#better question is does he recognize it as grief (probably not) and actually engage in the process of grieving (absolutely not)

[dilfdyke]

i know armands feelings towards the theatre coven were complicated and while i dont think theres any reality where he wouldve saved them. i do think he mourns them sometimes. bc quite frankly i dont think anyone could live with a group of people for 150ish years and not feel some sense of loss when they all die

[noodlewright]

Characters: Clockwork, Danny Fenton, Maddie Pairings: None Rating: G

-

“So will it be between seventy and a hundred, or lower?”

“No. Keep working.”

At the heart of Clockwork's lair, Danny stared unseeingly at the math worksheet in front of him. The numbers were starting to blur together. 

Today, Danny was visiting Clockwork after having a fit of homework frustration that was quickly becoming routine. He was lucky to have found a mentor in Clockwork and studied with him as frequently as he could. Danny had quickly found that the ghost was, apparently, scary good with numbers, but there was nothing to be done to make math less mind numbing.

“No, as in it'll be higher?”

“You know perfectly well Danny.”

Danny wanted to know if all his extra study sessions would pay off when it came to Friday's big test, but he knew what Clockwork was getting at. The spirit was concerned that knowing his future test score would make him slack off, either because of an expectation that he would do well regardless, or that he would see no point in studying with failure to come anyway.

He needed to study for now and later exams, Clockwork insisted.

Danny huffed in annoyance and stared harder at the problem that gave him such grief.

It didn't yield.

“Do you want to go over it again?”

Danny hung his head in defeat. “Yeah.”

Clockwork left his terminal and made his way to Danny's side with a spare sheet of paper, half of it covered in a scrawl from earlier.

Halfway there, the spirit paused. Clockwork stared just over Danny's shoulder, as though a thought had just occurred to him.

It wasn't the first time this had happened. Just the other day, while Danny visited, Clockwork had done a similar action. He hadn't given it much thought then, or the ones before. Everyone did it on occasion. In Danny’s case, it usually happened when he walked through a doorway. Most people though, Danny considered, didn't do it this much.

Maybe Clockwork was a little scatterbrained?

-

It was, by now, what Danny recognized and referred to as one of Clockwork's “Moments”.

Danny had come to learn that Clockwork had these frequently.  Clockwork didn't have all knowledge of all things, the spirit had once explained. Clockwork knew of the past, if he cared enough to know it, and knew of the present, but not all of the present. If he wanted, he could learn it all but there were, he said, very many things that were dull and unimportant, and taking the time to see every bit would be a torture unimaginable.

The future was similar to him, in that he didn't endeavor to see every scrap of it, but even if he tried, it wouldn't have the same easy clarity.

The real take-away was that, when it came to the future, all things weren't set in stone, and as Clockwork explained, the ghost often felt that some events got lobbed at his head and he needed a moment to sort out the new information. Danny could understand that. He had trouble grasping the rest of the hour-long, complicated discussion that included half a dozen different metaphors and some math chalked onto the wall, but he could get that at least, and was glad to gain a little more insight on how Clockwork's abilities functioned.

-

“Are you okay?”

Clockwork’s attention snapped to Danny. The intense gaze made him uneasy. Was Clockwork mad? He got the feeling like he might have interrupted something.

“Uh, sorry.”

Immediately Clockwork's eyes widened, “No no, I’m sorry. I just realized something. I need to go-”

“What?” They had barely started!

A wink was sent his way. “It won't even be a moment.”

Oh right. Well, it wasn't like Danny could just forget the last fifteen years of rigid physical laws that applied to his and everyone else's lives. Clockwork would probably only disappear and reappear between blinks.

A thought occurred to him.

“Wait, have you been disappearing on me this whole time?” he asked. He shouldn’t be surprised, it would be so easy to ditch and return without anyone being the wiser. 

“No, just when you’re already engaged in something.” Clockwork admitted.  

So basically, any time Danny wasn’t actually talking to Clockwork.  Which was a lot.

He shouldn’t be bothered by it.  He hadn’t even caught onto it until just now, but still, it sat unwell with him that Danny was someone who was to be put aside for a later date.  Couldn’t it wait until after Danny had left?  It wasn’t like Clockwork couldn’t just go back to whatever time period he pleased.

It would be polite at the very least.

But what was Danny going to do about it? Clockwork was nice enough, and Danny wasn't about to voice his disappointment when it wasn't actually that big of a deal to begin with. It would just have to be another mannerism to add to Clockwork's growing list.

“Uh, okay. So what's got you in such a rush to go?”

Clockwork opened his mouth to answer, but paused for another faraway look to overtake his face. “. . . Well, how do you feel about coming with me to find out?” he finally said.

There was hardly a thought before Danny agreed. “Sure!”

They set off.

-

Clockwork's portal led them to a large, immaculate kitchen.

“Very nice.” Danny said as he stepped out and oggled at the sheer size of the room. The number of cooking ranges and pots suggested that he was at a restaurant. “Do you come here a lot?”

Clockwork gave a distracted noise of affirmation as he walked over to a glowing red stove top and fiddled with the knobs until it was completely turned off. 

Had he just stopped what could have been a fire?

The ghost then grabbed at unsightly cords that littered the countertops and tucked them into less noticeable places.

“Danny, there is a set of knives to your left. Would you please place them in the cupboard?”

The cutlery in question had been loosely kept in a stainless steel container, not very dangerous in his opinion, but he obligingly shut it away.

From Clockwork's direction, Danny could vaguely make out senseless muttering, “-idiot thinks he's a chef . . . ”

Yeah, no kidding. Idiot was an understatement. Who left a stove on?

Danny startled at a sensation that brushed across his ankles.

He looked down to see a purring cat. “Um. Hi.”

It was long haired, and an obviously very well-kept animal. It was incredibly out-of-place for the current location. The cat gave him a lazy, silent meow. 

“I didn't think cats were allowed in restaurants.”

“It isn't a restaurant,” Clockwork clarified. “This is the home of Vlad Masters.”

Danny suddenly snapped alert and floated off the ground in a battle ready stance. His eyes darted around in search of an unwelcome presence. 

“He isn't here right now.” 

Danny immediately relaxed and found his footing again. He regarded the cat and kitchen before him once more. Now it was looking familiar. This wasn't his first jaunt uninvited to Vlad's house, but he had never paused to really look at the rooms he was darting through.

“Okay, so what are we doing here? I mean, I know fire-safety is important and all, but a blazing house and that guy isn't the saddest combination that I can imagine.”

“I understand,” Clockwork said as he made his way to a nearby window and began working its unyielding frame closed. “Masters has done you a great deal many wrongs. He is, what most would determine, unsalvageable. Unforgivable. Unethical and unrepentant.”

“Yeah. All that times a thousand.”

“He is also incredibly unstable.”

“I could have told you that.” Danny wondered where this was heading.

Clockwork ceased his fiddling and picked up the cat that had only been too content to loll on the ground. It wiggled, displeased at the graceless hold. 

“Before you is the crux of all of Masters’ affections.” He lifted the cat further with emphasis, and spoke with sincere solemnity. “The warmth held for you and your family is but a shrinking mote compared to what he has fostered with this animal.”

Shrinking? Anything that lessened Vlad's attention could only be a good thing. “Really? Does that mean he'll leave us alone now?”

Clockwork didn't entirely look him in the eyes when he said, “Not exactly. Masters is the very definition of passion and he can never entirely drop something once he's set upon it.”

“Not in all the timelines?”

“Most of those are currently closed and the few available are too . . .” Danny thought that Clockwork was about to have another Moment, but the spirit soon found his words, “-dreadful. Which is why it is very important that we curtail his fixations, in what ways we can, and direct him to better . . . things. This cat is crucial to that. He's poured all his love into it and should anything happen to it, Amityville will be a flaming crater, and its residents, crumbling charcoal.”

“He'd kill people for a cat?!”

“He'd kill someone for kicking it.”

“Oh my God. I mean, that's a really mean thing to do to a cat, and they deserve something, but the town is innocent. Why would he hurt them?”

“He’s an idiot when he's angry. And a part of him has always wanted to watch the world burn.”

Danny pulled the, now fed-up, cat out of Clockwork's arms and held it with complete reverence. “We have to protect this cat,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“We need to keep it inside and never let it out.”

“I know.”

“Sam can watch it when I can't-”

“Masters will be consumed with rage should it go missing.”

“Right. Okay. Well, it's- it's a cat, and it's been alright so far, right? It should be okay here. It's happy here and Vlad's happy.”

“But there's a problem. It's why I have to come here almost every blasted day. The cat is suicidal.”

“ . . . Is there a therapy for that?”

Clockwork gestured to the room, heedless of Danny, “She keeps trying to kill herself. Last week she was roadkill and the week before, mauled by a pack of dogs. I stop her from eating poisonous plants and she goes right back to them the next second. I keep her from chewing power cords and she tries and tries again- last time she did it while soaking wet from nearly drowning in the toilet. In fact, had we not been here, at this very moment, she would have deep fried herself! I am confident that I have now seen every possible misfortune that can befall an animal and I grow tired of it.”

Danny scrambled to absorb the dire information. “But . . . the deep fryer isn't even on.”

Clockwork glared at the animal pointedly. “And yet.”

Danny looked at the yowling cat in horror. “What can we do?”

“I'm doing all that I can.”

“But isn't there something we can do that is less hands-on? More permanent?”

“I've been scouring the timelines for that very answer and have come up short. Other possible solutions will show themselves eventually, but we're not at the right stage to begin exploring those.”

“Okay, well if we can't do anything with the cat, what about Vlad? Can't we just stop him?”

Clockwork rubbed his face tiredly. “Danny, a future where Masters has that sort of melt-down, and the city regardless saved, is not a future either of us want.”

Danny wished he could fact-check that, but he wasn't the one with foresight. “Are you suuure?” he needled.

“Yes.”

Well, Danny supposed that was that. He didn't entirely believe Clockwork. It was hard to judge when he knew so little of the information as a whole, it could just be that there was something that had been missed. However, he did trust that it was what Clockwork believed.

“Clockwork?”

“Hm?”

“This future you have in mind, is it a really good one?”

“. . . It's not all good, but it has a great deal many good things, yes.”

Something niggled at Danny. It was a thing that had long been bothering him, and it reared its ugly head whenever altering timelines came up, but he had never earnestly voiced it. Mostly because he had yet to see any bad come of it. “Clockwork, I know you can do all these cool things, but do you ever think that maybe you shouldn't be doing all this? Changing the timelines, I mean. I get wanting to have a better future for people, but what if you don't make the right choice? Why not just let it go?”

“Instead, how about you let it go?”

Danny's mouth dropped open in shock at the sheer rudeness, until he realized that Clockwork was pointing at the cat. She writhed in his arms and gave him warning bites to his gloves. 

He guessed Clockwork's answer wasn’t as much a brush-off as it was a diversion then. Fine.

He, gently, released the cat and planned to get right back to the questions at hand, but Clockwork addressed him before he could open his mouth.

“I've let things go a time or two before, Danny.” Clockwork had taken an interest in one of his many watches, his head tucked down so that shadow eclipsed most of his face. “And contrary to what some would have you believe, I have learned that it is better to do something, even if it's not the very best, than nothing at all. Inaction and apathy are things that I have fought hard to stay buried, and to embrace them again would be inexcusable.”

What could have possibly have happened? How bad did it get? Did he really want to know? 

“What-”

“So, will you help me keep this cat alive?”

And Danny did drop it, just like that. Clockwork clearly didn’t want to talk about it. That didn't mean he wasn't still curious. He was. But for today, and probably for a while, he would leave it be.

-

Vlad returned to the center of his current frustrations. He had been trying to recreate an old family recipe, when suddenly, he had been called away on business. It wasn't a long meeting, but he had felt the need to rush. A thought had dogged at him since he left.

Had he left the stove on?

He swung the kitchen door open and immediately calmed at the lack of raging flames and burning stove-tops. 

It seemed he did remember.

There was also a lack of general mess that often accompanied his random acts of cookery. His ingredients were laid out still, as well as a number of random bowls, but the utensils were nowhere to be seen and the deep fryer had been dumped. Curious. He didn't keep his cleaning staff this late, and even if he had, they wouldn't have been so lazy as to not properly clean up a clear mess.

“Who the shit has been in my kitchen?”

-

More

[suf-lives-rent-free]

Fragments

Everything below is just my opinion; I am in no way trying to say that how I feel about this is the one correct take or whatever.

I know a lot of people like this episode and what happens in it, but I don’t.  I totally understand that some people just don’t want to see any negativity, period, but negativity is not inherently bad or wrong.

Negative opinions, even about something you enjoy, can be valid too - regardless of whether you happen to agree with them or not.

Also I get very salty near the end of this, and that might be entertaining to people who stan this episode?

I am aware that a lot of people – the majority, I’m pretty sure – think that the episode is a masterpiece. And on some level, I see where they’re coming from with that assessment.

The episode is boarded beautifully, the backgrounds – especially during the training montage – are stunning as always.  The music is fantastic, and the performances are great too.  In these respects, Fragments is a stand-out episode; I agree.

(Like look at this.  Gorgeous.)

However, something that’s bothered me since I saw the episode is the writers’ decision to write it into the story that Steven shatters Jasper.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: I just don’t get it.  I’m purposefully misinterpreting the story to say it’s bad.  Steven brings her back to life; and it’s not like he meant to do it in the first place.  I just don’t have the capacity to understand the sublime nature of the show’s storytelling.  I’m an SU crit and all I want to do is make the real fans feel about themselves for liking it.

Uhhhh... no.  Nah.  That ain’t it chief.

It’s true; I am not a writer.  I’m just a passive consumer of media.  However, I do not agree with the viewpoint that in order to properly understand or critique a thing you need to have the expertise and/or experience in order to make something similar.

For example, if I were to put something I drew when I was 10 years old next to something I drew yesterday, it shouldn’t take a person who has had an education in fine art to tell you that the latter drawing is better-looking than the former.

That’s how I approach media consumption and criticism; when I criticise a writing decision, I am doing so as a consumer.  I’m not saying I could write it better, or even that my opinion is objectively correct and the writer is wrong or bad.  I’m just saying that I didn’t like a thing.  Which, I would hope, is allowed?

Okay, defensive hedging over, back to the point; I don’t like that they had Steven shatter Jasper.

[I get markedly saltier from this point on, fyi]

Full admission of bias here: one of the things I really cherish about the original show is how they wrote Steven’s character; he’s a boy with interests that don’t rigidly conform to gender stereotypes.  He likes ‘boyish’ things and ‘girly’ things, and that’s okay; thats just him.  In cartoons when I was growing up, characters like Steven would be the butt of jokes about being ‘girly’ or thinly-veiled homophobia.  I find him very relatable, and I want to acknowledge that yes, that is probably a significant part of why I have such an issue with this episode’s twist.

I am not trying to say that he’s a perfect baby angel or whatever; Steven regularly gets frustrated and angry. He does some pretty manipulative and dickish things to people around him (stop trying to make Larsadie happen, Steven. It’s not going to happen).  He is a flawed character who fucks up sometimes. And he’s not 100% peaceful either; he acts violently when he defends himself against corrupted Gems and Homeworld Gems (and Crystal Gems on occasion *cough*Bismuth*cough*).  

However, he has a pacifistic temperament; whenever it’s possible, he prefers that problems be solved without needless violence or hurt.  And I like that; in most media, it’s rare to have a male protagonist who wants to solve their problems without jumping straight to punching things.

When he accidentally frees Centipeedle, he convinces the Gems to step off and allow him to try and rehabilitate her peacefully; he even notices that the Gems’ weapons are a trigger for her, and make them put them away.  He frees Lapis against the Gems’ wishes because he recognizes that keeping her prisoner is wrong, and when she steals the ocean, he talks it out and heals her so she can leave Earth peacefully.

He tries to aid Jasper when she starts corrupting, fixes Eyeball’s gemstone when she’s cracked and tries talking Bismuth down when she attacks him with the breaking point.  In all of these situations, his words and help are ignored or rejected; he’s forced to resort to violence.  And it traumatises him.  

We get an entire episode dedicated to the fact that he’s been struggling with processing these awful things that happened.

Even in Future, Steven shows hesitation about engaging in unncecessary violence; he gives into Jasper’s goading for a fight after what’s implied to be dozens of failed tries at making her come to Little Homeschool, and he spends an entire episode trying to keep Lapis from squashing the two rogue Lapis Lazulis. 

The only time he hops into a fight willingly is after Eyeball and Aquamarine hold Greg hostage, and even then they pose a clear threat to his and Greg’s safety and have made it clear that they want to hurt him emotionally and physically.  Even at that, he stops and switches tactics to talking them down as soon as they lose their focus and start bickering with each other.

(I mean, he fails.  But it’s the thought that counts.)

I personally find it really jarring that the writers found it appropriate to write it into the series that this same character – over the course of three (3) days – goes from disliking mindless violence for mindless violence’s sake to happily engaging in the destruction of plants and animals* and has done a total 180 on his willingness to spar with Jasper, to the point that he instigates their rematch.

*(You best believe plenty of small mammals and birds – y’know, like the nest Steven saved in the first episode – died as he and Jasper felled tree after tree, not to mention all of those displaced by the destruction of their habitats, and the potential loss of food sources from some of those trees.)

You’re telling me that it’s a reasonable character beat for this boy to gleefully laugh like an anime supervillain at his sudden new-found joy in fighting, then pin Jasper in place, taunt her for helping him get so strong, and hit her so hard that she breaks into pieces and dies?

You’re telling me that that’s an in-character thing for Steven Quartz Diamond Cutie-Pie DeMayo Universe do to another character?

(And yes I am purposefully dancing around talking about the mental health stuff because if I did that I’d have to go on a whole other tangent about Growing Pains and fuck I just don’t feel like it right now lmao)

Going back to Mindful Education, another big thing we see Steven struggle with is the idea that his mother shattered Pink Diamond.  This knowledge sits heavily with him; it makes him sympathetic to the Diamonds, even under the circumstances in which he sees them (escaping from the Human Zoo, and being on trial for said murder). 

He sees their grief, and he feels awful.  He questions who Rose Quartz even was.  He knows, based on what Garnet said, that Rose had to do it; there was no other way to free Earth.  But he still feels awful seeing the pain that Pink’s loss has caused Blue and Yellow Diamond.

In Steven Universe, shattering is clearly equated with execution/death multiple times.  When Pearl and Garnet fret over the crack in Amethyst’s gemstone worsening.  When Blue Diamond threatens to break Ruby.  When Bismuth introduces the breaking point, and Steven recoils at the sight of what it does.  If you want to take the fact that Gem shards are sentient and desperate to become whole again into account, you could even argue that it’s a fate worse than death. This particular act of violence is treated very, very seriously.

When we find out that Rose shattered Pink Diamond, there is a season and a half long arc unpacking the implications and consequences of this one action, and how this knowledge forever alters Steven’s mental image of his mother.  And she didn’t even kill anyone.  It was a lie!

In Steven Universe Future, Steven shatters Jasper 4 episodes before the end of the series.  And it’s only brought up twice; once for a big *gasp* moment during his breakdown in Everything’s Fine, and in I Am My Monster by Pearl, when she has to fill-in Bismuth, Lapis and Peridot.  Notably, it is never discussed around or by Jasper.  Y’know.  The person who actually died.

No indication of how (or even if) what Steven did is affecting his own self-image after his initial breakdown, how Jasper feels about what she went through beyond falling back into the Era 1 and 2 mindset.  No inkling of how the knowledge that Steven killed somebody has affected how anyone in his life thinks or feels about him; when Pearl brings it up in I Am My Monster, she seems to not even really believe it’s true.

If there are any consequences or talks about this incident, they’re skipped over between I Am My Monster and The Future, and we’re expected to assume that Steven and his therapist are dealing with it, I guess?

And yes.  It was an accident.  He did bring her back to life.  But it still happened.  If you hit someone over the head and they stop breathing, just because the paramedics are able to resusitate and stabilize them afterwards doesn’t mean you never hit them.

But here, it’s shoved aside because dwelling on it would take far too much time, and risks framing Steven in an unsympathetic way when he’s meant to be on the cusp of a breakdown.

It just feels like careless writing to me.  They really, really wanted their big action scene with Steven and Jasper, but didn’t think (or maybe weren’t interested in thinking) about the seriousness or consequences of what Steven shattering someone would entail.

In my opinion, Steven shattering Jasper is one of the cheapest, laziest things they could have ever done with his character (and hers, for that matter).  To me, the entire thing feels entirely out of character.  It’s pure shock value; nothing more.

So yeah.  That particular writing decision just does not work for me.  And if you disagree... well that’s fine?  It’s fine.  We can agree to disagree?  I’ve read a lot of defense/praise for this episode, and honestly even after processing all of those opinions and all the time my thoughts about this plotline have been stewing in my brain, I still feel the same way.

[akechicrimes]

You have the best takes and I was wondering what an actual Akechi redemption would look like? Sending him to prison is a weird take I've seen considering the themes of power, corruption, and manipulation of youth, and quite frankly it's just boring and lazy from a plot/character standpoint. I imagine the first step would be talking to Futaba and Haru (and others who were affected by his actions) but I'm not sure what would happen after that.

ok firstly THANKS i do my best yellin into the tunglr void

second “Sending him to prison is a weird take I’ve seen considering the themes of power, corruption, and manipulation of youth, and quite frankly it’s just boring and lazy from a plot/character standpoint” is the SEXIEST sentence ive ever read re: goro and thank you for putting these words in this particular order i want it framed, truly it makes zero sense whatsoever

third thanks for this super duper cool question because weirdly enough i havent…………….. really thought about it before??? ive seen more than a few really interesting goro redemption arc fics but if i were gonna do one myself………………….. hmmmmmm

ok ok ok ok ok ok i will. do my best. big psuedo revisionist fanfic under cut

a redemption arc needs to address the wrongs and hurts that he’s done, as well as just generally other noxious junk. to rattle them off so we know what we’re working with, he

killed wakaba (unknown circumstances), which hurt futaba

killed okumura, which hurt haru

assisted shido in his rise to power

assisted an unknown number of other douchebags like shido in their rise to power

killed an unknown number of other douchebags

created psychotic breakdowns, involving casualties and potentially some deaths

was generally a shit on live television

lied to sae.

betrayed joker.

and from there he needs to address these in such a way that his character grows and is better for it.

simultaneously i think it’s important to weigh the opposite issues, which are the ways that akechi is either right or has a valid point, the ways that akechi has presumably been mistreated/abused by people around him, and just generally following through on seeing akechi become happier and healthier for having gone through a redemption arc. in no particular order, he:

apparently desperately craves approval/recognition from others, but not in a productive way (sorry the TV audience does not actually love you lmao!!!!!!!)

has some kind of complicated relationship with shido to say the fuckign LEAST, and i think addressing that angle of shido’s abuse is important

really suffers from his inability to be honest with just about anyone; how deeply he’s hidden his true self has not only exacerbated his loneliness, but it’s done so in a way that i think should be really understandable to any one of the thieves, who also need to hide their true selves and feelings when in public

is 100000% correct about how much shido should eat shit and die

does have a valid point about how dangerous the phantom thieves are, and, in irony of all ironies, probably is a good critic and moral barometer to make sure joker doesn’t go over any lines

is canonically the character who is most unafraid to go against joker’s orders

is smart all absolute FUCK while maintaining an attitude of FUCK COPS

so with all that in mind:

i’d say, the engine room confrontation happens as SOON as they enter shido’s palace. not necessarily specifically in the engine room, but that confrontation happens off the bat. the phantom thieves take two steps into shido’s palace and find that they can’t go anywhere–everything’s locked, or off limits, and the whole place is under more surveillance than any palace they’ve ever seen. sojiro was right when he said that shido’s paranoid as fuck.

they try to leave the palace for the day to regroup, and akechi’s there like a guard dog ready to defend shido’s psyche. why wouldn’t he be? he must have planned that perhaps the thieves would retaliate like this, whether or not joker was alive.

that whole very embarrassing breakdown happens. haru and futaba already canonically seem in favor of akechi rejoining the team, so although haru does say she won’t forgive akechi, i do think that doesn’t need to be at odds with them being in favor of him working with the team.

so, say, akechi’s on the verge of being convinced to work with the team, and he’s not necessarily all in on this whole “being alive” thing, and he’s not super convinced that he deserves redemption, but the phantom thieves really really really insisted, because the phantom thieves can and do change hearts, even when they’re not in palaces, and they’ve just changed akechi’s. 

cognitive akechi doesn’t show up because i’m using him later.

first thing: akechi, haru, and futaba need to have a talk, which is actually pretty easy and not even irrelevant. go through shido’s palace, get the letters of rec, everyone recognizes akechi. like haru in okumura’s palace, akechi’s practically their ticket into half the ship.

getting the letters of rec naturally brings up okumura and wakaba, imo, because it hammers home that these sorts of scumbags are the kinds of people that akechi was killing. and also that this is the kind of scumbag that okumura was, in life. have haru go through the five stages of grief all over again, like she did back in okumura’s palace, realizing that her father kills his own employees for the first time. have her struggle all over again to reconcile the father she loves with the father who died with the father who murdered and exploited and drove his employees to the brink of death. have akechi face that even the people he killed were people, too.

depending on your interpretation of wakaba, she was either just as corrupt OR she was genuinely a nice woman, but that can be addressed in a bunch of ways–akechi didnt know what he was doing at the time, or he totally did but didnt feel like he had any other choice–either way, some sort of contextualization of wakaba’s role in shido’s conspiracy needs to be unearthed. 

say futaba wants to know what her mother was like. say she asks akechi because akechi knew her, maybe knew wakaba better than futaba ever did, because futaba was young and also because futaba never spent a few days literally crawling through her mother’s psyche like akechi did. make akechi tell futaba about the woman he killed with his own mouth. maybe he tells her only the good parts. maybe futaba MAKES him tell her the bad parts. maybe futaba thanks him for it, and akechi figures out that an apology could never be enough.

the point, basically, is to use shido’s palace to have haru, futaba, and akechi come to terms with each other. forgiveness isnt necessarily the point–understanding is more important. haru and futaba come to understand how and why akechi did what he did, while akechi has to sit through several weeks of looking his victims in the eyeballs.

for extra bonus points of making akechi look his victims in the eyeballs, personally i think that futaba would be the most supportive of all the phantom thieves of akechi turning over a new leaf. she canonically tells him that “it doesn’t matter where you start over” and relates his struggles to her struggle to turn her own life around, and honestly i think sympathy would fuck akechi up the most.

meanwhile, in the real world, capitalize on akechi’s position: if he’s deep in shido’s conspiracy, it really only makes sense that akechi could locate the people they need rec letters from in the real world, and use that to find their cognitive equivalent in shido’s palace. show me akechi’s relationship with shido, founded on akechi trying to appease shido and trying to avoid shido’s wrath simultaneously. 

maybe shido’s closing in on the phantom thieves in the real world. he suspects that things haven’t gone according to plan. make use of the fact that shido trusts (to an extent) akechi’s word, and have akechi cover for the phantom thieves in the real world. 

maybe show me shido actively manipulating akechi with praise. show me the greys of that relationship, like how we saw madarame treat yusuke well, or saw sae at her best and worst with makoto. show me how difficult it is for akechi to continue to help the phantom thieves even while actively engaging with his own abuser.

make akechi a traitor to shido. being a traitor was his role, wasn’t it? to betray the thieves? just have him betray shido back. he’s good at being a traitor, isn’t he? akechi probably volunteers himself for the role. let him capitalize on his ability to lie and outsmart those around him. let him make it up to joker in the only way that akechi feels he can: even more lying.

get all the rec letters. akechi himself hands shido the calling card. confront shido–cognitive akechi is there and just as much of a bitch as always. show me how much disdain shido has for akechi, how little he thinks of akechi, how nasty he is–and how blindly adoring cognitive akechi is in return. it’s gross as all hell, but it’s a final nail in the coffin to haru and futaba’s grieving process, even forms some sort of solidarity. 

there’s half a second where akechi is in the position to kill shido. shido’s shadow is down, akechi’s got a gun, he could pull the trigger before anyone could stop him. futaba tells him not to. 

haru tells him that he can kill shido if he wants to.

everyone’s like HARU??? HELLO???? but haru says, as far as i’m concerned, this man is just as much my father’s murderer as akechi-kun is. if you want to, i won’t stop you. but i know that it’s harder to survive than it is to die, too.

akechi does not kill shido. they steal shido’s treasure and return to the real world.

at this point in the canon plot, yaldabaoth starts to happen really fast, but bear with me for five seconds–bring sae back on the scene. shido confesses, and akechi’s reputation goes up in smoke. people call him a fraud, people won’t stop talking about shido being his dad, akechi’s name gets dragged through the mud worse than back when the PT were at their most popular.

sae takes up prosecuting shido’s case, and akechi can’t avoid her forever when he’s supposedly a key witness. sae says, i’m going to give you one chance to explain yourself. you lied to him, you tricked me, you pretended to be my partner all that time and then ran rings around me. talk.

so akechi explains himself, even though half that stuff isnt permissible in court. he doesn’t butter her up and he doesn’t use his cutesy prince mask, and for the first time sae sees him as he really is. and sae says, those are some pretty serious offenses, akechi, what are you going to do now? 

akechi’s just gone through that whole bonding session with haru and futaba, during which akechi had to realize, ah, shit, i fucked over the lives of these two very nice girls and even inflicted the same trauma that i myself went through onto other people. so akechi tells sae, well obviously i don’t fucking know, i dont have a career, i might be expelled, and i’ve killed a shitload of people and there’s no way that i can make up for that. but if i could, i would want to do something to right the wrongs that i did–i’d want to address the murders i committed, and maybe do something to fix it.

sae says, you’re smart as all hell, what you’ve done is irrevocable, you know your way around the police and its corruption, you’re willing to do better and you know how hard doing better is going to be. i’m the same way. i might not have killed anyone, but i’ve ruined the lives of so many people in the name of my career and a distorted sense of justice. if you want to do better, i could use a person like you. what do you say that when this case is over, we become partners for real, this time?

akechi says, but sae-san, what about your reputation, what about your career, wouldn’t it be bad to have a fraud like me by your side?

sae says, i didnt have you as a partner the first time around because you were stupid. use your head, make it work, and maybe i’ll buy you sushi off the conveyor belt someday.

case number one is prosecuting the shit out of shido. sae said they’d be partners after akechi is no longer a key witness, but at this point, being a key witness is basically like being her assistant. sae’s there every step of the way while akechi gets shoved through the public wringer. i say, make him lose all his public fame and reputation and more, everything that he thought he wanted, and he come out with sae’s respect, akira’s support, and the phantom thieves on his side.

the trial starts to stall because of yaldabaoth’s influence, which then brings us to that whole reveal about yaldabaoth using akechi as well for yaldo’s own ends. yaldabaoth offers the p5 vanilla bad end, in which the phantom thieves continue on and become incredibly famous and eliminate most crime because they just change the hearts of anyone who does anything halfway wrong.

i say, let the thieves deliberate on that one. all of them, not just joker. it’s not actually a very bad deal, necessarily; it’s just vaguely skeevy and authoritarian. let’s say, akechi is the biggest opposer, and points out that if akira goes down that route, akira will be doing exactly the same thing akechi did for so long–using his power for his own self-satisfaction, power unchecked and out of control. let akechi use the fact that he’s akira’s “rival” and outspoken critic to good use. akira tells yaldo where he can stick it.

fight yaldabaoth, win. sae takes akira into custody. akechi makes good on his deal with sae, and both of them work together to use akechi’s testimony, akira’s testimony, and shido’s testimony to nail shido and clear akira’s name. 

from there, flash forward to the epilogue in the same way that it happens in canon, except akechi is now sae’s lackey and she’s overseeing his efforts to undo whatever damage he did to all the nameless people he’s hurt over the years. she’s going to become a defense attorney, and akechi’s probably going to become her assistant and later paralegal. both of them are committed to reforming the justice system for the better and addressing their past wrongs.

im actually big fucking mad at how little i had to change about persona 5 canon to make this redemption arc work. @ persona 5 royal meet me in the pit.

[sofiaeu]

⟨ REINA HARDESTY. CIS FEMALE. SHE/HER. ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, SOFIA MURAKAMI is actually a descendent of A P O L L O. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-FIVE year old MUSIC COMPOSITION MAJOR from GUADALAJARA, MEXICO has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite RESOURCEFUL & IMPULSIVE. 

STATISTICS

FULL NAME: Sophia Yildiz

AGE: Twenty-Five

DATE OF BIRTH: n.d.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Vienna, Austra

GENDER: Cisgender Female

PRONOUNS: She/her

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: doesn’t care

RELIGION: Agnostic

ATTRIBUTES

HEIGHT: 5'6

WEIGHT: 135 lbs

HAIR COLOUR: Brown dyed blonde

EYE COLOUR: Brown

TATTOOS: Has a treble clef on her ankle

PIERCINGS: Both ears and left cartilage

SCARS: A large scar on on her right side of her rib cage

BODY TYPE: ??

PHYSICAL HEALTH: Healthy

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  sophia was born to zehra yildiz , principal pianist in the vienna philharmonic orchestra. zehra was the second woman admitted to the orchestra , having beat dozens of men to the position and obviously captured the eye of apollo who was admiring her from afar.  their romance was short yet passionate , according to zehra and ended up giving birth to sophia in vienna. sophia was a prodigy from the first moment she was able to play the piano , arguably better than her mother which made her proud and slightly jealous. 

                 sophia then started focusing on her musical studies ever since she can remember , admiring how her mother flowed with the music and imitating her in every second she was able to.

                  she grew up listening and loving classical music but it wasn’t until middle school where she began listening to 90s grunge and rock when she began to feel even more appreciative of music and began composing original music for the drama club and for the band teacher.

                    she was about 12 when apollo claimed her and it all began to make sense, why she was so good at music and she did have a minor breakdown about it but apollo actually helped her through it and gifted her a golden baton for the future. which confused her since she did not want to conduct yet simply compose and play like her mother does.

                    she started to pick up instruments at a fairly quick pace, soon she was able to play every instrument in her high school band and eventually the teacher allowed her to conduct which was where she felt most comfortable and in her element and that is when she decided to become a conductor specifically for the vienna philharmonic because she wants to show those men who’s boss.

                    she was able to win her school’s band various awards and was even recognized and was hired to record pieces for bands and movies so she has some credit which is why she put off school for some time though she knew she needed to get her degree to be recognized. 

                     in one of her various projects she met darío and the rest was history. she fell for him, it did take a little back and forth because she is rather difficult but he assured her. and they became engaged when she was 21.

                     at 22 they were celebrating their one year anniversary of being engaged and he was going to take her to a remote location in the woods where he had a romantic dinner set up just for the two of them when they were attacked by a monster. this is where her aim really began to kick in and she blinded the monster in one eye which caused it to flee but it was too late. dario was bleeding out and was dead within seconds. grief stricken and in pain herself she held his lifeless body and began chanting the hymn apollo taught her to heal his wounds but he healed her instead. 

                      at 23 her mother and her moved from vienna to berlin since her mother was able to take another job with the berlin philharmonic and sophia just needed an excuse to get away from vienna and all the memories that came from it. a couple months later apollo appeared again and suggested eonia to help her get her degree to pursue her passions and surround herself by people who understand her so she left and hasn’t gone back since. 

PERSONALITY 

                      sophia’s outer demeanor is cool, calm and somewhat collected at times. the calmness that is exuded from her music tends to show itself in the way she holds herself , but don’t let it fool you. she tends to be on the more sarcastic side and cracks jokes at the somewhat unfortunate times. she doesn’t have much of a temper but when she gets angry she tends to become very quiet while her mind wanders off. she is the calmest under the sun and thrives in the sun and tends to become moody and stand offish when she’s secluded for long periods of time without her daily dose of sunshine. she wants to be selfish and tries to be but at the end of the day she helps people no matter what despite her completely denying that she did. she gives off the impression that you genuinely know her but she rarely speaks about her upbringing other than what can be found as common knowledge. she also has a rather dark sense of humor and uses that to her advantage but isn’t the hardest to get along with, you either love her or hate her.

ABILITIES

Audiokinesis : this is an ability that she possessed even as a young child, always being able to find the rhythm in everything and with help from her mother who is a professional musician she developed her skills at a very young age. she is able to pick up instruments fairly easily but her strongest are piano and surprisingly trumpet though she prefers the ease of the piano and other string instruments like the cello or violin. 

Foresight: she used to think they were daydreams that manifested while she listened to music, a form of synesthesia but she started to recognize the people who she daydreamed about. they began as small things with the people closest to her but soon it manifested with strangers and a simple look she can sometimes see what will happen in the nearby future, not too far ahead.  they are most powerful when she is conducting and composing music.

Archery: She can be a bit clumsy with it but even when it looks like she’s going to miss she somehow always gets it right on the mark --- she likes to say beginner’s luck.

MISC

she composes pieces for the drama club probably

she will bring you to tears with her pieces since that is the only way she feels comfortable expressing herself and if you confront her or ask her she will say she just saw a sad movie and used it as inspo

her favorite color is emerald green but loves gold

dyed her hair and cut it as soon as she got to eonia

is sometimes too blunt for her own good

listens to rock when composing her classical pieces

swears she won’t date but she does occasionally sleep around . . . is what she tells people but she hasn’t had sex in about 3 years

the type to threaten to cut her bangs 20 times and never do it but she did it once and cried about it for far too long

she doesn’t leave school grounds

fashion wise she doesn’t really like dresses, she feels too exposed unless they’re midi will mainly wear jeans which is sad for her and her array of band t-shirts

can play every instrument under the sun prob even a didgeridoo

can rap every nicki minaj verse in every song

[travllingbunny]

The 100: 7x03 False Gods

Although I liked this episode less than the first two episodes of season 7, which were great, especially 7x02. I quite enjoyed False Gods for what it was. This seems to be an unpopular opinion in the fandom, which mostly hated it for what it wasn’t. And I get it - Bellamy has been missing for almost 3 episodes (even though it’s not even been 2 days since he left Sanctum), Clarke took a back seat here, and the new SciFi Anomaly storyline is far more interesting than the power struggles in Sanctum. Plus the A plot of this episode was problem-of-the-week, another potential nuclear meltdown - of a reactor we didn’t even know about before. 

it feels like a setup/breather before we get to the real story. Yes, it's high time the storylines finally converge and Clarke and the others learn that Bellamy and others are missing, and get involved in the Anomaly plot. I guess I’m more patient than most, and it helped that I already knew this would only happen in the next episode.The biggest problem of this episode is probably that it didn’t address what was happening in the other storyline, for the benefit of all the viewers who are watching this weekly, don’t necessarily think about the show’s timeline and aren’t aware of the fact that it’s been a little over one day since Bellamy, Octavia, Echo and Gabriel went to research the Anomaly Stone, that there’s absolutely nothing surprising about the fact they haven’t come back yet (people were absent for similar periods of time in season 6 even when they went to a less distant location), that there is no reason whatsoever for Clarke and others to think that there are any other threats on the moon or any other humans outside Sanctum, and that there are no radio signals or mobile phones they could use to call them before they get back. And that, if she doesn’t have reasons to think Bellamy is in danger, it’s not OOC at all for Clarke to not be whining about the fact that he left with his girlfriend, his sister and Gabriel to do research instead of stay and help her as a co-leader in Sanctum, while she is also grieving her mom... Actually, you know what, I do have a problem with people criticizing Clarke for that. But I do see why a mention would help the viewers get a sense of coherence, that both this and the previous episode belong to the same story.

But at the same time, this episode delivered some of the things many fans have been saying they wanted to see: it was focused on the characters who have been there from season 1, Raven and Murphy (and Emori, who has been there since season 2 and has had the most long-lasting relationship in the show), it gave Raven an arc and character development and put her in the situation to make “impossible choices” and understand how Clarke has felt so many times (something that many were asking for after her season 6 characterization), it, put an end to Madi being a Commander, and let Clarke grieve for the loss of her mother for another episode.

Raven's storyline was still really engaging and the scenes in the reactor intense. And damn it, I liked Hatch, even though he was in just two episodes and a few scenes. He stole the show and made me really sad when I realized he was definitely doomed. I knew from the trailer that Nikki would beat the crap out of Raven, but I didn't know why. A lot of people thought Nikki would just be a straight-up villain like McCreary, but instead, she's given a good reason to feel the way she does. And it was high time the show addressed the fact that the Eligius prisoners are looked down on as second class people or barely people. Sure, they are murderers and thieves and not nice people, but that doesn’t make it OK to see them as barely human, as Eligius Corporation did when they were going to leave them to die as expendable.

This is probably leading to the friendship between Raven and Clarke getting stronger again. Other things this episode seemed to be setting up: 

future conflicts in Sanctum: SheidhedaRussell (SheidRussell? RussellHeda?) getting more control, while Clarke and others have no idea about who he really is, while the Eligius prisoners are going to be led by a very angry Nikki;

Clarke has a continuation of her story from 7x01 and gets a kind of closure to her grief over her mother. She gets to say that she cannot lose anyone else, a very obvious setup for learning about Bellamy’s  (and others’) disappearance. At first, this made me roll my eyes a little bit - it’s not like this is a new motivation for Clarke. She is always trying to save her people, and anyone who isn’t aware how important Bellamy is to her, has not been paying attention. But then it struck me - the show was doing extra work to set up Clarke being ready to leave Madi in Sanctum without looking like a ‘bad mother’  - and for that purpose, she now 1) knows Madi is not a Heda anymore and can breathe a sign of relief that Madi can be a normal kid now, 2) has no idea about Sheidheda, and 3) has started to trust Gaia enough as someone who could take care of Madi.

This time it’s Luisa's voice saying "Previously". It looks like they're having a different cast member say it at the start of each episode (Eliza in 7x01, Marie in 7x02).

James wasn’t losing any time, did he. It’s been just a little over a day since they came from the ship, and he’s already hooking up with a girl from Sanctum. And the show really did the horror trope of a couple that goes to a secluded place to hook up and dies. 

There is a nuclear reactor in Sanctum? We go to another planet moon, and again the same problems, just as Indra said.

The opening titles ended with a new shot of the mansion and the grave next to it - this is presumably what Abby’s grave will look in the future. At the moment, it’s a heap of rocks with flowers over them. (Maybe it's meant to be Kane's, too - they don't have either of their bodies, though Abby did die on Sanctum and they could at least bury her clothes.) Contrary to what many fans thought, Clarke burying Jake’s ring was not Abby’s “funeral” - the funeral had already been held, so the answer to the often asked question “why weren’t Madi, Raven, Jackson, Murphy etc. there", is - they were, when the funeral was held. Clarke just went later, alone, to bury the ring, the remembrance of both her parents. With the grave being so close to the mansion, Gaia saw Clarke coming to bury the ring and then came to talk and bury the Flame. 

It’s good that Clarke has another confidante/budding friendship, someone to talk to in her increasingly small circle. But I’m not sure that Clarke and Gaia managed to connect that much over grief - because losing a parent and losing your religion are very different kinds of loss. Clarke doesn’t even have a religion and doesn’t have that kind of experience.

I love the way the show acknowledged that everyone knows Clarke will always be the first one to risk her life to save everyone - and Murphy knows it. But the plot mechanics ket Clarke away from this storyline (because Murphy and Emori had have it) - Indra said Calrke had her hands full with Russell’s execution, even though it wasn’t clear why she’d have to be the one to organize it (especially since Indra herself seems to be capable of dealing with the politics) and Clarke didn’t look too busy the rest of the episode.

I’m glad we’re done with the plot of Madi being Heda or having to pretend to be Heda. Although I’m sure this will haunt her still, because she has memories of other Commanders - including Becca and Sheidheda, and she may find it the easiest to recognize SH, because she knows him better than anyone.  

I completely understand why Clarke wasn’t going to let Madi order Wonkru members to perform such a dangerous task - she doesn’t want to let Madi feel responsible for sending people to their deaths, feel the same guilt she did, but at an even younger age.

Gaia telling the truth both was and wasn’t the right thing to do - morally right, but with potentially terrible consequences, if no welders had been found. Here’s a song for her by one of my favorite bands. On the other hand, Raven lied to people in the name of necessity and the greater good of them all, and achieved her goal but ended up sending people to their deaths, and felt the consequences of lying.

One revelation I really liked is that the guy from Sangedakru thinks of the infamous Dark Commander as “Sangedakru’s greatest champion”. That feels a lot more realistic than the idea that all Grounders hate him and think of him as a monster - even though their culture is based on war and killing, and we’ve seen other Grounder leaders (Queen Nia) be just as ruthless. Sheidheda being from another clan helps makes sense of Indra’s story from 6x13 of the time SH “took Trikru” and was going from village to village and killing everyone who refused to kneel. I’ve been wondering for a long time what exactly Heda were commanding before Lexa united the clans. I suppose they were trying to command, but clans were still divided and preferred Hedas from their own. And it seems that Sheidheda was also trying to ‘unite’ the clans, but not by negotiations! Of course he is considered a monster by people from all the other clans, whom he was killing and torturing and trying to conquer, but is still remembered as a hero by his own clan. Of course. That’s how it usually goes.

Small moments of Sheidheda enjoying the fact he’s corporeal again - from touching his own arms to eating a cookie - are a nice touch.

I like the fact that Sheidheda is smart and much sneakier than the pompous Russell was. He had to be smart to be able to manipulate the AI in the way no other Commander could, not even Becca, its creator, ti isolate the other Commanders, get control of Madi, and later download himself to Russell’s mind drive. SH was also using the captivity to read some of the books he’s found and apparently gain some technical knowledge about Sanctum,

Delilah’s parents are finally back. I don’t think we had seen them since they killed Priya. And Trey (the annoying  “adjustor” who was brainwashing Jordan) can go f(ck himself. Really? Blaming Delilah’s parents for avenging her death?

I’m still unsure where exactly the show is going with Jordan. His brainwashing will have to be addressed at some point. It may not have been fully successful - he doesn’t think of the Primes as gods - but it was sure enough for him to stop despising them as murderers and to start believing their BS (and even to form some sort of attachment to Priya). If he weren’t brainwashed, he’d be spending time with Delilah’s grieving parents, rather than the people who worship her murderers. Right now, the show is playing it ambiguously, so some people may even forget about brainwashing and just see Jordan as a gullible naive guy (which he is, of course, he grew up just interacting with his parents) or as Jordan sees himself, as a moral compass/substitute for his father. Someone should tell him that Monty was never naive and knew when it was necessary to fight and kill, even though he hated it and tried to avoid it. Maybe realizing that he’s been manipulated by the Devout and by SH will be a wake-up call. 

Jackson has had more character focus in S7 than he had for seasons - the mild doctor now wants revenge for his mentor-mother figure. Good to see more focus on his and Miller’s relationship, including their arguments. What Jackson said about Miller seems to have hurt Miller, who’s still feeling guilty for his role in the Blodreina regime. Maybe this Mackson disagreement contributes to Miller deciding to leave, to prove something to himself, and save Bellamy this time, since he didn’t do it in season 5.

Memori continue to be adorable. and we learn that Raven having no respect for her friends’ privacy is a recurring thing. Another snippet about the life on the Ring.

There was one line that didn’t make sense to me. Raven to Murphy: “Go do your job, be Emori’s moral anchor”. What?! Isn’t it usually the exact opposite? 

Speaking of couples - Hatch called Nikki “Honey bunny”. That has to be a Pulp Fiction reference. Raven got the job done here, but I feel like Hatch’s death will have dire consequences for the possibility of peace in Sanctum. Both because he was the more optimistic and tolerant one, willing to expect good and to try to work to earn respect, and because Nikki is now going to be even angrier and more extreme. And just like we had different views about Sheidheda among the Grounders, here we see different views among prisoners about McCreary - Hatch calls him a jackass he won’t miss, but Nikki thinks he would have fought for the rights and better treatment of the prisoners. (I wonder what any of them have been told about Diyoza.)

“Welcome to the world of grey”

A few more words about Raven’s storyline -

One thing that bothers me about this storyline is the idea that this is the first time Raven is in the "world of grey". I guess the writing staff Murphy doesn't remember that time when she tried to give him to the Grounders to be tortured and killed in Finn's place for a crime Finn committed. She also tried to get Clarke to kill Lexa and start a war over Finn in that same episode, basically to sacrifice a bunch of people for him. There was also that time when she tortured Lincoln with electric shocks to save Finn. Or that time when she was withholding medicine from the dying people, including a dying child, because of rationing. Or the time when she was ready to turn the plug on 283 prisoners in cryo sleep. Or when she gave Echo an OK to kill Shaw, her ally, in season 5.

But all this got forgotten because she's never before had to deal with the consequences of her actions. Lincoln didn't die, the others stopped her from turning over Murphy and Finn gave himself up, Clarke opted to mercy kill Finn and do what's best for everyone instead, Murphy stole the meds and gave them to Abby so the child was given the medicine but died anyway, they didn't have to - and then couldn't - kill the prisoners in their sleep, Echo did not kill Shaw... 

There were also plenty of times when Raven gave others the responsibility - like when she decided Clarke needed to make the list of 100 people who'll get to survive Praimfaya in the Arkadia as shelter (while passively aggressively bashing her at the same time, which was weird: "I'm in charge of rationing, but deciding who lives or dies is your specialty"), and then Clarke got blamed for it.U

Now, the writers (going by Jason's recent interview where he said that Raven had never done anything morally wrong in the first 6 seasons) seem to have forgotten about it - which I guess is why they wrote her as a self-righteous moralizer in season 6 - unintentionally making her really hypocritical. Which I hated, because she used to be one of my favorite characters, but became quite hard to like in season 6. 

The way I see it, it’s best to ignore ridiculous BTS statements of the writers when those statements don’t match canon. I’m all for “Death of the Author” in that case, at least. If we just ignore it, Raven’t entire arc starts making more sense. Maybe they had some weird idea that they were writing her as the moral compass of the show in season 6 (but people who have acted as a moral compass usually don’t say things like “I’ve never done anything wrong in my life!” and refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes), but I’ve always interpreted Raven’s behavior in S6 as lashing out - she was hurting and lashing out, because she had been betrayed by her substitute mom Abby in the same way and for the same reasons as her real mom; she also felt betrayed by Clarke; and then she lost Shaw, the one person who would have put her first, so she felt she had no one left who would. (Though she did get better later in the season, making up with Abby, acting less judgmental and making up with Clarke. )

This is either the show course-correcting her earlier characterization, or fixing a long-standing flaw - Raven’s tendency to be harsh and judgmental to others, which had already been there before season 6. This was seen in this episode, too, from some of her disparaging comments to Murphy, to her contempt for the Eligius prisoners (not that this isn’t understandable, with the fact that she had been tortured by McCreary’s men).

So this feels like an important step in Raven starting to face the world of grey she often tried to see as black and white, and for once be in a situation where she has, almost directly, caused people’s deaths, by decisions she made on her own. 

(The show also seems to be course-correcting a few other things about Raven: she looks more like her old self, she has gotten back some of her snark, and the show is showing her disability more - after having largely ignored it for the last couple of seasons.) 

To be fair to Raven, she did not know from the start that she was sending Hatch and others to their deaths. She had assumed at first that the task would be dangerous, but not lethal. When she realized it was, the men were already irradiated, and it was necessary to fix the reactor so it would not kill everyone. The bigger problem was that Raven had lied - because she did not respect these people enough to give them an opportunity to maybe volunteer while knowing what the danger was. I think that Hatch, at least, still would have. He did prove smarter than she thought but realizing what was going on, while she was still lying to them that they weren’t going to die in minutes, and, contrary to what she had assumed - he did still want to fix the reactor, in spite of knowing he’d die, to save someone he loved. Raven also showed a similar disrespect towards Murphy - locking him inside to get the job done. It feels like this is something that has never been fully resolved between them - the fact that Murphy was a POS in season 1 and crippled Raven, but also, that she was fully prepared to give him to the Grounders to be tortured and killed in Finn’s place. I feel like this is going to make her start thinking differently and maybe give people the benefit of a doubt.

I knew Nikki was going to beat the crap out of Raven from the trailer, but I didn’t know what her reasons would be. It felt like Raven herself almost wanted this as punishment, because she felt guilty, and would rather take a beating than comfort (”Don’t touch me!”) And I’m sure Raven can understand how Nikki feels, since she has lost Shaw so recently, and Finn before. 

I liked Hatch’s conversation with Murphy and the parallels Murphy could see there - Hatch and Nikki were another Bonnie and Clyde-style thief or rather robber duo.... except it went too far and they became murderers. Which Memori were not... but Murphy was a murderer even in season 1. In season 6, Murphy died and thought he had gone to hell for his sins, so it must have resonated with him when Hatch replied that, no, he wasn’t looking for redemption, because “There is no making up for it”.

Body count: James (RIP to yet another Arker from Wonkru, though we first met him in 6x02), his Sanctum girlfriend, and 4 Eligius prisoners including Hatch (which means that 32 remain).

Rating: 7/10

[forgottenyear]

the road least wanted

[tw: rape]

I need to work on a point from the previous post.

*

By late 2010, I had a good career and I had memories of a reasonably healthy childhood.

Early in 2011, a very close friend died, the cafeteria in the building where I worked changed cooking oil, and I then wrote a story which prompted questions from a friend.

I did not think until just now, my close friend had known me since the earlier years of my identity. Regardless of what many people assumed, we were only friends (without benefits). I think that in our final hours together, however, my friend wanted for us to be closer than merely friends.

We were about to move into an apartment together. Had my friend lived one week more, we probably would have signed a lease together.

I had reached the end of my rope, so I thought, and my friend offered a chance for me to escape my situation. (Things have got better since then, but only after they got much, much worse.)

But then my friend died and I was helplessly trapped where I was.

Shortly after this, the cafeteria where I regularly ate lunch changed cooking oil. I did not know this, nor would I probably have cared, at the time. I began having an allergic reaction to the oil.

My mouth and throat began to burn. It does not take a great understanding of the digestive system to guess the burns that followed.

I was out of work for a few days to recover. When I returned, I had lunch again.

I am not sure when I made the connection, but I asked a cook if they had changed anything. When he told me the name of the oil they had switched over to before the day I had the first reaction, I did a little research and found that a small percentage of the population does experience allergic reactions.

These events, as will be explained momentarily, led to me write a story. The subject of the story was a transgender woman who went to a party and was targeted for rape.

A friend was confused by why I would write such a thing. My answers to their questions went from it had happened to a someone I once knew, to it happened to me.

It was a few months later before I learned that there is a gap in my memory, although it was a while before I realize that it was not only one year, but two (I had already created this blog, which is why it is “forgottenyear” and not “forgottenyears”). It took a few years of work with my therapist to piece together what had happened to my life.

*

This body has seminal fluid hypersensitivity. Contact with semen can cause burns that sometimes last for hours. This body is male and so this body is allergic to what may be argued to be the definitive product of itself.

There is one memory that is clearly from the hours after the rape. The burns and their locations tell the details of a story that is thankfully not in memory. The identity fragment, who I once called the “Protector,” is clearly present in this memory. The identity fragment decided that they would stay close to the apartment door but would not go out into the city unless they needed to. They would wait until the first train before leaving.

*

The forgotten years began in the final months of 1992 and ended more gradually over the final months of 1994 and into 1995. As far as I can tell, few memories were formed over 1993 and 1994, and they only gradually began to form over 1995.

The final months of 1992 coincide with the end of the engagement to the fiancée. The boy identity’s limited ability to function was already in rapid decline. The girl identity had hoped to make a go of it in her city, with her friends. The system would escape the boy’s city and begin a new life in a new town.

I have no memories of the girl identity after the rape. She was, effectively, erased along with every reminder that she existed.

*

In 2011, as you may already have figured out, my friend died and I lost an avenue to escape an impossible situation. I then had an allergic reaction that resembled the one in the memory following the rape. The memories these events touched brought me to write a story about ‘someone I once knew,’ without knowing that I was writing about this body and the previous identities.

*

As I have mentioned before, the amnesia is not the sort of thing I would expect it to be. I am not certain if it falls under the diagnosed heading of Dissociative Amnesia, or if it is actually from Dissociative Identity Disorder. “It’s all the same from the bottom of the river,” as Eeyore says.

I had some memories. Some memories were false or misleading. Some memories were completely off limits. Some memories were vague stories I once heard about people I once knew.

There was also what I have called the ‘electric fence.’ If I tried to dig too deeply into memories or contradictions, my brain would start to buzz as if I were about to pass out. I would then forget and find something interesting to focus on. The ‘something interesting’ was probably often something that would have been less interesting just moments before, but it would suddenly be very interesting after. This still happens sometimes, and I only know about it because of the times it has nearly happened, since.

And then there is my mother. My mother gaslights / mythologizes the past. My mother reinforced my ‘false’ memories of a healthy childhood. Fortunately, she lives far enough away that I do not ordinarily need to deal with her except by phone.

*

But it is the “stories I vaguely remember overhearing about people I vaguely remember knowing” part that is (finally, I know) the point of this post.

I feel like I have never had DID. I feel like the previous identities probably had it, but it is not a part of my reality. My brain rejects the idea. And I forget.

I have stated that I want recovery. I am not sure I have thought about what recovery looks like for me. I am going about this backward, according to the practice that has fallen from repute, in that I am looking for recovery long after integration.

Maybe a better term for what I want is “closure.” (I was working on grief recently, I am only just remembering.) Or, better still, the term is “recovery of closure.” I had a sort of closure, during the amnesia years. An imperfect sort. I suppose I am looking for a more perfect form of closure.

At this risk of sounding hokey, I want inner peace. I want an end to the unfinished business of the old system and the childhood. I want an end to the nightmares, or at least to approach such an end more closely than I have.

To get there, I have to deal with what is there. I have to deal with a reality that was. And a reality that may still be so.

To get there, I have to retrofit what I have always recognized to be reality. I have to remove bits that are false or misleading, and I have to incorporate bits that are painful and disturbing.

And I have to remember what I am doing.

*

The trouble is, I tend to sort the issues. I tend to consider things like DID and PTSD to be the issues of “people I once vaguely knew.”

The nightmares are my problem, but the PTSD is their problem.

Even when I can think about it as being my problem, I do not have access to enough memories. I do not even remember what the nightmares were about. Most of the time, I only know I had nightmares because of the lingering effects that carry into the following night.

*

That may be the key term: “lingering effects.”

I was not given the chance to deal with my life as it happened. I was shut out of my own trauma for a brief lifetime. I was separated from my own life for so long that I no longer recognize it for my own. I am perpetually haunted by my predecessors.

I am an incomplete and poorly assembled jigsaw puzzle of these “people I once vaguely knew.” I am trying to complete the puzzle, but too many pieces are missing and most feel like they go to the wrong puzzle. I would give up and just get on with my life, but for the lingering effects.

One of the lingering effects is that my conscious memory is next to worthless, while my subconscious memory appears determined to torture me.

Another lingering effect is the identity fragment. I am heavily dependent on the identity fragment for solving problems. But the identity fragment already ‘solved’ this problem by ignoring it.

*

I have the feeling like I am wandering into traffic, again.

I need the cooperation of the identity fragment. We need to integrate our effort on this.

But “integrate” is the most frightening word in this context.

Damn it.

Damn it.

Damn it.

This is not what I imagine for recovery. I wanted my life back. I didn’t want to give up my life.

i hate this shit

[grahamfinch1990]

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[nyxelestia]

Hi! I'm on anon bc I mainly worry about that sort of thing, heh. Besides this, I'm asking about, specifically, Sterek - in the sense that I don't really ship it myself, and I wanted to say that regardless of this, and that you do - your blog is brilliant. In general, your posts on the TW fandom and the various ships within are perfect and I agree 100%. Mainly, I'm asking about the sterek, or more specifically Stiles/Derek from actual canon tw, because I could never see anything other than (1/?)

Derek being physically aggressive towards the younger and weaker (in the sense of physical strength) human - a person in a position of power over another abusing that power. In a sense. Since, whenever I watch the show I can't help but see that, I was hoping you could either explain in that great way you usually do that makes things make sense, or at least point me in the direction of posts that have already done so, how exactly their friendship developed(because, yes, I don't think I could(2/?)

ever ship it romantically). Mainly I'd just like to see another's less biased point of view/take on their dynamic, so as not to alienate a serious amount of my fanfic readers despite the fact that it's probably gonna end up as Stalia(oh the horror, that gets like 0 reads ever)I don't want to sideline any characters that are important, such as Derek, and when I watch the show I can never get his character and his dynamic with Stiles down in my head because it's screaming at me not to like him 3/?

And I hate that, because I never like to despise a character without good reason to; I don't want to misrepresent the dynamic, I have to repeat, when I get to later seasons. It'll also help me understand him more, I think, and I hope you don't mind this ridiculously long anon ask, oops. I'm on anon mainly bc of a worry of this being received negatively, as I've seen this sort of query being done in the past for related topics. Ehrm, that's it, thanks for reading this even if you don't answer.4/4

Derek is pretty violent with everyone, including Stiles, in the first two seasons. Fandom has taken this violence and projected sexual tension onto it to justify the ship, but if we're going to count every instance of violence as belligerent sexual tension, then everyone on this show has foe-yay with everyone else.

The thing is, Derek was trying to do the right thing - he just didn't really consider things like collateral damage or value of life in the process. When Scott was Bitten, Derek did try to help Scott learn to control his wolf...it's just that he also lied to Scott about a potential cure for lycanthropy in order to manipulate Scott into helping him. Neither of these somehow negate or undermine the other.

Similarly, in Season 2, Derek felt responsible for the kanima, and thus wanted to kill it before it could kill anyone else. The problem is that he wasn't considering the life of the human who was the kanima without knowing, and he was jumping to conclusions and nearly killed the wrong person (Lydia) because she might be the kanima. Derek wanted to build a pack, and ended up dragging three new teenagers into the mess, two of whom would still be alive if he hadn't. But, they were also extremely isolated before they were in a pack, and never seemed to resent Derek for turning them, even when (in the case of Boyd, at least) it got them killed.

Derek tries all the time, and tries really damn hard. He also fails all the time, and fails really damn hard. Most of that failure all traces back to tunnel vision - he gets so focused on one problem or factor, he never really thought about anything else. Isaac called him out on this in Season 3A - Derek was wallowing about Cora's life and Jennifer's betrayal, which meant he was forgetting about all the other stuff going on that needed to be dealt with.

Derek also tended to presume to know best in the first two seasons and diving head first into problems. A lot of his development in Seasons 3 and 4 was taking a step back to think through the circumstances, and/or taking guidance from those around him. Whether he was the alpha and taking guidance from his betas (i.e. following Boyd's plan against the alpha pack, listening to Isaac calling him out, etc.), or when he was a beta again but following others' leads (following Scott as an alpha, taking proverbial marching orders from Allison in 3B, following the Sheriff's lead and Braeden's lead in Season 4, etc.), Derek always did better working with someone else instead of trying to lead on his own.

To put it another way: Derek really sucks at being King Arthur, but he makes for a fantastic Merlin.

Derek was a wonderfully supportive and empathic individual. Because he struggled with being an alpha, he was a confidante for Scott when he struggled to be a (true) alpha. Derek went from tunnel vision, brooding, and wallowing in the first few seasons, to learning how to use "human" self-defense mechanisms in Season 4 when he realized he wasn't healing and seemed to be losing his lycanthropy (and his strength and senses with it). IIRC, he never just sat down and listened to someone pour their heart out on him in the first two seasons, yet Season 3 opens with him doing exactly that, and this is something he continues to do throughout the rest of his time on the show.

I've said before that "quiet" =/= shy or introverted. Derek is never the kind to talk a lot in the show. In the first two seasons, this manifested as him doing things without really telling anyone or talking to anyone about it. Later, this manifested as him listening to people. He didn't have to change this part of who he is, he just learned to be more empathetic and productive about it.

Derek's story also plays into one of the central themes of the show. The werewolf symbol of revenge is the spiral, but here's the thing about spirals: if they aren't stopped, then they'll go on forever. Derek could've kept pursuing vengeance for his family, but chose not to, and came out better for it. This is highlighted by the nogitsune in 3B, when Derek is infected by one of the flies. Yes, Kate was already dead, but Kate was one person and his family was way more than that. He could've kept going, he could've murdered Allison and Chris just because they were Kate's family (the same way his family died just for being werewolves/in a werewolf pack), and the nogitsune nearly pushed him to do that. But instead, Derek ended the spiral of vengeance, recognizing that Allison and Chris had nothing to do with Kate's murder, and how different they were from Kate (regretting their own participation in Hunter psychosis, trying to change the family motto and M.O., etc.)

Derek's story is very much one of someone grieving tremendously and suffering from horrific trauma. But, it's also one that shows that one's own trauma can end up hurting those around them (the fact that Derek was traumatized and suffering for the first two seasons doesn't change the fact he engaged in a lot of manipulative and abusive behavior at the time). And, Derek's story is the process of recovering from grief and trauma, and learning to let go of anger in pursuit of one's own well-being.

How this relates to Sterek in particular, I've written about here and here, and feel free to ask if you have any more questions on it. :)

And here are some fics which capture Derek's character really well:

See You on the Other Side - Derek doesn't swoop in and save the day - but he does help Stiles, and he learns to share with Stiles and take help from others.

The Nightmare of My Choice - Long-distance relationship FTW.

Starts with "F", Ends With "U" - Fantastic way of Derek using his own experiences to help Stiles with his current abuse, and a great exploration of Derek's trauma that doesn't tokenize it or reduce his abuse to stereoptyes of what abuse actually entails.

[cakeandpi]

Aftermath - Part 1: Flotsam (also on AO3) Words: 12k

Warnings: Angst, canon character death, mention of child death (off screen), heavily implied major character death, mental and physical trauma, grief, alcohol usage

Summary: The team deals with the wreckage left behind in the wake of suddenly losing Kaldur'ahm. Follows Untangle, Consequence, and Interlude: Sha’lain’a. (Read those first in order to avoid spoiling yourself! Also the first scene follows pretty immediately off of the events in Interlude: Sha’lain’a.)

Notes: This was written for @yjficexchange​‘s mini big bang event! Probably the only reason I got this first part written this year, instead of just sitting on everything for forever. A million thank you’s to @lizziegoneastray for putting up with me talking about this nonstop and another million thank you’s to @windywords123 for the amazingly beautiful, heartbreaking artwork they’ve crafted.

“I told you that you should’ve waited.”

Orin grimaces at his wife’s tone and immediately regrets it as pain flares in his face. Readjusting his grip on the ice pack, he presses it gingerly to his eye once more as he watches his wife pace. Back and forth and back and forth, her feet slapping wetly on the tile. (There’s no need for a waterless room; it’s a frivolous luxury. They both breathe water as easily as air. They’re on the bottom of the ocean, with miles and miles of water above them, for Poseidon’s sake. But he has too much of the surface in him to not desire some reminder of it.)

“And then I’d be wrong for waiting.” He sighs. “I don’t blame her for being angry.”

“Good.” It’s only a single word, punctuated by the sharp report of her feet back and forth across the floor. It still leaves Orin with no doubt of how little sympathy Mera has for him right now. She’s always been better with words than him, be it giving grand, inspiring impromptu speeches, or cutting him - or whoever else has upset her - to the quick with such speed and precision that any swordsman would be envious.

He hopes her anger shifts away from him soon.

“This - this thing the courts have resurrected - we’ll fight it.” Orin says grimly as his wife paces. “Kaldur’ahm didn’t deserve this.”

“No, he does not. Did not.”

“Mera -”

“The last time this law,” Mera snarls, teeth showing, “was used was with a regicide attempt.”

“I know. I was present at the trial too, Mera. I know how they crafted their arguments. What they revived just so that they could maximize what they could inflict on him.”

Mera’s nostrils flare, but then she exhales slowly. Her pacing continues though it’s less full of directionless angry energy. The room is no longer full of echoes from her pacing as it becomes just something for Mera to do as she thinks.

“Can we fight this?” Orin blinks at her in surprise at the sudden question. Surely there’s no doubt that they must fight this, out of principle. Out of duty to his protege. Even assuming they’ve no chance of winning - and Orin’s not about to give up that easily - they must at least try.

“What do you mean?”

“Orin.” Mera sighs. “We’ve been slowly losing support in several key city-states over the past year. So far it hasn’t been too drastic a slip, or so we thought, but enough of one that our hands were tied where the trial was concerned. And this - that there even was a trial, even if it had had a different outcome - this is going to hurt us.”

“I would think Sha’lain’a and Calvin would want to support us.”

“We just lost their only son, Orin. Why would they?” She stops in her tracks, curling trembling arms around herself. “We don’t exactly have the best track record with children.” Her voice catches and breaks and Orin forgets the ice pack and developing black eye in favor of pulling her close. He tucks her head under his chin and rubs her back gently.

“Mera, love. That wasn’t your fault.”

“I know. But -”

“But nothing.” Orin exhales heavily. The guilt from the day they lost their son is still a knot in his chest; if he lets himself dwell on it too much, a raw, ugly rage uncurls from where he’s done his best to put it to rest. He knows it’s much the same with Mera. “We can blame ourselves all day for that, and it won’t bring him back.”

“I know.” She repeats. Only when he can feel the tension go in her shoulders does he relax his hold on her.

“We’ll need to tell the League about Kaldur.” He murmurs after a moment. He can feel Mera scowl into his chest. “They’ll need to know, love. They’d find out eventually, and it would just anger them if we kept these events secret from them.”

“Then they can be angry.” She pushes herself off of him and wipes at her face brusquely. “As bad as we messed up - don’t shake your head at me, you know we did, bad enough that Kaldur didn’t turn to either of us for help. But the League’s purpose - it’s founding idea - is about being there to help each other. About having each other’s backs. What happened there that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get help from anyone in the League? Not one single person, Orin.”

Orin opens his mouth to argue and then shuts it. He hadn’t thought of it that way.

“We’ll still need to tell them.”

“Fine.” She picks up the ice pack and runs her hands over it, light sparking down her arms and hands and fingers as her magic turns it frozen once more instead of being half melted. Handing it to him, she says, “I’ll talk to them.”

“I should do it.”

“And earn yourself another black eye? I think not.” She folds her arms and frowns at him. “If it is so important, then it is better that we tell them soonest. And you have several state engagements that would be difficult to break without further damaging our ability to recover from this mess. So. I’ll tell them.”

—

The League, as a general rule, doesn’t have meetings where every single member is present. Not only would it push the Watchtower’s occupancy limits, but it leaves villains free to do as they liked for too long.

That doesn’t mean that all of the founders never meet. But it is a little unusual for over half of them to actually be available for any given scheduled meeting, nevermind an impromptu one.

“What do you think this one’s about?” Diana asks Superman as he slides heavily into a seat.

“No idea. Pretty unusual for Aquaman to call an emergency meeting.” Which possibly explains why, for once, everyone has shown up. Except for J’onn, but he was on Mars. It doesn’t explain why Aquaman has yet to show.

Diana crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. She tunes out the sound of Flash chattering about some television show with Green Lantern. Further along the table, on the other side of Superman, she can see Batman carefully not fidgeting with growing annoyance.

Fortunately she doesn’t need to resort to distracting Batman from his poor attempts at patience. The door to the meeting room sighs open, and Diana sits up in surprise as Mera, not Aquaman, steps through. The woman crosses the short distance to stand at the foot of the meeting table, hands clasped behind her. Diana recognizes the stance as one she’s seen Aquaman use when he’s on his dignity or being formal.

“Our apologies for Orin’s absence. A situation arose in Atlantis that required his presence, and while we understand that League status is not transferable, the reason this meeting was called could not be delayed. We hope you will forgive our appearing in his stead.” Mera’s voice is, well, it’s not threatening but it’s not warm. If frozen air had a voice, it’d sound like Mera’s just now.

Diana can feel the scowl Batman’s making, and it’s not even directed at her. He’s probably grinding his teeth too. “Go on.” He grates out after Mera doesn’t continue. Diana’s fingers itch, and she clenches them closed on her lap before she finds herself with a weapon in hand. Mera’s eyes are like ice, an expression the queen rarely wore, and Diana can feel her own face sliding into a calm non-expression in response.

“When we first met, we were not sure working together would be of any benefit. Our only goal was to see to the continued safety and prosperity of Atlantis. But that was at the cost of ignoring the rest of the world. Maintaining our isolation was no answer if Atlantis were to continue surviving, let alone thrive, as the world’s many problems still came to rest at our doorstep regardless.

“Cooperation has benefited both Atlantis and the League over our years of working together. We have made many valuable friends and allies, we have new technologies, we have expanded our knowledge of not just this world, but other worlds in our solar system and beyond. It is our dearest wish to continue our cooperative efforts.

“However, as everyone here is doubtlessly aware, the situation in Atlantis has been precarious for quite some time. Recent events have made it clear that Atlantis requires more dedicated attention than we previously realized. To that effect, we cannot continue our current activities with the League. This decision has been a long time coming, and not made lightly. We understand if the League wishes to take this as a resignation, though we hope the League does not find such action necessary.”

“So Aquaman’s too cowardly to resign in person.” Green Lantern grumbles. Diana frowns at him sternly, and he squirms a little under her glare.

“If a resignation is how the League wishes to interpret this, we will not argue it, especially in light of recent events.”

“What recent events?” Diana asks. “It’s not like you to talk around things like this.”

Mera’s shoulders square up at the question, and her eyes gaze out somewhere above Batman’s head. Her hands don’t tremble, in the light clasp she has them in behind her back, despite the people who she usually considers friends and allies frowning at her. Her hands don’t tremble because she’s still angry, at the courts, at the League. At herself and Orin. She doesn’t tremble because he didn’t tremble, not once.

“Kaldur’ahm of Shayeris, also once known as Aqualad, no longer swims in our waters.”

For a moment the words are just that - words. Sounds. Noise without meaning or substance. And then unbidden comes the memory of the day Aquaman had told them about the lost of his son. He had used much of the same words.

Diana cannot remember a time she’s seen the Flash be more still.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t hear you. He what?” Superman’s standing, hands flat on the table. Diana reaches up and presses a hand lightly on his shoulder, silently urging him downward. He ignores her.

Mera’s eyes close briefly, and she inhales once. Twice. “Many of his actions during his undercover mission,” and her voice does not falter, remaining as icy as her gaze, “broke or heavily bent many of Atlantis’ laws. A trial was held to determine what judgment, if any, should be imposed as a result of his actions.”

“So you -”

Mera raises a hand to interrupt Green Lantern’s rising voice. “It is already done, Green Lantern. Forgive us if we decline to discuss the details; it is still a very fresh wound.”

Batman joins Diana on trying to push Superman back into his seat. She’s gripping him hard enough that she knows she’s leaving a bruise. The man ignores them both, planting both hands on the table and leaning forward, eyes sharp with outrage. “He put himself in a situation all of us would balk at, puts himself at great personal risk, infiltrates and takes out a group that the League has made no headway on for years, saves us from a hostile alien invasion, and this is how you repay him? What kind of mentor does that to their protege?”

Mera merely raises her eyebrows at the question. “And what kind of League is it, that Kaldur’ahm could not turn to any one of your number? We do not argue that we failed him, and we have no wish to assign blame, but it is also true that we did not fail him alone.” Mera meets each of their eyes in turn. Diana returns her gaze, almost defiantly.

“We have no wish to fail others in our care, now or in the future.” Mera says after a pause, her voice softer than before. But then it hardens again as she continues. “And so our sole focus must be Atlantis. To that end, however, uninvited guests from the surface world will not be tolerated.”

“Was that a threat?” It’s the first thing the Flash has said since Mera walked in.

“If it need be. Now, if you will excuse us, we have other matters requiring our attention.” Mera inclines her head at the group, almost as if dismissing them, and then turns and strides out.

—

Roy busily racks his brain for lullabies that kids like. Not that Lian is old enough to care. She cares that she’s hungry, that she’s cold, or that she’s not getting attention. He’s beginning to think she might care that he’s not Jade, which would be fair enough - he would complain too in Lian’s shoes. It’s not like he’s very good at this whole dad business.

Lian grumbles unhappily once more, and he shifts her a little in his arms and resumes pacing. He doesn’t think she’s sick, at least he hopes not. But he’s fed her and everything and she won’t stop whining and just go to sleep. Or rather, she only stops whining if he doesn’t stop moving, which has led to him wearing out a path on his apartment floor.

He’s never felt quite so out of his depth before, and he ought to just call Ollie and Dinah and get advice on if this is a normal baby thing. They’d ask questions, though, and he doesn’t want to answer any. Or admit that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

He swears as someone knocks on the door. “Definitely not your mom because she wouldn’t bother with such niceties.” He grumbles to his daughter.

Yeah, Dick’s definitely not Jade.

There’s no time to decipher the strange look Dick’s giving him as Lian decides right then and there that Roy has had enough ‘not moving’ time and takes to protesting. He must have made some sort of face because Dick snorts and motions for Roy to hand over Lian. Roy considers refusing for half a second, but he’s been pacing for the better part of twenty minutes.

He’s almost offended that Lian immediately stops crying once Dicks holding her. He doesn’t even have to pace to buy her quiet. Asshole.

“Yours?”

Roy shrugs the question aside, grunting in a kind of acknowledgement as he gestures Dick inside. Closing the door, he says, “Her name’s Lian. I guess you’re her favorite uncle or whatever now, cause she’s refused to quiet down until just now.”

“I’m flattered.”

Roy frowns when Dick looks anywhere but him. It’s not like Dick to make house calls like this, not out of uniform. There’s not much Roy can think of that would bring him all the way out here after midnight, and none of it’s good. “Hey, you okay?”

“No.”

Well, shit. Roy sits down slowly on his beat-up couch. He’s no good at this sort of thing; all he can ever think of is useless platitudes. Still, Wally had been their friend, and Dick’s stayed friendly with him even after the whole mole thing. He’d be a bigger asshole than usual if he didn’t at least try to say something.

“Listen, I know Wally -”

“It’s not about Wally.” Dick sighs and finally looks up at him. Really looks at him, and Roy feels his guts knot up. This is going to be bad, he can feel it.

“Dick?”

Dick clears his throat. “It’s Kaldur. He- It’s-” Roy’s fingers bite into the couch. He knows that if he looks, his knuckles will be white. He forces himself to be silent, to not interrupt whatever Dick’s struggling to say. All sorts of scenarios play out through his head - that Kal’s injured is the first thought; maimed is the second. Then there’s the possibility of poison. Or -

He pulls himself away from those thoughts. “Kaldur what?” Roy prompts when Dick doesn’t add anything more. His stomach is in knots. He doesn’t want to know. But, he needs to know. He must know. He’ll just worry himself sick otherwise, at best. At worst, he’ll be where he was before Lian had come into his life.

Dick visibly gathers himself. “Atlantis put him on trial, for his actions during the undercover mission.”

“On trial.” Roy repeats as if he didn’t hear it the first time. His heart thuds, in his chest, in his throat. For all that talk about being trained to be stoic and unreadable, Dick’s bad at hiding truly bad news. If it was just a trial, if Dick was only worried about the outcome, he wouldn’t look like he’d seen a ghost.

Dick’s voice is a hushed whisper. “It was a guilty verdict. He - he won’t be coming back.”

“What do you mean, ‘won’t be coming back’?” He doesn’t like the look on Dick’s face. He really doesn’t. “Just fucking tell me, I swear if you make me drag it out of you -”

“He’s dead.”

The words hang heavily in the air. It is weird how a only a couple of short syllables can make the world feel like it’s falling away. Can create a buzzing so loud that everything else is deafened and drowned out.

“That’s not funny.” It’s all he can think of to say. His voice sounds weird in his ears, all breathy whisper, as if he’s not breathing right. It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be real. And yet there’s Dick sitting at his table, holding his daughter.

“He never got to meet her.” He doesn’t remember deciding to speak. “I - I meant to. But something always came up.”

“He would have loved her, Roy.”

He knew that. He knew that, so why hadn’t he dragged Kaldur out here to meet her?

He knew exactly why he hadn’t.

“Roy?” Dick’s concerned voice breaks him out of his thoughts.

“Sorry. I. I need to - ” The words catch and crack and he clears his throat, but Dick seems to understand. He’s already standing and handing Lian back, and somehow she’s asleep and missing all of this. Not that she’d remember, but it’s a small comfort to know she isn’t distressed too.

“I’ll text you the details for the memorial?” Dick asks softly. Roy nods. Hopefully Dick will take the hint and goes away soon. Roy’s not sure how much longer he can hold himself together.

Dick says some other things that Roy doesn’t really hear and leaves. Slowly, as if by staying quiet this will all some sort of nightmare or hallucination, he gets up and puts Lian in her bed. He watches her for a long time, until his eyes water and his nose runs with the need for sleep and rest. He can’t cry, not when he’s the one who kept finding excuses to not see him.

An awful noise tries to rise out of his throat anyway, and he covers his mouth to keep it from escaping. Sitting on his bed, he struggles to keep his breathing even. Struggles, and loses. His free hand curls into a fist, and he slams it into the bed, once, twice. It’s his own fault that the last time he even saw Kal - not even talked to him but just saw - was over a month ago. He’s the one who chose to go after fleeing villains when there were others perfectly capable of catching them more easily. He could have stayed and actually caught up with Kaldur. Could have talked to him, could have introduced him to Lian, could have seen him melt with affection.

But no, he hadn’t wanted to hear Kal say ‘my friend’ that way, the one that always, somehow, managed to keep Roy at just the slightest bit of distance. The one that made Roy feel like there was some intangible glass wall that he could never break through and finally reach Kal.

He hadn’t wanted to deal with being the reason Kal kept that wall there.

And now he’ll never be able to fix what he’s done.

—

For the second time that year, Raquel attends a memorial for one of her friends. And once more it’s not a funeral because once more there’s not even a body. She feels… she’s not sure how she feels, really. Numb, mostly. There’s disbelief, and denial, and an earnest yearning to walk it all back to before all this had happened. Back to when they’d been indestructibly confident and high on having beaten the entire League with a MacGyvered solution to mind control. But mostly she feels weary numbness.

She can see Artemis leaning heavily on Conner, looking as spent as Raquel feels. Can see M’gann and Zatanna place flowers against the newest hologram to grace the Watchtower. Can see Dick next to her, in a suit, yet another set of flowers in his hands. Why are there only flowers? (Obviously, she answers herself, because food would rot, and anything else would be too trite.)

She watches as Dick places his flowers against the base of the hologram. As M’gann arranges framed pictures next to it. It might as well be a month ago, for all that this time it’s for Kaldur and not Wally.

Gods, she hates this.

Roy was here earlier, staring at the larger than life replica of Kaldur. He’d stayed for a bit when the rest of the team had joined, but had left soon after, claiming responsibilities. Or supposedly had. She can just barely see him fidget behind a tree out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t blame him for wanting to grieve alone. It’s already hard enough when there’s company.

At least, most company.

“Hey.” Dick falls in step with her when she goes to leave. “How’re you holding up?”

Raquel shrugs. “As well as can be expected, I guess.” She says automatically.

“Same here. Was planning to get super drunk so I can be as un-well as expected. You want to join me?”

The idea is actually pretty appealing compared to going home by herself and being not drunk. “Let me see if my mom will watch Amistad.”

“Sure.”

A phone call and a pit stop at a store later, Raquel accepts a glass from Dick. She hums in appreciation at the taste. “You always did make good drinks. If the whole vigilante thing and detective work don’t work out, you could do this for a living.”

Dick laughs. “I actually took couple of bartending classes once. Don’t get to show off often.”

“Well I can tell you paid attention. This tastes amazing.”

“Glad to know I haven’t lost my touch.”

There’s a subtle hint of a question there. Raquel muses over her answer - it’s been some time since she’s fooled around with anyone, and she’s always had fun with Dick in the past. But she’s also not really feeling the urge to jump him, as enjoyable as that would be, so she just smiles crookedly.

Dick smiles back and nods. That’s the nice thing about him. He picks up on cues quick as anything and never makes it some big production to get turned down. It’s relaxing. “Is cuddling out of the question? Or I can reacquaint myself with the couch.”

“Cuddling sounds good, actually.” She goes to take another sip of her drink. To her dismay, she’s somehow already finished it. She looks up at him with a pleading look.

“Easy there R, those puppy dog eyes are veritable weapons.” He drains his own glass before getting up to fix them both more.

She snorts. “Not half as dangerous as those drinks you make. Bring me some water too? I don’t want to feel too much like death tomorrow.”

“Getting old over there? Sure you can keep up?”

“Now look here you little whippersnapper, I’ll have you know I walked uphill both ways in the snow for my hangovers when I was young.”

Despite Dick’s words about drinking so he could be upset, they don’t talk about earlier, not once. Raquel’s grateful; the numbness is slipping away and she actually feels kind of good; she’d rather not turn into the sobbing mess she’d doubtlessly be otherwise. She’s fairly certain Dick feels the same way, the way his face goes a bit strained whenever their conversation strays a touch too close to Kaldur or Wally.

“Here.” It’s later, and the room’s wobbling like it’s the one that’s been drinking. “Lean on me. We’ll stagger to bed together.”

Dick accepts her offered hand from the floor where he didn’t mean to sit. Probably.

She doesn’t remember getting to bed, or getting in it. But at some point she wakes up half tangled in Dick’s limbs and bedsheets with a headache and a dire need to pee.

Extracting herself is a chore and a half - she’d forgotten about this part of sleeping with him. When she returns he’s still asleep, with that faint hint of a snore he insists he doesn’t have. It’s seems too much like work to crawl over him, and shoving him over would require more effort. So she flops down on top of him instead.

It works just as it used to. Dick snorts, grumbles something about too many rooms to deal with this, and scoots backwards. Raquel victoriously rolls herself into the freed space and luxuriates in the warmth spot he left. Her head pounds in a dull rhythm - she should’ve gotten painkillers while she was up. But Dick’s already curling up against her and her headache is not that bad that she wants to leave this bit of comfort.

Sunlight streams in through a curtained window the next time she opens her eyes.

Stumbling into the kitchen area of Dick’s apartment, she finds water and painkillers set out. “Thanks,” she mutters, downing them both. Her stomach twinges, so instead of hunting down some breakfast she leans against the wall and nurses her water.

Dick is seated at his small table and seems just as worse for the wear, dark sunglasses already guarding his eyes. “Hey Raquel?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think I did the right thing?”

It’s too early for heavy questions. “Yes, the mustache was a mistake. Shaving it off was the right choice.” She can feel his eyes flick towards her; she stares right back at him. “Be more specific if you want an actual opinion.”

“I -” His voice cracks and he clears his throat. “The undercover mission.”

The numbness that had faded over the last night returns in full force.

“They volunteered. Kaldur’ahm and Artemis. It was meant to be secret, just between the three of us, but Artemis insisted on telling Wally. He didn’t like the plan - hated it actually - but he went along with it anyway. And now…” He trails off, as if not finishing the thought will somehow make the results less real.

“And now you lost two of our own.” Raquel finishes for him.

He flinches. “We all knew there were dangers. That things could go… badly. And the mission - we did complete it.”

“And that makes everything okay.” There’s more bite in her voice this time, but he doesn’t flinch again. His head remains bowed, staring down at the untouched bowl of dry cereal on the table before him. “If you’re looking for absolution, Dick, you’re looking in the wrong place because I don’t have it.”

“I - I don’t know.” He rubs his face. “I thought I was prepared. For failing, for things turning sideways. But then the mission was over and done, and I relaxed. And. I shouldn’t have. I should guessed that something would have gone wrong with the MFDs. That something was up after weeks with no contact from Kaldur.”

“Weren’t we supposed to go through this shit when we had alcohol to excuse the emotions?”

Dick gives a choked laugh. “Yeah, sorry.”

She sighs. “I don’t know, Dick, that even Batman could have predicted any of this.” She raises her voice when he makes a noise of protest. Heaven forbid anyone suggest Batman could ever be surprised by anything. “But I do know  you cut all of us out. You lied to us and deliberately led all of us into believing Kaldur had switched sides and had killed Artemis. So, yeah, maybe something would have turned out differently if you hadn’t kept secrets.”

“It was too dangerous to tell anyone.”

“Okay.” She shrugs, not really wanting to argue, not now. “Well then, guess you better make sure it was worth it.”

Dick gets Raquel a taxi a little while later. On coming back up to his apartment after seeing her off, returning to bed and sleeping away the rest of the day seems, well, less taxing than anything else. He’s already called in a vacation day at work - and thankfully still he has some saved up - and there’s not any pressing chores he has to do right now. But Raquel’s words prick at him. Make sure it was worth it? There’s precious little he can do to change the decisions he’d made, or repair the team’s damaged trust in him.

But there is one thing he can try to fix. And maybe it’d help with his overwhelming sense of guilt.

It’s much harder than he ever expected.

Weeks pass and his coffee table is no longer a coffee table. It’s a war zone of forms and legal red tape and he is in over his head. Way over his head, and maybe he should have called a lawyer or two or five. Bruce has several on retainer; one of them surely would be willing to help. Half of the paperwork requires some other second set of paperwork, which in turn requires the first set. Frustrated, he lets the folder he’s holding slide out of his fingers onto the table with disastrous results.

Papers scatter across the table, sliding out of their neat stacks and some even falling to the floor. Dick groans and covers his face with both hands. “This is ridiculous,” he announces to the empty apartment. “It should not be this hard to bring someone back from the dead.”

It had been Kaldur’s idea to go undercover and ferret out any useful bit of information possible. Actually, it had been his plan, and he’d mostly let Dick know so that there would be least one person who would know what he was really up to. It had also been partly to have a second opinion on the whole thing.

They’d wound up bringing in Artemis, and she had helped them turn a ‘well maybe if we get lucky’ crapshoot of a plan into something that actually stood a real chance of working. But it had been Nightwing’s brilliant idea to have Kaldur ‘kill’ Artemis to prove his boot-heel-turn to Black Manta.

And it had worked. It had worked so well that it actually did cost lives in the end.

He pinches his nose and forces himself to stop grinding his teeth. He knows by now that he could plan, and make backup plans, and make backup backup plans, for years and years, and it still wouldn’t be enough to cover every eventuality. Life’s not fair - he knows this, knows it in his bones and heart and he knows that the universe doesn’t care who it takes or when it takes them. But he wishes it could have been him. Nevermind that he didn’t have superpowers and had no way to help at the north pole. Nevermind that he didn’t answer to Atlantis’s laws. Nevermind that he wasn’t anywhere near Gotham when Jason -

He smashes his fist against his thigh. No. He’s been over this before. Ever since he was nine, he’s been over this. He knows he can’t take their places, no matter how much he wants to. Slowly, deliberately, he takes a deep breath. Another.

The least that he can do is fix the mess he’s made of Artemis’s life with her death. The paperwork involved is an ungodly hell, but it would hardly be any form of penance if it were easy.

—

Artemis sets her bags down with a relieved sigh and stretches, popping her back. The door to her mom’s place squeaks shut just as she remembers, and it’s weird how much she missed hearing that. Maybe she’ll stay a few days more than she planned; her mom always likes when she stays over.

Breathing in deep, she can smell her mom’s cooking, and her stomach growls in anticipation. “Artemis, is that you?”

It’s not the voice she’s expecting. She jumps where she’s standing. “Jade?”

“Hey little sis.” Jade steps around the corner, her arms wrapped around a mess of blankets. “Sorry I can’t stay for long, but here -” Jade passes whatever she’s carrying over to Artemis, which is heavier than Artemis is expecting. And warmer. Looking down at the blankets she’s been handed, she rocks back on her heels to see a face.

Jade is smirking when Artemis finally looks up.

“Who’s the dad?” It’s the least important part of everything about this, but Artemis can’t help asking.

“It was too dark to see.”

“Too dark to -” Artemis begins to repeat, then glares at her sister. “Really, Jade? I’m supposed to believe that?”

Jade simply shrugs and grins at her younger sister. “I should be gone three days. Think you and mom can handle taking care of your niece - her name’s Lian, by the way - until I get back?”

“How hard could it be?”

“Oh, you have no idea. But mom can help you if you have any trouble.” Jade’s smirk fades a little, briefly becoming an actual smile. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

The door creaks open and slams closed before Artemis can fish her voice back out from her throat. Looking back down at the child in her arms, she tries to rally herself. She’s face down super villains and the the end of the world. How difficult could it be too look after a baby for a few days?

“Mom?”

“In here, sweetheart.”

Her mom’s checking something in the oven, and it’s weird. It’s so weird, because she’s seen this a thousand million times before, her mom preparing food or working through bills or folding laundry, so seeing her wheel about the kitchen, humming softly to herself, should be no reason to get emotional.

She does anyway, and the way her mom whirls to face her at the first sniffle makes it worse.

“Artemis,” and somehow that’s what sets the tears off in full force. She’s crying and her mom’s there and somehow her mom manages to take Lian from her and still cradle her head in her lap. “I’ve got you.” Her mom whispers. “You’re home and you’re safe. I’ve got you.”

—

His fingers tangle with Kaldur’s, gripping tighter than he normally would allow himself. He can’t let go, can’t afford to let Kaldur slip from his grasp. Bad things will happen if he can’t keep hold of him.

Their foreheads rest together, one more point of contact. Garth wants more, but that’s hard when there’s a table between them. Already it digs painfully hard into his stomach; a small price to gain even a millimeter of the closeness denied him.

He can feel Kaldur’s exhale brush against his face, and when he opens his eyes he finds Kaldur watching him.

“Garth.” It’s a whisper, a sigh, a shadow of the usual solidness of Kal’s voice. Garth squeezes Kal’s hands harder, determined to memorize everything about this. He doesn’t want to forget. He won’t forget.

“I don’t want you.”

Kal slips his hands out of his with ease, despite the intensity of Garth’s grip. He leans back from him and melts away, disappearing into the darkness of the room. Garth bolts up from his chair, leaping over the table with a desperate grab, and catches nothing.

Garth wakes alone in his room with a start, the darkness of his dream slowly resolving into dim light. It takes more than a few minutes to gain control of his trembling body. “There. He didn’t want me there.” He whispers, correcting the dream, as he tiredly rubs at his face. Maybe one of these times his mind will listen, not that it has so far. The dream is always the same.

It’s still early, but late enough that he’d not have any time to get more sleep if he returns to bed. Assuming his dreams would let him sleep. He’s interrupted in getting up by a sudden, demanding beep, and old habits make him snatch the communicator, unused and forgotten for months, from its spot on his bedside table. He hesitates before answering though - he’d rather not talk to anyone just now. It beeps again, and again, and before he can decide to smash it against a wall and never have to deal with a surfacer again, he answers.

“What is it?”

“… Why, I’m fine, thank you for asking.” Is the response. “I’d ask how you’re doing but obviously we’re skipping niceties today all over the place.” Garth closes his eyes so he won’t sigh heavily. Out of everyone from Kaldur’s team that could have called, it had to be Nightwing.

“Woke me up.”

“Um. Yeah, guess it is pretty early where you are. Sorry about that. Anyway, this will be super quick, promise. Just need to know if you’ve been surface-side recently.”

“If I’ve what? Why?”

“Just curious.”

Garth spares a glare for the communicator, willing Nightwing to see it. “I’ve been to the surface a few times the past few weeks,” He doesn’t elaborate on why since Nightwing won’t share his reasons either. “You need to be more specific if you’re thinking about a particular event.”

“Thought Atlantis considered the surface off-limits now.”

“Atlantis is off-limits to the surface. And you are prying.”

“It’s what I do.”

“Good for you.” He tries not to grind his teeth in exasperation as Nightwing laughs.

“All right, all right. We’ve been investigating some of Black Manta’s business associates. But, well, one of the safe-houses he used has been rather… heavily damaged by water. Which is why I called.”

Garth’s response dies before it leaves his throat. Shit. What should he say? What could he say? ‘Sorry for demolishing one of Black Manta’s bases, I was upset while trying to retrace Kaldur’s footsteps from when he was pretending to be evil and neither you nor he thought to warn me’? Not a chance.

“That was me. I might have lost my temper.”

A rude sound comes across the communicator. “Might? Dude, over half the building’s gone.” Garth blinks. He doesn’t remember losing his temper that badly. Had he? “Listen, next time, could you maybe destroy the nearby countryside or something? Or at least lose your temper in a place known for tsunamis or tidal waves. Hell of time dealing with the news coverage of it. Not to mention that we could have used whatever info was there, but now-” Garth imagines Nightwing shrugging.

“Yeah, got it.” He clicks the communicator off, forgoing any polite parting exchanges.

Looks like he has new plans for the day.

It takes more than a day. Almost a week, actually, passes before he finds the place Nightwing must have been referring to. By the time he arrives, it’s night, not to mention raining. Neither of which impede him much - it is a rare Atlantean that doesn’t see well in the dark - but the debris is a different matter. He picks his way carefully around the remains of shattered windows and pottery and other things he can’t identify, making his way to the building. What was left of it, anyway. One corner of it stands untouched; the rest is just… torn away. As if a giant hand had risen from the sea, slammed down on the house, and then swiped the remains down into the ocean.

From what he’d seen swimming up here, that was pretty accurate. He could see why Nightwing had thought this to be his handiwork.

He almost misses the object in the mud. Would have missed it if not for stepping right on it, thinking it just another bit of wood. It feels weird under his foot, though, and that’s enough reason to pick it up and wipe it clean of mud. He almost wishes he hadn’t.

The four inches of leather is intimately familiar.

The military would have reclaimed the actual blade when Kaldur had been … sentenced. As Aqualad, Kaldur had been, very technically, still part of the military though not actively on duty, much like Tula had been - like Garth even now - in the service of the monarchs. So the three of them had been allowed to keep their standard-issue blades, as ‘insurance against enemy capture’. But unlike the knife itself, the sheath could be personalized as desired.

Most common was to have the names of loved ones close to the wielder, so that it could be returned in case of tragedy. He doesn’t need to look at it to know the names pressed into the leather of this one. His fingers pick out the names wrapped around it - ‘Tula’ and ‘Garth’, ‘Garth’ and ‘Tula’, over and over.

It’s like it just happened, the memory’s still so fresh. Kaldur stumbling over his words, worrying over what they’d think, if they would laugh at him, if they would find his feelings too intense. The confusion on Tula’s face slowly giving way to delight. The happiness in his own chest that Kal felt so strongly about them. The odd not-quite-shame, but definitely somewhere in that area, feeling that had come later when he realized that Kal had still felt so uncertain about belonging with them.

He remembers receiving Tula’s, minus the blade of course. Remembers being angry at Kaldur for not being there.

He’d never received Kal’s. He’d thought that that was because it was considered part of the trial evidence. He didn’t want to think about how it could have wound up here, mixed in with the remains of whatever had happened to Manta’s base.

He doesn’t want to think about the feelings rising in his chest, bubbling up and threatening to spill over. There’s nothing to be gained from searching beyond here. There’s nothing he’d find beyond frustration and grief and regret.

Even so, the urge to look, just for a little, just one sweep, just to make sure - it tugs at him. He ignores it.

“I -” His voice cracks and he clears his throat and tries again. “I miss you.”

It’s weird to say out loud after carrying it inside him for so long. It’s also hard to stop.

“This - I know you didn’t do this to me, but how could you do this to me?”

Neptune, this is all coming out wrong.

“I know I can’t see you again, I just. I. I never wanted this.” His hand clenches around the empty sheath. He drags the back of his other hand across his face. He’s not sure what’s rain and what’s tears. His chest burns despite the chill, and he battles to control his breathing. The most he can do is clamp down hard on the feeling of wanting to punch something. Pain flares in his knees, his legs; it rips through the pressure building in him, like some popped bubble. He doesn’t remember deciding to sit, but it’s easier than standing.

“I never got to ask you why. Why you left, why you didn’t run, why did you not tell me, why didn’t you take me with you.”

Why did you not trust me? He tries to say, but his voice catches and he swallows thickly. The words stick in his throat, because didn’t Kaldur trust him to understand? ‘Because of Tula’, he’d said. Three words, short and concise and complete and utter bullshit. And he’d trusted Garth to know him well enough to get the message.

“Why did you come back with me? Did you think I wanted this? Did you really think I wouldn’t have helped you run?” There’s no response - not that he was really expecting any, except sick, perverse hope never dies easy no matter how thoroughly he buries it.

There’s too many questions to give voice to, all of them piling up since that morning he’d woken up with Kaldur gone right after Tula’s death. He’s not stopped coming up with new ones, though he had thought himself numb to them by now. He was wrong, it seems, as his insides curl anew at the answer he doesn’t want to think about. The answer he doesn’t want to accept.

“Did you really think I valued Atlantis over you?”

—

Artemis leans against the doorframe, trying to think if she’s forgotten to pack anything. Hair bands, toothpaste, toothbrush, her favorite earrings, nail polish, any clothes that she’s not giving away, books … She’s pretty sure she hasn’t missed anything. And if she did, her mom would send it to her, or she can come back to get it.

She’s been at home for several weeks now, and she’s loved it and hated it and she’s ready to go back to college, to finish and move on now that Nightwing’s finally sorted out the paperwork of ‘not actually dead, sorry about that’.

Still, she can’t quite seem to get herself moving.

When she had come home, with a duffel bag of her things and her bow and arrows, she hadn’t planned to stay long-term. It was just going to be a few days with her mom before she moved on. There were so many memories of Wally here, after all. She’d been scared they’d rip her heart wide open anew when she had just started to heal.

But she hadn’t counted on having a niece. She hadn’t counted on Jade actually being around for once, actually cutting short her jaunts around the world. She hadn’t counted on the smells and sounds of home leaving her defenseless and crying within moments of closing the door behind her. It was like she was five again, like she was some kid who’d scraped their knee and needed a kiss to make it better. Artemis hadn’t meant to stay, but she’d missed her mom, had missed her mom’s cooking and how safe her mom always made her feel. She’d missed not having to avoid people in order to be alone like she’d had to do at the Watchtower.

She’d been right too; it had hurt to be here. She’d also been wrong; for all the crying she’d done, it had been, mostly, a good sort of hurt. At the Watchtower, with the League and the team, all there had been were missions and talking - or most definitely not talking - about Wally. She hadn’t had room to do anything like laugh because she’d remembered a pun he’d made and it had been so awful she’d just had to shove him of the pier into the harbor. And then he’d surfaced and made another pun with a broad grin on his face that was just begging for her to dunk him under again.

At home, though, at home there was room; she’d almost entirely forgotten that she had happy memories of him here. Afternoons spent partly studying, mostly flirting with Wally; cuddling together as they watched movies on her old second-hand tv; patrolling together, sometimes just the two of them, sometimes with Ollie or Batman and Robin, before Robin had ‘graduated’ to Nightwing. Wally earnestly learning how to make her favorite foods from her mom but never quite getting it right. Taking him out to her favorite Vietnamese restaurant one night after he’d gotten a rejection letter from a university he’d really wanted to get into and then dumping almost an entire bottle of sriracha into his food so he could blame any tears on the food. (And then having to help him eat it because that was also the night that she discovered Wally didn’t do well - at all - with any sort of hot spices.) The two of them quietly planning their future together.

And now she’s planning her future alone, and her chest aches and her eyes blur, and she’s crying, again. Maybe her mom’s right, maybe she is going back to college too soon, because she still has days that getting out of bed takes all of her strength. Because she still shuts down sometimes because of seeing some lanky, freckled redhead on the street. So maybe this might all end horribly and she’ll get kicked out, but still, she feels like she can, maybe, do this. And Artemis knows Wally would be behind her all the way, encouraging her to go and get the things she wants, to enjoy it all and to look forward.

Artemis closes her eyes and wipes the tears away.

She can do this. She can.

And it’s easier than she thought and harder than she’d imagined. School and classwork and studying slot neatly into place with little effort. The hard part is not from forgetting Wally’s not here anymore and trying to ask him something - about dinner, about going for a run, about what the hell the professor was thinking with that assignment. Those moments hurt, but she’s also expecting them, in a way, so it’s not anything she can’t handle for the most part.

No, the hard part is how easily she adjusts her routine to his absence.

Which is a ridiculous thing to be upset over - he’s gone and he’s not coming back and she’ll have to move on sometime, and yet. And yet she doesn’t want to erase him, and somehow it feels like she is whenever she realizes it’s been a week since she last tried to ask what he wants for dinner.

It’s in fits and starts, but somehow she makes it through one semester. And another. And then all of a sudden it’s been a year. And she thought she was doing okay - actually, she had been doing pretty great - but now it’s been a year and she’s not okay, she’s not better, and she can’t do this.

She can’t continue to act like nothing’s wrong, like she’s not missing part of herself. She can’t go to his memorial and be all sad soft smiles. She just can’t. Each time she decides she’s going, her chest gets too tight like she can’t breath. She wants to yell and cry and scream all at once and there’s never enough air.

She wants him back. She wants to be over him already so she can stop hurting from the smallest things. She wants to have never have met him if it was only going to end up like this. She wants to have never have wanted such a thing.

She wants to hear him call her beautiful again, wants to see him smile when she calls him Baywatch. She wants and wants and wants and she can’t have any of it, not one single bit, so she doesn’t go.

She tells herself he’d understand why she doesn’t go.

She still hates herself for it.

—

For most people, a bag of groceries wouldn’t be cause for alarm. But Roy’s not most people, and this is his safehouse. One that he hasn’t been to in far too long as evidenced by the fine layers of dust over everything. But lack of use or no, this is his place, and someone’s been here uninvited.

Roy eases the door shut slowly, holding on so that it latches as silently as he can manage. He came here to rest, but there’s little chance of that now if this place has been compromised. But a careful search of the place turns up nothing. His back itches, as if he’s being watched, and it only gets stronger as he looks for further sign of intrusion and finds none. Finally there’s only the table left, with its shopping bag.

He’s been holding his bow at half-ready, arrow nocked but not fully drawn in case he found the intruder. Now he relaxes it and sets it down, near enough to grab in an instant if he needs. Reaching for the bag, he frowns as he pulls out cans of soup and protein bar boxes and a canister of salt. Salt? Kal would always add salt to his drinks, even as he’d complain about it not being the same. He stares at it without really seeing it, then whirls around to the couch, where a light blanket lies folded neatly on the armrest.

Oh. Oh, fuck.

Kaldur had been here. He’d been here, Roy’s certain of it. Normally he’d leave a note whenever he’d left without meeting up with Roy, but a frantic search through the groceries turns up nothing. Not even a receipt to give him an idea of how long ago he’d been here. Though it was long enough that Kal had apparently felt the need to replace his stores of food. And long enough for as much dust to gather on the groceries and the blanket as everything else in the room.

Head buzzing, Roy pulls out a chair and sits down, hard, and drops his head in his hands. He knows better than to let himself entertain the thought, but it’s hard to suppress the sick, dizzying hope that somehow this is a sign that Dick and everyone is wrong, that he’s still alive and out there somewhere. But if he was, he’d have returned to them by now, not left the team and Roy grieving and hurting for months.

No, Kal didn’t ghost on people, not like this. Only Roy was fool enough to do that and then expect things to still be normal when he finally returned.

“Fuck.” He whispers, rubbing his eyes. He’s exhausted - he’s been out all day and almost all night now. It’s too much work to fight the tears spilling over. He looks at the couch for all of two seconds before deciding against curling up there. Every time Roy discovered Kal holed up in one of his safehouses - wounded or too tired to make it home or wanting to be certain Roy was alive - every single damn time Kal would use the couch and not the bed. Even when Roy wasn’t even there to make it awkward. They had argued over it, time and again, but Kal had stubbornly refused to see reason.

The blanket is evidence that he still hadn’t changed.

It’ll smell like him, Roy’s certain. That’s reason enough to avoid it.

“The fuck, dude? Why didn’t you come find me? Why’d you hide out here?”

As if there’d be an answer, as if asking now would make any difference, as if knowing would help at all.

He can guess the why of here in particular - this used to be one of Roy’s main haunts. If Kal had needed him but hadn’t been able to come after him for some reason, waiting here would have made sense. Kal wouldn’t have known that Roy hadn’t used this place in nearly two years, and only a combination of bad luck and being fucking exhausted had brought him here tonight.

He swallows hard against the emotions roiling inside him. This isn’t like finding the boy he’d been cloned from. Roy wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he’d given up on tracking down Roy - the original one - until he’d either gone over every single square inch of the planet or died trying. With this, there’s nothing he can do. No amount of second-guessing his actions, no amount of bitter regret at lost chances, will bring Kal back to him.

Not that it’d be to him because he’d fucked that up too, in a magnificent fashion.

No, he’d been sixteen and a half to Kaldur’s fifteen and painfully oblivious and had panicked because he’d liked girls but maybe liked Kaldur too? And then had promptly avoided Kaldur to give himself time to think, not that he’d been thinking, not really, not about anyone besides himself and his own confused feelings. And to top it all off, he’d reappeared months later, believing that it’d be easy to return to how things had been. That Kal might give him another short, soft, hesitant kiss and Roy could kiss him back this time instead of running.

Which was absolutely fucking ridiculous in hindsight. Roy still can’t figure out what Kaldur ever saw in him.

It had taken over a year to mend the damage he’d single-handedly done to their friendship, and even then it had never been quite the same. There was always a distance that Kaldur kept him at, as if guarding himself against being hurt again, and even as much as that had frustrated Roy, he couldn’t blame Kal. It hadn’t been until Rhelasia and Kaldur actually responding to his call for assistance that Roy had known for certain their friendship was back on solid ground again.

Not that he’d ever thought to apologize for it at any point, which probably hadn’t helped. And he’d only racked up more and more he needed to and ought to have apologized for already. Like actually believing Kaldur had genuinely defected to the Light. Which only fed into not exactly avoiding Kaldur again but definitely not seeking him out.

The universe taunting him like this with traces of Kaldur’s presence is just cruel. He’s already tortured himself with all the things he could have done different over these past months; he doesn’t need yet another reminder.

—

“You usually aren’t the drinking sort.”

Dinah glances up from the counter of the Watchtower’s well-stocked kitchen. Shayera stood on the opposite side of the bar from her, arms crossed. “Usually don’t lose two people you’ve trained so close together, either.” She retorts more brusquely than she usually would. There’s still amber liquid in her glass; she drains it, the alcohol burning as it goes down. She sets it down to find Shayera sitting across from her with a glass of her own.

“Didn’t realize it had been a year already.” The woman explains as she pours her glass full. Dinah watches as Shayera raises the glass, murmurs “To Wally and Kaldur’ahm”, drains it completely and pours herself another within seconds.

“… I thought you didn’t drink at all.”

“Only because I might as well drink water, for all the effect Earth alcohols have on me.”

“Ah.” Dinah’s not jealous. Okay, maybe she’s a little jealous.

“And because, with this rare exception, you have normally enough presence of mind to not take on two entire bottles by yourself.”

Dinah’s eyebrows raise. “Are you scolding me?”

“Well, I am the maiden aunt. It’s part of my job, right?”

The deadpan delivery startles a laugh of Dinah. It takes her several minutes to regain a sense of calm. “Holy shit. I’d forgotten about that.”

“Me too. I thought he was going to expire on the spot.” Shayera shakes her head.

“You never explained why you wanted to be a maiden aunt. You’re married.”

Shayera just grins at her. “So? Doesn’t mean I can’t also be a maiden. Besides, I’ve never been the mom sort. Being an aunt fits much better.”

Dinah jumps as another chair skids beside her. “What’re we talking about?” Diana asks, joining the two.

“Kaldur calling us mom.” Shayera says. She raises the bottle towards Diana, eyebrow cocked. When Diana nods, the winged woman reaches over with a long arm to snag a third glass. “Remember that day where we all gathered on the beach?”

Diana chuckles. “How could I forget? It was rather flattering.” She raises her glass and clinks it against Dinah’s and Shayera’s. Making a face after draining half of it, Diana sets it down and spins it in her fingers slowly. “What had I asked him? ‘How are things going’, that was it.”

“And he said ‘fine, moms’ back.” Shayera grins like she’s the one who thought of it.

“He looked so mortified. Like he thought we were going to be mad at him.” Diana snorts at the ridiculousness of the idea.

“I think Paula was about to adopt him right then and there, she was so amused.”

“Are we sure she didn’t?” The three share a laugh.

Dinah sobers after a moment though. “We didn’t do very well by him, though.” That brings the other two back down too.

“No, we didn’t.” Diana admits. “Not that he easily accepted assistance in the first place, for all that he’d listen to advice.”

“He’d just promptly ignore it if it didn’t suit his needs. Very politely, of course.”

“Of course.” Shayera nods in agreement. “Is the team doing all right?”

“That’s… hard to say. Most of them are managing all right, more or less. I’m a little concerned about Artemis, but I can’t force her to talk to me.” Dinah sighs.

“Didn’t she go back to school?” Shayera nods at Diana’s question. “And is doing well with her studies?”

“From what I’ve gathered, yes. But I try not to involve myself on that level too much. Had my hands full enough badgering Roy about his schoolwork, let alone anyone else. But last I heard, she should be graduating in the next year or two. Don’t quote me on that though.”

“Yes, well.” Diana’s quiet for a moment. “Sometimes all you can do is give them space. Let them come to you when they’re ready.”

“Yes, but it’s hard to wait for them to be ready.” Dinah refills her glass once again, ignoring Shayera’s pointedly raised eyebrow. She doesn’t drink it immediately, however, instead drumming her fingers on the table. As much as she wants to air her thoughts, sitting through yet another rehashing of who was at fault for what and by how much doesn’t appeal.

“What is it, Dinah?”

“Do you think that maybe we had a part in what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

She picks her words slowly and with care. “I don’t mean that we were directly at fault. But it still bothers me, what Mera said. That we - the League - failed Kaldur too, not just her and Orin.”

From the quiet of the other two, they too don’t want to have yet another argument of going round and round and getting nowhere.

Shayera’s the first to break the silence. “You blame yourself still.” Dinah shrugs. Of course she would cut straight to the center of Dinah’s doubts. “You just got done saying you can’t force someone to talk to you if they don’t want to.”

“I know. I know that. But I can’t help but think of what if. What if I’d done things differently? What if I hadn’t simply accepted that he had chosen to fight for Black Manta? What if I had questioned it, what if I had tried harder to get him to open up, what if I - ”

Diana lays a hand on top of hers, interrupting her. “You can second-guess yourself all day long. Hera knows that I do. I could have used the lasso of truth to have question him, and yet I did not. Shayera is skilled in subterfuge and misdirection, and she too believed it.”

“Diana speaks true. And maybe the League truly had created an environment that made it hard for him to ask us for help.” Dinah stares at Shayera - she can distinctly remember the woman once hotly arguing that the League held no personal responsibility the first time these ideas had been brought up. “Isn’t that why we’ve been doing more and more collaborative group missions? So that everyone - protege or the Team or League - has a broader network of heroes they’ve actually met? So that even if they can’t talk to their mentor for whatever reason, they’ve probably met someone they can talk to? You spearheaded that, remember?”

Diana squeezes her hand gently before letting go. “We can’t change what happened. But we can do our best to not repeat our mistakes in the future.”

“I suppose.” It sounds right but also too easy an out. “I just wish it hadn’t come at such a cost.”

—

Zatanna took a moment to compose herself before stepping back into the living room. Voices greet her as she does. “So did you find anything?” Impulse asks, hope in his eyes, before she’s even clear of the curtain that serves as a door to her ‘divination room’.

She catches Artemis’s eyes before she answers. The archer smiles tightly and looks away. “No, I’m sorry.”

“Not even a trace?” Impulse presses. Of all of them, he’s the one who’s pushed hardest to continue searching for Wally. By now, the rest have let it rest, but not him. Zatanna’s almost certain it’s because of guilt, but she wishes he wouldn’t drag her into dealing with it. “You’re certain? Like, beyond certain?”

“Yes.” The response comes out harsher than she meant, and she almost apologizes but stops herself. She had done these same fruitless searches a year ago, with nothing but headaches and exhaustion to show for it. There was no point to doing them again - all it would do was reopen old wounds - and yet Impulse had insisted. And insisted. And insisted. And now had dragged Artemis into it.

“But there ought to be something. Even if it’s just, I don’t know, an after image or -”

“If Zatanna says there’s nothing, then there’s nothing, Bartholomew.” The boy winces at Artemis’s use of his full first name.

Zatanna nods. “I’m sorry, Impulse. I’d be overjoyed to find anything that hinted of him. But if there is, it’s not anything that I recognize as being even vaguely Wally-ish. As it is, there’s not even anything that even hints at being abnormal for that area.”

“Maybe if you widened the search -”

“Drop it.” Artemis’s tone is flat, and Zatanna suppresses the urge to shiver at the sudden drop in temperature.

“… Fine.” Impulse scowls at Artemis, gives Zatanna a part-apology, part-farewell shoulder shrug, and then there’s only a faint breeze to show that he was even there.

Artemis exhales heavily, running a hand through her hair. “Sorry about him.”

“Don’t be.” Zatanna crosses the small living room to her even smaller kitchen. “Do you want some tea?” Getting an affirmative, Zatanna busies herself in making some. Only once she’s done does Artemis break the silence they’ve fallen into.

“Do you really need a whole separate room to do your magic?”

Zatanna chuckles. “No, but the whole special room with the curtains and crystals and silks and everything is part of what people expect. Makes it more mysterious and all that.” Her smile fades a little as she adds, “And I wasn’t sure I could keep it together, given who I was trying to find. Wanted some privacy if I broke down.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Zatanna shrugs. “I know it must’ve been harder for you, to have to deal with Impulse wheedling you into this.”

Artemis doesn’t look up from her tea, turning the cup in her fingers.

“Hey, you doing okay?”

“Hm?” She looks up when Zatanna’s fingers brush lightly against her elbow. “Oh. I’m all right, more or less. I think I was kind of secretly hoping there would be some trace, this time around. I know it was silly to hope, especially after so long.”

“Not silly.” Zatanna wraps an arm around Artemis, briefly squeezing her shoulders. “Just human.”

“I keep thinking that I’m done grieving for him, you know? And then I fucking broke down and couldn’t even bring myself to visit his grave, Zee. And now I feel terrible that I’m upset about feeling terrible.”

She squeezes Artemis’s shoulders again, longer this time. Artemis drops her head onto Zatanna’s shoulder. “Seems fairly par for the course in my experience.” Zatanna says softly. “Everyone grieves differently and all that, but I know I’ll be fine for what seems like forever and then something normally innocuous will remind me of my dad, and well, cue the waterworks and all that jazz.”

“I was doing fine.” Artemis mutters into her shoulder. “Even with… with visiting Kal’s memorial. Like. I miss him terribly - I don’t think I ever told him how much I valued his friendship. But I was dealing with him being gone, with losing Wally and Kal and everything, I really was, until Impulse refused to let this drop.”

Zatanna makes what she hopes is a soothing sound, releasing Artemis’s shoulder to stroke her hair.

“I’m just tired of people leaving me behind all the time.”

Zatanna doesn’t know what to say to that. “I don’t think he meant to.” She says at last.

“I know.” Artemis sighs and straightens, pulling out of Zatanna’s hold. “I know he didn’t mean to, and I know it’s not fair to him.”

“Have you been, well, talking to anyone about how you’re feeling?”

“What, about being a selfish piece of work who can’t even let her boyfriend’s noble sacrifice be just that?” Artemis snorts and takes a gulp of tea. “No.”

“…  Not exactly,” Zatanna drawls after a moment. “I meant, are you talking to a grief counselor, or doing any sort of general therapy?”

“Because there are so many therapists available for vigilante heroes. What am I supposed to say, Zee? ‘Hi, I moonlight as Tigress, by the way my sister and dad are villains and my mom’s a retired one, and my superhero boyfriend sacrificed himself to save the world a year ago, and then, for icing on the cake, two months later our team leader died too, and I would like to feel less sad?’”

“Ouch, sorry for asking.” Zatanna raises her hands in surrender, not at all surprised by the bite in Artemis’s voice. She’s always been prickly even at the best of times, and Zatanna would have been a fool to expect her to react kindly to having old wounds poked at. Especially when others had already been poking at them.

Artemis grimaces. “I just - Black Canary’s offered a few times, but… I don’t know. It’s just weird. Talking to her about Wally and everything.”

“Mm. Yeah, that’s kind of too much like talking to your mom. I mean, not exactly, but -”

“Yeah. And she’s also kind of our boss in a way. Makes it extra weird.”

“No kidding.” Zatanna finishes her tea then stretches. “Okay, so I don’t know about you, but I could use some plain old Artemis time, you and me hanging out. What do you say to getting pizza and beer and getting your ass kicked at video games?”

Artemis snorts, a small smile forming. “It’s going to be your ass getting kicked Zee, just you wait.”

—

He’s highly aware of the irony of the situation. He’d laugh, if not for how he’d ended up here. He slowly dries himself off as he watches the older man inspect the haul he’s dredged up. Bits of it glisten; more of it will once the water damage has been fixed. The man pokes at the pile, picking up some of it and letting it run through his fingers. Slowly it gets sorted into two smaller piles, presumably ‘treasure’ and ‘junk’. Finally, the man grunts and straightens up, apparently finished with his inspection.

“Good enough,” the man allows. “You seem to know what you’re doing, I’ll give you that much. Know your way about a boat?”

It takes a moment parse the question rightly. “Not well, no.” He answers after a moment. There’d never been a need to learn before. Not that he’d sought out opportunities to learn; it had seemed rather unnecessary at the time.

“Willing to learn?”

He nods an assent.

“Well then. I’ll give you a week’s try, see how you fair. Do well enough, you can stay. Don’t like you, well, you’ll get paid for your time and I’ll see land back under your feet. Deal?”

Once, the man’s unchanging, stern expression might have bothered him. But this is no mission where a single misstep might lead to his death. And he’s had to deal with too many people who were far better at hiding their thoughts to feel even a little nervous now.

“Deal.”

The man’s expression finally changes, a grin spreading across his face. “What did you say your name was again?”

He resists the urge to point out that the man hadn’t even asked for it in the first place. Long practice of holding his tongue - aside from the rare slip - keeps the remark in check. It wasn’t as if he had volunteered his name either.

“Kal. Kal Durham.” It flows out naturally, without any hint of the practice he’s done to avoid tripping over the sounds. It still sounds weird in his ears to use his father’s name as his own.

“Well, Kal, let’s go eat and talk money.”

He lets out a breath he hadn’t realize he was holding. Now, if he can just avoid repeating history, maybe he can survive this too.

[alli-howard]

Recommended Reading

I recently read Bill Gates’s top 5 book recommendations from 2017 and it inspired me to jot down a list of my favorite books from this year. This list covers a wide variety of topics, but I hope you’re able to find at least one new book to add to your 2018 reading list. Enjoy!

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy –Sheryl Sandberg Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was shocked by the sudden death of her husband in 2015. She wrote Option B about her experience with grief, and I actually found it to be incredibly uplifting. If you are going through a difficult time, pay special attention to the three P’s that stunt a person’s recovery.

Small Great Things –Jodi Piccoult Jodi Piccoult has been one of my favorite authors since I was in high school. She has the unique ability to tackle complex and sensitive topics in a way that causes the reader to reevaluate their preconceived notions. In this book, she takes on issues related to race, ethics, and law through riveting storytelling.

All Too Human –George Stephanopoulos Disclaimer: The only reason I picked this book up was because my dad literally offered to pay me to read it. I was drawn in by the story immediately, but I walked away with a bad taste in my mouth towards politics as a whole. The most memorable part of the book for me was a quote from Vince Foster about working in the White House a few weeks before his suicide: “Before we came here, we thought of ourselves as good people.”

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead –Sheryl Sandberg Yes, Sheryl Sandberg made my list twice. Lean In encourages women to take a seat at the table professionally and engage in the conversation. As a young professional, the part of the book that stood out to me the most was when she was in her first job out of college and her boss found out that she didn’t know how to enter data into Lotus 1-2-3. Her initial reaction was: “I’m terrible at my job, I’m going to get fired…” but instead her boss sat her down and taught her how to use the program. She realized that she wasn’t terrible at her job, she just didn’t know how to use one particular program. A seemingly simple observation, this story has carried me through a few bouts of ignorance at work.

This Is How You Lose Her –Junot Diaz Though he can be indecent at times, Junot Diaz writes moving stories of love gone wrong. I enjoyed his writing style and his tendency to use Dominican slang terms (it reminded me of the year I spent living in Washington Heights). My favorite quote from the book is: “the half-life of love is forever.” Side note: If you like This Is How You Lose Her you will definitely like “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” which is a short story that he wrote for The New Yorker. 

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness –Michelle Alexander This year, I realized that I believed in systemic racism, but I didn’t have anything beyond anecdotal examples to support my belief. After coming to that realization, I picked up The New Jim Crow, which explains the history of racial inequality in the criminal justice system since the 1960s. The topic is heavy, but it is an important read. If you would prefer to learn about the topic through a podcast, I would recommend the Seeing White series from Scene on Radio (especially the first three episodes).

Letter to a Christian Nation –Sam Harris Because I am a Christian, this book recommendation might surprise you because Sam Harris’s goal is to bring an end to organized religion in his lifetime. However, I found that many of his critiques of American Christianity were valid. If you feel that Christianity in America more closely resembles politics and nationalism than faith in the living God at times, I would challenge you to read this book with an open mind. Note: the author does not address whether or not the claims of Christianity are actually true, which is, of course, the most important question. With that being said, I do not recommend this book if you are new to your faith or if you are easily offended.

Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality –Henry Cloud You might recognize Henry Cloud’s name because he was the coauthor of the million-copy bestseller, Boundaries. This book is quite a bit different from Boundaries in that it addresses essential qualities for success in business, but it provides equally relevant insight. My mom bought me this book for Christmas and I am about halfway through it but I love it so far.

Mere Christianity –C.S. Lewis I re-read Mere Christianity earlier this year, and I have to say – it was even better the second time. If you have been a Christian for a while, you will probably notice that most of C.S. Lewis’s most famous quotes come from this book. In my admittedly biased opinion, Mere Christianity makes a compelling case for Christianity. Skeptics welcome.

Happy reading in 2018! Feel free to let me know a few of your favorites :)

[museemagazine]

Woman Crush Wednesday: Heide Hatry

Interview by Hallie Neely

What made you decide to create this project?

I have to say that, first, I didn't conceive the project as art. It began as the totally unanticipated way that I came to terms with death and with grief in my own life, and when I realized what potential it had and that I could share that, I was happy in the same way I am to share my art, but I on;y came to look at it more generally and to configure it as an art idea, and as an art idea that has taken profound dimensions, in some way radically questioning the nature of our relationship to the art-work, while returning to what might be seen as a primordial feeling for both matter, in the most basic sense, and for the image as an essentially social, while deeply emotional artifact, as a result of my own painful experience. 

When my father died 25 years ago, in what seemed to me at the time to have been suicide, I was devastated, and it took me quite a long time even to be able to think about him without breaking down crying. Then, in 2008, one of my closest friends committed suicide. I couldn't believe that I hadn't been aware that he was feeling so despondent that he could do that, and not only was I inconsolable, but all of the unresolved pain of my father's death also came back to the surface. I felt paralyzed with grief. 

In Germany, the ashes of a cremated person must be buried, so I had never encountered the practice of preserving, or sometimes scattering, the ashes of deceased loved ones before I came to America, and it was, by chance, only a few weeks before my friend died that I had been allowed to look into an urn that contained the ashes of a friend's deceased wife. That experience touched me deeply, and maybe because of it I had the sudden idea that I needed to make portraits out of my friend's and my father's ashes. Probably that says something about my deeper motivations as an artist, that I think that death can be conquered by art, or that it can heal the worst emotional pain, but the fact is that even as the idea came to me, in a sort of revelation, I already started to feel a calm arise within me. Over the several months it took to figure out a method of using ashes to make their portraits (as I implied, I didn't have access to their actual ashes, so I was using a substitute, as I tried to discover a technique that would work) I engaged in an almost constant dialogue with them, often out loud, and even crying or yelling. By the time I had made their portraits, not only was my grief dispelled, but I felt like they were somehow there with me, that there was a presence that goes way beyond the power of art when I was with them. It reminded me of the relics of saints in the Catholic church or the humble glow of an Icon, which is often so much more powerful than even great works of religious art because believers know that it has been blessed and that they are being protected by the saint it depicts. 

Being an artist, I naturally thought that the effect was caused by the, in this case very lengthy, process of making the portraits, but when a friend, whose mother had died when he was still rather young and with whom he felt he had a totally unresolved relationship, one that was cut short before they could know each other in the way he wanted, asked if I would make a portrait for him as well - with her actual ashes - I discovered that he had the same almost preternatural experience, both of the presence of his mother, and of an indescribable calm and consolation. That's when I thought that this was a comfort that I could offer to others as well. And it turned out that I knew quite a lot of people who had ashes of loved ones that they felt were almost a burden, or were being disrespected, or shunted aside, by simply being stored in an urn or a box, and over a number of years I made portraits for some of them as gifts, always finding that their relationship to their beloved changed or was enriched in a range of interested ways just by having this renewed contact with what they knew was the physical residue of the actual person they had loved. 

How do you choose the people you want to create portraits for? Do you people come to you to request these pieces?

I didn't really choose the particular subjects, except to the extent that I was speaking to friends or people I learned had suffered a loss and telling them about my experience and that of others for whom I had made portraits, but it does strike me that in a world in which many more people are being cremated than ever before, we are more often in the company of what remains of our beloved long after the immediate exigency of attending to the body or even of coping with the pain and grief that frequently renders reflection impossible and which has typically dictated that we simply adopt common social practices without examining them, has subsided. So I think that in some way my discovery happens to suit the times, even as it obviously reflects a long cultural and perhaps even primordially human tradition. In fact the great art historian Hans Belting, among others, thinks that the origins of portraiture had exactly the purpose that my project envisions - to keep the dead among us and clear our minds, in some way still in relationship to the kinship group, even exerting a force among us with their presence. For me, such a process seems clearly better than hiding the dead away in an urn or spreading them to the winds. Memory is always better than forgetting: it is the basis of everything important that is human. 

More pertinently, though, a lot of people feel something like despair when the people they loved die, as if a part of them has died, too, or that they have suffered a horrible trauma. Knowing that the person is actually right there in front of you, as if seeing you as you look at him or her, has a powerful effect.  The friends for whom I made a portrait all told me that they also sometimes talk to their beloved one, just as I do with my father and my friend. 

Of course, a lot of the people for whom I made the first portraits are artists or people for whom art is an important thing in their lives, so for them the visual impact of the work is also very powerful, and they are used to having a deeper relationship to images than to something that is simply functional or decorative, and they also tend to hate waste, I mean to hate to incorporate objects in their lives that don’t express some sort of meaning.  In addition, the people who typically want this are people who had a profound and deeply loving relationship to the departed, and they feel this as an act of reverence to them and a memorialization of their relationship and their love.  They don’t ever want to forget them.

Still, it’s not something everyone would want, and plenty of people find it an uncomfortable prospect even if their relationship to the deceased was not fraught or problematic.  That said, there are also people who have found it compelling in spite of their deep qualms about using the ashes of people they loved.  One of the people whose husband’s portrait is included in the exhibition always tells me that while she is horrified by the project, she has also felt healed by it, and I really admire her for engaging these complex feelings.  But so far, most people who see the work find it invigorating or recognize the obvious respect that animates it than find it frightening or creepy.  I sense a turn in the general rejection or fear of death that has characterized our modern relationship to it.  Look at all of the books that have been published about death in the last decade, an astonishing number, and groups, like reading groups, that get together to discuss aspects of death, the so-called “death cafes,” or even programs that discuss death with children in schools.  And I think this is a great way to help bring that suppressed curiosity, or “socially inappropriate” but totally natural and healthy fascination into the open, and into normal life, again, after a very long and counter-productive period of repression.

 Has this project made you more interested in death as an art form?

I’m not sure I know quite what you mean by “death as an art form,” although it certainly sounds evocative – De Quincy’s Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts or Stevenson’s “The Suicide Club” spring to mind – but I have very much worked with death during the 8 years I’ve been engaged in this project, and I’ve learned a lot, for example, that we all have to die – including me.  Of course I knew that before, but there is a huge difference between “knowing” and actually being aware of it.  And I think this difference is what makes death such a huge taboo, especially for people in the US and other “civilized” countries.  To really understand that we have a few years on this planet and that then everything will be totally over is just too painful for most of us, and since death is unavoidable, it seems to be easier, and maybe more practical, to avoid thinking about at it.  Personally, I’m trying to cope with that pain, to get used to it like to a chronic condition and use it to remind myself of how beautiful life is and to want to live it to the fullest.

One of the not necessarily empty platitudes about art holds that it is all about death, even that it owes its existence to the fact of death, much as the philosopher, Jacques Derrida, could contend that “all of his writing was about death.”  And the Buddha, among many others since, quasi-paradoxically opined that the meaning of life is death.  In some ways, it is more difficult not to be interested in death, even without trying than it is to be free of the thought of it.  Since, however, in a way that cannot easily be said of much other art, the very substance of Icons in Ash is death, and in some respect I see myself as speaking for death, or rather letting it speak on its own account, giving it a voice uncolored by the civilized history of art or thought, I am profoundly and very personally attuned to this empty and very impersonal “thing.”  I think that much of the quiet force of Icons in Ash comes from the fact that we feel the void even as we know we are looking at someone we once knew and perhaps loved.  Death has the human face it has been missing for such a long time. 

Can you talk a bit about your process, about your workflow in creating each piece from start to finish?

I use three different techniques to make my ash portraits, all of which took a lot of trial and error to perfect – in my many experiments I generally used animal ashes from cremated pets that hadn’t been claimed by their owners.  The first, and the one I’ve spent the most time both developing and practicing, is essentially a mosaic technique, which requires individually placing thousands and thousands of discrete particles onto a bed of wax to create the likeness, working from black-and-white photographs that the family or friends have chosen for the portrait.  The obvious difference from the mosaics you might know, say the famous ones in Ravenna, is that my fragments are not really visible as individual “stones,” but are tiny particles, like dust or pigment that create a subtle dimensionality when they’ve been arrayed on the wax.

Because the ashes are pure bones and therefore of only one color, I also use white marble dust (as a symbol of death) and black birch coal (as a symbol of life) to get a palette ranging over different shades of grey.  This is, as you might imagine, an extremely painstaking method, and I am hunched over the work sometimes for weeks, applying these microscopic fragments with the tip of a scalpel.  It is like reconstructing a broken image, which is in fact where the word “mosaic” comes from – Moses piecing back together the tablets of the Ten Commandments that he had shattered in anger.

I also use a more painterly, but still methodical and highly repetitive, or meditative, technique, in which I draw many layers of very diluted ink onto either an emulsion of ashes and binder, or on a surface of pure ashes.  These look almost like photographs, but have a much deeper and textured feeling because of the layering of the drawings.

And, finally, because I realized that so many people who would like to have such a portrait can’t afford an image that is so time-consuming to create, I developed a photographic technique in which I can recreate a photo on a surface of pure ashes or, again, on a surface bearing an emulsion of ashes and binder. 

The portraits I have made so far are always approximately life-size, which I think supports the feeling that the person is actually there, and I recess them in a shadow box, which gives a sense of deeper dimensionality, as well as a distance that I think subtly reflects the changed state of the subjects’ existence, as well as of our relationship to them.

This is a conversation with the deceased - an homage to their legacy. These are their very ashes made into a portrait of themselves. How did it feel to start using ashes of people you didn't know to create such long-lasting pieces for their loved ones and for yourself?

I like how you put it: “a conversation with the deceased.” That’s exactly what it is, and an homage to their memory!  

When I started to develop this as an art idea, I had strong and strange feelings to touch the ashes of human beings, but I suppose that uppermost among them was the feeling that this substance was something precious and that, unlike almost every other action one might take as an artist, I had to be extremely careful and specifically about the material itself. 

But the far more disturbing aspect of the matter as I began offering to make portraits for others was the idea that I, as a German artist, making something out of human ashes, would involuntarily and almost inevitably conjure thoughts of the Nazi atrocities for many viewers.  I was so troubled by that possibility that I had to give up the whole project for several years, not seeing how it wouldn’t cause pain or anger rather than the solace that I intended.  It was only after I researched specifically what the Nazis actually did and what they intended that I could resume it, because I knew that my purpose was exactly the opposite of theirs: where they wanted to obliterate a whole people and make it as though they had never existed, to destroy them, and eliminate every trace of them, I am remembering, preserving, honoring, and making present what is lost to us.  To me, this is an act of reverence.

Of course it’s still strange to work with a human being’s ashes, and sometimes I have a very hard time to continue working and need a break – that actually happens more often when I am working on somebody I knew – just because it is so intense to be aware of what I am doing.  On the other hand it is a pure labor of love and I am rather trying to think about putting the bone particles back together, animating, in a way, a person who has died, than thinking that this is a dead person.  There is simultaneously a frustration and an ecstasy in this practice, which I think exemplifies the frustration and the ecstasy that has always characterized art: we are desperate to make whole what can never be whole, to make sense of what never makes sense in actual life.  This is where art is at once a greater truth than life, and an inevitable, if inadvertent, lie that has always excited a certain distrust among the practical and the earnest.  I believe, however, that this seemingly irresolvable tension or aporia is a consequence of the denial of death to which most civilization has been so fervently devoted from time immemorial, and in Icons in Ash, by materially putting the fact of death before us in its simplicity and its specificity, we can begin to strike an understanding that neither diminishes nor overreaches its subject.

WCW QUESTIONNAIRE

Describe your creative process in one word.

Love

If you could teach a one, one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

How to follow your dreams

What is the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

I am usually inspired by nature or art exhibitions, but the last book that inspired me was what I am reading right now: Death: An Interdisciplinary Analyses by Warren Shibles (Language Press, Whitewater, Wisconsin, 1974)

What is the most played song in your music library?

Black Star by David Bowie, sung by Amanda Palmer and Anna Calvi

How do you take your coffee?

Lots of steamed and frothed almond milk with a few drops of espresso

Heide has a solo show at Ubu Gallery in New York until May 12, 2017! 

[miragessplit-archive-blog]

18, 20, 21, 29, 31, 38, 40

42 character development questions!

@nightmaresend

18. What kind of person could they become in the future? What are some developmental paths that they could take, (best, worst, most likely?) what would cause them to come to pass, and what consequences might they have? What paths would you especially like to see, and why?

I’m a firm believer that there are many paths that a character can take depending on small events – a sort of “butterfly effect” kind of thing. As a result, there’s an infinite number of possibilities as to what direction the character goes in.

So this isn’t a cop-out, though, I’ll answer some of the fragments within the question:

Best: Likely in the best case scenario, if everything works out and the keyblade war is situated and he winds up with Sora and all that, Riku would become a get a good grasp on his dark powers and the balance of light and dark within him, and that he’d be able to sort out his jealousy issues so that Sora can still have his friends but at the same time he’ll work out having time with Sora alone that he won’t have with anyone else. In that way, it’s a sort of balance. I can imagine Riku being surrounded by friends of his own and being able to uphold the title of Keyblade Master, working out any issues that happen in other worlds as a sort of job that helps to sustain him and Sora, who may accompany him on these adventures.

Worst: The only way I could see the “worst” scenario actually happening at this point is if Sora dies. Sora’s the most important thing to Riku, so if something happened to him Riku would not take it very well. Even if Sora started hating him that would be a better outcome. Riku would probably lose his will to go on without Sora around, figuring that he should’ve died instead. It’d be hard to get him to do much of anything. In addition, he’d be on a vengeful course after whoever managed to commit the deed; and if it was an accident, then he’d be blaming himself for not looking after Sora better. If you want to make this even worse, then assume it’s not only Sora but Riku’s other friends who’ve fallen, and you have a Riku who likely will be unable to cope with the ensuing grief.

Most likely: Honestly, the most likely is a dampened version of “the best”, knowing Kingdom Hearts. He won’t wind up with Sora, but he’ll end up solving the Keyblade War and…well, essentially doing everything else. It’s Kingdom Hearts, after all; happy endings is kind of their thing. They brought all of the Nobodies who died back, after all. (Except Xion. RIP Xion.)

I think the best would be the one I’d especially like to see of all of them, but I’m not expecting it to happen in game-canon because…i mean, it’s Kingdom Hearts. They kind of did away with anything aside from ship-teasing tbh.

20. What kind of individual relationships do they have with others, and how do they behave in them? How are they different between intimate relationships like friends, family, and lovers versus more impersonal relationships?

For someone who’s friends with someone who makes tons of connections and prides himself on them, Riku himself doesn’t have many close relationships to boast of. Most of them are acquaintances that he knows through Sora – such as Donald and Goofy. That being said, there are three close relationships he happens to have that have a major impact on him.

Kairi: His best friend outside of Sora, Kairi is someone who’s important to him; this much is obvious given how much he risks for her in the first game as well as the fact that he tells Sora to take care of her. I’m one of those who doesn’t believe that he has a crush on her outside of the first game and that any hint of caring after that is mainly brotherly/sisterly, though either way you think of it it’s undeniable that he cares a lot about her and is a great deal protective over her. He’s also obviously jealous of her for the attention that she gets from Sora, but he tries not to let that affect his relationship with her and doesn’t hold it against her. He might’ve before, but he’s since let that anger go, even if there may be a twitch of annoyance when Sora says something positive about her every once in a while.

Mickey: pls no riku/mickey Mickey reached out to him during a low point and as such he’s a mentor figure for Riku. He looks up to the king with a kind of reverence and deep respect for him. As fun as it is to joke about how much of a fanboy he is for Mickey, he does want to follow in his shoes and wants to become honorable as much as Mickey has. He’s essentially a guiding presence in his life and as such he wants to follow after him. He’s probably one of the closer relationships aside from Sora and Kairi that he has, and he’s his first vehicle into the realm of making friends with everyone outside of the two he shared the island with.

Sora: And of course, how could I forget Sora himself? Sora is pretty much everything to him. Before he’d kind of treated him like garbage, shoving him aside because of the jealousy that he felt; but he’s grown out of that, and he’s since become rather protective of the boy, while at the same time treating him almost like glass. This of course comes from the fear that he would hurt him, so he’s very careful about touching and interacting with him. Some of the easy friendship slips in every once in a while, with banter and with laughter and with smiles, but there’s a weight to it that hadn’t been there when they were younger, and that’s the weight of crushing guilt that holds him back from seeking what he wants. He thinks Sora’s the most important person out there and as such will follow whatever he believes Sora’s desire to be, holding back his own thoughts if he thinks it’ll make things better between them.

Riku has met and become friends with others (Shiki, for instance), but his friendships are shallower than the ones he has with these three, and that’s because Riku has trouble connecting with people as closely as Sora does. Sora makes best friends the instant that he meets them – Riku takes a lot longer to open up to people. He’s so used to Sora being his entire world that anyone else trying to become a part of it seems like they’re out of place there.

21. What kind of relationships do they tend to intentionally seek out versus actually cultivate? What kind of social contact do they prefer, and why?

Riku doesn’t tend to intentionally seek out/cultivate relationships very much. While he’s taken on more Sora-esque behaviors, he’s still not someone who seeks out relationships so much as he pursues helping other people – that is to say, he doesn’t look for friends and adventure like Sora does, but rather to compensate for the mistakes that he’s made in the past. As a result, he makes a ton of acquaintances but not a whole lot of close people within his life.

In a way, he prefers it like this; being able to maintain this distance allows him to keep his feelings to himself rather than lying them on top of someone else. The only person who would be an exception to this is Sora, really. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about other people, far from it as he’s sometimes been known to open himself to vulnerability if he believes it will save other people, and he’s willing to put himself in uncomfortable positions even if he hardly knows whoever he’s doing it for. But as much as Riku likes helping people and exploring and “following his heart” as he might say he’s doing, he still holds himself back to some degree.

Of course, being a human he naturally craves contact and connection with other people, though that craving usually revolves around Sora rather than most people he meets. Still, he’d probably benefit from having more friends if he simply allowed himself to have them. He won’t admit it, but it would be kind of nice to have this huge circle of friends like Sora does. He’s unaware of the identity crisis this friendship serves for Sora, making him lose himself; he sees it from the outside and he sees how nice it is to be surrounded by people who are willing to catch you when you fall.

29. What kind of activities, interests, and hobbies do they have? What significance and impact do these have in their lives, both positive and negative?

Riku doesn’t engage in hobbies very often, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any.

Competition: Anything to do with competition, where there’s a winner and a loser, Riku likes. He likes sparring, racing, and anything else that requires a “game” of sorts. He doesn’t even mind if he loses; he just likes the thrill of the chase and the thrill of fighting. As long as there isn’t anything high stake at risk, Riku’s happy to indulge in a bit of friendly competition between himself and someone else. It’s a kind of play that bonds him with others, although he has a tendency to do that more with Sora than with anyone else.

Exploring: An activity/interest/hobby that’s died down a bit over the years, Riku had a thirst for finding every single corner of every single world, and it was part of the reason he wanted to leave the Islands in the first place. A part of him feels like he’s seen everything and he has a kind of homesickness now, but that doesn’t mean the adventurer within him is gone. If he finds a new world, he likes to be able to map it out and figure out where everything is. Riku likes the idea of discovering new things, especially if he’s doing it with Sora. Before he liked to advertise he knew these new things before having even seen them, and Sora used to hang off of his every word at that point, but he’s lately recognized he doesn’t know everything.

Pranking: Riku doesn’t make a habit of doing this anymore, but pulling little pranks on people is a secret pastime of his. He used to do it more often when he and Sora were younger, telling him things that weren’t true intentionally or getting Sora stuck in traps on islands that the two of them were walking into. It was never done with malicious intent and he’d always feel bad about it if it upset the person he’s pranking, and given that he has no time anymore he doesn’t engage in it any longer, but he still wouldn’t be above doing it if the opportunity presented itself.

Crafting: Riku likes building things. He had a lot of fun helping to build the raft on the Islands. This is a hobby that he hasn’t been able to indulge in for years, but it’s still there; if he had the ability to craft something, he would. Arts fall under this too, although he’s not so much artsy in the traditional sense of drawing on a canvas as he is about making something with his own hands. He’d done exactly that with the necklace that Sora wears, having custom built it with his fingers and his parents helping out so it looked good enough. He also likes to help out with rebuilding projects simply because he likes working with his hands.

Flying: Probably the oddest of choices, ever since he got the ability to within Sora’s dreams Riku enjoys being able to fly through the air. He doesn’t have a Gummi Ship to use, but he’d definitely like to learn how to drive one one day if simply so that he’ll be able to soar. He’s a little embarrassed about this one, which is why he hasn’t mentioned it to anyone, but a part of him wants to be able to grow wings so he can fly on his own without needing a vehicle.

Because he’s so busy, he doesn’t really indulge in these anymore (save for the competition; he has an excuse to do that through sparring). Many of these he shafts in favor of doing something that someone else (especially Sora) would like to do, but you might be able to get him to admit to wanting to do these things again if you asked him.

Overall, if it came down to it, his greatest hobby is simply spending time with Sora. Despite the distance he’s tried to maintain with him he craves the ability to just do things with him, whether it’s laughing or playing or dancing or anything like that. He doesn’t care what it is so long as Sora’s there to do it with. He’s opening up to his friends some so he’d be able to do it with Kairi and Mickey, possibly, though he reveres the latter a touch too much and well… Kairi’s “a girl” who probably is beyond their boy rough housing, in his mind anyway.

31. Is there anything that counts as a “dealbreaker” for them, positively or negatively? What makes things go smoothly, and what spoils an activity or ruins their day? Why?

Riku is actually rather hard on himself. If he orchestrates an activity himself, should even the slightest thing go wrong with it he’ll be prone to beating himself up about it. He didn’t used to be like this; when he was younger, if something went wrong he was wont to blame it on something else. No longer does he want to blame his own failings on other circumstances, though, so he’ll find himself apologizing profusely over a small hiccup in a plan.

An example would be if in a sparring session, he manages to accidentally hurt Sora. That would ruin the whole activity for him even if that’s a thing that happens commonly, and he’ll be beating himself up over it for a good hour, even if Sora forgives him. It’s hard for him to forgive himself even for mild transgressions because he believes he’s already fulfilled his mistake quota for his life; he can’t possibly make it any worse.

That criticism is not as harshly directed outward, but that doesn’t mean there’s no criticism directed outward to speak of at all. He was pretty mad when Yen Sid failed to tell him about Aqua’s fate – partly at himself, of course, but definitely at Yen Sid, too. He considers that a failing. Still, he was quick to calm down from it, wanting to go into fixing the mistake rather than harshly rebuking the person who made it, and that’s indicative of how he deals with mistakes from other people rather nicely. He’s not someone who will doggedly go after you about it. Yell at you for a few minutes, maybe, but after that he’ll be brainstorming a solution.

Things going right is just…no mistakes, honestly. There’s no positive “dealbreaker” for Riku; it’s just a matter of things working out or they don’t, and there isn’t much shade in between. That being said, he’s more willing to brush off misgivings and failings if someone else has done it. If someone hurts him during sparring, to name an example, he’s more willing to pretend it didn’t even happen to begin with. In his mind, his mistakes count far more than the mistakes of other people.

He’s also, quite obviously, more willing to forgive accidents rather than intentional mistakes. Sora nicking him on the arm by accident? Not a big deal. Yen Sid hiding the truth from him intentionally? Okay, let’s not do that?? Maybe?? Pretty much.

38. Is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? What, and why?

Absolutely.

Riku doesn’t see anything bad about his worldview in general – that is to say, he doesn’t think that his view on saving worlds is incorrect. He may feel a little selfish for not particularly caring about the predicament of a world, but he’s essentially following what he believes Sora wants to do, and as such it’s pretty much right. Help other people whenever he notices that they’re succumbing to darkness and that’s about it. He can take personal failings on accomplishing this goal particularly hard, but he never questions the validity of the goal itself.

That is not to say, however, that there is nothing that he wants to fix about his thought processes. The thought processes in particular that he wants to change are ones that gravitate toward his own wants and needs, the ones that are “selfish”: him wanting to spend more time with Sora and not liking how much time he’s spending with other people, him wanting affection when he clearly doesn’t deserve it… Anything that seems particularly self-centered, and Riku is not happy with it. Especially when it comes to Sora.

Riku blames these selfish desires as the reason why he’s wound up hurting Sora and Kairi so much. He hasn’t reached the maturity to recognize that it’s not the jealousy that’s the problem, but the way in which he’s handled it; specifically, the fact that he never talked to either of them about the issue to begin with. Instead, he sits within that jealousy while hating the fact that he feels it, and it leads to a vicious cycle of wanting to change his thought patterns but only exacerbating the issue by condemning himself for having them, as they only grow worse as a result of their lack of being properly addressed.

In other words, he never validates himself, and as a result his emotions on these issues fight back, just making the problem even worse than it already was.

If there’s one positive thing that comes out of his guilt, it’s the fact that he hasn’t acted rashly since he started feeling it. Unfortunately, he’s swung to the complete opposite side of the pendulum; he’s way too hesitant, and it can lead to the wrong impression and hurt other people anyway because he’s pulling away, rather than being outright about what he wants. It’s dealing with the emotion in a negative way again, just doing it differently.

40. What do they wonder about? What sparks their curiosity and imagination, and why? How is this expressed, if it is?

Riku used to wonder about other worlds. To some degree, he still does, though he doesn’t have the ability to sit around thinking about it as much as he could. He wondered what it was like on these other worlds, what kind of people there were, what kind of power he could find there. Much of his thoughts back in the day revolved around grandeur, but Riku’s thoughts now revolve more around the variety that he may experience going somewhere else as opposed to what he can personally gain from going there.

He’s often too busy to think about much else, although the sky and Sora have inspired him enough to have crafted for them both in the past. He sees the connection between the two of them: a freeing kind of connection that Sora fosters. Riku adores and craves that connection and he wants it for himself.

He’d be more curious about Sora’s friends if he wasn’t already jealous of them. Should the jealousy be properly addressed, he’d likely wonder what it’s like in their homeworlds and what they see in Sora as much as he sees in him.

In addition, he’s wondered what it’s like to be Kairi, a light princess who came from a kingdom that fell, but he’s always believed it to be too rude to ask her. You don’t just ask people about their traumas, after all! Besides, she did seem like she didn’t really remember anyway, so he doubts the thought would get him anywhere.

Usually it’s expressed through crafting and through idle thoughts and words that he’s said. Nothing grandeur, although back in the past in manifested in unleashing the heartless upon his world and then leaving it behind, so…uh… Maybe there’s a reason he minimizes that curiosity now.