#it’s a long and awful and drawn out tragedy of a man who shouldn’t have had to die.

[tovaicas]

my real favourite character is Nidhogg, I’m only obsessed with Estinien bc he’s a hangers-on /jokes

[jingabitch]

Armed to the Fangs ch.3

Summary: You grew up in the Hunter’s Guild, understanding that it is your sacred duty as a hunter to protect humanity from the vampires that lurk in the dark, draining the life from anyone unlucky enough to be caught. While making the rounds one night, you encounter Taehyung, a fabled born vampire - not that you know that when he tries to entice you into a dark alley. Next thing you know, you’re kidnapped and taken to their home, where you realise that all of them somehow crave your blood and seem to know more about your past than you do. Finding out about where you came from might be the key to setting humanity free.

Pairing: eventual ot7 x reader

Warnings: some description of violence, angst, pining, eventual smut, slow burn, minor sexual content (i dont even know if it counts)

Word count: 3.2k

A/N: hope you guys enjoy this!! it’s more slow burn and setting up but the plot is inching forward.

Series index

You ended up staying in that room for three days. It was a good thing there was an en suite bathroom, although come to think of it, you weren’t sure if vampires even had bodily functions. There was a lot you didn’t know about them, you were coming to realize.

Unfortunately, because you didn’t have much to do after exhausting all the ideas you had for escaping, you pretty much just worked out, showered, washed your clothes in the sink and took naps while waiting for your clothes to dry. You had no choice but to basically lie around and get lost in your thoughts, and that was never a good idea for you. With so much time on your hands, your thoughts inevitably turned to darker musings, like whether the Head knew about these vampires, and why he kept it secret from everyone.

Come to think of it, what did they mean when they said they were figuring it out? Figuring what out? After Jimin’s visit, they’d left you alone for the most part, although they served you three meals a day religiously. The meals were beautifully prepared and delicious, which was also confusing. Did they have human servants who knew how to cook? Did one of the seven mysterious brothers cook? Could vampires taste food?

Initially, you’d been blasé enough about it, figuring that the others would come to rescue you in short order, and everything would be fine. But when you woke up on the third morning and realized that you were still locked in that room, you began to panic. Three days was as long as you could be gone from the Guild.

When your breakfast was delivered – a hearty abalone porridge topped with crushed seaweed that honestly smelled better than anything you’d ever eaten at the Guild – you sat up quickly to catch whoever it was who’d brought your food before they left, clutching the sheets to your bare chest. You’d left your clothes in the bathroom drying after your evening workout, and gone to bed nude.

“Hey,” you croaked in your gross morning voice. You hadn’t spoken yet today, and it definitely showed. You cleared your throat and tried again. “Good morning.” No harm buttering him up, right? It was the cute, doe-eyed one you’d woken up to the last time, and you wondered if he’d be a little more pliant if you were nice to him, since threatening to shoot his brains out hadn’t exactly worked out in your favour so far. Live and learn, as they say.

Jungkook, who’d been studiously avoiding looking at you – or inhaling your scent – looked over in shock at you and regretted it a second later. He and his brothers took turns bringing you your meals, and from their discussions about it, you seemed to alternate between completely ignoring their presence and demanding to be set free or for more information about why you were being kept here, and he’d expected that since it was still pretty early, he’d be in and out without much interaction with you.

It seemed that the powers that be were bored today, because they’d seen fit to torture him on this fine morning. He was a good person, he thought. Maybe he sometimes struggled with controlling his hunger, compared to his brothers, but he was the youngest, and he was working on it, okay? He tried his best! He shouldn’t be faced with the ultimate temptation of his mate, naked and in his bed, holding the sheet to her chest and actually being nice to him for once.

You raised a brow as Jungkook just stared at you wordlessly, his jaw open.

Then you saw his eyes flicker, changing colour for a second. It was enough for you to grab your gun from under the pillow, aiming it at him with your right hand as you continued holding the sheet over your chest with the left.

“Hey, whoa,” he protested, his hands in the air as his lower lip slid out in a slight pout. “I thought we were past that.”

You pointed your gun at him more insistently, if it were even possible. “I saw your eyes change colour! I’m not going to be a sitting duck while you try to kill me,” you accused.

Jungkook flushed, and you stared in awe. He really was unfairly beautiful, you thought reluctantly, not wanting to admit that one of your captors, and a member of the species you had been taught were soulless, vicious predators, was so attractive. Really, if he’d been a human man you’d have been all over that in an instant.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” he defended himself, his pout intensifying.

“Are you telling me I’m seeing things?” you asked incredulously.

“No, I…” He frowned as he trailed off, not sure how to explain to her that he’d gotten turned on. It wasn’t his fault! She was literally lying naked in his bed.

You raised a brow at him, clearly not willing to back down without a clearer explanation, and he wished, for the thousandth time, that his mate wasn’t a scary hunter who was all too eager to blow his brains out at the slightest provocation. In fact, he wasn’t sure why all of them were still alive at this point, given the way you waved your gun around.

“Uh… vampires’ eyes change not just because of hunger, but physiological arousal in general…” he offered hesitantly, before cringing away. You wasn’t going to shoot him, were you? It didn’t occur to him until after he’d said it that you might take that as an even worse insult. Who knew what would set you off, really?

Instead, the hand holding the gun fell to the bed as you gaped at him in shock. “Oh…” you murmured, looking down awkwardly as you flushed. Jungkook could hear the blood rushing through your veins as your heart rate sped up and looked up at the ceiling so you wouldn’t notice his eyes change colour again.

There was something he was supposed to tell you, but it completely slipped his mind as the only thing he could focus on at the moment was leaving as quickly as possible to wallow in his own misery and embarrassment somewhere else. Jesus, of course he would be the first of his brothers to make a fool of himself in front of their new mate.

“Wait!” you stopped him as he scuttled towards the door. Embarrassment or no, leaving this place was your main focus right now. You had to get home by today.

Jungkook paused, his hand on the lock, and turned to give you an inquiring look. “Do you know when I’ll be free to go?” you asked, placing your free hand on the mattress in front of you as you leaned closer.

“Uhh…” Jungkook gave you a wide-eyed stare, his gaze flickering down and then returning resolutely to your eyes. Your question had actually reminded him of what he’d originally intended to say. “An agreement was reached last night; they’re sending someone to come get you today.”

There was a lot more that he wasn’t allowed to tell you, and from the way you squinted suspiciously at him, you had picked up on his caginess, but thankfully you were distracted enough by the prospect of getting to go home, and you just nodded in acknowledgement. “Thank you,” you said, more politely than he’d heard you say anything in the past couple of days, and although he knew it was just your joy at being away from what you deemed to be soulless monsters, his heart couldn’t help but warm at the way your lips quirked up in an almost-smile.

Once Jungkook had departed, you quickly got out of bed and got dressed, then ate the porridge he’d left for you. It really was nice, and under different circumstances you’d have been more vocal about your appreciation for the food.

It was Namjoon who came to get you, the one you’d dubbed in your mind as Mr. Tall and Stoic, since you didn’t know any of their names. You were ready and waiting for him, in all your clothes with your weapons back in place, more than eager to leave.

He led you through the hallways of the massive compound, and because this was the first time you were seeing it, since you’d been unconscious when they brought you to the room, you looked around curiously. It was decorated like a Victorian manor, complete with dramatic stairs down to the foyer, and a giant painting with the seven brothers hung on the wall behind the steps.

“Jesus,” you murmured to yourself, barely audibly, as you gazed at the painting. You’d seen five of them, but the other two men in the painting were strangers. All of them were beautiful, of course, but somehow you found yourself being drawn to the one with a long face, a delicate, sloping nose. He wasn’t smiling – none of them were – but the somber expression sat wrong on his face somehow, sending a pang through your heart.

He looked like he’d been through a tragedy, based on the slightly strained lines around his mouth and his cool gaze, and you felt the bizarre urge to stroke his face.

Namjoon, noticing the way that Hoseok had caught your attention, pursed his lips to hide his smile. Based on your scent, he’d already been fairly sure that you had some connection to Minhee, Hoseok’s mate, but this was just further evidence to him. Your sudden appearance in their lives meant more than any of them had initially thought, and he couldn’t help but wonder if this meant that things were finally turning around.

“Jennie-unnie!” You greeted the hunter who’d come to get you enthusiastically, all but flying across the foyer to her. To her credit, the older girl just grinned at you and opened her arms, letting you slam into her as she hugged you. There were more hunters behind her, senior members of the Guild, but you ignored them for the moment.

“You’ve had quite the adventure, haven’t you?” she asked, quirking a brow at you.

You pouted up at her. “It’s not like I wanted this,” you whined. Now that you were going home and around one of your closest friends, your demeanor was visibly more relaxed, and Namjoon, as well as Seokjin who was standing in the foyer as well, looked on in a mix of jealousy and fondness. They knew why you were on guard around them, but it still stung that their mate had this cute side they weren’t aware of.

“I know, sweetie,” she soothed, brushing your hair off your face. “You ready to go?”

You nodded eagerly, separating from her as you prepared to walk out. Before you could even take a step, however, Namjoon and Seokjin stepped forward. “We’re coming too,” was all Seokjin said. You hadn’t seen him since the first night, so you just gaped at him. The elders, however, just nodded and started moving off.

Jennie shrugged at you, and helplessly, you trailed after them, wondering just what was going on. There was no way this was normal – vampires being allowed into the Guild headquarters?

You didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because soon enough you were being ushered into one of the vehicles that were parked in the massive driveway. Of course they had such a ridiculously lavish place, you thought, taking your seat in the armoured car next to Jennie. The vampires didn’t get into the same car as you, so you didn’t know where they were or how they were getting to the Guild, but you thought rather spitefully that it would make sense if they turned into bats and flew there.

When you arrived back at the headquarters, the Head’s personal assistant-slash-bodyguard was there waiting for you. You sighed – this was not good news. You were probably going to get the scolding of your life for being so incompetent as to get caught, and then stupid enough that you weren’t able to figure out how to get out of there without being rescued.

“Master Bang wants to see you in his office. Report there in half an hour.” With that, he turned and walked away.

Jennie was looking at you with concern, and opened her mouth to say something comforting to you. Feeling bad about how much you’d inconvenienced everyone already, you forced yourself to smile, putting on a brave face to reassure her. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, unnie. At least he gave me some time to freshen up, so it can’t be that bad.”

They were, as they say, famous last words, but you didn’t know that then.

You opened the door to your bedroom and stepped in, immediately being accosted by your baby.

“Injeolmi!” You fell to your knees to greet your cat, who was meowing loudly at you. “Oh, I’m so sorry baby for leaving for so long, are you okay?” You picked him up for a cuddle, looking over the room. The litterbox was a mess and stank to high heaven, of course, but thanks to your foresight, it didn’t look like he’d gone hungry. You’d managed to rig a contraption to release the right amount of food into his bowl three times a day, so even if you weren’t around for a couple of days he would be fine. It wasn’t the first time you’d been gone for longer than usual, although you’d never been gone quite so long before.

Unfortunately, because the container you’d used could only hold three days’ worth of food, that was as long as you could be gone for. Sighing, you put him down and went to clean up the litterbox, wrinkling your nose at him as you got a large trash bag to dump out the litter. The whole situation in there was disgusting enough that just scooping out the poop wouldn’t be enough. “You’re lucky you’re so cute,” you muttered at him as you emptied out the litter, tying off the trash bag to cut off the stench, then got a fresh bag of cat litter.

Once that was settled, you went to your bathroom to wash your hands and refill his water bowl, then opened the window and lit a scented candle to combat the smell, which was still somewhat eye-watering.

Your irritation at the disgusting task was ameliorated, however, by Injeolmi going to lap at the fresh water you’d set out for him. Your heart squeezed at how cute he was even when doing mundane things, and even though you knew you shouldn’t disturb him, you couldn’t help going to pet him.

When he was done, you got his bag of treats out, opening a plastic sachet of Churu and waving it enticingly in front of him. You laughed lightly at his enthusiasm for the snack. Unsatisfied with just letting you hold it in front of him and squeeze the tuna-scented paste out, he’d actually placed his front paws on your hand to hold the snack to him.

“Oh, you love it, don’t you, baby?” you spoke to him in a silly baby voice, smiling indulgently at him. “You’re such a good boy, my son,” you cooed at him. He ignored you, of course, too absorbed in eating his treat.

When it was all gone, you disposed of the plastic packet and went to take a shower to freshen up before your scolding from the Head. It didn’t take long to get ready – you were an expert at quick showers by now – and you dressed yourself in a plain black turtleneck and jeans. Your outfit was intentionally chosen to make you look like a competent hunter, just like everything about the persona you showed him. He didn’t even know about Injeolmi, the cat you’d adopted after finding him as a kitten on the streets during your rounds two years ago.

Speaking of which, Injeolmi meowed plaintively and took a few steps towards you when you exited the bathroom and made to leave the room, causing you to panic. “Stop, baby, you’re going to get cat hair on my clothes!” That would definitely be a disaster, you thought, cringing. “I’ll see you soon, baby. Love you!” you said as you left your room.

You raced all the way to Master Bang’s office, knowing that you were cutting it really close with the timing because of all the time you’d spent lavishing love on Injeolmi. Standing outside his door, you took a deep breath, patting your hair back into place so it didn’t look like you’d rushed here, then knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he said, the sound slightly muffled by the wood.

You entered, already starting to greet him before you caught sight of the two vampires who’d followed you back to the Guild already in the office, and the words dried up in your throat. “Uh…” you said intelligently, then cursed at yourself internally.

“Yes, come sit down, we have some things to discuss,” Master Bang said, gesturing at the seat between the two vampires. Hesitantly, you made your way over, sitting gingerly in it. Your butt was perched on the very edge of the seat, and your back was ramrod straight, every inch of you radiating discomfort at being so close to them.

“We have come to an agreement,” Master Bang started. “Seokjin made an excellent point about this being a prime opportunity to improve human-vampire relations.”

You were sure your mouth was hanging open unattractively. Human-vampire relations? Was this some kind of joke? You stared incredulously at the man who’d taught you to shoot a gun and explained to you the moment you could understand words that vampires were evil and would drain you in an instant given half a chance.

Before you could voice your doubts, however, he’d continued. “The vampire clan has formally requested an ambassador.”

You blinked in response.

“You will be going to live with them as the representative from the Guild, effective immediately.” He concluded his instructions and sat back, his arms folded across his chest in a manner that brooked no opposition.

“Sir, please –” you tried to reason with him, let him know that this was definitely not a good idea. The thought of leaving the only home you’d ever known and going to live with a bunch of predators made your stomach turn, but he was having none of it.

“Pack up your things. You’re leaving with them.” At that, he seemed done with you, but you had to try once more.

“Sir, please, I really think I would be better utilized here,” you tried again to persuade him. You had a kill count higher than all the hunters currently on the streets, didn’t that mean anything?

He just glared at you, and your shoulders slumped as you slunk out of the room in defeat. Right as you were about to leave the room, you heard him speak again. “A hunter who’s useless enough to get caught doesn’t deserve the title.”

Biting your lip viciously to quell the sobs that threatened to rise in your chest, you ran back to your room to cry.

[bi-outta-cordonia]

Of Assumptions and Half Truths

Chapter 3 is up and maybe we might have a contender for a hot romance option in Tyril. I don’t know. We gotta see. But in the meantime, I’ve got a thought about an elf that grew up around humans running into an elf that might possibly be from Undermount and is not very nice to elves that weren’t raised in Undermount. Let the enemies to lovers commence...

Blades of Light and Shadow. Tyril x f!elf MC (if you squint). SFW, all ages. Tags include: Tyril may actually full on hate my MC, like seriously hate her, but maybe he’s willing to acknowledge that shit got fucked and she can’t be held accountable for not knowing her history, a maybe he’s grappling with early onset sexual tension with her. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eyes follow everywhere he goes. 

Used to be different, or so the elders say. Humes didn’t always have run of the land the way they do now. It was the Old Blood that built the ivory spires of Whitetower, that sowed magic within the soil and communed with the very earth. The libraries held more stories than what the  humes were able to steal after the fall. Scavengers, the entire lot of them—and they’ve the audacity to stare at him as if he doesn’t belong. Parnassus, Yodlin, and every city in between—it was his people that built these lands. And it was the scavengers that sought to profit off the blood still cooling on the earth following the tragedy. 

Eyes on him doesn’t bother him as much anymore. He’s impossible to ignore and it is in part by design. Humes are always so confident when they shouldn’t be. He corrects that behavior with a look, with his gait, and with carefully hissed words. A lot of the scavenging comes in the form of thieves and robbers, folk that would take coin from their own flesh and blood if it meant acquiring something that doesn’t belong to them. 

Eyes on him is a given. He understands that now. 

He tears a bit of his rations off and chews quietly. Stale bread again until the party reaches the next city along the way. Hume cuisine is rather quaint compared to what the Citadel serves but it fills his achy belly nonetheless. The crackle of flames is pleasant at the very least. So too is the quiet that it fills and the lack of distinct chatter from the other humes. The long haired fool sleeps heavily and the sheltered priestess sits tucked inside of her tent. Tyril’s eyes cut across the darkness and flame where the lowlander sits staring right at him. 

Ashala Venralei, or so she says her name is. 

He’s known many an elf like her in the stony city of Undermount—skin as deep and smooth as the cloudless night and eyes that blaze a bright gold. Something teems within her, perhaps a latent magic or the draw of the Old Blood within her. More prominently is the haughtiness and the daring. 

Tyril bites off more of the awful bread and refuses to shift his gaze. A series of emotions plays across her face as she daintily dips her spoon into the filth she dubs a “stew” and consumes the contents. Whatever benefit he could’ve gained from having another of his kind near is lost upon that very person being the most arrogant and self-centered creature he’s ever laid eyes upon. Every bite of his bread stirs a rage within him and all she does is calmly eat her slop. 

When she finally sets her bowl down, he braces. 

“Unclench your jaw, fool,” she says far too evenly. “Surely a well traveled wanderer has seen far more disappointing elves than I.”

His eyes twitches but he knows better. “I will not be riled by you, lowlander. There is nothing about you that is worth my anger.”

She cackles. 

“So bold of you to believe your anger is worth anything in the first place.” Ashala sits up and fiddles with the folds of her skirts. “Nothing pleases the prince. Not food, not a word—” She arches a brow, “—certainly not a person. Mayhap the prince would enjoy himself a bit more if he were to let go of this icy front. The cold and brooding act is hardly effective.”

“Perhaps the lowlander would love to see another of the people forget all that they are,” he snaps back. “Speak nothing of my plight and assume nothing of my motivations—I was not born to forget the tragedy that befell my people.”

A heavy silence hangs between them and a sensation claws at his throat. Call it a sense, or a hunch as the humes call it—his eyes flit back to Ashala’s and what he sees could bore through his entire soul. Lay him bare and strip him of everything he is for the simple sake of it. He knows it is more complex than that but he exists not to reveal these truths to her. 

“The prince bid me not to assume anything of him, yet there he sits assuming things of me,” she says, lips quirking just a bit. “You claim it was a tragedy that befell your people but not mine. As if mine made the choice to be lost amongst the many humans that fill this land.”

“We have kept to the true ways, so it makes them my people,” he answers. “What you have been denied—” His gaze falters and his eyes turn towards the ground. “The Undermount has always been there. Some of the elders lived before the fall and could tell many a story about it. I won’t be held accountable for your lack of initiative nor will I be forced to give over the histories to one as impudent as you.”

An owl cries out in the midst of the night, a gentle sound that splits the quiet between the two of them. Her face doesn’t change yet the mood shifts so clearly. To be of the people yet to be so different in everything they are—what does the fall truly take from them? Dignity? A sense of being?

Humes scavenged every bit of the histories they could find. The magic, the knowledge, their stories—even their children. Tyril glances at her again and it almost disgusts him to know the truth of her upbringing. Sending her to the Undermount was a choice that could’ve been made. 

“I hate you,” she hisses. His ears prick but neither of their expressions change. “You sound exactly the way I expected one of your lot to be. There’s no such thing as unity amongst you—the only thing that matters is your lot holding the histories tight to your bosoms while the rest of us are left to wander.”

“You know nothing.”

Her smile is dispassionate. 

“It was not my choice to be this way.” 

Ashala rises up to full height. The fire pops and crackles steadily. A glance down and her face pulls tight. Familiar tendrils of natural energy stir all around him, skittering and crawling towards the woman bidding them to gather in the palm of her hand. She reaches down into the flames and licks of it curl around her outstretched limb. Longer still does she hold her hand in the fire and more powerful are the flames as they wrap around the length of her. 

When she pulls her hand away, the limb is alight with flames embedding in her skin and forming familiar patterns. He was taught by the foremost scholars within the Citadel. His eyes narrow as she pulls more natural energy and turns the flame engulfing her arm blue.

“The Undermount has always been there,” he repeats. 

“And there is full guarantee they would accept a lowlander amongst their ranks?” she challenges. The flame shifts, slithering to the center of her palm where she molds it into a ball of bright light. “I am not naive like—” She throws a glance towards Nia’s tent and chuckles. “I could never afford to be. Survival serves as the point of my focus and, yes. If it means finding kinship amongst humans, I was more than willing to allow myself the connection.”

“And you’ve never once sought your way through to the Undermount? Did you not wish to know anything?” he asks. 

Ashala levels him with a calm expression. 

“I’ve always heard the stories from human mouths. What assumptions I built had to come from them, not because I wanted them to but because no one from the Undermount sought to correct such views,” she responds. She approaches him slowly and his body tenses. The all black clothing she wears swallows her entire being. She moves as precisely as a void, consumes all that wanders in her path as she goes. Ashala takes the spot next to him on the log and her eyes lock on his face. “You are the first I have ever seen.”

He doesn’t look at her. “I know.”

“You seem arrogant much like the humans describe—far too willing to make assumptions and even less willing to extend courteousness towards those that share not a drop of the Old Blood,” she says. Ashala pauses for a moment. “Despite that, I know that the humans who cared for me know little. They do not understand what it is like to be me, to see so many faces unlike mine and to know that our histories are not the same.”

Tyril snorts. “And you believe I am closer to you in that? I know nothing of what it’s like to be you either.”

She shrugs. “But we are the same in one way that I am not with them. Surely you understand the pain of not knowing all of it at once? Surely you see that I find you intriguing for more than the veneer you put on?” 

Heat tinges his cheeks.

“I will not be used to fuel a fantasy,” he says and frowns at her laugh. 

“Then regale me not with a fantasy, but with a truth that the humans do not know,” she offers. “Become not a teacher. Stay always the brooding man you are. Allow me a single truth and I swear to ask for nothing else.”

The quiet that passes between them is so profound, he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the whisper of the wind or the scurrying footsteps of the critters darting through the brush. Nothing about her is deserving of these stories. Everything about her is so far removed from the truths lying deep within the limestone paths of the Undermount. He slowly turns towards her, eyes boring deep into hers and body drawn stiff. 

They say nothing to each other for a long time. He feels nothing in him for an even longer time. 

Ashala sighs and looks to the sky—to the heavily cratered moon. 

“There were three.”

Her brow rises but she keeps her eyes trained on the glowing body sitting high in the sky. 

“I don’t believe that,” she says. 

“The ichor spread throughout the land, submerging all in rot and death,” he continues. “Their shadows billowed from within their armors but it was not just the Court that pushed out the physical manifestation of their corruption—it was entire armies, entire fields of soldiers, creatures, and magicks that bled deathly smoke and corrupting ash. Their terror held tight within the hearts of millions and their presence could be felt by the unfortunate thousands still remaining.” She finally looks to him and he leans closer. “Their shadows could be seen for miles.”

If he stirs her, he isn’t certain. If he strikes fear, he will likely never know. 

Ashala doesn’t move, doesn’t bat an eyelash. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap and her golden eyes remain steady on him. 

“When they razed the lands, their smoke and shadows cast heavy over the land. Entire cities would be consumed and entire villages became forgotten in their midst. There was little to hold onto, little that the light could touch and that could cast back their horror. Many simply gave in to the Shadow Court and sacrificed their lot in exchange for a seat amongst the horde. There wasn’t an atrocity that wasn’t worthy of committing. ‘Desperate’ is so kind a word to use to describe the fear gripping all.

“And in spite of that, in spite of the creep of death and the threaten of oblivion looming over everyone—there were three moons.” He nods towards the half eaten moon. “We call her ‘Gallius,’ the Unmoving. When the armies of the Shadow Court marched through the lands, Gallius and her sisters watched calmly over the masses. Thousands died staring up at her splendor. Some begged them for answers, many others cursed them. But would you believe there were those that looked to the sisters for guidance?”

Ashala’s lips part and his eyes dart to them. His jaw works.

“Why?” she asks. “Why the moon? What could it possibly offer?”

“Because Gallius and her sisters shined through the darkness that eclipsed all,” he says, eyes rising to meet hers again. “The Court...their shadows blotted the sun and stole from us the light. Their calling of death and destruction stole the security daylight brought. The Shadow Court took darkness, a natural part of our being, and they used it to oppress us. However, in the dead of night and through the pillars of smoke, the moon and her sisters shone their light down upon us.

“We had no moon goddess. We did not worship the night. But in the most desperate of our times, we found ourselves fascinated with that which the Shadow Court used as a weapon against us. Daylight became our bane for we could see the shadows encroaching and the armies marching towards innocent cities they had yet to level. Daylight meant we could see the horrors as they came and the inevitable demise they would bring. 

“However, in the night, the shadows were no different. Their bodies melted into the backdrop of the abyss. Their movements slowed immeasurably. And through that darkness was Gallius and her sisters sitting high in the sky, their light guiding us and their quiet shining upon us even as we lay dying before them.”

Ashala says nothing for a long while, her expression contemplative and her eyes much warmer than before. Her lips part again and Tyril schools his features carefully. 

“Why are there no longer three moons?” she asks. A smile tugs at his lips. 

“Because Gallius swallowed her sisters.” Ashala’s shocked look draws a laugh from him. “Most humes don’t even know this—it is as I said, we never had a moon goddess nor did we worship the night. Gods are tricky things, but give them enough power and they can be molded—born anew. Humes believe in giving of material things in exchange for that blessing or power. They know little of what it means to hold faith, to pour life, blood, and soul into the powers that become the forces that keep watch over us. 

“Gallius was the name she accepted. Gallius was the unmoving. Gallius was the light that the shadows could not claim. Gallius was simply a thought and became so much more despite it all. We sought her in death, cursed her in life, and we gave our blood in the hope that we’d be worthy of something we didn’t even know we were searching for when it all came to an end.” He leans back and takes a deep breath. 

“You mean to say…” Ashala shifts her gaze between him and the moon. “The people created their own goddess? From the three moons?”

“Gallius is a goddess of a unique sort,” he says. “The scholarly humes at Whitetower paint her truth falsely. They call her the ‘elven goddess of hope.’” Tyril rubs his knuckles on the soft material of his pants. “She is no such thing. She is so much more than that. She was the last thing we laid our eyes upon when the shadows of death came to claim us.” His ears twitch and his fists curl tight. “She was the ‘unmoving.’ She was the reminder we needed when all had been lost and despair was all that remained. She did not serve the purpose of hope—she was certainty…that which bled through the smoke and would always find us. We pray to her not for hope, but for clarity.”

“How would you define her?” Ashala asks. His lips twitch at the curiosity embedded all throughout her tone. “If not a goddess of hope, what is she the goddess of?”

He doesn’t answer for a long time. That which sets them apart makes them the same, it seems. 

“Truth.” Tyril rises from his spot and moves around the fire. Ashala’s eyes bear down on him. It is difficult to avoid her sight, much like it is difficult to dodge the light of the half eaten moon. “We did not want to accept our fate but we could accept what was certain. Death claimed many, horror wracked us all—” He turns back towards her and, for a brief moment, there is a softness in their shared expressions; a truth they have been so reluctant to share, “—and in spite of what we knew, we continued on.”

“Why this story?” she asks. “Why regale me a tale of a goddess that reigns over truth?”

A wisp of wind whips through the camp, stuttering the fire and sending a chill down his spine. 

“Maybe…some of your assumptions need to be corrected.”

Heat floods him as a coy look slowly twists her face, golden eyes travel the length of him slowly and he tries to ignore the uncomfortable fire stirring in his belly. 

“Hm.” Is all she says. 

[demytasse]

[Shizaya] Coping Mechanism — Ch 5

[Previous Chapter]

    Izaya wasn’t a hot-blooded individual, he only mimicked one — merely caught up in the moment it was hardly a permanent detriment to his nature. It's just that he was currently hot and bothered, both mind and body struck with fever.

An overactive imagination compromised his chill composure as all his attention was drawn to the bathroom which hid a scene he could only pretend that he witnessed. Warmed ceramic cradled in his hands, overheated brew burned his throat; polyester-wrapped cushions redirected his body heat up onto him, an old flame barely separated by drywall yet completely exposed — Izaya could not keep cool.

              “Mind if I join, hot stuff?”

              “Only if you drop the shitty puns.”

Honestly it was the simple things Izaya remembered the most, what he missed more than the sex, but //clearly he was not without those lusty thoughts. Due to circumstance, one beat out the other as an obvious winner.

    “What a selfish beast he can be... probably doesn't even know that he’s a tease…”

The shower ran stifling as Shizuo was wont to run it which created a blanket of humidity inside the tight quarters while an extension of its steamy forcefield billowed into the living room. Although he couldn’t see it, Izaya knew how the suds further censored the attractive man in the shower, its attempts failed as soap slid over muscle to his feet. Izaya remembered the way Shizuo looked, though not the way he felt beneath his own fingertips. He remembered the way his own curves were felt up, but not the actual touch of Shizuo’s carefully rough caress. Memories recalled the initial chill of water, but couldn't reenact how heated the droplets became after they hit their skin; how the smell of retired deodorant and cologne washed away all distractions — how oddly sweet and hypnotising their sweat could be while its misty remnants swirled their bodies. Izaya distinctly remembered the satisfying burn of shampoo when it seeped through his ill-sealed eyes, what slipped beyond his own smirk while the two paused to drown in air; the sweet-nothings, crude compliments, the spoken sputters and spat words, groans and giggles, frantic and hungry touches...they were all painfully arousing to his senses and only his resolve prevented Izaya from adding himself to the scene; easily change the teen appropriate content to something R-rated.

              “It's good clean fun, hm?”

              “That’s what you call our showers?”

              “It's an idiom, Shizuo.”

              “So you would mind breakin’ it then…”

              “You know, just because we’re in the shower doesn’t change the fact that your thoughts are ‘dirty’.”

Of course their showers were hardly successful — they were an excuse to feel alright about jacking up the water bill, an expenditure that was satisfying enough to split dessert once in awhile, not like Izaya ever needed to worry about that sort of monetary slipup. Under the sensual effects of those moments it was fun to pretend that they were two living in financial poverty while rich in love. And now Izaya found himself in bankruptcy with an overabundant desire to spend beyond his budget.

That's what drove him to crack the door, curse as he remembered the shower stall was beyond visibility from that viewpoint. The mirror also a wash all hazy and ineffective, barely even a blurry form upon it. Frustrated he gave up, turned away while he tugged the door behind him until he heard a low and murmured externalised thought — an echo from within the stall.     “...Izaya…”

It shook him like the rain of discarded water that Shizuo shook from his hair, that to which he glimpsed between the door crack above the hinges.

    “Fuck.”

Izaya thumped his head against the corner door frame, chastised himself and Shizuo for setting him up with such a nuisance to deal with. One glance of the other man with his head hung at his shoulders, affected by his own sensations, had Izaya feel like he needed to join in the same act — separate, in secret, but still the same. Auditory cues sent him into his memories, to one in particular and perhaps a twisted favourite of his subconscious.

     His skin had burned red, agitated from the extended spray of the shower head; it was harshest across his shoulders and traced around his blades, stung over the tracks of nails that sliced like knives. Clean cuts were only deep enough to balance out the soft attention that pathed around his abdomen. A half-drenched mop even with the height of Izaya's waist while Shizuo's eyes stayed out of view, not as though it weren’t easy to read his intent without having access to facial expressions.

    “You have work today.”

    “Yeah…”     “And you’re taking your time.”     “Uhhu.”

    “You’re not leaving enough time for yourself.”     “Then make it up to me later, Izaya, just shut up.”

    “How bothersome, planned sex is such a travesty to the whole act.”

    “For fuck’s sake.”

Izaya had to hand it to Shizuo on occasion, he could be swift in motion, a flash strategist when need be. Unpredictability — the highest high that Izaya could extract from any moment, but especially from Shizuo's actions.

Within a second Shizuo towered over him once again, the next moment Izaya felt tile grout imprint instantaneous bruises at his kneecaps; and even though he knew what the implied course of action was, it was still exhilarating to look up and feign sweet naivete and wait for direction from Shizuo.

    “I guess I’ll...make it up to you later, louse.” Izaya grinned, tickled that his partner could get so flustered over others wanting to please him; clearly it was Shizuo who was more in desperate need of a release anyway. Izaya shook his head while he played it off as trying to discard excess water from his bangs.

    “I’ll hold you to that, Shizu-chan”

It was anticipation that often made Shizuo shudder, sometimes more than the sexual favour itself. He was just that intune with his instincts, feelings, and the moment — just a tease along the underside of his shaft riled him intensely, the intentionally slow buildup to his tip was on par with a low key climax.

The drawn out ministrations went on longer than needed, but it was a treat, something that Izaya could get off on simply by observing Shizuo while he was entranced by the atmosphere; how ecstatic he was, eyes widened at the increasing pulse. Jaw slack, he stuttered guttural words, braced himself against the shower wall with a suction grip that almost broke the tile. And with a light rake of teeth that ended with Izaya's tongue play, it dialed up the sensation as the slit was given explicit attention; Shizuo nearly did the same damage to the floor with his curled toes as he did the wall as he restrained from premature release. He wanted to extract everything he could from Izaya’s efforts.

He seemed blinded of all reality yet intensely aware of his partner. Paid Izaya his gratitude, who hid his face while he bobbed forward and back between without eye contact, shielded away so he couldn’t confirm who grasped his hips firm fingertips, took only a solo knee while the other rest against his calve as if any amount of contact wasn’t enough — as if there were any confusion of what man applied his skilled tongue. Shizuo stroked from the crest of Izaya's bowed head, around the outside of his ear in order to trace what he could of Izaya's cheek; sensual appreciation and a sincere //'thank you’. It made Izaya cum after the arduous stroke of his own erection that he could hardly focus on while he worked at the job he did for Shizuo.

    It was a struggle to restrain himself from whipping the door open, forgetting to strip his clothes and ask for that returned favour that he was promised so long ago. Slam Shizuo against the wall to make him snarl, smile with relief that he was still desired. But what cemented Izaya’s feet, what prevented him from doing much more than kneading his palm over his crotch, was ruined when he recalled the tragedy that had indebted Shizuo in the first place.

                “Was that good enough for you, sweetie?”

                “You're ruining the moment.”

                “Aw, how am I ruining the moment, sugar-tits?”

                “Ugh, you know how.”

                “Alright, alright. I'll stop…Shizu-chan.”

                “Fuckin’ brat…”

                “See you have nicknames for me too, sweet cheeks.”

                “Ugh, I shouldn't wanna marry such an annoying pest.”

                “...excuse me?”

Izaya stopped as the scene came back to haunt him at the most inopportune moment.

                “Ah, well... I thought of ways...the best time to ask...I just...nothing felt right yet...”

                “You think this is something you spring up out of nowhere, without consulting me first? Like a rigged proposal flash mob where everyone's in on it including one being proposed to? A cheap way of pressure me into saying yes?”

                “The hell is a flash mob?”

                “Shizuo that's not the point.”

                “What is it then!?”

                “You're not ready for marriage.”

Izaya forgot that he held his coffee until the mug dropped at his feet. The shock killed his desires upon crash of ceramic.

    “Hey! Izaya...you out there? You alright?”

Squeaks, thumps, the slide of a glass door caused Izaya to panic.

                “The fact you were thinking about how you would propose rather than if I would even say yes tells me that. How you’re still too selfish for a partnership.”

                “...ah...right.”

Izaya ditched the mess he made and bolted for the door; he scrambled over the couch instead of rounding the obstacle. Forgetting his coat and extraneous phones he left on the counter, he only snagged his shoes before he struggled with slide locks and deadbolts that used to be easier to undo.

    “Goddammit, you better not leave, asshole!”

Izaya peeked over his shoulder, noticed that Shizuo barely tied a towel around his waist like he knew he didn't have the time to dress in anything else.

    “Sorry,” Izaya wavered.

A salute and a door slam preceded his dash to the elevator, conveniently a crack away from shutting; he managed to slip on by and cushion his momentous collision with the back wall.

Izaya rammed his head on the surface, breathed all too heavily to calm his panic. Only then did he notice a mature older lady to his left who was shockingly tempered, like she long knew of Shizuo's chaos; he made sure to flash an apologetic smile regardless.

As the lobby neared, he slipped on his shoes, forgot about the laces and prepared to bolt.

              “You won't even move in with me, like you're intimidated by my success?”

              “...well...”

              “You're preoccupied by the romance, Shizuo, not as if we even have much of it.”

              “You finished?”

              “Not especially, no, but I think you want me to be.”

Izaya struggled a final breath as the doors opened. He took long strides through the space, but halted in terror. At the stairway exit stood his ornery ex, loosely wearing his trademark parka as some sad attempt to cover more of his decency.

    “That apology upstairs wasn't what I wanted, louse!” He didn’t even huff, was barely short of breath, just spoke clearly with a commanding bellow.

    “I know,” Izaya nodded, shrugged with a pained smile. “Sorry,” he directed his word towards the puzzled couple shoved in the corner in clutch of the other.

    “Neither was that! How obnoxious can you get!?”

Izaya faced the street entrance, a fraction of pride in his posture, though his legs still refused to progress; stationary, he continued to trigger the automated doors to open after their close. While paralysed he fiddled with a small item — his hand dangled at his hip; polished and unmarred, a piece of jewelry was spun around in contemplation, consolation. It was something he hadn’t worn nor held earlier.

    “You’re such a coward. Don’t know why I thought it’d be any different when you showed up.”

    “Well,” Izaya pocketed the item, replaced it with his cellphone, “you are an idiot.”

He gained confidence from the snide cover and walked off — to his satisfaction Shizuo let him go. Just outside he let go of his breath.

    “I screwed up again, Shizu-chan. Honestly, I’m sorry.”

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S1 Ep 40 PART 1/2: So Much Random Stuff Happens That It Requires Two Parts

Most of the time, Yugioh’s plot is delivered in nice, bizarre, bite-sized segments, offset by duels that I skip. But then, in this episode they decided “Hey, we should drop some plot. Like a lot of REALLY WACKY plot.”

And thus we have an episode with over 80 caps. So, this’ll be a two-parter! The other part will show up later. Like...when we finish it.

Also, despite the fact that this is probably one of the more important episodes of the season, it has quite some damage on the recording on Netflix. You’ll see that it isn’t really cropped right on the sides, and in some parts it’s got motion blur I couldn’t avoid. One day, Yugioh will get it’s Sailor Moon remaster, but this is not the day. Also, if they redubbed Yugioh, it would be an absolute tragedy, but that’s a different story.

TL;DR Forgive the massive amount of text in the upcoming recaps. There’s just so much they did and I uh...didn’t want this to end up being over 100 caps this episode alone.

So, lets get into it: The Yugi crew is looking for Pegasus.

For some reason, Tea suddenly remembers what went down the night before and decides “I bet Pegasus is hiding in that spooky tower we don’t actually know how to get into because we climbed it with a grappling hook.”

(Sometimes I get used to Yugi’s eyeliner and then they throw a shot like this at me and it’s like DAMN, Yugi, when did you have time to apply that stiletto heel to your face? Like most of the time I’m just put off by the awful hair and then the rest of the time I’m just really jealous of this emo boy’s wings.)

With that they suddenly remembered...the other stuff.

(read more under the cut)

I like how Joey is just so incredibly fed up with magic at this point. Out of all of them, he seems to hate magic the very most although his best friend is a walking dark magic portal. Joey is just completely done, but unfortunately for Joey it turns out all the magic up to this point hasn’t even remotely been the amount of magic that this show is going to throw at us, because this entire episode is a bunch of wizards just screwing with each other.

I’ve mentioned before that it feels like the power players of Yugioh are kinda like Greek Gods where they just really can’t be bothered about 95% of the time--but when they are FINALLY bothered enough to move their own ass, they just kinda sweep the floor clean and leave me utterly baffled.

Anyways, Pegasus actually is in the spooky tower, to my disbelief, at this non-euclidean desk that doesn’t seem to exist in time and space.

And then Kaiba wakes up in a cabbage-patch lookin jail cell. I would love to see more of his reaction to that but alas, this episode is not about Seto Kaiba.

Pegasus decided to make good on his word, mostly because Yugi is a cursed Pharaoh and he doesn’t want to see what happens if he doesn’t make his end of the bargain. To be quite honest, getting your mind scrambled would have probably been better than what did eventually happen to him in this episode.

Seriously, did this guy ever sell a painting that wasn’t a card? His portfolio would just be one person. And they do say that you shouldn’t make your portfolio too many styles but, damn, you can’t just do one person, unless your going to work for one specific type of video game, in which case sure just draw that one space punk chick over and over it seems to work for you.

Bakura decides to show up, and he’s very Bakura about it, introducing a new Bakura mechanic that I didn’t at all predict would ever be a thing.

Bless this storyboarder.

After showing off his weird tarot ability for no other good reason than to mess with Pegasus for a little bit, he decides to make me regret ever saying this necklace looked like it has five dicks.

I am so sorry, I had no idea! I had no idea it would be shooting lasers! What the hell, show?? What genre am I even watching anymore??

Also this whole concept that at any point these items can just shoot anime lasers and start a...whatever this trope is called, is so bizarre to me. They CAN do this...but they prefer to use cards.

They CAN do this, at any point, but they prefer to trap the souls of you and your friends in a card so you must play even more cards.

Or they can shoot you with a laser and solve their problems that way.

But why would they? They can like...play cards and do tarot and read minds and make card monsters real so who would ever want to shoot freakin lasers!

I do appreciate that Pegasus’ laser is pink like the salmon I chose for his font.

My bro argues that Pegasus probably sees just fine with the golden eyeball, but I feel like it can’t be the same, like a Spike Spiegal situation. It’s not like they ever tell us, anyway.

Him being alive for centuries is just never brought up for the rest of the episode. It comes up here and then Bakura’s like “Woopsie! Change the subject!”

Kid’s show!

As a kid an episode of the Rugrats freaked me the hell out--you know the one where Reptar becomes alive? I couldn’t take that one, it was terrifying. So maybe I’m not one to judge, because I was not a normal kid when it came to anxiety (in fact a legit phobia of dogs gave me pretty severe panic attacks on a weekly basis) but, it seems like Yugioh is a lot like brother’s Grimm because they are SO READY to cut off body parts, revive corpses, and overall gross me out, just to make a point.

Is it necessary? Eh.

But is it bizarre body horror we can stuff in this kid’s story? YES LETS DO IT.

With the way they set this up it looked as if they were just going to have them show up in the nick of time or something, but instead the show was like “lol, these kids? You’re kidding, right?”

He’s literally missing an eye and Croquet’s exact line was something like “he’s fallen ill.”

Also, I’m glad we got a cameo from Double-Spike Mohawk Mullet Man in this episode, giving Pegasus a fireman carry like a trooper.

So, because they can’t not, and because Pegasus’ security is only effective at random times of the day (they must have a lot of smoke breaks or something) the four decide to raid Pegasus’ bedroom. Why would you ever want to do this to the guy who was ritually sacrificing people the night before!?

Joey’s weird crushes on blondes that are...not in High School. Joey. Stop this. You are a child.

Anyways, Tea goes straight for the juicy stuff, because if there’s anything in this world that I would never ever want to read is a grown man’s journal filled with all his unfiltered thoughts.

Then we’re welcomed into a Pegasus Flashback, because why not make a tragic past even more tragic? Anyways, it’s OK because anime food lives here.

Bro called them gravity melons. I want to point out the party cups drawn from the side sitting on the round table we see from the top. Love it. Also realllllly love that guy with the mustache and glasses in the bottom right corner. There’s some good stuff here in this vaguely 80′s flashback.

Anyway, she totally dies. The flashback goes through things we’ve been over before--they get married, she gets sick, she turns into a rose and then becomes a grave in a really poorly kept graveyard.

And so Pegasus turns to religion. Yes, you read that right, He decides, he wants to find a religion that will explain afterlife to him, and he’s like I might as well start with the oldest and work up, so he goes to Egypt.

Uh...OK. I mean if you’re just looking for a religion with an afterlife you could have chosen...almost any of them. You could have stayed in America and like gone to...anywhere but, the guy was like “Mummies, youknow?” and went to Egypt although Cecelia is already dead and buried so it’s not like he can do the mummy trick to her now. It’s a little LATE?

My brother and I were so entranced by this bizarre hat, that we wanted to see if it’s ever been made real. AND IT HAS.

MARVEL AT IT:

IT IS VERY EXPENSIVE.

LOOK AT THAT DUMB HAT!

We checked Amazon for cheaper listings, but only found trucker hats with the Square Mason symbol on it, and Illuminati trucker hats like this one.

My brother wrote this note to them. I hope they read it and take it to heart.

Anyways, our newly found joy, held aloft by the discovery of perfect square brimmed hats was quickly sullied.

His hat is a transformer. But a round to square kind.

So in walks this guy. His name is Shadi. I’m telling you that right now because I want you to pay attention to how long it takes before we find out his name is Shadi. He is going to tell us his name at some point, and it’s very weird when it happens.

Pegasus doesn’t seem to realize it is not at all normal for a guy in modern Egypt to be walking around with this massive ankh on his chest (eh...you can’t see it in these pictures, but there’s a HUGE ankh just hanging around his neck) with earrings and pharaoh makeup. Pegasus is just that type of sheltered American. He’s like...well you look like someone from a movie so it must be legit. And that is how Pegasus decides to follow a guy who is clearly an ancient spooky wizard into an ancient death dungeon crypt.

I feel like Pegasus could have easily avoided this whole situation he got himself into.

Shadi has a whole speech about how the eyeball has a lot of power, and that he’s got to protect it all yada yada--but at the same time Shadi is like “BUT I gotta make sure some people use it so a lot of terrible things happen. You’d think I’d just...leave this stuff in this crypt so it’ll never be a problem and the world will never be cursed with terrible dark magic that was sealed away for thousands of years, but...I’m gonna make it happen anyway...and it’s not my fault...”

How many times has Shadi done this? It’s suggested that Pegasus is not the first.

It’s pretty gross, and while it’s done in shadow (which was a nice visual allusion to Shadow Magic), it’s still pretty gruesome for a kids show. To happen twice in one episode of this kid’s show, haha.

She calls him by his full name “Maxamillion” which made me realize he’s probably never shortened his name to “Max” in his entire life.

I’m glad Pegasus making out with a ghost happened on screen. This is now the most romance we’ve seen in all of Yugioh. Good.

So did Pegasus actually write the part where he made out with a vision, though?

I’m curious about how that process works. But, I don’t think we’ll ever find out.

Anyways, next time, on this very same episode of Yugioh:

Will Bakura stick this eyeball in he own eye or will he back out last minute and just hang it from his necklace and pretend it was there the whole time? Will Tea next read Pegasus’ food diary only to discover, in horror, that he drank upwards 60 liters of grape juice and far exceeded his daily calorie intake? Will security even realize these children have been snooping in all of Pegasus’ personal stuff for the past 30 minutes?

[donalsgirl]

Oscar Isaac’s Mom Died. Now He’s Working Out His Grief in ‘Hamlet.’

Oscar Isaac spent most of the fall and winter at a hospital in Florida, caring for his dying mother, Eugenia. As her condition deteriorated, he found himself reading aloud to her from “Hamlet.”

“I would just read the play all the time, do bits for her,” Mr. Isaac said.

An Elizabethan revenge tragedy with a substantial body count and heavy existential dread isn’t obvious bedside comfort. But Mr. Isaac, his mother and his sister were all Shakespeare obsessives. When he was growing up, they watched Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” over and over. “Me doing Shakespeare was her favorite thing,” Mr. Isaac said.

So reciting “Hamlet” to her at the hospital felt like the right thing. Sometimes it felt like the only thing. “I didn’t know how to process any of this, but this I knew how to do,” he said.

As her health declined, Shakespearean questions that had seemed abstract — What drives the dissolution of a family? How do you overcome crippling loss? — felt immediate and real, he said.

Continue reading the main story

“I know it happens to everybody, but it’d never happened to me,” he said. “I know people’s mothers have died, but this was mine.”

Mr. Isaac’s mother died in February, but “Hamlet” is still with him. For most of this heat-struck summer, he is performing as the tortured prince grieving the death of his father, six times a week for nearly four hours a throw at the Public Theater.

Mr. Isaac certainly has other ways to spend his days. For one, his first child, a son, was born in April. And his film career is booming. In a few short years, he’s graduated from indie artisan, with films like “Inside Llewyn Davis,” to bona fide star with roles in “X-Men: Apocalypse” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” He can probably take whatever theater job he wants to or not take any theater job at all.

That said, “Hamlet” is a play that exerts a strange pull on a lot of movie and television stars (Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant, Jude Law, Ethan Hawke), and it’s a role just about any classically trained actor and plenty of actresses have dreamed of playing.

But it’s also a tragedy that asks Mr. Isaac to relive the anguished death of a parent at every performance. In Sam Gold’s rowdy, deconstructionist staging, every time Mr. Isaac mud-wrestles, or lofts a prop skull or performs a mad scene in just a T-shirt and briefs, he seems to be working through his own loss, transforming raw private grief into riveting public performance.

“It’s for my mom that I’m doing it,” he said. “It’s to honor her life, but also her death, which was so awful.”

ON A RECENT WEEKDAY, an hour before rehearsal, Mr. Isaac hunched in a booth at the back of the Library, the Public’s restaurant. Looking slighter in person than onscreen, he was sitting underneath a skull-bedizened poster for an earlier production of “Hamlet.” His black warm-up jacket was a modish update of Hamlet’s “inky cloak.” It wouldn’t have been a huge surprise if he had drawn a sword from underneath the table or spotted a ghost over by the bar.

This symbolic brazenness seemed like a joke; Mr. Isaac was probably in on it. He has a roguish sense of mischief that underlies even his more serious roles (“Ex Machina,” “A Most Violent Year”). And he’s one of the few actors of his generation who can combine the unrestrained volatility of a Method actor with pedigreed classical chops.

His Hamlet is antic, mercurial, unpredictable, but each line of verse comes across clearly, almost conversationally. As Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater — who helped cast a Juilliard-fresh Mr. Isaac in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” in 2005 and “Romeo and Juliet” two years later — said, “That combination, particularly in such a handsome man, it’s amazing.”

It’s that charisma that helped the “Star Wars” director J. J. Abrams decide not to kill off his character, Poe Dameron, who will reappear in the coming “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” “The idea of Oscar Isaac as Poe coming back into the movie and being an ally to the cause got my blood pumping,” Mr. Abrams wrote in an email.

MR. ISAAC LOVED THEATER early. Born in Guatemala and raised by evangelical Christian parents in Miami, he had his first roles in religious plays. Even then, he played antiheroes. His first lead? The Devil. He devised an entrance from underneath the bleachers, scaring an adored teacher and exciting the interest of the popular girl he had a crush on.

“For that little moment, I thought, this is what I want to do,” he said.

Eventually he fell away from the church, and though his parents supported his acting ambitions, for a while he stopped that, too. He turned to music, migrating from soft rock to grunge rock to heavy metal, before landing in third-wave ska groups like the Worms and Blinking Underdogs, which attracted a local following.

Still, he never really shook theater. He studied it at community college and apprenticed at Area Stage Company in Miami. The artistic director got him reading Shakespeare again. “I didn’t really understand it,” Mr. Isaac said, “but I liked it a lot.”

He even developed an infatuation with the film soundtrack to the Zeffirelli “Hamlet.” On an impulse, he auditioned for Juilliard, using a monologue from Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” and arguing about its interpretation with the head of the drama division in the middle of his callback.

Richard Feldman, one of Mr. Isaac’s Juilliard teachers, remembered sensing in him “the best kind of artistic ambition,” adding: “I’m not talking about fame, I’m not talking about fortune. I’m talking about the hunger to be really good.”

At Juilliard, he met Mr. Gold, at the time a directing student. Mr. Gold was immediately struck by Mr. Isaac’s “easy energy and an easy relationship to his talent and having an incredible amount of talent” and a shared belief that “acting shouldn’t look hard,” Mr. Gold said.

The two of them fooled around with some comic scenes from “Hamlet,” making a pact to work together one day on the whole play. They both got “bit by it and obsessed by it,” Mr. Gold said, speaking by phone. Those talks continued, and two years ago, Mr. Isaac signed on, saying he felt he had to do it “before the knees give out.”

“You can only be so old and be upset that your mom remarried,” he said.

Once he’d agreed, Mr. Isaac began reading academic books, watching famous past performances, playing a recording of John Gielgud’s Hamlet “and just listening to the beauty of that man’s voice,” he said. After creative tensions with the production’s original home, Theater for a New Audience, “Hamlet” shifted to the Public Theater, where Mr. Isaac had made his post-Juilliard debut, and dates were set.

But then his mother got sick and his partner, the documentary filmmaker Elvira Lind, got pregnant, and suddenly “there were a lot of things that really connected on a very personal level,” he said. As Mr. Isaac explained, performing has always helped him come to terms with his emotions. “This is how I’m able to function,” he said. “The only way that I’m really able to process stuff is through reflecting it.”

Some of the visual language that he and Mr. Gold settled on — the syringes, the IVs, the PICC lines — make his memories and associations even more visceral. His Hamlet wears rumpled clothes and has a 5 o’clock shadow (if you’ve seen Mr. Isaac’s movies, you know his facial hair is a key to character) to approximate “the look and feel of spending long hours visiting a loved one at the hospital,” he said.

In the first days of rehearsal, Mr. Gold worried “that there would be things in this play that would be such deep triggers that he wouldn’t be able to make it through the show,” he said. But he watched Mr. Isaac use the play’s words “to contextualize what he was going through,” he said.

Mr. Isaac didn’t worry about making a timeworn speech like “To be or not to be” sound new. As soon as he says the words, he is instantly reminded of his personal loss and “the feeling that grief can just make you want to stop,” he said.

At the same time, he never really discussed that personal life in the rehearsal room. “It was always a very subtle thing hovering in the air, ” Mr. Gold said. Instead, he threw himself into experimenting with the role — physically, vocally — and worked on making his colleagues laugh.

Keegan-Michael Key, who plays Hamlet’s pal Horatio, noted that Mr. Isaac, who bought a Ping-Pong table for the rehearsal room, “likes to have fun.” Onstage he’ll often monkey with a pronunciation or arch an eyebrow just to get a rise out of a cast mate.

“He’ll do it on purpose just to keep everyone on their toes,” Mr. Key said. “The more alive it is, the more uncertain it is, the more dynamic it is.”

Mr. Isaac said that performing the play hasn’t felt especially dour. When he comes offstage after four hours he feels energized, he said.

That’s in part because the play isn’t only for his mother. When he acts, he’s also thinking of his 2-month-old son, Eugene, named after her. The baby has Eugenia’s lips, he said, and her hands.

He brought Eugene to the first run-through (“I think some of the more philosophical and theological aspects of the play were above his head,” Mr. Gold joked), and it’s Eugene he thinks of when reciting the “to be” part of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy.

As Mr. Isaac explains, the speech is about dying — that’s the “not to be” part — but it’s also about choosing to go on living. And Mr. Isaac has better reasons to go on than Hamlet does.

“You have a child,” he said, “and you must — you must for their sake — you must say yes to life.”

Source

[ruleandruinrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, MADDIE!

You have been accepted for the role of STASYA BELOV with a faceclaim change to Imaan Hammam. Admin Rosey: I think I just about screamed when I arrived to the end of your application. I couldn't believe that someone would be so cruel as to put me through the love affair of Alexei and Stasya, then rip it away as brutally as you did. So, in order to return your cruelty in kind, I thought it best to give Stasya to you so that you may suffer with the rest of us at Rule and Ruin. Maddie, I absolutely swooned over your application. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and -- most importantly -- it gave Stasya that breath of life. Everything about it was perfect, from the 'What drew you' section to the ending summarization of her and her littlest tendencies. It was perfect. You're perfect -- and I want more. You have 24 HOURS to send in your account. Also, remember to look at the CHECKLIST. Welcome to Ravka!

OUT OF CHARACTER

ALIAS: Maddie! PREFERRED PRONOUNS: they/them or she/her AGE: twenty TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m in PST, and I’d say my activity level is a solid seven. I currently do not have wifi in my home, but I’m planning to get it soon—so that shouldn’t hinder my activity too much! I am doing some travelling this summer, but I’ll never be without my laptop. Honestly, I think I could find a way to get online even if I was six feet under, so no worries! I should be able to do replies at least every other day, but you guys will be the first to know if anything changes. TRIGGERS: OMITTED CURRENT/PAST ACCOUNTS: N/A. 

NOTE: I have a Google Doc here, because the submit box always seems to fuck up my formatting. I’ve noticed it did take away all of my italicized words, so to read it exactly how I meant it to be read you can go there!

IN CHARACTER

 DESIRED CHARACTER:

Stasya Belov: the orphan, the martyr, the sparrow, the soldier, the lover, the kind.

( STASYA. ) Derived from the name Greek name Anastasia, meaning “resurrection” or “life,” the name was at first such a cruel reminder that Stasya had been given the gift of death and destruction. They loved the way it sounded on the tongues of others, like a sigh of relief or a whistle of the wind they so easily harbored, but they couldn’t justify detaching it from its meaning. They were never sure why the meaning meant so much to them—surely whoever gave them the name never spared a second thought for it—but still it haunted them. If they were life, why did blood trail behind them in the battlefield? Eventually, they learned to love their name. So many people associated it with their own gentility and rare kindness that the name took on a new meaning. It wasn’t long, however, until they were reminded of its true meaning—the one they so desperately wanted to fit them for most of their life. Resurrection. Life. Stasya often thinks the words as they lay their hand flat over their womb.

( BELOV. ) Meaning “white,” this was a name Stasya gave much less weight to. It was more of a formality than anything: no one shared the name with them—not that they knew of, at least—and it didn’t connect them to their bloodline. Instead, they found their own family. They picked up members in the dusty corners of dark rooms, abandoned streets, scarlet-stained battlefields—and they were bound to them by love, by choice, and not by name. However, being as sentimental as they are, it’s impossible to live with a name for twenty-one years and not find some deeper meaning in it. Stasya has always looked as their surname as reminder: be love. On the days kindness comes less easily, Stasya remembers the surname that will always be with them, and they remember the sentiment they assigned to it. Be love, be loved, Belov.

WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?

A lot of things made Stasya feel like the character I was meant to play. For starters, I’m often drawn to soft characters, because I think it’s more difficult to be soft than it is to be harsh and jaded. I like to explore the struggle of staying gentle when the world is anything but. I don’t think that’s always easy for Stasya, to see the good in everything. They can’t always be wearing their rose-colored glasses. I also love the challenge of taking a character like Stasya, the Token Good Character™ and making them into a well-rounded and believable character. I think it’s so easy to take nice characters and make them into shining beacons of light, but to me Stasya is so much more than that. It’s mentioned that some of the characters, like Vasily, view Stasya as “ethereal.” Ethereal is such a one-dimensional thing to be—it’s a concept. I really wanted to explore what made this character more than that, what made them flawed. I think, at their core, Stasya is just a character who’s trying their very best. They’ve experienced so many awful things, and sometimes it’s really just a matter of trying to keep their head above water. Sometimes they’re kind to others merely because it makes them feel a bit lighter inside.

I was also intrigued by Stasya’s background. I’ve played a lot of characters with loved ones that have died, and while that’s probably because I love angst and death, I also think it’s because I’m drawn to the idea of a Before and an After. With Stasya, there is a distinct experience that changed who they were forever. There was the person they were before they met their lover, and there is the person they are now. I love to explore that development, to carry it on in-game. I think Stasya is a character that will be ever-changing, because their pregnancy is so new and their grief is so fresh. The development already set up in their bio gave me no shortage of ideas, and I think that’s the kind of exciting character everyone looks forward to playing.

I also love the contrast between who they are and the power that they harbor. I think it adds a lot of tragedy to them, because they can so easily kill but all they want to do is help. This is an internal struggle that I can really feel and empathize with. OKAY AND THIS IS LESS WELL-WORDED BUT I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANY ROLEPLAY INCLUDE A NON-BINARY CHARACTER WHO IS A PARENT. I THINK PREGNANCY IS SOMETHING OFTEN AVOIDED WITH CHARACTERS OF NON-BINARY IDENTITIES BUT IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT NON-BINARY PEOPLE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT RANGES OF COMFORT WITH CONCEPTS THAT ARE SEEN AS “GENDERED.” I AM NON-BINARY AND I REALLY WANT TO BE A MOTHER SOMEDAY. I JUST FELT KIND OF REPRESENTED AND I LOVE THAT. Ahem. Anyway.

I could ramble on for, like, twenty pages on why I love Stasya—but I think I’ll stop myself there.

WHAT FUTURE PLOT IDEAS DID YOU HAVE IN MIND?

( ONE. ) I would love to explore a future romance or companionship. While I’m not sure anything at this moment in time could be endgame for Stasya, I think a part of them is really desperate to feel as though someone loves them unconditionally. They might already have this in Neysa, but I think they really want something akin to what they had with Alexei. Of course, they’re in no place to replace him, but it might be therapeutic for them to be able to dote on a feel-good romance. I also think they’re a bit desperate to find their baby another parent. They know they will be an excellent mother, but they want their child to have the absolute perfect life, and they think that perfect life could have existed if Alexei, the father of the child, was still around.

( TWO. ) Throughout their life, Stasya has always been able to find compassion for everyone—even those who truly were not good people. I think a part of them can even find compassion for Vasily, though they’d still rather keep their distance from him. I’d like to explore a relationship in which Stasya truly hates someone. This hatred would really get to them; it might really tear them apart. I think The Darkling is an example of someone they might not be able to find compassion for. I’d really like to see how they handle true hatred, because I don’t think that’s something they’ve ever addressed before.

( THREE. ) There is a lot of mention of them being a “martyr,” but at this point they aren’t truly a martyr. They haven’t yet been kicked from the army or exiled for their beliefs. However, I think that might be an interesting route to explore. When news gets out of their pregnancy, surely they will not be allowed to go to battle throughout the entirety of the nine months. I also wonder what might happen to their child. Will they be allowed to keep it? What will people think when they know who the father is? I know for a fact that Stasya will not let anyone take their child. They would much rather be a mother than a soldier, and they will not lie about who the father is, either. I know they could be labeled as a traitor for sleeping with someone who killed so many of their own kind, and I’d like to discover the consequences of this. I think it might bring out a much darker side to them.

WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTER DIE?:

Always.

IN DEPTH

IN CHARACTER PARA SAMPLE(S):

Baby Bird, You will hear a thousand different accounts of the kind of man your father was. Most of them will not be easy to accept, but most of them will be true. He did bad things, and he was misguided, but I don’t want you to remember him for that. I will read this letter to you every day if I have to—anything for you to accept this one truth before any of the others: Your father was a good soul. Not all killers are evil, just as not all rulers are cruel and not all soldiers are jaded. Your father was a good person, regardless of what anyone will say.

He had a great capacity for love.

 “Stasya?”

They’d been half-asleep, still standing but their head resting on the bars of Alexei’s cell. Previously they were told not to get too close to him, to never tear their gaze away, but it was late and the trust they’d already put in Alexei was so much stronger than their sense of duty. They had been standing like that for half an hour—their limbs slack, their eyelids too heavy to open, completely off-guard—and the jailed man hadn’t touched them. He hadn’t done anything, really, until he broke the silence with a whisper of their name. His voice was so soft, so airy and smooth, that Stasya had almost mistook it for a breeze. After a moment, they shifted an inch or two.

“Stasya,” Alexei’s voice had managed to be even softer this time; it was such a difference from his deep, gravelly voice. Their name had never felt so safe on someone else’s tongue.

The corners of Stasya’s lips twitched upward into an invisible smile, and they wrenched one eye open to meet Alexei’s honey-sweet gaze. “Hm?”

“Who takes care of you?”

Suddenly, Stasya was awake. They pushed themself up from the wall, both their eyes now frantically searching Alexei’s expression. What was that supposed to mean? No one had ever asked them such a question. Their eyebrows knit together, just slightly, and their invisible smile turned into a vague frown.

“I mean, who…,” Alexei shook his head, staring toward the ground as though a script was there for him to read.

“You’re always watching after everyone else—who watches after you? Someone must.”

Stasya’s curls fell to frame their face as they mirrored his shaking head. “I don’t know,” they began to relax again, allowing their shoulders to settle. “The second army. My fellow soldiers. I have—I have a lot of friends, you know. A lot of good companions.”

Alexei shifted his gaze back to them, his eyes smiling. “I thought you to be quite popular.”

Their grin was less subtle now. They shuffled closer to his cell, wrapping their fingers around a bar. “I am,” Stasya watched him carefully as he finally stood and took a step toward them. Their voice was nearly a whisper as they added, “I have…a world of support surrounding me.”

The playful look dropped from Alexei’s face—a sign that he’d caught their lie. Instead of voicing it, though, he slowly reached out a hand. Stasya didn’t make a sound, hardly even took a breath, as they waited for his fingers to graze theirs. He rested a hand on theirs, palm curving over their knuckles. His hands were cold and clammy, and something told them that he wasn’t used to this kind of soft intimacy.

Regardless, the touch got his message across. I’m here for you, it said.

Stasya cautiously removed their hand from the bar, replacing the metal with Alexei. They laced their fingers in-between his, running their thumb along the back of his palm. Their eyes never once met his—didn’t even flicker to his face—but their touch easily delivered a message, too. And I’m here for you.

His grasp was so gentle, so steady and compassionate, that Stasya didn’t once remember that those same hands had brought so much bloodshed just days before.

He was strong and fearless in the name of love, and he taught me that I was the same.

Stasya was instructed to enter Alexei’s cell to interrogate him, but can’t remember now what he had said to get them to stay. It’d been two weeks, and he had yet to tell them anything significant regarding his betrayal toward the army. If this was a trial, it was on adjournment—and they didn’t mind. Maybe they didn’t know why he’d done what he did, and maybe they never would, but they’d seen his heart. They knew he was good, and they knew that mistakes didn’t define a person, and that was enough for them. Perhaps I am too forgiving, they momentarily considered, but then his lips hovered over theirs again and the thought escaped them.

“Relax,” Alexei spoke into their mouth. The pads of his fingers were running along Stasya’s bony spine, sending shivers following after them.

Stasya’s eyes remained open, looking over his shoulder and past the bars of the cage they were in. Their hands occupied themselves with his hair, curling dark strand after dark strand around their pointer finger. They couldn’t settle when they were waiting for the echo of footsteps in the hallway, for a pair of guards to find them in this compromising position and have their head for it. They were sure Alexei could sense this, too, because their back was impossibly straight and their shoulders were drawn up to their ears. The word ‘relax’ only sent them reeling more than before. Why was it always so hard to stay calm when someone wanted them to stay calm?

Slowly, teasingly, Alexei kissed his way from Stasya’s lips to just below their ear. He enveloped them in his arms then, making it impossible for their body to remain stiff. They melted into him, chest meeting his chest, arms falling to his sides. “No one’s coming,” his breath played along their neck, summoning goosebumps in its wake. “No one ever checks on us.”

The words sent Stasya’s head bowing forward. They nuzzled their face into Alexei’s shoulder, drinking in his scent. He smelled like grime and musk, but there was something comforting about it—because it was him. “If they find us together, I…am dead,” Stasya spoke into his shirt, “I’m dead. We should not be doing this.”

“Well,” he dropped his arm from their back and pressed a hand into the ground, steadying himself. “Do you want to leave?”

Stasya lifted their head, looked him in the eye. He had to know what the eye contact did to them, why they rarely managed to look at him intently. His amber brown eyes sent their heart plummeting to their stomach. He had to know. His gaze roamed their face, tracing their lips. They could feel their face growing hotter. He had to know.

Stasya shook their head. “Of course not.”

“Then you stay,” Alexei had a tendency to speak decisively, like everything was a fact, like the world was black and white. It was a flaw, but they loved it. Stasya had fallen for all of his flaws. “You have such a habit of doing things you don’t actually want to do. So just this once…stay because you want to.”

There was a moment of silence, the type of silence that settled over the two of them like a blanket. It was warm, but it was heavy. Stasya knew Alexei was waiting for them to speak, but their mind was too loud to allow for them to say anything. Why did they care so much about getting caught when they loved this man so much? Weren’t some things more important than rules, than what was expected of them? All they wanted was to stay by his side, and they couldn’t help but think that maybe Alexei had a point. Maybe it was worth it; maybe he was worth it.

“Okay,” they said finally, and returned their face to his shoulder. “Okay.”

“And if they do see us—which they will not—I will tell them I’m holding you hostage here,” Alexei sunk backward to the ground, pulling Stasya on top of him. The ground was cold and uncomfortable and covered in filth, but they hardly noticed. All they could focus on was Alexei’s heart drumming against them. How was the beat so steady? Stasya could feel their own heartbeat in their ears, a much quicker pace than his. “I’ll tell them I have been holding you against your will—and there’s nothing you could have done to resist me.”

“I would never allow you to lie for me,” Stasya tried to sit up to look at him, but Alexei wrapped an arm around them to keep them there. They didn’t try to move again. “Especially when you would get killed for it.”

There was a beat of silence—just a beat. A moment to breathe. A moment to meld together. And then he spoke, “They will kill me regardless.”

Stasya didn’t hesitate to shake themself loose from his grasp, rolling into the grime and dust and away from his warmth. There he went again. Stasya felt paralyzed on the ground, like they had suddenly become a part of the concrete. They weren’t breathing, but they hadn’t noticed. The pain in their chest was too distracting, too consuming. His stare was burning into the back of their head, and they didn’t dare glance back at him. In a matter of weeks, Alexei had managed to become one of the most important parts of their life. They couldn’t rationalize how it had happened. Perhaps they’d left the doors to their heart too widely opened, or maybe time just moved more slowly with him around.

Regardless of what they felt and why they felt it, it was there—it wasn’t fading—and Alexei had already given up hope on the feeling lasting. A part of Stasya wanted to stand up and yell at him, to march out afterward and assure the officials that he was innocent. Oh, how they longed to see him outside of those bars; how they longed to share the parts of them that existed outside of that prison. The simpler, more rational side of them kept them grounded. It told them to let life happen as it would. It told them to enjoy the moment while it lasted. It told them that nothing could go on for a lifetime.

“Please say something,” Alexei’s voice was rough and dry, clawing its way out of his throat.

“It hurts when you speak about the future like that. Like you know how it will unfold,” Stasya tucked an arm underneath their head, their back still facing him. “I cannot fathom how you—how you can just accept your death when you still have the option to change it.”

The silence this time was less like a blanket and more like steel: heavy, dense, and cold. Stasya could hear Alexei shifting behind them, could almost see him sitting up and folding into himself like he sometimes did. “I am not a good person,” he said. It was the most he’d ever admitted to them about his own morality. He’d told them about his family, about his friends, about everything he loved, but never about what might have driven him to such violence. “I am vengeful and crooked. The Grisha took my family, and so I became blinded by rage. I never stopped to think that not all of them were the same. I would have killed you, you know. Two weeks ago, I would have killed you.”

Stasya was shaking now, trying to get up but instead clawing at the ground with very little conviction. Their face was hot and newly wetted with tears. “Stop,” they were terrified. They had never been scared of him—not after holding him so tenderly on the battleground, not after seeing the truth of his soul in his eyes—but now his words settled into their bones. They’d always been afraid of people like him, even when they would have rather seen the light in those people and loved them for it. They didn’t know what it was like to succumb to darkness, to be driven mad by a circumstance they had no control over. They didn’t know because they’d always climbed over those obstacles with their head held high—they couldn’t imagine killing anyone instead. Suddenly, they felt a tinge of unsafety with their back turned toward him.

“No,” Alexei did not move. “You need to hear this. I deserve to die. I committed treason, and I deserve to die. I wanted death to the second army. I wanted to see Grisha blood paint every inch of the ground I walked on, and I wanted my family to watch from above. I am a monster. And I am selfish, because I’ve been withholding my confession all this time so I could spend as long as possible by your side. And I brought you in here, and I made you care for me, and I am a monster. If the law is at all just, they will kill me. I have known that from the start, and I still let you care for me. I still let you get used to me. What kind of human does that? I am a monster.”

Alexei was crying now. They could hear it in his voice: trembling and swollen and terrified. Stasya was still scared, but not of him. It only took a moment for them to realize that they were more afraid of how quickly their life was changing, of how attached they were to someone they could lose. They were not afraid of him. In fact, the more he went on about how much of a monster he was, the more they believed that he wasn’t one at all. Monsters didn’t feel remorse. Stasya finally found the strength to push themself up from the floor. They dragged themself over to the shivering mound of skin and bones before draping their arms around him.  

“You are the most humanlike person I have ever met,” Stasya spoke into his shoulder. Alexei didn’t move. “People are built to be angry, to make mistakes—to be selfish. People are built to do ridiculous things for love.”

“I do not deserve you.”

“Maybe so,” Stasya moved their hand to his face, hooked a finger underneath his chin. They met his eyes with more conviction and bravery than they ever had before. “But I am staying, because I want to. And I will not allow you to die, because I am selfish too.”

Alexei stopped shaking, but tears continued to paint his cheeks. “You are so good.”

Inching closer to his face, Stasya took their time to kiss both of his wet cheeks. Then they pressed their lips to his. “And you are worth it.“

He saved my life. Consequently, he saved yours, too.

Stasya was crumbling. If it weren’t for the walls, they were sure their knees would collapse underneath them. They’d been instructed to return to the Little Palace. Their job in the prison was over, and they weren’t naïve enough to question why that was. If they had no job, they had no prisoner to watch over. The chances of Alexei being found innocent were slim—and that could only mean one thing. Stasya’s heart was beating in their ears, making it impossible for them to hear much of anything.

Their breath hitched when they finally made it to his cell. The guard tensed the moment they appeared. “Did they not remind you that I am meant to relieve you of duty for today?” Stasya’s voice sounded so unlike them, so caught in their throat. The guard knitted his eyebrows, so Stasya settled a hand onto his arm. They hoped he couldn’t see that they’d been crying, that they could hardly hold themself upright. “There must have been a miscommunication.”

The lie was poorly delivered, and something in the guard’s eyes told Stasya that he didn’t believe it. Still, he shrugged. There was power in a good reputation, one that everyone trusted. They rarely took advantage of this reputation, but their panic was overshadowing any part of them that might have felt guilty. “Good luck,” the guard began his descent down the long hallway. “He’s in shambles.”

While the guard made his exit, Stasya pressed their back against the wall next to Alexei’s cell. They made sure to stay outside of his line of sight, but they were sure he could hear their jagged breaths. The wall behind them kept them standing, but it didn’t steady their trembling. The silence that swallowed them whole seemed to last an eternity. It suffocated them, made it impossible to find any semblance of serenity. As they looked up at the ceiling, their vision seemed to be deteriorating. Black tunnels were enclosing in on them, cutting off their peripheral. If they kept breathing this shallowly, perhaps they could pass out. Perhaps they’d wake and realize that all of this was some fever dream.

“Stasya, I know you’re there,” Alexei said finally. His voice returned the air to their lungs. They hated how easily he could do that.

Stasya slid to the ground, their back still firmly attached to the wall. They steadied themself by setting a flat hand on the ground, not realizing that their fingers were now directly in front of the cell. Their breathing only grew louder as they attempted to gain control of it, but eventually their vision returned.

A surge of energy struck them the moment Alexei’s fingers met theirs. He hooked a pointer finger around theirs, and they almost jerked away. His hand enveloped theirs completely, folding around their fingers. It wasn’t long before they were crying again, their eyes stinging as they wept. They hated this feeling, the all-consuming love that they felt, but they still longed for it to stay.

“I cannot believe you manipulated that guard into leaving.”

A huff of breath escaped Stasya’s lips, something between a laugh and a sob. Alexei gave their hand a squeeze, and it only made their crying more uncontrollable. “I can’t—“ Stasya was hyperventilating now, trying to clutch onto words that weren’t there. “I don’t understand.”

Stasya could hear Alexei’s heart breaking in the silence. “I gave them my statement,” he said, “and I told them of everyone involved with the hate group. That is all they needed.”

“I can convince them of your innocence,” Stasya’s voice swelled. They pulled their hand from Alexei’s and instead used it to cradle their face. “I can save you.”

“The world needs you more than I do, Stasya,” Alexei said simply. Stasya began to shake their head as though he could see them. They shook their head violently, insistently, but they didn’t say a word. “The world needs you more than it needs me.”

“No, no, no—“ Stasya’s words matched the pace of their head. “Stop talking like that.”

“I am terrified, Stasya,” Alexei slid a hand out from underneath his cell, and Stasya could see his thin fingers from the corner of their eye. “I wish I could turn back time. But I can’t. Life happens the way it happens, Stas. I am lucky to have met you, but I can’t choose how this ends.”

Peeling their back from the wall, Stasya fell forward in an attempt to stand. They stumbled a few steps before reaching the other wall and flattening their palm on it. Slowly they stood, knees trembling, heart breaking. “I will speak to whomever I have to. The general, the executioner—whomever. I—I will say anything. You have seen how they trust me, yes? Perhaps they would listen,” Stasya was convinced. Their words could not have been more genuine. If there was a way to save Alexei, they would find it. They would break him out of jail if they had to. They would escape the country with him, go into hiding for the rest of their life. They would do it for him.

“Stas—“

“I can save you.”

“You already have,” Alexei slouched forward. They could feel him looking at them—his eyes were probably wide and sad and beautiful. Stasya couldn’t bear to look. “I would have died a monster without you.”

“I am going to get you out of this,” Stasya wished they could sound more confident, but their voice wavered and whimpered instead. “I don’t care if they kill me instead.”

Alexei reached his arm out between the bars as though he could touch them. His outstretched fingers trembled uncontrollably when all he felt was air. “I care,” his hand fell to the floor. “A lot of other people would care. You don’t understand, do you? You are an orphan, but so many people count on you—and so many people will continue to need you after I am gone. You were the peak of my life, but I am not the peak of yours. There are other monsters that need to be reminded that they are human. There are other people for you to save.”

Save. Stasya never meant to save him. All they wanted was to love him—those two things were very different from each other.

“If you love me, you will let me die. I want to die. Yes, I am terrified, but I know it is for the best. And if you love me, you will respect that.”

Stasya whimpered again. “I have never said that I love you.”

“You didn’t have to,” Alexei leaned his forehead on a metal bar. “You didn’t have to.”

Your father was a good person. Even if you know nothing else about him, I want you to be sure of that. He was a good man with a good heart. You come from good people. You are good, too. Don’t let anyone else tell you differently.

Love always, Mama

CHARACTER HEADCANONS:

( TO BE HUMAN. )   Stasya had never felt romantic love. They’d never felt very left out because of it, either. Their heart felt such a spectrum of love that nothing ever felt missing. Other’s stories of true love warmed their heart, and sometimes at night they did wonder when the day would come—the day they’d meet the person who would stand by them just as assuredly as they stood by everyone else. Platonic love, they would always remind themself, was just as important. It was all they needed.

Until they met him.

They’d watched him and his allies cut down their brothers and sisters in arms, the only people they’d ever been able to call family. They did as they were instructed: brought ruin to the battlefield. They were meant to kill the entirety of the small group of human traitors, meant to avert their gaze and ignore the blood seeping into the ground, to smile through the nightmares as they always did. They had their eyes carefully fixed on the sky when they heard a cry cut through the wind they’d created.

Soon, their fingers were tangled in his hair instead of tendrils of wind. They knew they were done for the moment their eyes met his, and they didn’t mind.

Over the weeks they spent with Alexei, the traitor, they came to understand why romantic love was so often spoken about. It was so much more passionate than anything they’d felt before, and it burned bright even though it didn’t last long. When it ended, though, it hurt more than any pain they’d felt before. That was the trade-off of love, they learned. For every good moment, there is an ounce of pain to come when the love ends. Someday, they might allow themself to fall in love again—but for now they can’t even imagine it.

( FLEDGLING. ) The only feeling Stasya could register the moment they discovered the life growing inside them was fear. First, it was fear for their own life: What would happen when everyone found out they loved a traitor? What of their status in the army? Would they lose their livelihood—would they become a martyr for once and for all? After a week or so, however, the fear was mostly for their baby. What will its life be like? Will someone try to take the baby from them? Will people condemn it due to its beginnings? Their fear froze them for some time. They were so scared they regretted the life inside of them.

Now, two months into their pregnancy, they have decided to allow their fear to push them forward. They will not allow anyone to take their baby bird, their fledgling, from them. Even though the thought scares them, they will not lie about their pregnancy when their stomach becomes noticeable—and they will not lie about how the baby was conceived. They’d rather live a life of martyrdom and shame than bring their baby into lies. They will do anything to give their child a good and honest life, even if that means leaving Ravka entirely.

Stasya never thought of being a parent, but they’ve been motherly for their entire life. They know they will be a great mother—not a perfect one, but so full of love and good intentions that the baby will never feel anything lacking. They intend to fill the empty space in their heart, the one their parents left, with even more love for their baby. And because they are the child’s only parent, they know this extra love is important. Most nights, they’re able to convince themself that the child will be just fine with one parent. After all, they had no parents and still managed to keep a good heart. However, there are times when their mind wanders and they think, what if I can’t do this on my own? And if I can, what if I don’t want to do it on my own?

( JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES. ) Softness is brave, but bravery is never painless. Stasya’s love of humankind and the destruction they’re capable of have been at war for the entirety of their life. They never wanted to be a soldier, but they’re good at it—and good soldiers bring blood. Sometimes, it’s impossible for them to so much as glance at the destruction they’ve caused. But they still see it. The images of the bodies left in their trail haunt them, invade their dreams at night. Most nights, they wake in a cold sweat—breathless and mindless. They toss and turn, they cry in their sleep, but when the morning comes they will smile, they will love like nothing happened.

( KEEP A WINDOW OPEN. ) Stasya is weary of romantic love, of fully and vulnerably opening up to someone, because they know how much it hurts to lose someone. Their relationship with Alexei might not have lasted long, but it was the first time in their life that they were more than a kind, good Grisha. In Alexei’s eyes, Stasya was the most dynamic and whole person in the world. They’d never been so multi-dimensional to anyone before, and they’re not sure they can allow themself to be seen like that again. Being so open means getting so close, and getting so close means there’s something to lose.

Despite this, though, there is a part of Stasya that longs to be loved like that again. They’ve had a taste of romance, and now they wish to have it back. This is why they long for a co-parent, even though they know they can raise their child on their own. Though Neysa has offered her help, Stasya can’t stop themself from idealizing a family with two parents who are madly in love. Could they find this ideal with Neysa? Could they find this ideal with anyone? Would the pain be worth it?

( THE WAR IS INTERESTED IN YOU. ) It was a day of mourning when Stasya discovered their own powers. They were young and alone. They didn’t have family to stand by their side, or even friends to help them feel like a real person. Instead, people only seemed to want things of them. Everyone wanted them to tap their full potential, but not because they believed in them. Instead, everyone believed in their power. It’s a burden that Stasya has carried with them for their entire life. Those positioned above them just want them to kill, to win the battles. They were never interested in the war, and they still aren’t.

Yet they fight. They fight because they don’t know what else to do. They bring blood to the battlefield because that is what they’ve been trained for. Sometimes, they think their deadly power is the reason they’re so insatiably kind to everyone. Sometimes, they think they have mistakes to atone for. Maybe if they get someone out of a tough time, maybe if they save enough people, their heart will stop breaking every time they hurt an enemy.

Even enemies are human. That’s something Stasya struggles with every day. They have people whispering in their ear, telling them to stand up for Ravka and to stand against those who want to see it fall. They love their home, of course, but the people fighting against Ravka are still people. They have families, and they have light in them too. This is why Stasya struggles with their power.

Most days, they find themself wishing they were powerless. Wouldn’t life be so much easier? Outside of training and outside of battle, Stasya rarely uses their powers. Yes, they trained hard to perfect them, and sometimes their training comforted them as a child. When they had nothing else, at least they could retreat to the training room and learn to fight. When the world seemed against them, at least they could find a companion in the wind they created. Now that they use it for a cause they do not believe in, however, they can’t justify their power being worth the comfort it used to bring them.

( QUICKSHOTS. )

Stasya is pansexual.

The one thing Stasya’s parents left them with is a small ornate music box. They don’t even know their parents’ first names, or why they were unwanted, but they know that the music box belonged to one of them. They don’t have many possessions, and even less prized ones, but they’ve kept the music box with them for as long as they can remember.

Stasya knows so little about their parents that they do not even know why they abandoned them. There was a rumor in the orphanage once that it was because of their powers, because of the violence that swam in their veins. For quite some time, they believed this to be true. They never rationalized how anyone could look at a baby and see something violent, but even if they’d thought of that logic it wouldn’t have eased their pain.

Stasya is prone to “emotional hypochondria,” or taking other people’s feelings on as their own. This has caused them to try to fix problems within themself that aren’t actually there.

Stasya likes to draw, particularly with charcoal. They aren’t incredible at it, aren’t particularly talented, but it does help them to process in times of emotional intensity.

Stasya loves people, but they are not an extrovert. They will often take time to themself—sometimes retreating for days at a time—and are generally very private. They don’t like the spotlight on them, and sometimes will not even accept acts of graciousness. They definitely do not do kind things for attention, as it’s often more embarrassing than fortifying for them.

As a child, Stasya was very fragile. Every person who spoke against them was a tear they cried at night—and a lot of people spoke against them. Over the years, however, Stasya learned to cope with the bullying. They learned to put themself in other’s shoes, and it helped them get over any obstacles of the day. Still, however, criticism from those they look up to or care about has the tendency to wound them. They know it often comes from a good place, but they strive so hard to be good for everyone around them that they tend to be rather sensitive.

Another reason Stasya became less prone to bullying is because they did find a place to fit in. In the Etherealki, they find people they will always be able to sit next to—no matter what. In the Second Army, they find people who will always protect them—no matter what. It’s comforting to know that, and definitely one of the reasons they will stay with the army for as long as they can.

Stasya has no label for their gender identity (other than the umbrella term: non-binary). Instead, they just consider themself a person. Though their gender expression is rather feminine, they are rather sensitive to being called a girl or a woman. It took them years to understand why their heart skipped a beat every time someone called them “lady,” and even now that they know why they dislike it, they are often too nervous to correct people when it happens. (Note: They are more than comfortable with being called a mother, as this term is less gender-specific to them and more of a role they play.)

Stasya is a very tidy person. At the orphanage, they would earn their keep by cleaning up after everyone. They find something very therapeutic about washing up, like they declutter their mind as they declutter their living space. Sometimes they even clean loved one’s rooms without asking. It is a trait of theirs that was motherly long before they discovered they would be a mother.

EXTRAS:

( PERSONALITY TYPES. )

( ALIGNMENT. ) Neutral Good ( MBTI. ) INFJ—the advocate ( TEMPERAMENT. ) Phlegmatic ( ZODIAC. ) Pisces (March 12)

( CHARACTER ANALYSIS. )

Below is a little ramble on how Stasya operates, how they interact and think and feel. It’s not a very extensive or vast review, as it mainly focuses on a few traits, but I think it will aid in understanding them:

Everyone is born soft and pure, but Stasya never grew out of it. Their gentleness and kind nature was never something they flaunted. In fact, they’ve gone through stages of being ashamed of their own softness. They will always forgive, even if it’s not deserved, and they’ve found themself walked on many times because of this. In part, their constant forgiveness is due to their poor emotional memory. In their bio, their heart is described as a fluttering, forgetful thing—and that is very true to who they are. Their heart moves on quickly, always choosing love over resentment. To them, loving is just so much easier than allowing themself to be bitter. They don’t know how to be bitter. This does tend to frustrate them, however. They do believe that everyone has some good in them, but they don’t always want to be the one looked to in order to extract that good.

Stasya has a strong sense of loyalty that extends past their friendships. This is part of the reason they fight so hard in battles. Even though they don’t agree with the morality of war, and even though the bloodshed sometimes hurts them more than they can articulate, the violence has given them a purpose. More than that, the people they’ve fought with have become their family. They never had proper figures of authority to look up to, so they have always aimed to impress those positioned above them. This doesn’t, however, mean that Stasya will heed their every order without question.

Morality means more to Stasya than their loyalty. They will follow a ruler as long as that ruler is good and just, but the moment the ruler does something self-serving or destructive to their people, Stasya sees defiance as the only option. They are not one to rebel in eccentric, publicized ways—but they do rebel. They rebel by being better. It’s for this reason that Stasya often goes out of their way to be kind to the people society is the worst to. Orphans, like them, have a special place in their heart. Martyrs, like them, always attract their attention. They would extend a helping hand in a heartbeat to someone they believe has a good heart.

One problem with this way of operating is that Stasya can be so idealistic and naïve that they believe everyone has a good heart. They aim so high, strive to make the world a better place, and they are constantly reminded of its toxicity. They are constantly disappointed. All throughout their life, they have been able to overcome this disappointment and see something worth saving in everyone. After Alexei, things have taken a turn. Surely a love so pure was meant to last. Surely nothing could be wrong with loving someone—even if that someone was human and a traitor. The world seems to be trying to teach them something entirely different, and they haven’t yet overcome their disappointment this time. Sometimes, they’re able to justify that their baby is a continuation of the pure love, and that one day the loss will be worth the gain. They haven’t been able to cling to that concept yet, however, because the pain is so fresh. They would never think to regret the time they spent with Alexei, but they do have resentment in their heart for the first time in their life.

Even with this resentment, hatred has not found its way into their heart. They are wary, yes, and they are less naïve than ever—but they haven’t let that stop them from being kind. Their gentle nature, however, has found itself wavering. They are finally learning how to stand up for themself, because Alexei taught them how. They are realizing that they have been a concept to people their entire life instead of being a whole person. They are realizing that “they are not a bird to be studied, a spectacle to be put in an exhibition and viewed.” It is a newfound bravery, but it is also a newfound roughness. They still think of others before everything they say and do, but they’re starting to think of themself, too. What do they want to say? What could make them happier? Perhaps it is their sadness making them more reckless, or perhaps their loss has just reminded them that life is too short to allow themself to wilt and still pretend to be a flower in bloom.

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[winewomenwit]

five times kissed (i spent literally like an hour on yours its your turn)

send me five times kissed for a drabble about five times our muses kissed

one.It’s been a week since he asked for permission to kiss her--a week, and centuries upon centuries since the last time he’d asked at all--but she treats him differently now.

Or, rather, she treated him just like she had before, but she did so more frequently now.

Every word he says is a come on or a challenge, every fleeting touch, even the accidental ones, some conniving design on his part to open her back up to him. And it’s exhausting, even for the blink of an eye that is a week, to try living up to her expectations. To be lavish and loud and louche and lush, equal parts teasing and flirtatious, friend and potential lover.

It’s the suspicion that hurts him the most. He doesn’t show it, he’s lived through enough lifetimes to learn how to mask that kind of hurt, but when she narrows her eyes at the gift he produces--what’s this for?--the facade finally cracks.

Nothing. A kiss to the forehead. He won’t give her time to call him back. He needs to think.

It’s a copy of Hamilton. She had seemed genuinely interested in it.Maybe her interests are not all they seem.

two.It’s not surprising to see that Dio can throw a good party. It’s not surprising to find the crowd of dancing, laughing, celebrating mortals, his hangers-on, the brief little lights he calls his friends. They’re all beautiful. Iris watches as their auras flair different colors, all bright and stunning, fireworks in human form, always touching on some shade of purple.She wonders if Dio can see that, too.

He’s standing in the middle of three of them, all girls. One pulses a calm blue, tinted at the darkest end of the pulse with just the tiniest hint of royal purple; one shines a bright, energetic green, violet at the tips; the one closest to Dio (the one Iris tries the hardest not to see, grinding up against his rear) is a deep, steady glow of purple, faintly too red to be only purple.Iris thinks about leaving. That’s when his eyes meet hers, and with a laugh and a glance back at Reddish, he disentangles himself from the group. Green whines. Blue takes her arm and calms her down. Reddish catches sight of Iris, and smiles in a way that echoes the mischief the goddess has seen a thousand times before in Dio, and shoos him away. “We don’t have time for your shit, Theoinos! Go get you act together!”

“Consider yourself on my shit list, Junebug.”

More laughter. He’s well-liked here.How radically different from Olympus.No wonder he prefers it here, prefers them to anyone he’s known among his kind. It’s easy to stay somewhere you’re loved.

I don’t mean to interrupt, she tells him, immediately apologetic. I have a letter for you.

I know, he replies, and his laughing eyes are loud enough to actually compete with the blaring music. I’m the one that sent it.

And no, she wants to say, that’s impossible, I would know if you did, but none of it comes out because when she glances down at the envelope, that’s his handwriting. Now she feels stupid. Like he’s teasing her all over again, making her run stupid errands to prove a point, but his hand wraps around hers and crumples and the letter and pulls her in and this time when he kisses her, he doesn’t ask for permission.

She only remembers to blush when she hears the cat-calls. In spite of herself she runs away, streaking the night sky like a fallen star.

Why does he do these things?

three.It’s only awkward, she tells herself, because she almost got him killed. But that’s not the only reason it’s awkward. There a hundred more. It’s awkward because he and Hera are as they are and her loyalties are too split between them. It’s awkward because Hera’s rage forced her to watch more closely as the son of Zeus grew older, because she knows his tragedies as well as his triumphs, because his victory was her Queen’s defeat. It’s awkward because she had seen him deeply and fearlessly in love before, and lost to heartache, and she knows what both look like on him and neither look is present now.

It’s awkward because they can’t seem to ever fully commit.

It’s awkward because he’s in her home and speaking to her sisters, and even with the aid of a translator, they seem to understand each other perfectly. It’s the language of predators and revenge, a language she’s never spoken.He mentions the Erinyes. Her sisters nod in agreement. He laughs and turns and leaves, stopping next to Iris with a hand gingerly touching her waist.

Your sisters are good chicks. They just need a little more room to spread their wings. He kisses her temple then, just a peck, and Iris watches in consternation as her sisters’ feathers visibly ruffle.

He doesn’t actually know everything.

four.It’s different here than it is on earth. Dio sits at the long table, visibly distanced and disengaged from the conversation, idly passing a drachma between his fingers. There is a noticeable space around him, wider gaps between his seat and the seats of the two gods closest to him, gaps which do not exist elsewhere on the table.This is what he means when he says he hates family gatherings. For a social god, a god of essential connection and intimacy, the mandates of closeness, he is quiet and reserved and utterly isolate here.

It’s only a response to the way he is already treated.

He stopped fighting ages ago.

Dite presses her lips together every time she glances over at him from across the table. She should have sat next to him. She should have twined her arms through his and reminded these others that come what may, he is her chosen brother, he is of her ilk, he stands not alone here. It was stupid to let Ares tempt her into sitting so near him instead. Her brother languishes and wilts in that peculiar way of his that turns him from flexible, giving silk to hard, squat steel.

And Iris, awed, spies on him from behind Queen Hera’s seat. Nobody pays attention to her anyway (so she thinks), and so at every turn when King Zeus speaks, her eyes are drawn back to him. She never noticed before how terribly lonely he looks at these occasions. Perhaps she was only too busy tending to her Queen to notice the quiet death in his eyes, the stillness of body--only the coin seems to move--that is so markedly unlike him.He is cold. He is withdrawn. This isn’t the Dio she knows.How did she never notice before?

She finds him after the meeting, hesitantly touches his arm to call his attention to her. Dio....He looks at her hand before he looks at her; this close, Iris can see as he visibly steels himself for another attack.

It shakes her to her core. He meets her eyes but doesn’t soften. The tears in her eyes aren’t for her.

She goes up on tip-toe and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth before scurrying along, leaving quickly but not as quickly as she can, seeking out the Queen once more. She could always say anyone who saw that was mistaken, and she was only delivering a verbal message.

You should be softer with her, Dite chides, stepping out from the cover she’d taken when she saw the messenger. She likes you.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. She doesn’t know what she likes.

five.It’s so much better seeing him on earth now. Back among his mortals. Strange and fluid and laughing again. He takes one woman--she’s never purple, and tonight she’s a dull rose pink--by the arms and kisses her once on each cheek, pulling back with a “congratulations” and some joke the goddess can’t understand about marriage.

“You’re just as bad as he is!”

“I’m worse, even, I keep expecting you to say yes.” The woman laughs too loudly at that, shoving Dio lightly by the chest. She’s joined by a man who sets a proprietary arm around her waist but is too at ease around the god to see him as a threat. This man is purple, but not Dionysus’ purple. His color complements the woman’s.

“...leaving us to teach somewhere.”

“Then her students will be the luckiest damned sons of bitches in the world and you, cupcake--don’t give me that look!--you better give that talented ass of yours summers off, because I will not be deprived of your presence on my creative team.”

“I’ll think about it, Dio.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I think you’ve got a guest,” the man interjects, and he’s looking right at Iris. It’s a fight to keep from going too deep a red at that; she snaps to attention but this time when Dio turns around, his expression is soft and only grows...softer, happier, when he sees her.

“Ah. If you’ll excuse me.”

Dio doesn’t say anything at first; he only slings an arm around her shoulder and guides her out of the fancy party, smiling and laughing and throwing quips to others in the room as he winds their way through them. When he gets her outside she shuts her eyes and her opens her mouth and begins a horrible apology, something she can’t hold back, something about know this is your territory and I shouldn’t be here and I don’t have a letter but it was urgent--

And she’s cut off by his kiss, again, something shocking enough to open her eyes and her mouth, and he doesn’t waste a second before deepening it, a hand on one side of her face, caution thrown to the wind.

I have an apartment, he whispers, moving from her lips to her neck despite the awkward angle. Nobody up there visits it. Not even Dite. Nobody knows it exists.

Come with me.

She knows she’ll only wake up in a tangle of clothes and bedsheets and limbs, but she isn’t sure she cares. Whatever is between them...it’s so very much like love. She remembers the reverence of their first kiss and thinks that love-making will be like with him, slow and sweet and reverent and passionate and real.And she makes a decision motivated by her own instincts for once, and not be worry or doubt or fear or decree.

Okay, she whispers, and she can tell by the flash of a moment in his wine-dark eyes that she thinking isn’t wrong.

[mredlich21]

This is NOT a good movie.  But it is an amusing movie!  It wasn’t like the “wait for death” viewing experience of Azhar, or the “I am so angry I can’t function” experience of Ki & Ka.  It was a fun watch and if I had been about 20 years younger, I may have loved it.

This is just such a teeny-bopper kind of movie!  It’s like Justin Bieber and Zayn Malik and Lesley Gore and Titanic and Twilight and Romeo + Juliet all got mixed together in a big blender, and then boiled down to their hormonal and immature essence, and mashed into some kind of Indian curry.

And hey, there’s nothing wrong with that!  I own all the Twilight books and saw all the movies in theaters, I love Lesley Gore and The Shirelles and all of those people, and I was more than capable of swooning over an immature and dramatic love story when I was 13.  But see, I’m not 13 any more.  And so I watch this and think “I can see how this scene COULD work for me, but it just doesn’t.”

(Also, I now want to shake this girl and tell her to go home and do homework and write her college essay instead of waiting for some pimply boy to make her a promise he can’t possibly understand or keep)

Although it did explain why Aditya Roy Kapoor kept getting hoots at the Dear Zindagi screenings I was at!  At least, the two of them where the theater was 50% young woman.  If you are watching Dear Zindagi, I assume you can relate to the main character and her struggles as a young professional desi woman.  And if you are a young professional desi woman, I assume you saw Aashiqui 2 when it first came out, when you would have been maybe between 17 and 21.

Which could have been the right age (depending on your personal development) for the whole thing to just about give you a heart attack from the ROMANCE and TRUE LOVE and EMOTIONS THAT PARENTS JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!  And therefore, Aditya Roy Kapoor will always have a special place in your heart.  Just like all those woman who will always love Leonardo DiCaprio in a particular way, no matter how many big fancy films he makes (for me, it’s Zac Efron and High School Musical.  Oh Zac!  Why did you cut your floppy hair?).

(Oh Zac!  I have this on DVD, with the special Karaoke version extra)

Anyway, that explains the hoots and cheers when he showed up in Dear Zindagi.  Because there was that sudden moment when all these mature professional possibly married with children women were suddenly thrown back to late nights sobbing with friends over the beauty and passion of this love story, and why can’t a perfectly sensitive and damaged alcoholic wander into their life?

I was lucky enough to be able to watch this movie in a situation kind of like that.  Well, I should say “wise” enough.  Over Christmas, my sister was in town, and she came over to my apartment for a movie and pancakes one morning while the rest of the family was still asleep.  I was thinking I would show her Patiala House or OK Kanmani or something, you know, “good”.  And then I thought “No!  This is the perfect time to finally watch Aashiqui 2!  In my PJs, eating pancakes on a Sunday morning, with my sister.”

And it was perfect!  We swooned over the moments when he looked at her and you just KNEW he was in love.  And we cheered when the poor star-crossed couple was reunited.  And we booed when the boring older people told them they shouldn’t be together, because they were too old to remember what Real True Love is like!  And then we went “wait, there’s AN HOUR LEFT?!?!”  Because unfortunately our patience for long-drawn out overly dramatic love stories featuring immature pretty people has gotten shorter over the years (you should have been there ten years ago, when we spent an entire Christmas break re-watching High School Musical and Hairspray.  Oh Zac!  I wish I still loved you that way).

(Okay, I still love him a little)

This is just the most delicious confection of stupid.  It’s like eating a donut wrapped around bacon with whipped cream topping.  Tastes sooooooooooooooo good, but there’s no actual content to it.  And in the same way a donut tastes kind of like bread but without the nutrition, so does Aashiqui 2 taste kind of like A Star is Born but without the talent.  Or Abhimaan.  Ooo!  I can do an info-graphic!!!

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  The lack of talent is the biggest problem with this film, moviemavengal and I were just talking about that.  But in order to get into exactly what I mean by that, I have to get into SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

                I had to watch the Judy Garland A Star is Born for a film class.  Well, “had to”.  It wasn’t like it broke my heart to do it, I love classic 50s musicals and Judy Garland and all of that.  The only reason I hadn’t watched it before was that I had heard the ending was sad, and I hate sad endings!

I believe this version actually follows that one pretty closely.  There is an initial meeting, he promises her the moon, then there is an accident and he is unable to follow through on his promise at first, and she waits for him as her life gets progressively worse.  He finally, joyfully, finds her again.  And then convinces his producers to listen to her, they immediately give her a chance, and with his loving support her career takes off.  And he finally admits his love and they decide to get married.  She quickly becomes super successful, while he is happy for her, but has an increasingly hard time filling his days and feeling useful.  He turns more and more to drink, which has been a problem for him from the start.  Finally, she announces that she is giving up everything in order to help him get better and stop drinking.  He realizes that this means she will be depriving the world of her talent, and walks into the ocean and dies.  She retreats to solitude and misery at first, but is then convinced by an old friend that nourishing her talent is the best thing Aditya/James Mason ever did, and it is better to honor him by continuing her career.

Now, there are two big changes the Bhatts made when they teeny-boppered this plot.  I’m not even going to say “Indianized”, which is what they usually do.  Because A Star is Born was already pretty Indian, big dramatic emotions, big song numbers, etc. etc.  But the Judy Garland A Star is Born (not necessarily the original Janet Gaynor version) is also a very adult film.

That’s part of what makes it such a classic, Hollywood is so afraid of emotions and melodrama, here is a rare high budget high quality film that is about human drama, and doesn’t shy away from the tragedy and the ecstasy of it.  And it does it in an adult way.  This isn’t A Summer Place or Rebel Without a Cause.  These are big emotions in a big way between two adults.

(This was another movie my sister and I watched together.  Except, even as teenagers, it was too teenager for us to enjoy.  She gave up halfway through, I stuck it out to the bitter end because I can’t leave a film half-finished.  But believe me, the theme song is the best part)

Judy had been around by this point.  She was a good 20 years into her movie stardom, and a lifetime into her career.  And James Mason was similar, although less famous and familiar to the audience.  And that’s what they are playing in the film.  She isn’t some timid young newcomer.  She is a band singer and a chorus girl and a Hollywood hanger on whose done everything and seen everything.  And it’s just made her better than an newcomer could ever be.  In Aashiqui 2, Shraddha has to be “polished” and “trained” before she can become a star.  In A Star is Born, Judy has already been trained and polished, she just needs someone to see her.

And James Mason isn’t some lost little boy.  He is a grown man, more than grown, who has lived a life of indulgence and experience and had thought he would never feel that spark of excitement again, until he met Judy.

And what really makes the difference, is how amazing phenomenally impossible to ignore Judy’s talent is.  In any performance at any time, but especially in this movie!  We don’t need the script to tell us that she is something special, that James Mason is in awe of her talent.  We can see that for ourselves!

  The age of the characters makes the performing ability more believable and remarkable, but it makes the love story something special too.  It’s not about two kids swept up in the glow of first love.  It’s about to adults, who have had many love stories before this, finding that “little kid” feeling again and slowly giving in to it.

  So, that’s why it’s special.  The one sentence description of the plot, “Guy helps girl become star while his star fades, then kills himself” doesn’t even come close to it.  And it is just that one sentence version that this film is able to grasp.  Aditya and Shraddha don’t feel like real complicated people grasping for happiness, their problems don’t seem grounded and tragic, and most of all, their “talent” doesn’t seem all that unusual.

I like Shreya Goshal’s voice, she’s fine, has a definite “Lata” sound, which makes sense she is Lataji’s niece (I think?  Or cousin or something).  But it’s not dropdead remarkable, like Judy’s voice was.

You know who does kind of have that voice?  Aditya!  Or rather, Arjit Singh.  It’s rougher and deeper than the usual voice, and so powerful.  And you don’t need me to tell you that, out of everyone involved in Aashiqui 2, Arjit Singh was the clear break out star of the film, the one who’s career was pretty much made from then on.

  When moviemavengal and I were talking about the film, we bounced around the idea of a gender-reversed plot.  What if it had been Aditya/Arjit who had the amazing world-changing talent and Shraddha/Shreya who was just kind of okay? I’d have loved to see Shraddha stumbling around drunk and getting into fights and having all of that kind of juicy stuff, while Aditya had to suffer in silence and sacrifice!  And it would have made a lot more sense of things, for everyone in the film to acknowledge that Aditya was the once in a lifetime talent. (wait, that’s Khoya Khoya Chand, isn’t it?  And also, Mahesh Bhatt’s real life!)

(Too bad Shiny Ahuja’s in this so I will never ever be able to watch it)

That’s the thing with the A Star is Born story, it only works if the argument that “the best thing he ever did was help you become a star” is actually true.  For James Mason and Judy Garland, it certainly was.  James had some decent screen presence and was fairly handsome.  But you could tell that his character, just like himself in real life, was nothing special when compared to the huge bundle of talent that was Judy Garland.  Same goes for Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand in Star.  And maybe Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in the original?  I don’t know, I haven’t seen it, and Janet Gaynor is pretty great, but so is Fredric March.  And also, hopefully, for Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in the new one.

Of course, it also only works if the film isn’t UNUTTERABLY STUPID.  Starting with the tagline, “Love Makes Life Live”.  What does that even mean??????  It’s right up there with “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”.

And then, right at the start they tell you their expectation for the audience when they refer to Goa as a “small venue” and warn our hero not to travel the streets alone because it’s not safe here.  You know, those rough streets of small town Goa.  This is the level of realism and common sense present through out the film.  Our heroine goes vegetable shopping in the middle of the night.  Our hero disguises himself by putting on sunglasses and a hat.  And not only does he wear a stupid disguise, his disguise works!  Because all the other people in this world are too stupid to see through it.

It’s a stupid world, and also a cheap world.  Cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap.  My favorite is when there is supposed to be a big confrontation in front of a crowd at a fancy party.  And it is clearly just some random extras wearing whatever they had in their closet (no costume budget) standing in the lobby of an office building with a few tables scattered around.  But, you know, white extras!  So you can tell the party is fancy!

Oh!  And there’s also all the big concert scenes, that are carefully framed so you can only see the stage, not the crowd, because there’s no budget for crowd scenes.  Or the luxury apartment that frankly doesn’t look that luxurious.  Or the fancy bar that is conveniently closed, so they don’t need to spend a lot on decorations or fancy looking extras (only so much money in the budget for white people!).

So, why doesn’t this bother me?  Why don’t I find this movie infuriating, the way I do Azhar?  Well, because it feels like they all KNOW they are making a stupid cheap movie!

Aditya and Shraddha are working hard and doing their best, but they aren’t exactly trying to put in the most sensitive and subtle performances of their careers here.

(Hopefully they are saving that for OK Jaanu.  Full soundtrack now available on Saavn, by the way!)

Mohit Suri is a skilled director, he knows how to frame a shot and convey a story, but he isn’t bothering to do much more than that.  The script is pretty reliant on a few punchlines and the rest of the dialogue is filler.  The plotting, of course, is basically lifted straight from the Hollywood version, nothing terribly wrong there.  Well, except that in the Hollywood version it felt like everything unfolded naturally based on the character flaws and strengths.  Whereas here it feels like it unfolded unnaturally based on the need to fill 2+ hours of screen time.

These are a bunch of fairly talented people capable of putting together a much better film than this, but they chose to make a movie for the “kids”, as it were.  One of the things I found really interesting when I did my little research on this film is how it was released.  It had a very very specific audience in mind.  No overseas release, limited urban release in India.  And, my sister who is better than I with languages pointed out, lots and lots of Marathi touches.

This is a movie for the sappy young people of urban India, especially around Bombay.  It doesn’t care about any one else because it’s not here for you.  Like it, hate it, who cares, the Bhatts will still make money and the audience will still be happy.

The biggest thing that made it feel “young” to me is the attitude towards marriage.  Why AREN’T they married????  They are living together, they are committed, but no marriage?  It really feels like that is just because marriage isn’t “romantic” enough for the swoony teenage audience, it’s something their grown up parents and aunties and uncles do.

This also means they miss out the famous final line from both the Janet Gaynor and the Judy Garland version, “This is Mrs. Norman Maine.”  Taking her husband’s identity forever as part of hers, giving him the fame that he helped her achieve.  Instead we get some sappy “our love will go on” scene on a beach.

There’s another big change earlier, right before the suicide, in the original version Judy/Janet has sworn to give up her career to devote herself to taking care of her husband, and he overhears her and decides to kill herself to free him.  Okay, I guess two big changes.  In the original, since this is a grown up old guy, it feels like he knows he is never going to get better, change is not possible, this is a slow inevitable slide to death as she wastes her life.  In this one, Aditya is young!  Really really young!  How does he know he can never possibly get better?  The suicide feels random and impulsive, instead of regretful and considered.

Oh, but the bigger change is why Shraddha is going to give up her career.  I guess staying home and keeping him company and trying to stop his drinking and take care of him is too “grown-up” and unromantic.  So instead they go the passionate self-destructive route, and she announces that she is going to join him in his drinking!  Just like Meena Kumari in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam!  If he is living a life of intoxication, so will she, and perhaps she can find some form of joy in this.  By the way, if there is any young woman dating an alcoholic, THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.  DON’T DO THIS!  Be unromantic and sign him into rehab instead.

The only thing that made it break out of that audience group is, firstly, the soundtrack.  And secondly, the brilliance of Mahesh Bhatt.

I love the soundtrack, I’ve been listening to Arjit Singh’s “Tum Hi Ho” since it first came out.  Heck, that song was so good, even Shahrukh sang it!

  I don’t know if they decided to throw all their energy and money into a really good soundtrack, or if it was just a coincidence, but either way, these songs are so much better than the movie and helped bring it to worldwide notice.

Secondly, Mahesh Bhatt!  He put together Aashiqui 1 back in 1990, similarly sappy and silly and specific, and with two unknowns in the lead.  But he gave it the heart, the love story of himself and his first wife back when they were so young and so innocent that their love felt like the most amazing thing that had ever in the world.  And that is the spirit and ethos that carries through to Aashiqui 2.  Even if his only involvement was supporting his nephew the director, and lending his voice as Aditya’s “father” in phone calls.

(The coat thing, that’s so swoony I’m gonna DIE.  And of course, it is the element that came most directly from Bhatt sahib’s original)

  (I’m not counting the focus on alcohol as part of his involvement, because Mahesh’s version of alcoholism onscreen is way way more realistic than this!  Check out Daddy sometime if you want to see a real story of alcohol and art and love)

#Aashiqui2 : watch #AStarIsBorn instead for #JudyGarland or #Abhimaan for #JayaBachchan This is NOT a good movie.  But it is an amusing movie!  It wasn't like the "wait for death" viewing experience of…