#the lost fable

[thelostfable]

the lost fable & the past lasting forever

rwby v6ch3 concept art // @/ryebreadgf on tumblr // sylvia plath // what the dragon said: a love story - catherynne m. valente // reuse the cels - car seat headrest // @/peteski on instagram // toward certain divorce - marvin bell // rwby: fairy tales of remant

[st-whalefall]

Listen, I love the lost fable, it’s great, it’s so much fun, but it’s really misleading (that’s the point) and a lot of audience members take it at face value.

Two things stick out to me as hints that point to Jinn’s vision being not completely, totally, really the absolute truth:

1. In volume 8, the staff of creation/Ambrosias is revealed to be one of those “give you exactly what you ask for” macguffins, after Oscar tries to go back through the portal and it’s shown the portal is one way, a la “A one-way ticket to Vacuo.”

2. In volume 9, we’re told by the tree that the brothers Grimm were “born” simultaneously. The god of light is Not the elder brother. In the lost fable Jinn says, “It was here the elder brother dwelled beside his fountain,“ & “…all while careful to make no mention of [the god of darkness]’s elder,” and we now know this to be false.

Bring these two pieces together (and other things but were focusing on point 1 & 2 for brevity) and we’re meant to find Jinn’s vision suspect.

What did Ruby ask Jinn again?

“What is Ozpin hiding from us?”

So, what Jinn showed them was not The Truth. But what Ozpin thinks, what Ozma believes, to be true.

And the characters took that vision at face value, but we the audience are meant to question it.

[bobauthorman]

Opposites Attract

Oz and Salem's dynamic is interesting to me because both were crafted to represent a specific quality, but end up personifying the exact opposite quality.

Salem is supposed to be stillness. Her immortality is supposed to render her into a fixed point in time. She does not age, and all damage done to her is undone. She represents the previous era of mankind, wielding sorcery that can never be achieved again.

And yet, she is the one that has changed the most. She goes from helpless damsel, the Girl in the Tower, to cunning mastermind, the Wicked Witch of the West. By throwing herself into the pools of Grimm, her physical appearance changes heavily. And she not only causes the end of the old world by encouraging the people to rebel against the gods, but she keeps invoking the destruction of the show's status quo through her agents. By her own will, she becomes anarchy.

And Oz was clearly designed to be change. His immortality puts him in different bodies every time one dies. He ages. His mind alters as he and his host/victim join souls, and vice-versa. As (Self-installed) leader of the Huntsmen, he is supposed to represent the current era.

But however, Oz, by his own admission, never learns his lesson, instead using his troublesome reincarnation as a means of running away from his problems. And while their minds adjust, he and his body's souls soon reach an equilibrium where neither are indistinguishable from the other. And while he is supposed to focus on the growth of Huntsmen and humanity, he relies mostly on the ancient magic and gifts provided by the Two Brothers, having no real faith in the current mankind. He remains in stasis.

[moviemandyy]

when your comfort rwby episodes consist of: the god's condemning a woman to eternal suffering for the fact she wanted to be reunited with her love once again, an entire dead town killed by the grimm that live under the village who evoke apathy and thus "death", and the one where the protagonist commits "not wanting to be me" anymore :))

[eviltomb]

5 long long years

[nightmare-foundation]

Yknow, I've been doing some thinking about the idea of Jinn being unreliable

Some ppl seem to like to use the idea to be like- "what if Oz was worse than what was shown??" N I've just been doing some thinking n like

What if the opposite is true?? What if Salem is worse than what was shown, and the lost Fable only showed the 'best' or most palatable parts of the truth, or just what was relevant.

This isn't to say I think Salem was abusive, but if Jinn is unreliable and the lost Fable wasn't showing us the whole story, I think this is the most likely option.

The reason is because... Oz doesn't exactly have a track record of making himself look like the victim. Oz constantly, CONSTANTLY makes himself out to be worse than he actually is. He agrees with Qrow that he's the worst thing in Qrows life, he agrees with Hazel that he deserves torture, he blames himself for the fall of Beacon and Pyrrhas death, and he blames himself for Gretchen's death (iirc that is). He's more likely to make himself the bad guy in Salems story over being the victim.

So, if Jinn is unreliable (and that's a BIG if), it's very possible she just didn't show any of the bad things and opened up Oz to possibly seem worse, bc that's what Oz would do, what he thinks. Maybe it's even the 'best' version of what really happened.

I think it fits and is more in line with Oz's character. Either Jinn is unreliable and Salem is worse than what we think, or the lost Fable is 100% true and there was nothing left out. Both are likely routes.

[swirlmup]

It’s le piece of resistance, the episode of Fixing RWBY I contributed the most art to! Let’s take a look, shall we?

Believe be when I was obsessively looking at reference pictures of the castle both from canon and from RWBY: Fairytales, and hating the design of it more and more the more I studied it. xD It’s just not super great lmao, so I did some tweaking to the castle’s design throughout my scene, mostly adjusting some of the tower roofs and the layout. In this scene I’m particularly pleased with the statue of Salem’s mother now inset in the roof above Salem’s room. I had to extrapolate her mother’s design from the silhouette we saw in RWBY: Fairytales, and kept it relatively simple in the interest of honoring the silhouette. I think my favorite detail I added to her was giving her a fox-skin scarf. I also downloaded a star brush on CSP to fill in that sky, very fun to paint in.

Another thing I hated from canon and canon-adjacent material was how empty Salem’s room was. You look at canon or Fairytales and it’s like, “My God, does anybody actually even live here? How dull! It looks like an Ikea display!” So that was another one of my goals for this scene, that I wanted to design Salem’s room with a lot more Stuff(tm). Just stuff everywhere, as many necessities as I could think of for living, and clutter because she’s a teenage girl and she probably isn’t super tidy. A bookbrush I downloaded saved me a lot of trouble as well, for filling in even more Stuff everywhere. xD

You may notice that there’s a lot of stuffed animals and depictions of animals in her room, and that’s because I headcanon that Salem likes animals a lot, especially fanciful animals that have wings. xD I also felt the need to give Salem other hobbies besides just reading and writing, since even the biggest reader would get bored of that reading. Hence the painting easal, the embroidery ring, and the violin and deck of cards and dancing ribbon. Bitch(affectionate, Salem is my daughter) needed more stuff to do in a day. xD

This is an interesting drawing, because it’s actually right when I was shifting my style a bit! I’d discovered another artist whose art I admired, and so I was training myself to incorporate elements from their art that I liked into my own repertoire. It’s kind of hit and miss sometimes in how well I pull it off, but I like how this one turned out. :) Salem’s pajamas were designed at the last second as I was working the scene lol. I like how plaintive her expression is here.

This was a fun and quick drawing to do, and the first peek we get at the redesign we made for Salem! Explicitly, once we learned that Salem was canonically 16 when she was rescued, according to RWBY: Fairytales, we felt the need to redesign her so that she accurately reflected her age at that time. More on this further down when I share her reference sheet!

One of those more awkward moments on trying to work in a style I wasn’t super comfortable yet. xD More extrapolation on her father’s design, although it’s much easier to work with him since we have more visual reference on how he looked.

Another view of Salem in her room. The perspective was very difficult to do here! I wanted it to be like the camera was set right on Salem’s writing desk, and make it obvious that’s where the camera was and that we could see her writing implements in the foreground. But because the writing desk I gave her has an angled surface, it greatly complicated things in terns of trying to maintain a dead-on perspective and still keeping her writing stuff in frame. I kinda fudged it a little for the sake of visual clarity, after all was said and done. xD Her pen was fun to just doodle on lol.

Another fairly quick drawing. The longest part was lining up the text on the edges of the paper so that it displayed the way it ought to. Curious about what Salem wrote in her letters exactly?

text reads: Brave hero who finds this note, Please come and rescue me immediately! I am imprisoned by my father with no hope of escape. He refuses to let me go and I fear I shall never know the feel of grass beneath my feet, or the embrace of a husband. Please, I beg, rescue me from him. I am in the tallest tower of Dawnfall Castle, in Duskerfield Valley of the Kingdom of Scatheudo. Should you succeed, the Kingdom and all its lands shall be yours, and I your happy wife, to stand by your side as we explore all the realm we will rule together. —Graciously awaiting you, Princess Salem.

You just can’t help but feel sorry for how desperate she must’ve been, to offer her hand to the first guy who can reach her. And think of how lucky she was that it was Ozma who reached her, and not any of the rough-looking folk we saw in the RWBY: Fairytale episode. I made up the names of the location of the castle on the spot pretty much, and looked at proto-germanic for the name of the Kingdom. Would you believe me that I took inspiration for the structure of the letter from that bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? xD

More castle tweaking and redesign, put an actual wall around the whole place so that it was, ya know, defensible? xD perspective remains the bane of my existence, but I did a convincing-enough job with this. Happy Salem’s so cute, I don’t get to draw her smiling and showing off her dimples enough. :3

RED. I did also redesign the soldiers of the king’s castle. I actually forgot that we were given a glimpse of the soldiers in RWBY: Fairytales, and so went through the process of researching what armor style to use and how to dress them and this and that. And then I double-checked the episode and saw we actually had a glimpse of them. Oops. xD But I liked my design more than super-heavy duty one shown in canon, which I felt clashed with the castle’s overall aesthetic and the role of archers I wanted to portray them with. And so, I used the design I came up with for them anyways wwwww.

No longer happy Salem. :c Throughout each of the frames I drew for my scene, I kept playing with how the colors were done. It’s mostly filters to save on time, and lots of experimentation was done each time to achieve the exact looks I wanted.

I love when I can work on a drawing and profoundly feel the emotions the picture is meant to have. The perspective is fucked but once again i didn’t care very much lol. My main focus was showing Salem’s magic mirror now shattered, as she’s given up on ever leaving her tower. ;n;

Highlighting Ozma as the other main player in the story by him being the only other person given a full palette and not just colored with a contrasting solid color with the bg. :0 I did not give a flying fuck about attempting to replicate the actual design on Ozma’s staff, so we get a bunch of swirlies(and sometimes not even those LMAO).

This was almost a completely different image! The script talks about Ozma facing the King and his forces, and at first I just sort of copied what we were shown in RWBY: Fairytales. However, that never quite sat right with me. We’re told that Ozma used his cunning to defeat the king, but then the Fairytale just kind of showed him generically fighting the soldiers, albeit with magic instead of a sword? That never seemed very cunning to me though, and I couldn’t tell what the difference was supposed to be that made Ozma more qualified to rescue Salem than the others.

And so, I came up with the idea that Ozma really does use trickery and cunning to circumvent the castle’s main defenses and approach the king directly. It’s a little complex here and there was a lot of information to try and get across, but basically what’s happened is that Ozma has disguised himself as the dead queen in order to gain access to the castle and to the throne room without having to dismantle all the defenses. The king, of course, is able to see through the disguise with his own magic, but was allowing to hear out the charlatan if only for the novelty of their trick and the chance to see his wife again. I also felt it would be cool if Ozma used the image of the dead queen to chew out the king for his actions, abusing their daughter the way he has, and no doubt planning even worse atrocities in the future towards her in order to keep her locked up for the rest of her natural life.

A poignant moment  that deserved a frame by itself, and a minimal-effort floor lmao.

The big meeting! This was a moment I was very excited to draw. In small contrast to canon, I felt that the way Salem was portrayed in the show was that she was just a little too ready for Ozma to burst in all swashbuckling. So here I made a point to portray Salem as having been in the middle of something, because obviously why would she expect a visitor to bust in, let alone a complete stranger? She was occupying herself the way she always does, with her hobbies, in this case playing the violin.

From here on out the scene also uses more and more vibrant palettes for the environment, because ooo salem’s world is expanding and becoming more colorful thanks to ozma ooooo symbolism oooooo

Also a fun moment to draw. Salem’s delight contrasted with Ozma’s shock at seeing how young Salem really is. Plus I love dramatic height differences in characters, they’re so fun lol. You think Salem hurt her head at all against Ozma’s armor, rushing him like that? :,)

One of those trickier scenes to do, it’s always hard to figure out a character’s height relative to another when they’re kneeling. I think I accidentally drew Ozma a little small here, breadth-wise if not height-wise, but oh well. This is also the last view we get of Salem’s bedroom, fare thee well!

Here, it was all about the expressions for me. I wanted to emphasize the kindness in Ozma’s eyes as he pities this child who was prepared to offer him literally everything just for helping her escape a bad situation, and the lovey-dovey look in Salem’s eyes as she’s completely smitten for her rescuer. As a side note, I consistently struggled to draw Ozma. From his armor to his face and hair, he was just very challenging to me. xD

Some commenters from the video thought it was kinda funny that Ozma was covering Salem’s eyes as he led her out of the castle. I agree. xD It’s one of the smaller, practical things that I think make for very nice touches in storytelling. Such as Ozma realizing “it would probably be really bad if she saw her dad’s corpse on the floor, or the corpses of any of the other people who worked in the castle, I better cover her eyes and lead her out by hand.”

Some might note this is very different from canon, where it states that Ozma and Salem fought their way back out of the castle together. But tbh that didn’t really make a lot of sense, especially after the RWBY: Fairytales episode came out? If Salem could fight her way out the whole time, why did she need Ozma to rescue her? If Ozma had to defeat the king and his soldiers first to get to her at all, then who the hell were they fighting on the way out? The straggling survivors, the noncombatant servants? So we cut that detail, in the interest of maintaining logical continuity. Salem will have her chance to be badass and uber-powerful later in life, it doesn’t need to happen while she’s still a teen.

There’s also something I quite like about the imagery of a knight using his cape to help shield his maiden from something, very noble and chivalrous.

Had to shrink this image a bit for tumblr! The last frame of my scene, and the most colorful. Ozma’s horse here is a peacock leopard appaloosa! I was looking for horses so that I wouldn’t just give him a generic-looking one, and decided that appaloosas were perfect for a mage like Ozma. Spent a little more time detailing the forest here as well, I’m pleased with how it came out. It would’ve been nice to include a frame of Salem looking back and seeing for the very first time that there was a statue of her mother positioned over her room like a guardian angel, but alas, it would’ve been superfluous. :,) and i was tired by this point wwww

Now let it be said we like Salem’s canon design, quite a lot actually, but we like it for adult Salem, not a Salem who’s meant to be 16. xD We never expected we would need to do this, but @themixedcoffee​ whipped this up in the discord and me and Butterfly pretty much fell in love with it, it’s so cute and perfect, and so we just pretty much went and wholesale made it her official teen design. I like how she looks kind of bookish and unkempt, sort of like the awkward teen you might expect Salem to be, quiet and raised with good manners, but raring to let loose and run wild.

Of course, there were other redesigns which made their appearances this episode. O.O We reaallly weren’t jazzed by the technicolor mannequins that canon gave us for the designs of the Gods. xD We felt they could use more style, more flair, some pants, and just generally be more interesting to look at. For Light, we leaned into those eastern influences from his dragon, and went very bishounen for him. We also thought that Light/life as a concept was more nuanced than just creation, and that there were elements of a need to fight and defend in order to protect life, hence giving him the armor. We figure that Light specifically makes himself approachable for humans, which is why he’s so human-like(despite being 8 feet tall lol). Though i also liked adding the touch that when he’s angry the facade starts to drop and his features become more inhuman. O.O Another thing I quite like about his design here is adding a point of sharp contrast by giving him a purple gem. The darkness within light type of thing, to kind of bring the brothers more towards a yin/yang dynamic. Speaking of...

For Dark, our perspective was that he wouldn’t care about trying to impress humans or be approachable for them. He was the less-acknowledged yet still very important half of his brother, for without destruction there can be no creation, and volcanoes distribute fertile soil vital for plant growth after their eruptions.

As a slight compensatory act and a nod towards the more general prevalence of darkness as opposed to light, he gets to be twice as big as his brother. We were looking at all sorts of references and inspirations for him, to explicitly make as inhuman and macabre looking as possible. The cracks on his body also came from volcanic allusions, like his skin is cracking rocks. The floating, expressionless mask in place of a head came from a claymation movie about Mark Twain and a very creepy scene in it featuring The Actual Devil who also uses a mask instead of having a head. His forearms having gaps in them came from the 80s Bakshi movie Wizard, wherein the villain in that had a similar thing going on with his arms. Not really human, not really alive, and not really there either. I think my favorite part is probably his eyes being the sole spot of bright color in his design, light shining in the darkness.

And finally Maria!! I was very excited to work on her design and for people to finally see it in our rewrite. Some may think that it’s surprising that we redid Maria’s young design as well as her old design, but if you ask me, her young design isn’t very good either. xD I wanted her to have more colors, to have contrasting colors. To make the blue really pop and to make her look like the Grimm Reaper she was supposed to be. Hence the use of black and gray, with blue and orange as highlights to capture the eye. Tweaked the design of her mask as well to be more elaborate and a little more sugar-skull like. C’mon RWBY, you’re a 3d animated show, you can go for the fancy patterns and textures way more than a 2d artist like me can. xD We also made a point of making old Maria a more normal size instead of being a midget. I get that aging can make you shorter and Maria canonically as terrible posture, but it’s not that extreme. xD In both cases, I paid special attention to suggestions that were made by the members of our team who were actually mexican/hispanic/latino, which is actually quite a lot and they were very helpful to me. xD Maria’s goggles were also simplified just a bit.

Wow that was a lot of art to cover! This post almost didn’t survive it, had several failed uploads happen. xD But we’re not done yet! Even more art and redesigns are waiting in the future, which I’ll be just excited to talk about! So stay tuned, and thanks for watching/reading! ;D Btw, if you want a better view of the images in this post, here’s the twitter thread I made featuring all of them, so check that out as well! https://twitter.com/Erica_D_C/status/1624121234010013721

[but-a-humble-goon]

Salem was the only one around to hear the Gods describe the planet as "a remnant of what it once was," so does that mean she's the one who gave the world it's name? Or is it coincidence?

[lightanddarklove]

She didn’t start evil. She was wronged before being rescued, lost the love of her life, then asked the gods to bring him back but her inability to take no for an answer twice from the gods is what twisted her into a selfish hurtful person.

Just like people harmed can still be good, refuse to take the violence the world has done to them and turn it onto the innocent, people can also let the hurt fester and then use it in terrible ways to people who had nothing to do with your conflict. That is what happened to her. AUs where Salem had a good life and never turned evil still seem in character.

Her choices broke the world. And it is up to the main cast to find a way to mend it.

For those of you who have watched RWBY what are your opinions regarding Salem and her actions? I am asking for science.

[m0rninglatte]

[Spoiler warning for Arcane S2]

[st-whalefall]

Every glimpse we get at Salem’s real emotions (vs the performance she puts on) got me running up the walls

[angstandhappiness]

Interesting

At this point I’m really hoping that the whole trend of the team’s undiscussed Oz hate in volume 6 was the writers’ way of drawing out QRWBYJNR’s realization of just what they’re up against. It’s not a great writing choice tbh, but we can’t go back in time and have them rewrite vol 6, so this is what’d make most sense going forward. It would’ve been way better from a narrative standpoint to have an assortment of reactions to The Lost Fable from the team (like the FNDM did) when it happened, but that’s not what we got. I hope volume 7 is where they realize the state of things and come to understand and empathize with (not necessarily agree with) Ozpin’s methods/situation. 

I don’t know if I can go another volume of anger at Oz from every character, especially without stated logical reasons or… any?? Discussion??? Like, maybe Ruby’ll say something defending Oz even a little, and Yang’ll get mad at her for it, but Ruby keeps wondering. Or Qrow has time to think it through and see how he is making a difference, and it’s not all for nothing. Maybe the team will start to mistrust him for it at first, too. Or even Blake, since she gets the whole secret-keeping thing, having herself hidden being a faunus and former member of the White Fang. Or honestly Oscar’s likely to be the first to sympathize with Oz and understand why he made the choices he made. He’s a like-minded soul, after all. I maintain that having the Apathy Grimm episode immediately after the whole Jinn fallout was a big missed opportunity to see the complex emotional reactions from the team. They had so much to try to comprehend and take in and process, but instead we got a chapter of numbness.

I do have a little hope because of vol 6′s final scene where Oscar tells the others how Oz guided him to land the ship, and Yang responded “Does that mean he’s been watching us this whole time?!” (which… yes? He shares Oscar’s consciousness, of course he has to see what’s going on). But Oscar replied “I dunno, but… at least it means he was looking out for us.” The first semi-positive thing said about Ozpin since Jinn’s story back in Chapter 3. Plus the animation choices in that scene in Chapter 4 while everyone’s mad at Oz frames him in a sympathetic light. That gives me hope that the writers intend to redeem him in the eyes of the other characters. It seems like they just wanted to delay the team’s forgiveness to make it more dramatic for longer. Fingers crossed it comes sooner rather than later.

[bobauthorman]

Why do people think Pyrrha had the Relic of Choice?

This is the Pyrrha's tiara.

And this is the Relic of Choice, the Crown.

Do they look alike?

I get that people want Pyrrha to still have a role in the series post-mortem, but I think "character example of why Oz's method is flawed" is much better than "Unwitting guardian of a divine artifact". And besides that, Amber, the previous Fall Maiden, was in stasis, they couldn't even open the vault!

[book--brackets]

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler (2005)

This is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.

Weaveworld by Clive Barker (1987)

The Fugue, a magical land inhabited by descendants of supernatural beings who once shared the earth with humans. The Fugue has been woven into a carpet for protection against those who would destroy it; the death of its guardian occasions a battle between good and particularly repulsive evil forces for control of the Fugue.

Fractured Fables by Alix E. Harrow (2021-2022)

It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one.

Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

Midnighters by Scott Westerfeld (2004-2006)

A few nights after Jessica Day arrives in Bixby, Oklahoma, she wakes up at midnight to find the entire world frozen. For one secret hour each night, the town belongs to the dark creatures that haunt the shadows. And only a small group of people--Jessica included--is free to move about then. They are The Midnighters.

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (2019)

There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster—and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also uncover the truth, and the answer to the question—How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe (1980-1987)

It is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession - showing mercy toward his victim - and follows his subsequent journey out of his home city of Nessus.

The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer (2004)

In the future, in a place called Satelite City, fourteen-year-old Cosmo Hill enters the world, unwanted by his parents. He's sent to the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys, Freight class. At Clarissa Frayne, the boys are put to work by the state, testing highly dangerous products. At the end of most days, they are covered with burns, bruises, and sores. Cosmo realizes that if he doesn't escape, he will die at this so-called orphanage. When the moment finally comes, Cosmo seizes his chance and breaks out with the help of the Supernaturalists, a motley crew of kids who all have the same special ability as Cosmo-they can see supernatural Parasites, creatures that feed on the life force of humans. The Supernaturalists patrol the city at night, hunting the Parasites in hopes of saving what's left of humanity in Satellite City. Or so they think. The Supernaturalist soon find themselves caught in a web far more complicated than they'd imagined, when they discover a horrifying secret that will force them to question everything they believe in.

Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George (2006-2009)

Poor Creel. She can't believe her aunt wants to sacrifice her to the local dragon. It's a ploy to lure a heroic knight so that he will fight the dragon, marry Creel out of chivalrous obligation, and lift the entire family out of poverty. Creel isn't worried. After all, nobody has seen a dragon in centuries.

But when the beast actually appears, Creel not only bargains with him for her life, she also ends up with a rare bit of treasure from his hoard, not gold or jewels, but a pair of simple blue slippers-or so she thinks. It's not until later that Creel learns a shocking truth: She possesses not just any pair of shoes, but ones that could be used to save her kingdom, which is on the verge of war, or destroy it.

Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry (2017)

There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth. This is how it happened. How I went from being Peter Pan's first--and favorite--lost boy to his greatest enemy. 

Peter brought me to his island because there were no rules and no grownups to make us mind. He brought boys from the Other Place to join in the fun, but Peter's idea of fun is sharper than a pirate's sword. Because it's never been all fun and games on the island. Our neighbors are pirates and monsters. Our toys are knife and stick and rock--the kinds of playthings that bite. 

Peter promised we would all be young and happy forever. Peter lies.

The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock (1965-1977)

It is the color of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair that flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody... He is Elric, Emperor of Melnibone, cursed with a keen and cynical intelligence, schooled in the art of sorcery and the hero of Michael Moorcock's remarkable epic of conflict and adventure at the dawn of human history. 

[faustiandevil]

There is no greater personal Hell of your own making then getting obsessed with some dead actor and not being able to watch their entire filmography.

[fablexdreams]

I feel as though we as a community don't talk about Reaver's fear of death enough. This man was so afraid of getting old and dying that he went out seeking, (or at the very least stumbled upon and chose to interact with), an ancient demon cult that could grant him the immortality he so desperately wished for. He had no way of knowing the real consequence of his actions, says so himself in his diary that he had no intentions of Oakvale paying the price for his choice, but they still did. And he has to live with that.

He chooses to live with that regret, and continues to choose suffering from nightmares every night, constantly looking over his shoulder, being scared of every shadow and non-lit room, and playing an annual game of chess with a court of shadows where he repeats the same choice that got him into this mess in the first place over and over again instead of just accepting that he's human and can die like everyone else. Why is he so damn afraid of dying? Obviously, death is a common fear, but to the extent that it is for Reaver? No, there's more there. Did he lose someone as a kid? A parent? A grandparent? A sibling? Did he have to sit by someone's bedside, watching as they slowly slipped away? Did he have to watch someone he cared for bleed out and take their last breaths, choosing to carry it all with him for the rest of his too-long life? Or did he just simply want to live for as long as possible, scared of missing out on a future he already gave away, and uneasy over the fact that death is so unknown and permanent? And ofc the mess with Oakvale only served to solidify that fear in both his heart and mind after the fact, as if it wasn't already bad enough. What a vicious cycle.

There is truly so much we don't know about Reaver, especially in regards to his younger days in Oakvale, and it's something I wish was explored more. Though I do think keeping it all lock and key is very on brand for Reaver, and I appreciate the mystery around it. Getting info outta that man must have been like pulling teeth, but more painful...and probably way deadlier. Lmfao.