#life is strange brooke aesthetic

[bloodypriestess]

🔬👓

Character Aesthetic  → Brooke Scott (Life is Strange)

“Then I don’t have to pretend like I care anymore”

[letterful]

Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, life, the exuberant sense of life of the natural man, but it is also pallor, fever, disease, decadence, the maladie de siècle, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Dance of Death, indeed Death itself. It is Shelley's dome of many-coloured glass, and it is also his white radiance of eternity. It is the confused teeming fullness and richness of life, Fülle des Lebens, inexhaustible multiplicity, turbulence, violence, conflict, chaos, but also it is peace, oneness with the great `I Am', harmony with the natural order, the music of the spheres, dissolution in the eternal all-containing spirit. It is the strange, the exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, griffins, falling water, the old mill on the Floss, darkness and the powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, nameless terror, the irrational, the unutterable.

Also it is the familiar, the sense of one's unique tradition, joy in the smiling aspect of everyday nature, and the accustomed sights and sounds of contented, simple, rural folk — the sane and happy wisdom of rosy-checked sons of the soil. It is the ancient, the historic, it is Gothic cathedrals, mists of antiquity, ancient roots and the old order with its unanalysable qualities, its profound but inexpressible loyalties, the impalpable, the imponderable.

Also it is the pursuit of novelty, revolutionary change, concern with the fleeting present, desire to live in the moment, rejection of knowledge, past and future, the pastoral idyll of happy innocence, joy in the passing instant, a sense of timelessness. It is nostalgia, it is reverie, it is intoxicating dreams, it is sweet melancholy and bitter melancholy, solitude, the sufferings of exile, the sense of alienation, roaming in remote places, especially the East, and in remote times, especially the Middle Ages.

But also it is happy co-operation in a common creative effort, the sense of forming part of a Church, a class, a party, a tradition, a great and all-containing symmetrical hierarchy, knights and retainers, the ranks of the Church, organic social ties, mystic unity, one faith, one land, one blood, `la terre et les morts', as Barrès said, the great society of the dead and the living and the yet unborn. It is the Toryism of Scott and Southey and Wordsworth, and it is the radicalism of Shelley, Büchner and Stendhal. It is Chateaubriand's aesthetic medievalism, and it is Michelet's loathing of the Middle Ages. It is Carlyle's worship of authority, and Hugo's hatred of authority. It is extreme nature mysticism, and extreme anti-naturalist aestheticism. It is energy, force, will, youth, life, étalage du moi; it is also self-torture, self-annihilation, suicide. It is the primitive, the unsophisticated, the bosom of nature, green fields, cow-bells, murmuring brooks, the infinite blue sky.

No less, however, it is also dandyism, the desire to dress up, red waistcoats, green wigs, blue hair, which the followers of people like Gérard de Nerval wore in Paris at a certain period. It is the lobster which Nerval led about on a string in the streets of Paris. It is wild exhibitionism, eccentricity, it is the battle of Ernani, it is ennui, it is taedium vitae, it is the death of Sardanopolis, whether painted by Delacroix, or written about by Berlioz or Byron. It is the convulsion of great empires, wars, slaughter and the crashing of worlds. It is the romantic hero — the rebel, l'homme fatale, the damned soul, the Corsairs, Manfreds, Giaours, Laras, Cains, all the population of Byron's heroic poems. It is Melmoth, it is Jean Sbogar, all the outcasts and Ishmaels as well as the golden-hearted courtesans and the noble-hearted convicts of nineteenth-century fiction. It is drinking out of the human skull, it is Berlioz who said he wanted to climb Vesuvius in order to commune with a kindred soul. It is Satanic revels, cynical irony, diabolical laughter, black heroes, but also Blake's vision of God and his angels, the great Christian society, the eternal order, and `the starry heavens which can scarce express the infinite and eternal of the Christian soul'.

It is, in short, unity and multiplicity. It is fidelity to the particular, in the paintings of nature for example, and also mysterious tantalising vagueness of outline. It is beauty and ugliness. It is art for art's sake, and art as an instrument of social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction, peace and war, love of life and love of death.

— from Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism.

[twilightarc-gm]

Why do you like jiang cheng?

At the risk of liking him for the wrong reasons, let me be verbose and annoying about it.

A short anecdote: I finished the donghua before the novel and I liked JC's aesthetic so I was happy to have that imagery in my head for the novel, but mostly I came out of the donghua like "cool story, the ending was frowny face though" and I came out of the novel like I was lost in the IKEA store "there's stuff here but it's not what I want and it's organized in a way that's hard to navigate through." Bit like giving me a puzzle to solve.

Anyway, imagine a cat bapping at a thing trying to get fandom to show me what to do with MDZS (i.e. reading fanfic) and then I come across anti-Jiang Cheng stuff.

//record scratch

I'm sorry what?

Why?

NO.

I started then on Shuangjie reconciliation fic and quickly evolved into Jiang Cheng "Apologist" ((I actually don't think he has anything to apologize for even if he would do so anyway.))

I've been in the xianxia/wuxia sphere of media consumption for a year or so before trying out MDZS and JC just fits so well as the main character of his own story; destined for a position of power through birth, friends with someone in his life that causes conflict, seemingly betrayed by said friend when needing that friend the most, losing and losing and losing as his trust in said friend proves unfounded because the friend walks a path he can't follow, and then he's left with the tragedy that befell the world because--ultimately he trusted this friend too much.

It's a classic story of love and attachment and how good intentions can have massive consequences. Two men entwined by fate and in the end there's a battle on a hill (off screen in this case) where one is forced to "kill" the other.

MDZS could have ended with the past timeline, and I would have liked it more but at least in the present timeline we get Jiujiu and a-Ling.

Anyway: Excerpts and Commentary Below about WHY I LOVE JIANG CHENG, courtesy WANYIN

Of all the clans to offend, you don’t offend the Jiang Clan, and of all the people to offend, you never offend Jiang Cheng.

We stand by a badass mf in this house. The first thing we learn is that he gets credit for killing a big baddy and the second thing we learn is how fierce the rest of his reputation is. He brooks no shit and leaves no quarter. Amazing 💜

Well, I was done for at "gaze like two streaks of cold lightning" so RIP me, I guess. Reminds me of some antis that are like "you only like him because he's hot" which isn't true but it is a nice plus. He's described as inferior to LWJ so like, if it was only about hotness then wouldn't I like LWJ???

“I am his uncle. Do you have any last words?”

At the sound of that voice, every drop of blood in Wei Wuxian’s body seemed to surge to his head but then immediately drained away again. Thankfully, his face was already a mess of ghastly white, so it didn’t look strange when he went a little paler.

A man in purple attire strode over. He was dressed in a narrow-sleeved light robe, with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. A silver bell dangled from his waist, yet there was no sound when he walked.

This young man had fine brows and almond eyes, with a chiseled handsomeness to his features. His eyes were deep and intense with a hint of aggression, his gaze like two streaks of cold lightning. He stopped and stood three meters away from Wei Wuxian. His expression was like that of a nocked arrow on a bow, ready to shoot, and even his composure was suffused with arrogant pride.

Jiang Cheng ruled the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng alone, so it could have been said that he was in a state of isolation.

🥺 Alone?? And he could still afford 400 Immortal Binding Nets? Self-sufficient king 🤩 And like, his reputation is so fierce and he's boiling over with anger in that scene, but still he restrains himself because he did the cost-benefit analysis! And then later he takes a huge risk on WWX, like he always does for WWX, and that doesn't work out for him--like it always does.

Seeing that nothing had happened to Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng was greatly relieved. However, that relief soon turned into a furious reprimand:

Parent behavior. Enough said.

He has a twisted smile when encountering a trigger for his PTSD and then he decides to fight it instead of letting it paralyze him. He's such a doer. Like, every other moment of the day he's carefully calculating pluses and minuses to every choice (valid) but when it comes to facing his personal demons he's ready to throw down. Excellent.

A moment later, Jiang Cheng’s lips pulled into a twisted smile. His left hand subconsciously began stroking that ring once more.

He said softly, “Excellent. Back, are you?”

He let go of his left hand, and a long whip dangled from it.

“Oh? Then please enlighten me, what is your type?”

Walking A-Spec flag very concerned about what the man who might be his shixiong thinks about him, more at eleven!

Wei Wuxian waved him off and then hooked his arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders. “Who cares? I’ll tease him a bit more before I go. You’ve already collected my corpse so many times. Once more won’t hurt.”

Okay but big lol that JC doesn't get to collect WWX's corpse that final time. //sounds of sobbing

A smile appeared on his face, but then he immediately humphed.

He's so grumpy and adorable! I love him! pre massacre JC is precious and I just want him to have someone to bring out that smile again.

He literally didn't have to do this. He makes all these excuses how he'll be embarrassed if WWX is rolling around 😂 Perfection. Boy, you are still carrying him and he doesn't want you to stop.

Jiang Cheng, walk slower, you’re gonna throw me off.”

Not only did Jiang Cheng want to throw Wei Wuxian off, but he practically wanted to bash his head into the ground to create a human crater. “So fussy even though I’m carrying you!”

“I didn’t tell you to carry me,” Wei Wuxian reasoned.

Jiang Cheng flew into a rage. “If I didn’t carry you, I think you’d hang out at their ancestral hall all day, rolling around on the floor. I can’t afford this embarrassment! Lan Wangji took fifty more strikes than you, but he walked away on his own, and you’re not embarrassed, pretending to be an invalid? I don’t want to carry you anymore. Get the hell off!”

“No, I’m wounded,” Wei Wuxian said.

Alrighty, like I'm just going through the entire book at this point.

Let me see if I can make this more concise:

Sacrifices himself despite his very dutiful nature that would oppose this. He throws away all his responsibilities for WWX, again and again, carrying on a tradition of favoring WWX over his own health and happiness. Citing: JFM favoring WWX to the detriment of his marriage, JYL dying to save WWX, and JC (exhausted and with little or no power) running into danger to save WWX ala distracting the Wen patrol and 2nd Siege.

Can't be honest in his affections and makes up excuses to do nice things for others.

Loves and understands his sister. She wanted JZX so he made it happen when LLJ had absolutely no reason to reinstate the marriage contract between Xuanli. JGS notes in the CR arc that he didn't want the marriage for his son in the first place and that there were better options than YMJ, and that was before the war! JC helped her get to Yiling to show off her wedding dress! Even though she married out he still felt so attached to her son he couldn't not co-parent Jin Ling.

Yes, he has Zidian, but he also has a second horsewhip that he keeps on him which is very exciting to know.

The narrative hates him but he survives. (He survives because the narrative hates him).

Most BAMF entrance in the novel at the temple scene with the busting the temple doors down and coming in from the rain with an umbrella. Like sure the narrative hates him but small blessings that rule of cool still counts for something.

Mama's boy.

Just some dude, shows up late to treasury room nonsense, knows all the gossip, no one has faith in him including himself, but he keeps going and doing what needs to be done even when he's so so tired and his shixiong shows up 3 months late with a ghoul lady and a latte, or disappears to liberate slave property without warning first and now he's called into a midnight meeting after trying to get some much needed rest and now he's got consequences to deal with. Someone help him!

An expert at sneering. Threats as a show of worry and care. This makes all the little and brief smiles so much more endearing.

Sandu Shengshou is an amazing title, get out of here if you don't agree. Holy Hand of the Three Poisons? Brutal, perfect 💜 It gets used like, ONCE. Crime against me personally.

Link to Blorbo Sheet for JC

He loves, he hates, he wants to hate he's not allowed to love. Zero middle ground, he's all in and there's no way out.

//is shot and dragged off stage

But just as the Wei Wuxian of the past who’d extracted his golden core for Jiang Cheng had been unable to tell him the truth, the Jiang Cheng of the present could no longer bring himself to speak up.

[palaceoftherakes]

"i suppose marriage has always been a financial proposition, even in fiction."

Little Women (2019), dir. Greta Gerwig

the idea of marriage has always been strange.

for me, well i'm bisexual, and i never thought that marriage would be a prospect to me because i didn't think i'd ever be capable of loving one person for the rest of my life. then, i watched Little Women (2019). it wasn't this epiphany, but a slow realisation about how i'd been brainwashed to believe that marriage was the way to fulfilment. while there are many things about Greta Gerwig's adaptation that i'd like to discuss, sisterhood, womanhood and youth being few to mention, i would like to focus on this concept of marriage as it is represented through the eyes of Jo, who up until my tenth watch, i identified with the most.

Jo March, as self-described, is frumpy, homely and unlike any woman, Theodore Laurance would ever want to marry. i too have always felt like that. never be the one to be asked out, or even noticed by boys in school, and when i realised i liked girls too, it became a taboo subject that left me with slurs and various degrees of internalised homophobia. growing older, I've realised that perhaps it is me being a poc in a majority-white setting that has made it so difficult to feel the right to be loved by others romantically. or maybe it's because i've been stagnant in my approach to sexuality that it's scared others away. enough self-evaluation: Jo sees marriage like a prison, and that makes sense. or does it?

a perfect home life, yes. a nuclear family, the husband, the wife, the children, the white picket fence and a warm hearth to surround when it gets cold outside. even though the love between marmie and father is one to be idolised, it is caring and unconditional love that surrounds Jo, and yet she finds herself opposed to the very notion of marriage.

the setting that the march family sit in is quiet, a cottage core aesthetic (to use contemporary reference) where the only people they interact with are the Laurences, the Hummels and one Mr. John Brooke. when Teddy and Jo pair off and become quick and steadfast friends the natural conclusion is that they'll get married and have a hoard of children while living a mildly happy life. it works for Meg and Mr. Brooke, so why wouldn't it work for Teddy and Jo?

to me, it's very clear. it's clear for the moment Jo leaves her family home and moves to New York to work in a boarding house. meeting the foreign professor is this sign shouting "THERE'S MORE TO LIFE THAN WHAT YOU KNOW!" he applies a different school of thought and challenges her in a way that Laurie and her family never did. the challenges she faces, the rejection from the publishing house, not being chosen to go to France with Aunt March, and most significantly the death of Beth, all push her to the conclusion of finishing her book and getting it published.

but the question becomes, why was i more satisfied with the ending of Jo and Friedrich (the professor) than with her getting her book published? i guess it becomes the conversation of what romantic films have periodically presented us with the 'happy ending', which has been, falling in love, getting married, having oodles of children and then dying. to be honest, it's not just romantic films, it's the disney princesses that surrounded me in childhood. its stereotypes that are perpetuated even further into media, and are ingrained into young girls from a young age. even now, as I'm meeting adulthood for the first time, the questions of marriage, kids and the future keep on cropping up in conversations. i don't think i was ever conscious of my own bias when watching films, but watching Little Women for what seems to be the 100th time makes me wonder what it really means to be married, what that commitment really means. Is it like Jo says, an 'economic proposition' or is it something much more than that?

author note:

amy and laurie >>>> jo and laurie

[graywyvern]

( me / via )

Reinvent for the Book.

"THE BLACK POINT.

Whoever has looked a long time at the sun, Beholds in the welkin, where spot there is none, A disk livid and strange, persistently float:

Thus young and audacious, mine eyes dared to gaze On Glory one instant, and blind from the blaze, Are destined the black spot for ever to note.

Since then, on all things, like a portent or sign, Like the seal on Cain's brow, in dark and in shine, I see the mark spectral,—a black oriflamme:

A bar to my happiness ill I may brook! Ah woe! 'Tis the eagle alone that may look On the Sun and on Glory undazzled and calm."

--Nerval (tr Toru Dutt)

Bells.

"The flux of life is pouring its aesthetic aspect into your eyes, your ears - and you ignore it because you are looking for your canons of beauty in some sort of frame or glass case or tradition."

--Mina Loy (via @mjohnharrison)

Time Traveler in Ancient Egypt.

[afoolandathief]

[Image description: The phrase "Something Wicked" in glowing, red, neon cursive on a black background; it is surrounded by the following neon signs: an arrow, a crescent moon, a palm tree and a cocktail. End description]

“So, I’ll ask you again, Seer. Could this poor bastard ever be redeemed?”

WIP Intro: Something Wicked

Jade Shaw, a witch and one of the few Seers left in the world, has been using her ability to see the future at Las Vegas’s casinos for years, but lately even that hasn’t been enough to pay the bills.

So she doesn’t object when Casimir Mraz, vampire and former hit-man, with a reputation stretching back to Vegas’s organized-crime days, offers her a deal.

Caz says he only wants to kill and drain the blood of people with no chance for redemption, and asks Jade to determine for him whether the city’s worst of the worst will re-offend.

But things go sideways when a cop catches Jade and Caz disposing of a body, and blackmails them into helping him solve some unsolvable cases.

Soon, the two are facing off against giants, Fae and several of Caz’s exes.

Status: Third draft (including reworking several plot elements); considering this the first of a series (my brain won’t let me call this a book out loud without thinking I’m jinxing myself, so)

Genre: fantasy, urban fantasy, with some elements of crime and mystery

POV: Third-person limited of the two main characters

Setting: Modern day (pre-pandemic), in and around Las Vegas, NV

Themes/tags: Redemption, justice, some gore, murder on a bi-weekly basis, dark humor, neurodiversity, queer characters (including two disaster bi leads)

What can you expect here?

Currently I’ve been posting a lot of dialogue and jokes about my characters, as well as some aesthetic posts. Snippets of my writing can be found here. I’d like to try sharing some longer excerpts, such as my first chapter when I’m done editing it.

Taglist (ask to be +/-) below the cut

Characters

Jade Shaw: A witch with the ability to calculate your life’s outcome down to the exact percent chance. A mathematics PhD student juggling her work-study job, her meetings with Caz, and work as an odds-maker and poker player. Wishes these visions of the end of the world would lay off a bit.

Caz Mraz: Vampire, ex-hitman, polyglot, excellent dancer and an absolute train wreck of a man. Caz says Jade is helping ease his conscience about his need to occasionally to kill and feed off someone’s life force, but Jade is still doubtful about his supposed “change of heart.”

Violet Anouilh: A hedgewitch with an expertise on plants and potions, living with her mother Marie Anouilh on a farm outside of the city that is welcoming to vampires and werewolves. Trying get Jade to notice she’s been flirting with her at her family’s fruit stand for days now.

Ruby Hall: Jade’s best friend and a witch specializing in illusions. She performs at the casino as the assistant to magician Dominic the Great — who is actually her pet rabbit Domino under a powerful glamour.

Lila Brown: A werewolf currently living in and around the tunnels of Las Vegas. Used as Caz’s eyes and ears in the city on occasion. A Gen-Xer who knows a bit about Caz’s past.

Theoris Myrina: The head of the Southwest Coven of witches. Jade’s former mentor who barred her from the coven after learning she made a deal with a vampire.

Kenny Brooks: A detective who is on the verge of retirement — mainly because he keeps spouting theories about two suspects seen around seemingly unconnected homicides and disappearances, and his coworkers are getting sick of it. Spoilers.

Amelia: Caz’s former girlfriend, who left him after interpreting his secretiveness and strange habits as signs of a drug addiction. Caz is determined to win her back (but if he happens to date some others along the way, including a rich Fae prince, what’s the harm?). Spoilers about Amelia can be found here.

Taglist (ask to be +/-): @author-a-holmes, @avian-writes, @captain-kraken, @ceph-the-writing-spook, @digital-chance, @diphthongsfordays, @drippingmoon, @ellierenae, @enchanted-lightning-aes, @faelanvance, @fearofahumanplanet, @flowerprose, @frank-in-space, @houndmouthed @joaniejustwokeup, @leiwritess, @mjayatlas, @noblebs, @outpost51, @purplezebraproductions, @rhymingteelookatme, @somealienquill, @thegreatobsesso, @thelaughingstag, @vylequinne, @writing-is-a-martial-art

FYI: The original post for this used flashing neon gifs, so I'm pinning this version. The original can be found here.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Whole Cake Island

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano

sanji is such a self-sacrificial idiot. and i know that’s not exactly a ground-breaking statement, but it does define the entire first half of whole cake island, so it may as well be reiterated here: sanji does not value his own life as much as he should, and fails to grasp that other people care about him outside of what he can offer them, which is why he’s so surprised when luffy later comes charging headlong into big mom’s territory.

zou is a really good little arc, and it also mirrors the themes of whole cake island in miniature. the minks collectively make a massive sacrifice and risk absolutely everything to protect raizou, and wci is essentially all about loyalty and sacrifice, whether its sanji giving himself up to protect the strawhats and zeff or luffy and the strawhats facing impossible odds to rescue him to pedro giving up his life to get them all out of there safe.

huge fan of this panel partly just because it’s cute and partly because it’s a great visualization of just how dysfunctional the heights are in one piece.

zou is one of my favorite settings in one piece just for the sheer creativity of it. zunesha is so massive and so mysterious and so strange. and she really looks unspeakably old just from how she’s drawn, looming over everyone and everything, eyes hollow and empty, an entire forest and an entire people growing on her back that have been there for thousands of years. it’s just so neat and so wildly inventive.

this applies to zou as a whole, but i think it’s really cool how all the little threads that will become important during wano are set up so effectively even before whole cake island starts. we get this shot here of kidd beat to shit and then forget it because so much happens between here and when he shows up again in wano, but then oda punks us into caring about him and killer so much and this retroactively becomes very important.

ever since his introduction sanji’s always been a character basically defined by his adherence to his principles: always feeding the hungry, never wasting food, never hurting women, never using his hands in combat. he’s probably the most firmly principled person on the crew, and that’s more obvious in whole cake island than in any other arc except maybe baratie.

sanji is very stubbornly good, which puts him in acute contrast to his siblings and their general cruel apathy. it’s something i really like about him.

i’m a huge fan of big mom’s introduction, which is also our introduction to tottoland in general. it’s cutesy and colorful and musical while simultaneously being deeply creepy, with lyrics about killing people for ingredients and making jam out of blood, which is a great summary of the core of big mom’s character. she’s an old lady all in pink who lives in a cartoon fairy-tale land- but she’s also a deranged cannibal, and all those singing trees and flowers are animated by the life she steals from her citizens as tax.

whole cake island draws on a lot of fairy tale motifs (especially with brulee), and the contrast that saccharine appearance creates with how fucked up the actual content is is super effective and memorable, i think.

honestly i find most of the content of sanji with the vinsmokes just plain upsetting, which i’m sure is intentional, so i’m not going to go into it a lot here, but i am including this panel of him kicking niji in the face.

sad as this scene turns out, luffy’s absolute thrill at finding sanji and the corresponding bafflement of the vinsmokes as to how the fuck he even got there always kinda makes me grin.

i always love seeing people’s underestimations about luffy get thrown right the hell out the window- because let’s be honest, he’s easy to underestimate, he’s like a five and a half foot tall rubber teenager and not very physically intimidating and all, and then he goes and pulls off the impossible without blinking.

the thing that makes luffy unique as a captain has always been his willingness to rely on his crew, and his willingness to openly admit that reliance, like he did all the way back in arlong park. most of the other contenders for the pirate king’s crown we’ve seen- big mom, kaidou, crocodile once upon a time- have been stubbornly individualistic people who explicitly shown not to care for their crew and allies, generally seeing them as disposable.

luffy is the opposite of all of them, because his crew are everything to him, to the point of being willing to sacrifice his dream for them. and the loyalty he wins from them in return is unmatched, as opposed to big mom and kaidou, who both get cheerfully betrayed not just by their own crewmates but by their own children.

brook is really cool in whole cake island, and honestly it comes at just the right time for him as a character. ever since his introductory arc in thriller bark until this point he hasn’t gotten a ton of focus, so it’s great that he gets to be the mvp here and demonstrate exactly why he’s a strawhat pirate and how much he’s grown over the timeskip.

oda is generally really good at introducing and handling characters contained to a single arc/saga, but i do think he absolutely knocked it out of the park with pedro. he has an interesting backstory, compelling motivations, and basically an entire sub-arc ending in his death that never distracts from the main plot, but only ever adds to it.

pedro really feels like a fully realized character who’s had a whole life offscreen, who we just happened to catch at the very end of his story. i think that’s super impressive.

i really love this moment, because for me, this is the moment where whole cake island becomes a tremendous arc, and where the tides begin to turn and the dominoes begin to fall, one after the other. this is sanji hitting absolute rock bottom. the one ray of light he pinned all his hopes on was a lie, and he can’t even light a fucking cigarette.

but one piece is, very often, a story about picking yourself up even when you feel like you can’t.

i think there’s something lovely about how much one piece emphasizes the value of honestly asking for help. luffy waits for nami to ask for help, and for robin to say she wants to live, and for sanji to admit he just wants to go home, and then says, “okay, i’ll make that happen.”

it just makes me so happy how happy the stawhats are to know sanji’s back with them. it reminds me a lot of how they all brush off robin’s thanks after enies lobby. sure, they’re going to have to crash the wedding and confront big mom directly and might all die, but who cares? they’ve got sanji back. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, i love how much they love each other.

i think the gangster outfits are super fun, and i love that oda is committed enough to his aesthetics to come up with an excuse to put them all in formalwear. it pays off, they all look extremely snappy.

i know i just said it in the dressrosa posts but i’m reiterating it here because this is my favorite example of it by far: i love when oda does this split-screen thing with his panels. the contrast between the two halves of pudding is so severe and yet they’re so clearly the same person i honestly just find this pair of panels fascinating to look at.

this panel also kind of gets at my favorite thing about pudding as a character, really. i know she’s a little controversial in fandom, but i’ve always found her entertaining (at least post-reveal), especially in the contrast between her unhinged evil side and her genuinely sweet romantic side and her post-wedding tendency to randomly ping-pong between the two.

i just always like reminding people that sanji is fast enough and his observation haki good enough to dodge a surprise attack, while thoroughly distracted, from katakuri.

sanji in this arc tends to get shit from a certain side of fandom for being ‘useless’ since he doesn’t have a big climactic fight despite being the focus of the arc, which i think is thoroughly missing the point. sanji is still plenty capable in combat, as demonstrated both here and later, with chiffon and oven. it just happens that his strength isn’t what saves the day ultimately, because combat ability isn’t everything, which is the entire point of the vinsmoke backstory/subplot. sanji saves the day just by being kind.

i’ll admit big mom’s flashback isn’t one of my favorites, taken in isolation- there are some parts of it that kind of unresolved (at least as of now- i still suspect they’ll be followed up eventually), and in general, although there is a tragedy to it, it doesn’t quite hit the way many of the other more effective flashbacks do. that said, i do think it does a really good job of succinctly explaining why big mom is the way she is in the present: she’s a child who was never told no, who never grew or matured past the disappearance of her adopted mother. that’s it, and that’s enough.

i’ve always been a little bit in love with how seriously and consistently one piece handles its themes of found family, and sanji outright disowning judge in whole cake island is maybe the most outright they ever get: family is found, not made. you owe nothing to your blood and are never beholden to your abusers.

and i just like that a whole lot.

i do think the tamatebako is one of the best uses of chekov’s gun i’ve ever seen. we’re first shown it at the end of fishman island, it’s revealed it got sent off to big mom rigged with explosives which is a minor “oh fuck” moment, and then it gets forgotten about, because the entirety of punk hazard and dressrosa happens in between! which is a lot!

i remember when i reached the moment in whole cake island where we’re reminded that that bomb still exists and is still waiting to explode, i just started laughing hysterically out loud, because i’d completely forgotten, and now that i remembered i was just delighted to know it was going to definitely go off at some point, almost certainly in a very satisfying way.

pedro is, if i remember right, the first time the imagery of the coming dawn that will become quite important in wano really has attention drawn to it in-text- the recurring motif is there before this, of course, dating all the way back to the names of the first chapter (romance dawn) and first island (dawn island), but this is the first time it’s actively addressed in-story.

in doing so, oda essentially presents a fresh mystery for us, but one that has been set up so consistently ever since chapter one that it feels like it fits perfectly into the world and story.

luffy’s been punching way above his weight class ever since crocodile all the way back in alabasta, fighting enemies who clearly outmatch him but always managing to win anyways, but his fight with katakuri is maybe the clearest the sheer differential in strength ever gets, because katakuri’s powers are similar enough to luffy’s that he can pull off pretty much all of luffy’s techniques, but better. so luffy has to fall back on the two things that have always been his greatest strengths, again all the way back to crocodile in alabasta: innovation and sheer fucking stubbornness.

one thing i love about one piece is how no character is immune to being clowned on. absolutely nobody. everybody looks like an idiot sometimes, and it makes everything so much more fun than if the series took itself more seriously. katakuri basically actively tries to avert this by building up a fearsome, flawless, and utterly no-nonsense persona, but it winds up failing hard because it actually only makes the contrast and surprise of his actual personality and vices that much funnier.

i’ve always loved this one panel of carrot going sulong, because she just looks so monstrous, like a true werewolf. the same goes for the shift in big mom’s design when she starts going truly mad with starvation and gets even more threatening-looking (below). i just think oda should let women be monstrously scary more often.

i do really love that the entire climax of whole cake island hinges on the degree of trust and faith the strawhats, and sanji and luffy specifically, have in each other. they’re all facing massive challenges that would seem insurmountable to an outsider- luffy facing down a yonkou’s commander with a bounty of over a billion and sanji remaking a massive cake that took months to plan and make in just a few hours, the others evading big mom’s full forces and big mom herself for a full night- but none of them have even a shred of doubt that the others can manage it.

i wrote a meta post awhile back about one piece’s concept of ‘honor in a pirates’ fight, and what it came down to is this: honor can never be expected between pirates, but the best of them will show it anyways, and it can be a very telling judge of character. nobody would expect katakuri to do this, and luffy even calls him an idiot for it, but he has enough respect for luffy as a strong opponent to do it anyways, and that’s how we know for absolute certain that even though he’s an antagonist, he’s also a good, honorable person.

i really like the gesture of luffy leaving his hat over katakuri’s mouth, especially because until this point, we’re never even given any indication that he’s really noticed it, let alone that katakuri is insecure about it. he never reacts to or comments on it (which is in itself kind of unusual from someone who tends to nickname opponents by their appearances as often as luffy does) one way or another.

and then he does this, confirming all at once that he did fully notice and understand, he just doesn’t care. which i think sums up one of the more under-appreciated aspects of luffy’s character- he’s generally way more observant than people give him credit for, especially when it comes to people, it’s just that he has a very different sense of what’s important and what’s not than your average person.

i love the sheer contrast between big mom’s delighted, rapturous singing as she devours the wedding cake against the violence taking place on screen as her army rains fire and hell down on the thousand sunny. it parallels her initial introduction at the start of the arc perfectly, and is just an excellent way to close out the arc with a bang.

i said it earlier but it bears repeating here, for a different reason: luffy is not very physically intimidating. he’s shorter than most of the other main characters, he’s a lanky teenager, he dresses casually and his most identifiable accessory is a farm hat.

but then there are times when he looks like a captain, like a future pirate king, and it just looks so natural on him. i can never get over it.

i really like that, after spending a whole arc demonstrating just how different (and how much better) sanji is than the vinsmokes, it ends like this- showing us just how similar he’s grown up to the man he’s chosen as his real family, and just how proud zeff would be of him.

[loveablefangirl29]

Hey :) [I saw some people doing this, so I thought I would as well xD It's also so that you all know some stuff about me ♡]

You may call me Kenzie, I'm 24, my zodiac sign is Gemini ♊ [I'm a dragon in the Chinese zodiac], I'm bisexual [& a demisexual], also I'm female. I want to be an author and publish a few books eventually, hoping in two years or so [I'm finishing other stuff before I continue with writing a book xD], being a writer is my passion in life and it's something I truly love to do 💜 🖋️📖

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

Fandoms that I'm into [only gonna mention ones I post about on here, I'm into many others like Devil May Cry 5 & Twdg (mostly the final season game), I'm just listing some but if you want to know all of them, then check out my AO3 profile] ♡ -

Grand Theft Auto 5 [Gta V]

Life Is Strange 2 [LIS2]

Rising of the Shield Hero [Rotsh]

Baldur's Gate 3 [BG3]

Villainous

Hazbin Hotel

Helluva Boss

Detroit Become Human [dbh]

Ships/Pairings that I love with all of my heart & I really like to write about and read ♡ [I'm just naming a few, you'll find others I love in my AO3 works] -

Franklin Clinton x Lamar Davis (Framar) [Gta V] 💚 🏙️

Trevor Philips x Lamar Davis (Tramar) [Gta V] 🧡🌇

Sean Diaz x Finn (Sinn) [Life Is Strange 2] 💙🌲

Astarion x Tav [Baldur's Gate 3] (I really love his storyline) 🕯️🖤❤️

Iruma x Asmodeus (IruAzz) [Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun] ❤️💜����

Kalego x Opera [Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun] 😈🖤♥️

Black Hat x Dr. Flug (Paperhat) [Villainous] 🎩

Angel Dust x Husk (AngelHusk/HuskerDust) [Hazbin Hotel] 💗

Alastor x Angel Dust (RadioDust) [Hazbin Hotel] 🔪

Legosi x Louis [Beastars] 🐺🦌

Barnaby 'Bunny' Brooks Jr. x Kaburagi T. Kotetsu [Tiger & Bunny] 🐇🐅

Connor x Hank Anderson (Conhank/Hankcon, Hannor) [Detroit Become Human] 🌆 🥃

Danny Parker x Karl [Black Mirror] 🌃

Chiron x Kevin [Moonlight] 🌌 🌙

Louis x Clementine (Clouis) [Twdg] 💜

James x Louis [Twdg] ♥️

V x Nero [Devil May Cry 5] ⚰️🖤

Other stuff I love -

Reading/writing fanfiction 📃🖋️

Listening to music 🎧 [I'm into a lot of different bands/singers xD Like Falling In Reverse, Yungblud, Halsey, Rain Paris, lil Nas X, Hollywood Undead, Skillet, Three Days Grace, Linkin Park, t.A.T.u, Avril Lavigne, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Imagine Dragons, Twenty One Pilots, Panic! At The Disco, NF, Nico Collins, Sum 41, Papa Roach, Billie Eilish [& a few others that I can't think of at the moment xD So etc]

Taking pictures/I'm very much into photography 📷

Painting & some drawing (but I'm not really good at it xD) 🎨

Making aesthetics 🌈

I love the winter season ❄️ Because I can just put on a blanket and have some hot chocolate ☕

Teddy bears 🐻 & Candy (like chocolate) 🍫 Also soda, like Coke Zero and Dr. Pepper, even Pepsi sometimes (if I feel like it) 🥤

I also love foxes, wolves & cats 🦊🐺🐈

Watching my favorite tv series and movies 💻 I'm into zombie apocalypse stuff & disaster kind of movies, some horrors/thrillers as well (but I also love dramas and romances, a few comedies too [though it depends, especially if I like it or not])

I love to watch anime as well, I really enjoy it and have a few personal favorites :) Like 'Vampire Knight' (which is actually the first anime I ever watched), 'Sword Art Online' (I'm talking about the first season), & there's a lot more that I still love 💙💜

Talking to my close friends or anyone else who loves the same things as me/are into that kind of fandom and really love a pairing [& ship] like me ♡

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

My AO3 account [I post everything, all my fanfics/one-shots on there] - LoveFandoms828

Wattpad(s) [though I don't really post on there anymore, just so you all know] - ThatDemon828, InsanityLover828

Fanfiction.net [some of my fanfics are on there, but I don't post often on that website] - YandereGirl828

Instagram - loveablefangirl29 [Just like on Tumblr]

My Other Tumblr - crystalroses27

Well that's mostly it, some things to know about me, if I think of anything else then I'II add it later on ♡ Until the next post/fanfic 💕❤️

[doomonfilm]

Ranking : Ralph Bakshi (1938 -present)

August was progressing, and I found myself in a strange situation where I’d started diving into the catalogs of Andrei Tarkovsy, Mel Brooks and Kathryn Bigelow, but was unable to get any traction on a proper set of rankings.  Fearing burnout, I was on the verge of settling for some off the cuff, space-holder of a ranking, like ranking several partial catalogs of directors I need to watch in total, or (God forbid) ranking the directors I’ve previously ranked.

Then, in proper YouTube junkie fashion, inspiration struck, this time in the form of the Folding Ideas channel.  Dan, aka Foldable Human, has a wealth of wonderful content on his YouTube page, but when I saw his Ralph Bakshi and The Lord of the Rings video post, I immediately knew who was next in line for the ranking treatment : famed counterculture advocate and adult animation pioneer Ralph Bashki.  After a glimpse at his catalog, I knew it was meant to be, as I either owned or had seen everything he directed, and in true DOOMonFILM fashion, had even errantly attributed a few films to him that he had absolutely no involvement in.

When it comes to Bakshi, many things immediately come to mind : rotoscoped animation, harsh race depictions, fantastic music, deeply compelling fantasy and sexually-charged images are all staples of the Bakshi aesthetic.  Controversy followed Bakshi for much of the early portion of his career, and more than one of his films found cult success after being deemed box office failures.  His interpretation of The Lord of the Rings stood for generations as the definitive visual reference, and his animated take on Fritz the Cat was mutually beneficial, as it made Fritz a more famous character while skyrocketing Bakshi’s career into high gear.  His real life persona matches the fantastic nature of his content creation, and Bakshi has never been known as one to hold his opinion to himself or bite his tongue.

With that being said, it’s time to jump into the Ralph Bakshi catalog and rank the films in terms of my feelings on them.  This is by no means meant to be a definitive or scholarly list, but rather, a personal share meant to spark conversations.  Please enjoy, and don’t hesitate to share your opinions on the legend that is Ralph Bakshi as well.

9. Wizards (1977) Spoiler alert : as adept as Ralph Bakshi is at science-fiction and fantasy, they really aren’t my cup of tea.  In the case of Wizards, the premise is very interesting in terms of post-apocalyptic wizardry and warfare, with one side representing the “natural” while the other represents the industrial.  In terms of aesthetic, the film is quite dark, pulling off of some of the same energy that would eventually find its way into the anthology film Heavy Metal, which draws clear inspiration in terms of style and tone from the rotoscope-based work of Bakshi.  Perhaps for me, the breadth of the world presented dwarves (no pun intended) the actual presentation, which essentially plays out like a psychedelic storybook.  All of Bakshi’s work is worth investigating, Wizards included, but for me, I will need more time with it in order for it to properly resonate.

8. The Lord of the Rings (1978) Though Cool World and Fritz the Cat may give it a run for its money, it’d be an easy argument to state that The Lord of the Rings is the most universally well-known Ralph Bakshi film.  Standing as the first on-screen adaptation of the famous Tolkein epic in the wake of a long legal battle to save the property from public domain, the film is a relatively faithful adaptation of its source material.  That being said, it appears that Bakshi and the powers that be may have had different ideas about the production going into it, as the film feels like a series of shorter films (making it true to the three books) rather than a coherent single tale.  This is speculation on my end, but it’s possible that this shortened scope may have created pressure on the production end, which is evident when it becomes apparent how many different options are used to tell the story that aren’t Bakshi’s traditional rotoscope.  This theoretical rush on production also shows in the battle sequences, and with the scale and scope already having been shrunk due to budgetary purposes, having half-hearted swordsmanship makes sequences that are meant to pop fall flat.  If you’re curious about this Tolkein epic but you don’t feel like reading three books or essentially watching a day’s worth of Peter Jackson films, then the Bakshi version will certainly suffice, but if you’re on a Bakshi hunt, there are better films out there in my opinion.

7. Fire and Ice (1983) Of all the Bakshi fantasy offerings, Fire and Ice is far and away the style champion.  The combination of Ralph Bakshi animation and Frank Frazetta illustration is stunning, and all of the main character designs are instantly iconic.  The juxtaposition of opposite elements (fire and ice, in this case) works a bit better than the nature versus technology setup of Wizards, and the story is much more direct, with this streamlined nature providing the narrative with a natural momentum that pushes Lam’s hero’s journey forward.  The symbolism of Darkwolf as a sort of warrior-cupid figure is an interesting insertion as well.  As previously stated, my preferred Bakshi is the urban spectrum of his catalog, but if I had to choose one Bakshi fantasy film, it’s Fire and Ice, hands down.

6. Hey Good Lookin’ (1982) By the 1980′s, Ralph Bakshi had slightly taken the gas off of his urban stereotypes, descending from the heights of true indifference to the opinions of others on his work down to a level where it seemed Bakshi may have found personal entertainment in ruffling feathers.  For Hey Good Lookin’, Bakshi symbolically turns his urban mirror on himself, delving into the world of greasers and mafiosos rather than that of Black culture via gangsters, drug dealers and thieves, which may have been in reaction to his extreme portrayals of the Brer Rabbit mythos in Coonskin.  I never put two and two together until recently, but Hey Good Lookin’ borrows heavily from Mean Streets, right down to the Vinnie and Crazy Shapiro dynamic mirroring many aspects of the Charlie and Johnny Boy dynamic.  The music is pretty good in this film, as it heavily borrows from the Scorsese approach as well... in all honesty, this film is essentially the Bakshi take on the Scorsese 1970s classics.  Even the least interesting Bakshi urban picture has more heart, controversy and raw energy of any live-action gangster film, which makes Hey Good Lookin’ respectable, but Bakshi has definitely done the genre more justice with his previous works.

5. Coonskin (1975) Coonskin holds many distinctions in the Bakshi catalog... it’s easily the most divisive of all his movies, it may be the most clever adaptation he has presented to the masses, and it easily contains the most high profile cast of all the Bakshi films, with Philip Michael Thomas, Charles Gordone, Barry White and Scatman Crothers all playing major roles in the film.  With the imagery connected to the film, it’s easy to see why many people have a visceral knee-jerk reaction to the movie, many before having every even seen it, up to and including the Congress of Racial Equality.  When the shock of the deeply black skin tones and reckless violent abandon wears off, however, we are left with a story very similar to Ridley Scott’s American Gangster that perfectly connects to the Brer Rabbit tales, resulting in a narrative that takes a deep and hard look at systematic racism, oppression and economic disparity, particularly how they are interconnected in a manner that traps the unfortunate.  The symbolism and style are heavy in this film, and the imagery is extremely bold, but don’t let all of that fool you : Bakshi is in tune with the African-American experience in a way that many choose not to be, and even if his methods of creativity are tough to swallow at face value, his root message is one of understanding and deep sympathy.

4. Fritz the Cat (1972) For many people my age, one of the first truly eye-opening pieces of media that blurred the line between the innocent world of children’s programming and the seedy underbelly of adult programming was the salacious Robert Crumb character turned Ralph Bakshi debut film Fritz the Cat.  Meant explicitly to help push the medium of animation into a more adult realm, Bakshi used the character of Fritz the Cat to spin tales centering around aspects of college and counterculture life such as sex, drugs, profanity and generally reckless behavior rather than the innocent tales that animation generally presented up to that time.  Bakshi’s career prior to Fritz the Cat centered heavily on animation grunt work, but with the film making $90 million worldwide on a $700,000 budget, Bakshi immediately became the rising star of the animation world, especially in regard to the world of adult animation, which he helped bring to the popular culture forefront.  Fritz the Cat is a little rough around the edges, and at times it leans on very basic stereotypes like a crutch, but when its all said and done, the charm of Fritz the Cat rises above all other aspects.  Though the sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, is a bit more my speed, it unfortunately had nothing to do with the Crumb or Bakshi camps, hence its exclusion from this list.

3. Heavy Traffic (1973) With a coming out party like Fritz the Cat under your belt, it would be easy to fall victim to the sophomore jinx.  This wasn’t the case for Ralph Bakshi, however, as he made a deceivingly ambitious follow-up film that mixes aspects which would later appear in my two favorite Bakshi films.  First and foremost, the film is a bold mixture of live action and animation, with an almost equal balance of the two shifting back and forth during the viewing experience.  The blends go both ways (animated characters in real settings and vice-versa), and most are done in enough of an artistic manner to make the blends aesthetically pleasing rather than distracting.  Secondly, the deeply personal story of the Michael character feels like he could exist in one of the earlier sequences of American Pop, with Michael’s tug of war between the Mafia life and his burgeoning love for Carol mirroring many of the oppositional pulls that nearly every member of the Belinsky bloodline face.  The overarching symbiology of the crime-laden streets as a gigantic pinball machine works extremely well, as it not only mirrors the hectic hell that Michael and Carole face, but it bookends the movie’s live-action start and stop.  This wasn’t the first Bakshi film I saw, but it was the first one that I owned when I found a cheap copy used in a record store, which instantly gives it a special place in my heart.

2. Cool World (1992) For many people, this stands as the crown jewel of the Ralph Bakshi catalog.  When it comes to mixing live-action and animation, Bakshi is no stranger, and while Who Framed Roger Rabbit? put itself light years ahead of anyone in the live-action/animation realm, Cool World marked an interesting return to form and amplification of style for Bakshi.  Kim Basinger and Gabriel Byrne were already stars in their own right, and they certainly brought their star power to the table, but Brad Pitt found Cool World to be one in a series of breakout films for him, moving him from featured extra roles to supporting roles, and within 5 years of Cool World, lead roles.  In terms of the narrative, Cool World serves as perhaps the most meta of all Bakshi creations, with the entire story centering around a cartoonist trapped in a world of his own creation, all of which is wrapped inside of a grief-driven escapist reaction to a traumatic event.  Cool World marked a return to directing after a 9 year absence, and unfortunately, it’s been the last feature film the world has received from Ralph Bakshi.  If we’re lucky, we may get one more project before he’s gone, but if Cool World marks the endpoint of the Bakshi animated journey, so be it in all of its glory and dark beauty.

1. American Pop (1981) I’ve been a film fan for most of my life, but I’ve been a music fan my entire life, which makes it crystal clear why the infinitely moving American Pop stands as my favorite Ralph Bakshi film.  The film centers around four generations of the Belinsky family, spanning from 1850s Imperial Russia right up to the modern day (or at least the day that was modern as of the film’s release).  This journey of a Russian Jewish immigrant family into the U.S. directly reflects the personal experience of Bakshi, which in turn makes the story pop with a sincerity and honesty that is usually sacrificed for exploitation or the fantastic in other Bakshi films.  As we march through the ages, the Belinsky family (and their musical talents) allow us to take a parallel journey with the growth of American music from the Vaudeville era, through the Jazz and Psychedelic Rock eras, and directly into the world of Punk music and Stadium Rock.  The multitude of animation styles used in tandem with the wide variety of musical stimulus creates a pleasant assault on the senses, with several sequences having permanent real estate in my head to this day.  I’ve shared American Pop with many, many friends, and as far as my sphere goes, the vote is in : American Pop is a bonafide classic that is more than deserving of your time and attention.  

[capnjay21]

A House is Never Still 6/6

Five years ago, Emma Swan disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Killian Jones’ disappearance, well, not so mysterious – given the denizens of Storybrooke all but blamed him for her murder. Drawn back to town by a series of strange events, he soon realises the story of what really happened the night she vanished is beginning to unravel, and what’s more: it isn’t over.

A/N: and here is the conclusion! I’ll ramble a little more at the end, but for now, please once again accept my repeated and evermore wildly gesticulated thanks for @hollyethecurious​ for this beautiful aesthetic which made the fic - I literally would not have done it without it! also hollering at the kids from the @csrolereversal​ way back when for starting the event that I originally signed up for, it was so much fun to be part of and while I’m a lil disappointed with myself for finishing so much later, life happens! thanks all! 

and now - story happens!

Rating: T

Warnings: mentions of suicide, canonical character death, and some Spooky Business™.

Continuing the teeny tiny taglist - but if you want off this list for the epilogue (pending), just let me know and I promise I will not be offended! <3

@snowbellewells​ @carpedzem​ @kmomof4​ @optomisticgirl​

AO3 | one | two | three | four | five

-/-

6 - when the first man awoke in the night

Present Day

There was a pervading sense of strangeness to seeing them all in the same room again.

It was like listening to your favourite song for the first time in years, but the lyrics were now backwards. Instead of humming along in that easy, thoughtless way, it felt jarring to the ears and forced you to really consider what exactly you were hearing, line by line, word by word.

Killian couldn’t stop thinking about every word he offered up into their shared space now; everything felt permanent, nothing could be taken back. What they said in this moment would mark how every moment after it would come to be. He was sure of it, and he was sure the other three felt the same, which was why very little had been said since Mary Margaret had warily invited he, Regina and David over the threshold and into her loft.

Regina had taken a position nearest the door, arms folded, expression neutral, leaning steadily against the wall. She looked like someone trying desperately to imitate the pose of one unaffected, but the tension in the set of her shoulders gave her away. Killian had perched on the stairs that led up to the upper floor, and David stood in the centre of the room shifting his weight from foot to foot and glaring sadly around him, as if he had no idea where he fit into this room anymore and imagined any of her items of furniture might have been the one to oust him. Mary Margaret sat at the side of her dining table that allowed her to face all three of them at once, hands clasped tightly together over the tabletop.

Mary Margaret had offered them tea and they had all declined.

It was the distance, Killian decided, that was most difficult to take in. It was the closest they had been to each other in five years, but the space between them had never felt wider.

The tape recorder was clutched tightly in Killian’s right hand. It was a little slick with sweat from his palm, but he refused to let it go.

“Is this about Emma?” Mary Margaret asked, and while she asked politely, the edge in her voice was unmistakable. She did not want her house of cards to come down around her. When they didn’t immediately reply she offered with a wry eyebrow raise: “It’s not likely to be about anything else, is it?”

“It is,” Killian said, seeing no point in drawing it out. “It’s about the house.” He and David exchanged a look. “It’s back.”

Something ticked in Mary Margaret’s jaw. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer – I don’t want to know.”

In that moment, Killian couldn’t see anything but Emma in her – except he had always had an instinct for how to scale Emma’s walls, but with Mary Margaret he floundered.

Fortunately, there was someone else in the room who knew how far better than he.

“Hey,” David started, gently, in that tone so earnest and warm that none of them had ever really been able to ignore. “You know who we are, you know what this must be. Just look at us.” No matter what else had happened, there they all were. “This isn’t something from nothing – we wouldn’t do that to you.” He gave her a sad sort of smile. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Mary Margaret stared back up at him, and not for a second did Killian believe their story was as over as they had both claimed it was. “What is it, then?” she asked.

“It’s this.” Killian stood up, opening his palm to reveal the tape recorder inside. It was sturdy and blocky, resembling a clunky child’s toy more than the instrument that had brought them together that night. He laid it on the table, and before she could ask he cut her off. “I recorded this five nights ago, in Brooke House.”

The tape immediately began to crackle and scratch, and Killian fast-forwarded just long enough until it started. It whirred, and it tck-tck-tck­-ed, and eventually there was a voice.

‘Emma?’

His voice. Cutting through the static. There were a few thumps. A rustle as he’d stuffed the recorder in his pocket, some creaks as he climbed the stairs within Brooke House. Through the recording, Killian could relive the second night he had gone to the house since coming back to Storybrooke, the same way both Regina and David already had.

‘Emma?’

There was a crash, and the unmistakable tear of book bindings. Except, where Killian had heard Emma’s voice that night, the tape recorder had picked up nothing. Instead it sounded as if Killian had stood in silence, waiting.

‘Why didn’t you show yourself to Regina?’

Another thud, as another book was hurled against the wall. Otherwise, quiet.

‘Come here,’ the Killian on the tape said, ‘let me look at you.’

Mary Margaret was frowning, and lifted her bemused gaze up first to Killian, and then the others. “What is this?”

“Just wait,” Regina answered quietly from her place by the door.

The Killian on the tape let out a long breath. ‘I’m so sorry.’ A pause. ’All of it.’

Killian bristled at the memory, felt the cold touch of her lips like a steel edge. You couldn’t tell from the recording what had happened, and Killian had not been quick to fill the others in on his actions during that particular interval. But even as the seconds passed, his pulse began to race – he had listened to this recording a hundred times already, listened to Emma’s spectral presence like a non-entity, had initially resigned himself to having caught nothing of measurable value to show she was there at all.

Except right then –

‘Killian?’

Emma’s voice was unmistakable.

Mary Margaret’s reaction was instant, and visceral. She almost bolted out of her chair. In fact, she looked so suddenly pale and faintly ill that Killian nearly offered to fetch her something to throw up in. What were you supposed to do when you heard the voice of your long dead friend, five years after the fact of their dying?

But it was just that one word – then it was Killian promising to help her, and then there was nothing at all.

“There’s more,” he said grimly, but he had a feeling Mary Margaret wouldn’t have been able to form words just yet anyway. Killian clicked a finger on the fast forward.

He had completely forgotten about that recorder after Emma had kissed him – it had sat on those bookshelves for five days, running continuously in the study on the landing. He was fortunate it was such an old, robust thing. Even without attention it had continued diligently fulfilling his purpose, and his only regret was that it had run out of tape after a day and a half.

But in that time, it had caught enough.

Having wound the tape to this point so many times, Killian stopped it once more and let the noises trickle out.

A rustle of fabric, something scratching on old floors. A faint, but tangible sigh.

‘Killian?’

Emma, again. Killian shut his eyes. He let the sound wash over him.

‘Killian?’

There was nothing for a minute or so here, but Killian left it running. They all needed time to process it, and together they listened to the soft sounds of Brooke House murmuring quietly. Ancient wood groaned, the stairs told the bannister that someone was coming, the wind pushed doors open and closed them. But eventually, reverently, they heard her speak again.

‘Yesterday, I dreamed…’

She hissed out a breath. Her voice was quiet, and terribly sad. Killian’s heart seized to hear it, because he knew it was his Emma. This voice wasn’t rich with delighted, dark secrets. It was hollow and resigned and a breath of condensation across frosted glass.

‘I don’t know where I am. I thought I heard your voice.’

Something fluttered, possibly the pages of a book. Then there was only silence.

Killian knew this quiet stretched the tape for a few hours, so again he tapped his finger to fast forward, until they could hear her speak again.

‘It’s – it’s the car. I don’t want to see it anymore. Is David there?’

David dropped heavily down into a seat at the dining table. The Emma on tape continued, oblivious.

‘I thought I heard your voice. We have to finish it. It’s…’ Something scratched loudly, and the four in the kitchen winced at the sudden volume of the sound. ‘Killian? Is that you? I’m so cold. I –’

The recorder clicked, sputtered and stopped. It had reached the end of the tape.  

Then they waited.

It had been enough to convince David; it had been more than enough for Regina to let go of her scepticism about whether Emma needed rescuing. For Killian, it had lit a fire under him. Not only was Emma, their Emma, trapped in Brooke House somehow, but she was cognizant. He had seen it. In those breathless few seconds after their lips had touched, his Emma had bled through like a blot of ink stretching across paper, and she had asked after him.

Now he intended to answer.

But they couldn’t do it without Mary Margaret, not if they needed what he thought they did – three pairs of eyes turned to look at her.

Killian was unsurprised to notice she was crying. Her shoulders shook, and she did not resist David when his hand came over to rest atop hers. In fact, she curled open her palm and allowed him to thread their fingers together as she let out a tremulous breath, her eyes misty and fighting for clarity.

“Please tell me this isn’t real.” She sounded as miserable as she looked.

“It’s real,” Regina answered.

“Our girl is in there,” David urged. “We have to get her out.”

With her free hand, Mary Margaret furiously wiped her face with the back of it. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “How?”

Killian brushed a finger across the edge of the tape recorder, and for a wild moment considered rewinding it and letting it play again just so he could hear her voice.

“The ritual. The same one we started five years ago.”

It had always bothered Killian, had niggled in the back of his mind for years. If the sole purpose of that ritual had been summoning a malevolent spirit in order to control its power, then why had Liam Jones allowed himself to become embroiled in it? Liam was honesty, integrity, and fierce loyalty. It didn’t add up.

“It was never about bringing something evil out – I should have recognised the signs the moment I came back, but I was too busy thinking about Brooke House now to worry about then.” Turning abruptly to the coffee table, Killian plucked a pen and ripped a page from a notebook that had been lying there and brought it back to the dining table. On it, he carefully sketched the five-pointed star he had drawn into the floorboards at Brooke House. “History lesson. One of the earliest known uses of the pentagram is actually as a Christian symbol – its points are supposed to represent the five wounds of Christ.

“Then, as time goes on, you start to see a rise in occult practices, and they pretty much liberally borrow as much symbolism as possible from anywhere they can. Particularly the pentagram – which, if you turn around –” Killian swivelled the image so the tip of the star was pointing down, and the two points jutted out upwards. “—Has been known to represent the two horns of Satan, here. The rejection of heaven and all things spiritual. That’s what I thought I was looking at when I saw it needed to be in the ritual.” He’d spent a few days absorbed in old library books, researching what Liam had written down and left in his toolbox.

He had allowed himself to be influenced by Belle Gold, by all the talk of evil, and as a result had only bothered with one interpretation of the symbol – which was reductive, and a potentially fatal error.

“But way, way before all of that, you have its uses in Taoism, with Pythagoras and the Greeks, in early iterations of paganism. Some perceive it as a representation of the elements, but most agree that it’s about balance. It’s perfection in mathematics, the human body, words; it makes its uses in religious ritual and magic basically inevitable. But by the time the pagan revival begins – well, mostly a re-invention or re-construction of older practices – it’s become so strongly associated with malevolence and Satanism that it’s a little difficult to adopt as a symbol of faith. So, what do you do?”

Killian grinned.

“You turn it the right way up and draw a big fat circle around it.”

He rotated the paper again, so the single point was facing upwards and drew a circle around its points, connecting each one.

“It’s a different symbol. It’s what most modern wicca practices call a pentacle, it’s supposed to represent a physical object used in ceremonial evocation – the act of calling upon a spirit – for protection. It’s a talisman. Liam wanted the circle made from salt, which is a common ingredient in purification spells. There are candles at each point to give energy, but –”

“You should have left one unlit,” Regina cut across him, eyes widening once she’d put the pieces together.

“Exactly.”

David and Mary Margaret, for their part, looked entirely nonplussed by the turn of the conversation. Killian winced internally – perhaps he’d spilt out the word magic a few too many times for them.

David blinked. “What – what are you talking about?”

“One candle should have been unlit to let energy out,” Killian explained. “This isn’t a ritual for summoning or capturing a demon. It’s a ritual for banishing one.”

Mary Margaret dropped her head in her hands.

“Years. Years of therapy. All undone in a single evening.”

“Did you hear her?” Killian pressed, tapping the tape recorder emphatically. “Did you hear her calling out for us? She said it herself. We need to finish this. There’s no moving past it until we do.”

“I can’t. I just – I can’t.”

Killian could feel frustration mounting, but David laid a hand on his arm before he could burst out something furious and likely detrimental to their cause. They could attempt the ritual without Mary Margaret, but without a person sat at every point of the pentacle the spell would be weaker. It had to be her – there was no one else.

“Mary Margaret,” David began. He shifted his chair a little closer. “Mary Margaret.”

Miserably, she raised her head, hands clasped on the back of her neck.

“I think you need a little of something that you used to give all of us,” he smiled. “Hope.”

Her eyes welled with fresh tears, and Mary Margaret shook her head. “Hope – hurts.”

“Only when we give it up.” To Killian’s surprise, it was Regina who had spoken, pushing away from the wall to stand at Mary Margaret’s shoulder. “I thought I could bury this beneath the way the world had opened up. That it was the price for new eyes.” She locked eyes with Killian, offered him a nod of understanding. “I was wrong. And… I’m sorry. We should have supported each other, stayed together.”

“Regina’s right,” Killian continued. “And this is on me, too. I should have been here. I shouldn’t have missed… everything I missed.”

He had missed the service for Emma, he had missed old Henry Mills’ passing, he had missed David and Mary Margaret going their separate ways, he had missed the coda of their friendship with Regina, he had missed Archie leaving town, he had missed the library closing its doors for the last time, he had missed, he had missed, he had missed.

Killian had thought leaving Storybrooke was the best decision he had ever made; that without Emma, all that was left was walking in the dust.

Admitting that he had spent five years missing Storybrooke was like releasing a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.  

“Emma needs us,” David urged, taking one of Mary Margaret’s hands in his own. “One last time. All of us – together.”

They were all pieces of the same, scattered glass. Some edges sharp, some smooth. All Killian knew was the completed image was soft and golden, and he ached for it so harshly and so tenderly that he couldn’t bear it if the night ended any other way.

Mary Margaret took a steadying breath.

Her fingers clasped around David’s.

“Hope,” she said, and it settled it.

They were doing this.

-/-

The sky above Main Street was a deep, midnight blue, the winking light of stars only clearly visible if you fixed your gaze on it for longer than a few seconds. All appeared still, other than the stirring of crisp and deadened leaves in an unhurried brush down the road, and long shadows cast by the bronze streetlights were black in the way the sky should have been.

In the corner of Killian’s eye, everything seemed to shift. Every few metres it felt like something flashed at the edge of his vision, just out of sight, daring him to turn and look, trying to pull them from their singular focus of getting to the edge of town as quickly as possible. He was sure it was Brooke House. The dagger felt cool against his chest from the inside of his jacket. How did Emma put it? Testing the boundaries? Stretching her limits? A spectre at the edge of Main Street, a shadow at the end of David’s bed.

He could feel her all around them watching, waiting, trying to deter them from coming any closer. Perhaps she knew of their intent. Streetlights flickered overhead, and the groan of steel scarring tarmac could be heard distantly.

Killian felt so exposed. The others had huddled in close, walking swiftly as a unit – maybe they could feel it too.

He was so involved in wondering after the otherworldly, that the reality of a car pulling up beside them didn’t even register until the occupant was already climbing out. The door slammed definitively, purposefully, and it drew them to a halt. Once Killian had identified who now stood there in the gloom, features lit by the fading amber light of the street, he let out a string of murmured expletives.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before the whole gang was back together again,” Sheriff Graham Humbert growled, his voice as melodic and dangerous as it had been when Killian was just seventeen, frightened, and exhausted beyond belief on the night that had started it all.

Killian fought to keep his voice level. “It’s been a long time, Humbert.”

“Long enough that you’re ready to finally give me the truth?”

“Graham,” Regina began quietly, and it was the way her tongue curled around Graham, it was the intimacy of it, the sheer fact that they were on a first name basis that sent Killian’s mind into a tailspin, cataloguing a few more ways the town had continued to tick without him.

They were all adults now, weren’t they? So why not? Why not Graham?

Because he didn’t like it.

“Don’t,” Humbert said shortly. “So where is it you’re off too? The ravine, maybe?”

He looked older than when Killian had seen him last. He had only just been elected the month before Emma had disappeared, gruff but bright-faced and enthusiastic about his future turning over small town misdemeanours. Then he had been thrown into a missing-persons-assumed-murder case, and nothing about Storybrooke had felt small anymore. Had Emma’s disappearance given him those lines, pulled taut at the corner of his eyes? Could the unhappy curve to his mouth, the adamant line of his jaw, be because of Emma, too?

He had only wanted to find Emma, it was all any of them had wanted. On any of the countless nights Killian had lain awake, unable to dream of anything but the night that Emma had vanished, could Graham Humbert possibly have been doing the same?

Not to mention his instincts were correct. The four of them did know something more about it than what they had told him. It must have churned him up inside to know that, and not be able to do a single thing about it.

“We’re going for a drink,” Mary Margaret offered, and she surprised Killian with the smoothness of the lie. “Just old friends catching up.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Humbert snapped. His badge glittered in the dim light. “You were up to something then, and you’re up to something now.” He folded his arms. “I’d like to invite all of you to come down to the station and have a chat, seeing as you’ve got the time.”

At the end of the street, a bulb blew in a shower of orange sparks. Glass rained musically down onto the sidewalk. Killian thought he saw the flutter of white fabric dart around the corner.

Watching, waiting, daring.

“We don’t have time for this,” Regina muttered. “Step aside, Graham.”

“Fine, go. I’ve got no problem with it. The way you all look tonight,” Humbert stared at each of them in turn, scathingly, “I have a feeling you’ll lead me straight to her.”

He had only ever wanted to find Emma. That, Killian reminded himself, they had in common.

Movement flickered at the edge of his vision, and for a moment Killian was certain once he turned his head he’d see another spectre of Emma, dirty white and terrible, but it was David, David had surged forward and his fist was swinging and Killian heard the crack of Humbert’s head hitting the sidewalk before his eyes had even processed that he was witnessing his crumpled form falling backwards. Out cold.

David was hissing with pain, shaking out his hand and wincing.

The other three were blinking, astonished.

“Sorry,” he offered to Humbert’s motionless form. Then, turning to the others and noticing their expressions, he suddenly grew defensive. “We’re in a hurry, aren’t we?”

Inside a convenience store, a radio burst to life. The scattered notes of Only You could be heard scratching across the quiet street.

Killian narrowed his eyes. Yes, they were.

The four of them stepped carefully around Humbert, and continued their brisk journey into the night.

Given their intent, Killian had half expected for Brooke House to be gone by the time they got there, like when they had returned on the first night to look for Emma. After the ritual they had scattered into the trees, tearing off in different directions to try and find where she might have gone, voices hoarse with their continued calls out for her. By the time they had returned to the site of the house to regroup, faithfully following the trail of Killian’s orange string, it had gone. Taking Regina’s Ouija board, Mary Margaret’s scarf, David’s Apollo chocolate bar wrapper and Emma with it. A piece of all of them lost to the maw – some bigger than others. It had feasted on what it could and disappeared into the night.

Perhaps, Killian thought, as he stared at its broad foundations, the beckoning creek of its front door, the gasping cavern of its insides, it looked at them all like an unfinished meal.

It waited, it watched, and it dared them closer to finish them for good.

Killian’s hand tightened on the hilt of the dagger.

Emma needed them. And she had waited long enough.

As one, he and Regina stormed up the steps and headed inside. Behind him, he could hear Mary Margaret whimper, the urgent, hushed tones from David pushing her forward, but he paid them no mind. They each had a job to do here – this was his. Regina immediately pulled out a black marker and began tracing the shape of the pentacle on the floor, while Killian rummaged in the rucksack they had brought for the salt. He started sprinkling it in a perfect circle around the edges, and it wasn’t long before David had coerced Mary Margaret through into the sitting room. She had her palms over her eyes, as if by not looking at the aged walls of the house she might not have to acknowledge she was stood there.

Something crashed upstairs. David and Mary Margaret jerked towards the sound, the latter dropping her hands. Killian and Regina exchanged grim looks.

“It knows,” she said.

“Get the candles.”

There were other loud bangs of protest, like the sudden opening and slamming of doors, and at every noise it brought the four of them closer together, until Killian could feel Mary Margaret’s small hand clutching tightly to his upper arm. He spared her the briefest of glances – in the gloom she looked completely pale, but her features were set into something determined. The house could screech and moan, but she would not be so easily spooked anymore.

This was the girl he remembered. The one who could be both; afraid, and brave.

Killian fumbled with the matches, but not a single one would light. Killian stuck his finger into the packet and found, bafflingly, that the tip of every match was damp, even though they had been tucked away in his pocket. With irritation Killian thought of the damp wall and the wallpaper, and he thought he could hear laughter. It might have been the wind whistling past broken glass, but it was something.

“Here,” David said. He’d pulled a lighter from his pocket.

At four of the five points they set a lit candle, and at the fifth they set a final one – unlit, for the release of energy they had intended. Quickly they took their places behind a flickering flame, leaving the gap between Killian and David where Emma had sat all those years ago.

Killian’s pulse raced, his heart felt jagged and stuttered; hope, that treacherous notion, couldn’t help but imagine that at the end of all this, she might once again be sitting there.

“Ah,” came an icy voice from over his shoulder. Killian shut his eyes, knowing who it was at once. “You finally brought my dagger.”

“Ignore her,” Killian said firmly, refusing to turn around, but the others weren’t paying attention to him. Their stares, slack-jawed and stupefied, were fixed on the phantom that had just entered the room.

David’s voice was hoarse. “Emma?”

“David,” Killian barked. “Take Mary Margaret’s hand.”

“David,” Emma’s voice was honeysuckle and thick. “David, it’s me. Come on, come away from there. It’s time to go, don’t you think?”

Mary Margaret snatched his hand from where it had been hovering near her, and in a daze, David turned his head back towards her.

“Look at me,” she said, fiercely. “My eyes. Only.” David looked torn. “That is not our girl.”

“David,” Emma sang. His shoulders tense, but he did not turn to look at her again. Instantly, Emma’s tone turned nasty. “Get out.”

Killian didn’t care for ceremony anymore; he didn’t care for the weight of it all, for the ritual, for the sense of preserving the past – he felt like he had spent his entire adult life consecrating devastation. Regina’s hand was tight in his, their incomplete circle ready and waiting. The candle flames danced backwards and forwards, and Killian used his spare hand to pull the dagger from his coat pocket.

There was a loud hiss from behind him, like the hum of a cooped-up predator, and something ice cold and hard swung in front of him and gripped his throat.

Killian gasped.

Mary Margaret screamed.

He felt the air being squeezed from his windpipe, the dig of Emma’s nails into his skin so harsh he was sure they must’ve drawn blood –

With effort, Killian raised his hand –

And flung the dagger into the centre of the circle.

The effect was instantaneous. Emma released him immediately and wailed, something loud and drastic and terrible, as the air began to crackle. There was no slow build up this time, a steady gathering of wits as the room began to take in its breath, there was just the rumble of distant thunder, the storm they made to summon forming as suddenly as a tornado. The wind howled through the cracked windows; one of them shattered under the force of it and carried shards of glass towards them, hurtling around them with great speed.

Through the gap between Killian and David, Emma had stumbled backwards into the middle of the circle, and her eyes were black and furious. Right in front of them, she began to curl in on herself but it was impossible, her back had bent at a right angle and the contortions were too much, too strange, that his brain tried to tell Killian that it wasn’t happening at all. The wind whipped away her crown of flowers until it disintegrated, and her mouth gaped open in a silent scream, wide, wider, a yawning arc of darkness.

Something sharp dug into Killian’s cheek – glass, he thought, helplessly – and he reached up his free hand to try and shield himself. Mary Margaret and Regina had their eyes tightly shut, expressions scrunched up with pain and Regina’s lips were moving, but Killian couldn’t hear anything over the roar in his ears.

That was when the lightning struck.

In unison, arcs of obsidian light latched onto both the centre of Emma’s chest and the dagger, tying the two together like an ugly, pulsing artery. Again it flashed, this time onto her back, and again, her left hand, again, her right, until Emma was entirely obscured from view by the opaque jet of the zephyr.

This was where they had lost Emma before – she had thrown herself into the centre of the storm.

Killian tensed, maybe – maybe –

Regina’s hand tightened on his, as if sensing the direction of his thoughts.

Not a chance, it said, and gripped even harder.

Instead he yelled out into the darkness.

“Emma!”

The only response was rage – the door to the sitting room swung off its hinges, dropping heavily onto the floor. The wallpaper was ripped to shreds. A hole the size of a fist splintered into the floorboards behind him. Even so, on hearing him, the others took up the call – screaming for Emma to come through, to break free, to take her place in their circle and complete them.

“I know you’re in there!” Killian hollered, and his throat felt hoarse but he needed to make himself heard. “Emma, you can do it!”

And then – and then – he saw her.

Not the twisted, luminous Emma that the house had been showing him, but Emma, their Emma, staring out from the centre of the tornado. Through jets of black lighting he could see her, eyes wide, palms facing upward as if waiting for the rain to come, her mouth open in a cry that he couldn’t hear.

He couldn’t hear it, but he could see it. When she locked eyes with him her mouth formed the same words that had haunted him from the minute they’d first been ripped from her.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

Not this time.

Killian wrenched his hand free.

“No!” Regina cried.

If you have to have someone, he thought, furiously, then have me.

Killian hurtled in after her.

For a moment, everything was blindingly white, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Then he felt the touch of her hand.

It all fell quiet.

There was – nothing.

-/-

His heart was still beating. That was something, he supposed.

Behind his eyelids the light had dimmed, but it was still bright. That was how he knew it was no longer night. The air felt damp, and cold, and smelled faintly of wet moss and pine. The ground beneath his feet felt soft and earthy, and experimentally he wiggled his toes inside his boots. Obligingly, something squelched. Somewhere, a sparrow trilled.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. About a metre in front of him the ground gave way, dropping hundreds of feet below him in stacked and uneven layers of rock, grass and sediment. A distant roar sounded from beneath him, and pitching himself forward a little he could see the crash of the river against the edges of the rockface.

He was standing at the edge of the ravine, he realised. The ravine that Liam had driven into.

“This is what it does,” Emma said from beside him. “It makes you relive all your worst moments.”

His hand was tucked into hers, not unpleasantly. Their shoulders brushed.

“Where am I?”

In the distance something screeched, and he and Emma turned their heads towards the sound. Belatedly, he realised it was the exhausted brakes of a car accompanied by the rumble of an engine, and a wave of nausea began to rise within him. The harshness of the sounds felt dissonant with the relative peace above the ravine, but as Killian turned his eyes to the right he could remember how it had looked in the days that followed. It had rained heavily that afternoon, the police report had indicated that had wiped away most of the evidence, and everywhere mud had been churned over and over, plants ripped from their roots. But at this moment everything was still, undisturbed.

The sound of the motor grew louder.

Killian couldn’t remember how to breathe. He began to feel the light patter of rain on the back of his neck.

Not this, he begged, not this. I don’t want to see this.

“It’s alright,” Emma said, squeezing his hand tightly. “I’ll be here.”

Then the trees exploded.

Liam’s old Mustang burst through the shrub, and although Killian was anxious not to see it, he couldn’t tear his eyes away, tried to fix his gaze on every single detail in the impossibly short space of time between the car careening from the forest and tipping over the edge of the ravine. It was like watching it in slow motion. The windshield had already cracked in two places, and the Mustang swerved dangerously to the left – attempting to wrench itself to rightness before it was too late, but it was too late – and when Killian finally felt brave enough to look into the cabin, he realised something else with a chilling rush of dread.

Liam was not alone in the car.

Someone else – something else – had two hands on the wheel, and Liam was wrestling for control. Acting purely on instinct Killian surged forward, but Emma’s grip on his hand held him back. He knew, with the certainty that you knew things in dreams, that nothing he could do would be able to stop it.

Then he blinked, and Liam was alone in the car, and the Mustang had hurtled over the edge of the cliff. For a few seconds, the forest had earnt back its stillness.

Then, with an almighty crash that made the ground beneath him shake, the Mustang hit the surface of the water.

Killian couldn’t bring himself to look over the edge. On the cliff, just metres from where Killian now stood, someone else watched the car disappear beneath the walls. It was a man – or no, was it a man, his skin looked more like slick bronze, glittering like the scales of a fish – and then he was gone.

Killian reminded himself to breathe in, and breathe out. Emma reached across and brushed tears away from his cheek with a gentle finger, which was how he realised he had been crying. He clutched her other hand tightly in his own.

He couldn’t speak, and mercifully Emma didn’t seem to expect him to. It could have been minutes that they stood there together, breathing in, breathing out, or it could have been hours. It might not have been more than a few seconds. Somewhere, a sparrow trilled again. Killian began to feel a splatter of rain against the back of his neck, which was how he realised it had stopped raining the first time around.

“Careful,” Emma said. “Here it comes again.”

In the distance, he heard another screech of tired brakes.

Alarmed, Killian turned – and realised the treeline looked exactly as it had when he arrived, before Liam had burst through it.

Overwhelmed by the urge to throw up, Killian bent double and retched, but nothing came out. Emma rubbed a soothing hand on his back.

Again, he watched as the Mustang crashed through the thicket, as Liam fought for control of the wheel with the strange man – the same man who stood on the cliff afterwards before vanishing into thin air, he now realised – and skidded over the edge of the ravine. The world fell apart once more as the car pounded into its final destination.

“Where am I?” Killian repeated, in between taking large gulps of air.

The scaled man on the cliff watched the car, satisfied, before disappearing completely.

“It’s hard at first,” Emma sighed. “I watched my parents abandon me on the side of the freeway, like, a thousand times.” Her hand squeezed his own. “The car pulls over, my Mom gets out, she picks me up in my blanket and puts me down. Then she gets back in and it drives away. It was like picking at a scab I thought had already healed.”

It hadn’t, though. He could have told her that. Some scars were meant to stay with you forever.

We’ve all got ghosts here.

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. He began to feel the weak patter of rain against the back of his neck.

“I saw the kid who found me, too,” Emma added, bitterly, “his name’s August. Not that it matters now.”

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang screeched.

Killian was finding it difficult to process what he was seeing with what he was being told.

“They say that’s the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result? I waited for them to get back out, just once, to not just leave me there. But that’s what it feeds on. That hoping. The more you fight it, the more you want something else to happen when it never could, the stronger it gets.”

With a shudder, Liam’s Mustang broke the treeline again. It swerved, splattering mud across the clifftop. Liam wrestled for the wheel and the tail of the car swung out; hope shuddered to life within Killian, this time this time he would pull it back, he’d regain control, he’d turn before it –

The Mustang sped over the edge of the ravine.

“He wasn’t alone in the car,” Killian managed to get out, as his heart seized in his chest. “He didn’t – it wasn’t suicide.”

The scaled man on the cliff stared at the disappearing Mustang, and then vanished.

“That’s what the spirit of Brooke House looked like,” Emma said, nodding at where the scaled man had stood. “When it came to Liam.”

When it came to me, he wanted to cry, it looked like you.

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. He began to feel the weak patter of rain against the back of his neck.

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang screeched.

“It threatened you,” she continued softly. “It said it would kill you if he didn’t help the spirit escape the house.”

“But he didn’t,” Killian added, needlessly. Of course he didn’t.

He thought of the ritual, the one Liam had outlined to banish the demon, and he felt weak. Helpless to stop the chain reaction of Liam’s death – both in the weeks that had led up to it, and as witness to his final few moments as the car crashed into the ravine. He would have died on impact, the coroner had said. The body swept up by the rush of the water below, taken out to sea. Just like everyone had always said. That final, private wish that he had only whispered aloud once, that the lack of a body meant that maybe, maybe something else had happened, was finally snuffed out.

Liam had been in that car. It was small comfort to know he hadn’t done it to himself.

The Mustang thundered out of the undergrowth, swerved, screeched, and fell.

“He tried to banish it, but he was missing one key ingredient.”

Killian knew, with the certainty that you knew things in dreams, what that missing ingredient had been.

“The dagger.”

Emma nodded. “Right. After that didn’t work… he was always a dead man.”

But how had he known? How had he even thought to banish the demon? It seemed with every answer he got, a thousand more questions rose in its place.

“But the dagger… his name was on the dagger. Why didn’t he –?” Look like you?

If Liam had died in the ravine, just like they had always said he had, why was his name on the dagger?

Emma looked out across the ravine, darkly. “That’s just how it keeps score. Its victims. Liam isn’t trapped here, but I’d say he’s still a victim.”

Somewhere, a sparrow trilled. Killian began to feel the splatter of rain against his neck.

“Wouldn’t you?”

In just seconds, gone forever. Not trapped, but gone.

Trapped.

For the third time, he asked: “Where am I?”

Emma shook her head. That wasn’t the right question.

In the distance, the brakes of the Mustang squealed.

So instead, he asked: “How do we stop the demon?”

“I’ve already told you,” Emma sighed, airily enough that it felt as if he were just disturbing her at work in the library again. Her voice sounded faint. “God, don’t you ever listen?”

Listen.

With the suddenness of breathing, his hand closed on empty air where it had once been holding Emma’s. She had gone.

So had the clifftop.

It was like waking up, when you weren’t sure how long you had been asleep.

He was standing in the single room of the old apartment he shared with Liam, and he had always been standing there. It was smaller than he remembered; just the open plan kitchen-stroke-sitting room-stroke-Liam’s bedroom, attached to an even littler bedroom that had been Killian’s. The kitchenette was in the corner, dark and musty smelling, and Liam’s bed was propped against the opposite wall, impeccably made as always. There had only been room for the bare minimum of additional furniture – a chest of drawers for some of Liam’s clothes, the rest hung on a metal rack like the kind found in a shop, a moth-eaten sofa and a small, boxy handheld television plucked right from the jaws of 1994 perched atop an overturned wastepaper basket serving as a table. It was dark, lit miserably by a single window next to the sofa, and warm in the uncomfortable way that a gym was warm; lived in.

It looked so insignificant. Almost barren, certainly cheap. Nothing to be proud of.

Killian longed for it with something so profound that it was an almost physical ache. This was life before Liam had died.

A key clicked in the lock, and the front door to the flat was flung open with more force than necessary. Killian’s heart sank once he realised what he was looking at.

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

In tumbled Liam, exactly as he remembered him, and a younger Killian – twelve years old, freckled, dark hair askew, and furious.

“—So unfair!” The younger Killian was scowling. “I don’t want to move again! I just started making friends!”

Killian had forgotten what it was they had fought about – it had faded completely from his mind beyond the core sentiment, which had been bloody and foul, in the wake of everything else that had happened that day. Now it all came back to him with startling clarity.

This was the last time he had seen Liam alive.

“Well, tough,” Liam said wearily, setting a plastic bag on the counter next to the refrigerator. “We are.”

The younger Killian rounded on him angrily. “Why?”

“For work.”

“Has all the wood been chopped in Storybrooke, then?”

Liam fixed him with a withering look. “Don’t be facetious. It’s important, Killian. You just have to trust me on this.”

He had wanted them to leave town, he remembered now.

After that didn’t work… he was always a dead man.

He would have known, even then, that Brooke House was coming for them.

It struck the older Killian, then, just how tired Liam had looked – dark circles clung to the bottom of his eyes, and his skin looked stretched and pale. It also occurred to him how young he was. Liam had always been taller, older, wiser; even after he had died Killian had never thought of him any differently. Yet, here, Liam Jones was just nineteen years old – and he already been looking after the brothers Jones for years already. Killian had already outlived his brother’s unfairly short life by almost three years.

The younger Killian threw himself dramatically down onto the moth-eaten sofa. “I bet Dad wouldn’t make us move.”

Liam scowled, busying himself taking a few meagre groceries out of the bag and putting them away. “You don’t know what Dad is capable of.”

“I would if you just told me!” The younger Killian twisted on the sofa so he could look at his brother, bristling with indignation. “What is it that’s so bad? Why won’t you talk about him or Mum?” Liam kept his mouth set in a thin line. How that had infuriated him at the time. “How about you just tell me, and then I’ll go without a fuss. I’ll even pack tonight! How’s that?”

“I don’t like being held to ransom,” Liam replied tersely. The younger Killian let out a cry of frustration, delivering a swift kick to the sofa, then stormed over to his bedroom door. “And a tantrum won’t help. So long as you continue to behave like a child, I will continue to treat you like –”

The younger Killian whirled around, hand on the doorknob and eyes ablaze.

“I hate you!”

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

“I’m not finished,” Liam snapped, “don’t you walk away from me.”

The younger Killian did not listen. He stomped into his room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Don’t, Killian begged, come out. This is it. This is the last time.

Liam had followed him to the door, let his hand hover above the handle.

Open it, he longed, pleaded. Don’t leave it like this.

He watched Liam change his mind. He watched him pick up his car keys. He watched him curtly inform the younger Killian that he was going out for a little while, but he would be back soon. He watched him wait for the younger Killian to respond.

He did not.

Liam left the flat.

A key clicked in the lock and in again came Liam, with the younger Killian in tow.

“—So unfair!”

Like the clifftop, he was apparently doomed to watch the same moment over and over – but Killian refused. Seething, he tried to think himself into being somewhere else. He didn’t know the rules here, but somehow he had moved from the ravine to here, and if that was possible then he could move from here to somewhere that was not here.

Not this time, Killian thought furiously, no more than once.

In part instinct and in part miserable fury, Killian put his fist through the thin plaster wall.

Behind his eyes, pain exploded – but it was not from his fist. No, his wrists were smarting, burning with an agony he could not see, and someone was screaming and he thought it might be him, he was back in the sitting room at Brooke House, the storm raged, a tornado of wanting and longing and hoping and nothing ever changing, and he could feel his left hand clasped around the dagger but his right – his right –

Emma was there, and she was holding tightly onto his right hand.

She looked him squarely in the eyes. “Listen!”

He was in Granny’s Diner.

He knew this because he could hear the quiet lull of patrons around him, and the faint smell of melted cheese had begun to permeate. He could feel the hard, well-worn cushion from one of the booths beneath him, and he could still taste vanilla cake on the tip of his tongue. He knew because Emma’s arms were around his neck and she was holding him tightly, and he could feel her breath on his lips. He knew because he had lived in this moment so many times, and begged a thousand times to have ended it differently. He didn’t need a demon to do that for him

“Thank you,” Emma had said, her cheeks flushed with glorious delight (he had done that, he thought fiercely). “For always knowing exactly what I want before I do.”

“You’re…” he trailed off, because he had become distracted by the bright and welcome jade of her eyes. “You’re welcome.”

All it would take was moving himself closer just an inch. He was suddenly conscious of his hand on the side of her hip, of his desire to move it further around until it brushed her spine, to use it to tug her to him, bridging the final distance between them. Her lips looked soft and pliant, a rosy pink that had spent their lives shaping around his favourite words in the entire world, because everything she said was a gift, and he loved her, God, he loved her, he loved her so much.

The jagged beat of Only You was rattling from the jukebox in the corner, and Killian Jones wanted to kiss Emma Swan more than he had ever wanted anything.

He could feel her unsteady breathing, rising and falling against his chest, and he was sure her pulse would be racing to match his – but fear gripped him. What if she didn’t want this? What if it scared her as much as it bloody terrified him? If he leaned forward and she didn’t meet him halfway he didn’t think he could bear it. He hesitated

He hesitated –

He always hesitated when it was important –

It makes you relive all your worst moments.

Killian had sailed past this moment more times than he could count, he didn’t need a ghost to remind him of all the roads not taken. For the last five years, Only You had been the song he had almost kissed Emma Swan too, days before he had lost her forever. In that moment, he couldn’t think of anything worse than watching himself, feeling himself not doing it over and over for eternity when that had been his only chance.

That’s what it feeds on. That hoping. The more you fight it, the more you want something else to happen when it never could, the stronger it gets.

Is this what Emma had done, for five years? Replay over and over the worst possible pockets of time it could think to show her, wishing ardently for something to be different, praying desperately for some hope of rescue. He thought back to the tape recorder – she had sounded lost, confused. Defeated. Trapped in an unending limbo of nothing ever changing.

It had to stop today.

How do we stop the demon?

Listen.

Emma’s eyes flickered to his lips, he felt her swaying dangerously forward. The air smelt of burnt toast, vanilla sponge and anticipation, and Killian felt untouchable.

Only You trickled out from the jukebox in the corner.

“‘Looking from a window above, it’s like a story of love… Can you hear me?’”

Killian froze.

That song had been following him around for days.

Piss off, ghost.

A taunt, he had thought. A wretched reminder of everything he had almost had. But what if it wasn’t?

I’ve already told you. God, don’t you ever listen?

The tape recorder was proof, Emma had the ability to bleed through the machinations of the demon, to touch her surroundings cautiously, gently, from inside her void of almosts and never-have-beens, and she had been hurling this moment into his path ever since he returned to town.

Maybe something in it had to change.

But if you fight it, Killian thought furiously, that only makes the demon stronger. So what was he supposed to do?

Emma’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly around his neck.

In the space of a steadying breath, he allowed himself another long look at her. Pretty, dainty eyelashes, but fierce and warm eyes of jade, capable of spitting fire and turning his insides into something weak and wanting. Her lips were parted and daring him closer, and as he entertained the thought of leaning in his heart hammered against his ribcage. God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her more than anything.

The future was only sky. They had all the time in the world.

So maybe he didn’t fight it.

He didn’t want to, not anymore. He was so, so tired of fighting his way through life, Mary Margaret had lauded him over his stamina but that’s not what it was, not really, he just couldn’t remember what life had been like before he’d needed to throw up his fists. So he decided he was done with all that. If giving up meant he could live in the sensation of her breath on his lips, of their almost and their never-have-been, in that half a second before they decided no, then he would happily give up on life outside of this oblivion.

“‘All I needed was the love you gave…’”

Because almost kissing Emma, he decided, was so much better than living in a world where he hadn’t done it.

If you have to have someone, he thought, have me.

It was like waking up, when you didn’t know how long you had been asleep for. Suddenly mobility was possible, and he could feel his own chest rising and falling unevenly, aware of his own breath in a way that made it feel like he hadn’t been breathing before. Once he realised with awe that he could move it, he lifted a trembling hand up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, cupping her face with the other. As his pulse raced, he just wanted to be sure that she was real.

“Emma,” Killian said, and his voice sounded far away. His thumbs brushed across the shells of her cheeks. “I’d very much like to kiss you now.”

Emma grinned, and he realised she was crying.

“You fucking better.”

Instantly, Killian surged forward.

It was everything he had hoped it would be. Emma was warm, soft, eager, and mimicking the same little sighs he could hear escaping through his own lips – kissing Emma was like kissing air. It was tightness in the top of his stomach; it was saturated mornings under the oaks; it was winter at the door, brushing its feet on the mat; it was the final ten seconds before the whistle blew in a championship game when all that was left was that startling, adrenaline-pumping hope. Kissing Emma was a race that he had been training his entire life for.

Everything was noise.

Wind surged, static hummed, someone screamed but still Killian resisted; he was determined to inhabit this moment, this second, if this was the rest of his life then he didn’t intend to stray too far. If it was just the space of a single exhale then he would breathe out, and he would breathe out, and he would learn to go without oxygen because as far as he was concerned, there was no other possible choice he could make. He heard someone calling his name. A hand scrambled at the hem of his jacket. Something fizzled like a power line coming loose and he could hear the sound of glass shattering –

Emma pulled away.

He could still feel her hands in his hair, though. That had to be something. He kept his eyes tightly shut.

He was cold, and he could smell the forest. Dry leaves crunched underneath a boot. He tasted only velvet, mist, and Emma.

“Killian,” she said softly.

Killian shook his head. He didn’t want the dream to end.

“Killian, you can open your eyes.”

Reluctantly, he did as he was bid. He was standing in the middle of a familiar patch of forest, his hands tracing the edge of Emma’s face – because she was here, and she was solid, and there wasn’t a lot else he cared about other than that – it had to be the middle of the night, as the sky overhead was a black curtain pulled taut, specks of light barely visible scattered across it. The earth looked black beneath his boots but he knew from the crackle underfoot that in daylight it would be a watercolour pad of New England autumn, but that didn’t make his being there any less disorienting.

“Where did – how did we get out here?”

Was that – Regina?

“Oh, oh – Emma!”

Killian felt the wind knocked out of him as someone came crashing into the side of he and Emma, throwing their arms around them – David? – and again they swayed dangerously, but this time someone was crushing him from behind and someone was crying and eventually his knees buckled and they were all tumbling down onto the forest floor. It was haphazard and dizzying, but he recognised their hearts just as clearly as his own; all relief, all love, all fierce, fierce joy.

Emma was clinging to David while he sobbed into her shoulder, and Mary Margaret was holding on tightly from behind and speaking in such a floundering, nonsensical babble that nobody had any idea what she was saying. Killian was dazed, and more than a little confused, but blisteringly happy. He had no idea what had just happened, but since this was the outcome he had been praying for, he chose not to dwell on it.

Regina clapped a hand onto his shoulder, and he spotted her wiping something from the corner of her eye that looked suspiciously like emotion.

“It’s over.”

-/-

Brooke House was gone.

That was what they had managed to surmise after they had finally been able to disentangle from each other. It wasn’t that they had been transported to some other location, it was that the house itself had vanished around them, leaving them sprawled in the dirt feeling more than a little shaken and more than a little relieved. The ritual had worked, they had banished the demon, and the only evidence it had ever been there at all was in their story shared, their hard-won memories, and a curving, silver dagger stabbed blade first into the earth. A close inspection revealed its edge to be flat and smooth. No names. Just a dagger. They left it there, buried in the soil. They were finished with it now.

Killian had tried more than once to explain what had happened after he’d hurtled into the storm after Emma, not just to the others but to himself – but Emma had laced their fingers together and she looked so paralyzingly pained and sweet and sad that he had stopped trying. Some things were easier not to explain.

She hadn’t spoken much on the way back, just tucked herself tiredly into Killian’s side and dropped her head against his shoulder. She was wearing the same outfit she had disappeared in, which made her look oddly like something stitched together from different times – she was a woman now, wearing the old, worn, coat and boots of a girl. David had attached himself to her other side, putting a strong arm around her shoulders and occasionally patting her hair, murmuring tender reassurances and kissing her forehead.

Killian knew how he felt. He thought he might have a panic attack if he had to let go of her hand.

Somehow, they had done it. The demon was gone and so was Brooke House, and Emma had been given back to them.

She had been amazed to discover she had been gone for five years.

“I’ll go to the sheriff station first thing,” Emma said, nodding her head like it would settle everything. “Clear your names.”

Regina looked unconvinced. “I’m not sure that’ll do it.” The fact that David had punched Humbert in the jaw was just now coming back to them, and Killian couldn’t help but agree.

“Why not?” Emma argued hotly. Then she pointed at herself. “Missing girl. No longer missing. Case closed, right?”

Killian squeezed her hand. “We don’t have to settle anything now.”

For now she was here, and it was enough.

As they turned onto Main Street he felt Emma begin to tremble, her shoulders shaking underneath David’s arm. Whether it was fear or relief or anticipation or a combination of all three, Killian couldn’t tell, but after he had asked her she reluctantly revealed that where she really wanted to go was to the Nolan house; to Ruth.

David turned away to hide a fresh wave of overwhelmed, happy tears, but Emma’s attention was fixed on Killian.

She rounded so she was in front of him, her free hand fisted into the lapel of his jacket.

“I want to see Ruth,” she said, looking agitated, “but I –”

She cut herself off, stared fixedly into his eyes. Willed him to understand.

I don’t want to be away from you.

Something warm bloomed in his chest.

“I’m staying at Granny’s,” he offered with a smile. “You could – after. If you want.”

I love you I love you I love you I love

“No, he’s not,” Regina cut in. “He’s staying with me.” When they all turned to look at her she bristled, adding lamely: “I’ll… make lasagne.”

Emma laughed and it was such a beautiful sound. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I want.”

By the time dawn had kissed the sky with streaks of pink and orange, that offer had become too tempting for any of them to resist. Regina and Killian had immediately decided sleep was impossible and had started depleting her stores of homemade cider to try and relax their nerves and carry them until morning. They talked about nothing at all, and although Killian could tell Regina was desperate to ask about what they had done, what he might have seen, itching for a chance to make a comparison to her book of spells, Killian did not give her the opportunity to do so. There would be time for all of that.

An hour or so in, Mary Margaret had arrived at the door. Wordlessly, she had proffered a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and they had invited her inside.

The sky was just beginning to brighten when David and Emma returned, which was how they now found themselves laid out on the floor of Regina’s sitting room, gorged on the perfect lasagne and mellowed by fatigue and Jose, watching the sun come up through the tall, French windows.

Emma was curled in Killian’s lap, her legs slung across his and her head resting against his chest, listening to the steady gallop of his heart. He very much wanted to kiss her again – hell, he wasn’t even sure he had kissed her the first time. But there would be time for all of that, too.

Everything was bathed in golden light. Regina was dozing on a sofa, David and Mary Margaret were talking earnestly in hushed, gentle voices, their foreheads touching. Killian was struck by something so right, so definite, that he wasn’t sure anything he had experienced since Emma had disappeared had been real. This was so clearly how everything was supposed to be that it was inconceivable to imagine it had been any other way.

“Thank you,” Emma murmured against his chest. She lifted her head up so their eyes met. They were a soft storm of emerald, rimmed with a tired scarlet edge along her eyelashes. “For not giving up.”

I love you, her fingers curled into the worn leather of his jacket, danced a pattern across his chest. Tapped a beat to match his aching heart. He could hear her. I love you.  

“How could I?” he replied. “You know where Archie hides the good snacks.”

She kissed him in the dusty light of morning, and it chased the last of his ghosts away, out into the dawn.

-/-

A/N: if you made it this far - THANK YOU! I am honestly so grateful for all of the support I received for this fic, it was my first try at writing something kinda horror/spooky and I’m really proud of how it came out. I’ve honestly been blown away by some of the comments I’ve got, I am SO happy, you guys are so awesome and I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it so far - it’s been a pleasure to make your hearts race and keep you up at night! 

I’ll be posting a short epilogue on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that! for now, turrah, and thank you so much! <3

[dreaminpeaches]

Portal House (Paracosm aesthetic/moodboard/Intro/Masterlist)

"Young Brooke Mckinley always dreamed of leaving her old boring sleepy town to go off an travel the world, but after losing her plane ticket, she comes across a curious cat who leads her to a huge mansion filled with a bunch of strange looking doors, and a large set of keys. A note presumingly left by the house's previous owner gives Brooke new ownership of both the house and the cat, with keys in hand and a new furry friend, will Brooke finally be able to experience the adventurous life she always dreamed of all while staying under one roof?"

Storyline: Semi-linear

Characters:

Brooke

Nalani

Aesthetic//Playlist

[contemporaryartreflectionljmu]

Rachel MacLean: Modern Day Master

,‘Sickly sweet’ and ‘coloured with an absurdist comedy’ (Brown, 2018). ‘Tacky, kitsch and utterly repellent’ (Saunders, 2018). ‘A constant back and forth between the seductive and the unsettling’ (Couston, 2016). These are just a few ways the saccharine colour schemed work of artist Rachel MacLean has been described.

Rachel MacLean. Image: David Bebber, 2019

Possibly the most pertinent contemporary artist of our time, MacLean’s works are predominantly digital videos (Couston, 2016). Born in 1987, Maclean has gained attention in recent years, even going on to represent Scotland at the 2017 Venice Biennale (Saunders, 2018).

I first discovered the work of Rachel MacLean when she curated Too Cute (2019) at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition, alongside an explanation video by “Dr Cute”, played by MacLean, drew me in, in a way no exhibition had before.

For Too Cute, MacLean had juxtaposed ‘contemporary objects and art with those from the Nineteenth Century’ (King, 2019). The questions the exhibition aimed to raise were one factor that intrigued me. Have people always had a compulsion to all things cute and lovely? Has the idea of cuteness changed over the generations? At what point does cute cross the line into scary and repelling?

Still from Dr Cute video. Image: Art Fund, 2019 https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/exhibitions/2019/01/26/too-cute-exhibition

The other factor was the way these questions were presented to the viewer. While Dr Cute’s video touched on serious themes such as escapism from our daily lives and the excesses of consumerism, it was almost masked by the candy colours, exaggeration, reference to pop culture and satirical element. ‘Cuteness is a huge part of contemporary life: advertising, filters, emojis, memes, fashion’ and so on (King, 2019). Therefore, while MacLean’s art seemed absurd, it was, as with much of her work, ‘at once entrancingly strange and disturbingly familiar’ (Langley, 2016).

So, what exactly does Rachel MacLean do? Within her videos the artist uses green screen technology to display digitally created imagined backgrounds (Couston, 2016). Alongside digital editing, MacLean’s aesthetic is marked by a continuous reference to pop culture and mass media tropes. For example, Feed Me (2015) includes ‘X-factor style auditions, skin cream ads, Disney style sing-alongs and a soap opera’ (Couston, 2016). However, MacLean takes the merging of the real and the imagined one step further; her films are ‘collaged from found objects’ (Langley, 2016) and often contain found audio sources, ranging from Britain’s Got Talent to David Cameron’s speeches (Couston, 2016).

Still from Feed Me. Image: Frieze, 2016 https://www.frieze.com/article/focus-rachel-maclean

MacLean’s characters are distinct art works in their own right. Her characters, ‘taken from Disney animations and fairytales or inspired by commercial advertising,’ (Couston, 2016) are made up of found objects such as wigs, masks, and ‘elaborate candy-coloured costumes’ (Brooks, 2018). With MacLean a fan of caricature (Saunders, 2018), it is no surprise that her characters possess jarring features, whether accentuated teeth or melting skin. As MacLean explains in an interview, “there’s a strange power in the grotesque,” it can be easily and purposefully achieved, as opposed to today’s beauty standards that aim to keep you buying (Brooks, 2018).  

Still from Spite Your Face. Image: ArtRabbit, 2018 https://www.artrabbit.com/events/rachel-maclean-spite-your-face-chapter

Among her influences MacLean counts Cindy Sherman particularly her portraits; “it feels very relevant now to the age of social media… people representing themselves in photographs as their idealised self” (Brown, 2018). Additionally, she is inspired by video artists Shana Moulton and Ryan Trecartin (Langley, 2016). Comedy has impacted MacLean’s work, evident by the satirical nature of her films; “you can talk about serious ideas without it feeling too weighty… laughing at systems of power is quite a powerful thing” (Brown, 2018). However, perhaps somewhat unexpected at first glance, MacLean’s work is steeped in Art History.  A fan of Bosch’s Renaissance triptychs and Hogarth’s eighteenth-century cartoons (Saunders, 2018), the influence of the past on MacLean’s work can be seen in Spite Your Face (2017) with Piero della Francesca’s one point perspective, and the ‘crowded, flattened world of a Giotto fresco’ (Brown, 2018), and in Make Me Up (2018) in which MacLean challenges ‘the male oriented art canon’ (Brown, 2018).

Still from Make Me Up. Image: Rachel MacLean, 2018 http://www.rachelmaclean.com/make-me-up-film/

MacLean’s works encapsulate a range of themes and ideas paramount in today’s society. She ‘presents a critical and satirical view of the excesses of consumerism,’ even touching on the commercialisation of happiness and wellbeing (Couston, 2016). During filming for Channel 4’s Artist in Residence series, MacLean was able to delve deeper into this, after living inside Birmingham’s Bull Ring shopping centre. Of consumerism, she stated, “it’s an entire culture that necessitates dissatisfaction,” and thus was born a new character; the Satisfaction Bunny (Brooks, 2018). MacLean also discussed the hidden level of censorship in what are seemingly public spaces, after not being able to film in shops or interview staff; “the only way was to make art about the level of censorship around these brands” (Brooks, 2018).

MacLean outside the Bullring as the Satisfaction Bunny. Image: The Guardian, 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/05/rachel-maclean-artists-in-residence-channel-4-birmingham-bullring

MacLean has touched on various types of identity within her work; The Lion and The Unicorn (2012) and A Whole New World (2014) engages with Britain’s national identity and colonial past while Feed Me explores the class divide (Langley, 2016). Make Me Up, on the other hand, explores women’s suffrage and male fear at female empowerment (Saunders, 2018). The recurring presence of technology and reliance on smart phones is another identifier of MacLean’s work, with the ‘unnervingly cutesy aesthetic’ (Langley, 2016) being compared to that of social media filters (Brown, 2018). Throughout all of this, characters within the films speak directly to the camera; MacLean is confronting us, urging the audience to directly engage with issues presented to them (Langley, 2016).

Still from A Whole New World. Image: BBC, 2013 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052dh8s

Rachel MacLean isn’t the first or only artist to analyse these themes. However, the aesthetic she uses and the continuous references to the modern day make her works difficult to ignore, and her ideas more easily accessible and understood. This is furthered by the range of influences she draws on, ‘from Baroque architecture to Korean pop videos’ (Saunders, 2018). I am fascinated with how MacLean is able to reflect modern society in her works, using satire to get us to subconsciously question it ourselves. As Frieze sums it up, MacLean ‘exaggerates pop culture in order to reveal its underlying absurdities, heightening our awareness of reality rather than providing fanciful distraction from it’ (Langley, 2016).

Rachel MacLean. Image: The Herald Scotland, 2016 https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14481256.meet-rachel-maclean-candy-coloured-nightmare-world-artist-represent-scotland-venice-20

Sources:

Brooks, L. (2018) Rachel MacLean: My month in hell as the Bullring bunny [Online] Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/05/rachel-maclean-artists-in-residence-channel-4-birmingham-bullring (Accessed: 5th March 2021)

Brown, G. M. (2018) Rachel MacLean: Satire for the Age of Snapchat [Online] Financial Times. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/a6cb6d0a-bfee-11e8-95b1-d36dfef1b89a (Accessed: 7th March 2021)

Couston, E. (2016) Five Minutes on Rachel Maclean [Online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/rachel-maclean-art-now (Accessed: 7th March 2021)

King, J. (2019) Too Cute! What happens when sweet gets sinister? [Online] Art UK. Available at: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/too-cute-what-happens-when-sweet-gets-sinister (Accessed: 5th March 2021)

Langley, P. (2016) In Focus: Rachel MacLean [Online] Frieze. Available at: https://www.frieze.com/article/focus-rachel-maclean (Accessed: 5th March 2021)

Saunders, T. F. (2018) Rachel MacLean interview: ‘There’s a fear that if women makes jokes they’re going to start laughing at men’ [Online] The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/rachel-maclean-interview-fear-women-make-jokes-going-start-laughing/ (Accessed: 7th March 2021)

[jmsa1287]

The 10 Best Films of the 2010s

my 2019 pick has already changed since this published lol oh well! 

Compiling a list and picking just 10 films to represent the 2010s is extremely difficult if not nearly impossible — it's hard enough picking a handful of movies for lists that sum up a single year. Films change as the years pass; something you adored in 2011 may not hold up on a re-watch in 2019. Maybe that's because so much has changed in the world this decade, or you've experienced a personal philosophical shift, or a film is tied to a certain experience and emotion that has since soured. And, of course, the opposite can happen. A film you didn't respond to five years ago may have become a new favorite.

This list is a bit of a cheat — or a break — from the typical best films of the decade lists you may have seen online. It will have 10 films representing the best film from each year this decade (2010 through 2019). Though easier, making this list was still difficult mostly because there were so many brilliant and exciting films that were omitted (masterpieces like "Tree of Life" and "Gravity," for instance). Below, find the films that did make the cut and a brief blurb as to why they belong in the cinema hall of fame.

2010: "Black Swan," directed by Darren Aronofsky

Obsession and perfection are two ideas that were constantly explored this decade, thanks to the rise of social media. (There was even a horror movie released on Netflix this year called "The Perfection," starring Allison Williams.) In Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan," a young ballet dancer named Nina Sayers (played by an outstanding Natalie Portman, who won the Best Actress Oscar for the role), slowly detaches from reality as she prepares for the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake." The film's sound design is unlike any other film this decade. With each bone crack, nail clip, and flesh wound, Aronofsky makes "Black Swan" a social psycho drama melded with body horror, which also features a wild Winona Ryder performance.

2011: "Drive," directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Nicolas Winding Refn's movies aren't for everyone but his neo-noir hyper-violent "Drive" is an undeniable classic and game-changer. Starring Ryan Gosling as an unnamed stunt driver and for-hire getaway driver, "Drive" sparked a sea change in cinema, spawning an aesthetic that featured synth-pop bangers (glittery songs by Chromatics and a pulsating score from Cliff Martinez) and neon lighting. "Drive" tells an age-old story in a new and fresh way that audiences hadn't seen before, going beyond its ultra-cool style, to show a classic L.A. noir tale of betrayal and heartache. NWR also uses Gosling in the best way; boiled down to a few emotions, putting the handsome Hollywood hunk in a twisted role you'd never expect. Oh and Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks show up!

2012: "Spring Breakers," directed by Harmony Korine

"Spring Breakers" might be the best prank this decade. An arthouse film disguised as a sexy college romp, Harmony Korine's film features young college students — played here by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson — desperate to venture from their Christian college and indulge their wild side during spring break in St. Petersburg, Fla. There, they meet Alien (James Franco), a local rapper and drug dealer who Korine uses to show the dark side of unbridled partying, sex and excessive drinking. Intense dubstep, closeups of fleshy bodies doused in alcohol and an iconic rendition of Britney Spears' "Everytime," "Spring Breakers" has gone on to become a twisted cautionary tale and also put the indie distributor A24 on the map.

2013: "Her," directed by Spike Jonez

If "Black Mirror" shows us the evils of technology, Spike Jonez's melancholic love story "Her" is the other side of the coin. It's a warm and strange film where Joaquin Phoenix delivers a breathtaking performance. As does Scarlett Johansson, who voices Samantha, an A.I. a la Siri but begins to form a romantic relationship with Phoenix's sad-sack Theodore. "Her" is more than a movie about technology; it's an emotional film about change, loss and what it means to be alive that is tucked inside a fully realized not-too-distant future L.A. with a brilliant aesthetic.

2014: "The Wind Rises," directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has made some of the most successful and culturally significant films since the 80s, including "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro." But his so-called last film "The Wind Rises" is an impeccable emotional epic based in realism that is a gut punch to the soul. It's a devastatingly beautiful movie that is half dreamlike and half haunting. It is undoubtedly the most moving film on this list.

2015: "It Follows," directed by David Robert Mitchell

If Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive" started a new wave of cinema, David Robert Mitchell's retro throwback "It Follows" is the epitome of it. With a vibrating score from video game composer Disasterpeace, DRM's film winks at slasher films of the 80s, most notably "Nightmare on Elm Street," but dials the aesthetic up to an 11; it's got nothing on "Stranger Things." In this brooding film, a young woman named Jamie (a wonderful Maika Monroe) is cursed after she has sex with her boyfriend, who ties her to a chair and warns her he's passed "it" on to her. "It" is a sinister force that inches itself closer and closer to Jamie in an attempt to kill her. Many saw "It Follows" an allegory to HIV/AIDs or STIs and a commentary of female characters in 80s horror films. It's the film's open-endedness and reinvention of tropes embedded into American cinema that make "It Follows" one of the most thrilling and fascinating films of the decade.

2016: "La La Land," directed by Damien Chazelle

"La La Land" may forever be tied to one of the Academy Awards' biggest blunders in the institution's history, but Damien Chazelle's love letter to the Hollywood Musical is an impressive feat of filmmaking. A romantic saga with musical numbers that don't shy away from its influences (the MGM musical and the Technicolor delights of yesteryear), "La La Land" is an earnest if not corny film. But its Chazelle's impeccable craftsmanship that makes his movie soar while it tells a modern love story about when two figuring out if their passions are more important to them than a future together.

2017: "The Lost City of Z," directed by James Gray

James Gray's mind-blowing epic "The Lost City of Z" will go down as this decade's most under-appreciated film. Like many of the movies on this list, it is a film about obsession, perfection and family trauma. Based on a true story, "Lost City" follows British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) over several years on his plight to find an alleged hidden city deep in the Amazon jungles. There's a World War I sequence and Tom Holland shows up as Percy's son, who is eager to follow in his father's footsteps and head to South America with him. It's devastating and moving in that Gray way even though it is his first movie not set in New York. "Lost City" perfectly melds the personal with human history, resulting in a film that is technically impressive and emotionally shocking.

2018: "Hereditary," directed by Ari Aster

Somewhere in the late 2010s, the term "elevated horror" became part of Film Twitter's lexicon. It's used to described artful films that are grown from horror tropes, most notably "The Witch," "Get Out" and Ari Aster's masterpiece "Hereditary." And though it is definitely a scary movie, labeling it an "elevated horror" film or a horror film, in general, doesn't feel quite right. It's a family drama about trauma that is demented in the same kind of tone of an Edward Albee play. It's more visceral than the late playwright's work, to be sure, and at the center of "Hereditary" is a career-defining performance from Toni Collette. She plays Annie, a grieving mother who is haunted by deep loss and grapples with keeping her sanity and her family together. Aster's film explores family relations and how tragedy can infiltrate the cracks in relationships unlike any other movie this decade.

2019: "Parasite," directed by Bong Joon-ho

"Parasite" is the summation of Bong Joon-ho's work. The Korean filmmaker has long made movies about marginalized folks navigating their way through certain systems. Unlike some of his movies, "Parasite" is rooted in reality; there's no giant elephant-pig or mutated sea creature here. The evil lurking in "Parasite" is privilege and capitalism and if that's not the biggest theme of the late 2010s I'm not quite sure what is. The film is a genre-shifting story told by an expert, who has made a few near-perfect films ("Memories of Murder," "Mother"). When "Parasite" begins to unfold and show its cards, you know you're in the hands of a master and that it won't go off the rails. Here, Joon-ho successfully tells his story with effortless dynamic filmmaking and ease that is completely hypotonic and engaging while being unnervingly gripping and universal.

[hecohansen31]

To Kill A King (Playlist):

1) “To Kill a King” by Hungry Lucy.

“I always wanted to know How to kill a king”

2) “Strange Birds” by Birdy.

“But together we can make something beautiful”

3) “Fine China” by Lana Del Rey.

“Fine china and fresh linen All of my dresses with them tags still on them Fine china and dull silver My white horses and my ivory almonds”

(*) (This song alongside ‘Old Money’ is not properly chosen for its lyrics, but I just felt like the entire aesthetic of it completely matched the wedding scene and the preparation of it, and it is chosen more out of aesthetical purposes than because it mirrors the plot!).

4) “Gloria Regali” by Tommee Profitt (Feat Fleurie).

“Gloria regali Peace and understanding Forever may you reign Forever may you reign”

5) “Can’t help falling in love with you” by Tommee Profitt (Feat brooke).

“Take my hand, take my whole life too Oh, for I can't help falling in love with you”

6) Renaissance” by Skin/Paolo Buonvino.

“I can’t say that I can change the world But if you let me I can make another world for us”

(*) (Other than the original video to the song, I wanted to link you a fanvideo of Cosimo and The Contessina, I honestly think that Medici is a bit shit for the historical inaccuracy, but I do think that the way their relationship is portrayed mirrors a lot Ivar and Reader’s one in the chapters that are coming).

7) “Unchained Melody” (but you’re dancing with your crush in a dream).

“Oh, my love, my darling I've hungered, for your touch A long, lonely time Time goes by so slowly And time can do so much Are you still mine?”

8) “Lucky Ones” by Lana Del Rey.

“Every now and then the stars align Boy and girl meet by the great design Could it be that you and me are the lucky ones?”

9) “Starring Role” by Marina And The Diamonds.

“You're like my dad, you'd get on well I send my best, regards from hell”

(*) (I do think that this is one of the few songs that will be used later on, but it is one of my favorites when it comes to talk about Ivar...).

10) “Lost on You” by LP

“Let's raise a glass or two To all the things I've lost on you Oh oh Tell me are they lost on you? Oh oh”

(*) (Again another piece of period drama, because I low key love them and I fel again like Anna and Richard’s relationship mirrors Ivar and Reader’s, not to talk about the fact that Richard III was considered a deformed monster so...).

11) “Old Money” by Lana Del Rey.

“But if you send for me, you know I'll come And if you call for me, you know I'll run”

[afoolandathief]

“So, I’ll ask you again, Seer. Could this poor bastard ever be redeemed?”

WIP Intro: Something Wicked

Jade Shaw, a witch and one of the few Seers left in the world, has been using her ability to see the future at Las Vegas’s casinos for years, but lately even that hasn’t been enough to pay the bills.

So she doesn't object when Casimir Mraz, vampire and former hit-man, with a reputation stretching back to Vegas's organized-crime days, offers her a deal.

Caz says he only wants to kill and drain the blood of people with no chance for redemption, and asks Jade to determine for him whether the city's worst of the worst will re-offend.

But things go sideways when a cop catches Jade and Caz disposing of a body, and blackmails them into helping him solve some unsolvable cases.

Soon, the two are facing off against giants, Fae and several of Caz’s exes.

Status: Second draft (including reworking several plot elements); considering this the first of a series (my brain won't let me call this a book out loud without thinking I'm jinxing myself, so)

Genre: fantasy, urban fantasy, with some elements of crime and mystery

POV: Third-person limited of multiple characters, mainly the two MCs

Setting: Modern day (pre-pandemic), in and around Las Vegas, NV

Themes/tags: Redemption, justice, some gore, murder on a bi-weekly basis, dark humor, neurodiversity, queer characters (including two disaster bi leads)

What can you expect here?

Currently I've been posting a lot of dialogue and jokes about my characters, as well as some aesthetic posts. Snippets of my writing can be found here. I'd like to try sharing some longer excerpts, such as my first chapter when I'm done editing it.

Characters

Jade Shaw: A witch with the ability to calculate your life's outcome down to the exact percent chance. A mathematics PhD student juggling her work-study job, her meetings with Caz, and work as an odds-maker and poker player. Wishes these visions of the end of the world would lay off a bit. Caz Mraz: Vampire, ex-hitman, polyglot, excellent dancer and an absolute train wreck of a man. Caz says Jade is helping ease his consciousness about his need to occasionally to kill and feed off someone's life force, but Jade is still doubtful about his supposed "change of heart."

Violet Anouilh: A hedgewitch with an expertise on plants and potions, living with her mother Marie Anouilh on a farm outside of the city that is welcoming to vampires and werewolves. Trying get Jade to notice she's been flirting with her at her family's fruit stand for days now.

Ruby Hall: Jade's best friend and a witch specializing in illusions. She performs at the casino as the assistant to magician Dominic the Great — who is actually her pet rabbit Domino under a powerful glamour.

Lila Brown: A werewolf currently living in and around the tunnels of Las Vegas. Used as Caz's eyes and ears in the city on occasion. A Gen-Xer who knows a bit about Caz's past.

Theoris Myrina: The head of the Southwest Coven of witches. Jade's former mentor who barred her from the coven after learning she made a deal with a vampire. Kenny Brooks: A detective who is on the verge of retirement — mainly because he keeps spouting theories about two suspects seen around seemingly unconnected homicides and disappearances, and his coworkers are getting sick of it. Spoilers.

Amelia: Caz's former girlfriend, who left him after interpreting his secretiveness and strange habits as signs of a drug addiction. Caz is determined to win her back (but if he happens to date some others along the way, including a rich Fae prince, what's the harm?). Spoilers about Amelia can be found here.

[pens-swords-stuff]

Hey Undine 💜 happy STS! I miss hearing about Project Vestige, so I thought I'd drop an ask about it - are there any specific places/settings IRL that inspired some of the places (or the general aesthetic) in the WIP?

Antium and the aesthetic of Project Vestige is largely inspired by Arcadia Bay, another fictional town in Life is Strange. Arcadia Bay was based off of Garibaldi, OR, so Antium was inspired by it as well — albeit indirectly.

I got the name Antium after looking through Shakespearean settings for inspiration. I thought it sounded pretty cool, and as far as I’m aware, there’s no other modern towns named after it which was really great. The deciding factor was the history of Antium. It was a wealthy coastal resort town in the Roman Empire, that eventually was abandoned, which I felt really lined up with what I intended my Antium, OR to be. (It was also part of several conflicts against the Romans which is interesting, but unfortunately not as relevant).

When it came to researching towns in Oregon so I could worldbuild for Antium, I looked into Seaside OR, Bandon OR, and Brookings OR specifically so they inspired Antium as well!

Out of the existing towns though, the biggest inspiration was Bayocean, OR. Bayocean was a community in Oregon that was a planned resort community in the early 1900s. However, it eventually became a ghost town after coastal erosion caused by its residents, and is said to have ‘fell into the sea’. I thought this all felt thematically appropriate!

Storyteller Saturday: Come ask me questions about my writing!