#dream is the ideal professor for students who struggle with self confidence and need to feel more capable

[cuubism]

i feel like dream in human aus is usually characterized as being more stoic and stern while hob is more easygoing, but i think it would be funny to have a university au where hob is the professor who's like "no work is deserving of 100%. find 27 more sources and do it again" while dream is just like "they put their dreams into it, hob 🥺 A+! A+! A+! A+!"

[justcallmefox89]

Truth or Dare Part 8 - Mammon’s Ending

During a private meeting Diavolo makes Arianthi a tempting offer while Mammon’s jealousy spirals out of control.  With the end of the exchange program looming Arianthi has major decisions to make.

NSFW - blowjob, public hookup

TWs - potential triggers for those who have had experiences with physical violence.

Written from the perspective of my female OC Arianthi. 

Mood List:

Snakehips & MO - Don’t Leave Trixie Whiteley - Breathe You In My Dreams Cigarettes After Sex - Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby The 1975 - Somebody Else Brandon Flowers -  I Can Change

Solomon strides confidently into Diavolo’s office and I follow behind, making a conscious effort to hide in his shadow.  Diavolo has his head down, rifling through some paperwork.  Solomon and I each silently take a seat in the two chairs in front of his desk, waiting on him to acknowledge our presence.  

After a few more minutes he looks up at us.  

“Hello Solomon,” Diavolo says, giving him a polite nod.  

“Diavolo.”  Solomon smiles placidly.

“Hey princess.”  He gives me a soft smile, the nickname slipping out easily.  He flushes and looks back down at his desk.

“Hi Dia.”  I fidget with cuffs of my jacket, guilt coiling in my stomach.  

Diavolo looks pale, deep purple smudges beneath his eyes.  Despite his enormous size he seems smaller somehow, diminished, all his natural charisma muted. 

Solomon swoops in to save the day.  “Did you need to speak with us about the exchange program?”  

Bless you, you sweet sweet man.  I thought I was going to suffocate in my own awkwardness.

“Yes.  Yes, about the program.”  Diavolo clears his throat.  “I was hoping I could convince both of you to extend your stay in the Devildom.”

Solomon and I shoot a quick glance at each other, matching looks of confusion on our faces.  

“How do you mean?”  He asks.

Diavolo regards us both seriously.  “This first experiment into the exchange program has been far more successful than I had even hoped.  We will be increasing our number of exchange students during the next session.  Solomon, I would like you to stay on as a professor of sorts, teaching magic to the new human students.”

Solomon’s mouth drops open.  “I would be honored to extend my stay here.”

Diavolo nods, a smile on his lips.  He turns to me.  “Arianthi, I would like to ask you to stay on as an ambassador between the demons, angels, and humans.  You seem to have a unique ability to get along with just about anyone.  I think you would be the ideal person for the job.”

I think I’m in shock.  

I can stay in the Devildom.  I can stay with Mammon.  With the rest of my friends.  

“For real?  Like, for real, for real?”

Diavolo chuckles.  “For real princess.  I wouldn’t tease you like that.”  

The nickname again.  The easy banter.  As glad as I am to see a glimpse of the old Diavolo, I’m not sure this level of familiarity is good for either one of us.  I don’t think about it for too long though, the joy of getting to stay with Mammon drowning out all my other thoughts.

“Yes!  Absolutely yes!  I would love to stay!”  I say excitedly, bouncing a little in my seat.

Diavolo grins.  “Fantastic.  I will have the paperwork drawn up and have Barbatos deliver it to you in a few days for your signatures.  And of course you both can continue your Devildom studies while working around your new responsibilities. ” 

Solomon and I stand up to leave, but Diavolo speaks up, stopping us.  “Arianthi, if you could stay a minute?  There is something I’d like to discuss with you.”

I plop back down in my chair, looking at Solomon anxiously.  He sends me a cheeky wave and a look that says I’m clearly on my own.  Once the office doors have closed behind him, Diavolo crosses to the front of his desk.  He pulls the unoccupied visitor's chair closer to mine and sits down, facing me.  

Before I can say anything Diavolo takes my right hand in his much larger ones, slipping the ring he gave me for my birthday on my ring finger.  

“You left this behind when you moved out of the castle,” he says reproachfully.  

“It didn’t seem right to keep it,” I mumble, gently tugging my hand free of his.

He looks at me earnestly.  “It was a gift.  Anything I give you I give without expectations.  I want you to keep it.  It makes me happy to think of you wearing it.”

I nod, unable to form a response.  

Mammon is going to hate this.

“Lucifer tells me that you and Mammon are doing quite well.  He says it’s rare to ever see you two apart,” Diavolo continues.  

“Keeping tabs on me Dia?”  I quirk an eyebrow at him.

He huffs out a small laugh.  “Nothing sinister I promise.  Just occasionally checking in to make sure the woman I love is happy.”

“Diavolo.”  I’m at a loss for words.

“Allow me that much Arianthi.  I truly am happy for you and Mammon.  It’s a rare thing for a demon to find a love as pure as what the two of you share.”  Despite the smile on his face, Diavolo’s eyes betray his pain.

“Thank you Diavolo,” I whisper, not trusting my voice.

He shakes his head.  “Don’t.  I do it for my peace of mind.  I need to know that you’re safe and loved, even if it’s not by me.”  

He stands up.  “I’ve taken up enough of your morning.” 

I stand up and follow him to the door.  He stops before opening it.  “Once the paperwork is finalized and you’ve told Mammon your decision, I would like to put together a little something for you and Solomon.  Maybe a party?”

“I think that would be fun.”  I smile up at him, then open the door.  I’m halfway through before Diavolo catches my attention.

“Arianthi?”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t let Mammon get his hands on that ring.”  He smirks at me and I laugh.  

“I’ll keep it safe,”  I say, before I slip out the door.

——————————————————————————

Mammon wanders out of the student council meeting, impatient to see Arianthi after her meeting with Diavolo.  He stops in surprise, seeing Solomon chatting with Simeon and the chihuahua.  

She didn’t message me.  

Jealousy starts to creep up.

“Oi!  Solomon!”  He narrows in on the sorcerer, ignoring the angels completely.  “Where’s Arianthi?”

Solomon raises his eyebrows, affecting a surprised expression.  

“She didn’t message you yet?  Diavolo asked her to stay behind for a private conversation.  They must still be .............. speaking.”  He lingers on the last word, his tone hinting at something unspeakably lewd.

Mammon grits his teeth and pushes past the group, heading for Diavolo’s office.  

Damn it.  Damn him.  Arianthi is MY girl. 

Simeon turns to Solomon, a disappointed look on his face.  “That wasn’t very kind Solomon.  You shouldn’t rile him up like that.  You know Arianthi would never betray him.”

“I know that.  I’m just wondering when Mammon’s going to figure that out, the jealous bastard.”  Solomon smirks.  “And it’s just too easy to push his buttons, especially when it comes to her.”

Luke and Simeon both give him a scandalized look, while he just shrugs, a self-satisfied smile playing across his lips. 

Mammon storms through the hallways towards Diavolo’s office, stopping short when he sees the door is cracked open.  He hesitates, remembering the last time he walked in on Arianthi and Diavolo.  Despite his best attempts that memory is still burned into his mind, affecting his intimate moments with Arianthi at the worst times.  

She’s been nothing but patient with me though.

He frowns, jealousy overtaking him, and moves closer to the door.  He catches snatches of their conversation.  

“Woman I love........happy.....told Mammon your decision.....a party........sounds fun........don’t let Mammon........ring.”  

Then he hears Arianthi’s soft laugh, and a jealous rage crawls up his spine, clouding his vision and sparking fury in his veins.  

Mine.  MY human.  MY girl.

Mammon hears the door begin to open wider and quickly steps back out of sight. 

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

I close the door to Diavolo’s office and pull out my D.D.D. to message Mammon, thrilled to tell him the good news, hoping he’ll be as happy as I am.  A hand wraps around my wrist before I even manage to open the messaging app, and I let out a yelp as I feel myself being pulled forcefully down the hallway.  I look up and see Mammon, mouth pressed into a thin line, more angry than I’ve ever seen him.

“Mammon?  Mammon what’s wrong?  Did something happen?”  Concerned, I start to run through worst case scenarios.  

Did something happen to one of his brothers?  To Goldie?  Did he get sucked into a new pact with some witches?  That will be a major pain in the ass to deal with.........  

He refuses to answer, eyes darting around but never looking at me.

I start to struggle against his grip.  “Mammon!  Mammon stop!  What’s going on?”

He finds an empty classroom and pushes me inside unceremoniously, slamming the door shut behind us.

“What in the hell has gotten into you?”  I hiss, worry quickly shifting into anger.  

He presses me against the door, pinning me with his body, staring down at me with a coldness I’ve never seen before.  “Wanna tell me what ya were doing in Diavolo’s office?  Alone with him?”

I open my mouth to answer, to try to calm him down, reassure him, but he cuts me off before I get a chance.  

“He still loves ya, huh?  How long have you known that?  And what decision do ya gotta tell me about?”  

He grabs my hand. 

“I see you’re wearin’ his ring again,” he snarls.  “And what was he talkin’ about when he said “don’t let Mammon”?  Don’t let me what, huh?”

Ok, he’s jealous.  He’s insecure.  

I understand, given the circumstances.  I take a deep breath, closing my eyes.  

“Open your damn eyes and look at me,” Mammon growls low in his throat.  

My eyes fly open in shock.  Even when we were fighting, I’ve never heard his voice like that.  Low.  Dangerous.  Close to losing control and giving into his sin. 

“Hey!”  I raise my voice, jabbing him in the chest with one finger.  His eyes snap up to meet mine.  

Good.  Got your attention.  

“You need to calm down.”

“No, you need to start giving me some damn -”

I lift my hand up and softly press it against his mouth.  “Mammon, baby, I know that you’re upset but you can’t talk to me like this.  You need to get it together because I have something really important to tell you.”

All the jealousy and rage drain out of him, insecurity rapidly taking its place.  His shoulders hunch and he voice goes small.  “Are ya leavin’ me?”

“What? No!”  I shout. 

 Mammon flinches a little at the volume of my voice.  

“No.  No, I am not.”  I inhale deeply.  

“Yes Mammon, Diavolo said he loves me.  And I’m currently wearing the ring because he just gave it back to me. I left it at the castle when I moved out, but he wants me to keep it.   And he doesn’t want you to get your hands on it because it’s mine, it was a gift, and he probably doesn’t want you to pawn it because you’re feeling jealous.”  

He shrinks a little under my stern gaze.

“I’m not going to wear the ring, but it was a gift and a reminder of my time here, so I’ll have Lucifer put it in his safe.”  

I reach up to push some of Mammon’s hair out of his eyes, and loop my hands around his neck.  

“I can’t do anything about Diavolo still having feelings for me.  But it doesn’t mean much when I’m in love with you.”  I give him a quick series of kisses all over his face.

“Ya really mean that?”  Mammon scrunches his eyebrows together.

I rub my nose against his.  “Of course I do.  You’re THE Great Mammon and I love you with all my heart.”

He drops his head on my shoulder.  “Fuck, I am such an idiot.  I can’t believe I lost it like that.  I’m so sorry baby.  Just knowin’ ya were alone with him, and hearin’ him say he still loved ya.....”  

I press a kiss in his hair.  “You really are my greedy, jealous demon aren’t you?”

I run my fingers across the back of his neck in what I hope is a soothing motion.

He pulls back and takes my hand in his, pressing soft kisses along my wrist.  “Did I hurt ya when I grabbed ya?”

I shake my head.  “I’m fine.”  

I suddenly remember my good news.  I wrap my arms around Mammon’s waist and kiss his neck.  “Hey baby, guess what?”

“What?”  He asks, returning my embrace.

“Diavolo wants me to stay in the Devildom.”  

Mammon tenses at Diavolo’s name.  

“He wants me to stay as an ambassador for the exchange program.  I don’t have to go back to the human realm.  I can stay here, with you.”

Mammon is totally silent and I move back so I can see his face.  “Unless you don’t want me to?”

He pushes me against the door roughly, claiming my mouth in a fierce kiss.  His tongue touches mine, stroking for just a moment, before he trails kisses along my jaw and down to my neck, his breath hot against my skin.  His nips at my neck, fangs out, then sucks on the spot hard before soothing it with a soft lick of his tongue.

I let of a small yelp, instinctively burying one hand into his silky hair and giving a sharp tug.  

“I can’t believe you get to stay.”  Mammon murmurs against my neck, in between kisses and small bites.  “MY human.  MY girl.  Staying with me because she WANTS to.  All mine, and everybody is gonna know it.  I’m so greedy for ya Arianthi.  I never wanna let ya go.  I crave ya, need ya like I need air.”

I bite my lip to stop a small scream when Mammon nips hard at my pulse point and slides one hand under my uniform skirt and between my thighs.  

“Now you never have to,” I breathe.  

He’s never been like this before.  I’m not complaining though.  I’ve been waiting a long time for him to touch me like this.  But.......

I wiggle a little, and Mammon’s hands and mouth stop their exploratory trails.  

“What’s wrong?  I can stop if ya don’t like it.”  He looks at me worriedly.

I huff out a laugh.  “No, I definitely like.  This seems a little, no, a lot sudden, since you’ve only wanted to kiss so far.”  

I tuck a lock of unruly white hair behind his ear.  “I’m not sure I want to do this if you’re just doing this because you were jealous.  I don’t want you to regret it later.”

He puts his hands on my hips, and brings his mouth down to my neck.  “It’s not just because of that.  I’ve wanted ya for so long and I’m tired of waiting.  Tired of bein’ afraid you’re gonna change your mind about me.  Tired of second guessing everything.  You’re everything to me and I’m yours as long as ya want me.”  

The warmth of his mouth and the vibration of his words against my neck send a delicious shiver up my spine.  

“Forever.  Forever is good for me,” I murmur into his hair.

Mammon looks up, blue eyes locking on to mine.  “Works for me.”  

He lifts me up, hands under my thighs, and presses my back against the door.  On instinct I wrap my legs around his waist.  He groans and rolls his hips against me, and I feel just how hard he is.  His mouth captures mine in a searing kiss, tongue and teeth insistent and relentless.  When we finally break apart I’m seeing stars.

I laugh breathlessly as Mammon drops kisses from my neck down to my chest, taking the collar of my shirt between his teeth and tugging on it.  

“Hey!  I want you too but I am not having my first time with you be in a R.A.D. classroom.”

Mammon whines and nuzzles his head against my shoulder, rolling his hips against me again.  “Baby.......”  

My poor greedy little demon.  It really would be cruel to leave him in this state for the rest of the day.  

“Put me down.”

Mammon obeys immediately, and I quickly switch positions with him, pressing him against the door while reaching behind him to click the lock. 

“W-w-what are ya doin’?”  He stutters, the tips of his ears turning red.  “Ya said ya didn’t wanna-”

“I may not want to fuck you right here, but there are plenty of other things I can do to for my greedy boy,” I whisper in his ear before taking his earlobe between my teeth and giving it a sharp nip.

“Fuuuuuck,” he whines, bucking his hips.

I kiss down his jaw, lingering on his lips, then move to his neck, alternating between love bites and soft kisses.  When I reach his collarbone I give his skin a slow swipe of my tongue, then bite down hard, hard enough to leave a deep crimson mark.  Mammon yelps, hands gripping tight on my waist.  

I move back up to his mouth and run a finger over the bite while I whisper against his lips.  “That’s going to leave such a pretty mark, baby.  And everyone is going to know who left it on you.  Do you like that?”

He nods eagerly, moving in to kiss me.  I allow him only the briefest brush of our lips before pulling away.  He whimpers, wanting more.  

“I need you to be a good boy and use your words for me,”  I say as I palm his erection through his pants. 

Mammon throws his head back, eyes closed tight.  

“Y-yeah.  I l-l-like that a lot baby.  It feels so good-”  He groans as I tighten my grip on him.  “More.  More,” he demands, arching against my palm.  

I move my hand away, and he cries out at the loss of contact.

I press two fingers against his lips.  “Shhhh, my love.  I need you to be good and be quiet for me.  Otherwise people might find us and see you like this, one of the lords of the Devildom whining and begging for his human to touch him.”  

I work my hands under his shirt and drag my fingernails down his chest and over his stomach.  I feel his muscles twitch and shake under my touch.

Mammon’s eyes are shut tight and he shakes his head in frustration.  “Don’t care.......don’t care.  Please... baby I need ya.”

I smirk.  “Well in that case.”  

I bite down on his pulse point and my hands start working on his belt buckle.  

His eyes fly open and he lets out a breathy gasp.  “W-what are ya doin’?”

I start working his pants down over his hips.  

“I was going to get on my knees for THE Great Mammon but if you don’t want me to....”  I trail off as I take a half-step back.

He growls and yanks me closer to him.  “Don’t ya even think about stoppin’ now.  Finish what ya started.”

“Yes sir,” I murmur, giving him a light kiss.

Mammon’s eyes roll back as he groans.  “Drivin’ me crazy,”  he mumbles. 

He quickly shrugs out of his jacket, folding it quickly and shoving it into my hands.  I stare at him, confused.  

“For your knees.”  His cheeks turn pink.

Even as a horny mess Mammon is so thoughtful of me.  I give him a rough kiss.  

“God I love you.”  I put his jacket on the ground, then kneel, working his pants down his legs as I go.

He runs his fingers through my hair, hands settling on the back of my head.  He looks down at me through half-lidded eyes, darkened with lust.  

“Love you too,” he replies, his voice hoarse. 

I run my hands down his thighs, following with the occasional kiss.  Mammon makes small sounds of appreciation, fingers moving restlessly through my hair.  His erection is straining against his boxers, a wet circle of pre-cum leaking through the thin fabric.  I mouth his cock through the fabric, grabbing his ass to keep his hips still. 

He whines loudly, bucking against my tight hold.  “Come on.... please, please, please,” he begs.

I smirk, looking up at him through my lashes.  His eyes are closed, head thrown back, face flushed with desire as he bites down on his lower lip.  I grip the waistband of his boxers with my teeth and tug them down, freeing his cock.  

Oh, Christmas has come early.  

Starting at the base of his cock, I move my tongue in a long, slow swipe up the sensitive vein on the underside of his shaft.

“Yeesssss,” Mammon hisses, leaning back against the door for support.

I spit into one hand and start to stroke him while taking the tip of his cock in my mouth, sucking and licking like it’s my favorite lollipop.  Mammon rocks his hips against my mouth in a silent plea to take him deeper.  

I remove my hand and slowly take more of his cock in my mouth.  It takes some work; he’s not at long as Diavolo, but he is thicker.  I hold him in the warmth of my mouth for a minute, then pull back and suck in a deep breath.  

“Baby,” he whines loudly, arching his hips towards me.

I drop of soft kiss on the head of his cock.  “Such a greedy, greedy boy.”  

I swirl my tongue around him, bringing my hand back up to stroke his shaft.  

“Fuck baby, just like that,” he breathes out.  “So good, so fucking good.”

Encouraged by his praise I increase my pace, eventually resting my hands on his thighs so I’m only working him with my mouth.  Drool runs down my chin and drips off his cock, and my throat is beginning to get sore from repeatedly taking him so deep.  It’s all worth it to hear his whimpers of pleasure, words of praise, and whines of need when I pull away for a second to breathe.  

After he gives one particularly inventive curse, I hum in amusement with his cock still in my mouth and his whole body shudders at the sensation.  

Oh.  Oh my.  What an interesting development.  

I do a little more scientific research, humming as my mouth slides up and down his cock. 

I feel the muscles in his thighs begin to flex and tighten as his breathing becomes harsher, his moans a little breathier.  

“Baby, baby I’m gonna, I’m -”  He tries to pull back, but I grip the back of his thighs and hold him deep in my mouth, continuing my movements.

“Fuck!”  He thrusts his hips against my mouth and I taste something warm, salty, and thick as he releases in my mouth.  I don’t swallow immediately, waiting until I’m sure he’s looking down at me.  His eyes are open, pupils blown wide and a thin sheen of sweat covers his face.  His chest heaves as he attempts to slow down his breathing.  I open my mouth wide, making sure he can see his cum coating my tongue, then swallow, opening my mouth after and sticking my tongue out to make sure he sees I swallowed all of it.  

“Holy shit.”  Mammon slumps back against the door, unable to decide what to do first.  I scoot forward a little and use my tongue to lick him clean, removing any last traces of his orgasm.  He whimpers at the sensation and squirms a little at the over stimulation of his softening cock.

Once I’m satisfied he’s all cleaned up I stand, pulling his boxers and pants up as I go.  I buckle his belt and then pick up his jacket from the ground, shaking off any dirt and smoothing out any wrinkles.  He reaches for me, bringing our bodies flush together. 

“Ya really are something else, human,” he says, before giving me a kiss.  I can feel his smile against my lips.  

“It was good then?”  I nuzzle my face into his neck, breathing in his scent and melting against him.

I can feel his breath ruffle my hair as he huffs out a soft laugh.  “I’m ready to marry ya tonight after that.  And now I’m even more impatient to get ya in my bed.”

I giggle against him, dropping kisses over the red marks I left on his neck.  “Well there’s nothing stopping you from doing that when we get home.”

His arms tighten around me.  “I say we skip out for the rest of the day.  I wanna get ya home now.” 

I laugh and softly push away from him.  “Tonight, my greedy demon.  And we need to tell your brothers that I’m staying.  I hope they’ll be ok with it.”

Mammon shrugs into his jacket and puts an arm around my shoulders, unlocking the classroom door.  

“Are ya kiddin’?  They won’t care.  They all love ya.”  He pauses before adding, “But not as much as I do, ya know?  Like a little sister.”

“I know baby.  Should we just plan on telling them at dinner tonight?”  I snuggle closer to his side as we meandering through the R.A.D. hallways, ignoring the demons that still give us questioning looks, even after months together.

“Sounds good.”  Mammon drops one last kiss on the top of my head before we separate to go to our next classes.

Later that night at dinner we bide our time, waiting for the right opening to tell everyone else our news.  Still worked up from our encounter earlier in the day, Mammon touches me at every opportunity.  His hand on my thigh or creeping under my shirt to stroke the bare skin at my waist, kissing and nuzzling into my neck, making me giggle.  

Finally Lucifer has had enough.  “For the love of Diavolo can you take your hands off of Arianthi for one minute Mammon?  Some of us are trying to eat!” 

Mammon shoots Lucifer a dirty look, wrapping an arm tight around my waist and pulling me to him in defiance.  The move, combined with his strength, means I end up sitting in his lap, the eyes of all his brothers now on us.

“Mammon,” Lucifer’s voice has dropped an octave, irritation morphing into anger.

“Let them be,” Asmo chirps.  “I personally enjoy seeing them like this, all wrapped up in each other.”  

He shoots us a suggestive wink.

Mammon just ignores them both, hugging me tightly from behind and resting his chin on my shoulder.  I can feel him smile against my neck.  

“We got some good news for you guys,” he tells his brothers.

“Oh dear Diavolo.”  Lucifer visibly pales.  

Satan looks at us in alarm.  “Please tell me you’re not pregnant?”

Levi chokes.  “You’re pregnant?!” 

“What?”  Beel and Belphie ask in unison, looking at us with matching expressions of confusion.

Asmo is the only one who remains calm, probably remembering our conversation from this morning.

“Stupidity is genetic Arianthi,” Satan continues.  “I know you love him but I don’t think putting more of his genes out into the Devildom-”

“Satan!”  I cut him off with a dark look.  “Mammon is not stupid.  Apologize to your brother.”

Satan stares at me grumpily for a few seconds before he mumbles, “Sorry Mammon.”

“Thanks baby.”  Mammon whispers in my ear.  I squeeze his hand in response.

“But are you really pregnant?”  Poor Levi’s face is red and he looks like he’s close to hyperventilating.  

Probably worried about the possibility of a baby getting into his collectibles.  

I roll my eyes internally.  “I’m not pregnant Levi.”  

The brothers’ shoulders visibly relax.  

“Yet,” Mammon says from behind me.  I can hear the smirk in his voice.

The other six tense up again.  

“Not helping Mammon.”  I try to scold him, but I can’t keep the smile off my face.  

Yet?

“I’m not pregnant.”  I repeat.  “With no plans in the near future to get pregnant.” 

“Awww,” Mammon whines.  

I lightly pinch his thigh.  

“Ok, ok,” he mumbles, nuzzling his face into my shoulder.

I look around at the other six lords of the Devildom, demons I had come to view as family.  

I hope they’re as excited as we are.  

I take a deep breath.  “Diavolo has offered me a position with the exchange program.  I’d be an ambassador to the exchange students, and I’d still get to continue my Devildom studies.  I’ve accepted, which means I don’t have to return to the human realm.  I can stay here, with Mammon and you guys.  Permanently.”  

Mammon’s brothers stare at us for a moment, seemingly shocked into silence for the first time since I’ve met them.  Then pandemonium breaks out at the dinner table.

[houseisekai]

House Isekai: Shadowbringers Act 2, Part 1 - Withering Flower

House Isekai Shadowbringers AU Masterlist Here

—

“I don’t know if anyone will be seeing this message, whether that be myself or anyone else who comes into this godforsaken tower but...My name is Byleth Eisner. Son of Jeralt Eisner.”

“And my name is Sothis. Goddess of Fodlan...evidently.”

“We’re leaving this here in some hopes that this cycle can be broken, and to fix this mistake before it could ever happen...Our memories will be wiped after this, so we want to say everything we can before...before we forget.”

“And if anyone else besides our future selves sees this message, please give them to Byleth at Garreg Mach Monastery.”

“Now that the pleasantries are out of the way...We need to start at the beginning.”

----

[’Neath Dark Waters - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers OST]

Byleth looked at the reflection of himself in the tower. It was a floating crystal and after taking a deep breath, began speaking into it.

======

“Our journey-

No. 

Your journey. 

It is your journey that we are banking our hopes in.

It is your journey that will give you a different experience, and prevent you from committing the worst atrocity this world has ever seen.

And so, it falls to me to tell you how you got here...

Your journey began when you and Sothis woke up from a dream that had been reoccurring. A dream of a battle at Zanado.

You two did not have any memory of partaking in the fight, yet it was clear as day, despite the fact it had happened centuries ago.

Right as Jeralt was ordering you and the other mercs to prepare for another grueling march, is when your fate would change forever.

You, Sothis, and Jeralt saved three students named Edelgard, Claude, and Dimitri. 

They were part of Garreg Mach Monastery, and when the Knights of said monastery came to retrieve them, they convinced Jeralt to take up his former role of Captain.

Something he had never told you until then.

On the way, you exchanged some colorful conversations with them and tried to convince you to join their side.

All of them were next in line to their respective lands, the Adrestian Empire, Leicester Alliance, and Kingdom of Faerghus.

After being informed that you would become a professor, you were to choose your class to teach for that year.

Either out of instinct, or a wild guess, you went with the Blue Lions, led by Dimitri.

Throughout the course of the year, you fought and bled with your students as you accompanied them to various locations across Fodlan, doing the tasks of the Church. 

According to Sothis and many others, you did not display any emotions whatsoever. Yet, as the year went on, your wall broke little by little.

And by the end of the year with them, your bond with your students was unbreakable.

...But tragedy would soon strike.

No matter how much time has passed, it is a memory that will never leave you. Everything else will be a blur, but this?

It will be the catalyst to your journey.

Your father was killed saving the students from a Demonic Beast attack in Garreg Mach.

Killed by an Agarthan named Kronya.

In the following month, you march for their known location, eager for revenge. With your class right behind you, refusing to let you fight this alone.

Getting caught in a trap set by Solon, you and Sothis had no choice but to fuse together in order to escape.

Although you would not hear her for a very long time, she would never leave your side.

After successfully getting revenge and fusing with your friend, it is then everyone begins to show their true colors.

You journey to the Tomb of the Goddess and sit upon the very throne Sothis once did by orders of Rhea.

When you sat down, nothing happened, confusing everyone in the room.

But it is here when the Flame Emperor ambushes you and your class, and begin to fight Imperial forces.

And it is here where the Flame Emperor’s identity is revealed, alongside Dimitri’s true self.

Upon seeing that Edelgard was the Flame Emperor, he snapped and became unhinged.

Something that was consistent as the month passed on to your next confrontation, when the Adrestian Empire invaded and the battle’s outcome was a stalemate, both sides losing far too many men to occupy the Monastery.

However, during that battle, you fell into the canyon, where you went missing for five years.

It was only thanks to the intervention of Sothis that you were alive when you awoke, though she sent you five years into the future.

And with another year, you singlehandedly turned the war around against the Empire.

And became the saving grace to Dimitri’s grief-fueled madness.

After months of slowly pushing back the relentless tide of Imperial forces, you brought the war to a final showdown at Enbarr.

And it was then that Edelgard had finally met her match, and was killed by Dimitri.

A few days later, you and Dimitri swore to help repair Fodlan and its wartorn lands together.

Although, there was some part of you that wished to fix this outcome. To see if you could do anything different in order to prevent the war from happening.

Sothis had granted you a power known as Divine Pulse, which allowed you to turn back time.

Although it could only be used as a way to restart at most a day back, you called upon her power, and sent yourself back to where it all began.

The day you met Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude.

Instead of choosing the Blue Lions, you taught the Black Eagles.

Although you had knowledge of prior events, such as Jeralt’s death, nothing you said could stop it from happening.

When the fated day arrived at the Tomb, you sided with Edelgard. 

To find out why she did what she did in the previous timeline.

To your surprise, you found a much softer side to the brutal dictator. 

She held compassion and love for her fellow man.

And unending loyalty to you.

The same could not be said for Rhea, who had shown her colors as a ruthless and hellbent on getting her lost mother back, Sothis.

After defeating Claude and Dimitri, you and Edelgard killed Rhea in a burning city.

When that battle was over, you began to question who was right or wrong.

Who held the moral high ground in this conflict?

Calling upon Sothis again, you went back in time once more and sided with the Church to defeat Edelgard.

What had driven Rhea to similar madness like Dimitri?

You were confident about the answer until you finally found the real side to Rhea. A side she dared not show anyone but family.

Rhea harbored similar feelings, though it came after a near fatal conflict between you and Church forces.

She was nothing more than a daughter wishing to see her mother again.

Feelings you could sympathize with.

Rhea was alive but broken, Dimitri and Edelgard were dead, and Claude was missing.

This was not the ideal outcome you had wished for either.

That meant going back to the beginning.

Although this next attempt would only be your fourth time going back, you and Sothis had lost track of how many years had come and gone since you first met the students.

Going back this time and choosing the Golden Deer class, something new happened.

You met the Ashen Wolves, the secret Fourth House of Garreg Mach.

You discovered what happened to your mother, Sitri, and what Rhea was doing to get her mother back at any cost.

After saving the class, they went their separate ways and the year went on as normal, powerless to stop the events that had already been set in motion.

The journey with Claude did not have the outcome you desired either, although at the very least you now knew what he was doing the entire time in all the previous timelines.

You had put an end to the Agarthan agenda together and worked together to unite Fodlan under the banner of the Leicester Alliance, with Edelgard and Dimitri dead, with Rhea broken.

This had happened again.

And again.

And again.

Nothing you were doing could stop their deaths.

It was beginning to drive you mad.

So mad, you went back one final time.

[The Decision - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 OST]

Choosing the Black Eagles once more, you did everything you could to change anything. Even the smallest thing.

But by the time Jeralt’s death had occurred for the fifth time, you had chosen the final option.

You would unite all four against you, by becoming something far worse than the Empire and Church.

You would destroy this cruel world by forming the Knights of Nemesis.

Recruiting the help of Alois, Leonie, and Shamir, and your original mercenary group, you escaped the Battle of Garreg Mach Monastery and pursued your own agenda.

Little by little, you destroyed the bases of Those Who Slither and stole their technology.

Finally avenging Jeralt by killing Thales, you had become the most dangerous group in Fodlan.

And it was there, where you made your biggest mistake.

Creating the Javelin of Liberation. 

Many years would pass in your war against Edelgard and Rhea as your Knights built the Javelin, and you had forced the entire war to a standstill.

But due to your brutal tactics and unforgiving nature, forged by four timelines worth of loss and death, you would alienate your very own allies.

Leonie was the first one to act by revealing your plans to the Leicester Alliance, calling a summit to Derdriu.

And when you and your escort reached Gronder Field on the way to the Monastery...

---

(Edelgard) “Years ago we fought here as classmates…”

(Dimitri) “And now, we stand together against someone who was once a friend.”

(Claude) “As far as big class reunions go, this one’s got to be the worst one in history…”

(Rhea) “There is to be no mercy for these heretics. Do I make myself clear?”

(Catherine) “Crystal.”

(Seteth) “Loud and clear.”

---

After a bloody battle with heavy casualties on both sides, you retreated back to the Monastery, with all three nations hot on your heels.

Rhea was killed by having the Javelin fired prematurely, and as a result, you had lost your connection to Sothis...For a time.

The final battle approached and you stood near the top, awaiting your fate.

If you won, then everything would be blasted into oblivion. Your struggle would finally end.

And if you didn’t, well then your goal was mostly accomplished. To have everyone alive and united.

But things didn’t go as planned either way...

---

(Claude) “Think about this! Do you think blowing us all to hell is going to solve every problem that we have?!”

(Byleth) “Do you not think I haven’t thought of this? I don’t know the answer, nor will I ever. But, we’ll just have to have faith in the next generation once it fires.”

(Dimitri) “Are you hearing yourself right now?! What about the hundreds of innocents you’ve put down to get here?! And the millions you’re about to kill today!”

(Byleth) “It’s for the greater good.”

(Claude) “The greater good?! What do you think Jeralt would have to say about this greater good?! The people and students you swore to protect?!”

(Byleth) “You will not lecture to me of what he would have wanted! Us as a species are a blight! We will never have the will to move forward and change things for the better!-”

(Edelgard) “PROFESSOR!”

Everyone turned to Edelgard, who was stepping closer to Byleth.

(Edelgard) “Professor I’m…I’m so sorry for what I have done.”

(Byleth) “…!”

(Edelgard) “I…I understand where you’re coming from. I do. All my family is dead, and I wanted to destroy everything the Church stood for because of the crests, Rhea, everything…But…

I never wanted this war to happen. I never wanted any of us to fight each other! I never wanted to fight you, my dear professor! 5 years ago, you showed me just how beautiful and how tragic this world is! 

I’m sorry for all the pain I must have caused you back then. Please, stop this madness and…and we can find a way together to make the world a better place!”

(Byleth) “Edelgard…”

(Edelgard) “Yes?”

(Byleth) “…Nothing would make me happier than to accept your hand, and leave this all behind but…I can never be forgiven for what I’ve done to everyone…To you.”

(Edelgard) “…I understand.”

She unsheathed her axe, Dimitri and Claude moving to her side.

The battle was one sided since you no longer could properly wield the Sword of the Creator.

However, you did not care.

The battle was decided when the Javelin of Liberation finally deployed.

(Edelgard) “Professor…It’s over.”

Byleth looked up to the spell that was displaying the status of the Javelin of Liberation, and smiled.

(Byleth) “You’re right…it is.”

The three looked up to the spell, and saw the meter was full.

(Dimitri) “SHIT!-”

...

(Leonie) “D-Don’t worry about us, the core…!”

They all looked to the core which was pulsating faster and faster.

(Shamir) “Shit, it’s about to activate!”

(Alois) “Y-you-agh! N-Need to overload it with magic! HURRY!”

Dorothea, Linhardt, Lysithea, and Annette all started to cast their strongest spells and aimed it at the core.

(Shamir) “NOW!”

Right as they aimed their hands at the core, it was too late. It was flashing a bright white that enveloped the entire room.

And in the distance, the Javelin fired into the air, and made contact with the ground.

Dimitri, Edelgard, Claude, and you were sent flying backwards.

You had expected nothing would be alive after that hit, but you were wrong.

You looked back to the world, and it was still very much alive.

Although, the skies had darkened to a sickening white and grey hue, the temperature dropping fast.

It would not be long before the world turned into a frozen hellscape.

And much to your horror, the Javelin had not killed everyone in one fell swoop.

You just ensured everyone would die a slow and painful death.

You had overestimated what the technology of the Agarthans were capable of. Not even they could create a world ending device, and your carelessness and overconfidence costed you the world, and those you called friends...

When you turned around, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude were killed from the fall, while the forces under your command were engaged in a civil war.

Several hours later, you did not see any of your former students or faculty member which meant one thing: they were killed too.

It was just you and the men under your command.

Not having the option to turn back time, you and the Knights of Nemesis did everything they could to find any device to turn back time with the technology you had.

The Knights carried the technology back to the area with the most magical readings: Zanado.

And there, you all had created the tower, half out of the materials you had brought, and the materials there. It was crude, but it would get the job done.

And...It was here you could finally reunite with an old friend. And gave a final message to yourself.

I don’t know when or how you’ll see this message but...Find us. Before it’s too late. Don’t do what I did. And forge yourself a path that can save everyone, truly.”

======

[’Neath Dark Waters - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers OST]

Byleth put the crystal down and took a deep breath.

This would be the last thing he would record before the timeline was reset yet again.

But this time, he had no idea what was going to happen. Sothis was here, yes, but her power had greatly diminished by now.

She was only visible thanks to the Zanado Tower.

He looked outside an opening out the tower, and stared at the graves he had made for the Knights of Nemesis. 

They stayed with him until the end, whether out of pure loyalty, or wanting to reset what they had done.

Byleth would never know the answer.

(Byleth) “...WIth the tower restoring your power, you should be able to reset time once more with your Divine Pulse.”

(Sothis) “Hm...”

Sothis raised her hand and began drawing energy as Byleth sat down.

(Byleth) “...Thank you. I don’t expect forgiveness for my actions-”

(Sothis) “Don’t apologize to me. I said I’d be with you no matter what. And this is no exception. Apologize to those we have lost.”

(Byleth) “...”

(Sothis) “Do you think it was a good idea leaving that message? Perhaps this is something your...next self needs to know.”

(Byleth) “It isn’t but he will have to. Otherwise we’re doomed to repeat these exact mistakes. And maybe they won’t be so lucky to get the technology we have right now.”

(Sothis) “I suppose that’s true.”

They both remained in silence before Sothis finally lowered her hand and turned to Byleth.

(Sothis) “Child. My powers in combination with Agarthan, Goddess, and manmade magic...This could be a catastrophic reset.”

(Byleth) “I know-”

(Sothis) “There is no telling the amount of damage we can cause.”

(Byleth) “I know!”-

(Sothis) “And we could possibly tear apart reality itsel-”

(Byleth) “I KNOW!...I know, Sothis...”

Byleth’s back slid down the wall and his head looked up at the ceiling.

(Byleth) “I know. But I have to try something...Hah, even though I had the hindsight of how Dimitri and Rhea acted, I ended up becoming exactly like them...”

Sothis floated over to Byleth and attempted to hold his hand.

To both of their surprise, they actually managed to feel something, and it was then Sothis held his hand tightly and took a deep breath.

(Sothis) “...Goodbye, Byleth. And thank you, for everything.”

(Byleth) “...See you around, Sothis.”

Byleth closed his eyes as Sothis invoked the Zanado Tower.

...

...

...

...

Byleth slowly opened his eyes and saw Jeralt standing over him.

Sothis yawned obnoxiously, and Byleth tried to do his best to ignore her and not weird his father out.

(Jeralt) “Were you having that dream again?”

(Byleth) “Yeah...something about a war.”

(Jeralt) “Massive armies clashing on a vast field, right? There hasn’t been a battle like that in over three centuries. In any case, just put that out of your mind for right now-”

As Jeralt began to explain how dangerous it was to let your mind wander, Sothis as if on cue yawned even louder as she floated over to Byleth.

(Sothis) “Ugh, we’re up already?”

(Byleth) Not now, Sothis.

(Sothis) “Why? What’s he explaining to you that you don’t already know?”

Even though Byleth couldn’t express much, he was certainly feeling annoyed.

SLAM!

(Mercenary) “Jeralt! Sir! Sorry to barge in but your presence is needed!”

(Jeralt) “What’s happened?”

Outside...

(Dimitri) “Please, forgive our intrusion! We would not bother you were our situation not dire!”

(Jeralt) “What do a bunch of kids like you want at this hour?-”

FWOOM!

A black and purple portal appeared behind them, spitting out four screaming people as they landed with a violent thud.

(Sothis) “Woah.”

(Jeralt) “Oh, what now?!”

(Byleth) “Hm?”

(Boy in green cloak) “Ack, get the hell off me!”

(Girl with blue hair) “S-SHUT UP! YOU LANDED ON ME!”

(Girl in red) “I...hurk! Might be sick from that!”

(Girl in yellow) “P-People!”

(Edelgard) “What in the?”

(Claude) “Today just keeps getting interesting, doesn’t it?”

The four of them quickly got up in a panicked manner.

(Boy in green) “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS?!”

(Girl with blue hair) “Hey, don’t piss them off, you idiot!”

(Girl in yellow) “H-Hello there! We are adventurers and...We appear to be lost!”

(Jeralt) “Clearly.”

(Byleth) “Who are you?”

(Boy in green) “...Well uh...That’s Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness. And I’m Kazuma, I guess.”

...

[More than Truth - Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers OST]

(Byleth) “And that was our first contact with someone from another universe...”

Sothis nodded.

(Sothis) “So then...Six years later, they help us end the war in Fodlan, then we send the four of them home.”

Byleth looked at the nearby crystal walls.

They were replaying memories when Kazuma and his group first arrived in Fodlan.

Kazuma and Darkness went with the Blue Lions, while Megumin and Aqua had gone to the Black Eagles and Golden Deer respectively.

They caused some chaos in Fodlan with their stupidity, but they saved lives. And when they finally went home, Byleth went to sleep that night, and when he woke up...

...

(Byleth) “D-Dad...?”

When Byleth turned to his left, his eyes became wider.

(Sothis) “...W-wha...?!”

(Jeralt) “Where’d that come from, kid?”

(Byleth) “You’re both alive?!”

Jeralt was taken aback by how suddenly expressive his son was.

(Jeralt) “Clearly you’re still out of it. Come on, get up.”

(Sothis) “B-But we’re fused together aren’t we? How am I-”

SLAM!

(Mercenary) “Jeralt! Sir! Sorry to barge in but your presence is needed!”

(Jeralt) “What’s happened?”

Outside...

(Dimitri) “Please, forgive our intrusion! We would not bother you were our situation not dire!”

(Jeralt) “What do a bunch of kids like you want at this hour?-”

FWOOM!

A black and purple portal appeared behind them, spitting out at least a dozen people with a violent thud.

As it finished, a massive iron golem was teleported behind them.

(Boy in red) “What in the world...?!”

(Woman in yellow and blue) “Crap, is everyone okay?!”

(Small girl in green) “Y-Yes, Instructor Sara!”

Byleth and Sothis looked at each other.

(Byleth) “Doesn’t this seem like-”

(Sothis) “Kazuma and his group!”

After a wave of confusion among the group, they got around to introducing themselves.

(Boy in red) “My name is Rean Schwarzer of Class VII.”

...

(Sothis) “Then came Class VII.”

Byleth nodded as their memories were displayed on the crystal wall.

They could both hear their words almost clear as day as they walked down the hallway, but did their best to ignore it.

(Byleth) “After Class VII was sent home, we were reset back to the beginning yet again...”

(Sothis) “Then it was...The Phantom Thieves.”

(Byleth) “Right. Then, Megumi, S.E.E.S, the Investigation Team, Denizens of Nazarick, Slayer, and lastly the School-Living Club.”

They reached the end of the hallway.

Each time they had finished their journey with the newcomers, they were reset back when they first woken up by Jeralt, and the following group would take their place until last time.

Before the reset could happen, they chose to reset time themselves with Divine Pulse.

They had no idea if it would work, but they had to try something to break out of this loop. 

It resulted in the creation of House Isekai.

Instead of the groups appearing one at a time, they all showed up at once.

And it was now that they all went back to their respective homes together, but Sothis and Byleth could already feel the timeline about to reset once more.

And it was only now they discovered a tower had formed in Zanado.

They had no idea what was inside, but after walking through it, they were starting to get an idea.

Byleth saw at the end of the hallway, a small crystal laying on the ground.

(Byleth) “What is...?”

The crystal displayed a small window, showing the two the contents.

(Byleth) “Is...this a mirror or something?-”

(Crystal) “I don’t know if anyone will be seeing this message, whether that be myself or anyone else who comes into this godforsaken tower but...My name is Byleth Eisner. Son of Jeralt Eisner.”

Byleth and Sothis looked at the Crystal that was playing the recording, and let it play all the way.

Once it was done, they were speechless.

(Byleth) “I...I caused all this?”

Byleth was absolutely horrified by this revelation. He looked at the tower and the crystal mirrors around him, struggling to get his mind wrapped around it.

And it was then the crystal mirrors began to display the routes he had taken prior.

Before the memories of his past were wiped.

(Sothis) “So, this tower is why we keep getting sent back and brought the others in?”

(Byleth) “There’s...There’s no way I would do this! I wouldn’t do any of this!”

(Sothis) “I do not think we can deny what is in front of us. How do we prevent this? No, no. How do we prevent being sent back in time again?!”

(Byleth) “They reset time with Divine Pulse while also using the tower. Perhaps we could try-”

(Sothis) “What?! Child, you heard what that caused, it caused us to lose our memories and rip apart dimensions!”

(Byleth) “Well we have to try something! We did EVERYTHING we were given, fought and bled with our students! WE EVEN HAD OUR DAMN PERFECT ENDING! AND STILL! STILL WE’RE GOING TO LOSE EVERYTHING!”

The memories began to overwhelm the two, hearing echoes of their past finally catch up to them after so many years and timelines.

(Byleth) “...Sothis. We have to. We have to do things right and save everyone.”

(Sothis) “This is a terrible idea.”

Sothis sighed as she began to draw energy into herself from the tower.

(Sothis) “It could barely handle one time, I’m not sure if a second time will-”

KABOOOOOOM!

The entire tower shook violently, forcing Sothis to stop.

(Byleth) “What the hell?!”

The tower began emitting an almost ear piercing screech as everyone’s voices became too much to bear.

(Byleth) “SOTHIS, DO IT NOW!”

(Sothis) “R-RIGHT, HANG ON!”

Sothis raised her hand once more and everything began to turn back in time.

All they had done was reset once again.

Byleth opened his eyes and reached for his head, it pounding in pain.

(Byleth) “Ugh...”

When he looked around, he noticed that everything around them was still the same.

(Sothis) “Did...Did we do anything?”

(Byleth) “I’m not sure. We’re not back at Jeralt’s so maybe we need to-”

Before he could finish his sentence, they heard someone break into the tower.

The reflections in the crystal walls showed multiple men in black robes walking into the tower, seemingly examining it.

(Sothis) “Agarthans?”

(Byleth) “Wait a second isn’t that...?”

The Flame Emperor teleported in and looked around the area with the Agarthans.

(Byleth) “Edelgard?”

(Sothis) “She isn’t supposed to be here! We resolved everything with House Isekai so does that mean?-”

(Byleth) “We’re back in time again. But if we’re here then...who’s in our place?”

One of the Agarthans made their way up to the tower and was completely alone, getting closer to Byleth’s location.

Byleth and Sothis hid near the stairs as they heard the Agarthan walk up.

When the Agarthan made their way down the hall, Byleth stabbed him in the back with the Sword of the Creator and took his robes.

(Sothis) “What are you doing?”

(Byleth) “Improvising. We don’t know what’s going on, and I’ll be damned if I’m getting us caught.”

After Byleth finished getting dressed, he took the mask off the Agarthan and put it on himself.

(Byleth) “We’re gonna need a name as we figure this out.”

(Sothis) “Hm...I think I know one.”

...

Lahabrea made his way to Remire village and saw Dimitri, Edelgard, and Claude run to the entrance.

(Lahabrea) “So that seems to be correct, so all that’s left is-”

The gate opened, revealing Jeralt, Byleth, and Sothis.

(Lahabrea) “What in the hell...?”

And as if on cue, Kazuma and his group emerged from a portal behind the students.

(Sothis) “Why are there two of us?”

(Lahabrea) “We must have done something to the tower and we used it for the second time...”

Kazuma’s voice echoed through both of their heads, slowly joined in by the rest of his group.

(Lahabrea) “...We need to go back to the tower and figure out what’s going on.”

(Sothis) “Right.”

Sothis disappeared and before Lahabrea started moving, he took one last look at the Byleth in his place.

...

INTERMISSION

[fumikomiyasaki]

Hi Fumikomiyasaki, hope your day is going well. Just a quick question. . . How would a Monsville chapter play out if it were in-game? Your characters are great but I would like to know more about how their characters would canonical change through out the chapter. Also, could you possibly add in Syncrean (sorry if that's misspelled 😅) and any other Twisted Wonderland ocs? Thank you for reading this and your contribution to the Twisted Wonderland Fandom 😄- Anon

Monsville story chapter in Twisted Wonderland:

Placing between Ignihyde and Diasomnia, or maybe after Diasomnia if we wanna keep the 7 dorms first.

MC Has a dream of a factory, cogs are turning lots of Doors without rooms, Like a Maze MC runs through it without knowing where to Go

After this dream they wake up with some commotion in front of Ramshackle dorm.

They find Ace and Deuce fending off huge walking machine. As they struggle to calm it down, Leroy appears and turns it off with his handiwork. He kinda mocks Deuce and Ace mostly for being such wimps and how they were afraid of the machine, before he leaves with his freshmen who carry the machine away.

After that Crowley grants them a permission for a tour through the monsville dormitory…

to investigate why some of the machines have gone haywire. As well as what Leroy's involvement is in this affair. Idia, who was again talking over his machine, said he would look into the monsville construction from his room.

So MC, Grim, Ace and Deuce went to the Monsville dorm to start their mission, however they were greeted by the Dorm Leader himself Henry. He wanted to give the tour personally and said he wanted to discuss something with them after. You get to meet Students like Suffy and Mitchell working on a fridge with some extra functions, Alyn great you when you enter the building, Roslyn is focused in her paperwork, Gio tripped and accidentally threw a wrench in Deuce direction… Just simple interactions with all the Monsville students so far.

At the end of the tour you arrive at Henry's office, where he confronts you that he knows you have been stopping lots of Overblots. After the group was kinda intimidated by him, he flashes a smile and thanks them for what they do. He reveals how his main goal is to make everyone use less Magic in live and make people feel happier overall so that Overblots won’t happen. He shares how he witnessed a good friend died due to an Overblot.

The group ask him if there has been any odd occurrences, Henry is hesitant, but says he has some troubles with a student names Leroy. He does his work well, however he constantly announces how he is the true dorm leader of Monsville and he will prove that he is worth it.

However since then the Company is kinda split in two fractions, the people that support Leroy and the people that support Henry. Henry gets a call from his father and says they can explore the dorm more if they want to.

After that you talk to certain students, get attacked by some Monsville students who support Leroy because they fear like you are manipulating the students and when you finally find Leroy he asks Suffy for a little contest. Cue a Rhythm game with Suffy and Mitchell against Mellow and Leroy with the crew watching them.

After this MCs group interrogates Leroy why he feels like he is the true dorm leader. Leroy tells about the Origin of Interstate hill and how they are two stories, one about the Crab monster and the other about the Chameleon monster. He feels that because NRC has a statue of the Chameleon monster, that he is the true Leader of the dorm.

After this conversation Mellow will ask you to come to the garden to talk about something with Leroy and Henry.

In the garden Mellow tells you about the third story of Origin for Interstate hill, in which both Monsters work together. He also mentions how Leroy has changed even more than he already has through this competition. Mellow feels like Leroy waers himself down to get a following, and has it hard to be himself anymore.

But for the sake of Leroy, Mellow refuses to speak about his past.

Mostly after that you witness some clashes between students that support Leroy and students that support Henry and cause trouble around the cafeteria. Henry stops them because he wants the Monsville name not to be ruined anymore, Leroy swoops in to say: “You really have to kill the fun, do ya?” And mostly it leads to a fight of Ideals.

After Henry draws back and offers Leroy a competition where Leroy could win the right to become a leader, Leroy agrees and says he will crush him.

Mitchell, who watched the spectacle with you, actually mentions that he, Mellow, Suffy and Leroy went to the same school, that Leroy was way different back then. But before he can tell how different, Mellow dragged him away and apologizes.

During the Final Clash, something got messed up and The team that supported Leroy the whole time starts doubting Leroy, after Henry commented how Leroy doesn’t plan out things much… They started to turn to Henry again.

“So in the end again… I am all alone.” Leroy begins to laugh madly and tear roll down from his face, revealing his freckles on his face. “In the end, this friendship I searched, the love I wanted…. it was all a lie… I worked my ass off… AND THIS IS THE THANKS I GET FOR THIS!”

Cue his overblot transformation. "Again I am left alone by everyone. Just because I am different... I tried to change color, to blend in with the popular crowd but where did it get me... I am sick of it... Fine, I'll be the Monster I was always destined to be. TIME TO GO WILD!"

During the Fight His canister hammer has for 3 rounds increased strength and you can hear screams when He Hits you But needs to Charge it back after.

After you defeat him and convince him with Mellow and others, that he has friends that care about him, Leroy turns back to himself.

Cue an scene about Leroy and his love for Anime and Manga, switching to bullies taking his stuff away, stealing his glasses, ripping his favourite Manga apart… Leroy sat at the tables alone most of the times… he wanted to stay strong and try to be the smartest, but kinda Suffy and Mitchell got in the way. Mellow talking to him and introducing him to Suffy and Mitch and telling that as group they wanna work together against the bullies. And so Leroy had a place to belong and before Night Raven College, Leroy decided he wanted to become confident, make it on his own and shine brighter than everyone. Which led him to his overwork with his outfits and looks.

After this happened Leroy apologizes to Henry and admits, that it’s true he sometimes doesn’t think through, but also comments how Henry messed up in construction a lot. They both start laughing and Henry pulls Leroy in for a hug and cries. “Ew, could you stop that, it’s gross.” A finally end of the War between those both and it has been turned into a friendly Rivalry. Leroy comments how he still won’t lose to Henry, but will agree that he now also tries to hear out his suggestions. Henry smiled and thanks your crew for helping them.

The machines are finally under control again, and Leroy is now not shy anymore to wear his glasses sometimes and show his freckles all the time. He is now more open about his hobby, but in the end, he still kept his new Mischievious and Sassy self as a part of his new personality. The new Reborn Leroy.

Syncrean secret story chapter in Twisted Wonderland:

You meet the girls one day in the basement of NRC college by accident…

It mostly follows a story how they go on Missions to sabotage RSA and DCA to gain advantage in status and become their own school. the story mostly involves Sindrens Homeplace and her plans that get more and more devious as she is to invested in playing a villain herself when she wants to be the Hero. Mythra trying to get her to the right part, Feena making kinda mean comments, that push Sindren even harder into madness.

“If no hero is worthy to save this world, I guess I don’t have to become a hero, but a Villain to motivate these Heroes to try harder.” Sindren gets power hungry and fears like no RSA student could stop her plans. Which leads to her overblot.

Mostly I haven’t worked much on their story, so these are the Ideas I have.

Datamane story chapter in Twisted Wonderland:

Learning about the Robots, Crowleys curiousity about them and how they can use Magic.

The Overblot will play out like a Virus but I haven’t actually decided who will overblot. I think Damon would be very interesting, because although Maurice is the leader and Datamane is split in Professors and Robots, I think Damon would bring it more Emotionally, in a way of:

“I can’t do it… I can’t save Maurice or Seymour…. What is my life worth anyway… if it’s not of anyones use….” Mostly along these lines, storywise nothing is planned so far.

[hardheartd]

❝ BROKEN GIRLS BLOSSOM INTO WARRIORS. ❞ 

BARBIE FERRERIA? No, that’s actually ELIZA DURSLEY. A SIXTH YEAR student, this HUFFLEPUFF student is sided with MCGONAGALL’S ARMY. SHE identifies as a CIS-WOMAN and is a MUGGLEBORN who is known to be COMBATIVE, STUBBORN, and BLUNT but also PASSIONATE, OBSERVANT, and DYNAMIC. 

( pinterest. ) ( stats. ) 

FUN FACTS

Eliza has a black cat named Frances that she adopted as a kitten the summer before her third and fourth year. She refers to her cat as her child and the animal is frequently seen with Eliza whenever she’s not in an academic setting.

The moment Eliza came to Hogwarts, she was fascinated by quidditch. She didn’t make the team until her second year, the youngest player on the team by far and the youngest beater the team had seen in years. As much as she enjoys the game, that’s all it is to her - a game. She likes the rush she gets when she flies more than anything else though she does prefer to win - but who doesn’t? Upon entering her sixth year, she was elected captain and plans on keeping that title into her seventh year.

Eliza, unlike some in the wizarding community, has absolutely no problem resulting to muggle strategies. She has a mean right hook and anyone who’s ever messed with her friends can attest to that. She has always specialized in defensive spells and hexes but she has no problem punching someone if they somehow get her wand.

In addition to quidditch, Eliza is in the dueling club, for obvious reasons, and an active member of the Herbology club. Those who don’t always see her as a Hufflepuff can very much see her traditional ties to her house upon seeing her makeshift garden in the window sill of the girl’s dorms.  She has earned her title of plant mom several times over, though she far prefers the allusions to Persephone than to the joking title bestowed upon her by her fellow housemates.

Despite her combative personality, Eliza has no desire to become an auror, hit witch, or anything of the like after graduation; she wants to be a healer. She’s frighteningly protective of her friends and is always the one who heals their wounds when they get injured and she had learned how to heal her own wounds before she should have. In the coming war, Eliza knows that the side she’s aligned herself will need fighters but an army can’t win if they aren’t taken care of - she has no problems fighting and dying for something she believes in, but she knows the importance of healing in a war zone.

BACKGROUND

TRIGGER WARNINGS: (internal and external) fatphobia, parental abuse (physical and emotional)

Eliza was doomed from the start - a chubby little girl with magical blood bearing the name Dursley, synonymous with bigotry and the loathe of all things different, was never meant to come into the world at all. But here she was - still kicking and screaming if not more vehemently than she did as a baby.

Born Elizabeth Petunia Dursley to Dudley Dursley and Matilda Price, Eliza was the youngest of three and the only daughter in the family - she was also the only child with a drop of magical blood in her system.

Of course, that was never discovered until her Hogwarts letter came, which brought Dudley’s wrath down upon her with a vengeance. However, to say that her life up until that point was remotely easy would be incorrect.

Like her brothers, she had inherited her father’s temper and obsessive loyalty to family; unlike her brothers, she had also inherited her father’s chubby cheeks and round stomach. Her mother, a woman with a waifish figure that rivaled Petunia Dursley’s, put her on a diet before she reached the age of five.

With a mother who constantly poked and prodded her body at every turn, Eliza turned to her father for validation. His compliments were similar to her mothers - a backhanded slap with a sweet in the other hand, though his slaps were far more physical than Matilda’s. But like most children, she refused to see the bad in the people that raised her.

By the time she received her letter from Hogwarts, she was already well trained in obedience, undying loyalty to her family, self-hatred, and loathing of all things different; the letter came as a slap in the face, one that her father reiterated after reading it over her shoulder. Her mother was the one that saved her from Dudley’s wrath, only to look upon her with disgust. It was her mother that convinced her father to send her to Hogwarts, whispering “at least this way we won’t have to look our shame in the face.”

The months leading up to her departure to Hogwarts were miserable; one of the professors escorted her to Diagon Alley, her parents more than happy to pass her onto a stranger. Instead of being excited about the entire experience, she dreaded it. The world of magic was something that her family made damn sure she hated. The trip caused her to break down in tears more than once, seeing all those smiling families made her ache for her own and the hum of magic around them absolutely terrified her.

Her arrival at Hogwarts didn’t excite her anymore. When the Sorting Hat cried out the word “Hufflepuff” Eliza wasn’t sure if she should be excited or not. She didn’t understand which houses were bad and which were good; to be quite honest, she considered all of them to be pretty bad considering they took her away from her family.

The first few months of her schooling was pretty difficult, the young girl withdrawing into herself, still full of rage and loathing for herself and those around her. She struggled in all of her classes too scared of magic to fully allow herself to be immersed in the school work.

Eventually, she became friends with other Hufflepuffs and the odd friend from another house. She started to become herself again; or, rather, she started to find herself among those who didn’t look upon her with disgust and disdain.

As she grew more confident in as a witch, she started to pull herself away from her family’s interests. Her mother spewed hateful words at her during breaks and her father sent her back to Hogwarts with bruises.

It wasn’t until the summer before her fourth year that she refused to go back to her family’s home. She found a shop that would allow her to work and lived in the Leaky Cauldron during the summer, picking up odd jobs where she could.

Of course, she’d been planning it since her second year, after her father called her best friend damned freak and an awful influence on his disappointment of a daughter. She had taken his wrath for far too long, feeling like she deserved it, but when he turned on someone else, someone she loved and cared about like her own blood, she couldn’t accept that - she wouldn’t accept that.

It was during that time that she started to develop a much firmer sense of self. She didn’t need the love of her parents and brothers - she had another family, the one she found at Hogwarts, the one she bloody well chose. And she had herself. That was enough; or that’s what she told herself when she found herself missing the family that birthed her.

She felt the rage inside her start to quell, slowly but surely. She had people who loved her and she could deal with that. Sure, she would punch the odd boy who decided to put his hands on her or her friends and maybe she would occasionally go harder than she needed to during dueling club, but she working on it.

It wasn’t until the Death Eaters and their fascist ideals made a reappearance that the rage beneath the surface came back with a vengeance. There were hints of it before the attacks began. Mudblood started being thrown around whenever she passed by, though she quickly learned to smile back at the person tossing taunts her way. She was used to name calling, she’d been called fat and a bitch by her parents, and she wears both titles with pride now and mudblood was no different. She made herself crop tops with mudblood embroidered in bright pink and purple that she wears nearly every time she goes to Hogsmeade with her friends. She throws smirks over her shoulder at people look at her in disgust or confusion and hexes at those she suspects are Death Eaters or supporters of their cause.

If those people were going to hate her, she would give them a reason to. She fought back more than most people do. She’s mastered almost every hex and dreams of creating more. Unlike some in the Wizarding world, she had no problem resorting to “muggle” tactics, throwing punches when her wand was taken or hexed away. Because of this, she’s been targeted by death eaters, whom she politely calls “Britian’s Trump Supporters.” She meets their sneers with hexes and has gotten into physical fights with them several times over. She refuses to stop fighting or be intimidated by people who hide behind curses and masks.

A war is on the horizon and she’ll die in it before she allows someone she cares about it to hurt in the name of it. Of course, she can’t save everyone, even herself.

WANTED PLOTS AND CONNECTIONS

Note: These are just jumping off points; plz message me if you have any other ideas!

(Tr)eat your girl right - TAKEN BY NATALIA || They’re messing around and feelings are getting involved and oh boi, it’s gonna get ~complicated~

Ride or Die Babey!! - ONE SPOT TAKEN BY NATALIA, TWO OPEN SPOTS || Eliza is loyal to a fault and treats her friends as family, given her blood related family is far from perfect, but these are the people she would live and die for. This would probably work best with Hogwarts students who are involved in McGonagall’s Army.

‘Puff Pride - OPEN, UNLIMITED SPOTS || Eliza is a Hufflepuff through and through and loves her housemate more than anything. She’s the captain of their quidditch team and organizes makeshift tailgate parties in the common room. She’s also been known to comfort the lonely first years who are homesick and has created a running list of birthdays for her housemates so no one goes without acknowledgement. She’s become something of a den mother to her fellow ‘puffs and is fiercely protective of all of them.

Frequent Flyers - FIVE OPEN SPOTS || Eliza is an active member of McGonagall’s Army and hopes to become active in the Order after graduation. She’s got a mean right hook and a sharp tongue full of hexes  and she puts herself in the line of fire quite often, but she focuses a lot of her energy on healing other people involved in the war. She’s been known to be rather rash so she sympathizes with her fellow MA members who have difficulty controlling their anger; she often swaps stories with them while she patches them up. This is open to Hogwarts students who are involved in McGonagall’s Army.

Enemies and Lovers - ONE SPOT OPEN || This is someone she knows damn well is trouble but still falls into bed with. It’s very much a “fight and fuck” relationship that is never acknowledged once the two of them get dressed. This is open to any Hogwarts student, regardless of gender, and would work best with a Death Eater or DE sympathizer.

Ex-Partner - TAKEN BY MADDISON || It was stupid, teenage puppy love that ended in flames once the fighting really began. They ended up on opposite sides, or in Eliza’s mind they did - your muse could be neutral or DE or whatever. There’s still a lot of angst and pain that goes along with this relationship. They fluctuate between not making eye contact with each other and screaming at each other. This is open to any Hogwarts student, regardless of gender, and would work best with a Death Eater or DE sympathizer.

Keep Your Enemies Closer - ONE SPOT OPEN || Eliza is too blunt to con someone, she’s more of a slash and burn type of gal; but others aren’t, especially those on the other side. This is someone on the side of the Death Eaters that is attempting to use her for information or are trying to trap her to be tortured by one of the leaders of the Death Eaters. Eliza is very outspoken and observant so this would have to be someone who isn’t obviously affiliated with the DE and therefore likely isn’t in the inner circle.  This is open to any Hogwarts student and would work best with a Death Eater or DE sympathizer.

Mutually Assured Destruction - ONE SPOT OPEN || Eliza has 100% been attacked and tortured by someone involved with the Death Eaters before, most likely multiple times. She’s seen their faces and she’s more than willing to share that information with anyone who will listen to her, but perhaps they struck a deal. Eliza won’t say anything to anyone, provided her friends are protected from harm. It’s a risky deal and both of them know it won’t last, but it’s something to keep the peace for a while longer. This is open to any Hogwarts student and would work best with a Death Eater or DE sympathizer.

Tormentors - FOUR SPOTS OPEN || As the previous connection stated, Eliza is a target for the Death Eaters - she’s vocal about her hatred towards the group and has physically fought memebers before. These characters are the ones that are always at her throat, constantly looking for ways to fuck her up, and vice versa.

Parental Figures - TWO SPOTS OPEN || Eliza stopped going home for breaks around her fourth year and was essentially homeless until someone took her in. This character was either a Hogwarts Professor, a Diagon Alley employee who let her work for them, or one of her friend’s parents. She still works in Diagon Alley and/or Hogsmeade over breaks to make money so they could still work together or they might let her live with them when she has nowhere else to go. 

[mandelene]

Tag Game

Answer 15 questions and tag 15 mutuals

Thank you to @feyna-v for tagging me!

1. Are you named after someone? No, my mom picked my name just because she liked it and it was American/English and not Polish (she didn’t want to give me a Polish name).  My dad agreed to it. (My name is not Mandelene, btw). 

2. When was the last time you cried? While reading the ending of Small Country by Gael Faye a few days ago. 

3. Do you have kids? Nope, not yet, haha, but I hope to have kids someday if I can. Two or three but no more than three :) Idk how to explain it, but at some point within the past two years, I started feeling more...maternal toward kids, if that’s the right word for it. I just see kids on the bus and think, huh, yeah, I could have one of those, I think I might like that, God knows why. 

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Oh, boy. Yes. It’s not as obvious when I’m online, but ask my mother or my close friends and they will confirm that 90% of my daily life is spent being sarcastic. My life is just one big sarcastic meme. 

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people? How they present themselves -- whether they’re smiling or frowning, standing up straight or slouching, etc. For men, I immediately notice how tall they are because I’m a tall woman so tall men are absolutely heavenly to look at. Any man that’s like 6′2 ft or taller and in their mid to late twenties makes my heart flutter instinctively. (This is how I know I’m definitely straight, bahahaha).

6. What’s your eye color?

Hazel. I joke that I must be adopted because my parents and sister have green eyes, but my great-grandmother had hazel eyes so I guess my parents are my parents. 

7. Scary movie or happy ending? Happy ending for sure. Scary movies rarely have a storyline that I find interesting tbh.

8. Any special talents? I’ve been told I bake a fantastic coffee cake. I can recite the alphabet backwards, and I know some first-aid, but those are skills and not really talents. 

9. Where were you born? I’m a Brooklyn baby. :D Brooklyn, NY. 

10. What are your hobbies? Writing, reading, occasional video-making, playing with my cat, indoor cycler, casual gamer, novice yoga pupil. 

11. Have you any pets? Of course. Most of you know my baby already: 

Macchiato! 

12. What sports do you play/have you played?

Oh, here we go. Brace yourselves for a tangent.

I was the sickly asthmatic kid who was too busy coughing up a lung to play sports, and I’m only half-joking. I played soccer a lot as a kid with my friends, but I was never on a team because my asthma was too severe and out of control for that. I’ve talked about this many times before, but I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the doctor’s office. I missed a lot of school. I got poked and prodded. I cried often about how much I hated being sick. I would be out playing with my friends and have an asthma attack in front of them and feel embarrassed. I would start wheezing and ignore it because I didn’t want everyone to make a big deal out of it. Don’t ever ignore your asthma, please. That never ends well. Sports were something I feared for years.

Midway through high school, my relationship with sports changed completely. I started seeing them as a method to improve my asthma rather than worsen it. My pulmonologist got my asthma under better control by coming up with a treatment regiment that he made sure I stuck to by lecturing my teenaged self at great length and wrote notes to my gym teachers at the start of every marking period. I slowly started regaining my confidence. My doctor made it clear that he was not excusing me from gym completely -- I had to exercise to the best of my ability without making myself sick, and if I kept getting attacks, it was back to the drawing board. If I couldn’t manage to exercise normally, then, in his view, my asthma was impeding my life too much and my medicine wasn’t working for me, which was totally true.  

One of my high school gym teachers, Mr. B, was notorious for being the hardest P.E. teacher in the school. I was terrified of him. Whenever he made us run laps, I would pause when I started feeling unwell, rest for a minute, and then continue. He never said a word to me about it even though he was known for scolding students for stopping. Oddly enough, it took me a while to realize this, but he was always subtlely looking out for me. He always asked me if I had my inhaler with me at the start of class. Although I was often dead last in everything he made us do, he pretended not to notice and never commented on it. I never cheated him. If he said to do 30 laps, I would do 30 laps, even if I had to pause three times in between. Everyone else would have already moved on to other exercises while I was still doing my laps, lol, but I don’t think I ever had to reach for my inhaler. At the end of the term, he pulled me aside and told me, “I know you always tried your best, and I admire that.” He gave me an A. He was the only gym teacher I had who didn’t accuse me of making excuses or being lazy. Many previous teachers had convinced me I wasn’t trying hard enough, so I would push myself, and then I promptly proceeded to have attacks, be frustrated with myself, and end up in tears in the locker room. I needed Mr. B in my life to restore my faith in gym. 

Nowadays I indoor cycle 3-4 times a week for 45 minutes to an hour to strengthen my lungs. Once a week, I have my “long tour” which is when I cycle for an hour and thirty minutes. After cycling, I lift weights for another 15-20 minutes. If I have a cold or any other upper respiratory infection, I stop all exercise until I’m well, and I hold myself to this. I have a better idea of my limits and what sports are best for me. I love swimming, but unfortunately, I don’t have a good indoor swimming pool around me, so it’s not something I can do regularly. Running/Track is still something I really struggle with, but brisk walking or hiking is fine. Last year, I was really into dance classes with my friend. Cycling is super kind to my lungs but leaves me exhausted in a good way, so that’s why it’s my favorite form of exercise. I’m sure if I did it outside though, I’d have asthma attacks. I’m generally okay with all sports/exercise as long as it doesn’t involve long stretches of running with few breaks in between, and I don’t do it outside when it’s cold. I won’t die from a light jog unless it’s the middle of January and there’s a meter of snow on the ground. You can invite me to play volleyball/basketball/tennis/whatever, and I promise I’ll be fine, haha. 

I’ve also tried getting into yoga recently by following some YouTube instructors, but cycling is what I do most regularly and have stuck to. I take frequent exercise very seriously now, and I make it a priority. 

13. How tall are you?

5′10 ft, so 177.8 cm. Super tall, I know. You should see my legs in yoga pants ;) 

14. Favorite subject in school? In elementary school, I enjoyed English classes the most. In high school, AP comparative government in my senior year was my favorite because I love international politics. Then, there came a point in my life when I stopped liking English classes and started despising them (around my second year of university). College English consists of reading novels (which is a good start) and then writing unnecessarily long papers analyzing the novel, but if the professor doesn’t like your interpretation or analysis, they’ll deduct points. They’re not the classes you want to take if you want to actually learn how to be a better writer. They just teach you how to pander to the professor and not how to think for yourself. It’s annoying. Journalism classes get right down to the technical parts of writing and tear your sentences apart. I feel like I gain more from those classes than ones in which I have to write a ten-page essay on the symbolism of a key. 

15. Dream job? A few years ago, I would have said “reporter for the New York Times,” and while that would be incredible, I have multiple dream jobs now. 

I would still love to work at a media outlet. I’d want to either work at the international desk as a writer/reporter or work on digital content like podcasts or short documentaries. However, I can also picture myself working at an NGO or at a think tank. I might also be interested in doing something in government someday--anything that has a direct impact on getting involved in a community. Global politics and writing are my two biggest passions, so if I end up doing work in either of those areas, I’ll be happy. 

Ideally, I can continue writing fiction on the side and publish it someday, but that’s still a dream I have to work my way up to. 

I don’t want to leave anybody out, so if you’re reading this and you want to answer it, consider yourself tagged by me! :) 

[abgovind-blog]

Journal 1: Here Goes Something..

I am me: 23 years old as of right now, due to graduate at the end of this semester, art student with about as much clarity about the future as a road sign without my glasses on, dry sense of humor, and in my comfort zone I have a big personality. I am a proud person. I take pride in where I come from and where I am, I am proud to call myself an American-born Malayalee of Orlando, FL. I have tremendous pride in my club Orlando City, and my school, UCF; especially her teams. I am proud to call myself a student of art, no matter how many tests faced by a tenuous self-belief.  My emotions run very deep and I wear my heart on my sleeve. I feel very hard for people no matter what framing or context the relationship has. I care for everyone that I meet and as a result, my emotions ride heavily on external happiness; enable others to have heavy sway over them. I am a very self-conscious person and prone to insecurity about many aspects about myself not meeting an ideal of myself I’ve created either from my own desires or expectations felt from others. With counseling, I am at a place where I can identify that I’ve been facing depression over the past few years, especially the past year. Over the course of that depression, my emotions often times get the best of me and have controlled me more than I’ve controlled them. The one which has the strongest grip on me is the ever-present feeling of self-doubt which I have known for as long as I can remember. That self-doubt, manifesting itself in anxiety, is rooted in a vicious cycle of emotions which builds me up then tears me back down only to be built back up again and repeat; devastating my sense of self-worth and therefore my ability to self-love. I’ve been fighting a fierce war within myself against that cycle, battling every day to understand myself and grow from and past it. The fighting has been hard and over the course of this proverbial war: with each hard-fought effort made to earn back a sense of peace, I’d be faced with another emotional downward spiral and feel back at square one.  Before long, this accursed war had devolved into a brutal stalemate, constantly repeating and battling with this cycle but seemingly not making any gains. With each repetition of the cycle though, I could not help but feel an increasing sense of shame with every loss and setback suffered, further fueling the vicious cycle. The depression set in when the shame, despair, and frustration gave way to feelings of hopelessness. I was tired of fighting and began to think maybe I was never going to get better. I felt my emotions would be the reason I’d be doomed to be alone: my constant cycles were too much of a burden to constantly be subjecting my friends to, let alone a partner. The truest relationship, be it platonic or romantic is being able to completely giving yourself to the person you’re in it with and be willing to grow together. My unstable emotions were my curse and its venom courses through my veins; even if I found a person that’d be willing to stomach the constant bombardment I felt within myself, what kind of a person would I be to force someone else in the trenches with me? I couldn’t dare ask someone that I’d care about, let alone someone I’d care for as deeply as a partner to have to suffer that weight. People have their limits for emotion, especially negative ones, and they can only take so much of another’s before it became too much and causes them an emotional imbalance. My deepest confidants are my close friends, so every time I’ve lost one; that fear of being too much a burden on others was realized and the pain would be unbearable.  When I felt, I had lost my best friend and her family last year though for that very reason; there is no word sufficient to describe how crestfallen I felt and I fell into the deepest darkness I’ve ever known. It entered my mind that this was my burden alone to suffer, that it is selfish of me to subject another to the real me; a ravaged, broken spirit. Though I was as open to talking with people as I had been before, I grew afraid to ever truly open up to anyone. In thinking that I was looking inwards for self-help and looking to love myself so I didn’t need the love of another, I effectively isolated myself from those closest to me and caused them pain, especially my best friend which, though I was not directly aware, I knew within myself my distance was hurting her just as it was hurting me. This isolation and denial of kept up going into the fall semester, but the strong resolve which I believed I went into the semester to focus on school work and handle my emotions quickly disintegrated with the mounting workload, stress, and setbacks common to the course of a semester. I suffered a severe loss in motivation which worsened with each passing day, to the point that I would skip lectures more times than I ever had in all my life in school combined. I struggled to get out of bed to start the day, let alone handle any sort of daily routine. By mid-term though, I found myself staggeringly behind in classwork in all of my classes, one of which I was so far behind that earning a passing grade became mathematically impossible. I felt disgust, I felt frustration, but most of all I felt shame; shame in letting my teachers down and disrespecting them by not fulfilling my duty as a student to give a 100% effort in the classroom, no matter what; shame that I was even doing this with teachers I had taken courses with before. I had started seeing the counselor by that point, but even in that, my efforts were lacking. But the blow of failing a class I was originally so confident about and being in a position where I potentially could’ve failed ALL of my classes was overwhelming. After almost 3 months, I managed to see my counselor for our second meeting, just before finals time. I had also received a solid kick in the pants from a good friend to help redirect the course of my life. Feeding off the energy given by these two, I was able to create a spark to fuel the dying embers and with some hard work (and very forgiving grading from my professors), I was able to pass my other 3 classes. Reading my final grades in myUCF, I felt something I hadn’t felt in quite some time; pride. After a long and punishing fall campaign, I had emerged victorious. I entered winter break mentally exhausted from what felt like an absolutely punishing semester. In addition to feeling emotionally drained, I had not worked very much during the summer and over the course of the semester, my financial situation had deteriorated greatly (though that eventually was remedied by the closing of my car accident case around October). I gave myself a week to rest before opening up to nearly full availability at work and just earning as much as I could, in large part to prepare for the coming spring, but also in small part to hopefully distract myself from any negativity which could sneak up on me. Times arose during the holidays in which darkness threatened but between work and resuming wand making near daily, I had found ways to keep my mind occupied such that the melancholy wouldn’t linger so pervasively. Through the darkest times of it all though, I had rediscovered my passion for making art once again, a flame which I felt I had lost in school: my wands. Without having to actively think about it, I found an outlet to channel my energy, good or bad. I found something I could take pride in again. I found my creativity. The tide is turning. Fast forward through to the present, each day remains a battle but I have my best friend at my side to remind me I’m not alone. I’ve began taking steps to improve myself both physically and mentally, and made sure to resume visiting the counselor as often as possible. I am making gains, though when the valleys arrive, they are still hard and the self-deprecating thoughts won some days over. Most of January has gone by and been forgotten though from the good that has come through February. Not only have my best friend and I returned to normal again; our bond has been tempered and tested through the strains it faced the past year. I’m ever grateful to have her with me through thick and thin. Seeing her happiness this month though as she takes a big step in her personal life has given me a joy I can hardly contain. More than happiness though, I found something else albeit momentarily, in sharing this moment with her that I haven’t known in the longest time. I found peace. I am me: I am Arjun Govindan, 23 years old coming on 24 in just over a week. I have demons which I’ve been fighting in a constant war with for most of my adult life, and some for even longer than that. I don’t have big dreams or a clear plan for my future, and my ambition has been questioned for most of my adult life. I am an emotional roller coaster who wears my heart on my sleeve, sometimes to a fault. I have ADHD, anxiety, and depression and they sometime get the better of me. I have issues that I don’t like about myself and that I feel like I burden the people around me with. I am me: I am Arjun Govindan. I love my family, friends to death and those who truly matter to me love me back and have my back even when I think they don’t. I am fiercely loyal to them and my ideals, even when I’m at my lowest point questioning myself to the most fundamental level. My dreams are relatively modest and humble, but my ambition is just as alive and present as the next person’s. I wear my emotions on my sleeve because I am a person who feels strongly and do not (and could not) hide how I feel even if I tried. I always give my damnest effort to understanding everyone and constantly strive to improve myself personally. I have ADHD, anxiety, and depression and even though they get the better of me sometimes, that’s okay because I’ve been fighting this internal war for a long time and I won’t win every battle. But just like with my insecurities, with school, with work, and with every bit of personal growth I’ve achieved up to this point; it’s all a process and I need to trust it. Even if that faith begins to waiver, even if I do lose some battles, take some missteps and fall on the field; I can take comfort knowing to my left and right, I have my best friends there to help me back up and remind me, I’m not alone in this. As long as I remember all of this, I have something I haven’t known at all for over a year. I have hope. I won’t give up.

[amongthewildflowrs-blog]

Finding a place to study

While studying can be done almost anywhere - a library, on a bus, or in your off-campus student apartment, finding a quality place to study is very important.

Figuring out a time and place to do your homework and study is of the utmost importance.  Once you have figured out when to do your homework, the next question is where to do it.  

      A good study area should have a desk or table big enough to spread out books, notes, worksheets, etc. without them all being on top of each other.  You do not want to make a mess, but you also do want to have ample room to work.

      Make sure you have plenty of light.  Ideally, you will near a window with an overhead light and perhaps even a small reading lamp.  

      Most important in choosing a study location is finding a place that is relatively free from distractions.  That means no TV on in the room, no brothers or sisters running by, no phone conversations to listen in on, and no instant messenger or emails to keep you busy.  

      Whether or not you listen to music while you study depends on your personal preference.  You may choose to ignore any phone calls, or turn off your cell phone, and forget about the urge to go and get a snack every ten or fifteen minutes.

      Depending on your home, you may be able to find this area at the kitchen or dining room table, or in your bedroom.  You may be able to set aside a study space in your basement or an office in you home.  Some people find their homes too filled with distractions, and prefer to take their studies to the local library.

      Wherever you choose, it is best if you can study in that same place all the time.  If you can study in this same location consistently, your mind will get used to this being a focused and important place.  When you enter this area, you will know it is time to get down to business. Your pens and pencils, paper, erasers, stapler, calculator, and anything else you use often can be kept nearby.  Also, you can keep them in a bin or bag which can be pulled out whenever you need them.  This will avoid having to stop studying to collect supplies.

      Having this dedicated study spot will help you get down to business and focus more easily on getting your work complete.

Keep Supplies in a Homework Kit

      It’s four o’clock…you know what that means…time to do homework.  You scour the house looking for a pencil.  Then you need a pencil sharpener.  Ten minutes later you find one.  Finally you sit down to start your homework.  Where’s the calculator?  Dad’s desk?  Brother’s bedroom?  Once found, you discover that it is low on batteries…there have to be some in the house…but where?  If you find your typical study session unfolding like this, then here are a few suggestions to make you finish your homework with ease…

      You can waste a lot of time looking for homework supplies and making sure they are ready to be used.  OR, you can use a homework box or supply kit of some kind to keep it all together.  Then, when it comes time to do homework, everything is in place for you.  No running around, no scouring the house.  

      Any kind of box will do.  You can use a storage tote, an old shoebox, or even a drawer.  The key is to keep everything you need in there, ready to go.  Make sure the tote or box is placed conveniently in your study area.  It should not move from the spot.  

      Make sure siblings and family members know that these supplies are for homework, and not for other activities.  Those supplies should stay there, and only be used for homework.  You may want to label it so there is no confusion as to its purpose.  

      Pencils and crayons should be sharp, calculators fully equipped with fresh batteries, markers with lids tightly attached.  Here’s a tip, since your parents are always offering to help with your homework but it is up to you to do the work, suggest that they take responsibility for keeping the supply kit full and in working order.         When it comes to studying, there are few people that want any more struggle or stress than is necessary.  Keeping all materials and supplies handy and ready to go will make your studying not only go smoother, but possibly quicker.  And who wouldn’t want to shorten the time they need for studying?

Concentration is Key

      Learning to concentrate while studying and doing work is a skill that will be used for the rest of your life.  The art of concentration is to eliminate any possible distractions and completely focus on the task at hand.  Many students will read through material and discover that they have no idea what they have just read.  Or, they will attend lectures and have difficulty paying attention to what is being said.  Here are a few suggestions to help you stay focused and boost your grades…

      When scheduling study times, try to stick to a consistent and efficient routine.  Try to avoid studying one day late at night, and the next in the afternoon.  Write in your planner or calendar when you will study so as not to have conflicts.  

      Always study in a quiet environment.  If you haven’t already, find a designated study spot free of distractions.  If you live in a noisy house or dormitory, this may mean heading to a study room or even the library.

      When you need a study break, do something different from you have been doing, and in a different area.  Get up and walk around in another room.  Listen to music for a few minutes.  Grab a snack.  Try to take a break every hour for about 10 minutes.  

      Every student struggles with day dreaming while studying…thinking about plans for the night or tomorrow’s basketball game.  To avoid daydreaming, ask yourself questions about the material as you study it, which will keep your mind focused.

      If you have trouble focusing during classroom lectures, look over the notes of the previous lecture and read the course material pertaining to the lecture beforehand so you can anticipate the main ideas that the instructor will cover.  Additionally, show outward interest during lectures.  Have an attentive expression and posture.  This will self-motivate internal interest.  Also, resist distractions by sitting in front of the room away from disruptive occurrences and classmates and by focusing on the instructor through listening and note taking.  

      Just a few minor adjustments in your studying habits will go a long way in improving grades and concentration.

Skimming with Skill

      Think about how you find a name in a telephone book.  You don’t read any more than necessary to find the name.  Maybe you use your finger to guide your eyes.  This type of reading is known as scanning.  Skimming uses the same type of skill mechanically but a different skill mentally.  In scanning, you know what you are looking for; in skimming, you don’t.

      Since you don’t know exactly what you are looking for while skimming, prepare yourself by reading the title, source, author, and any pictures;  then question yourself,--who, what, when, where is this likely to focus on?  With a questioning mind direct your eyes down the column of print, or in a zigzag, if the lines are quite long.  Look for exact names of people, places, things, ideas, numbers and words like therefore, whenever, until, because, and instead, to clue you to how and why.

      When you first start to learn to skim you may see only the words in bold type, italics, digits, or capitalized words.  Soon you will note new or unusual vocabulary.  As you become an efficient skimmer your span of perception will develop and your ability to make closure will increase.

      Skimming is a step you should always take before you read any article of factual or practical narrative.  You will soon be able to detect most important facts, strange vocabulary, and words that are clues to important relationships.

It's a good practice to skim everything in mass media after reading the title and first paragraph. You may get all the information you want. This keeps your skimming skills from deteriorating, or will give you the practice you need to develop necessary skills.

Skim everything you intend to read before you make a final decision to read, discard, or study the material.

Skim all highlighting and develop a read-skim pattern to use for rapid review. And don't overlook this! Reviewing frequently and rapidly is the best way to memorize (or simply remember information) from notes and long text assignments.  Skimming is a very useful tool for studying, so learn it and use it!

From Start to Finish

      Confused about what to write down in your notebook during class?  Get stressed when preparing for tests and looking over your notes?  Here are some suggestions to take you from the beginning of the studying process in the classroom, to the end, or the test itself.

Read assignments before heading to class.  This will build your background for the information that will be presented in class.  It helps you be familiar with the vocabulary and concepts.  This is especially helpful if you are unfamiliar with the subject matter.  As you read, underline and highlight important information.  If you don’t have time to read the entire assignment, at least look over introduction paragraphs, bolded words, and summaries.  This will give you a good overview of the information.

Although it seems obvious, you need to go to class and take notes.  Most professors or teachers lecture during class periods, emphasizing points of importance.  Head to class ready to be attentive and write during the entire class.  Don’t stop taking notes until the lecturer is finishing.  Pay particular attention to the end of the lecture, as professors will cram information into this part to finish up for the day.  Use abbreviations; get details and main ideas to get complete notes.

While the notes are still ‘fresh’ in your mind, look over them and make any additions or corrections as soon as possible after class.  Be sure to make note of any parts you didn’t understand or missed.  Ask either the professor or a friend via email or before the next class period to get the missing information.  

Try to pass your first test in each class to boost self-confidence.  Make up a list of study questions and definitions and practice reciting this information aloud, either to yourself or someone else.  Don’t wait until the last minute study.  Rather, study for short periods over several days.  Of course, you will want to review the night before a test.

Finally, test day arrives.  Use these strategies during your exam to make all your hard work worthwhile.  Read directions carefully before you begin.  Take a few minutes to look over the test, then answer all the questions you know first.  This will help you get sure points and builds confidence. Don’t leave any blanks; it is better to guess if you don’t know.  Watch your time, and manage it accordingly.  Don’t rush, but don’t go too slow.  Take a few minutes at the end of class to look over your test to be sure you have answered all questions and that your answers make sense.  

[rksingh1950]

R.K.Singh In Conversation with Abnish Singh Chauhan

A poem rests

on brain signals imaged

in words and silence

one decodes with dog sense

smelling twists and turns in rhythm

that turn it prophetic. (A Poem)

The journey of poetic composition, as the poet says himself, begins with the poet and ends with the reader for which requires verbal competency, intelligence and constructive environment in order to code and decode the ‘signals’ of creative beauty in a forceful and effective manner. Since the poet is the first reader and critic of his poetic piece, he should have the capacity to articulate and interpret his own words in prose in order to judge the suitability, profundity and authenticity of his ‘signals’ in the form of emotions, ideas and images for inter-personal and intra-personal communications. T S Eliot also emphasized this in The Music of Poetry; however, in the coercive manner: “No poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is a master of the prosaic.” Therefore, Eliot’s statement may or may not be true in the making of a poetic piece; but it is certain that command over prose is an additional advantage to the poet, particularly in conversation with himself as well as with the lovers of literature on a public platform; and it is indispensable when the poet also performs as critic for efficient and captivating criticism.  Here is such an Indian poet of communicative sensibilities and critic of glittering language— Ram Krishna Singh (1950). Prof Singh, who is the contemporary of Niranjan Mohanty, Hoshang Merchant, R. C. Shukla, Gopi Krishnan Kattoor, D. C. Chambial, I. K. Sharma, Gopal Honnalgere, I. H. Rizvi, D. H. Kabadi, P. C. K. Prem, etc., knows how to raise and answer the questions about the world and its problems and how to incorporate information along with emotion in poetry and criticism in order to disseminate love and light to all the human and non-human entities of the Mother Earth through purity, charity, sacrifice and suffering: “I gave you my love/ what more do you seek/ to lighten the night/ my beloved/ let the fire burn /and consume the moth.”

Recently retired as Professor (HAG) from Indian School of Mines (now IIT), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India, R. K. Singh has authored more than 160 research articles, 175 book reviews and 40 books, including his latest poetry collection You Can’t Scent Me and Other Selected Poems (2016) from Authorspress along with his e-book Writing Editing Publishing A Memoir (2016). He has been conferred with many awards and honours across the world. He resides at J/4 (W), Rd. No.1/Block B, Vastu Vihar Colony, N H 2, Govindpur- 828109 (Dhanbad), Jharkhand and can also be contacted at profrksingh@gmail.com

N.B: The profile of R K Singh is separately published in author’s corner. It may be clicked and viewed HERE.

ASC: Sir, you were born, brought up and educated in Varanasi— the seat of light and learning from the ancient times. How did it play its role in the formation of a silver tongue poet and rational critic in you?

RKS: A silver tongue poet? Hm… Thanks for the compliment Abnish. Varanasi is a complex city, a city of contradictions, even if it has ceased to be what it used to be in my formative years in the 1950s and 60s.

The city did influence my mental habits unconsciously, since I was born and raised in the lanes and by-lanes of its interior, with values such as freedom to think and pursue ones interests, tolerance for differences, broadness and openness of the mind, uninhibited sexpression, etc. The conscious creative influences must be the result of meeting many people, visiting various places, and experiencing life differently at different points of time.  Also, reading and observing led to serious critical thinking, writing, debating, and corresponding. I had opportunities to work part-time and be independent to do whatever I liked. Besides writing poetry in Hindi, I had opportunities to reflect on contemporary issues and express myself in a couple of Hindi dailies and weeklies long before my graduation, just as I would actively participate in youth activities, debate and speech competitions, attend musical concerts, art exhibitions, poets’ meet etc and publish reports/reviews.

The city engaged me better than the irrelevant routines of the high school, intermediate and degree colleges. The teachers disappointed me most, from childhood to boyhood to adulthood.

I must also admit that I was not uninfluenced by the chaos and crisis of the 1960s.  As a youth I had no hope, no faith, no trust in the system, nor did I know the direction of life.  It was living in constant tension about the future.  In fact it was a lonely struggle vis-à-vis the glaring waste of time in college and university.  Given my anti-establishment attitude, I was not confident that I could ever get a job or have a career.  Failure and frustration loomed large.  Poetry was the only solace.

ASC: Sir, you started your career as a journalist. The job of a journalist always requires honesty, hard work, quality writing and the courage to tell the truth. But, just after a year or two you changed your job and adopted the teaching profession, which also demands proper understanding of the subject matter, wide interest, helpful attitude, love for learning, skills of classroom management and a desire to make a difference in the lives of the taughts. How much are these experiences constructive in communicating your vision and mission in your literary works and academic writings?

RKS: As I said, as a student I had very poor opinion of my teachers.  I had no interest in teaching as a career, but Professor S M Pandeya, who supervised my M A thesis, insisted that I should not be drawn to the glitters of journalism, and rather take up teaching as a profession.  He even helped me get the first job as a lecturer in a college in Pulgaon by writing to O P Bhatnagar, who later became a life-long friend.  I was 21 years old, wanted to do Ph D in American literature from Nagpur or Bombay university, but the management won’t let me go to meet the faculty there.  I resigned the job in less than six months and came back home.

After a year (or more) of unemployment—a period I spent with Dr B Chakroverty, learning the finer nuances of literary criticism (he was writing a book on Tagore, the dramatist)—I joined the District Gazetteers Dept in Lucknow as Compilation Officer.  The U.P. Government’s job entailed revising and updating the old gazetteers.

I ignored the offer of working in IIT, Kanpur as a junior lecturer. It came just around the time I had made up my mind to work in Lucknow.

In the mean time, I was also selected as a journalist trainee in The Press Trust of India, New Delhi, and was keen to join the position. However, my IAS bosses in the Gazetteers Dept (as also my parents) dissuaded me, but seeing my enthusiasm, they released me, with the kind option to return to the post if not satisfied at PTI within three months.

I was happy to join my dream profession, despite monetary loss and hardships of living in Delhi.  But soon I discovered I was a misfit there.  I couldn’t suffer the envious colleagues and their dubious designs and practices, and so, I finally decided to quit, as soon as I got an offer from the newly set-up Royal Bhutan Polytechnic, Deothang (E. Bhutan).

I was back to teaching, which now appeared more convenient, but very demanding. The direction of my career was clear: I would professionally practice ELT/ESP, but personally pursue literature, especially Indian English poetry, and promote new/less known poets and authors by reviewing their books, writing articles about their work, and editing books and journals.  It was challenging but rewarding. Learning by doing, you know.  It is this that made me known all over, from a small place like Dhanbad. Indeed, all this needs a lot of labour and commitment, as you rightly observed.

ASC: Sir, how do you summon your emotions and experiences for composing a poem or other work of art? Do you respond to urgency, stipulation or passion for creative writings, which seems as real, animated and impressive as the rest of the world?

RKS: To tell you the truth, most of the poems I wrote have simply happened. The poetic mood, short-lived as it is, would help create from anything, anywhere, anytime. I can’t write a poem deliberately on a theme on demand.  Nor have I been interested in didactic or moralistic writing.   My emotions and experiences are, therefore, genuine and sympathetic readers can relate to them.

Personally speaking, a poem’s composition helps me get a release from myself as much as from others or whatever agitates me. I feel free by unburdening myself in verses; I experience an inner relief, a freedom from the built-up pressure, tension, unease, or whatever, you know. If it turns out to be a good poem, it offers a pleasing sensation, rest to my disturbed nerves, and peace to my inner being.

ASC: Sir, you have been regularly writing poetry with social, cultural, spiritual, ethical, mythical, erotic and aesthetic perceptions for the international audiences with the universal lessons of truth, love, compassion, pity, peace and harmony. How do you secure and evolve selfhood along with worldhood in your poetry amidst the fast changing societies and their value-systems?

RKS: Thanks for summarizing well the essential nature of my poems. I, too, think it is broad enough to appeal to audiences everywhere. Human nature is same, whatever culture, society or country, and I have tried to express what people experience universally.  I don’t seek the sublime or great or ideal, you see. I am rooted in my basic nature, which  has been evolving.  When effective, one can physically feel it, I mean, the poet’s emotion or psychosexual sensation, and partake of his self.

There is poetry in the subtlety of awareness, as you will also agree.  I feel myself in words that acquire their own existence in the process of making, in a form I may have no control over, given the pressure or urgency to express the momentness of a moment as lived, perceived, or experienced in the continuity of memory.  My selfhood extends to worldhood in my expression in a timeless frame of a moment inhering the pressure of the struggle for survival, search for meaning or purpose in an otherwise very negative, frustrating, disappointing, painful existence, or social reality, if you so like.

ASC: Sir, when you talk about (even question) sense, silence, solitude, love and sex amidst the sound and serenity of pebbles, stones, rivers and the flora and fauna of the mother earth, you imbibe and inculcate man and Nature in your poetry, which is clearly recognized and understood by your readers. In spite of that, why do you rhetorically proclaim- ‘I Do Not Question’ (1994) and ‘You Can’t Scent me’ (2016)?

RKS: The answer lies in your question itself: it’s rhetorical. Philosophically, a straight forward observation of the Purush-Prakriti or Yin-Yang consciousness vis-à-vis the monotony of existence.  I seek meaning of the mystery of life, its reality and pains through the eyes of Nature, metaphors of self-contradictions, intrinsic dissonance, or search for harmony and identity.

Having said this, let me also add a word of caution. I’m very poor at titling my poems.  In fact I don’t believe in giving a title to my poem, nor do I give a title while composing it. Titles tell too much. In my volume of Collected Poems, you’ll find no title, unless extremely necessary for identification or other structural reasons (as in Haiku/Tanka sequences).  

Without titles, the poems give readers more freedom to make their own meaning and relate to their own experiences, different from the poet’s.

ASC: In one of your interviews, you have exhorted— ‘As a poet, if I use human passion, including the sexual, I try to transmute and transmit memories of experience, possibly more with a sense of irony than erotic sexuality.’ Hence, do you think that your sexual passion expressed in your poetry is meant only for creating a sense of irony— a popular technique of poetic communication or it also stands for something else?

RKS: Sex is eternal, unchanging over time and culture.  It is the basic principle of life and creation.  It’s expression, therefore, calls for celebration.  It is central to social harmony, emotional pleasure, and inner peace. It is not devoid of sensibility.  The metaphors of sex reveal our social consciousness, our inner mind, our hidden reality.   Our sexual passion is the mirror reflecting the spiritual passion; the body reveals the soul.  One needs to appreciate it and relate to the pragmatics of my communication.  While Jindagi Kumari’s ‘The Poetics of R.K. Singh’  is a helpful essay in this respect, Raghuvanshmani Tripathi’s ‘The Asexuality of Sex: A Study of Sex Expresion in R.K. Singh’s Poetry’ should enlighten a sympathetic reader further.

ASC: You wrote the paradox in your poem ‘Degeneration’— ‘I can’t change man or nature, nor the karmas/ now or tomorrow they all delude/ in the maze of expediency and curse/ stars, fate, destiny, or life before and after/ degenerating the mind, body, thought, and divine.’ Do they survive because they bring degeneration, and ultimately death?  If so, no hope, no dream, no joy and no future?

RKS: As a poet I would prefer to refrain from interpreting my own poem for readers.  I would rather leave it to them to make sense of it anyway they like. I don’t question unless it is deliberately personally offending…But, let me see it again. Firstly, the hang of the poem ‘Degeneration’ was added when I posted it online, or submitted it to some e-journal, I don’t remember now.  Secondly, it was my own ‘degeneration’ – physical, mental, financial and spiritual—that afflicted my mood in June 2014 when I wrote it.  Things were looking blue—the envious hostility of my junior colleagues who freely distorted facts and told outright lies, the  deteriorating health condition, the bad time predicted by  astrologers, and tall claims of prophet friends, tarot-card readers and fortune tellers on the net, seeking money to turn the wheel of time in my favour.  Their expectation from me had in-built irony in that I couldn’t compromise my realization that best things in life come free.  But people are as they are—out to grab wealth, favour, profit, promotion, whatever—by cheating, telling lies, weaving dreams, or stabbing in the back.  They suffer.  I can’t change my nature, and my adversaries can’t change their nature.  Ultimately we are all subjected to our own karmas, our destiny, or the forces of Nature. No use cursing or abusing, if we delude ourselves.  The plain truth is:  if we are dishonest to ourselves, we suffer all round degeneration in the maze of our own making.  The poem, however, preaches nothing, except showing a condition. The readers can draw their own conclusions.

ASC: Sir, what is your favorite technique (s) of protest against the anomalies/ grave issues of the world, party created by highly advanced machines and electronic devices and partly by man himself?

RKS: As I told you just now, portray the picture, or create the image of what obtains, and leave the rest to the readers’ imagination, or decision, if you like. No advice, no judgment.  New technologies have thrown up new issues, new norms, new values. The important thing now is to communicate, to interact, to talk about whatever issues or values bother you as an individual. You can’t live by your prejudices or traditional ideas alone, if you hope to be relevant.  The new age demands new language, new expression, new metaphors. You will discover the new technique to protest too. But, let’s come out of the shackles of our own making, first.

ASC: Sir, how do you characterize your Haiku and Tanka? Are they influential and beneficial to the masses to a large extent or only popular among and practiced by some selected people, especially the poets and a few others?

RKS: Let’s be clear about certain basics. Haiku is a difficult genre. It is miniature poetry, a sketch of a moment’s experience, to be filled out by the reader.  It does not use sentences, nor the devices of Western poetry, nor shares its use of the sentimental and simile—preferring always contact with the real—the things of Nature and the spirit of Nature herself, the perception experience. It is down to earth; expression of what is—what you see and hear and touch; the thing itself, not a poetic or literary or philosophical view of it. In haiku we don’t elaborate or explain, only sketch our experience of the moment.  ‘Haiku moment’ is the great secret.

It took me years of preparation and practice to be able to give expression to sudden or subtle moments of awareness into the nature of passing time.  As H.F. Noyes commented, reading some of my haiku, simplicity and lightness should be the aim of all haiku, and detachment is desirable in our way of looking at things-- detachment, selflessness, and a sense of our oneness with all life.  It is achieving the union of our minds with nature, or being in league with the five elements.  It is essentially spiritual.  There is God’s abundance to feel in the three lines.  The briefer you become, the nearer you are to silence.

I have tried to express sensuousness in haiku. After all, it’s not just seeing and hearing that offer us reality, but touch as well.

Another Japanese poetry form, Tanka is a typical lyric poem of feeling and ideas, often involving figurative language, not used in haiku. You can say it is like a ‘long haiku’ in five lines.  It addresses varied aspects of contemporary living. It shares the basic qualities of all successful poems.

But if you’re a poet, writing haiku and tanka too much can suppress some of your true poetic instincts, even if their practice should improve the quality of expression of Indian English poets.  It will ensure a sense of rhythm and prevent waste of words.   Many of my poems have haiku and tanka structure as stanzas.

ASC: W H Auden said, ‘Poetry makes nothing happen. One is deluded if one believes that one can actually preserve the world in words, but one is just playing games if one doesn’t try.’ Do you agree with him? If yes, why; if no, why not?

RKS: I don’t know the context in which Auden said this, but I, too, doubt poetry can make anything happen. It can’t mould a society by itself.  It has no utilitarian function. As I said elsewhere, it can at best create some awareness, hone some finer feelings, present some specialist perceptions, reflect one’s mind and soul, remain part of cultural activities and a form of literary communication.  But it can’t make anything happen.

Personally, I don’t practice poetry with any idealistic notion.  Nor do I share the view that poetry can teach one about ethics, morality, history, politics, or revolution. It is no means for social salvation either.  It might assimilate, inhere or portray a degenerating situation, but it can’t change it. My poetry commits no such obligation. Nor can poetry or criticism become a basis for societal reform.

ASC: Sir, you have been associated with the editorial activities, evaluation work of research projects and book reviews throughout your academic/literary career. Most of the times, it is observed that the authors/ researchers manipulate (also copy, cut and paste) ideas and concepts and produce them in their works. How do you, as a critic, examine and respond to such works?

RKS: What you say is true. It is indeed very disappointing that there is so much ‘recycling’ of material going on in the name of research.  Scholars tend to practice short-cuts, but it is the job of the guides/supervisors and seniors to help them improve their language and literary abilities, particularly research writing skills, and make them read, interpret and evaluate the original texts.  If the seniors are badly trained, their scholars will depend on, what you call, manipulation of all sorts.

To minimize this, scholars are now expected to publish research papers in standard national/foreign/Thomson-Reuter listed journals before submitting their theses just as the teachers are considered eligible for promotion only when they have publications in standard journals.  We need to be sympathetic but tough in this respect.  Let’s  hope things improve in the years ahead.

ASC: Sir, your poetry has been translated into Italian, Japanese, Chinese, German, French and a few other languages of the world. Translation (also other creative works) is not an easy task. It requires proper understanding of the language, its socio-cultural references, trends and tendencies along with the mind and motives of the author. How much is it effective and satisfactory when the readers are less engaged and little interested in the translated works?  

RKS: My poems have been translated not only into Italian, Japanese, Chinese, German and French, but also into Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Turkish, Romanian, Crimean Tatar, Bulgarian, Slovene, Croatian, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, Serbian, Esperanto, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Kannada, and Bangla.  I hardly know any of the translators personally, but the availability of my poems online has helped me reach out to a larger audience. The translators must have negotiated the difficulties you mention—I can’t comment, for I do not know all these languages (except Hindi).

The problem with most of us is that we don’t read. We don’t care to appreciate others, except ourselves. We don’t bother to study and critique the fellow-travelers but expect from  them to read and write about us.   Additionally, because we write in English, some of us in the academia expect the native speakers of English to pat us; we value their comments/opinions, and down-rate the observations by the fellow Indians, young or old.  Also, most of us don’t encourage serious academic research in writings of the new or less known Indian English authors, self-published or published by the small press.  In such a situation, how do you expect translations to be undertaken or studied?

We as academics need to change our attitude if we want to be accepted within our own country, first.  We can reach out to a larger audience via translation only if we accept the fact that people’s tastes in poetry differ widely, and most Indian poetry in English is generally considered naïve or oversweet.  Not many literary magazines will publish translation, unless it is professionally done and it reads as good as the original (or better than the original).  We need to handle several issues academically first... Frankly, I have more problems with the self-styled experts and dons than with the poets and writers who spend their own hard-earned money to publish their books and bear the cost of sharing these with them.

ASC: Sir, often it is observed that the publication and publicity (including critical appreciation) of literature are based on contact, relation, power and position. How far is it true and how can genuine authors rise and grow in such circumstances?

RKS: Internet has proved a great blessing. The age of all those few great names in Indian English writing that have been repeatedly studied and explored for academic degrees is over.  Now is the time to discover new names; study new authors, new voices. We have to prove that Indian English writing is viable, potent and worth studying; that there is something different about it; that it exists and is growing.  Your Creation and Criticism is doing that, isn’t it?

The institution I worked in Dhanbad is not a mainstream university, yet I could make worldwide publications from early 1980s almost regularly, without any personal contact, relation, or support. I had no short cuts except hard work, clear vision, and passion. You can see from my List of Publications how many new poets (who are now relatively better known) I talked about, not only from our country but also from outside.

When no computer or laptop was available, I would type out my manuscripts on my old typewriter and approach editors and publishers without any backing.  Slowly I made my impact, despite apathy from the likes of Ezekiel, Mahapatra, Shiv K Kumar, and all those Bombay poets.  I could ruthlessly challenge anyone because I never needed them for any personal favour, whatever my position. They didn’t know ESP and I didn’t care to know them (or their writings) till I started the MPhil/PhD programmes at ISM.

In fact, I won’t have time, motivation, or leave from the institution, to attend conferences, or visit other universities and develop personal relationship, except through letters.  Yet, I achieved what I wanted to, and reached the highest in the academic rung, without any personal contact.  Believe me, a good work will speak for itself, if one is honest and working hard.  Unfortunately, in most cases today, the quality is lacking, just as friends don’t want to see beyond themselves.

ASC: Sir, what is the role of social media, especially Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, in promoting and presenting literature online when a few followers and fellow-travelers (online friends) just ‘like’ (though most of the times ignore the post), remark- ‘congratulation/ best wishes/ wow/ thanks/ excellent/ amazing and so on’ or rarely make some serious comment (s) on the post?

RKS: I view social media as a positive development for poets and writers to be noted, even if the  members’ ‘viewing’ does not necessarily mean a post’s ‘reading’, or their ‘likes’ hardly imply something serious, except a confirmation that they saw it.  If no comments are offered, it does not mean the post has ceased to exist.  One’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Youtube, Tumblr etc helps in reaching out internationally. You can develop contacts here. The search engines record what you do on these sites. It’s a matter of time, opportunity, and a little bit of luck when your work is searched or discovered by interested readers, scholars, editors, or publishers.

ASC: Sir, now-a-days, prizes, awards, honors are more lucrative and valuable than before as per the mind-set of the public. If an author is conferred with them, he is accepted and appreciated not only in the literary arena but also out of it. How do you perceive the politics of prize and placement of the author in the present scenario?

RKS: It is no doubt motivating to be honored with some prize or recognition. Better keep from it, if it comes with politics.  It is also wasteful if it comes after paying money, for whatever reasons.

However, if the mainstream media – TV, newspapers, learned societies, government bodies, or publishing houses—and academia ignore me or you, it doesn’t mean we don’t exist.  It’s a matter of time till we are discovered by interested readers, researchers, scholars, editors, or publishers at home or abroad.  We need to keep patience and continue to do what we are doing.  This is what is the biggest reward in itself in the IT-dominated present time.

ASC: Sir, do you have any desire left to be fulfilled in the coming years or fully satisfied with your karmas of an author?

RKS: Though I have minimized my academic activities and stopped teaching after retirement last December, I continue to be active as a poet and wish to be recognized as such by the mainstream media and academia.   As it is, I am afraid I continue to write from the margin, and I hope, in the days ahead more scholars and critics would study and explore my poetry to strengthen creation and criticism.

ASC: Sir, would you please share your opinions about Creation and Criticism— the literary e-journal of English Language and Literature?

RKS: The e-journal is a happy development in the annals of literary publications, both creative and critical, from India.  Both you and Sudhir Arora have been doing very well as editors just as your claim to be friendly to researchers and scholars is justified.  The site is indeed very friendly. Kudos. You have already broken away from the past and hopefully both of you will reach much higher.

Let the journal promote studies on native Indian English poets and authors who have been active for decades from the periphery and suffering colonialist treatment in a post-colonialist environment, even after the maturity of Indian English. Let them not find themselves deprived despite merits; let them not rot in anonymity or degenerate in the politics of belonging.  Let us discover (or re-discover) the neglected and promising good poets and writers and contribute to the development of art and criticism from the perspectives of the 21st century scholarship. God bless.

ASC: Thank you very much for your interesting and enlightening conversation.

RKS: It’s my pleasure.

The Interviewer:

Dr Abnish Singh Chauhan (1979) is a bilingual poet, critic, translator and editor (Hindi and English). His significant books include Swami Vivekananda: Select Speeches, Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study, King Lear: A Critical Study, Functional Skills in Language and Literature, Functional English, The Fictional World of Arun Joshi: Paradigm Shift in Values and Tukda Kagaz Ka (Hindi Lyrics). His deep interest in translation prompted him to translate thirty poems of B S Gautam Anurag under the title Burns Within from Hindi into English and some poems of Paddy Martin from English into Hindi. He can be contacted at abnishsinghchauhan@gmail.com.

Published in http://creationandcriticism.com/113.html