#obv the dance is more complicated than just that but this is how i think helaena and aegon viewed themselves during it

[lullaebies]

Aegon II, Helaena, and Historical Counterparts: Hope, Fate and the Doomed

So I had to do a little write up after something came to mind. This is an interpertation of Aegon II and Helaena in regards to how they may see the crown as it effects their relationship. Note that this is based of their characters in F&B, not the show. So needed context for this write up: As we know, Targaryens marry within the family. Keeps bloodlines pure, keeps dragonriding as a Targaryen ability. For the purposes of this write up, the theme is Targaryens marry within the family in order to maintain power. Duty is to keep the dragons within the family, duty is for a male heir to marry his sister in order to keep the literal power (dragons) and figurative powers (the crown) in the family. Historical heirs and rulers married within the family; notably Aegon The Uncrowned and Rhaena, as did Jaehaerys I and Alysanne. These two pairs will be our focus and comparison to Helaena and Aegon, but to begin with, we must acknowledge that unlike Helaena and Aegon these two pairs were either expected to rule, or have ruled for a long time and were praised. For Aegon II and Helaena, they were, as far as I remember, the first sibling couple in the royal dynasty era that had not been expected to take over the Realm (Edit: aside from Baelon and Alyssa, who had been more of a love match, and whose marriage kept their dragons in the family). Helaena and Aegon’s marriage is not advantageous to them, but instead to Rhaenyra and Viserys's hopes for the crown - denying the Greens alliances and hence power to their cause. They don't seem to have/are not mentioned to have dragon eggs, and instead seem to claim older dragons (Sunfyre and Dreamfyre) so they have to gain that power "on their own" in a sense too. [I will note book!Viserys does not seem to discourage the Greens from getting dragons - but alas they still had to go out and claim their own.] With a marriage that seems more purposeful in blocking power from reaching their hands, with already two people who feel pushed aside (Aegon being described as solemn and a grouch; Helaena noted to be less remarkable in beauty to Targs, in an era where she would be compared to her sister who was once "The Realm's Delight"), they seem to be helpless in their place. They are in a position where neither of them have an inheritance aside from their dragon, and where they know they would have to live subservient to Rhaenyra's wishes despite their family not getting along with hers to say the least. Their marriage is a chain around them at the time, and it hurts them. Only teens, Aegon rebels and cheats as he is - Helaena also is rather jokingly cynical, noting that people won't find him in her beds when people look to coronate him. They have an odd somewhat resigned relationship prior to the crowning, despite being noted to sleep in the same bed together regardless and have moments of jealousy [Aegon being mad at Jace for asking Helaena to Dance] - to me at least, they read as if they accepted the hand dealt at life and try to go with the flow of each other. There is struggle and understanding they find in each other. For the longest while, Aegon the Uncrowned and Rhaena are their soft parallels. An Aegon that had been denied the Throne; Helaena is a rider of Dreamfyre as well just like Rhaena. They have twins, and most of all — their story seems doomed.

Then, the coronation time comes, and there is somewhat of a shift. Not specifically in the relationship, but how they try to take it up — suddenly, they are King and Queen, and their relationship is pinnicale Targaryen power. They are crowned with their notably metallic colored, silver and gold dragons marking a new future to them. Aegon II is declaring he is fighting against an usurper that he is sure will kill his family, that in the future will be compared to Maegor the Cruel. Helaena, beloved of the Smallfolk, joins the Council table and argues for peace with her mother, a moderate voice to her more stern king, along with their mother Alicent, [despite this being an admittedly slightly flimsier part] whose name can ring a bell back to Alyssa Velaryon, King Aenys's wife. What I'm trying to lead us to, is our second comparison — Aegon II and Helaena after their coronation, had been hoping to be like Jaehaerys and Alysanne. With their magnificent metallic dragons, they wanted to find their power against someone they consider Maegor-like (Rhaenyra; and soon enough her cause will lead to the death of both her nephews so... checks out). They wanted to find again their power in this union that was not meant to bring them power. They were young adults, accepting the mantle and entering the war with the idea that they are upholding the law and going against violation to the succession from occurring again like in Maegor's case; entering the war with the idea that they must do so to protect their family. Alas, that is not to be. Very soon, that impression of protecting the family with the crown is shattered with the death of Jaehaerys. And now they're back to understanding that a crown and dragons are not quite enough. The struggle returns. They break from each other after B&C and suddenly, they return to the doomed narrative — like Aegon the Uncrowned, Aegon II goes to battle. Unlike him, he does not die, but he may as well be with his condition, and from the eyes of Helaena, who never sees him again after he is smuggled away, it cannot be too different. As she realizes and returns to understanding that there is no hope - she is a black bride, captured by Rhaenyra who is her Maegor while her husband for all she knows is dead - she also realizes that she is living a fate worse than Rhaena too, when Maelor dies. She gives up. The hope is gone and the grief is too much. She and her children are as doomed - there was no power in the crown, only pain. She jumps down to the moat. Residuals of Helaena's image as an Alysanne like figure spark the riots against Rhaenyra, and Aegon II, hides like Jaehaerys I did from Maegor for the longest while, and uses his last bits of power to overthrow Rhaenyra. He still dies in the end, however, poisoned.

In conclusion; Helaena and Aegon's cause had them bolstering the image of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, but they could not escape the tragedy of Aegon the Uncrowned and Rhaena losing it all. There was hope to find power in their union, as Jaehaerys and Alysanne did, but the crown and war for it had brought them immense grief, as it did Aegon the Uncrowned and Rhaena. An arc of hope and tragedy between a doomed pair.

[bcolfanfic]

i’d love more jean hcs, im obsessed with her. what was her childhood like and her life before she met cros, how did they meet?

all of these apply to both side a and b of the au <3 things don’t really split off between them until the boys are out of bagram.

my girllllll. i love her so much.

- grew up in iowa in the same town croz did. very a typical suburbs white picket fence family. dad worked a 9-5 mom stayed home, did dance and soccer and all in all had a pretty normal childhood.

- def one of those little girls that got called bossy when they weren’t *mean*, just assertive. very self assured and in spite of everything she goes through as an adult that never really changes.

- big summer camp kid. makes her laugh a little when jj is the first kid they try to send to sleep away summer camp and he cries sooo much they have to go get him. even though her home life was *fine* she was a really independent kid and couldn’t wait to go away for a couple weeks the second school got out.

- was always the one teaching the other girls how to make super complicated friendship bracelets. holds on to a lot of the ones other people gave her even as an adult. sentimental like that <3

- her and croz met as kiddos. weren’t best friends right off the bat and were a grade apart but. he was very very shy and little miss assertive told people off at recess for picking on him.

- and sweet little 9 year old croz was so 😧 at this assertive little girl a grade below him going off at someone like that. had a lil crush on her immediately lmao.

- she goes by jeanie as a teenager into being an adult but when she’s a kid she hateddddd it. thought it was too babyish and would very bluntly tell people her name is je-an and that’s it.

- but croz calls her jeanie and she doesn’t have the heart to correct shy little boy that seems a little lonely. so she lets him do it. no one else though.

- they actually start talking enough to become true friends in middle school. and in true 13 year old girl fashion she’s distraughtttt when he goes off to high school a year before her. big dramatic tears about how he’s gonna forget her and find some pretty blonde high schooler that’s cooler to hang out with instead.

- and this is before they’re even datinggg 14 year old croz is like uhhh no i won’t (: don’t worry (: and how hard he fumbled that keeps him up at night lmfao.

- but obviously he does not forget about her and they start dating in high school. do all the stereotypical high school sweetheart things. prom, football games etc etc.

- croz is one of those kids that eats lunch with his english teacher bless his heart. very bookish and jeanie finds that so endearing about him.

- school wise jeanie does cheer and really likes math (: smart as a whip and it’s one of the many reasons croz adores her. thinks she’s just the coolest smartest girl ever and is sometimes worries she might be wasting her time with him of all people.

- their parents think they’re good for each other and are happy to joke about how ohhh those two are gonna get married and give us grandbabies someday hahaha (: isn’t that nice (:

- which is rich when both sets of parents full 180 and are kinda. fucking monsters when they have an Oops and she gets pregnant w/ jj right out of high school.

- in side a where croz is much alive during all the meadow stuff that’s a hugeee part of why he’s so pissed about everything. obv jj isn’t as young as he was and meadow is older than jeanie was by a few years. but she’s still /young/. and he can still see in his head how hard it was for them when jj was a baby, they were so clueless and he was terrified he’d gone and ruined jean’s life. doesn’t want that for his son, doesn’t want that for meadow <\3

[heyjude19-writing]

Also I had a musing I would hope you could share your own opinion on.

I'm so glad you find him as interesting and intriguing as I do C! 🌈

I'm a sucker for Greek mythos and I cannot wait to see how ur Draco’s journey will unfold. His aesthetic lends itself to the classics, lends itself to the analogy which is why I think I often make this connection. On top of his character being simply compelling, he has an air of timeless and competitiveness that reminds me of the age old Herculean hero that stand the test of time.

I don't like to prophesies too much bc I love to go in reading things blind (I avoid conspiracies and teasers like the plague!) but I cannot help myself in getting excited to see how he will confront and face crossroads and compare them to the great ancients.

If our golden boy will be more likely to pull an Apollo or become Achilles. The thing that makes characters interesting imo is how the deal 'in the complicated'. When they are taken away something they want, or confronted with a problem, do they go red or do they mourn in the quiet and peace? And I think from what little we know of in Draco from the chapters of what we've seen, he is a character that has more than what meets the eye. which makes him all the more compelling to see what happens when he splits.

We all know the well told romance of Achilles and Patroclus on how they were lovers/friends but also fellows competitors and Patroclus went to the Trojan war just bc his lover was destined for greatness there. He was a supportive bf haha. Achilles was very much following (up until the death of Patroclus) a very, 'healthy' doctrine to war. He fell in line and was excellent.

But when Patroclus was killed nameless grief took over Achilles and went genuinely insane with his screams of cry and revenge. He cried so horribly that even his mother Thetis could hear in the depths of the sea and went up to comfort his son. He kept the corpse of his lover in his tent for the entirety of the war as he extracted his revenge that was so bloody it was feral. He slept with Patroclus's corpse, delusional kept it, and threatened anyone who suggested to remove it. He wanted to be buried with him by the time the war was done and made Odysseus swear that he would see this happen. Obv as we know he killed Hector.

I remember shivering in class when I was a teen remembering the poem in the Iliad Book 18, that, he said, 'neither food nor drink shall glide down my throat, for as long as he [Patroclus] is mangled in my tent I only crave murder and blood and the rattling of dying'.

So does Draco follow the same blood wounded vengeful fate like Achilles? Will he move heaven and earth to go on his own Taylor swift reputation era tour? Or will he be a different drum, one of peace and calm like the story of Apollo?

The story of Apollo, as the God of music and dance, prophecies and healing (also God of the Sun, queue the analogy of why I think of Draco for obvious blonde hero reasons :P) fell in love with a mortal man named Hyacinthus who was as well a Spartan warrior prince famous for his beauty and everyone wanted him. men and women, the whole lot!

Include the God of the West wind Zephyrus. But Hyacinthus chose Apollo among his many admirers and they had the best romance dude. They would do all kinds of things together like music, dance, archery, they were both extremely sporty (as Leo is!!).

But Zephyrus was rotting with jealousy of their romance, that while they were playing archery, he blew Zephyrus's arrow off course and it hit him in the head and killed him.

Apollo was obviously inconsolable and mourned his lover and tried to commit su**ide many times hoping to join his lover in death. And bc he was inconsolable, he decided to always remember Hyacinthus by naming the famous flower by him and made music and games after him. And Hyacinthus bloom every spring now.

So it will be interesting to see whether Draco will be the type to be bloodthirsty, angry for his Harry or if he is a blonde hero that's more of a mourner?

These are the kind of musings I catch myself thinking of Draco and would love to know where ur heads at when it comes to it :)

oh wow, lots of theories here. so i read the greek classics much too long ago and most of what i remember is related to the web comic Lore Olympus tbh 😅. i'd say i don't really see a hero vs mourner dichotomy in the drarry story im writing as it's not one of war and violence, but more one of two people trying to find their way back to one another. they've moved past the bloodthirsty, angry part of their lives and it's more a question of coming at a relationship from two different perspectives with the same end goal and trying not to destroy each other in the process.

[sanstropfremir]

what do you think makes a well balanced group. your kepler ask mentions how skills and personality is important but is there a secret formula that you think is most potent. there are groups where each member is good at a specific thing, and groups where every member is equally skilled in dancing and singing. on one hand, if a group has the dynamic where everyone is equally skilled in all aspects it may make them lackluster. but would it be appropriate if say, 1 member is a weak dancer and the strongest vocalist and vice versa the same group has a strong dancer and weak vocal. maybe this dynamic would work in a small group, but not a large one? the trouble with large groups being, if all members have the same skills no one pays attention to them, or there will always be a standout member of a large group because realistically a group with 6 members and up cant be equally skilled with z e r o quirks or differences

well. this is kind of a multi-faceted answer, because although i don't think there's a specific 'secret formula' for a perfect group, kpop already has a structure that members get slotted into that actually does work. so yes, but also no? it's complicated.

so the whole system of assigned positions is essentially the formula that makes a well balanced group. that's literally the point of each of the positions; they're there in order to organize the roles so the group is balanced. now, do companies get it right all the time? no. do fans agree with it? absolutely not. but that IS what it's there for, and, in my opinion, it does work. most of the time. i think it's stupid and naive for fans to argue for equal line distribution yadda yadda because being a vocal is not going to be everyone's strong point. a main vocal SHOULD have the majority of the singing, that's their job. a main dancer SHOULD be leading dance breaks etc, that's their job. and an assigned centre SHOULD be in centre position, because they're there to be the hook. i've talked about how centre position is important before so i won't hash over that again, but my point is that those assigned positions aren't random, they're there in order to establish a balance within a group, so that people know what your place is. it's a job description.

however, those are just general positions, and obviously not every person and group has the same distribution of skills. what actually makes a balanced group is the people in that group understanding that they need to be balanced. no group is ever going to have the same interpersonal or skill related dynamics, but if all the members understand the parts they play and work together to fill in gaps and create a unified image, that's what makes the whole thing work.

of course this also feeds into my own personal beliefs about group composition, which i think are probably uncommon: i don't think there should be any large groups at all. five is the perfect size, seven is fine, nine is the MAXIMUM. groups larger than that have difficulty maintaining focal points and also have a higher likelihood of having filler members who may be able to keep up technically, but don't do much other than bolster numbers. everyone jokes about nct being too big, but the reality is that nct almost never promotes with more than nine members in a subunit, because sm intimately knows that if a group gets too big, it gets messy. you keep the member numbers down, and all those members have more of an equal reason to be there, even if it's not 'equal' in the songs or performances. there's a lot of other things that idols do that require different skills that aren't used in performance, and those are distributed differently depending on the group.

obvs none of these are hard and fast rules, and often a lot of groups settle into shapes that go beyond their 'job descriptions' and that's fine, because they're usually working through that together. it's all about negotiation

[thewomaninlilywhite]

WAIT IM LOOKING THROUGH YOUR POSTS! DO YOU ONLY WATCH MENS?

short answer: yes?

I first got into skating because I knew someone who competed in ladies singles and didn't pay attention to men's until much later; so I feel like I have a kind of tainted view of ladies. (She actually retired because she was fed up with the i*u – she was a pcs>tes skater; not the best jumper, but beautiful technique and artistry)

now I only really /care/ about men's; but I do watch ladies (if/when I have to time) and do have a few ladies that I keep an eye on (Kaori, Rika, Katya, Anya, Mae, Starr). But I don't actively follow the drama/go out of my way to plan my schedule around being able to watch the ladies event.

I think that the quality of artistry is more across the board in ladies because they're not expected to have as high tech scores as men's (obvs the russians girls are pushing this); but it's kinda hard for me to watch girls much younger than me whilst thinking about how their bodies/minds/etc. suffer from what they do. Also, the way that they bend their bodies isn't as pretty to me. (aka why I don't like Kami and a lot of the other russian girls – "I" spins don't impress me because they looks so unnatural and gross because I know first hand that you basically have to destroy your spine to be able to do them... there's a reason Yuzu doesn't do Biellmans anymore -- rip)

Idk maybe it's because I'm a dancer and know what they have to go through and how damaging it can be in the long run (I can't move my right hip without it popping 😅) that it's less enjoyable for me. I feel like, though men are pushing themselves athletically, they're not doing so in an inherently unnatural way as the ladies seem to; so it makes them more pleasant to watch.

As for the other disciplines: pairs TERRIFIES me because of that one girl who got dropped and became paralysed and then died of complications and I just Don't Understand Ice Dance ??? 😂

but in general, yea i only follow men's because I hate myself

[jostenneil]

do you have shounen recs too? other than naruto and fma lol

naruto and fma are like decade long infections that have refused to leave me djdbkdn but yes, i do! i’ll apply the same logic here as i did in the other post where i include some seinen too bc ultimately the distinction is just an age demographic

sket dance (manga) - this is one of my favorite manga of all time! it centers on a group of three friends—bossun, himeko, and switch—who start a student support group at their high school for anyone to come to with their everyday problems. the clientele and their problems are varied in a pretty humorous way, and in the beginning it almost feels like the series is set up to be purely comedic, but as you get further into the series you learn just why the main characters started the club, which is the winning point for me. these characters are so fleshed out and so much of their individual trauma gives insight as to why they’re intent to help and befriend others, especially on bossun’s part. he is probably one of my favorite shounen protagonists period. his character propagates a really wonderful message of how people don’t need to be fixed in order to solve their problems, just listened to and supported, and i adore the series for its exploration of that concept. the mangaka was also an assistant to sorachi on gintama, so i think fans of gintama will rly enjoy it in the sense that both series share similar values, messages, and humor! there’s a few crossovers between the two, iirc. also! i don’t particularly mind the anime and it has a banger soundtrack but just imo the emotional beats hit harder in the manga

silver spoon (anime/manga) - this is the series hiromu arakawa wrote after finishing fma, and i would actually argue that it’s her better work of the two! it centers on a boy named hachiken, who spontaneously decides to enroll at an agricultural high school to get away from his stressful family life in the city, and obviously, it’s a huge reality check for him. he’s dropped into this school where every other student has farming-related ambitions in the long run, while he has no ambitions at all and simply used enrollment as an excuse to get away from his problems. the series is a masterclass in learning about the worth in hard work, camaraderie, and why thinking about your future and what you want to do matters, not just from a practical aspect but also in terms of self fulfillment. as expected of arakawa, it boasts endearing humor, a wonderful array of distinct characters, and a really fleshed out portrayal of farm life, made even more enjoyable and genuine by the fact that she’s writing in her element, as she grew up on a farm herself

tsubasa reservoir chronicle (manga) - this is a cult classic within clamp circles, but outside of that fandom it’s more known as the intimidating clamp series most ppl wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. and i get that! the fact that it crosses over with some other clamp series makes it pretty confusing to parse through at times. but i also think that’s the series’ greatest strength, bc when you understand the nature of that crossover, the depth of the storytelling is truly brilliant! at its most basic, trc follows a pair of childhood friends, syaoran and sakura, who live in a desert-like “clow country”. sakura walks into some ruins one day and is spontaneously robbed of all of her memories, which syaoran must then journey across multiple dimensions to recapture, as her memories have been scattered in the form of feathers. the pair also have three traveling companions—kurogane, fai, and mokona—and altogether the group visits multiple dimensions that are loosely inspired by clamp’s other series and characters. obv, as the plot progresses, we discover there’s more to the group’s mission than meets the eye, and it ventures into pretty dark, existential territory, as is the norm for clamp. it also may be unpopular of me to say this, but i actually think it’s a great introduction to clamp (it was mine lol), given there’s so many cameos from their previous series and the series sets up such interesting lore. just be warned that you do have to think while reading this series, as the lore is intense! also, do not watch the anime. at all. it’s the worst adaptation ever

ookiku furikabutte (anime/manga) - popularly called oofuri, this series is in my opinion one of the best sports manga published in the last two decades. it follows a boy named mihashi, a baseball pitcher who refuses to give up the mound and essentially alienates himself from his middle school teammates in the process bc they don’t know how to actually utilize his pitches. he enters high school as a total nervous wreck with little to no confidence in himself bc of this experience, until the catcher, abe, recognizes that he’s actually a really unique pitcher unrecognized for his talents by his old teammates. abe and mihashi basically latch onto each other, with abe believing he can mold mihashi into the best pitcher there is, and mihashi believing abe is the one person capable of making him into a good pitcher. it’s a fascinating take on codependency and building up your self esteem, and i would argue that higuchi asa’s sports psychology background lends itself splendidly to the messages oofuri sends about how to build healthy sportsmanship among teenage boys. overall i think it’s a great series to read if you’re looking for catharsis and comfort, as well as baseball lore!

gangsta. (manga) - this series is the most dark and complicated of the works in this list, just as an advisory. there’s prostitution, gang violence, gore, etc etc. but for the presence of all of that, gangsta. is probably one of the most well rounded series i have read in the last few years. it starts with alex benedetto, a prostitute who ends up as the sole survivor of a mass gang murder propagated by two thugs for hire, worick and nic. the two men take her under their wing as a friend and someone who answers their phone, and the three of them form a unique but really loving partnership with each other. the plot eventually extends into a turf war that plagues the town they live in, ergastulum, on account of a drug trade that allows for the breeding of “twilights”, who are essentially drug enhanced superhumans. it’s hard to explain much more without giving away spoilers, but the series has an incredibly diverse cast, in terms of race, disability, and sexuality, and it manages to tackle really dark subject matter without coming off as too edgy or tragedy porn-seque. the artwork is also absolutely gorgeous and the relationships among various characters are portrayed with such amazing nuance, that i can’t even complain when plot points make me sad beyond belief

this is what i have for now but i may add onto it later! do let me know if you enjoy any of these ❤️

[janiedean]

I was wondering what you feel about the opinion that GRRM hates feminine/non-warrior women because they (Catelyn, Cersei, Sansa) are written with intentional flaws while his warrior girls (Brienne, Arya) are not? Do you agree with that? That Brienne and Arya have no flaws? It was some dumb meta about how the world is against Brienne, but she never does harm to the world, so she's a bad character and GRRM is a misogynist or something. (1/2)

I disagree obviously. Just because Brienne is not a demon doesn't mean she doesn't have flaws or she's a bad character lol. Like... why can't we have an angel in a world of monsters? What's wrong with that? Are these people jealous that Brienne is one of those pure character that their faves are not, so they feel like dismissing her as a bad character to make themselves feel good? I'm asking you because I know you love Catelyn and Brienne so I know you're the best person to ask this. Ty (2/2)

... I mean this has a long answer to give but this *meta* seems to me like it was written by someone who has no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to who grrm hates in his writing or his supposed misogyny because they have it all wrong and I think you pretty much guessed the point, but in order, let’s... tackle this one by one:

grrm doesn’t at all hate cat and sansa and their flaws are... flaws in the sense that he’s writing them like good people who aren’t 100% perfect but like.. sansa’s *flaws* from the beginning are stuff that’s common to most 12yo girls in existence and she overcomes them and she’s generally a good and kind and caring person whose main trait is that she’s good and kind and stays like that so how exactly now she’s written... like you’re supposed to hate her? bc she’s not. grrm never wanted you to hate sansa. he wrote her like a realistic 11-15yo but like most of us were like that at that age or have had friends who were like that, so... what the fuck. catelyn.... like guys the one heavy flaw she has is her treatment of jon but she’s written as a smart person who’s trying to live in a misogynistic society as best as she can and she’s written like a tragic character but grrm obviously likes her/loves writing her, it’s.... like if you read her chapters you can see how much work/love/craft went into them and how he worked on her bg very carefully also she is more of a protagonist than ned until asos when it comes to the stark side like.... how is giving her human flaws meaning he hates her?? grrm doesn’t hate her. the fact that she and brienne end up doing the knightly/lady sworn sword thing is even more of a proof he doesn’t but more on that later;

cersei... well I mean grrm obv doesn’t like cersei that much but a) he’s written a version of that character at least thrice already including the asoiaf one so I think he has an ex like that that he doesn’t particularly remember fondly or smth but like... she’s written to be a villain. she’s a villain. she’s a very well-crafted/thought out villain with a realistic background but diff. from cat and sansa she���s there to be the antagonist period, and just like... cersei and cat are aesthetically the same archetype and they couldn’t be more different so idk wtf are people smoking when saying that and if they can’t read cat chapters without fandom-hates-her glasses idk what to tell them;

brienne and arya have flaws are we serious, like arya has the flaws everyone has at that age (too impulsive/tends to judge people very fast/is too fixed on things/doesn’t listen to people etc) but like she’s fucking nine when it starts and she gets traumatized to hell and back, like arya’s sl to me is creepy af because no 12yo should be like that and it’s a very good trauma exploration but like....... she has faults but she’s not a bad person for obvious reasons as in SHE’S A KID same as sansa same as EVERYONE UNDERAGE IN THESE BOOKS except partially joffrey and even he has a background that explains how he is, like.... arya and sansa are supposed to be written in an equally sympathetic but specular way because they have opposite ways of reacting to trauma ie sansa holds on to her kindness arya gets progressively detached because she has to kill people to survive but you’re not supposed to hate either of them? honestly grrm wrote them with the exact same stakes, anyone who thinks it’s qualitatively different needs to go back and reread it with some intellectual honestly;

brienne... I mean we serious? the thing with brienne is that she’s a fundamentally good person who is written to become the ultimate example of a good knight™ and who is supposed to restore decency to the title after the institution has crumpled into the dirt, so... she’s... good, same as dunk is in the novels, but like: lmao she has a lot of faults, first thing that at the beginning she judges everyone on sight and sees everything in black and white, she has zero preservation instinct and nonexisting selfesteem because she thinks her life isn’t worth her vows and she thinks she’s not fit for anything she tries to do and would have died for a guy who danced with her once like sorry that’s not healthy, which are all things,... she’s... getting over.... because she has a character arc, but saying that brienne isn’t realistic or doesn’t have faults is ridiculous because she is;

now, this concept that grrm is misogynist is idiotic because a guy who has an insane number of female povs - some of which are the same trope ie brienne and arya - and have all a distinct different personality and voice and none of them are like too idealized or too evil and are to a level relatable means he’s everything but because a misogynyst wouldn’t be able to pull that off. like, in any other book brienne and arya would have been the same character, in his they’re not, so maybe like... give him some credit in the sense that the moment half of your povs are well-written realistic female characters and the ones without povs are equally well-written/manage to be fan faves (ie marg and olenna) maybe he’s just... not... a misogynist nor hates women so that’s out of the way;

re cat and brienne: like... saying ‘ah he hates catelyn’ when catelyn is literally the first *lady* who treats brienne like a friend/peer/person she cares about is completely fucking idiotic because guess what if you’re like brienne usually most Attractive Girls™ the way cat is are not your best friends in life (I mean c. calls her a cow and they didn’t even meet on paper lmao and it’s obvious from b’s povs that she has bad experiences with other women in general), so the fact that cat actually sees her worth, accepts her as her sworn sword doing a thing that’s usually just between men, trusts her with her daughters’ lives, thinks she’s a better knight than jaime could be and treats her as it befits her station (in riverrun she had dresses made for her but brienne wouldn’t wear them) and is actually good to one of the few good people in these books who gets treated like dirt by most others should tell you exactly what grrm thinks of catelyn, ie nothing too bad, and that she’s a good person who fucked up on one thing that the narrative knows and doesn’t excuse, but like.... lmao that entire argument falls flat just for that;

Are these people jealous that Brienne is one of those pure character that their faves are not, so they feel like dismissing her as a bad character to make themselves feel good? you’re on to smth but as I ranted on twitter once: this all falls again to the fact that people Cannot Accept The Fact That An Ugly Girl Who Is Going To Stay Ugly is one of the moral hearts of these series and is An Actual Good Person Who Deserves Good Things in spite of not performing femininity, and who’s going to get the guy of her dreams (who is Hot) without settling and without becoming beautiful, and she’ll manage to realize her dreams even without becoming beautiful and regardless of having been treated like dirt because of her looks all her life, and like... apparently that is too much or too complicated to conceive and so either they have to decide she’s not That ugly or make her things she’s not or decide she’ll die early wow and whatever else, but like: the problem is that usually the Pure Moral Center Of A Story Who Happens To Be Female and gets her dreams and the hot dude is standard attractive. brienne is not, she has trauma because of that, and she’s still the best person in there (or one of the best) and she’ll get her dreams and the hot dude, and people can’t handle this specific concept nor admit that grrm, having done a thing that no one else has until now because there’s no other brienne in genre literature/in that way, is everything but a misogynist, since he actually, ah, wait, gave decent rep to people who most times are relegated to playing the best friend who stays single or are usually evil bc ugly antagonist women are everywhere, ugly protagonist women who are actually Good People™ and aren’t a paragon of Pure Virtue and don’t die virgins? not really. so: people can’t handle that brienne the way she is is a Good Person and The One True Knight In Westeros and it’s a sad thing but it just shows that maybe more people should go for that trope and that’s my two cents;

other than that no guy who can write the range of women grrm does can be a misogynist by definition, especially a guy who managed to get perfectly how it feels being a straight nonstandard attractive woman in society in general because my friends if before I stumbled into asoiaf I never related 100% to one fictional character ever there was a reason, and I read a lot, so people can bite me on that thing;

to end and comment on one thing: 

how the world is against Brienne, but she never does harm to the world

congrats to OP they went THAT close to it: that’s the entire fucking point. being like brienne in her society (and not performing femininity™ correctly in ours) means that whatever you do people will criticize you and treat you like dirt even if you don’t mean them any harm. the world is absolutely against her because all the circumstances are stacked against her - she’s a woman, doing a man’s job, looking nonattractive and therefore other women treat her like dirt and men don’t consider her or see her as a threat and hate her for it because she’s better at their job than they are, wanting to be a knight which is a thing that’s technically forbidden bc women can’t be anointed as far as the westerosi law says, who’s doing that because she knows she’s good at it but every single person in her way doesn’t want her to succeed except for a handful, can’t use femininity to navigate the world and she has to survive as a woman in a men’s world in an extremely misogynistic medieval society and there’s a reason why no one but three people takes her seriously, ie that if you don’t count a few people in f&b that are history book material in her context/timeframe she’s an unicum and people tend to dislike it when you’re an unicum/sticking out/wanting to go against the system. the system is absolutely stacked against her, when everything she wants is do good to others and making her father proud and be a knight and find love, and even if it’s not that much to ask for her it’s, on paper, impossible.... and the entire point is that as impossible as it looks she’s definitely going to get it because she’s written exactly for that, and if people haven’t grasped that it’s her arc - overcoming a misogynistic society and living beyond gender roles regardless of your looks which in itself is groundbreakingly feminist - sorry for them but they’ll have a bad wake up call when grrm gets wow/ados out.

and that’s my two cents, but like: there’s nothing wrong in liking characters With Faults or evil ones and you can find Good Ones boring, just don’t try to make it pass like the author is a misogynist because the Good Character is a nonstandard attractive gnc woman because that’s actually a thing no one else ever did.

and this stated brienne is more similar to book!sansa than book!arya personality-wise so it’s an argument that doesn’t hold on even joking. /two cents

[equalseleventhirds]

if you want to talk about hades town you can do so on this because i am very much interested in your thoughts about it!

fdsfjdskfds oh anon i am at Work and when i get out of work i will be Homework but......... listen. listen.

(ok a lot of this i’ve already rambled abt in my hadestown tag but. BUT). i got into hadestown pre-broadway, which means i listened to the original cast recording from 2017 a BUNCH. and while i adore both version, there were... changes. which i feel did orpheus a disservice, and the overarching plot a disservice, but in some ways treated eurydice better by filling her out more and making her more of a revolutionary. 

anyway, i defos don’t have time for a full song-by-song comparison, and also some of the songs available for the broadway version never made it onto the release of the 2017 version, not bcos they weren’t in the show, just bcos.... idk they weren’t released? weren’t recorded? i do not pretend to know the inner workings of the music industry.

BUT of note: the major changes to epic ii. in the original, orpheus was mocking of hades (’king of a kingdom of dirt’ yo), while in the broadway version, orpheus is just singing abt hades and persephone’s history. epic iii also removes that like, ‘a king who loves everythign like a hammer loves the nail’ and ‘he comes down heavy and hard on us’, so it’s MUCH less about the workers’ resentment of hades and just. about hades and persephone.

btw fuckin miss me with that narrative abt orpheus solving global warming by reminding the ruling class that they’re in love with each other? like, i’m sure that’s more appealing to ur standard can-afford-broadway audience, and as a LOVE story it’s cool, but. just not a good lesson actually. 

also ‘living it up on top’ completely cuts out his ‘why would a man of his own free will go to work all day in the mine and the mill’ which is, y’know, callous when considering the people (like, later, eurydice) driven to work for hades, but is TARGETED at hades, who for real does not NEED to work the way he does. miss that....

we also, throughout the broadway version, get a LOT of hermes speaking for orpheus. in the original, ‘come home with me’ is orpheus convincing eurydice, while the broadway version has hermes telling her that orpheus will make her feel alive. ‘living it up on top’ also changes from persephone speaking directly to orpheus and letting him take up the ‘bless this round’ bit, to having hermes volunteer him. blah blah ‘under my wing’ blah, but having a god (again, member of the ruling class, even if this one’s helpful) speak for him? when we have a version where he speaks for himself? come ON. i am not a fan of orpheus being made helpless! let him make his decisions! let his voice be one of persuasion even BEFORE he goes to the underworld!

(this also ties into my personal take that as a demigod, the son of a muse--and you know how those muses are--orpheus’ carelessness is what originally loses him eurydice. he does not care about eating through the winter, he’s never had to worry about that bcos hermes looks after him, while eurydice has had a harsh life and knows they DO need to worry. art is all well and good, but it is also important to care for the people in your life. it’s later, when orpheus loses eurydice and must venture into the harshness of the underworld, meets the workers/the wall and has to find SOLIDARITY with them in order to stand up to hades, that he finally recognizes the value of working with others to create a better life for all. in this essay i)

i also rly miss the original ‘promises’ bcos like, while orpheus & eurydice as always-in-love is sweet, i really enjoyed the fighty version where they are both resentful & angry abt broken promises, and both acknowledge that what they originally claimed to want from the other & give to one another was both unrealistic and not what they actually wanted, eventually coming to a conclusion that was more based on reality. like. communication resulting in a healthier relationship after dealing with unrealistic expectations.... we stan.

now that i’ve gone over how i think the original was better, i did still LIKE the broadway version, and there were some improvements! most notable, eurydice’s stronger role as like, an active revolutionary (or attempted one, anyway) rather than a more passive rescue.

i genuinely adored the change of ‘anyway the wind blows’ from an intro song by the fates to eurydice singing (with the fates backing her up/singing in her ear), bcos it sets up eurydice as an average sufferer of the world the gods made, and lets us hear it in her voice, her experience, and her opinions. she is the one to say weather ain’t the way it was before--and when we later get persephone telling us ‘some might say the weather ain’t the way it used to be’, she’s dismissing eurydice’s suffering (and the suffering of all humans), bcos she’s more concerned with her own issues with hades than with how she’s impacted the world.

(also the changes made had some Interesting Implications abt persephone’s complicity in that whole ‘keep your head low’ thing, that i think is p cool, actually? like afaik the 2017 version didn’t have ‘no spring/no fall’ going on, so the fact that the broadway one DOES and yet keeps her having spring flowers & autumn leaves only to the ppl in the underworld when she arrives.... inch resting. something something the ruling class provides ‘charity’ of resources people should already have as a reward for ‘good behavior’ something.)

eurydice at the beginning is isolated. she falls in love with orpheus and decides to stay with him, but even them being together does not mean he understands her, or values the same things she does. this is evident in both versions, but in the broadway version, when eurydice goes to the underworld, she does something interesting; she tries to introduce herself to the other workers. now, i never saw the 2017 version in full, only heard the album, but in the album she signs the papers and is rejoicing that she’s ‘free’ and has to be told that she isn’t. she doesn’t really speak to the other workers, beyond this exchange about ‘freedom’. in the broadway version, she’s dejected--she did what she had to do. she knows that’s what the other workers did. and she goes to talk to them about it, bcos in spite of where they are, she wants to create a connection with her fellow workers (building solidarity! my girl!!) (also interesting: at the start of the show. she’s alone. she’s always been alone. she sings about how people always turn on you and she’s better off alone before she meets orpheus, but even after she has to leave him, she tries to make a connection with other people. oh...... character development, we love it.) she doesn’t SUCCEED, but she TRIES. which may be important in why they choose to follow HER later.

now we come to chant (reprise), wait for me (reprise), and doubt comes in, the BEST revolutionary eurydice songs in the ENTIRE show. in the 2017 version these were mostly orpheus-focused (and altho i miss the ‘he said he’s shelter us/he said he’d harbor me’ parallels from the 2017 version of chant ii, the company singing with eurydice & orpheus about ‘if i raise my voice, if i raise my head’ fucks SO HARD). eurydice sings with the workers as they’re revolting, and when they walk out of hadestown, the workers follow her. (they don’t follow orpheus, even tho that’s who eurydice is following; ‘if she can do it so can we’. she’s one of them. she’s the one they’re following. can you BELIEVE). eurydice also gets to echo (louder, stronger, and using our instead of my) orpheus’s fantastic fucking ‘i hear the walls repeating the falling of my feet and it sounds like drumming’ bit, with the workers giving her backup. god. so fucking good.

and then, again, i never saw the 2017 version, but ‘doubt comes in’ in that one is still melancholy even on eurydice’s parts; she’s hopeful, but she’s alone, entirely relying on orpheus to lead her. i did get to see the broadway version (and bro.... the production value on that.... the LIGHTS first of all, the LIGHTING, and this song in particular? all dark when orpheus sings so you can’t see eurydice, and then cut to eurydice in lights with the workers following? MY DUDE.) and eurydice’s bits in this song are triumphant. she is sure they will get out, she is dancing and turning back to the workers as she sings she is right behind him (they sing back: we are right behind you). she is following him and sure of him, and she is with the workers and they are with her.

which is part of why ‘sing it again’ does so little for me, actually? like, orpheus had his chance, and he fucked it up, and yes it’s a beautiful story and we want to think he’d do it right, but this is nothing like the end, and singing it again leaves no way to move forward. eurydice led the workers! she gave them her name, she made them care, she was their beacon of hope and what they could become (compare to their previous beacon of hope, persephone, who shows up once a year and sells them remnants of their former lives and does not try to lead them out bcos she’s too caught up in her own anger). eurydice did not make it out with orpheus, but i HAVE to imagine that she and the workers got that taste of freedom, that taste of memory, that taste of solidarity, and would not just forget it again. it becomes more than a love story, it becomes about eurydice’s position of solidarity with the other mortals (something orpheus almost gets, but fails due to insecurity and inexperience and being the outside-savior rather than one of them). and obvs that doesn’t work with the original orpheus and eurydice myth, but listen...... let them bother hades after the end. let them fucking unionize. pls it would be so GOOD i am just! i am just!!

[msiopao]

Sera with the Members

a/n: mark is in this because dream is now a fixed unit and he’s part of the lineup!!!!!!

WATERMELON ADDICT

was the person who made Sera comfortable since he reminded her of home

always asks if canadian bacon is better than american bacon

‘i dONt kNoW, sERa! mEAT iS mEaT!’

she didnt actually cry on stage when he was leaving but she cried when it was just the two of them and he recorded for the last time

it was her idea for hyuck to buy him a big bottle of ketchup

CANNOT believe that mark was a churchboy and ends up acting up in music videos

the duality SCARES her

calls her finny since her name is serafina

sera has her own room but she has an extra bed so he sleeps in there when he spends the night

learned this watermelon shake to help mark’s hangover

english all the time

ever since they met, mark has always placed his elbow on her head due to her short height

sera learned this fried rice recipe from her mom and he goes over to their dorm for breakfast

‘mark bls dont touch anything. get out of the kitchen and go watch tv or something’

always brings up his messed up eggs

‘gordon spitting facts tho’

whenever he feels too overworked or too pressured, sera has always made it a point to come over to their dorm and have a movie night with just the 2 of them with his favorite snacks and drinks

LONJIN

omg these two

sera is typically not mean but when renjun starts, she becomes ruthless

always calling out his fake personality

‘everyone, don’t believe him! he’s 2 faced!’

‘what are you even saying! you act like you’re so quirky and giggly but you yeeted jisung into the wall last night!’

‘YAH!’

so yea, they fight a lot

but its very playful and they know where that line is drawn and not cross it

he talks to her about space and aliens and she listens to every word bc renjun sounds so confident and happy whenever he talks about that stuff

they’re actually 10 days apart but sera acts like she’s 10 years older than him

‘IS THAT HOW YOU TALK TO SOMEONE OLDER?!’

‘okay, granny’

always in awe whenever renjun draws and paints and she really likes seeing him in his element

unbeknowst to her, he actually draws her a lot

wants to frame all of his work 

they go out to the roof and stargaze

he steals her airpods just to watch her go crazy

once hid her phone in the fridge

lives for his vocals

cannot believe how much he’s grown from chewing gum era to now

her heart strings were tugged when he cried in dnyl

renjun always says that he wishes sera was born as his little sister bc they act like they’re siblings

EYESMILE PRINCE

hmm

so their is kinda complicated

sera’s closest to him than all the members bc 1, he was her first friend and 2, he has cats

before, when they still went to school, her and jeno always went together

yes, jaemin and jeno and her went together in the beginning

but jaemin was in the hospital and recovering so it just became them 2

also, she goes to visit his parents so she can see his cats

this results to his parents and older sister adoring her

‘bongsik, nal, and seol are my kids’ - lee sera, 00 line vlive

she always craves for attention and when it isnt given bc he’s too busy playing, she just walks into his room and sits on his lap while he plays

tries to get his attention by saying stuff but he teases her by acting like she aint there

‘fine, i’ll go to jaemin’

jeno wasnt supposed to be blonde for the comeback but they were just messing around and next thing they knew, jeno’s tips were bleach blonde

when shes on that,,,, time,,,,, hes the only one in the dorm she listens to

not even johnny, who’s practically her father

collabs with her mukbang show and jsmr

he mentions her like at least once whenever he has lives that she’s not in

steals his glasses all the time just to watch him wander around with this confused adorable face

hugs are so cute w these two and czennies see them hugging in videos and she can barely reach his shoulder 

forehead kisses and sweater paws for daysss

NANA

drop dead gorgeous boy

shes not safe from jaemin’s affections

*cue jeno glaring at him for stealing her*

we all know how much he loves the members and whenever sera breathes, he busts his uwus

takes so many pictures of her

sera buys him lots of lip balms and carmex but he always forgets to put them on

sera hates peaches but she buys him peach flavored sweets whenever she sees them

‘NANA!!’

sera is also an attention whore so she always runs to him and wraps her arms around him and he squeals by how cute she is

bought him an expensive camera for his birthday

has a polaroid picture of him in her clear phone case

actually, her phone background is an old picture of predebut sera, jeno, and jaemin

one of the rare moments where she cried was when she found out that jaemin wouldnt be in a few comebacks bc he was sick

kept visiting him and jaemin cannot repay her enough

the dorm is full of ryan and winnie plushies from the sofa, a tiny winnie plush on the corner of the island counter, and their bedrooms

sera is the one who always throws away the his satanic drink even though it’s still full

‘yah, you need to think about your health and if it your body is tired, dont fight it by trying to drink these to keep your energy’

sleepovers with them are often and sometimes found sleeping on the spare bed in her room

FULL SUN

our big babie

oh boi when he got hurt

sera called him twice a day, one in the morning and one at night, just to check if it’s still hurting and making sure he’s resting

forever remembers when he dressed up as a girl 

‘you see, i’m not the only girl member. dongsuk is just on hiatus right now’

his name on her phone is ‘man-child’

when he went on tour with 127, she really missed him

like she missed him so much that she kept posting on instagram for him to hurry back home

still mad that he moved dorms to be with the older members

when sera got sick, she made him sing ‘no longer’ to her like a lullaby

when he asks sera to do something for him, usually she says no because he asks her to do ridiculous things but his aegyo always convinces her

thinks his color amblyopia is so fascinating and adds more into the unique traits he has

another attention giver and she loves hugging him because he gives really warm hugs

one time, jeno and sera had a fight and it got so bad that hyuck had to be called and he was the only one who got to talk some sense in sera to talk to jeno

but the legendary markhyuck summer fight was resolved because sera yelled at them and cried since they are best friends and they shouldnt be like that to each other

they made up since ‘wow sera cried’ and ‘the members are ready to beat us up if we continue this’

and by members, like all members, including the older ones

sera knows how much being the moodmaker title burdens him so she tries to ease that burden by talking to him just the two of them

DOLPHIN CHILD

look how adorable he is UWU

he is 1/2 of sera’s sons

like she’s whipped for him and jisung and he knows it too

‘noona~’

‘yes, i will give you the world, the stars, and the moon’

thinks his laugh is endearing and is sad that it isnt that high-pitched anymore since his voice got a little deeper

cannot believe how much he’s grown too

when he speaks in chinese, sera thinks its the cutest thing 

‘can we give his scalp some rest? its not healthy for the boy’

trust fund babies

you know how chenle has 3 airpods?

sera went through 4 phones since she keeps losing or breaking it

dont ask how bc shes as clumsy as namjoon

had this phase where he wouldn’t stop back-hugging his noona and she just left it alone

always buys him snacks and cooks him a lot of food bc she thinks he’s too skinny and wants him to be healthy and gain some fat on those cheeks again

on their break, she went to china with jisung and her lock screen is a picture of her and chenle holding his nephew

triggered her baby fever

czennies ship them but he makes it clear she’s the older sister he’s never had

nct dream took a vacation to her hometown and she bought them basketball tickets so chenle could see his idol

his mom practically adopted her since she goes over to his apartment all the time whenever the others are getting too much for her

she misses him so much its not even funny

JISUNG PWARK

our maknae is growing up :(

sera had the whole family sit and watch the first episode of dancing high

so proud of her boy

she called him during the show and it was shown and heard about her telling him to take care of himself and to not be too hard on his body and that she’s waiting for him at home

as the youngest member overall, sera babies him the most

he obvs takes advantage of it and she used to cuddle him to sleep when he was younger bc he had a hard time sleeping

again, cooks for him a lot since he’s a growing boy and making sure he takes vitamins and drinks water and limit sugary things

she calls his mom to give him updates about her son

remember his phone that he used until it actually died?

sera actually bought him a new one before that happened and just casually gave it to him

‘i know this was going to happen so i just took care of it. i have to take care of you, jisung-ah’

hypes him up whenever he dances bc wow this boy is actually talented

doesnt really like skinship but he tolerates it when she holds his hands bc theyre so much bigger than hers

one day just woke up and she got so confused when jisung grew up

‘did you grow in your sleep?’

‘n-no?’

loves his awkward nature and she keeps saying how adorable he is and cute he is whenever he acts cool

god, she’s just so whipped for him

but tbh, who isn’t?

aaaahhhhhh i cannot believe our wish came true and they became a fixed unit and we really getting a comeback and an mv in the 29th!!!

[sunflowerbi]

Hey! I absolutely love your blog and your work. Idk if you take request but idk who to ask lol. Would you be open to writing something about how Villanelle learnt to cook? If you can make it sappy and with Eve in it obv, even better!

This is so nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh my god. anyway i absolutely take requests, and this was lovely to write. hopefully it’s in the realm of what you wanted? It’s on ao3 too (link’s in my pinned post) hope you like it!!

           Villanelle had a sorted history with food. As a young child it was only a resource, something she needed to survive and never had enough of. She still remembered digging through the kitchen when her mother wasn’t home, desperately looking for anything she might not notice disappearing. It was something to be guarded, occasionally stolen, never shared. She hated food, hated her reliance on it, the way it controlled her. She’d spent plenty of nights unable to sleep for the gnawing pain in her stomach. She couldn’t do much with food then, at most she’d been able to heat things that needed it and pour salt on it to cover the taste. She never cooked anything, not really. She had fleeting memories of watching her father cook, but they were blurred, made her feel a mixture of sadness and comfort she mostly avoided. Between her mother and the orphanage, she spent most of her time trying to ignore her way she dizzied when she stood, her body demanding food she couldn’t provide.

In prison she worried less about where her food came from, sure, but she hated it just as much. Food kept her alive, and it always tasted like shit. She wasn’t fighting for enough food to live, but still would have rather not bothered with it at all. She was eventually assigned to the kitchen, which was better than scrubbing toilets, but peeling potatoes did very little to improve her opinion of food. It was a dirty kitchen where they made shitty food, and nothing ever changed. She peeled potatoes, then she cooked meat, then she mashed potatoes. She wasn’t allowed to cut anything, something about violent tendencies.

It wasn’t until much later that Villanelle learned to love food. When she got paid by the twelve for the first time, she went to the most expensive restaurant she could find and ordered the most expensive meal. She went to the cheapest place too, ordered food for a dollar and ate it. Food was a luxury she refused to deny herself, now. If she saw food she wanted, she’d buy it. More importantly, she taught herself to cook. She decided she wouldn’t rely on anyone else to provide food for her, she would fill her own stomach. She slept with a few chefs, dug through their things while they were asleep. She copied recipes, stole fancy tools they left lying around, found out what spices they used, ordered them from around the world.

She found independence in cooking, being able to make something solid for herself. She would spend free days picking out the most complicated recipes and perfecting them, hours just figuring out the perfect balance of spices. It staved off the overwhelming boredom she so often found herself drowning in, gave her something to focus on. Cooking created a moment where nothing else was happening in her own universe, she moved around the kitchen with frenzied grace, entirely wrapped in her movements.

The first time she cooked for someone else, she cooked for Konstantin, made him one of his favorite meals. He told her it was fine, but she didn’t miss the way he smiled as he ate, didn’t even try to reject her offer to send some home with him. (She saw him eat it in his car.) She cooked for him occasionally, after making him admit that her food was wonderful. She demanded places to stay with kitchens she could at least cook in a little everywhere she went, something to busy her mind while she waited for her next assignment.

The first time she cooked for Eve broke her open. Spaghetti, a nod to dreams from times past. As she dropped fresh pasta into the pot, she felt tears begin to form. She was overwhelmed by the sudden softness of it all, something she knew she didn’t deserve but was far too selfish to ever give away. Here was Eve, eagerly awaiting food she was cooking. Cooking was, in the end, a way to give yourself to someone, and she had never wanted so desperately to give someone all of herself.

“Villanelle? What’s wrong?” Eve was suddenly wrapped around her, dropping her chin onto Villanelle’s shoulder.

“Nothing. I do not think I deserve you, darling Eve, but I get to give you this spaghetti, and I want to give you everything. I want to give you all of me and all of the world. You deserve it.” It was a quiet confession, Eve was surprised she could even hear it, but she relished in it just the same.

“Maybe you don’t deserve me, maybe I don’t deserve you. I’m not sure I give a damn what we deserve, honestly. I love you, sweetheart, more than I ever thought I could love a person. So, if you don’t deserve me, that’s a problem for the universe. I want you, and hell if I’m going to let anything change that.”

Villanelle turned, pressing a gentle kiss against Eve’s lips. “You are my everything. Now find some plates, you’re going to make me overcook the pasta.” This time, a smack on the ass as Eve walked away.

“That was the best spaghetti I’ve ever eaten, babe.” Eve smiled, leaning back in her chair.

“It’s because I am the best, obviously.” Villanelle stood up, reaching her hand out for Eve to take. “Let’s dance, then, my love.”

“I can’t believe you tried to convince me you didn’t like to dance.”

“I had never danced with you; I did not realize how wonderful it could be.”

“Thank you for cooking tonight, I loved watching you make your way around the kitchen. You looked like you’d been cooking in there forever.”

“I hope I will be.”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

[psalloacappella]

Sirens - Ch 4

Title: Sirens Pairing: SasuSaku obv Chapter:  IV / Ao3 | FF Additional Details: AU verse; Sakura isn’t here to be saved, but she also has a lot of secrets; Sasuke has daddy issues; always hot mess express

.

.

“I assumed you would be picking me up from a station one day,” he says. Hates himself for the heat in his face that seems to crop up only in conversation with her.

With a wry smile, she responds, “So we’re both very lucky little delinquents.”

.

.

On the 28th day after they’ve met, she calls him from a police station.

On an unassuming Friday evening in which the bar is quite busy and all three of them are running ragged — well, Shikamaru is in the back office plodding through routine tasks even though Sasuke bestows his signature, smoldering, get your smoking lazy ass in the front look, pointed and serious, which does nothing to ward off the women lingering and coiling like clingy plant tendrils, hoping for a second of his time. By mere virtue of his pretty face, he’s left to the night wolves.

Naruto, sidetracked and distracted from bartending by a loquacious brunette with hair in two buns and blunt-cut bangs, hears it first.

Completing her drink full of gin as sharp as the flashy knives she’s rolled in with, he places an orange peel in it with a flourish and gives her a nervous, dangling half-smile. Cute, but her hobby is definitely one for someone more adventurous and decidedly not for him. Still, her grin suggests a gentler side and as he slides the cocktail to her, he reflects perhaps it’s something he can overlook.

“Thanks,” she says. “And keep it open; my friends and I just arrived.”

“No problem,” he responds, preparing to move on to the next.

“Ah, one thing . . .” Her eyes, a color in between hazy shades of silver and hazel, beckon him closer. Naruto inclines his head and leans in to hear her against the noise.

“I have to ask, who is he?”

Nods her chin at Sasuke, who hands off the next drink with the most minute, fleeting smile he can bestow, more of a movement of the head than any actual friendliness. There’s always an easy grace about him and frankly, paired with his looks, it’s infuriating to Naruto how a person can be given such tall, dark, and handsome sexuality and miserably fail to wield it.

A quiet chuckle, and he whispers, “A bastard, honestly.”

Interpreting it as a joke, she giggles.

“Seriously, he’s just complicated. You’re welcome to try, though.”

Lifting the cocktail and pinning a napkin to the perspiring glass with her fingernails, she winks and disappears into the crowd.

Naruto then hears what he thought he had before but shook off as his imagination — the ringing of a phone sounding not like the stock default tone of a mobile but the staid ring of importance, belonging to a lawyer’s desk or doctor’s office. Not the one in his pocket, but the one on the wall that hardly ever makes a sound and overall, hasn’t been used in any useful capacity since a month ago.

It rings longer than it should; he wonders if they have voicemail. That’s definitely a Sasuke question. He’s drawn to the unusual event and though he’s unable to put a finger on it, there’s an air of happenstance and fate. Put that way, it sounds like he’s crazy or clairvoyant.

Frowning, he puts up a finger to the next patron crowding the bar and says, “Be right with ya.”

Sasuke of course hears it too, though he’s currently drowning in a deluge of women who likely already have drinks in their hands but are eager to talk to him longer than necessary. If the bland expressions of disinterest, slivers between each interaction, aren’t enough indication, perhaps the kind but firm manner in which he ignores the flirting and lingering touches as they connect to exchange liquor and money is; the inquiries glossed with a breezy veneer but trying to gain a foothold on what he considers inappropriate topics and details. Glaring at Naruto over his shoulder, who’s treating this unanticipated phone call with more solemnity than he’s ever offered anything else in his life, he savagely wishes he had picked it up instead if only to get away.

They meet one another’s eyes. He’s known him long enough that it betrays its importance.

Extricating himself from a woman with blue hair and a sparkling silver chin labret, he leans in close and waits for details. Naruto covers the receiver and says, “It’s her. Your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my—”

“Maybe go to the office. Sounds important.”

A sensation in his gut, dripping dread. “Transfer it,” he says impatiently.

“Ah, I don’t think I— oh!” Naruto puts the phone back to his ear, listening to Sakura speak. Realizing it’s upside-down, he fumbles it. Nodding, he says, “Sure, he’s here. Jus’ let me . . .”

Jabbing a button on it, triumphant, he’s energetic and proud like a puppy as he slaps the phone back onto the wall with gusto. Grins.

A beat. Another.

“You fucking idiot,” he snaps, yanking it back off the wall. Pointing at the correct button, Sasuke’s eyes dance with what looks like the casual threat of homicide. Slams it back so hard his friend flinches. “If you hang up on her again—”

The ring echoes in stark contrast to his fury, and he snatches it up as Naruto opens his mouth. “Yes?”

“Not how your mom taught you to answer a phone,” Naruto whispers, shaking his head. Pivoting to show him an irritated shoulder, it’s the closest equivalent to a fuck off that Sasuke can give in full view of the bar. He strains to hear her over the din.

And then, there she is sounding so close. Echoes of the way her whispers curl and settle in his ear when she slips out of his bed, reverberating in the silent days that follow when she disappears on a schedule all her own, known only to one. Twenty-eight days can caricature a lifetime, a narrative he can clearly see in his mind’s eye, even if she’s weaving in and out of his life and their reality for most of it. It doesn’t bother him so much as long as she returns.

The strain of her lovely voice is noticeable, tensed twine. The way people speak in crowded rooms on terse topics and desperately carve a bubble of personal space for private, intimate words.

“I’m always speaking to you in unconventional ways. Always odd and in the dead of night.” Humor painted over the tightness of her vocal cords and wavering at the end, the tremolo of an instrument approaching repose.

“Are you all right?” Sasuke brings the receiver closer. No sounds from others on her end, just a gloomy quiet and possibly shuffling paper.

“Sure,” she says, laughing a little. A nervous skittering. “I always end up in police stations on my off nights.”

The beat that follows skips, stalls, as if there’s a space ballooning between each begging to be filled.

“Which one? I’m coming.”

“Sasuke—”

“Are you hurt?” The way he asks this is a gentleness defying his usual prickliness, so soft. Enough that Naruto glances at him over his shoulder as he manages the throng, piqued by the whispers.

“No! No, not really. I’m not sure what’s going on. They brought me here and I was sure I’d be arrested—”

“Sakura—”

“—but I don’t think so. No handcuffs, no fingerprinting. But this officer’s definitely not sure what to do with me.”

“Don’t talk to them. Just wait.”

Before she can protest, he hangs up abruptly. To Naruto: “I have to go. She needs help.”

“Is she okay?” Naruto sends another customer off, trying to hide his worried eyes. A mark of the short catalysts required for the fascinating chemistry of bonding, of friendship. She becomes a fixture for two wandering men with the inevitably and grace of astronomic orbits crossing paths.

“Police station,” he mutters.

Sasuke heads for the back office, not seeing Naruto’s eyes wilt even more as he goes.

Whipping open the door, he ignores the fact that Shikamaru was absolutely asleep a moment before all over a scattering of ledgers and rouses him with his classic abrasion. “Get out front. I need to handle something.” To drive home the point, pulls his jacket off the hook and swings it on quickly.

“Ah, right,” Shikamaru rasps, rubbing the indented depressions and ink off his face. “Emergency?”

“Sort of,” Sasuke mumbles. Reaches into his jacket pocket and casts about, in his mind, on who he can ask to dig into a situation that hasn’t yet yielded an arrest.

He always knows someone, though. The curse of the name.

“It’s that girl, isn’t it?”

Sasuke surveys him from the threshold, already aiming to leave. He wonders what he must look like when he thinks of her, when she’s in a room and has her beautiful hands on him, because the expression Shikamaru’s giving him is inscrutable and poignant all in one. She has the uncanny ability to splay his heart as a cadaver, pinned and primed for inspection. And it always feels that everyone understands something beyond him.

“Go,” Shikamaru says. “We’re here too, if you need us.”

He nods in response, and doesn’t bother with the zipper as he jogs down the hall to swing open the back door and depart into the night.

.

.

.

A well-placed phone call later, he’s at the police station front desk in an unfamiliar trendy neighborhood, asking after a girl with pink hair whose last name he doesn’t have.

“Pink, you said?” An austere expression creeps into the desk manager’s brows, sinks into her jowls; sharpness in her eyes. Clearly regarding him, and this, as ludicrous.

“Probably fake,” he volunteers. “She was brought in a couple hours ago.”

“‘Probably fake,’” the woman echoes, setting down her pen.

Anxiety flits about in his chest, a moth stuck in a dangerous, fated tryst with lamplight.

A door opens to the right of the front desk and an officer leans over the threshold. Serious and composed in contrast, badges gleaming. “Uchiha Sasuke?”

“Yes.” It’s a reflex, something about the way he speaks reminding him of another imposing, authoritarian presence that still lingers at the edge of his nightmares. Never quite sure if he’s relieved or regretful that he’s gone. Growing up, everything was suffused with it, the power and the name.

“She’s back here. Oh, he’s with me, no need for that,” he says to the woman. Waves a hand, blithe, sweeping away the very notion of procedure.

Sasuke follows him down a hallway expecting to be taken to holding cells, and the creeping familiar feeling settles into his shoulders. Instead, the officer sighs, yawns. They stop outside of a closed office door.

“Listen, this Sakura, your girlfriend? She’s fine. I’m apt to believe what happened, but the scene got — well, it was disorderly, let’s say that. We talked a little and the little lady she was defending is with her, too. Once she mentioned your name, well,” and here he puts what’s intended as a fatherly hand on Sasuke’s shoulder, who glances at it surreptitiously, “I knew and respected your father. Head of your family, very helpful to us over the years.”

Unable to express the fleeting, frenzied analysis that takes place as he’s speaking, the myriad implications, defending someone, little lady, girlfriend, my father, helpful, and the swift undercurrent of distaste at the remembrance of his family name, how his father was a pillar rather than any sort of parent or individual, and how reputation always came first:  Sasuke nods a few times and swallows everything he wants to say, instead responding, “I . . . appreciate this.”

Nodding once, satisfied presumably at staying in a dead man’s good graces by way of assisting his son, he smiles broadly. Such a contrast to the way his father ever did, who perpetually seemed sour. Still, many men can commandeer space whether with a jovial smile or the most straightforward intimidation.

They both startle as the door clicks open:  Sakura in the left chair and a woman with long, luscious dark hair on the right. They exist as another illustration of contrasts — hair colors on opposite sides of spectrums saturating the drab, taupe-beige space, one’s eyes green and sharp and the other’s, soft and mottled, cream.

There’s a spark of recognition when he glances at the unknown girl, a feminine personage and assumed offspring of a family he’s met before, perhaps as a child. Now though, nothing resonates. Instead he watches Sakura, who tucks a strand of pink hair behind her ear and meets his eyes, lips tugging into a smile despite the circumstances.

Does she know she could get away with anything with a face like that? Sasuke’s heart skips uncomfortably, the sensation of missing a step in some stairs.

When she sits up from the chair and sways, it’s the other woman who catches her first. By the forearm, and with a butterfly-delicate touch.

“Hah, I forgot,” Sakura mutters, more to herself than them. With a weak grin at her companion, she explains, “My ankle.”

“What happened to you?” Sasuke asks. Frowning, he passes the pad of his thumb across her cheek to sweep away what he assumes is cosmetic. It smears and fades but stubbornly stays.

And he knows that color more than he’s ever wanted to.

Sakura winces. “You should see the other guy.”

“I can explain,” the officer offers. Taking a seat behind his desk with another dismal yawn, Sasuke stands behind Sakura’s chair. Heat dashes across the back of his neck in irritation, confusion; she uses his arm as leverage to lower herself into the chair, intensifying the cloying atmosphere. The other woman keeps her head down, bowed. A familiar gesture.

“The ladies here were at a popular lounge downtown, separately. From their statements, they arrived at different times and did not know one another before tonight.” Pausing, his eyes sweep between the two, offering space for contradiction or comment. He continues. “Neither were unreasonably intoxicated. Over the course of the night, miss Hyuuga here,” and that name sparks something in Sasuke’s mind, neurons seeking details, “was dealing with the unwanted attentions of an intoxicated young man. At some point, miss . . . oh, the ink is smudged. Sakura, here, approached her,” here he flips an upturned palm to indicate her —

“Hinata,” she says quietly, inclining her head to Sasuke.

“— concerned for her well-being around this man. He apparently had friends as well, and the situation escalated to alleged harassment. Heated words were exchanged, bystanders becoming involved, and unfortunately it progressed to this man grabbing miss Hyuuga, and, well—”

“He received a face full of gimlet,” Sakura interrupts, folding her arms. “And then my fist.”

“You punched him?” Sharp, inquiring, but bewildered.

“No, with a palm to the nose. I didn’t want a broken hand.”

Sasuke’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. The officer winces and glances at Sasuke, under the assumption perhaps that he’s already aware of her tart retorts and lives lovingly with them.

There’s a pause, and Hinata yearns to fill the gap. “If she hadn’t been there to intervene, I don’t know how it would have gone. I truly, really appreciate what she did, even if it was, ah, unorthodox?” She smiles at Sakura, then the officer, and finally Sasuke. “Her form is quite good,” she adds, blushing furiously.

“Look, I don’t think we’re in the business of charging anyone tonight.” The officer has both palms up now in a show of calm.

“I asked you before, I’m not sure why you’re just letting me go,” Sakura says, sounding accusing. Folds her arms across her chest. “I understand why I’m here. I don’t know if that’s right, for nothing to be written up.”

“There’s much to be said for defense.” The tiniest air of condescending patience, a parent refusing to elaborate for a child. Redirecting his attention, he says to Hinata, “Your father will be here soon.”

The way Hinata bows her head again, bent as grass in the wind as if ready to bear difficulty, resonates with Sasuke deeply. A father whose existence was imposing and a relationship fraught with the inability to measure up.

Sakura pulls her phone out of her shimmering shirt with two fingers, plucking it from the magical ether with a certain polite grace in front of the men, and hands it to the woman next to her. Blushing, Hinata fumbles with the latch on a small clutch in her haste to exchange numbers.

Upon finishing, Sakura asks if there’s anything for her to sign.

“No no,” he says, again with that wave. A brushing away of rules and regulations by the mere implication of his authority. “Let your boyfriend take you home, rest that ankle.”

Pink eyebrows could brush the ceiling with how high they rise; Hinata steals a glance but doesn’t make a sound. As if relenting to the chain of events, the circumstances weaving far from the controlled loom of her own hands, Sakura’s shoulders sag and accepting Sasuke’s arm plays out as the next movement in a piece of music, an obvious outcome.

They stand apart on the sidewalk:  Him in all black from the work he hastily left, her in a shimmering shirt, barefoot, sandals in her hand. The bruised knot on her ankle matches the navy of her skirt. For a few moments, they don’t speak.

She doesn’t cry, doesn’t unravel, simply stands on the chilled sidewalk and idly swings her fingers with the sandal straps woven in them in time to an unheard rhythm. Noticing her shivering, his coat becomes hers once more, draped over her shoulders and covering the spatters of red and an abundance of glitter inherited from the lounge that will take days to erase, months to lose in the fibers of his carpet.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she says softly. “Got me off the hook.”

“I didn’t.”

A noise of disbelief, settling in the throat. Constrained.

“He said he knew and respected my father. That happens often.”

Musing on this, she turns and raises her eyes to his. “It must be interesting, to have people grant that to you wherever you go.”

She’s quite short without her shoes. Wilting and exhausted, withdrawing in a way that could leave her as mere wisps as clouds on a cold night.. Even in this tension and the aftermath of another surreal chapter in a chaotic narrative, the urge to sweep glitter off her cheeks and lift her, carrying her off to another planet, is strong and vivid.

“I assumed you would be picking me up from a station one day,” he says. Hates himself for the heat in his face that seems to crop up only in conversation with her.

With a wry smile, she responds, “So we’re both very lucky little delinquents.”

But her face falls, humor dissipating. When she falls against him, only then do her fears take shape between them. “This is why I leave.” Arms around him and fingers in the fabric of his shirt to stay upright. “Because strange things always happen and it always feels like I can’t stop any of it. Like fate.”

Taking on her weight, his fingers find strands of her hair dancing aloft from the wind; they slip through like silk. When he speaks, it’s a quiet murmur. “Sounds like that girl needed your help.”

“Both of them made it sound much more noble than it was.”

Untangling from him, she passes the back of her hand over her eyes, green and glimmering even in the wan, washed out glow of streetlights. Continues, letting weight off her bruised ankle. “The truth is, I was dancing and tipsy and full of false bravado, and spoiling for a fight. He just happened to trip into my orbit, stupidly bothering someone in front of me. The perfect storm of circumstances.”

Following the movements of her lips, an ache radiating in his chest; how can she tell him not to fall in love with her?

“Isn’t that everything?”

His words seem to take the wind out of her sails. Breath stolen, strength gone. She concedes his point with a small smile and nothing more.

Wincing as she readjusts her weight, he’s about to tell her he’ll find a car when she steps forward to the curb, albeit wobbly, and firmly thrusts an arm out, reaching into the blank night. Leaving him always wondering on her earthly origins as she summons one from the dead street with the enchantment of nothing other than her will.

They fall in against the seats, drunk on nothing but novelty.

As she pulls him close by his lapels and dips her tongue into his mouth

— skin humming and warm, as if she’s still moving and undulating underneath hot lounge lights; music in her bones, the echoes of beats hours before; a tang of tartness and botanics, the tastes on her lips that she shares with his; the sharp inhale that tumbles out when she pulls away and nips his bottom lip —

he’s apt to wonder which cabs they haven’t kissed in yet.

.

.

.

Damp locks fanned beneath her head, pink waves splayed wide as if dropped from above with the luck to land and lie tenderly in a field, cradled by earth. But it’s just her on the couch, chin crushed to her chest and face partially obscured, half of it pressed into the cushion as if burrowing for sleep.

“So I know I’ve asked you for enough already.”

It’s a tentative beginning, leaving a question unasked. Sasuke moves his thumb in light and repetitive movements against her ankle, skimming the fabric of the wrapping. She opens one jade eye, brilliant even in the twilight. He makes some noise of assent, and she continues.

“I have this work event,” she says. “It’s stupid, really, but I think it’s somewhat of a formal thing. I tried to get out of it, I did, but one evening the owner of the company — the actual company, not the manager of our subsidiary media branch or whatever — was around listening to my show and he spoke to me afterward.” She frowns, the expression of a sour conversation in her mind. “Anyway, he strongly implied it was an event that you wear something nice, and bring someone with. All above my usual social standing.

She pauses to blow a strand of hair from her face, then looks askance, eyes concentrating hard on the cushion.

“I need someone who’s good at these things. Navigating events like this, all those important people with wealth and to know what they’re actually saying, not just what comes out of their mouths.”

Her meaning is plain: Who better than you?

Not speaking just yet, he instead places a hand on her thigh; hours later her skin still hums, pliant and warm and dashed with glitter missed from her wash.

She shifts beneath his touch, nudging his fingers in an unconscious request. Staring at him fully with open eyes which survey each atom of his face in incisive and keen patterns, memorizing. The sensation, again, of the precipice and the twinge in his stomach and swift wind in his ears, obscuring hearing, drowning out any rational thought. Testing the notion, his hand skims the hem of her skirt; the tug of her lips which stifles a sharp inhale isn’t enough to go on, but the way her eyes brighten as he maneuvers her body easily, considerately, and he’s feeling like the desired target at the barrel end of a poised rifle —

she, eager and him, obsessed.

She trembles like aftershocks — hips caged in by his arms and his handsome chin so close and the fleeting thought of yanking him by his beautiful dark hair and making a mess of that gorgeous face is only to be postponed for another thirty seconds, maybe.

“So,” she exhales, “Will you be my date?”

He responds simply, “Yes.”

An amused smile on her face, eyes alight. “Sometimes, you’re a man of few words.”

Shifting again, her hips sinking into a softer dip in the cushion with a little satisfied sigh. Prompting him to continue the charged venture between her thighs, where his fingers from before are replaced by his lips and the catch of air in her throat is enough to rouse him. Vulnerable things, stupid things, rise to his lips and he swallows them whole, and she senses them; he’s defenseless enough to cough them into her waiting, shaking hands. Instead he whispers against the hot skin of her thigh:

“Do you trust me?”

Sakura reflects it’s a trite question to ask, much less to answer, with him between her legs. Fingers plucking at the edge of her skirt, she says, “Yes.”

And the rest is a whisper lost in her gasp, because despite her caution she’s a failure at any rational thought like this, so dizzy and losing the concept of what’s real and what’s bliss, and it’s possible it was never voiced at all.

But only just.

.

.

.

Bringing him to life with her soft hands on each side of his face and the fruity scent of her shampoo, she whispers, “I’m starving.”

On the floor, both sprawled out on his luxuriant living room rug, verdant like lush jungle and comfortable enough to serve as the night’s chaise. Neither’s slept for much time, the sun’s aurora crowning the horizon with a prophetic red crescent. Again, waking up next to her has the unmooring sensation of devastation and they’re scattered as debris.

They pull the previous night together in languid movements:  Refolding blankets, resetting pillows. Quick face rinses. She limps around on her own despite his quiet protests, intent on breakfast — food this time.

“I’m okay,” she laughs, running her hands over counters and underneath couch cushions. Likely her phone.

Sasuke finds it facedown on the floor, and flips it over. Immediately it lights up and reveals messages upon messages, and as another comes in they flash again, regroup as they hit a limit. Blinding in the dark. All of them from the same number, unsaved, tender and worried and beseeching in a way that doesn’t strike him as a lover and his heart rate falls but the way Naruto has messaged him after disappearing without preamble in a seedy bar or out a back alley, intent on a scuffle with someone to make him feel alive. A best friend who’s rescued another one from numerous poor decisions and choices when they’re feeling low like a layer beneath dirt.

The sound of her nails clicking against the case and scraping his skin startles him as it’s snatched from his hands; it’s a rough motion, jarring. Eyes jejune and dismayed. Emotional whiplash from the previous second as she swallows hard and clutches it to her chest and a sense of an animal cornered.

“Don’t,” she hisses.

“Sakura—”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Are you all right?”

Sliding it into her pocket, she pivots away; he takes her forearm and she shakes him off with the same ferocity with which she usually pulls him close. “Fine.”

“Would you be honest if you weren’t?”

Lips twitching, a response he can see her holding in. Instead, she swings her purse onto her shoulder in a wide arc that keeps him at arm’s length and makes an attempt to limp out the door with her chin high. She’s moving too fast on that sprain and he knows that she knows, pre-med and all, (and from the way she’s discussed it, close to finishing.)

He heads out the front door after her, snatching up his jacket and keys as he goes.

Frustration mounts as she punches the door close button with a loud smack so he has to take the next one. Head spinning at the shift in it all and the horrible weariness that surfaced in her eyes; and everyone has something like that, the trigger to the shutdown and a signal to bar the doors. Taps his foot impatiently at the elevator ride that seems to last for years.

Lobby, out the doors. She’s crossing the street against the lights, and he calls after her.

“Sakura!”

“Leave me alone!”

Bewildered, he plunges forward into the crosswalk—

The screech and hiss and smell of overworked brake pads; at the loud thumping sound Sakura pivots with a small scream mingling with cursing and raised voices—

Sasuke waves the driver’s screaming and his near-fatal experience away with the same annoyance of flicking away an insect, and it seems to bring him to an aggressive and lethal sort of calm. Something in his shoulders and jaw that lifts him, comprises control. And now she’s loath to move, feeling rooted to the spot by his glimmering dark eyes and the aberrant brush with catastrophe that intertwines their souls delicate as lace. Thinking perhaps he can survive even me, knowing as he advances that she could fall into his arms and he would break bones and move the world to remain in her space; he would lay it all at her feet.

Raises a hand to him, reaching as he safely makes it onto the sidewalk—

A thin arm causes her to pull up short, a horizontal barrier swung firmly into her path. Stumbling a little, she follows the long blonde hair with her eyes and drinks in the stance of this woman with her back to her.

Something breaks, a ballpoint hammer to a vulnerable crack in her decrepit heart.

“You better back off!” A voice Sakura knows in every fiber of her being, rattling her bones. Sasuke stops in his tracks at the sight of this blonde woman in his path, and shows his palms in conciliation and confusion.

With a toss of her hair, the woman turns to Sakura and holds her at arm’s length like she’s sprung from the grave, reborn and she’s unable to believe it. Fingering her long hair and her eyes so blue, ocean and skies, beg for recognition. “It’s me. It’s Ino!”

Mouth falling open, Ino takes her lack of response as shock and shakes her head in a rapid motion, back and forth. “Shit, Sakura. I’ve been looking — I found you.” Laughs in a light trailing way, stunned. Voice revealing a lightheadedness, a lovely giddiness.

Without warning she tackles her in a violent hug, the vehement and frenzied embrace of someone whose whole of her soul was lost and then found. Fingers clutching at hair and fabric and then Sakura obliges, relents and their behavior’s the same, scrabbling and wavering voices.

Sasuke watches as Sakura lets her chin rest, heavy and weary, on Ino’s shoulder. The reunification of two who have traveled on significant roads alongside one another, the mortar and brick of what he recognizes as found family.

Tears cutting salty paths down Sakura’s cheeks as Ino says again,

“I found you.”

[yutaya]

Every now and then I’m like “tua sense8 au!” because, you know, they were all born at the exact same second, but like - I mean, look, I LOVE the sense8 premise of them being all over the world and then suddenly being connected and trying to navigate this scary new reality - but, if we’re talking about the Hargreeves - I kind of - don’t want them to lose all their history as siblings and such?

SO what if when Reggie went out collecting babies he actually specifically picked up a cluster? Cluster can be 7 instead of 8, no biggie, it’s an AU. I started thinking about all the “miracle babies” being sensates in this way - all they say is that 43 women gave birth, not that there were 43 babies, so there could have been more and been some twins or triplets or something... ah, but i guess that would mess with the same second of birth thing.... or since we’re going non-eight au anyway the clusters could be different amounts too - like some of the clusters could be as low as three people, and there could be one that has more than seven people... 

Reggie of course doesn’t tell his children about this extra power yet, because you don’t want your test subjects to KNOW the details of the experiment..... He still studies them with it in mind, looks for hints of it in their brainwaves and at their interactions with each other for hints of a deeper connection than just being raised as siblings...

OH wait I just remembered that the sensate powers include being able to see other sensates they’ve locked eyes with even before activating. Ok let’s pretend that doesn’t work the same in this au, maybe? Not until they activate? Or only with their cluster and not others? Or they can still do it with other sensates but not with each other until they activate? But since the other sensates in the world are basically just the other 43 that doesn’t happen often.... oh, no, how would they activate in the first place then? I guess there would have been other birthing events after all? Hmmmm seems complicated....

Maybe we go a different route and Reggie actually was suppressing their connection somehow, like they had too many incidents when they were little that were leading them to slip out from his control so he decided to put a stop to that part of it? And then once he dies it starts to come back? Cause he was doing... something? It could easily even tie in to his whole “now you’ll be brought back together as a team” thing. Five and Ben got out of it when they left/died but since Five was away from all of them obv they still would notice nothing and Ben I guess since the living siblings were still blocked they wouldn’t notice.. God, idk, I’m just thinking that it’s like Ben is constantly travelling with Klaus... did he project before he died? No, no, this is getting too complicated for down the line when they all know, then, so let’s stick with canon - ghost!Ben.

ANYWAY the point is, I want the sibs to suddenly be able to pop in on each other any time, any day, and help each other out in ~situations~ and at first be all confused when it starts like “Diego? What... are you doing at my rehearsal?” “Your rehearsal? What are YOU doing in my CAR?”

Everyone’s like “jesus christ, new powers, really? We’re grown adults and now we have to learn NEW POWERS?” Vanya and Klaus: HA! That’s how it FEELS!!

Oh man or if it started before the end of S1 Vanya could be like: oh my god.. is this... is this my power..... and then she’s kind of disappointed when she realizes they can all do it with each other too so it’s not HER power, but! It’s by definition a THEM power. Vanya is literally a part of this new thing with the rest of them.

Because they’re Hargreeves, they are literally psychically connected and yet STILL never have any idea what’s going on with each other. Sometimes they’ll just pop into intense situations like “What the fuck is happening?! Why are we fighting?! Who is THAT and WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING AT YOU!?!?”

“Klaus... what are you doing with those tools?” “Gonna help Allie with the body in her house!” “Why does Allison have a body in her house?!” “You know, I didn’t ask.” “*siiiigh* *pops over to Allison’s house* Where did that body come from?” “These guys just attacked us! I don’t know why!” “*4th person pops in* It’s one of the Swedes. They’ve been hunting us for a few days now.” “They WHAT?! Why wouldn’t you tell us this!?”

OH AND ALSO THEY DON’T DO THE ORGIES. The first time one of them started getting it on and the others popped in they all freaked the fuck out. These disaster siblings have never worked so hard at something as they did learning the ability to block each other from feeling it when they’re horny. Dance parties together? That’s fine. It’s just like old times, except now they don’t even have to be in the same house to all hear the music. Sex parties? Hell fucking no.

[avvidstarion]

For the album ask game... how about The Black Parade?

oh ABSOLUTELY. i LOVE you. this is all subject to change at the drop of the hat bc im wishy-washy and i love all of these songs anyway so

this got WAY too long so i am putting it under a readmore shhvkldlkdgjlkdsj

not including b-sides:

1. Teenagers- kind of a basic pick i know, BUT, in my defense, the song slaps. it’s such a fun song, especially when you’re singing it at the top of your lungs. the guitar part is super cool too- im trying to learn it rn but it’s a slow process bc im bad at guitar.

2. Mama- what can i say. it fucks. the old time-y feel, the harmonies/background vocals, the layers. the guitar goes so fucking hard. banging lyrics- “you should’ve raised a baby girl, i should have been a better son”??????? songs to be trans to.”but the shit that i’ve done with this fuck of a gun” is the kind of lyric that you can only properly convey if you’re screaming it at the top of your lungs. the whole ending is just. mind blowing

3. The End.- LISTEN!!!!!!!!! the end is WAY TOO FUCKING UNDERRATED!!!! oh my goddd i love it so much. i love it SO much. it’s such a perfect beginning to the song. the lyrics are great (”now come one, come all, to this tragic affair” if you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, you can find out first hand what it’s like to be me”, “another contusion, my funeral jag. here’s my resignation, i’ll serve it in drag. you’ve got front row seats to the penitence ball, when i grow up, i want to be NOTHING AT ALL!!! SAVE ME!!! GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!! SAVE ME!!! TOO YOUNG TO DIE, AND MY DEAR!!! IF YOU CAN HEAR ME JUST WALK AWAY AND TAKE ME!!). the bit with the snapping and the ooooohs is fun too. such a good song, it could honestly be 1 or 2 but my ranking system isnt based in logic and makes no sense to even myself

4. House of Wolves- house of wolves was my favorite mcr song for a good chunk of time, but as a result i’m kinda burned out on it, which is why it isn’t higher.  however it is still number four  because it’s objectively a fucking amazing song. the guitar is so fuckin fun, the lyrics are great, and it’s just. fun to dance around and sing it at the top of your lungs. you better run like the devil cause they’re never gonna leave you alone!!!!! tell me i’m a bad, bad, bad, bad man!!!

5. Welcome to the Black Parade- the big man itself. the titular song. their biggest hit. a lot of people shit on wttbp for being popular and, like, pretty much the only song of theirs to ever be on the radio anymore (and even then it’s once in a blue moon), BUT. it got popular for a reason. it’s a really good song. i love the structure of it, i love how it builds and builds and builds. the lyrics are wonderfully done- “a world that sent you reelin from decimated dreams/ your misery and hate will kill us all”, the whole “do or die, you’ll never make me” stanza is The Ultimate rallying cry. and the “im just a man, i’m not a hero” is just. ughghghdlkslakdjglsdkg. the titular song of an album entirely about death and dying and misery being SO hopeful and SO upbeat really portrays the album as a whole much differently- mcr is known as The Emo Band because, yeah, their aesthetic is dark and their songs touch dark stuff but they have never been all whiney and boo-hoo-y and melancholic for the sake of melancholy. there’s always been a positive note to their music and a lot of people just don’t get that which makes me sad. anyway. wttbp is fun and i like it and i like the drums and the trumpets at the end. marching bands fuck

6. Blood- ok so the pattern here seems to be that i favor the fun songs over the slow ones, and blood sticks with that. much like with mama, i love the old time-y feel. i love that this is like a fun little bonus ditty to end the album on. the lyrics are silly and fun and jovial, and the piano is great. love it and it makes me happy

7. Disenchanted- OUGHH. OUUUUUGH. i know cancer is objectively the saddest song on the album, but disenchanted just hits different. “when the lights all went out, we watched our lives on the screen/ i hate the ending myself, but it started with an alright scene” just DECIMATES me, man. the acoustic guitar is a nice change of pace, and the vocal performance is just. so fucking emotional. especially the “woahhhhhhhh-ohs” at the end. great song, makes me Feel Emotions

8. The Sharpest Lives- ok so i know this is pretty much in the middle of the list, but i want to stress that i dont hate any of the songs on this album, so even the middle of the list is pretty fuckin good imo. the sharpest lives makes me go batshit.  the lyrics are so fucking wild. “a light to burn all the empires, so bright the sun is ashamed to rise and be” is SO fuckin sick like OH my god. what a line. also “there’s a place in the dark where the animals go/ you can take off your skin in the cannibal glow/ juliet loves the beat and the lust it commands/ drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, romeo” like WHAT?????????????? GERARD POPPED OFF W THIS ONE FOLKS!! also i love how at the beginning the whisper-y vocals bounce from ear to ear. also “so why don’t you blow me......a kiss before she goes” is fuckin hilarious. honestly this song should be higher but i havent gone through a phase where i’ve been obsessed w it yet so it stays down here for now. one day it will take hold and be all i can listen to for a month straight and THEN it will climb the ranks. 

9. Cancer- makes me cry like a liddol baby. my mom doesnt let it play in the car cause it makes her too sad. twenty one pilots covered it and it was FUCKING AWFUL so the song is kinda ruined now cause i can only think about their shitty cover. like the AUDACITY. but anyway besides that the song is heart wrenching and amazing. the hardest part of this is leavin you!!!!

10. Dead!- look, i know technically the end. and dead! are the same song/ are just continuations of each other but i’m listing them separately bc dead! is, to me, the worse of the two. not that it’s bad or anything, it just doesn’t pop off the same way the end. and all the songs before it on the list do. however i do love the guitar at the beginning and the solo, and the “one! two! one two three four! LA LA LA LAs” are super fucking fun. 

11. Famous Last Words- i used to hate this song!!!! i truly did!! it’s obvs not on the top of my list now or anything, but i have grown to appreciate it a lot more than i used to. like with wttbp, it is the silver lining of the album that betrays its optimistic side. it’s a happy final message to a dark album. the ending is fucking amazing. I am not afraid to keep on living!!!! i am not afraid to walk this world alone!!!!!!

12. Sleep- Sleep is, unfortunately, just kinda boring in comparison. i almost forgot to even put it on the list. however, i do like the “the hardest part’s the awful things that i’ve seen” and the “a drink, for the horrors that i’m in. for the good guys and the bad guys, for the monsters that i’ve been” lines. also the “three cheers for tyranny, unapologetic apathy!” line. but overall it’s just. eh

13. This is How I Disappear- i have. complicated feelings on tihid. on one hand, it reminds me of my favorite oc, re, and is on their playlist. on the other hand, i have grown bored with it over time. it just doesn’t stand out to me at all really. that being said, i do really like the “who walks among the famous living dead” and the “can you hear me cry out to you” stanzas. 

14. I Don’t Love You- while i dont think idly is a bad song at all, it just simply isnt my kind of song. i do think gerard’s vocals are extremely strong throughout, especially during the “when you go, would you have the guts to say/ i don’t love you like i loved you yesterday” line. like wow ok maam please continue. but overall i just dont vibe w breakup songs bc i cant relate

including b sides: 1. Heaven Help Us

2. Kill All Your Friends

3. Everything else

4. My  Way Home is Through You

my reasoning: 

heaven help us is tied for my favorite mcr song Of All Time. everything about this song is catnip for lil old me. the angsty christian imagery, the vocals, the guitar. all of it. the lyrics make me lose my mind, especially the “will you pray for me? or make a saint of me? and will you lay for me? or make a saint of- cause i’ll give you all the nails you need/cover me in gasoline/ wipe away those tears of blood again/ and the punchline to the joke is asking ‘SOMEONE SAVE US’” and the “you don’t know a thing about my sins/ or the misery begins/ you don’t know, so i’m burnin! I’m burnin!!!” parts. like i absolutely vibe with this song so fucking hard. i sing it constantly, it’s great to sing (very stimmy for me), it sounds beautiful. i am obsessed with it through and through

similarly, kill all your friends also speaks to my very soul. i can’t pick favorite lyrics bc id just have to copy and paste the whole song. i love the build-up, i love the time progression throughout the song (it’s been TEN FUCKING YEARS since i’ve been seein your faaaaaace rounnnnnd heeeere), i love the “you’ll never take me alives”. literally everything about this song makes me emo. it just Gets Me. it’s literally about my greatest fear. all my friends growing up and moving away and getting on with their lives without me, leaving me to rot in my hometown waiting for them to return. we only see each other at weddings and funerals, so it’s time to kill all your friends so we can party when the funeral ends!! it’s probably tied with heaven help us, but i’m putting it at number two just because it didn’t hook me as strongly as hhu did. it’s more of a strong, steady favorite than a “this song has latched on to my very soul and i have to listen to it on repeat over and over and over again”, if that makes sense. it’s still in my top 5 mcr songs though

i never vibed with my way home is through you. i don’t listen to it often, and i just don’t really feel it. it’s not bad, it’s just. eh.

anyway if you’ve read this far down i love you so much. thank you for listening to me ramble, mcr means a lot and i love to infodump about my music tastes. i really really appreciate being given an opportunity to do so <3

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the DIvine 42

Spoilers, obv.

Probably time for the periodic reminder that these notes are an assorted of random thoughts, and any attempt to take anything I describe herein as the sole reason we did anything is a mistake. I would hope by this stage of WicDiv we should recognise that, in that it's one of the book's major themes – as in, Be Careful When Jumping To Conclusions From Limited Information, but it's worth stressing. I was talking to a friend, and the idea came up that when the whole thing is over, to do a whole OTHER set of writer notes about the writer notes. As in, "Now this is all over, I can actually talk about some of the things I wasn't talking about at this stage." As we step towards the end, more of that big picture stuff is going to creep in. Not yet though – when thinking of this issue, I thought "Shall I write this?" and realised it still is too early.

I will be glad when this is done, for many reasons, but being able to just talk freely is one of them. I also suspect I won't be doing a huge amount of that. DIE has no writers notes per se, and that's the direction I'm heading.

Anyway - "Okay" is six issues, but the last issue is an epilogue. That means the arc is actually five issues, and this is its mid-point. It's also one of those issues where when after I wrote it I realised that the dovetailing material had created an unusually prominent thematic backbone. Last time I can think of one as strong would be issue 31, where the concept of Theft just percolated it. This is even strong.

This is an issue primarily about masculinity and the men in the story. Two of those men die. One man reaches the key turning point. Two other men have clearly key beats. This is rare in WicDiv, where the women tend to be at the centre of the plot.

Jamie/Matt's Cover: Which makes the cover being this somewhat pointed. Brunhilde, smeared in blood. All our covers are inspired by something inside the issue, and someone in it. This is in the tradition of issue 10's cover, which promises something obliquely.

Vanesa Del Rey's Cover: I love Vanesa's work – do read Redlands – so getting her to do a full-witchy Norns made a lot of sense.

Page 1

One page scene, which is telling. As the solicits put it "I just read the synopsis for this issue and gaped. We’re actually going to do all this in an issue? That AND that AND that? Honestly, this last arc really is going for it." When writing that, it was a question I clearly asked myself. How can I get all this in? Any one of the three set-pieces is probably enough drama for an issue, but they structurally speaking have to be here.

As each key scene is so big we give them as much space as possible, so everything else is crunched down. The scene structure is 1-5-1-6-1-4-3. And the last two scenes could really be read as 1-1-5 in terms of what the pages are doing – or maybe 1-1.5-4.5.. Each of the big stories actually get five pages – the 6 is actually 5 pages of page budget.

Anyway – TIGHT!

As the antagonists were missing from last issue, we catch up with them here, giving Baal a key baal image of standing on top of the shard. Look what Jamie does with the verticality of that first panel. Even on a five panel page, it feels big.

Matt's using a purple palette her – which is the Inanna palette that Baal turns to occasionally, for obvious reasons.

Still – even with a one page scene, we get two silent panels, plus the WicDivian use of mobile phone read out. I'll miss working with this team. It's easy to see what we do in the set-pieces, but it's the basic work which is a delight.

First of Jamie's strong expressions at the end of the page.

Christ. This much words on the first page. I'll cut down.

Page 2

Bible quote from John, subverted. I often think of these kind of truisms like that. The whole "What does not kill you only weakens you for final inevitable collapse" kind of thing.

Page 3-7

PoV shot to keep the reveal of the Creature for the page turn, leaving room for Jamie's quiet acting. I like trying to keep these kind of scenes quite low key, to ground the fantasy of it. What would you do when seeing something like the Creature? What would you do after five minutes of exposure?

The PoV hopefully reminds people of when we've seen this before – as in, Minerva. The Captions re-set the stakes, and adds more specific information. Clearly we could have said the "we need him on our side or not alive" at the end of last issue, but that would have complicated things, especially as it's a story route we're not going down here.

The heads thing is my biggest lampshading of the key thing in this arc – as in, not everyone knows everything, and the holes in the knowledge is significant. Trying to remember who knows what and when is one of the many challenges.

In terms of "this is everything I've ever loved" the visual reference I gave Jamie was the people entombed and dismembered in Aliens. The 2 panel reveal is a standard thing we've done since Phonogram. As I've said before, I quite like having a response next to an image rather than on the next page.

The catch up is a necessary paraphrase of the specials, including a little extra information. This arc features quite a bit of this (next issue especially) in terms of making concrete things which readers may not actually work out. There's stuff which I don't explain – but the 1831-Inanna-was-not-a-god would very much be among them. As I've also said before, I've always been interested in which things actually make people theorise and which don't, and I never saw anyone question that element of 1831 – I suspect a re-reading of 1831 the tells are clear.

(Her grasping that necklace in most of the scenes is one of the more subtle ones, but when you realise that she's not telling you a key fact, it's very much the sister issue to Woden's 14 in "When you know what the narrator is not telling you, it all changes." That her own transformation is completely skirted over is a huge absence.)

To state the obvious, the Why Some Bits Of 1921 Had To Be In Prose may also be clear now. If we'd shown the Zeitgeist, you'd have known who she was.

I love what Jamie did with the Metropolis-inspired element of the design on her on the wall.

Page 6 has another of "The characters know different stuff, so we have to be true to the characters, and then avert the derailment" captions.

Jamie has to work overtime in this whole sequence, of course – Baal's realisation of the awful horror of what he's done is happening at the same time as an information download. That the information download is what hits Baal ties it together, but does mean these are dense panel layouts. Jamie's choice of moments. The expression in the last page of 6 just kills me.

The last page of the sequence is just horrible. There is a lot of horrible in this issue.

Page 8

And the second of the one-page scenes. I originally had Mimir go up to the surface to make the call, but remembered I'd already established at least 3G coverage in the underground.

Let us applaud Jamie's design for the jury-rigged Mimir phone for a second, and the expression as he sends, and the shot as he walks back. There's a lot here.

Yes, I'm aware that it's a little strange that we get the heads free again (and three with bodies) and this is the only action by them in the next issue is this. They'll have their time soon enough.

This is another heartbreaker. Dominoes falling.

Page 9

Reference to Crisis on Infinite Earths, the 1980s DC event which basically formalised the modern crossover

Page 10-15

Another tightly packed scene, but also one I knew we needed space on. Abstractly the first two pages could be a single page. In fact, in terms of page budget, they are. We're using repeats (and tiny tweaks) on panels to extend a moment, so we give Woden the appropriate amount of time to actually think this through. Woden's mask has been a major boon for such trickery, and this scene wouldn't have played nearly as well.  Note how we turn to a rigid grid to ensure this actually works.

There's a lot of great expressions in this issue, but Minerva's "It's a name as good as any" is an under-rated one. The soft change from "be"ing Mini to "be"ing Ananke.

Page 12 reveal of the Valk's teleporting in the sort of colouring rush I want to stand up and applaud for.

Minerva's explanation to Woden is another thing we're doing this arc – as in REALLY making explicit things which the reader has been 100% shown already, and may have missed. (We've seen Minerva appear out of nowhere twice. We see that she has the same memories – she knows the number to call to contact Ananke. We've seen they don't share a consciousness because she has to phone to tell Ananke where she is when she arrives in 2013, etc) but it's such key stuff to the understanding of the story that it's important to state it outright.

Anyway, Woden's fucked. It's been a long time coming, and he gets consumed by his hamartia. It's not the cleanest example of it, but it's there. He had several chances to back out of this, but at the end, he still is trying to treat other people like objects to further his own needs.

The Maened death sequence connected to the hive mind was set up all he way back in issue 8, of course. There is a lot that's horrible here – the revenge against Woden is hollow. The Valkyries are still being used as tools, after all.

Still... that at this late stage that Minerva, for all her obvious monstrosity, can still get a fist-pump moment from the readers for killing another character is a sign of how loathsome a certain other character is.

Minerva provides the back quote here too. "I am oh so bored of men like you." Rarely has a quote fit an issue as well, I suspect.

I do wonder how long I would have stretched out the death sequence given more space. Probably for the best- this is metronomic, clinical, and horrible. The use of the grid and the hard cuts sort of reminds me of some of the dance-beat stuff we did.

Page 16

Another one page scene, and definitely one I'd have given more time to in another issue... but that moment with Baal and his family and him being seen was absolutely essential. Once again, Jamie does a lot with six panels – the thing one of Baal's expression in panel 5 is a hell of a thing. Laura's captions also do the heavy lifting connecting the scenes. This is a mode I'm more using over in DIE.

The middle panel is interesting for Jamie's choices – very wide, to show the fight scene in almost scrolling fighter way, but still giving space to see Laura and Cass arrive. There is a LOT here. Compare and contrast with the previous panel, which gives the more traditional comics action shot, used in a stealth mode. Jamie is very good here.

Page 17-20

Back in the underworld. Panel swap from the blues and whites of the previous page to the warm reds. In some ways, 17 could be seen as one of those one page scenes. This is Baal and Inanna. What can I say? No more than Baal can, clearly.

18 is the last elements of set up for next issue, but is also clearly setting up the end of the issue. The "Ever" from Nergal is obviously loaded – it's a Now Or Never.

"Faces are remaining distinctly unkicked." Oh, Lucifer, I missed you so.

The "It's gone midnight" bit from Cass on 19 is something I suspect I'll cut for the trade – it's an artefact from me trying to overexplain something. Reminding people of the failsafe from Imperial Phase is enough.

19 also is one of my favourite beats, in that it's not part of WicDiv's planned structure, and just listening to the characters. Of course, Cass would say something inappropriate about Woden's death. Of course, Mimir would be heartbroken. And, of course, Cass would realise. Being better is hard. Cass's "I'm so sorry" is an amazing panel from Jamie. I've been there.

20 is tightly wound too – I could have given more space, at the expense of the next scene. In the end, I decided this was the right way to go. I haven't changed my mind.

In the original draft Cass's last line was "Oh fuck." After Baal's line, it seemed too much... and  you always know things are going badly when Cass doesn't swear.

Page 23

Reference to Satre's perhaps most famous line.

Page 24-26

Nine panel grid, back again. It's taken a late period WicDiv life of its own, right?

There's little I can say about this – partially as I don't want to, partially because it's still too early. It's the sort of thing I may talk about in issue 44's notes.

It's a slow motion showcase of Jamie's acting. I'd never write this for almost anyone else. This is as real a sacrifice as we can get, and the longer we spend with the moment, the realer it is, but only if it's grounded visually.

Baph's own story was about his fear of death. He's the character who tried to kill other people to scramble out of this. He's come to a place where he does this. Normally WicDiv gods are consumed by their hamartia. I believe Baph is the first who actually overcome his. This scene breaks my heart.

(This Corrosion just turned up in shuffle, and the like a healing hand howl is a bit too close to the bone.)

Last page is astounding. Not a way I'd have pictured it in a million years.

Page 27

I believe uniquely for WicDiv, this is a continuing interstitial. As in, a response to the previous one. Issue 43 is going to be late, for the health reasons I describe at the back of the issue. It's at the printers now.

Thanks for your patience and thanks for reading.

[punkscowardschampions]

Ronnie & Joe

Ronnie: still stalking mckenna Joe: what, we can't BOTH like music? Joe: that's gonna be problematic for me tbh Ronnie: mozarts ghost aint gonna possess him in the encore Ronnie: you can fuck off Joe: you can enjoy your night Joe: I'll take my chances Ronnie: take your chances somewhere else Ronnie: or you wont have any Joe: you looking out for me? Joe: not necessary, I promise Joe: you look like you got your hands full as is Ronnie: its a threat Ronnie: shouldnt be necessary Joe: my apologies for making you work harder but its still not cutting it Ronnie: [throws something at him in a dangerous manner watch out everyone] Ronnie: we can both be into cutting Ronnie: not a problem for me Joe: [when he's probably with his flatmate or similar like they will complain honey they basics lmao, meanwhile just like 😏] Joe: careful, people will think you care Ronnie: what fucking people Ronnie: your girlfriend Joe: for one Ronnie: muzzle your bitch or give her shit to sink her teeth into Ronnie: it aint complicated Joe: I don't think not glassing randoms is exactly rocket science either Ronnie: nothing random about you Ronnie: you fucking wish Joe: you want some projection with that Joe: I found you, remember Ronnie: wasnt hiding nancy Ronnie: not still a runaway kid Joe: then don't hide Joe: I weren't looking for you, alright Ronnie: bullshit Ronnie: you said there aint no other bastards Joe: I meant tonight Joe: this is just coincidence, nothing more Ronnie: leave then Ronnie: your buyers remorse is about as welcome as you Joe: hardly Joe: that's not what it is either Ronnie: they were all out of shiny sisters baby Ronnie: take what you can get Joe: I've already got one of them Ronnie: yeah Ronnie: i remember Joe: you don't want a refill then Joe: replace the one you tossed Ronnie: you on the spectrum or do you not wanna read social cues Joe: well I ain't leaving either way but if you don't wanna make the most outta it Joe: 👍 Ronnie: keep putting words in my mouth & see what happens to yours like Joe: what spectrum are you on if you think that constitutes a please and thanks Ronnie: take it up with your ma Ronnie: she wasnt about to teach me how to play nice Joe: not really her forte Ronnie: thats why im still waiting for my plane ticket home yeah Joe: possibly Joe: I don't know Ronnie: 💔 Ronnie: how olds your good sister Joe: jury is out on good Joe: but 14 so we'll wait and see Ronnie: ill fucking drink to that Ronnie: if she was a write off shed already be Joe: depends on your perspective Joe: I try not to have one Joe: [is at bar] Ronnie: depends on your mas Ronnie: we cant all be black sheep Joe: exactly Joe: they don't really get on Joe: but she's probably just dreading the PTSD a teen pregnancy scare will bring Ronnie: should have kept me around Joe: yeah Ronnie: 1 more abortion and your country would offer me a fucking exorcism Ronnie: fun for all the family Joe: some girls have all the luck Joe: would not believe how hard it is for a lad to get one 🙄 Joe: [just putting the drinks for 'em on their table, when Charlie probs gonna flirt with you like oh hey] Ronnie: your girlfriend will let you hold her hand for her 1st Ronnie: stop sticking it in your cello & youll knock her up in no time Ronnie: [just staring at the drink like you've never seen one before] Joe: come on, she's CoE if I've ever seen it Joe: abortions? sure, but exorcisms ❌ Joe: [tryna just walk off but you know they'd be like who are you hello?! 'cos annoying lmao] Ronnie: not in ireland anymore baby Ronnie: [when you walk off like where the fuck have you got to be my dear] Joe: [at least he's not gonna drop the bomb, just being vague af like oh we met once or whatever goodbye] Joe: you gone yourself? 🛫🍀 Ronnie: on whos 💰 Joe: idk, your pals maybe Joe: but I've fucked off so he can at least top up your drink 'cos its long gone too Ronnie: wanker Ronnie: [comes back and punches charlie love you boy] Joe: [just wait 'til you have your own mindblown with that crazy connection boy] Joe: ✊ Ronnie: [gives him the biggest fuck you look ever like I can't believe you typed that] Joe: [just loling a lil 'scuse him company its not at whatever you said] Ronnie: [comes over, ignoring everyone else obvs, to drink his entire drink and walk off again] Joe: [omg stop flirting you two, everyone like what is going on tbh] Ronnie: [dancing with charlie cos he don't take kindly to being punched but you don't wanna answer his questions either] Joe: [save it for later you nosy hoe] Ronnie: [when you see his poor flatmate going to pee and follow her intimidatingly soz bitch] Joe: [this poor girl is in no way prepared lmao] Ronnie: [thinking she's about to get mugged or murdered] Joe: [when you're 18 and its your first time away from home no doubt this poor girl honestly] Ronnie: you deffo she aint catholic Ronnie: could see her in a penguin house Joe: weren't a question on the flatmate icebreakers Joe: shoulda asked for some segregrated accomodation but thought londoners were meant to be post-religion post-everything so Ronnie: 💔 it aint god its you baby Ronnie: shes no londoner Joe: no, I do know that one Joe: she's from Kent, I think Joe: or Surrey? Ronnie: not holy holier than tho Ronnie: u Ronnie: never gonna please a horse girl mckenna Joe: 😏 Joe: I'll not go there then Ronnie: charlies fucking easy to please Ronnie: youve done the 1 drink minimum & youll avoid the pregnancy scare Joe: I think he's the one that does the pleasing Joe: so I've been assured Ronnie: gets him off dont worry like Joe: I'll sleep easy now, tah Ronnie: lullabies are shit but yeah Joe: 🤞 that ain't his encore either Ronnie: if it aint opening an artery to spray the crowd count me the fuck out Joe: I wouldn't hold your breath Joe: though might be more fun Ronnie: [dramatically holds her breath in his direction like kids do] Joe: [just watching 'cos weird and into it] Ronnie: [lowkey going purple probably because you know she won't stop til she hits the deck] Joe: [just watching 'til the last sec when you obvs gonna catch her] Ronnie: [giving him a look when he does like we have to stop meeting like this but then exposing his tattoo wherever that is cos gotta check that really happened] Joe: [I hope you didn't opt for your booty, lol, probably inner bicep moment or something 'cos not that bitch getting those out at any chance] Ronnie: [just touching it like you're not shamelessly flirting with your brother okay then] Joe: [just looking at her face hardcore 'cos you can pretend you're checking her tat too] Ronnie: [when you come back to yourself and remember you're supposed to hate him for being your brother so you push him away unnecessarily hard and retreat to your corner] Joe: [go off to the bathroom yourself boy] Ronnie: [french exit while he's gone even though it'll make Charlie more annoying] Joe: [have fun Joseph] Joe: you missed the bloodbath Ronnie: made my own Joe: safer bet Joe: on all counts Ronnie: safer for your girlfriend Ronnie: & you Joe: you know she ain't my girlfriend Ronnie: no shit you dont wanna claim that conquest Joe: wrong again Joe: not gonna bang my flatmate who pays the bigger part of the rent 'cos she gets the en-suite Joe: give me some credit Ronnie: shed give you some if you gave it up to her Ronnie: but if youd rather pay rent Joe: there's no way I can keep that going 4 years Ronnie: she aint hacking it Ronnie: you can fucking smell the homesickness Joe: its like, down the road init Joe: ugh Ronnie: & Ronnie: she cant fit her horse in the en suite baby Joe: 😂 Joe: true..I'll make some rich friends to move in when she gallops off into the sunset then Ronnie: theyll not slum it with you for 4 years Joe: but I'm so charming Joe: what's the solution then, sis? Ronnie: sell yourself or kill yourself Joe: 👌 Joe: already with ya Ronnie: yeah dead connected us Ronnie: 🖕 Joe: you're the only one that's allowed to be suicidal? Ronnie: oldest cunt gets dibs Ronnie: aint that how this sibling shit plays Ronnie: whatever you wanna do ive already done it Joe: half the time Joe: but the other half is youngest gets away with it 'cos they're cuter so Ronnie: cause theyre a crybaby Ronnie: yeah you can have that soft lad Joe: 😥 bit of a prerequisite for the suicide Joe: so generous Ronnie: i left you alive so you can do yourself in Ronnie: since youve got such a boner for it Ronnie: generosity begins & ends Joe: You can stop thinking about my boners then Joe: that'll be my attempt at the virtue Ronnie: put em away Joe: you tryna expose me Ronnie: you dont need my help Ronnie: flashers keep more hidden than you Joe: really Joe: don't seem like that's something that would bother you Ronnie: youre that special mckenna Ronnie: every fucking thing you do bothers me Joe: 💘 Joe: check facebook some more, I'll keep my events up to date Joe: can avoid each other easy Ronnie: nah you see me you walk the other way Joe: I got places to be babe Ronnie: yeah a&e Ronnie: if you dont get the fuck outta my face Joe: see, you're well about it Joe: I got it, yeah, we're not family Ronnie: were nothing Ronnie: & if thats what gets you off pay for it like the other cunts do Ronnie: not my 9-5 Joe: I found Soho by myself, don't worry Joe: we're good Ronnie: boss Ronnie: stay there Joe: more expensive than Sophie's horse that Ronnie: train her up to be whatever the fuck you want then Ronnie: 4 years in she could probably kiss with tongue like Joe: you gotta ask yourself why you care Joe: 'cos I know Ronnie: i dont have to ask myself fuck all Joe: deny it then Joe: works for me Ronnie: theres no need to deny theres cunts i wanna talk to less than you Ronnie: or i that i gotta have something to do while i wait Ronnie: 💘 Joe: you're all talk Joe: say no more Ronnie: fuck you Joe: yeah fuck me Ronnie: stick your therapy speak in whatever hole you reckon can take it Ronnie: ill reverse over your head before i submit to this psychology bullshit Joe: not what I'm studying Joe: or doing Ronnie: you reckon if you say im all talk itll get you some action Ronnie: dream on motherfucker Ronnie: i dont look like her that much Joe: bold assumption Ronnie: nah Ronnie: charlies more like a brother than you & ive done everything there is to do to that tosser Joe: bold to assume I'm half as fucked up as you Joe: spent long enough telling me I can't be 'cos I got a ma and now I wanna fuck her, okay Ronnie: wearing it on your sleeve aint you though baby Ronnie: saw your arm & yeah i reckon halfs about right Ronnie: but me at 19 wouldve left you in more pieces than that Joe: you must be proud Ronnie: what the fuck of Joe: your 19 year old self Ronnie: youd have liked me better at 9 Joe: alright but a nonce joke is hardly original Ronnie: neithers wanting to fuck your ma Ronnie: read a book schoolboy Joe: that's you throwing that about Joe: not one I ask the prozzies to act out tah Ronnie: what the fuck else was your lil challenge about then Joe: what was yours? Ronnie: i didnt fire any shots shithead Joe: not true Joe: i got the 🍒 to prove it Ronnie: fuck me youre that cunt Ronnie: 1 sos & i owe you my life yeah Joe: where'd you hear that Joe: what was it, needle not clean or something Ronnie: you dont need to wait for a death that slow Ronnie: fucking do it Joe: why do you do it Ronnie: why do you give a shit what i do Joe: interesting Joe: why do you fuck with your face like that Ronnie: too late to keep it pretty for you Ronnie: should have nancy drewed this shit earlier Joe: you ain't gonna answer Joe: alright Ronnie: cant we both like pain Ronnie: is that your problem Joe: 'course Joe: no monopoly on that shit Joe: its universal, so the books say Ronnie: bullshit do you read fuck all else but sheet music Joe: not no more Joe: but i can read more than scales, like Joe: have to write essays and shit sometimes Ronnie: fucking hell Ronnie: save this riveting shit for your flatmates Joe: she does art Joe: dunno what the lad does, he's out his room less than me Ronnie: horse cocks out of clay like Ronnie: bet shes the professors pet Joe: 🤞 she gets in an ill-advised affair with a pervy prof Ronnie: every other repressed white bitch has done it Joe: my home is safe Joe: hooray Ronnie: til i sleuth your address Joe: then its petrol bombs and dog shit, I know Ronnie: after theres fuck all left to steal Ronnie: 🤡s in films 🔥💸 Joe: and eat six year old's arms Joe: crack on Ronnie: i aint bitten any kids since i was Joe: I'm proud even if you ain't then Ronnie: raise the bar baby Joe: guess the other lad you were with don't technically count no more Joe: actual kids are that annoying Ronnie: kids get to be annoying Joe: lucky ones Joe: the ones that get to be kids Ronnie: no shit Ronnie: youll be born & die a saint Ronnie: such a fucking martyr Joe: when God comes a calling, you can't refuse, obvs Joe: guess that's what she gets for not aborting you, nice bonus for being good Ronnie: yeah Joe: likes a joke as much as the next Joe: gutted for her Ronnie: cant take the scouse sinner out of her however much irish catholic dick shes taken since Ronnie: 💔 Joe: if its only paddys in heaven, I'll lose the invite Ronnie: you better stay in purgatory then Ronnie: dont want you in hell with me Joe: you're just jealous I'll be too busy getting tortured by some other demon Joe: you're alright, anguishing over my wrongs for eternity sounds like a bit of me Joe: I can hack it, more painful than being sodomized with pitchforks or whatever weak shit you're in store for Ronnie: wanna see your cum face even less Ronnie: fucks sake Joe: 😂 Joe: shh, you already know he's got that sick sense of humour Joe: your own clockwork orange moment for eternity now Ronnie: 💘 Joe: you ain't nothing like I thought when I was 🔎🤔 Ronnie: cheers for the romantic cliche you pussy Joe: you're that special Joe: and welcome Ronnie: what did you reckon id be like Joe: like the rest of 'em Joe: complete the cliche Ronnie: fuck off Joe: what, I did Joe: there ain't a bigger compliment, honestly Ronnie: i dont wanna hear your compliments Ronnie: or how big they are Joe: 😏 Joe: you asked Ronnie: cause i cant resist hearing how fucking soft you are Joe: that makes you pretty fucking soft yourself then don't it Ronnie: fuck you Joe: back here, yeah Ronnie: back at get someone else to knock you out Joe: shouldn't be hard Ronnie: depends how hard you are Ronnie: could be a turn on or off Joe: either way, its incentive for them to go harder Joe: can't lose, me Ronnie: enjoy yourself baby Joe: never Joe: if I lose my overwhelming urge to die what have I got Ronnie: new overwhelming urges Joe: won't be that good Ronnie: write it in your diary i didnt ask for your review Joe: you can do that you know Joe: they've all got profiles, like they're a shit local pub or something Ronnie: what a fucking state Joe: won't miss it when I'm in pugatory Ronnie: if i had a shot for every time you cried your eyes out id miss that Joe: you'd miss having a liver Joe: and functioning braincell Ronnie: didnt mean that kind of shot shithead Joe: your aim is for shit, true Ronnie: or that one Joe: ahh Ronnie: you had me at dirty needles 💘 Joe: s'worth being alive for, then? Ronnie: what the fuck waste of a question is that Joe: why? Ronnie: what do you think Joe: reason I'm asking Joe: if its just another slow way to kill yourself then I'm sound but if its more than that then its a potential for the repertoire Ronnie: if it was id have taken a faster way out Joe: its noted Ronnie: why do you wanna die Joe: its not even Joe: I ain't actually sad, soz to burst your 😥 bubble, IOU some shots, whatever Joe: just wanna turn my head off, not have to participate Joe: deal with any of it Joe: but saying you wanna be put in a coma doesn't quite have the same punch Ronnie: underline that note then Joe: yeah? Joe: not like I've never thought about it Joe: think about it a lot, hence the need for a fucking switch Joe: how cliche to look like I'm doing it to spite her though, eh? Ronnie: whatever you take now thats strawberry flavoured childhood bullshit Ronnie: youve found your prescribed dose of working adult medicine Joe: it don't touch it, not worth taking unless you wanna down half a blister at a time and have a decent kip Joe: get me some and I'll pay you 20% for your trouble Ronnie: come over Ronnie: told you im waiting Joe: alright Joe: if I ask for your current location do I give away that I'm not a decent stalker Ronnie: youve fucking shown that card bitch Joe: figured Joe: be obliging then Ronnie: [a location of who the fuck knows where cos we don't need Charlie or Bronson there for this excuse you lads] Joe: [when you need some privacy for your bonding] Ronnie: [when you need some privacy to shoot up your half brother who you ain't even told your other fam about] Joe: [fun and games] Joe: cool Joe: 🤞 i'm there just after the heroin Ronnie: get here before or ill be in no state to keep obliging you Joe: I'm yet to be initiated, my timekeeping skills are 🔥 Ronnie: give a shit about your cv Joe: I'll be there Ronnie: your loss if you aint Ronnie: dont come crying to me Ronnie: i wont hear it for fucking ages Joe: i'm not an idiot Ronnie: it dont matter who or what you are Ronnie: stopped listening after the ill be there Joe: 💘 Ronnie: get it tattooed next yeah Joe: yeah Ronnie: over the real fucker Ronnie: cause you love a cliche Joe: 'course Joe: have to find another dickhead with a gun though Joe: that one did not know his left from his right Ronnie: get what you pay for baby Ronnie: & we didnt Joe: touche Joe: I'll forgo accuracy for that Joe: and the dirty needle, obvs Ronnie: getting to put his hand on my tit will blow the brains he has like Joe: 😏 Ronnie: but if i toss him off thatll get shit back on track Joe: hot Joe: love that you have a plan Ronnie: cute Ronnie: you reckoning im pure chaos Ronnie: not your manic pixie dream skank Joe: ain't planning on being a composer Joe: least not now Joe: don't need to write about you Ronnie: 💔 Joe: make up your mind Ronnie: you aint on my mind mckenna Ronnie: dont get your balls in a twist Joe: do you wanna be on mine or not Ronnie: i know whats on yours Joe: same Joe: makes a change Ronnie: compose a song about your confusion then like Joe: less cliche than a love song Joe: still Ronnie: do it from the pov of the horse Ronnie: be a hit with your flatmate Joe: you just wanna get me stalked Joe: paybacks a bitch, yeah Ronnie: wanna get your habit paid for before you start it Ronnie: throw her a boner Ronnie: whats the fucking drama Joe: i don't fancy her Joe: nor having the convo about where all her moneys going Ronnie: & Ronnie: i dont fancy the cunt with the tattoo gun Ronnie: got fuck all to do with it Joe: & Joe: you're lowering standards, not getting anything up Ronnie: close your eyes & think of gear Ronnie: youll do anything for a horse like that Joe: let me try it first Ronnie: dont need to hear about your trust issues baby Joe: better stop talking now then Ronnie: yeah Ronnie: shut the fuck up Joe: [you know when its like 'removed message' that] Ronnie: 🖕 Joe: what Ronnie: i cant cut your sense of humour out Ronnie: cant live with it Joe: no funny business Joe: just a buttdial Ronnie: charlie aint here but adorable that you 2 homos hit it off Joe: just scousers gotta stick together or did you know him from back home Ronnie: he didnt give you the rundown Ronnie: mustve made him speechless mckenna Joe: too busy trying to work out how I knew you Ronnie: we grew up together Ronnie: & the mime standing next to us Joe: cool Ronnie: nah Ronnie: fucked Joe: I mean that you still know 'em, talk to 'em Ronnie: we aint trying to throw our family away for a new one Joe: like I said, s'cool Ronnie: like i said hes gonna eat that shit up Ronnie: you fawning over his family set up Joe: good to know Joe: not really my type either, call me fussy Ronnie: fucks sake Ronnie: join the god squad now & save yourself the 12 steps Joe: 'cos I don't wanna do a bloke or my horse girl roommate Ronnie: cause you only wanna do your ma Joe: you can't just give me dud options and come to that conclusion Ronnie: we playing fuck marry kill now Joe: not playing nothing with you Joe: cheater Ronnie: crybaby Joe: you'll 😥 when I have to kill your mate Ronnie: you wish Joe: making people cry is your thing Joe: I don't need to fight that claim Ronnie: like you aint been wanting to save me again since the 1st time Ronnie: thats your thing yeah Joe: save you from what? Joe: smack? obviously not Joe: other self-destructive tendencies? try again Ronnie: it obviously dont matter Ronnie: id never seen you & id still never seen a cunt more excited to do a rescue Joe: and I'd never seen you Joe: maybe you'd got all kinds of fucked up 'cos of all the shit I dragged up Joe: basic decency ain't nothing to get excited about Ronnie: i know how to self soothe im a big girl now Joe: didn't need you self-soothing yourself to death on my conscience Ronnie: didnt ask you to give a shit Ronnie: catholic guilts best left at home baby Ronnie: youll never find a place with the cockneys Joe: about myself? Joe: its barely but hanging on by a thread Joe: soz Joe: dead girls fuck you up Ronnie: not your type either then Joe: ultimate type Joe: don't wanna commit right now, tah Ronnie: 🤞 i od & you can finally sort your misery boner out Joe: too giving you Ronnie: im dead i aint giving a shit Joe: put that on the headstone Ronnie: pay for it you write whatever cliche you want Joe: you want a classy picture affair Joe: got it Ronnie: stop getting me Ronnie: it makes me wanna blow my brains out Joe: its obvious you wanna be seen Joe: no spooky sibling connection required Ronnie: fuck off Joe: what's better than ruining a graveyards ambiance for the mourners for the forseeable Ronnie: theres no room in the ground soft lad Joe: they just chuck you in with the old bones Joe: or 'move' them Ronnie: hot Joe: mhmm Joe: plague pit is the way to go Ronnie: fit the horse & the girl Ronnie: how fucking romantic Joe: that's me Ronnie: ill put john in the 💘 for you baby Ronnie: your ma robbed you blind of so many lennon comparisons Joe: still time to be pretentious with soph Joe: fuck off getting out of bed for good Ronnie: smother her with a pillow & fuck her corpse youll be feeling peace & love Joe: 💎🍓💘 Ronnie: playing with emojis & yourself aint getting you here Ronnie: hurry up Joe: can't make you any closer Ronnie: 💔

[zenosanalytic]

House of X #1: The Complications of Trees

Ok so, with that Intro Out of the Way, Here’s me talking abt the intro image of House of X #1 for 1500 words :| :| :|

For Context:

Father and Mother

Ok let’s get into it. The central image of page 1 is of 3 pillars of light pouring into the cavern from above, triangulating a Tree of Roots. Right off the bat this is Chthonic: “Chthonic”(pronounced thahnik, tho if you wanna sneak a barely perceptiple “ch” at the front of it, I’ll respect you u_u) means “of the underworld” or, less ominously, “subterranean”, and here we are not only literally in a cavern, but dealing with a tree made out of the subterranean PARTS of a tree; its roots. Strange eye-like fuschia circles seem to look on from the cavern walls, pupil-less, insectile, and, to me, especially reminiscent of the eyes of the Ohmu from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. For comparison:

Strange orange chrysalis-fruit grow at the bottom of the root tree(whether from it or placed near it isn’t clear). From these chrysalises hatch the X Men, beginning with Scott and Jean, to be welcomed by Xavier.

There are clear mythic elements to this image. Representing the X Men first with Scott and Jean, the prototypical m/f couple of the series, is an obvs reference to Adam and Eve. Having Xavier standing above them, looking on, welcoming them to life within a plant-space, a garden, obvsl casts him in the position of God, The Father, in the abrahimic creation myth and suggests his responsibility for this event, even though they are hatching from the eggs(?) growing on the tree, and not being made by him directly.

It isn’t only abrahimic, though; those Chthonic elements again. Gaia, the Greek Mother-Earth, was at once human and Earth; her anatomy analogized to physical geography. Caverns are enclosed interior spaces; wombs are enclosed interior spaces; caverns are wombs. Xavier’s costume furthers the Chthonic connection through oblique reference to other subterranean Greek deities: he is dressed is a form-fitting black jumpsuit. I cant speak to how Hades was colored in the classical era, but in the modern day he is typically depicted in blacks, dark-greys, and dark or grey blues, matching Prof X’s costume here. This visual connection to Hades goes further(though I can see this one being unintentional; Plouton’s epithets arent exactly common knowledge): X wears what looks to be a portable version of Cerebro which completely covers his eyes. A common Epithet for Hades/Plouton is “The Unseen One”; Xavier’s SEEMING sightlessness calls this to mind without being a direct reference, or undermining the larger visual(which his being invisible would certainly do). And we could take that further to an even more oblique, even subtextual, play with inversion&paradox, with resolution of opposites, with things being both themselves and their negation: Sightless, Xavier Sees; Seen, he is Unseeable. The Chthonic staging and symbolism, pairing Xavier with this environment, strengthens the Hades connection(Hades is the “Lord of the Underworld”, Xavier is in an Underworld place, in a “Lordly” position), and conversely the parallels are strengthened further by knowledge of Hades/Plouton’s Marriages. Originally he was husband to Demeter, variously etymologized as Mother of the House or “Great/Rye/Divine/Earth Mother”, seen in the subterranean setting, and then Persephone, a Goddess of Spring, Harvest, and Vegetal Fertility, which we see in the seeming-birth-giving tree. And the mythic symbolism of THAT goes further still, given how common humans and animals growing from plants are in myths all over the world. The image is layered in creation-myth, birth-imagery, and the supernatural or superhuman(the last bits resonating, obvsl, with the XMen’s own history&mythology). This works on both an immediate and meta level; not only is this scene taking place within the context of the story Hickman and his team are trying to tell, but it also takes place at the beginning of a reboot of the XMen franchise; in a literal meta sense, this scene is a “rebirth” of The XMen into this new “Dawn of X” era.

Returning to the cavern(but staying with Greek myth, cuz I’m predictable), it potentially presents another mythic aspect, though this is PROBABLY an idiosyncratic read and not intentional. Caverns are dark places; literally the epitome of darkness in the mythic Greek sense through Erebus(non-night darkness, the darkness of deep shadows or caverns), the husband-son of Nyx(Night). Erebus is more than just the son or the husband of Nyx, however; Nyx created Erebus from herself, by herself. In a real sense, Erebus is, simultaneously, apart from Night and a part of Night; Himself and Herself, Darkness and, at the same time, Night writ small. Coincidentally(and apropos for this story), within some Orphic traditions Nyx is tasked with ensuring the passage of divine leadership from one generation to another, and choosing who will lead.  Which leads us to...

Ambiguity

Ambiguity cuts through all of this, undermining the notion of clear oppositions; clear beginnings and clear endings. Xavier, small and masculine on the first page, is on the second towering and in a classically feminine pose(I’ve seen this in dance and modeling approx a BILLION times, but I dont know the name of it, and I cant seem to land on a search phrase that’ll get me decent stills of it. If anyone does, or can point me to an instance of it, I’d appreciate having the name so I could search & plop some comparison images in here) which combines with the conflation of his will, the Tree, and the birth above to present him as ambiguously mother and father. While possibly unintentional the same is repeated for the cave itself through the Erebus connection: an underground womb, it is Feminine; a “place of darkness”, of Erebus, it is Masculine.  And of course in the earth is where ppl are buried; a place both of birth, and death. Likewise a tree’s roots usually take nutrients from the earth, feeding on decay and decomposition, yet here they do the opposite “fruiting” the X-Men from themselves like moths from a cocoon.

There’s a particularly interesting depiction of X in this two-page spread that, at first glance, is symbolically masculine but, on further thought, I think its very masculinity works to play into this thematic ambiguity. On page 1 a tiny erect person stands before the Tree on a large mound, dwarfed by the uterine tree dominating the cavern&scene. The masculine symbolism of that figure in its context is obvious. However that context also subtly subvert it through a pun. Obvsl I go LOOKING for puns, so maybe this is a wholly idiosyncratic read of it, but part of why the tiny figure reads as masculine despite its lack of definition is the pun in “mound” being popular vernacular for vagina(more specifically the vagina’s external features, and most specifically the mons pubis/mons venus). So the first image we have of Xavier(though we aren’t SURE it’s him yet, or if it’s a man) is of him as a tiny man on a mound; symbolically atop a vagina :| A popular vernacular phrase for the clitoris is “a small man in a boat” with the “boat” also being this anatomic context :| :| Visually, Xavier is a Clit :| :| :| Again: Masculine and Feminine combined rather than opposed, and it goes all the way down(yes this wording is both awkward AND intentional u_u u_u).

His ambiguity crystalizes and embodies the general ambiguity of the scene: eggs that are chrysalises; new-born adults; a Tree that is only roots, birth underground in a place of burial, Light in a Dark Place, and mammals born through insect-imagery by a tree. This last image, the central action of the two pages(beyond the plants-fruiting-animals stuff mentioned before), contains so much ambiguity just on its own: Plants typically possess both ”male” and “female” parts(neither of which honestly mirror the animal counterparts for which the words were coined); the XMen “hatch” from chrysalises but chrysalises arent eggs they’re a stage in transition from one form to the next; they are human, but the process of their “birth”, with its eggs and cocoons “fruiting” from a plant, is everything BUT mammalian and human. 

This ambiguity extends to the moral realm. Large, bald heads, masks and helmets, eggs, sightless or hidden eyes, dark colors --especially black and purple(the fuschia circles, but also some lighting effects)--, gender ambiguity, pod-people; all of these are also conventional signs of the nefarious and villainous. While we know the X Men and Xavier as heroes, and while the event is presented as unquestionably mythic perhaps even miraculous, the moral quality of it, and of Xavier’s wider actions, isn’t clear. But again this is an ambiguity of inclusion rather than one of either/or; it merges the masculine and feminine, rejecting the boundaries set between them, rather than asking which is which. So I take this moral ambiguity similarly; not as a question “is Xavier right or wrong?” but as suggesting there are both morally “right” and morally “wrong” elements to these events(and to the comic series proper), existing side-by-side.

All of this ties into the theme of cycles, and from there into repetition and rebirth. A Cycle has phases which can seem to be in opposition(day and night, for instance) but which are actually part of a larger whole, leading one to the other. Death and Life are one such seeming opposition; living things die, an end for them, but that end feeds other living things. Life feeds from itself through death, to perpetuate itself in new beginnings. Appropriately this ties back into the mythic elements: the best guess as to what the Eleusinian Mysteries --dedicated to the Chthonic deities Demeter, Persephone, and Plouton-- were about was the descent, stay, and ascent of Persephone to and from Hades; in other words the cycle of life, death, and new life(though there doesn’t seem to be agreement over whether this was new life or an afterlife in the scholarship. Given the much under-discussed, and under-recorded, Greek belief in reincarnation, it could have easily been either).

All of which raises a central question: Is Xavier Banging that Tree :| (I kid, I kid! What can I say but: Comedy demands  -___-)