#but is it so serious that we have to undermine his place in horror and as a slasher villain

[sickmarrieddying]

today on twit i saw debate abt whether art the clown is a good slasher villain and so many ppl were hating like,,,,, first off ppl were replying to a person saying that hes the closest thing modern day horror has to a new iconic villain with examples of M3GAN and THE BLACK PHONE … vs art the clown in terms of iconic horror villains ,, yeah we’re fucked

also some ppl were saying the obsession w the terrifier movies/art the clown is weird bc its plotless and boring and “like just say u like gore” i dont think there is a single terrifier fan on this planet that is saying they dont watch it for the gore and are in fact watching it for the plot like lets use some critical thinking and observation skills everyone knows why those movies have fans

i thot yall wanted shitty horror movies back like why r we discounting terrifier’s place in the culture

[abattre]

It's actually so disappointing that Naruto's narrative took the route that it did. Kishimoto created an incredibly interesting world and premise, and ruined it by having everything amount to a shallow message of forgiveness that undermines almost every meaningful element in the story. And it's like,, I want to appreciate the world outside of the plot, but the moral framing of the story makes it virtually impossible because of how disingenuous it is. It completely undermines the audience's understanding of the tragedy and horror of the world so that Naruto becoming Hokage and being the most powerful person in the world by the end doesn't come across as distasteful as it actually is.

Like it's made abundantly clear throughout the story that the village system, and Shinobi society as a whole, is incredibly flawed. Kishimoto goes out of his way to show us that Konoha's council is made up of objectively horrible people. We see first hand how the council's short-sighted ideas of what 'protecting the village' means results in devastating tragedy for people both in Konoha and outside of it. It's clear in how Danzo and the rest of the council act that their atrocious behaviour is them just blatantly abusing their power to maintain their authority. The council has no remorse in anything they do; human experimentation, genocide, slavery, and blatant exploitation is all fair game to them if it preserves their status quo. And instead of maybe, like, addressing Konoha's skewed morality in a sensible way and setting the village up for reform, the narrative just tries forcing the audience to perceive Konoha's genuinely heinous actions as necessities. Which, you know, will work when you're like 8, but once you've grown up and developed some reading comprehension and critical thinking,,, it just feels annoyingly manipulative.

At its core, Naruto is a story that attempts to deconstruct morality. Like this is abundantly clear in how Kishimoto is constantly paralleling the dichotomy of good and evil literally every chance he gets. In the end though, this dichotomy just doesn't work in the context of the Naruto story because the narrative framing of the village being the good guys is just hysterically ridiculous. Konoha is an awful place, that does awful things, and is run by awful people that refuse to change anything because it benefits them for the village to remain awful forever. To anyone with a developed sense of media literacy the village cannot in any way be framed as morally good, so when the story resolves itself with Naruto becoming next in line to govern Konoha under the same unchanging authoritarian regime, with the same council supporting him because of his sheer physical prowess and complete dedication to their twisted ideology,,, it's honestly just an incredibly underwhelming conclusion to a story that made itself out to be more profound than it actually is.

If I had to guess, I imagine Kishimoto just didn't think through how negatively the world he created would reflect on the plot. Ultimately though, you can't write a moral story that's so deeply entrenched in real world social inequity and decide halfway through that because you don't know how to fix these things your story's going to have to be about how they're actually okay to be doing and perpetuating,,, like that is awful and also a terrible lesson to impart on an audience of children. With how serious the issues are in Shinobi society, trying to resolve things with the power of friendship was always going to fall flat. These broad scale injustices can't be brushed aside in that way without undermining their severity and diminishing the understandable impact they had on the characters that experienced such extreme oppression. That's essentially the trap that Naruto's conclusion falls into though, and so the story just ends up feeling incomplete and unfulfilling because none of the issues brought up are actually addressed or discussed with the gravity they deserve.

[ccaptain]

I need to address this thing that we had in the Genshin lore for so long- but the fact that Kaeya was put in solitary confinement along with Klee right as he was about to head to the Charm cannot be something of a casual concidence.

Judging by what we, as the Traveler, have found in the Chasm, I have two theories that both include Kaeya getting both himself and Klee grounded that day was intentional. These theories being the following:

A much simpler and less angsty one is that Kaeya had studied the Chasm, its environment and enemies prior to its opening, perhaps has judged it too harsh for an expedition made only of him and Klee. He knows about Klee's potential and strenght, but the poisonous miasma and complex enemies might have been too much for them to take on together- not to mention that they could have risked some sort of serious poisoning, without the proper equipment- and the proper equipment warranted more researches and investments, which they didn't had at the time. He was not willing to break Klee's enthusiasm over this and risking of undermining her position as the Spark Knight... so he had to cause a bit of chaos and get them both grounded in order to stop a potentially dangerous expedition. He kept Klee distracted all day in her room as they were both grounded, and the Chasm problem was swiftly forgotten. Another victory for Kaeya!

Now, for a much angstier possibility: Kaeya knows of the connection between the Chasm and Khaenri'ah. There's no way that this is obscure to him, a person who loves to investigate every single nook and cranny of places. An old headcanon of mine that I almost ditched is that my Kaeya, while being very little when the Archons wrecked havoc in his homeland, was able to see the horrors just as his father and the little group of runaway survivors was able to escape to the surface of Teyvat. There's a thing that he was that kept shining even among the Anemo-infused flames... and that was a Celestial Nail. Perhaps multiple, judging by how much the heavenly principles wanted to punish Khaenri'ah for their arrogant sins.

He also had an hunch that the Bough Keeper was nosing around the same environment, and no desire to meet him, along with little to no informations about the time of his visit- so he took no risks, rather getting punished and nullifying the expedition with a good grounding all together.

The Serpents are people that have, very possibly, seen him- and could have somewhat recognized him, evoking the image of a little child with a distinct color of hair and mismatched eyes from the depths of their conscience. Worse, they could have sensed the Curse of Khaenri'ah on him- and he would have had a lot of explanations to give to Klee, afterwards. 

Not to mention that there's the Curse- what would have happened if the distruption caused by the Abyssal Order was able to affect him at the same moment him and Klee were facing a powerful enemy? Poor Klee would have been left alone to fight and terrified as to why Kaeya was close to screaming in pain, doubling over and clutching his eye so hard...

It's very possible that Kaeya has considered all of these options, and picked the best way out of this.

So far, my Kaeya has yet to visit the Chasm.

Why? Both of these speculations are options he could have taken! We'll just never know BECAUSE HOYO DIDN'T EXPLAINED THIS FURTHER.

:)

[sanctummilitis]

Before Chaldeas she stood, shadow stretched across frozen and ruptured tile — the light of humanity twisted in reveal its alien design, vibrant pink swirling the sphere of sky blue reflecting blinding white from the intensity rays cast upon its surface. The grand design of Marisbury Animusphere — the direction in which he intended to take humanity, for no care of the Earth. If not for the threat it imposed, the sight would be a fantastical wonder, nevertheless, for the restoration of humanity, that light must die once more.

Forth she marched, lengthening the shade behind her form — a shape duplicated when Excalibur came alight with its golden shine. For all their struggles of which she perceived from afar, once the keystone of the Grand Order had been dealt with, Chaldea would finally know release from their manipulation and attain the freedom so long fought. all she need do is follow Goetia's knowledge and do something, at long last.

"Humans never do change, do they, Saber?"

At sound of his voice, her advanced halted — the man who embodied the dark underbelly of a dream not unlike hers stood before her, gazing the spectacle. What purpose was it for him to manifest here, in this time? At any opportunity, the Stars seemed keen to direct her backward toward the disastrous Fourth Holy Grail War that shattered her spirits, as though to mock an apparent lack of progress — and Kiritsugu Emiya all but embodied the personal torment of that brief, but vicious conflict. To Shirou, he had always been a dream to chase, and to Saber, a nightmare haunting her at every given opportunity.

"Yes," she responded, setting aside the agitation from his summoning. It would serve no purpose — this was not the true Kiritsugu. "Which is why we must correct their trajectory — so they cannot become whatever Marisbury Animusphere envisions for them".

In witnessing him here, she could not help but speculate what Kiritsugu may had thought of Goetia's vision; the eternal tranquillity that would see none suffer the agony of loss. A dream long faded, much like his of heroism. Dreams, much like life, were so transient and delicate, oft gone from memory once the dreamer's consciousness reassembles.

Kiritsugu's head rotated ever so — not enough that his life long-lost of vitality — would meet her. "Do you remember what you're fighting for? Securing the future will not ressurect the dead".

Emerald hues sharpened within narrowing windows of suspect. "What are you talking about, Kiritsugu?"

"Look around you".

Ordinarily, she would not humour him — their ideological clash had left a sour taste in her mouth ever since it first became apparent they could never be compatible, and there was naught to perceive. Chaldea was empty save for the unwilling cryogenically transfixed staff. So in turning, she had no expectation of what sight to behold.

It would have been kinder not to look, but closing her eyes would undermine her duty and her kinghood. A chilled breath escaped lips split in horror. The pools continued to grow, seeping into the fabric of their respective sources.

"Ritsuka—! Shirou—!"

They each sported grevious wounds — Ritsuka clutched at a site of impalement in her abdomen, while Shirou had lost the entirety of his left arm. Her impulse was to rush, brought to a standstill by Kiritsugu's resumation, bearing no trace of concern for the two mages — more strikingly when one were his adopted son. It gave credence to the implication he had never been the Mage Killer, but replicated his form in order to communicate to her. A personification of her guilt and doubts, or opposition yet to be confronted.

"Which of them are you going to save?"

—He couldn't be serious.

"What's the matter? You have Avalon".

In her hands, the sudden weight of steel pulled her sight upon the pristine scabbard — the miracle that had saved Shirou from the calamity wrought by her sword. The same she had deliberated its place in Spirale.

"To side with someone means that you're not on the side of someone else". You can't protect them both".

That— that wasn't true. She could and she would.

"They're bleeding out, and you only have one Avalon. It's impossible".

Was he really... trying to push her into choosing? How could she? It wasn't possible. They were both invaluable and irreplaceable — she couldn't... give up on one of them!

"So are you prepared for them both to die just to avoid having the blood of one on your hands?"

"I'm not—"

"You've considered removing Avalon from Shirou to salvage Ritsuka Fujimaru. Do you still refuse to admit to making sacrifices to preserve what you seek, O' righteous King of Knights?"

Teeth clenched; it was... a debate she had not taken lightly. Shirou had Musashi contracted to him — he'd found peace with Rin. Ritsuka's... battle was ongoing, her mind and body decaying further with each leg accomplished. On paper, it was a no brainer — she wasn't choosing one over the other. If not for Shirou's precautions, she'd never dare touch Avalon. He was safe... he was well out of harm's way, wherea—

 “I died, Saber".

She was eroding. She needed help, no matter how reluctant she might be to accept it.

"I ͞d͘ied̡ and ͟thęŕe̸ ̧wa͞s not̡hi͜n͡g y̨o̢u̸ co͜ul̸d do͞ ҉t̕o s͜t͢op̡ ít͢ or ҉h̀el̡p me̸”.

"I know what you're thinking — if you can find the Avalon of Pan-Human History's timeline, you can imbue one into each of them".

"...Then what about me?"

—That... wasn't Kiritsugu's voice. and though softly-spoken, it sent a chill down her spine, crumpling her brow in unrest even before twisting her upper body to observe him. In his hands, blood dripped fresh from Morgan's crown.

"You can't save us, Saber".

"—... Ritsuka—" the Servant began, finding quickly her voice falling silent.

It was a fact irrefutable. As much she tried to resist, to seek a miraculous solution, they were running out of time. The blood behind her was merging. She... couldn't protect anything. Not in Britain, nor Fuyuki, in Chaldea or Spirale. It was a crushing fact that had crashed into her with the force of a train numerous times, but for the sake of not betraying their faith, she'd get up again and resume trying.

But a candle only had so much wick to burn — and both Ritsukas were nearing the end. they had sacrificed so much, both of themselves and the universe around — to jeopardise Shirou to ensure Ritsuka could keep living...

"I̕f͟͞ ̶̡y̡͝o͝u̧͝͝r ̛̛h̸̸e̕ĺ̡p ̷̛i̷s̷͟͞ ͜t͟h̴͢i͠s̀̕ t̷̷͘he̢͟n͟ ̴̡I͟͡͡ ̵d̵͠͞o͞n̶͜’̛́t͏̛ ͟w̶̡͜an̡t̨̢ ̵̨it̴̛.̛̕͞”͘͢

She'd never accept it — nor would Shirou in the reverse. War incurred sacrifices, dreams would inevitably come to an end. there had been a time in which Saber was certain she could accept the decisions each Master made in surrender of themselves for something more — just as she had in order to lead Britain. Hypocrite. And now here she was, meant to effectively terminate one of them herself.

“̸́Is̷ ͟͞t̶̨h̶̨̨a̢t̢ ̴́͜h̛͘͞òw ̀͢yo̢u͡ ͟͜t́͡r̷͞ea̷t͜ ҉y͢óu̢͟r̷͞ ̷̸M̵̢̢a̡͢s̷t͡e̵̡͡r͘͢?"

No.

"҉̵͜T́͡h̵͞os̸e͞ ̀y̨͘o͢u ḩ̸a̴v͘e ̷̢s̶͜w͝o҉r̢͜n̕ ̕tò͡ ̧̢́pr͜͟òt͏̶ec̡t̷̢͞?̶̕"

She'd find a way. She had to.

"Ì̢f̶̷͞ ̢͟͟t̡̀̕h̴̸̡ey ͟͏̨w̷̨͟e̢re̶ ̧̛͝t҉o̢͞ ̧ķǹò̸w͏ t̡h̸ę͘͟ t̸̴r͝͝u̶t̴h͞ ̛͞o͜f ͜a̢ll ͏y̴o̡̕u͠ ̛҉h̸̶a҉̸v̕͡e̢͜ ͟do͝nè̴͟ ̢̀I̵̶ ̨͟͜d̶̢o̷u̵͟b̶̨̧t́ ͡͞y͘oú ̨̢c̴͠oưl̛̛d ̛͢èven̴͠ ̕lo͢ơ̧͢k͝ ìn̴͢t̴͘͢o ̶the̢̕ir҉͟ e͟͝ýe̷͡s͢͝”̸͞.͏̨͝

Silver grasped at gold, digging into its roots with a ruthless grip. For months, voices had hounded her, illusions which warned of her failures. Repeatedly, they spoke her shortcomings, her faults, her treacherous nature.

"̴Th̷̢a͢��҉ņ͞k̨͠s҉̵̧.̡́ ͘͟͞Y̡o͘u̷͠ ̴sav̸̡ę͞d̨ ̷̛͜me̕ ̴̢m̛̛̀a͟͜n̷̶͘y ͏t̸ime̵͘s"̴.̨̧̕

Why couldn't she find it? They believed in her. People were counting on her. Her entire existence had been to protect, and— And still everything slipped through her claws. Teeth ground themselves so fiercely that a slip could easily draw blood, biting down so not holler at the symphony of voices — she needed to think. Before it was too late. The thumping of her heart, the typhoon of her littered head, it was dizzying, and it were as if reality itself were crumbling.

"I'm

sorry".

[adamwatchesmovies]

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

I enjoyed 2016’s Doctor Strange but aside from the trippy visuals, it felt like a standard superhero origin story. This makes the sequel a follow-up that far surpasses the original. Confidently directed by Sam Raimi, with the best villain the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen since “Infinity War”, and loads of crowd-pleasing moments, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is hugely entertaining.

While attending the wedding of Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) saves teenage America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez). Rather than thank Strange, America runs from him. They’ve met before. Well, not exactly. She’s interacted with another Doctor Strange from another dimension and it didn’t go well. After consulting Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), Strange realizes a demonic force is after America’s unique ability to travel through the multiverse.

There’s no way to talk about what makes this movie great without revealing that former Avenger Wanda Maximoff is the film’s villain. As someone who hasn’t seen Wandavision, I can't tell you whether this was something you could've predicted. A part of you likes and understands her, which makes this scenario a lot more complicated. She wants America’s powers so she can travel to a different universe - any universe - as long as the sons she never had live there. Nothing excuses what she's doing but the teensiest bit of sympathy you hold for her makes you wonder if the film might find a way to give her a happy ending even while she butchers alternate versions of heroes that might've been her friends in a different life.

DSitMoM has a great time exploring the various Earths as America and Strange look for a way to defeat Wanda. Some of them are comical. Most are serious, even frightening. It’s fair to criticize some of the lesser films in the MCU for their homogenous feel. The same sort of humor, the same sort of tone, the same sort of characters. This film has Sam Raimi's touch all over it. That means there are gags but they never undermine the heroic scenes. It also means an affinity for horror. Ghosts, demons, rotting corpses, dark sorcery, even some well-placed jumped scares.

Then, there are the horror-analogous scenes in which Strange encounters alternate versions of himself. They made the wrong decisions and wound up on a wildly different path than him. Is every Stephen doomed to repeat each other's mistakes?

A major theme in this story is “regret”. Strange could’ve rekindled his relationship with Palmer. Now, he’s missed his chance. He again sees the mistakes “he” made. He’s allowed to learn from them, but will he in time? If he doesn’t, he may end up just like Wanda, stuck in a loop of wondering “What if?” and unable to move on. The emotional stakes are high, and the numerous deaths (in which the camera cuts at the exact moment to ensure the film gets that PG rating) means the physical threats are real.

In terms of criticisms, I only have two. The first is that among all of the characters that juggle topics of unfulfilled loved, grief, destiny, and the need for/inability to change, America Chavez gets a little lost in the shuffle. More could’ve been done with her. I’m not sure what would’ve been cut, for room, however. The other is minor but comes in right at the end. Of course, the film has not one, but two scenes during the end credits and they take away from the shocker of an ending.

There's a lot you can do with the idea of Multiverses. At least three different films this year prove this and if the ones we get in the future are as good as the efforts from 2022, I say keep 'em coming. In the Multiverse of Madness is easily the MCU’s weirdness film, and in a way, the most comic-book-y too. We’ve finally reached a point where (at least in my case), there are too many “issues” to read. You pick up the main titles but those side stories and spinoffs? You're fine just sort of knowing what happened in them. Except now that you’ve seen the aftermath, you'll want to go back and check out what you missed. (3D Theatrical version on the big screen, May 5, 2022)

[destielshippingnews]

Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x05 Bloody Mary

In this review, I’ll be discussing suicide, survivor’s guilt, and bad dialogue.

1x05 Bloody Mary enjoys a rating of 8.4 on IMDB. It’s a strong, atmospheric episode embodying the horror-show vibe the show was intended to evoke. It was originally conceived as being episode two or three of the show, and would have made a better episode two than 1x02 Wendigo due to its themes of guilt and bereavement linking into Jess’s death and Sam’s role in it.

Mirrors are one of the defining symbols of this episode, something made painfully obvious by the incredible number of mirrors the family owns. They are both the means whereby Mary kills her victims and the means whereby characters reflect on themselves. Sam’s info-dumpage that ‛mirrors reflect our soul’ should make it explicit to viewers paying attention that Mary is a metaphor for guilt. This guilt, however, is not necessarily the guilt that comes of commission of a crime or a moral evil, but the feeling of guilt borne of not being able to save somebody, or survivor’s guilt. A person burdened by such guilt looking in the metaphorical mirror must face a metaphorical Bloody Mary waiting to pass judgement.

Quite rightly, this judgement is not just, as indeed feelings of guilt, self-blame and survivor’s guilt are unjust. A discussion of the subject on Supernatural Therapy podcast raised the topic of self-blame when in fact one is not to blame: blaming ourselves is an attempt to feel in control of something and to understand it a little better. The deaths which the ill-fated father and Charlie blame themselves for are incomprehensible.

I can say from my own experience that losing a friend or loved one to suicide is impossible to understand. Grandparents dying of age is natural, and older relatives dying of long-term illness is understandable, though unjust. But when our driving instinct is supposed to be to stay alive, a friend’s or family member’s commission of self-murder undermines completely our comprehension of the world and our reality. It’s traumatic, and the mind seeks to understand and cope with something it simply can’t handle.

Returning to Supernatural Therapy, our feelings of guilt are misplaced attempts to control and understand, but they are more negative than positive. Thus Bloody Mary is an apt villain to don the role of avenging spirit in this episode, as she attacks people who feel guilty, regardless of whether or not they truly are responsible for a death.

This episode ties itself into the Sam’s character particularly closely, as Sam feels himself to blame for Jessica’s death. At first, his guilt is depicted as completely natural: he watched his possibly-pregnant girlfriend burn to death on his ceiling and was utterly unable to help her. Anybody in that situation would be dealing with guilt on top of bereavement and trauma, so he is naturally somebody Bloody Mary would go after. However, the revelation that he had ‛dreams’ (read: premonitions) about Jess’s death for days before it happened add another layer to his guilt.

That layer, of course, being his actual guilt in taking no measures whatsoever to ensure Jess’s safety. Sam is not a blue-eyed baby in 1x01: he is a man with deep knowledge of the supernatural world and was reckless to ignore them. It is never made explicit – unless something has slipped my mind – whether Sam had any experience or knowledge of humans with psychic powers, but it is clear that he knows about the paranormal. Any Muggle would be disturbed by having exactly the same dream of a loved one dying night after night, but would likely pass it off as stress, anxiety or some such. Sam’s no Muggle, and knows better. Was having a ‛normal’ life so important to him that he dismissed and ignored warning signs that the abnormal was coming for his lady? Is Sam partially responsible for Jess’s death here?

Knowing what I know of the circumstances surrounding Jess’s death, he likely couldn’t have stopped it, even had he called Dean and John for help. But he should have called them, and chose not to. If he had done so, she might have been saved. This is death by negligence.

What makes it worse is that he is aware that keeping his visions a secret got Jess killed, but at the end of the episode acts as though he is perfectly justified in retaining his secrets from Dean. Dangerous secrets overtly related to their mother’s death and the demon responsible for killing her, information which would be very useful to Dean and John if shared, but a danger if kept quiet. He learnt that not divulging his secret is dangerous for people around him, and elected to continue not divulging said secret to Dean. Please, dear viewer, bear this in mind in series 7, 8, 9, 15 and every other time Sam gets pissy at Dean for keeping things secret from him.

He even knows in this episode that keeping his secrets almost got Dean killed by Bloody Mary, but ‛just because we’re brothers, doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything’. Sam is supposed to be the hero of this piece...

Yes, some people are genuinely like that, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them, and I sure as Hell don’t like Sam. In the first five episodes, Dean is established as a flawed, contradictory hero who actually brings something to the table. Sam’s an entitled, spoilt prick who treats his brother like a joke and an embarrassment.

Returning to the theme of suicide and guilt, one thing that is not addressed in the episode is the dad’s own relationship to the mother’s death. That she overdosed on sleeping tablets heavily implies suicide, but for about half of the run time the viewer is expected to believe the father was somehow involved in her death, i.e. that he killed her, especially as the second victim was guilty of a hit and run where a boy died. What is never addressed, however, is that his guilt and the reason Bloody Mary targeted him is that he blamed himself for not being able to prevent his wife’s suicide. Charlie is allowed the catharsis of expressing her grief to Dean and Sam, but the father is not afforded the same opportunity.

Apropos Charlie, her precise meaning when she said her ex-boyfriend got ‛scary’ is left occult. He clearly suffered serious mental health problems, something which a lot of people simply aren’t equipped to handle, especially when the one suffering is a close friend or partner. Young male victims of suicide also tend to have been very good at wearing a mask to hide: did he try taking the mask off for her, and she didn’t like what she saw? From what little information she gives us, the implication is that he threatened her with violence or that he used hard drugs or something, but the viewer is at no point privy to what she means by ‛scary’ or to the man’s side of things.

Whether or not the young man intended to frighten and manipulate Charlie by threatening her with his suicide is also unclear. ‛If you walk out that door, I’ll kill myself’ can mean different things depending on tone and context, ranging from a desperate plea for help against an overwhelming mental illness to abusive, sadistic mind games. Having lost more than one man to suicide, the idea that someone would use it as a weapon is inconceivable, but without further information I simply can’t say.

From what little information we have, the man’s suicide was not Charlie’s fault. If we assume he was threatening her to keep her with him, she was right to run. Nobody should be mistreated or burdened like that, and no relationship should be built on a foundation of such abuse. She is important, too. Even if it weren’t a threat, the situation was intensely unhealthy for everybody involved and she was very justified in distancing herself. It wasn’t her fault, and I just wish Dean had told her that in the motel room, rather than simply talking about it to Sam in the car afterwards.

Speaking of said conversation in the car, Dean’s heart was in the right place as he tried to get Sam to stop blaming himself, but he perhaps revealed his own lack of coping tools whilst doing so. Dean is intelligent and empathetic, and far more caring than people give him credit for, but he was raised in an environment where he was not allowed to talk about his fears and anxieties. Nor was he provided any tools whatsoever to facilitate understanding and processing his traumas and illnesses; John wanted him as an emotionally-dead weapon to use in his war against Mary’s killer.

Dean feels, but with no healthy tools nor anybody to acknowledge and help in processing his issues, he bottles things up and pushes them aside as best he can. Of course, the best he can is not all that best, wherefore the drinks and the sex and the gallows humour. This is John’s echo in Dean: John silenced him, and Dean therefore is not best equipped to process his own trauma at the beginning of series 1, much less counsel somebody else (though this changes as the years go by and he learns how to act without John stymieing him).

He meant well in telling Sam he can’t carry on blaming himself for Jess’s death, but the problem is Sam can’t stop blaming himself. Nobody in Sam’s situation can stop themselves feeling what s/he’s feeling, and has to simply feel it. I knew my friend’s suicide wasn’t my fault, but grief, bereavement, and survivor’s guilt are not rational and can’t be controlled by the cognitive mind. The feeling mind is the one in control, all the cognitive mind can do is make suggestions and hope for the best.

Regarding grief and Sam’s situation, Sam’s nightmare and his conversation with Dean at the beginning of the episode are about as explicit as Sam’s grief for Jess gets int eh show, and it’s not much at all. They were together for maybe two years, she was possibly pregnant with his child and died on the ceiling above him, but he doesn’t do any actual mourning or grieving most of the time. That itself is okay as some peolel take years before they’re ready to process grief and bereavement, but Sam behaves like a slightly disgruntled, moody teenager which we’re supposed to interpret as him grieving Jess’s death, but we see next to no actual grief, trauma or expression of loss.

His discussion with Dean is supposed to give us the idea that this is a recurrent event, but it is very, very far from sufficient to genuinely make us believe that Sam is anything other than a little bit sad for Jess.

We have, however, already established that Sam is partially responsible for Jess’s death, but Dean doesn’t know that. In spite of it not being the most productive thing Dean could have said, it was valid. Grieving is natural and uncontrollable, but how we react to it is at least partially within the jurisdiction of the cognitive mind. We can’t resist grief, as even denying it acknowledges its presence, but rather we have to accept it as a natural part of life to be endured and felt, but not be controlled by it.

Similarly, Mary is herself a victim of trauma, having been murdered by her lover. Understandably, her mentis is significantly non compos after the experience, and killing people she deems to be guilty is perhaps her way of trying to process what happened to her. Referring once again to Supernatural Therapy podcast, Jovanna Burke (who played Mary in this episode) states she believed Mary saw herself as a vigilante trying to get restitution for people wronged by killing their murderers, but her world-view became so skewed and she lost all concept of a grey area. For her, things were black or white: guilty or not guilty. Dean as good as says that there is only guilty or not guilty for Mary: if somebody thinks their actions or lack thereof got somebody killed, that person’s guilty. Sam, after all, didn’t kill Jess, Charlie didn’t kill her ex-boyfriend and I don’t believe the father had a part in the mother’s death.

I would add to this that such thinking sounds like a trauma victim’s survival mechanism. If things are easily understood as either / or, good / bad, safe / dangerous, the risk of danger is theoretically reduced. Think wild animals assuming humans are going to kill them: it’s safest to assume and run away.

This has been quite the lengthy discourse on mirrors, but it’s time to switch from the metaphorical and symbolical to the more practical, that being the exact nature of how the magic works. Mary was bound to the mirror she died in front of, but as long as that mirror remained intact, she was free to wonder the mirror world when summoned. In the climax of the episode, Dean and Sam summon her to her mirror in the antique shop, smash it, then face her manifest form in the real world. Dean defeats her by showing her her own reflection in another mirror, whereupon her own reflection deems her guilty of multiple homicides and kills her.

Hawk-eyed readers will have noticed already, but if Mary’s power was bound to her mirror, how then could her own reflection have killed her when the mirror binding her was smashed? Was the source of her power in her, then, rather than the mirror? If so, then how would her seeing her own reflection killed her? A ghost in Supernatural doesn’t have the power to destroy itself like that: it simply can’t. A ghost has refused the Reaper’s invitation to pass on, and can’t therefore pass on, yet Mary does. I can’t make this make sense.

One more thing about that scene is that Dean’s eyes began bleeding, implying he is also hiding a secret where somebody died. Fans made a big number out of this at the time, and Kripke promised us we would find out in due course… but we never did. This is the first instance of one of Dean’s storylines getting dropped by the show, and it’s far from being the last one.

Kripke didn't like Dean. Dean was supposed to be the dumb, womanising popular guy who always gets the women but 'treats them badly' in comparison to Sam's sensitive nice guy act. Sam was Kripke's insert, and Dean was just a character the audience wasn't supposed to like either, so he didn't bother giving Dean his own storylines. Even series 3 is more about Sam's anger and 'grief' than it is Dean's.

Now that the main points are out of the way, there are more minor points in the episode to comment on. One is the lovely cinematography, especially during the cold open / prologue. I began this review by stating that mirrors are important in this episode, and the camerawork in the beginning really drive that home. Moreover, seeing Mary reflected in so many mirrors �� and indeed seeing so many reflections – blurs the line between the real world and the mirror world.

The children’s sleepover is also pleasantly lit, with very dark shadows and lots of candlelight evoking the feel of a ghost story. The shot in the library with the rays of light shining on the boys also looked wonderful, and the visual storytelling in the antique shop at the end was impressive. Said visual storytelling refers to the close up shot of a blinking red light, followed shortly after by the headlights of the police cars drifting across the wall. This is intelligent storytelling that expects the viewer to be paying attention, and it’s definitely appreciated.

In spite of my apathy for Jess as a character, the final shot of Sam seeing her on the pavement was fantastic cinematography: as with the flashing lights, it told us a story without needing to tell us anything. Sam saw her, and then she disappeared. Coming at the end of an episode about Sam’s guilt, and roughly a minute after his advice to Charlie about not blaming herself, this strongly suggests something has changed in Sam: the guilt that he was holding on to has begun to ease, or even vanish. It is, however, just a suggestion, and Sam giving Charlie a therapy session he sorely needs doesn’t mean he’s going to follow his own advice.

I wish, however, that more had been revealed about the kind of pills the father was taking in the cold open.

Speaking of the library – which we weren’t –do you remember when Wi-Fi didn’t exist? I remember. Currently I’m sitting about two metres away from my computer which is tethered to my mobile phone, typing on a wireless keyboard, using a wireless mouse in a room with no working ethernet cable or modem, listening to sounds of an oil rig on Bluetooth headphones, but in 2005 none of that was possible. There’s almost as much time between now and then as there was between my birth and ABBA winning Eurovision in Brighton in 1974.

Which is a nice segue into the soundtrack of the episode. The music in the opening is effective, being both reminiscent of the prologue of 1x01 with its minimalistic, slow piano track building tension and unease, but with an underlying hollow, howling wind sound that I can only liken to the dementors in Harry Potter.

Less impressive, however, was Mary’s dialogue, showing a complete lack of effort put into it. ‛You killed them, you’re guilty’, ‛you did it, you killed that boy’.

I rewatched this episode for the first time in 12 years in December 2020, by myself in a silent flat very late at night. I was 29, and this episode still creeped me out, making me hesitant to look at the window in case my reflection moved. Whilst it’s not my favourite episode, it’s certainly a solid effort with a memorable – if dated – antagonist in a self-contained MOTW story. Like the pilot, it showcased Kripke’s initial conception of the show as being about American folklore (although Bloody Mary is very much a British thing, too), and boasts a very atmospheric miniature horror show. It also offers character development and growth, even thought Sam’s claim that he would die for Dean is laughable in retrospect.

After once more exploring folk tales in 1x05, in next week's analysis of episode 1x06 Skin I'll be looking at how the show expands its daemonology by introducing a series staple.

[badchoicesposts]

In a Land of Myth...

Chapter 9

Summary: When Selene, a young sorceress, arrived in Stormholt she had every intention of remaining anonymous. King Constantine Rys had strict rules on sorcery. The act itself was punishable by death, and she had no desire to be burnt at the stake for her “crimes”. However, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to remain unseen when she becomes Prince Liam’s personal maidservant, and it seems that it’s her job to protect him from everyone that wants to kill him.

Disclaimer: This AU is a cross between TRR, The Crown and The Flame, and BBC’s Merlin. Merlin follows the tale of King Arthur and the sorcerer Merlin. Merlin comes to Camelot where magic is outlawed and is made Prince Arthur’s servant. You do not have to watch the show to understand this fic, but it is based on the BBC show Merlin so the story line will be similar. I don’t own the plot to Merlin or any of the TRR characters.

Word Count: 3,533

Author’s Note: This series is finally back and with a new mood board! Thanks so much for being so patient with the fact that it took so long!

Taglist: @flowerpowell, @bobasheebaby, @alexintheskyy, @slytherincursebreaker​, @kingliam2019, @furiousherringoperatortoad​, @goldenbirdcrystalcage​, @burnsoslow​, @zilch3, @desiree-0816, @sanchita012​

Let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from the taglist!

Catch Up: Masterlist

Wind whipped against Selene’s face as her horse raced forward. A loud laugh escaped her lips as she pulled on the reins, causing the animal to stop just in front of the castle.

“I win!” she called back to Liam and Drake as they came to a stop on either side of her. 

The three of them had gone for a ride after lunch, and in efforts to make the trip back more interesting, Drake had suggested a race. 

“We let you win,” the man grumbled under his breath as he dismounted his horse. 

Liam chuckled at his friend’s words and swung his leg over his horse to lower himself to the ground as well. 

“Don’t mind him. He’s a bit of a sore loser,” he whispered in Selene’s ear, loud enough for Drake to hear and shoot him an annoyed look. 

The three of them were pulled out of their peaceful afternoon by the sound of heavy footfalls descending the palace steps behind them. 

“Prince Liam, your father requests your presence in the council chambers immediately,” the guard said urgently. 

Selene and Drake shared a nervous look as they raced to catch up behind Liam’s retreating form. She bit back a groan at the thought of another crisis. Couldn’t they just have a normal day for once? They entered the throne room behind him and were taken by surprise upon seeing a man lying unconscious on the floor, Xinghai bent over examining his body. A few members of the council were scattered around the room, glancing around nervously. 

Selene moved closer to the physician, Liam standing protectively in front of her. She gasped in shock as she took in the man’s condition. His skin had turned a light shade of blue and his veins were now prominent on his face. His eyes were wide open and completely white. Selene had never seen anything like it before. 

Xinghai straightened up and looked towards the king. 

“Well, what is your diagnosis?” Constantine asked, concern expressed clearly on his features. 

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, sire. The victims are dying within twenty four hours, and the disease is spreading fast. It will take more time to properly examine the bodies, but…” he trailed off.

Selene looked over to where Bastien was standing behind Constantine, and the two shared a knowing look.

“What is it?” Constantine prompted, although Selene could tell that he already had a suspicion.

“I believe that it may be the work of sorcery,” Xinghai concluded, causing Constantine to recoil. 

“Do you know how to treat this?” he asked. 

“Until I know the source of the disease and how it is being spread amongst its victims I can not determine the cure,” he responded. 

Constantine called Liam forward and the two whispered quietly amongst themselves. 

“Search the town and find the sorcerer who has caused this. Leave no crevice unsearched, no stone unturned. Conduct door to door searches if you have to,” he said as Selene stepped towards them under the guise of approaching Bastien. “This is the kind of magic that undermines our authority. The person responsible seeks to spread fear through the people of Stormholt and make us look weak. We have to put a stop to this before the people begin looking to magic for a cure. You must find the sorcerer quickly.”

“Yes, father.” 

~~~

Selene watched with increased agitation over the next few days as more and more people fell victim to the illness and Constantine’s men patrolled through the town, knocking down doors and searching through houses and stables. She had taken to spending as much time as she could with Xinghai and Hana as they searched for a cure, neither one of them able to come up with the answer. 

“It’s getting worse out there and the guards are only spreading more fear,” she observed, as she looked out the window of Drake’s small kitchen. 

He had invited her over for dinner, and she had quickly agreed, wanting a few moments to distract herself from the guilt and worry she had been feeling since all of this began. She could help all of the people infected, but doing so would risk exposing her magic, and Bastien had practically banned her from doing anything about it. The guilt had been eating away at her since the very first body had been discovered. 

“Xinghai and Hana haven’t figured anything out?” he questioned, as he passed her a knife and some vegetables to chop.

“They think it may be stemming from the water supply, but they don’t know anything for sure yet. The guards have to realize that they’re not going to find anything by searching the town, though. Someone powerful enough to do this isn’t going to be sitting around waiting for knights to knock on their door,” she said, bringing the blade down onto the vegetable.

Drake gave her a curious look, and she frantically launched into an explanation. 

“I just mean the person who caused this obviously wouldn’t stick around and leave evidence of what they’ve done. That would just be stup- OW!” she yelped as she looked down to see that she had accidentally cut her finger. 

She dropped the knife, and Drake motioned for her to sit down as he grabbed a handkerchief to wrap around her finger. He kneeled down in front of her as he used the soft fabric to stop the bleeding, his touch gentle against her skin. 

“You were saying something about being stupid?” he asked with a small smirk, causing her to punch his shoulder playfully. 

“This is a really nice handkerchief,” she said, observing where his initials were hand stitched into the fabric. “I’m sorry to get blood on it.”

Drake looked up at her with a soft smile, before rising back to his feet and resuming her abandoned task.

“My sister made it for me.”

The sound of a knight instructing a group of younger guards to search behind a chicken coop interrupted their conversation and caused them both to roll their eyes. 

“I can’t believe I actually used to dream about becoming one of them,” he said quietly, gazing out the window absentmindedly. 

“You did?” Selene questioned.

“I grew up around the knights because of my father. To me they always symbolized strength, the ability to make a difference and do what was right,” he said. 

“Bastien said that he felt the same way,” she said, noticing how similar his words were to Bastien’s from the night she first met him. 

Drake looked down at the chopped vegetables in front of him before turning to face her, a slight blush on his cheeks. 

“Yeah, I guess he’s the one that really taught me that. When I was a kid I wanted to be just like him. He and my father were close, so I spent a lot of time with him after he died.”

“How did your your father die?” she asked quietly.

She had been unsure of asking him in the first place, but in the end her curiosity got the best of her. She knew from Bastien that he had died for Constantine, but he had never heard the full story. 

“He was at the palace delivering some weapons to Bastien and a few other knights when there was an attack on Constantine’s life. He ran to his defense and got injured in the process. It cost him his life,” Drake responded, looking everywhere but at her face.

“I’m sorry, Drake. It sounds like your father was a great man.” 

“He was. Anyway, that’s how I met Liam. Constantine had a funeral for him, and the entire family attended out of respect. We were just kids, but Liam came up to me and said that he was sorry my father had to give his life to save his father. He’s been my best friend ever since,” he concluded, turning away from her again. 

“I think you would make a great knight, Drake,” she said, approaching him from behind and resting her hand on his arm to get him to look at her. 

“I gave up on that a long time ago,” he mumbled.

“I’m serious, Drake. Just because Constantine has them looking for a sorcerer behind chicken coops doesn’t mean that being a knight doesn't give you the power to help people. They just need a leader who actually knows what they’re doing.”

“I don’t have noble blood. Liam’s begged his father more times than I can count. Apparently, it doesn’t matter that I’m one of the best fighters he’s ever met if I’m still a commoner,” he responded with a roll of his eyes. 

Selene raised her brows at him in amusement. 

“Liam’s words, not mine,” he defended, causing her to laugh. 

“That may be Constantine’s rule, but he’s not going to live forever,” she said, leaning her back against the small counter he was facing. 

“God forbid,” Drake said with horror.

Selene slapped his arm playfully. 

“You’d make a really great knight, Drake,” she repeated, her fingers brushing gently against his as he turned his head to look down at her. 

Selene’s heart began to beat rapidly in her chest when she realized how close their faces were. She began to lean in closer, unconsciously pushing herself up to her toes to make herself taller. Their lips were mere inches away from each other when Drake abruptly moved away from her, loudly clearing his throat in the process.

“Dinner is ready. I’m going to go get Savannah,” he said, practically running out of the room. 

It took Selene a minute to realize what had just happened. She had almost kissed Drake. The young woman nervously bit her lip. The guilt and confusion she had been feeling about her feelings for both him and Liam came to the forefront of her mind once again. She was soon pulled out of her troublesome thoughts,however, by the sound of Drake frantically yelling his sister’s name. 

Selene ran into Savannah’s small bedroom to see the woman lying on the floor with Drake leaning over her. Savannah’s skin was the same unsettling shade of blue as all of the other victims. However, the two of them could still hear her shallow breathing, indicating that the sickness had not yet claimed her life. 

“I need to speak to Xinghai. They have to save her,” Drake said, rising to his feet and wiping a few tears from his eyes with determination. 

Selene nodded her head and began following him to the castle, already knowing that Xinghai and Hana didn’t have a resolution, but that this wouldn’t stop him from seeking one out. They had just made it to the castle when they ran into Bastien, who was heading inside after a long day of training new recruits. Selene subtly motioned for him to follow and the three of them headed to the physician’s quarters. Drake threw open the door to their chambers without a second thought, frantically looking around. His entire body was practically vibrating with nerves, and Selene could see that he was actively trying his best to hold back more tears. 

“Xinghai, please tell me you’ve found some kind of cure,” he practically pleaded with the old man, his eyes filled with desperation. 

Xinghai looked between the three of them sadly, confirming what they already knew. 

“I’m sorry, Drake. We haven’t been able to find a solution,” he replied, his voice soft and sympathetic. 

“No! You have to figure something out! I can’t lose her!” he exclaimed, his voice full of grief as he begged for a way to save his sister’s life. 

“Drake, why don’t you have a seat,” Hana said, grabbing a hold of his arm and leading him to the table at the corner of the room.

“I can’t!” he said, angrily slamming his fist down on the wooden surface and causing everyone else in the room to jump. “I can’t just sit down and let he die! There has to be something I can do!” 

Drake abruptly pulled his arm out of her grasp and stormed out of the room. Selene made to run after him but was stopped when she felt a strong hand rest on her shoulder and pull her back. 

“Give him some time,” Bastien said solemnly. 

He nodded respectfully to Xinghai and Hana and rested his hand on Selene’s back, guiding her back to their chambers, where she immediately began pacing around the room, Chance chasing after her heels. She had never seen Drake so distraught before. Even Bastien, who had been so strong and stoic since she met him a few weeks ago seemed to be affected. Of course he was. He had helped raise Savannah and Drake. She couldn’t even imagine what must be going through either of their minds. 

“I know what you’re thinking, Selene. You can’t,” he said, sighing heavily as she sat down at their table. 

“I have to,” she said, stopping her pacing to look at him. 

“Selene,” he began sternly. 

“No! I can’t just sit by idly and let her die, Bas! I have the power to stop this, and I should use it. You know that it’s the right thing to do!” 

“That doesn’t matter right now!” he argued back. 

Bastien had never raised his voice at her before. She was taken aback by it for a moment, but didn’t let it stop her. 

“Have you ever seen Drake like that before? Losing Savannah would break him! He doesn’t deserve that! Hell, losing Savannah would hurt you too! You practically raised her, and I know you love her. So, why are you so content with sitting back and letting her die?” she yelled back.

“Because I can’t lose you either!” he responded, getting to his feet and gripping her shoulders tightly. “I can’t choose between losing you and losing her, Selene.”

Selene didn’t miss the meaning of his words, the implication of how much he cared for her. But, she also couldn’t help but wonder what made her life more valuable than all of the other lives that had been lost because of him forbidding her from saving them. 

“You don’t have to choose,” she said softly, breaking away from his grasp and running up to her room. 

She began immediately searching through her magic book for something that could help, for anything that even slightly resembled something that could help. After a few moments of searching she finally found what she needed. She grabbed her cloak and slipped down the stairs. 

“Where are you going?” Bastien asked, jumping up when she made another appearance. 

Selene looked over at him and placed a forced smile on her face. 

“I’m going to see if I can help Hana and Xinghai,” she lied. 

Well, her words weren’t a complete lie. She was going to see them. 

“Selene, I-” he began. 

“Don’t,” she smoothly interrupted. “I know that you’re doing your best. I know that you’re trying to protect me. These are just difficult circumstances, and it can be frustrating to sit back and do nothing when you have the power to help.”

“I know that this is difficult for you and unfair to the people who have lost their lives, but Constantine-”

“Is the worst?” she offered, causing the other man to chuckle.

“Be careful where you say that. Some people may view that as treason,” he said, seemingly more relaxed now.

“I’ll be back soon. Come on, Chance!” she said, closing the door softly behind her and making her way to the physician’s quarters for the second time that day. 

She gathered all of the herbs she needed from Xinghai and wrapped them in a piece of fabric before fastening the top with a piece of string to form a poultice. She hid the item in the pocket of her cloak and made her way to the small house Drake shared with Savannah. She let herself into the house, knowing that Drake probably wouldn’t answer the door if she knocked, and found the two of them in Savannah’s room. Drake had moved his sister onto her small bed and had brought one of the chairs from their kitchen into the room for him to sit on. Selene watched with sadness as she saw how broken he looked sitting there holding her hand. 

“Drake,” she called softly, causing him to look up at her in surprise.

He wiped his face roughly as she moved to stand next to him, resting a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. Chance jumped up on his legs, causing him to let out a forced laugh and scratch behind the dog’s ear before straightening up in his chair again. He rested his hand over hers and looked back to where Savannah was laying on the bed. 

“I’m sorry this is happening,” she said quietly, to which he only nodded. 

Selene looked around the room anxiously. She needed to get Drake out of the room to plant the poultice, but Drake showed no signs of getting up anytime soon. Savannah’s breathing was shallow, and they both knew that she didn’t have much time left. She walked over to the other side of the bed, and busied herself by tucking the covers closer to Savannah’s body. When she was sure Drake wasn’t looking in her direction, she stared out the bedroom door to the kitchen and used her magic to knock a glass off of the table. Drake jumped up in shock, and Selene pretended to do the same as well.

“What was that?” she asked, playing her part convincingly as Drake made his way out of the room to look for the source of the crash.

Selene quickly placed the poultice under Savannah’s pillow and mumbled the incantation softly under her breath. She watched in silence as a blue mist surrounded the woman’s face momentarily before dissipating. Savannah muttered softly in her sleep, and Selene bit back a smile as Drake re-entered the room. 

“I left a glass too close to the edge of the table. I guess it fell over,” he said, sitting back down on the small chair beside the bed. 

“I should get back to the castle before it gets too late,” she said wanting to get out of there before Savannah woke up. “I hope she feels better soon.”

She called Chance to her side and the two made their way back up to the castle, slipping inside and up to her chambers for the night. She was buzzing with nervous energy for most of the night only getting a few hours of sleep. 

The next morning she was up early, already making her way to Liam’s chambers not long after the sun had risen. 

“Rise and shine!” she called happily as she threw open the drapes covering his windows.

Liam groaned loudly and pulled his pillow over his head to block out the sunlight. 

“Come on, Liam! It’s a gorgeous day!” she said, pulling his covers off of his body. 

“Why are you so happy?” he mumbled, reaching in vain for the covers that she was keeping away from him. 

“I just have a good feeling,” she said with a smile. “Today’s going to be a good day.” 

Liam moved the pillow away from his face and looked over at her in curiosity, his bright blue eyes still squinted as they adjusted to the sunlight. 

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you this cheerful,” he said, finally getting out of bed. 

“I’m always cheerful,” she said, throwing his covers back down onto the now deserted bed as she began to help him dress for the day.

Liam raised his brows at her in amusement. 

“No, you’re not.”

Selene scoffed playfully. 

“Yes, I am!”

“Selene, I like to think that we’re friends, so as your friend, I feel the need to tell you that you’re not a cheerful person. You’re extremely sarcastic and pessimistic,” he said.

“Okay, fine. I’m not usually a cheerful person, but I am happy today. Don’t question it,” she said, bumping him with her hip as she passed by him and made her way back to the bed to straighten out the sheets. 

The two carried on their morning routine as they usually did, everything going off without a hitch. They were just about to separate as Liam went down to check in with the guards that had been searching the town for the sorcerer when one of the knights approached them. 

“Prince Liam, your father requests your presence in the council chambers. He believes they have found the sorcerer responsible,” the man stated, looking at Liam nervously. 

Liam nodded his head solemnly and began making his way to the council chambers, his shoulders tense the entire time. As Selene followed silently, she felt a certain feeling of dread wash over her. The knight did not seem happy that the person who had caused the illness was found. 

She gasped in shock when they entered the room and saw Drake kneeling on the ground, his hands shackled together behind his back. Constantine was looming above him, glaring down at the prisoner in disgust, clutching Selene’s poultice tightly in his hands.

[hotpotrandomfics]

Future AU: A Promise Never Broken (Prequel)

Summary: Jason has been asked to work undercover undermine the operations of Voldemort and his Death Eaters. During this time he meets someone he hadn’t seen since his final days at Hogwarts.

Word Count: 3,190

Jason wondered the streets of London alone. The sky was clouded, and rain fell on the once vibrant city. For the past two years, the Dark Lord had returned along with someone close to a certain Pureblood.

"Dumbledore contact should be here," Jason said as he adjusted his coat. "Someone I know he said."

"So, I see you found this place no problem?" said a deep voice man. He stepped forward from the shadows of a nearby alley. "Fratellino?" The man smelled of mountain air and red wine. He stood two inches taller than Jason. Skin lighter than him, not that same copper Jason carried as well as him. Auburn hair with streaks of brown with a matching five o'clock shadow and green eyes that reflected the water of the Mediterranean.

"Fratello maggiore," Jason turned to face the man. "N-no way. It can't. Jacob? You are-" just then Jason was knocked out from behind. He fell but was caught by Jacob. The scent of his brother was all too familiar to him had eased his mind. "B-brother..."

"Sorry little brother," Jacob held Jason as his brother lost consciousness.  "What the hell is your problem Greyback? This is my brother!"

"Let's just say your brother caused me a lot of trouble during his time at Hogwarts," Greyback smirked in satisfaction at subduing his throne. "Care now, and I might get a little aggressive again."

"Overstep your bounds, and I'll kill you," Jacobs held a stone face. "Let's go before we get caught." With that, the two men and the numb young man disappeared in a cloud of dark smoke and flew through the night sky.

"Jason..." "Meri?"

"Jason..."

"Meri!"

"Jason!"

"Aaaaaaaaah!" Jason screamed as he snapped out of his sleep. He had been laying in a bed. Where was he and how did he get here? He felt his adrenaline rushing as he tried to find his wand in a panic.

"Jason, it's me. Calm down Little Wolf," Jacob placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "You're safe."

"Where am I? Who-" Jason stared in disbelief. "Jacob," he lunged forward into him. Jason had searched and searched for Jacob but to no avail. He started to tear up. "You're alive!"

"It's good to see you, Little Wolf," Jacob stroked the back of Jason's head. He was choked up as well; it had been nearly fourteen years since they've seen each other. His little brother wasn't so little anymore. He wondered what it was like without being around to see him grow. Jacob kept up to date through Dumbledore but could only get so much. "You must have had it rough, huh?"

"It has been," Jason pulled away, "I've been through a lot and not simply just searching for you."

"I can only imagine," Jacob sighed then smiled softly at Jason. "I bet you are wondering a lot of things as well since your mind doesn't rest much."

"As always. Though I am happy to see you I need answers," Jason crossed his arms trying to make a serious face despite his joy his brother is alive. "So go on and explain."

Jacob ran his hand along his chin as began regaling Jason in all that he'd gone through. After being expelled from Hogwarts, Jacob had been traveling throughout Europe helping those in need while learning more about curses. He and Dumbledore kept in contact secretly while Jacob searched for leads on Voldemorts Death Eaters on his behalf. One such Arthur Queen had recruited Jacob to join the cause of the Dark Lord. Jacob has been gathering cursed objects and making them of use for the coming battles. But he has leaked the information to the Order of the Phoenix at critical moments as not to blow his cover. Something Jacob has done will remain with him as he had to make hard choices.

"It hasn't been easy Little Wolf," Jacob looked down in disappointment and felt the pain of his regrets hitting him worse than any curse. "I don't know if you can understand this pain and I understand if you hate me."

"I won't deny that I'm angry," Jason looked out the window of the room they were in. "I would have the right mine to hit you some would say. Mama. Papa. They would flip it worse than me, but I am happy your alive." He turned to look at his brother with the smile that brightens the room in the darkest times. "So, tell me why am I here?"

As if on cue, a man stepped through the door. He wore a suit in black with skin as pale as snow with eyes of amber.

"I am Arthur Queen, and your brother believes you will be of help to us," Arthur gestured to Jason with a creepie grin. "As an assassin."

"A what?!"

"Assassin. A murderer of an important person in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons."

"I know what it means but why would I be an assassin?" Jason stood from the bed and looked at the man. "What reason will I need to do such things?"

"Simple, secure the world for the Dark Lord as you eliminate all who stand in his way. From what Greyback has told me you're a werewolf sired by him, and you are well known for your adaptability in difficult situations." Arthur raised his hand to hold his chin. "Remarkable if you ask me, but if you refuse, you will die. All you love will burn before your eyes. So this is not a question. It's an ultimatum."

"You filthy little-!"

"Jason!" Jacob called him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "This is for the best."

"Well?" Queen smirked and pointed his wand at Jacob. "I can start with him since you two have recently reunited. Crucio!"

Jacob then collapsed in agony scream as his muscle fibers contracted. His screams echoed through the manner they were in while Jason watched in horror while Arthur snickered at Jacobs's pain.

"Stop it! I'll do it! Just leave him alone!" Jason screamed at the man. "Very well," Arthur snickered. "You will be under Greyback and follow his every order and if you disobey you and your brother will die. Along with your line."

Jason helped up Jacob and held him close and nodded despite the look of resentment in his eyes. "You have. My allegiance."

A week later, Jason was back in London with the Greybacks group of Death Eaters searching the alleyways with them for their target. This would be his first test as a Death Eater and failure wasn't an option. He searched through the narrow alleys and following the sounds of panicked footsteps. Jason followed closely till he founded the mark trapped without any means of escape.

"No no no no no!" the man panicked as he turns only to see his killer-to-be behind him. "You are..."

"I'll give you one chance to fight back. I won't kill a man without giving him the chance to fight back," Jason drew his wand. "Prepare yourself."

"I won't go easy because you're a child," the man drew his wand and looked at him with fear.

"Not after today."

"Expelliarmus!"

Jason brushed the spell off like it was nothing as he cast his Expelliarmus in response.

"Ah!" the man winced as his wand flew out of his hand. "Please, don't do this. You don't understand."

"I do."

"You and your sick Death Eaters think the Dark Lord will win this war?" the man looked at Jason in disgust. "The Chosen One will triumph."

"By Merlin may it be so," Jason lifted his wand looking into the man's eyes. "Avada Kedvara!" He shouted as the green, and a blinding light filled the alley followed by the screams of the man. "Requiescat in pace," Jason muttered as he walked over and pulled a flower from his coat, placing it down next to the man.

"Impressive," said Greyback as he and his pack appeared behind Jason. "A tad bit grandiose with the flower but you have a style for this Aurelius De Leone." He walked over to Jason and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Now, let's be off before the Ministry appears."

Jason and Greybacks group apparated back to their hideout. A large condo was looking over the city of London. Waiting at the dinner table was Jacob and Arthur having a heated debate.

"You honestly think that plan will work?!" Jacob was slamming his fist into the table while cursing Arthur out in Italian.

"Well it would work-" he looked at Jason and smirked. "Welcome back. I trust the task went well? Judging by your expression I take it did."

"Well he did," Fenrir laughed slapping his back. "Toyed with his prey before the kill. It was a good show."

Fenrir explained to them the events of Jason's first successful hit. He was going on and on the look of terror on the man's face. The sensation of this made Jason walk off before Arthur called him.

"You better remember well boy, you are one of us now," Arthur smirked as he gestured for Jason to come over to him to which he followed.

"Guess so," Jason's stomach was flipping nonstop making him nauseous.

"Give me your arm," Arthur held his hand out.

Jason followed obediently giving him his left arm.

"Now to mark you," Arthur pulled Jason's sleeve up and placed his wand against it, branding Jason with the symbol of the Death Eaters. "Welcome youngblood. We have your next target but for now, go rest, and we'll call you. You have much work ahead boy."

Jason nodded and walked off to the room he was assigned. He removed his cloak and placed his wand on the nightstand and looked out his window as the rain clung to it.

"What have I-," he whimpered walking into his bathroom and stepping into his shower as his realization came slamming hard than any dragon tail could hit. "Dammit. Dammit! Dammit!" he muttered as he fell to his knees weeping in frustration. How could he take a life? The man could have had a family. A wife. Kids. Friends. The thoughts swam through his head as he sat in his shower, tucking his legs in and holding them close. Jason thought what would his friends think. What would Merula think?

"Jason?" Jacob knocked on the door. "Are you okay?"

Jason sat there lost in his thoughts. Oblivious to his surroundings.

"I left your dinner on the desk. If you need me, I'm a here little brother," that Jacob stepped out and walked out of Jason's room. He sat outside patiently waiting to hear anything from him. "Oh fratellino."

Jason stepped out of his shower and didn't bother to dry off. He tossed on his sleeping pants and sat on the edge of his bed looking out the window. If this was what he had to do to save the world then the world was better off not being safe. But, he had to this. If not him then who? If not now then when? He took hold of his necklace and looked at it remembering Merula. The one person who saw Jason and understood him. He was her muse and the one person he treasured deeply. He hoped she was safe and if he could at least keep tabs on her and his friends that would help ease him. Jason knew his friends wouldn't submit to Voldemort's rule and were to die. He wouldn't let that happened even if it cost him his life for all of them to be safe. For now, Jason needed to rest if he could get at all that is. He laid down closing his eyes and listened to the rain as his thoughts faded to silence. "Jason," said a familiar voice.

"Meri?"

"You are a monster!"

"No, I'm not! Meri, please let me explain!"

"How did I ever love you?" Merula said, turning her back to him and walking away.

"Meri, don't leave me!" he tried to reach for her only to see her dead at his feet. "No! Meri!"

"Monster. Murder. Killer." said the collected voices of all of his friends.

"No! I am not a murderer!" Jason shouted looking down at his hands seeing them drenched in blood. "No, I didn't-"

Just then a monsoon of blood came rushing toward Jason, covering him and not allowing him to break the surface till it through him of the edge of a cliff. He screamed as he fell into the mouth of a snake.

"You're my servant," said the voice of the Dark Lord.

"Aaaaaaaaaah!" Jason woke up drenched in sweat and shaking violently as thunder outside reflected his inner turmoil. "Meri," he whimpered till he started to cry again. "I didn't do it."

"Jason?!" Jacob barged into the room and looked at his little brother distraught. "Are you okay?" he walked over to his bedside sitting next to him. "Hey hey hey," he placed his hand on his shoulder, "I'm here."

"I-," he tried to find the words to explain. Jason felt like this only when he lived with his father. He was not able to find the words. "K-killed. I killed," he muttered as he stared down at his hands. "Jacob I-"

"Shhh, it's okay Jason," Jacob pulled his brother close and stroked his hair like their mother used to do when they were scared. "Who's Meri? You mumbled her name so many times through the night."

"She's l'amore della mia vita," he muttered.

"Oh? Does my little brother have a love? She pretty?" Jacob teased playfully.

"The most beautiful woman I've ever seen," Jason gave a small smile. "A blessing."

"Tell me about her," Jacob looked down at him.

Jason nodded and began talking about Merula. From their first years as enemies to becoming lovers later on. He mentioned the bullying he suffered which infuriated Jacob but was calmed when Jason explained it was her only know outlet for the sorrow and pain she held. Jason said their first big date after the school year of their fifth year. Merula and Jason were to meet to go to a muggle amusement park. The date was his idea as he wanted to make memories that would last a lifetime. So began their little date tradition of going to the amusement park at the end of the school year. He laughed when recalling how Merula freaked out on a rollercoaster. It was those experiences with her that made him feel eased.

"And then she spat her lemonade all over my face!" Jason giggled wiping a tear away.

"Oh, my lord, Jason, how do you deal with that?" Jacob was dying of laughter.

"I love her," Jason sighed and his smile slowly faded. "Hey, Jacob. Can I ask a favor?"

"Yes?" Jacob's expression turned more serious. "Anything for you Little Wolf."

"I need you to help build an information network. I want to keep tabs on Merula and friends. I know they will oppose the Dark Lord, so I want to protect them and make sure they're safe."

"Might be risky but I know you love these friends like family."

"They are family to me, and I know they'd love you like family too," Jason smiled at his older brother.

"Well when you put it like that," Jacob smirked at him. "Okay. I will help you, little brother. We got family to protect."

After that night, Jason and Jacob built a network of resources and information that was used to help the Order as well as Jason's protection of his friends. For two years he kept tabs on everyone without appearing in front of them physically. Jason slowly collected his friends and set them in safe houses throughout all of the UK. All could contact him at a moment's notice or switch to a different safe house if one became compromised. He covered their tracks by faking each of their deaths as assassinations. To do this Jason made his marks drinking Polyjuice after eliminating them. It made him feel sick with everyone he did it to. As though as if he killed his friends. Clever, but sickening. By the end of this, he hoped he could repent for his choices.

"Jason!" Jacob ran into his room as Jason was in the middle of reading a book. "Bad news, Rowan, Penny, Tulip, and Merula are in danger. Greyback and his men are after them. Knockturn Alley!"

Jason stood up and grabbed his coat running out followed by Jacob as they made their way to the balcony.

"Where do you think you're going?" Arthur said appearing behind the two brothers. "I heard your little screaming Jacob. Saving lives of those who would defy the Dark Lord? Can't say I am disappointed, but I am, and that's unfortunate for you." He drew his wand. "Now get back inside, or I am going to kill you both."

"Should we?" Jacob smirked at his little brother.

"We never much listened to papa so..." Jason smirked back at Jacob.

The two drew their wands and used Depulso on Arthur sending him flying into the condo. Knocking him out."

"I'll go get the gang, you go on ahead and save your girlfriend," Jacob grabbed his broom and flew off.

Jason followed Jacobs's lead flying off on a broom and cast Bombarda Maximum setting it ablaze. He dreaded this day but was equally pleased knowing he was free from the Death Eaters now his cover is blown. Jason raced through the skies until he reached Knockturn Alley. A few minutes later, he was walking through the dark corners sniffing the air. Being a werewolf did have its perks to say the least. He heard screams in the distance and made his way to them. Climbing over the rooftops and listening carefully.

"Jason!" shouted a voice from behind. "Jacob gave us the message."

"Tonks," Jason smirked as his friends apparated one by one. "Guys, I'm sorry I got to pull you into this, but I need you all.

"Hey, you've protected us for the past two years," Bill laughed as he patted Jason's back. "We are in your debt, and we don't have time to talk."

"You're right," Jason gestured for his friends to follow him as they followed the sounds of explosions and lights of spells.

Just then they came upon the scene before them: Fenrir Greyback and his goons holding Tulip, Penny, Rowan, and Merula captive. Fenrir was reading to kill Merula until Jason acted on his plan to save his friends and his lover.

"Incendio,"  shouted a large man setting one Death Eater ablaze.

"Bombarda," shouted two feminine voices sending half of the enemy into a wall.

"What is going on?!" shouted Greyback.

"A rescue. Confringo," said Jason sending Greyback flying back as he stood in front of Merula as her shield.

Despite what he's done, Jason will always come and save those he loves. Even it means bearing his sins and collecting more. For his friends and Merula, he would bear it all no matter what even if it cost him his soul.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: “A New Approach”

A friend of mine has a van that she calls the Fun Bus. Oh that’s cute, I thought. I should chuck that into a recap sometime. “All aboard the RWBY Fun Bus!” Except my fun levels are ehhh right now, so how about we just don’t.

In fact, let’s be totally up front about things and get the major positives out of the way:

The animation this volume is absolutely stunning holy shit

I would once again die for James Ironwood. All hail the Hug King

Excellent introduction for Tyrian and Watts. I love feeling like the villains are actually dangerous again

The rest? I’ve got some things to say.

We open on Ruby looking appropriately downtrodden over their circumstances. Getting carted off in an Atlas police craft and all that. We get a pan across each side of the airship with the group looking angry (Yang) or defeated (everyone else)... with the exception of Nora, who is trying to eat through her bonds. I’m well aware that I’m nit-picking at this point, but for once I’d like the serious moments to remain serious in this show. Given her reaction to Salem, Kuroyuri, etc. we’re all well aware by now that Nora is more than just the comic relief. Undermining the others’ reactions with her making dog noises was an early cue that the writers weren’t going to treat the group’s arrest earnestly. To say nothing of the disservice it does to her character. 

Actually, there were a lot of coincidental dog references in this scene. Nora’s growling. Referring to the Ace-Ops as Ironwood’s “personal attack dogs.” Deducing that he must have a “bone to pick” with them. Obviously this all means precisely nothing. What I want it to mean is that Zwei will arrive in another package courtesy of Tai, wondering how his kids are doing after one ran off and the other went to find her.

(Seriously though, does everyone remember Volume Five’s ending with Raven? Heaven only knows when that will become relevant again.)

While Nora continues to try and eat metal like a rabid animal, Jaune expresses disbelief that the Ace-Ops “took us out like it was nothing.” Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me how often the group is surprised by other people being stronger than them. Like they’re not the youngest and least trained in a world of professional huntsmen. Rather than acknowledging their need for improvement though---callback to Ruby’s “But we already know how to fight” anyone?---Weiss frames it as an exceptionalism intrinsic to her city. “Welcome to Atlas.” You know, the same city she quickly agreed to steal from and then draw the attention of the guards by giving a racist civilian what-for. The speed with which the show flip-flops between ‘We should fear this city’ and ‘But we shouldn’t take any actual precautions’ is pretty impressive.

All of which is made weirder by Weiss’ next line to the other prisoner locked up with them: “They’re not that big of a deal.” So... which is it, Weiss? Are the Ace-Ops Ironwood’s elites who can obviously take out a group of nine in seconds flat? Or are they worth scoffing and rolling your eyes at? Because you had a rather different opinion literally seconds ago. She does the same thing when the prisoner uses the term “tyranny” to describe the situation in Mantle. She claims now that the label is a “bit much” when before the whole group decided not to approach Ironwood precisely because of how tyrannical he appeared. I swear, good chunks of the dialogue just functions as openings for the plot---let the random prisoner explain all the horrors of this city!---rather than something the character in question would actually say.

But I’m harping. We learn a bit more about Hill and her “Happy Huntresses,” clearly a parallel to Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. I was actually surprised to learn that she’s a full-on freedom fighter, just based on her posters last episode. The number of them and their professional look felt more like Atlas’ brand of propaganda. Big brother sister is watching you and all that. Then again, we also learn that Hill is gunning for a seat on the council, so it sounds like she’s not an ally of Ironwood’s plotting betrayal, and not a radical entirely removed from him either. We’ll have to wait and see precisely where she falls in this divide between Atlas and Mantle.

That fight is treated rather cheaply by the writing though. In this episode at least. Despite providing numerous looks at how horrible things are for the citizens here, this prisoner, currently representing that fight against the elite, is depicted as an absolute buffoon. He’s not engaging in an important, glorious battle for human rights. He just chucked a brick at an airship. He’s over the top, overly passionate, crazed enough that the group is looking away as he desperately tries to convince the guards up front that these things are important. The thing is? He’s right. But the writing doesn’t encourage us to treat his cause with respect, not when he’s bouncing off the walls and yelling like a conspiracy theorist. Actually, that’s the best comparison I can think of here. It’s like if someone laying out 100% real issues with climate change were written like a crack-pot loner who believes in aliens. That’s this guy.

We’re shown again that literally everyone recognizes Weiss Schnee---does no one else in all of Remnant have white hair?---before Jaune and a few others get distracted by how pretty the view is outside. Qrow commented earlier that they were no doubt going to jail.

Spoiler! It’s not jail.

It’s Atlas Academy, animated in a truly stunning design that reminds me of Weiss’ trip to the CTV tower to contact her dad. Looking back, that skyscraper-esque building probably made her anxious for reasons outside of just the call.

“I guess we will be seeing the General,” Ruby says because yeah, why would we have the group experiencing one iota of punishment before being handed the solution to their current predicament? 

Look, anyone who follows these recaps is well aware of my feelings towards the airship debacle. I said last week that I wanted the writing to treat the group’s horrific mistakes and criminal activities seriously, but I wasn’t overly hopeful. I was right not to be. From now until the conversation about Salem, the ‘protagonists can do no wrong’ mindset that drove Volume Six is pulled out again in full force.

First, Winter sees the group in handcuffs and responds with, “You have ten seconds to take those off before I start hurting you.” Which is completely out of character to me. Does Winter adore Weiss? Without a doubt. But Winter is also a stickler for protocol and rules. This is the women who threatened to remove Qrow’s tongue over a few vague, anti-Atlas statements. She is all about devotion to her Kingdom. So how should she react when she sees a group of kids being formally brought in for charges? I don’t know, maybe find out what’s going on before demanding an immediate release? Here, Winter prioritizes the emotional assumption that Weiss and her friends are perfectly innocent as opposed to trusting that they’re in handcuffs for a reason. Which they are. Combine that with the humor of the guards scrambling to obey her with more silly sound effects and it’s once again clear that the group’s arrest was never going to be taken seriously.

Things get so much worse though. Ironwood starts apologizing to them, also working under the assumption that this was all some sort of silly mistake. Of course you shouldn’t be in handcuffs. You’re the good guys! Yang and a few others have the gall to be haughty here (yeah, how dare you arrest us after we committed multiple crimes) and for a moment I think all of this will actually amount to something when Ironwood laughs and says, “We assumed [the ship] was stolen!”

Uh yeah, goes Ruby. It... was?

Which results in a brief moment of shock and about three seconds of anger from Winter... and then that’s it. That’s all we get. Weiss interrupts her with, “I’m sorry I worried you, but we did what we had to do” which, no?? Okay first off, worrying Winter is not the issue here. She’s been worried for literally those three seconds and nothing more. Second, as I’ve established numerous times in the past, they did not “do what they had to do.” Absolutely nothing in Argus forced their hand to the point where stealing military property, fighting Cordovin, drawing that grimm, and then deliberately hiding out from Atlas authorities was justified. Why doesn’t Winter or Ironwood challenge them on this? Why the hell would two military personnel accept at face value that committing all of these crimes was necessary? Imagine your younger sister steals a car (which is in no way comparable to an Atlas airship, but let’s run with it). She and her friends then get caught by the neighbor they stole it from, started a fight instead of giving it back, endangered a bunch of other people on the road, got the police involved, and hid out until they were finally arrested. Then at the police station big sister gets angry at the officers for daring to book you and is pacified with a hug. Don’t worry, dear. I know there’s no possible way you could be in the wrong here. No reason to acknowledge, let alone address, why you thought those were acceptable actions in the first place.

Qrow is briefly called out for letting this happen, but like Maria’s comment last episode about the group being incapable of keeping a low profile, he shrugs it off with a joke. “You try stopping these kids when they have their mind set on something.” You know what these ‘jokes’ remind me of? Privilege. Stuff like “Boys will be boys ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” where people accept that change is impossible, so why would we bother calling anyone out on their mistakes? Boys are just hardwired to hurt girls and call it love. Teens are just hardwired to steal airships and call it necessary. You know what they’re like. Putting your foot down is useless because that’s just how they naturally function... and we’re all going to ignore the fact that no one else could get away with this shit. They’re the special ones exempt from repercussions. There’s a reason why both both Oscar and Ruby smile here. They know they’re not in trouble. 

What all of this boils down to is that the group is above both the law and basic decency. That’s what Cordovin, Ironwood, Winter, and the writing all tell us. It doesn’t matter how many people you endanger. What you steal. What you break in order to accomplish that. Or how long you might try to hide what you’ve done. You’re you, a nebulous acceptance that you’re somehow above everyone and everything. These kids are never going to learn anything because each time they make a mistake---even massive mistakes that put a whole city in danger---they’re rewarded with smiles and a blanket acceptance that they did what they had to do. That is beyond frustrating to me. For the love of god, let them face an actual consequence for once.

It’s not going to happen though. Even the Ace-Ops apologize for doing their job (and treat Ruby like some sort of celebrity in the process). RWBYJNRQO is painted as victims for suffering the indignity of arrest... when they did numerous things they should have been arrested for. I particularly love Weiss’, “You could have asked us some questions first.” Yes, because everyone should be in the habit of taking a criminal’s word at face value and then letting them go when they say, “I’m innocent.” Rather than acknowledging any of this, the writing has the Ace-Ops go out of their way to emphasize how special the group is. You’re kids, but only technically. You’re students, but who cares. You’re as good as us, regardless of training or qualifications. That fact remains that the group did in fact do everything they were accused of and more, something that should generate reflection on whether they’re up for being paired with professionals, rather than an insistence that they’re automatically on par with these adults who complete their missions in a legal, safe manner. If that Argus fight gets them hugs and cool new weaponry, I shudder to think what else the group can not only get away with, but be rewarded for.

Once everyone blindly bypasses one of the biggest conflicts of Volume Six, we hit on the other divisive choice this episode: Ruby lying to Ironwood about Ozpin and the relic.

Okay. I’m going to be as clear as I can here: Ruby is being a massive hypocrite. That’s it. That’s the situation. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the fandom’s reaction, and yet I somehow still was. In just a few hours I’ve seen at least twenty posts detailing how Ruby is not a hypocrite because her situation is totally different from Ozpin’s. HE can’t keep secrets. SHE can. Which is the definition of hypocrisy: the group holding someone to a moral standard that they themselves will not strive for. Are there differences between telling the group about Salem and telling Ironwood about Salem? Yes, but the decision of whether or not to tell them derives from the exact same concerns:

Ozpin: I don’t know if I should tell these kids about Salem. I don’t know if I can fully trust them. I worry that admitting the relic still has questions will result in them using one irresponsibly.

Ruby: I don’t know if I should tell Ironwood about Salem. I don’t know if we can fully trust him. I worry that admitting the relic still has a question left will result in him using it irresponsibly.

And everyone is in on it. During the elevator ride up they all want to know what Ruby will say, meaning that they’re ready and willing to lie the moment she decides that’s best. “We’ll follow your lead,” Blake says. No one pipes up with, “Hey. Why are we considering lying to Ironwood when we decided that there’s no moral justification for keeping secrets like that? Especially from an ally involved in this fight?” Except, the group obviously never decided that. Jaune was happy to keep his secret back at Beacon. Blake too. Yang is still withholding info about the Spring Maiden. They’re all perfectly happy to lie provided they’re the ones doing the lying. Someone else doing that to them though? Omg, how dare you. 

That’s hypocrisy.

(As a side note: good lord this group is so astoundingly bad at fighting a strategic war. They announce that they should be careful about what they say to Ironwood while two of Ironwood’s guards are in the elevator with them. This is a needless conversation! No one has to establish that they’ll follow Ruby’s lead! But yes, let’s talk about our plans to withhold information from the General while two of his men are very obviously listening in. We even get a shot of one guard looking over at that little tid-bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if this came back to bite them in the form of:

Guard, who I am naming Brad: “Sir, I thought you should be aware... the prisoners that just left? I overheard them discussing whether or not they would tell you something.”

Ironwood: “What? But I thought we trusted one another... did they say what this something was?”

Brad: “No, sir. They just agreed to be careful about what they said in front of you. They clearly intended to hide something though.”

Ironwood. “Huh. Now that I think about it, Ruby did interrupt Oscar when he was about to say something. And she was awfully nervous about it.”

Brad: “Sounds suspicious, sir. I’d look into it.”

Ironwood: “Right you are, Brad. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll be sure you get a hefty bonus at the holiday party.”

Brad: “Thank you, sir! My husband and I appreciate it.”

Gay guards aside, this is why Ozpin was right to be cautious. This group is too hot-headed, too immature, and often too plain dense to keep world-shattering secrets safe. This moment gets put up alongside Yang’s demand that Ozpin spill all his top-secret info while the random old woman they picked up 30 seconds ago watches. They just don’t think.)

In short, they are in the same exact situation as Ozpin. Weighing truth against potential repercussions. The fact that said repercussions vary in severity---a group of teens betraying him and/or caving under the pressure vs. a potential dictator betraying them and/or caving under pressure---doesn’t matter. They’re both really bad potential outcomes and both parties are right to be cautious. So yes, I agree with Ruby’s hesitance. It’s the smart thing to do. What I don’t agree with is the characters’ and the fandom’s insistence that Ozpin is not likewise smart for doing the exact same thing. Now that Ruby has made this choice she’d better damn well acknowledge her own hypocrisy. If the writing doesn’t give us a serious moment in which the group reconsiders their actions against Ozpin in light of their recent choices, then the ‘protagonists can do no wrong’ mindset has irrevocably damaged this show. Because you can’t have Ruby making the exact same choices her mentor made and not change her perspective now that she’s had the chance to walk in his shoes. “Oh wow. Sometimes you do want to play information close to your chest. Maybe we were wrong to respond so viciously to Ozpin’s secrecy when I literally just did the exact same thing to someone else. I get it now.”

All that being said, I’d actually argue that Ironwood is in a more justified position to have that information. He’s a chosen member of Ozpin’s inner circle. Ozpin never got the chance to vet this group. He’s a fully fledged huntsmen in charge of an entire Kingdom. They’re a bunch of half-trained kids. Checking in on/taking the relic to Atlas does not require knowing about Salem’s immortality. Enacting a plan to tell the whole world about her really, really does.

Because what else is Ironwood’s end game here? The only way this plan makes any sense is if he believes that Salem is mortal. Ozpin may have failed to kill her, but if we get an entire world to attack her at once we’re bound to win! This plan straight up falls apart when you realize that defeating Salem is not a matter of more manpower. Salem’s immortality is the Achilles’ heel of this scheme, whereas fighting the good fight is something the group signed up for right from the start. Not that Ironwood’s plan is a great one, even if it were viable. I’m sorry, but plunging a whole world into despair---something that draws literal monsters out of the woodwork---is a pretty terrible idea. Ironwood’s army can’t be everywhere at once and an announcement of that proportion would cause an untold amount of death and destruction. I can sort of get Ironwood’s sacrificial perspective. Deal with the fallout because the end result (finally defeating Salem) will be worth it. “Trying to hide the truth from the world will eventually kill us all,” he says, except hiding the truth hasn’t limited humanity in the way he assumes it has. It has allowed humanity to live in peace while a select few try to figure out how to kill an immortal woman.

...speaking of, how has Ironwood not realized Salem immortality? This remains a basic if/then construction of the story that blows my mind whenever people fail to pass it. “If Ozpin has fought Salem for over a thousand years, then Salem is either immortal or reincarnating like he does.” Because nothing else is possible! I mean, maybe Ironwood does know about her immortality and he intends his plan to work for reasons I can’t fathom right now, but it’s looking really unlikely after this episode. It just astounds me that we haven’t had a single character go, “Of course she’s immortal. Why is that surprising to everyone?”

Anyway, I’ve gotten horrendously off topic plot-wise. We learn that Penny and Winter now know about the relics and Maidens---something that worries me a bit because, as a piece of technology, Penny is potentially hackable. Especially with Watts on the loose. The Ace-Ops know as well. We also learn that they’ve already found the Winter Maiden who, according to Qrow, is “not exactly a spring chicken.” Huh. Another important piece of information that wasn’t blithely announced because people naturally work on a need-to-know basis... Sorry. Not diving back into the salt. That comment does actually intrigue me though. We know the powers can only pass to young women, so it’s a cool setup to present us with someone who has actually survived with that power for most of her life. I’m also eager to know whether Winter is set up to be the next Maiden. “Young” is a subjective marker and one of the criticisms fans have leveled at Ozpin is the fact that he put that pressure on Pyrrha instead of asking an older, fully trained huntress to be the Fall Maiden. Making Winter the next Maiden will lend support to that criticism. Ozpin could have chosen someone older, an actual adult, and actively chose to give it to a teen. As opposed to the assumption I’ve always worked under: those like Glynda and Winter are now too old. We’ll have to see.

Outside of the Salem part of the plan, I think making Amity Arena into a satellite is an excellent idea. Provided grimm like the Nevermore really can’t reach it. It’s actually cool to see how our real life, kind of boring tech makes its way into a sci-fi/fantasy series.

And while all this stuff is getting revealed we see how utterly thrilled Ironwood is to have them all back. To be blunt: I adore this characterization. I want this to be real. Not only because it’s a breath of fresh air to have someone acting so loving and optimistic  towards everyone---He acknowledges Ozpin’s existence! Look at that smile! Kneeling down!---but also because it would be an excellent subversion of the premier’s setup. Dictator-y military figures buckling under paranoia is out. Tired but loving military figures making mistakes they’re willing to fix is in. That hug with Qrow? It added ten years to my life. Tender moments between two stoic guys will carry me through these cold winter months.

But (there’s always a “but”...) I’m not willing to buy into this characterization just yet. Not only because Ruby herself obviously isn’t ready to trust it. Not only because this is a story and we expect conflicts in the form of twists and surprises. Not even because there are moments where our trio feels vaguely threatening, stationed perfectly behind that desk, separated from the rest of the group.

No, I’m  hesitating because this whole encounters feels... staged. Let’s review the series of events from Ironwood’s perspective:

You learn that one of your airships has been stolen

Instead of sending some everyday guards like the situation calls for, you send out your most elite group to take care of this issue

They immediately confiscate the relic, demonstrating a) that they know it’s important (they recognize it as a relic) while likewise b) not showing any surprise that one of the four, magical objects in the world just happened to turn up among these random teens

They bring the relic to you

Someone orders the pilots to bring RWBYJNRQO to Atlas Academy, not jail

You then act surprised when the group suddenly arrives

Which, under the circumstances, makes no sense to me. Even if Ironwood had no idea who stole the airship (I’d have expected Cordovin to have contacted him about the distinctive group heading his way...), he would have figured it out the moment the Ace-Ops walked in with a relic in their possession. Someone obviously gave the order for them to bypass jail and come straight to him. Basically, Ironwood is expecting them. Ironwood set up the arrest and everything attached to it. The surprise at their arrival, the fawning over their treatment, really over the top emphasis on trusting each other... This whole thing feels fishy to me considering that he had to have known it was all happening in the first place. It feels like a man crafting a situation where he can look approachable and kindly, arriving like a savior and endearing the group to him. Remember who got you out of those bonds? Huh? Huh? Even the choice to give Ruby the relic back. Do I need to point out how incredibly stupid that is? Ironwood isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t give an invaluable, magical object back to a 17yo unless he had another, good reason for doing so; unless the need to make Ruby and her followers blindly trust him outweighs the risk the relic is in while she carries it.

I mean... seriously. The entire point of coming to Atlas was to put the relic in a safe place. And then Ironwood decides that carrying it around on the streets is somehow better than locking it up in the vault? When Ruby and everyone else just got beat by the Ace-Ops in about five seconds flat? Someone could take the relic off them in a heartbeat! It doesn’t even need to be a main villain. Some stronger-than-average goons could manage it under the right circumstances and a bit of luck. Look at this bright, shiny thing we can sell for quick lien. No, I have to believe Ironwood has an ulterior motive here. As much as I want him to genuinely be what he presents himself as---the embodiment of our opening, “When we trust in love and open up our eyes”---a lot of this just doesn’t fit.

(Then again... it’s RWBY. And the writers are clearly still working with protagonist vision goggles. Maybe Ironwood really does think Ruby keeping the relic is the best option here. In which case he’s just a fool.)

All of which, notably, still keeps our group from tackling the core, ethical issue: why they want to fight Salem when they think it’s impossible. They’re ignoring that question by keeping the truth from Ironwood. The plot avoided them completing their mission by having them get the relic back. We’re just existing in perpetual limbo here.

Which finally brings me to Penny. The end of this episode has her leading the group on an exhausting tour of Atlas Academy, the exact sort of bubbly, silly, casual interaction we got with her in the early volumes. Last week when I pointed out how inappropriate everyone’s reactions were to finding out a friend is back from the dead, a lot of people commented that we’d get to the emotional stuff later. Or going so far as to claim that the group, Ruby in particular, is suffering from a delayed reaction. Except we didn’t see that. There’s a difference between a setup and a non-evidence based assumption that what we want to watch will eventually end up on screen. There was no setup for a delayed reaction. No Ruby holding back tears. Or a closeup on someone grappling with an emotion. Or someone else trying to say something before they were cut off by the sirens. All of those imply that an emotion exists but, since we don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with it now, we’ll come back to it later. That wasn’t the case last week. Every emotion was clear and complete, no variation in regards to the overall chill acceptance of Penny’s resurrection. Now, we’ve seen that trend continue. Ruby doesn’t stop in shock when Penny appears in the Academy hall. We’re given no indication that anyone is distracted by her while discussing business, in the way one might be when a friend and ally is unexpectedly back in your life. When she’s left alone with them, there’s nothing except the montage of exhausted tourism and Ruby’s demands to know where they’re sleeping. Basically, I think this is it. Sure, maybe later down the line---maybe even next week---Ruby will have a heart-to-heart with Penny, but by that point it’ll be too late to feel emotionally fulfilling. We’ve already seen their first meeting, a surprise encounter, doing business, and hanging out together, none of which acknowledges her status as a miracle. Hell, in this episode at least, no one even cares that she knows about relics and Maidens now. Penny has never been closer to the group, but she’s still being treated primarily as the comic relief.

As @valasania-the-pale​  pointed out to me, we also have the question of when Penny was rebuilt. Doesn’t anyone, at the very least Ruby, care that their friend was brought back and no one thought to tell them about it? Would Ironwood, Pietro, and Penny herself have just let them live with her death indefinitely? It’s a pretty messed up situation when you think about it. A fantastic setup in my opinion, but one that Rooster Teeth isn’t equipped to handle well. Like with so much of RWBY, there’s great potential and very little follow-through.

At least Watts and Tyrian were introduced appropriately. We got confirmation that Watts helped build the Atlas code and now controls it at his whim, causing crashes and powering down security cameras. It’s the perfect threat for a city almost entirely reliant on its technology. Even down to, as said, an ally like Penny who knows all these secrets. Hell, Winter’s comment about the group having access to Atlas’ best weaponry while they’re here is worrisome. What if their upgrades end up hackable as well?

Tyrian, meanwhile, is still Tyrian. That blood pool was a great shot in my opinion. Wonderful creep factor as he sets off into the city. “I suppose we all have our talents” indeed.

Obviously then, there’s a lot going on. A lot to cover and, on my end, continually dwindling hopes that RWBY will cover it well. I can’t be too excited about the group lying when we 100% bypassed their choices last volume. If the show isn’t willing to call them out on those mistakes, I doubt they’ll be willing to call them out on this one either. I’m preparing myself to watch precisely what we’re getting in the fandom right now: an insistence that Ruby is wonderful for keeping her secrets while further demonizing Ozpin for keeping his. Because that’s where we’ve been for the past fifteen episodes: perpetually insisting that everything the group does is, by default, heroic. Logic and hypocrisy aside. 

But we’ll have to see.

Until next week 💜

Minor Things of Note

1. Please pay attention to precisely how many long, wide, and aerial shots we get throughout the episode. This is what happens when your main cast is made up of twelve people all working in the same place. Plus six more including Maria and the Ace-Ops. That’s far, far too many characters.

2. I really love how the Ace-Ops’ tail gives away how excited he is. That was adorable.

3. Despite my enjoyment at Ironwood’s obvious joy over seeing Ozpin... morally this is so fucked up for Oscar. He’s introduced by Qrow as, “the next Ozpin,” essentially undermining his identity as his own person (note how massively uncomfortable his body language is in this moment). Ironwood then immediately starts speaking to him as Ozpin, not at all interested in the kid he’s housed in. If he even understands that Oscar is a separate person. We should all keep in mind that just a few days ago Qrow told Oscar to stop thinking of himself as an individual. Ruby agreed with him via her silence. The whole group was happy-go-lucky when Oscar announced that he’s resigned himself to just disappearing someday. As happy as I am that someone actually acknowledged Ozpin’s existence and (gasp!) was happy to see him, Oscar is still getting the short straw in all this. The group really treats him like he’s some form of transportation and nothing more. Penny, our resident robot, has more agency than he does.

4. Maria is still just hanging out with Pietro, I guess? Does she care that the group got arrested? Is she trying to do anything about it? I’m half expecting a comedic moment where she barges in, prepared to break them out and take on all their captors... only to realize they never needed her help in the first place.

5. I like this shot of the relic, the first thing to be bathed in light when Ironwood’s presentation ends. Not convinced it means anything, but a cool perspective nonetheless.

6. Intrigued by this guy. 

7. Love, love, love, love, love Watts’ purple outfit. I mean, I’m just a sucker for purple in general. So... yeah. There’s that. 

[ventivante]

Part One summary | can be found here! genre | jennifer’s body!au, college!au, horror, supernatural, humor, angst, demon!wooyoung; wooyoung x reader, mingi x reader warnings | language, discussions of death, some blatant blasphemy, and very bad/cliche humor word count | 2.1k

DISCLAIMER: this fic contains lots of dark subject matter and i will put any specific trigger warnings before each part. i do not condone the unhealthy relationships portrayed in this fic, nor do i believe the characters’ real life counterparts to display these behaviors.

happy halloween y’all!

“God, just shoot me in the face,” Wooyoung whined aloud, leaning his head back to emphasize just how unhappy he was with studying.

“Stop, you’re gonna get us kicked out again,” you whispered across the table at him.

“Good! I hate this place anyway, it reeks of decaying dreams and B.O.,” Wooyoung announced dramatically, his voice still at full volume.

Against your better judgement, you’d invited Wooyoung to study with you at the library. It was against your better judgement for two reasons: first, because Wooyoung didn’t function well in environments where you needed to be quiet and you were both already on the librarian’s shit list, and second, because you felt like you owed it to him after ignoring him all weekend.

Another unspoken reason you weren’t ready to admit was that Wooyoung had been acting . . . weird over the past few days. Even weirder than he normally was. For starters, he had dyed his hair—gone were the black locks you had grown up alongside, now replaced by sandy blond, perfectly gelled movie-star hair. His response to being asked why he’d changed it?

I got bored, he had told you, as if it were the simplest question in the world.

Of course, you knew that abrupt hairstyle changes usually took place in the midst of an emotional crisis, but you hadn’t pressed the issue further. If Wooyoung wanted to talk about things that were bothering him, he eventually would on his own terms—you had learned that the hard way.

Not only had he changed his hair, but he had started dressing really different as well. Normally Wooyoung opted for comfortable sweaters and hoodies, with some standard t-shirt-and-jeans ensembles thrown in the mix. Now he dressed as if his daily commute was on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. You didn’t know where his sudden sense of style had come from, but you guessed it may have had something to do with the aftermath of the party yet again.

Despite all of the red flags, you wanted to find out just what had caused the sudden changes, and you felt partially guilty that you had been the source of it. You figured if you spent more time with him, he would open up to you and finally forgive you.

“Come on, let’s get out of here and grab some sushi, I’m staaarved,” Wooyoung pouted as he rested his head on a propped fist, eyes wide and lower lip protruding in a wholly pathetic display.

Even though he had been acting strange, Wooyoung had been in very high spirits. He was constantly joking with you and laughing over the smallest things, not common indicators that Wooyoung was undergoing mental duress. His current behavior also wasn’t a surprise, as he’d always had a distaste for studying.

“Let me just finish these last couple sections,” you sighed as you flipped the page of your anatomy book.

“I can give you the short version: Adam shoves his dick into Eve’s vagina, boink boink boink, and that’s the miracle of life,” Wooyoung explained crudely, even throwing in a few vulgar gestures for added emphasis. “There, I even included curriculum for the Bible thumpers.”

You grimaced at his tactless anatomy lesson and shut your book without another word. “That’s gross and blasphemous.”

Wooyoung only shrugged before folding his hands on the table’s surface and fixing a now serious look on you. “Don’t tell me you’re still squeamish about sex, Y/N.”

“I’ve never been squeamish, I just don’t need to shout about it from the rooftops.” You hoped that the blush you were undoubtedly now sporting didn’t undermine your words.

“Oh, boo, so boring,” Wooyoung rolled his eyes and slumped back onto the table, his chin resting on his forearms.

“Hey guys.”

You jumped as someone slid into the seat next to you, scaring the daylights out of you. Your pen was raised, ready to attack your would-be assailant before you realized it was only Yunho—one of your and Wooyoung’s few mutual friends—who had made a sudden appearance.

“Can you not just drop in like that?” you asked, lowering the pen now that you were no longer in danger.

“I announced myself! Maybe you just need to have more awareness for your surroundings!” Yunho whispered shrilly.

“Shh!” A fourth person joined in, this time from the librarian desk, where the older woman was giving the three of you the evil eye as she let out a particularly firm shush. You ducked your head bashfully and gave her an apologetic wave, hoping to convey that you would keep your friends in check.

“Have you guys heard?” Yunho started again, now lowering his voice to a more library-friendly volume. “They found a dead kid in the woods out by Hongjoong’s frat house, where that huge party was this weekend.”

You straightened at the news, feeling your heart skip a beat. “What?”

“Well, not a kid kid, it was a student here,” Yunho continued. “But they found him just yesterday. They think it was some kind of animal attack—dude was ripped to shreds from what I heard.”

“Jesus,” you breathed, your stomach beginning to churn at the thought. “What kind of animal?”

“I dunno, a wolf or even a bear maybe?”

“Dumbass, there’s no bears around here,” Wooyoung chimed in, looking positively bored with the shift in conversation.

Yunho cast an offended glare on the newly-dyed blond. “Hey, it’s possible! Climate change, bitch! Animals can come crawling here from all over now, the polar bears are migrating.”

Wooyoung rolled his eyes. “So you think this kid got mauled by a polar bear?”

“I’m just saying it’s possible.”

“Shhhhh!”

This time a student at the next table over had expressed their own irritation at the rising volume yet again. You sent them an apologetic nod of the head before turning back to your friends and lowering your voice once more. “Do we know for sure it’s an animal? Is there going to be like, an investigation or something?”

The taller boy shrugged and leaned a little closer to you to match your tone. “Cops were all over the place earlier but it’s calmed down a bit now. I think it’s officially been listed as an animal. Or, what they think it is at least. But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it’s some psycho killer, stalking young, vulnerable co-eds.” He grinned widely at the end of his statement, waggling his eyebrows in an exaggerated motion before poking you in the side.

You swatted his hand away and released a noise of discontent. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Yunho, why don’t you make like a tree and leave before I chop you down at the knees?” Wooyoung posed, leaning forward on the table with an acidic smile stretching over his features.

“Come on, I’m just kidding,” Yunho laughed. “I’m sure that they’ll find whatever animal it was and put it down.”

You wished you could be as lighthearted about the situation as the other two, but the news brought on a sense of dread that was seeping into your stomach like sour milk. Had it really been a random animal attack? And if so, what kind of animal could rip a person to shreds, as Yunho had not-so-delicately put it? Or worse, what if there was a murderer wandering around campus waiting for their next victim to come along? Were you actually safe?

“There’s probably nothing to worry about at this point,” Yunho added, as if he were reading your mind.

“Good to know. On that note, I think it’s time for us to leave.” Wooyoung rose from his seat and gave you a pointed look.

This time, you actually agreed with him and began to gather your things, shoving them haphazardly into your bag. Wooyoung was at your side in the next second helping you before focusing his attention back onto Yunho.

“Try not to get eaten by a polar bear on your way home, Yunho,” Wooyoung winked.

“Bite me,” the taller boy quipped, but you and Wooyoung were already on your way to the door.

Darkness was quickly approaching as you walked beside Wooyoung back to your apartment. It made you weary, especially after hearing Yunho’s news about the attack. Your best friend, however, seemed completely unfazed by the potential danger as he slung an arm over your shoulders and hummed quietly.

“You aren’t worried?” you asked him.

“Worried? About what Yunho said?” he scoffed then and only pulled you closer to him. “Definitely not. And you shouldn’t be either. You’ve got me to protect you!”

You let out an amused bark of laughter. “You? The same person who makes me kill the spiders in your room?”

“That was when we were ten!” Wooyoung whined, giving you yet another pout. “I’m a man now, in case you hadn’t noticed!”

“Please spare me the toxic masculinity spiel,” you retorted, albeit with another giggle.

A comfortable silence fell over the two of you as you continued down the sidewalk. You allowed yourself to enjoy the moment, because it felt like it had been years since you were both this close—not just physically, but also on an emotional level. You took a second to glance up at your longtime best friend and study him.

Wooyoung’s skin glowed in the waning rays of sunlight, blemish free and smooth as fine porcelain. His nose was a little large, something he had always been concerned with, but you saw absolutely nothing wrong with it. Even his dark eyes shone brightly as the day faded into dusk. And if you weren’t mistaken, you could have sworn he had been hitting the gym too—the arm wrapped around you was firm and not as wiry as you remembered it being during childhood.

You hadn’t admitted it to him, but he had grown up to be very handsome, and sometimes you found yourself wondering how things would be if the two of you had been more than just friends. It had always been a passing thought before, but now as he held you against his side and you looked up at him, the thought didn’t seem . . . particularly bad.

Just as you were rounding the last corner before your building came into view, you decided to ask Wooyoung what you had been meaning to for the past few days.

“Wooyoung, you’re not mad at me, are you? About the party, I mean.”

There was a short pause and you felt Wooyoung’s hand squeeze your arm gently, just as your phone chirped from your pocket. Automatically, you reached for it, digging it out and bringing the device up to check the notification.

It was a text message from an unfamiliar number, which made you squint in confusion. A split second later, realization dawned on you and you let out a small gasp.

It had to be Mingi, the boy you had met at the party.

You smiled at the thought then quickly remembered you had been waiting on Wooyoung to answer your question. You glanced back up at him and saw that he was eyeing your phone with a furrowed brow. His arm now felt tense and heavy around your shoulders but his voice was still light when he spoke again.

“Your friend from the party?”

“Oh, yeah, I think so. I’ll text him later—”

Wooyoung’s arm dropped from your shoulders and he took a step away from you, creating distance that might as well have been a brick wall between you two. He stared down at his feet for a few moments then lifted his head and smiled weakly. You noticed that the smile failed to reach his eyes.

“Listen, Y/N—forget about what happened at the party. I told you, it wasn’t a big deal and I’m over it. I’ll catch you later, okay?”

Wooyoung started to turn away, shoving his hands into his pockets as he went. You felt your small window of opportunity slipping away, so you reached out for him, latching onto his jacket.

“Wait! Don’t you wanna come up and watch a movie or something?” you asked, eyes wide with an unspoken plea.

Wooyoung peeked over his shoulder at you while his lips curled into a lopsided smirk. “Maybe some other time. I’ve got dinner plans.”

[seyaryminamoto]

Hello and first of all thank you for your great fanfiction work, I really enjoy reading what you write. Now there is a question, that bugs me for a while now. Would you say Sozin just got up one morning and decided to conquer the world, or has there actually been a reason for this? I imagine that the decentralized Earth Kingdom may have caused some trouble to the Fire Nation in the past or the islands simply had trouble to grow enough food for a growing population. What are your thoughts on it?

Yeah, your last idea is part of my interpretation. I think I had Gladiator’s Azula explaining her take on it once, back in the very beginnings of the story. Sozin, in my opinion, had two motivations: the first was the need for more territory. The way he talks to Roku about the prosperity of the Fire Nation in “The Avatar and the Fire Lord” implies things are thriving in the Fire Nation. The problem with such prosperity is that sustaining it can lead to different kinds of problems: a happier nation, with better survival rates and proper living conditions, will eventually translate into a growing population. If the population grows faster than the economy that sustains it, the prosperity will decrease: new problems arise, and there won’t be easy solutions for them.

I think Sozin’s Fire Nation was already on the verge of new problems arising. He didn’t reveal it, didn’t admit it, but that he acted on his plans regardless of Roku’s disapproval meant that, at first, he wasn’t scared enough of the Avatar’s threats. He considered Roku’s negative wasn’t a true deterrent for his ambitious plans. But when Roku tears his palace halfway to the ground and Sozin sees his friend’s threat is SERIOUS, he actually heeds it. I think it’s implied he doesn’t act on his conquest urges until Roku is dead. He makes the decision to let him die in the volcano for his own personal gain, and to see his dreams of extending the Fire Nation across the whole world coming true.

The direct attack on the Air Temples came from Sozin’s second motivation, directly related to Roku’s rejection of his plan: Sozin knows the Avatar will get in his way. Destroying the culture that the next Avatar will be born to would mean the Avatar would die before mastering all elements, and even if the Avatar is reborn to a Water Tribe later, a new Avatar would only be able to master three elements if the airbenders are all dead. This decreases the threat an Avatar can pose to his plan. Obviously, Aang escapes and he’s already an airbending master, so Sozin’s plan ends up backfiring despite it seemed so iron-clad.

None of this analysis is meant to take away the horror of Sozin’s actions, no military strategy could ever validate something as gruesome as the genocide of an entire nation, but I do believe there are possible interpretations that can point us towards why Sozin chose to wipe out Air Nomads instead of choosing the Water Tribes or the Earth Kingdom. Technically, as far as our idea of “overpopulation = need more territory and resources” goes, the Air Nomads are by far the least convenient option to destroy. There’s no Fire Nation colony in any Air Temple, for obvious reasons: they’re in remote locations that surely have very little to offer, as far as resources are concerned. The only new settlement there is in an Air Temple is that of the Mechanist and his people, who are Earth Kingdom refugees from the last years of the war, not descendants of early Fire Nation settlers who might take advantage of those temples. Therefore, Sozin’s attempt to exterminate the Air Nomads definitely obeys his fear of Roku’s power and the knowledge that a fully-developed Avatar could easily end his quest for expansion.

Now, looking at the actions of Azulon and Ozai, I think both of Sozin’s motivations carry on to his progeny. Azulon certainly wages war on the Earth Kingdom... but he takes all Southern Water Tribe waterbenders as captives, torturing them in the worst possible conditions he can conjure. Why the south, and not the north? Partly, the north is shown as a stronger, unified nation, which means it should be protected better. But as far as the cycle of the Avatars is concerned, it stands to reason that the Water Tribe Avatar alternates between North and South per cycle: the last Water Tribe Avatar was Kuruk, a northerner. The next Water Tribe Avatar should be a southerner... and as far as canon is concerned, Korra birth in the Southern Water Tribe proves that’s the case. Ergo, Azulon follows his father’s footsteps by trying to kill a potential, waterbending Avatar before they can learn new bending arts. With a war split in two fronts, Azulon has to take charge of battling in the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribe without any Sozin’s Comet bonus to aid him. He can’t afford massacring the Southern Water Tribe completely without sacrificing other aspects of the war, but he can afford doing away with all the waterbenders to further hinder the Avatar’s potential growth: if the airbending Avatar did die during Sozin’s wipe-out of the Air Temples or some time afterwards, then the next one would be born in the south. Take all waterbenders captive and if one of them was supposed to be the Avatar, they’ll be annulled and restrained: one less threat to worry about.

As for Ozai, I suspect half of what’s going on during his tenure got started during Azulon’s (he’s depicted in his portrait as the Fire Lord of the technological advancements, seen by the many factories depicted around him, but the factory in Jang Hui actually has been in place since Azulon’s time, if I recall correctly...). But even then, the Fire Lord’s rule we see most clearly in the show is obviously Ozai’s. One village we see Ozai’s army has taken over is Haru’s: the soldiers tax the villagers, and as it’s a mining village (even if the mines are abandoned), it stands to reason that the village was singled out because of its potential usefulness for mining. There are several other villages in the Earth Kingdom that haven’t been touched by the Fire Nation (at least not yet), so why Haru’s and not the Fortuneteller’s or Kyoshi Island? Why would Gaipan village (the one in Jet) be taken too? Well, Gaipan is close to a big forest, and the wikia describes it as a “quiet town of woodsmen and loggers”. Again, resources! As for Senlin Village, from “Winter Solstice Part 1″? Again, as written in the wikia: “Due to a lack of strategical advantage, the Fire Nation did not occupy this former Earth Kingdom village during the Hundred Year War.” There was no plausible logging advantage here after they literally burned down the whole forest, so...

Now then, why do we mostly see Fire Nation soldiers instead of actual, full-blown occupation in every village? Because, irony of ironies, war is a pretty effective means for population control. Send out an army to conquer and unless you’re some sort of miracle strategist or you have a weapon of wonders, you will sustain losses. As large as the Fire Nation army had to be to achieve all it did, they absolutely didn’t have the manpower to occupy the entire world all along, and all the other nations certainly fought back, meaning that the huge army didn’t wipe out everything with no opposition. While the comics establish that there have been colonies around for ages, for longer than Aang has been alive, even (which, um, undermines the whole matter of “Sozin stayed put for as long as Roku was alive because he was afraid of repercussions” thing established in the show, but that’s none of my business...), the show offers us a different, perhaps more realistic take on the subject: there are Earth Kingdom towns untouched by the war, there are some merely occupied by soldiers, and there are others that are fully conquered colonies.

I believe most of what Ozai and Azulon could afford to send into the Earth Kingdom were soldiers who occupied towns and forced the native population to work for them, to pay taxes and whatnot, until the Fire Nation population had been restored to its previous, excessive numbers. By then, they’d have enough towns and cities in the Earth Kingdom under their control, and it would be possible to send groups of people to live and take advantage of those occupied lands.

In the end, ideology is of course an important element in Sozin’s decision to conquer the world, for there’s no doubt in my mind he was a Fire Nation supremacist and thought himself better than everyone else. But I believe the ideology angle was emphasized and overblown just to masquerade some far more mundane motivations, which included his deep fear of the Avatar and the repercussions he’d face if a fully-fledged, four-element bending Avatar like Roku ever rose again to put a stop to his project of Fire Nation world-wide expansion.

[thesilverheroineproject]

By Haley Thurston

What are women afraid of? Why do women matter? How are women useful? Do these questions have gender-specific answers?

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell says that a hero is “someone who has found or achieved or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. A hero properly is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself or other than himself.” He goes on to distinguish between physical heroes, those who do deeds, and spiritual heroes, those who “[have] learned or found a mode of experiencing the supernormal range of human spiritual life, and then come back and communicated it.”

This is a grand and beautiful model. And especially when we just leave it at “someone who has achieved something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience,” it works very well for a hero of any gender. But when Campbell gets into the specifics of what counts or is celebrated as an unusual achievement, or how that achievement goes about getting done, I start thinking “well those are pretty unambiguously good achievements, but they’re also pretty male.”

That’s because there’s another element to heroism, which is where it interacts with social values, and gives us a mythology about what we should care about achieving. If we tell stories that laud a person for being unusually sacrificial, then we’re communicating that selflessness is a value of our community. Even when a story isn’t explicitly or intentionally communicating information about what is socially and morally good, we can retro-engineer a lot from the text to determine what its underlying values are.

While stories in general can be about any number of things beyond telling the reader what kind of person they should be (thank goodness), it’s important to remember that the genre of hero stories really is fundamentally about what makes a remarkable and laudable human. Even when a character is simply coded as a protagonist, hero stories have primed us to expect, justified or not, to learn something about what it means to be a good human from that character. So while I don’t want to go down some alarmist road that ends with “exposing children to Harry Potter means they will become Satanists,” and as obvious to the point of pedantic this might sound, the whole point of heroes is that we admire and emulate them, and it’s worth talking about what the consequences of being told we should emulate some trait actually are.

So to bring this back to the Heroine’s Journey, if we look at something like the Odyssey, we have two different kinds of heroes: Odysseus and Penelope. Odysseus is a pretty Campbellian hero. He leaves home, he does deeds, and returns home, having earned some kind of mantle of authority. Penelope, on the other hand, is left at home with the challenge of figuring out what to do with herself. She waits for Odysseus and she fends off a series of suitors. In the story itself she isn’t as perfectly virtuous as she’s made out to be by various pro-chastity ideologues. But she does, nonetheless, “achieve something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience” if you care about achieving fidelity. But this is a very different kind of heroism.

The Heroine’s Journey is about learning to suffer, endure, and be subjected to indignity while maintaining grace, composure, and patience. While most heroic stories involve some element of perseverance and strength of will, what makes Heroine’s Journey stories different is that a heroine’s perseverance is tested not to see whether she can persevere to achieve a separate goal, but rather simply to see if she can persevere, period. When you lay it out like that, it’s pretty hard to see the Heroine’s Journey as fundamentally heroic, to which I say: well yeah.

I suppose I’m interested in the Heroine’s Journey because I’m interested in the cognitive dissonances women experience; what creates them, what the consequences of them are, and what to do about them. In Heroine’s Journey stories, for example, women are told that their entire social role and contribution to society is contingent on them being really really good at being graceful martyrs. Yet at the same time, women are told that being a martyr is a weak thing to be; ie, the opposite of heroism. And even without being told that, most women can figure out in their heads that the Heroine’s Journey 1) doesn’t feel good and 2) is flawed heroism.

So the story of the Heroine’s Journey, the meta-Heroine’s Journey, if you will, is the story of being told a dissonant truth, and then attempting to disentangle it. In order to chart that story, we need to look at both the original, traditional Heroine’s Journey and then the modern Heroine’s Journey, troubled in its own way, that developed as a result of grappling with the traditional one.

The traditional Heroine’s Journey goes something like this:

The heroine is yet undeveloped. She may be wild and undignified, she may be mild and unremarkable, or she may be seemingly already virtuous.

Her worth is threatened. That is, her ability to persevere is threatened. The threat may be an assault on her virtue, an undignified circumstance, or random misfortune.

She endures, gracefully. She suffers, but her dignity isn’t undermined. If anything, her dignity is antifragile, she becomes more dignified the more she suffers.  Her perseverance then makes her previously undefined nature snap into place. Her dignity gives her strength.

Thankfully, it’s not 1850 anymore. The modern Heroine’s Journey is more like:

The heroine is yet undeveloped. She is often highly confused about where virtue is located.

Her dignity, composure and grace, ie, her worth in the “traditional” sense are threatened. Additionally, and perversely, her ability to defend traditional worth is tested.

She proves her value by either transcending or invalidating the test (“fuck it, this is a bad metric”) — or by transcending/invalidating the test, but stillpassing it (“having it all”). The modern Heroine’s Journey is about defining one’s worth anew.

A traditional Heroine’s Journey looks like the women from Les Miserables: the rejected Eponine, the destitute Fantine. Cosette never seems like much of a hero, but she certainly starts out from rags. The Victorian era was probably the height of the Heroine’s Journey, and you can see it in things like Dracula. As many horror stories would go on to mimic, two women, Mina and Lucy, are tested with seduction, but only the former resists and therefore gets to survive for her trouble. Jane Austen’s women teeter on the edge between the traditional and modern journey, each tasked with seeing through the cads and settling on the moral, pragmatic partner. Once you know this narrative, you see it in all kinds of romance stories: the triumphant woman is the one who rises above (or outsmarts) the men who would degrade her.

The modern heroine looks like Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids, a movie that pulls indignity rugs out from under its protagonist for two hours. She lost her business! Her ego is dependent on a guy who makes her hate herself! Her friend has a new best friend, one who’s richer, prettier and thinner! The movie is not so much critical as lovingly satirical towards female preoccupation with indignity, coming to the conclusion “indignity is bad, but not so bad in the end.” The modern heroine also looks like Sylvia Plath, who has both become a symbol of female suffering (trite, traditional), and of an interpreter of suffering that is female in a human sense. She is a symbol, in other words, of not wearing suffering easily, or of having suffering that is serious and legitimate. The modern Heroine’s Journey has no better description than Leslie Jamison’s “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain,” which describes contemporary women as “post-wounded.” The post-wounded woman is one who is never suffering in the present, but is instead always contextualizing and nervously proving ownership over that suffering. Jamison’s piece is one of the best (and perhaps only) articulations of the Heroine’s Journey, and I will continue to refer to it.

How did we get from the traditional to the modern? And where do we go afterwards?

You could argue, perhaps, that maybe there was a time in which Heroine’s Journey values were once constructive. Say, stability and self-sacrifice are good for childrearing; female work frees up men to be creative/accomplished; it’s to an oppressive group’s advantage to feed the oppressed group a heroic narrative about grunt work, shame, and putting up with crap.

But regardless of why, precisely, Heroine’s Journey values became socially useful, it’s clear that they became less useful over time. Increasing wealth, public health, safety and opportunity meant that whatever division-of-labor benefits enforced gender roles might have had, both women and men could suddenly not participate in various “duties” and they and human civilization would still survive. Such upheaval necessitates a series of grappling questions.

1. “Does this quality I’m told is good actually contribute to human flourishing?”

Stage one is destructive. It tends to involve a certain amount of hatred, either directed inward, or directed by one against another. Stage one amounts to smashing a social value, and smashing is usually crude. Smashing is like a person pacing back and forth and muttering “This thing is WRONG. I don’t know quite what it IS or what it MEANS but I know that it is WRONG.”

In practice, stage one is mostly torture porn. I’m thinking about Andy Kaufmann’s tape Andy and His Grandmother, which (as described in a Grantland article) made an art form of ribbing women. His questions sound almost earnestly direct, but because women are unaccustomed to responding to such directness, and he knows it (or else he wouldn’t make comedy of it) there is something disingenuously torturous about them as well.

Though I’ll say more in a second about why horror is actually one of the best genres for women, the reason that people can look askance at that idea, is because a lot of the time, for a long time, anti-female-composure stories have been for the amusement of people (largely men) who want to punish women. Take a hot girl, who thinks she’s hot shit, and put her through hell–that will teach you to be hot!!! Horror is catharsis, and it makes some sense to me that it would be a realm of catharsis, however essentially misogynistic, for sexual rejection and desire. When I described this piece to a friend, he replied: “So isn’t like 90% of porn the Heroine’s Journey then?” Well…perhaps so. If the graceful negotiation of composure and things that threaten composure is the essence of female value, and fetishes originate in the secret and taboo, then well, of course the destruction of female composure would become deeply, repeatedly fetishized.

The potentially brutal treatment of women in stories is also complicated by the idea that the way men become symbols for corrupt authority, women become symbols for corrupt social values and contracts. When you smash one of them in a story, often enough that’s what you’re symbolically smashing. But I think it would be disingenuous to say that all virulence directed at female characters is simply thematically motivated.

So that’s two kinds of composure-destruction by men. But you’ll notice that early female comedians got their start by challenging femininity too, people like Lucille Ball (who juxtaposed the ideals of homemaking with relentless physical and situational indignity) and Joan Rivers, people that were willing to look ridiculous and self-deprecating (“A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she’s a tramp.”).  That’s because comedy comes from the same place as horror, that place of essential fears and need for catharsis. Was there any other place for female comedy to go? Lucille Ball took a lovingly destructive angle, one that’s maybe more stage three (below) than one. As for Joan Rivers, I don’t know if she ever liked being a woman much, but she was good at hating herself for it. And laughing, more importantly, at the ridiculousness of that hatred. This strain in female comedy has stuck around: think of Liz Lemon under a blanket eating cheese or Amy Schumer’s “I’m a sad slut” schtick.

2. “If it doesn’t, or if I could better contribute in another way, then do I care about having status in a hierarchy that says it does?” (“Do I really care about human flourishing?”)

Female comedy verges into stage two. Stage two is conflict. Stage two stories aren’t made by people that want to punish women/society, they’re composure stories made (usually) by women and for women in order to grapple, rather, with the fear of punishment. Imagine our muttering person suddenly standing up and shouting “I DON’T care about the hierarchy. I’ll do what I LIKE.” Defiance. And then imagine them becoming fearful. “Doing what I like has the best chance of making everyone happy right? So why do I feel miserable? Wasn’t misery the trope I was trying to destroy?”

Bridesmaids (which had the honor of newly convincing us that women can be funny), again, is this. Girls traffics in it as well, as Leslie Jamison describes:

“These days we have a TV show called Girls, about young women who hurt but constantly disclaim their hurting. They fight about rent and boys and betrayal, stolen yogurt and the ways self-​pity structures their lives. ‘You’re a big, ugly wound!’ one yells. The other yells back: ‘No, you’re the wound!’ And so they volley, back and forth: You’re the wound; no, you’re the wound. They know women like to claim monopolies on woundedness, and they call each other out on it.”

Girls, both the characters and the writing itself, are stabbing at being crass, at being superficially elegant, and at being “transcendent,” and seeing what will stick. Girls gets at that intersection of feeling a duty to exorcise fears of being gross, but still wanting to be liked and wanted, and also thinking both of those are such small and unimportant goals in the end.

Caroline Knapp’s famous anorexia memoir Appetites uses the framework of disordered eating to discuss the female relationship to pleasure, denial, and suffering in general. Knapp sums up the twisted heroism of self-denial early on: “Other women might struggle with hunger; I could transcend it”; as in, become more than human in the classic Campbell-ian sense. Because glorifying suffering is seen as poisonous, having control over that suffering feels good, even though it also creates further suffering. Appetites represents how women struggle just before they realize they must “man up.” Writes Jamison: “We want our wounds to speak for themselves, Knapp seems to be saying, but usually we end up having to speak for them.”

People like Beyonce because she is a fantasy of stage two being resolved. Her persona is a fantasy of being sexual/human/regal and yet she feels beyond “having it all” even though she does, in fact, have it all. That’s because Beyonce is charismatic and that is how charismatic people make you feel (liked and okay!), but it is significant that the thing she makes you feel okay about is this modern quandary. You feel permission to partake in the resolution her persona offers. You don’t feel competitive with Beyonce.

Stage two is also where intersectionality becomes thematically salient. The dilemmas of the Heroine’s Journey universalize fairly well, but people (including women) participate in more than one social hierarchy at any given time. It might be hard to justify suffering for the sake of itself, but suffering for the sake of justiceis pretty much the easiest thing to justify there is. The details of one woman’s dilemma will not be the same as another’s; her suffering has different origins and flavors.

3. “If I do care about human flourishing, and I’m going the wrong way about it, then what do I do about that?”

So what do post-Heroine’s Journey stories look like? Stage three is constructive. As Jamison asks “How do we talk about these wounds without glamorizing them? Without corroborating an old mythos that turns female trauma into celestial constellations worthy of worship?” There have been many many stories about women throughout the history of stories that have been much more complex than the Heroine’s Journey, stories where female agency and/or grossness aren’t questioned (I think about classic female “trickster” stories like Scheherazade)…yet as Jamison’s piece and Appetites and all the works I’ve referenced so far demonstrate, somehow the Heroine’s Journey’s values still seem to underlie the choices of women constantly. What this means is that if a story with and about women and heroism doesn’t somehow admit the fear of loss of composure or come to grips with it or feel some way about it, I sometimes wonder if it’s about women at all. Moreover, that task in the third stage of the modern Heroine’s Journey, the task of defining worth, is huge and fascinating. And it is under-utilized.

In a great interview on Playing D&D with Porn Stars, Sarah Horrocks explains why, perhaps unexpectedly, the horror genre is actually one of the greatest genres for female heroism.

“S: Getting pushed to your limits, to the point of hysteria, but still surviving—that you’ve taken this huge weight of the world on you, and like Marilyn Burns in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you’re covered in blood and screaming and laughing—but you’ve somehow come out on top.  I don’t think other genres allow women to be strong, tough, and vulnerable in this way. And I mean there’s just way more movies in the horror genre where the perspective is that of a woman’s.  The slasher flick is not through the killer’s point of view after all, it’s through the woman’s.”

In other words, there’s no room for composure in horror movies. Which means that in them, a female character has the opportunity to be immediately exempt from having to prove that she is some conventional version of dignified in order to be heroic, and is instead forced to admit what she’s made of when that’s stripped away and no one’s looking.

One of the reasons I adore Lyra’s heroic journey in His Dark Materials, is that in spite of it being a very Campbell-style story (mysterious origins, a call to adventure, ad nauseum), Lyra’s girl-ness remains inherent throughout. One of the main arcs of the book begins with her being suspicious of femininity and only trusting male figureheads, and concludes with her accepting that she values wisdom, that the acquisition of wisdom is slow and difficult and that the unflashy female wisdom-seekers she once derided have things to teach her. We don’t want our heroes to be blandly competent, we want them to exist in the same world of difficulty that we exist in, so that they may give us a map for dealing with it. Lyra doesn’t do the Heroine’s Journey, exactly, but perhaps more importantly: she resolves it.

Understanding the Heroine’s Journey is not a replacement for or an improvement on the general writing prescription to “just write women like people.” It’s a hopefully helpful explanation, rather, of one (very important, complex) element of female people-hood. If you want to talk about how a person grapples with their society, look to the cognitive dissonance produced by what society tells them is heroic.

Thanks to Gabriel Duquette for his help in developing some of the ideas in this piece.

[stillbelievinginfireflies]

Some thoughts on Luther, the apocalypse, and the situation at large

Alright, so. Getting the sense that I’m one of maybe like five people in the fandom that doesn’t actually hate Luther Hargreeves, so I’m gonna do some analysis here and see if I can change any opinions.

So, first things first: Luther is not perfect. Not by any stretch. This post is not trying to claim he is, or that he’s some ‘misunderstood angel baby uwu’. Locking Vanya up was absolutely awful, and his obsession with making decisions for everyone else and acting like a martyr does him no favours. But! He is by no means the only person responsible for everything that happens in this series.

The post is gonna be under the cut, because boy oh boy it’s a long one.

Argument #1: Luther locked up Vanya, causing her to become the White Violin and destroy the world.

Yep. He locked her up. However, it’s not like he was the only person capable of getting her out. Allison, Ben, Diego, and Klaus all were present when this happened and knew that Vanya was trapped. Ben couldn’t do anything. Allison tried to pass by Luther and he held her back and refused to let her do anything until eventually she passed out. Then they all left Vanya to veg out in a soundproof chamber and lose her mind. While Luther is still obviously the one who locked her up, why did nobody else think to...idk...unlock her? He was sitting with Allison in her room right after this incident and obsessing over her. They could have just as easily climbed into the elevator and gone back downstairs to free Vanya and show that Allison wasn’t the only one in her corner. Hell, Diego is pretty much eternally ready to fight Luther throughout the series and while that doesn’t in any way make what happened his fault, it is worth noting that while Luther is the one who locked her up, the others were complicit in allowing her to stay locked up.

Argument #2: Luther is self-absorbed and constantly invalidates the trauma of the others in favour of his own trauma about being sent to the moon.

I’ve only watched the show once, so I may be wrong in this. But most of the instances that come to mind of Luther bringing up the moon are either when it seemed like a natural place in the conversation to do so (like the window conversation when he was sitting and talking with Allison about what it was like up there) or towards the end of the series when he’s trying to solve the apocalypse mystery and suggests that it might have something to do with his research on the moon and how finding that will help. He hated the moon, and he hated that he wound up becoming a half-gorilla-skin-graft situation to survive. But he literally hid the body issue until it straight up came out when Hazel and Cha-Cha attacked the house, and then while he was upset about the others knowing, he didn’t want to talk about it. As far as I recall (and again, might be wrong here) he didn’t talk about it until he was egged into it and got into an argument about how the others shouldn’t have left him alone. Which, okay. Admittedly, poor argument to make, given that the others left for a damn good reason and Luther should have left too. All the same, it’s not like he’s sitting there rubbing it in everyone’s face about ‘why are you upset? Dad sent me to the moon! Locking you in the mausoleum/soundproof rooms is nothing!’ He barely even seems to regard it as traumatic for a while, because he thinks there was a point.

Now, obviously everybody in that house went through hell as a kid, but none of them want to talk about that. This is not a family that is open with emotions, and Luther especially is removed from all of them with the arguable exception of Allison. Would it really have done anything if he had responded to the others by trying to have a sit down about their trauma instead of moving on with their life and bringing the conversation back to the moon (which again, at the time he thought might be a useful lead) so they could solve this mystery, stop the apocalypse, and never have to see each other or the House Of Horrors again?

Argument #3: Luther is self-absorbed and keeps forcing the idea that he is a leader and making decisions for others.

Yep. He does make decisions for others without their input. He often makes really stupid decisions. So does literally everybody else in the Academy. Five tries to solve the apocalypse by running off and handling shit on his own constantly and they’re halfway through the series before he thinks to involve anyone else in addressing the issue and solving it, much less mentioning the fact that the coming apocalypse is not a distant event, it’s happening in a week. Diego sees Grace sewing through her hand and turns her off without further discussion with the family. Allison’s entire power revolves around making decisions for and manipulating people into doing what she wants (ie, the Vanya incident which - again, I understand that she was four and didn’t know better and hell, maybe she forgot about it until Vanya brought it up, but aside from that, while she is trying to get better about it by not using her power anymore and that’s wonderful character development and I am by no means trying to undermine that, the point remains that she has the same capacity for manipulation and forceful decision making as any of the others.) About the only people who don’t and seemingly never have routinely taken the decisions of others away from them because ‘they know better’ are Ben (who is dead), Vanya (who thinks she’s ordinary until the end of the series), and Klaus (who nobody would listen to anyway because they view him as a junkie and he’s rarely in a state of mind to even make his own decisions). Even Pogo gets in on this by keeping all of Reginald’s secrets instead of being forthright and saying anything! Everybody in the Academy is really bad at decision making and constantly tries to tell the others how much they can or can’t handle.

Argument #4: Luther is self-absorbed and idolises their father too much to be a functional human being/is too busy pouting about their dad at the end of the series to be useful.

Luther Hargreeves is every bit as traumatised as each and every one of his siblings. He shows it very differently, though. Let’s look at it this way: Luther believed in their father until the day the old man died. He was with their father well past the others having left, leading to the incident where he almost died because he was trying to solo a mission that was impossible to solo. The others had years upon years upon years (in at least Five’s case, literal decades) to distance themselves from the trauma of their life and figure out a way to work through it and accept how awful their father was. Vanya wrote a book to get through it. Allison left it behind and didn’t look back. Klaus got into drugs. Diego became a vigilante. They all saw this mess and they left it, but we don’t know what that looked like in the moment, what even finally prompted them to officially give up. I’ve seen some hints that it was Ben’s death, which makes sense for some of it, but on the other hand whether it was Ben’s death that inspired the exodus or not, the fact remains that we don’t know what the other Academy members were like when they first left. Maybe Allison stopped talking to anyone for a while. Maybe Klaus just didn’t come home some time and three months later someone tried to bring him home and Klaus told them to fuck off. We don’t know.

When we see the Academy at the start of the series, it’s the first time any of them have seen each other in ages, and they are all still very screwed up and struggling to recover from their life and are incredibly dysfunctional as humans in general, never mind the undoubtedly complicated feelings they must have been going through about the entire situation of their Dad being dead now. For Luther, he actively still cared about their Dad and hadn’t left. He didn’t have that curtain of time to take the edge off of the loss, and then a week later he found out that it was all for nothing and Reginald Hargreeves was every bit the bastard his siblings had always claimed he was.

This puts Luther at a very, very different point in his progression of grief than the others are at. They’ve had time to adjust to the idea of their father being awful, but for Luther it is a fresh revelation that he absolutely cannot ignore anymore, and unlike the others, he doesn’t even have the option to bring it up to their father and get any kind of answers, because Reginald Hargreeves is dead. His claims that he wasn’t going to lead anymore, his running off to the rave to get high and get distracted, those are all probably similar things that the others went through when they hit that eureka moment about how much of a prick Reginald Hargreeves was. He’s grieving a lot of things, and he has an excuse to not be okay with everything.

Argument #5: Well, that’s Luther’s fault! He was a grown-up when he got sent to the moon. If the others left, so could he!

Here’s the thing: the kind of abuse the Hargreeves children went through has some serious impacts on a kid’s psychology. Speaking from research and experience here, when you have a parent that tells you you’re special, that you’re Number One, that you’re Important, you want to believe them. When it’s a parent like Reggie who shows no emotions and is unfailingly awful to his kids ‘for the greater good’, that only increases. Put yourself in Luther’s shoes for a moment here. His siblings, one by one, had left. He’s the only one his father still has. He’s Number One. He’s been told they’re saving the world. If he doesn’t stay and bear the load, what happens then? Who saves the world if all the heroes have left? He’s supposed to be the leader, and if the ones he’s supposed to be leading have left, well. That just means more effort is needed out of him.

When you want to believe that somebody has your best interest in mind, that they love you, you will make excuses for them. Everybody constantly will tell you that your parents love you and want what’s best for you, and if you truly believe that, you will make excuses for their behaviour, especially in situations like this. That’s why this kind of abuse is so awful: it puts the blame on the victim. Luther truly believed that there was a purpose to everything Reginald did, that making him Number One and pushing them to their limits had a reason, because your parents are supposed to be the ones you can trust and when they tell you something is for your own good as a kid, you adjust your worldview to reflect that perspective. It is hard as hell to break free from that.

The others managed to get out. They managed to see Reginald for what he was, and they left because they knew it wasn’t getting better. Luther couldn’t see that until the very end of the series, and he went down believing that everything their father did was done with the best of intentions because That’s What Leaders Do. They aren’t nice, they make the hard decisions nobody else wants to make. And that’s what Luther took away from everything: that he had to make the hard decisions to keep his family safe.

Argument #6: That doesn’t excuse him locking up Vanya!

No, it doesn’t. Locking up Vanya was a horrible choice. It was cruel, and terrible,  and exactly the sort of thing Reginald would have done. It was also not done to be vindictive or vengeful. It was done because he thought that was what he needed to do to keep the rest of his family safe. Keep in mind, when Luther sees Vanya for the first time, he has just found out she almost killed Allison losing control of her powers. When he chokes her out and locks her up, he is apologising the whole time because he genuinely is sorry. This is not him being vengeful, this is him making hard decisions because he thinks that’s what Number Ones are supposed to do. It is not a good decision, but it’s the only one that comes to mind for him in order to keep people safe when he already has a LOT on his mind (such as: Vanya having powers, Allison almost dying, the rave, the revelation that Reginald was in fact every bit the douchecanoe his siblings always said he was... Not exactly conducive for clear thinking, no?)

Argument #7: But he didn’t let her out when the others gave him other ideas either!

No, he didn’t. No, that wasn’t okay. Yes, that was awful. But again, he didn’t do it because he thought Vanya needed to sit where she was and think about what she’d done. He did it because he thought that this was safer. The others were suggesting they let Vanya out, but nobody made any suggestions on how to keep them all safe afterwards. At the time, Allison could barely move and had almost died. They were all emotionally screwed up. From his perspective, they were all either missing or at low power, and Vanya was freaking out in the cage - you know, kinda like how she was freaking out when she almost killed Allison? That said, I am ABSOLUTELY not blaming Vanya. I would freak the fuck out if I was locked in a cage too, especially if it was done by my brother who I thought I could trust and wanted to believe in. But while this was a fucking stupid and awful and horrible decision to make, I would like to return to my former point: if nobody else agreed with it, why was Allison the only one who even tried to do anything about Vanya being locked up?

Argument #8: But Luther caused the apocalpyse! He made Vanya the White Violin!

No. Like Five said, Vanya is the bomb. Leonard was the fuse. But there were a whole lot of other things that lit the match. If Luther had been the only person Vanya was mad at and the only one responsible for her situation, she would have only killed him. Instead, she wrecked the entire Academy and went for everyone outside of Allison. Let’s look at this in review:

- Allison Rumoured Vanya into thinking she was powerless as a kid. Granted, she has apologised for this and has been trying to be a better sister to Vanya. Hence, Vanya doesn’t intentionally attack her.

- Luther locked up Vanya and told her she was too dangerous to be let out. The only person Vanya actively saw trying to free her was Allison. Nobody else came back.

- Pogo lied to every one of the kids for Reginald Hargreeves. He kept his secrets, he perpetuated his lies. He knew about Vanya’s powers, and Allison’s role in hiding them, and he kept it to himself even when he knew better and didn’t reveal anything until it seemed like ‘a good time’, despite KNOWING how deeply the siblings trusted him over their father.

- Klaus threw away the contents of the box to go pawn it all, meaning that Leonard got hold of the book he used to train Vanya and screw her over.

- Leonard found Vanya, manipulated her, lied to her, and used her to enact his revenge fantasy against the Umbrella Academy and Reginald Hargreeves and all those other ‘Extraordinary People’ who made him feel like he was nothing, leading to Vanya feeling used and betrayed by the first person she has ever thought actually loved her for being herself, ordinary and all.

- Diego missed no opportunity to tell Vanya how little he valued her opinion or her presence, particularly in the first half of the season. At every given chance, he made sure to make jabs about her making a sequel, about how she didn’t get a vote until he decided her vote was useful. He loves her, yes, but he did not ever make her feel any more welcomed than the others did, and he certainly didn’t include her in the rest of their reindeer games as kids, either.

- Five, as stated, knew the apocalypse was coming. Rather than warning his siblings and trying to get them to come together to stop things, he spent the first several days trying to handle everything on his own, leaving a trail of corpses and problems in his wake while he tried to discover the owner of the eye and killed the assassins after him and then got shitfaced drunk when he hit a dead end and didn’t tell anyone what he saw until three days before the fact because he kept trying to handle it on his own and nobody else would understand.

Most importantly, above all others, there is Reginald.

Reginald Hargreeves was an absolute bastard. He abused his kids physically and emotionally. He neglected every one of them. He set them to fight each other, he set them up to go into situations which they were unprepared for, he set them up for ruin because ‘it was for the greater good’ and was never emotionally available to coax them through anything. He screwed over every single one of the kids, he was the mastermind behind Vanya being lied to and put on her medications and having her powers suppressed, he intentionally isolated her and made her feel worthless, he let nobody tell his secrets, and he was never straightforward or understanding or even marginally remorseful about any one thing he ever did in his life. He took seven kids and threw them in a house together and raised them to be extraordinary by his standards at the cost of their sanity and their emotional stability. He told them to be a team, and he made them each other’s enemies. That’s why the series starts with almost none of them being able to talk to each other, no connections between them, and all the other nuances of them being dead, addicted, disgraced, imprisoned, or otherwise isolated. These traumatised kids all grew up to be traumatised adults, and he is the reason.

The only person who is completely innocent of blame in terms of the apocalypse is Ben, because he was too dead to do anything about it. Even then, he did all he could - saving Diego, trying to get Klaus sobered up, fighting the guys at the theatre - but in the end, all of the siblings were too fucked up to work together and be an effective team. They all had a hand in what happened.

Now Luther is not a perfect person. He makes some stupid decisions. He makes some absolutely idiotic, cruel, inexcusable choices. But he is not an irredeemable person. He is in a different stage of his life and grieving journey than the others, and he is still reeling from trying to figure out who he is outside of the identity he was assigned as Number One. That doesn’t excuse his actions, but I’d say it makes them make a lot more sense. The apocalypse happened because Reginald Hargreeves screwed up seven superpowered kids and called it child-rearing, and now those kids are trying to fix the problem by going back to the start and rewriting the story. It didn’t happen just because Luther locked up Vanya and was grieving their dad.

[lilacmoon83]

Finding You Always

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Chapter 198: Hopeful Hearts

After training finished for the day, the Charmings, Golds, and Hood-Mills families proceeded to Granny's for some much needed sustenance.

"I was terrible...you make it look so easy, Dad," Bobby complained, as they found a table. David chuckled.

"I have years and years of practice on you, buddy. I was terrible too at first, but I learned and you will too," he assured, as they were about to flag down a waitress, but saw that Joe already had them delivery food to the large table, family style.

"Family style dining tonight. I knew this brood would be showing up famished," he announced.

"Oh you are the best…" Leo said, as he took a burger for each hand.

"Thank you Joe," Snow said graciously.

"Anything for this family," he replied fondly, as he went back to help get drinks and keep the food coming.

"So...I know that we've all been really preoccupied with everything that's been going on, but I don't think we should let that stop us from happy things," Snow said, as she looked at Leo and Elsa, even as her son was shoveling food in his mouth. Elsa smiled at her.

"Well...I've never had a wedding before and I have to admit that I really have no idea how to plan one," she mentioned. Snow grinned.

"But I do and I would love to help you plan this wedding," she said. Elsa smiled back.

"I'd love that too," she agreed.

"Good...I'm so glad you said that, because I have so many ideas. Honey...is my binder in the truck?" she asked. David smiled.

"Of course," he replied. A look of excitement lit up her features.

"I'll be right back," Snow said, as she ran out to the truck for a moment. David chuckled.

"Seriously...is no one going to reign her in even a little?" Leo asked in trepidation.

"Not when she's this happy," David replied. He sighed.

"Yeah...I guess. But no singing and choreographed dance numbers," he muttered. Elsa chuckled.

"Oh I don't know, that sounds kind of fun," she teased, as Snow returned and opened up her book.

"Okay...so I was thinking that the reserve would be the perfect place for the wedding since it's such a special place for you both," Snow said.

"I love that," Elsa agreed.

"Huh...yeah, me too. That's kind of perfect, actually," Leo said.

"That way all the animals can attend. They love you and wouldn't want to miss it," Snow said, as she flipped through her book.

"And then I was thinking with a little magic, you can build a few ice sculptures and even an ice castle with an archway," she continued.

"That sounds amazing. But can we talk about the cake?" Elsa asked.

"She means can we make the cake chocolate and everything else chocolate too," Leo clarified for her and Snow smiled.

"I think Frankie can do chocolate," she said.

"Sure thing...I have a chocolate wedding cake that is to die for," he called from the kitchen. They shared a smile and went back to eating and discussing their upcoming nuptials, as others carried on conversations and were able to relax a bit after a stressful day.

~*~

Winter moaned sleepily and stretched her arms above her head, as she finally woke up. She and Charming had spent most of the day in bed and then fell asleep. Now she was awake late in the evening and smiled at her sleeping husband beside her. Their incredible lovemaking had lasted most of the afternoon and well into the evening, before sleep had finally took them in a sated, blissful state. As usual, they hadn't been able to get enough of each other and it fueled their stamina. And even though it was half past midnight already, she was starving and knew he'd awake the same soon. So she plucked her husband's black tunic from the floor and donned it, before tiptoeing down to the kitchen.

"What the hell are you doing?" The Evil Queen asked, as she poofed into their castle.

"Excuse me? What the hell are you doing back here in my castle?" Winter growled, as they came face to face.

"I've been working hard all day in order to protect your son! While you have apparently been in bed with your idiot husband!" The Queen hissed.

"Charming and I needed that time! And don't you dare imply that we are not going to be working just as hard to protect our son!" Winter snapped.

"Oh yeah, because screwing your husband really helps your child," the Queen shot back.

"Need I remind you that it was my Charming that killed that evil witch that was going to hurt our baby?" She retorted.

"And don't worry...we plan to be very busy making sure Seth never touches him," she added.

"Well, that's going to be a lot harder than you think, princess," the Queen hissed.

"And you'll need my Intel, which would cost you if it wasn't for Bobby being the reason for it," she added, as the two women glared at each other. Winter crossed her arms over her chest.

"Fine...what did you find out?" Winter questioned.

"As much as I hate to admit it...Seth fears your son. And even you and your husband. Or rather your lighter halves," the Queen said.

"Then he is going to try to destroy us," Winter replied.

"Actually...he would prefer not to fight you at all. He's that worried, though I think he's giving you two idiots too much credit," the Queen said. Winter smirked smugly.

"He should be worried and you know better than anyone what happens when you go against our true love," Winter boasted.

"Ugh...I can't decide what's worse. Your smug arrogance or your other half's penchant for rainbow kisses and unicorn stickers," the Queen complained.

"It's not arrogance if it's true. Charming and I have gone against villains we probably had no business fighting...and we won," Winter reminded.

"Fair point," the Queen conceded.

"Well, if he doesn't want to face us head on, then how does he plan to deal with us?" Winter questioned.

"With another curse," the Queen answered. Winter rolled her eyes in annoyance.

"You've got to be kidding me," she spat.

"When will you and your evil cronies learn?" Winter asked.

"Nothing you can do can separate me and Charming...not for long anyway," she added.

"That's the thing...he doesn't plan to separate you. Just the opposite, in fact," the Queen said.

"Okay...you're not making any sense," Winter said impatiently. The Queen scoffed.

"He plans to curse you both and the children into a happy life, far away in the Land Without Magic, where you'll never threaten him with your true love and the chalice. And Bobby will not come into his full power to challenge him," she explained.

"He wants us to be happy?" Winter asked skeptically.

"No...he'd rather grind your bones to dust and rip your children limb from limb. But he's not confident he can get that job done, so he figures if he curses you and Charming or rather your light halves into utter bliss, you'll never think that you're missing anything," she explained.

"So we'd never seek anything out. Then he could rule unchallenged," Winter realized.

"Exactly," the Queen said.

"Why are you telling me this? You'd love to get rid of me and Charming," Winter replied.

"No...I'd like you both to suffer. Not live in the Land Without Magic in some white picket fence life. But...it might be the best way to protect Bobby," the Queen said. Winter looked at her in horror.

"You can't be serious! You're going to help him curse us?" she asked.

"Not you two...but the light halves. It could be the only way to save Bobby and Summer," She scoffed.

"Even if it is, I know my light half. She'll never go for it. She'll never agree to leave her people behind to Seth's evil. Neither will Charming's light half. It's absurd," Winter refuted.

"Oh, I know sweet cheeks and chisel chin will never go for it. But it's not like I plan to give them a choice. Unless you have something better?" the Queen questioned.

"Yes...as a matter of fact, we do," Winter countered.

"Yet you spent the whole day in bed satiating your libido instead, leaving me to do the heavy lifting," the Queen argued.

"Maybe Seth doesn't want to fight us...but we want to fight him. He wants us gone, because he's scared of us, so we'll fight him and we'll destroy him," Winter claimed.

"He may be leery of his chances against you, but he is by no means a pushover," the Queen warned.

"Which is why you need to undermine him for us at every turn. If you really want Bobby to survive this...then you need to run interference," Winter stated.

"I will do what is necessary for my grandchildren and make no mistake, if it becomes clear that cursing you two idiots into some blissful haze is the only way to save them, then that's what I will do to protect them," the Queen hissed, as she disappeared in a puff of purple smoke. Winter let out a frustrated growl and then felt her heart flutter, as her husband came down the stairs, shirtless and just wearing a pair of pants.

"And just when I thought I got you to relax," he joked. She sighed and welcomed his embrace, as he pulled her flushed against him and she rested her head against his chest.

"That woman…" she growled.

"We'll make her pay too, my darling," he promised.

"Except...I think she may help us save our babies," Winter said, as she looked up at him.

"I think you'll have explain how that would be possible and more importantly why," he said.

"She does love them, just like we do. We may be on a path of darkness, but we love our babies," she said. He nodded.

"Tell me what's happening," he requested.

"It's Seth...he fears us so much that he is looking for a way to curse our light halves and the children into a happy life that they would never want to escape," she explained.

"So they would never feel incomplete or seek anything else," he realized.

"And us?" he asked. She shook her head.

"I don't know...it's possible that he fears them more, because we revel in the darkness like him," she suggested.

"Well, we'll make sure he regrets that. Now that we are finally free and not inhibited by the light...we will finally make everyone that has wronged us pay," he promised.

"And if he gets in the way of our rightful rule...then he will pay too," he added.

"Yes...but the Queen thinks that a curse for our light halves might be the only way to save Bobby from Seth," she told him.

"And protecting our children is the most important thing, but if they're cursed...then we will lose them, maybe forever," she feared. But he shook his head and cupped her face in his hands.

"I will not let that happen. We will protect our babies and we will destroy Seth if that's what it takes to do so," he promised.

"Someone is always trying to take the people I love from me…" she said, as she looked up into his eyes.

"They have taken you away, countless times. They want to take my babies from me too...and my light half has let them do it time and again!" she raved.

"Then she has the audacity to forgive them and give a speech about hope and second chances!" Winter spat.

"But I want no more second chances…" she said.

"And there will be none. The time has come and I will make everyone that has ever wronged you beg for your mercy, my darling Winter," he assured. She smirked and took the wand, before using it on the mirror they were using to see around town. The image that appeared on the screen was one of the gardens at the convent and showed a familiar looking person, though her new form as a garden gnome made him smile in satisfaction.

"I do love your work," he said, as he put his arms around her from behind.

"Oh and this is just the beginning, my love," she replied, as their lips met passionately.

"Just the beginning and when I'm finished, everyone will bow to you as their Queen," he promised, as she kissed him again.

~*~

Snow leaned her head against David's arm, as they enjoyed a summer stroll on the beach that night, before they headed home. He smiled over at her and kissed her hair.

"I'm so glad seeing you happy, especially after such a tough day," he said.

"Well, you know how much I love planning parties and weddings, especially when they're for our babies," she replied.

"And it was tough, but I got through it just fine, because my wonderful, loving, handsome husband was there to hold me through it all," she said fondly.

"And I always will be," he assured, as they finally arrived home and went inside.

"Are you sure about this?" He asked with hesitation, as she pulled out the dream headband from her bag.

"I don't want to do this...but you know nothing good is going to come from being separated from our dark halves," she reminded. He sighed.

"I know...I just hate that he's probably the only one that has the solution," he lamented and she took his hands in her own.

"Me too, but like I said, I know you'll be there for me," she said. He smiled and kissed her tenderly.

"Always," he said, as he cupped her beautiful face in his hands and gently caressed her cheek, as she smiled dreamily up at him.

"Come on...let's kiss the kids goodnight and have some us time," she said, giving him a coy look. He grinned and allowed her to lead him upstairs.

~*~

The Major walked into the Rabbit Hole that night and ordered a drink. She opened her files and looked through them. She had her agents in plain clothes as implanted as members of the populace all over the United Realms, so she had the latest Intel on everything that was going on, including this fantastical serum, originally created by Dr. Jekyll, to separate Snow White and Prince Charming from their darker halves. It was really out there, but then everything that happened in this town was. She already had a young agent posing as a student though with the mission to get a vial of this so-called serum for her. She wanted to send it to one of the FBI labs for analysis. More importantly though, she wanted to harness the magic that this family had and make it work for them. She still had no idea how to do that though.

"It seems that everyone has an interest in this pair," a voice said, as a man of Asian looking descent joined her at the bar.

"Do you know them?" the Major questioned.

"Not personally...but I knew their predecessors quite well," he said.

"I've read the book...that would make you quite old," she mentioned.

"Quite...but then I've been stuck in a fallen land for thousands of years since my banishment," he replied.

"You are with the man that attacked during their anniversary party," she surmised.

"And you were not born in these lands...you are from out there," he responded. Her eyes narrowed.

"How do you know that?" she demanded.

"I do my research and you still wear the jewelry of your military station, even in your civilian clothing," he said.

"No one else has noticed as you have been moving around town, but as a former military leader, I can spot it anywhere," he added.

"You've been following me," she surmised. He smirked.

"You have that keen military eye," he complimented.

"Who are you and what is your interest in me and my operation?" she questioned.

"I am Shan Yu and you know this outside world...this Land Without Magic better than any here. It has intrigued my Master," he replied.

"Your Master?" she questioned.

"The Great Titan Typhon...or Seth, as he goes by now," he responded.

"And what interest does he have in the United States military and our government?" she questioned.

"He sees you as a means to possibly getting rid of his adversaries...these Charmings. He has a way...a curse that will keep them together, but with new memories and no reckoning of their old lives," he explained.

"And what does that have to do with me?" she questioned.

"He needs someone on the outside to monitor them...and make sure the curse on them is never broken so he can rule unchallenged by the truest loves," he said.

"And what do I get out of this arrangement?" she asked.

"The power and knowledge you seek," he answered.

"Tell me everything," she requested.

~*~

Snow recognized her surroundings immediately upon arrival in the nether realm. The billowy white smoke was eerie, but a far cry from the flaming red room that she had once experienced during the first sleeping curse. She was dressed in a long, airy white nightgown with a plunging neckline that seemed to shimmer like a light in the darkness.

"My my...and here I thought I was damned to never experience any pleasure again. And yet...here you are again, ending my years of endless torment in this place," a voice said and a chill slithered down her spine. She turned to find him there and immediately regretted it upon seeing his lust filled eyes drinking her in.

"I didn't think it was possible...but you are even more stunning than ever," he complimented, as he approached.

"Stay back…" she hissed, but he did not heed her words.

"Usually this place is filled with raging flames and my own wailing as I am tormented by living nightmares. Morpheus usually sends the Oneiroi to enact these torments. But sometimes he and Hypnos come themselves," Jekyll complained.

"Your torment is well deserved," Snow said.

"Then why are you here, beautiful Snow? Though I am very much enjoying such a vision," he said.

"I have something to ask you," she replied. He smiled.

"You need something from me," he realized.

"It's about your serum," she said.

"Ask away, my lovely Snow," he replied.

"I am not yours nor will I ever be," she snapped. He chuckled.

"Oh that fire...I have missed you. I have longed to see you again and even be scolded by that sharp tongue and incredible wit," he reveled, as he stared at her, no doubt undressing her with his eyes.

"Put your eyes back in their sockets so I can ask you this and get it over with," she snapped.

"As you wish, lovely Snow. How can I assist you?" he asked.

"In creating your serum...did you ever find a way to reverse it?" she questioned. He looked intrigued by that.

"Reverse it? As putting the two halves back together?" he asked. She nodded.

"Yes," she replied.

"To be honest...I never considered it. I worked so hard to get rid of Hyde permanently that I never considered rejoining us," he answered. Her shoulders fell a bit and she twirled her ring.

"Then you don't," she said in disappointment.

"Oh, I didn't say that," he corrected, as she looked up at him.

"May I ask why such an interest in reversing my serum?" he asked.

"No," she refuted.

"Dear Snow…" he said, clicking his tongue in a chiding manner.

"It would be most helpful for me to know," he said. She sighed.

"The Evil Queen has returned again and she used your serum on me...against my will," she revealed. His eyes went wide and his lips curled into a curious smile.

"Fascinating...so your own darkness is free?" he asked.

"I'm afraid so," she replied.

"How intriguing...a version of you with your beauty and a heart as dark as my own," he said.

"Don't get too excited. If she was here...she'd obliterate you from existence, after she made you suffer, because unlike me, she has no regard for Hyde," Snow warned.

"And it would almost be worth it to see an evil version of you," he joked.

"Well...Hyde has my notes," he said.

"Actually, he doesn't. We never found them and he's never had an interest in making more serum. What we had on hand was locked up with one of Regina's spells, but that didn't do us much good when the Queen returned," she explained.

"Ah...yes, well, then that is a problem. I could reverse engineer my serum for you...but obviously not from here," Jekyll said.

"That's not happening...I'd never free you from this place! Not after what you tried to do to me and my husband!" she replied in outrage.

"Then I'm afraid you'll soon find coming here was a mistake...because I am not going to waste this opportunity," he hissed, as he grabbed her arms. She screamed and kneed him between his legs. He groaned in pain and fell to his knees.

"You will not deny me again, Snow White...I am in this hell, because of you and you shall give me what I have been denied!" he growled, as she started backing away from him.

"Snow!" she heard her husband call and let out a breath of relief.

"David!" she called desperately, as he appeared through the smoky air and she ran to him, as he took her in his arms. Jekyll rolled his eyes.

"Honestly...does he ever wear a shirt?" the doctor complained, but he was ignored.

"Did he tell you what we need to know?" he asked. She shook her head.

"No...he says the potion can be reverse engineered, but we don't have the ingredients list. That is in his notes and he is refusing to tell me where those are," she replied.

"That's okay...I have a different approach. You asked and now I'll beat it out of him," David said, as he approached the doctor.

"David…" she started to chide, but he was already grabbing the mad doctor by his collar.

"Man handle me all you want, you neanderthal. I'll never tell you anything," Jekyll hissed.

"Oh that's okay...I'll just relay your refusal to cooperate to my dark half and give him the dream device. Then he'll pay you a visit and compound whatever tortures Morpheus' inflicts upon you...and trust me...he doesn't have my restraint," David threatened.

"Your dark half? She used the potion on you too?" Jekyll questioned.

"She didn't have to. Snow and I share a heart. I separated without the serum, because her dark half called to mine," David revealed.

"Inconceivable," Jekyll said in amazement, as David shoved him back and Snow sided up to him, as she put her arms around his waist.

"If you expect me to give you this information for nothing in return, then you can forget it, my lovely Snow. Not even you have that kind of power over me," he refuted.

"I will never free you...but if you tell us what we need to know, I will ask Aphrodite if I can speak to Morpheus and lighten whatever torment he inflicts upon you," Snow offered.

"You would do that?" he asked.

"We want to be whole again. Regina wants to be whole again. With what we are facing...it's the only way we can win," Snow replied.

"I see...and what are you facing?" he inquired.

"It's of no concern to you. Do we have a deal?" David asked. Jekyll thought for a moment and then relented.

"I hid my research from Hyde and the lot of you in cellar of Zelena's farmhouse where my lab was. The far wall is hollow and I concealed it there," he revealed.

"If you're lying...then my dark half will be the one visiting you next time and like I said before, he doesn't have my restraint," David warned, as they disappeared and Jekyll blew out a breath.

"A bit abrasive that one is," another voice said and Jekyll turned to find a shifty man there. He was rail thin with pointed features.

"Ah...another demon sent by Morpheus to torment me," Jekyll surmised. The being chuckled.

"A demon...yes. But sent by Morpheus...no," he revealed.

"I am Mephisto...though some like to call me Satan. I am not of this realm...not of this sector even. I was long ago banished from my home and ended up with many other unfortunate fallen realm of Nephilim," he explained.

"Ah...you must be a part of the calamity they are facing that dear Snow spoke of," Jekyll said.

"Quite...my Master Seth is a powerful Titan that has returned from his banishment for revenge and I serve him now, but also have many of my own interests," Mephisto replied.

"And how do I factor into those interests?" Jekyll questioned.

"I make deals by trade, Doctor and I can offer you a way out of this hell, complete with a new body, with a snap of my fingers," Mephisto said.

"And what would you want in return?" Jekyll questioned.

"Your soul," Mephisto revealed and then chuckled.

"It's not as dire as it sounds. I would own you, yes...and you would do favors for me when I require it. But for the most part, you'd be free to pursue your own interests," Mephisto said, as he waved his hand and an image of Snow White appeared above his palm.

"And does this new body have the advantage of the power I will need to do assert my will?" Jekyll questioned.

"Of course...you'll have all the power you need. Hellfire will run through your veins," Mephisto promised. Jekyll smirked deviously.

"Then that is a deal I would like to make," he agreed.

~*~

Snow and David awoke and looked at each other, before hugging.

"We did it...we can get what Hyde needs to create the reversal of the serum," she said, smiling at him. He smiled back.

"Yes we can, my darling," he agreed. It was almost dawn, so they decided to clean up early and would then call Regina, before calling Zelena as well to make a visit to her farmhouse.

As they made their way downstairs later that morning though, they heard a knock at their front door and answered it, finding Tink and Neal there.

"Hi you two...please come in," she said, as she opened the door wider.

"We're sorry to visit so early, but I thought I better come tell you about something we found this morning," Tink said, as she looked at her husband and he carried something in that was covered with a sheet. Neal set is down and then pulled the sheet off.

"Oh...a garden gnome. You shouldn't have," David deadpanned. Neal chuckled.

"We didn't...that's Blue," he revealed.

"Someone turned Blue into a lawn gnome?" Snow questioned and then smacked her husband's arm, as he started to chuckle.

"David…" she chided.

"I'm afraid the security cameras reveal that it was your other half that did this," Tink said, with a wince.

"Oh no...so that's how she got a fairy wand," Snow fretted.

"Has your father seen this?" David asked the other man. Neal chuckled.

"I sent him some pics. We're taking it there after this, because he wants to see it in person," Neal said and David chuckled again.

"Neal...we are not doing that. It's not funny," Tink chided.

"It kind of is. She's not dead or anything and she was horrible to you...and a lot of people surprisingly. Yet she flew around the Enchanted Forest like she was some kind of Savior to mortals," Neal argued. Tink sighed. She couldn't really refute any of those claims.

"Don't worry...we think we will soon know how to reunite not only ourselves with our darker halves, but Regina too," Snow said.

"Really?" Tink asked in surprise. She nodded.

"So you had to go talk to Dr. Creepyl?" Neal asked with a wince. David nodded.

"And he was just as creepy as ever, but he told us where his notes are," he replied.

"Wow...well, good luck with that. We better go," he said, as Regina arrived at their front door.

"Is that Blue?" she asked.

"My dark half did that," Snow replied sourly.

"Wow...nice one. I like it," Regina said.

"Regina…" Snow whined.

"I still like you better...most of the time, but that was a nice touch," the other woman replied and Snow rolled her eyes.

"Whoops…" Neal said, as he pretended to trip and almost drop the gnome.

"Neal!" Tink yelled and he laughed again, as they got back in their car.

"Well, shall we? I told Zelena we're coming," Regina said. They nodded and Regina used her magic to transport them to her sister's farmhouse.

~*~

The breakfast rush at Granny's was normal, as usual and bustled with most of the normal crowd, save for the Charmings that morning.

"Order up!" Frankie called, as one of the waitresses picked it up and delivered to a table where Rodmilla Tremaine sat sipping her morning tea.

"It's about time…" she snapped, as she prepared to eat.

"Make sure the order for my daughter is ready when I'm done. I'll not have her eating that hospital swill they try to foist upon her," she said, as she picked up her fork, just as the door to the diner flew open with a bang. It startled all the patrons and there were gasps of surprise, as a pair walked in. Normally, they would not fear them, but it was instantly obvious that, though they looked like their esteemed heroes, they were not. By now, word has spread very quickly that Snow and David had been separated from their dark halves. And by attire alone, they could tell that this was them.

"Easy…" Winter spoke, as she looked at a fear-stricken Joe.

"Most of you have nothing to fear from us…" she told them, as they approached Rodmilla's table.

"You, however, are much overdue for retribution," Charming said, as he glared at the woman.

"Well, well...I must say that I laughed when I heard about your "evil" halves and your hilarity does not disappoint. Now run along and leave the true evil to real masters like me," Rodmilla said, as she tried to walk around them. But Charming brandished his sword and it gleamed under the lighting at Rodmilla's throat.

"This is going to get messy," he said.

"Let's find a different place to make her suffer," Winter said, as she used the wand and the three of them disappeared.

"You...you think we should call Snow and David?" Frankie asked.

"Yeah...yeah we better," Joe agreed, as he took out his phone.

~*~

"Rumple…" Belle said in a chiding tone, as her husband marveled at the object in front of him.

"It's just...exquisite work," he said, as he admired the lawn gnome in front of him.

"There's even bird droppings on it...how very fitting," he added and Neal snickered at that.

"Rumple…" Belle admonished.

"Oh please Belle...the blue flea deserved this. I just didn't think Snow White actually had it in her. Kudos to her," he said.

"Well, technically Winter did this and stole her wand," Neal said.

"Okay...you've had your fun. Change her back," Belle said.

"Or...there are other options. She does make a lovely garden gnome," Rumple argued, as Belle gave him another look.

"Fine," he relented, as he swirled his hand over the gnome and noticed a friction that stopped him from interfering with the spell on the gnome.

"Impressive Winter…" Rumple said.

"What is it?" Tink asked.

"I am afraid the only one that can change her back is Winter herself. She likely knew someone would try to turn her back so she accounted for that in her spell," he replied.

"Well, back in the garden she goes I guess," Neal said.

"Don't worry...if Snow and David succeed in getting Hyde to reverse the serum, then Snow can use the wand to reverse the spell," Belle replied.

"Until then...I doubt she'll be missed," Rumple said. She gave him another look, but didn't chide him further, for she knew what he said wasn't really untrue.

~*~

There are infinite realms, all accessible via the All World River, a pathway to infinite doorways to worlds. Within each portal, a universe of its own can exist in various forms. Most have vast solar systems that extend infinitely and within some sectors, any number of realms can exist as well.

Each sector, no matter how many realms, has unique nuances that can vary in many ways. Some are considered primitive, while others are highly advanced civilizations based in science. Magic often exists in many places, while it can be completely absent from others.

In almost all of them, there are objects or relics of great, legendary power, some of which are even responsible for forging life, time, and reality as known to inhabitants. One example of this exists in the nine realms of one sector deeply rooted in magic. But this magical cluster of realms is unique, for one type of magic in these realms is one rooted very deeply in true love. In these realms, true love rises to a power that most would think to be impossible. The people of this realm, with the exception of any born in the one realm without magic, have enchanted hearts that glow when magically extracted from the body. Within the hearts of mortals born in one of these magical realms exists a star gem. For most mortals, their star gems are ordinary and without special powers or properties. But the same cannot be said for mortals with magic or true love, especially a true love blessed by the Gods. Those star gems had incredible power, power that few, even the holders of those star gems, understood," Rose read from a book she had found about star gems and only looked up when she heard her children entering the library. She smiled and the put the book down, as they hurried to her. They had spent the day with their father and Sif, as he showed her the Kingdom.

"Mama...Aunty Sif told us lots of stories!" Ben said.

"That's wonderful, sweetheart," she said, as she hugged him and Ari close.

"Your Kingdom is truly beautiful, Rose," Sif said. The other woman smiled.

"Thank you," she said graciously.

"And this library is nothing short of magnificent. I've never seen anything quite like it," Sif said. Rose nodded, as she stood up.

"We are very proud of it, especially since my evil Uncle let it fall into such disarray when he ruled," Rose mentioned.

"We have worked very hard to restore it," she added, as she put her arms around Fandral's waist and he kissed her tenderly.

"Every day I am discovering new and intriguing books and today was no exception," Rose said, as Sif read the title of the book in her chair.

"Star gems?" she asked. Rose nodded.

"You found one star gems?" Fandral asked.

"Yes...I read some of it and thought we should show it to Snow and David. Plus, it would be a good opportunity for Sif to meet them and show her around Storybrooke," Rose replied. Sif smiled.

"Does that mean we get to go to Granny's?" Carina asked. Fandral smiled.

"That's what it means. I'm sure Summer and Bobby will be there," he said.

"Run along, the three of you and get cleaned up," Rose instructed and this would be one dinner that none of them would dawdle to.

"I am very eager to meet your new friends and learn more about these star gems," Sif said, as she scanned the book.

"I haven't finished the book yet, but I can tell you what I know on the way," Rose offered. Sif nodded and they proceeded to get ready for a trip to Storybrooke...

[fluffmugger]

introspectivenavelgazer said: I’m curious about your thoughts OH HOLD ON BB I GOT OPINIONS. ITS BAD. 

sabacc said: ah, the disturbing things bingo movie oh no. nononoo. Make no mistake. This was not a “nooope” situation.  There was precisely one moment in a teaser that actually triggered me, and that was so fucking poorly done in the end product I ACTUALLY ENDED UP LAUGHING. I’m  not exaggerating, check the post. First time I saw that it pulled a very hard visceral cord, and when the Kersh scene came up in the movie, I was huddled up in my chair, hoodie on, ear blocking ready to ride out that wave of programmed fear.   Instead, I fucking laughed because the whole thing was so fucking ridiculous. What was a deft, vicious piece of editing got completely fucking wrecked.  And that’s pretty much what happened to the story, that film was a hot mess of absolute bullshit.  It not only completely fucked up the overarching themes of the original story, it made no fcking narrative sense in and of itself as a movie verse Lo, there be spoilers...

While some parts I can understand for expediency - such as sidelining Audra and shifting Bill’s obsessive run to IT being based on a local child that he ultimately fails to save, why the fuck have Audra in it in the first place? A five second appearance so ...wha, you can make a running joke on Bill sucking at writing endings that’s just an endless sledge against King? What was the fucking point of that?     Likewise the inclusion of Silver, stripped down to a single cameo that only got vaguely saved because it put him in the place where he could meet aforementioned kid (now living in Bill’s old house in a most contrived of plot points but I will allow it because it works) and form an emotional connection. The whole reason for them standing to face IT is shifted from the pact they formed - the childhood vow they could never break - to Beverley instead somehow magically seeing the future while trapped in the deadlights, and realising that if they didn’t finish IT once and for all, even after the cycle they would all eventually take their own lives like Stan did, unable to live with the taint.  While this could be a interesting take in and of itself - if you do not face the demons of your childhood, they will destroy you one way or another - it completely shifts the core motivation to one of self interest.    Initially the Losers (especially Bill) did actually take on IT from a position of self interest (and young Bill actually has a moment of self agony over it, is he only leading  his friends into a deadly crusade because he wants vengeance for Georgie? Does he have that right? Is he nothing but a “selfish little shit waving a tin sword”), but it became so much more, and these children became monster slayers.   It’s the hero’s journey.   And shifting that makes it a corruption, not into a subversion.   It was also so damned messily handled - it could have been interesting , the idealism of childhood shifting to pragmatism of adulthood, but it was reduced to a handwave threat, and they didn’t need to be threatened.  The original story had a whole intertwined creep that was fucking beautiful, this veneer of adults in control of their own lives and destiny being stripped away in thin layers, with the Losers gradually beginning to dimly perceive they are simply parts  of some great cosmic machinery and their illusions of control and indeed  their entire lives are all just that - illusions. The undermining of reality and stripping of power were great Adult Fears that played fucking beautifully in the book.  The silent unspoken Imposter Syndrome, hinted at, but never directly addressed, that all their successes were simply due to being touched by IT.  In the movie? Oh man we’re all gonna kill ourselves if we don’t fix this and it means ...nothing to the characters. Seriously. They all still walk anyway.  And   way too much fucking time is wasted on characters abruptly deciding to leave only to Not At The Last Second.   It’s just a big fat clumsy mess.

They completely chunked out Bowers taking Mike out of the final battle, yet still included him in the film - Why? what was the fucking purpose?  They also intimated that IT was responsible for killing his father - ironically the one fucking murder Bowers did commit -   and adult Bowers was delightfully played, but he served  no fucking purpose whatsoever. Not to drop them to the lesser number of power (5 as opposed to 7), not to drive them into the sewers, what was the fucking purpose of having him there? He shows up, doesn’t even break Eddie’s arm (so there’s your other purpose of resetting the gameboard to the positions of the last confrontation) gets stabbed, gets killed, and they go on la de da.

Michael’s story is absolutely fucked into unrecognisability.  I’ve already ranted about killing off his parents - it’s a dumb fucking decision and I will never fucking excuse it. William Hanlon is a key player in the books, inadvertently preparing his son for his role of watchman.  This is completely lost to the most basic of fucking racial stereotypes.   Holy shit they actually refer to his parents as fucking crack heads  at one point (although this is later revealed to be a fake out by Pennywise), but what does it serve?   While you can argue that removing him is what destabilises Mikes character THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON TO HAVE AN UNSTABLE MIKE.   In the sequel, Mike is clinging to sanity by less than the skin of his teeth, drugging Bill against his will at one point, actively leading everyone into danger with a false promise of victory and generally acting like a desperate fucking madman. Why take a dignified black character and turn him into an unstable Kassandra?  You don’t need a fucking unstable Kassandra, the very nature of what IT is, and its horrific, aeons-long parasitic relationship with Derry is so fucking unbelievable in and of itself it does that for you.   

Likewise Eddie’s adult career  is suddenly changed to being a ...investment? insurance? boring person thing? what the shit? Why not have him own the goddamn largest fleet private chauffeurs? Why change? that one tied back into his navigation skills at least, and there’s serious coin in that shit.   And fucking hell do not get me started on fucking Myra fucking hell if you want to touch a complex and fucked up relationship like that, you don’t handwave it. His entire rampant hypochondria is shifted to  something closer to ...smart arse with some small neuroses?  Ok, but you’re telling me this..why? what is the purpose of this?

Completely out of left field, Richie is heavily intimated to be Queer. Ok.     But they then go on to jam in additional homophobia (and this is on top of Mellon’s death that to be fucking honest is shot way too fucking far on the side of “lookit the smartmouth gay get stomped”)  and Pennywise threatening to reveal Richies Great Secret to the point I literally leaned over and asked His Lordship “The script writer does know this is set in the fucking 21st century, right?”   It could have been a fascinating side story of a man whose trauma keeps himself in a cage even when he doesn’t have to, but it’s not. It’s a hot mess of what the fuck let’s throw a gay (but not too obviously gay we’ll do it so we can claim he’s not so it still sells in china and we have plausible deniability hide your queers, hide your queers!)  in just so we can kill the object of his affection.  YOU DON’T NEED TO AMP UP THE ANGST OVER EDDIES DEATH. WE ALL KNOW ITS COMING. AND IT HURTS.    You know what woulda been ground breaking? You’ve laid the groundwork with Beverley already, have Richie in the deadlights as he is, have Eddie do his Big Damn Hero Save, and then have richie see what’s coming and shove eddie out of the way.  Having Richie die instead of Eddie? Holy crap, no one would have seen that coming. It would have blown up fucking everyone, film, telemovie and book fans alike.   (Also holy shit adult richie, far from being the smart, funny man we all know is a wanker. His comments at the chinese dinner party have none of the genuine humour of the book or even the  Curry adaptation, he comes across as a mean spirited bullying dickhead that you’d all go to the toilet at the same time and climb out the window to avoid. In a kid it’s funny. Kids have no filters. From an adult, it’s fucking poison)  

We also have all these elements of childhood coming back, but there is no purpose to them in the film.  In the book, it’s the wheel turning, the gameboard sliding back to where it was last time they faced IT, a very real embodiment of unfinished business and an inability to escape your childhood - a fact the characters are very well aware of and in varying ways horrified by their own regressions -  but in the film it’s just leaving the audience wondering why are they doing that? why’s that there. what the fuck man. why have bill stutter? So you connect the adults to the kids by using the broadest fucking flanderised tropes possible?  It doesn’t even stand on its own two feet, it relies on way too much back knowledge from other sources. And it reeks as it they bolted on large chunks of some other horror movie script that was presented to the studio and changed the names.  There’s no psychological implications, there’s no deftness, hell there’s no fucking chemistry with any of the fucking actors.  It’s reduced to a jumpscare gore fest. It doesn't even compare to the first half.  It got so bad that by the second act I was literally pointing at the screen and BAM right on cue, there was the jumpscare. That’s how fucking predictable it is.   The CGI was shithouse (I actually burst out laughing during the Paul Bunyan scene as well as the Kersh one it was so fucking bad) the ending is..my god they literally prance around him screaming “fucking clown” until he shrinks, they pluck his heart and crush it. Fuck me, the Curry adaptation had its problems but the savage, ritualistic destruction of IT as they all fell to their knees around and tore it apart with their bare hands had fucking balls at least.  And BTW, it’s only the caverns and the house on neibolt street that get destroyed, the rest of the town is just fuckin’ dandy and it’s like DUDE THE TOWN WAS LITERALLY BUILT ON IT. DERRY CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT IT.  IT’S A PARALLEL FOR THE HORRIFIC CANKER  AT THE HEART OF EVERY “LOVELY” AMERICAN SMALL TOWN. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY SOMETHING TO PLAY WITH.  and then, THEN they end it with a letter from Stan. See, Stan didn’t kill himself because in one brief, horrific instant he remembered everything, and even as a child knew he couldn’t face it again and bailed, no... he knew he was going to buckle and killed himself so..he wouldn’t die they wouldn’t all die what. the fuck. was the purpose. of THAT.

In short, it was a phoned in, badly written, badly edited piece of shit, completely purposeless and not even worthy of its predecessor. 

[marywrites-things]

We’ll be fine

Book: The Royal Romance.

Pairing: King Liam x MC (Amelia Collins).

Word count: 3931.

Rating: PG-13.

Summary: Never is the “right moment”, and Amelia is about to discover it.

A/N: It’s my very first fic, so please be nice! <3 It maybe get a second part, i dont know yet, so please enjoy! Thank you so much to @zaffrenotes​ for helping me<3

Tag: @give-me-ernest-sinclaire​ @zaffrenotes​

Chaos.

Everything was a complete chaos. The sound of people running and screaming was I could hear. My brain, my neurons, were in shock, they didn’t respond to anything. There was no time even to be scared, my head didn’t process it, it didn’t process anything at all. It was just turned off. I knew Drake was almost on top of me, growling between his teeth because of the bullet that had just pierced his shoulder, but I could not even react to that.

 “Duchess Amelia, you need to get out of here! Now!” somebody yelled at me while Bastien’s angry face appeared in front of me.

 My eyes fell on Drake and the blood stain on his shoulder, and something just clicked in my head. I looked around quickly while my body began to shiver. No, he has to be here. Liam has to be okay. I looked at Bastien and he seemed to understand my silent plea.

 “His Majesty is fine, the guards are taking care of him, but you need to get out of here now, Duchess,” I could see how his jaw clenched. “There’s a car waiting for you both, it’ll take you to a safe place in the suburbs. Take Drake with you and try to stop the bleeding.”

 “Wait, Liam…” I have to see Liam, I couldn’t leave him, not this way, not without knowing his is okay.

 “Collins, if we don’t leave now, you won’t be able to see him never again. You might be killed, he could be too so… Come on. Get up!”

 Against my will, I got up of the floor and let Drake to lean on me. My heart ached for Liam, I was leaving without being able to see him at least once, just to show him that I was okay. I knew he was worried about me, I could feel it, but Drake was right. I wanted to save him, I need to leave and not be a distraction. I trusted Bastien, I knew he would keep him safe. Besides, he was the King of Cordonia and I was completely sure many would gave their lives for him. Please God, let him be safe.

 The black SUV was waiting for us the entrance of the palace, just as Bastien said; when they spotted us, a man wearing black clothes jumped out of the car and ran to me. He bowed to me and freed my body of Drake’s weight immediately. My shoulders shook at the loss of heat that my best friend’s closeness gave me.

 “Thanks” whispered to the guard.

 “It’s my job, Your Highness.”

 I got in the black SUV and let out a sigh I didn’t know I was holding back; even still being close to the chaos, I was starting to feel a little safe. My green eyes went to the unknown faces inside the car, royal bodyguards I supposed, and beyond them, to the palace. Even with the disaster going on inside, it exuded greatness and security, as if nothing could break it. I’ve never thought that a group of rebels could break the security system of the royal residence and attack in a moment so important for Cordonia. The car started to move and I kept my eyes on the palace, waiting and desiring with all my heart that Liam come out and join us.

 Of course, that never happened.

 The cabin wasn’t far away only twenty minutes away by car. I had never seen it before and Liam never mentioned it before, or at least not to me. Maybe that was one of the many secrets of the Cordonian’s royal family that I should discover. Once the guards were sure that there was no danger and was pretty safe, they leave and let me alone with Drake in a dark cabin.

 “Seems like there’s a problem with the power plant. I’ll look for the first aid kit” murmured to my friend.

 “Check out the bathroom! Under the sink!”

 I checked where Drake told me and there it was, the small blue bag with a red cross on top. I went back to the hall and knelt down in front of Drake; his face was cover with little drops of sweat because of the pain he was suffering.

 “This is going to hurt” I warned before to put the cotton gauze with alcohol in the bleeding wound.

 “Seven hells, Collins! You weren’t lying!” Drake’s jaw hardened and his nostrils flared, trying to control himself. “A glass of whiskey would be great right now.”

 “Only you could think of alcohol at this moment,” I laughed lightly.

 “Hey! The alcohol is very useful, relieves the pains. All kind of pains. A few glasses of whiskey and I assure you I wouldn’t be aware of what you’re doing. It’s win-win. I don’t feel pain and, besides, enjoy the one of the pleasures of life.”

 “Well, sadly for you, that’s not going to happen. I need you conscious,” I shot at him a warning look.

 “Oh, come on Collins, just one.”

 “No. And don’t move! I can’t finish if you don’t let me,” I scolded him, but being unable to keep my face serious.

 “You’re so bossy.”

 I smiled at his grimace of disgust and continued with my work. In a short time, his arm was clean of any trace of blood and dust, and properly bandaged. I was satisfied with my work, to not be an expert I was pretty good. I think the first aid course my roommate had forced me to take had been quite helpful. Although I would have preferred it not to be like that.

 My brain, now idle, directed my thoughts towards the palace, recalling each of the scenes of horror that had passed before my eyes. The uncomfortable knot in my stomach did nothing but grow and my heart cringed at the idea of ​​being separated from Liam. Would he be good? Would he have managed to escape? What if he was injured and had no one to help him? Bastien had not communicated with me, and that worried me.

 I could feel the weight on my shoulders growing and growing as I turned the matter around. At last we could have started to be happy, at last we had managed to be together in front of everyone, without having to hide, without kisses and moments stolen between one meeting and another. At last we could declare our love before the eyes of all Cordonia and the world... and this happened. It wasn’t fair, neither for him nor for me.

 I had fought against everyone to be where I was, even against the most powerful man in the kingdom. I had taken every obstacle they threw at me and turned it into a triumph. The press adored me, the people loved me, Liam loved me. And me to them. But it seemed that not everyone was happy with the new happy life that the King was building, it seemed that not everyone was happy with the new fiancée Liam had. A New Yorker.

 Was this my fault? Had I been the one who had undermined Liam's stability as king? Had I been selfish enough to put my love for him and the desire to be together above his security? The breath caught in my throat and I began to hyperventilate, prey of fear and worry. I had to go out, I had to calm down, I needed to get out and run away from all that. I forced myself to look up when a hand landed on my shoulder.

"He’ll be fine. Soon we will have him here with us, maybe he's on his way."

 I nodded at Drake's words of support, but I couldn’t find my own voice, the knot had taken not only my stomach but also my throat. Instinctively, a hand settled on my belly, as if I wanted to protect something in there. I hadn’t been able to tell him. I had to do it, but for that I needed him to come back to me first.

 I felt Drake's hand twitch on my shoulder.

 "Collins... don’t tell me..." I looked up at him, my eyes watering in tears but unable to let them run freely down my cheeks. "Liam... does he know?"

I shook my head, breathing deeply before answering.

 "I was going to tell him tonight. I had planned a surprise, you know? It was assumed that once we left the dance we would go for a walk around the gardens..." my voice broke at the thought. I was so excited to tell him, I had put so much effort into the planning, and it had not worked.

"Does anyone else know about this?"

 "No. Hana suspects it, I know, but she hasn’t received confirmation from me. I wanted Liam to be the first," I wrinkled my nose, realizing that even that had failed. It had not been Liam the first to know, but Drake.

"Well... Congratulations, Collins. I guess I've lost my drink partner for about nine months," Drake smiled, and I could see that he was genuinely glad for the news. "We will update once that little troublemaker is born."

 "I think it will be more than nine months without alcohol, you know?"

 "God damn."

 "Don’t worry, Maxwell will be happy to take my place," I joked.

 "Not in a million years, Collins."

 We both laughed at the idea of ​​a drunken Maxwell, and let the silence settled between us. As the seconds passed, I could see how he assimilated the idea that his best friend would be a father, that we would no longer be the five of us as the friends we were, that there was a new little addition to the group. If Drake had reacted with almost a smile, which is saying a lot about him, I was excited at the possible reaction of Liam. He would be happy, I knew it.

 "Go and rest awhile. I promise to wake up as soon as I know something about Liam."

 "It's okay. Thanks, Drake. For all."

 "There's no need, Collins."

 I leaned over and placed a kiss on Drake's raspy cheek, before heading to the main room of the cabin.

 It was a large room, quite large. The wooden walls contrasted nicely with the soft, fluffy floor of white carpet, so seemingly comfortable that for a moment I wanted to lie down on it and forget about the enormous bed that adorned the room. The sheets were well stretched and clean, even considering the obvious lack of warm touch in the room. The wooden closet, huge and tall, was right in front of the bed, and next to what appeared to be the bathroom door.

 I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, not without first relaxing my aching muscles. I brought my hands to my back and found the closing of the dress, struggling a little to lower it before releasing completely of its weight. The gold and lace dress was beautiful, Justin and Bertrand had been proud to see me in it, and Liam had not been able to stop praising me and telling me how beautiful I was.

 I walked to the bathroom, leaving the dress on the floor without caring about the possible damage that could cause, and scanned the room with my gray eyes. It was small, a lot considering how huge the bathrooms could be in the palace, but it was fine. A double sink was to my right, and to my left was a white polished marble bathtub that invited me to try it. I opened the taps, letting the water heat up a little and I headed towards the mirror.

 The Amelia who looked at me through the mirror was far from resembling the one who had attended the Welcome Ball. The elaborate collection that Hana had made for me now fell gracelessly and deflated in my neck, with several strands of blonde hair jutting out of control; my makeup was messy, streaks of mascara down my cheeks, concealer failing to hide the dark circles under my eyes. It was impressive how a look could change in a matter of hours. I sighed and released my hair from the bun, massaging my leather hair with my fingers before undressing completely.

 I sighed as the warm water enveloped my aching body and I closed my eyes, letting myself go for a moment. The bathroom was completely silent, I could only hear my slow and soft breathing and the slight sound emitted by the water every time I moved one of my hands. I dedicated myself to cleaning myself, scrubbing my skin hard until it was red; I washed my hair and my face, wanting to erase with those the memories of that fateful night.

 Ten minutes later, I was already dry, dressed in a Liam shirt and lying on the bed, staring at the wall. I didn’t know what time it was, and I didn’t want to know; I didn’t want to be aware that the minutes passed without contemplation and that I still didn’t know about Liam. I just wanted to close my eyes and allow myself to dream about what would have been that night. Dreaming of the beautiful smile of my fiancé, imagine how his dark eyes would shine with surprise and joy at the news that he was about to be a father, I wanted to remember how his arms felt around my waist and how I could feel completely safe in them. A single tear ran down my cheek.

 Knock knock.

 I turned my gaze to the door, unable to move and with a terrible fear that it was Drake with bad news. I did not want to open. Maybe if I stayed quiet, he would understand the message and let me spend that night in relative peace, I would give myself those hours to dream about Liam before facing the outside world in the morning. I waited a few seconds and listened as the door handle began to give way. No, please no.

But it was not what I expected.

My heart skipped a beat when they were dark eyes that I knew very well those who looked at me from the small opening. My breath caught in my throat and I could see how his eyes walked through every corner of my body, relaxing at the confirmation that I was okay, that I was not hurt.

"Amelia..." he whispered softly before closing the door, as if afraid to scare me.

"Oh God, Liam..." I murmured and crossed the room in less than a second, throwing myself into his open arms and encircling his neck with mine. "You're fine... God, you're fine!"

Immediately, I felt security returning to me, how my heart stopped hurting and how the weight of my shoulders lightened with the passing of the seconds. Liam dipped his face between my neck and shoulder and sighed against my skin, making my body shudder at the joy of knowing he was alive and holding him in my arms.

"I was so worried about you. When the explosion happened and Drake was shot, all I could do was look for you around the room, but I did not see you, I did not even see your guards. Bastien did not let me go in your search," murmured hastily, as if the time we had was not enough. Hot tears began to fall down my cheeks." I thought... I thought you would not come back to me, that they had taken you... Oh, Liam, I thought the worst!" 

His big strong hands cradled my cheeks and caressed them with his thumbs, stirring little by little the infinite thread of tears that ran through them.

"Easy, I'm here. Nothing happened to me. I'm here, with you, and nothing will separate me from your side," he leaned in and kissed my forehead, then pulled me toward his body in a comforting hug. 

His fingers traced my arm gently and stopped at the small scratch on my skin. I could feel him stiffen and move away from me so he could check the wound on my arm for himself. My gray eyes searched for his browns and I saw endless emotions crossing them: anger, worry, sadness, guilt. 

"Liam, I'm fine."

"I should have known... I should have better prepared the security of the palace. It was to be expected that they would attack in the only dance where there would be not only the Crown in full, but also the other nobles..." Liam put a hand to his forehead and began to massage it.

"Liam"

"... My father warned me on multiple occasions, that I should be careful ..."

"Liam.” 

"...for the second time you were in danger. First Tariq and now this..."

 "Liam!" I shouted.

 His tormented brown eyes clashed with mine, and I smiled softly. I moved closer to him and let my hand run through his messy black hair.

 "I'm fine. We are fine."

 My hands traveled to my belly and I watched as his eyes rested on that little gesture on my part. I could see how his mind worked with speed to decipher the message behind that small gesture, it was only a matter of time. I knew it was not the best time to tell him, in fact it had not been the way I had imagined it, but after what happened today I realized that there was no adequate or perfect moment. The moment would be perfect when he knew it, not before.

 Liam's eyes widened and his head shot up, staring at me.

"Are you…?"

 I smiled broadly and nodded.

 The next thing I was aware of is Liam's lips on mine. I held onto his shoulders for stability while letting him assault my mouth. We had shared a kiss at the party, a few hours ago, but it felt like an eternity.

 The arms of my fiancé tangled in my waist and attracted me more towards him, between our bodies not even a sheet of paper entered. I could not tell where he ended and where I started. His kiss felt like glory, like a balm of fresh water before a few days lost in the Sahara. He lifted me on my feet and groped my way to the bed, where he deposited me gently and lay down beside me, pulling me back into a comforting embrace.

 "How long have you known?"

 "Two weeks, more or less."

 Liam leaned on his shoulders and looked at me with surprise.

 "When were you going to tell me?"

 "I was thinking about doing it tonight. Of course, not in these conditions," I murmured, fidgeting with my hands, nervous. He had not overlooked that he had not said anything about it. "I had a romantic night planned, but the attackers took away that possibility. After today, and seeing how close we were to losing each other, I decided I should tell you as soon as I saw you."

 I lowered my eyes and small tears accumulated in my eyes. What if I did not want it? The wedding was still far away, the baby would be a child out of wedlock, I doubted that the nobles in the country would accept that little baby as heir to the throne.

 "Is not what you expected?" I muttered, preparing myself for his response.

 "Amelia, look at me."

 I refused to look at him, I wasn’t sure if I would endure his rejection. I could not do it.

 "Amelia," his finger rested on my chin and forced me to look at his bright eyes. My heart accelerated. "Not only is the love of my life alive and well, but he has just told me that he is about to give me the best gift a man can receive. Believe me when I tell you that there are no words that can express my level of happiness at this time. "

But, my worries were not going to leave me so easily.

 “But... We're not married."

 "But we'll get married soon, love."

 "I don’t want my son to be considered a bastard for not being born into marriage," I whispered with a thin voice, and my hands flew to my belly, trying to protect that little creature that was growing inside me.

"Love, we'll get married in a month. Tomorrow if possible. My son, our son, will not be considered any of that. I will not allow it, Amelia. Nobody will hurt you. "

 "But -"

 "We will worry about that at the time, now the only important thing is that both you and she are well. I will put at your disposal all possible servants, I will spoil all your wishes, my love.” Liam leaned towards me and caught my lips in a soft kiss.

 "Wait... her? How do you know it's a girl? "I laughed softly.

 "A little hunch. Besides, do you know how happy he would let me know that there will be a mini Amelia running through the halls of the palace, that I will fall in love with his smile every day and that he will look at me with the huge gray eyes inherited from his mother?" Liam smiled with genuine happiness and love.

 "Oh Liam," I snuggled against him, feeling my chest explode in the face of so much happiness.

 "Can I...?" I looked at him and he pointed towards my belly.

 I nodded softly, looking at him questioningly and waited. Liam settled over me, each leg on either side of my body. He lifted the shirt gently and a chill ran through me when my abdomen was exposed. Without wanting to, my body shuddered with anticipation.

He looked at me one more time and leaned into my belly, stroking the sides of my waist with his thumbs.

 "Hi there," Liam whispered, and a huge smile shot up my face. "I’m daddy. I just became aware that you are in there, growing up, and I already love you with all my strength. "

I laughed happily, watching him.

 "I want you to know that I cannot wait to meet you; there are many things I want to teach you... like the face of your mother's satisfaction and happiness right now," he looked at me for a moment and smiled at me. "I’ll tell you a secret, but only if you keep it very well. Your mom is the bravest, strongest, smartest and most beautiful woman I have ever met, and I’m greatly grateful that she has entered my life." 

Without realizing it, the tears had begun to flow down my cheeks. 

"I would like to apologize to you. I know that you and your mom spent a lot of stressful hours today, but I promise you it will be the last time. Dad promises to take care of you and mom with his life, and will not let anything happen to them. You will be safe and well, we will be fine." 

Liam looked at me with adoration, and for a moment I let my heart believe what it said. I did not know what the future held for us both, I was not sure if at that moment there would be another attack on the small cabin where we were staying, I don’t know if Bastien would catch the attackers. 

I only knew that, while we were together, we would be fine.

Thanks for reading! <3