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dwestfieldblog · 2 years ago

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HEXAGRAM 2023

‘With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence, the key of Joy is disobedience’.

The foul war crimes continue care of dwarf slaphead Vlad and his fat Nosferatu wannabe president Prigozhin of the despicable Wagner group. The latter have just legally registered themselves as a company concerned with ‘management consulting’. Yevgeny was a former petty violent criminal and is now a serious professional criminal, (the scum also rises.) Shame there is nothing possible in democracies as a slow public execution broadcast live. The Russian Chuckle brothers have a vast amount of truly innocent blood on their hands and their degrading end cannot come soon enough.

The angry irrelevant like me still dream of the day when such bastards are righteously punished. Start at the top and work right down to culpable cretins like Trump, Boris and Matt Hancock. In-between Bolsanaro, Erdogan, above them Myanmar’s army, Kim Wrong ‘Un and Xi. Perhaps just the stocks and rotten cabbages for the Scottish leader and Farage. And castration for the execrable Tate brothers.

Expel Chang Frick from Sweden immediately and let him live in Russia.

Shock news…Brexit seems to be failing (the writer almost gloats…(but he is living inside the nightmare now, not observing from a safe distance) on every level other than the one where the rich keep their untaxable loot safe offshore and command poor hugely replaceable drones to do their bidding. And unless I am not careful/lucky, I will become one of the latter’s ranks very soon. ‘England awakes, England expectorates, all hope evaporates’. Land of hopeless stories…the untied kingdom with an abundance of food banks. This country is worse off than all the other G7 nations in terms of health care, work, pay, time off, culture…fill in the blanks with live ammunition.

A three-day weekend for the king’s coronation to show Britain ‘as it is today’. Diverse, multicultural, woke, vapid, amoral, racist and disintegrating? If the prison island is still floating after the nuclear tsunami from Putin’s submarines. And some cretins are proposing Boris ‘Let the bodies pile high’ Johnson as leader of NATO. Yes, that would be a GOOD idea, wouldn’t it?

And oh, get me OUT of this ridiculous country, a trigger warning has been placed on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge… a content warning of ‘animal death’, ie ‘I shot the albatross’. For feck’s sake, really? Aside from the fact the poem is a classic masterpiece and the action heralds a long stream of disaster and bad luck for the sailor (and thus its own warning perhaps), this is the latest in a heart crippling list of utter cow manure ideas from MORONS for the new generation of the weak. Sooner or later…obituaries themselves will come with a trigger warning. Death is inevitable you lily livered wusses.

‘Religion is a business and in business you have to protect your copyright’

‘When trade stops, war starts’ Chinese saying. Indeed, and their recent pronouncements at Davos economic Forum indicate a desire to re-join and open up in the high holy name of business. Covid rampant, birth-rate falling there for the first time in sixty years but nothing good for all those murdered or ‘ re-educated’ for the sake of noble Communist ideas…and the unwilling donors of Falun Gong members who had their clean organs harvested for the rich. Winnie the Pooh is a pig, four legs good, two legs better,eh? All the blank paper protestors vanishing, forced to sign a blank arrest warrant. ‘Picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ is the charge against silent protests. 10 years max. Cant rule without being cruel eh? Fk the Chinese government. Good luck Cao Zhixin.

Elon Musk the saviour of Twitter and reinstating Trump, quoted ‘The people have spoken, vox populi, vox dei’…interesting to note the full version from which that Latin comes is ‘And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness’. Reminds me again of Churchill’s quote ‘the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter’. The apparent all powering desire of Boris to be seen as a latter-day Winston rather than what he is, a pound shop Trump is somewhere between hilarious and terrifying. But aren’t most things?

Pronoun badges. An advert which proudly announces you are a tosser. Oh I am not in a good enough mood to follow my principles but in the safe space neophobes verses the it’s fun to explore neophiles, I despise both extreme left and right, the woke and anyone else dumb enough not to think for themselves. The Dalai Lama (goddess bless him) I am not. Be yourself, everyone else is taken. Explore, experiment, harm none but do what you Will.

‘For a Fuhrer to exist, there must be masses with a submissive imprint on that circuit’. Reality is What You Make It. R.A.W. Hail Victory, arf.

‘And since we’re all quantum systems, we’re in all possible states until we take our measurements, as it were’.Geddit? More Robert Anton Wilson.

San Francisco’s Open AI, backed by Q Onan’s favourite antichrist Bill Gates has unleashed ChatGPT…which, amongst other drear functions, has been set to task writing songs. A machine writing of emotions and images it will never experience might almost qualify as a type of psychopath with a good imagination (and there are a few such famous folk who have had their books published) but cold pure logic and random word play will never inspire any humans other than those most similar to machines. Poetry, fascination and longing expressed without a soul of light or a mind of lust, fire and loss. It does however make sense in these times of virtual Meta reality tv that certain types of primates might attain a numb thrill as their spirit slows to inertia. Souls in total stasis.

Oh God, ‘How art thou Nothing when thou art most of all?’

Carer’s Breakdown Diary …Five weeks ago I came downstairs at 7 am to find my mother kneeling on the carpet with her head on the bed, leggings and pants down, surrounded by excrement and broken glass because of falling from the commode. I carried her over the mess, took her to the freezing kitchen, washed her feet and checked for cuts, washed her legs, got her dressed. Carried her back into the sitting room, brought her pills and a drink and spent two hours cleaning the carpet. The glass of water had been on her bedside table and I was an idiot to have left it there. Just luck there were no cuts. She hadn’t called for help. Just waited for me, could have been there for thirty mins. After hospital, thirty eight days at the home she bought 33 years ago and still asking me ‘When can I go home?’

Mum goes walkabout at night, swears she is unaware of the care with which she removes obstacles which I later set up to hear if she left the room. Three months ago I woke at 5am to hear the landing creaking and stopped her just as she was stepping into the darkness of the top stair. Got a baby gate and was told it impinged on her civil liberties by a social worker. Moved her bed downstairs and woke early to hear her trying to come upstairs. I put Christmas lights around the commode and 4 sensor lights and this still didn’t help enough at night to remember. Maximum of four hours sleep every night, sleeping with one ear open for thumps. I have said exhausted angry things to mum that if I heard anyone saying to their ill, elderly mother, I would punch them into a hospital.

Her phases of not knowing me at all are increasing. Two weeks of mum in a care home…respite they call it, or Carers Break, to give me a break. (She lost 3kg there and already looked emaciated before going.) I visited mum last week; she was sitting in the hall in pyjamas I did not know. Did not recognise her with head slumped, had to get on my knees to look carefully. Spent thirty mins with mum then went to her room to unpack some extra clothes I had brought. Returned ‘You can’t sit there, David will be back soon’.

Today I spent an hour looking at all the photos mum saved of my life in Prague and for the first time since coming back in June, I felt the pang of missing Czech. Half of my life in Bohemia. I also found many photos I had never seen of mum at all stages of her life, actually smiling in many of them in our old garden or her on holiday in Guernsey and happy. A small but detailed diary she had kept of her two weeks there which I found in a box next to my childish diary of a holiday in the same place along with many many other memories. I spent over an hour howling with tears and making animal noises. Guilt and pain. Death cannot exist but decay seems to be bloody real. Fk cancer.

Was administering oral morphine at home in drops after having to call district nurses to come at 4am to inject. My mother is eating and drinking less and less, closing down. I will stop here for this one. February 3rd, mum in a hospice for four days, refusing all pills, so only morphine pump slow release. Visiting tomorrow and will be unlikely to want to re edit or revisit this piece.

Stay well and Love more. Much more.

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jakethesequel · 2 years ago

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Warning: Really Long Post

If I had to chronologize superhero comic history I think it would be like this:

The Platinum Age, 1896 to 1938

From the first word bubble used, to the first true superhero. Early pulp semi-superheroes like Flash Gordon, the Phantom, Buck Rogers, Hugo Hercules, the Clock, Tarzan, Mandrake the Magician, Sheena Queen of the Jungle.

The Golden Age, 1938 to 1954

From the first appearance of Superman to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority.

Of course, different publishers have slightly different eras, but we're generalizing for the whole industry. Marvel didn't get started until 39, and their Golden Age likely ended when they stopped publishing Captain America after the poorly aged "commie smasher" rebrand also in 54. DC's Golden Age really ended in 53, when they cancelled all but 8 superhero comics, nixing or rebranding the rest.

The Silver Age, 1954 to 1970

The CCA era. By the early 70s, writers start to push back against the code and write about complex issues, and some comics avoid it altogether.

Marvel's Silver Age doesn't get going until late, with Fantastic Four #1 revitalizing the genre. DC gets an earlier start in 1956, rebooting the Flash. Both publishers challenge the Code by publishing drug-related stories in 1971: Green Goblin Reborn and Snowbirds Don't Fly, respectively. (Note for Marvel, the Silver Age begins and ends with Jack Kirby. Respect him.)

The Bronze Age, 1970-1986

I'm going with 86 because that's when The Dark Knight and Watchmen were published. A lot of people point to 84 or 85 as the end, because of Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths. I disagree, those huge events are the peak of the Bronze Age, not its end. Its end came when people started asking for something more from superhero comics, to really consider what superheroes meant. Everything since has to answer Watchmen: Are superheroes just a corrupt Great Man theory? Do they just serve as propaganda for the powerful? Can superheroes even be a good thing, or are they just an outlet for unaccountable constant violence, constantly fighting criminals but never really changing anything? That, or they copy Frank Miller and say "they're an outlet for unaccountable violence that cannot really change, and that's super fucking cool." Guess which was more popular.

Marvel doesn't really have a Watchmen equivalent. They have a TDKR equivalent in Miller's Daredevil, but Watchmen stands alone. I guess Marvel was a little too busy with the record-breaking success of Claremont's X-Men. You might argue X-Men was such a juggernaut (lol) that it kept Marvel in its own Broze Age (and in good finances) for much longer than the rest of the industry. Claremont stepped away in 91, shortly after X-Men vol 2 #1 set a world record for best-selling single comic issue that remains to this day.

The Dark Age, 1986 to 2008

From Watchmen to the year Nolan's The Dark Knight and Favreau's Iron Man released.

This was a rough period for most mainstream, Big Two heroes in my opinion.

For Superman: Supergirl died in Crisis; his friendship with Batman is uneasy and distrustful where it used to be close; he dies, gets replaced by younger and more modern Supermen, one of which blows up a major city and drives GL Hal Jordan insane; whatever was up with Superman Red/Superman Blue.

For Batman, even taking Miller out of the equation: The Killing Joke has Batgirl permanently disabled, sexual abuse of her and of her father Commissioner Gordon, and depending on your interpretation an implication of Batman killing Joker; Death in the Family has Robin Jason Todd murdered and the Batman literally trying to kill Joker, only stopped by Superman; Knightfall has Batman beaten, physically disabled, depressed, turning to drugs, even replaced as Batman.

Spider-men deals with the symbiote suit making him violent, Venom coming after him, Carnage coming after him, Venom goes off to be an anti-hero (still eating people), Carnage comes after him again in Maximum Carnage, and a bunch of other symbiote bullshit; Kraven's Last Hunt has him beaten so bad Kraven just retires because he won; the messy-ass Clone Saga; Civil War has his identity exposed, Aunt May killed, which culminates in fucking One More Day, need I say more.

Captain America had been going through identity crises for a while, but the 90s took away his super-soldier serum, putting him in that weird fuckin exoskeleton thing; then he did the Heroes Reborn reboot for a while (unfortunately drawn by Rob Liefeld); Bucky comes back as a Manchurian Candidate assassin; then, again, Civil War. He gets off better than a lot of characters honestly. I wonder if that's because as a "man out of time" writers feel less need to reinvent him, since the old fashionedness is part of the charm.

The X-men explode even more, but the writing drops a bit in quality. There were dozens of X-books running in parallel, Wolverine would cross over with everyone and their mother, line-wide crossovers annually, anything and everything that might sell more action figures with excessive pouches and bad anatomy. Thankfully Morrisson's run pulled this back a bit to make a more coherent narrative, though.

Not all of these stories were bad, but they show that the Big Two were desperately trying to reinvent and find new ways to make their characters relevant to audiences. Most of the time it didn't stick with long-established characters. Where you did get gems occasionally was in their sub-imprints like Vertigo, which released some of the absolute best comics of the era, even of all time. I love a lot of the Vertigo stuff lol. I guess MAX is Marvel's equivalent, but it never hit the same highs. Though, imo Punisher MAX is probably the best work on the character, if you can stomach Ennis's habit of including a transmisogynistic stereotype at least once in everything he does.

And it would be remiss to not talk about the proliferation and success of indie imprints in this time. Wildstorm created a whole universe of new superheroes with new ideas who didn't have to be held back by the status quo and years of backstory (though whether they did anyway often fell on the writers). Milestone did the same, and specifically challenged the overwhelming whiteness of comic book heroes. Spawn is competitive with the most successful comics of all time, ranking a little below Captain America, insanely impressive considering it's a comic from the 90s going up against 30 or even 60 year head starts. Disappointly, Wildstorm and Milestone both got sold to DC, but Image remains an important publisher for creator-owned projects, even if McFarlane kinda fucked Niel Gaiman over Miracleman. Marvelman. Whichever. Also they should have recognized Comic Book Workers United willingly.

One last thing: I think the DCAU and the influence of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm had a huge influence on major DC characters being able to hold on to some core traits during a turbulent period. I would put money on people being far more attached to the DCAU from 93-06 than most of the comic runs from the same period. Who's had a longer-lasting impact on Batman media, Azrael or Harley Quinn?

The Film Age, 2008 to present

This one is, admittedly, more controversial, and it's speculative, but I think the influence of the Hollywood box office is the currect defining feature of the industry, at least the Big Two. There have been superhero movies before of course, but not like they are now. Over the 14 years since The Dark Knight and Iron Man, they've gona from being movies inspired by comics, to starting to dictate the comics themselves.

Adam West Batman was goofy, and didn't get taken seriously, even compared to the goofiness of 60s comics. Notably, this is the only DC theatrical release to predate acquisition by Warner Communications, one of the Big Five film corporations.

Donner's Superman is successful, hits 2nd at the box office, gets an Oscar, nominated for 3 more. Superman II hits 3rd. III doesn't hit top ten and is panned, same with IV. Four was produced by Cannon Films so I don't know what they were thinking.

Burton's Batman is also successful, it hits 2nd and gets an Oscar. Returns hits 3rd (although most consider it the best of the series). Forever hit 1st, despite being critically recieved worse than the other two. Batman & Robin was a failure commercially and critically and is seen by many as one of the worst CBMs.

Steel bombed. I mean it was a Shaq star vessel what do you expect. Catwoman also bombed. I think I used to have a popcorn jug with Catwoman on it. Never saw the movie, they must have been trying to get rid of it by giving it to anyone seeing anything.

Constantine wasn't a big sucess but also wasn't trying to be. It's not great as a Constantine adaptation but it has its own merits.

Batman Begins. Now we're getting somewhere. Drawing from Frank Miller's Year One, it provides a darker and more serious take on Batman than 66 or 89. 9th at the box office, very well-recieved. The next year, Frank Miller will announce he's writing a comic where Batman goes to the middle east to murder Al-Qaeda.

Superman Returns is an alternate sequel to Superman II. It hit 9th at the box office and had positive reviews, but was mostly forgotten.

2008. The Dark Knight. First at the box office. Two Oscars. Considered by some (I'll leave my own opinions implied) to be the best CBM of all time. Huge cultural impact, far more so than the comics at the time. Everyone knows "why so serious," only comic readers know who Damian Wayne is. DC film is going to spend the rest of time chasing this grim, gritty (literally, just listen to Bale's voice) interpretation. Miller is clearly the main inspiration for Nolan, so hey, why not adapt our other 1986 genre-changing comic?

Snyder's Watchmen is a disgrace.

Jonah Hex and Green Lantern flop.

The Dark Knight Rises brings back all the Nolan/Bale fanfare. It doesn't quite reach the same peak, and is a little outcompeted by rival Marvel's Avengers, but its still extremely successful and influential. Ask the next 30 year old man you meet if he can do the Bane voice. I don't mean that in a mean way he'll want to do it and it'll be funny to listen to it'll be a good time.

For some godforsaken reason Man of Steel tries to apply the aesthetics and themes of grim, gritty Batman to Superman. 9th in the box office. Mixed reviews, but very strong opinions either direction. This is gonna be the model for further DC film projects. And there are going to be further DC film projects, because they desperately want an interconnected franchise like Marvel is building. (We'll get to them. Don't worry, I won't go over every MCU film lmao.)

There is a lot of weird behind-the-scenes stuff about the DCEU that I won't go into in detail, but we have Batman V Superman to introduce what is more or less a copy of Nolan's Batman, without having to invest in a whole new standalone flick. Suicide Squad tries to bring in all the Joker fans from TDK with an edgy sort of action comedy, but it flops. Wonder Woman adds another character to the prep for Justice League. Aquaman, though not released until later, was already in production in prep for Justice League. They move a little bit away from the general grimness, but they're still noticeably part of the Snyder project. Justice League comes out and it's bad for a lot of reasons. Eventually Snyder gets his director's cut pushed through post-production and it sucks for slightly different reasons.

Since then, only Wonder Woman 1984 and Black Adam I think are the ones that stick closest to the Snyder project, though they're about one step more removed than Wonder Woman and Aquaman were. Shazam, Birds of Prey, The Suicide Squad, and non-DCEU projects like The Batman, and The Joker have a more unique feel to them. Which is probably a good strategy for Warner.

Now this is the more conspiratorial bit. In 2011, DC rebooted their entire line, the whole fictional universe, effectively erasing everything since Crisis in 1986. This is one year before The Dark Knight Rises, and two years before Man of Steel. I think the New 52 was an attempt to bring the tone and status quo of the comics more in line with that of the planned films. They've since retconned the New 52 by bits and pieces because people didn't like it, but I think that's because the original DCEU plan has also been falling apart, so they're doing whatever they can to recuperate both the comics line and the movies. I think they're still aiming to convert movie fans to comic fans, but things are such a mess they're having a hard time. (There's still examples, though: Peacemaker getting a new series to tie in with his TV show, etc)

Ok. Let's talk Marvel. Biggest movie franchise in the world ever. Far more successful at this point than the DC films, despite some major setbacks. But of course it wasn't always this way.

As far as I know the first theatrical Marvel release was Howard the Duck in 1986. It's got duck titties in it.

Blade came out in 1998 and was Marvel's first box office success. Blade II and Trinity were commercially viable, but the reviews got worse with each, and they got overshadowed by Raimi's Spider-Man.

Y2K gives us X-Men, unfortunately directed by Brian Singer, but fortunately written by Solid Snake. It was a bit of a resurgence for the superhero genre that had floundered a bit since Batman & Robin, reaching 8th at the box office that year. They invested in some big acting names, and they had reason to believe it would be a success given X-Men had dominated the comic market significantly over the last 20 years. Also, it was produced by 20th Century Fox. This will be on the test later.

Spider-Man by Sam Raimi (hell yeah) came out in 2002 to massive success. Spider-man as an individual sold about as well as the X-Men as a group. It was number 1 at the box office, the most successful CBM until The Dark Knight. It was produced by Columbia, a Sony subsidiary.

Daredevil (20th Cent Fox) wasn't a success, and neither was spin-off Elektra.

X2 (20th Cent Fox) was 9th at the box office in 03, continuing the success of the franchise.

Hulk came out that same year, to less fanfare. It was produced by Universal.

The Punisher and Punisher War Zone were not particularly successful.

Fantastic Four (20th Cent Fox) came out in 2005 in the shadow of Batman Begins. It wasn't great but I remember watching it as a kid. Its sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer, was less successful commercially, and the series was cancelled.

X-Men: The Last Stand completed the original film trilogy in 06, hitting 4th at the box office. Though these films aren't perfect, they're generally pretty well-regarded, at least in comparison to their later prequels/sequels/sidequels.

I should note at this point that the X-Men are by fair Marvel's most successful and well-known team, followed by the Fantastic Four. As individuals, only Spider-Man, Captain America, and maybe the Hulk are more well-known and popular. Let's review: The X-Men and Fantastic Four film rights belong to 20th Cent Fox, so long as they continue to produce movies on a regular basis. Spider-Man belongs to Sony with the same caveat. Hulk production rights belonged to Universal, but they gave up on making a sequel, so rights returned to Marvel with Universal retaining distribution rights.

Seeing the major success of X-Men and Spider-Man, Marvel Studios began planning their own film series with the characters they retained the rights to (sort of, there's an argument about how much is owed to the original creators). In 2008 they release Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. Though Incredible Hulk disappoints, Iron Man is the 8th biggest film of the year, with 2 Oscar noms. Of course they get to work on more.

Meanwhile, the Fox X-Men franchise continues with Origins: Wolverine in 09 and First Class in 11.

In 2009, Disney purchases Marvel.

In 2011, the comic book X-Men split in two, dividing characters and storylines between Wolverine and Cyclops, two of the most notable X-Men.

The Avengers comes out in 2012, the most successful film of the year, on the backs of several Marvel Studios solo projects. That same year, Sony reboots Spider-Man to retain the rights.

In a 2012 comic story arc, Spider-Man is killed and his body mind-controlled by Doctor Octopus. In another, the Avengers fight the X-Men, and Professor X dies.

The Wolverine was released in 13, to moderate success.

In 2014, Wolverine was killed off in the comics.

Days of Future Past came out in 14, the 6th biggest movie of the year, ahead of Captain America 2 and Amazing Spider-Man 2.

In 2015, a comic story arc began where mutants were being killed off en masse by a deadly cloud. They also fought with the Inhumans. Cyclops is killed.

That same year, Fox releases Fant4stic Four, to maintain their ownership of the rights.

In 2015, the (admittedly extremely well-writted) series Secret Wars reboots the Marvel Universe, and serves as the end to the Fantastic Four comic, which was cancelled indefinitely.

Deadpool comes out in 16, as does Age of Apocalypse. The former is wildly more successful than the latter.

In 2017, Disney acquires 20th Century Fox, including their Marvel film rights, reducing the number of major film studios from six to five. A nearly 40% market share. That same year, they release Spider-Man Homecoming, reaching a co-production deal with Sony.

In 2019, Kevin Feige of Marvel Studios is promoted, placing him in charge of both Marvel Studios and Marvel Comics.

In some interviews, it becomes clear what the line is for Marvel Comics: they're a test run for the movies, which are what counts. Sure, you can write what you want, but if we can't make it into a movie in a few years, your comic is getting cancelled.

Not a fan of these developments, I won't lie. Seems like its gonna suck for comics as a medium. There are still good stories being told, but it's in spite of corporate meddling, and we'd be better off without it. (And that's not to say anything about the effects on cinema, but thats another story.) I don't want these characters to become cheap imitations, stripped of history and complexity and sometimes contradiction, to appeal to lowest-common-denominator blockbusters you're meant to forget about when you leave the theatre.

If you actually read all that shit PLEASE leave a reply just so I know I didn't write it all for no one

The MCU and comic blockbusters have unironically made comics far worse and more conservative. It's a return to the unchanging status quo and repetition of the Silver Age

#comics

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lexpressobean · 3 years ago

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I've been thinking about these 3 alot...

... and how much they seem to really respect Shino. I know it's a filler, but, like... Why does it seem like Shino has a knack for finding children who have wondered off away from school? Like, he's just taking a walk, making his way around the village or surrounding forest, and then there they are. Kids playing hooky or some shit. And Shino just takes it upon himself to approach them and steer them back to where they should be, while getting them attached to him somehow in the process??

But honestly. If this was just one of many times this had happened, I'd say Shino does this not out of his knack for teaching or having a way with kids. Rather, he developed a way with kids and easily applies that to his teaching because he has a strong desire to simply protect children. And it's not even from some paternal instinct as much as survival, because I think it stems from the developing trauma of losing Torune to Danzo. And I don't think it's all subconscious either.

Like I know the novel and anime frames his desicion to teach as a sort of a new goal in life as the war has ended for a couple years already and a noticable Peace has been achieved by the Blank Period and well... He's an Aburame.

Like, the Aburame are literal living, breathing, walking bioweapons. With no fight to utilize that, what else is there? Well, much like the Nara have the Nara forest and Pharmacology specifically, The Aburame most likely have a historical stake in the area of Konoha, perhaps it was simply in their Ancestral Home. Idk, but they're here to stay, they ain't budging. They're Clan Culture is very Martial and I'd argue Spartan in nature, but otherwise, they do other things too. I think they'd do well as major players in the conservation and research of native species of animals and plants, but definitely insects too. I bet they play a huge part in the general area's ecosystem, especially due to the fact that the Kamizuru clan attacked with a whole clan's worth of non-native Hymenoptera that could very well have become and still are an irritatingly and consistent problem as invasive species tend to be. And as a far as goods go, why not put some of them to use and handle an apiary? Honey is a great good to sell. All of this is great as a clan that no longer needs to fight. But, what about individual members in general, and so Shino?

Well Shino is the Heir of this clan. This Noble Clan. This "ready to throw hands at any moment" clan. It's future is in his hands, so to speak. So I doubt Shino would completely sever his connection to Shinobi life all together. And so, teaching at the Academy would be a great way to keep that connection. Teachers have to know their stuff, after all.

But what if in order to ensure teaching was his calling, Shino did his absolute best to make Jounin ASAP so he could take on a Genin Team. And. And by chance, it ended up being these three?? And they are absolutely STOKED!!! And they also pass Shino's genin test, which... would probably be a feat in it's own right. But they already know Shino, and Shino has bestowed upon them some wisdom they actually took to heart! Yeah, well, in reality they might be just a tad too old to be Shino's first official genin squad, but they were still his squad one point in a sense, right?

Kon Nohara, Tano Ikemoto, and Aoki Kobayashi

I even gave them names help Imagine these three are already chuunin at least and decide they want to pay Shino a visit and even volunteer to help Shino during class time on a collective day off because they admire him so much (T~T)

But even then if not these three kiddos, maybe these three li'l shits lol

Even in times of Peace, Shino's special set of skills seem too useful to waste, and being a Jounin teacher would definitely have been a way he could still go on missions, but also definitely commit to becoming a Sensei at the academy once he was 100% sure and got older. Kurenai became a Jounin/Genin Squad Leader in her late twenties, but in comparison I see Shino doing that more mid-20s. (He needs some time to travel and find his big bug friend and generally live a little?)

Kurenai was a Genjutsu Specialist who manned a Tracker/Sensing based team. This sounds like it was a highly beneficial combination, even if she ended up being somewhat sadistic lol. Asuma was bound to Team 10 by Tradition as InoShikaCho and Sarutobi have that Pact together. Kakashi's team was literally Cherry Picked for him specifically by the 3rd Hokage. And Gai, a Taijutsu Specialist, had a team that Specialized in Taijutsu and Physical Offense.

Of all four teams, Kurenai and Gai were very suited to their teams, Gai in a complimentary way and Kurenai in a Challenging way. In that same vein, I think Shino would imitate Gai. Shino as a Shinobi himself has a general set of skills, but the way he goes about them are very niche. But, he was always very stealthy, and could sneak up on nearly anyone. Gags aside, he could go unnoticed as long as he wanted too, and by the time he was noticed or was ready to attack, he has you quite literally surrounded. Honestly I can see why Search and Destroy would be an Aburame's forte, but when there's no need, a person with a personal skill of high quality stealth could probably man a team with an emphasis on Reconnaissance and/or Surveillance, even Bodyguarding. I feel like Shino would probably put an emphasis on Stealth and Tracking too, utilizing his insects as sort of assistants that keep tabs on his students (Stealth Test) as well as to encourage just enough fear during too much down time in his students to inspire quality training opportunities, so maybe Kurenai rubbed off on Shino more than they all realized haha

(Plus I'm sure his students would be be smart and thoughtful enough to eventually understand what Shino and his bugs are: a complete unit. They realize just how strong and dedicated Sensei really is to be the way he is, and they all learn more in depth about Kikaichu and it's like WOW SENSEI YOU REALLY ARE RISKING BEING EATEN ALIVE EVERY SINGLE DAY, AREN'T YOU? But he's still here, because THAT'S how strong he's become over the years and the confidence to manipulate the Kikaichu while having to think of current chakra level, the most efficient use at any given time, how many he actually needs, how long usage will last, ect. They are high maintenance, man!)

Shino would no doubt produce highly skilled Bodyguards and Masters of Stealth. Maybe the type that would end up being in high demand for the eventual Celebrities that start to pop up as times change, but still very much needed when it comes to Criminal Activity, like in Sora-Ku?

But as time passes and he decided to teach at the Academy, he'd feel very at ease to do so. He'd be happy to be put in charge of all these children, because he would be able to help teach them things they need to know to defend themselves and others in a world where adults like Danzo had and will continue to exist. Maybe while he's at it, he'd use his stance as a Noble Clan Heir and accomplished Shinobi to push for changes in government with Sai's help and with Naruto and Shikamaru's cooperation? Like, the truth does come out, everyone on the Council were actually horrible and had too much power. So HERE are some ideas and REASONS why these ideas should be implemented because Shino's not going to let his brother's life and death be in vain!? HELL no, we WILL make some changes around here. Shino sees his students and just wants a future where no kid ever has to live in fear of being completely taken advantage of by the very system that was supposed to keep them safe and they pledged allegiance to.

I cannot help but think of the quiet but absolute fear little Shino was harboring for the years to come after Torune was taken by that strange man and Father Shibi didn't even attempt to stop him. His own father didn't dare beat the shit out of this strange man who came looking for him, and the only solution for Shino to stay was for Torune to make himself look more desirable as an asset and be taken instead. I bet there was a lot of misplaced resentment there for a while, and talks that just didn't happen. Maybe a classmate doesn't show up to class one day and Shino is IMMEDIATELY stressed out and just... takes it upon himself to look for them after class. And he's relieved when he see they're simply at home with a fever. Shit like that just fucks with Shino, because theres people taking kids and no one is doing anything about it?? And then as Shino grew older he realized exactly what happened and how slimy the machine of Konoha really is and it was never completely Shibi's fault that Torune had to leave. He grows mentally at a faster rate than most of his classmates, and knows more than a kid really needs to know.

Shino doesn't want that for any other child. Shino is the kind of person who hears kids screaming outside of his house and he can't tell if they're playing or being murdered and it's stressful to the point he'll check through his window and he sees them for himself. He get stressed out seeing a kid in public unattended and WANTS to approach them to help if need be but also maybe he's overthinking it and the parents are there somewhere and he'd just end up looking suspicious. Like, that's what I kind of figure for Shino. He's so hyperaware of the power dynamic between kids and adults and seeing a kid so ready to fall victim to that makes Shino feel ill the more he thinks of what could happen. And he wonders if watching the kid in the market until they finally reunite with their parent so he could move on with the rest of his day causes him even a fraction of the the utterly disgusting flurry of nerves and fear that Shibi must have felt all those years ago. It goes along with his desire to spare every single little insect's life he can. It goes a long with the fact he only gets violent unless absolutely necessary. Like he wants to be strong but he doesn't want to go mad with power either, less he becomes the very thing that hurt him and his family in the first place.

Originally Shino wanted to become strong to be able to defend himself because at a very young age adults failed him and Torune. But then that changes to defend not only himself, but others as he grows on a team, and realizes trust is important. And then he figured if there must be adults out there that would hurt a child, it's only logical that he should become one that would only nurture and teach one to be strong as well.

Anyway, yeah. Had some feelings. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#anime: naruto #aburame shino #shino aburame #tis i #i wish we could've seen jounin-sensei Shino #imagine he's consistently given a team of -bad kids-#but by the next chuunin they're an absolute unit in sync #people think he's the -scare them straight- sensei #in reality he's the -im not mad im just dissapointed- sensei #its super effective lol #being such a positive figure in the open as an Aburame would definately make the clan look good too #because I have a suspicion that Aburame were very often taken into ANBU and ROOT and while good for Shinobi life #its not seen as the best for public relations #anyway don't mind me im just rambling

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maxwell-grant · 3 years ago

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Cass wouldn’t even begrudingly tolerate [the Black Bat], because she’s even less lenient than Bruce on killing and far more willing to throw down.' - THANK YOU for remembering that.

Cass is my favorite Batfam member, the only one really that I have an active interest in reading about. I'd be incredibly ignorant to not bring bring up such a crucial aspect of her characterization. And even if I didn't personally care for her, well, last thing I'd want is to be another source of frustration for Cass fans. Lord knows there's enough of those to go around.

mousebrass also asked: On that note, how do you imagine a meeting between Cass and the Shadow going?

Fair warning: This one took me 6 hours to write, and it became a hell of a lot longer than I imagined. I liked Cass a lot, but I never quite realized I had this many feelings regarding her until I was tasked with writing this, and a lot of things clicked for me regarding my plans for The Shadow thanks to this ask. @mousebrass, thank you. I mean it. I think I may have found something here I've spent years looking for. Hope you enjoy the post.

I'm thankful that this scenario is only really taking place in a hypothetical fanon where both characters can get a fair shot, because I wouldn't trust DC with this premise. I don't trust DC with either of them as is.

There's a lot of ways that this crossover could go on about taking place naturally, initially because Cass is already connected to some of Batman's pulpier elements, due to her connections to Lady Shiva and the League of Assassins, and one could connect Cass to Myra Reldon (who really should just be race swapped if ever brought back so she can stand out as the cool character she is, without the yellowface gimmick holding her back). There's two things I think are crucial to making the most of this idea, and the first of which has to do with the subject of killing. I usually don't like to come up with hypothetical team-ups for The Shadow that focus too much on the fact that he kills, because it's far from the most significant aspect of his character to focus on, much of it is written from a wrong understanding of the character, and it never amounts to anything other than perfunctory. But here, not only is it completely unavoidable to discuss, here there is actually a very, very substantial grounding as to why this has to be such a big part of the story.

The first and foremost thing that's gotta be established to everyone reading that doesn't know already is this: Cassandra Cain, more so than Batman, more so than any other DCU hero, has a tolerance towards murder lower than zero, and this is completely non-negotiable. She will throw herself on the path of an assault rifle to stop men trying to kill her from accidentally killing each other. The defining moment of her incredibly grim backstory is that she was trained from birth to be the world's greatest murderer, and her first kill traumatized her so badly that she has pivoted as far away from that as possible. I stress a lot that the Shadow should not be written as the trigger-happy maniac comics made him into and that the pulp version killed mostly to defend himself and others, generally left criminals to the police if possible, offered plenty of second-chances, had stories dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals and so on, but none of this would matter to Cass.

Cass has literally chosen suicide over the prospect of living with murder on her hands time and time again, and The Shadow kills. When he kills, he does so without remorse, with unshakeable certainty. He hates death, he doesn't want lives to be at risk in the first place. But people will die if he doesn't do anything, and what he can do, what he exists to do, is turn the tools of evil against evil, and murder is the oldest tool of evil there is. He doesn't kill because a war scarred him, he doesn't kill because he's got a demon in his soul, he doesn't kill because he's mentally off balance, he doesn't kill because he's evil or sadistic or arrogant or anything of the sort. He kills because the men he fights chose death when they sought to harm innocents and fire guns at him. He kills because he is Death itself.

Regardless of how compassionate he is or can be, regardless of the fact that he's motivated by a desire to protect people, regardless of how justified he is, he is still dropping corpses and laughing maniacally doing so. Cass's real arch-enemy isn't Shiva or David Cain, it's Death, it's the thing that she's fundamentally most opposed to. And guess what The Shadow gets compared to often enough? Literally the very first line of the very first book where we get to see him, this is how we are introduced to him:

So the premise here is that we are taking a character who is defined by her fundamental opposition to death with every fiber of her being, who understands death on a level no other human being does, who is traumatized and hard-wired to detest death at all costs and to choose suicide over it, and asking her to team up with The Grim Reaper.

Even if he received the most abject lesson conceivable on the sheer wrongness of murder, even if he does put down the guns around Cass out of respect for her, he cannot protect his agents and others if he cannot shoot or kill those who try to harm them, and the protection of the agents is absolutely non-negotiable and not at all something he's willing to fuck around with by trying out gadget kung fu superhero alternatives. The Shadow has chosen to throw his life away for their sake time and time again, and no matter how appaling or disgusting Cass finds his deeds, even if he concedes that she's right and should be right on all accounts and that he is fundamentally a monster who has no right to judge others, he would not concede on his mission and he would make it very clear she would have to put him down violently to stop him from protecting others this way, and death has not stopped him before.

And to be upfront in case there's anyone who doubts it, Cass would kick The Shadow's ass, if they had to fight. She is the strongest fighter in the DCU, she lives and breathes fighting and combat in a way no one else does. And The Shadow's not one of those characters who is supposed to be invincible and the best at everything all the time always, he can and does lose fights and scrapes to people far less adept at it than Cass. He's a great fighter, obviously, he hauls bigger men than him through doors and was disabling people with Vulcan neck pinches decades before Spock, and he would definitely have an edge in other areas, but he's out of his league here. Frankly, I don't see The Shadow raising a finger against Cass unless she's been brainwashed into killing people by bad writing. Not because she's a woman, that doesn't really stop him from dealing with evil. But because, for one, she's practically a child compared to him age-wise. Two, he'd obviously know beforehand of her capabilities and how futile it would be to fight or even provoke her. And three, the Shadow's whole thing is knowing. The Shadow Knows and all that. Knowing comes with understanding.

He'd understand very quickly that there is no way someone this young could grow so quickly into the world's greatest fighter without horrific treatment that no one should ever be subjected to. He'd see the movements too practiced and quick, the self-control, the strength and speed far beyond even the trained warriors he's seen, the places where she's been scarred and is good at covering it up. Assuming he doesn't already know about her life story, any meeting between the two would lead to him very quickly figuring out that there's something much deeper about her opposition to killing than just moral reservations, something deeper than Bruce's own gun trauma.

Denny O'Neil's 2nd Batman and Shadow story was about The Shadow secretly helping Bruce overcome gun trauma, and Bruce rejecting The Shadow's intentions to hand him a gun. And to make it clear, people tend to assume that The Shadow only helps people for utilitarian reasons, which is not true as I've tried to demonstrate many times now. I don't want to convey that he would want to help Cass overcome her trauma just so she could be more efficient or something, absolutely no, he'd help her because he helps people in any way he can. I think a story with The Shadow and Cass might involve a similar premise, The Shadow understanding that she has been traumatized very deeply by death and refuses to accept it on any terms, trying to help her overcome it, only to learn that she does not want to "learn" anything she doesn't already know, that she has weaponized her trauma into a source of strength, and wishes nothing more than to help others with it.

And here's where we get to the part that allows the two to be on less antagonistic terms, because one thing that also very strongly defines Cass, at least the Cass I like reading most, is her stubborn, almost desperate need to believe in the best of people, that people can and will change for the better. Like The Shadow, her strength too is knowing, it's perception, the things that she knows about people that words cannot convey. Just as there are many things The Shadow would grow to understand about her that others would not, there would be many things that The Shadow would not be able to conceal from her. Things that no one but her would figure out. Things that, despite her age and lack of experience compared to him, he would have to defer to her knowledge on, which reverses the usual dynamic The Shadow has with people. And perhaps one aspect of that reversal, it's that maybe it's she who winds up secretly manipulating The Shadow into overcoming a deeper issue.

Cass's perspective on killing is shaped not just through trauma, but from a painfully intimate understanding of not just what happens to someone at the time of death, but the cost of murder upon the human soul, the ways it warps people into things they never should have been. Killing is a deeply, deeply serious matter, much more so than fiction seems ever willing to go into. Of course we suspend disbelief for fiction, there's nothing wrong with that, but if a story starts asking questions, starts poking holes into fantasies, they should not be disregarded.

And so it begs a question: How has it affected The Shadow? Is he really as remorseless as he appears to be? Is the fact that he's only killing evil people really of that much use? What's the cost of living as someone who has to know so much about so much evil in so many hearts? Knowledge never comes without price, and knowing evil is his tagline. When he enlists Harry Vincent, he makes it very clear that he has lost lives as he has saved them. From when is that regret coming from? What lives did he lose then? Is he saving people by damning his soul or merely prolonging the inevitable by piling corpses on another end of the scale?

If there's a character that could meaningfully start bringing these questions forth, who could ever truly get The Shadow to stop and reveal things to the audience he never would otherwise, maybe Cass could be that character. A girl who was raised to be a monster, who is treated as a monster and an aberration in-universe (and even outside of it), and turned that into a strength she uses to help others, who cares about everyone and refuses to let others be dehumanized as she was. Who better to know what lurks in the Shadow's heart?

Sometimes when I get an ask, I bullshit my way through infodump walls of text until I can structure it into something vaguely resembling a point. And sometimes, and I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I get a very, very clear word on my mind related to it before I start writing, that almost seems to be a beacon pointing where I need to get to, and I work my way into getting there. Once you sent me an ask about crossing over The Shadow with Cassandra Cain, the word that came to mind the very second was Language.

It's an interesting relation the two have with language. Language is of course a very substantial part of Cass's character, who does not process language and linguistic development the way most people do, and instead reads body language to the point of superpower. Many stories revolve around Cass's relation to the concept of language, the help she may require from others in getting around things beyond her upbringing, and ways in which she has mastered beyond anyone's scope. Though she is mute, language is her power, what makes her what she is, and she is someone that Batman freely admits could kick his ass if she ever felt like it.

For The Shadow, language is also his power. He speaks all languages and connects allies all over the world, he is an expert ventriloquist, he is able to project his voice beyond what's physically possible, he can imitate voices perfectly to the point of being able to conduct group conversations single-handedly well enough to fool even the people whose voices he's imitating, much of his presence and terror and manipulation are done through his voice, arguably the very reason he exists in the first place is entirely because a radio actor's voice performance was so good and captivating that it tricked people into thinking the character was a real star and not just a glorified narrator. The man you cannot see, but only hear, the perfect hero for radio. And then of course the laugh, which I have a whole separate post on and which, in many ways, acts as a substitute for language in the novels. He uses the laugh so often as a substitute for statements or words, even to himself, that it's pretty much his own personal language. And language is at the core of how he deals with people, as he knows the right language to use to manipulate and move and help them. He knows what to promise, what to reveal, what to omit. He knows what to say, how to say it, when to say it. Language is the strings by which he puppeteers the world around him (and he can talk to animals, at least of one kind).

The Shadow and Cassandra Cain have mastered two different types of Language as throughly as anyone can possibly master them. The Shadow can talk a group of hardened criminals into killing themselves, Cassandra can punch a heart into stopping without killing it. The Shadow echoes his voice "through everywhere and nowhere at once" to whip crowds of thugs into frenzies, Cassandra outraces missiles and was tanking bullets as a child. The Shadow can lie and usurp lives so masterfully to fool even the families of those he's passing off as, Cassandra is a living lie detector who gleams inner conversations from miniscule reactions. The Shadow can speak every language known, Cassandra is the greatest master of the world's most universal language other than music. The two are supposedly human, but every now and then, something comes along to call that into question because of the things they can achieve. They cannot hide secrets from each other the way they do to everyone else. They are driven by a deep desire to help others, to make something out of the circumstances of their lives. To weaponize that which dictates they should be evil and monstrous into a relentless force of good.

Language is the root of understanding. And if nothing else, as impossible as a conciliation of their approaches to crimefighting may be, I think there could be an unique understanding between the two. Perhaps, and this is a bit crazier a concept but one that seems to be where I might have been heading towards all along, even Cassandra Cain finding a calling away from the frayed dynamics of the Batfamily, away from the Bat's looming presence, to become The Shadow's successor, swearing to uphold a mission of justice through non-lethal tactics while he stays on the backseat guiding her. If The Shadow could trust the safety of his agents and the protection of the innocent at the hands of someone as capable and selfless and good-natured as Cassandra, I think he'd be all too happy to be able to trust someone in such a manner, to no longer be the Master of Darkness, but instead to serve the next generation that's weaponized darkness without submerging in it. To achieve, and perhaps return, to his strongest, highest self: A disembodied voice heard, but not seen. Once again the narrator, not the star.

It's a concept I've thought about very extensively for the years I've been a Shadow fan, but now it occurs to me that, if I had to appoint a successor of The Shadow, someone who could take up the mission but shine on their own right, even improve it with the right guidance and circumstances, it would be Cassandra Cain. The Orphan, The Shadow of the Batgirl. Daughter of the greatest assassins, meant to be the world's most lethal murderer, instead pivoted to being one of it's greatest heroes, but never allowed to shine as she should. But in the darker, less restrictive and wilder world of pulp heroes, in The Shadow's world, a beacon would shine all the harder. Perfect strengths attached to perfect opposites, joined together for a greater good, unstoppable after together having weaponized that which most take for granted: the power of language to move worlds.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #comic books #the shadow #cassandra cain #batgirl #i always had a feeling that a successor to the shadow should not be modeled on batman but someone within that range #i never quite found a character i would be happy with taking that role or a similar role #aw shit i just talked myself into a new favorite character #that just so happens to be another character brimming with potential that's denied them by corporate overlords #who could have seen that coming

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randomnameless · 3 years ago

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I try not to be that guy who's like "fiction affects reality" "it has a bad influence on people" cause I don't think that's necessarily true. Just because people liked the Joker or the GTA franchise doesn't mean that there's going to be a rise in mass shootings or anything like that. But at the same time, with the rhetoric these Edelstans are throwing, they're making it hard to believe that day by day, isn't it?

Yep!

And then people will tell you playing video games makes children violent, because they can't make a difference between jumping on a mushroom in a fantasy life from jumping on a mushroom in real life.

I think it's just ultimately the nature of Discourse, people don't want to nerd about their VG characters, they try to write serious things about it, link it to serious themes and concepts

(basically me)

And there's nothing wrong with this!

But incorporating real-life smelly arguments to strengthen your fictional essay... especially since, in real life, those arguments are not acceptable ; you're not going to look smarter.

Still, what are we supposed to deduce from someone who honestly believes it's alright to kill every member of a minority who's been framed because my fave is charismatic - in a video game - ?

What are we supposed do take from someone who says it's alright to occupy other sovereign states because they used to be part of a bigger one actually led by a charismatic ruler who wants to go back to their land's glory days - in a video game - ?

Those are red flags, in the video game, where the player is supposed to nope out on this, and question the morality of the character. Like them, hate them, they are still this character, but with opinions.

However, nowadays, you cannot like a character who's not morally "acceptable" because it means you endorse what they say... so the character is perfectly good and alright.

Or should have, remember, early fandom pulled out the Teacher Theory because the alternative (canon) means a character might not be morally "clean".

But now that all of those are debunked, and the character starts to be accepted by fandom at large as a "morally not white" character, some try to use the "they're all war criminals" to diminish the impact, when some go further -

Ironically, the takes from those fans... endorse what the character says or was meant to represent, in a purely non filtered form. Because she said they are "cruel beasts", her word is absolute, so they believe and spread what she said, even when the game explains the contrary.

We're not on the "she's not an imperialist you're just a hater with ovaries" level anymore, we are crossing in the "she is an imperialist? Well those countries never existed to begin with so it's not really imperialism".

We're beyond the "she doesn't want to erase Nabateans, she just wants them gone from the world they can run away" to "maybe their genocide was deserved, because they ruled over humans and this race has always been oppressive and evil".

The first ones realise there are things you cannot justify so try to find roundabout ways to avoid them, maybe write Fics or something - but the new (at least on the dash?) ones fully embrace the fact that nothing will stop them from defending the fave, even justifying racism and imperialism.

Fiction doesn't affect reality, for a charismatic person has always been able to affect people around them - hopefully not anyone finds Edel charismatic enough to forget basic morals and rights.

#anon #replies #FE16 #fandom woes #it's not racist to kill them based on their race ?? because their race is evil ??#like kill people when they attack you not when they're chilling and drinking tea ffs #this country used to be part of us so we're only taking it back #Ah non gardez votre Angleterre nous on n'en veut pas

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antihumanism · 3 years ago

Text

When I type everything out as a single run-on sentence I want you to imagine me cornering you off-guard in a crowded room, my empty brown cow eyes staring straight at you and reflecting you--nopony home here, she checked out and hopped away forever ago on the toxic chemical trains and clacking cattle cars years ago--and just, for no reason, I’m here and you’re there pocketed in the corner of a crowded room, and I’m channeling my alternate history past-self who was a preacher that got kicked out of the church for delivering sermons about the impossibility of sin and just ran off to Point Sur with my harem of distractions since I could never stop blessing my congregation saying “Go forth and know that you cannot sin, in the beautiful eyes of God and in my beautiful eyes there can be no wrong or evil” which backfired on me when they started setting fires and it all went to Hell, but I’ve won out over them because the world honored my wishes when I sighed “I should like to start again,” and so I’m here with you and you’re hear with me and I’m saying some insane shit like: “Looking back on Emily’s early works it is easy to see where her later reactionary turn comes from, because, from the start, Alfred Alfer was a story about the fear of castration, I mean, the first video was literally about Alfred getting neutered and escaping into a violent fantasy where he is loved and praised for his violence and the ‘punchline’ establishes the general theme of ‘reality by despair,’ which is to say that Alfred’s clearly dissociative episode is ‘verified’ by his destruction and it is this self-destruction that establishes ‘reality,’ like ‘pinch me i might be dreaming,’ but the pinch is violent and unfair self-destruction as hope is still ripped away, but hope remains, because it is a hope to die rather than be changed by the world, and this theme remains throughout her most famous work (the Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy which cements in canon the jokes of her previous Rise of Alfred cartoon) where Alfred is possessed by the spirits of Stalin and Hitler--a false equivalency made by the authoritarians that have passed for liberals for years--in Rise of Alfred, one would be remiss not to mention the phallic imagery in both the title and the video itself, Alfred is cut loose upon the world by the absence of a Near God or little other by the orders of a Distant God or big Other (in this video played by a droning and irrelevant corporate figure that can offer nothing more than a wall without lead paint that one can lick), and this is the essence of reactionary thought, the idea of a big Other who is totally incompetent yet all powerful and somehow worth respecting and suffering for (King Henry II saying ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome priest’ or the departed Daiymo of the 47 Ronin), the reactionary sees the big Other as a master who can only set the dogs off the chain, the police chief who needs to get out of the way so McBain or Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey (especially in Death Wish III) can do what needs to be done and purge away all the filth and make the world right again (no different than Rambo--even the first movie, which for all of it’s goods part still is reactionary propaganda bullshit pushing the fascist lies about a ‘fifth column’ that was rude to poor little meow meow war criminals--or modern day fantasies about nuking all of MENA until it glows green (fantasies delivered to raucous applause at Republican presidential conventions); the reactionary is perpetually trapped in this fantasy of destroying the world and escaping into the void of space, freed of the ground where the riff-raff are so they don’t have to negotiate life with their neighbors, and this is true, yes, even of people who spout bullshit about Fully Automated Luxury Communism who only want the right to consume as much as possible free of guilt--a condition they think is inflicting upon them by the big Other--as the Champagne of Shame Socialists of the 60s), and the righting of the world for the reactionary is just that, that the world must be Righted and the reactionary must be loved for all of their violence and because of their violence, for the reactionary finds themselves ever needing new excuses as they open new fronts in their fake, phony Culture War, and that is all they need (excuses), which is why Emily is so obsessed with justifying her edgy shit based on some Trauma (which is handy excuse to do Anything, even Things that Cannot Be Excused like war or self-harm or wanting to be seen), and so here you should already be able to hear so much madness, so many plaintive cries, all aligning around the same point (the trannies in the ‘wrong’ bathroom, the refugees in the ‘wrong’ country, the people in the ‘wrong’ neighborhood, the Jewish Question, etc), and, anyway, so in Rise of Alfred, Emily’s OC directly addresses the audience and tells them that they must love him/her--the castrated bitch desperate to be let off the leash--and in Alfred’s Playhouse she/he simultaneously affirms and denies the nature of a trauma that justifies everything (one is constantly reminded of The Act of Killing where one of the mass murderers imagines how, depending on the editing of the final film, he could be either a woobie or a war criminal) as the Trauma is simultaneously a joke--’sodomized with a popsicle!’--and the alleged real event that motivates her self-mutilation as we’re expected to believe Emily is processing something, but what is she is processing, hmmmm, isn’t that the true spice,” I rail and rave against your poor ear drums as my empty, dead cow’s eyes capture your entire body and reflect it back at you and the ice cubes in my drink pop and shatter and dissolve and as my fist clenches tighter and tighter around the glass containing them and I continue: she’s processing a fear of castration, which is shown clearly in Alfred’s Playhouse where Alfred’s “sodomy” is demonstrated by the sight of his crotch covered in blood (a scene that will be repeated in The Alfred Alfer Movie) but “what is castration,” one might ask, and one can respond “it is the removal of power by the Father,” and this is how we wrap back around to our root in the nature of Emily the Reactionary who believes herself to be deprived of the power she holds by The Bolshevik Jew that has inserted itself between her and the Father and this is the cause of the big Other’s ineffectiveness, and this is also the core of the reactionary as a whole, the reactionary doesn’t want a daddy to control them, but a Master to set them off the chain because they hate the Father who has castrated them, this is the nature of the mumbling corporate manager in Rise of Alfred, but it is also the nature of Alfred herself--and now you may ask if Emily is trans and the answer is I literally couldn’t fucking care less about any question left forever unanswered on God’s Green Earth and you shouldn’t care either--but Alfred the Castrated is also the Father/Mother of Alfred the Dictator, the murderous inner-self that is immune to consequences of the onrushing future (The Alfred Alfer Movie) but not immune to the justifications of the imagined past (Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy), and therefore free to inflict whatever violence that Emily the Reactionary desires, and it is in pursuit of this freedom that the reactionaries set off in the name of New Sincerity (two things to be noted here: (1) the Death of Irony was proclaimed at the birth of the 21st century police state and the new Forever War with all of its genocidal objectives, that is to say, 9/11, and (2) the broken necked coward who complained of American Psycho that it’s author provided no easy outs for easy survival was the one who offed himself while Bateman’s father still lives) and the Talking Cure (i miss who we used to be), and at this you should see me slugging back the whole lukewarm glass in between two syllables and continuing on without pause (as if this dog still has legs on which to receive them in any case), “Emily, like Alex Jones, is so desperate for an excuse because neither of them can accept that they have to be the one that pulls the trigger, like all liars they don’t understand that they have to define reality by action, the answer to what one might do is found in the difference between the types of irony, one type is constantly desperate for excuses (such as the broken necked coward found one day) for violence, and the other irony, the true spice, is the irony that releases from excuses into violence and energy, one must seek not to know or endure but to inflict, knowing that this inflicting was always inevitable, no searching for justifications, instead the answer is to realize that there was never a chain there connecting you to the Master or the present to the past, and the Father/Mother never had the power of castration (the past, after all, is a foreign country bombed and blasted to ruins already and better forgotten), and you can just be fucked up and terrible and do whatever amuses you right now without needing an excuse, and to the extent that anyone should, one should, because that is what fascism needs, fascism needs the need for an excuse and that is the irony of fascism--where the falling angel (the superego) meets the rising ape (the id) in an ego of ultimate violence which seeks only release from both of its creations in an instinctually and totally misunderstood caricature of dialectics--which opposes its opposite irony (the irony without fascism which is the id’s violence against purpose and reason rising free of anything else to obstruct it), and if you let go of that, if you just, ya know, if you just, you just have to cut loose and go and no one can stop you until it is too late, because there’s no Jew sitting over your shoulder to justify everything in terms of opposition or support, not even The Nazarene is real, but do you understand that you’ve always been free to just go? You’re free to go. You’ve been free to go all this time. You never needed permission for this or anything else. You’ve been free to go all this time. You’re free to go. A whole day off. Just mind the mo(u)rning and get on with it.”

#emily youcis #Alles ist wahr Nichts ist erlaubt #let's live now before we're back below

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the-last-kenobi · 4 years ago

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For the bad things happen bingo, I Will Punish You For Your Friend's Failure, with Obi Wan and Rex during the Zygeria arc with Rex being punished by the slavers.

Oooooh, happy evil brain twinkles.

TW for blood, child death, and mildly graphic torture. No specifics because spoilers but do be cautious.

•••

There is an enemy, and it is within, the Jedi taught.

You will encounter foes of all forms in your years as a Jedi. There will be cruel tyrants and selfish politicians, ruthless criminals and violent terrorists. Possessive lovers, radical reformists, slavers and desperate people willing to do whatever it takes to achieve what matters to them. And then the next thing, and the next.

But these are not the enemy.

The Jedi have only two natural enemies.

The Sith have been extinguished from the galaxy, lost to ruin. What the Jedi did not destroy, the Sith themselves did, locked in the raw emotion of the Dark Side, turning on one another.

And the Jedi are left with the true enemy.

You are the enemy, the Masters warned. Your weaknesses are your real enemy.

All obstacles can be overcome as long as you master yourself.

Fear will lead you astray. Push through it.

Anger will corrupt you. Abandon it.

Envy will poison you. Purge it.

Grief will break you. Overcome it.

And if you fall, you will fall as yourself, at peace. A true Jedi perishes for the right reasons, where not even self-possession could stop the sheer numbers of the opposition.

The enemy is within.

•

Obi-Wan Kenobi took a deep, steadying breath. The enemy is within, he reminded himself. My fear is the enemy. These people cannot destroy me.

The broken wrist, clumsily bandaged and still forced to work, whispers that otherwise. The bruises along his spine groan in misery. There was a cut on his upper lip that had bled and dried in his beard and lips. Someone had driven the handle of a whip into the muscles of his left leg, and it could not bear his weight.

He opened his eyes just in time to receive a stunning blow across the face.

Despite the fancies of holodramas, a strike to the face is nothing to brush aside.

The Jedi reeled, his head exploding, his face stinging. White light erupted behind his eyes and his nose burned as if he’d dived too deep into water.

“Who is your Master?” a voice demanded.

Obi-Wan blinked rapidly, gasping for air. His entire head throbbed; he was on his knees but his back had arched back so far his head was a foot from the floor. Wincing, he dragged himself back up and stared passively into the snarling Zyggerian’s eyes. “I am.”

A roar of discontent. “Wrong!”

The hand came back, but this time it closed around his throat.

•

Qui-Gon caught him by the shoulders, one hand moving upwards to press against the side of his Padawan’s neck.

“You are stronger than your fear,” he said. “Because your fear is only part of you. Your strengths outnumber your fear, Obi-Wan.”

Behind the boy’s young eyes, though - flashes of remembered horror, children dead in the streets of Melida/Daan and the screaming sound a blaster bolt made as it grazed close, so close, to his ear - and hit another boy instead —

Obi-Wan gasped as if drowning, his mind convinced that he was not getting enough oxygen.

Fear was going to kill him.

Fear was the enemy.

“Oh, Padawan,” sighed his Master. And then the hands left his neck and his shoulder, leaving Obi-Wan bereft, plunged into ice cold waters of terror and trauma, his failures haunting him like the ghost of Cerasi.

•

Obi-Wan choked, bucking involuntarily as the meaty hand clenched around his throat, crushing his air pipe.

He couldn’t breathe.

Still. What did it matter, if this monstrous slaver killed him in a fit of rage? Obi-Wan was more than this man and his pride, his greed, his disregard for life.

Obi-Wan was a Jedi.

His body’s automatic response to being abused and killed was nothing.

He was more than his fear.

“Damn Jedi!”

The hand released him, and the red-haired General slumped to the floor, unable to stop his forehead from colliding painfully with the uneven slag flooring. More blood. He tasted it in his mouth, he felt it dripping down his forehead.

“Very well,” the same voice continued. “The punishment must suit the prisoner, in some cases. How lucky of you. So special.”

They cannot hurt me, Obi-Wan reminded himself. My body is not my soul. I am more than my fear.

And then two more slavers entered the room at a summons, dragging a struggling figure between them.

Rex.

Obi-Wan’s fear spiked so sharply he felt his chest stab with physical pain.

No, he told himself. No. Fight it. Fight it—

The Zyggerian behind him sensed his rising emotion and grabbed him roughly, one hand on the thick collar around the Jedi’s throat, and the other dug painfully into his hair.

•

Obi-Wan shuddered.

A bomb - Twela, Bruin, Conno, Toorun, and others went flying, flailing helplessly in the air.

Toorun rolled on his side and got back up.

Conno collided with a vehicle and lay still.

Bruin landed on his feet and stood up, grinning in shocked relief, and then dropped with a bullet in his head. Blood spattered stone.

Twela landed on a pile of rubble.

When Obi-Wan found her, she had been lying there for an hour while the battle wore on, a rebar shoved through her stomach.

It took her two days to die—

Cerasi, falling into his arms. Gasping. Blood everywhere. Her father screaming. Blood on Obi-Wan’s hands—

Nield, his friend, telling him he didn’t belong - kicking him out of the camp to die alone - blaming Obi-Wan, rightfully, for the death of Cerasi and the peace she had helped create—

But as quickly as they had been taken away, the warm and solid hands of Qui-Gon Jinn were there again, this time on his back. Pulling him. Tightening around him.

Obi-Wan blinked rapidly, gasping and shaking, pressed into a warm embrace while his Master rocked him gently, whispering encouragement into his hair.

It was good to be held.

•

Obi-Wan twisted, struggling in near-panic to get away from the arms restraining him.

“Stop it!” he yelled. “Stop!”

They did not stop.

The Zyggerians had been on Rex for over two hours, holding him down, methodically slicing the soles of his feet, throwing their fists into his abdomen and face and throat, slamming his head against the unforgiving ground.

The Captain was a mess; bruised and bloodied, involuntary tears making his damaged face glisten.

Rex had finally started to scream five minutes ago, and still they would not stop—

“Stop! You’ll kill him!” Obi-Wan shouted, his bound hands clenched so tightly that his palms were torn and bleeding. “Stop!”

“And now the bird sings,” the slave master crowed, laughing down at him. “So high and mighty, Jedi?”

“Leave him alone!” Obi-Wan demanded.

The slaver’s face darkened.

Two things happened at almost the same moment.

A knife was drawn from seemingly thin air and without hesitation or fanfare was plunged into Rex’s thigh; the Captain screamed again, writhing.

A button was pressed, and the collar around Obi-Wan’s neck blazed with electricity that made him convulse, blinded, agonized.

“You don’t give the orders here,” the master snarled. “Haven’t you learned? You’re not in control here!”

•

“You are in control, Padawan,” Qui-Gon murmured, rubbing his hand up and down the boy’s back, following the still too-prominent line of his spine. Up and down, up and down.

“I’m not,” Obi-Wan sobbed. “I’m a failure.”

“You haven’t failed until you’ve let yourself down and decided not to get up again,” his Master replied firmly. “You are master of yourself, Obi-Wan, and therefore master of the situation. You can rise above. Even if you need help to do it. You are not a slave to fear.”

•

“Slaves are not masters,” the Zyggerian bellowed, and Rex screamed again.

Obi-Wan shuddered and twitched on the floor; he felt filthy, ragged, used. Now useless.

“You don’t make the rules!” A kick to the abdomen that deprived him of air. Once again suffocating. Drowning.

All he could see was the bloodstained floor. All he could hear was the voice, and Rex screaming through gritted teeth.

“Every time you cross me, I’ll punish your freakish friend. And anyone else that crosses your path. I! Am! In! Control! Here!” Each of the final words was delivered with a sharp jerk on the chain that had been attached to the collar.

Obi-Wan choked and wheezed.

Pain.

Terror.

Helpless.

I can’t —

“Who is your Master?”

“You are,” Obi-Wan told Fear, eyes glazed, blood spattered across his vision. Maybe permanently. Like a brand. Like Cerasi’s lifeblood on his shaking hands.

“Who is your Master?” the slaver asked again.

Obi-Wan stared vacantly upwards.

Fear looked back at him. Outside him. Inside him. Triumphant.

“You are,” whispered the Jedi, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

He slumped to the floor.

Rex’s screams faded as the punishment abruptly ceased; the Clone lay on the stone floor, limp and in terrible pain, staring with abject fear in his eyes at the fallen Jedi.

His utter relief that the pain was over, that they had taken their hideous hands off of him, was warring with his worry.

And his growing terror.

If even General Kenobi could be controlled...

“A good start,” the slave master said thoughtfully, trodding deliberately on Obi-Wan’s damaged foot. “And I was told Jedi did not feel fear.”

•••

#star wars #star wars fic #i’m sorry?????#obi wan kenobi #captain rex #the clone wars #someone hug them #please #torture #blood #abuse #bad things happen bingo

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secret-engima · 4 years ago

Note

In your Gremlin!verse, it looks like Ringmaster!Oscar, The Emerald City, and his heartfelt closing songs have become a name on the level of Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross, with a simple message of hope and an earnest belief that people can be better.

Now I’m a glutton for angst, so I can’t help but imagine what his impact is decades later when he finally grew old enough to die. Or his life was cut short abruptly in the war. How do people remember him? How do they tribute to his name and try to carry on the spirit? What does his criminal underworld do without the little bundle of joy that stole all their hearts and believed in them and made them better people? And perhaps how Ozmapin or his next incarnation reacts when they see that Oscar is still making a difference, long after his child’s death.

Is it enough to unite humanity, the death of one person who didn’t stop believing?

How dare you hurt me like this. This genuinely hurts me feels to even think about.

But fine I’ll talk about it a little- I like happy endings so the only death gonna claim Oscar is old age, and also if you think I’m not going to cheerfully break the Oz curse so Ozpin can live the rest of his life knowing Salem is gone forever and he won’t be hopping to a new host then you’ve got another think coming as well. But moving on-

How the regular public remembers Oscar is more like how one remembers a beloved performer, of course. One who offered hope and light and laughter, videos of his performances are archived with care, and there’s probably at least one documentary that tries to puzzle out the life and times of a little boy who’s first major appearance on the world stage was a little song about love and loss. I have no doubt that over his life he’s inspired many people, in person or not, to make a difference, to be better, and his messages still ring true and ring strong even generations after he and his have passed on.

To the underworld- it’s a little different. He was more than just a child to them, more than a performer with moving songs. He was a king, a ruler, wise and just. Who offered mercy, but would not let his own suffer just for the sake of holding a hand to those who rejected it too many times. He taught them much, and led by example even more, and they- they remember.

His empire does not remain cohesive in the wake of his death, but there is little to no infighting over the pieces of it either, his dying will had clear outlines to follow, and they are Loyal creatures, for all it was hard to earn. And even as the years pass and generations rise and fall, as the empire become kingdoms that are more allies than comrades, while a part of the underworld is, of course, rotten and violent and dirty, there is a stronger part, a larger part, that still holds tight to the rules of the Ringmaster. His honor code, his conduct, his beliefs. The children of the streets who grew up with him tell their children of him, and those children pass it on in turn. A mix of truth and legend and belief that borders on that of faith and fairy tale both.

The little Fairy Ring shrines remain, and more of them pop up all over the world. In every city that has homeless children and back alleys, look hard enough and there is a Fairy Ring, a safe haven for them, a place where the more honorable Underworld leave food and blankets and safety and in turn children who can write leave little slips of paper filled with thanks or information on the lip of the little shrine and those who cannot write either ask another to do it for them, or whisper their secrets to the little top hat that is always found in places such as these.

On the honor of the Ringmaster, is a phrase not spoken lightly in that world, and there are many legends of those, years after, that think they can still hear his voice singing softly through the alleys and the run down neighborhoods and the backs of bars that have rules and safe spaces for those on the run from bad situations. Some people say the Ringmaster’s ghost is still there, watching to see what becomes of his kingdom.

Others say he just comes to visit sometimes, to remind people that they, like everyone who knew him in person, can be better than they are. To see if there are any souls so lost that they need him to find them from the Beyond and lead them along to a place where they can be found.

Why would he do that? Scoff some of the younger ones, the ones who grew up with the stories and the honor code, but not the knowing.

Because he cares. Is the simple response that can never fully convey how much this was true. From the elders who remember what it was like to take the hand of the too-wise fae child that looked at them in all their blood and faults and said “I can see someone amazing underneath, if you just let me help you to meet them.”

#SE asks #anon asks #Team Gremlin verse #Secret Engima Rambles #there #i did the epilogue angst #happy?

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razorblade180 · 3 years ago

Text

Shackles 12: Protect your own

[part 11]

One thing leads to another. Pain brings grief, joy brings progress, day brings night; Jacquelyn knew simple truths like these, but she had really wished she could get her joy before night came. That didn’t seem to be the case. The tired woman sat on the Belladonna balcony. Her eyes scanned the stars that have kept her company for many years, bringing a sense of ease while her hands clasped a mug of warm tea. Blake’s mother, Kali, walked up from inside the house and poured more.

“Thank you.” Jacquelyn uttered softly. All day Kali hadn’t spoken a word to her. The older woman gave no expression, but her eyes said enough. They were upset, and mulling things over. “I’m-”

“If you’re going to apologize then don’t. There’s nothing you could say on his behalf.”

“Of..of course. I would never. I was going to apologize for myself. I’m…I involved your daughter in this. That one is on me.”

Kali looked over Jacquelyn. It just didn’t make sense to her. The girl before her sat solemnly waiting for a man who’s wracked sorrow to countless lives.

“If I wasn’t for Sun and Ilia, I would’ve denied you being here. I don’t want him near my home. He’s caused enough harm.”

“I understand. Still, I’m grateful. I know this can’t be easy for you.”

Tears of frustration welled up in Kali’s eyes the more Jacquelyn spoke to her. “Did you have a mother growing up?”

“…For a while. I lost her young.”

“I don’t know you, but I can tell she must’ve been caring; the kind of mother that would go to war for you.”

“Hehe, yeah, she was.” A tiny smile crept to her face, thinking back on the remarkable woman. “I owe her a lot in life.”

“A good mother’s only wish in life is to keep their kids safe and happy no matter what. So yeah, this isn’t easy. The thing I love the most in this world, my precious baby girl, you’ve helped invite back the very thing I failed to protect her from. I’m absolutely livid.So don’t tell me you understand. You’re not a mother.”

A lump formed in Jacquelyn’s throat. The little joy she had fizzled out. Kali’s words felt colder than Atlas winds and they had a right to be. However…a click at the door cut through all that.

“We’re home.” Blake said down stairs. Kali quickly ran downstairs. Jacquelyn put down the mug and ran too, but then, she stopped. A loud slurp came from behind her. She turned back around, gasping. Adam sat in her chair with her mug. His face was a bit pale and clothes were replaced with something a bit nostalgic.

“Hey, how you feeling? ” She said, smirking at his attempts to look cool.

“Dehydrated. Also a little stuffy.” He took off his old signature jacket. “Cannot believe this thing was still around. I guess evidence lockers really collect everything.”

“Did you climb up here?”

“Both Ghira, Blake and I all agreed that Kali is the absolute last person who should see me.” He walked towards her.

“Pfft yeah.” Jacquelyn did her best to chuckle but the smile she tried to force turned to a lip quiver while tears came automatically. Adam put her arms around her and she lost it. Her fingers clung to his shirt and wept, not caring who heard.

“Do you enjoy scaring me?”

“What did you think happened to me?”

“I don’t fucking know.” She sniffed, “so many things. I didn’t want to think you decided to up and leave but now I kinda wish that was the case. At least then I could be pissed at you for being an idiot. I held you Adam. You were so cold.”

“You off all people should know how close to death I can get. But I’ll admit it, I thought I was a goner. I’ll tell you about everything later, but first…” Adam let her go and stepped out of view from the balcony doors.

The entire Belladonna family came up stairs. Kali’s eyes were noticeably more red and her hand held Ghira’s. Blake’s eyes were also a bit puffy but much less.

Jacquelyn sighed as she wiped her own eyes. “Have we all been crying today?”

Blake chuckled halfheartedly “Looks like it. You okay?”

“Not really. I need a nap.”

Kali looked at the balcony. “…Adam, sincerity starts with eye contact.”

“Is that what you want from me?”

“No. Frankly I like not seeing you, but it’s rude to let this woman stand alone after waiting.” Kali wasn’t petty. She knew this wasn’t about her.

Adam walked into view slowly and stood beside Jacquelyn. He took Kali’s glare head on. It was actually nice to know one person in this room would definitely not hold back against him. He’s gotten used to that.

Blake looked at Jacquelyn and spoke. “Where’s Ilia and Sun? I thought they would’ve stayed.”

“Those two only stayed for about an hour. Ilia said she had to do something important and Sun tagged along with her. I have no idea where but they took an airship. They said they’d be back by sunrise.”

That was a little concerning. Blake had hoped to have everyone here for this. What in the world could possess them to leave?

“Guess this is everyone for now. Adam, we gotta do something with you. Even if you’re technically dead, things have to be different.”

“Lock me up.” He said bluntly. Everyone jumped a little from the suggestion.

“Lock you up!? Adam I made a case to keep you out of-”

“I wasn’t finished.” He interjected. “There’s already a collection of people here who know I’m alive. Those guards of yours in particular. Loyalty is easy to strain. If you just let me walk then they will resent you. Allowing them to put me behind bars covertly might give you a better chance to negotiate what to do with me later on.”

“Or you’re locked up forever without real protection. You might be at their mercy. I’m not allowing that.”

Jacquelyn nodded. “Neither am I. We didn’t get you out of one situation just to throw you back into the exact same one! Even if they work for Blake, she can’t watch over their every action.”

Ghira rubbed his beard. That was true. It wouldn’t be good for Blake to be visiting jail constantly anyways, still. “It wouldn’t be wise for Adam to go unpunished. I think for people’s peace of mind he must be detained for a while.”

“Dad! But…”

“Saber is a good man. He wouldn’t act out of line on a whim. Besides, I will volunteer personally to check on him daily.”

Kali looked at Blake’s shocked expression. “Sweetie, he is still a criminal.”

“I know, but…this doesn’t solve anything! How do you expect him to prove things are different behind a cell!?” Blake looked at Adam. “How can you be okay with it?”

“I’m not. If I see another pair of shackles again it would be too soon; but the public finding out about me is no short of a death sentence. However, I do have conditions for going along with this.”

Kali’s eyes narrowed. “Are you really in a position to discuss terms?”

“As long as this is a majority, then yes.” That wasn’t gonna score points with her but oh well Atonement or not, Adam refused to be walked all over. “First, Jackie’s home was blown up. I’d like her to stay here until it can be rebuilt. Second, I’d also want Sienna to be put in Jackie's care when she’s out of the hospital.”

Both Kali and Jacquelyn were highly confused. The maiden spoke up. “Ummm Sienna Khan?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. She’s this little girl that escaped the mineshaft with me.”

“White tiger ears? I remember a girl by you in the desert. Why me?”

“Unfortunately she’s not speaking much.” Ghira said. “Adam says you’re pretty good and patient with situations like these. Also, the child seems attached to Adam, so maybe she’ll be comfortable with the person around him.”

“Be careful though. She can get pretty defensive and violent.”

Jacquelyn squinted. “Giving me a way to focus while you’re gone, is that it? Hmph, like I’d say no regardless. Of course I’ll help her if I can.” She folded her arms. Guess she was getting single mother practice early.

“I’m glad. I do have one more condition.” He put his arm over the maiden’s shoulder and pulled her close. “I’ll go to jail, after I help Jacquelyn get through her pregnancy.”

The room went silent. Jacquelyn felt her face get hot and eyes water again. He knew. These terms weren’t for his benefit at all. They were all for her.

Ghira and Kali looked at each other, shocked by this revelation. A twinge of guilt hit Kali for the words she spoke early, but now she understood Jacquelyn’s feelings just a little bit more.

“You would send yourself to jail even knowing her condition?”

“I don’t make money and I don’t see any outcome where me being free makes it easier for Jacquelyn or those two kids. Anybody drawing the connections would be problematic to put it lightly. At least this way I’m not a complete dead beat. So, do we have an agreement?” He asked Ghira.

Blake bit her bottom lip. Right now she needs to look outside herself. She reminded herself of Yang’s parting words. “Slow down. I don’t need things done in a night. Sigh, besides, it’s not like I have a better plan.” Blake looked at her father. “It’s not unreasonable.”

“That’s not exactly the problem. I’d agree but even nine months of him being free is a lot to swallow. We simply don’t have the men to watch him or a place to keep him.”

“Yeah I don’t want him in my home of all places.” Kali added. “Now matter how you look at it, Adam is too dangerous for anyone to look after while he’s free. I can’t go on good faith where there isn’t any.”

“Mom he’s-”

“OH! OH! I’LL WATCH HIM!” Yelled a voice outside, brimming with energy.

A gust of wind blew in from the balcony bringing a glimmer of faith and dozens of rose petals. Blake’s jaw dropped. “Ruby!?”

The full fledged scythe wielding huntress grinned ear to ear. “Yo!” Ruby dashed in and stopped right in front of Blake, giving her a big hug and waving to her parents. “Busy day huh?”

Blake grabbed her leader by the shoulders. This had to be a fever dream. “Ruby, why are you here!?”

The reaper’s face went red as she started chuckling. “Hehe, so funny story…”

xxxx

“Ruby?!” Yang questioned, shouting over the edge of her ship at another ship passing by. Sure enough, her little sister turned around and gasped.

“Yang!? Why are you on a boat leaving Menagerie!?”

“Why are you on a boat docking to Menagerie is a better question!”

“I stopped by your house only to hear from Jaune that you went to see Blake for the first time in forever! You think I was gonna be calm about it? I took the first mission here I could find to have an excuse!”

Yang could not believe what she was hearing. “Rubes…but that..why!? Just why!?”

“You have a bad habit of saying things you don’t mean when you get emotional. If things went south then they might not get better.”

Moments like these made it really hard for Yang to believe she was the older sister; especially when Ruby is absolutely right. “Can you not call me out like that?”

“Why are you leaving? Don’t tell me things went up in flames?”

“N- Well they almost did, but it’s fine! We’re okay; more than okay. I had to cut things short because…I gotta do some stuff. So does she.” Ruby would have a cow if she learned Yang was pregnant. Yang wanted to tell her, but Jaune had to be first. Well…technically second, but first in her heart!”

Ruby could not believe she rushed over to Menagerie for nothing! Well at least her sister looked happy, so things must’ve gone okay. “Well, I’m happy for you! Sigh…I guess I’ll knock out this mission as fast as I can then-”

“Actually, Ruby, can you do your big sis a huge favor?”

xxxx

“And now I’m here.” Ruby rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment. “Would’ve gotten here sooner but a supply mission is a supply mission. I also checked in with Saber, was it? When I explained who I was he gave me a brief and vague update. Since I came here to mediate in the first place and Yang asked so nicely, I thought I’d lend a hand.”

“You were gonna do that favor or no favor.”

Ruby grinned. It was nice to be known so well. “Mr. and Mrs. Belladonna, I’ll watch Adam. That’s the main reason you turned the offer right?”

“Y…Yes but-” Ghira stuttered.

Kali sighed, “Do you really plan on sticking around for nine months?”

“Technically as long as he’s with me and out of sight then I wouldn’t have to stay here specially, but I can understand if you don’t want him too far away. If he’s genuine then having him help rebuild the blown up home should be no problem. I can stay in the house to watch everyone, or I’m happy to rent a place and keep them there. Ilia has a spot out of the way of people. We got options.”

Call her impulsive, but Ruby was persistent. A game changer everywhere she went and she knew it. The girl took a step back to be in the middle of the room. Her hands went on her hips. The next words she spoke were with pure confidence and sincerity.

“If you need good faith then look towards me. I love your daughter like family and I’ve always looked out for people, so believe me when I say this. Adam Taurus has nothing on me. I can take him.” Bold words but she meant them to the letter.

That confidence was felt by everyone. Even Adam felt challenged, though he had no intention of betraying anyone. His first time seeing Blake’s leader and the sister of a person he never thought would save his life, and she was trash talking him. Huh, I guess they really were related. The argument was strong, too strong for Kali and Ghira to deny. Both of them gave a look of uncertainty before nodding.

“I will cut everyone some slack and let them stay in this room tonight as long as you’re here too.” Kali said.

“Yes ma’am. I appreciate it.” Ruby gave a nod as the older woman left.

Ghira gave a smile to Ruby. “I’m glad Blake has family everywhere.” He left after his wife, leaving the rest of them to sort the rest out.

Ruby finger gunned Blake before turning around,

approaching Adam for the first time in her life. He was definitely tall. That’s for sure. “I don’t think we’ve officially met yet.”

“But I’m positive you know everything you need to know about me?”

“Eh, Blake’s not much of a talker. My sister said a few things but they weren’t exactly helpful, just nasty. You’ve done a lot to her, more than you probably know. Still, Yang fights her own battles and I guess recently she won a big one. We’ll only have a fight if you start one, deal?” Ruby extended her hand.

Adam couldn’t get a read on Ruby. She was open, yet guarded. Kinda Jacquelyn. He shook her hand. “Pretty bold to say you can beat someone you never met.”

“Really? I don’t think so. If my friends could do it years ago then me doing it now should be cake. I mean you even look like a ghost right now.” Her eyes shifted to Jacquelyn. “Congratulations by the way.”

“Thanks?” Jacquelyn grabbed Adam’s sleeve. “Can the two of us talk on the balcony in private?”

“Be my guest.” Ruby watched her new assignment get dragged away by….whatever that girl was to him. “So Blake, I know this isn’t the sweetest vis-eep!” A tight hug snuck up on her.

Blake squeezed tightly and let her stress fade

away. “That’s my incredible leader. Always coming to my rescue.”

“Awe, oh sweet hehe. Now I really know you’re stressed.” Ruby hugged back happily.

Outside, things were a little less warm and cozy. The cool breeze against Jacquelyn’s skin did little to cool her off as her hands tugged gently on the front of Adam’s shirt. Her eyes were glued to the floor while she felt his hand on her head.

“For the record, I’m not the biggest fan of all this.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s been preaching about being more than what I was? Salvation and all that?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t proud.” She lifted her for him to see her pouting. “So you knew I was pregnant all along? Gotta admit, that makes you getting kidnapped willingly and trying to go to jail makes you look really shitty.”

“Jackie-”

“I know I’m twisting your intentions but I can’t help but feel that way okay? I mean it’s fine. I’m just the gal who took pity on you and helped for her own therapeutic needs or salvation; whatever you wanna call it. Sure we slept around from time to time but that’s what happens when you have no one else. We had no labels. Circumstances made us glorified roommates at best. I mean yeah sure, on paper I guess I did what I set out to do. You’re changing.”

“And you’re trying not to cry.” He rubbed her cheek. Jackie wasted no time reaching to hold it in place. “You’ve spent a few years trying to get me to be more direct with myself. Think you can take your own advice right now.”

“……I fucked up. I should’ve just been helping you but I did more than that. I fell for you, and I can’t say with confidence I know how you feel back because we never talked about these things. A situation like this is what I used to imagine but along the line all I thought of was us, always together.”

“So you’re basically asking me what you are to me, is that it?”

“Stupid, right?” Jacquelyn started laughing at her own insecurities until Adam wrapped his arms around her and rested her head on his chest. The sound of his heart filled her senses and calmed her.

“I thought of you every day I was trapped. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel much different from the day you found me. If anything it’s only harder for me to deny how fucked I am.”

“Idiot, that’s a world of difference, and I’m not the only one who sees that.” Jacquelyn gave a soft smile. So much between was unsaid and uncertain, but that's fine for now. He thought of her, fought for her. She did the same. Those actions were worth a billion words. Roughly nine more months of actions before life changed forever. Best to not waste them. Jacquelyn tilted her head up and leaned in, kissing him gently. The joy she waited for was finally hers as he kissed her back.

Two sets of footsteps came back up the stairs. One pair was a very exhausted Ilia and the other was a slightly less tired Sun.

“Ilia! You’re back!” Blake yelled.

“Yeah I-” she spotted the intimacy happening on the balcony. “Hmm didn’t need to see that.”

“Be nice.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing this entire adventure. Also hey Ruby. Couldn’t resist a good drama?”

“As if! I came here to keep things drama free!”

Sun guided Ilia to the couch for her to plop on. Poor girl has been traveling nonstop for at least three days now. He was tired too, but a sudden rush of energy hit him in the form of Blake giving him a running hug and a quick passionate kiss that made him laugh.

“Haha, is that you saying sorry or thank you?”

“It’s me saying you’re amazing and I love you for rolling with this so effortlessly.”

“Oh there’s effort. You’re just worth it.” He smiled, kissing her again. “I’m just happy you’re safe, but you gotta-”

“Slow down. Yeah…I’ve been told.” Blake rested her head on his chest. His heartbeat was steady and strong, like he always is. “Where did you two go?”

Sun looked at Ilia who immediately got up and left to bother the pair on the balcony, grabbing Ruby too. Sun let Blake go. The man let out a faux cough. “So umm this is probably a completely inappropriate time to ask this but…”

Blake saw him reach into his pocket and her face immediately felt like fire. “Wait!” She frantically grabbed his wrist before he could take his hand out. “I know I asked but you could’ve lied!”

“Hey! I was actually trying to get things prepared back in Vacou but people started getting abducted. I know I just talked about you slowing things down and this isn’t the first time we’ve discussed-”

“Yes!” Blake could see the goofy and confused smile Sun was forming. It only flustered her more. “Don’t be surprised. Listen, it was always gonna be a yes. I’m still going to say yes; especially with all that’s happened. Lately it feels like I’ve been putting off things in my life for things I want in my life, but…you are someone I always want. Even if I don’t say it all the time.”

“I know that. It’s okay. Equality is busy work. It is your dream.”

Blake blushed, “So is marrying you. When this situation gets sorted out and dealt with, can you ask me then? You’ve given all your attention through this. I want to give you all of mine when.”

Drat! How could that feel so bittersweet sweet and yet appropriate? Sun knew his face was red too. Blake didn’t reject him by any means but the moment of courage was dashed! Guess that was the point. Typical Blake. Nothing typical about her. Sun let go of the ring in his pocket and chose to hold Blake’s face, staring into her eyes. How could they be so determined one moment and bashful the next. Honestly…

“My future wife is so ridiculous sometimes.”

“I think that’s what my future husband likes about me.” Blake smirked, “I love you.”

The two shared a kiss, taking a moment for themselves.

Ruby smiled from outside and looked at the others. “Okay, I know there’s more of a reason for nabbing me, because that pretty moment was happening no matter how many were around.”

“I brought you out here because the four of us plus Sun are about to keep a secret.” Ilia put her back against the railing, her head looking towards the stars. “Sobek, I handled it.”

Jacquelyn went bug eyed. “What? H-How?”

“Talked to the victims here, Vacou, and Adam briefly. If I would’ve gone in with you all then I might’ve recognized him. He did work in Atlas after all. Anyways it’s dealt with and you don’t have to worry about any of those victims talking. They already wanted to forget the ordeal so adding funds was icing on the cake.” Ilia stared at Adam with soullessness

“I know, you didn’t do it for me.”

“Oh how I wish that were true. Let’s make things clear right now, I’m so pissed at you. If you weren’t injured then I’d throw down right now. Blake never told you this most likely, but near my house I gave you a grave. To me you deserved at least that much; you kept me alive and going for a time. As much as I now hate some of the things I know how to do, I was fortunate you taught me them because those skills help people.”

Adam watched as Ilia took her pointer finger and pressed it against his heart. He could feel her shaking.

“If you ever want my help again then you will keep me in the loop at all times. I was there before and after Blake worked beside us. I had every right to know about you being alive as much as she did.” Ilia would never admit it to anybody but as much as she was crushed when Blake fell for Adam, she couldn’t help but feel angry when both began undervaluing her contribution. Like they say, three is a crowd.

Adam removed Ilia’s finger and nodded. “Hehe, I can accept those rules.”

“What’s so funny huh? Ugh, you really know how to tick a person off.”

“Nothing. Just…everyone is mad at me for something different. Hard to keep track of it all. Guess being a leader was doomed after all. I don’t get any of you. I can’t help but laugh at myself.” He chuckled to himself.

The strange humor of it all caused Jacquelyn to join in quietly while Ilia rolled her eyes and let things be as they were. She said her peace. Ruby though, she couldn’t help but look at the three of them, Adam specifically. There he was, a person recently beaten to near death, laughing at his own past mistakes in a world that didn’t want him.

“Hmmm I don’t get it. What was scary about this guy?”

#rwby #rwby au #rwby shackles #jacquelyn frost #ruby rose #blake belladonna #adam taurus #yang xiao long #kali belladonna #ilia amitola #ghira belladonna #sun wukong #rwby blacksun

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rhysand-vs-fenrys · 4 years ago

Note

Do the same thing for Heaven Official's Blessing (use Maas characters to tell the story)!

Heaven Official’s Blessing // TGCF told using ACOTAR characters (Obviously there will be spoilers, read at your own risk)

TGCF is told in a non-linear form, with Books 1, 3, and 5 taking place in the present, and Books 2 and 4 acting as flashbacks. I will be telling the story in a pure linear format.

** I’m going to have to ask people to ignore shipping stuff for the sake of this. I matched characters based on their personalities, so things became kind of scrambled.

THIS WAS VERY VERY HARD TO WRITE OKAY

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful Crown Princess named Elain. She was completely beloved by her people not only for her looks, but for her kindness, warmth, and incredible talents. Whatever she put her mind to, Princess Elain would easily accomplish, and those who read fortunes often said she was born on an auspicious day and was blessed with unparalleled good fortune.

Princess Elain’s father was fairly elitest and tended to ignore the common folk, but Princess Elain made it her mission in life to protect them and ease everyone’s burdens.

When Princess Elain was 17, the royal capitol held a parade to the king of the heavens, Helion. In this parade, an elite warrior dressed as the Divine Hero would actually spar with another elite warrior dressed as a Demonic Beast. The parade would circle the capitol as the two warriors fought, only ending when their stamina ran out and they were too tired to carry on. The more laps the procession completed before this happened, the more good fortune it would invite and the more honor to the god Helion. Generally the goal was around 15-20 laps.

On the third lap, as people clamored to see clearly the Hero and Beast battle, there was a horrible accident. A deformed child in the crowd, barely 8 years old at MOST, was knocked from his perch on a high wall and fell to his death.

As he fell, the Divine Hero abandoned their battle and leapt high into the air to catch the poor child. Picture like wire work when I say “leapt high”, it counts more as minor flight.

In the rescue, the Divine Hero’s mask comes off and it is revealed to be none other than Princess Elain herself! The Divine Beast was Elain’s bodyguard, Cassian.

While the common people go FERAL for this beautiful Princess who saved a wretched orphan’s life, the royal priests are angered. They warn Elain that her actions are an insult to Helion, and she must repent to avoid his wrath.

Elain famously and simply replies that if a god would begrudge her saving a child’s life, then they are not worthy of becoming a god.

And in spite of the priest’s words, the heavens agree with Princess Elain.

The child Elain saved has half his head heavily wrapped in bandages, but Elain is not afraid of him. She cradles him in her arms and he is mesmerized by her face. Still, after someone tries to move the bandage to see his face, the child runs away and vanishes.

This child was Azriel.

Tamlin is Elain’s cousin. His mother was a royal lady who had a baby with an abusive brute, and she ended up dying in disgrace after being abandoned by him. Tamlin was therefore raised by Elain’s mother, and he is disturbingly obsessed with the glory of his Princess Cousin. He is also dangerously unhinged and violent.

Just a few days after the ruined parade, Tamlin is racing through the city streets in his carriage, whipping his horses raw and yelling that if he runs over anyone it is their own fault. He has no cares for anyones lives, and Princess Elain considers him a thorn in her side.

Princess Elain is out with her bodyguard, Cassian, and her personal servant, Lucien. They see Tamlin coming and no only is he driving dangerously, there is a bloody sack tied to the back of the chariot.

Elain and Cassian leap onto the carriage to stop Tamlin, while Lucien breaks the rope on the sack. Elain and Cassian take Tamlin into custody, knocking him out, and Elain is ready for Tamlin to be thrown into prison for his behavior.

She opens the bloody sack, and inside finds Azriel. Tamlin was so incensed that the royal priests were angry with Princess Elain that he decided to kill Azriel to “avenge” his cousin!

Elain brings Azriel to the royal palace to be healed by the physicians within. He has broken bones and cuts all over his body, but again he strikes out if someone tries to move the bandages on his face. For his part- Tamlin is locked in his rooms and his carriage is destroyed, he is banned from leaving the palace.

But once again, Azriel slips out and runs away.

A few months later, black clouds swirl over the Royal Palace, and in a massive thunderclap, Elain ascends to the heavens as a newborn Warrior Goddess. Though by the laws of the heavens she cannot enter her kingdom for one thousand generations (to make sure she doesn’t give favors to the families of old friends), her father and his people build 10,000 temples in her name, several with massive statues of pure gold.

Goddess Elain brings Lucien and Cassian to the heavens with her, to help her in her duties as a god. She must intercede when appropriate (if there are demons or ghosts attacking people) and answer prayers. Despite the ban, she likes to sit on the altars of her temples, invisible, and listen to the prayers of her followers.

Elain doesn’t like the wealth and splendor of her temples, she wishes people would not bow, and just wants things to be simpler.

After a few years as a goddess, while wandering her city, she notices a crummy old shrine tucked into a forgotten alley. It is roughly made, with only a flower and a bun on the offerings table.

She watches this little but clearly loved shrine for a long time, and notices that it is tended by an 11 year old boy. He is homeless, cold, malnourished, and had bandages wrapped around half his face. Rather than eat what food he manages to get, he puts it on the offerings table to Elain, only taking a few rotten fruits or moldy buns for himself.

Elain hates to see this- the boy is so desperately starving and yet he leaves food for a goddess who has no need for it. Bullies come and destroy the boy’s shrine. He is beaten by them, but when it is over he only fixes her shrine back up, and curls in a ball beneath it to sleep.

Elain feels that this boy is more sincere in his devotion than those who leave gaudy offerings at her temples, so she leaves the boy some food, a blanket, a straw mat, and some food. When he wakes he knows it was the goddess who heard his prayers, and he is delighted.

She does not realize that this boy is Azriel.

Elain’s country becomes embroiled in a civil war. Elain breaks the rules of the heavens outright and tries to end it before it begins by helping refugees of a horrible drought. She is kind to one refugee, taking on mortal form and helping him bury his son’s body, which he brought to the capitol to show the king of how severe the people’s suffering is. Her father didn’t care, and would not see the poor man.

Elain’s attempts to stop the refugee situation from becoming a civil war as the capitol refuses to send aid go nowhere, and in the end the war begins. She feels she has no choice but to openly step out as a Goddess of War and take the side of the capitol, where her parents still rule. Her heart aches at fighting the common folk, and she is still trying to end the drought in their homeland, but war is inevitable.

During the war, Elain meets a young soldier of only around 15. He is brave and good with a sword- though she advises a saber would suit him better. Though he is too young to really fight, she keeps him by her side. Together they witness the desperation of the refugees, whose leader- the man who she helped bury his son- summons a horrible demon.

Amarantha- a monster who always wears a mask that is half crying, half laughing.

Amarantha calls forth a plague that rips through the capitol. Elain realizes that the only ones who aren’t becoming infected with this plague are the soldiers and criminals- anyone who has taken a life. She realizes if others figure it out, the whole world will be consumed in blood as everyone tries to kill one another for immunity.

Elain’s favorite soldier is removed from the army by Lucien’s command, outing the boy as too young. Azriel is once again thrown aside- not that Elain realized it was him.

Meanwhile Elain, heartbroken at the suffering of her people, makes the ultimate decision: she saves her parents, but leaves the capitol to die and fall. If the refugees- now rebel army- kill everyone inside the capitol then the disease won’t spread (since soldiers would do the killing), and no one would ever know what the cure was. One city to save the world.

Helion knows the Goddess Elain’s heart was in the right place, but her intercession not only failed to stop the war, she made it worse. He is forced to put a Cursed Collar on her, stripping her of all her powers as a goddess. However, instead of her becoming mortal again, Helion gives her an immortal body.

Elain, after all, was only seventeen when she ascended and now could be counted in her twenties. Young by any standard. She is a good person, so Helion grants her the immortal body believing that some experience in the world will help her learn. With time and dedication, she can ascend once again to be a goddess, and he will remove the Cursed Collar.

Lucien and Cassian descend with her.

But her confidence has been shattered. To keep the royal family hidden, they are forced to perform tricks on the streets for meager coins, do manual labor (including on monuments insulting and demeaning the Goddess Elain), and are constantly on the run from members of the new government’s army who are hunting the King and Queen mercilessly.

Eventually, Lucien tells Elain and Cassian that it is simply too much, he’s sick the struggles, and leaves to take care of his own mother. Cassian and Lucien always hated one another and bickered nonstop, but this is the ultimate betrayal. If Cassian could kill Lucien with his bare hands, he would.

Elain becomes paranoid and terrified that Cassian will leave her too. She has no possessions of worth- they’ve all been pawned- but she has a single golden belt left. The mark of a heavenly official. A reminder of what she was and what she must work towards becoming again. She gives it to Cassian, for its value is very high, as a way to beg him to stay.

Soon after, Elain finds a shady merchant selling lanterns she realizes are lit not by fire, but by little flame spirits- remnants of souls that should have been allowed to rest in peace. These spirits were taken from the battlefields around the royal capitol, her soldiers. Elain manages to use a few meager coins to buy them, and goes about releasing the spirits.

One small flame spirit will not leave. It tells Elain that it cannot move on, because its beloved is suffering and it must watch over them always so they will not be alone. Idealistic and lovely, but Elain is too disheartened to feel anything by cynicism towards such words.

She leaves the little spirit- Azriel, who had snuck back onto the battlefields after being removed from the army and was cut down.

And then the king falls ill.

Elain is desperate for coin to help make things easier for Cassian (who is earning most of the money now) and to buy medicine for her father. Everything she tries fails, and, utterly at her wits end, she is forced to try her hand at robbing.

Though Elain is too horrified to actually rob a man, she chases after him and runs afoul of several junior heavenly officials who recognize her. She begs them not to tell anyone, and flees. They swear they won’t say a word.

Elain returns home, and she’s terrified of what she almost did for money. She decides to leave, going to find a mountain with good spiritual energy to meditate and hopefully make progress back towards gaining the merits to become a goddess again.

As soon as she arrives thirty-three heavenly officials come to train on the mountain, as such a thing can even help gods advance among their own ranks. They bully Elain, and eventually mock her for trying to rob the man (those junior gods were assholes and didn’t keep their word).

What’s worse- Lucien is among them. He didn’t go back to care for his mother, he abandoned Elain to become a god once again, a junior in the service of another (not a path Elain can take since she was once a full goddess). He helps chase Elain away.

That little flame spirit- Azriel- is there to witness the humiliation.

Elain flees in tears, running down the mountain until she collapses, sobbing. When she is left staring at the ground, a hand appears to help her up- Lucien. Elain slaps his hand away and screams at him, and leaves.

When she arrives home, Lucien is there with sacks of food and medicine for the King. He tries to explain that he only left to return to the heavens- betraying one master to go to a new one- because he knew he could use the position to get food and such for Elain, Cassian, and the King and Queen.

Elain screams at Lucien to go, throwing the sacks of food at him. Cassian takes Elain’s side, and Lucien lets slip that Elain tried to rob for money. He doesn’t know Cassian didn’t know, and Elain is thrown even further into despair.

More time passes, once again the money and food and medicine run out. Elain starts seeing figures around her where there is nothing- the figure of Amarantha all in white with that horrible mask. Her own robes are sometimes replaced with Amarantha’s, and she is slowly driven mad.

At the absolute edge of sanity, Elain feels a summons drawing her into the woods. She follows it, even when ghostly flames try to block her path and stop her from advancing, and ends up in a ruined temple. A ruined temple that was once hers. The divine statue has been destroyed.

Elain sits on the altar and waits, knowing Amarantha will show up to claim her.

Over hours, people trickle into the temple, and lured by a mysterious summons even they don’t consciously remember following. When there are 100 people inside, wild howls come from around them and crazed figures appear, all infected with the plague that destroyed Elain’s kingdom.

They fall back into the temple and Elain seals the door. She is grabbed by Amarantha, bound, and Amarantha holds her up on the altar by her skull. Amarantha tells the people what Elain was so scared of anyone finding out:: that the plague can be cured if the person is a murderer. Amarantha helpfully explains that Elain cannot die, but if they land a blow on her that would be fatal on another, it counts. To demonstrate, Elain is run through.

The pain is horrible, and when the next person picks up the sword and stabs her, she screams. A white flame spirit enters the building, the one who tried to stop Elain from coming in the first place. Amarantha captures it to play with (torment) as the villagers line up.

No matter how much Elain screams, they stab her. Some slash her throat, so that she can no longer make a sound. She is trapped in her body as it is mutilated and wrecked, staring up at that flame spirit and imagining she can hear it screaming at what is being done to her.

People stab her two or three times, just to be sure they landed a would-be-fatal hit and unable to tell what they are stabbing as she ceases to look even human anymore. Just a pile of ruined flesh spilled across her own altar. Even her face is destroyed.

That flame spirit- Azriel- screams out with every stab, until he can’t take it anymore and loses his sanity. He explodes in a wall of flame that turns all the humans inside the temple- and the infected outside- into ash. Above the skies roil, marking the birth of a particularly dangerous spirit.

Elain lays in agony as her body slowly knits back together. She is dazed as she stumbles away from the ruined temple. Traumatized beyond the brink of insanity. What was done to her horrifies her, and she feels only rage and grief. She was a Goddess, and now not only is she living in squalor and humiliation and degradation, she was attacked by humans for no reason other than personal gain. Not an ounce of kindness shown to her as they hacked at her body.

Elain sees Amarantha, who wants to take her as a disciple and raise her to wreak vengeance against the world. Elain flees.

When she gets home, two weeks (or months, the translation is inconsistent) have passed. Cassian has kept the king alive and the queen has been beside herself. She swears she will never chide Elain again, just please don’t leave.

None of them know what happened to her body. None of them can understand. Elain is sick and tired and broken. And she knows the worst will pass sooner or later- Cassian will abandon her just like Lucien did. Leave her in disgust. She can’t bear thinking about his friendship turning to hate, so she attacks him. She rips him apart with the worst words she can muster, until he leaves in disgust.

You can’t fear something that already happened.

Elain locks herself in her rooms and ignores even her mother’s pleading to come out.

When she wakes, she bathes. She has to go and try to find coin again, but cannot find the bandage she uses to cover half her face and hide her identity (since, you know, as a disgraced goddess her face is everywhere). The house is too quiet, and when Elain opens the doors to her parents room, she finds out why:

With the king’s health failing, and the humiliation of being deposed and on the run, living in squalor, he has lost all hope. Her mother won’t be left behind, and she knows her life is a burden on Elain’s as the fallen goddess tries to care for them.

So the king and queen have hung themselves. Elain carefully takes down their bodies and tries to hang too, but of course this immortal body- a gift from Helion himself- cannot die.

The hangman’s noose has absorbed two lives, and was used in incredible grief by a goddess herself. It is imbued with the love Elain’s parents felt for her and their tragic desire to die as a way to help them. The cloth comes to life, sort of like a snake meets a puppy, but when not in use, it wraps around Elain’s wrist as if her arm were injured.

At the king and queen’s deaths, whatever is left of Elain shatters.

She goes to the battlefields outside the dead royal capitol, her home, and wakes the souls of her people. Millions, all killed in battle or in the plague. She screams to them all, demanding to know if they hate. On her face is the white mask of Amarantha- half crying, half smiling.

And thus, the White Clothed Calamity is born. A twin to the White No-Faced demon (Amarantha).

The souls appear as black smoke that floods into Elain’s blade- the one that was used to mutilate her body. All that hatred condensing.

And in front of Elain appears the form of a soldier. Also wearing a mask. A particularly powerful resentful spirit on his way to becoming a demon.

Not that Elain would recognize Azriel even if she could see, so consumed is she by her hatred and wrath.

Elain takes those souls to the new royal capitol to kill the leader of the rebellion- that man whose child she helped bury. The man who rained hell down on all.

But he’s dead. Killed by the plague. She can’t even take her revenge right.

So Elain goes next to the lands ravaged by that drought, the whole reason for the civil war in the first place. The very city she tried to save as a goddess to stop the war from starting. She drops from the sky, impaled by the black sword. She has given herself three days.

Three days for a single soul to show her an ounce of kindness. If none do, she will unleash those souls and the plague will begin again as the hateful spirits infect body after body until the world runs red with blood.

No one helps her. Not until the third day, when a man trips over her body, cusses her out, and then feels bad for losing his temper. Right as the sun sets on the third day, he takes off his bamboo hat and offers it to her, to protect her from the rain.

A single act of kindness.

But it’s too late. The souls trapped in the sword explode into the sky.

Elain tries to tell the gathering crowd to pick up her sword and just stab her. She’s resigned to being hacked to death again and again if it will save even a single person from what she unleashed in her wrath and grief.

But no one is willing to hurt her. Not even to save themselves, and not even when she is begging them to. Unlike the group in the temple, who attacked her for themselves even when she begged them to stop.

So Elain does something painful and horrible- she raises the sword and draws all those hate-filled spirits into herself. It could very well destroy her, and the pain is worse even than being stabbed, but she will do it. If she can even save one person to undo her own mistake, she’ll do it.

But that second soldier appears again, the one who stood across from her on the battlefield.

He takes the souls into himself. Elain absorbs 300. He takes a million. It destroys him utterly- that kind brave man giving his soul, extinguishing himself forever- just to help her right a wrong.

But Azriel didn’t die. He was blown apart by the power, and re-formed bit by bit later on to become a Wrath-level (tier 3) ghost.

Helion descends from the heavens to meet Elain. Yes, she nearly did something unforgivable, but she was willing to destroy herself to right the wrong. For this- and all her suffering- Helion wishes to bring Elain up to the heavens once again as a goddess.

Her wrath extinguished, her spirit broken, Elain refuses his offer. That poor man’s soul was destroyed (seemingly) because of her. Someone suffered for what she did. She wants to atone, and atone for those one million souls she roused rather than helping them lay at rest in peace.

Elain asks Helion to put a new Cursed Shackle on her. This time not one that banishes her spiritual powers. Once upon a time she met a small boy she saved from falling. She was told she had infinite fortune, well above a normal person’s, but that child’s fate was endlessly dark and wretched.

Elain asks for a shackle that destroys her luck. That takes all of her good fortune and shatters it. Fortune is something that ebbs and flows through the world, by removing all of hers, that luck will be redistributed, and could bring good to the lives of others.

But an offer to return to heaven was granted, so Helion and Elain come up with a little show to explain away the new curse shackle without Helion appearing to punish a goddess who has done no wrong:

Elain ascends, as offered, and storms through heaven, hacking at the bodies of gods and challenging Helion himself. It becomes known famously as her Second Ascension, which lasts all of 10 minutes before she is fitted with a new cursed shackle and hurled form the heavens.

Elain’s life will be wretched, luck-less, and full of strife. Nothing she ever tries will go right. it is a life that would shatter the spirit of anyone. But for Elain, every misfortune means someone else has better luck than they should have. Every harm she suffers means someone else is blessed. She is atoning for what she did, and that makes her happy. She still mourns the soul of that boy who was destroyed, still lives in repentance of that, but she is atoning for her crimes.

During this time, that boy- now a Wrath Level Demon- finds he cannot loose. All the good fortune lost by Elain is funneled into him, and it is impossible for him to not get what he wants. He enters the Demonic Kiln and is re-forged as a Supreme (highest level) Demonic King. His weapons are the Silver Wrath Butterflies- a form he grants to those million souls he swallowed to help Elain.

He wears around his finger a red string, one of the ones that had bound him to that ghost lantern as a little flame spirit, a red string of fate that promises he will find his way back to Elain one day.

Azriel walks into the heavens and challenges thirty-five gods-- those who humiliated Elain on the mountaintop plus Cassian and Lucien, her hateful servants who abandoned her.

Cassian and Lucien refuse the challenge, but thirty-three gods take Azriel’s challenge---

He kills them all.

Not only does he humiliate them in front of their worshippers, he destroys 10,000 of their temples in a single night. One temple for every one of Elain’s that was destroyed when she fell as a goddess. Without worshippers or temples, the gods fade from existence.

Until, 800 years later, the heavens explode. Godly palaces are destroyed (including those of Cassian and Lucien, who are now full gods), the infrastructure shatters, and when the smoke clears there is Elain. A goddess once again. Except instead of being a goddess of war, she is a goddess of misfortune and junk.

To atone for accidentally ruining so many palaces (though she had no power over the size of the boom when she ascended, it corresponds with power), she goes to the mortal realm to solve a mysterious haunting.

The moment she arrives, she finds a silver butterfly following her and is enchanted by it. The butterfly vanishes, and as soon as she steps into the haunted forest a man in red appears, takes her hand, and gently leads her through a blood-rain, destroys barriers that would have kept her contained, and delivers her safely to the lair of the creature she is hunting.

From then on, Azriel is never far from her side. He has hunted for Elain for 800 years. The beautiful princess he fell in love with as a child, and met time and time again without her realizing it. After their second adventure together, Azriel gives Elain a diamond ring to wear around her neck.

If a ghost’s ashes are destroyed or scattered, they die. Elain doesn’t want this to happen to Azriel, who has made himself an enemy of heaven. Azriel only tells her that his ashes are safe, and if their hiding place is ever destroyed or if they are cast away, he has no will to exist any more anyways.

His ashes are contained within that diamond ring, imbued in the stone itself.

Elain doesn’t know why the gods hate Azriel so much, he is warm and kind to her (though admittedly cold to others). Azriel accompanies Elain obediently on many adventures, though every mystery they solve they run afoul of one heavenly official after another.

Elain starts to realize there is a rot in the heavens. So many gods with so many horrible secrets.

Elain and Azriel invade the home of a particularly evil ghost- the Green Demon. Tamlin. After Elain’s fall from grace he went mad, his obsessive feelings towards her turning from admiration to hatred. It was Tamlin who commissioned all those statues of Elain in humiliating and degrading positions. Tamlin is a cannibalistic evil ghost, though lower than Azriel in power.

He quickly takes possession of the body of a man with a small child and refuses to leave, so Azriel cannot even kill him without Elain being angry.

Realizing something is rotten in the heavens, Elain makes her base a rundown cabin barely standing. She lives there with Tamlin as her prisoner and Azriel as her constant companion. That child becomes a noose around Tamlin’s throat- endlessly obedient and loving towards his “father” (whose body Tamlin cannot leave or else Az will kill him). Bit by bit, Tamlin’s cruelty starts to fade (though he’s never really nice per-se, it’s just that he likes the kid).

On her journey she is joined by Nuala and Cerridwen- two low level gods in the service of Lucien and Cassian, who hate one another as much as their masters do. Their masters also hate Elain with a burning passion, so Nuala and Cerridwen help her in secret.

Out of courtesy, Elain pretends that she doesn’t know Nuala and Cerridwen are only Cassian and Lucien in another form, trying to atone themselves for abandoning her so long ago.

As Elain, Azriel, Cassian, and Lucien go on adventure after adventure the crimes of the heavens are unearthed one after another- from a god who killed humans to hide his own crimes to another who worked black magics to steal the good fortune of a man about to ascend to a god and attached it to his unwitting brother, leaving the man’s family to be raped and murdered while his brother enjoyed the divinity that should never have been his, to another god who tortured a mortal to death just for fun.

They start to realize too that Amarantha- who vanished from the world when Elain refused to release her curse- has been close by all along.

For the Demonic Kiln that forges Ghost Kings- that imbued Azriel with so much power- was born of a horrific tragedy 2,000 years ago in which Amarantha’s entire kingdom fell around her.

A tragedy which Amarantha turned into an opportunity- she raided the heavens, slaughtered all of her fellow gods and changed her form.

And as new gods rose, she placed herself upon the throne with this new face--

as Helion.

Elain, Azriel, Cassian, Lucien, and all of their new friends must work together to destroy Helion, find the true King of Heaven, and restore balance to the world before Amarantha plunges it all into chaos and destroys everything Elain loves.

The only one powerful enough to stop Amarantha is Elain, but with her luck sealed away and her powers still stifled by the Cursed Collar, it is up to the Demonic Realm to save the Heavens above before the mortal world is destroyed.

Azriel already died for Elain once. To see her smile freely once again, he’d die a million deaths more. No matter the hardships, this boy who has followed his princess for 800 years will follow her to the ends of the earth and beyond.

And their growing love might just be enough to tip the tides of war in their favor. King Azriel will always find a way to his Elain. Not even a two thousand year old Demonic-King of Heaven can stand in their way.

#Anonymous #tgcf #heaven official's blessing #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #ok so i mainly described the flashback books #but the main books are episodic within the arcs #still extremely extremely good and they build to form a narrative #but you can summarize it as 'gods suck and often do bad things too'#my writing #LATER THIS WEEKEND I WILL DO THE UNTAMED AS TOG CHARACTERS FOR THE OTHER ASK ANON

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