#both of them so wrapped up in image and artifice

[aethersea]

@solarnexas it's always ok to tag me & show me cool things, thank you! and you're absolutely right, I do absolutely love Goncharov

The Muppets as Goncharov (1973)

the only goncharov remake I want is a muppets version

[Image description: Gifs of the muppets with edited captions.

1 - Kermit, wearing a suit, says, "Yes, I am Goncharov."

2 - Several ticking clocks on a wall

3 - Miss Piggy and Kermit kiss, while Miss Piggy says, "Of course, we're in love; that's why I tried to shoot you."]

[rcksmith]

Beautiful - Kaz Brekker.

Requests: “Also, the image of Kaz comforting with soft aftercare sobbing hot tears reader after being immensely physically and emotionally overstimulated - lives in my head rent free. Just saying. 💁💁💁”

“29 smut and 4 fluff with the Kaz AU please? Your writing style is ✨immaculate✨”

“hey there! may i request a smut fic on Kaz Brekker x reader with 43, 48 and 54? obviously everything else is your choice :)”

Fluff prompts:

4. “Sweetheart, you’re my entire world”.

Smut prompts:

29. “I didn’t know you were so sensitive.”

43. “When we get home I’m cuffing you to the bed and going down on you all night until my jaw is sore.”

48. “I only want to please you.”

54. “Come sit on my face, let me show you how much I missed you.”

Couple: Kaz Brekker/ Fem!Reader.

Warnings: swearing, explicit smut, nsfw, dirty talk, overstimulated, Kaz!soft dom.

Word count: 2k.

A/N: All smut requests for Kaz must follow these rules.

English is not my first language, so I so sorry if have a mistake

Requests are closed. Love you❤️

— — — —

Your chest rose and fell frantically, your mouth half-open in a moan or silent scream, your head thrown back on the black pillows, one hand clutching the sheet with the despair of a shipwrecked at sea. The air was hot and heavy and sizzling, the scent of sex and lust had long time flooded the room and now the fragrance only deepened.

His hot tongue licked your most swollen and quivering spot, his lips closing on your absurdly wet crest and sucking with sensual hunger. The electrifying sensation made you want to close your legs for the pleasure and pain of overstimulation. But Kaz kept both hands firmly on your thighs, separating them precisely, allowing him to eat you like a starving man for years. As if he hadn't already fucked you intensely minutes ago.

“Sir!” You moaned loudly, your back arching and hot tears streaming down your eyes.

You sobbed, the sounds already mingling in your stuttering mouth, reducing you to a tearful mess. But Kaz didn't give you relief. His mouth dipped deeper, his lips eating you adoringly, his hands curling around your thigh and pulling you closer. As if it were still insufficient.

“F-fuck-! S -...” Your incoherent scream was lost in throat, sounding absurdly submissive, innocent and desperate.

Brekker chuckled a little arrogantly. The vibration of his laughter hitting your walls so swollen and wet was enough to push you over the edge. The explosion of artifice behind your eyelids make your heart to pound wildly in chest.

Kaz lifted his mouth minutely, looking up at you, his cocky smile still gracing his lips swollen and wet from your orgasm. “ I didn’t know you were so sensitive."

It was a mockery, of course. And you would have rolled your eyes at that bastard if you had the strength. But you were just a mess that was pushed to the bottom of the well, so you just ran your fingers through Kaz's hair, the tears still flowing and the breath coming in a gasp from your lips.

Brekker has always had an overwhelming hunger, especially for you. He already had a controlling and dominant personality, always seen in the highest positions of command, always the boss, and being able to bend you at his feet was such an intense feeling that you never thought it possible for anyone to feel. He was careful at the beginning of the relationship, testing the limits, asking if you were okay and giving you the security password. But as time went on, when Kaz realized that your limit line was too far away, that you loved being tearful mess for him, things got really intense.

And you loved every second. And that's why you provoked so much tonight.

Your smile was mischievous, filled with that facade of fake innocence and prickly puppy dog ​​eyes. Your dress was tight and silky black, hugging your curves the way you knew Kaz couldn't control himself.

You were excited to overwhelming levels. Kaz had been traveling on business for the past three days and you felt much more needy than usual. And he had rules, explicit rules that involved you not can’t to touch yourself alone, your orgasms were his, so seeking relief with yourself wasn't an option.

And now he had arrived and needed to prioritize what the Crows were telling him about what had happened while he was gone. Normally, you would have understood. Kaz was an absurdly busy man, but you couldn't wait any longer. When he called you saying he was arriving at the crow club, you dressed immaculately and went to wait for him there, like just a like a girlfriend who was missing him. Not like a little devil who had much more impure intentions.

You realized that had successfully carried out your plan from the way Kaz looked at you the second he saw you. With hunger, visseral desire and sinful lust. He looked at you like he wanted to devour you. Brekker and you tried to keep up appearances for the rest of the gang, in a fiery game that only the two of you knew. But his hand was glued around your waist the entire time, in a possessive touch.

You had even been distracted a little more by Jesper's jokes when a voice, warm and sinful, whispered huskily in your ear: “When we get home I'm cuffing you to the bed and going down on you all night until my jaw is sore.”

The two of you already lived together, and Brekker lavished himself on that luxury by banging your back on the door when getting home. In an aggressive kiss, permeated with lust and longing, your body was already hot and you could feel panties wet without him even touching you right.

"I missed you." You whimpered into his mouth, your arms wrapped around his neck as you purposely pressed your breasts against his male chest. "I only want to please you."

"You have no idea how much I missed you." His mouth dipped into your once more, his hands roving possessively over your body.

“I doubt.” You stubbornly teased, just because you wanted more attention. More attention from him.

Kaz smiled that dissolute sideways smile, bringing a hand up to your throat and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Come sit on my face, let me show you how much I missed you.”

He had already made you come three times. Fucking you and eating you like an insatiable man, never feeling satisfied to see his own cum ooze out of you or feel you cuming.

"Fucking good slut." Another slap was delivered to your left thigh, followed by a possessive squeeze.

Kaz was on top of you again, slamming his mouth into yours in a fierce way, making you taste your own taste. It wasn't a pretty or elegant kiss. Tongues danced at once and your cum mixing with saliva. You sobbed loudly, your hands on his chest, the tears running hot and mixing with your smudged mascara. You were a tearful mess, exuding that submissive innocence. And the way you were vulnerable and at his mercy only fueled his hunger.

Kaz Brekker wanted more.

"Are you going to take my cum inside you like a good girl?" His voice was warm and lusty.

You stuttered, your breath burning in your chest and your pussy swollen with aching clit.

"D-daddy." You whimpered “I-I don't know if I c-can.” Your waist moved to his, and a broken moan escaped as your rubbed against his throbbing cock.

“Oh my poor baby.” His mouth was on your again, his cock rubbing against slippery entrance and swallowing your moans and sobs.

You two had a security password, and Kaz knew damn well you remembered and were perfectly lucid to say it. But the truth was, you didn't want to. You liked hunting, you liked the game, you liked being helpless in his arms and being used like a doll. And you knew Kaz knew that.

"Can't you handle my dick?" He tasted you, the tip of his cock pressing into your entrance.

You threw your head back, a moan along with a loud sob escaping your mouth and hot tears flowing in a steadier rhythm. Your hands were trembling against his chest, breasts rising and falling desperately with your panting breath. You shifted your waist, and Kaz used it to sink deep inside you.

Your scream came broken and fighting breath. Brekker bit his lip hard for the overwhelming pleasure it was to see you like this, feel you like this, enter your pussy and feel you throbbing strongly and sucking his cock inside.

"Fucking hell!" It hit your G-spot, and you felt a sob choke in throat.

Kaz hit again and sank down as far as possible, touching the tip of his cock to the mouth of your uterus and pouring all the hot cum there. For the second time that night.

"Fuck- Daddy!" You squinted your eyes and the scream was caught in your throat by your panting breath.

You pussy burned from overstimulation, her clitoris extremely sore and swollen. The hot tears flowed continually, and you buried your face in the crook of Kaz's neck, whimpering.

"My little princess." Kaz's warm arms encircled you, tracing lazy circles with his thumbs across your warm skin. “You did so, so good. Taking it all like a such good girl.”

You hiccuping. Your legs and hands trembling, your pussy swollen and throbbing. You breath burned in chest and you could have sworn your womb felt filled with Kaz's cum. As if the deep he poured into you, as deep as possible, had reached his goal and filled you up. Completely.

Kaz pulled his dick out of you gently, but pulled your panties back between your legs to keep his cum from leaking out. A realization that made you both moan softly.

“We don't want it to drain do we?" He sprinkled a little kiss on your trembling lips, his right hand wiping the tears from your cheek and holding your face sweetly. “Will you hold my cum inside you like a good girl?”

Even weak and sobbing, you nodded, bending your head to his touch and rubbing your cheek in his hand. Kaz lay down beside you, wrapping his arms around your shivering body and pulling you lovingly into his chest, brushing the strands of sweat from your forehead and wiping away your hot tears with his thumbs.

"My beautiful girl."

Kaz ran his hands over your body in a tender, gentle touch, soothing the trembling in your legs. Pampering your warm skin with loving sweets, splashing a few kisses on youd cheeks and gently nuzzling your hair.

"Sweetheart, you’re my entire world" a kiss to the bridge of your nose was poured "You know that don't you?"

"I know, Kassy." Your voice was low and tired, breathing starting to settle.

You and your body both protested when Kaz got up from the bed and picked you up. His warm arms accommodated you like they were the best refuge in the world, and you were already dozing off when you realized you had been placed in a tub filled with hot water.

You let out a loud moan of complete satisfaction, and Kaz laughed.

“Yeah, I thought you might like that." He played with you and you chuckled softly.

Your eyes remained closed throughout the process. Kaz's hands slid the soap over your skin with such care and affection that you felt a huge wave of love settle in your chest. He kept going through the process, shampooing and creaming your hair and placing his flap-shaped hand over your eyes, preventing the water from falling out when he rinsed the products.

You opened your eyes a few seconds after your hair was clean, and his gaze shifted to your face.

“Hey you.” Kaz smiled and you smiled back.

“I love you.” It was the only way you could find to express everything you were feeling right now.

Kaz sensed the intensity of your feelings by your gaze, and dropped a small kiss on the tip of your nose as he said, “I love you too, Dear. Now let me dry you.”

A/N: what can i say? i am a whore. HAHAHAH anyway, besties, i've opened the tag list now so let me know if you want to be added. Requests are closed. Love you.

Tagged: @glowingatdawn

[mimisempai]

Every time I look at you, I fall in love again

Summary:

As he gazes at his sleeping lover, Loki remembers the moments where he fell in love with Mobius.OrFive times when Loki's heart pounded in a special way and once when it pounded in a familiar way.

Notes:

Tumblr request : a 5+1 - it could be about moments in their relationship where Loki falls more in love w/ Mobius

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32821156

2084 words - Rating G

1.

For once, Loki woke up this morning before Mobius.

Leaning on his hand, he took the opportunity to watch his beloved while he slept.

As he gazed at the sleeping features of his lover, he was once again taken aback by the strength of his feelings.

Loki had little or no experience with love, so he had nothing to compare to what he was experiencing with Mobius right now.

No one had made him feel the way the man made him feel.

It was as if Mobius had wrapped his roots around Loki's heart little by little but without imprisoning him.

Mobius' love had set him free.

In return, Loki's feelings had taken root in Mobius' constancy.

Sometimes Loki liked to think about how his feelings had developed, because it had all happened so quickly that he had never been able to enjoy those stolen first moments.

It would be hard for Loki to say exactly when he had begun to notice that his relationship with Mobius was different from any relationship he had had before, but what he was sure of was that no one had ever been able to see through him as quickly as Mobius.

"I don't like to talk."

"But you do like to lie, which you just did. Because we both know you love to talk. Talkie-talkie."

Honestly, at that moment, Loki thought fondly, if he hadn't been so angry at being found out, he would have laughed.

As a matter of fact, it had become a fond memory for them. Whenever Loki would go into one of his grandiloquent tirades, Mobius would simply make this little gesture with his hand and would mouth "Talkie Talkie"

" You don't know anything about me.

"Maybe I'd like to learn."

It was probably at that moment that Mobius had begun to touch something in Loki that no one had ever touched. The fact that anyone would even bother to genuinely learn about him was in itself new. Except for his mother and Thor, most people had always assumed the worst of him.

"Honestly, I'm actually a fan. Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering why does someone with so much range just wanna rule?

Mobius had been the first to make him question himself.

Of course, at the time, he was not at all receptive to what Mobius' words really meant.

It had taken him some time to admit the truth.

The moment he had admitted it, the naked truth, without any more artifice, he had been ready to receive the final blow, the ratification of his vileness, but no, nothing like that.

"Because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear."

"'A desperate play for control.' You do know yourself."

"A villain."

"That's not how I see it."

That's not how I see it.

At that moment, Loki's heart had pounded for the first time.

The man in front of him had seen all the lowliness that Loki was capable of and yet he did not see him as a villain.

From the first hours of their meeting, he had made it impossible for Loki not to love him and from then on, his feelings had grown exponentially.

2.

As he walked down the path of his memories, Loki continued to gaze at Mobius as he slept. A small miracle in itself for Loki.

Knowing who Loki was, Mobius slept in his presence. The perfect image of absolute trust.

Loki sometimes still had trouble feeling worthy of such trust.

Seeing him sleeping like that, he thought of the day when he himself had first fallen asleep in this way with Mobius.

The day he fell a little more in love with Mobius.

It started with Mobius taking the blame for the failure of their first mission together, when it was all Loki's fault. They could have just pruned him, but no, Mobius had pleaded his case to Ravonna.

Then Loki had presented his theory to Mobius, admittedly with a rather shaky metaphor, even ruining one of his lover's favorite dishes.

"Well, here's a fun theory. You lure me out into the field, and then you stab me in the back. And that's a theory I don't wanna test."

"I'd never stab anyone in the back. That's such a boring form of betrayal."

"Loki, I've studied almost every moment of your entire life. You've literally stabbed people in the back, like, 50 times."

"Well, I'd never do it again, because it got old."

Mobius laughed and chose to follow Loki's theory, even though Loki had given him no reason to believe in him until now. Even though his theory was based on almost nothing, Mobius had chosen to believe Loki.

Then they returned from Pompeii and something happened that had never happened to Loki, he had fallen asleep. Loki, who was distrustful of everything and nothing, had simply fallen asleep in the presence of someone he hardly knew. As if his heart had understood before his mind that he had nothing to fear from Mobius.

When Mobius had woken him up, Loki's heart had pounded for the second time, and it wasn't fright that had caused it, but the realization that Loki was falling in love and falling deeply.

3.

As he looked up from his contemplation of Mobius, Loki's gaze fell on the photo that lay on his nightstand. A memory of their first vacations, when Mobius had finally realized his dream. In the middle of the paradisiacal decor of an island in Midgard, Loki had taken this photo of Mobius piloting -at last- a jetski. So much joy on his face.

Another thing that made Loki fall in love a little more: the passion of his lover for some small insignificant things.

Josta, salad, jet-ski...

"You know, some things... Actually, most things in history are kinda dumb, and everything gets ruined eventually. But in the early 1990s, for a brief, shining moment, there was a beautiful union of form and function, which we call the jet ski, and a reasonable man cannot differ."

"You ever been on one?"

"No... No. I think a TVA agent showing up on a jet ski on the Sacred Timeline, that would create a branch for sure."

"Oh it'd be fun, though."

"Yeah, it'd be really fun."

"So, why read about them?"

"It just helps remind me of what we're fighting for."

The expression Mobius had had at that moment, when he had said something like that with such candor had made Loki fall even more.

And his heart had pounded for the third time.

While he had sensed that what would happen next would destroy what Mobius believed in, Loki had not been able to stop himself from wanting to protect him and his happiness, and to hope that one day he would be able to realize his dream.

With his eyes on the photo commemorating a very real memory, he felt a sense of satisfaction, because his lover had been able to realize this dream and Loki had been there to witness it.

4.

"Loki... Don't go..."

Loki's eyes returned from the picture to his lover, whose features were now tense, probably from a nightmare.

"I'm here love, I'm not leaving. I'm staying with you."

Saying this, Loki gently strokes Mobius' cheek and his expression immediately relaxes. After a few seconds,he was sleeping peacefully again.

Loki didn't need to read Mobius' mind to know what he had dreamed.

He had known that he had taken a huge risk when he had decided to follow Sylvie and he had known that the reunion with Mobius would not be easy.

After all, he had betrayed him. But of all the acts of betrayal that Loki had been guilty of, this was the one that had cost him the most. Because of the feelings he was beginning to have for Mobius.

But what he hadn't imagined was that Mobius would almost turn into a jealous lover, even though at that point they didn't have that kind of relationship at all.

Loki had been incredibly surprised that it wasn't Loki's betrayal that had hurt Mobius the most, but the fact that he had made a connection with Sylvie.

"Come on. Look at your eyes. You like her."

"You like her. Does she like you?"

"Both of you were just swooning over each other."

"It's breaking my reality right now. What an incredible seismic narcissist. You fell for yourself."

"I'm supposed to believe your terrorist girlfriend"

"What, your female self that you have some demented crush on…"

Loki's heart had pounded for the fourth time when he realized what it could mean. He had fallen a little more at the thought of Mobius, at the thought that the man might be jealous, at the thought of what it might mean about Mobius' feelings for him.

5.

Then there had been that moment of grace, the exact moment when Loki had known that he was definitely in love with Mobius.

For the first time, when everything was against him, someone had chosen to believe in him. That someone was Mobius.

Even though he was clearly angry with Loki, he still listened to him and chose to believe him.

Despite Loki's attempts at manipulation, betrayals, and mistakes, Mobius renewed his faith in him and spoke those words that were imprinted in Loki's head.

"You could be whoever, whatever you wanna be, even someone good. I mean, just in case anyone ever told you different."

Loki's throat tightened as he was overwhelmed by the emotion of the memory.

Mobius had no idea how many wounds he had healed in Loki at that moment.

After what Loki had done, where Odin and Thor had not forgiven him, not only had Mobius forgiven him but even more amazingly, he had shown that he believed that Loki was capable of being good, of doing good.

At that moment, Loki's heart did not pound once, but thousands of times, at full speed.  Because of the joy and love that filled it.

The sudden disappearance of Mobius just afterwards had been all the more cruel. Because at that moment, they didn't know about the Void and Loki had thought Mobius was lost forever. He had been devastated.

He couldn't help but touch Mobius' face, gently so as not to wake him, then he whispered softly, "You too Mobius, do not ever leave me."

+1

They had found each other again.

When he first saw Mobius after he thought he had lost him, it only confirmed Loki's feelings for Mobius.

The way his heart had pounded at the sight of the one he loved was impossible to ignore.

So when they had to part once again, Loki had not been able to resist the pull of his heart, and instead of grabbing Mobius' hand, he had taken the man in his arms.

Loki had held Mobius in his arms many times since that moment, but he would never forget the feeling of that first hug. The feeling that the universe was in place. That he was where he belonged, that he was home.  He had expressed without words all that he felt and Mobius had answered him in the same way. They had to part again, but this time the bond between them was undeniable and unbreakable.

They had to go through a lot to finally enjoy their love, without the sword of Damocles, without the threat of the end of the world, or of a multiversal war over their heads, but they had made it. They were here now.

With each passing day, Loki fell a little more in love.

The Midgardian saying, I love you more than yesterday and less than tomorrow, had become his.

Because every time he looked at Mobius and realized the love they shared, he felt like it was stronger.

Mobius moved in his sleep, making the sheet slide off his shoulder.

Loki could not resist and leaned over to kiss the bare shoulder. Mobius woke up and turned to face Loki with a sleepy smile on his lips.

"Hey there handsome," Mobius whispered to Loki, gently kissing Loki's cheek. Loki's heart fluttered in a familiar way now, at such gentleness and at the adoration he read in his lover's eyes.

"Hey love," whispered Loki.

Mobius kissed him, his lips pressing lazily against Loki's. Loki smiled and kissed him back, happy.

Together they enjoyed the delights of a perfect, quiet morning.

_________

All other one-shots of this series here : X

As always, bear with me as it is not beta'd I hope you enjoyed it 🥰

[elexica]

Second Chance Christmas {{ December 24 :: Four Years Ago }}

Four years ago, Christmas eve was devastating.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27832405/chapters/69012459

Full chapter under the cut.

The pit at the bottom of Joey’s stomach had been aching for the last three days.  It was like he swallowed hot coals and they refused to stay down, bile creeping up his throat every time he passed by that closed office door.

The house should have felt warmer—there must have been fifteen human bodies radiating energy and buzzing around the house.  He’d been preparing in a way—a strange sort of supervisory role he hadn’t particularly desired—for the Architectural Digest spread on their house.  Joey had been told that the article was going to place special attention on the picture perfect family that Seto Kaiba had accrued.

What a fascinating figure, the journalist had said, he must be a very interesting person to be married to.

Joey couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt interested in the life he and the CEO had built.  Instead the décor and ambiance of their home was so cold and so superficial, like Joey lived in a hotel.

With such esteemed guests visiting on Christmas Eve, with such a paper trail of coverage, the administration of the Kaiba Estate had gone completely crazy.  Joey couldn’t leave a glass of water on the counter and expect it to be there in an hour.

Even the kids were with a stylist this morning.  It had seemed unfathomably frivolous and somehow also a bit duplicitous.  Were they really trying to convince the readers of Architectural Digest that their children had an intuitive sense of fashion?  Alexis was still not out of her terrible two’s, and the more layers of anything they draped over her, the greater the risk that they would trigger some sort of tantrum.

He’d deserve that, Joey thought, meanly.  He had half a mind to interrupt Kaiba in his office and ask him that simple question: What are you trying to prove?  Who could possibly care how Kaiba’s five-year-old son dressed?  What their kitchen looked like?

How well his husband was handling the spotlight?

If anyone really asked, he didn’t know what he would say.  No one from this world ever really asked him how he was doing, not in that caring sincere way that real friends do, and so he lived half a life sometimes—the exterior half.  The part that was supposed to be making cookies, and volunteering at the daycare even though the kids’ nannies were really more involved, and posting fun little videos on Instagram.  He had his own publicist, and he wasn’t supposed to even do that without approval—he understood the reasons but it was like every drop of authenticity was drained… all that remained was the flawless artifice of a live lived perfectly.  

And the worst part was he was supposed to have an ally in all this.  One person he was on the journey with.

But instead, Kaiba felt almost like a client.  A person who had engaged him for husband and fathering services, who had certain specifications, certain resource allotments.  

There was a forcefield around the office door.

Not a literal one, though Kaiba probably could have managed that if he had tried.  It was decidedly low tech.  Heavy mahogany, thick enough to withstand an explosion, and mysteriously devoid of the mistletoe and holly that had been draped over every inch of the house in an attempt to seem more festive and spirited than goddamn Martha Stewart.

The anger radiating out of the room must have been enough to keep the decorators far away.

Over the last year, Joey had been subjected to some updates about Kaiba Corp. affairs.  They had just released a new phone model that incorporated holographic images for video chatting or something.  The launch had been a success, Joey assumed, because everything that Kaiba touched in the marketplace turned to gold.  Kaiba’s failures were few and far between, and his successes shined brightly enough that nothing bad seemed to stick.

The technology was supposed to be able to harness the capabilities that rendered Duel Monsters so realistically in Duel Disks, and use them connect people to distant loved ones with compelling holograms.  It was a technical masterpiece that had him and Kaiba travelling cross country to attend industry awards and galas.  It was exhausting, and half the time he felt like some sort of accessory.  Like Kaiba’s personal assistant had flown in the right suit, the right watch, and Joey to complete the ensemble.

It wasn’t like that the whole time.  There was a period, really quite a long time at first, where it felt like a game.  Joey’d try to smuggle food into venues that didn’t allow it or smuggle it out of galas for later, they’d conspiratorially make fun of other guests—especially mocking the ever-present Pegasus.  Sometimes Joey would pull one of his old tricks—they’d graffiti a bathroom stall after defiling it or do some harmless property destruction at a fancy house.

Weird nonsense too: who could steal the strangest object from the von Schroeder mansion, most absurd selfie with a world leader, that sort of thing.  Little adventures that had wracked up a collection of items that they could never properly explain: Seto’s signed copy of Warren Buffet’s biography, crystal low ball glasses from Pegasus’ house that didn’t match the set that Seto already had, and a very strange cellphone photo of Joey holding the coat of the Prime Minister of Canada while the head of state was puking in a bush behind him.

It had been fun.  It had been so fun.  Once they had let their guard down around each other, they had found excellent playmates.  Joey could be almost as devious as Kaiba under the right circumstances, and he was playful.  And Kaiba was always gunning for a competition.  A rivalry, any rivalry, any time.

It was not like marrying his best friend, but it was like marrying his favorite co-conspirator.

But over time, something about the events had turned so routine that it was merely another part of Joey’s very draining job of trophy husband.  And the snarky comments he was getting about the suit sizing from the stylist was the last thing he needed.  It just reminded him that he wasn’t a person to these people—he was an accessory, a decoration that could be trimmed and measured and posed just so like all the tinsel in the house.

Even if Joey hadn’t been living and breathing the new technology by virtue of listening to his husband’s egotistical acceptance speeches every other weekend for a month, Joey had seen the advertisements that had polluted his social media streams and had threaded themselves in between videos.  He’d even been featured in one—and he had to admit that hadn’t minded filming that—talking with a virtual Yugi, still bearing his King of Games title and the wild tri-colored hair, with his Duel Disk strapped to his arm and belt still wrapped around his neck.

That had been fine, but several of the other ads were geared at families.  And although Kaiba had for the most part kept the family out of the limelight, Joey’s publicist had been pushing harder for more of that humanizing presence.

“Everyone knows what your husband was like during ‘Battle City,’ and subsequent tournaments and product launches.  He had a legend’s status and we could work with the ‘Rogue Genius’ sort of thing,” the publicist had kindly explained, his tone perhaps a touch demeaning.  “But Kaiba Corporation isn’t just selling toys anymore.  And people do not want to buy the most essential equipment of their lives from a rebellious teen.  They want to see a man with integrity.  With a family, even an unorthodox one.”

Joey rolled his eyes at the last comment.

They hadn’t built this family in order to sell more products, it had been so… organic.  A natural expression of love.  Being in their thirties, having so much love for each other that it made so much sense to share it with children.  They could do it right this time.  All they had to do was the opposite of what their parents had done.

And they had!  Kaiba never raised his voice and Joey never picked a fight.  It was everything they hadn’t had growing up.  It was stable.  Neat.

And it had become absolutely miserable.  A set of formal relationships, scrupulously maintained and completely aesthetically flawless.  And now, it was even a saleable commercial product.

Joey was so close to breaching the forcefield and getting the door open, but he could just hear the faint traces of a conference call behind the door.

The phantoms were trying to tell Kaiba something about some supply chain problem.  Billions of dollars in contracts and products were flying back and forth in complex negotiations that rose to the level of international affairs.

Suddenly Joey’s problem��do the kids actually need a stylist, Kaiba?—seemed unfathomably small.  Heroically unimportant, embarrassingly trivial.

Did he even want to walk into whatever shitstorm was going on in the study?  Kaiba had his job, and Joey had his.

The only difference was that people seemed to value Kaiba’s job, and Joey’s was increasingly shitty.

Finally one of the maids—Joey thought she might even be in charge of that team, but was not technically the household manager, which was a different staff person—shook him from his frustrated position just outside of Kaiba’s study door.

“They’re ready to start taking the pictures,” she said.  It was so neutral, and Joey realized, a bit slowly, that she didn’t like him.

People usually liked him.  If they didn’t, he probably had picked a fight with them or something.  Anyone who spent real time with him couldn’t resist his signature Joey charm.  Maybe she’s new? Joey wondered.  Or was he just… not the same anymore?

Within the same minute, the children’s stylist beamed out of the playroom, with much the same announcement.  She was all smiles—and who wouldn’t be with such a fun niche.  They both looked at Joey.

The publicist was scaling the stairs, hand skimming the highly decorated banister and leaping over the twirls of pine leaves and luxurious red velvet ribbons, announcing that the Architectural Digest reporters were ready to begin.

Ah, it was time for him to do his job.  The only thing that he was supposed to really do.  Face his husband.

Joey could see why everyone else dreaded it so much.  Why he was so well-compensated for the task.

Joey extended his wrist, with a slow trepidation he had learned as a duelist, and tapped.

Within seconds Kaiba was at the door, eyes all blue fire, like a lion interrupted during a feast of antelope gizzards.

“Eh, we’ve got the thing?  The Architectural whatever thing?”  Joey figured the posse of people gathered behind him made half of his point.

“Yes.” Kaiba said, clipped, and looking still slightly pissed.

“So uh, you good?  You look good,” Joey gave him a once over, and was rewarded, as always with the handsome view of a perfectly put together Seto Kaiba.

Kaiba rewarded the compliment with a smirk.  “Yes.”

And the whole team descended together, with two of the more intense nannies handling the children and joining at the back of the group.

When finally down the stairs, Alexis was passed into Joey’s arms, and Atticus was handed off to Kaiba.

“How are your piano lessons going?” Kaiba asked Atticus, as if he was a colleague and not a five-year-old.

“Awesome!” Atticus answered with a smile.

“Do you know any duets yet?”

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!” Atticus announced, pleased with himself.

Kaiba stood for a moment, as if wracking his brain for any memory of the song.  Then he nodded.  “We can start with that.”

The Architectural Digest reporter looked at Kaiba, having expected to have his full attention immediately.  Indeed, the reporter looked like the kind of person who expected to have anyone’s attention at any time.  Joey had spared the man a Google search at some point before the meeting, and he had been impressed by the guy’s list.  He had done articles on the interior design aesthetic—and the corresponding family culture—of two sitting presidents, the prime ministers of both Austria and Australia, and Oprah.  Oprah.

He dressed like it too.  His silk scarf was recognizably Hermes, and Joey could tell that his whole thing was how fancy people were expected to dress.  Flashy and complicated and matching, but only sort of?

The stylist had intentionally been playing up the new, everyman qualities of the updated Kaiba family.  It was a stark contrast to the Visual Kei inspired aesthetic that his partner used to wear, but honestly?  Other than changing the t-shirt to cashmere and making the jeans cost about $400 more, Joey felt like he looked pretty much the same as he used to.  His shoes were a lot less comfortable now.

The reporter almost raised a hand to interrupt, and Joey instinctually went on damage control.

“Hey, great to finally meet you!  Welcome to our house.  Looks like you’re in for a concert to start off!” Joey smiled warmly, and was pleased to see it mirrored in the reporter’s face.

“Your husband is an interesting fellow, huh?”  The reporter had something of a pan-Atlantic accent to his voice, making him sound a little bit like he fell out of the Turner Classic Movies channel.

“You don’t know the half of it!  But I’m sure he’ll warm up,” Joey lied.  Joey reached forward to loop an arm around his husband’s shoulders as they continued to make their way toward the grand piano in the living room.  “What are you doing?” he whispered in his ear.

Kaiba spared him a dark, sideways glance.  “I am trying… to demonstrate human connection.  That’s the instruction I received.”

Joey laughed, though it wasn’t easy.  “Well, could you smile or something?  Introduce yourself?  It looks disjointed like this, I think.”

Kaiba’s attention diverted, announcing that the conversation was over.  Joey withdrew, his speaking time already terminated.

But the comment made enough of an impact.  When they arrived in the living room, which had been festooned with just about every wintry icon available in the tri-state area—including a row of pinecones and decorative wreathing along the piano and the biggest tree that could fit in the tall space jammed with more lights and baubles than should be possible—Kaiba deigned to greet the guest.

Kaiba gestured to the piano, and Atticus happily plopped down.  Kaiba joined him, much more calmly.  “Now, for a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” Kaiba announced, rolling back the fallboard.

Atticus nodded mutely.  Someone had clearly drilled into him the importance of not saying anything weird, and he had interpreted it as not saying anything at all.

Kaiba began the initial keystrokes of the song, only for Atticuls to slam both of his hands down on the keys and completely startle him.

Kaiba instantly stopped playing, but Atticus kept going cubby child fingers on random keys.

“Do you… actually know how to play the song,” Kaiba asked, as Atticus started winding down.

Atticus beamed, “Yeah Oto-san, but this is a special Christmas remix!”

Kaiba smiled softly, shockingly genuine, and Joey was sure the cameras captured it.  “Very well.”  Kaiba diverted his attention away from the piano.  “Now that we have performed a Christmas remix, I suppose we may as well continue with the interview.”

The reporter seemed to be in good humor, eyes energic as they tracked Kaiba and Atticus back to the couch to join Joey and Alexis.

Like a flip had been switched, Kaiba acted like he had a human interest in the whole situation, but let Joey do most of the talking.

Joey thought maybe he was nervous.  He was so comfortable when the topic turned to the impact of Kaiba Corp., on international growth this or technology development that.  But sitting there, on a couch laden with thick green and red ribbon, being asked about how he balanced raising children with being in the office, he looked almost nauseated.

“I have a great partner,” Kaiba said, robotic and dead-eyed.  “And great help.  I could not do it alone.”

Joey tried to beam, but it felt like a brutally minimizing note.

A great partner?  It was a performance review, not a term of affection.

After the interview finally ended and the additional staff began to disperse, Joey found himself trailing Kaiba back to his study.  The kids were whisked away—Atticus already had another piano lesson and Alexis was due in the ballet studio.  She had made the cut as one of the youngest among the 130 children to participate in the New York City Ballet Company production of Nutcracker, scoring a prestigious position as one of the angels.  It was very impressive and very cute, but it felt a bit odd to watch the two-and-change-year-old have so many appointments.  She just spun around a little… Joey had to assume it was another instance of her name opening doors.  But it was adorable, and she was a pretty serious toddler, and who was he to get in the way of high performance.

She said she liked it, as much as a two-year-old can articulate that they like anything, and he didn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble.

So, after everyone had scattered, it was just Kaiba in his study, and Joey feeling empty.

Joey knocked on the door.  When he didn’t get a response, he opened it anyway.

“What?” Kaiba snapped, not looking away from his laptop.

“I…” Joey thought about what he wanted to say, but nothing came to mind immediately, except for the simple truth.  “I can’t handle this.”

Kaiba didn’t look up.  “You can’t handle what?  Talking to a guy for an hour?  You did nothing.”

When Joey didn’t immediately leave, Kaiba paused in his typing, maybe realizing that he couldn’t really account for what had happened prior to his entrance.  “Do you need more help?”

Joey sank into the companion chair in the study.  “I mean no, I think there’s probably too much staff.  Do the kids really need a stylist?”

Kaiba looked up.  “I am so busy, Jounouchi.  Do you really want to debate the merits of having someone pick the children’s clothes for a photoshoot?  That cannot possibly be the best use of your time, and I know it’s not the best use of mine.”

Joey met his eyes for a second, but lost his determination.  “I just… I miss how it was. Things didn’t used to be like this, right?”

Kaiba sighed.  “Things have always been like this.  What do you mean?”

“You know what, never mind.  It’s fine.  It’s just, I guess it’s Christmas eve.”  Kaiba didn’t acknowledge the statement and Joey left the study, heart twisted, feeling more alone than he had in years.  “We’re supposed to do family stuff.”

Kaiba went back to his computer.  “We did.  And I’m sure more is scheduled for tomorrow—I know that I’m scheduled to attend one of Alexis’ performances tomorrow.  You should check your calendar, I am sure we have a dinner scheduled somewhere tonight… I think at the Governor’s estate.  You should check with someone about the required attire.  But not me, Jounouchi, I really am busy.”  The chillin blue eyes didn’t even follow Joey as he stalked out of the room.

Joey didn’t say it—he couldn’t find the will to say it yet, and he didn’t say it for another year.  But in that moment, Joey knew that their marriage was over.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/7/2020

I missed THE GOLDEN GLOVE at Fantastic Fest last year. It was one of my only regrets of the whole experience, but it was basically mandatory since the available screenings were opposite the much-hyped PARASITE. As annoying as that sounds, it was actually a major compliment, since what could possibly serve as a consolation prize for the most hotly anticipated movie of the year? Needless to say, I heard great things, but I could never have imagined what it was actually like. I'm still wrapping my mind around it.

Between 1970 and 1975, an exceptionally depraved serial killer named Fritz Honka murdered at least four prostitutes in Hamburg's red light district. Today, we tend to think of the archetypal serial killer in terms of ironic contradictions: The public is attracted by Ted Bundy's dashing looks and suave manner, and John Wayne Gayce's dual careers as politician and party clown. Lacking anything so remarkable, we associate psychopathy with Norman Bates' boy-next-door charm, and repeat "It's always the quiet ones" with a smirk whenever a new Jeffrey Dahmer or Dennis Nilsen is exposed to the public. The popular conception of a bloodthirsty maniac is not the fairytale monster of yore, but a wolf in sheep's clothing, whose hygienic appearance and lifestyle belie his twisted desires. In our post-everything world, the ironic surprise has become the rule. In this light, THE GOLDEN GLOVE represents a refreshing return to naked truth.

To say that writer-director Fatih Akin's version of the Fritz Honka story is shocking, repulsive, and utterly degenerated would be a gross understatement. We first meet the killer frantically trying to dispose of a corpse in his filthy flat, wallpapered with porno pinups, strewn with broken toys, and virtually projecting smell lines off of the screen. One's sense of embodiment is oppressive, even claustrophobic, as the petite Honka tries and fails to collapse the full dead weight of a human corpse into a garbage bag, before giving up and dismembering it, with nearly equal difficulty. The scene is appalling, utterly debased, and yet nothing is as shocking as the killer's visage. When he finally turns to look into the camera, it's hard to believe he's even human: the rolling glass eye, the smashed and inflated nose, the tombstone teeth and cratered skin, are almost too extreme to bear. Actually, suffering from a touch of facial blindness, I had to stare intently at Honka's face for nearly half the movie before I could fully convince myself that I was, in fact, looking at an elaborate prosthetic operation used to transform 23 year old boy band candidate Jonas Dassler into the disfigured 35 year old serial murderer.

Though West Germany remained on a steady economic upturn beginning in the 1950s and throughout the 1970s, you wouldn't know it from THE GOLDEN GLOVE. If Honka's outsides match his insides, they are further matched by his stomping grounds in the Reeperbahn, a dirty, violent, booze-soaked repository for the dregs of humanity. Though its denizens may come from different walks of life, one thing is certain: Whoever winds up there, belongs there. Honka was the child of a communist and grew up in a concentration camp, yet he swills vodka side by side with an ex-SS officer, among other societal rejects, in a crumbling dive called The Golden Glove. The scene is an excellent source of hopeless prostitutes at the end of their career, who are Honka's prime victims, as he is too frightful-looking to ensnare an attractive young girl. These pitiful women all display a peculiarly hypnotic willingness to go along with Honka, no matter how sadistic he becomes; this seems to have less to do with money, which rarely comes up, and more to do with their shared awareness that for them, and for Honka too, it's been all over, for a long time.

Not to reduce someone’s performance to their physical appearance, but ???

To call Dassler's portrayal of Honka "sympathetic" would be a bridge too far, but it is undeniably compelling. He supports the startling impact of his facial prostheses with a performance of rare intensity, a full-body transformation into a person in so much pain that a normal life will never become an option. His physical vocabulary reminded me of the stage version of The Elephant Man, in which the lead actor wears no makeup, but conveys John Merrick's deformities using his body alone. Although there is an abundance of makeup in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, Dassler's silhouette and agonized movements would be recognizable from a mile away. In spite of his near-constant screaming rage, the actor manages to craft a rich and convincing persona. During a chapter in which Honka experiments with sobriety, we find a stunning image of him hunched in the corner of his ordinarily chaotic flat, now deathly still, his eyes gazing at nothing as cigarette smoke seeps from his pores, having no idea what to do with himself when he isn't in a rolling alcoholic rampage. The moment is brief but haunting in its contrast to the rest of the film, having everything to do with Dassler's quietly vibrating anxiety.

Performances are roundly excellent here, not that least of which are from Honka's victims. The cast of middle-aged actresses looking their most disastrous is hugely responsible for the film's impact. These are the kinds of performances people call "brave", which is a euphemism for making audiences uncomfortable with an uncompromising presentation of one's own self, unvarnished by any masturbatory solicitation. Among these women is Margarete Tiesel, herself no stranger to difficult cinema: She was the star of 2012's PARADISE: LOVE, a harrowing drama about a woman who copes with her midlife crisis by pursuing sex tourism in Kenya. Her brilliant, instinctive performance as one of Honka's only survivors--though she nearly meets a fate worse than death--makes her the leading lady of a movie that was never meant to have one.

So, what does all this unpleasantness add up to, you might be asking? It's hard to say. THE GOLDEN GLOVE is a film of enormous power, but it can be difficult to explain what the point of it is, in a world where most people feel that the purpose of art is to produce some form of pleasure. This is the challenge faced by difficult movies throughout history, like THE GOLDEN GLOVE's obvious ancestors, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, MANIAC and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Describing unremitting cruelty with relentless realism is not considered a worthy endeavor by many, even if there is real artistry in your execution; some people will even mistake you for advocating and enjoying violence and despair, as we live in a world where huge amount of movie and TV production is devoted to aspirational subjects. (The fact that people won't turn away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, no matter how monotonous and condescending they become, should tell you something) How do you justify to such people, that you want to make or see work that portrays ugliness and evil with as much commitment as other movies seek to portray love, beauty, and family values? Why isn't it enough to say that these things exist, and their existence alone makes them worth contemplation?

A rare, perhaps exclusive “beautiful image” in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, from Fritz Honka’s absurd fantasies.

You may detect that I have attempted to have this frustrating conversation with many people, strangers, enemies, and friends I love and respect. I find that for some, it is simply too hard to divorce themselves from the pleasure principle. I don't say this to demean them; some hold the philosophy that art be reserved for beauty, and others have a more literary feeling that it's ok to show characters in grim circumstances, as long as the ultimate goal is to uplift the human spirit. Even I draw the line somewhere; I appreciate the punk rebellion of Troma movies as a cultural force, but I do not enjoy watching them, because I dislike what I perceive as contempt for the audience and the aestheticization of laziness--making something shitty more or less on purpose. A step or three up from that, you land in Todd Solondz territory, where you find materially gorgeous movies whose explicit statement is that our collective reverence for a quality called "humanity" is based on nothing. I like some of those movies, and sometimes I even like them when I don't like them, because I'm entranced by Solondz's technical proficiency...and maybe, deep down, I'm not completely convinced about "humanity", either. However, I don't fight very hard in arguments about him; I understand the objections. Still, I've been surprised by peers who I think of as bright and tasteful, who absolutely hated movies I thought were unassailable, like OLDBOY and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. In both cases, the ultimate objection was that they accuse humans of being pretentious and self-deceptive, aspiring to heroism or bemoaning their victimhood while wallowing in their own cowardice and perversity. Ok, I get it...but, not really. Why isn't it ever wholly acceptable to discuss, honestly, what we do not like about ourselves?

The beguiling thing about THE GOLDEN GLOVE is that, although it is instantly horrifying, is it also an impeccable production. The director can't help showing you crime scene photos during the ending credits, and I can't really blame him, when his crew worked so hard to bring us a vision of Fritz Honka's world that approaches virtual reality. But it isn't just slavishly realistic; it is vivid, immersive, an experience of total sensory overload. Not a square inch of this movie has been left to chance, and the product of all this graceful control is totally spellbinding. I started to think to myself that, when you've achieved this level of artifice, what really differentiates a movie like THE GOLDEN GLOVE from something like THE RED SHOES? I mean, aside from their obvious narrative differences. Both films plunge the viewer into a world that is complete beyond imagination, crafted with a rigor and sincerity that is rarely paralleled. And, I will dare to say, both films penetrate to the depths of the human soul. What Fatih Akin finds there is not the same as what Powell and Pressburger found, of course, but I don't think that makes it any less real. Akin's film is adapted from a novel by Heinz Strunk, and apparently, some critics have accused Akin of leaving behind the depth and nuance of the book, to focus instead on all that is gruesome about it. This may be true, on some level; I wouldn't know. For now, I can only insist that on watching THE GOLDEN GLOVE, for all its grotesquerie, I still got the message.

[anteroom-of-death]

Life, for Dummies p8

a/n: *tyra banks voice* the master, but make it domestic. sorry all, tumblrs tags didn’t populate part 7 in the tags. but hey! lemon! romance! a little spice...

You woke with a curious yet lazy start, the smell of coffee and other breakfast-y type scents were drifting in your bedroom door. The sun was lazing in and your ceiling fan was twisting around giving you a hypnotic white noise. You dreamt the Master had returned for you, that he was genuinely sorry, it was confusing, but you shook it off and enjoyed the morning. 

Then it dawned on you: the scent of coffee? Food? How could that happen. You were in another room. You were suddenly in not such an enjoyable mood. You grabbed your screwdriver and crept out to the kitchen and found him at your table, he was reading a well-worn copy of 50 Shades of Grey.

“Morning, I thought you’d never wake! Coffee, just how you like it. I also made those things you like.” He smiled and placed it down, clearly on best behaviors. He pointed out his place setting for you, complete with daffodils and a paper towel folded like a swan.

“Is Gallifrey a hood in Boston?” You querched up and eyebrow and eyed up the coffee tentatively. He was good, remembering that you needed coffee for any basic functions to happen. You smelled it and took a few cautious half sips. His coffee was better tasting than you remembered.

“Hmm?” He asked, clearly confused. You indulged him in an elaboration. “You are certainly brown-nosing like a little Masshole.” 

“That slang for people that are from Massachusetts, yeah?” He seemed a tad more confused, but he got the gist of the sentiment.

“Finding your inner goddess?” You lightly mocked his choice of reading material.

“Oh yes! I was out of touch with her for a while...I think I might go back to my chemises and corsets…” 

You’d seen Missy from a distance once when you landed on a planet and she was looking for hats on the Planet of the Hats, you could admit, Missy was an experience from the ten seconds you saw her and the fact she vaporized a shopkeeper for having nothing that matched her favorite overcoat. 

You shook your head and gave a chuckle.

“I’d like to see it.”

“Come with me, and maybe you will…” He alluded smoothly. 

You pointed at your mug of coffee, “I haven’t finished my coffee, therefore, I’m still thinking.” You were firm. You still didn’t know exactly what to think of this all. You were still very angry and very hurt, yet exchanging pleasantries with him like it was no big deal. There was a slight tension in the air, but it wasn't an overt cloud of angst. Perfectly palatable, and doable. Enjoyable even.

“Alight.” He gave you some time and went back to his reading. 

The food was phenomenal, you had to give them that. He even drizzled a little bit of maple syrup in the corner of the plate into a smiley face. Cute.

He was begging in the only way he knew how. As much as you would enjoy him begging more, last night's awkward display of the man who has all the words choking at the idea of sentence formation had you in enough stitches for several lifetimes. 

You may be a tad bit of a sadist, but you weren’t that big of one.

You let out a sigh, “You have to promise me that you’re all in. You’re not going to pull more nonsense. You’ll also let me put in my two weeks.Maybe even go through a bit of couple’s therapy if need be. You will also not wig out if we meet her again. You. Are. All. In…” You laid out your demands in a succinct voice.

“Lasty, you are not going to take that damned collar off me again once it's on. You are in this ride for the long run. No backing out for any reason…” You forced yourself to say it with a blank face to let him know that you were dead serious. 

“All but the therapy and you got yourself a deal.” He offered his hand out as a deal signer. You took it. 

“Man’s only as good as his word.” You muttered, but meant for him to hear.

He smiled at the deal. 

“I can be domestic around here!” He clapped. 

“What?” You staggered back.

“Two weeks of work? And I can show you how good I can be…” The words played out like he was making fun of himself being at the mercy of another. 

You rolled your eyes and smiled and rubbed your temples. Your usual migraine was flaring up. You just let him bustle around as you went about your day, clearly in servicing behaviors. Just because the Master was in town didn’t give you the benefit of getting sloppy with your days.

After you got done with everything you sat down and started drafting your resignation letter, casually posing the question, “‘You and our team were a pleasure to work alongside of…’ or ‘It has been a pleasure working alongside the whole sales team…’” 

“Pardon?” He paused his tinkering on your security system. 

“My resignation letter. Have you ever heard of one?” You dragged slightly, it’s not like Time Lords has Human Resource Management. Insane bureaucrats that they were…”What sounds more diplomatic?”

“The first…” He walked over and peered over at your laptop, peering over to parse through your letter. “Yeah..that is definitely better. Sounds more chipper.” 

“Thanks.”

You went on and worked.

Monday eventually came and you printed your letter out and delivered it to the boss.

“Furthering your education?”

“Oh, yeah. Got accepted to a university in Galloway.” You said. The Master thought it would be funny for the play on words due to a Master’s Degree being something a human could earn and Galloway being a place and sounding like Gallifrey. You let him keep it in. As if it would be verified and you’d actually be here to suffer the repercussions. A funny little white lie to fraud you over until you died at the hands of some alien in another galaxy. No big deal.

“Well, congrats! Didn’t know you were looking to further your education! We’ll miss you around here…” Your heart fell a bit, the staff here were all so nice and had that small town charm but none of the artifice. You let yourself ride the wave of guilt. You hoped this would all be worth it. 

The rest of the week got tense. Sure the days were oddly peaceful and uneventful, but you two were getting handsy in ways you weren’t quite trusting of him yet. Simple brushes and hands laid on thighs. Quite scandalous, but you even shared the couch together as you watched a movie one night and shared the same snack bowls. He was still the same frighteningly attractive dunce he always was. 

What was also on your mind was he was really trying to atone for his poor behavior, your abandonment and anything else that might come to mind. It was beyond astounding that a man would and could try to correct his behavior, especially when you knew what he was capable of in times of casual cruelty. 

Your mind ached from the sheer amount of mental gymnastics and working through your thoughts and coping. 

But you did enjoy a roomie on his best behaviors. 

Soon your two weeks were up however, and you came home and shrugged off your clothes and slipped into a shower. The sweethearts treated you to sparkling wine and mini cupcakes, and even a little gift basket filled with anything a student back to school might need, even a few gag gifts.You nearly cried, but the adrenaline of traveling the stars again won out until midway through scrubbing your scalp. You were so excited for the stars and living a truly exciting life again, but damn if Earth gives her best shot at giving you a reason to stay. You finished up both your crying jag and your shower routine and walked out of the bathroom to go get dressed. 

He was drinking a cup of tea in the living room and glanced your way, his eyes grew and got covered in lust, and it happened quicker than you could fathom. The mug fell and sploshed all over the ground as he rushed over to you and pinned you to the wall, shaking your shelves a bit. His mouth found yours as he bit your top lip ferociously. He reached under your towel and slightly worked at you until your jaw went slack and a moan rattled out of you, “I’ve waited too long to touch you, pet.” He huskily moaned. You barely tried to fight it, “I’m not letting you go now, you’re all mine now.”  He pinned you to the wall with his hand and undid his belt, “Enough playtime.” He was already hard and tossed your legs up around his waist, you obliged and instinctively wrapped them around his torso, clinging for dear life. 

He thrusted up into you and took you in the most aggressive ways, if not for the shock and the thought of “Oh no! I forgot to lotion my legs!” You would have been into it more, but the dryness of your legs was distracting, as they were wrapped around each other and you could feel them sloughing against one another. 

He was claiming you in the most primal way. It was more violent as he penetrated your mind, filling you with images of all the other ways this past two weeks he wanted to have you and fill you with his cum. 

The one involving your wrought iron fire pit spade to your bare ass was avante-garde and fascinating enough to say the least. That one threw you off the stress of your lotion-less legs. 

He pulled your hair by the top and forced you to stare straight at him, “Precocious little slut thought she can forget about her Master, didn’t she?” He pressed his throbbing cock deeper still into you, “Not anymore.” He continued to use you and glare at you with a wicked glint behind rivers of lust. 

“Who do you belong to?” He asked, grunting, the question wasn’t a question at all, but demanded an answer.

You sputtered out in an almost hypnotized shout, “You! I’m yours!” It was so painful, but it felt so great to say it and own it yourself. You were minutely processing life at the moment. 

“Call me by name…” The voice was lower and less staticy.

“M-m-Master!” 

“Again!”

“Master!”

“Can’t hear you, pet…”

“Master!” You shouted as it clicked deep inside your skull and you felt him spasm inside you. Overwhelmed by this, he let you go off the wall with his hold and relaxed before petting your hair and smiling serenely. 

“You did good…” he gently whispered into your chest as he leaned in a bit, letting himself finish up and leak out of you. 

“Uh, thank you?” You were still a tad ready to go, but it seemed he was going to tease you and leave you wanting more. Not that you minded. You could deal with that later on yourself. You were throbbing and wet and your hair was still wet, you noticed. 

He got back up and slyly gave you a sideways look, “Turn around and face the wall, little pet.” 

You did it and he muttered, “Good girl.” You felt something slightly weighted go around your throat and his hands work some fabric deftly. He spun you around and marched you straight back into the bathroom by your arm pinned to your back, your towel was off and you looked shaken.

But your collar was back on, and it felt strange that it was ever off. He let your hand go as you glided towards the mirror and looked at yourself, stroking both it and your collar curiously, your thoughts flew many more miles away. 

You really had thrown yourself back into this. You trembled a bit, nearly in tears because of the simple gesture. Who would have known that a damn collar would have made you feel so many emotions at once?

You had a feeling he knew…

You looked back at his casual, yet pantsless figure looming in the back. He was standing there, as proud as can be, just marveling in the fresh chaos he’d breathed into you. He had broken through what walls you erected and won. 

“Why don’t I reclean you. You had been freshly bathed, yeah?” He offered kindly.

He drew you a bath and massaged you down and made sure there was no lasting damage done to you, he even got you a fluffy fresh towel and wrapped you in it and let you alone with your thoughts. (How dangerous!) 

You sat in there for what seemed like ten eternities and finally it dawned on you: You were his. You always were his. No amount of time or space or anything would come between  you two and the bond forged. It was bizarre to come think of, but the sheer fact that he owned you in such a way, was freeing. Of all the people in the universe, your only equal was this G-dlike being who was off in your house, doing heavens knows what.

And he was crazy about you.

You let out delirious laughter and pulled yourself off the ground and walked out of the bathroom for the second time that night. 

He was sitting on your couch with a fresh bowl of popcorn, wrapped in your couch blanket. He looked completely normal. Like he was any other guy, harmless. Pants back on.

“I thought we could finish that wild documentary about the gay redneck zookeeper an the woman who took ‘eat the rich’ a little too to the heart!” He stretched out and offered you a place at his side, you slid in and grabbed a hand of it. 

The Master was very good at making popcorn. He did something wild with coconut oil and salt and sugar that made the flavor pop into it. He also somehow managed to pop every kernel every single time. It was the most disconcerting thing about him, if you were completely honest with yourself. No one should wield that kind of power. 

“You’re still a rat bastard…” You muttered as you slightly started to drift off.

“Oh, I know.” He confirmed.

You fell asleep glued to his side as some man rode off into the sunset on a jet ski and Eye of the Tiger zagged on. 

You vaguely remember stirring gently when he lifted you up and placed you in bed, “Sweet dreams, my pet…” you heard in a sleep-drunk haze. “You have all the rest you need…” 

In your mind you heard as you finally got into a deep slumber. “You’re going to need it…”

[dustedmagazine]

Dusted’s Decade Picks

Heron Oblivion, still the closest thing to a Dusted consensus pick

Just as, in spring, the young's fancy turns to thoughts of love, at the end of the decade the thoughts of critics and fans naturally tend towards reflection. Sure, time is an arbitrary human division of reality, but it seems to be working out okay for us so far. We're too humble a bunch to offer some sort of itemized list of The Best Of or anything like that, though; a decade is hard enough to wrap your head around when it's just your life, let alone all the music produced during said time. Instead these decade picks are our jumping off points to consider our decades, whether in personal terms, or aesthetic ones, or any other. The records we reflect on here are, to be sure, some of our picks for the best of the 2010s (for more, check back this afternoon), but think of what follows less as anything exhaustive and more as our hand-picked tour to what stuck with us over the course of these ten years, and why.

Brian Eno — The Ship (Warp, 2016)

You don’t need to dig deep to see that our rapidly evolving and hyper-consciously inclusive discourse is taking on the fluidity of its surroundings. In 2016, a year of what I’ll gently call transformation, Brian Eno had his finger on multiple pulses; The Ship resulted. It’s anchored in steady modality, and its melody, once introduced, doesn’t change, but everything else ebbs and flows with the Protean certainty of uncertainty. While the album moves from the watery ambiguities of the title track, through the emotional and textural extremes of “Fickle Sun” toward the gorgeously orchestrated version of “I’m Set Free,” implying some kind of final redemption, the moment-to-moment motion remains wonderfully non-binary. Images of war and of the instants producing its ravaging effects mirror and counterbalance the calmly and increasingly gender-fluid voice as it concludes the titular piece by depicting “wave after wave after wave.” Is it all Salman Rushdie’s numbers marching again? The lyrics embody the movement from “undescribed” through “undefined” and “unrefined’” connoting a journey toward aging, but size, place, chronology and the music encompassing them remain in constant flux, often nearly but never quite recognizable. Genre and sample float in and out of view with the elusive but devastating certainty of tides as the ship travels toward silence, toward that ultimate ambiguity that follows all disillusion, filling the time between cycles. The disconnect between stasis and motion is as disconcerting as these pieces’ relationship to the songform Eno inherited and exploded. The album encapsulates the modernist subtlety and Romantic grace propelling his art and the state of a civilization in the faintly but still glowing borderlands between change and decay.

Marc Medwin

Cate Le Bon — Cyrk (Control Group, 2012)

There's no artist whose work I anticipated more this decade than Cate Le Bon, and no artist who frustrated me more with each release, only to keep reeling me in for the long run. Le Bon's innate talent is for soothing yet oblique folk, soberly psychedelic, which she originally delivered in the Welsh language, and continued into English with rustic reserve.

Except something about her pastoralism seems to bore her, and the four-chord arpeggios are shot through with scorches of noise, or sent haywire with post-punk brittleness. In its present state, her music is built around chattering xylophones and croaking saxophone, even as the lyrics draw deeper into memory and introspection, with ever more haunting payoffs. It's as if Nick Drake shoved his way into the leadership of Pere Ubu. She's taken breaks from music to work on pottery and furniture-making, and retreats to locales like a British cottage and Texas art colony to plumb for new inspirations. She's clearly energized by collaboration and relocation, but there’s a force to her persona that, despite her introverted presence, dominates a session. Rare for our age, she's an artist who gets to follow her muse full time, bouncing between record labels and seeing her name spelled out in the medium typefaces on festival bills.

Cyrk, from 2012, is the record where I fell in, and it captures her at something close to joyous, a half smile. Landing between her earliest folk and later surrealism, it is open to comparison with the Velvet Underground. But not the VU that is archetypical to indie rock – Cyrk is more an echo of the solo work that followed. There’s the sharp compositional order and Welsh lilt of John Cale. Like Lou Reed, she makes a grand electric guitar hook out of the words “you’re making it worse.” The homebound twee of Mo Tucker and forbidding atmosphere of Nico are present in equal parts. Those comparisons are reductive, but they demonstrate how Cyrk feels instantly familiar if you’ve garnered certain listening habits. Songs surround you with woolly keyboard and guitar hooks, and one can forget a song ends with an awkward trumpet coda even after dozens of listens. The awkwardness is what keeps the album fresh.

She lulls, then dowses with cold water. So Cyrk isn't an entirely easy record, even if it is frequently a pretty one. The most epic song here, reaching high with those woolly hums and twang, is "Fold the Cloth.” It bobs along, coiling tight as she reaches into the strange register of female falsetto. Le Bon cranks out a fuzz solo – she's great at extending her sung melodies across instruments. Then the climax chants out, "fold the cloth or cut the cloth.” What is so important about this mundane action? Her mystery lyrics never feel haphazard, like LSD posey. They are out of step with pop grandiose. Maybe when her back is turned, there's a full smile.

Who are "Julia" and "Greta,” two mid-album sketches that avoid verse-chorus structure? Julia is represented by a limp waltz, Greta by pulses on keyboards. Shortly after the release, Le Bon followed up with the EP Cyrk II made up of tracks left off the album. To a piece, they’re easier numbers than "Julia" and "Greta.” The cryptic and the scribble are essential to how Cyrk flows, which is to say it flows haltingly.

This approach dampens her acclaim and her potential audience, but that's how she fashions decades-old tropes into fresh art. She’s also quite the band leader. Drummers have a different thud when they play on her stage. Musicians' fills disappear. She brings in a horn solo as often as she lays down a guitar lead. The closer tracks, "Plowing Out Pts 1 & 2," aren't inherently linked numbers. By the second part, the group has worked up to a carnival swirl, frothing like "Sister Ray" yet as sweet as a children's TV show theme. Does that sound sinister? The effect is more like heartbreak fuelling abandon, her forlorn presence informing everyone's playing.

Fuse this album with the excellent Cyrk II tracks, and you can image a deluxe double LP 10th anniversary reissue in a few years. Ha ha no. I expect nothing so garish will happen. It sure wouldn't suit the artist. In a decade where "fan service" became an everyday concept, Le Bon is immune. She's a songwriter who seems like she might walk away from at all without notice, if that’s where her craftsmanship leads. The odd and oddly comfortable chair that is Cyrk doesn't suit any particular decor, but my room would feel bare without it.

Ben Donnelly

Converge — All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph)

Here’s the scenario: Heavily tatted guy has some dogs. He really loves his dogs. Heavily tatted guy goes on tour with his band. While he’s on the road, one of his dogs dies. Heavily tatted guy gets really sad. He writes a song about it.  

That should be the set-up for an insufferably maudlin emo record. But instead what you get is Converge’s “All We Love We Leave Behind” and the searing LP that shares the title. The songs dive headlong into the emotional intensities of loss and reflect on the cost of artistic ambition. The enormously talented line-up that recorded All We Love We Leave Behind in 2012 had been playing together for just over a decade, and vocalist Jacob Bannon and guitarist Kurt Ballou had been collaborating for more than twenty years. It shows. The record pummels and roars with remarkable precision, and its songs maniacally twist, and somehow they soar.  

Any number of genre tags have been stuck on (or innovated by) Converge’s music: mathcore, metalcore, post-hardcore. It’s fun to split sonic hairs. But All We Love… is most notable for its exhilarating fury and naked heart, musical qualities that no subgenre can entirely claim. Few bands can couple such carefully crafted artifice with such raw intensity. And few records of the decade can match the compositional wit and palpable passion of All We Love…, which never lets itself slip into shallow romanticism. It hurts. And it ruthlessly rocks.  

Jonathan Shaw

EMA — The Future’s Void (City Slang, 2014)

When trying to narrow down to whatever my own most important records of the decade are, I tried to keep it to one per artist (as I do with individual years, although it’s a lot easier there). Out of everyone, though, EMA came by far the closest to having two records on that list, and this could have been 2017’s Exile in the Outer Ring, which along with The Future’s Void comes terrifyingly close to unpacking an awful lot of what’s going wrong, and has been going wrong, with the world we live in for a while now. The Future’s Void focuses more on the technological end of our particular dystopia, shuddering both emotionally and sonically through the dead end of the Cold War all the way to us refreshing our preferred social media site when somebody dies. EMA is right there with us, too; this isn’t judgment, it’s just reporting from the front line. And it must be said, very few things from this decade ripped like “Cthulu” rips.

Ian Mathers

The Field — Looping State of Mind (Kompakt, 2011)

Looping State of Mind by The Field

On Looping State of Mind, Swedish producer Axel Willner builds his music with seamlessly jointed loops of synths, beats, guitars and voice to create warm cushions of sound that envelop the ears, nod the head and move the body. Willner is a master of texture and atmosphere, in lesser hands this may have produced mere comfort food but there is spice in the details that elevates this record as he accretes iotas of elements, withholding release to heighten anticipation. Although this is essentially deep house built on almost exclusively motorik 4/4 beats, Willner also plays with ambient, post-punk and shoegaze dynamics. From the slow piano dub of “Then It’s White,” which wouldn’t be out of place on a Labradford or Pan American album, to the ecstatic shuffling lope of “Arpeggiated Love” and “Is This Power” with its hint of a truncated Gang of Four-like bass riff, Looping State of Mind is a deeply satisfying smorgasbord of delicacies and a highlight of The Field’s four album output during the 2010s.

Andrew Forell

Gang Gang Dance — “Glass Jar” (4AD, 2011)

Instead of telling you my favorite album of the decade — I made my case for it the first year we moved to Tumblr, help yourself — it feels more fitting to tell you a story from my friend Will about my favorite piece of music from the last 10 years, a song that arrived just before the rise of streaming, which flattened “the album experience” to oppressive uniformity and rendered it an increasingly joyless, rudderless routine of force-fed jams and AI/VC-directed mixes catering to a listener that exists in username only. The first four seconds of “Glass Jar” told you everything you needed to know about what lie ahead, but here’s the kind of thing that could happen before everything was all the time:

I took eight hours of coursework in five weeks in order to get caught up on classes and be in a friend's wedding at the end of June. Finishing a week earlier than the usual summer session meant I had to give my end-of-class presentations and turn in my end-of-class papers in a single day, which in turn meant that I was well into the 60-70 hour range without sleep by the time I got to the airport for an early-morning flight. (Partly my fault for insisting that I needed to stay up and make a “wedding night” mix for the couple — real virgin bride included — and even more my fault for insisting that it be a single, perfectly crossfaded track). I was fuelled only by lingering adrenaline fumes and whatever herbal gunpowder shit I had been mixing with my coffee — piracetam, rhodiola, bacopa or DMAE depending on the combination we had at the time. At any rate, eyes burning, skull heavy, joints stiff with dry rot, I still had my wits enough to refuse the backscatter machine at the TSA checkpoint; instead of the usual begrudging pat-down, I got pulled into a separate room. Anyway, it was a weird psychic setback at that particular time, but nothing came of it. Having arrived at my gate, I popped on the iPod with a brand new set of studio headphones and finally got around to listening to the Gang Gang Dance I had downloaded months before. "Glass Jar," at that moment, was the most religious experience I’d had in four years. I was literally weeping with joy.

Point being: It is worth it to stay up for a few days just to listen to ‘Glass Jar’ the way it was meant to be heard.

Patrick Masterson

Heron Oblivion — Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop, 2016)

Heron Oblivion by Heron Oblivion

Heron Oblivion’s self-titled first album fused unholy guitar racket with a limpid serenity. It was loud and cathartic but also pure beauty, floating drummer Meg Baird’s unearthly vocals over a sound that was as turbulent and majestic as nature itself, now roiled in storm, now glistening with dewy clarity. The band convened four storied guitarists—Baird from Espers, Ethan Miller and Noel Harmonson from Comets on Fire and Charlie Sauffley—then relegated two of them to other instruments (Baird on drums and Miller on bass). The sound drew on the full flared wail and scree of Hendrix and Acid Mothers Temple, the misty romance of Pentangle and Fairport Convention. It was a record out of time and could have happened in any year from about 1963 onward, or it could have not happened at all. We were so glad it did at Dusted; Heron Oblivion’s eponymous was closer to a consensus pick than any record before or since, and if you want to define a decade, how about the careening riffs of “Oriar” breaking for Baird’s dream-like chants?

Jennifer Kelly

The Jacka — What Happened to the World (The Artist, 2014)

Probably the most prophetic rap album of the 2010s. The Jacka was the king of Bay rap since he started MOB movement. He was always generous with his time, and clique albums were pouring out of The Jacka and his disciples every few months. Even some of his own albums resembled at times collective efforts. This generosity made some of the albums unfocused and disjointed, yet what it really shows is that even in the times when dreams of collective living were abandoned The Jacka still had hopes for Utopia and collective struggles. It was about the riches, but he saw the riches in people first and foremost.

This final album before he was gunned down in the early 2014 is full of predictions about what’s going to happen to him. Maybe this explains why it’s focused as never before and even Jacka’s leaned-out voice has doomed overtones. This music is the only possible answer to the question the album’s title poses: everything is wrong with the world where artists are murdered over music.

Ray Garraty

John Maus — We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (Upset The Rhythm, 2011)

We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves by John Maus

Minnesota polymath John Maus’ quest for the perfect pop song found its apotheosis on his third album We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves in 2011. On the surface an homage to 1980s synth pop, Maus’ album reveals its depth with repeated listens. Over expertly constructed layers of vintage keyboards, Maus’ oft-stentorian baritone alternately intones and croons deceptively simple couplets that blur the line between sincerity and provocation. Lurking beneath the smooth surface Maus uses Baroque musical tropes that give the record a liturgical atmosphere that reinforces the Gregorian repetition of his lyrics. The tension between the radical ironic banality of the words and the deeply serious nature of the music and voice makes We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves an oddly compelling collection that interrogates the very notion of taste and serves an apt soundtrack to the post-truth age.

Andrew Forell

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society — Mandatory Reality (Eremite, 2019)

Mandatory Reality by Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society

Any one of the albums that Joshua Abrams has made under the Natural Information Society banner could have made this list. While each has a particular character, they share common essences of sound and spirit. Abrams made his bones playing bass with Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts, Mike Reed, Fred Anderson, Chad Taylor, and many others, but in the Society his main instrument is the guimbri, a three-stringed bass lute from Morocco. He uses it to braid melody, groove, and tone into complex strands of sound that feel like they might never end. Mandatory Reality is the album where he delivers on the promise of that sound. Its centerpiece is “Finite,” a forty-minute long performance by an eight-person, all-acoustic version of Natural Information Society. It has become the main and often sole piece that the Society plays. Put the needle down and at first it sounds like you are hearing some ensemble that Don Cherry might have convened negotiating a lost Steve Reich composition. But as the music winds patiently onwards, strings, drums, horns, and harmonium rise in turn to the surface. These aren’t solos in the jazz sense so much as individual invitations for the audience to ease deeper into the sonic entirety. The music doesn’t end when the record does, but keeps manifesting with each performance. Mandatory Reality is a nodal point in an endless stream of sound that courses through the collective unconscious, periodically surfacing in order to engage new listeners and take them to the source.

Bill Meyer

Mansions — Doom Loop (Clifton Motel, 2013)

I knew nothing about Mansions when I first heard about this record; I can’t even remember how I heard about this record. But I liked the name of the album and the album art, so I listened to it. Sometimes the most important records in your decade have as much to do with you as with them. I’d been frantically looking for a job for nearly two years at that point, the severance and my access Ontario’s Employment Insurance program (basically, you pay in every paycheck, and then have ~8 months of support if you’re unemployed) had both ran out. I was living with a friend in Toronto sponsoring my American wife into the country (fun fact: they don’t care if you have an income when you do that), feeling the walls close in a little each day, sure I was going to wind up one of those kids who had to move back to the small town I’d left and a parent’s house. There were multiple days I’d send out 10+ applications and then walk around my neighbourhood blasting “Climbers” and “Out for Blood” through my earbuds, cueing up “La Dentista” again and dreaming of revenge… on what? Capitalism? There was no more proximate target in view. That’s not to say that Doom Loop is necessarily about being poor or about the shit hand my generation (I fit, just barely) got in the job market, or anything like that; but for me it is about the almost literal doom loop of that worst six months, and I still can’t listen to “The Economist” without my blood pressure spiking a little.

Ian Mathers

Protomartyr — Under Colour of Official Right (Hardly Art, 2014)

Under Color of Official Right by Protomartyr

By my count, Protomartyr made not one but four great albums in the 2010s, racking up a string of rhythmically unstoppable, intellectually challenging discs with absolute commitment and intent. I caught whiff of the band in 2012, while helping out with editing the old Dusted. Jon Treneff’s review of All Passion No Technique told a story of exhilarant discovery; I read it and immediately wanted in. The conversion event, though, came two years later, with the stupendous Under Color of Official Right, all Wire-y rampage and Fall-spittled-bile, a rattletrap construction of every sort of punk rock held together by the preening contempt of black-suited Joe Casey. Doug Mosurock reviewed it for us, concluding, “Poppier than expected, but still covered in burrs, and adeptly analyzing the pain and suffering of their city and this year’s edition of the society that judges it, Protomartyr has raised the bar high enough for any bands to follow, so high that most won’t even know it’s there.” Except here’s the thing: Protomartyr jumped that bar two more times this decade, and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t do it again. The industry turned on the kind of bands with four working class dudes who can play a while ago, but this is the band of the 2010s anyway.

Jennifer Kelly

Tau Ceti IV — Satan, You’re the God of This Age, but Your Reign Is Ending (Cold Vomit, 2018)

Satan, You're The God of This Age But Your Reign is Ending by Tau Ceti IV

This decade was full of takes on American primitive guitar. Some were pretty good, a few were great, many were forgettable, and then there was this overlooked gem from Jordan Darby of Uranium Orchard. Satan, You’re the God of This Age, but Your Reign Is Ending is an antidote to bland genre exercises. Like John Fahey, Darby has a distinct voice and style, as well as a sense of humor. Also like Fahey, his playing incorporates diverse influences in subtle but pronounced ways. American primitive itself isn’t a staid template. Though there are also plenty of beautiful, dare I say pastoral moments, which still stand out for being genuinely evocative.

Darby’s background in aggressive electric guitar music partly explains his approach. (Not sure if he’s the only ex-hardcore guy to go in this direction, but there can’t be many.) His playing is heavier than one might expect, but it feels natural, not like he’s just playing metal riffs on an acoustic guitar. But heaviness isn’t the only difference. Like his other projects, Satan is wonderfully off-kilter. This album’s strangeness isn’t reducible to component parts, but here are two representative examples: “The Wind Cries Mary” gradually encroaches on the last track, and throughout, the microphone picks up more string noise than most would consider tasteful. It all works, or at least it’s never boring.

Ethan Milititisky

Z-Ro — The Crown (Rap-a-Lot, 2014)

When singing in rap was outsourced to pop singers and Auto Tune, Z-Ro remained true to his self, singing even more than he ever did. He did his hooks and his verses himself, and no singing could harm his image as a hustler moonlighting as a rapper. He can’t be copied exactly because of his gift, to combine singing soft and rapping hard. It’s a sort of common wisdom that he recorded his best material in the previous decade, yet quite apart from hundreds of artists that continued to capitalize on their fame he re-invented himself all the past decade, making songs that didn’t sound like each other out of the same raw material. The Crown is a tough pick because since his post-prison output he made solid discs one after each other.

Ray Garraty

[delicioussshame]

So I had this idea and I decided to write it. Set in the poly universe, but not actually part of the main fic, and thus won’t make it to AO3. Explicit and huh... you’ll see. Darker than usual for this AU.

“Binghe, ah, you’re home… early.”

His husband’s eyes burn trails of fire on his skin as he stares at him, before he slides a hand behind his head and pulls him into a kiss like he wants to eat him whole.

Not exactly an unusual reaction from Luo Binghe when he returns.

Mobei-Jun doesn’t bother to stop touching him. Why would he? Luo Binghe won’t ask him to.

“Shizun.”

Shen Qingqiu swaps at him. “Husband.”

Luo Binghe nods, enthralled. “Husband.”

“Better.” How can something so simple be so hard to understand? Shen Qingqiu will never stop being grateful that Luo Binghe was never exposed to sexy professor/naughty student porn, or his sex life would be even harder to manage than it already is.

“I see Husband hasn’t been lonely during my absence.”

Shen Qingqiu still finds it in himself to blush, somehow. “And whose fault is that?” If Luo Binghe has a jealousy crisis now of all times...

But no. Luo Binghe stays silent, preferring to latch his mouth to Shen Qingqiu's neck and suck until Shen Qingqiu is holding him there with trembling fingers, while Mobei-Jun is pressing against his back and spreading his hands all over him. His thighs open of their own accord to make space for his husband to nestle closer.

Instead, Mobei-Jun takes advantage, hands sliding down to tease the sensitive inside of his thighs and occasionally brushing against his hard cock in a way he knows isn’t accidental. Shen Qingqiu cannot stop pleas for more from escaping his mouth.

It's Luo Binghe’s fingers that find their way inside him first, pushing inside and stroking exploratoringly until Shen  Qingqiu starts squirming and cursing the bad things he did in his past life that earned him not one but two lovers eager to tease and slow to actually act. It’s not like they’re not into it too. When they’re that close, he can exactly how affected they are. Meanly, he rolls his hips, taking his turn at teasing. Both of them growl, the deep vibrations travelling through Shen Qingqiu. See what messing with demons get you? This is what they should teach at the sect. Don’t underestimate demons, before you know it they'll have seduced you and then won’t deliver until you've gone crazy.

“Husband is so beautiful like this, this disciple cannot hope to resist him.” His fingers move deeper while Mobei-Jun’s trails his along his length, his own erection rubbing wet and dirty against his lower back. “But he would hate to force Husband into something he doesn’t desire. Will Shen Qingqiu tell this disciple what he wants? This Luo Binghe would never forgive himself if he did something wrong.”

Shen Qingqiu could... No, forget about could, Shen Qingqiu bites his husband hard enough to draw blood.

Luo Binghe bites right back, which has Shen Qingqiu flinch away from him. “Binghe!” He knows better! Their ideas of rough play are different and he’s very aware of it!

Luo Binghe looks repentant not at all. In fact, he licks the blood off his lips like he relishes the taste.

He also adds another finger and shoves it deep, relentless until Shen Qingqiu’s throat is sore from screaming. “Well, did Shizun make up his mind? Does he want more from this disciple, or does he prefer to remain like this?”

Shen Qingqiu has half a mind to just ignore his husband and pick his other, more respectful lover, who isn’t going to make him talk. No one ever complained that Mobei-Jun was too loquacious.

It would be a callous thing to do. Mobei-Jun still is Luo Binghe’s underling after all. It wouldn’t do to put him in a position where he has to oppose his lord. And while Luo Binghe is often, too often if you asked Shen Qingqiu, content to watch, the way he keeps fingering him and making sure Shen Qingqiu couldn’t give himself relief made obvious he would favor more proactive means tonight.

Shen Qingqiu sighs, or he would if he could. What’s the point of trying to resist Luo Binghe? That’s a fight he’s not going to win, nor would he want to. “This master is willing to let his husband have whatever he fancies, as long as he stops being a terrible tease and do somethi- AH!”

Mobei-Jun’s arms snake around him to hold him up as Luo Binghe grips his hips and pulls him toward him, fucking him hard, just on the verge of too much. Shen Qingqiu closes his eyes to free himself from the terrible glint in his husband’s eyes. Unsurprisingly, his hands are trapped in Mobei-Jun’s hold, unwilling to let him come at his own pace. His mouth lingers on the back of his neck, the touch barely felt when compared to Luo Binghe pushing into him deep.

When Luo Binghe finally comes, Shen Qingqiu barely has time to think before he’s being repositioned and sat on Mobei-Jun’s cock, his limp body offering no resistance as he’s being used for both their pleasure, Luo Binghe drinking in the sight. The still coherent part of Shen Qingqiu’s brain just knows he’ll be ready again before Mobei-Jun is done.

Shen Qingqiu is doomed.

“Shizun takes it so well, maybe he could accommodate us both?”

That wakes him right up. It’s not something they haven’t done, but not without extensive preparation before the event. Luo Binghe doesn’t just expect him to take both of their ridiculously large cocks in like it’s easy, does he? “I… Ah… Not tonight. It’d, it’d be too much…”

“Are you sure? You look capable to me.”

Shen Qingqiu shivers against Mobei-Jun. Maybe he… No. Not a good idea. Luo Binghe just came back, he’ll have stamina to spare, while this would destroy his. Also, “It’s Husband! Ah! And I… said no. “

Binghe frowns, visibly vexed by his opposition. “Husband would deny me?”

“It wouldn’t be safe.”

Mobei-Jun’s voice is almost startling. For a moment, Shen Qingqiu is worried this will degenerate. Mobei-Jun rarely dares to oppose Luo Binghe, especially in matters relation to his husband.

Luo Binghe’s qi flares threateningly, but it settles down without issue. “The last thing I want is to hurt Husband. If both he and my subordinate believe it wouldn’t be a good idea, I will defer to their good judgement.” His hand wraps almost painfully around Shen Qingqiu, scrambling his thoughts completely. “As long as he is still disposed to serving me after.”

Shen Qingqiu hardly hears those words, too dazed by his rising orgasm to care.

___________________

Luo Binghe had not known what to expect when he would return, but it had not been this.

“Binghe, ah, you’re home… early.” Said with a healthy dose of embarrassment but not a hint of guilt. Likewise, Mobei-Jun had stood still, at attention but without fear. Obviously, neither of them had believed they were doing something wrong.

It looked like his counterpart’s life had become more exciting since the last time Luo Binghe stopped by.

From their lack of modesty as Luo Binghe devoured the delightful image their naked bodies made, his presence might even be welcome.

It’s not like he had been unfamiliar with this concept. Some of his wives enjoyed each other’s company. He didn’t begrudge them their pleasure. As much as he would have liked to, he just couldn’t attend to all of them properly himself. He had taken two or more of them to bed together more than once. This hadn’t been very different. And if he’d never considered bedding Mobei-Jun before, it was clearly a lack of imagination on his part. While it would not compare to getting Shizun to submit to him, which he definitely would this time, it would still be quite a thrill to get him to moan under him. Were they married here? Could this be allowed?

The situation had been too touchy to try his luck. If both Shen Qingqiu and Mobei-Jun figured him out, he would have to face quite a fight. But the reward would certainly be worth the risk.

Luo Binghe had approached the bed Shen Qingqiu and Mobei-Jun occupied, and had pulled his shizun in a kiss he gladly opened up for. He hadn’t even needed most of the drugs and artifices he’d prepared to make sure Shen Qingqiu would be willing. The only one he would use, he decided as he looked at the scourge of his life getting fucked out of his mind and loving every moment of it, was the pill that would cloud their mind, erasing the memory of his visit. It would work flawlessly, better than he thought it would. Since both of them would wake up together, they would explain away any lingering mark easily. That way, they wouldn’t tell his counterpart of his visit and would have no reason for caution.

It would make subsequent visits much easier.

[alexandralyman]

Beyond the Horizon, Chapter 42

Fic Update: Beyond the Horizon

Summary:  When Princess Emma's ship is captured by the Jolly Roger and Captain Killian Jones, she offers herself as a hostage for ransom if he will let the ship and the other passengers go. With Emma, Killian remembers the honour he once held dear, and Emma catches glimpses of the gentleman Killian had been. Against all odds, the pirate and the princess begin to fall for each other.

Read this chapter on ff.net here

                                              Chapter Forty-Two                                             The Villain of the Tale

The Evil Queen's Castle

Regina lifted the little gilt hand mirror from atop her dressing table and carefully studied her face, her reflection framed perfectly between the scalloped edges. It was bare of any cosmetics, she wore none of her usual rouge to enhance her bone structure or any of the carefully chosen pigments to line her lips, define her brows, darken her lashes. As a young woman she'd never bothered much with such artifice, preferring to pink her cheeks with a long ride across the fields and to redden her lips afterwards with stolen kisses in the stable's hayloft instead. Besides, it had hardly been necessary. She'd been beautiful then, not needing flattering hairstyles or cunningly designed gowns to conceal flaws like other, plainer girls did, Regina had been born blessed with natural beauty that her mother had fussed over and paraded about with pride, eagerly commissioning portraits to send to unmarried crown princes and widowed kings both across the realms and sparing no expense in the process. Her daughter was beautiful, and Cora was determined she would be a queen by marriage since she couldn't be sovereign in her own right. She'd clawed and scraped her own way to an exalted title and she would have something even better for Her Royal Highness Princess Regina, bluest of bloods on her father's side, and luckily winsome enough that Cora's much more humble and dubious lineage could easily be overlooked.

Regina's own opinion on the matter was considered of no importance, of course.

In the end it had been more a curse than a blessing. Regina had felt no different than her horse, being presented to foreign ambassadors and envoys as a prospective bride while they did all but examine her teeth as they openly discussed her family tree, her complexion, her likelihood of bearing sons. Breeding stock, that's what she really was, carefully reared and groomed by her mother to be sold at auction to the highest bidder. And sold she was, to a grieving widower old enough to be her father and a pretty child who was both adoring daughter and unwitting rival wrapped up in one.

Snow White

Regina was no longer that proud young filly not yet broken to the saddle she'd been before her marriage (and her mother had broken her, in the end, with a squeeze of her fist and words that still echoed in the back of Regina's mind all these years later) but neither was she a lame old nag ready to be put out to pasture. The face in the mirror was still beautiful, undeniably older than the seventeen-year old reluctant wife and new mother she'd been on her wedding day, with deep lines cut around her eyes by the passage of time and feathering around her lips that were usually hidden by powder and paint. But her hair was still thick and dark and lustrous, her neck and jawline were both firm and supple, and there wasn't a single liver spot to be found anywhere on the backs of her hands. She'd never been as vain as some of the tales made her out to be, the ones that cast her as nothing but a jealous stepmother to a beautiful young stepdaughter, but Regina did possess some vanity and it was impossible to ignore the fact that over three decades had passed since she'd once vowed revenge on the one who'd destroyed her life. Thirty years...a lifetime…time that was gone forever now. Daniel was nothing but bones and dust, forgotten by almost all, even Regina could not longer quite recall the sound of his voice or remember his face with the clarity she once did. Her father was dead, going to sleep one night and never waking up again in a cruel twist of fate that only served to remind her of that failed sleeping curse (True Love's Kiss...the one magic she could never wield) and while her mother still clung to life in that land of strange wonders on the other side of the looking glass, she was nothing but an empty shell who had lived too long without her heart in fear and suspicion and was prone to fits of madness now. Cora had made Regina a queen in the end, but her grand victory had cost her dearly, Regina had seen to that.

Everything comes with a price.

She stared balefully at her reflection, tilting the mirror this way and that to hollow her cheeks with shadows and to bathe her skin in the flickering candlelight, catching a glimpse of that girl in a pale blue gown she'd been once upon a time. Her youth was gone forever now, another casualty of her fruitless quest, but she was still beautiful. If the man from the tavern with the lion tattoo was still out there, somewhere, surely he would think so too. While she didn't lack for male companionship in her bed when she wanted it, there were always plenty of handsome guards around to play with for a while and then dispose of once she'd had her fill, sometimes she imagined finding him again...the man the little green fairy had said was her soulmate with such certainty and a pinch of pixie dust...finding him and seeing if maybe, possibly, there was a chance for her to find happiness.

To be Regina again, just Regina, and not the Evil Queen.

But then she would catch sight of herself in the nearest mirror, ebony gown and fine jewels, face painted and powdered into a stark mask that her younger self wouldn't even recognize and she would remember that she was the Queen now and not Regina and no man, not her handsome young guards with their flattering mouths and fearful eyes, not the stranger with the lion tattoo, none of them would ever see her as anything but that. Too much time had passed, her heart (what was left of it, anyway) was too hard, and her mother's harshest lesson had sunk in and permeated everything with the constant reminder that love was weakness and the one thing a queen without a king could never be was weak.

The King is dead...long live the Queen.

Even now, bare faced and bundled in an old, faded robe with frayed cuffs and loose threads instead of one of her extravagant gowns, she was still the Evil Queen, Snow White's wicked stepmother, forever bound in marriage to that little bitch even though Snow's father, Regina's husband, had been dead for years and his ring no longer graced her slim finger. All through the years of bitter exile and even now, triumphant at last with the kingdom hers alone to rule, it was always about Snow White. Regina would always be the interloper into her perfect family, the usurper to her rightful throne-

-the villain to her hero.

"My Queen…"

"Not now," she snapped at the familiar voice, setting the mirror face down with a thump and standing up from the table, turning away to stare out the window at the forest in the distance as she'd done every day during her first reign when she'd known Snow White was out there, rallying village after village to her cause under the cover of night and falling in love with that tall, blond princeling, so annoyingly proud and full of noble ideals, the one who had done what Regina herself could not, defied his father's will and set aside his royal fiancee to follow his heart into the woods instead.

Even when Snow White had nothing and Regina had everything, it had always felt like it was the other way around.

"Your Majesty." the voice persisted from behind her, both fearful and beseeching and it set her teeth right on edge, she was not in the mood to see or be seen by anyone at the moment, not even her most faithful and loyal companion. Of course, he didn't really have a choice in the matter.

"My apologies for the interruption but you said you wanted to be informed as soon as there was any news...she's been captured."

Something akin to hope flared wildly in Regina's breast and she whirled around, clutching the edges of the robe tight to her chest. "Snow White?"

Her Mirror appeared in the round glass on the wall through a swirl of grey smoke, shaking his head and hope was immediately replaced by rage that had dark magic sparking hot between her fingers, ready to shatter him right to pieces for that split-second of false elation.

"No, it's her daughter, Princess Emma. She's been captured at sea...by pirates."

Regina felt her lips twist at the name while a prickle of interest went right down her spine. Princess Emma was Snow White's only child, born of her love with that insipid Prince Charming, the child that was heir to her throne, her pride and joy and-

-her happiness.

She turned to face the full-length mirror next to her dressing table, taller than she was and twice as wide, seeing nothing but her own reflection.

"Show me," she ordered, in a voice that none in the whole of the kingdom would dare to disobey.

The glass darkened at her command, the image within rippling and distorting until it cleared to reveal what she quickly realized was the wooden deck of a ship, rocking back and forth slightly in the frame. She could see the ocean in the background, a tall mast and the corner of a sail, but her attention was drawn to the group of men congregated in a loose semi-circle around two others dressed in the new uniforms of her navy. One of them held a blood-stained cloth to the side of his face, while the other's jacket was torn at the shoulder and he was clearly favouring one leg over the other, wincing in pain but trying to hide it. Regina had tortured enough peasants to know the look of a man in hidden agony well.

"Now, are you two gentleman finally prepared to listen to my offer? Or do I need to fully sink your vessel to get it through your thick skulls that I am not a man to be trifled with?"

Regina turned her attention to the one who had spoken in such a lazy, unaffected tone that nonetheless carried a menacing undercurrent and had the rest all turning to him in clear deference. He was dressed in a long leather coat that was several notches above everyone else's attire, with a sword at his hip and one ringed hand resting lightly on the hilt. His head was down, features obscured by a shadow while he toyed with the pommel for a moment and when he finally looked up Regina saw that he had a handsome face, lean and sharp-jawed, with thick black brows framing bright blue eyes and a fringe of dark hair that swept across his forehead.

Pirates, her Mirror had said, and she took in the rich jewel that dangled from his ear and the arrogant set to his shoulders under the leather. A pirate he clearly was, a highwayman of the seas who pillaged and plundered his way from port to port. But there was no sign of Princess Emma and impatience had her bare foot tapping up and down silently on the rug. If this was yet another wild goose chase...

"The Evil Queen will have your head for this!" the man in the torn jacket yelled.

Regina rolled her eyes, letting out an annoyed huff. Never just the queen, always the Evil Queen. One of the pirate crew clouted the man in the back and he fell heavily to his hands and knees on the planks.

"On your feet for the captain!"

He was roughly hauled upwards again among jeers from the rest of the men to face the one in the leather coat, obviously the captain, who seemed completely unperturbed by the invocation of her title. Not only that, Regina saw to her shock that he was actually smirking at the threat, the fool. Handsome and arrogant, she'd broken more than her fair share of men like him to her own whip.

She was her mother's daughter, after all.

"Have my head for what?" the captain queried with an amused look, glancing around at his crewmen and lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug, "Putting a few holes in her ships? I'd say it's a small price to pay for what I'm about to give her..or, should I say, whom, and I'm sure Her Majesty would agree."

The feeling returned, a hot, burning coal in her chest that threatened to hollow her from the inside out underneath the threadbare dressing gown. There'd been no news for weeks, no sightings in the forest, no rumours in the villages. Princess Emma had simply vanished into thin air, no spell or spy had been able to locate any sign of her. It was almost as if something or someone was deliberately concealing her from Regina's view. Much to her frustration, she'd been unable to discover the source of it, although she strongly suspected the fairies had a hand in hiding the girl from her. She saw her two subjects exchange hesitant looks on the other side of the glass.

"You claim you have the princess aboard this vessel as your prisoner," one said at last, obviously unconvinced, "Our Queen will require more than just a pirate's boast to believe that, Captain."

"Aye, of course. Mr. Doyle, go and fetch my...the princess, if you please."

The pirate captain rocked back on his heels, jamming a thumb into his belt and giving another smirk of a grin while a large man with a red beard immediately jumped to attention and disappeared down a hatch. Regina clutched a fold of her robe in her fist, hearing the roar of the distant waves through the mirror that matched the roaring of the blood in her ears. If this smirking pirate was trying to deceive his way into the reward with a slattern tavern maid dressed up in silks and velvets or a pretty-faced boy simpering and preening behind a fan, then she would have his head, as well as several other body parts before she was through with him.

A hush had fallen over the group on deck that was thick with expectation. No one spoke and Regina felt like she was fixed in place, unable to tear her gaze away from the mirror and holding her breath until her lungs were fit to burst until finally, finally, the sound came of a feminine voice, high and reedy with fear. Both of her men went stiff-backed, eyes bulging and jaws dropping at something beyond the edge of the frame, beyond Regina's field of view.

"Unhand me at once you brute! Put me down, put me down, now!"

Kicking and flailing madly in the beefy arms of the red-bearded pirate was a woman in a yellow gown the colour of buttercups. Her full skirts spilled over his elbows as he half-carried, half-dragged her bodily onto the deck, ignoring both the shouting and the small fists pounding madly on his chest in vain. Regina felt her heart speed up, running her gaze over every last detail. The woman was young, and blonde, just like that blond princeling who Snow White had oh so cloyingly named "Charming" - though Regina had always found him anything but. The long strands of hair escaped from a green ribbon to curl around a flushed face with a familiar heart shape that had haunted Regina for decades, so flushed with pride and convinced that she had done the right thing in sharing a secret that was not hers to tell. It was the same face from that infuriating broadsheet the peasants traded behind her back, proclaiming her their true queen, the same face from the portrait she'd burned when she'd finally breached the defences and entered the castle in what was supposed to be triumph and finding it empty and cold instead, sending a ball of flame hurtling straight at the painted family hanging on the wall who were supposed to be cowering at her feet, begging fruitlessly for their lives.

Princess Emma

She was dumped somewhat unceremoniously on the deck right in front of the captain's polished boots with her gown billowing out around her, giving a cry of complete outrage that made Regina smile. The captain was also smiling, smug and clearly pleased as he nudged her carelessly with one foot and prodded, "Go on now, darling. Tell these fine gentlemen your name, loud and proud."

The girl glared up at him from under that cloud of golden hair instead, defiance that reminded Regina even more of Snow White. She rose carefully to her feet without assistance and faced him, tipping her head back to look him square in the eye and revealing a dark bruise that bloomed high on her cheek, the skin purple and swollen and a sharp contrast to the cheery buttercup yellow. Someone must have struck her, and recently, too. Rage flashed over the captain's face at her refusal, an emotion as intimately familiar to Regina as her own reflection in the mirror. His lips thinned and his eyes narrowed to slits while one hand grabbed her by the wrist and spun her around, pulling her flush against his chest from behind with his free arm circling her waist.

"That was not a request, Princess," he hissed, bending down so that his whiskered cheek brushed hers and pressing his lips right to her ear, "That was an order, and on my ship no one disobeys my orders."

She turned slightly in his hold, twisting and firing back, "Or what? You'll have me flogged, Captain? You wouldn't dare!"

Flogged. Regina rather liked the sound of that and the pirate looked like he was considering it. "Hmmm, stripped and whipped until you've learned your lesson? Well, I think we'll save the stripping part for later, my dear, but as for whipped no, not you. The lieutenant. While you watch."

"No...no, don't hurt him, please."

She struggled fruitlessly, begging and pleading until finally she slumped in his arms as the fight seemed to go out of her all at once. His own voice was mockingly cruel, practically dripping with scorn. "Still trying so desperately to be a hero, the pretty little princess who thinks she can best a pirate. Won't say a damn word to save your own skin, but you'll do it for him. We both know you'd do anything to protect the ones you love. Now, be a good girl and tell these men your name."

He hauled her back up against his chest, holding her firm while he grasped her chin and forced her to face Regina's men. His other hand was splayed across her stomach, thick rings on every finger save one. The large gemstones stood out against the soft yellow, dark onyx set in silver, rubies that gleamed like drops of fresh-spilled blood, this dark-haired pirate was clearly a man of considerable means. Regina was captivated by the unfolding scene in her mirror, curious as to both his identity and the meaning of his words. Who was this lieutenant that he spoke of, this man that Princess Emma was trying to protect even as a prisoner? She remembered Snow White and the poisoned apple all those years ago, taken not to save herself but to save the man she loved so dear. Snow's greatest weakness was supposed to be the key to destroying her at last, until Prince Charming had ruined everything with that blasted kiss. It seemed their child was just like the pair of them in more than just looks, a hero with a head full of foolish, noble ideals and a heart undoubtedly full to the brim with hope.

No more apples. Regina would take great delight in crushing that noble heart, letting hope turning to ash between her fingers.

The girl stared straight ahead, the wind whipping her hair around her face and shoulders squaring even in the pirate's grip. The posture of a princess, chin tipping slightly up to look down her nose at those she outranked with the haughtiness of one born to the ermine and the purple. Just like her brat of a mother used to do. They even had the same chin.

"Say it," he urged, more softly this time, turning her head to face him again, "Say it and save him."

She gave a tiny nod and his hand fell away, deafening silence reigned across the assembled men as they all waited for what she was about to say.

"I am Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Emma of the Enchanted Forest, daughter and sole heir of Queen Snow White and King David."

It rang through the mirror as clear as a bell, even making the glass vibrate a little from the force of it and even though Regina had recognized the face and the hair and knew she had to be who the pirate captain said she was...actually hearing the names that had been her own personal curse for decades had her vision going white at the edges while a hot rush of emotions flooded through her. Her knees almost buckled and she had to brace a hand on the bedpost to keep herself upright, nails scrabbling madly at the carved wood. After all this time she would finally have what she wanted...almost. Snow White's happiness, in the form of her only child.

"The princess...it's her!"

One of her men seemed to forget his injury and tried to lunge forward, reaching out for the girl with a sudden gleam in his eye, only to be met by a battalion's worth of swords blocking his way. The pirate crew were all heavily armed, their blades flashing bright in the sun. She ran a cursory eye over them, feeling her nose wrinkle in disgust, they were dirty, common men, barely worth her notice. Armed or not, she could destroy them all with nothing but a wave of her hand. Still, Regina was faintly impressed with how quickly they'd reacted, pulling their weapons in a blink and forming a barrier between their captain and the potential threat. Even the one standing to the captain's right who looked barely more than a child, knobby wrist clutching a sword that matched any on the deck and as grim-faced as the rest of the crew under a thick mop of sandy hair.

The captain himself had taken a step back almost as soon as the man moved, lifting Princess Emma clear off her feet with the arm around her waist and turning so that she was tucked against him to the side with his coat swinging open to shield her and his own sword pulled in one smooth motion. He clicked his tongue in reproach and wagged the blade back and forth like a finger. "Ah, ah, ah, look, but don't touch."

"But...how? We've been searching for her for months."

Regina wanted to know the answer to that as well, how had a group of lowly pirates managed what the best of her knights and spies had failed at so spectacularly? The only information they'd managed to bring her was that Snow and Charming had sent their daughter away in secret before she'd laid siege to their castle, along with those seven buffoons with the ridiculous names - Happy, Dopey...Bashful...Reckless….Thrifty? Whatever the hell they were.

A devilish grin spread across the pirate's face, revealing white teeth while the arm he still had wrapped around the princess moved upwards until his hand trailed across her collarbone in a possessive caress, fingertips just barely grazing the skin.

"Oh, now that is a fine tale, isn't it, Princess? Your little ship wandering across my path unawares, trying to flee the queen and heedless of the danger, your men fighting so valiantly when we boarded and the seas running red with their blood until there was only the two of you left. Found her hidden away belowdecks dressed as a peasant, can you imagine? But I knew the moment I laid eyes on her that she was so much more...a young lieutenant was guarding her, or trying to, at least. It was oh so touching watching him trying to defend her honour, he's clearly sweet on her. Took them both prisoner and sank the ship, any man left alive on it didn't stay that way for long."

Princess Emma's eyes closed while the captain recounted the story and Regina thought she saw a tear glistening high on the bruised cheek. So they were all dead, Snow White's allies, the ones who'd taken her in and sheltered her all those years ago. Regina wished it had been by her hands instead, but no matter. If they'd been slain by pirates then they hadn't died peacefully, not according to every tale she'd heard. They were ruthless, hard men who showed no mercy, and the dark-haired captain looked the very picture of such a villain.

The lieutenant was roughly shoved forward by two of the pirate crew, hands tied tight behind his back and forced down to his knees under the gloating stares and the princess's tear-streaked gaze. Regina took in the wrinkled naval uniform, the bland good looks, and could easily imagine a pathetic little romance blooming between him and Princess Emma at sea, all sweeping promises and fervent declarations of love under the stars.

Love is weakness, Regina.

The most important lesson Cora had ever bestowed was an echo in her ear, a lesson, it seemed, that the princess and her would-be lover were learning as well. She was bruised and he was bound, heroes brought low and separated by the man standing between them.

Her own man had his hands raised in supplication, eyeing the blades all still pointed at his throat. "There is a handsome reward for capturing the princess, Captain, surely you know that. Her Majesty has offered a thousand gold pieces-"

"I don't give a damn about gold," the pirate interrupted, practically spitting the words, "What I want is something even more valuable than mere coin, and more precious than any jewel. I've shown you what you wanted to see, you will take the following message back to your queen and tell her to keep her reward. Tell her that Captain Killian Jones of the Jolly Roger has what she wants, Princess Emma, alive and unharmed. Well...mostly, at least, a pirate's always got to keep the best part of the treasure for himself, eh lads?"

He exchanged knowing looks with the rest of his crew while the lieutenant flushed, staring resolutely down at the deck with his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears under his jacket. More laughter and cheers arose when Captain Jones nuzzled openly at Princess Emma's neck and pressed a showy kiss to the dip in her shoulder, leaving very little doubt as to what exactly he might have taken from her.

"I will gladly turn her over in exchange for the queen's formal, written endorsement of my vessel. We will sail henceforth as privateers under Her Majesty's flag, with Her Majesty's protection. Those are my terms, and they are not negotiable."

Regina felt her eyebrow lift. That was unexpected. What kind of pirate didn't care about gold? That was all they were supposed to care about, according to the tales. Killian Jones...the name was unfamiliar, but she was a queen, she didn't associate directly with pirates. Perhaps that had been a mistake, given that this one had managed to do what none of her more highborn knights could. He was still holding Princess Emma with her back to his front, pressed against her intimately from shoulder to knee with his hips flush to hers and her hands clutching at the sleeve of his coat where his arm was wrapped across her chest. So the perfect little princess had been taken by a pirate in more ways than one. Snow White's daughter was no longer as pure as her mother's namesake, the irony was delicious. There would be no grand marriage for her now, no king down on bended knee to play second fiddle to a pirate. The rest of her did appear to be intact, or rather, unmarred, save for the bruise on her face. A taste of what was to come, when Regina got her hands on her. All the plans she'd made for Snow White's punishment while stewing in exile could be made to fit Princess Emma instead. Well, save for what she'd wanted to do first, rip out Snow's husband's heart in front of her and make her watch while it was crushed to dust, just like Cora had done to her. That so-called Prince Charming might have managed to escape Daniel's exact fate, but there were a whole host of other ways to make the girl suffer.

"We will deliver your message then, Captain Jones, when we deliver Princess Emma to the queen's custody. I'm sure she will be amenable to your request."

His face lost all hint of amusement and a muscle moved in his jaw before he spoke in that menacing tone again. "I don't make deals with lackeys," he said, drawing the words out and enunciating them carefully as if he was speaking to a slow, dimwitted child, "And I will deliver her to the queen myself once she had agreed to my terms and not a minute before, the princess does not set one foot off my ship until then. Did you really think I was just going to hand over such a rich prize and hope that my message was received and not mysteriously lost along the way to the Evil Queen? What's to stop you lot from claiming you found her and trying to steal my reward? A pirate keeps his greatest treasures close at hand and welcomes any challenge with the point of his blade."

He pressed his point by pressing the tip of the sword to the man's cheek without removing his arm from around Princess Emma, scraping downwards along his skin and shaving a white line right through his beard. The blade was clearly razor-sharp and he handled it with ease, putting on a deliberate show that made sweat break out on the other man's lip while his tongue darted out to wet his lips and his eyes darted down to follow the movement. There was complete silence for a long moment, but finally he swallowed hard and pressed on despite the clear threat.

"The Evil Queen is not known for her patience, Captain, and will not be pleased to hear that you have refused to relinquish the princess. I suggest you take the gold and not attempt to provoke her by making other demands."

Even battered and bloodied by the pirate crew, he clearly feared her more than he feared the blade pressed so perilously close to his own neck. Regina felt a flicker of annoyance, they would always fear her and never love her the way they did Snow White. But Captain Jones only smiled, displaying no alarm at the prospect of provoking her ire. She was second in power in the whole of the Enchanted Forest only to the Dark One and entire armies fled at the mere mention of her name. The pirate was no coward, she would give him that.

"Then I expect her answer quickly, or I will sail away beyond her grasp. Either way, I will not relinquish Princess Emma until I get what I want, and I always get what I want. But I'm sure Her Majesty and I will both be...satisfied, in the end."

He actually had the audacity to wink, patting the man on the cheek with his sword like a father would pat a child before stepping back and giving an order to have both her men returned to their ship. The other pirates all swung into action at once and this time it was a shorter one in a knit cap who was tasked with taking Princess Emma back down below. Before he did, Captain Jones tucked one of the loose strands of hair back behind her ear and leaned down to whisper something that Regina couldn't hear. Her eyes fluttered shut and her chest heaved, another tear spilling out from under her lashes. His expression was hard, flinty-eyed, revealing nothing when he dragged his thumb over the bruise on her cheek to capture it and wipe it away. This time she didn't try to resist when the man in the cap took her arm and guided her away, glancing down at the slumped lieutenant and back at the captain before turning to follow, seemingly resigned to her fate. Snow White had been the same when she took the apple, right down to the tear. Like mother, like daughter.

Her own mother's face flashed before her eyes, Daniel's heart in her hand. Regina pushed the image away and blinked against the sudden stinging in her eyes.

"The Evil Queen is going to kill you."

It was the lieutenant who had spoken, still down on his knees with his head hanging forward. He sat back on his heels and looked up at Captain Jones, who was staring out at some point in the distance.

"Don't pretend you'll shed any tears on my account if she does, mate," he said.

"You didn't take the gold."

Captain Jones barked a short, harsh laugh, "It's what you expected me to do all along, wasn't it? My most abject apologies for disappointing you."

"I didn't expect a pirate to truly risk his own neck," the lieutenant muttered, rolling his shoulders and rubbing his wrists together behind his back.

With a flick of his wrist the captain pressed his sword to the lieutenant's neck without looking, blunt side turned to dig into the soft point under his jaw and forcing his head back. His voice dropped and took on a dangerous edge.

"I'd risk my life for two things, love and revenge. I gave one up, and I am not going to lose the other. Now hold your tongue, Lieutenant, and remember just who is captain here. I'll not remind you again."

Revenge. Regina stepped closer to the mirror, freezing the image in place with a raised hand. The word struck through her like lightening, illuminating a whole host of possibilities. She was going to give the pirate what he wanted in exchange for the princess, her signature on a royal charter that would grant him legitimacy as her subject to ply the seas in her name. Her own navy was clearly useless, and her allies had been thin on the ground since her return. The Dark One rarely left his own castle these days, too preoccupied with his bizarre married life to lift a finger and assist his star pupil anymore, Maleficent was gone, King George had inconveniently died weeks ago, she really did have no one left.

But now a different idea was beginning to take root.

The captain's face filled the glass, rippling slightly when she reached out and traced a nail along it, tilting her head and considering him carefully. There was a small scar on his cheek, lending him a rakish air that was not unappealing. If he were one of her knights then she might have enjoyed a turn or two in the sheets with someone like him, a man who was a bit rougher around the edges, who wouldn't break too easily.

It was so disappointing when they did.

A swirl of red smoke engulfed her and when it cleared Regina was looking at her own reflection again. Only now she was gowned in crimson velvet that fit her like a glove, her shoulders rolling back under the luxurious folds that fell straight to the floor in a narrow drape. Her lips were nearly black with rouge and her lashes shadowed and curled, while her hair was dressed up high off her forehead. No longer the soft beauty her mother had prized so highly, young and tender-hearted and as easily bruised, now she was as polished at the jewels she wore, glittering and alluring and as hard as a diamond. A true Queen, Cora had made her that.

The Queen is dead...

Years had passed but it wasn't too late, not yet. The pirate was going to bring her Princess Emma and Snow White's happiness would be destroyed for good, her vow fulfilled at last. There would be no happy ending for the girl in the yellow gown and her gallant lover, they might be heroes but they suffered from the same fatal weakness that had already been their undoing.

As for what would happen after, her own destiny was still out there, in another land that just might be within her grasp once more. The people would never love the Evil Queen, but they would love Regina, and Snow White would finally be not just dead, but forgotten. All she needed was one thing...

Captain Killian Jones might think that his terms were non-negotiable, but Regina had learned how to make a deal from the very best. She would agree to his demands, for now, wait for him to claim his reward, and bide her time just a little longer. She'd waited this long, she could wait a bit more to have everything she'd ever wanted.

"Mirror mirror on the wall...find out all you can about the pirate named Killian Jones, captain of the Jolly Roger."

The Mirror appeared in the glass, his brow creased in a frown, "What do you wish to know, my Queen?"

"Find out where he was born, his home, his family. Who he hates, who he loves, what he wants the most. Everything."

Regina turned towards the window and pictured the ocean in the distance, hidden just beyond the forest.

"I need to know what kind of man he truly is."

[thetradeway]

Session 42 22 May 2021: “He was pretty desiccated when I found him.“

I’m late! I still manage not to miss anything. Ed is away so Matthew takes Gideon for him.

In our downtime, Ahleqs has a massive migraine and when he recovers, he knows some different spells. (Duncan mis-read some of his sorcerer abilities, and swaps a few things around.) Gideon makes his excuses and disappears to the tower of the Order, he has some business to attend to. Kessler goes back to her lab for some tinkering. Not in her parents basement. They’re dead. (Batman meme, but I'm only allowed 10 images per post.)

Duncan: "Have you ever told any of us where you live?"

Mina: "Nope."

Brother Charity spends his time in the Dagger ‘doodling around’ in his room, ordering room service; Tarragon gets drunk with Renah.

Ahleqs rides around the city on his mouse cart: “Simon, let us take the air.” He buys some potions. He also wants to inquire about having things enchanted. Tarragon goes with him to get him a discount on potions from the shop where she works; she is very drunk and warns him to set aside some of his money for the cleaning bill on the mouse cart.

Did he have a particular enchantment in mind? Yes, he wants a large travelling chest enchanted so it can walk along behind him. The DM will get back to him on that. (Somewhere, Rincewind is delighted.)

While we’re all milling around, Gideon returns looking pleased with himself. In the morning Tarragon is not hung over, but she deserves to be. Melaina is the first one up. She is having breakfast in the taproom when she is approached by a scruffy urchin. Is she a friend of Gunna? (We all gasp, OOC.)

"Uh… Yeah."

Surge sent the urchin to get us, we are to go to the Docks ward. Something about a court...? (I think, I may have misheard that.)

Jirr calls the kid to the bar and gives him some bread; Melaina tosses him a gold coin. He looks like all his Christmases have come at once.

We meet up with Kessler and head down to the docks. Surge greets us, and leads us away from the normal areas of the Docks Ward to the wharf. It starts to rain; by the time we arrive on the wharf it’s pouring. Surge says he has got us passage on a ship.

Ahleqs, with a wistful sigh: "Remember when we had a boat?"

Charity, rolling his eyes: "This again."

Ahleqs, to Charity: "Have you got a boat?"

BC: "My father had a fleet of them."

Melaina: "Have you ever been keelhauled?"

Surge introduces us to Captain Beckett. He shakes our hands. He hears we’re looking for passage on a ship?

Yes, we want to go to Candlekeep. We’re looking for a book to help Tarragon’s sister maybe, as well as looking for information on the shadow weave - we’re meeting Mr. Pickles there.

It’ll be eight days, and Beckett can get us most of the way there. He can get us passage on a skiff or rake to take us the rest of the way. (Someone’s been researching nautical terms.) The rest of the journey will take about a day and a half. He hears we all have skills that could help? He looks at Charity first. He's a healer? The quartermaster on Beckett’s ship is acting as a medic, and would be glad to get back to his own duties.

Charity: "I dabble."

Beckett hands Ahleqs a scroll with the layout of the ship on it. The surgeon’s quarters are in the lower gun deck.

What can Ahleqs do? He casts British Gas Thumb. Beckett will put him with Sparks, the ship’s mage, in the forecastle.

The rest of us are in cabins. Nice!

Melaina has good eyes, and is OK with heights. She will report to Aegea, his second in command. He will put Tarragon with the healer as well and also in the kitchen, as she can cook. Is Popcorn tame?

Tarragon, looking extremely uncertain: "… Yeeeeees…?"

What are Kessler’s skills? We could use her as a weight when fishing for sharks. She can also punch the shark. She ignores us and tells Beckett she can repair broken things, or modify equipment? Sounds good. Beckett looks to Gideon. You’re a dwarf, you have some skills with smithing, if we put you with the artificer -

All of us, immediately: "NO!"

Beckett leads us on to the ship, the Fallen Star. It’s enormous, and beautiful.

Tarragon waves goodbye to Surge.

Melaina is introduces to First Mate Aegea.

Gideon and Kessler are introduced to the Bosun, Girton.

Gideon says something to him in dwarfish, both look at Kessler and chuckle. Ahleqs is introduced to the ship’s mage, a young girl named Sparks.

Ahleqs: "That’s a good owl. I have got a mouse though, so… "

He resolves to keep Simon in his pocket.

The quartermaster-slash-part-time-healer, Buckla, is drunk and very jovial. He claps Charity on the back and welcomes him aboard.

Charity, disdainfully: "Have you disinfected the surgery?"

Buckla: "Yeah yeah, whatever. Come and have a drink!"

Tarragon is introduced to Lorifi, or Lolo, the ship’s cook, an older gnome woman.

Tarragon wants to know where she got her meat cleaver. "Hello dearie, welcome aboard." They immediately set about the cooking sherry.

We set sail!

At night the crew set up on the deck under the stars; the skies are clear out here and very beautiful.

The Quartermaster and Aegea used to be in a travelling circus (I think?) and they do some entertaining of an evening.

First morning at sea goes mostly without incident. It’s a beautiful clear day - until we hear a noise. All except Charity, who is on one of the lower decks in the surgery. We hear haunting singing. (Uh oh.)

Ahleqs is with Sparks, who has been directing wind into the sails. She looks concerned at the singing. Melaina makes a Perception check - a 16. (Ahleqs has been asking Sparks if she sometimes accidentally sets her friends on fire too and if so, how she goes about apologising.)

Melaina sees what Joe has labelled “Mermaid??” (That’s no mermaid.) There are two over on a sandbar.

Those on deck make Charisma saving throws. Us below deck can hear the singing, but don’t have to make saves yet. Ahleqs and Sparks both save. Sparks screams for us all to get below decks. Some of the sailors walk to the edge and drop over the side of the ship. Ahleqs starts to head below deck, until he remembers that this is probably the sort of situation he’s being employed here to handle.

Ahleqs asks Sparks if this happens a lot; she looks at him with terror in her eyes. He goes first in the order; he goes to the edge of the ship where the sailors stepped off, and looks out to see if he can see what drew them. He casts Open Character Sheet. He sees the ‘mermaids’ and the sailors, splashing about in the water and trying to swim towards the sandbar. He casts Eldritch Blast on the ‘mermaids’. (Thanks to his migraine he can now double the effectiveness of a spell which gives him 240 feet on EB.) He does 23 damage and shouts, “Let that be a lesson to you!”

From below the water, the ‘mermaids’ sprout wings and take to the sky. (Harpies? Sirens? Can sirens fly? Do harpies have fish tails?)

Out of the sea behind Melaina bursts another creature, which flies toward her. Does 18 hit her? Melaina is AFK so Matthew checks - it does. She takes 11 bludgeoning and is Grappled when the creature’s tail wraps around her and lifts her into the air and out over the water.

(Matthew informs Sophie, who is just returning, what has happened. M, OOC: “Did you ask ‘why’? I think the simple answer is ‘Joe’.”)

Melaina makes her CHA save on her turn; she can now make an attempt to free herself, but if she succeeds she will fall into the ocean. She tries anyway, choosing DEX over STR as she’s 'better at wriggling than wrestling'. (There's a dirty joke at this point which I miss, though I suspect I would omit it here anyway.) A 16 frees her; she drops into the water but takes no damage from the fall. (Sophie, unsure what to do: “Mialee would know how to solve this.”) Is there anything at sea level she can grab onto?

If she goes around the side of the ship there are ropes she can climb. Can she try to hide from the creature? Put a jellyfish on her head or something? Yes, she can make a stealth check at disadvantage, and rolls two 27s, which is, according to the DM, ‘just as well’.

Does Charity know what’s going on? He’s below deck and has been reading Carl stories with his feet up and drinking a cup of nice hot coffee. (We all hear the thundering of feet as the sailors retreat below deck, so those of us already there know something is happening.)

Charity rolls his eyes and puts down his book. He goes to the door and shouts “What’s going on?” (Matthew is briefly unsure where the door is, and finds himself shouting into a wall.) “Carl, with me.” He leaves the surgery and makes his way up.

Kessler makes her way on deck as well. What can she see from the poop deck? (Matthew OOC: "Poop deck, hee hee hee!") (Well, someone had to.) Kessler can't see the one harassing Melaina, but she can see the one still on the sandbank. What’s the range on her crossbow? 120 feet, but she’s at disadvantage beyond 80. She holds an action.

Sparks jumps over the railing (Just off the poop deck, not into the sea!) and runs toward the front of the ship. Joe shows Melaina and Ahleqs something - Melaina saw it earlier and Ahleqs sees it now. (Ahleqs casts Mage Armour.) It’s a shark! (I am the only one excited by this.)

The water turns red and there is flailing and screaming around one of the sailors. Ahleqs starts screaming too. With a good Nature check, he knows that these sharks shouldn’t be so close to shore; they are usually found in much deeper water. Sparks sees what happened and screams as one of her crew mates is ripped apart by the shark, calls it eight kinds of bastard, and shoots at it with her shortbow.

Popcorn rushes up on deck and all he can see is the tail of the shark; assuming that it must be the main threat, he stands on his back legs and beats his chest with his paws, and tries to intimidate the shark into attacking him, completely unaware that this cannot possibly work. It’s the cutest thing anyone on the deck has ever seen.

Gideon tries to persuade the bosun to go on deck and help; it fails so he goes by himself. (But, not to be outdone by a fellow dwarf, Girton reluctantly follows anyway.) Gideon sees one of the flying creatures; “What is this vile harridan??” He has a good look at what’s going on, and casts Aganazzar’s Scorcher. One of the flying harridans makes a DEX save, and passes with ease. It takes half damage, which is 8, fire. It doesn’t seem to do as much as he had hoped. Shit! He’d been hoping it would poach it.

Another creature springs out of the water and flies at Kessler. She shoots at it with her held action, but misses thanks to its seashell bikini. It swoops toward her and does a multiattack - it misses with its claws and its tail.

Tarragon joins Popcorn on deck; if she can see what he's looking at, would the DM say that she has now seen a shark? Yes, but what's the max challenge rating beast I can become? (I look it up and will let him know.) (I can only be a beast of CR1 or below and this shark is CR2 so she can’t be one yet, but she has now seen one.)

Does 17 hit Gideon? It does, and the siren grapples and kisses him with its Draining Kiss attack. He rolls a nat 20 for his save, but his HP max is reduced by 5. Ahleqs can see him; he’s looking a bit green around the gills.

Another siren bursts out of the sea (Duncan OOC: "That’s too many! This is beyond a joke now!") and looks at Kessler and does a Charm attack on her. She fails and is smitten with the thing, believing it to be her one true love. (There’s a lot of that going around.) It beckons to her. Her armour is not is swimming mode, so she could be in trouble here. Is there a big button that controls the spring under her seat?

Brother Carl looks at Aardvack, waiting for instructions. He goes up the stairs; can he see anything? He has a cursory glance around. He can see one of the sirens if he looks under the sail. He holds an action, as he has no ranged weapons.

One of the sirens dashes and says to Aardvack telepathically, “You’re going to drown.”

Ahleqs spins around to find himself face to face with two sirens, one of which is dangling Gideon from its tail. He really, really wants to cast Mage Armour, but instead he bravely cowers and casts Shatter. It fails its save and takes 21 points of Thunder damage, to which it is not resistant. He uses his movement to get out of range of being immediately grabbed.

Another siren flies over Melaina’s head, but she is hidden. Another goes to Brother Charity and does its Charm attack; he makes an WIS save. “Come and swim with me.”

Melaina uses Cunning Action to Dash and get back on board; is there anything she can hide behind to shoot these bitches? She can duck into the shadow of the mast, but she’s used her bonus action to dash. She takes a shot at one of them anyway.

(Joe tells us that rogues can use their bonus action to give themselves advantage without hiding. Duncan, OOC: "Oh so rogues can do that, but can Ahleqs steer a spell around his friends? NooooOOOooooo…")

Melaina gets a natty 20. A hit? (DM: “I’d say.”) Pierced ear: Max damage, and roll the damage die again. There is some complicated maths and some squabbling, and it’s decided that she does 43 damage. The siren shimmers, and its form changes. Woah!

Charity is up. He feels like it would be a lovely thing to pop up over the side and go and have a swim with his one true love, but he holds up a finger: “Darling, one moment.” He turns to the one who told him he was going to drown and says “I’m not going to drown, do you have any idea who I am you hideous fishwife?” and Hexes her, then Eldritch Blasts the bitch with a dirty 20 and a nat 1. 15 damage though, not bad. The one he hits also shimmers and transforms. He makes his way to the highest point on the deck and prepares to jump into the sea. Does he have enough movement to get over the rail?

He bounds over, and makes a Concentration check for his Hex as he hits the water, which he passes. (He doesn’t know about the shark. Yet.)

Kessler makes an attack on one of them as she makes her way toward the railing as well. 21 hits and she does 11 piercing and pumps Fury of the Small into it as well for another 7 points. She takes another shot - a 15 hits, for 10 more damage. It shimmers and transforms. She hits the water and sinks like a stone.

Sparks saw her go overboard - she runs to the edge and casts Water Walk on her. She is willing, as not-sinking will allow her to see her one true love, still floating in the sky above. She bobs to the surface like a cork, and can now walk on the surface of the ocean. Sparks can get a few more people with her spell as well, so she does.

The shark attacks another sailor (who was on top of the water after Sparks’ spell) and munches him in half. The water goes red around it.

Aegea shoots something with her bow.

A siren swoops at Ahleqs and hits with a 22, grappling and dealing 15 bludgeoning damage. He makes a CON save when it does Draining Kiss on him - and fails. He uses Bend Luck, but a d4 isn’t going to help a 9. He takes it back, and loses 10 from his HP max.

Popcorn Dashes to go up to the main deck but can’t reach anything; he sees the siren Kissing Ahleqs, holds up two claws and points at his eyes, then at the siren, then back at his eyes. Next turn, bitch.

Girton throws two hand axes at one of the sirens - both hit. Gideon is up - he can make an attempt to break free if he wants. Instead, he casts Gideon’s Fucking Awesome Shocking Grasp. DM rules that he will hit no matter what he rolls, as missing would be impossible. He does 13 lightning damage, but it doesn’t seem to shock her as much as it should. It laughs.

A siren does a Tail Constrict attack against Sparks - it flies over the edge and drops her. She has Water Walk though, so she floats.

Tarragon can get herself, Brother Charity, Melaina and Carl with her Water Breathing spell, so she does, and then Healing Word for Melaina. (In the heat of the moment she forgets that Carl is dead and doesn’t breathe anything, so he won’t need it.)

Gideon resists the siren’s Draining Kiss, and makes a save against it, saying “I’m old enough to be your great great grandfather!” He takes 10 damage, and his max HP is reduced by 10. The siren drops him, but looks pissed off when he doesn’t sink - he has Water Walk cast on him.

Kessler’s one true love is pissed that she’s not drowning, and rakes at her face - if she takes the damage, she can make another save versus the charm. She debates using reaction-Shield - and decides to do it. The second attack is a nat 20 against her, grappling her.

Carl can’t jump 15 feet in the air, so he can’t reach the nearest siren. Could he run to the edge of the boat and leap at the one harassing Charity? He can make a DEX check, DC12, to try. He rolls a 2 (minus 1 mod) and falls in the water. The creature he was trying to hit flies down to the water, sniffs him and discovers it has no interest in him - so it attacks Charity instead. 16 hits him, for 9 slashing damage. It goes for a grapple, but he wriggles out.

Ahleqs is the least strong of anyone, so he could DEX out or he could Misty Step if he has it? He casts Shatter again; “That’s just how I do.” He wriggles around to face the siren. “Oooh, you look awful and I don’t like it!” Oh wait - this one’s still pretty, so he doesn’t mind as much. He casts it at 3rd level. It makes a DC14 CON save and fails - taking 27 Thunder damage. The beautiful face turns ‘all fishy and angry and gross’. Ahleqs scream goes up by two steps.

This thing Melaina shot on her last turn looks ropey as hell - it dives back below the waves. Charity’s one true love tries to canoodle with Tarragon and misses so claws at her face instead and hits for 9 damage.

Melaina can now shoot at it with advantage, as it’s within melee with Tarragon. 10 misses, however. “Bollocks.” She bonus-action-hides, but rolls a nat 1. For the first time ever she is not hidden - her arms and legs are hanging out the sides.

Charity chastises Carl for jumping in the water; “You can’t even swim properly!” He shouldn’t be in salt water for too long or he’ll desiccate. (“He was pretty desiccated when I found him.")

Charity Dimension Doors himself and Charity back on the deck of the ship. (That’s definitely not a Divine spell.) He is very cross to see his one true love canoodling with his previous one true love, we’re probably swapping stories, and he’s beginning to regret coming up from below deck.

Kessler can make an attempt to free herself if she wants…? She supposes she should. She makes a DEX check and succeeds. There is a large, hungry shark in her vicinity, but she’s on top of the water. That didn’t help that other sailor, though. She has her bonus action and her movement and has obeyed the siren’s orders by going over to it, so she can move freely until it gives another instruction or the Charm ends. She climbs back onto the boat.

Tarragon hears the door slam open and hears a familiar voice. "What the devil is going on here??" Lolo appears and takes a swipe with her soup ladle at one of the creatures; she misses, but it’s still badass.

The shark does Blood Frenzy, which doesn’t sound nice at all. Does 18 hit the Grease Wizard?

Duncan OOC: “He’s wearing a dress, of course it hits him.”

Gideon, indignant: “It’s an acolyte’s robe!”

The shark bites onto him and the water around him starts to turn red. He’s not in a good way.

Aegea shoots the shark again, and hits for 21 damage including 15 sneak attack. (Ooh, a rogue!) Gideon is now out of the shark’s mouth.

The siren grappling Ahleqs is very hurt; it drops him and plops back into the water. Ahleqs pukes as a free action.

Popcorn rushes forward and slashes with his claws at a siren - it hits, and he’s very pleased even though it doesn’t do as much damage as it should.

Girton hurls an axe at the shark and hits twice for 11 damage. The axes, having done their damage, disappear. Gideon watches this happen and makes a Perception check to see which of the remaining sirens is more injured. He’s found himself in a bit of a pickle. Is the shark technically a Large creature? Not Huge? Well, that clinches it. This might not work, but can the shark make a DEX save please, as Gideon casts Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere on it. It got a 20. “Son of a bitch.”

Matthew, OOC: “I can’t let Gideon die on my watch, take Charity instead!” Gideon climbs out of the water - DM rules that the shark doesn’t get an attack of opportunity, as it’s below the water and Gideon is above it.

The siren that Popcorn attacked decides to flee, letting out a shriek to the other creatures. Popcorn makes an attack of opportunity, but misses. (Me: “Aw, balls.”) The siren grapples him, doing 14 damage, and drops him in the sea with the shark. Everyone is rightly horrified. How dare!

(I guess we’re going to find out which would win in a fight between a shark and an owlbear. My money is on the shark.)

Carl wants to hit a siren. So he does, with a dirty 20. He does 9 damage, but it gets advantage on him on its next turn. The thing tries to grab Charity but misses, so it claws him and a 15 hits. He takes 10 slashing damage. (He maintains concentration on his Hex.)

Ahleqs’ stomach is empty, but there are still loads of the sirens about. The ones around him are still beautiful; he saw one of them drop Popcorn in the water. He casts Eldritch Blast on the one nearest Aegea using Tides of Chaos. 16 hits for 3 Force damage, 20 hits for another 3. He rolls on the Table of Joy to see what colour-slash-age he turns - he becomes Invisible for a minute unless he attacks or casts a spell. He also casts Fly on a random creature within 60 feet of himself which is basically everyone at the stern of the boat. (We all want it to be the shark.) Kessler can fly now. She’s actual Iron Man!

Tarragon sees Popcorn in the water and screeches, and casts Moonbeam on the shark. It makes the save but takes half damage - it’s looking ropey.

The siren near Tarragon tries to move and gets 3 attacks of opportunity from Tarragon, Lolo and Carl - only Carl misses. The siren flies up and repeats her song. Tarragon rolls a nat20 versus the Charm - with advantage, as she’s a gnome. Charity is Charmed, and Kessler makes her save so good it breaks her previous Charm effect. Gideon is having the worst ever day, and is Charmed. He must move toward the siren on his turn. He can walk on water, so he can beeline it. Yay!

Melaina shoots at the one clawing Charity with Sharpshooter but misses. Melaina, not sounding in the least bit sorry: “Sorry Charity, I must not have been paying attention.” She protects herself by hiding, nothing if not true to herself.

Charity must move toward the siren that Charmed him - he can bash the one near him as it’s in his way. He casts Shillblblglslgsglhjjljlhhh and deals a smorgasbord of damage. 8 fire/necrotic, and 12 bludgeoning. He pushes past it. “Do you not know who I am?” He leaps off the side of the ship to get to his third one true love. The one he attacked gets an attack of opportunity, doing 11 slashing damage to him as he goes by.

Kessler has two shots and unloads one into the siren that dropped Popcorn. 10 misses. She aims at the shark - 21 hits. Yay! 5 piercing. How de do dis, Yay!! As it rears up to bite Popcorn she shoots a bolt through its face.

(Charity is singing Under the Sea while all this is happening. “There’ll be no accusations, only crustaceans, under the seaaaaaa!”)

Lolo wallops another siren with her ladle - well she tries, but misses and is furious. “Filthy, disgusting - ”

Sparks flips frantically through her spells; they’re all for ship-sailing, really. She blows the siren that dropped Popcorn away from him and out to sea a little way.

Popcorn scrabbles out of the water. He’s wet and cross and doesn’t like anything today and someone took away the shark he was about to eat, so he bites the siren attacking Aegea for 5 damage halved. He’s somewhat mollified by this.

Girton throws his hand axes again, and another siren goes hag. Gideon’s name is called; silence, until Matthew remembers he’s running the Grease Wizard today. He climbs back on board the ship. Oh - wait, no, he’s still Charmed. He plops down onto the water and moves toward his beloved.

Tarragon runs up to flank the siren in melee with Lolo and wallops it at advantage for 3 whole damage, ooooooooo.

A siren flies up and attacks Sparks - but she’s still up, it’s okay, we are reassured. Then it makes a Tail Constrict attack and Sparks goes down. The siren drops her, and she crumples to the deck.

(Is Water Walking a concentration spell? No, it just lasts for an hour. Phew!)

It attempts to flee - Aegea and Popcorn get attacks of opportunity, Popcorn misses but Aegea gets a natty 20 and rolls max sneak damage as well. It’s dead-dead-dead! Carl is up!

Carl’s going to get in trouble for this. As he was scolded for jumping in the water, he throws the only thing available to him - his mace - at the siren in the water with Charity. Whether it hits or not, he won’t have a mace any more. Plus it’ll only do a D4 plus his STR if it does hit. Twelvesies? DM lets him make a standard attack. Fifteensies? That hits, so 1D4+2. Is his mace magic? “Not in the slightest.” He does roll max damage, but it gets halved. But! That’s enough to make it shimmer and transform into its ugly form. Carl flexes. DM says anyone Charmed by its beautiful form is no longer so.

Tarragon and Lolo get attacks of opportunity as the siren between them makes a break for it - Tarragon hits with a 17 for 9 damage but Lolo misses. The siren plunges back into the ocean and is gone.

Ahleqs is a bit cross. (as Kessler zooms through the air we hear AC/DC blasting from her armour.) He casts Shatter once again, at level 4 this time. He becomes visible again as he casts. The siren rolls a 2 for its CON save and takes 30something - how-de-do-dis!

Through his tears and snot he screams "GET AWAY FROM ME BITCH!"

She bursts with a sort of flat wet sound and showers everyone with viscera 'in the usual style'. One creature left. Ahleqs takes a potion as a bonus action. The last remaining siren is the one who squeezed the life out of Sparks.

How far can Melaina shoot with her longbow? Sophie is delighted to find out that not only does her longbow have a phenomenal range, but she is also elevated and has advantage. She makes an attack with Sharpshooter and hits with a 17 for 26 sneak and 12 piercing. How de do dis! It sort of slithers back into the sea, face planting the side of the boat on the way down.

Tarragon looks over the side and sees a load of reef sharks gathering around the dead shark’s body, so she can add 'reef shark' as well as 'hunter shark' to her beast shapes. She runs forward, ignoring Charity floundering in the water (he has Water Breathing so he won’t drown) and casts Cure Wounds on Sparks. Gideon climbs back onto the ship.

The dead sirens are oozing green blood; Kessler pushes them overboard.

Well done everybody, we killed all Joe’s sirens! Those who suffered the Draining Kiss attack will remain at lowered max HP until they take a long rest or someone casts Lesser Restoration on them. We didn’t kill Gideon either, success all around.

[rpchive]

Eighty Fourth Encounter-- To Be In Your Favor

it’s gay all the way my guy

Collin, Fawkes, and Tellus are standing in the console room, waiting for the others to arrive. Tellus is waiting by the door, fidgeting with her hair uncomfortably. Tori arrives with a reluctant Demo and Silky, who is ready as usual. Collin: There you guys are. Ready to wrap up this scavenger hunt? Demo: Oh, just us? ...Well, I guess we've all been ready since day one, honestly. Let's get this over with. Daedalus' voice echos out from the hallway. "Hey, hold on a damn second!"

He quickly strides out into the console room after the others. It seems that during his downtime he figured out how to use the closet in the IT, as he's ditched the jumpsuit that he "formed" with in favor of some actual clothes. He now has a plain t-shirt underneath a leather jacket, a pair of jeans, running shoes, and a pair of sunglasses that he's actively wearing despite being inside. "What, you thought you were ditching me here?" Silky tries not to laugh while Demo grins broadly.

Demo: Oh no, I knew you wouldn't miss this for anything. Daedalus: ... What're you giving me that look for? Silky: Human fashion is just...so...

Silky cannot contain her giggles. "...Why am I laughing; XL's family is even worse...!" Daedalus: I mean, I could've kept the jumpsuit if you'd rather I keep looking like one of GLaDOS' toys, but I figured I'd actually live a little.

Collin inhales sharply for a second before speaking. "Right, well, can we leave now?"

Daedalus: Not so fast. Gimme that gauntlet of yours.

Collin: What? Why?

Daedalus: You kidding? I'm not going out without something to protect myself with. Why do you need that stupid thing when you have magic superpowers? Give it. It's not like it won't fit or anything.

I want him to have some sort of abilities soooo badly; but Dee still doesn’t remember what he used to be capable of when he was alive :(

Collin rolls his eyes before unstrapping the gauntlet from his hand and tossing it over to Daedalus, who just as easily hooks it onto himself. He flexes the fingers a few times before making a fist.

Daedalus: Alright, much better.

Tellus: There's... one last thing I should tell you all before we go outside. Demo: Yeah? Tellus: We can feel the presence of the last two shards outside, but something is... wrong. alienrabitt: Wrong with the shards, or...? Tellus: We're... not entirely sure. We haven't felt something like this since the days of Israphel. N-Not that we think he's back or anything! Just that something about this place is... unnatural. Demo: Yeah, well, I'd like to see somebody actually manage to push through us for once. No offense; I'm sure it's really dangerous or whatever, but please; we can handle it. Tellus: Alright. Just... be prepared for anything.

On that note, she pulls open the door of the IT and leads the others outside. As they step out under a dreary gray sky, they find themselves standing on the withered lawn of a grand mansion-turned-workshop. The structure has clearly seen better days as the windows are broken, the paint has faded, and as a whole seems a husk of its former self. Strange additions to the building that were clearly made to support additional features or rooms inside jut out of the walls and ceiling at random, and a network of rusted brass pipes crisscrosses over the mansion.

All over the yard and especially on the building, the same purple ooze of flux that the group has seen before has been scattered everywhere. In front of the steps to the main building, a silver crystal is imbedded in the ground in the center of the flux. However, the flux seems to have retreated from the crystal rather than spread over it, forming a perfect circle around the shard. Demo: Don't go arcane sponging this crap up again; if you get stuck as something weird I'm gonna leave you like that this time.

alienrabitt: Ugh; I didn't do it on purpose...but I won't. I really have gotten better...

Demo: Riiiight, and this place is full of butterflies and rainbows. Daedalus: The hell is this wreck anyways?

Tellus: This is... Precantaro's workshop.

Daedalus: Well, I think he lost the deposit on the place.

Tellus glares daggers at him, and he returns with a faint shrug. "Sorry, just saying..."

Collin: Anyway, it looks like one of the crystals landed right outside for some reason. Let me just clean up this flux and we can scratch one off our list already.

He steps over to the puddle around the crystal and holds his hand out to it. The flux flows upward to meet his hand, but as soon as it makes contact Collin cries out in pain and snaps his hand away as he stumbles backward. The flux drops back down to the ground with a wet slapping noise and grows still. alienrabitt: Wh-what happened?! Are you okay?! Collin: Y-Yeah, I'm fine. Something is wrong with this flux. Well, more wrong than usual. Usually I can just filter out the entropy and break this stuff back down into magic, but there's something else mixed in with it that burns like hell if I touch it. Demo: Ah yes, acid reflux.

put me back in the basement

Collin: No, seriously, it- ugh, nevermind. I can still move this stuff at least, so...

He moves his hands to either side and the flux parts away from the crystal in conjunction. He grasps the crystal firmly and heaves it out of the dirt. There is a momentary flash of light, but rather than entering the foggy void, the light simply vanishes and the crystal hurtles into Tellus and phases through her body, immediately merging with the others. Demo: Did that seriously work? Why'd he decide to clam up like that? Tellus: I think he- ow!

She puts one hand to her forehead and winces. "E-Easy! Alright alright, here, just go already!" 

She vanishes in a flash and is replaced by a man in a long black cloak. His skin is the color of smoke, and even seems to swirl like it occasionally. A heavily worn witch hat of a matching color sits on his head, and a pair of dress shoes tap impatiently on the ground. He glances over at the others with a pair of bright yellow eyes with cat-like pupils before speaking in a commanding tone with a slight hint of urgency underneath it.

?: Good, you've finally arrived. It took you long enough to make your way out here. Demo: ...Uhh...you look new. ?: ... Right, I suppose I haven't spoken with the rest of you before. I am Fereldir, god of Witchery. Forgive me if I seem... impatient. I'm simply concerned with what might be happening inside that workshop. Silky: Oh, I understand; this whole thing just screams 'bad.' We should probably get moving. Fereldir: I agree. Follow me, please.

He leads the others to the front door of the workshop. The flux parts away from his path in a similar way to Collin's trick, although he doesn't seem to need gestures to mimic the effect. They step inside what was once probably a pleasant foyer area, but is now a collection of rotted furniture, faded paintings, and a healthy layer of dust and flux.

Daedalus: Wow, this place really went to hell, huh?

Fereldir: A strong understatement. Collin, now that I'm back with the pantheon, you should be able to use my powers again. I need you to close your eyes and focus on what this place was like in the past. Imagine the lives of those who were here before all this.

Collin: Uh, alright?

He closes his eyes as instructed and takes a few slow breaths. After a few seconds he opens his eyes again, although they now appear to be glowing faintly. In the foyer, a ghostly image of Precantaro with both eyes still present shimmers into existence. He seems to be giving a tour to some unseen guests and laughs at an unheard joke before fading away.

Demo: Oh boy, I always wanted to visit The Haunted Mansion in person.

Collin: What was that, exactly?

Fereldir: A memory, of sorts. You can dredge up the memories of the workshop itself to see what came before you. Unfortunately it seems like this room was too broadly used, so it would be difficult to capture a useful memory here. I think we need to go deeper inside and find something like his bedroom or library, for instance. Demo: So...you're using this to figure out who or what fluxed this up, right? Fereldir: That, and to figure out where Precantaro's crystal might have wound up. It will most likely be somewhere where something significant happened to him. I still remember the layout of this place. Follow me, we'll try his bedroom first.

He leads the group up a flight of stairs, carving a path through the stray flux around them. Demo shoots Tori a curious look before shrugging and following after the god, Tori and Silky following after that. Within a few minutes, they arrive in the remains of a room that was one part bedroom, two parts study and drafting area. Tattered blueprints and notes are scattered over desks and tables all around the room, while unfinished prototypes of various machines and gadgets serve uniformly as dust collectors.

Demo: Dude ate, slept, and breathed his own work, huh? Fereldir: Precantaro was always... dedicated, I suppose would be the word for it. His passion for his craft is both his best quality and his worst. When he gets fixated on a particular project, it's tricky to pry him away for anything else.

Silky: Oh yeah, XL's the same way. One time, she tried to do a week-long campaign with a handful of severed glitches because they didn't need to sleep, but she only got about three or four days in before she found out pretty quickly that she still needed to eat. Needless to say, Almiet was...well, amused, but annoyed. Fereldir: Ah, then you know my struggles with his passion, to some extent at least. Collin, can you try again? This time try focusing on around the time of our war with Israphel as well.

Collin nods and closes his eyes again. After a few moments he opens them again, and a specter of Precantaro bursts through the door and begins frantically pacing around a table in circles.

Precantaro: Stars above curse that wretch! Nothing I do seems to phase him now! Wand foci, reinforced golems, weaponized artifices, nothing! How are we supposed to compete with an entity that's suddenly so alien, otherworldly even?!

He slams his hands down on the table and practically burns a hole in the table with his stare before a surprised look suddenly takes over. "Wait..."

He rushes over to a bookcase and snaps his fingers, causing it to slide to the side. Behind the case is a small compartment which he then opens before extracting a single black leatherbound book. He flips it open as he returns to the table. "Yes, of course... If Israphel found some unnatural source of power, then it only makes sense that something else from outside our reality could affect it." He snaps the book shut with a gleeful smile and almost skips out of the room.

Fereldir: Oh no... Precantaro what did you do? Demo: ...I'm guessing whatever he found here never showed up at your party? Fereldir: It did not, and since I don't know about this in any form, that means he kept it a secret. Demo: What, were you two close or somethin'? Fereldir: You could say that, yes. Let's try his workshop next. Hopefully we'll get a better idea of what he was up to there.

they’re gay, Demo. all the gods are gay

The god leads the others back out into the hall and further into the workshop. As they reach an intersection, they come across several destroyed golems of various material. One of the golems is actually embedded inside the wall, and there are dents and scratches all over the walls. Silky: ...This looks really bad...

Demo: How bad could it actually be? We haven't seen anything actually dangerous in this entire disaster besides this really angry flubber everywhere.

Fereldir looks over the scene for a few moments before wordlessly leading the others down the left path. As they make their way down the hall, they find more and more golems in various states of destruction as the signs of conflict stretch on to the far end.

Collin: I have a really bad feeling about this.

Demo: Last chance to run out with your tails between your legs...

Fereldir: I won't stop anyone, but I'm not turning back. Silky: Well, we're at the end of this all, right? So it'd be pretty ridiculous to just turn around and leave here. I mean, I was willing to go hypothetical guns blazing towards a meteor the size of a planet with a giant...something inside; you think I'm gonna back down for some crushed up 'robots'? In your dreams, kid.

Fereldir arches an eyebrow as he gives a side glance at Silky. "Kid?"

Demo: How old even are you?

Silky: Old enough to be older than you, but young enough to not look old. What, do you ask every retired celebrity if they're a mummy? Humans are so rude... Fereldir smirks slightly. "Ah, the tenacity of mortals. How I've missed their company..."

Collin: Uh, not to rush, but can we get to the workshop? Being out in this hallway is starting to creep me the hell out.

Fereldir: You're right, we shouldn't delay.

The group continues on a little ways further down the hall until Fereldir stops them at a set of double doors. He pushes against them and struggles for a moment before they finally budge and creak open. The workshop is a massive room with a vaulted ceiling where different elaborate contraptions hang from above. Tool racks and material stations are scattered all around the walls and floor. An array of work tables stretches from the middle of the room to the far end, upon which even more finished or partially constructed devices sit untouched. A few more broken golems are scattered about, but not nearly as many as there were out in the hall.

At the other side of the room there is a path in the wall that leads downward, and spread in front of the path is the remains of a bookcase that was probably meant to conceal the way. Silky: ...Looks like this place was...raided, I guess? Looted or raided...real sloppy work... Fawkes: I'm not so sure about that. alienrabitt: What do you mean? Fawkes: If someone wanted to break through into that passage, they would have had to swing at the bookcase from our side, and the debris would go inward. All of the wreckage is in /front/ of the path, though. Demo: So something broke out? Fawkes: Perhaps, but the question is, "What broke out?" Fereldir: Only one way to find out.

Without hesitation, he begins descending down the stairs. Demo: Well, hope it's been fun having a boyfriend; uhh...we should go home now! Yeah. Just uhh...pack it the fuck up...and we can just...not go into the murder basement.

alienrabitt: Demo, I'm going to follow them. If you don't want to do this-

Demo: No, no, no; not me; you. I don't want you to do this. Go back. We'll handle this.

alienrabitt: Wh--! I am not!! Leaving! Him! What is your damage?!

Demo: Look, you and I both know that you probably can't actually handle any more magical messes; and the last thing any of us need is both of you getting seriously messed up at the same time again. Just...

Tori shoves past Demo and goes down the stairs after Fereldir, Silky quickly following after him. Growling in frustration, Demo stays where she is, visibly debating bothering to follow or not. Daedalus: Hey, beats sticking around up here alone, right? It's probably more dangerous out here than the place whatever was down there came from. I mean, why would it go back, right? Demo: I...know; I just...ugh. He is really making this whole 'don't be bad to people' thing hard for me. Daedalus: I hear that. C'mon, let's not get left behind. The last thing I need is to get blindsided by some murdersaurus the day after I come back to life. Reluctantly, Demo descends the stairs as well. The group arrives at the bottom of the staircase and discover a room almost completely covered floor to ceiling in flux. At the opposite end of the room is a massive bulkhead door constructed of thaumium and some other unidentifiable metals. The door appears to have been torn in two by some incredible force from the inside, although it doesn't appear that there is anything on the other side of the bulkhead anymore. Demo: Oh this is bad... Collin closes his eyes, and in a moment Precantaro's ghostly image appears in the center of the room. He is on his hands and knees, although one hand is clasped over his left eye. His breathing is ragged, but after a moment he forces himself to stand back up. He looks over at the door in silence for several seconds before he speaks.

Precantaro: G-Good... the door held. It better have, with all the... enchantments and resources I crammed into it. This...  This was a mistake, wasn't it? I thought I could control it, but... Hells below, what will the others think of me now?

He sounds on the verge of tears, but he takes a deep breath and pulls himself together somewhat.

Precantaro: I... I'll have to finish this later. That door should be able to hold for at least a century. There must be a better way to stop Israphel. Maybe... Maybe I've gone at this from the wrong angle- Stars, but first, I have to deal with my eye. This is going to be... a very tricky fix with no depth perception...

He turns to go up the stairs and dissipates. Demo: Oh, good; it's not a person, it's just some otherworldly, eldritch horror! Wonderful! This is going to go so well!

the monsters in your basement will always find you eventually...

Fereldir: I... I can't believe this. All this time, he's been... Silky: ...W...well? Fereldir: He told us that he lost his eye in a fight with Israphel. He's been covering this up because-

There is a sound like a whisper over the cracking of glass shards from the top of the staircase, and Fereldir goes silent. Demo: I don't think I want to know what you're implying... Fereldir: No, he was hiding this from us because he wanted to-

Several tentacles suddenly lash down the staircase and slam into the floor around them before rearing back up for another attack.

Silky draws her weapons, producing her dual energy axes. "Guess the time for talk is over!" One tentacle lashes out for Silky as soon as she speaks. Another reaches for several of the others but Fawkes slams his foot down on top of it. The last lunges for Daedalus, who blasts it away with a burst from the gauntlet. "See? I told you I'd need this thing!" As Demo summons her Candy Cane, she glances back at Tori. "Stay out of the way! You're gonna lose a lot more than an arm if you try messing with this thing!"

alienrabitt: Hey, I didn't lose the arm to a monster. Or, well, maybe I did...

Demo: Argue later! Live now! Fawkes: We can't afford to get trapped down here by whatever this is! I'm going to charge up the stairs and try to force it back! The rest of you need to make a break for it while I keep it distracted! Having merged her axes into a naginata again, Silky maneuvers herself out of the way of the tentacle lashing out for her. "...Suit yourself! Just don't get caught!" Fawkes: I don't intend to.

Fawkes deploys his jetback and sprints for the staircase, then hurtles upward back toward the entrance. There's the sound of a loud impact and a screech before the tentacles suddenly start receding back up the stairs. Grabbing Tori by his good arm, Demo charges off down the cleared path, mumbling something Tori barely manages to register in the commotion. The expression he makes is entirely unreadable as he reddens slightly and gives an answer that he cannot look at Demo to say. Collin and the others chase after them. Back in the workshop, they can see that Fawkes has managed to break away from the thing that he charged at, while the figure rises up out of the wreckage of one of the worktables. It appears to be a hovering humanoid completely concealed in a black cloak. A dark fog leaks out of the hood and the bottom of the cloak, which is also where the tentacles are reaching out from. More significantly, they can see that a large purple crystal has been wedged directly into the chest of the figure like a spear. It looks at the others and lets out another horrific screech as several more tentacles spawn from under the cloak. Demo: Yeah, of course that's where it is! Okay, now what?! Do we just keep hitting it like a piñata?! Collin: I've just gotta get close enough to grab the crystal. Once I activate it, it should pop right out of the thing and that'll hopefully cause it some serious problems. We just have to make some kind of opening for me to get close. Demo: So we need a distraction? Collin: I mean, yeah? Demo: Then I guess you came to the right mess.

The black sands of Xentrilis' Anubis blow in, forming a multitude of the bird-like dragons. Most of them get between the humanoid and Demo, though a few fall back to bodyguard Tori despite his embarrassed protests. The creature reacts immediately by lashing out with its tentacles at the dragons. Collin starts moving out to the side of the room and towards the figure, but suddenly arcane circles start to appear on the floor around it. He jumps out of the way just in time to avoid a blast of dark energy and skids off to the side.

Collin: Crap, it's got more than one trick! Silky: Yeah? So do we.

She unlinks her weapons once more, creating her dual axes as she charges in with Demo's dragons. The creature continues its assault against them as Collin gradually starts closing in on it. Once he gets close enough, he uses the air shard in his leg to kick up into the air and lunges at the figure from the side. Its arm suddenly turns into a massive claw and snatches him out of the air, holding him up as he starts to cry out in pain.

Creating the T-shape from the tournament, Silky looses the massive energy drill once again. "LET HIM GO!!" A bubble of purple energy forms around the figure just before the drill reaches it. It howls wildly as the bubble cracks under the strength of the drill and eventually shatters through. It severs the arm entirely which causes it to dissolve almost instantly. Collin, now free, creates another blast of air and latches onto the crystal. The monster shrieks in agony and forms a wicked looking dagger in its remaining hand, only to have it knocked away by a concussive blast from Daedalus' gauntlet.

Collin plants his feet against the creature's chest and rips the crystal out from its body. He goes tumbling to the floor as the crystal slides away from his grip. Unholy sounds erupt from the figure as it floats several feet away from everyone, its attacks ceasing immediately. Breathing heavily, Silky skids to a stop as Demo's dragons dispel around her. Laughing a little bit, she seems to be capable of speaking this time: "...Well...! That was easier than I thought...! ...You okay?" Collin groans slightly before he pushes himself up off the floor. "Y-Yeah, it just burned a bit, I'm alright." Demo: Well that's just great; anyway! How about you suck that thing up and we can Blue Skiddoo literally anywhere else? Collin: Alright, give me just a seco-

The creature screams again and the noise reverberates off the walls. Its shape seems to bulge and shrink randomly for several seconds before it suddenly erupts into a black and purple orb of sludge. It drops down to the floor with a sickening splat and begins expanding at an alarming pace. As it grows, inhuman eyes and mouths begin forming all over its surface, and it absorbs everything it touches. Within seconds, the mass has already taken up most of the other half of the room and blocked off the doorway out. Getting out the Candy Cane, Demo bolts for Tori. "GATE!!" Collin scrambles and snatches the crystal and sprints for the others, but the mass rapidly closes in on him. A loud "bwip" noise is heard right before it makes contact, and an enormous force field blocks the creature from expanding into the rest of the room. Just beside Collin now stands the Wandering Law, who has his hands held up to maintain the barrier. He sounds out of breath as he yells out to the others. "J-Just... in time! You can't... leave yet!"

congratulations! this is the first actually productive thing you’ve done since you got introduced!

even if you’re also the one responsible for putting everyone in danger, it was for “productive” reasons, right?

go die

alienrabitt: Seriously?! Now?! Law: This wasn't... part of the plan! I didn't know! This has to be... contained or else... it'll absorb the entire planet! Demo: Oh, again with the whole 'saving an entire thing' thing?!  Are you guys trying to play Twister with lost limbs?! Law: I won't... let that happen! Just... Collin, absorb the crystal! Unlock your power and... help me seal this thing!

Collin looks at the crystal and then back to the mass barely being held back by the barrier. A flash of light causes several things to happen at once. The crystal flies back to merge with Fereldir just like his own did, the tattooed band on Collin's arm seems to break away like a physical object, and a rush of power causes the runic markings to spread completely over his body once again. However, rather than being purple, the markings rapidly phase through the color spectrum in a wave that runs up and down his body.

Without hesitation, Collin joins Law in sustaining the forcefield, causing it to shift in color just like his markings. Gradually, the pair starts to shrink the horrific blob back down more and more, although Collin's markings rapidly begin to recede again. It screeches from every mouth in protest as it is forced back, but eventually the pair manage to shrink it down to the size of a marble. Law makes a twisting motion with his hands, and the barrier seems to lock and vanish from sight, transforming it into what appears to be an ordinary black and purple marble.

he’s RGB now

RGB stands for...Really Gay Boyfriend

Demo: ...Oh, well. Probably for the best...I'm pretty sure Tori doesn't have the magic to make a gate right now anyway... Both Law and Collin seem equally too exhausted to respond at first, although Law carefully reaches down and picks the marble up off the floor before casually stowing it away in his jacket.

Law: Alright... Are you kids okay? Silky: Somehow, I think so...! Law: Good... Good... I'm sorry, I had no idea one of these gods was stowing an... extradimensional monstrosity in their basement. That's a little outside of the scope of what I had in mind for you. Demo: Riiight...well, I'm sure you have some sort of...soliloquy or something about this mess? Law: Well I did, but... I used up all my energy containing a world consuming entity. I gotta get back and put this thing somewhere safe. The fact that Collin's colors changed is already a good sign, so... I think you're in better shape now. I'm sure we'll meet up again sometime, and I promise not to take someone's powers away anymore. I'll buy you kids a drink or something as a reward... You guys are of age, right? Silky: I can't speak for Rio, and I'm pretty sure XL would just...burn it up, but everyone else should be fine? Law: Cool, cool...

He has a short coughing fit. "Alright, I gotta bounce. Stay safe, now."

Without waiting for a response, he suddenly vanishes just as quickly as he appeared. Demo: Oh thank god he didn't actually monologue. I was entirely prepared to sleep through it. Anyway; Easter's over; let's go the fuck home. Collin: Y-Yeah, let's... get the hell out of here.

Collin puts one hand to his head and clumsily drops down to one knee. "... Can someone help me out? I'm a little dizzy." Putting her weapons away finally, Silky scoops Collin up into her arms. "Out we go, then!"

[MUGEN announcer voice]

ROMANTIC

Fereldir takes point and leads the group back out of the workshop and inside the IT.

Fereldir: Now, there's still one last matter that needs to be addressed. We didn't have a chance during the fight, but we need to have a talk with Precantaro. If anyone would like to be present for that, you can stay near me. Otherwise, feel free to go get some rest.

Collin: Silky, you can let me down. I need to stay for this. Setting Collin down gently, Silky nods as she leaves for XL's room. Demo and Tori remain behind. Fawkes gives a slight nod to the others and leaves as well, although Daedalus stays behind with the others.

Daedalus: I'm interested to see how this stuff plays out. Apparently this is a regular thing for you guys, huh? Demo: It has been for...what, a week now? Two? Collin: Something like that. It's been kind of a blur honestly.

Fereldir: Well, let's not waste any more time.

There is a flash of light, and the group finds themselves in the foggy void one last time. The rest of the pantheon surrounds them aside from Precantaro, who emerges from the fog a few moments later. His gaze seems locked to the floor, unable to look at the others.

Precantaro: Well.... I'm not sure what there is for me to say anymore. You've seen almost everything I could tell you, give or take some details.

Fereldir: My only real question is this: Why did you hide this from us? Why didn't you ask us for help at any point before you lost your eye? Do you not trust us, or-

Precantaro: N-No! I trust you all with everything! I just... I wanted to prove that I was able to solve something. I mean, that's what my magic is! Finding problems, studying them, and discovering a solution. Israphel was the problem, and I thought I had a solution! Once I had the creature controlled, I was going to surprise you all with its reveal. When it all went wrong, I... I couldn't admit my failure. In truth, I think all that time I spent studying that book altered my mind, clouded my judgement. Looking back on it now, it was almost as if I was... a different god entirely. It took the loss of my eye to snap me out of my fugue, and in truth I probably deserved more than that.

Fereldir: I want you to promise me something, Precantaro. Promise me that you'll never keep a secret like this again. That if you find a problem, or run into trouble, you'll come to us for help. You don't need to hide anything from us. I love you; we love you. Can you promise that?

Precantaro's voice quakes as he teeters on the brink of sobbing. "Y-Yes... I promise. I'm s-sorry, Fereldir..."

Fereldir approaches Precantaro and rests his hands on either side of his face. "You're forgiven, love."

He pulls him into a kiss, and the fog suddenly dissipates all at once. An elaborate marble floor suddenly forms underneath their feet, and the rest of a mighty temple begins to construct itself around them. Stained glass images of each god assemble themselves in the walls above individual doors, and a great altar appears at the far end of the temple.

Ezorius: Aha, looks like the godspace is finally pulling itself back together again! Demo: Either that or we suddenly got invited to a wedding. Sanglied: Nah, they did that ages ago, although we can do a reenactment if you want. Can we include the part where I drank all the wine and wrestled Tellus over the feast table?

Tellus: Please no, my back hurts just thinking about it...

I love the shenanigans between these two tbh

Brahmzen: At any rate, I think we should let the mortals return to the real world. Ezorius: Ah, you're right. See you back on the other side!    /With one last blinding flash, the group finds themselves dropped back into the console room, although Sanglied appears to have taken over for Fereldir. Demo: Well, this has been...this has been. I'm gonna go drink. Shaking her head, she leaves for the kitchen. Daedalus: You guys really are crazy, huh? I don't know how you guys do that every day...

He wanders off back to his room, shaking his head. alienrabitt: Honestly, I don't even care. I'm just glad everything's okay again... Collin: No kidding. Although the rainbow color's gonna take some getting used to. I need to figure out if I can hide this or something, 'cause otherwise sleeping is gonna get difficult. alienrabitt: Hey, unless it spreads to your face, it's not a problem. Collin: You say that now, but it's gonna look like a disco in our bedroom once I build up enough charge. alienrabitt: Pff; yeah, I guess...! Good luck figuring that one out... Collin: Gee, so supportive.

He rolls his eyes jokingly and then kisses Tori on the cheek. "I love you, Tori." alienrabitt: I love you too! Even if you're the aurora borealis now... Collin scoops Tori up off the floor and carries him off down the hall. "Alright, off to jail with you." alienrabitt: Heheh, what; I can't make jokes too?

alrighty, next log’s a Big One!!

[uomo-accattivante]

A little over a third of the way into the modestly dressed, disarmingly brilliant production of Hamlet now playing at the Public, Oscar Isaac as the iconic prince turns to us before one of his famous soliloquies and calmly tells us, “Now I am alone.”

I caught my breath at these four words. They were not a statement of fact — they were an invitation to the audience to imagine.

Not every Hamlet calls attention to its own theatricality. This Hamlet — beginning with its use of the company onstage as a second audience, a mirror for us out in the seats — engages us in a game that makes us contemplate the very nature of performing. When Oscar Isaac tells us, still surrounded by his fellow actors, “I am alone,” he is not describing but instructing. He is working on our imaginary forces — or, as he might say, our mind’s eye — telling us, These are the rules of this game. Come, play.

It is a mark of this production’s intelligence that its rules are inscribed in its aesthetic from the very beginning by a set of design choices that blur the line between audience and stage. The Anspacher is a strange space: a thrust configuration — which is Shakespearean enough — but surrounded by raked banks of red upholstered seats that come from an entirely different era of spectatorship. Hamlet’s set (by David Zinn), like the production itself, is unassuming and very, very smart: It extends the feel of the seating banks by covering the whole stage in red carpet. The chairs used onstage are a match to those in the front rows of the audience: modern, institutional, more red upholstery. Hanging above the playing space are additional house lights mimicking those above the audience (these the domain of lighting designer Mark Barton, whose work is a subtle, powerful complement to Zinn’s).

The main playing area — apart from the chairs and a table that looks like it could have been pulled from one of the Public’s conference rooms — is empty. The back wall is unadorned. Props are few and almost all present at the back of the stage at the show’s beginning, waiting for eventual use. There is a station for a musician (the incredible Ernst Reijseger) who creates the entirety of the production’s sonic landscape on a cello and a set of wooden pipes that play like an eerie organ. Each actor has only one costume, and if designer Kaye Voyce has not pulled directly from the actors’ own closets, she has quietly and cleverly curated a palette that feels as if she has done so. Director Sam Gold and his team of designers seem to have constructed their world in alignment with Hamlet’s advice to the Players:

--- …O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. ---

The actors likewise adhere to these instructions: Their attack on the language is clear and often conversational. They carry us deftly through the poetry without bluster or bravado — we follow the threads of their thought, and when great emotion flows it flows naturally, from a wellspring of grief or rage or shame that feels real.

Real. Ay, there’s the rub. Nothing onstage in this Hamlet is “theatrical” in the way that we have come to understand the term — as a synonym for spectacular, outlandish, or exaggerated. Rather, Sam Gold and his company are interested in a different and perhaps deeper definition of theatricality: Their Hamlet is playing a game with our notions of real and pretend, of sincerity and falseness. After all, you might think that by following Hamlet’s advice to the Players you could simply end up with a realistic TV drama — but Hamlet isn’t asking for realism, he’s asking for truth. He’s asking for honesty wrapped in the artifice of play. The heart of Gold’s production — and its genius — lies in its obsession with the paradox of the Honest Performance.

Hamlet insists that he “know[s] not ‘seems.,” but any good actor will tell you that you can feel all day long, but without seeming — without the show of that feeling — there’s no play. And Hamlet, the character, is a good actor. (This Hamlet, in the person of Oscar Isaac, at once mischievous and deeply soulful, is exceedingly good.) Part of the character’s tragedy is that he is a thoughtful comedian trapped in the bloody, archaic genre of the Revenge Play, forced into playing a role his very nature abhors. Imagine if Othello or Hotspur had been Old Hamlet’s son. Claudius would be dead and young Fortinbras defeated by Act 2, Scene 1.

Gold’s production dispenses with Fortinbras and with all references to any wider political conflict. (In interviews, he and Isaac have repeatedly described the show as “intimate.”) It’s a vision of a Hamlet in which the wider world is not Scandinavia but the theater. The company’s members are aware on some deep level of their existence both as actors and as characters in a play. Keegan-Michael Key (who makes a charming Horatio) begins the performance with a casual, endearingly silly curtain speech to the audience, but this is no mere lark: It introduces us to Horatio as a kind of narrator, a role that he will return to with much more gravity when, at the play’s end, he assumes responsibility for telling Hamlet’s story. He even adopts one of Fortinbras’s lines at the finale — “[Let] these bodies / High on a stage be placed to the view” — and when he says it, we hear not a dictator organizing a military funeral but a stage manager preparing for a literal eternity of performances of Hamlet.

In cautioning Ophelia not to trust Hamlet’s declarations of love, Laertes shows a similar subliminal awareness of the play-world he inhabits. He warns his sister that Hamlet “may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends / The safety and health of this whole state.” By “whole state” he typically means Denmark, but in this production Laertes (the compelling Anatol Yusef) gestures to us, the audience, and around the room at the chairs, the table, the lighting grid. Laertes is warning his sister, This story depends on him, and there’s only one way it can go. Likewise, when plotting to send Hamlet to England, Claudius (the superb Ritchie Coster) growls that he can’t outright punish his troublesome stepson, because “he’s loved of the distracted multitude.” Those last two words can only mean us. We, the audience, love Hamlet, and our imaginary forces hold sway in this room; Claudius, Laertes, and the rest of this ensemble maintain an understated awareness that they are acting in Hamlet’s play. This is not nudge-nudge-wink-wink mugging; the actors are not nodding their heads at us and mouthing, as Hamlet might have it, “Well, well we know.” A showier self-consciousness of theatrical artifice is fairly common on the stage these days. There is something subtler at work here — an investigation of the paradoxical alchemy of sincerity and deceit that lies at the heart of Hamlet and of theater itself.

The layers of this theatrical onion are further multiplied by the fact that the nine-person company of players doubles as … the Company of Players. By limiting the number of bodies onstage and letting each one accumulate valences of meaning, Gold sounds Shakespeare’s play like a great resonant bell. Seeing the Player King/Player Queen scene played out in the bodies of Gertrude and Claudius (who is also the ghost of Old Hamlet) is a revelation: Often delivered with self-conscious puffy artifice, here the scene feels like a moment out of time, like watching Hamlet witness a moment that might truly have taken place between his mother and his sickly father. And the Player King’s warning to his Queen — that she won’t be able to keep her vows never to remarry — rings with pathos and prophecy: “Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” So says this false king — this actor — prefiguring Hamlet’s recognition of the “divinity that shapes our ends” and summing up in a single line the tragedy of the prince’s character. What is Hamlet if not a creature of thought, doomed to an end none of his own?

Or take the doubling of Laertes and the Lead Player, who enters into a friendly competition with Hamlet over their shared delivery of the great Pyrrhus speech. The Player astounds Hamlet with his ability to “force his soul so to his own conceit” — he can make himself weep on cue! “For nothing! For Hecuba!” — which drives Hamlet to the frenzied contemplation of his own inaction. By this point, the Hamlet who could clearly separate performance from substance is gone: He now longs to act in all senses of the word, even if it means conflating those senses. In attempting to follow the Player’s example, Hamlet substitutes performance for the real action he so craves (and fears), winding up screaming melodramatically into the winds (“Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! / O, vengeance!”) and, here, doing great violence to a dish of lasagna. No wonder Isaac looks up afterwards — the clown who tried to play the avenger — and cracks a wry, abashed smile: “Why, what an ass am I!”

Though Hamlet knows in his most lucid moments that the performance of a thing is not the thing itself, he remains obsessed with the enactment of his own feelings, as if performing them paradoxically proves their honesty. When this Hamlet confronts Laertes at Ophelia’s grave (“What is he whose grief / Bears such an emphasis?”), we have already seen these two men compete in the performance of grief. First, it was for Hecuba, a mere fantasy, a play. Now, it is for Ophelia, a real woman whom they both loved. Laertes and Hamlet are both wracked by real anguish, and they are also playing at it: Who loved her more? Who can mourn her better? It’s a wrenching thing to watch — who among us has not felt something deeply and simultaneously felt ourselves performing the feeling? Acting is in our nature; we long to be witnessed.

Is such ore always there for the mining in this scene between the grieving lover and the grieving brother? Yes. But does every Hamlet mine it? No. It is the mark of a deeply intelligent production when it makes you hear anew a work encrusted with so many barnacles of historical, literary, and theatrical precedent.

They don’t call it “Poem Unlimited” for nothing. The glory of Hamlet is its unsoundable depth. Another director with another production might strike its great bell from a slightly different angle and produce completely different resonances. Another director might be as fascinated by kingship, war, and affairs of state as Sam Gold is by layers of theatricality. Still, while Gold might have stripped the play of its original political context, this “intimate” production has not been stripped of politics. Its seeming domesticity is deceptive; it has something pointed to say about the political state of our world, but its tool is a needle, not a bludgeon. By its indirections, we find directions out.

“Ay sir,” quips Hamlet to Polonius, “to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” It’s a great line, always, but at this moment I heard it cut the air with a new sharpness. That word, honest, rings out over and over in this production. The politics of this Hamlet is a politics of performance, of being and seeming, of sincerity and hypocrisy, truth and corruption. In this way, Gold’s production may well be an abstract and brief chronicle for our time. After all, how many of our highest politicians might currently be asking themselves, “May one be pardoned and retain the offence?”

Hamlet is at the Public Theater through September 3.

###

@poe-also-bucky

[bookedj]

As Shadowhunter fans already know, the very first installment of Cassandra Clare's bestselling The Mortal Instruments series, City of Bones, reached its tenth birthday on March 27th. As part of the celebration, a special edition of the novel will be available on November 7, 2017. Aka, we're just a few weeks away from our shelves gaining yet another beautiful book!

To celebrate the final weeks before this stunning collector's edition is available, and of course to wrap up the year in style, I decided to make some fun featured activities (or, ah, memes/questions) for fans to do in the meantime. That's right, mundanes (or, yenno, whatever you consider yourselves) we've got ten weeks to celebrate ten years!

Pretend I just blew one of those birthday horns in your ear. That's what those are called, right?  Feel free to punch me.

The celebration will be begin Friday October 13th, but there is no limit to when you start or finish after this date. If it tickles your fancy (ugh, I can't believe I say that phrase often), you can post them all in one go. You can post once a week. Once a day. Once a month. Once every five or ten or sixteen years.

Additionally, you may post to the social media platform you prefer: your blog, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, all of the above, none of the above--wherever is most convenient to you.

You can spice things up a bit by making your own header for the celebration. I used a free header image from Angie Makes as a base for my text, so if you use that banner in your post--be sure to have a nod to her page.

Originally posted here. It looks better in that format. If you’d rather read it here, follow the cut.

Each week will have multiple questions. You can answer them however you want, whenever you want. You can change them up to fit your desires. You can make edits. Anything is fair game. Just be sure to let me know what you do, so I can snoop! Drop me a comment here or a Tweet or a message on my book Tumblr or fandom Tumblr.

WEEK ONE: Walk us through your memories of the series. When did you first discover it? How did it make you feel? Does that feeling still hold up? What does it mean to you and why?

WEEK TWO: Your ultimate ranking of the core characters from The Mortal Instruments based on your favourite and/or least favourite traits. Who do you believe you are most like? Who do you feel least connected to? Why? (Bonus Question: Wanna include one of the other series set in the Shadow World? Go for it!)

WEEK THREE: Adaptations can be messy. The Mortal Instruments has had two different forms: the film and the television series that is currently airing on Freeform. Tell us which one you prefer and why. If you dislike both, share your thoughts as to why. (Bonus Questions: What are your favourite scenes from one, or both, of the adaptations? If you could change anything about the film or show, what would it be? Are there any positive changes that you appreciate in them?)

WEEK FOUR: Relationships! Which romantic relationship speaks to you the most? When did you start shipping them? What about friendships? Or family connections? Tell us everything. We're all rabid friends here.

WEEK FIVE: All about the parabatai. From any novel set in the Shadowhunter Chronicles (The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, The Dark Artifices, etc), what parabatai pairing is your favourite and why? If you could choose your own parabatai--from the series, from your real life--who would you choose? Would you have one at all?

WEEK SIX: You find yourself in the world we've only read about. Are you Nephilim? (Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234!) Demon? (I have questions.) Angel? Ghost? Mundane? A Downworlder? Chairman Meow?

WEEK SEVEN: What is your favourite book in the series? Do you have a ranking of the novels? One you aren't that fond of? Why?  (Bonus Question: Answer for one or all of the other series in The Shadowhunter Chronicles!)

WEEK EIGHT: Looking back through all the plots and settings, which are your favourite? (And why.) If you could somehow travel through the pages of the books, and pick a location, where would you land? (Example: Alicante, one of the institutes, the strings of Jem Carstairs' violin, Magnus Bane's home, The Lightwoods Cupboard. Surely they have one, right? Right?.)

WEEK NINE: Tell us your top ten favourite quotes from any of the series set in The Shadowhunter Chronicles. Why are they your favourite? (If you can't narrow it down to ten, or reach ten, do however many you want.)

WEEK TEN: Freebie. Pick any topic you want--something to get off your chest, general fangirling, favourite scenes or chapters, deaths you would change if you could, a letter to Cassandra (SHE DEFINITELY WON'T SEE IT BUT STILL FUN TIMES HEY CASS), headcanons, funniest moments, TOP TEN BAND NAMES FOR SIMON LEWIS (!!!!!), a fanmix, write a poem about Maia's eyes, do a little graphic magic, a character study, show us your collection of Cassandra Clare books, etc etc--go wild. Literally do anything!

*Don't run around Manhattan with a Stele. I can't bail you bitches out of jail. Honestly, guys, I'm not made of money here.

Will you be participating? Spread the word! I'm really looking forward to hearing your answers.

[clockworkopera]

Also there's this thing with the sea, that has been a huge part. Emma being scared of it, because of her parents and Jules (and the other Blackthorn kids?) loving it, because it reminds them of home and sea demons and stuff being present. Lastly, there's Thule, which was mentioned a couple times in the book. The poem in the beginning of course, but also one of the Seven says something about it..? Thoughts about all this? (pt3)

I love getting questions and have lots of thoughts on this!

I’m turning this into a post because I think a lot of otherpeople might be interested, although it contains a fair amount of trivia,history and folklore…

Disclaimer:My theories are built not just on the Dark Artifices, but from all the previousbooks as a whole, and will contain SPOILERS (including from Lord of Shadows) ifyou haven’t read them. These ideas are based solely on book canon.

So many great observations. I had a lot of similar ones.  I was just doing research into Cortana for anupcoming post and I think some of your questions may dovetail. Just in case youdidn’t know in the mundane world Cortana is a very real sword, but in itshistory, it once belonged to Tristan of Tristan and Isolde fame (just a bit ofbackstory first).

And that story takes place in Cornwall.

Tristan’s father, a king, was lured away by the enchantments of a fae woman who claimed to lovehim. His mother searched for him and eventually died of grief therefore hisname reflected the Latin derivative meaning “sad” or “sorrowful”. He eventuallycame to live with his Uncle Mark who was the King of Cornwall where he stood asthe King’s champion. He used Cortana in a trial by combat where the tip brokeoff. (This is the first reference to Cortana breaking).

Tristan and Isolde had a complicated and forbidden lovestory that ended tragically. But according to Wikipedia, “it is stated that a thickbramble briar grows out of Tristan’s grave, growing so much that it forms abower and roots itself into Iseult’s grave. It goes on that King Mark tries tohave the branches cut three separate times, and each time the branches growback and intertwine. This behaviour of briars would have been very familiar tomedieval people who worked on the land. Later tellings sweeten this aspect ofthe story, by having Tristan’s grave grow a briar, but Iseult’s grave grow arose tree, which then intertwine with each other.”

Emma and Jules go to Porthollow Church looking for Annabelwhile they are in Cornwall. Doing his own research:

Jules reading fromWikipedia: “Porthollow Church is located above the sea, on the cliff-top atTalland near Polperro in Cornwall. The altar of the church is said to date fromthe time of King Mark, of Tristan and Isolde fame, and was built at thejunction of ley lines.”

I think between the faerie connection, the location ofCornwall, that both Tristan and Mark are Blackthorn family names, the briargraves, and the mix of Cortana in there I think a case could be made theBlackthorns might be related to this bunch. I have no idea if any of this iswhat Cassie is thinking, or how she researches things like Cortana, but it’sinteresting to see so many historical similarities and her attention to detail.I think it makes the books seem so much more real.  

Blackthorn trees in folklore are associated with strife andill omens. The thorns are dangerous and being pricked by one sometimes lead toseptic wounds. Very cold springs were known as Blackthorn Winters.

But, they were also grown in thick hedges for protectionagainst invaders. And it is believed that the berry from a Blackthorn tree isonly sweetest after the hardest frost. IrelandCalling website refers: “The Blackthorn is often associated withovercoming obstacles for a better future or protection and hope in the midst ofdevastation.”

I wonder if the Blackthorns of old chose that name for anyof that symbolism.

The Blackthorn tree also is considered a fairy tree because it is under theprotection of the Lunantisidhe Fairy. So, there has been a constant theme offaerie within the Blackthorn family from (possibly) Tristan to Andrew andArthur and now currently with Mark and Helen—I bet the Fae know more Blackthornfamily history than they know themselves. Since the family seems to haveoriginated in Cornwall they are really entwined with the Fae population there.

Sleeping Beauty’scastle was protected by a briar hedge. Some stories say it was a rosebriar, other say it was a blackthorn briar. (I also want to point out that toCristina’s surprise when the Unseelie King asked the riddle of the egg and whatemerges— “A rose,” said Mark. “Withthorns.” It is interesting withCristina and Mark, one is of the Roses, the other a Blackthorn)

For the sad knight riding with the broken sword on Julian’swall painting—Cortana in mundane mythology says it was not only broken byTristan, but by Ogier the Dane as well (that time by an Angel). With the MortalSword shattered, that too is broken.

***(I thought it would have been cool for a faerieblackthorn briar to have started growing at the foot of the quickbeam nourishedby the blood and sacrifice of Emma and Julian after the whipping—sheltering theLA Institute and the Blackthorns from their enemies, but I guess that is whatfan fiction is for)

I don’t know what Julian’s motivations were for the paintingor why that image spoke to him, but Emma made an interesting observation:

She’d wanted to askhim if he’d tell the rest of the family the truth about Arthur soon. But she couldn’t.Walls had gone up around Julian that seemed as impenetrable as the thornsaround Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

And when Emma and Julian were going through Annabel’sportfolio:

Annabel had also drawndozens of pictures of the Blackthorn manor house in Idris, lingering on thesoftness of its golden stone, the beauty of its gardens the vines of thornsthat wrapped the gates. Like the mural on the wall of your room, Emma wanted tosay to Julian, but she didn’t.

So, Julian isn’t the only Blackthorn this story draws andI’m pretty sure this theme will continue in the Last Hours—like maybeBlackthorn Manor waiting to wake up when Jesse returns.

I had my own running list of thorn references too, and theyare as much a Faerie reference as to the Blackthorns: Thorn Mountain in Faerie,the thorn bindings that held Kieran in the Unseelie Court and the Queen’s Crownof Thorns.

We don’t know much about the Crown of Thorns except theQueen’s power can be taken away if she loses it, and that it will be a titlefor one of the Last Hours books. But, symbolically at least in the Christianreligion it the represents pain and sacrifice (although it’s not known whichspecific plant that crown was derived from).

–From Wikipedia:The term ultima Thule in medievalgeographies denotes any distant place located beyond the “borders of theknown world”. In the past, classical literature (by that, think of whatArthur reads) it meant the Northern most far away unexplored places. For Lord of Shadows, I guess it could meananything from the farthest reaches of Faerie (as in the Dreamland poem) to Heaven itself. Because of Livvy and the clockchiming I’m thinking it means Heaven. But, the demon that Emma and Julian slewin that Porthollow church called himself: “I am Sabnock of Thule” (so, therebeyond the borders of this world into a demon realm?)

–Water symbolism:I did a post a few weeks ago about Jemma not remembering Jessa’s wedding beforeLoS came out. There wasn’t really anything in the book to disprove thosetheories, but I thought that the water symbolism might have come from the watertrial Emma and Julian had to go through to become Parabatai. We don’t know anydetails of their ceremony, but in thecase of Simon and Clary they were unwittingly given water from Lake Lyn.Drinking the cursed water from Lake Lyn (how does a Lake get cursed in thefirst place?) causes hallucinations and I thought maybe Emma and Julian had abad reaction to it given her phobia of the water. Julian at the very least hasa bit of demon blood and I thought that a latent warlock talent might havesprung from experience (something like when James Herondale turned into aShadow)—that’s why Jem and Tessa have been keeping their distance and maybeeven having Magnus have them forget certain things (there’s more in that post).

To be honest I was surprised that other than Malcolm usingsea creatures there didn’t seem to be any other huge water references, and thatwas only in the first part of the book. With the cover of London drowning Ithought there would be more. There is the mention of the rivers in Faerie thatrun with the blood of the murdered and I cannot tell you how creeped out I amat the idea that Livvy’s blood might be flowing through it now. I think it wasin reference to mortal mundanes, so hopefully not Shadowhunters.

Let me know what you think!

[oykusuba3]

Reading Notes: “The Animated Esperanto: The Globalist Vision in the Films of Sándor Reisenbüchler“ by Paul Morton

   “The internationalist language, which communicates across political borders, and the globalist language, which transcends them, define and are defined by several dialectics.”

- Paul Morton

To kickstart the research, I started off with a general overview of Hungarian Animation. During the ordeal, I stumbled upon this paper in Animation: An Interdisiplinary Journal. It is mostly about Sándor Reisenbüchler, a seemingly well-known Hungarian animator, but from my skimming, I saw some comparisons with Marcell Jankovics, so I decided to read. Also, talking about an “Animated Esperanto” can really feed into how I wanna make my narratives.

Who is Sándor Reisenbüchler?

Hungarian collage/cut-out animator (1935 - 2004).

Actually wanted to be a live-action filmmaker but his health didn’t allow for big movements and remaining outside for long.

He didn’t knew much about animation- he “joined” Pannonia to use supplies and work with the cameraman to film.

Lived all through World War II and had his career thoughout Communist Hungary.

“Reisenbüchler was a world man, in his beliefs and in his aesthetic tastes. He saw capitalism and communism as twin evils, preferring instead an undefined third way.” (Morton, p. 94)

He was also an avid reader of world literature and UFO enthusiast.

Although uses localised art styles, Reisenbüchler uses landscapes and backgrounds as a means to communicate globally.

What is Animated Esperanto? In what ways can we define it?

Esperanto: A language developed by Russian/Polish-Jewish doctor and multilinguist Lazaro Ludoviko Zamenhof (1859 - 1917).

Lived in a very multi-national and multi-lingual environment. Still considered “Mi estas homo.” I am human.

Lived in a very turmoilous time in RussianTsardom and Poland.

Means “hope” in Esperanto; hope to bring world together with a  language easily understood by everyone.

Béla Balázs Visible Man (1924) 

Body language, gestures and expressions in silent film is understood by everyone.

Capitalism has made way for this, “The laws of the film market had room for only one universal language of gesture, which had to be comprehensible in all of its nuances from San Francisco to [İzmir] and to princesses and working girls alike.” (Balázs, Morton p.93) [Note, Balázs is a Marxist so that might also play in his thoughts about “Esperanto”]

The Spirit of Film (1930)- Sound sync killed Esperanto!! No need for visual nuances anymore?!

"[M]ute dialogues [which] seemed to convey the profoundest human revelations, even when the overall storyline was nothing but the most tedious kitsch.” (Balázs, Morton p.93)

He briefly mentions how Animation can create it’s own Esperanto but doesn’t delve into that idea.

Esperanto is codified and defined by its creation born out from beauty, accessibility, logic and ideology. Animated Esperanto is born out of same principles but not necessarily defined by them. “The animated Esperanto is a tendency born of various circumstances that has evolved into a naturalized philosophy towards the animation medium.”

For example: Steamboat Willie (1928) vs. Hedgehog in the Fog (1974). Although the backgrounds might contain cultural cues (American riverside vs. Russian folktale environment) the expressions and body language of the characters still carry out global messages and emotions to carry the film. 

How does Reisenbüchler go about his narratives? How does it link back to creating an Esperanto?

“Condensed epics.”

Az 1812- Usage of universal pointers of violence (fire, suffering faces...) Usage of stasis vs. movement demands different sensibilites.

Stasis demands the viewer to study and internalise traditional and international objects in the landscape. Ex: Orthodox icon of Jesus.

Live-action vs. Hand-drawn Animation: Live-action must create a whole sequence and communication between shots, to make sense of the objects and relationships within a scene = no stasis. Hand-drawn can make up relationships and communicate meanings within a single image.

Expedition Sent to Pacify the Planet Mars in 2895 as Imagined by the Good Old Jules Verne- Science-fiction wrapped into the the imageries of its time and world. “Artifices” the certain ideals to make into mind-exercises in a safe environment.

Comparison with Marcel Jankovics

Both Jankovics and Reisenbüchler are in or affiliated with Pannonia Filmstudio- first animation studio in Hungary.

Reisenbüchler was kinda unique in his status within the studio.

Jankovics was more in the studio environment

Studio was government-funded = daily political dose.

Reisenbüchler didn’t have to deal with that much.

While Reisenbüchler uses landscapes, Jankovics uses mostly the language of body and character design to communicate both Hungarian-ness, with some very international “words”. (Ex: Janos vitez, Sisyphus, Hídavatás)

Ending Marks

Rules for an Animated Esperanto

“The body contains an internationalist language.”

Body’s international language can become globalist, by erasing its cultural markers.

“The landscape contains a globalist language. Cultural markers do not erase this globalism.”

“Internationalism and globalism don’t exist in a binary but in a dialectic. Within the globalist lies an internationalist and within the internationalist lies a globalist.”

Animated Esperanto is fluid; it is not confined by rigid political ideas and avoids homogenization. It is transforming, unfinished and ever-evolving.

Extra Sources:

https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Wonderful-Horrible-History-of-Esperanto-the-Universal-Language

http://www.cb.uu.se/~kiselman/pau2008.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cbf55t8TdY&list=PL59rkJTqNrpH8fFzMOrSHe30yJtJ6KCHy&index=18&t=0s

[donalsgirl]

A Hamlet Where Everyone’s Onstage

A little over a third of the way into the modestly dressed, disarmingly brilliant production of Hamlet now playing at the Public, Oscar Isaac as the iconic prince turns to us before one of his famous soliloquies and calmly tells us, “Now I am alone.”

I caught my breath at these four words. They were not a statement of fact — they were an invitation to the audience to imagine.

Isaac was not alone, not in this moment nor ever. Hamlet as written contains seven soliloquies, but the Hamlet who is now wrestling with his fate on the red-carpeted boards of the Anspacher Theater is never a solo figure: He always has an audience. During each soliloquy, members of the ensemble sit or stand strewn about the stage, still present, giving their prince a quiet, serious attention — a company of players, watching and listening.

Not every Hamlet calls attention to its own theatricality. This Hamlet — beginning with its use of the company onstage as a second audience, a mirror for us out in the seats — engages us in a game that makes us contemplate the very nature of performing. When Oscar Isaac tells us, still surrounded by his fellow actors, “I am alone,” he is not describing but instructing. He is working on our imaginary forces — or, as he might say, our mind’s eye — telling us, These are the rules of this game. Come, play.

It is a mark of this production’s intelligence that its rules are inscribed in its aesthetic from the very beginning by a set of design choices that blur the line between audience and stage. The Anspacher is a strange space: a thrust configuration — which is Shakespearean enough — but surrounded by raked banks of red upholstered seats that come from an entirely different era of spectatorship. Hamlet’s set (by David Zinn), like the production itself, is unassuming and very, very smart: It extends the feel of the seating banks by covering the whole stage in red carpet. The chairs used onstage are a match to those in the front rows of the audience: modern, institutional, more red upholstery. Hanging above the playing space are additional house lights mimicking those above the audience (these the domain of lighting designer Mark Barton, whose work is a subtle, powerful complement to Zinn’s).

The main playing area — apart from the chairs and a table that looks like it could have been pulled from one of the Public’s conference rooms — is empty. The back wall is unadorned. Props are few and almost all present at the back of the stage at the show’s beginning, waiting for eventual use. There is a station for a musician (the incredible Ernst Reijseger) who creates the entirety of the production’s sonic landscape on a cello and a set of wooden pipes that play like an eerie organ. Each actor has only one costume, and if designer Kaye Voyce has not pulled directly from the actors’ own closets, she has quietly and cleverly curated a palette that feels as if she has done so. Director Sam Gold and his team of designers seem to have constructed their world in alignment with Hamlet’s advice to the Players:

…O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

The actors likewise adhere to these instructions: Their attack on the language is clear and often conversational. They carry us deftly through the poetry without bluster or bravado — we follow the threads of their thought, and when great emotion flows it flows naturally, from a wellspring of grief or rage or shame that feels real.

Real. Ay, there’s the rub. Nothing onstage in this Hamlet is “theatrical” in the way that we have come to understand the term — as a synonym for spectacular, outlandish, or exaggerated. Rather, Sam Gold and his company are interested in a different and perhaps deeper definition of theatricality: Their Hamlet is playing a game with our notions of real and pretend, of sincerity and falseness. After all, you might think that by following Hamlet’s advice to the Players you could simply end up with a realistic TV drama — but Hamlet isn’t asking for realism, he’s asking for truth. He’s asking for honesty wrapped in the artifice of play. The heart of Gold’s production — and its genius — lies in its obsession with the paradox of the Honest Performance.

Hamlet insists that he “know[s] not ‘seems.,” but any good actor will tell you that you can feel all day long, but without seeming — without the show of that feeling — there’s no play. And Hamlet, the character, is a good actor. (This Hamlet, in the person of Oscar Isaac, at once mischievous and deeply soulful, is exceedingly good.) Part of the character’s tragedy is that he is a thoughtful comedian trapped in the bloody, archaic genre of the Revenge Play, forced into playing a role his very nature abhors. Imagine if Othello or Hotspur had been Old Hamlet’s son. Claudius would be dead and young Fortinbras defeated by Act 2, Scene 1.

Gold’s production dispenses with Fortinbras and with all references to any wider political conflict. (In interviews, he and Isaac have repeatedly described the show as “intimate.”) It’s a vision of a Hamlet in which the wider world is not Scandinavia but the theater. The company’s members are aware on some deep level of their existence both as actors and as characters in a play. Keegan-Michael Key (who makes a charming Horatio) begins the performance with a casual, endearingly silly curtain speech to the audience, but this is no mere lark: It introduces us to Horatio as a kind of narrator, a role that he will return to with much more gravity when, at the play’s end, he assumes responsibility for telling Hamlet’s story. He even adopts one of Fortinbras’s lines at the finale — “[Let] these bodies / High on a stage be placed to the view” — and when he says it, we hear not a dictator organizing a military funeral but a stage manager preparing for a literal eternity of performances of Hamlet.

In cautioning Ophelia not to trust Hamlet’s declarations of love, Laertes shows a similar subliminal awareness of the play-world he inhabits. He warns his sister that Hamlet “may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends / The safety and health of this whole state.” By “whole state” he typically means Denmark, but in this production Laertes (the compelling Anatol Yusef) gestures to us, the audience, and around the room at the chairs, the table, the lighting grid. Laertes is warning his sister, This story depends on him, and there’s only one way it can go. Likewise, when plotting to send Hamlet to England, Claudius (the superb Ritchie Coster) growls that he can’t outright punish his troublesome stepson, because “he’s loved of the distracted multitude.” Those last two words can only mean us. We, the audience, love Hamlet, and our imaginary forces hold sway in this room; Claudius, Laertes, and the rest of this ensemble maintain an understated awareness that they are acting in Hamlet’s play. This is not nudge-nudge-wink-wink mugging; the actors are not nodding their heads at us and mouthing, as Hamlet might have it, “Well, well we know.” A showier self-consciousness of theatrical artifice is fairly common on the stage these days. There is something subtler at work here — an investigation of the paradoxical alchemy of sincerity and deceit that lies at the heart of Hamlet and of theater itself.

The layers of this theatrical onion are further multiplied by the fact that the nine-person company of players doubles as … the Company of Players. By limiting the number of bodies onstage and letting each one accumulate valences of meaning, Gold sounds Shakespeare’s play like a great resonant bell. Seeing the Player King/Player Queen scene played out in the bodies of Gertrude and Claudius (who is also the ghost of Old Hamlet) is a revelation: Often delivered with self-conscious puffy artifice, here the scene feels like a moment out of time, like watching Hamlet witness a moment that might truly have taken place between his mother and his sickly father. And the Player King’s warning to his Queen — that she won’t be able to keep her vows never to remarry — rings with pathos and prophecy: “Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” So says this false king — this actor — prefiguring Hamlet’s recognition of the “divinity that shapes our ends” and summing up in a single line the tragedy of the prince’s character. What is Hamlet if not a creature of thought, doomed to an end none of his own?

Or take the doubling of Laertes and the Lead Player, who enters into a friendly competition with Hamlet over their shared delivery of the great Pyrrhus speech. The Player astounds Hamlet with his ability to “force his soul so to his own conceit” — he can make himself weep on cue! “For nothing! For Hecuba!” — which drives Hamlet to the frenzied contemplation of his own inaction. By this point, the Hamlet who could clearly separate performance from substance is gone: He now longs to act in all senses of the word, even if it means conflating those senses. In attempting to follow the Player’s example, Hamlet substitutes performance for the real action he so craves (and fears), winding up screaming melodramatically into the winds (“Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! / O, vengeance!”) and, here, doing great violence to a dish of lasagna. No wonder Isaac looks up afterwards — the clown who tried to play the avenger — and cracks a wry, abashed smile: “Why, what an ass am I!”

Though Hamlet knows in his most lucid moments that the performance of a thing is not the thing itself, he remains obsessed with the enactment of his own feelings, as if performing them paradoxically proves their honesty. When this Hamlet confronts Laertes at Ophelia’s grave (“What is he whose grief / Bears such an emphasis?”), we have already seen these two men compete in the performance of grief. First, it was for Hecuba, a mere fantasy, a play. Now, it is for Ophelia, a real woman whom they both loved. Laertes and Hamlet are both wracked by real anguish, and they are also playing at it: Who loved her more? Who can mourn her better? It’s a wrenching thing to watch — who among us has not felt something deeply and simultaneously felt ourselves performing the feeling? Acting is in our nature; we long to be witnessed.

Is such ore always there for the mining in this scene between the grieving lover and the grieving brother? Yes. But does every Hamlet mine it? No. It is the mark of a deeply intelligent production when it makes you hear anew a work encrusted with so many barnacles of historical, literary, and theatrical precedent.

They don’t call it “Poem Unlimited” for nothing. The glory of Hamlet is its unsoundable depth. Another director with another production might strike its great bell from a slightly different angle and produce completely different resonances. Another director might be as fascinated by kingship, war, and affairs of state as Sam Gold is by layers of theatricality. Still, while Gold might have stripped the play of its original political context, this “intimate” production has not been stripped of politics. Its seeming domesticity is deceptive; it has something pointed to say about the political state of our world, but its tool is a needle, not a bludgeon. By its indirections, we find directions out.

“Ay sir,” quips Hamlet to Polonius, “to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” It’s a great line, always, but at this moment I heard it cut the air with a new sharpness. That word, honest, rings out over and over in this production. The politics of this Hamlet is a politics of performance, of being and seeming, of sincerity and hypocrisy, truth and corruption. In this way, Gold’s production may well be an abstract and brief chronicle for our time. After all, how many of our highest politicians might currently be asking themselves, “May one be pardoned and retain the offence?”

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