#tangentially. since that's why i stumbled across this in the first place

[queerpyracy]

i'll never be able to successfully replicate the particular bullshit of medieval/early modern western christianity in my fantasy religions because shit like this makes me just incandescently Furious

[qqueenofhades]

I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

[mountain-ash-and-rusted-iron]

this is an oc masterpost of all my haf-formed ocs languishing on pinterest with their messy aesthetics and unedited blurbs, in roughly chronological order of their creation, plus sorted by fandom. this post is only asoiaf, harry potter, hunger games, and riverdale, cos i have tooooooo many original characters otherwise and the post was getting incredibly long. (note that i love my ocs but these one’s are not polished or even the final versions of their characters, i just wanted to post them lol)

under a read more, if you’re on mobile start scrolling i guess, sorry,,,

Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire:

Laeya Targeryen: (child of Rhaella and Aerys Targaryen, born 280 AC - three years older than Danaerys) 

Fearful of her impending marriage, Laeya is eleven when she takes her younger sister and flees across the sea to Dorne, hiding herself and Dany with dyed hair and badly controlled magic. As Leia and Dani Sand they learn to live normally. At 15 Leia joins the Royal Guard and secures Dany work as a tailor's apprentice. When she is 17, an assassin tries to kill her in front of the Dornish court and everything changes...

- so laeya straight up has magic, which im considering an extension of the dragon thing dany has - she can control flame and for the disguise uses her ‘inner fire’ to make her eyes white-blue like super hot flames, cos the purple eyes are super distinctive. and then she’s discovered and suddenly politics are happening. honestly she’s entirely a way for me to remove the child marriage bits of the targaryen storyline (stop marrying off your twelve-year-old baby sister viserys u asshole) - in terms of meta/basics, laeya doesn’t have a fc cos most of my early ocs don’t, and bcs i picture her as emilia clarke with faked dark hair and blue eyes lol

and a quick aesthetic below:

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Kyrra Snow: (child of Robert Baratheon and Maery Snow, birthdate ???)

Kyrra Snow is the eldest natural-born child of Robert Baratheon, current King of Westeros, and daughter of Maery Snow, a Southron (but Northern-born) merchant woman. After her mother realises Kyrra was growing up a little too much like her father in looks and needed to leave the far South before she caught the wrong sort of attention, Kyrra was sent off to travel with her aunt and cousins. She is 17 and heading further north, to Winter Town, when Jon Arryn dies.

- kyrra’s another child of everyone’s favourite asshole king, and she’s got a lot of people after her head, but she just wants to travel and continue her work as a simple peddler. (riiip poor girl) honestly she’s not that developed but yolo -

aes:

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Brynn Stark: (child of Catelyn and Eddard Stark, Robb’s twin sister)  

Brynn believes in honour and family, and she is loyal to Winterfell and the North above all else. Likes - archery, embroidery and weaving. Betrothed to [some young Northern lord] to keep the bonds between the Norther families strong.

-i basically made brynn as a contrast to sansa’s pro-southnness and excessive femininity and arya’s anger and desire for swords (relatable mood tho lmao). so brynn is here to mediate, extoll the virtues of both needlework and weapons, make a decent marriage to someone she likes, if not loves, and hold down the fort in the North while shit gets increasingly messier in the South. and a possible faceclaim is Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey - 

aes:

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Rosienne Lannister: (child of Joanna and Tywin Lannister, born 273 AC)

Rose is looked at by the realm with dismissal, a consolation prize for her father, a spare daughter only useful for matchmaking, but at least able-bodied and pretty, unlike her brother. After a long betrothal, Rose is married to Willas Tyrell at the age of eighteen, cementing her role as the next Lady of High Garden...

- Rosie/Rose is a bonus Lannister, bcs why not. likes cyvasse and the harp, soft and kind and maternal, powerful in her own way. originally she was from a minor divergence where joanna survives tyrion’s birth and goes on to have another kid, but not sure if i’ll keep that aspect, so for now she’s tyrion’s twin -

and her aes (yes that quote is cropped, no i don’t care rn):

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honourable mentions to my other got underdeveloped got/asoiaf ocs who need more effort before i post properly about them:

Tamlen Storm, a rookery apprentice (working for the Maester of House Tully, managing the ravens) who may or may not be a reincarnated si-oc trying to save westeros, 

and an unnamed northern huntress who stumbled into the plot somehow and wants her normal life back (entirely inspired by Keira Knightley as Gwyn in Princess of Thieves, when she’s doing archery stuff and looking v butch).

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Harry Potter:

Taurus ‘Ara’ Lestrange:  (child of Bellatrix and Roldolphous Lestrange, born 1978) 

Raised by the Goblins after a legal mix-up following her parents' imprisonment in Azkaban, Taurus is good with a sword and aiming to be the next Minister of Magic. She attends Hogwarts with the other magical kids her age, under the fake identity Ara Burke, unknown cousin of a minor half-blood family. When the Potter brat’s drama starts destroying her change at an education just as her fourth year, her OWL prep year, begins, Ara intervenes.

- im tangentially aware that as bellatrix’s kid she’s almost occupying the place of whats-her-name from the cursed child, but considering that i know nothing about the cursed child and don’t care about it anyway, i have elected to ignore this. her actual parent might turn out to be some smitten half-blood from a minor branch of the Greengrass family, or it might actually be Rodolphous, who knows. slightly inspired by the fic ‘Harry Crow’ (by robst on ff.net) where harry is raised by the goblins -

messy aes:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Valerian Potter: (child of Lily and James Potter, born 1980)

After the Potter twins’ parents are murdered by Voldemort, they’re dumped on the doorstep of Number 4, Privet Drive. Dealing with two traumatised magical orphans, Petunia and Vernon Dursley turn to violence and neglect to stay in control, acting far more harshly than expected. With the arrival of two Hogwarts letters, life gets complicated incredibly quickly. (Self-sufficient and scarred from abuse, Val and Harry are immediately Sorted into Slytherin). 

- val’s fic is basically an angst fest, okay,,, -

aes:

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and shout-outs to: holly addison potter, a half-baked reincarnation si-oc (i love that concept a lot, can u tell) and my fav girl thea dursley, who already has her own fic and so isn’t getting a proper spot in this post 

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The Hunger Games:

Asher: (District Two, age 18) 

[rip no blurb for asher]

-asher is a career from two, who wins the 70th games. mostly im focusing on her recovery and how the games function in two, with training volunteers and mentoring and collecting sponsors, plus eventually the rebellion. lots of the D2 headcanon i have is inspired by @/lorata but i defintely made a distinct effort to have my own stuff, cos where’s the fun in plagiarism -

aes for Asher’s Games:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Rowan Everdeen: (District Twelve, age 19)

Rowan will do anything to protect her family. This extends to going to Head Peacekeeper Cray on a cold winters night, charging the most she can get for her virginity.  It extends to Reaping Day, when she steps out in front of the crowd and says “I volunteer as tribute” in the steadiest voice she can muster.  It extends to clawing her way out of the Arena, bloody and exhausted, with blades in her hands and violence kept tucked behind her teeth. It extends further, to a simple ‘Yes, President Snow’ when he coldly, carefully implies her family might meet with an accident if she doesn’t play the good little Victor (and fuck the people who pay the Capitol for her company). It extends to joining the Rebellion, to looking President Coin directly in the eye and agreeing to be a Mockingjay, a symbol for the people to rally around.

- another everdeen kiddo! as the big sister, rowan volunteers for prim, and goes through the Games - she’s a healer and a hunter, and a decent enough actor that she can manage interviews and a camera presence, unlike katniss. rowan also pairs well with a minor au i have, where the reapings are spaced out over a week and official training is a longer, giving the capitol a nice, long buildup to get excited and place bets, etc., and giving the poor, underfed tributes from the outer districts a better chance, which makes for more interesting television and better Games -

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Adrasteia Crane: (The Capitol, age 28) Unlike her big brother, Adrasteia doesn’t want to be a Gamemaker. Instead, she wants to create clothes, artwork, to enrapture the Capitol. She wants to be a Games stylist. After years of design school, of working her way up the ranks, first a PA’s assistant, and then fetching and carrying for Twelve’s prep team, and then eventually on a prep team for the dull tributes from Six, Adrasteia Crane finally has what she wants - the position of stylist for District Three’s male tribute in 74th Hunger Games. 

- tbh adrasteia is only seneca crane’s sister because i couldn’t think of a suitable last name for her lmao. i think i’d actually prefer her to be unattached to any major canon players. however, his death is a good motivation for her to join the rebellion, so we’ll see. she’s got a bit of the capitol fashion thing going too, with soft pink hair and diamond-effect skin on her face and shoulders -

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also bonus hunger games content: another oc, Sarsaparilla Verran, from District Eleven, fifteen and alone when she goes into the Games. An orphan, her siblings lost to the Community Home system years ago, her relatives dead or uncaring. So, Rilla is a wee lonely bab tbh. she did not want this, unlike most of my other hg ocs, and she’s not excited for weeks of murder. she just wants her family back, but since that isn’t possible, she’ll build a new family instead. and uuhhhhh,  spoiler alert, she dies before she can have this ://///

and my hunger games aus - a canon divergence where katniss joins the careers instead of peeta, her desire to go home to her family outweighing her reactive hate for the concept of training/volunteering to kill other teens, and a fem!Haymitch au where she’s a little wiser to the dark side of the capitol before she commits acts of rebellion (she still rebels anyway tho, just smarter).

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Riverdale:

Cat Cooper: (middle child of Alice and Hal Cooper) Cat Cooper (17) is the black sheep of the Cooper family. Her piercings, brightly dyed hair and connections to the Southside Serpents make her the odd one out among her sisters and constantly at odds with Alice Cooper. Cat’s life is occupied with her Serpent friends, work at a local coffee shop, and training - martial arts, supplemented with cross country, gymnastics and swimming. Until her older sister is shipped off to places unknown and her baby sister starts getting caught up in murder investigation with the absent Serpent heir... 

- haven’t decided between Catelyn or Catherine for Cat’s full name lmao. she used to be Kit, actually, but I changed it cos i prefer Kit to solely be my divergent oc (kit serafim). Cat is an ADHD disaster who loves her sisters and her friends and wants to get the hell out of Riverdale on a sports scholarship (she does either boxing or karate mainly, need to figure that bit out) -

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Georgie Andrews: (child of Mary and Fred Andrews)

Georgie likes soft drinks, cheerleading, and hanging out with the Blossom twins and Polly Cooper, their closest friends and a welcome distraction from their own problems. After Polly and Jason vanish, Georgie’s support system is almost gone, and they has to deal with everything they’ve been bottling up, just in time for Fred Andrews to get shot.

- also just angst ngl.  so georgie’s gender is basically ???, they enjoy cheerleading and not much else. they spend half their time dealing with depression, by trying to ignore stressful/hard topics and focus on the good side of everything. this isn’t a great long-term coping mechanism and has the fun side effect of pissing of the people around him when she seems unable to be serious or empathetic to someone else's pain (bcs she’s too busy deflecting for the sake of her own fragile mental health), so it gets fun when fred is shot and archie starts getting in too deep with the lodges -

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Sera Thornstone: (parents ???) Southside Serpent. Going to the Riverdale Community College and running errands for FP Jones. And secretly meeting up with her Ghoulie lover down by the Sweetwater where nobody goes. 

- everything about sera is vague and undecided lmao. but she has a ghoulie gf/bf/nbf? and they’re hiding that they were down by the river on the 4th of july, cos a serpent is an immediate suspect. going to community college to work on getting general credits before saving up for fancy school for law or journalism. the aes isn’t entirely accurate cos sera’s built from the remains of another serpent oc who i scrapped (she does have a baseball bat tho) -

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and honourable mentions to jen johnson and octavia blossom-murphy, my other riverdale ocs who actually have content, plus an in-development unnamed oc who gets adopted from the soqm by the Muggs family and growsup with Ethel. and my riverdale role reversal au, which i will never write but have some nice aesthetics for under the tag wip: bughead role reversal au.

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all my mini-aesthetics here are unsourced images/from pinterest. any similarities to other people or characters, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

alrighty that’s it. now i have to tag this behemoth argh

[emjenenla]

The Only Thing You Can Change is Your Name [A Grisha Trilogy Fic]

Modern AU/a Heavyverse fic. Through the dark and gritty streets of Ketterdam, among the worst of the worst one thing is whispered; if you need someone dead and you’ve got the money, go to the Darkling and they’ll take care of it for you. Appearances/mentions of Six of Crows characters.

Warnings: violence

Title: The Only Thing You Can Change is Your Name

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: Modern AU/a Heavyverse fic. Through the dark and gritty streets of Ketterdam, among the worst of the worst one thing is whispered; if you need someone dead and you’ve got the money, go to the Darkling and they’ll take care of it for you. Appearances/mentions of Six of Crows characters.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: Modern AU, same universe as I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy? but can be read separately; set a couple months before that fic (perhaps between 4 and 6 months?), the Darkling is in his mid-thirties, Alina, Nikolai and Co. are in their mid-twenties

Dominant Characters: The Darkling, appearances by Nikolai Lantsov, Alina Starkov, Jan Van Eck, Pekka Rollins, Tolya Yul-Bataar, Nikolai’s family, unnamed appearances by Mal Oretsev, Tamar Kir-Bataar, Genya Safin, Zoya Nazyalensky, mentions of Baghra, Bo Yul-Bayur, Kuwei Yul-Bo

Pairings: a TINY bit of one-sided Darklina because the Darkling wouldn’t be himself without his creepy, unhealthy obsession with Alina

Warnings: violence

Notes:

-The Darkling/Aleksander Morozova uses he/his pronouns, but the Darkling as a semi-mythical figure in the lore of Ketterdam is genderless. Therefore, if this story was in Nikolai or Alina's POV the Darkling would be referred to using they/theirs pronouns.

-The City Council in this AU is the equivalent of the Merchant Council in SoC.

-Also, there's a frustrating number of unnamed characters in this trilogy (The Queen of Ravka is literally just referred to as the Queen).

Disclaimer: I don’t own The Grisha Trilogy or Six of Crows or the song “Kira” from the Death Note Musical (the song I got the title from).

--

Some indeterminable amount of time ago, a man climbs the rickety stairs to an attic apartment. He keeps a hand on his gun, and looks left and right in fear. At the top of the stairs he knocks on the door. Crumbles of peeling paint fall away with the mild force of his hand on the door.

After a moment the door opens though no one stands on the other side. The man stands in the doorway for a moment, wondering what to do, then a voice calls from within, “Enter.” He takes a deep breath, gathers his courage and steps inside.

The apartment is utterly dark, lit only by a few small lights that do nothing to give any impression of the room. The only thing that can be seen is the vague outline of a figure sitting in the center of the room. The man makes his way across the floor, stumbling over a couple objects on the way.

“Sit,” the figure says.

He does.

“What do you request?” the figure asks. The voice is too low to be female and too high to be male.

The man hands over a stack of hundred dollar bills, and names his request. He gives a name, a description, and details. The figure takes it all with a nod and tells him to leave, and not to worry about anything.

He flees.

If the room had been a bit lighter, or perhaps just if he would have been a bit more observant he might have noticed that he and the figure were not the only people in the room. He would have noticed the small, dark-haired, gray-eyed boy, hunched in a corner, watching them both with wide, learning eyes.

But he didn’t notice, just like everyone else who had ever come into that little apartment.

~~~~

Many Years Later

The Darkling hunched on the roof of the mansion, staring down into the ornate courtyard. His booted feet were braced securely enough that he felt comfortable letting go of the tasteless gargoyle and blowing into his hands in an attempt to warm them. Ketterdam was in the grips of a coldsnap and his thin black gloves were meant to prevent him from leaving fingerprints, not keep his hands warm.

He was a little frustrated. It was supposed to get substantially warmer later in the week and he would have waited until then if his employer hadn’t been chomping at the bit.

A car pulled through the mansion’s front gates and coasted to a stop before the door. The Darkling pulled out a pair binoculars and watched as his targets got out. Alexander Lantsov, his wife and their sons, Vasily and Nikolai. By the time the night was over all four of them would be dead.

He watched while the family vanished inside then dropped the binoculars and climbed away from the edge of the building. Now he needed to wait for the right moment to strike.

Normally he would have hung out on the roof until the family went to bed, but it was really too cold for that tonight. He made his way to the doorway that allowed people to access the roof. There was no security, and the door wasn’t even locked. The Darkling snorted, people this stupid almost deserved to be assassinated. It wasn’t that difficult to slap on some climbing spikes and scale the side of the building; despite her old age Baghra had been doing it right up to her death.

The Darkling let himself into the building and hunched on the stairs, enjoying the warmth. He tried not to think about Baghra because whenever he did he was always sucked down into the bottomless pit of his own loneliness. It was a little terrifying because he hadn’t thought he would miss her. For years he had hated her as his jailer, as the woman who kept him trapped in their home in the name of safety. He’d expected to rejoice that she was gone, but that didn’t change the fact that she was the only person who he’d ever interacted with more than tangentially.

He pressed his gloved fingertips against his eyelids and tried to imagine that he was pressing away those thoughts. Those were the petty worries of Aleksander Morozova, not the Darkling. There was a reason he’d begun thinking of himself as the Darkling after Baghra’s death. It served as a way to mentally separate himself from the pathetic child who had wandered their home wishing that something would happen to take him far away.

At least that was supposed to work in theory.

He leaned his shoulder against the wall and forced himself to begin running through the particulars of the plan. He had a job to do, he did not have time to sit and mope.

As they often did, his thoughts took on the format of a conversation. He imagined he was laying out the plan for someone else and they were listening intently. Figuring out the best way to explain what he was planning to do kept him occupied until the house quieted around him and it was time to move.

He made sure his voluminous black robes and featureless hood and face coverings were all in their correct places. In his Darkling robes he was identity-less and genderless, a wraith of the night. He was visibly taller than Baghra had been, but she had been very careful and theatrical when interacting with everyone as the Darkling. He doubted there was anyone in the city who would notice that he was not the same Darkling who had begun their reign of terror sixty years ago.

The halls of the mansion were dark but there was just enough light to see the reflections from the gold details that covered basically everything. It was almost sickening. The Darkling had known that Ravka Oil made a lot of money, but he had no idea its CEO was quite this rich. Of course there was always the possibility that all this was bought with credit cards and that Alexander Lantsov, the King of Ravka Oil, didn’t have the money for this, but there was no way to tell. As a rule, the Darkling only cared out his target’s finances when that would affect the job, but that could be what the Apparat wanted the Lantsovs dead for. The Darkling would probably never know and that didn’t really bother him.

He went to the master bedroom first. Even though it was not that late both Alexander Lantsov and his wife were stone-cold asleep, overly confident in their high-tech security systems. The Darkling killed the wife first just to prove that the husband won’t notice.

When that was done, the Darkling left the master bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. There was no noise, no mess. If the rest of the job went this smoothly the bodies might not even be discovered until morning.

The next stop was the bedroom of the older son, Vasily. Since this target was substantially younger, the Darkling was prepared to face a conscious target, but Vasily Lantsov was passed out drunk and was also no trouble. The Darkling snorted as he let himself out of the bedroom, this was shaping up to be the easiest five hundred thousand dollars he’d ever made.

The last target was Nikolai Lantsov, the youngest of the family who was rumored to not actually be Alexander Lantsov’s son. From what the Darkling had heard, there was some definite truth to that rumor, but the Apparat was still willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for his head, so the Darkling considered himself aptly paid enough not to care.

Nikolai Lantsov lived in an attic bedroom that was remarkably close to the stairwell the Darkling had been squatting in for the last few hours. Still, even though it was an attic only in name. The stairway was just as expensive as the rest of the house, though it was a bit more understated, something the Darkling’s eyes were thankful for.

He wasn’t sure how it happened. Perhaps the people upstairs had reached a lull in their conversation. Perhaps the wind blew just hard enough to cover up their voices. Perhaps he had made that fatal mistake that Baghra had always warned him about and allowed his success to go to his head. No matter what the answer was, he climbed the last stair and found himself face to face with a very awake Nikolai Lantsov and a handful of others.

For a period of time that was only a couple seconds at most, they all stared at each other. Aside from Nikolai Lantsov there were six others, two men, four women. The Darkling was massively outnumbered.

For the first time he cursed his adherence to Baghra’s “never take a gun on a job” rule. She claimed that if you carried a gun it was too easy to panic and shoot someone you could have taken out by other, quieter means. This was probably the one time that proved that wasn’t always true. If the Darkling had a gun he could have shot his target and fled before the others had a chance to do anything. As it was he didn’t have any range weapons but a couple knives that weren’t strictly throwing knives that he could still throw if he needed to.

He threw a couple of the knives in Nikolai Lantsov’s direction. The bigger of the two men threw himself into Nikolai, knocking him to the floor and taking the knife in this own shoulder. “Tolya!” one of the girls yelled.

The Darkling knew that the job was off. Without the element of surprise, even the elusive and powerful Darkling couldn’t take these odds. He turned to run down the stairs but a voice stopped him. “You! Freeze or I’ll shoot!”

It was always a good policy to avoid being shot, so he stopped and looked back. One of the women had somehow come up with a handgun and she was holding it in a way that proved that she definitely knew how to fire it.  She had a thin, striking face and dark, searching eyes. Her hair was probably platinum blonde, but it was so pale it looked white.

She was beautiful.

It took him a second it realize what he was thinking and reprimand himself. Hadn’t Baghra trained him to avoid being distracted?

“Put your weapons down!” the girl said.

“No, thanks,” the Darkling said in the mid-range, androgynous voice that Baghra had spent many, many years drilling him on until she deemed it perfect. “I’ll be going now if it’s all the same to you.” Then he dove for the stairs.

He didn’t bother going down them, he simply jumped, a trick he’d practiced on the the many staircases at the apartment as a bored teen. He heard the gun go off behind him and pain seared his left side. He was more surprised than anything else; he hadn’t expected someone that delicate to actually pull the trigger regardless of her obvious proficiency with firearms.

He hit the floor at the bottom of the staircase and rolled before coming back up running. He made for the staircase to the roof. They’d expect him to go down and attempt to get out of the building; they wouldn’t think to look up.

The roof was no warmer than it had been hours before. The Darkling hunched down behind a particularly large gargoyle to wait. Nikolai Lantsov and his friends would be out on the lawn within minutes. If he tried to scale the building now he would be seen and captured. Fortunately, it would probably be hours before anyone, the police included thought to check the roof, so he could wait here for the right moment to make his escape.

He took a moment to see to his side wound. The wound was bleeding but still rather shallow. He was lucky the girl had been shooting a handgun, her aim would probably be lethal with a rifle.

He ripped a section out of his robe, pointedly ignoring the part of his brain that was chattering out the exact reprimands Baghra would have used had she still been alive. He knew he’d messed up, but he was going to get out of it and everything out be okay.

He wrapped the strip of fabric tightly around his chest and settled back against the gargoyle to wait.

~~~~

It was dawn by the time the Darkling made it back to the apartment. He showered to thaw out, stitched up and bandaged his wound, then he contacted the Apparat to come with the rest of the money.

When the Apparat showed up, the top floor of the apartment was clothed in darkness and the Darkling was back in his robes. He’d cleaned some of the blood off in the sink but it would take much more time than he had to wash it completely and fix the ripped part.

The Apparat paid the second half of the five hundred thousand dollars without asking for details about the job so the Darkling didn’t bother mentioning that Nikolai Lantsov was still alive. He’d gotten his money and the Apparat knew better than to cross him so it would be fine.

As the Apparat left, the Darkling bid the other man goodbye using his real name, just to throw him off and make him even less likely to attempt revenge when he realized Nikolai Lantsov was still alive. Once was gone, the Darkling locked the door and opened the curtains before heading downstairs to pick a bedroom.

Most people who came to hire the Darkling assumed that the room they saw was the only one that he used, but in reality the Darkling owned the whole building. There was enough space to house many people, but he lived alone. The building was completely furnished but modestly so even though there was absolutely no reason for that either.

The Darkling was one of the richest people on earth. The fees required to hire the Darkling were so high that Baghra had been set for life before he had become a teenager. He had enough money that he and a couple others could live lavishly without ever thinking about working again.

He wasn’t exactly sure why he kept taking jobs when he didn’t need to, though he suspected it was because he had no idea what he would do with himself if he didn’t.

He pointedly did not think about these things as he picked a room with a large, soft king-sized bed, and collapsed onto it. He curled up under the blankets and slept.

~~~~

The Darkling woke up after the sun had set and stumbled groggily to the nearest kitchen to find something to eat. His side was throbbing so he took a couple painkillers and a pill from his antibiotic stash because the last thing he needed was a raging infection.

He dug through the fridge looking for something that he actually wanted to eat. He knew that he had leftover pizza in one of his multiple fridges but this apparently wasn’t the one. He considered trying to find that pizza, but he didn’t feel like wandering around checking all the refrigerators. Instead he warmed up some soup that probably hadn’t been sitting for too long.

He had just finished eating when the proximity alarms for the staircase leading to the upstairs door started going off. Someone was coming to have an audience with the Darkling.

He threw the empty bowl into the sink and bolted for the interior stairs. He made it to the room just as there was a knock at the door. He threw the still-dirty Darkling robes on, pulled the mask on and yanked the blinds closed. Then he turned on the tiny lights and settled down in the specific place Baghra had marked out all those years before. When he was sure he was ready he pressed the hidden button to open the door.

Two men entered the room. Neither was in particularly good shape and both carried themselves with the pompous poise of extremely rich and extremely arrogant men. Granted, basically everyone who came to the Darkling with jobs was extremely rich and extremely arrogant, but these two seems somehow more so than usual.

The Darkling watched without speaking as they fumbled and stumbled their way across the dark room and sat down before him. One set a stack of hundred dollar bills on the floor between them; the consultation fee.

The Darkling picked up the bills and checked them by tilting the stack towards one of the tiny blue lights. Baghra had spent literally decades fiddling with the arrangement of the lights until they only benefited her and left her customers floundering in the dark. When she’d died the Darkling had seen no need to do anything but tweak the angles to accommodate his larger form.

Two carefully placed lights gave him a view of both customer’s faces, and the Darkling studied them as he slid the money into his robes and waited for them to speak.

“I am Jakob Hertzoon,” one man said. “This is my business partner, we are here to-”

“No you’re not,” the Darkling said in the Darkling voice.

“Excuse me?” the man asked.

“You’re not Jakob Hertzoon,” the Darkling said. “You’re Pekka Rollins. And you,” he gestured at the other man, “you’re Jan Van Eck. Just because no one knows who I am does not mean that I am not knowledgeable about the inhabitants of Ketterdam.”

“I-” Pekka Rollins looked nervous now, it was obvious that he hadn’t expected the Darkling to recognize the false name. “I…”

“So we lied about our names,” Jan Van Eck said leaning forward slightly. “We still have a job for you.”

“I’m listening,” The Darkling said steepling his fingers together.

Jan Van Eck pulled a folder out his briefcase and handed it over. The Darkling took it but didn’t open it because that would reveal that he had enough light to read it. “That is a file on a man named Bo Yul-Bayur. He used to be a practicing doctor, but recently he’s been doing medical research for Ketterdam Hospital. He has some research we want. We tried to buy it from him but he went into hiding with his son. We want to hire you to find Yul-Bayur, retrieve his research and...remove him and his son from the picture.”

This would not be the first job the Darkling had taken that would require him to track down his target, but it was never a good idea to seem too interested. “Finding Yul-Bayur might take me a considerable amount of time,” he said injecting as much disinterest as possible into his voice. “You’d have to make it worth my time.”

“Is ten million dollars worth your time?” Van Eck asked.

It felt like the world actually stopped spinning, only years of Baghra’s lessons kept him from reacting. He had never been offered a job with that much payment, and Baghra hadn’t either. When the Darkling had been in his early teens, Baghra had assassinated five members of the City Council at a million dollars a head, and that was the biggest job either of them had either done. Ten million was like a dream.

“Do you actually have that much money?” he asked when he’d controlled his emotions enough to speak in his androgynous voice without emotion. “You do realize that I charge half up front which means that you’ll need to give me five million before I even start on this job.”

Van Eck reached into his briefcase and set several more stacks of hundred dollar bills on the floor. “That’s a million dollars right there,” he said quietly. “If you take the job, I’ll give you another million every two weeks until we reach ten million. It will take us five months to get there and I imagine that you’ll be done long before then if you’re as good as everyone says you are. When you finish, I’ll give you the rest of the money all at once.”

The Darkling picked up one of the stacks of bills and checked them, trying not to look as excited as he actually was.

“Do we have a deal?” Van Eck pressed in a strange tone that suggested that he might have realized just how interested the Darkling was. Pekka Rollins looked on, staring at the money like he wanted nothing better than to steal it.

The Darkling knew he shouldn’t agree right away, that he should tell them he’d get back to them and take time to do some research. The reason that Baghra had gotten that five million dollar job was because a group of people on the City Council had pooled their money to pay her. Van Eck was claiming to have ten million to pay an assassin with no help. Something was fishy, but the Darkling found he didn’t particularly care.

That realization was a little startling. It seemed that he didn’t just take jobs because he didn’t know what else to do; it seemed there was an element of greed to this too. It didn’t matter how much money he had; he liked to make more.

“You have a deal, Mr. Van Eck,” The Darkling said. “Now, what kind of research do you want me to retrieve?”

--

Hope you enjoyed. I’m not going to promise anything more in AU because I don’t want to tie myself to anything, but I am thinking about other stories.

Please fav, follow and review!

Emjen

[caseybanning]

that which is empty

(Major late-game-spoilers for Ambition: Nemesis almost leading up to the current content boundary before the finale.)

When James died, the earth cracked open under their feet.

Bit by bit, the rest of their life followed: many sleepless nights wracked with grief, long stretches of time doing not much at all, despair entwining with panic, endless days watching the sun cast harsh beams through the window of their bedroom. Whispering to God. Screaming at Him. The night they left Vincent behind. Everything they thought they had known about the world now crumbling into a crevasse that led them to London.

Snippets, rolling through their head now: Jane turning to focus her one remaining eye on Casey's face, the sound of Jeremiah's chain on the walls, the bubbling purple water fountains of the Iron Republic, the drownie and her friends on the docks, feeling the captain's blood make the ax slip in their hands--all of this, "a specific chase, leading you here--"

Nearly two years had passed since they stumbled into the truth. The walls of their study still had notes and clippings, the fresh Echo note, the strange Correspondence symbol, all the payments... drop box locations. None of it touched since that February night.

Until now, of course.

The road still stretches ahead.

--

"That which is empty, whose purpose is to be filled." Casey states. "Except, Thaddeus, that does not make a scrap of sense to me."

Surrounding them are the walls of a scholar's study: books upon books, heaps of papers, weights holding everything down. Fireproof crockery. Scorch marks on the desk. Thaddeus leans forward in his chair, splaying his hands out to either side.

"In English we refer to a noun as a person, a place, or a thing," He explains. "The correspondence tends to break these down into their own separate grammatical categories that create it's own structure. A person is different from a place is different from a thing. So... we can start with that. That, as in that which is empty."

"Caves," Casey says. "One's plate after they've eaten." They frown deeply.

"Caves are anything but empty." Thaddeus remarks, his eyes twinkling in the low light.

Casey sighs and rubs their face. "It's getting late," They said, standing up from their chair. "But you're certain that's as exact of a translation as this sign could mean?"

"Unless you'd like to cast my entire body of work in to doubt, I'm confident that I have it. It was a fun challenge," He stands up to see them out. "How would you have come across such a rare sign in the first place?"

Casey forces a smile, and there's a beat before they answer. "An acquaintance gave it to me. Figured solving it's mystery would keep me from getting too bored."

--

The walls of their study are bare once more, but not for long. All their pages, maps, articles, stories, journals: all pointing to the Masters of the Bazaar, now all tucked into a crate under their desk. Casey rips their newest list out of their journal and tacks it up in the centre of the wall.

The first day of this endeavor is spent gathering information. Any old articles and journals are scoured for mentions of the masters. Hours spent in bookshops, cafes, eavesdropping. Stacks of notes begin to bloom in lines over their study wall, linking this and that, times and places... most come to complete stops.

The process begins again: newspapers, desperate flirting, a gift of wine to their aunt. Contemptuous glares from old revolutionary contacts. Names drop from the list: Chimes, Wines, Apples.

Days start early and end quite late: Iron. Fires.

Silence. A clock somewhere in the house ticking by: Stones.

A solid block of three days of no research at all when the Special Constables start to seem more commonplace around their lodgings: Spices.

Pages? Perhaps in journals, but the books available in shop are full before they're in your hands.

Veils? More adept at covering up. It wouldn't come as a surprise if Mr. Veils had some tangentially related event linking to this, but likely not the primary suspect.

Eaten?

For being a resident of the Neath for as many years as they have now, Casey still has not heard much to be said on the matter of Eaten. Friends know, surely, but sometimes passing mentions of the Name have a catastrophic effect for those most afflicted in their compulsion to find it. Ultimately, a compulsion Casey has no desire to feed in to. The barest whispers provide the most context: desires of revenge, of being wronged, empty plates, empty wells, but what could it be filled with? Hate? Despair? Why would that be it's only purpose?

And on Hearts, well. Ask anybody on the street and they'll bark back that the heart is never empty.

Casey stands and grimaces, a bone-crackling noise in their knees as they do so. Sitting hunched over a desk for hours is no better to their health than pushing their body too hard. As they turn to leave the study, they catch a glimpse of their own reflection in a mirror on the wall. Their hair is over-long and needing a trim again, and exhaustion has settled under their eyes. The glimpse of their own face staring back catches them for a moment, just one--just long enough--

An inkling. There was something... once. Somewhere. Years ago. Their feet carry them over to the dozens of journals filled out over the years, their spines carefully written with the dates and times for each. When was it?! They began pulling journals out in stacks, thumbing through the pages going back in time, scanning through their hurried scrawls and more carefully composed letters. Further back--1891? 1890? Memories are vague. They spot a journal entry with a Bible chapter written on top--sounds about right. Hurried page turns, finally until they spot the word they're looking for: mirror.

There was no chapter verse written for this one, but the entry is there. Dec 5th, 1890. 

“There was one particular mirror that drew me in...”

House of Mirrors. Is a mirror ever empty if it is always reflecting back? ... if it is always filled?