#mostly because in a world without the death note this would continue into perpetuity until light either succeeds with the hammers

[arisenreborn]

Okay here's my outline for the gist of how Olivia and Emrys's different cycles go, without getting too into the nitty gritty details. Mostly just how they end. Spoilers for sure and big gratuitous headcanons of course. <3

CYCLE 1: 

The Bad Ending. Emrys goes ‘purgener mode’ in the Unmoored World, mostly kills Olivia*, and then proceeds to wander through other worlds until killed. Time restarts and loops back for them. 

(*I think she was kept very slightly alive, the tiny thread of her remaining life 'elongated' by being fused into a dragons heart, but obv in a not very pleasant way or sense, and for a blessing she wouldn't have been very aware of it.)

CYCLE 2: 

‘Dream’, or False Cycle. This is a really warped, distorted cycle. It happens, but even more outside the typical parameters of the world than usual. It's a result of being the ‘bridge’ dragon!Emrys created, connecting the failure of the first cycle to a true, renewed attempt in the third cycle after a fashion. 

(Basically, he's creating the parameters for the time loop, using his connection to the Brine/greater powers via dragonsplague. The implications here are pretty big but we won't see more of that until the True Ending.)

Emrys is the Arisen, Olivia (fittingly after her death, an ‘empty vessel’) is his pawn.. It ends with the bittersweet victory of Pawn!Olivia sacrificing her newly realized will, prompting Emrys to realize this isn't 'how things should be', and the world loops back again.

CYCLE 3:

The Unmoored World goes very differently. Emrys seemingly overcomes the dragonsplague to help her defeat the Pathfinder Dragon, Olivia disappears for several months after the final battle. When they find her she has none of her memories, and it takes over a year for them to finally start to return - whereupon she is officially made Sovran. 

It’s a good, happy ending - until many years later their son, Idris, is made the new Arisen. They realize that while they may have gotten rid of the Pathfinder and Brine, the Dragon’s Dogma itself remains. When their son tragically perishes, time loops back once more.

CYCLE 4: 

The Final Cycle, The True Ending (Until I start getting more bright ideas.) I like to think the Pathfinder would be slightly more of a threat here -when- they realize they were overcome before, and were only returned to their ‘rightful place’ by… means unknown even to them. 

Ultimately a new order is created. Emrys ascends up the dragon ladder, overcoming dragonsplague and subsuming the Pathfinder/Brine. He essentially becomes a new class of dragon, holding that role in perpetuity, with Olivia as Sovran and Seneschal. 

Basically they become living gods and re-define the Dragon’s Dogma. 😌 (And they have their kids later and Idris never has to become Arisen.)

Notes!

Cycle 2:

It's almost dream-like/nightmarish in the way I imagine it is, yes, close enough to the basic DD2 story experience, but Emrys's actual perception of things is often skewed. His personal memories don't always add up, essentially, because they were cobbled together 'on the spot'. Basically he didn't actually 'exist in the world as a human' in the history leading up to him awakening at the excavation site when time looped back - he’d been a pawn up until that point. The chaotic result of Cycle 1’s ending and him trying to patch things back together, trying to ‘fix Olivia’, but ‘Olivia’ being ‘gone’ resulted in him getting slotted into the role of Arisen and a haphazard backstory shifting into place between the fell curse of amnesia.  It doesn’t all exactly make ‘sense’ because I just want to be able to slap an Arisen!Emrys cycle in there and it’s just inherently not right on any level.

Cycle 3 has the most alternative endings that are genuine, AU endings, that don't really fit in the scheme of continuity... but they're out there. 😂

The Neutral Ending. After several bad turns with Dragonsplague, Godsway, and dealing with Olivia’s brother, he begs her to give up her charge and simply leave with him. Though reluctant, she eventually agrees. They live out their days, sometimes avoiding and other times assisting new Arisen. The Happy Ending. Despite their son becoming Arisen, he later manages to truly break and end the cycle, and all is well. Some of it has overlapping plot points with the True Ending, but with Idris playing a more central role. It’s likely in this one Olivia and Emrys would eventually grow old together.

[windsofcourage]

FRUITY HC PROMPTS / @hypnoticallycaucasian / ACCEPTING .

🍎  :    how stable is my muse’s mental health?  have they been diagnosed with any mental illnesses and  /  or conditions?  do they have any undiagnosed mental illnesses and  /  or conditions?  do they or should they attend therapy?  

||. WELL , Link sure does have retrograde amnesia. . . . I'm not kidding about that diagnosis , and he definitely should go to therapy,but to actually answer the question : Link ...exists on a perpetual on a scale, and it always depends on "what time period of Link are you asking about", because the answer will change depending on what he does and doesn't remember.

Link before the Calamity (specifically: before the sword) would have been relatively stable. Outside of being a teenage boy with an extreme sense of duty and pressure to perform, he wouldn't have to contend with much. Healthy home, healthy mindsets, healthy life. It's when he pulled the sword and began to shut his emotions down to be a "reliable hero" that some problems would have begun to manifest. In my headcanon : dissociative episodes (+dissociative amneisa &. subsequent fugue) run congruently with his rising stress levels , and are a related but separate issue to his originally-self-imposed selective mutism.

Link is a slow emotional processor. He thinks through his emotions and takes time to sort them out. (Mostly because he really doesn't get bothered by a whole lot.) But when he's "on duty" or otherwise needed... he doesn't feel himself allowed to take the time to sort it out. Not during, and often not afterwards until well later, either. And then only when he's on his own. In Link's world, it's act first, think (and feel) later. ESPECIALLY when all eyes are on him.

At some point in his development into "Knight Link" (which imo was cemented well before he was actually appointed as Zelda's personal knight), Link's solution to a wealth of emotion without any time to process it all was to focus solely on the physical task at hand, whatever that may be. It ... doesn't shut down the emotion spurring the stress... but he can act. He can do something to stave it all off or fix it while it's happening. Face it head on, and quickly. Unfortunately ... even this isn't always possible in his profession. And this mind vs. heart endeavor is a taxing one. As such, if Link is unable to tackle the issue and fix it, he will rapidly begin to deteriorate into a dissociative episode. Specifically dealing with depersonalization. If the stress continues, Link has a tendency to completely emotionally/mentally black out during these periods. (aka: dissociative amnesia). He'll either seem to be completely spacing out, or completely zeroed in on a task from the outside looking in. (It's caused problems and some serious one-sided arguments with his mother before.)

In some conjunction with this, canonically, Link has been known to voice his inner thoughts and feelings less and less over time. By the time he was appointed to Zelda, it's noted that he barely spoke at all. While he is entirely capable of speech, when he undergoes high stress levels, it can become difficult for him to find the words to voice himself freely. (Now, it is worth nothing that Link is naturally a pretty quiet individual (imo even his voice is on the naturally softer side anyways). Link not talking does not automatically mean he's stressed out. But sometimes there is an inherent inability to speak even if he wanted to.)

All of this is true of Amnesia/Post!Calamity Link, although the triggers are different. Post!Calamity Link struggles a lot more often with depersonalization, derealization and dissociative amnesia + fugue, especially the more he comes to remember his/Hyrule's past. Part of that is due to stress, part of is trauma, and part of it is from just barely cheating death/the reincarnation cycle through the Shrine of Resurrection.

[im-just-a-random-fandom-girl]

trying to articulate my frustrations with Marvel’s treatment of female characters and characters of color

Hi, hello, hola, bonjour. I've been having a lot of thoughts about Marvel’s lack of diversity and of how they treat minority characters, so I'm taking a page out of Luisa’s (@its-tortle) book and just making a long, rambley post to get it all out.

Please bear with me while I try to encapsulate all of my frustration within the limitations of English language.

(ALSO, I'm white. I’m Spanish-American, but I do not have the ability to speak for fans of color and the other grievances they have. This post is just a combination of my own thoughts and what I've heard other people say on Tumblr, in YouTube videos, in articles etc.)

Now that we've had over week to collect ourselves after the WandaVision finale, because it was such a tearjerker and the end of a true masterpiece of a show, we really need to talk about how Marvel treats their their characters of color and female characters. I'll specifically be looking at Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, and Monica Rambeau.

Let's start with Sam.

Until Monica Rambeau became Photon just a few weeks ago in WandaVision, Sam was THE ONLY Black superhero in the MCU.

He first appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier 7 years ago in 2014, and he's been in 4 movies since then (not counting the post-credits of Ant-Man).

Let's see what we know about Sam in the MCU:

He was a pararescue airman in the U.S. Airforce

His wing-man, Riley, died in combat, prompting him to leave active duty

He works at the VA to help other veterans adjust to civilian life

That's it. This is all we know about his backstory, separate from Captain America. However, the MCU decided to include these parts of his backstory, (and exclude others) because they make him a better supporting character to Steve.

Sam's a vet - so is Steve. They have the same, early-morning run routine that alludes to strict military training. Steve is still new to the future and hardly knows or approaches anyone, but Sam is wearing his VA sweatshirt, so there's some sense of connection, one that is furthered when they talk about their beds being too soft. Sam is someone who can understand him, aside from being a super soldier.

Riley, Sam's wingman, died in combat - Hmm, haven't heard that one befo - oh, wait. *Bucky waves from the abyss of the Alps*. Yeah.

I'm not saying that these connections are bad, in fact, I think the opposite. In terms of storyline, these connections are incredibly important for their friendship. Steve is lost and alone in the future. No one he knows cares about him for any reason other than the fact that he's a super soldier, nor can he relate to any of those people on any level. Sam just fits. He's funny and kind and although they are 60 years apart in age, he can, to some extent, understand what Steve is going through in a way they no one else can.

But for the last 7 years in the MCU, all he's been is Steve's supportive friend.

Almost immediately after meeting Steve, Sam is dragged into an end-of-the-world battle. He readily agrees to put his life on the line to fight by Captain America's side. After SHIELD falls, Sam gives up his life for 2 years to help Steve find Bucky. When they find him, Sam, without a second thought, becomes an international fugitive to protect Bucky and Steve.

I mean, he practically says that he lives in Steve's shadow himself: 

"Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower."

Who does all this? Seriously? Sam is also a recovering vet. He, in theory, has a life, a family, a job, his own mental well-being to consider, but he immediately gives it all up to help Captain America, to follow in his shadow, to be his back-up and support in every battle. Marvel wrote him as a 2D character that lacks his own identity and agency.

Sam deserves his own storyline; he deserves to exist outside the orbit of Steve Rogers.

What Mackie has been able to do with the character is astounding. He took Sam off the page and truly brought him to life, turning him into a beloved character. I'm ecstatic that both Mackie and Sam finally (hopefully) get their time to shine in TFATWS, but it should have happened WAY sooner. Marvel has continuously overlooked Mackie, despite how much he brings to the movies and despite the significance of Sam as the only Black superhero. It's just so clear that they do not care about representation.

(And let's not start with the whole "Bucky should be Captain America" thing, thanks)

Next, let's talk about Natasha.

Nat has been in the MCU for 11 years, starting with Iron Man 2 in 2010. She was heavily featured in an additional 6 MCU movies (not including small cameos/post-credit sequences). She's one of the few female superheroes in the MCU, and the only one that's been there since the beginning. Nat was the only female superhero for 4 years until Gamora appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Let's see what we know about Natasha's history:

She's a former KGB operative and assassin, trained in the Red Room project

When she was a part of the Red Room, she was sterilized

Clint Barton got her out of the Red Room and converted her to a SHIELD agent

THAT'S IT. The second point is actually nauseating because this is what she says to Banner when we learn about her infertility in Age of Ultron:

"They sterilize you. It’s efficient. One less thing to worry about, the one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier — even killing. You still think you’re the only monster on the team?"

Like, actually, what the fuck? I remember watching this scene and having to rewind because I thought I mis-heard what she said. In truth, Natasha is probably referring to the terrible things she was forced to do as a KGB operative are what make her a "monster," but why in the world would they include this anecdote here?? It's just so distasteful and disgusting! It makes it seem like her infertility is what makes her a monster, perpetuating the misogynistic belief that the center of a woman's identity and purpose is to have children.

As Vox says in this article, the subject of Nat's infertility 

"rears its head sub-textually when Black Widow sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone. [...] It’s reasonable for Natasha to make the calculation that Clint’s kids deserve to have a dad when they come back to life after the Avengers complete their “time heist.” But because of that Ultron plot, there’s also an insidious implication that Natasha’s infertility renders Black Widow just a little bit more disposable than the rest of her teammates."

Furthermore, Nat's death in Endgame serves for nothing more than motivation for the other characters working in the time heist, WHICH ARE ALL MALE. Even then, the other characters talk about her death briefly (in a mostly unaffected manner), and by the end of the movie, she's been pretty much forgotten about,  completely overshadowed by Tony Stark.

I don't want to say that Nat shouldn't have died in Endgame. It caused me so much heartache and emotional pain, but I truly believe it was a great way to end her arc. CinemaWins on YouTube put it best:

"She needed to save her family, Clint included, finally wiping the red from her ledger. So much of her jouney in the MCU was trying to find her purpose, figure out which side she was on, and she finally feels like she's found it, just in time to die for it. 

"It's not wrong to feel cheated by her death, [but I think] she deserved this moment because of it's importance."

She says it in the movie: 

"I used to have nothing, and then I got this. This family. And I was better because of it."

Nat shouldn't have to die, but it's on her terms, and she is absolutely ready for it. Saving her chosen family... that is her purpose.

But altogether, over the course of the MCU, Natasha was cheated out of getting the storyline she deserved. Like Sam, she was relegated to the position of the supportive friend of Steve, but also of Bruce and Clint. For the audience, her identity is tied to this role that she plays. The identity and motivations she has independent from these other characters, her history, is skimmed over, and treated with immense disrespect.

It took 11 years, but it is thrilling that Scarlett Johansson finally gets to be the start of her own Marvel movie. There is no way that Black Widow will be able to completely make up for her and Natasha's mistreatment by the MCU, but I hope it will at least bring us some closure and allow us to have a better understanding of Nat's history and who she is away from the other Avengers.

Last, but certainly not least (despite what WandaVision may have you believe) is Monica Rambeau.

I spoke about this last week after posting about this review of the show, but it bears repeating.

Monica is a new character. You'd hope that, after 11 years of extremely limited diversity in the MCU, much to the dismay of fans worldwide, and after recognizing this and creating a movie with a cast like The Eternals, Marvel would try to get their shit together across the board.

Nope!

Monica was seriously the token diversity character of the show. It seemed like they would give her more depth after the episode during which they flashed back to the her during and after the snap, losing her mother, and seeing a little bit of what she's done as an adult since Captain Marvel, but that ended up being the most we got.

But why? Monica literally became a SUPERHERO. She became Photon! She deserved a much greater role in the show, especially in the finale, where she instead had maybe 5 lines and just stopped some bullets for about 30 seconds.

As the review I linked says, 

“There are so many black writers, fans, and critics noting how Monica got relegated to a complete lack relegated to meaningless best friend protector lacking in their own self agency and story except for making a shoehorned comparison of grief.”

Marvel made the same, bull-headed mistake that they made with Sam with Monica!

Let's do this again. Monica was snapped away for 5 years, and when she was snapped back, she learned that her mother had died. Losing someone you love and having the whole process of mourning and pain be complicated by the snap? What an interesti- oh wait. *Vision phases his head through the wall with a smile*

The only reason we got this backstory was because it made her a more sympathetic character towards Wanda. Her understanding of what Wanda is going through allows her to be the catalyst in the creation of the ideological fork in the road between herself, Darcy and Woo, who see Wanda as a victim of grief and loss, and Hayward and the rest of SHIELD, who see her as a dangerous threat.

How do you make the same, major mistake that you've been making for the past 7 years again? Guess what? You don't! Maybe it's not intentional, but Marvel, again, clearly doesn’t care enough about their characters of color to consider the roles they relegate them to in the MCU, realize what they've been doing is harmful, and then change it.

Hopefully, they will not continue to treat Monica this way and will remedy this in the next Captain Marvel.

In conclusion: MARVEL GAVE A FUCKING ROBOT AN ACTUAL ORIGIN STORY, A RELATIONSHIP AND MORE INDEPENDENCE THAN ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS.

But in all seriousness, Marvel needs to be help accountable for how they treat women and their characters of color in the MCU. I just looked at 3, but you could also make a similar argument about Rhodey, Hope van Dyne and Valkyrie, as well as Jane Foster, MJ, and Ned, although they are supporting characters and not superheroes. And I'm sure there are many others. Marvel (and Disney!!) has had an awful track-record, and change is long overdue.

[itmighthavebeenintentional]

Every Now and Then - Chapter 5

Summary: “It’s a simple case of not enough versus taking what you can get. Sometimes she sees him for a day or two, then not again for almost half a year.” Relationships are hard. When one person is a world-wide superstar and both people are idiots, they get that much harder. They both take what they can get, but eventually that may not be enough.

Warnings: Two large dollops of smut, a half-cup of angst divided, several pinches of language, dash of loneliness, and a good sprinkle of lack of communication. Fold ingredients together gently, bake at 200c fan for 20 minutes, then serve piping hot from the oven.

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Author’s Note: So many, many thanks to @glassjacket and @thoughtslikeaminefield for endless cheers and edits and more cheers. I love you both. Thank you to @there-must-be-a-lock for the lovely image (and all the many wonderful choices you gave me to pick from). Please excuse my slang terms if I got them wrong. I did a lot of internet research but was too self-conscious to ask an actual British person for advice.

In case you missed it: Chapter 4 ItMightHaveBeenIntentional’s Masterlist

…

Every Now and Then

Chapter 5

They have an agreement of honesty and disclosure but as few outside personal details as possible. She gets all the information she honestly needs about his love life from the tabloid press, and she answers any questions he has about anyone she bothers to date in his absence, though his questions are near to non-existent. As are her other dates, to be honest. It’s impossible to find anyone that measures up to him in his absence, and she’s mostly given up trying.

She doesn’t see him for the whole of one winter and then only sporadically through the spring. Then the internet and tabloids explode over videos of him dancing and kissing and all manner of things she honestly does not want to see, and she thinks…

Well, she doesn’t know what to think. Jealousy, obviously. Disappointment. A deep, unexpected emptiness. But really, what did she expect? They aren’t married. They aren’t dating or really even committed. They certainly can’t have an official relationship. She has no claim and should really have no expectations.

She does her best to avoid tabloids, to turn the other way at the market when she does her shopping, and she avoids all but the most necessary uses of the internet. She buries herself in work and her friends and family and continues on with her life, just as they both always say they should when they aren’t together.

Because they are very obviously, very much not together.

And, yet, she misses him all the same.

When the “news” of his break-up hits, she refuses to allow herself to be glad. He’s always wanted someone he can be with publicly, have a real, open life with, and she will not hope for or be excited by the prospect that he has lost something so important to him.

And, yet, she listens for his call all the same.

It doesn’t come.

Autumn has firmly set in and is toeing the line with winter. She is in for the evening, too tired to go out with her friends, feeling just melancholy enough to let herself sulk into a mug of hot chocolate as she surfs shit television, wrapped in giant cardigan, sweatpants, and a fleece blanket to boot. Her flat is conspicuously empty of him tonight, and she feels his absence in every fiber of her being.

“Fucking pathetic, ridiculous, and absolutely stupid.”

She groans and finishes her scalding drink in one go, heaving herself off the sofa with the intention of making another one with extra whipped cream, when the door buzzer goes off unexpectedly. She stares at it, perplexed. It’s too late for deliveries, and most of her mates are off on a mini holiday that she didn’t feel up to joining. No one should be coming over.

The buzzing stops before she can answer, and she waits for a moment, staring hard at the box mounted in the wall. Maybe there was a short in one of the wires. There’s a long minute of silence before she finally shrugs and turns to the kitchen. She’s just pulling the milk out of the fridge when a short, definitive series of knocks comes from the door.

He’s just as tall as she remembered, but he seems a bit deflated as he stands in her doorway, a ridiculous hat on his head, thick sweater obscuring the sharp edges of his body, looking as unlike himself as she’s seen in a long time. She steps back automatically to let him in, but he hesitates, his eyes nervous and sad behind his thick, black-framed glasses. She knows what he’s waiting for, but, as much as it pains her to pain him, part of her is the barest hint of vindictive tonight, and she needs to hear him say it.

“I missed you.”

She waits.

“It was too long.”

Yes, it was.

“I won’t apologize, because you told me not to, but I…”

She cuts him off with a sharp shake of her head. “Try again.”

“I tried, she and I both tried, and it didn’t work. I didn’t want to make you my rebound, so I waited until I thought I was settled again. I should have called, at least checked in, but I didn’t want you to think...I didn’t know what you would say, and I’m afraid I was a bit of a coward. That’s why I came instead of calling first tonight. I was afraid you’d hang up. And then I buzzed, and you didn’t answer, and one of your neighbors was coming in and didn’t recognize me, so I thought...I just wanted to see…”

She gives him one more chance, knowing instinctively he’ll get it right this time.

“I just wanted you.”

There it is.

...

“Where did you even get that ridiculous hat?” she asks him later, tilting the accessory in question over her forehead as she lounges across his lap. He leans back against the wall behind her bed, hands folded behind his head, watching her with a faint smile of amusement lighting his face.

In all those tabloids she hasn’t looked at even a little (not once, not at all) while he was gone, she definitely did not notice how little he was smiling. And all those interviews she didn’t watch on the internet. Or read about on the gossip sites.

“I’ll have you know someone told me I look rakish and edgy in that hat.”

“But how does it even fit over all that hair? Really, darling, you’re getting quite shaggy.” She turns to face him, kneeling with her legs on either side of his thighs. Her voice, though teasing, is lower and quieter than normal, and she still feels a little raw around the edges.

She needs to reassure herself he’s really here and not some desperate, late night fantasy conjured up by her loneliness. Her fingertips trace over the faint lines around the corners of his eyes, the ones that deepen so beautifully when he smiles. She runs her fingernails lightly through his beard, ghosts a faint touch over his lips, looking everywhere on his face but still managing to avoid his eyes.

“Tell me.” It’s a request, and she knows it, but they have an agreement, and she feels compelled to answer.

“I was jealous, more than I want to admit. And sad. And lonely. And everything I’d imagine you felt after you broke up with her, as well.”

“You have nothing to be jealous over, you’re so much-”

“Shut up, you great git.” But there’s no sting to her words. “I don’t want to be compared to her, even if it’s favorably. I’d never believe you, anyway. You asked, I answered. I missed you, I hated every mention of the two of you together, and I had every vitriolic thought conceivable, none of which I will ever let reach your ears no matter how much you convince me I need to be open and honest and blah blah blah about my feelings.”

“But you can tell me, you know.”

“I can, but I don’t want to. First, I am done to death with your ex-girlfriend and would love nothing more than to never think of her again. Second, I have gone nearly eight months without a single stupid Shakespeare recitation or dramatic reenactment of my favorite chef, so if you aren’t going to put your tongue to better use, go get that recipe book and get to reading.”

“Darling, I don’t need a recipe book anymore. As the good lady herself said, ‘Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again and can take off on your own.’ I think my tongue can be put to much better use pleasing you without resorting to recipes.”

…

She watches him silently from the sofa again, her feet encased in thick, cozy socks and fingers wrapped around her perpetual morning coffee mug, as he sips his tea and scans the newspaper. The sun slips a little higher in the sky, hitting his ridiculous halo of hair in a burst of bronze, and a knot in her chest she didn’t even know was there loosens suddenly. He looks up at that moment, as if sensing the change, and their eyes lock in one of those silent looks they’ve shared so very often. She feels the sting of tears, but she fights them. Yes, they agreed to honesty between them, but there is honesty and then there is idiocy.

“You’re a terrible arse, you know that? The worst kind, and you know I can’t bear the sight you.”

His smile, though sad and knowing, is entirely genuine when he gathers her into his arms and buries his face in the crook of her neck.

“I never claimed to be otherwise, darling, and I can’t stand you, either.”

...

The End

[xaibaugrove]

An Analysis of Ellie

In honor of The Last Of Us Day, I’m finally gonna drag out this headcanon I’ve had in my drafts forever. If you choose to read this, good luck because it’s a long time. 

Of course, SPOILERS AHEAD. 

So, this all started with me thinking about how Ellie has suffered from survivor’s guilt ever since she discovered her immunity, when she was meant to die with her girlfriend/best friend Riley. 

In that moment, Ellie had already embraced death and wanted to share it with her loved one, but that was robbed from her. She continued to live while forced to watch who might have been the first person she ever loved turn from infection. Ellie had no explanation for why that gift of immunity had been given to her. She had that gift thrust upon her by forces outside of her control. Ellie had to contend with her new existence as someone immune to the infection that had torn apart Earth’s reality, trapped in a paradox as a young teenage girl in a post apocalyptic world, until Marlene relieved her of that pressure by giving her life meaning, by giving purpose to her immunity and bestowing an important identity upon her: the savior of the human race.

Before all that, Ellie had always been just a number. She was just an orphan kid in a sea of other faceless, nameless kids in a military boarding school, without a future or special kind of destiny in a bleak world without any real meaning. Suddenly, she was a savior for all humanity and tasked with the tremendous responsibility of staying alive. She had to contend with her life having more value than others, seeing people sacrificing themselves over and over again, for her, when she had lived as a nobody for all her life until that point when everything changed.

I can imagine that that was a lot for Ellie to deal with as a teenager, a key developmental time in her life when she is just learning who she is as a person. A lot of her identity was based on not having an identity. Being trained and destined to be a nameless soldier. So when that identity was called into question, when she was smacked in the face with immunity to a virus that killed her best friend and numerous people on the planet, she needed the absurdity of her existence to be reigned in by her new title of savior of the human race.

During her journey with Joel, while the player mostly experienced the story and struggle of Joel, Ellie was struggling with her own internal issues as the secondary character. She mainly dealt with the loss of her innocence but she also still carried within her a crippling survivor’s guilt. This is very apparent after the death of Tess. In that pivotal scene in Part 1, Tess made it abundantly clear that the only reason why she was sacrificing herself was because of Ellie’s immunity, to the point of physically grabbing Ellie by the arm and pointing to the point of infection, relegating Ellie to just her immunity. Of course it wasn’t Tess’s intention to do that, but one can only wonder how Ellie absorbed that moment, another moment that helped her in defining herself. Tess wasn’t risking her life to save Ellie the person. She sacrificed herself for the immunity, the potential cure Ellie carried within her. 

This assisted Ellie in defining herself by her immunity. Instead of thinking about herself and how she related to the world around her with all the contradictions of her childhood, and the relationships she formed with Joel and Sam, the people in that world, it was easier to just soldier through life with the sole goal of fulfilling her destiny. Saving the human race.

Then came the turning point in her life, when her identity was stripped from her by the very person she had come to trust and love the most.

In a way, Ellie had her autonomy taken from her by Joel and had to come to grips with that, the fact that Joel loved her and yet, hurt her deeply as a result of that love, without truly acknowledging it. In making this ultimate decision about her life for her, Joel triggered her survivor’s guilt and Ellie had no way of expressing it, 1. Because Joel lied to her about the situation and forced the conversation to be buried in that lie, and 2. Because even if she gathered the courage to confront him about the lie, she didn’t really have the cognitive ability at the time to express herself fully, to tell him exactly what was wrong with it. And maybe on some level, she didn’t really want to have the conversation and finally clarify the unspoken truth. If she did initiate the conversation, how could she be angry at him when his defense is that he did what he did out of love? What defense would an average teenager have against a parent making that statement in one of many common situations that could occur in normal settings?

Because of the decision that Joel made, he was able to be content with his surrogate daughter, living his best life in a way, while Ellie was devastated in the aftermath. And if he did notice her inner turmoil, he never addressed it. She was probably subtly carrying around that guilt with her for years. It might have even bothered her or made her hesitant to indulge in the many positive aspects of being alive: developing friendships, romantic relationships, normal childhood things. It wasn’t until Ellie was allowed to stew on it, contemplate everything and allow the guilt to fester within her that she was able to finally muster up the courage to have that difficult conversation with Joel.

In yet another pivotal scene, this time in Part 2, she gave him another chance to confess to what she suspected was a lie for multiple years when she was met with another trigger of her survivor’s guilt, during the reluctant excursion she embarked upon with Joel in search of strings for the guitar he made for her. In that scene, she questions him, counters his excuses and challenges him. Ellie gave Joel the chance to be honest with her. And his choice was to dig his heels in deeper, lying to her face once again. When watching Ellie’s expressions after Joel silenced her protests, so much can be seen in the way she looks at him for a moment.

She looks at him and thinks of how many things he has done to make her happy, out of love for her, and the immense contradiction she feels with those acts of love when compared to the greatest pain he inadvertently inflicted on her as well as the continuation of that pain through him perpetuating the lie. She gave him another chance and he betrayed her trust again. When Ellie looks away from Joel, her expression then reveals her innermost thoughts. Her eyes search the void between them to see that Joel will never admit to the lie and the only way for her to reinforce what she believes is the real truth is for her to seek out the answers herself. So she does.

When he did finally confess to everything, it broke her with not only how indifferent he was to it, but how he had destroyed any chance she could have of fulfilling her purpose. It possibly even reaffirmed the suspicions in the back of her mind that questioned his love for her due to how much he had hurt her without apologizing even once for it and how much he had taken from her in the process. The validity of all their past interactions were suddenly called into question as well, because although Joel did those things to make Ellie happy, every happy moment was always undercut by the tremendous amount of guilt she carried that outweighed the happier moments for her as her entire life was worthless to her, from the moment Joel removed her from that hospital.

After that revelation, her sense of self was thrown into limbo. Ellie severed her relationship with Joel and went back to Jackson with no idea of how to truly carry on with her life and live with herself after that. In order to appease herself in some way, she regained some type of control in navigating their relationship from that point on. Before, their relationship hinged entirely on how Joel wanted to interact with her, with him approaching her to progress their father-daughter relationship after he removed her agency by making choices for her. Post their argument at St. Mary’s, it’s important to note that Ellie assumed control and eliminated that progression entirely. A consolation prize, a reclamation of her agency in life. But it was never enough.

Regardless, things continued on like that for some time, but then something happened that shifted the trajectory of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. On a night when Ellie attended a party, she happened to find herself possibly feeling grateful for being alive when her longtime best friend expressed interest in her and made an advance toward her. 

After Joel intervened in a conflict between her and a dumbass bigot, she angrily went to confront him. She continued to exercise her control in their relationship by coming down hard on him. Her anger about everything was very apparent during their confrontation later that night and one can see that she still felt like her life was technically meaningless without her death for the sake of a cure for the salvation of the human race. During that scene she finally expresses exactly how she feels, what she hadn’t been able to articulate for years.

It’s important to note that before she says any of that, Joel disarms her. Joel asked her about the simplest of things, if Dina was her girlfriend. Then he placed an importance on her existence, by saying that Dina would be lucky to have her, which I believe Ellie thought about for a split second. She ruminated on her feelings, on how a potential romantic relationship with Dina made her feel happy to be alive, as it wouldn’t have been possible if she had died in the hospital. And this thought, that Joel could have been right to save her, that she could possibly agree with him, caused her survivor’s guilt to spiral and she lashed out at him with all the emotions she felt since he first agreed to smuggle her across the country years ago.

Then, in a turning point in their dynamic, Joel is finally forthright with her when he responds to her frustration by stating that he would do it all over again. As a result, for the first time ever, Ellie feels as though she can finally understand his motivations and the validity of his love for her. In his honesty, he tells her that her life does have value to him, even if she can’t see that herself. And although she will never forgive him for his transgression or fully understand it because she doesn’t see her own value as a person aside from the potential cure she carries within herself along with her immunity, she realizes that she can’t stop herself from wanting... From wanting to live, from wanting to experience the joys of life, wanting to just be human. Joel introduces a new purpose to her life, to simply exist without purpose and be herself and find value in her life as just a person living it. She can’t erase the past and change Joel’s choices that directly affected her in the end, but she can choose to try his suggestion. To live life, despite her guilt and despite how afraid she feels to do it. This late night moment of vulnerability between a father and daughter opens the door to them possibly repairing what was broken 4 years ago.

Her entire world is then shattered when Abby slams that door shut by killing Joel. Just when Ellie was setting down the path of finding the strength to move on and repair their relationship. Her survivor’s guilt was triggered and sent into overdrive by this event, because once she discovered that the people who killed Joel were ex-Fireflies, she came to the conclusion that Abby killed Joel in retaliation to him removing Ellie from the hospital and killing any hopes of a cure, along with all the Fireflies in the hospital. This essentially caused Ellie to believe that Joel was killed because of her in a roundabout way, as he would have still been alive if he hadn’t saved her, further enforcing her belief that her ultimate destiny in life was to die in that hospital. In Ellie’s mind, Joel died for a pointless reason, because she viewed herself as worthless.

Since she and Joel were the only ones who carried the secret of what really happened at St. Mary’s, there was no one else who could blame her or punish her for his death. Abby punished someone who didn’t deserve the blame and let Ellie go, leaving her to deal with the aftermath and that survivor’s guilt. In Ellie’s mind, it should have been her, but there was no way for her to have swapped herself in Joel’s place. So she punished herself in a different way. This sends her down her path of addiction to self-destruction.

Ellie had no way of punishing herself for her immunity for all those years, for surviving while others died for her. Abby provided an outlet for this desire. Ellie pursued Abby under the guise of getting justice for Joel but more can be ascertained from her constant push to find Abby, in her constantly doing things that go against her better nature, committing horrible acts and torturing people, debasing herself and pushing away those who love her or even putting them in danger while simultaneously traumatizing herself all at once. With every murder she committed, with every wound she sustained, she was punishing herself for being alive.

Each wound she suffered during that pursuit was like a high for her, an adrenaline rush. Each time she damaged her mental state even further with a new murder of one of Abby’s friends, she reinforced the belief that she deserved all of this for surviving. She deserved all the pain for being the cure, for being immune and benefiting from it while the world and everyone in it suffered. This is why Ellie can’t let go, even after her first encounter with Abby.

It was easy for Ellie to spiral in that self-destructive cycle. She punished herself for Joel’s death by pursuing Abby, which caused her closest friends to suffer because they were connected to her hunt for justice. Even when it all seemed to be over and Ellie tried to change. Tommy nearly died and wound up crippled and separated from his wife because of her and even JJ wound up without a father due to Jesse dying while helping her in her pursuit of Abby. This all contributed to her revisiting the same destructive path when Tommy accused her of not following through after all he had lost for her. Tommy started her self-punishment with that accusation. And once Ellie had the chance to think it all over, it was easy for her to return to the same bad habits. This is why she leaves and continues to pursue Abby, steeling herself against a near-fatal abdominal injury, doing whatever it takes to get to her, lying to herself this time, by telling herself all the while that it is in service of Joel. To repay his life that was taken from him. To even out the injustice.

Ellie realizes this lie when she is mere seconds away from exacting her revenge by drowning Abby in the ocean. Joel’s face flashes across her mind, of him during that night when he told her that her life had value. She realizes in that moment that killing Abby will not bring her peace, because the motivation behind the act is a lie. It will not give her life value or meaning, or purpose. Because her life already has value. Outside of a cure, outside of her immunity, outside of her saving humankind. Her life has value because of who she is, not what she can give to the world. And Ellie finally realizes that she must accept this to be whole. Killing Abby won’t help her do this...so she lets her go. She watches the boat leave as she sits in the ocean tides ebbing and flowing around her, thinking of how broken she is, how much she has lost and if she can bring herself back from the brink to find value in the meaningless existence she believed her life was for so long.

When she revisits the farm and contemplates all this while holding a guitar that she’ll never be able to play again, she recalls that memory, when Joel reminded her of her value. In that final scene, she realized that Joel was the first person in her life who didn’t see her for her immunity. Joel saw Ellie for who she was and saw value in her as a person. To such a degree that he was willing to risk all of humanity to keep her alive. She was then able to forgive him and know that he truly did love her for her, something no one else had ever done before him. And if he could love her for her, maybe she could learn to do the same.

[artificialqueens]

Blue Neighborhood Series: HEAVEN (Brita/Aiden) - Mac

AN: Meggie is my love and my personal guardian angel. All my love and thanks to her for betaing and being my cheerleader.

Summary: Brita is straight. Aiden is annoying. Yet somehow they seem to make a pretty good pair.

Brita smiled instinctively down at her phone vibrating in her hand.

A: what are ure plans during lit class

She quirked an eyebrow up as she typed out a reply.

B: Lit class.

Aiden’s next message came only seconds later.

A: boo

A: that’s boring

Brita chuckled under her breath.

A: come to the bleachers

A: we can throw rocks at the PE class

B: Isn’t that dangerous?

A: no we should be fine

B: For THEM?

A: oh

A: yeah

A: thats the fun part

Brita couldn’t help the giggle she let bubble out.

B: Fine.

Aiden sent her back a smiley face with a tongue sticking out, and Brita again found herself marveling at how such a small gesture made such strong affection bloom in her chest.

Not that she would ever admit it.

Because then Aiden would get a big head and start listing off all the reasons she was superior to every living thing. Brita knew her well enough by now, after a week of non-stop texting, to know what she would do.

Her friends thought it was weird. Specifically, Jackie. Even though she had been there the night of Heidi’s revenge that the two made their initial connection.

“I just never pegged you being Aiden’s type, that’s all,” Jackie had joked.

Brita had insisted that it wasn’t like that. She had a boyfriend. She was straight.

“So is pasta till you heat it up,” Gigi teased.

Brita had rolled her eyes and ignored their comments. It wasn’t weird. She was just making a new friend. A new friend that wasn’t involved in every other aspect of her life the way, Jan, Jackie, and Gigi were. It was actually really nice to have an outsider’s perspective a lot of the time, and Aiden was the definition of an outsider, with her short jet black hair and pallid complexion, as well as her inability to stand anyone else for longer than a few minutes. Her narcissism and general disdain for humanity were surprisingly refreshing to someone like Brita, who, as Aiden had pointed out, was ‘perpetually joyous.’

Brita had called her pretentious for using the word perpetually but had smiled nonetheless at the title.

As she made her way out the side door of the school and headed toward the bleachers, she noted the skip in her step and found that she brushed it off without any real concern. Brita’s heart was hammering in her chest as she rounded the platform to look up into the bleachers.

Aiden stuck out like a small girl wearing mostly black in rows and rows of empty bleachers did.

“Took you long enough,” she teased as Brita climbed the steps.

Brita rolled her eyes. “The bell just rang, you idiot.”

“Idiot? You’re the one skipping class, stupid.”

“So are you!”

Aiden shook her head. “I always skip class.”

“Well, aren’t you so cool,” Brita teased. “What next, you’re gonna tell me you drive a motorcycle and wear leather jackets unironically?”

Aiden opened her mouth to speak but bit her tongue on a reply.

“No!” Brita exclaimed.

Blotches of color jumped to Aiden’s cheeks, and she hid her face in her hands.

“You don’t! Really?” Brita gasped dramatically. “You drive a motorcycle, oh my god, Aiden.”

“You’re the worst.” Aiden groaned.

“You are such a stereotype.” Brita chuckled.

“I am not the bad girl lesbian stereotype.”

“You so are.”

Aiden lifted her head to shoot Brita a death glare, but she only succeeded for a few seconds before they both burst into a fit of giggles.

“Well, your nickname is Brita so I’m not sure I should really care what you think.”

Brita grinned. “At least I don’t have a boy name. Did your parents plan on you being a lesbian?”

“Did your parents plan on you being a water filter? What the fuck kinda question is that?”

Brita chuckled, deep and loud and she wondered in the back of her mind why her chest felt so light, and her head so heavy. It was unlike anything she had felt before. But then again, Aiden seemed to always be pulling things from her that she hadn’t expected.

“So what’s the game plan?” Brita asked.

Aiden smiled and outstretched a hand.

She led Brita back down the steps and around to the rough gravel that covered the ground beneath the bleachers. Aiden pointed at the small gaps in the metal, just wide enough to throw something through if you aimed it right.

Brita learned this the hard way after attempting to throw some of the gravel pieces and having them ricochet back at her at alarming speeds.

Aiden just laughed at her and made fun of her aim.

When students began running around the track, warming up for class, Aiden actually managed to nail a few of them in the legs. Brita did her best to go with the flow, but after Aiden nailed some girl in the head, Brita managed to convince her to chill out for a second.

They sat on the rough gravel, Brita surprised to find herself unconcerned with the scrapes she would definitely have later.

They fell into comfortable bickering. Aiden making fun of Brita for masking her insecurity by being popular. Brita making fun of Aiden for being edgy as a defense mechanism to keep people from hurting her.

Normal friend stuff.

Brita noticed sometime after a while that they were actually sitting closer than she had thought previously. She could make out Aiden’s face more clearly. Could see the pores in her forehead and the wrinkle beside her left eye that was deeper than the others.

And just as soon as she noticed that she noticed Aiden’s lips inching closer to hers and she wasn’t sure who moved first, but suddenly their lips were pressed together like an accordion and she felt tingling from her spine to her toes.

Just as soon as it had happened, Brita felt a hand on her shoulder and a booming voice in her ear declaring detention.

Brita didn’t have enough time to process before she was being pulled by the back of her shirt toward the school. She ducked her head in shame and went about the rest of her day to the best of her abilities, all the while trying to ignore the pit in her stomach and the way she could still taste licorice on her lips if she thought too hard.

When the final bell rang, dismissing them, Brita made her way to the math department hallway, slowly, loath for anyone to catch her going to detention and possibly asking questions she wasn’t sure she had the answers to.

Brita took the first available seat, pointedly ignoring that Aiden was already there and sitting atop the box air conditioner unit by the window.

To make matters worse, they were the only two students that had gotten detention that day. This was according to Mr. Matthews, the home economics teacher who barely made the effort to show up before claiming he had business to attend to in his office, and left the two girls alone in the classroom with a warning to stay put.

When Aiden rolled her eyes pointedly, Mr. Matthews reminded the two of them that he would be contacting their parents about the matter if they couldn’t behave appropriately at school.

“Fuck.” Brita exhaled as soon as the door shut. “Fuck.”

“Shut up,” Aiden groaned.

“You shut up,” Brita snapped. “Fuck,” she repeated. “My parents can’t know.”

Aiden gave an aborted laugh. “It’s 2020 if they still give a fuck about having a gay daughter then-”

“I’m not gay,” Brita cut her off.

Aiden’s posture stiffened, almost reflexively.

“I’m not,” Brita repeated.

“You kissed me,” Aiden spoke softly, testing out the words on her tongue.

Brita shook her head. “Well, y-you didn’t stop me.”

“I didn’t wanna stop you,” Aiden said simply.

“Aiden!” Brita exclaimed, turning to get a full look of the other girl.

She just shrugged. “I am gay. I’m not gonna stop a pretty girl from kissing me.”

Brita did her best to ignore that Aiden calling her pretty made her stomach jump.

Her best didn’t seem to be enough because her brain, ever the helpful tool it was, decided that was a perfect time to bombard her with images to the contrary of her statement. Flashes of Aiden’s smile, her dimples, the night they chased each other around the grocery store to Jackie’s displeasure.

The way that Brita couldn’t describe how incredibly freeing it was to feel understood.

“What’s wrong?” Aiden asked.

“I’m not gay.”

The black-haired girl rolled her eyes. “Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because you don’t believe me.”

Aiden just shrugged. “You’re right, I don’t.”

“Why not?” Brita questioned. “I’m girly, I’m a cheerleader for christ sakes. I like pink, I’m a fan of pop music.”

“Oh c’mon all your fucking friends are gay, you’re not about to tell me any of those things make you less of a homo.”

“Not all my friends are gay. Jan is straight.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Aiden mumbled.

“Whatever.” Brita shrugged off the comment. “I like boys. I have a boyfriend.”

“Interesting that that isn’t the first thing you mention.”

“I’m flustered!” Brita exclaimed exasperatedly.

“You’re defensive. There’s a difference.”

“You aren’t helping.”

“When have you ever known me to be helpful?”

“I didn’t know you until a week ago.”

Aiden chuckled.

“What?” Brita asked exasperated.

“Nothing,” Aiden shook her head. “It’s just- you would be the one to forget.”

“Forget what?”

Aiden shot her a tight grin as she hopped off the air conditioning unit and walked over to Brita’s desk. “Growing up in the summer, you and me and all the other girls would pile onto our collective four bikes and ride to the ice cream shop.” Aiden shook her head, eyes crinkling up at the edges. “But you never wanted to ride, always said something about it being dangerous. So someone would have to walk with you because we were like six and pedophiles exist.”

Brita just stared at her in shock.

Aiden continued on. “Most of the time it was me. You and I would walk to the ice cream shop nearly every day in the summer.”

“Oh my god, you remember all that?”

Aiden shrugged simply, her shoulders coming up on either side of her head to wall her off from the outside world. “I remember a lot of things,” she attempted to say nonchalantly.

Brita could tell it meant more than the younger girl was letting on, but she let it go for now.

“Sometimes you insisted on holding hands too. That’s pretty gay,” Aiden threw out.

Brita bit back a chuckle, but the twinkling in Aiden’s eyes made it clear she hadn’t been as slick as she thought. “Why do you always know the right and wrong thing to say?”

“I’m good with people.”

Brita scoffed. “No, you’re not.”

“Well, not with them, but I understand them.”

“How?”

Aiden paused and picked at the skin around her thumbnail. “You learn a lot about people by watching them.”

“That’s creepy,” Brita said after a moment of thick tension.

Aiden shrugged.

“Like what?”

Aiden quirked an eyebrow up in confusion.

“Like what have you learned?” Brita reiterated.

Aiden chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Then show me.”

Aiden’s head whipped around, a smirk etched into the corner of her mouth.

“As you wish.”

She grabbed Brita’s hand and led her down the hallway, ignoring her concern that skipping out on detention was likely to land them in more detention. They headed to the opposite end of the school, through the hallways to the back of the art room, where Aiden stopped Brita from charging out with a hand.

She put her finger to her lips and then mimed taking a whiff.

Brita did as she suggested and inhaled deeply. She was almost knocked over by the stench of weed that filtered through the propped door.

“Mr. Mathhews smokes a joint out there every day after school,” Aiden whispered.

She took Brita’s hand again and led her next door to the theatre, up the stairs to the old prop room. They paused again outside the door and Brita could hear whispered curses and the repeated sound of skin slapping skin.

“Mr. Kressley and Mr. Rice get it on in the prop room every Tuesday while they tell their wives they’re in charge of academic club.”

Aiden took Brita’s hand again and pulled her across the hallway to a set of doors that lead toward the sports stadiums. She propped open the glass doors and leaned against the frame, letting the cool autumn air filter into the building.

Aiden pointed to the far line of trees that made up the side of the baseball field.

“And out in the sports shed, Dahlia sells her old essays to freshmen.”

Brita just looked at her in awe. No wonder Aiden thought she was better than everyone. She was sitting on all this information constantly, keeping everyone’s secrets.

“It’s funny, you know all this dirt on people,” she mused. “You could almost… I dunno, run a drama account or something,” Brita teased.

Aiden chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I could.”

Brita rolled her eyes.

When Aiden turned back around to look at her, they were close again, the same weird feeling taking root in Brita’s chest as she felt Aiden’s warm breath against her cheeks. This time, however, when Aiden moved closer, Brita stopped her with a hand to the younger girl’s chest.

Almost as soon as they made contact, something hard passed behind Aiden’s eyes and she pulled away like her skin burned.

“Aiden.” Brita sighed.

“I’m nobody’s girlfriend,” Aiden breathed, “but I thought we could at least be…”

Brita shook her head lightly. “I am somebody’s girlfriend.”

Aiden nodded once and set her jaw firmly before turning on her heel and heading down an adjacent hallway.

Brita let her go.

She went back to detention and finished the rest of her time, mind still processing the events of the day and her own feelings relating to them.

Sooner than she expected, Mr. Matthews dismissed her and warned her about landing here again. Brita took his advice seriously and nodded, thanking him as she exited the classroom, pulling out her phone reflexively.

She had two Instagram notifications; she had been sent a post and had been tagged in a post. She clicked on the link and felt her stomach fall to her feet.

The school drama account had updated.

It was a grainy picture from sometime in the past week of Brita and Aiden tucked away into a corner of the school. Brita’s head was thrown back in a laugh, and an all too familiar smirk was plastered on Aiden’s face.

The caption made the churning in Brita’s stomach all the more painful.

Opposites attract.

[dreamworksconvict]

She-Ra: Racism Problem Pt. 2

Thanks to everyone who said nice things about my earlier post!!!! I like am really invested in representation and media so I’m glad it’s being received well. 

I also want to add a caveat that I’m not trying to cancel She-Ra. I just want to hold media to a high standard and think that we can critique the things we like.

Next I want to talk about some pretty heavy topics: the White Savior trope and colonialism. Again, I’ll be pretty spoiler-heavy here. I also want to warn people that there will be mention of genocide and antisemitism. I’ll be writing about Hordak in the next part.

In the fourth part I want to add an addendum about Catra being coded as Latina, which I think is a valid interpretation. I also want to talk about the ableism present in the show with both Hordak and Entrapta, which is a separate issue so I’ll label it differently. 

Imagine a story like this: 

“I am a white-coded, able-bodied, implied cisgender protagonist who has a Special Trait that makes me Stronger and/or More Unique than other characters. I also have some connection to Some Evil Colonizers from Space. Oh no! Some Evil Colonizers from Space have showed up to threaten me and my Token Diverse friends who get about half as much screentime as I do! Wait a second, “evil?” There’s no such thing! They’re only Misunderstood Colonizers Who Didn’t Mean It, and/or there was More to the Story. Maybe they came from a Dysfunctional Family or were Abused/Bullied! I think the people/places they colonized may have been Secretly Bad or Just As Bad all along, too! Wowee! Let’s all have a Heart-to-Heart and/or sacrifice one of my Token Diverse friends to save the day!”

Which story am I referring to? Well...

Voltron... or She-Ra... or Steven Universe.. and probably others...yeah.

(And for those who claim that Keith isn’t the protagonist of Voltron, well... I mean he is... but that’s an entirely different essay. But notice how Lance and Hunk are actually smaller than the other characters on the screen and are partly transparent, and that Allura gets pushed to the back row and is mostly covered? Yikes...)

(On my previous post, someone also noted that Steven is half-Jewish. I was not aware that Rebecca had confirmed this officially. As I am not Jewish myself, I don’t want to speak over this, but I do want to point out that you can be white and Jewish, as it is a Diaspora identity. There are many Jewish ethnicities, such as Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim. I also wish that we had seen more of that in the show--like Steven celebrating Hanukkah, or learning Hebrew, or having a Rosh Hashanah celebration... From what I can tell, Rebecca only confirmed this on a Reddit AMA post. So I don’t know specifically how Steven identifies because that was never clarified in the show, but it seems like he is coded as white. Definitely feel free to disagree, this is just how I’ve interpreted the show, especially given its treatment of colonization.)   

On top of all three of these shows recycling a very similar plotline, they all share the White Savior trope. Teen Vogue has an article talking about how this is linked to colonialism and I highly encourage checking that out. I’m going to pull a large chunk of text from there because I think it’s really important and applies to animation, not just live action films. 

“Many white people in films based on the stories of POC are often subliminally depicted as godlike saviors, heroes who are rational and judicious to the core. They are usually deified men or women — glorified and righteous — like scripture out of a Holy Book. Look at Hillary Swank in Freedom Writers. The white savior somehow always ends up usurping the narrative. And in this centering of whiteness and white characters, the POC characters end up becoming props, which only perpetuates ideas of our otherness and unimportance, which then establishes a status quo of racism. Whiteness is again normalized, and POC are decentralized. This is particularly problematic because whiteness is not only favored in Hollywood but also in society at large; white privilege is ever-present and ubiquitous.”

Look at the center poster for She-Ra: Adora is pictured in white and gold and red as an accent. She’s bathed in a golden light. This color combination is no coincidence, because we already associate that combination with religious iconography, like the Vatican. 

(I also want to make a note that this is specifically associated with Christian/Catholic iconography. A lot of these shows could be classified as antisemitic in their handling of colonialism and genocide. I would argue--and will be arguing in my thesis--that Season 6-8 of Voltron’s plot heavily relied on antisemitic tropes, especially as it related to Lotor and the Alteans. But that’s for another day.) (Also see my discussion of Steven Universe’s Jewish identity above.)

So how exactly does She-Ra follow the White Savior trope, how is it similar to other stories’ utilization of the trope, and how does this all relate back to colonialism? I would say there are two main factors: setting up Adora as a white heroine with a darker-skinned foil (Catra), and setting up a narrative where Hordak “isn’t that bad of a guy, really.” For this part I’m gonna focus on Adora.

1: Adora as the White Savior

Adora is from the Horde. Keith is half-Galra. Steven’s mom is Pink Diamond. 

All three of these protagonists have some personal tie or connection to a group of colonizing villains. The Diamonds want(ed) to take over earth and suck the life force from it, as they’d done on other planets. They also used a super-weapon to with the intent to kill all the rebel gems. The Galra created an empire and also sucked the life out of planets. They also created a super-weapon that could kill an entire planet, and had already committed genocide against the Alteans. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big Bad of She-Ra, Horde Prime, has similar goals. Hordak certainly does.

There is an ever-so-slight separation of Adora from the other two protagonists, who, at the start of the series, do not know they are related to the villain group in some way. (Steven doesn’t know he’s a Diamond.) Adora, on the other hand, starts the series as a villain. She’s part of a group that has actively been fighting and destroying the Princesses and the planet. The first episode notes that she is particularly good at her job, with Hordak nominating her for Force Captain. Adora also notes that “this is what [she’s] been working for her entire life.” When Catra and Adora leave the Fright Zone, it is not out of goodwill. They simply want to go for a joyride on a skiff. 

When Adora gains the power of She-Ra, she acts ignorant of the Horde’s actions. The first episode, Adora is completely defensive of Hordak. She even claims that “Hordak says we’re doing what’s best for Etheria.” It is not until the second episode that Adora begins to have any remorse for her actions--but also note that Adora’s main motivation during the first half of this episode is to continue onward with Bow and Glimmer because she wants to know more about herself, not repent for her actions. It is not until the end of the episode that she begins to become a bit more self-aware, but there is a key phrase that Glimmer utters that is very key to the White Savior narrative: “I feel like maybe you’re here to help us.” This line comes after Glimmer apologizes for not trusting Adora. Adora. The Horde soldier. The soldier from the group of colonizers who were responsible for the death of Glimmer’s father. 

Ok sure. 

Consider how realistic this is. (Not that fantasy has to be realistic, but when you’re working with a narrative based on systemic violence, you need to at least be considerate of how this works in reality.) Adora has been trained to fight and kill Princesses and their allies. She’s been trained to take over Etheria and strategically destroy and/or take resources to weaken them. Yet she acts as if this is all news to her. Suddenly meeting the people she’s been trained to destroy causes her to repent, and suddenly the people who have been victimized forgive her and trust her within two episodes. 

Here’s what I think is going on here: given the current hyper-conservative political climate and rampant xenophobia in the world right now, white creators feel the need to put a white person as the hero as if they’re claiming, “See, this character--and subsequently myself--aren’t like those other bad white people!” They want a degree of separation from the reality that they have white privilege and are part of the problem. 

There is no truly “woke” white person. White people have been raised in a society where they benefit off the oppression of the chosen “other,” in this case black and brown people. Even if you do your research like I’m doing, you still will mess up. White people cannot rid themselves of privilege no matter how hard they try, because in this current society, the legacy of colonialism, imperialism, and racism have made it so that white people will ultimately be more successful and have more opportunities for success than others. (Also, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so even attempts to be considerate about taking advantage of laborers cannot be completely successful.) 

All of this results in a lot of White Guilt. Thus, we end up with narratives where the white colonizer character suddenly has a change of heart and fights against the system without really challenging the core mechanics that put that system in place. But fighting against oppression and violence doesn’t make a white person special--it just makes them decent. 

It also ignores the fact that white people, to be blunt, haven’t done shit to advocate for inclusion and equity compared to literally everyone else. I want to pull another quote from the Teen Vogue article:

[White saviors] perpetuate an idea that is essentially a historical banner of colonialism: People of color need white people to save them. To this day, some people still latently believe what imperialists such as Rudyard Kipling said, that colonialism was important for everyone: the conqueror and, most importantly, the conquered. That without the colonizers, the colonized had no hope of survival. And by constantly churning out movies with plots in which white people "save" people of color, Hollywood reinforces colonialist dictum.

Why does Glimmer think that they NEED Adora to be saved? Why is this white woman the only one who can do it? Sure, Adora has the power of She-Ra, but remember that giving Adora, a white woman, that power was a CHOICE made by the writers. They could have given the sword to someone else, they could have made Adora a PoC... but they didn’t. So suddenly, because Adora, ex-Horde soldier, is there, the Princess alliance can be reformed, people start working together, the rebellion is saved! etc. etc. etc.... 

So then it’s extra ironic (and honestly is pretty predictable given this White Guilt narrative) when the White Savior trope goes right along with The Colonizers Weren’t Actually Evil, Just Misunderstood.

This post is way too long so I’ll continue in the next part. 

[thimbleswrites]

with the lights out, it’s less dangerous | the last time

Pairing: Frankie Dalton x Original Female Character

Genre: Angst / Drama

Word count: 4k

Warnings: love/hate relationship, implied smut, suicidal thoughts

AO3 link:��https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884773/chapters/8685547

Author’s note: I wrote this a long time ago but I’m posting all my fics on my writing blog. I explain more about the Blood Donors concept in the a/n on A03 if anyone’s interested, click the link above.

Summary:

Anita, a human that Edward has been harboring in his house for years, struggles with the isolation of living as a fugitive in a world full of vampires. With the threat of being reduced to nothing but a Blood Donor looming just outside the walls of Edward's house, she must decide whether it is time to end it all or find a way to deal with the desolation.

But is the dangerous game she finds herself playing with Frankie Dalton, Edward's human-hunting brother, the best solution to her loneliness?

Set pre-Daybreakers.

Next: honesty hour

"Goddamn it, Frankie, I have until sundown to get some sleep before a shit load of work tomorrow – I'm not having this conversation again; it's done!"

A beat of silence follows the words as the dismissal rings heavy in the air and a resounding snarl tears through the tension. Anita grimaces at the sound of footsteps up the stairs and tries to press herself back against the hinged door, into nonexistence – a thin hand clawing at the threshold as she waits with bated breath.

No matter how many arguments she heedfully witnesses, how many times Edward tells her that she is safe after Frankie blows in and out of their lives over and over again, how many times she manages to make it just one more day without being caught and forced as a Blood Donor: the dread that makes her stomach clench in an almost paralyzing sort of fear is a constant reminder that she is never safe.

The comfort of safety is not a luxury she can afford – not anymore.

The years spent hiding with a decreasing amount of fellow human who had refused vampirism had not been wasted with pointless dreams of a secure future. Those days were harsh, dirty, and cruel – but in each other there was at least a small repose of normalcy. Humans living (well surviving, because what they had been doing was not actually living) with other humans.

A human living with one (sometimes two, she remembers with a tingle up her spine) vampires, though.

She wants to laugh at the thought of such an illusion as safety for someone in her position, but seeing as it's the one thing standing between her and becoming a daily juice box, she refrains. That is if she could remember how to laugh; the muscles surrounding her mouth are usually only ever exercised into a frown and she imagines that the act of straining them upwards might be foreign and difficult.

Her attempt at becoming a chameleon is at once deemed futile under the fierce gaze of Frankie Dalton as he passes in the hall. He's only just gotten back from his most recent tour of duty and as per usual he is staying at Edward's during his break, unable to afford an apartment he would scarcely ever use.

The first few days of his return are always the worst; Edward almost never remembers the day of Frankie's arrival and the latter's mood turns sour the moment he comes home to see his welcome party consists of one: a somewhat interested (and punctual; she doesn't have much to look forward to these days and even his return on the calendar is something) Anita holding a propped open book in one hand and the world's tiniest banner reading Welcome home, asshole! in her other as she lounges comfortably on a sofa in the office room, ready to leap to her crawl space at a moment's notice.

Just as she thinks that maybe, just maybe this time he will continue to his seldom-occupied bedroom and ignore her, he stops walking and looks her down as if she is a lower species; a turkey attending the Thanksgiving dinner. There is distaste clear in his eyes, rage too, and something even darker that she recognizes somewhere in the back of her mind but does not want to dwell upon.

Anita glowers bitterly up at him, willing him to feel her disgust at him, too, for him to know that this isn't exactly the ideal living situation for her either. A small part of her feels ashamed for those sort of thoughts – the last thing she wants Edward to think she is is ungrateful. She owes him her life, however useless it may be now.

Once, a couple years back, when on a supply raid with her group she had been wounded by a lone poor, starving vampire who had found them and attacked. Her party had left her there, assuming her to be dead, so it was not abandonment – not really, she would have done the same.

Self-hatred burns her insides with the knowledge that this new world – one with the rule of vampires and the hunt of humans like livestock – has charred her soul black to the core, a sense of meaningless survival (what is the point to her life?) taking control on instinct so that she has to fight every day to remember what humanity truly means.

But with an abundance of luck and patience on Edward's part, he had found her bleeding out (thankfully not infected; she'd rather die) and managed to get them both back to his place to nurse her back to health. Her constant attempts at his life or escaping had slowed things down considerably, but she eventually healed and came to the hard realization that her pack was gone. She knew by then they would be cities away and that she was alone. It was with little hesitance that Anita had accepted Edward's offer of shelter and food. Protection, too, but that was taken lightly.

She's never been one to depend on others; she likes to pull her own weight, and her current title of hidden house guest makes her restless. When she had first began living with Edward, she had offered him her blood – not straight from her veins, obviously, but with the proper equipment she would have given him enough, regularly but not nearly as much as she'd have to if she became a Blood Donor, to cushion the blow of his blood-bill. But he had refused; said he didn't drink human, and it would have been a lie to say she was too disappointed. The same offer was never given to Frankie – probably because she knows now, and knew then, that he would not have refused.

"Well, if it isn't the root of the problem." Frankie grinds out, his jaw clenched as he takes a step towards her. "Tell me – do you think Ed sees your face on the humans at his company or just dollar signs?"

She blinks indifferently, keeping her silence. They've danced to this song before, and honestly, she's grown too phlegmatic to be baited so easily.

"Probably not the money." He adds, his voice hard. "He pities you humans too much for his own good. And you in particular, doesn't he?" He chuckles darkly and points at her with his index finger. "No, you're his favorite little stray kitten – here to stay."

At his sneering words she looks back at the small opening across the small office that leads to the crawl space she spends her time in when the sun falls and darkness resumes – a pathetic excuse for living quarters but she is none the wiser, having been in worse conditions while on the streets. At least she has the sleeping bag to herself now.

She is allowed out during the day or when Edward is home and does not have company, but rarely downstairs and always, always she must be quiet (so quiet it is like she is not even there) in case the neighbors can hear. He cooks her food mostly (something she wishes she could do for herself; Edward is an appallingly bad chef) and she is permitted to have a shower every few days even though she has to use his toiletries. She does not mind much, though – things like that have not been a problem for her in a good long while.

It is not that Edward wants to keep her on a short leash so much as he is very meticulous in ensuring that she remains hidden, for his sake and hers. Every single thing is planned and routine; if he is to buy too much extra food or household necessities or if his guest notice that he seems to be housing three occupants, it might raise unwanted suspicion that would be better to avoid entirely. Paranoid, maybe, but it works. And although she will never dare to complain, living in such circumstances is taking the wear and tear out of her.

While food comes easier now than what she has been used to (having been malnourished since she was barely a teen) she is still unhealthy; her skin too pale from the lack of sunlight and the natural growth of her body stinted by the crawl space, making her appear pinched, and so much smaller than she should, too emaciated and frail to the point where she wants to avoid mirrors at all cost on some days. The perpetual dark rims under her grey eyes from many sleepless nights give her the appearance of a ghost, and her hair is almost always in a wild tangle of mousy blonde strands, but sometimes on her more vain days, she manages to run her fingers through it enough to tame the mess. Throughout every thing that has been lost to the war of vampires against humans, vanity seems to trail behind her in a race to catch up; not quite there but never too far behind either.

She looks hollow, dead in the eyes, and it's only fitting, really – she feels the same way.

Anita wishes that she could take pride in her quiet strength – she yearns to think of herself as one of the heroines from the books she reads to assuage her boredom (Edward has books everywhere, scattered in piles in all the nooks and crannies of the house and then some), biding her time before she can join the Revolution with her fellow humans, but honestly, the fear and cowardice that is still present, hidden beneath the bitter sorrow and ferocious contempt, only makes her feel weak. Weak from the tears that wet her pillow at night when she is by herself in the crawl space, holding her arms around her middle as if it will help the sickness, left with nothing but thoughts of death and blood and the unfairness of life.

She misses her family more than she ever thought she would, and it's unbearable because it leaves a gaping, festering hole in her chest that makes her want to lie still until she just stops breathing. At those times, more than usual, it stumps her how anybody could want to live forever. It's a consuming, mindless sort of grief that leaves her breathless and exhausted, hating herself for dwelling on the past when her current standing in the food chain demands all the focus she has.

Anita hates weakness.

And Frankie makes her feel weak.

Especially when he is this close to her, his head tilted down so he can meet her wide eyes, and his body so near her that she can feel the coolness of him. She hates the terror it instills in her at the thought that he can infect her with a smile on his face and her flesh in his teeth if he so desires. And he does desire it – he's told her so, after the two brother's verbal throw down matches over Edward's aiding and abetting a human criminal in his own house, a house that Frankie inhabits ("By knowing and not saying anything it makes me an accomplice, Ed!"). Edward thinks his threats of turning them in are empty ("He won't say anything . . . he owes me." Ed told her once when she had voiced her concerns) and he hasn't yet, however, Anita wouldn't put it past him. She can't turn a corner in a house that Frankie's in without having a threat to turn her thrown in her face.

Even more than that, though, she absolutely despises the other feelings he sparks in her too. The ones that make her flush with heat in her veins and an ache between her thighs from the longing to be close to someone again. Anita despises him for being a selfish monster and she despises him even more when he's not. She despises the salacious want he infixes in her when he glances up with sharp, trained eyes from whatever he is doing to watch her walk back to the office after a shower when she is in only a towel. But more than anything, anything else she despises herself for having allowed him to toy with those feelings periodically over the last four months.

As Frankie stares at her, something akin to understanding glints in his eyes and he takes a quick step in her direction, making her fall back two. After a moment she has enough sense to worry he might have recognized the look in her eyes as more than offense at his words. There is a familiar sort of triumph in his voice as he sneers, "Something bothering you, pet?"

The sound of the taunting sobriquet he had long ago christened her coming from his lips is far too palatable for her to handle so she imagines what the screams of the humans he has hunted and forced into the Blood Revenue Agents hands would sound like instead, so loud and terrible that it can banish those bad, bad feelings that surround her off to another place where things that are wrong go to.

For the moment, it works.

"Yes – you are standing too close," Anita finally murmurs, and something frightening in her roars at the covetous flash in his eyes as they narrow at her, but she silences it by biting her tongue, unable to resist the opportunity to wipe the smirk off of his face. "And I can still smell the blood of my people marring your precious honor, sir."

The corners of his mouth twist down at her mockery and he raises his chin, trying to intimidate her with his authority, but the vampire soldier card no longer makes her shrink in fear as it once did. She has had quite a bit of time in the weeks of Frankie's absence to prepare herself for his overwhelming presence that has always had a different effect on her than Edward's. She will no longer permit herself to be a distraction for him to amuse himself with whenever he likes purely because he can. She is more than his filthy little secret, and certainly better than him.

Her lips thin and she brings herself to full height, which is only a wee few inches shorter than him, but still her neck cranes up slightly to meet his gaze. She has pushed off from the door and he moves backwards to avoid physical contact. The fact that he is the one who falls back weighs heavy on him and his frown deepens in anger.

His relentless harassment over the years has been all too entertaining for him because of the easy prey she has always presented him with. His ability to read her like an open book is almost congenital – Frankie knows Anita to her very core; her thoughts, her fears, her dreams, he knows exactly what to do to provoke her. He can send her into a furious rage with a few casual words or tear her apart by a single deliberate look. But now the game has changed. She has surprised him with this sign of defiance; this charge of offensive play, and he does not know how to react to it.

A small thrill shoots through her from his falter, and the courage it gives her comes out in the smooth words she spits into his face, "Something bothering you, Frankie?"

She can almost taste victory in her mouth when his ochroid eyes flash and he quickly leans into her, a smirk curling onto his face, making her stumble back away from him and warily glance at the protruding fangs that press into his pale lower lip. He smiles widely to show her his teeth more clearly; a wolf's grin, and watches her clenched jaw tremble beneath the unspoken threat, eyes dancing and alight with the prospect of a challenge.

"Careful now, pet, wouldn't want to cross lines you can't come back from, would you?" He cautions.

The air feels weighted with the tension, as if electricity is crackling against her skin, sending sparks through her nervous system but she holds her ground and straightens. The warning is obvious in his voice; he wants her to know that he is in control. She hates that.

He is so close she can feel his breath fanning her face, and although it makes hers come in faster than she would care to admit, Anita resists the urge to swivel her head to the side. "Fuck your lines."

The curse word feels strange on her tongue, although she is pleasantly surprised at the evenness of her tone, and she enjoys his confounded look at her having taken a page from his book – he frequently uses the crude terms, and at least one adolescent innocent tendency has always made her wince when he casually refers to them – but it had sounded sharp and primitive and she is impressed by herself. She instantly realizes that she likes how fierce it makes her feel.

"Ooh, such language, Nita. Wouldn't expect it from you." He grins at her, his tongue grazing briefly over one fang, so quickly that she barely notices it with a sweeping sensation sent straight to her toes, and continues, "And while I appreciate that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, maybe you should mind your manners for now. After all, pets who misbehave must be . . . castigated."

Her knees quake, nearly giving out at his tone: almost a teasing threat, and that realization makes her stomach flutter in equal parts fright and excitement. She inhales deeply, pulling down the frayed sleeves of her sweater past her fingers.

Frankie's smile fades as his mouth contorts into a thoughtful expression and his eyes size her up. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but she is not sure if it is because of the dread in her stomach or the heat that flames in her cheeks and along her ears when he steps forward with his arms extended out on either side of her head, efficiently trapping her between the door and his body. He pushes a strand of hair from her darting eyes with a gentle motion; a mocked sign of affection, and lets the tip of his finger rest on her temple.

He is pushing her, stretching their interaction like a rubber band, testing to see how far he can go before she breaks. He doesn't have to push far this time – a simple movement; he bites gently and deliberately into his lower lip and his eyes drop to her mouth – and then she is shoving his arms away scathingly, hitting him with her fist as she turns to her crawl space.

Frankie catches her readily around her waist and flings her back against a wall, grabbing her wrists in his hands when she tries to struggle and pinning them above her head. His face is close enough to hers that she can clearly see the smile lines in his right cheek when the corner of his lip quirks up in that crooked grin that makes her loathe these moments with him as much as she secretly looks forward to them, although, she will never admit the hold he has on her; a strong fist around her rotting heart, forcing it to pulsate when the beats begin to degenerate.

Sometimes she wishes he would just let her die.

He thrusts a knee between her legs, pressing his body onto hers, and she can't breathe – she can't even muster the energy to ignore the way her body responds to the familiar feeling of him against her; the way her hips cant upwards into him, all but unwillingly.

And sometimes she wants nothing more than this.

"Fuck you." Anita seethes, because he looks so smug, like such a smug bastard that her blood practically boils and she feels alive.

"Hm, fuck me?" Frankie muses. "You're being rather straightforward today."

"Well, you know what they say." She returns with a sharp grin on her face that she saves just for him. "Bold is beautif – oh!"

He had ducked down into her neck, his mouth opened wide, and for only a moment she considers that he is finally making good on his threat to tear into her jugular vein, but it's not his teeth. It's his tongue, and she thinks that might be worse. He's kissing the base of her throat, ravaging the skin there (because Anita will shit a brick if she ever sees Frankie being tentative in his actions), and it almost hurts; she knows there will be a bruise there in a few hours.

There always is.

"Wait." She protests wearily, her heart beating a tattoo of his name onto her rib cage. "You said it was the last time. We agreed – we agreed the last time was it."

"I changed my mind." He says easily, his mouth trailing up to her jaw. "God, you're so fucking warm."

And the low, guttural sound of his voice makes her knees actually give out this time. He only tightens his fingers around her wrists, though, and his thigh between her legs keeps her upright, but oh – his thigh between her legs. She trembles.

Her eyes fall closed with a pleased, drawn out sigh and he lets out a breathy laugh.

"You want this just as much as I do, don't you, pet?" He taunts, scraping his fangs lightly over her skin.

Anita growls but before she can retort he presses his lips to hers and kisses her in a way that only he's ever done; hard, deep, angry. He releases her right hand and she presses her palm to the nape of his neck, holding him in place as she responds to his jabbing remark by nipping at his bottom lip. She makes a noise at the back of her throat when his tongue invades her mouth.

He's cold – all vampires are. But Anita doesn't see it like they do in the old YA novels about the then-mythical vampire, it is not just some side effect of being a dashing creature of the night like the young heroines think it is; it's one of the things she hates the most when she's with Frankie like this, because it reminds her that he is dead. He has no pulse, no heartbeat. Frankie is cold like a corpse, a walking disease.

This thought gives her resolve a burst of renewed strength and she tugs her other hand free from his grasp, holding tightly to his shirt as she pants, "We can't keep doing this." But even as the words leave her, she allows her hand to drift down towards his stomach, feeling the taut muscles of his abdomen beneath her exploring fingers.

Jesus, help me, Anita thinks desperately, he's my Kryptonite.

He's undeterred – his mouth hovering over hers, golden eyes watching her intently as his hands go to her hips and he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of her pants. "Why not?" He asks, softly, the words drifting over her lips.

She pauses, distracted by the way his fingers stroke circles onto her skin.

He smiles at her hesitancy, touching his lips lightly to hers.

The tenderness throws her into momentary surprise, but he suddenly grips the back of her thighs and lifts her up, propping her against the wall as her legs lock instinctively around his waist, and there's nothing tender about what's digging into the inside of her thigh. She gasps when his hands slide up her sweater, one at the small of her back and the other on her breast.

She kisses him fervidly, nearly slicing open her tongue on his fang, and cradles his jaw in her hands – he grins into her mouth, apparently satisfied by her response, and her body screams this is the last time, just once more.

"I'm not into necrophilia – you son of a bitch," Anita murmurs, short of breath, but even she hears the fond way the words are spoken.

"Shut up," Frankie groans as his mouth goes to her collarbone, his hand tugging one of her legs higher over his hip while his groin steadily rocks into the apex of her thighs as if to prove his next words, "D'you think I want to want this? I've taken playing with my food to an all new level."

And she doesn't even try to stop the morbid laugh that leaves her as he carries her to his bedroom.

It's the last time, after all.

-

[silverflintdaily]

ARTIST CLAIMS ARE NOW OPEN!

Please read all the summaries below the cut and fill out the form with your top 5 picks.  If you have questions about some of these fics before signing up and want us to follow up with the authors, please send us an ask or shoot Mel an email.  SUBMIT CLAIMS BY APRIL 25  - artist claim form here

1. running is a victory Skeleton Island holds the greatest and most ancient treasure the world’s ever known—not that anyone’s ever actually seen it before. Captain Flint and his crew sail through treacherous seas full of English ships, freak storms, and at least one large monster lurking in the deep, desperate to find the island and obtain the Urca gold. That all seems simple compared to dealing with the charming yet duplicitous John Silver and the alleged Urca curse. [Black Sails meets Pirates of the Caribbean!] 2. A Ship is a Republic Flint and Silver train relentlessly on the cliffs of Maroon Island. Silver begins to realise how much he enjoys obeying Flint's instructions. Swordplay gives way to foreplay. 3. Elijah's Violin "A mage, a sorcerer, and a warlock walk into my bar,” says a woman behind the counter. “Have you heard this one before?”

The city of Venice is in turmoil: someone has been turning people to stone. Years after the events that landed them both in hot water and separated them, Flint and Silver are thrown together to solve a dangerous magical mystery. They are joined on their mission by Thomas (who may or may not have a pet Hellhound). The three magicians must work together (and try not to kill each other) before the Carnival of Venice devours them as well. 4. title tbd Or, James Flint, state park employee and firebrand, discovers that someone who broke his heart is back in his life, and that someone is miserable. That this someone is miserable makes James Flint very happy! Except for how it really does not make him happy, whoops. Modern au, angst, slow burn, mutual pining, happy ending. 5.  Don't Say I Didn't Warn Ya John's a drag king, making friends with Thomas and his drag queen troupe. They all perform at the bar that Flint and Gates own and run together - The Frigate.

Trans!Silver, Poly!Flint. ships: silverflint, established flintgates & flinthamilton, possible eventual silverflinthamilton (if I have it in me to write that far) 6.  call to war When the Maroon Queen gets a letter from Woodes Rogers indicating that Madi is alive, she makes the executive decision to have Flint rescue her without telling Silver. When Flint does find Madi, she tells him not to tell Silver she is alive--so that he will want to continue to fight the war he so desperately hates, all so Madi's "death" wasn't for nothing. Against his own judgment, Flint agrees, leading to a series of events that spiral out of control, bringing Flint and Silver closer together, even as Flint is wracked with guilt over his deceit. A s4 canon divergence, heavily focused on Madi, Flint and Silver, as well as the Maroons.

7.  the life that we chose All of Silver's schemes and machinations screech to a halt when he locks eyes with Captain Flint across the deck of the Walrus and the world explodes into color. Flint's cold and indifferent behavior towards him in the weeks that follow makes no sense until he learns that the captain first saw colors ten years ago, in London.

(Flint's been able to see color since he first met Thomas, it's true, but - has Billy always had blue eyes? Was the spine on that book always such a deep green?)

note for artist claims: silverflint au where when you meet your soulmate you can see color. thomas and silver are both flint's soulmate: he saw most colors when he met thomas, but once he meets silver he can finally see the full spectrum. of course he doesn't realize this because ANGST 8. To Be Rid of Temptation “What would you suggest we do instead, then?”

Maybe it was the way he said it, the way Flint was sitting with his knees sprawled out, or the secrets he guarded so closely; Silver didn’t know what it was, but somebody’s Devil took ahold of his tongue then and he said, “I think we should fuck.”

Set around the start of season 3, *spoilers* they do fuck. 9. Chasing Sea Foam Once upon a time, there was a pirate Captain whose moods controlled the seas and whose grief over his missing Lord drove him to wreak havoc in the West Indies.

Once upon a time, there was a merperson who saved the pirate Captain from drowning and who longed to be a part of his world. One day he was faced with a terrible decision: to see his Captain bring death and destruction onto the world and himself, or to stop him and reunite him with his missing Lord. The merperson made his choice and disappeared into the sea.

Years after his Happily Ever After, Flint sets out to find answers about Silver guided only by tall tales and a longing in his heart.

supernatural AU (not a Supernatural the show AU, it just has supernatural elements), features Flint/Thomas and Silver/Flint/Thomas as secondary ships, and past Silver/Madi)

10.  the long waves crawl Nassau sang with magic in a way that Silver hadn’t felt since his childhood, not unlike the hazy memories of a tiny house crowded with herbs and all sorts of books that smelled of cedar smoke and sage.

Only here he was not hidden, nor was he safe. He darted through the streets, avoiding the hungry looks that other magic users gave him. Felt their eyes on his skin and knew they could smell the magic in his blood.

In which Silver is a witch, and in an already complicated world magic is a dangerous thing. 11. Fire Light Silver is a new University professor who starts his job by stealing research out from under Flint’s nose. To get access to the research, Flint steals Silver.

12. Birds Of A Feather A Black Sails/Pride and Prejudice crossover, featuring John Silver as a victim of Mrs Bennet's match making escapades and James McGraw as a lieutenant on sick leave who just wants some peace and quiet.

13. the whole estate of mortal man Silver has a limited memory, an unlimited lifespan, and a need for human souls. He spends four seasons trying to buy Flint's.

14. "On the Banks of the Lethe" Waking after a head injury with no memory of the past two years, Flint finds himself a stranger in a strange land. Faced with the politics of a war he doesn’t remember, and a Walrus crew he hardly recognizes, Flint must reconcile what he knows with what has transpired: Gates’ betrayal; the discovery of the Urca gold; the aftermath of Charles Town. All preceded by the rise of a quartermaster he doesn’t trust—a quartermaster he only knows to be a liar and a thief. Uncertain of his newfound loyalties, Flint suddenly finds himself standing in the shadow of a monster of his own inadvertent making: Long John Silver, Nassau’s newly christened Pirate King.

Amnesia!fic. Set right before Season 4. Angst. Confusion. Gross abuse of tropes. Stupid men in love (even if one doesn’t quite remember). AKA: What if Season 1 James Flint met Season 4 John Silver.

15. a beautiful, sinuous thing; a terrible, treacherous thing Driven by grief, James Flint leaves the city behind to become the caretaker of a lighthouse in a small coastal town. But despite his desire for solitude, he finds himself drawn to a man who seems to have simply strolled out of the sea one day. Silver expects the new lighthouse keeper on his shores to be easy prey - quiet, isolated, sad. But he may have more on his hands than he expected. Modern fantasy au influenced by works like Daisy Johnson's Fen and Victor LaValle's The Changeling 16. The Return of John Silver Seven months after leaving Savannah and the war behind, Flint and Thomas are doing their best to leave the past where it belongs. But the past is never quite past. When the arrival of a wounded pirate on their doorstep threatens to shake what little foundation they've managed to build together, Flint finds himself at a familiar crossroads. Does he allow himself to admit that John Silver belongs in his life, (and in Thomas's) or will he continue to deny the truth even to himself? 17. gonna need a bigger boat The not-quite-Jaws AU where Flint is a perpetually irritated sea captain, hired by a perpetually irritating quasi-con man Silver, both to hunt a shark that has supposedly killed seven people in the last few months. Only they stumble upon a crime in action, end up trapped on a small boat in the middle of an ocean, and they figure out that they're going to have to work together to stay alive and collect that shark bounty somehow. (Featuring the use of thinly veiled shark metaphors, shark fun facts, and two people who cannot believe that their relationship is hurtling towards - something). 18. Loose Lips Sink Ships Rewrite of Black Sails S4. Billy Bones tries to kill Silver, fails, and Silver starts his revenge quest. Woodes Rogers is dead, Nassau is in chaos, and Silver finds his whole world changed. Mostly silverflint and it does become silverflintham. Happy ending! Very, very violent beginning.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 204: Chintetsu

Previously on BnHA: Shouto left Endeavor on read. Team TodoIidaShoujiRo attacked Team TetsuHonePonySen head-on, hitting them with a wave of ice and freezing them all in place. But it turns out Honenuki’s quicksand quirk is actually a “softening” quirk which can soften anything he touches. He used that to melt the ice to allow his teammates to escape. It also turns out that he had pre-treated some of the surrounding area with his quirk, and Ojiro and Iida came crashing down from their hiding spots shortly after as the softened ground gave way beneath them. Sen attacked Ojiro with his drill quirk while Pony took on Shouji. Meanwhile Tetsu went for Shouto, realizing a direct attack was his best bet. And Honenuki trapped Iida under a layer of the softened ice, but then made the mistake of rehardening it, intending to keep him stuck in place. Instead, Iida blasted free with his Recipro, revealing that he’s built up his endurance to the special move. So now we’ll see if he can take Honenuki down.

Today on BnHA: We get a wholesome Iida flashback to when Tensei explained how to upgrade his Recipro by -- wait, what? Mutilating his own fucking leg?! Holy shit. That’s not wholesome at all. What the fuck. But anyway, it worked I guess because back in the present day Iida is zipping along at speeds faster than Gran fucking Torino, and he’s able to maintain this speed for up to ten whole minutes. The only downside is that he can’t fully control himself because he’s so goddamn fast and so he keeps skidding around. Anyway, so Honenuki is like “nope” and gets the fuck out of there. Meanwhile Sen continues to whoop Ojiro’s ass, but then Iida shows up to save him so yay. Elsewhere the Tetsuroki fight has heated up, quite literally, as Todoroki activates his left side to create a wall of fire, and Tetsutetsu proceeds to walk right through it and attack Shouto as a red hot steel man. Shouto thinks back to his dad’s training and decides that the solution to this is clearly to make shit even hotter, so he starts up with that, and the chapter ends.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 223, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

ohhh my god

IIDA FAM FLASHBACKS!??!

AHHHHH

EXCUSE ME IS THIS THE FUCKING FUTURE OR NOT?? CAN WE GET IIDA TENSEI A FUCKING HOVERCHAIR HERE PEOPLE? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK. IF ONLY HORIKOSHI WAS AT ALL FAMILIAR WITH MARVEL COMICS -- OH, WAIT

but seriously though. also he’s supposed to be rich too isn’t he? c’mon

also! Iidamom looks exactly like I expected her to. welcome to our canon full of other awesome moms, Iidamom! a few more moms and I’ll be ready to do a top ten moms post. spoiler alert, the winner is not who you’d expect (unless you’re expecting Aizawa, because then you’re absolutely right)

anyways so I got SUPER distracted just now but apparently Tensei is talking about “tuning up” Iida’s engine!

wow can they do that?? fucking quirks, though. wild

oh my fucking god

just yank that fucking muffler right the fuck out. and a new one will grow in!! fucking QUIRKS, though. WILD

dsfalkhsd

just yank that fucking muffler right the fuck out without anesthesia. what are you, a pussy!?

gee thanks Horikoshi for this graphic image of Iida biting down on something while he uses his bare hands to yank what are essentially bones -- or organs, or whatever! the point is they’re part of him! -- right out of his fucking body. might wanna add some vodka to that OJ tonight Iida

OH SHIT, THAT PAYOFF THOUGH

IN TEN MINUTES YOU COULD TAKE OVER THE FUCKING WORLD, IIDA!

okay maybe I got a little overexcited. but damn though!

so he’s DRRNing over to Honenuki and

oh my god

loool at the thought of Iida zooming around wildly for the next ten minutes while he tries to figure out how to stop this thing, and meanwhile Honenuki can’t land a hit on him though

GET HIM IIDA!!

oh fuck

can he breathe under there? you know, depending on how long they still have until time runs out, he could just hide for the next ten minutes and then emerge and drag the paralyzed Iida to Rat Principal Jail

(ETA: actually that was a stupid thought. obviously Iida doesn’t have to keep Recipro activated the whole time if there’s no need to.)

but no, he’s swimming back to Tetsu and the others for now

meanwhile Iida’s still up top and trying to figure out what he’s up to

maybe you should do the same

holy shit we’re cutting back to the kids outside and Deku says Iida’s even faster than Gran Torino

“by a long shot.” that’s fucking fast. and I love it

by the way, with the way Mina was pointing, I thought, “oh, maybe Ojiro’s finally getting the upper hand!”

but no

Horikoshi why do you hate poor Ojiro

it’s probably the pain of this guy kicking you in the chest with his rotating fucking foot

so he’s trying to figure out what to do because he can’t really attack, and he keeps getting hurt whenever he tries to guard

oh hey there

trying to decide if I’m disappointed that Ojiro will never get to do anything cool, or ecstatic that Iida fucking Tenya just pulled off a badass save of this caliber

leaning more toward ecstatic, honestly. sorry Ojiro

oh, Iida

nice use of the word “forthwith”, Iida

(ETA: and nice use of the word “slammer”!!)

and now he’s telling Ojiro to go help Todoroki and that he’ll be right back

well I guess class 1-A will need some sidekicks too

meanwhile we’re sticking with Iida, which means I’m going to keep right on posting all of his panels, because his dialogue honestly deserves a fucking pulitzer prize

never, Sen!

Sen’s trying to reason his way out of this and telling Iida that he shouldn’t let Honenuki get away because he’s more of a threat

and he’s also grumping about Iida interrupting his and Ojiro’s fight. “you shouldn’t interrupt a one-on-one fistfight like that”

um, says who? fuck that. we’re trying to win here, we can make friends after

Iida says if he allows his will to be bent here, it will be bent in the real world as well

basically he’s treating this seriously. well, good

meanwhile! we’re cutting back to two minutes prior!

I guess Tetsu’s best option is to somehow knock him out. but the problem is that Shouto’s reflexes are too good and he can create an ice barrier in an instant

I think Tetsu’s steel would allow him to withstand Shouto’s fire long enough to punch him on his left side, though, so that would be my personal strategy if it were me

heh

A+ attack name. Shouto I’m sorry, I love you, but if I’m being honest I’m rooting for this guy here

heh

so you think he should try the fire instead? I’m not so sure that’s the best play in this case though. at least with the ice he has better control and he can hold him at bay. I just don’t think the fire would be that effective against Tetsu, but I’m sure we’ll find out shortly

because Tetsu’s bragging about how easily he can break through Shouto’s ice defense

ah here we go

for some reason Bakugou actually wanted to go up against this. still don’t quite understand it. my baby boy got a death wish

lol Pony’s running off. honestly a miracle she wasn’t incinerated just now

Shouto’s yelling at Shouji to go after her and Shouji’s all “got it”

yeah I’m thinking my initial assessment was right and this was indeed a mistake

fucking great. now you’ve got a molten steel man after your ass, Shouto

LOL

holy fucking shit. just in case anyone isn’t aware, “chinchin” means “penis” usually. so yeah

and I fucking love that here he’s using it to mean “hot”, but it could also be a throwback to the whole “five peepee man” thing, which he doesn’t actually know about but I do, and so to me this is the funniest thing ever okay

I have no further comment

oh fuck

no but as you can plainly see he is no stranger to burns, so please try not to maim him too badly...!?

lol Vlad has started narrating again. no doubt elated that his team is somehow eking out a win in what initially appeared to be the most one-sided matchup we were going to see today

uh oh but now it looks like Tetsu may have accidentally triggered the quirk development that Endeavor was trying to trigger but couldn’t because Shouto won’t return his damn texts

before I continue to the next and presumably final page of this chapter, I’m just gonna take a moment here to appreciate the irony of Endeavor accidentally conditioning Shouto to never listen to him ever, even on the occasions where it turns out he’s right. he spent years trying to get Shouto to use his flame side, but failed utterly, and then in the span of one fight Deku did what Endeavor had spent Shouto’s whole life trying to get him to do

and now it’s happening again here, where we see that Endeavor was once again trying to teach him something, but Shouto just ignored him until a random kid from the class next door just happened to say something similar. and then it clicked

like, it’s a major burn on Endeavor (no pun intended), but it’s also really unfortunate for Shouto, because his dad has been such a prick until recently that he’s missed out on absorbing the few worthwhile things he actually had to teach him. lot of lost time to make up for here, on both sides

anyways, let’s watch as Shouto slowly processes all this

well I assume (a) because of the “surpassing my limits” thing, and (b) because he’s been texting you nonstop and it was probably on your mind even though you were stubbornly trying to pretend it wasn’t

lol what kind of cliffhanger is this??

he’s not even doing anything! come on Shouto what are you doing to us. this isn’t fair

also, what happened to your hand? why is it all smooth. I assume because of some fire bullshit you’re about to do, but that’s still just weird looking

oh and on the last page there’s a long translator note explaining what I mentioned before about “chinchin” meaning penis. sometimes on select occasions I’m down with Horikoshi perpetually having the mind of a 12-year-old. if he wants to make this a recurring thing I won’t complain, lol

[kanrakixystix]

Tenebrae Secrets -- CindyLu

@ffxvfemslashweek

@ramtiger, @domesticfluffsimulator, @agi92

Day 3: Mermaids

This...was an undertaking that I wasn’t expecting. I’ve really been looking forward to this one, and I ended up building this whole world and lore that I wasn’t ready for. So, this is more of a pilot run of something that I might turn into a full series if it gets enough positive feedback. I rushed the ending because it’s getting late here and it was getting long, so I’m sorry if it just kind of flops at the end. ^^;;

ANYWAY, I really hope you all enjoy this. I had a lot of fun writing it! 

Word count: 3179

Sunlight beat down the back of Cindy’s neck as she cranked the ratchet, tightening the bolt to the unit behind the lighthouse. She had been outside all morning and well into the afternoon just trying to fix the damn switch that triggered the light, or something like that. Admittedly, she was more handy with cars and other vehicles. Power boxes, well, that was a different story. Not to say she couldn’t do it, but it wasn’t in her main wheelhouse of expertise. Still, she was more than happy to lend a hand to the royal attendants that had recently taken up residence in the house on the other side of the cliff while Paw-paw oversaw repairs on the boat below.

 Her vision blurred, and Cindy shook her head, blinking herself back into focus. When was the last time she ate, she wondered? She had definitely skipped lunch, and breakfast, and maybe even dinner the night before? Hell, had she even had anything to eat at all in the last few days? The more she thought about it, the louder her stomach growled, and she felt a wave of nausea crash over her. Oh yeah, it had been a hot minute for sure.

 She swiped a gloved hand over her brow, huffing as she sat back on her haunches, looking over her work. No misplaced or extra pieces – that was a good sign – all that was left was to test it. Cindy stood, vowing to eat as soon as she tested the light. Whether it worked or not, well, that was another beast in of itself, but she prayed to the gods that her work was done and she could move on to the next project.

 As she turned on her heels, she wavered. The world spiraled, and the sharp lines and edges of shapes blurred into one. Cindy blinked, desperate to regain herself, and she reached a hand out to lean on the wooden fence blocking off the cliff.

 There was no way she could have known that that one particular spot was weak, nor any way she could have stopped herself from tripping, one leg over the other as she tried to catch herself. On the way down, she could make out the sound of wind rushing past her ears and she felt the sharp crack of bones as she hit the rocks at the bottom.

She didn’t hear the water enveloping her, or feel the tug of the current pull her out to sea, but she remembered thinking, before she lost cognitive thought, that she should be dead, and  that maybe a piece of toast could have saved her life.

-

 Sunlight beat down the back of Cindy’s neck as she stirred. Everything ached, but nothing really hurt, at least, not that she could tell. That was a good start. Cracked fingertips twitched on the surface of something smooth, slimy, and she realized that she no longer had her gloves. Had she taken them off? She was almost certain that she had them on when she fell. Whatever. She was too tired to care, and the melodic voice that was singing to her was too beautiful to interrupt. Questions could wait; she just wanted to listen to this song some more.

 What song is this, anyway?

 The next time Cindy came to, there was no singing, and the ache in her bones was almost non-existent. Without opening her eyes, she sat up, groaning. Even if her muscles didn’t ache from the fall, they were definitely stiff from being unused. Slowly, she peeked an eye open. Beneath her were rocks, but not the same rocks that lie at the base of the lighthouse in Caem. Maybe she wasn’t far off, though? Her jacket was shredded, discarded in a heap a few feet away, and her gloves sat atop them. Looking over her body, there was hardly a mark at all, save for an indigo colored bruise that looked more like a watercolor painting on the outside of her left thigh. It almost resembled a flower, Cindy thought, and she ran her fingers over it.

 “I hope you don’t mind,” a voice, gentle, feminine, came from her right, and Cindy whipped her head to face the source. A gasp lodged itself in her throat as she took in the…creature. She was beautiful; Fair skin, with ash blond hair wrapped in a braid and a pony tail, and eyes as blue as the clearest water she could ever imagine. A white, sheer top that did little to cover the girl’s chest hung around her neck, and purple earrings that glittered like crystals hung from her ears. Behind her was…a tail? A tail made of dark blue, almost midnight, with gold along the edge of each scale, swished in the water.

 “What..?” Cindy managed, and she hoped it would magically ask every question that was racing through her mind. What was she? What was this place? What happened? What the hell is the mark on her leg? What was her name?

 So many questions.

 “Your leg,” she says, and motions to it with a hint of guilt in her eyes, “It’s the mark of Tenebrae, an uncommonly practiced magic from the days of old that binds a human to the kingdom of which the mermaid who gave them the mark belongs.”

 Cindy gawked and rubbed her face. This had to be a dream. That, or she was one-hundred percent dead and this was some kind of weird limbo between Heaven and Hell. Or maybe this was one of those places. She had never paid much attention to the that sort of thing, and Paw-paw wasn’t much for preachin’. She scrunched her nose and ran her hands through her hair, only just realizing that she was without her hat. Huffing, she leveled another look on the…mermaid?

 “What?”

 The girl giggled, and Cindy almost felt bad for being so flustered when she saw her dazzling smile. And that laughter. Her voice was truly godly.

 “I should start over.” She placed a hand over her chest delicately as she spoke, and the gesture, though seeming a bit over the top, caught Cindy’s eyes. Was her skin shimmering? “My name is Lunafreya. I am the Princess of Tenebrae, an underwater kingdom that lies between Niflhiem and Lucis.”

 Those were words that Cindy understood, mostly. She’d heard of Tenebrae, but the Tenebrae she knew of was definitely not under the sea. She’d overheard the prince talking about it before, how he had visited there when he was a kid because of some injury, or somethin’. It couldn’t be the same Tenebrae, right? Was it possible that there were two Tenebrae? That seemed like the most logical answer, but also the least likely. Then again, given the circumstances, she supposed she couldn’t really be a judge of what was likely and what wasn’t.

 The mermaid continued to smile at her, and Cindy felt butterflies flutter in the pit of her stomach. She, Lunafreya, was a sight to behold, barring the fact that she was half fish, and Cindy found herself entranced by her. She’d never really paid much attention to the merfolk stories that Weskham had told her when she was a little girl, but sitting here now, amongst the sea-worn rocks, face-to-face with a creature from the deep, she wished she had. At least then, whether she was alive or dead, she would kind of know what to say, what to expect.

 “What do the humans call you?” Lunafreya asked, and she folded her arms in front of her on the rock, propping her chin atop them as she floated, eyes fixed on her.

 “Uh, Cindy,” the mechanic said finally, and the sound of her voice made her wince. It was deep, gravelly, and she coughed. “Cindy Aurum.”

 “Aurum,” Lunafreya repeated with a fascinated grin. “As in gold?” Slowly, Cindy nodded.

 “That’s right.”

 If Lunafryea was going to say anything, she was cut off by the sound of Cindy’s stomach roaring to life, but not with the aforementioned butterflies. With hunger. And it promptly reminded Cindy as to why she had fallen to her death in the first place. As her stomach gurgled, the two women locked eyes, an awkward silence falling between them, until they both giggled at the situation. Oh, what the hell. If she was dead, she might as well play along with whatever fantasy this was, right?

 Because this had to be a fantasy. Beautiful mermaids didn’t just save mechanics that fainted and fell into the depths of the water.

 “You wish to eat?” she asked, but Cindy thought it was more of an obvious statement than a questionable observation. “I am afraid I haven’t much in the way of human delicacies, but perhaps…” The mermaid trailed off, as if she had gotten lost in a stray thought, then reached out, her hands lightly touching Cindy’s cheeks. They were cool, Cindy noted, and felt like mist against her skin. Maybe she had been expecting her to smell of ocean, or dead fish, she wasn’t sure, but she was pleasantly surprised that she wasn’t slimy nor smelly. Lunafreya tipped her head down and pressed their foreheads together. Under her breath, she whispered words that Cindy didn’t understand – probably some kind of weird mer-language, is that was a thing, and felt a surge of energy around them. It wasn’t scary, really, rather, she was awestruck. Her eyes flicked from side-to-side as she watched this strange magic float around them.

 And then it was gone. In its place was a bowl of soup and bread, as well as juice in an ornate glass. Cindy looked from it to Lunafreya, who had sank back to her original position, watching her again.

 “So…you can just produce food from thin air?” Cindy asked, and Lunafreya laughed.

 “Nothing can come from nothing,” she replied cryptically, and Cindy suddenly felt dumb for asking it at all. “However, I am able to manifest simple desires, should one want them enough. Food, for instance. You wanted to eat badly enough that I was able to bring it to you from your mind.”

 It was one thing after another with this girl, and Cindy felt as though she would be perpetually dumbstruck. She thought maybe she should stop asking questions, but then where was the fun in that?

 In this case, however, she wouldn’t question the legitimacy of the food. The scent of potatoes wafted into her nostrils, and Cindy lifted the bowl to her lips, uncaring of the audience she was keeping, and drank. Immediately, she pulled the bowl back and set it down on the rocks.

 It was hot, and she felt the warmth spread through her as her tongue burned. Hastily, she reached for the bread. It, too, was warm, fluffy, like the kind she remembered her mother making when she was much younger.

 Cindy froze. If she were dead, wouldn’t they be with her? Did she not lead a life good enough to see them in the end? Her arms dropped, and the bread rolled from her fingertips. She hadn’t considered any of that prior to now, but now that she had…

 “Am I dead?” she asked softly, unable to meet Lunafreya’s eyes. If she had, she would have seen confusion and curiosity in them. She would have seen Lunafryea shake her head.

 “That is the price for the your mark,” she answered quietly, and Cindy felt her touch her hand. She didn’t pull away. “Your life was spared. In exchange you are bound to the waters.”

 Blood rushed to Cindy’s head; she heard it pounding against her ears, felt it thrumming through her veins. This wasn’t happening. No way.

 “…why?” she hiccupped, and Lunafreya frowned. “Am I just your pet now?”

 “Of course not,” the mermaid assured, and with her other hand lifted her chin to look at her. “That was never my intention.”

 “Then what was your intention?!” Cindy snapped, and she had expected Lunafreya to recoil, but she remained next to her. Their hands still touching, their fingers wove together. She wanted to yank her hand away, to be angry and lash out, but where would she go? What would she do? Lunafreya was her only hope at surviving. Her hand was forced.

 “Only to save you, and perhaps get the chance to talk to you.” Lunafreya admittedly quietly, and as much as Cindy wanted to call her a liar, she knew there was truth in her words. A voice as angelic as hers could speak nothing false.

 “Can I ever go home?” Cindy asked finally, allowing her cheek to be cradled in Lunafreya’s palm.

 “If that is your wish,” Lunafreya replied. “Though, I must warn you. Your mark will always draw you back to the sea. You will miss it, long for it. The need to be near the water will overcome you over time.”

 “And what does that mean?” She had only ever really known land, the desert, specifically, and that was as far from any kind of water as you could get. It wasn’t that she didn’t LIKE water, per se. She simply hadn’t spent a lot of time around it was all. Could she grow to like it? Probably, but under her own circumstances, and not some old mermaid hat trick.

 “I don’t really know,” the mermaid sighed. “Mermaids are only allowed to mark a single person in their lifetime, and since it’s a long forgotten tradition, no one has performed it in centuries. There are rumors that the human imbued with the mark may move closer to the sea to be near it, or live on the water by way of boat. However, there have been scarce whispers of humans that have fallen in love with the water so much that they wished to become one with it, and were granted permission by the Goddess to live as one with the kingdom in which they were marked by.”

 Cindy listened as she spoke, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask any more questions, or to speak at all. What would Paw-paw say if he saw her with the mark? Would he even know what it was? Probably not, she thought. He would think it was a bruise, a permanent reminder, like a scar.

 Night was drawing upon them quickly, but Lunafreya was still there, unmoving, patiently waiting for her to process things. There were still a million questions to ask, but there wasn’t enough strength in her to keep asking them. She didn’t know if she could handle the answers, or if she really even wanted to know them in the first place. There had been a time when she had considered herself a curious girl, but never in her life had she ever thought it was a bad thing to be. Now, she wished she had never asked anything. Maybe she would have been better off dying amongst the rocks.

 …Lunafreya, though, hadn’t seemed to think so. She had saved her on the principle that she wanted to speak to her. But why? It wasn’t like they had ever met before. Maybe she was the first human she had ever seen, and wanted to ask her own questions? That seemed plausible. But again, she didn’t have the energy to think about it anymore. She wanted to sleep, preferably in a bed.

 “I want to go home,” she whispered, and Lunafreya only nodded before she finally let go of her. Cindy watched as she tipped her head down, as though she were praying, and the water around her stirred to life, waves crashing on the rocks and glowing a seafoam green. From the depths arose two giant seahorses, one on either side of her. On her left was one that was all white, with scales that gave off an iridescent shimmer in the majestic light that surrounded them. To the right was one that was all black with oil slick scales. This one, unlike the other, was wild, as though it had seen a million journeys begin and end, and Cindy could sense the pride and loyalty it emitted.

 “Oh my stars…” Cindy trailed off, eyes flicking between the two giant creatures.

 “I can only provide you so much,” she said, and her voice echoed as though it were all around her all at once. “This will have to do for now.”

 “What…is this?”

 Lunarfreya flourished her hands.

 “Pryna,” she introduced the white one, “is my spirit guide, a soul that has been attached to mine since birth.” Cindy didn’t understand, but she nodded all the same. “And this is Umbra.”

 Umbra and Cindy’s eyes met, and Cindy couldn’t be quite sure, but she was almost positive she could hear Umbra speaking to her, as though there was some sort of secret understanding between the two of them. Maybe there was, now that she was part mermaid, she supposed. It might just come with the territory.

 “Umbra can take you anywhere,” Lunafreya explained. “He has the freedom to wander through time, within certain limits, of course.”

 “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me!” Cindy exclaimed, astonished. “This seahorse can do all that?” Lunafreya nodded, and Cindy couldn’t help but laugh incredulously. “Well, I’ll be. That’s pretty nifty!”

 “Indeed it is,” Lunafreya agreed as she smiled, but it was sad, Cindy thought. “He can take you to your home.”

 “What about you?” Cindy asked. “Where will you go?”

 “Home, as well,” the mermaid said, “until you call upon me. Then I shall be wherever you call me to.”

 Cindy blinked and tilted her head. Surely mermaids didn’t have cell phones, right? How in the world was she supposed to call her anyway?

 As if reading her mind, Lunafreya swam to her once more. Again, she placed her hands on her cheeks, and Cindy reveled in the gentle mist that blessed her skin. For a brief moment, their eyes met, and Cindy thought she could see the world within them. The gaze was intense, and it only lasted until she felt the brush of lips on her own. Gold and silver sparks ignited between them, but they didn’t burn. Instead, they tingled, and danced on the pout of her lip.

 And then they were gone, as were Lunafreya’s lips.

 “For whenever you speak my name by the sea, I shall come to you.”

 Everything blurred, but Cindy could see Lunafreya’s beautiful face, followed by a black mass that she assumed to be Umbra before she felt her eyes slip shut again.

 -

 Sunlight beat down on the back of Cindy’s neck as she swore and shielded her eyes. From what she could make out, she was at the lighthouse in Cape Caem again. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, noting that she was wearing her gloves again, and they were in the same condition they were in before she fell. Her jacket, too, was all in one piece. Had it all been a dream? She gasped, and immediately twisted her body to look at her leg.

 The mark was still there.

[exkernal]

Fanfic: The Life and Death of Hector Rivera

“Hector, mijo, pay attention!” was the constant refrain of his childhood. By seven, he’d lost count of how many times his abuelita, exasperated, let those words slip from her lips. For a time when he was six or so, he’d become half convinced that that was his full name and that everyone just called him Hector for short.

It wasn’t his fault. He tried to focus on his chores (boring as they were) or his lessons (mostly to avoid Senorita Garcia’s lethally sharp ruler) or mass (though, really, what was the point of paying attention when the priest spoke in Latin?) but his mind kept wandering away from him. He would find himself humming a tune or tapping his fingers against his calves in the perfect beat. He’d think, this could be a song, and then he was gone, creating the story in his mind, stringing the words and sounds together.

He couldn’t help it. It was just the way he was.

He grew up poor, but then, everyone was poor in Santa Cecilia. He didn’t have much family to speak of. He entered the world at a tumultuous time, and each year more and more men in his family disappeared to the revolution, or else the many diseases that ran rampant, snatching children from their families like a monster come to life. That was the fate of his cousins, his siblings, but strangely, it spared him. He’d had his mama once, but he couldn’t remember her. She died in childbirth, not with him, but a stillborn hermanito. This left Hector in the care of his aging, arthritic abuelita, who was forever lamenting Hector’s foolishness but still loved him fiercely, in her way.

Hector was drawn to the Mariachi Plaza. The music pulled him in, the timber of their voices, the sounds of the various instruments working together to create something magical. Was no one else hearing this? Yes, they enjoyed the music—he could see it in the way the townspeople danced, how they sang along—but it didn’t seem to move them like it did him.

It was no wonder, then, that he and Ernesto became friends. Ernesto understood. He was two years Hector’s senior, and came from a loving, doting family that was whole unlike Hector’s tattered one, yet he was the only other person in Santa Cecilia who loved music like Hector.

While the other boys were out in the streets playing football and tag (and Hector still joined them, some of the time, because he was still a boy, after all) he and Ernesto would often head to Mariachi Plaza to hear the music.

“Hey, Ernesto,” Hector said one summer day, as the two of them found shelter from the sun in the shade behind the fish vendor’s cart. “If I tell you something, do you swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“Of course, amigo,” Ernesto replied as he swatted at a particularly pesky gnat.

“I’m going to be a musician when I grow up.”

To his credit, Ernesto didn’t laugh. But he wasn’t enthusiastic either.

“Don’t you need to play an instrument to be a musician?”

“I’ll get an instrument. A guitar.” And already he could see it in his mind: the perfect guitar, bedazzled with diamonds in intricate designs, strapped across his chest.

This time Ernesto did laugh. “Where are you going to get the dinero?”

Both boys were currently wearing threadbare, patched up pants and shoes with worn down soles.

“I’ll find away,” Hector vowed. “Believe me, amigo, I’ll become a musician if it kills me.”

Ernesto pondered it. His voice broke into a smile. “Perhaps we could both be musicians,” he said, “and travel the world.”

“Si, we could go to Guadalajara—”

“And Cuidad de Mexico—”

“And California—”

“And Cuba—”

“And Paris.”

They were both grinning ear to ear.

Hector found his chance when he was nine-years-old.

It was the Day of the Dead. After the visit to the cemetery (always Hector’s least favorite part. His abuelita became so emotional, but Hector couldn’t share her connection to relatives he had never known in life), he’d gone to listening to the performers in the plaza.

“Come on, mijo!” his abuelita called, “it’s been a long day, you need your rest.”

He’d gone to follow, reluctantly, when he crossed paths with a disgruntled singer, who nearly ran into Hector as he made his way to the dumpster.

“Bah! This piece of shit! What good is it?”

He heard the sound of something heavy crashing down. Hector waited until the man had gone, then dashed over towards the dumpster. There, amongst the garbage pile, was a guitar. It was the most beautiful thing Hector had ever seen. Sure, it was covered in trash, and the guitar itself wasn’t in the best condition with its peeling white paint and splintering handle, but it was workable. Fixable, for sure.

He used some tap to fix up the handle. It wasn’t perfect, but it wouldn’t break anytime soon. With a little shoe polish, he was able to cover over the peeling paint and various dirt stains, turning it into black and white designs, including a skull that he was rather proud of.

They didn’t have a teacher. No books to guide them. Hector and Ernesto essentially taught themselves to play through mimicking the sounds they heard, passing the guitar back and forth. It was slow at first. Hector’s fingers calloused and bled, and he messed up the notes more often than not, but he pressed on. He found time to sneak away for practice each day, sometimes with Ernesto and sometimes without. By the time he was twelve, he finally felt semi confident in his abilities.

He left school that year. The family needed him to work to help them get by. He didn’t mind. He could read and write, which was enough for him to put his lyrics to paper. His true education came from the plaza.

He worked a series of odd jobs, never quite sticking to one. His favorite, though, were the occasions that he and Ernesto were able to play at the plaza or the local tavern, and collected a coin or two as tip. Typically, Hector played the guitar and Ernesto sang lead, with Hector occasionally providing back up. Puberty had been kind to Ernesto: he was tall and broad while Hector was a perpetual string bean, with a chiseled, handsome face and dark, soulful eyes. Girls flocked to hear them play, swooning over the dashing, charming Ernesto de la Cruz. Hector wasn’t too hard on the eyes himself; he had his share of admirers, even if Ernesto had twice as many. Not that he cared. The music was what mattered.

In those early years, they stuck to playing old favorites. Folk songs, traditional, humorous little ditties that always got a laugh. Hector became well known for his rendition of “Juanita,” though he only ever played that for the men at the tavern, when he was sure that his abuelita wasn’t around.

He tried his hand at writing his own songs. Those first attempts would embarrass him, slightly, in the years to come. He drew inspiration from the things around him—one particularly memorable sunrise that filled his bedroom in an orange glow, the people that he encountered in Santa Cecilia. This got him in trouble from time to time. On one notable instance when he was fourteen he tried between gasped breaths to explain to Mariana Lopez’s ham-fisted older brothers that “Donkey-Faced Mariana” was about some other girl, one they’d never met before and so definitely couldn’t be related to them.

He was returning home from playing in the plaza, in the autumn of his fourteenth year, when he heard the most beautiful sound. A girl was singing somewhere just ahead of him. He recognized it as “La Llorona.” Each note captured the sheer tragedy and longing of the song, as if the girl had lived a thousand lifetimes, each with a fresh share of sorrows. He needed to find the owner of that voice.

After dashing ahead and turning a corner, he found her, the loveliest girl he’d ever seen. She was tall and slender, with a round, flawless face and black hair tied up in an elegant bun. She carried a basket of laundry in her arms and continued to sing, unaware of her new audience. Hector grinned. Carefully, he slid the guitar into his arms and began to play along.

“La LLorona, la Lloron—argh!” she jumped at the sight of him, dropping the laundry on the dirt road.

“I’m so sorry! Let me help you!” he said, scurrying to collect her now dirty clothes. He felt himself blush, and ducked his face down to hide it.

“What’s the matter with you?” the girl demanded. She was about his age, and clearly not someone to be messed with. “Who do you think you are, sneaking up on people like that?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “I heard you singing and I had to follow. Senorita, you have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.”

She scowled, but it didn’t hide the pinkish tinge that appeared on her cheeks. Hector took that as a good sign. “I know you. You’re that boy that plays in the plaza.”

“Hector,” he said, with a theatrical, and he hoped, charming bow.

She was not amused. “Imelda.”

“You should join me in the plaza, Imelda,” he said eagerly. “A voice like yours needs to be heard.”

“I don’t have time for that nonsense,” Imelda scoffed. “Not when there’s work that needs to be done.”

She sounded harsh, but Hector caught the look that flickered across her eyes. It was wistful, perhaps longing. Hector was half convinced that he already loved the girl.

“If you say so,” he said. “Here, let me carry that for you. It’s the least I can do after scaring you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” she said, but she didn’t protest when he reached for the basket, and let him walk her all the way back to her casa.

He saw Imelda a couple of times a week. They talked about nothing in particular, and after a while, sang together. She had older brothers like poor Marianna Lopez, unlike the hermonos Lopez, Felipe and Oscar were not very intimidating. It balanced out, for Imelda was intimidating enough for her entire family, and could ensure that his intentions were honorable. Not that Hector intended anything less! Ernesto could chase after their female fans all he wanted, but Hector’s heart belonged solely to Imelda.

His abuelita died when he was fifteen. Pneumonia, he thought it was. He buried her with all of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church and made a point of placing her photograph on the ofrenda. Although he ached for her (he even missed her nagging) it caused only minimal change to his life. He was a man now, or close enough. He still worked whatever jobs he could, still played with Ernesto, still courted Imelda. It was a simple life, but he enjoyed every minute of it.

His songwriting improved, too.

“Hector, mi amigo,” Ernesto aid one night, clasping him on the back. “Where do you get your inspiration? ‘Un Poco Loco’ is genius!”

Hector grinned. ‘Un Poco Loco’ had been a smashing success at the tavern that night. In fact, at that very moment, he could hear two drunks stumbling around the street, belting out their own version of the song, which missed half of the words but still got the gist right.

“Ay, Ernesto, I can’t tell you. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Come on, you know I wouldn’t—” realization dawned on his friend’s face. “It’s about Imelda, isn’t it?”

Hector tried to keep a straight face, but failed miserably. They broke up into a fit of laughter.

“I don’t understand how you two stay together the way you fight,” Ernesto said. “Mark my words, you won’t last another year!”

“We’ll see.”

It took nearly two years before Hector could finally persuade Imelda to join them on the plaza.

She was uncharacteristically quiet as they walked to the plaza, her skin as white as a ghost.

“It’s normal to have stage fright,” he said. “My first time in front of an audience, I almost threw up on my zapatos.”

“I do not have stage fright,” she said automatically.

“Oh, si, si, of course you don’t,” Hector said. “But what helped my stage fright was loosening up like this.”

He wiggled his arms, shoulders, then neck, exaggerating every moment. “See, querida?”

She laughed. “Hector, you look foolish.”

“Si, mi amor, but I feel wonderful.”

She rolled those gorgeous brown eyes, but she went along with it. Not quite with Hector’s enthusiasm, but she did it all the same.

“Feels better, no?” he smirked, elbowing her in the ribs (lightly, of course). She pushed his hand away, but she was smiling, too.

They never had to worry about stage fright again.

He loved Imelda with his heart and soul, but there was a reason why she inspired ‘Un Poco Loco.’ Their bickering was legendary. Their relationship seemed to swing between periods of blissful happiness and tumultuous fighting. None of their friends could understand it, but Hector knew that’s just how they were.

One such incident occurred when he was sixteen. He found Imelda in the garden behind the house she shared with her older brothers.

“Ay, mi amor! As beautiful as ever—”

He had only a split second to dodge the shoe she aimed his way.

“You idiot!” she cried.

“What was that for?” he asked, more baffled than anything else. Usually the reason behind her anger was clearer.

“Oh, what was that for, he asks,” Imelda said, throwing her hands in the air. “I’m pregnant, estupido.”

Hector’s heart skipped a beat. He must have misheard. There’s no way she could have said what he thought she said. Then came the panic. This can’t be happening, he thought. We’re too young, we’re not ready. How can I support a child? He peered into Imelda’s eyes and saw his own doubt and fears reflected back to him. He wanted to comfort her. Would it really be so bad? They could make it work. And he’d have a proper family—he and Imelda and the child they had made, all together.

“That’s wonderful, mi amor,” he said, and by the time he said it, he was half convinced that he actually meant it.

The night before his impromptu wedding (Imelda was starting to show, but they could still hide it with the right dresses), Hector sat at the tavern, surround by friends and well-wishers.

Ernesto led the toast. “To Hector!” he raised his glass. “It's this crazy bastard’s last night of freedom!”

“To Hector!” the others echoed, clanking their glasses and laughing. Hector felt pleasantly warm, and couldn’t keep the smile from his face.

“Congratulations, Hector, she’s a real beauty,” Diego said.

“Ay, but that temper,” Antonio said, elbowing him in the side. “You can keep her, amigo.”

“Having a wife and family changes everything,” said Elian, the only married man of their group.

“It won’t for me,” Hector said, “I’ll still be out here every night, playing ‘Juanita’ for you bastards.”

As the others laughed, Hector noticed, briefly, the look that came over Ernesto’s face. He couldn’t place it, not exactly, but it was serious, almost grave. Before Hector could dwell on it, the topic changed, and the party switched back to the same boisterous mood as before.

Imelda went into labor two weeks after Hector’s seventeenth birthday. He was banished from the casa by a stern-faced midwife, though that didn’t stop him from making seven attempts to sneak back in. He couldn’t stand to see his wife in such pain, especially when he was powerless to do anything about it. Apparently, she couldn’t stand to see him when in such pain, either, because the last time he tried, she looked him square in his eyes, her face layered with sweat, her black hair askew, and said, “You did this to me, you bastard!” It did not strike Hector as an appropriate time to point out that that technically they did this to her.

So he sat outside of the window (hearing every moan and cry of pain) and strummed his guitar. He played a medley of songs, some traditional and some his own invention, all gentle and soothing. He hoped she’d hear it and know that he was thinking of her.

His daughter was born just before sunset. She was perfect: looked just like her mama with big, soulful eyes and a tuft of black hair. He couldn’t quite believe it. Him, a father. He was the father of a beautiful, healthy, perfect baby girl. They named her Socorro, but everyone called her Coco for short.

If marriage was an adjustment, it was nothing compared with adding a baby to the mix. For the first month and a half, no one slept.

Hector loved his daughter dearly, but he also missed his sleep.

It was particularly bad one night when Coco was about a month old. He and Imelda sat up in their tiny bedroom, red eyed and so exhausted that they could barely think. Nothing could soothe the screaming baby, not rocking her, not changing her, not feeding her.

“Ay Dios mio,” Imelda groaned. “Go to sleep, mija, por favor.”

Hector, who had been rocking the wailing child in his arms, met Imelda’s eyes.

“Hey, Imelda,” he said, then motioned with his arms as if to mimic throwing the baby out of the window.

Imelda looked a second away from scolding him, but then her face crumpled into laughter. Hector joined in. Laughter felt so good to his weary body.

“Let me try something,” he said. He began to sing, “Oh mija please go to sleep/so mama and papa can sleep/because if you don’t go to sleep/ than mama will claw out papa’s eyes.”

Imelda snorted.

It didn’t work instantly, but after a few more minutes of adding nonsense versus, Coco’s eyelids grew heavy, and after nestling against Hector’s chest, she finally succumbed to sleep.

Hector never felt so proud in his life.

“The lyrics were terrible,” Imelda commented, “but the melody was sweet.”

She was right. He had something there, if he could just fix the words.

[pontificalandwarlike]

Enjolras the (Non-)Survivor

Or, an essay on why I struggle with survivor!Enjolras

[ cut for length......  buckle down kids cause this is about to be a long one. ]

As I hinted at previously, there are 3 layers to why survivor!Enjolras is a strange and confusing beast to me. 

Let’s start with the easiest/simplest, which is: history. See, the point of having Enjolras survive the barricade is usually to give him a second chance, right ? He lives, he continues on, and he triumphs the next time, or maybe two tries later, or maybe ten –– but the ultimate goal is a happy ending of sorts for our golden boy. Or at least a triumphant ending, a closure of sorts, a successful closing arc for him and his Revolution. Except.... 19th century history isn’t kind to the French Republic. A lot of survivor!verse stuff take 1848 as the happy ending ( and I in no way mean to insult or nitpick them at all ). And on the surface, that makes sense ; that’s the next successful revolution ! Except the revolution might have been successful, but the Second French Republic born of it really wasn’t. Like, the February Revolution of 1848 happened in... February, as the name suggests; four months later, the June Days Uprisings were a major rebellion in Paris, where the workers rose up en masse, complete with barricades, in protest against the Second Republic’s policies. I won’t go too much into history here ( although there’s a lot of fascinating stuff ; a book I read characterized the June Days as the last major barricades ), I mostly wanted to mention it as an indicator of how rocky the Second Republic was from the start. And then, of course, the Second Republic lasted all of four years. In 1852 we have the Second French Empire, because they went and elected Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte –– aka Napoleon III, aka Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew and heir –– as the president of the Second Republic, and he did as Bonapartes apparently do in France. So, with 1848, Enjolras either dies on that barricade, or lives to see his beloved Republic fall apart in front of his very eyes and then give way to yet another empire. Not a very happy ending, and quite honestly, I don’t know how much his story changes functionally from what we already see in canon. 

Let’s say for the sake of argument that this boy survives past 60 and sees the next republic come to be in 1870. Well, first of all, to do that, he has to : 

lead a failed rebellion and deal with the physical, legal, and emotional aftermath of that 

live under a regime he tried to overthrow for another 16 years 

watch the Second Republic fall apart and give way to the Second Empire

live in an empire for almost 20 years

and finally, live through yet another bloody revolution 

which, clearly, is not a great time for anyone. But also, the Third Republic was a bit of a mess of its own. See : the Franco-Prussion War, the Ordre Moral and the suppression of the Commune which lead up to 16 May 1877 ( “le seize mai” ), the aggressively polarized politics... Hell, just look at the wikipedia page for the Third Republic. Similar to 1848, simply getting to 1870 and the successful Revolution that leads to the Third Republic is not a happy ending in and of itself. 

The point of all this historicizing is that, given his position in history, and his ideology as a radical revolutionary republican –– no matter what he survives and lives to see, Enjolras is just destined to be a tragic figure. There’s just no happy ending for him in history ; the best he can do is go out in a symbolic blaze of glory on a barricade somewhere, as he does.  

Alright, let’s move on to layer #2 now, which is the symbolic/meta layer. This is also the most fun layer for me, and I’ll shamelessly mooch on some other people’s brilliant meta for this. There’s a lot of things you could talk about in the Brick, but I’m going to speak mainly to one of my perpetually favourite scenes, which is the execution of Le Cabuc. More specifically, the speech that follows right after it. I could quote the whole damn thing, but the key part is : 

“As for myself, compelled to do what I have done, but abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself. [...] Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood. As Satan shall be no more, so Michael shall be no more. In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life; it will come, and it is so that it may come that we are going to die.” (Tome IV, Book 11, Chapter 8) 

It took so much restraint to not bold the entire passage, but I managed to stick to a few phrases only. There’s sort of two ideas happening here. One is nor blood for blood / in the future no man will slay his fellow / all shall be concord, harmony, which is to say that Enjolras and the revolutionaries are fighting for a world without violence. Sit on the contradiction of that statement for a moment. They are fighting for a world without violence. There’s a fundamental ideological crisis here, and that is the contradiction of violence in the name of a world without violence. A question aries, then: where do people who have shed blood in the name of liberty and progress, fit in a world after revolution? More specifically for me & this essay, where does Enjolras, a “pontifical and warlike nature” fit in a peacetime world ? We have our answer in to what I have condemned myself / so Michael shall be no more / we are going to die. The answer is, he doesn’t and he can’t. The answer is, if you try to fit him in, he becomes Robespierre and Saint-Just and the Terror. The answer is, a warlike nature is a warlike nature in war or in peace ; and Enjolras is made to be the war that brings down regimes, and just because there is no more regime to be brought down doesn’t change his nature. ( Note that this is many chapters before the moment they realize they’ve been abandoned, that Paris isn’t coming to their aid ; that doesn’t happen until Tome V, Book 1, Chapter 3. Why does that matter ? Because Enjolras has no reason yet to believe they won’t survive this rebellion. And yet here he is, already condemning himself –– to death, I imagine, given the rest of his speech –– and a few lines later proclaiming that we are going to die. The revolutionaries, these men fighting with blood and sweat and tears for the future, are not going to live to see it. Because there isn’t a place for them in the world they are trying to build. They’re writing themselves out of the future. ) 

All this to say : if Enjolras survives a successful barricade, there is no place for him in the world it creates. He has already condemned himself, and the rest of the revolutionaries with him ( “We will share your fate !” Combeferre shouts, and Enjolras replies simply with “Very well.” ) He is Michael, and in a world where Satan is no more, he too will be and must be no more. ( I mooched a lot of ideas off of this meta thread, so feel free to go there for more intelligent, coherent, and informed thoughts than mine. )

Okay, then what about a failed barricade ? Well, let’s talk about that on the symbolic/meta level for a bit. Enjolras surviving a failed barricade... doesn’t make sense, on that level. It’s sort of the point of his story, that he dies there. That he dies embracing Grantaire, holding his hand, smiling. That’s the ultimate sacrifice, yes, but also the closure of his character arc : accepting love, accepting the skeptic, accepting people-with-a-lower-case-p, even when they don’t fit neatly into his revolutionary worldview. It’s a symbolic redemption of the heartless, ruthless version of republicanism he espouses at the very start ; it’s the antithesis of “Silence before Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He disowned his children; very well, but he adopted the people.” In other words, his arc remains incomplete on a symbolic level if the barricade fails and yet he doesn’t die. Also, can you imagine Enjolras surviving the barricade when everyone else has died ? I sure can’t, unless some magic stepped in and saved him when the Guard thought he was dead and he really should have been dead. 

Anyway, having addressed the symbolic/meta reasons of why Enjolras surviving the barricades is a baffling situation to be in, let’s go to the third and most practical layer : characterization. Look, Enjolras as we see him in the Brick is made of exactly two things, and that is 99% Revolution and 1% his friends. ( Percentage may vary. ) So then, who is he when we rip both of those things away from him ? Who is Enjolras, when his Revolution has failed and his friends have all died ? I don’t have a good answer to that. I can’t possibly imagine him giving up, or God forbid turning a cynic, because that runs contrary to his entire person. It’s hard to imagine him becoming a moderate, peaceful republican or something along those lines, because he’s built on quite the absolutes, and while Combeferre/Courfeyrac/Feuilly/et al. to temper his beliefs, I just don’t think there’s a way he’s ever going to bend that far. He’d break before that. But at the same time, there’s no way he can go on like before, as if nothing happened. That’s just not how trauma works. This boy, all of 26 years old, waged a war, had his hands drenched in blood, killed people he didn’t want to kill ( see : the artillery sergeant scene ), watched all of his friends die by his side, was abandoned by a group of people he believed so deeply would be on their side, and saw the ideals he devoted his entire life to shatter to rubble in front of his own eyes. He’s not walking away from that unchanged, because that’s just not how human beings work. 

So then, to summarize. I can’t imagine him giving up, because it’s not who he is as a person; I can’t imagine him choosing a moderate path, because I don’t think he has it in him to be that tempered; I can’t imagine him continuing as he was, because that’s just not how we work as people. So I’m at an impasse. 

An Enjolras who survives with a few of his friends is easier to work with, because he as room to be at both ends. He can go through his terrible post-barricade phase, the survivor’s guilt, the trauma, the fears and the insecurities and the doubts that are borne of that experience. But then he can build himself back up, piece by piece, with the help of his friends –– and he can help them build themselves back up in turn. And at the end of the day, they stand back up as they did, scarred and wounded by their experiences but still standing. For what, I’m not so sure ( see history rant above ), but at least standing. 

But an Enjolras who survives alone ? I genuinely have no idea what he would do or be, in the long-term. In the short term, sure, he’d be terribly guilty and terribly scarred and probably honestly terrified for a while. And then ? Does he heal from that on his own –– and if so, how ? What happens if he does heal –– does he go on to join or found another revolutionary group ? What happens if he doesn’t heal –– does he die, somehow ? 

This is not to say that I don’t like writing survivor!verse. The opposite is true, actually ; I love it. I love angst, first of all, but it also lets me explore a side of Enjolras that doesn’t happen a lot in other places. Which is to say, an Enjolras stripped and broken down, an Enjolras shattered and torn apart, an Enjolras guilty and doubting and robbed of his own self-assured confidence. This essay is more to explore in more depth why I struggle with Enjolras post-barricades on a broader and longer-term scale. I could probably go on but I’ll stop now because this is already 2100+ words.

[jeonbase]

Hi can you recommend some of your fav angsty yk fanfics pls thank you!!!

me: i don’t rlly like angst

also me: has 20+ angst fics to rec

no particular order: 

(some are light angst, some have happy endings, those that contain explicit sexual content are top yoongi/bottom jeongguk) 

la douleur exquise - sobi (ghost au):

[ la douleur exquise : french - the heartbreaking pain of wanting someone you can’t have. ]

the boy with the scarf changes everything.

(this is a fic that i have talked about/mentioned A LOT, this fic ruined me… beautiful, ultimate fave)

Star-crossed - ichibanjeon (soulmate au, reincarnation au, mentions of death)

Star-crossed: frustrated by the stars

People always reincarnate with the age they first met their soulmate with, so they can age together. Once every 100 years, a pair of soulmates is cursed. In each reincarnation, with the help of clues left for them, but without any form of communication, one must find the other before they die. Otherwise, they lose the ability to reincarnate forever.

(Or: Yoongi writes diaries hoping that, when he’s ready to show them, Jeongguk isn’t already gone. Not again.)

(i love reincarnation au’s. also: lovely maria, thxs for breaking my heart with that soulmates/reincarnation au)

I know I’ll fall in love with you, baby - witheredleaf (micooled) 

(soulmates au, fanboy jeongguk, rapper yoongi, fluff and angst)

The soulmate/soulbond au where Yoongi is part of a famous rap duo and Jungkook is his diligent fanboy, they meet at a fansign and things escalate from there

(alt. Yoongi didn’t sign up for this)

aere perennius - bellamees (side yoongi/namjoon) (gods & goddesses au, reincarnation au, soulmates au, love triangles, angst with happy ending, mild smut, blood) 

“one thousand three hundred and seventy-six years, hyung.”

or; gods never die, until they do.

Breathless - bluemixtape (reincarnation au, hurt/comfort, prince yoongi, servant jeongguk, canon compliant, implied prostitution, cross-dressing, smut)

The distance between Prince Yoongi and his only comfort Jungkook is more than earth and sky: the weight of the crown, the unspoken apology, the endless regret.

When the fate forces them back together again, all version of universes are jumbled in messy emotions and lingering memories. Min Yoongi, carrying a heart that never rests, desperately trying to reach his air: a splendid soul with thousand years worth of pain, Jeon Jungkook.

(i love bluemixtape’s works, loved this fic so much)

fire work - markerlimes (sunmi) (au, pyromania, unhealthy relationships, self-destruction, slight horror, angst with happy ending)

Jungkook’s hair is so dry, practically tinder to the touch, and Yoongi can’t wait to set him aflame.

arson boyfriends sugakookie inspired by the prologue

As venom as love itself is - monoxxide (au, criminal yoongi, emotional/psychological abuse, smut, drugs, verbal humiliation, love/hate,)

Jeongguk is weak and just can’t help but loving Yoongi

Yoongi is weaker and just can’t stop Jeongguk from loving him

subtle criminal!Yoongi au

the space in between - toomanysleeplessnights (also side taehyung/jimin) (light angst, au, friends with benefits, mild smut, mild jealousy, slow burn)

here’s the thing:“because you’re nearing that territory of no return, you know like when you’re swimming and everything is going, well, swimmingly, and you see a dark abyss if you go closer and you decide to tempt fate to see what would happen if you did go closer, but surprise, there’s a fucking current that sucks you in if you get too close - and if you get sucked in then you will die a horrific death at the bottom of the ocean. the end, nice knowing you. do you even know how to swim? also jimin wants me in speedos when he gets back and i don’t own a pair so i thought -”

“do you ever stop?” jungkook said, checking his ears for blood. “just - what the fuck. how do i end up at the bottom of ocean? why did you just recite the finding nemo summary?”“feelings, you doped up baboon, if you catch feelings in an fwb - you die. kicked to curb like the trash panda you are. and it’s an epic movie, dumbfuck.”

or, a manual (that no one should follow) on how to move on.

and like flowers in his hands, death blooms - bellamees (hades/persephone retelling, mild smut, death)

“i have this friend, he has a spare room,” namjoon says, and he sounds apologetic. “he’s an undertaker.”

transatlanticism - bellamees (au, dystopia, mentions of sex, angst with happy ending)

jungkook lives in the day. yoongi lives at night.

(or: the realms of day and night, two different worlds coming from two opposite poles, mingled during this time.)

sonata - numajiri (au, pianist yoongi, cellist jeongguk, light angst) 

yoongi’s fingers slot onto the keys like the first words they have ever known.

if tomorrow comes (when will you learn?) - toomanysleeplessnights (one sided taehyung/jeongguk) (college au, angst with happy ending)

yoongi moved forward and seokjin reached out, but yoongi was too predictable. he stopped inches away from jungkook - wild and desperate and still fighting. “then why me, jungkook? why us?”

jungkook couldn’t think of an answer.

alt:no love can last forever - but fuck it if they’re not going to try. (and fall apart, maybe together)

unfinished - fruitily (implied/past taehyung/jimin, brief namjoon/jin) (ghost au, light angst)

“what am i supposed to do about this,” yoongi said blankly, “call the ghostbusters?”

“you don’t have to do anything,” jungkook said, “except maybe stop walking the bedroom-bathroom distance naked, because i’m like, seeing everything, y’know, and i just told you we should take it slow, right?”

–

in which it takes yoongi a month to realize his place is haunted, jungkook is bad at being a ghost, and namjoon and jimin are probably the only contacts in yoongi’s phone.

(i love ghost aus)

the last - bellamees (au, light angst, light smut)

happy twenty-three, hyung. love, jungkookie.

it’s just a note, stuck in a red envelope with silly drawings and a couple of gift cards sort of folded, but mostly crinkled. yoongi keeps the card.

Your mouth makes a hurricane - subspinipes (au, smut, light bondage, biting, choking, dom/sub)

Yoongi almost never kisses Jungkook’s lips, but he does devour his neck like he owns him.

to prosper - xiajin (au, smut, forced separation, fluff and angst)

do you adore me as much as i adore you?

do you adore me as much as i adore you?

eternity - xiajin (au, spirits, tragic lovers)

while the sun creates, the moon waits.

A Song for The Demon - bluemixtape (one sided jimin/jeongguk) (fairy au, semi-dystopia au, alpha & half demon yoongi, omega &  half angel jeongguk, hurt/comfort, mpreg, minor character death)

Between colorful dust and tinkling laugh in the world of fairy, there’s few black wings hidden; those who are tainted by demon blood. That kind lives in a constant war against themselves and Yoongi, being one of them, is not an exception. As the one who has to carry the endless darkness, Yoongi can recognize even the smallest light. So when the blinding light called Jungkook comes, Yoongi has no chance against him.

love me blue - bellamees (soulmate au, mild smut, ambiguous/open ending)

“you said trees are green in the summer,” his voice is low, almost monotone, as if he might be perpetually bored. “you see colors—?”(or: soulmate!au where everything is black&white until you meet your soulmate)

Pale Petals - sue_bts (au, slow burn, smut, prince yoongi, peasant jeongguk, past abuse)

Min Yoongi is blind in his arrogance and power. Jeon Jungkook is a petal the prince plucked from a bouquet.

The Sound of Winter - officialmaknae (side seokjin/taehyung, side namjoon/jimin) (werewolf au, rape/non con elements, slow burn, underage drinking, blood and gore, minor character death, omega jeongguk)

Yoongi has a lot on his plate, but when his pack discovers a small pup in their territory, he finds that he’s about to have a lot more.

Your Smile Is My Happiness - Sealegs2414 (canon verse)

“Hyung…” the shorter male just grunted in reply.

“Is there a reason your knees are shaking and your hand is squeezing like there’s no tomorrow?”

Yoongi refused to turn his head towards Jungkook and meet his gaze. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was really dark outside even with all the lights of the city, Jungkook could have seen his hyung blush. Sadly that was not in the cards for him to night. The two could see each other just fine but it wasn’t quite bright enough to see any dusting of pink on either of their faces.

A gruff, “No,” was the reply he got as well as a forced relaxation in the grip that the elder had on his hand but it still never moved. The knees however, well they got a little worse before they got better.

the nights really were made for saying things you can’t say tomorrow day - siderum (canon verse, slow burn, jeongguk centric)

“you know, the fact that my rap puts you to sleep should be insulting,” yoongi says wryly.

color in your cheeks (the feeling flows both ways) - siderum (canon verse, hurt/comfort, light angst, smut)

(continuation of ‘the nights really were made for saying things you can’t say tomorrow day)

yoongi and jungkook get put together in a hotel room for the next tour.

just the two of them.

siren song - xiajin (side taehyung/jimin, side namjoon/jin, platonic jimin/jeongguk) (magic au, hurt/comfort)

the thing about jungkook is that he’s a bit of a spacey witch.

Beauty And The Beast - TheOrgasmicSeke (minor taehyung/jimin, minor namjoon/jin, platonic yoongi/hoseok) (au, angst with happy ending, mild blood, jeongguk centric, dark fairy tale elements)

Jungkook didn’t completely understand what was going on, and he wasn’t sure if he believed in the whole true love thing, but he did know one thing. Yoongi was the single most lonely broken thing he had ever seen in his entire life and something deep inside of his bones screamed at him to fix it. So, He was going to fix it. Or perhaps die trying.

[quasi-la]

CHANGE+CHANCE

                                                 A very clever monkey once said “you can't step in the same river twice”, but for all we know (so long after his passing) he may well have been delusional, or was he alluding to the kind of slow incremental change that goes unnoticed by all but the keenest observers? Certainly change is the most constant thing there is, but that's a paradox in any 1's story...another is that words can lead to understanding or down the garden path! The revelation that came to-be this story, is that change is not a random 'thing' rather a universal process, where all things existent are on their way to becoming something else, mountains erode away to alluvial sediments and the jeans we're wearing will be rags much sooner than that; but even the genes that help god put our bodies together are not immune to change...

                                                                  All things have a beginning and an end, even the Universe wasn't always the way we see it today, and in fact the new high priests tell us that once upon a time there were no things at all! Simply nothing, the void, call it what you will but our comprehension of this (no) matter is limited to the imagination; after all how can ordinary words accurately describe nothing? In the realm of mathematics another language has been developed with that aim, one that requires the higher mental ability of abstraction, because its impossible using descriptive words that evolved aeons ago to compare simple objects of interest, in the vicinity, past, present or future. As if to compound the confusion an extremely clever monkey proved a century ago that time (as we imagine it) simply does not exist at all! A conundrum erupted that was soon forgotten as monkeys are easily distracted by wars and shopping malls, however a Universe without time or any thing at all does make some sense if there is nothing to change and no observer to compare or compute the rate of change...or even make up stories about how it all began!

                             Creation stories change too but 1 common theme is; “in the beginning was the word” and the word is 'information' which is not any kind of thing at all... On Earth when it used to be heaven, some clever monkeys began to develop machines to do their work and even to think for them as well, but before AI there was the binary code, and if (it) didn't exist prior to any monkeys, or silicon diodes, we would still be in heaven! Not that the monkeys or even the diodes were at fault in any way, its just that change is purpose driven, a process that draws reality out of the past inexorably toward a future 'cause'. Without higher language skills most of the monkeys are suspended in yesterday, busy shopping and chasing their own or somebody else's tail, so they fail to grasp the fact that in-form-ation is the only meta-physic needed. In a physical Universe, form is the precursor of any thing at all...and that non-entity needs and/or seeks material substance to-be functional – in the great process of change.

                                               Just like all story tellers even cosmologists leave some thing out; in their 'pop' version of universal genesis there was1 tiny little no-thing called a singularity, which is their own condescending word for a piece of nothing destined to-be everything. They calculated it was way smaller even than a bee's willy, and in far less than 6 (Earth) days all that matter (all that matters to them?) just popped into existence – with a rather large bang. Apparently it takes a good bang to get a Universe started, and then each atom took up its pre-existing form, countless trillions of them in the form of great galaxies of stars and not a few black holes beside; all this in the tiniest fraction of a second. Instantly the greatest amount of change any monkey could ever imagine, in the past, present, or future!

                                                                                  Fortunately for their version of creation its easier than 1 might think because its now known to-be mostly Hydrogen (99.99%) which is just the simplest form of matter that ever could be. However from simple things complex things grow, and in the far flung extremities bits of uncommon matter have had an eternity for chance to play a role... It turns out that there were many other forms in that tiny genesis-bag, and in those sacred niches where conditions are favourable, traces of a minor element called Carbon just can't help rearranging themselves into more and more complex structures, eventually even living cells with the real power to reproduce. By chance Carbon happens to contain 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons, which can occasionally evolve into consciousness, (a kind of language game)...or devolve into formal-superstition? Before we throw our hands in the air and make all manner of accusations, remember that Life-forms on this old Earth have been evolving with a quad-code for over five billion years. That translates into a hell of a lot of  random mutations, and even the machines with only a binary code have already learned how to programme themselves – by chance!

                           Life is  very good at staying alive and increasing Her complexity, ironically it was the machines that proved to the cleverest monkeys that evolution IS the law of Life, sadly intelligence still gives way to ego and the $ystems that seize power and exploit those they see as zeros... In one sense evolution does boil down to chance along the way, but the meta-physics cannot be ignored; remember the form of all things (including you and I) were there at the beginning and since information cannot be destroyed so 'immortality' is in the bag after all! Unfortunately a dichotomy opened up between the rich and powerful and those who sought knowledge, the former held on to the mindset of being made in the image of (their) god. Great achievements have been made by those with either disposition, but ancient Greek knowledge was the cradle of technology that gave them the (military) advantage over others...and led to AI! Ultimately those in power and even the 'zeros' will believe what they want to believe, but if you can't change your mind you haven't got one, which is is not mere semantics; changing your mind only seems like the easiest thing in the world!

                                                                    In fact even people seldom do, and the cause of this myopia may indeed go back centuries to when they were taught under duress, that a good subject must first believe, and then understanding will follow. This technique proved useful for the illiterate, in the early daze of empires, and all have followed suit; so long as the story remains believable, or the flock gullible enough. To stay on the power in times of discord the noisiest non-believers must be made an example of, and truly terrible things were done but the dark times were put behind. New wonderful shiny things were invented, and the monkeys even jumped over the moon! However a hundred new creeping neuroses developed and the greatest psychologist of all Time was convinced that centuries of rule by any form of terror could establish 'archetypes' in the subconscious or collective mind-space. An entirely new subject had been created under the tyranny of the powerful-but-less-intelligent, and it was open season for any breed of 'mind parasites' that are now paid a King's ransom – for keeping the literate ignorant!

                             Its nice to think your 'I' was made in the image of god, but for too many generations it was not safe to think anything else, and still to this day not all the monkeys want to live in the clear light of understanding, for all sorts of reasons (they) alone need to justify, but nevertheless it must be noted that a great deal of 'interest' is continually reinvested in this archetypical dualism. It became apparent that keeping the masses ignorant kept on increasing the power concentrated in the hands of a few, even tho the '1's' on top soon develop pathological disturbances more soul destroying than the workers. Power is totally addictive so they keep on keeping on, for their god, for their egos, and (its) empires. As for the sheep-with-bells-on its not conspiracy if those who teach others believe their own lies, and power truly has many many disguises.

                             Over successive generations a very powerful (belief) $ystem brewed itself up like a cyclone over a hot ocean, (it) made all kinds of formal rules of engagement  and they were distributed to the far corners of this old Earth, first through the pulpit, then by secular states, and finally by a one eyed monster that was placed with grateful appreciation in every living room. Now-a-daze the very condition of being a member of a 'society' has changed increment by increment to one of naked self interest, aimed point blank at the totalitarian individual... Whose spiritual leaders preach death as the antithesis to life but much older stories worship nature as the Mother of all, and positioned a single life within an eternal series. The great process of change known as Life is connected through death, and at the end of 1 life even the biological code is carried by your offspring. Information as memories and the DNA code (not diamonds) are for ever, the awareness of past lives is (more or less) subdued that's all – like after a good party!

                               At the boundary between memory (knowledge of what was) and imagination (...of what might be) there exists an infinite potential to affect the physical world around us. Her prize monkey like no other creature is Nature's agent of change incarnate, and Her true nature is embedded in all living creatures; essentially every being is created around a 'fragment' of that grand organising dynamic. This point of view is completely antithetical to that perpetuated by the monkeys in the upper branches, which has played on and on until it seems that so much change in the mass (de) cultured minds of the many-too-many is unthinkable. They would rather die and still do, but the flip side of this scenario is a chance event; millions of years ago our 'diamond' in the sky was hit by a meteorite shower and much of the precious Carbon was buried deep underground beyond Her reaches.

                                  In mysterious ways She had clever little monkeys dominate this old Earth through fierce competition, and a furious hunger for the energy contained in Carbon bonds... Bingo! is a game of chance too, but there can be no coincidence that fire is the greatest tool of any tool using creature. When the wood got scarce some clever chimp (or chap?) threw a black rock on the fire and then the Industrial 'resurrection' was already in the pipeline! From that point in Time to now is a heartbeat on Her agenda...and the burnt Carbon (dioxide) is the only way it can be re-incorporated into the biosphere. That much change is on the scale of planetary engineering and must have a final cause– the meteor shower was chance! Some times 'boundaries' must be enforced and to hold on to the idea of being made in the image of any god is heedless projection of the (male) ego – at best no more than an aberration of the monkey mind!

                                  Advertising is always linked to desire, and feeds that fatalistic agility which forever disproves any of His assertions...jumping over the moon not withstanding! The mute point is the form of ideas exist outside us, before 'I' and forever after that. Mass culture in all its man-infestations IS the 'beast with many heads' but paradoxically woMan the liberator of Carbon is really and truly on a mission from god! Think about the extraordinary rate the technology was developed to mine coal, drill for oil, refine it, and invent all those devices to 'use up' the fossil fuel – on a billion miles of roads! At the end of the day if you can change your mind there's a very good chance you're on the road to becoming something else, in the return to garden (of Carbon), which always was the other common theme. &...

[newstfionline]

Infinite War: The Gravy Train Rolls On

By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch, June 8, 2018

“The United States of Amnesia.” That’s what Gore Vidal once called us. We remember what we find it convenient to remember and forget everything else. That forgetfulness especially applies to the history of others. How could their past, way back when, have any meaning for us today? Well, it just might. Take the European conflagration of 1914-1918, for example.

You may not have noticed. There’s no reason why you should have, fixated as we all are on the daily torrent of presidential tweets. But let me note for the record that the centenary of the conflict once known as The Great War is well underway and before the present year ends will have concluded.

Indeed, a hundred years ago this month, the 1918 German Spring Offensive--codenamed Operation Michael--was sputtering to an unsuccessful conclusion. A last desperate German gamble, aimed at shattering Allied defenses and gaining a decisive victory, had fallen short. In early August of that year, with large numbers of our own doughboys now on the front lines, a massive Allied counteroffensive was to commence, continuing until the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when an armistice finally took effect and the guns fell silent.

In the years that followed, Americans demoted The Great War. It became World War I, vaguely related to but overshadowed by the debacle next in line, known as World War II. Today, the average citizen knows little about that earlier conflict other than that it preceded and somehow paved the way for an even more brutal bloodletting. Also, on both occasions, the bad guys spoke German.

So, among Americans, the war of 1914-1918 became a neglected stepsister of sorts, perhaps in part because the United States only got around to suiting up for that conflict about halfway through the fourth quarter. With the war of 1939-1945 having been sacralized as the moment when the Greatest Generation saved humankind, the war-formerly-known-as-The-Great-War collects dust in the bottom drawer of American collective consciousness.

From time to time, some politician or newspaper columnist will resurrect the file labeled “August 1914,” the grim opening weeks of that war, and sound off about the dangers of sleepwalking into a devastating conflict that nobody wants or understands.

Yet a different aspect of World War I may possess even greater relevance to the American present. I’m thinking of its duration: the longer it lasted, the less sense it made. But on it went, impervious to human control like the sequence of Biblical plagues that God had inflicted on the ancient Egyptians.

So the relevant question for our present American moment is this: once it becomes apparent that a war is a mistake, why would those in power insist on its perpetuation, regardless of costs and consequences? In short, when getting in turns out to have been a bad idea, why is getting out so difficult, even (or especially) for powerful nations that presumably should be capable of exercising choice on such matters? Or more bluntly, how did the people in charge during The Great War get away with inflicting such extraordinary damage on the nations and peoples for which they were responsible?

For those countries that endured World War I from start to finish--especially Great Britain, France, and Germany--specific circumstances provided their leaders with an excuse for suppressing second thoughts about the cataclysm they had touched off.

Among them were:

* mostly compliant civilian populations deeply loyal to some version of King and Country, further kept in line by unremitting propaganda that minimized dissent;

* draconian discipline--deserters and malingerers faced firing squads--that maintained order in the ranks (most of the time) despite the unprecedented scope of the slaughter;

* the comprehensive industrialization of war, which ensured a seemingly endless supply of the weaponry, munitions, and other equipment necessary for outfitting mass conscript armies and replenishing losses as they occurred.

Economists would no doubt add sunk costs to the mix. With so much treasure already squandered and so many lives already lost, the urge to press on a bit longer in hopes of salvaging at least some meager benefit in return for what (and who) had been done in was difficult to resist.

Even so, none of these, nor any combination of them, can adequately explain why, in the midst of an unspeakable orgy of self-destruction, with staggering losses and nations in ruin, not one monarch or president or premier had the wit or gumption to declare: Enough! Stop this madness!

Instead, the politicians sat on their hands while actual authority devolved onto the likes of British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, French Marshals Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Petain, and German commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. In other words, to solve a conundrum they themselves had created, the politicians of the warring states all deferred to their warrior chieftains. For their part, the opposing warriors jointly subscribed to a perverted inversion of strategy best summarized by Ludendorff as “punch a hole [in the front] and let the rest follow.” And so the conflict dragged on and on.

Put simply, in Europe, a hundred years ago, war had become politically purposeless. Yet the leaders of the world’s principal powers--including, by 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson--could conceive of no alternative but to try harder, even as the seat of Western civilization became a charnel house.

Only one leader bucked the trend: Vladimir Lenin. In March 1918, soon after seizing power in Russia, Lenin took that country out of the war. In doing so, he reasserted the primacy of politics and restored the possibility of strategy. Lenin had his priorities straight. Nothing in his estimation took precedence over ensuring the survival of the Bolshevik Revolution. Liquidating the war against Germany therefore became an imperative.

Allow me to suggest that the United States should consider taking a page out of Lenin’s playbook. Granted, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, such a suggestion might have smacked of treason. Today, however, in the midst of our never-ending efforts to expunge terrorism, we might look to Lenin for guidance on how to get our priorities straight.

As was the case with Great Britain, France, and Germany a century ago, the United States now finds itself mired in a senseless war. Back then, political leaders in London, Paris, and Berlin had abrogated control of basic policy to warrior chieftains. Today, ostensibly responsible political leaders in Washington have done likewise. Some of those latter-day American warrior chieftains who gather in the White House or testify on Capitol Hill may wear suits rather than uniforms, but all remain enamored with the twenty-first-century equivalent of Ludendorff’s notorious dictum.

Of course, our post-9/11 military enterprise--the undertaking once known as the Global War on Terrorism--differs from The Great War in myriad ways. The ongoing hostilities in which U.S. forces are involved in various parts of the Islamic world do not qualify, even metaphorically, as “great.” Nor will there be anything great about an armed conflict with Iran, should members of the current administration get their apparent wish to provoke one.

Today, Washington need not even bother to propagandize the public into supporting its war. By and large, members of the public are indifferent to its very existence. And given our reliance on a professional military, shooting citizen-soldiers who want to opt out of the fight is no longer required.

There are also obvious differences in scale, particularly when it comes to the total number of casualties involved. Cumulative deaths from the various U.S. interventions, large and small, undertaken since 9/11, number in the hundreds of thousands. The precise tally of those lost during the European debacle of 1914-1918 will never be known, but the total probably surpassed 13 million.

Even so, similarities between the Great War as it unspooled and our own not-in-the-least-great war(s) deserve consideration. Today, as then, strategy--that is, the principled use of power to achieve the larger interests of the state--has ceased to exist. Indeed, war has become an excuse for ignoring the absence of strategy.

For years now, U.S. military officers and at least some national security aficionados have referred to ongoing military hostilities as “the Long War.” To describe our conglomeration of spreading conflicts as “long” obviates any need to suggest when or under what circumstances (if any) they might actually end. It’s like the meteorologist forecasting a “long winter” or the betrothed telling his or her beloved that theirs will be a “long engagement.” The implicit vagueness is not especially encouraging.

Some high-ranking officers of late have offered a more forthright explanation of what “long” may really mean. In the Washington Post, the journalist Greg Jaffe recently reported that “winning for much of the U.S. military’s top brass has come to be synonymous with staying put.” Winning, according to Air Force General Mike Holmes, is simply “not losing. It’s staying in the game.”

Not so long ago, America’s armed forces adhered to a concept called victory, which implied conclusive, expeditious, and economical mission accomplished. No more. Victory, it turns out, is too tough to achieve, too restrictive, or, in the words of Army Lieutenant General Michael Lundy, “too absolute.” The United States military now grades itself instead on a curve. As Lundy puts it, “winning is more of a continuum,” an approach that allows you to claim mission accomplishment without, you know, actually accomplishing anything.

It’s like soccer for six-year-olds. Everyone tries hard so everyone gets a trophy. Regardless of outcomes, no one goes home feeling bad. In the U.S. military’s case, every general gets a medal (or, more likely, a chest full of them).

“These days,” in the Pentagon, Jaffe writes, “senior officers talk about ‘infinite war.’”

I would like to believe that Jaffe is pulling our leg. But given that he’s a conscientious reporter with excellent sources, I fear he knows what he’s talking about. If he’s right, as far as the top brass are concerned, the Long War has now officially gone beyond long. It has been deemed endless and is accepted as such by those who preside over its conduct.

In truth, infinite war is a strategic abomination, an admission of professional military bankruptcy. Erster General-Quartiermeister Ludendorff might have endorsed the term, but Ludendorff was a military fanatic.

Check that. Infinite war is a strategic abomination except for arms merchants, so-called defense contractors, and the “emergency men” (and women) devoted to climbing the greasy pole of what we choose to call the national security establishment. In other words, candor obliges us to acknowledge that, in some quarters, infinite war is a pure positive, carrying with it a promise of yet more profits, promotions, and opportunities to come. War keeps the gravy train rolling. And, of course, that’s part of the problem.

Who should we hold accountable for this abomination? Not the generals, in my view. If they come across as a dutiful yet unimaginative lot, remember that a lifetime of military service rarely nurtures imagination or creativity. And let us at least credit our generals with this: in their efforts to liberate or democratize or pacify or dominate the Greater Middle East they have tried every military tactic and technique imaginable. Short of nuclear annihilation, they’ve played just about every card in the Pentagon’s deck--without coming up with a winning hand. So they come and go at regular intervals, each new commander promising success and departing after a couple years to make way for someone else to give it a try.

No, it’s not the generals who have let us down, but the politicians to whom they supposedly report and from whom they nominally take their orders. Of course, under the heading of politician, we quickly come to our current commander-in-chief. Yet it would be manifestly unfair to blame President Trump for the mess he inherited, even if he is presently engaged in making matters worse.

The failure is a collective one, to which several presidents and both political parties have contributed over the years. Although the carnage may not be as horrific today as it was on the European battlefields on the Western and Eastern Fronts, members of our political class are failing us as strikingly and repeatedly as the political leaders of Great Britain, France, and Germany failed their peoples back then.

Congressional midterm elections are just months away and another presidential election already looms. Who will be the political leader with the courage and presence of mind to declare: “Enough! Stop this madness!” Man or woman, straight or gay, black, brown, or white, that person will deserve the nation’s gratitude and the support of the electorate.

Until that occurs, however, the American penchant for war will stretch on toward infinity. No doubt Saudi and Israeli leaders will cheer, Europeans who remember their Great War will scratch their heads in wonder, and the Chinese will laugh themselves silly. Meanwhile, issues of genuinely strategic importance--climate change offers one obvious example--will continue to be treated like an afterthought. As for the gravy train, it will roll on.