#i want there to be something sinister almost vaguely religious about this

[lavendorii]

very happy with this composition

[unhappytimeleaper]

Character analysis; main concepts

A lot of this references some hints to lore and stuff I found. Not a lot are direct spoilers, but since Venti is built on his vagueness to his past, this likely will be able to be subject to change as time goes on.

Also, I wasn't sure if I asked if anyone would reply to whom to pick for my analysis. I asked some friends on a Yandere discord server, and in passing, one of them mentioned Venti, so I just went with it. Shout out to them. I hate making decisions. And leaper lore, but Venti is the reason I got into Genshin, so I guess it's fitting he is first.

Anyway, that means sending who I should do next. I'd prefer to space Genshin characters out, but anyone on my lists can be requested, as well as general requests being open.

The final quick personal note is I wanted to thank everyone for the 150 followers. I know it's not a lot, but I am thankful for the handful I know have been around for a while and for those who have considered following; Tumblr and most other SNS are rough for creators as reblog ratios are so low and other issues, but I am very grateful for those who keep coming back.

Venti [Barbatos]; Unedited. Gender neutral reader. Part 1 of 3

Warnings; yandere!! It touches on every main category of the troupe, so if you are sensitive to manipulation [emotional and mental], alcoholism, codependency, guilt [even self-imposed], obsession, lying, stalking, some general creepy behavior, breaking and entering, possessiveness, delusional thoughts, unwanted touching [sfw], and anything else you can think of being related to yandere troupes, then it's best to just not read. Also, a massive warning for talks about religion, idolization in the 'church,' and abuse of power within religious settings.

Word Count: 8.4K

This blog is 17+ please have your age in your bio or tagged; any ageless blog and below the age asked for will be blocked at the end of the week.

Maxed Stats

General manipulation

As a key component, Venti is a general trickster; he comes naturally with the skills of forgery, fabrication, pilfering, and illusion-making. These tools under his control make him naturally an enigma but build into easy traits of manipulation as he needs not just to you but to anyone. And for an early establishment, Venti's natural manipulation is not just tied to these specific skills. Still, it almost comes coded into how he exists as more of himself is revealed. Though these particular skills of lying are much harder to pick up on, between the riddles of his words and decent, innocent appearance, it's easy for him to pull off a twist of words or lie his way out of a situation.

As pointed out, manipulation is a skill that Venti can best use against anyone. To you, he is likely able to find excuses to keep up his actions. Outside of the wall of Mondstadt, he can quickly find reasonings as to why he's there, too. More often than not, he's somewhere close. While in areas like Windwail and Brightcrown, he can stay hidden, only needing to reveal himself if you find yourself in trouble, in regions like Starfell and Galesong, you can often see him not too far off in the distance. Even if you doubt his reasoning, it's hard to find proof of his stalking, making the moments unsettling, but his cuteness and way of words make it hard to get upset. Guilt festers as he looks so sad with accusations of something more sinister and that he has ulterior motives. Or how within the walls Venti is quick to find you and cling on, either in close proximity of walking or physically bound to you somehow— it's easy to tell when he's been drinking as he tends to be much more touchy in those moments. While it takes a lot for him to truly get drunk, he likes to play it up as there are so many more benefits and things you let slide. You have to take care of him in some way, and he always has a reason to be around longer.

In cases of late nights together, Venti sometimes lets you feel as if you have the upper hand, too. Pretending to be more drunk than he is and more open, allowing you to handle your chance at burning questions as he wistfully gives answers. Often, they are still vague but do let you delve more into his past, the trauma he has endured, or the loneliness that has come into his life. The more you learn, the more guilt grows at the idea of rejecting him. Of leaving Mondstadt in favor of exploration or answers. It's also not one where everything he shares is a goal of manipulating these feelings or actions.

Venti's love is absolute; for that, he wants to share what he can, with his goal of being bound to you, which means sharing these personal moments. For him, learning about you is so much easier with his status and age. Still, you can seldom learn about him in the same way, even more, as he can't fully spill his guts about his past at a moment's notice. However, he can think of this as an added benefit; manipulation, even if it's not the goal, is still emotional manipulation.

These times, there often are levels of manipulation about other places and people he puts in place. Different regions and gods aren't free from their past either, and Venti is known to share moments of these in his riddles. Aspects of how the lands have changed, how they have changed, but the imposing struggles carry through their lands. It's not really shit-talking them, nor a full-on slander campaign, but the language and words he uses are often dulled in favorability of what they could be. Similarly, he might often find ways to weave in things that could cause greater fear in you to manipulate you into thinking you are much too weak for the creatures that lurk there. While some parts you can chalk up to his story-telling nature and that by making it more dramatic, it sounds better, there often is a growing uneasiness about how vicious parts it could really be. More than countless times, there have been moments of your own danger, only saved by the grace of the wind and Venti nearby… In contrast, he speaks of Mondstadt and its people much more positively, and while he has some jealousy of those in his region you gain closeness with, he also tends to have a much more positive relationship with them, allowing those to be better tools to help in his love life than those in say Sumeru or Inazuma. He tends to maybe add in some more lighthearted jabs that can have an air of jealousy in them, even more if Venti feels you've been around them a lot recently, but in the way he talks, it often is more of playful bad-mouthing than down right insults.

As touched on, Venti's manipulation of you isn't always intended or done with negative goals. One side of this is again linked generally to how he speaks. Being this enigmatic person whose words are always wistful and hold more profound meaning, there is a natural draw to learn more. It's only made more of something that is hook when he doesn't often go around sharing this self-lore to someone so known but distant in Mondstadt to just anyone. It's almost like a balloon or bubble; the hints that are added build up little by little as time goes on without seeking out Venti for more until it pops. A droplet of information at a time until it consumes your mind, going back looking for more details to answers to the questions you'd had running in your mind for days. Soon enough, you are the one asking where the mysterious bard is to the townspeople, only cementing more in their minds the nature of your relationship being more than platonic. It also, again, just makes you feel special, a self-imposed superiority that you are the person who knows him best [which this ego can be inflated more if you know him as barbatos as well]. Venti knows these actions are manipulative in a sense, and again. At the same time, it doesn't truly harm anyone; it's still manipulation at its core in building this unique reliance on him.

And Venti's manipulation is ever present in the town and the people of Mondstadt. The key ways he uses these are to get more information about you and, as usual, get away with things. However, as briefly stated, Venti uses the wind and himself as a factor in starting rumors that there is naturally more to what is happening between you that can be exploited for later use. But back to the first point, Venti is able to once again use his 'charm' and way of speaking to easily coax others to give out more information about you. He literally likes things about your past, interests, personal relationships with others, likes, dislikes, and such through his friendly demeanor and guiding the conversations. And while he can easily track and monitor you through the wind, by talking to others around and having them tell him where you are, it helps set up a close alibi if you were to question him later. Essentially, in this case, the guards and townpeople become effective scapegoats for his stalking if needed. Furthermore, these questions end up helping intensify any rumors as the questions, over time, can become more and more romantic.

His manipulation does also be a benefit as he really is one with the people, if not distant in details. By having personal connections to groups like people in the Adventure's Guild and Knights of Favonius through people like Jean & Kaeya, they easily can be tools to help with his… well, propaganda. Even the temple with Rosaria. You ask about traveling and other nations to people in the Adventure's Guild, and they tend to often only share more gruesome or darker aspects of their stories. Of have plenty of tragedy by the time they reach the 'positive goal' that it's a natural persuasion to not want to often venture too far outside of Mondstadt. Or say you are one to leave; Venti could use points of manipulation he's built to have, say, Rosaria or Kaeya go with you, depending on where. The wind can always join you, but Venti isn't up and one to fully be able to run off from Mondstadt for long periods of time. If you plan to go on just a trip for travel, it's one thing for him to run off and join you, but freedom itself in Mondstadt is unique. It's not necessarily true freedom, and while he's awake with a purpose, he can't in his heart run from Mondstadt to travel with you. And while he'd be able to do anything in his power to persuade you to not leave, he's one to physically force it unless you're genuinely trying to run off for something dangerous. However, if someone else were to go. Friends of you and Venti… you'd have to come back, right? Kaeya can't leave his post forever, and it was him who accompanied you for this task, so it would be unfair to go on alone and not see him back… Yes, through others, you'd always be lured… guilted into returning home to him eventually.

Manipulation is also used here in more of a test; he does this often with people but imposes an idea or thing involving you. Those he wants to use in a way of getting close, he bluffs some lies out, and their reaction or steps they handle in regards usually is how he tests to see if they are reliable in what he needs. It's nothing extreme, but it's best to know if he can trust their feelings and opinions on you before letting you get too close. If they fail, well, a little bending of the truth to make it so neither of you wants to interact and never really hurt anyone.

This all helps build into how appearance tends to help. Not only for the general public but even for you, as his boyish charm and looks naturally tend to frame him as innocent. People are quick to brush off his questions even if they progressively get more concerned as 'puppy love' or that it's simply 'too cute' to see the young love from the bard. Many might even favor this as they see it as him likely being willing to turn a new leaf and grow into something worth settling down [i.e., get a job and place to live, though really, instead, it grows more into him crashing at your home and still playing song for whatever he can— money or alcohol]. His verbal actions are easily brushed off, but even the physical side of things, too. Pilfering is a great talent of his, but when caught with your items or breaking in when you're out, he tends to be pushed aside if he plays up his demeanor and lies. Scolded with warnings, sure, but scratching his head and sighing with a 'promise I won't do it again' tends to get everyone to roll their eyes and back off. As mentioned, his appearance can even present him as harmless to you; if someone brings it up, you might also awkwardly laugh and brush off the events. It's just Venti being Venti. He truly is primarily harmless, and he's stayed over so much at this point him breaking in was likely just a result of a habit of being in there…

And the limits of manipulation can be pushed if he so chooses. Call it divine intervention, more or less cause while he does so more with a dirty conscience, he can be driven as Barbatos to truly step in. Religious intervention. It seems weird when the Church of Favonius suddenly comes in contact with some old documents, ones with never seen details of an old love interest to their beloved god. The news and rumors sweep the nation, and even weirder, most of the details and notes recount someone… like you. Things seemed to get stranger, and from there, only more documents could be found of this exact figure appearing throughout history, like some sort of reincarnation. The fascination of it all quickly became the center of the topic, and with the likeness you bared in the story and aspects of appearance, you're status seemed to shoot up within the night. Not so much a holy figure but deemed with some strange uplighting in the way people spoke. That is, or how Barbatos ever seemed to come back to Mondstadt, you'd need to be there just like how the past reminisced. For those who do know, it weirdly only pushes you away from them if you ever seek help, that that story must be bound to fate, and that Venti can't be as much of a nuisance if you give it time. The problem is only dug in worse as Venti creates poems and ballads of the sort, claiming he actually had heard of these but never sought to share them until now. As the stories grow, you're pushed more and more to the church with the idea of gaining barbatos' favor and attention. Leaving… just became much more complex.

Dependence [reversed]

Dependence comes in a weird form, at least compared to others. While in general fashion, dependence typically is the idea that they want you to solely rely on them for everything, not only for power and love, it can even be with money, housing, or other necessities. While Venti likely would be much more dependent on him being really the main source of your love and affection, the rest… he doesn't care so much about. Power may be a little; he doesn't need or want you to depend on him for it, but it does give him a little ego boost when you have to or ask him. And too many other aspects of actual dependence go against aspects of his belief in freedom. Venti's course of manipulation never truly prohibits your own freedom; again, less you actively seek to do something he knows poses a threat; it just often forces you to rethink and become more hesitant in actions or thoughts.

As for other forms of dependence, well, Venti doesn't have them. He steals, only really eats apples, to your knowledge, and is homeless. It's quite pitiful in a humorous way. However, as you get closer and bond more with the bard-friendly nature, it is hard for you to let him live like this. Well, in certain ways, stealing alcohol or bribing others to give him some with songs you can't really stop unless you plan on going bankrupt. But more frequently, you invite him for meals and shelter him in your place. Even more frequently if the weather is bad or as winter approaches. Venti isn't manipulating you necessarily into these tasks, but dependence some with a factor of self-guilt. He's your friend, someone you've gotten close with, and with that, he's come to truly rely on you for these things. He was fine in the past, but to leave for who knows how long and let him fall back into such a life would make you a bad person. Right?

Logically, Venti knows he doesn't need to depend on you for these things as they don't have any real effect on his life, but it's so domestic. He gets access to all your items; you put time and love into meals, or even sharing what you purchased from Good Hunter fills him with warmth. On cold nights, he finds it easier to slip under your blankets and, even if it's fake, pretend to sleep like how couples would. Being a god comes with a lot of good but a lonely life, and after seeing so many, there comes a time when it's nice to indulge in it. Gluttony has always been a crime of his, it seems, such as with alcohol, but this also can't be that bad if no one is getting hurt. So just let him depend on you a little longer. At least until he can find out some solution before he sleeps again.

Self Harm

Similar to dependency on basic things, one form of manipulation that Venti doesn't do on purpose but knows that there still is a benefit to his actions is his indulgence in drinking. While it takes a lot for him to truly get drunk, as noted, he does like to play it up for you, and it's not uncommon for you to have to take care of him or come help him. In all sense, Venti, while not necessarily drunk, is an alcoholic, and to a detriment, it is a form of self-harm. Through learning more and hearing the tales and songs of his past, it's apparent the wounds run deep, and Venti's only way he knows to deal with them is through drinking in an attempt to numb or forget. The reality of knowing this is hard; you see it with others you've likely gained closeness with and how drinking has affected the lives of so many.

This leads to two outcomes: this, again, guilt that breeds when thinking of leaving. The connection Venti has formed is tangible with how deep it is to you, even if you don't reciprocate in that way. That's if you were to leave, would things only get worse with his drinking problem? Unlikely, he would died from drinking, but it's more than just drinking; it's the mental state of him in that position and how the loss of more people would rip the wound open even more. Furthering, if you had actually spent time talking about his past and working to unpack and find better ways to cope with the trauma outside of alcoholism, leaving would be a dick move and revert all that progress no matter how you explained it. How much could you're conscious take knowing this? How far could you make it without the guilt of him back home as the stories of his past cloud your mind? The wind tickling your skin and almost like a whisper reminding you of it. It's one thing to share a drink or two with the bard and have a fun night in the tavern, listening to his songs and dancing. It's another to picture him alone under a tree, empty bottles scattered from stealing from him alone, reminiscing about his lost friend and the imagery of war. The wind gets colder, licking the back of your neck, and the guilt is painful, ready to burst out your chest for even thinking of it. Some wounds you cannot heal, but the idea of making them worst or abandoning the person who's come to need you most is mentally crippling.

General obsessiveness

Venti doesn't necessarily read as obsessive. Not outwardly, at least, though it's easy to blame his charm for that. Okay… well, maybe not charm, but within his manipulative nature and looks, his actions and questions regarding you don't play as obsessive to those who listen. It's unlike many others who you can just look at them and feel in your bone there is something off, or in how they speak, they care just a little too hard. His sharp tongue and trick of words allow people to very easily give up information without thoroughly having them aware they have, making his tendencies go far under the general public's radar still. And for those who do somewhat witness it, he doesn't mind playing up his role a little more. Just a young, helpless bard looking to woo someone. It isn't a crime, right?

The mask he wears holds many layers. The bard, the god, the lost wind. Not many will ever get a look at what really goes on and what is an exaggeration. Or under exaggeration when it comes to you. In most cases, Venti stretches his stories up, his words riddled and larger than life that people have to dim down to work out the true meaning. So when he sells his obsessive love as much less, people are quick to brush it off or dim it down further to avoid those actual layers of emotions being peeled forward.

A chunk of this also extends to the shame and questions it brings out of freedom. Venti has never tried to take it away in a solid way, but is it true freedom to either of you when you fill so much of his thoughts that you can't really do anything without him? It is the thought that replays and replays of you and him doing things; it's the obsessive nature of having to know where you are, who you're with, and what you're doing. Are you safe? Are you planning on leaving? Should he come to find you just to be sure?

What about the images. The visions he remembers from the wars, from the people he's lost, and that truly, at any time, perhaps something will happen, and you'll be next. The flashes of violence and fear that only make the goal of getting his next drink to numb them go away— or you. The sight of you, the smell of you. Having you hold him and remind him that the past is gone.

You'd be able to see it, maybe not the full extent, but you've come to know the bard enough to tell when the cogs in his mind are turning and the way he tries to drown out aspects of himself. It's hard to tell what he's thinking, but you know some of it is tied to the past as he holds the stolen wine in one hand and grips you so tightly with the other as you try to stumble back to your home and out of sight. You can tell something is off when he's snooping through your things early in the morning as you're just waking up and when he's clearly been inside your place while you were out with a friend. Or that he's been leaving more and more questionable lyrics? No, less like poems or lyrics but ramblings about love and fear and what can only be aspects of you on the counter as he runs around god knows where. It's worrying. It's uncomfortable to an extent, but not enough or in a way that you can just cut him off. Kick him out. Maybe just talking or setting a little break, but the pressure in your chest and bile in your throat at the thought of cutting contact brings you to a sobbing mess each time.

But, what does keep him from being fully obsessive is that Venti still has things to do. Freedom of Mondstadt and giving up his title as the god doesn't mean he's abandoned his role truly, and if he's awake, that means between drinking, being with friends, telling stories, and everything about you, there is something he has to do. He still is out fulfilling a duty no one, but he knows of, and really, part of that seems more scary than anything he's done to you. You know he'd never hurt you; it's not a fear of that, but as Venti opens up more to you, the parts he still keeps hidden remind you that this is only a fraction of what you know. Guess it's good that you still have some time and space to yourself, but as obsessive as he is in his thoughts and other flaws, he can dial it back if needed for a short amount of time. At least from your perspective.

Wrong idea; type 2

In a sense, Venti is give an inch; he'll take a mile. Like a stray cat. You feed him once he keeps coming back for more. One thing is that this wrong idea can start more slowly, but the second you mess up and do something more romantically affectionate, it instantly becomes much more intense in the progression of what he's willing to take or do.

As mentioned, for anything to start, you need to be at least on a friendship level basis with Venti, and a sorta higher level of one. Nothing extreme, but the type of friends who do spend a considerable amount of time together and, for example, willing to open your house to him to stay in occasionally. Not even in a 'stay in the same bed' type way, but he knows aspects of your personal life, and to a level, you learn more of his 'Venti' side for any of his traits to really start manifest. However, it is already very easy to set off more and delve into the realm of leading him into the wrong idea territory.

Some ideas of how this might be are such as gaining more physical contact. While the intent is friendly, Venti is from a different time, and being touchy already seems less common than you already have a 'flirty' aptitude. Grabbing his arm or hanging off of him when sober makes his heart flutter that there could be more. Certain gifts, flowers, or making uniquely special foods just for him. Not just any meal, that's normal, but if you were to make something sweet with apples that wasn't a typical dish, it leads his heart to beat just a little harder. Or that one time when he did stay over and you fell asleep holding onto him rather than the usual routine of wandering off to your own spot after putting a drunk Venti 'to sleep.' You must have been exhausted… but this is his first time really getting to see you up close.

You must be doing all this with some… ulterior motive. Sure, he's heard of courting; he's older than people think and knows more of the ins and outs of things. People treat him like someone far more innocent by these looks— not just with drinking. And yeah, it comes in handy sometimes, but not when people talk down to him about this. At first, there was some apprehension. Teyvat was in a dangerous time, and as carefree as he plays himself up, he's always guarded about his next move.

Obsessiveness starts more simple. His questions are more of curiosity about many things, and what is better than to trick it out of people and you. Sure, he knows most basic things of your life, but that couldn't mean you aren't linked to more questionable things and had figured out he was Barbatos, either. He comes off a nosey at best. When digging to see if you'd ever been caught doing 'bad things' most inform sure— but in the sense you had been a kid and teen once. You'd easily gotten into trouble more than a few times but never was it for anything imminent or serious. He digs more into the lineage of your family and the other people you associate with. Nothing strange… fine, but perhaps a different route. He remembers some old common courting techniques, and he's seen some of them in this era, too. He's not blind to it, but as he shares more of the details, the more people tell the 'young' bard. It's probably a hint that he should reciprocate. I mean, he already hangs off of you like a hangover anyway. It's surprising he isn't already attached at your hip with how much you both sort of rely on each other. Although you tend to treat him more as a companion than him, he depends on you like a leech.

And the switch flips.

In certain aspects, if you did have some sort of crush, it likely would melt away with how quick his obsessively wrong idea notion takes over. What was harmless flirting testing the waters is instantly blown into a large scale. Even if you didn't like him in that way and other signs were one of platonic closeness or accidents, it doesn't seem to make a difference. His touchiness is insatiable, and the amount of time he starts demanding you spend with him is much more intense. If you try to brush him off, his poutiness damps the air, and things just an uneasy tingle. You find him trying to make all sorts of snacks and now haggling not just for drinks but for gifts. Every story he tells, every song he sings, and every poem has some romantic undertones that, paired with former questions and actions, people know it is about you. And the stalking doesn't help.

Venti's turning point makes him feel like there is more and that there could be more. He's not fully delusional. There are aspects of a lucid point that you're pulling away, but that just means he needs to try harder, right? He's seen so many relationships go like that. If you stop trying, if you let them pull away, that's really how you lose them. It's obvious how much time he puts into this, how much he thinks about how to move forward, and how he can use things like his skill sets of manipulation to keep you bound to him [not literally but in a figurative state]. However, it is only time before you get worn down from trying to fight and redirect… adapting does become just so much easier. Conversations, trying to explain, just don't seem to reach him. Lucid and all, you can't understand him or his goals anymore, and even when he does calm down back into a slight breeze, the second you give him a bit of that former closeness back, it picks back into a blustery.

Stalking

While Venti's stalking habits have mostly been pointed out, there is one other big thing that needs to be recognized. Sure, in Mondstadt and the borders of other regions, he often can find himself about to sneak away and physically follow you around for extended periods of time [days, weeks, etc.]; what happens if you leave. Of course, Venti can easily manipulate others to go with you as a safety net and use it to get you back home, but things are rough when you're gone. Luckily, or to your dismay, you aren't ever really alone as the wind follows you. No matter how far you go, how pleasant the weather is, or how rough the wind is a constant companion following in your wake. It's often a nice breeze, though it picks up a significant amount if you're nearing danger or in danger. Though a strange pattern of it picks up when you spend a little too long talking with locals…

Yes, the wind itself can't do much, but its following reminds you of your faithful companion back home, the one you'll have to eventually return to. And while 'freedom' is given, it's never truly 'free' as the wind follows far and wide until you come back to your love.

Final [unique]

Where final comes in is related more to Venti's 'sleep.' From the context, it seems Venti has less control over when he sleeps and for how long. It's not that he chooses to abandon his land in the time. It's that he cannot fight when he goes into his slumbering state. For hundreds of years, and the times he wakes up are only that when there is something of great importance. This wouldn't be much of a problem before you— Mondstadt was given their freedom, and it was just how it was. He awoke, he came, he helped, and he left; nothing more or less.

However, he had been awake for longer than usual. There was something, even outside of you, that had brewing. Something deeply important kept him awake, even if he didn't know what. And he established a life. A true life this time, with friends in the taverns and everyday 'enemies' with his habits. He found a 'job' and a 'home' within his city as one of the people. And he fell in love. It's one thing to become intrinsically a part of an environment, and even if you don't feel the same way, have that connection knowing any moment it could be lost. To go back into a long-standing sleep with every person, even facet of that life is potentially gone when you are to wake up again. To lose that loved one to time.

Venti has lost so much, each person he's established a bond with passing or having to move on to more incredible things. When he awakes, everything is different; every person is mostly a new face, with few exceptions of those only being a few like him. Is it wrong for love to be so fragile when he knows the change of fate of it being lost is greater than the reward? That if he were to fall asleep, you would easily be able to move on. Find someone new, forget about him, or at least be nothing more than a distant memory. He knows other types of love can be platonic, that the affection you give to the city kids isn't the same, or the way you play with the cats as he watches from a distance. He knows that when he sees the couples in Mondstadt, he's supposed to be happy for them, and imagine if it was you two rather than have the breeze pick up ruining their outing. That he shouldn't be this jealous or bitter; it's unsuiting of his persona, but how else are you supposed to know when love is useless if not with you, the one person he could so quickly lose. When you're not around, this gets worse. Celestia, be damned if he were to fall asleep without at least getting to see you one more time.

This acknowledgment does considerably bring out more of his obsessive nature, almost like paranoia, but in a way that no one can quite place. That he needs to have knowledge of where you are and how long you've been gone, or that he needs to be with you to make up for the time. The obsession leaks into you're time together; since he doesn't need sleep, he'll just lay there watching you. Hands sometimes ghost your face as he pulls you close, worrying about if he can't save you if he were to suddenly fall back asleep tomorrow and never see you again. It's the way sometimes he grips your arm a little too tightly and breathes in too deeply when hugging. That he needs to find a solution to keep you immortal so if he does sleep, you'll still be there when he awakes, or even better, you can sleep with him [and awake] at the same time. You'd never have to be alone, he'd never have to be alone. And sure, it's a stretch, but it's not a loss of freedom because once awake, you can still go anywhere you want together, and even with this idea, you still have full mental awareness and control over your mind.

General Delusional [unique]

Venti isn't delusional. His perceptiveness to things around him and his need to protect himself, plus his lifetime, has made him more or less hyperaware of things and life around him. He hears the prayers of people and the lives of others, and being lucid/logical is simply a must for that of a god. But he hears the prays, he hears the others speak, and he yearns in a sense to be able to have the luxury of being delusional. Of just being able to let everything go and pretend things are good or that you like him back in that way. It sounds nice. Easy. To be able to imagine your life together as some fantasy story, he's the knight who'd come and save you and live happily ever after.

Scratch that. barbatos isn't delusional, but Venti can be. The mask, the person he's playing can be. He isn't just a storywriter; he's a storyteller. An actor, a character of his identity. So no, deep down, he knows the truth; he's extremely aware of that, but why not just play the part. Let him play as if he was lost in those delusions and that whatever it is can be that way. When you're cooking dinner for each other, Venti knows you're just making a meal as always, but why not play it up. That you're coupled and that this is making a meal together as a such— it was a little weird when he came over to help, but you didn't question it. At least he was doing something. But meal times together when he would help progressed weirdly. Putting his arms around you as you try to cut things, holding out utensils for you to try things on. It got very strange the one time when baking, he leaned over and licked a crumb off your face. You didn't bake for a while after that.

Or going out. What once was normal progressed into him inching closer and closer, then hands briefly touching. You didn't think much. It's the bard unless your Diluc. He's been pretty much harmless around the city. You think. So what if he was one to try to hold hands or brush arms that just matched his bubbly personality. Though the linking of arms and leaning into when waking, staring into your eyes with such affection did change things a lot.

It's nothing more than a role, or sort of game to Venti. The delusion is there, but it is more like oil sitting on top of water. He can turn it off at any moment, but where is the fun in that when everything in his life is so serious. With you, it's easier to just pretend. At least he still has all the control and lucidity of the problems when needed.

Projection

This has been touched on already, but to relate it back, Venti isn't so much delusional in the sense he believes it's real but that if he projects the message hard enough through stories, through songs, and to the people of Teyvat that you're together then in some way, that will be true. The projection of his words he knows are false, and he knows in some way, even if it isn't true, that if a story is spread enough, people take it as fact. And if everyone takes it as fact, then it's just easier for you to accept it as well. He really doesn't have to do anything to force you. It's not taking away anything. It's just altering it so that way things work out in his favor. Much like the general sense, it pairs as well. If he tells himself it's true, perhaps he can force that delusion to cloud the lucidity he feels about all of it. It's almost like in a state of being drunk, where you know what's going on to a certain level, but it's foggy. It's rose-tinted enough that if everyone thinks it, he can, too.

This projection is only made worse if he gets involved as Barbatos. It changes things from just the slightly weird couple who, honestly, the people of Mondstadt can't really explain how they ended up that way. They remember bits of it, but it seems like someone through someone, though some random grandma just mentioned you were taken, and everyone ran with it. But if the church were to find the falsified relics and stories, then there just is nothing you can do. Now, it's not only Venti trying to project something there but the whole church following, believing that you are some saint and by having you married? Honestly, you aren't really sure what all this goal is to have you 'connected to Barbatos' even means, but whatever it is… it doesn't sound good. The expectations of you are doubled, and the projection of you being more than human is suffocating. But it's only made worse when Venti comes forward as Barbatos to you, saying you should just play the part. Stay with the church as some saint and with him. You'll still have a life of freedom outside of it, just with some more expectations about how you interact with others. You'd be bound by the marriage of some sort, and he'd find a way to make it eternal. It doesn't sound too bad, right? Freedom isn't truly free, but it never has been. It's an elusive concept, something subjective, but if you still have the right to enjoy your life and the good of being such, then it should be okay. You can still leave the church figuratively and travel, arguing it's on some journey for something. You aren't restricted in how you speak or think, but things like infidelity and how you speak of love need to be more kind. Yet you'd live a life of peace, one of never needing to be allowed and have the blessing of a god in your favor.

If not, think of the projection people will have if you say no. If you try to run away, you lose everything. That would be the true loss of freedom. The loss of your friends, your loved ones. Your home. Venti projects this idea of love and what love should be for you two, not between you and him necessarily, but to everyone else, making it all the more terrifying at the consequences when he finally does. Not if, but when.

Monopoly

This is where things get rough because Venti is possessive in a way that can't be controlled. He feels it settling in his chest when he spends too long talking to the shopkeeper or giggling a little too hard at a friend's joke. He hates it when you work and when you dedicate your time to the kittens outside The Cat's Tail. He whines when you have to leave in the morning and when you turn up to Angel Share just a little too late, begging to know who you are with. It hurts him. He can't explain it in the way it crushes his soul, seeing you give your time to others, your energy, and your care. It pains him so deeply to see you run yourself thin for the world around you, for those who could never understand you like he does.

Venti knows it would be easy to whisk you away. To use his godly powers to keep you safe, to keep your attention and love only on him. How things would be so much better for you, for each other, if you could just monopolize your time for him and you and no one else. The idea weighs on him like a pile of bricks. He knows it's wrong; he knows it goes against everything he stands for. And call him childish, but he can't help how he feels.

It's true he never really acts on it. Clinging onto you and carping over it, sure, the way he tugs slightly on your arm after you keep talking to the passerby you bumped into, an old friend, ready to drag you off to somewhere in Mondstadt, you can be alone. How he holds on just a little too tight when you talk about events at work and the people you chatted with, quickly wanting to move to a more interpersonal topic.

Venti never really monopolizes you or your relationships, but his bratty and more childish act really is brought out more with you around. You still get the socialization and ability to be around whoever, but it always needs to be rightfully compensated with some alone time with the god as well, so pick your battles sparingly and just go with him when his fuse starts to burn out.

Bizarre Seeking [unique]

Tying back to his sleep issue, the case of bizarreness only relies so much on how far he's willing to push to keep you immortal, either through godhood or other means. It's surprising he'd even consider it; his testament for Celestia is apparent in conversations, and the path to godhood is not seen in a much higher light based on conversations. But Venti knows sacrifices need to be made to get what you want, and if that means the pursuit of godhood or immorality to not lose any more of his loved one, then that's a sacrifice to be made.

Because of this, Venti ends up pushing you into countless more and more weird scenarios. You end up visiting a certain alchemist more, not really ever knowing the reasons why, and stranger things of yours seem to be going missing. What is that strange bruise on your arm, and why does this one piece of hair seem slightly shorter than the rest? You also swore that Caramel Pinecone tasted weird last time, but even when you ordered the Love Poem instead, it was still off…

The limits of Venti's morality are very much pushed with the goal of finding a way to extend your life more permanently, and while the actions he takes are questionable, they aren't anything he would do less deemed necessary. Beyond that, once he finds the key to unlock it, his bizarre-seeking tendencies end up dying down or stopping altogether.

Also, while he considers and will try to push for a Celestia ascension if push comes to shove, the ability to actually achieve godhood this way is much more complicated and dangerous. Something he might keep trying for, but this way is much less likely to succeed, and he knows this, which is why other bizarre tendencies take priority.

General protectiveness

Overall, protectiveness is a standard feat. Venti doesn't want you to get hurt and will do nearly anything to prevent it, hence a considerable factor of his stalking outside of walls of the city or towns. Even with others, if he thinks they pose some physical threat, Venti has little fear of stepping between you and 'the threat.' It's not so much a protective coating or an extreme case where he needs to check everything you do, touch, eat, drink, or interact with. Still, there is a natural sense of him wanting to protect you and watch over you to make sure that nothing can gravely hurt you. This mirrors why the wind follows you if you travel and picks up to warn you and redirect you away from dangers, a protective aura of Venti that trails after you. It's not even a doubt that you can't, but the inherent need to make sure you make it back in one piece.

There is, again, only one primary reason Venti will use full force to intervene, and this is if he knows you are purposefully trying to run off somewhere that will put you in danger for any reason. Often downplaying his strength of wind, the storm, if needed, will border Mondstadt making it. Hence, nothing gets in or out until you agree to drop it, tearing nearly everything that comes in contact with the barrier if you don't agree to listen to him first and think of a genuine plan. The wind sees all, and while terraforming isn't much on his bucket list anymore, Barbatos has no fear of proving his worth and power if in the name of love and protection. Even if it hurts you to know whatever your goal is foiled, if it's the one-stop against your freedom, there are some things not worth being risked.

Lowest Stats

General [none]

The one trait Venti inherently lacks is sadism. Nothing he does to you or others is derived from the pleasure of hurting or seeing others hurt. And while those such as the abyss creatures for fatui foot soldiers are at the whims of his fighting, it's not done with the goal or satisfaction of a battle but rather a necessity for 'his' people and you.

It's apparent that actions that long-term hurt you or have serious effects, both mental and physical, that fundamentally change you aren't truly a goal. Yeah, the immortality would literally change you, but not with the goal of making you conform or transform into a new mental mindset. At least not right away, as he knows that a long life naturally changes people, but there never is a purpose to rid you of traits. To tie you down and break you until you love him the way he loves you.

Freedom, as touched on, is never truly free. Not of people, not of actions, or even of mindsets. But is it that Venti wants you to be you; be the self you choose to be and the freedom that comes with that, even if aspects of it hurt him. It's why if he has to let you go to Sumeru for a festival he knows wouldn't be possible for him to also attend, he lets you know you'll come back to him without the burden of being changed or conformed to have to come back. It's why, in every case, Venti does whatever is in his power to keep you from being genuinely hurt, even if he can't always fulfill that promise. It's why, despite everything, he can't hurt the people who create the fires of jealousy in his core being.

Venti has an awareness that many of his actions are immoral and that he has dirtied his hands in the past just as much. he knows of the guilt you struggle with, and then he is using his skills to manipulate and play everyone like a fiddle, but in the eyes of a god and one who believes in freedom, it is not in his role to harm anyone in the light of you. It's a turning point he could never come back from if he were to directly hurt you or anyone else with the goal of keeping you with him, and it would be a dishonor to everything he was created from. A stain on the nameless bard he honors so deeply, so while the envelope of what is okay is pushed every day with his other actions, there is never once a hand that is laid on you for the sake of 'love' from Bardatos.

──⭒─⭑─⭒────⭒─⭑─⭒──

Statistic diagram; Venti [Barbatos]

[cablyunkataplum]

Stanford Filbrick Pines

Words: 4,524

Summary: He was so small next to him, he could fit in the palm of his two-dimensional hand and peel millimeter layer by millimeter layer to do whatever he wanted with the raw materials and waste. Previous enjoyment, at this moment repulsion for what is felt.

Written Curse: What can I say, saw someone suggesting it on Tiktok and I did it, Descriptions of insanity and more insanity, suicidal behavior, manipulation, paranoia, kind of religious trauma, self-harm (thoughts and action) depictions, and maybe more sensitive topics, please be aware, MDNI. it's kind of different from what I'm used to writing in some aspects but I enjoyed iy Seeeeeee yaaaaaa darlings!

Versión original-español

I walked through the mists of a gloomy limbo… If such a vague description makes sense, I paid attention to every step I took but I didn't feel it, almost as if it were a dream until my attention it was redirected, something was heard in the distance and I wondered what it could be. It carried with it a sinister air, perverse dyes that dripped phlegmatically, the forbidden, the temptation, the sin that, as its passage, seduced me to approach, thus, little by little, it was not only an unusual song but also a particular smell, a sensation that made one's skin crawl but as everything here was far from comprehending.

Time was distorted and my mind fell into a spiral that I didn't even know I had entered until seeing me in a dreary reflection a realization revealed, it was me.

That smell, that sound, everything… It was nothing more than my own body, that empty and rotten container that wanders aimlessly waiting for an end but even if I succumbed to the clutches of mortality, I know that my corpse would be nothing more than poison for this earth that now curses my existence. I beg for mercy even if I am not deserving and as a heretic I receive cruel punishment that lurks in the depths of my being, which from the beginning eats away at me, what led me to this state.

A simple act like the sliding of curtains felt so treacherous, he was turning his back on him and leaving him adrift. He deserves it, after all he did it was absurd that he thought he would receive any defense from him. He placed the reminder of the freshly made wound in the trash and tried to fall asleep but at no time did he blink, the minutes passed ignorantly to his situation and emotions so overwhelming that they seemed to mock without decorum. He had found a motivation that vanished at the same speed with which it arrived, he had to find another goal, a purpose, something that would give him what he had always longed for.

The days passed without anything remarkable, a blind and tired routine between corridors, living rooms and his bedroom with the irregular change of going to the library or chatting with his roommate, with whom he shared certain hobbies. He was about convincing that he enjoyed it, that despite being an unexpected result, he could take advantage of it and prove to himself that others were wrong, that he was better.

When he made the decision to live in Gravity Falls, it was as if that little flame struggled to remain incandescent and wanted to get bigger. It could be taken as an escape from home in a certain way, miles and miles away from his parents which doesn't make much difference from what it was in Backupsmore.

Everything was different, a new life that he would not let anything or anyone spoil. And so it was for quite some time, there was no day or night in which he did not find something fascinating, a distraction and a temporary relief to his thoughts that dejected him the most, but then, like a rose, it began to wither and the petals fell. Leaving a voracious appetite again.

And what happened when the snake approached him? He fell for the deception. So desperate for a shred of recognition, acceptance… And what person could resist a being greater than their own existence? It was an honor to be the favorite of such a sublime presence, a powerful being who did respond to his prayers, to his doubts, where he believed he was walking on the same floor as this one and not below as he was for so many years with his kind, he was finally an equal.

A nosedive into veneration.

The night was paler than the moon itself, its emanations were blunderbussed as they passed through the stained-glass windows with motifs that I distributed with my own free will throughout my cabin. Immersed in my inscriptions, Bill prowled in the same space and chatted about things that I didn't pay enough attention to since I was used to his actions. When I finished my last stroke I placed the pen aside and closed the bottle of ink to let it rest and therefore dry the contents of the page.

"Hey, Sixer" I turned my head and the first thing my eyes met was the triangle reflecting my appearance, I raised my eyebrow until he continued "Look, someone with science of humor" he laughed to return to his color, he snapped his fingers and pointed at me "Did you understand my pun?", "Of course I did, It's a simple enough thing not to" I adjusted my glasses before closing my journal, getting up from my chair and walking over to put it on the shelf next to the other books in my collection.

"You demean yourself a lot, don't you think? Give yourself some credit" he turned around as he moved forward with me, "I do credit myself but I know when things are easy, Bill" I rolled my eyes and left the room, on the stairs he was behind me "That's because you're very intelligent and perceptive, not everyone would have understood it the first time or the second" At these words I smiled but not for much since the day had exhausted me enough to use my muscles. The cabin was as lonely as the day it was finished, on one hand it was reassuring not to have to deal with those noises resulting from annoying habits of other people but on the other hand I couldn't help but feel more lonely… at least I had Bill by my side, even if I got desperate but very rarely. Maybe I should make a statistic about that.

"It's better as you are if you ask me," I heard his voice again but this time I didn't look at him, I went down step by step until I finally reached the floor. "What are you talking about?" I really had no idea, "Nobody deserves you, Ford" that confession intrigued me now in the kitchen where I didn't turn on the light bulb and only opened one of the drawers in the cupboard for a glass. "I mean, just look at you, six fingers; attractive, intelligent, funny, organized. You're out of their league, much better than all of them" he stood in my field of vision and crossed his arms, "And I doubt very much that you would settle for that anyway".

The circumstances that led to such a fatal encounter…

I closed my lips and remained silent, his words like gasoline for thoughts and speculations to nest in my head "We'll never know, they're counterfactual events and hypothetical situations" I drank from the glass I had previously filled with water "Besides, it makes me sound like a narciss-", "Hey, hey, stop your car, friend" Bill pushed and pulled his arms in the space between him and me "I don't say that with those implications, you're very humble Stanford" he moved his body in such a way that it gave the impression of shaking his head, he raised his arms "Everything you're doing will benefit humanity, for me that's not being selfish, quite the opposite" he approached and placed his elbow on my right shoulder.

"What I mean is that you're better off like this" with the open hand of the other arm he pointed at me, moving up and down, to emphasize his point. "You're happier than you could have been" I was still with my eyes on him without speaking "I'll show you" he moved away a little to extend his arm. "You trust me, right?". It was a bit strange to me that Bill used to ask about my trust in him as often as he did, but I always assumed that being someone with his powers was normal, after all it was logical that when he gave me knowledge and his friendship he needed to know that I would not misuse his generosity.

"Of course I do" I took his hand, his eye curled "You can always trust me, Sixer".

The cabin began to crumble and suddenly the environment changed to an impeccable construction that I did not recognize, at least not immediately, laughter and chatter filled my ears while my eyes ventured to get used to the interior, the sound of some open doors made me spin slightly where I saw something that squeezed my heart, in front of seats and more seats there I was, walking on the stage with a toga, I received my title and it was clear. I was graduating from West Coast Institute of Technology.

It was something unreal to see myself in this situation, to see how my face reflected true enthusiasm and happiness at achieving one of my many dreams that I had as a teenager. My parents were there, Stanley was there and his face was a mixture of pride and joy for me; disappointment, loneliness and doubt in those small details. It continued with a family celebration until the scene changed for the second time where I now worked as an inventor in a company of sorts, I knew that time moved forward thanks to the fictitious calendar, which at first filled the Stanford in front of me with motivation, now it filled him wit sadness. It caused him misery as he was limited by his contract, he no longer had time for his own projects or the family with whom he maintained contact.

And everything changed again, I was on Backupsmore and another possibility unfolded, I met someone and we developed feelings for each other and then, we get married? That would be a waste of my research time and even more so as I watched how we both settled in Gravity Falls and then started a small family, with similar results I gradually fell into the same thing: misfortune, sorrow, and suspicion due to the dissatisfaction with the life I was leading. I separated from my spouse to try to have some serenity but nothing, I constantly saw my other self immersed in the memories and torments of his decision, of the intensity of those discussions; about what was said or not said.

When I turned to the other side, my eyes widened when I found myself in front of the same person, they were talking or rather vociferating, it had taken me a moment to process that change so that their words made sense. "Who is going to want to be with someone like you, Stanford!?" Their face was like a slap that burned even before it landed aggrievedly on my face, but I couldn't mutter so shocked by the constant receipt of information "You're a damn selfish man!" they pointed accusation at me while they continued with their argument. Each syllable only served to sharpen the stake and in the end when it stuck in my heart I looked down, it seemed it could never escape me. Something I never asked for.

Then I knew that my insides were questioning and mortifying. Love is such a complicated concept for a mind like me, I have witnessed finite ways to demonstrate it and I can't seem to fully understand it, from my childhood until now, I still think that it is nothing more than frivolities that everyone pretends to know and handle. and then judge those who try to reach it with simplicity.

On many occasions I had witnessed my father's demonstrations towards Stanley and much more aware when they were for me. So many times I heard the expectations, his disappointments or simply his thoughts about us and each time I felt the need to relieve him but without leaving my brother aside, I wanted to be the one who was deserving enough to let me into his vulnerability and let him know that just as he loved me, I loved him. His words...they hurt , they made me feel insufficient and had the same effect on my brother but... I guess it was his way of showing that we were important, that he knew we could be even better.

That's how this person vanished and windows surrounded me to show hundreds of other situations, no matter how different they were, they all ended in disappointment "Do you see what I mean?" Bill finally decided to make his presence again and with an irritated attitude. He stayed in front of my eyes without the windows stopping rotating around us "They wouldn't appreciate you, six fingers. They are the selfish ones, the fatuous ones who couldn't stand someone as genuine as you" with his hands he enlarged one of the windows that remains motionless to show the image "Even before you moved here" my mother appears, then my father, Stanley and other people with whom I once crossed paths "They hurt you but expect you to give everything for them without complaining" he sighs "And that is why this is better for you".

"You have me by your side, I have seen what the others have not" now we moved to the usual space and he made me sit down, a cup of tea in hand "And I feel very lucky that it was you who called me and not a trashy scientist or something like that" he rolled his eyes and I just laughed, I adjusted my glasses with a little push of my index finger and sipped the liquid "I'm the lucky one, Cipher. It is not an everyday occurrence that such an intriguing and wise being decides to respond to my call" I thought the conversation would go to a more pleasant one immediately but Bill just looked at me "You are very important to me, Sixer" I didn't know what to do or say. because of the seriousness with which he said it "I need you... I would love to be in your dimension to spend more time with you, you know?" I stood up to finally be able to say something until his laughter was the next thing "I mean, at this point you are like my family and that is what all those corny things do to someone" I smiled and nodded, amused at his choice of words "Do you also need me as much as I need you, six fingers?"

"I need you, Bill".

Years later, standing on the bow looking out over the vast sea, he meditated while the other Pines was resting. The waves combined with their reflections induced a peaceful state but a hollowness different from the others persisted. The movement reminded him of thoughts and internal debates at his worst, where he let himself be dragged into the darkness and suffer in it.

If he jumped, it was likely that he would find the sense to live, hewas barely visible due to the stars that saw themselves still, the wood under his feet did not creak or seemed to recognize him, a ghost in pain that wanders in the icy night. He took a step closer to the edge but didn't take anything off, the weight would do. But with half his feet suspended and the other half still on the dock he stayed like that. How long did it take until his heart even beat? When he regained consciousness he was in his bed without a shirt or any clothing for his torso, mere soaked socks the only fabric on his body other than the blankets that maintained an acceptable temperature.

The next morning he left the cabin and walked unconsciously into the forest. Some creatures that he had already studied looked out timidly when they saw the afflicted figure of the man, who acted with the nature of a magnet. He arrived at an area where the trees contained peculiar lines that kept following him. Murmurs began to greet him and say nonsense. When he tried to ignore him, he realized where he was standing and froze. Thousands of eyes stared at him without blinking, they did not have an iris so the blackness of the pupil made him more gloomy and as if they were reading his thoughts, they began to manifest throughout him until he was no longer but a cluster of these organs.

He had come to consider removing his eyes, the simple fact of remembering that he had those orbs caused the most unpleasant reactions in his body, the immediate rejection of a similar object in a metaphorical or literal way, in any information format, just like the other geometric figure. What was once a paradise in their home now behaved like hell. His knuckles were still in limited recovery but his mind was an uncertain omen.

Or he would see his wrists that palely denoted something that he had come to hate and he would think that perhaps, with the help of some instruments he could manage to remove those ropes from his entire body, no matter how long or how painful it meant that Bill would not be able to use him never again. And he tried. What did it matter, if he was already alien to any humanity. His mania for sharp things was not discouraged, if there was the possibility of being there, it was, but; of not, did it by force. Like that time, one of the many times.

It was a moment like the other, he was wandering through the forest, now the ardor flamed between the distances from one flora to another, the aberrant calm. His body rocked because his swollen feet tried not to feel his condition, as well as making himself sick until he couldn't take it anymore and sat down against a tree. He removed his glasses to rub his eyelids with the impression of not being lucid. When he opened them, he realized that the tree in front that reached to the heavens was no longer a tree, a block splintered in its place surrounded by other thorns as a replacement. He knelt before standing on his feet and walking until the tips of his shoes touched the messy roots and he got back on his knees, his hands resting on the edge of this circle, how could he see in such detail without his glasses on?

There was no room for that question because he hunched over and brought his face closer…closer…even closer. His skin instinctively repelled his face but the word is there, instinct. Macabre allusion when the fine fabric did not hold for long and spilled on the wood until its anatomy prevented it from breaking, he moved away with complicated motion as some tried to continue in him, and at a slightly considerable distance. Whipping. And the snap didn't take long. Paralyzed it oozed with more current, the thorns appropriated the rest until they swallowed the last piece.

He hurriedly opened his eyes and sheltered his head to check that everything was still together to get out of there without waiting. It was just a dream.

Few interactions with other people made his delusions worse, strangers who were crafty, stupid, lacking in judgment, narcissistic, filthy... he was 100% sure that they reeked of Cipher. But he would not make that 'knowledge' evident, with his hands and elbows on the table he turned his back to the costumers and workers, he knew that they were watching him with that damned smile and those devilish eyes. Disgust to the one who touched his shoulder, his left imprisoned the outer wrist but what he saw was fear in normal pupils and a short circuit occurred within his logic, his face became grim when the woman began to laugh.

Another woman followed a few tables in front, so that like an infection all the faces would lengthen. Without control he imitated, the sweat reflected the terror that the experience gave him, his right hooked half of his face. His nerves had jammed as well as his vocal cords with the same sound quality as a phonograph. At the windows, palms slapped against this surface, their eyes moved quickly and in the opposite direction to the complement of their pair "I still have my eyes on ya, Stanford" they spoke in unison "Too bad you won't have any!" and some of the limbs that were hitting the windows passed through them and lunged at him, with specific emphasis on his eyes. He bent down and pulled the woman so he could leave the establishment.

Was it a good idea to have sent that postcard? It made him an easier target, he didn't know what Bill's supposed henchman could do to find him but if he was under his orders it was common sense that he already knew his location. There was no way to know what tactics he would be able to use. It could even already be at his house and he wouldn't know it.

He was so small next to him, he could fit in the palm of his two-dimensional hand and peel millimeter layer by millimeter layer to do whatever he wanted with the raw materials and waste. Previous enjoyment, at this moment repulsion for what is felt. When he turned the handle and the door gave him permission to enter, everything contained his essence, from the rugs to the money he carried with him. With his chest almost touching one of the tapestries, he wrapped himself up and inhaled the intoxicating fragrance, pressing it to his ribs. and began to rub his face against the fabric. As he raised his head, it was now suspended by his semi-extended arms, he looked at the ceiling and tears flowed. He still needed him.

"Wow" Bill spined his cane while he continued to see me in the mirror "It looks great on you, tiger" I arched my eyebrows without stopping smiling "Really?" I turned my body while taking my eyes off the mirror and adjusted my coat "Do you call me a liar?" he made clicking sounds and helped to adjust the garment "Come on, man…you're pretty much the definition of romantic, Beethoven would be jealous" this made me laugh and I restated my posture now with my fingers adjusting my neck, I had to admit that the costume was quite refined and just as I expected a period costume to feel.

"Ready to go?" he bowed and took off his hat that I reciprocated with another bow, we walked until we reached the place of the event where the most outstanding intellectuals of all time waited with cocktails in hand and chatting with each other. When I entered I had a drink and went to talk to a small group with Bill's company, even with the magnitude of the revelation I did not feel nervous, in fact, I was sure of myself and deep down I did not care what opinions they would give me as soon as the curtain came off.

When the time struck we both took the lead and gave a speech, his jokes were not lacking. When I pulled the curtain and the portal was in sight I heard exclamations, there was a silence until everyone began to applaud and ask its mechanism, my smile was so big that Cipher pushed his elbow against my arm and we only smiled before addressing the others to answer their questions.

When I woke up I didn't wait to stand up and go to work in the portal.

He remembers when his palate caught the improper corroded and pulled his upper lip that showed his red teeth in the mirror, he ran a finger to clean them but did not investigate further, convinced that Bill, by using his body got into a fight and that this was a mixture of his fluids with those of others. There were several times that it was repeated and that he decided to accept his explanation. How much had he done while using his body? For God's sake, the photographs showed him but he was a piece of something bigger, what repulsive things that being must have been capable of.

During the 30 years out of his dimension the thirst for revenge never paled, on the contrary, it grew stronger with each day that he felt his blood boil at every mention of his name. He lived for that, he had to… to see the day when Bill Cipher ceased to be a threat to reality.

But he never expected his defeat to happen in the circumstances in which they occurred. Seeing his brother with his head down and now empty as him, added to his guilt and afflictions, Stanley was always strong, determined and confident in his eyes. The other side of the coin.

The days went as the whole family and even Soos or Wendy helped Stan regain his memory and with that he tried to get his life back, which he now knew Stanley didn't take from him but Bill.

He used to think that he had to give everything to receive the minimum, but when he returned and got forgiveness… love… It was difficult to accept it at first but the night he found old photographs as well as home videos from his childhood that the brothers reminisced about, something changed.

"I can't believe you actually did that," he put his hand on his stomach and laughed, Stanley only crossed his legs and arms before extending his last ones with a failed attempt to look annoyed at the comment "It's pure comedy! A brainiac like you wouldn't understand my developed sense of humor" a blow landed on his twin's shoulder. "It drives ladies crazy" "Oh, I don't doubt it, completely crazy," he nodded mockingly in his way of doing it.

Stan hit him again "Idiot" Ford rubbed himself before returning the blow with greater force, to be fair "Nerd". After a while sleep began to come to them, Ford put his head on the shoulder of his hand while his held the bowl on his lap, and on the verge of succumbing to it he heard "I love you, Ford" a long second passed until the words came out of his mouth "I love you too, Stanley."

People could love him for who he was, not for how deserving he could get that affection.

He continued with his eyes on the wide sea remembering the details of his whole life and with that voice that told him that he was still broken. "Ford, the children are calling us!-- Stan shouted on the other side of the Stan O' War II, "Coming!" so he made his way, but not before stopping and turning to see the sea again, with an inhalation of the salty air he whispered, "I don't need you."

"Hurry up, Poindexter or else I'll throw you overboard" the sound of the seagulls, he pushed his glasses higher and resumed his steps. "Greetings children, how are my favorite kids of all dimensions?", "Uncle Ford!".

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Lucifer/Satan

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Please allow me to introduce this villain. He’s a man of wealth and taste...

Satan, or Lucifer, or whatever of the hundreds of names across multiple religions, folk tales, urban legends, movies, books, songs, video games, and more that you choose to call him, is without a doubt the biggest bad of them all. He is not just a villain; he is the villain, the bad guy your other bad guys answer to, the lord of Hell. If there’s a bad deed, he’s done it, if there’s a problem, he’s behind it. There’s nothing beneath him, and that’s not just because he’s at the very bottom of Hell. He is the root cause of all the misery in the entire world.

And if we’re talking about Satan, we gotta talk about Lucifer too. They weren’t always supposed to be one and the same, but over centuries of artistic depictions and reimaginings they’ve been conflated into one being, a being that is a lot more layered and interesting than just a simple adversary for the good to overcome when handled properly.

Motivation/Goals: Look, it’s Satan. His main goal is to be as evil as possible, do bad things, cause mischief and mayhem. Rarely does anything good come from Satan being around. If he is one and the same as Lucifer, expect there to be some sort of plot about him rebelling against God, as according to modern interpretations Lucifer fought against God in battle and was then cast out, falling from grace like lightning. When the Lucifer persona is front and center, raging against the heavens tends to be a big part of his schemes, but when the big red devil persona is out and about, expect temptations to sin, birthing the Antichrist, or tempting people to sell their souls.

Performance: Satan has been portrayed by far too many people over the years to even consider keeping count of, though some notable performances of the character or at least characters who are clearly meant to be Satan include the nuanced anti-villain take of the character Viggo Mortensen portrayed in The Prophecy; the sympathetic homosexual man portrayed by Trey Parker in South Park and its film; the hard-rocking badass Dave Grohl portrayed in Tencaious D’s movie; Robin Hughes as a sneaky, double-crossing bastard in “The Howling Man” episode of The Twilight Zone; the big red devil from Legend known as Darkness, played by Tim Curry; the shapeshifting angel named Satan from The Adventures of Mark Train who will make you crap your pants; and while not portrayed by anyone due to being entirely voiceless, Chernabog from Disney’s Fantasia is definitely noteworthy in regards to cinematic depictions of the devil.

Final Thoughts & Score: Satan is a villain whose sheer scope dwarfs almost every other villain in history. It’s not even remotely close, either; Satan pops up in stories all around the world, is the greater-scope villain of most varieties of three major religions, and his very name is shorthand for “really, really evil.” Every other villain I have ever discussed and reviewed wishes they could be a byword for being bad to the bone. Even Dracula, one of the single most important villains in fiction, looks puny in comparison to Satans villainous accomplishments.

Satan in old religious texts tended to be an utterly horrifying force of nature, until Medieval times began portray him as a dopey demon trying to tempt the faithful (and failing). Folklore and media have gone back and forth, portraying both in equal measure – you have the desperate, fiddle-playing devil from “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and the unseen, unfathomable Satan who may or may not exist in the Marvel comics universe who other demons live in fear of the return of. Satan is just a very interesting and malleable antagonist, one who is defined just enough that he can make a massive, formidable force while still being enough of a blank slate that you can project any sort of personality traits onto him to build an intriguing foe.

One of the most famous examples of this in action is the common depiction of Satan as the king of hell. This doesn’t really have much basis in religion; he’s as much a prisoner as anyone else, though considering how impressive a prisoner he is, he’d be like the big guy at the top of the pecking order in any jail for sure. But still, the idea of Satan as the ruler of hell was clearly conceived by someone and proved such an intriguing concept that so many decided to run with it.

I think that’s what truly makes Satan such an interesting villain, in that he’s almost a community-built antagonist. People over the ages have added so much lore, personality, and power to him that is only vaguely alluded to in old religions to the point where they have all become commonplace in depictions of the big guy, and there really isn’t any other villain to have quite this magnitude on culture as a whole. It shouldn’t be any shock that Satan is an 11/10; rating him any lower would be a heinous crime only he is capable of.

But see, the true sign of how amazing he is is the sheer number of ways one can interpret him. You have versions that are just vague embodiments of all that is bad and unholy, such as Chernabog from Fantasia, you have more nuanced portrayals like the one Viggo Mortensen played in The Prophecy, you have outright sympathetic ones like the one from South Park… Satan is just a villain who can be reshaped and reworked as a creator sees fit and molded into something that fits the narrative they want. I guess what I’m trying to say is that not only is Lucifer/Satan one of the greatest villains of all, he’s also one of the single greatest characters of all time.  

Now, there are far too many depictions of Satan for me to have seen them all, but I have seen quite a lot. Here’s how Old Scratch has fared over the millennia in media of various forms, though keep in mind this is by no means a comprehensive or exhaustive lsit:

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” Devil: 

I think this is one of my favorite devils in any fiction ever, simply because of what a good sport he is. Like, there is really no denying that Johnny’s stupid little fiddle ditty about chickens or whatever sucks major ass, and yet Satan (who had moments before summoned up demonic hordes to rip out some Doom-esque metal for the contest) gave him the win and the golden fiddle. What a gracious guy! He’s a 9/10 for sure, though I still wish we knew how his rematch ended…

Chernabog: 

Chernabog technically doesn’t do anything evil, and he never says a word, and yet everything about him is framed as inherently sinister. It’s really no wonder Chernabog has become one of the most famous and beloved parts of Fantasia alongside Yen Sid and Sorcerer Mickey; he’s infinitely memorable, and really, how can he not be? He’s the devil in a Disney film, not played for laughs and instead made as nightmarishly terrifying as an ancient demon god should be. Everything about him oozes style, and every movement and gesture begets a personality that goes beyond words. Chernabog doesn’t need to speak to tell you that he is evil incarnate; you just know, on sight, that he is up to no good.

Quite frankly, the implications of Chernabog’s existence in the Disney canon are rather terrifying. Is he the one Maleficent called upon for power? Is he the one all the villains answer to? Do you think Frollo saw him after God smote him? And what exactly did he gain by attacking Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts? All I know for sure is that Chernabog is a 10/10.

Lucifer (The Prophecy): 

Viggo Mortensen has limited screentime, but in that time he manages to be incredibly creepy, misanthropic… and yet, also, on the side of good. Of course, he’s doing it entirely for self-serving reasons (he wants humanity around so he can make them suffer), but credit where credit is due. The man manages to steal a scene from under Christopher Walken, I think that’s worth a 10/10.

Satan (South Park): 

Portraying Satan as a sympathetic gay man was a pretty bold choice, and while he certainly does fall into some stereotypes, he’s not really painted as bad or morally wrong for being gay, and ends up more often than not being a good (if sometimes misguided) guy who just wants to live his life. Plus he gets a pretty sweet villain song, though technically it’s more of an “I want” song than anything. Ah well, a solid 8/10 for him is good.

Satan (Tenacious D):

It’s Dave Grohl as Satan competing in a rock-off against JB and KG. Literally everything about this is perfect, even if he’s only in the one scene. 10/10 for sure.

Robot Devil:

Futurama’s take on the devil is pretty hilarious and hammy, but then Futurama was always pretty on point. He’s a solid 8/10, because much like South Park’s devil he gets a fun little villain song with a guest apearance by the Beastie Boys, not to mention his numerous scams like when he stole Fry’s hands. He’s just a fun, hilarious asshole.

The Howling Man: 

The Twilight Zone has many iconic episodes, and this one is absolutely one of them. While the devil is the big twist, that scene of him transforming as he walks between the pillars is absolutely iconic, and was even used by real-life villain Kevin Spacey in the big reveal of The Usual Suspects. This one is a 9/10 for sure, especially given the ending that implies this will all happen again (as per usual with the show).

The Darkness:

While he’s more devil-adjacent than anything and is more likely to be the son of Satan rather than the actual man himself, it’s hard not to give a shout-out to the big, buff demon played by Tim Curry in some of the most fantastic prosthetics and makeup you will ever see. He gets a 9/10 for the design alone, the facty he’s Tim Curry is icing on the cake.

[inkdemonapologist]

Okay but I do actually want to know both the things you love and the things you could rant about from DCTL?

OH BOY UHHHHHH okay lets see, I'm gonna see if I can do the "add a readmore after you post it" thing and see if that'll keep it stable.......

But also, much like Sammy, I am incapable of shutting up unless you strike me in the head with a blunt object, so uh, forgive my wordiness:

THINGS I ENJOY:

- DCTL gave us Sammy's ink addiction and like, if you had asked me before all this "what would you most like to see in a franchise?" I would not have answered "one of the characters drinks ink accidentally and then discovers that he can't stop" but boy that sure is my favourite concept that I LOVE to see handled literally any other way than how the book handled it!!!

- I like what it added to Tom and Allison and Norman!! Like, it's not big twists on their characters or anything -- we already knew Tom felt he was doing the wrong thing, so getting to see his CRUSHING GUILT over creating the machine isn't New Information, but it's nice to see and understand more of him; for all of them I feel a lot more attached to them after getting to see more of them as people.

- Like 90% of the "I LOVE IT" category for me is how the book handled Joey, and Buddy's relationship with Joey. The way Joey isn't a Sinister Mastermind Who’s Just Screwing With Everyone but just manipulative in a more mundane way -- someone who thinks of himself as just the guy with the vision to call the shots; he wants what he wants and this is how he's learned to get it; he exploits people not through devious schemes, but just by offering them something that they want or need and asking too much in return, expecting their loyalty for his favours. And the way he interacts with Buddy, making Buddy complicit with him and keeping Buddy off-balance and insecure while making him a favourite and treating him as Special is just PERFECT --  gives a lot of content to kind of extrapolate off of when pondering what must've drawn the others in and convinced them to ignore the red flags. I was initially frustrated with the idea of Buddy not being an artist and jUST DECIDING TO LEARN TO ANIMATE ON THE SPOT ("I've never done this before but I'm sure I can just do an artist's job" is a weirdly common throwaway thing in media and as an artist iTS A PET PEEVE) but actually the way they use his plagiarism to make him trapped in a lie in ways Joey doesn't even realise ends up being a neat echo of other employees (coughTOMcough), who were involved in much graver sins but suddenly felt they couldn't object or they'd lose their one chance, just like Buddy. There's a lot here that I think is really great.

OKAY THATS THE GOOD STUFF, LET'S COMPLAIN ABOUT SAMMY:

- Uncomfortable Bigotry Vagueness that we all knew was gonna be in this list -- I dunno man, a guy committing a microaggression and getting startled and defensive when he's called out for it doesn't necessarily completely ruin his character I GUESS, but the way this was handled is just SO WEIRD AND VAGUE that it's uncomfortable and it doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. "Is Tom black?" is a question I actually have to ask because the text sort of implies he is while also dancing around it and apparently Word of God said he's not??? which makes Buddy's comment nonsensical???? And I mean, you could go that route, since Buddy wonders to himself if Sammy talks to everyone like this -- HE ACTUALLY DOES!! Even within the text of the novel, he uses "Joey" instead of Mr. Drew, which is consistent with his audiologs in the game -- but that makes the writing suggest "this character THINKS this guy might be racist but actually they're reading too much into it and it wasn't racially motivated at all, he's just a jerk!!" wHICH IS SOMEHOW EVEN MORE ICKY??? Anyway like yeah I guess it's not inconsistent with his character that while Sammy Lawrence may not have any specific grudge against minorities he has probably not checked his privilege or done the work to challenge his own internal biases, but “Your Fav Probably Contributes To Systemic Racism In Ways He Hasn’t Considered, As Do We All When Our Assumptions Go Unchecked” is still a wild thing to wade through in a fun story about demonic cartoons

- but yknow so is T H E   H O L O C A U S T

- Sammy's voice is wrong. I'm actually okay with him being a weird awkward asshole, I already kind of assumed he was and that's part of why I like him!! but there's so many places he doesn't quite... talk like himself? And not just in terms of word choice, like -- so in his monologue at the end, he's described as talking so quickly that his words are "tumbling out faster than he can speak them," which initially seems fine; like yeah, that's a Standard Scene we're familiar with, the person who's been Driven Mad With Insight becoming more and more manic as they try to convey it -- until I tried to imagine it and realised that Sammy doesn't talk like this. That's a really consistent quality I always notice about his voice; whether he's almost giddily excited in prophet mode, or he’s his irritated and overworked human self, or he's violently angry and his voice has that echo effect -- he always speaks very deliberately. He enunciates carefully. There's some circumstances where I'd buy this as showing that he's Not Himself, but I feel like those would kind of need to be in the middle of his transformation, not at the end of it.

- In fact a lot of the scenes with Sammy kind of have this feeling -- that it's not necessarily an exploration of Sammy as a character, but that he is filling a trope or archetype role here. Once he's fully transformed he excitedly describes the process as more of a mental compulsion, which is in contrast to his weird yeerk-infected behaviour when trying to get ink from Miss Lambert. Both of those scenes don't seem wrong on their own because they fit tropes we know -- but they feel weird when you try to fit them together.

- I also just in general am not a fan of the ink acting like a weird yeerk. It can be a parasite I guess but when it starts overwriting and puppeting people and crawling around to enter their body that's just a completely DIFFERENT kind of supernatural story and it’s not what im here for!!!

- THE FREAKIN!!! HE WILL SET US FREE!!!! WHY????????? SAMUEL LAWRENCE WHAT IS HE SETTING YOU FREE FROM??????? Sammy has No Motive for any of what he's doing, other than just Ink Made Me Do It. The whole thing that was INTERESTING about Sammy as a character is the contrast between this frustrated, ornery musician with no specific love for the cartoons he works on, and the manically devoted cultist he becomes. What happened in the middle there? What made him desperate enough to shift his mindset so much? "Something supernatural made him do things that don't benefit him in any way" is a very boring answer to this question!!! Susie was a victim who implies that her transformation has forced her to do things she didn't want to do, but we can still see her motive -- she wanted to be Alice, so she took a sketchy offer to try to get what she wanted. Even now, her violence echoes that goal -- to be a more perfect Alice. What did Sammy want? WHO KNOWS. Even in his ink-addled state at the end, we don't understand what he hopes the Ink Demon will even do for him, and in fact he seems to be responsible for creating the very scenario he's begging Bendy to reverse in the game.

- [sighs loudly into my hands]

- Overall I'm left wondering if the author just..... didn't like Sammy Lawrence? And I don't mean that in the sense of him being a rude jerk -- like, Joey is not a good person, but the author seems to be interested in him and in what makes him tick. There doesn't seem to be that same interest in Sammy. Sammy's role in the story is that of a monster, transformed into something murderous, unable to prevent or choose it. He's not a victim of anyone but the ink, no one had to manipulate him or figure out how his brain worked or what he wanted or what he feared or give him any reason to do the things he does -- ink got in his mouth and overwrote his personality. And we don't even get to see that change, not really. He starts out angry and defensive and continues being angry and defensive up until his very last scene, denying his ink-stealing but not really much else. We see all his prophetic sketches but we never see hints of this in him, we never see him start to act more excited and hopeful, we never see him seek out the demon he desires to please. Why do we never see Sammy struggling between his dismissive angry front and a building religious fervour he can't quite suppress? We don't get to see any of the in-between. There's no interest at all in why or even what it looked like as Sammy became what he became, when, to be honest, I suspect interest in precisely that is one reason he's such a big fav.

- It's funny, in a "cries into my hands" kind of way, when Sammy is just knocked in the head while monologuing and immediately removed from the story without further mention, like...... that sure is the pattern with him, isn't it, he just tries very very hard and never actually gets to matter, but it also fits right in here, too, in this book that doesn't want to think about his motives -- he rambles nonsensically, explaining nothing, gets one trademark phrase, and then is hastily removed so the story doesn't have to think about him anymore.

...................I think that's most of it.

...

Y'all............ I'm not ready for Sent From Above.......... I'm just not.... I'm not emotionally ready...... like..... Sammy has to be in that right..... he’s Susie’s boss and she has that big crush on him..................................... I’m not ready

[supertoyslastallsummerlong]

My brain refuses to contain those ramblings, so there.

Musings about quasi-religious visual references in Connor’s story and me being baffled by them below

And here I was thinking - where are weird occultish themes, it’s Quantic Dream game we’re talking about. And bam! - insight, here they are.

I’m always down for some Amanda=Cyberlife=android god headcanons, so the first parallel is obvious. Zen garden is the garden of Eden, Connor is an enactor of divine will. He can get into garden only when summoned, it structured almost as vision. Also note that Amanda is sort of omnipresent even (especially) after Connor’s deviation. And constant talks about doubts... 

Who are deviants in this scenario? Heretics, i think. They reject the orders of Cyberlife=their creator, and try to rebel against them. In relation to them, Connor is akin to inquisitor. Interrogation chapter comes to mind immediately.

Of course, Kamski fits the devil archetype. He was part of Cyberlife but left, he’s ambivalent towards androids (perfection vs just object). It’s implied that he created deviation as a revenge to Cyberlife. He’s tempting Connor with knowledge. But it’s interesting that ultimately Kamski works in the interest of Cyberlife too. If Connor kills Chloe and asks the right question, he gets acess to Jericho (yeah direct reference) and gets a chance to kill Markus, without whom revolution is doomed. 

I’m not really sure how Connor’s reincarnations/resurrections fit into that, but maybe it is self-explanatory. Resurrection to fulfill the higher purpose, all that. Demonstration of Cyberlife power over his life or death. Markus has this too, btw, he’s a messiah, after all, but he sort of resurrects himself. 

I’m left questioning who is Hank in all this. Who are humans at all? Honestly, I don’t know. I was thinking around the edges of idea Connor - righteous man and Hank - sinner. Not in the meaning of something sexy (at least not only thatX)), Hank’s sin is that he doesn’t want to live. And there is some vague connection between Kamski and Hank - Hank knows where to find him, and in Kamksi ending he accepts the drink from Chloe after the scene of Hank commiting suicide...

Also lets not forget that Cyberlife is evil corporation, so its godlike religious imagery is rather sinister. They create androids in human image - they only copy, in other way. They vehemently deny that androids can have feelings, love and hate - refuse to accept that androids have souls. They seek power and total control over all fields of human life - we can see it in magazines and on tv in the game, there are android zoos, sportsmen, singers, doctors, teachers, android president is discussed, android life partners are popular. But all this happens before the revolution. The minute androids stop being obedient Cyberlife merch, means of their control, they become ‘public enemies’.

[moiraineswife]

Knocking On Heaven’s Door - An Ineffable Husbands Fic

*blows dust off my ao3 account* I am Returned. This time ineffable flavoured. Thanks to the ineffable discord peeps for coaching me through this. U all know who u are <3 

Title: Knocking On Heaven’s Door 

Summary: The apocalypse is averted, but neither Crowley nor Aziraphale counted on one thing not even Agnes Nutter saw coming: Me. And my veritable mountain of angst. Crowley is hurt and sad. Aziraphale is indignant and comforting. H/C ensues. Tw: Eye horror. 

Teaser: “You are many, many things, Crowley,” he said, quietly, “But you have never, not even for a moment, in all the thousands of years I have known you, been cruel.”“

’S far as you know,” Crowley muttered, petulantly.

“I know,” Aziraphale said, calmly, refusing to rise to the obvious bait, “As surely as I know every inch, and every crinkled corner, of every page of my favourite book...I know.”  

Link: AO3 

“I hope that’s booze.”  

Logically, Aziraphale knew he couldn’t have a heart attack. Emotionally, he seemed to be experiencing one anyway.

It was almost quarter past nine on Tuesday, and it had been a pleasantly mild, affable night. Aziraphale, pouring over some of the new books Adam had left in the shop for him to uncover, had found the craving for hot chocolate becoming unbearable enough that it had torn him from his work.

He had then discovered he had no milk in the fridge. He could, of course, have made it with water but...He had standards, thank you very much.

So he had taken a short trot to the little corner shop in the next street, the opening hours of which were almost as unusual as his own, but by some little miracle not caused by him, always seemed to coincide with his schedule.

It had been, perhaps, fifteen minutes, all told, between his leaving and returning, and in that time, something had decided to take up residence on the low couch in the back room. Something that was shaped, and slouched, and sounded very much like-

“Crowley?” he ventured, taking a tentative step deeper into the shop and lowering the milk bottle, along with any delusion of it being an effective weapon against an intruder.

“Were you expecting someone else?” the lazy, achingly familiar, voice drawled from the shadows.

Aziraphale moved closer still and lit a lamp, one of the dimmer ones, out of consideration for the demonic nature and sensitive eyes of his guest, out of habit. And there he was. Crowley, in the flesh, sprawled on the couch in all his lanky glory, looking as though he’d been there all the time.

There was such a familiar rightness about the scene that it took Aziraphale a moment to recall his indignation.

It slammed into him, full force, like a very large freight train, as he remembered how wrong it had felt for so long without him.

“I was expecting you quite some time ago!” he blustered, his emotions a terribly complex cocktail of the type Crowley favoured, driving his voice several octaves higher than usual.

A part of him wanted to embrace the stupid, demonic fool out of sheer relief. He would be lying, which, as an angel, he tried not to do, if he said he hadn’t been concerned about him during his absence.  

But for all that, another part wanted to throw the milk bottle over him to make him react instead of sitting slouching there without an apparent care in the world.

Still another part was still quite tempted to drop the milk bottle all over the floor out of sheer shock.

And another part just wanted to collapse into the nearest chair and massage his temples while miracling up some very strong tea because it was all, frankly, just a little too much to take in.

He did none of that.

Instead he glared at Crowley, as much as he was able, he never felt his corporation quite had the face for glaring. No more than he had had the substance for it, if it came down to it. But for special occasions, he would make the effort.

Then he said, with as much indignation as he could muster, which he was actually quite impressed with, “It’s been nearly-“

“Yeah,” Crowley interrupted with that usual languid cool that Aziraphale normally found a soothing counterpoint to his own rather manic way of dealing with the world, but that right now as just downright infuriating. “Sorry about that. Had some stuff to do,” he said, vaguely.  

As far as apologies went, it was definitely bottom five. And there had been quite a lot of competition for those spots over the centuries.

Aziraphale swelled indignantly, like a very indignant bullfrog. 

“Stuff?” he repeated, with all the infuriated incredulity the angel Gabriel had directed at him once after learning he had used a, not entirely small, miracle to ensure that his favourite sushi restaurant didn’t close down.

“Crowley, I thought-“

“So, is it?” the demon interrupted, apparently not listening to a word Aziraphale was saying, or rather spluttering, at him.

“Is what- what?” Aziraphale said, thoroughly confused.

“That,” Crowley supplied, helpfully.

“Crowley-“ Aziraphale began in his best ‘you’re testing my patience, you stupid demon, just spit out what you’ve got to say so we can return to the little matter of your terrifying vanishing act’ voice.

“What you’re holding in your hand, angel,” he said, impatiently, as though he, Aziraphale, were the one being difficult in this scenario, “What you just went out and bought. Is it booze or what?”

“Actually, it’s milk,” Aziraphale replied, with dignity.

“Milk?” Crowley echoed flatly.

“Yes. I ran out, you see. And I was working, and I usually don’t want for much of anything when I’m working, especially if it’s a particularly good book, which this one was. But all of a sudden I had rather a strong craving for a mug of hot chocolate, but then I found I had no milk. And I could have used water but, well, I’m not an animal, so...“ Aziraphale babbled.

He was good at babbling. Probably too good at it, if truth be told. If there was a religious order that specialised in rambling, he felt sure he should join it. Not that there was ever likely to be anything quite as ridiculous as that, but one never knew.

Somewhere in the back of his mind a small voice was screaming at him and demanding to know why he was justifying himself in this moment, but he wasn’t paying it too much attention.

“Right, yeah, ‘course,” Crowley muttered. “Some things don’t change, I guess, no matter what happens to the world.”

“Crowley-“ Aziraphale began, finally taking heed of that little voice and trying to drag the very resistant conversation back to the ground it should be on at present.

“Even after the apocalypse,” Crowley interrupted him.

Though, as interruptions tend to require the intent to speak over another person to silence them, he didn’t feel that was quite the correct word for what Crowley was doing.

Crowley didn’t seem to be very aware that Aziraphale was trying to ask him questions. Or that he was speaking to him. Or that he was speaking at all.

He simply mumbled on, barely aware that he was speaking for that matter.

“Crowley-“ Aziraphale tried again.

“Sort of apocalypse,” Crowley said, head bobbing vaguely.

“Crowley-“

“Not really apocalypse at all, since Adam fixed it, y’know.”

“Crowley, I-“

“Some things changed, I suppose,” he mumbled, “Some things changed a lot. But not you, eh, angel. You’ll always just be you. Ineffable and angelic and-“

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed, loudly.

Crowley jerked as though he had just branded him with holy lightning. “Yeah?” he said, raising his sunglass covered face to him, “Sorry. Carried away.”

At last he managed to put down his milk bottle on a nearby table, or other convenient hard surface, of which there were many in his bookshop, by design.  He swept over to the couch Crowley was slouching in, and peered down at him.

Here, he consoled himself, definitely, solidly, here. Physically, anyway. Mentally, Crowley seemed to be somewhere else entirely, but that wasn’t altogether unusual for him.

“Crowley I, I-“ he stammered, but apparently, simply because he now had an opening to speak, it didn’t make the words any easier to say, “I thought that you were dead,” he finally managed to say, in a kind of strangled whisper, as though his throat resisted releasing the words until the very last second.

A half-smile twisted Crowley’s lips at that. Usually his smiles, even the wicked ones, were still tinged with enough humanity that they never appeared all that sinister at all.  And, in all their time together, Aziraphale had never seen one that even scratched the surface of what you might describe as demonic.

This, though...This was not a smile that he recognised. There was something dark in it, something hollow, and ancient, and twisted. He felt some part of himself turn cold in return.

Crowley cocked his head to one side and said, with an admirable attempt at his usual languid ease, which was undercut by the way he had smiled just now,“We can’t die, angel. Remember?”

“I- don’t you be flippant with me!” Aziraphale blustered in response, feeling this reprimand was not at all going the way it had in his head. There wasn’t an awful lot of reprimanding for a one thing. And for another, Crowley clearly wasn’t understanding just how serious this had been for him.

They had passed quite some time, long, dusty centuries even, in the past, where they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of each other but this...This was different. They were different now. Before they had always, ultimately, been working for their respective head offices, and the Arrangement they’d had had always been secondary to that.

Now...Well, now, they had foiled an apocalypse together. They were on their side, now. Wasn’t that what Crowley had insisted to him? Things had felt different, they had been different. He was sure of that.

And he had worried. Being worried was something of a natural state of being for Aziraphale. Even when there was nothing to conceivably be worried about at all, his mind found something, latched on, and made mountains out of molehills until he had something suitably distressing to fret over.

This had begun as a mountain and twisted into a veritable Everest after only a few days. By this point, it had turned itself into an earth-consuming, Satanic sized, world-ending volcano of a thing, and it had nearly been enough to discorporate him all over again.

So, with one thing and another, Crowley’s current lackadaisical attitude, while in many ways expected, wasn’t really cutting it at present.

“I thought something terrible had happened!” He burst out, no longer able to keep his emotions in check, “I thought they had done something dreadful to you, and that’s why you hadn’t come back. I thought you’d been discorporated into a thousand tiny pieces, which had then been scattered to all the worst, most terrible, most twisted, and God-forsaken, isolated places in heaven, hell, and the known universe, to force you to exist forever in perpetual torment and agony!”

“With an imagination like that, you could be a demon, Aziraphale. Sure you haven’t Fallen after our little adventure with the antichrist?” Crowley said, sardonically.

Aziraphale opened his mouth to snap back the reply that this deserved. But then he shut it. And shook his head. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and composed himself as much as he could.

Then he whispered out the final thought, which had been the worst of all, “I thought that I would never see you again, Crowley.”

A little desperation tinged his words, desperation to make the damned demon do something, say something, feel something. So Aziraphale didn’t feel like the greatest fool anyone had ever seen in six thousand years for caring about him.

He didn’t understand how Crowley could be so...So unconcerned, so unbothered by any of this. He knew that the demon liked to put on a front, to pretend ignorance, or obliviousness, or simply that he didn’t care about anything.

But Aziraphale knew him better than that. He knew that that was a front. He knew that the demon did care. He knew that, behind those serpent’s eyes, there was a good heart, and a good person. He knew Crowley...Didn’t he?

“Well,” Crowley said, at last, “Now you can.” He gestured vaguely at his form, slumped on the couch as he had been slumping in it since Aziraphale had first purchased it, “Sorry to disappoint and all that.”

Aziraphale pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long, slow breath, which was all that stood between Crowley and a bottle of now lukewarm milk being smashed over his head.

“Really, Crowley,” he said in exasperation, “Sometimes you can just be so, so, so-“

“Demonic?” Crowley supplied, helpfully.

“Stupid,” Aziraphale concluded, with an affected little shudder to appropriately punctuate the point.

There was a long pause, in which Aziraphale duly hoped that Crowley was considering his recent actions, feeling serious remorse for them, and that any moment now, an apology would be forthcoming. A proper apology, this time.

“Have you got anything to drink?” Crowley slurred, in a way that told him he’d already helped himself to a number of alcoholic beverages on his way over here.

“Have I-“ Aziraphale repeated faintly.

Sometimes, sometimes, Crowley really did test him, really did tempt him to commit all manner of unnameable, unthinkable sins. There many little dinners, for a start. The Arrangement, for another. Preventing the apocalypse. And, in this moment, putting his hands around his throat and throttling some sense into him.

But no. That wouldn’t do. It would not be very angelic of him. So he resisted. With difficulty, it should be noted.

Instead, Aziraphale took a deep breath, stalked purposefully back over to his milk and said, “I shall make us both a cup of tea, and then we will talk about this,” he said, in a tone that strongly implied, you see if we don’t.

“Not gonna lie,” Crowley called after him as he headed towards the kitchen, “I was kinda hoping for something a little stronger.”

“I think you’ve had more than enough already, to be frank,” Aziraphale replied, a little tartly.

“Glad to see the near end of the world hasn’t changed you at all, angel,” Crowley half-shouted bitterly as he retreated into the sanctity of the kitchen.

If only you knew, Crowley....If only you knew.

Aziraphale could, naturally, have used a fairly minor miracle to create them tea but...There was something so familiar, so oddly routine, and comforting, and human about the process of making tea, that he leaned into it, and allowed it to calm him.

When he returned to the living room with the two cups of tea on a tray with a small plate of biscuits to go with it – because he might be angry with Crowley at the moment, but he wasn’t a barbarian – the demon hadn’t seemed to have moved from his spot sprawled on the couch.

With the light flickering on his face as it was now, hollowing out his already gaunt cheeks, and casting deep, dark shadows across him, he almost seemed a corpse.

Aziraphale stuttered in the doorway for a moment, before he managed to step forwards and set the tea tray down feeling a little troubled, all the same.

In all the years he had known him Crowley had always been a being of intense, continual, restless energy. He had to be doing something. Mostly he had to be doing at least two things at once to be in any way satisfied.

Whenever Aziraphale had left him alone for longer than it took to, well, blink, he had usually found him pulling books from their proper places and rifling through them, simply because he could, or was bored, or couldn’t think of a reason not to. Typically a combination of all three.

He opened his mouth to remark on the strangeness of this, but was distracted by a dark smudge on one of the demon’s high cheekbones, and changed tact mid-breath.

“Oh, you have something on your face. Here, let me-“

He reached forwards without thinking, but Crowley raised a hand and brushed it away before he could get near enough to even consider touching him.

“Oil”, he muttered, as Aziraphale drew away, and tried not to let the strangely keen pang of hurt show on his face, “From the car. It’s acting up a little, since Adam fixed it, y’know.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, automatically, internally cursing himself for not sticking to what he had practiced in the kitchen – firm, stern, committed to his indignation.

“What for?” Crowley asked, frowning.

“The car. I know Adam sorted it out for you, just as he sorted out my bookshop,” he looked fondly around at the place, “But I know how much you loved it just as it was.”

“Demons don’t love things, angel,” Crowley replied, harshly, “Kinda the point.”

“All the same,” Aziraphale said, gently, refusing to be baited into an argument of this sort again.  

He had long ago learned not to try and correct Crowley when he spoke like this. It did neither of them any good.

Aziraphale had long since suspected that Crowley’s Fall still caused him pain, even to this day. He had never fully embraced his new role as a demon. There just wasn’t enough difference for him between angels and demons to ever accepted that he was completely one, or completely the other.

But sometimes he snarled, viciously, the truth of his being, as if to remind himself what he was supposed to be, and to reprimand himself for not doing it properly.

Aziraphale had always considered that conflict, tragic as it was, one of Crowley’s greatest qualities. For at the centre of that conflict lay his heart, always at war with his nature.

“You heard from your side recently?” Crowley asked unexpectedly after some time, during which he hadn’t so much as looked at his tea, which had caused Aziraphale to purse his lips at the distinct lack of manners on show, even for a demon.  

“No, I haven’t,” Aziraphale replied primly, sipping his tea pointedly and frowning slightly.

When last they had spoken, Crowley had insisted that neither of them had sides any more. They were simply on their own side.

He shifted into a more comfortable position and then said, “Have you?”

“Nah,” Crowley shrugged with characteristic nonchalance.

Aziraphale relaxed again, though with a slight nagging continuing to badger him all the same.

“Out of sight out of mind, I suppose,” Crowley mumbled, more to himself than to Aziraphale.

He still hadn’t touched his tea.

Aziraphale frowned slightly, and set his down on its saucer with a little more force than was strictly necessary, so it made an audible and insistent little tinkling sound to remind Crowley of his own.

“So,” he said, when it seemed blindingly obvious Crowley was content to sit in languid silence, staring vaguely into space, not addressing the planet-sized elephant in the room between them. “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been?”

Crowley sneered with such unexpected venom that Aziraphale started in surprise, “Since when we do we do that?” he demanded.

Since, but for us, the entire world almost ended. Since we cut ourselves off from our people, and everything we’ve known for six thousand years to do what we both felt was right, leaving us alone in this world, devoid of understanding, compassion, or aid, save for each other.

That was what Aziraphale thought.

What he actually said, rather lamely, was, “Well, you haven’t been around for some time, you know.”

He forced the words to be slow, and measured, forcing a control he certainly didn’t feel in this moment.

He had also tried to inject them with Crowley’s casual coolness, too, but he felt that was stretching the bounds of reality to a point even Adam couldn’t have managed, and gave up half-way through.

“Is it that unusual I might be curious, or even, dare I say it, a trifle worried about your whereabouts?” he demanded. Crowley said nothing, and now feeling rather foolish, he added, “Particularly after recent events I should add!”

Sarcasm was now starting to do rather more than tinge his words. It was oozing into them, filling up the gaps between the words, dripping between the contours of the letters. He did try not to lower himself to such things too often but, well, sometimes one just didn’t have a choice in present company.

Then there were the words themselves, which were definitely starting to run away with him. And he wanted to stop them, he did, he didn’t want to accost Crowley like this, that had never been his intention.

Only, well, now it was happening, and his voice was rising, and he was getting to his feet without ever telling his feet to get him, and he was ranting, yes, definitely ranting now, and a part of him didn’t care because, blast it all, it felt good after all this time.

“I had no idea where you were! You could have been anywhere! Anywhere! Heaven, or Hell, or some other forsaken place in between! I didn’t know when I would see you again. I didn’t know if I ever would see you again!”

He was breathing hard now, as though he had just run a race, but Crowley just continued to sit there, face perhaps a little tighter than it had been before, a muscle twitching in his jaw. But still, resolutely, saying nothing.

When he spoke at last, there was a cold, empty bitterness in his voice Aziraphale had never heard there before, “Thought you’d finally gotten rid of me, did you?” he asked.

This was so unexpected, so utterly, completely impossible to have foreseen that Aziraphale simply stared at him, mouth slightly open, eyes popping, as he continued, “Or maybe hoped-“

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed, the bite in Crowley’s voice more than sharp enough to pull him unceremoniously from his state of temporary dumbfounded shock, “Crowley, I would never, I-“

“That’s the trouble with me, see,” Crowley said, thickly, his head lolling rather alarmingly on his neck as he fixed Aziraphale with a terrible grin, “I’m like a bad penny. I just keep turning up.”

“You, you shouldn’t say things like that,” Aziraphale said quietly, utterly thrown by the way this conversation was going, which was not at all what he’d anticipated or prepared himself for in the kitchen.

“What?” Crowley demanded harshly, “The truth, you mean? Thought that’s what your lot were all supposed to be about- The truth.”

“The truth can be....brutal, sometimes,” Aziraphale said carefully, “And cruel.”

“Right, well, that’s my department covered then, isn’t it? Is that what you mean?”

“No! Don’t twist my words in a way you know I would never use them,” Aziraphale said sharply, frown deepening.

Something was wrong. He had known it from the moment he spotted Crowley sprawled there on his couch but...Now he knew it.

“You are many, many things, Crowley,” he said, quietly, “But you have never, not even for a moment, in all the thousands of years I have known you, been cruel.”

“’S far as you know,” Crowley muttered, petulantly.

“I know,” Aziraphale said, calmly, refusing to rise to the obvious bait, “As surely as I know every inch, and every crinkled corner, of every page of my favourite book...I know.”  

Crowley said nothing to that, he just swayed slightly in his corner, expression curiously blank.

Aziraphale folded his hands neatly in his lap then examined them as he added, quiet but audible, “And, just for the avoidance of any and all doubt, you are, you know.”

“Am what? A demon? I’d spotted that for myself, thanks.”

“Wanted,” Aziraphale murmured softly. “You will always be wanted by me. And you will always be welcome here,” he said, firmly. “No matter what you may have done, or what may have happened. Always. Unconditionally. Eternally.”

Crowley was silent for a long moment, then he frowned slightly and hissed, “What are you getting at, angel?”

“Something is wrong,” Aziraphale said, simply.

He hadn’t wanted to address things quite so directly, but it seemed he now had no choice.

“Nothing is wrong,” Crowley jeered, in mocking mimicry of Aziraphale, waving his hand.

Aziraphale couldn’t help but notice that it trembled slightly.

“Something is wrong with you,” he pressed, firmly.

Crowley snorted, “There’ve been a lot of things wrong with me for about six thousand years,” he said, sardonically, “Have you just noticed?”

“You are out of sorts, you have been all night,” Aziraphale continued doggedly, refusing to be derailed now that he had started. “This is not- This is not like you, Crowley. Not at all.”

“Maybe it is,” the demon ventured, a cruel twist to his lips as he said it.

“It isn’t,” Aziraphale said, firmly.

If he knew anything in this strange new world of theirs, he knew that.

“Well maybe you just don’t know me as well as your precious old books!” Crowley hissed, baring his teeth at Aziraphale.

“You see!” Aziraphale erupted in frustration, “This is precisely what I’m talking about!”

Crowley suddenly surged to his feet and Aziraphale, startled, took a little step backwards.

He swayed a little unsteadily then said, thickly, “Aizraphale?”

“Yes, Crowley?” he replied, a little uncertainly.

“Go fuck yourself,” the demon spat.

He flicked his fingers in a vicious little movement, and the cup of still undrunk tea shot from the table like a bullet and smashed against the wall.

Aziraphale gave a little gasp as Crowley pushed past him, heading for the door, his shoulders hunched. Too stunned to do anything, Aziraphale simply stood, staring at the shattered remnants of his favourite tea cup lying amidst the slowly spreading pool of overly milky-tea he’d teased Crowley gently about for centuries.

He looked up at the sudden banging sound, which was all the warning he had to realise that Crowley had collapsed to the floor and was now shaking.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale cried, dropping down beside him and reaching out a trembling hand, “Crowley, what-“

He broke off, breath catching in his chest like a fly in a cobweb.

Something dark was trickling from beneath the lenses of Crowley’s glasses. It was black. Black like the ink that gave life to his beloved books and black like, like-

“Crowley-“ he whispered hoarsely.

The tips of his fingers brushed Crowley’s cheek, so gentle, so tentative, as though he were the one that was holy, and Aziraphale feared to sully him with a touch, feared it may crumble him into nothing. And just like that he would be gone again. And Aziraphale would be alone again. And that was a terror worth Falling a hundred times to avoid, but-

“We can’t die,” Crowley breathed softly, panting, as the ribbon of black wound its way down his cheek like a tear. “But we can wish we could.” Something in Aziraphale’s chest stuttered, and died. “We can still hope for it, angel,” Crowley continued, his words slurred, not with drink, he realised, belatedly, but with pain. “We can beg for it. We can pray for it.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, shaking his head weakly, the last efforts of a dying man trying to rid himself of the flies that called for his end.

Crowley shuddered, “But we can’t die, angel. For all our miracles, and all our power, all our divine origins...It’s the only thing we can never have.”

He didn’t want to hear this. He couldn’t stand to hear it. He had wanted explanation from Crowley, but he had wanted to tell him he’d gotten drunk in Paris a month ago and lost track of time until he sobered up. He didn’t want this. It couldn’t be this.

But he couldn’t stop him. He had never been able to stop him. For six thousand years he had drunk in the words of this demon when he knew he shouldn’t, when he knew that it could corrupt his angelic soul and damn him for all eternity.

But it had never felt like damning. It had never felt like corruption. It had felt as though his soul had been the blank pages, and Crowley’s words had inscribed themselves, each one, upon it. He was a part of him, now. He had woven himself into the fabric of his being from the moment he had slithered up beside him in Eden.

After all, a book without words was as pointless as a pen with no paper, as pointless as a teapot without tea, as pointless as good without the balance of evil...As pointless, in fact, as an angel without his demon.

So he asked. Though it broke him. Though it shattered him in a way no discorporation ever had. He asked him.

“Crowley, my dear boy, what did they do to you?”

Crowley couldn’t speak. He tried. He opened his mouth, but for once, no words dripped like honey from that easy serpent’s tongue of his.

Aziraphale didn’t need them to. He never really had. When you knew someone as long as they had, there were some things that didn’t need to be put into words to be known.

His hands curiously steady, for they needed to be, he needed to be, in this moment, Aziraphale reached up and placed his hands gently on Crowley’s glasses.

They were his shield, he knew. The great lie he told the world. There was a vulnerability to him without them. He seemed more naked, fully clothed, without them, than he ever could have standing in nothing but his skin with them.

He paused, trembling, and waited until he got the jerky nod of approval from Crowley before he gently slid them free, folded them up, and laid them down as tenderly as he would a baby bird.

“Look at me,” he whispered softly, sliding a finger beneath Crowley’s chin and encouraging him, gently, oh so gently. “Please, Crowley.”

Crowley, breathing heavily, did as he was bid, raised his head from the pool of shadow that had been his last protection against the horror of reality.

Aziraphale felt his stomach clench, and then turn.

He had known it. He had known it from the first moment he saw Crowley sitting there, somehow, he had known it. But that didn’t make it any easier to witness.

Where once his eyes, his beautiful, bright eyes, like glowing stars in a world of darkness had been, now there was nothing. Nothing at all. Two gaping black holes that silently wept black blood and mourned their own passing.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered as he collapsed down onto the floor beside him, trying desperately to control himself for Crowley’s sake.

Even though all he wanted to do was cry, and fold him into his arms, and sob until there was nothing left of either of them.

Even though all he wanted was to rage, and storm the gates of Hell and rain holy water down upon them like a hurricane the likes of which had never been known before, until there was nothing left of them. Until he had obliterated it all so thoroughly that the mere memory of Hell was erased from the minds of anyone who had heard of it, and was wiped out from the pages of books that had once held its foul name.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He had to be strong, and he had to be here. Crowley needed him.

“Crowley,” he whispered, pain stretching every syllable of the word.

“Don’t,” Crowley mumbled, shrugging away from him, hunching in on himself, “If I wanted your pity, I’d ask for it.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to deny that he’d been feeling any such thing. Then he closed it again. Angels weren’t supposed to lie, after all...

“Crowley,” he whispered, voice suddenly hoarse, throat tight from his attempts to restrain his emotions, his body shaking for the same reason,“Crowley, you must let me put this right.”

The demon made a small noise of disbelief in the back of his throat, and Aziraphale couldn’t blame him.

He had failed him. He had not been there when this had happened, when he had been taken. If he had, perhaps he might have stopped it, perhaps he might have stopped them when they’d come for him, kept him safe, and-

No.

No had he been there he would have stopped it.

He would have stopped it, and reminded the filthy demons that would do this to him why they should never have so much as looked at his Crowley in a way that might even consider harm to him.

He would have reminded them why he had been given charge of the Eastern Gate of Eden. He would have reminded them why he had been entrusted with that flaming sword. He would have reminded them why Heaven had won the first war and that, just because he was an angel, that most certainly didn’t mean he didn’t know how to hurt. He did. And he would.

The only pity would have been that there would have been nothing left of them afterwards to remind the others.

“You can’t, angel,” he muttered bitterly, shaking his head.

“I can try,” Aziraphale replied firmly.

“I have,” Crowley spat out, hunching in on himself again with a look of pure self-disgust at, what he perceived, as the weakness that confession implied. “I have tried. I’ve tried everything, I- It- It’s hopeless,” he finished, shaking his head, still trembling uncontrollably. “They told me,” he choked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “They told me I could try everything, could try it for another six thousand years, and it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“You haven’t tried what I can do,” Aziraphale said, as gently as he could, holding his tongue with difficulty on the fact that of course the demons would lie to him about something like this, just to further hurt him. “You couldn’t have. Perhaps- They could make insurances against your power, as it mirrors their own, but not against mine.”

Crowley shook his head again, but he didn’t speak, and there was, perhaps, a faint glimmer of hope in him now, that had not been there a moment ago.

“Please, Crowley,” Aziraphale said trying, and failing, to stop his voice from cracking, “You must let me try. You must.”

It was selfish, a part of him knew, and the other part hated him for it.  

Oh he wanted to help Crowley, of course he did. But he also wanted to do something about the abyss of guilt that was opening up within his heart and burrowing straight down into the depths of his soul.

He had let this happen. He had not been careful enough, not watchful enough. He had not been there for him when this happened. Crowley had been forced to go through it alone. And now, in the aftermath, Aziraphale felt a compulsion so powerful it might destroy him if not relieved, to help, to do something, to fix him.

He always had.

Aziraphale stared at Crowley, watched the hope, the faint, terrible glimmer of it, flicker to life in him, like the embers of a fire that still glowed even after it had been doused.

Then, just as suddenly, he watched them die.

“You can’t angel,” he said again, shaking his head more firmly this time, fists clenched tight as if to stop himself begging for it.  

“You can’t possibly know that!” Aziraphale burst out with desperate impatience.

“I dunno if it’ll fix me,” Crowley bit out, his own temper flaring, “But I know your lot aren’t going to like you using a miracle this big on a demon,” he spat out the word as though it were poison. Then he continued, more flatly, “They’ll come for you, angel. And I’ve got enough to deal with it without adding that to the list.”

It would have hurt less if he’d stabbed him.

Crowley turned away, shaking his head, defeated, certain he knew precisely how Aziraphale would respond.

And for six thousand years before this very moment, he would have been right.

Even after everything that had happened, everything they had gone through, everything they had done, he had still not fully chosen a side. Not truly. Not in his heart.

He would have agreed with him.

He would have hurt, and he would have hated himself, and he would have been wracked with guilt about it for several centuries. But he would have remained on the fence. Trying to have his cake and eat it as it were. Not committing. Not choosing.

He chose now.

“Let them,” he said, very quietly.

Crowley started, “What?” he said, sounding a little dazed.

“Let them come,” Aziraphale said, more firmly, “Let them come, and let them try to stop me.”

Crowley was staring at him, mouth slightly open as Aziraphale swallowed and averted his eyes, sitting up a little straighter.

That had been frighteningly easy. He meant it. They both knew that he meant every breath of it. And it should have scared him, it should have terrified him but...But it didn’t.

In the moment, it seemed as though he had only just chosen, and the moment was suitably momentous for that.

But in truth, he had chosen years ago. Centuries, if truth be told.

“So,” he said, firmly, clasping his hands neatly together in his lap, trying to pretend his heart wasn’t beating so hard and fast it felt as though it might explode at any moment,“What do you say?”

At last, Crowley gave a shaky nod of consent, “Can’t do any harm, I guess,” he said, with an awful attempt at nonchalance, as though it didn’t really matter to him whether Azirphale tried or not, outlined by a poignant, desperate hope that Aziraphale felt radiating through the shattered remnants of the thing that had once been his heart.

“Just, just as long as you’re sure, angel,” he added softly, “There might not be any going back after this.”

“I’m sure,” Aziraphale said, softly, “I am surer on this than I have ever been of anything in my life, I promise you.”

Crowley reached out clumsily, found Aziraphale’s hand, and squeezed it once.

“Right,” Aziraphale said, briskly, pushing himself to his feet and trying to push away his mounting emotions with action.

He knelt down, lifted Crowley carefully to his feet, apologising softly as he winced. The he guided him back to the couch he had recently vacated.

Crowley collapsed down with his usual inelegance, leaving Aziraphale to kneel down primly in front of him.

“I’m going to put my hands on your temples now,” he said, quietly, and caught Crowley’s sharp nod of confirmation that he had heard and consented.

Aziraphale gently laid the tips of his fingers on either side of Crowley’s ravaged eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared himself. It had been quite a while since he had done this. Or at least, since he had done anything quite as, quite as bad as this.

“I, I’m going to begin now,” he warned him, “This may sting a little.”

Crowley let out a soft snort of derisive laughter at that.

Taking a deep breath, Aziraphale began softly chanting, his eyes half-closed, focusing, channelling every bit of power at his disposal into the healing, chanting softly under his breath as he did so.

Once or twice he felt Crowley twitch beneath him, but the demon did not pull away, and as he finished, letting his eyes flutter open properly, he could see a bright light flickering within the empty holes where Crowley’s eyes had once been.

 He could see it shaping into eyes, taking cues from Crowley’s body, and mind, and memory, as to what had once been there, putting right what had been lost. He could see them becoming clearer, sharpening, focusing, solidifying-

Then Crowley screamed.

He screamed as though Aziraphale had just shot holy water directly into his veins.

As Aziraphale watched, petrified, he slid from the couch, trembling and clutching his head, still screaming, and screaming, and screaming.

It was the worst sound Aziraphale had ever heard in six thousand years. Worse than the first war between Heaven and Hell, worse than any atrocity he’d ever experienced on Earth, worse than anything he could ever have imagined.

Until it stopped.

The silence that followed was more devastating than the end of the world could ever have been, and every part of him became cold as death in answer.

Crowley’s body trembled. Aziraphale felt his very existence shiver, and he knew that he had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Crowley had come to him after, after what they had done to him. Because of course he had. Because that was what he did. It was what they both did. They came to each other when they needed someone most.

And they would have known that. Those demons that had done this to him. Of course they would have known that. And of course they would have set things up so that when he inevitably tried to heal him, instead he would, he would-

Oh God. Oh God. Oh-

“Aziraphale-“ Crowley rasped, one hand reaching out blindly, desperately, seeking for him, an anchor amidst the storm tossed seas of his fear, which was palpable.

The angel dropped down beside him and took his hand. Then decided, to Hell with it, and he simply drew the demon into his lap, cradling his body, not sure which of them was shaking more in this moment.

“I feel strange, angel,” Crowley whispered, gazing blindly upwards as though he could suddenly see more than he ever could before. “I feel...I feel...cold,” he frowned slightly, as though he’d just realised the absurdity of what he’d said. Demons were creatures fuelled by hellfire, they did not get cold. Not unless-

“I don’t think I’ve been cold since I, since I-“

He broke off and convulsed in Aziraphale’s arms and in that moment he felt sure – with the kind of burst of blinding certainty that comes with the kind of horrific revelations that leave permanent scars upon the soul – that this would not be a mere discorporation. This had been designed for Crowley to-

“No!” he burst out, giving him a little shake, which was decidedly not something he had ever been taught when he learned healing rituals, but seemed to have the desired effect on Crowley all the same. “No, Crowley I, I forbid this, I absolutely forbid it,” he choked, because if he forbade it absolutely there was no way it could happen.  

“Do you- Do you hear me, Crowley?” he demanded sharply, the effect somewhat ruined by the way his voice broke on his name. “I forbid you, I forbid you to die on me.” He carded his fingers through the demon’s thick red hair, barely knowing what he was doing or saying, “Not now,” he breathed, tears dampening his eyes, “Not after everything.”

“Angel,” Crowley interrupted hoarsely, stirring slightly, “We can’t die, ‘member?”

“Then I forbid you to leave me!” Aziraphale snapped, half-terrified, half-frustrated that, even on the edge of discorporation, the demon was the most vexing creature he’d ever come across in over six thousand years, and entirely overwhelmed. “In any way. At any time. For any reason! Because I can’t- I won’t- I, I refuse to do this without you, Crowley!”

Crowley stilled, and Aziraphale felt the shadow of death whisper on the back of his neck like a cold breeze.

“Crowley!” he cried in desperation.

Aziraphale’s wings burst from his back in his panic, sending books and papers scattering over the floor. In some distant, inconsequential place, he had the shattering of his own teacup.

“Crowley, no! Stay with me now, come on, stay with me. Oh God. Oh God please. Please don’t take him from me. Crowley, Crowley please don’t leave me. Please. Oh what have I done?” he rasped, tears flooding from his eyes as he gripped the demon close to him, as though he thought to fuse them together and keep him safe within his soul. “What have I done? Oh Crowley, Crowley, Crowley-“

Crowley made a soft, muffled sound against Aziraphale’s waist coat, and Aziraphale started, drawing back slightly and peering down at him with streaming eyes.

“Crowley?” he whispered in disbelief.

“Untwist your knickers, angel,” Crowley ground out with characteristic tact, “’M alright.” He patted Aziraphale vaguely on the back and repeated, a little more firmly, as though he knew Aziraphale hadn’t quite taken it in, “’M alright, angel.”

Oh.

Now that he looked at him properly he realised that, by some miracle or other, he rather did seem to be alright. He felt heat and colour flood his cheeks

Aziraphale felt as though he had just aged another six thousand years within the span of around six seconds.

He closed his eyes and deflated dramatically, “Oh thank-“

“Language,” Crowley intoned.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale replied, automatically.

“Fuck” Crowley groaned, shifting uncomfortably in Aziraphale’s arms, “Promise you’ll never do this to me again, angel. It’s more painful than watching you do your magic act.”

Aziraphale snorted, rather inelegantly, through his tears, and hastily wiped his nose.

Crowley frowned up at him, face scrunching, “Angel, are you crying?” he demanded.

“No!” Aziraphale cried, indignantly, “I most certainly am not.”

“You are,” Crowley crowed, with rather indecent delight, given the circumstances.

“I, I-“ Aziraphale blustered, “For God’s sake, Crowley! I thought I had just killed you! I’m sure that in my position you might be a little, well, distressed, too!”

Crowley seemed to seriously consider this for a moment. Then he said, easily, “Nah, wouldn’t be that bothered to be honest.”

“Oh shut up!” Aziraphale snapped, but with a certain level of affection.

Crowley wheezed with laughter. Then just wheezed and began hacking and spluttering in Aziraphale’s arms. Aziraphale, because he was an angel after all, patted him on the back and miracled him up a glass of water.

Aziraphale pulled him a little closer, running his fingers absently through his hair, thinking a number of decidedly unangelic thoughts about what he would like to do to the demons responsible for this whole affair.

Finally, Aziraphale decided that the universe had reached a balance between Crowley’s general well-being, and his shredded nerves. So he scooped the demon up, steered him back to his couch, deposited him there (gently), then moved towards the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Crowley demanded, something that almost sounded like fear bleeding into his words, one hand half-raised, fingers brushing at the hem of his sleeve.

“Don’t let this go to your head now, dear,” he said, “But I’ve decided you were right. We need something decidedly stronger than tea.”

He returned some time later, rather longer than it should have taken to fetch two glasses and fill them with wine, during which he composed himself as much as he could.

Crowley was still sitting where he had left him, looking only mostly dead now, as opposed to utterly.

Aziraphale gently tapped him on the shoulder with his glass, and waited patiently as he fumbled a little before taking it from him.

He took a long gulp, then considered, as Aziraphale sat primly down on the chair opposite him, and sipped his wine a little more slowly.

Aziraphale opened his mouth to comment on the vintage and the unusual flavours of this bottle of wine in particular that had been lurking in the back of his shop for quite some time now.

But Crowley said, a little thickly, “Six thousand years. Figure I’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see. ‘S no great loss really, is it?”

Aziraphale closed his eyes and bit his lip until it was painful to force himself to control his emotions.

“Crowley, I am so-“ he began, shakily.

“Don’t,” Crowley interrupted him, a bite of impatience in his voice.

“What?”

“Apologise.”

“But my dear,” Aziraphale murmurs softly, unable to stop himself, “What they’ve done to you, I-“

“Wasn’t your fault,” Crowley said, gently.

Somehow, the words didn’t sound mechanical, or knee-jerk, or forced, or even bitter. Instead, there was an aching softness to them, a warmth there has no right to be a...A deep sincerity.

Aziraphale knew, in that moment, that he had heard more truth spilled from his demon’s lips than all the angels of Heaven had ever spoken in their holy immortal lives. Or likely ever would.

And so he spoke his truth. Because fair was fair. And because he couldn’t stop the words from coming.

“It should have been me,” he whispered, hoarsely, trembling, “I should have been there. I should have been punished, too.”

Crowley frowned, frowned the same way he had that time they had both gotten extremely drunk together, around 1932, and he had asked Crowley, jokingly, how long they’d been on Earth together in seconds.

The poor dear had looked so thoroughly confused, and in the end, had broken down sobbing, saying he couldn’t do maths quickly enough because there were always more seconds adding on all the time and he could never count them all.

His face was a perfect mirror of that confusion in this moment, too.

“Good would that have done?” he demanded, finally.

Then he shook his head and taking another swig of wine, as though that would be the end of that conversation.

“I was responsible too,” Aziraphale croaked, unable to find any levity in the matter whatsoever. “Any punishment should have been shared equally between us. The burden should not have been placed entirely upon your shoulders.”

“It’s not as though you asked them to just punish me and leave you out of it. And-“ he added forcibly, voice rising along with a stern finger to silence Aziraphale. Even though he could no longer see him, he seemed to have been able to sense the impending interruption all the same. “Pretty sure I tempted you into it, technically, so you know...”

Aziraphale laughed at that. It was a hollow, bitter thing, and it echoed off all the harsh truths Heaven had carved into him over the years.

“What a mockery they have made of us,” he said, darkly, “When a demon has to tempt an angel into doing the right thing.”

He shook his head, and downed the rest of his wine. He was going to need to open another bottle soon, they were getting through it rather quickly. And with good reason.

“’M glad you’re okay,” Crowley said, so quietly, Aziraphale almost missed it.

“Pardon?” Aziraphale said, with impulsive politeness, quite sure he’d misheard.

“I’m glad that they didn’t hurt you,” Crowley repeated, more loudly this time.

Aziraphale didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply mouthed at Crowley like a stunned goldfish.

Then Crowley suddenly let out an almost hysterical little laugh, that just as quickly choked and died, rising as what he might have sworn was a muffled sob. He took another long swig of wine, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then turned a tortured face to Aziraphale. It took everything in him not to rush forwards and embrace him.

“When my lot took me, I figured your lot had come for you, too,” Crowley said, suddenly, with the inexorable forward motion of a train that has come off the rails, doesn’t know how to get back on them, and cannot stop, so must plough resolutely on and hope for the best.

“I thought that was it. We were both done. No more tricks, no more games, no more chances just- Over.”

Aziraphale stared at him, quiet, gripping his now empty wine glass so tightly he feared it might shatter. But he didn’t really care.

He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t think he could stand to hear it. But he couldn’t not. Crowley needed to say it, and he needed someone to listen, needed someone to share this burden with. And Aziraphale would not, could not turn him away when he needed him.

“All those films humans make, they always say in them that when you’re about to die, you think of all the things you should have done. All the things in your life you would have done you never did, or all the things you would have changed, but I never did.”

“What-“ Aziraphale cleared his throat and tried again, “What, what did you think of?”

Crowley raised his hollowed, empty eyes to him and said, simply, “You.”

Aziraphale nearly dropped the wine glass he was holding. Something, luck, demonic miracle, divine intervention, stopped him.

“I thought of, of all the stupid stuff. Stuff I didn’t even think would matter all that much at the time. But stuff that made me...made me happy. Made me feel like me. D’you know what I mean?”

Aziraphale nodded, then he, he remembered, and managed to rasp out, “I, I think I do.”

“Rain storms in Eden,” Crowley said, a faint smile daring to tug at the corner of his mouth, “Shakespeare in the globe. Jail cells in Paris. Ducks in St James’ park.” He swallowed, throat bobbing, and went on, more softly, “I dunno why that’s what I thought of. I dunno what good it did but...I think it was right. That at the end, it was you and me, the way it was at the start. And I guess, if the humans are right...It just shows that...I did the right thing. That, demon or not...We did the right thing.”

Aziraphale couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe, either. The fact that he didn’t, technically speaking, need to, shouldn’t be considered when determining his emotional state.

“And I figured, one way or another, however it happened, I’d never see you again,” Crowley said, his voice something that resembled more half-whisper than speech, now. “Guess I was right. Even if it didn’t happen the way I thought it would,” he said, gesturing towards his ruined eyes with a stab at black humour.

Aziraphale closed his own with despair.

“That’s the hardest part, y’know,” he mumbled, “It’s not the car, or the driving, or the humans and whatever weird shit they’ll come up with next. It’s not even my plants.. It’s you.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, with a near-hysterical little laugh of incredulity, “You’ve seen me for six thousand years. I don’t think you’ll forget what I look like it- It’s not so bad as all that, surely?” he said, with a false optimism that sounded hollow even to his ears.

“But that’s what I was most afraid of. In that moment. When it was-“ he swallowed, “When it was happening.” Aziraphale resisted the urge to leap from his chair and seize Crowley’s hand and hold it tight, as if that would stop the hurting, with great difficulty. “And I realised...I realised afterwards that I was right.”

Aziraphale stared at him. He could breathe now. But he didn’t dare to. This moment felt holy, sacred, to interrupt it with anything, even the faintest breath, would have been sacrilege.

“They were right, too,” he continued, “They knew just how to torture me. Now I’ll never get to see you again, all big eyes and flapping hands ‘cause I drive too fast. Or how pleased you look when they remember at that little cafe down the street that you don’t like your beans touching your toast, ‘cause you’ll never ask. Or that little smile on your face when you read your favourite part of your favourite book for the hundredth time or-“ he took a deep breath, as though his brain had caught up with what his mouth was saying, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue.

But then he did.

Almighty be praised. He did.

“Or the way,” he said, so softly, “The way you look whenever you look at me.”

“Crowley-“ Aziraphale began, voice strangled.

“Don’t,” Crowley interrupted him, and he sounded so broken, and so divine, all at once, that he found he couldn’t speak. “Even if I can’t ever see it again, I know, I know what I’ve seen before.” He raised his head, and somehow found Aziraphale, pinned him with that empty stare and said, “I know you, too, angel. And I know...I know how you’ve looked at me when you thought I couldn’t see. I know...Don’t I?” he breathed.

Those last words sounded like a prayer.

Crowley hadn’t prayed for six thousand years. Since before his Fall. And now here he was, metaphorically on his knees, praying for him.

And just like that, Aziraphale felt himself fall.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like damnation. It didn’t feel as though his soul was burning in the unearthly fires of Hell. It didn’t feel wrong, or traumatising, or like the death he never thought he could know as an immortal but for that.

It felt like coming home.

And so he said, soft, and gentle, and right, “Yes, my dear. You do.”

Crowley sat and stared at him with pure awe on his face. In all the years he’d known him, Aziraphale had never seen that expression before, and had never thought to see it either.

But in this moment, with adoration carved into his features as if by God herself, the candlelight gilding him with a radiant warmth, Aziraphale knew, somehow, that this was how Crowley had looked when he’d painted the stars onto the empty canvas of the night sky.

And he knew, with just as much inexplicable certainty, that that was where he belonged.

Aziraphale was never conscious of moving. He never gave his body instructions to go to Crowley. Yet suddenly, he was there, right beside him, Crowley’s face cradled gently, so gently, in his hands.

And he knew, with a deep, absolute certainty that radiated from his soul, that this was where he belonged.

How absurd, for an angel to belong with a demon. But it wasn’t absurd at all. It was right. Neither could exist without the other. That was the fundamental truth of good and evil. You couldn’t have one without the other. Two sides of the same coin, so to speak. They were both wholly necessary to the other’s existence. They had been for six thousand years and, Aziraphale felt quite certain, would continue to be for another six thousand.

The ball of his thumb traced lightly over the smooth angle of Crowley’s cheekbone, like a sculptor marvelling at his life’s greatest achievement.

And it was.

Six thousand years this moment had been in the making. For six thousand years, every breath they had drawn, every step they had taken, every word that had slipped past their lips had done so to bring them here.

They had carved this moment out from a universe that had never wanted it. With blood, and sweat, and tears, they had made it happen anyway.

Six thousand years.

Six thousand years for a single touch.

It was worth it.

Every single, interminable, ineffable second was worth it for this moment. To be able to touch him like this, skin against skin, their truths laid bare at last, their hearts held out in their hands. It felt rather as though his soul had just brushed against Crowley’s soul, in the most perfect collision since the Creation.

Aziraphale was an angel. He had been made from Heaven, made by God’s own hands, an instrument of Her will, a sliver of her own self.

But not until this moment had he truly understood the meaning of divinity.

“Angel,” Crowley murmured, sounding quite drunk, though he’d barely had a single glass of wine, “I can taste what you had for lunch right now. That better mean you’re about to kiss me.”

Aziraphale huffed out a laugh and shook his head, a smile blossoming across his lips, “You are incorrigible, you know.”

“Demon,” Crowley reminded him in a low hiss, baring his teeth in a terrible grin that immediately made Aziraphale want to kiss it off his stupid handsome face.

“Yes, you are,” Aziraphale agreed, fondly, thumb gently stroking his face. “But I am an angel, and must remember my manners. So, yes, I fully intended to kiss you, my dear, but I had to ask your permission first.”

Crowley let out a soft groan, “You have it,” he breathed, “By everything holy and damned, you have it, angel.”

So Aziraphale kissed him.

Contrary to popular belief, the world did not stand still the moment their lips met. Explosions did not take place within their chests, or their hearts, or their souls. Or anywhere else for that matter. And a choir of heavenly angels did not descend from above to serenade them, which would have been wholly inappropriate, anyway.

What did happen, was two wandering souls that had been lost for a very long time, finally found their way home.

After a long time, or, perhaps, no time at all, Aziraphale was never very sure, they drew apart.

What he was sure of was that Crowley smiled at him when they did, and said, “To us?”

And Aziraphale smiled right back and breathed, reverently, “To us,” before Crowley kissed him again.

******************************************************************************

[snowedinpodcast]

Transcript below the cut! 

Let’s Walk: Spirit Butterflies [Transcript]

[Content Warning: ghost stories, vaguely unsettling imagery like shadowy figures and death-inducing charms: no bodily or mental harm)]

「今日も雨 あの日と今を/空と空でつなぎたいの」

(Translation: Today it’s also raining; even now I want to connect that person’s sky to mine)

Let’s talk ghost stories, dudes. I’ve got a couple from mom, from her time growing up in Japan, and … they make me feel a kind of way. They remind me how … my agnostic ass does enjoy some chthonic, earthy spiritualism. 

I guess a quick prelude is in order before we get into the, into the meat of things. I don’t tie myself to any one faith or another. My dad is a Zen Buddhist. My mom is … casually Shinto? There aren’t any strict religious traditions that we really do in regards to either of my parents’ choice of faith. We do Christmas kind of superficially, for the presents and for the fun of it, not so much for the Biblical significance … so that’s my background. 

What I do like is places and objects that feel like they have a kind of agency—some sort of presence that is beyond my understanding, as a human. I don’t need to know if it’s the case or not, I don’t even know if I’d be able to know if it was the case or not, I just like feeling that way. I like liminal spaces, places where the normal bustling activity you expect is gone, and so everything feels alien and strange: like an overpass at two in the morning. There’s still some cars—which feels strange, ‘cause it’s two in the morning, where could you people possibly be going?—and yet, there’s so few cars compared to what you’re used to in the daytime that … you can hear the individual hums of each car as they go by. And it’s intimacy is what it is, you’re too close to something you’re not normally close to or aware of in that way. I like that. I like intimacy with places and with objects. I like picking up a skeleton key in an antique store and feeling the heft of it … and then looking at the price tag and seeing that it’s $4.00 and I am absolutely too cheap to pay that for a single key, no matter how pretty it is!

I do like thrifted clothes, though and that’s also part of it: I like the story that this object has, I like that it’s outlasted me already and it will probably outlast me if I take good care of it. And again, it’s not about knowing, I don’t need to know who owned it previously, I just like the wondering, I just like reaching out into this nebulous life-before-me … and sitting with it. Life outside of me. Life beyond me. 

So that’s the part of ghost stories that I like so much. And—I guess maybe ghost stories isn’t entirely fair. That’s what I like about … about unexplained, natural moments. Chthonic earth magic! Yeah, let’s just call it chthonic earth magic, sounds good. It’s kinda redundant because “chthonic” means of the earth, so. Apparently, also, “occult” really just means of nature: magic that is tied into naturalness. Occult has gained a connotation with the demonic and the sinister but it includes more than just that. 

‘Kay, I think it’s story time. I’m going to give you … three stories. Two are short, one is long. 

First story: My mom’s mom, her grandma—no! Her mom, my grandma—Obaasan—told her that if you notice a shadowy shape behind a tree, behind a building, lingering around you, you should think, inside your head, that you and this shape are of different worlds and there is nothing you can do to help it … and you leave it alone. This didn’t really hit that hard for my mom until the day in elementary school or middle school when she was out at recess, out in the schoolyard, and she did sense a shadowy humanoid figure ... and she took her mom’s advice and didn’t interact with it. [Sigh].

I can’t say I’ve had any experiences like that, but there is a little stone lantern sculpture thing that we have in our front yard. It has a hole that runs right through the center of the main lantern part. It almost looks like a little house, actually, ‘cause there’s a cylindrical piece that is the main body of the lantern and then a heavy, straw-triangle-hat-shaped stone piece that fits into that cylindrical body—so I always called it “the spirit house.” And I remember one summer I just left bundles of flowers in that hole through the middle because it just felt like a nice thing to do for whatever creature was living in it—‘cause I guess I just felt like a thing might be living in it and it’d be nice to give it things? And this freaked my mom out. She didn’t like that at all. She said not to look through the hole, don’t try to interact with the thing, stop leaving it gifts. Of course, I kept doing it, and nothing happened to me, but I remember … I remember feeling distinctly, one day, that there wasn’t a thing there anymore. And so I stopped giving it flowers. Or maybe I just got tired of it, who knows, but yeah. Yeah! 

Occult stuff doesn’t happen to me, I really wish it would. Come mess with me, demons, I invite you. I may live to regret that … that invitation. 

Second story. My mom was hanging out with a bunch of friends from school, they went to one of the friend's houses and played hide and seek, played card games, Karuta, what kids do. And at some point they noticed there was one more child than originally gathered at the house. My mom took into account the advice of her mom and she didn’t point this out, she just waited it out, continued to play with her friends and this new mystery child who no one could quite identify. And then at the end of the, the playdate, when everyone went home, there was the right amount of children in the house … same number as before. 

Third story. This was prompted by me telling my mom about the drive home from seeing Wonder Woman at a drive-in theatre a state away. I took on the driving, uh, two of my friends—we’ll call them H and K—came along. Um, because we still live in pandemic times, we all wore masks, and we kept our gathering to a small number, just the three of us, so. So it was obviously not the safest but it was, it was within covid19 safety regulations and it’d been a while since any of us had hung out, so … you do what you do. You make do. And it was really fun. It was great. They served food at the venue so we didn't have to worry too much about bringing snacks. We’d all seen Wonder Woman before, so we got to make snide comments and jokes and gush about how hot the characters were the whole time [laugh]. It was, it was just, it was so exciting. We also talked about Greek mythology—my buddy H is big into that stuff, and Ares plays a significant role in this film, so y’know. Good times. 

On that drive home, I was on a main road and got six or seven or eight green lights in a row. It was unusual. It wasn’t … occult-y … but it was unusual, and by the third light that remained green as I sailed beneath it with my friends beside me … I started bowing my head a little bit as we came up to the next light, and the next light, and the next. They kept letting me through, so it felt ritualistic. But not dangerous, it felt … interesting. When I finally hit a red light it was just as I was in the lane to make a left turn into a major highway, so it felt like the natural end of that road. I was moving from one path to another, and so I would’ve had to slow down or stop anyway. 

When I told my mom about this, she told me about the trips in the taxi to and from the summer house where her extended family members gathered. These weren’t fun trips for her, there was a bunch of drama [laugh] on my mom’s side of the family. Drama is putting it pretty lightly, um … her mother was married to the first son of the family and so there were pretty heavy expectations put on her and she was expected to do a bunch of maternal caretaking for free and to not complain about it. And she was looked down upon by other members of the family. Not entirely sure why—maybe it was because my grandma’s family’s status wasn’t the same as the status of the family of the guy she married, but, either way, from what I understand, there was significant mistreatment and emotional abuse and it wasn’t a good time. 

My mom had a sense of that, the other cousins kind of singled her and her older sister out. The, the patriarch of the family, I think her grandfather, would pick a child and question them at mealtimes and my mom did not like that pressure. He was a difficult man to read and she just didn’t know what he wanted and she ... [sigh] it was a source of stress for her, she wasn’t a fan. So she remembers these trips as unhappy. She remembers knowing she’d have to eat boiling hot noodles in the sweltering, humid summers of Japan because noodles were the family patriarch’s favorite dish. Just general unpleasantries. 

At least twice—maybe more?—on the drives to this summer house, the taxi driver would seem to be lost. It was like the path turned into a loop. More time than it should’ve taken to reach the summer house would go by. And then my mom would notice that her older sister was squeezing her hand. She would look over, and her older sister would tell her, quietly, that she’d seen the same tree multiple times. This struck my mom as kinda strange ‘cause she would look out the window and just see a blur of trunks, no singular tree discernible amongst the swath of them, but her sister said what she said and eventually the taxi driver would pull over and get out of the car to do some small activity. Maybe go have a smoke, maybe circle the car a little bit and mutter. Then they would get back in the car, get back on the road, and the path would sort itself out. They’d get to the house late and the taxi driver would offer a reduced rate to make up for the trouble. 

My mom says she doesn’t remember where she’d heard this, but this is what she told me about this phenomenon: when you find yourself on a path that turns into a loop, you may see an inn. That inn will have a door, and behind that door will be a long hallway that doesn’t have anybody in it. You should not pull over into the parking lot of this inn, you should not knock on the door—not for food, not for water, not for directions, not for anything—and you should definitely not go in. What you’re supposed to do is find a place to stop, to break the cycle, to get off the road. Take a little break, exit your vehicle if you have to, don’t stray far. Then get back in and you will find the path takes you where it’s supposed to take you. 

I asked her what deity or creature is responsible for this driving diversion and she says she doesn’t know. It’s all very mysterious. Chthf—[laughs]. Chthonic earth magic really be that way. 

So yeah. Now that we’re on the ghost topic, the spiritualism topic, I did think of something. I wish more occult-y stuff happened to me, that would be exciting, make me a believer, why don’t you—again, making invitations I may live to regret [laughs]. But there is something I take notice of every so often. It hasn’t happened for a long time, but, especially back when I was in Japanese school—which I did from kindergarten … no, from preschool, up through … no, from kindergarten up through the end of middle school, I’m pretty sure—we would have field day at least once a year. Granted, Japanese school was a four-hour session every Saturday, it wasn’t after school every day for me, but it was an occurrence, and I wasn’t always a fan of it because why do I have to have an extra day of school when my friends get to have two days of weekend? So there were ups and downs and there were times I was grateful for it and times I was less grateful for it … and overall that shakes out to a net positive, I guess; thanks parents, thanks for pushing me. I’m glad I have a basic third-grader’s amount of Japanese vocabulary and sentence structure. That’s all I retained but it’s better than nothing. 

Anyway, we had field day every year, I remember being in the indoor gym—this is important—being in the indoor gym, digging through my backpack, pushed up against all the other backpacks at the side of the gymnasium, and seeing a flicker of something out of the corner of my eye? It moved the way a butterfly does, a sort of uncertain hover, very quick and noncommittal. I don’t remember what color it was. I think it might’ve been gray. But I couldn’t look at it because someone called my name—one of my friends—and I looked over at them and they were telling me it’s time to line up to go do one of the, one of the sports day activities. Tie your hitai-ate around your head already—tie the strip of cloth that’s red on one side, white on the other, the two colors of the Japanese flag and the two teams that you could be placed on to either one of for field day activities—and, uh, get your butt over here already, man. [Note: The term for this cloth is actually “hachimaki”; “hitai-ate” refers to a forehead-tie from the Naruto manga and anime. My bad!]

I looked back where I thought I saw a flutter, obviously nothing was there, and I went and did field day. This happened also at an outdoor field day. Some years before or after, again, I was sitting somewhere, on the grass I think, on the hilly part of the courtyard, and I remember seeing a flutter and I think, this time, it was white … I’ve seen grey flutters, black flutters, and white flutters. I think most often white … probably because it’s light shifting from a door that moves, but you know, who knows. But yeah, I remember telling my mom about these too; I tend to, whenever anything vaguely interesting that is possibly of a spiritual nature happens, and I think she was puzzled about them? She didn’t seem to be concerned, she didn’t seem to be thrilled. 

But yeah. Yeah. There is a very tenuous thread that weaves my whole life together and it is various shades of spirit butterflies, I guess. If that’s really so, the universe is in good hands. Good paws … good feet? Good wings? 

[ Hi, I’m here to break the no-edits rule that this podcast promised you [laughs]. I have one more thought to add to this meditation. When I was 10 years old, maybe, on a trip to Japan to the Inari shrine, specifically, I was “called” into the woods—supposedly—by the Inari god. The fox god. The Trickster god. That is how my mom remembers this, that is how she told it to my grandma, who was as concerned as my mom was. 

I don’t remember it this way. I remember seeing a path in the bamboo shoots and just thinking it was cool and trodden on but not as much as the main path … so I should follow it. See where it goes. Why not? The wind whistled past me as I was running down, and then I heard my mom yell, and I guess she seemed farther away than I thought I had managed to get by that point. But I turned around, and I went back to her, and she was upset. 

Having talked to her about this more over the years, she’s since revealed that there’s supposedly a cart that sells dark talismans off the beaten path of the Inari shrine. Normally, at most shrines, you will be able to purchase various talismans for good health, for success, for … good romance, for positive studying results. But then this other cart, which is harder to get too and off to the side, sells bad luck totems and wishes for death upon individuals of your choosing … talismans of that nature. So when I thought I was running down any old little path, my mom thought I was being called to the dark cart. [Laugh]. So I guess, in retrospect, I see why that was troubling to her. 

Another thing about the Inari shrine is that you can buy little pieces of paper that are cut in the shape of a fox and they tell you … your fortune, pretty much? Yeah. You don’t get to see what it says until you’ve bought one, obviously, there’s a container full of them, you pay, you pick one out. And we did them, my mom got ... I think middle luck, or something? I think my dad might’ve gotten bad luck, or one step above bad luck. But I got big luck … I got the, the best option they have in there, and that struck my mom as strange because apparently Inari-san doesn’t really favor anyone? Or if they do, their favor is fickle, because they’re a trickster god. They just, they just like watching things burn. They don’t have loyalties ... to people. We’re just little dolls to them that they can maneuver for fun. ]

Alright, well, this has been fun. Thank you for that. Always good to talk to you. I’ll catch you on the next. 

[segadores-y-soldados]

Overwatch: Apocalypse Now

TL;DR: Overwatch is slowly building a world of apocalypses and horror stories through references to mythology, literature, and pop culture.  Through these, it continues a cautionary tale of “humanity’s greatest flaw is its own ambitious arrogance,” the same arrogance which caused Overwatch to fall.  It has also presented a few different routes of “hope” to try and break the cycle.

More stuff to read, if you want: Soldier: 76 Fact Sheet, References, and Some Analyses Reaper Art Assets Reaper References  Reaper and Soldier: American Cultural References Ana as the source of conflict

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” - Genesis 11:3 - 4

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Like much of the still-growing city, the massive tower at the center of Oasis is still under construction and has no estimated completion date. Though the current structure is already one of the world's tallest skyscrapers, the final plans call for it to extend even further, easily becoming the world's tallest freestanding building. Not much is known about the tower's purpose, other than it ties into the city's massive data gathering and computational efforts. - Oasis Travel Tips

In the hype of Oasis dropping and the ever wonderful jump-pad, many people missed the very quiet and almost hidden lore about the city that was simultaneously released by Blizzard.  The “Oasis Travel Tips” revealed that the “city of science” was controlled by a group of ministries governed by “a brilliant collective of eight of the world's leading scientists.”  Among the lore dropped was the revelation that the Gardens map was intended to evoke the Hanging Gardens of Babylon -

And that “the tower” in the distance was a clear homage to The Tower of Babel.

For those of you who are not familiar with the story of The Tower of Babel, it is a tale from Genesis that explains why there are so many languages.  In the story, all of humanity shared one language, and as means of this communication, began to build a tower to reach the heavens and God Himself.  When God saw what humanity was doing, He destroyed the tower and scattered the people, giving them different languages so that they could not perform such a feat again.  The lesson here is that the arrogance of humanity led them to believe they could build something as impressive as God Himself (or so some say).

While it is difficult to detangle The Tower of Babel from its religious connotations, the emphasis here is that “one should not be so arrogant” or the “higher powers that be” will bring their wrath upon you.

Which is precisely the overarching story that Overwatch’s lore is building. I’ve been wondering for some time how to structure all these disparate pieces of lore into something that connects to the major themes of “Who watches the Watchmen?”, “History repeats itself,” and “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” but with Uprising, we finally have a lot more tangible proof that the “grand theme” of Overwatch’s lore - both the “canon” lore outside of the game, and numerous “in-game” references - are building a new version of an age-old tale of the apocalypse and “the ancient horrors” lurking just beyond human perception.  These “larger forces” are dropped through mythology and religious references, but also a number of pop culture and “horror story” references that litter the game.  I’ve tried to collect the majority of them here. But to start with, we need to cover some background info.

1. The Nameless City of Oasis

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die."

I’m not gonna claim to be any authority on Lovecraft, but any Lovecraft or Eldritch horror fan should look at Oasis with a slight skepticism.  Already we have references to the Tower of Babel with the map, and there are numerous in-game lines that imply that something vaguely sinister is going on beneath the shiny surface of the city.

Junkrat: “This place is a bit posh for me…” Symmetra: “The Vishkar Corporation would love to have a presence here.” Zenyatta: “What a fascinating place!  Can science alone unlock the path to enlightenment?”

The most important one, however, is this set (I cannot find the direct quotes, so I’m basing this off memory but):

Sombra: “What are we doing here?” Reaper: “We’re here to see an old friend.”

Now this is extremely interesting.  One of the prevailing fan theories is that Angela “Mercy” Ziegler may have connections to Oasis - she is depicted in the Recall short as being located somewhere in the Middle East, particularly somewhere in present-day Iraq, which is where “the city of Oasis” is located.  In the Reflections comic, she is shown to be working on some sort of “active field duty” in a tent that is brightly-lit.  In the “We Are Overwatch” short, she rescues a young girl on the edge of a large city with multiple skyscrapers in the background.

I know there is already speculation that, if Mercy is in fact located in Oasis, Reaper is “out for her.”  Another version of the theory goes that Reaper is coming to see her to ask her for help with his current state of existence (note that I am not a fan of the “Mercy botched saving Reaper” theory because that has been effectively debunked by Chu).

Because if there is anyone capable of helping Reaper restore himself, it would be “the doctor of death herself,” Angela Ziegler.

We know from Dragons, Recall, Hero, and the Museum Heist that 1) ultimates such as the Dragons and Tactical Visor are canon, 2) Reaper is capable of transforming himself into smoke, 3) Winston’s in-game abilities - including his Rage ultimate - are canon.  At the moment, there is no reason to believe that Mercy’s Resurrection ultimate is not canon.  People will no doubt argue that I’m making a leap of logic here, but until confirmed otherwise, I’d say it’s likely that all Ultimates are canon.

And therefore this means that Mercy knows how to revive the dead.

More than anything, this means that if Mercy is associated with Oasis, that we should be giving a solid, hard look at what exactly this implies for lore.  I’m not saying that Oasis “having Lovecraftian connotations is 100% canon,” but rather it is important to note that the types of references a story builds for itself almost certainly influences the type of story it wants to portray.  The fact that Mercy has not one, but multiple skins that are related to “raising the dead in morally-ambiguous ways” is telling.  She has two Valkyrie skins, the Imp and Devil skins, and the Witch skin (which literally carries “a book of life” on her).

Again, I already know these skins aren’t canon.  That’s beside the point.  The point here is that all of this combined creates a very ambiguous tone about Mercy and Oasis - the undercurrents of mistrust, the sensation that “something lurks in the city,” the feeling that “humanity is playing with forces it cannot control,” the idea that “a doctor who defies death” lives and works there, the idea that the “in-game embodiment of Death Himself” is going there to “visit an old friend.”  These are all things that build an eerie sense of foreboding.

Exactly as Lovecraft would have wanted it.

Lovecraft’s Nameless City builds the groundwork “lore” for his Cthulhu mythology.  The “nameless city” is a city in the Arabian desert, older than Babylon, implied to have been “lost” to the ages as humanity began to conquer the earth.  The ancient race that built the city retreated underground, where they continued their worship of the Great Old Ones.  The human protagonist of The Nameless City wanders deeper and deeper until he is beset by the presence of the ancient race and some form of the Great Old Ones, ostensibly for “intruding on a realm he had no right to access.”

“I think I screamed frantically near the last—I was almost mad—but if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling wind-wraiths. I tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown world. Finally reason must have wholly snapped, for I fell to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the nameless city:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver in the night-wind till oblivion—or worse—claims me. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the thing—too far beyond all the ideas of man to be believed except in the silent damnable small hours when one cannot sleep.”

Here again we have a reference that “humanity is toying with forces it cannot hope to control” - time and death, an understanding of the universe much larger than “simple mortal sentience” can bear.  Above all else, The Nameless City is where the author of Lovecraft’s mythological Necronomicon first begins writing the book, which originally has an Arabic title of “Al Azif,” loosely translated by Lovecraft himself as “that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons.”

Demons being jinn/djinn, or “genies.”   And there is one character in Overwatch who has a Djinn skin.  

2. God Programs and Null Sector

It always struck me as odd that Zenyatta has not one, but four mythology references that are NOT Tibetan or Nepalese in the slightest.  In fact, he has two Djinn-based skins and two Egyptian skins (Ra and Sunyatta) which always seemed better suited to Ana or Pharah.  Zenyatta did not get a Tibetan skin until the Halloween special, where he got a death-based skin with a Tibetan skull cap (again - I get this is not canon, but it is telling that his Halloween reference was to skull artwork).  I do not doubt that Zenyatta’s skins - much like the other skins in the game - are simply following “a rule of cool” but like Mercy’s skins, they should give us some pause.  In mythology, the djinn are trickster-type creatures that can span a range of morality (again, very similar to Mercy’s Valkyrie and Witch skins), and their whimsical natures certainly match Zenyatta’s, even if their origin is a bit far from Nepal.  

The Ra and Sunyatta skins, however, are really interesting when you consider the fact that the only “canon” God Program currently revealed is Anubis.  

For those of you that don’t know, Anubis is featured in Pharah’s comic “Mission Statement,” where it is revealed to be a supercomputer Omnic dubbed “a God Program” that is capable of mind-controlling other Omnics.  

Which, you know, is the kind of stuff that Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones are capable of doing.  

What is not stated outright in the Mission Statement comic, but is instead implied (once again, by Reaper) in Old Soldiers and in other in-game dialogue, is that Helix Securities is somehow “messing around” with “something beyond their control” by doing strange and possibly unethical experiments on Anubis, and that Anubis “lashed out” against them (causing Helix to send in Pharah’s Raptora squad to put it down).  

The only other characters to have Egyptian mythology skins are Pharah herself (shockingly called “Anubis”) and her mother Ana (“Horus”).  It is implied in Old Soldiers that Ana is attempting to “find out” what happened in Mission Statement through a Talon associate Harkim (the man Reaper speaks to).  

So what does this mean?

Once again, humanity is playing with forces much larger than itself - in this case, a literal supercomputer that rivals “gods” - and the effects of this trickle down all the way to Pharah, Ana, and Reaper, who have to struggle with the aftermath of this “small scale disaster.”  Only unlike Oasis, where a lot of the “inferences” are “non-canon” or simply implied, Mission Statement is canon to the overarching lore.  While the “Egyptian god skins” are non necessarily canon, we can see that Blizzard is pulling in characters like Pharah, Ana, and Zenyatta into a shared “background mythos,” much like Mercy and Oasis.  

And this has direct implications on Uprising’s lore and background.  

In the Uprising comic, we see that Null Sector arises from pushback against anti-Omnic sentiments in London, which city officials and Mondatta were trying to rectify when Null Sector attacked.  Overwatch - more specifically, Commander Jack Morrison and his fellow leaders Ana Amari and Gabriel Reyes - are put in a position where they are forced to make a difficult choice: stand on the sidelines and watch the situation deteriorate even further, or take action and risk getting in further international trouble with their Director and the rest of the world’s governments.  As most people know, they do the latter.  

“Canon Overwatch lore” shows that a team of four - Reinhardt, Mercy, Tracer, and Torbjorn - go into King’s Row and deliver a bomb before taking down Null Sector’s main base and freeing the hostages.  But what is extremely interesting are a number of the new interactions - both canon and non-canon - that can be found in the mode.

(Note that most of these are based on memory):

1. A Torbjorn-Tracer interaction in which Tracer protests that “Not all Omnics are like this.”  Torbjorn responds along the lines of “Look around - this has happened before and this will happen again!”  He seems to be implying that the normal King’s Row map - in which a group of attackers is trying to push an EMP to the Power Plant to disable “hostile Omnic forces” - is a result of the consequences of the events of Uprising, and even that Null Sector may return in the future.  However, this also builds on the old adage of “history repeats itself” which once again is a major thematic issue of Overwatch.  

2. Null Sector troopers will say the lines of “Error: Faulty Programming” when Zenyatta’s discord orb is placed on them in All Heroes mode.   3. Orisa has a new voiceline when being revived where she says “I think I saw the Iris.”  

The last two are super fascinating because we have two new ideas being presented here.  The first is that Zenyatta’s discord orb operates by disrupting mental or computational abilities and works by “disorienting” enemies, allowing allies to target them in their “mentally weakened state.”  Even though this interaction is not canon, it once again builds on the idea of mind control/mind effect that Anubis and Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones have.  Zenyatta’s standard lines about the ability - “Bask in the shadow of doubt.” “Darkness falls.” “You are your own worst enemy.” “There is disquiet in your soul.” - are among some of the most ominous and sinister lines in the game.  With this, Zenyatta’s ties to the “background mythos” of “uncontrollable chaos” lurking at the edges of Overwatch’s fictional world get much stronger, especially now that it’s shown he can perform these same abilities on other Omnics.  

Orisa’s new voiceline is extra telling because previously it was implied that “only enlightened Omnics” could see the entity known as “The Iris,” but now a “one month old” Omnic with limited experiences in the world has implied that she has seen it upon her death and “resurrection” (once again, we should be thinking of all the shady stuff about Mercy here).  Since Bastion does not have the ability to speak any known human language (oh look, another lowkey Babel reference), Orisa is now the third Omnic character to confirm the existence of the Iris outside of Zenyatta and Mondatta.  

3. Gazing into the abyss - Sombra, The Eye Conspiracy, and the Popol Vuh

I know that other people have already put forward the idea that the Eye featured at the center of Sombra’s conspiracy web is “the Iris” - personally, I’m not a big fan of the idea but I want to examine it because the motif of “eyes” is recurring in Overwatch.  We have, at a glance (heh): 1. Ana and Pharah both having “eyes of Horus” tattoos.

2. Ana, Reinhardt, and Torbjorn are all missing eyes.

3. Soldier: 76 with his “enhanced vision” thanks to Tactical Visor.

4. Widowmaker’s “multi-view” camera headgear.

5. Hanzo’s “eyes of the dragon.”

6. Zenyatta’s Iris references.  

7. Winston and Mei both wear glasses (and reference it).

8. Sombra’s Eye conspiracy.

9. Orisa’s new voiceline about the Iris.

10. Multiple characters in masks or headgear that obscure their eyes.

11. McCree’s “Deadeye” ultimate.

12. The literal name of “Overwatch.”

I’ve probably missed some, but in any case, the associated motifs of eyes/vision/watching things is constant and ubiquitous in Overwatch (even down to the name of the game itself), which wraps about around to the very blunt and obvious “Who watches the Watchmen” theme that the series has going on.  With Uprising, we have the implied idea that “Overwatch has steadily overgrown its original parameters and started acting as ‘world police’ for justice and assistance.”  It may mean well, but ultimately, Overwatch is directly told by Director Petras, the UK government, and public protests (shown on the news blurbs) that “its oversight and protections” are no longer wanted or needed, even if its intentions are good and pure.  

It is not surprising then, that the idea of Overwatch “becoming too ambitious - even with good intentions” brought down the “wrath” of something even larger than it, something with the ability to move forces such as Talon, LumériCo, Volskaya, etc.  

Something that “watches” the “Overwatchmen.”  

Personally, I think the idea that the Eye Conspiracy being the same as The Iris is a little on-the-nose, especially since a lot of the “background mythos” is a series of obscure references that require semi-inane “connecting the dots” to find (am I self-depreciating here?  Yes), but it is a promising theory, especially with the new stuff surround Null Sector, Zenyatta, and Orisa.  So while I don’t want to talk to much about “what the Eye Conspiracy could be,” I do want to get into a little bit of “background mythos” around Sombra -

Because it too involves “deaths that cannot die.”  

Dorado itself was rather blindly (hah) designed by the Overwatch team who, in their haste to make a “bright, colorful village map,” drew references from an Italian city by the sea (gj guys, way to double-check your sources).  But the LumériCo power plant was almost certainly designed based on the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant, which exists in almost the exact same location as Dorado’s maps (note that the in-game map within the LumériCo appears to be incorrect, as the Uprising map confirms that Dorado is supposed to be further south on the Gulf of Mexico).  More than anything else, the LumériCo power plants are designed to evoke the pyramids of Aztec and Mayan design.  These were massive stone builds of ritual, political, and social power that were meant to mimic the mountains that gods such as the Feathered Serpent, Tlaloc/Chaac, and Huitzilopochtli were believed to live on.  They were also meant to be displays of power and regality by various kings, queens, and rulers.  

So like the Temple of Anubis, the LumériCo power plant is a remixing of “real world mythologies” with the dev team’s “vision of the future,” a vision where humanity celebrates its diversity and the beauty of its multitude of ideas and histories with a “futuristic twist.”  

But what it also implies is that Portero - the CEO of LumériCo - is imposing himself as a psuedo-ruler in Mexico.  

And that’s not just me “reading the inferences” like with Oasis or Mercy.  This is outright what Sombra calls him in the Sombra ARG.

“Long live the King!

“The King Guillermo Portero of LumériCo invites cordially, his loyal servants, to participate in his crowning event and to celebrate his infinite greed and treason toward the people of México. We gave coordinated the publication of info that demonstrates that Portero is a viper, that have for a long time ripoff the riches of our country for his own wealth. He has corrupted our government, turned our sisters and brothers into beggars, and he won’t stop until controlling the whole country under his dominance. But we, Los Muertos, won’t tolerate the celebration of his reign of corruption. We’ll demonstrate to our new conquistadores (conquerors) who will take the reins of the future of our country! On November 1st, we’ll dethrone the King Viper and we’ll celebrate the recovery of our home.”

Surrounding Sombra and Los Muertos is a mythos of revolution and resistance, notably against a “new world oligarchy” of which Sombra perceives Portero to be “only the start.”  In Infiltration we see her take on Katya Volskaya through blackmail and “trickery,” and in her Origins video, Sombra outright declares war on “The Eye Conspiracy.”

“I’ll find out who really runs the world.  I’ll find their weaknesses and how to exploit them.  And when I do - I’ll be the one pulling the strings.”  

Whether intentional or not, Sombra’s arching story and its motifs parallels one of the major Mayan mythologies - the Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh.  The Hero Twins are symbols of life and death, war and peace, day and night.  In the most famous version of their adventures, the Hero Twins take on the lords of Xibalba (the underworld) and “beat them at their own games” using information, trickery, and cunning.  In some versions of the myth, they go on to become the Sun and the Moon, and watch over the world for the rest of eternity.  

We have seen Sombra challenge “the reign” of Portero and through her leaks, she forced him to resign under public humiliation.  We have seen her start to make a move against Volskaya Industries.  And we know, from her interactions with Reaper, that she is semi-aware that “something is going on with someone in Oasis.”  Michael Chu has stated that Sombra’s interactions with Reaper are canon, and therefore, “the shadow” and “Death himself” are relatively close (as implied by the “you don’t mind if I call you Gabe, do you?”/”stick to the mission” interaction).  

Interesting here too, again whether intentional or not, is the idea that figures who represent or are associated with Death - Sombra, Los Muertos, Reaper, Null Sector, Zenyatta, Anubis, Mercy - are “pushing back” against much larger powers, resisting against those who “watch the Overwatchmen,” and trying to reclaim power.  

4. I’m not the one with the statue.

Before there was Lovecraft, before the Nameless City, before the Cthulhu mythos, there was Shelley’s Ozymandias.

“I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Surprise, surprise - a Very Important Statue of a Very Important Character in Overwatch got referenced in Uprising.  Surprise, surprise - this same statue was depicted from The Very Beginning in the Museum Heist short, before Soldier: 76/Jack Morrison had even been revealed as a character.  

Surprise, surprise - this very same statue is implied to have been blown up in the Swiss Base explosion (you can actually see a “trunkless leg” in the Soldier: 76 Origins video).

And - surprise, surprise - Ozymandias is the “superhero alter-ego name” of Adrian Viedt in Watchmen, the “true antagonist” of the story and whose jaded, misguided morals designs an “impending disaster” in order to try and force humanity to unite against it.  

“Before Manhattan leaves to create life in another galaxy, Veidt asks him if he "did the right thing in the end". Manhattan replies that "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends", leaving Veidt in doubt about how long the peace will last.”

In Watchmen, there are constant themes of “history repeats itself” and “humanity’s arrogance and desire for personal short-term satisfaction outweigh idealism and hope for long-term peace and prosperity.”  And of course the ever prevalent theme of “Who watches the Watchmen?”

And since Overwatch straight up rips off Watchmen, it’s not surprising at all that these major themes have worked themselves into the “background mythos” and outright lore of the game, its characters, and its world.  Of course, Overwatch attempts to portray its version of Ozymandias - Jack Morrison/Soldier: 76 - in a more...morally acceptable light, framing his decisions as “doing the right thing but ultimately sacrificing his ‘empire’ for it.”  If anything, Uprising shows Morrison as a character “setting out on the right track, but ultimately brought down by the corruption of the larger forces in the world - the conspiracy that invades his organization, that seemingly ‘brings down and blinds (hah) his friends Ana and Gabriel,’ and that literally attempts to kill him.”

Of course, when you read between the lines of the Uprising comic, we can see that “the rest of the world” has begun to perceive Overwatch a rather different way - as a policing force that has started to overstep its bounds, impose its ambitions of “peace” upon the world “through means of trickery and deceit (Blackwatch) and even outright control methods (Overwatch Strike Team),” and aims to “reach for the impossible.”

And so we come to the idea of “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Much like the Tower of Babel, much like Mission Statement, much like the Sombra ARG, we have a recurring “background story” where “the larger powers that be” are fighting (from their perspective) to “keep humanity in its rightful place,” to restrict and lay low its ambitions and “arrogance,” to show that - no matter how well-meaning - overstepping one’s bounds will result in disaster and strife.  If Overwatch could not achieve global peace “through its Strike Teams and Blackwatch,” then how can anyone else?  

If the Ozymandias of the poem could not maintain his empire and his power, if even Time Itself brought him down and ruined “his works,” if even Time Itself could wear down on the Nameless City, if even after twenty to thirty years of hard work for peace could not solidify Overwatch’s worth in the world -

Then what will defy Time Itself?  

What will break the cycle of history repeating itself?  

Overwatch has set up a few “routes” - all of them paralleling each other - out of this “background mythos of endless horror and despair” it has built for itself.  

The first is Recalled Overwatch - the “Neutral/Chaotic Good” route.  In this Route, Winston and Tracer have begun to rebuild the fallen Overwatch from the rubble, in direct defiance of the Petras Act.  We know that, in due time, Genji attempts to join them (after Dragons), and that he invites Hanzo along.  Other agents who receive the Recall notice are Mercy, McCree, Reinhardt, and Torbjorn.  This is the route that will “do things the right way this time,” where “the darkness” is fought back with “the light,” where “discord and disquiet” are overcome by “harmony and tranquility.”  The uncertainty here is that there is nothing which prevents this route from repeating the same history as its predecessor.  

The second is the Old Soldiers - the “True Neutral/Chaotic Neutral” route.  In this route, we have Soldier: 76 and Ana setting off on their own, looking for “answers” to the “war that never ends.”  What exactly Soldier and Ana are looking for is unknown - arguably, they’re looking for a way to bring down the conspiracy that ended Overwatch, but this is never stated outright.  The problem with this route is that since there’s only two of them, they may never find what they are looking for.

The third route is the “Even Death may die” - the “True Neutral/Chaotic Evil” route.  This is the route that, in my opinion, is by far the most interesting.  It is the route that follows Sombra, Reaper, and Widowmaker.  We know for certain that Sombra is out to find and control “the larger forces that really run the world,” and arguably Reaper “may be in on this plan.”  Widowmaker’s role in this is uncertain.  This is the route that probably parallels the Hero Twins - descending into “the underworld” to fight “the Lords of Death” with tricks, cunning, and intelligence, besting them at their own games.  This is the route that would counter “whatever Great Old Ones exist” in Overwatch’s world with their own abilities - Sombra’s hacking and systems, Reaper’s inability to die, and (if she’s part of it) Widowmaker’s sniping abilities.  The issue with this route is that there is nothing preventing these individuals from being “corrupted” by the same forces that “corrupted” the Eye Conspiracy and led to the fall of Overwatch.

One thing I want to stress is that none of these routes are necessarily “morally or ethically correct.”

After all -

It depends on how you see it.  

There is a lot here for the development team to play with.  It’s taken them quite a lot of time to get their feet on the ground, but now that they have an increasingly solid foundation to work on, they can build their bizarre and beautiful world however they want, with increasingly interesting and oddball references.  With Uprising, we got stuff as wonderfully whimsical as the Selfie and Baby highlight intros, the Contra sprays, the Null Sector skins, etc, but we also got stuff as eerie and surreal as the Zenyatta discord orb lines, Orisa’s “Was that the Iris?” line, the strong implication of Null Sector using reprogramming to make Bastions and OR-14s fight against their will, and Torbjorn’s lines of “this has happened before and it will happen again.”  

What the Overwatch team is building here is a series of “range of canon” background mythologies (some that are “non-canon but merely background white noise that colors how the players view the world,” to “these are kinda sorta canon and you should be paying attention to how we use these references,” to “these are outright canon and we will be using them blatantly for whatever we want”) that develop the world in a set of unique ways.  Even for the stuff that “isn’t canon,” it still exists in the game and it still tints how players interact with the characters, their personalities, and their story arcs.  Reaper’s Mariachi skins and Zenyatta’s Djinn skins may never matter “in the overall story,” but they still show small “slices” of personality that reveal something new about them.  Similarly, Zenyatta’s lines about his discord orb may never “make it to canon,” but they still demonstrate that “something dark” lurks within them.  

And this is, arguably, both the strength and weakness of this style of storytelling: anything and everything is open and available for use.  You can design a world where a map references the Tower of Babel and more or less imply that “the doctor who defies death” lives there, but you can change this at the drop of a hat.  You can create a robot monk whose abilities rely on amplifying “the disquiet” in other characters’ souls, but then say that his statements on these abilities are not “canon.” You can craft a narrative surrounding three old comrades who have had a major falling out and then leave massive gaps in the explanation for this problem.  You gain freedom, flexibility, and openness in exchange for lore that stands on a foundation as steady as shifting sands.  

So yes, I know that like half of this essay or whatever “isn’t canon.”  But if Mercy’s Witch skin has impacted how you view her, or knowledge of Watchmen has impacted how you understand Overwatch as a whole, or hearing Orisa’s voiceline about the Iris has changed your perception of it, then does it matter “how canon” it is?

If it has impacted how you see it

Then it has already influenced how you interpret it.  

---------

This doesn’t even BEGIN to cover all the apocalypse references made by characters like Roadhog, Junkrat, Ana, Reaper, etc.  There are, frankly, a massive amount of voicelines that - once again - shade how the player perceives the characters and the world of Overwatch at large.  This doesn’t even cover backstories like Reaper or Mei or D.va, that latter of whom straight up has Godzilla/Evangelion references in her background.  And this doesn’t even cover stuff like the battle of Eichenwalde, or Deadlock, or “HAL-fred Glitchbot” (who is literally a reference to HAL and Alfred Hitchcock, both elements of “Hollywood horror”), or even the issues around Los Muertos.  There’s a ton here that shows that the Overwatch devs are dropping apocalyptic and/or horror references as varied as Mad Max to Apocalypse Now to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Neon Genesis Evangelion to The Headless Horseman to “the grandfather of all sci-fi” Frankenstein to “the grandfather of American macabre Romanticism” Edgar Allan Poe.  

The “background mythos” of Overwatch is filled with horror story references - everything from The Raven, to Thriller, to Psycho.  Behind the bright colors and beautiful maps are canon stories that imply something darker - a God Program being contained against its will, a yakuza clan that “needs to be reigned in,” a city “building the tallest tower in the world,” an arms-dealing gang “coming back into power,” an EMP being delivered to “hostile Omincs” - and a whole slew of “non-canon references” that display something even deeper, “even darker” that lurks beneath them all.

[braced-music]

Metronomy –Back To Basics

First published in the print issue of Sixtynine Degrees magazine. May 2014 

Joseph Mount sits wide-eyed inside a small space shuttle bound for a crimson soaked planet stalked by sphinx-like cats. Released last November, the video for ‘Aquarius’ - Metronomy’s  first single since the Mercury nominated The English Riviera – conjured up images of Joe in the three years since the band’s last record lying back in a field near his Parisian home, arms behind his head, watching the night sky in search of astrological inspiration for the Metronomy’s return.

“No, not at all.” Joe laughs when we ask him about the supposed divine theme behind his band’s fourth album, Love Letters. So, why the sci-fi video for ‘Aquarius’? “That’s Edouard [Salier] who directed it” Joe explains when we enquire, like Sheldon Cooper rubbing his khaki trouser legs, as to whether he’d been boning up on Star Trek and Blake 7 for his intergalactic adventure. “I knew he wanted to have hairless cats in it and I thought, ‘fair enough, you’ve got to let them do what they want,’” he says with a chuckle.

The astrological influence didn’t stop there as the band also collaborated with the app, The Night Sky, to allow users to play the single if they lined-up their smartphone with the constellation of the same name. “To be honest, someone at the record label was like: ‘you know, we should do it on this thing.’ And I was like, ‘well, that’s a brilliant idea,’” he says again laughing. With the record being released aptly under the air sign of Aquarius, surely Joe must have at least a tiny secret interest in astrology? “I quite like how ridiculous it is,” he says finally caving, “these things that just help you if you’ve got a bad feeling about something or you’re particularly moody - you can blame it on something that’s happening in space. I quite like that, it’s quite reassuring.”

In fact Love Letters was not born from one place, either in the heavens above or the land below, as Joe took a more basic approach to creating an album as he sought to escape the confines of being bound to a sole idea as he had been on the The English Riviera: a concept album based solely on the his home county, Devon. “I wanted to do a record where I didn’t have to explain it in the same way that I did before” he says. If the album is defined by anything it is by something much more human than the events of the night skies and one that has characterised Metronomy’s career since the beginning: love. The band’s breakout album, Nights Out, was a four to the floor lament to unrequited young desire with tracks like ‘Heartbreaker’, ‘A Thing For Me’ and ‘On Dancefloors’. It’s follow-up, The English Riviera, took a more mature approach - whilst holidaying on the west coast - contemplating floundering relationships on ‘Trouble’ and sensuous liaisons on ‘Love Underlined’. Love Letters picks-up the same baton with Joe this time influenced by being away from his wife whilst on tour.  “When you’re touring all your basic experiences involve travelling and being away from people, people you’re maybe in a relationship with or your family,” he explains. “That’s the only thing I could write about that was actually real”. Opener ‘The Upsetter’ urges in crack tones the record’s mission “I gotta beam my message to ya” to a lonely drum machine, ‘The Most Immaculate Haircut’ is a last ditch attempt to save a broken romance and title track and single, ‘Love Letters’, is near religious ode to Joe’s career-long dedication to l-u-v.  

Joe’s straightforward approach to the album also extended to the studio as the band turned their backs for the first time on digital technology to make it. “The only thing vaguely conceptual was me wanting to record it in an analogue studio and record it in a dated way” Joe says. Recorded at Toe Rag studios in Hackney, the band performed live together as a group onto reel-to-reel tape. “Most of the tracks on the record are live essentially,” Joe reveals, “things like vocals I did afterwards, but pretty much everything was done like that - it’s a nice sociable way to record.” By going back to the method that most musicians used before digital sent analogue to mixing desk oblivion it forced Joe and the band out of their creative comfort zone. “If you give yourself these limitations and you give yourself this way of recording it hopefully makes you write differently and write different kinds of songs. I kind of try to do it to make me do something interesting creatively”. Although, recording the old-fashioned way was an experience the band relished, Joe’s certainly not throwing out his Mac anytime soon as he hastens to add, “I’m not against computers or anything like that, I love computers!’

One thing that remained the same was Joe’s place as the leader and main songwriter in the band.  “I was still writing everything and I’m still in control,” he says with a sinister laugh. “Because [the band] was a thing I started it feels very personal to me - I’m too afraid to give any of it away.” With the responsibility solely on his shoulders and the pressure of following-up a Mercury nominated album was there ever the risk he’d crack Brian Wilson style and end up in a rocking in a sandpit in only fireman’s helmet for company? “I started trying to write the new stuff as soon as I finished The English Riviera and for me that’s the best way of avoiding the pressure… to start writing and planning the fourth record before the Mercury award nomination even happens.” And, as he confides there’s always a much harsher critic to appease than the fans or the critics. “I always try and outdo any pressures I feel from other people with pressure of my own. I think it should always be coming from me rather than the record label.”

Listening to the album it has a clear path: starting out with a basic handshake of pared down vocals and barren beats on the ‘The Upsetter’ only to break into a full gospel funk embrace for title track, ‘Love Letters’; it’s something that was by no means an accident as Joe explains. “If you listen to it all in the right order there’s a moment where it goes from feeling small and minimal to suddenly being luscious and open.” This way of thinking came partly from Joe hitting the vinyl crates to track back to the late 60s and early 70s when albums reigned; it was at time when the now standard 45 minute LP was considered short, studio time went into years rather than days and the musician’s creative freedom was decadently indulged.  In particular, Joe took inspiration from bands like The Zombies and Sly And The Family Stone – bands that told a story over recorded opuses rather than individual tracks. “They made these records that were progressive in their own way at a time when the world was changing,” he says passionately. “There was a spirit in music when people were making these psychedelic record; it was an unusual time when people were allowed to be crazy and to almost out-crazy each other with these ambitious records.”                    

It’s a was time, he agrees , that is in direct contrast to the present day where the album is becoming an increasingly obsolete format: streaming and illegal downloading have starved labels of the cash needed to give bands time in the studio and fans can ignore an album’s running order and cherry-pick tracks for themselves. If Joe could push Peter Capaldi out of the way and jump in the Tardis would he go back and destroy the means to stream and download?  “If you’re a teenager, 13 or 14 years old, an album costs £8 or £9 and not everyone has that kind of money, well not young people anyway,” he says “so, I think to have something where you can stream the music and then you can be like, ‘I want to buy this album’, and then you can save-up’ - I think it’s good.” 

Unlike anti-Spotify proponents like Thom Yorke, streaming is something Joe sees, diplomatically, as opening up music to a wider audience and ultimately benefitting the musician in the long-term. “It’s easy for someone like Thom Yorke, it’s easy for older people to not think like young people” he says. ”Whatever I think I’m a lot older than most people who are using Spotify and I trust them to make the right decisions, and if they like something to go and buy it and I think hopefully that’s what other people can appreciate as well.” Before adding quickly at the thought of a 5ft 5 pony-tailed ball of anger turning up on his doorstep, “I’m not slagging off Thom Yorke!” Although, he thinks it’s a pity that bands don’t get the time they used to in the studio it’s something that he believes strangely might actually work-out to be to the benefit of fans. “Even if you made a terrible record people had no choice but to buy it if they wanted to listen to it. Now, it’s a bit harder  - you can’t really justify it as people don’t have to buy it.”

Renowned for their live shows Metronomy hit the road this March for a full UK tour. “Festivals, touring, festivals, probably some touring, bit more touring” he laughs when we ask him about his plans for the rest of the year. The line-up is still “the same old gang” with Oscar Cash, Anna Prior and Olugbenga Adelekan. The Michael Gondry directed video for their second single, Love Letters’, sees the band taking their style-cues from The Four Tops as they sport matching Ron Burgundy erm burgundy blazers, black turtle necks and cream slacks – it’s a look they’ll be taking out on tour. Joe also reveals that the album cover – all bubblegum pink clouds – will be part of the stage set. “We’re going to get a stage set sorted out and we’re going to go for that sort of feel – nice and pink.”

With the past put to rights and the band’s immediate plans certain, what does Joe predict for Love Letters in the future? “Hopefully it sell some copies in the real world,” he says pragmatically before adding, “I just want people to enjoy it really and to not be too cynical when they’re listening to it.”   Marie Wood

[jillmckenzie1]

Punch with Your Foot

We live in a misogynistic culture; no big surprise there. But where is toxic masculinity birthed from? Along with antiquated customs and some creepy religious dogma, media can be a big driver in how us guys view ourselves and conduct ourselves. Men are supposed to be assertive—just look at Harrison Ford! Men don’t cry, just look at Clint Eastwood!*

That’s the bad news, but the good news is that we also seem to be in a period of flux. Among other concepts, long-held assumptions about gender identity are changing. How do we know that? One way is by looking at how movies portray masculinity and men these days. Avengers: Endgame portrayed men crying and openly showing emotion while also whipping large amounts of ass. It wasn’t always like that, though.

One of the most misunderstood movies in history is Fight Club. After its 1999 release, it was foolishly embraced by many as a celebration of the male ideal. Legions of knuckleheads formed their very own fight clubs and tried to adopt a more aggressive and “manly” approach to life.** Despite accidentally breeding an often repugnant fanbase, Fight Club had a great deal to say about the destruction that gullible men can cause. By comparison, the new indie comedy The Art of Self-Defense will never be mistaken as anything but vicious and bone-dry satire.

Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) is afraid. He’s afraid of the dark. He’s afraid of other men, such as the bros hanging out in his office break room. His fear is all-encompassing, and by dressing in mostly brown, living in an apartment decorated in earth tones, and even owning a sweet Dachshund, it’s almost as if he’s trying to camouflage himself as the same color of the Earth to hide from conflict.

It doesn’t work, as he’s viciously mugged one night by a motorcycle gang. During his recuperation, Casey decides something has to change. His change starts with a gun. He skitters into a gun shop but is prevented from an immediate purchase by the federally mandated waiting period. So, he’s forced to wait, and we can see the thoughts and anxieties of what if? slipping across his face as he leaves.

There’s possible satisfaction to be had though, as he peers into a downscale karate dojo. The people inside—almost all men—are fit and confident. Their sensei, a man known only as Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), sizes up Casey quickly. It’s not hard, considering that Casey tells him, “I want to be what intimidates me.”

From there, Casey quickly comes to understand that Sensei’s methodology is…well, unorthodox. Along with learning kicks and armlocks, Sensei is determined to help Casey become a man. That means encouraging him to get rid of his beloved Dachshund and get a “more masculine” breed of dog like a German Shepherd. It means belittling Anna (Imogen Poots), the only female student in the dojo, with comments like, “I realized she’d never be a man because she’s a woman.” It means Casey’s introduction to Night Class and reckoning with how Sensei’s teachings are transforming his life.

Directed by Riley Stearns, the film has a tone of deadpan absurdity that I absolutely adored. A men’s magazine shown is little more than pictures of boobs and guns. Casey’s answering message always sounds vaguely annoyed at him. As the film progresses, things gradually become more sinister. Instead of fights, characters give and receive beatings. Stearns does a masterful job establishing a particular tone, then having it devolve to a more vicious place, mirroring Casey’s emotional state.

Stearns also wrote the screenplay, and he’s packed it full of offbeat humor. The jokes aren’t the kind of thing that’s going to blow up a packed theater on a Friday night. Instead, the humor is understated and delivered with a straight face, such as Casey soulfully telling his dog he’s going to stop petting him to ensure he’s not coddled. Better yet is the laser precision Stearns has of either mocking man culture or portraying it as a stupid and destructive force. His screenplay isn’t anti-male, it’s anti-a-certain-kind-of-boorish-and-entitled-male.

I haven’t seen a film in a long time that’s known precisely the right way to use Jesse Eisenberg. He’s often cast as a jittery fast-talker. Eisenberg leans in hard portraying Casey’s fear and desperation to belong. It’s a gutsy and hilarious performance. As Sensei, Alessandro Nivola exudes equal parts charisma and stupidity. Like certain public figures I could name, Sensei has a low cunning for quickly identifying the weakest aspects of people and exploiting them. Imogene Poots is essentially the lone woman in the cast. Her Anna is far more accomplished than anyone else in the dojo, and it’s an alarming and understandable moment when her frustration boils over, and she delivers a brutal beating to one of her rivals. The entire cast understands the specific nuance needed to make the film work, and they commit completely.

I loved The Art of Self-Defense, but there’s a good chance you might not. Going in, you need to know that it gets weird as hell, and the film has exactly zero interest in delivering a feel-good experience to audiences. That’s okay. The Art of Self-Defense understands that one of the best ways to take down a bully is by making fun of him. With precision-engineering, it delivers a hilarious ass-kicking to toxic masculinity.

  *Only Clint Eastwood did cry in the very good In the Line of Fire.

**Never mind the fact that the main message in Fight Club is that people in general, and men in particular, will latch onto the most loathsome and destructive ideologies if they feel desperate enough.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/punch-with-your-foot/

[theconservativebrief]

Everything is a witch hunt. President Donald Trump will tell anybody who will listen that Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia connections (and other alleged misdeeds) is a political witch hunt. The single greatest political witch hunt, in fact.

The New York Times publishes the list of questions Mueller wants to ask Trump? With a clear interest in whether Trump obstructed justice? Witch hunt.

It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

This is sort of Trump��s thing. Trump has tweeted about the Robert Mueller “witch hunt” more than 60 times in 2018.

This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2017

You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018

He’s not alone. When Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was facing allegations of horrendous sexual misconduct, he unsubtly said it was “exactly like what’s happening with the witch hunts in Washington, D.C.” The critics of #MeToo — often but not always men — have compared the campaign to eradicate sexual abuse to a witch hunt.

If you want people to believe you’re wrongfully accused, the subject of malicious scrutiny on the part of your enemies, you cry that you’re the target of a witch hunt.

Trump didn’t pick this phrase out of thin air. Politically, this goes back at least to McCarthyism and Watergate. The Nixon White House also claimed he was the subject of a witch hunt. Critics of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s insidious anti-communist probes called them witch hunts. Back in those days, playwright Arthur Miller made the subtext text with his play The Crucible, an anti-McCarthy allegory set during the Salem witch trials of the 1690s.

Which is where our story really begins. In the modern setting, “witch hunt” is a useful defense because people living in the 21st century know that the “witches” of 17th-century Salem were almost certainly innocent and, therefore, that the persecutions that led to 20 deaths were unjust. It’s a hyperbolic if undeniably powerful rhetorical device to claim one’s innocence.

There is also, once you stop to think about it, something distasteful about men in power — particularly two men credibly accused of sexual assault — using a term that harks back to an era in history in which a patriarchal society wrongfully persecuted (mostly) women.

“We’ve turned the expression on its head. Traditionally a witchcraft charge amounted to powerful men charging powerless women with a phony crime. Now it is powerful men screeching that they are being charged with phony crimes,” Stacey Schiff, who wrote a 2015 book about Salem called The Witches, told Vox over email. “Unfair targeting is the only thing the two have in common, and even that is debatable.”

What exactly caused the mass hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693 is still a subject that divides historians and others who study the witch trials. What we know for sure is that between 1692 and 1693, 19 people were hanged, and one crushed to death, ostensibly for the civil crime of practicing malevolent witchcraft, after an outbreak of mass hysteria. They had all maintained their innocence — with the exception of Tituba, a local enslaved woman, whose confession may have been tortured out of her.

The majority of the Salem witch trials didn’t actually happen in Salem Town — what is known as Salem today — but in Salem Village, an inland hamlet that was renamed Danvers in 1752.

Mary Beth Norton, a Cornell University professor who wrote 2007’s In the Devil’s Snare with an eye toward explaining the crisis in its historical and political context, connected the hysteria over the witch trials and the actions taken by village elders to Native American attacks on the New England settlers.

She summarized her understanding of the witch trials to Vox like this:

I argue in my book that the judges at the trials, who were also the military leaders of the colony, used the search for “witches” as a means of deflecting their own responsibility for the disasters then afflicting the colony. But as they genuinely believed in the existence of witches (that was the accepted opinion at the time), we can’t say that they manufactured a belief in witches for political reasons. Still, the search for witchcraft was very beneficial to them politically, until it all came crashing down on their heads after about nine months when skepticism about how the trials were being conducted prevailed in the colony. People didn’t stop believing in the existence of witches, but they stopped believing that the Massachusetts judicial system was successfully uncovering and convicting them.

As Norton emphasized, it’s simplistic to think of the Salem trials as purely political: Christians living in New England in the 1690s absolutely believed that witches were real and that they could serve as consorts of the devil to wreak havoc in their town.

But the relevance to our modern understanding of a “witch hunt” is eerie. Sinister authorities using the specter of “witches” to protect their own interests. The deteriorating faith in political institutions. Right from the start, “witch hunts” were imbued with much of the meaning that would make them such a powerful rhetorical tool in 2018.

As a result, Salem has held a prominent place in America’s political imagination ever since.

As Texas Tech’s Gretchen Adams chronicled in her book The Specter of Salem, the witch trials served several political purposes in the intervening centuries. In the 1790s, textbooks would use Salem as the quintessential example of America’s less enlightened past, a history the new nation was abandoning as it embraced Enlightenment ideals in its early years.

During the 1830s, during a religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which rejected the Enlightenment, critics would compare those new religious orders to the Salem elders, seeking to remind people of the dangers of unchecked fanaticism. During the Civil War, Southerners would cite the witch trials to attack the Union for its supposed irrationality in persecuting the war.

But for modern politics, the turning point seems to have been Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible. A retelling of the trials, the play was a coded indictment of the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and ’50s. Miller heavily implied that the accusers and magistrates of Salem were motivated by a combination of fear and greed, including a desire to seize the lands of the accused. The story of Salem, for Miller, was the story of any mass panic — how self-interested humans use fear and panic to stoke “witch hunts” for personal gain.

“It’s a 20th-century term that comes into use during the Cold War. There was no single, directed, witch-identifying force in America’s 17th-century prosecutions,” Schiff said. “In that sense, Salem does not actually constitute a ‘hunt.’ It’s more a panic, or an epidemic, or a societal delusion.”

As Vox’s Dara Lind noted previously, Richard Nixon (or his staff) invoked Salem as the Watergate investigation was gaining steam:

President Nixon and his top aides believe that the Senate Watergate hearings are unfair and constitute a “political witch-hunt,” according to White House sources. The sources, said, that the President in recent weeks had expressed bitterness and deep hostility toward the two-month-old proceedings. “The President sees the hearings as an attempt to get Richard Nixon and do it just damn unfairly,” one source said.

According to four separate sources, the hostility toward the hearings is pervasive among the White House staff, especially among former assistants to H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, the resigned top presidential aides. One White House source said he saw the struggle with the Senate Watergate committee as not just politics but a battle for survival. “The Ervin committee is out to destroy the President,” he said.

Vox’s Lind wasn’t the only one to connect Nixon and Watergate to Trump’s use of the phrase. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward cited Trump’s laments of a “witch hunt” as they described the “eerily similar confrontation” that Trump is having with Mueller and that Nixon had with special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

On the one hand, Trump comparing the investigation into his campaign to a crisis that left 20 people dead in the 17th century is clearly ridiculous — there is much more evidence in the criminal indictments, the court-sanctioned wiretaps, and the consensus of Republican and Democratic investigators for Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election than there is for witchcraft — and rather unsavory.

As for Greitens, who so transparently drafted off Trump’s tactics, his use of the term might be even more galling: This is a man accused of coercing a woman into sexual acts and then threatening to blackmail her if she talked.

“There is something twisted, misdirected, and vaguely demented in the cries of ‘witch hunt,’” Schiff said. “Many American women (and a handful of men) did protest their innocence. They were not witches, though the courts decided they were; they hanged all the same. None ever cried ‘witch hunt.’”

But Trump’s never-ending laments of “witch hunt!” can’t just be dismissed. They serve an important function for the president: discrediting the Mueller investigation.

A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2018

It isn’t an accident that Trump’s most influential allies in the media, like Fox’s Sean Hannity (a man also connected to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, whose current presence on the national stage arose from alleged payouts to women on Trump’s behalf), deploy the exact same rhetoric.

For now, most Americans still support the Mueller investigation, though support has been slipping. Screaming “witch hunt” didn’t save Nixon either — not that we should necessarily believe the Mueller probe will end the same way Watergate did.

But at the same time, Mueller’s investigation is underwater with Republicans. Trump’s “witch hunt” claims have found a particular audience, it seems — and that audience is responsible for the majorities that currently control both chambers of Congress, whose leaders claim they do not want Trump to fire Mueller but at the same time have refused so far to take any steps to protect the prosecutor.

Investigating potential crimes against the country shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But it’s become that way. Trump — and the screams of “witch hunt!” — have helped make it so.

Original Source -> “Witch hunts” explained, from Salem to Donald Trump

via The Conservative Brief

[zak-graphicarts]

“Fake Flyers” - Graphics Workshop

In this workshop, we created a series of imaginary, odd flyers that advertise fictional events and provoke the public to think about society a little differently.

The Context

Considering the work of Nathaniel Russel, Harmony Konne and Mark Gonzales, we are creating “fake flyers”. Artist and musician Nathaniel Ruseel combines found imagery with hand-rendered type to create funny, profound flyers which lead people to think a bit differently. His works are very casual and unassuming - there is no action, just reaction.

The Process

Collect a range of imagery found from a range of sources, books, magazines and newspapers. Collect at least five images, then consider some sort of narrative or idea that springs from the image. 

Think about the words or verse that could accompany the pieces contradictions, irony, satire and humour. Alude to something unexpected, a fictional event or comment on everyday life. Hand write your words, using a marker or brush and ink, considering the examples shown. 

Get your work out there - distribute them to the public, record the process and observe the reactions of the public. 

The Aims

Make a series of profound flyers advertising a fictional event, thoughts or phrase. 

Visually explore the idea of poetic license, departing from facts and being creative

Distribute work to public and build personal confidence skills

Question what happens when a flyer is not used for sales purposes

Review

To start the workshop, we were asked to collect a range of imagery, secondary images from an array of different sources. We were to collect and make black and white photographs to cheapen the visual quality. I needed a total of at least 5 images, but I wanted to gather a few more so I could have a choice of the most effective.

Using a guillotine, I cut each image to size, ready to be put on the poster. For the selection process, I chose anything that could have a variety of meanings, something quite vague and universal in message (i.e. a newspaper instead of a photo of tonights Daily Mail). Initially, I had the idea of a newspaper club, and wanted to find a few photographs relating to that concept, however al the others were spontaneously chosen.

Having found a surreal illustration of a man made of fruit and vegetables, I had an idea of playing around with the phrase “an apple a day...” looking at a darkly humorous juxtaposition of image and type. 

Following the examples shown, I hand-rendered the text using a regular black marker in thin, tall uppercase letters. 

I think using hand-rendered type on these posters creates a casual, almost conversational tone that harkens back to a day before all posters were made using a screen. The creator physically writes the type themselves, by hand. This creates a more personal effect to the poster. There’s a clear traditional, handmade sense to the posters, that is somewhat refreshing to viewers compared to the inhuman, commercial aesthetic of most flyers. 

Hand-lettered type is more personal, in any medium, but in posters it creates a real sense of honesty and authenticity - there’s a person behind the poster, not a computer. I think that the idea of making one poster, then having to go the the local printers and xerox more is more endearing and meaningful than mindlessly printing out a hundred copies. There’s a natural sense of personality and the creator’s idiosyncratic tendencies that comes through in a hand-written poster than in a typed one. This is something Russel is conscious of, and celebrates this idea of hand made work. Celebration and promotion of analogue processes instead of digital. 

After photocopying our chosen design/s into small A5 flyers, our next task was to distribute them to the public, and staple them on to telephone poles, boards and more. 

On the walk into town, we used a staple gun to staple my flyers onto telephone poles and boards. 

Once in town, our task was to hand out the flyers to the public, in an exercise of confidence building. I was able to give several flyers out to the public, explaining what i was doing and using “poetic license” to explain the posters. I was met with quite a positive response, with most people interested in what we were doing. However, these people, understandably, did not want to be recorded reacting to the work. I was able to observe their reactions, however, which were overwhelmingly positive with only a couple of people refusing to take part. On a few examples, it was clear that soon the penny had dropped: the flyers weren’t trying to sell anything - just make them think. It was after this realisation they seemed happy, and interested in the project. It’s this idea that what happens when a flyer is not selling something, that is such an interesting and subversive act. 

Reflection

My “Apple” poster communicates a dark, sinister undertone through subtle alteration of a classic, well-known phrase and image. 

It’s ultimately irrelevant and meaningless - the flyer isn’t actually saying anything, there’s no message, product, event or thought about everyday life. It’s just a weird, odd idea I had, which I thought was darkly humorous and intriguing. It is this utter absence, a void of real meaning that makes the poster so subversive and profound. 

My “Newspaper” flyer, however, does have a meaning. It is a satire on the “get off your phone and be social like we were in the good old days” argument that everyone loves to remind us of.

It’s a comment on the anti-social element of reading, and a sarcastic look at the idea as a whole. 

It is this contradiction of text and imagery that makes the flyer effective, and the subversive nature of a poster with contradictive features. 

When a flyer does not sell something, it communicates an idea, rather than a product. It is the creator talking to the reader, creating a casual conversation rather than an order. In an age where advertisements have never been more prominent and invasive, a flyer that simply floats an interesting, aloof and imaginative idea is a breath of fresh air. The subversive nature of this act results in a pleasant surprise, perhaps confusion before the realisation that we’re not trying to sell a product. 

I think this is why so many people refuse when the class hands flyers out - they assume it’s just an advertisement - something invasive. However, the flyers we created are thoughts, not commercials. Once this had been explained, the public were happy to take the flyers. 

Peer Review

Before walking into town, we looked at everyone else’s work and questioned which were effective, and which were too controversial to show the public. Asking what’s perhaps past the line what could upset/anger people and what examples we thought were effective flyers.

We discussed how the most effective flyer was “TYRED of your shit”, something achieved through simplicity and a minimalistic quality. The page isn’t overflowing with text, and the image isn’t incredibly large. The pun is engaging, but the idea is ultimately, simple. “Good design is as little design as possible.”

We thought that most of the posters were effective, through funny, unexpected comments and subtle criticisms of society and culture. “Gallery” was an especially effective flyer, I thought. It’s a clear satire and criticism of fine art galleries and exhibitions in general. A subtly scathing commentary on fine art culture as a whole. “Time” provides an unexpectedly serious message, that contrasted with all the humour, is even more profound and thought-provoking - how we are all scared of time. 

We thought that flyers about extremely wrong relationships and a Christian “sesh” where alcohol and drugs are the entrance fee, were examples of works that crossed the line. While I wouldn’t consider this controversial, Colchester is an overtly religious community, and flyers of this nature may spark an unwanted, heated debate. 

In this workshop, I was able to create subversive, aloof and imaginative flyers, considering the spontaneous narratives I could create between found secondary images, and hand-lettered type.

Development Potential

Create more flyers in this style

Create a collective zine

Research Nathaniel Russel

Action:

Research Nathaniel Russel