#its mostly that ive seen so much of them (especially when i was a warriors fan smh😭) that i got a little desensitized.

[hartpisces]

for the ship bingo:

warriors' splash bros - steph and klay

toronto core - demar and kyle

[imminent-danger-came]

hi (its the anon who sent you the ask about misogyny lol/correct opinions anon (i dont think my opinions are that great but thank you!) except im not on anon anymore lol) ive been meaning to ask you now you feel about the hero mk warrior mei thing; its by far the most popular interpretation of the hero and warrior dichotomy being applied to mk and mei and it IS a concept İ personally like in my head (İ ❤️ tragedy) but the fandom interpretation has kind of ruined it for me (personally) because it feels like a lot of people only take mk's role in the narrative into consideration and just kind of slot mei into the warrior role without much thought toward her actual character or importance to the plot. that doesnt mean İ hate the idea by any means, but it does kind of make me more critical towards it lol

İ am personally kind of biased towards the hero mei warrior mk thing because for one, İ think mei-swk parallels create such an interesting conflict for mei, and two, because its the less popular interpretation in the fandom İ dont have to see as many bad takes on it haha (im joking)

(also there are SO many parallels between mei & swk that i rarely see pointed out by other fans... like i outside of you i dont see Imk bloggers point them out very often 💔 (ive *never* seen someone point this out before but do think mei stealing the jacket she that gives to mk in 3×02 from ao guang parallels swk stealing the staff from ao guang?))

all of that aside though, im not personally sold on either of these options! İ dont think mk & mei directly fit into the roles of the hero and warrior in the same way as macaque and wukong did! to me it feels like the hero & warrior dichotomy is being set up to be subverted by the show to an extent (whether thats because the show is going to have mei take on the role of the hero, or because mk and mei wont fight at all, or a secret third thing is up to your personal interpretation lol); especially when you take into account the average audience's perspective on the hero and warrior stuff; the obvious conclusion that ive seen most people make is to have mk as the hero and mei as the warrior with most people not even considering mei as the hero/mei paralleling swk! İ dont think this means that mei-swk parallels dont exist (İ spent a decent bit of this ask talking about them LOL) but because they require more inference on the audience's part they dont get talked about as much, which does make me think that show is going to call it into attention at some point (although İm not great with predictive analysis haha, im mostly just putting my thoughts on the table here)

thats pretty much all İ have to say on the topic lol (sorry İ rambled so much haha) im not sure that last bit makes sense AT ALL but hear me out im cooking! İ meant to reccomend some songs that İ thought fit the Imk characters ages ago that İ forgot about lol, anyway İ think burn by the cure is SUCH a samadhi fire mei song. like its one of those songs where it feels like it was made for the character. big shot by jhariah fits like. 90% of the Imk cast imo. like İ know everyone in the comments section is talking about spamton and yes the song is very spamton coded BUT if you erase all your preexisting memories of spamton and only imagine monkie kid characters with it, it becomes a macaque/mei/swk/mk/whoever-coded song. like "think you're a big shot / İ think you're raveled up in a tangle of did nots / you're always just a bit shy, following behind" is so shadowpeach divorcecoded to me. "yeah it's not fair, İ know it's not fair / you aint the only star that's been left for dead" is so shadow play coded to me (it sounds more shadow play coded in the actual song trust me here). İ also think martyr by depeche mode is a samadhi fire mei song (although im pretty sure you could say any depeche mode song is Imk character coded and youd be right aha) also İ think ヘヴンリーユー by lonepi kind of goes down the same route as big shot where you could apply it to multiple lmk characters and it would still fit. its kind of a mei & mk take on the roles of the hero and warrior type thing to me (their asses are NOT escaping samsara!) (one of the english translations of one of the lyrics is literally "time and time again" (what mei says in 3x10) İ think those are all the songs ive been meaning to mention here as of right now ! sorry if this ending seems abrupt İ just dont know how to end asks haha

faggotvivsection I can't believe it was you the whole time! *MK 2x05 voice* What a twist! I always enjoy seeing you in my notes, so hello :)

Anyways, as for the 3x02 Mei and Wukong parallels, I think it goes deeper than just Mei stealing the jacket!

Ao Guang: "Stealing from me? On orders from the Monkey King no doubt."

Mei also steals the map from Ao Guang on behalf of Wukong, just like he had stolen the staff in the past. I think in a way, the map and the staff were both "roadmaps" to get more power, you know. The map enabled them to unseal the rings, and the staff gave Wukong a suitable weapon.

Ao Guang specifically comments on both Mei and Wukong's weapons, Mei with her sword and Wukong with stealing the staff. In a way, both of their weapons are dragon related, one from the Dragon of the West and another from the Dragon of the East.

When it comes to hero and warrior mk/mei, I lean towards both! I think they're both the hero and the warrior for each other in their own respective ways. I love warrior Mei specifically because of 3x10, and because MK refuses to abandon her thus subverting the typical progression of the hero warrior dynamic (even if he can often be dismissive of Mei, stealing things from her [2x06, 3x03], putting a strain on his relationships for power [1x06, 2x03, 2x06, 2x07, 3x03]). I think moving forward however, Hero Mei and Warrior MK are far more likely to play out!

I have a whole samadhi fire part 3 tag centered around a parallel prediction, where we continue the parallel that was set up in 3x10 and 4x08, and while MK is on the verge of destroying the world have Mei get through to MK and reach him. In 3x10 MK is actually able to reach Mei...but in 4x08, MK runs away before Mei can make it to him. So if we had a moment where they were able to close that gap, and neither of them leaves, it'd be really satisfying. I am a huge believer in Hero Mei Warrior MK, don't let anyone ever tell you it isn't real.

Anyhow, onto the song recs:

Burn by the Cure

"Oh don't talk of love" the shadows purr Murmuring me away from you "Don't talk of worlds that never were The end is all that's ever true There's nothing you can ever say Nothing you can ever do" Still every night I burn Every night I scream your name Every night I burn Every night the dream's the same Every night I burn Waiting for my only friend Every night I burn Waiting for the world to end

What a "Samadhi Fire Mei pov toward MK" song am I right. It's also very Warrior Mei ("It follows the tragic tale of a legendary Warrior, and how those who bring light into this world, inevitably bring darkness to those they hold dear" -> "Oh don't talk of love the shadows purr", love a good light and dark motif)

Big Shot by Jhariah

Though I may love Spamton, and this is a very stage motif-y "There is no audience" kinda song, I do get the Shadow Play vibes (it's also giving theater Kid Macaque versus Wukong have stage fright lol), and over course it's overtly shadowpeach-esque. I also get a little bit of s2/s3 Macaque @ MK, especially with "You ain't the only star that's been left for dead"

Yeah it’s not fair, I know it’s not fair You ain't the only star that’s been left for dead I asked about your name on the moon It was quiet nobody knew you Aim like an atom who swears it’s going to shoot you Are you the only one-of-one to be found? If you could see the rest, would it bring you back down? You’re no big shot, think you’re a big shot I think you’re raveled up in a tangle of did nots You’re always just a bit shy, following behind I think you’ve spent enough time Singing the same lines

Martyr by Depeche Mode

I've been a martyr for love And I will die in the flames As I draw my last breath As I close in on death I will call out your name I've been a martyr for love Nailed up on the cross While you're having your fun As the damage is done I'm assessing the cost

THE SAMADHI FIRE MEI @ WUKONG OF IT ALL. Mei having to bear the consequence of Wukong's decisions, potentially burning herself from the inside out.

ヘヴンリーユー (Heavenly You) by lonepi

As the moon waned, I realized you weren't with me anymore. As the dawn of the new day broke, I hid my tear-swollen voice amidst the morning dew. You had said something like, "It's all my fault that you're this way." That's right, it's your fault. But just remember, that's not all of it. Every time my positives overcome the negatives, you toss them in the trash and do it over. You've stanched all those opportunities away from me time and time again.

The first pair that comes to mind is MK @ Wukong, or Macaque @ Wukong, but I think MK @ Mei would be interesting, even if not exactly canon. Mei is carrying MK's mental health on her lone shoulders, so that being disregarded in favor of blaming her for his problems...I dig that sort of broken Mei & MK dynamic.

[eirrw]

spoilers are below the break and indented

2022-11-13, 15:13

so id written up this whole first impressions review after watching s2e1 of warrior nun but i think it disappeared into the aether?

im through s2e4 now and and opinions are pretty much the same. writing is better but still not great, feels like the got a better budget and/or practice on the vfx, storylines are interesting enough to make me want to keep watching

im sketch about the major new characters (but i always am (especially men)), but as theyre built out i am intrigued how things will go. there's some relationships hinted at that id love to see followed up on cause im a hopeless romantic at heart

theres also some kickass demon murder which is always cool

2022-11-14, 00:07

right so netflix already killed one show i loved this year (rip first kill, you were too stupid to live 🙏). if warrior nun doesnt get a third (final? wrap it up, dont push your luck) act i might actually fuckin riot.

and dont get me wrong, i have ~feelings~ about how the show went down (particularly e8), but those can (and should) be cleaned up

can we talk about the tropes that went into the last bit tho? kill your gays, forbidden lovers, borderline enemies-to-lovers, fuck! also the whole thing felt really male-gaze-ish

dont get me wrong, i was rooting for it the whole time (see: hopeless romantic), as someone who mostly ids as male it felt kinda icky. idk maybe im just drunk

but anyways, it was good solid fun and i think it deserves another go. give it a whirl netflix, take a risk, you have a content problem and making cool shows that ~some~ (not all!) people like helps

also it takes the piss outta the church. i think i make my view on religion fairly clear (and am happy to clarify them if i dont), but i am an absolute sucker for myth and legend and boy howdy do the abrahamics have a lot of that

christianity is of particular interest to me, maybe because its the predominant religion in my part of the world, and the one ive been exposed the most. i also find that in general its the least commonly to be used in a mythological sense

i love shit like warrior nun, or lucifer, or his dark materials (is the show good? i havent seen it), that use christian myth as an inspiration/basis and spiral out from there. like fuckin da vinci code is about the fake history, these build a fantasy out of the legends

i see "a lot" of stuff stemming out of islamic and jewish myths, and im not nearly well-versed enough to say why that is. maybe theyre older religions that hung on to some of the old gods cruft? the creatures and shit that dont really appear in christianity

and dont get me started on the ips that are built on other old religions. norse, greek, slavic, the "old gods" that are classified as myth solely cause no one really believes it any more

theres no difference to christianity, or judaism, or islam, outside of the fact that people still believe in it. its all stories to explain why the world is the way it is and codify a way to live

im mainly picking in the big three here, but i have the same feeling towards all the others. hinduism, shintō, etc dont get a pass

so yeah, more christian myth please. theres a lot of material there and making people mad is fun.

2022-11-14, 12:51

been thinking a bit more about why this bothered me so much can we talk about the tropes that went into the last bit tho? kill your gays, forbidden lovers, borderline enemies-to-lovers, fuck! also the whole thing felt really male-gaze-ish

i think its the build up. they were pushing this from e1 or e2 with the dance scene, but then did the ol classic "we're into each other but we're never gonna talk about it like normal people"

and the relationship never progressed. at all. until the last half hour when its just lets kiss and declare our love for each other

which fair, these chars are young and in a rough spot (mildly) so maybe theres no time for that. but it still felt weird

and something i see pretty often (from a certain crowd) in these situations is the "oh so youre just gonna make 'a' gay now? she never suggested anything like that", and its like, no

bi people exist. and if theyre in a heteronormative relationship then 1, good for them, and 2, they can still be into the same sex! they dont need to talk about it!

and in this case, 'a' had been confined to a bed in a catholic orphanage for most of her life. maybe the whole, oh i like girls too thing just didn't hit for a while.

and 'b' was obviously gay right from her exposition chat in s1, even if they didn't come right out and say it (see: catholics).

i love that it happened but im bothered that there was no depth to it. idk, maybe if they figured it out in like, e5, and were able to spend some time building up to that final release itd have gone down better

i.e. still tropey but at left i could have felt better about it

copied from twitter, 2022-11-13/14 https://twitter.com/virunus_/status/1591887046150340615

[asimawv]

I write and conceptualize story to music, so I’ve compiled a playlist of 30 Darkest Dungeon-specific songs that I listen to when writing (and subsequently re-writing) in no particular order, which I hope will help you set the vibe too. :+)

Names in bold are links for easy listening - tons of Hozier and Of Monsters and Men up ahead, five minute warning.

1. ‘Fire and the Flood’ - Vance Joy

If you listen to nothing else on this list, listen to this one - it’s the kind of song that’s made for movies about yearning. Folk influences, choruses of trumpets and vocal harmony, and instruments that are layered for a rich, resonant sound. This is the song I imagine Dismas and Reynauld horse-racing through a crowded outdoors market in the hamlet to, and the song I listened to nonstop freshman year when I first started writing The Myth of Sisyphus.

You're the fire and the flood And I'll always feel you in my blood Everything is fine When your hand is resting next to mine Next to mine You're the fire and the flood

The chorus is built around biblical allusions to the fire (the burning bush signifying first contact) and the flood (destruction of the first world), the beginning and end. Every line is similarly evocative of Darkest Dungeon in their simplicity (“I’ve been getting used to waking up with you,” etc.)

2. ‘Soldier, Poet, King’ - The Oh Hellos

By the title alone you can guess who this is for. Even the Guild quote for the Leper approaches these three things as the defining parts of his character (specifically it’s “a ruined man, a warrior, and a poet.”) This song coincidentally has an old world influence to it, with a Medieval Renaissance style from a guitar playing a lute-adjacent melody.

There will come a ruler Whose brow is laid in thorn Smeared with oil like David's boy, oh lei oh lai oh Lord Oh lei, oh lai, oh lei, oh Lord Smeared with oil like David's boy, oh lei oh lai oh Lord

To be smeared with oil is to be anointed by a prophet and thus chosen by god himself to be king, just as David was and his boy after him (presumably Solomon). There’s something strangely wistful about the imagery, which is just how I like my songs about bygone kings.

3. ‘Exit Hymn’ - Bear Attack!

This song is about the end of the world in a version where everyone simply stands together in silence watching, rather than having the masses swarming in panic.

Lovely shapes to the world descending, Brothers and sisters. Lovely shapes to the world descending, Brothers and sisters Mute.

It defies Lovecraftian horror, which is based on the premise that “common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large” - it flies in the face of existential nihilism and the despair that it should bring us. That’s why I like this song for deaths in the end-boss fight; it also has a special place for other death-related ideas, like full-party wipes - entire teams of people vanishing into the dungeons, gone insane, holding hands while the darkness surrounds them.

It’s a bare song which has a sanctity to it, mostly just piano and rain and human voices. Just what you would hear at the end of the world.

More under the cut:

4. ‘Pursuit of Glory’ - Jhameel

This song is laid-back. It doesn’t have the Homeric intensity that some of the other songs here do - it’s a guy with a guitar and vocal harmony. By god is it a great piece of writing though (all of Jhameel’s older songs have that quality to them), and all of it is evocative of Darkest Dungeon.

So many eyes set on the path to glory Too many ties, friendship is for the lonely Can't still my heart, my tongue has tasted folly Thirsty for art, hungry for power and money

This is a song for everyone in the barracks, especially the ‘laundry list’ of people and their approaches to the pursuit of glory.

5. ‘Good Old Days’ - Macklemore (feat. Kesha)

This fucker put a Macklemore song in here. I did, yeah. It’s not even the only song with Kesha in it here (I’m sorry.) 

It’s a sentimental pop song, and I am sentimental to a fault. This is Darkest Dungeon AMV material, and I always mishear one of the lines as “we were underground, loaded mercs in that 12-passenger van” so it’s here.

We've come so far, I guess I'm proud And I ain't worried about the wrinkles around my smile I've got some scars, I've been around I've felt some pain, I've seen some things, but I'm here now Those good old days

6. ‘Past Lives‘ - Kesha

Here it is, the other Kesha song - this was introduced to me by a good friend, also in a Darkest Dungeon context. There’s just something about the lovers spanning time trope and finding each other in one life to the next that is irresistible (for the obvious reason in the context of Darkest Dungeon.) It’s a soft song, totally out of place in Kesha’s typical discography, and has a line about losing someone to the crusades, so... you know.

There's just somethin' about you I know Started centuries ago though You see your kiss is like a lost ghost Only I would know But I, I keep on falling for you Time after time Time after time

7. ‘Viva la Vida’ - Coldplay

You cannot fight this. You know that this is the song for King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, you know it is. Did you know the official name of this genre of music is “Baroque pop”? Yes, that means more songs like this exist. You will live with this information now.

Don’t fight it. Just let it wash over you.

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing Roman Cavalry choirs are singing Be my mirror, my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason I can't explain Once you go there was never, never an honest word And that was when I ruled the world

Mirror, sword, and shield, the three other members of his party, his missionaries in a foreign field. Thinking emoji. I typed that out so I wouldn’t have a repeat of the crab emoji incident.

8. ‘The Boxer’ - Jerry Douglas (feat. Mumford & Sons, Paul Simon)

Partly inspired by the Bible, Simon & Garfunkle’s ‘The Boxer’ is a folk rock song about poverty, loneliness, and homesickness. It’s written and sung in a style that’s strongly reminiscent of older times, and the final verse about its eponymous boxer is particularly powerful:

In the clearing stands a boxer And a fighter by his trade And he carries the reminders Of ev'ry glove that laid him down Or cut him till he cried out In his anger and his shame "I am leaving, I am leaving" But the fighter still remains

This is what I use for Dismas’ life leading into organized crime and his foolish abandonment of stable job prospects in a half-baked bid for fame, as well as being punched down over and over again but with nowhere else to go. That last part is widely applicable across the cast.

9. ‘I Will Wait’ - Mumford & Sons

I am but a simple man. I see 'folk rock' and add it to my Darkest Dungeon playlist. This song I use for Reynauld - it has that sort of “salt of the earth,” somewhat biblical humility in its choice of words and style. 

Raise my hands Paint my spirit gold And bow my head Keep my heart slow

10. ‘Little Lion Man’ - Mumford & Sons

Have we not beaten this song to death yet? Can you blame us? This is the people’s song. We reserve it for all of our favorite fuck-up characters, as primal as Saturn devouring his son. We love this song. Jesus.

Tremble for yourself, my man, You know that you have seen this all before Tremble little lion man, You'll never settle any of your scores Your grace is wasted in your face, Your boldness stands alone among the wreck Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck

The line about learning from your mother in particular is why I think of this song for Dismas’ introspection, but I also associate it with the Hellion.

11. ’From Eden’ - Hozier

There’s too much Hozier in my playlists. There is so much of it, and it’s all important to me, says the hoarder. There’s something about profoundly intimate folk music that I love, and god put folk, R&B, blues, and alt rock into a Vitamix for 45 seconds to make Hozier.

Honey you're familiar like my mirror years ago Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword Innocence died screaming, honey ask me I should know I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door

‘From Eden’ is, according to Hozier, about idolizing someone from a distance, written from the perspective of the devil “looking longingly at something he desires - for everything that he does not have.” I associate this song with the Grave Robber for its playfully nihilistic tone - Audrey does say something to the effect of being left for dead by high society and the affectionate bordering condescending address is on-brand.

12. ‘Cherry Wine’ - Hozier

‘Cherry Wine’ is unabashedly about domestic violence, and its sincerity is heartbreaking, the sanctification of the blood spilled in the name of keeping her.

The way she tells me I'm hers and she is mine Open hand or closed fist would be fine The blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.

This song is strongly tied to the Vestal for me.

13. ‘Work Song’ - Hozier

A song about unconditional love - heaven and hell were just words, indeed.

When my time comes around Lay me gently in the cold dark earth No grave can hold my body down I'll crawl home to her

I think of this song for both Dismas and the Abomination - it’s a song about love transcending spiritual and even physical need, complete devotion, but something about it is also not quite right. It’s morbid and excessive, self-pitying, and almost ugly in its sincerity.

14. ‘Sunlight’ - Hozier

The strong gospel influence with the choruses, church organ, religious fervor - I think it makes a great song for traveling scenes and church/altar scenes.

I had been lost to you, sunlight Flew like a moth to you, sunlight oh sunlight Oh, your love is sunlight Oh, your love is sunlight (sunlight, sunlight) But it is sunlight

15. ‘Arsonist’s Lullabye’ - Hozier

The gospel this time is paired with electric rock instrumentation. Something about the lamentation is unapologetic and matter-of-fact in its disturbing inclinations - this is Paracelsus’ song. Arguably representative of Bounty Hunter and Flagellant as well.

Now that I think about it, it’s great for Abomination as well. Damn.

All you have is your fire And the place you need to reach Don't you ever tame your demons But always keep 'em on a leash

16. ‘We Sink’ - Of Monsters and Men

Of Monsters and Men are closer to the indie rock/pop spectrum with influences of folk, with much less biblical influence and more folklore-inspired lyrics. They make for great trailer and action songs.

We are the sleepers, we bite our tongues We set the fire and we let it burn Through the dreamers, we hear the hum They say come on, come on, let's go So come on, come on, let's go

In Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos, dreams are how the Old Ones commune with humans on the earth’s surface while they slumber in the ocean depths (Cthulhu fhtagn meaning “Cthulhu is dreaming”); I like to think of the ‘sleepers’ as the heroes being tasked to “set the fire” and the ‘dreamers’ being the Heir and Ancestor driven by some unseen force to unearth the antediluvian underground.

17. ‘I Of The Storm’ - Of Monsters and Men

Very somber song, overwhelmingly piano and snare drum and vocals. Also a great death scene song, or for introspection around the campfire, or played to reveal a major event.

If I could face them If I could make amends With all my shadows I'd bow my head And welcome them

18. ‘King and Lionheart’ - Of Monsters and Men

My favorite OMAM song - it’s clearly written about two children, kind of reminiscent of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ in its fantastical nature, and very upbeat about the end of the world.

His crown lit up the way as we moved slowly Pass the wondering eyes of the ones that were left behind Though far away, though far away, though far away We're still the same, we're still the same, we're still the same

This part is reminiscent of the Leper’s journey, but the mentions of taking over a town, howling ghosts, the end of the world, a black sea and creatures lurking below, etc. are all evocative of Darkest Dungeon.

19. ‘Little Talks’ - Of Monsters and Men

Also very upbeat for its subject matter - according to OMAM, it’s a narrative of a woman speaking with the ghost of her dead husband, or going insane and believing that she’s speaking with her dead husband.

Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right Your mind is playing tricks on you, my dear 'Cause though the truth may vary This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore

The call-and-respond style of the song is haunting. I like this song for expeditions and afflicted heroes.

20. ‘Wolves Without Teeth’ - Of Monsters and Men

Suitable for both Occultist and Abomination, being consumed by an unseen and otherworldly force that inhabits them - well, maybe just rarely seen, in the Abomination’s case. Special mention to OMAM’s ‘Human,’ same conceptual backing but more raw.

You hover like a hummingbird Haunt me in my sleep You're sailing from another world Sinking in my sea, oh You're feeding on my energy I'm letting go of it He wants it

21. ‘Desierto’ (Original Motion Picture Score) - Woodkid

This is a full album, because all of it is dark orchestral cinema music described as ‘unsettling,’ with the sole exception of ‘Land of All,’ which has vocals to it. I reserve this album for writing fight scenes and for particularly unsettling events because it’s tense and wordless. I read Junji Ito to this soundtrack too, it’s insanely high-strung and discordant.

22. ‘Iron’ - Woodkid

‘Iron’ qualifies as Baroque pop - you might recognize this as the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations song. The large-scale, cinematic style of it and thematic lyrics make it great for writing about dramatic encounters or brigands.

This deadly burst of snow is burning my hands I'm frozen to the bones, I am A million miles from home, I'm walking away I can't recall your eyes, your face

23. ‘Never Let You Down’ - Woodkid (feat. LYKKE LI)

Another somber song, orchestral with some industrial noise in the mix - another great introspection song, or one for a scene with some hard decisions to be made.

Will you come along cause I'm about to leave this town In my eyes, a waterfall, all I can hear, a siren call Could you be waiting by the shore, oh I could drown without you Will you be holding out the line when I fall?

24. ‘Run Boy Run’ - Woodkid

Church bells, fast percussion, strong orchestral presence. For chase scenes, obviously, but great for fast-paced sneaking scenes as well. Also has a strong quasi-Medieval fantasy setting style to it.

Tomorrow is another day And you won't have to hide away You'll be a man, boy! But for now it's time to run, it's time to run!

25. ‘I Love You’ - Woodkid

Don’t let the scream effects and aggressive percussion at the beginning deter you (it kind of took me by surprise the first few times too) - it soon fades into more of the church bells and melodic string accompaniment.

Oh yeah, unrequited love song? It’s free (mental) real estate, baby.

Is there anything I could do Just to get some attention from you? In the waves, I've lost every trace of you Where are you?

26. ‘Vagabonds’ - Grizfolk

A rare departure from folk! Grizfolk is alt rock/indie pop. Stylistically it doesn’t match the feeling of Darkest Dungeon, but lyrically it’s almost 1:1 to arrival in the hamlet and the subsequent expeditions. Good song for writing about recruits bonding.

Oh this careless ground, guessing this is home now Oh in no man's land, at least we're still standing And we're all just fighting, some of us will not return And there's no redemption in trying to find your way out

27. ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ - Lorde

Great trailer fuel, if you’ve seen the AC: Unity E3 trailer with this song - I listen to an extended version when writing fights in the Guild, especially one where two heroes are beefing. It’s got a primal kind of thing going on. I also associate this song with the Arbalest - lyrically, it fits her backstory like a glove.

Welcome to your life There's no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you

Acting on your best behavior Turn your back on mother nature

28. ‘Torches’ - X Ambassadors

More alt rock/indie pop - kind of a rallying song for dark expeditions, hopeful but still somber in nature - some gospel elements. X Ambassadors’ more popular ‘Renegades’ is also a fun tavern song.

Come on, carry your flame Carry it higher Leave it in the darkness Carry your torches

29. ‘Passing Afternoon’ - Iron & Wine

This is a song I use for reconciliation or domestic scenes - Dismas with Junia in the garden, for example. It’s soft and kind of meandering, and features vintage piano - you know, the piano you heard in the basement of your church turned community center as a child.

There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon And she chose a yard to burn but the ground remembers her Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

30. ‘Some Nights’ - Fun.

You know this song, your mom knows this song, everyone knows this song from like, middle school. Thought it’d be fun to end this list on an uplifting and very popular song. This is the song that a Disney adaptation of Darkest Dungeon would use in the Training Montage™ - from the point of view of Reynauld. It hits all of the points - being their commander rather than their equal, his stern and antisocial zealotry with no true ideology behind it, the ghost of his wife.

Verse 2, starting with “Well, that is it, guys, that is all / Five minutes in and I'm bored again” is where I see it transitioning to Dismas.

Well, some nights, I wish that this all would end 'Cause I could use some friends for a change And some nights, I'm scared you'll forget me again Some nights, I always win (I always win) But I still wake up, I still see your ghost Oh Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for, oh What do I stand for? What do I stand for? Most nights, I don't know

_____

Well that’s all from me! Feel free to leave your own recommendations in the replies, and I’d love to know what you think about my personal picks. :+)

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

this DLC has me FUCKED UP and i keep screaming

spoilers for Bounty of Blood under the cut, keep reading at ur own peril. Also some Guardian Takedown spoilers for anyone who hasn’t beat it yet

tl;dr: a comparison between something taken from BL2 and a thing taken from Bounty of Blood. more spoilery tl;dr below the cut.

also the siren thing is not spoilers so i’ll share it here for anyone curious, it’s just this: siren tattoos are blue but when lily absorbs eridium in 2, they turn pinkish/purple. just like how vaults do from bl1 to bl2. they’re white/blue in bl1, then purple-pink in bl2 (and tps), y’know, after Eridium begins erupting from the ground. just a neat little detail i noticed that im not entirely sure was intentional but im gonna believe it is.

tl;dr: Gythian Blood = Core and the Ruiner is of Eridian Origin even tho everyone in the DLC likes to say it was created with Jakobs’ bioengineering. disclaimer: idk if I’ve found every hidden ECHO so I may be missing a few things but I have done every side quest and took ample screenshots of all important dialogue in the DLC : )

“man i just sat here for like 15 minutes staring at my keyboard mentally comparing core and eridium like the dumb bitch i am. 

it's not like we can do an actual comparison because we have no idea what the natural fauna of gehenna was like before jakobs came and mutated everything with core unlike pandora where we know what skags and rakk and shit were like BEFORE the eridium crust erupted. 

altho!!! there's a neat comparison between joey ultraviolet and rose. like obviously he wasn't getting tattoos and was just doing lines of crushed up eridium but the point stands they both have glowy eyes and unique powers so i don't necessarily think this means rose is a siren just because she has magic powers especially when we know she got the whistling passed down to her from her grandmother. 

especially because we've never seen a siren interact with core before. altho that leaves the question we have seen core tattoos now what are eridium tattoos like? actually rose's tattoos were on her right arm obviously she isn't a siren as we know them right now (I saw a post on reddit where people thought rose was a siren) 

of course that brings up the point perhaps siren tattoos ARE eridium tattoos. but then we hear the general's log about how the devil riders were tattooing a man with core and blood so obviously they're not ‘naturally’ occurring unlike siren tattoos. so odds are they're probably not equivalents but something interesting i thought of while thinking about this is how well siren tattoos compare to the Vaults from borderlands 1 and borderlands 2″

anyway. this is all ive been thinking about. yes yes i know guardian takedown post but! >:( im still salty even tho this update has been lovely (outside of Blane not getting his correct damage scaling ‘till today......). so i’ll do that at my own damn pace. now let me elaborate so i can sleep at night lmao

Eridium

refinement produces slag, which weakens people and can mutate things

has mutating properties, mostly with imbuing elements into shit- possibly causes insanity

seems to be connected to another dimension, likely the one the Eridians are from

Core

has a secondary form of Infused Core

has mutating properties, mostly regarding a thing’s body and mind

apparently radioactive

there are some things i wanna note

1) People throughout the DLC say the Ruiner was created by the Jakobs corp (the company) thru bio-engineering but I’m 99% sure that’s not true. The paperwork seems to me like they found the egg somewhere on Gehenna and decided to roll and experiment with it like all corporations do when they find weird alien shit. so maybe they experimented with whatever was inside the egg, but I don’t think they actually created it entirely

“Excavated from [REDACTED] ... Local legends speaks of a [REDACTED]. This theory is not endorsed by our research personnel.

2) The Ruiner’s design reminds me a lot of the Warrior.

3) Core immediately reminded me of Gythian Blood from Guns Love and Tentacles and I don’t think that’s coincidence to have 2 back-to-back DLCs where the big bad is focused on green death juice. I think Gythian Blood and Core are of the same stuffs.

4) Therefore, I think the Ruiner is (mostly) of Eridian origin (if you haven’t already guessed). 

This gives us an amazing look into how the Eridians actually create their beasts!!! And I’m so happy they showed us this.

(side note, Interitus Regina (the long name for Ruiner) literally means Destruction Queen and I think that’s beautiful <3)

i mean the idea that they plunge them from orbit to create an explosion similar to a nuke is fucking horrifying (but holy shit I love it so much ahhh it’s so cool!!!!)

the one side line from Oletta about how the company couldn’t control the Ruiner deffo makes me double down on this theory. I’m not entirely sure how Rose’s grandma knew about the whistling (I don’t think I’ve found every echo log in that area YET), but I would bet it was part of the testing given how many fuckin’ tape players they have throughout the facility. The Warrior was controlled by verbal commands via Jack, so it’s possible that the Ruiner was intended to be controlled similarly, but Jakobs intervention (or something like the way Rose hatched it) fucked it up.

now we know the Warrior was created to protect the Vault of the Destroyer (hmm.) so what the heck was the Ruiner created for? Ruiner is a name given to it by Jakobs/the people of Gehenna so we can’t really assume, but then again the monster names are pretty apt in this series even tho they probably technically shouldn’t be. 

it was only an egg, so maybe it was another test of Core? A Vault Monster incubating until it was ready to protecc and attacc but was never hatched because the Eridians ‘sacrificed’ themselves before it could? (I’m still not convinced the Eridians are the good guys. Listen. LISTEN. The guardian takedown is something to think about, BUT it doesn’t disprove that theory and I’ll stand by it because I 100% trust the Overseer more than bitchpants mcgee over here who thinks he’s soooo special for no reason fuck you and your dumb ‘I did what the Watcher could not’ bull you haven’t done shit.) ok sorry im done he just angers me. stupid guardian man. your whip is stupid and you should feel bad. oh also I totally called us actually being Guardians thru Guardian Rank before the game came out aha yeah.

I definitely think Gythian was a test/use of Core from the Eridians. We see in Bounty of Blood that core seems to mutate more the physical (and occasionally mental) parts of people, like with the crew challenges u do for Juno with all the weird hybrid people and whatnot. Gythian had the whole ‘the heart still beats’ thing going on (which is definitely a physical mutation if i’ve ever seen one), plus the whole, you know, mind control and shit. Which is p similar to what the menta gnats can do when charged with Infused Core. And keep in mind in BLaT we see DAHL notes on what happens to test subjects when injected with Gythian Blood. They mutated physically and went insane.

What im saying is Sirens and Eridium and Elements are connected, so what does Core equal? body/mind sure but are there unique creatures for core (yes holy shit I’m not talking about h2o au for once and FINALLY they gave us a canon name for the green stuff!!!). If not, I’d love to see a Siren interact with Core to see what it does to them. seriously why hasn’t tannis interrupted us yet. horrible excuse for a science lover (kidding kidding, I love her). I’d also really love a fuller rundown on what the hell Rose’s powers were. Because the whistling thing seemed to just be her grandma’s thingie passed down to her from her mom

but the core stuff

her gun seems to be infused with it. So did her sword thing. I didn’t really get a good look at it i was too busy trying to see thru my blurry tears of LOVE for this DLC.

Strangely while her tattoos are (mostly) green I actually don’t know if they’re core infused bc look at this

n look back at hers. hers aren’t very lime.

anyway

her eyes

I’d love to know if the core gives her immediate future sight or just increased perception or reaction times. there’s a huge difference but she seemed to be able to shoot the gun outta the sheriff’s hand near immediately and it seems kinda implied its because of the core (or at least because her eyes are glowing green)

there’s a possibility she has some unique core powers/possibly implants because of her relations to the project in the first place, or as leader of the devil riders after looting the facility. it’s really hard to say without more info and like i said im not sure if i missed an ECHO or two or not regarding her backstory :( 

Her hair is also green which I just noticed. Maybe she has core powers bc her grandmother got suuuuuuuuper irradiated/influenced working on project horizons and it passed down thru her n Rose’s mom, to Rose. Tannis does have a line about Sirens having unique hair colors and, if Sirens are linked to Eridium, perhaps those linked to Core also have unique hair color. Could also explain why only Rose seems to have those whistling powers. That said we don’t really see anyone else trying that whistling thing out afaik and idk if it was, like, a special ability or a certain tone/ditty or w h a t. 

i know being vague with everything gives them more creative freedom to create amazing characters and scenarios, but dammit I want A N S W E R S.

All THAT said man I’m so glad magic is real in the borderlands universe. oh, sorry, “magic”. It’s magic. Science it, tannis, I dare you. either way, I win. Either it’s magic and H2O AU is canon, or it’s science and I finally get my goddamn answers. Hey gearbox can you make a book just explaining all the science and eridian stuff. please. I’d love you forever. please. pleaheheheheaaasseee it’s all i’ve ever wanted.

oh also can i just say, suuuper disappointed we didn’t learn anything about anshin. Really wish non-fan favorite corporations would get the spotlight/lore for once. Like, I like Jakobs as much as the next guy, and I get WHY they did it (can’t have a corporation looking too good!!!) but they now have 3 DLCs (Jakobs Cove, GLaT, and Bounty of Blood) and also a hefty chunk of the main game. Like... we all know Jakobs fuckin sucks, look at what they did on Pandora. I really just want info on a medical corporation 😭 I have to do everything my damn s e l f. but SERIOUSLY IMAGINE the possibilities that could come from a medical corp getting its hands on eridian tech. like, yeah obviously the weapons corps are gonna use it for weaponry and stuff BUT WOULDN’T THE MEDICAL CORPS MUTATING PEOPLE MAKE MORE SENSE??? ldfhgldfshg I have to do everything my damn self...

anyway all that aside, this is definitely by favorite borderlands dlc by a LONG shot. Nothing comes close. Ahhh the lore, the nuclear aspect, the a e s t h e t i c (seriously, have I mentioned how much I adore Trigun???), the art, the music, the cryoslinger, the fact I can bust out going beeEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAans like Ray Chase at any time and it will MAKE SENSE. I love all of it.

oh, also, Rose is totally not dead. C’mon, they couldn’t find her body. She pulled a Lilith. “Are you sure she didn’t just suffer a wound that LOOKS fatal, only for her to come back in a blockbuster sequel...?” is a line from mr Jones himself (the movie guy)

I just hope when she comes back she gets to meet Captain Scarlett. I’d love to watch their interactions plus pirates and or ninjas. That’s 2 DLC villains now that have vanished without a trace. And I like Captain Scarlett way more than Rose (seriously I spent the entire beginning of the DLC complaining about how her voice bothered me- I was so happy she was a villain, I was hoping that was the case).

oh yeah, reminder, the people of vestige were living next to highly radioactive egg for likely years. i feel really bad for them :(

also!!!

this made me smile

[normal-thoughts-official]

HEY SO u didn’t wanna go on a trans!magnus tangent in ur sexuality post but *I* want you to go on a trans!magnus tangent! Tell me more about him coming to terms w/ his identity & how it’s influenced his life and all that. Essentially just give me all the trans!magnus content in ur brain. Love u ❤️❤️❤️ ~cursedlightwood

here’s my hot take: magnus’ gender is Tired. and yes, i will elaborate, because Ive spent the last 2-3 weeks doing research for this ask, so this is probably the most well-informed theory you’ll see on this subject. yeah, we’re doomed

EDIT: i was gonna say this from the get-go but i forgot, so: english is not my first language and i’m unsure about the usage of some terms that i found during research, particularly those referring to traditional javanese religions and customs; so, if you spot anything that is problematic, racist or colonialist please let me know and i’ll change it. 

ok, so i want to start this off by saying that, although javanese society had a binary gender system, they had pretty egalitarian views on gender, and from what i’ve seen the division of labor wasn’t really set in stone - although they were less common than male ones, there were female warriors, for instance. both men and women could be the sovereign and were equally respected, both could ask for a divorce, etc. the most important part of their gender views, to me, seems to be that they believed women were better for diplomatic roles and trading, because they believed men were too emotional and not as good as debating and making compromises as women were (same source)

so i’m just gonna say this, here and now: AFAB!Magnus makes a lot of sense because Magnus is the most diplomatic person you’ll ever fucking see, and in this context, if he were AFAB, he would have been socialized to be for a very young age. and i dont mean hes diplomatic just on the sense that he’s literally keeping most of the characters together and preventing fights (remember when he had to stop a Raphael VS Simon catfight? ugh), but also in the sense that out of everyone hes the one who best handles the seelie queen, for example. he’s good at Wit Battles, negotiating, building bridges and dealing with power relations when its needed.

and i mean, this would also be a pretty good start on why he’d be like “no thanks” when it comes to this whole Womanhood thing, because yeah, Magnus is good at that, he has to be, but does he like it? to me it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t, that he’s absolutely uninterested in anything involving power and negotiations and this whole ridiculous dance it involves. also he’s constantly giving himself the short end of the stick so y’know. honestly, at heart, magnus is an inventor, an explorer; he likes to create things, he likes to learn, he likes to explore the world around him, meet people, help them, build relationships - but on equal grounds, not this whole give-some-take-some thing diplomacy entails. and as a Woman™ in pre-colonial java society, it’s pretty much that, be a farmer, or a concubine - we’re gonna get to that a little bit later on.

so i think in this context little magnus would be like “no thanks” and wanting to go around and, i don’t know, look at plants and learn their properties and figure out why apples fall, or something. it’s not exactly a Man’s Role™ either, although to be fair i found it a little hard to figure out what exactly were men’s roles in javanese society because gender studies usually just focus on women and treat men as the standard and don’t really explore how manhood is construed. but anyway. i know that they were warriors more frequently than women (same source), but women could be warriors as well. like i said, gender roles in javanese society weren’t really set in stone. [alec voice] they’re not rules, they’re suggestions.

add to that the fact that magnus lived in a port city - he had to, since in the early 1600s the dutch were only settling in important ports and trading centers - and the ports in java were very important trading centers that had been attracting people from all over Asia and Europe for centuries, and had a quite good share of migrants and immigrants living there, including quite a good share of Buginese, aka the people who had a 5-gender division. jakarta, which is in java, has like the 10th biggest buginese population in the world, not to mention the countless other societies that had their own views on gender relations; and you have a pretty good and accepting environment when it comes to differences. the javanese were flexible, they were well aware that culture isn’t set in stone, and they were very prone to syncretism. the kingdom allowed people to have any religion they wanted, even if its “official” religion at the time was buddhism. so really: the javanese were actually not very into the whole “imposing cultural constructs” thing, especially the coastal javanese. so magnus would have likely had the freedom to explore and to not really want to conform to any gender stereotypes without that being a HUGE deal, in my opinion.

and then there’s the fact that the concept of womanhood was a pretty disputed one at the time; yes, the javanese had their own views, but it’s important to note that by the 1600s most of the coastal javanese population had converted to Islam, which led to a few differences as well; when compared to other southeast asian communities, for example, the rate of women in trade was a little different - while it was a steady 50% in almost all countries and cultures, in indonesia it was around 30%, because muslim communities had more of a “women stay at home” view. however, when compared to other asian societies such as the chinese society, where the rate was of 1-5%, you can see that the javanese’s egalitarian views on gender stood a fair amount of ground. also, in indonesia, precisely due to their more open views, Islam mostly syncretised with local religions and customs, including the gender views; in Bugis, for instance, the 5-gender system was kept, as were traditional customs such as “ritual transvestism” and homosexuality. so, yes, it was disputed, and people had many views on what people could or couldn’t do, but that mostly ended up becoming a kind of “live and let live” thing. which is the perfect environment for 1- AFAB!Magnus be Very Tired of this whole womanhood thing that no one can even decide what it is anyway; 2- Magnus to say “fuck this” and live as a masc-leaning genderless entity that just wanted to make some goddamn potions.

but then there’s the colonial relations, right? how do the dutch come into this already very complicated and delicately balanced equation? that was honestly the main point of my research, trying to figure out just how much influence the dutch had at such an early stage of colonisation, and also what it would be like to live in a mixed-culture household such as magnus’. here’s what i have:

during the first century of dutch colonisation (aka the part we’re talking about) the dutch and the europeans didn’t really have a big influence in javanese cultural and political relations. the javanese were pretty well organised and had a powerful and strong society so the europeans didn’t really manage to invade them successfully - even the portuguese, the most powerful european nation at the time, tried and failed to invade them for the whole 16th century (get rekt lmao). so what the dutch did was, they simply established themselves as one of the many companies that settled in jakarta to trade, and slowly built their power and influence from there. don’t get me wrong, the dutch were very violent colonisers and in other parts of indonesia they were doing the european thing of mass genocide as much as any other country. they weren’t a “softer” version of colonisers, they just didn’t have the power to subjugate the javanese, so they had to try a slower approach. during the early 1600s, the only dutch people in java were the VOC workers (VOC is the dutch east india company - the acronym is in dutch. basically the company that was there to get some nice spices to sell to the rest of europe so they could shove it all up their assholes or smth since up to this day their food is bland as shit), and they weren’t permanent settlers; they could only stay in java for the duration of their contract with the VOC and they couldn’t bring their wives and children with them, and they couldn’t bring any wives or mixed children they had while in java back to europe, either (same source).

this weird relationship meant that magnus’ “stepfather” and his mother probably had a relationship of concubinage (told you we’d get back to that), which was not uncommon in java neither before nor after the arrival of the dutch. in short, his mother was supposed to take care of his house, make him food and all that jazz, and also have a sexual relationship with him, in exchange for money (same source). it was not prostitution and it worked pretty much as a marriage, except it was temporary and contractual. BUT it meant that magnus’ mother would have to have converted to christianism (same source) and due to the fact that she was in a temporary contract, she couldn’t divorce him, and in their home he would treat her as, well, europeans treated their wives - with the particular western brand of sexism that they so kindly forced unto the rest of us. so that makes the whole thing even more disputed and complicated.

but as a VOC worker, magnus’ stepfather wouldn’t even be home for most of the day, and he couldn’t really keep magnus or his mom from, like, leaving the house and doing their things. i think he wouldn’t even try because that would prolly be very looked down upon in java; spousal abuse in southeast asia as a whole was pretty rare, since anyone could divorce whenever they wanted and women were politically and financially independent, so i think if he tried to pull something like that he would be in trouble - again, the dutch were the minority, and for the most part, they lived as the javanese did, in their villages, in their homes, eating their food and mostly adapting to their customs (same source). they even mostly spoke indonesian in their homes, since most indonesians didn’t speak dutch, and indonesia was kind of the universal language at the time, since there were many languages spoken both in and outside of java (this also explains why magnus speaks indonesian instead of javanese; that would have been the language spoken at his home. you have no idea how relieved having an explanation for this makes me). also there’s the pressing question of, would he even give a shit what magnus does or doesn’t do? magnus wasn’t his biological son, and most of these guys didn’t care about any biological children they might have had with these women, since they were women of color and they would leave them eventually anyway. honestly this is all the more reason for him to treat magnus like shit - he was javanese, he was brown, and he wasn’t even related to him by blood. this was also probably grounds for him to treat magnus’ mom even worse, since in his christian eyes the fact that she had a child outside of marriage made her even lesser than other indonesians.

so honestly, what i’m picturing is something like - most of the time it was pretty okay, there were certain expectations and a certain kind of female socialization but it was okay that he didn’t really fit in there, and then with his stepfather the whole thing was just shit. 

also, the fact that his mom was probably a concubine means there was a fair chance that his stepfather would have other concubines, and listen, yes i may be flexing, but you can’t stop me from imagining that maybe magnus was raised in a multicultural home with lots of other southeast asian women and children and maybe even buginese because again you can’t fucking STOP ME.

but either way, even if his home wasn’t like that, his city was - we don’t know which city he lived in, but it doesn’t matter, really; all cities with dutch settlers were port cities and therefore followed pretty much the same pattern of being a cultural tapestry with all sorts of influences coexisting in peace.

so really, little magnus lived in a pretty rich environment when it came to exploring his identity. he and his mom lived in a pretty egalitarian society gender-wise, he had the space and the opportunity to explore the world and figure out what he liked and didn’t like. am i going crazy imagining a tiny magnus with his mom, running around in other farms and listening, enraptured, stories of people from all over the world, about their cultures and lives, and learning there is so much to see and wanting to just go wherever he could, getting himself a passion for travelling that would later fuel his want to invent a quick way to go anywhere he wanted to, going to the port and seeing all the stuff they had available, from plants with healing properties to spices, and just loving to figure out their properties and how they could be mixed together to create new things, loving this world full of wonder and possibilities? maybe. god.

but anyway, what i’m trying to get at here is that it’s really impossible to think of a cis magnus in this context, no matter if you think AMAB or AFAB trans magnus - i know ive been focused on AFAB magnus here but really that’s mostly because 1- Projection; 2- thinking about AFAB magnus brings in new layers of complexity that need further exploration in my opinion; but really this applies to any magnus. what would being “cis” even mean, in a context where the very concepts of manhood and womanhood were so disputed and complex? and that’s not even going into the fact that after so many centuries, complying to gender roles of that time looked nothing like complying to our modern gender roles. really, it’s a lost cause. magnus kind of has a culturally-specific gender that…. no one but other warlocks born in similar situations could, really? there’s no word for it. there’s no explaining it with words. it is [REDACTED GOOD OMENS REFERENCE]

the closest we have is masc-leaning enby, since somewhere along the way he seems to have decided to use male pronouns and have a mostly masc-presenting body, even if paired with a more fem-presenting appearance fashion and mannerisms-wise. but again it’s too unique, there are way too many influences here.

and honestly that’s kind of beautiful! i love imagining small magnus having contact with people with all kinds of views on gender and society throughout his childhood, exploring, trying on their clothes, learning about their religions and customs, having elderly friends from different backgrounds and also young friends who were raised in very different ways, and sharing all of that, and learning about who he is amidst all of that, and being able to explore that and talk about that to his mom and friends and close people because they are used to these differences. even if when at home he was probably met with some kind of transphobic rhetoric and violence because of his stepfather and the imposed christianity that came with it - and that unlike other religions, didn’t syncretize at all.

which brings us to a second, very important point on the whole trans magnus ordeal, which is how deeply tied to racism the transphobia he’s suffered and the general understanding of his gender was. of course, this applies to every single of-color and non-western born person, but magnus has lived that through history. from a very young age, the blunt of the violence he was met with came from a racist standpoint that believed his very identity and existence made him lesser and in need to be corrected - because that’s what, after all, the colonizers were doing. their whole rhetoric was that the colonized were barbaric and needed them to learn the right ways through violence. it is worth noticing that the javanese have been referred to as “the most inhuman of all people” by dutch colonizers, and amongst the reasons for that was the fact that their views on gender were so different from the european’s (same source).

so really we’re mixing in the fact that he was a “bastard” child in his stepfather’s eyes, a warlock, and trans… and yeah, oof. there’s no way he was treated with anything other than violence from way before his mom’s suicide and the subsequent drowning attempt. in his stepfather’s eyes, everything about magnus’ existence was demonic, impure, and all the more reason why he and his mom were dirty and needed to be corrected.

it’s also worth noting that sorcery was a very big part of javanese culture that was also syncretized with pretty much every religion. the javanese believed in sorcery, believed everyone could do magic, and the dutch, of course, despised that. the source above is a pretty interesting article that argues that the european’s so-called “skepticism” on magic and “rational-based” culture was actually part of a construction of whiteness that hoped precisely to differentiate them from the “savage” others. i mean, the guys were burning women at the stake because they were “witches”, but every other culture’s religions, rituals and magic were just bullshit and couldn’t be trusted because the europeans were too rational and knew better? okay buddy. it also features an amazing story about a dutch colonizer who got hexxed because of his racism that is, quite frankly, heartwarming. but i digress.

so yeah listen i know i already talked about this on the other ask but there’s really no way the reason his mother killed herself was because she found out magnus was a warlock or a demon’s son or whatever. magic was part of their culture. it was what they believed in. it was a part of nature to them. it’s way more likely that the reason she killed herself was the constant violence she was met with in daily life that she couldn’t get away from, and his stepfather simply blamed magnus because, to him, he represented everything that was wrong with their culture - and that makes even more sense if we think about trans!magnus, because that makes him an even deeper abomination. it’s very likely that most of the violence and belittling his mother had to face was related to magnus as well - look what you created, what you do, your culture is an abomination, this is unacceptable. but magnus was way too small at that time, and he believed what his stepfather told him, because i mean, what else would he believe in?

i also think that asmodeus kind of messed with his perception of how the whole thing went down, telling him that he “murdered” him when really it was clearly self defense, erasing the violence his stepfather directed towards magnus and focusing on the end to convince magnus that he was evil, unredeemable, that no one would accept him but asmodeus, that he had no other choice. so that’s super fun! but yeah i do believe that asmodeus spent enough time gaslighting magnus and rewriting this whole story for this to be considered magnus’ worst memory, seen by him as a reminder of his “ugly side” that doesn’t really even exist. asmodeus weaponized this, which served the double purpose of convincing magnus he had no choice but to follow asmodeus, and teaching him that violence is normal and there’s nothing wrong with it, and that retaliating makes him bad. 

this is all i have to say about the asmodeus years, really, because like i said before i don’t think he gives a shit about gender, he’s way older than it and who cares. but the trauma that the whole thing put magnus through is easily weaponizable. @thesorrowoflizards also wrote this amazing fic that features the headcanon that asmodeus used magnus’ transness to manipulate him as well, using spells that made him more masculine and stuff but only if magnus obeyed him. fun! especially considering that he was with asmodeus through his puberty (or at least that’s likely) when his body would have begun to change, so for him to have such a masc-presenting body…. yeah. this is very plausible. i love pain.

and then we get to england, where again, everyone is an asshole, about everything, all the time. like holy shit, he thought the europeans cared too much when he was in java, but that is nothing compared to the brits and their casual sentencing people to death for being gender non conforming. also, to the europeans, asian men were seen as emasculate and their gender relations as a whole was unnatural, and listen, i know that in 18th-19th century england men also wore makeup and stuff, but i mean, magnus was probably seen as exotic in his “effeminate” mannerisms and non-compliance to gender roles, even if people didn’t know he was AFAB or just trans in general. he was probably objectified in that sense, kinda like a human-zoo sorta thing. fascinating, these emasculated asians with weird bodies and customs. ugh.

so yeah gender got particularly exhausting at that time, too. thankfully there were the warlocks, who were old enough to know all of this was bullshit and who had people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds, thousands of people with culturally-specific genders, as well as other people who were raised in similar environments as him. so in there he finds a home of sorts, a place where this doesn’t matter and where he can be himself and nobody cares, and also has access to different cultures and views and knowledge, and really it’s like the good parts of his childhood again. he learns more about magic and potion-making, about other cultures and places, travels the world, learns about science and the workings behind his magic. creates new potions, new spells, continues his education, learns and remembers how much he loves this, the cultural effervency, the chances to learn and explore and create. really the warlock community is so amazing and it’s like, golden era.

but he’s also living amongst mundanes and to some extent he likes them - not to mention, he likes travelling and learning about different places and cultures. and they seem to care more and more about differentiating genders as time goes by, and to be getting more and more violent in their never-ending quest to force people to fit into these roles, and it’s. tiring. exhausting. who cares. it makes less and less sense to him, and this alienation from the whole thing only solidifies his non-conformance and general inability to fit. sometimes he feels old, and alone, even if he has other people who are Like Him now - the shadow world can get tiring, sometimes, and there’s also the shadowhunters racism thing going on that’s also inevitably trying to subjugate their spaces and looks down on their culture - so it also has the downsides of his childhood. sometimes it’s like there’s no word for who he is, no one that can understand it, no place where he can be fully himself and loved for it. and this only intensifies by the middle of the 19th century, when suddenly makeup and colorful clothing is not for men anymore, and he’s even less conforming than before - he was a pretty respectable Man™ to their standarts up to that point, but from then on that is lost. it doesn’t matter too much, because even if he is masc-leaning, he still doesn’t really see himself as a man in the sense that he seems to be expected to. but that furthers the alienation, and the feeling of loneliness and of being old and unfit for this world.

that is also when he meets camille! and that’s canon because there was that one picture of him with camille and ragnor and the clothes they are wearing are very much from the 1840s (i talked about this here), which is precisely when the whole men’s fashion differentiating from women’s fashion thing was starting. so in the context of his gender this makes it even easier for camille to manipulate him into thinking that she’s the only one who will ever understand and accept him, and that he’s naive, and that he doesn’t fit into the world and doesn’t understand what’s best for him, and really he should trust her judgement better because he is a man out of his time, but she can help him, and- yeah. that good olde cis-girl-abuses-trans-person routine, with even more elements than usual. ggghhhghh

and it’s not until the 1960s and 70s that these notions start to actually be challenged. of course, trans people have always existed and were building their own communities and helping each other as well as they could, and magnus certainly was a part of that, because, well, that’s who he is. he doesn’t leave people in need and he knows how painful it is to go through all of this alone, so he does his best to help and adopts pretty much everyone he can. but for the most part, they are a diaspora, and the cissexist society that alienates and tries to kill them goes on unchallenged.

that gives him all the more reason to get so involved with stonewall and the subsequent building of the queer neighborhoods and communities, that feeling that maybe he can belong after all, that things might change and his life doesn’t have to be an infinite cycle of violence, isolation, abuse, and repeat. seeing these events unfold, helping keep people safe, meeting Sylvia Rivera and all the other trans people of color who were part of this, who had stories so similar to his, who were also bisexual (!!), who knew what it was like. that was healing, and that was important to him, and gjfdkafaskfa yeah.

and of course not everything is a sea of roses, because then the community starts to divide and trans and bi ppl, particularly of color, particularly those who are like him, start to be looked down on. Sylvia is arrested and even booed at Pride, suddenly he’s drawing the short end of the stick again. and then there’s the AIDS crisis, and he sees so many people die, and for a while, it feels like there’s no way out after all. and he even loses a lot of his warlock friends, the people who really understand him in his entirety, because sometime around that there’s the Circle massacre, as well. it’s a dark time for him, and honestly it’s a good thing he’s sworn off romance after the whole camille ordeal to clear his head, because after losing so many people he’s never felt this alienated, this alone, and to fall into the arms of another camille or asmodeus would have been just too easy.

but god, he heals. it’s crazy, but he has raphael, he has cat, ragnor, dot, elias, and he somehow builds himself up and relearns to trust and starts to believe that he has the love he’s always believed himself unworthy of having, that he believed impossible to him. and he starts to open up, and to feel more confident in his own skin, right in time to meet alec.

and look, trans!Magnus just makes malec all the more powerful. not only is this shadowhunter showing up and fully trusting a downworlder, giving him his strength, caring about him, cleaning his home (!) and taking care of him, something he hasn’t allowed himself to have for so long, something he didn’t believe he could have and that alec does so easily even when they’ve barely met. he shows magnus so much care and respect from day one and magnus doesn’t get that from anyone, let alone a shadowhunter, let alone a shadowhunter that’s there with jocelyn’s entitled daughter who treats him as a tool - and look, i know he loves clary, but she is entitled and magnus unfortunately enables her and other entitled shadowhunters to treat him as such, because even he treats himself as such most of the time, and it’s something he needs to work on, and probably has been at least since he broke up with camille.

but he’s also a white, gay man, and magnus has seen firsthand that these people can be nasty to people like him. yes he tried to help alec come to terms with his sexuality, and yes he’s surprised him before, but it’s also not like alec didn’t fuck up and wasn’t entirely… well, shadowhunter-y and had a lot of trouble believing that things didn’t have to be the shadowhunter, bigoted way for a while. but alec doesn’t give a shit if magnus is trans, it doesn’t lessen his attraction or love to him in any way, and it’s just. ugh. beautiful.

and yeah this has gotten too long and it already took me like 3 weeks to answer it because of the amount of research ive done and general tiredness so im gonna end this here, and on a positive note for a change! magnus is happy and learning to take care of himself and accepts himself and trans rights. hell yeah.

[tysabrewing-s]

Thoughts on Lena?

Wow anon u rlly just asked my number one actual fave™ as always prepare for one big post hhvhvhjvn 

Like ive always liked edgy teen characters I think they have a nice charm to them and I like the conflict they cause for other characters ( best example for this is besides Lena is needletail from warriors tbh!! Theyre rlly similar in cool ways) 

Lenas like different for me tho she isnt just some dumbass teen messing shit up and everybody be like "broooo stop being so immature :\\" I mean she is that but she means more to me as a character again abt to get super personal ( what can i say my favs are my favs cuz I relate to them personally or wish I was like them lmao) but I relate to her like a lot haha I dont have anybody in my life like magica is to her in all but I can relate in a very toned down way of how controlling she is and how she doesnt get a bit of space ik that isnt the main aspect of it but god I still felt that u know I also relate how magicas keeps being like "u cant have friends lmao its only to get scrooges dime stop getting attached" again not exactly the same but a certain person in my life is always telling me friendships are dumb they never last blah blah blah shouldnt bother to pursue any for this reason and its just annoying okay anyways tho enough abt me im srry this is so long its basically me just venting :') 

One of the best things abt her tho?? How she sasses pack at magica and isnt shown to be in the wrong pretty sure everybody and their mom has talked abt this but like srsly not all victims of abuse are super nice wouldnt hurt anybody type of person hell most arent its just such a breath of fresh air for once to see a character go thru this shit especially one of those edgy™ characters ( srry to describe her as edgy like 5 times but idk other ways my vocabulary sucks fhchcjvhv) and isnt shown as just being rebellious or whatever magicas literally treating her like dried up cat piss and audience KNOWS this we literally cant deny it and when beakley apologized to her for being rude I wanted to explode from happiness??? Ive never seen a show do that have an adult admit they were wrong okay I dont watch a bunch of cartoons but even when i think abt other stuff i like like books movies games etc ive still NEVER seen this 

Basically lena is an absolutely AMAZING representation of abuse victims is what im trying to get at ( btw if im in any way wrong abt this pls someone dm me!! Ive never been abused so I get I can never get it like know how that experience feels if im wrong pls educate me on this!!) 

Also I adore her dynamic w webby like my short answer is im a big old softy for nice bubbly girl\emo gal trope and I eat it up like somebody who found a bit of water in a desert 😔👊 

But like its also rlly heccing epic cuz most likely before her nobody ever treated her as like a person so just an extra cherry on top with it 

I see their dynamic as like finding comfort in each other and helping each other with it and idk its very endearing and sweet to me to think abt 

And on top of this?? Shes still a dumb as FUCK teenager!! Like beagle day massacre is basically just her taking a 12 yearold to crash a party lmao and forget the eps name but when her huey and webby just went underground for whatever reason?? Absolute horrible inlfuence and im all for it babey 

Anyways even tho ive written a book by now heres some headcannons djvjvjvjb

She likes an ironic shitposter basically just think of those cant see the haters thru my tears or is crying until 4 am badass stuff haha 

Cusses like theres no tomorrow 

When she gets older ( if she like ever ages that is lol) her and louie get rlly close like their buds and do dumb stuff like stealing a police car 

I hc her as a non binary lesbian!! She goes by she\they but mostly she 

She makes a tik tok ironically but then it actually got popular 

She used to steal a lot while living on the streets so shes rlly particular on what she spends her money on and she rarely shares anything 

Everyday she needs at least a while to herself to listen to some music and stuff like that she hates being around ppl all the time 

Idk if this even counts as a headcannon cuz ik everybody agrees with but shes touch starved af she rlly only accepts hugs and stuff from webby tho 

She actually doesn't think violets is a knock off of her or anything like that shes just a jealous bitch haha like shes actually rlly impressed that shes good at controlling magic 

She wouldnt tell anybody this but she actually kinda likes how she looks she isnt super confident abt it but she doesnt think shes ugly and is like "huh u know what my dyed hair is kinda dope" 

Shes like totally in love with lemon demon 

Alrighty pretty much done with this post!! Srry if im rude or its to long I just can never shut up abt my fav characters once u ask me yknow jghfjfghj

[terresdebrumestories]

Clark Kent, of Krypton - 2/4: Shadow

FANDOM: DC’s cinematic universe. RATING: Mature. WORDCOUNT: 20 640 (Fic total: ~98k words) PAIRING(S): Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne (main focus is on Clark, though). CHARACTER(S): Kal-El | Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Jor-El, Lara Lor-Van, Kara Zor-El, Zor-El, Martha Kent, Alfred Pennyworth, Diana Prince, Barry Allen, Arthur Curry, Victor Stone, John Stewart, J’onn J’onzz, plus a quick cameo by Lois Lane. GENRE: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), transition fic with romance. TRIGGER WARNING(S): A great deal of anxiety and self loathing, especially in parts one and two. Some descriptions are heavily inspired by my experience of dysphoria-induced dissociation. SUMMARY: Batman crashes on Krypton a few days before the Turn of the Year celebrations and Kal-El's life takes a sharp turn to the left, on a path that will ultimately lead him to becoming Clark Kent.

OTHER CHAPTERS: [I. Kal-El] [III. Superman] [IV. Clark Kent] ALSO AVAILABLE: [On AO3] [On Dreamwidth]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thank you, still, to @stuvyx for the wonderful illustrations and to @susiecarter for the beta :D

“Can you see him?”

Shadow leans a little harder on his hands, peering over the curve of the Citadel dome to survey one of several guest quarters’ balconies. In the sky, Krypton’s moons shine crimson over the lands, their light like blood spread over the planes of the jagged mountains and the pale stone of the Citadel, the balconies below painted in a burgundy darker than even Shadow’s suit.

“Not yet,” he tells Support, his own voice too loud in the confines of his helmet. “Maybe he’s just not in the mood to come out tonight.”

“You would know better than me,” Kara replies, slipping out of her more professional tones. “I am not his friend.”

The truth is, neither is Shadow. He may have brought Batman out of his destroyed spacecraft and into the Els’ residence, but they have not talked to one another—nor, indeed had any contact at all—since that fateful winter day. It is easy for Shadow to remember it: the bitter cold biting at the tips of his fingers after the suit had to divert power away from temperature regulation for a while. The ache in his limbs even as he set dreams of his bed aside and decided to push himself through another rescue. The burning heat of flames licking at his face once he pulled Batman out of his destroyed spacecraft and willed his helmet off to examine the man’s wounds. Batman, on the other hand, was unconscious for the whole process, and kept under for over a day after his rescue. What little connection exists between him and Shadow is one-sided, at best.

Not that Shadow has not been paying attention to the shipwrecked man. He has kept a close ear to the gossip spread about him, just in case curiosity should have turned into resentment. In the end, though, the ever-faster advance of the Melokariel Proposition has kept most of El—and Shadow—far too busy to worry about a lone alien who does not even have the decency to look different from regular Kryptonians. This, of course, proved to be an oversight once Batman, smarter than most Kryptonians and in a far better position to notice the abnormalities in the Principality’s political proceedings, started noticing something was amiss and taking an interest in the situation.

As it is, though, there is nothing Shadow can do about it but be wary of Batman’s involvement. It is rumored that Pol Vea-Ry, the Wise Queen of Warriors, will call for another vote on the matter soon; and, like Kara, Shadow is inclined to agree with those who speculate that Tsiahm-Lo will vote with her...and with two Council members out of five in favor, it is likely that those in El who would rather not see the project come to fruition will continue on the same road they were already taking, only at a harder pace than before. There will be many families reaching for the colonies in the months to come, and more militia—Ellon or otherwise—doing everything they can to prevent that. There is blood on the walls of the Citadel. Some of it, Shadow helped put there. More often than not, though, he failed to save those who spilled it, and in the urgency of the situation, Batman, like many of the pettier offenders Shadow used to worry about in the beginning, had to fall low on the list of priorities.

Until, that is, it was discovered that the alien has had dealings with the Green Lanterns.

“There he comes,” Shadow says.

Not a moment too soon, either. The suit is strong enough to help with most physical tasks Shadow has to perform, but sticking to the wall like an overgrown spider requires a lot of muscle control, and the effort never fails to leave Shadow stiff and uncomfortable.

“Is he alone?”

Shadow waits until Batman crosses the balcony and braces his arms against the railing, gazing over the outer city and the mountains beyond, before he answers in the affirmative.

“Good,” Kara says. Then, in a grumble: “I wish the repairs on my handscreen weren't taking so long. I hate being unable to see what is going on on your end.”

“I’d offer to describe everything,” Shadow retorts as he braces himself for a jump, “but I’m afraid that would make me sound a tad more insane than I’d like to appear.”

He smirks when Kara snorts. Then he pushes against the Citadel wall and, in a small shower of everlasting concrete, drops a dozen feet downwards. He can almost hear Kara’s eyes roll when he puts the elasticity of his suit to good use and sticks the landing with very little impact to his joints. Vain, he realizes, but still much faster than crawling downward—and much more dignified too.

“I was wondering if you’d show yourself,” Batman says, quiet and unsurprised, as Shadow rises to his feet.

And here Kara thought Shadow enjoyed dramatics.

He takes a step closer to Batman, careful to remain in the part of the balcony that can’t be seen from the inside, and does not put much effort in disguising his amusement when he speaks.

“You could have said something,” he replies, adopting the grammatical forms of a middle-class man addressing an equal.

He rolls his eyes when Batman chooses stony silence over even a simple shrug. Part of Shadow wants to wait the man out, but he decides to be the bigger masked creature and ask:

“Do you know who I am?”

“I’ve heard of you.”

Batman falls into silence again. Under his helmet, Shadow's mouth opens in disbelief. Theatrics can be useful, he will admit to that much, especially where civilians are concerned. That Batman would use the same tactics on him, though? It rankles more than Shadow would have anticipated, and his shoulders stiffen in response. He manages to suppress a scoff at the last second, and then goes to stand at the railing, careful to stay out of view from the room, just in case.

Kal-El, of course, would shrink from such a chilly welcome and sink into himself. Shadow knows he cannot afford to let himself be defeated so easily, though, and so he ignores both Batman’s reservation and Kara’s comment—“How in Rao’s name did you of all people manage to draw this man into a conversation?”—before he reaches into his pocket and produces the Green Lanterns’ bracelet.

“I think this is yours,” he tells Batman.

He does not change his tone—casual, but polite. A simple conversation between strangers of equal ranking, though technically it is something of a demotion for Batman; but the other man still gives him a sharp look before he takes his bracelet back. His expression, mostly unchanged, seems grimmer than usual but not outright hostile, and Shadow waits the silence out, solid as a stone and patient as the sun. Shadow is not a petty creature—cannot afford to be—but he cannot be the only one to make a move here.

“The Els say you brought me here.”

This is not the reaction Shadow was hoping for, but it is not rejection, either, and so he shrugs as he says, “I thought this would be where you’d have the best chance of survival...if any. Would you rather I’d left you where I found you?”

“How did you know they would take me in?”

“Gods, he is starting to remind me of Queen Ra-Ul,” Kara sighs in Shadow’s ears.

It is not a compliment.

“The Prince and his wife are well known for their devotion to Rao,” Shadow says, ignoring Kara's comment. “Assuming they would help you didn’t seem like that big a leap of faith.”

It is difficult to say whether Batman means for his scoff to go unnoticed or not, but Shadow hears it either way. He knows better than to react to it, though, and says instead:

“I would have had more reservations, if I’d known you were working with one of Krypton’s oldest and most prominent enemies.”

The only entities Krypton—especially its upper classes—resents more than the Green Lanterns are Feyar, Paom, and Koahu: three planets who formed an alliance to fight their way free of Kryptonian dominion long before the Lanterns were ever a dream. Still, fourth on the list of mortal enemies of your host planet is nothing to scoff at, and Shadow knows for a fact that Batman is smart enough to realize that.

“I knew some people would be unhappy about the connection,” Batman says. “I did not expect you to be one of them.”

“Do you always evade questions, or are you just giving me special treatment?”

“I like to keep my options open.”

On the other end of the line, Kara groans. Shadow does not react in any way that will be obvious to Batman, but he is rather inclined to agree. He rolls his eyes again, but does not quite manage to prevent his shoulders from tightening a fraction. He had been expecting some evasion on Batman’s part. He would have attempted the same if their positions were reversed. But what Batman is doing now is starting to verge on sabotage, and neither Shadow nor Kara—nor, he suspects, Batman himself—have time to waste on this particular dance.

“I’m not here to antagonize you,” he tells Batman, pausing to give him the time to absorb the new word. “You’re right, I work with the Lanterns too. Or I work with people who work with them, to be precise. I do still need to know what you’re doing here.”

“I’m not a spy,” Batman says.

“’That’s what a spy’d say’,” Kara says in an exaggerated version of Shadow’s more casual grammar, her voice dropping a half-octave at least.

Under the helmet, Shadow rolls his eyes.

“That, I can believe,” he says, ignoring the slap of what he assumes is Kara’s hand hitting her forehead. “You have still been asking too many questions about the Melokariel Proposition, and you've been seen in places you shouldn’t have been visiting.”

Batman has also been seen leaving his rooms at night, via this very balcony. Sending Kryo to spy on him was not an easy decision to make, and a sliver of Kal’s shame pricks at Shadow’s conscience, but he pushes it aside. The literary association between him and The Shadow may not have been his choice, but he does take the role seriously, and one whose mission it is to protect an entire realm cannot afford to let even friendship stop them.

“Maybe you don’t care about the consequences that could have for the House of El—”

“No one would suspect them of colluding with me,” Batman cuts in with a slight snap to his voice. “Everyone at court knows the only one of them who will spend any time with me is a timid simpleton. They will assume he couldn’t have guessed anything, and they will be right.”

Batman has gone back to higher-class inflections for this last sentence, the sudden distance he puts between himself and Shadow a stark reminder of Kal’s experiences at court, and it takes more effort than it usually would to ignore the wound and remain Shadow.

“Be that as it may,” Shadow says, relieved to hear no tightness in his voice, “I need—”

“Kal!” Kara all but shouts at him, “say something, for Vohc’s sake! You are not a simpleton!”

“The Els have been helpful, in their way,” Shadow tells Batman without acknowledging his cousin, “and considering their potential replacements, it’s in the Principality’s best interest that they stay in power, at least for the moment.”

“If you say so,” Batman says.

His face has not changed, but Shadow has heard Batman’s voice enough to recognize the smirk in his tone. It gives the impression of something more behind the word, some sort of double meaning, almost suggestive. Shadow’s face heats up beneath his helmet, and he finds himself abruptly glad that Batman cannot see him. Not that it does him any good, as his blush is perfectly audible when he answers:

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not what’s happening here.”

“If you say so,” Batman repeats, mild and unconcerned.

“That,” Kara sighs into her communicator, “was pathetic.”

Shadow is not the type of creature whose shoulders hunch at the slightest provocation, but that does not mean he disagrees with his cousin’s words. It is hardly a surprise that he lost the upper hand several questions ago. He knew, after all, that this was Batman’s aim, and allowed the conversation to progress anyway because he felt cooperation would be a better way to proceed...and also, in large part, because he thought Batman would reciprocate. He did not, though, and now Shadow realizes he will need to pry if he wants to leave this conversation with any clear information.

The problem being, of course, that he has no idea how to do that.

Shadow was never meant to interrogate anyone, especially not someone who evidently knows his way around inconvenient questions. Militia men, for the most part, expect brute force, because this is what they were trained against, which makes it easy to trick them with more subtle tactics. And in any case, half of the time either Kara or Kal can glean more precise information through their superiors, anyway. Interrogating Batman, though, let alone in a meaningful way? Shadow never learned how to do that. At first, it was naivety. Shadow once thought the Militia members who hurt citizens during arrests, or were unnecessarily violent with them, were rogue elements, and that bringing them to justice with sufficiently obvious proof would be enough to shatter what he believed was inertia on their superiors’ parts. This happened often in the beginning, hope holding out against all else, even proof at times. But as time went on, it became apparent El’s police forces—and, later, the Council’s Militia—did not focus on criminals with nearly as much zeal as they did on reminding the whole of El that the Wise Council loved them, protected them, and deserved nothing less than their utter respect and total obedience. Eventually, Shadow saw enough of these visits—often reasonably scheduled, but just as often happening late at night, or other times when citizens would not have expected to be visited.

One day, one such house call ended with the police dragging an entire family away from their home in the middle of the night, pushing them all into an aircraft, and spiriting them away over the mountains. Shadow stood and watched as it happened, a weight like stones in his guts telling him he ought to intervene. The younger, more hopeful part of him—the one that still believed the way the members of the court rejected the lower classes’ grammatical forms of Ellon so completely as to make them almost into a foreign language had to be a bug rather than a feature—told him to wait. Wait, make sure. Trust that things would turn out all right. But then a week passed. The family did not come back. One week became two, became three, and if would have taken many more to convince Shadow if Queen Oa Ni-Col—Kara’s mother, whose independence of thought and outspoken nature had always been noted at court—had not made the unexpected decision to overcome a debilitating fear of heights in order to fling herself off her bedroom balcony into the mountains, hundreds of feet below.

“Batman,” Shadow tries again, “I realize you don’t care about the Els. That’s your right. But your actions will have an impact on more than just them if you’re not careful, and I won’t be able to mitigate the consequences of you being caught if I don’t know what you’re doing.”

Shadow’s voice is pitched lower than Kal’s. It rings clearer, too. This time it rises on the last few words though, pleading bleeding in at the edges, and for a moment Shadow almost fears he is about to be unmasked. What happens instead is a long silence before Batman eventually nods. Shadow has practice hiding his relief by now, and so his body language does not change. But the rush is still there, and it takes him a moment to realize Batman is staring at his helmet with almost frightening intensity.

He has rarely been this glad for the two-way mirror effect of his visor.

“I am not here to hurt anyone,” Batman says, sounding as if it is costing him some effort to reveal even that much. “But there is something strange about the Melokariel Proposition.” He pauses and then, even more reluctantly than before, finishes: “Whatever it is about.”

“He’s been investigating all this time and he does not know what it would do?” Kara exclaims on her end of the line. “What a—Kal, you have to keep him off the field!”

Shadow tends to agree, but to tell her so would be to reveal her to Batman, and he would rather avoid that as long as possible. The fewer people who know Shadow does not work alone, the safer Kara will stay.

“There is,” Shadow tells Batman, “and I’ll explain as soon as I can. I don’t have the time for it tonight—there are other things I need to do—but I’ll explain. All I ask in exchange is that you stay inside tonight, and wait for my instructions.”

“Does he look like he intends to cooperate?”

Batman’s shoulders have tightened. His neck stiffens and, by his side, the fingers of his right hand clench together. Shadow can’t tell Kara as much, but he suspects she has a fairly good idea as to the answer anyway. It is not, after all, that surprising. Batman has been too invested in this research, is too strong-willed to give up when someone asks him to. And if these were not indications enough, there is the matter of his obvious disdain for and disappointment with Kal-El’s lack of interest in politics. None of that speaks of Batman being able to let go of the topic.

Besides, Shadow thinks in a surprisingly detached, distant way, if even Batman does not think twice about Kal-El’s lack of knowledge after spending such an extended amount of time with him, no one else will. It is reassuring information to have, even if it will do nothing but fan the flames of Kal’s shame.

None of that, of course, makes the matter of Batman’s involvement with Krypton’s political issues any less of a problem...or a mystery.

“I mean it,” Shadow insists, hoping despite an increasingly loud sense of resignation that Batman will decide to surprise everyone and actually cooperate. “You don’t know enough about Krypton or the Proposition for this to end with anything other than you dead in a ditch.”

That is, after all, where Shadow would have ended up more than once, if not for the suit and Kara’s support. Batman, however, does not seem all that disposed to see it, and Shadow restrains himself from sighing. He steps onto the balcony railing instead, orders the suit to shift into its gliding form and, as soon as the batons on his back have melted into wings, jumps down and to the right, as if aiming for the more populous areas of the outer city.

“It is a good thing we never made you into a politician,” Kara says. “That went terribly.”

“I noticed, thank you,” Shadow says, the part of him that still belongs to Kal even while in the suit shriveling with humiliation.

“You are welcome. There is no improvement without feedback.”

Kal does not reply to that, too focused on his second-least-favorite part of gliding in the suit: the landing. The maneuver is tricky enough when he aims for a horizontal surface and has enough room to use a proper parachute—to land on the Citadel’s outer wall, with its near verticality and smooth surface is another exercise altogether, and he is never as grateful for the suit’s gripping claws as when he has to perform this specific operation.

“Almost no roll this time,” Kara teases, more good-natured than dismayed now. “You are getting good with this thing.”

“And here I thought not dying in it on the first try was already a sign of competence,” Shadow retorts.

Kara snorts at the quip and, Shadow is pretty sure, mutters something about him needing to be like this more often. He ignores it, used to that sort of remark by now, and makes his way back toward Batman’s balcony.

“You are panicking again.”

“I’m not.”

“Kal, this suit monitors your heartbeat.”

“I know,” Shadow retorts, “and I know I’m scared, but this is still not me panicking.”

Shadow, unlike Kal, does not panic. It would be a lie to say he is unaffected, of course, especially when the smallest slip could easily mean a death as gruesome as his aunt’s—and as Shadow, he has a better understanding of what that would be like than most. Nevertheless, he is not only still moving, but also in full possession of his wits. This is nothing close to panic.

“All right, then,” Kara concedes. “Are you nearly there? Distances are harder to judge on two dimensional displays.”

“I am,” Shadow says.

Down below, to Shadow’s complete lack of surprise, Batman is still standing on his balcony...or, more precisely, on the balcony’s railing. The moons shine overhead, irregular shadows casting Batman in dramatic shades of crimson and black as his cape flares out in the wind, jagged ends like daggers slicing the air. Kal watches the man’s ramrod-straight posture, the set of his shoulders, the angle of his neck as he surveys the western half of the outer city, and sighs.

“Is something the matter?” Kara asks.

“Nothing,” Shadow says.

Part of him wants to tell her she is not allowed to call him overdramatic again, but the thought feels bizarrely like a betrayal, and so he keeps it to himself. Besides, to speak his mind here would do nothing but spark a discussion they have already had a thousand times between them. No, it is not his fault Zod’s engineers conceived the suit as a body-tight armor. No, it is not his fault crimson is the best camouflage in El’s particularly clear nights, and no, it is not his fault the shape of his helmet—the only one he has found that allows for a clear panel of display beads while still protecting him—makes Shadow look like a vengeful bug. He knows it, and he knows Kara knows it. It prevents neither Kara teasing him about it every chance she gets, nor Kal feeling irrationally insecure about it. Deciding that silence is the better part of honor, Shadow keeps his mouth shut and focuses on not losing his grip on the wall instead.

“Does it look like he is about to leave?” Kara asks after a short pause. “Did he bring some sort of rope?”

“Nothing I can see, but he does seem to be bracing for a jump.”

“You can’t be serious,” Kara exclaims, her breathing disrupting the connection for one uncomfortable moment. “There is at least six thousand feet between that balcony and the city! He can’t possibly make that jump!”

“I’ve made it before,” Shadow points out, and is not surprised when Kara hisses:

“Against my advice! And you are wearing the best armor Krypton has to offer—what does Batman even have? A fancy cape.”

“I don’t know how he plans to survive the drop either. I mean, the nearest rooftops are only about two thousand feet away but—”

“That does not make the situation any better!”

Kara is making a fair point, here, but before Shadow can concede it, Batman takes a deep breath and, with one powerful push of his thighs, throws himself off the balcony. Shadow, heart rising in his throat, forces air back into his lungs even as he jumps off the wall, letting the suit rearrange the material of his wing to absorb the worst of the impact. He rolls to his feet in the same movement and runs up to the railing just in time to see Batman, cape extended into a makeshift glider that slows his descent, shoot some kind of line at a decorative beam below and a few feet in front of him.

A moment later, the line tenses. Batman’s entire silhouette—clearly meant to evoke a particular image—glides into a curved trajectory like a bird turning in the sky. From Shadow's vantage point, there is no sign Batman even considered the possibility of failure. He must have, just as he must have carefully considered the precise trajectory needed for this specific jump. Yet not an ounce of fear, or even hesitation, shows through in him, as if the men of Batman’s planet were always meant to move this way. Batman’s line shortens as he goes, bringing him into a curve short enough that it is easy—or looks easy—for him to let go of his handle on his line, flip in the air and, catching the beam with his gloved hand, right himself upon it as if on any regular floor.

The technique in itself is actually similar to Shadow’s own mode of travel in the city, though with very different tools. The elegance of it, however, the complete confidence Batman has in his own body and proprioception—Shadow, mouth and throat abruptly dry, swallows hard.

“He took the jump,” Kara says with a sigh, “didn’t he?”

“He did,” Shadow says, not surprised in the least by the way awe tinges his tone. “He looks fine.”

Better than fine, even, but Shadow doesn’t quite know how to describe the feeling that seized his heart and squeezed at his chest at the sight, has no idea what contracted his stomach in such a way. He takes a silent, fortifying breath rather than attempt the exercise and announces:

“I’ll follow him tonight. Let the Dark Sun know I won’t be able to make the run.”

“That’ll push the next ship back three days, at least,” Kara says, the frown easy to hear in her voice.

“I know, and I’m not happy about it either, but we need to know what his intentions are. I don’t think we’ll get a much better opportunity than this.”

“Fine,” Kara replies with an explosive sigh. “I will let them know. Switching to one way audio, now.”

Shadow thanks her for the courtesy even as his audio input clicks off. It is a silly superstition—or an impractical hangup, depending on the nature of his mood at the moment of description—of his that he cannot take complicated jumps while he can hear Kara talk, or breathe, or indeed make any noise at all. It is not her fault and, though Shadow knows the habit displeases her, it is not a true choice on his part, either.

Eight years he has been Shadow now, six with this suit, and even before that—when he had to climb down the entire service elevator shaft and then climb back up the roofs of the outer city—the slightest diversion of his attention would halt his first jump. There comes a point during the night, when he is focused enough—when he is Shadow enough—that silence is not such an absolute prerequisite. A point where he loses himself in his suit and his self-imposed mission, so deeply that he can ignore the distraction. But never for the first jump. Not while he steps away from the balcony railing, not when he briefly asks Rao not to let him fall. Not when he takes off at a running start, jumps up to the railing, and, using his momentum to add to the force of his jumps, gives a great push against the balcony railing, throwing himself into empty air and the sickening lurch of freefall.

It is not possible to shut off natural audio feedback from the helmet—not with the way Shadow programmed the suit, in any case—and so despite the slowing mechanism, similar in effect to Batman’s glider cape, the wind screams past his ears as the glittering lights of the outer city hurl themselves at him. There is just enough time for him to wonder if Batman, too, has to fight the gut-clenching fear that this time will be the one he misses and does not come back.

Then the moment to catch himself comes, and Shadow sets all thoughts of Batman aside. The extra material of his suit shoots forward, nanobots so attuned to Shadow’s needs they almost feel like a living thing, and with a similar curve to the one that caught Batman, Shadow lands hard on the decorative beam.

Now, to find Batman. The man is at least as comfortable swinging from roof to roof as Shadow is. It is also quite possible—almost certain, really, judging from what Shadow has seen—that Batman is much more at ease than he is with this exercise...which means the technical difficulty of any given path won’t be any help in determining whether Batman went that way or not.

Shadow allows himself a small sigh, surprised when Kara does not immediately ask what is wrong, and forces himself to think. There are two obvious routes from where Shadow stands: straight forward, going away from the Citadel wall and into the wealthier areas of the outer city; or backward, closer to the more impoverished neighborhoods. Going forward would be easier, for decorative cornices and railings become more numerous as the city goes on, and the lodgings there are easier to climb. At the very least, the risk of having those crumble underfoot is much lower than in the inner circle of the city, especially this far away from the Citadel’s main gates. Batman, however, has been researching the Melokariel Proposition for far too long to forget it now, and since as far as Shadow knows the project is almost exclusively discussed in terms of what it will do for noble families and noble pockets….Shadow starts toward the wall.

“Shad—damn it—Shadow do you hear me?”

Shadow grunts as he pulls himself on a curved roof, scanning his surroundings with one practiced sweep of his gaze. No trace of Batman, and now this.

“That’s the third time we've lost contact this week.”

“I am aware,” Kara sighs. “The vote has yet to be called, but Zor-El has allowed three different soundings already. Your installation is functional enough, but it cannot compete against that.”

Behind her, there is the low, regular buzz of a mechanical fan, and Shadow sighs. He does not have the technical skills to compete with his uncle’s police, let alone the Council’s Militia. He is...not quite incompetent, but he does not have it in him to make technological miracles. What he did have however, especially back when he first prepared himself to become Shadow, was a lot of time and unlimited access to ancient tomes on primitive technologies such as radio waves and binary coding. It took him quite a while and even more trial and error, but he did manage to build himself a central database no one on El would ever think to scan for, its near-prehistoric workings the very source of its secrecy. Later on, when Kara joined him as Support, she positively laughed at the setup, though Shadow could never quite figure out why she did.

In any case, the installation has worked well for them so far. There is no way to secure it against official forces’ technology, of course, but that is almost a non-problem in the sense that Shadow’s entire existence hinges on absolute secrecy and everything turning out as well as possible each and every night. Were he someone else—an independent Lord, perhaps, or a more ordinary citizen—there might be ways to justify the scrapes and bruises that come with his nocturnal life...but how do you explain serious injuries on someone who, like Kal-El, barely ever sets foot outside of his parents’ extremely secure residence, and even then almost exclusively to visit the extremely secure Stateroom of Peace? You do not. If Shadow makes one wrong move, every scrap of what little help he can bring to the citizens of El will be lost.

“I’ll look into alternative solutions,” he tells Kara. “Radio waves, maybe.”

Kara mutters something about sticks and stones, but Shadow ignores her. There, barely a dozen feet away from him, is Batman.

“I found him.”

The man has perched at the crumbling edge of a crumbling house’s domed roof, precariously balanced with a foot against the wall while the other rests on the rusted remains of an escape ladder that must have been abandoned for quite a while now. Batman seems unused to the architectural configuration, positioned in a way that will leave him much sorer than necessary come morning, but he seems steady enough all the same. Which explains why Shadow, seeing no reason to hurry, is only about halfway to Batman when they both hear the scream.

Altering his course, Shadow reaches the source of it a fraction of second before Batman does. A woman on the ground, a soldier’s gloved hand in her hair. Behind, three men: two armored, one screaming but otherwise paralyzed. In the distance, a window closes.

“Please, don’t take her!” shouts the man.

There is a wet crunch. He falls to the ground, clutching his nose. One of the armored men raises his weapon in the direction of the fallen man's head, aims—Batman falls on him from above, like Vohc himself descending from the stars. He is practiced, that much is clear. No hesitation. Not a single wasted move. He would win the fight in seconds if Ellon soldiers didn’t operate in groups of five.

Shadow jumps from his perch a second before the first soldier releases the woman and raises her rifle at Batman’s back. He runs. Jumps, suit extending on either side of him. Throws Batman to the ground when the impact shoves him backward.

“What was that?” Kara asks on her end of the line.

The suit must have fully reconnected, then.

Shadow does not answer her, though. He rolls to his feet—ducks a hit to the head, punches a second armored woman in the gut. Swords come out, and part of the suit turns into a familiar pair of batons. The blades shine and sing—miss Batman by inches in one corner of Shadow’s vision, spark against his suit in another. Shadow parries, ducks, strikes back. Rao, please let him get out of this alive. He is not good enough for this. There is a reason he prefers stealth, and—another duck. Close call, this time. He holds his ground, but only by virtue of having an extremely smart suit and very flexible weapons he has been using for the past eight years. Duck, duck, parry—shout in pain when a quicker sword strike catches him before he can have the suit rearrange itself, and slices his arm underneath. Parry again. One last strike, a solid kick in the shins—four soldiers leave in a profusion of curses, the fifth one unconscious on a comrade’s back.

Shadow allows himself three heaving breaths before he turns back to the people they just rescued. They have fallen to the ground, Batman standing guard while the man clings to his wife and babbles about someone left inside—children, Shadow realizes. He means children. Batman, much quicker on the uptake, is about halfway to the door when Shadow catches his wrist.

“We don’t have time—”

“You’re the better fighter,” Shadow hastens to explain. “If they come back before we can leave, you’ll be more useful here. Besides, the kids will know who I am.”

A small part of Shadow wants to grin when Batman’s impatient snarl turns to surprise, but the man was right. They do not have time for frivolity. Ignoring some pleased surprise of his own—he was halfway expecting Batman to argue against a plan that wasn’t his own—Shadow rushes inside. It is a mess, of course. The house was clearly ransacked for evidence. Broken furniture, papers strewn about with almost methodical madness. Nothing out of the ordinary, here. The soldiers made no mention of children, though, which means they must have hidden somewhere the police did not think to look at first glance. Either somewhere creative and complicated, or...Shadow crouches in front of the cabinet under the sink, and gives a soft greeting to the two little girls he finds there.

They have the same green eyes, the same wide rings under those eyes. The oldest one slaps his wrist when he reaches for them, and Shadow praises her for her bravery. Said bravery becomes a little less practical when he reaches for her and she tries to bite him, but these are harsh times for El, and so Shadow does not reprimand her.

“I’m not an enemy,” he says instead. “I am the Shadow of El. Your parents are waiting outside, and we need to go now, quietly.”

Miraculously, the children stay quiet as Shadow carries them outside. They all but fall over themselves when their father comes within reach, one of the girls almost falling to the ground in her hurry to reach familiar arms.

“Thank you,” the man tells Shadow between kisses to his daughters’ heads, “thank you so much!”

“Please, don’t. You’re not out of trouble yet.”

A few feet to the side, the woman looks between Batman and Shadow with a stony gaze, no trace of tears or fear on her face. She gives Batman a short, stoic nod before she goes to gather her family and tells them to brace themselves.

“The Shadow is right. We are still in danger, here. We need to leave.”

“I can help you with that,” Shadow says. “I know a place where people will help you.”

There is no scheduled convoy tonight but the Dark Sun, Shadow has learned, keeps shelters ready for families in transit, and these people will be safer there than anywhere else in the city. They can stay there and wait for the next departure to the deserted borders with Ul, and from there, to the stars and the safety of the Green Lanterns’ space territory. It is a good plan, but Shadow is not surprised to find both the woman and her companion eyeing Batman with undisguised wariness. Shadow cannot blame them. The citizens of El have learned to be wary of outsiders in recent years and a family suspected of treason—rightfully so, judging from their expressions and the traditional printing material Shadow saw inside—would be even warier.

Shadow cannot make a pleading face through his helmet, but Batman must pick something up from his body language because he nods, walks to the nearest rain pipe, and starts climbing. Shadow sighs.

“At least he is being cooperative,” Kara says, almost making him jump.

She was so quiet throughout the fight, he somehow managed to forget she was there at all. Or perhaps he simply didn’t hear her. Either way, her voice is a comfort, and Shadow feels his shoulders unwind a little as he tells Batman, “I’ll see you where we first met.”

He waits for Batman to turn around and look at him before he jerks his head to the left, away from the Citadel dome. Batman’s answering nod is curt and small, but it is a sufficiently explicit agreement for Shadow to settle further. He listens to the click of Batman’s boots on the rain pipe for a while, giving the family some space to organize themselves. Then, once the man has gone back inside for what looks like a long-ready travel bag, Shadow leads them to one of the Dark Sun’s safe houses.

“Is there any sign that they intend to pursue you?” Kara asks a few hours later when Shadow comes back to the house.

The place is buzzing with activity, but there is no sense of victory in the air, no feeling of a pack on the hunt.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like they found anything on the Dark Sun, either. We got lucky.”

“That you were,” Kara replies hotly. “I don’t know how we missed that raid—”

“I’ll go by our informant’s house before I come back,” Shadow promises.

They are supposed to have this neighborhood covered, after all. This did not feel like a scheduled raid—not enough coordination for the soldiers to be an official team-up—but if there are overzealous rogue elements in the city’s police, their contact will need to know about them. And if, for some unfathomable reason, the authorities decided to send a newly minted team on a scheduled raid—improbable, but still not to be discounted—it is vital for Shadow and the Dark Sun to figure out how that could have passed them by.

“I will contact whoever I can,” Kara says. “In the meantime, you should go and give your friend a good telling-off.”

Shadow, already on his way over the rooftops, does not answer...but he does not miss the frown in Kara’s voice when she speaks again.

“Kal—”

“I’m glad to know the line is uncompromised.”

Not that it would do them much good, should anyone start scanning for audio frequencies, but it is always reassuring to know they are not being listened to.

“Kal,” Kara insists, “you are going to tell him off, aren’t you?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Shadow hedges. Kara’s grunt is more than enough to let him know what she thinks of that. “I know what he did was risky—”

“Risky? If anyone recognizes him—”

“He was trying to save those people!” Shadow protests, feeling his voice rise into a more Kal-esque register despite himself. “You can’t blame him for that!”

“I recognize that he had noble intentions,” Kara says, “but that does not excuse his recklessness. You have got to talk to him, Kal.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Shadow repeats.

Kara does much more grumbling than usual when she signs out.

Once Shadow finds Batman again, he wastes neither time nor words and strides toward the mountains with Batman close on his heels. The alien is physically fit, impressively so by Ellon standards, but Shadow is surprised to hear his breathing grow heavier after the first half hour. Whatever Batman does on his planet must not include much trekking, then. He does not complain, however, and about half an hour later they are both standing at the darkened mouth of a narrow crevice of jagged rocks. To the left, the Citadel glows a pale red in the moonlight, the outer city swallowing its feet in a mass of inky darkness that not even the light of the moons, so bright in the mountains, can penetrate.

Shadows orders the suit to rearrange one of his gloves into a flashlight and, once Batman has caught his breath—a short process, despite his insistence on maintaining proper posture and sacrificing practicality for dignity—he steps inside the crevice. Inside, it gets narrower for a while, the stone above low enough to force him to duck. At one point, he hears Batman’s head hit the stone and smirks. When they reach the first chamber—quite small, compared to what comes after, but still just wide enough for two adults to camp in—Shadow stops.

“Where are we?” Batman asks, sitting down while Shadow detaches the flashlight from his suit and settles it on the ground. “Your base of operations?”

“I wish,” Kara mutters, the connection clicking back to life in Shadow’s ears.

“One day, it might be,” Shadow tells Batman, perhaps more of a smile in his voice than he meant to put there. “For now, it’s just a cave I found when I was a kid.”

It would be a lie to say that he was less timid back then, but his parents had insisted he see the outside world, and later on his martial arts instructors had declared it good for his health to run around the mountains. In between, Kal explored. And scared a few adults in the process, but that is hardly the point.

“It’s not very interesting, geologically speaking, but it does offer some privacy.”

Batman hums, and Kara clicks her tongue.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Right,” Shadow says, and winces internally when Batman cocks his head at him. “I almost forgot,” he covers, “I wanted to thank you.”

“Thank him?”

“Thank me?”

“For stepping in, earlier. You didn’t have to.”

“Kal, this is not what we said—”

“It was reckless,” Batman says before Shadow can debate whether he should ask Kara to let him speak. “But armed men dragging a woman by the hair in the middle of the night is not a good sign, back on Earth.”

“It isn’t a good sign here either,” Shadow sighs, “but this isn’t your planet. No one would have resented you for staying out of this.”

“I would have.”

The words carry a kind of life-defining finality that makes Kara hum and Shadow bow his head. They both know the feeling, after all. It would be hypocritical of them to contradict Batman on that point, even should they want to.

“Well,” Shadow says at last, “thank you anyway. If you hadn’t helped—”

“I am usually more on the punitive side of things,” Batman says.

It is not hurried, not urgent...and yet Shadow cannot help the feeling it is meant as a dismissal somehow. Specifically timed to make sure Shadow could not finish his sentence.

“In that case,” he says rather than force his way through the rest of his intended words, “you did well, for someone outside of their comfort zone.”

Shadow grins under his helmet, unable to help himself. His only responses are the warmth of his own breath on his face and Batman’s expression remaining so immobile as to make Shadow doubt the exchange even happened, but he is glad he said it all the same. Shadow’s belief in telling people when they've done well might be primarily a result of Kal’s needs, but that does not make it any less strong, nor is it dependent on Batman acknowledging the compliment. Not that Shadow would have complained if he had, but to each their own.

“Though to be honest, sometimes I wonder if a punitive figure wouldn’t be more useful around here.”

Shadow...tries to be one, sometimes. Well. He tried. Nothing short of a solid beating seems to deter militia members, though, and that is simply not something Shadow is truly capable of delivering. It is not a matter of training, although he is definitely lacking in that area. No; the truth is, for all that Shadow plays at being strong it is just that: a play. An illusion cast on the people who meet him to help things go the way he wants them to. But in his heart of hearts, Shadow, much like Kal, does not have it in himself to rise to the level of violence the militia is ready to use. He does become violent, sometimes, when no other options remain. He does. He also spends a significant amount of time retching, afterwards, and so he avoids physical confrontation as much as he can.

Batman’s gaze on him pulls Shadow off that particular train of thought. The blank whited-out lenses of the man’s cowl have fixed on his face—or his helmet, rather—as if they can somehow divine his secrets through the power of staring alone. Shadow is not sure what it says about him that he finds himself fearing they might succeed.

The silence stretches between them, darkness shivering with the faint echo of their voices. There is a sense of anticipation in the air. Not quite an antsy silence—although Shadow is definitely getting there—but somehow expectant, all the same. It is as though Batman, immobile as he is, manages to project the sense of waiting for more. Of waiting out someone’s nerve, to discover what they want, and Shadow….

“You are about to cave in, aren’t you?” Kara sighs in his ears.

He ignores her, out of necessity as much as personal preference.

“They want to mine the planet’s core,” he tells Batman. “That’s what the Melokariel Proposition is about. The expectation is that this will revive the entire planetary economy and bring some life back into what’s essentially—”

“A decaying former colonial power incapable of accepting its lack of relevance in the modern universe.”

Well. So much for thinking Batman would be delicate about this.

“It is,” Shadow admits nonetheless. “The Independence War’s been over for more than seven hundred years now, yet most of our nobility still acts like that was yesterday. The Wise Council is even worse. There are even people who hope the Melokariel Proposition will help Krypton reestablish its dominion over the galaxy.”

“Only because they have no more sense than tchkay plant,” Kara mutters.

“It may not sound like it,” Shadow tells Batman, trying not to let his helpless grin bleed into his tone, “but El is actually one of the more moderate Principalities.”

“And yet your king is accepting quite a lot of bribes, in the form of gifts.”

“On behalf of his father,” Shadow says. “Kor-El is the Wise King of Thinkers, and he tends to vote with Tsiahm-Lo because they are old friends. People think winning one of their votes means winning the other...but you can’t gift anything to the Wise Kings and Queens directly. It’s against the Council laws. So people work around it. There’s been an increase in the number of gifts Tsiahm-Lo’s family receives, too.”

It took quite a while, confirming that last information. Kor-El lives primarily in Kandor and is hard to meet, even for his closest relative. As for Tsiahm-Lo, he lives on the other side of the planet. Kara has contacts in many places, however, and Kal’s clumsiness is often more helpful than one might think, genuine though it is. The proof, when it came, was a hard blow for Shadow and Support both. Batman, however, takes the news quite well. He has, of course, proven his ability to remain stoic in most circumstances several times over, by now, but the demonstration is no less impressive for it, and Shadow holds in a sigh. What he would not give, for that kind of mastery of himself!

He wondered, once, whether Earthlings were simply much less emotional creatures than Kryptonians. Not every sentient species is created equal where sentiment is concerned, after all. Batman was too kind to Kal, though, and for too long, for it to be faked. Mastery it must be, then, and Shadow can only admire it, knowing he will never be able to grasp it for himself.

“That explains Zor’s remarks,” Batman mutters to himself. Then, a little louder: “What about the Green Lanterns? Why do they have that kind of reputation?”

“You said it yourself,” Shadow explains with a shrug. “Krypton is a decaying ex-colonizer that can’t accept times have changed, and the Lanterns were the ones who beat them. That would be bad enough by itself, but now they’re taking Kryptonian refugees under their protection….”

“And Krypton does not pursue?”

The way Batman asks the question makes it feel like he might already know—or strongly suspect—what the answer is, but Shadow answers anyway:

“The Peace Treaty we signed after the war doesn’t allow them to. Once the refugees are within the Lanterns’ space territory, they’re out of reach.”

“If I did not know you so well,” Kara remarks in Shadow’s ears, “I might believe this history lesson will finish with ‘and that is why you must remain uninvolved’. But you are going to let him keep going with his investigation, aren’t you?”

“I would say you are putting too much faith in that treaty,” Batman says, voice overlapping with Kara’s, “but if your government is already too proud to increase commerce with its ex-colonies when the planet is literally dying, assuming they will be too proud to ask for permission to go and catch their own traitors does not seem that far-fetched.”

Shadow nods. The words are not quite those he would have chosen to explain the situation, but they are accurate enough. It would be futile to dispute them.

“Our main difficulty here is to help those who need to flee to join the escape networks. After that, I’m told things become easier.”

“I take it you are not privy to that part of the operation.”

Shadow shakes his head. “It’s safer if we don’t know too much about the things we’re not directly involved in,” he says. “Besides, the Shadow of El is more useful in the city.”

Batman does not ask any questions, but Shadow knows what he said calls for an explanation all the same...and even if it did not, he is not hoping for Batman to remain uninvolved anymore. This means he will need information, and, well. The story of the Dark Sun and its Shadow is nothing the general public does not know. Even Kara does not protest the decision, though she does remind Shadow he only has about three hours left until the sun rises.

“So what I hear,” Batman says once Shadow is done with this retelling, “is that you are alone in ensuring those who need the Dark Sun can find them safely.”

“Yes,” Shadow says, and winces when Kara yelps in protest. “More or less.”

“Thank you,” Kara says. “’Alone’...what am I, chopped silten?”

Batman seems to ponder the answer for a moment, head bowed over Shadow’s makeshift flashlight. At the mouth of their hiding place, the sky is still dark, but it will not remain so for much longer. Shadow breaks the silence:

“To tell you the truth...I could use your help.”

Batman looks up, sharp and fast, and Shadow makes himself keep his shoulders straight. If nothing else, he will at least be able to tell Kara, truthfully, that he offered a partnership rather than begging for help.

“It seems pretty clear you won’t let go of your investigation, but you know nothing about Krypton—”

“Almost nothing,” Batman corrects. “Kal-El is a fool, but he is not entirely incompetent.”

“You really are not going to defend yourself at all, are you?” Kara sighs, but Shadow only swallows.

It is, he tells himself again, a good thing that Batman thinks so little of Kal. Less risk of discovery, this way. With that in mind, Shadow nods, conceding.

“My point is, you could work on your own, but that would take more time than you’d like. And besides, it would be a waste of energy when we could just as well pool our resources.”

“It sounds to me like I would be the one with the most to gain from that,” Batman says. “More information, more material, a better knowledge of the local culture...what do you get from it?”

“You’re a better fighter than me,” Shadow says, matter-of-fact. “And clearly you’re a skilled detective, or you wouldn’t have progressed as far as you have with a limited Ellon vocabulary. Clearly, there’s a lot you could teach me...and when this is done, the Dark Sun will help you leave.”

Batman and Kara hum at the same time, although not for the same reasons at all.

“I need time to think this over,” Batman says at last, and Shadow nods.

“Fine. But not tonight—dawn’s coming, and there’s something else I have to do before then. Let’s meet here tomorrow night. Two hours after sundown.”

“Very well.”

Together, they walk back to the entrance of the cave, where the crimson glow of the moons is paling, slowly bleeding out of the sky to give way to the orange copper of daylight. Shadow pauses to admire the sight of the mountains to the east, and when he turns back, Batman is gone.

With a grin at the alien’s flair for the dramatic, Shadow shakes his head and strides back toward the city. He does, after all, have a militia lieutenant to call on.

The next night, Shadow arrives at the crevice in the mountain only to find Batman already there, standing at the entrance with his head raised to the sky, the dim light of the moons turning his mouth and chin almost copper. He does not flinch, or indeed react in any way when Shadow steps up beside him, except to say:

“There is conflict between two of your neighboring planets. Leaark and Axor. They wanted an impartial judge, so they asked for our help. I was on my way back when I crashed on Krypton.”

“’Our’ help?” Shadow asks, puzzled. “Is your planet known for its good judgment?”

Kal knows that it is not. Shadow, however, has heard nothing of this place, and must therefore show interest in Batman’s past if he wishes to make use of that knowledge.

“No. Earth does not have political representatives in space. We do have….” Batman’s voice trails off for a moment, as if he were hesitating. The thought is incongruous, knowing what Shadow knows about him, but hesitation it must be, because Batman sounds rather reluctant when he says: “We have a group of superheroes whose reputation reaches beyond the borders of Earth. They are called the Justice League.”

Shadow blinks.

“Isn’t that a good thing? To have so many heroes dedicated to the protection of your people and the defense of justice among them?”

“There are only seven of us, actually. And the name sounds—ridiculous.”

‘Ridiculous’ is, most likely, not what Batman would have said in his mother tongue. Something worse, perhaps? Either way, the sentence leaves him frustrated, the slant of his shoulders familiar from many a language lesson. Shadow smiles at the sight, but takes care to push it out of his voice before he says, “A lot of people here would find it ridiculous, too. I think it sounds quite noble. I’d be glad if Krypton could have something like that.”

Batman looks at him again, lips pinched tightly together, but Shadow does not move. Shadow and Kal-El are very different—for all that they share a body and a mind—but their values are the same, and neither one would be ashamed to admit as much. Batman may find the concept, in its nakedness, to be ridiculous, but Shadow would argue perhaps the problem lies in him rather than in his League’s name itself.

“Mm,” Batman says, rather than answer Shadow’s question. As deflections go, it is far from his best; strangely, Shadow appreciates it all the more for that. “I have given some thought to your offer.”

Now Shadow’s heart picks up, anticipation tingling in the creases of his palms as he waits out Batman’s dramatic pause with bated breath. Eventually, just as Shadow is considering breaking the silence himself, Batman says:

“I find it acceptable. I will help you train and deal with the Melokariel Proposition. And when I ask you to, you will help me leave Krypton, whether this business is finished or not.”

“Of course,” Shadow says.

Kara, he suspects, will strongly disapprove. What good is it, to involve a man who might choose to leave next week? But Batman could have demanded to be let off Krypton right away, and he has not. He would have had every right to it, after more than three months so far from his home. Yet, despite that, he chose to stay on and help. It would be more than unfair for Shadow to ask more of him than that, and so what he does instead is bow his head and say:

“Thank you. I’m looking forward to our cooperation.”

“You might yet live to regret it,” Batman says. “Do you have somewhere we can use to train you?”

“Yes, actually,” Shadow says with a grin. “It’s the reason why I wanted us to meet here. Come with me.”

They make their way back inside the crevice and then further into the mountain, until they reach the first truly significant cave. Their footsteps echo there, every noise magnified until even the small drizzle of water at the back sounds like a river. The space is quite wide, almost large enough to contain Kal-El’s bedroom—far more than they will need to setup sparring mats and physical training equipment. The ceiling is not very high, but it is comfortable enough, and when Shadow’s flashlight touches it the crystals embedded there come alive with cold white flashes.

“This seems acceptable,” Batman says. “From what little I can see.”

“I thought you’d say that,” Shadow replies with a smile. “Just a moment, please.”

It was, perhaps, a tad overdramatic of him to hide the fire figs under a blanket. The effect when he uncovers their glass cases is so magnificent, though, that he feels no guilt about it. He brought only four bushes, but their light is enough to reflect and refract in the overhead crystals and fill the cave with multicolored beams of light, along with a softer and more natural orange glow. White lights will have to be brought in later on, as supplements, but for now this light is enough, and Shadow smiles when he realizes even Batman’s jaw has gone a little slack.

“What do you think?” he asks.

Batman swallows.

“It is...adequate,” he says.

Shadow chuckles.

“Well. Let’s get started, then.”

“If you feel ready.”

All jokes about Batman’s flair for the dramatic aside, he does display a level of intensity even Shadow was wholly unprepared for. For the three hours following his and Batman’s agreement, Shadow does nothing but jump, run, crouch, and crawl all over the floor. Sweat pours out of every pore he has, chafes at his skin under the suit, and by the time Batman is done with him, his limbs feel ready to drop him to the ground at any moment. When he requests a break, he barely even waits for Batman’s permission before he kneels next to the thin stream at the back of the cave and lets the bottom half of his helmet melt away into the rest of the suit, drinking his fill and then some without, somehow, managing to feel like his thirst is quenched.

“I thought you were ready,” Batman says when Shadow is done drinking and back to panting.

There is no apology in the man’s voice, not even an ounce of regret, but Shadow hears the disappointment loud and clear. His fists clench.

“Clearly,” he says, struggling to keep his voice even, “I miscalculated.”

He shouldn’t have. He has seen enough of Batman, by now, to know better. He should have anticipated the hard work, and more—and to tell the truth, he should have been better prepared regardless. The Shadow of El should not let itself be stopped by something so mundane as lack of endurance, and in the privacy of his own mind, Shadow resolves to do better next time. After all, if Batman can do it, why should Shadow not even attempt it?

“How have you even survived all this time?” Batman asks.

The disappointment is gone from his tone now, his voice back to perfect neutrality. Shadow, who has not been naive enough to imagine a neutral tone meant neutral feeling for a long time, asks himself the same question. The suit is many things, after all, but magic is not one of them, and if this training session has proven anything, it is that Shadow must have been much luckier than he had ever thought...that, and that he was right in deciding never to discard the suit for his patrols.

“I’m usually more of a spy than a vigilante,” he tells Batman, breathing still ragged.

He manages, just barely, to keep the apology out of his voice. It does not do much for the blooming sense of inadequacy at the pit of his stomach, but it does preserve the dignity of the Shadow of El. Besides, he is starting to suspect that to apologize for his shortcomings, at this point, would accomplish nothing but driving Batman to push him even harder. Not that it would not be useful! There is, after all, a reason Shadow suggested this partnership in the first place, and contrary to what Batman seems to think, Shadow is fully convinced he is the one who has the most to gain from this endeavor. Batman has full access to the royal library, after all, and Shadow is starting to suspect he could have found his own way back to Earth, given enough time.

Fighting is simply not something one can properly learn on their own.

“Focusing on information-gathering,” Batman is saying, as Shadow returns to his feet, nanobots reshaping into his helmet just in time to hide the last of his chin as he turns back around, “does not mean you can afford to be useless in a fight. Your suit may do a number of amazing things, but it is still nothing but a suit, and you cannot afford to rely on it. You must be able to defend yourself, even if you are caught without it.”

Shadow, feeling like a child scolded for failing to put enough effort into his homework, resists both the urge to protest that he is always wearing his suit—as it is both beside the point and a piece of information best kept between Kara and himself—and the urge to bow his head. There is no time to be self-pitying. He is here to learn, after all. That means taking whatever Batman has to throw at him, and using it to grow. If it also means Shadow must go through more physical drills in the upcoming weeks than he has in his entire life up until now, then so be it.

“Just be careful who you share this with,” Kara teases when Shadow recounts his first training session later in the night, on his way to pick a family up from their home and lead them to the nearest safehouse. “There would be no explanation for your sudden transformation into a high-level athlete.”

Not, of course, that she truly has to worry about that. The only person Kal-El could ever talk to about his progress in martial arts would be Batman, and Batman does not want anything to do with him. Shadow bites down on a peevish retort anyway.

Shadow...keeps up, somehow. He trains with Batman for three hours every evening and emerges from the cave, exhausted and drenched in his own sweat, only to go around the city, gathering intelligence on the militia’s movements, interrogating whoever he can with Batman’s help—and oh, how these conversations go faster with someone who is actually skilled at drawing answers out of reluctant participants!—and leading more and more prospective refugees to the Dark Sun’s safe houses. The Melokariel Proposition was voted into effect three weeks ago, precisely three and a half months after Batman’s arrival on Krypton, and Batman's failure to publicly involve himself one way or the other in that controversy has mostly silenced those at court who whispered that he might be an envoy of Vohc. He almost snorted, when Kal related this news, and chuckled when he shared that tidbit with Shadow later the same day.

Of all the things collaborating with Batman has changed in Shadow's life, receiving regular updates on his own life from an external perspective is, without contest, the strangest. He knows how to deal with being interrogated, both as Shadow and as Kal. Hearing himself described on a semi-regular basis is another thing entirely.

Mostly, though, Shadow struggles. He gains muscle, but loses weight. He fights better, stands straighter in the night. But when daylight comes and he turns the suit back into Kal-El’s lab coats and refined fabrics, his shoulders slouch further than they ever have in his life. It is...fine, at first. Exhausting, yes, but important, and Shadow—he keeps up. He manages. Not brilliantly, maybe, but efficiently, and who cares if Kal suffers for it? Certainly not Batman, and certainly not Shadow. For the first six weeks after Batman started to train him, Shadow manages.

After that, though, the training starts to take its toll. Shadow feels it in his bones, perceives it in the tightness around Batman’s mouth, a sense of defeat hovering around the alien in a way it never has before, in all four and a half months he has been on Krypton. For a while, Shadow tries to believe Kara and entertain the thought that Batman might, perhaps, simply be homesick...but if it were only that, then why not simply ask to go? Or, at the very least, go to Kal, whose eagerness to learn more about Batman’s home planet could not be more pathetically obvious if he tried? No, all the evidence points to Shadow himself being the source of Batman's displeasure.

Gradually, the giddiness he had felt over this arrangement—the beauty of all the things he would learn to do, and do better—fades. Shadow goes through the motions of his and Kal-El’s lives on autopilot, faced with the bitter realization that even he is not enough. There is nothing there—a sham, at the most; an illusion the people of El cling to well past the time it should have been cast aside, merely because there is nothing else to count on. Because they have put too much faith in it, by now, to turn back without consigning themselves to a life of shame. There is nothing there except the thin ghost of a wish, an ideal that could be put to better use by better hands.

Batman could do it. He does not say as much, and speaks little of his own work on Earth to Shadow—but Kal is a timid fool, and there is no danger in sharing secrets with him. Batman could do it; but Shadow cannot, and so he applies himself to helping Batman as best as he can...or, failing that, to making sure he does not hinder the man’s work, at least.

Together, they infiltrate houses and places Shadow would never have dared to take on alone. They scare Kara half to death—or rather, Shadow does. He has yet to reveal her existence to Batman; part of him is still wary of the consequences should someone else find out about her, and another part is disturbingly unwilling to let Batman know he is being observed, when Shadow knows the alien would retreat even more than he already does if he were aware of it. Shadow is unpracticed, at first, and then he is tired and stumbles where he needs to be sure-footed. He muddles through the thick fog of his brain, when he should be sharp and alert, and blinks himself from the brink during patrol.

They are few, these moments, and far between at first. It is like...like Shadow detaches from himself, somehow. Like his soul remains trapped in his head, while the rest of his body moves on with life, a puppet made of empty, mechanical parts, until these divided pieces of him finally reunite in the sweetness of oblivion. These moments, few and far between—until, somehow, they aren’t.

Time numbs Shadow to his own purpose. Caring becomes harder. It takes more effort than it used to, to fear for the people he helps, to mourn for those he loses. It is not so much that they are not important, but rather—rather that everything is important. Stopping the violent expulsion of citizens is important. Gathering evidence of the corruption that led to this predicament is important. Helping those willing to do the work to inform the rest of El of the dangers of mining Krypton’s core is important. Everything is important; everything claws at Shadow’s attention, pulling at his soul until it all blurs into a thick feeling of guilt for his inability to care more...and then Shadow shuts down.

He does not mean to do it. Does not plan to sit at his desk, and blink so slowly two hours have gone by before he opens his eyes again and picks up his pen. He does not mean for Kal to lie on his bed in the morning and think he should go and wash himself, feed himself, read—turn his head away from the ceiling, at the very least, but even that proves beyond his strength, and so Kal-and-Shadow both remain where they are and let time pass them by. Neither part of him means for that to happen, the space where they meet horrified and desperate to stop it, to move, to do anything but—anything at all. But that space where Shadow and Kal-El meet is a sad thing, shriveled and pitiful, and while the days it manages to take over do not, at least, feel like they are spent watching fresh paint dry, they are the kind of days that make both Kal and Shadow regret the numbness.

That part of Shadow—that small, terrified part of him that makes even Kal sound...functional, somehow—wonders with despair how far it will all go. What it will take to wake him up, even just a part of him. It watches as Shadow-and-Kal go through the motions, present but not. He-they go through the motions—must perform with some success, seeing as no one thinks to ask what is wrong with them. Him. Inside, though, it feels more and more like Shadow—like Kal, like both of him—is trying and failing to pry a locked door open with his bare hands. He sleeps. He does what he must at night and during the day, protecting those who count on him and attending what official occasions he is expected to. He does forget to eat, now and then, if nothing pressing requires him to make sure he has some sustenance. It is not a problem.

Or, to be precise: it is not a problem, until Kal faints in the royal family’s private library. He does not mean to faint, much like he has not meant to do many other things. One minute he is looking for a book, somewhat lightheaded, and telling himself he will go lie down as soon as he finds what he needs to prepare for Batman’s Ellon lessons, and the next something deep and dark opens behind his eyes, pulls him down—he blinks, and has to think hard for a minute or two before he realizes the reason that particular green velvet loveseat looks so strange is because it is not meant to be seen with one’s head lying on the ground.

There is a low sound in Shadow—no, Kal. There is no red at his wrist, no warm moisture on his face. He is meant to be Kal. It is just as well. He pushes himself up on his wrists nonetheless, surprised when something on his shoulder forces him back to the ground.

“Stop trying to get up, you imbecile,” a low, rough voice is saying, close to his head, when he manages to recognize words again. “Lie down.”

Kal blinks, head spinning again even as he tries to figure out whether anyone else was present when he—blinked? Fell? It is hard to tell. He remembers where he was before, but it is difficult to understand how he came to be where he is now...wherever that is, exactly. To make sense of what he hears, right now, is beyond his ability. Not that it truly matters, in the end, for before Kal can truly understand what he is being told, a strong pair of arms seizes him under the armpits, lifts him up off the ground—Kal is on a sofa. The green loveseat is nearby, cozy but too small to lie down on in full. Kal closes his eyes, opens them again and focuses on the ceiling when the abyss inside him turns out to be much closer than he thought it would be. He does not try to sit up.

“I called for honeyed tea,” Batman-in-his-Nightwing-suit says when Kal finally manages to find his face. “You need sugar.”

It is quite probable Kal actually does need that. From the feel of things, though, he also needs some ice for his head and a thousand years of sleep. Better yet: he needs to go to bed, and never wake up at all. It is a tempting thought. Burying himself under the covers, forgetting there is a world outside...but that would not be acceptable, of course, for a prince of El. Not even for the pathetic offspring of a lower branch. So what Kal does instead is apologize, squinting when it becomes clear Batman did not understand him.

“I am so sorry,” Kal repeats, to no better result. “Your lesson….”

It takes Kal tremendous effort, to seize control of his own mouth again and force the words into some semblance of shape, but he manages. This time, Batman understands. He does not...scoff. Not truly. He does not roll his eyes either, although a part of Kal is acutely aware that the cowl makes it terribly hard to be certain of that. Besides, the man’s stoic silence gives the strong impression that, though he considers himself too dignified to roll his eyes, a significant part of him wants to. That prompts Kal to apologize again, only for Batman’s mouth to pull downward.

“Do not apologize,” he says, laying a gloved hand on Kal’s clammy forehead. “These lessons are not life-or-death anymore.”

Kal, whose throat and chest feel like someone is trying to squeeze them into some terribly undersized container, manages to keep a hold of himself long enough to say:

“You are right. I suppose you do not need me anymore.”

He remains conscious just long enough to take his tea before sinking into a long-needed nap. In his dreams, Batman stays by his side—brings him water when he wakes up, and pushes the hair out of his eyes as he sinks back into sleep—but when he wakes up, this time in his bedroom, there is no sign that he has been anything but alone.

Shadow groans when Batman pulls him, none too gently, to his feet. He is not, thankfully, dizzy enough to have trouble standing, although it certainly did not help him during the fight. Part of it might be that Shadow has yet to grow used to how much fighting they have to do, these days. It has been six weeks, now, since the Melokariel Proposition was adopted. Five months, almost to the day, since Batman landed on Krypton. Why he remains, Kal has no idea, but he does carry the knowledge of how invaluable Batman’s help is on his shoulders and in his guts, every day.

Barely a night passes, now, without them having to put themselves between people who refused to sell their homes to the first mining companies and those who would intimidate them into leaving. Desperate men and women left everything they had in poorer Principalities to come and work in El, where, they were told, life would be easy and plentiful—and where they are instead welcomed with insults, closed doors, and employers who could not care less what happens to the lowest layers of Krypton’s social strata. Farmers on the outskirts of the city are losing cattle, the noise and dust of the first mining shafts stressing the animals too much for them to remain productive; not to mention the sudden influx of Ellon citizens who can no longer live around the Citadel but still can’t, or won’t, attempt to make their way in exile. All around the Principality, the consequences of the Melokariel Proposition are already proving disastrous, and the only people who seem to care are either unable to act directly, like Kara, or pathetically, impossibly outnumbered, like Shadow and Batman.

Every morning, Shadow comes home with new bruises, new cramps. He sinks into exhaustion and numbness for the rest of the day, and struggles harder and harder to exit itwith every night that passes...he is, overall, not very surprised that the intimidating line of Batman’s mouth seems distinctly chilly tonight. He did not wait to see as much before beginning a familiar litany of self-recriminations, of course. He is, after all, perfectly aware of all that he is doing wrong—perfectly aware of what would have become of that woman, if he’d failed to keep the Kandori soldiers away from her. He is also perfectly aware of what would happen to him, should he fall into their hands, although that at least he could live with. Metaphorically speaking.

The overarching point of all of this is: Batman is unhappy. So is Shadow. How could he not be? He sees what he is doing wrong—how woefully short he falls of upholding the simple standard of making himself useful to the people around him. What is the point of there even being a Shadow, if all he does is add to the mess? What is the point of pretending, of forcing Kal into an ever deeper isolation, if Shadow cannot even accomplish the one thing he has ever truly tried do for his people?

“What in the — is wrong with you?” Batman hisses as he all but drags Shadow away from the safe house they left their rescue in, the foreign word strange and yet perfectly understandable to Shadow’s mind.

Shadow could give Batman a long list, a very long list, of the things that are wrong with him. Long enough to fill the whole trek to their cave in the mountains, and then the rest of the night after that, but they do not have that kind of time. To be honest, Shadow does not have that kind of strength, either. The honest, ugly truth of it is: he is barely even surprised. There had to come a time when he couldn’t fool himself anymore, let alone the people around him. The thought bows his head even as he follows Batman out of the city and into the jagged mountains around them, half his energy focused on putting one foot in front of the other and the other half spent on keeping his spine straight enough to avoid tipping his red suit over the line from majestic to clownlike.

“Shadow,” Batman says again, sterner this time.

Shadow draws a breath in.

“I think I was right, you know. That first night. You’re much better suited for this than I am.”

They have reached the outskirts of the city by now, sharp boulders surrounding them in ever closer ranks as they stride through the mountains. Batman has grown used to the trek in the past few weeks, and he does not trail behind like he did on that first night; but he does leave a step or two between Shadow and himself, and that is something for Shadow to be grateful for. The peace does nothing to soften the silence, though, and with silence comes an ever-lengthening list of things Shadow should have learned by now—should know how to do better, faster. It is a list Kal has been very familiar with for many years, but it is the first time Shadow has had to go through this painful a reading of it, and so he tries to keep it at bay by saying:

“Perhaps Kal-El was right in his description of you. You do seem like you could be Nightwing come again.”

Batman snorts, but there is no humor in it, and he does not wait for the palm of Shadow’s suit to turn into a flashlight before he steps into the crevice under the mountain.

“I know,” Shadow says as he hurries to keep up, “Kal-El is an imbecile, but—”

“Kal-El is looking for meaning where there is none,” Batman interrupts. “He thinks if I am Nightwing come again, I will lead him out of his miserable existence somehow. He is wrong, and you need to get a hold of yourself now, before you start believing the same things.”

He steps into the cave with an angry gesture, the curtain they installed to keep the light in rattling in protest at his abruptness.

“I didn’t mean—“ Shadow starts, but Batman cuts him off in a hiss.

“You nearly destroyed that operation. You cannot slip up like that again.”

It takes a few seconds before Shadow finds it in himself to nod, chastised. He has no excuse for it, he knows, no way to explain his actions except sheer incompetence. He knows—has known since he saw Batman leap off the Citadel—what a true hero should look like. What standards Shadow must be held to, before he can be said to fulfill his purpose. He has tried to meet those standards—he has. But he has fallen woefully short, and it is, perhaps, time he faced the facts and did the last helpful thing he can think of: retire.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

The words sound strange in Shadow’s lower, harsher register. Apologizing does not fit the image of him any more than it would fit Batman. Who would fear someone who apologizes, after all? And isn’t that what Shadow is meant to do? Strike fear into the hearts of those who would harm the people Shadow is meant to protect?

No. It never truly worked like that. No one ever flinched from him the way they flinch from Batman—or Nightwing, as some have called him, no matter how much he dislikes the connection. There was a time when Shadow—when Kal himself, hidden far inside his own heart—could pretend that it worked. Could tell himself he was doing what he was meant to...but perhaps it is best, now, that he finally let go of his illusions. That he start making his decisions with a clearer head. A sounder mind. It is what is best, for everyone.

“Don’t be sorry,” Batman tells him from where he went to crouch beside the little stream, tone far gentler than Shadow deserves. “Be better.”

“But how?”

That...was not meant to come out of Shadow’s mouth. Not where anyone could hear it, at the very least. It is one thing, after all, to know that he is a failure, but it is quite another to beg for Batman’s pity. As if the man did not have far better things to do than to indulge Shadow’s weaknesses in both aspects of his life! But the question did come out, and Shadow cannot take it back. He breathes in, deep and unsubtle, and does not allow his neck to bend, even though his gaze plunges low enough that the tip of his nose and the inside of his helmet are the only things he can see.

Batman, for his part, has frozen. Stunned, probably, that Shadow has the audacity to ask that sort of question. To be that pathetic. It would make sense. Probably.

“I do what has to be done,” Batman says at last. “And if something is a problem, I work at it until it is not one anymore.”

Shadow nods. That makes—a lot of sense, actually. And if he is honest, he knows it would be best for him to leave his whining behind and work on the things that are problems, but...well, the thing is, everything seems to be a problem these days, for Shadow and Kal both. Eating is a problem. Showering is a problem. It is not that he does not do these things anymore. He does. But where such tasks used to be perfunctory, so automatic as to go unnoticed, it sometimes takes him hours to brace himself for the journey from labs to shower, from shower to bed. In the morning, the journey back is just as hard. Neither Shadow nor Kal—to say nothing of the creature in between—has enjoyed a meal in weeks, let alone any kind of activity beside that.

If Shadow were a better man—a stronger man—he would get a hold of himself and pull himself back into working order, but he is not. He is not, and he cannot. He has disappointed Batman tonight, and he will disappoint him again, that much is easy to see. And...it would not be so bad if Sh—if he had known better than to allow his hopes to grow in the first place. It would not have hurt so much if he had remembered that the truth of him lies not in Kal, not in Shadow, but in that dark and shriveled space inside. If he had known better than to let himself think this part of him could possibly hope to rise from the mediocrity clinging to its bones, even to fulfill the only purpose he thought he had. If he had been smart enough not to expect anything more than passable performances, then failing would not have been so painful.

But he did not know better, and the bitterness of reality burns at the corners of his eyes, the edges of his cheeks. It slides down the bridge of his nose and onto his neck without his permission, even as he struggles to keep his breathing even, his voice controlled. There is a cold, grim pride in realizing there is no trace of tears in his voice when he says, “You’re right. I have to—I’ll do better.”

He has no idea how, yet, but he will figure it out. After all, he can hardly do worse.

It takes Shadow more time than usual to climb up the disused elevator shaft, but he does manage it eventually. He collapses at the foot of it with a relieved sigh, thankful for once that Kryo’s security protocols mean he is to survey the top of the stairs and is, therefore, nowhere to be seen. There is too much of a mess in Shadow’s head to bear the thought of a witness. He does not have the strength to deal with it and with his hunit at the same time. Showering, in itself, is an ordeal. He goes through it with mechanical gestures, wiping the snot from his upper lip and the blood from his knee, where the suit’s rearranging circuitry cut him during a false move. When he emerges, he is...slightly less of a walking piece of waste, perhaps. It is a good thing, and, clinging to that, Shadow mostly settles himself down into the hunch of Kal’s shoulders, his more timid intonations. Kal is still unable to stomach the thought of walking as far as his rooms, though, and so once Shadow’s suit has shifted into more princely garments, he alters his course and goes to collapse in the nearest library.

They have entered the small hours of the night, now. Everyone, even Batman will be asleep—or at the very least pretending to sleep. There is little risk of being disturbed, or even found before the household wakes. It leaves more than enough time for Kal to dismiss Kryo and let the suit’s sleeve rearrange into a communication screen to type a quick message saying he is home, safe and sound. The rest of the night hardly matters, and Kal is not planning to discuss it until Kara writes:

What’s wrong?

Kal blinks, display beads blurring in front of him as exhaustion takes over and makes him slouch even further, and raises his knees to his chest until only half of him is even taking any space at all.

Nothing, he types.

You have not been punctuating.

Kal’s nose itches. He sniffles a little, just enough to dislodge the dust stuffing his nostrils. Just enough to try and swallow around the knot in his throat.

I’m fine

Kal. What is it?

Just tired

There is no way to know whether Kara is even looking at her handscreen anymore. She might have gone to sleep, for all Kal knows. She would be right to, even. But much as Kal dreads the turn their conversation has taken, he can’t quite help himself from feeling like a drowning man clutching at a buoy when the material of his sleeve forms into a new line of text:

You have been tired for months, now. Perhaps it is time you allowed yourself some rest.

From what? There is little enough for me to do, here

From your projects. You have been doing nothing but that for weeks on end. Perhaps it is time you stopped following my advice and found something else to do. It would do you good to spend a little more time with Batman.

He has no interest in me

Gods, the self-pity, even in the written words, is unbearable. Kal grits his teeth just seeing it on the screen. Has he not had enough? Has he not shown how pitiful he is often enough already? He should stop here, and he knows it. But instead of bidding his cousin goodbye and going to bed, Kal watches with some horror as his fingers keep typing as if on their own:

He has no interest in shadow either

he is right

Where in the Sixth Heaven is that even coming from? Kara sends back, almost instantly.

Nowhere, Kal tells her. I suppose I am a little

tired

I almost caused our doom tonight

one day, I actually will

I suppose I am tired of wondering if today will be the day

You must be exhausted indeed to say that sort of nonsense, Kara sends after a long pause. You need to take time to rest, Kal. Everyone has their ups and downs, you simply need to pull yourself together.

Kal gapes as the screen, shocked as if by a slap. There are—he does not know that there are words to describe the hollowness gaping in his chest, the pressure around his throat. His eyes burn again, hotter than before. When he breathes in, it sounds ragged. Painful and laborious, like a wounded animal. He forces himself through it—then through another, and another, until he feels composed again, and can...until he is somewhat composed again. Held together as if with gossamer, but composed nonetheless. Adult. Mature. Rational.

He has every intention of being exactly that: of thanking Kara for the advice and going to heed it as soon as possible. But then his eyes catch the words again, and nothing in the world can stop the tears from spilling.

It takes Kal a while to realize he is not alone, caught up as he is in the aching burn of tears down his face. It is as if the world vanished in his sobs, somehow, swallowed whole by a thing Kal should have known better than to let grow so vast—should have known better than to succumb to. He cries, and cries, and cries, and does not notice there is anyone there until a hand settles on his shoulder, light and too tight at the same time as if its owner couldn’t quite tell what sort of pressure would provide the most comfort. Kal shrinks away, at first. He buries his face deeper in the hollow between his knees, arms coming up to cover his head and shield the burning heat of his neck from the rest of the world.

Eventually, though, the tears run out. They leave him empty, wrung out, as if after two days without sleep. In his chest, Kal’s lungs echo with cold wind, a wet and pale feeling where there should be warmth and sun. Despair left with the tears, though, and Kal may be cold but he is also settled, somewhat, mind cleared just enough to make him feel almost coherent as he runs a hand across his face and turns to whoever decided to stay with him. He is perhaps more surprised than he should be, caught somewhere between gratitude and mortification, as he discovers Batman’s cowled face looking down at him with a frown. It seems the Gods have decided today will not be his day.

“Do you feel better?” Batman asks before Kal can think of anything to say, proper grammar still firmly in place.

The shift from talking to Kal like an equal to talking to him with the respect due to a prince greatly improved Batman’s quality of life in the palace, but Kal’s stomach has yet to learn not to drop with disappointment every time it happens. It makes him ache for the night, and the way Batman at least sees Shadow as an equal, if one of little use.

Kal nods, unable to make himself speak. He wants to stay the way he is—to coil tighter and tighter until he disappears and people forget he ever existed at all. To vanish into the night and become...the wind, maybe, or something equally untouchable. His parents would disapprove, though, and the weight of their gazes is on his mind as he gathers what little dignity he has left and forces himself to uncurl. Bit by bit, Kal straightens up, bare feet resting on the plush carpeting, toes digging into the fibers as if he can find strength down there. He is acutely aware of the itch in his face, the splotchy heat in his cheeks. How ridiculous does he look? There is nothing here he can use to fix his appearance, but he cannot help but wonder. At least if he could see himself, he would be able to assess just how disappointed Batman must be in him. Assuming he can still be disappointed in Kal, that is—assuming there is a greater depth to which his opinion of Kal could possibly sink.

There is no point in dwelling on the topic, however, and Kal makes himself take a breath. Batman is going out of his way to give Kal some attention when he cannot possibly want to be doing that. The least Kal can do is to make this encounter as short as possible, and let Batman be on his way.

“Thank you,” he tells the man, relieved when the tremor of his voice does not grow to a full tremble. “I am fine now.”

He cannot possibly look fine. Even without the tears—and those, Batman cannot miss—the lack of sleep must be easy to read in the hollows of his face by now. Kara, he knows, would be marching him to bed at this point, pulling promises of sleep from him before they even reached his bedchambers. Kara has long been familiar with short nights herself, before she even discovered Kal and Shadow were one and the same, but she has always been adamant about sleeping for a six-hour stretch every night, and has never hesitated to bully Kal into following the same rules.

Batman is not Kara, however, and where she would be sending him to sleep, he stands by Kal’s side without a word, solid and surreal in the darkness of the library. The top of his head, silhouetted against the ocher light of the moons, looks like stone, and it seems like he could wait forever for Kal to speak. Perhaps it is the comfort—or threat—of it that makes Kal blurt out:

“Truly, I am fine. Sometimes things are—I am fine. I will take care of this.”

“If that is what you want,” Batman says, voice entirely neutral, hand immobile. “We could also talk, if you would prefer. It does not have to be about...this.”

The carefully nonspecific phrasing makes Kal snort, as he wipes the last of his tears on the heels of his hands and resists the urge to lean into Batman like a tired child. He should be better at this. Batman, he is sure, would never be caught in this sort of state. He is too professional—too controlled—for it.

He did offer, though, and it might be that he is only acting out of pity—a part of Kal thinks, perversely, that Batman might be hoping to have the library to himself, but he shuts it down. It feels somehow ungrateful to listen to that voice for too long. Out of pity or not, however, Batman did offer to listen, and where else is Kal going to find someone to confide in? The only one who would be willing to listen is Kara, but she is busy, and does not seem to realize her advice of pushing through the pain and being normal again will not work for Kal. And, in all honesty, what harm could possibly come of confessing to someone who considers him uninteresting already? If worst comes to worst and the conversation proves unhelpful, well. Kal has learned to deal with that.

“It is nothing,” he says with a small shrug. “It is—I suppose I am...frustrated, sometimes. That I am not—”

It does not feel right to say ‘good enough’. Too self-pitying, too overt a demand for attention. Too desperate a plea for an absolution Kal does not deserve. He changes tack:

“That I do not have a Guild.”

There is a pause, heavy and cold, and Kal bites his lip. Why did he have to say that, and why did he have to say it to Batman, of all people? Crying about his Guildlessness is not going to make Kal sound any less pathetic; quite the opposite. Besides, he chose it, did he not? He could have followed Kara and his parents’ advice and dedicated himself to the learning of a Guild of his choice, and then perhaps...oh, but who is he trying to fool? No amount of work would ever have compensated for an absence of genetic markers, and while Kal might have spared himself some suffering if he had chosen that path, he might as easily have made his life worse. There is no real way for him to know, and, from what he knows, no basis of comparison in Batman’s culture, so what is the point?

“I apologize,” he tells Batman. “I know you do not care for that system.”

The alien has been discreet about this in public, but there was a time when he did not shy away from sharing his opinions with Kal. Even now, as he smiles—or gives the impression of a smile—Batman does not seem overly invested in the topic.

“Evidently, you do,” he says anyway.

There is a short pause, as if Batman were chewing on his words before he adds:

“So does the rest of Krypton. A great deal, from what I understand.”

“They do,” Kal admits, head bowed almost without his consent. “I know I should heed Kara’s advice and ignore them. I know I am too sensitive, but—”

“With...all due respect to your cousin,” Batman says, slipping out of his more formal grammar and into the familiar forms he used to use to talk to Kal, “it seems to me like it is quite flippant of her to call this easy to ignore when she has a Guild to belong to.”

Kal blinks, raising his head to look at Batman again, jaw slack with surprise. Never, in his entire life, has he been told anything like this, and in less than a second his throat clenches again. He breathes through it, and swallows hard.

“I do not—I have no idea what it is like not to have a Guild on Krypton. But I do know how it feels when everyone you meet has been convinced you were an idiot long before they ever met you.”

This time, when Kal blinks, there is a distinctly deprecating grimace on Batman’s lips, as if he has just swallowed something incredibly bitter. Kal understands the sentiment, of course. Of course he does. But the thought of Batman—quite possibly the smartest, most competent person Kal has ever met—being regarded with anything but awe and respect? Let alone the same sort of disdain the rest of Krypton has for Kal? Impossible.

“Please,” Kal says, voice smaller than he likes, “do not feel like you must pretend on my behalf. You—”

“I’m not—” Batman breathes in, deep and long, and when he speaks again his tone is entirely stable: neutral to the point of blankness. “I am not pretending.”

He is controlled, the emotion gone from his voice, and a part of Kal admires that. The rest of him, though, focuses on the tightness of Batman’s jaw. On the way his fingers dug—briefly, but hard enough to bruise—into the meat of Kal’s shoulder. On the way his other hand has clenched into a tight fist. Kal sees all of this and realizes with a dismayed sort of awe, that Batman is, indeed, telling the truth.

“On Earth, I—most people do not...see me as a very smart person. You could say I am something of an idiot.”

“You are not!” Kal protests, more vigorous than he would have anticipated. “I may not have known you long, but—”

“I know,” Batman says, not an ounce of arrogance in the tone. “My point is—just because a group of people deems you useless does not mean you are. Sometimes people are wrong, even as a group.”

Kal’s mouth opens and closes before he can even figure out what he wants to say. It seems, however, that Batman sees something in his expression, because the next time he speaks—quiet, collected, but with what sounds a little like regret in his tone—he says:

“I can be wrong, too.”

Kal clamps his mouth shut at that, teeth clicking together as he lowers his head again. It takes longer to get himself under control this time, more effort to push the words aside and keep them for later examination. Some words—some gifts—cannot possibly be appraised at a glance.

“Thank you,” Kal manages anyway, the words all the fainter for having to squeeze their way through the tightness of his throat.

He gets to his feet, then, breathing fast, eyes burning. He may be able to set Batman’s words aside, but his heart cannot, and despite Batman’s noise of protest—or what Kal thinks, hopes, is a noise of protest—he bows in gratitude.

“It is late, and I do not wish to impose on you any further,” he says. “Thank you for your kind words. Good night, Batman.”

This time, the alien does not try to stop him. Kal makes his way back to his apartments on quiet feet, one hand pressed over his mouth, and cannot quite tell what sort of tears he spills as he cries himself to sleep.

Batman spends more time with Kal, after that night in the library. It is...awkward, in a way their language lessons never were. Part of it is that it is impossible to disentangle the sudden resurgence of interest from what felt like one of the most humiliating encounters of Kal’s life; but another, not insignificant part is also that Batman himself does not quite seem to know what he is trying to do. Or rather it feels like he is trying to help, but does not quite know how to go about it, as if his kindness were a long-unused muscle he has not yet figured out how to train. The thought is touching, and Kal knows to appreciate the sentiment—he does! But there is a sense of purpose in these encounters, a feeling of reaching for a definitive goal, that wasn’t there back when they simply exchanged ideas and asked questions about each other’s culture.

Kal is grateful for Batman’s help. He is. But quite aside from the fact that every one of their conversations makes it more obvious that Batman is better suited to leadership positions—much as the Nightwing associations continue to chafe at him—there is also a part of him that misses the days when Batman treated him not as a mission, not as someone to fix, but as a friend.

Still, they continue on, and it is soothing to have someone to talk to again. Not as much as it used to be—not nearly enough to compensate for all of Kal’s shortcomings, both in and out of Shadow’s costume—but enough at least to lull him into a sense of—of misplaced optimism. Just enough for Kal to think that maybe, if he gives himself enough time, he will manage to fix his flaws. To stop being sorry, and start being better.

Life, as it is wont to do, proves him wrong less than two weeks after the incident in the library, the night before his thirtieth birthday.

He knew—from the very start, he knew his poor sleeping habits would become a major problem, given time. He knew this, and still he refused to do what needed to be done, too worried about the dangers of sleeping medicines to accept that they were the only solution to his problem.

Now Shadow is running after a group of Kandori soldiers, the data sticks in their pockets containing enough information to bring down a significant portion—if not all—of the Dark Sun’s escape routes, and he is losing ground. His lungs burn with the effort of keeping up with Batman, or at the very least keeping the alien in his line of sight; his legs scream in protest with every movement. By his sides, his arms pull at his shoulder blades as if to split him in half. He is drenched with sweat under the suit, panting for breath even as he calls out Kara’s directions as to where to find the people they pursue, grateful that she is here to keep track of his suit’s readings when he is too exhausted to focus on anything but the chase.

Several feet ahead, Batman is all but flying. Every line of his body screams competence, confidence. Earlier, when the Kandori soldiers split up—two leaving, while the other three remained to take care of the so-called terrorists—Batman was the only reason Shadow got out of the fight at all, let alone unscathed. Even now, when the soldiers make a wrong turn and shove themselves into a dead end, it is Batman who catches up with them first, all but gliding into immobility. What his uniform is supposed to represent, Shadow does not know; but he cannot blame the two Kandori for recoiling from it, both the color and the shape far too reminiscent of Nightwing—and, by extension, the wrath of Vohc—to leave any Kryptonian indifferent. Even Shadow shivers as he takes his place by Batman’s side.

“Kal, you have to sit this one out,” Kara warns in his helmet. “Your readings—”

“I don’t really have a choice,” Shadow mutters between two heaving breaths.

To his left, Batman gives him a sharp look, but does not speak. Shadow allows himself two more lungfuls of air before he speaks in Kandori:

“Give us the data. We will let you go unharmed.”

Neither of the soldiers answer, but one of them spits on the ground. No need to translate that. On Shadow’s left, Batman stiffens.

“Kal, please,” Kara insists, just as Batman says:

“Fine.”

Batman jumps into the fight without hesitation. Behind him, Shadow scrambles—grapples with one of the soldiers to pull her off Batman’s back. Lands in a puddle with a hiss. Rolls back to his feet. When he raises his head, the soldier—a captain, her uniform says—is smirking at him. Why shouldn’t she? Batman is busy, and Shadow has already demonstrated he is not up for this fight. He braces himself when she comes for him. Dispatches the material of one baton to reinforce the suit. He ducks a punch. Catches another in the shoulder; the suit absorbs it. But not the third, or the fourth. He falls to his knees.

“Kal!” Kara calls out in his ears.

He shakes his head.

“Kal, get up!”

He tries to obey. Under him, his knees refuse to move. When the electrified knife comes for him, he does not know how he dodges it. A roll of his shoulder, a ripple of his suit. A lucky swing. The soldier falls to the ground with a cry. Shadow drags himself to his knees. Strikes her in the stomach with a baton while her partner passes overhead and crashes into the nearest wall. He is wearing a corporal’s uniform.

“Nightwing,” he tells Batman, gesturing to the woman even as he tries to hold her to the ground, “the data—”

“You have a bigger problem,” Kara warns.

Inside the helmet, the bead display morphs into an arrow and the words ‘danger, multiple unknowns’.

“Shadow!” Batman barks as he catches the soldier’s electrified knife seconds before it hits Shadow in the face. “Pay attention!”

“There’s more coming,” Shadow gasps in return, head turning to the right again. “We need to go.”

“I have the sticks.”

Batman pulls the woman’s handcuffs off her belt and forces her wrists into them. The man, still struggling to even sit up, they leave alone as they hurry out of the dead end, only for a loud, angry cry to echo through the streets.

“Shit,” Batman hisses.

From the corners of his eyes, Shadow counts six soldiers—three Ellons, three Kandori—and swears in turn before he catches Batman’s cape and they take off into a mad dash through the streets.

“We have to get to the roofs,” Batman yells.

Shadow does not answer. There is not enough breath left in him for it. He runs, lungs burning, legs aching, arms screaming, and prays to Rao to send something, anything to help them—prays to Vohc to spare Batman, at least, to leave El and Krypton a fighting chance in the near future. What he gets instead is a long series of bright blue riffle lights, and a piece of stone crashing into his helmet as he drags Batman into the nearest side street, relief coursing through him when he spots an emergency ladder, eight feet up in the air.

“Support,” he gasps as he steps into Batman’s hands to reach the bottom of the ladder, “we’re going to need extraction!”

“You had reinforcement this whole time?” Batman exclaims under him.

“I have your position,” Kara retorts, a rustling sound echoing behind her, “but you need to get to the mountains!”

“On the way,” Shadow manages.

Every inch of him protests when he jumps from the roof he and Batman emerged on to the next, muscles straining past what he ever thought was possible; but they have no other choice. He has no other choice. Every gap between houses is too wide, every roof too slick—but still he jumps, and catches himself, and scrambles up because if he does not, he will die. Roofs explode around them, the militia’s rifles blasting ancient walls into rubble, and with every one of them Shadow’s panic rises, his heart beats faster, his jumps grow messier.

“Nearly there,” Batman shouts.

He must have guessed where they are going. Shadow nods under his helmet. Pants, gasps, scrambles to the very last roof, and, without hesitation, dives into the air. The suit rearranges around him, carries him farther than he could ever have hoped to go on his own. Shadow shouts in joy when a bug lands less than a yard away from them, the bright blue of its engines shining like a small sun in the night.

“Shadow, get down!”

There is the dull sound of a body throwing itself to the ground. A bright blue flash, from behind. Shadow falls, the breath stolen from his lungs. Behind him, a cry of triumph, and then the shrill scream of sound cannons echoing over the mountains. Shadow gasps, tries to breathe, to shield his ears, to move, but he can’t, he can’t, it hurts too much, he can’t—

He cries out again when Batman seizes him. The world falls away, the loud, harsh sound of his ragged breathing filling his helmet until he can’t hear anything else. His vision goes gray, then black, then gray again. By the time he manages to focus on anything else, he is lying on the ground at the back of the bug, wind screaming past him through the open doors. Overhead, Batman is pawing at his shoulders, his neck.

“Come on,” he growls, something odd in his tone, “there has to be a way—”

“Excuse me,” Kal says, forgetting to adopt Shadow’s lower timbre, “may I help you?”

Batman freezes. Stares at Kal’s helmet through the cowl, hands and mouth gone slack. Kal coughs, and orders the suit to initiate its wound management protocol. He yelps when the first nanobots gather on the burnt flesh itself, hissing and biting his lip as the pilot tells them they are only five minutes away from their departure point.

“Departure point?” Batman asks.

Kal barely hears him through the rush of his blood in his ears. Half his skin crawls with the rippling movement of the suit, nanobots pulling away from unnecessary areas—his batons, first, then his helmet—to put pressure on the wound and reinforce the armature around Kal’s legs, his lower back. His head falls back and hits the ground when he loses support to his neck.

“No—ow—no material in—”

“But the Palace!” Batman shouts—Kal think he hears their pilot gasp. “There must be a doctor, a—anyone! You cannot have been working without some kind of safety—”

“Support—on the way,” Kal manages, struggling to keep his eyes open now that the blood loss is making itself known. “Not a doctor.”

“Then someone else!” Batman hisses.

Again, that tension in his words. Something in his voice...if Kal did not know better, he would be tempted to call it anguish. On Kal’s behalf. How unexpected.

“It’s okay,” Kal says, distantly relieved when his voice remains steady.

He knew this could happen. From the very first day, he knew. There is no surprise, here, except the absence of tears in his voice, the utter dryness at the corners of his eyes. Perhaps it is the pain that swallows them. Perhaps his body, trying so hard to pull him into oblivion, does not have the strength for them. Regardless, his voice is steady, and it remains steady when he says:

“I’ve been curious about Earth for a long while now.”

A short silence, while Batman absorbs Kal’s words and then, in English:

“You utter reckless idiot!”

“Batman—”

“Do not ‘Batman’ me!” Batman almost shouts, back to Ellon now. “What kind of stupid idea—”

The bug lands, lurching to a stop with a hiss as its grips anchor it to the mountainside. Inside the suit, Kal’s entire left side throbs, and he loses himself in the pain.

He opens his eyes to a higher ceiling and no wind, no smell of grass, no red moonlight around him. There is the soft feeling of a mattress under him and, to the right, someone tall and blonde working the controls of a healing pod. The suit still presses down on the wound, but even with it Kal’s vision remains frightfully gray. With a terrible effort, he gasps, and Kara turns—she pushes one last lever and, in a hiss of machinery, strides toward Kal and stands by his bedside. Her cheeks glisten.

“I was afraid you would leave without saying goodbye,” she says with a shiver in her voice. “Not that they should be very long—you have lost rather a lot of blood.”

There is a loud click, and the cot under Kal buzzes to life, the vibration strong enough to make him wince—to make him gasp, grasping for a breath that isn’t there, that won’t come, and his eyes widen with fear. Kara’s hand on his brow feels warm, almost too warm, and Kal leans into the touch with a sigh. He wants to stroke Kara’s hand—to hold her fingers one last time, but when he tries it feels like his arm has turned into a mix of lead and rubber, and all he succeeds in doing is making his hand flop out of the bed. He heaves a breath in.

“Kara….”

Kara’s face, haloed in golden blond in a sea of dark greens and near-black grays, squeezes tight, her eyes shining. Her hand leaves a burning trail from Kal’s forehead to his cheek.

“Oh, Kal,” she says, and breathes in hard.

Under him, the cot vibrates harder, and someone moans. It takes Kal a moment to realize that it is him.

“Batman is starting the ship, now,” Kara says the effort she makes to keep her voice steady pitching it much higher than normal. “Kryo will help him pilot. You will only have to say in the pod and heal.”

There will be no last look at Krypton, then. No sight of the mountains from above; no image of the Citadel, red against the darkness of El’s mountains, to treasure in Kal’s exile. Kal tries to take a breath—it feels like swallowing seawater and makes his throat tight, makes his eyes hurt. For the first time tonight, tears come to him, unbidden.

“You will be fine,” Kara says above him. “You will survive, and you will heal. And you will write to me.”

“Kara,” Kal manages.

It is more whine than word and it hurts—it hurts so much, tearing at the back of his throat, squeezing his lungs. Tears burn at his temples, tracing a searing path from his eyes to his hairline, and when Batman and the anonymous pilot come to move Kal’s bed toward the pod, panic seizes every last inch of him.

“Kara,” he repeats, “please, I don’t—”

His throat closes before he can finish his sentence, but she understands, Kal is sure of it. For years, Kal has told himself leaving Krypton would be a boon, his one chance at building a better life for himself. The only way for him to find a place he could fit and belong in. Now that moment is here and his heart recoils—clings to the steep slopes and the sharp edges of El’s mountains, the red light of the two moons. The northern winds, cold and deadly, and the smell of elderfir on the warm air of summer nights. Countless days spent sitting on a balcony, looking at El from above and pretending he could see Ul, far in the South. There will be no more of that for Kal, no more of anything; and here, at last, at the edge of leaving, he finds himself sobbing for a loss he never truly believed would pain him.

“Be safe now,” Kara tells him as the two men transfer Kal onto the pod’s bed. “Be happy, if you can.”

She presses a bruising kiss to Kal’s forehead, and he wants to answer—wants to look at her one last time and keep this, at least, in his heart. There are too many tears in his eyes now, fear gripping his heart too tight to leave room for anything else, and he squeezes his eyelids shut against the bright white light of the pod.

The last he sees of Kara is barely more than a small blonde dot in his peripheral vision.

[proverbsofpestilence]

I know this coward blocked us all, but I’m still gonna publish it, BECAUSE I WAS READY TO POST IT JUST BEFORE OUR QUEEN VALENTINA BLOCKED US ALL. I knew you were waste of time, but damn. I guess that’s it for “I don’t care about this discussion and I’m back to my great amazing life”, huh?

tbh I hadn’t planned to respond in the beginning, because of this post:

(that you btw deleted after few minutes and didn’t even mention me like an unbothered warrior princess you are) if there were fucking diplomas in pseudosciense yours should had been taken away after saying that “ENFJ 6 so/sx is the type that’s more able to survive/navigate in the real world”. girl, have you seen sp blind 6? they’re rare, but they’re exist. and you’re one of them.

>I’m replying to you idiots @hitsujinko @proverbsofpestilence on a different post because that’s what you two should have done in the beginning

oh you mean, we should reply to you in different post without even mentioning you and then delete it right away? like you did? wow great, thanks for your tip.

>Hmm no, @syntheticalcomposure didn’t have to be “sceptic” of my post because it said nothing controversial, she just doesn’t fucking know how to read

no, girl. she just noticed that you’re post is kinda. basic. and then commented to straight things out. and you got all defensive and acted like she was attacking you while she was actually agreeing with you. you’re disintegrating and trying to act like you’re better than smarter than all the other people to cover up your mistake. been there, done that.

>And bitch i’m sorry but i’m not attacked at all because you don’t have any power over me, i’m literally chilling on my bed drinking a smoothie and you’re the only one who cares so much about my type but okay

oh I care! because I hoped you would actually type yourself correctly after this whole time. you know, I mentioned I followed you. it was a long time ago, but guess what! I actually liked you. past tense. don’t judge book by its cover, right?

now it’s just entertaining to make fun of you.

>And again, I have no inch of enneagram 6 on my body. Their outlook in life sickens me and it’s completely different to how I survive, if i was a 6 I wouldn’t even be alive lmao. You have absolutely no basis to type me as a 6 other than what you’re projecting into me

you have no inch of 6 in your body and yet u were mistyped as one? :0000 just like u have no inch of 9 in your body and you’re mistyped as one? gotcha.

and you keep. accusing others of projecting. like you’re doing it yourself.

“ew dont call me sweetie, we’re not there yet” okay. bitch. are we there yet? :))

>Also what community??? What the fuck is a community and especially online??? Shut up your soc”

do you think soc blinds are dumb? no, seriously. another prove you don’t understand theory at all. soc blind have poor understanding of social bonds and constructs or just simply don’t even acknowlegde them in the first place. they know what fucking community is. you know. the way a lot of soc blind people use to describe “””typology fandom”””.

also wow! I’m soc. yeah I have fucking soc in my stacking u fucking moron. what are u even trying to prove.

> Which by the way was: you can’t type someone’s enneagram based on outwardly behaviors alone but instead you have to think of the reasons why they do them

don’t worry, you’re not a special snowflake. if INFP 4 so/sp can be typed by one single post alone, you can be too.

>Also what community??? Again with your SOC bullshit???? Who is defending me??? Of what????? The way you all think is so freaking weird

are you serious. like. I know you think I’m dumb. but have some fucking respect for soc blinds. they’re not that fucking stupid as you try to portray them.

>Just because I don’t sound like those stupid infjs here using difficult words and concepts because they’re so smart uwu , doesn’t mean I’m not one

what. who said that. who fucking said that.

>Check how @mowoths expresses her thoughts vs the way I express mine. She’s an enfj, i’m not and you can clearly see how different we both are

she’s not 6. also she’s not dumb. important factor, ya know.

>You: valentina is a fe-dom Also you: valentina is not capable of having the most basic skills of a real fe-dom

yay! and I actually believed you know your shit since you were into it for so long.

>Like… Make a decision????

like u did with your typing that u kept constantly changing back?

>What???? The reason behind this is not inferior Ti. It’s simply because English is not my first language and I don’t know how to express myself correctly in a way that makes sense, especially not to natives or more advanced speakers. If all of you spoke Spanish, i promise I wouldn’t sound “disconnected from everything”. So stop being a bitch just because you understand this language better than I do

babie. sweetie. honey. bitch.

1) I’m not native English speaker neither,

2) you speak English just fine,

3) that’s not a fucking excuse because your English. is just fucking fine. probably better than mine.

>But have you seen my actual aes instead of the shit I reblog? Let’s be realistic: They suck. If you compare them to the aes of the actual high se users

>there are actual parameters that show wether someone’s a high se user or not and i don’t have any of those, not even one

umm what. I said your aes is tert Se. not high Se good.

wait, who was accused who of not being capable of reading again?

>I do have the presence of a gut core but you can’t fucking know that because you have never seen me in real life. And yes, i know people can see through you online but NOT in the way you’re doing it. This is not it. I do have everything a 9 core has but that could only be seen if you actually knew me

oh you have such poor self awareness but you know what type of presence you give off? also. it’s. a fucking. vibe. I don’t need to see you to feel your presence. every single gut core has it. every single one of them. I can fucking talk to person online and still figure out that they have gut core energy. sad you apparently can’t.

>And so-dom??? What the actual fuck???? I am EVERYTHING except that. I have never exhibited any behavior of that ???? I’m a so-blind, the end.

yeah sure. I totally believe you. soc blinds don’t know what community is. don’t realize when someone’s defending them even when they mention them in their own post to support their stand. that’s not like you also automatically assumed I’m friends with synthie just because I agree with her on this topic. like you know. soc would do.

>Okay, okay… I would maybe believe you if you told me I’m a SX/SO because that would make some sense and i typed as that before. Except that i don’t have ANY trait of a sp-blind. Then nope, i’m still a so-blind

okay, so sx/so would make sense because you typed as one before? then why the fuck ENFJ and 6 are completely out of options? you were mistyped as them too. also I love that you keep saying you cannot be this type because either just no or other factors. but don’t worry. most people are able to type people by, you know, observing their behaviour and talking to them. which I just did.

>Also, i’m the most SX-dom to ever exist???? If we could have only one IV, i would simply be SX

nah, you’re not. you have sx, it’s true, but it’s not dom.

>What a stupid argument adjfkrk. I haven’t ended this conversation because a) I’m right and b) who gives a single fuck about an internet discussion????? Do you know all of this literally doesn’t matter in real life????? Do you know i’ll just post this and go back to my amazing life as if it didn’t happen????

wow, so because it doesn’t matter you keep responding? addition: that’s why you blocked as all? also “amazing life”??? can you turn off your fucking 3 fix soc for one goddamn second.

no one taught you that the harder you try to appear as something you’re not, the worse it gets?

>In real life, i’m conflict avoidant and i don’t have to prove that to you

THIS IS REAL LIFE. YOU’RE TALKING TO A REAL PERSON. I’M TALKING TO YOU. A REAL PERSON. YOU FUCKING TYPED THIS ON YOUR KEYBOARD OR ON YOUR PHONE. WHATEVER. YOU SPEND YOUR APPARENTLY SUPER AMAZING IRL TIME TO INTERACT WITH ME IN THE SAME WAY YOU WOULD INTERACT WITH ACTUAL PEOPLE. seeing you in real life would change NOTHING, except I’d be able to see your body language. which honestly doesn’t matter when you’re so obvious to type.

9 would end this conversation a long time ago. An actual INFJ 9 told you that.

>finally the fact that I don’t understand english well enough (again, stop being so fucking condescending about this)

??????SDFfkhkfhjjkKDFKFGFJjkg?YUHRTO7O78??????????????????SDFKDFKDH??? WHERE BITCH. WHERE. you’re projecting. I didn’t say anything about your english skills in my post. nothing. but you’re insecure about it and you’re projecting your fear onto me, thinking I was mocking you for it. why can’t you see the shit you accuse others of doing?

>Also I love that you genuily think I’m an ENFJ 639 SO/SX… As if that wouldn’t be the type most known for their amazing social skills

once again. you don’t know theory. you don’t know what soc blidness actually looks like. you don’t know what Fe is like. you don’t know what any enneagram type is like.

also, sp-blind 6s are rare, but they exists. mostly nothing but a giant mess.

>Literally no one could ever get close to my level of optimism and hope in other people, the universe and life in general

>For 6s, when something goes wrong they literally think their whole life is over. While instead i ignore whatever is going wrong and get back up without thinking

psst. have u ever heard of 6w7? because I just found out your wing!

>I also trust people a lot. Of course I’m not a naive bitch who lets everyone in because I have SP. But what I mean is i don’t distrust everyone and think that they’re all against me and are going to betray me, as 6s usually do. I don’t test people to prove if i should trust them or not. All 6s do that and I think it’s pathetic

you don’t understand what 6s are.

also. everyone thinks 6s are pathethic. including 6s themselves.

>Finally, If I don’t trust myself it’s because of my mental illnesses and countless childhood trauma. Literally every type can distrust themselves. But fuck you for making me bring that up

no one fucking made you bring it up. fucking. no one. stop being so goddamn defensive. stop acting like a victim. stop projecting. stop trying so hard to act like someone you’re not. you could, you know, FUCKING YEET OUT OF THIS DISCUSSION LIKE A PROPER 9 WOULD DO

>If i ever use projection as a defense mechanism, it’s only due to my mental illnesses and what i have always been taught. This was literally the point of my post, every single type can be an emotional mess: as proven by me and my family

“ever”. ha. funny joke.

you realize just because your behaviour can be justified by external something, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a 6? like. for example, you can be a shut in because of your social phobia AND be a 5. one doesn’t exclude each other.

or like fucking me, be a 6 and have clinical anxiety that is actually not fucking related to your type.

>And i’m not acting defensive and attacked??? I’m literally chilling here… and unlike you, studying for my future and doing something productive with my life :) 

wow I’m so unbothered wow :) and chill :) like a conflict avoidant type I am :) like the person that keeps projecting shit :) that doesn’t know when to give up :) that keeps accusing people of attacking her :) that calls people bitches and then delete post because they’re a coward :) that blocks people because she can’t handle admitting she was wrong :) that feels a need to consantly repeat how unbothered she is because god she’s so unbothered :)

>No shit sherlock, there you go again schooling me about something I already know

wow you know this? weird. because u keep proving you don’t know basic stuff.

oh and louder for people in the back.

STOP BEING SO GODDAMN DEFENSIVE. STOP ACTING LIKE A VICTIM. STOP PROJECTING. STOP TRYING SO HARD TO ACT LIKE SOMEONE YOU’RE NOT. AND FOR SAKE OF THIS FUCKING WORLD TURN OFF YOUR 3 FIX SOC BECAUSE YOU’RE LITERALLY UNBEARABLE TO LISTEN TO.

[i-am-the-entertainer]

RevieWBY: Volume 6

This has been stated so many times, but Volume 5 was bad. Okay, it wasn’t terrible, like I don’t feel offended by it being bad (unlike certain folks), but looking back on it I don’t have anything to say to really defend it as something Rooster Teeth should have talked up as much as they did at the time. It had some good things going for it, but the amount of problems it had in terms of animation and writing really put a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. So for Volume 6 to deal with all that fallout, it was going to have to do a lot. And to their credit, CRWBY accepted the criticism in stride, and actively worked to make Volume 6 something that people who despised Volume 5 might enjoy.

Still, one had to go into this season with the understanding that some people were never going to be completely satisfied with whatever CRWBY did. Because at the end of the day, the RWBY that Rooster Teeth currently makes is not Monty Oum’s show anymore. No, this isn’t saying CRWBY is in any way disrespecting his legacy, it’s just Monty Oum had a certain method to running the show that only he could really get away with: epic fight scenes, suddenly throwing giant curveballs into the series’ mythology, taking vital time away from storytelling so the fights looked cool. I mean, there are people who criticize the show for doing that now when they didn’t give two shits when Monty did it, because Monty did it in a manner that somehow worked. I don’t know how he did it, but he did, and, well, he’s not here to do it, and there’s no way even a huge animation team can collectively do things like him. And they shouldn’t: if they can use a better industry standard animation engine than Poser, than the fact that Monty Oum didn’t like animating with Maya shouldn’t stop them.

Blah blah blah...this is all about FNDM reception. What did I think of Volume 6?

Well...

Focus

In my mid-volume review I cited this as Volume 6′s strongest aspect, and as far as I can tell this remains the case. By focusing our hero storyline on one group and for the most part the villain storylines on only a few characters who were paired off, Volume 6 effectively told a story that didn’t force the viewers to juggle multiple things and find some semblance of a continuing story. Everything happened linearly and the whole thing made for a more enjoyable watch overall.

Tone

Building off of that renewed focus, this volume felt like it had more of a consistent tone that lasted from beginning to end. RWBY markets itself as an anime show and uses a lot of that anime-style of humor (slapstick and comedically exaggerated emotions), but honestly it’s always played fast and loose with using that humor in a way that doesn’t feel out of place. In this volume it was more consistently used, and that’s largely thanks to the nailed down focus that allowed character interactions to utilize the humor in a natural way. Ruby and Maria Calavera were especially good sources for humor.

Now, things did get a little more screwball when Cordovin came into the mix, but it was interesting seeing CRWBY take that humor to a logical extreme for the first time in a while (not since the Beacon years). It interrupted the tone for a bit, but not in a manner that overall changed the genre this show is going for.

Animation

Beautiful. The improved production pipeline that we’ve heard about really came through. These episodes were the best they’ve ever looked, minus a few errors here and there, showing just how amazing RWBY can look when you give the animators time to add their own touches. There was some really great fight animation to boot: none of the fights this volume felt awkward, and you could tell the animators had a lot of fun.

Worldbuilding/Storytelling

It feels weird saying that Volume 6 did a better job with worldbuilding than Volume 4, which took place on four different continents and traveled across one, and Volume 5, which took place on two different continents and featured the second major skirmish between the villains and the heroes. I think this has to do with just how well it was integrated into the story: insight into the world came at points where the story needed it and when the viewers wanted it. Nothing ever felt like a massive info dump better suited World of Remnant; where there was just too much information delivered that wasn’t relevant to what was happening in the show. Volumes 4 and 5 had this same problem with establishing the world, often telling us too much in a way that just didn’t feel natural to the story. With Volume 6, almost every chapter up until the final Argus arc included some form of that insight:

Chapter 1 showed us how ordinary civilians deal with traveling through Grimm territory––the steps they take to protect themselves

Chapter 2 showed us some aspects of the Mistral criminal underground, not telling us too much about it but suggesting it was much larger than what Cinder encountered.

Chapter 3 showed us...so many things.

Chapter 4 offered a sense of the stakes RWBY faced in relation to all of Remnant.

Chapter 5 and 6 gave us a glimpse at another form of non-city life in Remnant.

Chapter 7 introduced us to Argus, my favorite of all the Remnant cities we’ve seen; plus a glimpse into the life of the silver-eyed warriors; and a more representative depiction of what domestic life is like in Remnant

Chapter 8 told us what Atlas personnel who aren’t Ironwood or Winter are like, plus the long-awaited insight into how the silver eyes work.

Chapter 9 shows something of the effect the Battle of Beacon, and by extension Pyrrha’s death, had outside of our core group.

Things kind of teeter off with the finale arc, but that’s because worldbuilding became a little less important to what was going on. This is kind of a stretch, but the mech fight and the arrival of the Grimm in Argus give us an idea of how large non-capital cities defend themselves without just spelling everything out.

All in all, this volume delivered on some impressive worldbuilding, probably the best the series has had in a while. It wasn’t massive info dumps unless it needed to be (e.g. Chapter 3), and it offered just enough for other important things like the storytelling and the action to still be in the forefront.

Characters

Volume 5, despite the fact it involved the major reunion of Team RWBY after two volumes, felt like it was simply putting the main characters through situations without those situations really doing anything to develop them or define them as anything beyond what we already knew. Some characters fared better on the development front, namely Yang, but others, especially Ruby, just seemed to be along for the ride without us getting any insight into them. This is where the writing issue that came from separating everyone starting with Volume 4 really came to a head: too many different characters with their own story to cover, and sometimes those stories just didn’t do much for the character beyond existing as a situation they were in.

Volume 6 feels like the refutal of that, and that mostly has to do with the fact that we’re not juggling so many storylines anymore. When a major event happens to the heroes, everyone gets affected at the same time. The train crashes? DEVELOPMENT! Jinn’s story? DEVELOPMENT AND INSIGHT! Snowstorm? INSIGHT! The Apathy? DEVELOPMENT! Telling team JNR about Jinn’s story? DEVELOPMENT! Adam ambushes Blake and Yang for the first time since Volume 3? DEVELOPMENT! WITH A HEALTHY DOSAGE OF ANGST!

Surprisingly, the same thing is happening to two of our favorite villains, Mercury and Emerald: even though they only really appeared in three chapters this Volume, we actually got a surprising chance to see how their defeat at the Battle of Haven affected them, and their increasingly strong misgivings about working for Salem. We get more of an idea of them as people rather than Cinder’s blind followers, understanding why they stuck with such an evil person for so long. It’s the most we’ve learned about them since Volume 3, and we didn’t even need lengthy flashbacks.

Even Adam got some more insight. RWBY has been following the path that Adam was an abusive ex-boyfriend for quite a while now, but there was always this underlying thought that he got into the White Fang business for a seemingly noble cause. The problem was the show hadn’t depicted how he got from Point A to Point B. The Adam Character Short offered us some of that much needed insight, putting some of his actions up to this point in a new context, even if it was set-up for clearing up some things so they could get rid of him.

Of course, there are still exceptions to characters getting character development, and honestly they’re kind of glaring ones. Oscar’s development arc, where he came to accept he was his own person, completely happened offscreen (for reasons that I’ve brought up before and will reiterate in the final section), robbing us of really witnessing his growth as a person. I enjoyed some of the stuff Cinder did this volume, especially her escape from the vault and her fight with Neo. But honestly she continues to be a pretty bland villain with little hints at her motivations for being such a terrible person: the Battle of Haven was such an utter defeat for her there needed to be some form of consequence that would’ve affected her character while also telling us more about her. Maybe it would’ve been her strategizing her revenge, which would’ve gotten more insight into how she thinks as a master planner. Instead, we get her leaving the vault, more or less going back to what she used to do but in a more low-key setting, fighting with Neo, plotting with Neo, and leaving with Neo. It felt more like “Hey, she’s alive, and here’s what she’s doing,” which while I appreciate it feels kind of a waste of time if you’re not doing anything with her beyond that. Honestly, a post-credits reveal that she was alive and then a pre-Volume 7 character short detailing how she made it to Atlas that covered her and Neo’s entire storyline this volume would’ve been more helpful.

Before I go on to my most major critique of this volume, I need to address the two Goliaths in the room.

Adam

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they needed to get rid of Adam. The way things have been going, there was only so much more you could do with his character before he became a nuisance that was overstaying his welcome. I understand people wanted some deeper insight into him, but the fact was he was never introduced to be a major villain to anyone beyond Blake and later Yang. They could’ve had him have a thing against Weiss, but they didn’t, they focused the time that would’ve made him a major villain for everyone else on making people like Roman and Cinder and Salem the big villains. They decided on the path of abusive ex-boyfriend a very long time ago, and if you hadn’t figured that out after the Adam Character Short I honestly think you were being willfully ignorant to what’s been building up.

The best I can say is that Adam and his history is a missed opportunity for some pretty interesting storytelling and worldbuilding, but the fact remains: it is not his story that they want to tell, it is not his show. It may make something interesting to think about, but Adam’s story is supplementary, and works better in supplementary material, a la character shorts and maybe mangas.

Jaune

Y’all need to quit it with the “Hrrr drr Jaune took up time again moan moan Miles Luna is self indulgent” talk, he barely did anything this volume beyond Chapter 9 and having a sister that the whole fandom loved.

Pacing

This...this is where Volume 6 ran into trouble.

Overall, from the season premiere to the finale arc, this was probably the best-paced season of RWBY we’ve ever had. Major story events happened right when we needed them, and for the most part they didn’t drag out story arcs for any longer than they needed to be.

Well...until they reached Argus, that is.

At face value, a lot happened in the final couple of chapters. Chapter 8 gave us Maria explaining the silver eyes, Chapter 9 had the scene with Pyrrha’s statue and the mysterious Red-Haired Woman (I’ll headcanon whatever I want about who she is, Jen Brown) Chapter 10 started the Cordovin fight, Chapter 11 reinforced Blake and Yang’s partnership, Chapter 12 killed Adam, and Chapter 13 had Ruby finally use her silver eye powers to defeat a Grimm and they made it to Atlas. Yeah, it was a pretty eventful set of episodes.

So then why did it feel like it dragged? Here are a couple reasons that I’ve identified.

1. The Cordovin Battle sidelined story arcs for too long

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the finale arc should not have been split up like that over so many episodes. It afforded us some pretty well-animated fights, some of the best the series has ever had, but the volume hadn’t been relying on that action to keep up the forward momentum, but on actually telling the stories of these characters. I get the need for CRWBY to prove that they can do well-animated fights, but as I’ve come to accept action should never take precedence over storytelling (I know, that’s hard to swallow when parts of the fndm spends hours complaining about how Monty’s not animating the fights anymore). And it’s clear to me in this final arc put emphasis on the action over the momentum of the story, bringing the actually pretty good storytelling the volume had had up to that point to a grinding halt.

Now, historically RWBY fights have delayed telling stories, but it’s never been for too long, at most maybe two chapters? But if you spend three chapters on a single fight, thereby devoting three weeks of your viewers’ time to high-octane action, people are gonna notice that the story is basically going nowhere.

What could’ve made this less of a problem? Well, perhaps establishing Cordovin earlier and making her less of a buffoon would’ve eased my hatred of this arc. Volume 6 lacks a clear antagonist for the story, but the way Cordovin was treated as a big deal in this final battle made it seem like she was taking up that role, except we didn’t even see her until the final half of the volume, and in her debut we couldn’t take her seriously as a villain, much less an antagonist, because of the pure comedy they used in her intro. There needed to be something about her at least a few episodes early––take this with a grain of salt because I think following JNR in Argus would’ve killed the balanced pacing of the first half of the volume (and just made the Jaune haters apoplectic), but maybe a few quick scenes of JNR arriving in Argus and getting rejected by her would’ve been helpful. Or honestly easing off on the comedy of her intro. Such a one-note character who we are primed to not take seriously isn’t interesting as a major force, so identifying her as a more threatening roadblock for the heroes would’ve made the stakes of the final fight a little more...present.

2. Important storylines got trimmed for time’s sake and weren’t addressed properly.

@hypeathon (whose excellent production analyses for this Volume are well worth a read) identified a tweet Miles made back in October, prior to the premiere and most likely when they were finishing storyboards, about “killing your darlings.” For those unaware and who may have severely misinterpreted that comment, “killing your darlings” is when writers have to sacrifice something they love or want to do so that the story works better. The timeliness of this tweet (after they would’ve finished the script but before they’d wrapped on storyboards and voice acting for the final episodes) suggests the writers’ room had to cut a lot of material from Volume 6 (what Miles called a massacre of darlings), most likely due to production limits or not having enough time to cover them.

Think about it: the story from Chapters 1-7 was really good: everything was properly spaced out, the scripts felt polished, there was a balance of action and comedy and legit storytelling, the good pacing lasted longer than it ever has within a single volume.

Then we hit Chapter 8 and suddenly it all changes: storylines don’t get the proper time devoted to them, arcs come to a screeching halt due to the big fight. Unlike previous volumes, where the imbalance was pretty much the entire volume, there’s actually a clear point right in the middle of this volume where things suddenly took a turn for the worse. And the fact is, some of the problems with the story in the final arc suddenly make more sense if you accept that time that would’ve been devoted to it got sidelined in this “purge”: Qrow’s alcoholism suddenly getting brushed aside after Chapter 9 hopefully to be addressed next volume, Oscar disappearing and all his development happening offscreen, Adam’s completely unsubtle return after only a vague hint in Chapter 1 that would’ve been stronger if he’d kept popping up in Argus. I’d even go so far to say the odd pacing of the final few chapters could easily have been the result of the writing team not being able to devote a single chapter to such a grand fight, so they needed to stretch it out so CRWBY could actually animate it within reasonable deadlines, which meant sacrificing time for those arcs that so desperately needed development.

So what overall is gonna fix RWBY’s pacing in the future? Well, I think at the moment the show is too ambitious. If it wants to keep to a reasonable production schedule, they need to control the scale of their finales so that it can be completed without needing to sacrifice other storylines. If it wants to hold onto that ambition and make the finales as grand as they want it to be to do their boy Monty proud, then they absolutely need to delay the actual release of the volume so they can put in the proper amount of time to both the story and animation. And I don’t think anyone would mind waiting a little longer for Volume 7 if it meant this show got the care and attention it needs to tell the story it clearly wants to tell.

Conclusions

Evaluating Volume 6 is impossible without evaluating what came before it. RWBY was never a perfect show, but when you lose someone who was responsible for the show’s popularity in the first place and have to change how it’s made to make up for his absence, there’s going to be backlash. Backlash from the fans, and, uh, backlash from inside the company. The fact is, people are never going to be satisfied with the RWBY that Rooster Teeth makes today, and Rooster Teeth is never going to push out a RWBY that will make everyone happy. All they can really do is keep moving forward.

And move forward they did. Despite my problems with the finale, Volume 6 was good. I’ve always been sort of ambivalent about the show (I was drawn to it by my brother shortly before Monty’s death and have been watching it out of respect for him and the company as creative artists), and even if I thought some of RWBY’s critics were being too harsh (or seriously needed to find something better to do), I didn’t find Volumes 4 and 5 enjoyable enough that I felt like defending them. But guys, Volume 6 did something amazing: it made RWBY fun to watch again. Focused, consistent, and compelling storytelling plus gradually eased-in worldbuilding made for a story that I could follow along without having to juggle so many different plots. Improvements in the overall animation made things nice to look at and when fights happened they were always entertaining, never making me cringe or grimace, always making me think “Hell yeah, beat the shit out of them!” Just like I felt back in the old days of the show.

I feel as though what’s holding RWBY back at this point, however, is adhering to the production schedule that its old vision called for in making its current vision. And it honestly cannot keep doing that. RWBY is a show trying to reach grand heights, and its rushed production timelines and lost story arcs are keeping it tethered to the ground. Yet I can’t help but say: Volume 6 is RWBY at its finest so far. It can’t fix the problems that previous volumes have had, but it builds on the void those problems left to build a story that makes this show feel like something worth following once more.

So, I can safely say I’ll be following along when RWBY returns for Volume 7...hopefully later rather than sooner (again, it needs a better production schedule).

[cienie-isengardu]

Satine and Pre: Personal Ships

Previous parts: political & social position < • > Wealth: clothes < • > paintings seen in their residences < • > living conditions < • >

This time I’m gonna talk about two very different ships - Satine’s Coronet (Luxury spaceliner):

and Pre’s Gauntlet (Kom’rk Class Fighter/Transporter)

Starting from the beginning, building ships & vehicles seems to be thriving industry of Mandalore System, what I assume is one of main income for New Mandalorian society. 

Coronet itself is an interesting ship, not only due to its wealth, but also its role. Let’s look what The Clone Wars: Incredible Vehicles (TCW:IV) tells about Satine’s luxury ship.

Coronet is one-of-a-kind model built by Kalevala Spaceworks - once again, Satine’s personal wealth / position is backed up by her native planet.

It’s hard to tell who really invented (initiated) building such expansive ship (Mandalore’s ruler herself? Kalevala Spaceworks, as a gift for new duchess? Someone’s else?) but luxury alone wasn’t the reason for such project. Coronet is a showcase for Mandalorian engineering AND proof that New Mandalorians left their violent past behind (about that more information soon). Thus the ship is a tool of Satine’s ideology / propaganda. And is used in her political work:

What was also pointed out in TCW: New Battlefronts:

Beside the role in Satine’s politics, Coronet also serves as luxury starcruiser, carrying out different types of travelers (from the richer officials & tourists to the ones seeking cheap passage) and goods during its travel between Mandalore System/Sektor to Core Worlds, like Coruscant.

The quality and size of the rooms varied depending on the wealth of traveler. From the layout of the ship and TCW animated series we know that on Coronet, Satine has Royal Suites and Throne Room

that for sure look much richer, more colorful than the cheaper rooms like the one shared by Anakin and Obi-Wan (who as Jedi, refused to take room for VIPs)

Satine can’t complain about lack of luxury during her travel. To be fair, the whole interior of the ship intended for passengers looks beautiful, with rich details that are made of the best things from all Mandalorian worlds:

The luxury for all passengers has its hidden meaning as well. The Coroner is a tool for political meetings no less as a tool to popularize the pacifist New Mandalorians as a better culture, detached from the predecessors' crimes. The trips of Coroner are as much about transport and trade as they are about changing people’s mind about Mandalore System/Sector and giving them a chance to see Mandalorian worlds - and its beauty & wealth - for themselves.

Here comes an intrigue part - the ship is presented in sources as luxury vessel that belongs to Duchess of Mandalore. There is little information how planning Coronet’s trips worked and how often those happened or how those were related to Satine’s political activity. I mean, the ship is a private property of the ruler, yet it is used for good of common people (both native of Mandalore System/Sektor and outsiders). I’m not sure if during Clone Wars era we heard about other royal vessel used like that. BUT!

Luxury travel alone can’t pay the operating expenses of a liner the size of the Coronet. The great ship’s lower decks are mostly for cargo [...].

I’m seriously intrigued WHO GET THE IDEA OF MAKING SUCH LUXURY SHIP THAT IS SO EXPENSIVE TO MAINTAIN? To the point that not even selling tickets for travel from Core Worlds to Mandalore System/Sektor is enough and the vessel must be used as container ship at the same times?

Like, I get that this is practical thing to do, to combine useful with pleasure and all, but I kinda get the feeling the Kalevala Spaceworks and/or Duchess or whoever came up with the idea may not think it over really. Coronet is supposed to be a showcase for Mandalorian engineering and new face of Mandalorian culture under pacifist ruler. Sharing vessel with common people by duchess was intended from the start or did it became a necessity when cost of maintaining turned out to be too expensive? Also, who paid for the production of ship and who is paying now for its maintaining? How much (if even) it burdens the state budget or Satine’s own wealth? Could the cost be reason why Coronet is one-of-a-kind model? Was it so unprofitable to produce more or didn’t Kaleva Spaceworks want to undermine the ruler's prestige?

On one hand, the Coronet belongs to Duchess, and plays political role in Satine’s attempts to gain allies, at least during Clone Wars. On another It also carry different types of travelers and goods (transport and trade) and plays a role in propagation the more friendly image of Mandalorian people in the Core Worlds.

Frankly, the last part may be one of reason why Pre despise so much Satine’s rule and thinks she “tarnishes” the name of Mandalorian by making Mandalore the “cheap entertainment” for boredom people of Core Worlds.

In contrast, the Gauntlet and similar Kom’rk Class Fighters/Transporters used by Death Watch, according to TCW: IV were build in secret by rogue elements within MandalMotors:

Those ships, including Pre’s own, were made for fight and transport, what means the main focus was the practicality, not luxury. Kom’rk Fighters were relative small but maneuverability and could carry around 28 people (4 crewmembers + 24 armored Death Watch troopers). Pre’s own ship didn’t stand out from other crafts.

We may only wonder how the rogue elements within MandalMotors managed to make at least three Kom’rk Fighters with armament in secret and who paid for those. Most likely Pre’s high social & political status helped with that, but as a spy working undercover he couldn’t do everything alone, right?

Like I said before, there is not much information who get the idea to made such luxury spaceship like Coroner thus I don’t cross out the chance that Coronet may be a “gift” from Kalevala (or Kalevala Spaceworks) for the new ruler. What could make an interesting parallel to Pre’s Gauntlet & Kom’rk Fighters, who also happens to be a gift from Death Watch’s supporters working in secret.

The Gauntlet (and other two Kom’rk Fighters) were important part of Death Watch’s daily life. Used as transport, air cover and part of camps, it served all warriors the same. We don’t have much informations how much maintaining Gauntlet alone costed, but at the same time, the show alone did not mention that Death Watch have problems with that. And fuel, machine maintenance or repair for sure cost something and Pre was most likely cut off from his potential bank accounts.

Despite the differences, both ships were a tools in Pre and Satine’s private crusades - against New Mandalorians or against violence and brutal past.

The names of ships alone speak a lot about their owners too. Coronet is a term for small or relatively simple crown, especially as worn by lesser royalty. The title of Duchess is related to aristocracy yet in terms of royalty, Duchess is lesser to status of Queen. Coronet then may have double meaning, on one hand the wealth of ship speaks for Satine’s own prestige & social status, on another the special ship is the best example of Kalevala’s technology achievement - a way to “crown” the pacifist (better) culture of New Mandalorian

In contrast, Gauntlet is related to fight. According to dictionary, the world alone represents part of armor (“a glove worn with medieval armor to protect the hand”) or an open challenge (as to combat, when used in phrases like “throw down the gauntlet”) or a severe trial (ordeal). All three fit Pre’s characterization & role in story, from wearing armor & respecting old ways to challenging Satine’s pacifist rule and actually going through trial(s) from season 2 (surviving failure(s), fighting with Maul for control over Mandalore/DW).

There is also once again the symbolism of light and darkness. Coronet is all about luxury and beauty (good / light), built as offical vessel, while Gauntlet was made in secret (in the “darkness”) and used for fight (war).

[possibilistfanfiction]

where the days have no numbers (to slow among roses, or stay behind)

[yall were rly cute abt the fic where lexa needs to retire & they have hale so here’s a little continuation for u. lexa’s hip gets better n they go on VACAY! ao3.]

//

where the days have no numbers (to slow among roses, or stay behind)

.

if it’s harmed, it’s harmed me, it’ll harm, i let it in —bon iver, ‘00000 million’

//

lexa looks out of place, and uncomfortably so, in a hospital gown and the beds that on many warriors look tiny. but you’re struck again—as you are sometimes, when things are calm and the world smells like flowers, and lexa’s hair is loose from its braids and you are sure she has never loved anyone as much as she loves you—you are struck that your wife is small, and slight, and delicate. 

she is, also, incredibly stubborn and sort of ridiculous, which right now is helping the pang in your chest lessen, just a little bit. 

‘stop trying to take those off,’ you tell her, and try to be gentle about it, because you know she’s mostly just scared and not trying to be consistently obstinate. 

lexa lies back against the pillows, looking impossibly younger in the soft gown, without any armor or warpaint. she huffs. ‘this procedure is for my hip, clarke. i do not see the use for all of these.’

she looks toward the oximeter on her finger with absolute disdain, and you can’t help but laugh.

she glares.

‘they’re just so we can make sure that you’re healthy the whole time.’

‘i am healthy,’ she says, and without swords and daggers her annoyance looks a little like a pout. 

‘you are,’ you say, grant her that at least, kiss her cheek gently when she petulantly turns away. you smile against her skin, though, and you feel her resolve start to waver. ‘you’re very healthy, and once your hip is healed, i have all sorts of plans to increase your flexibility.’

she turns toward you. ‘yes?’

‘mhm, commander,’ you tell her, and her pupils grow in size immediately. you want to laugh because you have been having sex with her for almost fifteen years and still this never fails. ‘lots of range of motion exercises.’

it takes her a moment to laugh, but then she does, softly and with resignation. ‘i look forward to that, clarke of the sky people.’

you smile fully then, and tug her in for a kiss. her IV line gets caught in your hair and you have to carefully untangle yourselves, but she doesn’t seem nearly as frustrated as before. 

the hospital in polis is coming along—she’d given you and raven free reign, essentially, to build an equipped hospital in polis, to work with the healers to blend both your practices of medicine. raven had been able to salvage some ark tech, and replicate it as well, and so now you have x-ray machines in polis, and three surgical theaters that are almost up to your mother’s exacting standards. you’ve spent your years setting up clinics in most clans, educating their healers, traveling with—and without—lexa to the far reaches of all of the land you could’ve never dreamed of. you’ve delivered babies, and treated head wounds, and tried to chart every poison and antidote the grounders seemingly have an endless supply of; you have given yourself to leadership and education and healing.

your mother had grumbled when you’d insisted she travel to polis to do lexa’s surgery here, but when you’d pointed out that there was no good way to transport your wife after her surgery back to your home, you had seen your mother consider having to have a sore, stir-crazy commander in her pristine arkadia hospital, and she had agreed. 

you’re waiting for her to be ready, now, with lexa in this small sterile room that she hates, hooked up to all sorts of machines that she hates, and you can understand: she has been hurt before, but never electively. you think this sort of decision goes against her very nature: to give in to the way of grace, to let something heal her when the earth cannot.

but she loves you, more than you ever could’ve known, so she’s here, quiet and stubborn and grumpy, in this hospital bed. she’s nervous, fidgeting and stoic, and you adore everything about her.

you’re about to tell her this, or try to, when your mother walks in, brusque and professional, in her surgical scrubs. 

‘ready?’ she asks.

‘yes,’ lexa says, very seriously, and you squeeze her hand with a little smile when she looks to you.

‘she’s good to go,’ you tell your mom, and her eyes are soft and understanding when she sees the two of you. it had been difficult at first, because of the mountain, but your mother had grown to love lexa, because they both want to give you the world.

lexa swallows and turns to you, kisses you gently, chastely. your wife—the most powerful person in the world who comes with cities that have fallen under her hand, an army that looks at her like a god—is scared, and you kiss her forehead. ‘you’re going to be just fine.’

love is not weakness, you have learned, and she is the strongest thing you have ever known.

your mom smiles gently as you back up and she steps up next to the bed, explains the surgery quickly once more, as per procedure that she insists on sticking to, which is comforting in its own way. and then she puts her hand gently on the side of lexa’s face, cups her cheek, in the same way she’s done for you, in a gesture of incredible comfort, and fondness, and tenderness, your whole life, in the same way she does for hale, now.

‘you’re going to fall asleep, and you won’t feel anything, and the next thing you know, clarke will be right here again when you wake up. it’ll be just like a blink.’

lexa nods. ‘thank you, abby,’ she says, and then turns toward you.

‘see you soon, niron,’ you say, and she kisses your knuckles.

‘ai hod yu in,’ she tells you, and this surgery is, in the long run, not dangerous at all—not compared to every battle you have ever seen her off to fight, every tense meeting among generals in the tower, even. 

but still, you feel it, feel her and your life together, the very center of all you are.

‘i love you too.’

she smiles and your mom nods at you seriously and wheels her away.

you stay staring for a while at your hands, where hers had been.

//

she is just as obstinate when she’s out of surgery as before, trying to take the oxygen cannula out of her nose, generally just being a pain in the ass to the post-op staff as they usher you in the room with a sigh of relief.

‘my love,’ she breathes out when she sees you, stops her struggle against a lead stuck to her chest.

‘hi,’ you say, trying not to laugh, and sit down next to her bed, take her hands in yours—out of comfort but also stillness. ‘how are you feeling?’

she shrugs unevenly, a gesture so young and unlike her you wish you had one of raven’s cameras with you.

‘are you in any pain?’

‘pain is just,’ she says, then leans back her against her pillows like the words have taken a lot out of her. ‘pain is merely a state of mind, clarke.’

‘well, you just got a bunch of new nerves and twenty-one stitches after my mom reconstructed your bones, so—’

‘shhhhh,’ she tells you, and closes her eyes. ‘brevity.’

you laugh and kiss the top of her hand, which makes her smile lopsidedly. ‘get some sleep.’

‘i’m not tired,’ she insists, still with her eyes shut.

you can’t help but smile, because your mom told you with utmost confidence that everything went better than expected, and that your wife is, indeed, very healthy.

‘get some sleep, lexa.’

she’s still for a few moments before she nods minutely and then whispers, ‘stay?’ a little roughly.

you feel eighteen again, in love and blown away and aching. but now it’s easy— you have built a word full of peace together: ‘always.’

//

lexa is tired, you can tell, but the good kind of spent because you had hiked to the tidepools together, and she had told hale stories after stories about all of the small creatures you can find there. your daughter had been delighted, and you need to thank raven again for the camera she had managed to salvage, because now you have a picture of your wife holding your daughter while they peer in wonder at phosphorescent starfish, their hair wild in the wind, their eyes bright.

lexa had carried hale all the way back on her shoulders, telling you both about the different kinds of birds, and trees, and generally finding what you can tell is an immense amount of joy in sharing the ground with you.

it’s been months, and she’s regained almost full mobility, only feeling pain when it had gotten especially cold, and then it was mostly just stiffness. 

when she had been well enough to quietly pitch the idea of a vacation to you—six whole days with no duties to anyone—you had cried, because you still owe your lives to your people, and you always will, but there is a sort of breath now, the same sort of healing that came to her bones.

she had brought you to this grand, single story house on the beach, one that apparently she had been having built for three years now, before hale was even born, hoping for this day. it’s the most spectacular gesture: the big windows looking out over the ocean; the aisle in front of them; the big bed with soft, warm linens and a driftwood headboard—all of it for you; all of it for your love.

tonight lexa grills fish she caught this morning, somehow managed to have something called a lemon to squeeze over them, and herbs she apparently planted herself, over a year ago, in a small garden on the side of the house. 

so much of her love is unspoken, and tender, and grander than you know how to give sometimes. but you tuck hale in together and you take a blanket and some wine out to the beach with her hand tucked in yours, the air salt and warm, the waves of her hair loose and long—and you try.

this is your private beach, and you take your clothes off together and touch each other, like have for fifteen years, like you do with more care and attention every day.

she traces a tiny scar under your eye and you pay careful attention to the one down her hip, but then you don’t think about harm so much anymore. you touch her and she arches into you, and she kisses you—down your skin and into your core—and you look up to see the stars; you close your eyes and see them all the same.

afterward you laugh into her neck about the sand somehow stuck to the side of her face, and she wraps her strong arms around you and spells out words on your skin that you can’t follow.

you lie like that for minutes together, listening to the sea and looking at her under the moonlight, washed out and stunning; you are incredibly in love.

‘what are you thinking about?’ you ask her, after a while.

she hums. ‘your medical procedures are so odd.’

your lips quirk up.

‘i had to choose to let your mother harm me so that i could heal, in the long term.’

the way she says it, full of softness, makes you remember her all those years ago, when you’d first met, the way she wanted more than just survival, her trust in you, the way she knelt before you in reverence.

‘i am going to grow old with you, clarke of the sky people,’ she says, with the same conviction she does when she gives speeches as the savior of her people.

you kiss her, deeply, and when it grows too heavy you tickle her side and she laughs with a yelp into your mouth, kisses you softly afterward.

you say, ‘i don’t plan on anything else.’

// 

hale wakes you both up in the morning, crawling over lexa with an oomph to plant herself in the middle of the bed. lexa groans and rolls over, throwing an arm over both of you.

‘rest, strikon,’ she says, her morning voice rough and only one eye peeking open. you kiss hale’s forehead with a little laugh when she huffs but snuggles up against your chest and sighs into it.

she’s quiet for a few minutes but then wrinkles her nose and sits up, her little fist held high.

‘why is there san, mama?’

‘sand,’ you say, and you can feel yourself blushing, even though lexa glares at you both and hale has no idea what’s going on. ‘and, um, we were playing in it last night before bed.’

lexa snorts from below her pillow and that’s all it takes for hale to squeal in delight and pile on top of her, mixed english and trigedesleng about playing in the sand almost in full sentences, and lexa laughs and turns over and hugs hale to her chest, blowing a raspberry against her cheek. 

your heart is full, and whole, and hale reaches for you and pulls you toward both of them, into a clumsy embrace where you knock limbs and feel the summer sweat already beginning. your chest aches, and the air is warm; you are at peace and your wife is looking at you like you are the first person any sort of gods ever found holy: you are so far from harm.

[alltheshadesoftruth-blog1]

Lannisters, Sex, and Power

“Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Perhaps I’ve shown my hand a little too soon — perhaps I should have left you hanging. But sex is a key means by which Lannisters in A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) cement and legitimise power.

Tywin and Joanna

For Tywin and Joanna, this is particularly interesting. Their marriage was not so much a dynastic match (although it had a pertinent symbolic value in ensuring that the world knew that the Lannisters stood together now, and these two young, powerful nobles were its future) as a love match. While it may be tempting to characterise Joanna as someone who is gentle (another example of the “fix-it” ship, where one heals and softens the other — whilst it’s true that Tywin hardened after Joanna died, that does not mean that either of them were gentle before then, except with each other), Tywin does not respect gentleness, does not respect conventional “womanly” attributes. And, again, that is not to say that Joanna did not follow her duty as a lady to the letter (ruling Casterly Rock in her husband’s stead, providing him with counsel when appropriate, bearing perfect golden twins, a willingness to bear him more children) — simply that she should be treated as a person in her own right, and not subjugated to Tywin’s narrative and thematic needs.

Joanna, as I picture her, is very similar to Tywin in her ambition (I think she was going to be married to Lord Lefford before the match with Tywin was proposed? That may be fanfic though — in any case, as a Lannister from a lesser branch, finally making it to the Rock is a dream come true) and in her means. And then, are we really to assume that a woman who has Tywin’s ambition, pride, and commitment to the idea that the end justifies the means would consent to be the King’s mistress? The stories of the mistresses of Aegon IV would have been well-known — not only for their bastard-born children, but for the way in which they were cast aside when the King had had his fill. The idea of being the King’s mistress may have seemed like it had power (and, if your bastard grew ambitious enough, it did, although this is a negatively-coded power), but not as much as one could have as 1) Lady Paramount of the Westerlands, a position matched in prestige only by the Lady Paramount of the North and the Queen Consort, and 2) as a trusted Lady Paramount whose lord was away ruling the kingdom. For all intents and purposes at this time, Joanna would have been ruling Lady Paramount of the Westerlands, far more important than an ordinary wife.

Sex would have been, then, a way for both of them to cement their legacy. Partly because, well, Lannisters are canonically sexually desirable — in the books, Cersei is described as the most beautiful woman in the world, for all her sneers, and Jaime as her twin fares no worse. Even Tywin, aged 58 at the time of his death, is described as broad-shouldered and trim, and was described by Stannis as having been everything that the realm would expect of a King. But also for the potential power that an heir would bring them both, materially and symbolically. Materially, of course, it meant that the succession was secure, and that both Tywin and Joanna had done their marital duties (although whether they truly felt like duties is debatable). But there was a great deal of symbolic importance to this as well. In providing House Lannister with both a healthy son and a healthy daughter, Joanna not only highlighted the ideal of fertility/virility always connected to House Lannister; but also the dynastic potential — in Westeros, loathsome as it is to our modern sensibilities, a daughter is a useful carrot to be dangled in front of unruly lords (if any remained after the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion), and a son, especially if warded with one’s vassals, as Jaime was at Crakehall, would be a nod to tradition, to legacy, and to present prosperity. Just like now, Westerosi economic and political arenas hate uncertainty.

Tywin and Joanna’s marriage was, then, both mutually beneficial and beneficial to House Lannister in terms of present and future prestige and standing in the noble community of Westeros. And it would, therefore, be seen as the benchmark against which all other Lannister marriages were measured.

Kevan and Dorna

As one would expect, we have less canon information about Kevan and Dorna’s marriage, as they are tertiary characters at best, but their marriage represents an important union in Westerlander politics. After the War of the Ninepenny Kings, Tywin demanded hostages from any debtor who could not afford their repayments: to ensure that they would remain true and that they would remember that House Lannister would no longer tolerate insolence or refusal to conform to the responsibilities of a vassal. Indeed, Harys Swyft is said to have said, on learning of Tywin’s demands, “The lion has awoken.”

Dorna Swyft was one such hostage — we can only imagine how she would have felt, mostly because GRRM doesn’t tell us — and it was in this situation that she became betrothed to Kevan.

Kevan is obviously cut from a different cloth to Tywin — one not unlike their father, Tytos. More willing to follow than to lead, gentler (though not necessarily kinder) and more willing to appease than to demand. Whether he and Dorna grew fond of one another or whether it was simply an arrangement by Tywin to ensure that Lord Swyft stayed loyal, Kevan would have obeyed without question, no matter his personal feelings. We can glean two things from this:

1) Kevan and Dorna’s marriage is a sign of the power of House Lannister. Not dissimilar to the threat faced by women in places plagued by Dothraki warriors, the fact that House Lannister can both take the daughter of a vassal and then marry her to one of its menfolk is a clear sign of dynastic power: liege lords asserting their dominance in the feudal system. No matter how happy in marriage they may have become by the time the books begin (and let’s not forget, we only have Kevan’s reflection on that), their marriage would have continued to be a sign of Lannister dominance. But we can see something else in this example.

2) Kevan and Dorna’s marriage is a sign of Tywin Lannister’s power over the lives of others. In linking himself so closely with the fortunes of House Lannister, its dominance heightens his own. Part of it is because of the differences of character between Kevan and Tywin (Kevan would be more likely to obey anyway, regardless of who it was); however it is largely down to Tywin’s own forceful and uncompromising nature that this match was made, and it is another sign of Tywin’s dominance in every area of Lannister life. Again, however happy in marriage Kevan and Dorna may have become by the time of the books, one of the most important decisions in a feudal society was made by Tywin and they have been living by it ever since.

Genna and Emmon

Genna was betrothed to Emmon Frey at the age of 7 and wed to him as soon as she had flowered, and she has been making him pay for it ever since. We know from the text that Emmon has been overpowered by Genna and that she has never let him forget that she is his social better and that he is not worthy of her. Genna and Emmon’s marriage is another example of how potentially disastrous Tytos’ “reign” was. If marriages can be seen as yardsticks for the power of a house in a feudal society, then marrying your only daughter, your key “carrot”, to the second son of a minor and ill-respected house from another Kingdom instead of to one of your principal bannermen (such as the Reynes, which would have avoided so much bloodshed) was a major blow to House Lannister’s credibility and a major blow to Genna’s own reputation: even with Jaime’s assertion that she is “all Lannister”, and even if Emmon were to die and she could remarry, her reputation would be tarnished by the dishonour of a marriage below her station.

That said, I think Genna would have remained faithful to Emmon — the consequences of being found guilty of infidelity would have been far worse than being simply married to him, and there are other ways she can avenge herself on him. By allowing the rumour to persist, she is slowly eroding his reputation, while the fact that he is so intimidated by her means that there is little damage to her own reputation, as he does not challenge her. In doing this, she reminds him that he is not worthy by both Westerosi standards and by her own, as he cannot please her (he has never been satisfactory, and he never will be, and in such a cutthroat environment as House Frey, where we have literal child murderers running wild, looking like you can’t even control your wife is not an option).

Another point to note in this, although it’s not so much linked to sex and marriage as it is to Westerosi gender and feudal expectations: the fact that Genna is described as laughing and joking with household knights etc. mirrors strongly with Ned Stark’s much-praised style of operating, whereby he invites a member of his household to sit at the high table to talk about their business. One could argue that, in this sense, Genna is not only showing that Emmon is not satisfactory, but that even she, a woman, can be a better lord.

Tygett and Darlessa

If we only have a little bit of information about Kevan and Dorna’s marriage, we have less about Tygett and Darlessa, as at least Tygett is dead before the series begins. However, what information we do have suggests that they were not as fortunate as Kevan and Dorna in their match. Lord Marbrand, aside from being Tywin and Tygett’s uncle, is one of the most important bannermen in the Westerlands, as shown by the continued importance of Addam Marbrand in Jaime’s life — their sons are cultivated as friends and allies to the heir, their daughters seen as worthy wives. So on paper, a match between Darlessa and Tygett is only natural.

Despite the apparently beneficial nature of the match, they only had one son. Looking at the age of Tyrek (apparently about 13 at the time of Myrcella’s departure for Dorne), there are two options left to us:

1) Tygett and Darlessa married relatively late for a Westerosi noble couple. (Westeros is early compared to our own medieval average marriage ages). This in turn means that either Tywin specifically reserved Tygett for a Marbrand bride, waiting until Darlessa came of age (and Tywin’s draconian control over his life can only have grated with Tygett); or that Tygett tried to “pull a Blackfish” for as long as possible but, significantly, failed. Which could compound the seeds of resentment already present since their youth and Tywin’s conduct in the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion.

2) Tyrek was born very late in their marriage. This could either have been a calculated example of resistance on Tygett’s part (Tywin may have forced him to marry, but he wouldn’t be able to force him to have sex with his wife any more times than was necessary); or another example, in the Westerosi mindset, of why Tygett just didn’t quite match up to Tywin. Either way, we can see clear signs of how the relationship between Tywin and Tygett fully disintegrated (having already been partway there following Tygett’s horror at Castamere, which doesn’t seem to have been shared by any of his siblings).

Tywin creates such an unliveable goal that it would have been very difficult to live up to. This would, of course, cause further conflict, as Tygett is expected to conform to the Westerosi ideals of masculinity, and all that entails — having to occupy a dominant position in literally every aspect of his life, having to essentially roleplay as Tywin, would have been just as personally damaging as every other part of Tywin’s influence.

Tygett and Darlessa’s marriage can, therefore, tell us a lot about the more coercive nature of marital culture in Westeros. This was a marriage which had power exerted upon it from outside since the beginning, and this did not stop until Tygett’s death from a pox (interesting in itself — it’s not specified what kind, but if it were a venereal disease, Darlessa is not recorded as having had this or having died from it herself; which could suggest that he took it upon himself to relieve his unhappiness in a way designed to remind Tywin of their father…but then that failed too, and led to his death).

Gerion (featuring Joy and the Sailor’s Wife)

Gerion’s an interesting case — despite the fact that he doesn’t ostensibly fit into half of this piece’s remit, Gerion’s attitude to marriage, from what we can glean from the text, is very telling about his character and his relationship with Tywin.

For a start, Tywin is likely the only ‘Lord of the Rock’ that Gerion has ever really known — of course, Tytos was still alive when Gerion was born (indeed, Gerion’s wetnurse became his new mistress after Jeyne Marbrand died — but Gerion himself says: “My lord father would have made a splendid innkeep, but old Toad would have been a better lord”), but the main authority figure in Gerion’s life was…Tywin. This, and the age gap between the brothers, highlights some key aspects to Gerion’s relationship with authority and what this means for his attitude to sex.

1) Gerion’s the youngest of five siblings, the fourth son of Tytos Lannister. He is unlikely to ever have a keep and is therefore not that much of a dynastic catch, despite having the last name “Lannister”. So Gerion is really the only one of the five siblings who can enjoy being a Lannister, with no responsibilities or expectations. He doesn’t even have to attempt to make a name for himself from under Tywin’s shadow, he can kick back and relax. Which, in turn, means that he has a much more relaxed attitude to sex, since he has no form of dynastic responsibility

2) Joy is a key example both of the friction between Tywin and Gerion and of Gerion’s attitude to the world. We never hear of Briony except for the fact that she gave birth to Gerion’s bastard (was she provided for? Perhaps, but certainly not at the Rock, after Tytos’ own mistress — Gerion poked the sleeping dragon, he never stabbed it with a pitchfork) and she and Joy were separated. This last was probably at Tywin’s behest (‘fine, have a bastard, but she will be a Lannister bride with all the responsibilities that that entails’) but Gerion certainly, then, showed no signs of taking responsibility for her. He may not have power in any conventional sense, but he still takes his rights as a Lannister and as a man in Westerosi society.

3) The Sailor’s Wife is also interesting in terms of Gerion and his view of sex. It’s not really clear from the text why the Sailor’s Wife has to marry her clients: but it is quite telling from Gerion’s perspective. For him, because he has no dynastic responsibilities, marriage is a means to an end, and he probably didn’t even think of what would happen after he left and went on to Valyria. He drifts in a way that skips over the line from naivety into thoughtlessness.

4) Every canon piece of information we have about Gerion seems to directly clash with what we know about Tywin: Tywin, proudly connected to Casterly Rock vs Gerion, who seems to have spent as little time in the Rock as he could as soon as he was able to travel; Tywin, who desperately hid any sign that he had extra-marital sex vs Gerion who has two known bastards both bearing his look and one named for the emotion he feels his brother lacks the most; Tywin, desperately committed to legacy vs Gerion, who vanished without a trace. So we can suggest that there is something slightly Freudian, perhaps, in the way that Gerion rebels against everything that Tywin stands for: symbolic patricide.

[mst3kproject]

Conquest

This movie has long been something I wish MST3K would have tackled, but I figured they never would because there are simply too many gratuitous boob shots in it.  Imagine my delight, then, when Avalanche introduced us to the Titty Drones!  I imagine they'd get a hell of a workout from this one... perhaps in a host sketch they'd end up lying exhausted on the table while Jonah and the bots sing a song to inspire them to carry on.  Other than that, the movie is just one long, foggy, dubbed, what the fuck am I watching sword-and-sorcery experience with Jorge Rivero (yep, Yuri from Werewolf) as our hero.  Bring it on.

A young man named Ilias has decided to set out on a quest.  The wise old elder of his people gives him the Bow of Kronos, which can shoot arrows of light, and off he goes in search of some Hero Stuff that needs doing.  Y'know, monsters to slay, maidens to save, that kind of thing.

I did not alter that screencap.  That is what the movie actually looks like.

Anyway, he arrives in a country in the thrall of a topless brain-eating sun goddess named Ocron and her army of coke-snorting wolf-men (I swear to you I could not make this up if I tried). In a drug-induced vision, Ocron sees herself being shot by a faceless hero wielding a laser bow, and decides she'd really better nip that in the bud.  Her first attempt to ambush Ilias is foiled by the wandering barbarian Mace, who wants the magical bow and needs Ilias to teach him how to use it.  The two become fast friends – indeed, Ilias is the first friend Mace has ever had in his life, so when Ocron finally succeeds in killing the kid, Mace decides to take up his cause and avenge him.

There is an awful lot of nudity in this movie.  Even with the titty drones, they would still have to make some deep cuts to get PG-13 out of it, and Jonah would probably face some awkward questions from Crow and Tom.  The nudity ranges from the very matter-of-fact to the extremely leering, and weirdly most of the latter is saved for the villainess.  The camera lingers on her nipples and groin as she writhes in the throes of precognition, while a phallic snake crawls up her abdomen.  Yikes. Elsewhere, other topless women appear to be completely incidental. A scene in which a near-naked girl is torn to pieces by the wolf-men is much more about the absurdly artsy violence than the nudity.

There is an equally shocking amout of fog.  Not a single frame of this movie appears to be fog-free.  I think it's supposed to create atmosphere.  Mostly it just makes me want to clean my glasses over and over like I’m searching for Robert Denby.

As thick as it is, the fog cannot disguise just how much the movie's visuals suck.  Ocron's army of werewolves are on the same believability level as bear-headed Ivan from Jack Frost, and leap from above like the cavemen in Starcrash. Mace's bird friends look like if Birdemic had used terrible puppets instead of terrible CGI, and make the same sound.  Night-time is represented by a blue filter so intense it looks like we're filming through jell-o and the exact same colour is used for an underwater scene.  One entire sequence takes place in pitch blackness, and all we hear are monster noises.

And that's not even getting into what these crummy effects are depicting. Angry grass, swamp zombies, a caveman nunchaku fight, chirping cocoon-people... every time you think you've seen the weirdest possible thing, Conquest throws you another curve.  Mace's long hair and the angular symbol tattooed on his forehead look like they're supposed to remind us of Charles Manson, but I can't imagine for what purpose.  There are loving close-ups of oozing pustules covered with flies.  The laser-arrows look like something out of Tron. The music falls somewhere in between 'funky disco' and '80's mellow synth'.  It's all so weird.

You can enjoy the movie purely on that 'wtf' level.  It's especially fun to show it to friends and watch their facial expressions as the movie piles oddity upon oddity.  But if you want something to think about, this movie is actually full of themes and commentary!  Mostly, it's looking at the 'hero's journey' motif and pointing out the weaknesses in it, but there's also an element of Greek tragedy, in that it's impossible for Ocron to escape her fate even when she's the most powerful woman in the world.

Ilias sets out on his quest with no specific goal in mind.  It seems as if he wants to be a hero, but he hasn't yet settled on a heroic deed – he'll take whatever comes his way.  His first attempt at a 'heroic' act is saving a girl from being bitten by a snake, and then he pouts when she laughs at him and runs away, rather than sticking around for the kissing he assumed would follow.  Then, once the action begins, we quickly find that Ilias is terrible at heroing.  He gets his butt kicked by Ocron's trolls, and Mace has to save him.  It is Mace who finds them a way out of the cave when they are lost and trapped, and Mace who goes to find healing herbs when Ilias is poisoned.

This is all totally understandable, though – Ilias is in a strange place, and has no idea where he's going or what he'll do when he gets there.  Although he's a good shot with his bow, he has no combat experience and growing up in peaceful agricultural society has not prepared him to survive in this wilderness of lawless hunter-gatherers.  When Mace warns him that Ocron and her goons are more than he can possibly handle, it seems like he has a good point, and Ilias eventually comes to think so as well.  There is a point when he nearly turns back, actually getting on a boat and setting off for home.

The moment of lost hope is a common part of the hero's journey story.  As the Death Star prepares to fire on Yavin IV, it seems that the Rebellion will be unable to destroy it in time.  The Fellowship of the Ring is nearly broken by the death of Gandalf.  Moana tries to throw the Heart of Te Fiti back into the sea.  In all of these stories, this moment is followed by a turn as the characters find a source of inspiration: Luke hears Obi-Wan's voice telling him to use the Force, and is able to destroy the Death Star.  Aragorn urges everybody to continue on to Lothlorien, where they can rest and regroup.  The spirits of Moana's ancestors show her what she has already accomplished and give her the strength to try again.  Ilias, too, remembers his original goals – vague as they were – and turns back, arriving just in time to take care of the cocoon-people who have crucified Mace and thrown him off a cliff.

Yet even this is kind of a failure, as Ilias is unable to save Mace from downing in the ocean at the cliff bottom.  Instead, friendly dolphins come to Mace’s rescue (in yet another what the fuck moment), and shortly thereafter Ilias is killed by a cave monster! The Callow Youth ultimately fails to defeat the great evil, and it happens because he is a Callow Youth.  Mace, who is rougher and tougher and used to looking after himself in this country, ultimately succeeds because he has the skills and experience Ilias lacks!

Meanwhile, Ocron's own fate is as coldly inevitable as that of Oedipus in Sophocles' play.  As the story begins, she and Ilias have never even heard of each other.  When one of her minions mentions her by name, Ilias doesn't know what he's talking about and has to ask Mace. Ocron herself never even learns Ilias' name, always simply calling him 'the Wanderer'.  She sets out to kill him not because he has actually caused her any trouble, but because her visions tell her that he will in the future.  Yet it is Ocron's attempts to get rid of Ilias before he can threaten her that first bring her to his attention and make him a threat, when he decides this is the great heroic task he's been chosen for.

But Ilias is not the one who defeats Ocron – his death, instead, spurs on Mace to kill her, and this fulfils another aspect of the prophecy.  For one thing, Mace is far more of a 'wanderer' than Ilias is.  Ilias comes from a settled society and intends to return there when his task is done.  Mace, on the other hand, is some kind of outlaw, with the mark on his forehead to denote that he is 'everybody's enemy'. He has wandered for many years and sees no end to it.  Ocron's prophecy is entirely self-fulfilling, and as in Oedipus Tyrannus, it is the efforts to avoid it that make it come true.  She even has a harmatia, a single mistake that seals her doom.  When we look at her visions in light of the ending, we recall that the warrior she saw had no face. It is, instead, the bow of Kronos that is fated to kill her.  Her fatal error was focusing on the wielder rather than the weapon!  

There's way more I could talk about here.  I could go into more detail about how the film uses Ocron's nudity to dehumanize her, covering her face and nothing else. I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about the homoerotic love story between the two heroes and its derivation from the Greek tradition of erastes and eromenos (the names in the story, Ilias, Kronos, Ocron, are almost all either Greek-derived or just intended to ‘sound Greeky’). I could contrast their positive philia with the film's negative depiction of eros as embodied in Ocron. I could boggle over the fact that Mace uses strangers as target practice or wince at Ilias shooting trolls in the crotch.  Conquest is as endlessly fascinating as it is endlessly weird.  I'm pretty sure Lucio Fulci failed at whatever it was he was trying to do with the movie, but man, he failed with style.

[seekerandthewizard88-blog]

Show Up As You Are

On the topic of service:

 When I think about what it means to serve people, I get this deep sense of soul satisfaction. Everytime I help someone, I feel a great sense of joy and power fill me up from inside - a sense that my existence matters and is meaningful because I can help change the world for the better... and that is something that lasts forever. When I think about actually giving up my time, that's when the fears come up.... particularly the fear of not having enough... I barely have time for myself, how can I make time to serve the world?! Also, I don't know enough yet to have an impact. I have many reasonable justifications for why it's not a good time. It just seems unattainable to me right now. Or is it? Perhaps I am not widening my definition of service enough. Maybe I will not be the person distributing food at the local shelter or marching in a parade for awareness anytime soon. So what does service really look like for me? Because I feel like it's important, I need to ask myself that question or else parts of me are being left unfulfilled due to a sheer lack of willingness to spend time answering that question...

 I woke up this morning and took Ash's advice to listen to an inspirational podcast first thing, which just so happened to be season 1 episode 1 of Magic Lessons, 'Do what ignites your soul.' LG (Elizabeth Gilbert) says if your mother modeled creativity growing up, you become creative. If she modeled martyrdom, you become a martyr. I have seen this firsthand in subverting my creative, collaborative mission with spirit into many tasks that COME CLOSE, but are not the thing... 

 LG talks about her mother sending her and her sister away when she was working on a project. Both Liz and her sister are now writers. My mother never sent me away while she worked on something just for her. My mother constantly gave her time away. Everything she did she did for others. Watching this, I learned that service meant sacrifice, in this instance, to the point that I often wondered about what ignited my mother's soul. There were beautiful clay pots of intricate designs strewn about the house, and an old kiln lived in the garage where every night, my mother would pull the car in after coming home from work and park just up against it to fit into the space. Kilns I later found out were pretty expensive! One wouldn't buy it just for the hell of it. But she never turned it on, and my dad said it probably was no longer functional. She never sold it either.... and over the years it became a collection table for trinkets and dust. My mother made me her mission work and made no secrets about explicitly telling me this, but I wonder what it would have been like to walk downstairs and watch her in her element, lost in a spinning wheel, her hands glistening with wet clay. It brings tears to my eyes for her and for me. 

 I want to see my mother in her creative joy. I NEED to see it and know it as much as I want to remind her that it still exists. I want her to teach me her skills because they are also in my veins asking to be shown. I need to know how to access it, especially now. This talent suits her because my mother would be the person who can take an inanimate lump of clay and turn it into something intricate and exquisite with her eye for beauty and her attention to detail. She has always made something from nothing. I caught glimpses of it over the years, and I suspect my mother is one of the most creative people this world has never known. I'm afraid of what it will feel like to ask myself too late - what would that have been like if I put it into the world? If I can figure out how to crack open and pour the contents of my soul art into the universe, maybe I can show her how too. 

 LG goes on to say that serving others is great, but it should not be our REASON to do a thing. She says ultimately, service is collaborating with inspiration, because that thing that's gnawing at you... it's an idea that's coming out of the cosmos and has chosen YOU and is asking you to work with it...

 When I look at the archive of notes in my phone, peppered throughout my endless lists going back to 2014 is the phrase 'start a blog.' I have ALWAYS loved books, writing, words themselves, and creative expression. Somewhere along the line, I simply stopped. I had no time for creativity when I was trying to get ahead in life. It was time to become an adult. I needed to focus on a career and gain the technical skills to execute. I needed to focus on the 'important stuff.' So why did it often feel as if something was missing? Don't get me wrong, I'm so happy to finally be in a place in my life where I have a solid direction! I go to school full time to learn a craft that I believe in and am proud of. I have a wonderful mentor that I shadow who takes the time to explain and show me the ropes. My plate is so full! And I'm happy about that. But still... there's that gnawing. And in quiet moments, in inspirational moments, or in moments of despair, I would find myself writing something down here or there. It would just come out of me. And then I would go back to the grind.

 So when Ash asked me to start this blog project, I said yes immediately because I knew that working with someone else would make me more accountable to show up consistently. And it sure has. At that time, I had been spending a lot of hours reading about current research surrounding autoimmune disease, therapies, and even possible CURES (which I was told did not exist). My mind buzzed in clinic, poring over peoples' unique cases, discussing them with my supervisor, connecting all the dots in my head and then going home with more questions and names of researchers to read up on. At first I had all these ideas about how to heal myself, and I was consuming information round the clock barely sleeping. I read about herbs and scientific discoveries about the human microbiome, everything down to endocrinology textbooks to be able to decode some of the more technical scientific research papers... I was determined to get to the bottom of this once and for all and debunk all the misinformation myself! I would share the things that actually WORKED and offer hope to others.... and myself. I made myself a guinea pig. I would start to feel hopeful that I was on the right track, but then I would try to employ some of the techniques I was reading about only to have a resurgence of symptoms, and sometimes I was left feeling even more run down and exhausted. Mostly I just wanted to share breakthroughs and victories with everyone, but I was still dealing with a lot of frustration and confusion over which direction to go.

 Yesterday was the first day in the past 2 weeks that I slowed down. I received the suggestion that I was being too hard on myself and even 'militant.' I needed to hear that, and my mind quieted as I simply listened to another human being tell me her perception of how I was going about things. I was making all these BIG changes and giving myself NO ROOM for error. How stressful indeed.....

 I began to realize I never even gave myself a chance to simply BEGIN this new journey. New journeys always take time and patience, and I forgot that I cannot skip over parts of my process. Here is the rub now that I've calmed down and closed the books for the time being- Ive been in a space of really coming to terms with my diagnosis, what it means, and where its going from here. Simply deciding to do this blog and putting my truth out into the world had more implications for me than I realized. Most people in my life do not know that I have an autoimmune diagnosis. This is because I never told anyone. Especially not like this. I had been living my life as if the news I received that day simply did not exist. And for a while, I was mostly symptom free and didn't need to deal with it... so I didn't. I put it away in a hall closet and shut the door. I feel like as I'm bringing this out for the world to look at, I am also simultaneously looking at it alongside all of you, for the very first time.

 [insert deep sigh here]

 Since accepting this out loud, I have been flooded with emotions both pleasant and not so pleasant... 

 I stumbled upon a podcast yesterday called Invisible Warrior Radio by Adrienne Clements, which is all about living with chronic illness and how that affects your nervous system and stress levels. Addressing the anxiety piece, and RECOGNIZING it, has been super helpful to me. It was extremely validating to hear how anxiety is more a PHYSIOLOGICAL event than an emotional one. This echoes my experience of feeling as if I'm panicking for NO REASON. My nervous system starts firing and then I need to deal with that flood of hormones telling my body there is a threat to my survival that is imminent, which then lingers for some hours after. She addresses the fact that when we have a chronic illness going on, our bodies are AWARE that something is wrong and so we are constantly already in battle mode. This means even small stressors can have a more exaggerated effect on those of us dealing with chronic illness...

 One of the things I admittedly do is gauge myself against how others do things. I know better but it seems to be subtle and instinctual. I think I need to forgive myself for beating myself up for wanting to stay home and rest a lot of the time when I'm not working or going to school. I think about all the invitations I get that I end up turning down- invitations that I WANT to say yes to! The truth is, my body is constantly fighting a battle that other people are not. I am tired, and I need more rest than the average person. Especially because my plate is so full these days with everything I am trying to accomplish. I need to avoid bad foods and bad substances because the aftermath of those decisions is magnified for me. Most of all, I need to stop feeling guilty or like I'm not enough as I am... this is who I am, and these are my needs. And I'm allowed to give them to myself. I'm lucky that I still CAN. So Adrienne talks about soothing your BODY when you have anxiety, because of that crucial physiological piece. 

 Now that I was aware I needed to soothe my body, I was primed to resort to my bag of tricks when dealing with stress. I follow Doreen Virtue on facebook, and oftentimes it reminds me that I have a spiritual realm of friends and guides willing to help me if I just ASK. I have been going it so alone and forgetting to simply ask for help and guidance. She posted about the importance of self care (so fitting), and the accompanying graphic was a portrayal of Archangel Raphael, who is the Archangel of healing. I quickly looked up Archangel Raphael meditations on youtube and clicked the first one that caught my eye and laid down on my bed.

 As I listened to the meditation going from chakra to chakra, it made me realize and become aware of the energies I was carrying there. When I got to my heart chakra, and as the voice gave me permission to let go of anything I was holding onto that no longer served me, a deep sense of sadness materialized and I was suddenly overcome with tears. I cried very deeply for about a few minutes, and then I became aware of how much I have been feeling deeply afraid. Afraid that I would never be well again and there really is no cure. Afraid of the terror of these panic attack symptoms... afraid that maybe it isn't anxiety, and something more sinister might be dismissed as anxiety when it's really something more physical, like a heart problem.

 Then something magical happened that I cannot explain, except that I could FEEL that I was no longer alone. As I opened myself more to the experience and immersed myself in the energetic space being created, a thought came to me (some people call this clairsentience as I do not ever hear an audible voice) to pick up one of the crystals I have sitting on my nightstand. It was a piece of malachite, which incidentally is a vibrant green, and the color green is associated with Archangel Raphael's healing energy. I placed it on my solar plexus as that was the chakra we were now on, and then instinctively readjusted it over my liver where I sometimes feel pain. I kept feeling like it was somehow working on my blood. I felt compelled to continue working with this stone after the meditation. When I finally got up, I looked up the properties of the stone in a wonderful book called, 'Stone Medicine: A Chinese Medical Guide to Healing With Gems and Minerals' by Leslie J. Franks. Malachite energy works with the liver/gallbladder and stomach/spleen meridians. Also, the stone is used for purifying the blood and purging pathology from the body. The page number for this crystal was 333. 333 in Doreen Virtue's numerology system means that ascended masters are surrounding you and supporting you in this moment. All of my signs had showed up. I noticed that the feeling of constriction in my chest had let up, and I was able to take a full, deep, glorious breath. 

 (Sidenote here about religion: Doreen Virtue belongs to the Christian faith, and while I practice Nichiren Buddhism, I still think that spirituality is a deeply personal path and can oftentimes include overlap. I do believe in angels because of my own personal experiences, and I think that 'God' is whatever it means to you. Sometimes it is more important to work with the energetics or the theme of what someone is saying without getting too caught up in the dogma and religious aspects of it. If meditating on the healing energy of Mother Earth works better for you than angels, go with that instead!)

 Last night before bed I again did that beautiful Archangel Raphael healing meditation which I promised I would share with you, so here it is! Also I want to share with you the Invisible Warrior Radio Podcast I started listening to, and I intend on checking out her blog this afternoon as well. It's important to find people who are going through similar struggles for support. I am the person who isolates when I don't feel well, so I am going to give myself this gift of connection so that I have an outlet; a platform of understanding to land on when I'm feeling weighed down by my burdens. An unforeseen bonus, which I suspect will be one of many, of this blogging journey is that it has also opened up a new world for me to follow others who are putting light out into the world, and for that I am supremely grateful! I never really explored podcasts before yesterday... yay for expansion!

 I got the first good night's sleep I've gotten in the past couple weeks last night. I'm now aware that I have been working through some anxiety and probably PTSD surrounding my physical symptoms... waking up in the middle of the night with extreme palpitations and having to call 911 to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance is EXTREMELY STRESSFUL. Especially when it comes seemingly out of nowhere. And I only took two days off to recover from that before beginning my usual grind once again. I was pushing through each day on high alert that this could happen again at anytime. It caused me to feel more high strung, frustrated, and tired in a way that isn't necessarily outwardly visisble because of how I carry myself through the world. (This is why I love Adrienne's concept of an invisible warrior!)

 I have also been dealing with feelings of selfishness since I have been spending A LOT of time on myself lately. My mission is so tied to helping others, and when I feel down and blah, I think to myself- don't write anything right now in this state because it's not very inspiring for people to read. Hide yourself until you feel better. Hide your pain. Don't talk about your struggle. If you can't lift other people up, at least don't bring anyone down with your doubts and your fears.

 I want to dare to challenge that thought in my life. I think sharing our burdens, especially as women, is one of the bravest choices we can make. It helps us to connect to our authenticity, it brings out the authenticity in others, and ultimately it helps us to feel not so alone. THIS IS REAL LIFE. Own your experience because it is yours, it is valid, and it has a place and a purpose. Things happen to people and we should be able to talk about all of it. Service. How am I serving others today? It could be as simple as showing up fully and saying HERE I AM, and it's ok for you to also show up as you are. 

 Because I grew up the way I did, I value hard work. I value self sufficiency. Because of this I am often too independent and stubborn. But sometimes we need to take it easy and sometimes we need help. And neither of these things should mean we are failing, weak, or that somehow our value is now less since we didn't do it all on our own. When we feel isolated and alone is exactly when we need to reach out, because that light- that support is THERE. 

 I think the biggest takeaway from this past week for me is to listen to your own body. IT KNOWS WHAT IT NEEDS. It is so patient with us considering we don't usually listen until it's been asking for quite some time. Everyone is walking a different path. There is no one size fits all solution. We need to validate ourselves because no one else will ever know our journey as intimately as we do. We are the only ones who can give ourselves what we need. Listen to that voice that says we need to cancel plans in order to rest tonight. Listen to that voice saying we need more fruits and vegetables. Take a salt bath with some lavender essential oil if you've been dealing with a lot of stress lately. Love your body for all it does for you. You never need an excuse to care for yourself! 

 On that note, I am going to make myself a nice warm breakfast of gluten free grains, blueberries and cinnamon. I am not going to freak out that I spent the morning writing and I haven't had my morning celery juice on an empty stomach yet and I have to do that before I eat! No... breathe. My body is saying that we need to eat, because going through my morning stressing about juice is no longer part of my healing journey. Going through my days dizzy and tired because I'm strictly trying to eat only raw vegetables and not getting enough calories is no longer part of my healing journey. I need to feel energized and stress free, and that starts with my attitude and my intention. I can have my juice later this afternoon and all will be OK. I need to learn how to 'dance on the shifting carpet.' Life happens, and we need to be able to adjust and be flexible. Writing this morning was a priority. All we can do is to take things as they come and stay true to ourselves, showing up just as we are. 

 Thanks guys for all your support and for taking time out of your day to share this experience with me. I appreciate having a platform to share myself so openly as it helps me to grow and become more self aware with each passing day! I feel extremely lucky, I love you all, and I wish you a wonderful, healthy, blessed day!

 The Wizard

[euro3plast-fr]

How the iPhone changed marketing forever

Happy birthday iPhone

120 months go on the 29th June at 09.41am (California time) the world changed forever.  Six months after being introduced at the Macworld Convention by Steve Jobs, the $499, 4GB storage iPhone was finally in stores.

Since then, over a billion iPhones have been sold globally. In 2007 Apple had $6bn in cash. Today the company’s accounts are reportedly in the final stretch to being valued at $1trillion.

But things could have turned out very differently. Back when the iPhone wasn’t even a glint in Steve Jobs’ eyes, telecoms giants like Verizon held a tight grip over the specification of handsets.  Weighty manuals read like a bible of ‘thou shall nots’. Such restrictions went against everything Jobs believed in.  It certainly wasn’t a sector that he wanted to get into.

Some three years before the iPhone said ‘hello’. A team of Apple engineers were fiddling about with touchscreen technology on an interactive surface that was the size of a ping-pong table.  They didn’t have a clue their ping-pong rig would eventually help redefine everything people understood about Alexander Graham Bell’s invention.

The engineers showed the technology to Apple’s Design Chief, Jonathan Ive. Recognizing its potential, he presented it to Jobs.  Initially, the boss wasn’t that smitten.  But eventually, commercial circumstances helped nurture the idea until touchscreen technology wizardry grew on him. At the time, the iPod was Apple’s lead product.  Yet, Jobs realized that its days of serving as a cash-cow were numbered.  He worried that other companies could start working on a mobile phone able to play music – leaving the iPod redundant and takings thwarted.

Apple’s brightest engineers set to work on figuring out how to miniaturize the touchscreen technology, as well as develop an operating system and… fit everything into a neat device.  The project was code-named ‘purple’.  Engineers worked 24/7 in a sectioned-off part of Apple HQ named the ‘purple dorm’. (It was said that engineers were bringing in takeaway food and sleeping wherever they could lay their heads, the atmosphere in the purple dorm was more like a purple haze).

One of their fundamental tasks was to figure out how to incorporate a touchscreen keyboard.  Numerous iterations were considered.  Complicated shape swiping was dismissed as simply too difficult to learn.  Eventually, one engineer combined AI (Artificial Intelligence) with a standard keyboard layout which predicted words. It was one of what would turn out to be many ‘eureka moments’.

Every aspect of project purple was unremitting. Demands were intense. Hundreds of engineers sacrificed weekends, holidays and, in at least one reported case, a marriage.  When the patent for the original device was eventually awarded only 14 people were listed as designers.  But, in truth, as with so many breakthroughs, delivering the iPhone called on the cooperation of many more who remained behind the scenes. 

The iPhone that almost wasn’t

The name iPhone did not originally belong to Apple. Infogear used it in 1998. Their Linksys iPhone appliance combined a standard phone with a web terminal.  In 2000 Cisco Systems took over Infogear. The company rebranded the appliance, Linksys VoIP.  Apple’s own branding of the iPhone led to a conflict with Cisco Systems – which was eventually resolved.

Apple’s iPhone wasn't the first handset to include iTunes. The Motorola ROKR beat them to it in 2005.  But following Apple releasing the iPod Nano, Ed Zander, Motorola’s CEO relented asking,

“What the hell does the Nano do?  Who listens to 1,000 songs? People want devices that do more than just play music. Something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users.”

[Ooops...]

Motorola’s second-generation ROKR left out iTunes support. 

“A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device.      (Steve Jobs’ original description of the iPhone).

Apple also had to tackle the business community’s addiction to Blackberries.  (Also known at the time as the ‘crackberry’).  Sales Warriors loved the device’s keyboard.  Apple’s solution was to first market to consumers and then gradually win over the business sector by making iPhone much more than an individual’s phone.

Whilst the original iPhone had no third-party apps, GPS or even a means to record video, with each new model, the device gradually led to the demise of having to carry around lots of devices. Its all-in-one technology made serious dents in the sales of compasses, stopwatches, calculators, diaries, maps, voice recorders, answering machines, portable games consoles, newspapers, alarm clocks, point-and-shoot cameras, GPS units, camcorders, PDAs and even Apple’s own iPod.

One year after its debut, the introduction of the App Store led to 2,200,000 apps featured as instant downloads.  (According to app measurement company App Annie, Google Play Store currently carries 3,400,000 apps).

For now, more Android system devices have a far bigger market share than IOS, but thanks to clever marketing and luxury pricing, IOS sales are still very comfortable. By 2018, Apple is expected to sell 241 million phones, compared with Samsung’s 404 million. (Canaccord Genuity).

In 2016 the risk of Samsung Galaxy Note catching fire, halted a serious escalating threat to iPhone sales.  New phones from the likes of Huawei, Sony and OnePlus with even more sophisticated features than currently offered by Apple could yet damage sales.

Whilst many celebrate iPhone’s tenth birthday, they also await its 16th iteration, to be finally officially revealed in the Fall.  Only after then will Apple’s CEO Tim Cook finally know whether all the fuss over blowing out birthday candles turns out to be little more than hot air.

How iPhones helped change more than you thought…

Everyone is always on

Once upon a time... in an age long, long, long, ago you could wait up to ten minutes to get onto the web. Now everyone is connected instantly either via Wif-Fi or cellular networks.

Chewing gum

People are so transfixed to their phones that traditional last moment point of sales purchases at checkouts like chewing gum have declined by 15% since 2007. 

Accessories

The ‘sweet and sour’ of everyone’s mobile lives - accessories - including Bluetooth speakers, headphones, cables and docks are ubiquitous.  ABI research estimates that revenue in the global mobile accessories market will top $110bn by 2021. 

Media

More people are watching TV and getting their news via mobile phones than ever.

Vanity

According to tech futurologist Benedict Evans, there will be more photographs taken this year alone on devices like iPhones than during the entire history of photography.

In 2017, following an analysis of 2.5 million selfies on Instagram, researchers discovered that more than half fell into the 'appearance category' – images that describes the person's outward status and wealth. (The selfie movement is mostly driven by women and the 18 to 35-year-old age group).

Broadcasting lives in real-time around the globe.

Thanks to video conferencing software as well as services like Periscope and Facebook Live, potentially more than half the world’s population can become ‘live tv’ broadcasters, sharing everything from local brawls to cute pet moments.

Games

Seven of the top ten grossing iPhone apps are games.

Instant gratification

No – not porn via mobiles - although that particular sector has also ‘erupted’.  Instead I refer to paying via phone.  The iPhone Wallet app stores credit card payment facilities for touch and pay purchases as well as retains retail coupons, reward cards, cinema passes, flight board tickets and much more. (Speaking at a 2016 event, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook said: “We’re going to kill cash”).

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

ADHD has soared.  Attention spans, especially for children, have plunged. In addition to school teachers feeling despair as they try just about anything to retain students’ attention, the dramatic fall in attention spans has also fundamentally changed communications as practiced by virtually all business sectors including news media, entertainment, recruitment, professional training, journalism, marketing and advertisers.

Privacy

The psychology of reciprocity has gone into overdrive as brands lure consumers into revealing more and more of their private information in return for incentives like free taxi rides and retail discounts.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/iphone-changed-marketing-forever/