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thero0ks · 4 years ago

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My Most Treasured Items

Reiner receives a letter from someone in his past.

No happy ending, just angst.

Season Four spoilers

Trigger Warnings: Detailed description of death/corpses, brief discussion of childhood abuse

The detour had never been in the battle plan. Hanji and Levi would probably be pissed if they knew she’d taken an alternate route. She had studied the map for weeks to know the layout of the city, so that this detour would only add a couple seconds to her time. That’s why she took off a few moments earlier than everyone else. Her feet landed in the alleyway. Peeking her head out to check the Main Street she found it was empty. Rushing to the lone mailbox she pulled out the crisp white envelope. Having taken great care to avoid any wrinkles in the delicate paper she gave the envelope a soft kiss before placing it in the mailbox.

Four years later she would be able to speak her peace. Her shoulders relaxed. A weight lifting off her as she took off in the air once more to rendezvous with the rest of the squad.

* **

They sat around the table discussing Zeke’s betrayal. Reiner proposed an immediate counter attack. They left the meeting agreeing to think on the matter.

Entering his own barracks he found a letter placed on his bedside table. The flowing script pulled at something in his memory. Amber eyes flickered over to the name of the sender and his heart stopped. Y/N L/N.

His legs gave way as he sat on the edge of the bed tearing open the letter. Another Devil from his past had come back to haunt him.

To my beloved Reiner,

What would I do if I had 13 years to live? I’ve thought about the question for four years now, and I still don’t have an answer. By my calculations you only have a year, maybe two left?

I know your love for me was forced, and I truly apologize for the turmoil I caused you. A devil like me is hard to love for someone like you. The bitter truth that you were always enough for me, but I was only another sin that stained your hands is a hard thing to bear. I guess I have a knack for loving the wrong people. Perhaps that’s my punishment for the sins of my ancestors? Isn’t that what you Marleyans say?

You said a lot of things four years ago, but I didn’t get to say a word. I just watched you leave, and dealt with the aftermath of all my friends dying. For the record, I never wanted any of this. I think all this death is senseless, and I meant what I always said that this world could use more love.

I guess this world doesn’t have a place for dreamers.

I wanted to hate you for choosing them over us, but I realize that’s your home. It's easy to hate something you hold no attachment to. Loyalty is a strong trait, and it’s something I wanted to curse you for. I looked at you leaving me as a betrayal, but how can you betray something or someone you were never loyal to in the first place?

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. I forgive you for not choosing me, but I also ask that you forgive me for not choosing you anymore either. There is not a decision either one of us could change that would have put us on a different path. For both of our sakes I wish to allow you a glimpse into my dreams.

I choose to believe in a world where we made all the right choices. One where we ended up together, happy, and surrounded by all our fallen comrades.

Maybe you have no desire to see me in that way. Perhaps every stolen moment we had was nothing more then something you did to pass the time. I want to believe the man you showed me exists, because everything I showed you was real.

Even after four years I cannot hate you. I hope your heart softens when you think of me too.

With love,

Y/N L/N

A tear splashed on the cream colored paper. Reiner’s hand moved to his cheek trying to recall the moment his eyes leaked water. His heart ached at her words.

Every time he recounted his time on Paradis to other Marleyans internally he always ended the statement with “except her.” Never had he said it aloud, but never had he lumped her in with the rest of them.

He remembered the night when she finally opened up about herself. Growing up in poverty, her abusive father, and the inner turmoil she felt about loving the man that abused her. He’d been so angry when she recounted the abuse to him, and the confusion he felt when she expressed empathy for the monster.

Gripping the letter he realized he had been a different monster to her. Wasn’t that his goal? Make the Devils of Paradis suffer? Then why did he want to beg for forgiveness at her feet for the sins he committed against her?

Running his hand through his hair he straightened the letter. Rereading it, hoping for poisoned words to jump out of the page. He deserved every verbal lashing she could bestow upon him, but he knew they would never come.

He wanted to write back to her. Tell her there wasn’t a moment he regretted leaving her on that island to rot. How her heartbroken look still haunted his dreams. Mostly he just wanted to assure her that he too wanted desperately to believe that in some alternative universe they would be together forever.

Here he was encouraging a full scale attack on the island. “Forgive me for not choosing you anymore either.” The hope of a relationship between the two had been crushed with that statement, but love still lingered in their hearts.

She was exactly what he needed. His bed felt cold without her. He still had issues going to bed alone, because she wasn’t there to coax into bed. Knowing her soft heart would melt if he told her he couldn’t sleep without her.

It was such a strange thing that someone so small was friends with the dark. She often told him she found peace when darkness coated the earth. Perhaps that’s what made it easy for him to fall asleep in her arms. He’d tried to tell her he was a monster, but she’d always kiss his forehead, and assure him that he was a good man, and that she would love him no matter what.

A knock on the door pulled Reiner out of his thoughts. “What is it?”

Porco poked his head through the door, “we have all the Devils bodies. Magath wants you to take a look,” Porco said, gripping the door knob. “See if anybody essential to their military is among them.”

Reiner sighed, folding the letter up and tucking it away before following Porco down to the yard where the bodies were being kept. The gate guards gave them a nod of acknowledgment as they passed.

Several rows of bodies were laid out and Reiner inspected each. They were all new faces. The attack on Paradis they launched four years ago had wiped out the scout regiment.

Reaching the last row he caught sight of a female corpse. The (dark/light) hair looked familiar. His feet seemed to echo off the pavement. Stopping in front of the body he took her in. Her soft curves had grown cold and stiff. Several bullet holes littered her body, and her neck was twisted in an odd angle. Bile rose in Reiner’s throat as he took in the soft cheeks, and her eyes that once held so much warmth were nothing but an empty abyss devoid of life. The color now dull the light long gone out.

Tears streamed down his face as shaking hands reached out to her. Nothing felt like her as he touched her cold skin. He hadn’t felt the sting of pavement as he fell on his knees to grip her hand and brush the hair from her face.

Porco remained silent. Taking in Reiner’s actions. Porco couldn’t find it in his heart to judge the man for falling in love with a devil. Especially when he had watched the woman die.

“I should have taken you back to Marley.” Reiner babbled, amber eyes fixed in the past.

“Reiner, she chose to attack Marley,” Porco tried to reason.

The large man rounded on him. “You know nothing about her,” he seethed. “She never wanted any of this.” Running his fingers through his hair. “All she wanted was to find something more out there than hell she was living in.”

“You can’t blame her death on yourself.” Porco reasoned.

“She would never have come here if it was not for me,” Reiner stated, as he removed a leather pouch that was strapped to her thigh. A bitter laugh escaped his lips as he pulled a small stone out.

* ** “Hey L/N!” Reiner said tossing the small stone at her.

A squeak escaped her lips as she lifted her hands to block her face. The stone making an audible thud against her ribs. “You didn’t even try to catch it,” Reiner said, picking the stone back up.

“Well I’m sorry, I grew up with an older brother who would have just pelted me with the rock,” she huffed. “It was a natural reaction to go into defense mode.”

Reiner let out a laugh at the thought of an elder L/N terrorizing her. “It’s a lucky rock,” he said offering the rock to her. He held the perfectly round stone between his index finger and thumb and her fingers brushed against his to pluck it out of his grasp.

“What makes it lucky?” she inquired. Curious eyes flickered up to catch his gaze.

He simply shrugged, “it’s perfectly round. That’s gotta be lucky.”

His answer seemed to satisfy her. “If I make it through our next mission without dying I’ll believe it’s lucky,” she said tucking the stone away in her leather pouch she kept secured to her thigh.

“What’s in your pouch?” Reiner asked, his head tilted as his gaze focused on her legs.

“My most treasured items,” she said with a shrug. “Tell you what Braun if I die before you, you can have my pouch and whatever is in it.”

Reiner ruffled her hair. “You’re not going to die as long as I’m by your side.”

* **

“The only time she wasn’t suffering was when I was lying to her,” Reiner murmured, the guilt washing over him at the sin he most regretted. The luck in the stone had finally faded Reiner thought numbly, or maybe it was the belief in the luck that died.

Perhaps he should be honored that a piece of him was counted among her most treasured possessions. A black and white photograph was the next thing he pulled out. It was a portrait, and Y/N was dressed in Marley’s finest. Joy seemed to be radiating from her face. Reiner’s guilt seemed to lessen. It was possible she had found a way to move on in her daily life.

The next thing he pulled out was a love letter. Reading through it he was surprised to find a small hand drawn portrait enclosed. The letter and portrait signed by Jean Kirstein. By the letter it was a different kind of love. It was the kind of love made for slow mornings, and gentle hearts. It was built for smooth sailing, but was never meant to survive the storms that life threw. Perhaps she knew that, and cherished the safety Jean had brought her for the period of their relationship.

The fact was that Reiner’s relationship with her had been built to weather storms, but he had set sail without her, so she was left to weather the waves without a life preserver. Somehow she’d clawed her way to the shore to try and rebuild what he had taken.

The last thing he pulled out was a small leather journal. Flipping through the pages he found some entries dated to cadet training, and her last entry was the night she died.

“Magath is going to want to read that journal,” Porco stated. Breaking the silence that he had given Reiner to go through her belongings.

Reiner tucked the items back into the satchel. “Can you give me the night to read through it?” Reiner’s downcast eyes took her corpse in one last time.

Porco nodded, “yeah just give it to Magath tomorrow.” Porco gave Reiner’s shoulder an awkward squeeze before leaving him.

Reiner tried to figure out how to say goodbye to the last thing in the past he cared about. The soldier was officially gone, and the only thing that remained was the warrior. All he wanted was more time. His thirteen years were almost up, his best friend and the love of his life didn’t have as much time. Perhaps they would be waiting for him. All he wanted was to see their smiles at the end of all of this. He was tired of fighting, and he was tired of being alone. “We’ll be together again soon,” he vowed, closing the door on death one more time.

#reiner x reader #reiner braun x reader #reiner braun #reiner braun x y/n #reiner braun x you

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vantablade · 4 years ago

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【 🌌 MYTHOPOEIA V. 】

TLDR: A lore/world-building headcanon that focuses on the chronology (in this case, Epochs or definitive eras) of the in-universe of Nocturne’s canon. Also has some information, vaguely, regarding the mythology of divinity and important figures.

An era is defined by the most significant factor of its time. While planets and countries may have their own eras, defined by the reigning monarch or a particular age of change, the Bright Star System, as a whole, follows the timeline of Epochs, which denote significance of a grander scale. As of Nocturne’s position in the chronology, we are in the Sixth Epoch, which would be known by her people’s descendants as the Age of Anarchy. In-universe scholars will argue about the true beginning of the Sixth Epoch, as they argued about the Fifth before it, and the Fourth, and so-on; it is the Epoch’s nature to be debated, discussed, analysed and re-interpreted to fit whatever narrative is best to be served. Epochs are not limited by a particular stretch of time—there is no mandatory “limit” of days, months, years or centuries that permit a new Epoch being determined. Rather, it is determined by a time of significant change that alters how the denizens of Bright Star understand or adapt to their environment. For example, while the Genesis Migration was a significant cross-system event, it did not, on its own, cause enough of a cosmic upset to earn an Epoch-level importance to begin an era. Rather, it was but a mere instrument in the grander scheme of the Age of Champions, the Fifth Epoch.

This headcanon exists to give a context towards the chronology and a greater understanding of the world Nocturne is a mere part of. There will be references towards the in-universe mythology and other significant events that took place far beyond our hero’s birth, but there will be no in-depth description of those events, as I want to keep everything that could reveal too much—or is unnecessary in understanding Nocturne—under wraps. However, hopefully there will be enough information to provide a better grounding of the world Nocturne lives in, particularly if you are interested in combining universes or developing deeper threads with her character.

Despite the fact Nocturne exists in the Sixth Epoch, truthfully there are Seven; the first of all Epochs is known by scholars as the “Zero Epoch”, a time before time, a space before space, where the original Primordial first willed itself into existence. Here is where Essences, the foundation of all life, magic and matter in the Essential Universe, first came into being. It would not be until the First Epoch that actual physical space began to take form, as the Ancients—Gods comparable to the Titans of Greco-Roman mythology, who were more a physical embodiment of the things they ruled over and interpreted to be “carriers” of the Primordial’s divine will where it could not directly enact on its wishes—came into being. These Ancients are also comparable to the incomprehensible deities of the Cthulhu mythos, with titanic, unbearable bodies and minds so alien to us that they evade description or empathy. They are more like machinations of cosmic law, unkillable and undestroyable, for on their shoulders rests the entire Universe.

The Second Epoch is when the Divines, Gods who created “bi-essences” that combined the Primordial Essences into Lesser Essences, came into being as “children” of the Ancients that possessed a sentience closer to the realm of comprehension. They are capable of whimsy, of want, of ire and of fondness. Here, they would be most comparable to most pantheons of deities, with inter-relationships both within the circle of the Divines and with their creations, the Kinetics, pseudo-mortals who co-existed with the Divines and were taught their magic in return of being subordinate with them.

The Third Epoch is the first Epoch marked by a war of tremendous proportion, that resulted in the death of Divines and the weakening of magic that is still felt to this day. Here, the Divine Nolu, the God of Secrets and Mystery, prompted the Kinetics into rebelling against their deities by telling them forbidden secrets of mortality, encouraging them to upheave the heavens and take their power by storm rather than tolerating watered down lessons that kept them under their benevolent Gods’ thumbs. Nolu would abandon the Kinetics during this war, leading to slaughter on both sides, only to return at last moment to assure the death of all Divines—aside from themselves. The Third Epoch was solely this war, though the duration of it is unknown, and the true extent of the damage and knowledge of what the pre-Divine War world was like is knowledge lost, perhaps for eternity. All that is known is that likely it was a time of Edenic bliss, where magic flowed like wine and mortals were cared for by Divines. After the trauma of the War, the Fourth Epoch was birthed: the Age of Ruin, the Age of Loss, the Age of Abandonment.

Kinetics, now scorned by the Ancients whose children they had revolted against and punished by the Primordial who hosted them, suffered the punishment of agelessness. They were removed from the life-death cycle that promised reincarnation and forgiveness of the soul, forcing them to live an eternity of repentance and grief as they watched the world they knew rot into a mere husk of its former self. Magic weakened with nobody there to teach them, and without Divines to create Kinetics with such innate skill, they were condemned to physically reproduce until there were only Mortals.

Mortals lacked the intimate tutelage that gave Kinetics their mastery over the Primordial Essences, or the Divine Essences, and so their powers weakened too. Magical knowledge was not lost completely, but it would take lifetimes to achieve a level that most Kinetics had earned in adolescence. Over time, the era of bliss and magic that had once been an undeniable reality would fade to myth across the Cosmos, with the division of the New Way (the belief that all of this was purely mythology) and the Old Way (the belief that all of this was fact) separating mortals across the Universe, severing some from their magical heritage entirely to make way for man-made scientific advancement devoid of spiritual attunement.

The Spider Star System was a System that followed the New Way, forcing the less-magically repressed mortals—known as Undanes—into hiding lest they be rejected or destroyed for their absurdities. This System would also become the grounds for one of the greatest calamities recorded, with the Genesis Collapse marking a potentially unrepairable wound in the very fabric of reality whose effects are still present today, giving way to the Paroxysms that blight the Bright Star System in the Sixth Epoch. The Bright Star System followed the Old Way, however, and magic is still understood and studied with varying levels of skill and mastery across the System. It was the Genesis Migration that introduced the Genesse people, Undane and Mundane alike, to the cohabitation of magic-repressed and magic-expressive people, though not without duress. It was this discovery for the Mundanes that contributed to the genesis of the Ametsuchi, forged out of hardship, exile and sacrifice brought on by a primal rejection of this magical nature.

The Genesis Collapse was the locus of the Fifth Epoch, the Age of Champions, where it became apparent that Divinity could be reached by mortalkind should the Primordial bestow upon them the capability. The nature of Champions is debated among scholars; some argue that Champions, of which there is only one certainty and one other heavily contested, are the Divines reborn, returned from their celestial graves, while others argue that the Champions are entirely new in spirit as it would be disrespectful to the Divines to ignore the devastation they had suffered at the hands of men. Unfortunately, the effects of the loss of Divines is still felt to this day, as the sole Champion of the people, Genevieve (the sacred figure of the Holy Order), is absent. Whether she perished after the Genesis Collapse or otherwise went to another System or was killed by the Goliath in some unseen battle of tremendous proportion, is completely unknown. Mortals can only emulate what they think she would have done, such as the Divine Right of Kings applied to the Boucher imperial line on Neo, or the Holy Order’s fight against Paroxysms.

The Fifth Epoch is potentially the shortest of all Epochs, having spanned only several generations, perhaps not even a millennium.

The Sixth Epoch, then, is the playground for the plot of this blog and its attached extended canon. It is the Age of Anarchy, the Age of Monsters, of all things Eldritch. It is uncertain when the Sixth Epoch came into play, for some argue it was with the formation of Spider’s Eye as it tried to awaken the Spider-God Goliath, the destroyer of Genesis and the foe of the Champion Genevieve, or with their first use of Chaos manipulation and Paroxysm invocation as a weapon in the assassination of the Green-King Eoin of Namana. It is potentially even incited by the Ametsuchi Massacre, which was tied to the actions of Spider’s Eye and the High King Kazumi Ametsuchi, resulting in Chaotic manipulations and mutilations of all remaining Ametsuchi. The onus of the Sixth Epoch may be debated, but the end of the Sixth Epoch is entirely unknown: some fear that it may never end, others fear that it is the end, but hopefuls pray for a better, kinder Seventh Epoch, just on the horizon of what may be the most horrifying Epoch to exist in.

#mythopoeia #long post

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makiema · 5 years ago

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Continued from here

2. I think Levi’s face in Chapter 105 wasn’t expressive of his being tired of Eren rather, it was the face of disappointment, sadness and even, betrayal. Levi has always associated Eren with hope like I said before, Eren gave purpose to his strength. He saw Eren as a determined kid whose “fire”, i.e. his unwavering spirit needs to be nurtured and protected at all costs. After four years, we can say that he had build a certain amount of trust in Eren, something that he couldn’t let go of even in the moment of judgement as is evident from Chapter 112. Levi would rather wage war against Marley than give up on Eren.

Coming back to 105, his pained face directly parallels Mikasa’s

and I think that’s enough canon evidence right there, to show his immense agony. He’s hurt, really hurt, just as much as Mikasa is, whose whole life and light has been Eren. Now I know a lot of antis think Levi kicking Eren again in this chapter was another act of blatant sadism but, thing is his face says otherwise. He didn’t enjoy the act and it wasn’t meant to show his dominance or anything; he’s disappointed, he feels betrayed, and that’s why he kicked him. The stress lines coupled with his over all expression clearly shows how grieved he is

This is just my opinion but I think there’s another motive behind Levi’s kicking Eren. The way he uses the words: “ this brings me back” is suggestive of Levi making a reference to the past, a nostalgic one at that. I think, this can be interpreted as Levi’s failed attempt at trying to make Eren recall his older self, the older Eren who Levi believed in so much and whose spirit Levi always admired.

But, Eren’s eyes look lifeless now and he even throws shade at Levi by mocking his ability to understand letters. I think this moment marks the beginning of Eren distancing himself from everyone he held dear. Levi had just said that he wanted to have a talk with him after he’s restrained however, Eren coldly rejects his attempt at conversation by a cutting remark. The same thing would happen later with Hange, Armin and Mikasa, where Eren would deliberately hurt them with his words so that they give up on him. But now, without further digression, let’s come to the context of Levi’s expressions. He’s aggravated by Eren’s snide remark and appalled by his obvious disinterestedness in talking with him. Eren looks so devoid of any feeling and his idc attitude breaks Levi to the point where he feels absolutely betrayed and he goes on to compare Eren with people in the underground who were rotten, obviously devoid of any sign of life or empathy. The pain of disillusionment, the feeling of betrayal is clear in his words “I cannot believe this”.

Yeah so, I don’t think he was tired or anything and more than Eren making a mess I think what really hurt him was that how radically Eren had changed. He isn’t the Eren Levi knew; the Eren that revered Levi and looked up to him for advice, the Eren whose eyes used to be full of life. The Eren of now likes to be left on his own, remains unbothered, and is indeed the monster, that in Levi’s own words, “cannot be controlled even by love.” (VN/Burning Bright in the Forests of the Night)

3. The answer to whether Eren really still cares for Levi is obviously going to be a biased YES. I’ll try to attach as many canon evidences as I can but most of it is just speculation.

• Continuing from the second answer, right after Levi expressed his utter disbelief, we see an intriguing look in Eren’s eyes.

Just a moment before, his eyes were lifeless but, now, he looks up at Levi and suddenly, it seems like he understands something?? or maybe he’s surprised that Levi actually cares so much ?? or maybe he realises that Levi had more trust in him than he could imagine?? even i don’t know for sure why that particular expression but let’s just say Levi’s words had some effect on him and assumably a positive one; something that strikes a chord somewhere deep inside him. I mean, let’s face it, unless we really care about someone, there’s no way what they say will affect us to the point where it’s almost as if his eyes returned to life (and when I say we, I’m talking about a 19 y/o adult who has to bear the burden of the whole world on his shoulders alone and who has only 4 years left of his life that justifies his the lifelessness in his eyes)

• The next possible proof that Eren cares about Levi is here in the end panel of Chapter 117.

I know that the fandom has arrived at a variety of conclusions explaining Eren’s expression, and initially, I was more for the idea that it is a look of relief at seeing Zeke. But now, after the happenings of Chapter 121, (like Eren’s snarky attitude towards Zeke and his betrayal) I’m more for the theory that Eren’s expression in 117 is one of concern. He doesn’t care much about Zeke; he had only used him to achieve his ultimate goal, or what he calls “the scenery”. Anyway coming back to 117, Eren was aware that Levi was watching over Zeke. So the fact that Zeke had broken free and made it to where Eren is, instead of it being the other way round, must have worried him. Hence, the expression. • The final and the most relevant canon proof that Eren still cares about Levi is in Chapter 122, where Eren Jaeger will become God the most powerful being in the whole Universe. Eren’s powerful speech that’ll ultimately make Ymir open her eyes and bring about a whole transformation in her draw heavily from what Levi had said to him previously in the Female Titan Arc.

Those moving words are, in parts, derived from his mentor so now, can we really say that Eren doesn’t care about Levi? Of course, the bit about Ymir being free and that she is just a human being is inspired from Eren’s own philosophy of life and freedom but the bit in his speech about choices, the freedom of making a choice, and the importance of making a decision by yourself and owning up to it- I think, that is taken from Levi’s advice. To support this claim, let me also refer to the memory panel in Chapter 120. Eren’s best memory of Levi is that exact moment when Levi had said those words to him, words that had influenced him to such an extent that he used the same to comfort Armin (like I said before) and now, to comfort Ymir. When we repeat someone’s words to us, it is a given that that person is in the back of our minds. So, it is pretty evident that Eren still thinks about Levi otherwise, what can explain this connection to Levi when it comes to consoling or validating someone?

Also, in previous chapters, Eren has been shown to repeat quotes from people who had left a huge impact on him like his own child self as in here:

Carla’s:

and then, Kruger’s:

So now that Eren throws light again on Levi’s advice, I think it’s suggestive of how important Levi’s role is in his life. And that the fact that the speech inspired from Levi would become the key for Eren to achieve the Founder’s power, is like a tribute to Levi’s encouragement and his overall faith in Eren that went a long way in making Eren the confident, responsible man he is presently.

I hope this answers all your queries anon. I’m really, really sorry that it became so long. Forgive me for using your ask to rant endlessly and no, you’re the cute one. <333

#ereri #snk #snk meta #snk analysis #levieren #levi ackerman #eren yeager #eren jaeger #asks #anon

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demigodofhoolemere · 5 years ago

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Long bitterness below because I saw something that drove me crazy and I wasn’t gonna be able to rest until I articulated my frustrated thoughts

~~~~~

@ the person who wrote this I just wanna talk

https://screenrant.com/mcu-avengers-most-shameless-things-loki-ever-done/

Most of these are just outright wrong and it only takes the slightest glance at canon events to prove them as such, and the ones that have any amount of accuracy to them are devoid of critical context.

I don’t remember seeing much of this stuff before Ragnarok but it’s everywhere now and it’s kind of telling of the narrative bias that movie planted in everyone’s heads that people are now looking back with a lens that’s colored to be against him from the outset without bothering to take into consideration context, critical thinking skills, or empathy. The narrative tells us that he’s just bad so let’s not look any further than that I guess.

Wasn’t gonna debate each of them but the more I think about it the more it’s gonna bug me until I do, so here comes the bitter canon police...

Number 10

1) Right from the off: “Loki and Thor have always had a love/hate relationship — though it gravitates more toward the ‘hate’ part.” Um... always? Because last I checked, despite their differences, they grew up as best friends. Their problems that we see onscreen span from 2011-2017, a measly 6 years compared to over a thousand years of life together. This is a blip on the radar, one that certainly doesn’t constitute leaning towards mainly hate for each other. Heck, even during this time period, they’re clearly shown to love each other. Loki definitely gets angry, but I wouldn’t say he outright “loathes” Thor, at least not in a way that diminishes the love he also has for him.

2) “As such, Loki has betrayed Thor and his adoptive family many times.” This is so wrong I barely have the energy to explain why. People love to give examples of all of Loki’s supposed betrayals and they pretty much all fall down under scrutiny. The only ones I can understand listing are lying to Thor about Odin being dead, along with his attempts to kill Thor at the climax of the first movie (this stuff was when he was waaay out of his right mind, btw — not that he’s not responsible for his actions, but context is still important when taking into account anything he does), and various things in Ragnarok that were out of character for him to do in the first place. Anything else, even if it’s bad, cannot be counted specifically as betrayals against his adoptive family, since things like coming to Earth weren’t about them. If only a couple of instances are able to qualify as betrayals, then no, he has not done this “many” times, no matter how much people like to push that idea.

3) “Of course, Thor often got the brunt of it.” I’ll let that one stand because Thor got a fair number of screams aimed at him, but honestly, I’d say the person most negatively affected by Loki’s actions tends to be Loki. Thor really didn’t get more than he could handle. And as much as I love him, he’s not innocent of dishing his own stuff onto Loki as well. Wording it this way makes it sound like he’s Loki’s abuse victim (when more than anything, they are both the victims of Odin’s awful parenting rather than each other).

4) “So, it’s basically a normal sibling relationship that they portrayed. Oh, and Loki is never apologetic about his violence against Thor — siblings through and through.” First of all when I see stuff like this I have deep concerns for other people’s relationships with their siblings and am reminded of how grateful I am for my sister, but secondly, I don’t get the impression that Asgardians do much apologizing overall. You don’t see Thor apologizing for violence against Loki either. Terrible habit, but it seems to be the culture they were raised in. Besides, I feel like dying for Thor multiple times is decent substitution. (And while it’s not totally clear what he was specifically referring to, it’s worth noting Loki did profusely tell Thor he was sorry on Svartalfheim.)

Number 9

1) Oh my word, I am tired of seeing this. That scene was filmed as a real death, and everyone from Tom Hiddleston to Kevin Feige continued to refer to it as such after the reshoots. I wouldn’t know where to find it right now but I know there’s a quote from Kevin about it being real and that it was only just non-fatal enough for him to survive it. The only place anyone ever says he faked it? In Ragnarok, which is already filled to the brim with retcons, and it’s said by Thor (or whoever that is in Ragnarok who took Thor’s face) who has no knowledge of what really happened, he just makes assumptions and accusations that Loki isn’t given the chance to refute. It. Was. Not. Fake.

2) “He was rather casual about it and didn’t care much about how the rest of his family would take the news.” Source? We don’t exactly get the time to see his feelings on the matter. Also, Thor is the only one who would have cared anyway. Frigga was killed and Odin wanted him dead.

Number 8

1) “One of the reasons why Loki faked his own death was to seize a great opportunity [...]” He must not be good at carrying out his own plans then, since he immediately genuinely tried to offer the throne to Thor. Thor turned it down. Was there still satisfaction from getting the chance to prove that he can be a king? Yeah, because he’s still never felt like he’s been able to prove himself as equal. The chance to prove people wrong about him, and especially the chance to prove his own worth to himself, is exciting, hence that grin at the end. He’s certainly not upset at that opportunity. But that only happened because Thor didn’t take him up on the offer.

2) “The worst part was that he cast a spell on Odin and exiled him in a retirement home on Earth.” The... the worst part? That he removed the man who would have killed Thor upon return and was willing to have all of Asgard and everyone in it destroyed? And still had the mercy to send him somewhere that he’d be safe and taken care of every single day? Uh... okay.

3) “For a time, Loki ruled the Asgardians in their process of recovery from the Dark Elves’ attack.” Yeah, exactly. Thanks for aiding my point. Even Ragnarok of all things, despite the issues I have with the way Loki was portrayed as king, still manages to prove this point by showing things on Asgard being peaceful and repaired.

Number 7

1) Mostly correct this time, but missing the context of why Loki is angry enough at Odin to want the Dark Elves to go after him. Without considering all of the lies and heartache Odin caused that sent Loki’s mind spiraling in the first place, let alone the fact that he left him to spend the next 4,000 years of his life in solitary (which is outright torture, and Loki knew it would be because he seemed to have no problem with the thought of being executed instead), it makes it sound like it was a purely petty betrayal rather than based in any reason. Loki does everything for a reason.

2) “One would think that Loki would’ve learned a lot from this but he kept on being his usual self after a short bout of guilt and anger in his cell.” First of all I think you greatly underestimate how long that’s gonna stick with Loki. Secondly, if by ‘kept on being his usual self’ you mean the immediately following scenes wherein he helps Thor go get revenge on the monsters that killed Frigga and ultimately dies to avenge her and save his brother’s life, then you forgot the actual events of canon again and also inadvertently complimented him by saying that’s normal for him.

EDIT: You know how you can watch something a thousand times and somehow it takes that thousandth time to catch something? Yeah. Anyway, Loki directed Kurse to Asgard’s power plant so he could turn the shield off. THAT is what he was directing him towards, it was to let the Elves in to get to Odin. He didn’t even unknowingly lead Kurse to Frigga, Kurse just went where Malekith was, and Malekith found Frigga because she was guarding the Stone. Kurse would have killed her anyway, Loki’s actions had no bearing on that. Hold him responsible for getting the shield shut down and letting more Elves in (while still referring to point 1 for why), but Frigga’s death never had anything to do with him because Kurse got out anyway. Loki just doesn’t know that. But a character blaming themselves doesn’t mean they’re right.

Number 6

1) Another thing I wish would stop cropping up in all discussions of Loki. Stealing the Tesseract isn’t his ~thing~. I’m annoyed with this one just on principle lol.

2) “Throughout all the MCU movies, Loki has stolen the Tesseract at least thrice, each in three different movies. He just doesn’t know when to give up.” None of those times were just for the lolz like people say. In Avengers he had to get it for Thanos to save his life. In Ragnarok, what the heck was he supposed to do, leave an Infinity Stone floating around in space for anyone to get? It’s not like it would have been destroyed with Asgard. Better to take it and keep it safe. And in Endgame, while I felt that was starting to lean too much into ‘haha I love taking the Tesseract’ territory, it was to get away from the imprisonment and possible death that would have been waiting for him in either SHIELD or Asgardian custody. Loki does everything for a reason.

Number 5

1) “[...] he immediately embraced his evil tendencies.” ROFL I’m sorry but the idea of THIS kid having had prior evil tendencies is actually hilarious.

2) “[...] killing countless innocents on Earth [...]” In canon, there were 74 fatalities in the Battle of New York, which were caused by the Chitauri that Thanos sent rather than directly by Loki. Loki’s personal kill count on Earth can be listed on one hand — literally, it’s something like 5 confirmed onscreen deaths by his hand, with several other unconfirmed ones because we just see him attack but not how badly people got hit. The 80 people that Natasha mentions were the SHIELD agents that went down with the base in the beginning, which wasn’t Loki’s doing, outside of the few guards he killed when he got there. That was pretty easy to count.

3) “[...] and probably other planets as well.” Supposition. Not even the slightest bit of hinting of that in canon. Next.

4) Loki himself was being tortured and under extreme emotional duress and mental manipulation during this movie. Not that he’s automatically 100% absolved of responsibilities, because he did make choices of his own, but again - CONTEXT. This was a fight for his life. He was not well, physically, mentally, or emotionally. There is almost nothing he did in this movie that he would do under normal circumstances in his right mind.

5) “In addition to that, he also put his homeworld of Asgard in constant danger. Odin’s words about Loki being followed by death and destruction wherever he goes definitely rang true.” If you’re referring to the first movie when he lets the Jotuns in, both instances of that were planned in such a way that no Asgardians were supposed to be in danger; he couldn’t have known the guards to the vault wouldn’t be able to take them (and that first plan was intended to protect Asgard from a young and arrogant Thor’s reign; another of few instances that can count as betrayal, but done with reason), and the second time he brought them in was specifically to kill them because, with the combination of his unstable mind and the kind of things Odin praises, he thought it would finally gain him approval from his father (and he was raised with no regard for Jotun lives therefore he didn’t even grasp that it was wrong). That’s the only time Asgard was even slightly jeopardized by Loki. In every single other instance, he is pretty darn devoted to protecting Asgard. Time and again. Odin’s words are a load of crap. Loki has only been surrounded by things like that in the last couple of years, when out of his right mind or coerced or both. This is not something that has always been, and it’s certainly hypocritical for Odin of all people to be making accusations like that when he and his favorite son have done worse things. Heck, Thor’s body count on Jotunheim in the very beginning is on its own a larger number than Loki’s body count in the entire MCU, all for being called a princess. Many of the heroes in the franchise have worse — even significantly worse — body counts than Loki.

Number 4

1) Tortured and controlled by Thanos. Next.

2) “[...] the culmination of all of Loki’s plans ever since he left Asgard to become a villain.” For one thing I love how this makes it sound like he made the conscious decision to run away and be a villain lol, but I just... you remember how he left Asgard, right? When he made a suicide attempt by falling into the void that he could not possibly think he would survive through? He didn’t exactly have future plans in mind. He was trying to die.

3) Now you’re only assuming people died? I thought it was countless?

Number 3

1) This wasn’t a takeover of Asgard. Frigga, who knew that he’s a Frost Giant, appointed him as regent for the time being. What he did with the power is what’s questionable, but the way he got it was completely legit. There was no scheming — he didn’t even want it at first. The thought of proving himself got to his head but he didn’t take the throne purposely nor was it illegally, or done in deception or under false pretenses.

2) While the things he did were wrong, it was not technically a betrayal of Odin or Asgard. He did what he did precisely because it was the sort of thing his father and his people would usually see as heroic. If you wanna call it a betrayal of Asgard for taking the risk of having Jotuns there, I guess, but not of Odin, and it was not done maliciously towards them. The ones who actually suffered for this were the Jotuns.

3) “[...] quickly transformed into one of Asgard’s most dangerous enemies.” He transformed into Odin’s enemy. If he were an enemy of Asgard he wouldn’t have spent his years on the throne protecting it.

Number 2

1) This one is mostly fair and I consider this to be the worst thing Loki’s done. However, this is hardly about shamelessness. This (and seemingly all of the article) is written in the assumption that his actions were done in his right mind. Again: he was in the middle of a mental breakdown. That doesn’t exonerate him but it’s sure as heck important context.

Number 1

(covered the image because no one needs to see that)

1) “[...] betraying the whole universe just because you can is pure evil.” Yeah, it would be. Good thing for Loki then that that’s not what he did.

2) “Loki consciously served Thanos with the initial goal of becoming ‘king’ of the Earth.” Loki was consciously fighting to stay alive because disobedience and failure would mean unimaginable horrors.

Working with Thanos is NOT something he would do just because. As far as wanting to be king of Earth goes, Thanos canonically messed with Loki’s head. He made him think that was what he wanted, just like he dug into his mind to make him angrier at Thor. Thor himself, who has known Loki their entire lives, noted that his behavior and goals were uncharacteristic of him.

3) “It seems like Loki got his just desserts on that front.” Gotta say, I’m genuinely a little horrified when I see people say that Loki deserved that death. No one deserves to have their windpipe crushed and neck snapped brutally by their abuser. That was the most gratuitously graphic character death I’ve ever seen. Even if you think he wasn’t tortured by him before and willingly joined forces with him, he still wouldn’t deserve that fate. It’s too morbid for anybody. ‘Just desserts’ is supposed to be about justice. There’s no carrying out of justice here. It’s just senseless and cruel, and done to a man who had gotten out of the dark place in his life to start anew.

~~~~~

That was longer than I ever intended to let myself get worked up over a dumb ScreenRant post but I feel better with that out of my system.

Here’s to fact-checking before making accusations that have no basis 🥂

#as usual i’m trying to stay in my lane keeping my negativity under the cut but just beware that if you click you will see bitterness #marvel #loki #marvel critical #ragnarok critical #tbh mostly article writers critical #i long for the day when people stop writing about things that they don’t know well enough while acting like they’re obviously right

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dotthings · 6 years ago

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All right here we go, my notes on SPN 14.17 “Game Night,” which gets into parental issues and closure, domesticity on SPN, Cas and loneliness and connections with others, parallels between Dean and Cas, waffles, Dean’s facade, Sam’s heartbreak, my boredom and dislike of villain characters who I am supposed to dislike anyway, the nature of souls, and God as absentee parent.

First off, S14 has to be possibly the most domestic SPN season ever. We’ve had glimpses. But S14 is really digging in showing us this family’s life in the bunker. Add to this, even though Cas wasn’t present for game night, how accepted and normalized it is that Cas lives there. That’s his home. He’s expected and if he goes he at least tells Dean and it’s temporary, it’s assumed he’ll come back. Our bunker family includes 2 characters who aren’t blood related to the Winchesters, Cas and Jack, but they are part of the family nonetheless, something S14 has made abundantly clear.

Why is this domesticity important? Isn’t SPN about killing monsters? It’s important because SPN is about killing monsters. It adds texture and layers to our heroes, makes their lives even more real, and ups the drama factor when we can see them have moments of domesticity and being a family to contrast with the harshness and the monster fights and the darker aspects. SPN from the get-go, has as its primary fuel the bonds between characters. Most of SPN is about Sam, Dean, and Cas as charcters who have MHI and PTSD and how they keep on keeping on, and their bonds with each other and other characters.

We also need to be reminded of the stakes. Our heroes need to be shown living the world they’re trying to save and we need to see why they care if their loved ones are imperiled. We need to see them being a family to understand what could be lost. Remember in ep 300 alternate Sam and alternate Dean we learn are isolated characters and we see Cas devoid of personal attachments, and that was their tragedy.

The monsters are really just a backdrop to explore these characters. Because SPN is a horror/urban fantasy series, we aren’t going to spend a whole lot of time on the domestic stuff, it needs lots of monster-killing action, but all in service of revealing character, and the domesticity needs to be there as part of the emotional weave. It stood out to me how extra domestic the start of Game Night is, with Mary and Jack putting snacks together, Mary trying to talk to Jack, and Dean trying to fix the mouse trap game, they reference that Sam is off getting pizza and will be back shortly, and we have a reason Cas isn’t there but we know if Cas were he’d be right in the thick of the domesticity.

They also did it because of how hurty this ep gets later on, for dramatic contrast.

Dean, our smart little engineer. Dean seems really, really frustrated he can’t fix the mouse trap game which you might think is just there for comedy but it’s not. He’s really minds he can’t fix that mouse trap game. Dean hates it when he can’t fix things, doesn’t he. When someone in his family is hurt or something’s wrong with them and there’s nothing he can do. He’s also not over that PTSD from having Michael screaming and banging in his head. It’s the little things. You think SPN actually forgot he has PTSD, look again.

And where is Cas? Why, he’s off meeting with the angel Anael to get a fix for Jack’s soullessness, without telling Sam and Dean, because Cas...he’s still got issues which I’ll get to a moment.

Interesting Cas orders a waffle he’s apparently not eating. Maybe just to not appear out of place in the diner. While Anael doesn’t even get coffee. Like it’s important to Cas to behave as a human, even if he’s not actually going to eat that waffle. Maybe Cas just wanted a waffle. It’s a really cute waffle, I’d want that waffle. This is reminding me of Cas and the milkshakes in 14.15. Why do they keep showing us Cas and cute milkshakes, Cas and cute waffles. It’s tantalizing. Almost lampshading the fact that this idea of Cas and milkshakes, Cas and waffles, is appealing, the idea of Cas enjoying these things, and maybe Cas would enjoy these things, yet he’s not going to actually consume them.

So Anael was Joshua’s right hand. That was a reveal that shows she was an angel of some importance.

I love the Anael and Cas dialogue. “Ill-conceived lone-wolf desperation.” Anael has seen some things. There’s several moments here where she sees through Cas’s bullshit, and several moments where Cas sees through hers.

Cas is not only hiding his deal with The Empty, he’s gone off to find God to fix Jack’s soul without telling Sam and Dean.

Oh this Dean and Mary scene. I’ve talked about Mary’s arc before, and how purposeful the distance and remoteness is, why the character is meant to be brittle, and wondering what kind of progression we’d see, a softening on that. Here’s another moment of it.

“You’re here, okay?” “But I should’ve been here more. I know I can be closed off, hard.” “That’s where I get it from.”

Oh, this is making me worried for Mary. That’s an awful lot of emotional honesty and softening and I’m thinking about John in ep 300 and closure and how that ended up. Dean got to say what he did to Mary near the end of S12. “I hate you and I love you and I forgive you.” And that was why Dean needed Mary back. But Mary has stuck around for several seasons and there are still unresolved things there. Which this scene offered one step towards a resolution for. How very John paralleling of you, SPN.

Dean relating to Mary’s facade isn’t spn vilifying Dean. SPN doesn’t think Dean is actually closed off and hard, the narrative doesn’t show us that, and the authorial voices don’t believe it. Dean does however construct a facade for himself and I’m not sure how people can claim it’s vilifying Dean for SPN to remember that. (People want consistency and SPN to remember Dean’s characteristics...it does). Dean references his facade here.

Remember that Dean’s perception of himself is that he’s a hardass. The Dean we actually see--and yes SPN is not only aware of that dichotomy but plays with it consistently--is a big-hearted squishy vulnerable softie who outbursts his emotions often and does a terrible job of hiding how much he cares. But in his Dean’s own mind his face is impeccably forged.

He’s acknowledging here he realizes Mary has a facade too and her brittleness and remoteness isn’t because she doesn’t care.

I think also Dean wants to relate himself to his mom. He modeled himself on John much of his life and had to find a way to being his own person away from that shadow, but he’s actually always been more like Mary and he wants to be close to her. So here he purposefully spells out a connection between them, even though Dean isn’t really just like Mary, their facades are still a commonality.

Mary saying “I’m grateful” for all the time she gets to spend with her kids. Her adult kids. Not the babies she lost. Her children as they are.

Ohhhh something bad is going to happen I can feel it.

We get smart researchy Sam, and Mary and Dean mother-son badass hunting team. I’m sorry we haven’t seen more Mary and Dean team-ups, I’ve been waiting for that. (See why I’m nervous? There’s a lot of Dean and Mary stuff in this ep I’ve been waiting for and was denied and now getting it...Marty, I’m scared. I know how SPN operates).

So Nick is basically a complete amoral psychopath now and I am both bored yet weirdly relieved the story isn’t even going close to trying to make him someone relatable or intriguing. Nick is one of the only things most of this fandom in all lanes agrees on: he has to go. And SPN is making him as unpleasant as possible, reflecting that.

Jack and Donatello have no soul and yet they show more conscience and care of others than Nick, who has his soul still, which is raising questions in my head about how souls work on SPN and can empathy be learned even if the soul is gone. It’s not that Jack isn’t incredibly dangerous without his soul, his inner compass is completely borked. But not totally absent. Donatello also has judgment about how to treat others. But Nick...Nick is only murderous.

“Because you’re a good man. You are. It’s one of the reasons I’m so proud of you.”

We are John paralleling like mad here. Sam gets to hear Mary is proud of him. Dean gets an apology for her distance and her letting him know she appreciates being with him.

Closure, closure, closure. Something terrible is going to happen.

These Cas and Anael scenes are utterly delightful. Not just because Misha and Danneel have a great rapport but the themes the dialogue is wading into is making me rub my hands together in metaish glee.

“I believe in Heaven.”

Anael was a believer. Joshua’s right hand. She was a good soldier. Unlike Cas, it doesn’t sound like she had much inclinations to rebel. It seem unlikely Anael ever needed a reset, but like Cas, she eventually did.

“I don’t need Heaven and I don’t need God. I’m happy,” Anael says.

There’s that theme of actual happiness vs. false happiness again.

“Really?” says Cas, who we know has figured out how important bonds with others are. “Because that sounds lonely.”

“We’re all lonely because we’re all alone,” says Anael.

Well this just got deeply philosophical. We can feel alone even when we’re with others. Anael feels God abandoned everyone and she’s not wrong, and she hasn’t found a connection with others the way Cas has. And Cas, even though he has found those connections, is still a lonely figure. Isolation, alienation, feeling he doesn’t belong have been major themes with Cas for years. But Cas knows things Anael doesn’t about how life one earth works.

Oh I so am enjoying Dean kicking the crap out of Nick.

Jack is soulless yet still cares about helping Donatello.

“My father was a monster.” “He loved you...and you broke his heart.”

Shut up Nick, you manipulative psycho. Love isn’t enough. Lucifer “loves” like Thanos “loves.”

Back to Cas and Anael, “I’m doing this for Jack,” Cas says. Which he is, in part, but it’s not the only reason. Anael may have passed on coffee but she’s packing tea. “You’re doing this because you’re afraid. Because in your mind it’d be easier to call God than tell Sam and Dean Winchester the truth. Jack’s soul is gone.”

Here is my whole separate post of its own on over-protective Cas trying to shield Sam and Dean from the storms and while it’s done out love, it’s misguided and his methods of shielding them often end badly.

But if you think Jack is all Cas cares about? Jack is the only reason Cas has done anything lately? You aren’t paying close enough attention (also that’s ignoring big chunks of canon anyway but I’m talking specifically, that even some of Cas’s Jack decisions have been about protecting Sam and Dean from pain...read my post).

There’s another samulet. Cas recognizes the object most likely to be the telephone to God because it’s similar to the Winchester samulet. It’s not identical to Sam and Dean’s. Similar but different design. Slightly different purposes. One glows in the presence of God. Another acts as a voicemail system. Are there others, with other purposes, related to God?

Chuck abandoned humanity and the angels but made sure means of communicating with him were left, perhaps scattered all over the world? In case of emergencies? Was it a full abandonment?

Cas sneaking away from his family to call his father for help out of their sightline because he’s scared and worried, why is that familiar. Where have I seen that before...oh yes, Dean calling John way back in “Home” in season 1.

This while Sam and Dean are going through closure things with the Winchester parents and Cas is again looking for his absent father.

“Go home and tell Sam and Dean the truth.” GOOD PLAN, ANAEL.

I love this exchange with Cas and Anael so much. This is the whole lynchpin of what Cas has learned.

“Just because God’s not with us doesn’t mean we’re alone.” “Why? Because we all have each other?” “Yes.”

Similarly to how Dean had already accepted himself without needing John’s approval to do it, Cas has already figured out he’s not alone even though his father is a chronic abandoner.

Now Sam is beating Nick! It’s the Nick gets beaten up episode and I am so here for it. Sam doesn’t kill him of course because Sam is a good person but I am also sort of sorry Sam doesn’t kill Nick. Which I don’t think is the takeaway they intended and yet.

Sam’s Nickrage. Sam tried to see the good in him and give him the benefit of the doubt. Nick turned out to be completely amoral, and Sam was wrong. And now there’s something wrong with Sam’s shared Team Free Will adoptive child, Jack, who Sam needed to believe in. Sam has had something wrong with him and he’s not all bad, he was worth saving, others are worth it too and Sam needs to believe that. Jack maybe will vindicate Sam in this by the end while Nick is proving to Sam that isn’t always true and I think being faced with that is breaking Sam’s heart. No not everyone is worth saving. Not everyone can be saved.

It’s almost like survivor’s guilt. Sam is a good man. Sam had demon blood in him, he’s made mistakes, he’s done some terrible things, he’s been through some stuff, and he is worth saving. Sam doesn’t seem himself as worth it while others as less worthy, and he’s having trouble not over-identifying on this issue. This is a very long arc for Sam--think back to S8 and Sam talking about knowing as a child he was tainted, that he’d never qualify as a knight, as a pure hero he saw in the books about King Arthur.

But those are idealizations of the heroic paradigm. Someone can still be heroic while being tainted and imperfect. Sam’s figuring this out but he’s still struggling with the object of the proof that not everyone is worth being saved: Nick.

I am not here for Nick beating up Sam. :((((((((((

I am here for badass Dean which is always good to see.

Oh no Sam. :((((((((((((((

“Count with me.” “You always put me first. Your whole life.”

Look I know Sam won’t die-die for good yet but this is still upsetting, Dean trying to keep Sam with him and Sam deciding that should be his final words to Dean, because he’s aware of all Dean took on and he’s grateful. Sam knows. This is also a mirror flip on Dean’s head injury in Ouroboros. This made my heart ache. :(

No can we not have Lucifer back please? I adore 98% of the characters on this show, I’m serious, I am an ensemble gal, but Lucifer’s story has, for reals, played out. Nick is irredeemably awful and dull, Lucifer is boring and selfish and cruel and petulant and I’m bored. Luckily for me neither is being presented as someone I am supposed to or expected to feel sympathy for and I hope it stays that way.

Hey SPN, you’ve successfully made me feel zero sympathy for characters who I clearly am supposed to feel zero sympathy for! You did your job! But do you realize how dull this is? I’m not sure this is supposed to be so dull.

Jack just saying no to Lucifer. Bye, Lucifer! Thank you, Jack!

Thank you Jack for saving Sam!

Hey Jack’s not doing too badly for someone’s who’s soulless...oops wait. No this is not good.

Look I get the way Jack killed Nick is not good and soulless Jack is really dangerous and that was a horrible way to kill someone which Jack didn’t have to do, he could have done it mercifully and didn’t. Of course Mary is horrified witnessing that, and I would be too, but otoh thank you, Jack for dispensing with Nick who is not just murderous. Murderous can be interesting, there are lots of interesting villains out there. But he is just so boring. The drama of Mary’s distress at what Jack did is undercut a bit here because I’m not sorry someone kills Nick. I rarely ever root for any character to die, even ones I dislike (just write them off maybe) but I’m making an exception.

Really Jack’s doing me some solids in this ep.

And then a bad.

Okay, bad Jack. No, Jack, don’t hurt Mary. Which, I been knew, something bad would happen to Mary, telegraphed all ep, and there it is, after all that closure. It’s left ambiguous exactly what happened though. Is she dead? Is she banished to another AU world? Turned into a woodland creature? Was it even Jack who did it? We don’t know what exactly happened yet.

#Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Jack Kline #supernatural #Mary Winchester #Sam and Dean: a work in progress #Team Free Will 2.0 #anti-Nick #anti-Lucifer #SPN #supernatural spoilers #meta

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mindlessselfdeprivation · 5 years ago

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The Nothing

It’s just like The Neverending Story. It’s not darkness, it’s not even a hole, because even hole would be something. No, this...this is just nothing.

That’s depression. That’s what true despair is, it’s The Nothing that eats up your everything. It bleaches your life, nothing has any color or flavor or texture anymore. Food sucks, company is annoying, being alone is excruciating and substances exist only as a shit-ass temporary floaty. Recreation means nothing anymore, every desperate action during the day is taken only to distract me from myself for a little bit longer. Sleep will come soon, and in sleep there’s just that sweet fucking nothing.

Which is what you feel like you constantly have, at any given time. Nothing. The Nothing has it now. And now every memory is covered in spikes, too painful to even go near.

Nothing can make you feel ok anymore, and your good days are the ones where you only brood and lament your life for a few hours out of the day. You know, as opposed to every second you’re awake.

Those days happen so much more often. I swear to fucking God, some days I feel like the pain inside me is gonna open a fucking hole in the earth. Like I’m no longer going to be able to keep this horrible monster at bay anymore, and the scream that finally peals out of me will shred my lungs and crack open an abyss that swallows me once and for all.

I fear for anyone that might be around when that bomb goes off. Which is another problem. Although I’m desperate to be seen and heard and known and loved, I’m fucking terrified of getting near anyone ever again, it seems like an absurd idea to even say it out loud. I’m a goddamned hurricane, I’m a fucking natural disaster on legs, an extinction level event taken human form. All of my relationships....it’s just a festering sewage basin, that whole area of my life. Everything there, flies and pestilence, disease and rot.

That’s my heart in there too. Fucking rotten, like an old forgotten tree stump wasting away in a swamp somewhere in whogivesafuck. Thinking on it, can I even love anymore? Do I even know what that is anymore?

An older woman I work with asked me for a hug the other day cause she was a little sad, thinking about her brother that died...and I was happy to oblige, she’s the sweetest little thing. And I realized - holy shit, this is the first real hug I’ve had in an entire year. I’ve hardly touched anyone for ten months outside of a handshake or a friendly bro-hug.

And afterwards she thanked me and said I gave great hugs, and it dawned on me...I remembered being a guy who loved hugs, remembered a guy that was very romantic and affectionate, that insisted on using physical touch to remind those around him that he loved them dearly....then I looked over from that guy to the one that’s in there now. What a shadow, what a husk he’s become. Empty and hollow and discarded. A lost soul...an inevitable consequence of The Nothing.

The worst thing? I mean, if there is a blacker black than all the rest...

The Apathy. That’s what The Nothing shits out and leaves behind for you. You just don’t....fucking....care...anymore.

I used to have passion, play music, learn language or just about any damn thing else (I was always such a junkie for knowledge), write stories or poetry or music or any one of a dozen other things that enjoyed. And I don’t even write this out of sadness or with some sense of self pity, this is just a cold, apathetic recall of facts. There was a guy who knew love and there’s the guy sitting there now. And those are simply two different guys. And the insurance adjuster in me is fairly certain that at this level of damage, it’ll cost more to repair the existing vehicle than it would to just buy a new one.

I don’t have any real relationships anymore. I have the ones that are necessary to maintain normal social function, but even those I put in just enough to get buy and no more. I’ve lost too much and hurt too deeply and hurt others far too much to let anyone close anymore. It’s hard to describe how it feels to look around you and realize you’re standing alone, no one around.

The only times I hear from someone is when they need something from me. I’m like a tool for rent. Why buy this thing when I only ever need to use it once in a blue moon?

Family? No, two sisters and two brothers in law that I don’t know anymore and they definitely don’t know me. A mom that taught me to use people like pawns and a dad so devoid of emotion and connection that it’s impossible to communicate, a daughter I never see or speak to anymore and an ex that swore we’d remain amicable for the sake of our daughter but slowly, methodically, and fucking brilliantly shut me out of her life completely...and my daughter with her by extension. Friends? No one there that knows me either, just people I talk to on occasion to spend a little bit of my distraction time with someone else.

But no one around me knows this. I put on a pretty decent mask I suppose, my boss apparently thought I was a really happy guy and married with kids. Ha. Cool, it’s working. I’ve gotten good at camouflage. It’s just another form of lying, and I’m incredibly good at lying.

Talking about it, is like...what’s the fucking point? This is a tar pit, baby. I’m not bringing anyone else in this. Even if you were standing right next to me with a brilliant torch, this darkness, this Nothing around me is far too thick to see it.

I miss writing though, maybe that’s why I’m finally doing this. Putting something down. I’m going to commit to talking to this fucking thing everyday. No one knows me here, I barely use this website. I only ever got onto it for....well, another person who eventually left. Maybe that’s why I feel I can be ok here, being naked and bleeding and fucked up and real.....no one who knows me by my mask will have to know what lives underneath it. This is my tree of trust.

I don’t want this to just be a dumping ground for depressed Emo bullshit though, I can go listen to Dashboard Confessionals while cutting myself if I wanted to go there. What I want is a true exploration and record of The Nothing as it grows stronger, what it’s taking, what fuels it, can I escape. I don’t want help either, I don’t think there is any such thing (see tar pit reference above). Maybe you’re always alone too, maybe you’re also constantly afraid that the house of cards will get blown down and people will see the real ugly inside.

Maybe this is just me yelling into the wind that you’re alone, but not so alone. Maybe all of us are and none of us. Maybe I don’t know what to believe anymore.

I’ve tried to remember it, you know. Happiness. I’ve tried to find that motherfucker like Sherlock and his dear Watson, complete with cocaine and violins. You ever try to think of a nice warm fire while you’re soaking wet and freezing your balls off? And how’d that work out for ya? Same idea - “Just think happy thoughts” is like telling someone that just fell into arctic waters that they should “Just think of a nice warm fire”.

Hopefully, they’re still giving you the finger when their body gets frozen in place. It’d be a bit of justice, if there is such a thing.

That happiness is like the thought of a warm blanket when I’m currently buried in snow. Doesn’t actually exist.

There’s not a day where I don’t wake up wishing to fuck that I hadn’t. And there isn’t a night that I go to sleep that I don’t pray that I won’t wake up this time. Life has become a grueling marathon of pain and most days I have trouble figuring out why I fucking bother.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m constantly stopping to wonder what’s the fucking point.

I’ve gone on dating apps, funny enough. But every time I actually think about having a connection with someone, it honestly freaks me the fuck out. I’m so fucking damaged, there’s just no fucking way I’ll find someone with a back strong enough to help me carry all this baggage. I freak out and delete the account.

It’s completely not about the sex for me, if you can believe it. I’ve got such a low libido recently that even the idea of it lately gives me paralyzing anxiety. I don’t want to have sex if it’s not with someone I have a good intellectual connection with, and I never have. The problem with that is that sex in my mind is held on this strange pedestal where it straddles the line between sacred entity and foul beast, and it’s gotten so complicated and ridiculous that I just don’t care anymore.

There isn’t anything even tempting or alluring about sex anymore. Even masturbation is almost completely without enjoyment, used every so often as a tool for general upkeep. And even this The Nothing has it’s hands on. The other day, I stumbled on a video that looked almost exactly like my child’s mother with another man...and I got physically ill. After throwing up 3 times and shaking for nearly an hour, I slowly pulled myself back from the panic attack I was having.

I didn’t eat for 3 days and I couldn’t get another erection for more than a week. Suppose it’s safe to say I’m still in love with that woman, I guess. Not only did I feel like absolute shit that whole week, I felt like shit for feeling like shit. My Yin and my Yang were both very very pissed off. This is just one of a number of broken fuses and faulty wires inside this broken machine.

Sometimes I wish we had the ability to do a form of Vulcan Min-meld, but with emotions and empathy. Especially when someone asks what’s wrong. Just grab their hand and rest it gently over my heart and let it tell the story for which I’ll never have the words.

That’s also why I’d be scared like hell if that were possible, I’d be afraid the weight of it would crush them. I’m not trying to be really morose or hyperbolic, I’m fairly certain the vast majority of people walking around out there don’t carry this. I’ve talked to them, I know them. When you’ve spent a fucking lifetime perfecting your camouflage and your tower of lies, you can spot someone else playing that game from a mile away. And I’m not saying everyone else out there is skipping through a magic pixie lolly-pop fairyland or anything, but most people out there are general pretty stoked about being alive and doing stuff. People like me are out there, but I don’t see very many people that are under the spell of The Nothing.

I fucking hope not, this is an existence I wouldn’t wish on anyone, friend or foe. On that note, I also hope you aren’t going through that as well if you’re reading this right now. If you’ve never counted the different ways you could choose to end your life instead of counting sheep to fall asleep at night, you are truly blessed.

I hope you stay whole. And with whatever capacity I’m still capable of feeling it, I love you. Cause maybe you don’t hear it that often either, and for that I’m sorry. I’d rather go without food than love, and I’ve been in both spots before.

I hope The Nothing never finds you.

Until next time.

#TheNothing #Depression #WhoCares

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two-are-the-trees · 6 years ago

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Deeper Analysis: “It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone

Ok so I mentioned in my last Twilight Zone episode countdown that I was going to talk further about this particular episode, which happens to be, in my opinion, the scariest episode of the entire series. It’s an episode deviod of outright visual horror, devoid of aliens or robots or voices from the grave, and yet it remains utterly bone-chilling for audiences even today. And perhaps it is especially today’s audience that can really begin to understand the horrible significance of this story.

The episode begins strangely. Rather than showing us a short scene to introduce the characters and setting before Rod Serlin’s introduction, Rod comes out and addresses the audince directly, claiming that this episode of The Twilight Zone is “somewhat unique.” He states that a small town has been cut off from the rest of the world by a “monster” and then goes on to explain how the monster can create and destroy things according to his every whim using only his mind, and that everyone in town lives in fear of his power and cruelty. This opening is jarring and unnerving right of the bat, as Rod Serling’s strange emphasis on the importance of this episode indicates that even the host himself regards this one with a particularly serious air. We are left, too, in suspense about who or what the monster actually is, as Rod Serling saves this bit of information for the very end of his introduction. And rightly so as we learn, much to our surprise, that the monster is merely a child, a child that happens to have psychic abilites. Immediately the uncanny atmosphere with which the episode began increases tenfold as we are left to wonder what terrible events could have unfolded for Rod Serling to unflinchingly call this child a monster.

Well as it turns out, a child with psychic powers is actually the perfect recipe for a monster. Anthony, the monster in question, being a child with a limited sense of how the adult world operates and with no sense of responsibility, abuses his complete control over this town. Characters mention that they are running low on certain supplies like soap and alcohol, specifically because Anthony, being a child, sees no need for these things and therefore doesn’t allow them into his closed-off town.

It’s also clear that Anthony has had his powers from an early age, as it appears he has been raised with this power in mind. He has no compassion, empathy, or consideration for others, an indication that he has never been disciplined or extensively educated in these matters for fear of his powers. Because of this, he uses these powers however he wants, which usually involves torture and violence. He creates horrible creatures like three-headed gophers, mutates farm animals, and kills any animal he doesn’t like. When he “makes TV” for all his neighbors, he creates a violent program of one dinosaur brutally killing another.

But the most terrible part of this episode is Anthony’s violence against other humans in town. All of the adults are petrified by Anthony, and force themselves to smile all the time all constantly repeat that anything Anthony does is a “real good thing” no matter how horrible. The reason for this is because Anthony can read peoples’ minds and if he hears any “bad thoughts” in anyone’s head, he will do unspeakable things to them. In one scene, Anthony recalls a time when someone had a bad thought about him and had to “make him go on fire.” He also dulled his own aunt’s mind and severly limited her mental capabilities for the same reason. Therefore, all the townspeople have essentially brainwashed themselves into behaving in a cheery manner all the time to avoid accidently thinking a bad thought. The images of some of these people forcing themselves to smile and say “It’s a real good thing!” even through their tears of anguish is devestating to watch and creates an escalating feeling of tension and fear. This all comes to a head when one man finally snaps, hoping that someone will finally work up the nerve to kill Anthony, but alas no one does and Anthony turns him into a nightmarish jack-in-the-box, which still retains the man’s lifeless head.

Anthony’s power and violence is entirely dependent on his whim and is impossible to predict, hence the reason why he has so thoroughly enslaved everyone in his town. He claims, “I hate anyone who doesn’t like me!” and doesn’t hesitate a moment to punish or exclude those who don’t line up in accordance to his every petty desire. At the end of the episode, he decides to make it snow simply because he wants to, not understanding, or not caring, that it will ruin half of the town’s crops, dooming everyone to possible starvation.

Rod Serling ends this episode by simply saying “no comment.” A wise move, perhaps, as it encourages the audience to do a little more thinking if they want to find a meaning in this episode for themselves. And while there are a lot of different people, places, and periods in history we can draw comparisons to, I think the scariest notion of all is how many comparisons we can draw between the monstrous Anthony and one Donald Trump.

Firstly their upbringing or “privilege.” It’s no surprise that Donald Trump clearly did not recieve an education on tact or compassion during his childhood. Growing up wanting for nothing in a wealthy family (with a 1 million dollar from his dad I might add) Trump obviously has tremendous amounts of power and privilege over others inherently, in the same way that Anthony has had his ability to control others from an early age. Trump and Anthony use this power and privilege in a similar way; bullying and intimidation. Trump has been known to show cruelty toward disadvantaged groups (the poor, the disabled, refugees, the list goes on and on) and has no compassion where it is required of him (mass shootings, the California fires, ect.) much like how Anthony shows cruelty toward animals. They seemingly lack any sort of empathy. Obviously there are those in positions of power that do have empathy and compassion, however, those who were raised with unhindered power with no discipline or instruction on how to behave will exhibit behavior like that of Trump and Anthony.

Secondly is their threatening and manipulative nature. Seeing as how I am writing this post during the third longest government shutdown in U.S. history, a shutdown caused entirely by Trump’s unfounded desire to build a border wall that no one else approves of, I already have a pretty solid comparison. Trump’s tendancy to gravitate toward drastic measures, much like how Anthony constantly threatens violence, has everyone in a constant panic that he will upset the delicate balance of government. Trump has caused foreign relations scares in the past with his feuding with North Korea and he threatens that he will continue the government shutdown indefinitely, leaving thousands of government employees without pay and sending the economy into a spiral. Much like Anthony’s drastic displays of power, Trump’s constant threats leave the public in a constant state of unease.

Lastly, and this was the comparison that first led me to think more about this episode in the first place, is the very clear way in which these two figures cannot or choose not to understand anything that lies outside their selfish desires. Trump’s arrogance is plain; his giant gold towers and planes with his name in bold lettering on the side, his engaging with people personally on twitter when they insult him, his outrage at the many many unflattering pictures of him in circulation. His self-obsession is exactly comprable to this spoiled child in The Twilight Zone, as Anthony outright states that he hates people who don’t like him and gets incredibly angry whenever something doesn’t go his way (again, Trump’s government shutdown *cough*). They both ignore the needs of those around them, as Anthony does not provide things like soap and Trump does not provide things like healthcare or comprehesive rights for underprivileged groups. And no comparison can be clearer than the terrible effect these two have on the environment. The fear in the townspeople’s eyes as Anthony ruins all of their crops with his desire for snow reminds us all of the impending disasters that will come with climate change and Trump’s lack of environmental protection policies.

So perhaps I should end this discussion as Rod Serling did, by simply stating “no comment,” but I do have to note that I find it more than a little distressing that there are several notable and significant comparisons that one can draw between Anthony “the monster,” a dangerously spoiled and selfish child with no understanding of how the world works and a tendency for cruelty and destruction, and Donald Trump, the current president of the United States. And clear too are the comparisons between the townspeople who back down at the opportunity to finally stand up to Anthony and the conservatives who refuse to call out Trump for his irresponsible and reprehensible actions.

Perhaps, for our own peace of mind, these speculations are best left in The Twilight Zone.

#Gothic #The Twilight Zone #analysis #sci fi #my thoughts

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elfnerdherder · 6 years ago

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Art For Art’s Sake: Chapter 2

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Chapter 2: Deadly Encounters

Will Graham had just finished dragging the body of Randall Tier up a small hill to an abandoned well when he saw another gentleman just across the way doing something much the same.

There was a moment, in seeing him, that Will considered immediately pulling out his pistol and ending him. He wasn’t much of a trigger-happy sort of man, though; keeping his wits about him –so to speak –in a stressful situation was the only reason he was currently alive. Will glanced to the body at his feet, wrapped with utmost care and devoid of any distinguishing features or evidence, then to the man just on the other side of the well.

The man was watching him, too.

“Well, one of us is going to have to change,” Will said dryly.

The man tilted his head, as if to better catch his words and turn them about. Likely he was studying Will just as cautiously as Will was studying him, taking in what little details he could find. Unlike Will, dressed comfortably in flannel and jeans that would later be burned, he was dressed in something reusable, a plastic suit fitted over a sensible quarter-zip sweater and slacks.

Not his first offense, then.

“I’d apologize, but these things happen,” the man said. He had a cool clipped sort of voice, accented lightly with something European and a dash of sophistication. A doctor? A professor?

“They do,” Will readily agreed.

The hill was quiet as the two continued to scrutinize one another, waiting. A cool breeze teased the hair at the nape of Will’s neck, reminded him that despite the weather he had worked up a sweat in killing Randall. His shirt clung to his back, the material cold against his clammy skin. He wondered if the man across from him had matching eyes, or if they’d be the mismatch pair of someone that had found their other half.

“Is this where we both explain the reason why we believe that we deserve this location as a place in which to place our respective bodies?” the man wondered.

“Maybe rock, paper, scissors?”

“I thought the view here would be lovely for his final resting place,” he said as if Will hadn’t spoken, and he turned his head to look out over the forest. His body stayed firmly squared towards Will. “It’s peaceful, here.”

Will looked out over the rolling hills, the lush green hardwoods that rose to grand heights. The forest in Wolf Trap, Virginia, was the product of both hundreds of years of growth versus months of brand new life bursting from the rich soil. Will knew the paths like the back of his hand, the animal trails that led him to the best of places to fish. Each living thing within it was a comfort to him, each bed of moss and each field of flowers remarkable.

This man…was an interloper.

“I’d say let’s keep it peaceful here,” Will suggested curtly.

“There’s no need for more death,” the man agreed.

“Then I’ll take the well, and you take your body elsewhere.”

“I need the well, though,” the man protested, although it was a polite sort of protest. They eyed one another cautiously, and the man’s smile was even amiable. The light made it difficult to tell the color of his eyes.

“Yeah, well,” Will grunted, and he hefted Randall Tier up just enough to lean him against the crumbling stones of the well. It brought him close enough to the man to be able to note the subtle colors in the argyle pattern underneath the plastic suit as well as the fitted booties over his shoes. Matching eyes. “I get the feeling you’re the type that kills often enough that you’ll be able to find another well in no time. No need to waste your talents here.”

The man continued to stare as Will lifted Randall and dumped him end over end, the darkness of the dry well swallowing him whole before a few seconds later, there was a muted thump. Satisfied, Will rocked back on his heels and wiped his brow, jaw set stubbornly.

“Do you feel good about being able to make such a conjecture?” the man asked.

“Satisfaction isn’t always a good thing; sometimes just means you accomplished what you set out to do.”

“Then you’re satisfied,” he clarified.

“To a degree. There’s still the matter of you taking that body to another well.”

“Why are you so concerned about there not being two bodies in this well? Are you particularly territorial of it?” The wariness from before seemed to soften; his tone of voice was somehow amused, teasing.

“I’m particularly concerned with no one finding a body at this well. Not one, and sure as hell not two.” Will ground his teeth and planted his hands on his hips. Just an inch behind the right hand, the holster to his pistol lay in case he stumbled across snakes or wild hogs.

Or other killers.

“You’re not concerned that I’ll call this in?” the man asked, and his smile left deep grooves in his cheeks. It made the hollows of his eyes far more sunken, far more dangerous. The amiable gentleman from Europe was gone for the briefest moments, and despite everything in Will’s gut begging him to rip the pistol from its holster and dump three bodies in the god-forsaken well, he didn’t.

He had his curiosity to slake, after all.

“That suit tells me you’ve thought this through,” Will noted, and he swept his gaze along the man once more. No other inch of him moved, save for the occasional tilt or turn of his head. It was animalistic, his need to catch the sounds falling from Will’s mouth. “The calmness of your hand, your stance, and your voice says this is a normal affair for you. Your eyes are matching, meaning this was no soulmate murder that can be explained away by a chemical change and some claim to temporary insanity. This was well thought out. Your willingness to speak with me rather than simply fall to fight or flight instincts shows an analytical mind, no doubt mimicking my lack of using the firearm at my side.”

“I’m being polite.”

“Nothing wrong with politeness, but I know you noticed my gun. You’re responding to my lack of violence with a lack of violence of your own, either until you have the opportunity or until you have a better understanding of your situation. That rules out most disorders or psychotic breaks. You can reason.”

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?” The man was amused.

“A bit.”

“You’re not entirely wrong,” he assured Will. “Please, do go on.”

Given that he still hadn’t moved, Will folded his arms across his chest and got comfortable. “You specifically chose this place, the top of a steep hill, and there is more than just a body in that bag behind you. I heard tools and equipment rattling around. You’re not going to just toss a body here, you’re going to do something with it.”

“Perhaps I mean to bury it deeper?”

“Hardly. As of right now, there are three on-going investigations regarding serial killers within a seventy-five-mile radius and dozens of cold cases.”

“Oh?” The man showed only the barest of surprise.

“Only one of those sets up elaborate displays in shocking or dramatic locations that are ironic only to the victim.”

Quiet crept along the wind that stirred between them. Just at the tip of his tongue, Will tasted the bitter scent of maple leaves and wet acorns from the breeze, faintly pungent. The man before him tilted his head once more, and it was a quick, predatory jerk. Will had him, there. He saw it in his eyes, how they hardened to chips of garnet in the sunlight. Matching eyes. No soulmate.

“Am I speaking to the illustrious Will Graham that was just recruited to aid in a cold case with the hard-working agents of the F-B-I?”

Will bared his teeth. “Not so cold anymore, I think. Not since a week ago I got a special visit from the director of the BAU.”

“I’m curious as to what you’ll do next, Special Agent Graham,” the Chesapeake Ripper said kindly. “We are both here on interesting circumstances, after all.”

Special circumstances, after all. Will thought about the pistol, then rejected the idea. Gunshots this time of year weren’t entirely surprising, although the time of day could be suspicious. Will thought once more of leaving three bodies in the well.

He didn’t reach for the pistol.

“I’m not here to have a dick measuring contest between the FBI and the alleged Chesapeake Ripper,” Will said at last. He could still taste the hint of acorns on his tongue. “I’m just saying, if the Chesapeake Ripper set up a display at this well, sooner or later there will be something that leads the FBI here. Where I just dumped a body.”

“You’ve put yourself in an interesting predicament then,” the Chesapeake Ripper observed.

“No, it means you’re going to plant that body somewhere else.” Will gestured to the body once, then jabbed a little harder for emphasis. “Don’t care where else, as long as it’s not here.”

He wasn’t sure what to think of the way the Chesapeake Ripper stared at him after that, equal parts amusement and something borderline murderous. His palms were hot, and he thought of the body sitting at the bottom of the well, how everything had gone so wrong so fast. It wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t his fault.

“You know, I’ve read stories about the special agent that was recruited for the Chesapeake Ripper’s case,” the man said, and his expression softened. “How he helps the FBI find monsters because he is one.”

Will’s confidence in his ability to draw his pistol quickly faltered, if but a little. He swallowed, hard, and resented how his hands shook. “No, it’s because he thinks like one.”

“One could argue that what we think, we say. What we say, we do. What we do defines who we are.”

“Now who’s psychoanalyzing who,” Will muttered, only he wasn’t so congenial as the Chesapeake Ripper had been. He felt his identity like a brand, something he could normally set aside when he stepped into the forest, even as he’d done it to hide the body of a man he’d murdered.

“I’m curious about the story that led a person with hyper-empathy disorder to take the life of what looked to be a young adult male?”

“What is this, quid pro-quo?”

“I did freely allow your psychoanalysis,” the Chesapeake Ripper reminded him. As a gesture of peace, he even rocked back onto his heels and tucked his hands into his pockets.

With a stance like that, how could Will say no?

“He was another serial killer,” Will admitted, “that decided to make me his target. He failed.”

“You didn’t think to call your boss at the FBI?”

At that, Will faltered and looked to the well, then back to the man across from him that seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say. Will cleared his throat, then ground his teeth together.

“Is this your first time taking a life?” the man asked when he didn’t –couldn’t –speak.

“No.”

“Your second?”

“…No.”

The man tilted his head, his smile more of a smirk this time. “Are you creating a pattern, Special Agent Graham?”

“All three of them have been in self-defense,” Will protested, and his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He felt oddly exposed. “I just…don’t want there to be a pattern. Two isn’t a pattern, but three is.”

“I’d imagine with your neurosis, the pleasant staff of the FBI ensure constant psychological evaluations as the nosy and unpleasant poke about with a blunt instrument, clumsy and ignorant.”

Bluntly put, and yet...

Will blinked once, hard, then shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose as they slid down. “Yes.”

“When one has to live in a head such as yours, the last thing you’d wish to endure is someone else seeing just how ugly the things inside of you are.”

“Hence why I suggest that a high-publicity figure such as yourself should find somewhere else to stash your body,” Will replied, and he couldn’t help a humorless laugh. “Now you’re catching on.”

“You trust that I won’t make a phone call to Agent Jack Crawford? I know he is the head of the case on the Chesapeake Ripper.” His smile that time was delightfully sadistic. “He won’t stop until he has the head of such a notorious serial killer on his desk.”

“I have enough of your description that there will be a man-hunt shortly after my own arrest, I assure you.”

“I could simply frame you for all of my kills,” the Chesapeake Ripper pointed out.

“And give me the credit for your art?”

The Chesapeake Ripper preened. “Then even you, disgusted by your own murder as you seem to be, can admit the artistic style of my work and how this well would be a lovely location for it?”

“I’m not disgusted,” Will snapped, “I put that animal down like the dog he thought he was.”

Silence between them once more. The way the Chesapeake Ripper regarded him made something just underneath the thin membrane of his skin shift, and he wondered how quick he’d be to his gun, should the man lunge.

Not as quick as he’d like, that was for damn sure.

“May I sit down here with you?” the Chesapeake Ripper asked, and that wasn’t at all what Will was expecting.

“Why?”

“I have quite the curiosity about you, Special Agent Graham, and I think you have something much the same about me.”

“I don’t.”

The Chesapeake Ripper’s smile was serrated. “You will.”

“You think this means I’ll just leave the case on you?” Will asked hotly. “I ask you enough questions, and I tell Jack that I just can’t help him on this?”

“On the contrary, I thought to have a pleasant chat. I set this body aside awhile longer, and the two of us have an adult conversation.”

“This won’t endear me to you,” Will warned him.

“Heaven forbid we become friends,” the Chesapeake Ripper solemnly agreed.

He wasn’t an impatient man. He gave Will the time to mull over his words, his heart pounding as something just out of reach screamed for him to just shoot the bastard already. It couldn’t control his limbs, though, no matter how it tried. It was things like this that made Will wish he’d just stayed away when Jack came skulking around, made him think about Alana Bloom begging him to just tell Jack to fuck off. Maybe if he hadn’t gotten involved with this shit, a suspect to a huge case wouldn’t have taken an interest in him.

Maybe if they hadn’t taken an interest in him, they wouldn’t be dead.

Will sat down on a large rock just beside the well. He stared out over the lush, green hillside in profile to the Chesapeake Ripper –known in the BAU as ‘Jack’s Magnum Opus’ –and gave him a clear view of Will’s pistol, still tucked safely away in its holster.

After Will was settled, the Chesapeake Ripper crossed the small distance and sat down beside him.

The pistol was tucked between them.

“Do you often find your talents grotesque but useful?” the Chesapeake Ripper asked.

“I am capable of hurting people whether they’re good or bad,” Will replied heavily. “I choose to only hurt bad people.”

“You have such an acute understanding of them, therefore you know why they must die. Their thoughts are your thoughts. You see the monsters behind their skin.”

“I know how rotten they are down to their marrow. How twisted. How hurt.”

“It’s a burden to you.”

“Is your apathy your burden?” Will retorted. “They are beneath you, so it’s not murder? You can’t be bothered to care?”

“I have feelings. The people that die by my hand aren’t entirely deserving of life –why should I bother with caring for their death?”

“Next you’re going to tell me that you’re god,” Will scoffed.

“Didn’t you feel like god when you killed that young man?”

A little bit. Enough that he could understand why there was absolutely no reason, way, shape, or form that Jack Crawford could find out about what’d happened. He swallowed heavily and wondered which of them would be faster to his pistol now.

“God is amazing,” the Chesapeake Ripper murmured. “Humans enjoy depicting him as a benevolent caretaker and loving father, but he is nature. God is as much a balance as the seasons are; in one hand he holds the miracles of birth, and in the other hand he created S.I.D.S. There is nothing kind nor cruel in his acts.”

“What would you call it, then?”

The Chesapeake Ripper turned to him and stared into his eyes with a smile. “Power.”

Will Graham was ten steps away from him with his gun drawn before he could quite get a breath in, before he could quite realize what he was doing. His other arm swung up in order to clasp the pistol properly, grip it tight with both hands because that was far more stable than the teacup approach.

The Chesapeake Ripper hadn’t moved an inch.

“You have an aversion to eyes,” he noted gravely.

“Get that fucking body and get out of here,” Will said shakily. He’d seen his eyes.

He’d seen his fucking eyes.

“Do you avoid everyone’s eyes?” Rather than laugh, the Chesapeake Ripper stood with care, probably more than aware of the tightrope that he walked in that moment. Will’s finger was on the trigger and squeezing ever-so-slightly.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Are you going to kill me now, Special Agent Graham?”

“Leave and I won’t have to.”

It was like before, only this time it was Will on the incline and the Chesapeake Ripper at the top by the well, staring impassively. His hands were shaking, and he wondered what Beverly would say should she find his body carved up and stretched out on a canvas for her to find later. Kill or be killed was how the world went whether or not there were gods or balance or nature or anything of the like.

And Will was very, very good at killing bad people.

“I’m going to leave,” the Chesapeake Ripper decided.

“Good idea.”

“I hope to see you in the near future, but I understand if the sentiment isn’t shared. I can only imagine someone with the turn of mind like yours would be wary of garnering a chemical connection to another human being.”

“If I ever see you again, I’ll have to kill you,” Will replied. “You know that, right?”

“We’ll see.”

The Chesapeake Ripper departed from the hill. Will stayed back, listening to the sounds of twigs snapping, leaves crunching, and wind rustling against synthetic material until it faded into the distance, swallowed up by the density of the forest.

It was quite some time after until he finally made his own trek home. He’d have liked to have said that he left Randall Tier up on that hill with the body in the well, but in reality, Will figured he’d never quite leave him –like the residue on the counter that just wouldn’t quite wipe clean.

He lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling. He thought of garnets in the sunlight, bright and eerily calm as they watched him hold a gun. Matching eyes.

Fuck.

He slept, and he dreamt of digging into the soft earth outside, tilling the soil until he found raw crystals and stones, garnets in the sunlight. The air smelled like rotting flesh. It smelled like Randall Tier.

It was a knock at the door that woke him, but it was the pushing, tugging feeling in his chest that forced him to unlock it. Something was whispering, urging, and when arms came close to wrap around him, he didn’t mind so much.

Was he dreaming?

It didn’t feel like a dream. His skin flushed, and there was a sense of everything being just right as hands glided along his back, sweaty and hot from bad dreams.

A mouth was on his, and all thought was lost entirely, something urging him to touch and how could he question such a reasonable statement as that? To touch something that wanted to be touched, arching under his curious and wanting hands.

Will found the bed, and the frame creaked and smacked the wall. They fell back onto it, and he found himself staring up into eyes too dark to clearly see.

“Your bed is in your living room,” Hannibal huffed, and his shirt was removed deftly, tossed somewhere else into the darkness where the dogs would likely lay on it and get hair everywhere.

“Shut up,” Will groused, and his skin hummed as lips met his chest with purpose, mindful of what made him tangle his fingers through silvered hair.

Something inside of him was pulling, pulling. It felt right, and it stole his breath from him, left him digging his fingers into his sheets, urging.

His heart beat, hard, and there was the dizzying sensation where he couldn’t have been sure if the heart pressed just against his skin was beating in perfect measure with him, too.

“Your front window is broken,” Hannibal Lecter said conversationally. He lay on his side just across from Will, a hand pressed to Will’s bare hip.

“Randall Tier jumped through it when he attacked me,” Will replied.

Hannibal eyed it critically. “The repair job will do for now, but it needs properly fixed before it snows.”

“Why would you care?” Will wondered.

Hannibal’s hand flexed against his hip, tight then painfully relaxed. Will’s skin hummed at the touch, and the feeling of everything being just right.

“Should I not be, given what we’re feeling right now?”

“I have to kill you, you know.”

Somehow, it didn’t sound as aggressive as Will wanted it to. It was almost like he’d said the punchline to a joke that had been shared many, many times.

Fucking soulmate bond. He held his breath, but when Hannibal put lips to his neck, he couldn’t quite keep it in.

“Do you suppose that I haven’t also entertained the notion?”

It sounded wicked against his neck.

“I’d say it was your first thought, and many after. You could still be considering it and trying to distract me with this.”

“You’d feel it, though,” Hannibal pointed out.

“I’d feel it,” Will agreed after a beat.

“And what is it you feel, Special Agent Graham?”

“I feel…”

But that was the trouble, wasn’t it? Will Graham felt, and at the moment it was hard to describe the need, something that urged and whispered wicked things in his ear and made him wrap a leg around a psychopath’s calf.

He felt good, though. Really good, all things considered. He hadn’t even thought about Randall Tier’s corpse since he first woke up.

“I don’t know how this will even work,” he finally said, but it wasn’t so full of conviction. Hannibal’s mouth had found his jaw.

“We’ll think of something,” Hannibal replied, unconcerned. “One of us may kill the other at some point yet. We can’t say for certain.”

Will didn’t feel like it, at the moment. Jack would definitely lock him up if he didn’t, and yet…

“We’ll see,” he decided. Not quite full of conviction, but it was difficult to be, at the moment.

Some people said that soulmate connections were just chemicals, but it was difficult to feel that way at the moment, with his skin in direct contact and everything inside him urging him to remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully, Hannibal didn’t feel obliged to move from his position any time soon.

#LiaS scribbles #soulmate au #hannibal soulmate au #the fault in my code au #hannigram #hannibal x will graham #hannibal fanfic #hannibal au

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dexcidium · 7 years ago

Text

Without ideals, our lives would be meaningless. Without empathy, humanity cannot advance. And without dreams, we have nothing to strive for.

Hey folks, it’s ya boi back with another rambly thingo where I vomit words onto a screen. Don’t worry though, this does relate back to FGO, Guda and even the Fate series and what it represents as a whole. So I just finished Camelot. And without contest, it is hands down the best piece of writing that’s come out of FGO (In NA at least) so far. Of course who else could have written it but the madman himself? That’s right. Kinoko Nasu. The man who started it all, and the creative genius behind the Fate series, and the Nasuverse as a whole. Hence, the name ‘Nasuverse’.

Before my hand gets tired with jerking off Nasu, let’s move on to… well, I guess it’s more accurate to say that we should take a step back and look at the Fate series as a whole. Do something for me: what comes to mind when you think of Fate. Perhaps it’s its most basic premise: heroes of the past duking it out in a battle royale. Perhaps it’s even a specific character that you love in the series. And perhaps even one of the series’ multitude of flaws. But to me, it comes down to a single word:

Idealism.

We all have our own ideals. And we all live with certain beliefs that complement those ideals. Way back when during the Stay Night era of things, we had Emiya Shirou. The embodiment of idealism. He wanted to be a hero of justice, to save everyone. But that’s just what it was. An ideal. Shirou was fundamentally weak. His magecraft at that point was so useless in actual combat besides making things harder. He trained his body, sure. But a single man can’t save the world. And this persisted as the narrative went on. No matter how much he did get stronger, he will never save the world. Even with sacrifice. Even when his literal future self came to fucking kill him because he knew that his hands will never hold anything. This boy kept going towards those ideals.

It was unshakeable and it was clear that there was nothing (besides death) that’d get him to stop. Of course, Shirou doesn’t seem human at all. His thought process is rather… robotic in this case. He exists to keep going for those ideals. Sure he has his hobbies, family, and friends. But all of that is surface level. At his very core, his ideal lies. To become a hero of justice. Though I’m pretty sure there’s a couple of endings that has him giving those ideals up in Heaven’s Feel. But nine times out of ten – he doesn’t stop. And in a way, he’s rejected his humanity and become a machine of heroism. But a hero isn’t just about saving people. There’s so much more to it. And it’s a lot darker than it sounds.

Enter Emiya Kiritisugu. A nihilistic, broken man who seems to have lost it all only to find that he hadn’t lost it all, but then loses it all anyway. He was cursed in so many different ways. And he too, wanted to be a hero of justice. But his fundamental ideals were different. Sacrifice the few to save the masses. If he’d had to kill his own wife and daughter. He’d do it. Sacrifice was the only thing Kiritisugu knew. And this was reflected when he was engulfed by the grail in the 4th holy grail war. It showed him exactly how he was to save the world: to slaughter what he cares about the most in order to save the masses. But there was an err. A logical error. His wish was to save the world. But he didn’t know how and this corrupted piece of magical shit could only grant wishes the way the user knew how. And so even this omni-potent wish granting device couldn’t save the world. Because the man who wanted to save the humans who inhabited said world, was no longer thinking like a human. He too, as his son would, would become a machine that saved people using his own principles. But he had lost his idealism. His own wasn’t a perfect world. Which is a contradiction to what an ideal is. A person’s perfect view. What they wanted they wanted the world to be like.

But that no longer existed. Kiritsugu had seen humanity at its cruellest. With him participating in that same cruelty.

He was a monster of logic. Who only saw war as beyond hell. And violence as a tool of achieving a goal. Idealism is in itself is an unfair, and unrealistic view on life. And as a young boy who had a rather small world, only for that to be constantly taken from him again and again and again and again. Happiness didn’t exist for Kiritsugu . And when he did find happiness. It was always temporary. And it was always burnt away with the rest of his ideals. Every. Single. Time.

This is why he hated Arturia’s ideals so much. To him, a man who barely talked to this paragon of idealism, Arturia is nothing but a lie within herself. While Arturia saw battle as honourable and chivalrous, Kiritisugu knew war to be worse than hell itself. He was pragmatic, and cruel. Exemplified by how he took out Kayneth, his fiancé and his servant. Nothing about it was honourable. It was cruel, calculated and worse of all… it lacked human empathy. The very same thing that has corrupted humanity since our very existence. Without it; can you really be human? Or are you just a monster of war?

Kiritsugu is a hypocrite. He hates war but uses tactics prominent in war. He hates violence but uses nothing but the cruellest, efficient of ways to achieve his targets. Seeing the King of Knights battle witch such honour and respect… it irked him in such a way that he had to show this Saber exactly how war was nothing but a ploy to achieve his goals. But Kiritsugu was just as wrong as Saber was. While to him, Saber had been romanticizing the act of war, he had been so far devoid of the human aspect in ‘war’ that he forgot that humans were the ones making war. Often times, war is fought by people who never truly grasp the situation.

I’m sure you all know of the Christmas of 1914. The first world war. It’s a famous story where both sides of the war stopped just for that one day. No man’s land became populated with both sides of the coin. People were exchanging gifts, even playing ball for a time. They had so much in common after all. Both sides lived in terrible conditions in trenches, both sides just wanted to be back home with their families, and both sides just wanted the war to stop. And the most interesting of all… they both thought they were fighting for freedom. Both sides thought each other was the oppressor without ever truly realising what they were really fighting for.

And Kiritsugu lacked this fundamental understanding. War was indeed worse than hell. War wasn’t a grand, chivalrous battle either. But in his nihilistic views, he forgot the human factor. No normal human wants to make war. We’re not tools of war either, yet Kiritsugu had become one.

He was trying to use war to end war as a concept. But again. He didn’t know exactly how to go about that. And Saber, while you might think was ONLY being constantly being berated for her idealism, was proven to be somewhat right. Her lonely path did pave the way for her kingdom to prosper for a time. Even if it did fall: she did much more than Kiritsugu ever did. Gilgamesh in this case found her to be nothing but amusement. The contradiction in her idealism, and how Excalibur represented how brilliant those ideals were. And it was a beautifully animated, and breath-taking scene where that golden light, symbolising that perfect king… but Iskander? He saw it as a shame. A regretful view. He saw it for how it truly was: a little girl never getting to partake in what she wanted in life. She never experienced that normalcy. She never got to experience what it meant to be a normal human being. As a result… she was distant and lonely. With little to no sense of what a normal human being is. And for the King of Conquerors… he was different. His idealism was something that he mostly achieved. The thrill of conquering, and the beauty of striving and achieving for more and more goals. He didn’t realise until the end that the journey was the thing that mattered to him the most: not the ideal. Saber was to be the Once and Future King. Saber was to be the Perfect King. Saber… no, King Arthur was the perfect picture of idealism.

And the Lion King is the King Arthur that went too far.

Enter Fate Grand Order. You, the protagonist, the most human of human that has ever human’d, are now on your sixth major mission. You, some kid from Tokyo who happened to see a flier at some time. You, an average joe who lived the most normal of lives. You, a normal person who just wanted to do some good in the world. A naïve kid who didn’t know what you were in for. And before you knew it, you’re all alone in your job when there were supposed to be forty-eight of you. All the responsibility now lies on you and you alone because you’re the only master around.

But you’re never truly alone. You’ve got people there who’ll support you in your endeavours. Even if you’re the only one in that role, those other people can lighten the burden by quite a lot. You’ve done a lot at this point. Endured the ravaging of the French country side against a tyrannical, twisted and idealised version of one of the most famous saints in the world. The awful writing that is the entirety of Septem. Survived the harsh seas of Okeanos with your very own pirate crew. Solved the mystery of London and encountered for the first time, the eventual end game. And just previously, you went on a round trip of the USA in its earlier days, fighting against the Celtic invasion with a thirsty ho at its reigns. Now, you’re on perhaps your most difficult journey as you go further back into the past.

This time, you’re seeing the aftermath of the ninth Crusade. Six months this singularity has been allowed to exist. And the irregularities in it are immediately prominent. Immediately, you’re thrusted into the harshest weather conditions you’ve had to endure in your career. And as you go on and on, you meet people who have been living here for those months. Learning how everything changed and deviated from normal history. And how drastically worse their lives even after the crusades were done.

You see, the Crusades were absolutely terrible. It was about Christians taking back the holy land. Even the first crusade was just the crusaders ransacking, pillaging and taking EVERYTHING from even their own countries, and everything between the holy capital and Jerusalem. It was a terrible time for everyone that happened to be in the way. And to preface this: Muslims had Jerusalem for 450 years already at that point. That’s about as long as when Columbus “discovered” America and now. As Gawain described: they were grave robbers. Now the ninth crusade was meant to be the last one.

And now, imagine seeing the holiest of knights fending off those crusaders. Saving you and your home town. You’re just a kid. You were glad, overjoyed even. These Knights promised a utopia.

But there was a catch.

There was always a catch. Only those of the purest of hearts, incapable of evil would be allowed into this new holy city of Camelot. Everyone else?

They were to be slaughtered. They weren’t needed. Now your mother is selected. But you weren’t. And this Knight who literally brought sunshine where he had walked orders for your death. Thousands of people. But only three were selected.

The “saviours” that had saved you from the constant ransacking of your home, and your people’s home for a very long time are now telling you that you have no value as a human being. These holy knights so corrupted by their king’s ideals… that most of them no longer thought for themselves.

Now you’re just but an innocent boy. Your mother refuses to let you go. She was pure of heart after all. She didn’t want to let you get slaughtered. And so, in a last desperate act, saves you from a fatal blow. In the middle of a commotion, there was a small group creating a ruckus. A ruckus that allowed some people to run away from these unholiest of knights. But you don’t really notice. You’re too caught up in what was happening in front of you. Though, you didn’t quite realise your mother was now dead. And now, you’re vulnerable to the same fate. But just as you were about to meet that fate, someone saved you. A girl clad in purple with a big shield. And comes along this… seemingly normal-looking person in the midst of this crazy war filled with super humans, shouting out commands to people who were a hundred times more capable and powerful than them. This time, you were saved not by the people who promised a selective utopia. But some complete strangers who were just passing by.

This was the case for the NPC in the singularity, Rushd. A young boy who was smarter than the innocence he gave off. He was the few survivors of the tragedy that had plagued that area. The Holy Knights of Camelot. The Knights of The Round Table. Or what remains of it anyway.

Chaldea. Their goals were to preserve humanity. There isn’t an ideal in that. It’s simply just… self-preservation of one’s own species. One of the most basic of instincts as a human being. Now, this Camelot singularity was a result of King Arthur who had gone too far because she hadn’t gone and died as she should have after the battle of Camlann. Having summoned the Knights of The Round, and purging those who did not agree with this new promise of a utopia… even her own brother and relatives were amongst those. And now, this new Arturia… now known as The Lion King bestows these gifts to the remaining knights. But no, they were no gifts. They were restraints to ensure that they remained loyal to her. It was a curse.

Some were blinded by their loyalty, another was completely reversed from who they were as a person, another had lost all of their own goals and simply became suicidal… without realising it. They had lost their sense of self. They were no longer their own people. They were now only the Lion King’s Knights. Where free thought wasn’t encouraged, and individualism was a sin.

At its core, the utopia was no more than a glass cage. Preservation, yes. But then the people in it would cease to become human. They were to be eternal as humanity. But they had lost their humanity. That utopia was nothing but a false promise of a former human who had transcended humanity.

No, it isn’t quite correct. Rhongomyniad had taken control of Arturia’s body. Make no mistake. This was not Arturia Pendragon. The Once and Future King. This went beyond that idealism, too far into it. The distance that Arturia had as the King of Camelot back in her actual time had grown into an infinite. Because she already lacked that fundamental humanity to understand her subjects, she became a divine spirit. Simply an avatar of a greater power.

The spear of ends. Goddess Rhongomyniad.

She had transcended her humanity. Now, this king no longer viewed humanity as a human but as a goddess looking into a glass cage that must be preserved at all cost. Humans were essential to the world after all. But they were tools. Nothing more.

An idealism taken to its logical limit. And this shows how terrifying an ideal it is. About how good people can become monsters given this twisted circumstance. This essentially serves as a cautionary tale on how obsessing over an ideal isn’t a good thing. It’s actually fucking terrible. Because ideal is perfection. And there’s no such thing as true perfection. There will always be flaws. Always.

Now this was a terrifying reality. Arturia achieved this ideal with an iron fist, not caring about the emotions of the people she had taken into her lance. She had become a machine of ideals. And nothing but that. She had lost everything that made her into that character we knew at the end of Fate Zero and Fate Stay Night. That Arturia who had been discovering for the first time, what it means to be normal. It was quite nice to watch after seeing her struggle with her own ideals… realising that while yes, she had her regrets, those ideals didn’t matter. She had been happy. She had been so much happier being a simple girl than being that lonely king taking all that burden.

But now, there isn’t a shred of that left. This is the extreme end of how Arturia would be if she had not died when she had.

Now then comes along this normal-ass dude. This person was just helping people as they saw. They, and their group committed simple acts of human kindness as they went about their noble goal of correcting human history. Helping those people weren’t in their mission. They just did it because you know, people need basic human empathy to survive. Without it, humanity in its entirety would be nothing but machines of war and self-preservation, fighting against each other for their own beliefs. It’s be a shitty world without it.

Even the trashiest of the Fate universe, Fate Apocrypha hammers this into the viewer’s head. Shirou Kotomine’s ideal world was humanity’s salvation… but the way he would do it was taking away free will. And at that’s why Jeanne D’arc resisted so goddamn hard. Because that’s now humanity works. We were sinful creatures, yes. But there was also good. There needed to be a balance, not an idealised world where no one was allowed freedom.

Anyway, as Guda walks along through this new situation that they’ve been force in, having seen what they’ve seen, their basic instinct is telling them to help. But they’re realistic. They can’t help everyone. And they don’t obsess with that either. They do what they can. After all, they’re not super human. And even those super humans can’t possibly save everyone. Again, they’re just doing what they can. This was shown in Camelot were they could only let a few of the refugees survive because that was all they were capable of at the time. They still risked their asses by fighting the knights by doing so. But it does pay off.

They don’t strive for a ridiculous ideal. They understand after so many similar cases, after losing the rest of humanity to the King of Magic, after being burdened with the task of saving a world that won’t remember that they saved them, that they can only do what they can do. The obsession on idealism is potentially deadly to the human mind. It can poison one’s thoughts with nothing but high standards that this world can’t possibly meet. And then, no matter what one does, they’ll be let down. It’ll always end in disappointment.

But Guda takes that in stride, and just rolls with it. They go with the flow. That’s who they are. Yes, they’re always seemingly bright and happy. In this messed up world, somebody has to be. What they do may not be the most efficient things ever. But it works out for the better. You see, those little acts of kindness. That basic demonstration of human humility – it got them out of a myriad of tough situations. Each group they help, came back to help repay them in full. The people they rescued along the way, came back to help them take down Camelot. Nitocris, who they had rescued from Hundred-Face, continued to help them out and help evade the Raider Knights. And she continued to help them for helping her, and understanding her stubborn and proud nature. Showing respect and courage against Ozymandias had him respect them back and in turn, help them in the final show down. Showing that same zealousness against King Hassan had them gain his help. Cursed Arm was ready to lay down his life for this campaign. Guda continued to gain the trust of the other Hassans with their willingness to help. Of course, this also attracted a certain clumsy monk who was instrumental in breaking through the front gates of Camelot. And then there’s Arash. A good man in every sense of the word. He too, laid his life down so that Guda could finish their mission.

And of course, Bedievere. The knight who had lived 1500 years just so he could correct his mistake. You could say that he too was drowned in his own ideals. Again, he too was a cautionary tale. Living 1500 years is not something a normal human can do. And yes, Bedi was not a servant. He was a living being in Camelot. One that lived that long so he could see the king he had devoted his everything to smile once again. He gets what he wanted but… this destroyed him. It cost him so many life times. It too, was something that humanity wasn’t going to remember.

Going back to Guda, they were only successful because they understood that the future wasn’t predetermined. However, they never truly understood that their basic human kindness would actually pay off. They were just doing what they thought was right. There was no need to over-simplify things. Because they were just acting as who they were. No ulterior motives. Everything was as clear as Arash’s beautiful smile. They were honest and lived that life honestly. Things fell into place because they accepted help from people unlike the people that came before them. They actively sought out that assistance because they knew their limits. They were doing what they can, and for things that they couldn’t do, they asked someone to help. It’s as simple as that. They weren’t consumed with this idea of idealism because what was the point? They’d never be the ideal person for this job. Some dude from Tokyo was all they were who happened to exhibit basic human kindness: something anyone is capable of.

Yet, they get so angry at the fact that Goddess Rhongomyniad had treated them like cattle to be watched behind a glass cage. Because humanity meant more than self-preservation. I went beyond Chaldea’s goal. Because to be human is so much more than that. And they understood that humans aren’t lonely creatures but one who needed companionship, not hostility. So they meet everyone with that same positive attitude. It wasn’t their job to be cautious. That was on someone else who was more capable of that. And that’s fine. Because their role was to be everyone’s master.

Blank enough for servants to project their own wants upon on, but enough of a personality to be their own self. That is who they are. And despite seeing atrocities beyond what a normally raised human being, they continue to be that shining beacon of light. They had people with them. They weren’t alone. They were just being themselves. They lovely, goofy, ‘I’ll go along with anything’ person. Always ready to tackle a new problem with an upbeat attitude. A complete shitlord of a magus, but because they didn’t have that traditional magi attitude that their natural charisma easily shines and leads on their servants. Encouraging them to be much more than to be weapons of war, and live a new life in Chaldea that could make them feel truly alive again. Best of all, they were making do despite the looming incineration of humanity. They were just being them. And that, is the most human thing they can provide for their servants.

In terms of being a protagonist, they had a couple traits that Kiritisugu, Shirou and Arturia lacked in being successful: the realization that the path to saving the world isn’t a lonely one, that you can’t save everyone, that connecting with other humans is important, and to never let go to that sense of normalcy that you’re fighting to save in the first place. Those three had lost it. They became a slave to their own ideals. Guda didn’t have super powers. Nor did they hold some grand ideal.

They’re just some dude who saw a flier that one time who happened to save the world.

#[...ooc]#this was 4000 words #kill me

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tessalivesandbreathesbooks · 8 years ago

Text

Love at Last

Here’s the next chapter :D

Love as Last is an AU set in the human world where you’re going to find characters from both, ACOTAR and ToG. You’ll learn the life and struggles of the characters as the story progresses.

Chapter 8 (AO3)

Aelin’s POV

Rowan was lethal.

He was as swift as death, as fatal as a sword and as quiet as a shadow.

He was a pure-bred warrior of incomparable strength and aim.

And he beat the hell out of Aelin. Every. Damn. Day.

Aelin laid on the floor covered in sweat, her chest expanding with short and quick breaths. Rowan had been training her for two weeks now … two weeks on endless agony and pain where Aelin had confirmed Rowan was as heartless as he seemed. Not only did he made her wake up before dawn to train up until late night, but he also seemed to enjoy it, relishing in her quiet grunts of pain and her constant state of complaining.

He was a jerk, one of the most horrible beings she’d had the misfortune of meeting. And yet … she couldn’t help but feel a little wonder for the spy. He was cruel and brutal, but maybe that was because life had made him that way. He had been trained to be a spy with no remorse nor empathy … and he was incredibly good at it. Aelin still was amazed at his strength, speed and fierceness. She had never seen anyone move the way he did: as if he were carried by the wind and fire was his ally. He was a storm … unpredictable and destructive, able to end everything that stood before him.

And even though that was scary …

… it was also alluring.

Leaving his grim temperament and deadliness aside, Aelin had to admit Rowan was annoyingly attractive. Rowan … he had the most gorgeous green eyes she’d ever seen. They were of a green so deep and so endless they made her feel as if she could drain in them if she stared long enough. His hair was long and startlingly white, as bright as crystal and as smooth as snow and the light usually reflected upon it, making it shine out of spite. And his body … Rowan was a corpulent man, all muscle and skill. Rowan had been born for battle: he was death and ruination. He was devastation and carnage.

He was the most stunning man she’d ever seen in her life.

If he wasn’t such a jerk at all times, she might have seriously considered him boyfriend material. Not that it mattered because he evidently showed no interest in her. None at all.

Ugh, he was such an annoying brat. Such a gorgeous, grumpy, dangerous brat.

Aelin closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. Rowan was what he was, but … she owed him. He had given her a purpose, a mission. Something to keep her going, something to focus to avoid crumpling apart. Even if he an offensive brat at his best times, she had a lot to be thankful to him. If he hadn’t appeared when he did … she didn’t want to think about what she would have turned into.

Suddenly, she heard Rowan’s footsteps approaching. When he stopped before her, she opened her eyes to find him looking down at her. He asked, rather annoyed. “Are you getting up or what?”

Aelin grunted. “Five more seconds?”

Rowan just stared quietly at her. She sighed and pushed herself up, brushing the dirt off her jeans. She glanced at him and met his angered stare with hers. “Do you feel better now?”

Rowan growled. “This is your fault. If you weren’t such a useless girl, we would have made some progress by now, but we can’t because I have to spend every minute of the day training you. It seems all you are is a burden.”

Aelin snarled. “Don’t you dare call me a burden. It was you who insisted on training me. If we are here losing time, it’s because of you.”

“So what? Would you rather die finding the killer? You need training. But the least you could do considering the situation is to try a bit harder. Or shall I spend the rest of my life training you?”

Aelin clenched her fists. “I am trying.”

Rowan glowered at her and said through gritted teeth. “Then try harder.”

Then he moved. It didn’t matter how much they trained together, Rowan always managed to take her by surprise. She knew what he was about to do, they had been doing those same basic movements for hours now, but … he was still too fast. She moved her arm to block him, but he kept on throwing punches at her. She managed to keep him at bay, blocking him on and on for a few more movements, but it wasn’t enough. Before she could do anything, she felt his fist connect with her face. She tried to stay upright, to keep her balance, but it was nearly impossible. A vicious kick to her chest followed the previous one sending her tumbling back to the ground, gasping for air.

Rowan just stared at her hard and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are still too slow.” He shook his head, making a few locks of his white hair fall from his ponytail. “If we kept going on like this …”

Aelin moved her head towards him. Her breath was coming in short pants and her jaw throbbed from the blow he’d landed on her. She shook her head and looked at him before saying quietly. “Okay, enough. Who?”

Rowan’s eyes met hers. “Who what?”

“Who … who did you lose?” Aelin moved into a sitting position, never breaking eye contact. She hissed at the pain that spread through her side.

Rowan’s eyes were burning with contained rage … and something else, so heartbreaking she felt it in her bones. He simply said, his voice devoid of any emotion. “That’s none of your business.”

Aelin gulped. “You know everything about me. Don’t you think I deserve to know at least something about you?”

Rowan moved towards her, his movements swift and precise. Aelin just looked at him, bracing at whatever was about to come out of his mouth. He kneeled to looked at her right in the eye and sneered. “You are nothing to me. There’s nothing I want to tell you nor share with you and I’m sure as hell I don’t owe you an explanation for what I’ve done or what I do outside of training. The sooner you can manage to defend yourself, the sooner we can finish this and I can be rid of you.” Rowan’s breath was hot against her face, unrelenting. “So stop your whining and your insolence and let’s get back to work.”

Aelin’s eyes burned with hatred and rage. She simply said. “You don’t have to be so offensive, you know.”

“I don’t want to talk, Aelin. Especially not with you. And I definitely don’t want your pity.”

“That was not my pity.”

“Then what was that?”

“Nothing. I just wanted you to know that I understand what you’re going through. The loss, the pain, the emptiness … I fought them years ago and I’m still fighting them now. And I wanted you to know that you could talk to me, if you ever needed to. It’s okay to rely on others sometimes, you know. To cry, to share burdens. Because otherwise … ”

“Otherwise … what?”

“Otherwise you become a monster. You let rage and despair consume you to the point you forget who you really are. And you are annoying, Rowan. You are angry and insolent, and a hateful jerk. But I also know there’s a heart beating beneath all that and I can see it. You might have fooled everyone up until now, but not me.”

“And why not you?”

“Because … I see myself when I look at you.” Aelin drew in a long breath and raked her fingers through her hair. “So, fine. Don’t tell me if you’re not ready, but know I’m here whenever you are.”

Rowan muttered. “And what if I never am?”

Aelin shrugged. “Your loss. Let it consume you. It’s your choice, Rowan.”

Aelin pushed herself up, her muscles and joints screaming in pain. She felt more sore and hurt than she had in a while and she was sure she was going to have more than a few bruises when she woke up tomorrow. She sighed and turned her gaze back towards Rowan. “Okay, I’m ready whenever you are. Throw the next punch.”

But he didn’t move. Rowan was looking towards the window, deep in thought, something like grief coursing over his features. All of a sudden and so quietly she could hardly heard it, he whispered. “Her … her name was Lydia. And she was my wife and the future mother of my child.”

Aelin blinked, completely taken aback. She opened her mouth to say something, not really sure what, but he kept on with that soft and broken voice. “We met during a mission. His father was the leader of one of the most dangerous gangs in Russia and I was to infiltrate that gang to extract information about him and his whereabouts. I didn’t … I definitely didn’t expect to fall in love with his daughter.” Rowan shook his head. “She was … she was a modest florist, a simple girl that despite the chaos, the despair and the pain that surrounded her still managed to become someone sweet, caring and incredible. She was everything I’ve ever dreamt, a gift from heaven. I tried not to love her, I really tried, but … in the end, I couldn’t help it. I told everyone it was for the mission, that I was doing it to make the leader trust me. Hell, I even tried to convince myself. But deep down I knew … I knew it was something else.” Rowan shook his head and smiled, something heartbreaking and awful. “So, for the first in my life I disobeyed the direct orders from my superiors and told her everything. About me, about what I was doing, about her father.”

Aelin felt her blood thrumming in her veins. She asked quietly. “And what did she say?”

“She understood. I loved you, she said, you are everything to me. I trust you Rowan, I am with you. Don’t be afraid. We married little after that, in secret and I managed to get her out of there, to give her a new identity … before everything exploded. Her father went to prison, as well as his whole crew after a really complicated and long trial and … everything was fine. We were young and in love and we had our whole lives before us.” Rowan exhaled. “I kept on working as a CIA agent, even though she wanted me to quit. I never listened to her. I thought I did, but …”

Aelin felt her heart constricting. “What happened to her?”

Rowan’s face contorted in pain before saying. “She started working at your … at Sam’s office as a secretary. She mentioned some of his work, what he was doing, but I always … I always dismissed it as nothing. I always thought I was above him, that what he did was nothing in comparison to what I did. Lyria wanted me to help Sam at some point, but … I told her no, I told her I was busy and that I had to go on a mission the next week. We had a big fight and I left her in tears. I’ll never forget her heartbroken face, her cries and pain … I never got to talk to her again. When I came back … she was dead. And so was our child.”

Aelin closed her eyes and shuddered at the pain that flashed in Rowan’s eyes. Lyria … Sam … so many deaths at their account. But no more. She would never let anyone else die because of her, because of her family.

Aelin lifted her gaze to meet his and said. “We will avenge them.”

Rowan shook his head. “Maybe there’s no possible way. Maybe all I’ve been doing … maybe it was all for nothing. I’ve been trying for years and nothing has ever come out of it. Maybe there is truly no hope. Maybe it’s time to give up.”

Aelin felt her feet moving towards Rowan, as if some invisible force drew them together. He stared at her as she neared, his eyes a turmoil of emotions. Aelin quietly stopped before him and lifted her hand to stroke his beautiful face. He shuddered. “I thought giving up was for cowards.”

He muttered softly. “Maybe I am a coward.”

Aelin shook her head. “No, you aren’t. You are just tired. Tired of fighting hard for nothing, tired of seeing only death around you …” She gulped. “I understand that feeling. I’ve been ignoring and running away from it: the pain, the guilt, the desperation for so long I can’t even remember. And you know what? It’s useless because no matter what you do, your past is not going to change. So we can’t back down. We must dry our tears, step forwards and keep fighting. We have to catch the bastard who did this to us.”

Rowan closed his eyes and Aelin let her hand fall to her side. He was silent for a few moments before asking, “and what do you suggest we do?”

Aelin exhaled. “We should stop reduce the number of hours we dedicate to my training and start to actually do something.”

Rowan lifted his brow. “Like what?”

Aelin shrugged. “We could go check my sister’s apartment.”

Rowan rolled his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. “We already did that. There was nothing useful in her room.”

“Perhaps because you didn’t know where to look.”

Rowsn narrowed his eyes and she smiled. “My sister was a genius. If what you claim is true, if she truly knew they were coming for her she’d have left something. Something to the eyes of those who knew her that meant something. Something that would lead straight to her assassin or … whoever is behind this.”

Rowan shook his head in quiet disbelief. “If you knew that, why didn’t you do anything before? Why wait until now?”

“I thought she had committed suicide and I was so heartbroken at that time that I … I couldn’t stand to see her room, her belongings. And maybe … maybe I was supposed to wait for you.”

Rowan blinked, surprised. She took his hand and held it to her heart. She whispered, with fierce determination. “We will fix this Rowan and we’ll do it together.”

Rowan just stared at her, something like hope beginning to shine in his eyes. “To whatever end?”

“I claim you as my partner in crime, Rowan Whitehorn. So be prepared.”

He snorted and walked away, but Aelin couldn’t help but feel something had changed between them. As if a bond had been created, something deeper than they both wanted to admit.

And Aelin Ashryver Galathynius smiled as she gathered her belongings and followed Rowan right to her sister’s apartment.

#love at last #chapter 8 #aelin's pov #aelin x rowan #rowaelin #fanfiction #fanfic

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 8 years ago

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Hellraiser as a Horror Fairy Tale

So for a while now I’ve been struggling to come to a clear, concise take on what I feel the classic Hellraiser’s are actually trying to be about. There’s a lot of themes here that are easy to emotionally grasp, but it’s been a bit of a struggle to try and build a coherent logical analysis on what all of these layers are conveying when properly understood all together (let alone figuring out how to verbalize what I was seeing). This is going to be a MASSIVE post, so buckle up for a long ride.

This has been especially frustrating because so many people have already asserted so much. There’s a lot of analysis out there that feels very unfocused and vague, or focuses far too much on very specific aspects that someone has isolated, like the unsettling theme of “pain and pleasure, indivisible.” The problem of course being that these aspects isolated like this are taken out of their full context, divorcing them of the very necessary emotional/psychological depth of the narrative, resulting in a rather simplistic, confused, or vague understanding of what kind of story we’re actually being told. This is problematic because it’s very clear that these films, the first two (and even three!) in particular, are deliberately using these horror elements as metaphor and analogy in a way very similar to traditional, dark and bloody fairy tales (see the outright fairy tale themes and references in H2). These are films that seem to function with a similar kind of gothic unreality that say, Angela Carter’s works do. And in any good fairy tale, a wolf is not a wolf.

Overall, I feel like the classic Hellraiser films are narratives discussing the nature of physical versus spiritual experience, the intersections thereof, and how this applies to the complexities of human suffering, trauma, abuse, etc. First, I should clarify what I mean by “spiritual.” I don’t mean “spiritual” in a faith/religious/superstitious sense, but as in humanity; in other words our personhood, the part of us that experiences emotion, empathy, craves human connection and emotional intimacy. So in turn, when I speak of “physical vs. spiritual,” I mean “physical” as the body divorced from it’s humanity. With me so far?

The first two films cover this this topic in different ways, with the second adding layers of spiritual complexity to the initial ideas laid out by the first film (and the third film, while extremely flawed, adds a few more intriguing elements that kind of bookend the themes for me), so there’s a lot of ground to cover. But hopefully, this will clarify my take on the themes of these films and how they suddenly became some of my favorite films of all time. I was actually quite surprised I enjoyed them so much, because I kind of expected something more akin to Nightmare On Elm St., or worst case scenario the subject matter would completely repulse and offend me, but instead I found something rather sophisticated and more fitting on the shelf where I put Cappola's Dracula, Labyrinth, Legend, In The Company Of Wolves, etc. It's much more like a gothic dark fantasy series than your general 80's horror franchise. I felt like I was watching a long-lost classic that nobody told me about, and nothing has really given me the same feeling I had back when I first watched all those nostalgic cult classics. Hellraiser 2 might even be ripping Labyrinth off a tiny bit, actually. If you're only familiar with Hellraiser because of the awful sequels (movies 3 to 9), you don't really know what the originals are like at all.

So without further ado, here’s my long-winded, [TOTALLY SPOILERIFIC, YOU WERE WARNED] analysis under the cut. ;P

[Warning for discussion of difficult subject matter from the films, including implications of past child abuse, attempted sexual assault, objectification of women (intentionally depicted, not as a failing of the films), allegorical kink-themed demons, etc. In the films It’s all imo presented rather tamely/tactfully outside of the over-the-top 80′s gore, but we’re talking a bit about all of this under the cut.]

I see the first Hellraiser film as dealing specifically with the evils of selfish, consumptive physical gratification, devoid of spiritual substance/humanity. Frank opens the door to Hell through a desire to reach new pleasures, because he’d exhausted all other avenues. He’s unsatisfied with what this world can give him, so he seeks out “the pleasures of heaven or hell,” he doesn’t care which. And I feel this speaks to what is at the heart of Frank, namely nothing at all. Frank is a being that exists purely for his own physical gratification. He is a textbook sociopath; essentially empty, devoid of emotional substance, and so he seeks to fill that void in him with physical pleasure. In that endless consumption Frank dehumanizes women; they become objects who’s humanity he disregards entirely. I’ve seen people try to call Frank a somewhat “sympathetic” villain (in the literary sense, not the ~redeemable~ woobie sense) even if he’s revolting, because apparently people can relate to his (and Julia’s) dissatisfaction with the banality of life, but Frank’s dissatisfaction comes from a place of spiritual emptiness. He is disconnected from his own humanity and the humanity of others, and so he wanders endlessly in search of the next base, physical high (so uh, personally, I find it hard to relate).

This is mirrored in Julia, who abandons the “emotional” roles of wife and step-mother in order to resurrect Frank, who gave her the physical gratification she holds above all else in her life, including her own morality and the lives of others. Julia is slightly more sympathetic because her dissatisfaction seems to stem from a sense of being pushed into traditional female roles that give her no fulfillment, so there are interesting elements of women’s oppression creating a human disconnect for Julia (particularly when it comes to the ways in which men dehumanize/use her). That said, I think it’s clear from Julia’s behavior across the board that her disconnect from her humanity is exacerbated by her obsession with the physical fulfillment she finds with Frank. There is an interesting line in the film from Frank, where he describes the relationship they have as being “like love, only real,” implying that he rejects the highly spiritual, emotional concept of “love,” as though he perceives what is purely physical as the only thing of real value. For Julia, I’d imagine that this has become a truth for her, because the traditional “loving” relationships of “wife” to Larry and “mother” to Kirsty brought her no fulfillment.

The men in general of the film seek this same selfish gratification - Julia seduces men home to feed to Frank, all of them seeking to consume her. You can see this underlying consumptive menace when the first man she drags home reveals his true colors, spitting angry words under his breath at her when she starts to seem hesitant. (it is interesting that she in turn is “consuming” them; they serve a material purpose to her that has nothing to do with their personhood. She’s feeding them to Frank, who literally consumes their life-force.) Larry also reveals a consumptive side when Julia tries to distract him with sexuality; she starts to shout “no!” (at Frank, who is looming menacingly in the shadows ready to strike at Larry), and it not only takes him way too many “no’s” to actually stop kissing her, he gets indignant at Julia’s “hot and cold” behavior, as if he was owed her body and denied. There’s little regard for her needs; he does not ask if something had hurt her, if she was okay, he only says with indignation that “he just doesn’t understand her,” rather than make any attempts at understanding.

H2′s Dr. Channard is another case of a consumptive soul, single-mindedly obsessed with his pursuits. However, unlike Frank, Channard’s obsessions are, for the most part, non-sexual. Channard has a sadistic, clinical fascination with the mind, endlessly consumed with a need for knowledge and discovery. But while Channard’s obsessions are focused in a mental space, it could be said that this too is a soullessly physical pursuit; he views the mind as an object to viciously plunder, and so human beings become objects for his purposes. So, like Frank, he is a character utterly incapable of empathy, humanity. The sexualized Male Gaze is unnecessary for dehumanization.

Despite all this objectification and abuse, despite the heavy underlying sexuality in these two films, they both seriously lack any Male Gaze whatsoever. In fact, all images of sexuality are pretty much entirely given to us from the perspective of women. There is a single exception of Male Gaze bullshit in H2, where there's a woman hanging topless for no justifiable reason in Julia's murder room, though you could actually blink at the right moment and miss it entirely (and we don't see a man or monster perpetrate violence against her, it's just Julia who promptly eats her). While Clive Barker directed the first film (and is a gay man), the second film was directed by Tony Randall (who is I believe a straight man), and it's things like that one little topless moment and the mild focus on Channard's enchantment with Julia that makes H2 lean slightly further away from H1's Male Gaze-less track record. That aside, Hellraiser 1 and 2 are rather unique for their time period in this way, because it's such a hard-hitting focus on women's experience of sexuality, or how women experience male sexuality in particular, which in Hellraiser is almost always predatory, un-self-aware, or in Steve and Kyle's romantic designs on Kirsty, a little bit too self-focused and limp. This is starkly contrasted with Hellraiser 3 and pretty much all Hellraiser films after it (particularly the constant callous objectification and violence perpetrated against women in Revelations, which surprise surprise, is the most recent film. Thank's modern cinema. Don't fucking remake Hellraiser you sociopaths). Hellraiser 3 was the first film to feature Pinhead committing violence agains a woman (that fact right there? that's fucking amazing for an 80's horror franchise. Especially one featuring these themes.), who in the moment is scantily clad and just had somewhat graphic sex with J.P., and the visceral and negative reaction I had to this dumb, cringey scene is very different than any of the reactions I had to the gore of the first two films. It's nothing too hard to handle (he rips her skin off with a hook in a bad effect and then the evil pillar eats her, so it's very gory but nothing shocking), but I mention it because the first two films really stand out as horror films that managed to deal with the abuse and objectification of women as a subject without actually objectifying them or showing us gratuitous, fetishistic shock-value surrounding that abuse, the way so many contemporary horror, thriller, and crime-procedural media does.

Beyond Frank and Julia, the other half of this story deals with Kirsty and the Cenobites. First of all, Kirsty is someone directly harmed by the consumptive, selfish gratification of both Frank and Julia - with Frank, there are fairly blatant implications of child abuse that may have occurred years prior (and if not, most certainly he intends on abusing her now). As for Julia, Kirsty likely wanted a mother figure after the death of her biological mother, and she was denied this emotional connection from Julia. Later, Julia becomes a direct agent facilitating Frank’s attempt at abusing Kirsty. Julia doesn’t seem to care who is harmed in the wake of Frank’s consumption, as long as she can still receive gratification.

Kirsty is the major character who breaks this mold of reckless obsession with the physical. All of Kirsty’s dilemmas are focused in a spiritual, human place. She lost her mother years prior and is still struggling with her grief. Her relationship with Julia is strained, so any hope of a mother-daughter connection after that loss has been entirely torn asunder for her. She loves her father dearly, but she’s just gained her independence and is dealing with worry over her father. Her father wants her to play mediator in his strained relationship with Julia, who she dislikes. She’s starting out a new relationship with Steve, possibly her first adult relationship ever. She’s dealing with either a secret abuse trauma and/or traumatized over Frank’s re-appearance and physical assault of her. Where Frank and Julia are obsessively absorbed in their need for physical gratification, Kirsty deals with many layers of spiritual/emotional realities, positive and negative.

The Cenobites, as we know them in the first film, are cosmic beings that exist in extreme, grotesque excess of sensory experience, far beyond any human comprehension of “pleasure.” All they truly understand is pain. Their function is to reap the souls who intentionally open Hell’s door and enact literal eternal torture; Hell consumes souls like meat to rend and tear (an interesting juxtaposition of flesh and spirit that I’ll discuss more when I get into H2). These creatures seem almost devoid of anything recognizably human in terms of emotionality (in the first film anyway), they are Borg-like. But again, a wolf is not a wolf. These beings, and Hell itself, are supernatural allegories for the human character’s dilemmas. In this film, they are the looming threat of eternal consumption devoid of humanity, given face. The oblivion on the other side of the threshold. You invoke their presence, they come at your call.

There’s more to say about how all this plays out in the first film, particularly when it comes to how Kirsty is the second person (after Frank) to summon the Cenobites and how she uses them against her abuser, but first I want to bring up aspects that are more prominent in the second film to pull this whole picture together (the films really are a “Part 1 and Part 2,” to me).

The second film (my favorite, if you couldn’t tell) focuses much more heavily on spiritual themes. It’s set almost entirely in either a mental hospital or Hell, respectively. So immediately, we’re given two pictures, one of a place of spiritual/emotional healing, and one of eternal spiritual and physical torment, the lines between the two blurring and distorting as we get further into the story. This is important because this film seems to focus much more on the experience of psychological/emotional trauma.

“The mind is a labyrinth,” Channard says, as he artfully performs a grotesque procedure on the brain of a patient. And so too is this reflected in H2′s depiction of Hell as an endless cthonic Labyrinth, where lost souls experience hallucinatory reflections of their traumas and vices, subjected to psychological and physical punishments eternally under the watchful eye of Leviathan, the “god of flesh, hunger, and desire.”

Leviathan as an entity is a rather interesting and ambiguous being. Certainly, it is a “god” of baseness and physicality, but it’s realm is made of psychological torment, perhaps more so than it is a place of physical torture. Whether you are a “good” or “bad” person is utterly irrelevant; if you are in Hell, your soul gets reflected back to you, often with a heavy focus on traumas of your past. For Kirsty this manifests in her childhood home and images of her mother, which begin bleed and transform into an image of Julia - and perhaps it manifests in Frank’s presence. Although according to Frank, Kirsty has stumbled across “his” little corner of hell which manifests “his” punishments, the first time I watched the film (before he explained where they were) I initially was convinced that behind this second door was another reflection of Kirsty, that it was another trial for her to face. It looked to be the exact same door as her own, and well, the writhing ghostly women under sheets seemed to be an image of sexual repression or fear of sexuality (the brief glimpse of the woman who Kirsty pulls the sheet off of has her hair, as well). Is this piece of hell reflecting Frank’s punishments, or Kirsty’s fears, trauma, possible repression, etc? Or is it reflecting both simultaneously? It’s still rather ambiguous to me, actually. But I digress.

The point is that there is this heavier focus on trauma in H2, where H1 was much more tightly focused on the folly of reckless, single-minded physicality without human connection. This focus on trauma adds a whole new layer of dimension to the narrative because “pain” itself is something much more complex, here. Here, it is revealed that the Cenobites were once humans, and that humanization of these creatures that were once presented to us as allegory and pure cosmic evil is very interesting. Rather than present the Cenobites as the ultimate culmination of personalities like Frank when consumed by Hell, it’s presented as if these Cenobites were perhaps relatively innocent people. Why then, do some people become Cenobites, while others stay as tormented souls? To me, the answer is still unclear. I'm not sure there actually is an answer, beyond the whims of Leviathan. (Channard is the obviously monstrous person who was changed, but he seemed to me to have been chosen as a tool in the moment and then discarded. ) That said, “suffering” itself is more than just the experience of physical pain; the psychological nature of hell implies that this is also internal suffering, and the Cenobites aren’t just entities there to enact physical torture. They are beings that exist in this eternal, perpetual suffering of all kinds, who speak of that experience as something sublime.

The Cenobites spend the majority of their time in both films popping up periodically to speak to Kirsty, from ominous threats of eternal torture, to invitation of joining them, to mocking her with insinuations that some part of her wants their world. For Kirsty, they are demons that reflect back to her all those fears and repressions, all her internal confusion and torment, which is what they spend most of their time doing in the first two films. In Hellraiser 3, there's more of this element of Cenobites as psychological reflections: Pinhead acts as a tempter, using the psyches of the humans he encounters to ensnare souls, which is why with J.P. he's literally consuming women, and for Terri, he switches gears to be the voice of female vengeance.

Earlier in the film, we are given multiple references to fairy tales, usually as used by older adults to mock and belittle Kirsty. The detective mocks her for making up fairy tales about “demons,” and Julia mocks her by comparing Kirsty to Snow White and herself to the Wicked Stepmother/Evil Queen. These side characters demoralize Kirsty in her idealistic efforts to rescue her father from Hell and fight back against forces much larger than herself that a more cynical person could scarcely imagine overcoming. Later, quite similarly to the west wing sequence in Beauty and the Beast (I think coincidentally so, Disney’s BATB came out a few years afterwards), Kirsty explores a dangerous place (Channard’s home) and finds an old, faded picture of a man who she recognizes as the monster she has previously encountered. Ultimately, Kirsty saves herself and another girl through an act almost unbelievably idealistic and naive, especially for such a dark story. She finds a way to transform a monster back into a human being. This was a victory won not with physical violence, but through humanity; a fairy-tale-esque triumph that flew in the face of those who tried to demoralize or deny Kirsty’s reality. Furthermore, this victory is not about the tragedy of Pinhead, but the triumph of humanity and empathy overcoming darkness.

There are a few expressions of human connection and empathy in these two films, like the care between Kirsty and her father, or the attraction between Kirsty and Steve, Kyle’s attraction and care for Kirsty, or Tiffany holding Kirsty as she cries over her father, But for me there was never quite a moment as striking and emotionally raw than when Kirsty and Spencer are looking at each other across the darkness once his human face is revealed. It feels like very artful, deliberate visual contrast to the circumstances and surroundings. But I digress.

So to clarify this picture: Kirsty is faced with monsters personifying everything that represented her trauma and fears, etc. They represented all-consuming physicality without humanity, they represented the things in herself she may have tried to suppress (sexuality, trauma, etc.). Monsters that wanted her to be as consumed by their world as they were. She then utilizes her demons to destroy her abuser, and later recognizes the humanity in her demons and transforms them, frees them from their spiritual and physical eternal torment, and in turn is saved from the same fate, herself.

The third film (which I enjoy despite the fact that it is admittedly a raging trash fire) features a cast of characters all dealing with similar situations. J.P. is our endlessly consumptive user, and Joey and Terri are two women dealing with spiritual trauma. Joey through the loss of her father, and Terri through a broken home life and later abuse at the hands of J.P. The reason why I include the third film in this is because of those additional elements and the insight it gives into Pinhead’s human self, Captain Spencer, and how he perfectly bookends the narrative. Spencer is another person who once opened the box, but it was never clear why he did so in the second film. In the third film, he explains that he was trying to escape spiritual suffering (war trauma/PTSD) through physical means ("forbidden pleasures,” aka kink). At some point he came across the box and opened it. While there are plenty of monstrous men in all three Hellraiser films, and Pinhead himself is a literal monster bent on taking any soul who opens the box with some form of desire in their hearts, my take away from H3 was not that Spencer himself was ever an abuser like Frank or J.P. (and indeed his behavior when lucidly himself in H2 and 3 is decidedly in immediate defense of women he cares about, up to and including two counts of total self-sacrifice), but that Spencer was perhaps pushing his explorations into unsafe realms of self-harming. He was punishing himself, and was thus made into a cosmic punisher of others by Leviathan. So, unlike Frank or Channard or J.P., people who are susceptible to the box/Hell’s temptations because of their need to endlessly consume, Spencer was susceptible because he was so effected by spiritual suffering that he turned towards unhealthy physical means of escape. In my mind, there is something in this idea of self-punishment/self-blame that is also potentially true of, say, Kirsty. How else would she be genuinely susceptible to the box (beyond basic desire having opened it initially), if not that she was teetering on a similar edge, herself? (However, I think perhaps her darkness also veers into a streak of sadistic vengefulness.)

This actually makes the extended cut of the H6 Pinhead/Kirsty reuinion scene a lot more tragic and distressing for me, because underneath all the bullshit, there’s this subtext of Kirsty still running from her Hell and yet still encountering consumptive, abusive men and being pushed off the deep end into untempered vengefulness and violence. And Spencer, who once was freed by her and in turn sacrificed himself to free her from Hell, trapped once more in his monsterous form and obsessing instead over dragging Kirsty down with him to be as endlessly consumed by her pain as he is within his own. No thanks on that grimdark noise, H6. ...but fucking wow, tho. If you've seen Hellseeker but have never seen the extended cut of this scene, I'm linking it Right Here. Warning for...just...ugh. Badly written infuriating creepy grimdark bullshit that genuinely sounds like a bad fanfiction writer wrote it. But at least you have that one moment right at the end where you can hear Spencer's voice come through to help her get free.

In conclusion, I think Hellraiser is a story about, well, Hell. But Hell not as nebulous place where the really bad people go, but Hell as an allegory for eternal spiritual suffering, that absolutely anyone can reach and be effected by once a gateway is opened for them. Particularly so when it comes to reckless physical indulgence, or consumption, or unsafe vice overtaking one’s humanity to others, or towards one’s self. So ultimately, the “moral of the story,” if you’d like to call it that, is that in order to protect one’s self from being consumed by spiritual suffering, one must cherish and cultivate their own humanity, and in the case of people who have been traumatized and/or victimized, one must fight back against the consuming force of that spiritual suffering through confronting the hell that exists within. Sometimes that doesn’t mean blasting the darkness away and ignoring it’s existence, it means reminding the darkness that it is only human.

[Regarding the content of the films, feel free to message me if you decide to watch them but you feel you need a total break-down of what to prepare for.]

#Hellraiser #This is my meta post for this weekend #some of you are not as keen on DW or are on it less often I know #so here you go my dudes #if you see me around too often call me out on it #Horror #Meta

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gyrlversion · 6 years ago

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Disgraced trophy hunter who killed a sleeping lion REFUSES to comment

The hunter who snuck up on a sleeping lion and then took three bullets to kill the magnificent beast has shown he is not so bold without his gun.

Retired energy company executive Guy Gorney refused even to try to explain why he would kill an animal as it napped when DailyMail.com visited him at his home.

‘I’m not interested in talking to you,’ he said on the doorstep of his half-million-dollar house on the windswept Illinois plains south of Chicago.

‘Private property,’ he added. ‘Take off!’ He then firmly shut the door.

An eight-year-old video of Gorney shooting the big cat in Zimbabwe surfaced this week, leading to outrage that he would kill an endangered animal as it slept.

Guy Gorney, 64, of Manhattan, Illinois, is identified as the hunter in a shocking video who killed a sleeping lion. He refused to comment on his kill to DailyMail.com at his doorstep

The video of Gorney, a retired energy company executive, is believed to have been recorded in Zimbabwe in 2011

Even as it lay motionless, enjoying the African sun, Gorney couldn’t take out the male lion with a clean shot from his high-powered rifle. Instead it woke after being hit and was seen writhing in agony before he could finish it off with two more bullets.

Gorney is then seen celebrating with Mark Vallaro, a professional hunter in Zimbabwe who was acting as his guide.

Vallaro is heard telling Gorney to stop shooting after the third bullet, then he says: ‘That, Mr. Gorney, is a very nice lion. A very nice lion.’

As Gorney approaches the lion, poking it with his rifle to make sure it is dead, Vallaro adds: ‘Beautiful. That is an exceptional lion.’

Gorney, 64, has been vilified for his actions, with comic Ricky Gervais — an outspoken critic of trophy hunting — calling him a ‘sniveling sadistic coward’ in a tweet.

Top golfer Ian Poulter also tweeted: ‘How brave you are. How pathetic shooting something that’s sleeping. This has to be STOPPED. #Coward.’

DailyMail.com columnist Piers Morgan said he felt ‘physically sick’ watching the video, saying: ‘Only someone with a severe mental illness could possibly enjoy doing what you did to that poor unconscious lion.

‘The ecstatic thrill it gave you suggests you’re a psychopathic monster devoid of any empathy or compassion.’

Gorney lives in a five-bedroom home in Manhattan, Illinois, a wealthy village 50 miles southwest of Chicago. A large wooden American flag hangs on his front door, along with a religious message. Two SUVs and a pick-up truck sit in the driveway with a large RV in the back yard.

This is the half-million-dollar Illinois home where Gorney was approached by DailyMail.com but he refused comment, saying ‘I’m not interested in talking to you. Private property. Take off!’

In the video, Gorney fires one shot, and awakens the unsuspecting lion to meet its demise

The lion can be seen writhing in pain on the ground, after being awakened by the attack

‘Beautiful,’ the guide says, as the video shows a closeup of the lifeless animal’s face

He has visited Africa several times to kill big game, once boasting that he has bagged all of the ‘big five’ animals that are said to be the most difficult to kill on foot — the lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and Cape buffalo. Of the five, the buffalo is the only one that is not endangered.

‘You can say, why’d you shoot a lion?’ he said during a 2015 interview with WBBM-FM, a radio station in Chicago.

‘I love zebra, so shooting a lion probably saves 70 zebra a year, give or take. There’s all these kinds of balances in nature.’

However, his Facebook page, which he has now taken down, contained a photo of a zebra’s head in his vehicle with the caption: ‘Now how did this get in my truck?

A picture of his ‘trophy room’ showed 17 stuffed animals and two zebra skins.

He admitted in the old interview that his hunting is mainly for the thrill of the kill. ‘I really like hunting elephants,’ he said. ‘They’re difficult to track down. They’re incredibly dangerous.

‘The first elephant I got, I walked over 120 miles tracking elephants before I actually caught up to him and found him.

Gorney said he had a hard time understanding why people could accept deer hunting in the United States but not big game hunting in Africa.

‘If you have a picture of somebody with a deer, nobody seems to care. But if it’s an elephant, it’s a big problem. If it’s a lion – especially now – it’s a huge problem. But to me, either way, I’ve stopped a beating heart.’

He did not address the question of deer normally being killed to be eaten while big game is usually just for the trophy, or the fact that most species of deer are not endangered.

Gorney even invoked the memory of former president Theodore Roosevelt during the interview. ‘When I killed that buffalo that had hurt somebody, the people that had benefited from the death of that animal cheered. Clapped.

‘The ‘why’ is just the – I call it the adventure of it. Same reason Teddy Roosevelt did it.’

Last year Gorney got up during an open mic night for authors at the Book and Bean Café in Joliet, Illinois, a few miles from his home, where he said he ‘travels’ a lot’ and writes journals.

He said once in Africa he had been asked to deal with a lion that had attacked livestock. ‘When they get like that, they are not killing to feed, they are just killing, so they are particularly dangerous.’

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In a 2015 interview, Gorney addressed violent reactions to trophy hunting by pointing out he can defend himself. Gorney is pictured with a hippopotamus that he killed

In the interview from 2015 with CBS, Gorney showed no remorse for his ‘hunting’ habit, which at that time included killing 70 big game animals, such as elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo. Gorney is pictured with a rhino that he killed

‘The “why” is just the – I call it the adventure of it. Same reason Teddy Roosevelt did it,’ Gorney said. ‘I really like hunting elephants. They’re difficult to track down. They’re incredibly dangerous. The first elephant I got, I walked over 120 miles tracking elephants before I actually caught up to him and found him’

The hunter also appears to enjoy searching for prey – including moose and bear – closer to home, in North America, as well as the African bush where he bagged a sleeping lion

He said he volunteered to help, ‘literally putting himself in harm’s way.’

As he sat in a tree waiting for the lion to attack an animal he was using as bait, he heard a noise behind him and furiously began to plan in his mind how he was going to kill the lion if it attacked.

But the story ended when the animal that approached turned out to be merely a porcupine. He did not say whether he killed it anyway.

Since the furor caused by the newly released video, Gorney has taken down his Facebook page which showed him with his kills, including one of him straddling a lion while wearing the same clothes he had on in the video.

That was in stark contrast to 2015 when he told WBBM’s Steve Miller he would not remove the page due to public anger. ‘I thought about taking it down, but I really have a problem changing my behavior over people that are just over the top,’ he said.

The video of Gorney killing the lion was posted on the British Twitter account @Protect_Wldlife — which has nearly 335,000 followers — on Monday. The administrator says: ‘I am an advocate for wildlife. I expose animal abuse and abusers wherever they are. I will NEVER stop fighting for better animal rights and welfare.’

The account which shared the video is an animal rights advocacy account, based in the United Kingdom, according to the information on the page, under username @Protect_Wldlife

Top golfer Ian Poulter expressed his outrage over the killing, asking how Gorney can sleep at night

Others suggested penalties for the actions of Gorney as shown in the video. ‘In my book that should be 5 years in jail. Grotesque,’ one user wrote

‘Even if it was awake, the Poor Animal Shouldn’t be Killed AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!! EVIL B*****D!!!!!!!!!! [various emojis],’ wrote another user

Many expressed objection over trophy hunting, in general, regardless of whether the animal was asleep at the time of its killing

Many Twitter users called out the ‘cowardice’ of attacking the wild animal at rest.

‘A sleeping lion, wow what a big man!’ wrote one user, alongside an angry, cursing emoji.

Many expressed their objection to trophy hunting in general, regardless of whether the animal was asleep at the time of its killing.

‘This is not hunting, or sport…it’s murder #stoptrophyhunting #Fightforyourworld.’ user @verdiKate wrote.

‘Even if it was awake, the Poor Animal Shouldn’t be Killed AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!! EVIL B*****D!!!!!!!!!! [various emojis],’ wrote another user.

Others suggested penalties for the actions of Gorney as shown in the video.

‘In my book that should be 5 years in jail. Grotesque,’ one user wrote.

Another still called for a punishment in kind, replying, ‘More like fed 2 a pride of lions & eaten alive.’

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