#the narrator may be somewhat unreliable

[vixstarria]

Mark me as yours

This takes place immediately after and is interlinked with 'Missionary with the lights off' but from Astarion's rather than Tav's POV - check it out if you haven't already, the fics complement each other.

Soft sassy Astarion, F!Tav, Gale, minor appearances by other origin characters, Astarion POV

Fluff, humour, banter, pining, non-explicit sexual references

A day in camp in the life of Astarion. Features brooding, sewing, doing laundry, being dramatic, engaging in improper use of archmage of Waterdeep, reading erotica, and more!

Approx. 2,000 words

AO3

You frowned at the stuffed bear you held in your hands, weighing up your desire to showcase your skills against the absurdity of the task at hand.  

The whole thing was coming apart and needed to be washed and restuffed if you were to do this properly. What was inside, anyway? Fur..? You supposed you could go hunt something furry. Or maybe save yourself the time and just give Scratch a quick partial shave, he wouldn’t mind – the mutt lying at your feet was stupid enough to like you. To prefer you over anyone else, in fact.  

You reached down to give him a fond, absentminded pet.  

And then there was the matter of not letting it burn to a crisp the moment Karlach touched it. 

“Is there a flame ward enchantment on this..? Can you reapply it?” you asked Gale, who was nearby at his usual spot by the fire, concocting something edible for the rest of your group. 

“There is and I sure can,” he replied.  

Great. You had gotten yourself into a group project with the wizard to rescue a teddy bear.  

“Don’t tell me this is what Wyll was so concerned about earlier...” Tav had finally made it out of your tent and sat down next to you, looking somewhat less disheveled than how you’d left her.  

“The bag of holding finally tore. Naturally I was the only one competent enough to fix it.” 

You gestured with your thumb towards a towering pile of assorted crap that Wyll and Lae’zel were still sifting through: Lae’zel inspecting and setting aside any weapons and armour she deemed worth keeping, and Wyll sorting through an array of scrolls and potions no one was ever going to use, or would forget were in your possession if the need for them ever did arise.  

“Darling, this is your fault, you know,” you added. “Must you pick up everything?” 

“Karlach made me do it. Also I don’t know what you’re talking about, I am prudence and sensibility personified,” she said. 

“You’re uh... You’re also bleeding,” Gale said, pointing at her neck. 

A trail of blood had started running down from the puncture wounds, which must have reopened.  

Shit. 

Before you could reason yourself out of it, your instincts kicked in and you pressed your mouth against her neck, licking the blood off. By the gods, she actually leaned into you as you did that, not away. You glimpsed a guilty, sheepish smile she threw at Gale, as you pulled away.  

“Idiot... Here, apply pressure, I’ll get the amulet,” you said. 

“I’m the idiot?! You’re the one who ran off to resolve a sewing emergency, like a good little seamstress, before sorting me out!” 

You strode over to your tent, in part to grab the amulet of Silvanus, in part to discreetly tuck away the erection that had immediately started developing as soon as you tasted her blood.  

Hells, am I 239 or 15? you thought, annoyed with yourself.  

“An amulet? I was wondering why you’d stopped visiting me in the mornings...” you heard from Shadowheart. 

“We have a system,” Tav replied.  

“Clearly,” laughed Shadowheart. 

A scene from the night sprung up in your mind as you went about your day: 

She’d fallen asleep on your shoulder, half lying on you, her nose buried in your neck.  

It was... nice. Really nice. And you didn’t think this bizarre scenario would ever happen again.  

And yet, pleasant as it was, she still felt too far. You needed to feel her closer. Perhaps you were being greedy, but after all these years, why should you get anything less than exactly what you wanted? 

Carefully, very carefully lest she stir awake and leave, you rolled over onto your side, holding her against you.

She was still asleep. Good...   

You cautiously slipped lower and lower until your head was at her chest, delicately wrapping your arms around her torso. 

Then she stirred.  

Shit. 

Without waking, she sighed, drawing you into a tight embrace, clutching you against her chest, complete with throwing a leg over your hips to pull you even closer. 

You finally relaxed, your arms wrapped around her waist. 

Perfect... 

She felt so warm... She smelled of comfort. 

You could indulge in this for the night. You would wake up before she did anyway.  

You drifted away, lulled by the beating of her heart. 

You didn’t have any nightmares that night.  

“Is your boyfriend coming?” you heard Karlach somewhere in the distance.  

You cringed at the juvenile term. Still, you were curious how she would answer.  

“He’s on laundry duty,” she responded. “Just us gals today.” 

“So your idea of doing washing is to pawn everything off to me,” said Gale. 

“Vampires and running water, remember,” you said. “Also you don’t look like you’re exerting an awfully large amount of effort yourself... Although I must admit, this is ingenious.” A little flattery wouldn’t hurt.

Gale sat at a riverbank at a deeper section of the river. Some sheets and clothing were being tossed and spun in a small bubbling whirlpool within the water, together with foaming slivers of soap. 

“Surely few archmages possess such finesse and creativity?” you continued. 

Gale sighed and motioned for you to throw your bundle in as well, expanding the whirlpool.  

“Just toss your shirt in too, it's splattered with blood,” Gale added wearily.  

Her scent lingered on it. The last thing you wanted was to wash it off.

You pulled the shirt over your head and hurled it into the whirlpool.  

“Not Tav’s creative nailwork, I presume..?” Gale asked with a wince, looking at your back.  

“Nope” was all you said, as you pulled a book out from your pocket, making yourself comfortable on the bank. To his credit, the wizard did not probe further. 

‘Mark me as yours’ 

Those words had been echoing in your mind over and over all day.  

It couldn’t have meant anything.  

A little expression of some vampire fetishism finally poking through – you shouldn’t have expected any different from her, she did offer you her blood consistently, not even asking for anything in return.  

Still, you’d felt like something inside you might burst from your desire and thrill when you heard those words.   

And then everything that followed after... 

You had actually lost yourself for a short while. Not dissociated and detached. Lost yourself. In bliss. In the scent of her skin, in the sounds of her need for you, in the sensation of her blood merging with yours and flowing through your veins. 

And now she was walking around somewhere, with telltale bitemarks on her neck for all the world to see. Scandalous... 

No, it couldn’t have meant anything.  

‘Mark me as yours’ 

Still... What a pleasant little fantasy... 

‘Yours’ 

“You’ve been smiling at that page for ten minutes straight now,” Gale’s voice snapped you out of your musings.  

“It’s my favourite page,” you retorted. 

“What’s it about?” he asked snidely after a short pause.  

“I have no idea,” you confessed, begrudgingly, snapping the book shut. If the wizard knew what was best for him, he would abstain from any further comments.  

“She’s quite fond of you,” Gale said sombrely after another pause.  

“Is this about to turn into one of those ‘You break her heart – I'll break your face’ talks?” you scoffed, rolling your eyes. 

“Oh gods no,” Gale laughed. "No, I would go straight to incineration... You just strike me as the type that needs to have the obvious spelled out for them.” 

“I am not entering this type of discourse with someone who’s presently washing my spend off my bed sheets,” you said, laying back and shutting your eyes, to bask in the sun. No answer followed. 

Not even a minute had passed when a shadow fell over you.  

Odd, you thought. There hadn’t been a single cloud in the sky. 

You opened your eyes to see a giant water bubble hovering a few meters above you. Was that... a bedsheet floating in the middle..? 

Worth it, you thought just as the undulating bubble spilt and crashed over you.  

You coughed and spat, trying to untangle yourself from the sheet, as the unleashed torrent nearly swept you off the bank. And yet, above all else, you found yourself curious. 

The water had no longer been running as part of the river, true, but given its sheer volume and the velocity at which it hit you, it should have hurt more than merely your pride.  

You made it to the edge of the bank, and cautiously dipped a finger in.

Nothing...

You proceeded to submerge your hand, then your entire forearm, to your elbow. 

Nothing.  

Of all things... Why this? Why not your reflection? Why not the blood craving? Oh well. Beggars, choosers... 

You were laughing.  

“This tadpole,” you turned and shouted at Gale, unabashedly stripping yourself of your pants, as Gale turned away, muttering something about going blind, “is the best thing that’s happened to me in centuries!” 

The best? Maybe second best? It had some tight competition, but you supposed nothing would have been possible without it, so it reigned supreme. 

You leaped into the river, diving and letting the gentle current carry you downstream for a while.  

You knew what you would be doing later that evening with her.  

“What have you got there?”  

She slid onto your lap like a cat that refused to take ‘no’ for an answer as it sought attention. You had been idling away your time by your tent, with some pulp you had picked up earlier. The rest of the group had been drinking and roasting something at the campfire.  

“Trash. Disappointingly boring trash, this time,” you answered. 

“No pulsating flesh tunnels in this one?” 

“Alas... There were not one but two mentions of ‘velvet-wrapped steel’ however, and plenty of ‘sword-sheathing’.” 

“To the hilt?” 

“Is there any other way?” 

“Wouldn’t want to sheathe it only partially, I suppose...” she mused. “Come join us. We found some half-decent wine. And you don’t have to be alone all the time, you know.” 

“Spare me, I’ve had enough of Gale’s lectures and Wyll’s tales for the day. And besides, ugh, all those chewing noises!” You made a gagging sound. 

None of them want me there. 

“Oh don’t be such a delicate princess,” she rolled her eyes. “How’s this: it’s our joint meal time. It would be rude and completely unfair to exclude anyone. You should sit down with everyone, bite down on my wrist and make a great deal of slurping.” 

“You can’t be serious.” 

Delightful. Simply delightful. 

“It will be funny!” 

“I fear you might be the only one laughing, darling.” 

That is hilarious, I can just imagine Gale squealing or getting sick. 

“Is there anyone else you’d care to make laugh?” she asked with a slight upturn of her lips. 

Not in the least. 

“I could die again knowing I have accomplished something if I ever make Lae’zel laugh. But perish the thought – I am perfectly happy right here with my literature.” 

“Well, if you don’t want to join the group, perhaps I will stay and you can...” She snatched the book from your hands and tossed it aside, leaning in and bringing her lips up to your ear. “...Release your kraken in my field of rose petals,” she purred in a sultry voice. 

“Stop,” you choked back a snicker.  

“Get tangled up in my beef curtains?” she continued with the same tone. 

“You’re disgusting.” 

“Sink your meat shaft in my cream tart!” she persevered.  

“By the gods, woman, I am never having sex with your again.” 

“Suckle the nectar from my weeping core!” 

“Alright, fine, I’ll go, anything is better than this.” You got up, pushing her off your lap. 

“Taste my forbidden, oozing fruit, Astarion!” she cried out from the ground behind you as you covered your ears and shouted “LALALALA”, making your way towards the campfire. 

You would endure the prattle of your companions.  

Then you would take her for a moonlit swim in the river.  

Then you would see if she might spend the whole night in your arms again.  

Perhaps she could sleep in your shirt and leave her scent on it again – it was foolish to sleep completely in the nude out in the wild after all, what if there were intruders? 

Everything was going according to plan, you reminded yourself.  

~~~~~

Next in series - Down by the river

Series master list

AO3

Tags: @littleenglishfangirl @something-pithy @darlingxdragon @tallymonster @tragedybunny

Also @spacebarbarianweird - you haven't asked for a tag but sounded interested

[labyrynth]

mxtx did not write “the scum villain’s self saving system”, a satirical novel commenting on and subverting stallion novels, danmei, and a plethora of other genre staples and tropes, just for y’all to take the title at face value

[trans-li-ling]

I will not lie there are a lot of very strange vibes from the trailer and it seems very "unreliable narrator" type stuff but I can say one thing.

I do not fucking trust Fu Shi

[applestorms]

adding ur tags cuz they’re so so so good too

i was on a "thinking about ryuk" kick earlier and. i get the appeal of saying he's the only one who sees light in his entirety — it makes perfect sense, he's the one who light monologues to about his grand plans, he's the one who light stays with practically 24/7 for five years — but i don't think it's completely true?

ryuk to me has this tendency to assume that light is straightforwardly malicious (see: he thinks light was lying when light says he'll avenge his father if soichiro ever gets killed by kira, he doesn't really get why light wants to do things like reveal his location to L until light explains he wants to eliminate L entirely, he takes the "i wish i had wings" thing seriously as though it's supposed to be part of light's Master Plan instead of a little quirk that light was clearly feeling vulnerable about, he's surprised when light isn't willing to kill sayu in the second arc). like there's real fondness for light in there as well, he congratulates light for getting into college for instance, but i don't really feel like ryuk has ever. understood him fully. he's trying, he gets better at it over time, but he does have a bias.

and i think, also, that this is because ryuk has another tendency to assume that light is just like him.

which makes sense, because light is the one who offers up "i was bored, too" as a genuine point of commonality between them. and then ryuk jumps to "you know, you'd make a really good shinigami!" and "hey light do you want the eyes" and then at the end "we eased each other's boredom for quite a while." he does notice when light is acting weird and tries to adjust his viewpoint (he goes ! when light starts doing his "i've never been so humiliated in my whole life" thing) but given that he only figures out light genuinely cares for his sister when he refuses to sacrifice her, after five years of watching this whole family dynamic, i don't think he ever actually gets there.

which is. sad. it's really goddamn sad. you know you're really fucked when even the demon haunting you can't figure you out

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Narrators

7 Types of Narrators

The Protagonist The story revolves around this character.

The Secondary Character The character who is close to the protagonist, but somewhat removed.

The Detached Observer This narrator is completely removed from the action and relays the story without personal opinion.

The Commentator This narrator adds personal opinion and insight and becomes his own “storyteller” character.

The Interviewer This narrator exists between detached and commentator. This narrator focuses on the characters with limited commentary, although his opinion may be inferred based on the way he chooses to tell the story.

The Secret Character This narrator appears to be similar to the commentator but then reveals himself to be a pivotal character in the story. He may refer to himself in third person until the big, shocking reveal.

The Unreliable Narrator This narrator appears to be reliable until readers can detect, through interaction with other characters, that the narrator cannot be trusted.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References Writing References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character

[myfairkatiecat]

okay so shannon giving us a keefe pov seems actually lowkey important and what i would do in the story rn but I'm not convinced she's going to use it to do the things I feel like we need her to do.

let me explain.

Shannon set Sophie up as a character who behaves certain ways. A lot of those ways are very good, and she's certainly a hero, but she also has character flaws that get worked through. For example, she can be a little reckless (personally I would have made all the same choices) (I know we think of Keefe as the reckless one but he's a different type of reckless) she can prioritize the wrong things, she can be disorganized, etc (all things that are super valid and understandable and make her relatable btw. I am a sophie foster defender)

and BECAUSE sophie is the protagonist, we see all of this develop. She has certain qualities that are a little stagnant sometimes, at least if you look from the outside, but there's actually a ton of development going on. She hears others' opinions on her actions, good and bad, and the reader sees how this impacts her and how she grows and changes, even if that change is nonlinear or in many ways she stays the same and just grows more mature.

Here's the thing about Keefe. he wandered out of side character territory and into second main character territory starting at the end of everblaze and peaking in legacy. And Shannon has been INTENTIONALLY writing him with consistent character flaws since the beginning, explainable by his past circumstances in fascinating ways. But we aren't there to see a lot of the falling out for that stuff.

A lot of people complain that keefe never faced consequences for stealing the caches or never had the black swan or adults yelling at him or mistrusting him or his friends avoiding him. And like... we do not know that. It could simply be that that was just not Sophie's problem at the time. Sophie also may have simply not been one of the people giving him a difficult time about it. In fact, we know she wasn't, but boy oh boy Fitz certainly didn't bounce back in less than five seconds. And we don't know what the Council and/or black swan did with him that sophie just wasn't involved in--and bc it didn't become relevant to the plot from sophie's perspective, sophie being the actual MC, it just seems unimportant.

Another thing is that Keefe has a lot of the same character flaws throughout the series, but they do shift somewhat with his experiences, and that's without us even seeing in his head, you know? So here's the thing.

Shannon went and started developing Keefe like a second protagonist (who is interestingly also an anti hero in some ways) and even if you aren't a person who thinks he's the most developed character on the paper (disagree but see where you're coming from) he's DEFINITELY most developed in shannon's brain, and that bleeds through. But then we ONLY see Sophie's perspective BECAUSE THIS IS SOPHIE'S STORY, and everything revolves around what is relevant to the plot from her perspective, and then keefe is just in the background being extremely important and relevant and having all these extra issues that we ONLY ever see from sophie's perspective.

Unlocked was... well, it was half a book, and only half of it was keefe. I actually do think his perspective was enlightening in some ways, but a full keefe book at this point kind of seems necessary to me. Because... he's taken on the role of another main character in this story, but we don't see any of that development happening, and for a lot of people i can see that getting taxing. Now I get that those same people also wish keefe would just. step back from the plot. and i get that! but I think with the way he's involved in the plot NOW, seeing his perspective is important, because sophie's POV (especially with her unreliable narration) doesn't give us enough of a window into the complexity that is keefe's worldview right now, especially with all the ways he keeps impacting things. it's just a really important perspective to have at this point.

Shannon, if unraveled is just keefe trying different human foods and giggling like a kotlc react on wattpad, I will probably enjoy it bc i love your work always, but i will also be shaking you by the shoulders because we need this book and you better spend it doing the things we need

[daisukitoo]

I am 15% of the way through Harrow the Ninth. There are no plot spoilers below.

"Second person, past tense" is a really weird choice for a novel's narration, and I will be disappointed if this does not pay off mightily.

Most pieces I see in second person POV are short stories. The goal is to establish intimacy and immediacy, and they are most commonly in the present tense. The notion is that the action is happening to you, right now, and you are finding out about it as you the reader go through the story. Occasionally you see such a story in the future tense, suggesting someone is prophesying to you.

Second person, past tense is someone telling you your own history. This is kind of weird. One assumes a Memento story with an amnesia premise, or similarly Merlin living backwards in time. The second person here raises the question of who is telling you the story. The past tense raise the question of why you need someone to tell you your own story.

That our protagonist is explicitly and demonstrably insane gives us a lot of "why," although the particular "why" depends on the "who." The most obvious "who" is that Harrow is telling herself her own story. We have already seen Harrow telling herself her own story within this story, so adding another layer of recursion seems obvious and later adding multiple seems fun.

But here we reach a fork that we cannot resolve this early in the book. Is Harrow in a moment of lucidity telling herself what she should already know? Is Harrow in a moment of insanity hallucinating a new history? Is Harrow just lying to herself because the ending of Gideon the Ninth was too painful?

Harrow the Ninth is sometimes described as gaslighting the reader about Gideon the Ninth. Someone is not telling the truth about something here. One character seems to have noticed, but it is hard to be sure when our narrator is unreliable and may be hallucinating and/or lying.

Gideon was a somewhat unreliable narrator not in the sense that she lied (except perhaps about her emotions, except perhaps mostly to herself) but in that she was not paying attention, like the meme post in circulation about a movie showing the start of World War I from the perspective of a pet pigeon. You can probably identify all the important plot points of Gideon the Ninth by how boring Gideon finds them.

Harrow is more classically unreliable. She has a skewed perspective, and within that perspective she hallucinates, and on top of those hallucinations she will deceive herself and others. This early in the book, we already have many examples of Harrow seeing things that aren't there. She tends to realize within a page or two that she is hallucinating. The big news at some point should be that those little hallucinations were within the context of a larger hallucination and/or lie.

And now I need to go finish the book so I can check my Tumblr notifications without worrying about spoilers in the notes.

[brucewaynehater101]

hii i just wanted to ask about the accuracy of the statement of "Talia abducted Jason during when he was arguably at his most vulnerable cuz catatonic and took advantage of his state (+no Bats knowing Jason came back to life) to indebt him to her and a cult + groom him to be a tool for whatever goal she had in mind" or if it's fanon and your opinions on this idea (+ actual canon if this statement is in fact fanon)

but just like how we play with the scale of good parent, bad parent Bruce we could also fuck around and do so much with this concept (fanon or not)

Hi! I'm not as familiar with this, so let's do the research together ^^ It's gonna be a long post!

I've heard many many many people curse out a few writers (I'm shitty at remembering names) for being a racist pieces of shit. I've also heard of Talia being thrown under the bus by a lot of writers. Here's a link to a wonderful Tumblr post that goes into Talia and how writers fucked over her character.

There's other posts, but this one quickly summaries what they did to Talia and briefly mentions the assassination of Ra's character as well.

Here's a post that goes further into Ra's character.

On that note, I have seen a few fics play around with two ideas that were (as far as I'm aware) retconned: Damian's conception being unconsensual and Talia having sexual relations with Jason.

As long as you keep in mind that these were retconned and come from racist, sexist, or both connotations, it's okay to explore the impact these actions would have on all characters involved (especially if we're utilizing the reasoning that Talia wasn't in her right mind during those actions).

That's a basic summary of why there's heavy debate around Talia and the al Ghuls as a whole.

Now! Let's get into Talia and Jason specifically!!!!

The comic run we want to look into is Red Hood - The Lost Days. I am unsure if there are any other comics that cover post-death Jason but pre-Red Hood. If anyone has any other canon material that covers or mentions this time period, feel free to comment, reblog, etc.

This is Talia's initial reaction to hearing about Jason:

She expresses concern, worry, and grief for Bruce

She then has spies give her updates on Bruce's situation. Everyone else states Bruce is "stepping up his game." She calls them fools (since Bruce is obviously just hurting)

Very quickly, we get into her discovery of Jason Todd:

So. Jason's catatonic and Talia was ordered not to inform Bruce. Regardless of if she wanted to, she would be betraying her father if she told Bruce

Then I'm just going to drop all of these panels:

This shows she somewhat cares about him. Whether that's for Jason or because of Bruce, that's irrelevant. She still cares and wants him to get better. She wants him to go home.

Talia only pushes Jason into the Lazarus Pits because she's run out of time

Now... she may be an unreliable narrator. She states she's doing this for Jason's sake, but it does seem like it's more for her own. Regardless, she doesn't have ill intentions.

Talia dips Jason in the Pits and then tosses him out

That line of hers seems suspicious, but I see it more as her trying to hide the fact she had Jason for so long. It's less "go be mad at Bruce" and more "gods, what is Bruce gonna think of me if Jason shows up on his doorstep?"" Selfish, but not in the way fanon characterizes it.

She had trackers on the bag, though. She just needed him away from Ra's

Ra's tells Talia she fucked up, Jason tries to blow up the batmobile, and then tries to tell Talia he didn't lose his nerve for revenge against Bruce

Talia realizes that reviving Jason with the Pit might have fucked Jason up

Jason asks Talia for her help with revenge against Bruce. Talia did not set that up. Jason was the one to suggest it without influence

Talia obviously does not want to be helping Jason right now. She still agrees, though

Let me just toss this here too:

So... She's not doing this completely because she cares about Jason or that it's the right thing, but she also sure as hell does not want Jason to be going down this revenge path

Despite all of this, there's this:

They then proceed to fuck.

Which is gross as hell, and how some people can say that she took advantage of him

I think them fucking got retconned, though....

So, it's slightly complicated?

In my personal opinion, the final answer is: "It is fanon!"

There may be some truth or canon behind it, but that most likely comes from more racist characterizations of her character. However, the canon material that explicitly covers this topic makes it clear:

"Talia was selfish with her help to Jason. She wants Bruce to love her. She thus ends up hiding Jason's existence out of fear of Bruce's reaction. She does not want Jason to be mad at Bruce or fight his dad."

This also matches the other characterization I've seen of this: "Talia uses the distraction technique to try to hold Jason back from murdering his own father. 'You can't murder Bruce without training, Jason.'"

To continue, whether Talia should've told Bruce or not is an entirely different matter. Sometimes, I've avoided telling people shit out of fear, which made the situations worse. It wasn't great of her to do that, but in no way should this villainze her. I also 100% love that this gives her a flaw. People make mistakes. She's trying. She may have gone about it poorly, but she did what she thought she could. It was selfish, but I don't blame her.

She could've also convinced Jason to give up his mission entirely right before they fucked. That's where it gets murky.

You are absolutely correct that we can use the fanon idea of the al Ghuls manipulating Jason. On the other hand, I haven't seen enough fics where Talia treats Jason like an unruly toddler instead.

"No, Jason. We can't murder Bruce. Obviously, you need training first." Her visible reaction is a motherly rolling eyes. Internally, she's just panicking ("fuck fuck fuck fuck. How do I curb bloodlust? How do I stop patricide? Procrastination!!!")

Anyways, thanks for bringing the question up! It allowed me to look into it and put my thoughts in order ^^

Feel free to read the rest of the run!

[novarex]

Thoughts on Nere

Ugh, look at his pretty white eyelashes. I just want to smoosh his face.

I have a lot of thoughts regarding Nere and how he could have gotten where he is by the time we see him. @lysblack has started a really excellent conversation I would like to expand on. For science.

So may I present a somewhat lengthy analysis (rambling thoughts) of Nere, based on comments of other characters, what we know, and my reading of the Drizzt Do'Urdon books that go deeply into Menzoberranzan and life there.

Warning - this is long

Let's start with when we meet Nere.

Before we meet him, we meet the duergar, who have some things to say - Morgal is the one asking if you and the other duergar are "plowing", and from Corsair Greymon asking if "the Sargent has choked on True Soul Nere's prick". I do think that the duergar here are just generally vulgar and probably don't have much respect for anyone, but they are definitely getting to the end of their patience with Nere. They are mostly hired mercenaries with at least one believer in the Absolute among them (Sargent Thrinn). Something to note here is that duergar are a race of dwarves that were experimented on an changed by Mind Flayers and later escaped, that is why they have psionic powers, you can connect to them without them having a tadpole, and they have a special nose for True Souls because they can literally smell the parasite in you.

When you move down to the cave in area where Nere is trapped and Thrinn and her crew are trying to dig him out, you can talk to Nere through the rubble. He is literally suffocating to death on the poison that is filling the room, and obviously panicking - he thinks he is going to die in that room and I don't blame him. In his eyes (and any Lolthsworn drow), the people that are supposed to be rescuing him are just about the worst case scenario - they are inferior, disloyal, stupid, and unlikely to succeed. Like Minthara, I am sure he would MUCH rather have drow coming to rescue him than mercenary duergar and slave deep gnomes. On that note, he even is quick to tell you, another True Soul, not to trust the duergar mercenaries.

I also want to take a moment to say that no matter what we think of his behavior, Nere has to be under an absolute unbearably high amounts of pressure at this point - he is failing in his mission, he is stuck in the rubble that is quickly filling with gas, with wildly unreliable help. Like this is peak desperation. He is lashing out in anger and fear in any way he can. I think our Tav showing up is probably the only thread of hope he has to cling on to. Even Gale recognizes how bad of a situation Nere is in.

When you push into Nere's mind at the rubble and see through his eyes while he is suffocating to death in the cave in, the narrator makes a point to say that he had killed a gnome with powerful magic. He probably went to Sorcere (school for magic) in Menzoberranzan (although it is possible he isn't from Menzo).

Most noble drow have a natural talent for magic (breeding throughout the centuries), but sometimes commoners have the talent for it too. Sorcere is almost exclusively men because women with any talent for magic go to Arach-Tinilith, the school for drow priestesses. Male drow can also go to the school for fighting, Melee-Magthere (Drizzt went here), and they do spend one year at the end of their training in Sorcere learning some magic.

The reason I don't think Nere is a noble is that he would have certainly let us know if he were, especially if you are playing as a drow (I play as a drow female). This could just be an oversight in the writing, but I don't think so. When you fight the spectator over where the petrified drow are, if you manage not to get Dhourn the wizard killed and talk to him (disguise yourself as a female drow if you don't play as one and you can bully him into giving you his research and not have to kill him), he immediately lets you know he is the third boy of house Ba'Tol. In everything else I have experienced, drow are quick to name drop their house. It is extremely important in Lolthsworn society.

Nere is probably a commoner with enough magic talent to go to the school. All drow have a little magic to some degree, but to really learn it you have to go to Sorcere. There are few things you can do as a male in Memzoberranzan that give you any sort of status besides "useless male", and wizard/sorcerer is one. I suppose it is possible he is of noble birth, but I really think he would have let us know.

In Sorcere he would have spent most of his time around other males, as Sorcere is a 30 year long school (unlike Melee-Magthere which is 10), and exclusively male, which could explain why a female hadn't absolutely killed the shit out of him yet. The occasional priestesses from Arach-Tinilith would be around, but I think he could manage to be fine.

Nere certainly has an attitude to match with having gone to Sorcere. Some of his reactions, like blaming others for failures, are actually VERY cultural and expected among Lolthsworn drow. It just tracks. It would be strange if he didn't. He would have, however, faced constant criticism, bullying, sabotage, and crappy backstabbing politics within his time there, so it makes sense that he would have some emotional baggage regarding failure. Pretty much all male drow do to some extent. Even if he didn't have to deal too much with daily subjugation by female drow, he would still have faced a lot of scrutiny from other males in Sorcere. Failure of any kind is extremely dangerous in Lolthsworn society, especially for men.

I don't think his failure necessarily comes from him being bad at things. He has really good stats, so he isn't weak at all. He is also physically very strong. He is taller than both Gale and Astarion. The top of my female drow's head comes up to his chin (as opposed to Astarion and Gale where the top of her head is about dead center on theirs). He is also clearly intended to be intimidating. He has the Muscular feature as well as High Spellcasting - so he is big, strong, and good with magic. Wisdom is his lowest stat, and that could be the source of his problems in life. Strangely, he has really high charisma... but I will get to that shortly.

Anyway, back to the Grymforge. Before you bust him out of the rubble, talk to Thrinn, then go talk to the two drow who want to betray Nere, go back and talk to Thrinn and let her know they are planning to betray him. She doesn't seem particularly concerned with Nere's ability to handle them.

I think it is reasonable to assume that Nere is not a total fuckup. I think he has a lot of talent and strengths, but is either unlucky or unwise, or some combination of both. He has enough intelligence and strength to be powerful, and enough charisma to persuade people, but not enough wisdom and insight to know when to shut up or walk away... or when he is in over his head.

I do think he is unwise... there are some indications that he constantly underestimates what he is up against. This could be from lack of experience or this is just a character flaw.

Baby boy, what about any of this is simple? Please. You should have known better.

He is trying so hard here to convince himself that things are going to work out, but you can here it in his voice that he is trying to believe it. He must think that we are surely powerful enough to speak to Ketheric and convince him that Nere is still worthy. He is lacking the appropriate wisdom and insight to really accept what has happened.

We know from talking to Minthara that the influence of the Absolute is extremely overpowering and overrides any of your own common sense. It turns you into a fanatic and forces you to do things you would never ever do if you had control of yourself. This would also be true of Nere. He has this wild fanaticism and desperation to please Ketheric and the Absolute, but he drops it IMMEDIATELY when you fill him in on what is really going on. Once he is free of the brain's power and sees the bigger puncture, there is a very strong shift in his attitude.

He becomes very reasonable and quickly puts two and two together. This is probably the first time ever in his life where he is free of cult influence - if you convince him to run from the Absolute (and also I assume Lolth, because dear god he CAN NOT go back there without being tortured to death for information and then killed or worse, turned into a drider for his sins against Lolth)... and it does seem like he has a lot to process.

He is actually very calm and grateful for what you have done for him. It is such a shame you can't drag him around with you.

I am also not sure if it is an oversight in writing, or if Nere loses control of his mind again once we leave the area, or if he is just so pissed off at Balthazar and Ketheric and the whole ordeal that he goes after Balthazar to try and mess everything up for the Absolute by sabotaging the Nightsong plot.... but it is just such a shame that he dies anyway. I would like to think it is just a gap in writing because the game is SO HUGE.

If he is wiling to potentially die for a cause, what better cause than getting revenge on the people who did this to him? What better hook to get him to join our party and quest to destroy the Absolute and rid ourselves of the parasite? I think this is a huge missed opportunity.

LET ME DO IT, LARIAN. AGHHHH. LET ME SAVE HIM.

As far as how he became an exile/rogue, because I really do think he was.... (previous post on this)... I think there are a few possibilities, and we have absolute no indication as to what they could have been.

So this is pure speculation with nothing to back it up on my part. Here are a list of reasons he could have resulted in him being separated from Lolthite society.

Was out on some kind of mission and failed, couldn't go back without risk of severe punishment or death.

Separated from expedition to the surface (for slaves, or supplies, or whatever) either through no fault of his own or because he was unwise.

Attempted to kill someone and failed, fled. Probably while they were away from the city.

There was an attempt on his life that failed and he fled. Probably also while they were away from the city.

Was scouting or part of an expedition for a noble house that was annihilated while they were away. Nothing to return to without risking being killed.

I don't think he was some matriarch's special pet, because there is a certain level of obedience a reverence for female drow he would need to have to not be killed. His attitude is way off to have been some matron or priestess's favorite. Sure he is hot, but most drow are hot, so the standards for "too hot to be killed" are way too high for that to have been it. There are plenty of dead hot drow men.

I think it is likely that he made some mistakes that led to him not being able to go back for fear of death. I also think that when he mentions going to the Order of Soul Spiders, that is just him being unwise and not thinking the whole thing thorough. Like baby boy, you are going to be destroyed once the hear what you have to say. Sure, they will want to know it, but you are NOT going to escape punishment for abandoning Lolth. That isn't a possibility. Think it through.

Ok wow this post got too long and way out of hand. Nere is my current hyperfixation, and I hope that at least two of you share this hyperfixation with me and found this worth reading.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[intuitive-revelations]

Trying to put together a pseudo-theory/diagram about the Guardians of Time / Six-Fold God and how the Toymaker, Maestro, Harbinger etc. fit into it...

... and man does it annoy me we're somehow now up to seven Guardians instead of six in the expanded universe.

This was going to be a quick rant, but has somehow turned into more of a full dissection, so buckle in for some major overthinking about Doctor Who lore from someone who has other stuff they should be focusing on.

History of the Guardians in the DWEU

To recap, we're introduced to two guardians in The Ribos Operation:

White Guardian: Light and Order

Black Guardian: Darkness and Chaos

1980s Doctor Who Magazine stories like The Legacy of Gallifrey and Power to the People continue to depict just these two (though the prior is filtered through a possibly unreliable in-universe narrator and the latter is fairly tongue in cheek). These give two possible origins of the Guardians of Time.

The prior implies the White and Black Guardians were manifested by Rassilon from within the Matrix, and entrusted with the Key to Time. While the wiki suggests this somewhat aligns with a comment by the Tenth Doctor in a recent book suggesting Rassilon could be considered a singular 'Guardian of Time' (a bit more on this book later), I wouldn't put much stock into it. Reading it now, The Legacy of Gallifrey is filled with a number of inaccuracies (though tbf, this may be more a matter of its publication date than any writing error) and as a whole comes across somewhat as pro-Rassilon propaganda, something somewhat supported by the ambiguous framing device.

The latter notably depicts the Guardians as having been a single entity of the same species as capital-G God, but split into two once God placed them in the universe. Interestingly, this does somewhat align with the later Big Finish depiction of the Guardians as below the "Grace", god-like being(s) from outside the universe.

We then get Divided Loyalties, which clarifies there's six in all, similarly forming a 'Six-Fold God'. This is directly connected to the existence of six parts of the Key to Time. It also names two more:

Crystal Guardian: Dream and Fantasy (supposedly the Toymaker)

Red Guardian: Justice and Truth

Also mentioned are "twin Guardians" of something, though the Toymaker cuts himself off before finishing.

Divided Loyalites provides an alternative account of Rassilon's meeting with the Black and White Guardians and his naming of the Great Old Ones. Rassilon speculates that the Great Old Ones are the Time Lord equivalents of another universe. Though he only knows of the two, somewhat fitting The Legacy of Gallifrey's telling (also by Gary Russell), he speculates that there may be more Guardians: Guardians of Justice, Mortality and/or Imagination. Also, fitting the idea that the previous story might have been propaganda, Mortimus dismisses this new account as 'rubbish', for "What can be more advanced than the Time Lords?". Finally, somewhat contradicting the rest of the book, the record suggests there could be more than one being known as 'Toymakers', perhaps supporting the concept of him having his own 'pantheon' as we are seeing now.

This idea of there being six Guardians is later supported by the more recent "The Whoniverse" reference book, which depicts six Guardians at the beginning of the universe, though admittedly there is room for more off-image, if one assumes they're spread evenly in a circle.

Craig Hinton expanded on Divided Loyalties's ideas, as well as those from books like Millennial Rites, in The Quantum Archangel. This is most explicitly shown in his writing notes published in Shelf Life, where the Guardians are envisioned as the high eschelons of the previous universe's Time Lords, a bit like the other Great Old Ones, and also seemingly welding this version of the Toymaker's origins with the original concept of him being one of the Doctor's people (which still may or may not be true, depending on the Doctor's origins). They also consider the Eternals and Chronovores their children. He gives a list of six Guardians, higher Time Lords (mostly) from the previous universe, who act as vessels for fundamental elements of the new universe:

The White Guardian – The Guardian of Light in Time, the Guardian of Structure, He Who Walks In Light.

The Black Guardian – The Guardian of Dark in Time, the Guardian of Chaos, the Guardian of Entropy, He Who Walks in Darkness.

The Red Guardian – The Guardian of Justice and Morality in Time, the Guardian of Right, He Who Walks in Judgement. Eventually, this will be the Doctor (see Aspects of Evil).

The Azure Guardians – The Guardians of Balance in Time, the Guardians of Equilibrium, They Who Walk Both Paths.

The Crystal Guardian – The Guardian of Thought in Time, the Guardian of Dreams, He Who Walks in Dreams. Also known as the Celestial Toymaker…

The Gold Guardian – The Guardian of Life in Time, the Guardian of Sentience, He Who Walks in Life.

He also identifies them respectively as the equivalents of the following of the previous universe's "Time Lords" (as they're not literally so, I'll refer to them as 'Pre-Time Lords' from here on out):

President – Black

Chancellor – White

Castellan – Azure

Matrix Keeper – Crystal

The Renegade – Red

The Matrix – Gold

Notably there are some odd 'asymmetries'. For one thing, the Azure Guardian seems to actually be made up of two beings (if they're a former Pre-Time Lord, maybe they "bigenerated"?), presumably being the 'twin Guardians' mentioned in Divided Loyalties. Meanwhile, the Gold Guardian, instead of perhaps being the Pre-Time Lords' Gold Usher equivalent, is actually a manifestation of their version of the Matrix.

The Red Guardian is also notable for being a renegade - the equivalent of the Doctor of the previous universe. Per Aspects of Evil, a Hinton story published in the charity anthology Missing Pieces, the Doctor in-fact not only was once the Renegade/Red Guardian, who may also be the Other (and thus the Timeless Child?), but eventually will be again once their life is over.

Regardless, all seems well and good: we now have six members of our "six-fold God" of ambiguous origins. While we do see a 'Beige Guardian' and hear about a 'Green Guardian' in Happy Deathday, a 35th anniversary DWM comic, these are seemingly entirely fictional in-universe, characters in a video game played by Izzy Sinclair.

More recently, the Leftbridge-Stewart series has dipped its toes into this part of the lore, with the Azure Guardian actually appearing in-person in An Ordinary Man. Interestingly, he is also referred to as the "Rainbow Guardian of the Quantum Realm". While the rainbow element is a bit unclear, the 'quantum' aspect may suggest his two-part nature relates to quantum superposition and entanglement.

A few months later, this is followed by another Leftbridge-Stewart story, The George Kostinen Mystery, which features the "Silver Guardian of Space and Matter"...

...which is a problem.

Now we're seemingly stuck with seven Guardians, not six. (Or arguably eight, if you count the Azure Guardian twice.)

An Aside: Time Lord Legends for Time Tots

Arguably we might even have two or three more Guardians too! That Tenth Doctor novel I mentioned earlier, Legends of Camelot, features a Time Lord legend naming more, based on Arthurian lore. Removing Ten and Donna's interjections and comments, the full thing reads:

Once upon some times, in a universe before and after our own, two powers existed: the Guardian of Might and the Guardian of Magic. In an endless battle, the Guardian of Might would try to defeat the Guardian of Magic through strength, and she would try to defeat him through cunning. Yet so closely aligned were they that neither could ever triumph. The Guardian of Might, known as Arthur, wished for the universe to be ruled by order. The Guardian of Magic, known as Morgwen, championed the forces of chaos. The fight continued until their very universe grew close to collapse, but neither would concede. The final hope was Merlin. Merlin, Champion of Neutrality, offered a solution. No more stars would be razed, no more galaxies destroyed. He took one small planet and created on it a scenario that was designed to encompass both might and magic, order and chaos – a scenario of swords and sorcery, knights and monsters, honour and deception. Each Guardian would choose a player, and the game would play out as it may, until one side had triumphed. The war would be over, the universe would be rebuilt. The Guardians agreed, and the game was played. Arthur chose a player and gave him his name, and Morgwen did the same, with Merlin as the neutral adjudicator. But the final triumph never came. If ever Arthur approached victory, Morgwen would force a reset and choose a new player, hoping for a different outcome. Merlin discovered her perfidy, and knew his plan had failed – and that other dimensions were now threatened too. While the two Guardians were distracted by their game, he compressed reality around them. Like carbon into diamond, so their dimension became the Druse, known also as the Crystal Cavern – a place imbued with such powers it would send them into the deepest possible sleep. Yet the Guardians were so mighty, it could not be guaranteed that sleep would last for all eternity. Merlin therefore imprisoned himself with them and joined the Guardians in their slumber within the Druse. He recreated the game scenario in his dreams and fed it into theirs. Thus, believing they were still playing the game, the endless battle between might and magic, Arthur and Morgwen would not realise they were imprisoned and so would not attempt to escape. And still they sleep, and still they fight, and so will it continue within time and without time, eternally and never. Yet travellers in eternity beware, and approach not the Druse, lest you rouse the sleepers and bring their fight to your reality.

Now are these 'Guardians' actually connected to the Guardians of Time?

I think...sort of.

The descriptions of each one certainly sound like they match the scale of the Guardians of Time, as does their behaviour, being convinced not to fight each other directly, causing intergalactic scale damage (as we discover the Toymaker is capable of in our universe in The Giggle), but instead by influencing mortals, or ephermals.

They also seem to match certain roles seen in the Guardians of Time. The Guardian of Might champions order, like the White Guardian, while the Guardian of Magic champions chaos, like the Black. Meanwhile "Merlin", who may or may not be a Guardian himself, champions neutrality and acts to bring balance, similar to the Azure and Red Guardians. Of course, while this shows a clear similarity between this book's Guardians and the Guardians of Time, it also implies they're redundant.

The solution seems to appear in the detail that these Guardians, even in their empowered forms, originate in another universe. Which universe is less clear, as they seem to exist parallel to N-Space, but also "before and after our own". Either way, it suggests that the same history that led to the Guardians and Great Old Ones entering N-Space (and the Division trying to escape to the next universe in Flux), may have occured before, whether as part of the same universal cycle, as part of the Dark Times, or within a completely separate universe.

Whether this version of "Merlin" connects to the Doctor and/or Red Guardian, however, is another question entirely. Ten actually mentions his recurring role as Merlin in the book, but say he definitely wasn't this one (yet anyway).

Back to the Silver Guardian

So we can discount Legends of Camelot's Guardians, but what about the "Silver Guardian of Space and Matter"?

Well... I see two possible approaches to fix this, without fully ignoring any member of the group.

On one hand, technically there is some ambiguity over whether the Guardians have jurisdiction over just Time, or both Space and Time (and presumably the whole universe). While the prior is the classic name, most descriptions suggest the latter. Even The Giggle explicitly refers to them as "The Guardians of Time and Space".

One could argue, therefore, that it might be that only the "Guardians of Time" are limited to six, and there could be more outside of that number serving the rest of the universe. If so, then the Guardian of Space and Matter might be part of this latter group.

However, it's pretty hard to justify the other Guardians not including space as part of their domains. It should also be noted that when the Toymaker says there are six Guardians in Divided Loyalties, he is explicitly referring to "Guardians of the Universe", seemingly nixing this theory.

On the other hand, a group of six + more is a surprisingly common theme throughout the Doctor Who universe, specifically in Gallifreyan culture. There are six chapters, but also the shadow-y CIA (not to mention other organisations, some of which even refer to themselves as 'chapters', like "Chapter 9" and "The Final Chapter"). There are six founders, of somewhat ambiguous identities, which may or may not include the Other, who may be a seventh. Even Gallifreyan numerology seems to reflect this, with circular Gallifreyan using a base-7 number system:

(There are also six known Menti Celesti, which seemingly lines up with this too. However, we've yet to learn of a seventh at the current time, so who knows? That being said, unlike the Guardians (for the most part, more later), the Menti Celesti seem to exist in opposite pairs: Life and Death, Pain and Hope, Time and Fate, so they may not follow the same pattern.)

This could suggest a seventh 'shadow' Guardian, separate from the other six. Our sources so far would suggest it's the Silver Guardian, given they weren't included in previous accounts, but this doesn't seem to match what little we know about them.

Other possible candidates could be the Crystal Guardian (given the Toymaker's uniqueness, not to mention 'Crystal' not exactly matching the colour naming scheme, though silver technically doesn't either - perhaps he was being unreliable in including himself as one of six in Divided Loyalties), or perhaps the Red Guardian, given their connections to the Doctor/Other, who might also be a shadow-y seventh figure in the founders of Gallifrey.

Alternatively, it could be the Azure or Golden Guardians, both unique in their own ways, the prior consisting of two entities, the latter having formed from something like the Matrix (and thus possibly consisting of many, many individual beings).

A Possible Fix?

While I'm not sure if this is the theory I'll stick with in the future, I do have my own interpretation which might offer a solution.

I think it's notable that among the 'main six', only the two members we've seen the most, the Black and White Guardians, seem to serve as direct opposites to one another.

Order/Chaos.

Light/Darkness.

It is also only these two that directly seem to link to 'Time'. The White Guardian represents order, the Black, entropy. While the exact nature of time remains uncertain to physicists, one common definition uses the arrow of time enforced by the second law of thermodynamics: the rule that over time, the universe will approach a state of chaos over order. Over time, the entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.

(This can also be applied to discussions of the Big Bang and possible fates of the universe, including the concept of repeating universes, either by quantum fluctuations long after heat death, or by cyclical processes like the Big Crunch/Bounce, something also relevant to discussions of the Guardians.)

This leads us to two conclusions:

If there is a divide between the "Guardians of Time" and the rest of the "Guardians of the Universe", it's probably around the Black and White Guardians, explaining their prominence.

The nature of the Black and White Guardians may be unique, even compared to the other Guardians.

To expand on point 2, I think it's possible that Power to the People was more accurate than we've given it credit for. While the idea of the Guardians splitting from one 'god' could be interpreted as connected to their joint identity as the 'six-fold God', it's not very compatible with the more common version of their origin as individual Pre-Time Lords.

(Unless one imagines the Pre-Time Lords all being in their 'Matrix' at the time of their entry into N-Space, I suppose, with the Gold Guardian once being all of them? Hmm... that's not part of this theory, but I suppose could be utilised as part of an alternative at a later point...)

Instead perhaps the White and Black Guardians alone were once a single "Guardian of Time", one of the six, before fracturing into two?

This may not even be that unique a circumstance. As we've acknowledged, the Azure Guardian is somehow made up of two entities, and we know there may be multiple Toymakers, not to mention his "sister" Hecuba, plus Maestro and Harbinger (though their nature might be different - as we mentioned before, the Guardians consider Eternals and Chronovores their children, so it may be that Maestro is less a Guardian and more one of these).

However, perhaps the strongest evidence other than Power to the People itself might be in one of Hinton's stories I've previously mentioned.

Aspects of Evil depicts a far-future Doctor, on the verge of death. He is approached by the White and Black Guardians who reveal that he has all his life actually acted as a servant of the Black Guardian, and a force for chaos in the universe, in combat with forces like the Daleks and Cybermen, who were always acting to impose their own "order" on it.

Along with these forces, the Valeyard is named as the Doctor's direct opposite, serving the White Guardian's goals as they served the Black's.

Not the Master, born alongside the Doctor, but the Valeyard, who was split off from them.

I think this may be a sign that the White and Black Guardians have exactly the same relationship. They weren't born together as opposites, but emerged as such, split off from one another.

One could even make the argument that they represent exactly the same thing (albeit, with Aspect of Evil's revelation, in reverse). The Valeyard represents an inevitable evil to the Doctor's good, emerging far in his future. The Black Guardian represents an inevitable chaos to the White Guardian's order, again emerging far in his future, just by the natural consequence of entropy.

Thus our final six-fold line-up of Guardians of the (current) Universe, ignoring any off-spring, reincarnations and such, might look like the following:

The (Grey?) Guardian of Time, split into the White Guardian of Light and Order and the Black Guardian of Darkness and Chaos.

The Red Guardian of Justice and Truth

The Gold Guardian of Life and Sentience

The Azure (and Rainbow?) Twin Guardians of Equilibrium and the Quantum Realm

The Crystal Guardian of Dreams and Fantasy

The Silver Guardian of Space and Matter

It's definitely messy, but might be the best fit for now. However this very much remains an open question, and there's lots of alternative solutions that could be proposed...

...

(...or you could just do the sane thing and ignore the inconsistency.)

[sailoryooons]

The Wood | JHS | (m)

☾ Pairing: witch!Hoseok x female reader

☾ Summary: From the moment you step foot in Kill Devil, you know something about the town is off. Determined to find out exactly how your sister went missing in such a small town, you receive unlikely help from the man staying in the motel room next to yours. But there is so much more than what meets the eye with Hoseok and the citizens of Kill Devil.

☾ Word Count: 16,786

☾ Genre: supernatural, psychological thriller, southern-gothic

☾ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 

☾ Warnings: Creepy town vibes somewhere in the south, unreliable narrator because she’s a dumb bitch, missing family member, descriptions of nightmares and night terrors, allusions to toxic citizens and intolerance in the southern US, cryptic exchanges, being attacked and choked by a strange entity, sleep paralysis, depictions of anxiety and panic and deep fear, manipulation, cat Yoongi.... sort of, explicit language, explicit sexual content including unprotected vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, slight hand job, a lot of spit and cum, fucking in a nasty ass motel room, mean Hoseok at the end, I don't know why I reference frogs so much please forgive me, ambiguous ending/unexplained ending, implied death of a side character off-screen

☾ Published: May 29, 2022

☾ A/N: Not only is this absolutely a million weeks late, it also is the longest it has ever - and I mean ever - taken me to write a fic. This was so hard for me to write, and I have deleted anad re-written thousands of words for this. The end result is something that I absolutely did not plan. This fic is ENTIRELY different from the original outline and idea, so at times it might seem where this piece doesn’t know where it’s going because it wasn’t until I got to the end of the smut scene last night that I realized what the hell this story needed. 

I want to thank @here2bbtstrash because I could not have written this fic without them, but also for the amazing and thorough beta they gave this. This was one of my choppier/messier pieces and they helped fix this so much and I have giant feelings for M that are very normal. Also a special thank you to @gimmethatagustd for keeping me somewhat sane while really struggling with this piece.

☾ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

Masterlist | Ask | To Love A Monster Collab | Song Inspiration

Only God can save us! 

It’s probably the tenth sign of the like that you’ve seen. Your palms feel sweaty on the wheel, the unsettling feeling in your stomach as you drive through God’s Country increasing. For some reason, as you catch glimpses of old abandoned churches at the end of red dirt roads and leaning fruit stands with no seller in sight, you think that perhaps God has forsaken this place. 

The drive has been unremarkable, but the closer you get to Kill Devil you think perhaps the town is aptly named. You can’t help but get the sense - especially when you stop at a gas station with no one inside and a single working pump - that there is a reason the town sports such a unique title. 

It’s hard to imagine why your sister would ever move here, even temporarily. Outside, the locusts whine, a high-pitched buzzsaw hidden in the boughs draped with Spanish moss. The paint on the road has long since faded, single lanes stretching North to South in an endless strip. 

Sticky heat prickles your skin. Though there’s no one else around save for you and the locusts, you can’t help but look around nervously, eyes scouring the oak trees. The door to the gas station is locked, and the other side of your single-station pump has a red bag on the handle. 

The sk sk sk of the pump is a slow heartbeat. Pulling out your phone while you wait, your stomach flips when you see that you have very little service. You’re about thirty minutes away from Kill Devil and an hour away from any major cities. Peppered along the map are small towns like Kill Devil, home to pecan farms, corn fields, and cotton gins. 

You feel a long way from home.

A tingle slides down the back of your neck. You look up from your phone, gaze sweeping back and forth through the trees and over the cracked pavement of the station. There’s nothing else there, but you have the sense that the trees have eyes. 

The pump clicks loudly and your heart lurches, hand flying to your chest as you shriek and turn. For a few moments, your heart beats so loudly in your ears you can’t hear the chirping of the locusts or your ragged breathing as you close your eyes, trying to level out your moment of panic. 

“Fuck,” you mutter, pulling the handle and jiggling it lightly to ensure any dripping gas is shaken off. 

Naturally, you’re a pretty calm person. The jumpiness belongs to your mother, who screams every time someone turns a corner in the house unexpectedly. It’s something about the feeling that clings to you like a second skin as you get in the car that has you shaken. 

Or it’s the fact that your sister has been missing for two months. 

On instinct, your hand goes to the necklace around your throat. It’s a heart-shaped locket, which would seem cheesy to anyone else. But for you, it’s one of the few coveted items you have from her.

It’s also something that you swear burned you in the middle of the night two months ago. You’re not sure if you believe in spiritual intuition or connection between family members, but what you do know is that you haven’t heard from her, and the local police have been no help. 

Trust your gut. That’s what she’s always said. And you do trust your gut on this, this knowing that something is wrong. 

On the road again, your tension continues to increase. The land has turned to steep up and down hills, pines lined on either side of the road, pocked with deep canyons.

Orange tire tracks appear and disappear on the highway, turning off onto clay roads with washed-out shoulders and deep ruts from all of the rain over the summer. Your sister had mentioned the house she was renting was nearly impossible to get to when the rain was bad.

A green sign that says Kill Devil City Limits passes by. No welcome sign, no little plaque announcing the population. Your music skips in and out, the connection to your phone weak. You switch to FM, flinching at the roaring static that comes through, finger jamming on the arrows to skip through to something passable.

Country. Country. Church. Country. Rock. Pop. 

You leave it on the pop station, turning your eyes back to the road. A logging truck comes roaring up the hill, blasting by your sedan at top speed, making your car shake. Your heart squeezes in fear. You’ve passed over two dozen of them and they never drive any slower or any safer each time. 

You’re going to kill Hanna if you find her lounging in her house, making you come all this way.

She had taken up a story there, investigating the town's eerie occult background for the media company that she worked for. Her editor had stopped receiving updates from her around the same time you’d stopped hearing from her. 

When you called the landlord she was renting from, he was no help. Some idiot who owned seventeen houses dotted around the country, renting them out for twice the price they were worth. 

The local police station had been worse. They’d done a wellness check several times after you called but insisted she wasn’t home. No signs of a break-in, no signs of a struggle. No reason to be missing. They refused to make it an official report, as there was no reason for her to be missing. 

Have you considered she just doesn’t want to talk to you? they’d laughed on the phone. 

It was a joke. Somehow you could not believe they refused to file a report, and you threatened to take it to the state police and anyone who would listen to you. The woman you had spoken to had chuckled then, her mirth sending a chill up your spine. 

Have fun on hold, sweetheart.

You could not fathom how not a single person cared. Not the news, not any authority that you could get in contact with, and certainly not the lawyer you reached out to. 

Let law enforcement handle it. Your pleas fell on deaf ears and it was like it didn’t even matter that an entire person was missing. You’d heard about the blunders of the law enforcement system before, but this was a new level of ignorance and oddity.

It was… unexplainable. 

Which was why now, you were driving into the backwater town of Kill Devil in the southern part of the United States. 

Dropping your speed down, you take the chance to look around. There are a few houses on the outskirts of the town, their yards sprawling with kudzu and their homes leaning heavily with brown vines climbing up the eaves. There are several old, broken-down trucks in the middle of the kudzu fields, swallowed by the invasive vine-like devil’s snare. 

You’d heard of one-stop-light-towns but you had never seen one without. Kill Devil is made up of all stop signs. Everything is built around the courthouse, a red brick building dropped in the middle like a fungus growing its roots outward.

The sheriff’s office is just across the street with Crown Victoria model patrol cars. A taxidermist is right next door, the gold cursive font on the front of the glass door telling you it’s been there since the 70s. 

Kill Devil has everything you expect. Antique shops with dusty windows and dry-rotted awnings, a convenience store that looks straight out of retro America, closed-down shops with empty shelves and shattered glass, and a single diner with station wagons and mud-slicked trucks in the parking lot. 

A single motel stands at the edge of the town center. When you pull into the parking lot, you look up at the sign and frown. Like something out of a horror movie, the Lodging Motel is missing several letters in long-burnt-out neon, three letters blinking in the fading afternoon sun: Lodging Motel. 

Die.

With one look at the crusted, three-paneled windows and mold-covered brick face, you think that you just might die. 

Pink sun sinks behind the rolling hills of pine. You get out of the car, stretching and popping your joints as you look at your lodging with a sour taste in your mouth. You pass the ‘vacant’ sign as you walk to the small square building at the end with ‘front office’ on the window. 

“Yeah no shit,” you mutter. You cannot imagine who would stay here out of anything but necessity. 

In fact, it seems like there is no one staying at the hotel. This fact makes you jumpy as you approach the office, which is just a clerk's window and a woman with sunken eyes and a scowl on her face watching you. You swallow thickly as you give her a weak smile and nervous wave, trying to get past the sudden anxiety trembling in your hands. 

“Hi,” you say. “I have a reservation for-”

A small window that’s about six inches tall and a foot wide pops open. She hacks, fluid-sounding and phlegmy before saying, “I can’t hear you with the damn window closed. What do you want?” 

You clench your jaw. Slowly, you begin again. “I have a reservation.”

“ID and credit card.” 

You slide the materials through the window. She holds them up close to her face, scrutinizing them. Crickets join the singing of the locusts. Mosquitos fly around your head and you cringe, swatting at them as you wait while she rolls her chair over to a cabinet.

Wordlessly, she puts your credit card on a manual credit card imprinter. You raise your brows, unsure of the last time you’ve seen someone do paper credit card printing instead of sliding it through a machine. 

While you wait, you look past her into the office. It’s dingy inside but you can see a box TV and a window unit air conditioner rattling in the window. There are metal cabinets that form their own little skyscrapers around her office. An episode of I Love Lucy plays on the fuzzy TV screen. 

“Here’s your room key.” She tosses it through the window. It’s room three, the key hanging on a diamond-shaped, acrylic keychain with Lodging Motel written in Sharpie. “We don’t got room service or maid service. If you need more towels, the launder-mat is down the street. Don’t run the hot water more than twenty minutes or so. If the AC ain’t on, hit ‘er a few times.” 

“Great,” you deadpan. “Anything else?”

She scowls. “Mind the raccoons. They got rabies.” 

“Thanks.”

Inside the room is just as expected: peeling wallpaper, red shag carpet with questionable stains and the unmistakable stench of cigarettes, sconce lighting with lampshades that look decades old, a twin with a horrible patterned blanket, frayed at the edges and moth-eaten, and a single, square dresser with a box TV on top and a white, corded phone. 

The bathroom is no better. The tub is stained with limescale, cracked tiles, and a lamp that buzzes when you flip it on. You scream when you see the massive roach hanging out in the tub, gagging and running out to look for anything to kill it with. 

You settle on a sneaker, and it’s a battle involving your high-pitched scream as you try and kill it. You do win, but you’re covered in sweat and shaking after your victory.

A sharp knock on the door startles you further. You drift to the front door, looking out the peephole to find that it is cracked and you cannot see the person standing just on the other side. You slide the chain lock in and open the door tentatively, peering out into the now early night. 

“Everything okay?” a male voice asks. “I heard screaming.” 

The voice belongs to someone who absolutely does not belong in Kill Devil. He’s dressed in jeans with large rips at the knee and a plain white shirt that hangs off his frame stylishly. He has a few necklaces on, a single hoop hanging from his right ear that catches the flickering parking lot light. 

And he’s beautiful. The kind of beautiful that stuns you. He has a slender face with smooth, flowing skin. His eyes are kind, glittering brown with flecks of lighter shades throughout. The slope of his cheekbones and jawline makes you think perhaps he’s into modeling, which would explain the taste in clothes. 

But it does not explain what someone who looks like that is doing in this shithole town. 

“I had to kill a roach,” you admit, a little hesitant. Your skin tingles under his gaze, your instincts picking up something that you can’t put your thumb on. “I don’t like them very much and it was fast.”

“Disgusting. I had to buy killer for them - it came in a two-pack if you want?” You don’t answer, watching him warily. He picks up on your anticipation and smiles, disarming. “Sorry - my name is Hoseok. You can call me Hobi, if you’d like. I’m staying next door which is just as gross as your room is I’m sure. I heard you yell and I got worried.”

“That’s kind of you. This doesn’t seem like a place where people would care if they heard  screaming.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not from here.” He looks around the parking lot and his eyes focus on a raccoon meandering near the trash. You grimace, thinking about rabies. “Thank fuck, this place feels right out of fucking Deliverance.”

You can’t help but laugh, feeling better at his distaste. “One sec, let me slide the lock off.” You close the door and slide the chain before opening it a little wider this time. “Yeah, this place gives me the creeps. Hopefully, I don’t have to be here long.”

“A night is long enough. You want that spray?”

“Yeah, that would be great.” 

Hoseok grins and holds up a finger, asking you to wait as he jogs to his room. He’s only gone for a moment, leaving you in the poorly lit lot with the tk tk tk of the raccoon pilfering through trash and the crickets creek creek creeking. 

Hoseok’s door opens and he’s back, handing you a large, red can of lemon-scented Raid. “Just make sure you drown them. They did outlive the dinosaurs. Makes you wonder what the hell is in that stuff.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem…” He drifts off, unsure what your name is. You laugh, a little flustered by the way his entire face lights up when he smiles, and give him your name. “I like it. Well, I don’t know how long you’re here, but I’m your neighbor for a few days. Try not to catch any infections while you’re in there and holler if you need me.”

“Thanks,” you grin. You hold up the can and add, “Especially for this.”

With a wave goodnight, Hoseok returns to his room. The buzz of something instinctual fades with him, replaced once more with the unsettling frequency the town seems to vibrate at. 

Closing the door firmly behind you and flicking the lock, you shiver. The eerie feeling that had been following you lingers.

After changing the sheets, inspecting the rest of the room and setting the spray can firmly on the pillow next to you, you lay on your back in bed, mattress lumpy and air conditioner rattling. 

-

Moonlight streams through the curtain, catching dust motes floating in the air and turning them into diamonds. You stand in the middle of the room. Cold but humid air clings to your skin, the air conditioner rattling and dripping as it cools the room but does nothing to suck out the moisture. You don’t know why you’re standing in the middle of the room and you don’t remember waking up and getting out of bed, but you face the window, the curtains open just enough to face the empty parking lot. 

Silence blankets the world. The hum of the air conditioner fades and you stare out into the silver-painted parking lot. Above the lot, a street light flickers on and off weakly. It goes out for a minute and flashes back on.

Someone leans against the pole. You can’t make out any features, just that there is a person there, perhaps facing you. The hair on your skin stands on end but you can’t move. Your instincts begin to prickle and there is a sharp feeling in your chest.

Belatedly, beyond your hypnotized stare, you realize the feeling is fear.

Your ears start to ring. You stare out at the shadow and the shadow stares back. Something is telling you to run run run but you don’t know how. Can’t move your feet. Panic begins to rise, your heart beating so fast that you can hear it over the steady whine in your ears. 

Thump thump. Thump thump. Thumpthumpthumpthump. 

You can feel your pulse skyrocketing, your chest squeezing tight with terror as the beating gets louder and louder -

Awareness hits you like cold water. You lurch forward in bed, hands flying to your chest as you gasp for air. It takes a moment to get your bearings, the pounding in your heart so hard it feels like you might vomit. Battling the sheets, you rip them off of you, legs sticky with a sheen of sweat. 

The lamp is still on in your room, the curtains are closed just the way you left them, and the bug killer rolls on the bed as you get up. Several paces away from the window, you catch your breath, running a hand over your face. 

“Fuck,” you pant, realizing you were dreaming. 

When your breathing levels out, you glance at the closed curtains. Something niggles at your brain. Slowly, you walk toward the window, feeling the hairs on your arms tingle and stand on end.

Lifting your shaking hands, you grip the curtain tight. Taking a deep breath, you hold it in and pull open the curtain just a bit. 

Unlike your dream, there’s no moonlight outside. It’s so dark you almost can’t see anything in the parking lot. When the lot light flickers back on, your heart squeezes, expecting to see a shadow leaning against the pole. There’s nothing there, just empty lot and a dumpster. Not even the raccoon is around. 

Blowing out your held breath, you close the curtain again and shake out your hands, trying to get rid of the jitters. Rolling your neck and shoulders, you try to work out the tension as you sit on the end of the bed, staring at the faded wallpaper. 

The dream felt so real. You swear that if you turn your head, you’ll see silver moonlight through the curtains. That you’ll see that person - that shadow - standing outside of your window. 

Exhaustion weighs heavy on you. You crawl back into bed, mattress damp and smelling like mildew even with the sheets that you put on it. You’re under a lot of stress and you hate this motel room as much as you already hate this town that you’ve barely started to explore. It makes sense that you’re having weird dreams. 

Blanket pulled up to your chin, you eventually let your lids flutter shut until you’re taken by dreamless sleep. 

-

Morning sun chases away the dregs of your strange dream from the night before. With daylight streaming between the curtains, the room looks no better. It’s a futile hope, perhaps, to keep thinking that the room will suddenly not look nearly as questionable as when you checked in. 

At least there are no bugs. 

Outside, the balmy air is filled with the voices of the locusts. You lock the door behind you and glance toward where Hoseok vanished the night before. His windows are closed and there’s no sign of him anywhere in the parking lot, so you head to your car, stomach begging for food. 

Kill Devil is small in both size and population. The Diner is easy to find, tucked in the southwest corner of the town across from the courthouse. Folks wander about the parking lot, shaking one another’s hands and laughing as the weekend rush of people meanders up the steps for breakfast. 

Your arrival is noted immediately. Eyes turn your way as you walk through the lot, loose gravel crunching under your feet. The lot is more packed dirt than pavement, full of holes and mud softened by rain. 

Seeing a new face in a wretched little town like this probably isn’t common. Though you’re not familiar with growing up in such a small population, you remember what it was like knowing everyone at school. The same theory applies here when a portly man with raised brows stands, screen door in hand as he stares at you.

The man blocks the way to the inside of the diner. You pause and look up, noting the confusion on his face. After clearing your throat, he realizes that he’s completely frozen from opening the door and coughs, bowing his head and apologizing. 

“You uh - visiting?” he asks, holding the door open for you. When you nod, he seems surprised, though that had to be the only answer. “Well, that doesn’t happen often. Welcome to Kill Devil.”

There’s a small host stand with a pile of laminated menus on top. A girl who looks to be about your age stares back at you, wiping her hands on a red apron tied around her waist. She’s in jeans and a t-shirt that says The Diner across the chest, her hair pulled up and stabbed through with a pen. 

“Just you?” she asks, eyes fluttering to the man who shrugs behind you. You nod. “Right this way.” 

The wooden walls are painted white, some of the paint peeling. There are miscellaneous animal heads with plaques underneath stating the names of their killers with a stamp of Jason’s Taxidermy. You try not to make eye contact with their black, glass eyes as you sit in a chair that wobbles from side to side.

You thank the hostess as she wanders off to get you coffee. The family at the table next to you does their best to whisper about who the hell is that as you look over the menu, flipping it to the breakfast side. The laminate is sticky and peeling at the corners. 

It’s a pretty standard breakfast menu. You put it down on the table, nudging the container holding different colored sugar packets and sweeteners while you wait for your coffee. There’s a breakfast bar with people bent over steaming eggs and sitting atop cracked vinyl seats. 

The door opens behind you at a steady rate as people pay their bills and leave while new customers are sitting. A presence at your back sends a cool tingle up your spine, making you straighten and look over your shoulder.

Hoseok stands in a shaft of sunlight coming through the window, turning him gold. For a moment, the diner around you falls to a hush of murmured voices, muting the clinking of spoons against ceramic and scraping chairs.

He’s dressed well again, in a simple white button-up with the button undone to reveal a strip of golden chest. His hair is slightly damp and styled back, an outrageously good look on him. The same hoop earring dangles in his ear but today he has on a few necklaces and rings on his fingers. Somehow, he makes the delicate pieces carry an edge. 

“You survived the night, huh?” he says by way of greeting and then gestures to the chair across from you. “Would you mind company for breakfast?” 

You shake your head, forgetting words for a moment as he smiles, radiant as ever. Hoseok pulls out the chair and sits down, a twinkle in his eye that makes your heart flutter as he plucks a menu from the holder at the center of the table. You can smell his rain and lavender scent from across the table. 

“Thanks again,” you say, realizing you haven’t spoken yet. His brown eyes look at you over the top of the menu, and you can’t help but admire how beautiful they are. Warm, both dark and light, with flecks of chipped gold. “For the bug killer. I haven’t seen any more but I just know they’re there.”

“That’s the shitty thing about the South. All of God's least favorite creatures are here.” He glances at the table of scowling men next to you to emphasize. You hide your laughter with the plastic menu. “What brings you to this shit hole?”

“I’m… visiting my sister.”

“You sound unsure of that. Does she not know you’re coming?”

“She doesn’t.”

While they aren’t technically lies, you don’t know how much you can trust him. Instinct makes you hold the truth from him. After all, you don’t want him to know you’re in a town where no one knows you, and where no one knows you are. By yourself.

Hoseok looks at you again, his eyes narrowed. You feel tension creep into the air between you, your mouth drying out as he watches you silently. 

The arrival of the hostess who is also your server saves you from another question. You both place your order, and you note the way the girl cuts her eyes to Hoseok, wary. Her hands shake a little.

When she leaves the two of you, you ask, “How long have you been here?”

“A few weeks.”

“Enough to win over the locals, hmm?”

His grin is sly as he drums his fingers on the table. “I’m their favorite - you’re perceptive.” 

“My sister is an investigative journalist. She’s made me watch all kinds of shows and read books about psychology and body language with her. I picked up a few things.”

“An investigative journalist, huh?” Hoseok plucks a sugar packet and rips it open with his teeth. He shoots the ripped piece onto the table with a huff of air and dumps the contents on the table. Leaning on one elbow, he begins to trace patterns in the sugar. “So you’re not from here. No one here is smart enough for that.”

“No, she’s been living here since July.” 

“What’s she investigating?” You hesitate again. He doesn’t look up from the patterns he’s tracing on the table, finger steady as it cuts through the white sugar.

“I don’t really know.” He does look up when you say that, gaze razor-sharp. A chill slides up your spine. So you add, “Something to do with the occult.”

Hoseok stops moving his finger through the sugar. He doesn’t look at you, but he’s fixated on the mess he’s made on the table. You chew on your bottom lip, eyes dropping to his little sweetened artwork. You don’t understand the pattern that he’s traced, but it buzzes your brain when you look at it.

The silence stretches on. He remains unmoving and silent. Anxiety starts to creep in and you wonder if he thinks you’re crazy or is going to get up and leave-

With a huff of laughter, he leans back and smiles at you. 

“The occult huh? Interesting subject.”

“Know anything about it?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “I mean, what is really considered occult? Most of these Bible thumpers around here would consider being queer witchcraft.” 

“You have a point there. Don’t tell them I’m a witch.”

He grins. “You can join my coven, then.” 

“Do you think they know there’s more than two genders?”

Hoseok’s laugh is infectious. You laugh along with him, visibly ruffling the feathers of the table next to you. 

For a moment, the two of you share a secret smile at your little table, wedged between the people who go to church every Sunday and swear by Fox News at brunch. It feels good to know you’re not the only person completely out of place in Kill Devil. 

The arrival of your server with steaming plates breaks the moment, but you feel better about your morning nonetheless. Especially when the conversation switches from stilted exchanges about your sister and the occult to things about you and Hoseok. 

Over runny eggs on toast and crunchy bacon, you learn that Hoseok is a shop owner in a small town very far from Kill Devil. He brushes over the fact that he’s visiting family to tell you all about his small corner of the world and all of his favorite plants. 

“Fiona is a venus fly trap,” he giggles with a snap of bacon. “She’s my second favorite, but what I really love is my pitcher plants. They eat bugs, mostly, but they like to devour frogs too. The frogs love to hide in them, but sometimes the pitcher plants take kindly to them and don’t eat them. It never lasts.” 

“I would hate for them to eat the frogs.”

“Hmm, circle of life.”

“But the poor frogs!”

Hoseok isn’t swayed. “There has to be a balance to everything. The pitcher plants will kill the frogs eventually. Sometimes a predator likes to play with its prey. Their ecosystem doesn’t make sense. In order to pay back the food the pitcher plants bring them, the frog must die. It pays for power, in the end.”

“How do you mean?”

“Everything has a give and take.” He pauses to sip his coffee. He makes a face, opens a sugar packet, and empties it into the coffee. “In order to have life, we must have death. In order to have water, we must have fire, for earth, we must have air. There is a give and take in existence, and it has to stay that way.”

“If it doesn’t?”

“Chaos.”

“You know, a lot of theology believes that chaos created the world.”

“And perhaps it did. But in order to make the world, chaos needed…” Hoseok takes his butter knife in one hand and sticks out his pointer finger with the other. You watch as he places the knife horizontally across his finger, sliding it just so until he slowly lets it go, leaving it teetering back and forth, but never falling. “Balance. There has to be even weight on the scales to make it work.” 

“Interesting. So you think there is true balance in the world.”

“Not always, which is why we must make it.”

“Hmm. You have some interesting opinions.” 

“I am an interesting person.”

You like Hoseok. Conversation flows easily and it seems that he either doesn’t notice or does not care that he draws glances around the room, particularly when he gives a high-pitched laugh, leaning backward on the metal legs of his chair to clap his hands excitedly. You swear you see the table next to you flinch, though you can’t imagine why.

Hoseok insists on paying the bill, though you fight him all the way to the register. The elderly woman behind the till jams the pricing in from the ticket and slams the cash drawer shut when Hoseok hands over the bills. She makes sure not to tell you to have a good day, and you feel her sharp stare as you leave the interior of The Diner. 

In fact, the stares of the citizens are just as intense outside. Hoseok rattles on about a time he got really high and forgot to feed his cat. “Yoongi was so mad he wouldn’t talk to me for a week.”

“What?” you ask, distracted by the way a group of men leaning against a red pickup glare. “Your cat talks?”

“Oh- he- well he meows, you know what I mean?”

“No, but I’m sure he was very vocal.” Hoseok smirks, toeing the gravel of the parking lot as you reach your car. You glance over at the pickup truck again, seeing the four sets of eyes fixated on the two of you. “Why does everyone around here stare?”

“They’ll ignore you soon enough if you ignore them.”

“They don’t seem to ignore you.”

He gives you a wry smile. “I guess you’re right. Going to visit your sister, then?”

Digging around in your bag, you search for keys. “Yeah, she lives out in some place called Grave Hollow. How creepy is that?” 

Silence is your only answer. You look up, pausing the search for your keys to find him staring at you with a blank expression. Your heart skips a beat - it’s the same wiped-clean face he had when you mentioned your sister investigating the occult. 

Licking your lips, you ignore the feeling of a weighted stone dropping into your stomach. Hoseok says nothing.

Then, he’s chipper again. “Well have fun,” he chirps, shrugging and giving a wave as he backs away to leave. “Hopefully she has some cool occult stuff to tell you about. You know where to find me!

It’s hard to keep track of the way Hoseok’s mood flips on a dime. You stare after him, but he’s all smiles and sunshine again before turning on a heel to walk out of the parking lot. His hands are tucked into his pockets and he tilts his face toward the azure sky, whistling a tune with a happy cadence. 

Something sticks to you as you watch him leave. You don’t know what it is, this feeling that you’re missing a critical detail. It’s like your instincts are scratching lightly at the door, but you have no key to flip the lock and no crowbar to force it open. 

Anxiety returns when you remember the weight of the eyes still focused on you. Hurriedly, you snatch your keys from your bag and get in your car, tossing your bag on the seat and starting the engine. As soon as it purrs to life, you feel instant relief. 

You hope that it lasts.

-

According to the research you’d done on Kill Devil, the town had been officially founded in the 1700s. Of course, being ‘officially’ founded didn’t mean much in the way of Western colonization. You had little doubt that the migration of people to the South chased out Native American tribes, as was the story everywhere. 

Kill Devil has been named such since its inception, which occurred a little after Georgia had been named an official state. The abundance of soil for cotton and peanut fields made it a wet dream for the expansion of cotton gins and eventually, peanuts - there was even a rumor that peanut butter had been invented in Kill Devil first, but you knew that to be untrue. 

A small town with a small impact. That was Kill Devil at the heart of its existence. It has always had a small population of sleepy folk. No stop lights, one church, a lot of paper companies coming in and cutting down trees, and some farming fields for various reasons.

There’s no reason that for a tiny little dot on the map, the town should be significant. 

And yet it had called your sister here. 

The car bounces, the suspension whining as you drive down the dirt road. A clay wall comes up on either side of you, roots of trees sticking out periodically. There’s no shoulder to the road, the rain has deepened the ruts on either side. You’re careful to keep in the middle, slowing down as the road tightens on corners. 

Pine stretches as far as the eye can see. You pass the occasional neon tape, marking sections of trees for the paper company to let grow a little longer before hacking them down. Several metal gates with keep out and declaring different hunting clubs flash by. There’s even a sign that says Rucker’s Meat Processing. 

GPS is unreliable out in the sticks where the cell towers don’t quite reach. You keep an eye on the flattened paper map in the passenger seat, marked with your red marker to make sure you take the right road.

A sigh of relief escapes you when you see a little metal post with a turn-off sign: Kill Ditch South. The house that your sister is renting lives off of that, only a mile down the road or so. Long drives appear between the trees, houses parked at the end of them. You feel a little less alone in the woods now knowing that there are people around. 

Though you’re not sure how helpful they would be if something was wrong. 

Worry creeps into your stomach as you slow the car. There’s a little mailbox with the address your sister gave you. It’s at the end of a short drive that’s been layered with gravel to make the incline easier on tires. It crunches beneath the tires as you drive toward the modest, white house. Your sister’s Four Runner is parked outside, making your heart thunder. 

Turning the car off, you slide out into the humid air, hands trembling. Locusts scream, hidden in the trees. The sun is at its zenith, beating down on you as you slowly walk toward the house. It’s a single-story with two sets of windows facing the front. A wrap-around porch that leans to the side stands empty, save for a single bench. 

As you pass your sister's car, you notice that the grass underneath is dead and dry. As if the car hasn’t moved for a while, denying the grass any sun to live. It makes you feel nauseous, feet like anvils as you take your first step up the stairs. 

The creak of the wood makes you flinch. 

“Hanna?” You call, voice shakier than you want it to be. “Hanna, it’s me! Don’t freak out!”

No one answers. Your stomach bubbles like acid, the slow drip of sweat down your neck making a chill rattle up your spine. You reach the door and swallow thickly, lifting your hands and knocking loudly. 

“Hanna?” 

Nothing but the sound of the locusts answers you. 

Your palms feel sweaty as you knock again. This time, your voice cracks when you call, “Hanna? Please answer the door.”

Wind sweeps across the trees. One thing about the wind in a land of pines and hills is that it’s loud, making a whooshing sound as it’s picked up by the boughs of the trees, rattling and letting their needles shake to the floor. 

It’s cool at your back and you feel your lip wobble when you lower your hand to the doorknob. When you twist, the door opens immediately, swinging of its own volition when you let go. 

Inside the house is the kind of silence that terrifies you in horror movies. The air is heavy. Your ears ring, searching for any rasp of sound to tell you that your sister is home. Licking your lips, you step over the threshold, the wooden floor cracking beneath the weight of your feet. 

To the immediate left of the door is an open kitchen. There are dishes on the dry rack and plants in the window, though they are wilted and dry. You chew your lip as you step further into the house, eyes sweeping around.

A blue, painted table stands in the middle of the kitchen. Piles of mail sit on top of it with a fake plant centerpiece and your sister's car keys.

Across from the kitchen is an open doorway with a stacked washer and dryer, and a folding table. It smells faintly of detergent, clothes folded in neat piles as if Hanna had just completed a laundry day.

Everything is silent in the living room. The couch looks cozy, with piles of blankets draped across it. There’s a faint smell of vanilla, though the wick on the candle doesn’t look like it’s been lit in a while. Dust collects on the TV stand and there are sandals by the door that leads to the back porch. 

Chewing your lip, you gently press your fingers to the door of Hanna’s bedroom, holding your breath. The sudden fear that it’s going to swing open and you’ll find your sister dead in her bed nearly incapacitates you, making the room spin a little as the door fully swings open. 

Nothing. No Hanna, no rotting smell of a dead body. Just an unmade bed in a room that smells vaguely of her cherry perfume, a bathroom with the door open, and a pile of clothes near the hamper.

The sight of the clothes on the floor and right next to the hamper slams you with a wave of nostalgia. You walk into the room and you unceremoniously plop yourself down on the edge of the bed. It sags underneath you but you don’t care, letting your face fall into your hands and letting a sob rip through you. 

Hanna isn’t here. You knew she wouldn’t be, but the relief that you don’t find her dead is so poignant that you can barely breathe past the snot clotting your nose and the way your throat constricts as you let out the fear. 

The sobs subside and you wipe your face, hands coming away sticky and wet. Through swollen eyes, you look around the room. With a wipe of your hands on your jeans, you get up and start looking around, pulling open drawers and looking for evidence of the last time that Hanna was in this home. 

It’s slow going. You’re unfamiliar with the space and you don’t know what to look for. It doesn’t seem like she had packed anything, but then again, how would you know if she did? 

There are signs that she hasn’t been in the house in weeks. Rotted food inside of the fridge, molded bread in the pantry. 

Outside, weeds grow around the steps. A cricket pops from the railing to the grass where its green body vanishes. The yard isn’t much of a yard - it’s open to the trees and a kudzu field to the west. 

Back inside, you grab Hanna’s keys and open her car. There is nothing inside that looks like she was trying to make a quick getaway. An extra pair of shoes shoved in the back, and an empty grocery bag she was using for trash - all normal things. 

In the passenger seat, you strike gold. 

Hanna’s journals and folders sit in the passenger seat, stacked in a leaning tower with pages sticking out from the edges of her books and slanted handwriting scrawled on the folder tabs. Gathering all of it, you head back inside and deposit the stack on the kitchen table before looking around the house again to see if there’s any sign of her. 

Something in your gut tells you that Hanna hasn’t been in the home for at least a month, if not more. 

Dread creeps into your stomach as you gather items and pack a bag. Your intention is to keep it on you at all times in the event that you find her cold and alone somewhere. The thought of needing it leaves a sour tang on your tongue, but you pack it nevertheless.

Bag over your shoulder and stack of Hanna’s investigative work in hand, you head off to your room at the motel. The afternoon sun still burns hot over your head, but you have no intention of sitting in the empty house that carries the scent of your sister’s absence. 

-

… While most historical accounts and official state documents indicate that Kill Devil was founded in 1730, journals buried deep in the city’s crumbling library have written records of townsfolk living in this settled town long before it was declared an official town. The journals reference the town as Covenstead and are filled with generations of the same family names. 

Booth. 

Park. 

Warren. 

Kim. 

Jung. 

Jeon. 

Min. 

Generations of these families settled in Covenstead and built what is now Kill Devil. From the description of the town in the collection of journals, it appears that the general layout of the town is similar to Kill Devil’s current city map. 

Throughout the journals, there is a reference to the Wood. It seems to be a place mentioned in reverence, and there are allusions to celebrations in the Wood with entries dated in alignment with sabbats on the Wheel of the Year. 

Only Mabon is referenced in any of the journals explicitly, in a strange entry from a man named Yoongi Min. I have written it here for safekeeping: We bringeth the little lamb to The Wood today for the honor of Mabon. I loathe seeing him go, for he hath brought cheer and many a smile to the Covenstead. May he bring us blessings and warmth in the winter. 

Your finger traces over your sister’s writing. She still writes in her cramped, crooked way, with the sabbats of pagan holidays crammed in the margins. You smile, biting your bottom lip again as you go through the written notes of her study. It is dizzying and you’re unsure what exactly you’re looking at, but something tickles the back of your mind as you reread the entry she copied from the long-dead Yoongi Min. There’s something you're missing.

This time, your eyes snag on a word. 

“The Covenstead,” you murmur, reading it over again. “Why would he call it the Covenstead? Is that just an older way of speaking?”

A tingle pricks your neck as you stare at the entry. You can’t understand what made your sister think this entry was odd besides the old-fashioned writing and reference to Mabon, because she writes nothing more on her analysis, and none of the journals she had been studying were anywhere you could find. 

Sighing, you push away her notebook and pull out a collection of folders and papers that she had on the town. It’s mostly renderings of the town in its heyday with maps and newspaper articles. There seems to be no correlation between her clippings of new business openings and random town news. 

Kill Devil Court House Gets New Building

Bird Flu? Poultry Farm in Trouble After Flock Dies

The Grove Neighborhood Building Plans Accepted by Mayor

Mayor’s Son Experiences Fatal Well Accident

Something catches your eye in the article about the mayor’s son who fell into a well and died at the bottom. You reach for your sister's notebook and flip to read the small dates shoved into the margins.

Mayor’s Son Experiences Fatal Well Accident

June 19, 1781

Litha: Summer Solstice

June 19-23

Grabbing the other newspaper clippings, you climb off of the bed and lay them flat against the sheets, each crinkling under the excited press of your fingers as your brain whirs. It’s a puzzle your sister seems to have figured out already, and one you don’t expect to understand.

But you do. 

Kill Devil Court House Gets New Building

February 14, 1899

Bird Flu? Poultry Farm in Trouble After Flock Dies

March 19, 1899

Ostara: Spring Equinox

March 19-22

You suck in a breath as you look at the next clipping, using your pointer finger to keep your place on the sabbats calendar your sister has written down to see that the article for the new neighborhood The Grove is dated only a month before the mayor's son fell tragically in the well. 

“Holy shit, Hanna,” you mutter, rubbing a hand over your mouth and staring with burning eyes at the dates. “They match with pagan rituals? Something good, followed by something bad… like revenge? Punishment? Payment?” 

The question bothers you. A flutter in your gut tells you that you’re asking the right questions as you stare at the pages, unseeing and trying to understand what your sister is getting at. She didn’t write down her thoughts explicitly - in case anyone stole her work, she’d said - and now you’re wishing she weren’t so paranoid. Or that she at least used a computer. 

It isn’t an easy answer to puzzle out. An ache has settled deep in your temples and your half-eaten dinner has long gone cold. You decide you’ve earned a shower, though you don’t go into the bathroom without the bug spray armed and ready. 

Briefly, you think about Hoseok. Such an oddity to the town. You can’t help but think about the way he changes from light to dark so quickly, face becoming shadowed and eyes masked, expression there and gone so quickly that you’re unsure if you saw it at all. 

Strange. It’s all very strange. 

-

There is a shadow in the parking lot again. This time, it’s closer. The bulb burning above the lot flickers, but stays on. The shadow stands just beyond the silver halo of light it distributes.

No moon hangs in the sky. It is dark dark dark - impossibly dark. You stare through a crack in your curtains, watching the shadow as it watches you. Dread weighs down the pit of your stomach and you feel a fresh wave of terror-laced nausea sweep through you. 

You slide a foot backward gently, preparing to step away from the window. The shadow twitches and cocks its head to the side, not unlike a dog curious about something it’s heard. You suck in a sharp breath and hold it in, air screaming in your lungs, heart racing a frantic staccato. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck it seems to say, beating until it’s all you can hear and feel, pumping your system so full of adrenaline that you feel light-headed. 

Your heart turns into a drum, frantic. It beats louder and louder and you feel rooted to your spot on the carpet, the soles of your feet surgical-stitched to the ugly shag carpet. You stare and stare and stare at the shadow and your heart is hammering so loud boom boom BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM-

Sweat-drenched and gasping for air, you sit up. Your heart pounds so hard you can feel it under the palm you have pressed against your chest. But the banging is coming from the hotel door, a steady stream of closed-fist hammering and Hoseok’s voice calling your name. 

Peeling the covers back from your damp skin, you stumble to the door, nightmare-drunk and disoriented. You forget to remove the chain from the door, yanking it open and immediately slamming it to a stop as the chain pulls, refusing to let the door open.

Hoseok is on the other side, hair slightly disheveled, brows pulled together. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants, a casual look by anyone’s standards but still effortlessly put together. 

“Shit, hold on,” you slur, tongue heavy in your mouth with sleep. Closing the door, you slide the chain out, then reopen it successfully. “Sorry, is everything-”

“What’s going on?”

“What?”

His gaze is thunderous as he looks past you into your room. “You were screaming at the top of your lungs.”

Heat flushes your neck and face. “I-I’m sorry. I was having a nightmare. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’m not mad. What’s going on?”

In the shadow of the night, he looks dangerous, made up of edges and eyes narrowed. “Can I come in?” 

You open the door and move out of his way. “Sure.”

“Thanks.”

Out of habit, you latch the door when you shut it.

Hoseok is a little out of place in your room. Even when dressed down, he looks like he belongs on a private jet, lounging among soft, polished leather and sipping exotic coffee. Not in a rundown motel room with peeling wallpaper and smoke-stained ceilings. 

“What’s all this?” Your stomach plummets when he sees the journals and papers on your bed. you rush to shove it all under the blanket but Hoseok is fast, plucking a sheet of paper and looking over it, face pinched. “Is this what you meant by your sister studies the occult?”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just um- looking over her work.” 

“You know about the occult?”

“Not at all.”

He glances at you, razor-sharp. “Then why would you be looking it over for her?”

The atmosphere shifts. It occurs to you that he doesn’t know your sister is missing. Has no idea that you’re desperately trying to put together pieces of a broken puzzle, without any clue on where to find the remaining parts to view the entire picture. 

You weigh the options of lying, losing precious time as the silence hangs heavy and awkward between the two of you. He watches, brows raised and expectant, fingers gripping the paper. 

“My sister is missing.” It feels weird to say it. Your tongue feels heavy and as you stare over his shoulder at a fixed spot on the wall, it feels like someone else enters your body to tell him, “I came here because no one would help me find her. She was here studying the town's occult myths for work and vanished. I had this… horrible feeling when she stopped calling and answering.”

“Have you contacted the authorities?”

You scoff and throw a glare at him. “Of course I have. It’s useless and frustrating. No one seems to give a shit that there is a missing person, and every lawyer, law officer and city official I talk to don’t fucking care. It’s like they’re all programmed to give me the same answer. They keep telling me that they’ve seen her around or that she’s probably ignoring me on purpose. They make me seem crazy.”

You expect him to tell you to leave it to the authorities. That’s what Hanna’s boss had told you to do. No one seems to be alarmed, no one cares. But you do. Desperately. And you cannot wrap your head around them looking the other way. 

You’re preparing for the same reaction when Hoseok surprises you by saying, “You’re not crazy.”

“I’m not?”

He quirks a brow and his rosebud lips twitch in a smirk. “Well, you probably are. But not for this. Have you asked around town about her?”

You shake your head. “I only went to the house that she was staying at. I wanted to see if maybe she really was ignoring me or maybe just… I don’t know. In the zone for work. She wasn’t there and it doesn’t look like there was any sign of distress.” 

“Take me there.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.” He tosses the papers onto the pile on your bed. “We’ll be safe.”

“First of all,” you hedge. “How do I know that? I barely know you. Second of all, what is going there in the middle of the night going to help?”

“I’m good at investigating. Maybe I’ll see something that you don’t.”

“Sorry, are you a cop now?”

“No, it’s hard to explain but I promise I’m trying to help you.” When you don’t move, Hoseok grimaces. “Look,” he explains evenly. “I really am trying to help you. I haven’t been entirely honest about why I’m here in this town. I came because I was also interested in some things happening here. Now I’m worried your sister is involved.”

Your heart squeezes painfully in your chest. “Involved how?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping it’s a coincidence. Believe it or not, those do happen. But I’d like to visit her house to see if there’s anything at all that sticks out to me.” You hesitate, chewing on your lip. You don’t really know him, and now you trust him even less with his reasoning. “Please,” he adds. 

You relent. “Fine.” Hanna is your main goal. You don’t trust Hoseok, but you wonder if he really can help you when no one else has. “Let’s go.” 

Damp air rushes through the open windows of your car. You lowered them as you got in for a quick escape if Hoseok attacks you while you drive. He says nothing in the passenger seat, eyes fixed on the pine trees rushing behind you. 

Outside, the world is painted night-blue from the moon. There’s a weird hue to everything, making it feel as though you’re wading with heavy limbs through a dream. It’s no better when you arrive at the dark house.

It looks terrifying at night. There’s no street light to guide you, only that of the silver moon and the bright halogen lights of your car. You turn off your vehicle but switch the headlights on, turning on the high beams to shine on the house. 

On the edges of where the light fades to shadow, your fear lies. The trees look taller than in the daylight, their branches like craggy limbs and reaching fingers. Anxiety bubbles uncomfortably in your stomach. 

Each crunch of the grass beneath your feet falls too loud against the heavy silence. Here, you notice that the crickets are no longer singing. It’s just the hush of the wind gusting through the canyons and the far-away swell as it blows up the hills. 

Though it’s not cool outside, there’s a chill on your skin. Hoseok walks up to the house, the beams of the car’s headlights throwing his shadow across it in jarring, monstrous shapes. You keep your eyes focused on him and your keys tucked in your hand, ready to use them as a weapon if needed. 

Hoseok doesn’t seem concerned about your anxiety or the silence thrumming around the home. He walks up the steps and opens the door, vanishing into the dark mouth of the threshold. For a moment, you stand in the front yard, getting tunnel vision as you stare at the darkness in the doorway. 

You imagine stepping over the threshold into that cool dark, letting it suck you in. You imagine that as soon as your shoes hit the creaking floor, Hoseok will snatch you by the waist and pull you into the belly of the beast. Once in his clutches, he’ll throw you to the ground and the last thing you’ll remember is-

Hoseok reappears in the doorway. You blink and the waking nightmare melts away, so vivid that you’re shaking where you’re standing, looking at him in confusion. He hops down the stairs, scowling as he crosses the front lawn in a few long strides. 

He pauses when he sees your face. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

“I…” you shake your head, trying to dispel the weird vision you had a moment ago. “Nothing. I just don’t like the dark very much.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you find anything?”

His lip twitches. It’s almost impossible to detect, but you’re so focused on his face and trying not to picture him as the man in the terrifying thought you had moments ago, that you see it. “No.” 

Lying. He’s lying. You clutch your keys and your breath quickens. He moves to round the side of the car and take the passenger seat, but you step in front of him. He pulls up short, eyes narrowing as you stand between him and the vehicle, blood pumping. 

“I think you’re lying.”

“About what?”

“A lot of things.”

“What gives you that impression?”

“My instinct.”

He hums. “Instinct isn’t always a good thing.” He looks you up and down. “I didn’t find anything,” he says again. “I just got a really weird feeling inside of the house.”

“And?”

“And it’s the same weird feeling I’ve gotten in other places where people visiting went missing. Including the motel we’re staying at.” That makes you recoil. You feel the blood drain from your face, making you a little dizzy. You don’t know what’s going on, don’t understand what he’s getting at. “Your sister’s notes were about the covenstead here.”

That word again. The covenstead and not Covenstead, like a town name. “It was the town name before it was Kill Devil.” 

“No,” he corrects. “It was a landmark. A covenstead, for people who lived here. A coven.” 

“A coven.” He nods. “Like vampires and witches?” 

Hanna’s notes had included all of those pagan holidays crammed in the margins of her work. Marking dates of occurrences that coincided with sabbat holidays. “Hoseok,” you say slowly. “Are you telling me that a bunch of witches live here and have kidnapped my sister?”

He regards you for a moment, eyes flickering up and down. His face is unreadable and dark in the night air, eyes shadowed and haunting. “That’s actually exactly what I’m saying.”

“Witches aren’t real.” 

He frowns. “I can prove that they are.” 

“How?”

He gestures to the car. “Let’s go.” 

-

When you were younger, your sister always believed in magic. You remember spending all of October huddled on the couch with crocheted blankets, watching Halloween movies with the blanket pulled warm over scabbed knees, with popcorn-greased fingers tucked under heated thighs. Hanna always picked the movies - Halloween was her time of the year and you were happy to indulge. 

Hanna’s choices were always superb. Hocus Pocus received more airtime than anything else, replayed between Halloweentown one and two, Practical Magic, The Witches and The Addams Family among others. Every night of the month was crammed full of magic and spells and haunted houses, sweetened by candy corn and Butterfingers. 

Those were the nights that you loved the most. There was no fighting, no whining and crying over Hanna stealing your hair clips or you breaking her hair dryer. It was just the two of you, pressed skin-to-skin and spelled by the scrolling movies.

It’s as close to magic as you’ve ever been. You don’t think you were ever closer to her than in those moments. Under the blankets and the dim candles your mother lit, you were one being, melded. You knew when she would gasp at every jump scare and whisper each one of her favorite lines. 

Thinking back on it, you wonder if Hanna was onto something. She always insisted that parts of the movies had to be true. Stories are rooted in history, and though myth and legend changed with culture, colonization and the introduction of new religions, science and ideas, there was something about the concept of magic and spirit that felt real to her. 

It was why she went to school and majored in journalism with minors in folklore and history. She had even started a master's program for occult studies and folklore, spending late nights studying between traveling across the country from haunt to haunt for her job. 

Staring at her work on the bed of your hotel room as Hoseok adds some of his own notes and findings, you have never missed her more. There is a sudden ache inside of your chest, so strong that it takes your breath away. Your hand goes to the necklace at your neck, feeling flushed, heart pounding. 

Hoseok is explaining how there used to be a coven of witches that lived in the Wood long before Kill Devil existed. The Wood, Hoseok explains, is like a living and breathing conduit of power. It was something that gave the coven power but also needed to be fed. 

The Covenstead. You remember the journal entry that had called it the covenstead. A place where witches commune and live together as one functioning body of magic. That much power does things to a place, skews the way the world works a little bit. He gives examples of places all around the world with similar experiences: the Bermuda Triangle, Door To Hell, Reed Flute Cave. All places where an abundance of magic and energy warps the way life functions. 

But the Wood was strange before the witches got here. Hoseok rolls out a map, fingers tracing the lines of the city. Clarity snaps like a rubberband stinging against skin as you stare at it, lips parted, inhaling sharply. 

The city roads make a pentagram, and at the very center is the courthouse. 

“This is on purpose,” Hoseok explains. “There are other places in the world where the way the city or town or village is built is like a pentagram. Usually, these are called portals. They’re different from faerie rings which have their own power and distortions. These portals are for practicing witches and those who know how to use them.”

“Portals for what?”

“Creatures of great power that exist in worlds that don’t belong to us. Part of what gives witches their ability to perform magic is their energy. They are attuned to the world around them in a way that humans are not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you understand the concept of third and fourth dimensions?” 

“Third dimension is what we live in,” you answer mechanically, somewhat familiar with the idea. “If a fourth dimension existed, we wouldn’t know because it moves in a way that we are unable to perceive. The fourth dimension, in theory, is movement and sight we would never have.”

“Exactly. But witches are attuned to that. These pentagrams,” Hoseok murmurs, tapping the map. “Are made to connect to the fourth dimension. Pentagrams are not inherently evil or even paranormal, but similar to sacred geometry, they… radiate at a frequency that other dimensions do. Powerful symbols like this have existed since Mesopotamia.” 

“I… how does this prove that magic is real?”

For a moment, you’re distracted by the way Hoseok’s artful fingers pluck your sister's notebook from the bed. He flips until you’re looking at her journal entries and the newspaper clippings with dates and headlines. 

“Witchcraft is different in every culture and part of the world. These holidays have roots in Celtic and Welsh craft. It was brought over by the pilgrims when people fled England and traveled here. This is old - not as old as whatever lives in the Wood, but old enough that it’s powerful. These dates you’re looking at? They’re sacrifices to keep the Wood powerful.”

“How do you even know all of this?”

“I’ve studied it my entire life.”

“Why?” 

“It’s just something that runs in my family. We’re very spiritual people.” Something about the way his voice wavers makes you look at him sharply. Hoseok isn’t looking at you, busying himself with sifting through papers. There’s a pinch in your gut that makes you think he’s lying, but you’re afraid to push the matter. 

“Get some rest,” he says, breaking your exhausted train of thought. “We can talk more in the morning when you’re not exhausted.” 

“Yeah.” You rub your weary eyes. “Yeah, okay.” 

With Hoseok gone, you crawl into the bed, leaving the light on, staring off into the distance as your hand clutches your necklace. Your lip trembles and your throat constricts painfully. When you close your eyes, you feel tears slide down your face. 

Tucking your face into the pillow to hide your tears, you let out a small, aching sound. You just want to know where your sister is, and somehow you’ve landed in the middle of a hateful little town with strange little people and a strange little fantasy.

Crying is inevitable. But at least it puts you to sleep.

-

This time, you know you’re dreaming. You don’t know how you know, but you do. There’s a watery feeling to the hotel room when you open your eyes. As though you’re both there and you’re not.

You glance at the clock but the numbers are all wrong. You rub your eyes and look again, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t make sense of them.

You want to sit up. You move your arms - no, you try to move your arms. They don’t move, suddenly too heavy to slide under the covers of your blanket and peel it back. Panic sparks in you as you try to shift your legs, but though you can feel them, you can’t move them.

Terror as you’ve never known slides between your ribs, sharp and poignant. You can’t breathe and you know you’re dreaming and yet you can’t move. You close your eyes, brain repeating the same words over and over again: wake up wake up wake up wake up WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP-

It doesn’t happen. You open your eyes and your room still has the dream-glazed light to it, and you still can’t move. Something shifts in your peripheral vision. Your heart seizes in your chest so sharply you think you’ll die. 

You cannot turn your head to look at the shadow that moves just beyond your sight. Tears slip from your eyes, hot, wet and burning. You can’t wipe them. They blind you, turn your vision into an opaque, watery mess as something slides to the foot of your bed. 

When you feel the mattress dip, you try to scream. The sound is locked in your throat, with so much force behind it that you wait for your vocal cords to explode. The fear is raw now, your eyes wild, tears leaking as you mentally thrash and thrash and thrash. 

Weight shifts on either side of the bed and you have the sense that there is someone crawling on you but you can’t see beyond your crying, can’t hear beyond the pounding of your own heartbeat slamming in your ears, blocking out every other noise and-

Something invisible to you grips your throat. You still have the instinct to move, driving you to madness as your brain signals for your hands to fly to your assailant and yank and remove the hold on your neck. 

It’s crushing. You gasp for air, no noise coming out as the grip tightens, and you know with certainty that this is it. Whatever dream this is will kill you, this time. 

The realization that you’re going to die suddenly mutes the terror. It slides behind a glass door, beating its fists, but it's duller now. You have sharper clarity, and briefly you think of what Hoseok said about beings from the fourth dimension, and how the witches summon them through their craft here. To this place. Where you cannot perceive them. 

You wonder if this happened to Hanna. You miss her, your sister, with big dreams and fast smiles and a head full of magic and wondering. This, you think, is how you go. And perhaps you’ll join her. 

Thoughts blend together, sloshed wine in a glass. They’re warm and liquid and have no shape to them, no real purpose. It’s like you know you’re thinking, but you don’t know of what. Darkness pools at the edge of your vision. It feels cold and alone but you drift toward it, away from the pain. 

And then you can breathe. 

Air comes sweeping in, forcing its way into your mouth, into your lungs. Your lungs inflate so painfully that for a split second, you think they’re on fire. Oxygen burns its way through you and bursts of color explode on the canvas of your closed eyes - you don’t remember closing your eyes. 

You roll over in bed, coughing, mouth wet with spit and phlegm as you try to gulp in as much air as you can. 

High-pitched ringing whines in your ears, and there are muffled sounds on the other end of it. The motel room tilts back into vision, melting into place. You think that the room has reloaded into your world wrong - everything is crooked. 

Then you realize you’re laying on your side, gagging and gasping for air. There is a hand against to your back, palm cold, fingertips freezing. The touch, you realize, feels full of energy, your spine tingling where it’s pressed against you. 

Lurching away from the touch, you roll to the side of the bed, looking at the person whose hand had been pressed against you. 

Hoseok’s tangled in the sheets, hair a mess, shirtless and in sweats. He’s panting, flushed, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his body. But it’s his eyes that stop you from scrambling away. They’re dark, burning like two pieces of coal as he looks at you, kneeling with his hands in his lap, palms facing the ceiling. 

Hoseok says something. The ringing in your ears has just started to die down and you shake your head, unsure of what he means and not confident in your ability to speak. 

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

You stare at him. “What the fuck just happened to me?”

“This is my fault, I’m so sorry.”

“What?” 

He lifts his hands and you flinch. The look on his face is pure heartbreak, shrouded in golden light. “Please,” he murmurs. “Let me help you. I’m not going to hurt you.” 

It’s quiet, save for the sound of the humming air conditioner. 

Trust your gut, your sister had said. 

So you do because he’s offered to help you thus far. You nod, giving him access to you. He sags in relief, shuffling forward tentatively as he takes your face in his hands. His palms are impossibly warm. Your eyes flutter shut at the touch, unable to look at him this close, this boy of light and something, as he cradles your face. 

Warmth pools in your face, saturating down to your neck and chest. The ache in your lungs eases, and the lump in your throat continues to recede. You don’t want to ask what he’s doing. You don’t want to think. You don’t want to feel the terror of moments ago ever again, and with the way Hoseok is touching you, so close that his breath fans your brow, and you can smell him like rain and lavender, you want to embrace it. 

There’s no thought process to the way you lean up into him. Your eyes are closed, your breath shaking as you seek him. Hoseok makes a surprised noise, but it vanishes as you press your lips against his.

Relief sweeps through you. It’s nothing you’ve ever felt before, every drop of terror fading away, momentarily forgotten. Every ache vanishes. It’s just Hoseok and the way he burns brighter than the sun, and the way it doesn’t hurt anymore. 

After a brief moment of hesitation, he kisses you back. It’s sweet and soft-lipped, his fingers pressing into the side of your face gently as he pulls you to him. You follow his pull, both physically and something like a tether, getting up on your knees to get closer. 

Hoseok breaks the kiss, nose brushing yours. You open your eyes, half-lidded and feeling dizzy from just the gentle press of lips. His eyes are dark, but you see the light flecks of brown in them, like an entire world of sun and stars exist in their depths. 

“Make it go away,” you whisper.

You don’t specify. The pain, the nightmares, the fear, the weird town, the worry about your sister. You want it all to stop and this person you barely know - you feel as though he can take it away. Or mute it. 

He nods, eyes closing as he kisses you properly. You forget what you were worried about, and it’s all you can do not to fall headfirst into Hoseok. His mouth is warm and wet, tongue soft but greedy as he pries your mouth open, drinking you in. 

Hoseok’s lips tingle against yours, sending a shiver skating down your spine. You wrap your hands around his neck, fingers tangling in the silky strands there. He hums appreciatively when your nails slow-scratch at the base of his scalp. 

Carefully, Hoseok shuffles you into his lap. Your knees dip on the mattress on either side of his hips, straddling his waist. His hands find the hem of your sleep shirt and pull upward. You break the kiss, a string of spit connecting your flushed mouths before the garment breaks it.

The room is cold, air hitting your bare chest and hardening your nipples immediately. You whine but Hoseok is fast, pressing your chest to his as he attaches his mouth to your neck, sucking at the tender flesh sharply. 

“Fuck,” you whisper, letting your head drop backward heavily. Your eyes are shut and the world feels like it’s spinning. He has one hand on your hip, the other on the small of your back, pressing you to him to keep you warm and to rock your hips gently into his. “Feels good.”

He hums in response, sucking wet stains onto your flesh as he moves toward your chest. You push your tits out to meet his searching mouth, gasping lightly when the rough drag of his tongue swipes across your nipple. 

The sensation is overwhelming. Your fingers dig into the back of his neck as Hoseok sucks your peak greedily. You’re grinding into his lap on your own now, panties clinging to your hot, sticky folds as you seek friction. He’s hard beneath you and you want to feel him. 

Letting you rut in his lap, Hoseok drags delicate fingers over the curve of your ass and thigh, and his nails leave goosebumps in their wake. The feeling between your legs and at the base of your spine is heady as he lets go of one nipple with a sharp pop, tongue tracing a sloppy line to the other. 

Hoseok’s teeth tease the tight bud and you whine. “Oh?” he asks, voice rough and low. “Gonna be a baby about it?”

You shake your head, but your lip juts out as you look at him, dazed. “Want more.”

“Tell me.”

Dropping one hand from his neck, you take the hand resting on your thigh, guiding it between your legs. Hoseok presses the pads of his fingers to your underwear and you let out a keen. It’s not nearly enough, but the pressure sends another wave of arousal flooding through you. 

“Hmm,” he hums, dragging his fingers back and forth over the damp cloth. “Soaked from just that, huh?” You nod and he bites your collarbone. Fuck, he’s going to kill you, sending another tremble down your frame. He hooks a finger in your underwear, sliding against your glossy folds experimentally and he curses, “Fuck. Pussy is already messy and I’ve barely touched you.”

“Please.”

“What do you want? I already asked.”

“More.” Hoseok presses your clit, letting you drip onto his fingers, but he doesn’t move them. You grit your teeth. “Want your fingers,” you ask through clenched teeth. “Fuck me with them, anything. Please.” 

He grins, face wicked before he kisses your nose. “See, you just had to tell me.” 

You’re tense as he pulls your underwear to the side, shoving the fabric against your thigh. Cool air hits your cunt. You can’t recall ever wanting someone like this, vibrating uncontrollably as he traces your slit with his fingers, lazily circling your clit.

A sigh of relief escapes your lips and you drop your forehead on Hoseok’s shoulder. He lets you sag against him as he plays with your pussy, fingers barely dipping to tease your hole and gather juices before coming back to trace your clit, applying delicious pressure. 

It feels so good. It’s mind-numbing, letting him do what he wants. Hoseok pants in your ear, breathing stilted between chaste kisses against the side of your head. 

Painfully slow, Hoseok inserts a single finger into your wet heat. The sound you let out is high-pitched and loud. It’s not nearly enough, but you lose all sense of asking for more as his finger slides in deep, pressing against your front wall to massage that delicate spot inside of you.

“Oh shit,” you stutter, unable to help it. 

He laughs, voice deep when he asks, “Yeah? That the spot?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He slow-drags his finger in and out of your pussy, fucking you slowly. He curses, teasing you only for a moment before he gifts you another. The stretch is so much better, and you melt. He thrusts leisurely, not hard and fast but deep. Your walls swallow his fingers, gripping them and begging him not to stop as a tight coil winds in your stomach as he presses hard against your g-spot.

It’s messy, the wet drag of his fingers in your cunt. You feel the slow drip of arousal every time he pulls back, soaking his hand. It drops down your thighs as he picks up the pace. You lift your hips a little, adding a bounce to his motions. 

“Oh? You wanna do it?” He stops moving his hand and you let out a desperate sound. He laughs. “No, go ahead. If you’re so eager, do it yourself. Fuck yourself on my fingers.”

Seeking balance by holding his shoulders, you grip him tight, face tucked in his neck as you maneuver yourself, using your knees to lightly fuck yourself on his fingers. It feels so good, and you adjust the angle until you feel him hit that spot again, making you see stars. 

It’s electric, this feeling rippling in your bloodstream. It feels different with Hoseok and you can’t place why, but your orgasm is building so sharply in your stomach that you nearly stop thrusting, overwhelmed by the sensation. 

The pressure in your stomach winds and winds and winds until it snaps, every muscle in your thighs and ass squeezing tight, your hands turning to an iron grip, breath stuck in your lungs as you let out a strangled sound, squeezing Hoseok’s fingers as you come. 

Hoseok is whispering something in your ear, but you can’t hear him over the thundering heartbeat of your pulse, shaking as you come down from your high. When you do, you’re vaguely aware that he’s pulled his fingers out, but he’s massaging the tight ring of muscles, making you shiver.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Wanna see you stretch yourself on my cock like that.”

“Wanna,” you mumbled. 

Your limbs are heavy and lazy as you shuffle, uncoordinated. Hoseok laughs, finding you endearing as you scowl and shift off his lap. His touch is featherlight as he pulls your panties off. You need him, completely naked and shivering as your eyes drop from the smooth, carved planes of his chest and abs to the heavy imprint of his cock in his sweats.

And the wet stain mess you’ve made. 

Flushed, you watch as he looks up at you, smirking. “Go on.” 

Scooting toward him with eager hands, you rest with your feet tucked under you. Dipping your touch below his waistband, you grasp him firmly, cock heavy in your hand. He sighs, head tilting back a little while you slide your grip along his shaft.

Brushing your thumb over his tip to collect hot, sticky precum, you spread it, looking up at him through your eyelashes as you stroke him gently, testing the waters. His hips twitch and his mouth parts, gold light of the lamp turning him into Giovanni’s Apollo. He is ethereal, a burning sun and you suddenly understand why Icarus flew to his demise.

Maybe you will too. 

With your other hand, you push Hoseok’s sweats down. Though you could feel the size and swollen weight of him in your hand, it’s still a marvel when you see his thick length, dark tip oozing precum. 

A hiss escapes his teeth when you give him a firm squeeze. He lets you pump him lazily, and your mouth catches the underside of his jaw, teething and sucking sharp marks into his skin. He tastes like something electric and a little bit of sweat, your tongue buzzing. 

“Hmm,” he hums, fingers gripping the back of your neck to pull your mouth back up to his. It’s more spit and him gasping into your mouth more than anything. “You know how stunning you are?”

You feel heat creep up in your cheeks. Hoseok shuffles away from you and you let go of your grip on him, watching his dick slap against his stomach, smearing precum. He sits near the headboard, leaning against the wallpaper and staring at you with hungry eyes. 

“You’re going to make me shy,” you say softly, though you still crawl toward him. You can feel the slick slide of your inner thighs. He pumps his cock lazily, giving you a look that says he doesn’t believe you. “You’re pretty.”

“Think so?”

You nod, a little light-headed and uneven. You tilt toward the side and he catches you, hands sticky from your mixed arousal. Bending down, you capture his lips. Hoseok runs the crown of his cock through your folds and you moan, lips parting. He drinks in your sounds, licking them from the roof of your mouth. 

For a moment, it’s just the teasing and sloppy kissing, pausing to pant into each other's mouths, slick from sweat. He presses the blunt head of his dick into your hole, dipping only a little before retreating and sliding back up to tease your clit.

“Hoseok,” you growl, biting on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, the iron tang blooming in your mouth. He hisses out a laugh and does it again. This time, you lower your pussy, trying to catch him on an angle to sink down on him. “Stoooop.”

“Whiny baby,” he teases again. “Cock-hungry, huh?”

“Wanna be full.”

“Mmm.”

Hoseok repeats the motion, but this time lets you sink slowly on the length of him. The stretch stings, hurt-laced pleasure as you suck in a sharp breath and hold it. It feels like your lungs might burst, shaking as you slide down until your ass rests on his damp thighs and you feel the tip of his cock deep in your gut. 

“Fuck,” you gasp, leaning forward, palms pressed to his shoulders. They slide a little, his skin warm and sweaty. You dig your nails in for purchase and he sucks in a sharp breath, but lets you claw your way back to sanity from the feeling. “Deep.”

His hands find purchase on your ass, digging in and massaging. “Come on, then. You were so eager for my fingers.” 

You lift your hips a little, the slide delicious against your warm walls, and drop down with a wet smack. You both moan at that and you grin, putting the weight into Hoseok’s shoulders as you lift your hips again, hypnotized by the wet schlick of your cunt sliding on his length. 

Everything fades away again. Your thighs burn as you increase your movements, chasing the buzz that has settled deep in your stomach. Hoseok lets you use him, his eyes fixed on the way your cunt drips into his lap. 

His nails bite into the meat of your ass and you feel dragged under by the pleasure, the sting of his grip and the pressure of his cock hitting your g-spot sending you further and further.

Your legs grow a little tired, movements sloppy. Hoseok doesn’t mind, planting his feet on the bed and thrusting upward to meet you, hands supporting your weight under your ass. He helps lift you, pulling you up and down until you’re mumbling incoherently. 

It feels mind-numbingly good, and the tension in your stomach grows taught and tight, your second orgasm oncoming. 

“Come on,” Hoseok demands between clenched teeth. “Give it to me.” 

You nod, sliding a hand between your thighs, fingers circling your clit with just enough pressure and speed to get you shaking again. White spots appear in your vision as you squeeze your eyes shut, letting him take over and fuck up into you, cunt gushing as you come hard enough around him that you fall forward. 

Hoseok lets you lay on his chest, dead weight as he claws at your ass and thighs, rutting up into you. You’re dimly aware of the soaked mess of your smacking bodies, but your ears are ringing and you feel lighter than you’ve ever felt before. 

You begin to whine in oversensitivity just as Hoseok slams into you as deep as he can, cock twitching and filling you up. You shiver as he grunts, hips bucking with a wet squelch as he gently fucks you through his orgasm.

Both of you lay there in a messy pile as his cock softens inside of you. Cum pools between your pressed bodies, but you don’t care. The room is humid, the light dim with the haze of how far gone you feel. Hoseok traces soft circles on your hips with his fingers. Your mouth is pressed against his jaw, breath kissing his skin. 

You could fall asleep here, you think. It’s nice to forget for a while, to let your body feel the pounding of his heart against your chest, the shaking of his thighs against yours, the ache in your muscles. 

Heaviness tugs at you, so close to pulling you under, but Hoseok stirs. You feel drunk, letting him peel the two of you apart until you’re stumbling to the shower. The air makes your tacky, cum-covered skin cold. 

It’s hard to fit both of you in the shower, but you manage it, rotating under the rough spray of the hot water, hands exploring and kneading sore muscles. Your lips are abused and feel bruised, but it doesn’t stop you from seeking the comfort of his mouth, the world turning to static every time you kiss him. 

The motel room smells like sex and sweat when you return to peel clothes back on. Wordlessly, Hoseok takes your hand and leads you to his room on the other side of the wall. It has the same faded wallpaper, the same dusty and stained lampshades, but it looks more lived in.

There are added pieces in the room. A dehumidifier hums in the corner, and there is a hamper full of clothes. Hoseok has added plants near the window, plasticky leaves vibrant green and shiny. Burnt-out incense sits on the plastic folding table he’s erected, books and papers splayed out over its surface. There’s a collection of crystals you can’t identify.

An inviting bed beckons you. You both fall into it, heavy-limbed and sighing. It smells like Hoseok, a mix of rain and lavender. There’s a sense of trepidation as you roll over on the mattress.

Carefully, Hoseok pulls you to him. He presses your back to his chest, one arm going under his head as he yawns and smacks his lips lightly, the other looping over your waist.  

“No one is going to bother you,” he sleep-slurs. “I got rid of them. And they won’t go against me.”

You hum, sleep crawling up and stealing your thoughts. You wonder how he got rid of them and why they’re afraid of him. 

It isn’t until he mumbles a response that you realize you’ve spoken your question out loud. “Because,” he sighs, words slow and soft, as he drifts off to sleep. “I told them you’re mine.” 

Hoseok’s words are lost on you because you’re long asleep. 

-

No dreams disturb you. When you wake up, you feel the weight of the night before on you. It’s cool and empty behind you as you startle, realizing you’d fallen asleep with Hoseok there. You look over your shoulder, blinking away sleep, and see that it’s just you in the dark room.

From the bathroom, you can hear the shower. You relax a little, groaning as you roll to your back and stare up at the popcorn-textured ceiling. Your thighs still burn with the soreness from the night before and you bite your bottom lip, trying to conceal your grin. 

Gently, you bring your hand to prod at your neck where it had hurt so much last night. You remember the lock-limb nightmare, the feeling of needing to scream. The thought that you were dying. 

Hoseok had saved you, but it begged the question of how. You remember asking him last night, but you cannot remember what he answered. You’re also surprised to find that you’re not in any pain from whoever or whatever had attacked you. 

Unease turns your stomach but you decide to crawl out of his bed, wandering around his room. A salt lamp casts an orange glow on his makeshift desk. You’re drawn to the mess on top of it, looking at the stacks of books and frowning. They’re not in English - or any language that you know, embossed symbols and shapes on the covers and cracked spines. 

Lifting a heavy, green canvas book, you flip it over in your hands. The edges of the paper are yellow and oxidized with time and there is a gold symbol pressed on the front. Your fingers trace the groove, remembering what Hoseok said the day before about sacred geometry. 

Putting it down, you select another book. It has a pentagram on it. When you flip the book open, the pages are filled with slanted writing, diagrams, and shapes. You recognize sabbat dates and stop when you get to a picture of interlocking shapes. You trace the symbol absently, wondering what it means. 

Why does he have books like this? 

A current of electricity slides up the finger that’s tracing the symbol. You squeak in surprise and drop it, cringing at the loud clatter that it makes against the table. The shower flips off and you look at the shut door. Hoseok moves around before opening the door, sticking his head out. He’s dripping in water, hair slicked back, golden skin glistening. 

Despite the night before, you avert your eyes, shy. He doesn’t notice or doesn’t say anything, instead asking. “You okay?” He glances down at the books. “Good luck reading those.” 

“Yeah,” you answer absently.

He grins. “Be out in a second.”

When Hoseok shuts the door, you feel unsettled. Rubbing your arms to fend off a sudden chill, you continue looking through the things on his table. There’s a small glass case with the exoskeleton of a frog. You cringe, thinking about Hoseok’s pet frog awaiting death in his pitcher plants.

Hoseok’s phone starts vibrating on the desk, making you gasp. Your hand goes to your chest, feeling the way your heart pounds violently against your rib cage. Looking at the screen, you see that someone named Yoongi is calling him. 

You hesitate, cocking your head. The name rings familiar, and you watch as the call goes to voicemail. The screen fades to black but you keep staring at it. Not for the first time on your trip, you get the sense that you’re missing something, that there is something right there. 

A text from Yoongi comes in, lighting up the screen. 

Jung, you better not be fucking around with your prey again. We need to prepare. 

It doesn’t sit well with you. When the screen goes dark, you tap it, bringing up the preview. What the hell does Yoongi mean fucking around with your prey? And what are they preparing for? You swear you remember the name Yoongi, retracing your thoughts. 

You feel the blood drain from your face. You do know that name. 

“Yoongi was so mad he wouldn’t talk to me for a week.”

“What?” you had asked him. “Your cat talks?”

“Oh- he- well he meows, you know what I mean?”

Slowly, you stiffen, remembering Hoseok’s words after breakfast. It had seemed silly then, that Hoseok was talking about a cat. But it’s not the only place you’ve seen Yoongi’s name. 

Trust your gut, your sister always said. 

You look at the bathroom door once before turning on your heel and creep from the room. You pull the front door open slowly, wincing and holding your breath as the outside world makes noise. Slipping through, you’re careful not to let the door click loudly before running to your room. 

With the same care, you shut your door, flipping the bolt lock and sliding the chain in the door. The room feels like it’s spinning, your tunnel vision making you dizzy as you sweep your gaze back and forth, looking for the piles of your sister's research. It’s sitting on the floor, shoved off the bed where you let him fuck you last night. 

The urge to vomit flips your stomach as you dive for the papers, riffling through them and scanning, feverish and sweaty. You find the entry you want, finger pressing to the page as you read it multiple times, fear making the words tangle.

Only Mabon is referenced in any of the journals explicitly, in a strange entry from a man named Yoongi Min. I have written it here for safekeeping: We bringeth the little lamb to The Wood today for the honor of Mabon. I loathe to see him go, for he hath brought cheer and many a smile to the Covenstead. May he bring us blessings and warmth in the winter. 

Yoongi. 

A sick feeling coils in your stomach as your hands tremble, eyes scanning the list of names your sister scribbled out as old families in Kill Devil. There’s another one you remember, the one that Yoongi used in his text to Hoseok. 

Booth. 

Park. 

Warren. 

Kim. 

Jung. 

Jeon.

Min.

A shaking hand presses to your mouth. Jung. “Fuck,” you squeak, looking at the wall separating you from Hoseok’s room.

It occurs to you that all this time, you thought the citizens were looking at Hoseok with contempt. How easily hatred can be confused for fear. Hoseok, who had shown up every time you were having a night terror. Who seemingly knew all the right things to do to ease you.

Hoseok, who had flashes of darkness that terrified you. Whose expression could go blank as he thought about something, but flip on a dime to a bright, sunny boy. Hoseok, whose presence always gave you a weird tingle, triggering some sort of instinct you couldn’t place. 

Something happens then. With absolute certainty and a razor-sharp resolve that you’ve never experienced, you know your sister is dead. Perhaps you’ve always known. The sudden burning of your locket that night two months ago, the way that it looks like she ceased to exist. The eerie feeling dogging you, nipping at your heels. 

Hanna is dead. The pain is only sharp for a second, a slice of agony as you bend over, arms wrapped around your stomach as you let out a silent scream. The grief is powerful but abrupt as you hear Hoseok call your name on the other side of the wall. 

You stand. Because now you can’t mourn. Now, you must leave as quickly as possible. Because you hadn’t been trusting your gut, ignoring that weird little sense of something wrong. 

Now isn’t the time to scream over what you know. Now you must get away from-

“Was it the books or the phone call?” 

You whirl around. Hoseok is leaning against the wall by the door. The bolt is still flipped and the chain is still in place. You’re frozen to the spot, staring at him. He looks at the papers on the floor and back to you, smirk razor-sharp. Of course, he could get into the room without opening the lock. 

All of the features you thought were beautiful are suddenly terrifying. “It took you way too long to puzzle it together, but I guess you’re not nearly as smart as Hanna.” You open your mouth but nothing comes out, throat constricted. “You were so easy to convince though, so I guess that’s something.”

“I don’t…” your voice is raspy, shaking. 

“When you kept calling the city officials, I knew it was only time before you showed up here. I’ve been living in this fucking shit hole waiting.” He tsks and shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “Took you forever.”

“The citizens?”

“Stay out of my way and stay out of the Wood. They’re the frogs I let live, so long as I find other ones.”

“Why?” you ask, shaking your head. It’s the only question you can think of. It’s the only question that matters: whywhywhywhy. “Why help me?”

“Sometimes a predator likes to play with its prey.” 

It dawns on you that he had said as much at breakfast while he was tracing symbols on the table. He had been talking about his frogs, but he had been talking about you too. How many signs had you missed because he fucking smiled at you? Something dangerous lurking behind light flirting. 

He points to himself. “Pitcher plant.” He points at you with a grin. “Frog. Ribbit.”

“Fuck you,” you snarl, fear replaced by a hatred that burns so hot the edges of your vision flash red. But it isn’t him you’re mad at. It’s you. For being so easily deceived. For being so casually influenced in a matter of days. “Fuck you, and your fucking town.” 

“I did fuck you. You were special, though. I hope that makes you feel better. Didn’t fuck your sister. You’re cute, and I had time to spare.” 

“All of this for what? To get off on the chase? The manipulation?”

He scoffs. “I already told you what this place is. It isn’t my fault you didn’t put it together. I almost hand-fed it to you. The Wood gives us power, and the Wood needs sacrifices.” Hoseok pushes himself off of the wall, his smile like the first light of the morning sun. “I’m taking you to the Wood.”

[tossawary]

Posting about my reread like this in an attempt to help me remember some of these small details... I am quite bad at remembering things from the beginning of a book by the end of it, partially because small, easily overlooked details often become far more meaningful and therefore memorable on the reread.

Some quotes and thoughts on Binghe's birth + adoption, Tianlang-Jun, Su Xiyan, and the poor, unnamed washerwoman:

"Immediately after birth, Luo Binghe was abandoned by his parents, swaddled in white cloth, and put in a wooden basin that was lowered into the Luo River. This occurred on the coldest days of the year, and it was only thanks to fishermen pulling him out of the water that he didn't freeze to death as a baby. Because he'd been drifting along the Luo in the season when it was choked with thin ice, he was given the name Luo Binghe.

Luo Binghe spent his early years wandering the streets, hungry and cold - a dreary childhood. A washerwoman who worked for a wealthy family took pity on him, and since he had no children of her own, she adopted and raised him as her own. Mother and son were poor, and they suffered much humiliation at the hands of their rich patrons." - Chapter 1, pages 9-10

"As it turned out, Luo Binghe had been born to the Demon Realm's Saintly Ruler and a woman of the Human Realm; within his veins flowed the blood of the ancient, heaven-fallen demons as well as that of the human race. His father, Tianlang-Jun, had been sealed beneath a great mountain, trapped for all eternity. His birth mother had been a disciple from a righteous cultivation sect, but shortly following Tianlang-Jun's dealing, she had been expelled on suspicion of having secret ties to demons. She had died from a postpartum hemorrhage after giving birth to Luo Binghe, but prior to her death, she had set her son adrift from the lonely ship she'd birthed him on. It was the only way she had been able to give Luo Binghe a chance to survive." - Chapter 1, page 11

I view a lot of these small details as somewhat flexible, with the different levels of unreliable narration going on. We are being told these things by Shen Yuan, who may be misremembering these details (as any reader, myself definitely included, does), and who read them as told by Airplane, who may have retconned prior details as he came up with new ideas, forgotten small details as he wrote millions of words, or was just lying in the narration for later reveals that never came to fruition. Shen Yuan may have also been reading dialogue between characters who also didn't know what they were talking about or were lying to each other.

So, I can do what I want with a lot of this, I feel! Shen Yuan doesn't necessarily know what he's talking about here. (More details will be revealed later on, I remember, and I will be looking out for them.)

Interesting things to remember here! Tianlang-Jun was apparently probably sealed during the winter, maybe late autumn at the earliest, which was probably unpleasant for snake demon Zhuzhi-Lang. I'm currently imagining Tianlang-Jun leaving his nephew to essentially hibernate somewhere to avoid the weather, promising to stay out of trouble (actually planning to meet up with Su Xiyan), and then just not coming back.

Su Xiyan apparently gave birth to Binghe on a ship! That's interesting. I had forgotten that detail if I ever took note of it.

I knew that the book implies here that Binghe was found by the washerwoman a little later into his childhood, but I'd forgotten the fishermen detail. I usually intentionally ignore this and just go with the washerwoman finding Binghe (which is what the animated show did, I think), because if Binghe was honestly "immediately" abandoned by Su Xiyan, then he would have been a newborn! Someone HAD to have been looking after him. This is one of my pet peeves in fiction: Binghe HAD to have been breastfed by someone OR this world must have an equivalent to baby formula for him to survive. (This is the main reason I conceptualized Luo Jiahui in PINTWILF as a young woman who had recently had a stillbirth, just so she could breastfeed this newborn baby.)

It's possible that Binghe had a series of caretakers who fell through before his adoption, leading to brief periods on the streets as a young child, and/or he did a lot of "wandering the streets" begging and scavenging AFTER his adoption by an extremely poor woman (and the sentences there are just a little out of order). Even if demon baby Binghe COULD survive on other food somehow, newborns can't... walk... or crawl... or lift their heads.

If I have to stick to what's written here as closely as possible, then I would go with the following interpretation: newborn Binghe being found by fishermen, who take him to town to see if anyone has lost or abandoned a child, or if anyone is willing to take one in. The only person to agree is this washerwoman. People in town possibly donate some means (baby formula equivalent, kinky plot device plant that kickstarts lactation) to feed this baby or cruelly tell the washerwoman the baby will die. Possibly, the washerwoman goes deeply into debt asking these rich patrons for the means to feed this baby. As Binghe grows up, he spends a lot of time on the streets, begging and scavenging to help his extremely poor adoptive mother. End mostly canonical interpretation.

If we wanted to get a little wild, we could also go with the interpretation that Shen Yuan is incorrect when he uses the word "immediately". Either he misinterpreted something Airplane wrote, or a character relayed information incorrectly in PIDW, or the SVSSS just formed differently to Shen Yuan's impression based on very vague information that Airplane may not have been keeping consistent.

Maybe Su Xiyan actually lived for several months on this ship after giving birth, creating the seals and somehow managing to feed her newborn child (the poison that killed her is a problem with breastfeeding here, but idk, maybe heavenly demon babies can drink blood for all we know, which is something Su Xiyan would know but the washerwoman would not), before setting Binghe adrift. Binghe would be too young to remember this time with his birth mother. I'll have to see what Wu Chen from Zhao Hua Temple says when I get to his explanation of what happened to Su Xiyan in the third book.

[dross-the-fish]

People read that Erik didn't know good from evil and they take that in the most literal interpretation and run with it because this hellsite's reading comprehension is a fucking joke.

Agreed. Sometimes I'm a little terrified that there are people on this site who pick up a book like "Lolita" and think Humbert isn't a disgusting piece of shit because he tells the audience he isn't. I also think it's fair to say that because of the format, with it being a journalistic retelling of supposedly "true" events, we can somewhat consider Leroux an unreliable narrator so there IS wiggle room for personal interpretation. That said the idea that Erik is completely unaware that killing and kidnapping is wrong is a pretty wide stretch. If Erik didn't have at least some concept of right and wrong he wouldn't feel guilt and he wouldn't try to lie to the Daroga and deny his crimes. He also wouldn't let Christine go in the end if he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong. He knows well enough what he did was wrong, his behavior when called out is evidence enough of that. Sometimes what the characters, and even the narrator say needs to be taken with a grain of salt in the light of how a character acts. Erik is complex, he can be childish, traumatized, warped, tragic and have a heart that could hold an empire and still be cruel, manipulative and villainous, he can be ALL of these things and his morality may be skewed but he has enough moral sense to have standards and to feel a need to deny what he did. It's the complexity that makes him compelling, the capacity for good and evil and what such a character does when denied the opportunity to be good for so long only to be given it again one last time at his lowest point, when you can argue that he's used up any grace he's owed. I love seeing "unredeemable" characters get a last minute saving grace. That character who has fallen so far over to the dark side get that one act of mercy that fundamentally changes them for good. We can find him sympathetic while still being horrified by his actions and moved by the tragedy he causes and is himself a victim of. That's what makes him a worthwhile character to spend time with. This idea of a woobified baby who doesn't know better and can't be held responsible for anything he does creates a version of the character that is, frankly, uninteresting and undermines the potency of his redemptive arc and I really wish people would stop doing it, because if we have to disregard his ability to do evil then we have to disregard his ability to do good too and at that point you've just thrown out the whole character.

[nebraska-is-a-myth]

Abuse in 'Runaway Max': A Stranger Things criticism

One thing I know to keep in mind is that the book is told from Max’s perspective, so it's her eyes we experience the world from, and her opinions that guide us through the story. For that we have to value her as a somewhat unreliable narrator, considering she is thirteen at the time and dosnt understand certain things.

A quick timeline to keep in mind because the book handles time very messily:

Billy has just turned 17 by the time Max and Billy first meet.

After Halloween in season 2, Max says she’s known Billy for 7 months, which takes us back to early May.

They move in together three weeks after the wedding in late June, meaning Max and Billy have lived together for a total of 5 months by the time they get to Hawkins.

Neil confiscates Billy's car keys for two months in June, so I’ve taken an educated guess that Max first witnesses Neil's abuse somewhere around august, then in September/October Billy breaks Max’s friends arm, leaving for Hawkins late October.

Now onto the deep dive:

In 'Runaway Max', we learn about the terrible Hargrove family dynamic, and how the Mayfield's learn to navigate that. Max gets a very graphic front row seat of Billy's abuse in chapter 10, and during that chapter Max responds to that situation as any 13 year old would, scared and confused. Despite this however, Billy's image doesn't change in Max’s mind. She has no visible compassion for Billy at any point of the book except from this chapter, and after that she states that she’s actively trying not to care about “his stupid life and his cruel dad”. 

From a writing standpoint, choosing this to be a part of Max’s character takes away from her complex experiences in an abusive household. Yes Max is a hardened character, but not exploring these difficult topics of disliking Billy while also feeling sorry for him makes her feel like just another pawn for the audience to make them dislike Billy. The writers could have made the step-siblings dynamic much more interesting to have them navigate this terrifying experience together. But I understand the duffers just wanted another one dimensional antagonist for season 2.

"I'd watched the Hargroves in action. Neil standing over billy with the belt - calling me a stupid little girl - making it clear that he thought I was weak and pointless. Knowing Neil believed that still wasnt as bad as the way Billy had hated me for trying to help him"

I have mixed feelings about this. I feel this description Max gives dutiful to anyone going through that situation, that they would feel disheartened by someone rejecting their help, and verbally berating them for it. However, it’s vitally important to understand the context of Why Billy reacts to Max this way.

During the assault on Billy that Max witnesses, Max calls out and interrupts Neil, trying to diffuse the situation. Neil responds not to Max, but to Billy “Is this the son I raised? A worthless loser who needs a little girl to fight his battles for him?” And then strikes billy again. 

Max assumes this to be an attack on her, however that's not what's happening at all. Neil is using Max against Billy. He takes Max’s intervention as a sign of Billy's own weakness, a softness. “Any hint of softness and he would never let me forget” In a way Billy had been trying to teach Max to harden herself so that Neil couldn't find anything to target her for, Billy had been making her more likeable for Neil. And now this softness that Max is showing for Billy, by standing up for him, is getting him punished. It’s been implied before that this was the case, but now we are seeing it explicitly that Billy is being punished for Max’s actions. This chain reaction forces Billy into a position where he cannot be on Maxes side, he cannot be friends with Max, because siding with anyone other than his father equals punishment.

After Neil leaves, we circle back round to the sentence “Sometimes Billy acted like we were in on some big, crucial secret together / like we were in some sort of secret club together - like we could be on the same team” Billy had been trying to tell her from the beginning, they were both members of a club trying to navigate life with Neil Hargrove, bonded by shared experience. They were supposed to be on the same team too, victims of Neil, but Neil has made that impossible by using Max against Billy. “I could see all the ways he hated me” Neil isolates one from the other, Billy resents Max for getting him hurt, and Max resents Billy for rejecting her.

During most of the sections of the book that happen in Hawkins, Max continues to call Billy a “Monster”. However, never Neil. It’s not untrue that Billy has a mean streak, he can be cruel and heartless, most notably when he breaks the arm of one of Max’s friends. The only time this level of violence is seen in Hawkins is during the fight with Steve.

Both of these big outbursts of rage are built up by attacks from Neil. Note: Billy is still an asshole, these are not excuses for his actions only explanations.

Yes, there are two occasions in which Billy grabs hold of Max’s arm, but there is an argument to be made that this is just normal sibling behaviour. Have you never pushed or shoved your sibling before, or been on the receiving end of that physicality. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s not uncommon for siblings to get physical during disagreements. Max is also only distressed by this on the first occasion, “He caught me by the arm, and it wasn't the first time he’s ever touched me, but other times had always been to push me out of the way in the kitchen or flick me on the end of my nose. This time, his fingers closed hard around my elbow” - however the second and last time goes like this “He reached out fast and caught me by the wrist”. Those are the only times Billy is ever physical with Max.

Despite this, Billy is still the monster. “Billy was the closest thing to one that I had ever known - this was what it meant to live with the monster.” Monster singular. Billy is the most terrible thing living in the Hargrove home, not the man who beats his son.

Personally I find something off putting with Max ranking Billy as a worse monster than Neil. During the night at the byers she says "I understood now that Neil was in his head, and that meant he was just as dangerous as his father. Worse because Neil was cruel and frightening but he cared how things looked on the outside. Billy was crazy" Max isn't stupid, she knows Neil is a bad person, and maybe from Maxes point of view Billy is worse than Neil because Neil hasn't ever physically hurt her. But from a writer's point of view, to say that the victim is worse than the abuser? That is both dangerous and honestly disgusting. To call Billy crazy, and insinuate that he’s acting like a ‘bad victim’ because he doesn't pretend that everything is normal is so hurtful to victims of abuse who see themselves in Billy. 

Continuing this thought, Max then goes on to compare Billy to a recently possessed Will. Which, first off, comparing abuse is never okay. But what Max says is almost worse, "Will had turned into something terrible and frightening, but even with the mind flayer working through him, he was trying not to let it. He'd almost gotten us killed, but you couldn't blame him because he didn't ask for this. He was trying so hard to stop it" Is the author trying to say that Billy should try harder to not let the abuse he has been experiencing at the hands of his father since before he was ten, affect him? Because if Brenna Yovanoff is using Will as a ‘good’ example of a victim of parental abuse, and using him to discount Billy's own experiences, then I’m sorry but who let this book go to print?

Obviously as a character Max choosing this comparison means very little to her because she doesn't know about Lonnie, but the writers do. Comparing Billy to will is a choice.

Billy and will have both experienced abuse from their fathers. Will is on one side of the spectrum of victims, quiet, timid and apologetic. Billy is on the opposite end of that spectrum, his experiences have hardened him, made him angry about what's happening to him. Billy isn't quiet, he’s an asshole and he has issues with authority, but the one thing that sets Billy and Will apart is the fact that Billy is still experiencing that abuse.

Will is a survivor, Billy isn't.

To imply that "you can't blame Will because he didn't ask for it", but it’s okay to blame Billy, does that mean we are supposed to think Billy is asking for it?

There are choices writers make in the information they reveal to their readers, the phrasing that is used and the comparisons they make. It speaks volumes that while Will is praised for his experiences and bravery with his dad, Billy is called a monster for acting out because of those same experiences.

I mean, tell me you're a writer who doesn't understand the complex reactions to abuse without telling me you only care about “good” reactions to abuse.

[zeyris-daydreams]

I had just finished reading your bunny darling with Tighnari post and was kinda wondering how Tighnari would react and how his life is going after our poor got Stockholm Syndrome. If you don't wanna write about that, that's fine but I still wanna know how life's going or what if Cyno found out what he did?

About the fox and the rabbit part one:

I actually have a part two planned, but before I manage to write that, I'll simply elaborate it here. Well, in my previous Tighnari oneshot I mentioned Cyno's undying support for Tighnari ;( after all Cyno did say that he's like a brother to him. Oh also some nsfw mentions may occur.

And what's a better way to help a family member by watching over their pet sometimes? Things happen alright, sometimes our ranger is busy and Cyno has to step in.

That's absolutely infuriating however; how could a man like Cyno, the general, someone who usually cares about peoples wellbeing possibly assist in this?

Well, you see; you're just a tiny bunny. You're so irrelevant and really unimportant that it's simply harm reduction :( to Cyno, letting Tighnari take you is better for everyone. It has a few causes, one that he realises just how important mates are for fennecs. They mate for life alright, and Cyno knows well just how melancholic Tighnari will get if the mate is taken away.

I feel like it's worth a mention that Cyno did scold Tighnari somewhat for this, cause he did mate himself to you on his own accord. But what's done is done, and perhaps it's better to let Tighnari have someone to use his feral instincts on.

Another factor coming into Cyno's understanding is also the way Nari portrays you. Like come on it's just a small rabbit. It's weird really; you're a mate, at the same time you're reduced to a house pet. To be loved, pet, squeezed, without real possession over your own body, but still his mate.

A part of Cyno kinds of understand that. Maybe when Tighnari let Cyno take a look at his mate, he made sure you were too fucked out beforehand to be able to protest and show any sign of the slightest inteligence.

He didn't really have to do that to get Cyno on his side though. As shocked as Cyno was to find it out, I think he was the first one to notice the warning signs before you've arrived? And since you're demoted to a level of a house pet in their eyes, he won't mind watching over you when Tighnari is especially busy.

Oh, same with getting away actually. Don't think you'll get far with two hunters on your back; escape is practically impossible, I mean. Running away itself may be easy, but Tighnari will find you. He always does. And if he can't, Cyno is more than willing to help out.

Like I'm sorry, but you're not that important, and if keeping you locked is all it takes to keep Tighnari's hard working, nice and loving ethic to the public eye, Cyno is willing to make that sacrifice.

Enough about them though, what I planned for darling? Aside from the fact I usually write narration as unreliable, that you're dumb, non important, I'll just mention this once. So I don't have to again, I suppose; darling is definitely a smart person. Like, inteligent, on Tighnari's level, imagine that or even above his inteligence. It works all these ways, even if she's very knowledgeable, but slightly less than Tighnari.

All of these are the same infuriating factors that made Nari decide that you learn your place. What's better way to do that than constant humiliation?

He's a fox okay he needs something to get his feelings out on. And you're perfect to grab and toss around and bend and fiddle and undre- we are digressing here. Well, given since reader is indeed not just a dumb bunny, she doesn't bend to his will when he's not home.

I mean he's a scary fox, but when he's gone, you have a clear route of playing your escape. It gives you time to scan the surroundings through the window, gather items, hide them. You aren't a coward usually; but he's a predator after all. You are fully aware he can't kill you due to the bond, but he never mentioned not being able to mutilate you.

He won't do that, but he's scar okay. Your brain will easily convince you that as longest as you stay alive he will be able to mess with your anatomy in any way to keep you there. And so when he finally leaves the house one unfortunate day you manage to slip out. You made sure he didn't lock the doors or the window properly. Whatever you did, you were on the run.

The forest is vast, so your little expedition took a day or so. But you had food, and clothes, you were prepared. In fact you'd be free and already in Fontaine if not someone saying that a suspicious looking traveler is rummaging through the forests.

Once Cyno learned the description of said.. travel. It was up to him to help the man he called his best friend. Perhaps he'd notify Tighnari and let him have the thrill of dealing with you, perhaps he'd grab you by your plush ear and drag you back to Tighnari.

Whatever happened you end up back where you started, and you won't hear the end of it. Oh how worried sick he was, how stupid must you be to run away anymore? You're just a bunny, you're safe here! How he cares about you and other infuriating bs, most importantly he's really mad. And he's not the type of a guy to beat you up even when he's mad? The most you get is being suffocated and railed till you're simply crying.

A part of that is due to the fact that he doesn't want you to keep your brains. Surely if he fucks you hard and well enough you'll understand? ? ? I mean that's how it must be working. If he does that each time before he's gone you'll be docile and sweet and soft like a bunny is supposed to be!

Tighnari didn't really do that as often with you before, so it really did work in keeping you brain-dead after he finally found you again. And since you did have some brains, you were unlikely to develop any attachment to him; then again your intelligence went out of the window the moment he saw you. He's terrifying to put it short, even if you heard people say how sweet and nice he is before.

He himself proved to you just how scary he is, and with him keeping your brain fuzzy for months on end after this endeavour, you're not sure if you don't find yourself slipping in your sanity. Perhaps letting him do these things IS better than having to be constantly on the run !

[the3rddenialist]

The Unreliable Narrators of

The Somewhat Incredible Jackie-Boy Man & Void Silver

And their capacity to deceive us in the future.

Dramatic Youtube Thumbnail lol

Major #0 spoilers

Gotta say, I really love when a story comes with a sister story with it, this being the two Altrverse comics. As I personally love having two texts to compare and contrast, as it can really help highlight what they share, what's different, and what's missing.

And wow there is some things in each story that look a lot more suspicious due to their sister text existing.

While Sister Stories do many things, in this case it highlights the unreliable narrators of each text. I hope after this look into these aspect, and if these aspects continue into the next comics, will implore you to keep an eyebrow raise in regards to Marvin and Jackie.

But first, what is an unreliable narrator? At the most basic, an unreliable narrator is a storyteller whose perspective isn't totally reliable if we want to get the full picture. They can be intentional, unintentional, aim to wrongfully mislead or give a happier story. But even unreliable narrators with good intention still can alter the story to its viewers in a way that will lead us to the wrong conclusions.

Now do I think the Volume #0 are unreliable? Not really, but it had the capacity to be, which means in future comics, they may become more and more unreliable.

I will explore how each comic is unreliable by the perspective of each story and what we are shown (or more importantly not shown).

First we'll start with

Perspective: Who is their story being told by?

From the first page of The Somewhat Incredible Jackie-Boy Man, and by the second page of Void Silver, it is already establish that these narratives will be unreliable.

First we have Jackie. Who straight out of the gate acknowledges the viewer.

SO LET'S JUST GET OUT THERE--

And continues to narrate the rest of his story.

Now this probably doesn't seem important at first, don't a lot of comics do that? Spiderman does it! Which TSIJBM draws inspiration from. But remember what I said about Sister Stories? While this doesn't seem strange when by itself, it's strange when you look at VS.

Unlike TSIJBM, who has Jackie address the viewer, we instead have a completely different character, Higgins the Cat, introduce Marvin to us. And boy does Higgins know we're watching.

So while in TSIJBM, Jackie introduces himself to us, in VS, Higgins introduced Marvin to us.

Giving us two different protagonists, Jackie, who knows he's telling a story, and in the role of storyteller, and Marvin, unaware his story is being told and the role of storyteller belongs to Higgins.

This shows that these stories have unreliable narrators.

Shown: What do we get see?

This is also evident in the structure of the comics.

In TSIJBM, the entire story we are following Jackie, as we get his input and thoughts. The only exception being the first couple pages and the final couple panels. This also limits what we see of Jackie. As we only see what he sees/cares about, having an entire page dedicated to his thought process, because he decided that to be of most important than what else is going on around him. His story is heavily skewed by his perspective of things. Which seems to be a theme in TSIJBM, as he mistakes CyberMass' demo to be a Robot Apocalypse. We even have a minor time skip in the comic with a flashback, as we see why JBM was late to an order, but this flashback is used to bring out sympathy. It's why we only see him come out of the dumpster, not into it, it's what is more important to recall to him.

This is oppose to VS, where we don't follow Marvin the entire time, he's not even in his first page. And have an entire section dedicated to the Twins. You could say it's still Marvin's perspective because he learns of what the Twins do, but we don't learn it at the same time as Marvin. We see what happens and he learns afterwards. If we saw him go home, pick up the mask, and then see what the twins did, that would be more accurate to Marvin's experience. But Marvin, while the protagonist of his comic, is not the narrator, which belongs to Higgins. And so we see in the order of how Higgins wants us to see.

Higgins controls the perspective in Marvin's narrative. Jackie controls his own.

This means Jackie has the capacity to deceive the viewer in TSIJBM. Will he? Well we don't know him well enough in this version to know for sure. But we need to know he does have that card at his disposal.

But Higgins has the capacity to decisive the viewer in VS, and a part of me feels like he wouldn't be above that. What is especially interesting though is that it makes Marvin's story appear a lot more authentic, due to his lack of knowledge of his story being told, as we need to worry more of what Higgins shows us of Marvin.

All of this shows how Jackie is the narrator of his story, whilst Higgins is the narrator of Marvin's, both storytellers having the ability to mislead us in the future. We've already touch on a bit about what is shown in each narrative due to their narrators. But Great Sister stories highlight what they don't show.

Shown: Marvin doesn't think

There is almost 0 thought bubbles in VS. I implore you to look yourself. The only thing resembling a thought bubble is Marvin recalling what was mention in the previous pages and the statement that "Everything this masks sees, it records", which doesn't seem to be his own thoughts but just recalling statements said to him.

There are pages in VS, where if Jackie was in the situation, would be scattered with thought bubbles, like the two pages of Jackie moving while he comments on social aspects that dehumanises people. But there is none in VS. This makes sense of course, Higgins is the narrator, not Marvin, why would Higgins know what Marvin is thinking? He at best can show us what he's doing, or doesn't want us to know what Marvin's thinking.

This does highlight that Jackie is his own narrator with the lack of though bubbles in VS, if thought bubbles are a tool only for the storyteller. I mean look at these pages and tell me it wouldn't have thought bubbles if Marvin was the narrator.

If this was in TSIJBM, we would probably see Marvin's thoughts of frustration, not just his face.

This page especially.

We didn't know why Marvin recognised the insignia until later, when Higgins showed us a flashback. Because we don't know Marvin's thoughts.

So while Marvin is more authentic than JBM, he's more secretive, not of his own volition, but because he's not his own narrator.

While they aren't both unreliable narrators, since Marvin isn't his own, they are both unreliable protagonist. One which can alter his own story, the other which has his thoughts concealed.

Similar to how there is a theme for Jackie of his perspective being skewed to what he deems reality is, there is a theme of Marvin just not knowing what's actually happening, having to rely on others to inform him (Sunday, his mask, Ramesses). Marvin is a lot less aware that he's in a story and his role in his own story.

The viewer can only trust what Jackie decided is more important for us, and the viewer has to be informed by Higgins what is important for us. This makes both comics of TSIJBM and VS have unreliable narrators, and that we should be careful at taking everything at face value in the future.

I have no clue if these aspect will continue in #1, perhaps these things only a apply to #0. But is they do continue in the next comics, I hope this has help you approach the next comic with more suspicion.

Thanks for reading. And remember that you can't always trust what is shown.