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animepopheart · 3 years

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Wonder Egg Priority, Episode 11: “The Temptation of Death”?

Wonder Egg Priority is a beautiful, uncomfortable, moving and confusing series that starts out engaging all the things we don’t talk about—self-harm, abuse, rape, bullying, gender dysmorphia, and homosexuality, to name a few. Our silence and blindness to these issues have a weight and pressure to them, and WEP shows how this reinforces the isolation and hopelessness of the young women of the “eggs” who turn to suicide for relief. The first ten episodes have been exhilarating and exhausting alike.

And then there is Episode 11. This past week, the series took a bit of a turn, leaning hard into the sci-fi-philosophical, with appearances from Greek gods, a murderous artificial intelligence, and really, really disturbing insect girls, one of whom, despite being a brutal killer, is apparently a vegetarian. Has the show gone off the rails? Has it lost its way in departing from the familiar procedural approach of engaging a differing social or mental health issue with each episode?

Such a critique is perfectly legit, but before you write off the penultimate episode of WEP, just hear me out on why the abstract, meta turn in episode 11 may just be the most valuable thing this series has to offer so far.

Before we begin though, a little recap of what we learned this week. In episode 10, we hear the eggheads, Acca and Ura-Acca, discuss the need for warriors of Eros to battle Thanatos. This is our first hint that things are about to get lore-full and maybe a bit weird. Eros and Thanatos are of course gods in the ancient Greek pantheon, Eros being the god of love, and Thanatos, of non-violent death. Within the first minute or so of episode 11, it’s clear that the eggheads’ hope is now focused on Ai becoming the long-awaited warrior. At this point though, rather than continuing with Ai’s story, the episode shifts into flashback mode and we are finally introduced to the villain, an artificial intelligence created by the eggheads back when they were still human. Their lives gradually come to revolve around her: She is the fulfillment of their obsession to create life, and she is good.

Frill is associated with hydrangeas, which symbolise heartlessness and pride in Japanese flower language. But is it her heartlessness and pride, or that of her makers?

(Atelier Emily has done an outstanding series of posts on the flowers in WEP. Check it out!)

Only, it turns out she doesn’t play so nice when others join the happy family. After killing Acca’s wife, and putting the life of the unborn baby at risk, the AI—who named herself Frill—is unrepentant, all traces of her seeming humanity now revealed to be illusory, a mere affectation. Acca locks her away in a hole in the cellar. Years pass. The baby, Himari, grows up and is a ray of sunshine. But after effectively confessing to her ‘uncle’ (why does anime always do this?), she commits suicide. Ura-Acca discovers that Frill is still very much alive and active from her hole in the cellar, having powered up all the discarded monitors and laid down reams of electrical cables—to what end, we do not yet know. Though Ura-Acca surmises that she has somehow influenced Himari to take her own life. How else would the girl have known about Ura-Acca’s admiration for her mother? Where else would she have learned to make what will forever be to me now that uncannily sinister popping sound?

Here’s where it gets weirder. Unlike the suicides of subsequent egg girls, there is no indication that Himari, Frill’s apparent first victim, struggled with any mental health or other issues that would motivate her to take her own life. Indeed, her ‘uncle’ did not even reject her confession. (Again anime, why you do this thing?) Instead, the eggheads explain Himari’s suicide as being on account of the “temptation of death.” What now?

This is implying that death is somehow attractive, not just to someone facing overwhelming brokenness, trauma or pain, like the egg girls we’ve met so far, but to someone on the verge of stepping from a (relatively) happy childhood into young adulthood, with the promise of potential love to look forward to; someone who has not known suffering, but rather only smiles and cake. (To be fair, it is always possible that she experienced trauma in the womb, or was more deeply affected by her father’s sadness than Ura-Acca’s memories belie.)

That’s my question too, Ai.

The notion of death as somehow attractive or even beautiful is rather alien to Western culture. Certainly, there will always be some who romanticize death, à la star-crossed lovers (Shakespeare, I’m looking at you). But in general, Western culture views death as something ugly and frightening, something to avoid until it is staring you directly in the face, and even then, closing your eyes in denial is a perfectly reasonable response. Death is one of those things we don’t talk about. In my experience, Anglo-American culture is not very good at even mourning death. We lack the grieving rituals and observances of other cultures, and instead seek to confine death to the sealed, sanitized spaces of hospitals, care homes, and funeral parlors. We keep it shrouded tightly in silence. How could there ever be anything like the “temptation of death”? How could we ever consider death to be something desirable? Are the eggheads or CloverWorks simply aestheticising suicide and death here to make it sound deep and philosophical?

No, I don’t think that’s it. Instead, Acca and Ura-Acca are doing what all good researchers do—and indeed what all Christians, as believers in an unseen spiritual reality, are also called to do: They are looking more deeply into phenomena that seem, on the surface, to already be explained. The two idol fans were consumed with their obsession, so when their idol killed herself, they followed suit. The young woman whose identity was wrapped up in her own appearance ended her life to preserve her beauty. The abused gymnast saw no way out, no hope in ever living free from torment. Some explanations may be more sympathetic than others, but they all possess their own internal logic. Contemporary society is full of a vast array of pressures and stresses and each one, taken to breaking point, can result in death. Case closed. This might very well be our conclusion from the first ten episodes.

Only the case isn’t closed. Because there is a question that has pervaded every episode until now, but has remained unspoken: How is it that death could even become an option for the egg girls? Why does reaching a breaking point trigger suicide? What made death seem like a savior to these girls? This is the question that episode 11 tackles, in its own admittedly obscure way. The eggheads are focused on the underlying, deeper reality that unites all the eggs’ stories, as disparate as they are—the common thread, which is the idea that death is a release, a rescue, a beautiful ending, and as a result, it is tempting.

“But we wondered if there could be another push that drove them to suicide,” explains Ura-Acca.

This is a really important question for us to be asking. Because it’s not just these traumatized, vulnerable girls who fall for the seduction of death. We do, too.

Just ponder for a moment: Have you ever anticipated how wonderful it will be when, in heaven, you no longer struggle with that particular temptation? When your temper is no longer so short, when you’re not afraid of being hurt anymore? Or maybe you think about how one day, on those gold-paved streets, you won’t have to worry anymore. All your hard work coping and just keeping it together will finally pay off and you’ll cross that finish line and heave a sigh of relief, knowing that you made it in the end. Have you ever contemplated these kinds of things? I know I have.

But here’s the thing: When I expect my liberation to come only after I die and not right here, right now, then it is not Jesus who is my savior, but death. I am waiting for death to free me from temptation and sin and fear and brokenness, and usher me into eternal life. I make Thanatos my god.

The temptation of death is not limited to the drastic act of suicide, but also permeates all the accusations and fears that inspire us to put off living the fullness of life in Christ here and now. It’s the temptation to believe that it is death that will ultimately solve the more difficult and painful problems in life.

Acca and Ura-Acca seek to create a love that suits their ideals, just to relieve their stress.

The source of this “temptation of death” in Wonder Egg Priority is Frill, the AI. That is, a man-made, artificial version of love—with ai meaning “love” in Japanese. According to Ura-Acca, they made her “just for fun,” as a way of dealing with the stress of their enclosed lives. They designed her to suit their preferences, to make it easier to love her and forget that she was artificial. In this sense, Frill is the fruit of their self-centeredness, her every characteristic designed to satisfy their own ideals of how a daughter and woman should be. And this artificial love born of selfishness brings death into their midst and beyond, spreading it through the horrendous deformities of girlhood that she in turn creates, in imitation of her fathers. (Only perhaps her creations are less deceptive than theirs, wearing their monstrosity plainly on the outside…)

Frill’s creations. We’ve met Dash (right) and Dot (center), but who is that on the left? And is her name Morse??

To counter her destructive influence, Acca and Ura-Acca need true love, a genuine love. They need Ai, a messy, at times very weak human being, but one who nevertheless is willing to fight to live up to her name and maybe, just maybe, become a warrior of Eros.

There is also a deep, underlying force at work in our world, one that connects all despair and the actions born of it. A wide range of social issues, traumas and mental health challenges can and do trigger suicide, but they do not explain it fully. The deeper reality is the existence of an enemy who seeks to manipulate us into believing our true savior can only be death, whether it is right away by our own hand, or more subtly, decades from now by natural causes. But this is a lie, and it is one that we can combat. Just as I’m sure we’ll see in the final episode that Ai is equipped to wage the coming battle in WEP, so too are we armed, here and now, with the power to overwhelm the enemy’s “temptation of death”—we possess already the words of life, given to us by our true savior.

Jesus began his ministry with a public announcement that he had come to heal heart wounds, comfort those in pain, fill broken lives with beauty, and wrap those in despair with reasons to praise like a warm protective blanket, so that they might celebrate with joy once again. He came to bring freedom to prisoners and captives alike, giving a fresh new life to those locked up because of deeds done wrong, and those punished and injured at the hands of others. He came to take the outcasts, the weak, the traumatized and broken and transform them into mighty oaks, clean and strong; into people with the vision and skill and compassion and fortitude to rebuild a broken world (Isaiah 61:1-4, Luke 4:18),

He came to rewrite and restore our experience of life here on earth, and through us, to redeem our communities, cities, nations, and the world. God does not withhold the fullness of life from us until we finally make it to him in heaven. No, instead he moved heaven and earth to get right up close so that he could pour his own life out into us, even going so far as to breathe his very spirit into our hearts and bodies and minds. We don’t need to wait for death’s rescue—our hero has already come. But we do need to remind each other and ourselves of this truth pretty often, and let it work down deep into all the cracks and bruises in our souls until it strengthens all our weak spots.

In Deuteronomy 30:19, God tells the Israelites that he has given them the authority to choose between life and death. But he also tips the balances in their favor, urging them to choose life. In Jesus, he comes to tip the balances even further, making it possible for us to step into eternal life here and now, immediately and forever. So let’s do it. Each day, through each struggle we face. Let’s choose life and not death.

Warrior of love? And is Ai’s himawari (sunflower) related to Himari somehow?

Join me (in spirit) for the final episode on Tuesday to see Ai’s love triumph! (At least, I really really hope that’s what happens!)

#wonder egg priority #wep #wep frill #ai ohto #Christianity #blog #NOT by me but rather by one of our other writers: cajk2

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bisluthq · 4 years

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*WARNING Domestic violence topic* Could you explain to me why seven could sound queer?, Like I can see how many Taylor songs can be interpreted in a queer way, but with seven I can't see it, like for me it's clearly about domestic violence and the only possible queer thing I can hear it's the closet part...but in this particular case I do not think it refers to sexuality but to literally hiding form your abusive parents. Sorry if this was asked before or if it's disrespectful to ask.

So firstly let me just say that victims of abuse who hear that in the song are so valid. And I’m not here to “take away” a song that speaks to that experience. If it brings you comfort and relief, that’s amazing.

Do I think Taylor meant it as a song about domestic violence or escaping from that? Honestly, no. Because she described herself in LPSS as longing for that time in her life and talked about how she misses being able to throw tantrums and feel more freely and without judgement; in her head she’s thinking about this period in her life very fondly. Now, this is one of those death of the author moments because if you’re an abuse survivor who found comfort in this you... shouldn’t care wtf Taylor meant by it, what matters is what it means to you. Same as how if betty speaks to your sapphic teenage love triangle, it shouldn’t matter that Taylor imagined James as a boy.

But yeah, so for Taylor it was not meant to be about abuse. It was about feeling stuff more freely. And let’s take a look and examine at why it feels so fucking gay to... like... basically every queer woman.

Please picture me

In the trees

I hit my peak at seven

Okay so Taylor is setting up a narrator - presumably herself. Especially in the context of her hyperconfessional marketing and the LPSS explanation we’re literally meant to picture Tay. But tbh that doesn’t matter so much - it could be any little girl. This little girl is “in the trees”... which isn’t really where little girls are supposed to be. In these very first lines Tay is setting up a little tomboy character.... and then she says “I hit my peak at seven” - ergo this rugrat period of abandon, where I was free to play in the trees, is “my peak”. It was the best time in “my” life.

Lots of people feel that, it’s not inherently gay, but for queer women - I don’t know about other shades of queer but suspect yes - childhood often represents even greater freedom than to hets because it’s before we felt deviant. There was nothing to compare ourselves to. Sure, we might’ve played families in het couples like heteronormativity is felt by children too, but that kind of thing was largely asexual and we didn’t know yet that other people felt differently about it all.

Like I only realized I was different in late middle school and I didn’t have the word for it for ages tbh. Like I just knew I didn’t get the fuss about boys. When I was a little kid? I didn’t know what the fuss was really. It was a kind of “peak” so yeah, I feel that in my bones.

Feet

In the swing

Over the creek

I was too scared to jump in, but I, I was high

In the sky

Here we have her playing, once again with reckless abandon - she’s standing on a swing (naughty!) and swinging high over a creek. But she’s slightly nervous. I relate to that too, it’s not a gay thought it’s a little kid thought I think - because while she’s enjoying her freedom and the chance to play, there’s an awareness of the risk. That’s a lot of childhood and what makes her such a greater songwriter is how she’s able to capture these feelings we’ve all had before, in this case the rumbunctious nature of free play paired with the cautious nervousness of knowing you can fall.

With Pennsylvania under me

I mean this simple makes it more autobiographical for her, like if we didn’t know her was her that was the me , now we really do.

Are there still beautiful things?

This is speaks to her nostalgia for this time period and serves to highlight how much she misses it. She wishes she was young and innocent and had that freedom of playing in the trees and above the creek and feeling like she’s flying just because she’s standing upright on the swing. This is meant to be her “peak”.

Sweet tea in the summer

Cross your heart, won't tell no other

The first line is setting up mood again, it’s innocence and suburbia and freedom and the hot days of summer vacation. The second is a common English phrase - for the ESL folks - that means “let’s keep a secret”. It’s extremely common for little girls especially to have secrets with each other. “You’re my best friend and I’ll tell you something I haven’t told anyone else before but cross your heart you won’t tell anyone else” is the kind of thing that has probably happened at a sleepover for every woman (gay or straight). So Tay’s whispering and telling secrets to her best friend aged seven in the heat of the summer and the neat rhymes kinda remind me of those clapping games you play as a kid.

And though I can't recall your face

I still got love for you

Again, I think this isn’t specific to gay kids necessarily - it’s that idea of having lifelong affection for your first best friend even when you don’t know where they are, can’t imagine them in adulthood, maybe can’t even remember their surname and frankly don’t really want to or care... but you still have warm feelings towards them.

Your braids like a pattern

Love you to the moon and to Saturn

So the friend is a girl. And here’s where the non wlw readers will have to work with me a little bit because as I’ve explained before a very common, enteral part of the queer female experience is obsession with other girls’ femininities. We notice things like hair and clothes and makeup on girls far more than straight girls seem to and waaay more than het guys do. A friend of mine who is v butch noticed like minor shit that any of us change in our appearance. Describing in detail a girl’s appearance feels - on a gut level - pretty gay. Now this isn’t a detailed description, but she links this physical trait - this pretty, braided hair her friend has - to loving her.

Now, she is a child in this story. This isn’t a sexual kind of thing in the child’s mind. She’s obviously not “in love” with her friend aged seven. But she is saying her deep, overwhelming love for her friend is inextricably linked - via rhyme scheme - to her feminine appearance.

This incredibly close, quasi homoerotic friendship is a near universal wlw experience and I’m sorry but it differs from straight girls’ close friendships because it’s... a lot. It is “love you to the moon and to Saturn” and obsessing over her clothes and hair and little habits.

And there’s no vocab for this, nothing to prepare you for it and nobody bats an eye because little girls are supposed to be friends with one another but like... you’re way overinvested and often that other girl isn’t and starts to drift away because she isn’t having this language free connection and it’s legit heartbreaking.

Passed down like folk songs

The love lasts so long

This childhood friendship becomes an anecdote, a moment of folkloric storytelling, but it never completely fades away and tapping into this first - not quite sexual but very sapphic - experience is super easy.

And I've been meaning to tell you

I think your house is haunted

Your dad is always mad and that must be why

And I think you should come live with

Me and we can be pirates

This sets up the narrative some people - I understand where y’all are coming from and I am here for it - hear of domestic abuse. The thing is, it’s not Tay’s character who is getting abused. Tay is a small child - and she’s envious of and nostalgic for that era of her life, when she thought that her best best best friend’s asshole dad was simply reacting to ghosts. It speaks to an innocence her character has which may not be shared by her friend, the girl with the braids.

But Tay is innocent and she says “come with me” and run away so we can be pirates together. Now, on a very basic and superficial pop culture level it’s worth noting Keira Knightley in POTC is pretty fundamental to any queer millennial woman’s sexual awakening. However, that’s not what Tay’s referencing here. She’s saying, at least on some level, let’s run away and be gender nonconforming. Again, she’s a small child. She doesn’t know why she wants that. But she doesn’t tell her friend “let’s run away and be princesses” - she wants to be a pirate. It links to the first scene in the song of her being a tomboy in the trees and on the swing, honestly. There were also a number of cross dressing female pirates, many of whom were gay back in the day so it’s a subtle nod to how a lot of childhood fantasies actually are rooted in possible historical fact.

But also come on, every queer girl wanted to be a pirate idk why really we just did. Like I say I can explain it as a desire not to conform to gender norms but it’s also just... another weirdly common fantasy that she’s tapping into.

Like idk this song is so fucking gay and it’s not trying to be but every line is just... felt in my bones. Like little me is seen by this song.

Then you won't have to cry

Or hide in the closet

This is obvi the line people go on about and look. The friend’s dad is clearly an asshole like that’s established. But the line has a double meaning. She’s saying if you run away with me to be a pirate on the high seas you won’t have to cry anymore and you won’t hide in the closet. It’s an innocent thought but it’s also a double meaning, right? You won’t be abused, you won’t be sad. And you’ll be with me out of the closet. It could’ve been “hide under the bed” or “behind the curtains”. But she picked closet. And that word gives this verse a second meaning, which is particularly palpable given as I say this is a very gay song from a thematic standpoint.

And just like a folk song

Our love will be passed on

Again, this is a deeeeep love. This is someone she wants to run away with. And she probably doesn’t know why, she probably doesn’t have the words. She’s a little kid. But this friend of hers is the person she wants to rescue and run away with and be together with even though she - Tay - is pretty content otherwise. In fact, she longs for this time in her life. It was full of beautiful things. And yet despite being happy, she was willing to drop it all for her little female friend she was clearly preoccupied with.

Please picture me

In the weeds

Before I learned civility

I used to scream

Ferociously

Any time I wanted

I, I

Again, this reiterates she is nostalgic for this time period. It was a good time in Taylor’s life. It was a time when she could be herself, before she had learned civility and what was expected from her by society. Which ties back to that thing I said right in the beginning, about how this first quasi sapphic friendship is cherished by queer women because we didn’t know it was weird. We hadn’t “learned civility” yet. We could scream, we could run around and climb trees, and we could ask our friends to run away with us not knowing those thoughts didn’t occur to them with the same intensity.

Sweet tea in the summer

Cross my heart, won't tell no other

And though I can't recall your face

I still got love for you

We’ve discussed this already. It’s still queer coded to me.

Pack your dolls and a sweater

We'll move to India forever

Passed down like folk songs

Our love lasts so long

So she’s once again cementing the fact that this is a little female friend with the dolls, and again suggests running away together and says even though none of that happened and she grew up and realized this... was actually a fairly specific experience not a universal universal one and she learned civility and heteronormativity but this foundational, pure, innocent gay love... will always remain in its complete innocuous harmlessness but immense power.

And so, yeah. This song is probably Taylor’s gayest shortly followed by Treacherous.

But if it means something else to you, I’m by no means taking it away. Anyone can enjoy her music in any way they like.

It’s just weird that most queer women feel their childhood selves are completely seen by this song if it was a complete accident 🤷🏻‍♀️

#tw domestic violence #tw domestic abuse #sapphic themes in tay’s music

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xiubaek-13 · 5 years

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Definitely Not Hogwarts

Prompt: Baekhyun + “You taste like fucking candy.” + “I was just hoping that y’know… you’d fall in love with me.”

Setting/AU: Magic

Warnings: innuendo, magic, completely non subtle references, swearing.

Word Count: 7,173 (it’s still a drabble, let’s pretend it isn’t this long)

A/N: I hope you enjoy it, you kind of get everyone in this as an added bonus for me taking so long.

If there was something you hated more than changing schools mid-year you had yet to encounter it. Why had you agreed? Because it was a great opportunity. So great that you’d accepted the offer knowing full well that you’d be moving in the middle of the year, packing all of your belongings into boxes - ones to take with you and ones to go into storage, and starting in classes that had already set their dynamic up for the year. Would it be easy? Not at all. Did you still want to do it? You bet your ass you did.

The school was in the middle of nowhere so you had to live on the premises. You’d never been to boarding school before so this concept was somewhat daunting but you were choosing to think of it as a hotel for the moment. All of the students lived in dorms and boarded for the year, only going home at the end of each term, and the teachers lived in separate wings of the school. Yes, wings, because the school was a goddamn castle.

Until a couple of years ago, they had never taken on a teacher’s aide before, but the powers that be had made a treaty between the gifted and the non gifted (god forbid the humans actually use the word magic, apparently that made it seem childlike and not the absolute danger to society that the government liked to portray it as. Magic was neither childlike or the demise of society as we know it but you digress). In the two years following that they had taken on a handful of aides, always non gifted, and usually morally opposed to the concept of magic, a choice that made you think that the wizard in control of the school was in fact, enjoying this whole ‘play nice with the humans’ thing far too much. The aide who had been chosen this year had vacated his position without notice at the end of the second term due to a spell gone wrong. Or something. The particulars were unclear. All you knew was that on one late summer morning you received an offer and should you have accepted that offer (you did, but you made sure not to sound too desperate when accepting it) you would have three days to prepare and move.

Those three days had been a complete and utter whirlwind. Your friends were ecstatic for you. You were the first aide they had selected that had actually had a positive attitude to the concept of magic. First and foremost you believed in science, but you were open to the idea of there being something more out there and if it could be applied to positively benefit human society then you were all for it. Plus, who wasn’t curious about what these kids were being taught?

Your work was sad to see you leave but thankfully you were only employed casually so you didn’t have to adhere to the standard procedure of giving two weeks notice or break any contracts in order to accept your new role, one of the bonuses to being a university student who was unable to work full time. You’d never been happier to not have job security.

Upon arrival to the castle school you were ushered to your wing (the north one with the big spire) by an overly enthusiastic pair of seniors, one of which kept cracking terrible jokes that you guessed were meant to put you at ease but they were just making you cringe, something that the taller senior - you were pretty sure he said his name was Chanyeol - found hilarious. The two showed you to your room, if you could call it that.

You felt like you’d been transported to the world of one of the many books you read while you were growing up - the princess or assassin (your parents made sure you didn’t reach adulthood believing that some man was going to come whisk you off your feet and solve all of life’s problems for you. They gave you books where the women took charge and fucked shit up as well as the damsels in distress, and ones with useless protagonists and ones with good men) living in the tower of a castle, waiting for the unfairly attractive prince or guard to appear so that hijinks could ensue. Your “room” was more of a suite, if castles could have suites. You decided they could, because you couldn’t fathom calling this a room, it was a bit too grandiose for that. You had a bedroom, private study/office, bathroom and tutoring room.

“As you can see, you have space for smaller lessons or tutoring.” Suho explained as you entered the small space, only a few desks and chairs decorating the room. “It’s mostly seniors who will come to you to go over homework, assignments, and anything they’re stuck on.” He added.

“But I’m just here as an aide, not as a teacher. Why would they come to me?” You asked.

Chanyeol replied. “A few reasons. First, if they don’t want the teacher to know that they haven’t fully grasped what was covered in the lesson, the school is super competitive so no one ever wants to let another student see an area that they are weak in. Second, you’ll be marking homework and assignments so they’d come to you if they want clarification around grades. Third, some will come to you to try and scare you. It’s like a sport for some of the students. They see how long the new non-gifted will last before running for the hills.” Your face must have dropped because he instantly waved his hands as he tried to lessen the blow of his statement. “N-not that all students are like that, there’s just a select group who do it. Most of us welcome the initiative to have humans in our school so that they can see that we’re not the evil witches and wizards of their childhood stories.”

“The castle and long robes aren’t helping that, just saying.” You deadpan.

Suho makes a sound akin to choking on air but when you look at him you see that he’s laughing. He looks at Chanyeol as he tries to calm himself but he keeps laughing while trying to speak. “I like her. I don’t think she has anything to worry about with that attitude.” The look the other senior gives him is one of pure exasperation and you have to do all that you can not to crack up at his face.

“Hyung…” he starts but then thinks better of it. His long legs carry him through to the next room, he clears his throat before continuing to speak. You leave Suho, who is still chuckling to himself, in the tutoring room. “This room is your office. It’s kind of a half library, half office. You can do your own research in here and organise all of your work in the room. If you ever need the fire lit just ask me to come and do it. I’m proficient with fire, most students can conjure fire but some would mess with you and light a fire that emits a stench, or one that burns too hot, one that talks to you, you get the idea.”

You nod and make a mental note to ask him to light the fire in winter for you if you haven’t come across any other trustworthy students by then. The proficiency stuff is new information to you. You knew that the gifted could conjure elemental magic but you didn’t know that they had proficiencies for certain elements.

“I apologise for Chanyeol, he always forgets that the non-gifted don’t know about the proficiencies. I’m assuming that’s why you look confused?” Suho leans against the door frame as he speaks. He pushes off and enters the room once you nod. “To cut a long and dreary history short, gifted - as you refer to us - have the ability to wield elemental magic. Certain families have a proficiency with certain elements which allows them to have superior control over that element. In Chanyeol’s case that is fire. In mine, water. There are nine such students at this school but if we go by our history books there are twelve families with proficiencies. We can do greater things with our elements and we take extra classes to hone our skills with them. Normal students can cast a spell to light a fire in here for you but Chanyeol could click his fingers and a fire would light, or he could create a flame in his hand and have it hover for you.”

“Can he hadouken too?” The words leave your mouth before you can stop them. Chanyeol folds in half, slapping his leg as he laughs. Suho looks less amused. “Or do you guys have special rings? Can your powers combined conjure Captain Planet?” Chanyeol is struggling to breathe because of how hard he’s laughing.

“That’s… that’s not how the elemental magic works.” He begins.

“Suho, I’m kidding.” You interrupt. “You need to brush up on your human pop culture circa the 1990’s.” You smirk. “Just doing my part to help eliminate the dark, evil wizard stereotype all of you have going for you.”

He chuckles at that, shaking his head as he moves towards the next room, lightly shoving Chanyeol as he passes. “This next room is your bedroom. You’ve got one of the better rooms. You should see the aide’s room in the East Wing, it’s like a shoebox. (You thank all that is good for giving you something better than a cupboard under the stairs.) It has your bed, wardrobe, lounge and adjoining bathroom. It’s the only aide room that has that actually, all of the other wings have a communal bathroom for the aides but you lucked out with a private bath.”

You wanted to make a witty remark about that but all words died on your tongue as you stepped into the room. This was far too grand to be called a bedroom. You had a giant four poster bed to one side, a lounge suite by the fireplace, a couple of wardrobes and shelves, a table with four chairs and a little kitchenette. This was more like a studio apartment but in a castle. Everything was ornate, it was like medieval meets industrial aesthetically, which worked far better than you imagined it would.

“It’s pretty nice isn’t it?” Chanyeol remarked. “Like we said, you got pretty much the best aide room out of the lot.” He scratched the back of his head as he pondered what to say next. “Uh, that pretty much concludes the tour of your room. We’ve both got class to get to but Xiumin & D.O. will come by to take you on the tour of the grounds. They’re two of the other students with proficiencies as well, and they’re both trustworthy so you’ll be in good hands.” The two students bowed and waved farewell to you, wishing you well on your first week at the school before they left.

The other two students turned up not long after Suho & Chanyeol left. One arrived while making voice notes into his dictaphone and the other while cleaning his glasses. It wasn’t difficult for you to guess that these two would be top students, they just gave off the ‘we study a lot and it shows in our results’ kind of aura. You had been informed that all of the senior students who would be showing you around were high achievers but where Chanyeol and Suho were a more relaxed and reserved levels of intellect, these two exuded it.

The two students bowed to you and introduced themselves. The one with glasses was D.O. and the one with the dictaphone was Xiumin. You swallowed the urge to make a Harry Potter joke to D.O. but with that style of glasses he was on borrowed time before you blurted it out. You were, after all, supposed to be professional. You might only be a few years older than these seniors but you were an employee of this establishment, not the new kid. You didn’t have to fit in or be classified as cool. You had the feeling that until you actually started working you’d have to keep reminding yourself of that fact.

“So we’ll be showing you the grounds so that you have a general layout of the school. If you get lost you can always ask a student but to be on the safe side I’d recommend a fellow teacher or a student whom you recognise. Others might find it fun to mislead the new non-gifted aide.” D.O. explained. Why were these seniors painting this school like it was filled with miscreants? Did the students not respect their elders or were humans looked down on that much? Were you just a temporary plaything to them or something?

“Do the students have issues with treating the non-gifted aides with any modicum of respect?” You asked.

“It’s not that. The majority of the student body welcome the integration of humans into our school, we have just as much to learn from you as you do from us if our kind are to coexist moving forward.” Xiumin replied. “But there are a select few, as there are in any setting, who will only find pleasure in making your life difficult. They will take any chance they get to embarrass and ridicule you, to trick you and to eventually send you running from this school. Their primitive thought process is that if they have enough aides flee the school that the whole initiative will be discontinued.” He shook his head as he finished speaking, showing you just how dumb he thought this select group of the student body were.

“What Xiumin is trying to say is trust your instincts. Don’t blindly trust a student because they act kind towards you, feel them out and work out if they are playing you. We’ve been through a few too many aides this year and that group think they can send anyone away. For the most part, don’t react to them. If they think their tricks have no effect on you hopefully they’ll just get bored and leave you alone.”

“Or, they will escalate their antics and put me in actual danger.” You rebuked.

“They’d get caught and punished if it came to that.” D.O. deadpanned then added. “I’m sure you’d be fine. While we’re out Lay, another senior, will be putting up warding magic on your room to prevent any hijinks from happening there.” Hijinks? you mouthed but before you could say anything back to the half blood prince wannabe he started walking down the hall.

Xiumin chuckled under his breath and motioned for you to follow. “You’ll get used to him. He’s blunt but he’s not unkind. He doesn’t like his routine being messed with. Normally he’d be running a study group so he’s a little off kilter today. Just work with it please?” You nodded and followed the other male as he set off after not Harry Potter.

The tour was pretty informative, with both boys giving you some history for the different areas which you found fascinating. They also showed you the areas of the school you’d be frequenting the most - the main hall, the teachers lounge, kitchen, and a small selection of the classrooms you’d be in. They marked these locations on a map for you and went over the easiest routes for you to follow. Both of them were very polite and patient with you as you very slowly got your bearings. Xiumin advised for you to memorise the paths rather than any objects in the halls as they had a tendency to move. D.O. eventually led you to a large set of double doors and guided you down towards the grounds at the rear of the school. This place was massive and your brain hurt from trying to remember everything.

“The sports grounds, gym, amphitheater, horticulture and agriculture areas are spread out here. The easiest ways to know the borders of the grounds are the lake at the back, forest to the left and mountains to the right. You’re perfectly safe if you remain within those boundaries. We’ll quickly take you down to each building but you won’t have to come down here too often so don’t worry too much about memorising them.” He stated.

Xiumin added, with a grin on his face. “You’ll probably only come down to watch sporting matches. Even if you don’t really care for sport, adding magic makes the games much more interesting. Occasionally a class will be held down here if they are using spells that require a lot more space than a classroom offers.” You were going to have to witness this if only to put a real image in your mind of what that looked like. Until you did, it would be every tacky wizard movie you’d ever seen playing on repeat, which would drive you batty. The two of them continued showing you everything, adding fun facts and tidbits of history along the way.

“So, uh, forgive my ignorance but we really only have mainstream media to go off here. Do you guys use wands?” You ask.

D.O. scoffs indignantly. “We absolutely do not. Wands are for children and idiots.”

“What he means to say is that we use our hands and minds. Wands exist but are not widely used since they require far less skill and are less accurate.” Xiumin adds.

“Your mainstream media is dumb.” D.O. says.

You raise your hands. “Hey, no disagreement from me here. I know it’s incorrect with its portrayals 99% of the time which is why I asked.” Xiumin chuckles as he calms D.O. down. You hadn’t expected his outburst to be over a fucking wand but hey, weirder things were surely still to come.

Eventually the three of you approached the large doors that would lead you back within the main building. D.O. smiled when you looked to him to lead the way back. “Oh no. You’re going to lead us back to your room as best you can. Consider this a test of your short term memory.” He chuckled as your face fell.

“Fine.” You grumbled. How hard could it be to follow a map back to your room anyway?

Harder than it looked was apparently the answer. You made it back after a few wrong turns. Part of you wondered if this was some cruel joke where they got to laugh at you leading yourself in circles while futilely trying to reach your destination. The other part just wanted you to hurry up and work out how to get back to your room. When you spotted the stairs that led to your hallway you sighed in relief. Both boys smiled brightly at you. “We consider our tour a failure if you can’t find your way back. You might have made a few missteps but you got back without needing any assistance. You’ll know the grounds like the back of your hand soon enough.” Xiumin smiled.

The two of them led you the rest of the way back to your room before bidding you farewell. “We’ll see you in class.” Xiumin said as he bowed, a small smile on his face. He definitely didn’t look old enough to be a senior but who were you to judge? You were in a freaking school of magic, for all you knew he was 400 years old. Or maybe there was a portrait of him hidden in an attic somewhere.

“Thanks for the tour, you both helped me out a lot. I will definitely be using this map over the coming days while I get my bearings. There is a lot of history here,” You gestured to your surroundings. “and it’s fascinating, I know you barely scratched the surface with the small insights you gave me but it was very informative and enjoyable.” You smiled.

D.O. chuckled. “I’m glad you didn’t fine it too boring. Most of the aides that come through here don’t even listen to half of the tour we give.” He paused. “Actually, before we go I have a question for you.” His head tilted to the side as he appraised you, as if looking for some answer to his yet unasked question.

“Go ahead, it’s the least I could do after such a lovely tour.” You replied.

“Well, the least you could do would be nothing but -”

“Let’s not debate semantics right now.” Xiumin interjected.

D.O. huffed, but acquiesced. “Fine. We’ll ignore the idiosyncrasies of the english language for now.” Xiumin rolled his eyes, this was clearly not the first time he’d had to deal with the other nitpicking at insignificant details of the language. “My question is in two parts. Firstly, where do you stand on the issue of magic? and secondly, why did you accept this role?”

Well that wasn’t the question you were expecting. You didn’t know what question you were expecting but it sure as hell wasn’t one this bold, especially not from a student. “To start with, you know I don’t actually have to answer you right? You are technically my students.”

“Of course. Will you answer it though?” He asked, his gaze locked on yours. The balls on this kid…

“I will, but the point is that I don’t owe you, or any student an explanation like this.” They both nod at you and wait for you to continue. “To answer the first part of your question, I believe in science. Always have and always will, but I’ve always had an interest in magic. It was this mystical thing that appeared in the storybooks of my childhood, and I don’t mean the propaganda that litters the homes of the non gifted, these books had the gifted as heroes, as people who saved the day. I watched the change happen. All it took was one world leader who realised the gifted were real and they feared the abilities you have over non gifted. Suddenly all of the children’s books had evil wizards and witches who would trick you and eat you. I was never swayed, my interest only grew once I realised that the mystical wonders from my childhood books were real. I think that in order for gifted and non gifted to coexist, they need to work together and not look at either side as less than or evil. There are terrible gifted and non gifted people but there are also wonderful gifted and non gifted people. We fear the unknown but if we work together, that fear lessens.”

You pause to take a breath, noticing how wide Xiumin’s eyes have gotten as you’ve been speaking. “As for the second part, part of it has surely been answered in the first part of my response but aside from general curiosity and a belief in our kind working together I also want to be a part of that. It’s not lost on us that most non gifted selected for the program have been heavily against the concept of magic and view the gifted as the devil incarnate. I know I’m probably one of the first to be selected who has no negative preconceptions of what goes on here and I want to do my job, help students and be able to provide workable ideas for the future of our kind coexisting. I believe that if we can work together, science and magic combined will result in wondrous things.”

Finally, he cracked a smile, his whole face changing into that of a bright young man. “You are a welcome change. You’re not wrong when you say that the other aides have a dislike of our kind and of magic as a whole. I think our kind chose the wrong approach by attempting to make a non gifted who was fundamentally against everything that we stand for change their mind by simply existing with us. It was never going to work, and even if it did your government could scratch it up to stockholm syndrome. Just.” His face hardens but his gaze softens as he looks at you. “Keep your wits about you and don’t be fooled by rose coloured glasses.”

***

Your first few days went by without too many hiccups. You’d been thrown into a wide array of classes; apothecary, history of magic, potions, magical law, spellcasting & defense magic. The classes were overwhelming but oh so interesting, to the point that you had to keep reminding yourself that you were supposed to be reading up on the syllabus and grading homework against the guide sheets you’d been given, not giving your full attention to the teacher. That was easier said than done once the topic of dragons came up. It took all of your self restraint not to blurt out “Fucking hell, dragons are real?!” but maintaining your professional facade took priority. You made a note to read up on them later because they were even more fascinating than your childhood stories had hinted at.

You met most of the other proficient students thanks to Suho & Chanyeol introducing them to you. You’d run into Xiumin & D.O. again when they were on their way to their extra credit classes and asked them about their proficiencies, apologising for forgetting to ask the first time you’d met. They’d let you know that Xiumin’s proficiency was ice and D.O.’s was earth. You didn’t get to ask much more about it because they ran off to class, not wanting to be late and have that mark on their records.

“Good Afternoon Chanyeol, what can I do for you?” You’d asked when he approached you with two other students trailing behind him.

He grinned and gestured to the two behind him. “I figured I should introduce you to these two. They’ll either annoy the shit out of you or be model students.” You raised a brow at him. “They’re younger than most seniors, thanks to their proficiencies.” He stage whispered at you.

“You know we can hear you right?” One of them remarks.

To his credit, Chanyeol ignores them and continues talking. “Whilst they are young and immature, they possess a lot of control over their elements, Kai in particular.” He gestures to the boy to his left, who smiles shyly at you and waves. “They figured they should get him through school, disciplined & bursting at the seams with morals before he got too old. His proficiency is teleportation you see, so everyone does what they can to steer him away from a life of crime.”

You nod. “No ill gotten gains for you then.” Kai chuckles. “Can you only teleport yourself or can you take people and objects with you?”

“I can choose. I have to be touching whatever I want to take with me but if someone grabs me I can choose to teleport alone or with them.” He replies.

You lean forward on your desk. “How large an object can you move?” You ask.

He grins at you. “Not telling.”

You sigh dramatically. “Chanyeol, I fear that he might have already given in to a life of crime.” For a moment Chanyeol looks confused until the synapses connect and he realises that you’re poking fun. “If you do a dramatic pose when you teleport then I think you’re well on your way to the criminal mastermind title.”

Kai laughs loudly. “I like her.” he states before wandering off to find his seat. You just hoped the military never found out about him, they’d abuse his power wherever possible and he seemed far too kind for that kind of life.

The other male clears his throat to remind Chanyeol that he is still waiting for his introduction. Chanyeol’s eyes widen and then narrow in frustration. “This is the youngest of the proficient, Sehun. He likes to think that the universe revolves around him but we keep him grounded, figuratively and literally…once or twice.”

You glance past Chanyeol to Sehun. He looks like he has a chip on his shoulder, and the resting bitch face isn’t helping him not seem like a jerk to you but you give him the benefit of the doubt. “Hi Sehun, what is your proficiency?”

He gives you a very slight, like blink and you’d miss it kind of slight, smile as you feel a light breeze wash over you. “Wind.”

You ponder for a moment and bite your tongue to prevent another Captain Planet reference from coming out. “Wind would be the broad term though wouldn’t it? You control air right?” You ask.

He nods. “Yes. I can control and manipulate the air, it’s velocity and molecular structure.”

“Are they trying to prevent you from a life of crime as well by fast tracking your schooling?”

He smirks. “Something like that. I had a huge amount of power but no control over it so I was pushed through school to better harness my power.”

Chanyeol interjects. “His power used to be based off his emotions so he’s had to learn to control himself and basically relearn how to use his power.”

“That’s pretty impressive actually.” You reply.

Sehun actually smiles at that. “I like her too, for now. Nice to meet you.” He nods then also heads to his seat.

Chanyeol smiles warmly. “He caused himself a lot of harm while he was learning. Lay, you haven’t met him yet but he’s proficient in healing, had to patch him and quite a few of us up on several occasions. He seems cold and aloof but he needs to be in order to keep his ability at a safe level.”

“Thanks for introducing me, that’s 6 of you I’ve met so far so I still have 3 to go? Lay being one of them. Who are the other 2?”

You hear the groan in his voice. Clearly he isn’t a fan of these two. “Chen & Baekhyun. They are probably the two who will give you the most grief. Too clever for their own good and they are sneaky as all hell. They control lightning & light. Don’t be fooled by their lost puppy eyes. In fact, ask some of the other aides, I’m sure they have stories.” He glances up as the teacher enters the room and ducks off to his seat.

You’re left to wonder about these two supposed wicked students. What do they look like? (Probably should have asked that in hindsight) Are they really that charming? Had the other aides exaggerated with their stories? You were going to find one after class and learn more about these two. You wanted to be prepared for whenever they decided to show up in your vicinity.

***

“Baekhyun? Is he here?!” The aide shuts the door quickly, looking around the room frantically.

“Woah, woah, calm down. He’s not here. I was just asking about him.” You try to calm the spooked aide. Christ what did this student do to the aides?

“What did he do to you?” She asks quietly.

“Huh? Nothing. I haven’t met him yet.”

“Keep it that way.” She says quickly.

“The better question is what did he do to you?” You take a step towards the aide, determined to get answers. She seems truly afraid of this student. Is she vehemently against magic? Yes. Does that warrant this level of fear? You’re not sure.

“He’s evil.” She whispers.

You roll your eyes. “Come on now. I know you aren’t exactly pro magic but evil? In what way?”

Her eyes widen as she grabs the fabric of your shirt over your shoulders. “He toys with you. He’ll be the sweetest student you ever meet until you do something that he doesn’t like. Then he’s your worst nightmare.”

“So a teenager with an out of control ego. That’s not so bad. You had me thinking he’d be murdering kittens on my doorstep or something.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand! He’s proficient in light, sounds lame right?” Maybe it sounded lame to her but you had already put some thought into that power. Manipulating light and dark, controlling shadows - that could be a terrifying power. “It sounds like a nothing proficiency compared to the others but once you realise that light is necessary to everything, it becomes terrifying. He shouldn’t be.” She shudders.

Maybe that attitude is why he doesn’t like you. You think to yourself. Out loud, you attempt to change the subject. “And Chen?”

She scoffs. “He’s a trickster but there is no malice in what he does. He messes with you because he can. Compared to the other one, he’s harmless.”

You bid her farewell and head back towards your room. Another aide stops you down the corridor. “He knew she had a fear of the dark so he manipulated the shadows so that she felt like she was perpetually being engulfed in darkness for the better part of a month. She’s been a nervous wreck around him ever since. All because he didn’t score higher than Kai in class.”

“He sounds like a right jerk.” You state.

“He is. He’s ruthless once he’s decided that you aren’t useful to him anymore. The others are all probably like this but he’s the only one not hiding what an evil monster he and his kind truly are.” The aide leaves before you can give him a piece of your mind. Armed with more information on the remaining two proficient students than you’d had an hour ago, you head back to your room. Lost in thought you fail to notice a student the student that brushes past you.

***

The rest of your day goes smoothly. You attend two more classes and are given homework to mark for each. Sehun comes to you for tutoring after his magical law class. He’d told you he understood the concepts they’d covered but didn’t understand why any of it mattered. You’d done your best to explain the notion of risk and consequence in relation to magical law, using his own grasp on his proficiency as an example. Once he left another student came knocking on your door, one you hadn’t been introduced to yet.

“Are you a senior?” You asked.

He nodded. “You’re our new aide.”

“Your powers of observation are second to none.”

“Hey now, that’s not how you should talk to students!” He exclaimed as he entered the room. You’d figured that he was one of the 3 remaining seniors you were yet to meet, you just didn’t know which one he was. The upturned shape of his mouth screamed ‘I’m mischief incarnate’ so you ruled out Lay.

“Most students would announce themselves upon arrival. Forgive me, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced yet.” You don’t hold out your hand, a tip you were heeding since Xiumin mentioned it.

“I’m Chen and I suck at apothecary. Please help me teacher-nim. I need to be in the top tier of the class so that my parents will get off my back.” He dramatically drops to his knees and overacts begging for help, making you laugh loudly.

“Get up, dear lord. Chen… lightning proficiency right?” He nods. “Do you just invoke it or can you direct it wherever you want it to go?” You ask.

Instead of answering he flicks his wrist and a small electric shock strikes your thumb. It’s similar to when you get a shock from your car or if you touch something after shuffling on carpet. You look up at him to see him smirking. “I can control it, and make it as strong or as delicate as I please.” He waggles his eyebrows at you.

You choose to ignore what he’s implying and continue to question him. “Just lightning or all electrical currents?”

“Oooh we have a smart one this time. Everyone else tried to work out my proficiency based off norse mythology.” He grins, that smile as disarming as you expected it to be.

“Oh please, you’re more shock mouse than god of thunder.” You blurt out. “Though I hear that you aren’t dissimilar to another norse god - Loki.”

He laughs loudly, the sound is music to your ears. “You are not what I was expecting but I’m not mad about it yet.” He settles into a seat at the desk across from you. “But seriously, I need help with this class. Can we work on that now and exchange smartass lines at each other later?”

You laugh and nod, settling back into teacher mode. So far Chen doesn’t seem as bad as the reputation that preceded him but you make sure to keep your wits about you. You know one thing for certain though, this student is a tragic flirt.

***

You’re exhausted after the extra tutoring sessions and the marking. Your bed has never looked so inviting and you cannot wait to slide under the covers and drift off to dreamland. Your alarm had rather rudely pulled you from a particularly salacious dream last night and you were hoping to return to it tonight. You packed away all of your stuff, making sure to lock the students work in your private office. You’d been informed that there was a nullify spell over the room which rendered everyone’s skills, no matter how proficient, useless. Once you were done packing up you made your way to your bathroom to wash up for the night, taking your time to complete your skincare routine and brushing your teeth.

You refrain from rushing to your bed because you are not a child but a sigh of pure joy escapes your lips once you finally crawl under the covers. You think back to the dream you had left this morning and sink into the pillows, closing your eyes. The image of the log cabin in the snow coming back into view. You feel the cozy warmth of the blanket wrapped around you as you wait for him to return. He’d gone to fetch more hot chocolate and sweets so that you could finish watching the movie you’d started just over an hour ago.

Vaguely you recalled him being more built in this mornings dream but as long as he was bringing you sugar who were you to judge. What did alarm you was the sudden change in sensation of the blanket against your skin. Before you felt cozy as it had warmed your clothes but now you could feel it against your skin. When had you suddenly become naked?

Then he appeared. He didn’t look as sweet as you recalled. Rather, he looked annoyed for a fraction of a second before his face transformed, a kind expression now showing on it as he climbed back onto the bed next to you and handed you a mug of the aforementioned hot chocolate and placed a bowl of sweets in front of you. “Thanks babe.” You smiled as you picked up a toffee and put it in your mouth.

“You’re welcome.” The words sounded forced. Like he didn’t want to say them.

You do your best to ignore it and continue watching the movie as you sip your drink. You feel like he’s staring at you and not in a ‘I want to kiss every inch of you before I ravage you’ kind of way. “What?” You ask as you look at him.

“Really? ‘You taste like fucking candy?’ That is the smooth line your subconscious came up with? You need to get out more.” His tone is full of judgement and disgust.

“What?! What are you talking about?” You exclaim, confused. This dream isn’t like the one you wanted to return to.

“In your mind we keep watching this movie and then I lean in to kiss you and say that line.”His judgemental tone is really starting to grate on you.

“Who the fuck are you?” You ask exasperatedly.

“I really thought you were smarter than this.” He chides as he gestures to himself as though he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. “I’m Baekhyun.”

“What the fuck are you doing in my head? I’ve never even met you!” You clutch the blanket around you as you remember your nakedness. Was this still a dream? It felt a little too real to be a dream. There were details missing and if you were dreaming up Baekhyun then you needed to have some stern words with your subconcious about cockblocking you. The dream was supposed to start cringeworthy and saccharine sweet but then twist into a filthy romp. You knew the lines were cheesy, but they were supposed to be. It wasn’t so sweet when your face was planted into the rug about 20 minutes from now.

He shrugs. “I’ve had no reason to seek you out in person, not with everyone painting me as some sort of antichrist to you.”

“So what? You just decided you’d appear in my dream?” You choose to go with this no longer being your dream. You figure that he’s somehow invaded it and that alone is pissing you the hell off.

“I wanted to see what you were like and my proficiency allows me to do this so I figured ‘what the hell’ and popped over for a visit.” He grimaces. “I was not expecting ‘I’ve come to clean ze pool’ levels of dialogue though.”

You close your eyes and shake your head. “You need to get out of my dreams. I didn’t fucking invite you here.” It dawns on you that he must be able to dream walk and that thought somewhat terrifies you. Suddenly the frantic fear that the other aide had doesn’t seem so dramatic.

“Push me out then. Consider this a lesson in defense against wizards. Your mental barriers are weak. I can see everything.” He leans against the wall of the cabin as though he hasn’t a care in the world. You don’t have a clue at how to push him out because why would you? You try to imagine kicking him out of your head and locking a door behind you but he simple laughs at you. You try visualising a vault, and locking away your precious thoughts and memories, slowly filling the vault with more and more items.

He laughs. “Oh you are tragic. I thought the candy line was bad but this, this is just ripped from a poorly written romance novel. ‘I was just hoping that y’know… you’d fall in love with me.’ Excuse me while I barf.”

“Fuck you.” You grumble. You are going to evict this smug prick from your mind if its the last thing you do.

He looks you up and down and smirks. “Non-gifted aren’t usually my thing but I’d make an exception for you.” He winks. “The bit after all of the terrible dialogue isn’t so bad now that I look forward. My, my, you are filthy.”

You want to punch him.

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youngbradford · 5 years

Text

on circles, mom, and Madonna

“I go round and round just like a circle I can see a clearer picture When I touch the ground I come full circle To my place and I am home I am home”

I went home last night.

Drinking Gamay with my mom last night, in my new home, which has finally come together, she remarked on my life’s journey and how I got here: Manhattan, marriage, success, happiness. And of all the hurdles I had to clear in my 43 years.

She spoke of working too many hours when I was young, to escape from my father. She apologized to me for allowing me to grow up in a home with an abusive, drug-addicted father, who’d hock my stereo, or CD collection, and, at times, literally stole my car from my high school parking lot to go shoot up. I thanked her for the remarks but told her they were unnecessary. My turbulent childhood was actually full of love. From her, grandparents. But also that the pain and horror I saw early on forced me to find solace outside of our, oftentimes, broken home. I did that via music. I would covet and collect songs and CDs, 12 inches and cassettes, and I found my place in other’s thoughts, melodies. I learned the words. I made sense of my feelings of sorrow, abuse, coming out, via the language of pop singers. I translated my heart through the chorus and refrain.

And I still do.

My mother and I had a remarkably deep conversation last night, that moved from my apartment and to the restaurant down the block, where red wine was replaced with Mescal margaritas, and discussion of my childhood pivoted to my adulthood. There, my mother opened up about her recent opening up and I shared with her how important music was to me. Many artists, Bell to Tennant, Smith to Lauper, gave me hope. But one, only one, was the supreme.

Madonna.

A few weeks back, on a whim, I bought my mother and I tickets to see Madonna’s Madame X show in Brooklyn. I’d seen every tour since Blonde Ambition, and was unable to make the date Georgi had secured, so I opted to treat my mom, killing two birds: I’d get to see Madonna and we’d have something fun to do on her trip. I had no idea, weeks back, that the night I took my mom to Madge would also be a night we’d dive into nostalgia and try to make sense of our steps to get here. So, as we ate snapper and octopus, the discussion of my childhood became a discussion of this idol, of gay rights, of politics, of family.

From dinner, we drove in the rain to BAM, drank more, this time gin and tonic, checked our phones, and sat down for the show. Michael Kors and Amanda Lepore, visible from our 4th-row seats, made the night feel even more quintessentially New York. The lights went down the audience up on their feet.

Madonna was spectacular. Her banter was vulgar and weird, but endearing. Her look, minus the Pete Burns eye patch, that seems to be, even for me, a bit forced, was at times vampy (“Vogue” recalled “Justify My Love” stylings), chic (the entire Portugues/Spanish moment), serious (“Frozen”), and ethereal (“Come Alive”). The music was great. The setlist, which was most of Madame X, her spectacular new album, a dramatic return to electronic-form, with some greatest hits thrown in. Madonna’s 3 best, and consecutive albums, Ray of Light, Music, and American Life have found their rightful follow-up, as Madame X feels like those records. And Madonna’s voice, often panned, was the surprise hit of the night. When the vocoder, turned up for effect, not disguise, stopped, a fragile, nuanced voice emerged. “Frozen” was a revelation, showing off her lyricism and musicianship in bold display. “Future” was the most symbolic, of our time, but of her career too. Madonna, definitely coming to the future, obviously learning from the past.

My past was a perfect foil to Madame X. Madonna danced with her children while I danced with my mom. The joy of these songs. The connection to these lyrics. The love of dancing and art and song and New York even James Baldwin. All made the intimate show even more intimate. I stood on the edge of the 4th row and she and her band danced down it, with Madonna literally right next to me.

I was unphased sandwiched between her and my mother. The woman to my right has been next to me for 30 years, almost as long as the woman to my left, who I have known for 43 years.

At one point Madonna sat in the audience and sipped a beer of a gay man working in criminal reform She made small talk with him. And it was funny. He was from Oklahoma, she made cowboy jokes.

But things got serious, quickly. He thanked her on behalf of the gay men killed by the plague. For being one of our first advocates. For loving gay people. For celebrating our culture. She was stunned a bit, humbled. Then he went on, thanking her for the suicidal little boy he once was, for giving him hope. For inspiring him to believe that it gets better. It was the heartfelt thank you I have owed her my entire life.

The moment was not lost on me. The circle of life. The boy I once was and the man I am now, in New York Fucking City, living the life I wished for myself, inspired by this woman and her song and punk rock attitude. And it was not lost on me that his and my experience with her was not unique. She touched, inspired, and protected an entire generation of gay men this way. I am one of many.

Having a fucked-up childhood was not all bad. It allowed me to find my siren and find my own voice, which I am still finding.

With my mother by my side last night, I felt closer to home than I have in decades. Life’s poetic, a dream at times. Sometimes, you hear it in records, at concerts. Sometimes, you hear it in your mother’s words. Sometimes, you hear it when you write things down.

#writings

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kramlabs · 6 years

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six norms that may be making your family less healthy

via Shane Trotter

What is normal is not normal. The human biology expects sunlight, constant movement, physical novelty, whole, natural foods, close relationships built upon shared purposeful efforts for survival, and a generally slow life pace.

Today it is normal to eat exclusively processed, convenience foods, to remain indoors all day except for trips in our temperature controlled cars, to feel pulled and prodded by constant message alerts, and to sit all day, predominantly with our face in a screen while being passively entertained. Normal is a relative term.

Very few forces are as powerful as the human need to belong. Consequently, we naturally tend towards herd mentality, behaving as the masses do, regardless of personal benefit. In fact, we’ll adopt odd “normal” behaviors without even realizing they directly contradict our desires, or that we could choose not to.

The standard model of life that we’ve been handed has created a devastating global health picture and all signs point to this trend worsening in our youngest generation. Now, more than ever, we must be willing to question what is normal and carve a different path.

Freedom is not just having the ability to behave as we wish, but knowing why we choose those behaviors. Through reflection and education, we truly become free and are then able to craft an environment that pulls our family to health and vitality.

If wondering where to start, I recommend exploring these six norms that may be making your family less healthy.

1. Having “Kid Food” Around

There is a widespread belief that there should be a distinction between kid’s foods and adult foods. I’ll never forget a client telling me how she ate well for most meals, but often found herself snacking on her kid's chips or popping a soda. When I suggested she stop keeping these foods in the house, she responded angrily, “I’m not going to not have chips and sodas for my kids.”

I’ve even seen this in healthy parents who make separate meals for their children so the young ones aren’t subjected to nutritious eating, as if this was a torturous experience. They’ll have roasted chicken, brown rice, and mixed vegetables while making chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, or frozen pizza for the young ones.

We’ve been sold the belief that kids can only eat chicken in nugget form, fish in fried stick form, and that the rest of their diet should come from packaged junk. While it is true that palates have to develop, children have always eaten natural, whole foods.

Fruits, vegetables, meat, seeds, and nuts have been the only available foods for almost all of human history. Roasted vegetables, sweet potatoes, and fish are actually childhood favorites when children aren’t engulfed in a world of Pop Tarts and pudding that only further serves to warp their palate. Without a diet predominantly consisting of whole foods, children are virtually ensured of future struggles with health and eating.

Make it simple. Make meals from foods that could have existed 10,000 years ago and have your children eat what you do. Ice cream and other desserts are wonderful occasional treats, but they should require a special trip, not be an always available temptation.

2. Driving As Your Only Mode of Transportation

For most of human history, human muscle moved us wherever we went. Today locomotion outside of our sanitized home or office environment is typically outsourced to the automobile. We even drive across the work campus or endlessly circle in search of a closer parking spot.

Most people struggle to find time for fitness while neglecting to incorporate normal activity into their everyday life. Why is there a need to drive your kids to school if it is less than a mile away? Why must you drive to work if it is just across town? My daily trip to work only went from 10 to 20 beautiful minutes when I switched to a bike commuting lifestyle.

According to the CDC, 71.6% of Americans over age 20 are overweight. Healthcare costs are unsustainable, and yet we drive when it would be almost as easy to use human muscle.

Help your kids break free of this pattern. What a model it would be to make it standard practice to bike when round trips are 10-miles or less, or to walk to pick your kids up from school until they are old enough to walk home themselves.

Despite modern helicopter norms, this is the goal of parenting: to create self-sufficient people capable of creating a purpose and contributing to something bigger than themselves. As much as it scares us we should want them to have this desire for independence and exploration. It sure beats smartphone addiction.

3. Letting Kids Have a TV in the Bedroom

Our environment is powerful. If cookies are always on a plate in the kitchen, we’ll probably make it a norm to grab one while walking by. Replace that norm with a bowl of fruit or ants on a log (peanut butter and raisins on celery), and our snacking norms change.

Screens are an especially pervasive temptation in the modern world. They bring an infinite number of messages. Nowadays, televisions are the focal point of our homes, constantly beckoning us to sit down and stop conversations. But at least we share the programs. They can provide talking points, mutual laughter, and a communal experience not too much different from the primal experience of fireside stories.

Yet, in a kid’s bedroom, the TV brings no positives and many negatives. It is a constant source of distraction from study, reading, getting out to play, or trying any creative endeavor. It is a pull towards more time in isolation and more ability to avoid dealing with potential family conflicts. Most destructively, it is a recipe for poor sleep.

Adolescents and teens need 8 1/2 to 10 hours of sleep per night but tend to average 7 or less. Absent of this they will be foggy, moody, lacking concentration, and at increased risk for the poor decisions that characterize this age.

Their natural body rhythms pull them towards later hours, but school start times rarely honor that reality. Add extra-curriculars and socializing and it can be very difficult for teens to adopt a healthy sleep schedule. These struggles magnify tenfold when they have a TV in their bedroom, which they’ll inevitably watch from bed.

Dr. Craig Canapari, director of the Yale Pediatric Sleep Center, says that the number one thing you can do to help your kids avoid sleep problems now and into adulthood is, never put a television in their bedroom.

The only rationale I can see for putting a TV in bed is to appease your children, despite their own well-being. You are the parent. Be the parent.

4. Giving Kids Smartphones Without Boundaries

Nothing poses a greater risk to your children than that screen they can walk around with every hour of the day. The phone allows millions of messages to shape unhealthy beliefs and values, it prompts poor posture and sitting, it precludes face-to-face communication and overcoming social fears, and it wraps the mind in a vortex of anxiety and a compulsive need for distraction.

At least with the TV you sit and share a single program with other people. The smartphone isolates and constantly prompts you to search for the next best thing after only a brief superficial scan. Take everything wrong with having a television in the bedroom and multiply that by a trillion with the smartphone.

There is no culprit more responsible for the terrifying state of American physical, mental, and emotional health, particularly in childhood than smartphone ubiquity.

But, what are you gonna do, right? It is the world we live in, right?

Please, parents, piss your children off. Tell them no, not until 8th grade and not without tons of boundaries. Why open Pandora's box too early? I’m sure I sound extreme, but this technology is extreme. While working in schools I’ve watched the lobotomization it renders on a generation and, it isn’t just them.

Parents line the park benches scanning furiously. Grandparents and babysitters take their children to bounce houses at odd hours so they can sit and scan their phones uninterrupted. We’ve all seen tech addiction and we’re all subject to the allure. Unchecked smartphone use is the path to a Wall-E type dystopia.

You can’t pretend smartphones don’t exist and you can’t hide them forever, but you can for a while. I highly recommend checking out the screen use recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatricians and using their Create Your Family Media Plan tool. It is very easy and will prompt you through ideas and nuances you may not have considered.

5. Not Managing Smartphone Alerts

As usual, we should start with our own model. Strong parents make strong kids. More often than not we are constantly pulled away from the moment by email dings, texts, and quick scans that turn into a 10-minute mental mindless scroll. This is only made worse by the Apple watch that now supersedes any phone away boundary to shove messages back in your face. Take that dinner time!

Simple recommendations that can help you take back control of your time and be more present for your family:

Anything urgent should require a call. Go to your settings and silence all texts and email messaging. People will learn this about you and it will recalibrate their sense of what is urgent.

Plan the times you will batch all messaging response.

Plan the times you will use social media, apps, etc. For example, maybe you can batch this to two 30-minute blocks within your day. This takes the negative out and makes the tool work for you.

While doing complex work, turn the phone on airplane mode and focus. You’ll get more done.

After work or as you come to dinner, put the phone on a charger, away from you and your bedroom.

Get an alarm clock. A single function device.

Silence all calls and notifications a couple hours before bed. You can make exceptions for people you mark as favorites. This is quite easy to do actually.

6. Buying Into a Modern Youth Sports Culture

After the smartphone, this is truly the toughest insane norm to tread in the modern world. For most of you reading, youth sports were an amazing, integral part of your upbringing. Here we learned essential social skills, how to work on behalf of a team, and how to practice to improve. We played every sport, building a broad array of physical skills that nurtured a love of moving and play. It’s probably where you first fell in love with training.

Today, these foundational experiences have been completely perverted by conmen looking for easy money and a culture of over the top bulldozer parents, willing to pay any price to convince their child they are the center of the universe. Second graders have “signing days” when their parents pay for them to join the “elite” soccer team.

Third-grade football teams put the kids' name on the back of the jersey and have a “pep-rally” every Friday night before Saturday games. Most disturbingly, at earlier and earlier ages, coaches try to convince players they are falling way behind without ridiculous travel, specialization, and expensive skills coaches.

Elementary school kids will have multiple evening practices per week, late games, and long Saturday tournaments. Family time evaporates under the guise that this is what you have to do. By middle school baseball and volleyball parents have conceded their wallets and their summer to travel ball. The family no longer has the option to vacation other than 1,000-mile trips to play athletes just like the ones in their own city.

Clearly, this is an article unto itself. The biggest take-home message is:

This is not the best way to build athletes. Athletic participation is way down, meaning our talent pool is smaller and more kids miss out on these vital experiences. Furthermore, as detailed in the Long Term Athletic Development model, optimal athleticism follows age-appropriate, balanced exposure to sports.

Youth sports should not be expensive and should not be all-encompassing. All the kids want to do is play the game with their friends. Remember that? We’d just go play sports with our friends without coaches or parents and we grew up doing it. Or, we’d go outside and play catch with mom and dad.

Resist the urge to follow the masses into this crazy debt trap. Youth sports can be an amazing experience, but they shouldn’t be the only experiences. How you spend your time matters. Family dinner matters. Family vacation matters.

“It’s no sign of health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”

Krishnamurti

As usual, any broad rambling list will be full of prescriptions that don’t accommodate or appreciate your unique constraints and needs. There are major exceptions to nearly every point I’ve made, but I will stand by the underlying principles. Our standard model is a cultural conveyor belt towards poor health and dissatisfaction.

The best thing we can do is have the courage to buck the norms and live authentically, pursuing a path we earnestly believe in. This will take strength and require you to be counter-cultural. Your efforts matter. Strong parents make strong kids.

This Week’s Mission

Apply any of the suggestions from these six unhealthy norms. If you are unsure where to start, create a family media use plan. Having boundaries tends to offer a great deal of freedom. Without them, we are constantly pulled and prodded, controlled by a constant flood of habit-inducing notifications.

http://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/6-unhealthy-norms-plaguing-us-all

http://breakingmuscle.com/coaches/shane-trotter

#shane trotter #raising kids

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thegraytalon-blog · 6 years

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Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug

Remember Chewbacca, everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Stormtroopers everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Darth Vader everyone? Oh I ‘ member!

Remember the Millennium Falcon everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the original Game Boy and Game Gear? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Indiana Jones? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sega Genesis? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Mario Kart, Starfox and Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the Sinbad pirate movie that we all swear exists but in reality doesn’t? Oh I ‘member!

Above are just a few of the many vast examples of nostalgia in the form of media and entertainment for some of us who grew up in the 80’s and the ‘90’s. Now you might be asking yourself, how can a handful of random pop culture references have anything in common? The answer lies in that they all share one crucial thing that is very similar. That being they all represent a form of nostalgia for the most of us who grew up within this era. This is the era that represented the iconic heroes, symbolic artifacts and the rise of video game dominance that we all know and love today. Even such entities that do not really exist and are part of what is called the Mandela Effect, such as that Sinbad movie from the 90’s that we all swore a blood oath existed but have no concrete evidence backing up such a claim. Well, other than the fact that Sinbad himself used to dress up like a pirate and wear some really baggy pirate looking pants in the 90’s.

So what is it about nostalgia that is such a driving force behind what compels our minds today in such forms of life as decision making and even to the point of crucial thinking? Well, let’s start from the beginning. The majority of the memories that we have stem from early childhood and carry on over into adolescence and lessen by the time we reach and are in our full adulthood. When humans are born and are children from the age of about 3 or 4 we begin to develop our brains more and begin to retain moments that transpire in the world and capture them into an ethereal bubble and store them in our memory banks to recall at anytime we want. That is, if the memory is worth recalling at all. While most forms of nostalgia are positive some memories are not always as pleasant as that moment when you picked up a Nintendo controller for the first time to play the very first level of Super Mario Bros or when you went into that creepy cave and an old man gave a wooden sword to a child because it was too dangerous to go alone into the wilderness in The Legend of Zelda. However, they are still considered nostalgic because they caused such a tremendous impact on one’s life.

Let’s say Timmy is 5 years old and is learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. During his trials one day he happens to lose balance, fall off and cuts his knees and sprains both ankles at the same time. Timmy then decides he will never learn how to ride a bike again. It’s not a pleasant memory, but little Timmy may carry on this memory for the rest of his life as it had a big impact on his childhood. When he is older and if people ask him if he knows how to ride a bike, he can not only say no but recall the traumatic experience that shaped his bike riding fate into the present day. Now let’s say little Timmy started riding a bike with training wheels at the age of 5 and nothing went wrong and he eventually graduated to riding a bike with two wheels like a champion. Later on during his life if the topic of riding a bike came up, Timmy may not recall the exact moment when he learned how to ride a bike or even his age, just that he knew how to ride a bike and learned when he was a child. The devil is in the details so to speak and the more prominent the events that transpire in your life, good or bad, the more you will recall and retain them and with great detail.

Now let’s shift our focus back to the positive aspect of nostalgia and what kind of effect it has on our psyches and even physical attributes over a prolonged period of time. I will be using many examples in the form of video games and media for the rest of this entry so strap in and brace yourselves for some serious nostalgic moments!

Petey is a pre-teen boy in the late 90’s who indulges in a plethora of video games. Sometimes on a weekend he goes over to his relative’s house to enjoy the competitive elements that gaming offers in the form of racing and shooting. He partakes in numerous races of Mario Kart 64, dogfighting matches in StarFox 64 and the tactical espionage shooting of GoldenEye 64. After hours of racing, dodging shells, popping balloons, aiming true and losing friends with that infamous blue shell in Mario Kart and shooting down enemy starships in StarFox and cursing out the kid who picked Odd Job in GoldenEye (even though we said NOBODY PICKS ODDJOB IN GOLDENEYE you cheating, miserable fucks), Petey leaves his relatives house and returns home. The next day at school Petey is in class doing his assignments when he notices out of the corner of his eye a pencil about to roll off the student’s desk that is to the left of him. Immediately Petey jerks his arm to the left and catches the pencil before it falls off and reaches the floor. Petey did not realize it, but by him dodging those shells, lasers and bullets in the games he played the day prior, it allowed him to have a slight form of heightened reflexes as his brain and body worked in unison to move his arm and catch the object before it reached the floor more so than a person who did not attune their senses by engaging in a hobby that tested your hand to eye coordination like video games do. In most video games, repetition is key. By performing various tasks over and over again, a person trains their mind and body to react in ways that are almost considered unnatural by the laws of man. Now I’m not saying that gamers are all Spider-Man or Jedi Knights, but their critical thinking does improve as well as their reflex actions and allows them to think and perform outside of the box more than others from time to time.

Speaking of critical thinking, let’s say that it’s a bright and sunny Saturday morning in spring of 1987. You are 7 years old and wake up, have your Cookie Crisp or Fruity Pebbles while you pop on some Transformers or Thundercats as you prepare for your day off from school. Then in the early afternoon proceed to your room and take out the gilded cartridge crafted with great care by the Hylian warriors of future’s past, proceed to take a deep breath and blow deeply into the bottom of the cartridge. You then insert the cartridge into your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and start to hear the whimsical and delightful music of The Legend of Zelda. As your adventure continues across the vast land of Hyrule, you seem to discover many dungeons along your path in which require you to solve puzzles and obtain keys to open your path to venture forward. Most of the puzzle solving includes memorizing geometrical squares or blocks to move them in such a pattern that they will allow secret passages and doors to open so you can continue your hero’s journey. After spending countless hours dungeon crawling , slaying mythical beasts, solving numerous shape shifting puzzles and obtaining the Master Sword to defeat the mighty evil lord Ganon, you put the game to rest for a little while. The next day, Sunday, you go over your friends house to hang out and he has something cool to show you. His mom bought him a new puzzle game called Simon. In this game you have to remember color patterns and memorize them to not fail and go back to the start of the puzzle. Your friend, who is not into video games as much as you, and proceeds to try out the Simon game with you. He gets a score of��4 turns without failing and you happen to score a whopping 12 turns without failing. Could it be that his memory is not as attuned as yours because you just spent the previous day playing The Legend of Zelda and solving pattern memorization puzzles in a plethora of different dungeons? It is indeed very possible and almost factual. Once again, repetition is key and it shapes the mind to retain and remember glimpses of imagery that will help you in such tasks as doing well in a memorization game or exam.

Video games such as The Legend of Zelda are prime examples of how nostalgia not only plays a factor in critical thinking but also how our minds are shaped for when we become adults and how our way of thinking is affected by experiencing games like this in the past in our childhoods. For the most part, The Legend of Zelda series is aimed at a child base with it’s whimsical characters and environments and tunes. However, deep, beneath it’s surface, those games may contain such a deep nostalgic presence in the form of a darkened and twisted tone, that it can only be harnessed and resonated years to decades later as we reach adulthood and see how we use our intellect and minds to either provide rational thought or even something as trivial as conversing with someone and describing your likes and desires. For example, why do some of us migrate towards TV shows or comics or movies with such dark messages or that have a really sick and twisted meaning? I’ll use The Punisher and Fight Club as examples here. Could it be that our love for these 2 embodiments of physical and psychological warfare on the mind, body and spirit stem from our interaction with let’s say The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy and/or The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the Nintendo 64? I know I am singling our Zelda games a lot but there’s a reason and method for my madness here, I promise. You see, both of these games in particular in the series have a deeply disturbing underlying message. In Link’s Awakening you play as the famed hero Link who awakes on an island with no memory of how he got there so his goal is to find a way off the island and get back to his homeland in Hyrule. Now SPOILER ALERT because I am about to fast forward to the game’s ending. At the end of the game, Link encounters the Wind Fish, who is a mythical creature and king of the island that informs Link he is part of some kind of deep REM like fever dream that once he wakes up from all of the creatures and inhabitants of the island he is presently on will cease to exist and die pretty much. The game’s theme and message here then becomes somewhat complex. It twists the plot and forces one’s mind into a psychosis that cannot necessarily determine fiction from reality. The same is present in that of the film Fight Club. Again, SPOILER ALERT here as the entire movie we cannot tell what is fact from fiction as the main character slips in and out of a deep schizophrenic psychosis that plays the duality of himself with a character who he may or may not have created, Tyler Durden, who was everything the main character was not. Like seen in Link’s Awakening, the focus of the story is shifted from reality to fantasy in the blink of an eye where you, the player and the main character in Fight Club and Link as well are uncertain whether the world they are living in and characters around or within them are all real or simply part of some kind of imaginative force. Nobody can really pinpoint the truth of the matters, only that there may be multiple outcomes for their unique situations.

The Punisher and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask are also similar in their own diverse ways. Now before I continue I want to go on record for saying I feel Majora’s Mask is the copyrighted and trademarked property of not only Nintendo, but Lucifer as well. That’s right folks, this game is possessed by the devil and I can prove that with hard concrete evidence. Just Google or YouTube “Ben Drowned” after finishing this and I promise you that you will not sleep well tonight after seeing that. Now for a hefty third SPOILER ALERT here as in Majora’s Mask many feel and believe that the story takes place with Link having failed in all his endeavors to stop Ganondorf from taking over the world, Princess Zelda, who he loved, was enslaved and Link himself was dead and the game takes place in the Hylian afterlife where Link has a finite amount of time to save that world from collision with a moon face who kind of looks like he is in the middle of taking the most constipated crap known to man. Now my point is here that Link is dead, he knows his world has ended as he knows it and is now just running through the motions doing what he can to survive while expelling the evil around him, doing and making whatever he can right, until death knocks on his door. The same can be said for the Punisher. The man known as Frank Castle is dead and has been since his family’s cold blooded murder, leaving behind a shell of the former man he once was and he is just simply doing what good he can, righting the wrongs of the world, while being consumed in the hell on Earth he is living in, the same as Link in Majora’s Mask, until that fateful day when the grim reaper comes beckoning.

Therein lies our attraction to such nostalgic elements of the past to that of the present in a nutshell. But it is only a mere taste of the many nostalgic elements of the past that carry on into our present and future, forever shaping and molding both conscious and subconscious states of our minds determining our focus and reality.

Now in conclusion I would like to leave you all with a disturbing thought about a form nostalgia that can pander to even the most enlightened thinkers as hazardous and demeaning. How many of us grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo and Princess Leia from a galaxy far, far away? How many of us used to cherish those films and even used to dress up like those characters for Halloween or even go to extreme lengths to cosplay at shows such as Comic-Con or just for fun and create videos and role play as them for blogging purposes? George Lucas created something unlike the world has ever seen and even with his infamously criticized prequels, the Star Wars franchise was still a force to be reckoned with and like the Force itself was a powerful ally of nostalgia indeed. Now fast forward a few decades to where we are now. That nostalgia of Star Wars with what once was so illustrious and fruitful has caused us to sheepishly support the ongoing cancer of the new modern world that is known quite simply as the sequel trilogy. The soulless embodiment of corruption, greed and rape of the Star Wars franchise known to man and the majority of us continue to witness the horror, which is the equivalent to watching a train wreck I guess because some of us just cannot look away. And why you may be wondering? That devil is in the details here. Nostalgia is a pathway to many abilities, like I stated earlier, and some are considered to be unnatural. The most frightening ability nostalgia gives us is the ability to go and pay hard earned dollars to experience something that is completely unworthy, unholy and just plain unnecessarily bad for our souls because nostalgia said it was a good idea! This is not only present in such forms of media as Star Wars but in other forms of entertainment as well. How many of us saw Batman VS Superman because we as teenagers or adolescents read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and thought it would be an exact rendition of that piece of art? Who saw Man of Steel only because they saw the Nolan Brothers names in the credits and thought it would be just as good, if not, better than The Dark Knight? How many of us flocked to theaters to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because we loved Harrison Ford in the original adventures of Indiana Jones trilogy? Give me the total number of cattle who grazed their way to the theaters to see The Hobbit after the renowned success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? And even in video games, who ran out and bought The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask because it took place in the same world and timeline as the famed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? The same with Nintendo and their consoles can be said. How many of you owned a Nintendo Game Boy and had to wait on line for 3 hours to obtain a Nintendo Virtual Boy due to the nostalgia caused by the Game Boy? On the other side of the fence, how many countless people purchased Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 because of their fond recollections of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast? The list goes on and on and on.

All of these newly released end resulted products listed above have ended in disappointment over their predecessors in some way, shape or form. These letdowns that I just stated cannot hold a candle to their nostalgic ancestral entities of the past that brought us such warmth and joy. Simply stated, they just do not make them like they used to! So why do we continue to follow this systematic pattern? Does nostalgia alone drive our state of mind or is it something deeper and something even more psychological? I feel that there is another driving force that goes hand in hand in tandem with the nostalgia factor. I strongly believe that married to nostalgia is F.O.M.O. or the “Fear of Missing Out”, which is a syndrome created by chemicals in the brain that develop such an emotional fear that if they were ever to stop witnessing a piece of intellectual property they have invested so much time and energy into that they became terrified as to what the outcome may be, even if there would be no harm done to them physically. Emotionally speaking, these people are frightened to the point of stasis that if they were to miss out on viewing or playing or experiencing something they have dumped a large chunk of their lives to, their minds may collapse into themselves like a neutron star! It fascinates the very mind and can even warrant further study to what drives an individual to such lengths of commitment, with nostalgic fear being one of the leading factors and causes. A prime example of this would be the television show The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic series. The show has been renewed for it’s 11th season and has long since lost my interest so I simply stopped watching. But I know people who continue watching even though the show has turned stale. Why? F.O.M.O! Godforbid they miss out on a morsel and crumb of walking down a barren road! And what about the next Star Wars movie? Episode IX is due out in December of 2019 and the majority of people I know are committed to seeing it even after they claimed Episode VIII ruined the franchise for them. Why? F.O.M.O!

I will leave you all with this final thought to ponder: If one is to break away from the sheepish herd, they must first act and lead like a member of the wolf pack.

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upontheshelfreviews · 6 years

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If there’s a reason why we’re able to recall the story of Snow White from memory, and why said princess is usually depicted with short hair, a cute bow and surrounded by woodland fauna, look no further than Disney. Their take on the Grimms’ fairy tale is the prime example of pop cultural osmosis. Even if you’ve never watched Disney’s Snow White, it’s easy to recognize when a piece of work is borrowing from it or spoofing it. And I can definitely see why – not only is it going eighty-plus years strong, but its influence on nearly every Disney feature to come after it is a profound one.

The real story of Disney’s Snow White begins in the early 1910’s when a young Walt Disney saw a silent film version of the Grimms’ fairytale starring Marguerite Clark. The movie stuck with him well into adulthood. One night, well after he had established himself as an animation giant the world over, Walt gathered his entire staff of animators and storymen and re-enacted the tale for them in a mesmerizing one-man show. They were enraptured, but what he told them next struck them dumb – they were going to take what he performed and turn it into a full-length film.

In Tony Goldmark’s epic(ally hilarious) retrospective of Epcot, he performs a quick sketch he summed up as “Walt Disney’s entire career in 55 seconds” where Walt presents his career-defining ideas to a myopic businessman capable of only saying “You fool, that’ll never work!”. Considering how animation is everywhere today, it’s easy to forget that an animated film was once seen as an impossible dream. The press hawked Snow White as “Disney’s Folly”, and Hollywood speculated that it would bankrupt the Mouse House. It very nearly did. Miraculously, a private showing of the half-finished feature to a banking firm impressed the investors enough to ensure its completion.

Snow White is touted as the very first animated movie – admittedly something of a lie on Disney’s behalf. Europe and Russia were experimenting with feature-length animation decades before Walt gave it a try. But consider this: most animated films predating Snow White’s conception are either sadly lost to us or barely count as such by just crossing the hour mark. With all the hard work poured into it showing in every scene, with each moment displaying a new breakthrough in the medium, Snow White might as well be the first completely animated movie after all. Hell, it’s the very first movie in the entire history of cinema that was created using STORYBOARDS. A tool used by virtually every single movie put out today. If that’s not groundbreaking enough, I don’t know what is.

But is Snow White really…but why does it…can it…

“You know what? No. I’m not doing this teasing question thing before the review starts proper. OF COURSE Snow White is a masterpiece. OF COURSE most of it holds up. Let’s skip the middleman so I can explain why.”

After the opening credits we get the first of what will be many Disney leather bound books opening themselves to invite us into the world of the story. We’re informed that once upon a time there was a particularly Wicked Queen (nicknamed Grimhilde in promo features and the comics) who had a serious narcissistic personality disorder. Every day she consults her Magic Mirror™ to see who’s the fairest one of all and takes pride in being repeatedly told she holds said title. In the meantime she bullies her younger, prettier stepdaughter, the princess Snow White, and gives her the standard Cinderella treatment in the hopes that endless drudgery will wipe out the competition.

One fateful morning, however, the Mirror informs the Queen that she’s been bumped down to runner-up. She susses out that it’s Snow White who’s taken her place after the Mirror describes the newcomer as having “lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, [and] skin white as snow”, but maybe the Queen is projecting here due to her extreme jealousy. Going by those three traits the Mirror could be describing almost anyone on the planet.

Care to narrow it down a bit, buddy?

Now if you consider yourself a feminist or at the very least have progressive views regarding women, I know what you’re thinking – just another example of the patriarchy pitting shallow female stereotypes against each other, right? Well in a manner of speaking, yes. There’s plenty of evidence that the Brothers Grimm held some odious misogynistic beliefs that stemmed from a bad combination of the era they lived in, outdated religious teachings, and their own experiences with the opposite sex. It shows in their second fairy tale revisions – the heroines are naïve bimbos in need of a man’s rescue, and the villains are evil stepmothers and witches who happen to be hideous 99% of the time – and those views have been reinforced in our society thanks to those particular iterations being passed down to today.

Here’s my way of viewing the central conflict: The Mirror’s news is a wake-up call that Snow White is coming into her own as a woman and princess. That means marriage to a prince and the end of the Wicked Queen’s rule. Snow White will have all the power and adulation while the Queen is forced to step down and become another footnote in ancient royal history. Up until now the Queen has gone out of her way put down her pretty young opponent with petty cruelty because there’s nothing stopping her; but when faced with the inevitable, she unflinchingly opts to take more drastic measures so she can keep the throne.

If it weren’t for the fact the Queen’s unofficial moniker is Grimhilde and her transformation scene reveals a head of black hair, I’d suspect her real name was Cersei Lannister.

You also have to remember that the Queen takes the term “fairest” at face value. The Queen is beautiful, sure, but it’s a glacial beauty – cold, unfeeling, and nothing beneath the surface. All she cares about is looks and power. You’d have to be a pure loving soul or Woody Allen find something worthwhile in her. Snow White is beautiful too, though it’s her kindness and fair treatment of everyone that garners her the title of “fairest one of all”, not her appearance.

Speaking of, we follow that scene with Snow White (Adriana Casselotti) dressed in rags cleaning the castle courtyard. She shows her bird friends her wishing well and sings “I’m Wishing”, where she reveals her wish for her one true love to show up.

Confession time: In childhood the title of my favorite Disney princess was neck and neck between Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. I’ve already discussed at length why I adore Belle, so I suppose I should do the same for Snow.

…turns out it’s more difficult than I thought.

For as long as I could remember, I was surrounded by Snow White paraphernalia – tapes, toys, dolls, music, games, artwork, bed sheets, I can even recall the ice show. Snow White is ingrained into my early years. It more than likely has to do with the timing of its brief return to theaters and first VHS release between 1993 and 1994, right at the peak of the Disney Renaissance, so I experienced Snow White-mania right alongside Lion King-mania, Beauty and the Beast-mania and various other Disneymanias that were rampant at that time.

Even this one, embarrassingly.

As a result, I idolized Snow White as much the other princesses of the time, right down to making her the character I dressed up as the most for Halloween. I suppose what drew me to her was inherent kindness, ability to make friends with everyone, and her voice. Yes, I admit it. I don’t find Snow White’s warbling to be as irritating as everyone says it is. Maybe I’ve listened to it so much that I’ve grown immune. Then again I am that one Disney fan who doesn’t loathe It’s A Small World with every fiber of their being so maybe I should question my own tastes more.

Now as an adult with a critical eye who can put nostalgia behind me when necessary, is there something more to the character of Snow White that’s worth appreciating as much as the more-fleshed out princesses of the Renaissance and current Revival period?

I accept that I’m in the minority on this one, but I firmly say yes.

I know what you’re thinking – all Snow White does is smile and sing while she slaves under the Queen and the dwarfs and dreams of a handsome man to come carry her away, so I should turn in my feminist card for daring to suggest she’s a good character and role model for girls, right? Consider this: like Cinderella after her, Snow White’s happy nature and songs are her ways of coping with her unpleasant situation. It keeps her spirits up and in turn she tries to spread that positivity to others who need it as well. She refuses to let the Queen’s negativity turn her as sour as she is. All the little things Snow White reveals in what she does – her patience, pride in her work, healthy emotional balance, drive to help others, and warmth towards those smaller than her (in both a figurative and literal sense) – are all signs that she is capable of being a far better and beloved ruler and all around person than the Queen is. Plus, her reason for wanting to find love is two-fold: not only is she looking for someone with whom she can share a unique emotional understanding bond – which is something most every human craves – but it’s the also best possible means for her to escape from her stepmother’s abuse. Like I said earlier, once Snow White gets the ring, she gets to rule.

And what’s wrong with having a princess who can run a practical household? One could argue that it’s an example of traditional female roles desired by an oppressive patriarchal society on full display, but you want to know why millennials are called out for being lazy? Because baby boomers have cut out classes that teach things young adults actually need outside of school like how to properly cook and do laundry and pay your taxes since those weren’t seen as “essential enough to education”. So I have to admire a princess who, while not the most “progressive” of the bunch by today’s standards, is willing and able take care of herself and others when it comes to basic everyday needs. I think TheBrutallyHonestMom summed it up best in her post defending Snow White:

When we denigrate what Snow White accomplishes at the dwarfs’ cottage, when we rename her accomplishments to make them sound more impressive, more official, more valuable—management, administration, domestic CEO, sous chef, hospitality specialist—what we are really doing is saying that we don’t value the truly valuable work that she and so many other stay-at-home individuals do. Those words are a microaggression against what have traditionally been feminine roles, an attempt to align them with a patriarchal worldview where only those with the biggest titles and fattest paychecks matter. Snow White is domestic. She is a maid. She is a mother figure. She does take on the womanliest of the womanly roles. To claim that adopting these roles (and being good at them) somehow makes her a poor role model for my daughters is not a failure of Snow White’s imagination. It is a failure of ours.

Then there’s the matter of her actress too, which I can’t stay silent about. A few years ago it was revealed that in order to preserve the illusion of Snow White as a real character (a good many years before the company applied that same logic to their character performers at the theme parks I might add), Disney forced Adriana Casselotti to forego her screen credit and never take on another acting role again, essentially robbing her of a career. She only managed to appear in It’s A Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz because hers were uncredited minute parts. Casselotti had no regrets about choosing Snow White over a promising show business vocation, but I still call bull on the matter. If this kind of thing happened today, people would not stand for it, character illusions or not. There’s also crazy double standards since all the actors who played the dwarfs got to keep on acting; Sneezy’s voice actor was in Fun and Fancy Free for crying out loud! I love ya Walt, but that is one dick move. So if you’re a detractor cheering that you never have to hear Casselotti’s voice beyond this movie, keep in mind that’s all because of one man silencing her for the sake of his business.

So, Snow White. She cooks, cleans, delegates, teaches, loves, domestically kicks ass, and her behind the scenes story makes a strong case for the Time’s Up movement. Any questions?

“Yes. You’re over 2000 words in and we haven’t even gotten to the dwarfs yet. Plan on getting off that soapbox sometime this decade?”

Snow’s singing attracts the attention of a handsome Prince (Harry Stockwell) passing by on his horse. But his forwardness startles the shy girl and sends her sprinting up to her room. He charms her out to her balcony by singing his one song in the feature…”One Song”. You gotta love it when the title matches the tune perfectly.

“Wherefore art thou Prince? Deny thy father and refuse thy name!”

“Sure I’ll gladly refuse my name – if I had one, that is.”

All joking aside, I have a soft spot for this scene. Stockwell’s voice has this old-time Broadway/operetta quality I’ve always liked, the lyrics are unironic purple prose that still feel genuine, Snow’s little excited gestures are adorable, and it’s framed beautifully. This is what got it into my heard early on that the most romantic gesture anyone can make is serenading someone from beneath their balcony.

“Too bad you’re technically in a long distance relationship.”

“I know. Propping up a phone beneath your window just doesn’t have the same effect.”

Snow returns his affections with a kiss delivered via a dove and departs the scene with one hell of a pair of bedroom eyes, especially for a Disney character.

Daaaaaamn, girl! You already got him hooked, no need to gild the lily!

Unbeknownst to either of them, the Queen is watching overhead; Snow catching the eye of Prince Charming is what finally pushes her to take further action. She summons her Huntsman –

– to bring Snow White out into the forest and do away with her. Brief as this scene may be, there are two things I really like about it. First, the gravity. The Huntsman reacts with horror on being told what he must do, foreshadowing his eventual turnaround, yet with an icy hiss of “Silence!” and a short reminder of the price of failure, the Queen goads him back into line. We don’t know what the penalty for insubordination is, but it’s implied to be pretty nasty if she’s able to convince him otherwise with just a few words. Second, the Queen’s other demand. In the original fairytale, the Queen requested Snow White’s liver, lungs and heart so she could eat them and inherit her stepdaughter’s comely attributes.

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But here in the film, she only wants the heart, and not for lunch. The Queen wants to keep it as a trophy. She even has a disturbingly appropriate box for it at the ready.

Proof that she really puts the ‘grim’ in ‘Grimhilde’.

Snow White, now dressed in her iconic yellow and blue dress, goes out flower picking with the Huntsman waiting not far behind. She spies a lost baby bird, and the moment she turns her back to help it, the Huntsman moves in for the kill. It’s framed like the murderer creeping up to their next victim in a scary movie, slowly building up to the moment he confronts her, with tension you could cut with a – well, you know.

Ultimately the Huntsman is moved by the princess’ humanity and can’t go through with the deed. Instead he reveals the Queen’s plot and pleads her to run, run away, Snow, and never return. Terrified, Snow White flees into the forest where her fears magnify her surroundings. Brambles become gnarled outstretched hands, logs are hungry snapping crocodiles, and there are eyes everywhere, always watching, boring into her every place she turns.

I should note that while developing Snow White, the Disney studio became something of an art college with fine arts and film study classes offered to the staff in order to hone their craft. Some of the movies they studied were horror flicks from the pre-Hays Code era, classics directed by the likes of James Whale and F.W. Murnau. The results speak for themselves. Scenes like this and the Queen’s transformation are why I consider Snow White my very first horror movie. The frightening imagery and darker themes all hide beneath a veneer of Disney childhood innocence. Like a proto-Pan’s Labyrinth, the terror as much psychological as it is fantastical.

A young Sam Raimi watched this and vowed one day he’d make those trees even more terrifying and bad-touchy.

This scene is also the source of one of the most famous stories to come out of the film’s creation. During the planning of the part where Snow falls backwards through an open-mouthed cavern into a lake, one of the animators cried out in terror “Won’t that kill her??” And the whole room fell silent. They reached the point where they no longer thought of Snow White as a cartoon but as an actual person, something that had never happened before. That was the moment where they were officially, as Ben Vereen once put it, on the right track.

Overwhelmed, Snow White collapses in tears. She’s brought back to her senses by the usual cuddly forest inhabitants inexplicably drawn to female royalty in need of assistance. Of course, being the ever-thoughtful soul that she is, Snow apologizes for startling them and making a fuss over how afraid she was, once more putting others before herself. She bonds with the animals through the uplifting “With a Smile and a Song”. Then she spends several minutes talking to them and making plans for the future all in rhyme. I confess it’s one of the weaker moments of the movie, showing that the studio’s transition from the Silly Symphonies to full-fledged filmmaking hasn’t completely been made yet.

The critters lead Snow to a quaint cottage in need of a good cleaning service. Assuming the miniature-sized furniture means the inhabitants are orphaned children, she decides to surprise them by sprucing up the joint, hoping her act of kindness will make them forget her breaking and entering and they’ll let her stay. Said cleanup time is underscored by one of the more upbeat tunes in Disney’s songbook, “Whistle While You Work”. Like Mary Poppin’s “A Spoonful of Sugar” it’s all about finding joy in the little things that make the work go by quicker.

“Here’s the last of the underwear, Bambi. And try not leave any ticks in the laundry this time!”

But as we all know, the cottage belongs not to seven children, but seven little people who work as jewel miners, all the while singing that famous mining song –

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“No, the one sung by dwarves.”

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“Seriously?!”

All joking aside, Heigh-Ho is the best song in the movie, no contest. Easily the catchiest tune here if not the entire Disney canon. If it can keep a theater full of gremlins occupied, it’s doing something right.

Sure, they whistle while they work for now. But once they find the Arkenstone it’s all downhill from here.

And let’s not kid ourselves, the dwarfs are the real reason why we keep returning to Snow White. Their quirk-matching names and designs make each one memorable, they’re endlessly entertaining, and they’re the characters that come the closest to having some form of arc. The group is a prime example of the illusion of life that is animation, exaggerated to a degree that they’re still believable in their movements and mannerisms. Dopey especially works well in this regard, a wonder considering much of his character was developed by happy accident. When an actor suitable enough couldn’t be found, they made the decision to simply mute him. Like much of Disney’s favorite animal sidekicks, they based his personality around that of a lovable dog, though I’d be lying if I didn’t see some Harpo Marx in there as well. As a result, his childlike playfulness and comic timing is up there with Chaplin’s Little Tramp. His hitch step was also an unexpected boon; after animator Frank Thomas put it in one of his scenes, Walt liked it so much that he insisted all previously animated footage of Dopey be redone to include that step. Incidentally, Frank’s popularity among the animation staff reached all-time lows after that announcement.

Snow White flops down for a quick nap on the beds upstairs just as the dwarfs return home. What follows is them sneaking about their now suspiciously squeaky-clean cottage and further establishing their personas through a series of finely-tuned gags (Walt paid five dollars for every good joke his guys could come up with, and this was when five dollars could take you out to dinner and a show). Dopey is elected to check the bedroom and he comes to the conclusion that Snow’s sleeping form is a monster. The dwarfs work up their courage to go kill the beast themselves only to realize in the nick of time that it’s just a harmless girl. But Grumpy, the clear-cut misogynist in the group, isn’t keen on having a “wicked-wiled” female refugee in their abode and shamelessly yells “Let ‘er wake up, she don’t belong here no-how!”

Snow wakes up and instantly charms over everyone except Grumpy as they introduce each other. The dwarfs are shocked and terrified to learn the Queen has put a hit out on her. Grumpy in particular declares the Queen is a powerful witch skilled in the black arts, which is true, and it raises a potent question. Is her magic common knowledge throughout the kingdom, or is it mere speculation? If it’s the former, how did that come to be? What happened to Snow White’s father the king anyhow? All this could make for a very interesting –

“You know what, never mind, forget I said it -“

“Too late! Jenkins, write that down! Bob’s gonna love it!”

“Very good, sir. Shall I pre-heat your crack pipe in preparation for the first draft writing session?”

“Does the Academy loathe streaming services? Hop to it, my man!”

“Hey, I thought you left that jerk to go work for Don Bluth.”

“Shh! I jumped ship after A Troll in Central Park and came back under a new identity. I couldn’t pass up the bankroll Disney’s been on since 2009.”

“Mum’s the word.”

Grumpy’s certain that they’ll be in the Queen’s crosshairs once she learns they’ve been harboring Snow White and demands they kick her out at once. But Snow White stands up for herself and says she can take care of the house for them if they let her stay. Just like Belle offering herself in her father’s place, no one corners Snow into the position of housekeeper. She’s the one who puts herself out there, listing all her best qualities like she’s on an interview. It’s only when she does so (and also mentions she can bake a mean gooseberry pie) that the dwarfs overrule Grumpy and declare she’s welcome in their home.

Yet even when all is said and done, Snow makes it clear that if she’s the one doing the work, then the dwarfs must play by her rules. Immediately following their acceptance, she goes into full Team Mom mode, insisting they improve their manners and wash themselves before dinner’s ready. Doc attempts to get around it by saying they cleaned up “recently”, but despite her sweet nature, Snow won’t let them walk all over her. She does a cleanliness inspection that makes the dwarfs almost as bashful as Bashful himself, and even gets a good bit of sarcasm in (“Why Doc, I’m surprised.”) The dwarfs washing themselves is another one of those Silly Symphony-esque filler scenes, but at least it gives us more time for their fun shenanigans; though I have to wonder if dog piling Grumpy and half-drowning him takes it too far.

“Where’s the money, Legrumpski? Where’s the fucking money??” “It’s down there somewhere, lemme take another look.”

Back at the castle, the Queen is showing off her newly acquired bodily organ to the Magic Mirror while demanding he validate her preconceptions of who’s fair and who’s not. Alas, the Mirror tattles on Snow White’s location and reveals that heart belonged to a pig, which I’ve got to say I’m glad they didn’t show how the Huntsman got ahold of.

Infuriated, the Queen storms down to her secret lab (and no, there’s no wrong lever scene. I’m disappointed too). She brews up a potion made up of ingredients like scream of fright, a thunderbolt and partially hydrogenated dimethylpolysiloxane which will completely transform her into a disguise nobody could suspect her in, an aged peddler woman.

Was I afraid of this scene way back when? Of course, but it was one of those rare moments where I didn’t want to look away either. Here we have a woman dangerously obsessed with beauty becoming the very thing she loathes in order to sate her implacable desires. Not only that but in this disguise she’s able to set loose the insanity buried deep beneath her frigid calculating exterior, grinning and cackling like the witch that she is. The Queen never smiles once when she’s in her true form. But once she’s the old Hag and it’s all cackling and gap-toothed smiles, it’s extremely unnerving.

Case in point.

“Anyone else miss the creepy fade to black where the villain’s eyes remain for a few seconds? Disney needs to bring that back.”

Major props to Lucille LaVerne, who gives a bone chilling and utterly unrecognizable performance as BOTH the Queen and the Hag. She made the switch from one role to the next by removing her false teeth between recording sessions. In doing so she gave us one of the great Disney villain performances.

The part where she preps the infamous poisoned apple does undercut some of her menace, however. The Hag is supposed to be sharing her scheming with a cowardly raven, but due to how much she stares directly into the camera while monologuing, it comes off as directly addressing the audience, like we’re watching her in a play. It’s not just the Silly Symphony style of storytelling creeping in, it’s melodramatic semi-vaudevillian theatrics that early Hollywood was moving well away from at this point. And again, what’s with the sudden speaking in rhyme?

At the last moment the Hag looks up a possible antidote to the poison and learns that it’s Love’s First Kiss. However she scoffs at the notion that Snow White can be saved because she’s counting on the dwarfs believing the princess is dead and burying her alive.

“For those of you who claim Disney waters down fairy tales into saccharine pap, I point you to Snow White.”

And it doesn’t end there. As the Hag leaves the dungeons, she passes a cell where a skeleton is sprawled out between the bars, reaching for a water pitcher. It’s bad enough to imagine this poor soul dying of thirst, spending their last moments with salvation just out of their grasp, but the Hag openly mocks the skeleton and kicks the pitcher aside. If that’s not a deciding irredeemably evil factor moment, it comes pretty darn close.

This would have also tied into an important but ultimately scrapped sequence where the Queen kidnaps the Prince, locks him in the dungeon to keep him from saving Snow White and torments him by detailing her elaborate scheme.

This sounds vaguely familiar…

Depending on which pitch you’re reading, the Prince refuses the Queen’s offer of marriage, and she enchants the chained-up skeletons of other scorned suitors to dance in an extremely misguided attempt keep him entertained while she’s out, or floods the dungeon to drown him. He makes a daring escape and rides to the rescue on horseback.

Again, vaguely familiar…

Unfortunately we had to wait twenty-plus years for this to happen because the animators weren’t confident in their abilities to create a believable male character. This is why the Prince appears only in the beginning and the end of the movie (and by extension why the Cinderella’s Prince is barely in that feature as well). When it came to making Snow White look realistic, they subtly incorporated some rotoscoping in a few places (I’d call it cheating but it’s difficult to tell where it begins or ends because she looks that good eighty years later). But I guess it just wasn’t worth the effort to do the same for her love interest, who doesn’t even get the dignity of an official name (fans go back and forth between Florian and Ferdinand). He’s reduced to a deus ex machina – which to be fair is exactly how he was treated in the fairytale. The movie has the slight advantage over that, however, by setting him up before he arrives for that wake-up kiss.

“And now it’s time for Silly Songs With Happy, the part of the review where Happy comes out and sings a silly song. Today’s interlude, appropriately titled “The Silly Song”, features choreography which has gone on to inspire many other Disney musical sequences dating as far ahead as the 70’s.”

“Hold it!! It’s just the exact same movements with the Robin Hood cast grafted over them!”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“Well…no…it’s just a bit distracting when you finally notice it. I mean I love Disney’s Robin Hood, but boy did they take the main character’s attitude towards stealing to heart when it came to the animation.”

And yes, “The Silly Song” itself is fun too. It’s one of the less remembered Disney tunes, though I have fond memories of it due to its inclusion in the Sing-Along video lineup. The decision to have it follow the Hag’s unsettling introduction makes perfect sense; I could imagine audiences experiencing it for the first time needed a bit of a breather after that.

I guess I should mention the musical number we could have had instead of this one, though. “Music in Your Soup” was a similarly lighthearted song that was fully recorded and animated before it was ultimately cut. It was expertly animated, featured more dwarf-Snow White interactions, and it also closed up a plot hole involving a bar of soap Dopey swallowed earlier. Still, it didn’t add much to the story overall and it disrupted the flow, and keeping both that and “The Silly Song” would have been superfluous; so as much as I like “Music In Your Soup” I think they made the right call in sticking with “The Silly Song”.

After the dancing, Snow regales the dwarfs with a love story, though they quickly figure out she’s talking about herself and her prince. She dispenses with the self-insert fanfiction and sings the movie’s eleven o’clock number “Someday My Prince Will Come”. Bawl all you want about setting women’s rights back a decade, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lovely song, even without Casselotti’s vocals. In fact, much of the movie’s soundtrack has been a go-to for jazz artists through the decades ranging from Miles Davis to Dave Brubeck. The pure simplicity of Larry Morey’s lyrics and Frank Churchill’s melodies are ripe for riffing on. Virtually every cover I’ve found succeeds in the impossible task of measuring up to the original in some capacity. The action in the song itself is subtle and restrained, mainly focusing on the dwarfs’ reactions. It’s not only good storytelling, but a clever way to get around showing more of Snow White than the animators could handle; she was already tough enough to animate even with rotoscoping.

Snow realizes how late it’s getting and ushers the dwarfs to bed; however Doc and the others try to behave like gentlemen and allow her to sleep upstairs while they take up whatever space they can fill on the lower floor. It goes to show how much her kindness and politeness has had an influence on them, at least while she’s around. Them taking up whatever sleeping space they can find on the ground floor is an excuse to squeeze more gags in, but I’m fond of how it lets us wind down and take in this cozy atmosphere.

The next morning before they head out the dwarfs warn Snow White to beware of strangers. Even Grumpy can’t help but show concern in his own gruff tsundere way. It’s little touches like this that reveal Snow White’s unwavering compassion is chipping away at his chauvinist attitude and he really does care about her after all –

Hang on, they couldn’t spare ONE dwarf to stick around and keep an eye out in case the Queen does drop by? They’re really think the Queen isn’t going to make another murder attempt as soon as possible? They sadly must, because no sooner do the dwarfs heigh-ho off to work than the Hag creeps up like a meth user turned Jehovah’s Witness.

“Hello, my name is Elder Grim. Would you care to learn more about our lord and savior Chernabog?”

After the animals fail to communicate the obvious danger, they fetch the dwarfs for help. Meanwhile the Hag has convinced Snow White to let her into the cottage and show off her “magic wishing apple”.

Already I can hear the slapping of a thousand facepalms through my screen. I get why, but there’s something about the situation that feels strangely relatable. The Queen is fully aware of Snow White’s gentle, trusting nature and knows how to take full advantage of the girl. Snow isn’t all smiles and open arms though. There’s a split second of regret the moment she divulges she’s by herself, and as the Hag literally corners her into tasting the poison apple her body language gives away how uncomfortable she is. Even the cottage itself grows darker and claustrophobic, mirroring her trapped state. Snow White knows there’s definitely something off about this stranger, but there’s the downside of her kind personality. She can’t bring herself to kick the old lady out no matter how wrong this scenario inherently feels.

“Just keep smiling and slowly reach for the mace.”

Ultimately the Hag coaxes her into tasting the apple. Every breath leading up to it is dramatically intercut with the dwarfs led by Grumpy (further proof Snow White really has gotten through to the old softie) racing back to the cottage.

Do you want to know why the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is considered one of the scariest movies of all time? Because for all its promise of a gory spectacular, the violence is deliberately kept offscreen. Our imaginations fill in the blanks and come up with even worse terrors than they could possibly show. Snow White’s poisoning works on that logic. All we hear is her gasping and groaning as the Hag gleefully looks on, ending with the most cinematic shot of the film.

If you’re still convinced Snow’s a dunce for biting the big apple, trust me, it’s a vast improvement over the original. The Queen showed up in disguise three times to kill Snow White with varying methods: strangulation by laces, a poisoned comb, and of course the apple. This was cut down to the last one for obvious reasons – not only would the story be repetitive and extremely padded if they remained, but it makes Snow White look like an idiot for falling for the same trap thrice in a row. The only time I’ve ever seen the inclusion of all three murder attempts work is in the anime The Legend of Snow White (which despite the laughably bad English dub is worth checking out). By the time the Queen comes around with the apple in that instance, Snow White is well aware of who she’s dealing with. But she plays along because the Queen has turned the kingdom to stone, and the only way to break the curse is by taking the bait and destroying her staff while she thinks she’s down, thus turning what was once an act of naivete into a heroic sacrifice.

The Hag exits the cottage feeling confident in who’s the fairest now just in time for the dwarfs to show up. They chase her through a thunderstorm up a cliff side. Literally trapped between a rock and a hard place, she attempts to dislodge a boulder and crush her pursuers. But Zeus is having none of that and a lightning bolt strikes the cliff, plummeting the Hag to her doom.

To quote Linkara, “Thus the origin for ‘Rocks fall, everybody dies’.”

And in case you’re still thinking she could have survived that drop, even with that boulder tilting over after her, the vultures that have been tailing her since she left the castle begin circling lower and lower over the place where she now lies. A chilling, subtle way to show they’re getting a meal after all.

We fade to a wake the dwarfs are holding for Snow White, complete with organ music and weeping – LOTS of sad, silent, motionless weeping. Poor Grumpy gets the worst of it. One can only imagine the tsunami of emotion he must have felt coming home to see that she was making a pie just for him. Like “Someday My Prince Will Come” it shows how restraint can be an asset in acting for animation. Considering how it’s very much like a real-life wake and just how much everyone believes Snow White is truly dead, this was a tough scene to get through.

The seasons pass and we’re told through title cards that the dwarfs couldn’t find it in themselves to bury Snow White, so they built a glass coffin and kept constant vigil along with the depressed forest animals.

“Clearly the idea of watching her slowly decompose over time never crossed their little minds.”

The funeral on top of the wake keeps piling on the sadness. We’re used to animated features moving us to tears, but you have to remember for audiences back then this was an entirely new experience because no animation dared to get this heavy. Think about it: Shirley Temple, Charlie Chaplin, the best and the brightest of Hollywood who poo-pooed Walt for his ridiculous idea – all moved to tears over Snow White. I can only imagine the satisfaction Walt must have felt hearing their sobbing at the premiere. Again, going back to that animator who felt genuine fear for her safety, the audience developed an emotional bond with the character just as they would for a real human on screen.

The Prince FINALLY shows up again still singing his One Song. Believing the love he has long searched for to be lost to him forever, he says his final farewell by bestowing her with Love’s First Kiss.

“Ah – “

“If you make ONE necrophilia joke, I swear I’ll take all the Adam Sandler movies off the Shelf.”

“Please, no!! I’ll have nothing to fully snark at!!”

The kiss does its work and Snow White awakens none the worse for wear. And since what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she’s immune to all poison ingested via deciduous fruit now. That’ll make ruling the kingdom she’s inherited from her stepmother and disappeared father much easier. And for those of you complaining how a magical kiss is a cop out, trust me, it’s better than how the original fairytale resolved it.

“Somewhere my love lies sleeping, and here she is! I’ll pay you dwarfs anything to let me take her back to my castle and keep her there as a memento of our tragic love.”

“This had better be worth it, she weighs a freaking ton!” “OHH, there goes my hernia!” *BANG*

*HACKHACKCOUGHHACK* “Thanks for the Heimlich, guys, damn apple’s been stuck in my throat for a year!”

“Seriously, I’m not making that up. Plus, they invite the Queen to the wedding and force her to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes.”

Everyone rejoices, Snow White says goodbye to the dwarfs, and the Prince leads her on his horse to his shining palace in the clouds. They all live happily ever after, the end.

And that’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the very first animated Disney movie. Do I believe the American Film Institute’s claims that it’s the best animated film of all time? Well, to be honest, no. The main characters aren’t as developed compared to future Disney protagonists, the animation goes noticeably off model at times, and it’s got one foot stuck in the style of the Silly Symphonies shorts that came before.

Is it the most influential animated film, however? Of course! Without it animation wouldn’t be as mainstream as it is today. While the formula has been updated and subverted through the decades, most animated features follow a similar blueprint – a dastardly villain, fun side characters, memorable music, distinct visual flair, fighting, torture, true love, miracles, you get the picture. We wouldn’t have any of that without Snow White. Once upon a time, this movie was the Star Wars of its era; a groundbreaking, audience-thrilling blockbuster that changed the way people looked at movies. Part of that is because Snow White taps into an emotional simplicity in a manner few films are able to. It relies more on providing an emotional catharsis than logic, inviting us to experience the story as we once did through the eyes of a child, and in doing so captures the essence of a classic fairy tale.

In fact, looking at the ripple effect of how movies can influence one another across the years, Snow White ranks among one of the most influential movies made in general. Apart from Disney you can see its echoes in The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver’s Travels, Citizen Kane, and yes, the original Star Wars. Even Sergei Eisenstein, the man who revolutionized filmmaking with freaking Battleship Potemkin, declared Snow White to be the greatest film ever made.

…So why did Walt Disney come to hate it later on in life?

Every movie that’s met with acclaim and accolades is bound to hit some backlash for one reason or another. Maybe it’s been overhyped, or time hasn’t been that kind to it. For Walt, Snow White leaned into the latter as his artistic prowess grew. No creator likes looking at their past work because it’s easier to notice the flaws when viewing it through a more experienced eye (believe me, I know). That, and no matter what he did, it seemed impossible to escape from Snow White’s shadow. For decades everything he created was inevitably compared to it.

Hmm, the animation and music are an improvement, but what it’s really missing are some dwarfs.

Hmm, the creativity leaps off the charts, but if only the score had lyrics that rhyme with the words “shmeigh shmo”.

Hmm, it’s breathtaking and magical, but it’d be perfect if you could just sit and watch it for eighty minutes without interacting with any of it at all.

Hmm, it’s practically perfect in every way, but…um…uh…more dwarfs, dammit!!

Thankfully Walt’s displeasure mellowed after some time. As for Snow White, she’s still rightfully hailed as the one that started it all. The art is iconic, the characters are unforgettable, and virtually all the songs are Disney gold standards for a reason. Well before Rodgers and Hammerstein changed the face of musical theater by having the score and the book go hand in hand, Snow White did it first in the cinemas. In fact this was the first movie to ever have a commercially released soundtrack, another confounded idea Hollywood wouldn’t understand for quite a while. Though time may temper with modern expectations, Snow White is as much a classic now as it was destined to be eighty years ago, and nothing can touch it. It still is the fairest one of all.

“HA! Try to remake/sequelize THAT, Disney!”

“Excuse me, is it too late to join this review?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Oh, where are my manners? I’m Snow White’s sister, Rose Red.”

“…You sure you’re not just a color-swapped OC clone from Deviantart?”

“Of course I’m not, silly! I’m in the fairytale and everything! Well, not THE fairytale per se, but there is one titled ‘Snow White and Rose Red’ where we’re siblings.”

“Checks out. They’re technically related.”

“Okay, but what are you doing here?”

“I was just wondering when you were going to discuss my upcoming movie!”

“Your…movie?”

“Oh yes! It’s going to be Disney’s Snow White all over again but from MY point of view! Isn’t that exciting?”

“But…but you weren’t even in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

“I know! I was off to the side doing…well, you’ll have to wait and see! The lady who wrote that Gone Girl knockoff that takes place on a train and the Indecent Proposal remake is doing the screenplay and she is just delightful!”

“…Excuse me for one moment.”

“Oh dear. Have I said something wrong?”

“It’s ok. This is just the part of the review where Shelf goes berserk.”

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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this review, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Special thanks to Amelia Jones and Gordhan Ranaj for their contributions.

You can vote for what movie you want me to look at next by leaving it in the comments or emailing me at [email protected]. Remember, you can only vote once a month. The list of movies available to vote for are under “What’s On the Shelf”.

Also, Patreon supporters get extra votes among other perks. If I reach the goal of $100, I can get back to reviewing animated series! I’m at the halfway mark right now, so please consider supporting me if you’re able.

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Most screencaps courtesy of animationscreencaps.com.

February Review: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) If there's a reason why we're able to recall the story of Snow White from memory, and why said princess is usually depicted with short hair, a cute bow and surrounded by woodland fauna, look no further than Disney.

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yourprayer · 6 years

Text

pop culture chapter 8

“Adulthood in a town like Derry is even worse than childhood. The listless, empty ramblings of days dragging on in a town that felt like one-size-too-small-shoes sat heavier on the recently graduated than the younger children. Before you were eighteen and responsible for your own lunch money, you could spend your interminable afternoons exploring the surrounding environment, friends of friends abound. Escaping to the arcade and seeing the same films six times at the same theater was an acceptable amount of nothing to do at twelve years old. But when nineteen years hit Bill Denbrough and college acceptance letters didn’t, the sudden, overwhelming, nothingness of Nowhere, Maine became too heavy to bear.”

chapter 8 (wc: 4k)

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“Someone’s knockin at yer back door, Stanny.”

“Couldn’t kill you to answer it?”

“Not my house.”

“Well you’re not getting any of my pizza, then.” Stan griped as he marked his place and set down his novel before crossing the room.

“Wait, you ordered pizza?!” Richie extracted himself from his position on Stan’s bed, where he had been reading comics upside down.

“You’d know if you got the door.” Stan called over his shoulder as he descended the stairs. Another knock rang through the empty house.

“Coming dear!” Richie yelled with a ridiculous trill as he attempted to slide down the bannister.

“Don’t break yourself. I don’t want your blood on my carpet.” Stan yanked Richie’s sleeve, returning the wily boy to his feet.

“Buzzkill.” Richie muttered, crossing his arms as he followed Stan sullenly.

“Reason you’re still alive?” Stan quirked an eyebrow, walking backwards with a finger pointed at himself.

“Touche, douche.” Richie rhymed under his breath as they crossed the kitchen.

“Heard that.” Stan commented as he opened the door.

“Hey.”

Stanley and Richie’s eyes went comically wide as they took in the sight on Stan’s back doorstep. Before them stood a disheveled Mike and Eddie, both sweaty and breathing like they’d ran all the way there. Eddie was holding the collar of his shirt to split and bleeding skin of his chin, droplets of the blood escaping and dripping down his neck, leaving dried trails like lay lines. Mike was smiling almost apologetically, like he was sorry to have stopped by.

“Got a first aid kit?” Mike broke the silence, smile almost manic as he joked.

“What the fuck happened?!” Stan inquired, pulling Mike in the room and out of the way before Richie practically launched himself at Eddie, who he promptly shoved over to the sink so he could begin cleaning his wound.

“It’s a pretty, uh, funny story actually.” Mike said with a strange, nervous laugh. Stan studied him crossly between cupboards he opened in search of some bandages. “Mind if I have a glass of water?”

“Go ahead.” Stan replied warily, watching Mike grab a cup out of the cabinet to his left with trembling hands. Richie moved Eddie away from the sink as Mike came over, meeting Stan at the kitchen island and grabbing the box of band-aids he’d successfully scavenged. Mike drank three full glasses while Richie diligently attended to Eddie’s chin. Stan and Eddie caught each other’s gazes just once, and at Stan’s questioning eyebrow Eddie only shook his head. Stan waited a moment more before starting in on Mike again. “You gonna tell this funny story?”

“It’s a real doozy.” Mike braced his hands on the sink, back facing the others.

“I think I can handle it.”

Mike took a deep breath before turning.

“You want the long or the short of it?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

“I think I just controlled fire with my mind.”

Richie dropped the bandage he was opening.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. That’s the short.”

“Does the long explain this?” Richie pointed at Eddie’s band-aid clad chin.

“If I tell you it involves Hockstetter and Belch, does that answer your question?”

“Shit. Yeah.” Richie adjusted his glasses reverently, eyes downcast as his mind easily grasped the general specifics.

“So you what, turned his flamethrower contraption off?” Stan crossed his arms and leaned against the pantry.

“More like turned it around.” Mike paused to drink more water. “It didn’t burn me.”

“It touched you?” Mike nodded. “And it didn’t burn.” Another nod. “And you’re sure it was real fire.” Richie continued incredulously.

“It was. A whole lot of it. And it couldn’t touch me.”

“Bullshit.” Richie said with awe.

“You literally turned invisible a couple days ago.” Stan glared at Richie.

“Yeah, but- that’s nuts!”

“More nuts than your thing?”

Richie qualmed. “No…”

“So shush. Let the man continue.”

“That’s pretty much all there is to it.” Mike shrugged. “I guess fire can’t burn me anymore.”

“Let’s test it.” Richie pulled a lighter out of his jean pocket. “Experimentation.”

Mike spoke at the same time as Stan, his acquiescence overlapping Stanley’s protests.

“It’s fine, Stan.” Mike repeated, stepping over to Richie with an outstretched arm.

“What if it was just a fluke?” Stan folded his hands in concern.

“It’s just a tiny little Bic, what can it do?” Mike said casually as Richie flicked on the flame.

“You sure?” Richie asked, lighter in one hand and Mike’s arm in the other.

“Go right ahead.”

Richie watched Mike’s face with pinched eyebrows, disbelief and uncertainty on his face. He titled the flame to touch skin, eyes going wide as Mike did not flinch.

“Nothing?” Richie pressed the flame into Mike’s skin, which was not burning or bubbling as all laws of physics deemed it should.

“It feels like hot wax, but not super hot wax.” Mike took another sip of his water with his free hand.

“Are you the wax in this equation?” Richie questioned as he moved the flame up and down the length of Mike’s forearm.

“I think so?”

“Fucking hell.” Richie sighed as he let go of the trigger, pocketing the lighter once more. “Of course you get a useful power.” He complained as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“The fuck do you mean?”

“I mean that’s what this whole thing is, right? We’re all getting superpowers or something! And I get this bullshit where some of my organs go see-through, and it hurts like a bitch, mind you, and you get to be fire-retardant! Stan can fuckin’, I don’t know, levitate things, which is helpful-”

Stan and Mike spoke over each other again.

“Stan can what?”

“You’ve been reading too many comic books.”

Stan looked guilty after he realized what Mike had said over his comment.

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Last night. My book was floating.”

“That’s it?”

“I made it fly into the ceiling.”

“Did it stay there?”

“No, it fell.”

“Who cares if it stayed up there? Point is Stanley actually gets something that doesn’t suck-”

“Eddie, you’ve been weirdly quiet. Are you okay?” Stan interrupted Richie’s rant, desperately wanting to shift the subject away from himself. Eddie blanched at the sudden question, shuffling his weight awkwardly on his feet. He thought for a moment about saying something, but settled on a shake of his head. “What’s up?” Stan pressed.

“I’m with Richie.” Eddie said after a moment, voice unsure. Richie definitely didn’t dig his nails into his legs from where his hands were clenched in his pockets in response to the thoughts Eddie saying the phrase I’m with Richie conjured. “I got dealt a really shitty hand.”

Richie swallowed, wishing away the heat in his cheeks. “How so?”

“You know how so!” Eddie went from reserved and shaken to bitterness teetering on the edge of rage in a matter of seconds. “The only ‘power’ I got is being scared so shitless I can’t even fucking move every time something goes wrong!”

“Eds.” Richie pleaded softly, hoping to head off the explosion he knew was coming.

“You should have seen me today, Richie. I was fucking useless. Mike was about to get barbequed and I just fucking laid there!”

“Belch was holding you down Eddie, he had his boot in your back-” Mike protested.

“Wait, Belch had his boot in your back? That son of a-”

“The point is that I’m useless now! Who am I if I can’t protect my friends?!”

“Eds, you are not useless-”

“Richie’s right, Eddie-”

“You don’t get it, Stan-”

“Eddie, I don’t think you have a super power.” Mike said firmly, breaking through the chaos of everyone’s voices overlapping.

“Excuse me?” Eddie blinked at him.

“I don’t think you have a ‘super power’.” Mike air quoted, glancing at Richie. “I think you have a panic disorder.”

“Mike.” Richie warned quietly, almost subconsciously raising a hand as if to placate a wild animal. Stan stared at him shocked, genuine surprise and fear overtaking him as he worried over the results of the statement.

Eddie went white, his whole body eerily stilling. His eyes started out laser-focused on Mike’s face but began to dart around the room. He tried to form words, his brain working in overdrive as he scrambled over a response. To Richie it looked like he’d short-circuited.

“I- you- how dare-”

“Eddie, I’m not trying to offend you-”

“How dare you, Michael.” Eddie spat. “You have got to be fucking kidding me right now.”

“I’m not.” Mike stood his ground.

“If I wanted someone to stand here and list a bunch of fake illnesses I don’t have, I’d be at home!” Eddie nearly screamed. Stan clasped a hand over his mouth. Richie swallowed again before laughing nervously with the teasing, though-”

“Shut UP Richard. I’m not fucking around.” Eddie rounded on Mike again. “I can’t believe you, one of my best friends treating me like my fucking mother, trying to find some fucking disease you can blame me on-”

“I am not acting like your mother, Eddie.” Mike yelled back, surprising Stan and Richie with his intensity.

“You know what hurts the most about it?” Eddie pushed on, apparently unaffected by the bite back. “What really gets me about being told I’m sick all the time? She says my behavior is what makes me sick, the things I do or like or say. It’s not my temperature or my complexion or whether or not I throw up, it’s my fucking personality! To her, I’m the disease! And I thought you of all people would see me differently. But it’s clear now you don’t. I’m something you want to cure too.”

“Eddie-” Mike protested feebly, shocked beyond belief.

“I am sorry I was such a useless pile of shit today.” Eddie said through angry tears forming in his eyes. “I feel terrible about how I acted. But you don’t have to be so vicious about it. You don’t have to treat me like a germ.”

With that, Eddie was turning on a heel and leaving, storming out of Stan’s back door as the other’s scrambled after him, Richie yelling for him to come back.

“Let him go.” Mike said calmly, a hand on Richie’s shoulder as the three stood in the doorway. They watched Eddie storm out of the garden, the brand new and almost frighteningly large cactus plant near the door escaping their notice.

______________________________________________________________

“I’m the world’s worst boyfriend.”

“Oh come on, Ben.”

“No, I really am. I mean, absolute shit.”

“Th-there are p-p-plenty worse boyfr-friends than you out there.” Bill clapped a hand on Ben’s shoulder, smiling at the sight of Ben idly fretting.

“What kind of asshole waits until a week before an anniversary before they even start thinking about a gift?” Ben put his head in his hands, soda and fries forgotten on the bench next to him. He and Bill were on one of their regular excursions to the downtown district of Derry, where they would both get a coke and fries to be eaten as they walked around and windowshopped for all the things they couldn’t afford.

“S-some people forget the d-day entirely.” Bill pointed out, popping a french fry into his mouth. “I did.”

Ben looked up at him incredulously. “You forgot yours and Bev’s anniversary?”

“She b-broke up with me for a reason.” He joked, taking a drink of his soda. Ben laughed at his casual admission.

“No offense, but I’m glad the bars not so high.” Ben said through giggles.

Bill snorted. “Wh-what bar?” The two broke into fits of laughter, trying their best to contain themselves in public.

“Well, shit.” Ben leaned back, picking up his styrofoam cup of cola and taking a sip. “Guess I’ve only gotta do something mildly impressive.”

“What k-kind of gift are you th-thinking?” Bill tucked a leg under the other as he ate more of his fries.

“It’s cliche as shit, but I was thinking jewelry.” Ben scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, it is only our six-month, but still…” Ben trailed off, Bill watching him intently as he continued to eat. “I’m really fucking serious about her. I wanna get something that says I am.”

“Jewelry is good, then.” Bill said seriously.

“What do you think she would like?” Ben asked, vulnerability and desperation clear in his eyes as he locked them with Bill’s.

“C-can’t go w-w-wrong with a n-necklace.” Bill took another drink.

“Yeah…” Ben sighed, contemplatively taking a bite of one of his fries. “That doesn’t feel like… special enough though.” He finished the fry. “I feel like it should be something, I don’t know, more. She deserves it.”

“Yeah she does.” Bill agreed sincerely as he took another drink. The boys sat in silence for a few moments, watching Derry townfolk shuffle around on their nameless errands.

“Would it be the most embarrassing thing in the world to get her a promise ring?” Ben said after the silence had stretched too far. Bill shook his head, swallowing the fry he was on.

“Nu-uh. I think sh-she’d love that.”

“Really?” Ben asked nervously.

“Sh-she told me sh-she did s-s-so, yeah.” Bill grinned.

“Oh. I didn’t know you guys talked about…” Ben fiddled with his fingers nervously.

“Y-you guys?” Bill supplied. “B-b-bev and I are still fr-friends, Ben. We talk ab-bout all kinds of stuff.”

“I just didn’t think you’d want to hear about it.” Ben looked at his feet. “I wouldn’t want to if I were you.”

Bill was silent for a beat, thinking. “You l-liked her when we w-were dating, d-d-didn’t you.”

“Yeah.” Ben admitted after a breath. “I’ve liked her since we first met.”

“Th-then you really should get th-that ring.” Bill ate his last fry, wiping the grease from his fingers on the corner of his flannel. Ben watched Bill nervously, almost as if he were afraid he’d angered him. “You kn-know I’m not huh-hurt over you g-g-guys dating.”

“You’re not?”

“No. B-bev and I have always b-b-been better off as fr-friends. You guys were suh-supposed to be tog-gether.” Ben’s jaw dropped slightly at the statement as Bill stood up from the bench, garbage clasped in one hand.

“Bill, it really means a lot to hear you say that.” Ben admitted as he stood as well.

“Sh-shoulda said it s-s-sooner. It’s always b-b-been true.” Bill shrugged, looking up and down the street at the row of stores. His eyes landed on a pawn shop nestled at the end of the block. “Now c-c-c’mon. Let’s go g-get your girlfriend a pr-promise ring.”

______________________________________________________________

“Well that sure was swell, Mikey.” Richie commented bitterly as he paced the Uris living room, a slice of pepperoni pizza in each hand. He had been alternating between the two, taking an angry bite out of one, then the other, then back again. These are technically his third and fourth slices, Stan thought after a brief glance at the pizza box.

“Richie, don’t get pissy with me. If you’re worried about him, go take it up with Eddie.” Mike tore off the end of his breadstick and ate it.

“You’re the one who pissed him off.” Richie took a bite from the left slice, speaking before swallowing. “You should apologize.”

“For what? Looking out for his best interests? And you should chew with your mouth closed. God, what are you, five?” Mike grumbled before finishing off his breadstick.

“Je-sus, Micycle. Bee in your bonnet?” Richie teased, proceeding to take a bite out of the right slice.

“Forgive me if I’m not in the mood, Tozier.” Mike glared at him.

“Would you two cut it out?” Stan cut in, depositing his pizza crust in the lid of the box. “If you’re gonna keep bickering like this, I’m gonna kick you out.”

“On what grounds?” Richie squinted at him.

“The ‘no-whiny-assholes’ clause.” Stan returned the look as he went for another slice.

“Sorry.” Mike mumbled as he grabbed another breadstick.

“I will not yield.” Richie said with a stubborn flourish, polishing off the left slice. Stan rolled his eyes as he shook his head.

“Of course you don’t. Mike, do you think we should have another meeting and tell the rest about what happened?”

Mike looked contemplatively at the carpet. “I’m not opposed to it, but don’t we have a movie night in a couple of days?”

“We could wait till then if you want.”

“That’s probably best. Oh, and Ben got those pictures developed. He’ll probably want us all to take a look at them.”

“What for?” Richie muttered to himself, finishing the crust of the right slice, his now pizza-less hands he wiped off on his jeans. “Said it yourself, won’t do any good.”

“Ben’s peace of mind will probably appreciate it.” Mike quipped. “Besides, he was gonna give a bunch to you.”

Richie folded his arms and turned to look at Mike, who even while sitting on the floor with Stan, still seemed tall, immovable.

“You shouldn’t have said that to Eddie.”

“I’m not wrong.” Mike rebutted, unphased by the quick turn of subject.

“That doesn’t matter. You know he hates being told he’s got something wrong with him.”

“I never said having a panic disorder is wrong.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s not going to jump to that conclusion.”

“That’s on him.”

“You hurt his feelings, Mike!”

“I was being honest!”

“That’s not always what Eddie wants.” Stan cut in. “We’ve been friends with him for a long time, Mike. He’s always preferred easy lies over hard truths.”

“It’s how he was raised.” Richie muttered under his breath as he fiddled with the carpet with his bare toes.

“So you baby him and tell him what he wants to hear? How is that any better than his home life?”

Richie and Stan remained silent.

“I’m not going to patronize him. I know he hates that shit even more. I’m going to be honest with him because he’s my friend and he deserves that, even if it makes him angry.”

“That’s fair.” Richie aquiesced after a beat. “But he’s still gonna be pissy with you if you don’t apologize. And he probably won’t listen to your reasoning if he doesn’t like your accusation.”

“He’ll come around.”

______________________________________________________________

Ben arrived home a little later than usual, pocket heavy with the weight of what he’d decided to do that evening. His whole demeanor was effected by the choice, his smile giddy as he unlocked the door. His mother was waiting with freshly reheated dinner, a telltale sign she was near the end of a pay period. The sight of the cheap, frozen meals steaming in their plastic wrap on the table made Ben feel a little sick, and abruptly wish he hadn’t just spent so much of his money. It was supposed to help with groceries you idiot, Ben chastized himself.

“Hey sweetie. Dinner’s on the table.” His mother greeted as she entered the room, smiling at Ben as he shed his shoes.

“I saw, looks delicious, thank you.” Despite his reservations about the situation, Ben would not refuse a meal from his mother, no matter the context. He knew he should sometimes, knew her constant over feeding was an almost exclusive reason for his issues with weight as a young man. But he was also aware it was one of her ways for making up for his father’s absence. She used food to show her love, and if he said he wasn’t hungry, she took it as rejection. Ben may not always be hungry, but God did he constantly love his mother. So frozen dinners it is.

“You look particularly at peace this evening, Benny.” His mother commented as she crossed to the sink and began washing her hands. “Anything exciting happen today?”

Ben smiled shyly to himself as he got a glass and poured some juice from the fridge. “Uh, yeah actually.” He leaned over and set his cup down at his seat, then raised the jug of juice so his mother could see. “Want a glass?”

“Sure, thanks. Tell me about this excitement!” She pressed, drying her hands before sitting down.

“So, remember how I told you Bev and I’s anniversary is next week?” Ben couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he returned the juice to the fridge. “I got her gift today.” He beamed at his mother as he handed her her cup and sat down.

She returned his grin. “What’d you get her?”

Ben looked around conspiratorially, preening when it made his mother laugh. They loved to joke that others might be around, that things must be secret, ever since Ben was a child and loved playing spies. When he deemed the coast was clear, he pulled the small ring box out of his pocket.

“I got her this promise ring.” Ben said as reverently as he held it out under the light. His mother took it in hand, regarding the ring in awe.

“Oh Benny, this is gorgeous.” She breathed.

“Think she’ll like it?” His tone betrayed his nervousness. “Bill helped me pick it out, I was so unsure.”

“Honey, she’ll love it.” She smiled and returned the box to him. “It’s perfect.”

“I sure hope so.” He pocketed the ring box and picked up his fork, using it to tear back the plastic wrap over his food.

“Sorry it’s not plated, I wasn’t sure how late you’d be and I wanted it to stay warm.” His mother said as she took a drink.

“Oh no mom, this is fine. I don’t mind a bit.” Ben shook his head.

“Oh, and speaking of miss Beverly, she left a voicemail for you a little while ago.” She added, cutting into her meatloaf.

“Thanks, I’ll listen to it after dinner.”

They ate in silence for a bit before she spoke again.

“I like that girl, Benny. I like her a lot. Think someday you’ll put a real ring on that finger?”

Ben smiled down at his food.

“I sure hope so.”

______________________________________________________________

“Georgie, can you get the door for us?”

“Sure momma.” Georgie Denbrough responded with a smile as he jumped down from his makeshift vegetable cutting station. His brother, who was tenderizing meat next to him smiled as he watched his brother happily run off.

The doorbell rang again as Georgie rounded the corner. “Coming!” He called sweetly, beaming as he reached the door. He pulled it open easily with his one arm.

“Oh- hi Georgie.”

Georgie squinted at the sight before him, happy but perplexed. Eddie Kaspbrak was on his doorstep, which he was excited about, because Eddie was his friend and he loved seeing him. But Eddie also looked hurt, his chin covered in bandaids and spots of dried blood on his yellow tee shirt.

“Hi Eddie.” Georgie kept his smile plastered on his face, reminding himself of what his mother always tells him; don’t ask people invasive questions, Georgie.

“Is your brother home?” Eddie asked nervously, wringing his hands on the bottom of his shirt.

“Yeah, he’s in the kitchen.” Georgie gestured across his body, jerking towards the kitchen with a thumb. “Are you staying for dinner?”

Eddie gave a short, airy laugh. “I’ll have to ask. Can I talk to him?”

“Billy!” Georgie suddenly switched to his outside voice. “Eddie’s here!”

Eddie gave Georgie a slightly surprised expression, impressed by the kid’s volume. A moment later Bill arrived in the doorway, chiding Georgie about yelling in the house. He stopped abruptly as he caught sight of Eddie in the doorway.

“Ed-eddie.” He crinkled his brow. “You alright?”

“Uh, sorta. I’m- can uh, can I stay over tonight?”

“Yeah, of course. W-we’re just making-”

“Dinner, yeah, I’ll help.” Eddie scurried into the house, not bothering to give Bill a chance to finish the thought. The boys shared a look as they left the doorway, its meaning indecipherable to Georgie. He huffed to himself, feeling a bit angry about once again being left out of things, and went to close the door. He stopped his motion at the sight of the edges of their front garden, his gaze on the bushes that came up to the side of the doorstep. The small yellow flowers that usually bloomed on its stems in spring were opening up, unfurling at an unnatural speed, leaving the bush covered in fresh blossoms before it stopped. Georgie watched with wide eyes, confounded by the sight before him.

Momma’s right, he thought as he finally willed himself to close the door. I’ve been watching too many cartoons.

______________________________________________________________

authors notes: sorry this took forever to come out! i told myself i’d put it up on wednesday. i did not accomplish that lmao. anyways he’res another installment, things are really starting to pick up! in the pop culture universe georgie has one arm; the denbroughs were in an accident when the boys were young, where georgie lost his arm and bill sustained the brain damage that causes his stutter. also no one is more of a benverly cheerleader than bill.

tagslist: @s-s-stutteringbill @gazeboseddie @misssiriusblack @mythgirl96 @crackhousetozier @reddieaddict @wincestklaine @beepbeep-losers @ayyyymichele @megelizabethvh @tapetayloe @flickerflies @ghostbustermike @i-is-gazebo @reddiesetrichie @wyttolff @gayzier @kaspbrak-is-our-king @mikedenbrough @28shoes @nicoperryy @kinghanscom @eddiecare @shadysandi @fyeahreddie @reddieforlove

#prior.txt #prior.fic #popcultureverse #it #losers club #reddie #benverly #stenbrough #stenbranlon #it fic #reddie fic

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mara-the-cactupus · 6 years

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[long post ahead - kind of meta, kind of philosophy; I might rewrite this later but feel free to reblog]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier just... resonates with me on some deeper level, like it’s addressing a hidden part of my subconscious. There’s a tension there, something that has existed under pressure for a long time, and sometimes I forget that exists but other times it feels like it’s just bottled up, boiling over, ready to explode.

I think that’s why I love the main suite by Henry Jackman, the “Captain America” theme: it starts out quiet, gradually building, persistent and at times violent, breaking up into the harsh Winter Soldier theme but always keeping that forwards momentum, building up that the deep, theater-rumbling tones of helicarriers crashing into the sea and ideals shattering like shifting cracks in age-old ice, but also bringing in the higher, almost wistful strains of purity and hope, lone notes rising brightly only to die out slowly – and the human voices at the end, falling with achingly numb rawness.

It’s not an uplifting song, but I wouldn’t call it “sad” either. It feels like the rage and despair that I feel simmering under the surface, all the time, but at the same time each note feels drawn-out, allowed to cry out but then be held, suspended, until it fades away under the cries of other notes amid the ever-pressing underlying percussion. Like screaming into a void, without any of the relief.

This to me embodies what I love so much about Steve Rogers’ characterization in this film: he is a man out of his time, struggling to adjust to the world around him, and uncertain whether he even belongs there at all.

Before, he had a mission – his whole life in the first movie was dedicated to fighting bullies, becoming a soldier, winning the war. He had ideals, and confidence in his side’s rightness. He had friends.

Coming out of that, and being thrust into the modern era with its high-tech spies and moral complexity, not being able to know for certain that the cause he was fighting for was right, or even respecting of him as an individual and not a pawn – and extending into his personal life, likely not even knowing for certain whether he wanted to continue living in this strange dream-universe of America, isolated from his friends and his sense of identity – that must have caused tremendous mental trauma, and it feels like Steve is still internalizing all of it, still struggling to pick up the pieces and catch up on all of the history and pop culture he’s missed, not really having any time or putting in any effort to make real human connections.

The way he brushes off Nat’s attempts to set him up on a date, the way he can’t trust his own team or his superior, the way he watches Peggy slowly fade away and shies away from Sam’s initial attempts to befriend him – he isn’t really grounded in the world.

He doesn’t have a place.

He seems cool on the outside, but you can hear all of the suppressed rawness at having been ripped out of his world and thrust into a new one through the music of the score.

The Winter Soldier’s theme is much more visceral, with metal screaming at the violation of his bodily autonomy and sense of humanity, at the state of his mind having been wiped and reprogrammed again and again; but Steve’s theme feels numb, drawn out in agonizing quietness, like the ice he was trapped in hasn’t completely thawed.

I can empathize with Natasha, as someone watching another person’s struggle from the sidelines, wondering how or even if I can comfort him when I don’t have any of the answers myself. She’s had to come to terms with the nature of her job years before, and understands that the world is too complex to really get attached to a side or hold yourself to a moral standard every time.

I love Sam, who understands this too but chooses to make a difference by building connections with people like Steve, to be better than the system, rather than wallowing in alienation from it.

And I feel that duality of Steve’s numbness and Bucky’s viscerality sharply; they each fight with the instinctual need to survive, to have some sort of autonomy in that moment even though neither of them is really free in their own lives.

That terror that Bucky wears on his face, in his eyes, at not being in control, at being forced to hurt others and do things that he would regret if he could remember them afterwards – the feeling that if he could just remember, there was something important there but it’s floating in and out of view, the tip of an iceberg, and if he gets too close it might gash into his industrially-constructed shell and sink him, drowning under the horror of everything he’s done – although I can’t relate to his physical experiences, that expression of terror embodies the raw mixture of rage, fear, and shame that at times threaten to tear through my conscience, if I spend too much time thinking about the world’s injustices and my role in perpetuating them. I don’t feel in control; the problems are too big.

And even though I’m not actually committing such grave crimes as assassination, sometimes it feels like They are forcing me to drive a knife through the heart of my fellow humans, forcing me to gun down the oppressed people within our society and trigger bombs all over the face of mother earth as I watch from within, trapped inside my own body, not in control.

The world is filled with Alexander Pierces and Nick Furys. And like Steve, I really don’t know if we can trust either. There’s a law in social science that states that no matter how good-intentioned people are, all leaders or organizations will inevitably become corrupted into preserving their own power over continuing to prioritize the organization’s goals. I don’t know how true that is, but the reality is that the world today scares me, and sometimes it feels like you really can’t trust anyone.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the people around me, and their good values and kind hearts, when the institutions and stratification loom above us like skyscrapers, casting massive shadows. How do we change all of that, within our lifetimes? How can we stop these deep-rooted problems before they destroy us? Is it even possible?

I feel like Steve’s displacement is a metaphor for my mental shift from childhood to adulthood. As a kid, I had lots of stong-held hopes and ideals about how the world worked. I was caught in that “good-old-days” mentality of Steve’s 1940s, aware of some of the ground-level problems but still confident in the idea that we can win the war, and then come home, and at least that will be a victory.

But being thrust into the reality of today, and not just the recent problems but also the realization that these problems have been happening this whole time – like Hydra, present within the very system I thought was pure – and that the people around me, already adults, are numb to these issues and have moved on in accordance with them... that was soul-crushing.

And I started emulating them, building back the walls of my little bubble, alternating between reading the news and then hiding in a shelter of books and dreams: feeling at one moment like the world is beautiful, the ocean and the sun are beautiful, nothing can crush my unbridled happiness – and then feeling the stress of deadlines and my future looming over me the next, and beginning to unpack the problems in society and realize how they work and how they will continue, reeling with the ideas of a journal article still fresh in my head as I walk into a grocery store and am hit with the sheer amount of plastic, the food waste, the low prices that I know come from exploitation but also the pressure to save money in our capitalist society.

And suddenly the thought of the ocean and the sun feels like a distraction, because the ocean is filling with plastic and chemicals and I need to do something to prevent another oil spill, but I can’t, because They’re too powerful and wealthy and I’m still trying to grapple with student loans – and why am I even worrying about this, when we’re bombing the Middle East and no one knows why because they don’t teach us about that in school, because this is America, because our country is founded on that poisonous combination of individuality and go-go-go accumulation, and the way that you win is to exploit the land and the people and anything else that gets in your way, and we all know that deep down but it’s wrapped in that propaganda that says that hey, maybe I can be one of the winners, and we’ve dominated so much of this planet that I don’t know how any alternate system can hope to overcome.

And it’s just one long, drawn-out scream underlying everything I do. Internalized, numb. Like that rawness has been put on ice, hushed, and a glossed-over version has been put on display in an air-conditioned museum: the facts are glorified and the electricity pollutes, but I’m tired of thinking that way so I just embrace the numb Americana of it all. The carpet is muffling, in a comforting sort of way, and the air is cool and smells faintly of cologne. This is not my world, but it’s the ideal that they present to me. I can see through the veil but at the same time I don’t want to... and so I don’t. Until that underlying rage comes back into the picture, and threatens to boil over, and I feel the shriek of metal all over again.

#this is a very long post so I stuck in a read-more #(that's why the paragraph formatting is a little weird - I might edit it later)#but SHIT this really needs to get out of my system #I will have to rewrite it later into a more coherent and concise essay #mcu meta #mara writes

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mei-be · 4 years

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My therapist suggested that I write the narrative of what I’d like my childhood to have looked like. I started to do so, and then decided to base this dream in reality. The following absolutely true, and focuses on the most formative moments in my childhood. I removed the abuse and trauma from the narrative, and finished with a broad strokes synopsis of the adult I grew into; in the format of a dating profile.

Mei was born April 15th, 1985, at 6:49 AM, in Elmhurst, Illinois. Her father was a naturopath, acupuncturist and chiropractor. Her mother had been a teacher, now turned homemaker. Her father named her Shin-Mei, which meant “Beautiful Heart” in Mandarin-Chinese. He wanted her to be beautiful on the inside, rather than the outside. They lived in a white, split level house in the suburbs, with a large, wild and grassy lot, a garden, and a mulberry tree. Mei was a dreamy child who loved the outdoors. She’d wade through the deep grass in the east yard, even though her mom warned her of snakes. She found a snake egg, and caught a snake in the basement, but she never got bitten by one. She loved the carpet of creeping Charlie that surrounded the garden plot, and would lay with her head close by the tiny purple blossoms, smelling their earthy and spicy fragrance, wondering how they got there. There was a chain link fence that separated her from the neighbors, and she’d walk the boundary, staring at the needle pointed tips of nightshade flowers. She smelled the tomato-but-in-a-bad-way scent of the green and red berries that grew on the vine, but never tasted. She picked baskets of purple-black mulberries in the summers, dunking them in water to watch them become electroplated with silvery bubbles. There was a wild rose bush hugging a wall of the house, and she would collect the petals, and throw them into the air. She was alone, an only child, but she wasn’t lonely. She had books, she had dreams in her head, and would spend hours sitting in the window, watching the clouds and feeling the sun, until she fell in a trance, a quiet, glorious, meditation. She would go to work with her father, who worked science and art into the broken bodies of other people. He healed them with hands, with heat, with electricity, sound waves, and the secret medicine of plants. He’d turn on the light box, and a blue-hued light would shine through x-ray film, showing the insides of human bodies. He pointed out vertebrae, and showed her how they looked like Scottie-dogs. He could read these pictures like written language, while she only saw Scottie-dogs. He would take her to a forest, and walk her through the leaf litter. She discovered fairy circles, and mossy stumps, and one folded, yellowed, dollar bill tucked into the splintered limb of a tree. She ran through fields of dandelions, sowing wishes in her wake. It meant everything to her.

At home, she was taught many things. When she learned to use scissors, and cut out pictures from magazines, she imagined that she was freeing the creatures from a two dimensional life. The quicker she got them out, the less their suffering. But she had to be very careful not to make mistakes or cut into them, because they needed to be whole in the next world, and she didn’t want to hurt them. She could feel them calling. She had many coloring books, and quickly learned that black outlines made colors pop. Instead of filling spaces with the appropriate colors, she added thick, black crayon to bright neon colors, making mosaics within the pictures. All the illustrations looked like stained glass, violently vibrant. She learned to read at an early age, staring at picture books with their accompanying symbols until one day, the picture of a giraffe made its symbol come to life. GIRAFFE. She felt like she had set the symbol free, and with that movement, she set all the symbols free. She’d read for hours and hours, unlocking worlds with her mind. In the cooling warmth of twilight hours, her mom would give her a piece of watermelon candy, and with perfumed breath floating in the honeyed light of late afternoon, they would walk to the park.

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

As she grew up, Mei learned some important lessons. One day, her father found her stepping on ants as they milled around their anthill, made on the edge of the black topped driveway. She saw seriousness in his face, as he told her to stop, but wait there, next to the anthill. He went inside the house, as she nervously stood next to the scene of her crime. He came back out with a small handful of translucent white rice. He poured some of the grains into her hand, and directed her to scatter the rice around the anthill. Immediately, the shiny black hoard, previously in a mass of crisis in reaction to her foot smashing down on them, organized. They gathered into small groups around each pearly grain of rice, and began pushing and pulling the rice into their gritty mountain dome. He showed her that no matter how small, every creature had purpose, every creature wanted to live. Her eyes widened and her heart broke as the monochromatic, light saturated, scene cemented into her mind. She immediately understood the preciousness of life. He barely spoke a word. Years in the future, she would become a young woman, being courted by a young man. She would bring him a lovely, jewel-green grasshopper. In the spirit of rowdy jest, he would knock the grasshopper out of her hand and smear it along the sidewalk. She would stare at the mortally wounded grasshopper in horror, it’s perfection ruined, yellow eggs and viscera extending out of it’s thorax, delicate crystal-veined wings bent and broken. It was the very worst thing he could do. She never spoke to him again. Men would come in and out of her life, each with their unique set of shadows, but that was the very worst thing.

When Mei was about 4 years old, a patient of her fathers was a piano teacher. He looked at the little girls hands, and told her parents that she had piano hands. Long, nimble, sensitive, fingers. She began lessons immediately, under the watchful eye of her mother. She had a natural talent for music, being that music is an intersect between intense technicality and the fluidity of art. She grasped that abstraction very well, causing her to progress quickly and quite far. Though she practiced piano into early adulthood, she never did fall in love. She loved the language of it, the magical ability to read music like words, but it never struck her soul. Not like the ants did, or the books, or the creeping Charlie. She would open the sliding glass door when she practiced, and make a little concert for the neighbors as they lounged by their newly installed above ground pool. Sometimes they would cheer and clap. She liked that. Sometimes they would invite her over to swim. She liked that a lot. Eventually though, the runoff from the pool would seep into her backyard and kill the raspberry bushes that had grown there for years. She would touch the yellowing leaves and feel powerless. She wanted them to live so badly, and didn’t know how to make that happen. She would tear up, she would try praying. She would learn that you can’t pray away chlorine.

One time, when Mei was still very small, she was in a shopping cart pushed by her father. Unbeknownst to him, the shopping cart was on an slope and started rolling away with Mei in it. She witnessed the scene as if it were in slow motion, watching her father chase the cart, but growing ever-increasingly far away. She could feel the inertia of the cart moving, gaining momentum in the busy parking lot. She started trying to think of what she would do to stop the cart and save herself. She came up with nothing. Her father eventually caught the cart, but for a few minutes, Mei learned that she could be harmed, and that there are some things her father couldn’t do. As time went on, she began ruminating on her helplessness, and brainstorming emergancy scenarios. She began testing the parameters of her perceived security. One time, when Mei’s absentminded Aunt Carol took her to the playground, she crept away and hid in a structure made of rubber tires. She wanted to see how long it would be for her aunt to discover that she was missing. She hid for a very long time. Her absence was never realized, and she brought herself out of hiding when she got painfully, miserably bored. Gravel had ground into her knees from the extended crouching.

Every year, on her birthday, her mother would lead her to recite a chant. It’s origins in the culture of Chinese filial piety, she would kneel and vernerate her parents for giving her life and taking care of her. They would eat long life noodles for dinner. One year, her father brought her Boston Market for her birthday dinner. One year, she had an ice cream cake. One year, she got a spinning world globe. Mei and her cousin would send the globe spinning, and then bring their finger down onto it. That was where they would travel to. What is Lesotho like? Sometimes their fingers would fall very close to where they already lived. They would groan, and yell, “Boring! Do over!” For her tenth birthday, her mom gave her a birthday party. It ended up being a really wonderful time, it went off better than she could have hoped for, and she got many lovely gifts, some that she would keep for the rest of her life. As she got older, Mei would look at the pictures from that birthday, 6 beautiful, smiling girls. She would realize that even though they had a good time, those girls weren’t actually her friends. They were the friends she wanted to have. For a week afterwards, the girls would smile and wave at Mei, make small allowances to include her. But soon enough, everyone went back to their own groups. This experience would stay with Mei for a very long time, confusing her and making her wonder very hard about the functionality of social relationships. She wondered if they ever knew the extent of the part they played in her childhood. She suspected they barely even registered the event. She wondered if she ever played a part like that, and if she would know it if she did. One to the world, the world to one.

When Mei was a teenager, she had a friend who was running for student council. He was not a popular person, a bit awkward, a bit odd, a bit beta. He threw himself into the campaign like a fever, with a sense of purpose and optimism that she had never known. A sense of admiration grew in her, one fueled by hope, goodness, perseverance. She watched his light grow brighter and brighter, as he turned the social tide with pure determination. She started to understand that the impossible could become possible if you worked hard enough. As the Election Day crept closer, she could see support for him growing and growing. People who had never looked twice at him became active supporters. She was moved. She felt electrified. It was actually going to be a close race. Her heart swelled with pride for him, she saw him become a symbol. The evening of the election, she stood, waiting to cast her ballot. Groups of students were milling around, talking. The one that included her started critizing him, laughing at his antics, poking holes in his identity. She didn’t know where it came from, but she found herself participating, telling them stories of his ineptitude, losing control in the chorus of laughter. She told herself that it was okay, what she shared weren’t secrets, and anyways, she was still going to vote for him. She thought it was all harmless, and was intoxicated by the power of her insider information. But when it came time to check a square, she found herself voting against him. He lost the election by a handful of votes. When his friends were consoling him, he told them that it wasn’t the loss that really upset him. He had prepared for that. He just couldn’t understand the numbers. You see, he had tallied up the votes he knew he had. Friends that he KNEW were going to vote for him. Others who had promised they would. That number was off. Mei made her eyes wide and her indignation wider as she poured sympathy onto him. She feigned disbelief, but she knew why. It would sit heavy in her heart for the rest of her life, as the worst thing she had ever done. She would eventually confess it to him, and he would not even remember the election at all. He would brush it off, and forgive her, wish her well, because at that point, they hadn’t seen each other or spoken in ten years, and he really didn’t care. She would sit with his nonchalance, shaking with the shame of it all. She would never know how to make it up to him, because there wasn’t any way to do so.

I am: Mei Li, 35 yo female. Bachelor of Arts in English and Journalism. Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Poetry. Forager, herbalist, yogi, hiker.

Loves: books and looks, foods and woods. Weird dancing, found art, studying in cozy cafes.

My occupation: Bartender, server

Religion: An atheist who is hopeful that she is wrong

Looking for: A curious person to go on adventures with. Open mindedness, a kind heart, and a sense of humor go a long way.

I’m really good at: Hyperfixation and reading preternaturally fast.

My weirdest quirk: I am really literal and have a tough time with lying, colloquialisms and verbal humor, but it doesn’t stop me from being sarcastic as hell.

Six things I could never do without: My body and it’s 5 senses, the natural world, diverse and always changing experiences, coffee, imagination.

Six things I hate: prolonged skin to skin cuddling, repetition, the cold, Donald Trump, my food touching, social disparity based injustice.

My perfect day: Coffee, yoga, an exhilarating hike to a secluded but shallow body of water (I’m have a love/scared shitless relationship with water). Lunch in the sun, followed by a bike ride back. Study session identifying the plants we had discovered, followed by a lovely massage. Later, an expertly curated dinner, finish with an evening bonfire and lively conversation.

My dream life: is ever-changing, but for now, looks like this: To live on a small farm on a wild property that includes wooded flood plains, marshland and prairie. I would raise goats, chickens and have a dog. I would make herbal products, cheeses, cured meats, and lead foraging tours throughout the property. There would be goat yoga. I would do a lot of cooking, and have a long wooden picnic bench to host many family-style gatherings. I’d love to learn metal-working, but would probably lose life and limbs to some sort of smelting accident, so maybe not that thing. See? Ever changing...

Virtues:

I’d rather do right than be right.

May all living things be happy and free.

A man was telling his friend about hunting rhino in Africa. It had been a long hunt, and he had finally come to meet his prey. The rhino was a dense, black, death machine of a beast. He fired, but missed. His second shot jammed the rifle. Panicked, he looked around, there was nothing but grass in every direction. No weapon, no tree, no rocks to climb. Just grass, heat, and angry rhino. He could hear the rhino’s approach like thunder, he could very nearly feel the animals hot breath on his neck. Entranced in the tale, his friend asked, “So what did you do?” “I climbed a tree right in the nick of time!” He said. “What tree?”, the friend asked, “You said there was no tree!” “Don’t you see?”, answered the man, “There has to be a tree, there is always a tree, you have to look for it, but that is the point of my story. There is always a tree. Find the tree.”

You have to make mistakes in life. You have to trespass a little, so you can discover what should not be trespassed against. But the lesson isn’t without price, so you must always learn something.

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ahmumbles · 4 years

Text

October 24

It’s Saturday, October 24, 2020.

I stayed in today after going shopping for the 1st time in forever... definitely this year... (not including thrift stores) to get birthday gifts for Stephanie and treated myself to a sweater + the beige suede Levi’s overalls I’ve been eyeing (thanks to Mom and Dad’s card).

I watched Amores Perros which was an incredibly engaging film.

I saw the sun go down (quite early as it does nowadays).

And I laid down to go to bed around 8:30PM. It is now 11:11PM.

I don’t know how so much time has passed... but obviously I’m not that type of tired. Instead, I am the other tired that is at my very core and seems to have been for over 5 years now.

My mind started to wake up when for the first time in my adulthood life, I started to think about family.

I started to specifically think about my father. Appa.

Whenever I think of him, there are certain moments that pop up immediately in my head. All are bad except the most recent one.

- All those nights I would lie awake hearing my brother yelling from the pains of my father beating him with a belt, judo stick, kitchen utensils, hanger, etc. and I would think of the worst thoughts and try to muster enough courage to go down and save my poor brother and hopeless mother from this monster... but never did.

- When he came yelling at me in the kitchen when I came home late after getting a McDonald’s mcflurry with Daniel and some others and I never saw such a terrifying face.

- 2 times he left the house: 1st one was a cross-country road trip and my mom packed him food and we sent him off until he returned in a week. Still don’t know what was his motive here. 2nd one was when I was older and tired of him and told my mom and she kicked him out of the house, offered to leave him for my happiness, and he stayed at a motel for a few days.

- The countless times he would get angry with me if I didn’t come downstairs immediately when he called, if I ate at the dinner table before him or made eating noises, if I wasn’t thankful for a gift.

- The numerous gadgets he gave me, like the endless amount of new Samsung phones, as if they could also be symbols of ‘Here. I care about you.’

- How machismo he is... my mom cooking for him AND doing the dishes, taking off his socks, him plopping on the sofa, my mom bringing him fruits and snacks if he called for it, how my brother and I never got to choose our own meals at restaurants because he would order for everyone, how absolutely RUDE he is to waiters which also puzzled me because he owned a restaurant, how we stopped correcting his English because he would get defensive, the endless tyrants he would go on to ridicule us if he felt attack or he thought we were ‘embarrassed’ of their accent and how we were no better than he was.

- When he was yelling at me at the car dealership and in the car after I crashed my car for the 2nd time when I was on xanax and told me I was worthless and not fit to be a teacher and don’t think I’m better than anybody because I’m not and don’t even try to feel good about yourself because you fucked up and I’m going to make sure you know it.

He is the scariest person I know and ever knew. He is the only person to make me genuinely afraid and terrified by a look in his eyes. He is also the meanest person I know. He screamed things at me that felt like knives... always centering around the idea of me being worthless. How I act like I’m better than everyone else when I’m not. I’m not and never will be. How that’s what’s wrong with me. I think I’m so good and nice and I’m not. I’m fake. He would call my behavior ‘ugly’ and say that it’s ‘no good’ while shaking his finger at me. He would look so disgusted at me sometimes I felt like a disturbance. He would say it doesn’t matter how I looked on the outside because my insides were ugly and bad.

He would yell these things at me since I was a child. A child... and I believed him. I would tell myself that I don’t think I’m those things; I really don’t. But I would keep quiet, like a good girl, and rage inside while my exterior was focused on zoning out to something in the background and trying to block it all out.

Sometimes I feel like it was all a dream... sometimes I can’t even remember a single thing about my childhood. I have vague memories of my grandmother and then it jumps to middle/high school and all my memories are flooded with friends. But no family. And certainly no dad.

To be fair, he did work a lot. The only time we started to see each other more was my last semester of senior year in college when i was living at home and by the time I arrived home from teaching, he would ask if I ate. Almost every time I would eat by myself or go out or say I did, because I wanted to avoid any time alone with him. I knew I got uncomfortable and angry in his presence so I didn’t even put an effort.

The only good memory I have is one day when I visited home from Barcelona my mom was not up yet but he and I were and they had recently started to pick up walking around the neighborhood. He asked if I wanted to walk to Assi with him and I decided, why not?, and we walked from our house to Hansel & Gretel. It was a good walk, crisp air and not too long. We talked along the way and he asked me about my future plans and we got a croquette and some other pastries and coffee and ate them at the bakery. I think we even laughed. It was nice. It was the first time we had a father-daughter moment. In all my memory. In all 23 years of my life at the moment.

I have gotten so used to our relationship that I don’t think twice about it. As in, I’ve gotten so used to us not talking that I didn’t even realize until tonight that we probably never had a phone conversation longer than 2-3minutes over the 3 years I’ve been living in Barcelona. And never direct. Just a few words on the phone when I’m talking with my mom. He doesn’t text me. i don’t text him. We just say ‘I love you’ and send emojis in the group chat, which I continuously have to add him again to.

Back to the reason I’m still awake, I’m still awake because my brain is active because it is wondering... “Is it normal that I don’t have a relationship with my dad?” This is the 1st time I am thinking about him. My friends all are at least amicable with their fathers, except for the ones that don’t know their fathers. I think I’m the only one who isn’t friendly with my father who is still in my life, and that makes me feel weird.

I know part of it is cultural, but obviously many things have been repressed and have started to fade away. But I don’t want them to fade. Because I need to understand my past to understand me.

I’m wondering if many of my situations with him are triggers for why I am like this today. Maybe why I zone out so often. Maybe why I have issue with things like ‘identity’ and who I really am. I know I have these so-called ‘daddy issues’ but I always correlated them with just never, ever, ever dating/marrying a man like my father. I promised myself this long, long ago. And surprise surprise, I probably won’t because I am so much like my father. ironic.

It’s weird because I never thought about our relationship... always was just focused on my mom and trying to treat her as best as I can and yet keeping a distance because there is an inevitable distance even in that relationship from just being out the house for so long (almost 8 years now...) and never sharing many details about my current life with her because I know she doesn’t understand.

Things to think about I guess. I just had to get it out there. The more I think about it, the sadder I get. And after looking back on my posts on here from 2015, I realize that sadness truly is an essence in me. It’s not something I curated for myself. Yeah, sure, as I got older I wanted to be ‘dark and mysterious’ but the pure form of some type of sadness has been with me since pre-high school even... it’s been with me as a child. I hope I can explore this one day. The only comforting part is knowing that there is nothing wrong with me. That’s just me.

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athingofvikings · 7 years

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Chapter 10: Whetstones

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Chapter 10: Whetstones

Perhaps the second most mythologized human figure to come out of the Norse domestication of dragons is the Hero's father, Stoick the Vast, a.k.a. Stoick the Lawgiver, Stoick the Wise, Odin's Spear-carrier, and other such titles. Primary sources from his personal contemporaries are minimal, with most of the surviving sources being from the perspective of his son and others of his generation. While the legends generally agree on the broad strokes of his life, the details are shrouded in mutually exclusive legends and myth. This especially pertains to the periods of his life preceding the ascendance of his son; mythologized and mutually contradictory accounts of his childhood, young adulthood, and ancestry are common. Even specific points that many of these accounts agree on have an odor of myth. For example, it is unknown if he truly did 'pop a dragon's head clean off of its neck' as a toddler, as is claimed by legend. His later accomplishments are known with more certainty, but the blank slate of his life prior to the birth of his son has resulted in endless embellishments of his youth, which makes determining the truth a near impossibility.

This is not helped by the fact that the man had a literally larger-than-life stature; in an era in which the average height of an adult man was sixty-eight-and-one-quarter inches (173.4 cm), Stoick, from modern analysis of his remains and attested from numerous primary sources, is confirmed to have measured eighty-one-and-a-half inches (207 cm) in height, with a build to match.

Additionally, other romanticized aspects of his life are well-substantiated, rendering the sorting of truth from fiction to be more difficult. Perhaps the single most famous example of this is his famous devotion to his wife, Valka. As the cultural expectation of a high ranking Norseman of the era, even on Berk, was to be polygamous, Stoick's attested monogamy has been the subject of significant romanticization…

—The Dragon Millennium, Manna-hata University Press, Ltd.

With an impressed whistle, King Mac Bethad looked at the wooden coffer filled with neatly bagged dragons' teeth. He reached in, picked out a bag at random, and opened the drawstrings. A pile of sharp ivory teeth the length of his hand lay inside the bag.

Lips pursed thoughtfully, he palmed one of the teeth, feeling its dense weight in his hand, and then closed the bag and replaced it in the chest. Playing with the tooth like a worrystone, he looked up at his spymaster, Taskill, and the three men that he'd handpicked to scout the Hooligans' Thaw Festival, Alan, Iain, and Gregor. They'd gone in the guise of merchants, as Mac Bethad had decided against opening formal recognition of the chief with an official envoy.

They'd returned the day before yesterday, having taken their time in returning, having had to lay over on Manau for four days due to spring thunderstorms. Then Taskill, in his habitual suspicion, had taken several precautions against them being noticed entering the citadel, and that had added some more delays.

But now it was time to find out more than hearsay and the growing legends of the Dragon Riders of Berk.

He, his wife Gruoch, and several of his most trusted advisers were currently in his private chambers, with armed guards standing at the doors between them and the outside. Over Taskill's protests, the window shutters had been opened, with curtains to muffle the sound. Privacy was all well-and-good, but nearly a dozen people in the small room would quickly render the space to stifling, and the courtyard below was private. Raghnell, his steward, was taking advantage of the daylight to take notes, which Taskill had grudgingly allowed.

He examined the three spies, who were looking distinctly uncomfortable at having an audience with their king. Pleasantly bland, with nothing noteworthy about their appearances, they were stout sorts who would not stand out on the deck of a ship or in the ranks of an army or crowd. The only aspect of note was that their eyes were alight with intelligence, looking around noting details, even as they sat nervously before him, their sovereign.

He poured a draught of ale for himself and another for his wife from the small cask sitting on the nearby table, sat in the straw-padded chair next to her, and nodded to the men.

"I know that normally Taskill would be the one to direct such questionings and would then report to me. However, under the circumstances, I thought it best that we all be present. I know that I will have questions." He waved to his spymaster. "Taskill, if you would?"

The dour man nodded and looked at the trio. He had been… less than happy when Mac Bethad had leaned on him for this special session, although he understood it, and had reluctantly agreed to it.

"All right then, boys. Let's start with the basics. Tell us about the place itself. Alan, you first."

The spy nodded and said, "Not much to tell. It's up in the Hebrides, north of the kingdom proper. Small village, built into one of the smaller islands. Sheep, cattle, wild boars in the forest, fishing in the sea; pretty much a sleepy fishing village with a few hundred people, except for the dragons."

"Is it defensible?"

The three men looked at each other and nodded. Gregor spoke up. "As much as any place without a wall is defensible. The coast is rocky, mostly cliffs and the like. They've already built into one of the few sheltered harbor spaces, and it's behind a bunch of sea stacks and shoals. If anyone tried to take a big fleet in there, they'd lose ships to collisions and beachings."

"What do they have for defenses?"

"Some catapults, but the dragons did a number on those. Plus I think every adult in the village is a fighter on some level, from what we got. Call it about four or five hundred warriors total." There were looks around the room at that. A formidable force, but nothing that Mac Bethad's own forces couldn't defeat in an afternoon's battle. Presuming, of course, that said battle happened on the ground.

"Every adult? But… how does that work?" Gruoch said, honest puzzlement in her voice. "Or, rather, who does the work, if they don't have carls and thralls to do the labor?"

"Milady Queen, as strange as it sounds, from what we saw and were told, they got rid of the thane, carl, thrall system; as far as we could tell, everyone there is some weird mix of thane and carl—they fight, but they also work. Even the Chieftain."

There were raised eyebrows at this. Mac Bethad found the very idea incomprehensible. Oh, certainly, he owned farms and other lands, but they were worked by serfs and thralls. He himself was too occupied with affairs of state to spend his time on the fields.

"Did you find out more about that?"

"Aye. Turns out what thralls they did have got freed four or five generations ago, if they were willing to fight when the dragon attacks picked up. And they all did. Or, at least, that's what a very drunk Viking told me over some wine that we brought."

Mac Bethad cocked his head in thought. "Bizarre, but I can see the thought behind it. But… Vikings without thralls? How strange."

"Our thoughts exactly, sire," the spy Iain said. "Some of the contests we saw were very… well, they weren't for warriors, but for carls and the like, and it was surreal to see Vikings treat the outcome of a contest of carrying sheep with the same weight as a more martial competition."

Mac Bethad took a drink of his ale and absently played with the dragon's tooth in the other hand. After a moment, he nodded. "I can see the thread of it, though. Hmm. Well, continue."

With a nod of acknowledgment, Taskill asked, "How big is the village?"

"A few dozen houses at most. Maybe as many as a hundred or slightly more scattered across the island for the farms. They had to keep rebuilding them because of dragons burning down the houses for generations," Gregor said.

Alan spoke up. "They're built out on this staggered cliff area with some light pasturage immediately around the village; there's a big stone peak in the area, almost a pillar, perhaps a hundred or two hundred feet in height, and they've built their great hall into a cave at the base. They have a dragon-fighting arena from their old days built into another peak nearby. That one also has a hollow at the base that they built into. They used to use it to hone their skills against captured dragons, and train new warriors, but now it's just used as a place to practice riding."

"Interesting…" Taskill made a note. "Anything else on the village?"

"Well, there is one thing that I found of interest—" Iain spoke up, and Gregor shook his head.

"Yes, Iain?" Taskill said. "Gregor, let me be the judge of things of interest."

Gregor nodded, chastened, and Iain said, "Well, two things that I found interesting was that they have a wealth of iron from trade, selling the corpses of the dragons they killed, but they didn't just spend all of their wealth on metal. They also bought dyes and paints and the like." He nodded towards the chest of teeth. "I got that off of the Hero himself when he came to my stall in the festival market, and they were just as interested in the ink as they were the weapons. Actually, regarding the Hero—"

Taskill interrupted. "One thing at a time. We will get to him shortly. But I don't want to get off topic. You mentioned iron and dyes and paints. What did they use those for?"

"Well, the iron was all over the village. Weapons, of course, but also they used it for building—they put bands around the bases of their signal fires to reinforce them—and their fighting arena had a chain net to keep the dragons inside. But… even though the houses were all new, they were all splendidly carved and decorated." He nodded towards a decorative wall hanging on the chamber wall. "That would be normal there in most of the homes. Even the iron banding on the houses and such were decorated. It was actually… quite… pretty."

Mac Bethad raised an eyebrow. "Interesting… but I wonder why you raised the point?"

"Well, sire… I asked about it. Nothing too direct, but when I said that it was an awful deal of work to do when the dragons kept burning down the houses and all of that decoration, one of them told me that that was the point. That they did it because they were stubborn. It might have been easier to stop making beautiful houses… but that would have been an admission of defeat. Of something that they'd had taken away. So they kept carving and painting and decorating, just to shout their defiance in the face of their enemies."

Mac Bethad looked at the tooth that he was still idly playing with, and nodded in acknowledgment. "Aye. That is a good point. Thank you for raising it."

Iain smiled and bowed his head. "Thank you sire."

Taskill let the moment last for a count of three, and then continued. "Anything else about the village itself? I would have preferred that previous point to have been saved for the villagers, but I see the connection."

The three looked at each other and shook their heads. "No, not really. They have no fortifications, no walls of any significance. It's just…" Gregor spread his hands with a questioning look, "it's just a small fishing village with a bunch of hard-headed, hard-drinking Vikings who live off the sea, bow down to pagan idols, and are too stubborn to leave." He gave a helpless shrug. "If not for the dragons, it would be nearly unexceptional. We must have passed a dozen like it on the shores between here and there."

"Well," Taskill said dryly, "we'll get to the dragons in a moment. What about the people, as Iain has already started us on the topic?"

"Well, I talked with a fair few, when I worked the stall." Iain shrugged. "Five major clans—Haddock, Hofferson, Ingerman, Jorgenson, Thorston, each with a clan head. Haddock is the chieftain's clan, and the smallest of the five, due to casualties from the war and sheer rotten luck, from what I heard. There are also a fair number of freedmen and clan outsiders, although I didn't learn too much on how they handle that sort of thing. Call it seven hundred people in total, maybe a hundred and twenty per clan."

"And how are they?"

"They're thick-headed, thick-bodied, ax-swinging Vikings with a weakness for pretty things. Without the dragons, also not that exceptional, all things considered." Iain looked at the other two. "With one… notable exception."

"The Hero," Mac Bethad said in a low, anticipatory voice, leaning in. Now came the truly interesting parts. "Tell us about him."

"Aye, my lord," Alan said, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. "Just… we're telling you truth as best we can, and swear before God that we're not lying. Please understand that."

Mac Bethad gave them a magnanimous wave and said, "Please, continue."

"Well, first thing is, they have some very odd naming traditions there—"

"Which are fortunately dying out," Gregor muttered under his breath.

"—so they give their children… silly names to frighten off monsters."

"Didn't work," observed Iain.

"But you know how traditions can be," Alan said, moving resolutely ahead. "So… the Hero's name is… Hiccup."

The entire other side of the room blinked in unison.

"Repeat that?" Taskill said, regaining his composure first.

"Hiccup Horrendous Haddock, the Third," Gregor said with a mournful look. "Apparently they liked the name so much that they used it twice already."

Mac Bethad looked at the three men, who were looking as if they had been sat down in the dentist's chair against their will, and the man with the bloodstained apron was approaching them with his pulling tongs. They were all serious men, not given to idle jesting, and, well, he needed them. He sighed, and the three men relaxed as one. "You did warn us," he said. "I am not going to kill my messengers. Pray, continue." He paused for a moment. "Continue speaking, that is. Not praying. I will be patient."

"Aye, my lord," Alan said. "Well, he's very much not like the rest of them."

"How so?" Taskill asked.

"In every way," Gregor said. "He is small, weak, and has no skill at arms."

"Then how did he defeat the Night Fury in the first place?" Mac Bethad asked. "I was given to understand that it was an epic battle, worthy of song."

Alan shook his head. "The boy—and he is a boy, rising sixteen, apparently, and just starting to grow like a weed—apparently made some war machine worthy of Archimedes and shot the dragon out of the sky with it."

"Truly?" Mac Bethad asked, surprised. That hadn't been the tale told.

Alan nodded. "Truly, my lord. And when I say 'worthy of Archimedes,' I mean it. The boy is a genius."

Iain held up his hand and started ticking off on his fingers. "While I was there, I saw riding tack specialized for each breed of dragon. I've had to deal with enough harness- and saddle-makers to know how difficult it is simply to craft new saddles for horses, and at least they have the courtesy of all having the same body shape and size."

Gregor nodded in agreement. "I got a peek inside of his workroom in the village smithy. Lining the shelves and covering the walls were designs and models of war machines and various arcane devices whose functions I could not guess at."

Iain picked back up. "In the practical department, though, he has already devised a method to harness dozens of dragons together to lift heavy objects. I grew up on a farm, and I know what an accomplishment that is, having had to manage the yokes of separate beasts so that they all pull together. From what I saw, his mind is even more dangerous than his pets."

Mac Bethad raised his eyebrow at this. More dangerous than dragons? He'd been expecting a warrior—dangerous, but in a known way—not whatever this boy apparently was, and felt himself shifting as quickly as he could. "That is a bold claim. Do you truly feel that he is that dangerous?"

"Aye, sire," Iain said. "I saw a mind whose intellect shone like the sun at mid-day. In a matter of two weeks, he designed, built and perfected a replacement tail for his dragon that allows it to fly with his aid after its injury. If you knew of a smith who could make a man a metal hand nearly indistinguishable from his flesh and blood, would you not find him a marvel if he were beholden to you, and a danger if he were not?"

"Aye, I suppose I would. What is this about the tail?"

"He injured the dragon with his weapon such that it could not fly, and when it was lamed, managed to tame it and befriend it. The beast is very intelligent itself; I saw that it understood the spoken word clearly, and found myself wishing that my hounds could understand my wishes half as clearly."

"We will get to discussing the beast in a minute," Taskill said testily. "About the boy-hero… he is still a boy. Is he well-favored? Handsome? Young men are susceptible to flattery, no matter how bright they may be. Would he find it suspicious if some outsider woman found him of interest?"

Gregor winced. "You're not going to have much in the way of luck there, sir."

"Why not? Prefers boys?"

"No… not that we could tell, but he has a woman already, from the tribe. A beauty his own age, and the enchantment there is quite mutual. They were quite devoted to each other."

"Feh. Young love. It fades with time. We could remove the girl and put one of our own in her place, he wouldn't notice a difference so long as there's a warm one… or two or three, in his bed," Taskill said dismissively.

The three shared a glance and Iain said hesitantly, "I rather doubt that, my lord. But, as you say…"

"Eh, I suppose. Besides, if it is young love, the best way to turn him against us mercilessly would be to be caught doing the removal." Taskill shrugged. "Let some other fool take that risk, and we'll attempt to move in if there an opportunity." He made another note. "What is the girl's name, at least?"

"Astrid Hákonsdoittor, clan Hofferson. She displayed great prowess during the competitions. I would not want to face her on a field of battle," Gregor said, shuddering. "She reminds me of a shieldmaid I once had to fight. I survived because I fled before she could cut my hamstrings. Potent and vicious."

Iain smirked. "And she has the Damascus knife now, sire," he said to Mac Bethad.

The king quirked an eyebrow and toyed with the dragon's tooth a bit more. "Oh?" He'd once liked that knife, but he'd given it up to flesh out the spies' wares for their cover as merchants. It had been war booty from the clash with his cousin's army last summer; they'd taken it off of one of his cousin's honor guard, whose father had served in the Varangian Guard and had originally brought the blade home with him. Mac Bethad had once coveted the weapon in more peaceful times, but now it just reminded him of his dead kinsman, and had given it up with a will.

"Aye. When they came through the market…" Iain smiled. "Well, to be quite honest, it was rather sweet, seeing the boy and his girl. I offered the jewels, but she was more interested in the weapons." He cocked his head towards the chest that the tooth had come from. "We got interrupted by the boy whose dragon was taken by Adalwin's men, but the Hero came back the next day and bought the entire lot. Paints, inks, parchments and the like for himself, and weapons for his ladylove. While I sold out the entire stock that we brought with us to the tribe in general, all of the teeth there were from him."

Mac Bethad looked at the chest. "That's not everything?"

"No, sire. We have some copper and silver and the like that we're using to pay for other expenses, but—"

"That's a small fortune!" Mac Bethad said, still looking at the innocent-seeming chest. "And he paid that for, what?"

"Fourteen pots of ink, a ream of parchment, some other odds and ends, a quiver of arrows, that yew longbow and the Damascus knife," Iain said, counting off. "Didn't even try to haggle. And then we saw him give them to her, the night after they caught Adalwin's men." He waggled his eyebrows. "She seemed pleased."

Mac Bethad snorted. "Well, may she get more joy from that blade than I did."

Taskill, looking irked, took back the reins of the conversation. "Getting back to the boy, what levers do we have on him?"

"He is devoted to his tribe, that is for certain. You've heard about the attempted theft?"

Mac Bethad and Taskill nodded. "Rumor's already spread, aye."

"Well, I was right there when the boy who was attacked and his dragon stolen came running up to Hiccup and Astrid," Iain said. He snorted. "Name of Fishlegs." He rolled his eyes. "Regardless of the absurdity of his name, he only survived out of sheer luck. While we were waiting on the healer, I managed to pump him for some more information, and he didn't even notice, he was so panicked and pained. But Hiccup proceeded to muster every single dragon rider he could manage and flew out within the hour, and scoured the sea looking for the thieves. And, when they were caught, he forwent vengeance to send a statement."

"That would be the dropping of that ship in King Adalwin's bailey, yes?"

"Aye, milord. They found it funny, back on Berk. They took pride in the fact that they had so overpowered Adalwin's forces that they need not even kill any of them."

"That's not what we've heard. From what Adalwin is claiming, they sacked half of his city."

"No, sire, they didn't. They flew out, dragging the boat behind them to skip across the waves, made the entire crossing from Berk to Vedrarfjord in a day, and then dragged up the ship and placed it neatly in Adalwin's bailey with nary a drop of blood spilled. I had it straight from six that went on the expedition, and they were all laughing at the memory of the expression on Adalwin's face. They were like the seasoned old warrior on the training field—you know, the one who shows the young recruit that old age and experience beats youth and enthusiasm, with a side dish of knocking the blades from their hand and knocking them face-first into the muck." He made a face. Mac Bethad was fairly certain he remembered that old warrior as well, and nodded in acknowledgment. "They had Adalwin dead to rights, and, rather than kill him, they left him there with a ship in his fort, and left saying that next time they wouldn't be so nice."

"Well. If we engage them, we will have to make sure that that is the last time, then, won't we?"

"Aye, milord. The boy is a peacemonger, but his father is still the chief, and he is not."

There were eyebrows raised at this. "The boy truly is a peacemonger? A Viking peacemonger?" Mac Bethad found the very idea absurd. He knew something of the Norse pagan religion, its last vestiges holding on in the north of his kingdom. The closest that the Vikings had to a god of peace was Baldr the Beautiful. And if he recalled correctly, to show exactly what they thought of the idea, the other gods amused themselves by throwing sharp things at him to watch them bounce—until one didn't, and he was sent to their distinctly unpleasant goddess of death for failing to die in battle.

"Well…" Gregor hedged. "As much as one of them could be. Better to say that he has odd philosophical notions regarding life's value, and doesn't think with his ax. Which, as I understand, is why he now rides a dragon."

"I see," Mac Bethad said dryly. "Anything else of significance about him?"

"Well, there's the small bit of the dragon…"

Taskill just gave Iain a stony look. Several people, despite the seriousness of the moment, chuckled.

"No, not really, milord. Not that we saw or heard about. A year ago, he was the village screwup, the pariah. His father could get people to agree with his actions simply by threatening them with having to watch over the boy. Now he's their golden child, and very few would hear anything against him."

"'Very few' implies that there are some," Taskill noted. "Expand."

"Well, there are the village hermits and diehard dragon haters. Apparently the most prominent one is an elder named Mildew, who believes that the only good dragon is a dead one. He's potentially a useful contact for subverting the village from the inside if we need to, and we've already started cultivating him."

"Good, good. Anyone else?"

"There's another clan that's looking to supplant the chief and his son, the Jorgensons. They have a blood tie through the chief's sister, and a boy the same age as Hiccup, named Snotlout." There were a few snorts at that. "Apparently, until last year, the boy and his father considered his future chiefdom to be a certain thing, and now… not so much. So they're doing everything they can to undermine the chief. The boy Snotlout is a proper Viking—dumb, thick, brash, loud, aggressive, easily manipulated. Thinks with his weapon and thews."

"I see. What are his prospects for actually gaining the chiefdom?"

"Now? Low, I'd say. His cousin would have to be both discredited and killed to manage that. He is also just not cunning enough to be able to outsmart his cousin. And there's really no love lost between them. They're allies now, but it reminds me much of how it was between you and your cousin a year ago, my lord. But with the roles reversed."

Mac Bethad considered that for a moment. Matters between him and his royal cousin had been… strained. At best. "Aye. I see. So you are trying to say that we should back the winning horse?"

"Aye, milord," Gregor said, with evident relief.

"All right. But we will also try to to cultivate both horses in this race," Mac Bethad said. "Accidents do happen. Like what happened to my cousin. Battlefields are no respecters of persons, royal or not." His mind drifted back to the Damascus dagger, once coveted as exotic, and then just a reminder of the moment where he had taken it from a dead man's hands, his cousin's body nearby.

"Aye."

"Anyone else of significance in the village?"

"The chief. Stoick the Vast is his moniker. Widower for about fifteen years, according to rumor."

Taskill perked up at this, making Mac Bethad roll his eyes. He had no doubts as to the loyalty of his spymaster, but the man tended towards a few preferred stratagems, a fact that occasionally exasperated the king. "Widower, eh? Any—"

All three spies shook their heads in unison. "Nay, sir," Iain said, "He wears his wife's breastplate for his helmet. Part of the reason he never disowned the boy, despite him being a screwup, was that his son was all that he had left of his wife. Apparently people repeatedly told him to disown the boy and remarry to try again." He shrugged. "He never even took a concubine, even though as a Viking chief it's unusual for him to not have one or two."

Gregor added, "And most of the clan heads have their own concubines, too. The Hofferson clan head apparently has two that have been with him and his wife for so long that people forgot that they're actually concubines and not actually wives, which caused a right bit of confusion when they came to the stall." He rubbed at his chin in thought. "I didn't get any details there on their laws, but I can say that Stoick being a widower for this long is by choice." Another shrug. "So… you could try, but I wouldn't place coin on that horse."

"I see," Taskill said coldly. "Pity." He made a note on the parchment as Mac Bethad hid a chuckle behind a drink from his tankard. "Continue."

"Not much more to say, there. He's a Viking chief. He rules by strength and right of blood, and at least tries to be fair to his own people. And he's got lots of strength to spare. During the festival, he sat himself down for the arm-wrestling contests and didn't lose a single one."

"Broke a table, though," Alan noted.

"Better to say that the table burst because he and his opponent crushed it for leverage," Gregor said, eyes distant with recollection.

Mac Bethad quirked an eyebrow. "Raghnall, make a note. No dueling the Viking chief."

"Aye, sire," said the steward dryly.

"Anything else regarding the chief?" Taskill asked the spies.

They looked at each other and nodded, and Alan spoke up. "Just a bit. He has some advisers, but his word is still law. His marshal is his brother-in-law, and his steward is the village blacksmith and mentor for his son. If he has a formal privy council, we didn't see evidence of it. There's a pagan priestess, but we didn't see much of her. No chancellor, no spymaster that we saw, no lesser appointments. Just a small, if pretty, village with really… exotic livestock."

"Aye, aye, we can talk about the dragons now," Taskill said irritably. "Get started with the He… the boy Hiccup's dragon."

"Well, it's a Night Fury for certain, first off," said Alan. "I've heard that demon whistle before, so there was no doubting that."

Mac Bethad winced, recalling a dark night filled with the screams of men, and said, "And a vicious, brutal beast I imagine it is, too."

"Uh… not truly, sire. If anything, it's… playful. Like a laphound."

Mac Bethad simply looked at the spy, knowing that skepticism was written on his face. In the back of his mind, long-ago cries of pain and the smell of burned flesh were being recalled unwillingly.

To Alan's credit, he continued resolutely in the face of his monarch's expression. "I saw the beast follow his master like a loyal hound, up to and including following an order to 'stay', and it played pranks on another dragon during the festival. It came, it heeled, it licked the face of its master when they won ribbons together…" he shrugged. "I wish my own dogs were as well-behaved."

"And the dragon certainly looked fearsome enough, which may be a point for that mild temperament," Iain spoke up. "Much like how the biggest dogs may have the mildest dispositions. They know that they have nothing to prove to the yapping puppies at their feet. And it had a sense of humor." He snorted. "The lad was trading teeth with me for my wares, and tells me that he has a tooth from a dragon named Toothless. I looked at the dragon, and it didn't have any teeth—until it popped them right out of the gums, grabbed the fish like a striking snake, ate it, and then smirked at me."

The king looked at them and said in as even a tone as he could muster, "The dragon's name is Toothless."

"Aye, sire," Iain said. "And a right playful temperament it has."

"I recall being under attack by one once. That fire is not a mild temperament," Mac Bethad said, still in the same forced-even tone.

"Aye, sire, but that may be exactly the point. Who barks louder? The inexperienced little pup, or the wise old hound?"

Mac Bethad considered and then said, "I take your point. Continue."

Gregor nodded. "Well, the beast is loyal, and very smart. It understands the speech of man fairly clearly, and it and its rider work together as only the best horsemen and mounts can. I watched their racing and acrobatics at the Festival, and they could… move as one. Every obstacle dodged with deceptive ease. It was… magnificent."

Mac Bethad gave a nod. His men did sound impressed, and he would have to ask Taskill later on how much of a departure this was from their normal temperament. "I see. But one dragon rider is still only one man, regardless of his skill. How many dragons does the village have, both with riders and unmounted?"

The three spies looked at each for a moment and then looked back. "Probably a good two thirds to three quarters of the villagers have their own mounts at this point," Gregor stated, "if not somewhat more. Call it five hundred mounts, at the least."

"Five hundred!?" his marshal burst out in shock. Mac Bethad was also stunned, his mind's eye imagining a flock of five hundred Viking-ridden dragons descending on his lands.

"Aye, milord. From what I gathered, the biggest bottleneck is that Hiccup and his mentor and perhaps a handful of others are the only saddle-makers in the village, or near enough as to make no difference, so most are still going with rope halters. But, likely by this time next year, each member of the village that wants to ride a dragon will be able to."

"I see. And how many dragons without riders do they have?"

"Of the ones that can be ridden? At the very least, another three or four thousand, milord."

This caused an uproar. Everyone in the room started talking at once, and it took Mac Bethad a solid minute to restore order.

"That is more dragons than Harthacnut has Thingmen in his army. How can they afford to feed them all?" The current King of England had inherited his father's and half-brother's standing army of three thousand Norse warriors, and the heregeld tax needed to pay them was slowly draining England dry.

Gregor looked miserable, as did the other two. "No idea, sire, but we counted the flock as it roosted on the island peaks. Unless they were somehow engaging in a deception to inflate the numbers, there are at least that many. Possibly more, and that's not counting the smaller beasts." He grimaced. "And, officially, they're the possessions of Stoick and Hiccup, as the chieftain's family. As the attempted poachers found out."

"I see," said Mac Bethad coldly. "Well. Anything else?"

"No, my lord."

"Good. You have done well. You are not to blame for the news you have brought. We are indebted to you, and will have more work for you shortly. You are dismissed. Keep yourselves near at hand in case there are further questions."

The three spies rose from their chairs and fled the room, his chamberlain escorting them to a room elsewhere in the fort where they could refresh themselves, as the King of Alba and his council began to discuss the information brought by the spies and debate what to do next.

###

Stoick looked around the empty house. Thornado was burbling behind the back of the house, enjoying his fish dinner, but other than that, his home was empty. Hiccup and Toothless were off somewhere, and every creak of the wooden walls seemed to echo.

Stoick was known as the Vast. But in the here and now, after days of his boy and the cacophony that surrounded him being gone, he felt very small, and very alone.

The last seven months had, in many ways, been the happiest of his life since his wife had passed all those years before. He had connected with his son. His people were at peace, and were safe and growing prosperous. The old ways of fighting could be put safely away, like an old warrior's ax and shield on the wall, ready to be taken up again, but gathering dust until needed.

His son had even found love, and Stoick felt his face soften at the memory of walking in and seeing the two of them staring into each other's eyes, so taken up by each other that he had gone unnoticed. He had just stood there and committed the sight to memory, placing it alongside other treasured memories of his own time when he had been the subject of such adoration.

And now, with them gone on his son's mission of peace…

It was so very quiet.

He took another draught of ale and sighed.

From the time he was a boy, he had known who he was, and who he had to become. He had grown and changed himself to fit that mold. Stoick the Vast, Chieftain of Berk, seventh of his line, the shield and bulwark between his people and the hostile world, the one to make the hard choices and face the responsibility, so that others need not.

He had led from the front, facing every danger, shirking no responsibility so that his tribe would be safe. The glory had been only secondary, when it mattered at all. For what glory could a leader claim when his people starved, their homes burned around them?

For a time, it had all been so clear. Vikings. Dragons. Mortal enemies to the last, no retreat, no surrender, just death on all sides.

He had killed hundreds, possibly thousands of dragons over his life. They blurred before his eyes. Nadders. Whispering Deaths. Thunderdrums. Gronckles. Monstrous Nightmares. Zipplebacks.

He had been so proud. Each foe felled was another beast that could not threaten his people. Each carcass had been transmuted into coin that could buy food and supplies. Berk had possessed thirty longboats at this time last year, a veritable fleet, built on the bodies of dead dragons. He, a chieftain of a small village, had possessed more ships than the King of England's Thingmen, because of the dragons.

And then the Green Death had burned them all.

With a grunt, he stood from his chair and poured himself a fresh flagon of ale.

As he drank, he stewed on his own lack of knowledge, his thoughts rambling through unhappy pastures. Specifically… the knowledge that the dragons he had killed had been every bit as much victims as his own people had, had been thralls in nearly every way, with the threat of steal or die hanging over their heads…

He had hated them his entire life, loathed them since Valka's death… and now… they were his friends. But… even that… the knowledge that they had been enthralled, and that he had been killing not warriors… but frightened slaves… He was disgusted with himself. Even though such a self-indictment was unfair, and he knew that it was unfair.

Despite the upheavals and changes they brought… despite the demands of a lifetime fighting them… he would not… could not hate them any longer. Not hardly. The seething fury he'd once felt upon seeing a dragon had dwindled, guttered, and gone out in the face of other knowledge. The old ways there were dead and buried… and good riddance to them.

He looked at his flagon and sighed. Then downed the rest.

It was too quiet here. A man should not be alone with either his thoughts or a barrel of ale, and here he was with both. He got to his feet. While someone would almost certain pester him with some minor problem if he so much as set one foot into the mead hall, at least there would be people there, and sound, and life.

Here there were just memories and quiet.

###

King Henry of the Franks, third of his royal house of Capet, stared aghast at the report that his spymaster had marked as important.

Of course things couldn't be going well. No, that would make his work too easy.

No, clearly, just to make things more difficult, the Vikings had managed to tame dragons. And they were using them in raids, including one that reportedly had ended with them dropping an entire longship in the middle of one of the Eire kings' forts a few weeks back, shortly after Easter. That story was spreading like wildfire, according to his spymaster, who had it confirmed from no less than nine distinct sources. And they had looted the fort at Brycgstow and burned it to the ground with dragonfire, killing half of the garrison. Harthacnut was reportedly furious.

And, of course, if the Normans in the north of his ostensible kingdom decided to appeal to their distant kin for fire-breathing mounts of their own, they might very well get them. Which would spell the end of the Capet dynasty's God-granted mandate over the Kingdom of Francia.

On the other hand… if the Vikings could be induced to raid those self-same kin in the Duchy of Normandy, or others of his supposed vassals… it could perhaps even the odds a bit for him, here in his own (admittedly somewhat pitiful) stronghold holdings. His most significant issue was extending his authority over his fractious vassals, who had armies and castles of their own. He had a piece of paper that said that he had authority over them, while their arms and holdings gave them a dissenting opinion.

But if those assets were to be taken off of the board… perhaps he could finally assert his authority.

Yes. That could be so very helpful.

He scrawled a response note on the piece of paper to his spymaster. His orders were to find who had control over the dragons—as, according to the rumors, only a single dynasty had discovered the secret of controlling the beasts—and to see if they were willing to do a spot of mercenary work…

###

Astrid blinked awake as Stormfly nuzzled at her sleeping furs. "I'm awake, girl, I'm awake," she said, stretching and yawning, grateful to be awaken from near-nightmares. They were fading rapidly, but the image of Hiccup looking at her with a contemptuous expression and walking away from her probably wasn't going to fade that quickly.

She sat up and looked around as she stretched. The dragon riders had found a small loch yesterday and had decided to land then rather than fly onward. Making camp had been pretty easy; Meatlug had just eaten some rocks and spat out the glowing stones that they had roasted their fish on, and the riders had just unfurled their sleeping furs on the ground near the warmth, with their dragons curled up next to them. A net and some dragon-assisted fishing took care of the food situation. Some leather tents were available against rain, if needed. They had gotten it down to a pretty good arrangement by now, over the last few outings, although most of those had been to the Dragon Nest.

Of course, from Astrid's perspective, there were two things currently wrong with it.

Toothless and Hiccup had settled down on the opposite side of the fire, rather than next to her and Stormfly.

She scowled at herself and made a fist, and almost pounded it into her other hand, but managed to remember the splints on her fingers in time. Of course, she had handled the argument yesterday poorly too. He'd felt like she was attacking him, and, of course, he hadn't listened to what she was trying to say.

It was just so frustrating. Hiccup's ideals were wonderful, and she loved him for them. The more she got to know him, the more she was impressed at not just how good of a man he was for her, but how good of a person he was for the world. He reminded her of Baldr, god of peace… and wondered if she'd end up being his mistletoe. He had been so right before, when he accused her of thinking with her ax. Peace was not her way… but it was the way that Stoick had endorsed, the way that she had fought Snotlout for. And wasn't that ironic?

She scowled at her thoughts as she hopped to her feet and started working out the kinks in her back and legs with some stretches. At times like this, when they had some argument or other… well, tact wasn't her calling. Peacemongering, likewise. She was a shieldmaid, consecrated to Freyja and Sif. Her way was that of the battlefield, the shield and ax.

And… well, now… and last night, in between her thoughts as she'd been trying to think and fall asleep… she was fighting off the thought of wondering why he wanted her. Why her peaceful boyfriend wanted a violence-prone shieldmaiden like herself.

Last night, even as she had laid awake in her bedroll, thinking to herself, her mind had treated her to a litany of unwelcome memories.

Every jesting insult, every snub, every punch, every pinch… every time she had hurt him, even as a joke, had paid a visit, casting themselves in the worst light possible, even as she stubbornly tried to stay focused on how to heal this rift before it grew.

The memories had whispered to her that he would hate her, that he would leave her, that she had spent their entire lives treating him like crap, that he would wake up and realize that he had made a mistake in coming after her that day in the cove…

She tried to ignore those thoughts, but they kept coming.

Intrusive.

Unwanted.

But persistent.

Instead of wallowing in them, though… tempting though it was… she just tried to think of how she could fix this. Maybe the art of persuasion and diplomacy were not hers… but she could damn well try. Maybe she might not be his match in that area, but she wasn't going to give up on him, or herself. This might be their worst argument yet in their relationship… but she wasn't giving up on him… or giving him up without a fight.

She grimaced.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the best way to express that thought at the moment.

But it was who she was.

Maybe on a diplomatic mission like this, she was, perhaps, less than useful…

She blinked away the thought with another grimace. No, that was hardly the case. The villagers the day before had been one over-aggressive or inquisitive dragon away from a panic-driven attack on them, and, if it had come to that, she would have been needed.

She just wished that Hiccup could see that. Well, it would be her job then to open his eyes and help him see. For while Odin had blessed him with a top-notch mind, for certain, he hadn't automatically gotten the wisdom to go with it. She grimaced at the thought as well. On the other hand, given what Odin had had to do in order to get his own wisdom, maybe that was for the best. Giving Hiccup a drink, or two, or more likely three of the Mead of Suttungr was one thing, but she liked her boy with both eyes. He'd lost enough parts already.

Stretches finished, she started rolling up her sleeping furs, lost in her own thoughts, and feeling a bit frustrated with her boyfriend. Which is why she missed his distinctive steps approaching her.

"Astrid?" he said hesitantly behind her.

She turned. Hiccup was a few feet away, his body language being pretty much identical to when he was approaching an untamed dragon. Inwardly, she sighed. On the other hand, she hadn't had to chase him down either. That gave her heart. And it said something that he, a teenaged boy with an appetite currently like that of a bottomless pit, was coming to have what could only be an uncomfortable conversation before they even had breakfast. That could only be a good sign, right? Right?

Muttering a brief prayer to Forsetti, son of Baldr, the mediator, for his blessings, she said simply, "Yes, Hiccup?" and then sat down on her rolled up furs. Thinking that she should try to be conciliatory, she patted the roll next to her. "Here, sit down. We need to talk."

Awkwardly, he sat down next to her, trying not to touch her as he did so.

The silence lengthened, becoming more and more awkward as it grew.

Then both of them spoke up at once.

"Hiccup, I'm sorry for shouting."

"Astrid, I'm sorry for not listening."

There was a pause as both of them looked at each other and they both smiled.

"You go first."

Someone off to the side, which sounded like one of the twins, laughed, and they both glared. Tuffnut just raised his hands in a warding gesture and walked off.

Hiccup smiled weakly at her as they turned back to face each other, and Stormfly and Toothless, sensing the awkwardness of the moment, just curled around the pair and raised their wings, giving the two riders at least the semblance of privacy.

"Astrid, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. You were right. I mean, we have Mildew and other people like him on Berk, and all I had to picture was an entire crowd of people like him, and then I thought about what you had said and remembered how Johann's sailors acted—"

"Hiccup, breathe," she said, smiling slightly.

Inhaling sharply, he looked at her with a sad smile. "I just wanted to say that I was sorry that I didn't listen, because you were right. For every person that was being friendly yesterday, there were ten or twenty more standing back." His smile grew a touch more lopsided. "And I had an idea that might help people get used to the dragons and show that Berk isn't interested in—"

He quieted as she put her hand over his mouth, a smile on her face.

"First. Hiccup, I accept your apology. Do you accept mine? I'm sorry I lost my temper at you."

He nodded.

She gave a happy sigh and hugged him. "Hiccup, of course I want everything to work out. I don't want to trade one war for another one." She broke the embrace and held him by his shoulders, looking at him, her feet tucked underneath her. "But you can't just hope that it'll work out, that you can just show up on dragonback and say 'Hi, this is Toothless the Night Fury! He doesn't blow up siege weapons anymore!' and expect them to believe you. You have to work at it. If you want something, you have to actually spend the time and effort doing it, working towards it." She patted her ax, lying on the ground next to her. "People are like axes, Hiccup."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Come again? Sharp, and you like to throw them into trees?"

"No…" she said, drawing out the word. She had thought of this at length the previous night, trying to find an example to compare that would work for him. She had thought of it as sparring, like how you fought other people to practice and get better. But that comparison wouldn't work on the crafting-minded Hiccup, and she had thought for hours on how to say this to him.

"People are like axes, or like Toothless' riding gear, or anything else you and Gobber make in the smithy." She picked up her ax and presented the flat to Hiccup, the long-ago marks of Gobber's hammer visible even in the polished surface. "Gobber and you had to pound this into shape with fire and hammers. You had to keep going back, working it over again and again, fire, anvil, hammer, fire, anvil, hammer, fire, anvil, hammer, and then, when the shape was right, you then had to sharpen it and get the edge into just the right shape in order to be able to cut things, and then I had to keep it sharp." She placed the weapon back on the ground and put her hand on Hiccup's knee, just above his metal leg.

"My ax, Toothless' harness, your leg… like everything you make in that forge, you have to keep remaking them, keep them in the shape that they're supposed to be. You don't get to do a poor job of knocking it into a 'good enough' shape and expect it to work as well, would you? You wouldn't expect a dull ax that you haven't sharpened to be able to do—," she rose fluidly to her feet while grabbing her ax, and then flung it into a nearby tree, all in the same smooth motion. The ax sunk in with a solid thunk! and held there fast. "—that as well as the one I keep sharp? Would you?" Hiccup just looked at her, his eyes wide, as she sat back down gracefully.

"Hiccup?" she said after a moment, hoping that the ax throw hadn't been a mistake. Stormfly was giving her a look of irritation for the startled moment when the ax had flown.

"Uh… wow. Thinking."

She grinned at him. "Take your time," she said, and rubbed at his left calf a bit, feeling the tension of the remaining muscle below the scar tissue relax a bit at her touch.

A few moments later, he said in a mildly dazed tone, "Dear gods, I am so lucky to be with you."

She smirked. "And don't you forget it."

"I won't," he said reverently.

"Good." She turned and took his arm. "Hiccup, that was always your biggest problem, back before you met Toothless. You would come up with these grand ideas, and then go out to try to do them, but without thinking! And thinking is your strongest area!" She laughed lightly. "You would be hoping, expecting! that your intentions would make it work, without any help from your brains." She snorted and poked him in the forehead. "Toothless's tail was the first time where you couldn't get away with doing that and leave someone else to clean up the mess, so you had to keep trying until you got it right." She patted Toothless on the chin, and he purred.

Hiccup just slumped into her lap, and she used her other hand to play with his hair. Speaking down to him as he laid there, he said, "Okay, I'm really, really lucky. Wow. Uh…"

She just grinned at him and said, "So, now, you have this other idea. That's great, and I'm not joking. I honestly want to hear every single bit that you've thought of for it." Her grin shifted to a smirk. "And then I'm going to chop it all to pieces. I'm going to keep asking 'what if this happens, or that happens' until it falls apart. And then you're going to put it back together. And we'll keep doing that, until it is the right shape. Your job is to build something that I can't take to pieces or bend out of shape. And then we'll do it. Got it?"

He nodded, looking a trifle dazed.

She bent and gave him a kiss. "Come on. Let's break our fast and get going. We're wasting daylight." She pushed him to his feet and hopped to her own.

As she walked off to the firepit, Stormfly at her side, she heard Hiccup say to Toothless behind her, "Dat da dah, I'm dead," and her grin bloomed.

It soured a moment later as Ruffnut chimed in, "Yeah, you'll actually have to use your brain enough to keep her happy."

Then Tuffnut snorted. "It's probably the only way he can keep her happ—" The sound of a small one of Toothless' fire blasts echoed briefly, as Tuffnut yelped and could be heard running away, shouting, "Oh, I hurt, I very much hurt!"

She turned back to look at Toothless, who was giving an innocent, "Me? Who, me?" wide-eyed expression while Hiccup laughed.

Half an hour later, they had taken flight again. As they took up formation to fly to the next place on their list, Astrid was thinking warmly of those moments, like in the cove a few weeks ago, when Hiccup had proven Tuffnut so very, very wrong.

Hiccup had shown her, during their rare moments of privacy over the last few months, that he paid very close attention to how to make her very happy. And he was very, very good with his hands. And now she really understood some of those stories about Freyja a bit better, because, wow.

And being the competitive kind of person that she was, she had done her best to make him happy, too.

So far, it was working out nice, in every way that she could conceive of, and that was even with not having gone too far. Yet. She smirked. Given how much joy they'd given each other so far… she had to admit that she was looking forward to that. Oh yes…

Watching the mountains and valleys pass below them, she sighed happily to herself. Oh, yes… she was so very happy with him. Even with little… heh, hiccups like their argument.

It didn't help that, during the long winter and some of the cold rainy days in spring, as was unofficial tradition, her mother and her friends gathered together to complain about their husbands as they spun thread and yarn, wove cloth, and made clothing. Even her own father, who she held in high regard, was apparently not totally immune… if better than normal. She remembered growing up and overhearing them complain about men not listening, or not thinking, or being interested in only one thing. And it had shaped her; she'd just shrugged and decided that she wasn't interested, thank you very much; why compete with other women over men when they were all the same? She'd rather just compete with the men and kick their behinds to show them that she was better than them. And that had colored her thinking for years.

And now, with Hiccup in her life… she had felt nothing but pity for the other women as she laid on the floor of her lofted bedroom, listening to the past season's complaints. Because her man wasn't like that. And there was a degree of smug and a degree of pity in it, and a degree of fear and sadness. Smug that she had gotten to him first… and pity because Snotlout was closer to the average. And the fear… Just thinking of how her own sharp focus on her own status and skill had almost cost her this unexpected happiness was enough to bring that one up. She still occasionally thought in disbelief at just how lucky she was, because she had never noticed his attraction to her, and had rejected him as the village pariah. It was a train of thought that occurred to her semi-often in such moments.

That other girl that she could have been. The one that was first ranked in dragon training. Slayer of a Monstrous Nightmare before the assembled eyes of the village. Member of a proud tradition of Hofferson dragonslayers. Respected shieldmaiden, and renowned warrior.

Astrid the dragon rider just looked at that other path and felt… pity for that other girl that she could have been. She would have been content with the path that she had laid out for herself and called it happiness. But she wouldn't have known what she had learned. Learned what it felt like to soar through the clouds. Learned how to fly on dragonback. To see the sun rising above the sea thousands of feet below. To feel the wind streaming through her hair. To race around the sky for the pure joy of it. To move at speeds no human had before imagined. To have a friend that could give you those experiences, and share them with you—and she wasn't sure if she was referring to Hiccup or to Stormfly when she thought of them. In those ways, that other girl… lacked.

But she had her friends now, both human and dragon. And maybe she was second in dragon-riding, after Hiccup, but it was a close second, and she wasn't giving him any room to breath easy there. And she would happily start up a new tradition of Hofferson dragon-riders, and she had her love's respect for her skills and insights. Others would follow if she had anything to say about it.

Didn't mean that she was going to give Hiccup a free pass when he wasn't thinking, though. He was smarter than her, and sometimes she just looked at him after unraveling one of his trains of thought with a small degree of awe. But, just like her, he wasn't going to get to just be lazy. Nope. Not if she had anything to say about it.

And she did.

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dazedclarity · 8 years

Text

the world is yours and you can’t refuse it

In which Damian wants to be an adult, accidentally stumbles into friendship with some dumb ten-year-old half-alien kid, and maybe finds appreciation for the kid still in him too.

Friendship fluff

Damian Wayne is not a kid.

He lets Grayson call him “kiddo,” sure. And much to his dismay, there have been times when he, Pennyworth, or Father carried him to his bedroom after he dozed off somewhere else in the Wayne Manor. And he lost his last ba–deciduous tooth more recently than he liked. But that doesn’t make him a kid.

Damian’s earliest memories are being pushed to climb mountains, taught how to fling swords into an opponent’s gut, and told, time and time again, of the legacy he will fulfill. Visceral violence and blood. There was never a time for childhood. At least not one in the traditional sense that everyone else seems to describe.

Besides, he’s thirteen. Surely that adolescent age is finally old enough to be considered on his way to adulthood, his lack of growth spurt and still-high-pitched voice be damned.

Jon Kent, the half-alien, on the other hand? Is perhaps the biggest kid he’s ever known.

He didn’t want to be friends with him. He didn’t. With his unrefined, feline-endangering powers and his processed snack bars and his completely absurd notion that his temporary (that growth spurt is coming!) taller stature gives him anything resembling superiority. He was annoying and he was overenthusiastic and he was ten. That’s like, a whole three years younger than Damian.

It was Kent, really, who started calling him at random. And Damian reasoned that it was more fun talking to him than breaking bones alone. It was just a force of habit, really, that lead him to feeling a little lonely when Kent didn’t call for a while.

It was quaint how deeply he wanted that video game. He should have understood by the age of ten that flashy, colorful distractions are detrimental to practical abilities. But as he scrolled through the company website and saw Youtube videos of the gameplay demos, he supposed he could see some tactical training nestled within the silly sounds and bastardization of real-world physics. And he guessed that he could see why someone as childish as Kent would want to play. So he told Father that he wanted it, but made sure to insist that he buy it himself–he didn’t need his father sneaking any hints to the alien. He still considered it rather silly, though.

But that didn’t stop the pride he felt when Kent’s eyes lit up at the sight of the gift that he’d pulled out from right under his father’s nose, as much as he tried to force it down. Or the heat in his cheeks when Kent launched at him into a hug.

Or the slight thrill he did get at maneuvering those candy-colored monkeys across the screen.

“Ha! Got you!”

“No fair! That’s cheating!”

“It’s not cheating if it’s built into the game!”

“HA! Got you!”

“What? Argh…”

Ok, it was more than a thrill. It was different. It was…fun. And for a moment, surrounded by warm Christmas colors and their last score flashing on the screen, Damian didn’t feel like Robin or the Son of Bruce Wayne or anything. He wasn’t sure what he felt like, but a part of him liked it. Another part of him liked the way Kent was smiling and laughing (because of him!). In a quiet moment, he decided that maybe he could try this friendship thing out after all.

In what seemed like no time at all, Jon dozed off on his shoulder and his father was tapping him on his other to tell them that they had to go. Damian may have pouted—though he preferred the term sulked—just a bit as he pulled his coat on. Just a little.

Yes, after that day Damian started calling him. Mostly just to check on his progress as Superboy; it really should be going along faster. He had powers, after all, he could be dangerous to those around him. Of course, on occasion, he’d call on long nights when father was gone and Pennyworth was cleaning their large, ghostly quiet mansion. There was something about Jon’s rambling, even when it wasn’t about superheroing as much as trivial topics like farms and cleaning his room and homework, that made the hours past faster and his own bedroom seem a little less empty. That’s when he got to thinking, really, he never went to a normal school. He never rode a garishly yellow bus to sit at an uncomfortable desk to drone out simple equations or read short books. He never swung around low plastic bars on a playground.

He was certainly beyond such things. But he was curious all the same.

He didn’t experience them from a kid’s point of view, of course. But he did get to spy on Jon from inside a rubber mask while he did. Before he spied on his cute little family game nights straight out of a sappy sitcom and his wholly undignified 9:00 bedtime.

Damian wasn’t a kid. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a little fascinated by what it was like to be one. At least, until it was time to whip Superboy into shape.

One night, when they were laying out under the stars covered in mud and and twigs violently snagged throughout their costumes, Superboy spoke up like something had long been bugging him.

“You said my name is Superboy instead of Jon.”

“It is. As is Robin for me. If we are to reach our true potential, we must commit to those aliases.”

Jon was quiet for a moment. Damian hoped that it meant that he got it. Until he spoke.

“Dad said that staying connected to your civilian identity is really important. I asked him once. He’s Clark Kent first, he said. It keeps him grounded and reminds him what’s really important.”

This time Damian was quiet. “Maybe it is different for you aliens. But my father puts on the mask when he goes out as Bruce Wayne. Anyone who really knows him can tell you that. Anyway, your father should be pushing you harder instead of coddling you.” He didn’t have to look to see Superboy’s face scrunch up in annoyance.

“He doesn’t coddle me!” he argued, crossing his skinny (but destructively strong all the same) arms, “and you act like I don’t have enough training to be in the field!”

“You don’t.” Damian grinned cooly at him, watching his face redden even in the darkness. “Shameful, really. That’s why I brought you out here. You don’t have time to be a schoolboy.” Damian ignored, for the time being, that he was out here too because his own father wanted him to be a schoolboy rather than work–perhaps that alien had gotten to him, god forbid.

Jon only humphed and turned away. Until,

“Your dad worries that you, like, never take off the Robin suit.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I heard him say it to my dad at Christmas. Maybe my super hearing might have come in a little, I guess, I dunno.”

Damian gritted his teeth in annoyance. “He’s the one to talk.”

Another moment of quiet. “Doesn’t it all get to you too?”

Damian tutted. “Why would it?”

“Isn’t that why you call me all the time? And why you just broke into my bedroom?” Jon chuckled, and it made Damian’s fist clench.

“I’m trying to make you fulfill your legacies as Superb–”

“Dad says I’m doing just fine! Why else would you follow me around!?” Damian’s blood boiled. How dare he insinuate that Damian is following him like a puppy begging for attention? That’s the last time Damian tries to guide a snot-nosed little brat like him.

“Shuddup,” he snapped. Jon’s smile fell before Damian firmly rolled to the side, facing away from him.

Crickets chirped for several moments more.

“Hey Damian?”

“What?” he sighed.

“When we’re all done with this, like when we get back home, do you wanna stay over? I haven’t had someone to play Monk E Monsters with in a while. Kathy doesn’t like it.”

“What, like a sleepover?” Damian said mockingly. He’d never really had one, but he’d become familiar through pop-cultural osmosis. The word brought imagery of silly sleeping bags on floors, confectionery being consumed at a disgusting rate, and pointless games being played into the night.

“Yeah!” Nothing about Jon’s tone was ironic. It was cheerful, and hopeful. It caught him a little off guard.

“Sure, whatever.” With a moment’s thought, Damian added, “If Father allows it. I do have a very tight schedule as Robin, you know.” Just to appease the kid, he told himself. After all, Jon did smile brightly at his answer.

In the end, however, after they returned to Hamilton county to a mother’s panic, harsh scoldings, promises that Jon would not go out for months, and turns in the shower to wash off days of grime and sweat, much to Damian’s surprise Father did consider it best that he rest a bit at the Kent’s for the weekend. So he found himself sprawled out on the Kent’s couch, biting his lip as his ape punched Jon’s off a platform, mindlessly tossing microwaved popcorn kernels into his mouth. Later on, Lane let Jon watch one sort of scary movie, apparently convinced because he had an older friend with him.

“Psh, she thinks I’m such a baby,” Jon scoffed. “I’ll be fine.”

Thirty minutes in, Jon was gripping Damian’s arm for seemingly dear life. That familiar heat rose to his cheeks once again.

“You’re such a kid,” Damian groaned, but didn’t pull his arm away. Especially not when maybe one of those stupid jump scares might have made him flinch a little. But he’d be damned if he let Jon see that.

Damian found sleeping in a thin sleeping bag on an inflatable mattress about as comfortable as he expected.

“Thanks for staying over, Damian! It was super fun!” Jon piped from the bed above him.

But it wasn’t so bad, he supposed. And their parents must not have been too mad about all this, because they still let them team up to fight crime–for the times they knew about, at least.

“Hey, you said you’ve never been to a carnival, right?” Jon asked over the phone one night, several months later.

“Um…no,” Damian replied, uneasy at the sudden question. He wasn’t going to ask what he thought he was going to…

“Do you wanna come to the one in town this weekend?”

“Seriously?”

“Uh huh, my other friends are gonna be busy with their parents’ stands and it’ll be fun! You should come! Have you even ever ridden a ferris wheel?”

“I’ve never wanted to ride a ferris wheel,” Damian said in a huff.

“You always say stuff like that, and then you always have fun.”

Damian denied it, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at the Kent’s door anyway.

Of course, Grayson had heard him discussing the matter over the phone and wasted no time in pressing him into it.

“I grew up in something like a carnival,” he’d said, “you’ll like it. It’s fun! You can run around and eat sugary crap like kids your age should.”

Damian tutted in irritation. But his brother had persisted. Later, when he didn’t know the youngest Robin was lurking in the shadows, Damian had overheard Richard telling Pennyworth that he thinks Jon is a good influence on him–a balancing force, so to speak. Damian tried to ignore that point on the ride to Hamilton County.

Though he had to admit, there was something a little comforting about peeling off the sweaty Robin costume after having had worn it for several days straight. Sometimes he just forgets to.

If he’d known that he’d have to squeeze into the backseat of the Kent’s stale-smelling family truck, he’d have hired a car to take him directly there…but Jon soon distracted him with rapid-fire stories about pie-eating contests, water-gun fights, and viciously spinning light up rides. Damian was hard pressed to admit it, even to himself, but part of it was intriguing. Provincial, but intriguing.

“Last time Alan ate an entire cheesedog before going on the tilt-a-wheel, we told him not to but he did anyway and then when he went on, it all–”

“I think that’s enough, dear,” Ms. Lane said from the front seat.

“Quite enough,” Damian agreed, though something in him wanted to hear the end.

“I’ll tell ya later,” Jon said, almost like he read his mind. It made him less uncomfortable than it should. In any case, he had inspected the alien man’s powers closely enough to know that telepathy was not one of them, and so his son certainly didn’t have it.

Something in his head that sounded an awful lot like Grayson’s voice told him that such things occur with friends.

Perhaps that was why he also let Jon grab his arm again and drag him to the muddy fairground, with Lane’s voice shrinking into the distance as she told them to meet her back at the car by 10:30. And so he was dragged that night, up to game booths with cheap stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling (”You know we could buy these toys with pocket change at the dollar store, right?” “Winning them is the fun of it Damian, gosh…stop being such a killjoy”), over to meet Jon’s friend Kathy to drink some unpasteurized milk (who, to Damian’s amusement, was quite taken with the fact that he was thirteen…until Jon made a comment about Maya’s liking to him in retaliation), and through a “scary” funhouse with twisting mazes and poor trying-too-hard actors in running makeup (both of them agreed, after the Joker, none of those clowns were the least bit intimidating).

It was fun. There, he said it. That unpasteurized milk was pretty tasty (whether it would make him sick was still under consideration). And maybe the toy Monk E Monster that he won at a ball-throwing booth (all too easy for someone of his skills) was kind of cool. Some of those mazes almost posed a slight challenge. He enjoyed himself. He smiled fairly often that night.

Until they reached the looming ferris wheel, and his smile fell.

“I am not going on that.”

Jon handed him a stick perched with a monstrous, artificially pink ball of fleecy sugar–cotton candy.

“Come on!” the kid whined, threads of his own blue one sticking to the sides of his mouth. “It’s so cool! You can see the whole fairground up there!”

Damian squinted at the spinning contraption, studying its shoddy construction. “That thing is only being held together by luck. And I don’t believe in luck.”

“What…,” Jon’s voice fell to a whisper and he leaned in, “is Robin not brave enough to ride a mere ferris wheel?” For a moment, Damian was ready to march up to the damn thing and toss that stupid kid on it. But in another, he simply sighed and rolled his eyes.

“I can’t believe you tried that old trick on me.” He took an indignant bite out of his cotton candy (which tasted better than he cared to admit). “Not going to happen.”

He preferred to believe that his stomach lurched in response to the unpasteurized milk, not the way Jon’s face fell and his tiny voice sighed out “Ok, let’s go back to the car then.” But either way, he ended up paying that damn ticket price and leading the then-joyous boy onto the rickety platform, praying to whatever pantheon might be listening to let him survive this.

The wheel creaked and shook as it began to turn, and Damian knew this was a huge mistake.

But Jon was grabbing his shoulder and pointing out the shrinking people below, as well as all the places they had been that night. And yes, against the country sky, which glittered with far more stars than any city night, in the distance the flashing yellow and red lights of the carnival went from tacky to something kind of like beautiful. Just enough for him to forget his assured doom.

“See, I told you it was cool!” Jon said smugly, again showing an ability to read him that Damian knew now he did not like one bit. Damian smiled slightly in response. Only slightly.

“It’s alright. But you should see Gotham from up high, it’ll beat any carnival you’d attend for the rest of your life.”

“Sure! That would be awesome!”

Damian didn’t intend that as an invitation. But he supposed he could deal with it becoming one.

“Hey…Damian?” Jon said softer this time, both out of caution and seemingly to make sure no one else heard. “I know you thought it was kinda lame, but thanks for coming here.”

“…You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me, I suppose.”

“Of course I did!” Jon said casually, “you’re my best friend.”

The wheel didn’t screech to a halt. But it might as well have.

“I’m–what?” Damian sputtered. Jon’s casual expression became timid, and Damian felt the hole get deeper. “I…I thought Kathy was your best friend.”

“I mean, she is…” Jon rubbed his arms and adjusted his glasses self-consciously. “But you’re different, ya know? She can’t be in with all the superhero stuff. You can be best friends with Superboy too. Like you can come to carnivals with me and help me kick bad-guy butt!”

Damian blinked twice, for once unsure of what to say. He looked at Jon, then back at the fairgrounds, getting a little closer now that they were wheeling towards the ground. Then back at Jon.

Truly, what was the harm?

“Ok.”

“Really?”

Damian shrugged. But he guessed that by now Jon could tell he didn’t feel that relaxed. “Yeah. We’re best friends.” Oh, wouldn’t Richard be so proud, he thought sarcastically.

His newly christened best friend grinned wider than he had for the rest of the night, and Damian’s heart thudded a little in his chest. Must have been the milk again.

“For two supers, it’s just nice to get to be normal kids with each other.”

“I am not a–” Damian, much to his own surprise, stopped, sighed, at looked back across the carnival. “Yeah…yeah, it is.”

By the time they had gotten back to the car, they had pushed and shoved each other enough to get cotton candy in each other’s hair, stains on Damian’s shirt, and smears across Jon’s glasses. Ms. Lane sighed and sent them to wash in the bathroom before they went in the car.

Before long, they were laughingly making mud puddles of the dirt floor as they splashed each other from the sink. One thought, soft but warm, crept into Damian’s mind in the chaos. Perhaps being a kid sometimes might not be so bad after all.

Look at you kids, you know you’re the coolest The world is yours and you can’t refuse it Seen so much, you could get the blues, but That don’t mean that you should abuse it [x]

#jonathan kent #damian wayne #super sons #supersons #damijon #dc comics #fanfiction #jondami

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