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rawliverandcigarettes · 4 years ago

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Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

#Mass Effect #mass effect retribution #me critical #writing #mass effect novels #anderson #kahlee sanders #Aria T'loak #paul grayson #liselle #salarians #IP conversation #omega #mass effect lore #reapers #book review

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slothgiirl · 4 years ago

Text

maybe together we can get somewhere (noah x mc)

the gang finds out noah is alive. he and mc have built a life together while no one was paying attention (12k)

this was fun and experimental to write, trying to build a relationship through the limitations of the gang only getting snippets of noah and mc and hopefully giving enough information to piece together a plot without being to expository. hope u enjoy (noah x mc are soulmates change my mind)

Stacy.

It's a family vacation. Only the second one after her college graduation since she's only living an hour from Westchester.

It's her mom and dad and Connor and his girlfriend and her girlfriend.

Sofi laughs easily, fitting right in at some story Connor is telling and Stacy’s still annoyed that her brother brought up what she and her friends had found in the woods as children when they were at the airport: when anyone could have heard. She doesn't want to deal with it ever again. And she'll get up and move across the country if she has to.

Connor catches her gaze and offers a small smile and just like that; Stacy let's it go.

“Oh a farmers market,” her mom cries out, “we should check it out!”

Her dad laughs, “alright but don't expect me to eat any frankenstein fruit.”

Stacy snorts, finding Vancouver both amazing, and like any other city she's been to. Canada is hardly an exotic travel destination, but it's nice, waking up to a view of the pacific ocean. She wonders if she should visit her old friend since she's in town.

She'd last talked to you on the phone a month ago, surely she could just drop in.

Sofi slides her hand into Stacy’s, before asking, “what are you thinking about?” It's the first time Sofia's really spent time with her family. And her girlfriend knows about her tendency to overthink and now is one of those times.

Stacy's sighs, “just-I have a friend who lives in Vancouver. I was wondering whether I should visit them or not.”

Her girlfriend smiles, leading them into a stall with lots of fruit samples, “You should! If they're your friend I bet they'd be really happy to see you.”

Stacy shrugs. “Yeah, I guess you're right. It's not like I'm going to be in Vancouver again anytime soon.”

She grabs a second sample of the blood oranges, before telling Stacy as she decides to get a few for the road, “so who is this friend?” Because Sofi doesn't know about the whole Redfield thing and she'll never know because Stacy doesn't want to burden her with Redfield and also doesn't want to talk about it herself. It's over: in the past. Finished.

“One of my childhood friends like Lucas. There was this whole group of us,” Stacy explains.

“Like Dan,” Sofi nods, understanding. “Do you guys still talk?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you should totally drop by! Personally, I could skip the biking tour.”

Stacy laughs, “my parents really just got us all the types of tour.” It was nice, how much things had changed and the boat tour had been fun even if she’d gotten pretty cold over those two hours, it had just been the perfect excuse to snuggle up with Sofi and a cup of warm coffee inside. Connor and Vy could be outdoorsy together, taking millions of photos of the water and skyline.

“It’s cute,” Sofi comments, “my dad would just grumble about the expense and lead his own tour, no doubt getting us all lost.”

Stacy shrugs, “that’s why we have google maps.”

Sofi laughs, and pays for her oranges.

Stacy’s tired of the crowded stall, so she steps outside to wait. Canadians may be polite, but there’s only so many people brushing past her she can take. She takes out her phone and asks Lily for your address because of course Lily has it; she had sent everyone care packages and birthday presents without fail. Stacy had just sent an electronic gift card and called it a day.

There’s a good crowd but this isn't a sad little farmers market like the one back home that has like nothing but a stall or two.

She finds that she does miss the small town feel of the city she lives in even if she has to drive everywhere and living close to her family is nice even if she’ll forever hate the woods, any woods. Andy and tom had confirmed nothing was out in Westchester but she won’t chance it.

It’s second nature to go through her emails while she’s on her phone.

She scans the crowd, seeing if she spots her family somewhere. And sure enough Connor and Vy are sniffing at some tea samples, looking disgustingly sweet together and Stacy makes sure to take a picture because she went with Connor and Tom to pick out the ring. He just has to pop the question.

Wait! Was she or Sofi going to ask the question? Oh god, Stacy wanted to marry this girl. It hits her like a ton of bricks and they’re only 23, been dating two years so they have time, but Stacy’s sure. This is the one.

The panic subsides as she realizes, yeah, this is the woman she wants to spend the rest of her life with and that’s no big deal. They’ll take it day by day.

She locks her phone, glances around, ready to go get Sofi who probably struck up a whole conversation with the vendors and is getting invited over to their house for dinner as Stacy stands out here, waiting, and sees. . .well not Noah Marshall because he’s dead. So that’s not possible. And it’s not like she’s in Westchester.

But-but it certainly looks like Noah at a glance.

She can’t actually make out the man’s features, just the back of his head, which wow-Stace, she might just be losing it if she’s starting to see Noah Marshall walking around, but there’s something about the way the man walks and the shade of hair even if the haircut has changed. . .she shakes her head.

She’s imagining things.

“Ready to go,” Sofi asks, putting her hand on Stacy’s arm, “Your mom texted, she said to meet in front of Whole Foods wherever that is. Also, hilarious that there’s a farmers market in front of Whole foods.”

Stacy snorts, nodding, “yeah, let’s go.” And then looks back because it’s been five years and she still wants to kick Noah’s ass even though he’s dead so it’s a non issue at this point.

The man’s gone.

Stacy soon forgets among trying to keep up with the itinerary that her family had made on google docs over the past few months.

They take a ferry in the general direction of the address Lily gave her because it’s a fun way to travel. Connor comes along but Vy stays behind in the hotel because she wants to call her parents.

“Did they go to school here,” Connor asks, because it had been a few years and he hadn’t really kept in touch with you the way Stacy and the others had.

“No,” Stacy explains as she double checks the address while Sofi points out cute houses as they walk down the street google maps is saying the house is on. “They went to UWash. I think they studied something boring like finance which I know Ava made fun of them in the group chat about.”

Sofi, a current law student, asks, “what’s wrong with finance?”

Connor snorts, “you’re talking about the same woman that helped organize supplies for her campus’ black lives matter protests.”

“Ava’s very anti-establishment,” Stacy explains because Sofi hasn’t met Ava. Her old friend had transferred to Berkeley before Stacy started dating Sofi, but not before showing everyone her minor magical abilities. “You know, the whole break up the banks, give native americans their land back, will definitely end up a granola anthropology professor in some university after her goth phase.”

Sofi nods, “Ah, I get it. She’s not wrong about the banks. Did you watch the big short?”

“You have the most boring taste in movies,” Stacy teases because this woman made her watch Dunkirk which was long and boring and the soundtrack gave her a headache.

Her girlfriend shrugs shamelessly, “I did do a film studies minor so. . .”

Stacy knocks on the door. “I hope they’re in.” It’s a cute if small house on the edge of the city, close enough to still be part of Vancouver without being in the middle of traffic. There’s a subway station just two streets over, but taking the ferry had been much nicer. Subways had lost their charm in new york after all the times Stacy had been an hour or two late because of some issue.

“Wait,” Connor asks, raising a brow, “you didn’t text them?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Stacy admits. She hadn’t seen you in over two years. You had even less of a reason to be in Westchester compared to everyone who’s family still lived there. Your house had sat empty since you left for college.

“I think it's cute,” Sofi says, wrapping her arms around Stacy’s waist from behind.

Stacy smiles, blushing slightly.

The door opens up and holy fuck.

Stacy gasps, her mouth forming a wide O because she can’t even form a coherent thought.

A very much alive and happy Noah Marshall opens the door, wearing a pink apron that says something inane “kiss the cook”, with more than a bit of food stains, and flour on his chin. He’s not wearing a beanie, but it’s summer and Stacy is sweating even in shorts, and his hair is cut and styled instead of long and greasy like it had been in high school. His eye color has somehow changed from brown to a strange shiny blue that seems too catlike to be natural but that’s whatever when he’s apparently risen from the dead.

What the hell!

Connor is just as flabbergasted as she is.

And Noah’s caught off guard, the easy smile dying on his lips as he realizes who’s at the door.

It’s Sofi that spares them, asking Noah if you’re home, because she doesn’t know anything about what went down in your senior year of high school.

Noah nods wordlessly, “yeah, yeah, come in,” even though he looks like that's the last thing he wants to do looking as grim faced as he had been in school, sitting in the back and refusing to talk to anyone.

For once, Stacy wishes Sofi wasn't here because she wants nothing more than to kick Noah’s ass. She took kickboxing lessons, she totally could. Noah's taller, but not exactly built in the same way Andy is after all the years of exercise; though he's not exactly a scrawny teenager anymore.

How long has this been going on?

You're sitting at the kitchen table, a cheap flimsy thing from Ikea that at least has the decency to look nice, laptop open while wearing a moth-eaten oversized t-shirt of the beastie boys. You don't even look up, when you ask nonchalantly, “so who was at the door?” You reach a hand from another chip, eating straight from the bag.

“Stacy,” Noah says faux cheerfully. And Stacy did not miss how annoying he could be. “And Connor Green.”

You finally look up. A couple thousand emotions running through your face: surprise as you open your lips to speak and then close it without a word, your brow furrows as you frown, then you exchange glances with Noah, then you're blushing red as you meet Stacy's questioning gaze, caught red handed. After a second, you can't meet her gaze, instead looking at Connor the same way you had that year as if he could single handedly save you from everything and no wonder you asked him to the dance, oblivious to Stacy's crush on you at the time.

“Hey Connor, long time no see,” you get up, crossing the length of the small kitchen to hug him, “Andy's always going on about you, you know.”

Connor manages a smile, “it's good to see you, too.”

“Hi, I'm Sofi,” she says, extending a hand, “Stacy’s told me a lot about you.”

You shake her hand, inviting her to down sit, “all of you. Dinner’salmost ready.” You glance at Stacy asking. . .

She shakes her head. Of course she hasn't mentioned Noah. She's tried to erase him from her memories the same way she's tried to forget all about the ruins in the woods and Dan disappearing.

“Not that you helped,” Noah quips, proceeding to slip back into the kitchen.

“Self care.” You smile back, confirming her suspicion that this had been going on for a while. And you haven't mentioned anything. Not once. But then, you stopped bringing him up when you realized everyone was on the same page, the page you weren't, after what he had done, no amount of childhood tragedy could excuse the fact he had been willing to kill all his friends for some monster. Stacy couldn't find it in her to forgive him, even in death.

Meanwhile, you had spent too much time after everything that happened crying over this jerk.

“What are you making,” Sofi asks as Stacy takes a seat, everything clicking together as you offer everyone something to drink, exchanging lovesick smiles with Noah even as he bats you away from the stove with a spatula.

You loved him.

Despite everything he had done, you loved him. Stacy couldn't understand: had been closer to Dan and you than Noah even as kids. The way you looked at him said everything; the way you'd chased after him, unwilling to let him go into the woods alone.

It made sense why you were so willing to forgive him, and why you had spent so much time mourning him.

“Vegetable pot pie,” Noah explains, starting to roll out the dough, “This one decided to become vegetarian.”

“Since when,” Connor asks, deciding to just go along with it all. Maybe Connor was just mentally stronger, better able to cope with all the supernatural weirdness having helped Tom out at the lake, and still trying to understand the power from all of Pritch’s journals.

“Just a few months ago,” you admit. “It was this whole vegan challenge at work for the month but I missed yogurt a lot but giving up meat was pretty easy.”

“Where are you working now,” Stacy asks, taking a seat carefully, making sure not to turn her back on Noah.

“Oh,” you smile, closing your computer, resting your chin against your hand, “UBC, at the anthropology museum. It's why I-we moved here. I do financial analysis for their investments. Ava found it really funny that I got a job at a museum before her.”

“Oh,” Stacy wonders, glancing at Noah again, who's just as tense if the line of his shoulders is anything to go by, and the telling line of his mouth that reminds Stacy of the first and last time she tried to include him: a APUSH presentation that Noah had waved off and preferred to bomb. “You told Ava?”

She feels the sting of hurt but Ava makes the most sense considering you were closest to her and Lily. Not to mention Ava was still messing around with the occult. A heavy lead ball of anxiety always forms whenever Ava has shown Stacy her magic tricks.

You get the double meaning.

Noah pointedly ignores her, carrying a conversation about the best places to eat in the city with Sofi.

You force yourself to smile, “about the job yeah. Thought she'd laugh since she's the anthropologist. She called it the encroachment of late stage capitalism.”

“That sounds about right for Ava,” Stacy snorts.

You'd chosen Noah over her: over your friends. The choice had already been made before Stacy had even known this was an option.

You two were a packaged deal.

Stacy takes a deep breath, and turns her back on Noah, joining the light conversation of local things to do in Vancouver and how you had completely face planted while trying to ice skate.

“-and instead of helping me,” you tease, getting plates out for everyone, “Noah just sat back and laughed!”

“And took a video,” Noah points out. “You don't have any balance babe.”

“I wouldn't do you like that,” you wrinkle your nose, smiling fondly as Noah brings the food out of the oven, the smell filling the small house and suddenly Stacy’s mouth is watering.

“You have,” he replies all mock offended, “you left me in the cab!”

“I was very drunk,” you shrug shamelessly, then turn to Sofi and Connor with an explanation. “Too much fun on date night.”

“Shut up,” Noah utters, placing the food on the table, looking incredibly soft and it finally sinks in. He's alive. He's alive and you're together and while Stacy doesn't care for him, she's glad you're doing well.

She's still going to punch him the first chance she gets.

The food’s some of the best she's ever had.

She hugs you goodbye two hours later: a great big tight hug that says everything she hasn't been able to because of distance. She puts all her love and tenderness into hugging you. “It was so good seeing you,” Stacy says and means it. One day they'll talk about this.

But not now.

She's dragging Sofi into this.

You nod, hugging her back just as tight, before whispering in softly into her ear, “please don't tell anyone.”

And how could she refuse, with your sweet chocolate eyes looking at her like that, as if she holds everything you hold dear in her hands. It's easy for Stacy to make the choice to look away and say nothing.

Lily.

Britney makes them take a hundred selfies before they even leave the airport. Lily beams at the camera even as she pays for starbucks. “Aw man we should've tried tim hortons now that we're officially in Canada.” Lily muses, shooting you a text, letting you know she'd soon be out of the airport.

“But do they have peppermint frappuccinos,” Britney asks, leading the way as they head to the exit. Airports were always so big. It took forever to get anywhere.

“I'm not big on peppermint,” Lily comments even though Britney already knows that, before taking a long sip of her pink drink. She really had been craving a drink. That was another thing about planes: dehydration. Still, it would be worth it to visit you for the first time since you moved to Canada.

“I know,” Britney winks, “that's just more peppermint bark for me.”

Britney's the one that spots you first. Lily's taller than you, but still pretty short. “Your loser friends over there.” Britney teases and it shows how far she and Lily have come that they're able to laugh about the time wasted in high school where she bullied other kids including Lily.

Lily follows on her heels, fixing her coat to try and look cute. It had only been a three hour plane ride but it was three hours plus dealing with airport security so it felt closer to three years. Gosh it had almost been three years since she graduated college. Time just flew by.

Excitement bubbles up and Lily’s smiling hard when she sees you in an olive green jacket and grey hoodie combo, still the same as ever if happier now that you weren't stressing about school.

She had meant to visit you sooner but being an adult meant things often got in the way.

Then Lily spots Noah Marshall hovering behind you, laughing at something you just said , face lit up like a kid who's just been told they can finally dig into their Halloween candy. Except it can't be Noah because he's dead. Yet here he is, wearing a black coat, washout blue hoodie, and of course a beanie. If Jocelyn was here, she'd say he looks like an asshole wearing aviators indoors.

Removing any doubt of who he is, Lily having already come up with a reasonable explanation of you having coped with Noah's death by finding a lookalike, dies when he spots Britney and Lily before you. “Lily,” Noah grins as if he didn't die after trying to kill her, “you looked like someone kicked your puppy.”

You smack his shoulder. “Behave,” you tease as you try and smother a gasp. You meet her gaze sheepishly, but Lily's still too flabbergasted to respond.

“Aren't you supposed to be dead,” Britney asks.

He deadpans, “Mandela effect.”

This time, you dissolve into laughter.

Noah glances over at you with a smile, pleased with himself.

Lily finally manages, “explain.”

You nod, “let's get you settled in first.”

Britney hands her bag to Noah, “here. I need to carry Lily's bag.”

“Sure thing,” Noah snorts, taking her bag.

Lily had imagined Canada to be much more green. Like a national park green, with so much plant life she could smell it thick in the air, but it's pretty much just another downtown metropolitan area like Seattle. You'd really only moved a few hours away from Seattle so that made sense.

She keeps glancing over at Noah as if he'll disappear and this is some trick from whatever thing still lived in Westchester. But he's still there, flesh and blood, his arm draped around your shoulder as they stand by where she and Britney have taken a seat, bags under their feet. They had only brought carry on bags.

You're obviously together but Lily keeps getting stuck on the fact that Noah's alive.

She isn't surprised. Noah only ever had time for you that year; both of you slinking off when you thought no one was paying attention. Lily remembers seeing you hug Noah in some lonely corner of the school if you didn't skip fifth period math.

And Connor had said he'd seen you both out in town during school hours.

Maybe it's the glasses.

Noah won't be alive to her until she sees his entire face, leaving no room for error.

“Can't believe you're moving to Seattle!” You repeat because yeah Lily had gotten a nice job offer there.

“Neither can I,” Britney complains, “I like SF, and I'd like to live somewhere warm one day. Aren't there any major tech firms in Miami?”

“Nasa,” Lily says thoughtfully, “I didn't have the experience to apply though.”

Her girlfriend frowns, “You went to Berkeley though. That has to count for like ten years.”

Lily laughs.

“You should've shot your shot,” you agree.

“Isn't Florida super humid though,” Noah mentions tilting his head, reminding Lily that he's there and she can't help but flinch. “And there's tons of snakes and agitators everywhere.”

“I like snakes,” Britney notes.

He had been so sweet those last few weeks, Lily thinks to herself. Noah was always saying how she was much stronger because she could be kind even as everything was going to hell. In english, she'd burst into tears, sick and tired of having nightmares just to wake up to a living nightmare, and he'd chased after her, comforting her.

It had made his betrayal hurt all the more.

“So how exactly are you,” Lily asks, dancing around the subject. Surely it was rude to bring up that Noah had been dead.

“Alive,” he replies, quirking his brow, holding Britney's bag as he opens the door.

“Yeah. . .that.”

This time, when you and Noah look at each other, there's no boundless joy that fits in perfectly with the holiday season. You've even put up snowmen in the house's windows, and there's lights wrapped around the porch: off right now. It's just you looking at Noah with glassy eyes and Noah with an amount of tenderness in his eyes that Lily didn't know people were capable of in real life: the look people get when they're finally able to confess how in love they are in movies.

It's only there for a second and then Noah's making light of the whole situation, as if he can't stand to see that haunted look in your eyes, “Well you know what they say, when you wish upon a star-”

You roll your eyes, lightly smacking his arm, then changing your mind and squeezing his arm. “Don't be a dick.” Then you round your attention on Lily, “there's the shoe rack.” Before ushering the group into the living room. “I-I didn't,” you take a deep breath, tugging your coat off as you take a seat on a cheap navy cotton couch. “I guess I never stopped looking for a way,” you glance at Noah, “for a way to fix things. I mean, I still went back there for all the school breaks.”

You've stopped looking at Lily, gaze locked on Noah's. Pink dusts his cheeks and he ducks his head, looking alway, out into the quiet street, skyscrapers in the distance.

Britney purses her lips, listening intently. She heard accounts of this nature from Jocelyn. Dan knee better than to tell her anything about the woods back home.

“And I found it,” you finish without elaboration. Lily understands. Some things were, there were some things too awful to speak once again into being.

He slips his hand into yours, threading your fingers together.

It's sweet and though Lily's reservations remain, it's clear he loves you.

“Okay then,” Britney claps together, knowing full well she was ruining the moment, “how soon can we go shopping. I'm doing all my christmas shopping in Canada.”

“Because of the exchange rate,” Noah sneers, not missing a beat.

“Hardly,” Britney snaps back, “I'm a certified trophy wife now.” She smiles as she looks over at Lily who giggles.

It's two in the morning and Lily keeps tossing and turning. It's warm with the heater chugging away in the night. But she can't sleep.

They'd spent the whole day out, exploring the city. You'd gotten a few days off work. Britney had made you both carry bags and bags of gifts as promised.

At least she'd have plenty of time to wrap them. December had only just begun.

But Lily can't sleep.

It isn't the nightmares of her childhood: of Jane and all the things she wishes she had said no to, or those terrible months in which Lily had nearly died from sheer terror, but a pool of anxiety masquerading as restlessness.

She gets up, having visited you before back in Seattle, back when you had shared an apartment with Ava and a revolving door of roommates during college, and wonders if Ava knows. Ava, who messes around in the more supernatural corners of the world, who you had always been closest too.

Lily gets up and decides maybe a glass of water will calm her down as she chews over the idea of Noah and her both under the same roof.

She slips into the dark kitchen, with that weird anxiety that she was sneaking around that she could never shake even knowing that you wouldn't mind her going through your kitchen. She slips into the kitchen and nearly faints at the sight of Noah at the table.

He's sitting in pitch dark.

Only it isn't-

“-your eyes,” Lily hisses, breaking the calm of the twilight hours.

Noah's sitting in the dark reading.

Because his eyes are glowing blue like redfield when she was little and redfield was a friend and hadn't shown it's true nature.

Noah's eyes are glowing.

“Shit,” Noah says gently, reaching up to flip the lights on.

He moves slowly, but Lily still flinches.

“I'm sorry Lils,” he says, those three words encompassing so many years and the darkest parts of her life, casting a shadow over her whole life she can never escape because Westchester is home but it's also where it happened and Noah's a big part of why Lily spent a year having panic attacks: having flashbacks to that awful game. He says it and the last itchy scab over the deep wound Lily has harbored for years flakes off.

Lily does a little nod of acceptance, but keeps her eyes on his unnaturally reflective eyes, a light in the dark.

She swallows thickly.

That glass of water sounds amazing right about now.

“What are you doing reading in the dark,” she asks. It seems Noah had been right all those years ago; Lily was able to keep trying, a flower growing in a crack of cement.

“Studying,” Noah says calmly. “It's pretty boring actually. Sort of makes me wish I was still haunting the woods.” His smile is small, testing the waters.

Lily-she can't. She shits her eyes, shaking her head once, slow.

“Sorry,” he says easily, shutting a thick textbook, “coping mechanism.”

Lily thinks about all those nights she'd wake up in the middle of a nightmare, “is it a glitch then?” She tilts her head curiously, the way she spent hours going over the same file of code checking for any bugs: and mistakes that had slipped through the cracks.

“You could call it that. . .but they reckon that it's more of a give and take situation.” He fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt. “The power takes people but gives them power, and when, when they brought me back, I took something with me.”

For once, dread doesn't fill Lily at the mention of what lies in the woods back home.

Lily nods, and pours herself a glass of water. “What are you studying?”

“Psychology,” Noah answer's, “trying to do developmental psychology. I want to,” he waits a beat before finishing in a rush. “I'd like to be a child therapist.”

“I thought you wanted to go to culinary school,” Lily questions. She remembers you mentioning that once. Then there's the fact that Noah had brought her lunch to school a few times when he'd learned that Lily's parents had forced her into a diet.

“I did,” he shrugs. “Turns out I like to cook for myself more than anything.”

Lily smiles.

She's glad he's able to move on like she has.

“You know I use to have nightmares. Nothing really helped apart from-.”

“Tiring myself out,” you both finish.

Noah smiles grimly.

Lily drinks he water and keeps him company for a while.

Lucas

Logically, Lucas knows that Canada is not that different from the states yet he still feel like the place should be more exotic as he steps off the plane for work. It's grueling work really, the pay is bad and he flies economy more than is healthy for his back, but he likes keeping private corporations on their toes. That was the whole point of environmental science, though going to law school for the same thing is starting to look more and more appealing everyday.

He just feels like he doesn't have the weight to truly go after these people and hates having to pass off the cases when he knows he could do more.

But law school is. . .stressful.

He'd have already started his third year of law if he had just gone straight to law school after undergrad.

Lucas wonders if he's ready to manage that type of stress.

He gets off the plane and has to go directly to the non-profits office. It's a tiny little thing in a rougher part of the city; gone are the shiny sports cars and whole foods.

There's boxes of paperwork dating back from the 60s and he gets to work, drinking the cheap donut shop coffee that the office head, an amicable black man who still has a rhythmic african accent that Lucas isn't worldly enough to place, gives him with a shrug, “got to support our local businesses eh?”

Lucas nods. “Tell me about it. I feel like I missed out on the New York that was happening.” Ava had sent him a buy back the block patch and he really hadn't been surprised because she had always been opinionated and headstrong about it. If she was the town witch, well then she was going to be the biggest baddest witch.

He types a reminder into his notes to get her a souvenir.

He uses yelp to find a cheap diner, where he continues to pour over a thick manila folder--have to break up the work--and finds that he can smell the ocean here even when he can't exactly see it.

Lucas sets a reminder to himself to go enjoy the beach at least once.

Then he sees the reminder to call and ask Stacy where you were living. Lucas half wanted it to be a surprise, but worried he'd miss you.

He knew you liked going out dancing. And he had arrived on a Friday night.

It was unorthodox.

He usually worked strictly in the states since each country had their own laws and environmental precedent established by the courts. And alright, Lucas’ phone had a lot of law school tabs open. He was only twenty four. That wasn't too old for law school.

Weren't some students in legally blonde in their thirties?

Experience could give him an edge.

Lucas calls Stacy but it goes straight to voice mail.

Right, time difference.

He'd have to wait until tomorrow.

Having not exchanged any money as of yet, Lucas pays for his breakfast for dinner with his card and hopes the fee isn't too bad. Then he stuffs the folders and decides to walk to his hotel.

It's an hour long walk through town but years of being incredibly stressed had left him with the purposeful choice of slowing down when he could. Sometimes it felt like forcing himself to slow down, but he always felt better after a walk through a new city or sitting down with a fictional book even when he swore he didn't feel all wound up.

As far as cheap diners, tonight's was good and he had fun trying poutine.

Lucas walks through the tall buildings and wishes he hadn't worn a suit jacket. He should've worn a plain shirt or one of those gag gifts Andy was always sending him from various thrift stores. It might be further up north than even he grew up, but it was still hot in the summer.

Walking an hour in a casual suit was not his greatest idea, but the city carried the same vibrant energy the new york had. The energy that had encouraged Lucas to go to a house party--once.

He's walking by a street full of dive bars all blaring out nostalgic hits from his teenage years from Hannah Montana, which okay, to Kesha which sounded about right, and of course, Blackpink. The chalkboards outside all promise cheap drinks but Lucas isn't a big drinker.

He isn't sure how much of that is avoiding any substance that could get him hooked or if he's making that choice because he really doesn't like alcohol.

Lucas is just about through, about to by a monolithic building that has a bunch of displays in the windows, when he does a double take.

Noah fucking Marshall is smoking on the curb outside a bar, face flushed.

There's no doubt about it. Lucas would know that asshole anywhere. The same sharp jawline and prominent nose, brown hair curling around his ears only a few inches showered than it had in high school. He's wearing dark jeans and a black leather jacket over a white shirt and looking way too happy for a murderer.

Noah Marshall wearing aviators at night like the rat bastard he is!

The intense feelings of rage and wanting to hit something until the world righted itself surges in Lucas’ chest until there's a white hot anger in his throat and red clouding his vision.

He blacks out.

One second he's furiously gapping at the man-

the next

-Lucas is standing over Noah Marshall, knuckles on fire having just sucker punched the fucker.

Oh shit.

Noah looks just as surprised for a second as he looks up, blood beading up where his lips split open.

Lucas watches as recognition hits those bambi blue eyes---wait, blue.. .?

And then Noah shrugs, the ghost of a smile forming on his lips as he states, “yeah. I deserved that.”

There's a couple people looking over.

Lucas is still pissed as Noah gets up, dusting himself off and looking at the barely smoked cigarette on the ground as if he wants to smoke it, before grabbing the glasses and placing them back on instead.

Then, he grabs another cigarette, “want one,” he offers Lucas who no, wouldn't want one: wouldn't want anything from Noah if he was drowning and Noah had the only life jacket.

He was good with drowning.

Thanks.

Lucas, anger still fizzing under his skin like boiling water, asks, “how the fuck are you here!”

Noah shrugs, before slurring and it's then that Lucas realizes the other man is flushed drunk, “I live here,” without an ounce of sarcasm.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Lucas says, curling his lip and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Oh you know me. I'm just plotting world domination and decided Vancouver would be the perfect location for my evil villain lair. I've got a neon sign and everything.”

Lucas rolls his eyes, grinding his teeth together. “Do you always have to be such an asshole?”

Noah spreads his hands out and proceeds to do jazz hands, before taking a drag of his cigarette.

Fuck, Lucas feels like punching him again.

He's really thinking about it as he watches Noah, sure the idiot will try something again, when he hears your voice as you stumble out of the bar, “I knew it! You were going out for a smoke break!”

Noah's entire demeanor shifts, no longer the boy Lucas has built up in his head as the cause of all their problems. Over the years, he's decided that Noah had known from the start. In the depths of his denial, Lucas had told himself that Noah had kidnapped Dan. But, you appear, and Noah's turns bright pink as he hurried to stomp out the cigarette you've already seen like a naughty school boy, even as he turns and smiles as if you hung the sun in the sky and painted the night stars. It's lovesick the way you both look at each other with the fondness of ancient couples out for a walk in the park, lost in their own world.

However the fuck he's alive, Lucas realizes that this Noah, the real living Noah, has been just as freaked as the rest of them. It's something he hasn't thought about in years.

Noah had lost Jane.

It's enough for Lucas to unclench his hands even if he's still seething because what the hell, he still offered them all up on a silver platter. Redfield or Jane--whatever it was in the end--had given Ava powers and she hadn't stabbed your group of friends in the back.

You cross the distance quickly, and throw your arms around his middle, tipsy. That's probably why your smile is so pure-untouched by all the trauma and boring adult problems like remembering to pay the bills and having to call the cable company for the fifth time.

You don't even notice Lucas.

“What happened to your face,” you ask, raising your hand to cup Noah's cheek, frowning.

Noah nods over at Lucas.

You finally notice him.

“Lucas,” you wag your finger at him, still cuddled up to the man in question, “You can't punch Noah. Do you know how much trouble I went through to get him back?”

It shouldn't be possible, but Noah turns pinker.

“Aw babe,” Noah teases you with a familiarity that carries depth.

This wasn't a new development then.

“You really do care about me.”

This time, you round on Noah, wagging your finger menacingly, “Don’t be an idiot! Of course I love you. You're the best thing that ever happened to me!”

Which has Lucas majorly side eyeing you.

Sure, Noah had grown up to be tall and not unattractive, as far as pasty white boys were concerned, but he'd still tried to kill everyone.

Noah also looks skeptical.

“What are you doing in town Lucas,” you then ask.

“Work,” Lucas replies blandly, as he tries to come to terms with this reality altering discovery. “You were dead.”

“That's not entirely true,” Noah muses philosophically, “Physically I was dead but technically I was still roaming the woods as a monster.”

Reflexively, you interject, resting your hand on his chest, “you're not a monster.”

“I thought you liked the shape of water.”

Which sends you squealing. “Noah!”

Lucas doesn't get it. You are the strongest person he knows who can talk to anyone and has a sense of determination that rivals a gold medalist: the one who kept everyone together during one of the shiftiest times in his life, and he's who you settle for! “If you have to say technically, you've already lost the argument.”

You snort.

Noah rolls his eyes good naturedly.

“Wait,” you realize, eyes going wide, “does that mean you're younger than me now.”

Noah tilts his head in thought, “physically. . .”

“Pretty sure that means yes,” Lucas adds, wondering how long Noah had been back for.

“Oh my god, I'm stealing from the cradle!”

Noah looks incredibly affronted as he blinks rapid looking down at you like you'd grown a second head.

“You mean cradle robbing?”

“I'm. . .twenty four,” Noah says. Not even he sounds convinced.

“Twenty two,” you correct archly. Then look at Lucas with a friendly smile, “you want to go get pho?”

“Right now!” Lucas checks his watch. It was already midnight. He should've been at his hotel room sleeping by now.

You nod.

Noah elaborates, “it's pricey but the broth hits different. They have some pretty good view of the city too.”

Two years. Noah had been back for two years and you never said anything.

Lucas can put up with Noah for a few hours to spend time with you. After all, you were the one who was putting up with him for life apparently.

“Should we let-,” you begging to ask, amusement dancing in your eyes, city lights reflected in the dark brown hue that had a quality of depth that made it easy to open up to you.

“Nah,” Noah smirks, “Sheer chatted some dude up, they won't even realize-”

“Rahul will though.”

“Psst, it's fine.”

You've both built a life here, far removed from any traces of Westchester. Maybe that's where he had gone wrong. Lucas had been so desperate to escape he's never found a place of his own, and still haunted by his one and only home: a place he wants nothing to do with. He needed to make a new home.

Law school wasn't sounding too shabby.

Noah leads the way.

A lightbulb turns on.

“What's with your eyes?” Lucas asks.

Noah chuckles, “sometimes you fall into a vat of radioactive waste because that's just the type of luck you have.”

You shake your head, amused. “Side effect. It's nothing serious. We checked.”

That doesn't comfort Lucas at all.

He wonders if Connor or Tom could fix that just to be sure Noah wouldn't suddenly go Redfield on you while you were sleeping.

Ugh, that was one mental image he didn't need.

“So what terrible horrifying government secret are you here investigating and does it have to do with a company hiding vats of radioactive waste,” you ask.

Lucas takes the bait.

He could and has talked people's ears off about the loose regulations on place on waste disposal among an array of industries.

Andy, Dan, Tom

This all starts with two things as far as Tom is concerned. First, they've all been talking for ages about doing a guys road trip after everyone still around Westchester had driven down to visit Ava. Not that the girls weren't fun, Tom thought to himself, but it just sounded nice.

He never had a sleepover growing up so this would make up for that. At least that was the idea.

Then Lucas called Andy freaking out about Noah Marshall and Connor could only nod and go, “yeah he was with them about a year. . almost two since we visited. I think it's already been two years.”

Which was a total mindfuck because why hadn't he mentioned anything.

Why hadn't Stacy?

Tom’s done some research into necromancy and it never ends well which is why they pile into Dan’s prius and hit the road to Vancouver Canada. Sans Connor because Vy is pregnant and Connor is glued to her side. “I think they were dating,” he also adds, bookmarking some cases around New Orleans that scream supernatural activity. That throws everyone for another mind loop as he clues the Pine Springs gang who wasn't there that senior year, why Noah Marshall shouldn't be alive, much less freely walking around. The only person who takes the news relatively well is Dan, who scratches his chin thoughtfully before saying, “that makes sense,” he nods to himself.

Andy rounds on him, ready to kick Noah's ass on sight which Tom will totally back him up on. Tom still can't handle spiders for which Danni and Jocelyn continue to tease him about.

“How in the fuck does that make sense,” Andy seeths, “that motherfucker landed you in a coma! I broke my leg and had to repeat senior year!”

Dan adds, “well you know, they spoke about how tragic his death was. And they used to have nightmares of him dying-”

They all turn to look at Dan.

“What,” Andy says, “when did they tell you that?”

Dan shrugs, “well they were always coming over that year and making a point to spend time with everyone but I always thought they looked sad and thinking about them alone on the edge of town,” he trails off. He’d never brought up your parents absence, but it was clearly felt. “So I went over to theirs when I could,” Dan finishes.

Andy shakes his head, “no. I don’t know what or how, but people don’t just come back from the dead and everything's sunshine and roses,” he crosses his arms against his chest and fumes across the entire state of New York.

Tom has to agree with Andy. There’s nothing in their research to suggest that people can just come back okay. Everything taken by the power ended up twisted into a funhouse version; it never ended well.

They stretch their legs in Cleveland, Andy still scowling. Every now and then he’ll rant about how Noah has to be up to something and he has to go save you from dying. Tom doesn’t bring it up, prefering to let Andy work through it now and wrap his head around Noah Marshall being alive on the car ride up to Canada, but Connor had said Noah’s been back for at least two years--wouldn’t he already have done something? He thinks of you and how you had been alone with Noah at the end. Maybe you had kept some things to yourself.

It was hard to relive trauma aloud.

It made it more real.

Tom sends Imogen a few snaps in Toledo as Andy blasts The White Stripes, to fit his mood.

He wishes Parker had been able to get the days off. Having someone at a distance from the situation might help everyone keep their cool. He knows he won’t stop Andy from beating Noah’s ass.

Dan picks up postcards in Chicago for everyone, as they sit by the famous Bean eating pizza.

“I can’t tell if this is better or if I’m fucking starving,” Andy admits, on his third slice.

Dan snorts, looking up from his lap where he’s writing out the postcards, wanting to send them quickly, “so they make it back before we do.”

Tom takes a walk around the plaza, thinking that fall really was the best weather, cold enough for a sweater without being too freezing and the sun didn’t burn.

They don’t stop in Wisconsin or Minnesota except for gas and Mcdonalds.

Andy sleeps as Tom takes over the driving.

Dan’ll be up next.

“Please play something other than Beach House,” Tom complains at Dan, “this is going to make me fall asleep.”

Dan chuckles, “Its good night driving music.”

“No Dan,” Tom shakes his head with a smile

The sun rises, and Tom gets to sleep.

He wakes up in Rapid City, South Dakota and they have to recreate that awful Hilary Clinton, “just chilling in Rapid City,” Andy says mockingly.

Dan almost chokes on his coffee.

Montana is so fucking beautiful and Tom’s seized with the sudden urge to come live out here. “We could totally do it,” he tells the other men, “it’s cheap out here. We could buy a huge piece of land and never have to deal with any bullshit again. Our friend group could do it. Danni’s really handy and Lily could set us up with wifi!”

“Bro,” Andy says gravely, “you know I love you, but I’m not moving to Montana with you.”

Dam smiles softly, “Danni would have a field day taking pictures here.”

Montana is beautiful and green and none of the nature here has that heavy feeling the woods in Westchester do, but they’re tired and exhausted from being on the road for the last two days. They crash at a motel 8 and sleep for the next twelve hours.

They ask this beautiful woman who's wearing birks and has a tote bag emblazoned “love your mother” with a planet earth painted on, to take a picture of them in front of Pike Place Market. Dan has her number before Tom’s done sending the pictures to his Pine Springs groupchat, teasing Parker about having stayed behind to yell at teenagers smoking weed while driving boats around the lake: accidents waiting to happen.

Tom has never been to Seattle.

He knows most of his friends from Westchester have to visit you or Ava, and he's grown close to Ava, but at the time he was more of a friend of a friend and so never flew up to Seattle.

“Is it lame I'm still tired,” Andy asks, as they find a park to sit down at. It felt so good to be able to lay in the grass instead of sitting cramped up in the car.

“Age is starting to hit us.” Dan muses. “Either of you want to come get some things with me.”

His friend snorts, “Haven't you gotten enough gifts for everyone?” Which, yeah, Dan has been accumulating a small horde of souvenirs in the back for all his friends. He's a thoughtful guy. Tom’s not surprised the man’s a nurse. If he'd had Dan as a nurse when he was a kid, he might not completely hated going to the doctors office.

“I was kinda thinking about getting something from every state,” Dan says, blushing red as he rubs the back of his neck.

“I think it's sweet,” Tom says, clasping a hand on the other man's back. “Cheesy, but sweet.”

Andy shakes his head, “we should've gotten there by now. If only we hadn't stopped in Montana-”

“Noah's not going anywhere,” Dan points out, “you can kick his ass tonight or tomorrow.”

“They know we’re coming,” Andy scowls, “He could be halfway around the world by now.”

“Just remember Lucas already sucker punched him,” Tom offers his friend as consolation.

Dan shakes his head a little, but stays silent. Tom hasn't been able to get Dan’s feelings on the whole situation. He can’t imagine him being completely ambivalent or cool with Noah getting off scot free, but then again, Tom doesn’t know every little detail.

No one talks about it in detail even in their little power club that Connor and him started up.

He gets it.

It’s not something anyone wants to linger on.

And he understands better than most.

His monster was different, but no less horrifying.

“I’ll go with you,” Tom offers Dan, because this is a new city and even though the point is to go see what's up with Noah, and make sure he isn’t still the shadow monster he was the last time Tom saw him, he still wants to make the most of it.

“Two hours,” Andy says with a warning. “Two hours or I leave you in Seattle.”

“Sure, sure,” Tom shakes his head. Andy would never do them like that.

“If you’re coming we should go to the space needle,” Dan says thoughtfully, taking out his phone to begin google mapping the places he wants to hit up.

“Two hours!” Andy calls back from where he’s watching a couple people play basketball.

Tom discovers he has a thing about heights as they ascend via an elevator. It’s a slow day and the elevator operator talks him through it, telling him all sorts of bad puns and more information about the space needle then he can remember. “Sarah Palin came by the other day,” the woman who looks to be about their age with green ringlets and a friendly smile that doesn’t seem to be forced like most customer service workers smile (smile through the pain), “and she said she could see Alaska from here! Get it?”

Tom tries to smile, but yeah, he’s never doing this again. “Did you see the masked singer with Sarah Palin?”

The girl nods, “how the mighty have fallen. You think there's an alternate universe where she was vice president and insead Joe Biden’s on Dancing with the Stars?”

Tom’s laugh dies in his throat as the elevator jolts to a stop. It certainly feels like a huge jolt, but that may be his anxiety making everything elven times worse.

“Well thank you for riding air force two,” she salutes as Tom finally steps into the platform.

Sweet, sweet relief.

He sort of has to go take a picture or two off the viewing platform. He’s made it this far.

“She was totally into you,” Dan says, stepping in to take Tom’s mind off things.

“Was not.”

“Totally was.”

Tom rolls his eyes, “she was just being nice.”

“Sure man, sure. But she was.”

They arrive even later than Andy had predicted. It’s midnight and proof that they had dallied in Seattle for two long. This is the first time Dan has ever left the country so of course they stop and take pictures.

And then they stop and eat at the cute little cabin lodge just off the highway.

And even Andy forgets about the Noah business.

They pull into the street, disappearing from the city in the turn onto the street. It’s crazy how much of a difference a street can make. A little quiet row of houses tucked under the twinkling lights of the city lights.

Your house is a small one story thing, clearly an older home from before cookie cutter houses came into fashion, and with a certain amount of charm even with the dead plant by the doorstep: closer to a cottage than a house like something out of Snow White. There’s even a ouija board doormat that Tom thinks is completely in line with your humor and probably Noah’s as well. He just doesn’t remember much about Noah when he was alive. Last time Tom saw Noah, Noah was saying sorry to the birds. People could change.

Right?

It’s not like Noah had gone all Zodiac Killer on his friends.

The lights are off and Tom feels kind of bad that he’s about to wake you up, but he also really wants to crash in an actual bed.

Dan knocks on your door as Andy paces behind Tom.

A minute later, you peak your head out the door. Your navy blue sweater is cuffed around your hands, clearly meant for someone taller, helping to stave off the autumn chill, and grey flannel pajama pants. You rub your eyes with the back of your hand as you yawn. “You’re here,” you smile and hug Dan with one arm, “do you need any help with the bags.”

“The bags can wait until tomorrow,” Dan answers for the group, “I just want to sleep in a real bed.”

You snort, “don’t actually have a guest room,” you admit, keeping your voice down as you usher them all inside, “but I do have a pretty comfortable pull out couch and way too many quilts. I have to stop going to Victoria Island.”

Andy looks around, tense.

Tom’s a little surprised when you hug him too. “Want any food? There’s a ton of leftovers. Noah’s been stress baking. He has a bunch of exams this week.,” you say with such casualness.

“We already ate,” Dan offers, “there was this cool looking log cabin that sold me on pumpkin spice muffins.”

“Where is Noah,” Andy asks, cutting right to the quick.

You look at him pointedly as you explain, “he went to sleep early. He’s got school at like 7 am. I have no clue why. . .college was all about afternoon classes for me.”

Andy wisely, let’s it go for the moment.

You show them where things are, the couch is already extended. The TV’s sitting on a pile of textbooks with a nintendo switch right next to it.

Tom is out before his head hits the pillow.

They wake up and eat the promised leftovers as you rush to find the spare key to leave with your friends before you too have to go to work. “I would've asked for the day off like I did for the rest of the week,” you hastily explain, filling the electric kettle with water, “but it was Maureen’s birthday and I would’ve felt like such a dickhead.”

You make Dan promise to come look through the Museum you work at before it closes, and then you’re running off with a tumbler full of tea, putting a hand through your hair as if that’ll save it from looking like a mess. Tom’s unsurprised at your easy nature when they’re all imposing, making no secret of the real reason they had driven all the way to the other coast of North America.

Andy conducts a walkthrough of the house, leaving the sole bedroom of the house alone.

Dan shakes his head, flipping through the TV channels, before logging onto your netflix account, the most recent show having been played was Avatar the Last Airbender. “Anything you want to watch?”

“The good place,” Tom offers, “everyone’s always saying it's good.”

Dan shrugs. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have netflix.”

Andy comes back with a picture frame clutched in his hand, “He’s such a dick!” Red seeping into his neck as he fumes.

Tom looks over at the picture, but it’s just a photo any normal couple would have hanging around their house: a blurry polaroid of you and Noah, each with a red solo cup at some house party, with the date, over a year ago, written on the border. He gets it, he does. And Andy’s his friend, so he nods.

Dan on the other hand, “okay. . .”

Andy disappears back down the hall. “I just don’t understand how they kept this from us! I mean-after what he did!”

Tom nods the same way he always had when his dad would start lecturing him in japanese even though his japanese is limited to whatever the japanese equivalent of Dora the explorer teaching spanish is.

“Probably so we wouldn’t freak out,” Dan offers, not looking away from the screen.

Andy marches back into the living room with a deep set frown, “Noah was fine offering us up to that monster and now they’re here playing house like nothing ever happened.” He sits down next to Tom, head in his hand. “I just don’t get it.”

He clasps a hand on Andy’s shoulder in comfort.

“Maybe they just wanted to forget as much as we did,” Dan notes quietly. “Some of us left and never really went back.” He’s talking about Lily and Lucas, who only visits during the holidays, then there’s Ava out in Arizona, busy doing field research and only going to Westchester in between jobs. Dan’s an hour away, a world away, near Stacy.

It’s really just Andy and Connor who stayed.

He’s in Pine Springs, a good hour to the west of Westchester.

“He died,” Andy grumbles out, “it could’ve easily been them, or any of us, or all of us. We’re lucky no one else did.”

Dan frowns, looking over at Andy, “I don’t like this anymore than you do. I’m not jazzed that Noah’s been back for years and we just found out. But I trust their judgement.”

“Necromancy is serious business,” Tom says, breaking the staring contest that’s started between the two friends.

Noah’s at least a little bit of a coward, as he saunters up to them, running a hand through his hair as he takes a seat at the table.

You had said this diner had the best malai kofta in the neighborhood.

He’s resting expression is still skewed towards sour, even as there’s other noticeable changes from the Noah Tom remember’s who’d kept to himself in school. His hair cut into a flattering undercut, clothes no longer on the angsty scruffy side but still decidedly casual as he opts for a dark palette, and of course, the blue eyes that seem to glow even in the afternoon light Lucas had mentioned in great detail. Noah’s clean shaven and lean, a backpack slung over his shoulder.

He only spares Tom a second’s glance before he focuses in on you, his lips quirk-ing up in a small smile. Sitting down, you lean forward expectantly as he plants a kiss on your cheek by way of greeting, before saying, “C’s make degrees right?”

“Mhm,” you nod, “but you did fine so it doesn’t matter. I ordered you the chicken and waffles. That’s what you usually get right?”

“Actually,” Noah starts, clearly about to tease you.

You shove his shoulder lightly, “beggars can’t be choosers.”

Dan extends an olive branch, “hey Noah.”

Which Andy immediately shoots down, “so it’s true.”

Tom’s only glad they’re already sitting and yeah, Noah’s a coward for meeting them in public, not that it had stopped Lucas from sucker punching him. It probably won’t stop Andy, only he’s sandwiched in between Dan and Tom and there’s no way Dan is getting up and out just so Andy can punch Noah. That’s not the kind of friend Dan is. Dan’ll take someone away to cool off, sprouting lines about being the bigger person, but Tom thinks that sometimes a punch is well earned.

Noah nods, sobering up, rating his arms on the table. “Yeah. It’s still. . . it’s still a trip nearly four years later.”

You cover his hand with yours, giving Noah’s hand a squeeze.

Now that they’re here with Noah, a burst of curiosity that’s been brewing in the back of Tom’s mind finally surges forward. “Do your eyes always glow? Or is it light a cat’s iridescence and that’s why you can read in the dark?”

“Gee, let me give you the paperwork the doctor diagnosed me with after I explained that my sister became a shadow monster and I came back to life. He was super nice and helpful about everything. We really don’t pay doctors enough.”

Andy rolls his eyes, “So are you still a monster or not.”

Noah frowns, before leading forward, gripping a glass of ice in hand pointedly, lifting it off the table, watching his own action with a sad fascination, “you can’t begin to imagine how nice it is to be solid again--to be more than a lingering ghost who can barely remember who it used to be.”

Which doesn’t answer the question but--

Some monsters were all too human for comfort. And some monstrous beings ended up friends and allies back in Pine Springs.

You and Dan walk up ahead arm in arm, chatting about everything from how cozy ll bean’s wool socks were to how you wanted to branch out and leave your job but it just couldn't be a bank, working in a cubical all day seemed like a death sentence. Dan fills you in on the news from back home and you both catch up as you walk at a leisurely pace back to your home.

Somehow, Noah manages to be patient as Tom rattles off question after question.

“Do you remember much?”

“What was it like coming back?”

“Can you do any magic thought,” he purses his lips in thought, “that doesn’t tell us much, since Ava’s out there levitating feathers.”

“Are any of your other senses better?”

“Do you have any other changes after coming back?”

“Can you speak to animals now?”

“Do you ever get a craving for human flesh?”

“Your limbs don’t fall off or anything? Right?”

“You have all your memories back?”

“Do you ever see any ghosts?”

“Can you see ghosts?”

Noah answers them patiently, if amused, as Andy skulks behind, clearly listening in on the conversation.

“How did they bring you back,” Tom finally asks, having spent countless nights researching necromancy. It had crept up in the Pine Spring’s society books, journals detail all sort of gorey accounts of their attempts to harness the power to gain power over the dead and living, but none of it had ever amounted to anything. At least in the best case.

One member had rotted away from the inside out, black mold blooming in his lungs, incurable as he choked to death after trying to raise a simple cat from the dead.

Noah tenses up, glancing over to where you’re laughing as Dan does a spot on Bernie impression about how it’s time to once again, “ask for a The man from U.N.C.L.E. sequel,” before meeting Tom’s gaze again. “You’ve formed a little club to keep the power away from people right?”

He nods, “I just-I don’t want more people to go through what we have,” he explains. They had to be proactive and learn so that no one else would stumble upon the power and exploit it to violent ends. Ava’s magic wasn’t derived from the power. Tom had double checked that. Ava’s magic was her own through her own sheer will.

But the power-that was something else entirely.

He swallows thickly.

Nothing had happened so far. And he couldn’t tell if their plan was working, or if they had gotten lucky. It had been a handful of years. But then, a decade had passed between Jane Marshall’s death and her awakening.

“And no one else ever will,” Noah says forlornly.

“Explain,” Andy says, walking up on Noah’s other side.

The man looks up at you, as you and Dan wait by the street corner for the rest of the group to catch up, and he shakes his head. “All you need to know is the power won’t be a problem again.”

Tom runs the problem over and over in his mind as they explore Vancouver and Andy continues to get digs in at Noah while Noah lets him.

He thinks about it as Andy makes everyone watch #Alive. And then Dan reminds them how obsessed everyone was with Inception when it came out. And Tom thinks about Noah’s words. And then you suggest watching something lighter: Zoolander.

Tom plays Noah’s words over in his head as he stares up at the ceiling, listening to Andy’s snores.

He puzzles over what Noah meant, why he didn’t want to bother you with it, as he drives back across the continent.

The power takes.

The power gives.

He gets it as they stop for gas in New York.

Oh, you really must love him.

Ava

Ava walks into Tom’s house out in Pine springs. It’s summer and she’s ready to spend the entire week swimming and continuing the search for a black lipstick that won’t stain. Fenty came pretty close.

There’s tons of cars in the driveway and she knows she’s the last one to get there; she always did like an entrance.

She tries the doorknob before knocking, hearing the laughter and conversation carry outside. The house is unlocked so she lets herself in; she likes to make entrances, guilty as charged, before following the sound of voices into the back porch overlooking the lake.

Tom had lucked out in buying this place during the summer the lady of the lake terrorized the town.

She’s frozen in shock when she sees Noah sitting with everyone like he hasn't been dead for over eight years. He’s sitting with an arm around you, beer in his other hand, talking with Lily, in a faded AC/DC shirt and dark jeans despite the heat.

Ava pinches herself to make sure she isn’t dreaming.

“Ava,” Lily cries, spotting her, “you’re here.”

“What the fuck!”

Realization dawns on your face as Noah looks over at the resident goth chick who’s withered into a refined goth woman, less fishnet and more victorian mourning shirts paired with flared black and white leggings, for the first time in eight years and seven months.

“Hey Ava,” he says, lifting his hand up in greeting from where it’s resting on your shoulder.

Your face heats up, as you look at Ava, realizing you’d never gotten around to telling her. Not when you’d visited her for Thanksgiving even though she refused to participate in a propaganda holiday that “perpetuates colonialism” or the time last year when you’d gone to support her big lecture at UMississipi. It had never seemed the right time and now the time to calmly explain was gone.

“Someone explain before I light him on fire,” Ava utters, feeling heat grow in her fingertips. It was easy after years of practice. She was toying with the idea of buying a house in Salem.

Noah doesn’t even flinch.

How could he, having grown up with Jane for a sister that had gone around filling people shoes with mud and shoving people into pools with a laugh. That girl had been fearless, and Ava has long thought if she’d been an inch more scared, you and Jane never would have gone into those ruins.

It almost warms Ava’s cold dead heart.

Ha.

If Ava had sometimes been the third wheel with you and Jane, then Noah had been the ugly duckling waiting for a scrap of attention because Jane shone bright, a sunflower soaking up light, thriving on attention. Maybe Noah hadn’t been all that bothered to let his sister take the lead as kids, even as he grumbled about the trouble they were sure to get into, but neither Marshall twin had cared about anyone’s attention more than yours.

Jane had always been a limpet, her hand in yours.

Ava had been too independent even at nine to always go along with Jane, or want a friend that close.

But you didn’t just go along with Jane, you encouraged her, and dragged Noah along when Jane got too caught up in her made up games to remember to play nice. Noah who even at nine seemed clued into the fact that you were hurt that your parents were never around, something that never occurred to Jane.

So she’s not surprised that Noah and you are a thing.

Figures.

You’d kissed more than one white boy that could vaguely pass for Noah if you had enough to drink in college even if you had only dated twice and neither had been Noah Marshall knockoffs.

It’s glaringly obvious in hindsight.

What she doesn’t get is how he’s alive.

And everyone’s just cool with it.

“I thought you already knew,” Dan says.

Lily looks at you, “didn’t you tell Ava first?”

You raise a brow, “I thought Lucas told everyone?”

Lucas shrugs, wearing a suit in the summer, “I did. I just figured Ava already knew”

Stacy sips her cocktail, “awkward.”

“Wow,” Noah jokes with a grin, “you guys are terrible friends.”

Andy almost chokes on his beer, sending Noah a look that would’ve made Medusa jealous.

Danni shakes her head, “too soon dude, too soon.”

Maybe she should move into Cora’s old house. That way she could keep up with her friends' news.

How the hell did she miss Noah coming back to life.

That was metal as fuck.

She and you would have words about keeping secrets.

“Just give me the strongest drink you can make,” she says with a shake of her head, taking a seat next to Imogen, the resident mixologist.

#noah marshall #ilitw noah #noah x mc #maybe theres two left #reposting bc it didnt show up in the tags #lily's part was my favorite #toeing the line between making noah a sarcastic shit and a traumatized man and a soft boy in love #mine

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legobiwan · 5 years ago

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Just got home from The Rise of Skywalker. No pithy intro, I’m just going to jump right in and it’s going to be a LONG rant here so buckle up, my friends, and be sure to read below the cut. SPOILERS AHOY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Okay, so yes, the first third of the movie went at a blistering, nearly nonsensical pace. JJ really had to cram a whole watermelon’s worth of exposition into a...well, you know, there was a lot to take in. This movie had to do so much telling instead of showing because it was such a departure (and middle finger to TLJ) from what came before.

The thing was, the first third was also the most interesting part of the movie. I actually wish the whole trilogy had started with all of the Sith nonsense. (Actually, I wish they had started with Kylo absolutely wrecking shit like he did and then the Palpatine scene. People would have made all the wrong assumptions and it would have been glorious to unravel it over three films.) There is a strong history of Sith artifacts in both Nu-Canon and Legends, and it wouldn’t have been out of place, considering what we know now, to have made Rey, Poe, and Finn’s quest for these artifacts the start of the new trilogy, and then told the rest of the story in a non-linear timeline. Probably too experimental for a Star Wars reboot, but it would have grabbed attention and everyone like creepy Sith shit.

Frankly, I would have dropped zombie-robot Palpatine at the very start of the trilogy, as well. It’s bonkers but I don’t hate the Rey Palpatine thing and they could have spent the rest fo the movies explaining this weird-ass lineage and how it relates to Kylo, Snoke, etc. and then have built back to the final confrontaion on Exegol.

Leia. Trained. Rey. I so so so so so wished we had been able to get more of this. This, in my mind, is what it should have been all along. I liked TLJ (okay, so shoot me) but Master Leia is a whole other level of awesome. If I had to rewrite Luke and Leia’s roles, it would have went something like this:

Luke was searching for Sith artifacts. Luke was becoming disillusioned by what he was learning of the Jedi through “The Sacred Texts.” WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE? Hmmmm, I wonder....

Could you imagine Luke started to go a little Dooku in this respect, and so instead of fucking off the Ach-To because he had a feeling that was more “gravy than of grave” about Ben Solo’s dark sidedness, he fucked off to Ach-To - or even better - gave up training in order to keep himself from going down a darker path.

And so instead, Leia is getting involved with training (and probably also governing at the same time because she would be an overachiever like that.)

Enter Ben Solo, who is Force sensitive, strong, being trained by his mother and occasionally his uncle, who is not totally plugged into the light side at the moment, which can rub off on Ben. Meanwhile, Han is maybe not the best father (he wants to be, he tries, but it all comes out wrong. I’ve been watching a lot of Psych lately, so I’m thinking of a dynamic similar to Henry and Shawn, but a little more dramatic.)

Of course, Palpatine is seeing all of this behind the scenes, he’s fostering ill will and discontent through the scattered remains of the Empire, sending Snoke clones out to be almost pseudo-religious/cult figures in the wake of the economic and social devastation left by the Empire’s fall and the floundering new government. Extremism, in pockets, rises. Extremism which preys on discontent, which preys of the desire for family, for belonging.

Enter again Ben Solo, who has been pitted against the other strongest trainee, Rey (insert whatever last name you want. She knows it’s not her real name, she knows she was an orphan on Jakku, but she was brought by Luke to be trained). Ben is pissed how she and Leia bond, has been talking to his uncle, and perhaps encountered a Snoke clone on the way.

Rey, on the other hand, is no one but wants to be someone, and that manifests in weird ways during her training. Perhaps she leaves at some point, perhaps not. But the seeds of her being Palpatine’s bloodline are laid within her. She wants to seek that belonging Ben has.

Okay, but getting away from my personal rewrites of the sequels, Star Wars is about family and lineage, both blood and found. There was so much potential to play on this throughout the trilogy with the Skywalkers, with Rey’s relation to Palps that if they had just planned the damn thing, it could have been brilliant.

Moving ...(for now)

I felt so bad for Oscar Isaac. I felt like I watched his soul slowly depart his body over almost 3 hours. That man was not a happy camper and it came out in his performance.

Power levels. Here’s the thing, guys. Magic needs to have consequences. Sure, you can cast a spell, but what does that take from you? You can use the Force, but to what degree? How much? Even Anakin exhausted himself at some points, and he was (allegedly, according to one Qui-gon Jinn), the Chosen One. It’s the first law of thermodynamics - energy can neither be created nor destroyed - and the Force is literally the energy of every life thing in the galaxy. You take the energy, use it towards something else, it has to drain from somewhere. This is what bugged the hell out of me with Rey’s Force Healing abilities (an ability that doesn’t thrill me to begin with as it’s so easy to overuse). Kylo keels from resurrecting the dead (and yeah, he was pretty beat up already), but Rey barely seems to breathe a beat harder. Once you start ignoring the consequences for magic, you end up like a shitty video game, and one of the criticisms I’ve leveled at the movie is that it feels like a montage of Battlefront and I can’t say that’s totally off point.

JEDI HUNTERS. Ochi. I will bet my right liver we’re going to hear something about this on The Mandalorian.

So I know a lot of people wanted to see Rey Kenobi, but there was one piece of glaring evidence in the film why that would never be. (Aside from Kylo just announcing it to Rey.) She has a lightsaber, but she still ends up using a blaster. So uncivilized.

Speaking of The Mandalorian - Stormtroopers with Mando jetpacks. Hmmm.....

I loved techno-Sheev hooked up to all the equipment just floating. That was creepy as hell and played with the whole cloning and extension of life that was such a large part of the Darth Plagueis novel (which I still consider to be canon, higher powers be damned). Also, Palpy’s glowup with the wardrobe was hilarious.

Dark!Rey was hot. There, I said it.

Let’s talk about romance. Or the lack thereof. Or the shoehorned thereof.

Poor Rose got shafted in this film with no explanation. I didn’t buy that whole thing in TLJ, but god damn anyway. (Finn also got shafted, for different reasons, which I will talk about later.)

If they were going to romance, just let it have been Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, or fuck it, even a trio.

I mean, I could have bought Reylo if it had been presented better. (With context. Adam Driver is an amazing actor, another thing I’ll talk about later.)

The Reylo kiss though - my theater laughed. No joke.

Of course, this was the same theater that thought Lando was trying to mack on Jannah at the end, so who knows what we were all thinking in there. (On that note, Lando was hilarious because no matter what, he was just having a grand ‘ol time in the movie. I like to think he got a medical spice card in his retirement years and was just enjoying anything that came his way, be it Wookiees, Jedi, starships, wars, whatever.)

While the Reylo kiss didn’t hit the mark the space lesbian background kiss got cheers, so there was some hope for my fellow theater-goers.

Did anyone pick up on Threepio saying the Senate made the bill that would render him incapable of translating the Sith language? No doubt that was a Palpatine move from TCW era.

What is up with these movies and desert/jungle planets? Ugh. Thank everyone for Kijimi, at least that was interesting.

New characters I loved: Babu Frik and DO.

Finn’s Force sensitivity. Yes, I totally buy it. I wanted more. I wanted more fucking context of a Stormtrooper who would have known nothing of the Jedi getting these feelings and then bailing from the First Order (or, if I were writing the movies, bailing from the remnants of the Empire/Snokes weird military cults.) Totally underutilized character development.

We. Were. Robbed. of Good!Ben. Adam Driver is so phenomenal. Form the little we saw of redeemed Ben, he is the perfect mix of his parents, from the “Ow” to the eyebrow wagging, the swagger, the smirks...I LOVED good!Ben. I wanted so much more good!Ben. What a transformation.

Speaking of which - the scene between Kylo/Ben and Han was terrific. I wish we had had more context for why everything went south, but it was so good and the type of family dynamic we really needed more of.

The Knights of Ren looked awesome in this film? They needed to be like the Black Order of Star Wars, and they were getting to it, but not quite there. Gods, they could have been the enforcers of Snoke’s cults (Palpy’s puppet cults) that could terrorize far more than a normal, brainwashed Stormtrooper, who was only useful as cannon fodder (I mean, if we look at the history of the clone army to the Stormtroopers, it would be terribly fitting.)

That ship tug-of-war was DUMB. (See my rant about magic and consequences). But, if Rey was going to shoot lightening Palpy-style and blow up a ship, Chewie should have died. I’m sorry, that’s terrible, I love him, but there needed to be consequences for actions and throughout the film, there were either no consequences or random consequences that were a narrative convenience rather than developed into the plot/characterization/worldbuilding.

Here’s the thing with the ST - there is so much potential. There are some awesome ideas. But they wanted to play if safe with JJ by rebooting the OT, Rian was too far out for them, there was no cohesive storytelling, and so we get these little glimpses into what could have been amidst a shitstorm of trailers for Battlefront 17.

we could have had it allll....

Final rating: 4/10

#the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #tros spoilers #tros #hello there #rants from the lego compound #and what an appropriate tag it is #rey #kylo ren #finn #poe dameron #sheev palpatine #leia organa #luke skywalker #han solo #bunch of other characters i'm not tagging right now

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terramythos · 4 years ago

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 22 of 26

Title: House of Leaves (2000)

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

Genre/Tags: Horror, Fiction, Metafiction, Weird, First-Person, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator

Rating: 6/10

Date Began: 7/28/2020

Date Finished: 8/09/2020

House of Leaves follows two narrative threads. One is the story of Johnny Truant, a burnout in his mid-twenties who finds a giant manuscript written by a deceased, blind hermit named Zampanò. The second is said manuscript -- The Navidson Record -- a pseudo-academic analysis of a found-footage horror film that doesn’t seem to exist. In it, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson moves into a suburban home in Virginia with his partner Karen and their two children. Navidson soon makes the uncomfortable discovery that his new house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Over time he discovers more oddities -- a closet that wasn’t there before, and eventually a door that leads into an impossibly vast, dark series of rooms and hallways.

While Johnny grows more obsessed with the work, his life begins to take a turn for the worse, as told in the footnotes of The Navidson Record. At the same time, the mysteries of the impossible, sinister house on Ash Tree Lane continue to deepen.

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That’s where it is. Right at this moment. But don’t look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead and take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it’s gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails? don’t worry, that particular detail doesn’t matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms--you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book-- you won’t have time to even scream.

Don’t look.

I didn’t.

Of course I looked.

Some story spoilers under the cut.

Whoo boy do I feel torn on this one. House of Leaves contains some really intriguing ideas, and when it’s done right, it’s some of the best stuff out there. Unfortunately, there are also several questionable choices and narrative decisions that, for me, tarnish the overall experience. It’s certainly an interesting read, even if the whole is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

First of all, I can see why people don’t like this book, or give up on it early (for me this was attempt number three). Despite an interesting concept and framing device, the first third or so of the book is pretty boring. Johnny is just not an interesting character. He does a lot of drugs and has a lot of (pretty unpleasant) sex and... that’s pretty much it, at least at the beginning. There’s occasional horror sections that are more interesting, where Johnny’s convinced he’s being hunted by something, but they’re few and far between. Meanwhile, the story in The Navidson Record seems content to focus on the relationship issues between two affluent suburbanites rather than the much more interesting, physically impossible house they live in. The early “exploration” sections are a little bit better, but overall I feel the opening act neglects the interesting premise.

However, unlike many, I love the gimmick. The academic presentation of the Navidson story is replete with extensive (fake) footnotes,and there’s tons of self-indulgent rambling in both stories. I personally find it hilarious; it’s an intentionally dense parody of modern academic writing. Readers will note early that the typographical format is nonstandard, with the multiple concurrent stories denoted by different typefaces, certain words in color, footnotes within footnotes, etc. House of Leaves eventually goes off the chain with this concept, gracing us with pages that look like (minor spoilers) this or this. This leads into the best part of this book, namely...

Its visual presentation! House of Leaves excels in conveying story and feeling through formatting decisions. The first picture I linked is one of many like it in a chapter about labyrinths. And reading it feels like navigating a labyrinth! It features a key “story”, but also daunting, multi-page lists of irrelevant names, buildings, architectural terms, etc. There are footnotes that don’t exist, then footnote citations that don’t seem to exist until one finds them later in the chapter. All this while physically turning the book or even grabbing a mirror to read certain passages. In short, it feels like navigating the twists, turns, and dead ends of a labyrinth. And that’s just one example -- other chapters utilize placement of the text to show where a character is in relation to others, what kind of things are happening around them, and so on. One chapter near the end features a square of text that gets progressively smaller as one turns the pages, which mirrors the claustrophobic feel of the narrative events. This is the coolest shit to me; I adore when a work utilizes its format to convey certain story elements. I usually see this in poetry and video games, but this is the first time I’ve seen it done so well in long-form fiction. City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer, both of which I reviewed earlier this year, do something similar, and are clearly inspired by House of Leaves in more ways than one.

And yes, the story does get a little better, though it never wows me. The central horror story is not overtly scary, but eeriness suffices, and I have a soft spot for architectural horror. Even Johnny and the Navidsons become more interesting characters over time. For example, I find Karen pretty annoying and generic for most of the book, but her development in later chapters makes her much more interesting. While I question the practical need for Johnny’s frame story, it does become more engaging as he descends into paranoia and madness.

So why the relatively low rating? Well... as I alluded to earlier, there’s some questionable stuff in House of Leaves that leaves (...hah?) a bad taste in my mouth. The first is a heavy focus on sexual violence against women. I did some extensive thinking on this throughout my read, but I just cannot find a valid reason for it. The subject feels thrown in for pure shock value, and especially from a male author, it seems tacky and voyeuristic. If it came up once or twice I’d probably be able to stomach this more easily, but it’s persistent throughout the story, and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot or horror (not that that would really make it better). I’m not saying books can’t have that content, but it’s just not explored in any meaningful way, and it feels cheap and shitty to throw it in something that traumatizing just to shock the audience. It’s like a bad jump scare but worse on every level. There’s even a part near the end written in code, which I took the time to decode, only to discover it’s yet another example of this. Like, really, dude?

Second, this book’s portrayal of mental illness is not great. (major spoilers for Johnny’s arc.) One of the main things about Johnny’s story is he’s an unreliable narrator. From the outset, Johnny has occasional passages that can either be interpreted as genuine horror, or delusional breaks from reality. Reality vs unreality is a core theme throughout both stories. Is The Navidson Record real despite all evidence to the contrary? Is it real as in “is the film an actual thing” or “the events of the film are an actual thing”? and so on and so forth. Johnny’s sections mirror this; he’ll describe certain events, then later state they didn’t happen, contradict himself, or even describe a traumatic event through a made-up story. Eventually, the reader figures out parts of Johnny’s actual backstory, namely that when he was a small child, his mother was institutionalized for violent schizophrenia. Perhaps you can see where this is going...

Schizophrenia-as-horror is ridiculously overdone. But it also demonizes mental illness, and schizophrenia in particular, in a way that is actively harmful. Don’t misunderstand me, horror can be a great way to explore mental illness, but when it’s done wrong? Woof. Unfortunately House of Leaves doesn’t do it justice. While it avoids some cliches, it equates the horror elements of Johnny’s story to the emergence of his latent schizophrenia. This isn’t outwardly stated, and there are multiple interpretations of most of the story, but in lieu of solid and provable horror, it’s the most reasonable and consistent explanation. There’s also an emphasis on violent outbursts related to schizophrenia, which just isn’t an accurate portrayal of the condition.

To Danielewski’s credit, it’s not entirely black and white. We do see how Johnny’s descent into paranoia negatively affects his life and interpersonal relationships. There’s a bonus section where we see all the letters Johnny’s mother wrote him while in the mental hospital, and we can see her love and compassion for him in parallel to the mental illness. But the experimental typographical style returns here to depict just how “scary” schizophrenia is, and that comes off as tacky to me. I think this is probably an example of a piece of media not aging well (after all, this book just turned 20), and there’s been a definite move away from this kind of thing in horror, but that doesn’t change the impression it leaves. For a book as supposedly original/groundbreaking as this, defaulting to standard bad horror tropes is disappointing. And using “it was schizophrenia all along” to explain the horror elements in Johnny’s story feels like a cop-out. I wish there was more mystery here, or alternate interpretations that actually make sense.

Overall The Navidson Record part of the story feels more satisfying. I actually like that there isn’t a direct explanation for everything that happens. It feels like a more genuine horror story, regardless of whether you interpret it as a work of fiction within the story or not. There’s evidence for both. Part of me wishes the book had ended when this story ends (it doesn’t), or that the framing device with Johnny was absent, or something along those lines. Oh well-- this is the story we got, for better or worse.

I don’t regret reading House of Leaves, and it’s certainly impressive for a debut novel. If you’re looking for a horror-flavored work of metafiction, it’s a valid place to start. I think the experimental style is a genuine treat to read, and perhaps the negative aspects won’t hit you as hard as they did to me. But I can definitely see why this book is controversial.

#taylor reads #2020 reading challenge #6/10

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symbolism-of-a-rose · 6 years ago

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SO, again it is Rune Factory’s 12th anniversary weekend. And I finally pulled out my laptop, so here’s the beginning of a fanfic that I’ve started writing. I actually started this a while back, before the weekend was announced and... yeah.

Behold, my theoretical plot for Rune Factory 5: The Wooly Revolution This is Chapter 1 (it’s unfinished, but getting there. I’m up to chapter 7 or so)

Spring 1, Year 1

I woke up to rain. It splattered across my face and dripped down my neck. The sky above me was a blurry blue-gray between the feathered foliage of overhanging trees. For a moment I just allowed myself to breathe. There was an ache in my head, near the base of my skull and crawling toward the top. The air was cold. It sat like the last dregs of winter in my mouth. The ground beneath my back made me shiver. Oddly, it was dry. Pieces clicked together. I must have been lying there before it started raining.

How had I gotten there? Had I meant to-

Blond hair and blue eyes suddenly popped into my view. “You alright?” a young man asked, his eyebrow quirked in a curious face of concern. A brown headband did little to tame the sunny spikes protruding from his scalp. He looked like a traveller of some kind. He offered a hand to help me up.

I took it, looking around at my surroundings. It was a forest, densely populated. I could hear birds, monsters, and other small animals rustling in the underbrush.

Oddly, though, it did nothing to remind me of how I got there. Or why I was there in the first place.

Or, I realized with horror, who I was.

“Can you talk at all?” the man tried again. Now that I was standing, I could see that he was shorter than I expected. He stood at least four inches shorter than myself. That wasn’t normal-- was it?

I blinked at him. “I-- yeah.” I ran through a few ways to broach the subject with him. Did he know who I was? Was I supposed to know him?

“Do I know you?” I asked finally.

The man smiled as if I had made a joke. “Hmm?” he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I was just heading to Laine up the way and saw you here. Did you hit your head?”

I rubbed my head experimentally. Sure enough, there was a sore patch right on the crown of my scalp. I winced.

The man nodded sympathetically. “Let’s head into town together.” He shivered slightly in the cold. His head tilted to the side and he made a strange face. “Sounds to me like you’ve got some amnesia.” He smiled reassuringly at me. “But I’m sure there’s a place up ahead where you can live out the rest of your life in relative peace without anyone from your previous life ever showing up.” He started walking before I had a chance to figure out any of the words he had just said. Had he started speaking a different language while I wasn’t paying attention?

“Wait what?” I asked as I jogged to catch up with him.

“I’m Micah,” he said cheerily as he continued to walk through the forest. “Do you remember your name?”

“Uhhh….” Did I remember my name? “It’s Elle.”

“Elle? Nice name,” he said brightly. “And, if you don't mind my asking, are you a guy or girl?”

I made a face without thinking, starting at Micah in disbelief. “What?” He just stared at my face as calm as can be as if he hadn't just asked one of the oddest questions I had ever heard in my life.

Which, considering I could only remember the past few minutes, didn't say much. I sighed. “A girl.”

“Awesome!” He smiled. “Do you remember your birthday?”

“Ah…” no. I did not. “Maybe the beginning of winter?”

“Sounds good!” His smile broadened as he pointed ahead to a place where the trees suddenly cleared. “Look! There's Laine!”

We broke through the last line of trees. For the briefest moment, the world seemed to hang on a breath, my heart hovering between one beat and the next. Mist hung low over the rolling grasslands, leading down toward a small village near the coastline’s edge. A cluster of buildings were huddled together against the chill from a spring breeze carried from across the ocean. Some were small, homes perhaps. Others were robust and comparatively full of life-- smoke curling from chimneys and doors fearlessly tossed open in defiance of the chill.

“It’s beautiful,” I said quietly, my voice lost in a gust of wind.

I glanced at Micah at my side. His eyebrows were knit together in a look of confusion. “Something’s not right,” he muttered. He took off at a run down the path that led to the cluster of sea-worn buildings.

Without thinking, I followed him. What did he mean something wasn’t right? Did he live there? Were we about to run into a mess?

Probably. But I followed him regardless.

We arrived in the town, breathing heavy. I curled forward with my hands on my knees as I struggled to be able to ask one of the thousands of questions that were starting to bubble into my mind. Micah was looking around as if he expected to be greeted by someone or something.

When I finally thought I might be able to say something, a scream interrupted my intake of breath.

I turned my head this way and that, looking for the source. There were sturdy wooden structures like homes or businesses, but it took me a moment before I found the person who was screaming. It was a group of children playing outside the porch of one of the bigger buildings. About half a dozen of them were chasing one another. A small, dark-skinned boy was at the head of the pack, running away from the other five with a stick in his hand.

“Jerome! Get back here!”

“Big Bully- gimme back my stick!”

“Heeee~eey!!!! That’s not yours, it’s my turn!”

“Get him!!!”

The kids ran until they came running toward me. For a second I wondered if they would stop. They didn’t and my second of hesitation was a second too long. For the second time in all of the half an hour of my life, I found myself looking up at the sky with gentle water drops finding their way into the awkward crevasses of my neck.

“Ah now,” said a wizened voice, thick with sarcastic intent. “Look what y’all did. You nearly killed this poor girl.”

“It’s Jerome’s fault!” said a different voice. “He took my stick!”

I sat up, blinking and trying to again make sense of my surroundings. An old man, judging by the wrinkles in his skin and the white hairs on his head, stood with crossed arms and an expression that told me I was in trouble. He wore simple but hardy clothes, he looked like a worker of some kind, like a blacksmith or carpenter. He also had that air of authority that told me I should probably respect him or find myself in a world of social inconvenience.

But why the heck am I in trouble? I wondered. I’m the one they knocked over!

“Maybe less poor than just stupid,” the man said, nodding to himself. “That’s what you get for standing there like a gaping fish.”

Don’t agree with yourself! I thought bitterly, standing and trying, vainly, to brush the mud off my clothes. It occurred to me that I hadn’t noticed what I was wearing earlier. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to think about it now either.

“You alright, Elle?” Micah asked, seeming to have only just realized that I had fallen.

“I'm fine,” I said, not sure if I really was.

“Good,” he said. He turned his attention to the old man. “Is there a shrine or temple or anything nearby?”

“You need to make a confession?” The man squinted at Micah.

“Ignore him,” a new voice said behind us. We turned to the newcomer, an old woman was standing there with a small child on either side of her. She was elderly more than old. She seemed like the stately kind of woman who took charge of almost any situation. She wore a long green-gray dress with a high neck and long sleeves. Her hands were folded in front of her nicely. I envied the neat way she tied up her hair. My hair kept falling into my face no matter how many times I pushed it back.

“I tend the shrine here,” the woman continued. She shot a look at the old man and sniffed. “Rooty’s just a lazy sack of bones.”

I glanced at the man, wondering if this was normal. I didn't really have much to compare it to. But the words didn’t seem to sting their intended recipient.

The old man, Rooty, smiled sardonically in response. “Sally.” the way he said her name made me think they were probably old friends. “Wonderful to see your rheumatism kept you from bringing the kids on time.” He paused. “Again.”

“Old coot,” she sniffed. Gently, she nudged the children toward the building.

“In any case,” the woman said, keeping an eye on the children as they ran past me, Micah and Rooty. “If you need to see the shrine, I'd be happy to show you.” She bowed respectfully, finally turning her eye to Micah. “I'm Salina.”

Micah’s shoulders fell in relief. “Thanks a bunch,” he said as his face fell into a smile. He looked at me and gestured to Rooty. “You should probably stay here. I bet Rooty knows where the farm is.”

I blinked. “What farm?” I asked. Had we been looking for a farm? Was I forgetting something?

He laughed as if it hadn't occurred to him that this needed explaining. “The farm where you'll be living from here on out.” He waved as he hurried to follow after Salina, leaving me there with more and more questions by the moment.

I looked back at Rooty. He was scratching his head. He looked at me. “You're here to start a farm?” He asked dubiously. He eyed me in a way that said he didn’t think I was suited to the farm life.

I shrugged. “I don't know. He found me unconscious in the woods. I don't remember how I got there or where I'm from or anything else for that matter.”

Rooty grunted and started to turn back down the road. “Well, your friend wasn't lying. There's a farm just over that way that hasn't been tended to in years.” He turned back to see that I was following. “C’mon, follow me.”

“Waaiiitt!!! Jerome still hasn't given me back the stick! It's my turn!!”

Rooty turned sharply toward the child who spoke. “You had better get into Miss Charity. You know how she gets if you're late.”

All the children suddenly stiffened before taking off at a full sprint toward the schoolhouse. I wondered briefly what kind of woman Miss Charity was, but then Rooty was walking off again. I had to jog to keep up with him. How was an old man so fast?

“The farm's this way. There's a little house attached to it that no one’s using. I don't know if it has any furniture or anything but you're welcome to have it.” His words flowed so quickly I hardly had the brain power to interpret them. “The seed shop’s owner’s been out of town for a while. Their son is taking care of it for the time being. A no-good delinquent, if truth be told, but there you have it. Luckily he's got that girl keeping an eye on him, but she's as naive as they come. You’ll find the shop if you poke around town for a bit. The carpenter’s shop is open, but I don't know what services they're offering this time of year.”

He kept up a rattling account of names and shops and places in town with a solid complaint against each of them. Somehow, even though his words were harsh, I got the impression he was quite proud of his town.

“And if you know anything about monsters, then you’d be welcome to try to cross the forest. But if ya don’t then steer clear. It’s a dangerous place these days what with--.” he coughed suddenly, interrupting himself. “What with everything.”

“What do you me--?”

“And here we are!” he interrupted me, gesturing to a dilapidated shack beside a weed-infested field of stumps and boulders.

It struck me that the area outside of town, the way that Micah and I had come into the town proper, would be much better suited to farming, but I decided to say nothing so not to seem ungrateful. Rooty looked at me expectantly as if either waiting for my complete dismay or complete adoration. I settled for a half-hearted, “Wow.”

Rooty turned away, but not before I saw a smile form on his face. “This’ll be your home from now on. Take good care of it.” He started to return the way we had come. “If you need me, I’ll call ya.” He waved without looking back.

“Wait, what?!” I looked after him, rooted to the spot. He just kept waving and walking until he was out of sight. I looked back at the shack. A large blackbird swooped overhead and lighted on the crest of the roof.

“What?” I said, quieter, to myself. I stood there staring for a long moment. More birds flew around. My head began to throb painfully and I shivered with a cold breeze that tore through the dress I wore.

I made my way to the little hut. At least the wind wouldn’t be able to reach me inside, right?

Surprisingly, the inside was much cozier than the outside might lead one to believe. It was only a single room with a small washroom attached to one side. There was a small space with a table and a single three-legged stool to the left of the front door. To the right, there was an old mattress on a wooden frame. A small apple crate was placed next to it with a single candle stub and a worn book.

I moved toward the book, curious. Inside was a diary belonging to someone named Cucumber who had run a farm there a long time ago. Without hesitation, I tore out the pages belonging to Cucumber and began to write my own entry, explaining everything that had happened to me thus far.

Just as I finished, my door was thrown open. The roof shuddered and dust flitted down from the ceiling. I froze, fearing that the house would fall down on top of me. Then I saw Micah standing there in the doorway, eyes wild and a giant grin on his face. “Holy Native Dragons, Elle, you’ve got to see this!”

He paused when he saw me with the open book in my lap. He grinned. “Oh, hey! You found the diary! So Rooty already explained everything to you about the farm, yeah?”

“Ah,” I closed the book, not wanting Micah to see my descriptions of him. “No, not really. But I think I’ve got the jist of this part at least.”

“Well lemme explain the rest reeally quick, then-- you’re absolutely not gonna believe it-- anyway--.”

He shot off in an explanation that was almost entirely lost on me. At first he said things like “check through your inventory with the [L] button” and then “equip with the [A] button” and “You can use it with the [B] button, but be careful because sometimes you’ll get stuck using a move and get killed by a monster mid-stroke.”

I stared at him blankly until he was done, physically feeling the words bounce right off my head. He finally finished miming a stroke from a weapon of some kind and put his hands on his hips. “Make sense?” he asked.

My head fell to my hands and I wished that I had never regained consciousness. “How did you make that sound with your mouth?”

Micah ignored me and turned toward a chest I hadn’t noticed against the far wall of my hut. “Oh, hey,” he said, moving closer to it, “I bet this has your farming equipment.” He opened it and started rummaging through it.

Horrifyingly, the sounds that came from it sounded significantly more echo-y than they should have for a container so small. I moved to examine the chest over Micah’s shoulder. My mouth fell open. Inside, the box was significantly wider and deeper than it should have been.

“How-?”

“I know,” Micah said in a tone of weary dismay. “But it’s always like this.” He pulled out an ax that definitely shouldn’t have fit inside the box, to begin with. He examined it and sighed discontentedly. “This couldn’t cut a twig, let alone a tree.”

I sighed, realizing I had expected his answer this time.

“Don’t worry,” he said, patting my shoulder as he misinterpreted my exasperation. “I’m sure the blacksmith in town can help you upgrade them eventually.”

I hummed in response, wanting nothing more than to sink into unconsciousness and hope that this was all just a bad dream. Micah seemed to notice my despair. He sighed, glancing out the open door. “Well, I guess it can wait until tomorrow,” he said. “Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll be back tomorrow morning to help you figure out the farming stuff-- heck, I bet I can find you some seeds from the shop in town as well!”

With that, he turned on his heel, smiling back as he shut the door softly. “Sleep well!”

I listened to the crunch of his boots against stone as he walked away toward town. Eventually, they faded into the cawing of birds and the whistle of the wind over my rooftop. Wearily, I turned on my bed so I was sitting on my knees and facing the window. I gently pulled the dusty curtain back, worried that the touch would cause the gentle fabric to disintegrate.

The scene outside was just as it had been when I’d first seen it-- bleak. From this angle, I could see the rickety wooden fence that marked the edge of the cliff. I made a mental note to never wander too close-- or fix up the wall later when I knew more about that kind of thing.

With the window open, I curled up on the mattress. It felt stiff and musty. As I closed my eyes, I wondered if maybe I’d regain my memories once I woke up. Maybe I’d know my way home. Maybe I’d remember my family…. Maybe I’d… Maybe…. Remember.

The sun’s fading light threw a perfect square of light into my face, waking me with some gentle warmth. I pulled the curtain closed, blinking until I could see again. The small room was a warm orange now. I noticed things I hadn't before: the small fireplace in one corner, the large mirror on the wall beside the washroom.

Slowly, I sat up. My head didn't ache as much, to my great relief.

Sadly, I still remembered nothing from before I woke up in the forest. The thought left me feeling somewhat melancholic. I took a deep breath. Better to mourn it now and accept my lot then let it fester for later.

I might have a family somewhere. They might come looking for me. Or they might not. I might have people waiting for me. Or I might not. In the end, whatever happened in regards to my past, this place was my new home. And I would make the most of it.

I recorded these thoughts in my diary. I didn't realize I was crying until the ink began to blur.

What made it all the worse was the fact that I didn't even know what I was mourning. I didn't know what I was supposed to be missing. I didn't know what home I had left behind or what friends I had now abandoned.

But all the same. All the same. I had a new life. New people. I could be happy here. I just had to try, right?

My stomach growled, interrupting my soliloquy. I winced, wondering where I'd be able to get food. The hut didn't look particularly well-stocked. I began to pat the sides of my dress. Maybe I had pockets and money inside of them.

Sure enough, I found a store of money in my inventory with just about three thousand gold pieces. I hoped that would be enough for a meal in town. And some seeds. Maybe tomorrow I’d be able to get a start on fixing the farm.

I stood and stretched. My back popped. I winced. Moving toward the washroom, I caught a glimpse of myself for the first time in my memory.

I was obviously a woman. Micah’s question came back to my mind and I made a face. The dress I wore was well-cared for if not just a bit dirty. I could see places where someone-- myself, perhaps?-- had patched the seams and tears. It fell past my knees where I could see my torn stockings. They were knit with some kind of twisting pattern around my calves. Boots that laced up just past my ankle were tied onto my feet. They seemed scuffed and a little worn, but in good condition overall.

“So that’s what I look like,” I said, finally looking up at my face. There were splotches where dirt had clung to the rain on my face. My hair, probably a dusty brown, was currently just dusty. It might have been in a braid at some point, but I looked a bit like a wild child.

For a moment, looking into my eyes, I thought there was something wrong with them. But the moment passed. They were a deep fuschia color. Pinkish, but maybe that was just the setting light.

I moved to the washroom to clean myself off slightly. Maybe even brush my hair. I found the room to be better stocked than I had first anticipated. There were even some old, worn clothes. They were cleaner than what I was wearing so I put them on. It wasn’t anything flattering, but it seemed that I might be able to sew, so maybe I could take them in a little to fit me better.

I set my dirty clothes aside with the intent to wash them later when I returned. My stomach hurried me along toward the town again. Feeling refreshed and ready to eat the best meal that a poor amnesiac could afford, I threw open the door--

Only to have someone knock against my forehead with a sharp knuckle.

I spluttered and ducked, rubbing my forehead.

“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry-- I didn��t-- gods--.”

“Ahh,” I hissed. This kid had the knuckles of a palm cat. I blinked at the wood floors beneath my boots. Did I know what a palm cat was?

“Are you alright?”

I finally looked up at the man on my doorstep. His face was golden with the setting sun. His hair was sandy, nearly blending in with his skin. His purple shirt glinted with silver threads. He was tall and reasonably built, not gangly nor threateningly large. All that being said, if he wanted to pick a fight, I was pretty sure I could take him.

“Mmm, yeah,” I said, straightening. “Er… Sorry about that.”

His eyes widened comically. “What? No, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have--- gods, I’m so sorry. I should have been paying attention.” He was waving his hands. I found myself smiling at him. He was cute.

A blush spread across his face. “Really, I-- sorry-- I’m here because Granny Sal sent me. She said you’d probably be hungry and Rooty forgot to feed you before dropping you off and she’s with the twins right now and Rooty’s at the orphanage, of course, and-- gods, I’m rambling I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I laughed for the first time. I noticed the box in his hands. “Is that for me?”

“Yes!” he said as if he had just remembered. With his arms stiff as sticks, he extended the box toward me. “It’s a dinner-- and there’s probably enough for breakfast tomorrow as well.”

I accepted the box. “Thank you, I was just thinking I was hungry.” My stomach growled to emphasize my point.

“I- uh.” from his other hand he lifted a second box. “Sal gave me one as well, so that I could join you, if you don’t mind the company?”

I blinked in surprise. Given what I had seen of Sal-- well, I had only seen her for a minute. Maybe she made a habit of making sure no one ate by themselves. “Of course not,” I replied.

I didn’t need to glance behind me to see the dusty, unwelcoming interior of my home. “Shall we eat outside?”

“Sure!” he beamed, clearly relieved that I had accepted. “There’s a place over there--,” he pointed toward the cliff, “--where a lot of us like to come to watch the sea. It’s a nice spot, is it okay if we eat there?”

As nervous as I was about the cliff and the rickety fence, I followed him there. The fence was even more rickety than I had imagined. Pieces of wood were just a nudge away from falling to the churning water below. He led me past the fence, around to a little flight of stairs leading down to a large shelf of sand and grass.

“Sometimes Will comes here to fish,” he explained. “Juliette and I come with him every now and again. It’s also a great spot for the fireworks festival next month. We don’t talk about it in town though, Rooty goes off on us hard if we do. He doesn’t want the kids thinking that it’s okay to get this close to the cliff.”

I nodded as if I understood what he was saying while we found our way to a rickety bench against the cliff face. Then I realized I had no idea who he was talking about, apart from Rooty and the kids. “I’m sorry, who is Will and Juliette?”

The man, who still hadn’t introduced himself either, laughed self-consciously. “Right, sorry, I forgot that you haven’t met everyone in town yet.” He opened the box of his dinner and began eating as he explained. “Will, Juliette, and I all work at Charlie’s Inn. Will’s-- well, he’s supposed to be an entertainer, a juggler, but he’s more of a glorified waiter.” He chuckled again. “Juliette helps me with the music sometimes, but she’s more of a hostess. She’s kind of like the face of the Inn.”

“So you’re a musician?” I asked, not really wanting to take my attention away from the best meal I could ever remember having. If Sal’s cooking was this good, then I think any sense of melancholy would be lost with my expanding waistline.

“Mm-Hm,” he said around a bite. “I stick to the piano for the most part-- you should hear Juliette on the violin, though. She’s incredibly talented!”

I glanced at him. The tone in his voice, he was so proud of his friend. He also seemed the type to deflect any sort of compliment away from himself. Again, I wondered, how do I know that?

“I’m sorry,” I said suddenly, hoping to finally get his name. “I never introduced myself. I’m Elle.”

He blinked at me in surprise. “I knew--” his face changed suddenly. “Oh! I didn’t introduce myself either, I’m so sorry!” He shifted to turn toward me and bowed slightly. “I’m Hammond, it’s an honor to meet you, Elle.”

“You as well, Hammond,” I smiled at him.

He chatted more about the townsfolk. I heard another half dozen names that seemed to just slip through my mind without any sort of intention of staying there. He was very animated as he spoke, very enthusiastic about all the wonderful qualities of everyone in the town. His voice had such a gentle quality. It was pleasing to hear.

The sun sank past the horizon, setting the mist aflame as it said it’s final adieu. Hammond had been right, it was a very nice spot. The temperature was still chilly, but I could see the summers passing with townsfolk celebrating at the cliff’s edge. It was oddly… idyllic.

“I should probably get going,” Hammond said as the night began to settle in a fair shade of lavender. He collected both of our boxes (neither of us had left enough leftovers worth saving) and tucked them under his arm. “I’ll walk you back to your house.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for bringing these, the food and company were both much needed.”

Another blush formed across his face. “Ah! You’re welcome!”

I watched his retreating form disappear toward town again. I leaned against the bottom half of the door-- which Hammond had shown me how to separate. I wondered if the townsfolk really were as wonderful as he had painted them to be. I hoped I could see them as optimistically as he did.

#rune factory #rf12th #Wooly Revolution #RF5 ch1 #i'll likely post the rest to archive #lemme know if i should post a link #otherwise i'll just shout it to the void #again #not finished #but it will be eventually

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