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stillness-in-green · 1 year ago

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On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XVI - XVIII, Endeavor Agency to Villain Hunt)

My thanks to @codenamesazanka for providing me a few crops this week for less fuzzy looks at background characters than I could manage working just off the Viz online catalogue. I'm hoping this posts okay, because it's about a thousand words longer than any of these have been so far, but has a lot less sub-sub-sub bullets than last week's breakdown of the CRC volume extra. Fingers crossed, and dive in, all!

The Endeavor Agency Arc (Chapters 241-252)

Chapter 245:

Another installment of Bakugou using animal terms, as he calls Hawks a spoonbill (in the Japanese, heradori, loosely meaning carefree bird). Deku asks, with some sweatdrops, if he means Hawks; Endeavor’s sidekicks just tell him he’s got moxie. One of Endeavor’s four consistently illustrated sidekicks is a big horse-like guy, though he’s by far the one who gets the least attention from the narrative; he is notably not in the panel of Endeavor sidekicks praising Bakugou’s go-getter attitude.

The Paranormal Liberation War Arc (Chapters 253-306)

Chapter 256:

Shouji is noted as having done his work study with Gang Orca. I would kill to know if they ever had a conversation about their wildly different approaches to managing their scary heteromorph image, but Horikoshi has not deigned to show us anything to that effect.

Chapter 258:

This chapter gives us the full spread of the PLF regiment advisors. While only a few of them will (as of this writing) get much to do, it’s notable that the percentage of obvious heteromorphs considerably increases at this level. The MLA leadership was, barring cosmetic things like Curious’s skin or Re-Destro’s pointed ears,[1] all quite baseline, but every single regiment has at least one obvious heteromorph in their chains of command. Indeed, a solid third of them are blatant heteromorphs,[2] which is a better percentile than, for example, the Shie Hassaikai or the U.A. staff can claim. It makes sense, given the obvious problems with restricting unlicensed quirk use to the home, that the MLA would attract a disproportionate number of heteromorphs, but the full extent of this will not be apparent for some time yet.

[1] His nose I read as more an exaggeration than a trait that’s specifically intended to be non-human-looking, but if it is supposed to be non-baseline, it’s considerably more obvious than his ears.

[2] That is, the really obvious, extreme heteromorphs, who number seven of the twenty-one advisors. I didn’t count the R2D2 lookalike, the guy with the question mark mask, or Hose Face, who might be heteromorphs or might just be in costume, nor did I count Dabi’s #1, the spiky guy in the cabbie hat, whose concrete divergence of a pronged chin is a lot less noticeable than his being, like, eight feet tall and as broad in the chest as a particularly top-heavy wardrobe. Any of those that are heteromorphs obviously increase the ratio even more.

Chapter 259:

Our only shot to date of the gal who’s probably Natsuo’s girlfriend, who’s a heteromorph in the “mostly human but with some tertiary animal features glued on” mode; in her case, she has mouse ears and, judging by her body language, a fairly mousy demeanor. Notable for being one of the most prominent heteromorph/non-heteromorph romantic relationships in the series, which is setting the bar about a quarter-inch off the ground. Even more notable when you consider Dabi and Shouto’s willingness to sling around dehumanizing microaggressions! I will remind everyone again that Natsuo evaded the topic of his having met someone at school when Fuyumi brought it up in front of their mother back in Chapter 187; while it played at the time as just a young man being embarrassed, this chapter’s splash page makes it apparent that he had a reason to be embarrassed, and was not just that awkward about the very concept of himself in a romantic relationship. Knowing, then, that he had met someone at school, the question for the attentive reader becomes, “So why didn’t he want to tell Fuyumi and Rei about it back then, when Fuyumi gave him such a perfect opening?” At this stage, the most the reader has grounds to assume[3] is that he’s just shy, or he wasn’t quite yet at a point in his relationship with this gal that he wanted to do the whole “introduce her to my family” song and dance, especially given what someone finding out more about his family would entail! Later reveals about Rei’s side of the family will suggest a different, less benign possibility, however.

[3] I’ll go ahead and rule out the idea that Natsuo is an asshole who’s not serious about her as being obviously not in the spirit of what we know about him.

Chapter 267+268:

Mirko has the thought, “Quick as a rabbit!” when focusing on catching up to Ujiko. Later, in the midst of vigorously dehumanizing Shigaraki, she makes mention of her “rabbit survival instincts.” We saw those animal references with Hawks as well, whereas it’s not something we see as much, if ever, from people like Tsuyu or Spinner. As I suggested before, it’s easy to imagine people who have a hard time because of their appearance are more sensitive about said appearances than people who look like drop-dead gorgeous baseline humans but with a few animal features—but only as long as they’re cute or charismatic animals!—pasted on as an “exotic” touch.

Chapter 271:

Dabi addresses Hawks and Tokoyami as yakitori—grilled chicken skewers, localized as “roasted chickens.” This is less eyebrow-raising than him calling Spinner a lizard and then accusing him of being oversensitive for protesting—Hawks and Tokoyami are Dabi’s enemies, after all, and this is hot off of Hawks murdering Twice. However, it certainly doesn’t support a read I’ve periodically seen offered that Dabi Learned From His Mistake With Spinner and Resolved Not To Do It Again.

Geten calls the assembled heroes “dogs of the state.” He’s not addressing any heteromorphs specifically, and of course using “dog” as an insult against someone viewed as overly obedient to a corrupt authority has plenty of history in many languages. Still, I wonder if it’s the kind of usage that is frowned on as insensitive in some circles, similar to using e.g. “blind” to describe willful ignorance.

Chapter 278:

First spoken line delivered by Spinner’s #2, who will go on to be a key figure at the hospital attack. Even the handful of lines he gets here is extremely effective at establishing his personality—grandiose, dedicated to the cause of revolution, and a vocal rallying figure for those he leads. A few pages later, another panel will reveal him as being unusually short, likely taller than e.g. Mineta, but shorter than any of the story’s other teenagers, even the girls. This small stature, combined with the insectile legs protruding from behind his shoulders, give an early hint that we’re looking at a heteromorph, while his mask sets up the possibility that he’s concealing something about his face. Regarding the mask, it's possible that he just wears it for The Aesthetic, save that the MLA—unlike, say, the Shie Hassaikai—don't have an organizational culture towards masks, as the MLA are very geared towards hiding in plain sight, just looking like normal, average members of society. Only three out of the twenty-one advisors (give or take whatever’s going on with the R2D2 look-alike) fully cover their faces; Spinner's #2 is one of those three. It begs the question of why—a question the hospital scene will at least suggest an answer to.

Chapter 281:

Shigaraki lays out, over the course of four pages, his mini-manifesto on why he’s going to destroy Hero Society, in which he talks about how heroes have disregarded, even actively concealed, the suffering of those they couldn’t save. While his mind seems to be mainly on his own experience, we also know that he’s aware of how others like him have suffered. He’s spent months with victims of Hero Society’s repressiveness, one of whom made very clear, by means of shouting it in Shigaraki’s face, the discrimination he’d faced with no one ever coming to help him. Shigaraki knows about heteromorph discrimination the same way he knows about villain quirk discrimination and the dehumanization of criminals. His declaiming here about generations of heroic failure serves to stand in for all of that. Notably, it continues to be the case that the crowd scenes consist mainly of relatively baseline, mostly human-looking folks. Those are the ones who most enjoy protection and safety in the current system; all of two people in thirty across three crowd shots in Shigaraki’s manifesto have heteromorphic features/builds more extreme than some extraneous pointy bits pasted on, and both of those two are dressed as heroes, not civilians.

I count the big energy guy in the cape in the top panel, and the Muppet-looking guy with four arms in the bottom. Everyone in the panel I didn’t include—the one of Tenko walking through the crowd of silhouettes—is baseline-give-or-take-some-pointy-bits. We hardly ever see someone like the Sludge Villain or Shouji, or hell, even Tokoyami, in these crowd scenes as everyday civilians, and the conclusion is, inescapably, that it’s because the present-day society doesn’t accept people like that as everyday civilians.

Note, here, how Endeavor responds to the accusation that heroes ignore the pain of those they can’t save—he takes a breather while Shigaraki rambles and then immediately resumes his attack, not seeming to register for even a second that this could be an opening to talk, to de-escalate, even if only as a stalling tactic to let Aizawa get a blink in, to buy the evacuation more time, to give his compatriots that little bit more time to recover. He’s clearly written off Shigaraki’s words the moment Shigaraki started talking, and no one with him seems to have done any different, not even Midoriya Izuku. This kind of thing is distressingly common in the series: the heroes have absolutely nothing to say about societal inequality, right up until a victim of it turns up acting criminal, at which point the dialogue goes from the stone silence of complicity to the moral scolding of, “This is going too far.”

Chapter 297:

The Tartarus jailbreak chapter brings us Shishikura’s father scoffing at the idea that Gigantomachia could be called human, referring to him instead as, “A disaster on legs, or a wild beast. Just like the rest of the animals we’ve got locked up here.” He goes on to say that “disgusting beings” like the Tartarus prisoners only managed to blend in with society for as long as they did because, “Quirks have warped our standards for humanity.” This is clearly mostly a villain bias issue—with the exception of Kurogiri, all of the villains shown on the page of this dialogue are relatively baseline, with transformation or emitter-style quirks. All the same, it’s worth noting that he repeatedly associates villains with wild animals, dehumanizing them in ugly, startlingly explicit terms. It begs the question: What are Shishikura’s father’s standards of humanity? What is he suggesting his society tolerates that pre-Advent society would not have? I would guess that his beef is with those he views as lacking the self-control or moral standards to refrain from villainy,[4] but rather than just say that, he instead goes to turns of phrase invoking the bestial. I suspect that deterministic rhetoric like his is not uncommon as justification for both anti-heteromorph discrimination and the bias against villains.

[4] This guess is based on his wording, what we know about his son’s personality, and the worldbuilding lore that the crime rates shot up with the advent of quirks and never went back down to pre-Advent norms. The crime rate issue in particular would be highly visible in a society that prided itself on being as peaceful as Japan does in the real-world modern day.

I will note that, of the six people we see making breakouts who we weren’t already acquainted with—five nameless figures and one Lady Nagant, at the time a new face—four of them are visibly, obviously heteromorphic.

The three in the foreground are quite distinct, and the one at the far back looks like he fits the bill as well. Only the one to Moonfish’s immediate left looks baseline, likely an emitter.

The guards, of course, are baseline to a man, with the only exceptions being Gyges and Briareos, who, judging by their costumes, are hero-licensed, not normal wardens.

Chapter 298:

The Central Hospital staff start getting introduced. In much the same way as the police force has a relatively high rate of animal-type heteromorphs in speaking roles,[5] Central Hospital is full of Super Mario Bros. joke characters. This is mostly a silly in-joke at the time, but Dr. Yoshi here will be back to serve as a deeply exasperating, bad faith gotcha during the hospital attack.

[5] The rando guys with riot shields are always hella baseline, but there are, by my count, six recurring roles in the police cast: Tsukauchi, Tsuragamae, Sansa, Gori, and two unnamed men I suspect to be with the National Police Agency (the one who tries to get Nedzu to call off the Cultural Festival and the one with the HPSC President in the scene where she’s giving Hawks his League infiltration assignment). Half of these are heteromorphs.

Chapter 299:

Hawks's dad, whose little elbow winglets prefigure his son's full wings, has a lament about how he could have been, “free as a bird!” There's no animal reference in the Japanese text.

I brought up a panel back in the Kamino arc to demonstrate that there was a higher incidence than usual of heteromorphs in an area that was meant to come off, visually, as somewhat seedy. While there’s always some element of randomness to that sort of thing—I assume the background extras are usually drawn by Horikoshi’s assistants, not the man himself—we see the same thing in the subway station Tomie takes baby Hawks to after they leave home.

Note how run-down the place looks, with cracked floor tiles, dingy walls, and equipment piled up in the open, then note how at least three, maybe four, of the five people in the foreground have heteromorphic features.

Chapter 300:

Dr. Toad at Central Hospital, who will show up in a flashback in the hospital raid that is barely less obnoxious than Dr. Yoshi’s appearance.

Chapter 301:

While not immediately connected to heteromorphobia, this chapter establishes that Rei’s family, the Himura, were once prestigious and much-storied, but had fallen on hard times by the time they were approached by Endeavor about a quirk marriage. The easy assumption for why Rei’s parents are so okay with the arrangement is that they were just that desperate for money, but in retrospect, a quirk marriage was far more sane and normal than what their family had been doing for generations!

Chapter 303:

Hawks mentions Spinner in his accounting of the problems facing Team Hero. This makes him rather unusual—All Might, for example, will later repeatedly fail to mention Spinner in similar situations, though it’s unclear whether that’s because All Might genuinely doesn’t believe Spinner to be a threat or whether All Might is trying to avoid bringing up the brewing race riot enormous mob consisting of members of a long-oppressed minority group, in hopes of keeping his students away from it.

Chapter 306:

I’ve avoided bringing him up until this point because his hero costume makes it very hard to tell if his neck is just a mildly caricatured feature like Re-Destro’s or if it really is covering up a non-baseline feature, but Best Jeanist’s outfit at the press conference is the place to start if you want to make an argument for him having a heteromorphic feature.

If he is a heteromorph, Jeanist covers it up extremely well, to the point that I’ve never seen anyone outside my chat group even raise the possibility that he might be! But that is part of his whole modus operandi, isn’t it? To keep up the appearance of things, to present an unassailable image of heroes, even when they’re running themselves ragged, because that’s what he believes the public needs? Here we see Shouji’s decision about masking himself taken to its logical extreme—being so invested in a harmonious appearance that doesn’t disturb anyone that he doesn’t even register as non-baseline to begin with. I’m very fond of Jeanist, mind you, and I love his awareness of surface and veneer—he feels like someone who has made a conscious, considered, moral decision to uphold the system, a decision he’s given far more thought to than fellow heroes who never get past, “How do I want to present myself to the public?” to the question of, “Why do I believe this presentation is the correct moral choice?” But that veneer is, as the endgame has gone to some efforts to explore, not sustainable for anyone. (Would that Shouji were taking notes.)

The Villain Hunt Arc (Chapters 307-328)

Chapter 310:

This chapter brings us the attack on the giant woman.[6] While the three men—all baseline, all using support goods rather than whatever their own quirks are—attacking her seem to be doing so out of fears that she’s a villain, not explicit hatred for heteromorphs, this is very clear heteromorphobia nonetheless. There’s absolutely nothing about the Ordinary Woman that suggests that she’s remotely villainous—not her attitude, not her dress, not even something like a punky haircut! The only reason to distrust this woman’s intentions is suspicion of her height, her claws, her vulpine face—in other words, her status as a heteromorph. The only other thing remotely dubious about her is that she was out after dark—but of course, so were the men hunting her! Note here the woman’s strong implication that she was attacked before she ever reached a shelter. She says she thought to take shelter at a hero school and, somewhat haphazardly, left her home in the night. She doesn’t finish the sentence, trailing off before apologizing, but it’s plainly nighttime when Deku rescues her, and, by her own words, she’s still in her own town. The story isn’t finished with her yet, and what happens to her next is tied to her experience at the shelter she was trying to reach.

[6] As yet unnamed due to some misguided idea Horikoshi has about keeping her an everywoman; even in her character profile, she’s just the Ordinary Woman.

Deku unthinkingly commits what reads to me as a fairly egregious microaggression here,[7] suggesting that the men who attacked the Ordinary Woman were probably just as afraid as she was of the recent chaos. They were just understandably afraid, so, you know, it’s not really their fault that they viciously attacked you, an obviously terrified innocent woman! You just look so scary!

[7] Though I don’t get the impression Horikoshi registered it.

The two discuss wanting things to “go back to normal.” Normal, in Ordinary Woman’s experience, means not getting attacked right out in the streets of her own town, but it’s worth thinking about how little it took to prompt that attack, and thus to ask how abnormal such violence truly is. As we will find, there are parts of the country that didn’t at all need a slide into lawlessness for an attack like this to be horrifically, appallingly “normal.”

Banjo compares the current circumstances to those around the time of the Advent—darker days in which people lived holding their breaths, trying not to stand out. This phrasing is not exclusive to heteromorphs; even something as simple as being on your own can make you “stand out” as a target, and we know plenty of quirkless people were victimized exactly like that.[8] All the same, it’s self-evidently the case that people who don’t look like everyone else will inherently stand out, and no amount of traveling in groups or refraining from the use of their powers will change that. Lines like this don’t explicitly reference the heteromorph mass slaughters we will later be shown, but they do lay the contextual groundwork that makes those slaughters both believable and predictable. Folding that all together, the Ordinary Woman demonstrates very clearly how difficult it is, especially in times of chaos, to be a heteromorph and just be normal. And when being "normal" is so difficult, what do you do? Try to be normal, gambling that heroes will be there to save you when you’re victimized? Try to protect yourself by becoming the kind of paragon your society admires, knowing it will cost you your voice? Turn against the society that repeatedly fails to protect you, resigning yourself to a life on the run? There's no outcome that doesn't demand carrying the burden of a decision that other, “normal” people are not required to make.

[8] We know this because it’s explicitly explained as what happened to the quirkless man in the One For All dream flashback in Chapter 193.

Chapter 314:

Lady Nagant drops the ugly secret of the HPSC for Deku,[9] telling a heroic character an only very slightly more extreme version of what the reader already knew from Hawks’ duties and backstory. This is not specifically about heteromorphs (though the face we most visibly see her murdering is one), but it does point to the possible difficulties in organizing serious movements to agitate for changes to the current system. The HPSC is so firmly convinced that the Hero System is society’s best and only defense against chaos, and thus any threats to that system can, justly, be disposed via extrajudicial assassination. What chance, then, would an activist leader have as soon as they started being disruptive enough for the HPSC to notice them?

[9] Who will do absolutely jack shit with it, and, indeed, come away from their encounter blaming her fall on AFO, somehow.

Chapter 318:

*meme voice Good For Him*

Introduces the Spinner fanboys, a pair of octopus-type heteromorphs in quite good Spinner cosplay, who will crop back up later at the hospital attack. They’re foreshadowing for the Spinner-as-representative plot, though said plot will not make 100% clear whether or not these two were inspired by Spinner on his own merits, back when he was just another member of the League of Villains, as opposed to after the PLF started pushing his image forward specifically. They’re with a small group of other heteromorphs attacking a trio of baseline folks. Deku defends the baseline group from the attack but apparently does not follow through on chasing down the heteromorphs; he just breaks it up and lets the attackers run off, perhaps feeling like panicky civilians (to whatever extent people literally wearing a wanted villain’s colors are “civilians”) are not threats he needs to facilitate the arrest of, or perhaps just conserving his energy for his big fights with AFO’s people.

Later in the chapter, we see a more abbreviated version of a similar sequence of events, save that this time, there are heteromorphs on both sides, demonstrating that the violence has not entirely broken down along baseline vs heteromorph lines. You saw this in an earlier chapter as well, with one of the people in the group confronting Endeavor being a lady with a dog head, but this is the first place you see it in an actual conflict.

I dig this kappa dude with the Shounen Main Character Guy haircut. And good on his more baseline friends for sticking with him.

This chapter also introduces Dictator, one of the Tartarus escapees singled out as sent by All For One. Dictator drives me crazy because like, okay, yes, he’s a cartoonish and ridiculous caricature of a Villain, down to his quirk name being given as Despot.[10] But I would ask the reader to look at this guy and really, really think about what life must have been like for him when he was, say, Kouta or Eri’s age.

I mean, really.

[10] Remember my thought experiment from early on about who decides what quirks are named, parents or a government official? Yeah. Who’s responsible for giving that quirk name to a four-year-old?

One thing that’s always felt telling to me about Deku’s brief exchange with Dictator here is that Dictator, in amidst a flurry of dramatic supervillain talk, says, “Taking you in will bring me security,” and Deku, Mr. Wants To Understand Villains & Save Absolutely Everyone himself, doesn’t ask, doesn’t even think, about what Dictator could possibly mean by that sentence. I know Dictator’s in the middle of controlling a bunch of people and is working for AFO and Deku’s exhausted and all—the story makes it clear that he took a turn for the more gritty and driven after Nagant quite literally blew up in his face. Still, when you compare the attempts he makes to ask questions and interact with Muscular, Overhaul and Lady Nagant—all relatively baseline when their quirks aren’t in use, and significantly more baseline than Dictator even when they are—his total incuriosity about Dictator does stand out pretty badly.

Chapter 320:

Ojirou mentions being touched by how angry at Shinsou Deku got on his behalf back at the Sports Festival. Recall that Shinsou called Ojirou a monkey back then. Is he not used to other people getting mad for his sake about that sort of thing?

Chapter 323:

Some really fascinating stuff both from and about Nedzu in this chapter. Firstly, Endeavor says that Nedzu’s contributions to “quirk morality education” have made him internationally renowned, yet I can’t help but observe that at least the first year students have not learned anything of the sort. Their classes and exercises are focused primarily on combat, with a secondary focus on teamwork in that most of their exercises see them separated into pairs or small groups. There are also special lessons that boil down to being about how to create their own distinct hero “brand.” What I cannot call to mind are any lessons on the morality of quirk use.[11] That’s not to say there’s none of that in the series at all, but the stuff that I think of is not encountered in class. The focus on dealing appropriately with injured and frightened victims, for example, comes courtesy of the license exam, while the lecture about heroes following the rules and behaving appropriately comes from Tsuragamae after the Stain incident. The remedial course with Gang Orca probably comes closest, and is technically a course, rather than an exam, but Nedzu has nothing to do with it, so it clearly can’t count. Once again, I am left to wonder when exactly Hero schools start teaching these alleged lessons in quirk-based ethics. Offscreen, or only in higher grades? It’s not a real great look, I think, that the priority is on all the cool flashy stuff and not the ethical ramifications of using your power to enact violence on people. And sure, it’s a shounen comic, so you’ve got to keep things flashy enough not to lose the readers, but it wouldn’t take more than a few dedicated pages now and again where Aizawa or Nedzu talk to students about the weight of what they’re doing. We don’t get those pages, so the discussion of quirk “morality” is largely under-explored.[12] This is, of course, not directly about heteromorphobia, but discussion of the morality of quirks would have to include the beliefs people have about quirks, which in turn affect everything about how the world deals with them: quirk discrimination, quirk counseling, the laws surrounding quirk use, the punishment for breaking those laws, and so forth. All things with significant impacts on heteromorphs!

[11] Indeed, if there were any effort from U.A. to provide morals education, you’d think Mineta would have seen some consequences for his egregious behavior ages ago.

[12] Honestly, I think the person who’s ventured the clearest moral stance on quirk use is Yoichi in his flashback, and he’s ludicrously absolutist about it, saying that quirks must only be used to help others, never for personal gain.

My Press X to Doubt response to Nedzu’s contributions to quirk morality education aside, I’m fascinated by his mini-speech that follows:

It’s a great observation of humanity from one who sits just that little bit removed from humanity, and begs a whole series’ worth of questions about Nedzu’s position and his feelings about the species his intelligence has both enabled and required him to grapple with. While he doesn’t specify exactly what sort of intolerance he has in mind, and the flow of the plot ties his words to the anti-hero sentiment amongst the civilians, we’re well past Chapter 220’s introduction of the CRC here, and have more to see yet on the treatment those with “villain” quirks are subjected to.

As one who was, himself, mistreated in a way that fundamentally would not have happened were it not for his (heteromorphic) quirk, yet whose quirk gives him a degree of insight about that very mistreatment, Nedzu is in an amazing position to opine on discrimination. I frankly wish he got way more room to do it in.

Chapter 325:

The Ordinary Woman giantess gal returns to tell us that she was turned away from several shelters because they didn’t allow heteromorphs. It’s hard to overstate how incredibly bad this is—the blatant discrimination of turning away an entire demographic during a national emergency. And not just a national emergency, but one where the actual support personnel—heroes—are going to be concentrating around the shelters, consciously electing to leave minimal aid for people remaining behind in evacuated zones. So like, when this is how bad it is, can it possibly be any kind of surprise that there’s a riot brewing, especially when there are villains stirring the pot behind the scenes?

One thing that really, really gets me is the bit where Ordinary Woman says several shelters turned her down until she made it to U.A. Remember how I mentioned that the strong implication of her original scene is that she’s still in her own city, only left her home that very night, and was attacked before she could reach a shelter? If that’s so, then what in hell happened after Deku left her with All Might? I’m so serious about this. Did All Might just take her to the nearest shelter, drop her off at the door, and then drive off, so concerned about getting back to Deku that he left before he could ensure her safety? That would reflect incredibly poorly on him, and put her right back in danger. Though it would not be the first time he prioritized his mentorship of Deku over his other responsibilities, it would still make him look so bad that I’m doubtful that was Hori’s intended sequence of events. The other possibility I see is that All Might did stay with her, driving her to a few different shelters before getting fed up and bringing her back to U.A., where he could be sure she’d be accepted. This option looks almost as bad for a totally different reason: that even in the face of a refugee delivered to them by All Might himself, with everything the country owes him and the nigh universal love and acclaim he commands amongst the populace, people would still take one look at Josei-san and turn her away. Of course, it’s also possible that I’ve just misinterpreted her initial scene, and she already had been to the several shelters, but couldn’t bring herself to tell Deku why. Her silence on the topic would be its own brand of Relevant For This Essay, particularly given Deku’s baseline state—perhaps she doubted that he would believe her, or thought he might get defensive, if she told him. That’s certainly the least awful of the options. Still, I’d maintain that the way her story is framed—the way she was traveling on foot, the time she says she left vs. the time it was when Deku found her, how unlikely I think it is that there are multiple hero school shelters in timely walking distance,[13] the fact that she’s perfectly willing to tell him about her rejections when they meet again at U.A., etc.—suggests she hadn’t made it to a shelter yet when Deku turned up, and thus either All Might got unforgivably sloppy or there were multiple government officials overseeing shelters who were willing to be gargantuan bigots right to his face.

[13] That’s if hero schools are the only shelters in use at the moment. On the one hand, that feels improbable and unnecessary to me, given that HeroAca!Japan presumably has all the same emergency shelters IRL!Japan has now, and Jeanist’s phrasing in 306 suggests that hero schools are being added to the list of designated shelters, not that they are being designated the only shelters. On the other hand, he does also say the heroes are looking to decrease the amount of area they, with their diminished numbers, have to cover, and specifically calls out hero schools' defensive capabilities and large campuses, while not independently mentioning shelters of the normal sort like I might expect if both were going to be in use. For example, he could say something like, “We are asking people to report to their local emergency shelters, and will be opening hero schools as shelters to help with the increased burden.” I invite readers to come to their own considerations on what’s more likely, but will say that if it is only hero schools being used as shelters, that obviously makes the whole “turning away heteromorphs at the door” scenario even more scandalous.

The baseline dude who’s generally been the spokesperson for the anti-let-the-kid-back-into-school crowd asks Deku if everyone can go back to their old lives after this, if they let him in to rest up. Deku, who has just been told that a woman he rescued was turned away from multiple shelters, reiterates that he and the rest of the heroes will “bring it all back.” No matter when he promises this, he will never exhibit the slightest hint of awareness about what exactly he’s proposing to return.

Chapter 327:

Bakugou makes a conscious effort to call Deku by his given name instead of the derisive nickname of their childhood. It remains to be seen whether he will follow through on that for the derisive nicknames he uses for everyone else, but for what it's worth, I have made it all the way from here up through the point at which he goes down to ShigAFO and have not had cause to jot down anything about him for the purposes of this essay yet. We'll see if he can keep it up through the epilogue!

With Deku safely passed the fuck out, Jirou—a heteromorph, albeit not a hugely visible one—is the one to say that they and the rest of the heroes can’t just bring things back the way they were; they have to make things better. Desperately wish Deku would pick up what Jirou’s throwing down here.

Chapter 328:

328 gives us some cameos of international heroes, cameos from the third movie, World Heroes Mission. The one relevant to this topic is Big Red Dot, the Singaporean hero who the wiki claims is his country's #1,[14] and who appears to be a merlion heteromorph. And like, there is so much I could say about Big Red Dot and his status as top hero and heteromorph! So much! I could talk about the merlion as a national symbol for Singapore, and how heteromorphs who just so happen to resemble local sacred/divine/fortunate animals in their regions might be treated differently compared to heteromorphs like Spinner or Shouji. I could talk about the merlion's status as tourist attraction and subject of nationalistic poetry, and how that imagological history impacts Singaporeans' feelings about the merlion as cultural icon. I could talk about the way the merlion's brand image is maintained under trademark by the country's national tourism board, and how that might relate to or impact Big Red Dot's image as a hero, particularly given that we have no idea what sort of metrics Singapore's HPSC equivalent uses to rank their heroes! I'd love to talk about that, but I'm reluctant to do more than sketch out the above outline for two reasons, both profoundly Doylist.

[14] The fandom wiki does not see fit to cite a source for this. I assume it's mentioned in the movie? Anyway, if he isn't Singapore's #1, the stuff I said is still relevant, just somewhat less pronounced.

Firstly, I read Marvel comics growing up, and I am keenly aware that a tremendously common approach taken by superhero stories dealing with heroes from outside the author's country of origin is to just theme those international heroes after famous (e.g. stereotyped) aspects of their home countries. I highly doubt that whoever came up with Big Red Dot was thinking any deeper than "Singapore = merlion, ergo Singaporean Hero = merlion hero guy".

Secondly, Big Red Dot is, first and foremost, an original character created for the anime, and the anime transparently, desperately Does Not Want To Talk About Heteromorphobia, so I highly doubt they're thinking about ways it might impact their movie OCs. Now, I know Horikoshi comes up with many of the designs of prominent characters in the movies, but I don't know how much he's involved in conceptualizing those characters. That is to say, did Studio Bones ask him for "a design for a top hero from a country of your choice, Horikoshi-sensei," "a design for the top hero of Singapore," or "a design for Big Red Dot, the merlion-themed top hero of Singapore"?

Suffice to say that if I were going to include BRD in a fanfic, I'd be full of things to say about him. For the purposes of this essay, though, I'll just raise some possibilities and then leave the reader to turn him around in their heads some and think about how he fits into the broader tapestry of the heteromorphic experience around the world.

---------

Come back in (probably) two weeks for what will hopefully bring this essay up through the hospital attack! We'll see after that if I want to continue on into Vigilantes or what-have-you.

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #bnha ordinary woman #ippan josei #my post button is showing now #but will it still be there if i go to edit this later #the villain origin threatens once more #which is to say i'm hoping i got the spaces right on the first try #my writing

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naomiwielant · 1 year ago

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Give me a moment to appreciate these beautiful costumes!

I really really love the posters released by Gone with the Rain!

Especially ones focusing on details of costuming!

Seriously!

Mmmmmm! Look at the ornament!

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llolianarchives · 5 months ago

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Boggart: Internal

Defense Against the Dark Arts: Learning how to counter a boggart is taught within a Fifth-year's first semester. Yet when Genevieve is required to face it again for her exams, it seems that her fears have taken a new form.

(A/N: Genevieve Myra Moxie is an original character and MC stand-in of mine for the game and its storyline.)

A boggart is a non-being, deemed harmless by the textbooks. Harmless, it claims, as if psychological damage has the worth of that of a paper cut's. Bitter as she can be, in truth, Genevieve knows that her fears are not suited for her kind — for her classmates who dread spiders and acne and loud storms. She's almost tempted to give Professor Hecat a look if it weren't for the sheer confidence the woman has in her capabilities. (And who is she dissapoint? She, Hero of Hogwarts, Wielder of Ancient Magic.)

The staccatto of her heart is in her ears. The thought hurts: She's caused many, their own hearts, to stop beating. Would they crawl out that wardrobe, shrieking of their sorrows and her sins? Would it pour a stream of thick velvet, flooding the room and staining her hands red? It takes the form of your fears. The book had not been so specific. Make a mockery out of your nightmares and the boggart shall be defeated. She wants to spit venom and ask how does one make a mockery of the dead and the disappointed.

It is she who is next in line.

"Miss Moxie, if you could please come forward."

Judgement, a part of her whispers. This is judgement. Condemnation for your crimes. I had done it all for the sake of good. Look at how happy we were just moments ago. It is a demonstration of today's DADA curriculum. I'll succeed.

Professor Hecat meets her eyes.

The crowd eyes her like a spectacle, dispersing from the center as if to form a makeshift carpet. Since the events of the attempted Goblin Rebellion, most have begun to see her as a walking, talking theatre, moreso than they did when she first arrived as the 'Mysterious Fifth-Year'.

Genevieve steps forward, her wand held firm in her hand.

"You know the counter, dear girl. Think it amusing. Do not let it rule you," she urges. "I know you of all people, Miss Moxie, will persevere."

Hecat's hand on the knob hesitates, waiting for Genevieve's signal. Her classmates turn silent in raw anticipation.

She nods.

And the doors creak open.

"Is that—?!"

Something descends from the darkness — a shoe that matches her's in all its customized cobblerly. Another steps out and fear grabs her by the throat when it dawns upon the girl that the boggart is her.

Wrong.

A mirror image of her own but unlike her in so many ways.

Its facing this way, standing as a mannequin for whatever evil wracks within, limbs looking wrong, disjointed, longer somehow. Once dainty-skin painted purple and bruised, pale like a corpse, like the ones she's seen and killed. The same curved jaw, straight nose, llight hair, but this isn't her. It's not. It can't be.

With its chapped lips and sunken cheeks, its fingers flex around a familiar wand of intertwined wood–

Run.

and raises it to–

No. Fight it. It'll kill...

– her.

"Riddikulus!"

"The lesson ends here! Miss Onai, kindly guide Miss Moxie to the infirmary."

It should be that simple.

It should be, watching Hecat subdue the creature.

It's that simple: a play of one's wand and the boggart's visage contorts, a grotesque parody of fears both imagined and real. Hecat stands in between the girl and the wardrobe. With a final whimper, it dissolves into a haze. The room, previously thick with dread, shares an exhale.

Her legs are trembling, or is her body entirely? The world sways and Genevieve can't see anyone past the blur of her vision.

"Off now, everyone! Well done!"

She can't feel herself. Is she still alive?

"Vivi," calls a familiar, accented voice.

Natty places a hand on her shoulder, tugging Genevieve into a hug that's botj solid and warm and she yields. Her head falls against the crook of Natty's neck. She submits to being pampered, submits to letting the tremors of her body wash away.

It looked at her.

Eyes hollowed and dark, pupils slit like some semblance of composed insanity.

"It's alright now..."

A lighter voice, this time — Poppy's. Genevieve feels circles rubbed against her back as Poppy whispers words of encouragement. Sweet nothings. Empty promises of assurance.

Her friends know nothing of the truth. She ensured it. She's done well in keeping them at an arm's length. Only Sebastian had broken through her walls, tethered closely to her side, created a home in her heart, yet look now where he stands.

They cannot- should not see the blood on her hands, nor the scars strewn about her body like a heinous frankenstein. They cannot know of the crown placed upon her head and the thorns that dig in, of her duties and failures.

It reeks of copper and soil.

To what lengths are you willing to go?

It hurts that her friends don't feel real.

Are you a hero or a monster?

The repository calls her name.

Are you even Genevieve Moxie?

Her friends guide a husk to the infirmary, not without a string of kind words and gentle touches to her skin.

"It's alright."

But she knows, it's not.

#hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy mc #hogwarts legacy main character #original character #sebastian sallow #natsai onai #poppy sweeting #professor hecat #boggart #ancient magic #hogwarts legacy original character #hogwarts legacy oc #angst #my writing as dusty as the boggart's wardrobe #little snippet of my ambitious daughter #inkless printer

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refinementofacourtesan · 2 years ago

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Black Friday Lingerie Sales:

If you are making the transition into high end s*xwork now is one of the best times of the year to buy lingerie and begin building your wardrobe. Summer sales, anniversary sales, sample sales and Black Friday/after Christmas sales was when I would buy almost all of my lingerie when I was first starting out.

Most of these sites/designers are a bit on the pricey side (which is another reason to buy when it's on sale) but I put a few mid and lower cost options/brands in here as well because not everyone has Agent Provocateur money.

Agent Provocateur - 30% off site wide (use code AP30) this may not seem like much but if you purchase from their outlet (pieces that are already discounted) it will add up nicely (doing it this way and you can literally buy a set for less than $100).

Bluebella - up to 50% off site wide definitely check out their "outlet" section as well

Bloomingdales - 25% off selected items

Curvy Kate - up to 50% off site wide - great store if you are plus size

Dita Von Teese - 20% off and though that may not be much, her sales page is definitely worth checking out

Fleur du Mal - an EXTRA 30% off of sale items with code 30FLEURYOU

For Love and Lemons (on their site, not VS) - 30% off everything, use code CYBERWEEK (if you're into very feminine, pink, "girly" lingerie, definitely check out their sales page)

Harlow and Fox - 30% off all in stock items (they don't have a large collection of in stock items because their lingerie is usually made to order but I wanted to mention them because their bras go all the way to G cup)

Journelle - 20% off everything which includes their sales page

Moxy Intimates - $10 off $50, $25 off $100, $45 off 150 + free US shipping

Net-A-Porter - up to 50% off select styles

Playful Promises - up to 85% off of everything

Revolve - up to 70% off

Saks Fifth Avenue - up to 80% off of select styles

Studio Pia is having a sale as well (the discount depends on the collection).

The Outnet - an additional 25% off of everything with code BLACKFRIDAY

And my absolute favorite: HONEY BIRDETTE IS 50% OFF select styles (just stop reading and go right now)

Honorable Mentions:

Ann Summers - up to 50% off everything

Yandy - up to 80% off sitewide

I know Ann Summers and Yandy are not considered high end, however, I'm mentioning them because if you need photos, doing online s*xwork or need additional pieces to create content to post on your social media, these 2 sites can really come in handy. However, if you are really slim and/or have a small chest be very careful if you order from Yandy, a lot of their sets have a tendency to run slightly on the bigger side (even their size small) and a lot of their pieces are actually sized S/M and M/L not S, M, L, etc. They do have some XS pieces that will fit A cups fine. But if you are plus size, they have a substantial collection of plus size lingerie.

I'm not mentioning SHEIN because although they are also doing a Black Friday sale, their shit is always cheap lol.

#swonly #fssw #heaux #heaux advice #fssw only #heaux tips #high value heaux #high class heaux #the diary

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yourkimjaejin · 2 years ago

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Times When NCT was Protective over Aurora

This was a request by Sophrodite. Thanks so much for the request. I hope you all enjoy!! ~ Author Izzy

The notion of NCT protecting Aurora is laughable

Because she can and will protect herself(see the numerous times she has or has wanted to punch someone)

But there are couple times where NCT have stepped in or backed Aurora up and here’s more than a couple

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

During the The Dream Show 2 Tour in North America, Aurora realized how many fans loved her.

She also saw the lengths antis will go to make an idol they hate understand why they don’t like them

A couple fans were rude to the members over the course of the tour so far but eventually they shrugged them off. Remembering there's thousands of other fans that love them in this one fans place

Aurora had a group of Antis since debut. Somehow the scrounged up the money to fly to Dallas and buy floor seats

Haechan was the first to notice them. They kept talking over Aurora first mnet of the night

Later, Aurora made eye contact with one of them. They group of anti’s let their backs face her while Aurora was on their side. She straight up ignored them but the boys didn’t think that was enough

Even member found someway to hang off Aurora the whole concert

Jisung and Aurora were extra flirty during Quiet Down

Renjun holding hands with her during Sorry, Heart

Both Chenle and Aurora being super chaotic during Love Again

Jeno attaching to her leg during Candy, knowing she can't drag him by herself

Jaemin kept trying to tickle her during Chewing Gum

Even Haechan left his annoy Jisung agenda during Puzzle Piece to pull Aurora into his lap so they could share a mic

The anti’s after a while just quietly left the show. Score for the Dreamies!!

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

During training, Aurora was friends with a very select few. The rest she ignored.

Some of the female trainees were turned off by her standoffish nature but at first they didn’t mind

Until Aurora started training with baby shinki

Aurora was chosen over trainees that had been in SM for years. And they did not like that. Some of the slighted girls gathered together in a room to bad mouth Aurora for hours.

Aurora never found out about it because this group never said anything to her face. Anything that was said was kept in the room for their ears only.

This went on for months, they’d act cool in front of Aurora’s face then dog her out behind her back.

Until the boys found out.

One of the girls implied that Aurora was possibly sleeping with them (First of all - Ew. Second of all - get your head out of the clouds.) Mark went OFF

The girls’ were in tears by the time Mark was finished. He almost kept going but Aurora walked in.

(I’m not gonna say more because I am in the process of writing this whole debacle)

Aurora didn’t want to tell anyone about what happened. She felt Mark’s rant was enough. But Moxy and Juno disagreed.

When those same girls complained to their teachers about their dorm room’s being trashed. Nobody could prove it was them

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

This one doesn’t happen often. For the longest time Aurora’s wardrobe didn’t get to the young idol without being approved by Ms. Chae, Moxy or Mark if the first two weren’t available.

As she grew up, Aurora felt better about her stage outfits. More comfortable defending her own comfort zone without the help of her mom or leader.

But sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

Once, during a Breakout!Era fansign, the stylists gave Aurora a skirt without some slip shorts underneath. At first, she felt fine. Great even. Then the leering eyes started getting to her whether they were real or imaginary.

The skirt was just a bit out of her comfort zone. A place she thought she was ready to leave

Moxy noticed the maknae squirming around but she couldn’t really do much since they were outside and none of the stylists brought clothes to change into.

So Moxy stood behind Aurora for the ENTIRE fansign to protect her

None of the fans in attendance really understood what was going on with them but they were too busy giving heart eyes to the two members

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Some fans take things too far. Especially in this case.

The Dreamies were at a fansign for Boom. Everything was going smoothly until the last couple of fans waiting in line. Among the girls was one guy. Quietly he went down the line of members until her reached Aurora at the end.

In casual fashion, Aurora was her usual self until her face dropped.

“You know, you didn’t have to join a boy group to find a guy. Plenty of guys are out there, including me.”

Aurora froze in place, pen still signing her signature onto her picture. She put the pen down then faced the ‘Fan’

“If I wanted to find a guy and then I found you, my mom would disown me because I would’ve lowered my standards. Look at you. You prepared that for how long and now you have to sit embarrassed knowing that the idol you adore would never want you.”

The ‘Fan’ left with his tail tucked between his legs

What Aurora didn’t notice was the six twin glares the boy was getting. Those eyes were enough to get him moving but Aurora’s just as sharp eyes kept him in place

Like brother, like sister

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Aurora has a wide demographic of fans. By far, the wildest are the males. Male fans love her standoff-ish nature

But a chosen few take it too far.

During a music show recording for Welcome To The Jungle, a “fan” started screaming weird things directed at Aurora

At first Aurora ignored them, keeping her attention on the fans opposite from the screaming one

But then they got louder. And bolder.

Fans saw Aurora get more and more disturbed by this fan's presence.

The pre-record started soon after. This dude kept screaming the entire time, disrupting the fan chant. Making fan uncomfortable. Irritating the staff.

It was Hannah who decided enough was enough.

Once the pre-record was over, Hannah stomped off stage. Ten minutes later she reappeared. She whispered something in Aurora and the maknae visibly relaxed

Seconds later, The fan and his friend were dragged out by security.

Don’t piss off Hannah: Lesson Learned

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

NCT has watched Aurora grow up before their eyes. She went from a little kid to a strong woman in the blink of an eye.

They were there when puberty hit Aurora like a bullet train

One day everything was fine. The next day, the whole world was turned on its head.

Suddenly she needed new articles of clothing that she wasn’t worried about before. Every month cramps, headaches and nausea racked through her body only to disappear a week later.

Boys became appealing to her eye. Her style changed. Her taste buds changes.

It all became too much

So Aurora lashed out. Expecting them to fight back, the members not holding her outbursts against her made her feel worse. Eventually everything reached a head during one We Go Up dance practice.

Aurora just exploded. Ranted and raved for ten minutes straight before crumbling to the floor in tears. Renjun was the first by her side, pulling her head into his neck and dragging her legs into his lap. One by one the boys surrounded her until she cries herself to sleep

The Dreamies agreed to never speak about what happened. But they did inform the other members about Aurora problems so they all knew how to handle it. Give her space

When she came to any of them for help, they kept it quiet. Knowing the maknae would recede even further if she felt everyone was talking behind her back.

She changed her hair and clothes. Anything she didn’t like ended up in the trash until her current style stuck.

The members helped Aurora during her time of the month no matter how embarrassed they all felt.

She talked about boys. Not a lot but enough for the maknae.

NCT as a whole kept this up until Aurora felt like herself in her own skin again.

When she looks back at that time, Aurora can feel the tears build up.

She really has the most amazing family.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Request: I've just read the most recent post and my heart hurts for my precious Rora.. I love that girl so much. I want some moments were NCT/AG were overprotective over Rora, I need some fluff (and angst if needed) bcs all her scenarios are angst (not that I'm not like the biggest fan of it skkskw) Keep up the good work and take care of yourself, don't apologize for anything, I'm sure that anon understands that you have a life too~💛

Taglist: @alixnsuperstxr / @1-800-call-ria / @sophrodite / @sunflower-0180

#NCT AG #NCT AG.Aurora #NCT AG.Request #NCT AG.Writing #nct female addition #nct female member #nct female oc #kpop addition #kpop!au #kpop!oc #kpop!addition #kpop female member

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naomiwielant · 1 year ago

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I guess I won't survive number five.

Gone with the Rain drinking game that will ensure you get alcohol poisoning

Take a shot every time:

1. The drama tells, but does not show, us that WJG/Bland Boy is the Best General Ever

2. Feng Yao cries

3. Feng Yao gets kidnapped/threatened

4. WJG runs away from a battle

5. Chen Wende is sexy

6. Chen Wende changes his plans and gives in to Moxi

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volunteerfelinedetectives · 2 years ago

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Wrote this chaotic little piece for @cherrycokeisnice, basically everyone gets snowed in together. Cleo/Jake, all the friendships, and Moxie/Ellington if you choose to read it that way. Huge thanks to @asouefanworkevent for organising the exchange

The first day went off without a hitch. Moxie and Kellar were of course the first to arrive, Moxie bright and eager as always as she stepped out of the Bellerophon taxi, typewriter for once not in her hand.

Instead she was helping Pip and Squeak carry in all the admittedly rather surprising stuff Cleo had sent them out to find over the previous week, blankets and houseplants and cooking utensils and lamps and absolutely anything colourful, to match with Cleo’s rebellious addition of more and more bright clothes to her wardrobe. Kellar had somehow obtained an enormous antique metal umbrella stand which he was trying, without much luck, to haul up the front steps. Ornette Lost and Lizzie Haines arrived last together, Ornette dragging a sledge loaded with wallpaper and paint through the quickly falling snow and Lizzie staggering under the weight of a heap of curtains and canopies in a rainbow of colours and fabrics.

“Is that everyone?” asked a slightly exasperated Jake, his clothes covered in flour from a mishap involving Moxie, an overfilled storage cupboard and an enormous high-tech blender they were trying to carry.

“Not quite,” replied Cleo calmly once the entirely responsible journalist was out of sight, reaching up a slender hand to brush some additional flour from Jake’s cheek. “I have an associate coming to live with us for a while. In fact, I need to go and meet her in the library now.” And with that she grabbed her coat and bolted out the door, leaving her sweetheart bewildered and suspicious in her wake. Jake shrugged, and went to help Moxie out in the kitchen.

The morning was a blur of constant activity and almost as constant accidents, and by the time everyone settled down to lunch (stuffed mushrooms involving more herbs and spices that anyone in the group apart from Jake could even name) they were all regretting not arriving in more casual clothes. The source of all the chaos was not incompetence on the part of any of them, indeed the living room was looking far more beautiful than it ever had from the work of endless interior designers hired by Ignatius Knight. Instead the problem was, bizarrely, that the place was overrun with stray cats. Yes, you read that correctly: glassware was crashing to the ground everywhere, wallpaper had been scratched down as soon as put up, and a particularly large ginger moggy seemed to have decided Moxie’s typewriter was a bed. This was the last straw. Moxie had her suspicions about who was behind this, and fortunately one of the troublemakers had left a convenient trail of painted paw prints for her to follow. She grinned to herself as she trailed them up the stairs and along the corridor to the study door; mysteries were almost never this easy to solve.

The door to the study was slightly ajar, and it the creak it let out as she pushed it open was loud enough to make her jump back before tentatively making her way in. All four walls were lined with huge and heavy-looking books, and at the back of the room a leather-cushioned chair faced a massive desk carved from a disturbingly familiar dark wood. Slowly, the chair begun to swivel round, and Moxie’s heart threw itself against her chest as she saw who was sitting there. Hair so dark it made the blackest of ink look grey, eyes almost luminescently green. She wore a long, luxurious black silk dress Moxie was pretty sure was Cleo’s, and her long fingers were resting on the head of a white Persian cat with electric blue eyes, which bared its teeth at Moxie as she tentatively approached.

“Hello, Moxie,” Ellington greeted in a slow, honeyed voice, smiling a smile that might have meant anything.

Out of all the people Cleo could have been inviting over? (She had overheard, of course). Ellington?

Moxie did her best to disguise a grimace as she looked the older girl in the eyes. She cut straight to the chase.

“What are you planning this time?” Ellington’s smile faded and her brows furrowed as she began to slowly steer the chair away from Moxie. “I don’t know what you mean. I needed a place to hide from the police, that’s all.”

“You’ve completely flooded the house with every stray cat in town, Ellington.”

She grimaced at the interruption, but carried on speaking.

“I was looking after all of them when I was living in Black Cat Coffee and I don’t know where else they could go. Cleo invited all of them here with me, she told me we’d be safe.”

“After everything that happened? She still trusts you?”

“Listen, Moxie. I’m not another story to be told or case to be unravelled. I’m not here to hurt anyone or sabotage anything. I’m just trying to live, like we all are. The only difference is that I don’t want to simply forget it all.” To Moxie’s horror, there were tears welling up in Ellington’s eyes.

“Wait!” Moxie called out, but she simply pushed past her and ran out of the room, feline draped round her shoulders like a living, breathing fur collar. Moxie wanted to be here, she really did, but she was still uncertain of Ellington and whether she really did mean well. She drifted towards the window and watched the snow that had begun to fall outside, concealing all of Stain’d-by-the-sea’s secrets and dangers beneath an unassuming canopy of white. Part of her imagined that once the snow melted away the town would be rewritten, all of its dark history washed away as it emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. She knew that made no sense, but what was it that Lemony had once said? ‘There’s nothing wrong with occasionally staring out of a window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.” Something like that, at least.

She was startled out of her meditation by Cleo’s voice calling her up to the guest bedrooms, sounding more than a little exasperated. She found Cleo sitting just outside a huge, empty room, furniture cluttering the hallway around her.

“I’m sorry if I worried you, I just need someone strong to help me get all this stuff in here. “

Moxie nodded, ready for the task. She was used to carrying things, and any opportunity to spend more time with Cleo was an opportunity she was willing to take. They were in reality very distant cousins, but Cleo seemed like a sister to her nonetheless. They got to work, Moxie carrying or pushing the furniture to the right place and Cleo stringing up fairy lights and heaping blankets and pillows onto the bed, chatting all the while about their universally agreed favourite subject, literature.

“You need to read Fahrenheit 451 if you haven’t, it’s a masterpiece of dystopian fiction,” Cleo was saying as she attached a hanging basket of ferns to a hook at the top of the wardrobe.

“I have,” Moxie replied, bending down to tighten a loose screw on the desk. “I know it’s unfair to compare two completely different writers but when it comes to classic dystopia I’ll always prefer 1984.”

“Much as I love 1984 as well, Fahrenheit 451 feels so much more real to me, like that’s slowly becoming our world.“

A good natured argument does indeed firm up a friendship, and this particular one became so engaging that Moxie completely forgot to ask who the room was being prepared for until dinner that evening. Crab linguine, to be precise. Moxie spent a long while thanking Jake for preparing the food, as well as helping to lay the table, so by the time she could sit down there was only one remaining seat between Kellar and Ellington. She reluctantly took it, avoiding the older girl’s gaze until she felt a tap on the shoulder.

“Thank you for helping with my room,” Ellington whispered, twirling the pasta absentmindedly round her fork.

“That was yours?” Moxie asked, a little too loud for her liking. She wasn’t too keen on the fact that she’d unwittingly done a large favour for Ellington, but thought that perhaps at least appearing to trust her would be the best way of finding out what she was planning. So she lowered her voice, leaned in and said, “Look. I’m sorry about accusing you of doing something bad earlier, I just find it hard not to question everything after all that business with— with your father.”

Ellington shivered; actually trembled despite the warm fire burning in the hearth, and for a moment Moxie was afraid she’d said the wrong thing entirely. But then Ellington turned to her and their eyes locked together as she replied.

“I know exactly how you feel. I spend most of my time afraid I’ll never be able to trust anyone ever again. If even the kindest man I knew was capable of such treacherous things…,” She didn’t finish her sentence, but the second clause hung in the air between them like an echo. …then there is no telling what anyone will do.

They ate the rest of the meal in an amiable silence, trying to keep track of the others’ conversations but finding that they faded in and out, the mingling voices unable to compete with the endless questions and contradictions swimming through their minds. The plan was for everyone to stay the night, and they did, but for reasons unique to each person nobody went upstairs to bed. Instead those who managed to sleep at all did so on couches and chairs in the lounge, books still open on chests that rose and fell like an untroubled sea.

“It’s… 5 o’clock in the morning…” Jake blearily checked his watch then turned to face Pecuchet ‘Squeak’ Bellerophon, who had been vigorously shaking his shoulders for the past three minutes.

“It’s the snow!” Squeak exclaimed without so much as an apology or a ‘good morning’. “It’s too thick and the doors won’t open. We’re snowed in!”

Jake grimaced as he pulled himself up to look; he was hoping to tend to the garden that day, but it seemed like that would be impossible. Sure enough, the snow outside was several feet deep, and so dense it was impossible to even open the door to shovel a path. He tried the other doors and found it exactly the same. They were well and truly trapped. He sighed and went to get the others up from the numerous pieces of furniture they were draped over, with the exception of Cleo who hadn’t slept a wink that night and was now standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand, slathering concealer over the dark circles beneath her eyes. She headed for the door the moment she saw him, not even giving him the chance to say good morning before she disappeared up the stairs. No doubt she was extremely busy with something, he thought; he’d get her a bit of breakfast, something to keep her going during the day. He brought the omelette up to the study and poked his head round the door; she was writing furiously in a black notebook and seemingly didn’t even see him as he placed the food on the desk and a kiss on her cheek. Cleo worked so unbelievably hard; he acknowledged that fact with that rare, perfectly balanced mix of admiration and dread.

“105…106…107…” Cleo wasn’t the only one already going stir-crazy from being stuck inside. Ornette had seen potential in the endless scraps of wastepaper left behind from the previous day’s activities and was now attempting the age-old tradition of folding a thousand origami cranes. Once they were done, she decided, she would string them together into a huge canopy of folded paper birds, her most ambitious project yet and a symbol of all the hopes and wishes she had for her re-emerging town. Already there were birds made from every possible type of paper in every nook and cranny of the house, and Kellar Haines, who had been watching with eager curiosity and gathering the creations together for her, could see that she wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon.

And Moxie was sitting at her desk in the guest room that had been specially set up for her, just writing and writing and writing. Getting everything from the day before down in great detail before typing out an impulsive opinion piece on Lemony Snicket, which had very few good things to say. She was right in the middle of a particularly scathing paragraph when she heard a knock on the door connecting her room to Ellington’s. Ellington herself breezed in without waiting for Moxie to answer, brushing a stack of books carelessly aside as she perched herself on the end of the desk. Moxie wished she could be annoyed at the way Ellington treated the world like she owned it, but the truth was that everything in her vicinity did seem to suddenly revolve around her like the Earth’s gravity pulling meteors into orbit.

“Sorry to intrude,” Ellington said after an awkwardly long period of Moxie looking up at her in silence. “But window in my bedroom is tiny and I needed somewhere well-lit to read without going downstairs and waking anyone up.”

Despite it being seven in the morning, everyone was already awake, although Ellington had no way of knowing that.

“What are you reading?” Moxie asked, eager to strengthen the bond that was growing between them. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But was she an enemy? Whatever she was reading, it was obviously good, as she didn’t seem to hear what Moxie had said. So she moved her typewriter onto the bed, keen not to disturb her for some reason she couldn’t possibly understand.

The Associates were quieter than they had ever been in one another’s company, as if the snow had buried all their memories, their shared aspirations and dreams. But one thing that couldn’t be buried was how safe they felt around each other, the knowledge that they could make mistakes without everything they had built together falling apart. Which was why Jake hadn’t bothered Cleo in her study at all that day, however much he yearned for her company. He understood her need to always be working hard, always striving to compensate for everything her parents did. But sometimes she forgot that she too was worth something, and when 4 o’clock in the afternoon struck and she still hadn��t come out or said a word to anyone, he decided to finally knock on the door. She opened it and her hands were deathly pale and trembling, exhaustion in her icy blue eyes which she had been trying to fight with the five or six now empty coffee cups scattered around the room. She pulled him inside and kissed him almost desperately, and he leaned into her, keen to give her the support and affection she clearly needed so much. Cleo was on one side of him and the study wall was on the other, and in the moment the whole world seemed that small, that perfect. She pulled away, a rare sheepish smile creeping up her face. “Sorry, sorry, I just— I really needed that,” she whispered breathlessly, running a hand through Jake’s hair as she pulled him down onto an ottoman in the corner of the room.

“Don’t worry,” he replied equally breathlessly. “You don’t have to apologise for anything with me, I’m here when you need me, here because you need me here.” Cleo was chaotic sometimes, troubled and secretive, but Jake knew he could never love anyone else as much as he loved her.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he murmured, resting his head on Cleo’s shoulder as she picked up a book from a nearby table, taking the break she needed at last.

While the two of them sat together in silence and Kellar was still trying to gather the folded paper birds scattered all over the building, something rather exciting had been unearthed in a suitcase upstairs.

“You have what?” Ornette shouted, gazing at Ellington bug-eyed. “You could sell that for enough money to get you safely out of the country for the rest of your life!”

“Well, maybe I love these songs too much to do that. It’s nice to have music almost nobody else has heard, something I’ll only share with the right people.”

“She’s right,” Lizzie chimed in. “If everything can be bought or sold or invested then it loses its original purpose entirely. Auction that CD off and it’ll never be played again, just sold off to richer and richer people at higher and higher prices.”

Ellington reached out a long fingernail to press the button on the CD player, and placed the iridescent disc in its slot, and Ornette was overcome with a rush of endorphins as she heard a familiar voice sing new melodies, new words.

“Hold on, I know someone else who might want to hear this,” Ornette interrupted, moving towards the telephone, picking it up and dialling a number.

“Moxie, come up here! You won’t believe what Ellington has! No, not a weapon, not anything even remotely sinister. Illegal, yes, but purely noble in its intentions. Yep, a pirated CD containing Melanie Martinez songs that were never officially released and might not be found anywhere else in the world. Yes, I’m serious.” Ornette hung up the phone and spun to face Ellington and Lizzie with a thrilled expression.

“She’s coming!”

“So his name actually was Lemony?”

“I couldn’t believe it either until his sister told me. It always sounded made-up, like the kind of name you’d tell a company to avoid getting newsletters.”

She was always going to mess this up, Moxie thought to herself. The plan was to keep a close eye on Ellington and prevent her from getting into any mischief, and it wasn’t supposed to involve sitting cross-legged on Ellington’s bed with her hands temporarily incapacitated by the black varnish drying on her nails, courtesy of Ellington. It definitely wasn’t supposed to involve Moxie having the time of her life hanging out with her. Maybe it was just the excitement of her first proper sleepover, but she was finding Ellington surprisingly fun to be around when they weren’t directly in the midst of intrigue. The evening so far had been a blur of music and games and conversation, over the course of which they had all ended up with completely new hairstyles. Ellington’s hair had been plaited and wound into a spiral at the back of her head, Moxie’s straightened into a chin-length bob, Lizzie had a new fringe which cast her eyes in shadow and Ornette’s was let down from its usual yellow scrunchie and pulled into row upon row of tight braids decorated with colourful beads. Moxie thought they all looked transformed, shifting rapidly from the uncertain girls they were six months ago to the wilder, freer ones they were becoming. The connection she felt to them was new, unfamiliar and exciting, and even though she still had her doubts about Ellington her bed was so comfy and she was tired…

The rays of the sunrise shone through the curtains over the East Window, waking her up the next morning to see Ellington bringing over a tray on which were two steaming cups of coffee. Really, Moxie? Falling asleep in Ellington’s bed?

“Sorry I didn’t wake you up,” she said gently, brushing a lock of hair out of Moxie’s face. “You just looked so cosy there and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Don’t worry, I think the couch in here is even more comfortable than the bed!”

Moxie reluctantly took a sip of the coffee Ellington had handed her, and discovered with reluctant gratitude that she had prepared it with milk, sugar and cinnamon, adding a delightful mild sweetness to a normally bitter drink. The coffee reminded her somewhat of Ellington herself that morning, everything dark and sinister had somehow melted away and she seemed kinder and less villainous than she ever had before.

Meanwhile, Cleo awoke to the smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, something that would be comforting to most people but made Cleo’s heartbeat quicken and her breathing stop. Here she was, in her bedroom in the family home, the familiar smell of cinnamon rolls that were never for her wafting up at her from the kitchen. Had she only dreamed all the friendships she had made over the past six months, or that she was free from her parents at last? Without stopping to get slippers or a dressing gown, she bolted down the stairs to the kitchen where she was greeted by a rather bemused Jake.

“Are you ok, sweetheart?” he enquired with a nervous smile. “I made you breakfast.” Cleo managed an equally nervous smile back as she hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter and pulled Jake closer to her, kissing him softly on the forehead.

“Everything’s alright, Jake,” her voice tapered off ever so slightly. “It’s just that I’ve never actually had a cinnamon roll before. Zada and Zora always made them, but my parents had me on this ridiculous diet. I wasn’t even allowed a slice of cake on my birthday.”

“That’s dreadful, Cleo! We need to fix that, right now.” With mock solemnity, he fetched the tray from the other end of the room and handed her one of the warm pastries, oozing with cinnamon and cream cheese frosting. She bit in, and in that moment she could have sworn she had never tasted anything quite as heavenly.

“I can make them for you more often if you’d like,” Jake told her, grabbing one for himself from the tray. And this, she always said, was the moment the full extent of her newfound freedom hit her. It was also the moment she ran to the window and discovered the snow had melted just enough for them to go outside again.

Back upstairs, Moxie and Ellington had almost finished their coffee.

“You know,” Ellington declared suddenly, “I might actually try and sneak out today given the snow’s melted.”

“It has?”

“Not completely, but enough for us to leave the building.”

Ellington pulled on a black trench coat that was draped over a chair in the corner, and half-ran, half-leaped down the main stairs in the centre of the building, landing in the hallway with cat-like precision and gliding towards the door.

She knew that this was a rather silly idea, but she was never the kind of girl to allow herself to be contained for long. The world, or at least Stain’d-by-the-sea, was beckoning. As she turned the handle on the door she felt Moxie come up behind her.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked, and Ellington smiled deviously to herself.

“Of course you can, a walk is almost never any fun when you’re alone,” Ellington replied, doing her best to sound casual. “But I’m not carrying that typewriter.”

Moxie laughed, flinging open the door with her typical enthusiasm and taking off running down the path towards the town while Ellington lingered behind, bunching up snow in her gloved hands.

The snowball hit Moxie on the back of the head, almost knocking her hat off. She rapidly turned around.

“What was that for?” she shouted.

“What was what for?” Ellington replied innocently, hurling another snowball in Moxie’s direction. To Ellington’s utter astonishment she caught it and threw it right back, hitting Ellington before she had time to recover from the surprise and dodge it. Of course, there was now no way of deescalating the situation, and of course, like with most snowball fights, others began to join in. Namely, Pip and Squeak, who had observed the action from a window and had jumped at the opportunity to cause mischief. Much to Ellington’s chagrin they were fighting firmly on Moxie’s side, and she didn’t stand a chance until Ornette dashed in front of her out of nowhere, carrying a small arsenal of snowballs she had been surreptitiously preparing in the yard. Soon everyone was involved; Jake and Kellar joining Moxie’s side and Cleo and Lizzie teaming up with Ellington. It was the first snowball fight any of them had had in years, and it was wonderful just to play like the children who they’d never been allowed to be, all system of teams and sides quickly forgotten as they ran shouting and laughing down the slightly less empty streets, much further than Ellington was technically supposed to go from her hiding place in Cleo’s home. Many years later, Moxie and Ellington would always say this was the moment that any trace of a rivalry between them disappeared, and they were just two girls on a winter morning, holding hands as they ran to catch up with the others by the sea.

Cleo drew her coat around her as she sat down on the pier overlooking the restored sea, the dams holding it back from the town’s edge having been long since destroyed. She shook the remaining snow from her hair, accidentally elbowing Jake who had come to sit down next to her. He rested his head on her shoulder and took her hand in his. “You’ve done so much more for the world this year than most people do in their lifetimes, and you’re still just sixteen. Look around at what you’ve made, Cleo,” She turned and saw Ellington smiling shyly, drenched through from the still-raging snowball fight, and Moxie draping a coat over her shoulders, their faces illuminated by the golden dawn. She saw the cobbled road cutting through the houses to the town square, and the empty pedestal awaiting the planned memorial to a great sub-librarian they once knew. And she saw the pen-shaped building she once looked upon with shame rising high above the town, no longer looking like it intended to cross it out, but instead poised ready to write a new beginning. “We’ve got whole lives ahead of us. Let’s go live them.”

#asoue #lemony snicket #a series of unfortunate events #all the wrong questions #atwq #ellington feint #jake hix #cleo knight #ornette lost #kellar haines #pip bellerophon #squeak bellerophon #lizzie haines #wicked way exchange

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