#poetic license taken

[lastflowerofyourhouse]

i've seen some people debating whether the little cigarette salute after the soup scene was g1deon or pyrrha, and i personally believe it was g1deon for two primary reasons.

the passage states that harrow looked him directly in the eye right before he did it, but doesn't mention his eyes looking at all strange or different, or use any particular adjectives to describe them (the words "dark" or "shadowy," for example, could be taken as poetic license to a first-time reader while actually serving as foreshadowing).

i don't like the idea that it was pyrrha. pyrrha already has lots of personality and tons of opportunities to show it off. let g1deon be a lil dramatic and personable sometimes! let him have a fun moment!!

[ifancyharry]

Too late

Please let me know if you liked this, i love feedback!!

Word count: 6.8k

What is it: childhood friends to strangers to lovers; YN is getting married and she and Harry haven't spoken in five years. Harry hopes it's not too late, because he's been in love with her since he was 10. angst

TW: mentions of marijuana

When Harry received the invite he was coming back from his usual morning run. It had started as a rather nice kind of morning, really; the weather was warm and the sun kissed his tights with every jog he took, turning his skin a nice golden color, but not enough to make him sweat to the point of grossness. 

Days like that were rare in London, especially in May, so Harry, while he was running, thought about five nice things he could do outside to take advantage of the beautiful weather. Of course, he obviously hadn’t taken in prospective the possibility of getting home to an invitation to his best friend’s wedding, so instead of sun bathing, eating his favorite meal on the porch and whatever other three things he’d come up with, he closed the door behind him, shut all the blinds, and sat on his bathroom floor for hours. And not what felt like hours. He really sat there until his bum had taken the shape of the floor’s tiles. 

He has to admit, albeit without little shame, he tried to throw up a couple of times. He most definitely knows how dramatic that sounds, but call it poetic license or a really bad taste in romantic movies, it felt appropriate at the time. Because he really did feel like throwing up. 

When he started feeling too pathetic to excuse his behavior, he jogged downstairs once again, and he picked up the invite in between his fingers. If he’s being honest, he really hoped the letter wouldn’t be there anymore. He’d rather have imagined it. A nightmare he couldn’t seem to wake up from, or perhaps a sick joke? YN wasn’t like that. She could never joke about such things. 

Harry was definitely the more unserious out of the two, and even he wouldn’t dare to pull such a prank on her. So he knew the invite was real. 

After a brief moment where he seriously contemplated going MIA and pull another ‘kissy’ post and disappear until the upcoming year, he took out his phone from his hoodie’s pocket and opened the calendar app. 

As he came closer to the date, he was praying to god he’d be busy. Call him coward all you want. He was really hoping YN chose the date of the Met (it’s not like he was planning on going, but he’d definitely reconsider if it meant missing her wedding) or the date he’d set for an album release. She hadn’t. She actually chose a nice, free Sunday at the end of the month. And Harry felt like lying on the bathroom floor all over again. 

If Harry was any other person in the world, he would have felt guilty. Because you’re supposed to be happy if your best friend’s getting married. Except, Harry isn’t like other people. Because Harry’s been in love with YN since he was a child; since the very first moment she moved next door and Harry wasn’t even old enough to know what love was all about. He’s certainly aged now, and with it you’d think the love he felt for her could have subdued, or fade, but it never did. It stayed with him until the very day he received the invite. 

Harry eyes briefly the piece of paper in his hands, ‘You’re invited to YN and Graham’s wedding’ and bla bla bla, written in that one font Harry despises (he truly doesn’t, he wasn’t even aware that font existed before this morning), and he feels the sudden urge to pick up a lighter and burn it. That’s how much he despises that font. That’s how much he loves YN. Because seeing her name close to another who isn’t his, makes him want to never get out of bed ever again — he contemplated doing that already, and, frankly, he probably will, at least until he isn’t required to do something like a show or whatever else Jeff schedules for him. 

The thing is that the invite wouldn’t have had this effect on him if YN and Harry were still friends. Because despite Harry still calling YN his best friend, he doesn’t know if she considers him even a friend anymore, and he made it that way. It’s his fault. Harry, who’s someone who never takes accountability for anything, knows it’s his fault. And everyone around them knows, but sometimes Mitch, who maybe cares about him to the point of hiding the truth from him for his sake, tells him it wasn’t his fault entirely; he says: you followed your heart, so you made the right choice — which coming from Mitch means a lot. But Harry, despite appreciating the effort, knows it’s not true. Because he did follow his heart, but he lost her. So really, he would have preferred a life in pain beside her. Because now he’s still in pain but without her. So who won? 

-

YN never thinks about Harry. She doesn’t think about him when she’s shopping at Primark and sees a fruit theme stuffy she knows he’d like, she doesn’t think about him when she gets in the car and her bluetooth connects to his playlist on her Spotify automatically (she told Graham many times it wasn’t her fault, it was kind of a default thing her car did), she’s not thinking about him now, in front of her closet, debating whether she should wear a dress he bought her for her wedding rehearsal dinner.

YN sometimes likes to pretend she never knew Harry. She likes to pretend she never moved next door to him when she was only ten, she likes to pretend he never auditioned on xfactor, she likes to pretend she loves Graham as much as she loves Harry. 

Other times, YN likes to pretend there’s a universe in which Harry’s the one she’s marrying. In this universe, she imagines never meeting Graham, she imagines Harry never leaving and shattering her heart, she imagines the cat they’d adopt, the house they’d buy, how they’d raise their children; in this universe she sees herself always happy. 

She knows she’s not being fair to Graham, so she lets herself linger in this universe only for a couple of minutes and especially on hard days when she feels overwhelmed, it doesn’t make it more morally right, she’s aware of that, but what else could she really do? 

When YN sent Harry that invite, she certainly didn’t think he’d come. It’s not like she appositely called Jeff and asked — begged — him to free his schedule the day of her wedding. She asked Glenn instead because she’s friendlier with her. 

A part of YN still wonders why she did it, from time to time. Maybe, if she was a bad person, she could’ve done it because she wanted Harry to see her happy and in love. But she’s not like that. She could never imagine hurting him in that way. 

So, she always comes to the conclusion that maybe she sent the invite because she just misses him. It’s not like she has to have another reason. Missing him is enough. 

She knows no one is truly aware of the affection she feels for Harry. What she feels for him isn’t nowhere near what she feels for Graham. In the past, she used to be so scared of feeling such things for another, because with those feelings came the realization that she also had something to lose. And she truly felt like she couldn’t do it without him. 

But then, he left her. And she did do it without him. She met Graham, graduated college, and got engaged. And at one point, she felt like she’d give up everything to have Harry beside her again. So, can you blame her if she remembered his address by heart? Can you blame her if she invited him? 

-

Harry feels like a pretentious asshole. 

He hates his car; he hates the flashy yellow color of his Ferrari, the sound it makes when he revs the engine and all heads turn to look at him. All but one, because YN’s the only one that recognizes him by the sound of his car. Even five years later.

When he gets out of the car, he feels like everyone’s looking at him, and he doesn’t dare shift his gaze to see if she’s looking at him too. He feels like they all know what he did that night, that he broke her heart. He feels exposed before them.

He’s glad YN invited Jeff and Glenn too, and he waits for them to get out of their car too before approaching the crowd.

“So nice!” Glenn exclaims once she’s out of the car, shutting the passenger’s door loudly behind her. 

Harry looks around and has to admit, it really is nice. A nice old cottage in the English countryside, with a big well-kept garden full of flowers he knows it’s where the wedding will take place (because YN loves flowers). It’s nice. He’d be a liar if he said otherwise, but it’s not YN. Because YN, or at least the version he knew of her, wanted to get married in the winter — on Christmas Eve —, in a small chalet with only her close family and friends, where the snow would never stop falling and they’d be forced to stay in with the fireplace popping and wool, chunky blankets to keep everyone warm. 

“YN!” He hears Glenn once again, and he shifts his attention to her. 

She’s standing on the porch, wrapped in a long black coat definitely too warm for the weather, and despite being far from where he’s standing, he can see her clearly. She hasn’t changed. It’s still her. 

Harry doesn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe a more grown up version of her, definitely boring and that kind of resembled her mother a bit. He wasn’t expecting her. The YN he once knew still there, perhaps more beautiful than ever. 

He feels his heart skip a beat, and with her walking slowly towards them, waving politely at a couple of guests that stop to greet her on the way, he feels warm. A kind of warm that resembles the one he felt as a kid when he was sick and his mum would take care of him. He feels something that reminds him of a certain familiarity, like he had been floating all this time and he’s finally back on the ground. He feels parts of himself coming back with every step she takes forward.

“Hello” he hears her giggle, and he feels the sound resonate in his chest, spreading all over his body up until the very end of his fingers. 

“Hi!” Glenn squeals, shrugging her shoulders and stretching her arms forward, closing YN in a hug between her arms.

“I’m so happy you came” she says, her voice muffled by Glenn’s shoulder, and Harry isn’t sure if she means him too. 

She hasn’t exactly looked at him, but Harry isn’t upset about that. He knows her. He knows how she is. She never makes eye contact when she’s uncomfortable. And Harry feels a certain smugness come with it. He’d rather make her uncomfortable than uninterested, because with her uncomfortableness comes the realization that maybe, maybe — deep down, under her skin and rooted in her heart — she did miss him too. And maybe it’s not like Mitch says. Maybe it was his fault and he should’ve fought for her. 

However, Harry realizes things always late; because she’s getting married to someone else now. 

YN briefly hugs Jeff too, and after that, she smiles awkwardly at Harry and waves at him with her hand, “Hey” she says, her hand dropping by her side. 

“Hey” he replies, and he watches as she hugs the coat closer to her body as a sudden gust of wind embraces them, ruffing her hair. Harry can make out the faint scent of her shampoo, and as it fills his nostrils, his mind is swarmed with memories of hot summer nights where they would talk in bed for hours after swimming in his stepdad’s pool all day, minds free of whatever worry a 15 year old could have, sweaty bodies sticky together, tanned skin against skin, Harry not being able to make out where he’d end and she’d begin. 

“This place is so nice!” Glenn interrupts, and YN is grateful for that, because she isn’t sure what she would’ve done if Glenn hadn’t talked. She fears she would’ve leaned in to hug Harry if she’d stared a second more into his green eyes. 

In the five years they spent apart, YN always wondered if there would come a time when she’d no longer remember the exact shade of green of his eyes and the way they used to twinkle when he’d talk about something he was passionate about. 

Now, YN doesn’t know what things Harry’s passionate about, but his eyes are the same color she remembered. Despite the stubble on his chin, and the cheeky grin he used to give her turning in a more mature one, his eyes stayed the same. 

“I know, right! Graham picked it, he used to come here on vacation with his family when he was a child” YN smiles happily at Glenn, and turns her body to look around herself.

Harry frowns at her words. Of course Graham picked it. She never would’ve if it was up to her, he knew that. And somehow, call him an asshole all you want, he feels a certain smugness coming with the awareness that he knows YN more than her own fiancee does. 

“It’s nice” he agrees, and he smirks at her when she snaps her head in his direction, probably not expecting him to talk, “but I prefer winter weddings, you know? With the snow and everything…” 

YN’s happy smile turns in a frown when she hears the words come out of his mouth. She isn’t entirely sure about Harry’s motives. She doesn’t know if he remembers that she wanted to get married in winter or if he’s just expressing a preference. She doesn’t know this Harry anymore.

“It’s beautiful, YN” Jeff chimes in, and YN shifts her glance towards him and smiles at him too.

“Let’s go, then! I want to introduce you to Graham” she exclaims, and turns around, grabbing Glenn by the arm and intertwining it with hers.

“C’mon” Jeff says, patting Harry on the shoulder as an encouragement.

Harry nods and starts to walk beside him, his hands tucked in his pockets as another gust of wind flies over them. 

He watches YN walk in front of him, too occupied to talk with Glenn to close her coat against the wind, and he’s sure he can make out the floral design of the Gucci dress he bought her on his vacation to Italy many years ago. How happy she looked when she opened it, and Harry remembers he thought about how much he wanted to buy her every pretty dress in the world if it meant seeing her so happy.

He kisses his mouth at the memory of every dress he saw in those five years and that he thought about buying. Now, knowing she still wears his gifts, he wishes he did. He wishes he bought everything that reminded him of her. 

Harry knows it’s just a dress, and he shouldn’t get this flustered over such a simple thing as that! But with it comes the realization that maybe, in her deepest subconscious, she wore it for him. And Harry’s content with that. Because maybe then that means that those five years apart didn’t mean anything. Maybe then she missed him as much as he missed her. And Harry feels warm at the mere thought. Maybe he hasn’t lost her entirely.

-

Harry met Graham, and everything went somehow fine. 

It’s not like she was imagining Harry fighting Graham over her — no, that’s just a thought that pops in her mind every once in a while when she catches herself fantasizing over what her life with Harry could be like.

It’s weird to YN how there’s someone in her life that Harry didn’t know until she introduced him. And not just someone; her future husband. It sets a weird kind of awareness, because until now she was almost pretending Harry was in an island unknown to mankind, without his phone and that’s why he wasn’t calling. 

Now, seeing him shake her fiancee’s hand, smiling politely at him, she realizes Harry wasn’t stranded on an island without technology; the missing phone calls were a choice. So she should be happy she’s no longer involved with such a person. 

Why isn’t she happy, though? Why does she catches herself wishing she could go up to his room, lay on his bed and talk to him? 

She really wishes she could tell him she’s scared of marrying Graham. She knows he could tell him that and he wouldn’t judge her like everyone else would. She knows he’d have the answer. He’d say something like “get your stuff, I’ll start the car” and they’d laugh and run away to the nearest McDonald’s drive through to stuff their mouth with a big mc or some chicken nuggets, and Harry would purposely stain her wedding dress with barbecue sauce, and she’d laugh. As I said before, whenever she catches herself fantasizing about an alternative universe with Harry, she’s alway happy.

So, then, why didn’t she call? Why did she let five years pass? Five years without hearing his voice. Seeing his eyes. 

She doesn’t know why. 

At first she was mad, because Harry made love to her and then he left. So she was really really mad. Then, after the anger had subdued, she got scared. Scared he didn’t want her anymore. Scared their friendship wouldn’t be like before — now, she thinks it doesn’t matter if their friendship had changed. She wanted Harry around, no matter what.

She’s aware sometimes nostalgia makes you remember things that were never there. But she feels like it was different with Harry; it’s why she’s walking towards his room now, heart in her throat, and hands twitching at her sides.

She wishes it could be easier. She wishes she could be different. She has a fiancee. Why is she going to Harry’s room? Why did she invite him in the first place!

The cottage has six rooms upstairs, and she remembers exactly in which room she put Harry. He’s the only one without a plus one, so his room is smaller than the others. She hopes he liked it, but she knows he didn’t. It’s too fancy, for him. He doesn’t like flashy things, which is kind of ironic for someone who owns six cars, but who is she to judge when she helped him pick the very one he came here with? 

When she stops in front of his door, she feels ashamed, and she’s scared someone may catch her, even if she’s not doing anything wrong, just greeting an old friend. But Harry wasn’t always a friend. There was one night in which they were more than friends, and she feels herself fluster at the thought of being alone with him in a bedroom.

She releases a big breath and closes her hand in a fist, knocking it against the door. 

When he doesn’t answer she tries again, “Harry, it’s YN”, she clarifies. 

Nothing.

She stands before the door for a couple of minutes, but then realizes he’s not going to answer. He doesn’t want to see her. 

It’s fine. She’s fine. 

She understands, it’s been five years. She can’t pretend nothing has changed between them. She feels stupid when she turns around to head back to her room and a single tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away before anyone can see. She refuses to cry. She cried enough when he left. 

This gave her the answer she needed. She’s marrying Graham, and if before she wished Harry’d persuade her in not marrying him, she knows he doesn’t care now. 

-

Harry’s sitting on the his bedroom’s floor, freshly showered, his hair still a little damp from the water, waiting near the outlet on the wall for his phone to charge. He’s playing with the chord of his phone’s charger as he listens to his mother rumble on the other side of the line. 

He’s not paying much attention to what she’s saying, his mind is definitely more focused on this morning’s encounter he had with YN’s fiancee. Harry tried to be on his best behavior, because despite hating Graham, he loves YN and he wants to be respectful of her choices. Harry has always been someone that never fought for what he wanted. He kind of always went with other’s decisions. He doesn’t know why he’s like this. Sometimes he thinks it’s just easier to let others decide for you, other times he’s aware it’s a matter of accountability: he doesn’t want to be responsible for his own choices, because then if something goes wrong, he doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself. 

“How’s YN? I’ve seen her Instagram and she looks even more beautiful” he hears his mum say, and his eyes widen at her words.

“Mmmh, yes, she’s beautiful” Harry agrees, chewing at the skin of his thumb. 

“Do you think she’ll have a baby soon?” Anne asks, and Harry almost wants to throw his phone against the wall at the mere thought of the love of his life having a baby with someone else.

“I don’t know, mum… I don’t think so” he shakes his head, but his words aren’t that much convincing to him. He doesn’t know if YN wants to have a baby with Graham. She had expressed her desire to have a big family when they were still friends and when she thought the timing was right, but was it now? Was it with Graham? He honestly doesn’t know.

“You know, I always thought she had a little bit of a crush on you” Anne giggles, almost childishly.

“She’s getting married” Harry says, and his tone suddenly turned stern. He doesn’t want to be rude, especially to his mum, but thoughts of what could’ve been have been hunting him especially hard since he saw her, and he doesn’t want to come to terms with the fact that maybe something could’ve happened between them if he had been a little more brave.

“She isn’t married now” his mum says, and he rolls his lips in his mouth. 

Weird enough, he knows what his mother means: she’s giving him an ultimatum, a sweet reminder that there’s still time. She’s not married yet. But what could Harry do? He really wishes someone could tell him. He wants his mum to say, Harry, tell her you love her before it’s too late. And he swears he’d do it. He’d do it right now. But coming up with that decision on his own? He’s not that much impulsive. 

“Mum” he says, “I have to go now. It’s time for dinner”.

“Okay, my love.” She replies.

“We’ll talk tomorrow” he nods, and ends the call, throwing his phone in his lap.

He shuts his eyes tightly and his head drops between his knees, his hands reaching up to clutch his hair at the roots. 

He feels pathetic. He feels like screaming in a pillow. He picks up his phone again and taps at the scree to check the time: 7.37 pm. At this time tomorrow the love of his life will be married to someone that’s not him.

-

Harry is late. Everyone has already eaten their appetizer and he still hasn’t shown up. Yn knows she probably shouldn’t care, especially after he didn’t answer the door after she knocked on it three times feeling like a naive teenager with a school crush. But still. She wonders what he’s doing. It’s not like she blames him, this dinner is pretty boring, and coming from the bride says a lot! But Graham especially requested no music and no dancing while eating, so the room is kind of quiet, albeit for a soft giggle or whispered words every once in a while. 

She’s biting in her pasta when Harry walks in, and suddenly she feels breathless. He’s beautiful. The kind of beautiful that warms her insides and reminds her of the color yellow, the sun shining when they visited Rome together, the tan he used to get at his stepdad’s pool when she’d spend hours looking at his lips while he sunbathed and she wondered if they tasted like chlorine. Beautiful. 

He walks slowly towards where he spots Jeff and Glenn, and YN looks at him shamelessly; he’s wearing cream tailored pants that hug his tights perfectly, paired with a silky blue blouse tucked at the front of the pants. She swallows the mouthful of pasta. When they were friends he definitely didn’t dress like that, he was more into skinny jeans and flowery button down shirts. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t like him like this. But, must I dare say, she’d like Harry even if he was wearing a trash bag.

He throws her an awkward smile before sitting down, and she shifts her eyes down on her plate, suddenly aware of being caught staring. 

As dinner goes on, she never raises her eyes from her plate, not even when she feels a familiar pair of green eyes burning her skin.

-

YN pushes her palm against the wooden door and takes in a big breath once the fresh spring air hits her warm face. She takes a step outside and the door closes behind her with a thump. She cringes at the sound and hopes it didn’t wake anyone up.

It’s almost one in the morning and she couldn’t sleep. She doesn’t know wether it’s pre-wedding anxiety or the thought of another universe soon to be lost forever, but she felt a heavy weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe.

She looks at the garden before her and decides she wants to take a walk in the rose garden. She’s always loved flowers, and she thinks seeing some beauty could help her clear her mind.

She makes her way down the cobbled path, illuminated by some lamps paved across the way, but when she reaches the start of the rose garden, she has to blink a few times to accustom her eyes to the darkness. 

The garden is the only thing she likes about her wedding location, and she’s thankful Graham agreed to get married there. He decided everything else, so at least he left that part up to her.

When she turns the corner of the hedge that divided the rose garden from the location of the wedding, she’s surprised to see a dark figure sitting in one of the reception’s chair.

She walks closer and she’s able to make out a familiar pair of broad shoulders bent over. Harry’s sitting on a chair from the first row, his head hanging low between his shrugged shoulders, his legs are slightly opened and his forearm is resting on one of his tights, the bright fire red of what she knows is a joint illuminating the side of his face. 

She’d recognize Harry even in darkness, but she still feels her heart fall to her chest when she realizes he’s right in front of her, sitting probably where he’d be tomorrow.

She debates whether she should go sit next to him or go back to her room and pretend she never saw him. It’s almost like she can’t control her own legs when they start to walk towards him.

With the movement, Harry turns his head around and his eyes widen at the sight; YN’s walking towards him, but what’s most shocking to him is that she’s making her way down the aisle. He suddenly gets up on his feet when he sees her, and when she stops right in front of him, she gives him a mischievous smile.

She’s breath taking. If this is what Graham will see tomorrow, he doesn’t know how he’ll manage not to faint.

“Walked like a true bride!” He says jokingly, and she giggles at his words, slapping his chest lightly. Harry feels the skin burn under her touch.

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asks, and she shakes her head.

“Can I?” She says, gesturing to the lit joint he’s holding between his fingers. He’d almost forgotten what he was doing before she appeared.

“Mhmh” he nods, stretching his arm. 

She doesn’t take the joint from his fingers though, she just opens her mouth and waits for him to place it between her lips, and Harry swears he can feel himself faint, his head dizzy with all the love he feels for her.

He holds the joint between her lips and she takes a long drag from it, tilting her head towards his fingers, closing her eyes after she inhales. She opens her mouth again and opens her eyes as she exhales the smoke from her mouth, Harry watching closely her every movement, his eyes dark and glazed over.

He watches as she turns around and sits on one of the white chairs, the one next to where he was sitting before, and she tugs one leg to her chest as she hugs it closer to her chest.

Harry stays standing before her for a while, looking at the faint image of the cottage behind her and absentmindedly smoking his joint. When he feels her eyes on him, he looks down at her. It’s been years since they’ve been this close, and suddenly he’s 15 years old again, his hands twitching at his sides from how much he wants to stretch them out and just touch her.

“Graham is nice” he says, and immediately after he cursers himself in his mind for ruining the moment when he sees her gaze harden.

“Yeah, he is…” she whispers. 

Harry tilts the joint towards her to ask her if she wants another hit, but she shakes her head no and he drops his hand at his side, nodding his head.

“I really like the place, by the way. I was only teasing this morning” he shrugs, smiling at her. 

“You were?” She asks, and when he nods she says, “so you remember?”

“Of course I remember.” And he doesn’t have to say anything more, because they both know what he means.

“Graham picked everything” she releases a shaky breath at that, and Harry takes another drag from his joint and raises both his eyebrows to signal her to continue as he exhales the smoke from his mouth.

“I wasn’t… I didn’t want this” she shakes her head, shifting her gaze from his eyes to an indefinite point behind him.

Harry wonders whether she means the cottage or the wedding. Perhaps she even means their fight. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t dare ask, ignoring the voice in his head telling him that maybe she’s offering him an opening to a conversation he isn’t sure he wants to have.

 “I’m sure it’ll be wonderful anyway.” He smiles and throws the joint’s butt on the grass.

“Yeah” she nods firmly, and he’s aware of the tension lingering between them.

“I better go,” she says, getting up from the chair and tugging at the sleeves of her sweater to cover her hands “big day tomorrow”.

She smiles awkwardly at him when she walks past him, and Harry notices the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. 

He shifts his gaze in front of him, staring out in the darkness. He’s about to lose her all over again, the bitter night five years prior vivid in his memory, hitting him like a bullet. He thought the pain from leaving her that night had left, and he wonders how much time it will take for it to stop hurting. Maybe it never will.

He’s sure he doesn’t want to live his life with the memory of her back planted in his brain, leaving him once again. He doesn’t want to think back to her and remember her like this. Leaving.

So, when she’s about mid way through the aisle, he calls her name.

He doesn’t have a speech in his mind, and when she turns around with her brows furrowed and her shoulders sagged he doesn’t really know what to say, how to tell her.

“What, Harry?” It’s the first time he hears her say his name in five years, and he’s upset she sounds so defeated. He wishes he could make this easier for her, but he doesn’t know how.

His chest floats as he takes a big breath. 

“Whatever” she says, shaking her head, but Harry notices she doesn’t turn around.

“Don’t marry him” it’s the only thing he manages to say, and he isn’t even looking at her, he’s still looking out in front of him, and she wishes he could look at her to see if he’s joking or not.

She scoffs, because despite the words coming out of his mouth made her insides warm , she isn’t sure if he’s being serious. “You’re so… so immature! You enrage me!”

“No, no!” He hurries, waving his palms in front of him. “Hear me out, then you can — you can leave. if you want you can leave.” He nods, trying to convince himself, but he really doesn’t want her to leave.

“Don’t marry him. You know he’s not right for you! He… he’s controlling, he doesn’t know you! You shouldn’t marry someone like that.” He’s standing in front of her now, and he grabs her hands in his.

“Is that the only reason you don’t want me to marry him?” She whispers, looking up in his eyes.

“No… i-“ he sighs. 

“You can’t even say it, Harry.” She frowns, trying to free her hands from his grip, but he only tightens it, intertwining his fingers with hers.

“I can say it.” He nods, “i don’t want you to marry him because I want it to be me. I— I have loved you since I could remember.”

She shuts her eyes tightly at his words, “you don’t mean that”.

Harry frees her hands and reaches for her face, caressing her warm cheeks with his thumbs.

“I do. I do.” He nods, “look at me, angel — please look at me” 

YN opens her eyes and Harry can feel his heart clench at the sight of her beautiful eyes filled with tears. 

“You had me, Harry. All those years ago, you had me. But you let me go! You have no idea how… how hard it was”

This time, Harry closes his eyes and then reopens them, despite being aware, the thought of making her suffer is hard to face. 

“I thought… I didn’t…—“ he shakes his head, his hands still keeping the firm grip on her face, “my life was hard, YN. It was crazy. I thought… you weren’t ready. I didn’t want to ruin you.”

“You did anyway. I hated you for what you did to me. I hated you for leaving.” She frowns, tears spilling from her eyes, but Harry wipes quickly at them with his thumb before they can roll down her cheeks. He leans down to place a delicate kiss between her eyes.

“I never once left you. In my heart it has always been you.”

He can feel her start to soften, but the she says “It’s too late now.”, and she shakes her head, her hands reaching up to remove Harry’s from her face. He complies, not wanting to force her. “I’m getting married, tomorrow.” 

“Angel, please” he whispers, but she’s already turned around, and Harry’s left alone in the middle of the aisle.

Suddenly he feels nauseous, and he brings a hand to his chest to calm his restless heart. As I said before, Harry realizes things always too late.

-

The next morning, Harry wakes up on his bed with the sound of an alarm he forgot he’d set. As he rubs the sleep off his eyes, he can’t wait to get the hell out of this place as soon as he can, and when he reaches for his phone and checks the time, he remembers why he set the alarm so early in the morning: this way he can avoid everyone from the ceremony on his way out. 

He can’t bare the thought of sitting through the wedding. He’ll send YN some fancy gift that she’ll enjoy with her husband and then he’ll disappear from her life once again. 

He knows it’s better this way.

He did it one time before. He knows already how long it will take to mourn their lost friendship and get back on track. The sooner he goes home and sleeps his feelings off, the sooner he’ll feel better.

He hurriedly throws his clothes in his suitcase, without caring if they get wrinkly or ruined. He grabs his phone and its charger and doesn’t even bother to check the bathroom twice to see if he left something behind. He doesn’t care, he’s eager to get far away and never face the heartbreak he’s leaving with.

As soon as he opens the door, though, the bag in his hand falls from his grip to the ground as he takes in the image in front of him. 

YN’s against the other side of the wall, her head hung low between her shoulders. 

“YN?” He asks, and she looks at him with her big, glossy eyes, and Harry feels like staying. He feels like grabbing her hand and tugging her inside, kissing her until he’s finally able to show her how much he loves her.

“I’m not… I—“ she shakes her head, her voice trembling as she gets her back off the wall and takes a step towards him, “i called the wedding off.”

It’s the only thing she says, but Harry feels butterflies fly in his stomach. His heart clenches in his chest, and he has to bring a hand to his chest like he did the night before to make sure he’s not having a heart attack.

“It’s not too late.” She whispers, “if you still want me, it’s not too late.”

Harry reaches up to her and tugs her closer to him by her arm. 

“I’ll never not want you”.

YN steps in the room and closes the door behind her, and Harry gently takes her face in his hands and tilts her head up. He looks from one eye to the other attentively before placing his lips against hers, and he almost contemplates not closing his eyes in fear she’d no longer be there when he reopens them, but YN moves her hands from his neck, to his shoulders, and he feels her grabbing his shirt between her fingers and holding him closer, her fingers digging in his skin. She’s real. She’s here, and he’s kissing her. It’s been five years since he’s last tasted her, and this time he’s kissing her without guilt. Because it’s not too late. Life just started.

YN parts her lips slightly and Harry sucks her bottoms lip in his mouth, eager to taste her more. 

His tongue licks over her lips and when she whimpers against his lips, he sneaks his  tongue inside her mouth and caresses hers with his. He explores her mouth like his life depends on it, and he feels like he wants to drink her. He wants to get drunk on her taste and never recover.

YN moves her hands from his shoulders to the hem of his shirt, tugging on it, and Harry parts from her mouth breathlessly. He feels dizzy and he’s not entirely sure it’s from the lack of air.

“No” he says, taking her hands in his and squeezing them in his grasp.

YN pouts at him and he tilts his head to kiss it away from her lips with a brief peck: “i want you. I really do. But not here”.

She widens her eyes at his words and realizes she was almost about to have sex with Harry when her ex fiancee and his family could hear them. She giggles loudly at the thought, and Harry, despite not knowing why she’s laughing, lets out a chuckle, shaking his head and looking at her with a bewildered look in his eyes.

“Let’s leave then.” She says when she calms down.

“Okay.” He nods, picking up his bag from the floor, “get your stuff. I’ll start the car.”

YN bites down on her bottom lip hard, trying to suppress the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. 

“What?” He says once he realizes she still hasn’t moved from her place.

She shakes her head, “nothing” she says, “i’m glad I wasn’t too late.”

“You could never be too late” he smiles, and he hopes she knows he’d wait for her all his life if it meant having her beside him. 

[gregorovitch-adler]

My thoughts about The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes:

Let's start by summarising the movie -

No crime-solving happens in the first 34 minutes. The first act is all about Holmes and Watson's dynamic, exploration of the nature of their relationship with each other, etc. If you're the type of person who only watches/reads Sherlock Holmes for the cases, you'd believe this portion is skippable. Only the blink-and-miss detail about the "Midgets' case" is important as far as Holmes' detective work is concerned.

However, if you think exploring Holmes and Watson's interpersonal relationship and their casework are both equally important, like I do, the first act is GOLD. Most of the Tumblr gifs about this movie are from the first 30-35 mins lol.

1.) Holmes enters and they bicker like an old, married couple.

H: Oh, come now, Watson, you must admit that you have a tendency to overromanticize. You have taken my simple exercises in logic and embellished them, embroidered them, exaggerated them ---

W: I deny the accusation.

H: You have described me as six-footfour, whereas I am barely six-footone.

W: A bit of poetic license.

Not only is this whole scene just delightful in general but the theory about Watson being an unreliable narrator in ACD canon is actually being supported throughout the movie, starting right here.

--

W:It's those little touches that make you colorful...

H: Lurid is more like it. You have painted me as a hopeless dope addict - just because I occasionally take a five per cent solution of cocaine.

W: A seven per cent solution.

H: Five per cent. Don't you think I'm aware you've been diluting it behind my back?

This exchange was lovely. Way to slip in their closeness through a few words.

2.) Watson doesn't think it's odd to barge right in when Holmes is completely naked and taking a bath?

Also, why the hell does Holmes bathe with his bedroom door wide open?

And what's that thing he's taking a bath in called? Does anyone know about this stuff? Was this thing common in that timeline? It doesn't seem to fit a grown man like Holmes.

I have so many questions and I'm speechless at the same time. I'll just drop this here:

3.) Then Watson persuades Holmes to go to The Swan Lake ballet.

Watson enjoys that ballet, a little too much at that, mostly because he's staring at all the women on stage. (We'll get back to this later.)

Holmes on the other hand has dozed off. All he can admire about the most beautiful dancer, Petrova, is her strong arches. Which is... 🏳‍🌈

Then that whole scene about Nicholai and Petrova and Holmes in the dressing room. XD

Petrova offers a Stradivarius violin to Holmes in exchange for sleeping with her for a week, so that her child would be beautiful like her and brilliant like Holmes.

Holmes gets out of the situation by lying to both of them; saying he's in a relationship with Watson.

Honestly, that whole bit. Just look at the lines:

N: She has been dancing since she was three years old, and after all, she is now thirty-eight.

H: (gallantly) I must say she doesn't look thirty-eight.

N: That is because she is forty-six.

And:

Nicholai: (about Tolstoy) Too old --- Then we considered the philosopher, Nietzsche --

H: Absolutely first-rate mind ---

N: Too German --

Etc. They're all so funny. This whole scene is something else.

In fairness to Holmes, he did try to get himself out of the situation by lying about having hemophilia in his family, or saying that he's unromantic because he's English, etc but Petrova was having none of it.

Watson coming into the room all of a sudden gives so much clarity and calmness to Holmes. He just knows what to say to help himself because of Watson.

This unforgettable exchange:

N: You mean, you and Dr. Watson - He is your glass of tea?

H: If you want to be picturesque about it.

On a side note, I absolutely loved Nicholai's face journey throughout both scenes - in the dressing room, stuck in the middle of Holmes and Petrova's awkwardness, and later on when he asks about the alleged Holmes-Watson romance to Watson after having spread the rumour in the whole room.

I just loved his reactions a lot.

According to this movie-

Caprice of Mother Nature = Gay.

Half-and-half = Bisexual.

Watson comes to know about the rumour, after having had the time of his life with both men and women in the ballroom. Watson is pissed off, he goes home and confronts about the whole thing to Holmes.

They have a row at Baker Street, in which Watson is being extremely heteronormative again. Thinking too much about his reputation without stopping to question his own feelings and his weird fixation on Holmes' love life.

There's that famous line again:

W: Holmes, let me ask you a question. I hope I'm not being presumptuous -but there have been women in your life?

H: The answer is yes -- you're being presumptuous. Good night.

Awesome.

This marks the end of Act I.

The existence of these 33 minutes of the movie is proof that the writing team in this adaptation knows that exploring Holmes and Watson's characters and what they mean to each other is as important as Holmes' casework. Billy Wilder takes this seriously, even though there are some jokes here and there about it.

The whole of Act I is filled with raising questions about Holmes and Watson's preferences, etc. Does Holmes feel love or is he just a machine? Does Holmes feel love for Watson? Does Watson know about Holmes' feelings for him? Does Watson feel the same way about Holmes?

In my opinion, all the answers to the personal questions about Holmes are as clear as a day. What's really questionable is whether Watson knows and/or feels the same way about Holmes or not. Different viewers might draw different conclusions/inferences after watching this movie.

After this, the movie takes a turn because "Gabrielle" enters the picture, and the actual crime-solving begins from here. The tone becomes a bit more serious in this act.

A young woman, completely wet and in shock enters 221 B. Watson has to pay for her fare to the cabbie before he and Holmes take her upstairs to take care of her.

She can't remember anything at first, then from her wedding ring, Holmes gets to know her name: Gabrielle Valladon. Her husband's name is Emile Valladon.

She appears to have temporary amnesia because of getting hit on the forehead and almost drowning in the Thames.

She reveals info about herself that she's from Belgium, her husband was here in London for a job, they used to write to each other, and after some time, the letters from her husband stopped coming. She'd gone to the London police first after coming to this city. She says the police had advised her to consult Sherlock Holmes.

Now, this should make the viewer skeptical of her. Scotland Yard does consult Sherlock Holmes when they need him, but they aren't going to let him have the whole case if there's a situation like this.

Besides, that woman ending up at Baker Street specifically seems to be planned, anyway. Also, there's always this man who keeps waiting for her or someone else's signals on the outside.

I know what we see on screen comes from Watson's drafts on loose pages, but this movie's narration seems to be Third Person Omniscient POV to me. Where the viewer is privy to more information as compared to the characters.

The three of them keep looking for her husband's whereabouts, and she pretends to be helpless, needy, and fragile (to stroke the ego of the men around her, I believe. I mean that could be one of the reasons...) with temporary amnesia throughout most of the movie. Holmes and Watson don't suspect a thing about her as they keep working for her and she keeps sending cryptic messages to the "Trappists" (German government) with her parasol.

The thing I love about this act:

Ilse von Hofmannsthal aka Gabrielle Valladon is actually a competent character who happens to be a woman. We can see something shady is going on with her even though we don't know her real name, but one of the most brilliant people on the planet doesn't suspect anything. He thinks she's just a woman looking for her husband's whereabouts. He thinks her back story is real.

He keeps on thinking that until Mycroft basically tells him in the third act which is why we're able to see for ourselves that Ilse was genuinely able to outsmart Holmes. We don't have to be told by the narrative voice about Ilse's strengths (*cough* unlike BBC Sherlock and a lot of female characters written by Steven Moffat *cough*).

I, for one, felt respectful of Ilse or "Gabrielle" for real. It was quite refreshing to me after having watched some modern Holmes adaptations.

Holmes, Watson, and "Gabrielle" go looking for the cause of Emile Valladon's death after they've found his coffin in the graveyard, in the guise of having a picnic. Holmes and "Gabrielle" pretend to be a married couple - Mrs and Mr Ashdown, and Watson is their valet. The scenes after this point are delightful mainly because of Watson's reactions (which could be read as his jealousy over Holmes, too).

Also, me when Holmes calls Watson 'John' in an archaic Holmes adaptation:

Because of his sort of stupidity, Holmes takes Ilse, a German spy, right in front of the submersible (which he thinks is a mechanical 'monster' that lives underwater) in a boat, along with Watson.

Ilse was trying to grab as much information as she could about that secret project because she was working for her country. Who knew someone would show her the live version of that model so readily (albeit unknowingly)? :P

The three of them are obviously unable to find anything about Emile Valladon, so they go back to the inn room they're staying in.

That's when one of Mycroft's men comes to pick Holmes up and take him to his elder brother. Here's when the third act begins, I think.

Mycroft had warned Sherlock not to pursue "Gabrielle's" case any further during the second act. But Sherlock didn't listen, because a.) he's an empathetic man, and b.) Mycroft can't just order him to do or drop something just because. Sherlock is not a child anymore.

I know Mycroft was only trying to protect Sherlock, and that he couldn't have told him the real reason to stop him at that time, but still.

Either way, months of planning and testing the submersible have gone to waste because Holmes did not suspect at any point that his client, "Gabrielle Valladon" might have just been lying to him since the start. Can't blame Holmes for that. Ilse was meticulous.

Mycroft shows the model to the queen and she strongly disapproves of the model and curses it a lot. Personally, this seemed to be a shitty decision on her part, and I felt so frustrated and annoyed at her in that scene. She didn't even care to hear about its features. She just rejected it on the spot! :(

Mycroft decides to 'give the submarine' to the German government. It's implied that the Trappists were drowned along with the submarine itself in the deep waters. (That's what I gathered from that scene - correct me if my interpretation was wrong).

In conclusion, while Ilse is genuinely able to outsmart Holmes (unlike some writers forcing us to believe it in their adaptation because they told us so), the German government isn't able to go anywhere with the info they've gathered through Ilse because of Mycroft's last move. Moreover, the English government would have sent her to jail, if Sherlock hadn't suggested Mycroft send her back to her own country.

So, in the end, it's a lose-lose situation for all of them.

1.) Sherlock Holmes didn't know that Ilse was faking her name and her whole identity for a long time, so he unknowingly helped a German spy, thinking he was just helping an ordinary client. Ilse almost had him and the viewers could see for themselves that she'd outsmarted him.

2.) Even after Ilse von Hofmannsthal has got what she wanted for her government, as a spy, they aren't able to make use of that info because of Mycroft. And she has to get out of England anyway.

3.) Mycroft Holmes also fails, to some extent, because ages of effort to plan the submersible, hide the plans, and test the model in secret - all of it has gone to waste. The queen doesn't even want to hear him out in the end.

But even if it was a lose-lose situation, the battle was damn intriguing because of the high intellect on both sides - Holmes brothers and Ilse.

Months later, Holmes receives a letter from Mycroft about Ilse's arrest and execution by the Japanese government. Reading that, he's so moved that he can't even finish his breakfast. He gets up and asks Watson for his cocaine supply. Watson tells him, and then Holmes grabs the bag and goes to his room. Holmes shuts himself in, Watson gets up from the breakfast table too, sits beside the fireplace, and begins to write something on a piece of paper. Probably about the case, but for nobody to see.

End of Act III and the movie.

--

I loved the background score of this movie. It's quite touching and refreshing to listen to.

A lot of dialogue exchanges in the movie are so deep if you stop to think about them. It's unbelievable how much writers can convey through a few words. Some of them are quite funny too - particularly from Act I. There's a thin line between being funny and mocking, and TPLOSH didn't cross that. It was nice.

I love this portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. It's clear how deeply they've understood him from the original canon. Pretends to be dismissive and closed off but actually cares about everyone way too much.

I also liked Mycroft in this movie, even if he didn't have much screen time.

About Ilse von Hofmannsthal - I loved her. Seriously, this is how you write female characters, modern writers! People say ASIB is a direct adaptation of TPLOSH, which is true, but I'd prefer TPLOSH over that episode any day, and one of the reasons is the way the female lead has been written in the former. Not exactly a fan of how Moffat wrote her in his adaptation. He did her dirty, I'd say.

Characters like Ilse make me think that the writing team of this movie knew what feminism is. I can't say the same for the modern Holmes adaptation that has been heavily inspired by TPLOSH.

I loved the plot of this movie too. The case in itself was also pretty interesting and kept me hooked throughout. Even if it wasn't exactly resolved finally, and the ending was melancholic.

I wasn't expecting the movie to be this good. Which is why it took me so long to sit down and watch it.

I only have one complaint about this movie - Watson's characterisation.

I mean, Watson wasn't half as bad as I'd expected (I thought he was going to be horrible, based on the snippets of the movie I'd seen before), but still. I like how he doesn't fall into the bumbling idiot stereotype. As far as the casework is concerned, Watson is also quite competent and observant in his own right. He can handle the medical work too.

I've got problems with his heteronormativity, and the fact that when it comes to deducing what lies in Holmes' heart, he's dumb as bricks. It's annoying. Like, it's one thing if he doesn't feel the same way about Holmes, but he doesn't have to be so weird and homophobic about it. Also, I think Holmes should've told him about the truth related to Ilse and the 'mechanical monster'. I've had enough of 'keeping Watson in the dark for his own good', damn it! He should be more in the knowledge.

Watson's character was the only element in the movie that didn't receive justice from the writer. As a Watson-centric fan, I need this to stop happening in future Holmes adaptations. People should see more from his POV too, and stop to actually see where he's coming from, and properly understand his character in the next show/movie/whatever they make.

What I gathered from the movie about the characters and their interpersonal relationships-

Holmes is in love with Watson but doesn't admit it... for valid reasons this time. (side eyes at Watson's homophobia).

Watson is deeply attached to Holmes but sees him as a close friend. I wish he felt the same way about Holmes in this movie, but alas! Though if he doesn't feel that way about Holmes, why the hell does he seem so jealous of Ilse in Acts II and III? This is beyond me.

I think what they've tried to show is that Watson is too close-minded to confront his possibly repressed feelings for Holmes, deep within his heart? Maybe. It could very well be my wishful thinking lol.

But as far as Holmes' feelings for Watson are concerned, it's not even wishful thinking. It's just... right there. I wish the subtext about Holmes' pining were spelled out. I know why it couldn't (the Doyle estate was being a pain in the ass at that time), but still. It's quite clear what they wanted to write as far as Holmes' emotional side was concerned, but they dropped it from the scripts after Act I and decided to focus on the case instead.

Holmes is dismissive of 'Gabrielle' at first, but he becomes sympathetic for her after some time. He reaches out to help her with her situation, and as the plot moves forward, he grows affectionate for Gabrielle/Ilse, which is why he doesn't hold a grudge against her when he realises he's been outsmarted by this woman (even though his ego was mildly hurt for a while).

The way they maintained a balance between the plot and the characters is commendable. I love seeing well-written women in fiction and this movie showed me that.

I was surprised to see how good this movie turned out to be, as compared to my preconceived opinions. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes has officially become my comfort movie now. Miles ahead of BBC Sherlock, in my opinion.

Thanks to my discussions with @jamielovesjam in a previous post about this movie lol. I wouldn't have wanted to watch the movie if not for the long talk I had with them. Also tagging @gaypiningshit and @helloliriels for further discussion.

End of my unnecessarily long rambling.

[f0point5]

I’m not brave enough to go near f1 twitter and I think I might’ve said this before actually but there is no deep “narrative” in f1 especially with people like Max and Charles. As a fan it’s interesting to observe and draw connections but some people have taken it way too far lol

Like they drove together as kids.. so did 90% of the grid? They both had Spider-Man helmets!! Yeah boys tend to enjoy that massively known superhero 🤷🏻‍♀️ Motorsports is a small world guys they aren’t star crossed soul mates

Even like brocedes they’re just friends that fell out to me? I really doubt Lewis is at home pacing thinking about Nico and the childhood friendship he lost?

Spitting straight facts.

It’s fun to imagine this rivalry narrative because of that one Jos quote about how they’ll race together in F1 but um they were the two most talented ones in their European karting class I feel like it wasn’t exactly a premonition for Jos to say that?

Like, it could be a dramatic narrative and I have no issue with people taking poetic license to make art out of it but we all have to recognise that these kids ALL knew each other. Esteban karted with them too, so did Pierre. And then one category down there was Lando, George, Alex.

I love a narrative but the reality is definitely nowhere that deep.

I have to say I disagree with Brocedes. I think that did have a deep effect on Lewis’s psyche and how he saw racing. Because he really changed his vibes after that season. Definitely changed how he dealt with teammates. I also think it’s interesting how Nico won once, climbed the mountain and went back down, and walked away to what I would say a more fulfilling life while Lewis was just addicted to sitting at the top. I think because Nico and Lewis were genuinely friends and did value that relationship I’m more open to believing it was deep for them.

Whereas with Charles and Max…I don’t think these two think about each other.

But Idk I like a narrative.

I don’t think any of them are as poetic as people make out but I think a lot of them are interesting/fun to speculate.

[princess-of-the-corner]

As of today, if you had a nickel for all the times Joan of Arc was shown as a magical girl you'd have four, as far I know:

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne: a 1998 manga with anime adaptation, it features Joan's reincarnation in the modern day on a mission from God, stealing magical chess pieces to foil the devil's plan.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: the final episode of the original series, aired in 2011, shows Joan on the pyre as one of the magical girls rescued by Madoka. The manga Puella Magi Tart Magica (with the name Tart being taken from the original spelling of her name, Jehanne Tart) was eventually made, detailing her story and ending with Joan on the pyre as Madoka is coming for her.

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir: Joan first shows up in the season 1 finale, with her image appearing on a stained glass window facing a goddamn' dragon. The actual Joan gets time displaced and briefly meets Marinette in "Ephemeral", and her ghost is summoned in "Reunion".

Giovanna Pulzella: a song from Italian parody band Bardomagno released on October 25 2024, the video shows her going from a "normal" maiden that hears the voice of God into a warrior as a magical girl transformation that gives her armor and a new haircut.

Now, how historically accurate are they?

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne: Not in the slightest. They took the bare bones of Jeanne's tale and adapted it to a phantom thief story, throwing the magical girl thing in to make it work and going utterly against the actual history while accidentally getting the medieval Catholic idea of purity of a woman right.

PMMM: Extremely accurate down to her haircut (though incorrectly showing her as a blonde), and featuring a lot of historical character in the proper time and action with a single exception justified by virtue of being Perenelle Flamel (that is someone said by folk tales to be immortal), though with a few poetic licenses due the magical girl setting. Especially notable her banner (preserved after her capture but destroyed during the French Revolution), based on historical descriptions except for Kyubey (that Joan thinks is an angel) replacing Jesus, prompting those who see it to comment on how ugly it is (and explaining why descriptions differ), and her reaction of awe to a Soul Gem (by Catholic doctrine the body is merely a container of the soul, so being suddenly able to TOUCH her soul is taken as proof of the Incubator's divine power).

Miraculous: mixed bag, and irritating. For starters it's the only time they presented her with her historical black hair, if with a cut contrary to descriptions preceding her prisony. In "Ephemeral" she calls for Bertrand de Poulengy, a French knight historically known only for being her follower from BEFORE meeting the Dauphine Charles to her rehabilitation trial, only to follow it up with her attacking with her sword when her own testimony at the heresy trial, confirmed by witnesses at the rehabilitation trail, explain she never used the sword in combat, only as decoration and to chase prostitutes out of the camp (and breaking one on the back of one of the prostitutes). And in "Reunion" her ghost (by some accident identical to how ghosts were seen in the Middle Ages, as an image of the soul of a defunct left in the world to help the living or made by the devil to tempt them) shows her famous temper and references how the French throne was in fact vacant from the death of Charles VI in 1422 to the anointment and coronation of Charles VII in 1431 (long story short one could truly be King of France through the coronation in Reims and needed to be a knight for it, but the city was in English hands until retaken by Joan and Henry V was below the minimum knighthood age), only for her devotion to God (great enough she was eventually made Saint Joan) to go unmentioned and her devotion to France being ignored for a trite romantic plot that included Charles VII and Henry V being presented as warmongers prolonging the war for their own ambition IN DIRECT CONTRADICTION TO INFORMATIONS SHE HAD MENTIONED EARLIER IN THE EPISODE (when she was asked who was King of France in 1423 and she started explaining why the answer was "no one").

Giovanna Pulzella: Quite accurate except for the jokes (it's a parody band, after all), as expected by Bardomagno, whose members are all history buffs. Just don't ask why Charles VII is shown as looking like the main character from the old manga Kaibutsu-kun, that's one pun for older Italians that would make Chat Noir groan.

And if you ask me, when the magical girl manga and the parody band that are both taking artistic licenses make a better job representing Saint Joan than the guy who supposedly is a fan of the Maiden of Orleans, one has the right to be angry.

It's a bit of a mess

[lickthecowhappy]

I struggled with this one so please be nice to me. I think the prolonged exposure to low grade sadness made me grumpy.

The French text in this poem is taken from Gustave Flaubert’s 1842 novela Novembre.

And for the record, I don't think Crowley is really this much of a sad sack, it's just artistic license.

Translated version is below the cut.

Deux Langues de Nous

Rhapsodies poétiques,  I stuttered and struggled- laid utterly bare- surrounded by the words of infamous poets,  all fleeing my grasp like timid prey. souvenirs de mauvaises lectures,  How desperate I was to recall any  soliloquy, monologue, or profession of love  crafted so carefully by the human heart. hyperboles de rhétorique,  I could not compare thee to a Summer's day,  nor my love to a red red rose; I only scrabbled for  any stale crumb of affection my mouth could offer. que toutes ces grandes douleurs sans nom,  We couldn't say it, unspoken all those years-  until I put a name to what could have been,  and took “Us” with me when I left. mais le bonheur aussi ne serait-il pas  une métaphore inventée un jour d’ennui?  Perhaps I was not created to be loved,  only to be used and discarded. Cast down  once Love, Herself, tired of me. J’en ai longtemps douté,  For one bitter moment I believed in my  withered soul that you might hold me dear.  How foolish I must have seemed in your eyes. aujourd’hui je n’en doute plus. You and I were speaking two different languages and you were never very good with French. I suppose we both learned that the hard way.

[Translation]

[Two Languages of Us]

[Poetic rhapsodies,] I stuttered and struggled- laid utterly bare- surrounded by the words of infamous poets,  all fleeing my grasp like timid prey. [memories of bad readings,] How desperate I was to recall any  soliloquy, monologue, or profession of love  crafted so carefully by the human heart. [rhetorical hyperboles,] I could not compare thee to a Summer's day,  nor my love to a red red rose; I only scrabbled for  any stale crumb of affection my mouth could offer. [all these great nameless pains,] We couldn't say it, unspoken all those years-  until I put a name to what could have been,  and took “Us” with me when I left. [But maybe happiness too, is a metaphor  invented on a day of boredom?] Perhaps I was not created to be loved,  only to be used and discarded. Cast down  once Love, Herself, tired of me. [I doubted it for a long time,]  For one bitter moment I believed in my  withered soul that you might hold me dear.  How foolish I must have seemed in your eyes. [today I no longer doubt it.] You and I were speaking two different languages and you were never very good with French. I suppose we both learned that the hard way.

Read more of my work here. This poem is also available on AO3.

[fckyeahvikings]

I've been waiting for a little of the hype to die down a smidge but this was one thing that just happened to inch across my YouTube feed and I was immediately smitten by the redheaded warrioress that graced it. The said redhead, Sigrid, aside, let's have some fun under this cut for spoilers and mature themes.

It's quite simple: you'll either love it or absolutely hate it.

Twilight of the Gods was something that I had next to no prior knowledge of except that "300" was the first R rated movie I was able to legally see (I'm that old.)

Now, that being said, this animation - I won't insult it by calling it a cartoon - is definitely a mature-themed bunch of rag-tag half taken from Norse mythology figures with a female lead, Sigrid, that was actually, refreshingly, allowed to be herself, which happened to be a wildly emotive woman with a sex drive to boot. The story itself takes several creative licenses with Norse mythology, injects some run of the mill misogyny (i.e. frequent use of the word "cunt" vs anatomically correct vagina/vulva) and sets up for a season two.

If you can get past the fact that it's essentially a watered down Ragnarok that, again, you'll love or hate.

Each character is fleshed out in a halfway believable way although seemingly like they walked straight from the Prose or Poetic Eddas: a bit like cardboard cutouts of Viking ideals that have survived over the centuries and a little stiff for it.

I'm really trying not to sound like boo, this is garbage. Because it's really not. It... just isn't to everyone's taste, likely.

Here's what I did enjoy:

Sigrid. As a whole. Even though some aspects of all the characters do seem stiff, Sigrid being allowed to be an openly angry, grieving daughter (you'll find out why in the first episode) is something that isn't normally seen in mainstream media. Female rage incarnate.

Leif. Sigrid's betrothed. As far as animation goes, he's not hard to look at. He struck me as the older son that isn't trying to follow in his father's footsteps and regrets some things along the line (re: in a lot of ways, he reminded me of Vili Hemmingson from Assassin's Creed Valhalla almost immediately. Which, if you know me, you know I adore Vili in AC Valhalla. Leif was difficult not to see the resemblance in, especially when Leif seemed to be lacking in certain areas and greatly fleshed out in others. The same way that Vili seems to have half a character in his part of AC Valhalla and the other portion was chopped off.) His character is very honor driven though with some darker choices sprinkled in there for moral spice.

Loki. Finally allowed to be their Jotnar self, they have the depth you would expect for a depiction of Loki, down to the association of spiders with them. Loki's shapeshifting is flaunted, even down to the story behind Sleipnir, though with a fair dose of period-specific homophobia in that. (It's not so much that Loki was the mare, it was that Loki was the bottom.) Some people online have taken great exception to this, understandably, but this is unfortunately period specific and accurate to the Viking beliefs. The dynamics of Loki with their family, as a doting father figure willing to do pretty much anything to spare their children, is actually another refreshing take on the sagas. While Twilight of the Gods does have them relatively accurately depicted, the choice of Loki being decidedly presenting as an obviously male Jotnar is a bit jarring. Even in the sagas, Loki takes on a more Aesir (human) appearance and has red hair.

Freyja. Her design in Twilight of the Gods is absolutely exquisite, in my opinion. She's shown as a woman of color and of great power, wisdom and influence, even hobbled as she is in the story. She feels appropriately otherworldly. She also feels like the type of woman who would absolutely murder you and stage being the grieving widow while wearing an expensive fur coat all while wailing, "Oh, no, officer! I have no idea how this happened! *sniff* He was like this when I arrived! *uncontrollable sobbing*"

Baldr. Another design that I adored. Baldr's being a god of light was key in his design and it's obvious, he looks like a piece of the sun itself came into being in the animation. He has some of his mother's (Freyja's, as is most common now) features but he otherwise is simply golden and radiating light. He is rather impartial to his half-brother's rampaging but that's also saga accurate. Interestingly, this is one of the places where the series plays fast and loose with the mythology. He is pierced by a mistletoe dart but nothing of Fimbulwinter comes of it. The events of Ragnarok do happen but wildly out of order or not at all, Baldr is one of those.

Odin. I can't write all of this and not give the All Father a nod. Without giving away huge portions of the series, this is seriously one of my favorite depictions of him now. He managed to simultaneously be Havi, the Mad-One, and Odin, the all wise, all knowing All Father. He creeped me out endlessly and was as familiar to me as the back of my own hand at the same time.

What I didn't like:

Casual sexism. As period specific as it is, being aware of it when it's spoken does diminish the experience somewhat. Especially with Nidavellir. This could do with a warning unto itself: the way that women are used and then literally drowned in the dwarvish realm nearly wrecked and ruined things for me there. The use of "cunt" over any other word for female-presenting anatomy (vagina/vulva/etc) seemed juvenile. And while there are several sex scenes in the series, including two where it's male/male and woman/woman, there is no shown female climax. Just male. You just get the woman/women moaning seductively off-screen. It's an unfriendly reminder that the use of vagina and showing female pleasure onscreen would have ramped the rating of this from mature to outright pornography for those two things alone.

Thor. It's the second time that he's depicted as being outright abusive to his family (first being God of War's take.) If this was faithful to the sagas and to the Viking teachings on honor (among other things), it would have been grounds for Sif to readily divorce him. Which Thor would have borne the brunt of. The depictions of his brazenly, wantonly slaughtering Jotunns is saga accurate.

Egill. And the se of "ergi." It's not something that you just... have happen like that. Nor is it necessarily a brand. (If you want to squint and tilt your head, Loki calls Odin that in the flyting mess.) Some equate is to the modern F slur whereas the F slur didn't even exist as such then.

Tiwaz. IS TYR. WHY DID THEY MAKE HIM AN ABSOLUTE UNINTELLIGEBLE THING BEYOND COMPREHENSION. And is honestly is a glaring error in the entire story.

Still, a solid 8.5/10 for accuracy but 3.5/10 for the story in places and characters. The cons should definitely be addressed in a season two and these are just the ones that immediately sprung to mind without a complete rewatch (which I'm not prepared for yet.)

No, don't @ me on this. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[jcs-study]

So, Peter denies Jesus three times, and then according to the Bible, the cockerel crows, just as Jesus said. In all the recordings I’ve heard and the many performances I’ve seen of JCS, I’ve never heard a cockerel after the third denial by Peter. It’s in the Bible, so why not in the show? I’ve always thought that the fact biblical Jesus said “Before the cock crows three times you will deny me,” and then the third time Peter denies him, a cock crows, to be quite powerful storytelling.

Okay, well, I'll start with the most obvious answer: because it's a show, not a literal reenactment of the Bible. Yes, lines and actions taken from within the Bible occur during the show (and way more than fundamentalist Christians actually realize, as I've covered in these pages before), but there's also a ton of stuff that's flat-out made up. (After all, it's not as though Judas has a sung angsty monologue about how things are going astray and Jesus is letting fame go to his head in the Bible either…)

It's a creative work taking poetic license. Besides, Jesus doesn't even mention the cock's crow in the lyrics, just that Peter will deny him. You wish it was in the show? Take it up with Tim Rice!

Having said that...

Some productions do include the rooster. The Ivo van Hove rendition currently running in the Netherlands, I am told, is one example; there are probably more I don't know about. (Hey, I know a lot about JCS, but I don't know everything.)

As someone who has done a lot of historical research, I can tell you there probably wasn't a cockerel involved in the first place. According to biblical scholars who have delved into the historical Jesus (as opposed to the Christ of faith and literature), the keeping of fowls was illegal in Jerusalem, especially in the Temple complex, where loose fowl were not permitted for fear of their contaminating "pure" sacrificial animals with unclean creatures they might drag out of dung heaps; in reality, Peter would not have heard the cock crow… if we think of this in literal terms. However, the land of Judea -- and Jerusalem -- was under Roman control and customs. One such custom was the night "watches" when the trumpet was blown at each watch. The melody of the tune played changed with each watch, so the town would know approximately what time it was. A verse in the Gospel of Mark refers to all four, suggesting one was "at the cock-crowing." So, it's possible Jesus meant Peter would deny him "at the cock-crowing"; while he may not have heard a rooster, since none were available, the trumpet blast of the Roman "watch" would be heard throughout Jerusalem overhead. Some savvy JCS productions that did their homework have opted to reference this theory by having the brass and woodwinds play the "betrayal" theme Mary sings before she comes in, allowing for the visual impact of Peter realizing he has fulfilled the prophecy first. It's clever if you've done enough homework about the show and the story to catch the reference, and even more clever if the "watch" motif has already been established, using, for example, the intro to "Simon Zealotes." (For that matter, if you, too, subscribe to this theory, "in just a few hours" could refer to that "watch," but that's a heavy-handed interpretation I'm imposing on the lyric.)

I hope this answered your question!

[ryanlowrie]

From the nonsensical page of my diary to whatever device you are watching this illustration on I have taken the poetic license to make a rendition of a photograph of a fan who lent use of her likeness to my online exhibition of my art journal. Print media may be dead but the Paper Stage project prevails as a presentation of friends in art, fiends at heart

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

Regarding the Headline song discourse, I think it's important to recognize that Louis has said his songs are open to interpretation. Even the most confessional of songwriters like T Swift use poetic license. Also subtly or explicitly linking a song to a past relationship (especially one between two famous people) is a good way to garner press and interest. Taylor does this, Harry did it with "Cherry". One Direction did this with "Perfect". Still doesn't mean the song can be taken literally.

This was already mentioned.

But relationships are easier to understand than the technicalities of songwriting, so fans cling to gossip.

Also, Louis hasn’t ever said that Headline was about any particular relationship.

He has mentioned some aspects of his life with respect to songs before, but other than Eleanor with We Made It, he seldom mentions any specific person. (In 2017, Louis specifically said that Back To You was not really about him.)

[daniel-profeta]

hi, my name's daniel and I make music every now and again. It's a bad habit that shouldn't be encouraged, but it's cheaper than therapy so I keep doing it.

Recently I posted an npr tiny desk submission on youtube of this song, but I wanted to share my original demo for it somewhere. And no better place than within this gated asylum I've come to love so much.

This song is kind of a love song, and also fairly autobiographical. Some poetic license was taken however, such as: I was actually dropped on the head twice (true story).

So whether you like sad songs, angry songs, or hopeful songs, this song might be the song for you.

"The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now."

[inspofromancientworld]

The Iliad and the Odyssey and their Ancient Origins

By JW1805 at en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2171360

Homer lived in about the 8th century BCE and was an Ancient Greek poet, widely regarded as one of the best poets in the world, Plato saying he 'taught Greece', Dante having Virgil say he is the 'Poet sovereign', Alexander Pope referring to him as the 'greatest of poets'. There were many other works attributed to Homer in antiquity, including the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, perhaps expanding the line from Hesiod's Works and Days in which he claimed to have won a poetry contest. Though, with various references in the poem, it was dated to the second century CE.

By Francesco Hayez - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152601

It is thought that the blind bard Demodocus from the Odyssey was meant to represent Homer, leading to the oft repeated description that Homer was blind. He was said to have been the son of the river god Meles and the nymph Critheis, that he wandered, and that he died after failing to solve a riddle. There were many biographies of Homer written in the ancient world, all of which were based on the traditions passed down about him rather than based on studying writings of those who might have known him.

By Lawrence Alma-Tadema - fAFfW9CzajZAaA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21886584

Studying Homer's writing is one of the oldest forms of scholarship, going back to Ancient Greece and Rome. There are writings by Xenophanes of Colophon, a Greek theologian, who claimed that Homer's treatment of the gods made him 'immoral'. Theagenes of Rhegium countered that the poems are meant to be allegories, only symbolic and not meant to be taken as literal representations of the gods. There were also commentaries to help make Homer's Ancient Greek understandable to those who spoke classical Greek. His works were taken as to support the Stoics and containing hidden wisdom, and that the poems purpose was to educate. Eustathius of Thessalonica produced nearly 6,000 pages (in the 21st century printed version) of commentary on the Iliad and the Odyssey in the 12th century CE.

By Pinpin (talk · contribs) - Inspiré de la carte "ACHAEANS and TROJANS" du site de Carlos Parada, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2830268

Dating the Trojan War and the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as their historical factually is complicated. The ancient Greeks give us a date of 1184 BCE as the date of the sack of Troy, though there are wide-spread doubts that Troy existed as Homer wrote about them. Homer's poems also contain combinations of Bronze Age elements (bronze weapons, large shields, and a boar's tusk helmet) along with Iron Age elements (cremation, smaller shields, and many aspects of the civilization). These may be artifacts of anachronism that crept in because of Poetic license or lack of primary sources, or they may be elements that show the epics are works of pure historical fiction. No locations have been found, to date, that match Homer's description of Troy. Additionally, with the translation of Linear B, we now know that Bronze age Greek civilization was more closely related to that of the ancient Near East.

By CherryX per Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21675688

Whether the Trojan War happened as described in the Iliad and the Odyssey was debated even in antiquity. Thucydides, a historian who lived about 460-400 BCE, was of the opinion that it was a historical event but was exaggerated by Homer, that there were not 1,186 ships sent to Troy. Later, opinion swung that the Trojans won the war and the epics were a way of the Greeks hiding that loss from the historical record, as written by Dio Chrysostom in about 100 CE. Gradually, it was generally believed that the Trojan War was fully fictional until 1870, when Heinrich Schliemann excavated Hisarlik, Çanakkale, which he believed to be the historical Troy, leading to the interpretation that the that there was a Greek campaign against Troy but that the poems aren't a faithful record of the events. Since the 1990s, efforts have been made to understand the conflict as it appeared in writing of the countries around the area, such as the Hittites.

By Unknown author - http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/image_archive/mss/mss2.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4297434

The Iliad and the Odyssey are both written in a 'literary language', or formal language, rather than the 'everyday language' that people commonly spoke. They were mostly written in Ionic Greek with an level of importance of the number of syllables per line, which was part of the reason for many of the epithets (such as 'rosy-fingered Dawn' and 'owl-eyed Athena') as well as the so-named 'Homeric formulae (for example: 'and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men' or 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light') which influenced later Greek and Roman poetry. These 'oddities' are sometimes taken as evidence that the epics were orally transmitted before they were written down. Other 'fingerprints' of oral telling include 'ring composition' (introducing elements or ideas in one order then reversing them, which might be a mnemonic device), short sentences with limited use of conjunctions, and using 'type scenes' for things that happen often in the poem.

By User:Bibi Saint-Pol - Own work (Original text: Own work (using Wikisource for text)), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1904767

The Iliad is 15,693 lines long, divided into 24 books (one for each letter of the Greek alphabet). It covers the ten-year long siege of Troy (Ilium) by the Mycenaean Greeks, though it focuses primarily on the final weeks of that campaign. It also details the machinations of the Olympian gods in provoking and prolonging the war.

By Michel Martin Drolling - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Twice25 using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4297275

The first four books give the exposition for the story, beginning near the end of the war, then explaining what happened that caused the war, from the competition between the goddesses for the golden apple caused by the spiting of Eris. through to Hera convincing Zeus that only the destruction of Troy is acceptable and Athena nudging the Trojan archer Pandarus to shoot Menelaus, breaking the truce. The next three books focus on duels between the Greeks and Trojans. Books 8-15 talk about the Trojans winning against the Greeks and the machinations among the gods to allow this to happen. Books 16-18 focus on Patroclus' sacrifice and books 19-24 focus on Achilles' grief and rage at the death of his companion. Achilles' rage is the ring composition that encompasses the entire poem as it begins 'Wrath of Achilles' as the opening words of the epic.

By File:Odyssey_manuscript.jpg photoshoped by Odysses - File:Odyssey_manuscript.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46651771

The Odyssey is 12,109 lines long, also divided into 24 books. It focuses on Odysseus' return home to Ithica and his reunion with his family, which can be contrasted with Agamemnon's return home to Clytemnestra, who kills Agamemnon with the help of her lover Aegistrus, or Achilles' inability to return home at all despite his fame. The second main theme is that of hospitality to strangers, as exemplified by the Phaeacian court and by Odysseus' shepherd who takes him in when he's disguised.

By VladoubidoOo - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30558926

The Odyssey begins with Odysseus being unable to return home to Ithica because he angered Poseidon, so he's staying with Calypso, or a captive of Calypso. There is also a focus on Odysseus' family, Penelope and Telemachus, and the suitors camping in the palace, campaigning for Penelope's hand in another type of siege, with Telemachus setting out for Sparta to find information on his father. The first four books set up the story with the gods pushing the humans into place to begin the journey. Books 5-8 deal with Odysseus leaving Calypso's island of Ogygia and and he managed to make it to Scherie despite Poseidon's wrath at him because of the help of goddesses. In books 9-12, Odysseus recounts his adventures to the Phaeacians including episodes with the lotus fruit that cause amnesia, the island of the Cylcopes, the winds given by Aeolus and the resulting storm, the Sirens, and the hunting of the sacred cattle, which is how Odysseus ended up on Calypso's island. In books 13-20, Odysseus is able to get home with the Phaeacians' help, though they drop him off while he's asleep and at a hidden cove so Athena needs to let him know where he is. She has him hide the treasure the Phaeacians left for him and disguise himself as an old man so he can reconnoiter things around his home. Telemachus returned home from Sparta, avoiding an ambush set up by the suitors as he does so. He meets up with his father and they plan how to defeat the suitors. In books 21-24, they carry out the plan, beginning with challenging the suitors to an archery contest for Penelope's hand through to the massacre of the suitors and the execution of the maids who were unfaithful to the household through having sex with the suitors.

You can read the Iliad here. You can listen to the Iliad here. You can listen to OSP's summary here.

You can read the Odyssey here. You can listen to the Odyssey here. You can listen to OSP's summary here.

[raisinchallah]

its very fun how xena the show positions itself as undergoing the same processes it undertakes on all the various cultural products that it samples remixes and redefines that not only is it never taking on the role that say many takes on historical or mytholgical stories will position themselves as telling the real story even if in only a tongue in cheek way xena creates further levels of remove from itself as any type of reality it is repeatedly played with that the show is based upon scrolls written by gabrielle which are already her own poetic license being taken with the events of her life with xena then potentially inaccurately translated and turned into a television show it omits the other level which is cultural saturation as mythological product before being turned into television perhaps its one deference to its difference from hercules but though not uncommon especially for a one off episode or even a shows entire framing device to be like a novel or diary entry or whatever few shows ever create that many levels of separation while also never compromising the emotional truth its honestly quite savvy in the same ways it may use humor to undercut seriousness or seriousness to undercut humor it looks right back at the fact some people may find the entire thing too silly or hard to take seriously that all of these myths and historical figures are being hashed up and rewritten or merely gestured at as needed for an offhand joke that the show itself is subject to those same processes ...

[blackbloodteeth]

Snippet Sunday? In front of my Reverb?

Hahahaha thanks for the tag @cannibal-nightmares and @silluuuu! I am once again back on my [content warnings] – Blood? Body horror? Death? – but, this probably isn't going to go exactly the way you think it will.

———

Don't start stories in front of mirrors. That's what I've been told. Well, this doesn't start here, it happened four years ago.

Where oppressive soot and metallic sting gripped my lungs, and the pain cracked my ribs right in half. Wasn't hollowed out just for that. Rust stuck to my sleeves, the blade I was trying so hard to dislodge while I could barely see, couldn't even think to call your name at the time. I did eventually, though.

The thought of how our fingers fit together, my hands flitting right over the piano keys, your hands sitting beneath my staff, that's what made it hurt so much. I could barely stand but there I was, fingers shaking to hell and back as I could feel your soul beating in my other hand. Straight out of the dead bastard's mouth.

I've never cried in front of you before. You know I don't like it when I do, couldn't stop myself this time. Couldn't see all that well but I knew it was you. No doubt about it.

Maybe I was mad then. Maybe I always was, just a little bit. Couldn't take it I guess. Had to make sure it never happened again, or something poetic like that. You weren't too happy about me shoving you between my ribs for a while.

I still remember it pretty clearly. It's like… absorbing a soul into yourself, except instead of making it yours you just keep it there. Like if instead of my chest being teeth, they're like fingers, an analogy, where I just hold onto you. It was… different. I remember that a lot.

You know how it's like when you hold onto my scythe form? I could feel your wavelength beating directly against mine, and it just felt so… strong, that the angry tears fell directly from my eyes. You weren't mad at me, not really, and I didn't want to really "make you mine" or do the unthinkable. But you know that already.

We were both upset for a long while, but you were still in tune with me at least enough. I could feel your body, not here with me, far, far away. They took your body from you, they took your body from you. Went on repeat as I went looking non-stop.

Wasn't ever gonna stop until I find it again.

His fingers and thumb run carelessly through his bangs, another snip of scissors taking off one last finishing touch before he looks himself over from every possible angle. A smirk pulls at the corner of his lips as a hum of approval radiates up his sternum.

Alright, what about the rest?

A disapproving huff rolls its eyes at the back of his mind, and damn if he can't help but tease her with a finger curling through the sides of his hair. He knows she likes it long, he knows he likes it that she likes it long, he doesn't really care otherwise other than getting annoyed by it consuming his face like an emo boyband middle-schooler.

The flat-end of the scissors tilt his chin up a little, a humming squint eyeing all the scruff having taken over. That bossy little pout weighs in that she likes his fuzzy coat of facial hair, thank you very much. He looks like a homeless stoner. It's endearing. And makes his face look good.

Also he pretty much is one already.

A hyena laugh barks out as he shines a grin of his fangs at his reflection, setting the scissors down while fussing with his disheveled head one last time.

Alright, you lead?

Her scoff shifts his eyes into a playful shade of green as she now brushes the renegade clippings off of the bathroom counter, letting him sit back and handle the mental checklist for this morning as she puts the scissors away properly. Gonna be one helluva day finally getting her a driver's license today.

[haggishlyhagging]

Sexuality is a very complex phenomenon. At once social and physical, "nature" and "culture," it defies categorization. Pagan religions saw sexuality as part of the natural order, part of the same generative force that ultimately resulted in fertility. Erotic attraction had an integral place in the workings of the cosmos. Sexuality could be sacred, part of the continuation of the cosmos, as in the Sumerian sacred marriage ritual. In this ritual, the expression of sexual emotions could be associated with the experience of divinity, and the songs and poems connected with the sacred marriage provided a religious setting for the expression and celebration of sexual desire. Even ordinary sex could be seen as godlike, for the stories of the sexual adventures and misadventures of the gods provided a divine parallel for sexuality. These stories showed that gods also felt these drives and performed these acts. Sexual behavior did not make people less like the gods; on the contrary, it reinforced their resemblance to the upper orders of being. The male gods could be models of male virility and sexual potency, their behavior paradigms of proper (and sometimes of improper) sexual activity.

Ancient pagan religion also portrayed the sexual impulse as a goddess of sexual attraction. Male gods, figures of potency, can express sexual activity; they cannot fully express sexual attraction in a predominantly heterosexual, androcentric society. The figure of Inanna/Ishtar provides a way to conceptualize the erotic impulse, a vocabulary to celebrate its presence, and an image with which to comprehend the human experience of sexual desire. Sexual desire comes from the presence of Ishtar. When she is absent,

The Bull springs not upon the cow, the ass does not inseminate the Jenny. In the street man does not inseminate young woman. The man lies down in his (own) chamber the woman lies down on her side.

Sexuality was part of the divine realm, most specifically of the female divine. Even when other functions of goddesses were absorbed by male gods, sexuality could not be absorbed into male divinity. Ishtar remained the representative and divine patron of sexual attraction and activity.

All of this religious dimension of sexuality disappears in biblical monotheism. There is no sexual dimension of divine experience. Instead of gods and goddesses interrelating with each other, there is only the one God of Israel. YHWH, moreover, is a predominantly male god, referred to by the masculine pronoun (never by the feminine), and often conceived of in such quintessentially masculine images as warrior and king. In the earliest biblical poem, the Song of the Sea, God is "man of war." God is also king, the prime metaphor of mastery. This, too, has a masculine connotation. But these masculine qualities of God are social male-gender characteristics. The monotheist God is not sexually a male. He is not at all phallic, and does not represent male virility. Biblical anthropomorphic language uses corporeal images of the arm of God, the right hand of God, God's back, and God's tears. God is not imagined below the waist. In Moses' vision at Mount Sinai, God covered Moses with his hand until he had passed by, and Moses saw only his back. In Elijah's vision, there was nothing to be seen, only a "small still voice." In Isaiah's vision (chapter 6), two seraphim hide Gods "feet" (normally taken as a euphemism), and in Ezekiel's vision (chapters 1-3), there is only fire below the loins. God is asexual, or transsexual, or metasexual (depending on how we view this phenomenon), but "he" is never sexed.

God does not behave in sexual ways. In the powerful marital metaphor, God is the "husband" of Israel. But this husband-God does not kiss, embrace, fondle, or otherwise express physical affection for Israel, even within the poetic license of the metaphor. Such reticence is not demanded by rhetorical usage, for in the other erotic metaphor, that describing the attachment of men to Lady Wisdom, there is no hesitation to use a physical image, "hug her to you and she will exult you, she will bring you honor if you embrace her." Wisdom is clearly a woman-figure, and can be metaphorically embraced as a woman. But God is not a sexual male, and therefore even the erotic metaphor of passion reveals a lack of physicality. God is not imaged in erotic terms, and sexuality was simply not part of the divine order.

God is not sexed, God does not model sexuality, and God does not bestow sexual power. God, who is the giver of fertility, procreation, abundance, health, does not explicitly give potency. God does not promise the men of Israel that they will be sexually active or competent. Biblical thought does not see sexuality as a gift of God. To the Bible, the sexual and divine realms have nothing to do with each other. Indeed, the Bible is concerned to maintain their separation, to demarcate the sexual and sacred experiences and to interpose space and time between them. God would not reveal godself or God's purpose on Mount Sinai until Israel abstained from sexual activity for three days. This temporal separation between the sexual and the sacred also underlies the story of David's request for food during his days of fleeing from King Saul. David assured the priest Ahimelech that his men were eligible to eat hallowed bread by asserting that they had been away from women for three days. Sexual activity brings people into a realm of experience which is unlike God; conversely, in order to approach God one has to leave the sexual realm.

-Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth

[titleknown]

HELLOWEEN #10: ACABUS

-ACABUS is a Constable of Hell with 3,921 Watch-Men and 42 co-signed laws to her name. She may be summoned to prevent entry and egress from contained spaces, produce sigils to command those in their wake, produce a cubic oubliette preventing all egress and cause injury to those who have broken contracts.

She appears as a knight with a long tower for a head with an eye at the apex, wielding a hammer in one arm and a telescope in another. She requires a contract for her services, do not sign it with your dominant hand or else you are doomed to damnation.-

As there are landlords in hell, there are also cops. And amongst cops, a decent sample is Acabus. Petty would be the word I use to describe her, but not for her own indulgence's sake (at least not overtly), but rather for the sake of the Law.

This was clear to me when I contacted her within an entire city block she had taken over due to a simple parking violation, barricated from every avenue of egress, automobiles and pedestrians alike crushed into cubes due to being complicit in the viscinity of the parking violation, all surfaces festooned with tickets like freshly fallen snow. 

Despite her pretentions, she is more or less a low-level traffic cop of hell, dealing with loitering, violations of driver safety, ticketing, and barricades amongst others. She really loves barricades. She waxed baroque of the art of making them as glorious yet painful and difficult to egress from as possible, and the ones in the location I had met her indeed seemed to bear an elaborate artisanship, albeit a grotesque one given the amount of twisted forms adjacent to humanoid and flame-belching skulls (conscious and unconscious alike) therein.

But, despite her low level, she was extremely proud of her work, saying that hell would devolve "like those filthy lemurs above," without her, her hatred of the souls of sinners and desire to punish as terrifying as it was sincere (despite being notably unhappy about her own limitations) and emphasizing to an almost suspiciously insistent degree that all she did was "by the book" unlike those who were here.

She did not seem to like most of hell either though, given the way the conversation (More a monologue on her part) escalated to her contempt for the hosts of hell, and I recall the line "Were I the ruler I would make Pandemonium itself a prison!" was uttered.

I quickly gave my leave after her comments on Pandemonium, heaven knows what she might do to me, but there was one other notable thing about her. 

She told me her proudest moment was being brought on for inducing a traffic-jam for participating in large-scale torture of souls, who had been released onto a 'street" in "cars" and told they were free. Not even the main torturer, just as an assistant, but to her it was the closest moment to pure justice in her mind.

Of course, the justice of Hell was never supposed to exist, because the justice of pain is a false one. But I didn't tell that to her out loud. God no.

-Xavier X. Xolomon , Monsterologist and Understudy to The Librarian Of Babel

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This one's one of my favorite designs I made for this project, and I am at least sorta proud of the "small-name big-ego traffic cop" personality I gave her. 

The design's impetus was actually based on Road Rage from Ultimate Muscle, if anyone remembers that, and the love of traffic barricades is an Earthbound reference! 

And yes, she totally would fight a small child who wanted to get past one of said barricades, that is something she would enthusiastically do.

Also, Xavier's not just being poetic, in my setting, Hell was a gargantuan cosmic mistake, a maelstrom-wound that drives the wicked into its folds, but in a way that was never ever intended. So yeah, there's that bit of lore.

As per usual the whole descriptions, designs, ectcetera from this project are free to use as you see fit under a CC-BY 4.0 license so long as I; Thomas F. Johnson, am credited as their creator!