#something something the difference between imprisonment and devotion (and the similarities)

[vaguely-concerned]

gideon cheerfully accepting kremy using suggestion on him left and right (and also being like '*fond smile* aaaaw yeah all the good old times :)' at the implication that kremy has essentially wielded him as a bloodied blunt instrument all these years) has some. hm. kinky implications. perhaps. also narrative/character/interpersonal ones of course but the kink factor here is unspeakable.

why are you as a man freely and gleefully offering the use of your body and occasionally autonomy to another man. why would someone who fought so hard for freedom and agency find such joy and satisfaction in willing submission. who's to say! finally actually having gay sex about this would frankly be less gay than whatever sublimated thing is going on right now

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Somehow, Through the Storm

Summary:

Living in the slums of the Warehouse District, Kaz and Inej are struggling to cling on to life through a seemingly unending winter. Wrapped up in a stranger's overcomplicated marriage contract that he is convinced is key to solving the merciless weather, Kaz remains busy and distracted for days on end, putting everything else at risk. So when a storm ravages the city and sweeps Inej into danger, the offer of safety, food, and a place to stay is an overwhelming one - no matter the cost. Terrified of mounting threats, Inej signs a contract - not knowing she would land herself trapped at the Menagerie. Kaz signs a contract that states if he can walk all the way through the city and back to the Warehouse District with Inej behind him, never looking back at her, they will both go free. But this is the Barrel, the darkest part of the city where the rules of physics can change with the stroke of a pen; the journey back will not be the same as journey there…

This is a Hadestown-inspired reimagining of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, casting Kaz and Inej as our main characters and heavily featuring our beloved Crows, set in an alternate version of the Grishaverse with a different magic system based entirely on contracts.

Tags: @lunarthecorvus @marielaure @multi-fandom-bi @igotthisaccountunderduress @thelibraryofalexandriastillburns @devoted-people-hater @spraypaintstainonawhitewall

If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list let me know <3

Warnings for this chapter: imprisonment, slavery references (similar to Kerch indenture contracts), implied abuse references, implied reference to a potentially abusive relationship, non-consensual touching, implied sa references, violence, implied violence

AO3 link:

Chapter 9 - Nina

“Did you ever wonder what it’s like on the underside? (Way down under) On the yonder side? (Way down under) On the other side of his wall?”

- Way Down Hadestown, Hadestown

After spending most of her night holed up at Lexi’s listening to Kaz drone on and studying the clock as she added up the perfectly practised timings for how long she would take to get back to the Sweet Shoppe and how much longer she could get away with being out, Nina had finally returned to her room very much looking forward to collapsing on her mattress and ignoring the world for several long hours. Nina very rarely seemed to get what she wanted. 

Kaz had asked she and Inej to keep in contact; he couldn’t share notes of letters with her because he didn’t know any Ravkan, but she and Nina could write to each other just fine. It worked out well for all of them, really. Nina would have to risk getting caught for sneaking to the Warehouse District less often, Inej could leave notes for Kaz with her if there was some reason she couldn’t reach him first, and Kaz was kept happy knowing how unlikely it was that anyone could intercept any of their intelligence when it was written in Ravkan. 

“What about anyone at the Sweet Shoppe?” Inej had asked, a little divot forming between her brows, “Surely there are Ravkans or Suli there?”

Nina parted her lips to answer, but before she could make a sound Kaz was already part way through his sentence: 

“Nina can receive any personal correspondence that she wants to. Stick to Ravkan, so as not to raise suspicion,” he looked back at Nina, and she wondered if he was trying to spare her something by not letting her speak about the Wraiths, or if he hadn’t even noticed she’d been about to speak, “Do they search the mail? Open it before they pass it on?”

Had Nina even received mail since arriving in Ketterdam? It took a search of her memory, but the answer was only once: a brief, straight to the point form response from the Ketterdam magistrates office. They had received her letter; they would contact her with regards to it at a later date; she was not to contact them regarding the same issue again before that time. When had that been? Six months ago, maybe? There had been no word since. Nina was alone, and Matthias was… Nina’s hand drifted to the fern tattoo, growing in a ring around her arm. 

The letter had still been sealed when it appeared through her door.

“Not that I know of,”

“Good. Keep the envelopes mostly plain, but list the sender’s address as somewhere in Ravka - and if you send several close together, mix the addresses up a little. Sign off with the name you were using at the boarding house, and never mention anyone else but Nina by name - just to be safe,”

Inej nodded. 

“Don’t use Haskell’s runners,” Kaz added, “We can’t trust they won’t let anything get back to him. I’ll give you a few names you can go to,”

Thus far Nina had only received a rather introductory letter from Inej, setting up the possibility of frequent communication as likely in case the note was indeed read before it reached Nina’s hands. It was all I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written, and Gregor finally remembered to tell me your new address, but Inej had proclaimed herself that character work was not her specialty and the letter was only short. That was fine; Nina could more than make up for it. She wrote a false response, asking about her fake friend’s fake mother’s fake illness, her fake friend’s fake partner’s fake new job, and addressed to the same nonsense address Inej had marked as the sender on her envelope. They were certain to check that before they sent it, probably have someone else translate it, but unless they were very eager to learn a lot of detail about fake gossip in a fake village about a fake unexpected pregnancy that Nina was requesting more information on than what she already knew, which she had described to her friend in detail so she wouldn’t end up receiving redundant information, Nina expected they would be quite bored. She’d filled out plenty of pages to keep them busy with, though. Maybe Eamon or some other sod from the Dime Lions would have to sit there listening to someone read all of her complete and utter nonsense out loud in Kerch. Nina might enjoy that. 

She’d been met in person by one of Kaz’s runners to ask her to go to Lexi’s tonight; not unusual, he never wanted it written down. Still, she expected it may end up being worked into her correspondence with Inej soon. She wandered her bleary way back into her room at the Sweet Shoppe, pushing the door shut behind her before she flopped down against the cushions of her little settee. The curtains were still open behind her, but it took her a long time to gather enough effort to pull herself back onto her feet and close them. They were thin, white, lacey things that bled sunlight into her room every morning and her candlelight into the street air after night, but with a door that didn’t lock and peepholes built into the walls they were about the closest thing Nina had to the illusion of privacy. Actually, that wasn’t true. The walls and door being there at all were the illusion of privacy they’d been good enough to grant her; the curtains were just for decoration. 

Everything around here was for decoration. 

Nina had intended to pull the curtains shut instantly, to stare at a distant pocket of sky above the wall until they were closed and turn away as soon as possible. Instead, her eyes were drawn to the street far below. 

Rollins usually had four Grisha set up for work at each of his properties, so there were two of them on each changeover cycle and he was never left shorthanded. But at the Sweet Shoppe there were only two of them so Nina spent her months here alone, with free reign over the highest of five storeys. There was only a loft above her, with a padlocked hatch and no ladder. She’d only made the mistake of trying to investigate it once, and had no desire to repeat it. 

The fourth floor was taken up by catering, and though Nina wasn’t sure why it had been designed that way she found that she was shamefully grateful for it. For as long as she could hear the kitchens below her, she could not hear much else. The fifth floor did, however, give her an unnervingly good view of the Barrel. It was not a perk of its position.

As her gaze slipped down onto the street, the first thing she saw was an enforcer from the house talking to someone dressed in the red Komedie Brute cloak of Mr Crimson, their face obscured by the red and black mask. It took a moment until the pair moved just enough to reveal a girl maybe half of Mr Crimson’s height caught in between them, her blue silks half undone and threatening to fall off her shoulder. Nina couldn’t quite make out her face from here, but the long blonde braid swinging down her back was recognisable as belonging to Magdalena, a Fjerdan girl who was brought to the Barrel not long after Nina had arrived here. Her contract was the first that Nina had drawn up from scratch for the Sweet Shoppe, and it wasn’t until after her first changeover, when Van Eck found out what she was doing in the Geldin District, that anyone had realised the loopholes she’d written into it. Not that her attempts had done anyone much good; the Red Laurel company had made an example of Nina to the other Grisha, and Magdalena had a new contract written by someone else. 

Magdalena reached to lift the strap of her costume back up and into place; the enforcer, Nina didn’t know his name, caught her wrist in the air, pushing her downwards, and a bare second later she had dropped to her knees with her arm half raised above her head where her slim wrist was still clutched between his fingers. Nina’s window didn’t open and she couldn’t hear what they were saying through the glass, but the enforcer and Mr Crimson seemed to argue for a minute longer before Mr Crimson finally marched off down the street. Magdalena stayed very still, kneeling in between them, until he’d left and the enforcer lifted her back onto her feet. She stared at him blankly as he ran a finger under the strap of her costume and moved it back onto her shoulder, then followed him back into the house without prompting and apparently without noticing the little blue slipper she had left behind on the cobbles. 

The rest of the street was mostly taken up by revellers jostling their way through crowds to reach the doors of various clubs and houses, a whirlwind of bright colours beneath the black, near-starless sky. Nina stood, frozen behind the glass, her eyes drifting from one figure to another in the darkness. A woman pulled back the veil of the Lost Bride’s cloak as her companion passed her a drink, her face almost glowing white in the flickering of the streetlamp above them, her cheeks turning rosy in the night air and the veil catching in her hair as it rustled in the breeze. Her companion, in turn, pushed the horned mask of the grey imp onto the top of his head to take a sip of his own drink, before leaning into the Lost Bride’s ear and whispering something that made her break into a giddy peal of laughter. From a doorway just to the right of them, a tall, maskless man stepped out onto the street and eyed them briefly. He stood for a moment, arm in arm with a girl from the house that he’d just left; she wasn’t as tall as him but had just enough height that she might have been able to rest her head against his shoulder and she stood so close that she was pressed almost entirely against him, like she might be completely consumed into his side and vanish entirely. 

Someone picked up the dropped slipper that Magdalena had left behind; pocketed it. Nina felt her stomach clench. She should have gone and collected it, made sure it was returned to her. Would Magdalena be punished for having lost it? Someone else was buying food from a stand in the street, apparently not caring that one of the boys behind the counter had a chain looped around his wrist. A lot of the houses didn’t bother much with chains unless they had too, since runaways were rendered all but impossible in pretty much every scenario, but smaller businesses that took advantage of the crowds along West Stave were more likely to. It meant success to show they could afford the arrangement of a contract, and cheaper in the long run with no payment beyond the first lump sum, but they couldn’t afford to keep Grisha employed long term. That meant risk of being scammed with a false contract, or that any vague language or even mistakes that could be exploited would be expensive to fix; they took precautions. And people cared less for the very obvious statement of imprisonment here than they did at the brothels, anyway. 

This, Nina knew from Kaz, was the kind of contract that Lexi had been trapped in - though he’d also said that she’d been in the Geldin District. Nina hadn’t seen anyone held like that when she was there. They must care more to hide it up in the nicer end of town. 

Almost in perfect time with Nina finally pulling the curtains closed, the door behind her was pushed open. She resisted the urge to scream - the Geldin District might not have been her favourite place in the world, but at least there was a lock on her door. And people always knocked. She turned impatiently and her chest tightened to see Eamon standing in the doorway, but thankfully he appeared to have no intentions beyond chucking a small envelope onto her table and saying: 

“You got mail,” through the wad of jurda he was chewing. 

He left the door open as he left; Nina waited until his footsteps had echoed down the stairs to close it again, and then slit the envelope open and cast her eyes over the neat, looping Ravkan that crossed the page. 

Dearest Nina, 

I’m afraid that each time I come to write to you anything interesting I might have been planning to tell you is simply forgotten - I must start making myself notes throughout the week and gathering them together when I sit to write. I think it’s just that it feels so stilted to write and for it to take so long to receive each other’s replies; I could write you a letter every day and still have plenty more to tell you when you visit. You will visit soon, won’t you? I know you’re busy, but I do miss you. 

I’m going to Sankta Anastasia’s statue tomorrow - the one outside the Church in the village, that is, not the big one in town - to start preparations for her festival. Will you be able to celebrate in Ketterdam? I suppose it might depend if it coincides with any of Ghezen’s celebrations, but I don’t know when any of them are. I’m sure that the village has brought in more bowls than we need and more wine than we ought to drink, so maybe I can sneak some out and send them to you if you need it. Anyway, I’ll be there all morning from nine bells tomorrow, sorting what tables and ribbons and all we already have and seeing if we need to order anything in, then in the afternoon I’m meeting up with Gregor. He doesn’t know I’m going to Sankta Anastasia’s, I should add. He’s so distracted by work that he probably couldn’t tell you if it’s her festival or Sankta Marya’s coming up, but you know he won’t be happy if I go into town on my own so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me keeping myself busy with this instead. If he really must know, I can tell him afterwards so it’s too late to stop me anyway. 

Write soon, Nina, and do update me on how things are going. I know you want to hear about it again no more than I want to hear your thoughts on me and Gregor again, but I do worry about you in that city. They say such strange things about it that I lose track of which ones might be true and which are entirely made up. 

Always yours, and always missing you, 

Eurydice

Nina shook her head. Bad at character work, indeed. Inej could claim anything she wanted about that, but she was undeniably good at codes. 

[darkpoisonouslove]

💛 Yellow

Hi! Thanks for the ask!

💛 Yellow: Do you ever alter, highlight, or de-emphasize certain canonical traits in a character? If so, why and describe how.

Since you didn't send a specific character and I already did Valtor, I'll go ahead with Griffin. I intensify pretty much every part of her character if we're being honest. But let's look at the main things:

I'm of the opinion that they made her too nice post 1x17. It almost feels like she's a different character afterwards. The only time we see her doing some truly questionable shit is when she kind of used the Winx as bait for the Trix in 2x18 (which the RAI dub tries to deny but that is pretty much what happened). I think she should be allowed to be ruthless and scathing but she'd have to be a force that the plot has to take into account for that to happen in canon so I see why they didn't really do it (though it was somehow okay for her to almost kill the Winx in 1x06). So fics will have to do. I try to show that she's calculative, kind of always scheming or at least analyzing a situation to figure out what the other party wants from her (the exception being most of her interactions with Faragonda because I don't think she'd feel the need to be on guard around her outside the periods of time when they're basically enemies).

I definitely lean very firmly into her familiarity with Valtor, which I think was absolutely something they should have done on the show. Forget shipping but the fact is that she worked with him and he himself - even after she betrayed him - speaks very highly of what they could do together. Showing the similarities between them and how well she knows him - even through a little dialogue with the Winx ffs if they didn't want to devote a lot of screen time to that - would have set up Valtor and his story better. But forget canon! I like to really make her specifically very familiar with his methods (when it comes to him, I don't think he'd know her that well anymore after his imprisonment in Omega but he could definitely read her very well before). I try to show that by making her have a pretty easy time figuring out what he's planning and seeing through his words.

Since she was hinted to show remorse and guilt over the situation with the Trix, I can't imagine her existing without some kind of leftover guilt for her actions in the past as well. Especially when she's faced with Valtor and her former partnership with him. This I don't really begrudge canon for ignoring (they did imply she felt guilty for working with him) since it's been 17 years and Griffin is bound to try to repress that shit when Valtor is around and would have a field day poking her about it. And in general, she'd probably try to keep it locked down as much as possible. Seeing her fail a little would have been nice but this is a lot more pertinent to the CoL era so I'm not complaining too much that they didn't do anything with that in the show. It is somewhat a cornerstone of my fics though because they focus on her almost exclusively (not to mention that it also annoys Valtor).

[iamthenightcolormeblack]

Much has been written about the foils in Jane Eyre used as representations of the conflict Jane faces between passion and reason (ex. Rochester versus St. John, Bertha versus St. John). I wanted to include the Reed cousins (Eliza and Georgiana) within that discussion because I haven't seen much about this particular foil.

In chapter 21 of the novel, Jane meets her cousins while visiting Gateshead to see her sick aunt. She stays for a month and gets to know her cousins, who have changed since she saw them last.

First, my case for the Reed cousins being foils:

Eliza Reed lives like a nun--she wears plain black clothing and keeps herself busy on her own schedule, which runs like clockwork. She devotes herself solely to religious instruction and busywork. Eliza values logic and likes dividing each day into sections for productivity.

Georgiana Reed is the total opposite--she represents the excesses of the wealthy as she's perpetually bored and lives only for balls and social events. Even though she should be in mourning gowns, I've always pictured her wearing fancy pink, puffy dresses, slightly plump with bows in her golden hair and jewelry adorning her neck. Unlike Eliza, Georgiana is "emotional" and complains whenever she isn't the center of attention.

They are both united by their lack of empathy for others and only care for themselves. Georgiana is self-centered and thinks only of her own pleasure, while Eliza, though "religious" in that she observes the rites and studies the Bible, hates Georgiana and wishes to cut ties with her even though they are sisters.

So how is the foil of the contrasting Reed cousins used to develop the conflict of passion versus reason?

Georgiana's "vain and insipid" personality represents the danger of being completely ruled by emotions. She's become immature because she doesn't have any logic/reason with which to control her emotions/channel it into something to occupy herself with.

Eliza is interesting because she is what Jane would have become had she stayed at Lowood; studious and "productive" but slave to a boring routine of religious rites where each day is rigidly divided into portions and controlled by a schedule. Eliza is seemingly level-headed but does not allow herself to feel; as a result of emotional suppression she has lost the ability to love others, calling into question whether or not she is a good Christian.

Jane doesn't approve of Eliza's decision to become a nun because she feels that Eliza would be "walled up alive" inside. By cutting herself off from the outside world and the possibility of human connection she is in effect slowly killing herself. In this way Eliza and St. John Rivers are similar in that their zealous, rigid view of religion turn them into "automatons" who are busy performing religious rites but who don't actually "live."

I saw an interesting post about St. John being a "broken mirror" in that he reflects what would have happened to Jane had she suppressed her emotions and lived according to "duty." In fact, a possibly stronger argument can be made for Eliza being the broken mirror as well. In outward appearances, they resemble each other (plain and wear dark clothing); in fact Eliza modeled herself after Jane's composure. Like Jane, Eliza wants independence, but she and Jane have different ways of getting freedom. They both prize self-sufficiency as a means of attaining some independence; Jane does so through employing herself as a governess, while Eliza is proud of her ability to control her time by setting strict schedules.

But their view of freedom differs significantly. Eliza's freedom involves rejecting human connection so that her time will not be taken up by others. In other words, Eliza's freedom is "negative" in that she wants to banish all obstacles to her lifestyle, even with the cost of emotional imprisonment. In contrast, when Jane becomes "self-sufficient" through inheriting her fortune, her first instinct is to divide it among her family members. Jane achieves her freedom through balancing her individualism with the need to "love others" in a Christian way like Helen Burns; she thrives from the support of those who respect and care for her and in turn gains pride from her individual ability to support them and herself.

As much as Jane dislikes Georgiana for her laziness, she recognizes that Eliza is to blame as well for her lack of compassion towards her sister. And last but not least, Eliza is an important part of Charlotte Bronte's critique of Christianity within the novel. She is by outward appearances a good Christian but in actuality a "machine, an automaton without feelings." Ultimately, the contrasting cousins represent alternate mindsets for Jane, and it is up to her to find the happy balance between passion and reason, self-sacrifice versus self-indulgence, isolation versus community, and "work versus play."

This is a continuation of a fragment I had in my review of the 2006 BBC miniseries version of Jane Eyre about the cousins representing passion versus reason.

Tags: @appleinducedsleep @princesssarisa @thatvermilionflycatcher @obscurelittlebird @brontefanatic

[lamelinam]

The maid and the Cat, Ren and Akira: some musings

What gloomy love brightened the half-lives of the Sohmas’ most Cursed ones?

I often wonder what the relationship between the former Cat and his attendant would have looked like, twisted and sad as it must have been. Precious little is shown about those two, and only through Kazuma’s pov. We know she took care of and pitied the Cat, to the point that she even slept with him and bore his child. This is not unlike Kureno’s relationship with Akito. She might have treated him with the same kindness and devotion, distant, perhaps harmful, yet selfless.

Selfless? I think another way to extrapolate on the story of Kazuma’s grandparents is with Ren and Akira’s relationship.

Many great meta writers have already pointed out that those who fill in the positions at the extremes of the Sohma hierarchy, the Cat and God, or in this case the Cat and the idolized, deified family head, are foils to each other and are the ones that are dehumanized and isolated the most.

But now I think that you can also compare the way the previous Cat and Akira both chose ("chose" being a relative term in the case of the Cat) a romantic partner.

(Akira wasn’t God, but as the family head, he was worshipped just like Akito. His sickness also contributed to making him stand apart. Not only was he kept inside the compound because of his frailty, the hold that death had on him blessed him with this ephemeral, divine aura. “Was it the sorrow that befell him at such a young age that gave him that otherworldly beauty?»)

Both Kazuma’s grandfather and Akito’s father were doomed, Akira to die an early death, Kazuma’s grandfather to live the life of a living dead. Both were buried alive in the Sohma estate, either at the outskirts or at the center of it.

Both reached out to their progeny. (But Kazuma rejected the offered cake, and will endeavour to atone and honour his grandfather’s memory. Akito clung to every memento she had of her father and will need to learn to let go of him.)

And both the previous Cat and Akira found some measure of comfort in the affections and arms of their female caretakers, Sohma servants who saw their loneliness and expressed their compassion, though not in a particularly healthy way: Kazuma’s grandmother acting out of pity, Ren out of obsessive love.

It’s interesting to me how their respective position was reflected in their partners’ feelings : the imprisoned, despised Cat, Kazuma’s grandmother looked down on. The respected, otherworldly beautiful Akira was adored by Ren.

Kazuma sums up his grandparents’ relationship thusly:

Those correspond to the main "duties" that a wife is traditionally supposed to provide her husband.

The day-to-day caring.

Childbearing.

Attending their husband’s deathbed.

Obviously Ren wished she could have skipped the second one and be there for the last one. (I headcanon that she had prepared her last words years in advance, finding small pleasures and comfort, on the back of the wave of despair anticipating Akira’s death, in rehearsing the declarations of passionate love she would address to the dying man.)

The Cat’s companion attended her partner’s deathbed, seemingly very composed, even cold, as seen in Kazuma’s memories, while Ren, deprived of her husband’s last moments, that she felt were “stolen” from her by Akito (in reality by the maids :@), was mad with grief.

"The only one who can save him"

Those parallels make me wonder whether or not the Cat’s companion might not have developed a saviour complex, like Ren, both believing that they were the only one able to save this lonely, condemned person they were taking care of, and relishing it.

“I love you” vs "I pity you"

On Ren’s side though, it seems that she believes she truly saw Akira, as the person hiding behind that otherworldly aura, filled with sadness and fearful of death. Seeing that Akira agrees with her ("Ren noticed I was lonely"), fought against the Sohma leaders and regretted on his deathbed that he and Ren couldn’t reconcile, I believe this is not a delusion of hers. Her love was genuine and passionate, and she and Akira were happy. Unfortunately, that happiness didn’t survive her pregnancy, for she was also jealous and obsessed.

Kazuma supposes that his grandmother believed that she was doing something good. I wonder at her expression. It is shadowed, enigmatic. Is it a smirk or not, is she sad or not? i wonder whether she was selfless in her pity, like Kureno, or selfish like Kagura, perhaps feeling better by «sacrificing» herself in associating with the Cat for the sake of a miserable soul.

(Whatever you can say or imagine about her, Kazuma doesn’t seem to suffer from the stigma of being the Cat’s grandson, nor does he bear any trace of an abusive upbringing - in fact, he was among those doing the abusing - or even the echoes of the previous generation’s, so my guess is that she was an okay mother and grandmother... which would have made Kazuma’s disappointment and hurt at her words all the sharper... Like Tohru thinking of the zodiacs members she finds so kind and adorable secretly looking down on someone else she realizes she cares about more than she thought.)

There is no way to know how the Cat reacted to a pity-love. But considering Kureno and Akito’s relationship, this might also have been but a superficial balm, and potentially just as hurtful. Then it depends on the interpretation. Kureno’s pity cocooned Akito and kept her from moving forward, but the Cat was condemned anyway to an eternity of imprisonment. Moving forward was forbidden to him. And if his self-worth was already completely destroyed as his role and his treatment are meant to do, he might have just felt grateful towards the attendant. There’s no way to say for sure whether he would have been hurt or not by the truth, and I don’t know which option is the saddest!

... but I know what could be sadder. Because is the maid entirely to blame? We know that in Fruits Basket, love requires a measure of selfishness. The one cursed with the Cat has no self, no existence, no wants and no future, and they accept this fate. They believe they deserve it. (Which is why the Cat's Room doesn't need bars in the manga, nor locks. Rin was under lock and keys because either Akito didn't completely trust her to keep her word or she didn't want someone to discover her.)

It would be very difficult for someone to fall in love with a person who has renounced to everything, perhaps including love. Because who's to say that the Cat loved the maid too?

Recognition vs indifference

How depressingly fitting that we don't even learn the Cat's name, while Akira’s is remembered by all and echoes back and forth in the later part of the story.

Ren marrying the Sohma family head was such a big political deal it provoked a family schism. The Cat’s story with the maid gets completely ignored. It is probably known, just not "officially recognized", says Kazuma. Like everything related to the Cat, it was relegated to the back of the minds, in the dusty closet of the things that are uncomfortable to think about but that you tolerate if it doesn’t upend your little world-view. Ugh, some maid is being inappropriate with that monster! Well, as long as she doesn’t free the loathsome creature, who cares. (And she wouldn’t, because she’s no Tohru.)

In contrast, the maids of the main family thought that Ren was stealing Akira from their grasp. Ren didn’t seem to care for the family, and in a way, her love allowed Akira to also escape from them, "snatched away" by "that woman”, for the old attendant. Unlike the Cat’s attendant, Ren felt like a threat to the Sohma strict hierarchical system. (Fortunately, God will be born to bring back the right order of things, phew! Certainly she he will accomplish what Akira-san was momentarily too misguided to do and rid us of that woman!)

Inheritance.

Both women's profession of their true feelings deeply marked their progeny and the way they view relationship, whether personal or not, romantic or filial.

While her mother affirmed that "a woman only needs one man", Akito leaned on the love of the zodiacs ; Kazuma viewed and loved Kyo as a human and dreaded that his son would find himself in the same situation as his grandfather but also with the same kind of companionship. (His reaction to Kagura speaks of a long-held anxiety). But Ren's hatred for Akito coloured the way Akito interpreted her words, while Kazuma’s grandmother’s declaration shook Kazuma, his personal relationship with his grandmother notwithstanding.

This comparison isn't about good or evil, neither to judge those characters. Furuba isn’t about that. Obviously, they are not blameless. But it is very difficult to say whether or not Kazuma’s grandmother was wrong to act out of pity if it provided a bit of comfort to a prisoner. And is it surprising that Ren developed this saviour’s complex when it seems she was the only one willing to breach Akira’s isolation bubble?

Anyway, Takaya-sensei is really good at making foils. Either because she does it on purpose or because her characters are so deeply intertwined with the themes of the series the parallels appear on their own. But in this case, I don’t think it’s for nothing that the chapters recounting Ren and the Cat’s attendant stories follow each other (chapters 114 and 115).

Of course, this meta is less an analysis and more suppositions and conjectures (frankly, I wonder if I might not as well have written a fanfic). From the little we see, the Cat’s companion and Ren work as distorted yin-yang mirrors, their differences highlighting the similarities of their situations, from the ugly effects of the inner workings of the Sohma cult to the messed up inner workings of the heart. Genuine but obsessed, jealous love... Pity, perhaps self-serving, in the guise of martyred love.... One thing I can say for sure is that these two both gave me chills in their own way.

[andoqin]

Novel Rec

Qiang Jin Jiu / 将进酒 by TangJiuqing

QiangJinJiu (QJJ) is about two men who at the outset couldn’t be more different, or really from more different circumstances, who are thrust together by the vagaries of politics and fate and find that they have many similarities that bind them together. 

Shen Zechuan is the only surviving son of a concubine of a traitor Prince (not royalty prince) who barely survived to adulthood (no thanks in part to our second main character) and is now on the path to bloody revenge on essentially the whole of this empire’s aristocracy. 

Xiao Chiye is the youngest son of another country prince, surpremely blessed in physical abilites and the arts of war. His family is responsible for a large part of the nation’s defense and so he is sent to the capital as a sort of hostage for the emperor not to suspect his family of traitorous thoughts as well. This is the worst kind of environment for him, because he grew up on the wide plains and hates the confines of the city, 

SZC and XCY’s first meeting does not go well (SZC is imprisoned and already close to death and XCY gives him a kick that is pretty much meant to send him to the underworld) but they both grow up imprisoned by the politics of the capital. SZC hides away for years, before he comes out into public to execute his revenge and at first XCY’s dislike of him holds true, but soon enough the fascination between the two of them leads them to have what is pretty much a one night stand. 

From there their relationship develops further and further while the outside world believes them to be on opposing sides. And while the two of them definitely have their own goals, they are an amazing force when combined. 

My personal feelings/review: 

I really, really like the way this relationship is developed, initially there is so much animosity, but you can tell there’s something else there too and they have sex fairly early on. Afterwards it doesn’t immediately develop into love, but neither can deny that the attraction they feel is real. SZC even goes to a brothel to see if he feels anything when looking at the kind of men/boys to be found there, but they leave him entirely cold and it is only when he is with XCY that he feels that heat.

One thing that I really appreciated was that SZC looks (and mostly acts) like a pretty boy, but he can chop people’s heads off like nobody’s business if he so desires and that’s something that XCY really appreciates about him too. He is ruthless when it comes to reaching his goals, as he needs to be, but if 

Furthermore the politics in this novel are insane in the best way, there are so many names you have to remember and so many named characters play an important part down the line. 

Another thing I appreciated, which is similar to LSWW, everyone (in their camps) knows XCY and SZC are together and it’s not really commented on beyond the fact that the guards often have to listen to them fucking haha. In the most recent (translated) chapters they have been talking about getting married as well! I don’t think that’s technically a thing in this universe but who’s gonna stop the two of them. They are *such* a great unit together, but they also understand that they have to fulfill their own goals. 

The translation is going very fast, currently there’s 110/282 Chapters translated with a new one coming out around every 3 days. 

I have no idea if it has a happy ending (if you have spoilers, pls hit me), I could see this ending up either way, but honestly what a ride no matter what.

TL;DR: should you read QJJ?

If you like really intricate plots, tropes like enemies to (devoted) lovers, murder couple, and possibly bringing down all of the aristocracy as a main goal? Yeah, do check it out!

Edit: maybe I should include links too...

English translation here: https://jade-rabbit.net/category/bl/qiangjinjiu/

Original JJWXC link: http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=3373718

[adifferenttime]

Andrew Ryan vs. Robert House

On almost every House post I make, someone in the notes will reliably reference Andrew Ryan. I totally get it - they look similar, they're based on the same guy, the parallels are so clear that the NV dev team added an achievement for killing House with a golf club - but I think these commonalities tend to engulf both characters, blotting out some of their more interesting ideological/personal differences. It's useful to examine them in relation to one another, but part of that is figuring out what distinguishes them, which is just what I’ve attempted to do.

It's difficult for me to talk about Randian objectivism because I don't think it's sound enough to address on its own terms, but considering this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan has adopted, I kind of have to. What I’d identify as the core premise of Randian ethics is this: altruism is a moral wrong. Some Randians have argued that isn't really what they believe - that the real point is anything resembling altruism is self-interest in disguise - but they're departing from the beliefs of their icon when they make those claims. Per Rand:

The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute is self-sacrifice – which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction – which means the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

The way Rand defines altruism is by linking it to self-sacrifice, which she uses to differentiate it from kindness or benevolence. Aiding others at no cost to yourself is benevolent, but not altruistic, and therefore not evil. Sacrificing your happiness to help another human being is, from Rand's perspective, evil, as is any philosophy that prioritizes the other at the cost of the self. This whole idea has been broadly rejected by most scholars on account of it being really fucking stupid. What justifies the leap from "man is naturally selfish" to "selfishness is good"? If selfishness is moral, wouldn't the most moral behavior be to exploit others through whatever means necessary, favoring force over the market? Rand defines happiness as "using your mind’s fullest power," achievable only when you "do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal," but why is this the only definition? What if your only options are self-sacrificial in nature? How do you weigh them if neither sacrifice is linked to values, individual achievement, or "your mind's fullest power" at all? Rand didn't care because she was too busy trying to ethically justify cheating on her man with her best friend's husband, but nonetheless, this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan’s adopted. He claims that "Altruism is the root of all Wickedness," in what's almost a direct quote from Rand herself.

To that end, Ryan builds a system that doesn’t just accept selfishness but actively incentivizes it. Every other principle he expresses is subservient to the ideas that selfishness rules man, and that for Ryan to act on his own selfish impulses is the highest good in the world. His lesser political principles (individual liberties, negative rights, the creation of a stateless society) don’t matter to him as much as the central precept from which they stem: that selfishness is his moral imperative.

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It's the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism.

It doesn't come as a particular surprise to me when he starts imprisoning dissidents or executing rivals or banning theft (standard practice in most societies, but not what an egoist would pursue; if you can get away with taking it, you deserve to have it, or so the thinking goes). I’ve seen him described as a hypocrite, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true considering everything he does is in line with his opposition to altruism. He'll adhere to his other principles only if they don’t sabotage his pursuit of personal power. This is evident in the fact that he only adopts a negative perception of Fontaine when his own interests are threatened, but doesn’t give two shits what Fontaine might be doing to sow conflict and harm people before that point. A guy named Gregory asks Ryan to step in against Fontaine early on before Fontaine's fully established himself as a threat to Ryan's power, and Ryan's extremely blase about it.

Don't expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you don't like what Fontaine is doing, well, I suggest you find a way to offer a better product.

Contrast this with how he reacts when Fontaine has risen as a genuine business rival. This is from the log titled "Fontaine Must Go."

Something must be done about Fontaine. While I was buying buildings and fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. Rapture is transforming before my eyes. The Great Chain is pulling away from me.

This double standard is the natural outgrowth of his prioritization of self-interest. If your most deeply-held belief is that you should never give up your interests for others, ancillary rules become flexible in times of personal crisis, and Bioshock makes the case that putting someone like that in charge of a city will leave you with a crumbling, monstrous ruin.

Superficially, House has some similarities. Ryan executes political rivals; House has you blow up a bunker of his ideological opponents. Ryan is the highest authority in Rapture; House is the absolute monarch of Vegas. Their goals and moral codes, though, are almost diametrically opposed. When you ask House why you’re expected to trust him when he’s openly admitting to installing himself as the despot of the New Vegas Strip, he says this:

I have no interest in abusing others... Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine-god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions.

Most of his resources are devoted to large-scale, impersonal projects, aimed either at building the power of Vegas or securing his long term goal of “progress” as he sees it. He’s rejected selfishness as a moral good because House is very far from Randian objectivism. He's a Hobbesian monarch.

In that respect, he shares an outlook on human nature with Ryan that I deeply disagree with (that human beings are essentially selfish), but in terms of what that means for the structure of a utopian society, House takes a very different position. From his perspective, human nature breeds suffering, not industriousness, and the only way to stamp out conflict - and, in a post-nuclear age, ensure the continued survival of the human race - is through a strong sovereign. The purpose of a state as laid out in Leviathan aligns very, very closely with the one House expresses.

...the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men...

The monarch's successes are reflected in his society and the well-being of humanity as a whole. To subvert his goals is to subvert society's goals, and to doom humanity to the war, death, and suffering that exist in a state of nature. When you destroy his Securitrons/kill him, he doesn't plead for himself or get offended on his own behalf. He accuses you of betraying not him, but mankind.

Single-handedly, you've brought mankind's best hopes of forward progress crashing down. No punishment would be too severe. Fool... to let... personalities... derail future... of mankind? ...Stupid! Slavery... the future of... mankind? What... have you... done?

An important corollary of this idea which again distinguishes House from Ryan appears in Leviathan’s description of the political/moral responsibility of a monarch to his subjects:

...that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority... he hath the use of so much power that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.

Hobbes and House give the monarch virtually unlimited power but match it to the monarch's duty, which he lives to fulfill. His obligation is to speak for the people, act for them, and protect them from all threats, internal and external. House generally abides by this, orienting his decisions around his goals for society irrespective of the personal cost (the negative consequences of his actions are a product of his fucked evaluations of what’s best for society, not personal greed). It’s not just a departure from Ryan’s philosophy but a complete refutation of it. He's almost died for what he's misidentified as the greatest good.

Given that I had to make do with buggy software, the outcome could have been worse. I nearly died as it was…. I spent the next few decades in a veritable coma.

This is not the behavior of an egoist. This is the behavior of an extremely arrogant but marginally altruistic (from a Randian perspective lmao) guy. This is some distorted “from each according to his ability” shit if you’ve managed to convince yourself your abilities exceed those of everyone else who has ever lived and that you can get the Mandate of Heaven by being really good at statistics.

The reason these guys develop such similar structures and hierarchies despite the ideological gulfs between them is because both of them are elitists who’ve experienced a massive failure of self-consciousness. They’re unable to conceive of other people as being fundamentally like them. Ryan separates people into the clearly-delineated classes of “producer” and “parasite,” ignoring the fact that everything he’s ever “produced” was reliant on a huge, coordinated effort between workers, architects, accountants, middlemen, and others, all of whom, in conjunction, contributed more to the realization of his dreams that he ever could have alone. Rather than realizing his own position is more parasitic and reliant on other people’s labor than that of anyone else in Rapture, he adheres to his doctrine of selfishness even when it’s not reflective of reality and is ruining the the lives of an entire city of people. He deludes himself into believing he’s a superman among ants instead of one flawed man who is reliant on the goodwill of others to help him survive, as are we all.

House, too, thinks he’s exceptional. Unlike Ryan, he acknowledges the necessity of the worker to a functioning society, but while he’ll accept his reliance on that labor, he doesn’t trust the laborer enough to share political power. House knows he’s invested in humanity’s survival and the creation of a better world, but he refuses to consider that he might not be alone in this goal. He chalks up the existence of the Legion to fanaticism/the ambitions of a sultanistic dictator and attributes everything the NCR has done to greed, without it ever occurring to him that the massive harm these nations have done was partially motivated by the same goals he’s devoted himself to - and that the atrocities he’s committed since his rise to power are, in some respects, very similar. House knows himself to be invested in the well-being of humanity, but he’s too arrogant to ask himself if his methods are wrong or trust other people to build a new path, one that doesn’t necessitate his complete control over the land and people of the Mojave. Ryan and House’s worldviews are distinct, and their flaws, as highlighted by their respective narratives, say some interesting things about how each set of devs view power and the pitfalls of elitism.

Anyway. If you put these two men in a room, they would probably try to murder each other, and I think that’s great.

[frozenartscapes]

I think Verdant Wind being added as Silver Snow copy paste dragged down the development. If VW wasn't added, then SS, CF, and AM could have all been more fleshed out (so Edelgard could have been shown killing Thales personally and Dimitri's arc would be gradual instead of him going from batshit crazy to "good boy" instantly). So I think either VW should have not been made or SS was scrapped and Claude could actually get a story about him.

So here's what I'm thinking for Verdant Wind, because honestly if it were up to me it would be a total overhaul, and if put into the context of the game's development might have had to be a DLC or something if they were as pressed for time as it seems.

You pick Claude and the Golden Deer and the first half of the game follows many of the same story beats. (Though one thing I would like to see in White Clouds is more opportunities to interact with the other Houses outside of free time, like maybe a couple missions where two houses are sent to the same place to back each other up. This would then allow for supports to form between characters who might not necessarily be in the same house).

Shit goes down, Edelgard is revealed to be the Flame Emperor, war is declared, Byleth falls into a ravine for 5 years.

You come back and things are in a similar place as they start off in VW. You meet Claude at the monastery, he fills you in on what's been going on, and you decide that action needs to taken. However, that action is not "let's go to war too" but instead more of a diplomatic move. You decide to meet with Edelgard in a parlay at Grondor and she initially accepts, but when you both arrive you discover Dimitri has come with an army of his own. Not believing this isn't some sort of ambush on Claude's part, Edelgard calls the parlay off and initiates the battle of Grondor. However, this time you and Claude decide to stop Dimitri and successfully manage to intervene in the Kingdom's attack. Edelgard and her forces still retreat back to Enbarr but Dimitri is able to be captured and (eventually) reasoned with. (In this version Dimitri hasn't fully lost it like he does in AM. He still has some old friends and supports so he doesn't end up completely feral. He's still deeply distrusting of Edelgard but he at least agrees to help Claude find out a motive before killing her).

The attack on Fort Merceus is basically the same. You succeed in seizing it only for the whole thing to be blown up by the Javelins. Everyone manages to escape, though, including notable people from Edelgard's army. They are just as confused and horrified about the strike as you and your team.

Edelgard isn't up for talking this time around so you are forced to lay siege to Enbarr. This also plays out very similarly to VW, but the end cutscene is different. First, Claude is there. Then, rather than killing Edelgard, you extend a hand out to her, instead. She's hesitant, but Claude manages to convince her that there are no schemes this time. They just want to talk. He mentions the Javelins and how even her own army didn't seem to know what they were. When she blanches at the mention, he realizes that these "allies" of hers aren't exactly the most trustworthy of people.

Edelgard then reluctantly tells you, Claude, and Dimitri about Thales and TWSITD. She's hesitant because this is all sensitive information but she doesn't have much to lose at this point, what with Claude's army basically occupying Enbarr. She reveals what happened to her and her family, why she has two Crests, and why she's been forced to work with Thales. It's Dimitri who approaches first once she's finished, moving quickly and reaching out a hand before anyone can react. Edelgard flinches but instead of going for her neck, his hand comes to rest gently on her shoulder. "Where is that monster?" Dimitri hisses, "So I can tear his head from his body."

Once the three leaders form a tentative alliance, Edelgard reveals where Rhea has been hidden. She tells them all that she tried to keep her from too much harm, but she didn't have much control over the situation. Rhea is released and initially weak from imprisonment. She is also briefed on what happened to Edelgard, and why she started the war in the first place.

With a new target in mind, the alliance of nations storm Shambhala. Rhea has been healed up enough to aid in this battle. You defeat Thales, and he responds by launching all the Javelins he can. Rhea goes on to intercept them as she does in the game, but this time things go differently. Hubert points out that as long as Thales has a hand on the rune activating the Javelins, they'll keep coming. So Edelgard charges him along with Dimitri. The two cut through any mage who tries to stop them, and ultimately Edelgard sees vengeance for herself and her family by killing Thales herself. This halts the Javelins before they become too overwhelming for Rhea, and she returns, a little hurt but ok.

Everyone returns to Garreg Mach for celebrations, and also political discussions because there are a lot of things that now need to be covered. Rhea reveals everything about the Nabateans, Crests, and the Relics. Once she learns the true history of Fodlan, Edelgard makes her case for her own goals. She still believes that society should move away from putting so much importance on Crests, especially now that she knows where they truly came from. But she admits that uniting the land under one banner and disbanding the Church entirely would be taking things too far. Dimitri agrees with Edelgard, despite some protests from Faerghus officials. But he decides that the Hero's Relics have served their purpose and it is time they let the souls of the dead rest. Claude is insistent on Fodlan opening up to other nations, to which the other leaders agree, too. Rhea also decides that it is time she steps away from being Archbishop, but she does not appoint Byleth to the role.

A messenger then interrupts with news that a strange and powerful army is currently sweeping across Fodlan. They connect the dots and realize that it is Nemesis. They all decide to confront him as a group, showing off the might of a Fodlan united under peace. Rhea, fearful of mass casualties, tells Byleth what she did when they were a baby, explaining why they have the Crest of Flames and can wield the Sword of the Creator. There isn't a lot of time to unpack all of that because Nemesis is basically at their door, but Byleth still thanks Rhea for telling them.

They confront Nemesis all as one united front and defeat him. There are many parallels in cutscenes that call back the first cutscene of the game. The difference this time is that Rhea isn't facing Nemesis alone. In the last cutscene after defeating him in gameplay, Claude's arrow fake-out kicks things off, but it also includes Edelgard, Dimitri, and Rhea charging him alongside Byleth. In the end, Nemesis is run-through by the Sword of the Creator, the Sword of Seiros, Aymr, Areadbhar, and a bolt from Failnaught. He goes down, his army dissolves into dust, and victory is finally secured.

After that it's revealed what happens in Fodlan: each nation stays as their own land. Dimitri takes his place as the King of Faerghus and works on moving the kingdom away from knighthood and militaristic practices. He devotes more time and money to revitalizing the land and towns, building better roads between cities, and expanding education and other important services. Edelgard also works on fixing and providing social services like education and healthcare to the Adrestian people. She forms a strong alliance with the other nations, utilizing the fact that Adrestia has so much viable farmland to ensure no one goes hungry. She also grants Brigid its freedom, and works closely with Seteth and Rhea in Church reformations. Claude leaves Fodlan to take his place as King of Almyra, though he promises to visit often. Lorenz takes over the Alliance, and like the other two leaders works diligently to provide a better life for his people. Rhea eventually steps away from her role as Archbishop. She does offer it to Byleth, but you get a choice as to whether or not you want to take it. If you don't Rhea says she understands and that Seteth will take on a temporary position until a human can be found to carry on the legacy. She agrees that an immortal being shouldn't hold that kind of power forever.

There's one final cinematic cutscene in which every character with a Hero's Relic solemnly returns it to the Holy Tomb, with Byleth laying the Sword of the Creator last. They glance up at the Throne with all the characters visible behind them, and they smile.

Now Sothis can finally rest.

---

A couple other fun things that could be included in this route:

Because of the mentioned supports between houses, it is possible to s-support any of the House Leaders, not just Claude in this route

To make things extra fun, every unit could potentially be playable in the final battle

Edelgard and Thales can have special dialogue where she basically tells him to go fuck himself before killing him with the axe he gave her

None of the Black Eagles who stay with Edelgard would actually die in the siege on Enbarr, but would have unique "oh no I've been captured" quotes

The cutscene with Edelgard's surrender could start exactly like it does in SS/VW so if people saw that first, they would at first think she was going to die. This would then make Byleth extending a hand out in peace that much more impactful

Every now and then Dimitri and Edelgard could make a comment about how odd it is to be working with each other, and how they are still surprised neither one of them died after all those years of war, a BIG wink to the camera regarding the other routes where one or both of them don't make it

Claude can bring in Nader and other Almyran reinforcements for the final battle, and as a result could result in unique battle quotes from Rhea and Nader with the two of them commending each other and realizing that tensions need not be so high between their nations

Because different supports can happen between houses, there isn't as much pressure to recruit everyone by the end of White Clouds

There could be different paralogues for characters, along with ones already in the game that might be route specific. Dimitri's paralogue where he takes on Cornelia can be a side event that helps strengthen the Kingdom's army in future battles. Bernadetta/Petra's paralogue would allow for allies from Brigid to join in future battles. Edelgard could get a new paralogue where they have to sweep out the last remnants of various TWS labs and lairs, and it's made clear just how bad it had been for her.

Like, I know this is a lot, and executing it as a playable section of the game would be a lot of work. This is all just hypothetical, of course. This would be what I would recommend for the game, but as I say this just know that I don't expect any of this to actually be made. These are just some ideas for how VW could theoretically be changed.

The game would still need a route for Claude, as he is one of the three main choices at the very start of the game. I don't necessarily think SS should be removed, either, because that choice of "kill or don't kill edelgard" is still an incredibly poignant moment that would be lost if SS was gone. But I do wish VW or SS played out differently or at the very least used different cutscenes. The fact that Edelgard dies the same way twice kind of sucks. (This, on top of Dimitri dying off-screen multiple times and Rhea basically being kneecapped and not useful in 3/4 routes)

But I like Claude's route being a Golden Route. It is the Golden Deer after all.

[nordleuchten]

Hi ! Facts about the Lafayette couple. Thanks.

Hello Anon,

well, well, the La Fayette couple, Adrienne and Gilbert  - where to even begin with these two? Their marriage was arranged and arranged marriages were very common for the time and people of their position. A family with wealth, a title and influence was keen on preserving all of this – and tried to add to it by trying to arranging marriages with families who as well had at least one of these things. A truly popular combination was a family with a great name/title that had fallen on hard times and a very rich family without too great a name. Now, La Fayette and Adrienne were lucky in so far as that they really loved each other. Their marriage was far more than pure convenience. Still, not everything was picture perfect. La Fayette had different mistresses and although he loved Adrienne, I always feel like it took him quite some time to realise just how wonderful Adrienne truly was, how loyal and devoted. It was not entirely uncommon that a man and a women in an arranged marriage barely know each other prior to their marriage. That again was different with La Fayette and Adrienne. La Fayette actually lived with his future in-laws together in their house prior to the marriage. Behind the scenes everything had already been sorted out, but the bride and the groom were still none the wiser (although La Fayette was told before Adrienne was told). Partly responsible for this living-arrangement was Adrienne’s mother, the Duchess d’Ayen. She was the metaphorical lioness protecting her cubs. She was fiercely protective of her daughters and thought that Adrienne was still way too young. So La Fayette moved in with them, they had some time to get to know each other and to mature a bit. La Fayette also won over the Duchess, who was a bit skeptical at first.

When La Fayette and Adrienne finally married, she was fourteen and he was sixteen. Their marriage contract stated that they should continue to live with Adrienne’s family and that their marriage was not be consumed for some time. This rule again was included due to the input of the Duchess – who still thought her daughter way too young for any martial endeavours. Regardless of that, Adrienne became pregnant with the couples first child during this proposed period – the popular opinion is, that La Fayette after some time simply wanted to be with Adrienne and sneaked into her room (something that he supposedly confessed to later in life). Whatever happened, they both seemed quite happy.

When La Fayette departed for America, Adrienne was completely clueless, she said that herself but there is also circumstancel evidence to support her statement. She had a young and sickly daughter to look after, a daughter that would die a few months later when La Fayette was still in America. She furthermore was pregnant with their second child and Paris was on fire with rumours. Newspapers printed rumours about La Fayette’s death on the field or something similar every other day and she often had no possibility of hearing from her husbands for months and months (before La Fayette’s first return to France they had not heard from one another for roughly eight months). The news of the death of their oldest child Henriette reached La Fayette so late that he send Adrienne many letters asking about Henriette, asking if she was well, long after Henriette was deceased. But despite all of it, Adrienne put up a brave face in public and never complaint. In general, whether she agreed with her husband or nor, weather she liked what he did or not, she never criticised him in public, never embarrassed or questioned him in front of others.

After the conclusion of the war in America La Fayette and Adrienne together with their children moved into their own home. They were, for people of their time and status, very engaged parents. They started hosting their “American Dinners” on Mondays and Adrienne was also included in La Fayette’s “Plantation-Project”. La Fayette kept a lively correspondence with George Washington but Adrienne also exchanged letters with Washington. There is one lovely, humours account by Washington in a letter to La Fayette dated September 30, 1779:

“(...) But at present must pray your patience a while longer, till I can make a tender of my most respectful compliments to the Marchioness. Tell her (if you have not made a mistake, & offered your own love instead of hers to me) that I have a heart susceptable of the tenderest passion, & that it is already so strongly impressed with the most favourable ideas of her, that she must be cautious of putting loves torch to it; as you must be in fanning the flame. But here again methinks I hear you say, I am not apprehensive of danger—My wife is young—you are growing old & the atlantic is between you—All this is true, but know my good friend that no distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder, and that the Wonders of former ages may be revived in this—But alas! will you not remark that amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young Woman from real inclination has prefered an old Man—This is so much against me that I shall not be able I fear to contest the prize with you—yet, under the encouragement you have given me I shall enter the list for so inestimable a jewell.”

This is just such a funny, carefree, teasing letter between the three of them. Its adorable. But these carefree times soon came to an end with the onset of the French Revolution (you could argue that the Revolution had already begun long prior to 1789 but in that year it rapidly gained speed).

La Fayette entangled himself in the political and military matters of the day and when everything started to go down the hill (from his perspective at least) he tried to fled to America and got caught before he even could reach a harbour. Adrienne and the children stayed behind in France. Now, it had became some sort of custom that the women of (aristocrat) man who fled France during the Revolution “divorced” her husbands. (“Divorce” because these divorces were often not real civil divorces in accordance with the law but more a sort of public separation from their “treacherous and anti-republican” husbands that could get these women a passport and/or out of prison. It also opened them the opportunity to marry again later in life.) Somebody proposed a divorce to Adrienne and she was absolutely repelled by the idea. She had married La Fayette for better and for worse and she would not, not under any circumstance divorce her husband. Period. In fact, she started signing all her papers with “la femme de Lafayette”, “the wife of Lafayette”. After and eventful and fearful time, Adrienne was eventually released from her prison in France. She gathered her two daughters (her son was safe in America with his tutor) and went to Austria were La Fayette was still imprisoned in Olmütz. She had some family connections to the court in Vienna and eventually obtained the permission of sharing her husbands imprisonment. Although accounts vary, all accounts agree that Olmütz was a true hell-hole. Adrienne and her children were treated better than La Fayette  - but the treatment was still not good. Soon Adrienne became ill and the prison doctor could not really do anything. Adrienne was told that she was free to go, leave this place behind, find a good doctor, settle down somewhere more comfortable. Nobody wanted to see her suffer or even die. The only stipulation, if she would leave now she was not allowed to ever return – and with that Adrienne stayed and suffered and hasted her death because she would not leave her husband behind. In my opinion her sacrifice at that moment made La Fayette understand just how incredible his wife was. He never forgot what she endured for him and her actions probably lead their relationship to unknown heights.

After they were eventually all released from prison they settled first in Danish-Holstein and then in the Netherlands before returning to France. Adrienne managed to regain a lot of the property that they had previously lost during the Revolution. Although she was successful in that regard, her health (and beauty) was forever ruined. Despite all that she took great joy in seeing her children marry and becoming a grandmother. When Adrienne died on December 24, 1807 La Fayette was absolutely shattered. He wrote a very, very long and very, very sad letter to a friend, retelling Adrienne’s last days and expressing his grieve:

“As yet you have always found me stronger than circumstances, but now this event is stronger than me. Never shall I recover from it. During the thirty - four years of an union in which her tenderness, her goodness, the elevation of her mind, charmed, adorned, honoured my life, I felt myself so used to all that she was to me, that I could not distinguish it from my own existence. She was fourteen, and I was sixteen, when her heart amalgamated itself with everything that could interest me. I knew I loved her, I knew I needed her, but it is only now that I can distinguish what life which I had thought was to have been entirely devoted to worldly matters. (...)”

The letter is really long but so worth the read if you are interested. Really! It is such an honest, open, affectionate and reflected statement of their relationship. Adrienne’s last words were “Je suis toute à vous” (I am all yours) and La Fayette had these words inscribed on a miniature of Adrienne that he constantly had upon his person. Here is an account of the portrait from Jules Germain Cloquets book “Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette, etc”:

“In his children he cherished the memory of their mother, (Mademoiselle de Noailles,) whom he had loved most tenderly, and whose name he never mentioned but with visible emotion. One day during his last illness, I surprised him kissing her portrait, which he always wore suspended to his neck in a small gold medallion. Around the portrait were the words, “Je suis à vous ,” and on the back was engraved this short and touching inscription, “ Je vous fus donc une douce compagne: eh bien ! benissez moi .” I have since been informed that regularly every morning Lafayette ordered Bastien [his valet] to leave the room, in which he shut himself up, and taking the portrait in both hands, looked at it earnestly, pressed it to his lips, and remained silently contemplating it for about a quarter of an hour. Nothing was more disagreeable to him than to be disturbed during this daily homage to the memory of his virtuous partner.”

I hope you have/had an awesome day!

[just-like-playing-tag]

Me???? Still not over that Apollo Ray AU in 2021?????? It's more likely than you think.

I jumped into the water and now I need to keep swimming

If you're new to the AU, you can check out this post where it's explained where the name comes from and this other post on what Apollo Ray differs from Minerva Norman.

Tonight, I'd like to expand the plotline that Apollo Ray would choose to imprison Emma and Norman to prevent them from getting in his way to demons' eradication. I know y'all might cringe at this but you have to understand, he's REALLY convinced it's for their best.

This is how I can imagine things to go: Ray kinda tricks them and traps them somewhere inside of the Paradise Hideout. Not really a prison, he'd probably just lock them in a room and be like “you just got back from a long, dangerous journey, why don't you take some rest? In the meantime, I've got some stuff to do at, let's say, the Royal Capital :)”

Sounds familiar?

Like mother like son

Very relevant detail is that the room MUST be without locks. Make it an electronic key or a biometric iris recognition lock or whatever. Ray knows Norman well enough and he's not falling to the magical hairpin trick lmao.

Now, I like to think Gilda would take sides with Ray. I've always thought about Ray and Gilda having a lot in common (often seeing the glass half empty, loving Emma unconditionally; furthermore, they were the only ones who agreed that escaping from Grace Field with everyone was unequivocally impossible). At some point, paralleling how Norman asked to talk with Gilda and Don, Ray asks for Gilda only to come into his study. They have a long talk, during which he persuades her to join him. On Ray's end, he needs somebody he trusts to stay in the Hideout while him and his squad go to their fun trip to the Royal Capital, to keep an eye on Emma and Norman and make sure they won't escape or try and go to the Seven Walls. Now, Gilda probably wouldn't look like his first choice, for she is endlessly loyal to Emma; however, Ray plans of making that very factor, her love and dedication for her friend, his trump card. By talking to Gilda and calmly describing their situation, he makes her understand how hopeless is the mission Emma is so desperate to fulfill; that no one ever came back from the Seven Walls, and they're most likely to die there. Moreover, Ray persuades Gilda to believe that his plan of demon eradication is without doubts the most certain route, that will surely lead to the safest future for her friends - even though they can't understand it yet. However, their safeness and happiness is above anything else, even their own temporary freedom- isn't it? They will understand, once everything is over, that him and Gilda were only acting for their best.

Although initially hesitant, as never in her life she had gone against Emma, Gilda ends up firmly accepting, for she's determined to do anything to save Emma's (and Norman's) life- including betraying her.

I don't think it shouldn't be too surprising to have Gilda accept Ray's plottings; already in the manga, she's shown as being maybe the most condescending to Norman's plan, since she believed it was the less dangerous route to secure Emma's safety- and, to her eyes, consequential happiness.

In this AU, Ray's using the very feelings of affection that build Gilda's loyalty to Emma to bring her to his side; he's persuading her that the mission Emma and Norman are trying to carry out is a suicidal one, and that if they let them go they will lose them forever- which is something he knows Gilda would do anything to not let happen.

I know it may seem like he's manipulating her to get what he wants, but I want to underline I don't think that'd be the case: by saying he's worried Emma and Norman are going to lose their lives going after the Seven Walls, he's putting genuine sentiments on the line, and he's as determined to prevent it from happening as Gilda is. In comparison, Norman has been way more dishonest when he spoke to Gilda and Don- as Gilda would have later learnt, he was never intentioned to spare Musica (thus having plainly lied to them).

On the contrary, Ray's intentions of simply wanting to protect Emma and Norman were sincere, and he was way more honest with Gilda with his plan, fully entrusting her with it.

On the other side, Don would obviously take sides Emma, which would eventually lead to a very cool conflict between Gilda and Don?? I'm certain Don would support Emma because he grew up to be very similar to her. Brings back to my mind this old old post I once made, which considers the events of chapters 138 and 139: Don shares Emma's point of view on many matters, so I'm confident he would be ready to support her. When you think about it, he was the fastest to take sides with her in canon too, probably second to Ray only; and when Ray's choice was likely driven by his undying loyalty to Emma, chances are that Don was supporting Emma not only because he believed in her, but also because he was the first one to truly believe in her ideals as well, the first to believe they would have really been able to find a solution that would have brought happiness for everyone.

Now Don openly supporting Emma would inevitably lead to him and Gilda clashing which I find being the absolute COOLEST thing. I mean I love them, and I love how they love each other; still the thought of them being compelled by the circumstances to collide intrigues me so much!!!! I think they'd have this extremely angsty confrontation that will eventually end with Don convincing Gilda that trusting Emma has took them so far, and that the best thing to do is give up and help him to free Emma and Norman (maybe Ray had entrusted her with the keys / password to open the room Emma and Norman were locked in?? Dunnot)

Besides, I think it would make a lot of sense taking the whole tpn plotline?? It would end up paralleling Gilda and Don's chapters in Grace Field in so many different ways. First of all, I have to say it would be very nice to have a new spotlight on Gilda: her role in the first arc was relevant indeed, with her and Don being the key to the success of the escape; however, she didn't really got to have enough space for character development. The moment when the trio revealed them the truth was more about Don, while Gilda had never doubted of their words in the first place; moreover, the space she had as a possible spy was mostly used to deceive the attention from the true spy, and the revelation that she was never intentioned to betray them was more of character development for Emma, who consolidated her will to trust and protect her family, than a growth of Gilda herself.

But now, for Gilda to take sides against her dear Emma, the person she's more loyal and devoted to, what a great potential for character development that has!!!!!!! I can imagine her, once she finally accepts to help Emma, to echo the words Emma once told her at Grace Field: “I'm sorry- to protect you, I was prepared to be hated by you; yet, I wasn't ready to believe in you!”

To sum up: the Apollo Ray AU is still my jam and Gilda and Don deserve way more space than what they were given in the manga. Also stan Gilda.

[yanderecandystore]

The collector with an equally if not even more powerful Goddess darling that has an abundance of followers? Bonus points if she relies on being underestimated to get what she wants

Oooh, spicy! I like your thinking boo.

Also I named the Collector Diph cause I thought it was cute and I needed a break from writing The Collector over and over again lol 🤣 I'm saying mostly so y'all don't get confused when you see these new names.

TW/Tags: a little bit of a bratty reader // god on god type of childish war // kinda silly boo // Sheep having trouble writing as usual ;-; // infantalization (I mean, as in he sees you as a child/funny person)

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Entertainment [Yandere!Eldritch OC x F!God!Reader - Headcanon]

It's funny how silly he thinks your attitude is, until he starts to get a little frustrated with the attention you receive.

I mean, sure- He does have his own abundance of devoted followers, that he got by not being a sneaky little thing like yourself, you know?

Playing this role of dependent god sure seems fun to you, but come on now, he could tell from a galaxy away that you're completely the opposite of these damsel in distress approach you have.

He gets a little annoyed counting his numbers on mortals and comparing it to yours. It seems you got them by pulling off this little theater of "lesser god", just so they could empathise with your "situation".

"- I at least give them what they wish for, differently from you that basically turns their loyal subjects as jewelry when they die." You tell him, as you have already noticed the strong jealousy your "friend" seems to have over you and your godly fame.

"- If they ask for a fulfilling life, of course I'm going to give them just that! I'm not completely unfair, they just never asked what happened when it's my turn to get something out of the contract." He would always defend himself the same way whenever you brought it up: it's not my fault they didn't pay attention to what I asked in return, I was crystal clear that I wanted them as eternal company.

This ridiculous banter between you two was fun but you really didn't appreciate how he would treat lesser beings as items rather than living creatures, yet you probably didn't see it as a inherently bad thing, considering your status above the rest.

Your friend however seems to be having so much fun with this nonsense that is your constant back and forth. Regardless of how you see him, as an irritation, as a dangerous being, or even as a source of entertainment, Diph seems to be too invested in the time he spends with you than with his own "treasures".

He sees no evil in spending time with someone that is an equal, oh not on the whole god-status-thing, after all, even among his "species" (I suppose we can call it that-) he stands above the rest. But you?? Oh no, you're too fun to be regarded as less than him, you're like a diamond in the rough. It doesn't matter if you're like him and share a similar mask, or if you're the type that resembles more a mortal than an enlightened being, you're basically the only one that he can tolerate if not like!

You are a terrible little schemer, and he is a "despicable creature that imprisons others", sounds like THE power couple if you ask him. The idea of considering you a possible lover doesn't appear as soon as it may seem like, but the signs of a hidden appreciation sure is there.

It all depends on if you condone his antics, or if he'll try for the first time to actually imprison a god into a fake reality, where he can orchestrate various scenarios with you as the actor, and him as the director, all being carefully controlled in his perfect little pocket dimension. Ya know, to each their own I suppose.

;3

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Somehow, Through the Storm

Summary:

Living in the slums of the Warehouse District, Kaz and Inej are struggling to cling on to life through a seemingly unending winter. Wrapped up in a stranger's overcomplicated marriage contract that he is convinced is key to solving the merciless weather, Kaz remains busy and distracted for days on end, putting everything else at risk. So when a storm ravages the city and sweeps Inej into danger, the offer of safety, food, and a place to stay is an overwhelming one - no matter the cost. Terrified of mounting threats, Inej signs a contract - not knowing she would land herself trapped at the Menagerie. Kaz signs a contract that states if he can walk all the way through the city and back to the Warehouse District with Inej behind him, never looking back at her, they will both go free. But this is the Barrel, the darkest part of the city where the rules of physics can change with the stroke of a pen; the journey back will not be the same as journey there…

This is a Hadestown-inspired reimagining of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, casting Kaz and Inej as our main characters and heavily featuring our beloved Crows, set in an alternate version of the Grishaverse with a different magic system based entirely on contracts.

Tags: @lunarthecorvus @marielaure @multi-fandom-bi @igotthisaccountunderduress @thelibraryofalexandriastillburns @devoted-people-hater @spraypaintstainonawhitewall

If anyone else would like to be added to the tag list let me know <3

Warnings for this chapter: implied sa references, slavery references (similar to Kerch indenture contracts), implied imprisonment

AO3 link:

Chapter 4 - Nina

The River Styx is a river of stone. And Hades lays them high and thick, with a million hands that are not his own. 

- Epic II, Hadestown

Nina hated Ketterdam. 

She lay on her side for almost an entire hour after she’d awoken, staring at the wall and keeping her hands clutched close to her chest in the warm little cocoon beneath her blanket. Her fingertips were cold as she stretched them out to touch the skin of her forearms, as far as she wanted to move for fear of losing her comfortable warm spot and failing to find it again, and ran them over the tattoos hidden under the sleeves of her nightclothes. Nina had three tattoos; two on her right arm, one on her left. Only one of them was important, but she lay and traced her fingers over all of them anyway. Just as she’d done before she fell asleep last night, and just as she would do tonight, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow evening. At night it had become a strange comfort, something in the routine or the motion or the soft, kind touches she could give herself that could carry her away from this city as she closed her eyes, could trick her for a brief moment into comfort, even safety. In the morning, it was just anything to extend the minutes she spent alone, calm, quiet, for as long as possible. 

She had to get up at some point, though. Nina sighed as she rolled out of bed and fumbled in the half-darkness for her slippers; dawn seemed to mean little in this city, with its endless winter and relentlessly thick clouds, so even when Nina begrudgingly parted the curtains it did little to illuminate the room. She peered through the slightly misted glass down to the street below. 

It wasn’t particularly busy this morning, probably too late in the day for the work rush to be in full swing, but a few strangers in fine suits hurried over the road and disappeared between the buildings. Nina used to have a better view of the city from this window, looking out the Government and Zelvar Districts, her position on the fourth floor even letting her see the distant harbour and a pocket of the True Sea on a clear enough day. Not anymore though. The wall was too high for that by now. A cart trundled by on the street beneath her; an old wooden thing with a half-faded laurel painted on its side, pulled by a tired-looking horse and carrying more tired-looking workers next to the stacks of bricks within. Nina couldn’t see them properly from here but she knew the workers perched atop the cart were wraiths, that their eyes would be glassy and their voices non-existent. The horse plodded along the cobbles, making its way towards the wall even though the driver was paying far more attention to the wraiths huddled behind him than the road ahead. Nina watched them for a moment, until her throat became too dry to breathe and she forced herself to turn away. 

What time was it? She must be due at the house relatively soon. 

The Red Laurel Enterprise’s property extended down pretty much the entire street, this and the next building being accommodation for the Grisha who wrote the company’s contracts, but the house itself stood at the top of the road, glowering down on it like a castle casting shadows over its crooked kingdom. Nina was to report to the house each morning and if she was needed, which it would be a damn miracle if she weren’t, would complete her tasks for the day within its walls. Let it just be reviews, she thought, eyes drifting back to the window. Reviews were hardly easy, but they were better than drawing up a new contract from scratch. That was the kind of thing that she thought might drive her mad one day. 

Someone shouted her name from down the hallway, and a moment later came a hammering on her door. 

“Nina!” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Nina sighed as she shoved her arms into her dressing gown, tying it loosely as she crossed the room, “I’m coming,”

Nina hadn’t been expecting to see Eamon on the other side of the door, but of course it had to be him - why would her luck ever swing in a different direction? He smiled at her and a surprisingly charming dimple creased on his cheek, as though it existed for the singular purpose of juxtaposing the boy’s unpleasant, leering smirk. 

“Nice to see you dressed for the occasion,” he said, leaning against the doorframe and very neatly placing his boot in the way of her closing it again. Not that she would’ve done, not matter how much she might’ve liked to trap his ugly fingers in the hinges, “Suits you,”

His eyes wandered up and down Nina’s gown, and she considered giving him a swift kick between the legs. 

“What are you doing here?” she snapped, “Because if you’re just here to-”

“Don’t you own a calendar, love?” Eamon smiled again. Saints, he really did look punchable, “‘It’s changeover day,”

Nina felt something tense inside her chest, and hoped that it hadn’t been visible. How could she have let it slip so close to changeover without realising? 

“I thought he didn’t need me until this afternoon,” she said, trying to keep her voice as casual as she could manage. 

“Well you thought wrong then, din’t you? You fancy hurrying up? I ain’t got all day,”

“Then you’d better move out the way so I can close the door,” 

Eamon huffed a small laugh, and for an unpleasant moment Nina didn’t think he was planning on leaving. But then he took a step backwards, and she slammed the door against his nose as quickly as she could. 

Changeover day. 

She closed her eyes and took a slow, shaky breath, trying to still her shivering hands.

Changeover day. 

She’d done it before, and she could do it again. 

Nina had been in Ketterdam for almost a year, and in that time had seen herself through three changeovers. She didn’t entirely understand how the deal struck between the Barrel and the Geldin District worked, but she was one of around twenty or so Grisha who officially resided in both areas. Every three months, the changeover came. Nina did not want to go back to the Barrel. But, of course, no-one had asked her for an opinion on that.

She dressed quickly, wrestled hair into a little red ruffle because there was more than one skiv around here who had an unpleasant habit of taking hold of it when it was loose, and shoved her feet into the single pair of shoes she owned. They didn’t exactly work with the outfit, the ridiculous little skirt and blouse embroidered to mimic a Grisha kefta that the Geldin District specifically required of her, but if Jan Van Eck didn’t like that then he’d just have to buy her a new pair. Maybe she should point out how incongruous the clunky leather boots were herself, just on the off chance that it meant she would get something new for once. 

Eamon thumped his fist hard against the door again as Nina was washing her face, shouting for her to hurry up. She brushed a hurried line of gloss over her lips, then slipped out the door and ignored Eamon’s grumbling as they walked downstairs. 

This outfit really wasn’t suitable for the weather. Goosebumps prickled up and down Nina’s legs as she followed Eamon through the front door and onto the damp cobblestones, a cold and angry breeze catching them the moment they stepped outside and clinging on so tightly that it may have been trying to pierce her flesh and dig right into her bones. Hopefully she would be able to get a seat below decks on the boat - it wasn’t a long journey, but she would gather together every crap of warmth she could for as long as possible. The walk to the Van Eck house wasn’t long either, but Nina was still almost surprised to discover that she hadn’t turned blue by the time they arrived. 

They didn’t go in through the front entrance, of course, but were greeted at one of the side doors by a blank-eyed girl in dark uniform, a laurel tattoo on her arm that matched the one on Nina’s. Eamon practically threw his coat at her and Nina more than noted his wandering eyes, but either he wasn’t stupid enough to try anything in the house or he wasn’t stupid enough to try anything in front of Nina. Still, politenesses or none, Nina wasn’t sure she’d have minded withstanding whatever waited for her in the aftermath of beating him to a pulp in the middle of the Van Eck living room so long as she got to do it. 

The girl hung Eamon’s tattered coat over the hatrack very much within his reach, then led them down the hallway in silence. Nina always found this house eerily quiet. It was too big for itself, like it was abandoned and ought to be overgrown with ivy and weeds. That might look prettier than the austere panelled walls that glared down at them now. She tried to imagine the carvings, which were mostly stories about Ghezen, the Kerch god of industry and commerce, replaced by leaves and flowers. Maybe they could even grow amongst the gaps between the bricks and tear down the wall. Maybe Ketterdam could fall to something as simple, something as complicated, as a single geranium. 

Maybe Nina needed to give herself a firm shake. 

The girl gave a quiet knock on an unnecessarily tall door, and a moment later they were inside the office. It was a spacious enough room, home to an oversized, ostentatious mahogany desk, a real DeKappel hanging on the wall, bookshelves that reached the ceiling. Behind his desk, of course, sat Jan Van Eck himself. Ever at his side was Marya, clad in the traditional black dresses of the merchant wives, a dark red rose tucked into her hair the only show of colour in her outfit. Nina had had two whole conversations with Marya Van Eck, and still she was just about her favourite person in the entire city - or at the very least, the only person she could stand. Right now she looked distinctly bored, an expression she was making absolutely no effort to hide from her husband, and Nina thought that was hilarious. 

Nina bowed, as did Eamon - not even he was enough of an idiot not to - and waited a moment for acknowledgement. He always liked to make them wait.

“Nina Zenik?” asked Van Eck, glancing briefly up from the list of names laid out over his desk. 

“Yes, sir,” 

He beckoned her forwards, and Nina rolled her sleeves up as she obeyed. It was the same process every time. 

Van Eck surveyed her left arm, where the laurel tattoo lay, first. At his instruction Nina turned her arm each way to show him that there was nothing new, nothing wrong with the mark, and then held herself very still as he reached out and took her wrist in his hand. He pressed his fingers hard into the ink of the tattoo, and in response it darkened and pulsated beneath his touch. Nina closed her eyes as her skin thrummed like something was trying to clamber out; Van Eck’s signature trying to return to him with every contact. Relief flooded through her chest as he released her, nodding his satisfaction, and the hot, rushing pressure vanished from her arm as quickly as it had appeared. She opened her eyes to meet Marya’s sympathetic gaze, and tried to smile - and tried to keep her gaze from drifting to the woman’s gloves. Nina was very much in the minority of people who knew what was hidden underneath them, and she definitely didn’t need Jan Van Eck knowing that she knew. 

Van Eck nodded at her other arm, and she raised it up. There were two tattoos on this one; a ring of growing ferns around her bicep, and a lion curled into the shape of a crown sleeping on her forearm. They rattled through the usual questions about them - Where did she do her work for Rollins? The Sweet Shoppe. What did she do for him? Exactly what she did here. When had she signed the contract? The day after she signed the one with the Red Laurel Enterprise. Who had drawn up the contract? She had. And the ferns? A prior contract. With? Matthias Helvar. Where is he? Hellgate prison. Has she had any contact with him? No. When did they sign their contract? A little over a year ago. Who had drawn it up? She had. Did she have the contract? No. Did he? No. Where was it? Lost somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, with no hopes of ever being undone. 

Saints, you’d think that they could just write all this nonsense down somewhere. Why did he have to make her say it every time? Though maybe it was good for her. Maybe if she wasn’t forced to stand here and relive everything she had done to Matthias, the memory of its pain would start to fade. She couldn’t have it do that. She wouldn’t let it. 

Van Eck nodded. 

“Alright then. Thank you for your service,”

It almost took effort not to laugh at that. Nine gave each of the Van Ecks a polite nod. 

“Sir, Ma’am,”

Van Eck waved his hand to dismiss them, and Nina bid them good day as she turned around and murmured something she hoped sounded polite about seeing them in three months. 

“Oh, I’ll miss you this time, dear,” said Marya, softly, the first time she’d spoken at all. 

Her voice was gentle and melodic, like at any given moment she might be about to sing, or like she knew how to shape the world around her into a tune with every word. Nina wasn’t sure if she was supposed to turn back or not, but when Marya kept talking she decided it was probably more polite to look at her as she did so. 

“I’m visiting my mother for a few months at…” she glanced at her husband, smiling at him, “well it’s about at the same time, isn’t it?”

His only response was to nod. 

“So I suppose I’ll see you in nine months, Nina,” 

Nine months? Of course, yes. Nine months. 

It took Nina a moment to form words, but when her voice finally answered her she could only wish Marya a pleasant trip, politely excuse herself, and try to hold back the need to run from the room. 

Nine more months. Here. In Ketterdam. Right. 

Nina stared at her beaten up shoes as she followed Eamon towards the harbour, and the melancholic melody of Marya Van Eck’s voice followed her all the way. 

*

“Have you had any contact with Matthias Helvar in the past three months?” 

“No,”

Nina resisted the urge to sigh. Had she not just been through this with Van Eck? This Saintsforsaken system was nothing if not thorough. 

“And do either of you have a copy of this contract?” asked Rollins through the cigar tucked between his teeth, leaning back in his chair as he shook out the match he’d just used. 

The office above the Emerald Palace was both similar to and completely unlike that of Jan Van Eck. It was dissimilar in its colour - its outright gaudiness, to be frank - and its shimmer had a fake, almost cheap sheen to it even though Nina was sure it had taken a good amount of cash to fill it with all this nonsense. It was exactly the same as Van Eck’s office in that both of them were the most ridiculous show of overcompensation that Nina had ever witnessed with her own two eyes. 

“No,” she repeated, through gritted teeth as she tried to argue her impatience deeper into her stomach to hide, “It was lost off the coast of Fjerda,”

“Destroyed?” 

Saints, he was making Nina want to bang her head against something. 

“Well it's made of paper and it sank to the bottom of the ocean, if you need help connecting the dots then-”

“That’s enough,” he snapped.

Nina bit her tongue, but thankfully Rollins appeared to be done. He waved her off impatiently, and you definitely didn’t have to tell her twice. Besides, now that all of the ridiculous meetings were done she didn’t need to have an escort. She was free of Eamon and she could wander to the Sweet Shoppe in her own damn time - although, in saying that, it was still cold outside and she was still wearing a skirt that didn’t reach her knees, so the walk probably wouldn’t be turned into a long one. 

Nina hated Ketterdam. But it was probably fair to say that she hated the Barrel, individually, even more. The Staves were both busy as she moved across from East to West, buzzing and thrumming with the endless sound of brightly-costumed thrill seekers moving through the streets and over the bridges, moving like they were one creature, ebbing and flowing as though the canals had burst their banks and were crawling over the cobbles. As she approached Goedmed Bridge, where most of the bigger pleasure houses were situated, a barge passed along the canal close enough for to see a wraith in purple silks with someone’s arms tight around her. She stared blankly out over the barrier and into the city as he leaned closer, until his lips met her neck and she tilted upwards in response to the movement. Nina closed her eyes for a moment. If she’d thought anyone was listening, maybe she would have prayed. 

By the time she arrived, Nina wanted to wrap herself in a blanket and hide away in her room at the Sweet Shoppe for as long as humanly possible, doing nothing and speaking to no-one. But, typically, it was apparently not going to be her choice - the first thing she saw when she slipped into the third floor bedroom was a note on the table in unmistakable, scratchy handwriting. 

Boundary stone, 5 bells. Someone you should meet. 

Nina was just about ready to rip the note into shreds and scream into a pillow. 

Of course Kaz Brekker knew it was changeover day. And, of course, he couldn’t let her have two minutes of something that might have vaguely resembled peace. 

[cypher-of-the-night]

Biography: Yuuichi Kuroi

“Between going to hell for killing leeches, or to heaven at the cost of innocent lives... I’d rather stay a sinful man for the rest of my life.”

~

Full name: Kuroi, Yuuichi

Kanji: 黒佑一

Age: 19

Meaning:  Yuuichi - To help one; Kuroi - Black, Dark

Nickname(s):

Sensei (by Yui),

Yuuichi Jiang (Alias)

Yòu-Yī  Jiang (Chinese Name)

Age: 19 (Looks around early 20′s)

Birthday: April 1st

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Ethnicity: Chinese/Japanese

Nationality: Japanese

Hobbies: Hunting, Practicing Martial Arts

Favorite Food: Cream Stew

Dislikes: Days-Off, Vampires, and Ignorance

Race: Vampire, Human (Formerly)

Gender: Male

Height: 178 cm (5’10")

Weight: 67 kg (147 lbs)

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Blue

Blood Type: O

Occupation: High School Teacher-in-Training, Vampire Hunter

Relatives:

Ying-Yue Jiang (ancestral foremother)

Naoki Enjo (Distant Relative)

Hisoka Kuroi (First-Cousin, Arranged fiancée)

Tsurara Kuroi (Parental Grandmother)

Favorite Food: Cream Stew

Hobbies: Hunting, Practicing Martial Arts

Seiyuu: Satoshi Hino (Ao from Hakkenden (Talking /Singing)

English Voice: Greg Cote (Eita Izumi from Just Because) (Talking)

~

Personality:

To the public eye, Yuuichi is a cool, collected young genius. At the age of 13, He graduates from college and is mentioned to be friendless, as he distances himself from others ever since childhood; Only having his cousin as his only other companion growing up. As he was always quiet, people found Yuuichi intimidating as he would be the only one brave enough to stare down and talk back at the Sakamaki’s, the Mukami’s, and even the Tsukinami’s; Something not even the Principal could do. Yuuichi is also observant and strict, even catching Ayato cheating but never calls him out on it; This leads to him and Ayato having a rather antagonistic relationship.

However, Yuuichi’s cool front is actually a mask, revealing himself to be passionate, but broken young man, desperately looking for love, affection, acceptance, and acknowledgment. Having grown up in a family of Vampire Hunters, Yuuichi has learned to kill vampires since he was young; While he was exceptional in this field, Yuuichi always had to live up to high expectations and was forced to distance himself from others to protect them from getting involved with his life as a Vampire hunter. He cares dearly about innocent people, but felt he must put them at a distance to keep them safe from harm. Always feeling that he must carry the burden on his own, Yuuichi bottles up his emotions in order to continue his role as a protector to innocent humans. He also has a soft spot for children, especially orphans, as he himself is an orphan.

While it was never reciprocated, Yuuichi did hold romantic feelings for his cousin, Hisoka, ever since they were children; Even before their arranged engagement. However, while he has tried to win her heart, it was apparent that She never loved him anymore than a brother. This is due to growing up believing he was a mistake by their grandmother, as he was born as an illegitimate child to the Kuroi family, and that Hisoka was the first person that has treated him as if his existence wasn’t a mistake and that he felt validated by her. This is also why he was not the family heir, despite being the oldest. He also developed a self-hatred and a case of PTSD from having to undergo harsh training as a Vampire hunter, losing his family members, to the abusive treatment from his grandmother.

Due to the way he grew up in the organization and his own hatred towards vampires, Yuuichi feels no remorse in killing the blood-sucking creatures and strongly believes that they are beasts in human form that deserve nothing more than to be extinct. While he genuinely feels that way, it only adds in his self-hatred and disgust for allowing himself become a vampire just to survive when he would rather die. As a vampire hunter, he also knows tactics to torture someone and do what ever means necessary to get the job done; Even it meant resorting to manipulation.

While appearing rational, Yuuichi also holds a sadistic side from the influence of being a vampire and would have the tendencies to succumb to vamperic urges along with his own desires; Depending on which route he’s in, He can either succumb to insanity, forcibly take what he wants as a desperate attempt to find his own happiness, and die as a tragic man, or He can be taught that he can love and be loved healthily, that he must pick up the broken pieces in order to find happiness, and to live as the avenging survivor.

~

Strengths:

Highly intelligent, respectful to elders, goal-oriented, protective, observant, a realist, serious, mysterious, cool, calm, fast-learner, outspoken when needed to, Caring to children, does show gratitude, strong-willed, kind, athletic, knowledgeable, passionate, experienced, and faithful.

Flaws: Secretly sadistic (from Vampiric urges), cold, stoic, vengeful, stubborn, persistent, easily lonely, hot-tempered, hostile, emotionally scarred, secretive, mentally scarred, self-hatred, has a hard time trusting people, hard, mentally unstable, anxious, paranoid, can’t cook, fearful of losing loved ones, socially awkward, shy, secretly masochistic (heavily embarrassed of this fact about himself) and secretly soft-hearted (can’t show it due to his upbringing as a hunter).

Skills: Shooting with guns (specifically pistols), Fluent in different languages (Chinese, Japanese, English), her intelligence (has even gotten a higher score than Reiji on tests), has high patience, high stamina, a fast runner, enhanced sense of smell, slightly stronger than normal humans, good listening skills, reading people and their emotions, skilled at playing on the flute, singing, has good flexibility, is Ambidextrous (both left-handed and right-handed), charisma, negotiation and interrogation skills, pain endurance, has slow but steady healing, a quick thinker, surprisingly observant, excellent swordsmanship, and an expert martial artist.

~

History:

Born as an illegitimate child to the Kuroi family, Yuuichi has always been deemed as a “mistake” all of his life by his own grandmother, Tsurara Kuroi. At a young age, His father was disappeared after being reported as MIA during a mission while his mother was kidnapped by a vampire. He was placed under the care of his aunt and uncle for a short time, meeting his first-cousin, Hisoka Kuroi; Falling in love with her and her innocence, Yuuichi swore to protect her and to work hard to become her husband when they are older. Such a thing even became the reason why he would eventually become a exceptional vampire hunter as he grew older.

When he was placed under Tsurara’s care, Yuuichi was immediately taken to start the harsh vampire-hunter training for Kuroi family members; The training sessions caused him to experience horrors and force him to kill in order to save himself, resulting nightmares and eventual numbness in order to get through every training session. Becoming a professional at the age of 8, Yuuichi’s first mission was to kill the same vampire that kidnapped his mother; But once he did and comes across his mother, who was imprisoned the entire time and showed signs of abuse and bite marks, She tearfully begs him to kill her so that she doesn’t turn into a vampire, fearing she would end up hurting others the way her captive has hurt her. Heartbroken that their reunion would end up as it did, Yuuichi complies before telling his mother he loved her, in which his mother replies that she (along with his father) will always love him. From having to kill his own mother as well, this lead to the start of his burning hatred for vampires, vowing to eradicate every single one of them so that humans won’t have to suffer the same way his mother did.

After hearing about the deaths of his aunt and uncle, the memories of his father’s disappearance, and the kidnapping and death of his mother comes back to haunt him and fuel the burning hatred of vampires more; Whether or not Hisoka herself survived or not, Yuuichi will still remain guilty for not being able to be there to protect her or her innocence as he swore to.

If Hisoka did survive, whichi is Hisoka’s Route: Due to the fear of almost losing her, Yuuichi becomes heavily emotionally invested in her to a point he gets jealous of anyone that Hisoka interacts with, especially Yui Komori, who he envied and hated for being the one that helped Hisoka open up when she needed someone the most. Yuuichi would do anything for Hisoka just to make her happy and to win her love, in a similar way Richter loves Cordelia; However, when a mission to rescue Yui was changed to killing her, Yuuichi was the first to take the task to do so. Due to Hisoka’s love and devotion to Ruki Mukami, Yuuichi’s mentality breaks, becoming insane and unpredictable, and resorts to making his happiness happen by force (the happiness being promised by Tsurara herself if Yuuichi kills Yui successfully). This ends up failing and leads to his death by Hisoka’s hands.

If Hisoka didn’t survive, which is Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi becomes the only Kuroi member left in the new generation, making him the only other candidate to become heir to the Kuroi family. But Tsurara does not allow it as she still labels him a ‘mistake’, despite his adroit skills as a hunter. From this, Yuuichi comes to the belief that Tsurara had something to do with the death of the rest of his family members, especially after learning about the wiping out of the clan from his mother’s side. As such, He has decided to investigate deeper into the mystery, which lead to taking on the task to assassinate Yui Komori, only to use her to figure out a lead to Tsurara’s crimes that ended up massacring the rest of his family.

Sometime in between the Haunted Dark Bridal Saga and the MORE BLOOD Saga, Yuuichi was almost near death from a mission he was sent to by Tsurara, only to be saved by and turned by Richter on a certain condition:

Hisoka Route: Richter agrees to make Yuuichi strong enough to kill the Mukami’s, especially Ruki Mukami, who was working with Karlheinz, the Vampire King, but in exchange, Yuuichi will help him dethrone Karlheinz and kill the Sakamaki’s. Due to Yuuichi’s mentality breaking from Hisoka loving Ruki, He agrees to help Richter overthrow Karlheinz and kill the vampires. This is also because they share a mutual understanding of loving a woman that loves someone else, and will do anything just to make them happy/their own, to a point not having them in their arms makes them lose their own sanity.

Naoki Route: Richter agrees to help provide Yuuichi the information he needs to prove Tsurara was guilty, if Yuuichi agrees to keep Yui safe from the Sakamaki’s and the Mukami’s. While Yuuichi didn’t understand why Richter would give him this opportunity, seeing that they both have a common enemy in Tsurara, Yuuichi accepts this despite his own hatred for vampires as long as it would be beneficial to what he is looking for in order to get evidence of Tsurara’s crimes. He eventually does kidnap Yui, using Naoki as a distraction, but while he had her in his custody, they do eventually fall in love and Yuuichi realizes his own inhumane actions and decides to learn to love himself, as well as to move forward with his life.

Eventually, He goes undercover in the guise of a Teacher-in-Training at Ryoutei Academy.

(SPOILERS)

In Naoki’s route, in the DARK FATE Saga, It is revealed that Yuuichi is also a bloodline member of the Chinese clan of human vampire hunters with the first-blood blood in their veins, due to their foremother ancestor, Ying-Yue Jiang; Ying-Yue was the original host of a first-blood’s heart (whom was also her lover in her former life as a human), and was a human before turning into a vampire after she gave birth to a human son that carried the blood of a First-blood, Asher. Due to herself staying hidden for many centuries to hide from Karlheinz under her first-blood lover’s instructions, Ying-Yue was given the nickname “Lilith”, who was known to be the first wife of Adam but leaves him after she refuses to become subservient to him (in a similar sense where Ying-Yue refuses to let herself become experimented as an Eve to Karlheinz’s plan); However, their secret was revealed when one of their clan’s members was kidnapped by a vampire who found out about the truth of their blood. That kidnapped member was Yuuichi’s mother herself. And after the Clan was targeted and massacred, Yuuichi became one of the two only clan members left alive; The other revealing to be Naoki Enjo, the current host of Asher’s heart. The one that plotted the massacre of the clan was Tsurara herself; However, due to Karlheinz’s decision to kill off the entire family of Hisoka, including Hisoka herself, to allow one member from the Jiang clan escape from the massacre, this lead to Tsurara to hold a grudge as she had plans to use Hisoka as her perfect successor as Head of the VH Organization.

It is also revealed that, the real reason Tsurara called Yuuichi a mistake, is because she became aware of the first-blood blood in his veins, and deemed him as one with filthy blood; This is the reason why she refused to make him heir to the family, as all of his abilities were only enhanced from the blood of a first-blood, and that she only sent him on the mission where he was almost killed is to ensure that he does get killed and never returns. In Hisoka’s Route in the DARK FATE saga, where Yuuichi has already been killed, Tsurara explains that she was responsible in organizing the massacre of the Jiang clan and that she did arrange killing of Yuuichi in order to give Hisoka the push she needed to attempt rising up against her, and turn her into the perfect successor after Hisoka herself realizes the truth of her existence and the reason for the death of her family was all because she existed.

Once everything comes to light, in Naoki’s Route in the DARK FATE saga, Asher reveals to Yuuichi that his father was the one informed the clan about the kidnapping as a warning and took Naoki to the orphanage, but as a result from receiving word he gave warning of the VH Organization hunters coming to massacre them, Tsurara had him, one of her own sons, executed for “betraying the organization”.

~

Trivia:

• Yuuichi is unable to cook; Legend tells he tried to cook something himself, but he ends up burning everything he cooks into flames. Even cereal. Even in

Hisoka’s Route

in the

MORE BLOOD

saga, It is mentioned that Yuuichi himself almost burned down the organization from trying to cook; The one of the very few things he can do is brew coffee.

• While only describes as his hobbies, Yuuichi actually hunts and practices Martial arts as said hobbies is mainly because it helps him keep his figure and to ensure he does not slack off from lack of training.

This is why He doesn’t like day off’s, as he feels uncomfortable doing nothing and that he would rather much do something than doing nothing.

• In his own Manservant ending in the MORE BLOOD saga with Yui, He ends up becoming just like Richter and becomes a submissive slave to Yui, who would end up inheriting dominant, sadistic traits from Cordelia; He even ends up killing Richter to ensure Yui remains his, in fear that Richter will take her away from him.

In the DARK FATE route of Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi confronts Richter as he tries to make a move on Yui in the delusion that she’s Cordelia and denies being like him; This is ironic, considering the fact that he is very much like him in Hisoka’s Route, as his own mentality breaks and would do whatever means necessary to keep Hisoka at his side, even if it meant killing those in his way.

•  He inherited his blue eyes from his father, while his mother holds the same pink eyes as Naoki; It is implied that the bloodline family members of the Jiang clan have the same colored eyes, but the reason why Yuuichi has blue eyes is because the Kuroi family genes has been known to be arguably stronger.

• Yuuichi was originally made to be a character for Hisoka Kuroi’s universe; However, regretting such great potential to go to waste, Yuki (The creator of this blog and @star-crossedfidelity​) brought him back for Naoki Enjo’s story in an alternative universe and gives him a happy ending where he is the love interest of Yui Komori.

• Yuuichi’s real name is Yòu-Yī Jiang (Jiang Yòu-Yī; 江佑一), which respectively mean “To protect all” and “River”.

• Upon his appearance in the MORE BLOOD Saga in Naoki’s route,  

• By the DARK FATE saga in Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi is revealed to be spiritually-Endowed Human-First Blood Hybrid; This is due to Ying-Yue Jiang, his foremother and Asher’s lover, became the first carrier of the first-blood’s heart before she had sexual intercourse with another human in an arranged marriage, which lead to conceiving a human child that would later start a family line of human with first-blood ancestry from Ying-Yue carrying Asher’s heart before the child was conceived; Thus, Yuuichi is a human with first-blood ancestry.

Asher reveals that because the child was born from two humans, despite his blood running through its veins, they can not possess magic, transform, or summon familiars like a first-blood; Instead, because of his blood, The child was stronger, quicker, and healed faster than an average human, along with inheriting the ability to sense vampires and invisible familiars. This is why the clan were phenomenal vampire hunters as, while they can’t see them, they can sense their presence, using those abilities to their advantages.

Asher also reveals that Yuuichi’s enhanced abilities were due to the blood that ran through the family bloodline for generations, and if Yuuichi was the host for his heart, Asher admits that Yuuichi would’ve unlock even more power due to his upbringing as a vampire hunter.

• Due to never having a normal childhood or having a chance to relax, Yuuichi has no knowledge or recollection on what’s it’s like to be a child; For example, He has never been to an amusement park, nor has he ever been to a festival before.

• While he is good with swordsmanship, He prefers to use guns instead; The reason for this is because, when he went on his first mission, He used a sword; Which meant he had to kill his own mother with the sword, and began to use guns after that. In Hisoka’s Route, It is confirmed that Yuuichi would only use swords if he is being sent on a more difficult mission.

• Yuuichi uses the alias “Yuuichi Jiang”, a mixture of his Japanese name and his mother’s maiden name; However, in Naoki’s Route in the MORE BLOOD saga, this is how Asher began to suspect Yuuichi as another living survivor of the massacre, due to his Chinese decent, his own enhanced abilities, and his familiar scent of those from the Jiang clan.

• In Hisoka’s Route, Yuuichi is in love with Hisoka, and not Yui, who he bitterly hated and envied; However, in Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi becomes Yui’s keeper by the MORE BLOOD Saga and they end up falling in love. ~

Credits: Character sheet image, art provided by @seven-re​.

[ala-mhinyan]

VII :: Nonagenarian

The Coeurl aren’t a people meant to last.

It’s clear to any that run into them; any that truly take a keen eye to their lifestyle. Their rituals seat them as sacrifices to the very eikons they worship; beholden with power not their own and sent glistening with a ferocity most men wouldn’t dare temper with. For a people richly cultivated with history and culture, they seem more beast than man at times--a people to fear more than to know. To those who see through city eyes, for men who cannot see beneath the surface; they are nothing more than savagery with a penchant to hunt the impossibly dangerous.

Nothing more than solar flares. Burn bright, burn fast, burn hot. Then fizzle out.

Those who see their daily lives and their struggles know that the Coeurl are a people borne of hardship and prayer; an intricately immaculate culture as deep as the core of this star, this hundreds upon thousands of different facets in something as easy as everyday life. So much that goes unseen for those that choose not to see, so many gestures and unspoken phrases that would mean scriptures in an encyclopedia of knowledge if only one paid attention. Their pride is their fuel, their devotion their blood. A people of immense sacrifice; a people who would martyr themselves to give the generations past and future an unquenchable flame that burned hotter than any other to preside on this star.

A people of blood, mystery and impeccable beauty--both surface and soul-deep.

This inalienable oath is the reason they are not meant to last--for good things can never last forever and despite how the world may perceive them, they stand at a balance between life and death that only they can shoulder.

The price for the drip feed of godhood.

.::.

There is but one among them that has transcended the rote of time; one who has witnessed what many would only cite to be calamities--one who has been through Jauhar--one who witnessed the Garlean empire in its prime and the revolution of their country. One who Sees, Hears and Feels with all of their being.

Her name whispered among their people, too soft to catch the wind and carry but felt in the tremor of the sand beneath their feet. Too many who would forgo her in fear of what her presence and words mean, who make up stories of what did and would happen to her if one would find themselves in her presence.

C’arha was one among the fearless, sure steps carrying her along a well-worn path through the caves toward an isolated cavern busting at the seams with plant life that surely could not grow with no sunlight. The tickle of leaf and petal was familiar as she journeyed along the path that steadily grew tighter and smaller until one would have to crouch to make their way through the overabundant foliage. She did so without terror, without hesitation; into the very heart of the curse her tribe swore her to stay away from.

And when she emerged from the smallest opening, her bright green eyes settled on an elderly woman sitting in a comfortable rocking chair; basking in sunlight from the cracked portion of the cave that hung overhead. A smile pulled on the young woman’s lips and she approached easily, slinging the stuffed bag from over her shoulders onto the ground near the older woman.

<“C’aarya.”>

The elderly woman turned slowly, round ears tweaking just a moment too slow--though the smile on her drooping features brought sunlight to the Seeker’s soul. She was in a good mood today. <“Arha…”> A whisper-soft voice of age, wonder and magic. C’arha bobbed her head in a nod and knelt in front of the woman, gently touching the top of her foot and running that hand over her hair in a sweeping arch. Only then did she look up into familiar green eyes, a warmth settling into her bones to know another that was the same as her.

<“I brought you fresh fruit and stew. I have a bunch of salted meats and grains that will be good for you to make your porridges with, as well as a couple of pre-made meals.”> C’arha pulled the bag over, untying the lead and widening the opening so she could show the older woman the bounty she’d brought with her. C’aarya smiled fiercely, her long tail giving a distinct flick at the very tip only. 

<”You are kind to me, young one. I’m grateful.”>

C’arha nodded, gathering the bag and pulling it off to the side where a kitchen had been crafted for the elderly woman; her own stove, cupboards and an ice box that C’arha had fashioned together out of hard clay, brick, palm fronds and ice clusters. It did well to keep C’aarya well taken care of, so the runt didn’t seem to mind. Once the food was put away, she made her way back to the elderly woman’s side--settling down on a seat cushion she’d pulled from the pile of cushions nearby.

<”You are well today.”> C’arha made a gesture toward her head, index finger curling and then moving outward. <”Coherent. How do you feel?”>

The elderly woman let her head tip back, her smile never leaving those lips. <”Well, better than I have in a long, long while. It’s even better to be seeing your face.”>

<”I do not fear you, C’aarya. I have no reason to push you away back into this corridor and never visit you, it is cruel.”> Her lips turned up in a brief snarl, one that faded when the older woman waved her hand dismissively.

<”They fear the unknown. You cannot fear what you are, Arha. That is why you come here.”>

C’arha felt her ears press down, letting out a quiet sigh--leaning forward to rest her face against the older woman’s thigh. It was warm and homey--something she only felt when she laid against C’ohna. This woman was not family to her, none that she knew, but her imprisonment had burned a special place in C’arha and their visits had grown more frequent after C’sah’s betrayal.

As far as she was aware, no one else visited the woman but C’tolemy.

<”I don’t understand, elder. I still cannot understand. I don’t know if I’m blinded by emotions too deep to crawl out of or if I’m just too lost--but I still cannot seem to understand. Misery haunts my every shadow and my personal life is unraveling in ways I can do nothing about. How did you stay at peace--through all of this? You carry the same curse in your blood that I do and yet you’ve outlived so many… So much so that even your own blood cower at the possibilities. How did you not succumb to the pain of it all…?”>

The elderly woman listened carefully, long tail picking up a stuttering sway while she hummed a bit to herself. <”Let me ask you something Arha… Do you hate what you’ve been given? This affliction?”>

C’arha cocked her head, little ears wriggling just a little. <”I… Do you not hate it? It is a curse…”>

C’aarya shook her head, smiling to herself. <”By its definition, yes it's a curse. But does it feel like a curse to you?”>

The younger woman frowned sharply, <”I am punished with pain and suffered to silence for holding back the emotions that hurt me in favor of keeping another’s joy. How is that not a curse?”>

Wise, vibrant green eyes shift aside and peer at C’arha as though she were looking through a mirror to her younger self--bemused at the similarities. Of course she would feel this way. <”Are your emotions a curse, Arha? Is feeling and being felt--seeing and being seen--wanting and being wanted--a curse?”>

C’arha recoiled at those words, her face screwing up in frustration and part-way fear. No… The answer to all of this couldn’t be that misguidedly simple, not for such a complex disease that had robbed her of years of her life already… Surely, to reverse this, it was not just as simple to…

<”That cannot possibly be true.”>

<”Believe in that which cannot be disproven. If you doubt me then attempt it yourself--I have not lived this long just because I’ve had an easier life than you, Arha. I was also far less stubborn about the truths of my life.”>

<”It is not being stubborn about my life! It is knowing--”>

<”That at the crux of your being you are hurting, confused and lost. Why, I will never understand, you feel that is wrong of you? I cannot say. Why you are ashamed to be this--to be you? That is what is killing you, not this curse.”>

That froze C’arha in place, stunned to silence--very quickly veering from frustrated so depressed and right back to anger. No--it couldn’t be… But… could it? The younger woman sighed in defeat and slumped against C’aarya’s robbed thighs once more, hooking an arm loosely about the woman’s ankle as if that would get her closer to the truth.

<”...How did you get to that point? Of acceptance?”>

<”Mm…”> A moment of pause, the sing-song of her hum wafting about the space. <”It took time, that it did. Time and understanding of myself, my person-hood and my feelings. You must allow yourself the will, the right, the ability to feel and not to be ashamed of those feelings. The more you suppress it, the deeper you hurt. You wouldn’t believe how lighter you are when you welcome yourself home instead of running from yourself all the time.”>

C’arha sighed aloud once more, turning her head to bury her face into soft--warm fabric. All she could think of were what felt like the hundreds of times her Xaelic brother had sat her down and about begged her to trust him and be open with him about her feelings. Had told her that a burden shared was a burden lighter--had promised that all would be well if she just trusted.

How foolish she was to believe that trusting hadn’t meant trusting herself as well.

<”I’m an idiot,”> Came the despondent mutter.

C’aarya’s sweet laughter filled the space, the wisdom and warmth in the moment doing much to soothe C’arha’s frazzled nature to tears--swept up in herself with the old woman present to watch over her.

<”We are all foolish at least once in our lives. It is wisdom to learn from that foolishness.”>

<”And if I never learn?”>

<”You will, we all learn someday.”>

[thecoleopterawithana]

The Beatles and Dysfunctional Family Roles

Humans are social animals. When one lives in a group, each has a part to play. A role in this great play that is life, if you will. 

All the worlds a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits, and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.

— William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII.

These sets of adequate behaviors are determined by the expectations of everyone around us, eventually becoming internalized through socialization. This means that the role we play is also context-dependent, and should change and adapt according to different times and spaces. It’s only when we become too fixed in certain dynamics that there is a problem.

Humans are master profilers. We have to quickly know what role our scene-partner is playing, after all. Furthermore, we also have a tendency to generalize. To forget that these are merely parts and others and ourselves are much more complex than the character they present at any given situation.

Thus, humans are masters at creating tags (long before the ‘hash’ prefixed it). Each Beatle member has been attributed, from their very first days under the public gaze, a very specific part: the Smart One, the Cute One, the Quiet One and the Funny One. 

Like most labels, they are informative to a degree, which becomes limiting when one assumes that’s all there is to know. And even though there were infinitely complex individuals behind these fan nicknames, it’s curious how even within the band, in the privacy of their hotel rooms, these four young men fell into a very structured dynamic with very specific roles (which with time became stifling).

But it is wise to remember that the Beatles were more than a band.

They were a family.

This was something that they always identified with very keenly. They were brothers. (Of course, on top of this dynamic, John and Paul had the added complexity of also feeling like they were married.) 

But for now, let’s look upon them as the children that they were: four brothers in one big adventure. It probably pays to follow their self-denomination and examine what part each member played in this dynamic. And because I used the word “dysfunctional” in the title, let’s first establish what it entails.

One of the main distinguishers between healthy and dysfunctional family dynamics is just how fixed these structures are.

In any given family the individual members fulfill and act out roles….

While in healthy, functional families these roles are generally fluid, change over time, in different circumstances, at particular events and are age and developmental appropriate, in dysfunctional families the roles are much more rigid.

In a healthy family members are integrated and various parts may surface at different times at no threat to the family system. In functional families the roles are interdependent.

The various roles in a healthy family are parts of every person….

Healthy families in general retain functionality when individual members ‘leave’ the family system through ‘moving out’, starting their own families or even death of an individual member.

By contrast,

In dysfunctional families the roles are almost a form of continuity or stability of the family system, stifling development….

Members must submerge parts of their personalities and take on a role so they are less of a threat to the family system that must be kept in place. In the case of a dysfunctional family all the roles are characterized as co-dependent.

In a dysfunctional family each member takes a role, and/or is assigned one, to make up the whole which is the family. Rather than a family of fully (yet age appropriate) persons, the family system gears to create just one: the family itself.

In dysfunctional family systems when an individual member leaves, this creates an (almost) irreparable hole in the existing system… This is why dysfunctional families are often so enmeshed. The system needs all members to function as a unit, not as a community.

— “Healthy vs Dysfunctional Family Roles”, Out Of The Storm.

It displeases me to dish out a diagnosis, for the line between healthy and unhealthy is often quite subtle. 

But it’s hard not to argue that at times the Beatles tended towards the rigidity of a dysfunctional family. They have the resulting tensions and fallouts to prove it. Just the simple premise that the stability and continued existence of the family unit (the band) was more important than the wants and needs of its individual members is a sign of how prone they were to imprisoning themselves for the good of the whole.

In 1981 Weischeider identified five archetypes that children are assigned, originally relating to her work with alcoholic families. Since then the terms have evolved to cover other types of dysfunctional family systems: including the presence of other kinds of addictions; untreated mental health illnesses; sexual or physical abuse; fundamentalism or rigid dogmatism.

But what are these Dysfunctional Family Roles?

The Golden Child (The Hero)

This family member devotes his/her time and attention to making the family look “normal” and without problems. The Hero can mask or make up for the dysfunctional home life. Over-responsible and self-sufficient they are often perfectionistic, are over-achievers and look very good - on the outside.  The parents look to this child to prove that they are good parents and good people. Their goal in life is to achieve “success”, however that has been defined by the family;  they must always be “brave and strong”. The Hero’s compulsive drive to succeed may in turn lead to stress-related illness, and compulsive over-working. They learn at a young age to suffer the sadness of a parent and become a surrogate spouse or confidante.

While The Hero saves the family by being perfect and making it look good, the golden child may struggle to live up to his status.  In a Narcissistic Personality Disordered (NPD) family, The Golden Child is the recipient of all the narcissistic parent’s positive projections, and is their favourite child. The golden child is usually victim of emotional and (covert) sexual abuse by the narcissistic parent. (S)He is also witness to, and sometimes takes part in, the other children’s abuse. Many specialists believe that witnessing your sibling’s abuse is as damaging as receiving it.

The Caretaker (The Enabler)

Another descriptive word for this type of codependent family role is “the Caretaker.“ This is also a role a child can fulfill, especially in case the other parent/caregiver has not resigned to enable the dysfunctional Addicted or Narcissististic parent. The Enabler feels like they have to keep the family going. Over and over they take on the addict’s problems and responsibilities.

The Enabler is the martyr of the family, and often supports not only the dysfunctional behavior, but also a prime enforcer of the codependent roles that everyone else is required to play.

You often see this role in a family where the functioning of (one of) the parent(s) is impaired in some way, i.e. mental illness, substance abuse or a medical disability.  This child will attempt function as the surrogate parent. They worry and fret, nurture and support, listen and console. Their entire concept of their self is based on what they can provide for others.

The Enabler protects and takes care of the problem parent so that the parent is never allowed to experience the negative consequences of his or her actions. The Enabler feels he or she must act this way, because otherwise, the family might not survive. The paradoxical thing about The Enabler’s behavior is that by preventing the dysfunctional parent’s crisis, he or she also prevents the painful, corrective experience that crisis brings, which may be the only thing that makes the dysfunctional parent stop the downward spiral of addiction…

[Note: The Caretaker is often the “intra-familial counterpart” of The Golden Child, which can overlap and be played by the same person.]

The Problematic Child (The Scapegoat)

The Scapegoat is the “problem child” or the “trouble maker”. This family member always seems defiant, hostile and angry.  The Scapegoat is the truth-teller of the family and will often verbalize or act out the "problem” which the family is attempting to cover up or deny. This individual’s behavior warrants negative attention and is a great distraction for everyone from the real issues at hand. The Scapegoat usually has trouble in school because they get attention the only way they know how - which is negatively.  They can be very clever, may develop social skills within his or her circle of peers, and become leaders in their own peer groups. But often the groups that they choose to associate with are groups that do not present healthy relationships. The relationships he or she experiences tend to be shallow and inauthentic.

The Scapegoat is sacrificed for the family. The Scapegoat will be the “identified patient”. Scapegoats come in many different flavors, but two common ones are:  1) the picked, weak or sick child; or, 2) the angry, rebellious problem child who is constantly getting into conflicts. They are often self-destructive, cynical and even mean.

In an NPD family, The Scapegoat, or no good child is the recipient of the narcissist’s negative projections. They can never do anything right. The name ‘rebel’ implies that the child has chosen this role, which is debatable. The Scapegoat is usually victim of emotional and physical abuse by the narcissistic parent.

The Quiet One (The Lost Child)

The Lost Child is usually known as “the quiet one” or “the dreamer”. The Lost Child is the invisible child. They try to escape the family situation by making themselves very small and quiet. (S)He stays out of the way of problems and spends a lot of time alone. The purpose of having a lost child in the family is similar to that of The Hero. Because The Lost Child is rarely in trouble, the family can say, “He’s a good kid. Everything seems fine in his life, so things can’t be too bad in the family.”

This child avoids interactions with other family members and basically disappears. They become loners, or are very shy. The Lost Child seeks the privacy of his or her own company to be away from the family chaos. Because they don’t interact, they never have a chance to develop important social and communication skills. The Lost Child often has poor communication skills, difficulties with intimacy and in forming relationships. They deny that they have any feelings and "don’t bother getting upset.” They deal with reality by withdrawing from it.

In an NPD family, The Lost Child just doesn’t seem to matter to the narcissist, and avoids conflict by keeping a low profile. They are not perceived as a threat or a good source of supply, but they are usually victim of neglect and emotional abuse.

The Clown (The Family Mascot)

The goal of The Family Mascot is to break the tension and lighten the mood with humor or antics. (S)He is usually “the cute one.” This child feels powerless in the dynamics which are going on in the family and tries to interrupt tension, anger, conflict, violence or other unpleasant situations within the family by being the court jester. The Mascot seeks to be the center of attention in the family, often entertaining the family and making everyone feel better through his or her comedy. They may also use humor to communicate and to confront the family dysfunction, rather than address it directly. They also use humor to communicate repressed emotions in the family such as anger, grief, hostility or fear. This behavior is lighthearted and hilarious, just what a family twisted in pain needs — but the mascot’s clowning is not repairing the emotional wounds, only providing temporary balm. The rest of the family may actually try to protect their “class clown”. The Mascot is often busy-busy-busy.  They become anxious or depressed when things aren’t in constant motion. The Mascot commonly has difficulty concentrating and focusing in a sustained way on learning, and this makes school or work difficult. (Hence they also referred to as “The Slacker”.)

They often have case loads rather than friendships - and get involved in abusive relationships in an attempt to “save” the other person.  They have very low self-worth and feel a lot of guilt that they work very hard to overcome by being really “nice” (i.e. people pleasing, classically codependent) people.

— “Dysfunctional Family Roles”, Out Of The Storm.

Since then a sixth type is sometimes also considered:

The Manipulator (The Mastermind)

The Manipulator takes their experience of their hostile environment and uses it to their advantage. They capitalise on the family situation and play family members against each other. This individual will quickly become adept at recognising what the actual problem the parent suffers from. They’ll understand which one is the enabler, and which one is co-dependent.

Manipulators exercise this knowledge to control and influence family members. They’ll do it covertly, not directly. They never want to get caught. Gradually, they’ll learn what triggers the parents and their siblings and they will take shots at all of them…

Manipulators can turn into bullies, those who harass people and get a kick out of it. They are unable to form healthy relationships. If they are in one, they will be controlling with a partner who has low self-esteem.

They will only think of themselves and what they can get out of others. They feel that the world owes them for their lousy childhood and will go about getting it by any means.

— “6 Dysfunctional Family Roles People Take without Even Knowing”, Learning Mind.

It is not always clear-cut what role each member has been assigned, and the positions can change over time (normally as a result of the loss of one of the members). But people are inherently complex and multi-faceted. They have within themselves bits of each archetype. The unhealthy factor derives from the attempt to fit and perform one single one-dimensional role.

For example, John clearly acted up The Problematic Child publicly, but privately he also certainly had elements of The Dreamer; not only on the sense of being imaginative and introspective but also in his tendency for escapism and withdrawing from reality. 

Also, when the fear and pain affected him the most, he became desperate enough to play The Manipulator. He did this from early on, but with the help of Yoko (who I now think, as a result of her particularly difficult childhood, became a “primary” Mastermind herself) he became even more effective at it from 1968 onwards. 

JOHN: I did a job on this banker that we were using, and on a few other people, and on the Beatles.

Q: What?

JOHN: How do you describe the job? You know, you know, my job – I maneuver people. That’s what leaders do, and I sit and make situations which will be of benefit to me with other people, it’s as simple as that. I had to do a job to get Allen in Apple. I did a job, so did Yoko.

YOKO: You do it with instinct, you know.

JOHN: Oh. God, Yoko, don’t say that. Maneuvering is what it is, let’s not be coy about it. It is a deliberate and thought-out maneuver of how to get a situation the way we want it. That’s how life’s about, isn’t it, is it not?

— The “Lennon Remembers” interview, by Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone (8 December 1970).

In regards to the occupied archetypes, often one member has to fulfill more than one role. But because the structures are incredibly rigid, they can only perform one role at a time. This can cause even more internal stress as a result of not knowing which facet is being demanded of them at any given time.

Paul seems to have needed to balance being both The Golden Child and The Caretaker. This could explain his apparently parental role, alternatively characterized as masculine (Paul being a God/Father-Figure) or feminine (Paul being called the mother of the group). The gendered side of it relates more to society’s associations with these responsibilities (being “successful, brave and strong” = father’s job; taking care, “worry and fret, nurture and support, listen and console” = mother’s job), than I believe was ever consciously played by Paul himself. He just had a responsibility void to fill and he did it.

It is also crucial to understand that these dysfunctional dynamics are “transgenerational.” Meaning that “individuals reared in dysfunctional families tend to gravitate toward 'dysfunctional’ partners and create dysfunctional families of their own.” 

This leads me to believe that it’s very likely that the Beatles replicated a dysfunctional family when they got together because they each individually came from dysfunctional families of their own. Or rather, one of the reasons why the Beatles got together in the first place was because they each came from dysfunctional families of their own, and thus were attracted to individuals who shared these patterns.

I loved my association with John and Paul because I had something in me which I recognized in them—which they must have or could have recognized in me, which is why we ended up together. And it was just great knowing there’s somebody else in life who feels similar to yourself.

— George Harrison, interviewed by Alan Freeman for BBC Radio 1 (6 December 1974).

Maybe this is why John, Paul, and George were such a strong front-line on their own but needed Ringo, and not Pete Best, to finally complete the set.

It may also be another factor as to why John and Paul bonded so tightly, as Paul knew how to “handle” John and John wanted to be taken care of. (There is of course much more to the dynamic; this is just one of its possible facets, which was at risk of becoming draining and a source of tension when to fixed in this co-dependent state.) 

Again, it is hard to make an objective evaluation of the dysfunctionality of the Beatles’ biological families. There wasn’t so much awareness of the unhealthiness of some dynamics at the time, so many of the participants may even lack the words (or the will) to describe them. But the symptoms seem to be present. I believe that alone makes it worth looking for a potential cause.

Also, these attempts to create fixed dynamics for the stability of the family unit all seem to happen as a response to the inner inconstancy and instability of the forces governing the unit itself (normally the dysfunctional parental figure, but maybe can be extended to the life-circumstances themselves). For example, could severe financial instability be enough to create these patterns? 

Either way, we can find in the Beatles’ childhood sources of dysfunction easily enough. 

One that makes a common and expected appearance, in a liquor-filled Liddypool, was drinking, particularly in Ringo and John’s childhoods.

Ringo

Johnny Starkey would play a crucial role in the raising of his grandson, and by all accounts he was a full-on “wacker” (a much-used word for working-class Liverpool men and boys), being a drinker, laborer, gambler and brawler.

— On Ringo’s grandfather, John Starkey. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Elsie, Harry, relations, friends and workmates would drink and sing through the evening until closing time, and then, well bevvied, tumble into Elsie and Richy’s tiny terraced house where the party carried on—more singing, more drinking, more swearing, Johnny and Annie Starkey on banjo and mandolin, the steam rising ever higher into the night… The boy would always remember singing at home “not in front of a coal fire but in front of a bottle of gin and a large bottle of brown,” emphasizing the point that, as many children have experienced down the years, the bond of good-time music and booze was significant. Years later, he would admit, “My parents were alcoholics and I didn’t realize it.”

— On Ringo’s childhood. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Dingle people actually had much in common with cockneys. Both were poor and working-class, both were predominantly English/Protestant, both suffered terrible bombing at the hands of the Germans, and both liked a good drink and boozy sing-song. One big reason Harry fit right at home in Liverpool 8 was because he liked nothing better than to go to the pubs and clubs, get a few ales inside him and sing.

— On Ringo’s stepfather, Harry Arthur Graves. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Richy took the job because he still harbored hopes of joining the merchant navy… But the job also had another attraction: booze. Richy was now a confirmed drinker. Regular exposure to alcohol in and around the home was an influence, and it was what many boys did anyway, swear and smoke and drink at the first opportunity.

— On Ringo’s second job at the tramp steamer St. Tudno. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

John

He was an ale drinker, but once he started drinking he’d drink anything. If there was a bottle, he’d stay with it.

— On John’s father, Alf Lennon, as told by close friend Billy Hall. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Alf Lennon didn’t begin the new decade very well either. The Dominion Monarch docked at Tilbury before Christmas, after which he tomfooled around London with a few shipmates, waiting for it to sail again in mid-January. Alcohol was surely a fixture, opening time to closing with bottles between sessions…

— On John’s father, Alf Lennon, as told by close friend Billy Hall. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013). 

John’s time with Julia was also complicated by the presence of “Twitchy.” His relationship with Bobby Dykins was not all bad but neither was it particularly rosy. Pete Shotton isn’t the only person to recall him as an alcoholic…

— On John’s “step-father”, Bobby “Twitchy” Dykins. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

John, of course, had the added factors of possible mental illness in his mother, and the abandonment by his parental figures (Alf, Julia and Uncle George).

Paul

Paul also had the loss of his mother and all the upheaval it brought. I’ve talked before how I thought the suddenness of Mary’s death and Jim’s inability to be visibly strong enough in the face of it, made Paul feel like he could not rely on the people around him to always be there, and that he needed to protect himself and be independent. 

But now I wonder if there weren’t other possible sources of instability, that made him feel the need to take on responsibility even more strongly:

Though given such a strong foundation, Jim could not be spared from a further vice. For Jim McCartney was something of a gambling man, fond of betting on the horses. He once got badly into debt, though for reasons that at least had motives other than selfishness; his mother, Florence McCartney, who was capable of coupling a strongly matriarchal role with a fondness for humor of a most prurient nature, was badly in need of a holiday.

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986).

Jim McCartney also enjoyed a drink, but would never permit himself to become so intoxicated that he was no longer in control of his own actions. That he should always maintain his self-respect was one of the principles of his existence, and one which he later passed on to his sons.

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986).

The McCartneys had money worries. After the war, Jim’s job at the armaments factory ended and he returned to the cotton exchange, as a salesman for A. Hannay and company, but the war had changed everything; the cotton market was in chaos, and lie was lucky to bring home £6 a week. It meant that Mary also had to work and it was always a cause of slight embarrassment that she earned a higher wage than he.

— In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Yet the education that Jim McCartney offered his sons was not always conventional; they couldn’t help but notice his inability to pass a slot machine without putting a coin in it, or the way he would give quadruple measures of undiluted alcohol to guests. Later, when the boys were in their teens, he would show them how to get away with drinking underage in pubs, slipping them the cash to buy rounds of drinks.

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986). 

Mum was a working nurse. There wasn’t a lot of money around – and she was half the family pay packet. My reaction was: ‘How are we going to get by without her money?’ When I think back on it, I think, ‘Oh God, what? Did I really say that?’ It was a terrible logical thought which was preceded by the normal feelings of grief. It was very tough to take.

— Paul McCartney, in Ray Coleman’s McCartney: Yesterday & Today (1996).

The boys went to stay with Jim’s brother Joe and his wife Joan, while friends and relatives tried to calm their distraught father, whose first thought was to join his wife.

— In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997). 

A Hard Day’s Night had its London premiere on July 6, 1964, the day before Jim McCartney’s birthday… Then, as midnight chimed, Paul drew his father over to him. “Happy birthday, Dad,” he said, and produced a painting—perhaps the one mentioned to the Telegraph magazine—of a horse, which he handed to Jim.

“Thank you, son. Very nice,” muttered the somewhat confused father. (Later he was to tell Thomas Gaule about it. “I thought, ‘It’s very nice, but couldn’t he have done a bit better than that?’”). Then Paul revealed that this was a painting of the £1,050 racehorse, Drake’s Drum, that he had bought his father.

“You silly bugger,” was Jim’s joyous reply.

“My father likes a flutter [bet],” Paul said. “He’s one of the world’s greatest armchair punters.”

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986).

Again, it’s hard to definitely label a situation problematic, but the impact it has on a developing person is more relative to how the person experienced it than to the experience itself. But perhaps Jim’s gambling habits, the family’s financial insecurity, Mary’s death, Jim’s consequent suicidal depression and/or possible self-medication with alcohol, all lead to the creation of an unreliable enough parent that the son had to occupy such roles. 

Also, it would be remiss not to mention the use of bodily punishment during their upbringing, which made enough of an impression on the McCartney brother’s that Mike would mention it often and Paul would never speak of it; until the early 2000′s, when he remarked how his father hit him across the face at 16/17 and he finally stood up to him and dared Jim to do it again. (I am getting ready a post specifically on it, so I hope to explore this subject further there.)

George

George’s situation is a bit harder to tell. He seemed to be the one most aware and most averse to his title as The Quiet One. Maybe it’s because he felt it was ill-fitted. He wasn’t the quiet one after all, among his own family:

I found Harry reticent and quiet; Lou was loud, vivacious, not shy at all—there wouldn’t be silence in the room when she was there—and George was bubbly like his mum. They all bounced off each other and would do anything for anyone, and they all had a wonderful sense of humor, George especially. I threw a strop one day and threatened to walk to Budleigh Salterton. I stayed away a bit but all I really did was go to the loo and kill some time before coming back. After that, whenever George went to the loo he’d say, “I’m just off to Budleigh Salterton…”

— Jenny Brewers, a family friend. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

But maybe the silence was meant to be read as stoicism in his more public persona: 

George was cool. He dressed as an individual and often to shock, to goad reactions—usually admiration from his peers and dismay from adults. He could be quiet, and sometimes grumpy, but he was always honest and never intimidated or afraid, standing up for himself verbally and physically. “He was cocky,” Paul would say, admiringly. “He had a great sense of himself. He wasn’t cowed by anything.”

— In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Whatever it was, George fit right in with the rest of them and easily slipped into his role, even if he was also the first to overtly buck against it. He  clearly wanted to expand beyond these parts in a play they had created within the Beatles, these fixed dynamics for the greater good of the band, which he now felt stifled by:

Q: What was the conflict with Paul? I don’t understand.

GEORGE: It’s just a thing like, you know, he’d written all these songs for years and stuff, and Paul and I went to school together. I got the feeling that, you know, everybody changes and sometimes people don’t want other people to change, or even if you do change they won’t accept that you’ve changed. And they keep in their mind some other image of you, you know. Gandhi said, 'Create and preserve the image of your choice.’ And so different people have different images of their friends or people they see.

— George Harrison, interviewed by a New York City radio station (25 April 1970).

Perhaps the Beatles, the family unit, needed to collapse in order to free its members of the fixed dynamics they had built the band upon. Maybe it was time to grow and evolve beyond the images of the people they were when they met as teenagers. And because they were different, but their images of each other often didn’t match, there was tension.

Still, I don’t think this automatically means that it was impossible for them to ever be good friends again, work together again or even reform. Everything is possible if one just chooses so. 

It would certainly be different. It would not be the same. But that would be good.

-

[This post was born out of conversations with the wonderful @ljblueteak and is an exploration of the concept introduced by Michael Gerber in the follow-up discussion to the Hey Dullblog entry “John and Paul, Friends and Rivals”.]

[trash-bin-throwaway]

•Ghirahim has a Chat™️ with Impa•

(Shortly after setting up base camp in the desert to plan their attack on Gdorf at the castle)

Impa: You there. Come with me, I want to speak with you.

Ghirahim: Ah, yes, of course. I was wondering when one of you was finally going to come and see me.

Impa (while walking): So you knew I planned to have a word with you?

Ghira: Of course I did. I couldn’t predict wether I’d be confronted by you or the Goddess Sword, but I’m not some half-witted, guileless, flower-brained fool to think we’d be accepted wholeheartedly by everyone here, least of all you two, because I know exactly what you think of me. And I know you’re ever so leery of how I deduced this, and so I’ll be completely, utterly, and perhaps even excessively honest with you. I thought the same things of myself at first. “However could you bring yourself to do this? You would turn against the very master you were created to serve, protect and kill for? Is there no limit to the trust you will betray, the things you will turn your back on? If you will betray your master, your very life’s purpose... who can you ever be loyal to?” ...Does that sound like an apt summary of your concerns?

Impa: Hm... Quite apt. Forgive me for my suspicion, but I can’t help but be wary of you, if not for my own sake, then for Princess Zelda’s. I simply cannot have you here if you pose a threat to her, despite her wish to give you a chance. As of right now I simply can’t see how you’d have a strong enough motive to join us now of all times, when you seemed to be on the side with the advantage...

Ghirahim: Pah, no I wasn’t. The hero still lives and breathes, and he still holds blade of the Goddess. If we can glean anything from all these people from all these different eras meeting here and now, it’s that no matter how soul-crushingly and horrifically grim the hero’s chances seem to be... the Demon King will fail. It’s always been that way, and I’m rather confident it always will be.

Impa: You fail to comfort me. How is that supposed to convince me you don’t plan to win Link’s trust in order to stab him in the back, or kill him as he sleeps?

Ghirahim: Well, that specific point wasn’t exactly meant for comfort or convincing. I was simply pointing out a trend. One I of all people should know about, as... unfortunately... the first victim of said trend...

Impa: What do you mean?

Ghirahim: We all know that the first incarnation of the hero was he who fought the first Demon King. The Demon King who cursed them both to be reincarnated over and over and over again in an endless war? Am I mistaken?

Impa: No, that’s right. The hero who forged the master sword, using it to save the first reincarnation of the Goddess Hylia from Demise. Your master.

Ghirahim: Exactly. Dying in that conflict once was for more than enough for me... *brings his hand up to his chest, where the gem would be* Heh... nothing that lives should know what that feels like... but I, of course, am positively extraordinary.

Impa: I’m sorry, am I understanding you correctly? Are you trying to tell me that you remember everything that happened in that time?

Ghirahim: I am, and I do. Ganondorf is powerful, but he lacks the patience to rip his old servants from a random point in time as opposed to reviving them. This proved to be a horrible, and if I may be so optimistic, perhaps even fatal mistake on his part, as he seems to not know what he did to us then... and as such has no reason to believe we could tell he planned to do it over once again.

Impa: What he did to you? I’m unfamiliar with that side of the events... by all means, do tell.

Ghira: I wish I didn’t remember it as clearly as I do. But some things are just too... immense... to truly and completely rid yourself of... After centuries wandering the surface world aimlessly, with no purpose, no drive, and no way to bring back my master in sight, I finally found that girl, the first vessel of the Goddess’ soul. I painstakingly chased her around the entire wretched world, that absolute, infuriating nuisance of a boy at my heels and that ancient roadblock of a woman in my way at every step... ah. I suppose I should add that I mean no offence to you here and now... (Impa looks confused) ...Oh, whatever. I’ll explain it all later if I must, but for now I must finish telling you my tale... I worked day and night to complete my goals, to take the chance I’d been given and finally bring back my master, and I did it! As far as I was concerned, I had won. Demise had returned, and all that was between us and our conquest was a child with a sacred, glowing toy. Overjoyed, euphoric, and a heart full of rainbows hardly even begins to describe how I felt, as the victory that had long evaded us was finally within reach. My master was back. I finally had my true purpose returned to me. Now surely things could only get better from there, right? Well, unfortunately for me, it seems my fantasies were so, so far too grandiose, because what happened next was as far from better as anything could ever possibly be. He had not even stood in his true form for a single, measly minute before he turned to me, and with hardly a moment’s hesitation and an utter, desolate silence, struck me down, ripped the blade from my core and... shattered me... to absorb my power into his sword. He said nothing to me! Not a sound as he ended the life of his most loyal servant! He... he didn’t even thank me for freeing him from eons of imprisonment and giving him the ability to return to his true form! Nothing! Nothing at all! Not even the tiniest twinge of remorse or the slightest hint of regret in his face, and you simply must trust me when I tell you that if there was any such thing there in those empty pits I’d have been the one to see it. And I- I... I laughed in my final moments. I laughed because I had absolutely no precious idea what was going on. ‘Surely he wouldn’t harm me after all I’ve done for him! I trust my master to know what he’s doing. This must just be means to an end, and soon enough we will destroy these humans together and build a new world’, I told myself as the pain only grew worse. Then suddenly... nothing. There was nothing. Absolutely, utterly... nothing. And the next thing I really knew for complete certainty was when this era’s reincarnation resurrected me in the desert. So needless to say... I had a lot to think about. Perhaps that will clear some things up...

Impa: I... had no idea. It’s a shock to me that even you, his most devoted follower, would be counted among his victims... Near unbelievable...

Ghira: Well, it’s certainly nice we agree on something.

Impa: But there are things I’m still confused about. You were given another chance in being revived like that; why did you throw that chance away to join us? And where does Zant fit into all of this?

Ghira: Ah, I suppose I only told you my life’s story and not his... well, honestly a lot of it I don’t consider to be my story to tell, but I’ll disclose that the end of his story is rather similar to mine. The Demon King had the power to keep him alive but selfishly refused to. As for where he fits here, we’re two sides of the same coin. A coin Ganondorf tried to absentmindedly toss into a dark fountain for good luck, as he wished for a distraction to hold his enemies away from him long enough for him to become unstoppable and completely dominate the world. But in his absentmindedness, he failed to realize that the coin’s two heads had minds of their own... that the coin’s heads had believed they held value to him...! And that they would not simply fall into the endless, crushing shadows together without a word! Without him... they simply had each other to remain for! And... and... (sigh) honestly? In that fateful moment when we realized he planned to discard us once more, we only had each other to live for. And truly... we were okay with that. That feeling of being wanted? Being enough for someone... it was nice. I was unaccustomed to someone truly valuing me as an individual as opposed to a tool, and yet... he truly cares for me and I can hardly describe how happy that makes me. Not enough words exist, I’d be rambling for eternity. I may be quite... expressive... especially compared to my sacred counterpart, but for a Sword Spirit to truly feel something unrelated to their purpose is not an easy feat. Yet somehow, he does it easily. Hehe... perhaps serving Demise was not my true purpose after all? Ha ha ha! Well... I... I mustn’t get ahead of myself.

Impa: I... I feel as though I’m beginning to understand. Yet at the same time I feel like I’m even more lost. You are a strange being, Ghirahim. And I’m still not convinced that you aren’t attempting to lie about your turning against Ganondorf. Perhaps that is partly my own shortcoming, as I’ve devoted nearly every moment of my life to Her Highness, but-

Ghirahim: Argh, fine! I didn’t want to have to put this image in your head because I did not want the thought of it to disturb you, to haunt you as it does me, but you leave me no choice, as it seems you can’t see past your own nose or your pure and lovely little Goddess of a liege! Envision this for me, Impa, if you will. (Impa reluctantly nods and closes her eyes) Your dear Zelda is captured, and magically imprisoned in the midst of a desolate land that you are forced to wander alone with seemingly no way to free her. It takes nearly a lifetime of searching every horrid, purposeless, bleak, empty day, but you see an opportunity finally arise! You chase whatever lead you could find and you pay little mind to any that would stand in your way in favour of fervently chasing after the opportunity to finally have a purpose again, to finally bring back the one that made your life matter...! And it takes long, hard effort, but you succeed in the very face of your biggest foe. Your precious Zelda is returned to you in all her glory, looking just as immaculately untouched as the day you lost her. You are revelling in the joy, the triumph! The knowledge that with her beside you now, your battle is as good as won! She turns to you... and without a word, she snatches your sword away from you and stabs you in the chest with it, with not even a second’s hesitation. You see her staring at you unflinchingly as you die painfully. Then the next thing you see is her next incarnation, looking oh-so-similar... ready to have you serve her again as if nothing at all had ever happened. And eventually, you can see the same look in this new Zelda’s eyes as you did in the first as she killed you... and you know this is your last chance to save yourself.

Impa: (opens her eyes, disturbed) I... I see. I... understand now. Wether or not I trust the two of you entirely yet, that is something I still have yet to decide. But I can see now that you have more than enough reason to defect. Very well. Prove you’re no threat to us as you assist us in casting Ganondorf back to the abyss he emerged from.

Ghirahim: I will do so with extravagant pleasure. That I swear to you on my very soul.

Impa: See to it that this is a promise you do not break. (She turns to leave)

Ghirahim: Simply make sure I don’t have any overtly horrid, glaring reason to. That’s all it will take.

(Impa turns back just long enough to nod)