#he is now terrified FOR THEM in addition to his own fears. afraid of burdening them with his own passing

[messiahzzz]

it is completely fine to have different interpretations of a character, that is what the fun is all about. but if you honest to goodness believe that emmr*ch expresses any form of commitment phobia in regards to romantic love… then idk what to tell you

[fafamateone]

the fight (shane x farmer!)

i wanted to make a little one shot about something angsty between shane and my farmer, so enjoy! ps: english is not my native language, so im sorry if it is difficult to read or if it is not well written, give me all your critics please! •-•-•-•-• As long as you remember, having kids was always your dream. Even when you lived in Zuzu City, working at a job which had no flexible hours you always imagined yourself with a husband and a couple of kids at sundays, all of you in the bed watching tv. You still had that on mind; even after moving and working twenty-five hours a day, having kids was always your dream. But not your husbands. ‘‘Hey, im home’‘ Shane said, as he passed the door. He leave the wet umbrella at one side of the entrance; he would be soaking wet if it wouldn’t for that umbrella; there was a big storm. Since your marriage, he was promoted and worked behind the JoJa market; the payment was good as well. another reason to have a kid. ‘‘Hey~'’ You said, as you hugged and gave him lots of kisses. His wet hair gave you tickles and as soon he realized that, he smiled ‘‘I missed you, how was your day?’‘ ‘‘Excellent. Sebastian visited me and we talked a lot... did you know that he and Abigail are expecting?’‘ Of course you knew, Abigail wasn’t quite happy when she find out she was pregnant and the first thing she did was running to you to ask advice. Shane sat down in the couch and patted his lap, waiting for you to come over. ‘’Yes, Yesterday she came over to told me. I am happy for them- ‘‘ He was about to interrupt you when you said ‘‘and jealous’‘ ‘‘Why?’‘ His eyes narrowed to see you better, there was some fear in there. ‘‘You-... Are in love with Sebastian?’‘ You Chucked, and kissed his check. He was serious. He was always afraid of you leaving him. ‘‘I want to have kids’‘ If there was fear before in his eyes, now he was terrified. His body tensed as the word ‘’kids’’ slipped from your mouth; you could feel it under you, he was nervous. ‘‘Allie...’‘ ‘‘You always avoid the subject... i want to discuss it.’’ He frowned, you knew what was coming. ‘‘Alex and Haley have Emily . Sebastian and Abigail are expecting; Leah and Penny adopted the little Pam. Emily and Harv-’‘

‘‘I don’t want kids. ‘‘ His voice was cold. You looked to his eyes, this fight was just beginning. ‘‘Why?’‘ Your voice was harsh. Your eyes were dry. It was what you expected; he didn’t wanted to make a family. ‘‘They are messy, loud and energetic. Having one will be a pain in the ass.  When they grow up are selfish and insurgent, you don’t want t-’‘ ‘‘I want one Shane. Not all the kids are like that... besides i  always wanted to be a moth-’‘ ‘‘I don’t’’. ‘‘Why?’‘ What he said before wasn’t a reason, you wanted an explanation. ‘‘Lets face it All; you and i will be awful parents’‘ Now you frowned. You just standed up from his lap as he standed up from the couch; this fight was going to get big. You crossed your arms. ‘‘We would be amazing parents’‘ Anyone could be able to feel the sorrow in your voice. ‘‘No we wouldn’t. You always forgot the birthdays, let the chicks without food, always got hurt in the mines and work all day, when are you going to take care of a child? ‘‘I-’‘ your throat went dry. ‘‘I would be a good mom.. i-’‘ ‘‘Your mother will not help us, she hates me and probably don’t want a kid of yours which i would be the father’‘ ‘‘That’s a l-’‘ ‘‘Face it Allie, we aren’t made to have kids‘ That’s it. The tears started running through your checks. ‘‘I would be awful... i would be mad all the time, i-’‘ He started to get nervous as he saw the impact of his words in you. When he tried to get to you, you just stepped back. ‘‘I-.... I didn’t wanted to say that i just-’‘ ‘‘I would leave my tasks at the farm, Shane. I would be free to take care of a children. I won’t forget to feed up my own baby and-... my mother adores you. ‘‘ ‘‘Yet she never come to visit.’‘ ‘‘I just... I just thought we could be amazing parents.’‘ You lifted your head to see his eyes. ‘‘I wanted to have a family with you. To have kids. To see in a little girl my hair and your eyes’‘ His lip trembled. He imagined it. And he liked it. ‘‘Robin was going to be here tomorrow to make two additional rooms; Jas was moving in as a surprise. ‘‘ You knew how much that meant to him. How difficult was to see his best friends resemblance on a kid. To have taken care of Jas all this years ‘‘I guess you are not ready’‘. You were crying a lot; face full of tears. ‘’But i am ‘’. He tried to catch your hand, to pat your head... but you headed to the door. ‘‘All...’‘ ’’It’s my dream since i was six years old Shane’’ He was ashamed, checks red. But, although that, he just said: ’’Sorry not sorry’’. ‘’I will be at Pam’s’‘ You whispered, as you took your purse and leave him alone. He tried to run behind you but you were faster. When you got at Pam’s you were soaking wet... and she wasn’t home. ’’I can’t go to the saloon like this’’ That was the only place where Pam was if she wasn’t at home. She wasn’t going to look after anyone else. Pam was the only resemblance of a mother in Pelican Town- Unless... _ Shane was bitter. Mad at himself. He just had an awful day, and entirely lied when he talked to his wife. Sebastian went to the Market to tell him he didn’t know what to do. That they didn’t wanted the child, but Robin would kill him if he just thought of the idea of an abortion. Shane didn’t wanted that kind of burden to his wife. He couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t want a kid. When he was going to answer Sebastian added: ‘‘It will be depressing man’‘ Sebastian said. ‘‘Can you imagine? Yourself? As a father?’‘ He just grabbed his head. ‘‘Only you would be worse than me at parenting’‘. After that, Shane wasn’t capable of thinking of anything else. He was wet. He looked for his girl over all the town. From Rasmodious Tower to Lewis Tent. His clothes were wet and he wasn’t able to find Allie yet. He went back home and looked to himself at the mirror. He was nervously shaking, his body was cold. His eyes were red. It was only in the moment when he looked into the drawer of the bathroom when he find out a pregnancy test: positive. _ ‘‘Good Night Lady, where are you heading to?’‘ You climbed the step to the bus. Your dark brown eyes met the driver of the bus face. You just bite your lip. You took a bill from your purse, it was wet; you were cold. Yet, you managed to say: ‘‘Zuzu city’‘.

[algernoninwonderland]

“Porter sur toi un nouveau regard”: basic outlines and preparatory notes

What better way to celebrate a fic being completed than me releasing some of the basic notes I took while planning it? Here they are, with a few additions.

 It all started as a prompt I got on Discord, the very simple “love at first sight” and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it at first, but the idea of sight stuck with me. Are your first impressions the right ones? Can you learn to see someone a certain way or another? It’s ultimately a story about learning to see other people and yourself, isn’t it?

Which meant I had to take a certain point of view, because an omniscient floating eye is emotionally detached. Character POV may have a limited scope, but that may help empathise with them. This is a story about Kagami, so it was only fair for Kagami to be the centre of it.

Chapter 1: 

“How does Kagami truly feel about Marinette before Ikari Gozen”? 

While Marinette sees the two of them as rivals, that rivalry is one-sided, and Kagami wouldn’t take that girl seriously. She’s simply annoying. 

Kagami is a lonely character, who genuinely wants to make friends, still, and she’s anything but cool or smooth. She doesn’t know the other characters the way the audience does, at all.

Tomoe Tsurugi sucks.

Switching from “Dupain-Cheng” to “Marinette Dupain-Cheng” to “Marinette” would be a nice way to keep the reader hooked. Lots of tiny details that’ll come back later on!

Comphet. 

Lots of comphet already. What you “should” like, a calculated, conscious choice.

A few jabs at the show because why not.

Chapter 2:

Filling gaps in characterisation and timeline to make sure that everything hurts later on! Including pre-Adrigami. People thought the paperwork between Tomoe and Gabriel was a marriage contract, not quite, but an arranged relationship? Definitely from Tomoe’s side.

Are Kagami and Marinette already going on dates when they visit the city together all on their own? Isn’t that the true sapphic experience.

Also, the promise of them going to the terrace rooftop on sunny days! It’ll come back later on.

The Bike Motive. Marinette driving her forward.

“Your hair is beautiful” but make it much gayer. 

I hate the André scene in the finale, it sucks and it’s awful for everyone. It should be awful for both Marinette and Kagami. Comphet. So much comphet. 

Kagami’s impression of brokenness is something we’ll come back to over and over again.

Adrien doesn’t notice because he’s Adrien. The kiss. Nothing.

“K-Kagami!” End with a cliffhanger for more suffering.

As a side note, I made myself cry writing this chapter.

Chapter 3:

Everything hurts. Everything. Hurts. 

Identity reveals don’t solve anything, they still fail, and Marinette still isn’t willing to show herself to Kagami, still hiding behind a facade.

Just because Marinette understands things a little better doesn’t mean it hurts any less

They are both lying to each other and themselves and they don’t even realise it.

“Fixing the brokenness” through comphet.

Nothing is solved at all.

Falling asleep on a chaise longue plus blanket

Chapter 4:

Life as a socialite in Paris, concerts and restaurants, wearing clothes she hasn’t chosen

The Adrien routine, pulling chairs and flowers

It’s all miserable still, lots of “shoulds”

Fencing competition, fencing competition ahead. Tomoe is a terrible parent and a terrible coach.

Text conversations with Marinette, overdoes joy with emojis

The Bike Motive Returns, with more feelings, Marinette’s almost desperate gestures

(Kagami as the only person she can fully confide in, but still won’t)

An early birthday present… But Kagami is born in November, Marinette is a mess and so is her room.

Hug and first hint of reciprocated Marigami? Just the happiness of having someone like Kagami who admires her work as Marinette.

Falling asleep on a chaise longue plus blanket, part deux.

KAGAMI IN A SUIT!!!

Kisses on the cheek are really common in France, not Japan. A heavy kiss.

Dress or suit?

Marinette is a mess, texts at night. Difference between Adrien and Marinette’s texts, Adrien’s more self-centred.

No sense of space in Tokyo, jet lag and closed house. Closed spaces. 

Chapter 5:

I’m going to write a full chapter about sabre fencing and people will love it

Lots of sneaky (or not so sneaky) GL and Yuri manga/anime references. Make Juri Arisugawa part of the Jury.

All the locations are real

Marinette overdoes it again, Kagami can’t tell.

Kagami’s technique dissecting her opponents. She is a champion already.

Teach the readers about fencing whilst describing it. Have opponents be challenging in specific, understandable ways.

She chooses the suit. What even is subtlety.

As a side note: it was a really fun one to write.

Chapter 6:

Marinette internship phone call, Nathalie’s plan. No way Gabriel would accept to work with a kid. Flirting, Kagami as a muse?

The Foucault chapter. Everything is a prison. Restaurant, vertical stripes on wall as prison bars, the relationship, the self-locking car. This is no Utena car.

Everything is wrong, including the food

Adrigami friendship, much better than Adrigami romance. Rose/Chair. She doesn’t hate him at all, she just doesn’t love him… It wouldn’t work, she’s gay and he’s a liar.

Self-imposed gestures of affection.

Do not describe the kisses, they’re just a thing she has to do

Marinette is a mess, Ladybug is a mess, hell imagery, falling down a hole, almost dying. We are in the car with Kagami and we want to do something, anything, and we can’t.

Chapter 7:

The first step to things being alright again is to admit that they aren’t alright now

Nighttime conversation, Kagami letting Ladybug in

Marinette finally showing herself bare to Kagami but still tries not to until the dam breaks. Being a hero is miserable. Being the Guardian when you are a child with no guidance or support is miserable. Kagami as the only person she can trust.

Botched Lukanette date?

“I’m just so tired.”

“You are not a failure, you are so courageous, a genius fashion designer and my best friend”

(Additional note: I cried writing that passage)

Sharing the burden: help in more than just words.

“I hate that you have to see me like that.”

But showing your vulnerability and still being accepted as true love

Kagami truly sees Marinette now.

“Tutorship” and Tomoe being awful but excuse works. Help is material, homework, tidying up the room together.

“Stop feeling guilty about letting other people help you.”

Flirting hidden behind jokes, Kagami lying to herself. Way to ruin the mood.

Marigami baking.

Harlem 88, postal workers, acab

Watching television on the same couch, or rather watching Marinette watch television.

Umbrella scene with polka dots.

Kagami fully aware of her feeling and afraid of them, afraid that Marinette might feel the same

Chapter 8:

more fencing, Kagami absolutely rules

Worrying about Marinette alone with Gabriel, rightfully so, but can’t say that out loud

Stereotypical outdated Japanese-ness, Kagami can’t conform, doesn’t know how to put on her houmongi on her own. Tomoe and paradoxes, her daughter is both weak and “too muscular” at the same time.

The Palais Royal. The Buren columns are very climbable.

Gabriel, “quite miraculous”. Testing the waters, Kagami doesn’t notice. 

Jealousy when Adrien speaks of Marinette?

Ratatouille reference! Tatou. 

Tomoe playing the role of the exotic Japanese to be accepted. 

Drunk parents, drunk on power and self-satisfaction. 

Adrien’s kiss, forced to return it. 

Fear that Adrien might become Marinette’s muse

The bike motive once more

Barkk’s power is tracking magical signatures, each is different from the other

Marinette taking control over her own life, making plans to stop Hawk Moth instead of passively waiting for each attack, 

“She was never broken. She is in love with another girl.”

Marinette is in love with her too, but is ready to wait.

Chapter 9:

Adrien IS Chat Noir, up to the entitlement and his way of being physically affectionate. Stay true to canon and canon implications.

Adrigami/DJWifi double date, Alya means well but doesn’t know everything

Wordbuilding: of course the Ladyblog isn’t the only website ever, bad rival, Daily Bugle pun.

Not hating someone doesn’t mean you should be with them.

Hints of Adrigami friendship again, relief at avoiding romance.

Food at Kagami’s, cooker, formally perfect but not personal

Marinette and Barkk, closer to their goal

The Turtle Pearl bracelet: a shield, a great way to show feeling of danger, symbol of love

Kagami is the one to kiss Marinette on the cheek this time

Chapter 10:

Tomoe is a bad instructor episode 100

In which Adrien proves himself to truly be also Chat Noir, i.e. unable to understand personal barriers and entitlement. Still Kagami’s POV. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, insistence≠playfulness. certainly won’t apologise

The bike motive again. Scenic road and conversation

Going to Orsay, definitely a date!

Chat Noir was moody during akuma crisis because of course he was.

Chapter 11:

Adrigami “break”, Adrien sucks at admitting that he’s anything but perfect and being confronted with that.

Kagami bluntness.

Adrigami isn’t about Adrigami, it’s about the Tsurugi family’s status and Tomoe terrified of consequences. Attacking the room instead of Kagami herself.

The Turtle Pearl glows when wearer feels endangered or imminent danger

The museum pictures, the two of them together

Aquarium date?

“Voice of reason” isn’t the voice of reason at all.

Barkk is in the bag, smells everything

Chapter 12:

Kagami as Tomoe’s messenger

Agreste mansion as a mausoleum, setting up the geography, security cameras, cold. Painting of Émilie, goal is near

Nathalie being extremely good at pretending she didn’t just knock that kid unconscious months ago, she’s awful and it’s great.

Marinette internship, Gabriel wears a bowtie… Resembles a butterfly.

Barkk in the bag, smells everything.

Stressful phone call, feels feverish, it’s him and that’s undeniable.

Marinette the detective.

“Thanks for being there for me”

“Thank you for trusting me so much”

Having dinner with Hawk Moth, it’s awful and stressful

No more chair/rose

Adrien is miserable but not aggressive. Building up to final fight

Chapter 13:

Meet the Dupain-Chengs, short, awkward, sweet moment

Marinette’s room, perfectly clean

From creepy stalker to detective, without downplaying the former or overplaying the latter

The two are complementary, very concrete things, 

The plan: catch Hawk Moth red-handed, take it outside and expose him to the world

How the Kwami Pearls work: just like the Miraculouses themselves, feeding off the host, only more brutal. Marinette trying to reassure Kagami

Re-explain Turtle Pearl and other powers, illusion, thunder, time-rewind and portal

Gabriel owns original Degas painting since they are both assholes

Adrien/Chat still not great at all

Ice-cream but no biphobia/lesbophobia this time, just a regular shop suggested by Juleka.

The Pont des Arts, no more locks, just like in real life.

The confession, the kiss: consent and everything is right, but also desperate. Marinette really wants to do it well.

Longg is back, also, hype

Side note: I cried writing this one.

Chapters 14-15

Ryuko infiltrating the mansion, all in the details

I hate that Hawk Moth’s lair is an actual real physical space in the show, but if this needs to be material, then so be it. He was allowed to turn his house into that because he got help from the Mayor/Audrey.

Chat Noir can’t fight, near breakdown.

Nathalie knew. Remake of first fight, only Ryuko has clear upper hand.

Having missiles in your house isn’t a good idea.

The Turtle Pearl serves its purpose at last, 

Gabriel mostly defeats himself on his own, hubris, the whole extent of his power dynamic with Nathalie

Going back to the Champ de Mars, 

Teamwork, taking the butterfly down. Chat Noir rejects his father entirely, cataclysm-ed akuma.

The mansion again, entirely destroyed, paintings of Émilie burning. Spell book and tablet recovered.

Chapter 16:

Taking the big bad down is useless if you don’t take down the power structures that allowed him to strive in the first place. Killing Voldemort only solves that much.

Discovering it all on a phone screen, shut-in

ACAB no matter your gender

They are just following orders and happy to do so, and Gabriel still has some power over them

Tomoe plays by the rules, even though these rules are awful

Kagami’s anger

Chapter 17:

Aquarium date, aquarium date! Fish facts

Kagami’s anger still, doesn’t die out, render it through environment and senses

Water as a healing motive, fish facts

Hot outside - cold inside, ice-cream

Kagami nearly blows out because of kids after being slightly soothed

The power of love is strong but it can’t solve everything.

Additional note: someone in the comments asked me if Kagami had ASD, and the answer is, I don’t know, you tell me! If you think she is on the spectrum, then she is!

Addressing Kagami being closeted, because there’s simply no other way. This isn’t good. Having to live hidden out of fear isn’t good..

The bike motive, + ice cream

Kagami uses the word “lesbian” for the first time to describe her own experience.

Chapter 18:

Tomoe has feelings and these feelings suck. Under the guise of rules, abuse.

Kagami fighting back.

Power is material, through connections and money, nothing that can’t be bought

Kagami’s first demonstration, don’t make it too violent but still ACAB

Nino and Alya as reporters, Julerose and Luka seasoned protestors

The Palais de Justice’s gilded gates are closed vs the crowd

Marinette using her powers for something other than Hawk Moth, strong stance but also still a 15 yo kid’s understanding of the situation

Chapters 19-20:

No tanabata because Tomoe is terrible

The rooftop terrace at last, more Marigami wholesomeness

Dupain-Cheng house vs Tsurugi house, the furniture and dishes, the meal, more Tom and Sabine

Marinette has been cut from her Chinese heritage, exploring that (callback to Mandarin app, chapter 1) and bitterness of it

Adrien moving on in England, still Plagg with him, he’ll become a rich prep boy

Marinette as a Guardians, her own spell book

Duusuu is devouring Émilie’s soul and neither Marinette nor Kagami knows

Françoise Dupont at night, fencing classes, Marinette moves like Ladybug

The future: it is bright but bittersweet, let’s talk about it together

And there was only one bed

Oh, to cuddle with your girlfriend in her bed for the first time

Watching the sun rise together, calm breakfast

Side note: I also cried writing this one.

Chapter 21, epilogue

A new beginning

Kagami turning her back on her mother almost entirely

The bike motive, but Kagami no longer needs Marinette to show her the way now

New school, familiar faces but not only

An ordinary bracelet for Marinette, but proof of love despite everything

End on their hands.

[rosethornewrites]

Fic: this body yet survives, ch. 5

Relationship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn

Characters: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Lán Qǐrén, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín, Jiāng Yànlí

Additional Tags: No War AU, Recovery, Trauma, Dissociation, Courtship, Courting Rituals

Summary: Wangji approaches the Jiang siblings with betrothal gifts, hoping for their approval. More of Wei Wuxian's self-esteem issues rear their ugly heads.

Notes: See end

Parts 1 & 2

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

AO3 link

-----------

Wei Ying offered to help carry the baskets, or even the two cages containing a fat white-feathered wuguji rooster apiece, but Wangji refused to let him—it seemed improper to have him carry any part of the betrothal gifts. 

Fortunately, xiongzhang and the outer disciple were both able to help. Wangji could not recall the young man’s name, only that he was an average cultivator with merely adequate guqin skills. Wangji himself carried the cages.

On the way to the guest house Jiang Wanyin and Jiang Yanli were staying in, Wei Ying stayed close, one hand grasping the edge of Wangji’s sleeve, the other holding the box with his forehead ribbon with a sort of reverence. He kept looking at it, his expression tinged with wonder and disbelief. 

Wangji knew it would take time for Wei Ying to process the events of today; he wondered if perhaps everything was moving too quickly—telling Wei Ying he wished to court him, the clarification of his acceptance to GusuLan as a disciple, and now formally delivering betrothal gifts to his siblings. Wei Ying was still recovering, after all, but it was too late to change course now.

If he stopped now, Wei Ying might interpret it as changing his mind, and that would be so much worse. Wangji did not want to give him any cause to doubt, not after all he had been through. If he could shield Wei Ying from everything that might hurt him, he would—but he also knew that way of thinking could turn him into his father. 

He would not cage Wei Ying, even to protect him. 

Jiang Yanli was writing outside in the early afternoon sunshine when they arrived, and Wangji could see her immediate understanding and joy at seeing the decorated baskets before she schooled her expression and called for Jiang Wanyin. 

He froze coming from the guest house, a stunned look on his face.

Wei Ying noticed and stopped short, his expression shifting to uncertainty. He didn’t know how his brother would react, Wangji realized. Wangji hovered next to him, not sure how to help. 

Fortunately, Jiang Yanli seemed to know what to do. She came to Wei Ying and tucked her arm into his, pulling him forward, then called Jiang Wanyin’s name with a hint of exasperation in her voice.

Quickly, the three siblings were seated at the table, Wei Ying in the middle. He still looked uncertain, almost overwhelmed, and Wangji longed to go to him and draw him into his arms. 

He was relieved when Xichen stepped forward, that xiongzhang would handle this part. Technically neither himself nor Wei Ying should be present for this, but on a similar note the Jiang siblings were the family of Wei Ying’s heart, not blood, so nothing about this was strictly traditional. They were both orphans, and thus no parents were involved in this betrothal process. 

Xichen directed the disciple to place the baskets he was carrying and set his own down as well. At his pointed look, Wangji placed the cages with the roosters on the table as well. 

“Wei Wuxian received his ribbon today,” Xichen began calmly. “As only family and cultivation partners may touch it, Wangji thought perhaps he could show Maiden Jiang how he ties his into his hair.”

Jiang Yanli looked delighted, and Wei Ying opened the box to show her the ribbon. 

“Oh, it has little embroidered clouds,” she exclaimed.

“An inner disciple’s ribbon,” the outer disciple said, sounding surprised.

“Wei-gongzi has contributed much to Gusu Lan already,” Xichen clarified. “Shufu and I made the decision.”

Jiang Yanli eyed his hair, clearly thinking ahead to the lesson, and she smiled. 

“Oh, is that a new guan?”

To Wangji’s delight, Wei Ying blushed.

“Mine broke this morning. This one belonged to Lan Zhan’s mother.”

“A love token?” Jiang Yanli asked, her smile widening. “It is lovely.”

“You have a whole bag of guan,” Jiang Wanyin muttered. 

Wei Ying froze, his eyes going distant. The Jiang siblings looked startled by his reaction.  

“The guan in his bag all had lotus on them,” Wangji stated. 

He offered nothing more, but they realized anyway if the grief on their faces told him anything. As Wei Ying has predicted, they were sad, but there was a determination there as well. 

“I’ll go through your bags for you,” Jiang Wanyin told him softly. “Get rid of anything with lotuses.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t realize, A-Xian.”

Wei Ying attempted a smile, but it was weak. 

Both of his siblings looked as though they felt guilty for not having realized, but Wangji had only noticed this morning, had connected his fugue with the fallen lotus guan scattered across the floor. 

“I didn’t tell you,” Wei Ying murmured. “How would you know?”

“Tell us what’s bothering you, you idiot. We can’t help otherwise.”

The smile turned more true, and sheepish.

“I’ll try.”

Xichen cleared his throat delicately and gestured to the baskets on the table, and he and Wangji bowed and took their seats across the table as the outer disciple started to unwrap the cloth covering them. 

“Regarding the love token…”

Inside the baskets was white tea from Gusu Lan’s stores, aged decades to develop its delicate flavor. Sweet osmanthus cakes stamped with dragon designs—no phoenix, as both he and Wei Ying were men. A pair of dragon candles. One of the baskets contained cuts of pork, obviously purchased in Caiyi; this gift implied Jiang Yanli was a maternal figure. Another basket contained an assortment of seafood to symbolize a long and happy marriage. Oranges and apples, dates, dried tangerine and melon slices, lotus seeds, candies symbolizing prosperity, good fortune, luck, peace, and offspring—perhaps the hope he and Wei Ying would adopt? Sprigs of pine for longevity. Carved jade in different hues—green dragons and turtles, red and purple birds, white clouds, a black bat, orange fish, blue butterflies, flowers in all colors, and other auspicious symbols—all to show Wei Ying’s worth. 

Gold had a value; jade was invaluable. 

“We have brought a betrothal gift for you, Wei-gongzi’s siblings, to seek your approval for him to be wed to Wangji.”

“I asked him if he would consent to be courted, and he agreed,” Wangji offered.

Instead of responding, Jiang Wanyin looked at Wei Ying with what seemed like anger at first glance but was actually disappointment and grief. 

“You’re not coming back to Lotus Cove,” he said. 

It wasn’t a question, and he clearly already knew the answer. Jiang Wanyin’s voice was resigned and rough, as though he had held out hope all this time while knowing it was unlikely. 

Wei Ying flinched, his face pinched with his own emotions. His throat worked soundlessly for a moment. 

“I can’t,” he finally said, his voice shaky. “I’m sorry, Jiang Cheng.”

“Don’t apologize,” Jiang Wanyin told him. “It’s not your fault. After what happened…”

“I promised I’d be your right hand man,” Wei Ying murmured. 

His hand was fisted in his sleeve, Wangji noticed, his knuckles as white as the robe, as he fought his emotions.

“But I can’t go back. Not now. Maybe not ever. I’m sorry.”

Jiang Wanyin took him by the shoulders and shook him slightly.

“It isn’t your fault!” he hissed as Wei Ying stared at him wide-eyed. “You have nothing to be sorry for, A-Xian!”

Instead of releasing him, he pulled his brother into an almost violent hug. Then they were both crying, as was Jiang Yanli, who put a hand on Wei Ying’s back. 

“It’s enough that you’re here,” she said. “That you’re alive.”

Wangji knew from her expression she was seeing Wei Ying wan and bloody in the mud.

“You will always be his siblings,” he said impulsively, trying to stave off those same memories. “That cannot be taken from you.”

“Yes,” Jiang Yanli whispered. “A-Xian is the brother of our hearts.”

Jiang Wanyin released Wei Ying and fixed Wangji with a calculating look, measuring him as though trying to decide if he was worthy of his brother. Wangji did not begrudge him that—he should do so. 

“You’ll protect him?”

Wangji nodded. 

“He lies. He’ll pretend he doesn’t need help or protecting when he really does. You’ll protect him from himself?”

Wangji nodded again, reflecting on the way Wei Ying has, how he often put himself last in sneaky ways. He would need to compensate with that in mind. 

Jiang Wanyin nodded back, looking very much like he was struggling to find words. 

“He’s afraid of dogs. Terrified of them. Even the tiniest puppies. You have to protect him from them. And he forgets to eat. Even before, he forgot when he was working. He gets too focused and forgets to eat and sometimes even sleep.”

Wangji realized abruptly that these instructions were Jiang Wanyin’s way of expressing his approval. It would be his responsibility to care for Wei Ying. 

Jiang Yanli expressed the importance of spice, of nutritious and delicious foods, of hugs and affection.

“Xianxian is three,” she said softly, tweaking Wei Ying’s nose between two knuckles and then dabbing at his tears with her sleeve. “He doesn’t say when he’s hurting. He keeps it inside, like with the lotuses. He fears becoming a burden.”

Wei Ying sat still between his siblings, his face flushed, clearly overwhelmed by their discussion of him and his needs.

“Wei Ying is never a burden,” Wangji said. “Wei Ying is a joy.”

His face flushed deeper, and he hid behind his sleeves.

“You can’t just say things like that, Lan Zhan.”

“Mm, can.”

“Lan Zhan!”

“Xianxian deserves to be spoiled,” Jiang Yanli said with a smile, nudging him playfully. 

Wei Ying peeked out to shoot her a tremulous smile, but otherwise kept his face hidden. Jiang Wanyin shoved him lightly. 

“I won’t be able to get away with staying here forever,” he said regretfully. “I’m the heir. Eventually I’ll be expected home.”

He fixed Wangji with a scowl. 

“But if I can be sure Wei Wuxian is protected before I have to leave, I’ll feel better.”

“He is a Gusu Lan disciple,” Xichen pointed out softly. “He will be protected even without the courtship and marriage.”

“Unlike in Yunmeng,” Jiang Wanyin muttered bitterly.

Though Wangji knew xiongzhang hadn’t meant it in that way from the way he winced, he didn’t disagree with the Jiang heir’s interpretation. As a disciple—as head disciple—Wei Ying should have been protected, even from the fury of Madam Yu. She should have faced consequences for attacking a disciple alone, not protected by Meishan Yu with Wei Ying dismissed as a mere servant, as though he was property to be done with as she pleased. 

These things still angered Wangji a year later, and probably always will. 

“A-Cheng,” Wei Ying said. “It wasn’t—”

“You should’ve been protected,” Jiang Wanyin interrupted. “A-die should’ve protected you. We failed you.”

“You didn’t,” he whispered. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Jiang Yanli reached out and took Wei Ying’s hand.

“A-Xian, we want to be sure it never happens again. A-Cheng and I couldn’t protect you well enough, and Father should have protected you from a-niang, and he failed to.”

“Shijie…”

Wei Ying ducked his head, and Wangji knew he was trying to avoid thinking poorly of the man who he’d been raised to consider an uncle. But there were other issues as well—in truth, Jiang Yanli was no longer his martial sister, but he had called her that since he was young and perhaps hadn’t fully realized. Or, more realistically, he didn’t know what to call her otherwise. 

“He could have officially adopted you, A-Xian,” she said gently. “He could have made you our brother officially. She wouldn’t have dared touch you then.”

“It isn’t too late,” Xichen interjected. “The three of you could become sworn siblings.”

The Jiang siblings froze, blinking at each other in surprise. They had not considered the option, but Wangji had not either. The act would send a clear message to the cultivation world at large, would serve as further protection for Wei Ying. 

“It would mean you still have a connection to Yunmeng Jiang,” Jiang Wanyin said after a moment.

Wei Ying looked flummoxed, surprised beyond words by the suggestion, and perhaps a bit torn. With his reaction to lotuses, his trauma, a connection might not be a good thing. 

“You could call me jiejie,” Jiang Yanli whispered, squeezing Wei Ying’s hands. “I’m not really your shijie anymore, but I’d really like to be your jiejie.”

That was apparently the final straw for Wei Ying, who let out a sob and buried himself in her arms. Jiang Wanyin managed a smile, putting a hand on his shoulder, but looked close to tears himself. Becoming sworn siblings would just make official the relationship they had had most of their lives, would solidify their connection to one another. 

“We can set up the ceremony for tomorrow,” Xichen said, smiling gently. “As Jin-furen and Jin-gongzi are visiting, they could serve as witnesses.”

Jiang Yanli glanced at Wei Ying in concern.

“Jin-furen?”

“We met her in Caiyi,” Wangji stated. “She has dissolved the sworn sisterhood and wished to commission Wei Ying.”

The news clearly comes as a surprise to the Jiang siblings—apparently in previous visits Jin Zixuan hadn’t mentioned it. 

“They are having tea with shufu presently, but likely intend to visit you,” Xichen added. 

The Jiang siblings were watching their brother with concern, and he managed a smile, straightening.

“I’m fine. Lan Zhan was with me. We rescued a turtle at the fish market and released it in the pond at the jingshi. And we got a book about turtles and poetry and oil for my hair and tanghulu.”

None of his rambling mentioned the Jin, and Wangji could hear exhaustion in his voice, despite how he tried to keep his tone light. From his siblings’ expressions, they could tell as well. 

“It was a long day for Wei Ying,” he said softly. 

A broken guan and slight breakdown, consenting to be courted, rescuing the turtle, shopping, encountering Jin-furen unexpectedly, receiving his ribbon and clarification that Cloud Recesses was now his home, and now this. Too much for him while he was still recovering, almost certainly. He wanted to take him somewhere quiet so he could rest, or to the meadow to bury him in soft rabbits. 

“You’re already protecting him,” Jiang Yanli commented approvingly. 

“We’ll need to establish chaperones,” Jiang Wanyin said, frowning.

They were agreeing to the betrothal, Wangji realized, and warmth spread from his chest in a way he usually only felt around Wei Ying. Joy. He was feeling joy. The siblings of Wei Ying’s heart had accepted their courtship. They would wed. 

Xiongzhang smiled and nudged him gently, clearly happy for him. 

“Wei Wuxian deserves no less,” Xichen agreed. “We want to make his worth very clear. Chaperones through the courtship period will be appropriate.”

Wei Ying looked embarrassed by this, as though he felt the fuss was too much for him. 

“A-Xian has faced enough questions over his worth. He is precious to us and will be treated as such.”

Jiang Yanli was watching Wei Ying, too, he noticed, and was speaking in part to him.

“A-Cheng and I will be happy to chaperone,” she finished.

“For times when you are indisposed, or if myself or shufu are unavailable, I’m sure we can have some of the outer disciples act in that capacity,” Xichen added. “They are often responsible for escorting guests.”

“Wei Ying may need rest before dinner, while you are visiting with Jin-furen and Jin-gongzi,” Wangji stated, watching him. “I would like to escort him to his quarters once Jiang-guniang has tied his ribbon.”

In truth, their lunch in Caiyi had been more of a second breakfast, too early to truly be lunch. There were still several hours left before dinner. 

“I’ll just take it off to rest, won’t I?” Wei Ying protested.

“And I will help you put it back on before dinner,” Jiang Yanli said. “I’m happy to.”

“Disciple Su can chaperone your return to Wei-gongzi’s quarters before he returns to his other duties,” Xichen said.

The disciple bowed. He had a somewhat petulant look on his face, but as Wangji recalled that seemed to just be his natural expression. 

“Yes, Lan-zongzhu.”

Jiang Yanli reached into the basket of osmanthus cakes and presented the disciple with one, bowing.

“Thank you for your help.”

He took the cake, blinking at her in a startled way, then quickly returned her bow and retreated. 

She moved around the table to study Lan Wangji’s hair, and he removed his ribbon and demonstrated how he wove it through his hair for her twice before she was satisfied she understood. 

Within minutes, Wei Ying was wearing his ribbon, the pale fabric making the skin of his face look less pallid, demonstrating how much healthier he looked in comparison to only weeks ago. He looked beautiful as a Gusu Lan disciple, with a proper ribbon—but he was always beautiful to Wangji, so perhaps he was biased. 

“It suits you,” Jiang Yanli told him softly. “The clouds almost look like wings from a distance. Perhaps the wings of a crane.”

Wei Ying blushed, and Wangji felt his ears heat. A pair of cranes alluded to a wish for a long married life. He had never considered the resemblance of the embroidery to wings, but he could see it now. 

“Or lucky roosters, like these,” Jiang Wanyin muttered, pointing at the cages. “I don’t know what we’ll do with them.”

Jiang Yanli brushed her thumb against the embroidery on the ribbon, smoothing what must have been a minute wrinkle. The gesture was almost motherly. 

“They’re for Xianxian’s wedding, to lead him to his husband. We’ll keep them until then, of course. They’re lovely.”

She sat beside him, and Wei Ying leaned his head against her shoulder, a beautiful smile gracing his lips. He looked radiant, if tired, filled with a joy Wangji felt as well. 

“Shufu and I will consult to select an auspicious date,” Xichen said. “I would be honored if you two would assist in the planning of the wedding.”

Jiang Yanli looked overjoyed, and Jiang Wanyin nodded, his expression of a man about to embark on an important mission.

“A-jie and I had ideas,” he said.

Wei Ying stared at him, open-mouthed in shock. 

“What, you thought we didn’t do that for you like you and I did for A-jie? Like I’m sure you two did for me?” Jiang Wanyin demanded. 

“Of course we made plans for you, A-Xian.”

“I didn’t expect to get married,” Wei Ying whispered. “I was going to help Yunmeng Jiang.”

Wangji was surprised by that, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been—Wei Ying was exactly the type to deny himself to do what he saw as duty. His siblings were looking at him in horror, as though just realizing that terrible truth.

“You were allowed to marry, you idiot,” Jiang Wanyin exploded, then took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Even if it meant marry out. You didn’t have to stay.”

“I did. I promised.”

Jiang Wanyin looked to his sister, clearly trying not to lose his temper. 

“Xianxian,” she whispered, looking like she felt helpless. “We would never want you to give up your future for Yunmeng Jiang. You always talked so much about Lan-er-gongzi, I always assumed…”

Wei Ying blushed and glanced Wangji’s way, then down at his lap. He was struck again by how exhausted he looked. 

“He did not know my regard for him,” Wangji realized aloud. 

Worse, Wei Ying had thought he’d been rejected, that he was despised. And, knowing him, he had probably justified to himself that he deserved it. 

He could see Xichen’s surprise, but his brother had always known how he felt, before he could even understand himself.

“He thought I disliked him,” he clarified for xiongzhang. 

A look of guilt passed over Jiang Wanyin’s face, and Wangji realized perhaps he had thought similarly, had said something to Wei Ying about it. But ultimately the fault lies with Wangji, for not expressing himself more clearly, not until it was almost too late. 

Xichen also looked somewhat guilty, as though he felt he should have done something himself, but Wangji wouldn’t let him blame himself.

“I will strive to be clearer. Wei Ying should know he is loved.”

Wei Ying made an almost strangled sound.

“Lan Zhan, my heart can’t take it,” he groaned, hiding his face dramatically again. “You’re too much!”

“As much as Wei Ying deserves. Wei Ying will acclimate.”

Jiang Yanli patted her brother’s shoulder, looking softly fond, but also concerned. Wangji wondered if she too realized that Wei Ying might disbelieve he was loved. Jiang Wanyin stayed quiet, but watchful, his jaw still clenched, his expression still stormy. 

“Xianxian will need to get used to it, I think. Lan-er-gongzi will need to use the courtship period to help him adjust.”

Wei Ying gave her a mock betrayed look, and she laughed gently and tweaked his nose. He blinked at her cross-eyed, looking like a sleepy kitten. 

“But I think perhaps you could use a nap.”

The lack of protest was enough of an indication, but Wei Ying swayed when he stood, steadied by his siblings. Jiang Yanli pulled out a handkerchief, then put some of the dates, dried tangerines and melon, candies, and an osmanthus cake on it before tying it into a pouch and pressing it into Wei Ying’s hands.

“A snack would do you good,” she said, leading him around the table to Wangji. “I’ll send A-Cheng for you when dinner is ready. Lan-zongzhu and Lan-er-gongzi are welcome as well.”

Wangji took Wei Ying’s arm in his own to help steady him and received a tired smile. Disciple Su frowned at him, as though scolding him for touching his betrothed, but he ignored him. Xichen smiled.

“I will discuss courtship etiquette and terms with Wei-gongzi later, Wangji. You are aware of them. I trust you to respect them.”

He nodded to his brother and led Wei Ying toward his quarters. 

Respecting courtship etiquette was the same as respecting Wei Ying, particularly to the rest of the cultivation world. Wangji was disappointed, in some ways, that he had been right; the trip to Caiyi was to be their last time spent together alone for some time to come, and part of it had not been.

But as Wei Ying leaned closer, starting to wilt, Wangji focused on him alone, ignoring the disciple accompanying them. He would ensure Wei Ying ate at least some of what Jiang Yanli had packed before leaving him to rest, and the disciple could simply wait as he did so. 

Wei Ying’s health came above all else.

---------

Lots of symbolism in this chapter. Different colors of jade have different meanings. Green, which is the most prized, is for friendship, harmony, and renewal. Red for energy, life, and love. Yellow for optimism, success, and generosity. Orange for ambition, vitality, and libido (lol, like WangXian need help in that department). Blue for loyalty, freedom, and faith. Purple for insight, peace, and devotion. Black for elegance, security, and pride.

There are a lot of meanings involved in carved jade specifically as well. The bat, for instance, would represent happiness and longevity. Butterflies are a symbol of love. Dragons, power, strength, and goodness, as well as masculinity. Fish represent wealth and abundance, and when paired, harmony and connubial bliss. Different birds have different meanings as well, though Lan Wangji doesn’t specify which ones there are, or which flowers are carved.

I am not as familiar with betrothal customs as I would like to be, but it seemed killing and cooking the roosters would be crass at best, at least before the wedding. Apparently some customs include putting the betrothal chickens under the marital bed for the wedding night. In essence, this betrothal is different in a lot of ways because they’re both grooms and both orphans. Because of Wei Wuxian’s lack of blood family, the decision to go to the Jiang siblings is more a courtesy and recognition of their relationship than anything.

“Gold has a price/value; jade is priceless/invaluable” is a Chinese saying that seemed apt for a betrothal gift. 

Wuguji are black-boned chickens, specifically silkies. They’re a smaller breed, but prized in cooking.

Also, I keep meaning and forgetting to thank my amazing beta, @missyriver, for all her help!

[stuck-in-hawkins]

Battle in the Produce Aisle

A New in Town Story

Stranger Things: Post Season 3

Will and El wondered around the aisles of the grocery store.  Will’s eyes scanning the shelves for the items on sale.  El kept piling junk food in the cart.  He mentally crunched the numbers and knew it was all out of their budget.  He didn’t want to lecture her. She was the only person in the world who knew about him now.  After everything she’d done for him, it seemed like it would be nagging.

But he needed to tell her about their financial situation.  It would be better telling her now before there was another department store fiasco.  

“Hey, El?”

“Hm?” She said as she put a bag of marshmallows in the cart.  

It took him a moment before he could collect the words together but El was patient, and he always appreciated that.  “There are some families that can afford the extra stuff, like Mallomars and Chips Ahoy.  They put them in the cart and don’t even think about what it costs.  But… our family’s not like that.  We always have to think about what the number’s gonna be at the register.”

She looked into the cart and back at Will.  “Like the jeans?”

Goddamnit.  How did she always see this stuff?  He forgot sometimes how observant she was.  Despite having little to no clue about most social cues and all ‘the way the world works’ stuff, she could put things together very easily.  Like she had all the pieces already and just needed to fit them together.

“Yes.”  He answered, “Mom, Jonathan, and I have spent years learning how to make the most from the money we have.”

“These go back then?”  

Will nodded.  El picked up the extra things not on the list and returned them to their spots on the shelf.  They were walking past the frozen foods and El looked longingly at the Eggos.  He knew that they reminded her of home.

“You can get those.”

She turned to him, a question on her face.

“One splurge isn’t a bad thing.”  He smiled.  El beamed and got the box of waffles from the freezer.  

Will looked around the aisle for peanut butter.  It wasn’t next to the bread, like it had been in the stores back home.  An associate was stocking the crackers.  Why were the crackers in with the bread?  What the hell was wrong with this store??

Will asked, “Umm.  Excuse me.  Could you tell me where the peanut butter is?”

“Aisle one.”

Will asked, “Next to the produce?!”  He couldn’t keep the judgement out of his voice.

The guy looked at him, like the soul had been sucked out of him, “I just stock the shelves, man.”

Will bit his lip.  “Okay.  Sorry.  Thanks.”

He felt a little embarrassed.  He definitely pulled a suburban-mom-moment there.  Why did it even matter?  ‘Because peanut butter should always be next to the bread!’ He mentally groaned.  He felt like he was playing a game of Pong.   Constantly bouncing from one aisle to the next trying to check the items off his list.  Still, he hadn’t meant to be one of “those” customers.  He’d heard enough stories about people like that from his mother and Jonathan.  People who quoted, “The customer is always right,” as if it were a bible verse.  

They finally got the peanut butter and were about to head to the registers.  Will noticed El standing by the produce aisle, fixed to the spot and staring ahead.  

“El?”

And then he heard a familiar voice.  From that day in the locker room, “Aw, come on.  Just seven little numbers and I let you go back to sorting oranges.”

Will couldn’t hear much of the response, but he heard the pleading “please.”  The scared, cornered feeling in this girl’s voice.  

“Excuse me,” someone said as they tried to get around Will’s cart.

“Oh, Sorry.”  He pulled up to El.

“We need to go.”

She looked back at him and the look she gave him made Will squirm.  

“There are always gonna be guys like this, El.  This is what they do.”

Her nostrils flared and she shook her head.  “Not while I’m around.”  She grabbed a toilet paper roll and flung it at the leering thug.

It hit him square in the shoulder.

She looked at him with her death stare.  “She said no, Jack Ass.”

The thug turned and Will could see the girl’s face as it changed from fear to relief.  Will felt ashamed at his cowardice.  How many times had he wished for someone to intervene when Troy and his goons were on the prowl?  The jackass started walking towards El.  Will stepped in between before he could get closer.  

“What are you trying to do?”  He laughed, “You trying to play tough, fag?”

In that moment, when Will should have felt intimidated, fearful of the guy nearly a head taller than him… he wasn’t afraid.  He couldn’t make sense of it.  He had spent his life ducking away from those accusing words, denying them.  But today… the word had missed its mark.  Men made the word seem like it was the worst thing someone could be… effeminate, gay.  To be marked with such a word was the equivalent of a pirate receiving the black spot.  But he had stared actual death in the face more times that this asshole could count.  The bluster, the act was all just that.  An act.

It took off a weight, he felt a power, and he laughed.

“You know what I just realized?”  He chided, “This is all you have.  The highlight of your day is towering over someone and throwing your weight around as if people have any reason to be afraid of you.”

“I can give you five reasons you have every reason to be pissing your pants right now.”  He closed his fist and and pounded in his hand.  It was so cartoonish, it was funny.

“What are you going to do?  Hit me in a grocery store?”  He laughed, “One day you’ll realize that there are things that are actually terrifying.  Things that would snap you like a twig.  You say that word, ‘fag’ like I should be afraid of it.  But I’m not.  You are.”  He took a step closer. “Because if God forbid anyone call you that, you’d lose this.”  He gestured at the space between them.  “You’d have nothing to look forward to.”

“I’m gonna make you eat those words, you faggot.”

Will smiled.  “I’m not the one afraid of that word, faggot.”

The towering boy’s eyes filled with rage and he pulled his fist back but suddenly dropped.  El had kicked the back of his knee and thrown him off.  She grabbed Will’s hand and pulled him out of the store.  

They ran out the door and down the street.  Will heard his feet against the pavement.  The adrenaline shooting through him.  He had been ready to fight.  He had been ready to take that jackass’s fist to his face.  Being forced to run had set his brain in motion.  The swell of confidence, the feeling of power, had gone back out like the tide.  As he ran, he remembered the feeling but couldn’t rationalize it.

It didn’t matter how many times he had stared death in the face.  He was human.  He could still be broken, like he’d nearly been in the locker room.  Why had he said those things to him?  What had he done?

Will was running out of breath.  El pulled him into the space between two shops.  They doubled over trying to get the wind back in their lungs.  

“Damnit, El. I didn’t want to get into it back there.”

“You damnit.  You were gonna let that jackass…”

“Do you even know what he was trying to do?”

“He was scaring her.  That’s all I need to know.”

“What you need to know is that we are fucking screwed for food this week.  What we needed was to get groceries.  We needed to help our family.”

El was furious, but a small part of her felt guilty.  He’d said ‘our family’ without hesitation.  And there was the sudden feeling that she let him down.  She wouldn’t let it show though.  She didn’t look at him.

She seethed.  “So, if someone is in trouble, let them deal with it alone.  Is that what you do?  Just ignore it because you are more important?”

Will leaned his head back against the bricks.  “I’m not saying that.  I’m saying you need to learn to pick your battles.”

“People ‘picking battles’ are why mouth breathers keep doing it.  And why are you on his side?  You were arguing with him.  You were winning.  We won.  It was the right battle.”

Will took deep gulps of air, avoiding the question.  There was a fearlessness in that moment with the thug.  It was an old feeling of power.  A feeling that hadn’t been his but another’s.  But he still remembered it.  That guy in there could beat him to a pulp but if the horrors of the other world ever came, Will would survive.  He would find a way.  

El continued, “You weren’t scared of him.  You called him that name back.”

It was funny.  She was picking up new swears and insults all the time, but she still refused to say that word.  She didn’t recycle words that bullies threw at them.  As if her insults had standards.

Will answered, “It felt good to say it at the time.  It felt good to have that.  But now we have to go home empty handed.  Now Jonathan will have to be the one to go to the grocery store in addition to working because we couldn’t stay out of trouble.  I can’t work a job, El.  Mom won’t let me.  She says I need to focus because my grades have slipped.  So this was my way to help.  This was how we contributed.  I don’t want to be a burden on them anymore.  I want to hold my own where I can.  Can’t you understand that?”

“Then, we go back and get our groceries.”

“He’ll be waiting for us.”

“Fuck him.  It’s a battle worth fighting.  Not being afraid is worth fighting for.  We’ve fought scarier things.  I don’t want to be afraid of him.”

And Will caught something in her voice.  He looked at her and could tell, she had seen herself in that girl.  She had seen someone vulnerable, cowering before that guy.  El didn’t have her powers and was having to learn what it meant to be ‘normal.’  The idea of being as scared as that girl… it was a normal El would never let herself accept.  

Will approached El, hesitantly.  “I don’t either.”  He reached out and gave her a side hug.  Or he tried to, but she threw both of her arms around him and pulled him in.  She wouldn’t speak it.  She wouldn’t say it.  But he could feel it in the grip of her embrace.  El was scared about never having that power again.  Of living her life without the abilities that had saved her.  She wanted to learn to fight without them.  That she could fight without them.  

El had been at his side so many times.  She was always ready to fight for him.  The least he could do was return the favor.

“Let’s get our groceries while we still have some daylight.”

___________________________

They walked back to the store, waiting for the thug to be there.  But he was nowhere in sight.  

When they got inside, they saw the girl behind customer service.  Her eyes were red from crying.  She stood up and the manager looked over at them.  

“These the two?” They heard him say.  She nodded.

He waved and walked over to them.  He stopped once he got closer and dropped his voice.  “Mary told me about what happened.”

Will waited with baited breath for the consequences.  Would there be a police report?  Would they be banned from the store?

“That boy has apparently been hounding her for some time.  I appreciate you both stepping in.  I’ve reached out to the boy’s parents and they know now he’s not to come into this store without them again.  And as for the two of you… while a toilet paper roll, isn’t exactly throwing a gauntlet… It is undeniable that you were both hitching to fight that boy.  I can not abide by violence in my store.”

Will and El stood nervously.  Will’s stomach was in a knot.

He continued, “There are better ways to solve something like that.  The next time you see something like that, you tell one of us behind the desk and we’ll handle it.  And if you see that boy hanging around the parking lot, looking for more trouble, you tell me and he’ll be put straight. Understand?”

They both nodded.

“Alright, then.  Do you want your cart?  We saved it for ya.”

“Thank you,” Will said earnestly.  

“Thank you,” El echoed.  She was looking at the girl behind the counter.  While Will went over to get the cart rung up, El walked over to the counter.  Will saw the girl hand El the toilet paper roll and they laughed.  And then Will saw El’s light.  It didn’t matter that she didn’t have powers.  She was able to save someone.  It was just who she was.  

Will knew he’d have to come to terms with the fact that she would never be the type of person to back down.  That meant he’d have to stand by her in out-matched fights.  It might also mean physically plucking her out of the war path.  But, all things considered, that wasn’t so bad.  It was worth it to have her in his corner.  

[onwardintolight]

Read it on FFN here

~~~

Leia woke up late to the sound of wailing.

Ben’s wailing, coming from the living quarters.

Karabast, she muttered under her breath. What time was it?

She checked her chrono. 1230.

Ugh. Again?

Blinking back the sleep that threatened to pull her under once more, she groaned as she sat up.

Ben’s cries came more fiercely now, mixed with a few choice babbled syllables he’d been trying on for size lately. The cold, empty spot beside her in bed told her Han was out there with him. That was a relief. Their son had an escape artist streak; at least this time he wasn’t crawling around the house all on his own, looking to see how much trouble he could get into. Still, her heart sank. They were all about equal parenting, but it seemed like Han had been shouldering the greater burden as of late.

She fixed her eyes on the light streaming through the window, trying to get them to adjust. It didn’t really help. Her head still hurt; the room was still blurry. She forced herself to get up anyway.

Han looked at her apologetically when she finally lurched into the living quarters. “I was tryin’ to let you sleep,” he said. “I guess this little ruffian had other ideas. ‘M sorry, sweetheart.” Inexplicably, Ben had already stopped crying; he was now contentedly perched on Han’s hip, tugging at his hair.

“I’m sorry, Han, I should have been up hours ago; I should never have made you take care of Ben this long—”

“Hey,” he interrupted, acting affronted. “Made me? I chose to spend time with this little guy.” He ruffled Ben’s hair. “Besides, you needed to get some rest.”

She didn’t argue; she was too tired, and it would be a losing battle, anyway. He knew she’d been staying up half the night lately, unable to sleep. For no good reason, she thought angrily. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t get any sleep when she lay down; it was that somehow, dragging herself into bed seemed like a near impossible task. She’d distract herself with pointless research or dumb holonet shows, watching the hours tick by, too weary to go through her bedtime rituals, too anxious to let her mind rest. Too afraid to face the possibility of another nightmare.

“Rest is overrated,” she grumbled. “I need some caf.”

She headed for the kitchen, but Han stepped in her way. “I’ve got it, sweetheart. You go sit down.”

She tried to step around him, but he blocked her again. Her ire spiked. “Han, stop it.”

“Go sit down.”


“Why? How incapable do you think I am? Last I checked, I don’t have the virus.”

“Leia—”

“Just let me do it.”

He raised his free arm placatingly. “Okay. Sure.” He stepped aside, frowning. She had probably pissed him off, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She stepped into the kitchen and fumbled around in the cabinets for the ground caf. There wasn’t much left in the container, she noted with alarm. She should have ordered some more days ago. The way everything was in the galaxy right now, it would take forever to arrive. Somehow, the prospect of less caf over the coming days made her feel breathless, almost dizzy. She leaned against the counter, trying to get ahold of herself.

She was almost always on edge these days. Funny how the end of her time as a soldier didn’t signal the end of that. Truth be told, she didn’t know how to stop being that way.

It had gotten better, for a time—it had taken awhile for things to settle down before she had Ben, and in the meantime her Jedi training had helped her learn new techniques to calm herself (even if it simultaneously stirred up some deeper fears). Then there was that honeymoon phase of life with their new little family, that shaky and awkward but ultimately hopeful step she and Han had taken together into new territory. It had been a deeply happy experience overall, even if hard at times. Being together was a gift, thanks to a galaxy newly at peace, and she had treasured this weird, messy, beautiful, strangely domestic era in their life. She would miss it, when it was gone.

But all the same, she yearned to get back to work. She felt in her bones that she still had more to give to the galaxy, if only she had the opportunity. Han was itching to get back in the cockpit, too. It was past time to forge a new normal with her family, where they could all be who they fully were as they found new ways to grow and love together.

Apparently the galaxy had different plans.

During her parental leave, she’d taken time off because she chose to, and she’d been okay with that. She’d never expected this pandemic to come in later and take so many choices away. When people started getting sick on Corellia, no one had guessed how quickly it would spread, stopping the whole galaxy in its tracks. They’d been quarantining now for almost a month, and she didn’t know how much longer she could stand it. She even found herself missing the polite, insistent prattling of her protocol droid, T-2LC, who lately more often than not sat powered down in their home office with nothing to do.

Unfortunately, even if it weren’t for the pandemic, she had still been semi-exiled from the Republic government. Oh, it wasn’t as though it were official or anything—people still treated her with utmost respect, and she still counted several of those in leadership, Mon Mothma and Ackbar in particular, as dear friends. But the truth of the matter was that she had been gradually, quietly sidelined, ever since Kashyyyk. She did not regret in the slightest her actions at the time, but her angry outbursts and rogue behavior were not forgotten. The new government had truly taken off after the Battle of Jakku, right around the time Ben was born, and she had missed out on much of that formative time. After her parental leave was over, she had simply not been invited back.

That hurt.

Despite all that, she’d done her best to liason with the Alderaanian remnant, to take care of their needs and ensure they had adequate representation on Chandrila. In fact, she still had work to do on that, even if the virus had put much on hold.

But lately, she’d been doing nothing. She’d just been sitting around at home: restless, fatigued, and oddly enough, terrified.

The daylight outside the kitchen window disappeared into clouds, dimming everything around her.

It was strange. She’d been through countless battles; she’d seen so many horrors. And yet here she was, with a different kind of fear, one that seemed to have gripped her in ways deeper than she could have imagined. Not fear of the pandemic, per se, though of course she was worried about her family, about everyone she cared about, about the entire galaxy.

No, even more than that, Leia was terrified of who she was, of what she’d become. She hardly recognized the woman in the mirror anymore. The woman who was no longer consumed by the fight for galactic justice. The woman who had nowhere to channel her grief anymore, and no giant, all-important cause to distract her. She was alone with herself, now, and the longer this went on, the more she hated herself.

Swallowing, she forced herself to move. She dipped a measuring spoon into the ground caf, brought it to the caf maker. Her hand was unsteady, though; some spilled out on the counter. She muttered a curse under her breath and stabbed at the controls to get the thing running. It would do.

This pandemic had stirred something deep inside her. Instinct had kicked in—she needed to be back on the front lines, leading, making a difference. She needed to fight. But she couldn’t fight, not this time. Not when the enemy was a virus instead of an evil Empire. She felt desperate to do something besides sitting locked away at home. She’d always done something. But there was nothing for her to do now, no role they wanted her to fill. None of her skills that might be useful were needed. The true soldiers, this time, were the medics, the farmers and food suppliers, the workers providing what everyone needed.

She couldn’t fight. But she couldn’t seem to make herself back away from it, either. She was stuck.

The air felt heavy, thick. The smell of caf filled the room. She stared half-seeing as it slowly dripped into the carafe.

Why?

Why couldn’t she back down? Why couldn’t she just be content with isolating with her family? That was what was needed of her, after all. That was the way she was making a difference.

The problem was, it didn’t feel like enough.

It was never enough.

As long as she was fighting, she could at least say she was working to make Alderaan’s sacrifice count. Working to atone for her part in all that.

No, she challenged herself. That’s not how this works; you know better, now.

She sighed and turned away, shaking her head. She didn’t blame herself as much as she used to. At least, not on the surface. She’d come a long way since those first few years, in no small part thanks to Han. But still, shame had settled inside her core and refused to budge, no matter what she told it; it was shaped like a pointed finger forever turned inward, whispering of “should haves” and “should nows,” never letting her rest.

Those whispers had only gotten stronger lately, as the paralysis set in. The feeling of being trapped between fight or flight had settled on her as a heavy weight. She was depressed, she’d come to realize with a shock. It was hardly the first time, but she didn’t ever remember it being so destructive to her functionality, not even at her lowest of lows. In addition, her anxiety was hitting insane levels. Wartime levels; maybe even higher. Little things made her jump, took her right back—a sound that reminded her of blaster fire. The smell of something burning. The unexpected chime of the door. Ben’s cries.

For kriff’s sake, a slight note of anger in Han’s voice was nearly enough to make her panic and react to him in ways she hadn’t in years. Any hint of disappointment or even simple requests could send her into a meltdown, as she tried to prove to him (and even more so, to herself) that she really was capable, that she wasn’t as much to blame for everything as some inner part of her clearly still thought.

The clouds outside drew closer, and she felt, more than heard, a faint, distant rumble. For a moment, she remembered lightning on Appenza Peak, her old bedroom windows thrown open to see it. She pushed the image away.

To Han’s credit, he seemed to have caught on that something was amiss with her, moreso than normal. He’d been taking on even more responsibility with Ben lately, not snapping back (well, at least not usually), and treating her with vastly more grace than she felt like she deserved. His attempt to let her sleep in this morning warmed her heart, but at the same time, it speared her through with guilt like a blaster bolt. She should be better than this.

Where was the Leia that sucked it up and helped saved the galaxy? Where was the Leia who had commanded troops and put her life on the line again and again? Yes, that Leia had suffered greatly and had been dealing with no small amount of PTSD, but somehow she’d gotten through and fought despite it all. Perhaps that Leia would have stayed up most of the night as she’d done the night before—probably intent on the distraction of supply charts and strategies instead of wandering their flat aimlessly—but that Leia would have also forced herself awake the next morning and worked until she practically made herself sick.

That Leia had definitely not been healthy, but she was functional.

At least that Leia got stuff done.

Now, she was useless. She was just as haunted by everything that had happened, if not more so, but she had nothing to do, nowhere to run.

Nowhere to run. Trapped.

Her neck was hurting again, and her arm—the places the torture droids had once injected her. The muscles in her shoulders and back felt tense, hard as a rock. She had a headache. The room spun a little. In fact, the room seemed not quite there. Was she really here?

“Leia?” Han appeared in the doorway, Ben still on his hip.

“I… I think I need to go sit down,” she mumbled.

He nodded, brows knit. “I’ll bring you a cup of caf when it’s done.”

She stumbled over to the couch, feeling vaguely relieved as it embraced her. Idly, she watched as the sky outside grew darker, more ominous. Force, she hoped it would storm. She could hardly take the thick stillness.

Minutes passed. She heard the sound of the caf maker finishing its work, Han rummaging in the cabinet, liquid being poured into a mug. He brought it out to her, and she took it, set it on the table beside her to cool. She sat back, hands over her eyes against the pressure, and managed a nod. “Thanks, darling,” she murmured.

He was being so sweet, so caring, and she was so, so grateful for him.

She also hated it. She hated that she had put him in a position where he felt like he had to do everything for her and Ben. Where he had to take care of her as if she were another child. He was suffering, too; aching to get back out among the stars, haunted by the reports of the sick and dying in the slums of his old homeworld. She should have been able to deal with all this herself.

But… she couldn’t. Not right now. Everything hurt. She could barely even catch a good breath, for kriff’s sake. She tried breathing in and out, slowly and deeply. Did it help? Perhaps a little, but it was hard to tell. All she wanted to do was curl up in a fetal position and just… not be there. Not be her, this new, useless Leia. She started to curl in on herself, but then she remembered curling up in a ball on the floor of the Death Star cell, and she stopped.

No.

She could almost feel the gaze of the cell guards, hear the breath of Vader. Instead, she leaned forward and focused on her breathing again—how was it possible that it was even shallower than before?

“Sweetheart? You okay?” Han’s voice came through the static in her head.

She started to nod, hands still over her eyes, then stopped. After a moment, she shook her head no instead. She felt deeply ashamed, but that was the truth of the matter—she wasn’t okay. Not at all.

Vaguely, she heard Ben babbling on the floor, the sound of him handling and biting some things that were most likely toys. Han must have distracted him for the moment. She decided she didn’t have the energy to care all that much what Han had given him to play with; she’d trust his judgment for now.

“Turn around,” Han said, sitting beside her. She felt his hands start to rub at her neck, her shoulders. She let out a shaky breath. It felt so good.

His touch was also real, here, now—unlike Vader, the guards, the cell, or that room of horrors in Cloud City. She remembered the exercises Luke had taught her, and she tuned into the sensations, focusing on them, letting everything else fall away. Emptying herself of all but this moment, his hands, her muscles… she was a cup to be filled up.

Her breath finally slowed, deepened, and tears filled her eyes. Gratitude, relief, frustration, grief… it all threatened to spill out. Her breath hitched again.

“Breathe, Leia. It’s okay.”

“What the hell is wrong with me?” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Han, I don’t know why I’m like this, I don’t know who I am anymore….” She turned and lay her head on his shoulder, and he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her.

“Sweetheart,” he said finally, “you’ve been through a hell of a lot of trauma. My guess? Now that you’re forced to relax, now that you can’t fight, it’s all tryin’ to come out, shoutin’ at you to deal with it. That’s probably a good thing, you know, because it means you’re safe now. You’ve gotta take some time to heal.”

Reluctantly, she nodded. She recognized the truth in his words. He’d clearly learned a lot in his own therapy sessions post-carbonite, as much as he’d complained about them. Maybe it was time to look into that for herself again, too. She could hardly be any more of a mess.

“I… I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t know how to deal with it. I’ve been a terrible person to be around, lately, and I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I can’t just manage—“

“Sshhh,” he said. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I know. We’re in this together, okay? Let me help you. Let me help you rest.”

“I can’t, there’s so much I should—”

“I’m serious. You need to rest.” Han sighed. “You’re already a hero, Leia. You’ve helped save the whole goddamn galaxy. It’s okay to rest now. You need it.”

Leia stared at the wall. Then, finally, in a small voice, she said, “I’m afraid if I let myself rest, I’ll never be able to rise up and do what I need to do again.” A few moments passed; when she continued, her voice was edged with panic. “What if this is actually the real me? What if I never fully deal with it? What if I just… waste away, and become someone people pity?” She blinked back tears again. “I can’t stand the thought of people’s pity. Like, ‘Oh, she fought in the war, she was a great leader, it’s a shame what she’s let herself become—’”

“Leia, stop it. First of all, no way is anyone gonna pity you like that. Again, you’re a hero. You will always be a hero. People know who you really are—” he held up a hand to stop her from interrupting—“and that person is the person I still see before me right now. Someone’s who’s incredibly strong. Someone who will always fight for what’s right. Someone who, right now, is fighting a battle inside that’s, oh I dunno, at least as big as any she’s ever fought on the outside. It’s just that now, fighting looks like rest, like sleeping in late, like letting your husband help you. Like cuddling and feeding and loving on a baby. Like muddling through the day however you can while processing all the hell you’ve been through.”

The tears were falling, now. Leia shut her eyes, burying her head into Han’s chest. She tried to let his words sink in.

“We’re a team, Leia,” Han said, his voice filled with conviction. “Things are hard right now, but we’ll get through this together. You don’t have to have it all figured out on your own.”

She exhaled, nodding silently. She’d probably need to be reminded again before long, but for now, his words were enough to fade some of the shame.

A flash came, then a low rumble. Shakily, she stood up and walked over to the window, watching as the first few drops of rain pattered against it. Han followed, coming up to put his arm around her as they looked out on the storm together. She leaned against him.

It calmed her, somehow, seeing the tumult outside. It always had. She could almost smell the rain, feel the rush of the wind. She half wanted to rush out on their bedroom balcony and let it all drench her. Unfortunately, she was all too aware that their flat was near the top of one of Hanna City’s few towers.

Maybe she would later, once the lightning had passed. She would go out with Han, Ben in her arms, and teach her son how to laugh in the rain.

Her breaths were starting to come more fully now.

“Mama,” a little voice said, and she felt a tug at her pant leg. Ben had crawled over and was holding his arms up to her. She reached down and picked him up, pulled him into her embrace.

“I love you,” she whispered, and her heart felt suddenly full. He wriggled around, untamed as always, twisting in her arms so he could look out the window along with them, mouth open wide in wonder.

“Da,” he said, pointing a chubby little finger at the wild sky.

A bolt of lightning shrieked down from the clouds, followed by a clap of thunder that shook the whole flat. She caressed Ben’s curly head, ready to offer comfort. No need; he seemed to be enjoying the show as much as she was.

Another bolt of lightning struck the outskirts of the city, spectacular in its vivid starkness. For a moment, she felt like a finger of that light was breaking through, piercing the dense, sluggish dark inside her, leaving a far deeper imprint than the silhouette still burning in her eyes.

It was right then that she knew it: this heaviness wouldn’t last forever. Someday, perhaps not as long as she feared, this time of intense processing would be over. She’d get up from her rest, get back to being her more functional self again, and work once more to heal all the wrongs of the galaxy. Perhaps by then, she’d be doing it wholler, wiser. More healed, herself. And maybe, just maybe, the galaxy would be even better for it.

But in the meantime, she would tend to her wounds and embrace the lightning as it came.

In the meantime, she would finally learn how to rest.

~

~

~

Notes:

Thanks for taking the time to read this! I hope it encourages you like it did me, especially in these uncertain times when so many of us are dealing with the trauma of our own pandemic.

I literally wrote this as part of my own therapy for PTSD, so please be kind. If you are considering leaving a comment about how this "proves" Han and Leia were bad parents or that you think Leia would never struggle like this or need time to process her trauma, please refrain and take your false and harmful negativity elsewhere. It's hard enough for anyone struggling with PTSD to take the time to heal as it is. Thank you.

For those of you who are struggling with PTSD and/or other mental health issues, I see you. You are not weak; you are strong. You are fighting an incredibly difficult battle. It's okay if you weren't productive today. It's okay to rest. It's okay to take the time to heal. You are worth so much.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

We don't need to choose between between lives and livelihoods

By Tim Farron MP

This afternoon, chancellor Rishi Sunak will make an announcement to the House of Commons about the shape of government’s coronavirus support over the coming months.  He faces a tough choice as the country starts to open up, whilst trying to keep infection rates as low as possible. There is no easy way out of the current crisis, and I have sympathy for him as he grapples with the decisions he has to make.

In my constituency in the South Lakes, we have been very nervous about welcoming tourists back to our beautiful region. We have had high infection rates and a high death toll here. Yet 80% of the working age population in the Lake District work in tourism and hospitality.  Those jobs have almost all either disappeared or been put on ice.  As the visitors began slowly returning since Saturday, some of those jobs will return – but not all of them.  The chancellor is my constituency neighbour, we share the Yorkshire Dales, I think he understands that tourism is a special case.

In a community which has an average age ten years above the national average, there continues to be a fear of concentrated numbers of visitors in popular beauty spots.  The virus is still out there, it claims scores of lives every day, to protect others we must maintain physical distancing and observe the guidance. But at the same time some easing needs to take place, to alleviate the pressure on the tourist sector, to re-open the economy, to give businesses the chance to survive and workers a chance to save their jobs.

We do not want to be in the appalling position of having to choose between saving lives and saving livelihoods.  After all, the disease itself won’t have cost many jobs.  The damage to the economy has come from the necessary lockdown, and any stop-start-stop-start approach to further big lockdowns is in danger of leading to large scale business failure and will ensure widescale hardship and misery.

We have already seen more than a 300% increase in the numbers claiming universal credit in my patch, and these figures will probably quadruple again if the government’s grant and furlough schemes are not extended beyond the autumn.  Lakes tourism exists on a feast and famine basis; the summer months being the feast.  The problem is that this year the lockdown came just at the end of the famine, then the feast was cancelled, and there is no way that the industry will be able to stand on its own two feet again as the next famine commences.

So what does the chancellor do?  Keep funding furlough, or start to cut his losses now?  It’s a heavy responsibility that he faces.  It will be massively expensive to decide to fund those sectors that cannot survive this short term hit, to extend furlough, provide new grants, waive taxes.  If he repeats the package he produced in Spring, it will be phenomenally expensive.  Future generations will have to carry the cost, taxes may have to rise, there will be a burden that we will all have to share.

Yet my encouragement to the chancellor is: don’t panic, don’t get vertigo on top of the growing mountain of debt.  Don’t panic because, to put it bluntly, we are going to end up in colossal debt whatever we do.

He could instead choose to roll back furlough as per his plans, force employers to contribute from August onwards, end the scheme in October and provide no more grants.  Let’s be clear, this will cost billions too.  As hundreds of thousands of people become unemployed, the benefits bill will go through the roof.  In addition, businesses that could have emerged fighting out of cold storage once the revival fully begins, would be dead, holding back the recovery.  Rishi Sunak has two options, and they both involve incurring mind-blowing debt.  I want to encourage him to choose that version of debt that brings with it hope and the prospect of a swift recovery, rather than the misery and failure.

If the furlough scheme is not extended this week, I can guarantee that employers will start laying people off within the next few days to avoid paying contributions that they cannot afford in August. Alternatively, if the chancellor announces that jobs can continue to be furloughed at full cost and businesses effectively mothballed (or partially so), at least until the start of the next feast in the spring, then many will begin to see a light at the end of this very long tunnel.

At the start of lockdown, the government rightly believed that people would not comply with the medical guidance to stay home and save lives if they were afraid that by not going into work, they would have no income at all. Now businesses are opening up cautiously, but by no means recklessly. A survey for Cumbrian Tourism found that 69% of businesses are not planning to fully reopen this week.  If we want to ease the lockdown carefully, to avoid a further surge in covid cases, we need to ensure that people need not be so terrified about receiving no income that they are forced to take risks and go back to work unsafely.

During lockdown the number of people contacting me has well over doubled, and the majority of those people are facing extreme and even desperate situations.  On many occasions these are life and death issues.

Getting people back to work will be meeting many of those needs.  The idea that it is somehow grubby to care about the economy in the face of a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people, is nonsense.  It isn’t wealthy corporate bosses in my mind when I think of the fallen economy, it is the millions who won’t be able to feed their kids after the government phases out the furlough scheme.

Fighting hardship is the right thing to do.  But it isn’t a matter of choosing livelihoods over lives, because to understand the economic recovery is to understand that it will simply not happen while the risk of infection and death – and the fear of it – remains high.  There is a fine balance that needs to be found.

I want to encourage the chancellor to remember that there is no low-debt option on the table.  Given that this is so, I want him to give as many people as possible the dignity of remaining in employment by preserving businesses that could lead the recovery next spring.

Tim Farron is the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale

[singingwordwright]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Characters: Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood Additional Tags: Post-Episode: s02e07 How Are Thou Fallen, Episode: s02e18 Awake Arise Or Be Forever Fallen, Morning After, Banter, Philosophy, Fluff, wise Magnus Bane, Protective Alec Lightwood, Inquisitive Alec Lightwood Summary:

A continuation of the morning after conversation in the 2x18 flashback sneak peek.

“Well, what scares you?”

Magnus asks the question with a teasing smile that somehow feels just the tiniest bit brittle. How Alec knows that, he’s not sure. Even last night he probably wouldn’t have recognized it. After all, no one would ever accuse him of having an excess of empathy.

But here in this bed, this moment, with the warm glow of the rising sun turning everything around them to molten gold, he feels attuned to Magnus, in a way he’s not sure he’s ever felt before, not even with Jace when their parabatai bond has been at its strongest.

“Seriously? You’re gonna turn it around on me without even answering?” Alec’s jaw scratches and rasps on the pillowcase, despite the fact that he shaved before rushing to Magnus’s place last night after he came to his decision. Everything just feels more this morning. The sun is brighter, the sheets more slippery, the slow susurration of their breaths and the whisper of their skin against the bedding is a cacophony in his ears.

He’d always assumed claims that everything felt different after your first time were a myth. Now he’s inclined to believe them.

His body still hums with the memory of pleasure and if he’s still too groggy to initiate anything more just yet, there’s a sizzle along his nerves that tells him he won’t be for long.

“Fine.” Magnus sighs. “I’m abjectly terrified of deep philosophical questions before my first cup of tea in the morning.”

“Not coffee?” It’s absurd, how thrilling it is to seize upon some new sliver of knowledge to add to his growing Magnus compendium. Now he knows something he didn’t before. He has insight into Magnus’s morning routine, and it feels like a triumph.

“Coffee is for when I require brute force caffeination after pulling an all-nighter for a particularly annoying client.” Magnus shudders. “Tea is for civilized mornings.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Alec murmurs, unable to prevent himself from reaching out to sweep a knuckle down Magnus’s bare forearm. Within seconds, he plots a campaign to discover Magnus’s favorite kind of tea. His imagination starts tossing out scenarios for how to surprise Magnus with a freshly steeped cup, maybe greeting him with it right at daybreak after getting back from an all-night hunt.

His knuckle bumps the back of Magnus’s hand and without any conscious effort their hands turn, orient themselves with each other.

Magnus’s fingers lace with his. “Your turn to answer the question.”

“Oh, my turn, huh?” Alec snickers. “You call that an answer?”

“It’ll do for now,” Magnus says breezily.

“Okay, fine.” Alec shakes his head and sighs. He knows what his fears are only too well, and though perhaps they’re too heavy, here in this glorious, golden stillness, it feels safe to speak them aloud. “I’m afraid of not being able to protect everyone I care about.”

Magnus doesn’t speak, and once the floodgates are open, the words keep flowing. “That’s always been my job, you know? Jace and Izzy rush headlong into whatever they’re going to get into, and I guard the perimeter, watch their backs, make sure nothing flanks them. I guess you don’t have to reach very far for the metaphor there.”

“Given what I’ve seen you do for your family over the past couple months? Not at all.”

Alec’s gaze slides sideways to catch Magnus frowning thoughtfully. “What?”

“Nothing. I think it’s an amazing trait, that sort of devotion. Though I do wonder about the cost to you.”

Something uncomfortable squirms in Alec’s gut, dimming the edges of the glowing morning. “You’re talking about my wedding?”

Magnus’s fingers tighten around his. “Not necessarily, though it’s not a bad example. Carrying the responsibility of shielding everyone from the fallout of their own choices is a terrible burden. And it runs the risk of devolving into paternalism, which--however well-intentioned--eventually breeds resentment. Perhaps sometimes the trick is knowing when to protect, and when to make sure the people you love have what they need to protect themselves, so they can make their own choices--and occasionally take the knocks that come with those choices.”

That’s...an uncomfortable thought, and not one he wants to spend too much time on just now. Later, when he has an opportunity to mull it over properly.

Instead, Alec rolls to face Magnus again and draws Magnus’s hand up to his lips to kiss the back of it. “I thought you didn’t talk philosophy before your morning tea?”

Magnus gives him a narrow look. “I definitely do not, and I have no intention of falling for your attempts to lure me into that forbidden territory.”

“Oh really?” Alec releases his fingers and runs his hand down Magnus’s solid shoulder, and then further, along ribs and waist and hip. Slick satin skates over warm brown skin. “Maybe I can lure you into something else instead?”

Magnus makes a low sound, trapped somewhere between a purr and sigh. His knee wedges itself between Alec’s as he rolls closer, and his voice is a husky rasp. “You need only ask.”

BUY ME A CUP OF COFFEE!!

[kalinara]

So, I’ve just babbled endlessly about my hypothetical rewrite for the first half of season 2, so now to talk about the second half.

In general, I’m happier with the second half.  Mostly because my favorite character is back...so to speak, and there’s more of a sense of metaplot movement.  There are some pacing issues: it is awfully abrupt at parts, but I think some of that can be smoothed out by introducing a few key concepts earlier.

Therefore, I’d probably keep Raiders of the Lost Art through Land of the Lost as pretty much the same as is in canon, with a few caveats.

I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve decided that one big change that I would make, that I didn’t mention in my last post, is that I would jettison the whole hallucination Len bit, after all.  And I would have Leonard Snart as a member of the Legion of Doom much earlier.

I feel like this would introduce a bit more suspense in Mick’s arc.  I don’t think he’d be inclined to side with the Legion on his own without provocation, but actually seeing Len there in earlier episodes, like my hypothetical JSA/Spear episode would have a bit more of a bite.

I think I’d revamp Camelot a little and have Malcolm accompany evil!Rip to kill Charles.  I wouldn’t have Malcolm do anything, mind you.  I think it’s important storywise to have Rip be the one to kill him, but it’d give a bit of an opportunity to see how Malcolm feels about the entire evil!Rip situation.  We know from Arrow that he’s not above brainwashing, but he had an interesting little dynamic with Phil.

The other thing is that I would like to play up Sara’s rage a bit more.  Bloodlust was an important arc in season one, and all but forgotten in season two.  Sara has specifically chosen not to kill Damien Darhk at this time, out of duty.  But I’d like to see that wrestled with more.  Especially because of how I’d end the season for her.  (She’d still get the heroic moment, don’t worry.  :-))  At no point would we see her succumb to her bloodlust, but I really think it’s important to re-establish that struggle.

I think I’d keep Moonshot mostly the same too, though I think I’d want to emphasize Ray’s role a bit more.  Ray didn’t get a lot of development at all in season 2, which saddens me.  I think a lot of that might be alleviated though if we actually allow him to react to Damien a bit more.  That moment of rage in Camelot fascinated me.  Damien had imprisoned him for a year, and he just saw him mistreat a (admittedly brainwashed) friend.  I think maybe that’s a thread I’d want to develop through Moonshot and maybe Fellowship.

Here’s where we get to the big change though: Fellowship/Doomworld/Aruba.  I’d keep the original theft of the Spear, but that’s pretty much it.

Doomworld was fun, but in the end, it was a completely pointless jaunt.  The characters didn’t learn anything, because it got rewritten.  We had Mick betray the team twice, and no consequences, except bitter cynicism when the showrunners start touting the idea that Mick finally sees the team as a family.  This is Fellowship Mick, after all.  And it’s hard for me to not see him as one dickhead move by the team away from betraying them all.

But mostly I’m pissed off that the penultimate episode gave us nothing to work with in terms of character growth when a much better premise was squandered.  We know that the spear tempted the crew, but except for Mick and Amaya, we don’t even know what it SAID.

So what I’d do is expand Fellowship into two parts.  No stupid rewritten universe.  I’d go full on temptation arc.  We have eight characters at this point who have tremendous losses and issues, so let’s take two episodes and explore that for each of them.

Also, I’d have the Legion of Doom defeated soundly at the beginning of Fellowship.  Done.  The team’s real adversaries in the last three episodes are themselves.  (Though the Legion members can assist with temptation perhaps from the brig, Hannibal Lecter style.)

I kind of want to keep the idea of Mick betraying the team, but I would avoid that out of character confrontation on the bridge.  I think I’d make it entirely about Leonard.  He does care about the team, but if Len goes back, he dies.  How can he let that happen?

So maybe Mick’s hears the voices of his family, sees Len in the Brig, and just snaps and tries to use the Spear.  Which promptly ensnares each character in a personalized temptation:

Most of the characters would have pretty straight forward temptation quests but we’d actually get to see them.  Amaya’s would include Rex as well as her village.  And we’d see it all, including a vision of Mari at the end when she succeeds in defeating her temptation to manipulate fate.  Ray’s would be heavily symbolic.  Heroism, being able to make a difference grand scale, and culminate in taking the throne of Camelot and ushering in a new age, while bringing justice to his enemies.  (Eobard’s monologues from Moonshot play heavily into this.)  He passes when he realizes that he’s been a hero all along and he can work on ways to increase his positive impact on the world.  (Ideally Kendra would appear because I love Kendra).

I’ve never had a good grasp on Nate, I’ll be honest, but I think it would offer him ultimate knowledge and the power to make things better for himself and his friends.  Save Amaya’s village, bring Henry back.  A bit like Ray’s but a bit narrower scale.  Not selfish, but more self-centered.

Jax’s and Martin’s would be linked, I think.  Jax wants to be recognized as his own man, for his own accomplishments.  I think the Spear wouldn’t offer him as much direct power, but the means to achieve things on his own.  Fixing his knee.  Money for school.  A ship of his own.  Basically start up capital.  Jax of course realizes he doesn’t need any of that.  He already is a great man who can do great things, and his potential is only growing.

Martin is deathly afraid of losing more people that he loves, so his temptation would involve protecting Lily, Jax and Clarissa.  To the point of over controlling everything to keep them safe.  Of course, he’d need to let go.

Rip and Sara will have slightly different set ups though.   Rip’s avoided the temptation of using the Spear before, after all.  And Sara’s already had that lovely “I’d rather have a nightmare that’s real” speech.

So their tests will be less about using the Spear itself (though what’s offered to them should provide insight into their characters), and more about their personal flaws.  Namely, Rip’s issues with reaching out/trusting/being honest with the team, and Sara’s fear of herself.

Rip:  It’d be easy to bring back Miranda and Jonas for this, but I think that matter was put to bed in season one.  Like Sara and Laurel, this is a test that he’s already passed.  He’s also the one who has past experience with the Spear’s temptation.  The Spear's temptation of Rip is more about shame and regret. Specifically, it will offer him the chance to undo all the evils committed by evil Rip: bring back Charles, Galahad.  He can bring back Henry, who lost his family and then died because of Rip’s mission.  He can undo recruiting the team, undo Leonard’s death, and Carter’s.  He can undo falling for Miranda, and putting her in the crosshairs of the Time Masters and Savage.  He can undo himself.

Rip is tempted more than Sara is, his self-loathing is strong, but he’s too much of a Time Master to believe that he can undo his past mistakes.  Instead, he wants to take the spear and basically go, with it, into a black hole or something.  No more spear.  No more Rip.  Complete the journey he should have taken in Legendary.  This is his responsibility and his burden.  (There should be a thread of distrust in Rip’s plot.  He loves his team, but he doesn’t want to burden them and he doesn’t really trust them with the burdens.)

So of course, then, his true test is to let it go and relinquish his burden to someone else, to trust SARA to act.

Sara: I wouldn’t make Sara’s test about bringing back Laurel.  Since, as I said, she’d already resolved that in Compromised.  Sara’s test is different:  The Spear promises her wrath: the ability to destroy her enemies and eradicate anyone who has ever or will ever hurt her, her sister, and her friends.  I’d specifically highlight: her murder at Malcolm’s hands, her sister’s murder by Darhk, and Rip’s violation by Eobard, because that gives an additional temptation: they’re helpless in her brig.  She CAN deal with them now.  She can protect anyone.  “No woman should suffer at the hands of a man” can be a reality now.

But Sara doesn’t respond to this temptation by going for the Spear, but rather fleeing away from it.  Sara is terrified by this temptation and terrified that on some level she wants it.  That’s why, in the end, she’ll be the one to use it.  Because her true test is to trust herself.  When she does use the spear, she doesn’t bring back Laurel. She doesn’t obliterate her enemies as a Goddess of Rage.  She just does what needs to be done.  The Spear neutralizes itself and they’re all freed.

I’m torn when it comes to Mick, since on one hand, I want to give him the chance to undo his mistake in a heroic manner.  But on the other, who can blame him for wanting to save his friend?  But I like this betrayal better than the ones in Fellowship/Doomworld, because I think the team can accept that these sort of circumstances would not likely happen again.

That might require more thought.

In the end though, the team rejects their temptation, Rip trusts Sara, and Sara overcomes her fear of herself to use the spear.

(I admit, that I’d be inclined to throw Sara and Mick a subconscious bone.  Somewhere, hidden in time, a version of Laurel Lance and Leonard Snart wake up.  NOT because Sara couldn’t resist temptation.  She succeeded.  But more as an act of the Spear itself.)  

I suppose I’d still keep Rip leaving and the broken time at the end, but I’d make it less about having rewritten time that once and more about the team’s general carelessness along the way.  The people saved and people killed.  The zombies and stray Time Pirate.  Tokugawa and Turnbull wouldn’t have happened in this version, but I’m sure we can find a few more instances of the team trampling through history to use as a basis.  And then, go on from there.  :-)

[ETA: I admit, I probably would not include Gideon in the mass temptation, but it’s possible that she can be involved in Mick’s side of the plot.  If he does end up  choosing to help the team in the end, he may be unsnared by this whole mess, and she can help him.  That also will require more thought.]

[lesmotsdoux]

Let Us Listen to Narratives of Abuse. Let it be Enough.

In October 2017, The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that more than a dozen women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexually harassing, assaulting, or raping them. Many other women in the film industry also reported similar experiences with Weinstein, who denied any non-consensual sex. Weinstein was subsequently fired from his production company with his wife, Georgina Chapman, leaving him and multiple other public figures denouncing him.

Reading the recent allegations against Harvey Weinstein has brought me back to my own experience of abuse and the unfortunate, yet prevailing reality of calling men out for their abusive behaviours.

The first and only relationship I was ever in was incredibly manipulative. My partner was sexually coercive, emotionally and psychologically abusive and completely destroyed my sense of self. After our relationship had come to an end, I, on many occasions tried to hold him accountable: in both direct action and through engaging my experience to mutual friends and online. I have only now come to realize the additional emotional labour and work asked of me to further my experience of trauma. Albeit, this process of ‘calling out’ resulted in harassment, bullying, silencing, threats on my safety and life and most significantly: enabling and justification of his abuse— from both men and women in my circle.

Not all abusers are famous.

Though it is refreshing and significant to see so many people, especially in positions of power, standing in solidarity and calling out abuse, it has also been incredibly re-traumatizing for me and other women in my life. The reality of calling men out often results in a dominant and unfortunate outcome: we are silenced. More often that none, our narratives are questioned, disavowed or challenged. Disparagingly, when calling out my abuser his behaviour was justified and questioning displaced onto me. Not surprisingly blame, responsibility and labour is commonly displaced back on to the abused. I noticed every other aspect of my character—especially negative, coming into play when calling him out. I noticed the focus shift on me, rather than even try to deconstruct or acknowledge what he had done and continues to do.

I was gaslighted. This was something not only inflicted by him but also by every person mutually involved, who know the realities of his actions, but still choose to side with him. I felt crazy for calling him out and even attempting to perform any type of work of justice. I have kept quiet and have continually brushed off my pain and experience out of fear. I was scared to speak up when I was with him, I felt scared to speak out against him and when doing so, became afraid of my own feelings because of this particular backlash— to the point of minimizing my own emotions and questioning my narrative. These individuals continue to be complicit in both enabling and justifying his abuse. They are complicit in normalizing and forgiving abuse and are amongst the primary reasons I continue to fear speaking out. They have silenced me. 

When women come forth with stories of sexual assault, people are very quick to try and discredit them. The fact that women are afraid to name their abusers is not their fault. It is a testament to the little faith we have in the system and of the fear of our perpetrators. The justification of male dominance and abuse is everywhere, even in Hollywood. It is universal. It is socially bred. It is a stream of misogyny that runs through all of us.

It has been a special kind of hell knowing that my abuser will probably never have to take accountability for his actions. Years after the fact I still suffer through the residual effects of his actions and am continually being silenced by him and people in his surroundings. I don’t know if he will ever have to face an accountability process nor if he will take it. Thus leading me to question: how can justice continue to be performed for victims who may not have the same resources, social capital or platforms to call out their abusers?

To start a call out process is an incredibly draining and re-traumatizing thing to do to. To go after the person that assaulted you, at risk of not being believed because of social factors, is terrifying. I am thankful for these women in positions of power, as exemplified in the recent Weinstein case, for setting the stage for these discussions to be mediated in a larger and broader sense. Though it is also important to recognize the burden of calling out abusers in certain social settings and the circumstantial processes of re-traumatization visited when doing so. Nevertheless, I am learning every day to allow the space between where I want to be and where I am to inspire me and not terrify me. The recent firing of Weinstein from his company has indefinitely reconstituted a sense of hope and courage within me. Little by little I see the barriers of this kind of normalized discourse being broken down. I see action being taken and women being taken more seriously.

How do we then ensure everyone feels safe? Even when these stories are not covered by the media? I do not have the answers to this but I do feel there are ways to make us feel safer. This begins by listening. It is important for victims to feel heard. Ask the women in your life, listen to them, believe them. Stand in solidarity with victims and let those hurting feel whole again by believing their words. Reflect on your own experiences, question everything. It is work to be conscious of the misogyny and abuses of power around us but it is a vital step to performing justice. Listen to these narratives and take them as enough. Because we are scared, we are hurt, but more importantly what we feel and and what we have experienced is valid. And we do not deserved to be silenced.

Your name is Kristian Aziz.

You are my abuser

and I am no longer afraid.

[julystorms]

The Great Fandom Debate: Episode 29, Nanaba’s Death

Considering that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, it seems grotesquely fitting to talk about the anime-only reveal of Nanaba’s history as a survivor of it.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the lines Nanaba speaks in her death throes. I’d like to add my two cents because I feel that I bring a valuable and relevant perspective to this discussion.

Here are the lines:

“Ahhh! No! No! Father, stop! Father! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! Father—no!” **

They are cried out as she’s being torn apart by titans. She’s already lost most of her right leg; her femoral artery is hemorrhaging blood. Even assuming the artery contracts to try and slow the flow of blood, she’ll lose consciousness in <40 seconds and she’ll die from blood loss in less than three minutes.

A few people have commented across various posts and reblogs claiming that they interpret these lines as Nanaba recognizing her father as one of the titans attacking her, or that she’s hallucinating and she’s apologizing to her father for having joined the military. I’ve also seen people try to claim she was calling out to a priest or to God.

However, in context these interpretations don’t work. Firstly, Nanaba, using polite language, is calling out to her familial father (お父さん)—though he could be either a step-father, biological father, or adoptive father. Secondly, if Nanaba’s family was from Ragako Village, she would have gone south with Mike and/or it would have come up in the Rooftop Conversation scene. It didn’t.

Finally, you can’t take chunks of what she says and interpret them separately. They come together. Everything she says is aimed at her father. Not just, “I’m sorry.” Not just, “I won’t do it again.” She says both of those things to him. She also begs him to stop. She cries out, “No! No!”

This is not a person apologizing to their father for joining the military.

This is a person in the middle of an overwhelming PTSD Flashback. She thinks she’s with her father. She believes she’s done something wrong and is being punished for it. She’s trying to get the punishment to stop by apologizing and promising not to commit the offense again.

Nanaba is not a person who did something wrong once and got hit for it. This kind of PTSD reaction is undoubtedly the result of something bigger. These lines exist to show us that Nanaba is a survivor of child abuse.

We’re not fully privy to the type(s) of abuse inflicted upon her (though there was undoubtedly a physical component). We’re not made aware of how long it went on for, either (it could have still been ongoing at the time of her death—via letters, on furlough). We don’t get the details. All we know is that Nanaba’s experiences with her father were so traumatic that the pain of her leg being ripped off triggered a PTSD flashback.

For a more detailed look: a broken femur is one of the most painful things you can experience, yet Nanaba’s femur being snapped off triggers a PTSD flashback to her father beating her. Rating this as just physical pain, it’s obvious here which event is more painful. Yet we know what pain Nanaba sees as worse, as the bigger evil; we know what experience she associates massive amounts of pain with and the aggressor of that painful experience. It’s her father.

Most people have accepted that Nanaba is a survivor of child abuse and they all have a lot of interesting things to say. I saw many comments and reblog additions by happy and angry people, not all of whom will receive credit with their mentions here (to protect those who may wish to remain anonymous). However, I’d still like to discuss and add my own opinions to this discussion because I believe there’s a lot to be said about this character and about the backstory that has been added for her.

First, my own thoughts. I’ve been writing Nanaba for a long time. I RP’d her for a while. I had a backstory chosen for her years ago, and had mentally, at least, fleshed out her character. To give you an idea of perspective: I’m coming at this as someone who has liked this character for a very long time.

I always wrote her as a fairly confident person, but then the “Shelter from the Rain” story came out and revealed that Nanaba feels that she is a burden to her teammates, which led me to believe she has some issues with feeling that she needs to be better/that she’s not trying hard enough. Lately I’ve been writing privately with @trash-god to try and get a really deep in-depth feel for Nanaba’s character, since I’d like Nanaba to be a big part of a story I’m planning.

This reveal didn’t ruin her character for me. It didn’t alienate me. It left me feeling a little shell-shocked, a little hollow, and …uncomfortably close to her. I have a lot of fears regarding this reveal. I’m afraid people will remember Nanaba primarily as an abuse victim instead of for her actions or her personality: her resolve, her smile, the way she fought, how she took control of the situation, her belief that once you’ve signed up as a soldier you must fulfill your duty no matter how dangerous it is.

And some of the things people are saying… Honestly, reading those things makes me feel like I’m slowly crumbling.

This reveal was manipulative. It existed to make an already tragic death worse. It’s…angst fodder. It will never matter or mean anything.

It says nothing about who she was as a person.

It’s there to shock the audience, and in that it did succeed. A lot of people were shaken. I’m still shaken. I’ve watched that scene now over 20 times. I can’t stop thinking about it. I was shaken to my core over just a few lines.

It’s not the implication of child abuse that bothers me so much as the way it’s portrayed, the perspective we’re given it from.

Abuse like that…

It needs to matter. It doesn’t float in a void. The reveal made it her character instead of allowing it to be a part of her history. We were given a woman’s most private fear, something I doubt she shared with just anyone, and we saw her completely overwhelmed by it—living it, even. She shared her last moments with the person who hurt her most while she was still alive. She couldn’t escape it, couldn’t overcome it—not even as she died.

I refuse to blame Nanaba for succumbing to a PTSD flashback because she can’t help it. It happened against her will. She was terrified and in a lot of pain and those feelings are things she associates with her father. This is a reality that survivors of abuse and trauma live with, often for the rest of their lives. Nanaba can’t control her PTSD any more than any of the rest of us can.

That said, I don’t like the message it sends to victims and survivors of abuse—that they won’t be able to move past it, that it will come back to them in the end, that there’s no escaping it.

That kind of abuse…in an environment like the military… Look, it would have had an impact on Nanaba. You can’t say she was able to hide something so traumatic from everyone: from her teammates, from her supervisor, from her friends, from the person who bunked with her. If pain is a trigger, she’s probably been triggered before—where? An expedition? Training? And then there’s the fact that her father was an Authority Figure who abused her. How did she feel about the people who had power over her in training? Did anyone ever try to abuse their power over her in any way? How does she feel about Mike who is not just an authority figure but a very tall very imposing-looking man? Was there anything to overcome in regards to his presence as her immediate supervisor? What about Erwin as the head of the entire Survey Corps?

I’d also like to address the gendered stink surrounding this. I’ve accepted it as part of Nanaba’s backstory (let’s not pretend this defines her, all right?), but I think it’s really, really important for everyone to acknowledge that the writers made a conscious choice to give this to Nanaba. Not to Henning who has no real personality at all, and not to Gelgar who was suffering head trauma at the time of his death.

We know that Gelgar already had a death scene planned out. It was in the manga. He wanted a drink, didn’t want to go out sober, and was thrown into a situation of cruel irony where he got his bottle of liquor but…it was empty. Nanaba was left a little high and dry in the manga: she died silently—but I liked it because it was something I associated with her line to Mike about not wanting the cadets to see her feeling discouraged. It was something I felt connected to, because man, I really identified with her line about not showing weakness to a bunch of kids she doesn’t know well. I thought (and wrote!) that she forced herself not to cry out at her death to keep from panicking the cadets whose helplessness she felt partially responsible for.

Nanaba didn’t need anything added to her death or to her character—and she certainly didn’t need something added more than Henning (who got the least attention of all the vets at Utgard) did. I realize that Henning died instantly and so was not a good candidate for cramming in a history like this, but I want you all to think about the fact that none of our male characters have a traumatic past of this nature given this little amount of attention. Those same lines could have gone to Gelgar and had a massive impact on the audience. Here’s a fairly strong character who has shown a lot of fear, who wanted a drink, who hit his head hard enough that he lost almost all his remaining strength… And who could have cried out just the same. It would have no doubt leant another angle to his desire for alcohol, to his fear of the titans and his coping mechanisms. To a home life that we know nothing about.

But no. These lines went to Nanaba.

Just like sex/human trafficking went to Mikasa.

Just like an abusive/manipulative mother and father went to Historia.

Just like poverty went to Sasha.

Abuse went to Ymir.

An implication of rape via abuse of military power went to Hitch.

Don’t fucking tell me this shit isn’t gendered in this series. Don’t. Don’t even try. This is trauma used for flavor text. Spice. Aimed specifically at female characters. Tidbits of shit that don’t mean anything overall and never come up again/seem to impact the characters or their relationships to others. Bullshit like that.

The writers weren’t thinking any deeper than “how can we make her death sadder?” And the answer was: “Her life was painful, too.”

You can say Levi had a pretty bad past, but we get chapters devoted to it. We get a two-volume spin-off dedicated to telling that story. We see his personality page after page, chapter after chapter, extra information interviews/stories/et cetera, one after another.

We don’t get that about these female characters.

We never will.

And look. Speaking as a person with a lot of mental issues and hang-ups brought on by various factors I’m not comfortable making public knowledge, I know how they affect my life. My daily life. Including the parts people close to me can and do and will inevitably pick up on. I know how hard it is to try to exist as a “regular” person in a world that is not meant for me. I see red when I see trauma dumped into a series like this just so it can exist as…a cute little…accessory.

That’s not what it is. It’s not a fun bit of trivia. It’s not something that tells us what kind of a person she was. It just exists to make an already terrible death harder to watch. Not because we see Nanaba is rooted in the middle of a PTSD flashback and not mentally present in the situation, but because that is literally all we know of her life. So her life becomes abuse to the audience and so does her death.

This isn’t character development because nothing develops. We’re not shown her working to overcome a history of abuse. We’re not given scenes other characters being gentle to her in ways to help her get through her daily life/cope with this trauma. There’s no progress (or lack thereof) with which to compare to even make a claim that we’re seeing development. For an example: Mikasa learning to let/trust Eren look after himself is development. The fact that she was almost sold into sex/human trafficking is not.

One last comment on this subject: I think the presentation of the scene of Nanaba’s death is especially disturbing in that it manages to victimize her in a distinctly gendered way. The imagery of this scene evokes thoughts of assault, in particular of a sexual nature. I don’t know how much of this was intended and how much of it was accidental. I don’t know if we’re meant to think that Nanaba suffered that kind of abuse at the hands of her father, or because of him (prostituted to other men, for example), or if it’s just a product of how the scene was laid out in the manga. (If one titan had a hold on her and had been chewing on her leg or shoulder and she was crying out in that same way, it would not have given me the same visceral reaction or mental image/connotation.)

There is hope for those who want to look closely at Nanaba’s character, but I refuse to believe the writer(s) looked this closely themselves or even intended it, so I’m just going to stop everyone at the door and say: this is MY interpretation and NOT something I give WIT or Isayama credit for having created intentionally.

In the context of Nanaba’s history as a survivor of abuse by a prominent authority figure, one she had to call “father” (not “dad”) and speak politely to, I think her relationship to Mike is extremely important. Let me explain.

Nanaba calls Gelgar by his first name: no honorifics. The implication is that they are close, or at least view each other as equals (he returns this favor by calling her by her first name without any honorifics). Hell, Lynne talks to Gelgar that way, too.

But Mike is an authority figure—one whom Gelgar (who is in general a casual speaker) refers to respectfully (he calls him Mike-san). Nanaba, on the other hand, just calls him Mike…and not only when she’s alone. Before the rooftop scene, she calls Mike by his first name with no honorific in front of Thomas. Mike is by far her superior, one of the highest-ranked members of the Survey Corps.

For someone who was forced to call her dad “father” and speak politely to him, I think that she calls another Big Imposing Authority Figure by his first name means a lot.

I’ve mentioned this a long time ago, of course, but in light of this new context it carries much more weight. It could be a sign that she’s not weighed down anymore in her everyday life by her shit old man.

Unfortunately we don’t get to see this develop. We don’t know what Mike and Nanaba’s relationship really was, though this implies a certain closeness that isn’t implied between her and anyone else. And we will never know what obstacles she’s overcome to get to a point where she could not only call Mike by his first name, but that she could also feel comfortable going to him when she felt afraid and in need of comfort.

But I like to think it was a long journey--one they went through very carefully together.

(And I’m going to write about it.)

Shipping aside, it’s a hopeful thought. That Nanaba was not saddled with constant fear of her father every single day of her life, and that she did take what she wanted and fought for it--not just toward the end of her life, but all the way through.

Now for the things various people said about this reveal and my opinions on them:

“wonderful character development”

It’s not character development.

“it makes her memorable”

I guess in the same way I’m memorable because I don’t have teeth? Fuck off.

“her character had no hook except ‘badass woman’ in the manga”

People don’t have ‘hooks’ all right. Like from a literary standpoint I get what this is saying but it irritates me. Nanaba was a long-time veteran of a high-casualty military branch who still lost hope when she thought Rose was breached, when she thought the world was about to end. But she was talked into fighting and she did so until the very end—and gave her life to protect the helpless cadets she felt partially responsible for. “Victim of abuse” isn’t a hook. It isn’t her character.

“a cool little detail” because it shows that “even characters you don’t see much have depth to them” and “she has a backstory even if we didn’t see it or a buildup”

It’s not a “cool” “little” detail anymore than my trauma is a “cool” “little” detail of my life. Please be careful about your phrasing. That said, just like IRL everyone we see has a backstory and depth we are not necessarily privy to. It could have still been written in a way that wasn’t jarring and unnecessarily heavy-handed.

“it doesn’t add anything to her or the situation”

I won’t say it doesn’t add “anything” since information about a character in general is something, but…it doesn’t affect the situation so it’s unnecessary.

“an attempt to make her look pathetic and pitiful like Mike during his death scene”

I kind of agree. Mike’s death seemed to seek to humble a hulking giant of a dude by making him break into tears. Nanaba’s death preyed on her gender in a much more harmful way, I think. (As the “Goodnight, Sweet Dreams” story for Mike shows us that he has some PTSD that evokes tears already.)

“so on the nose” / “cheap” / “silly in its attempt to be serious and dark”

I agree with the first two but I don’t think it’s “silly” in its attempt to be serious and dark. Child abuse isn’t silly; I can’t even pretend it’s silly. It’s way darker and more serious than this series can deal with, though; it was just a cheap shot at tragic dark angst.

“no problem with the detail itself” but “pushed and unnecessary to understand her actions”

Agreed completely.

“we don’t have to know much about a character to enjoy them” / “can’t come to terms with what she said even though she never interested [them] as a character”

I agree. I’ve loved Nanaba for a long time, way before this reveal. That said, it was a very triggering thing to have suddenly thrust in your face and I know a lot of others in fandom were made very uncomfortable by it, so I’m sorry that so many people have had to deal with it.

“time spent trying to understand the character might feel thrown away?”

I don’t feel this way, but I understand why people do and I think it’s a perfectly valid way to feel. I feel frustrated, personally, by the fact that I wrote a story featuring domestic violence and Nanaba was in it and in light of this new information I feel I should go back and edit it and tell the entire story for Nanaba, too, instead of the gentle light-hearted story that was told from her perspective. A part of me feels like I’ve been telling her story wrong all these years for having failed to include it. But of course…how could I have known? I was purposefully avoiding the “she has short hair she must have been hurt by a man” stereotype.

“could have been woven in better from a narrative perspective like a realistic flashback in 26 to give her an actual little arc” 

Man oh man, I’d have really felt something if we’d gotten a hint of it in 26: her voicing her own fear, mentioning her father…or Mike mentioning her father in response to her fear-reaction re: Wall Rose (assuming he knows about her trauma and would seek to create a parallel, which is: you fought that, now you have to fight this, too. You won’t lose, you’re not lost. Not if you don’t give up). (To clarify, though, I think Mike would understand that sometimes there might not be much of her able to fight, and that’s okay.) This could be a little extra sad if we assume that she might be worried Mike is dead. Not that she needs him to stand tall, but his role as her encourager and pillar could be really important to her character, and part of her being triggered could be that she feels she’s lost it. But that’s looking way too deep at something the writers would have never bothered to attempt…

“doesn’t mean it’s sexist or shock value if it’s realistic for the world”

Our world’s pretty damn sexist but it doesn’t mean that a guy telling me I have “no business” in my field and “should be home barefoot and pregnant” isn’t a sexist comment. By definition any kind of material inserted into fiction without narrative build-up that happens to be shocking for some reason is…basically just…shock value.

“no indication of her having been abused”

I want to talk about this a little more, because I feel like…abuse isn’t something you always see. Even physical abuse. But narratively speaking it shouldn’t be inserted as a random detail of her life without any buildup. It was a poor choice. Again: shock value.

“doesn’t mean being abused is being weak”

Agreed completely. I don’t want fandom to send this message to people, either. The crime of abuse is on the abuser, not the victim. You’re not weak for doing what you have to do to survive.

“it’s not about experiencing abuse, but how it was handled”

Agreed completely. It could have been done well, but it wasn’t. End of story.

“makes nanaba weak” / “won’t be known for her bravery but as the girl who was abused” / “final moments leave big impressions” / “it’s not sexist though” / “i’d feel the same even if those lines were given to another character.”

It doesn’t make her weak. I understand the fear that she’ll be known as a victim of abuse over her actual personality traits, but I want to talk about this sexist thing you say here, where you think you’d feel the same even if the lines were given to another character. I just want to ask you if you’d refer to Gelgar, given those same lines, as “a boy” and not “a man” or “a guy” or “a veteran.” Nanaba is an adult woman, 30+ years old I’d guess. She has not been a girl for a long time, but since this reveal that word’s been thrown around a lot. Please. Stop that.

“the sexist/misogynistic messages aren’t intentional i don’t think, but they still exist”

Yeah, see below.

“latent sexism is hard to explain unless you analyze discourse and conversation because we’ve been taught it’s normal. The fact that a woman screaming in her death throes begging her father to leave her alone/promising not to misbehave again is normal enough that we consider it character development is what makes it sexism. That there was a CHOICE to give this to a female character is too.” @teetanjaeger​ [here]

This is a great post and I want everyone to read it.

“abuse used as a tragedy amplifier”

That’s exactly what it is.

“a history of abuse (and from the sound of it, horrible ongoing abuse) is canon now. we can’t pretend it doesn’t matter.” / “it won’t be explored or developed.” / “filler to amp up the sads.” @momtaku​

Yes, yes, and yes. That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with refusing to accept the anime in this instance as canon—especially if it makes you feel more comfortable.

“a lazy addition” / “cliché”

It’s definitely lazy but I don’t know if it’s cliché. I’ve never seen this kind of death in any other series that I can recall off-hand, but then again…I’m pretty selective about my reading material.

“it’s saying people are still cruel inside the walls”

HAHAHA FUCK THIS BULLSHIT. Look, I get what you’re sayin’ pal, but this is a horse that has been beat to death 3001310 times over in this series. We get it. It doesn’t need to keep being stated. The extent of Nanaba’s abuse comes to this and ONLY this: “How can we somehow make her death worse than it already is?” It’s got nothing to do with spreading more of this message we’ve already seen ten tons of.

“gratuitous and unnecessary. Girl is getting her limbs torn off by titans after losing three of her friends in battle right in front of her—that’s tragic and horrifying enough. Did we really need the implied past abuse angle thrown in there at the last second to make it even more tragic and shocking?” “some backstory or even ONE mention might have made more sense but like with Mike’s death it feels like WIT is just hamming up these deaths to make them as horrible as possible.” “grossed out” “imagery of assault, gendered violence, victimization of Nanaba.” @drinkyourfuckingmilk​ [here]

Completely agreed, especially at the imagery of assault bit. I still feel gross.

“is there sexual abuse implied in this?”

That’s up to interpretation but considering the above imagery we’re given, I think a case could be made for saying it is.

“no issue with a history of abuse” “no issue with a character who rises above it or a character who falls back into that dark place” “issue is with something serious like child abuse being treated as tragedy wank fodder” “can’t rule out the nature of her abuse/if it was sexually motivated” “all of her accomplishments now relate to that abuse, something she had no control over” “her father now colors her presentation” “she’ll never get out from under his shadow” (see: petra’s dad who made fandom see her in terms of her marriageability to a man) “didn’t need to give nanaba’s filthy father more power over her” “at the moment of her death he still had power over her” “she didn’t escape him and that’s grotesque even if we’d known about her situation all alone” “especially terrible for those who relate to her” “I’m sorry there are people using your struggle for tragedy points” @lindowyn​ [here]

Another good post. I agree. Petra’s seen by a lot of fandom the way her dad talked about her: marriageability. It’s awful. I’m afraid for how they’ll portray and talk about Nanaba in the coming years. That said, not everyone gets a full recovery or can throw off the mantle of their abuse entirely. It’s doesn’t make Nanaba weak or “less than” for what her final moments were. But damn if I hate the message it’s sending to people, especially considering how many teens read this series.

“i don’t think it was added to reinforce that strong female characters are built by and will revert to their weakness in an abused state”

I agree, but unfortunately it’s a message that seems to still be getting across. :/ It’s an unfortunate accident.

“they gave her final moments to her abuser”

Yes they did.

“it seems that people who don’t have an experience with abuse aren’t able to understand the viewpoints of those who do”

I think this is the case, especially with the younger fans. Experience goes a long way re: sympathy and empathy…

“they didn’t add this scene because they want to explore child abuse and/or nanaba’s past abuse”

They absolutely did not; you’re right. I think they’d have actually tried a little if they wanted to show us a character who had that as part of their backstory, but I know what they were doing by adding it in—just trying to get a reaction from the audience. :/

If your name is not here and you want it to be associated with your comment...let me know.

TL;DR: I’m not mad at the backstory but I’m pissed about how it was handled, and the way the fandom is arguing about it and treating it makes me feel sick. There’s a lot to discuss here. I’ve accepted that this is part of her backstory. But I don’t want fandom to make it her character and I don’t want people calling her “weak” over it, either. 

I still really love Nanaba. She’s one of my favorite characters in this series. Maybe even my favorite. (How does one pick?)

If you have any questions, concerns, thoughts, or you’d like clarification or to engage me in discussion, please feel free to send me a message.

**Edited as of 20 May 2017: Nanaba’s English Dub dialogue for this scene is as follows: “Dad, no! No, stop it! Please, I’m sorry Daddy, I’ll be a good girl from now on--I promise! Ahhh! No, Daddy, no!!”

[minnamarie1983-blog]

Bible verses for Wednesday July 26,2017

Colossians bible verses Colossians 1:16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. NIV Colossians 3:1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. NIV Colossians 3:16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. NIV Colossians 1:13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves NIV Colossians 1:18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. NIV Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters NIV Colossians 2:12 Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. NIV Colossians 1:28 We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. NIV Colossians 1:9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives NIV Colossians 1:8 And who also told us of your love in the Spirit. NIV Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. NIV Colossians 2:6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him NIV Colossians 2:13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins NIV Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. NIV Colossians 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. NIV Colossians 3:18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. NIV Colossians 3:15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. NIV Colossians 3:13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. NIV ********* Confidence bible verses 1 John 5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. NIV Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus NIV 2 Corinthians 3:4 Such confidence we have through Christ before God. NIV Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. NIV Hebrews 13:17 Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you. NIV 2 Corinthians 2:3 I wrote as I did, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. NIV Ephesians 1:12 In order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. NIV Philemon 1:21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask. NIV 1 John 2:28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. NIV 2 Thessalonians 3:4 We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. NIV Jeremiah 17:7 "But blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose confidence is in him." NIV Hebrews 10:35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. NIV Galatians 5:10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will have to pay the penalty, whoever that may be. NIV Proverbs 11:13 Gossips betray a confidence, but the trustworthy keep a secret. NIV 2 Corinthians 1:15 Because I was confident of this, I wanted to visit you first so that you might benefit twice. NIV 2 Corinthians 7:16 I am glad I can have complete confidence in you. NIV ********* Courage bible verses Joshua 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." NIV Galatians 6:9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. NIV Psalms 27:14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. NIV Deuteronomy 31:6 "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." NIV 2 Samuel 10:12 "Be strong, and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The LORD will do what is good in his sight." NIV Judges 6:12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior." NIV l Matthew 14:27 But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." NIV ************* Encouragement bible verses Philippians 2:1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion NIV Romans 15:4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. NIV Titus 1:9 He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. NIV Hebrews 12:5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as children? It says, "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you," NIV Romans 15:5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had NIV Philemon 1:7 Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord's people. NIV 2 Corinthians 7:13 By all this we are encouraged. In addition to our own encouragement, we were especially delighted to see how happy Titus was, because his spirit has been refreshed by all of you. NIV Acts 20:2 He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece NIV Acts 15:31 The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. NIV Romans 12:8 If it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. NIV 1 Corinthians 14:3 But those who prophesy speak to people for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. NIV 2 Thessalonians 2:16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope NIV ******** Friends bible verses 1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. NIV John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. NIV 1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. NIV Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling NIV 1 John 3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. NIV 2 Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. NIV John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. NIV Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. NIV Jude 1:3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that the Lord has once for all entrusted to us, his people. NIV 2 Corinthians 7:1 Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. NIV John 15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command. NIV 3 John 1:14 I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face. Peace to you. The friends here send their greetings. Greet the friends there by name. NIV 2 Peter 3:1 Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. NIV ****** Love bible verses Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. NIV Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. NIV John 14:15 "If you love me, keep my commands." NIV John 13:34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." NIV Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" NIV Micah 6:8 He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. NIV Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." NIV Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her NIV 1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you. NIV 1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. NIV John 14:23 Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." NIV Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds NIV 1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. NIV Ephesians 1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love NIV Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." NIV Luke 6:27 "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you," NIV Matthew 5:44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you NIV John 13:35 "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." NIV 1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. NIV John 15:12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. NIV 2 Timothy 1:7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. NIV Leviticus 19:18 "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD." NIV 1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. NIV Matthew 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" NIV

[yennefers-geralt]

Arya and Dany: Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors

After posting this gifset, there was some debate about the Hogwarts sortings for Arya and Daenerys with some insisting that they were both Slytherin. So I thought I would explain why I see them as fitting into Hufflepuff and Gryffindor rather than the other two houses. This got long, so I’m putting it under the cut.

TL; DR: Even though both characters have Slytherin and Ravenclaw traits, it is, IMO, their Hufflepuff and Gryffindor characteristics that most significantly form their characters, influence their choices, and represent their values.

Why Neither is Predominantly a Slytherin

Both Arya and Dany do have a number of qualities that fit with that house, such as ambition, cunning, resourcefulness, determination, self-preservation, cleverness, etc. But the novels don’t show either of them as being driven by these qualities. They don’t value the traits above others nor are their actions dictated by those traits. Instead those are qualities in both of them that are motivated by other, more dominant characteristics.

So while it’s true that Dany has been amassing power, showing great cunning in her fight against the slavers, and plans to claim the Iron Throne, that ambition is born out of duty to her family and a newfound duty to those she can protect with her position.  

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?“  – ASOS

In other words, she’s not seeking power for ambition’s sake, but so she can have the power to protect others and herself. She is also seeking the Iron Throne because she sees it as her duty as the last of the Targaryens. Initially, she supports Viserys’ claim and then Rhaego’s claim. It isn’t until they both die that she wants to pursue the throne herself. Several times she wishes she could have a normal life and wasn’t a queen with the responsibilities of the blood of the dragon. If Dany really was a Slytherin, she would have been more likely to embrace her own claim and not see it as a burden. And when she reached Astapor to buy the Unsullied, her priority would have been to head straight to Westeros with them. It wasn’t as though she knew the people being enslaved at the time or owed them anything. Yet, to the determent of her own cause Dany halts her own plans to help them. 

As far as Arya goes, the novels show her to be ambitious since she wants a position of power such as a king’s councilor or high septon. She’s also shown as extremely clever  and cunning. But while these are traits she has, Arya’s character and choices aren’t shaped by them. Like Dany, Arya often puts helping others above her own goals. For instance, as much as she yearns to reunite with her family, Arya puts a high priority on Gendry and Hot Pie’s safety as well.

She would make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. �� ASOS

If  Arya fit in Slytherin, she would be more likely to put her own needs and her own self-preservation first. 

Why Gryffindor?

It seems like Dany and Arya’s Gryffindor potential isn’t up for debate, but I’ll touch on it anyway.

A solid case for Gryffindor!Arya can be found here. The long and short of it is that Arya not only possesses traits like bravery, nerve, courage, and daring, but those are also traits that she values. What a person values has a significant influence, if not an all out determination, of who they are. She uses Syrio’s “fear cuts deeper than swords” mantra to inspire bravery in herself and pushes herself onward, even when she’s completely terrified. 

“I am a wolf, and will not be afraid. She patted Needle’s hilt for luck and plunged into the shadows, taking the steps two at a time so no one could ever say she’d been afraid.”  

In this and in countless other examples, Arya shows she will continue on even in the face of fear, which is the ultimate show of bravery. In other moments, she feels shame at not being able to show bravery and criticizes cowardliness in others. In all of this, her character and choices are guided by Gryffindor ideals.

With Dany, her Gryffindor traits grow as the series progresses. Like Arya, she has a mantra that she uses to draw strength and courage in the face of fear.   

"I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up. “I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the dragon." 

As stated before, going forward even when afraid is the definition of bravery, particularly in this series. Even though Dany initially doesn’t have the opportunity to push herself to be brave since she is under her abusive brother’s thumb. But even then, she recalls moments where she stood up to him in the past and gains the confidence to do so more often. by the time we get to ASOS, she’s wanting to lead battles and in ADWD, she’s facing down a plague to help her people and witness their suffering for herself.

Why Hufflepuff?

The more I went over the Hufflepuff traits that guide Arya and Dany’s actions, the more I realized that this is probably the house their characters naturally fit the best. Like Slytherin (and all the Hogwarts house, tbh), Hufflepuff is often misunderstood. I’ve seen it casually regarded as a house for weak characters or for the left overs. The latter is due in part to this line from one of the sorting hat songs:

"I’ll teach the lot And treat them just the same.”

While the other founders are quoted as preferring specific traits in students, Helga Hufflepuff will welcome all of them. This kind of tolerance and acceptance of all different sorts of people is exactly what Dany and Arya are about. Just looking at the variety of characters from all sorts of backgrounds that Daenerys is surrounded by proves this. She accepts all sorts of people and actively tries to be a queen to everyone. For Arya, her tolerance for a wide variety of people can be best described with this quote:

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. – AGOT

This is proven throughout the novels as Arya makes friends with a butcher’s boy, a blacksmith apprentice, the lord of Starfall, an archer from the marches, prostitutes, the lady of Acorn Hall, mummers, and on and on. 

Along with the tolerance and acceptance of others detailed above, other significant Hufflepuff traits are justice, loyalty, and hard work.

Hard Working

Even as a queen, Dany is hard working to the point that Barristan suggests she start delegating instead of taking everything onto herself. Arya also doesn’t shy away from hard work whether it’s foraging with the Night’s Watch recruits, performing back breaking labor in Harrenhal, or working in the House of Black and White.

Loyalty

Arya’s loyalty to Mycah is consistent through the novels. She not only befriends him despite his station, she fights the crown prince to protect him, and tries to get justice for him once he’s been murdered.

In some ways, it could be said that she is loyal almost to a fault. Not only is Arya unable to abandon Gendry and Hot Pie, who are slowing her down, she also takes on additional work to cover their tracks and puts herself at risk for them. Her loyalty to Gendry and insistence on rescuing him are part of the reason she and Hot Pie are captured in ACOK. She also puts herself forward and tries to hide her friends’ whereabouts from the Brotherhood, when they’re found in ASOS. 

Similarly, Daenerys hurts her own cause several times by staying loyal to the freedmen and women she’s trying to help.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strong enough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. – ASOS

“I would sooner perish fighting than return my children to bondage.“ – ADWD

"I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.” – ADWD

Justice

Many refer to what Arya and Daenerys do as revenge, but primarily, for both characters it’s about justice.

Arya has a strong sense of justice that was instilled in her by Ned. The reality that most of the world, including her own country men and Ned himself, don’t uphold those standards is a harsh blow for her. But it only gets worse as she witnesses atrocity after atrocity. That leads her to take action in enforcing justice.

I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words,” she’d heard him tell Robb and Jon once.

Looking at the list of names Arya recites, one can see that each character earned their place by committing a crime, usually murder. This isn’t about petty revenge for her.

Daenerys’ dedication to justice speaks for itself: 

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. – ASOS

Harsh justice is still justice. – ASOS

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for.”

In the end, if Dany and Arya were somehow dropped in a Hogwarts universe, in my opinion, they would both be more likely to choose Gryffindor than Hufflepuff. They both have aptitudes for each house, with a possibly high aptitude for Hufflepuff. But their value and reliance on courage seems to outweigh most everything else. 

@themagicaljess, @shegryffindor, @fleiur

[asapcvsey]

6.06.20 | Damn.

Hi, it’s me again. I know it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but I felt it was time.

I haven’t felt like myself in a long time--a sentence I’ve said many times over in the past. But this time, I really lost myself. I lost me, and the love of my life, because I was just floating through darkness.

I’m not here to play the victim. I was going through it, but so was he. We know each other like the back of our hands, yet this was a problem we couldn’t figure out for the life of us. It frustrated both of us, drove a wedge in our relationship, and pulled us apart.

I’m not here to say I’m sad or whatever, because I already went through that storm. Blaming myself because I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but this time in solitude has really helped me. It gave me time to address my insecurities, the reasons behind them, and my trauma in the past that I kept tucked behind a safety net.

One that was breached for the first time when I saw a therapist for the first time at CSUF. I realize I do a lot of self-blaming; I take turmoil to the heart, whether it’s someone depending on me, or my relationship problems. I think somewhere along the way, I realized how damaged I was, and how perfect Justin was. Don’t get me wrong; I know he isn’t perfect. But in my eyes, he is, and so is his family; this supportive, loving rock that really grounds you and humbles you.

All throughout our relationship, they’ve been so supportive; in a lot of ways, more than my parents. In a lot of ways, I envied Justin. Even though he shared everything with me. I saw how hard he worked for what he wanted, and how positive his parents were with him our entire relationship. And even with me--the support was so overwhelming that I cried about it a lot, even though I didn’t ever tell Justin that. It was this perfect family I always wanted. But I grew insecure because I didn’t feel like I deserved it.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my parents. As permissive and dismissive as they are, they’ve always been supportive. I’ve always been their “little girl.” But if I’m going to be fully honest, I felt closer to my Kuya Paul growing up than my own parents. I can name multiple situations where my mom made me regret being born and telling me so, in addition to my dad overcompensating because he had another daughter, which I also didn’t understand at the time until my mom bolstered it.

I guess I’ve felt incompetent my whole life. My problems and insecurities never felt like they bore any weight with my own family. Only with J, and I grew overly dependent on him. He’s always been my support, my rock, my everything. So anytime I felt threatened to lose him, I lost myself.

I told myself at a point that if anything happened to him, I would rather die than live without him. I’ve always known and felt that his love for me was unconditional. But that’s where it got dangerous, too. I knew what I had was good, and it made me paranoid. I know I grew distant with him. I think I was honestly trying to protect myself with these thoughts that he thought too highly of me, or expected too much of me. But the real problem was me feeling like I didn’t amount to anything. 

My heart breaks even typing that, because I never admitted it to my closest friends, let alone myself. 

I knew for a long time I was killing myself with these doubts and insecurities that even Justin couldn’t cure. But I just continued to let it kill me.

I liked to blame it on the fact that he was ambitious and confident, but the fact is I was just too insecure. His family made me feel insecure because they were too good to be true. Even with my own family, any time Justin and I had doubts about our relationship, I felt so alone. I feel like my dad felt obligated to take my side because I was his little girl, and he was my protector, even though his words never actually made me feel better. My mom has always taken Justin’s side because he’s the only person I’ve ever been with. I always appreciated her for that because my mom can be a pretty good judge of character even though she is super judgmental. 

But in the darkest times, I only felt like I had myself. Too scared and insecure to talk to anyone, to burden anyone. Because of that, I was reckless a lot. Defensive. Aggressive. Angry.

I know I have so many people I could simply reach out to via text or phonecall, but it’s just so hard for me. Justin was literally one of the only pillars of support I felt confident about. So when I lost him because of my personal issues, I really felt like I lost a huge part of me.

I know I have such a reliable support group, but reaching out has and always will be hard for me. I have trust issues to this day with everyone, regardless of how close I am to them. I feel so alone, and too scared to reach out.

Vulnerability scares me because I feel like my vulnerability has ruined most aspects of my life. I’ve always felt too scared to inconvenience my friends, and gotten backstabbed. Even though it was a long time ago, I was a permissive girlfriend, and Justin found someone else. I feel like I come off ass superficial or cocky to my friends because I can be super opinionated.

At the end of the day, I’m so scared. Like, why do people betray my trust? Why do they do things behind my back? Why am I always an afterthought to my family? It must be something wrong with me. And that’s dictated my entire life. I know that I’m not perfect as a person. I’m a difficult person to be around, be friends with, and be with, period.

But no matter what I do, I feel so small and inferior. And that’s why I am so terrified of being vulnerable and naked to anyone in my life. It seems like I’m only honest about my true feelings when my inhibitions are affected.

I’ve always kept the times I was taken advantage of or sexually assaulted to myself, because I always felt like it was my fault--I was too afraid to speak up. And while I could put on a brave face through it, I would cry by myself afterward.

I think what hurt me most was pushing Justin away. I couldn’t understand why I did it at the time, but I think I know now. I just couldn’t face the things that really triggered me. And I applied those fears and insecurities to a lot of aspects of our relationship. I lost control of myself, so when I felt like Justin was being controlling, I felt cornered and helpless.

I don’t know what to do with myself now. I’ve been journaling these past few weeks, but typing is faster.

Facing demons is really fucking hard when you do it alone. But I wanted to do it alone, because I didn’t want to depend on anyone else to protect me forever.

I feel like I was guarded and protecting myself for a long time. It’s why I pushed everyone away, and held in all of my trauma and pain. Even though I knew I had so many people to lean on; I just didn’t trust anyone enough.

That became clear to me the night I hurt myself for the first time in basically a decade. I decided for myself that I’d rather gamble with my insecurity than reach out to people that love me unconditionally.

It makes me so sad now, to think about it. I never trusted my parents enough to tell them about my depression, and only worked hard to make them proud of me. I never confided in my brother about how lonely it’s been living without him throughout my college career because I didn’t want him to inconvenience his new life in Washington. And even though I had this gigantic inferiority complex in my relationship with Justin, I never communicated that with him because I felt undeserving and paranoid that I would fuck it up later anyway.

These are SO many fucking feelings I need to unpack and absorb. My entire life has been dictated by keeping my pain to myself because I’ve never fully trusted anybody. But the fact is, I never even gave them the chance. Maybe I should start.

[araitsume]

Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 510-520: Chapter (48) The Division of Canaan

This chapter is based on Joshua 10:40-43; 11; 14-22.

The victory at Beth-horon was speedily followed by the conquest of southern Canaan. “Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale.... And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp at Gilgal.”

The tribes of northern Palestine, terrified at the success which had attended the armies of Israel, now entered into a league against them. At the head of this confederacy was Jabin, king of Hazor, a territory to the west of Lake Merom. “And they went out, they and all their hosts with them.” This army was much larger than any that the Israelites had before encountered in Canaan—“much people, even as the sand that is upon the seashore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many. And when all these kings were met together, they came and pitched together at the waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.” Again a message of encouragement was given to Joshua: “Be not afraid because of them: for tomorrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel.”

Near Lake Merom he fell upon the camp of the allies and utterly routed their forces. “The Lord delivered them into the hand of Israel, who smote them, and chased them ... until they left them none remaining.” The chariots and horses that had been the pride and boast of the Canaanites were not to be appropriated by Israel. At the command of God the chariots were burned, and the horses lamed, and thus rendered unfit for use in battle. The Israelites were not to put their trust in chariots or horses, but “in the name of the Lord their God.”

One by one the cities were taken, and Hazor, the stronghold of the confederacy, was burned. The war was continued for several years, but its close found Joshua master of Canaan. “And the land had rest from war.”

But though the power of the Canaanites had been broken, they had not been fully dispossessed. On the west the Philistines still held a fertile plain along the seacoast, while north of them was the territory of the Sidonians. Lebanon also was in the possession of the latter people; and to the south, toward Egypt, the land was still occupied by the enemies of Israel.

Joshua was not, however, to continue the war. There was another work for the great leader to perform before he should relinquish the command of Israel. The whole land, both the parts already conquered and that which was yet unsubdued, was to be apportioned among the tribes. And it was the duty of each tribe to fully subdue its own inheritance. If the people should prove faithful to God, He would drive out their enemies from before them; and He promised to give them still greater possessions if they would but be true to His covenant.

To Joshua, with Eleazar the high priest, and the heads of the tribes, the distribution of the land was committed, the location of each tribe being determined by lot. Moses himself had fixed the bounds of the country as it was to be divided among the tribes when they should come in possession of Canaan, and had appointed a prince from each tribe to attend to the distribution. The tribe of Levi, being devoted to the sanctuary service, was not counted in this allotment; but forty-eight cities in different parts of the country were assigned the Levites as their inheritance.

Before the distribution of the land had been entered upon, Caleb, accompanied by the heads of his tribe, came forward with a special claim. Except Joshua, Caleb was now the oldest man in Israel. Caleb and Joshua were the only ones among the spies who had brought a good report of the Land of Promise, encouraging the people to go up and possess it in the name of the Lord. Caleb now reminded Joshua of the promise then made, as the reward of his faithfulness: “The land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's forever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord.” He therefore presented a request that Hebron be given him for a possession. Here had been for many years the home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and here, in the cave of Machpelah, they were buried. Hebron was the seat of the dreaded Anakim, whose formidable appearance had so terrified the spies, and through them destroyed the courage of all Israel. This, above all others, was the place which Caleb, trusting in the strength of God, chose for his inheritance.

“Behold, the Lord hath kept me alive,” he said, “these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses: ... and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in. Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day: for thou heardest in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said.” This request was supported by the chief men of Judah. Caleb himself being the one appointed from this tribe to apportion the land, he had chosen to unite these men with him in presenting his claim, that there might be no appearance of having employed his authority for selfish advantage.

His claim was immediately granted. To none could the conquest of this giant stronghold be more safely entrusted. “Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance,” “because that he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel.” Caleb's faith now was just what it was when his testimony had contradicted the evil report of the spies. He had believed God's promise that He would put His people in possession of Canaan, and in this he had followed the Lord fully. He had endured with his people the long wandering in the wilderness, thus sharing the disappointments and burdens of the guilty; yet he made no complaint of this, but exalted the mercy of God that had preserved him in the wilderness when his brethren were cut off. Amid all the hardships, perils, and plagues of the desert wanderings, and during the years of warfare since entering Canaan, the Lord had preserved him; and now at upwards of fourscore his vigor was unabated. He did not ask for himself a land already conquered, but the place which above all others the spies had thought it impossible to subdue. By the help of God he would wrest his stronghold from the very giants whose power had staggered the faith of Israel. It was no desire for honor or aggrandizement that prompted Caleb's request. The brave old warrior was desirous of giving to the people an example that would honor God, and encourage the tribes fully to subdue the land which their fathers had deemed unconquerable.

Caleb obtained the inheritance upon which his heart had been set for forty years, and, trusting in God to be with him, he “drove thence the three sons of Anak.” Having thus secured a possession for himself and his house, his zeal did not abate; he did not settle down to enjoy his inheritance, but pushed on to further conquests for the benefit of the nation and the glory of God.

Another claim concerning the division of the land revealed a spirit widely different from that of Caleb. It was presented by the children of Joseph, the tribe of Ephraim with the half tribe of Manasseh. In consideration of their superior numbers, these tribes demanded a double portion of territory. The lot designated for them was the richest in the land, including the fertile plain of Sharon; but many of the principal towns in the valley were still in possession of the Canaanites, and the tribes shrank from the toil and danger of conquering their possessions, and desired an additional portion in territory already subdued. The tribe of Ephraim was one of the largest in Israel, as well as the one to which Joshua himself belonged, and its members naturally regarded themselves as entitled to special consideration. “Why hast thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit,” they said, “seeing I am a great people?” But no departure from strict justice could be won from the inflexible leader.

His answer was, “If thou be a great people, then get thee up to the wood country, and cut down for thyself there in the land of the Perizzites and of the giants, if Mount Ephraim be too narrow for thee.”

Their reply showed the real cause of complaint. They lacked faith and courage to drive out the Canaanites. “The hill is not enough for us,” they said; “and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have chariots of iron.”

The power of the God of Israel had been pledged to His people, and had the Ephraimites possessed the courage and faith of Caleb, no enemy could have stood before them. Their evident desire to shun hardship and danger was firmly met by Joshua. “Thou art a great people, and hast great power,” he said; “thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots, and though they be strong.” Thus their own arguments were turned against them. Being a great people, as they claimed, they were fully able to make their own way, as did their brethren. With the help of God they need not fear the chariots of iron.

Heretofore Gilgal had been the headquarters of the nation and the seat of the tabernacle. But now the tabernacle was to be removed to the place chosen for its permanent location. This was Shiloh, a little town in the lot of Ephraim. It was near the center of the land, and was easy of access to all the tribes. Here a portion of country had been thoroughly subdued, so that the worshipers would not be molested. “And the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there.” The tribes that were still encamped when the tabernacle was removed from Gilgal followed it, and pitched near Shiloh. Here these tribes remained until they dispersed to their possessions.

The ark remained at Shiloh for three hundred years, until, because of the sins of Eli's house, it fell into the hands of the Philistines, and Shiloh was ruined. The ark was never returned to the tabernacle here, the sanctuary service was finally transferred to the temple at Jerusalem, and Shiloh fell into insignificance. There are only ruins to mark the spot where it once stood. Long afterward its fate was made use of as a warning to Jerusalem. “Go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh,” the Lord declared by the prophet Jeremiah, “where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel.... Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by My name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh.” Jeremiah 7:12-14.

“When they had made an end of dividing the land,” and all the tribes had been allotted their inheritance. Joshua presented his claim. To him, as to Caleb, a special promise of inheritance had been given; yet he asked for no extensive province, but only a single city. “They gave him the city which he asked, ... and he built the city, and dwelt therein.” The name given to the city was Timnath-serah, “the portion that remains”—a standing testimony to the noble character and unselfish spirit of the conqueror, who, instead of being the first to appropriate the spoils of conquest, deferred his claim until the humblest of his people had been served.

Six of the cities assigned to the Levites—three on each side the Jordan—were appointed as cities of refuge, to which the manslayer might flee for safety. The appointment of these cities had been commanded by Moses, “that the slayer may flee thither, which killeth any person at unawares. And they shall be unto you cities for refuge,” he said, “that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment.” Numbers 35:11, 12. This merciful provision was rendered necessary by the ancient custom of private vengeance, by which the punishment of the murderer devolved on the nearest relative or the next heir of the deceased. In cases where guilt was clearly evident it was not necessary to wait for a trial by the magistrates. The avenger might pursue the criminal anywhere and put him to death wherever he should be found. The Lord did not see fit to abolish this custom at that time, but He made provision to ensure the safety of those who should take life unintentionally.

The cities of refuge were so distributed as to be within a half day's journey of every part of the land. The roads leading to them were always to be kept in good repair; all along the way signposts were to be erected bearing the word “Refuge” in plain, bold characters, that the fleeing one might not be delayed for a moment. Any person—Hebrew, stranger, or sojourner—might avail himself of this provision. But while the guiltless were not to be rashly slain, neither were the guilty to escape punishment. The case of the fugitive was to be fairly tried by the proper authorities, and only when found innocent of intentional murder was he to be protected in the city of refuge. The guilty were given up to the avenger. And those who were entitled to protection could receive it only on condition of remaining within the appointed refuge. Should one wander away beyond the prescribed limits, and be found by the avenger of blood, his life would pay the penalty of his disregard of the Lord's provision. At the death of the high priest, however, all who had sought shelter in the cities of refuge were at liberty to return to their possessions.

In a trial for murder the accused was not to be condemned on the testimony of one witness, even though circumstantial evidence might be strong against him. The Lord's direction was, “Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die.” Numbers 35:30. It was Christ who gave to Moses these directions for Israel; and when personally with His disciples on earth, as He taught them how to treat the erring, the Great Teacher repeated the lesson that one man's testimony is not to acquit or condemn. One man's views and opinions are not to settle disputed questions. In all these matters two or more are to be associated, and together they are to bear the responsibility, “that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” Matthew 18:16.

If the one tried for murder were proved guilty, no atonement or ransom could rescue him. “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Genesis 9:6. “Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death.” “Thou shalt take him from Mine altar, that he may die,” was the command of God; “the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” Numbers 35:31, 33; Exodus 21:14. The safety and purity of the nation demanded that the sin of murder be severely punished. Human life, which God alone could give, must be sacredly guarded.

The cities of refuge appointed for God's ancient people were a symbol of the refuge provided in Christ. The same merciful Saviour who appointed those temporal cities of refuge has by the shedding of His own blood provided for the transgressors of God's law a sure retreat, into which they may flee for safety from the second death. No power can take out of His hands the souls that go to Him for pardon. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us;” that “we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” Romans 8:1, 34; Hebrews 6:18.

He who fled to the city of refuge could make no delay. Family and employment were left behind. There was no time to say farewell to loved ones. His life was at stake, and every other interest must be sacrificed to the one purpose—to reach the place of safety. Weariness was forgotten, difficulties were unheeded. The fugitive dared not for one moment slacken his pace until he was within the wall of the city.

The sinner is exposed to eternal death, until he finds a hiding place in Christ; and as loitering and carelessness might rob the fugitive of his only chance for life, so delays and indifference may prove the ruin of the soul. Satan, the great adversary, is on the track of every transgressor of God's holy law, and he who is not sensible of his danger, and does not earnestly seek shelter in the eternal refuge, will fall a prey to the destroyer.

The prisoner who at any time went outside the city of refuge was abandoned to the avenger of blood. Thus the people were taught to adhere to the methods which infinite wisdom appointed for their security. Even so, it is not enough that the sinner believe in Christ for the pardon of sin; he must, by faith and obedience, abide in Him. “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” Hebrews 10:26, 27.

Two of the tribes of Israel, Gad and Reuben, with half the tribe of Manasseh, had received their inheritance before crossing the Jordan. To a pastoral people, the wide upland plains and rich forests of Gilead and Bashan, offering extensive grazing land for their flocks and herds, had attractions which were not to be found in Canaan itself, and the two and a half tribes, desiring to settle here, had pledged themselves to furnish their proportion of armed men to accompany their brethren across the Jordan and to share their battles till they also should enter upon their inheritance. The obligation had been faithfully discharged. When the ten tribes entered Canaan forty thousand of “the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh ... prepared for war passed over before the Lord unto battle, to the plains of Jericho.” Joshua 4:12, 13. For years they had fought bravely by the side of their brethren. Now the time had come for them to get unto the land of their possession. As they had united with their brethren in the conflicts, so they had shared the spoils; and they returned “with much riches ... and with very much cattle, with silver, and with gold, and with brass, and with iron, and with very much raiment,” all of which they were to share with those who had remained with the families and flocks.

They were now to dwell at a distance from the sanctuary of the Lord, and it was with an anxious heart that Joshua witnessed their departure, knowing how strong would be the temptations, in their isolated and wandering life, to fall into the customs of the heathen tribes that dwelt upon their borders.

While the minds of Joshua and other leaders were still oppressed with anxious forebodings, strange tidings reached them. Beside the Jordan, near the place of Israel's miraculous passage of the river, the two and a half tribes had erected a great altar, similar to the altar of burnt offering at Shiloh. The law of God prohibited, on pain of death, the establishment of another worship than that at the sanctuary. If such was the object of this altar, it would, if permitted to remain, lead the people away from the true faith.

The representatives of the people assembled at Shiloh, and in the heat of their excitement and indignation proposed to make war at once upon the offenders. Through the influence of the more cautious, however, it was decided to send first a delegation to obtain from the two and a half tribes an explanation of their conduct. Ten princes, one from each tribe, were chosen. At their head was Phinehas, who had distinguished himself by his zeal in the matter of Peor.

The two and a half tribes had been at fault in entering, without explanation, upon an act open to such grave suspicions. The ambassadors, taking it for granted that their brethren were guilty, met them with sharp rebuke. They accused them of rebelling against the Lord, and bade them remember how judgments had been visited upon Israel for joining themselves to Baalpeor. In behalf of all Israel, Phinehas stated to the children of Gad and Reuben that if they were unwilling to abide in that land without an altar for sacrifice, they would be welcome to a share in the possessions and privileges of their brethren on the other side.

In reply the accused explained that their altar was not intended for sacrifice, but simply as a witness that, although separated by the river, they were of the same faith as their brethren in Canaan. They had feared that in future years their children might be excluded from the tabernacle, as having no part in Israel. Then this altar, erected after the pattern of the altar of the Lord at Shiloh, would be a witness that its builders were also worshipers of the living God.

With great joy the ambassadors accepted this explanation, and immediately carried back the tidings to those who sent them. All thoughts of war were dismissed, and the people united in rejoicing, and praise to God.

The children of Gad and Reuben now placed upon their altar an inscription pointing out the purpose for which it was erected; and they said, “It shall be a witness between us that Jehovah is God.” Thus they endeavored to prevent future misapprehension and to remove what might be a cause of temptation.

How often serious difficulties arise from a simple misunderstanding, even among those who are actuated by the worthiest motives; and without the exercise of courtesy and forbearance, what serious and even fatal results may follow. The ten tribes remembered how, in Achan's case, God had rebuked the lack of vigilance to discover the sins existing among them. Now they resolved to act promptly and earnestly; but in seeking to shun their first error, they had gone to the opposite extreme. Instead of making courteous inquiry to learn the facts in the case, they had met their brethren with censure and condemnation. Had the men of Gad and Reuben retorted in the same spirit, war would have been the result. While it is important on the one hand that laxness in dealing with sin be avoided, it is equally important on the other to shun harsh judgment and groundless suspicion.

While very sensitive to the least blame in regard to their own course, many are too severe in dealing with those whom they suppose to be in error. No one was ever reclaimed from a wrong position by censure and reproach; but many are thus driven further from the right path and led to harden their hearts against conviction. A spirit of kindness, a courteous, forbearing deportment may save the erring and hide a multitude of sins.

The wisdom displayed by the Reubenites and their companions is worthy of imitation. While honestly seeking to promote the cause of true religion, they were misjudged and severely censured; yet they manifested no resentment. They listened with courtesy and patience to the charges of their brethren before attempting to make their defense, and then fully explained their motives and showed their innocence. Thus the difficulty which had threatened such serious consequences was amicably settled.

Even under false accusation those who are in the right can afford to be calm and considerate. God is acquainted with all that is misunderstood and misinterpreted by men, and we can safely leave our case in His hands. He will as surely vindicate the cause of those who put their trust in Him as He searched out the guilt of Achan. Those who are actuated by the spirit of Christ will possess that charity which suffers long and is kind.

It is the will of God that union and brotherly love should exist among His people. The prayer of Christ just before His crucifixion was that His disciples might be one as He is one with the Father, that the world might believe that God had sent Him. This most touching and wonderful prayer reaches down the ages, even to our day; for His words were, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word.” John 17:20. While we are not to sacrifice one principle of truth, it should be our constant aim to reach this state of unity. This is the evidence of our discipleship. Said Jesus, “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.” John 13:35. The apostle Peter exhorts the church, “Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.” 1 Peter 3:8, 9.

[minnamarie1983-blog]

Bible verses for Saturday August 12,2017

Confidence bible verses 1 John 5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. NIV Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus NIV 2 Corinthians 3:4 Such confidence we have through Christ before God. NIV Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. NIV Hebrews 13:17 Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you. NIV 2 Corinthians 2:3 I wrote as I did, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. NIV Philemon 1:21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask. NIV 1 John 2:28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. NIV 2 Thessalonians 3:4 We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. NIV Philippians 1:14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear. NIV Jeremiah 17:7 "But blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose confidence is in him." NIV Hebrews 10:35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. NIV Philippians 3:3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh – NIV Galatians 5:10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will have to pay the penalty, whoever that may be. NIV Colossians 2:5 For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. NIV 2 Corinthians 1:15 Because I was confident of this, I wanted to visit you first so that you might benefit twice. NIV ~~~~~~~~~~ Courage bible verses Joshua 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." NIV Galatians 6:9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. NIV Psalms 27:14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. NIV Deuteronomy 31:6 "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." NIV Joshua 1:18 "Whoever rebels against your word and does not obey it, whatever you may command them, is to be put to death. Only be strong and courageous!" NIV 2 Samuel 10:12 "Be strong, and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The LORD will do what is good in his sight." NIV Judges 6:12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior." NIV ~~~~~, Encouragement bible verses Philippians 2:1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion NIV Romans 15:4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. NIV Titus 1:9 He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. NIV Hebrews 12:5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as children? It says, "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you," NIV 2 Corinthians 1:5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. NIV Romans 15:5 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had NIV Hebrews 6:18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. NIV 2 Corinthians 1:6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. NIV Philemon 1:7 Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord's people. NIV 2 Corinthians 7:13 By all this we are encouraged. In addition to our own encouragement, we were especially delighted to see how happy Titus was, because his spirit has been refreshed by all of you. NIV Acts 15:31 The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. NIV Romans 12:8 If it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. NIV ~~~~~~ Friendship bible verses James 4:4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. NIV Ezra 9:12 Therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them at any time, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance.' NIV Proverbs 22:24 Do not make friends with the hot-tempered, do not associate with those who are easily angered NIV Deuteronomy 23:6 Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live. NIV John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. NIV 1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. NIV ~~~~~~ Love bible verses Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. NIV Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. NIV John 14:15 "If you love me, keep my commands." NIV John 13:34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." NIV Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" NIV Micah 6:8 He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. NIV Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." NIV Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her NIV 1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you. NIV 1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. NIV John 14:23 Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." NIV Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds NIV Philippians 2:1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion NIV 1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. NIV Jude 1:2 Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance. NIV Colossians 1:13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves NIV ~~~~~~~ Prayer bible verses Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. NIV James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. NIV Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. NIV Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. NIV John 17:20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message," NIV Ephesians 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. NIV Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. NIV Acts 14:23 Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. NIV 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Pray continually, NIV Matthew 21:22 "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." NIV Colossians 4:2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. NIV Philippians 1:9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight NIV John 17:15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. NIV Romans 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. NIV 1 Timothy 4:5 Because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer. NIV 1 Peter 4:7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. NIV