before, brought him a form of comfort. It allowed him to think of all the memories of the times you had worn them.

Moments where being around each other could be so comfortable and casual. Where you wanted to be closer but were too afraid to actually do it. And, of course, times when you stole them too, he mostly laughed at those memories. He found himself thinking about it a lot, especially when he was gone on tour for longer periods.

Did it hold the same meaning to you? He figured you just did it out of convenience or because you were friends and had become so comfortable with one another. Both of you chalked it up to nothing more than the result of a long term friendship.

One day, after years of confliction, you told yourself that it was time to let your crush on him go. Your lives were heading in completely different directions. He was way more busy, gone from home often, and was just getting an entirely different lifestyle. It was time to face reality, no matter how hard it was.

Harry was tooth rottenly sweet. And having known each other for so long you were more comfortable around him than anyone else. You still made time for him, sometimes before anyone else out of eagerness. And he made sure to make time for you when he was home, often putting you on the top of his priorities. It wasn’t like you were just drifting apart, both of you worked to maintain your friendship.

That made it harder to move on, but you tried your best to work at it still. It seemed like the best thing for both of you. You were both doing things that held you back in your lives, only because you refused to talk about it with each other.

It seemed like as you were trying to distance yourself further he only did something to pull you closer, which made you question if he knew what he was doing. At first he didn’t see it, it started out small. You were trying to become more mindful of your behavior around him, stopping yourself from doing things that people who are just friends wouldn’t do.

No longer would you be found with an arm wrapped around him at most times, the closeness only made butterflies fill your stomach. You stopped running your fingers through his hair as much, it was too blissful to keep going. He especially noticed that you stopped resting a sweet kiss on his cheek at random yet perfectly timed moments, which was the first to go.

Though he immediately noticed these changes he tried to shrug it off. Without realizing he started doing those things to you in greater numbers, in an attempt to make up for what your relationship was now lacking. It confused him, he wondered if you were upset with him but he didn’t know what he might’ve done wrong. He tried to ask in various ways and did eventually decide to ask straightforward.

When confronted you just simply said you weren’t upset, but you didn’t go on to explain what was going on either. You couldn’t, that would mean you would have to tell him about why you were trying to become more distant in the first place. This left him in a helpless position. It was clear that something wasn’t right.

“You’ve got sticky hands,” he pointed to his cardigan you were wearing. “But you aren’t very sly.”

You smiled, “Apparently I am though, I trick you every time.”

He ducked his head and laughed. “You don’t trick me every time.”

“No?” You challenged him. “Then how do you always end up leaving without your cardigan?”

“Because, you said it yourself.” He gently tugged on the hem of the cardigan, “It looks better on you.”

Mindlessly your hand was drifting to rest on his arm, you quickly caught yourself and froze your actions. Instead, you brushed your hair behind your ear and crossed your arms. This wasn’t getting any easier.

“It’s getting late,” you cleared your throat. “I know you have early plans tomorrow, so you should probably go to get some rest.”

Harry frowned as you took a step back. You were doing it again, deflecting and pushing him away. He couldn’t figure it out.

“I could stay a little while longer. It’s not even ten yet.” He pointed to the time.

He was right, and normally he would stay well past that and often he would actually end up spending the night. You decided that was fine from time to time. Friends stay at each other’s houses, just not three nights in a row.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” You shrugged the cardigan off your shoulders. “By the time you make it home and get your cardigans put away it’ll be later.”

You placed the cardigan on the pile with the others, then picking them up to hand them to Harry. He smiled weakly in response, he got the message. You never just handed his cardigans over, he always had to come collect them just to lose another.

“Aren’t you going to keep this one a while?” He picked the top cardigan up and held it out to you.

Did you want to keep it? Absolutely. But you knew that doing that less was a part of letting go.

“I’ve still got a few of your things, it’s fine.” You opened your bedroom door for him, “And like you said, I’ve got to stop stealing them so much.”

He nodded sadly, placing it back down. You quietly exchanged good nights and he made his way home. It was odd to leave like that, so melancholy. There was definitely something going on, he needed to figure out what it was.

You noticed his reaction, it was obvious that he knew something was up. You knew that you wouldn’t get away with it for long but part of you wished that you would. A problem was, you never planned what you would do if he started to figure it out. You didn’t want to think about any situation where you might have to expose yourself further.

No one could understand why you were doing what you were doing. They didn’t understand because they were seeing a bigger picture than you. They saw Harry’s feelings for you, they knew that there was more to it than just a friendship. And no matter how hard everyone around the two of you tried to make you see it, you remained oblivious.

Over the next few weeks Harry found himself in similar situations, where you would push him further and further away. He couldn’t understand it. One minute things were normal, you were talking and laughing with one another like there was nothing wrong. The next minute you were suddenly cold, coming up with any excuse to put some space between him and you.

Honestly, he was beginning to miss you. He missed your grazing hands, your entangled legs, your head on his shoulder. Spending time with you became so ordinary, and not in a blissful sense. Where did he go wrong?

It made him feel selfish. He wanted all of these things from you, expected them even. He returned them, but that didn’t feel like enough. How could he ask for all of those things, things one only tends to find in a relationship, yet hide his true feelings about it?

It was becoming more and more clear how much you meant to him. How reliant did he become? Just a few weeks without as much affection and he felt so uneasy. He tried to fill in the lack of affection but was slowly giving up on that as you pushed further and further away. Maybe it was time to confront it all.

“Are you sure everything is fine?” He broke the silence. “I didn’t do something to upset you?”

You froze, really hoping you would’ve never had to hear him ask that again. The first time he asked you could easily get him to brush it off, but now? Had you really been so obvious about it?

“Harry,” you began.

“Y/n, come on.” He was hesitant, “Something is off, you’ve been… different around me. I just don’t know why, so did I do something?”

“No, you haven’t done anything.” You had to be careful with your words. “We’re fine, really.”

Your answer wasn’t satisfying, it was far from believable too. He could tell you didn’t want to talk about it, and normally he wouldn’t press but it was necessary this time.

“If we’re fine why are you becoming so distant?”

You stood up, going to your kitchen. “We have been hanging out like normal.”

“Normal amount of time maybe,” he followed. “But it’s not the same.”

You weren’t going to be able to avoid it any longer, that didn’t mean you wouldn’t try to though.

“What do you mean?” You avoided eye contact, reaching for a cup.

“You know what I mean,” he stood beside you. “I mean that you’ve stopped. You stopped messing up my hair just to fix it, you’ve stopped with the constant hugs and pecks on the cheek. You haven’t stayed later than eight at my place, you didn’t keep my cardigan the other day or even try to keep multiple.”

“You’re reading too much into nothing,” you mumbled.

Harry felt his heart fall a bit. He had been telling himself that for weeks, it was becoming more evident that it wasn’t true though. You were still being avoidant though, he had to remind himself of that.

“Am I? I’m just worried, okay?” He licked his lips, “I don’t want us to drift away.”

He had every right to be asking these questions and pointing those things out to you, you knew that. But still, you wished he wouldn’t.

You didn’t think he would’ve noticed certain things he had pointed out, how much more had he noticed? It even seemed like he was missing them, maybe he was. You didn’t want to let yourself too much of it though.

“It’s not you,” your focus was on the cup.

He leaned closer to you, “So what is it?”

“I just—“ you weren’t ready. “I never meant for this to happen.”

Harry was confused by everything. What did you mean by that? You still refused to look at him, afraid you might spill if you did. It only made him more concerned, it seemed bigger than what he thought.

“Meant for what to happen?” He rest his hand on your shoulder, trying to comfort you.

It felt like a weight on you, rather than doing any help. You were used to his touch taking weight off of you and reassuring you that everything would be okay, but for the first time it was the opposite.

“Nothing,” you faked a smile. “Sorry I’ve been weird.”

You took his hand off, going to fill your cup with water. You needed to get away again. It was too soon to talk about something that you weren’t even completely over yet. He did deserve an explanation and you knew that, you just weren’t capable of giving one.

“Can we talk about this? Please?” He ran a hand through his hair, “I just want to know why things are changing so suddenly. Why are you so dead set on distancing yourself now? What did I do?”

“Nothing,” you repeated.

He knew you were stubborn, he also knew you were hiding something. It was eating him alive. There were so many possibilities as to what the issue was. He didn’t know if it was him, if something was going on in your life to change things, if you were just growing tired of all the pining.

“Clearly something happened, you can’t deny that.” He chuckled nervously, “At least tell me some bit of truth. I just… I don’t want to lose you and it really feels like I am.”

You were blinking rapidly, trying to hold back your tears. You were thankful that your back happened to be toward him so he couldn’t see you cry. If you said anything he would surely hear a crack in your voice though. Staying silent was no good either though, you would have to say something eventually.

“Maybe it’s good we put some distance between us,” you turned around. “We acted like… like we were more than we were—are. It was… messing with me. I just need some distance.”

You noticed it too? But you didn’t seem to feel the same. You wanted distance, you wanted to stay just friends. It hurt, to say the least, but he was doing his best to just be relieved that he finally sort of knew what was going on.

“Look, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” He fiddled with his rings.

“No, you…” you squeezed your eyes shut, “you didn’t. It was me. I got ahead of myself, I shouldn’t have done those things in the first place an—“

“I did them too,” he interrupted. “I guess it was both of us.”

Letting out a sigh you paused. At least you didn’t have to directly say it.

“I can’t do that anymore,” you explained. “I can’t pretend that it didn’t have an effect on me. We— I have to move on.”

Harry could believe what he was hearing. After all of those years of telling himself you’d never see him as more than a friend you were saying, what? That you did have feelings for him, at least at some point? And he completely messed it up.

He hoped it wasn’t too late to fix it.

“Can I just say something?” He continued when you gave a nod in response, “I know that you don’t want to talk about it really, and I don’t want to assume anything you may or may not be saying but… I love you, I have loved you for some years now an—

“Harry, don’t.” You sat your cup down, shaking your head. “Please don’t do this.”

“Just hear me out?” He gently held your hands in his own.

It felt warm again, comforting. You hesitantly agreed, knowing whatever was about to be said would likely hurt.

“I love you,” he continued. “I don’t think anyone knows me the way you do, and I don’t think anyone else ever could. And I know that our relationship has been… weird, and I know that you have things you need to work through.”

This is the conversation you wished you had with him years ago, you were waiting for it for so long. Now it was happening and you felt conflicted. It wasn’t as simple as it could’ve been, you were supposed to be moving on.

“Harry, I—“ you pulled your hands away, “I can’t do this now. I’ve been waiting for so long to hear you say that, I had to stop waiting at some point.”

He knew, deep down, that it was too late. He saw the signs months ago, when you had begun to push him away. It still felt like he had to tell you this. It made him feel selfish again though.

“I understand,” he smiled weakly. “Just know that… I’ll love you for the rest of my life. Even if you don’t love me back, and even if we both move on, which I hope you’re able to better after this. There will always be a part of me that will always love you, no matter what.”

There was nothing to say, nothing to do. It was too late in a way, but at the same time this was the moment you were waiting for for all of those years. You weren’t sure what to say, and he didn’t expect you to say anything. A part of you wanted to tell him you felt the same, because a part of you did. But another part of you was saying you needed to keep moving on.

Maybe you both had missed your chance when you returned the first cardigan.

#zoeyswritersappreciationwc #harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles fic #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles x reader oneshot #harry styles x reader imagine

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raisansgrapeon · 4 years ago

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My Views on Some of the Cast of the DSMP

We got a lot of things flying left, right, and center right now about characters in the dream smp fandom and I love it. I love seeing the perspectives and the stances and everyone's opinions as long as we're all being civil about it. So, I'm civilly putting in my two cents about... Well... Everything. But mainly just Ghostbur, Phil, and Techno since this post would get obscenely long if I did everyone.

I'd like to just say one thing about my approach to this story:

The characters are morally ambiguous. No one is the good guy. No one is the bad guy. No one is an exception.

Yes, even Dream falls under this.

These are all people, and I always hesitate to call people bad or good in real life because there is so much more beyond what I can see of them, and I think it's a testament to the wonderful acting, improv, writing, and character establishment/writing that it can get me to see fictional block men who do things like claim their mother is a salmon and fill their palaces with flamingos as people.

With that information, I say that I love every character for who they are in the context of the narrative and how they play their role in said narrative.

And I love how each and every one of them are in the wrong somehow in some way.

Ghostbur is suffering the loss of everything he built, technically, a fourth time over.

First with Dream's initial explosion of L'Manburg, second with the actual explosion of L'Manburg, third with the explosion of Logstedshire, and finally with the final explosion of L'Manburg. He's hurting and yes, we all feel immensely bad for this little amnesiac ghost boy who only ever wrote books and built what he loved.

But he acknowledges that he's also hurt people. He knows that. That's why he wants to be resurrected. Even if he forgets conversations, impressions and residual feelings and ideas still hold over, since he clearly didn't just forget about his desire to be resurrected after he forgot his spat with Phil. He recontextualizes his desires and feelings under new sources but the idea of, this is the only way I can make everyone feel better, still lingers. Fundy told him that he needed to stop running away from his problems and face them. He may have forgotten that conversation, but the idea that who he is and what Ghostbur, as an entity, represents is hurting everyone, lingers.

Ghostbur has hurt people. Not of malicious intent, but intent does not dictate the feelings and actions of those around you in response to your own actions. Ghostbur uses his blue to forget his sorrows, and that action cuts those around him off from the emotional reconciliation Ghostbur knows they need from him.

Even then, who he is is not primed to deal with the fallout that would come if he even had voluntary control over his amnesia. Ghostbur insists he's not Alivebur, but he kinda is in a way. Both are very rigid in their beliefs when their mind is made up. There is no negotiation afterwards. Ghostbur's fundamental ideals have been locked in from the start of his existence. He makes others happy, and he restores L'Manburg. The idea that he no longer has the capability to do either of these things as he is now lingers without context. A ghost of a conversation forgotten that got held onto as the only good thing to come out of it.

Ghostbur is not 100% good. He's airheaded and well meaning, but he's never addressed the core issues that he caused.

Phil is trying to prevent what happened to his son from ever happening again.

Phil is a bigger picture man. He sees the world around him as a collective that works together to maintain itself. He doesn't have many personal ties beyond Techno and Wilbur in canon. He truly acts like a third-party hanging above the fray watching as the tides of war ebb and flow. He sees the corruption and sickness that lies within L'Manburg that killed his son thrive long after the mad king had been struck down. He held hope that in the wake of tragedy, Tubbo and the citizens would turn the tides, but they proved him wrong. What killed his son tried to kill his friend, and Phil was going to stop it.

But Phil was too zoomed out to see the personal aspect that L'Manburg held. He was too focused of the bigger picture to remember that Friend was in his house. He couldn't see L'Manburg as the home of many. He was still too detached from the feelings of the people to understand why Ghostbur was upset in the first place. The conversation between the two was not about Phil trying to get Ghostbur to understand why L'Manburg needed to go, it was Ghostbur trying to get Phil to understand why this was not the right option.

Philza has hurt people. He hurt his son by not only aiding in the destruction of his son's home and Friend, but also refusing to see the individuals in the conflict. He hurt Fundy by rejecting him the moment he realized that his grandson was following the tide of battle in the wrong direction. In the end, Phil never chose to see the situation from any other perspective other than his own.

He's disjointed and disconnected from the world around him. He truly loves and cares for two, at one point three, people on the server canonically and beyond that is an ambiguous blur. This isn't really his battle, in all honesty. He came when he saw that Wil was gonna do something everyone would regret, and he tried to step in and stop it, but beyond that, he was never there for anything. He never cared about L'Manburg and he never cared about its people. He's kind and caring to those in passing and he has a sense of nobility and honor where he respects and helps those who helped him. Still, he sees the world around him as a collective, and rarely anything more.

Philza is not 100% good, but he's not 100% bad. He's principled and intelligent, but he has no concept of how his actions affect the individual beyond the collective.

Techno has been abandoned and played like a fiddle this whole time.

Technoblade is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most straightforward character in the smp in terms of motivation. He is explicit and blatant about his anarchy and goals. Yet, somehow, everyone keeps falling into the thought that Techno is a naturally passive force that can be activated into action. In actuality, Techno is very proactive. He prepares and plans beyond wartime. He acts swiftly and precisely. He follows Sun Tzu's tenants faithfully. He does not idle and sticks to his most recent plan to a T if he thinks he can win.

But Techno doesn't see outside himself. He knows what works for him but is blind to others' needs and desires. Anarchy is how Techno can live comfortably, but not everyone can and certainly not everyone in the server. He plays by his rules and rational and imposes those thoughts onto others, not understanding when they act contrary to his understanding and thus rules them to being irrational on purpose. That they just want to ruin his life.

Techno has hurt people and we all know this. Everyone here believes that Techno betrayed them not when he wouldn't join their government, but when he wouldn't leave well enough alone. He did that too late. If he had conceded at the end of the Manburg-Pogtopia war that he did what he was called to do and just left for retirement in the first place, he could've lived just fine. But he's proactive, and he felt betrayed by them when they instantly instilled not only a new leader, but one under the same format and structure that had already failed twice. But who ever said that was his problem?

Techno, as well as everyone but especially Techno, sees himself as the one in the right all the time. He doesn't regret a single thing he's done, at least not anywhere I've seen. He is sure in his beliefs, lifestyle, principles, and logic. He enforces these on other's and sees them as ignorant and dumb for thinking different to him. It takes a lot for him to let bygones be bygones, and it's easy to provoke him into action. Albeit, none of this is helped by the literal chorus of voices constantly memeing in his head, but my point still stands.

Technoblade is not 100% bad, nor is he 100% good. He's motivated and honest, but he doesn't think about other's preferences having the possibility of having a logic behind them.

I could go on and on with nearly every main player in this story but this is what I have off the top of my head.

Basically: no one is good. No one is bad. They all make mistakes as a result of their flaws and those mistakes negatively affect real people in real ways. And I wouldn't have them act any other way.

Your favorite doesn't need to be a saint. You don't have to bend over backwards to defend your fave in order to make them the morally correct person in any given situation. Let yourself love a rich, flawed character. Because they deserve to be loved for their flaws and all.

They deserve to be loved as people.

#ghostbur #technoblade #philza #ph1lza #wilbur soot #philza minecraft #dream smp #dsmp #dsmp wilbur #dsmp philza #dsmp techno #dream smp writing #character analysis #dream smp analysis #dream smp doomsday #dream smp spoilers

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undefined5posts · 4 years ago

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Credit: Jordan J. Lloyd

I've been trying to dive deeper into politics, discover the genuine roots of our society, the origins of our beliefs, and the consequences of our economic system. It's a big, long, wide journey and through multiple sources such as articles, images, videos and multiple social media platforms, I've been trying to educate myself more on important subjects.

Communism, capitalism, libertarian, conservative, the left, the right, the history, the impact. It is scary to commit to everything because once you start, you simply cannot stop, once you start waking up your conscience about the horrible reality, the lies, the truths, you cannot put it back to sleep. You can't just ignore prejudice, especially when you're extremely conscious of it's omnipresence. I have continually tried to build my own opinions all while actively creating bullet point arguments in my mind because I just know that at some point I will have to defend my thinking, and I want to do it right.

Now, I am so far from being enlightened, I am a beginner and an amateur in all of those themes, but I am trying, which is the only way to start and grow.

So to tell you about my beliefs, I am a militant human rights activist, I believe in equal opportunities regardless of gender identity, sex, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race and disability. This is a fact, not a belief, but the system was obviously not built to protect all people, its wasn't created to serve everyone equally but to grant a privilege to some and harm others. The current state of the world is not a slip, an accident or a misfunction of our brilliant system but a testament of it operating remarkably well. I believe that equity leads to equality, and I believe that we cannot "fix" methodologies that were immorally created with absolutely no honor whatsoever. I believe in reproductive rights, in legal, safe abortions for anybody who needs one. I believe in the decriminalization of marijuana. I believe that the death penalty is a despicable punition that should be banned as soon as possible. I believe in defunding the police and the military. I believe that it is a shame that I even have to talk about police brutality, I don't want to have to say that it is one of the most horrible things our world has originated, I feel extremely dense when I do because it seems like the most obvious certitude and I refuse to believe that this is a controversial statement. I believe that everything I have just stated, along with many more, isn't anything grand but the bare minimum, the bar is low, and yet, we still have the fight for basic human decency.

Humanity has become an option. We have normalized supporting people that represent everything wrong in this world under the name of tolerance. The left has never claimed to be tolerant towards hateful beings, We have never accepted homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism and sexism. We cannot, for exemple, accept nazis, as too much tolerance inevitably leads to intolerance. This picture explains it perfectly:

I consider myself a communist/ socialist. The two terms still confuse me a little, some say they are the same, some say they differ quite a bit. What I know is that socialism is the transitional period between capitalism and communism. At the end of the day, the final result and goal is a stateless, moneyless and clasless society that will provide to each his need.

Our capitalistic society has brainwashed us way more than you may think. It is the root of so many of our issues, the underground demon of our problems. Every idea, thought, belief, and misconception of ours were all affected by our current economic system. It has sold us the billionnaire dream which is one of the most toxic things capitalism has offered. We have looked up to billionaires for way too long, why are they so idolized? Most of them come from high upper class families that can easily afford to invest in their inventions and creations. After starting up their companies and occasionnaly stealing other's people ideas to ultimately get undeserved merit, they then can start to properly exploit their hardworking employees's labour. And for unlimited hours and a minimum wage which probably won't even suffice you to survive, you will have to either pick up more shifts or a second or even third job, especially if you have a family to support. All while the CEO barely does any of the work and gets all the praise and money. So no, they don't all come from really poor families and have built everything for nothing.

The worst thing is that we've been so gaslit and brainwashed that we're proud of our own exploitation, we are wired to think that to be successful we have to suffer, work 10 jobs we all hate, constantly pick up extra hours, have 2 hours of sleep, have no free time to do anything we love, waste our entire youth, be depressed our entire adulthood, to finally have a few pennies to spend when we're eighty. We so strongly believe that this is the only right way to be successful that I don't think many of us have dared to question it's authority, and even if we do, we quickly accept that this a truth, a fact we cannot change and this is just the way things are.

We have capitalized water, food, land, forests, oceans, space, and everything in betweeen. Money is social construct and we have deliberately let it take over our lives. To think about the wasted opportunities and the misery that we have to endure so others can enjoy life truly angers me.

Also, communism is not an ideology that has every actually taken place. Despite what they say, there was never actually a communist country. However, every nation that has attempted a socialist system, for exemple Burkina Faso, has thrived. But of course, once capitalist countries noticed that, they decided to murder it's leader. So in conclusion, the only reason socialism failed is because of capitalism and it's interventions.

"As President (1983-1987), Sankara initiated economic reforms that shifted his country away from dependence on foreign aid and reduced the privileges of government officials; he cut salaries, including his own, decreed that there would be no more flying in first class or driving Mercedes as standard issue vehicles for Ministers and other government workers. He led a modest lifestyle and did not personally amass material wealth. President Sankara encouraged self-sufficiency, including the use of local resources to build clinics, schools and other needed infrastructure. [...] President Sankara promoted land reform, childhood vaccination, tree planting, communal school building, and nation-wide literacy campaigns. He was committed to gender equity and women’s rights and was the first African leader to publicly recognize the AIDS pandemic as a threat to African countries. Although Sankara became somewhat more authoritarian during his Presidency, his ideas, and the possibility that they could spread, were viewed by many as posing the greatest threat. President Sankara was assassinated during a coup led by a French-backed politician, Blaise Compaoré, in October 1987. Compaoré served as the President of Burkina Faso from October 1987 through October 2014, when he himself was overthrown."

Via:https://africandevelopmentsuccesses.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/success-story-from-burkina-faso-thomas-sankaras-legacy/

I have been reading and watching some amazing human rights activists, notably Angela Davis, Malcolm X and James Baldwin. The people that were villainized, labeled as violent and radical, when every single word that came out of their mouhs were pure facts. They are probably some of the most eloquent people I have had the pleasure of hearing. Every sentence, every argument, every single detail made so much sense and opened my mind to so many new realizations. This is the perfect exemple of how the media tarnishes the reputation of wise black women and men. I would strongly advise you to research more about them.

"Socialism & communism are demonized in the west to the point of erasing influential individuals' socialist advocacy. Heres a short list of people you may not have known were socialists/ communists:

MLK

Albert Einstein

Nelson Mandela

Frida Kahlo

Tupac Shakur

Mark Twain

Malcom X

Oscar Wilde

Bertrand Russell

Hellen Keller

Pablo Picasso

George Orwell

Shia LaBeouf

John Lennon

Woody Guthrie

Socialism & communism are not dirty words. Some of the most brilliant minds of our history were socialists and communists. Embrace it." Via @sleepisocialist on twitter

So what else can I say, capitalism has ruined our society and the way we act and think. I know a lot of people refuse to support communism because they think it's too much of a perfect ideal utopian world for it to ever actually exist. And to that I say, first of all, so you agree, it is a wonderful theory, and second of all, a world without racism, sexism, homophobia or any kind or discrimination could also be perceived as "too ideal to actually exist", but does that mean I'm giving up on talking, educating myself and others, protesting and trying to build a better future? Absolutely not. This is the objective, it would be so dumb to think that we just couldn't achieve that so let's not even try.

I want to talk more in detail about communism, theory, human rights, etc... but I don't want to make this post any longer. I will however be posting more about it soon enough.

I know this is a little different than what I usually post, but I want to speak, tell you all my own opinions, I don't want to just repost activism related stuff. I'll continue to do that, but not exclusively. I know it won't get as many interactions as my other posts, but this is what I needed at some point in my life, and if I could make understanding some basic informations easier to some people, it'll already be a great accomplishment.

Thank you for reading.

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askhubertvonvestra · 3 years ago

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Hey Hubie! I have another question relating to you and the BE. If all of you have a unique Persona (P5 & P5 Strikers), which one would each of you have and why? I suggest watching this if you're looking for inspiration: [Persona 5 Royal + Scramble ALL AWAKENINGS in Chronological Order!] on Youtube

The very concept of these “personas” is odd, but not altogether unfathomable. I’m certain Linhardt would be thrilled at the prospect of studying any truly unique personas that would come of the Black Eagles manifesting their own, but as that’s not possible, speculation will simply have to suffice.

Bernadetta von Varley: Necronomicon (Hermit). I would say ranged support is Bernadetta’s preferred method of combat and as such, this suits her. Informational direction isn’t necessarily her current forte, but I could see her having a penchant for it in this context. For a more common persona, I suspect she’d like Sudama, even if for nothing else than companionship. They are cute with a promising strength not readily observed.

Caspar von Bergliez: Arsene (Fool). A distinctly driven personality combined with an undeniable sense of justice that goes beyond the restrictive societal definition of the term does make him ideal for what this entity represents. He strives for strength, although not for his own ends. It allows him to defend those who are unable to do so for themselves, and he does so gladly. Often with unnecessary grandiosity.

Dorothea Arnault: Milady (Empress). Despite the refined and inarguably beautiful appearance of this persona, there is a well-concealed strength one may not expect until it is far too late. Much like Dorothea herself. When she senses a threat to what she holds dear, she makes a decisive stand against it. Her weapons aren’t in the typical collection of what one might use, but that is precisely why they are formidable.

Edelgard von Hresvelg: Goemon (Emperor). Such a powerful persona built on transforming your regrets into your motivations to improve the world around you is a natural choice for Her Majesty. Blind to corruption no longer, she aspires to bring about the life she has envisioned so that all people might know that freedom of a truly level playing field.

Ferdinand von Aegir: Captain Kidd (Chariot). However you choose to perceive Ferdinand, courageous or reckless, he does devote himself wholly to the cause. He may not show it as plainly as Captain Kidd itself, but revolutionary thinking is as natural to him as taking breath. Simply because he was born within the heart of the corruption that plagues our society does not mean he ascribed to it. This persona represents a true separation from that lifestyle in his mind, cutting out that fixation of how he was perceived that once held him back. It is enough now to adhere to how he is, not how he seems to others, as he endeavors to change Fódlan for the better.

Hubert von Vestra: Johanna (Justice). Tradition is little more than shackles to this persona, and I could not agree more. The only path is forward, removing whatever may stand between our forces and the justice that humanity has been so long denied. Operating within the ranks of our enemies, I will ruin them before they have any inkling of what is already underway. The skills of this persona reflect that far-reaching destruction I will leave in my wake as I extract my pound of flesh for their transgressions.

Linhardt von Hevring: Carmen (Lovers). The appearance of Carmen may suggest a vested interest in the attention of others, yet the opposite is the truth of the matter. Carmen appears as it wishes to for its own enjoyment. Heedless to the praise, envy, or disdain of others, this persona represents a sense of freedom transcending colloquial phrases. Few people care less about the rumors or barbed opinions of others than our very own flippant scholar. As much as it is infuriating at times, there’s no denying that his free spirit is partially what drew him to Lady Edelgard’s cause even though it called for war.

Petra Macneary: Zorro (Magician). I believe the masked nature of this persona captures her ferocity that is easily overlooked in favor of her pleasant and companionable demeanor. Hers is a quiet strength of will and character that empowers her to overcome adversity with remarkable ease, and Zorro offers that in both combative and restorative talents. A stalwart ally and unrelenting protector of her people, Petra is already an exceptional leader who would be served well by such an entity as this.

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sebastianshaw · 3 years ago

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Shaw & Skadi for the kid meme!

Name: Sigvid Skadisson Shaw. I know it should be Shawson BUT FUCK THE RULES. “Sig” is a pretty standard prefix for a lot of Norse names from the word “sigr” meaning “victory” and “vid” from the Old Germanic “widu” for forest. Gender: Masc and male-presenting but beyond that I’m not sure? Trans man? AMAB non-binary? Look, he uses he/him (maybe they too) and people THINK ‘man’ when they look at him, that’s all I know General Appearance: Tall and beefy, he couldn’t NOT be. Medium pale skin that gets even paler in winter but tans easily in summer. Black hair, or so dark brown it might as well be black, and very dark eyes. His hair, unlike both parents and most of his Asgardian brethren, is actually kept short, and while he has a beard, it’s not the big one. The reason for this is functional; short hair is better if you’re spending a lot of time in the wild. Stuff gets stuck in long hair, it can get tangled in branches at the worst times, it’s hot in the summer, and it can literally freeze in the winter if it gets wet. His attire is very much out of a Viking fantasy, but less on the “heavy armor” end of things and more on the “wearing lots of furs and skins” side. He doesn’t look like someone you want to fuck with, but he also doesn’t look like he’s going to war. He carefully avoids any kind of dangling amulets, charms, or other jewelry that could get caught on anything, but he’s got a sort of leather toolbelt containing various survival tools made from wood, bone, etc. Personality: Sigvid, as you might guess from his attire and the reasons for it, is an outdoorsman. Not as a hobby, not as a lifestyle, but an EXISTENCE. He thrives in the natural world as Sebastian does in the business world, finding ways to survive in even the most adverse of situation. Whatever Mother Nature is doing around him, he can not only make it through it, he can work it to his advantage. His closeness to the natural world, his close observation of it, means that he sees both the facts and errors in his father’s mentality. He sees that the strongest predators will pick off the weakest prey, that the winter will take those who do not prepare, that mother animals will neglect and even devour their young if they’re sick or runty. He also sees that prey are more aggressive than predators, how some creatures will adopt and nourish infants that are not their own or even their own species, how some will share their kill with no benefit to themselves, and how even the smallest and most humble animals can make it through things that the larger, so-called stronger ones did not. Sigvid is very pragmatic, like his father, very practical, very self-preservationist. He has to be. But he’s also very spiritual, not in a way that connects to some distant god, but the world around him, to earth and nature. Not some idealized hippie-dippie conception of nature as a loving mother that is always in balance, but an acceptance that it is a greater power that he cannot control, he can only hope to survive at best. It keeps him humble. It also gives him a much wider, more relative perspective on things that is not human-centric, or Asgardian-centric for that matter. My Shaw often says that he admires human accomplishments above all else, that no other animal has built cities, computers, cars, and so on. And he is correct in this. But Sigvid always points out, how many termite mounds has man built? How many times do humans migrate thousands of miles using an innate sense of the Earth’s magnetic fields? How many fish have we hunted by literally sensing the electricity in their bodies? Yes, humans are “the best” if we judge them by standards HUMANS MADE. Judge us by the base standard of any other species, and we flop. Same for judging any species by the standards of any other. Nothing is “more” or “less” evolved than anything else, more complex does not mean better, and nor does being bigger, stronger, meaner, or even smarter mean a species is “better” or “more evolved” either. Survival of the fittest is not about that, nor about individuals; it’s about how well a species fits its environment and niche. A slime mold is just as evolved as a person. Sigvid is very passionate about this, though he’s not the type to speak up most of the time; he’s stoic and saturnine, used to keeping his mouth closed and his thoughts to himself, because most of the time there’s no one to talk to. And that also means he’s learned to exist without the validation and approval of others---ironically, something that is much like his father, learned in a completely different environment.

A lot of this, obviously, comes from Skadi. He was at side her since infancy learning to hunt and track, learning the difference between wood sorrel and white clover, how to tell when a moose is about to charge, and what it means when the woods go quiet. This connects deeply to Skadi’s Jotunn side in particular, which in Norse lore are thought to have symbolized the inherently chaotic and uncontrollable nature of, well, nature! Though Sigvid would not, nature it’s chaotic, it’s actually very ordered, people just don’t bother to understand what’s inconvenient to them. But where he differs from Skadi is that he’s not a Disney princess. Animals don’t hang out with him. He doesn’t nurse injured creatures back to health. He doesn’t keep pets. He does not see them as friends. They are not less than him, but they are not allies, they are beings he co-exists with, avoids, or eats. At least, until a thylacine started hanging out with him. Yeah, a thylacine. The extinct Tasmanian tiger. Who knows where it came from or why he’s attached itself to him, but he’s very adamant she’s not a pet and he hasn’t named her, but she is THERE. Sometimes. She isn't at his side like a dog, it's more she's following him from a distance and she pokes her head out from the trees somewhere. She's not a pet. She's more a parasite. But unlike Shaw, Sigvid doesn't use that term in a bad way, and he's fine with her presence. He's just curious where the hell an extinct Australian animal came from? Obviously, Sigvid is not interacting with people a lot, but when he does, he’s far less awkward or boisterous than people expect. He doesn’t have the overt weirdness people expect from a hermit, nor the bombastic warrior cliché of an Asgardian, or the vicious stereotype of a Jotunn. He has a quiet but overwhelming elegance, not like an aristocrat but like a great stag emerging from the forest. He chooses his words carefully, and can say much with just a few. He walks the middle ground between judging by individuals and judging by species; he does a little of both. He has preconceptions and generalities that he believes in about each group, but also believes in room for exception. After all, he’s not what a lot of people expect, is he? Despite this, he’s frequently misread as disliking people, but he doesn’t. He is utterly neutral on them, he just prefers his own way of life. Likewise, he tends to be very neutral towards individuals, and this also is often misread as dislike. One thing he does dislike though, is when people try to endear themselves to him by talking about how they agree animals are better than people, or say stuff like you know only man kills for pleasure. . . .this actually just annoys him. Firstly, a lot of animals do kill for pleasure. Secondly, when people say animals/nature is better than people. . . .they’re forgetting that people---humans, Asgardians, Jotunn---are animals too. This is just another way people, of any sort, try to insist they’re something special and different, whether in a negative or positive way. It doesn’t impress him. What impresses him tends to be how well people work within their niche, whatever niche that is. Like Shaw, he doesn’t really judge in terms of conventional morality, but a person’s success----Sigvid’s definition of success is just much wider. Like, maybe you dive for a living---are you a good diver? A great cafeteria worker? The best toilet cleaner in the tri-state area? He admires that and he commends you. When he is angered, he stays quiet, and his response is swift and physical; he either leaves or strikes physically and then leaves. When he feels sufficiently bonded with someone. . . he is still quiet. He appreciates a person who doesn't need to be filling the silences between them to feel comfortable and kinship. And kinship for him is rare, but he's not lonely----just also not adverse to it, as many assume he is. People assume a lot about Sigvid, and most of it is wrong, but he's also very chill with it. Sigvid is a very chill guy.

Special Talents: Besides the obviously mentioned talents for hunting, tracking, foraging, survivalism, and nature knowledge? Many people think he’s some kind of seer because he’s good at predicting storms and such, but actually he’s just very good at reading the signs most people aren’t attuned to. He also presumably has the attributes of Asgardians and Jotuns (super strength, etc) but if he has a mutant power, it has yet to manifest. Also cannot assume a Frost Giant form. Who they like better: Skadi, though eventually he does respect his father for performing so well at what he does

Who they take after more: I think both equally in different ways Personal Head canon: -He really likes amethyst geodes. -He finds a lot of manufactured foods, like chips or snack cakes, to be WAAAAY too strongly salty or sweet for him to stomach, is allergic to Red Dye #40, and he finds the taste of domesticated animals to be weird. - Not much of a dairy person, but ghee is good -Dislikes when people stereotype hillbillies as stupid; as in like, people who are genuinely living in the hills and mountains of the American Southeast, they're an interesting people with their own unique culture like any other group that lives off the land in isolation---which he respects---and not interchangeable with typical rednecks. -He doesn't typically carry anything with him that's not a necessity, if he knows he's going to be seeing people soon, he will pick up knick-knacks he finds in abandoned places and distribute them like a weird Santa Claus. Who, he's met, by the way, and according to him, Father Christmas is something of a badass. - He will always buy your homemade soaps, and I have no idea what he's doing with them. Yes, maybe he's using them in the normal intended way but IM NOT SURE?? - Pops up in art museums. People never expect him to be here, in these cathedrals dedicated to human creation, but he is. I think he views art a bit differently than the average person, but he's there all the same. - He's an Aquarius but there is a LOT of Saturn in his chart - The first Midgard movie he saw was Forrest Gump. He was expecting it to be about something else because of the title, but he enjoyed it and LEARNED THIS DANCE Face Claim: n/a

#sigvid #kids #kid meme

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eryiss · 4 years ago

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Chapter One - The House

Summary: Freed and Laxus live incredibly different lives. Freed is a corporate lawyer in the capital city, and Laxus works as a handyman in a countryside hotel. Despite their differences, their lives collide when Freed inherits a house in Laxus’ village, and hires him to make the derelict building liveable. But the closer they get, the more they seem to offer each other. [Fraxus Multi-Chapter]

This was written as my admission for Fraxus Day 2020, hosted by @fuckyeahfraxus. It ended up becoming a multi-chapter, and I thought the first chapter should go up today, as a holloween gift. The next one will be published on thursday, and will continue on weekly.

You can read this under the cut, on Fanfiction, or on Archive of Our Own. You can find the chapter masterpost here.

Chapter One – The House

Freed hadn't expected his mother's death to be so tedious.

He should probably feel more emotional about it. He and his mother had no ill-will towards one another – there was no tragic secret nor history of arguing or abuse between them – but he found himself oddly unbothered by hearing of her death. Not a numbness of any kind either, he felt very much the same as if a colleague had told him their mother had passed. It was just an event that had happened, and something that affected his life, but not his emotions.

His apathy probably came from the fact he and his mother hadn't spoken for years. Again, not for any great reason, just because they didn't. He and his father had always been closer, and when he had died four years prior, Freed had grieved and got over it as best a person can. His mother was the worker of the family, and thus the emotional relationship hadn't been as strong. Neither had made an effort to connect in their adulthood, only really linked by his father. And so once he had passed, there wasn't really any reason to speak. Neither person was overly emotional, so they didn't seek comfort in one another's arms, and instead just drifted off.

And so, the death of his mother was tedious.

Death was followed by a lot of things. The need to plan a funeral, people being completely unaware of how to act around him, and an odd amount of pity coming from people who didn't know him at all. Freed was something of a pragmatist, and as such it became an experience he didn't want to repeat. At least with the death of his father, he'd had his sadness to distract him. But this was just, well… tedious.

Perhaps the worse thing to have happened occurred two days prior. As was customary after someone passes, there was a reading of the will. A pointless exercise for this instance, given Freed had literally inherited everything. Freed knew this already – he was his family's lawyer for god's sake, he drafted the damned thing – but he still had to attend the reading. So, for an hour in a busy work week, he was forced to travel down two floors in his building, and sit there while another lawyer – Natsu Dragneel, who had actually interned under Freed for a year – explained the law and what the will meant. To the man who had taught him it!

Further adding to the annoyance of the situation, almost everything he'd inherited had strings attached. There was a lot of debt, from both loans and gambling, apparently. Freed's credit score was going to take a hit, given how much there was. There were also her belongings, which he would have to look through at some point. She also apparently owned property, which was now his.

This would be good, had it not been for its location. Freed's life was centred in the city, this house was in the middle of the countryside, miles from what Freed considered civilisation. Why she had owned a house there was beyond Freed, she was more metropolitan than him; she lived in Era and Era alone. But unfortunately, now it was his.

So now, he was nearing the end of a three-and-a-half-hour train ride.

He was going to sell the place, of course. Why his mother hadn't done so confused Freed, given her debts. Property values were high in this area, many rich older people wanted to retire there, and a three-bedroom cottage was perfect for that. But he needed to see it, speak with estate agents, and sign away the rights. All in all, tedious.

When he got off the train, he was hit by how different it was to Era. It was open, the air smelt different and it looked like an illustration from a Victorian romance novel. All very idyllic, but Freed had no intention of staying long enough to appreciate it. Instead, he located the taxi service, and ordered a car to his new property.

Apparently Uber hadn't arrived there yet.

The car came soon enough, and after a few failed attempts to illicit more than a curt answer from Freed, it was a quiet ride. It took about forty minutes, and Freed watched as fields passed by, the atmosphere dampened by the scent of manure filling the air. People raved about the fresh air in the countryside, but Freed much preferred the smell of petrol and faint piss of Era to literal crap. Better the devil you know.

Thankfully, the smell of muck spreading was interrupted when his phone lit up. He glanced at the contact name – 'Estate Agent' – before lifting it to his ear and accepting the call. He needed an evaluation for the property, and apparently this man was the best in the area. Hopefully the fastest too.

"Mr Clive," He greeted, leaning back.

"Mr Justine," The estate agent replied in a more jovial tone. "Just to let you know, I'm at the property and waiting for you. There's been a few evaluations over the years and they're all pretty similar, so it shouldn't take long."

"Thank you," Freed nodded to himself, glancing past the front seat to see the GPS saying they should be at their destination in about five minutes. "I'll be there soon."

"Great," Gildarts' grin was audible in his tone. "Sorry that you had to come down here to deal all of this."

"It's not your fault," Freed said placatingly, though not honestly. "The sooner it's done, the better."

"Couldn't agree more," Gildarts grinned.

"Why had it been evaluated before?" Freed asked, brows furrowing slightly.

"Apparently your mother has tried to sell it a few times. Twice with independent online stores, and once with an estate agent. Clearly it didn't go well," The man laughed. "But we'll be more successful. We know what we're doing."

After some pointless pleasantries, the call was ended. Freed found himself frowning; a cottage in this area should have been sold without any difficulty. The fact this one hadn't, despite its perfect position and seemingly positive qualities, didn't bode well. He tried to be optimistic, but at this point, it was almost certain that even selling the house would further add to his annoyances.

It was ten minutes later – it took longer than expected because he got caught up in traffic caused by a heard of cows crossing from one field to the other, followed by an uncaring farmer who glared at the taxi as if it were an affront to his lifestyle – when he saw the house.

It was clear as to why his mother couldn't sell it.

The place was practically derelict. In its prime it would have been the ideal village cottage, with white walls and a slated roof. It would have had a garden filled with perfectly trimmed flowers, a large but well-groomed oak tree, and most likely a cliché dog running around. Unfortunately, the house's prime was clearly centuries ago because it embodied the world decapitated in a way Freed had never seen. The roof was falling apart, the garden filled with so many overgrown plants nothing else could be seen, and a window was hanging out of the wall. It was unliveable, and practically unlovable.

Perfect. His mother had left him debt, three wardrobes filled with wrinkled clothes, and a building nobody could use without a death wish. Now his hopes of selling the place was unrealistic.

As he approached the building, a man made his presence known by leaving a car with a smile on his face. He was older than Freed, in his late forties if Freed was being kind, and he gave a polite 'Hello' as he approached. It was clearly the estate agent, who was showing a lot more optimism than Freed felt at that moment.

"Mr Justine, nice to meet you in person," He greeted.

"Likewise," Freed nodded, though his tone didn't reflect the sentiment. Gildarts laughed.

"I can see from your face that you were expecting something a little… different," The man chuckled, and Freed found himself annoyed by the man's enthusiasm. "You probably thought it'd be a little more liveable, didn't ya?"

"Something like that," Freed agreed, looking at the building almost accusingly.

"Well if it's any kind of relief, the building's structure is actually very secure. I won't lie, there's probably hundreds of problems going on in there, but at least the roof isn't going to collapse on our heads," The agent laughed, and in any other situation it might be less grating. "I can explain the details as we look through it, I'm sure that you want to get this done quickly."

"If that's possible."

Gildarts nodded, then jogged back to his car. When he returned, he was holding two hardhats that one would see on a building site, and Freed looked at it warily. Gildarts smiled and patted him on the shoulder with an unneeded amount of strength.

"The roof itself won't fall, but there's always a chance that the ceiling tiles might, so we can't be too careful, can we?" He chuckled loudly, placing on his hat, and walking into the building. Freed, after a moment of hesitation, joined him.

~~~

"So, you're sayi-" A small scratch. "-basically unsellable."

Freed ground his teeth together slightly. He was pacing down a village high-street, holding his phone to his ear and trying his best to listen to Evergreen's stuttering voice. Apparently random country roads were perfectly fine with phone signals; but for the most built up area for miles, it was practically impossible to have a conversation without some kind of interference. It was something very quickly grating on his nerves.

"Essentially, yes," Freed sighed, sidestepping a couple walking towards him. "It's too run down for anyone to want to buy it. My estate agent said the best thing to do is to see if a property auction will take it and sell it cheap."

"Why don't you-" Another scratching sound. "-it down. Sell the land-" A quick, high pitched noise. "-farmer or property developer."

Freed's muscles tenses slightly at the suggestion. He had thought about that, but of course when he had told Gildarts that it was the logical course of action, the man had looked at him with something akin to pity in his eyes. He had then patted the man on the shoulder – again making Freed's body jerk slightly with the power behind the action – and added another layer of annoyance to this ridiculous situation.

"Apparently it's a listed building, and has some kind of historical preservation status," Freed sighed, slowing slightly when the buzzing on the phone went quiet. Hopefully, he had a stronger signal now. "Essentially meaning, the building has to stay."

"If it's so important, why did they let it get so run down?" Evergreen asked, voice clear now.

"They didn't, my mother has been receiving phone calls and letters from local council about it for years," Freed wiped at his eye with his free hand, deflating slightly. "Which I will now be getting, I suppose. Along with the letters and phone-calls from debt collectors, no doubt."

"How much would it sell for as it is?"

"Optimistically, 25 thousand. Since you can't make any modifications to the outer building, something in this state is hard to get customers for."

It wasn't anywhere near enough to cover his mother's debts, even when combined with the savings he was unwilling to give up. Though a successful corporate lawyer and having saved a substantial part of his earning for over ten years, Freed was by no means rich. His family came from money, but never gave any to him as they wished for him not to be spoiled. So far it hadn't mattered, but now with six figures of debt from nowhere, his comfortable life seemed unstable. This wasn't helped by the fact he only wanted to use his savings as a last resort; he'd saved this money for himself, not to give to online casinos because of his mother's apparent addiction.

"Couldn't you make it a bit more marketable," Evergreen suggested, and Freed found himself irrationally irritated by the chewing he heard. They were colleagues, and he knew that her lunch break wasn't for another hour. "Tidy it up slightly."

"It's not run down, it's unliveable," Freed grunted. "The windows are boarded up, the garden practically a jungle, bare floorboards, furniture that is practically rotting, and a bird had nested on the oven."

"Maybe plant some flowers and bake a cake when showing people around," Evergreen joked, and Freed almost laughed.

He couldn't resent his mother. He did love her, and perhaps if he had made some kind of effort in talking to her then maybe the debts wouldn't have happened because she could talk to him about her gambling. Of course that regret was pointless now, thinking about what he could have done wouldn't change anything. He just had to deal with the consequences.

"You'll figure something out," Evergreen spoke up again.

"I know," Freed nodded. "But I'm not quite sure exactly how, yet."

"Well, I've just checked, and there's a nice-looking hotel near you," Evergreen smiled, and Freed could hear the clicking of a computer mouse through his speakers. "All good reviews, apparently a brilliant kitchen and very nice staff."

"Good for them," Freed said with furrowed brows.

"I've booked you a room," Evergreen declared, clearly grinning. Freed went to speak but Ever went first. "You're staying there for a week. You can either spend it thinking what to do next with your house, or just have a nice break, which you're overdue. Climb one of the mountains or something. I'll have a suitcase sent down with everything you need."

"No," Freed said firmly.

"I don't believe I gave you a choice, dear," Evergreen smiled. "And I've already paid for it. If you stay, consider it a gift. And if you don't, you'll be in even more debt, and I'm much worse than any bailiff you can think of, and we share an office, so I will make your life miserable."

"You're both blackmailing and threatening me," Freed grunted. "I could technically sue you for workplace harassment."

"Yeah, but you're my lawyer so you'd have to argue with yourself," Evergreen laughed. "Which you could, you've got an ego big enough you probably crop up on those reddit pages about people who think they're really smart," Freed let out an indignant sound at that, and Ever just laughed. "Just take some time off, you know you have to have a week off eventually. Why not just do it now? Enjoy the countryside, smell the fresh air, read a book."

"I read constantly, the fresh air is laden with the scent of literal shit, and so far the countryside is a pointless expanse of green that makes me want to take on more cases against environmentalists."

"Oh stop feeling sorry for yourself," Evergreen laughed. "Find your hotel, get yourself a drink, and relax for a week."

After a second of consideration, and a deflated sigh, Freed spoke again. "What's the hotel called."

"Fairy Tail Inn," Evergreen read aloud. "Sounds a bit cliché, but the rooms look great and the reviews are all good. Should be at one end of the high street, at the top of the hill."

Freed looked back over his shoulder, he had walked past the hotel in his search for a reliable amount of signal. He hadn't paid it much attention, as it was at the start of the conversation and he'd been attempting to understand any of what Evergreen was saying, but it looked nice enough. The only real reason he had actually remembered the place was because he was fairly sure they had mistaken the two spellings of the word Tail. He started to walk back up the steep high-street, telling Evergreen that he knew where the place was.

"Okay, I'll leave you to it then," Evergreen smiled, and the buzzing on the phone returned slightly. "See you in a week. Oh, and text me a picture of the house when you're tetchy so I can make fun of you. Bye!"

She cut herself off before Freed could reply, and the lawyer rolled his eyes slightly.

When he reached the top of the hill, he walked through a quaint beer garden and into the Fairy Tail building. He was confronted with a small front desk, behind which a woman with a light bob smiled up at him. He walked towards her, scanning the name tag – Lisanna – before she gave a polite introduction to the hotel.

"Are you here to eat, or to stay sir?" She asked, voice enthusiastic and happy.

"To stay," Freed explained. "I believe my friend just made a reservation for me. Freed Justine."

"One moment," She smiled, leaning down, and typing on the computer.

As she worked, Freed glanced around the lobby area. From the outside, the building had been incredibly rustic looking, and Freed had feared slightly that it was going to be as old fashioned and outdated inside as well. But it was contemporary, clean, and relatively nice. It was clear that it was made to look farmhouse-ish while keeping all the needed amenities, making a distinction from the branded hotels while also keeping to a high quality.

They had a few certificates hung on the walls, mainly hotel awards from different companies. There was also something proclaiming 'MAGNOLIA: Village of the Year 2019' in proud prominence. Freed vaguely wondered if this was something all businesses got, or if Fairy Tail was some kind of hub for the town.

"There you are," Lisanna said suddenly, and Freed turned back to her. "Room 17. If you'd like to follow me, I'll take you there. I can carry your bags if you'd like."

"I don't have any bags with me, actually," Freed said, and Lisanna looked at the floor with a frown to confirm his words. "This is rather impromptu, I'm afraid. I'm having a suitcase sent down here, I expect it'll be here tomorrow."

"Oh, okay," Lisanna smiled, though Freed could clearly see she was somewhat confused. "What brings you to Magnolia, if you don't mind me asking? We don't get many people here in autumn, you're our only guest actually."

"It's not for pleasure," Freed explained. "I inherited some property, and selling it isn't as easy as I thought, so I'll be here for a little while."

"Is that the Albion House?" She asked as they turned a corner.

"Yes," Freed answered a little slowly.

"Oh, sorry, that probably sounds a bit creepy that I know it so fast," She laughed. "It's just that news sort of travelled about it getting a new owner. It's been run down for a while, and people thought that maybe the new person would try and renovate it. But if you want to sell it then that's your choice of course, I hope it goes better than it did with your mother-" She stopped talking, and clearly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, I'm sorry. For your loss, and for that."

"You don't need to do that," Freed waved her off. "I'm not going to start crying at the sound of her name."

She looked relieved at his reaction, and Freed tried not to show a small scowl on his face. The young woman hadn't done anything wrong, but the fact she knew both the house and the fact his mother had died meant that other people knew as well. He had hoped that, at least for one week, he wouldn't have to deal with people knowing about his bereavement. Apparently he wasn't even going to be given this.

"Is the house important for some reason?" Freed asked as they climbed the stairs. "It's got historical preservation, and you said people were interested when they found out I own it."

"Not exactly," Lisanna smiled. "I think all the buildings in the town have that status, they want to make it look like it did when it was made. Personally, I think they do it because the council makes a lot of money from film shoots coming here," She laughed a little. "And we're a fairly small community, so news gets around. They were the same when it got sold last time, actually. They thought it'd get renovated too."

"So my mother wasn't the reason it looks like it does, then?"

"I've never seen it in a better state," Lisanna shrugged, before pausing in thought. "I think there's a painting of what it used to look like in your room. That's a coincidence."

She laughed to herself before continuing to walk, Freed following her. They walked through a few more corridors and up another staircase before they stopped at the old looking door of one of the rooms. Lisanna pulled a key from her pocket and opened the door, revealing the room that was to be Freed's home for the rest of the week. Freed walked in after, and looked around.

It was a nice room, also designed to look like it belonged in a farm house while still being relatively luxurious. It was on the smaller side, clearly Evergreen hadn't wanted to spend too much if the single bed was telling, but nice enough. A private bathroom, TV, and area for making drinks. It was essentially everything one could want from a hotel room. Although the fact that the slanted roof above the bed was low did make Freed pause; he would have to make sure not to bang his head when he awoke.

His eyes fell to a painting on the wall. Sure enough, there was an illustration of the house he'd been inside, only in a much better state. It looked rather homely.

"It's nice, isn't it," Lisanna smiled. "I think that's why people want to see it renovated. Just because it's nice."

"Well, perhaps soon it will be," Freed mused. "I'll most likely have to sell it to a retail auction, they often attract people looking for cheap property to work on, or so my estate agent said. So perhaps that'll happen."

"You don't sound enthusiastic about the idea?"

"I was hoping for more than an auction house would be willing to pay, I must admit," Freed sighed, still looking at the painting. "It's a last resort, but I doubt I'll find a better offer over the next week."

"You could renovate it and sell it when you're done?" Lisanna suggested.

"My knowledge of property development extends to the legal side only," Freed chuckled to himself. "If I were to try and work on it, there's a good chance I'd set it alight. I expect that doesn't align with the preservations society's rules."

"I suppose not," Lisanna laughed. "I should get back to the desk and leave you alone. Breakfast is served from six until twelve, you get it included in the price of the room. And if your bags come I'll bring them up for you, or have my brother do it since he's working the desk tomorrow If there's anything else you need, just call reception," She smiled. "And we hope you enjoy your stay."

Freed watched her leave, before standing alone in the room and letting himself decompress for the first time since he arrived.

Peculiarly, he found his gaze land on the painting.

#Fraxus Day 2020 #Fraxus Day #Fraxus #Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #fairy tail #fanfic #writing #event #Multichapter #Word Count 3.9k #Fuckyeahfraxus

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hihowareyawrites · 4 years ago

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Did You Know I’m Utterly Insane?

Cross Posted from AO3

No pairing; Solf J. Kimblee character study

Summary: Solf J. Kimblee was not a man who was uncertain of anything, generally. He felt completely aware of everything he said and did. His refusal to continue his father's business, his eagerness to leave home, and his fondness for destructive alchemy- yes, it was never anything he was unsure of. But now and again, he did question his well being.

Solf J. Kimblee was not a man who was uncertain of anything, generally. He felt completely aware of everything he said and did. His refusal to continue his father's business, his eagerness to leave home, and his fondness for destructive alchemy- yes, it was never anything he was unsure of. But now and again, he did question his well being.

If nothing else he was defined by his savior faire- his uncanny ability to enter a situation and claim it, appearing dominating and submissive all at once. He would not hold the conversation captive, but rather steer it with small comments and gestures. It was something that made those around him captivated by his presence, and also, wary of his aura.

But of course, he knew what he was doing.

He would observe others, their empathy and their compassion. The way they felt for others. He wondered what that must be like, to see the pain of another person and truly understand what it is they were feeling. It was something he found trying. He'd given the effort as much as he could, he must feel some care for his mother (or so he thought), since he did intend to give her some of his income provided by the state.

But was it compassion? Or was he just repaying a debt he felt he owed her, out of respect? Respect was an easy emotion for him. He could acknowledge another person's ability or conviction, and he could respect them. But that didn't necessarily mean he cared about what happened to them beyond that.

No, perhaps he cared more for vanity and social status than he'd thought. The delicate thought and meticulous eye he would give to his appearance was unlike the passing glance offered to those suffering around him. But he couldn't understand what he was supposed to feel, then.

He did feel however, anger. He had a reservoir of bitterness welled up in the black of his heart, something he felt could devour him from the inside. He had no desire to truly help people. Some might credit it to late teenage angst, or perhaps a typical anger issue distinctive of young men. But he didn't find either apropos.

The creation of his alchemic specialty was with that distinction; that he had no internal drive to aid the masses. It would get him nowhere, he felt. Of course he was capable of preforming standard alchemy, he could do it if he needed. If he wanted. But he didn't want to.

He channeled the frustration, the apathy, the anger, the distaste for things around him, for people, into his work. Maybe it was because his father pushed such a rigid lifestyle on him. Maybe it was because no matter how hard he saw his mother work, she could never get ahead. Maybe he was just born with a natural affliction. The reasons didn't matter, the results did.

When he'd first arrived in central for his exam, he found it was a much different place from his small hometown. It was large, it was loud, it was a city. It had the capacity to house so many, but were those on the streets then, the remainder? He'd passed a number of homeless people, starving and cold and sad- and he found he felt nothing. No concern to help them, no desire to do more. He only thought it was the way of nature, survival of the fittest, and moved on. He felt nothing.

It occurred to him that perhaps, his view was unnatural. Perhaps his lack of concern for others wasn't standard, and he felt for the first time ever, a sense of inferiority. What genetic trait was he denied that allowed others access to an emotion he couldn't attain? What sort of defective make up did he have that rendered him unable to feel and act as everyone else does? He'd never an issue with memorizing algorithms or music or languages, and yet the simplest task of all was something that would not come easy to him.

But he could pretend it did. He studied them, the people around him. The ones in the large central office, the ones he passed on the street, the ones who sat near him in wait. He studied them all, and carefully built a persona.

When it came time for his interview, he imagined what each of his emotional models would say- how they would react. His skills were enough to award him a rank of major, a coveted watch, and a unique title. But he applauded himself on his ability to fit in with the masses. He allowed himself a sliver of haughtiness, that they did not truly know the man they had employed. He considered they had seen through him and simply did not care, but his ego preferred the former.

He did however tell them of his indifference to committing murder on behalf of the state, how it was a duty he would gladly uphold for his military. They praised him for his candor, and his loyalty. This seeming confession of psychopathy was overlooked. This confession meant nothing.

He found these brief moments to be the most rewarding; the only time where he truly felt like he might be happy. Deceiving others, earning praise, things that others may find unbecoming traits.

In training, he found his objective difficult. Many of the tasks were laden with bouts of heroics. Saving this civilian, protecting this city, et cetera. He found it banal if nothing else, but moreso uninvigorating. Why should he care if one more person were to die? Or perhaps one hundred more? What could they possibly offer, if they hadn't the will power to keep themselves alive of their own accord anyway? He hadn't become a state alchemist to be a charity worker, he had become a state alchemist for... now what was the reason again? It didn't matter, he found comfort in being apart of something.

While reading one night, he came upon studies of sociopathy and psychosis. He tried to separate himself from them, but found it harder as he skimmed the psychology book further. Yes, perhaps he did relate to this- perhaps his feelings were symptomatic of personality disorders he'd only known in passing until now. But should that make him a bad person, if he was suffering from an illness of the mind? Some may applaud him for seeking a normal life anyway. He applauded himself. He was twenty three, and doing well enough.

Still, there was a dull ache in his chest, for something more.

Only a few years later, they were being sent to war. He found purpose in his orders. They were giving him a command, a standard to perfect. It didn't matter what the order was, he was determined to be the best at it, regardless.

His new favorite hobby was walking down the streets, post-destruction, and admiring his own work. There was the exhilaration of the act of course, but there was nothing quite like enjoying the afterglow of the efforts either. He'd liken the entire experience to sex, but without the obligation of human connection after. This experience was all he needed to feel alive. He wished the war would go on forever, that he could live this way for the rest of his life. Every day would be a new opportunity to best himself, and he would seek enlightenment with every attempt. Yes, that would be ideal.

He tried to make acquaintances, to associate with living people, but none could understand him. It wasn't that he wanted nor needed to be understood, but he desired some sense of comradery with anyone here. Even though the uniforms on their backs were the same, he felt as though he simply had many enemies he could not and should not target.

When he was handed the stone, a tangible shard of human souls, there was an immediate connection. This small crystallized object, formed from human suffering, had more in common with him than any of the people around him. It existed only to cause chaos. It too was burdened with a tempest of agony, and he used it to inflict the same on those around him. This stone was truly the only thing that he understood, that understood him. It too existed merely to cause suffering.

He'd not be separated from it. He took their lives solely to preserve his possession- it's possession of him. He held out his hands promptly, to be cuffed. At the movements of his arms those around him recoiled, knowing full well what his hands were capable of. Surrender however was not a known attribute. He stood on trial and accepted any guilt. He did not flaunt it, he simply agreed. His assigned lawyer threw down his papers in frustration; why must this man cooperate with the jury and not his own attorney? He admired his new home, a stuffy, dark and damp cell, and shrugged off the gnawing feeling of claustrophobia. Surely, this is where he would spend the last of his days. He would be handed the death sentence eventually, right? It was only a matter of time.

And then 6 years went by. And there was nothing. Truly, he would be left to rot here. He announced full guilt in the crimes he committed, and they allowed him to live. This confession, too, meant nothing.

There was an emptiness growing in the pit of his stomach, so deep he thought the stone would become lost in it. What is all of this for? What was any of this for? He couldn't remember now.

And soon he was released. With bravado and a false sense of self entitlement he announced his deserving of freedom; truly, if they would release him after all this time, he had earned it. But there was still a confusion, a lack of certainty. What his goals were, what his plans were. He followed orders diligently, set himself to one goal and chased that goal. Chased it until it impaled him through the side. Chased it until it dared make him feel humiliated in front of dozens. Chased it until he was told to give up, and focus on something else. Failure was a new feeling.

Or, it was until it started to occur again and again. And then he began to realize that he was never succeeding at anything. The praise and acclaim he had earned in Ishval meant nothing. Now, he was unable to accomplish any given task. He stood in apoplexy until the order was given to rescue Pride, and he decided he would not fail again.

And though hard he did try, he found himself truly recounting his life's purpose as he lay on the ground hemorrhaging. His life force escaping out his throat and onto his tailored suit. In this moment, he confessed his crimes and his failures, to himself. He recounted them and, for the true first time in his life, felt regret. Regret he had not accomplished more. He realized then, while he had confessed his crimes to others, he never truly had to himself. And upon doing so found he was remorseless. And found that aside from orders given from others, his actions were without goal or purpose. He realized, only now in death, that he had never truly had free will. His conviction was a ruse, he acted only on the conviction of others.

"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. "

Solf J. Kimblee was not a man who was uncertain of anything, generally. Except for his own identity and reason for living, he questioned only when it was too late.

#solf j. kimblee #Solf J Kimblee #kimblee #fma fanfic #fma #Fullmetal Alchemist

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but-the-library-of-alexandria · 5 years ago

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I have some thoughts about Good Omens, Crowley and Aziraphale and Change. Maybe all this is obvious but indulge me anyway.

One of the many ways that C&A are visually presented as opposites - one of the subtler ones, I think - is that Crowley’s appearance changes frequently. Crowley’s aesthetic and his everyday lifestyle is in many ways defined by his changeability. He has a few favourite pieces, but he seems to wake up each morning and find something new and on-trend to wear. He has a new haircut every few years and a few times he(?) changes his gender presentation for a while, too. Sure, he has an old-fashioned answerphone and a vintage car, but those things are pretty on-trend right now, and he also has a smartphone, a fancy TV and a chic, relatively modern home. His modernity, in every era, relies on making frequent changes to everything he owns, and himself.

Hell, one of the first things we see Crowley do is change:

The next we hear of him, he’s changed his name. He’s changed it again when we see him in the forties, and both times there’s a whole little dialogue around it, just to make it more conspicuous.

And Aziraphale? Well, he literally wears the same jacket for over a hundred years. He’s had the same haircut for all of time. Aziraphale’s aesthetic - both in terms of his own clothes and in his home/bookshop/favourite places - is defined by the old-fashioned and preserved. His whole earthly life has been built around preserving antiques - the bookshop, that jacket again:

Aziraphale also never seems to change his name. He presumably has a human alias, but it’s only used once (the Nazis call him ‘Mr. Fell’) and his false forenames are never revealed, except that the initials are A.Z (according to the sign over his bookshop). He generally seems to go by Aziraphale or nothing at all; he doesn’t seem to have given a name at all to Shadwell, while Crowley invented yet another alias to deal with him.

Doesn’t this reflect their different attitudes to bigger things as well?

Crowley is all for carving out a new path pretty much the moment the apocalypse shows it’s face on earth, while Aziraphale, the dude who said ‘you go too fast for me’ after 6000 years, waits until the very last minute to give up on going the approved, official route.

It’s change Crowley threatens Aziraphale with to scare him into helping stop the apocalypse - the loss of his routine, the things he loves, his old things, old books and old clothes. The end of the world would promise an enormous change, even if ‘good’ were to win the war and create some kind of paradise.

Of course, they’re both in this because they like their familiar lives on earth and don’t want to lose that, but it seems to be lack of change Crowley fears:

Perhaps progress, new experiences, and constant stimulation are what Crowley likes best about being on earth, as opposed to the timeless stagnation of either heaven or hell. Aziraphale, meanwhile, likes to live in a bit of a cocoon, at least in the modern day: he’s not keeping up with the latest music or technology, just basking in the things humans have already created.

This isn’t to say that Aziraphale doesn’t change at all. In fact, he adapts his look to the current fashions for thousands of years in episode three: a new, usually quite showy, outfit for almost every era of history.

The moment he startings settling into his Forever Look is sometime during The Breakup - here he is on that day, wearing his soon-to-be signature jacket:

and again, in the forties, in almost the same outfit:

and sporting the same Look for this infamous moment:

And he sticks with it into the modern day.

He stops changing around the time he starts to get scared about how things are going. Earlier in time - pre-Arrangement and into the earlier stages of the Arrangement era - he seems happy enough to move with the times, fashion-wise and in terms of culture. It’s only when shit starts getting real with this whole thing he has going with Crowley - when Crowley starts asking for holy water and breaking into churches, and making it clear that what they’re doing is dangerous but that he doesn’t plan to let that stop him - that Aziraphale starts looking for more stability and clinging to ‘the old days’.

That iconic line fits this whole Change theme perfectly: at some point in time, Aziraphale was happy to be swept along, but when he’s hit with the very real possibility of his and Crowley’s destruction, all of a sudden it’s all about keeping things how they are, or even how they were, in defiance of a future where things look to be getting more and more dangerous for them. Perhaps the sweet spot was right there in the Victorian era, after their formative lunch date in Paris but just before the holy water debacle that made Aziraphale back-pedal - so he wears the jacket that belonged to that ideal time forever.

Crowley has the opposite approach to being faced with possible destruction: change more! Explore new avenues of self-defence, new ways of living and of being! Get hold of holy water, stop the apocalypse, form a whole new ‘side’ distinct from either heaven or hell! But Aziraphale conspicuously struggles to accept Crowley’s changes, struggling with his new names, getting confused by his new-fashioned music and slang, and of course, his proposed changes to their relationship over the course of the years.

And I think it’s this dichotomy, more than the good/evil, angel/demon one, that causes most of the tension in their relationship. I’m gonna promote this post again for Good Shit relating to this: basically the idea that crowley’s reaction to danger is to commit to your stance and prepare some ways to survive the inevitable consequences, whereas Aziraphale’s reaction is to put the brakes on whatever you’re doing wrong and try not to get into any more trouble.

Aziraphale’s instinct to hold back, to look back to a time before the trouble started - his instinct to stop things from getting worse, and to keep everything that’s working well, everything he’s comfortable with, exactly as it is, clashes with Crowley’s instinct to keep adapting and moving forward to stay ahead of the game. And isn’t that the real difference between angels and demons: fidelity to the status quo vs. questioning and pushing boundaries?

And I just love that you can see all this in their clothes.

#I've been sitting on this for weeks and I finally wrote it down halleluja #good omens #good omens meta #go #ineffable husbands #Elise's posts

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somerton · 4 years ago

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The American Trilogy

People have said that Stanley Kubrick’s final 7 films are more like 1 film about humanity spanning different genres. It’s undeniable that there are specific parallels and connections between his films, but the way his films connect to each other on a basic level is quite interesting and not very difficult to see.

Dr. Strangelove ends with nuclear bombs destroying the world cut to the black void of 2001; The Dawn of Man. The end of the world caused by man’s violent nature transitioned into the beginning of man’s violent nature with Moonwatcher discovering the bone as a weapon.

2001 ends with the Starchild looking directly at the camera; at us, while A Clockwork Orange opens with a closeup on Alex’s eye. A transcended soul cut to a devilish man. The eye was a very potent symbol within 2001, representing the vast exploration possible inside oneself. The eye continues to be important in Clockwork, especially with Alex’s stigmata eyeball cuff links, strengthening the comparison to the godlike Starchild and Jesus Christ dying on the cross as a man, transcending to a God. Alex does not transcend, he lives on to do the deeds of evil men.

A Clockwork Orange, set in a near future or alternate reality, ends with an offer for Alex to move his way up the societal ladder by aligning himself with the same corrupt politicians who used the Ludavico technique on him in the first place, then a daydream with Alex surrounded by what look to be noble men and women of a past era observing him in a sexual act with a woman. The next film, Barry Lyndon is a period piece that explores the issues of class in 18th century Europe and trying to better oneself by moving up in the classist system. Clockwork is a story about where society is now (or was then), while Barry Lyndon explores where society was within the period piece genre. Interestingly enough not much has changed. Both world’s are violent, full of wealthy people using lower class people to further their own agendas, the people at the bottom forced to scratch their way to the top of a corrupt system, often using nefarious techniques to get ahead.

Kubrick is trying to communicate the way society / humans are and have always been while connecting the films with transitional elements that bring this idea into the viewer’s subconscious.

I believe those films, are also connected to the final three in Kubrick’s portrayal humanity and the way he sought to hold a mirror up to us via the cinema screen. However, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut seem to have a deeper connection to each other than the previous films. Yes, they too are an exploration of genre, using the conventions of it to subvert more complex themes, but I feel Kubrick started to develop ideas on how to thematically connect these films on an even deeper level throughout the 20 year period spent completing these three.

I suggest that the final three films act as a trilogy, exploring the genocide America was built on and the ideals of which continue to permeate through our society. These films are his ode to America’s dark secret hidden in plain sight. Not since Dr. Strangelove had he made a movie even based in America. These final 3 are inherently American films. While Strangelove was an overt criticism of authoritarian power, the final trilogy shrouds itself in a ghost story, a war epic, and a sexual thriller in order to issue Kubrick’s vicious critique.

Just to caveat, I don’t think the final trilogy are ONLY critiquing America but I do think this is crucial in all three films, more so than his others excluding Strangelove. 2001, Clockwork, and Barry Lyndon are more overtly commenting on humanity and culture in general.

Let’s get into how the final 3 specifically do this. I’m going to breeze by a lot of basic info that any Kubrick obsessive should already know.

The Shining references Native Americans constantly, the hotel is built on an “Indian burial ground” and had to repel Native American attacks while building the Overlook. There’s a ton of info on this out there already so I don’t feel it necessary to explain all the evidence to support this, but it’s overtly injected into the film, barely under the surface. There’s also a ton of material to support the idea that the hotel itself represents America and it’s constant ability to “Overlook” the horrors that our society is built on. Stuart Ullman, the Hotel Manager has an American flag on his desk, echoing his jacket and tie with an American eagle statue poking out form behind his head (Symbols related to characters’ heads are important in Kubrick’s work). In a film where mirrors are also important his initials backwards are US. The Shining is about the bloody birth of America and the generational inheritance of said violence. To see these things, one has to use their own ability to Shine and see through the veil of genre.

The next film is Full Metal Jacket, based in the Vietnam War. The film starts out with soldiers getting their heads shaved, representing the first step in their dehumanization at the hands of the U.S Military. Vietnam is not considered a just war and is an obvious extension of the genocidal characteristics America was born into. America is still doing the same thing that The Shining represents; going into a place full of brown skinned people and wreaking havoc for their own benefit and seemingly justified by racial bias. Vietnam is truly the beginning of a modern genocide, justified by politics, fear, money, and propaganda. This film came out in 1987, 12 years after Vietnam ended, but interestingly enough 3 years before another example of this American Imperialism; The Gulf War. Full Metal Jacket makes us look at something inhumane that just recently happened and yet most people remember the drill Sergeant yelling hilarious obscenities at the soldiers, many thinking the second half of the film as inferior to the first. As horrific as the dehumanization process of bootcamp is, it’s easier to watch than the reality that happened in Vietnam. In the film’s major battle sequence, we see multiple solders die, wasting hundreds of rounds only to find one young girl to be their target. This is the reality of Vietnam. Note the poster’s reference to Joker’s helmet, BORN TO KILL, relating to both the birth of America and the eagle behind Ullman’s head, turning him into a literal figurehead of this inherited American violence.

Eyes Wide Shut continues this theme from the perspective of someone living their adult life in post Vietnam society. The modern genocide has turned war into a commodity and has shown the darkest side of capitalism. Bill probably was too young to go to Vietnam but would be a first generation adult starting a family post Vietnam (meaning he was old enough to experience Vietnam as a child but not old enough to go).

Coincidentally enough, when EWS was released in 1999 the US were only a few years away from yet another unjust conflict in Iraq based on lies with huge non-compete contracts handed out to companies that the G.W. Bush administration had personal and financial connections with. It’s also interesting to note that although this couldn’t have been intended by Kubrick, the themes of generational violence being passed down through the generations connects to George Bush starting an Iraq war in the 90s while just over a decade later his son would do that same. Kubrick saw humanity in such a deep way, the good and bad, that he’s almost seen the future through his exploration of complex themes. Sadly though I don’t believe he was psychic, but purely able to to see the reality of cycles we humans perpetuate throughout time.

Eyes Wide Shut is about modern society’s classist structures and how someone like Bill Harford could be so oblivious to the dangers that surround his lovely life and how easily that can be taken away by his own inability to see himself and the various social constructs he participates in. He is blind to the world, happy as clam to live an upperclass Manhattanite lifestyle. This is inherently connected to the more overt violent themes in the previous two films. There is a cultural genocide perpetuated by the richest people who use others like pieces on a chessboard; built off of the original sin of America’s treatment of the Natives and continued through our unjust wars of today, finally providing the power structure for a few people to wield over the rest. Money in Eyes Wide Shut is equivalent to the axe in The Shining, the rifles in Full Metal Jacket. The first line in Eyes Wide Shut is, “Honey have you seen my wallet?”. This is no accident, it’s a seemingly insignificant line of dialog that immediately begins to beg you to pay attention to this theme.

- From The Shining: ULLMAN: We had four presidents who stayed here, lots of movie stars. WENDY: Royalty? ULLMAN: All the best people.

See my post on “All the best people”

#The Shining #Full Metal Jacket #Eyes Wide Shut

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