#like i enjoy the city but it's fundamentally not going to last

[brw]

Every once in a while they try to reinvent Avengers Mansion for the Avengers and it never works. That fucking island is not Avengers Mansion. Tony's goddamn tower is not Avengers Mansion. The mountain with the fuckass Celestial in it is not Avengers Mansion and the floating city in the sky is also not Avengers Mansion. Where are my soap opera hijinks happening in that Manhatten mansion??? Where's Jarvis stocking up everyone's favourite tea?????? I'm not resistant to change, but that mansion allowed for a much more intimate feel and made them feel like a group of friends with complex working relationships and not the United States Military in brighter colours.

[astraystayyh]

Bittersweet

Pairing : Bang Chan x reader, exes to lovers.

Summary : You broke up with Chan because of an once in a lifetime work opportunity. Four years later, you are back home and everything has changed.

Warnings : Some cursing, reader has a big fear of thunder, allusion to sex in the end but no smut.

A.N: I wrote this as part two of Beginning of the End, but it can be read as a stand-alone. Still, i HIGHLY recommend reading part 1 first, it will just be more impactful!! Please let me know if you enjoyed reading, it means a lot to me <333

(Part 1)

-------------

Four years later, you were back to where it all started.

It felt weird to return home after all this time; to stroll down the alleys you once memorized, to meet up with the friends you once couldn’t live without. To witness firsthand how small your existence is, in the sense that you were so attached to your city, yet it had moved on perfectly despite your absence.

Still, you couldn’t really blame the world for moving on because you changed a lot too.

You had grown happier and more secure in yourself. Your work was recognized and praised, and you made some unforgettable memories that wouldn't have been possible had you not left. You felt as if everything you fought hard for finally paid off.

But throughout the years, one thing did remain the same; your love for Chan. You never tried to forget him or make your feelings go away. You figured that loving him was like the skin that clung to your bones, an inseparable part of your being.

Still, you were human after all, and as the months passed, you began to forget the sound of his voice and the warmth of his body against yours. His giggles became a distant memory in your mind, and so did the feel of his hands on your skin. Loving Chan became like a photograph that you safely tucked away; it chipped at the edges and its colors faded, but it still lived on, just like your love for him did.

And now that you were finally back with a bigger promotion, you couldn’t help but think about Chan even more. Everywhere you went, you saw snippets of your past with him.

You were so young, so foolish, you realized.

But so utterly in love.

----------------

It was 11 pm, and you were suddenly craving ice cream. You knew it was a bit ridiculous because it was -3 degrees, and you were already freezing, but you had one fundamental rule in life: never say no to your heart's desires.

This is why, despite the cold, you quickly leave your new apartment and skip toward the convenience store near you.

You head inside and grab your favorite ice cream before strolling around in case something else caught your attention. You just loved the calm inside and wanted to bask in it a bit more.

You round the milk aisle and suddenly bumped into someone’s chest. You were about to apologize when the words got stuck in your throat.

Chan.

"Yn��?" he calls out, and you feel yourself grow weak in the knees.

There was something about the way your name rolled off the tip of his tongue that made you feel as if no one, besides him, had ever done it justice.

He was even more beautiful than when you last saw him four years ago. His brown curly hair was tousled and his warm eyes reminded you of galaxies. Your heart was beating wildly in your chest because you couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t believe it was him.

Memories of your last time together came crashing down on you like a wave; how he hugged you and told you to pretend as if nothing was happening, how he wrote you the most heart-wrenching letter that you’ve since memorized by heart.

"How are you?" you ask, clearing your throat. It felt silly to ask such mundane questions. This wasn't what you wanted to know. You wanted to ask if he still hated the taste of alcohol, if he still cried during sad movies, if he still squealed when he laughed, if he still loved you as you loved him.

But you couldn't voice those thoughts, so you willed yourself to drown them in the storm that is your mind.

"I'm good, and you?" he replies, smiling a little. It doesn't reach his eyes.

"I'm great."

"You look like it," he says, and you meekly nod, "So do you."

"Are you... visiting?" he asks after a few silent beats, and you shake your head, "I'm back for good."

"That's great. It's nice seeing you again," he gives you a genuine smile this time, and you can't help but grin back. You missed him.

You both stare at each other for a while after that, taking each other in. Looking at him felt like looking at a mirror of your past self -you could clearly see yourself in him because he once was a part of you, just like you were a part of him.

"I'll... I'll get going," he points behind him, retracting back, and before you could think it through, you grab his wrist to stop him.

It wasn't butterflies you felt when you touched him, that would be an understatement, it was pure electricity shooting through you.

People had touched you while you were away - hugs, kisses, and intimate caresses - but none of them made you feel this way. You were like a prisoner who had just felt the sun's rays against their skin for the first time in years. And you were starving for that sunlight.

"Can we meet up? Catch up? If you want to, of course," you whisper. Your voice is quiet- a stark contrast to the chaos going on in your mind.

"Yeah... Yeah, I'd like that," he agrees, rubbing the spot where you had grabbed him. Did he feel the sparks too?

"Tomorrow, this time, in the park near our old apartment?" you suggest, and he nods, "Sure. I'll be there."

"Great. I'll wait for you."

----------

You are sitting on a swing, swaying back and forth gently. Your heart is beating erratically in your chest, and you bite your nails from how stressed you are. In the four years you were away, you had to give conferences in front of thousands and thousands of people, yet you weren't as nervous as you are now.

"You still do that?" a voice next to you reprimands and you turn around to find Chan.

"Old habits never die, I guess," you smile sheepishly, dropping your hand down, and he chuckles.

"How are you?" you ask again, and he shrugs, "I'm good."

"How are you, really?"

"I don't think you have the right to ask me that anymore." His words cut you deep, and you swallow forcefully. "I'm sorry, I didn't... I didn't mean to pry."

"I know, fuck, I didn't mean to snap at you."

"It's okay," you reassure, looking up at the starry sky. He was right after all.

"Haven't been stargazing for a while," he whispers, and you smile sadly. That was one of your favorite activities together.

"Me too. But I love looking at the stars," you reply.

"I know. They remind you of how small you are in the grand scheme of things," he says nonchalantly as if he didn’t just knock the breath out of you. He remembered.

"Yeah, like how I've been away for four years, and everything moved on as if I've never been here."

"Your absence was felt, yn”, he pauses, “I used to miss you." Used to. Past tense.

"I still miss you." Your reply is instant; you don't feel the need to hide from him. You never did.

Chan holds your gaze for a while, and you wonder what he was thinking at that moment. You wanted to shout at him to tell you what was on his mind. To just say it. But you couldn't. You can no longer ask things from him; you knew that.

"I saw your name in news articles and TV shows. You had your big breakthrough," he suddenly smiles at you, changing the subject. You feel a blush creep up your neck; the fact that he kept up with you made you feel shy all of a sudden.

"I guess I did, I grew a lot. I... I think that I needed to get away and experience new things. It would have haunted me had I not," you smile, and he nods attentively. He still listened to you intently, as always.

"You were always destined for great things," he says seriously, and you feel your eyes well up with tears.

He spoke those words as if he wholeheartedly believed them, and nothing in the world could ever sway his mind.

"So are you. You've been doing amazing these past few years, getting all these awards and deals. I love your music," you gush, and he waves a hand in the air as if to dismiss your words.

"Don't do that," you chastise, "you should be proud of yourself. I know I am very proud of you."

"I suppose the years did us good," he sighs wistfully, and you hum in agreement. You are both quiet after that. You don’t dare to speak, afraid that your next words would break the bubble you are in. As selfish as it was, you didn’t want to face reality yet.

"Just say what’s on your mind," he suddenly speaks up, and you raise a brow at him inquisitively.

“You are scratching your throat as if to stop the words from coming out. Just tell me.” Chan, ever the perceptive.

You take in a deep breath, willing your voice to sound strong, "The only thing I regret is that... I had to lose you in the process. I know I'll never find someone as amazing as you."

Chan doesn’t reply and your words linger in the air, suffocating you. You hoped that a strong wind will come by and carry them away, somewhere they wouldn't hurt anymore.

"I did love you, yn." A pause, and you can feel a heartbreaking ‘but�� coming. "But I don't anymore. I found... I found someone else. They are good to me and I love them."

"Oh". You dreaded it, expected it even, you never wanted him to wait for you. Because you left, so he had every right to move on. Still, you were only human, an enamored human whose heart now broke in two.

You feel the bile rise in your throat and you shake your head as if to clear those stupid thoughts away. You left, for god’s sake, you weren’t allowed to feel this way. But still, it hurt, it hurt so bad all you wanted to do was to curl in a ball and weep.

"I hope that you are happy with them. That's all I ever wanted for you, happiness." Your voice wavers and he knows, Chan must know you are trying so hard not to break down. So he doesn’t comment, he only smiles at you, which makes your heart break even more, because he must smile at them like this all the time now.

"I will get going," you abruptly stand up, dusting your pants. "Let me walk you home," he offers and you shake your head no.

"It's nearly midnight, you are out of your mind if you think I'll let you walk alone."

"Okay," you simply reply. Truth is, you weren’t processing what he was saying anymore. 'I love them' kept repeating itself in your head like a broken mantra. He found someone else. He found someone else. He found someone else, and it isn’t you. 

"This is me", you clear your throat when you arrive in front of your apartment, and Chan stops in his tracks.

“Come here”, he says and it’s all it takes for you to bury yourself in him. Just like four years ago, he was leaving you with a goodbye hug. Only this time, there was no hope left. Only a sense of finality. He knows that you still love him, you couldn't hide that from him. But he doesn't love you anymore and he can't hide that from you.

The hug only lasted a mere ten seconds, but you tried your best to take it all in, to memorize how it felt for Chan to hug you again. You desperately needed to patch up the broken memories you had left of him.

You finally lean away, wiping your tears with the sleeve of your shirt. Chan’s brows furrow looking at you, and you smile reassuringly. "I'm okay really. This is just bittersweet to me."

"It is to me too," he whispers and you nod, biting the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from breaking down.

"You stay safe for me, yeah?" he tells you softly and you nod again, "you too."

"Goodbye, yn."

"Goodbye, Chan," and with that you turn around, entering your apartment block.

You've never hated goodbyes more than in that instant.

------------

it's been 3 months since your talk with Chan. Admittedly, you've gone back to that convenience store where you've met him, for a month straight, just in case he went back there. He didn't. And now you had a large stock of snacks you didn't know what to do with.

After that, you went to all the places where you've gone to on your dates. You don't know what you were expecting. You've lost Chan, but still, you always found yourself back to where you shared memories with him. But he wasn't there.

In the third month, you've started accepting that you lost him for good. The love mingled with the ache and you found comfort in its everlasting presence. It served as a reminder that you did love him, and he did love you back at some point.

Thankfully, your work was going really well, and tonight, you were out with your superior to celebrate a successful deal you chaperoned and discuss some upcoming projects.

You enter the restaurant, your boss hot on your tracks, when you abruptly stop. Sat on a table right across from you is Chan with a girl you did not recognize. You would have bolted out had it not been for your boss who looked at you with worried eyes. You shake your head mouthing an "I'm fine" to him.

While your boss placed your order, you couldn’t help but stare at Chan. He looked so... happy with her. She said something and he laughed, tipping his head back. You felt jealousy gnaw at your heart because you were the one who used to make him laugh like that.

You left, you remind yourself, you are the one who left.

Against your own will, you look up at Chan once again, only this time he was looking at you too. You hold his gaze as if under a spell, and when the girl next to him touches his hand softly to bring him to her, you almost sob right there and then.

"... our partners will come from France and you will have to hold a meeting with them tomorrow."

"Sure. I already prepared the slides and sent them over to your mail," you nod. Work, forget about Chan, work.

"I will check them out. You'll have Clara with you?"

"Yes, she's the only one who can speak French besides me. I have been overlooking her for this past month and she's really competent."

"Should I challenge her?"

"Yeah, I think she's up to the task", you smile and he nods, satisfied.

You try to eat your dinner after that, keeping up with your boss’s chatter. But it felt like a punishment- sitting there when the man you still loved was on a date right across from you.

And as if your night couldn’t get any worse, you hear thunder rumble loudly. You clench your glass so tightly in your hand- you are surprised it didn’t break.

You had a really really big fear of thunder. It stemmed from when you were a child, playing hide and seek when a thunderstorm happened. You ended up being stuck in the closet for an hour because your cousins forgot about you, and you fainted from how afraid you were.

You look up at your boss apologetically, you couldn't tell him you had to leave because of a childhood phobia, so you quickly try to muster up an excuse. "I'm sorry to cut it short but can I go? I have a- a dentist appointment and I need to wake up very early tomorrow."

"Sure. I'll see you at work?". You have never been more grateful for his understanding.

"Yeah, thank you for dinner".

You quickly grab your things, leaving the restaurant. You hop in your car but you are shaking so badly, you can't even start the engine. Another thunder resounds and you drop your keys, forcefully shutting your eyes. You try to drown out the sound with your hands clasped on your ears but it didn’t help. It was too much- the pain, the fear, the ache. You needed everything around you to stop.

You hear the door next to you suddenly open and you snap your eyes toward it, to find a disheveled Chan standing there. He pulls you out of your seat, instantly bringing you to his body.

He knows how scared you are of thunder.

"Shhh, it's okay, I'm here. You're safe," he pats your head gently and you hug him tighter to you; as if he was your only mean of survival.

He tries to peel away but you only hold him closer, to which he rubs soothing circles on your back, “I’m not going anywhere, let me drive you home, okay?”

You nod against his chest and he lets go of you, holding your hand instead. He opens the passenger door for you then he quickly hops into the driver’s seat. He starts off your car, blasting the music so loud you no longer hear the thunder booming.  

Your hand is still tightly clasped in his when you arrive home.

He silently opens the door for you once more, and you lead him to your apartment. You were mortified he had to leave the restaurant for you, but you were so grateful for him, because at the end of the day, he came to you.

Chan awkwardly stands in your living room and you figure the least you could do is apologize. "I’m sorry I cut your date short."

"You sound jealous", he points out.

"I am jealous, but mostly sorry."

"You shouldn't date someone who won't be with you in times like these," he dismisses your words, and you frown. Why did he sound angry all of the sudden?

"He didn't know."

"Still, he should have seen the signs. I was across the room but I saw you shaking for god's sake!” he almost shouts and you take a step toward him.

"Why do you care?"

"I don't," he is lying.

"Why does it bother you?” you insist. You needed to know.

"I said it doesn’t yn," he enunciates but you don’t back off.

“He’s my boss that’s why I was alone, but why? Why does it matter to you?"

"Because I fucking lied", he shouts, inching closer to you. "Because I lied yn, I never found someone else, it was you, it was always you."

"What... but the girl?".

"She's my coworker yn. I tried to forget you. I tried but you were always there. You were everywhere. And I had to carry on with the love I had for you but I didn't know where to put it anymore. Because you didn't tell me, you didn't tell me where the love was supposed to go now that you left!"

You stare at him unblinking, afraid that this was all just a figment of your imagination.

"And then... and then you came back and it was as if no time has gone by. It was as if you'd never left and I wanted to kiss you and hug you and I wanted you back. I needed you back", his hands are on your shoulders now, grasping you tightly as if to convince himself that you were here.

"But I couldn't, I couldn't allow you in because what if you left again? I wouldn't survive that, yn," his voice cracks at your name and it’s all it takes for you to bring his lips crashing down on yours.

You stagger back, your fingers grazing your lips in shock, "I'm so sorry, I didn't-", your words are cut off by his mouth on yours once again, "don't stop", he whispers and you kiss him, again and again. Your mouths moving in sync to the symphony that is your love.

When you finally pull away, he places his forehead on yours and you close your eyes. "Tell me this is real, that you're back to me."

"I'm here."

"You still feel like a dream."

"I'm here, I'm here", you reassure, your hand gently cradling his cheek, "I never stopped loving you Chan. I knew I was destined to love you, whether you loved me back or not."

"You are my soulmate", he leans back, kissing your forehead softly, "you and I are one."

"I've got a tattoo of your handwriting", you confess softly and his eyes snap open.

"What?"

"I tattooed a sentence from the letter you left me, with your handwriting, 'Our love will remain'."

"Where?"

"Here", you trace the outline of your breast and he chokes, "somewhere only I can see it."

"You are crazy", he chuckles, a bewildered smile on his face.

"In love, yes," you giggle and he blushes, hiding his head in your neck.

“Can I see you tomorrow? We have a lot to talk about," he asks, peppering the curve of your neck with kisses.

"Sure, I'm all yours after 5 pm."

"Works for me. I’ll see you tomorrow?", he smiles, and you beam at him, "I’ll see you."

Chan doesn't let you go and you laugh, kissing his cheek, "you are not leaving?"

"I'm not", he smiles cheekily.

"And why is that?"

"Because....", he drawls out, his lips brushing against your collarbone, "I need to see that tattoo."

----------

A lover’s body is like a land you discover over and over again. And tonight, as Chan made love to you, you drank it all in- the flexing of his muscles and the new sounds he made. But despite those changes, you found out that you never forgot the secret passages to his body, and the ways only you can make him unfold.

Still, it wasn’t when his naked body hovered over yours that you felt bare in front of him. It was when you both laid next to each other, talking in bed until the sun rose, that he undressed your mind.

It is there, behind those walls that you both built, that Chan and yn from four years ago lived on.

And you were still as in love.

[atlasofthestaars]

[MK X READER] New Era - Chapter .015

first part | previous part | next part

NOTE:

Yet again we’re hoping for less than three weeks update time. We’ll see how it goes now haha ^^

edit: I lost track of time. I keep on forgetting when I last updated.

Rain got in as a love interest, which does alter the story a bit! 

Reminder that I like to do canon divergence <3 

Would you guys like a collection of headcanons I’ve done for requests on AO3?? I usually don’t post them there because they’re pretty short but I can put them all into one book that I’ll update.

Also happy 100k+ words! I'm. I'm not ready to figure out how many words this will all be by the end.

FROM THE EYES OF SOMEONE WHO ENJOYS A MOMENT OF PEACE

“Things are getting rough.”

You stood upon the roof of a building, staring down at the destruction of the city around you. Outworlders mobbed the streets, terrorizing the innocent Earthrealmers. To describe it as “rough” was an understatement. It’s been two long years ever since the first invasions on Earthrealm started. It’s been nearly a year since you’ve moved out to the city along with the others to fend off where it was the worst.

Most of Earthrealm’s forces were sent here, along with Raiden, to defend the city. But there were a few that were scattered around the world to help other regions. Fujin and your father, for example, stayed behind to help the monks defend the Wu Shi along with others of the White Lotus. You missed both of them dearly, only being able to communicate with them occasionally.

You haven’t been able to visit Kung Lao’s grave in over a year. You only hoped that he understood why.

“Are you planning on going out again?” Liu Kang’s voice spoke. His voice dripped with concern. You turned your gaze away from the apocalyptic sight to your dear friend. It was a much better view than the one below. His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at you. You sighed and nodded before turning your gaze down to the view below. As disturbing as it was, you felt guiltier turning a blind eye.

“I have to, I don’t think Raiden and Johnny Cage are enough to take down that extermination squad they’ve sent out.” You said, crossing your arms. A light breeze passed by, sending the smell of smoke your way. You grimaced at the acrid scent. No matter how long you’ve been here, you’re not sure if you’ll ever get used to it. Especially with how you’ve become so accustomed to the much cleaner air at the temple. “That, and Nightwolf said he would enjoy my help to help recruit the two Raiden has been getting information on.”

“New recruits?” Liu Kang inquired. You nodded gravely in response. A hint of distaste seemed to linger with his words along with some confusion. You didn’t blame him, ever since you’ve been out here, you’ve never really gone and sought out other help. Well, you’ve wanted to, but Raiden had been hesitant in dragging others into this whole affair.

As if they weren’t already. Still, you saw the logic within Raiden’s decision, even though it was flawed. 

“Yes. Raiden says they have potential.” Out of the corner of your eye, you see your friend move. Was that a flinch? Or did he simply shift his weight? When you turned your gaze to check, you couldn’t tell. “I think it would be good to get more help. Our efforts are stretched out thin as it is.” You elaborate. Your hands go out to grasp at the concrete railing, gripping it tightly. You were certain by the time you let go of it, your hands would have the texture imprinted upon them.

“I still cannot believe that even after winning two tournaments and even I had nearly killed Shao Khan, it was not enough.” Liu Kang said, moving to stand closer to you. Bitterness coated his words. The distaste within his words felt strange, no matter how much more common it was becoming. You recalled back to the moment you had confronted him at Kung Lao’s grave. He was doing much better now, but you had felt like something had fundamentally changed within Liu Kang.

You could never truly pinpoint when that change happened. Was it when the invasions had started? Or maybe, was it when Kung Lao died? Part of you doubted it was either one of those, even if it sounded like it made sense. It was probably much earlier, maybe after Raiden had said Liu Kang was not the chosen one. Either way, he had changed. There was resentment that lingered in his soul, directed at Raiden. You could feel it with every interaction.

It worried you. Team morale was low enough as it were without the subtle drama between Liu Kang and Raiden. It was taxing enough to keep on a brave face in front of everyone, to pretend like everything would be alright. You didn’t know if you had enough spirit left in you to mend things together. With every day that you had to hide your dwindling confidence, you broke a little inside.

You should really talk to him, but you feared that it would lead to more issues. Maybe you were being irrational and over thinking things. You were all tired, maybe he was just irritated at how the world has essentially fallen apart.

Surely that must be it. Liu Kang was not one to dislike Raiden. If anything, he had been the one out of all three of you who had regarded him the highest. So it was illogical to think that he would suddenly dislike or even hate the god.

You were just being too worried. Maybe your logic has become weaker after pretending everything was alright for so long. That, and Liu Kang and Raiden were adults, or in Raiden’s case, more than an adult. They can figure out whatever dispute they had, if they even had one. They didn’t need you to coddle them. You had enough on your plate already, you could trust them.

Still, even with that conclusion, a pit of guilt formed in your stomach. 

Warmth radiated from Liu Kang, a detail that you noted as you were drawn from your thoughts. It enveloped you in a sense of security. You closed your eyes, and for a moment you had nearly forgotten how terrible everything was. You felt safe. You only indulged yourself in the sensation for a moment before you opened your eyes and forced yourself to look at the destruction below. You didn’t deserve to feel safe and comforted in a world that needed your help.

“I can’t believe it either.” You replied after a long, long moment. You didn’t know what else to say, because what else could you say? It was unbelievable to you as much as it was to him how awful things were, even after all your efforts. It felt like a perpetual punishment for something you’ve never deserved. None of you deserved this, and yet you were all saddled with the heavy responsibility of it.

The two of you stood on the rooftop, looking out at the horrors of the world for a long while. It wasn’t as if you enjoyed seeing it. Not at all, but you couldn’t bear holding a smile for the others right now. Being alone with Liu Kang was better for your soul at the moment. None of you spoke, either not knowing how to or unwilling to break the fragile silence that settled over the two of you. It wasn’t until you realized how much time had passed that the silence had been broken.

“I need to get going now.” You informed Liu Kang. “Nightwolf will be waiting for me.” You turned away, moving to walk away from the man. Then, you felt him grasp your hand. His grip was firm, but not harsh. Just enough to keep you there, but you could still shake his grip off if you needed. But you didn’t. Your gaze trailed up from the grip to his arm then settled on his face. “Liu Kang?”

“I-” He began. His hand trembled. For what reason you had no idea why. Worried, you turned to face him fully. You placed a hand upon his, trying to quell whatever had caused him to shake. His hand settled between yours. His gaze lifted, and for a moment that stretched into eternity, he stared into your eyes. There was a fire that seemed to burn in his eyes, then it slowly burned away into embers. A soft flush appeared on his cheeks, and it seemed he even stopped breathing. You rubbed the back of his hand with your thumb, trying to coax the words out of him. His hand twitched before squeezing yours. “I just want you to stay safe.”

You could tell immediately that isn’t what he wanted to say.

“I will.” You said, reassuring him. You didn’t know what he wanted to say, you just knew those weren’t the words he wanted you to hear. But you held no judgement for the man. He could tell you what he wanted to say in due time. There was no need to rush him. You simply smiled at him. You lifted his hand and pressed it to your chest so he could hear your heart’s beat. “This heart of mine won’t stop beating anytime soon, okay?”

A shy smile spread across his lips as he nodded. His gaze fixated on where his hand was spread upon your chest, feeling the steady heart beat.You could feel how his hand grew a bit warmer, a side effect you knew from him getting a little emotional, whether it be from sadness, joy, anything really. You stood there, letting him feel the reminder that you were alive for a few moments more.

“Alright.” You said, gently removing his hand. Though the man was tough as nails, you delicately removed his hand. You moved it down to his side before sending him a smile. “I’ll be back soon, hopefully with new recruits.” You assured him, giving him a nod. “You better stay safe too, okay?” You watched as the monk nodded slowly.

You left him on that rooftop, feeling the warm gaze of your friend follow your form as you descended down back into the base.

Waking up today was the first time in a few days where you did not feel mired in heavy emotion. That was not to say you didn’t feel at least a little somber, but you at least did not feel desolate. You didn’t think your bed could handle another frenzied episode. Your fingertips traced the sewn up areas a little guiltily. You were still hoping that it was enough to not make others not mad at you.

The last thing you’d want is to ruin the apparent fragile relationship between Outworld and Earthrealm over something silly like this.

You felt a little better at the idea that perhaps not all of your memories would be so heavy and dark. You swung your legs over the bed, and you moved through your morning routine with some grace. It was a small boost of confidence, but one you sorely needed. Maybe it was a little silly, but you didn’t linger on that type of thought process for long. 

As you stepped out of the bedroom, the last bits of your somber mood felt like they disintegrated when the sunlight touched you. You felt light, but there was still a slight chill in the air. It was hard to deny that you missed the warmth Liu Kang would give you within your memories. For a brief moment, you wondered if it would be silly to try and stand close to the god to feel if he had that same warmth. 

Right on cue, the familiar taps of princess Kitana sounded from the far hallway. As both of you made eye contact, you shared a nod in understanding. Both of you met halfway, falling into familiar step as you walked by her side. It felt familiar. You weren’t sure if it was because you’ve walked by Liu Kang’s side for years, or because of the implications of your memories that you might have walked by her side before.

It felt nice to have a companion to walk with, either way.

“I noticed you went around with the actor.” Kitana spoke, a tinge of amusement in her voice. You couldn’t tell whether she was amused at the idea of the actor, or you being with the man. “Or, rather, he dragged you around.” She quipped. You held back an exasperated sigh at the memory. Even the princess had noticed that?

“Yes, he was rather…” You trailed off, trying to think of the proper words to express your feelings without making a bad impression of the actor for the princess. “...persistent.” You watched her eyebrows raise, and she nodded. The very hint of a laugh left her lips. You blinked, you weren’t certain if that was the first time you’ve heard her laugh.

“I can attest to that.” She replied, a tone in her voice indicating that she understood, even if just a fraction, how stubborn Johnny Cage could be. “The actor would not leave me alone the day after the banquet.” She peeked over to you, a thoughtful look on her face. “Forgive me for saying that I had the thought to smack some sense into him.”

“I take no offense, I understand just how he is like.” You said, a laugh escaping your lips. “He’s rather stubborn whenever he wishes, but he has a good heart.” You said, hand raising to cup your own cheek. Your smile slipped into something that felt sentimental before it bounced back into its more friendly state. You shrugged causally. “Even if it isn’t apparent at first.”

“Such praises are more comforting coming from you rather than his own mouth.” Kitana said, and you could detect what you could only describe as a teasing lilt to her voice. You smiled warmly at it, and you saw how her own smile seemed to grow a little less professional and a little more genuine. It was like watching a flower blossom.

“I can imagine so.” You laughed, bringing a hand to muffle it. You could imagine Johnny bragging about himself to the princess, and her probably being annoyed at it. Or amused. Either way, you had a feeling that the impression he left upon the princess was not the one he desired. “I just hope he didn’t irritate you. Like I mentioned, he means well.”

“While he is persistent as any other who attempts to court me, he is far less brutish.” Kitana reassured you, making you feel a bit better about his flirting, “And, if anything else, he is amusing enough to listen to.” You let out another chuckle at the image of Johnny thinking he was wooing princess Kitana when in reality she thought him closer to a court jester.

“Don’t let him know that.” You informed her, making her quirk up an eyebrow. “He’s an…entertainer in Earthrealm. His ego would swell with pride at the idea that he at least amuses you.” You couldn’t tell if it was the trick of the light or not, but you swore you saw her roll her eyes at the premise of Johnny Cage’s ego swelling even more.

“I’ll keep that information in mind.” Kitana replied, a light tone to her voice. With that, the both of you arrived at the entrance to the Great Hall. She turned to look at you fully, a small smile still gracing her lips. “Enjoy watching the match.” She said, and you granted her the same sentiment. She walked off, content with your response.

To your surprise, Raiden and Kung Lao were not around yet, leaving only the fire god waiting in the Great Hall. You looked around. For a moment, you considered the possibility that you had arrived earlier. You then were quick to doubt that idea due to your walk with princess Kitana. She seemed to be very diligent on routine, so you doubted that you both would have walked out early.

“Where is Raiden and Kung Lao?” You inquired, moreso thinking about the former than the latter. It wasn’t like you didn’t fret over Kung Lao, it was just that the lack of Raiden appearing was strange. While Kung Lao was typically early, it wasn’t as if he didn’t allow himself to take more time to himself. Raiden, on the other hand, was always early. Almost to a fault.

“I am not certain.” Liu Kang replied, his voice calm. You looked over to see him composed as ever. He caught your gaze, giving you a small smile in return. Subconsciously, you found yourself standing near him. You noted the warmth he radiated. It was familiar, the same aura he had back in your memories. “I would not fret over it, I am certain they will be here in due time.”

“I know.” You said, and yet you found yourself biting at a thumbnail. Your gaze was cast downwards as you contemplated over the whole ordeal. “It’s just…odd.” You admitted. “He usually would be here by now. By he, I mean Raiden. Kung Lao sometimes shows up simply on time.” 

“Indeed.” Liu Kang nodded. You could feel his gaze still on you. It did not sear you, rather it felt gentle. It was much like how it would feel if you were to hover your hand over a candle to feel its warmth. “However, he is also not the type to show up late if it is an important event. I would not worry over it, it will simply cause more stress.”

“You’re right.” You replied. You felt called out at the last statement, but you knew it was for the best. After all, you weren’t the best at keeping yourself from not being stressed. It was supposed to be a friendly reminder. You took in a breath, straightening out your back before lifting your head up. You shouldn’t be stressed. 

A silence settled over the two of you. This silence was different from the comforting one you were used to. It was tense, like a string being pulled far too taut. You supposed it was your fault, you and your busy mind. That, and you've been finding it harder and harder to try and separate the man you remembered the god in front of you.

“Have you been enjoying your stay in Outworld?” Liu Kang spoke. His voice was soft. It was like a droplet of water falling into a still pond. It was so deliberate, so delicate, how he broke the tension. You turned your gaze, and saw the smile he sent your way. It was bittersweet, the way he smiled. It was exactly the same way you remembered. 

“I have.” You said. You weren’t keen on lying to the god, but you did feel a bit bad admitting it. You watched his face shift a tiny bit, but you couldn’t quite read if that had any significance. You turned away, finding it hard to see the way he smiled. “It’s very…different.” You told him. There was a hesitance to your words. 

Certainly you were struggling to find the right words because you didn’t want to make it seem like you were suddenly forsaking Earthrealm, but there was also something else to it. You enjoyed Outworld, you truly did. But you weren’t naive to blindly praise it to a god. There were, for all you knew, probably a darker side to this place.

The memory of seeing Shao Khan for the first time still lingered in your mind.

“I’m glad you have been enjoying it.” Liu Kang replied, a pleased tone to his voice. You felt his heat grow a little more. Curious, you glanced over to him to see he has stepped over a bit. He was standing so close that he was nearly brushing your arm with his own. “I hope you continue to enjoy your stay here.”

“How has your experience been for this trip?” You asked quickly, not wanting the tension to settle back in the air. You forced yourself to look at him, meeting those glowing white eyes. You wondered, just briefly, what caused the warm mortal eyes you once knew to become godlike. Was this just a new world where Liu Kang was deemed a god? Or was there more reason to it?

“It has been lovely.” Liu Kang said, seeming satisfied with the eye contact you gave him. “Not much has changed since the last hundred years since Outworld functions differently, but something about this time around has been more…” There was a pause as the god seemed to search the air for the perfect word to say. “pleasant.”

“I see.” You replied, but the words felt like a lie on your tongue. You understood the joys of being here, but not the reason behind why it was more enjoyable. The little voice in your head told you that you should know though. And you felt just a little dumb for not knowing the reason. Still, you kept the smile upon your lips. 

It was hard not to smile when Liu Kang was looking at you that way.

It didn’t take long for someone to show up. That person was Kung Lao. A broad smile spread across his lips as he sauntered in. As he laid eyes upon you and the god, his eyebrows raised as he looked around, probably searching for his fellow farmhand. When he did not see him, he walked over to you two and looked around once more, just to make sure.

“Where’s Raiden?” He asked, the confusion clear within his voice. You saw him cross his arms as once more, he scanned the room. He seemed more certain that his eyes were in the wrong rather than believe in the fact that his friend was simply not here. You supposed no one could blame him, you were just as unbelieving when you had arrived. 

“He's just a little behind.” You excused, trying your best to not show in your voice that you had felt the same way. You didn't want to cause a fuss. “I am certain he shall show in due time.” You saw the fire god nod in agreement, which only made sense since he had been the one to share that same sentiment. At your reassurance, you saw Kung Lao shrug nonchalantly.

“I guess so.”

Some more time passed, and despite your own words, you felt yourself getting antsy with every minute that the diligent man did not arrive. Kenshi had arrived at this point, sending the group a curious glance upon noting the disappearance of the champion. You felt your intertwined hands fidget and clench and unclench. The stare that Kenshi sent your way did not help either. He could do very well with being less obvious.

Finally, to relieve your worries, Raiden finally showed up with Johnny Cage at his side. You sighed as you walked over to Raiden. Your eyes raked over the man. He looked rather unkempt. His clothes were a bit of a mess, and his hat was a bit crooked. He seemed to be nearly on edge. Your tongue clicked as you reached out, adjusting his clothes and hat for him.

“You had us worried.” You admit softly, making sure that the man was presentable. After all, at this point, many of Outworld’s citizens were keeping an eye on Earthrealm’s strong champion. You sent him a small smile, trying to reassure him since you could see how tense he was on his face. You watched as his mouth opened to say something, probably an excuse, but you laid a hand on his shoulder to quiet him. “Hey, you’re here, that’s what matters. Plus, you’re not late either. Don’t worry about it, it’ll leak into your fighting”

“You’re right.” Raiden said, nodding slowly. You could see the nervous energy in him seem to melt away. His eyes closed as he took a deep breath in before releasing it. A small flush covered his cheeks, perhaps still from how he had rushed to get ready this moment. When he opened his eyes, he sent you a sunny smile that warmed your heart. “I will do my best.”

“I know you will.” You told him. You watched as Kung Lao handed over a few items for Raiden and Johnny Cage to eat. You could always rely on him for that. Raiden seemed most grateful at the gesture. Chatter among the group seemed to calm the former farmhand, and it was not very long until the usual proceedings occurred. 

“Young Raiden.” Sindel spoke, gazing down at Raiden. You were impressed with how she kept her smile seeming this warm and cordial despite the trend of her champions being taken down by Raiden no matter how the odds seemed. “You have…bested all the champions thus far with grace skill.” The empress commended, though there was almost a slight strain to her voice as she admitted it, it was very subtle, hardly noticeable. “Let us see if this next contender can match your might.”

Surprisingly, after being absent yesterday, General Khan was back to announce the next champion. 

“The next challenger is another one of my officers, Motaro.” The general spoke, his voice booming and echoing off the walls of the hall. The sound of hooves caught your attention, and you turned to see a centuarian walk into the halls. His stride was confident, and he walked in with his arms crossed. His gaze was tilted down already, almost glaring down at Raiden who was forced to look up at his opponent.

Despite being an officer, he lacked the same armor that both Kotal and Reiko had donned, being fully bare on his upper body. Only a silver belt concealing where a horse body fused into a human body was present as any sort of protection, and even then it was more decorative than anything. That is, until you spied the back of his horse body. A metallic tail more akin to a lizard’s was attached there. Your eyes lingered on the curve of his horns, finding them interesting. It seems that centaurians were not a simply a human fused with a horse body as Earthrealmers would believe.

You believe you’ve seen this man before, but whatever feeling you had was much weaker than it was for any other person you’ve met. Maybe this man was in your life for but a brief moment…still, if he was, it was strange your brain even felt like it recognized him. 

“Motaro is one of the centaurian’s finest.” General Shao bragged, seeming more enthusiastic to talk about Motaro compared to Kotal from the other day. Motaro lifted his head up to bask in the speech, an almost pleased look on his face. “With the tenacity of a bull and the might of one of the best warriors I have fought alongside, he is one of the best warriors in the legion.”

“Little man.” Motaro addressed Raiden curtly. He snorted as he continued to look down at the farmhand. His countenance returned to the look he had previously, but it was marred with a near sneer. His gaze felt nearly as sharp as his metallic tail did. You watched as Raiden took the comment in stride, bowing to his opponent, not fearing despite the size difference between them both.

“It is an honor to fight you.” Raiden told his opponent. You smiled at how polite he was to his opponents, even despite the lack of respect he was granted in return. Still, you wondered if that would remain that way in the future. While the thought of Raiden trying to smack talk his opponents was funny to think of, you hoped that nothing would hurt Raiden enough to take him in that direction.

Motaro’s fighting style was unique, suffice to say. His unusual body type, at least compared to what Raiden had normally fought against. He would charge in a brutish manner, using brute force to try and make the champion cower. Despite his bulk, he also maintained a lot of the battlefield control when Raiden tried to create space by being able to shoot projectiles from the metallic tail that you had spied earlier. 

Still, even with the trickiness of the fight, Raiden’s wit led him to victory. When he needed to close the gap, he would teleport behind Motaro. Due to Motaro’s body, he struggled to turn around and face the man before he was met with lightning that was strong enough to stagger even him. Sometimes, Raiden would realize that he would have to match the reckless nature of Motaro and surge right at him, catching the other man off guard.

It was no surprise to you to see that Motaro eventually collapsed. Taking deep breaths, Raiden looked down on his opponent, an ironic twist on the dynamic before. Except for Raiden, there was no hint of malice or disrespect in his eyes. Only warmth glimmered within his. 

“Thank you for the match.” Raiden told him humbly, a soft smile on his lips. You watched him reach out to try and attempt to help up his opponent instinctively. He almost seemed to flinch when he retracted it when Motaro denied the help. There was a mixture between a scoff and a huff from the centaurian, but ultimately he nodded before he walked off. You eyed the tail that almost seemed to drag on the floor, making a slight scratching sound.

“Congratulations on a well fought match.” You said, walking up to the once again successful champion. His smile seemed to grow as you walked towards him with a delighted expression. It was almost like seeing a child light up when you gave them the sweetest candy in the world. “Your technique is improving everyday.”

“I can only thank you, Lord Liu Kang, and the monks for preparing me for these moments.” Raiden replied, seeming to fall back onto his habit of being far too humble. You sighed and shook your head in disapproval of how he still didn’t consider his own skills into the fray. Still, it was endearing enough that you still smiled.

“Do not forget how much hard work you have also put in, Raiden.” Liu Kang reminded him, practically taking the words out of your mouth. You saw the god’s eyes flick over to you for a moment. Whether that was in reference to how you and Raiden had often stayed up late training or if it was a reference to how the god knew what was what you were going to say, you could not tell. 

“Yeah man, you killed it out there, even with sleeping in.” Johnny hopped into the conversation. You elbowed the actor at the mention of him sleeping in, maybe a little harsher than you should have after seeing how flushed the champion’s cheeks became. You heard the American clear his throat. “You gotta give yourself some credit, Raidude.”

“I will try.” Raiden said, a bit of hesitance in his voice. While it did seem to partially stem from the insistence from all of you that he should be giving himself more credit, you could also sense the hesitance coming due to the nickname Johnny had called him. You would never admit it, but the fact that even the kindest of your mentees seemed to hold a slight disdain towards the actor’s nicknames never failed to amuse you. Yet, all the same, the enthusiasm in him wanting to succeed and work hard on whatever his criticisms were shone through. 

After discussion with Liu Kang, like usual, your little group dispersed once more. For a moment, you swore you saw Kung Lao linger for a moment before he seemed to walk off with Raiden. You weren’t sure if your eyes were seeing things correctly, though. The man who did stick around was Kenshi, who soon found his way by your side.

“Ready?” The ex yakuza member inquired. His eyebrows were raised as he looked at you. The way he gazed at you seemed to tell you more words than he said, like how he was willing to wait for you if you weren’t. You supposed it only made sense, from what Kenshi had told you before, that the Yakuza would need to be subtle and communicate with others with even the slightest nod. Still, it was almost like a fresh breath of air compared to the others who seemed like an open book compared to the man beside you.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” You told him with a confident nod. Then, the both of you set off. The difference between the walk to Sun Do with Kenshi compared to Johnny was almost night and day. While it wasn’t completely silent, you both only had some chatter here and there. It didn’t feel like small talk, and comforting silence filled the air otherwise. 

You took this time to try and sneak some glances Kenshi’s way while he seemed to remain vigilant in staring on the path ahead. Out of all your champions, you considered the man beside you to be the one you understood the least. While you did attempt to get closer to the man through food, there was still a lot you had left to learn about him. He wasn’t as eager to dispense knowledge as the others, even if he wasn’t totally private about the past. 

The reason why Kenshi was so vastly different in this timeline compared to the other three was beyond you. It was a mystery you’ve been trying to unravel since you’ve met the man. His backstory was completely different, and the lack of powers he had previously made you question a lot about this life. Different backstories weren’t anything new, per se, but it was still strange how…different it was. From your memories of the world before, you could conclude that perhaps his lack of powers was from how he did not wield Sento. 

You’ve considered confronting Johnny about giving the swordsman the sword back, after all the actor had it for a rather petty reason, but you’ve never gotten too far in your plans. You couldn’t guarantee that talking to the actor would do any good, that man was rather stubborn, even in the face of reason sometimes. But there was also another reason you’ve held yourself back.

You were afraid that the sword would doom Kenshi to some kind of tragic fate. Your memories of Kenshi's previous story were hazy. You couldn’t tell if it was because you simply didn’t remember, or if it was because you never sought out to ask too much about it in the past. Either way, you were upset with yourself over it.

What you did know for certain, despite the lack of memories, was that in your previous life, he had been blinded due an incident that had something to do with the sword. Yes, he did gain powers that enabled him to be more than he was, but thought of losing his eyesight because of it and you potentially being the catalyst for that was more than you thought you could bear. It wasn’t as if you could warn Kenshi of the dangers, you’d sound insane.

Plus, you knew with the significance of that sword, your warnings might go unheeded. You had a sense that the ex yakuza member was selfless enough to be a martyr for the sake of his clan. The thought of him giving up his eyesight willingly squeezed your heart.

You were willing to craft a hat for Kung Lao, there were no flaws behind that as far as you could tell. But Kenshi’s weapon had a lot more weight to it. You wouldn’t know if the consequences behind that influence were the same, and if they would be less than the positives. There was a lot more to consider. Even if your decision that you would err on the side of caution, you still felt guilty that you could not help and provide the weapon that the man beside you craved.

“You’re glancing at me a lot, should I be flattered or concerned?” Kenshi inquired, snapping you out of your thoughts. You found that you were now meeting the swordsman’s gaze who held you with an intrigued look. With a scene that felt all too familiar, you felt your face heat up again. How you’ve let yourself space out and stare so obviously at your companion two days in a row, you had no idea.

“Flattered, I suppose?” You said, awkwardness soaking your words after you cleared your throat. You found yourself unable to maintain eye contact. Suddenly, the blue sky speckled with clouds seemed interesting. You felt your hand creep up to the side of your neck and press against it. Compared to the heat of your face, your hand felt like an ice cube. 

You didn’t know what excuse to say, or if you even should. Obviously, you couldn’t tell him the real reason why you were taking what you thought was sneaky glances. If you weren’t telling the god who took you in about your memories, you weren’t going to tell Kenshi. The issue was that now, you had no idea what excuse to even say, and you put yourself in a rather awkward situation because of it.

Despite this, it seemed that you didn’t have to. You heard a chuckle, and took a cautious peek to see Kenshi looking at you with a gaze that seemed free of judgement. His cheeks were tinged with pink. It seemed whatever excuse he had gleaned from what little you said satisfied him. You weren’t sure what his assumptions were, but at this point, you figured you were far too deep to ask what he thought it was.

This was the consequences of your lack of sneakiness, you supposed. You didn’t find yourself too upset though. It seemed to make him pleased enough, and that was enough for you. 

The rest of the walk to Sun Do left you feeling just a little lighter.

You both wandered into the city, deliberately leading him in a different direction you had gone with both Johnny and Raiden. You didn’t need to retread those places, you knew very well that you wouldn’t find the gift for Bi-Han you wanted in those shops. It would only waste precious time. You both went from shop to shop, peering at possible gift ideas with careful eyes.

Shopping with Kenshi was much different than the other two. With Raiden, he had been far too passive. He seemed to enjoy peering at the wares and agreeing with you more than scrutinizing the items. He4 didn’t provide any meaningful feedback in terms of whether the gift was appropriate or if it felt right. You didn’t blame him, you had a feeling he was far too elated by simply being in the heart of the capital. That, and he was the one who invited you to explore rather than shop. 

With Johnny, he had a completely different taste than you did. He often criticized your choices for being too “tame” or not flashy enough. Perhaps it wasn’t the worst opinion, you had gone for subtler gifts, but the gifts he offered before the ribbon had all been rather…gaudy and definitely didn’t fit the Lin Kuei. It was almost a miracle he had spotted the ribbon and offered it up.

Kenshi, on the other hand, was almost like the perfect shopping companion. His tastes seemed to align with what you were searching for, so that was a far better companion than Johnny. Not only that, but he was very inquisitive and seemed to take every comment you said to heart. You couldn’t resist a smile as you realized this nature was the exact reason why you had chosen Kenshi in particular to critique your cooking. 

“How about this?” Kenshi inquired, lifting up an intricate blue sash. You hummed as you leaned in close to peer at the fabric. You plucked the item that was draped over his hands, your fingertips brushing against the inked surface. You lifted up, studying the details. Then, you squinted at it more as you tried to imagine Bi-Han wearing this sash. Your nose wrinkled at the fact that you could not conjure up that image.

“I think we should stray away from accessories like this.” You concluded. “I don’t think Bi-Han would find himself wearing anything in accompaniment to his uniform.” You explained. The swordsman nodded as he took your words into consideration. You handed back the sash to him so he could place it back. With careful precision, he folded the sash before delicately placing it back into its former spot. Had you not known the man, you would have never guessed his dark past with how he carried himself in his actions. 

You scanned the area, looking for other ideas while Kenshi also perused the store. Nothing in particular for the grandmaster caught your eye. This store was mostly filled with accessories, which was not the type of gift you could imagine giving Bi-Han. And yet, despite this, something did catch your eye. You walked closer to get a look.

It was a set of five rings. Though they looked initially plain, the closer you inspected them, you saw the beauty within the craftsmanship. They were intricately engraved, small patterns dancing along the metal. But the part that caught the eye the most was the gorgeous gems set into each of them. Each one had a different color, gold, pink, blue, green, and red. You marveled over the rings and were pleasantly surprised to see that the rings had some minor magic, so they could be resized on their own. 

You looked and saw they had a special deal if you bought the whole set. Your eyes lingered on the rings for a moment more. How perfect this would be as a gift for your champions. A smile appeared on your face as you thought about it. You glanced back at the bag where you held your gold. Maybe if you had left over gold you could come back for these. 

“I don’t think this place has what I’m looking for.” You told the swordsman, striding over to him. You stood slightly in the way of the rings. You didn’t think he’d notice them since it didn’t align with the idea you had for Bi-Han. But still, you wanted to keep it a surprise, just in case. Luckily, it seemed that Kenshi hadn’t noticed where you had gone.

“I agree, especially since this place is geared towards accessories.” Kenshi replied. He nodded in the direction of the door, his hand gesturing for you to lead the way. You did just that, managing to glance back at the rings one last time. You knew that if you did, Kenshi would be likely to notice with how much he’s been noticing your stares. Then again, you supposed that’s because your stares towards the swordsman were rather…obvious. Still, you wouldn’t put it past him to notice the little things.

And so, both you and the ex yakuza member were back on the streets. But not for long. This time, Kenshi pointed out a shop. At first, you hesitated, gazing at all the porcelain cups and teapots. You weren’t certain if these ceramics would be an ideal gift, but then your eyes landed on a particular teapot set in the window. You were so fascinated by it that you stepped inside to get a better look.

The teapot set in question was delftware styled. The blue painted ceramic was decorated to be depicting a snowy wonderland with snow leopards as the main focus. Your eyes studied the set carefully, marveling over it. It had some gold accents around the rim, giving it that extra pop. It even came with a little tea pet, a snow leopard. At first, you couldn’t imagine gifting Bi-Han such an item, but the more you marveled over it, the more you couldn’t imagine giving him anything else.

“With the way you’re looking at that, I think I did my job.” Kenshi remarked, walking up next to you. You smiled over to him, and you saw on his face a very pleased expression. He crossed his arms as he took his gaze from you over to the set. “It’s miraculous how cheap these items are here, back in Earthrealm, these would be worth a fortune.”

“I can’t believe it either.” You agreed with a nod. You eyed the price. It definitely was cheaper than you would expect, but the quality didn’t seem terrible despite it. Looking at it for a few more moments, you nodded once more. “I think this is the one.” You told your companion. Kenshi hummed, his eyes lingering on your decided gift before pointing to something else. 

“While we’re at it, you should probably get him some tea.” The swordsman recommended. Your eyes landed on the displays of various teas they had. You walked over, noting how they felt similar in style to the dried teas you served for Madam Bo. On a closer look, some of the teas even appeared to be the same. For a brief moment, you wondered whether a long time ago Earthrealm had some of their teas imported here. It didn’t seem too far off an idea.

You scanned the various teas they had on display. For a moment, you considered picking a tea unique to Outworld. But then you considered how awful it’d feel to gift something that he might enjoy, but then never be able to savor once again in his lifetime. For that reason, you decided it might be better to chose something that he may be able to get at home. 

One particular tea caught your eye.

You grabbed the box of the high quality tea, inspecting it. You had never considered this to be made into tea. You couldn’t help but to smile down at the box, too amazed at the fact that tea was a thing. You held it up to show to Kenshi who quirked up a brow.

“Parsley tea?” He asked, eyeing the box carefully. His voice sounded skeptical. You shrugged, but you already knew that the moment you had laid eyes on this particular type of tea, you were going to buy it. Something within you simply told you that it just fit him. That, and you couldn’t deny that you were interested in how it tasted. From the look Kenshi gave you, he seemed to know you were already set in your ways.

With a little pep in your step, you walked over to the Outworlder at the counter. After discussing which set you wanted along with the parsley tea, you soon found yourself back onto the streets with a very nicely wrapped gift in your hands. As you were walking back, satisfied with your findings today, you spied the shop with the rings you had looked at earlier. 

“Could you hold this for a moment?” You asked the man. You swiftly handed him the gift and quickly walked off into the shop, ignoring the perplexed look the swordsman had sent you. You couldn’t blame him, you had said you only needed one more gift. 

Stepping inside, you were thrilled to see that the rings you had your eye on were still there. Elated, you quickly asked the clerk for the rings. The centaruian seemed more than happy to oblige, giving you a few boxes to carry them in. You slipped the gold one on, eyeing how the light seemed to reflect off of it perfectly. The rest you slipped into your bag. You wanted to keep them a surprise for now.

Checking the money you had left, you were delighted to see you had enough to buy one more gift. That would be reserved for Liu Kang. 

“Find everything you needed?” Kenshi inquired. He peered at you, his eye catching the sight of your new found accessory. You nodded, beaming happily at the man. You reached out, hands extended to take back the boxes. Despite this, you found the man pulled away from you, boxes clutched securely to his own chest. “It’s fine, I don’t mind carrying them.” He insisted.

“I don’t want to burden you with them.” You said, furrowing your brows. You made a reach for the boxes again, but the man simply side stepped your attempt. You sighed, placing a hand on your hip. “This is rather childish of you, Kenshi.” You chided, trying to see if you could convince him to give back the gifts. And yet, despite your words, the man was adamant. You sighed once more, shaking your head. “If you insist.”

“I do.” The swordsman quipped back, a victorious tone in his voice. You resisted an eye roll and made your way back to the palace. Once there, you led the ex yakuza member back to your room since he insisted on helping them carry them back all the way back there. As you finally regained the packages, you peered at him for a moment before opening your door. “Wait a moment for me, okay?” You asked.

You stepped into the room, placing your packages along with the other gifts you’ve bought. You removed the rings from the bags, admiring them once more. For a moment, you considered bringing them all in so you could give them at dinner time, but then you paused, remembering you hadn’t gotten Liu Kang’s gift quite yet and how awkward it might seem. Plus, you fancied the idea of giving the gifts privately. It would seem more personal that way.

“Thank you for waiting.” You said as you strode out. You placed your hands behind your back, hiding the little box. You supposed you were as sneaky as a toddler attempting to hide whatever mess they’ve made, because Kenshi quickly sent you a questioning look and leaned over to try and peek. “Here.” You handed over the box, scanning his features for his reaction. “A gift.”

“You didn’t have to.” Kenshi said, his voice shocked. He tried to hand back the box to you, but you pushed into his hands. After that, he relented. He scanned the box, probably trying to guess the present before he opened the box. You felt elated as you watched his surprised reaction to the ring. He lifted it up, watching with amazement as he slipped it onto his finger and it fit perfectly. “This is…” He trailed off, trying to find the right words.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” You remarked. You held up your hand to showcase your golden ring. “I thought this would be the perfect present for all of us.” You then gestured to the red ring. “I chose that color specifically for you.”

“Why red?” Kenshi inquired, looking between the ring on his hand and you. You smiled at him, a small laugh leaving your lips as you looked directly into his eyes.

“Simple. I think it matches your eyes wonderfully.” You explain to him. A soft flush appeared on Kenshi’s face, and he appeared to have been stunned into silence. His mouth closed, then opened, then closed once more. Then, a soft smile appeared on his face as his gaze cast downwards to the ring on his hand once more.

“Thank you.” Kenshi mumbled softly. You grinned at him and placed a hand on his arm. 

“No problem, I’m glad you like the gift.” You told him. “Now let’s go, I’m hungry.” You walked off, leading the way. You missed the fond gaze Kenshi sent you way, taking one more glance between the ring and you before following you.

Dinner went smoothly, and it was just as delicious as before. You were tempted to make plans to go shopping for some Outworld type of seasonings before you left so you could cook up some food the reminded you of this place. Maybe if you had left over money after Liu Kang’s gift.

It was yet another wonderful night in the garden. You basked in the moonlight as you waited patiently for the princess to emerge from the palace. You perked up as you heard the familiar sound of heels, and smiled as your eyes landed on the princess. 

Oddly enough, there was not the more prestigious and refined look that she usually held. Her face held something that reminded you of the first time you encountered her here. She seemed…upset. You raised your eyebrows as she drew near. When she noted you in the spot, her face shifted, masking her previous attitude with a smile.

It reminded you of Empress Sindel’s smile towards Raiden.

“Are you alright?” You inquired, testing the waters. You saw her smile strain, like a string being pulled nearly too taut. Her hands, which had been folded in her lap, squeezed together as if she were squeezing out her frustration. 

“I’m fine.” Mileena replied, her words clipped. You couldn’t sense any hostility within her words, but you could tell that asking about her situation would probably be unwise. You didn’t blame her, you weren’t that close after all. You nodded slowly, taking her attitude into consideration. “How have you been?” She inquired quickly, eager to divert the topic of conversation.

“I’ve been fine, I went and shopped more today.” You told her with a smile. You could read the signs of her frayed nerves and played along with her plan, changing the conversation away from herself. You saw her eyes dart to your hands. You looked down and saw the ring. You lifted your hand to showcase it, allowing her to get a better view.

“I can see that.” The princess observed. She leaned in closer, analyzing the accessory and how it fit on your finger. You saw her expression change slightly, going from a more fake look to a more genuine smile. She looked at it for a few moments more before leaning back and looking at you. “It suits you, you have a good eye.”

“Thank you.” You replied, staring down at the golden gem which shone so prettily in the moonlight. You smiled, still feeling the high of making a satisfying purchase. You paused, considering what to talk about next due to her slightly antsy mood. “How was your day, princess? I’m excited to see how you fare against Earthrealm’s champion tomorrow.”

“My day was alright.” Mileena replied, her eyes looking away into the garden. There was almost an empty tone to her voice, as if she were not telling the entire truth. She rolled her shoulders back as she cleared her throat. “I…” She began, then paused, her face scrunching a bit as she seemed to ponder on the words she would say next. “I am interested to see how I fare against him as well.” She replied, the same smile from earlier appearing on her lips. 

You couldn’t tell entirely, but you could sense the aversion towards the topic of fighting. Was it that she was nervous? You scanned her. No, it didn’t seem so. But the reason behind her distaste towards the topic was one you weren’t certain of.

You couldn’t quite ask her about it either.

“What story would you like to hear today?” You inquired, quickly changing the subject. You saw her posture relax a bit, and what must be a breath of relief left her lips. Very subtle actions, but actions you noticed. You suspicions were definitely correct, she had some type of issue with fighting Raiden, or the topic of it. 

“Anything light hearted would do.” The princess requested, the relief of the topic change showing on her face. You pondered on this, humming as you considered the various stories and movies you’ve seen. What could possibly cheer her up? You smiled as you recalled the first movie you saw and turned to face her.

“Alright, then how about this one?”

That night, you didn’t quite know why she was upset, but you knew you uplifted her spirits.

part sixteen

tagged - @bonezisded @lollipopin @simpxinnie @zhivaxo @koisuko

[djbunnie]

reddit inspired AU DamiRae

Rachel (19) was in a relationship with her high school sweetheart, Garfield (19). They had been dating since their sophomore year, a total of five years. After graduating high school, they moved to the big city, shared an apartment, and Rachel began pursuing a degree in Finance. Fortunately, she had a scholarship, and her parents covered her tuition, but she still needed a job to cover rent, utilities, and other expenses.

Rachel paid for everything without complaint, willing to make that sacrifice for her boyfriend.Garfield, he on the other hand, was pursuing his dream of becoming a DJ and influencer. While he did some work, it consisted mainly of small jobs like dj school dances and other small events. 

Things seemed normal until Garfield decided to have a serious talk with Rachel. During their conversation, he dropped a bombshell on her.

Garfield wanted them to have an open relationship, meaning they would both be free to date other people while still being together.

The idea completely shocked Rachel. From the beginning of their relationship, Rachel had been the "loser" while Garfield was the "popular" and the "it Boy." Like any other kid in school, she had longed to be accepted and have some like Garfield by her side. Imagine her luck when she experienced a growth spurt over the summer and developed a curvaceous figure. By her second year of high school, she had transformed from "loser" to "pretty girl." Rachel underwent an incredible glow up but remained quiet and timid. Garfield noticed her newfound popularity and began dating her.

Rachel was overjoyed.

She believed they were exclusive: just the two of them, committed only to each other. That was her understanding and expectation, especially since they had moved to the big city and were living together.

When he suggested changing this fundamental aspect of their relationship, Rachel initially refused, but eventually Garfield pressured her into agreeing. 

Rachel tried to convince herself that this new arrangement was acceptable and normal, and that she was truly okay with it.

Of course, they established some ground rules:

They needed to text each other beforehand about the time and location of their dates to avoid scheduling conflicts.

They would not discuss other partners with each other.

They were not allowed to bring other partners to their apartment.

And so on.

For the first four months of this polyamorous arrangement, Rachel was unhappy. It hurt to see Garfield seeing other women, as he had dates almost every day. Feeling neglected and alone, she couldn't complain because she had agreed to the terms and didn't want to appear controlling.

After four months, she decided to go out. She went to a bar and met Damian (19). They hit it off immediately, and she told him about her open relationship with her boyfriend, asking if he was comfortable with it. Damian agreed, explaining that he had recently ended a bad long-term relationship and wanted to enjoy his youth.

After a couple of dates, Rachel and  Damian really hit it off. They were constantly calling and texting each other. Whenever Rachel was with her friends, she couldn't help but talk about Damian. Every time she said Damian's name, she smiled. Damian was always on her mind, and she looked forward to their dates.

There were times when she completely forgot about Garfield.

Rachel: "Great news! Damian is ahead of his classes. He called me last night, excited because he's on track to graduate a year early!"

Donna: "That's awesome, Rae! Any plans to celebrate?"

Rachel: "Yeah! you won't believe my luck. I was able to get a reservation at that nice Italian restaurant. Someone had to cancel their reservation last minute, and it was available the day I called."

Donna: "Nice!"

Donna: takes a sip of beer "By the way, how's Garfield doing?"

Rachel: "Who? Oh! Yeah, um... he's doing okay, I guess."

At this point, Garfield was rarely home because he was constantly out with other women. Their relationship had grown increasingly distant, to the point where Rachel saw him as nothing more than a roommate—and a freeloader since he wasn't contributing financially.

Rachel stopped planning dates and buying Garfield gifts. she ceased calling and texting him, and he didn't notice because he was preoccupied with his other relationships.

Damian and Rachel were at his place, both slightly intoxicated. Sexual tension filled the air as they made out on the couch. The atmosphere heated up, and Damian began kissing her neck. 

Rachel moaned as she grind against his crotch.

Damian: feeling cocky “bet your boyfriend doesn't make you feel this good”

Rachel: "Who?"

Damian pulled away, halting their intimacy.

Damian: "Your boyfriend...Garfield? Did you forget about him?"

Rachel: "Oh! Yeah, um... I'm sorry..."

Damian: "Rachel, is everything okay?"

Rachel wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or her trust in Damian that made her so vulnerable. she confessed everything to him: how Garfield had pressured her into an open relationship and how lonely and neglected she felt. At that moment, Rachel realized she no longer had romantic feelings for Garfield. And without intending to, she confessed her feelings for Damian.

Rachel: "Oh shit! I'm sor-"

Damian: "I love you too Beloved."

Both were shocked. Rachel was overjoyed to hear him say that. He leaned in to kiss her, but she stopped him.

Rachel: "Dami, wait!"

Rachel: "Don't get the wrong idea. I'm so happy we confirmed our feelings for each other, but I want to be in a monogamous relationship."

Damian: "Me too!"

Rachel: "Great! Before we take this further and make it official, I need to break up with Garfield first."

So no physical intimacy between Rachel and Damian... yet.

On the drive home, Rachel received a text from Garfield reminding her that he was leaving for a gig tomorrow and wouldn't be back for two weeks. Seeing this as an opportunity, Rachel decided to make her move. she acted normally until Garfield left the next morning. Rachel called her best friend, Donna, and other college friends to help her pack and move into Donna's place. After moving all her belongings, Rachel texted Garfield that they should break up, informed him that she was no longer on the lease, and sent him this month's rent money via Venmo. She told him not to contact her and blocked him on everything before starting a relationship with Damian.

When Garfield returned from the gig, he bombarded Rachel with texts, calls, voicemails, and other messages. He was distraught, begging her to reconsider and claiming that opening their relationship had been a huge mistake. He confessed that the women she had dated only wanted sex and never truly loved him. He realized that Rachal was the one who truly loved him and admitted he was foolish for letting her go. He pleaded for another chance, unaware of her relationship with Damian. (plus Rachel was paying for everything, he didn't have any money) 

The first few months were chaotic, with Garfield becoming increasingly unhinged. Fortunately, law enforcement wasn't involved, and eventually, Garfield gave up and moved on. (maybe Damian was the reason why and didn't tell Rachel about it lol) However, Garfield continued to try to contact Rachal for another chance every year, but she never responded.

Rachal graduated and began working for Wayne Enterprises Finance Department.  Damian became CEO and proposed to Rachel, she said yes. They started a beautiful life together, living in the Wayne Manor with 6 children. 🥰🥰🥰

[queenvhagar]

It seems like a lot of House of the Dragon's writing issues in the first season stem from the disastrous final season of Game of Thrones, specifically the rushed implementation of Daenerys' Mad Queen arc. It feels like the writers and HBO are hyper aware of Daenerys' ending being fumbled and the negative audience reaction it garnered, and now they're trying to correct the mistakes of the main series through the prequel series and specifically its characterization of Rhaenyra. Both Rhaenyra and Daenerys are Targaryen dragon riding queens motivated by their perceived birthright, but the similarities between the two characters are surface-level. In reality, Daenerys and Rhaenyra are not the same character, and the story of the Dance of the Dragons is not the story of the War of the Five Kings.

Daenerys is the last Targaryen (as she knows it), a former slave who seeks to use the power of her dragons to reclaim the throne and in the process abolish the institution of slavery as it exists in the world, a true revolutionary who seeks to transform society through fire and blood if need be (and if a Mad Queen arc appears in the books, it will undoubtedly be because the existing Lords in Westeros would likely oppose a restructure of society - after all, they are the primary beneficiaries of the feudalist society - and this could lead to conflict with Daenerys, which would escalate).

Rhaenyra is the named heir to the throne. Her position is "quite comfortable" - she enjoys her privileges (which is very fair of her). However, her privileged position above others leads her to act according only to her own desires and not her duty as heir. She fights only for herself and her own (although the show added the prophecy to obscure this motivation), and despite having the power and influence as the most powerful woman in the realm to promote "a new order" as she once envisioned a child, she repeatedly reinforces existing structures to further her own power (like defending Lucerys' illegitimate claim so her own looks stronger with her son as Lord of Driftmark instead of advocating for Baela to inherit as Laena's eldest daughter, something that ironically could have really supported her own claim of "eldest child inherits" in the process - and she could have sidestepped the bastard issue). Rhaenyra wants to be the exception to the rules; she doesn't seek to rewrite them for anyone else. Rhaenyra is a "rebel" only in the sense that she's breaking the law and then using her privilege to avoid facing the consequences of her actions at all costs.

You can argue that both Rhaenyra and Daenerys are breaking ground when it comes to becoming queen of Westeros, and both are motivated by their beliefs in Targaryen supremacy and their perceived birthrights to the throne. They might both be known as a "Mad Queen" - Rhaenyra's arc will come, and when it does, I'm really hoping it will be because of the reasons it was in the books: her suspicion and distrust leading her to isolate herself from her allies, eventually turning on them, and her disregard for the commonfolk leading to her being driven out of the city and the death of dragons (though I won't be surprised if the writers shy away from this, in fear of repeating any aspect of Daenerys' portrayal). But fundamentally, trying to write Rhaenyra to be Daenerys 2.0 so that they can fix the mistake of the Game of Thrones ending kind of ruins the Dance.

The Dance wasn't written as just the tragedy of a heroic girl taken down by sexism and misunderstandings, which is the story the show seems to be trying to tell. It's the tragedy of a family tearing itself apart, of the cultural conflict between Westeros and their Valyrian conquerors, of the desire for power and the lengths one will go to in order to get it.

But the writers are more interested in trying to tell a largely black and white story where they can make up for what they did with Daenerys' arc. Unfortunately for everyone, Rhaenyra is not Daenerys, and the Dance is not the War of the Five Kings.

[classic-maya]

I really loved your view on when did Brian fall in love with Justin and I saw how happy you were about a qaf ask, so here I am:

when do you think britin reunited after the finale, specifically how long do you think they lived apart for AND how do you they reunited? (I couldn't bring myself to watch that episode because this is gonna break my heart) OR do you think they are not together?

I love this fandom and I love you. I’ve been wanting to write some more fic for them for a while and haven’t had the motivation, but this might spur me along.

In the meantime…I’ll start with the last episode and why I have an unpopular opinion about how it ended and then get into how I envision their reunion. 

Finale

I know there is a lot of hate for S5 finale, but I honestly love the “It’s only time” speech that Brian gives and it’s so so special to me. I feel like it is one of the most romantic lines in the show because in Brian Kinney-speak “It’s only time” is "I will always love you. I will love you just as much tomorrow as I love you today and the next day and the next and the next. I will die loving you. I will love you if you come back to me and I will love you if you never come back to me because time doesn't matter, you are the person I love and that will never change.” 

Not joking, QaF fundamentally altered my view on romantic love. I previously only thought that familial love could be unconditional, but it was such a believable representation of unconditional romantic love that it shifted my perspective. They both truly just want what is best for the other, even if that means they cannot physically be together or at times are not in a relationship. It took my breath away.

All that being said, I definitely do not think of their last scenes together in S5 as a break-up, maybe just a break. They needed to exist separately and apart from each other for a little bit. I think Brian is fairly conscious of their age gap and he never wants to hold Justin back from anything because of their relationship. We see him struggle with this throughout the series, remember him encouraging Justin to make some friends his own age, “Enjoy your youth…I sure have ;)” as well as his many attempts to get Justin to go to and finish college. Even when Justin was with Ethan, of course Brian was hurt because of the cheating, but he also didn’t hold it against Justin because he ultimately wants him to have everything he wants and desires and Brian recognized that he couldn’t give Justin that at the time (let’s Brian’s struggles with low self-esteem aside for the purpose of this conversation). On the other side, Justin loves Brian exactly how he is, and I think Brian’s sudden change of heart (i.e. declaring his love, proposing marriage, turning down opportunities to hook up with tricks etc.) scared Justin.

The two of them went through yet another extraordinary trauma with the attack on Babylon and I think the rush to get married was an extension of that, but I don’t know if either of them were actually ready for marriage. In the same way Brian is afraid Justin will wind up resenting him and their relationship if it were to keep Justin from reaching his full potential as an artist, I think Justin is afraid that if they do get married, Brian will later resent it because he was only caught up in the fear of once again losing the love of his life. But no matter what, something big did shift in a very real way for both of them and made Brian feel freer to express his love for Justin. Reunion

I think Justin moves to New York and has the exact experience he was looking for. He struggles for a bit and he hides it from Brian and his family because he wants to prove to himself that he can do it, that he can take care of himself and Brian lets him. He supports and loves his independence. I think they see each other frequently and are madly, passionately, exuberantly in love even though they live in different cities. I think Brian flies to New York every few weeks and Justin takes the bus to the Pitts every chance he gets.

The first time Brian visits, Justin picks him up from the airport and they can’t stand another moment not touching each other, so they don’t even make it home and end up having a quickie in the airport bathroom. Then Brian takes them to a hotel because he is not sleeping on Justin’s ratty second-hand mattress and letting his roommate hear them fuck their brains out for the next 48 hours.

Eventually, Justin’s art starts selling and he stops struggling. He makes a name for himself and is being flown across the country for different shows and speaking engagements. Meanwhile, Kinnetic becomes the top ad agency in Pennsylvania and begins to gain clients throughout the northeast and in New York to the extent that developing a satellite office in the city only makes sense. Brian moves to New York, not because he is following Justin, but because it has always been his dream. He sells Britin and swaps it for a penthouse in Manhattan that he puts in both their names. Justin moves in without either of them talking about it.

I see them getting married about 7 or 8 years after we last see them in the show, and this time it feels right. They go back to Pittsburgh and their chosen family, the gang and some new friends, are all there to celebrate them. I do not think they will ever choose to have a monogamous relationship. It is not what either of them want nor do they see it as a way to show their devotion to each other. Their non-monogamy looks a lot different than it did when they were younger though. They are both more intentional about the partners they choose and it’s more like the trick of the month vs the trick of the night (or even hour if you’re Brian Kinney). More often than not they wind up in threesomes or moresomes together rather than seeing someone separately. They allow the exchange of names and numbers because they feel more secure in their relationship with each other. The prohibition on kissing anyone else remains.

They don’t have kids together, but they both are in and out of Toronto with enough regularity that Gus sees them as de facto parents who helped his moms raise him. Gus often goes to New York to spend long weekends with them and in high school and college he will spend entire summers in New York with Brian and Justin.

They are the consummate New York power couple; they help each other’s business and are always attending each other’s events. They travel separately for work but always make time to leave the country and vacation together a few times a year. Eventually, they move from the penthouse to a beautiful Brooklyn brownstone and at some point, they (cover Brian’s ears) grow old together.

[chaos-the-stinky]

Waiting to get a copy of tbob. Uhh The Great Gatsby

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why—ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh,—you're Jordan Baker."

I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—"

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way."

"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—"

"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I'm too poor."

"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Chapter 2

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."

I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.

"Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant—"

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."

"All right."

"I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."

She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

"Awful."

"It does her good to get away."

"Doesn't her husband object?"

"Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass.

"I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one for the apartment. They're nice to have—a dog."

We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.

"What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window.

"All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"

"I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that kind?"

The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.

"That's no police dog," said Tom.

"No, it's not exactly a police dog," said the man with disappointment in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never bother you with catching cold."

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it."

We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

"Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."

"No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?"

"Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know."

"Well, I'd like to, but—"

We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in.

"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."

The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle" lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.

Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door.

The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.

"My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."

"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.

"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own homes."

"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.

"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like."

"But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the back hair."

"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think it's—"

Her husband said "Sh! " and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."

"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.

"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.

Tom looked at him blankly.

"Two of them we have framed downstairs."

"Two what? demanded Tom.

"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point—the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point—the Sea.' "

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.

"I live at West Egg."

"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?"

"I live next door to him."

"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from."

"Really?"

She nodded.

"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."

This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:

"Chester, I think you could do something with her," she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.

"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start."

"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"

"Do what?" she asked, startled.

"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that."

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

"Can't they?"

"Can't stand them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away."

[sillypuppetmeister]

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been un­usually communicative in a reserved way, and I under­stood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, pre­occupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quiv­ering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infi­nite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If per­sonality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that reg­ister earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This respon­siveness had nothing to do with that flabby impression­ ability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short­ winded elations of men.

* * *

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradi­tion that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware busi­ness that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weatherbeaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

“How do you get to West Egg Village?” he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbor­hood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was be­ginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Mæcenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all spe­cialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epi­gram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual forma­tions of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical re­semblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more ar­resting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every par­ticular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swim­ming-pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and gar­den. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gen­tleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neigh­bor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashion­able East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

this is such a good passage i love this book. a must reread.

Antinous just kind of… listens, for once. He’s been so scatterbrained with Penelope on his heels (for good reason) that he’s just.. tired. So he listens, and seems surprisingly attentive, muttering something about ‘I like this Gatsby fellow’ before nodding off.

[grichel]

current ranking of datv companion personal quests, spoilers obv

i’m not finished with the game, but i’ve gotten hero of the veilguard status with everyone except lucanis, but i feel confident judging him anyways bc whatever remains of his personal quest would have to be wildly unexpected to change my mind about it

RANKING

#1 Neve

Neve is an amazing character and her quest is pretty much perfect. The plot is compelling, the pacing is good (I don’t feel like we should be doing it with more urgency, the breaks in the quest make sense) and while it ties into the main quest by having Aelia be Venatori and servant of Elgar’nan, it’s still personal for Neve and relates to her struggle maintaining her morals while trying to effect real lasting change in a corrupt city. Both options at the end feel justifiable and realistic, neither feels like the “bad” option. The side characters are compelling, the city feels lived in (on one of the message boards I saw a flyer that said Cida Ciconia had missed a show, which indicated she was one of Aelia’s victims, and it made it feel like the plot was progressing even when we weren’t actively on it), and even though it’s taking a new angle with the noir detective vibe, it also feels appropriately “dragon age.”

#2 Davrin

Davrin and Neve are very nearly tied. The plot is excellent, but the pacing was occasionally off. Sometimes I felt like we could be doing more with more urgency—the threat to the griffons was time sensitive!—and unlike Neve’s where it felt like she was doing her own legwork in her off hours, each leg of Davrin’s quest started with “let’s check in with the wardens.” There’s nothing super wrong with that though and it’s much less tiresome than it could have been since I like the wardens as a faction and the specific warden npcs that appeared in game. It connected to the main plot as part of the elven gods spreading the blight, and it also was personal to Davrin as he struggled with what sort of caretaker he wanted to be to Assan. The highlight of the quest is that it’s very fundamentally “dragon age,” exploring the darkness and horror of the wardens and the blight. Neither DA2 and DAI really brought back the wardens in their element the way DATV has (Anders being a warden was secondary to everything else about him, and Blackwall wasn’t even a warden). On that note though, the choice at the end, while neither option was “bad,” I don’t feel compelled at all to take the griffons away from the wardens. I love the wardens and I love the hope that the griffons bring them. I know it’s explored that the wardens harmed griffons in the past and there’s a chance it could happen again because of the way the wardens are dedicated to doing anything they must to fight the blight, but as a player and long time fan, I’m so fond of the wardens that the choice was easy to make.

#3 Emmrich

Emmrich’s quest was fun and suitably personal as Emmrich struggles with his fear of death while being so close to it all the time, but it had nothing to do with the main plot at all. At this point, that’s my main critique of the Mourn Watch as a faction as well (they’re fun, but what do they do here?). It also lost points because it didn’t feel very “dragon age.” Unlike Neve’s where they’re going for a different genre but slot it into the setting seamlessly, Emmrich’s feels like it could be transposed to another universe easily. There’s nothing to tie it to any existing dragon age touchstones. It’s fun! I enjoyed the creepy necromancer mad scientist thing! But it’s not dragon age to me. It gained points at the end because I enjoyed Manfred’s sacrifice and that both options, to revive him or let him rest, felt respectful to him. I wish we had gotten more lore on what lichdom really means and some more pushback on whether it’s bad or good, why Emmrich wants it other than just his fear of death, etc. Leading up to the final choice, I saw no reason to stop Emmrich from pursuing it. Emmrich looking at Manfred and saying he doesn’t regret giving up lichdom was so well acted, I really enjoyed it, but I wish it had been more earned.

#4 Harding

I hate that I have to rank her so low because I love dwarf lore and her quest was all dwarf lore. However, it loses points because it was just dwarf lore. Other than a connection to Solas because he was the one who made the titans tranquil, it has very little to do with the main plot and it doesn’t feel very personal to Harding. Harding embracing her emotions at the end was cool, but I didn’t feel like I was even aware she was suppressing that much leading up to it. The choice at the end was also simple: of course she should remain her own person and not become a vehicle for the titan’s anger. It also felt way shorter than anyone else’s quest. When it was over, it was unexpected and kind of abrupt, but it was also the first personal quest I completed in its entirety, so it possibly just caught me off guard that I was at the part in the game where people’s personal quests were coming to an end. I loved Isana Negat and the Deep Roads and Kal-Sharok, but I got angry that those maps were only open when we were doing her quest. I rushed through Kal-Sharok when we went to see the oracle, thinking I would get to go back, and then it was closed and so I missed a lot of it, which sucks because this is literally what I have been waiting ten years for. I also think it was odd how little it was explored that Harding was a surface dwarf and had no real connection to the Stone before this. I wish she struggled with that more. All in all, I love the lore but I’m really disappointed in Harding’s character writing. It feels really sparse, and also irrelevant to the plot, which makes me sad because I love her.

#5 Taash

The early parts of Taash’s quest were entirely personal with no plot. At first, I really enjoyed exploring Taash’s struggles with their heritage and their gender, but by I think the second leg of their personal quest, I was like, “Oh, is the entire quest gonna be like this?” I said this before, but it is baffling to me that they made Taash’s struggle with their cultural heritages an either/or issue while simultaneously having an exploration of their gender being more nuanced than a simple binary. I can’t understand how anyone saw those playing out right next to each other and didn’t think they were muddying their message. I was cringing during the dinner scene with their mother when my encouragements to them to embrace the parts of Rivain’s culture that they enjoyed turned into them forcing it on their immigrant mother. It just seems like someone with a multicultural background should have been in the writer’s room for that one. Taash’s quest gets points at the end because I enjoyed the fort inside a volcano map, and their mother’s death scene was moving and well acted.

#6 Bellara

Big waste of everyone’s time in the most baffling way. No one seems to care that there’s another elven god on the loose? The pacing is bad and constantly has me like, “Shouldn’t we be more concerned about all this?” Bellara’s dead brother is alive! But he dies again at the end. Anaris is back! But he goes away at the end. We didn’t learn anything. Bellara didn’t develop as a character at all. Like what did we do and why did we do it? It gets points at the end solely for the in-fight dialogue where Rook calls Anaris a second rate loser, exactly what I’ve been thinking this entire time.

#7 Lucanis

Anything I enjoyed about this quest has been so overshadowed by my frustration with how the Crows have been presented as a faction. First of all, it’s obvious from the very beginning that Illario is behind everything. I was trying to withhold judgment on that because I thought it could still work as dramatic irony to highlight that family is Lucanis’s blind spot, but that’s not really explored. It was baffling to me that Illario left Caterina alive, but still I thought, this could work I guess to show that family is Illario’s weakness as well, but again, they don’t get into it. The plot fell apart entirely for me when Lucanis (hardened in my playthrough) only sent Illario to prison instead of killing him, and that Caterina and the other Crows not only tolerated it, but rewarded him with their most prestigious leadership position. Lucanis can make as many offhand comments in banter about the Crows infighting and house wars as he wants, but the Crows that are on screen are docile. It’s infuriating that Lucanis (hardened!!) can do something so tepid and weak in front of the leaders of all the houses, show them all that he will suffer attempts on his life without retribution, and that doesn’t ruin the reputation of House Dellamorte irreparably. I don’t even know where to start with this. After I finished this quest, I stewed about it for the entire day afterwards. I guess I haven’t finished with him because I haven’t gotten Hero of the Veilguard status yet, but the game would have to pivot hard on how they’ve portrayed the Crows to change my opinion of this quest, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.

[lakemojave]

I feel so bad that I didn't actually play resident evil 6 for my project last year. I based a lot of my opinions about it based off how wild its narrative content was and secondhand accounts about its gameplay. It's very easy to say "it's bad" just by looking at it, but playing the game itself reveals much deeper, more fundamental flaws that you don't get just watching a video essay or let's play.

Resident Evil 6 is attempting to be so many kinds of games at once, so it's actually so many kinds of bad at once. The first ten or fifteen minutes of the game are a slow crawl through dark corridors and university ballrooms; there are no enemies, just a series of tutorializing sections and thin attempts at building a tense atmosphere. It's extremely slow and dreadfully boring, which is crazy because all of this happens within seconds after shooting your best friend, the zombified president of the united states like a rabid dog.

It moves to a city in the midst of the first wave of a zombie outbreak, then a cathedral filled with traps, then a secret lab, then like three layers of medieval dungeon. The tone and genre intention of this section varies wildly, but it seems to be a repeat of the spare parts of Residents Evil one through four: first the abandoned opulent structure, then the burning city, then the gothic architecture complete with spike traps. The city section is actually really good because at this point there had been no reimagining of the Raccoon City destruction in a modern console, so the level of chaos and manic destruction at play with the return of more classic zombies to the series is extremely refreshing and fun. Then the cathedral happens and, after a pretty boring cemetery maze, there's a really good sequence of co op puzzles that harkens back to classic Resident Evil design. It's a good series of levels--the problem is that it's derivative.

It's not just derivative of it's own series, actually. For all the references to past games, Resident Evil 6 is assembled mostly from the spare parts of other popular action games from the 2010s. There's lots more mobility mechanics, way less ammo scarcity, absolute heaps of weak zombies, cover mechanics, swimming sections, and quick time event after quick time event. Combined with the artificial widescreen black bars, it's riffing off of Uncharted, Gears of War, and David Cage style design so closely. So many of the dungeon props and layouts look almost exactly like levels from Dark Souls or Skyrim, and when we get to Chris' campaign the tone is almost indistinguishable from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Is there an aspect of game design that was popular in the 2010s, or even just happened to appear in games that were popular in the 2010s? That mechanic is absolutely in Resident Evil 6.

When RE6 has an original idea, it is so patently ridiculous and unhinged that my immersion is immediately shattered and I can't possibly take the game seriously. When RE6 is borrowing an idea, it is so bland and anonymous that my immersion isn't given the respect it needs to form whatsoever. RE6 fluctuates between these two moods so repeatedly and with so little warning that experiencing the game first hand is like going to a haunted house and, instead of actually getting the proper experience, a guy in a room just beats the shit out of you. Is it scary? Technically it is, but not in the way I wanted, not in the way I enjoyed, and the experience was so painful that I could barely process what was happening.

Like all bad horror movies, if you're gonna experience Resident Evil 6 at all, I insist you do it with a friend. That is the only way to salvage the experience--to suffer with someone else.

[heliads]

I just saw that your requests are open, which is exciting! I love the Staying Undercover story you wrote for Matthias Helvar and was wondering if you would be willing to write more for him? I would love an enemies to friends to lovers story with the reader (fem or gn). The idea I have in mind is reader is a Grisha working for Pekka unwillingly (perhaps being blackmailed into it) and one of the crows thinks it would be best to get the reader on their side but for some reason not kill them entirely, and so reader works as a person on the inside to overthrow Pekka and join the crows and tends up with Matthias. You can obviously change anything you want, this is just the overall fondest I have. I love your writing!! <3

ty!! matthias for the win always

masterlist

Kaz Brekker has another trick up his sleeve. Normally, that’s a sign that Matthias should be worried. The last few times Brekker called a meeting of the inner six of them, they ended up having to lay low from the stadwatch for months. Months. Brekker argues that as the stadwatch are mostly blind anyway, they weren’t fundamentally impacted, but Matthias knows otherwise.

So yes, seeing the demjin close the door to his office behind them with the typical sadistic gleam in his eyes isn’t exactly what Matthias wants to see. It’s not that Matthias thinks Kaz will get them all killed, just that they’re about to be flung into yet another scenario in which their lives will come perilously close to being ended. It’s the miniscule gap between life and death that Brekker enjoys the most.

Matthias, contrary to popular belief, likes being alive. You wouldn’t think it from the way he keeps finding himself in terrible situations with impossible odds, but it’s true. That means he watches Kaz with a raised brow until the gang leader finally starts explaining himself, gloved fingers steepled over the crow’s head of his cane.

It’s well known that Brekker hates many of the gang leaders in the Barrel, but the one he despises most is Pekka Rollins. There’s a reason for that stemming way back, of that Matthias is certain, but Brekker refuses to elaborate to anyone except perhaps Inej Ghafa.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that Brekker’s latest plan is targeting Rollins yet again. Kaz recently happened upon some information relating to one of Pekka’s footsoldiers. Apparently Pekka hired a Grisha Inferni about a year or so ago. The circumstances weren’t right, and blackmail is the primary reason why this Grisha is staying under Pekka’s payroll.

Kaz believes that this is a loophole they can exploit. Unhappy workers are the easiest way to get a mole on your side. Brekker’s plan is to meet this Inferni and convince them to feed him information on Pekka Rollins, as much as possible until their cover is blown.

There are many things wrong with this plan, Matthias feels. Nina frowns, voicing one of his concerns. “This seems incredibly dangerous for the Inferni. They’ll be putting their life on the line, and we’ll only get them after they’ve been caught. The only thing we’ll be collecting is a corpse.”

Kaz shakes his head. “We’ll get to them before he does. I’ve devised a method of sending signals between their quarters and the Slat. If we move quickly, we’ll be able to pull them out. I don’t intend on wasting resources, Nina. Having an Inferni in our ranks is useful, even after they’re revealed as a mole.”

Inej tilts her head to the side, considering this. “Have we won over the Inferni already, or is this pure speculation?”

Kaz nods. “I spoke to her two days ago and, after some weighty consideration, she agreed. Her name is Y/N L/N, and she hates Pekka Rollins just as much as we do. That’s why she was alright with this. Pekka has Grisha hunters on his payroll too, and he’s threatening to turn Y/N over to them if she doesn’t go along with it. To make matters worse, Y/N has a young friend who came to the city with her, one who’s also Grisha, and the threat goes for them, too.”

Jesper scowls. “Every time I think the scumbag can’t get worse, Pekka goes and pulls something like this.”

The rest of the crew seem convinced, but Matthias still has some apprehensions. “So, we’re going to the trouble of trying to watch out for two strangers in the lion’s den because…?”

“Because I want an inside man,” Kaz says, and that just about settles it. 

Matthias is still getting used to this whole thing, how Brekker decides something on the drop of a hat and they all have to go along with it. Of course, it’s not all that different from taking orders from the higher-ups in the drüskelle order, but that had been something else. Matthias hadn’t realized that there was an option for him to say no. Now he knows he doesn’t have to do a damn thing, but he’s still with Brekker’s crew anyway. Figures.

In all honesty, Matthias knows that he shouldn’t have a problem with any of this. There are innocents who’ve been roped into a bad situation, this is the sort of thing that Matthias usually rises up against. It’s just different because– well, because they’re Grisha.

He thought he was over this, really he did, but Matthias can still hear the words of his old drüskelle commander rattling behind his ears, telling him to not trust a damned one of them. He doesn’t know how to shut that voice out, so he ignores it as best he can.

Soon enough, Brekker’s plan is put into motion. Y/N starts feeding them information and Kaz’s mood notably improves. One of the Crows meets up with Y/N in regularly scheduled intervals, usually Inej, and so far, the Inferni has never led them astray.

Matthias had assumed that he wouldn’t be involved in this until the time came to break Y/N out of Pekka’s hold, but one day Kaz stops by Matthias’ door in the Slat and informs him that Matthias will be meeting with the spy instead.

Matthias frowns. “What? I thought that was Inej’s job.”

Brekker’s expression is cold. “Inej is occupied. You are free. Go.”

There’s not really a whole lot he can do after that, and in the blink of an eye, Matthias finds himself stalking out of the Slat and towards a nondescript pub in the shadows of the city. The location changes each time for the Inferni to meet Inej, but he’s been provided with a booth and a hastily drawn image so as to identify them.

Matthias gets there early so he can scout out the place and make sure he’s not been followed. He sits in the corner of the booth, hands twisting around his drink, until someone slides into the seat next to him. Matthias is ready to tell them that he’s waiting for someone until she pushes her hood back and the dim lantern light of the pub reveals the face of the Inferni.

“You’re Brekker’s Fjerdan?” She asks by way of introduction.

Matthias frowns. “I have a name.”

She arches a brow. “Yeah, and it isn’t relevant. Do you want the information or not?”

Matthias gives her a sour look, which only seems to make the girl’s smile broaden. “If I decline, Brekker will tear out my lungs.”

“Of course he will,” the Inferni says gleefully. She reaches into a bag by her side and pushes a packet across the table at him. Inside are the same notes they’ve been receiving all this time. Matthias can’t help but notice that the papers are lighter than usual, signaling that she’s got less material than her previous trips.

When he points this out, a shadow crosses Y/N’s face. “I know, I know. I think Pekka’s catching on to me. He’s started concealing his important conversations, and locking up documents before I can get to them. Tell Kaz that he’s going to have to get used to less frequent meetings, I’m worried I’m going to get caught otherwise.”

Matthias feels a twinge of worry despite himself. “Do you think you’re alright to return back to his clubs?”

Y/N waves a hand dismissively. “He’s not going to murder me immediately, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m good for another few weeks of information, your source hasn’t dried up yet.”

“I’m not asking about information,” Matthias presses, “I’m asking about you. Are you going to be okay?”

She eyes him curiously. “Why do you care?”

Matthias lifts a shoulder as casually as he can. “You are trying your best. You’re not as much a monster as he is.”

“Neither are you, Matthias Helvar,” she decides.

Matthias smiles. “I thought you didn’t know my name.”

She flashes him a wicked grin in return. “I didn’t want you to feel too important.”

He laughs, although the weight of the situation quickly comes crashing back down around him. 

“Why would you be willing to do this?” Matthias asks, “Surely Pekka Rollins doesn’t take kindly to moles.”

Y/N scoffs, the sound as harsh as a Fjerdan winter. “Of course he doesn’t. He’d kill me if he ever found out.”

“So why do it?” Matthias probes cautiously.

Y/N sighs. “I don’t have a whole lot of other options. Even if I never raised a finger against Pekka, he’d still find some flaw in me and have me killed, or sell me to one of the Grisha traffickers if it better suited his interests. Pekka can’t be trusted. Kaz, though, he always honors his deals. I can count on Kaz to keep me alive.”

Brekker or death. Matthias is about to open his mouth and point out what a colossally awful way that would be to live, and then he realizes with a shudder that it’s pretty much how he lives, too. Brekker arranged to get him out of Hellgate, and it’s with Brekker’s crew that he’s running now. Without the protection of the Crows, where would Matthias go? Back to Fjerda? Absurd. He’d be hanged as a traitor in minutes.

So they both have that, then, the demjin protecting them from the noose. Not exactly the finest of thoughts, but still one thread to keep them bound together as allies rather than enemies.

“You really think you’ll be able to leave that easily? You’re still in the same city, and you’ve got his brand on your shoulder,” Matthias points out.

Y/N snarls under her breath. “I’ll burn that ink off all by myself if I have to.”

Matthias feels his eyes widen despite his best efforts to maintain a poker face. “I am certain that there are better ways to go about removing the tattoo. Don’t– don’t do that. Djel.”

The corners of Y/N’s lips quirk up in a half-smile. “Are you taking Djel’s name in vain? Goodness, Helvar, Brekker truly has ruined you. I thought drüskelle were all Grisha-hating, Djel-fearing puritans. Don’t tell me you swear, too, or all my illusions will be shattered.”

For some reason, hearing Y/N think so little of him in connection to the Fjerdan beliefs makes Matthias’ stomach turn. “We’re not all like that,” he says shortly.

“I can tell,” Y/N replies, but he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing, what she says of him. In fact, the glimmer of something in her eyes might almost be newfound respect.

They leave soon after that, out of fear that staying too long in one location might draw suspicion, but Matthias thinks about her the whole walk home, plus later that night, alone in his bed unable to sleep. How could Y/N be so certain of her own impending death yet so committed to the cause of taking Pekka down? How could any of this be worth it?

He must not be as capable of internalizing his emotions as he’d thought, because Kaz regards him suspiciously the next day when Matthias hands over Y/N’s packet of secrets. Matthias manages to excuse it away as concern that their source may be in greater danger than she mentioned, but he has no doubt that Brekker has seen through him anyway.

Still, that doesn’t stop Matthias from asking to take over Inej’s job of meeting up with Y/N the next time, and the next time, and the next. He ignores the knowing smiles, the exchanged glances. It’s easier to forget all that when he’s laughing with Y/N in some shadowy place, pretending they’re not both likely to be killed. She makes it all worth it.

Matthias’ nerves only grow more rattled the longer time passes. Every time he sees Y/N, she looks more and more uneasy. Pekka comes closer to catching on by the day. He can’t imagine what it must be like to operate under that kind of stress, knowing that you’re so close to being found out, but Y/N manages it anyway.

And then, one day, she doesn’t, and Kaz spots the warning signal displayed from Y/N’s quarters. She’s been caught, then. The Crows assemble in minutes, sprinting over to Pekka’s area of operation so as to pull Y/N out before too late. They split up, heading in different directions to canvas the location as quickly as possible.

Matthias heads up to the roof, working his way down through the floors. He hears the sound of shouting and quickly turns towards it, throwing himself into a fight without even knowing who’s in trouble. He takes down the last guard and then there she is, extinguishing an open flame on her hand as she stops the soldier trying to kill her.

Matthias can’t stop himself from letting out a sigh of relief. “Y/N.”

She looks up and Matthias marvels at the look in her eyes, the sort of overwhelming reassurance that must be present in his own expression as well. “Matthias?”

Y/N runs to him, or maybe he runs to her, or maybe both, because suddenly they go from standing on opposite sides of the corridor to being together again. Matthias embraces her easily, as he thinks he’s wanted to for quite some time. Her head tucks against his shoulder, and for some reason he feels that if he just keeps her this close forever, they will both be safe.

“Hey,” he says softly, “hey, it’s okay. You’re with me. You’re alright.”

She’s shaking, but the movements still and die away the longer he stays with her. “It’s alright,” he says again, “it’s alright, it’s alright.”

Matthias has no idea how many times he reassured her of this, or how long he stayed there, but soon enough Y/N squeezes his hand one last time and steps away from him. They still have to get back to the Slat before the plan will have fully succeeded, but the fact that both of them are alive and relatively unharmed right now is good.

The escape is easier than the break-in. Matthias guides her to the roof and then down, their footsteps quick on the uneven cobblestones of the surrounding streets. He pauses briefly to light a candle in a neighboring window, the signal they agreed upon to indicate that Y/N had been found, and then he turns back to Y/N again, the danger relatively behind them.

“Are you alright?” He asks, scanning her in search of injury.

She looks fine, and tells him that much. “They haven't caught up to me yet. I overheard Pekka telling his men to find me and bring me to him, that’s when I sent out the warning signal. I’ve been trying to hide ever since.”

Matthias breathes out slowly. It sounds terrifying, but it doesn’t surprise him that Y/N would be able to pull it off. She’s braver than any of them. “I don’t know how you managed to keep a cool head during all that. Hiding from dozens of guards couldn’t have been easy. At least you knew Kaz would send us to get you.”

“I wasn’t thinking about Kaz,” Y/N tells him slowly, “I was thinking about you. All Kaz needed from me was information, but I knew that you would fight to keep me safe. That’s what kept me focused. I knew you were out there waiting for me.”

His breath catches in his throat. There’s something she isn’t telling him, something he isn’t telling her either. He’d like to, though. No more secrets. Just them.

Kissing her is easy, actually, and it makes Matthias wonder why he’d waited this long to do it. Once again, he is struck by the overwhelming sensation that this is right, this is what he’s wanted for so long, perhaps even before he’d met her. When you’re a child, you always wonder how there could possibly be someone out there made just for you, but at last, Matthias understands. It is her. It has always been her. They are going to be safe, and they are going to be alright, and Matthias is deeply, unendingly happy.

requested by @roguemetalmaster13, i hope you enjoy!

grishaverse tag list: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @mayfieldss, @amortensie, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000, @baju69

[askfukase-flower-andfriends]

Fukase & Flower extended information:

Fukase

—————-

Full Name: Fukase Uta (Deep River Sound)

A 33.000 (33) year old trans male. He works in a freak show time to time, mainly as a sword swallower or a Jester. Goes by He/lt

Height: 7’9 (As a Human) 12-15ft (As a Beast)

He is mostly made of metal, due to various injuries, 80/20 to estimate.

- Left side of his body, Right side around his back and stomach, & Right/ Left Leg are completely mechanical.

- Right Arm, Face, and Chest, top of his head are still human, but most things that would be there, like bone, have been modified to fit with his mechanical parts.

Other Injuries & Extras: Missing two fingers on his right hand, and some scarring on his upper right arm and chest. Scattered burn marks on the right side of his face

Has a lower jaw on his neck; it's pretty useless. After connecting with his animal side he sprouted two extra fingers & eventually added two extra to his prosthetic. Deaf, does speak; however not often.

Status & Power: Fully aware of being a God, Has the power of Plasma vomit(as in one of the fundamental states of Matter), it works like the acid breath of a DeathGripper from HTTYD 3

Relationships: Brother to Yohioloid & Oliver. Raised from age 14 by Ann & Al. Friends with Rin, Len, & Gumi

Hooks up with Piko and/or Flower every so often, it's not serious in the slightest.

Has an actual interest in Teto. Takes care of Hime, Mikoto, Una, & Gachapoid. Friends with Rin & Len.

Hobbies: aside from his Freak Show job, He finds enjoyment in working with animatronics, metal prosthetics, and weaponry. This mainly was to do with himself due to being mostly robotic; a cyborg.

Likes / Dislikes :

+ Coconut Ice Cream

+ Hime, Mikoto, Una, & Gachapoid

- Entitled People, Mortals as a general + The Overlook & The moon pools

- Medical Facilities

- Orphanages

+ Night Clubs

+ Hidden pocket worlds

- Moke

Extras: His hat is sentient! He doesn't wear it as it usually just grows legs and walks itself, He calls it Mr. Hat. Point is a large, also sentient creature. She likes running off in the woods to be with her army, but always returns home at night.

———-

VFlower:

——————-

Full Name: Flower (Hana) Gaku (flower music)

A 45.000 (45) year old, Masc, Agender person. Works as a gothic florist. Specializing in the darker side of flowers and how they are put together.

Uses Its/it

Height: 9’1 (As a Human), the same as Big Al; 12 ft (as a beast)

Injuries & Extra: small scar across its snout, some of its scales on its neck and back have pieces missing or are completely missing (although they shed off, so the placement can change). Various scars out its shoulders and near its tail. Some larger scars down the stomach and back legs

Has a large, Henna tattoo on it’s neck and chest, it looks like kelp, with intricate swirls and lines.

Hyperdontia: has extra teeth in its mouth, some grow out the top of the gums and poke out of it’s mouth

Status & Power: A Sub-God- a certain god that is so disconnected from their immortality and powers that they are considered mortal, usually they fail to ever connect to their godhood or animal form, however Flower has managed to connect with its animal side though still hasn’t connected with its godhood

Relationships: Lives with its sisters (who are her other banks, so V3, Talk, & whatever the a

Last one is, I forgot ::/). In an Open, long distance relationship with dill (an Utau) & hooks up with Fukase here and there, but not often.

Friends with Piko & WALTT (another Utau)

Hobbies: Aside from its job, Flower enjoys going to the open field in the middle of the forest, usually to start large bonfires for itself. Enjoys woodworking too. Carved the logs around the fire and collects insects that it pins and hangs up

Likes/ dislikes:

It’s not entirely sure what it likes, it keeps to itself and is good at hiding its joy, although it’s believed to like

+ Large Fires

+ Carnivorous Flowers

+ Insects, particularly Dragonflies & Weevils

———

- Crowds

- Visitors

- The inner City

Extras: Has a Pet Cat, A Lykoi named Wolf. Where’s a lot of bracelets and chokers, usually with spikes or flowers

————————

// I will get around to side characters, but for now I’m just putting down the main focus point of this blog. I’m also working on full bodies and I’ll attach them here when they are finished

[marxonculture]

Personhood and Genre Fiction | My 2024 Reading Journey So Far

I’ve been working as a Library Assistant for six months now, and boy has it been a massive jolt to my love of reading. It’s hard not to be excited about digging into a book when you’re surrounded by them all day, and I credit that feeling with being responsible for my reading more books for pleasure in the first four months of 2024 than I have in the previous seven years combined. As I reach a modest milestone in my reading for the year, I wanted to reflect on what I’ve observed to be a common theme among the books that have most captured my imagination since January. With the world having been in a particularly fraught state over the last few years, and an increasingly prevalent trend of groups of people being actively dehumanised by those with power and influence, it’s been quite an emotional experience for me to discover that the books which have most captured my imagination this year have been about personhood and what defines it.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)

The first book I finished this year is one that I think about every day. Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a wonderful little novel about who we are at different times, and crucially different places, in our lives. It explores personhood through the lens of fundamental internal change; when we go through seismic changes, do we become different people or are we fundamentally the same?

Clarke uses magical realism and a meticulously well-designed alternate reality/dream world as a means of exploring the evolution of one’s own personhood, as well as an adoration of design, architecture, and place. Piranesi was invigorating for me as a reassurance that it’s okay to redefine oneself at different points in life, and that just because you’re a different person now, that doesn’t mean that the old you ceases to exist.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (1996)

Terry Pratchett is so well known for being a satirist, that it’s easy to forget how sincere and moving his work can be. After putting it off for many years, I finally started reading the Discworld books this year, and have been enjoying them immensely, and while I had a great time with the first two books in the City Watch sub-series, it wasn’t until the third entry that one of them really hit me, emotionally.

Feet of Clay is about golems (‎גּוֹלֶם). For those unfamiliar with Jewish folklore, golems are anthropomorphic clay constructs ordered to obey the commands of their master and animated via the inscription of the Hebrew word for truth on its head. Pratchett’s golems are slightly different in that they are brought to life by placing governing words inside their heads. Pratchett uses this to remarkable effect to build a story of self-ownership and self-determination. It was especially moving to me to see Jewishness used in this way – as something empowering rather than grotesque, which is a real rarity in Western fantasy writing.

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (2016)

The last book I wanted to talk about here was this second entry in Becky Chambers’ beautifully humane, space opera anthology, The Wayfarers series. A Closed and Common Orbit centres on two protagonists, one an AI learning to adapt to a life passing as a human in an illegal ‘body kit’, and the other a clone, bred for factory work, trying to help the AI make a life for herself.

As with her first book, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, what characterises Chambers’ writing is her deep love for her characters, and the way that love manifests itself in this book is nothing short of miraculous. Sidra and Pepper’s parallel journeys are not merely about convincing others of their personhood, but rather convincing themselves. A Closed and Common Orbit is about finding a way of living where you feel most like yourself, learning to feel that you deserve for your needs to be met, and accepting that your loved ones see you as a person, even in times when you don’t.

All of these books have meant a great deal to me during a time where I have had to completely re-evaluate the ways in which I see myself. Genre fiction is not necessarily where I expected to find this feeling of personhood and recognition, but it’s especially exciting to have done so. There’s nothing quite like finding deep meaning in something you have engaged with purely for entertainment, and I hope to continue to do so as the year goes on.

[drlectertho]

Hello dearest Hannibal community,

Thanks to all the peeps who are still following me after like 10ish years of more or less complete inactivity on here.

I did have a lil‘ peak now and then, looked at old posts of mine and reblogged some that didn’t feel all too cringe. Also scrolled through my feed and hannibal tags and found that actually not all too much has changed in this fandom - same humour, same love for the show, same insanity, same kind of lovely people… heck, some of you veterans from back in the day are STILL active! I very much applaud your committment! 👏🏻

I‘m actually writing this post because I thought I‘d give an update on what‘s been going on in my life in hopes that some of you also comment a wee update about themselves or make a post and tag me (and others from the community) 🫶🏻

I‘ll try and make this not too long (Spoiler: it got longer than expected):

Basically, Hannibal (@nbchannibal) fundamentally influenced the trajectory of my life.

I went to med school because of that show and got my medical degree few years ago. Never in my life thought about becoming a medical doctor until I watched Hannibal, more specifally after watching Season 3.

I‘ve always been fascinated by sciences, human anatomy, forensics, horror, the dark and obscure. But also loved arts and creative work, and for the longest time I’d wanted to make that my profession. I was planning on studying Digital Animation right up until I finished my last year of high school. At this point, I didn‘t really have a portfolio for uni application and was doubting my creative skills/potential.

When Season 3 of Hannibal aired, I‘d watched it 2 times in a row and then rewatched Hannibal all together (since have rewatched the whole series again about 3 times). I realized that I didn’t solely love the show because of the (b)romances, its story and its goriness, but because of the psychological and medical aspects of it. Really, really loved the „sassy forensics team“ and their work (even though it was very fantastical at times and surely not the most realistic portayal of forensic medicine). Suddenly, I had the epiphany of becoming a forensic pathologist. Silly me didn‘t know that meant that I’d have to do 6 years of medical school, get a medical degree and then do another 6 years of residency in forensic medicine. But applied for medical school anyways, passed the „big“ entrance test and sure enough, I fell in love with medicine.

My dream of forensic medicine was pretty much crushed right away, since I was told that there were only few residency options in the city where lived (and wanted to continue to live) and hardly ever any open positions in this niche specialty. Also job market was rather saturated - and still is.

Did a pathology internship during uni and found it very intrigueing but couldn‘t really cope with the smells, even though seeing, touching and cutting (recently) deceased bodies was no trouble at all. I then thought, maybe forensics would‘nt have worked for me anyways and abandoned the idea completely.

Last year of medical school I did an internship in psychiatry, enjoyed it, apparently did well enough and was encourage by my attending to pursue a career in that feeld. Before that internship I had again recently rewatched Hannibal, and rather unknowingly paid closer attention to the psychiatrists and psychologists portrayed in that show. Hereby became more and more fascinated by the subject of mental health and mental disorders. I was aware, however, that most psychiatrists in Hannibal almost exclusively performed some form of psychotherapy and hardly any clinical/medical psychiatry was shown.

Ultimately, I got a job at the very same psychiatric clinic I did the internship at and am still doing my residency there. I like my specialty very much, love and care for my patients deeply, and my work definitely gives me some sense of purpose. Do I feel completely fulfilled? No. But who really is, am I right?

As of late, I‘ve been entertaining the idea of forensic medicine again and changing my current specialty. I guess, I have not been able to let it go completely after all…

Anyways, did Hannibal affect your life also in some or great way as it did mine? If so, I‘d be curious to hear your stories! :)

Thanks and best wishes to those who read the whole thing or even just a small part of it. ❤️

- M.

[perexcri]

there’s nothing more cruel than to be loved by everybody but you - [byler week - day 5]

yeah so i thought this fit the secret identities thing until i wrote it and realized it uhh. isn’t quite that. so enjoy whatever this is i guess - lots of miscommunication and a fun set-up for potential enemies to lovers

also it’s my personal headcanon that Will is a music snob, so if you don’t like that then uh,,,,i guess skip this one idk

title from: wilson (expensive mistakes) by fall out boy

dedicated to: the listening party for fall out boy’s new album that i went to last week in a city an hour away from me; i came up with this stupid idea on the drive there! indie record store in [city redacted], you were very nice, and thank you for having a decent selection of poetry i could pick from :]

Don’t ask Will how this ended up being his job, because he honestly doesn’t know. One day, they had a meeting for the university’s queer artists’ zine where he was complaining about everyone’s responses to the new U2 album (yes, it sounds different from other U2 albums, but obviously if you look at the lyrical and metatextual themes of Achtung Baby, it’s still very much U2), and then BAM–suddenly he’s in charge of doing the cover art for the zine and writing music reviews.

Sure, he could probably turn it down, but nobody else will take the job.

Also, he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t do it right, because, as much as he loves this group, their music tastes are…well…not everybody has an older brother like Jonathan Byers who makes sure they grow up with proper music opinions.

So, if anything, Will does this to keep the spirit of reviewing and recommending underground artists in New York City alive for the zine, and also because he doesn’t think anybody else could do it justice, no offense to them.

But Will is loathing this job for their upcoming edition. He’s sitting in that weird liminal time between class periods where people are in the chaotic throes of rushing around or throwing their notebooks open to prepare for the lecture; his elbows are pressed into the desk that’s just a little too small, and his head is in his hands. He’s staring down at the one submission he’s been putting off for precisely three semesters, because the president of the zine said it needed to be done before they moved on to new submissions, so could you please just lower your standards for one night and go listen to them play so you can write the damn review?

The Fellowship of the Ring, the submission card reads in faded pencil. Scratched under it in the slightly-fresher ink of the zine’s president’s pen, it reads: Thursday - The Purple Hall - 8 PM.

And, God, Will wishes this show was just gonna be a live reading of the Tolkein book. It would be so much better than what he knows it actually is.

The Fellowship of the Ring is a local, up-and-coming act in the underground venues of the greater New York City area that everybody loves because they sound like Nirvana and, you guessed it, throw out Tolkein references like they’re Led Zeppelin. They’re huge on college campuses, where students pass around live-recorded tapes of their supposedly-legendary performances all the time, gushing about how even the bass sounds, the peeling shrieks of guitars, the way the vocalist wavers between grumbles and ethereal, falsetto howls. They even gush about the lyrics and how they truly capture the experiences of Western youth in these first few years of the new decade: malaise, boredom, this sense that there is no great struggle for the future left for them, only an endless drowning in comfortable excess.

Will had even seen a girl with the band’s logo tattooed on her shoulder.

Which is…fine. He guesses.

If you like shitty music, that is.

See, that’s the fundamental problem here: Will likes doing these silly little reviews for live music around New York because half the time, the music is passably decent, and even if that doesn’t work, the lyrics can make up for it. There’s so much creativity in the air, and people are doing so much with it.

Not The Fellowship of the Ring, though.

Where everybody else sees innovation, Will sees reductivity; where everybody screams about the charm of the lyrics and the pop culture references they sneak in, Will sees a demeaning pandering to an audience. Every single time he has been subjected to the squawks and out-of-tune guitars of The Fellowship, he’s spent his time thinking he would be better off to save himself the time and just listen to Nirvana’s Nevermind for the millionth time, because that’s all The Fellowship’s trying to do, anyway, and at least then Will could listen to something good.

Yeah, Will hates The Fellowship of the Ring, and now he’s squeezing his temples so hard that the letters on the submission card are beginning to swim in his vision.

“Hey!”

Thankfully, Will is saved by his very friendly, incredibly good-looking neighbor in History of the American Constitution, Mike Wheeler.

“Hey!” he says, trying to gain back the energy that seeing The Fellowship’s submission card had unwittingly drained out of him.

And honestly, seeing that flash of Mike’s smile and how the fluorescents dance in his eyes, Will feels like he has enough energy to power the sun now, even if they are going to have to sit through yet another lecture about Article II–whatever the hell that means.

“What’s got you so down?” Mike asks, head tilted to the side, some of his hair tumbling into his eyes, and all Will wants to do is push it away–

But, no, he has to have a coherent conversation right now, so he shakes his head and tries his best to return Mike’s smile. “Oh, nothing…Just something for that zine I work on.”

“Oh, yeah!” Mike snaps his fingers, causing some of the buttons on his jacket to rattle together. He always wears a leather jacket no matter the weather or the rest of his attire, and today, paired with plaid pajama bottoms, held-together-by-duct-tape converse, and a baggy Care Bears shirt, it shouldn’t work, but in Will’s eyes, it does. “I think I saw one of those around! I wanted to grab a copy, but somebody else did before I could get to it.”

“I can bring you a copy of the next issue,” Will says, then, remembering the task at hand, groans and puts his head back in his hands. “That is, if I even survive it.”

“What, are they making you skip classes for it?”

“No, worse: they’re making me listen to a band I hate.”

Mike winces. “Yikes.”

“Yeah.”

“That sucks.”

“Right?”

“Can’t you just, like…push it off?”

“I did. For three semesters.” The professor wanders in with a mumbled greeting and a steaming cup of coffee in hand, and Will lowers his voice in anticipation of the lecture beginning. “That’s why I have to do it now.”

“Maybe it would help if somebody went with you?”

Despite having flirted with each other mercilessly all semester during this one shared class of theirs, they haven’t hung out much outside of it, so to be faced with the possibility of something that could potentially be labeled as a date between them is shocking. For a moment, Will can forget about the future torment awaiting him Thursday evening at The Purple Hall’s listening stage, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, having somebody to talk to over the drone of the lazily-played guitars could make the evening slightly more bearable.

“Yeah,” Will finally says, a grin stretching across his face. “Of course. Yeah, that’d be awesome!”

Mike returns the look twofold, and one of his legs begins to bounce. “Awesome! When is it?”

As the lecture begins, Will resorts to a torn piece of notebook paper, like he’s a kid passing notes in class again to survive the boredom. He scribbles The Purple Hall - Thursday 7 PM, then hands it to Mike, who responds with a quizzical look at the paper, scratches something out, and hands it back to Will.

The Purple Hall - Thursday 7 PM 6?

Will shoots him a thumbs up, prays it wasn’t too awkward, and then folds the sheet of paper up and sticks it in his pocket.

And if he carries it around there for the rest of the week, then that’s his business alone.

---

The pros: this is one of Will’s favorite music venues, there’s several bands to look forward to tonight, and Mike seems wholly invested in the idea of this being a date, if him leaning closer and the playful hand on Will’s knee mean anything.

The cons: Will has to listen to the fucking Fellowship of the Ring in approximately ten minutes.

He’s able to put the thoughts off for the first hour. After all, The Fellowship isn’t set to perform until 8–he and Mike had met at 6 as planned, and Will has spent the first hour and a half trying to be blissfully unaware of the torturous fate awaiting him.

Even as his skin begins to crawl at the thought of having to hear those plucky, out-of-tune guitars and the lead singer screeching about the Gulf War under the guise of Star Wars references, he does feel a little settled. Mike’s fingers are surprisingly warm, and the alcohol they’ve been nursing makes his chest glow with warmth. It’s easier to laugh, to be focused solely on Mike and these wonderful, looping conversations they’ve found themselves ensnared in.

“This one’s good!” Mike half-shouts over the drum solo of the current act, consisting of just a drummer and a bassist crooning over their heady rhythms. They’re called the Jazz Squares, or something like that. Whatever.

At least they’re not The Fellowship.

“The drink or the band?” Will queries. His own head’s spinning with the beer he’s been sipping on for the better part of an hour, and he already feels lightheaded, because he’s a lightweight, and Mike’s got something to do with these pulses of courage thumping in his chest, right?

“Both!” Mike takes another long sip from his Jolly-Rancher-blue mixer. Will had asked him what was in it earlier, and all Mike had responded with was Coconut-something and a whole lot of rum!

They’ve talked about so much already–their families, their majors, their hobbies. Mike comes here a lot, he reveals, and he mentions that he plays guitar, too. He keeps it a playful secret when Will asks for more information, though: how long have you played? Do you write, too? Are you in a band, because I could put you in the zine if you wanted–

It’s a surpriseee, Mike had drawled in response, a stupid grin twisting his mouth as his fingers had vacated Will’s knee momentarily just to ruffle through Will’s hair.

As the Jazz Squares’ set finally dies down to some spotty applause (this is more of an alternative scene, after all, but a gig is a gig), Will lets out a groan, melodramatically knocking his forehead into the table, and finally drags out his notebook.

“What’s that for?” Mike asks, eyebrows high on his forehead.

“For that review I have to do,” Will grumbles.

“But isn’t that act on in, like, two hours?”

Will blinks a couple of times. He supposes he hadn’t actually told Mike which group he was here for, but he thought the fact that he originally proposed a meet-up time of 7 would have communicated enough that it was somewhere around then. “Um, no? I didn’t say anything, I guess, but I think they’re up next.”

Mike’s fingers begin to nervously tap on what remains of his electric blue potion. As his and Will’s gazes snag together for several heady seconds, he purses his lips, then throws back the rest of his drink, swallowing the last of it in just a couple of gulps.

Will slowly draws his notebook out, flipping to the page he had specifically marked The Fellowship of the Ring with a disheartened, frighteningly life-like frowny face scrawled next to it. “Is something wrong?”

Mike drags his wrist across his mouth, smearing any remaining drops of blue onto his leather jacket’s sleeve. “So this band you hate that you have to review…It’s The Fellowship of the Ring?”

“Yeah.” Will taps the top of his paper. “I didn’t say anything, but…Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“Um.”

Will quirks an eyebrow up. “I mean, do you like them? That’s fine, of course, I mean–people have different tastes and what-not. I’d just have to seriously question your judgment in all matters music-related, I guess.”

“Um,” Mike repeats, fingers now tapping a dangerously fast staccato against their bartop table. It makes the remaining beer in Will’s bottle slosh around. “Um…This is bad.”

“What? Are you a super fan or something?” Thanks to the alcohol, Will feels bold enough to scrunch his nose up with disgust. “I mean, fine, whatever. But seriously, if you want a second date, I’m gonna take you to a record store so you can hear some actually decent music. If you’re impressed by that fucking band’s reductive bullshit, you’ll be positively amazed by a group like The Clash or Smashing Pumpkins or–hell, even fucking U2–”

“Excuse me!” the MC calls over the mic; when the feedback whines, he takes a second to tap at the mic, then announces: “Calling everyone’s favorite up-and-coming group, The Fellowship of the Ring, for soundcheck–their set starts in five!”

The club erupts into raucous cheers. Will has to hide the involuntary groan of annoyance he lets out behind his hand.

Mike casts a nervous glance at Will, then pushes his chair out and looks like he’s going to walk away, the buttons on his jacket clicking together. He nearly trips over the saggy laces of his converse, and through the tears in his jeans, he almost looks like he’s shaking.

“Hey, wait!” Will says, reaching forward and grasping Mike’s wrist. It makes the other guy stop, a blush creeping up into his cheeks, and Will tries to push down his distaste for the band and lets out a sigh. “Listen, I’m sorry–I was being stupid. It’s just a band, after all. If you like them, that’s fine, and I will…” he swallows here, and it hurts, taking on this insurmountable task of trying to push his music-snob’s pride down. “I won’t make fun of you for it. I promise.”

Mike blinks a couple of times before a reassuring grin overtakes his features. “Uh…Nope. That’s okay, Will. It’s not for everyone. I wasn’t like…trying to run out on you or anything.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m still gonna be here.”

“Then why are you getting up?”

Mike points at the stage, where a drummer and bassist are setting up their instruments, their eyes scanning the room in search of their infamous guitarist and singer. “Didn’t you hear? We have soundcheck. The set starts in five.”

Will slowly nods. “Yeah. Then the next act starts, and I have to scratch down whatever notes I can think of for them, and then we can get back to our date.”

Mike stares at him for several seconds.

And then it all catches up with Will.

“Oh, shit–”

Mike’s grin turns into something playful, his eyebrows shooting up beneath his bangs. “Can’t wait to read your official review of my fucking band’s reductive bullshit!” he says with a two-fingered salute, then spins around to make his way to the stage. He’s bathed in the dim lighting of the stage, hunching over his guitar the second he straps it around his chest, and Will wonders how somebody who was brave enough to wander around in a leather jacket and a fucking Care Bears shirt and look that good could be involved in a band that’s just–

This bad, Will finishes for himself as Mike strums his first cord, its electricity shaking the walls of the club, and he begins yet another signature Fellowship song that’s nothing more than various John Hughes and horror movie quotes juxtaposed over warring drums and guitars.

Of course Will would be stupid enough to fall for the lead singer of his most-hated band in the greater New York City area.

[bright-tatters]

Tatters #22

Alice delivered paper and pen, and Piper spent an agonizing four hours helping to process the reports streaming in from Tatters and Docks. Once he had decent triage going he returned, through three locked doors, to Fortune’s cell.

Fortune had laid his sheet of paper on the little metal table. He looked at Piper without surprise or passion. “There,” he said, “I have something you’ll want to burn.”

“Give it here,” said Piper. “Is this how you entertain yourself?”

“I enjoy literature,” Fortune said mildly, standing to hand Piper the paper. “Burn it if you want, I can write it again.”

Citizens of Photia: A comfortable life under a corrupt system is one thing. A life burdened by unfair taxes, clueless representatives, and a systemic disregard for labor cannot sustain corruption for long. It must collapse, or change.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Tatters Ward, which produces twice the industry tonnage with half the resources of any other ward. I don't need to belabor the point, we've all seen the dire conditions, the law enforcement governed by the politics of unrelated wards.

I will only call it Tatters. Our own name.  Our own work. Our own pride. This is what the other Wards refuse to recognize, and it is what will stand no matter what happens to our individuals.

Tatters is the workhorse of this city. Feed it or get out of the way.

Piper’s hands were shaking. “We could shred this.”

“I have it memorized.” He was stroking the shelf with two fingers, looking shifty. When Piper obviously looked, he moved his stroking – only twice – to the wall beside the shelf.

Someone came in behind Piper. “Fortune, it’s time for your hearing.”

“Ah,” said Fortune, and turned his back to hold his hands behind. He moved like he always did, stillness to stillness with the swiftest of slides between silhouettes, like a motion picture. He only melted into ordinary movements when he was fettered. The officer opened the door, cuffed him, and escorted him past.

Fortune locked eyes with Piper and jerked his head toward the now-empty cell. Piper swallowed hard and leaned into the hallway. “Bring in a ghost scanner.”

A ghost scanner did one thing: analyze a surface, such as that of a desk, to recover the last thing written on it. It was part of the explosion of empathic technology currently roiling Photia and the wide world.

Piper bolted it to the table and ran a scan of the entire surface. He found nothing but the text Fortune had written. Then, feeling a little shaky, he turned it ninety degrees and scanned the wall.

No scan was perfect. But he got most of it.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a poor poet. I must ------ --gether better writers’ finest lines, and even that feels artificial. I can produce no t-------- -ines, though this comes to mind:

You can’t tear clothes I’ve thrown away.

And you take - ----- -- my attention instead. I hope to be more collected next time. But the only thing I regret losing is contact ---- ---. Everything else I can buy back.

I can buy anything, Concern--. And right now I don’t want to. It’s fundamentally wrong, yet I cannot disprove it. You break my logic.

I will be fr-- ------ long. I can’t know what that means for you. Inform me, if you wish.

Inform me, pl--se.

From the bottom of the heap and the depths of the prison, I remain,

--ithf--ly yours,

F

He must have written the entire thing with the end of his pen to leave the invisible psionic residue. Piper swallowed and transcribed the letter to a personal notebook, then scrawled all over the wall the same way. That would ruin it for the next scanner.

He put the scanner away and stopped against the wall, head thrown back, thinking. This wasn’t sex, only it was. This wasn’t him protecting a prisoner, only it was. It wasn’t a big part of his life, only, he couldn’t stop thinking about the lean man who wore death like a badge and strange, tenacious beauty like an amulet against his skin. Nothing but a shirt’s thickness between; how did he possess both?

He went for the front desk. This trial needed to happen quickly. Whatever play Fortune had in mind, he was needed on the streets in the shadow of the Gleaze factory. Either that or he deserved to be put away forever.

*

The hearing was in an upper level of the great golden slanted Headquarters. The judge was a permanent appointee of the Council; Fortune knew this one. More than just how to hurt her, that is.

“Mr. Fortune, you are here on one hundred counts of distribution of the illegal drug Gleaze.”

“Yes?” Fortune said mildly. He seemed to have stopped blinking.

“The prosecution has produced not one shred of evidence that you are affiliated with this operation,” said the judge.

Staring. “Quite. I never touch the stuff, myself.”

“So we can’t proceed with the counts of distribution.”

Catalina surged to her feet. “And one count of murder!”

“Madam, we don’t have the gun allegedly used to kill the victim.”

Staring. “I don’t know how I could have shot him without a gun.” Fortune stayed calm.

Catalina drew herself to her unimpressive height. “Your shit flunkies made it disappear!”

Fortune put an edge to his voice. “My entire staff was working on the evacuation. And as points of pride go, I'll back that one all my days.”

“Kill fifty people, but at least they all learned to cooperate first. Bravo. Bravissimo.”

The judge rang the deep-voiced bell beside his desk. “In the absence of evidence, I must release Mr. Fortune. The court has spoken.”

Fortune nodded, promising more money where the first came from.

“I can escalate this to the Council,” snarled Catalina.

“We have an emergency,” said Fortune. “Send an officer with me if you must, but let me help my people.”

“Your only people is yourself.”

“How many lives would you like to stake on that? Lady Reinaldo, from here the only change we can have between us is improvement. I hope we can smooth over any past tensions.”

Catalina’s eyes blazed. “You're an animal, ‘Fortune.’”

“Current tensions, too. Your choice.”

“I have to help the next Ward over. The one you’re poisoning.”

Fortune lost patience. “Ah, yes. Working as hard as you've worked all your life for your advantages.”

Catalina’s voice dropped half an octave. Husky and furious, she said “Bow.”

“Of course, madam. That'll prove something.” He made an ironic, deep bow, with a flourish of his hand. On the way back up he made insolent eye contact. “Happy?”

“Piper,” said Catalina, “go with him. Make a note of any further law-breaking.”

“Of course, my lady.” Fortune really had no idea which way Piper would jump on this. Loyalty to one’s weird obsession might pale before loyalty to the city. The loyalty he had professed openly, when Fortune was trying to figure out whether to trust him.

Damn the city. Fortune had to save Tatters.