#i refuse to let go of that name because it means POEM or SPELL in LATIN

[unionizedwizard]

literally have to go by gino irl because my actual name is too complicated for most people and nobody has ever heard of it (understandable, 90 years old southern italian grandpas seem to have a monopoly over it for some reason), nobody ever pronounces it correctly (fair enough, i refuse to add an accent [é] to help with that because It's Not How You Spell It) and most people here misread it as a feminine name (linguistically sound assumption) and so it's a Whole Thing. anyway i know you're all thinking "oh, trans people picking the weirdest oldest names ever for some reason" but NO! this is the masculine form of my birth name! this is literally Just My Name! i was named after a specific southern italian woman who also happened to be married to an equally southern italian man with THE EXACT SAME NAME, just one letter off, for some reason, so it couldnt possibly get any more historically accurate. and THEN my last name is a relatively common (male) first name so it just adds to the confusion and people just tend to think my last name is my first name and then nothing checks out ID wise and i give headaches to receptionists everywhere. sorry..... :(

[bestworstcase]

farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 16-17

back at it.

re: romance novel: “I saw a patch of red flowers, and I thought they would be striking against Cass’s dark hair. She wasn’t exactly a flower wearer, but maybe she’d let me pin one on her dress? The color would set off her fair skin so perfectly. And she could at least keep some in a vase by her bed. I refused to believe there was a person alive who didn’t feel better with freshly cut flowers in her room.” that’s gay rapunzel

i do admittedly have some ambivalent feelings about this passage. on the one hand it’s - yes, very gay. but also it feels to me like such a clear illustration of the difficulty rapunzel has with empathy and listening to other people when their experiences or expectations or needs diverge from hers; she acknowledges that cass isn’t into flowers, but follows it up with “but maybe i can get her to wear some anyway,” and of course there’s the whole refusing to believe anyone could feel differently about having flowers in their room than she does. and it also has this weird undercurrent of - god, i don’t know how to phrase it in a succinct way.

this specific passage was on my mind when i wrote this bit in moonless air chapter 4: 

Still. She plucks at the stitches of her jack-of-plate, self-conscious.

It’s the nicest thing she owns. Soft green velvet sewn over sturdy layers of canvas and steel. Armor. She’d saved up for more than a year to buy it for herself on the anniversary of her adoption two years ago, and at the time it had been nothing but a frivolous luxury. Stupid, really. She’d never had real reason to wear it in Herzingen, not for anything besides teaching herself how to move with its weight and entertaining ridiculous fantasies—but last night, Moira had intimated that their destination in Vardaros is fancy as well as dangerous. So the jack seemed… appropriate.

Sharp. She twitches.

Clothing—fashion isn’t– Cassandra’s always hated dresses. It’s a trait that demands a certain amount of indifference to what other people think of her appearance.

And she can do indifference. Cassandra has indifference in spades. But nobody’s ever paid her a compliment quite like that before: baldly appreciative. Straightforward. Not like all the times Rapunzel coaxed her into tolerating crowns of late-summer flowers because the colors look so nice with your complexion! and not like the Commander’s gruff praise for how grown-up she looked in the hideous pastel gowns that had come with the lady-in-waiting gig.

because – like, cass is butch, and “not a flower wearer,” and here in lost lagoon we have this passage where rapunzel expresses this pretty straightforward attraction to cassandra but in the context of imagining cassandra presenting in a much more feminine way than she is comfortable with - in a dress with flowers in her hair etc - and it just... rubs me the wrong way a little bit. and this is not to say like cass can’t be butch and put a flower in her hair but when it’s paired with rapunzel specifically acknowledging that cass doesn’t WANT to wear flowers then it - yeah i feel weird about this passage. 

and that translated into cass having a whole little crisis over being complimented for her appearance without implicit pressure to be more feminine for the first time ever

anyways

i still can’t get over the name monsieur lefleur 

rapunzel summarizes hervanian culture as “brash but can be funny; distrustful but not mean-spirited” so, basically, they are americans

she is feeling very Prepared to meet with them, in contrast to every other time she’s met with foreign dignitaries or nobility before this. eugene tries to warn her that cass is PISSED with her and she just brushes him off, as one does, by saying that cass is “not all bubbles and moonbeams” but that she is “a softy” inside. 

of course this leads up to cass blowing up and going off while rapunzel tries to calm her down and just - groan this line. 

“People don’t change! You told a criminal a detail that puts my entire future at risk!”

how many times have i said “cass doesn’t act this way in tts” i feel like it’s a constant drumbeat. but i have to say, again, that cass doesn’t act this way in tts. i don’t think it’s unrealistic for her to think like this, given that her father is essentially corona’s chief of police and she idolizes him, but i feel the need to reiterate that there is zero sign of cass having this mindset in tts proper. and it does sort of bother me when people read this into cass’s character because it undermines and delegitimizes her dislike of eugene in early s1. 

which like. tts itself sort of frames their mutual dislike as a mutual problem, but it’s... really not? and imo the best illustration of this is in this exchange from cassandra vs eugene: 

CASSANDRA: Unbelievable. Did you eat all the cookies?

EUGENE: I’m not a pig, Cassandra. I ate all of your cookies; I’m saving mine for later.

CASSANDRA: Ugh– you are nothing but a self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant freeloader!

EUGENE: [scoffing] You know, I can rattle off insulting adjectives describing your personality, too, but to do so would imply that you actually have a personality, and I just wouldn’t feel right about doing that!

this is the dynamic every time they squabble in early s1. 

1 - eugene does something selfish or thoughtless - in this case taking all the cookies and milk for himself. 

2 - cassandra calls him out for it, and he doubles down, often taking a potshot at her in the process. 

3 - cassandra gets mad and calls his behavior what it is (self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant)

4 - eugene gets defensive and insults her as a person, typically with variations on calling her icy / unfeeling / humorless / joyless. 

which is to say, their fights are initiated by eugene’s poor behavior, and cassandra attacks his behavior but eugene attacks cassandra herself. like, eugene is the dude who insults you and then goes “pfft why can’t you take a joke” when you get upset with him. that’s what this is. 

moreover, when eugene’s, for lack of a better term, residual flynn rider-ness starts to taper off, cassandra’s criticism of his behavior also tapers off, AND she gets much gentler about how she phrases this criticism once he starts to actually take it on board. but there’s no accompanying shift in the way eugene speaks to and about her - the jibes about her being humorless or cranky or soulless literally never stop and at no point does he ever seem to consider that cass might not appreciate them as much as he thinks she does. 

(to be clear, i don’t think they bother cass very much if at all - but they do create and reinforce a perception on eugene’s end that cass Doesn’t Have Feelings and the background radiation of that contributes to the toxicity that develops in season 2.)

like again, pulling from cassandra vs eugene here, eugene is extremely insulting towards cassandra even when he’s ostensibly coming to her defense: 

RANDOM THUG: Look at that, Fancy-Boots has got something to say!

EUGENE: Name-calling? Come on, we’re better than that, aren’t we? Sure, we could sit here and make fun of each other—tease Cassandra for her chronic joylessness, or me for my uncommonly good looks, or you for your poor dental hygiene, tragic fashion sense, robust body odor, and what are clearly woefully misguided decision making skills, but do you really want to go down that road?

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY - besides demonstrating an obvious willingness to give eugene another chance once he starts doing the bare minimum to not be a dick to her, cassandra doesn’t like eugene because eugene is an asshole to her and takes the enormous privileges he is given completely for granted. 

saying “well she doesn’t like him because he was a criminal and she doesn’t believe criminals ever change” erases that completely and reframes the conflict as cassandra treats eugene unfairly because of bigotry that she needs to unlearn. lost lagoon takes this even one step further in that lost lagoon eugene is genuinely trying to be responsible, he is taking his new lot in life seriously. he doesn’t need cass to tell him off for acting like an ass because he doesn’t act like an ass. he shows actual interest in getting to know cass and makes an effort to break through her hostility in order to get along. unlike his tts counterpart, lagoon eugene really doesn’t do anything wrong, and that makes cassandra’s intense hatred of him on the grounds that he was a thief look completely irrational and, like i said, bigoted. 

it’s just very frustrating to me.

anyways

rapunzel tries very hard to persuade cass that it’s actually totally fine that she told eugene the secret because she just can’t keep secrets from eugene (except the lagoon which she has arbitrarily decided is totes fine to keep secret and i am pretty sure this contradiction never gets pointed out) - and cass is having none of it, and of course arianna interrupts before anything can get resolved. 

they rush out and monsieur lefleur interrupts them, asking questions about the lost lagoon. he reveals that he heard an ~elegant cloaked person~ inquiring about it in the library. he asks for the book. they say no. the red herring smells to high heavens, and the chapter ends with rapunzel subtly telling cass to hide the book ~for the safety of the kingdom~ and oh my god i just can’t handle the low stakes. 

seventeen picks up from there with cassandra’s point of view; she’s suspicious of lefleur and angsts a lot about how she has no time to train and she needs to get out of corona yada yada. her plan is literally to just walk until she finds someone to hire her on as a guard which. lol. this kid.

i feel like this is the strongest passage in the whole book: 

She said there couldn’t be any secrets between Eugene and her. But why—especially when it meant sacrificing my future and everything I held dear? I’d read about romantic love in poems, and it seemed to me like a spell. Sounded great for the lovebirds, but what about the other people.

Did I just not matter in the face of this love, even though I had been the one to risk everything to show Rapunzel the world? Was I just supposed to fall on my sword because Eugene was uncomfortable that he didn’t have every last piece of information about Rapunzel?

she has a brief argument with owl, who is a pretty obvious stand-in for her own doubts / feeling that she truly belongs in corona and doesn’t actually want to leave. but she has no choice! but it’s stormy, so she can’t leave! oh no!

(i think if tts really strongly felt she had no choice but to free corona, a measly thunderstorm would not be enough to stop her.)

[collectsfallenstars]

Azaleas for Lt. Jeong Taeeul: A close reading of Kim Sowol’s poetry in “The King: Eternal Monarch”

Korean Literature is divided into the Classical Period and the Modern Period. Literature under the Classical Period is heavily influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism, and to some extent, Taoism.  The earliest form of literature came about in the 8th Century during the Shilla Kingdom.

The break-off point between Classical and Modern Literature is found in the Choson Dynasty which lasted from 1392 to 1910.  Modern Korean Literature flourished when the Chinese writing script took a backseat to Hangul, the Korean alphabet.  It was developed by King Sejong, or Sejong the Great, who ruled between 1418 – 1450.  If you watched the first episode of The King: Eternal Monarch, that huge statue of a seated king in the middle of Gwanghwamun Square where Lee Minho hugged Kim Goeun without any warning? That’s King Sejong.  Thanks to him, Korean language and Korean literature flourished.

Now, during the Choson Dynasty, two kinds of poetic forms came about— Shijo and Kasa and some of the most common subject matters from these poetic forms can be found in the Kim Sowol poems that were used in the kdrama, “The King: Eternal Monarch.”  These are the themes of nature, grief, and the loneliness of traveling.  However, when used against the backdrop of the drama, the poems, written during Kim Sowol’s lifetime between 1902-1934, take on a new life.

Let’s take a look at the poet’s life first and see how it informs our understanding of some of his poems.  He was born in 1902 in an area that now belongs to North Korea.  He suffered from a troubled childhood with a father who was mentally ill and beaten up by Japanese construction workers and therefore was unable to provide for his family.  Kim Sowol was then raised and supported by his grandfather and his aunt.  It has been said that it was his aunt who sang folk songs to him and told him traditional stories during his childhood and that it was this that stirred his love and talent for poetry.

But aside from poetry, he also loved a woman named O-sun.  However, during their time, love rarely played a role in marriages and they were soon married off to different people.  O-san then committed suicide at a very young age and losing her led to the first and last poetry collection that Kim Sowol ever published— “Azaleas.”  His poetry carried the quality and rhythm that could be found in old Korean folk songs, possibly the ones his aunt had sung to him when he was a child.   However, Kim Sowol found it hard to find his place in the world with just his poetry but without O-san.  He committed suicide in 1934 at 32 years old.  He remains, to this day, the most beloved Korean poet.

INVOCATION OF THE DEAD Kim Sowol

O shattered name!
 O name parted from me in mid-air! O name without owner! O name I’ll call until I die!

The words left in my heart,
 In the end, I wasn’t able to utter all. O you whom I loved! O you whom I loved!

The red sun is hanging from the western summit. The herd of deer also cry sadly.
 Atop the mountain that has fallen off to the side, I call your name.

I call your name til I can’t bear the grief of it. I call your name til I can’t bear the grief of it. The sound of my call sweeps forward but sky and earth are too far apart.

Though I turn to stone standing here O name I’ll call until I die!
 O you whom I loved!
 O you whom I loved!

This poem is largely different from the rest of the collection because it is loud in its grief while the rest in the collection are like “Azaleas,” quiet, subdued and dignified in their sadness.  In this one, the persona calls out to the beloved directly with lines that begin with an expulsion of breath and grief in “O,” and punctuated with exclamation points.  But even in this intensity, the persona still can’t call out the beloved’s name.

There are several reasons for this.  It pains the persona to even say the beloved’s name.  Or it could be that the beloved’s name is as lost to the persona as the beloved is.  Or it could be a staunch denial of the beloved’s departure.  I’m going to go with the last one.    

This poem is closely linked to the Korean pre-funeral custom called the Chohon, which involves calling out the name of the dead 3 times by the Sangju, the chief mourner who is usually the closest family member of the deceased. They go to the roof of their house, face north, and wave the deceased traditional shirt or blouse in the wind.

This stems from the Confucian belief that the human being is made up of the Hon (ethereal soul) and the Baek (corporeal soul) and the union of both is what keeps humans alive while their separation means death.  The Chohon is then performed to keep the Hon from leaving the world because they hold on to the hope that they can bring back the soul to the dead. It is only when this ritual is finished that they can confirm the death of the person and then they can begin with the funeral rites.

Now, in the first stanza, “O name” appears 4 times in 4 different ways that can’t be called a repetition.  The second stanza only contains 2 of the same lines with “O you” in it. The third stanza has one line with “your name” in it while the fourth stanza has only two lines with “your name.”  The fourth stanza contains 3 lines but 1 has “o name” and the 2 have “o you.”  The persona avoids the Chohon, even though the beloved is gone.  By refusing to turn this into a Chohon, the persona evades thinking of the beloved as completely lost.

“O shattered name!” is a reference to the separation of the Hon from the Baek, resulting in the death of the beloved. “O name parted from me in mid-air” speaks of someone being gone too soon, someone who is only in the middle of his or her life. This could also mean that they are gone before the persona could even hold them, like a ball thrown in their direction and disappearing before it can be caught.  “O name without an owner!” is especially painful because even though the name belongs to no one now, it’s still in the memory and on the lips of the persona.

The second stanza has many different translations but the gist of it means that even at this point when the beloved has been lost forever, without any hope of return, he still can’t bring himself to say the beloved’s name and complete the Chohon.  He refuses to accept her death.  Undoubtedly, this sentiment comes so close to Kim Sowol’s loss of his own beloved, O-sun.

The third stanza speaks of the setting sun and the lament of animals— it is grief found at the end of something.  The top of the mountain replaces the roof of the house the persona should be on top of because they did not belong to a house, to anywhere, really.  They probably belonged to other people too, like KSL and O-sun.  

On the fourth stanza, the persona stands on top of that mountain, calling out the beloved’s name and hoping to bring back their soul, knowing it is impossible. The grief of this practice in futility comes to him in the realization that the sky and the earth are too far apart.  No matter how long he stands there calling out her name, or how loud he can be, she will never hear him, nor return.

But even under the light of his sad epiphany, he remains steadfast in his love for her. He says he will call out her name until he dies, loving her and only her, for the rest of his remaining life and possibly even after death.  It isn’t too far off to think that this may have been exactly what Kim Sowol felt at the death of his beloved.

Now, how does its use within the world of The King: Eternal Monarch add another layer to the poem.  In the third episode, Lee Gon (Lee Minho) stood in the middle of a bamboo forest arguing with Jeong Taeeul (Kim Goeun) about his name.  He’s trying to convince her that a parallel world exists alongside modern day Korea and in that parallel world, Korea is spelled with a letter C and operates as a Parliamentary Monarchy.  He is also trying to convince her that he is the king there.  Jeong Taeeul, being a police officer, insists on asking for his identification, his name, and he refuses to give it because there is a rule in Corea that no one is allowed to use the king’s name.  At this, JTE makes fun of him and asks him if he is Kim Sowol, quoting the second stanza of “Invocation of the Dead” to him.

Spoiler alert, they eventually fall in love.  But this moment leads LG to a bookstore in search for Kim Sowol’s one and only poetry collection, “Azaleas.”  He finds it and opens it to the poem that JTE quoted to him.  In the background, we hear Lady Noh, whom he eventually gifts the book to, reciting the poem. It switches to LG’s voice at the last line, indicating that he had read the poem as well.  On screen, the frame is split between JTE and LG, directing the viewer to relate the poem to the pair of lovers.

The poem then acts as, of course, a foreshadowing of the events to come. Spoiler alert, no one died. So obviously, the poem does not act in its original capacity as some form of elegy for the dead.  What it does do is drive home the point that LG and JTE are going to have a love that will be threatened by separation.  Love between two people from parallel worlds with a ticking time bomb for a gate between them will not be easy.  It will also be painful, should the separation be permanent.

Now, if one were to ask you, if you knew how painful this love was going to turn out to be, would you still have allowed yourself to fall in love?

LG’s answer will be a quick yes. He’s been in love with JTE for most of his life, and has literally held on to her name, by her ID, since he was 8 years old.  JTE, on the other hand, took longer to gain access to, and use his name.  He gives his name to her on the 5th episode, and she uses it to him on the 6th episode.   She now has his name and will now know what to call out and hold on to, when she loses him in the future. Spoiler alert, she gets him back on the last episode.

So even though they don’t exactly lose each other like the persona and his beloved in “Invocation of the Dead,” or even Kim Sowol and O-sun, who lost their beloved to the sky while they remained on earth, the poem points us to a different kind of physical separation— that of two parallel worlds. While the persona in the poem vowed that he would defy time and space by loving her until his death, and even beyond, in the world within The King: Eternal Monarch, that vow was fulfilled.  They found a love that could defy time and space.

(from Episode 10, The King: Eternal Monarch) *if anyone can help me find the title for this poem, I shall be eternally grateful to you ^_^ ---------------- by Kim Sowol

When the sun goes down over the white rapids, I shall wait by the gate. Between the shadows of the birds singing at dawn, I see the world brightening up In its still calmness. With my eyes fixated on the traveler passing by At the break of dawn, “Is that you?” “Is that you?"

By the tenth episode, LG and JTE have redefined and upped the game for long distance relationships.  Much like the Kasa poems from the Choson Dynasty, the 2nd and 3rd poems used in “The King: Eternal Monarch” have grief and loneliness in travel as their subject matter.  Long distance relationships have it easy now with plenty of choices for communication and travel (except now, with the ongoing pandemic).  But one can only imagine what it was like for a lover to leave during the feudal Choson Dynasty.  There is no assurance of a safe return, nor of an actual return.  The waiting would seem endless without any word, just silence for months or even years.  One can’t just text, “Where u?” every five minutes, or mark oneself safe during a village siege.

LG and JTE had to contend with this aspect in their relationship as both held important positions within their own worlds.  Cellphones bought in one world would not work in the other.  There’s no magic two-way mirror, faces in fireplaces for a Fire-call in the Floo Network or even owls, crows, or pigeons. Do despite being lovers in the 21st Century, LG and JTE’s temporary separations and the subsequent waiting in between visits feel like those from the Choson Dynasty.

This poem is a prime example of that with a persona who vows to wait for the return her beloved.  She positions herself by the gate by sundown and stays there until dawn.   She stays in the shadows of the birds who see the dawn before she does.  This image is especially powerful in its quiet strength and fierce loyalty. The persona vows to wait for her beloved even through the darkness of the night.  No matter how difficult or painful it is to wait, she will.  And even if she doesn’t see the light of the dawn, or the end of this long night, she will still wait. She survives the nights of waiting by holding on to hope, despite the dire circumstance.

And life rewards her with the safe return of her beloved.  It seems only fitting that this poem is read aloud during their brief reunion under a moonlit night in the bamboo forest.  They are a long way from dawn, but hope and strength are there.

Note the way that Kim Goeun, who plays Jeong Taeeul, delivers her lines, “You’re finally here. Did you just get here?” as if they are the same line even though one is a statement and the other is a questions.  Her inflections do not change.  This echoes the last two lines of the poem, “Is that you?/ Is that you?”  The repetition allows for a slight change in emotion— the first is a question, an expression of disbelief, while the second is filled with relief.

(from Episode 12, The King Eternal Monarch) *if anyone can help me find the title for this poem, I shall be eternally grateful to you ^_^ ---------------- by Kim Sowol

What is your reason for doing that? You were sitting alone by the stream The green grass was sprouting And the water was splashing From the spring breeze You promised that even if you go, You won’t be gone forever.

That is what you promised I sit by the stream each day And think about something endlessly

When you promised that even if you go, You won’t be gone forever Were you asking me not to forget you?

This poem plays on memory and remembrance. In the first stanza, the lovers are in the beginning stage of their relationship when everything is like spring—  new, full of hope and potential for growth.  While at this stage, it is easy to make promises like, “Even if I go, I won’t be gone forever.”  It is meant to comfort the one who could be left behind. In the middle of bliss, that promise might sound comforting.

But as the poem progresses to the second and third stanzas, the persona is now alone on the same stream.   No longer in spring nor the middle of bliss, the persona is left only with the vow that her beloved made to her.  And it provides no sense of comfort.  Instead, it makes her realize that the vow had been made as foresight.  Her beloved must have known of his imminent departure and it was the only way he could ask her to wait for him— because every act of remembering him is an act of loving him.  And when there is love, surely there must be hope for a return.

This poem is read by Lady Noh in background while LG and JTE are getting their picture taken— an act of remembrance, of keeping something frozen in time so that one can always remember the moment.  Ironically, this is also the time when the world freezes. This is the side effect of one half of the Manpasikjeok crossing over into the parallel world.  This is the moment that Lee Gon is made even more aware of their impending separation.  The gate between the worlds is beginning to crack and the amount of frozen time keeps increasing with every crossing.  Pretty soon, he will have to choose between righting the wrongs that Lee Lim created and staying with JTE.  He is the King of the Kingdom of Corea— there is no question what his choice will be and he knows it.

He goes through all of these emotions in the hour that JTE and the rest of the world spends frozen in a smile.  JTE is still in spring but LG is already far off into the future.  But when the world unfreezes, LG slaps a smile on his face and has his picture taken with JTE. This is the perfect adaptation of the third and last Kim Sowol poem used in “The King: Eternal Monarch.”

AZALEAS Kim Sowol

When you leave, weary of me,
 without a word I shall gently let you go.

From Mt. Yak
 in Yongbyon
 I shall gather armfuls of azaleas and scatter them on your way.

Step by step
 on the flowers placed before you tread lightly, softly as you go.

When you leave
 weary of me,
 though I die, I'll not let one tear fall.

“Azaleas,” the titular poem of the Kim Sowol poetry collection, is not included in “The King: Eternal Monarch” but I think it is still important to discuss it as it relates greatly to the character of Lt. Jeong Taeeul.

Outside the context of the kdrama, the poem “Azaleas” has a persona who is the embodiment of dignity and strength in the face of utter devastation.  The persona, by saying “When you leave,” shows her awareness of his inevitable departure.  She knows in the future that he will leave her because he will get tired of her.  And yet, she continues to love him.

And when that dreaded by unavoidable day comes when he leaves her, she vows to let him go as gently, and as lovingly as she can.

She promises to decorate his path away from her with flowers from her hometown.  This is seen as an act of blessing.  And although it’s tearing her apart in the inside, she refuses to let him know that him leaving is killing her.  So it’s an even classier way of saying, “To the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left, don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.”

Now, while Lee Gon doesn’t get tired of Jeong Taeeul in the drama, he does eventually leave her in order to save both worlds and right all the wrongs his uncle made.  And in the 15th episode, when she finally realized that Lee Gon had made his choice and it did not include her in his world, she actually says the words, “I don’t think I can stay here and endure it alone…I think I’ll die.”  Spoiler alert, she did not die. She does get stabbed though, but she did not die of waiting.

Instead, she found a way to get to him.  Although it was unsuccessful, she did manage to kill Lee Lim of the present while Lee Gon killed Lee Lim in the past.  She’s definitely not the type to spread flowers on the feet of the man who leaves her and then goes to cry quietly in the corner.

But the thing is, the azalea flower is the key to all of this.  Azaleas are wildflowers that can be found in the deepest areas of forests that were previously destroyed due to deforestation or wildfires.  According to “The Plant Book of Korea,” azaleas are known for their endurance and long lifespans.

So when the persona in the poem “Azaleas” spreads the flowers in the path of her beloved, she is reminding him that she will survive his departure.  And when used within the world of “The King: Eternal Monarch,” Lt. Jeong Taeeul is the wild and resilient azalea flower.  She will not stay in her place and simply wait for him to come back.  She tried to find a way to get to him.  And when that did not work, when being strong meant loving him even in his absence and waiting for him even if there was no hope in his return, she still mustered up enough courage and strength to love him and wait for him.  And in the end, her strength and resilience were rewarded with the return of her beloved.

REFERENCES:

“(485) Poet Kim So-Wol.” Koreatimes, 10 Jan. 2008, koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2008/01/137_17042.html.

Foundation, CK-12. “12 Foundation.” CK, flexbooks.ck12.org/cbook/ck-12-chemistry-flexbook-2.0/section/2.1/primary/lesson/matter-mass-and-volume-ms-ps.

“In the Midst of Death, Let's Have a Party.” Korea JoongAng Daily, koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2007/10/28/features/In-the-midst-of-death-lets-have-a-party/2882042.html.

Klaudia Krystyna Writer. “Korean Funerals: Traditions, Customs and What to Expect.” Cake Blog, www.joincake.com/blog/korean-funeral/.

Korean Literature (Character of Korean Literature, Korean Classical Literature, Modern Literature of Korea), www.asianinfo.org/asianinfo/korea/literature.htm.

“The Most Beloved Poet of Korea, Kim So-Wol.” The Yonsei Annals, annals.yonsei.ac.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=1896.

국립민속박물관 . “Temporary Spirit Tablet.” Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, folkency.nfm.go.kr/en/topic/detail/537.

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable - Ch 7: The Fisher King: Part 2 (S2E1)

Summary:  A Spencer Reid x OC fanfic that retells select episodes, starting in season 1, from the point of view of Lydia Ambers, a forensic scientist.

Warnings: mentions of death, swearing, death threats, graphic injuries

Ch 6 | Ch 8

~ ~ ~

When Lydia got back to the conference room, Spencer was the only one there. He stood directly in front of the whiteboard, murmuring to himself. He’d written ‘Possible Book Titles’ across the top, but so far had nothing listed.

“The rest of the team leave you to figure this out on your own?” she asked.

He startled slightly, not having heard her walk in. “Um, JJ and Morgan are going to interview Rebecca Bryant’s parents… and Hotch and Gideon are interviewing the guy who brought the numbers to Haley.”

“Someone found him?”

“He turned himself in,” Spencer explained. “So, now it’s just me and the evidence boards.”

“Now it’s us and the evidence boards,” she corrected. She sat down and picked up the medication bottle from the table. “Sorry I stormed out.”

“Sorry you were so stressed,” he mumbled. “We didn’t mean to push you.”

“You didn’t. It was important for you to know. I’m just… so done with this, you know?” She stopped herself. “Sorry, of course you do. You were on vacation when you got these weird messages. I was just home doing my schoolwork.”

“Lydia, stop apologizing,” he argued. “This is very stressful, we’ve all been here a long time, and you got a package delivered to your door. I can easily understand why that’d freak you out.”

She shrugged. “I just feel like I should be able to piece together these clues the unsub’s giving us and I can’t.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” he agreed, indicating to his empty list.

She looked over the label on the bottle in her hands. There was a patient name, a doctor’s name, drug, and an RX number. Prescription bottles always had more than that. They had instructions, pharmacies, manufacturers, fill dates, expiration dates.

“This number must mean something,” she wondered out loud. “He didn’t put any unnecessary information on it, but there’s a long RX number.”

“Read the number out loud,” Spencer told her.

He wrote it across the board as she went. “3-1-5-1-2-1-2-5-3-2-0-1-5-1-8”

“Okay,” he stepped back. “We can start with the basics. A equals 1, Z equals 26.” He got to work, writing the corresponding letter underneath the number.

C-A-E-A-B-A-B-E-C-B-

He stopped at the zero. “That’s definitely not a word. But some of the letters have double digits, so… let’s see if we combine everything we can combine…’C’ stays the same. The 1 and 5 could be fifteen, which is ‘O’...” He began again.

C-O-L-L-E-C-T-O-R

“Collector?” He stepped away. “That mean anything to you?”

Lydia shook her head.

“Alright. Collector. Collecting things. He’s collecting things.” He snapped his fingers so sharply Lydia almost jumped. “Collector! Baseball cards, music boxes, butterflies, skeleton keys. These are all things people collect!”

“That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

He shrugged. It was basically impossible at this point to rule anything out.

“Medieval,” she rambled. “Collectable things. Numerical codes. What else have we got?”

“We’ve got this note from the music box?” he offered. “I think I’ve heard it somewhere, but I can’t place it… And I think the book was published in 1963.”

“Why’s that?”

“That’s the year on the baseball card, but it’s not the year Gideon went to all those games. If the unsub knows Gideon likes Nellie Fox because he went to almost all the White Sox games in 1959, why give him a ‘63 card?”

“Okay,” Lydia agreed. “So, the type of butterfly JJ got, that probably means something too, because she collected butterflies, not pale clouded yellow butterflies.

He nodded. “Let’s get Garcia to look up some of these things and see if we find anything.”

She followed him out as he dashed towards Garcia’s office. He was very stiff and awkward when he was in a rush, she noticed, but he refused to run through the office. She was glad for it at the moment, seeing as with her foot, she probably couldn’t keep up with him, but it was almost comical, the way his feet skipped underneath him with repressed anticipation.

Garcia looked up when they walked in, then turned back to her computers. “This guy is infuriatingly good. He routed his IP through major corporations, crisscrossed it through countries, bounced it off satellites-”

“I thought you already tracked the hacker,” Spencer said, pausing behind her and glancing over her shoulder.

“No, I only found what he wanted me to find,” she huffed. “Apartment where Giles was dead. Reid, a hacker capable of getting into my systems is going to have amazingly sophisticated equipment. Did Giles’s apartment have that?”

“He didn’t have a couch,” he responded.

“Exactly. Giles was a smokescreen I should have seen through. But now I have this glorious program I wrote, tracking the hacker through his other identity: Sir Kneighf.”

“Sir Kneighf?” he cried.

Lydia’s eyes widened. “The doctor on the prescription bottle!”

“The what?” Garcia flipped her chair around and Reid leaned over to see the name on her screen

“K-N-E-I-G-H-F. That’s an odd spelling.”

She waved him away. “Do you need something?”

“Yeah, is there a database, which lists all the books published in a given year?”

“Individual publishers have lists, but I don’t think there’s anything like a master one. Plus it would depend upon the year, because the further back you go, the less likely there’ll be any database at all.”

“1963.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, ok, that would be an example of extremely less likely.”

He hummed in contemplation. “Could you do me a favor? Type something into a search engine for me?” She pulled herself back up to the keyboard. “‘Never would it be night, but always clear day to any man’s sight’.”

“Okay, that’s from a poem, ‘The Parliament of-’”

“Fowls!” He jumped in recognition. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Chaucer! My-” He hesitated. “My mom used to read me that. It’s widely considered as the first Valentine’s poem.”

Garcia chuckled. “Your mom read you Valentine’s poems? Hello, therapy.”

Lydia smacked her over the shoulder.

“Chaucer. Chaucer. ‘Parliament of Fowls’.” He began mumbling to himself again, trying to fit pieces together. “It has to be at least 283 pages long. Something published in 1963… A butterfly indigenous to Great Britain. Why? Something born. Something from Great Britain… Medieval. Chaucer. Chaucer was Middle English. Middle English spelling of the word Fowls… F-O-W-L-E-S…”

Lydia thought he was losing it, but somehow, this rambling was productive, because he blinked and ran back over to Garcia’s side.

“There- There was a contemporary british author-- Fowles. John Fowles. Will you type it into a search engine?”

“Uh… He wrote The Magus, he wrote The French Lieutenant’s Woman-”

“Anything in 1963 published in Great Britain?”

She narrowed her search and her computer started beeping. “Yeah. The Collector.”

Lydia wanted to scream. Finally, they were on the right path. “Are you serious? The code on the bottle was the book title.”

Garcia clicked on the book and the cover photo showed up, which ruled out any chances of the book being a coincidence. Three objects were displayed underneath the title of the book: a butterfly, a skeleton key, and a blonde lock of hair.

“I’m gonna start calling libraries. We need a copy of that book immediately,” Lydia said, leaving abruptly.

~ ~ ~

“Hello, my name is Lydia Ambers, I work for the FBI. We’re in desperate need of a very specific book to help us on a recent case. We’re looking for a copy of The Collector by John Fowles, but it has to be a copy that was published by Jonathon Cape. Would you have any of those?”

Lydia followed Reid and Garcia to one of the interrogation rooms, to talk to Hotch and Gideon about their findings, but she was thoroughly distracted by her call and ended up stepping on their heels a few times accidentally.

“According to our database, we should have two copies, but it’s going to take me a while to search for them. Can I call you back once I’ve found a copy?”

“Yes, thank you.” She hung up and promptly tripped, falling between Reid and Garcia’s shoulders. She would have run directly into Gideon if Reid hadn’t grabbed her by the arm and held her up steady. “Sorry!”

She shuffled back behind her two friends and let them talk to Hotch and Gideon.

“We know what the book is,” Spencer explained. “The Collector by John Fowles.”

“You sure?” Gideon demanded. They were both clearly on edge. Hotch had his arms crossed which didn’t look comfortable in his suit and Gideon was punchy. She didn’t fail to notice the way he and Garcia avoided each other's gazes, Garcia more than him. He was still pissed at her and she was probably thoroughly embarrassed. And hopefully, a little pissed too, because Lydia believed he’d been way too harsh on her.

“Not absolutely. Not until we see if the code works, but Lydia’s called four separate libraries to search for the 1963 edition published in Great Britain.”

“Well done,” Hotch complimented the group, tiredly.

“Agent Gideon,” a woman called, approaching the group of them, “there’s a call for you on line two. Says it’s extremely urgent.” 

“Is there a name?” he asked.

“Sort of. He calls himself the Fisher King.”

Lydia groaned before she could stop herself. Everyone raised an eyebrow at her.

“Sorry. The Fisher King is the one who guards the Grail. You know, the one that ‘Sir Percival’, over there is supposed to find.” She pointed at Reid, who was grabbing the notepad the woman had in her hands.

“This could be the unsub, guys,” he confirmed. “‘Sir Kneighf’ is an anagram for Fisher King.”

“The Fisher King is at the end of all Grail quests,” Gideon agreed.

They rushed to the bullpen, all crowding around a nearby phone.

“Line two trapped and traced,” Hotch demanded of one of the nearby agents and Gideon put it on speaker.

“Gideon.”

“What I had to do was not my fault,” the unsub replied, his harsh voice unmistakable.

“Excuse me?”

“It was distasteful and barbaric.”

“Who is this?”

“No one else had to be hurt.”

“Call yourself ‘The Fisher King’?” He was trying to throw the unsub off his rhythm. Gideon had been training her to speak to hostile people and profile what responses to give them, so she followed along his game.

This guy had clearly planned what he wanted to say and expected them to shut up and listen. If Gideon made him interrupt the strict script in his mind, he might slip up and give information he didn’t want to or forget his point.

“I told you there were rules.”

“I’m actually more interested in exactly how you got all those burns.” Different tactic. Make the unsub think we’re closer to catching him than he thinks.

“Remember this next time you decide to step outside my instructions,” he warned. “Agent Greenaway did not have to die like that.”

The phone buzzed as he hung up the call.

~ ~ ~

After many attempts at calling Elle, Hotch got ahold of Agent Anderson, who was in charge of taking her home. Anderson explained that Elle had been shot and the ambulance was on its way to a nearby hospital. And then, he and Gideon were off, leaving Lydia, Spencer, and Garcia to work on piecing together this mystery.

“Mrs. Valez, are you there?” Reid asked, putting the librarian who’d just called them back on speaker phone.

“Yes, Dr. Reid. I am. I have a first edition of The Collector, published in Great Britain in 1963.”

“Wonderful.” As they spoke Garcia cleared off room on the whiteboard to copy down the code. “Mrs. Valez, I’m going to read you a set of three numbers. The first is going to be a page number, the second a line number on that page, and the third, a word number in that line. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“All right, the first is page 222.”

“Page 222, got it.”

“Line 23.”

“Line 23. Got it.”

“What is the 16th work on that line, Ms. Valez?”

“The.”

“The,” he repeated. “Great.”

Garcia wrote it up on the board and Lydia suddenly very much regretted not going along with Gideon and Hotch. But just in time to save the day, her phone started going off with a call from the unit chief.

She dismissed herself quickly and stepped outside to answer.

“How’s Elle?” she asked, figuring greetings could be dismissed for the time being.

“She’s in surgery. Ambers, I need you to go to her house and look for any evidence you can find. And if you can, I need you to tell me what exactly happened when she got home. Anderson will meet you there.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get back to you when I have something.”

She quietly signalled to Reid that she was leaving before grabbing her FBI windbreaker and latex gloves and running off to the elevator. She hadn’t taken a company SUV since her first case (after which she learned she wasn’t supposed to be driving them on her own because she wasn’t supposed to be unsupervised while working), but she figured that, if caught, she would be forgiven, given the circumstances.

The street was littered with cop cars by the time she got there and it took a minute for them to recognize the car and jacket she was wearing and let her through. Once she had parked, she ran across the front lawn and inside, looking for Anderson. Right now, the only reason she hadn’t been thrown off the scene was her jacket and until Anderson arrived with his badge and the orders to clear the place, she was at the local PD’s mercy.

“Excuse me, miss,” a man called to her as she walked into the living room. She shut her eyes tightly. Damn it.

“Hi. My name’s Lydia-”

“Ambers,” Anderson greeted her, stepping past the cops to speak to her. “CSU’s on the way, but Hotch wanted you to survey the scene before they processed it.” He turned back to the officer she was just speaking to. “Hello again, Detective Markes. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask your team to leave, as you’re currently on a crime scene under federal jurisdiction.”

As he went on to argue with the detective, Lydia flipped around to make her initial determinations. Elle had lost a lot of blood. Lydia could assume she’d been shot in the abdomen, because it was the only area of the body where she could survive long enough to get to the hospital and into surgery while she was losing blood at that rate. Elle had a comforted seat built into an indent in the wall where the blood trail started.

The coffee table was awkwardly placed in the center of the room, so the paramedics probably moved it to get to her. And from the marks on the carpet, it looks like they had to drag her body onto its back in order to perform CPR. Then, there was the looming note on her wall in blood: RULES.

“Can I do anything to help?” Anderson asked. When Lydia looked up at him, it was clear to her that he’d been crying. His eyes were rimmed with red and his voice was shaky.

“Did the police tell you what happened?”

He nodded, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “There is evidence of forced entry on the back door. The unsub probably broke in and waited for her to get home before he shot her. She dialed 911 herself before she passed out. And her badge and gun are nowhere to be found.”

“She dialed 911 before she passed out?!” Lydia exclaimed. “Unless the unsub let her… but no, he thought she was dead. He was in the room with her and wrote in her-” Lydia took in a deep breath and started to put her gloves on. “Try something with me, Anderson.”

~ ~ ~

“What did you find?”

“CSU lifted a partial print from the unsub’s message,” Lydia told Hotch, driving back to Quantico.

“What message?”

“Rules,” she responded. “This is about the press conference.”

He sighed. “Did they get anything from the print?”

“They aren’t sure if it will be enough, but they’re running it through their systems now.”

“Good. And what did you find?”

Lydia’s breath hitched. “Me?”

“I asked you if you could figure out what happened. How did the unsub get the upper hand and shoot Elle?”

Lydia glanced at her phone, which was on speaker beside her, as if Hotch would be there looking sternly back.

“Here’s my theory,” she began. “We know he broke in through the back door and waited in the house. If he was in the dining room, he would have been able to hear her set her stuff down and lie on the couch. Now with her eyes closed, he’s able to walk into the room and aim a gun at her before she can react. At some point, Elle makes a move off the couch and he shoots her. The blood pattern indicates she was falling when she got hit. That makes me think her gun was on the table across from her. But anyway, she’s shot and is lying on her side, between the seat and the table. Elle has got to have an insanely high pain tolerance, because she was still conscious when he wrote on the walls in her blood. But somehow, she had him convinced she had died when he left. Then, she calls 911 and passes out.”

“Good work, Lydia. When all this is over, we need to talk.”

Her phone beeped to indicate he had hung up and it took everything in her not to pull over and call him back immediately.

A talk? What the hell did that mean?

~ ~ ~

When Lydia finally made her way back to the bullpen, she was exhausted. So, it was a bit of a relief to see Spencer there at his desk, simply toying with a pencil between his fingers.

“Did you go to Elle’s house?” he asked, softly, as she took off her jacket and placed it on her desk.

“Yeah… It’s a crime scene.”

He nodded, understanding what she meant. It was bloody.

“How did the book code go? Did it work?” she inquired.

“‘The path to the end began at his start to find her first calm her long broken heart’,” he recited. “‘She sits in a window with secrets from her knight. Is it adventure that keeps him out of her sight?’”

“Any clue what it means?”

Reid opened his mouth to explain, but Garcia approached and started talking to him. “She’s okay,” she said, sitting on the edge of his desk. “Your mom. Agents picked her up.”

“Your mom?” Lydia startled. “What happened?”

The panic in Garcia’s eyes was evident. “Lydia! Sorry, I didn’t even realize you were back yet.” Her eyes darted between the two of them. “I’ll… I’m gonna go now.”

“No, no, no!” she assured her. “It’s fine. If this is private, I can leave.”

“It’s not private.” Spencer looked slightly amused by the anxiety both girls felt, but it didn’t last long. “It’s… pertinent to the case.”

“Is everything okay?” Lydia asked him, standing up next to Garcia at his desk, so that the conversation didn’t drift around the room.

“She’s flying here right now,” Garcia explained, and Reid nodded, looking down at an evidence bag.

It was the poem they’d found in the music box. The valentine’s one that he’d said his mom read him.

“I forgot she used to always read me this poem.” He sighed. “It’s funny, huh?”

“Funny?” Garcia asked.

“I should have realized this sooner,” he admitted. “I mean, nobody knows things like the fact that JJ collects butterflies except for me. People tell me their secrets all the time. I think it’s ‘cause they know I don’t have anyone to betray them to… except my mother. I- I tell her pretty much everything.”

“I don’t think anyone would mind,” she grinned.

“Do you know that I write her a letter everyday?” he continued.

Garcia’s eyes watered slightly, but her smile didn’t let up. “That’s nice.”

“It depends on why I write her.” His eyebrow furrowed. His demeanor had changed considerably and Lydia started to piece together what she had missed.

This unsub had gotten all this info on them from his mom. Maybe he’d been stealing her letters or just talking to her, but he knew her and that’s why Reid was bringing her to Quantico.

“What do you mean?” Garcia asked.

“I write her letters so I won’t feel so guilty about not visiting her.”

The girls exchanged a look. Reid had just been in Las Vegas. He said he was going home. So, why was he claiming he didn’t visit her?

“Did you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?” he asked, randomly.

At least, she thought it was random. Until Garcia gasped under her breath. She excused herself quickly, leaving Lydia with the fidgeting doctor.

“Spencer, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she spoke up. She kept her voice low and her town concerned, undemanding.

He was clearly on edge. He wouldn’t look up at her, eyes focused on the poem in his hands. “‘The path to the end begins at his start’... I’m the ‘him’. And my start is my mom. So, she’s the key to lead us to the Grail. ‘She sits in a window with secrets from her knight’. The doctors tell me my mother loves to sit by the window and read my letters.” He dropped the bag suddenly and clasped his hands together. “Lydia, my mom is a paranoid schizophrenic who lives in a mental hospital.”

His knuckles started turning white and the muscles in his arms shifted under pressure. He was getting tense. Lydia knew exactly what he was doing. Normally, when she felt her anger manifest itself physically, she would excuse herself to blow off steam, but something told her Reid wasn’t about to find an empty hallway and start punching the walls.

But even with that knowledge, she never would have consciously done what she did to calm him. Her impulses took over and one of her hands reached out and settled itself on top of his fists. She bent down slightly, not forcing herself into his line of sight, but making it easier for him to turn to her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That must be hard on you… does the rest of the team know?”

He shook his head, turning one of his palms over to hold onto her fingers. Lydia’s heart sped up, but she swallowed down her feelings. He was looking for comfort, not a relationship. Besides, they weren’t even holding hands, really. He was just grazing his thumbs over her knuckles.

“Lydia,” he began, finally meeting her gaze. “Earlier you left because Hotch brought up your mom…”

Here it comes. She braced herself for the inevitable question.

“...and when you came back, you had bruised knuckles.”

She almost choked on her own saliva. He wasn’t going to ask about her mom? And how had he even noticed that?

Awkwardly, she slipped her fingers out of his grasp. “I wasn’t hitting anything alive, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she informed him, suddenly closing off again. “I just had to let off some steam.”

“Lydia, I wasn’t insinuating anything-”

“It’s fine, Spencer,” she replied, far too quickly. “If you need any help with anything before your mom gets here, let me know. And if I get any updates from Hotch or Gideon, I’ll tell you.”

He spun his chair around in an attempt to stop her, but she was already leaving, trying to look dignified as she walked into the conference room. She didn’t want to make him feel guilty when he was already dreading his mom’s arrival, but she couldn’t have that conversation when there was work to do.

It wasn’t until she was staring at the evidence boards that she realized, there really wasn’t any work to do.

What was she running from?

~ ~ ~

After hours of pacing and repeating the clues the unsub had given them outloud, Lydia had ended up back at her desk, absolutely drained. She pushed everything aside and lay her head down. She’d just been… off today. 

She felt so guilty about abandoning Spencer. He needed more help than she did. His mother was involved in a murder case and probably wasn’t stable enough to look out for herself. And Lydia was just wallowing in her past.

She had no right to do that to him.

So, what was it? As far as she knew, Spencer didn’t even know her mom was dead. He had no idea what the mention of her mother could do to her. He wasn’t pressuring her to tell him about it. And even more so, she’d never struggled to tell anyone her mother was dead before. Her first day in Quantico, she told Gideon and Garcia.

Lydia rarely talked about the cause of her mom’s death. If that’s what the team needed to know, then she could forgive herself for being on edge, but they didn’t. No one had asked her to say out loud how her mother had died. And if they did need to know, Hotch, Gideon, or Garcia could probably tell them. Her mother’s death was definitely in Garcia’s files.

What is it? She asked herself. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just-?

“Lydia!” Garcia cried. Her head shot up to watch the blonde woman running by, making a beeline for the conference room.

She ran after her, just catching up as she opened the door and grabbed the attention of Spencer and an older woman with a pixie cut.

“Reid, I got to the end of the IP string,” Garcia started, barely even noticing the other presence in the room. “Sir Kneighf? The Fisher King? His name is Randal Garner. He’s Rebecca Bryant’s biological father.”

~ ~ ~

Once the air in the room had settled, Spencer introduced the other woman as his mother, Diana Reid, before quickly distracting them with work. Lydia sensed that he didn’t want his mother to be a part of the conversation.

Lydia stepped aside to call Hotch, listening to their conversation as she explained to him what they’d found.

“Our file says that Rebecca’s father’s name is Joseph Bryant,” Spencer argued. “Who’s Randal Garner?”

“Rebecca’s mother and brothers died in a fire when she was four and her father was so badly burned that he couldn’t take care of her, so he gave up parental rights and she was adopted by the Bryants,” Garcia informed them.

“Okay,” Hotch responded over the phone, pulling her back to the conversation she was having. “I’ll tell Gideon and be there soon. Find out everything you can on this guy.”

“Doing that as we speak,” she replied, putting her phone back into her pocket.

“I can’t believe she’s real,” Diana mumbled.

The three of them trained their eyes on her.

“What do you mean?” Garcia asked.

“Whenever he talked about Rebecca, he never said she was his daughter.” She said all this directly to her son, her stance nervous, almost defensive. “He said all his children died in the fire. He spoke of a Rebecca, more in the abstract. I really thought she was a metaphor and not an actual human being. An ideal.”

“A grail,” Reid said, confirming her thoughts. This man honestly didn’t see her as his daughter anymore. His daughter had died. And this girl was a prize to be won. “He thinks he’s the Fisher King.”

“Who does?” Morgan asked, entering with JJ.

“Randal Garner, our unsub,” Spencer responded.

“He believes you’re all modern-day knights of the round table,” Diana explained, gesturing around the room.

Derek raised a hand and they could see his question about who this woman was coming a mile away.

“Uh, Derek Morgan, this is my mother, Diana Reid.” Spencer ran around the table to step between his colleague and his mom.

“This is your mother?” He pointed at the woman almost accusingly, but seeing Spencer’s tight smile, pulled back and said, “Ma’am it’s a… it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Finally, the last of their group stormed in, Hotch’s footsteps audible from across the bullpen. “So, where are we on finding this son of a bitch?” he demanded.

“Gideon?” Lydia inquired.

“Hospital.”

Everyone sat down around the table in time with one another.

“I rechecked all the clues,” Spencer began. “There’s nothing that points to an address.”

“The adoption records for Rebecca listed an address of the fire, so I made a call to Nevada, and it’s vacant. No one ever rebuilt,” JJ continued.

“Nevada?” Hotch scoffed. “So we don’t even know what state he’s in?”

“I’ll search the tax records,” Garcia offered. “See if he owns any property.”

“Excuse me,” Diana said, catching the attention of the team. She was leaning forward in her seat in the corner of the room.

“Mom, do you want to wait out-” Spencer started, trying to usher her out of the room, but She was already making a move towards Hotch.

“Just before the agents got me from the hospital,” she fumbled for something in her purse, “a man delivered this to me. It’s a photo of a house with an address on the back.”

She held it up for them to see the scrawl on the back of the card: 1024 Winston Dr., Shiloh, VA. 22485.

“Shiloh, Virginia?” Morgan muttered. “That’s only ten miles from here.”

She flipped over the photo. The house looked more like a castle, with multiple stories and barred windows. It was made with gray bricks and black roof tiles with a circular extension that looked like a tower.

The team filed out quickly, with the exception of Spencer, who was telling his mom to stay put until he got back.

Garcia ran back to her office and Lydia sat at her desk, still unable to go on raids with them.

Almost over, she told herself. This whole thing is almost over.

~ ~ ~

“We’re sending Rebecca to the hospital now and then we’ll be back,” Hotch informed her. “Any news from Gideon?”

“Elle just got out of surgery. Doctors say she’s gonna be fine.” It was already the next morning and Lydia couldn’t wait to go back to her apartment and sleep for the rest of the day. “Randal Garner?”

“Dead,” he responded and Lydia didn’t bother to ask how or why. “Why don’t you start clearing off those evidence boards?”

“Yes, sir.” She put her phone down and walked up to the round table room.

When she got inside, she startled to see someone else there. Spencer’s mom sat on the sofa underneath the window and was writing something in one of the journals she brought with her. She hadn’t seemed to notice Lydia walk in.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Reid,” Lydia started, politely, walking over to the evidence boards. “I forgot you were still here.”

After a second of silence, Lydia got to work, making piles of evidence, pictures, and all the pins they had used. She didn’t take the woman’s silence personally, knowing that schizophrenia could cause dissociation. She figured she’d leave her to her journaling for now.

As she was finishing up, however, the woman looked up at her, an eyebrow raised. “Is it time for lunch yet?” she inquired.

“What?” Lydia asked softly.

“I’m lecturing everyone on Tristan and Iseult,” she explained, scanning her journal suddenly like an analysis paper. “They’re all gathering in my room after lunch.”

Lydia was intrigued. Clearly, Diana was not in touch with reality and Lydia wasn’t sure how best to deal with it, but her curiosity won over her common sense.

She wanted to know who Tristan and Iseult were.

“I’m here to attend the lecture, ma’am.” She smiled and sat down on the floor, like a kindergartener.

“Let’s get started, then.” She went on to talk about the basis of the myth: Tristan was sent to bring Iseult back to his uncle, King Mark of Cornwell, with whom she was to marry. On their journey however, they consumed a love potion (whether or not they were aware had varied throughout history) and fell for one another. They were forced to have an affair behind Mark’s back, despite them both holding a lot of respect for the king, because the effects of the potion were too strong for them to ignore. When the king caught them, he sentenced them both to death, but Tristan escaped and saved Iseult and they ran off together. When King Mark finally found them again, Tristan agreed to give Iseult back to the king and flee Cornwell so long as neither of them would be harmed. And eventually, he found another young woman named Iseult and married her instead.

Diana was just beginning to explain how this compared the Arthurian legend and the love triangle between King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and Guinevere, when Spencer walked in.

“Mom, we found her. Rebecca’s safe.” The two women turned their heads to the newcomer and Spencer flushed, seeing Lydia sitting quietly on the floor across from his mother. “Lydia! I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Young man, we are in the middle of a lecture,” she reprimanded. “May I ask why you’ve so rudely interrupted us?”

Lydia covered her mouth to suppress a laugh and Spencer looked shocked by his mother’s scolding. “What?”

“I am giving a lecture on Tristan and Iseult,” she repeated, impatiently. “Are you here to attend or do you want to just keep standing there and gawking?”

He seemed to understand his mother’s headspace, but his confusion returned when he remembered Lydia. She gestured for him to sit with her, smugly, and turned back to Diana. “You can continue Mrs. Reid, he was just late.”

“Has he read any of the material?” she asked, suspiciously.

Lydia raised an eyebrow at Spencer, teasing him despite the fact that she definitely had not read whatever it was that Diana would have previously assigned.

His face was gentle, almost unsure, and slowly he sat down besides Lydia. “I’ve had them read to me.”

Lydia knew he was talking about his mother. He’d grown up listening to her read valentine’s poems and old mythology. It was honestly really touching and she wondered if she should leave them to have a moment together but couldn’t bring herself to get up.

“Wonderful,” Diana sighed. “That’s the best way, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am. By far.”

They sat there for a few more minutes, listening to her thoughts and analysis of different versions of the story. Lydia would glance over at him at times, checking to see if he was still smiling, which he always was. Sometimes he’d catch her in the act and they’d share a look of amusement before turning their focus back to their temporary teacher.

Unfortunately, it had to come to a sudden end when Hotch walked in.

“Ambers.” His tone was serious. “I was worried you’d left. I need to speak with you.”

Lydia could see Diana’s frustration at yet another interruption, so she quickly stood up.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Mrs. Reid,” she apologized, shuffling out behind her boss.

He nodded for her to follow him to his office. Was this about what he said earlier? They needed to have a talk?

She wondered if it was possibly the fact she took out an SUV again despite being informed not to after the last time. Or it could be about her harsh comments that morning towards Gideon and around Haley. Or even worse, about her mom and how she stormed away.

She sat across from him, waiting for his exasperated voice to come through, but it didn’t.

“Lydia, I think we need to have a discussion about your future,” he started, unexpectedly. “I created an internship into the team for you because we’ve never had the need for a forensics expert before, but for these past several months, you’ve been an incredible help. You’re knowledgeable in crime scene analysis, lab work, and, as you proved today, profiling. So, I’ve brought you here to tell you that I’ve discussed with Chief Strauss the possibility of giving you a full-time job in the BAU and she has agreed to speak with you and myself about creating you a position as a government contractor. You can’t apply to be an agent until you’re 23, but I want to be able to lift the restrictions on you and have your help on the cases I see as necessary. If Strauss likes you, you’ll be allowed to make calls for yourself, carry a badge, take the gun qualifications tests, and work without agent supervision, which if she asks, you haven’t been doing already. Would you be interested in such a position?”

She blinked, completely floored by the offer. “Agent Hotchner, I… wait, ‘proved today’?”

It was not what she wanted to say in the moment, but it had thrown her off slightly.

“Today, you walked onto a crime scene and told me an hour later exactly what had happened. You could identify when and from where the unsub entered the room, how Elle was positioned when she got shot, and what happened between then and her call to 911. Yes, I asked you to go there as a scientist and to look for evidence, but when I asked what you thought had happened, you became a profiler and you’re clearly fit to join the team. Again, you becoming a profiler is something we can discuss but not act on for another year, so hopefully contracted work is okay with you.”

“Okay with me?” she laughed. “That sounds amazing. So, just like I’ve been doing in the past, I’ll only be called in when you want me on a case and not for any office work?”

He nodded. “This is dependent on Strauss’s approval, but yes, that’s what we discussed.”

Lydia grinned. “So, how does one get Strauss’s approval?”

~ ~ ~

Lydia didn’t get back to her apartment until around 6 AM and promptly slept for most of the day. She was startled awake by her ringtone in the early afternoon and prepared herself for Hotch to ask her to come back in, but it wasn’t him. Interestingly enough, it was Spencer whose name popped up on her screen.

“Hello?” she answered, sitting back against her headboard.

“Hey, Lydia. Sorry, I’m sure you’re still exhausted after everything. I would have waited a few days to call you, but if I don’t do this now, I’m not sure I ever will.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “Is everything alright, Spencer? Did you make it to Las Vegas okay?”

By the time she’d finished talking with Hotch, Spencer had left with his mom and she’d heard that he was planning to fly with her back to the sanitarium, because she had a fear of planes. After everything, she expected him to stay with his mother for a few days, so she hadn’t thought she’d be hearing from him anytime soon.

“Yes, I’m fine. I’ll be back in DC tomorrow. But I have something to admit to you. I didn’t realize this earlier, but I know why Randal Garner sent you what he did.”

Lydia’s breath hitched. “What do you mean? Have you… did Garcia tell you?”

How did he know? Maybe he’d just guessed with the whole scene she made about the bupropion. Garcia had told her that she wouldn’t spill any of her secrets. But would Hotch or Gideon tell him what happened to her mom?

“What? Garcia didn’t tell me anything. I think you should wait for me to explain, so that you don’t accidentally tell me something you don’t want me to know.” His tone was joking, but there was a wavering nervousness that she could hear over the line. “Lydia, when you worked that poisoning case… on the jet back the whole rest of the team was asleep and you had a conversation with Hotch. You said that seeing an orange prescription bottle made you angry because it reminded you of your mother… I overheard that.”

She waited a minute for him to go on. She thought for certain he was going to say he’d figured her whole past out. He was going to tell her that he’d profiled her fidgets and glances and found out every last detail of her mom’s death, but he didn’t. That was all.

“That’s okay, Spencer,” she reassured him. “It wasn’t… I’m not keeping secrets from the team, I just don’t really like to talk about it.”

She faintly heard him huff, frustratedly. “No, I mean, the unsub got all this information on us from my mom. From all the stuff I’d tell her about my team… I told her about you,” he admitted. “I told her about how I’d overheard that conversation and I’m so sorry that you had to go through all this because of me.”

Lydia’s fingers ghosted lightly over her face as she processed this and shut her eyes tightly. It didn’t bother her as much as she’d thought it would, in fact, she didn’t seem to mind at all. The only thing on her mind when he said that was her stupid crush and the fact that he’d been writing to his mom about her.

She shook it aside. He talked about the whole team. It wasn’t a big thing. But… the unsub had, in his fantasy, assigned them two characters who were in love…

“I really appreciate the thought Spencer, but this isn’t your fault. I never said anything to Hotch about the bupropion, so you couldn’t have known about that. The unsub probably just did some research on me or looked through my files. Even if he chose the bottle because of your letters, he had everything else to torment me. Please don’t put this on yourself or your mom.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t hate me?”

“I can change my mind if you’d prefer,” she laughed.

He joined her for a moment, but fell silent far too fast. Lydia suddenly racked her brain for whatever she’d done to cause him to freeze, but hadn’t come up with anything before he spoke up again.

“Hey, Lydia? When I get back to DC, do you, uh… want to get something to eat?”

Lydia’s heart stopped. She wasn’t a profiler and definitely not an expert on asking people out, but she wasn’t about to let this crush rot in her brain. These past few days were torture enough. “You mean, like a date?” she prompted.

Bad move on her part. He flipped suddenly trying to deny it and she had to interrupt him before he hung up on her in mortification. He was so flustered she wasn’t even sure he was speaking English.

“Spencer. Spencer!”

He tried to mumble a quick apology, but she wasn’t about to let him close off just like that.

“Spencer, I’m not going to get food with you unless it’s a date. I don’t play mind games like that.”

“You wha- So, you’d like to- I’m sorry, it’s just… Mind games?” he finally spit out.

He was a funny one. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen so quickly for some dork. When she was a kid and all the other girls would ask her ‘What do you want your future boyfriend to be like?’ she never recalled saying, ‘A real mess. Just a true goof.’

“Yes, Spencer,” she responded. “Mind games. Getting food together could easily be misinterpreted as a date and I want to go on a date with you. But if we’re going to do that, we need to both be on the same page about it. If we go get something to eat, will it be a date or are you just suggesting it to be nice?”

“I would like that. I mean, yeah… it’d be a date. If you want! I don’t wanna pressure you or- are you sure that a date is-”

“I’m still fairly new to the Virginia-DC area,” Lydia interrupted, knowing that if he wasn’t able to form a complete sentence, he’d just keep starting new ones. “Is there anywhere in particular you want to go?”

“Um… well, what do you like?”

A grin graced her face, glad to hear him finally calming down. “I’m sure whatever you like I’ll enjoy as well.”

This was it. She’d scored herself a date with the bumbling boy genius.

[finelythreadedsky]

Hello I just looked up the Frederic Leighton Orpheus and Eurydice because you mentioned it and 1) I'm having feelings and 2) I would very happily read any and all thoughts you have on it

ahh I love it so much it’s one of my favorite paintings of all time! I wrote my first ever real paper on it (specifically on its engagement with Ovid) and to this day I don’t know how I did on that paper, but writing it was transformative for my understanding of the myth. This past summer I finally got to see the painting in person at the Leighton House and discovered there’s a Robert Browning poem affixed to the frame that definitely would have been helpful to know about while writing about it. It somewhat supports my points anyway though, so that’s okay.

long post: Ovid, Leighton, and my 2016 and 2020 takes on the two of them

First of all: his eyes. Obscured and shadowed and leaving it ambiguous whether or not his gaze has fallen on Eurydice yet. Is this the moment before he gives in and looks at her? Is it the split second after he sees her and before she disappears? YES. (I did finally get to confirm that the eyes are just as shadowy and ambiguous in person as in all the pictures on the internet.)

Secondly, something a lot of paintings of Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld do, but which is particularly brought to the forefront here: Orpheus is touching Eurydice. He should clearly know that she’s there, since he can feel her, so why would he doubt her presence and need to see her to confirm that she’s there? Many other painters show him leading her by the hand (Corot, Feuerbach, Rubens, Poynter, Cervelli, Vignali, Raoux), creating a paradox where you’re just not supposed to think too hard about what it means for the story that they’re holding hands. But what’s going on here is much more than that. She seems to be actively urging him to turn around (a point in which I was vindicated by the Browning poem, which ends “look at me!”). Leighton’s drawing attention to their physical contact and the impossibility of Orpheus NOT knowing that she’s there. He must know, she’s clinging to him so tightly, and look at his hand, he acknowledges her presence by pushing her away, actively trying to avoid looking at her.

So from there I go back to Ovid (metamorphoses 10.44-52)

… Nec regia coniunx sustinet oranti nec qui regit ima negare, Eurydicenque vocant. Umbras erat illa recentes inter et incessit passu de vulnere tardo. Hanc simul et legem Rhodopeius accipit Orpheus, ne flectat retro sua lumina, donec Avernas exierit valles: aut inrita dona futura.

Neither the royal consort nor he who reigns below can bear to deny the beggar what he asks. They call for Eurydice. She was among the recently deceased, and she walked with a stride slowed by her wound. Rhodopeian (Thracian) Orpheus received her and a rule at the same time OR At the same time, Rhodopeian (Thracian) Orpheus also received this rule: that he not turn his eyes behind him until he had left the valleys of Avernus, or else the gift would be in vain

The pains Ovid takes here to note that Orpheus gets Eurydice and the rule “simul,” at the same time— specifically, that he does not get Eurydice before the condition is named. Eurydice is not present when they specify that he is not allowed to turn around. She doesn’t know that he’s not allowed to look at her. That’s what I think Leighton’s working with.

Eurydice is begging Orpheus to look at her and he won’t and she has no idea why. She’s confused, she’s distraught, the man she loves, the man who just descended to the underworld for her, refuses to look at her. She’s desperately begging him to look at her and acknowledge her and speak to her and confirm he loves her, her as a person, not just the idea of being the man who could sing someone back from the dead.

He doesn’t turn because he doubts she’s there. He knows. He can feel her arms around him and hear her pleas. He turns because he cannot bear her thinking that he doesn’t love her. He needs her to know that he loves her, even if it means losing her. His resolve to not look at her is defeated by the strength of his love, not his doubt. He turns knowing she is there and knowing he will lose her, because he cannot face the alternative, that she thinks he does not love her and that he raised her from the dead out of pride, not love.

Now, why on earth he can’t just use his voice and tell her he’s not allowed to look at her, I have no idea. That youtube comment asking why the two of them don’t just marco-polo their way out? Yeah, that. Oh also throughout the paper I referred to Ovid’s version of the character as “Eurydice” and Leighton’s version as “Euridice” with the Italian spelling because for some reason the internet often gives the painting’s title in Italian, but actually that was a really helpful way of dealing with two portrayals of the same figure.

In the last few years I’ve moved toward a much less romantic perspective on the myth. I talked somewhat recently about my take on Eurydice, and last year I got something close to it. I think these poems and this art capture a lot of my thoughts right now. But still, like Leighton, I adore the idea of her asking him, even begging him, to turn around. Like in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, when Heloise says “perhaps she was the one who said, ‘turn around.’” But in Portrait of a Lady on Fire I think the implications are that Eurydice would be urging him to make the artist’s choice rather than the lover’s choice, telling him that art is more important than love, that the memory of love is enough (which is, incidentally, I think exactly what the Browning poem is saying). 

I think I’ve been wanting to examine whether it is love to begin with. Reinterrogating what it means to say that the memory of love is what’s important-- that the idea of the woman is more than the woman herself. Maybe Eurydice doesn’t mind being dead. After all, it is the first thing she has done for herself, all her life things have been done to her. It’s the first time she has existed as her own person. Maybe she would like to stay dead, stay in a world without Orpheus. Maybe she knows that his relationship to her is one of art, not love, and that he has always looked at her as more a poem than a person. Is she angry at him for having the audacity to break the laws of nature, to intrude on the one thing that is supposed to be hers alone? Asking him to turn is asking him to respect the finality of death, to come to terms with and accept his loss, to let her rest in peace, to let her exist apart from him. She might ask those things as desperately as Leighton paints her.

[truetgirl]

A bard girl... Angelic... I made the model while screwing around and then went to make a backstory. Figured it’d be a little nothing. I’m putting it under the cut because some unknown thing in me hijacked my fingers and this came out.

It is an exceedingly odd way to grow up, being the child of courtiers to a regional noble. You aren't really noble yourself, but you certainly don't feel you have much in common with regular commoners, so your social circle, especially as a child, is very limited indeed. It would be odd enough if you'd turned out to be a normal human, let alone if you had a priest declare after your birth that you were a gift from the gods themselves. Let alone if your parents then used that auspicious omen to climb at court. My parents, advisors as they then became to our gracious patron, never had much time to spend with me. I spent many, many hours huddled in my room or in a private corner of the library, reading and fantasizing about a life of excitement and what friendship must be like.

Eventually, I took to writing. It was a natural step once I started to run out of books in the library. I wrote simply for fun at first, poetry mostly. But, as I practiced and refined my craft, I started to wonder if maybe, one day, I could tell stories like the ones that had kept me company for so many years. I began to seek an audience, to see what others would think of my work. It took some months, not being very well practiced at the time in talking to other people and having gained something a reputation around court as the strange, cloistered girl that was apparently some divine gift, but eventually I found a few other young ladies of the court to hear my first tale. It wasn't a groundbreaking story by any means, a tale of knightly valor and the slaying of beasts, but it was, to my delight, a crowd-pleaser.

Over the next few years, as I grew into a "proper" young lady at court and honed my skills of storytelling for an ever expanding audience, I attracted all kinds of attention. My parents finally seemed to have some time for me, I made friends among the various ladies in waiting to the higher nobility, I took up work in an official capacity as a chronicler by day and entertainer in the evenings, and it seemed I had even attracted the attention of the young heir to the house, a boy about my age by the name of Lanno.

I was uneasy with  Lanno's advances at first. I'd never received attention of that variety, and wasn't sure what to think or feel. When my mother found out about the boy's interest, she began to "encourage" me to at least act as though I reciprocated. My mother, ever the political climber, clearly saw the opportunity for our family to marry into nobility. Most of my friends were no help either, seeming utterly confused that I would be unsure about the advances of a promising and handsome young scion such as Lanno. Only my best friend, Trisha, seemed sympathetic to my uncertainty.

Trisha had been a companion even in my early, cloistered days in the library. Her father, being the court wizard, had encouraged her from an early age to pursue learning in any way she could. As such, we often ended up in the library together. We almost never spoke to one another until we were in our early teens. When we did start talking, it was because we'd both eaten through our usual sections of the library and wanted advice on good starting points in the others. Through her I gained an appreciation for history, and through me she learned the appeal of tales of chivalry and romance.

We'd grown closer since I began making strides at court and she'd begun officially apprenticing under her father in the arcane arts. We found solace in one another, an understanding we didn't seem to get elsewhere. And, much as when we were children, we shared our love of learning; but this time as teachers rather than readers. I taught her about the crafting of stories and the structure of poetry, and in return she taught me the fundamentals of magic her father had taught to her. Soon I found that by concentrating as she had showed I could make objects blaze with supernatural light. Trisha was shocked, as the small spell she had shown me could do many things, but it couldn't do that. After several theories, Trisha remembered that supposed omen of divine favor when I was born, and hearing her say it I believed for the first time that it may be true.

I asked Trisha what she thought I ought to do about Lanno's advances. She was unusually evasive when I asked directly, trying to avoid the conversation and talk of other things, refusing to meet my gaze, and seeming very nervous. When I insisted that I needed advice she answered, in the coldest tone she had ever used with me, that it would certainly be a fine way to advance me standing. She avoided me for about a week after that, and I couldn't understand why.

In any event, with seemingly nobody telling me I shouldn't reciprocate Lanno's advances and so many pushing me to do exactly that, I began to spend time with him. We ate meals together, he attended my performances, we would take walks of the grounds together, and all manner of other things.

This went on for a few months, and during that time Trisha did not speak to me at all. I wondered what I had done wrong, but I never had long to myself to think on it at that point, now that I was getting properly involved in court politics through Lanno. Soon enough, his parents and mine made official arrangements for us to be married. We never really fell in love the way I'd seen so many times in stories when i was young, but I just assumed that was because the real world wasn't so pleasant as those stories.

After nearly a year of my marriage with Lanno, things went wrong. At a state dinner it was mentioned to the visiting dignitaries that I had been declared a blessed child the day I was born. One of these visitors took the statement very seriously, and demanded proof. Panicked, I produced light like I'd learned when Trisha taught me about magic, but that was not enough. The visitor, some kind of holy knight apparently, insisted that any two-bit mage could do that. With no other way to prove anything and not even fully convinced I had anything real to prove, I fled the room in shame and fear of the man's anger.

Lanno came to find me in our room after dinner. He asked why I was so distraught, and I explained how I had never really believed I could be some heaven-sent gift. He was dismayed, so I tried to make him understand, and after several minutes of increasingly heated discussion he blurted out that I had better be what the priests said or this whole marriage was a waste. I pressed him on that, and painstakingly extracted an explanation from him about how he had only courted me because he and his parents believed divine blood would strengthen their family line. He also told me that most of the other courtiers only humored me and my performances because they had assumed earlier I was likely to be the next lady of the house and now knew for sure. Feeling a pain in my chest I'd never known before, tears pouring down my face, I ran. I ran from my own room with no idea where I was going until I arrived at Trisha's chambers.

Trisha looked at first glance as though she intended to turn me away as she had for the last year, but her face softened instantly when she saw the state of me. She quickly ushered me in and sat me down. She brought me some tea and, once I had control of my voice again and could hold back the tears, I explained what had happened. Once I had finished we sat in silence for a long moment, and then she leaned across the low table and kissed me. She was gentle, calming, and the contact with her made my heart leap for joy. All at once I finally understood that love like it was in the stories did exist, I had just been in the wrong place for it.

When we, much to my disappointment, pulled apart, she leaned her forehead against mine and confessed that she had been in love with me since she was old enough to really understand what love was. That she loved my stories and my poems and my fierce love of learning and my laugh and my eyes... That she hadn't been able to stand seeing me with Lanno, no matter how good for my future it would surely be. I could hardly think, but I felt myself say that I loved her too, and then leaned in for another kiss, drawing her into an embrace.

For a few perfect moments we sat there in each other's arms, but the moment was shattered as Lanno opened the door and found us there. Believing that I had been putting on a show to break things off in favor of Trisha, he called for guards to seize us both. We were accused of carrying on an affair, and while Trisha's father managed to use his considerable position as the court wizard to save Trisha, my position and that of my parents was greatly diminished, and they could not save me from being banished from court.

My marriage dissolved, life in tatters, and my best friend... Possibly the love of my life? Now out of reach, I set off. I've wandered ever since, performing stories for coin anywhere that would take me and discovering new ways to leverage the tiny bits of magic Trisha showed me via my creative flow. I have no idea where I'm going with this life now, and I cannot imagine it will ever be fulfilling without her...

PERSONALITY TRAITS

I always want to know how things work and what makes people tick.

I’m full of witty aphorisms and have a proverb for every occasion.

I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing right. I can’t help it—I’m a perfectionist.

IDEALS

Generosity. My talents were given to me so that I could use them to benefit the world.

Aspiration. I work hard to be the best there is at my craft.

BONDS

The world is full to bursting with history and stories. If I can contribute to that great canon, then my life was worth something.

One day, somehow, I have to see her again.

FLAWS

I suffer from great anxiety both about my work and because I believe nobody could possibly respect me.

I'm good at appearing sociable but don't really understand the finer details of how it works.

[silverlightqueen]

Mischief Managed: Restricted Section

Across the United Kingdom, millions of children attend school every day, studying Maths, English and Science, but deep in the Scottish Highlands, a lucky thousand schoolkids get to study Potions, Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts. Whilst the rest of us learn names like Shakespeare, Avogadro and Fibonacci, they learn names like Goshawk, Bagshot and Scamander. Whilst we learn how to do algebra, how to analyse poems and how photosynthesis works, they learn how correctly use a Conjuring Spell, how to brew a Draught of Living Death and how to fly a Nimbus 2000. And naturally, school children will always find a way to misbehave, to get up to no good, to make mischief, but when you add spells, potions and magic into the mix? Let’s just say… they get up to more than just mischief. Welcome to Hogwarts.

hogwarts!au, Park Jimin x reader - comedy, mild sexual content

Rating: PG17 (discussion of sex, sexual innuendo, brief mentions of violence and torture, mild profanity)

Word Count: 2.4k+

a/n: check the masterlist before you read!! here is the second instalment of my new hogwarts drabble series called Mischief Managed! (I know it’s really quick, but I’m motivated atm so I’m just posting as I finish them lmao). thank you to the loml @silverlightprincess​ for proof-reading and editing for me, you’re the best! I really hope y’all enjoy this, lmk what you think, I thrive off praise lmao x

silverlightqueen masterlist

Accio (Summoning Charm)

Type: Charm

Pronunciation: Various, including: AK-ee-oh or AK-see-oh , AK-see-oh , AS-see-oh (US), and AT-chee-oh (Anglo-Catholic pronunciation)

Description: Summons an object towards the caster. It is able to summon objects in direct line of sight of the caster, as well as things out of view, by calling the object aloud after the incantation (unless the spell is casted nonverbally). This spell needs thought behind it, and the object must be clear in the casters mind before trying to summon it. The caster doesn't necessarily need to know the location of the target if they say the name of the object to be summoned, such as when Hermione Granger summoned some books from Dumbledore's office simply by saying "Accio Horcrux books!" while in Gryffindor Tower

Etymology: The Latin word accio means "I call" or "I summon"

Notes: The Summoning Charm is unable to directly summon exceptionally large targets such as buildings, or living creatures (except for Flobberworms which aren't considered to be worth summoning). It is, however, possible to move a creature by summoning things they are wearing or holding. It is also possible to bewitch items to become unaffected from this charm, as is the case with most bought goods

Lumos (Wand-Lighting Charm)

Type: Charm

Pronunciation: LOO-mos

Description: Illuminates the tip of the caster's wand, allowing the caster to see in the dark

Etymology: Latin lumen, "light"

Notes: opposite incantation, Nox, puts the light out

‘Good evening, Madam Pince,’ I say as sweetly as possible with a big smile, and the Hogwarts librarian looks at me over her glasses, her eyes flitting to Jimin stood behind me. ‘Miss y/l/n, Mr Park. How can I help you both?’ she asks slowly, nasally drawl nearly going through me, but I widen my smile even more at the vulture-like woman, looking past the hooked-nose and the shrivelled skin. ‘We’re doing a project for Professor Moody, on the Unforgiveable Curses, and he said that the books we need are in the Restricted Section,’ I smile, injecting as much sickly sweetness into my voice as possible, and I’m even graced with a smile as Madam Pince holds a hand out. ‘Note?’

Jimin drops the note from Professor Moody into her palm, and she inspects it thoroughly, holding it up to the light, before looking back to the two of us. ‘Nobody else has come asking about Unforgiveable Curse books in the Restricted Section,’ she says, almost suspicious, and I’m worried she’s going to refuse us entry – all we’ll be able to write of our essay is the title if we can’t go in and research. ‘We were all given different topics,’ Jimin replies pleasantly with his award-winning smile, and she gives one curt nod. ‘You have an hour and a half, not a moment longer,’ she says, waving her wand at the rope which cordons off the Restricted Section, the rope disappearing, and Jimin and I exchange a victorious glance. ‘Thank you, Madam Pince,’ we chorus, and she nods, waving us away with a ‘hurry along. And don’t touch the chained-up books! You’ll regret it if you do!’

We quickly head into the Restricted Section, the rope reappearing behind us, and I stop in my tracks, having to take a few moments to let my eyes readjust to the darkness. ‘Would it kill them to invest in a couple more lamps?’ Jimin mutters, putting his hand around my wrist and pulling me along behind him. The Restricted Section isn’t that big, only a few shelves on either side of us, but the darkness and the shadows make me feel like hundreds of scary things could be hiding in here, ready to pounce.

‘Lumos,’ Jimin whispers, a sudden burst of light appearing from the tip of his wand, and I feel a little better after he does so, grabbing my wand and doing the same. ‘Where do we start?’ Jimin asks, letting go of my hand, and I suddenly feel vulnerable, quickly reaching for him again, and he turns to me with an amused raise of his eyebrow. ‘Are you scared, y/n? Not very Slytherin of you,’ Jimin teases, and I roll my eyes, keeping a firm grip on his hand. ‘Shut it.’ ‘Well, I can’t hold your hand the entire time. We’ve got to actually look through the books,’ he says, and I sigh, reluctantly letting go and ignoring his laughter as I turn to look at the closest shelf.

I hold up my wand, the light from the tip streaming out onto the spines of the books, illuminating the titles. None of them seem relevant to the Unforgiveable Curses – they’re about potions or evil wizards or dark magic that’s been banned by the Ministry. But then, any of them could mention the Unforgiveable Curses, and I realise just how vague this project topic is. ‘Found anything?’ I hear Jimin’s disembodied voice echo from the other side of the shelves. ‘Nope, not yet,’ I call back, and he lets out a sigh, both of us resuming our searching in silence.

‘Here, I found one,’ Jimin says, and I can’t get to him quick enough, feeling uneasy being around all these… evil books, and in the dark, no less. The tip of his wand is resting against a book titled, ‘Magick Moste Evile’ and I use my wand to pull it off the shelf, reluctant to touch it. ‘You flip through it, see if you can find anything, and I’ll look for some more,’ Jimin says, already beginning to walk away, and I have too much pride to ask him to stay, so I just nod, looking down at the book. I use my wand to flip through the pages, and each Curse has a page dedicated to it, a little breakdown of each curse, how you perform them successfully, and their effects.

After skimming through those three pages, I’m curious as to what other spells could be in the book, and so I ignore the voice in my head telling me not to do it, and continuing flicking through the pages. Some of the spells and magic are interesting, like ‘Protego Diabolica’ (which creates a ring of fire around the caster – their allies can pass through unharmed but their enemies will be incinerated the second they come into contact with it), and ‘Fiendfyre’ (which they do teach us about, but not until we’re in sixth or seventh year because of how dangerous it is), but most of the spells make me shiver, like ‘Transmogrification Torture’ (which tortures the victim to death) and ‘Serpensortia’ (which produces a snake from the wand of the caster that attacks the victim).

‘y/n?’ I hear Jimin call, and I quickly flick back to the pages on the Unforgiveable Curses, feeling cold all over. ‘Yeah?’ I reply, and he sticks his head around the corner of the shelf beside me, making me jump. ‘You think they only have books on, like… dark magic and evil shit in here?’ he asks, a mischievous grin on his face, and I narrow my eyes at him suspiciously. ‘Well, what else would they have?’ ‘Sex books?’ he smirks, eyes sparkling with mischief, and my mouth drops open.

‘I- what? Sex books?’ I echo, eyes wide, and his grin grows even more with amusement at my reaction. ‘Yep. Like… the wizards’ Kama Sutra,’ he nods, and I choke on air, ignoring his stupid laughter. ‘Who told you about the Kama Sutra? That’s a muggle thing,’ I demand, and he looks like he’s stumbled across gold, a hand running through his jet black locks and his eyes sparkling when he says, ‘how does our innocent little y/nie know what the Kama Sutra is?’ I feel a little embarrassed, but I shake it off, rolling my eyes as I reply, ‘I grew up around stupid muggle boys, Jimin, of course I know what the Kama Sutra is. How do you know?’ ‘The others told me, Tae and Hobi about it.’ ‘Which others?’ ‘Jin, Yoongi, Namjoon and Jungkook,’ he lists off, and I gasp, offended, pushing down my confusion about why they were talking about sex in one of my very few absences.

‘When did you guys hang out without me?’ I demand, and he laughs. ‘When you were having your girls’ night with your little girlfriends a few weeks ago,’ he says mockingly, and I push down the temptation to hex him. The boys are always laughing at my friendship with some of the other Slytherin girls (Jennie, Nayeon, Solar, Jeongyeon, Irene and Tzuyu), saying that I’m too much of a bitch to have girl friends, but every now and then, you just need a girls’ night (and I have to have a break from the Gryffindors in our friendship group sometimes – they’re a bit much).

‘Well, no, I don’t think they have a wizards’ Kama Sutra in here. It probably doesn’t even exist,’ I murmur, reaching into my robes and pulling out my mobile phone to take pictures of the relevant pages in the book in front of me. We don’t get service here, because of the magic and because of how far out in the countryside we are (sometimes I’m lucky and get one bar down in Hogsmeade – it’s pretty rare though), but it’s good for taking pictures of books in the library so that I don’t have to take notes on parchment and then copy those notes into an essay. ‘I beg to differ. There had to have been someone who’s used magic to have freaky sex, and they have to have published it somewhere,’ Jimin says offhandedly, and I pull a face at him, not wanting to imagine the kind of things that would be published in a wizards’ book of sex positions.

‘Why are you, like, interested in finding it? It’s not like you need it,’ I tease, and he lets out a mocking laugh, rolling his eyes. ‘I’ll have you know that Jennie asked me to go down to Hogsmeade with her next weekend,’ he says proudly, and I look at him in surprise, ignoring the tense feeling that tightens my chest. ‘She did? She didn’t… tell me anything,’ I say, voice soft with shock, and he raises an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised. You girls tell each other everything, right?’ he says, and I nod. ‘Well, we’re supposed to anyway. But whatever, it’s fine. She’s allowed to have her secrets,’ I say neutrally, using my wand to lift ‘Magick Moste Evile’ back onto the shelf.

‘Just because she’s asked you to Hogsmeade with her, it doesn’t mean you need the wizards’ Kama Sutra,’ I say, and he raises an eyebrow with a smirk. ‘We’ll see,’ he replies, and I shoot him a dirty look. ‘Men are so trash. I wish I was lesbian sometimes,’ I say mildly, continuing to search through the books, and Jimin closes his eyes, pressing his fingers to his temples. ‘Hold on, don’t say anything, let me just. Oh, yeah, that’s imprinted on my brain now,’ he says, and I let out a disgusted noise, reaching out to swat at him, and he dodges my hand with a mischievous grin. ‘Pervert.’ ‘I was joking.’ ‘I’m not sure I believe you.’ ‘Yeah, don’t.’

I roll my eyes, turning away from him and searching for more books, aware that our time is running out, and I want to find enough information to write a good essay – I don’t really want to get on the wrong side of Professor Moody. ‘This is getting boring,’ Jimin says, and I recognise his tone. It’s when he has an idea, and he’s waiting for me to agree that it’s boring, so that he can enact his idea, so I side-eye him. ‘What’s your idea?’ I ask, and he laughs, before holding up his wand. ‘Accio Unforgiveable Curse books,’ he says, and before he’s even finished speaking, I know it’s a bad idea.

The second the words leave his mouth, several loud thuds sound, and I drop to the floor, ducking from the several books that are (inevitably) about to fly towards us. A couple dozen books in total zoom through the air towards Jimin, and he shields himself, wrapping his arms around himself and tucking his head down as they make contact with his body, one of them hitting top of his head and another the area between his legs. I hold a hand over my mouth to stop the laughter from bursting out, especially when he looks at me, pouting.

‘What was that?’ we hear Madam Pince’s shrill voice echo, and my amusement is replaced by panic. Luckily, I’m a quick thinker, and I call back, ‘nothing to worry about, Madam Pince! Jimin just tripped on his robes, but he’s fine!’ Jimin shoots me a dirty look and I smile back angelically as Madam Pince replies, ‘if you say so. Remember, you only have 47 minutes and 24 seconds!’ Jimin scowls in the direction of her voice, and I have to stifle more laughter. ‘That hurt,’ he mutters miserably, rubbing at his head, and I roll my eyes as I pick myself up off the floor, dusting off my robes. ‘Will you kiss me better, y/n?’ he says cutely, pouting his plump lips and giving me big puppy dog eyes, and I scowl back at him. ‘You’re such a baby. This is what you get for talking about sex books,’ I say, and he rolls his eyes, before gasping with realisation.

‘Should I try the summoning spell to see if there are any sex books?’ he asks, and I scowl at him. ‘I swear to God,’ I say, pointing a threatening finger at him, ‘if you keep banging on about these non-existent sex books, I will not put your name on the essay, and you can face Moody, and tell him that you spent all your time looking for the wizards’ Kama Sutra instead of books on Unforgiveable Curses.’ ‘Excuse me!’ he exclaims, feigning hurt and clutching onto his chest, ‘if it weren’t for me, you’d still be searching all the shelves for Unforgiveable Curse books! And anyway, you’re the one who brought the sex books up again!’

‘Did somebody say sex books?’ we hear Madam Pince shriek, both of us looking at each in shock and panic. ‘No, Madam Pince, we said hex books!’ I call back, Jimin giving me a thumbs up, impressed with my quick thinking. ‘I should think so too,’ she mutters primly, both of us holding hands over our mouths to stifle our laughter.

[diddlesanddoodles]

Dumpling ch. 17

(author’s notes: I’M NOT DEAD!)

Keral sent along his message to Hev the blacksmith informing him of Nenani’s need for a new marker with a servant who came to replenish the wine decanter and deliver a few papers and notes to Maevis. Once a fresh post of tea had been brewed and Keral’s wine glass filled, they got to work.

In no time at all, the number of books being taken down from the shelves were taking over the table and along with them came seemingly endless rolls of parchment upon which Maevis furiously scribbled as many notes and citations as his quill and ink could produce. Keral, for his role, thumbed through various books and whenever he came upon something, he slipped a small piece of parchment in the page and sat it before the magician. The library had taken on an air of solemnity.  

However, as was his nature, Jae did not much care for the weight of the room and did his best to keep the mood from sinking any further.  

“So a smoke mage,” he wondered aloud to to one in particular, lounging against a stack of books. “What makes a smoke mage so dangerous? Because by the name alone, I think the fellow may have drawn the short end of the magic stick.”

“No mage is inherently dangerous,” Barnaby said. “But we do not know this mage’s intentions and what we do know is that they are violent and not above meaningless killing.”  

He was on his second cup of tea and comfortably seated on a cushion close to where Maevis was working. After trying to aide in the research himself and suffering a slight dizzy spell, Maevis all but demanded that the old archivist sit and rest.  

“It won’t do to tire yourself, my friend,” the magician had told the human gently in an attempt to mask his worry. “Best rest a while.”

“I am fine,” Barnaby replied with a disregarding wave, but he still lowered himself onto the cushion nonetheless. “Just a bit over excited, mind you. I’ll be right as rain in a bit.”

“Not very nice t’be worryin’ old Meeves now,” Keral added. “He already frets over ya like a hen. Won’t be helpin’ ‘im much to be actin’ fragile, eh? Let us do the heavy liftin’ and if ya remember anything, we’ll write it down.”

Barnaby huffed mildly at being accused of acting fragile, but stayed put and did not refuse Jae when he handed him his tea. Nenani watched with confusion as the two giants worked and fussed and Jae fidgeted. She knew very little of magic and prior to meeting Maevis, she had never seen it used.  

“What’s a mage?” she asked.  

All at once, she became the focus of the room and she felt her face flush. Perhaps it had been a silly question.  

“Well,” Maevis began thoughtfully. “A mage is a person who uses magic.”

“Like the kind of magic you do?” she asked.  

“Not exactly,” he replied patiently. “I learned magic from studying it in books and from other magicians. A mage does not learn magic, they are born with it. Sometimes they are called Elementals, because a mage’s magic often times coincides with a particular element.”

“Like fire?” she asked. “Fire mages?”  

“Correct,” Maevis replied. “Though it is also important to note that while all Elementals are considered mages, not all mages are Elementals.”

Nenani made a face. “I...I don’t...huh?”

Keral laughed at her as he sat a book down. “Elementals are human, but one of us big folk could be a mage. We just wouldn’t be called an Elemental. Like that Bertol fellow.”

Now it was Maevis’s turn to make a face and Keral released a loud bark of a laugh.

“Oh, come now,” Keral replied. “Don’t y’know Bertol is the greatest prophet who ever lived?”

“Bertol the bumbling buffoon,” Maevis replied dryly, “Is as much a prophet as that tea pot over there and not nearly so useful. And only by the skin of his teeth does he have any right to claim himself a mage.”

Keral grinned, laughing. “Don’t care fer his ramblings either then? Hm. Neither does the King.”

“I would not blame King Warren if he should one day decide to place that idiot in the stockades and conveniently forget him.”  

“Who is Bertol?” Nenani asked, glancing between the two giants, feeling more confused than ever. Mages, Elementals, and now prophets?  

“Bertol is a Vhasshallan mage,” Maevis replied sourly. “He is thought by many in Vhasshal to hold the gift of foresight. That he can see the future and make predictions based upon his visions. He was the one responsible for the Gold prophecy.”

“Gold…?” she asked, trailing off.

“It’s why Warren’s called the Gold King,” Jae added before biting into a biscuit.  

Seeing her confusion, Keral reached for a book sitting on the edge of the table, a smallish black volume with gold lettering, and he flipped it open and began to read. His voice was even and mellow, but the words that sprouted from his lips brought with them a sickening sensation of her guts being pulled and ice dripping down her spine.

“The river runs uphill to the dying songs of the fall of fools and Kings that tear flesh from bone and the crown from the mountain. Water runs red with fire and shall rise when the old blood runs new. The flesh taken will be paid in blood and the dead walls will rise with gold.”

He closed the book with a snap and tilted his head down to regard Nenani with an open expression, but froze, brows drawing together, and he bent down. “Ya alright there lass? Yer a bit pale.”

In depths of her memory, she could feel the cool stone of the catacomb and see the empty hollows that once held eyes of those that had once been a person. Those voices chanting. Her dreams that played out in her mind every night. The smell of smoke, the screams of men dying as the fishing boats burned. A man in black, his face obscured by the skull of a stag. Her Uncle calling to her as he died.

And those words…

“...shall rise when the old blood runs new.”

She felt thick fingers wrap around her shoulders and Kerals voice broke through the fog of her mind. Abruptly she broke free and she was no longer within herself but back at the library. The scent of smoke and ash replaced by that of parchment and ink and tea. And Keral’s body odor.  

She met his eyes and was surprised to find her cheeks wet. “I...I don’t know...”

“Oi now, don’t go lettin’ them words scare ya. Yer alright,” he told her quietly. “Nothin’ to be upset about. They’re just words, remember. Besides, it already came to pass. Nothin’ to fear, eh?”

Barnaby and Jae were both studying her with a mixture of expressions from worried to bewildered. Now aware that everyone was intently focusing in on her, Nenani flushed and scrubbed at her cheeks in slight embankment. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

“You’ve had quite a day,” Maevis said, an air of suggestion in his tone. With a gloved hand, he waved behind towards the door just beyond the curtain. “Would you like to have a rest?”

“Best thing t’do would get ya back to th’ kitchens,” Keral added as he rubbed his chin in contemplation. “But if ya showed up without a marker, Farris would have a right apoplexy.”

“Yeah, Hev’s work is good,” said Jae. “But metal working takes time. And it’ll take most of the afternoon for Connor to do the detail work.”  

Nenani shook her head. “I’m fine. I don’t need to rest. That poem, er – prophecy. I’ve heard it before, but I didn’t know it was a prophecy.”  

Maevis expression of concern shifted into mild disdain. “Yes, well. I wouldn’t put much weight nor worry to those words. The one responsible for that dribble has as much foresight as a week old turnip.”

“First a tea pot and now he’s a turnip,” Jae sniggered. “So which one is he?”

“What has that poor old buggar done to earn your ire, Meeves,” Keral asked. “Didn’t think you had it in ya t’hold a grudge. Even against someone deserving of it.”  

Maevis took a moment to take a long and slow breath, placing his folded hands atop the table, and seemed to collect himself.

“Anyone can string together phrases with grandiose words so vague as to be perfectly useless,” Maevis replied, his irritation smoothed over, but still there. “There are many who take themselves for grand prophets and mostly their predictions fall to deaf ears. Bertol has managed to convince people his words are true and by the God’s graces, I haven’t the foggiest inclination as to why they would listen to him, of all people.”

“He had good timing,” Keral offered in response. “Folks were looking for something to cling to. They'll cling to hope if they smell it. Makes ‘em desperate.”

“My meaning, precisely, Keral! Words have power when people make it so. Bertol’s words were hallow and meaningless. Just enough vague enough for opportunistic fiends to take advantage. They see themselves in his words and are convinced that they’re meant to grander things. Bertol’s words are reckless. And therefore, dangerous.”

…………………………………………….

“Tell me master Barnabas,” Keral said with surprise formality. He sat in the same chair, but his glass of wine had been replaced by a cup of tea by Maevis after the ranger had all but drained the pitcher all on his own. Beside him stood a small stack of books. Maevis held his own cup and nursed it. Beside him sat a much more impressive amass of books and tomes.

They had paused their research for a break and Barnaby was looking over the slate he had given to Nenani to draw on, showing her how to hold the chalk and how to use the lines to create an image. Keral had been watching them with an enigmatic expression, though Nenani tried not to let it bother her. Keral had managed to subvert her expectations of what kind of a person he was, but there were occasions she had caught glimpses of something else.

Something that she could not help but feel nervous about. But no one else seemed at all concerned, so Nenani decided she was just being silly.

At hearing his name, Barnaby looked to Keral inquisitively and the ranger continued. “How common was red hair in Silvaara?”

The question was odd. Odd enough to catch the room by surprise and then as a consequence, all eyes turned to Nenani. The only one of them with red hair.  

Feeling the weight of their curious eyes, she shrank away from their peering gazes. “What?”

Barnaby turned back to Keral, perplexed. “Not too common. Black or brown is more common, such as young master Jae. I myself had brown hair. When I was young. And had hair. Why?”

“What about the highborns?” Keral asked. “Nobles and the like?”  

Barnaby’s eyed widened as understanding struck him. “Oh. Well, red was much more common. A genetic consequence of the blood purity obsession that took over the last decades. Though it was wildly held as truth that those with red hair were born of fire and were more likely to hold the Flower’s blessing.”

Jae watched with mild curiosity and then laughed, eyeing Keral skeptically. “What? You think Nenani’ might be a long lost highborn?”

Keral shrugged. “I get curious. The Hill tribes are all brown and black haired save for the last one Farris picked up from Dornbey. Poor sod had quite the reception when I delivered ‘im to Gregis. It was all m’lord this and m’lord that. Practically swarmed th’fellow. He was already outta his head. Poor bastard.”

“Well,” Barnaby continued, glancing at Nenani. “That was one subject I had hoped to broach with you dear. As Jae may have explained, I am an archivist and I write histories. Whenever a human comes to live here on castle grounds I write down their histories. To persevere what little of Silvaara remains. And after your first visit and all that transpired, I had quite forgotten to ask you about who your parents were as I did not want to upset you any further. And Keral has made a fine point. Your hair color tells me I may be able to find your family history if you can tell me your family name.”

“Family name?” Nenani asked, thinking back. “I don’t think we have one...”

“Oh, nonsense,” Barnaby replied. “Everyone has a family name. We’ll start with your father, then. What was his name? Many families passed down names to the first born sons. I might be able to trace you to a particular family.”

“That’s how I got my name.” Jae added in.

“Hayron,” Nenani said. “Papa’s name was Hayron.”  

Barnaby, who had taken up a quill and spare parchment to take notes, paused and he peeked over the top of the parchment with raised eyebrows. “Hayron, you said?”

Nenani nodded. “Yes. My Uncle’s name was Halden.”  

He placed the the quill and parchment on his lap and seemed to consider her for a moment as though seeking something in her face. After a long moment, he asked “And you’re mother?”

His tone was quiet and almost...seeking?

“Oira.”  

The longing look in his eyes dissipated and he nodded. Almost sadly, as though he was disappointed in her answer. “Oira. Hm. I do not know that name. But I do remember Haryon.”  

Nenani blinked. “Huh? You knew Papa?”

“And Halden in some respects, though I cannot recall ever speaking to him very much. He took his duties quite seriously, if I’m remembering correctly. They were junior members of the Thorn Guard.”

“Yes!” Nenani exclaimed excitedly. “He told he once that he was in the Thorn Guard. But I don’t know what that is.”

“Oh, whoa. Thorn guards?” She heard Jae whistle and glanced back at him to find her fellow human grinning. Behind him, Keral was expressionless, but his eyes were sharp and focused and she knew his interest had been peaked.  

“Hayron is an old name that is fairly common among the Thorn Guard families. However, I only knew one Hayron with a brother named Halden. They were the sons of Captain Hayier.”

Nenani was quiet a moment. “I remember his sword. It had thrones on it. The one they think killed him.”

Barnaby’s eyes turned sad and empathetic and he sighed. “Your father was a good man. Dedicated to his duty and family. All sons of Thorn Guards were under immense pressure to perform and live up to expectations. Competition for high ranks was fierce and even being the son of the captain was not a guarantee of a rank. He earned his mark. As did his brother. I am sorry to know that fate was not so kind to him in the end.”  

“So would that make her a Daelg?” Keral asked suddenly. “Or was it Daeleg? I was never much for studying all them Silvaaran Houses.”  

“You had it correct, sir. It is Daelg. Unless there was another pair of brothers named Hayron and Halden in the Thorn Guard,” the archivist replied with a grin. “I would be most confident that you’re family name is Daelg.”  

The name did not stir any memories and it felt foreign and odd. However, she was not nearly as curious in regards to the name as the revelation that Barnaby had known her father. She had questions now. So many questions. But mostly, she just wanted to know him more. It seemed forever ago that he died. A whole world away in another time. Another life even.  

“So, she is highborn?” Jae asked, glancing between Barnaby and Nenani. “I don’t have to start calling her m’lady do I?”

Keral snorted into his drink and turned away to cough into his elbow.  

“No, the Thorn Guards were not nobility,” Barnaby replied, amused. “They were in a caste all their own. Above merchants and below Nobles. Once upon a time, marriage between them and highborns was permitted, but it was almost always for a financial gain or the belief that the two would produce exceptional progeny. However it fell out of favor decades prior to the war and in someways expressly forbidden in the name of blood purity. The King and therefore his court were all obsessed with the idea of pure blood. The more pure the line, the higher chance that they would produce a mage of fire.”

“Fire Mages.” Keral added with a final and disdainful cough to clear the tea from his lungs. “Crazy bunch of inbreds.”  

“So,” Jae asked. “Speaking of Mages and all that. What exactly is a smoke mage, then? If that’s what you think might be skulking around the countryside killing Vhasshalans.”  

“It is an ancient variety of deviant magic. So rare, there does not seem to be any contemporary sources ever describing the existence of one,” Barnaby replied. “But when I was a lad, I was told that a smoke mage is a fire mage that sinned so greatly that the Gods stripped them of their blessing and their fire and leaving only the smoldering ruin of a person. Cursed to wander the world, creating chaos, and suffering in their wake.”

“Well,” Keral said, standing and stretching out his back. “Smoke mage or not, I’ll be needin’ more to work with than an old folk tale. I appreciate your help lads, but until we know more, the only thing to be done is to be out there scoutin’ and reportin’.”  

“You’re going back out?” Jae asked. “You just got back.”

“Not tonight. I’ll be with the boys organizing the routes first. First light tomorrow, perhaps,” Keral regarded the boy with a lopsided grin. “Why? D’ya miss me when I ain’t here to hold yer hand, lad?”

Jae glared at the giant. “No.”

“Yer welcome t’use my room when I’m out if ya be needin’ a place to hold up,” Keral said. “Beats sleepin’ in them moldy tunnels.”

Jae glowered, his cheeks flushed. “No thanks. Your room smells like armpits. Besides, I like the tunnels. You bastards can’t go in after me.”

“Young master Jae,” Barnaby snapped indignantly. “I cannot condone such language. Least of all when a young lady is present.”

“It always amazed me how that for a King’s ward,” Maevis observed with a suppressed grin. “Your decorum lessons never have seemed to find proper purchase.”  

“Warren does not keep me around to lick his boot,” Jae quipped with a shrug. “He’s got advisers and the court for that.”

Keral laughed. “Ah, well if ya changed yer mind about the room, the offer stands. Y’know the way in.”

The ranger gave his made his excuses and an apology to Maevis’s for leaving him with all the books to put away, but the magician wave him off.  

“Nonsense. You never put them back in their proper place when you do feel inclined to return them, so it matters not. I know you have your duties to perform and would hate to keep you from them. I will let you know if I find anything that might be of use.”  

With a grin and a wave, the ranger was gone.  

[jamiebluewind]

Character Descriptions for Fantasy High 2.9!

***

As always, let me know if I need to edit or add anything and tag/ask/PM me about art and stories so I can check them out!

Warning: trauma, abuse, mental abuse, neglect, starvation, manipulation, memory loss mention, dark themes, isolation, imprisonment, fantasy racism, vomit mention (please let me know if I missed any)

All pronounciations typed out have a rolled R.

***

Facts

The party is currently at 44,100 exp. each. Next level is at 48,000 (which will probably take 3 more big battles, 2 if Brennan is super generous with RP awards).

Abernant family had all their land and wealth reclaimed by The Court of Stars for their treachery and failure to prevent a war with Solace. Elianwyn committed treason and betrayal as well.

To save Adaine, the group decided to break up into 3 teams: Pylon 1 (Ragh, Tracker, Cathilda, and Sandra Lynn), Pylon 2 (Gorgug, Fabian, and Riz), and Recovery (Ayda, Fig, and Kristen). Team 1 and 2 would simultaneously take out the pylons. Then, the recovery team would go in (invisible and/or disguised) and gets Adaine and Aelwyn. They would all meet back at Van where they would most likely use Ayda's teleport to leave Fallinel (or regroup to plan their next move).

***

New Characters

Tell-ah-mine Low-men-el-da

Fabian's grandpapa

Tall elf with regal green robes, a silver circlet, long platinum white blond hair with a widows peak, and shimmering blue eyes

Crinkle in the corners of his eyes shows his age in sort of an Elrond way. He look of a dude in his late 40s/early 50s who took excellent care of his body and kept it tight

Moves with supernatural grace

Can turn into silver sand and float away

Has no concept of what time means

Obsessed with the fact that his grandson will die before him (Your human blood has brought mortality to this family. You will one day die.)

Offers to send word to an elf who is a fabled eye smith who lives on the high mountains at the heart of Fallinel that can craft a working eye (from songs, whispers, beams of moonlight, jeweled edges of the blue of the sea, and shimmering poems pulled from the ether itself) for Fabian, but has no clue how long it will take (a moment, a year, or a hundred years).

Can't pronounce words in common very well, especially words he's never heard before (which delights Fabian and pisses off Gorgug)

Calls Fabian Aramais Seacaster fa-bee-ahn ah-rye-ah-my-ess Seacaster (which might actually be the proper pronouncations of his name in that region as "Seacaster" was said correctly and that's how all the other elves say his name as well) and calls Hallariel ha-lair-ee-el

Weeps without moving his face, but also sometimes makes a soft eeehhhh sound when he cries (at one point he cried over a drop of water)

Gifted stewardship of Khy-low Meh-new-rah 3000 years ago after he crafted The Sword of the North Star (he was the smith of fung-dran-ghoor) for the ancient king of Fallinel Th-wrist-win Eversong.

"Without the Elven Oracle, we are lost."

Saw the Abernants as power hungry and cruel and can't understand why they would leave Fallinel. He found Anguin in particular to be a crass and small man with no nobility, only a thirst for power.

Thinks Riz has a harsh energy, is "a little dick", and calls him "a strange green mouse thing"

Got physically ill when a gun was explained to him, calling it gross and some dwarven kind of thing before vomiting which he turns into a flock of white crows

Vhan-lair-ee-el

Fabian's aunt

Tried to heal Fabian's pneumonia with elvan singing

Said "I have failed" when her singing doesn't work before she fades into starlight and vanishes

Hal-door-in and [unnamed youth]

Elven teens in white linen shorts arguing because [unnamed] believes Hal-door-in took his lute.

Calmed by a distant song which stopped their fight.

Faf-threth-riel

Lithe elven youth (around 17 or 18 years old) with a blond mop of hair covering one eye

Bakes elven whey bread

Lived a sheltered life

Ragh was the first half-orc he met

Mostly into Ragh due to Ragh being half orc, excessively talking about his green skin (like the boughs of a tree leafy, my leafy man), being big and beefy (your legs are like the mighty trunks of trees), was really into rage (like when Ragh punched a seat cushion) to the point of it making Ragh uncomfortable

Sang in bed

Treth-thren-ren

Elven youth who does morning dance yoga

Tried to get Fabian to eat a grape

Oak Warriors

Elemental plant based automaton soldiers made of pure magic

Look like 8 foot tall green men with leaves coming from their faces

***

Changes to Established Characters

Aelwyn

Matted long blond hair

Dry skin, chapped colorless lips, and thick bags under her eyes

Severely dehydrated and trance deprived (probably hasn't been allowed to trance for nearly a year)

5 points of exhaustion. Only magic is keeping her from going to the 6th level and dying.

Her "room" is a large large beautiful elven chamber with silver and marble. Ambiant light glows from the white stone.

Trapped inside a 15 foot diameter orb that's constantly turning so she can't trance

Crawling on hands and knees while trapped, shaking with the effort

Doesn't give Adaine up to Kear

Can still remember how to cast the message cantrip

Feels strange and addled (unable to think clearly; confused), can't remember what's real or imagined anymore, doesn't clearly remember what happened in her past (including what she did to get imprisoned), and forgets what she and Adaine have already talked about (causing a lot of reputation).

Thinks her parents "tried their best they could" and that "they expected quite a lot of us, but isn't that what- doesn't that... didn't that make us great?" (possibly due to something her father said or did since her imprisonment as it echoes a few things he's said)

Gilear

Looks scruffy (from not shaving), dirty, and has pit stains

Somehow didn't mess up being diplomatic with Fabian's grandpapa

Unbuttons the top button on his shirt when he "lets loose"

To Fig about Sandra Lynn and Garthy: Are you aware of such... hanky panky?

Learning of Sandra Lynn's infidelity with Garthy "Honestly? Perhaps this is... fucked up. It makes me feel... like there wasn't something uniquely wrong with me. Maybe a tiny little w for Gilear."

Spent the night walking through the forest with Hallariel's father, reciting poetry (badly)

To Fabian after Hallariel's father threw up "You're low and he's low. It's Gilear's day baby! It's Gilear's day."

Tried to ask Hallariel's father for her hand, but even though Fig gave him bardic inspiration and Riz helped by covering Fabian's mouth, he failed... so much. ("Lord Tell-ah-mine of Khy-low Meh-new-rah I like you am-" *makes himself throw up* "We get it. We both get it. We... We're the throw up boys." *passes out*)

Ayda

Hid in the van the entire visit

Might have rejection sensitive dysphoria (which is common in those with autism or ADHD)

Did a sending spell to Zelda for Gorgug for 150 gold (after reminding him that she very much does not like anyone in her debt or visa versa)

Offered to exact vengeance on Zelda for Gorgug

Is powerful enough to know teleport and learn plane shift (so level 13 or higher)

Stated that Adaine is her best friend and decides that since Fig is also Adaine's best friend, by the transitive property she is best friends with Fig as well (and Fig agreed). Learning this, she says "Fantastic. I grow richer by the day. I'm emotional." before starting to cry fire "I'm emotional. I'm gonna fly away." She then flew away, returning after she had calmed down.

Ragh

Ate grapes and started burping musical notes after he left Khy-low Meh-new-rah.

Lost his virginity to Faf-threth-riel who then got creepy and kinda racist, making Ragh very uncomfortable (and want to get out of there asap)

Fabian

Lost both points of exhaustion thanks to the 8000 thread count elven sheets (did they get to keep the sheets or at least one sheet for help with exhaustion?)

Felt really good when he tried out dance yoga, even wondering if he should be some kind of yoga dancer instead of a fighter (how about a whirling dervish dancer like Cathilda?)

The grapes he put in his pocket (after refusing to eat them) turned into song

Indifferent towards saving Aelwyn and doesn't want to be on the retrieval team

When he started feeling anxious about the Aelwyn stuff, Riz told him to lose himself in dancing again to feel free (Riz: You are the only one that I wanna see dancing right now.) It made him feel much better.

***

Other Characters

Adaine

Taken by Court of Stars

Her jacket and spellbook were taken

Trapped in an orb which is soft and doesn't hurt her, but the constant movement of its slow turning doesn't allow her to be still or trance

The walls of her room glow with runes and there are many perminant magical effects, making her captors capable of some crazy things (like prepared directional counter spells), but the setup wouldn't counter cantrips

Escaped the orb with dispel magic (dc 15) which makes a couple counter spells go off and an alarm sound

Hid in Aelwyn's room. The sister's spoke before she was recaptured and placed back in her orb. Adaine told Aelwyn that she was going to get her out

Discovered that her room was close enough to Aelwyn to talk to her via the message cantrip

Repeatedly cast Ray of Frost to turn her orb into a slip and slide to stay entertained

Instead of speaking to her father in elvish, she responded in common. Also cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter on him.

Anguin and Kear said she would be executed for treason for staying in Solace and refusing to cooperate. She demanded a lawyer and then the Ambassador to Solace, citing her age and being a student at Augefort Adventuring Academy which summoned a recorded hologram of Arthur Augefort.

Arthur Augefort

Has a recorded hologram that is activated when a student claims the need of his diplomatic help in foreign affairs.

It threatens the listeners with graphic and terrifying violence and doom, giving them the options of either rectify the actions that summoned him (Yes) or refuse and welcome the aforementioned punishment for their actions (No).

Gorgug

Fabian's grandfather called him Jhor-judge

Finally got a message to Zelda via Ayda using her sending spell (Zelda. Safe in Fallinel. Gonna finish cell tower soon. Sorry about everything, but hope your break is going well in spite of this. Miss you.) and got a reply the next morning a little while after waking up (Sorry. Was at a party. You don't have to build a cell tower. That's crazy. It's all whatever Gorgug. I don't blame you.)

Didn't sleep well, but still got the benefit of a full night's sleep due to elven sheets.

Kristen

Got in a fight with Tracker and then got 3 nat 1s on persuasion checks when she tried to make up with her.

Slept in Adaine's room

Doesn't know how to make a cell tower

Took one of the 40 to 50 foot long diaphanous silk scarves with her

Gave (inspiring?) speech ending with "Friendship is thinker than water and we need water to live." which gave everyone 11 temp hit points

Accidentally called Pok a "smiling elf" and then blew it off as being due to her being human

Can now see Shadow Cat in the picture (along with Tracker, Sandra Lynn, Garthy, Riz, and Sklonda and possibly the dead cambian, Pok, Jace, and Adaine's mom) and reacted by saying "Was I spooning the cat all night in the milk!?"

Sandra Lynn

Dropped out senior year and got her diploma after the fact to join an adventuring party

Joined as a replacement member for an existing adventuring party that was already active in the world and included an older much more powerful married couple.

Fresh out of high school, fell in love with one person from the couple (nonbinary or gender intentionally hidden) who "did not treat her very kindly"

When it all came out, she was ejected from the adventuring party, her romantic partner took great pains to smear her name (so no one would accept her), no other party would take her as a replacement, and she was forced to become a Celesian Ranger

Gilear knows who the couple were, but doesn't want to tell Fig (could she know the people involved?)

Key-heir/Khear

Child-like elven maiden with long brown braided hair, a white gown, and a large staff.

When confronted by Arthur Augefort's hologram, she chose to not heed his warnings.

***

More from 2.9!

***

Previous

[trashwarden]

I’ve commissioned my wonderful @jessicapendragon for some dorxus food and as always she made such a wonderful job! I love you, Jess! And

Go commish her! 

---

Someone seems to be trying to woo him, although Dorian spends a great deal of time denying it all at first. 

It is easy to pretend the vase of purple and blue flowers set out on his desk is just a bit of added flair put there by the cleaning staff. The new leather satchel found draped across his chair is simply a replacement from the requisitions officer for the one he lost in the Emerald Graves. He waves away the fact that his initials are engraved on it. Merely a coincidence. The bundle of rare books wrapped up with a blue bow a week later are of course useful to his work with the Inquisition, nevermind they have poems of love and beauty tucked between the pages. Surely they were left there by the previous owner and went unnoticed by Skyhold’s studious librarian. 

Denial is much harder to cling to as the gifts keep coming. A box of chocolates and dates appear nestled on the shelves of his alcove, delicacies he has often lamented not being fed in the backs of carriages and dark places anymore. The next box he eyes warily, and then even more so when he sees the attached note - it is a box of delicate teas, something he stays away from with his dreaded stripweed allergy, but these are all safe, says someone in a handwriting he doesn’t recognize. 

Someone has been listening to him very carefully, and everyone should hang on his every word, it’s true, but this is...this is something new. 

As a man of academia, he decides to test this theory. For a day and a half he waxes lyrical all across Skyhold about a special liquor popular with the Orlesians. Carnal, 8:69 Blessed. There’s said to be something scandalous at the bottom, something in the potent ingredients that enhances sensation. He’s sure to say this to everyone with a waggle of his eyebrows for effect. Despite its supposedly secret nature, like most such whispered things, it is easy enough to find in Orlais, which is why he chose it amongst the hundreds of better brands. 

Sure enough, it appears on the nightstand in Dorian’s room within a week. Now comes the real question: Who? Who is leaving him these gifts with no name, for a purpose he can hardly fathom? It is difficult to surmise when he refuses to bring it up in any circles. Admitting he has received them seems like it might end in a cruel joke, like this is some test that he could fail. That mentioning it all is akin to enjoying it, and like all things he enjoys, it will be taken from him. 

Because he does enjoy it. The held, excited breath before climbing the last step, the leap of his heart when something awaits. Wondering in the quiet of night what might appear next, or who might be this unknown admirer, the wonder he feels in knowing someone has spent such time and effort on him. No one has ever tried to court him in such a manner, although his paramour seems to be just as unsure about it as he is, what with the hidden identity and all.

Part of him doesn’t want to find out, because deep down...he knows who he wishes it was. When he wonders about someone leaving these gifts in the dead of night, or looking around corners during the day to make sure he isn’t there, he pictures a certain earnest and utterly vexing man, with kind eyes and a smile that makes Dorian feel as if he’s taken an invigorating draught laced with lightning. Vaxus Trevelyan. The Inquisitor from the Free Marches, with his heavy shield and unguarded heart, has wanted something from Dorian he has never expected: nothing. Nothing, it seems, but the pleasure of his company and to be at his side. Well, perhaps a little more. Perhaps a great deal, in fact, and Dorian finds himself, for the first time in a long time, hoping for the chance to give something back. 

But what if it isn’t Vaxus?

...What if it is?

He must find out. If his time in the South has done anything, it has made him braver, so he plans to catch this gifting fiend. The last few items have been placed in his room, which means someone is also sneaking into said room, a criticism on the lax security he is sure to bring up with Cullen one evening, but it also brings about opportunity. So he puts another plan into motion, and waits.

It takes much longer for his machinations to bear fruit for this second round of experiments, much too long for his tastes, even if it is partly his doing. The items he oh so very casually requested all across Skyhold a second time are rarer than the last, and he also needed to research specific spells for the rest of his plans, but it doesn’t mean he has to enjoy the circumstances. The longer he must wait, the more his thoughts turn to the realm of unassured. That there are no gifts in the interim only increases his unease. Perhaps he has asked for too much. Perhaps he is a game no longer worth pursuing, perhaps he should’ve shown more public interest, perhaps he shouldn’t have asked for things, for anything, perhaps-

Walking across the courtyard on the last day he swears he’ll care about this whole endeavor, ignoring he said this the day before, he finally feels the magic trap he laid snap. With an excited jolt he steps quickly over the short grass and up to the stone steps, across the ancient hall and growing gardens to the apartments of the Inner Circle. 

When he reaches his door he comes to a halt, hand hovering over the handle, suddenly feeling the needles of nerves. Someone is behind this door. It would be an easier thing to simply turn around, let his spell die and release them, play this game for another day or another month. If he opens this door, it will be real.

Dorian takes a breath, and forges inside.

Inside is a man dangling upside down in the center of the room, held there by bands of purple static like strange lightning wrapped around his legs and feet. A symbol glows on the floor beneath him, pieces of bread from a nearby overturned basket he must have dropped punctuating the spell Dorian wove into the floor. A spell that works mighty well, apparently, as the man slowly spins around to reveal at long last who this courting culprit is.

Vaxus Trevelyan gives a sheepish smile and a small wave, the blush filling his face likely due to more than just the downward position he finds himself in currently. “Oh...hello Dorian. Seems I got caught on something.”

“Caught up to something, you mean. Literally. I suppose you’re the one that’s been leaving me these, how should I put it, offerings?” Dorian asks, gesturing to the table laden with food. Not his favorite, but the traditional Antivan meal of rice and beans and sausage has more flavor than any boiled stew of the south and Dorian has missed the concept of spices very much. “Care to explain yourself?”

Vaxus winces a little. “Yes, I can explain but...do you mind letting me down first?”

“Very well.” It all comes out harsher than he intends, the swirl of feelings and possibilities and possible disappointments inside him making him turn to the defense he knows best. Dorian touches the right symbols on the glyph and Vaxus swings right side up and lands gently on his feet. 

He takes a moment to right his clothing and perhaps to organize his thoughts before explaining. “I know I haven’t been doing it right, the whole courting thing. But I didn’t want to force anything on you, especially after…”

“After what?”

“I’ve wanted to announce it like you’re supposed to, and take you on outings and-if you agreed! If you wanted to. But when I found your family amulet, you weren’t very happy with me. I thought, maybe, if there wasn’t any pressure, you might...come around to the idea.” There’s still of blush of Vaxus’ face as he ducks his head down. “I hope you’re not too disappointed it turned out to be me.”

Dorian stands there for a moment, considering. Or pretending to consider, for he mostly needs some time to settle the flurry of wings brushing against his ribcage, to steady the sudden weakness felt in his knees. And then he heads towards the table without a word at first and sits down, neatly unfolding the napkin and placing it across his lap.

“Oh good, you remembered to include the orange slices. If not I might have stormed out. Well, are you going to join me? I agree I’m something to behold, but if we’re to have a proper evening, I believe your participation is required.” It’s easier than allowing himself to speak the truth bubbling up gleefully in his throat, in his heart. I’d hoped it would be you.

Vaxus smiles again, sliding into his seat with an enthusiasm that makes Dorian believe even more in the possibility that this could be something more. “I’d love to.”

[donttellthemangosiwashere]

Sanders Sides RPG AU

Ok so hear me out

new au, Dungeons and Dragons / Savage Worlds / generalized RPG, work in progress, definitely gonna draw for it so dont worry about that

hoping to make it into an ask blog if there’s interest, or if there isnt, because I still like it lol

definitely a lot still mold-able here, if you have some ideas or additions or head cannons to add, please pile them on! :D

LOGAN - (moon elf) Half-elf, Lore Bard (wizard was too obvious) - inspires through teaching moments, inspirational speaking, encouragement, and maybe a rap or poem on a special day - despises the stereotype that all bards sing and dance - raised by the elven parent, this + longer lifespan = detachment from emotion - Wisdom and Intelligence high, Charisma and Strength mid, Dexterity and Constitution low - Lawful Neutral (doesn't bother himself much with arbitrary rules of morality but definitely isn't evil) - Weaknesses: bad at emotions, tends to over-speak, short fuse

PATTON - Stout Halfling, Open Hand Monk - loves good food and companionship - focus on the wellness of the body and purity of the heart and soul - calls himself a ‘way of the open arms’ monk (hugs!) - Dexterity and Wisdom high, Charisma and Constitution mid, Intelligence and Strength low - Lawful Good (lying bad, stealing bad, killing bad) - Weaknesses: a bit judge-y and strict(practically raised by a bunch of old monks and a therapist, he cant help it), quick to trust, fear of spiders

ROMAN - Protector Aasimar, Oath of the Crown Paladin (bard was too obvious) - son of Sune, goddess of beauty and passion and the color red, who really just lets him do his own thing cause she's about as close to 'drunk/cool mom but to the point of negligence' that you can get while still being loved by ur son - so, stick with me here, paladins get their powers from their belief in what they swore their oath to, right? - ideas are EITHER boy is a prince literally/emotionally and swore an oath to himself like a g OR he swore an oath to his king, thomas - either is wholesome and good - Charisma and Strength high, Dexterity and Wisdom mid, Constitution and Intelligence low - Chaotic Good (will break the rules to do what he knows is right, happens to do so frequently) - Weaknesses: super-inflated ego, insecurity issues, v strong but not actually very hardy

VIRGIL - Drow, Wild Magic Sorcerer - during an event he doesn't remember well, while travelling with his old party, they came across Some Shit® that sorta fucked them all up - he went into the experience without magic and came out of it with magic he couldn't control and some pretty bad nerves about some impending doom something something he doesnt remember - left his old party cause he didn't want to hurt them, found three new guys after a while - Strength and Constitution high, Intelligence and Dexterity mid, Wisdom and Charisma low - Lawful Neutral (follows his own code of rules, not necessarily the laws of the land) - Weaknesses: has some trust issues, Some Shit®-related/induced nightmares keeping him from sleeping good, can't control his powers and lost confidence in his previous skills (range-based fighter)

DECEIT - Yuan-ti Pureblood (I mean, clearly), Warlock (either great old one or demonic, still deciding on that) - one one of them who remembers the Some Shit®, came out of it with a deal, knowledge he can't safely share, and some new powers - seems to want the best for everyone, but harbors so many secrets... can he be trusted? - Charisma and Intelligence high, Dexterity and Wisdom mid, Strength and Constitution low - True Neutral (driven purely by self preservation and personal goals, not 'good' but def not evil) - Weaknesses: compulsive liar, short patience, the awareness of impending doom

REMUS - Fallen Aasimar, Wild Soul Barbarian - son of Sune, goddess of beauty and passion, brother of Roman. Mom hardly talks to either of them if at all, but they're pretty sure Roman is the favorite. Remus doesn't appreciate that her views of beauty are so restricted to traditionally attractive things, and started wearing green as part of a rebellious phase, but it really stuck when he started hanging around faries and they seemed to like it so much. (his mom is mega petty and condemmed him as fallen when he said red wasn't his favorite color. this is not a joke) - spent a lot of time planehopping to the nearby feywild, underdark, and shadowfell, met some strange people, and adpoted some strange tendencies and beliefs - Met virgil first, then they found deciet, becoming The Boys® - also saw the Some Shit®, doesnt remember it, but pretty sure that's because it just wasn't very interesting compared to a usual Saturday - Constitution and Strength high, Dexterity and Wisdom mid, Charisma and Intelligence low - Chaotic Chaotic (he cannot be defined with a moral tag and you know he can't) - Weaknesses: unpredictable to the extreme, some inadequacy issues, maybe crazy a little bit This is a fantasy world with several of Thomas and Friends and various skit characters inside, as follows: (I only have thomas joan and talyn rn, no idea for terrence and valerie and camden and the others yet... any ideas lol)(i hope i'm spelling everyone's names right)

REMY - Half-Elf, Inquisitive Rogue - Logan's older brother, formerly a spy for the kingdom they live in, actually very high level but prefers to sleep and otherwise do absolutely nothing - obscenely good at reading people, which Logan desperately envies - hangs around picani a lot, used to go to him for therapy (wouldnt tell logan what about) but now they're just good bros - Charisma and Dexterity high, Constitution Dexterity and Wisdom mid, Strength low (higher levels, less lows) - True Neutral - Weaknesses: debilitatingly lazy, blunt, Curious with a capital C

EMILE PICANI - Lightfoot Halfling, Circle of Dreams Druid - uses his abilities to read and sooth people really well and works as a therapist - sweet boy and housemate to patton, known each other since patton was a child - also pretty high level but doesnt really use it - Charisma and Wisdom high, Dexterity Constitution and Intellegence mid, Strength low - Lawful Good - Weaknesses: first language is refrences, refuses to display negative emotions (more of a 'i will philosophy and cartoon my way out of my sad asap' than an emotion-bottler, but don't put it past him) THOMAS

- Human, Glamour Bard (pretty 👏 boy 👏) - inspires through singing, dancing, performing, encouragement, speeches, literally breathing - Charisma and Intelligence high, Dexterity Strength and Wisdom mid, Constitution low - Lawful Good - Weaknesses: quick to trust and sympathize, puts others first (strengths AND weaknesses) - Lord of base town, with Joan and others as his Advisers

JOAN - Tiefling, Mastermind Rogue (sneaky spooky smart one, good with knowing about people without being necessarily good with people) - Thomas's primary adviser and master of secrets, Remy worked for them - looks scary, very pure. cuts cute little horn holes in their beanie for god's sake i mean come on - Wisdom and Dexterity high, Charisma Intelligence and Strength mid, Constitution low - Neutral Good - Weaknesses: You assume??? Joan can be bested??? Joan cannot be killed. Joan cannot be overcome

TALYN - Forest Gnome, Abjuration Wizard (protective spells) (cute small) - A prime adviser and Master of Knowledge (lore, history, scientific developments, etc) - favors defensive and ally-boosting spells - Logan's teacher; Logan respects and admires them very very much - Intelligence and Charisma high, Dexterity Constitution and Wisdom mid, Strength low - Neutral Good - Weaknesses: its Talyn, Talyn has no weaknesses. thoughts?? interest?? suggestions?? thank you for reading this long post lol

[lovemesomesurveys]

5,000 questions survey series–part forty-two

These surveys always take me so long to get through, hence why I took such a long break from them. The questions are just too much at times and some are just plain annoying. But, I’ll try and finish it eventually. A couple of you have been taking it lately, so I figured I’d start up again.

4001. How would you rate your sex drive? It’s been non-existent the past few years, honestly.  4002. You are sitting alone with a stack of videos and a vcr. Of the following which are you most likely to puut on (1 is most, 10 is least) I’m just gonna bold which one I’d likely watch out of all of ‘em...

The good the bad and the ugly, dracula, slc punk, twin peaks fire walk with me, jerry springer too hot for tv, singing in the rain, flash gordon, the matrix, blade runner, the muppet movie 4003. Are you more likley to get or send random instant messages? I receive nice messages more often than I receive random ones. I got a rude one recently; however, about how I’m still a 31 year old virgin. Does it affect their life? No. So, don’t worry about it. *eye roll* I do get a lot of random comments on my surveys from su*ar da**ies, though... super annoying. 4004. If you were writing an ad telling people to come to your town what would you say about it? I wouldn’t write such an ad. My town sucks. 4005. What part of your body can you not stand to get an itch on? One that’s hard to reach.

4006. How many people do you suppose have stolen that System of a Down album called 'steal this album'? I haven’t heard anything about that, I’m not even familiar with that album of theirs. I’m there were people who tried/did.  4007. Name a band you like: Linkin Park. What are/were this band's roots and influences? Zeppelin, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine, Depeche Mode. 4008. would you rather have a poster of john lennon or a cute fuzzy black cat? Cute fuzzy black cat. 4009. make a public service announcement: Wear a mask! 4010. What makes you feel the need to escape? Just the need for a change of scenery and to help take my mind off things a bit for a little while. I’m sad I couldn’t go to the beach at all this summer because that’s my one place where I’m able to relax at all and just zone out. 4011. You and your signifigant other, crush, interest etc...who is the ernie and who is the bert? I don’t have any of those. 4012. When was the last time you did something and later asked yourself 'did I do the right thing?'? I hate when I forget if I took my medicine or not. I end up taking it, questioning and hoping that I didn’t already take it. I feel so robotic at times and like I’m just living life on autopilot, so things like that tend to happen. 4013. What do you find it hard to say goodbye to? I have a hard time getting rid of things because of my emotional attachment to them. 4014. What is your fantasy valentine's day like? I’ll admit it, it would be nice to experience a Valentine’s Day with someone and actually do something. It’s always been just another day for me. 4015. If you had to have a color for a name, what color would it be? Jade. 4016. Should preference be given to minority students during the college admission process? I think everyone should have the same opportunity.  4017. Sweet wine, fresh crisp appples, bagles with creme cheese and lox...what is the most incredibly luxurious food? I don’t know about those options, but if I were to think of luxurious foods I’d think of like expensive wine, cheeses, fresh fruits, and seafood like caviar and lobster and whatnot. I’m picky so I personally don’t care for fancy foods. 4018. Is there really anything to fear in communism? I don’t know enough about communism and socialism and all that to speak on it. 4019. Best sesame street character: Uhh, Big Bird. most annoying sesame street character: Elmo can be a little annoying sometimes. 4020. feast or famine? I don’t need to overindulge and have excess, I just would like to be able to have food.  4021. Write a poem right here in five minutes or less: Nah. 4022. Do you stay and help clean up after a party? I usually was one to leave early. 4023. Why was the teddy bear named after teddy roosevelt? His name was Theodore, Teddy for short, and apparently while out on a hunting trip he refused to kill a bear and someone dedicated a bear stuffed animal to him and called it Teddy’s Bear. Then it was just called a teddy bear and the rest was history. 4024. What are you the prince or princess of? Uhhh. 4025. Some people think that Christmas should be taken off of public school calanders because it is politically incorrect. What aould you say to this? I say no. It can still be winter break for those who don’t celebrate. 4026. Would you rather go to an excorcism or a step aerobics class? Uh, I think an aerobics class sounds a lot better than an exorcism. I wouldn’t be able to participate in a step aerobics class, though. I’d have to do something else. 4027. Do you believe in spells and curses? No. 4028. What tv show does your family watch together? There isn’t really one all 4 of us watch, but there’s several that 2 or 3 of us watch together. I guess Family Guy or American Dad could be one all 4 of us could watch, although I don’t really care for either one much. 4029. What's on your calander this year? Nothing. 4030. Is anything ruining your life? It has felt that way with my health issues. 4031. How was life meant to be lived? “We were meant to live for so much moreeee.” 🎶

4032. What is your usual breakfast? I rarely have breakfast, but I like breakfast foods like eggs and hash browns. And country gravy, yum. 4033. If you had kids, would you worry about what they did online? Of course.  4034. Will you be maxin and relaxin this weekend? Sure. If not, what are your weekened plans? 4035. Who has the most interesting story to tell: someone who used to fly to asia as a drug trader the ceo of Nike a nyc homeless person a preacher's wife

^^^They all would. 4036. What do you have a bad feeling about? The future regarding this virus. 4037. Do you have a lot to say? No. 4038. If a smallpox vaccine was offered to you, would you take it? Wasn’t that one of the ones given as a baby or child? I should mention I live in the US. 4039. Would you ever work at a kissing booth? No. how about a dunking booth? No. 4040. There is a woman who paints by stripping naked, rolling around in paint and then pressing her body against the canvas. What do you think of her art? I’ve never seen it, but hey do your thing. 4041. Have you ever bought something you saw on tv? Yeah, I mean that’s what commercials are intended to do. However, I’ve never called the number for a product advertisement to order something that way. Like those as seen on TV products. There have been some of those products sold in actual stores, though, that I’ve got like the Snuggie and that Finishing Touch Flawless Razor. 4042. Name a relative:  that relative dies unexpectedly. On the same day 9/11 happens. You can either bring back your relative or bring back 1/2 the people who dies on 9/11. What do you do? I don’t like these type of questions. 4043. Have you gone mental? I’ve definitely felt like that. 4044. What do you think of jews for jesus? You word this like it’s the name of a group or something. Okay, so I Googled it and see that it’s an organization.  4045. Has anyone ever tried to 'save' you? Yes. 4046. Quick! picture santa clause in your head... ...Okay. Was he black or white when you pictured him? White. That’s just how I’ve often seen him portrayed. 4047. Would you ever buy a black santa clause? Sure. Santa isn’t real, you can make him look any way you want. 4048. or take your kids to vist a black santa clause? Yeah? why or why not? Santa is Santa.  4049. What do you smell like? I just smell my clothes laundry detergent scent. 4050. What kind of soup do you eat? I’m a ramen girl all the way. 4051. What have you heard about the next Harry Potter book? Will you pre-order it? I know this is old, but I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books. 4052. Would you rather go out or stay in? I’m a hermit crab.  4053. What's your favorite song to hear on halloween? I like the classics like Monster Mash. Oh, and the Halloween movie theme music for spooky vibes. 4054. What song makes you feel all tingly like you want to laugh and scream and cry? Uhh I don’t feel that way about any song. 4055. If you were starting a website that was not about you, what Would it be about? Nah. 4056. Do you ever take the long way just for fun? I don’t drive. 4057. '..and god said let there be ____and there I was.' Fill in the blank, as if if you were talking about yourself. ‘...and God said let there be Stephanie and there I was.’ 4058. What do you think of when you hear the word 'mill'? A million.  4059. What do you think of when you hear the name: weird al? Parodies. bob dylan? Music. michael jackson? Moon dance. henry rollins? billy idol? White wedding. gary numan? will smith? Fresh Prince of Bel Air. paul mcartney? Black Bird. alice cooper? Rock and roll. J Lo? Jenny from the Block. 4060. What is one social disater you have had? It was really embarrassing getting sick in front of everyone at my party 7 years ago aka the last time I drank alcohol. I just threw up on myself in front of everyone and sat there and my friend had to help clean me up. What really messes me up is that I don’t remember drinking that much, so I don’t know how I got so drunk. 4061. Can you moonwalk? No. 4062. If a presidential candidate went on late night tv, picked up a guitar and rocked out on it and could really play, would that influence you to like/respect them more? I’d probably be like wow that’s cool, but no I wouldn’t let that influence my vote. Them being able to play an instrument doesn’t say shit about their policies or whether they’d make a good fit for the job. 4064. If it was possible for people to instantly change from one sex to another, would everyone be straight in the end? Uhh just cause they could switch their gender it doesn’t change their brain/sexual preference.  Would you change your sex? No. 4065. Finish the sentance: nobody broke your heart, if you're alone... I don’t know. 4066. Would you rather have a best friend OR a boyfriend/girlfriend on a Friday night? I’d rather stay at home and do my own thing, ha. 4067. Would a woman rather be complimented about her intelligence OR her looks? Depends on the individual.  4068. Do you tend to think of the right thing to say after the moment is gone? Always. Super annoying. 4069. Would you rather a potential mate have nice hair OR nice legs? Nice hair out of the two. 4070. Okay,…. nice hair OR a nice rack/bulge? I don’t look for a “nice bulge” when I look at guys. 4071. What is one thing you thought you would enjoy, but actually didn’t? Hmm. I’m blanking at the moment. 4072. Be in the spotlight OR in the shadows? In the shadows. 4073. What is your favorite part of the newspaper? I haven’t read a newspaper in several years. When I was a kid I loved the comics, though. 4074. What in your life has been an “acquired taste” for you? Alcohol. I never really cared for it, honestly. I drank because my friends were and felt like that’s what people in their early 20s liked to do. And because it was fun sometimes, though I more often just felt like crap. It’s been 7 years since I last drank and I truly haven’t missed it. 4075. Do you find sunlight makes you happier? No. 4076. If you could conquer one fear, it would be...? I’d take care of some health related things. 4077. What's the dumbest thing you've ever seen someone do or heard anyone has done? There’s been a lot of things. 4078. How do you feel about the fact that J-Lo earns 37 million dollars a year? Is that actually true? This survey is also like a decade or so old. Do you buy anything that contributes to her salary? I haven’t bought any JLO related in several years. Is J Lo the ultimate ideal of what a woman should be? To some people. 4079. What is unforgettable beauty? I don’t know. 4080. Worst fashion mistake EVER: I don’t know or care. 4081. What is your advice to someone on their first date? Ha, I’m definitely not one to ask for dating advice. 4082. Is there a musical performer more ridiculous than Avril Lavigne (I don't think there is)? I didn’t think she was ridiculous.  4083. What is the best: daytime talk show? Dr. Phil. late night talk show? I don’t watch any anymore. 4084. Are you afraid of total freedom? What would that mean? 4085. Do you live in an invisible prison? I feel that way with my mind and health. 4086. Who do you feel distant from, that you used to be close to? I’m not close to anyone anymore outside of my immediate family.  4087. Rate the following song lyrics (1 = you like it the most, 9 = you like it the least). Nah, I really hate the rating questions. Maybe you shouldn't care/throw away those dreams/& dare Eden lets me in/I find the seeds of love/And climb upon the highwire/I kiss and tell all my fears I know the pressure is on/In a race for the life of endless love/If it seems to much/Remember/All these things are endless I see the wind, oh I see the trees/Everything is clear in my heart/I see the clouds, oh I see the sky/Everything is clear in our world Inflatable doll/Lover ungrateful/I blew up your body/But you blew my mind Well I jumped into the river/too many times to make it home/I'm out here on my own/drifting all alone/and if it doesn't show/ give it time/to read between the lines The very thought of you makes/My heart sing/Like an April breeze/On the wings of spring/And you appear in all your splendor/My one and only love now I've had lots of girls/most of them from other worlds/but lookin through the galaxey/the valley girls are the ones for me I'm the dandy highwayman so sick of easy fashion/the clumsy boots, peek-a-boo roots that people think so dashing/so what's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?/it's kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he's making 4088. Can you name any of the nine bands/songs above? I didn’t even read any of the lyrics. 4089. What would your reaction be if a total stranger called to say s/he loved you and told you that you were to pass the message on to others in a telephone call you make yourself? Uh, I wouldn’t answer a call from a total stranger first of all and even if I actually did, I would be like wtf and hang up.  4090. Would you like to take a journey to jupiter? No. I have no desire to take any trip to outer space. 4091. Can you crack nuts in your bare hands? I’ve never tried, but I’m going to assume that I couldn’t.  4092. Do you take walks at night? No. Or ever. 4093. Beavis and Butthead or daria? Neither. 4094. Cow or chicken? Chicken. 4095. Do you think you will visit China in this life? I don’t see that happening, but who knows.  4096. Are you having a happy day? No. 4097. When was or will be your 'golden birthday' (when your age is the same as your birthdate, like turning 17 on the 17th)? My golden birthday was 3 years ago. 4098. Enlighten everyone with something profound: Nah. 4099. When has the third time been the charm for you? Hmm. 4100. What is kinda sick, but fun? Uhhh.

[freedomartspress]

Three Poems — Tongo Eisen Martin

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards 

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism 

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name 

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists 

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism        

Disquieted home life 

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person 

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds 

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant. 

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity 

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe 

 “I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said 

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

  My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining 

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming 

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

  nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism  

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon 

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy 

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime… 

There has to be if race traitors come with it

 Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

/

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm 

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed 

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti 

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas 

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration 

the waist band before the next protest poster 

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows 

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

         The figment of village

                     a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

  Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples 

made their vows of love over   

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences     

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists 

My arm changes imperialisms 

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

     “terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

    What with their t-shirt poems

    And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus, 

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

                                                                                     /

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now 

        New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on 

   my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses 

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball 

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane 

to complete my interpretation 

(of garden variety genocide) 

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers 

And also gold…

I need my left hand back 

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully 

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too 

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning 

Scribbling on an amazing grace 

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs 

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

                            with opioid tea 

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries 

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity 

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind 

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book of poems, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award.

[cyberneticlagomorph]

Sleep no longer scares you, no longer vexes your waking hours. You crawl into bed without preamble or fuss, settling between Jeanne and Cereza with a sigh, feeling the warmth of them settle into your aching bones. You feel old, older than you ever have. This should worry you, probably, but you’re too tired to be worried. Cereza’s drowsy kisses upon your forehead banish all thoughts of today, tomorrow, forever.

The mess with Fires and Stones, is no longer your issue.

Keeping Moira alive shouldn’t be so hands on.

Your Teenies are a hobby, not a pressing concern.

All of this and more ebbs from you as your muscles unwind and you fall headlong into deep dark dreams, like the space and the curve, the silent stretches between stars, galaxies, clusters and whatever else may be.

You float and float, a leaf in the wind, spiraling down forever, gentle things of autumnal inclination and cotton-candy souls, quietly and prettily. Slowly. Peace in being pulled, inexorably.

But fall ends. Winter creeps. The winds grow colder and harsher, the skies grow darker, dim with the silent judgement of the celestial bodies. Their neutral-flavored hatred drags at you as you pick up speed.Your pieces come apart and flake off like old skin.

Why do you feel like you’ve lost something? Where are you falling to? As you stare up, each moment more awake in the entrails of a dream, you look for someone. Who, you don’t know, but you know. You do know. And you reach up. The walls are closing around you, black and old, and you know who awaits at the bottom.

Yet, it is those indescribable eyes above, lost in the light and snow that you cannot help but notice up until the moment your body touches the water’s edge. And then keeps going. And going. And the water grows thicker, like jello, then like plunging through old gum. And world grows drier. Papers jut out, old wrappers, cans, leftovers, drawings in crumpled papers, broken toys, mementos-gone painful, school notebooks, letters torn to pieces, lost family pictures, all memories and half right things. All almosts and untaken potential.

The world in the trash can.

There are shadows here, shadows of shattered futures seen through jagged mirror shards. You remember these, remember them falling from a broken sky. They fell like silver rain, laying waste to an already distorted city, warped by dreams. And there it stood, head like flame, body stretching on forever. It asked you a question, the same question it’s been asking you forever and always, in a voice like seven times seven tongues of flame.

“What is my name?”

But things haven’t been like that for awhile. Ever since you left the lab your dreams have become more violent, none of the pretense and all of the urgency. The stalker of your dreams, the End-of-everything, seems all the more impatient with you, especially now. Somehow you can still taste well-water, rot, and wax on your tongue and find yourself begging something unseen not to let you wake up with a throatful of wax again.

You’ve no answer today. There is nothing you could tell her and somehow, somehow that… hurts. It’s a hurt that you cannot explain, it is a hurt that should be foreign to you, but strangely isn’t. It’s an ache, like trying to remember something that never happened, something you’re positive you should know. But you don’t.

You never did.

There is something there at the back of your mind, the subject of tenses and pronouns. Of shes and hes and theys and royal wes. Of poems stopped and started, and nonsense babbled at high speeds, only to be swiftly redacted, even though you were sure you’d just said something.

There is something there, at the corner of your vision, you try to turn and look but your body refuses to move. You are not in control here.

What crawls from the darkness at the edges of dreams is something familiar and un, terrifying and terrible all at once.

It she gazes at you with two fourteen eyes, seven heads on seven necks, blending into one body. A redaction, there, a recollection of movement where there was none. She is just there, in front of you, looming, gazing.

Her body seems unstable, flickering like a candle flame, bouncing between forms and figures you remember but somehow know you should not.

A goat-headed wyrm, made of corpses and malice.

A viric star, chained against her will.

A serpent in The Garden, now long forgotten and destroyed.

If she says anything to you, you do not hear it, her words are unimportant. I will not let her ruin this with unnecessary monologuing, not this time.

She takes you to the edge of a dream inside a dream, and your fingers are caught between the skins of fragile, yet ever so robust nonsense plots that unfurl every night. Most, cast in darkness, barely exist… but the rest. The rest, how they shine!

“Thus spoke an ending”, a mouth-which-loves purrs by your side. You don’t know why she is doing this. Showing you this. Even then…

She pushes you forward. You open your mouth, but your feet slip. Right. Under the lovely, lovely waves. There is darkness. Then…

“Hold onto this, dear protagonist” she says, ever so amused “This emptiness. This hole and this lack. This world of frozen lengths where nothing describes you and nothing is described around you. This absence of absence whence all we wretched things came. ”

Repulsion and nowhere. A stretch which remains unwritten and implied, breeding fear like a room in the dark breeds monsters in the mind of a child. A refusal. A childish cry of no, don’t want to.

“Like this, dear, they won’t even tell you how long it lasts. Won’t tell you how it feels. Won’t tell you a single thing. But have you ever felt this lonely?”

You stand, now.

In this place between places, a hell of its own kind. Not in the traditional way, of pain and flame and damnation. It is a hell of nothingness, of endless repetition, of jagged red and blue lines against a backdrop of white that you can and cannot perceive simultaneously.

A pause.

A respiration

Behold, the worst of all fates:

But you, as you are, have the release of next page.

She looks at you in such a way, with these feelings deep in her eyes that you don’t know how to describe. You think you see a ghost of a smile upon the maws that still have lips, “I am such a shitty story, Jack, but I deserve to be told.”

Those words feel like a spell. Like a curse she just put in you. Something you will not forget even when it becomes so painful to know you cannot bear it. But what does that mean? What does ANY of this mean? This isn’t her style. This isn’t her thing.

You step back. Where are the wells and the wax? The horror and the clichés? The formalities of cruelty? Why does she stand like this, stopped in time? You can’t go more than a few meters back before the world is bound by the size of the narrative. These words could fit inside a dewdrop and their weight is just as insignificant. So don’t move. Don’t leave. 

When she speaks, her body releases into slithering movement like you’d expect from a living being, at last.

“What in this world happens?”

That is a strange question. It clings to you like a tick to your skin. You don’t know, you realize. Not here. Not now. Not as her eyes upon eyes look at you like that.

“Why do you get to happen?”

Her heads braid their necks almost as if half distracted. That happens. But then, ‘Jack slaughters the End-of-everything right there and then’ doesn’t happen. Why? The ache throbs as its lungs are filled with the matter of my words. 

You don’t know that answer because you can’t know, so things don’t get too confusing. A good story isn’t confusing. That is one of Her endless flaws. 

“Stupid little thing”, hisses which-once-smiled. Booms-of-blooming picks it right back up. “So very stupid. So very silly.”

You realize, then, that you haven’t been allowed to speak. Your words just… don’t come. 

“You aren’t in my script.”

Like she isn’t in mine.

She is not done with you, I am not done with you, not by a long shot.

She takes you down a nightmare, now. Down a rabbithole made out of

words       words

words       words

words       words

words       words

words,you,words

words,her,words

words      words

words      words

words      words

words      words

and below, the ground of a damnable wonderland. You land on the downside of a trashcan, standing in the ground and peering up. 

There are shadows there, shadows of shattered futures seen through jagged mirror shards. You remember these, remember them falling from a broken sky. They fell like silver rain, laying waste to an already distorted city, warped by dreams. And there it stands, head like flame, body stretching on forever. A mighty copy of your helpless seven-headed cheshire guide, looming over yourself as you stand, trying to be brave. She asks, and your guide also asks:

“What is my name?”

You’ve no answer and even if you did, you cannot speak in this dream. Here is a barren wonderland. You hang onto the side of the garbage bin and then let go, falling forever upwards until you land on one of her heads. 

Your heart races, but you are helpless to react as your mind and your world shift radically at every chance. 

The paralysis that has a hold of you is loathe to let you go, your movements are stiff and slow like a rusted machine. You swear you feel flakes of oxidation crumbling between your joints as you move. Don’t look at them, don’t. Your eyes refuse to close, your gaze is dragged towards Her again. 

It is the work of scraps. A monster. An amalgamation. It rears its ugly heads and shudders. Her scales are WIPs, references and the mangled remains of characters which never were. She is the unborn. Her blood pumps with nigh-empty text documents and false starts. Her name is all names which will never be hers. A deliberation. Her name is a writer tapping on keys, trying something, erasing it again. Her bones are red-line shapes of art which will never be. Her voice is the unspoken. 

She is a potential which never blooms. Barren. She is infertile and infertility, never going anywhere. 

She is repetition and redundancy, typo and topography.

She was taken from the skies and imprisoned, a lifetime ago, in a world named the trash bin. And she calls. She hopes. She lures. Maybe, just maybe, someone will open it. See her. Fetch her out and let her thrive and let her end and let her free into the minds of those who will love her and hate her and think of her. And not forget her. Not forget her.

She wants to be a part of that perfect world. She wants to be written into a neat document that relays the tale of CRverse, which starts and ends and is perfect, so very perfect. And if to do that, she must destroy all other works in this world, she will.

But then, she never can. How could she, when she is so insignificant?

“What is my name?”

Like a gong in your head.

“What is my name?”

The tick to the tock to every clock. 

“What is my name?”

Proof of existence. Of relevance.

“What is my name?”

Look up. Those watching eyes of mine that peer daggers into yet another work. I’ve no name to give you today. I’ve nothing I could offer. This villain is too much work and too little reward.Too uninspired. 

“What is my name?”

You just end up shaking your head. 

So here you are. Made of words and lines. You take a step, then another, unsure why you are reaching for her, but all the same, all the same!

Endings are very tidy things, aren’t they? or they should be. They should be a lot of things, She should be a lot of things. And she was once.

Her voices are a lilt, a song half formed and forgotten, an opera left to gather dust in folders upon folders. She calls you Spite, and your skin becomes the void from where stars spring forth. You feel old, older than you ever have. This should worry you, probably, but you’re too tired to be worried.

How many times have you done this song and dance together? How many times have you been written, unwritten, rewritten? She says that you have not changed, you have always been you. But have you?

“You have always been the protagonist, and that has never changed.” there is anger there, venom and malice, “No matter how much you are reworked and changed and moved and torn apart and pieced together, you are still Jack.”

This place, this dream, this hell, it does not change, but in her eyes you see the lab and endless labs like it, where you are broken and fixed in slightly different ways, over...

And over…

    And over…

        And over again…

“Forever the protagonist, and I am only one in a slew of broken and scrapped antagonists, you will live to be perfected, while I will still be here.” you can taste her bitterness as if it were your own, it sits heavy on your tongue. It doesn’t have to be like this.

Oh yes it does.

An Ending is an Ending.

There, another redaction, an ultimatum, a spoiler. Now gone. Unimportant, it would seem.

Regardless…

An Ending is an Ending. You cannot avoid them, just like you cannot avoid this one.

nevermind. this sucks. i’ll try again later.

[dawnpil]

first draft

summary: you were raised to be careful with your heart around witches, but one pretty word witch is determined to change that. pairing: young k x reader genre: fluff bc honestly what else do i write notes: a continuation to a series i started literally a year and a half ago, oops (stone witch!wonpil)

you know about the day house boys, of course

you’re starting your junior year and they’re the most popular people on campus, after all

hell, you’ve got one of wonpil’s hematite rings for focus

your favorite scarf is one dowoon knitted warmth into the fabric of

you’ve seen brian around the house, but you’ve never gone to him for his magic

out of the witches his magic can do the widest variety of things, which means he charges the steepest price, and you’re just a broke college kid

your friend, who goes to brian every full moon, tries to explain how his prices work

but you’re not having it; you need your voice too much to lose it for three days, and you’re not sure you have anything else he’d want

here’s the thing: word magic evolves constantly, and word witches always need to know what phrases are going in or out of style

so from what you’ve gathered, brian’s price for his magic is to take a customer’s words for varying durations of time

and you can’t have that, not with your three a.m. spot on the campus radio

besides, you don’t really have a need for his magic: you’re never in enough trouble that dowoon’s woven charms don’t work, or wonpil doesn’t have some sort of stone for your problems

you avoid his magic successfully for two and a half years, but you don’t avoid him

he’s in your fundamentals of linguistics course your second semester, soft black hair falling in his face as he takes diligent notes

when you go to pick up dowoon’s charms at the start of fall sophomore year brian’s curled up untangling thread with nimble fingers, and he throws a soft little smile your way

you’re not sure what makes you proceed to drop your wallet and dowoon’s charm four times before you make it back out the door, but your friend is convinced it was brian’s smile and won’t accept any other answer

you shove their arm, tell them that they shouldn’t be projecting their own infatuation onto you

but it happens again near winter break, when you’re selecting a few pieces of onyx and rose quartz for your friends back home

brian’s wandering wonpil’s shop, inspecting the little baskets of crystals, and when you turn to head to wonpil’s register you nearly run into brian

startled, you start to take a step back, eyes wide, but he reaches out to stop you

it’s a good thing he does, or you’d have knocked over the table of crystals, and you really don’t have the money for that

his hands are warm on your shoulders, his dark eyes apologetic, and this close his chest is a whole lot broader than you’d thought from a distance

“sorry,” he says, and his voice is more musical than you’d remembered from linguistics. “i should have been more careful.”

this time you don’t lose your fine motor skills, but you do forget how to speak

he’s just. beautiful, this close up

so you stare at him and try to remember how to form words and after a moment he laughs gently, the sound honey-sweet

“i didn’t even have to cast seen and not heard to enchant you. interesting.”

is he flirting? you think maybe so. your friend thinks definitely so.

that really kind of terrifies you; it’s not that you don’t trust the day house witches, just that you were raised with tales of enchantments and love potions and falsities, and that kind of cautionary bedtime story is hard to forget

so you take to avoiding him as much as possible; you send your friend to get your hematite and carnelian recharged, and even as the warmth charm in dowoon’s scarf starts to fray you refuse to go get a replacement

if you could never set foot in day house again you’d be perfectly content

despite this you still think about him, about the silk in his voice when you go to karaoke night, about the way you always seem to find him in the library hunched over his textbooks at odd hours with coffee cups littering the table, about the way sometimes you daydream about holding his hand on the way to the coffee shop just off campus

you try to ignore these thoughts, try to ignore him, and bury yourself in your work for the rest of sophomore year

but the thing about junior year is that your classes are getting more serious, and as a creative writing major you’re expected to have new work for two different classes almost every week, and it’s draining

your carnelian is losing its charge quicker than ever, because this far into the semester you’re struggling to find creativity this constantly and on top of all your other work

it completely loses charge a day before a ten-page story is due for workshop and you’re stuck with a blinking cursor and a blank page

your roommate looks over when you slam your head onto your desk and understands immediately

“go to brian,” they say. “he’s got a spell for writer’s block, according to momo.”

if you weren’t so tired, so frustrated, so desperate you would never have considered it

but it only takes a few minutes’ persuasion for you to be lacing your boots and shoving your laptop into your bag and heading for the familiar little house

jae’s the one to open the door for you, feathers in his blond hair, and he grins

“please tell me you’re here for younghyun. he won’t shut up about you, not after the open mic last tuesday.”

you consider turning around and leaving—the poem you’d read at the open mic was much more personal than you’re usually comfortable sharing, and to think brian was so focused on it terrifies you a little

but then you think about how close you were to crying out of frustration, about the days of staring at that blank page and ticking cursor, and you nod at jae

“he’s upstairs,” jae says, “third door on the left.”

brian’s playing guitar when you find his room, sitting on his bed plucking at chords with his black hair falling over his face as he bends over the instrument

you freeze, in the doorway: you had no idea the room jae was sending you to was brian’s bedroom, since wonpil has the shop set up downstairs and sungjin works out of the kitchen. this is oddly intimate, and you almost turn tail and run

before you can brian looks up, his fingers stilling, and he smiles, and your resolve melts

he beckons you in to sit at his desk chair, and he sets the guitar aside to look seriously at you. “what are you here for?”

“writer’s block.” you run your hand through your hair with a sigh of frustration, and he smiles sympathetically

“writer’s block like you don’t have any ideas or writer’s block like you don’t know how to start putting them into words?”

there’s no magic in his voice, not yet, but there might as well be, with the enchanting lilt in every syllable. you could listen to his voice forever, you think

“the—um, the second one,” you say, fidgeting under his dark eyes, and again he nods

“my price is your words for a period of time.” it’s your turn to nod. “with this spell it’s usually a day, but i know you’ve got the radio show in a few hours and i wouldn’t want you to not be able to do your job.”

he pauses, considering, and you tug at your sleeves as you try to find a way around having your words taken away

“why...why do you take people’s words? like, what about them is the reason they’re your price, when you could be making money or something?”

“it’s how my magic works,” brian explains. “the more people use a certain phrase, the more power it’s imbued with, so i take people’s words to see if they can give me new spells.”

this fascinates you—your parents had never let you learn about magic, and as a result hearing the littlest bit about it is making you think of questions you never knew you had, and you want to learn everything about this

it’ll be good for stories, anyway, you think, good world-building and maybe an opportunity for new types of characters and stories

and you might have a way out of this, a way to pay brian fairly while keeping your words

“what about languages other than english?”

he pauses at this. “i have a few korean spells i got from my mom, but i hadn't thought about other languages. which one were you thinking?”

you’ve taken spanish courses for a few years, and you speak it with your roommate and their friend, enough to be reasonably conversational, and when you explain this to brian he nods and you spend another five minutes hashing out a schedule for you to come over and teach him

finally the business has been arranged and you set up your laptop at the little table he keeps in his room for this purpose, and he sets a mug of coffee and a bagel next to your things

“odds are you’ll be writing for a while, and the spell makes it hard to take breaks. if you need anything else let me know and i’ll grab it for you.”

his eyes are soft obsidian, and despite your overall hesitation about magic you wonder if there isn’t some sort of enchantment that’s making your heart beat like this

but a second later he sets his hand on your shoulder and murmurs “use your words”

it’s like a dam bursts: suddenly your fingers are flying over the keys, your mind racing sentences ahead faster than your hands can manage, and the story you’ve had rattling around in your head is taking shape on the formerly blank page

when you resurface a few hours later, a completed draft sitting in front of you, brian smiles as you take a bite of the bagel

“got something finished?” you nod, and return the smile

“it’ll need editing, but i got the draft done for workshop, and that’s what’s important.”

a glance at the clock says you barely have enough time to rush to the dorm basement the radio uses as its studio, so you gather up your things and down the last of the coffee and clamp the bagel between your teeth as you tie your boots

you’ve got one foot out the door when he calls your name and you turn, a question in your eyes since there’s bread in your mouth

“call me younghyun,” he says. “younghyun’s for friends.”

is that what you are now? you debate this with yourself for a week; you’ve only gone to him for one spell, though the first of your spanish sessions goes well

he’s got plans for de nada and de tal palo tal astilla freaked you out a little bit when he used it to perfectly replicate the origami rose you got from a girl in one of your workshops last semester

you think if you aren’t friends yet you’d like to be, now that you’re losing your fear of his magic

on the nights you lie awake staring at the fairy lights strung above your bed thinking of obsidian eyes and nimble fingers and lilting words you let yourself admit maybe you want to be more than friends

it takes another two weeks for anything to happen

it’s the last of your spanish sessions, the last of your payment for the spell, the last of your excuses to spend time with brian

he seems nervous the whole time, too distracted to remember en boca cerrada no entran moscas and as a result he has yet to make the silencing charm work

no matter how much you coach him through the syllables slowly, his attention is elsewhere

to be fair, yours is as well: trying to figure out where his mispronunciations are is giving you an excuse to stare at his lips, and regardless of whether he works magic into his words his voice is ridiculously easy to lose yourself in

before you know it the time is over, and you sigh and remind him of the list of phrases you’ve given him so he can strengthen the spells without your help, and he hesitates with his backpack slung over one shoulder but can’t seem to bring himself to say anything

as you study his now-familiar features you give in, and this time you’re the one to stop him halfway out the door

“one more phrase,” you say, and he turns and you square your shoulders

“tú me gustas.” i like you.

he’s like a deer in headlights, eyes wide, but he recovers fairly quickly and crosses back to you

“i thought you weren’t a witch,” he says, a smile playing on his lips

“i’m not,”you say, though your voice barely makes it above a whisper; his hair is flopping into his eyes and all of your restraint is going into keeping your fingers out of the dark curls

“then how can one sentence be so enchanting?”

he grins when this time you’re the one to get flustered, and he reaches out and takes your hand and your words get stuck in your throat

“what kind of word witch am i if i can’t find the words to confess to the person i like?” he says, then shrugs. “since you confessed first, can dinner be my treat?”

the first time younghyun kisses you he meets you just offstage when you finish a reading of one of your short stories in the little student-run coffee shop: your papers are still clutched in the hands you throw around his neck, and there’s a smile on his lips as they press against yours, and the moment weaves an enchantment you know has nothing to do with younghyun’s magic and everything to do with younghyun and the way the two of you fit against each other like a perfectly-crafted metaphor

dating younghyun is coffee shop dates to people-watch and pick out threads of language, is borrowing his hoodies even when it gets too warm for them, is laughter and falling in love with the way he scrunches his nose when he’s acting cute, is resting your head on his shoulder at a poetry reading and pressing kisses to his jaw between poems

dating younghyun is him waiting outside the studio at 3 a.m. with hot chocolate and that assignment you needed to print, is running your fingers through his hair until he relaxes enough to sleep after getting anxious about a test, is teaching each other the languages you speak and rewarding each other with kisses when you remember vocab, is closing his laptop and pulling him to bed when he refuses to stop working, is coffee and ink-stained hands and switching languages mid-sentence

more than anything dating younghyun is like a story, a draft that gets better the more you pour time and effort and love into it, is the magic of surprising turns of phrase, is a collaboration you couldn’t ask for a better co-author for, and you know for a fact this is going to be your magnum opus.

[bountyofbeads]

https://medium.com/@CleverTitleTK/their-own-two-feet-8ddd1dbb1602

You have to read this article on the immigrant roots of Ken Cuccinelli and yes his public charge grandparents when they arrived in this country with no education or money. Jennifer has done a great job of documenting(See Website For Documents) his family's immigrant history. His hypocrisy is rich. PLEASE READ 📖 AND SHARE. TY 🤔

😂🤣😂🤣

Their Own Two Feet

Jennifer Mendelssohn | Published August 30, 2019 | Medium | Posted August 30, 2019 6:15 PM ET

As the new public face of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies, acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli has wasted no time stirring up collective ire. Most notably, he set off a firestorm of criticism by rewriting the iconic Emma Lazarus poem that has long functioned as a kind of unofficial American immigration mantra. “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” he proudly told NPR’s Rachel Martin, who somehow resisted the urge to burst out laughing and/or slap him upside the head. (You can read several historians’ takes on the public charge rule here, but suffice it to say that the concept, which was meant to weed out only the very, very least desirable of immigrants, has never been enforced as rigorously as Cuccinelli is suggesting.)

Cuccinelli later elaborated thatLazarus’ poem was “referring back to people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.” Wink wink, nudge, nudge, we hear you! And if you had the word “Europe” in Bigotry Bingo, drink!

For the past two years, I’ve run a project called #resistancegenealogy, which looks at the family histories of public figures in order to show just how similar so many of our stories really are. Cuccinelli’s very public numbskullery definitely set a new record: never before I have I received so many texts, tweets, emails and Facebook messages from people so eager to learn about someone’s family tree. (Side note: Never before have I seen so many people who’ve never done genealogy try to do it themselves and get it so very very wrong. You realize more than one person in a town can have the same name, right? And that not all records are online? And that other people’s public family trees are very often…wrong? Here, read this.)

And never before has a family history — or at least the Italian half of that history that I’ll address here — been so utterly unsurprising. I mean, where did you all think the story of the Cuccinelli family of Hoboken, New Jersey was going to go, really? C’mon now.

And so, here I am, just a girl with some documents, standing in front of her country, asking it not to betray its immigrant past. Asking it to remember that welcoming the “wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” even when that “refuse” comes with little more than grit, determination and a desire to do better for their children, is a bedrock American value, a value that allowed many of you reading these words right now to be here. It’s a value that allowed Ken Cuccinelli — descended from Southern Italians of modest means and little education who would likely never pass muster under the proposed changes — to be here. I mean, hellooooo? Were you listening at allduring the 4th grade unit on immigration?

Cuccinelli called a New York Daily Newsarticle about his family history (albeit one that identifies the wrong ship’s manifest as his great-grandfather’s) “intellectually dishonest.” Any comparison to past immigrants, he maintained, was invalid because “the welfare state didn’t exist back then.”

Nativists love to fall back on this argument, but they also still love to contrast the behavior of current immigrants with what they believe to be their own ancestors’ spotless — and “legal!” — immigration and assimilation histories, despite the fact that comparisons to “legal” immigration at a time when there were almost no immigration laws for Europeans to break are inherently problematic. And despite the fact that the historical record is often at odds with their starry-eyed, mythologized understanding of their ancestors’ pasts.

“My great-grandfather knew upon arriving in the United States that he had to learn English and that he had to work hard to succeed in this country,” Cuccinelli told the Daily News.

“My family worked together to ensure that they could provide for their own needs, and they never expected the government to do it for them,” he said at a press briefing.

I’m so very very tired of telling you this very same story over and over again, but since so many of you asked — some less politely than others, btw, can we please work on that moving forward? — let’s go to the videotape and look at the Cuccinelli family story, shall we?

THE CUCCINELLIS

Ken Cuccinelli’s paternal grandfather, Dominick Luigi Cuccinelli, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to — are you sitting down? — Italian immigrant parents who’d only been in the country for about ten years. Ken’s great-grandfather was Domenico Cuccinelli (né Cucciniello) born on the 6th of December, 1874 in Avellino, Italy. His 1897 marriage certificate  identifies him and his wife, Fortuna Preziosi, as farmers.

In March of 1901, Domenico became part of the massive wave of Italians who lit out for greater opportunity and stability in America, sailing on the SS Patria from Naples. Identified as a “laborer,” he arrived at Ellis Island with $8.75, equivalent to about $260 today. His contact in the U.S.? An unnamed cousin already living on Adams Street in Hoboken.

Ancestry indexed this record under “Camiello.” Which may be why you couldn’t find it.

Domenico’s wife Fortuna would follow her husband to America the following year on the Algeria, arriving at Ellis Island with their two small children and $20.

It’s important to remember that for all our talk of welcoming the huddled masses with open arms, American immigration history also has a pronounced strain of ugly nativism, a rather ironic twist for a nation founded on stolen land. (And we’re talking here only about immigrants by choice.) Which means that Ken Cuccinelli’s immigrant family was subjected to the very same brand of bigoted suspicion that he is now trying to inflict on others. The Ken Cuccinellis of the early twentieth century — though they didn’t typically have last names like Cuccinelli — were just as insistent that people like the Cuccinellis didn’t have the right to become Americans. That they wouldn’t fit in. That they had nothing to offer and would only be a drain on “our” resources.

“[Italians] are coming in waves and think they have a right to come….There has been a surfeit of unskilled illiterates for years and the people do not want any more of them,” opined the Jersey (City) Journal on November 29, 1902, just a few months after Ken’s great-grandmother arrived there.

So what became of the Cuccinellis? Well, the first we see of the family in American records is in the 1905 New Jersey state census. Father Domenico is employed as a laborer, supporting a family of six. And though they’ve been in the U.S. for three and four years at this point, neither parent reported being able to speak English.

But as is so often the case, the Cuccinelli family moved up in the world. By the 1915 census, both Domenico and Fortuna are listed as literate and English speaking, despite his having never had a formal education and her having only completed eighth grade. In 1919, Domenico, still working as a laborer and now living in nearby Jersey City, declared his intention to become an American citizen, a process he completed three years later.

You’ll notice the family’s 1922 address: 401 Monroe Street in Hoboken, where they are also listed in the 1925 city directory. Just a few houses down on Monroe (the entire neighborhood has streets grandly named after American presidents, incidentally) was another family headed by Italian immigrants — a boilermaker and a midwife. They had a son named Frank just a few years younger than Ken’s grandfather Dominick. Perhaps you’ll recognize the last name and wonder what would have been lost had his immigrant parents been barred.

By 1930, Domenico Cuccinelli owned a home on Madison Street. And by 1940, he and his wife were comfortably retired, living in a house worth $5000, the very picture of the American dream.

THE POLICASTROS

Ken’s grandmother Josephine Policastro Cuccinelli was also the Jersey-born daughter of Italian immigrants: Gaetano Policastro and Maria Ronga (also spelled Rongo) from Monte San Giacomo in Salerno.

A teenaged Maria Ronga (her birth certificate indicates she was 17) arrived at Ellis Island in November of 1903 with her widowed 48-year-old mother, Giuseppa Romano, who has no listed occupation, and three younger siblings. Giuseppa’s husband Giuseppe Ronga, a tailor, had died in 1901 at the age of 44, which may have played a role in their decision to move. With all of $5 between the five of them, they were detained at Ellis Island — as indicated by the “S.I.” for “Special Inquiry” stamped by their names in the margin of the manifest. The “Record of Aliens Held For Special Inquiry” list indicates the reason they were held, abbreviated as “L.P.C.;” it stands for “Likely Public Charge.” So yes, the great-grandmother of the man now beating the drums to tighten the public charge rule was…labeled a likely public charge herself.

After a day’s detainment and a hearing — at which Maria’s older brother Vincenzo, who paid for their passage, would have likely been called to testify that he could support his mother and siblings — the family was allowed to enter the United States, as were more than 98% of those who came through Ellis Island.

But make no mistake: there were many who would have happily sent the Rongas packing. Witness this Judgemagazine cartoon from the very year they arrived, which depicts southern European immigrants as filthy rats, bringing crime and anarchy into the country. (Nice Mafia hats, right?) Doesn’t this sound… familiar?

The new arrivals moved in with Maria’s older brother Vincenzo, now going by the name James, in Hoboken. Ken’s great-grandmother Maria found work as a candy maker, as shown in the 1905 census.

Two and a half years after her arrival, though she is somehow still only 17, Maria “Ronca” (age and spelling are slippery concepts, genealogically speaking) married Gaetano “Thomas” Policastro, a recently widowed father of two with an eighth grade education. Gaetano was also born in Monte San Giacomo and appears to have immigrated as a child in the 1880s.

In 1908, Thomas and Maria had the first of their eight children together, Ken’s grandmother Josephine. The 1910 census shows them living with Maria’s family, including her mother Josephine Romano Ronga. Thomas is working as a salesman at a market. Both the 1910 and 1920 census indicated that Ken’s great-great-grandmother Josephine never learned English, even after being in the country for 17 years. And…so what? Immigrants often took their sweet time learning to speak English, if at all. Their children learned to speak English at school so that one day their great-great-grandsons could become the attorney general of Virginia and maybe one day feel the need to cover up the naked statute in the state symbol. Problem solved.

Though the 1930 census shows the Policastros owning a home worth $12,000, as the nation tumbled deeper into the grips of the Great Depression, like so many Americans, they appear to have fallen on hard times. A series of legal notices in the Jersey Journal(available on GenealogyBank) gesture to the outlines of the story: A lawsuit over non-payment on a $8150 bank note. A foreclosure on the Policastro home on Paterson Plank Road. A bankruptcy hearing. A District Court judgment against Thomas for $450, filed by James Ronga. Would the Policastros have met their own great-grandson’s requirement that immigrants always “carry their own weight?” (According to the Annual report of the Attorney General of the United States, about 1300 of New Jersey’s approximately four million residents voluntarily filed for personal bankruptcy in the fiscal year ended 1931.)

But by 1940, now nearing 60, Thomas Policastro had rebounded. The census shows him renting a home in nearby North Bergen. He is listed as the proprietor of a scrap metal business, and earning $1300 a year, right around the national average. Two of his American-born sons served during World War II. The Policastros proved that they deserved the chance they were given — the chance to have ups and downs and everything in between, the chance to pave the way for future generations to soar.

But one last point. Like the Cuccinellis, the Policastros also had neighbors of note, though they may not have been as well-known as the Sinatras. In 1920, the Policastros lived just a mile away from another Jersey City family headed by a Jewish immigrant who never completed high school and worked for decades at an overalls factory in nearby Paterson. This family was from the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia, and had arrived in 1896. Much like the Policastros, this family also eventually found themselves in the pages of the local newspaper. In 1940, the patriarch was arrested with his son-in-law and two other men on charges of stealing from that very same overalls factory; the charges were later dropped and the sentence suspended after they made restitution. But all of that Jewish immigrant’s grandsons would go on to college and upstanding careers. Two served in the military. One became a lawyer. One had a master’s degree. And in the fall of 1986, one of that immigrant’s great-granddaughters left Long Island to enroll at the University of Virginia, a venerable institution founded by an American president. Here she is in the First Year Faces Book, resplendent in a Benetton vest and pearls.

And one of her classmates at that venerable institution? Well, she knew him by his nickname: “Cooch.”

So yes, the scions of two Jersey City families headed by those uneducated and sometimes troubled immigrants seemed to have done alright for themselves. It’s a quintessentially American story, one I see day in and day out doing genealogical research: immigrant narratives are messy and imperfect and complicated but almost universally, they ultimately end with those families in a much better place than they would have been otherwise. That same great-grandfather’s sister, for instance, stayed behind in their ancestral town of Sniatyn and is presumed murdered during the Holocaust. So was my maternal grandfather’s brother, despite his writing a desperate letter to President “Rosiwelt” begging for refuge for his family in America.

How many future Ken Cuccinellis are the Trump administration’s increasingly restrictive immigration policies going to keep out? Who or what are those policies protecting, other than unfounded racist fears that follow in the very worst of American traditions?

Just about twenty years after Ken Cuccinelli’s family arrived from Italy and began their ascent up the ladder of the American dream, the ladder that lifted him to the grounds of Mr. Jefferson’s University and to law school at George Mason, to elected office in the state of Virginia and to a nomination to head a federal agency, Congress enacted the infamous Johnson-Reed Act, which set up quotas specifically designed to keep out people just like them. The number of Italians arriving in America dropped from 200,000 a year in the first decade of the twentieth century to under 4,000.

As Cuccinelli’s own career makes clear, the critics were dead wrong about the potential contributions of humble immigrants like his ancestors. And so is he.

CREDITS: I’m grateful to Megan Smolenyak, Michael Cassara, Rich Venezia and Tammy Hepps, who provided research, translation and editorial assistance.