#the surface level things they take from different cultures without doing actual research

[babeclownart]

I'm so fucking angry I need to see some hardcore genshin critique

[bloop-bl00p]

Alastor could have been Native American

Before anyone screams racism, removal of representation, or whatever I redirect you to my post about the Voodoo representation of the show.

→ HERE ←

First thing first, Alastor is not a Wendigo but his cannibalism aspect led to fans believing the contrary, a belief that was pushed further with him being a deer. Wendigoes aren’t related to deer at all, they mostly look like men who are visibly starved and all. The deer thing came from pop culture.

Now you’re gonna ask..

“You’re all for representing properly religion and culture why would you want him to be American Indian if he’s not a proper wendigo?”

He could be a skinwalker with small elements of wendigo.

Here’s a small rewrite

It’s not related to Hell’s Safe Haven, I’ll be doing something different, feel free to take the idea for your oc if you want. But remember, Always do research :)

Why a skinwalker? They are shamans who started as healers but broke taboos from the culture which involve using their ability for harm and curses. If you’re smart then you should see where I’m going with this.

Rather than being an “evil voodoo man” Alastor could have been a shaman who transgressed important rules and became a skinwalker, one of these taboos is murdering a close relative to align with darker powers which pretty much fits for Alastor. Obliviously, you don’t villainize the whole culture, you can still show that shamanism, when not perverted by skinwalkers, can do good. Alastor’s mother could have also been a shaman and went to Heaven.

He could still have been a serial killer, stalking and learning the routine of his victims before killing them. Then he could have died in the snow because hunters noticed his activities in the forest, thanks to their dogs smelling the putrid flesh of the bodies he was carrying around, and then he got shot. Or you can have it that he managed to escape but got lost and had to eat part of the corpse he managed to get with him, but he also had to use their skin to not try and protect himself from the cold in vain partially linking him to Wendigoes.

In Hell, he could have looked like a starved disturbing-looking deer, starved because of wendigos and deer because that’s the animals he favored the most to lure people. In terms of powers, he could have the ability to reproduce people's voices through electronics mainly using radios to do so. A cool detail could be that these voices sound slightly disturbing and fake.

He completely took a more charming and refined aesthetic once in Hell to appeal to and manipulate others more easily. Skinwalkers are described as carrying bones I guess that could help for a possible redesign. Since his appearance is quite scary he could wear a hat to hide his face.

The actual critic

This is really a surface-level thing, it's a first draft based on Wikipedia, but you can’t say that it’s not remotely much more cohesive than whatever Viv is doing with Alastor.

This is something that absolutely frustrates me with the Hellaverse, Viv has very surface-level concepts, and she doesn't do enough research to bring them to their potential. It happens with Voodoo, the Goetia, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the whole pantheon of biblical figures.

What she does is she takes these cool ideas and slaps them onto her oc without much thought.

Take an example with Andrealphus, he teaches math and geometry so one of my first thought is to give me space manipulation. This means he can basically change your location in an enclosed space, turn an entire room around, and twist it to his liking. With his knowledge of maths and geometry, he knows what to do specifically to make you land exactly where he wants which makes him extremely hard to fight inside a house, especially if it’s a big place.

He could also completely reshape the laws of geometry and physics, how funny would it be to see that he lives in a small house, not taking much place but then you go outside and discover it’s basically a whole castle? It’s generic but it makes sense and makes places for lots of interesting scenes for fights or just aesthetics.

Vivziepop chose to give him ice power, for some reason. I mean math isn’t really an attractive notion in terms of supernatural abilities but you can still do something interesting with it. Unless his castle is a geometrical wet dream, I don’t see a possible link between the two. It’s a matter of creativity and the willingness to do research to cultivate it, she doesn't have that.

If you just slap very specific labels (like voodoos) on a character without thinking about how it could work for them and affect the world around them (if voodoo works then the Lwas exists), then not only you are not doing your “job” as a writer but you are just doing it for the aesthetic. It’s not wrong to do if it’s mundane things like saying that one character knows how to speak Latin, but in some cases, you gonna have to be careful about what you write in your stories.

[vvatchword]

So a friend of mine was raging about how an artist they were watching was posting anti-AO3 shit because they keep the doors open for all kinds of weird shit, including underage smut. And it made me think about this book, which I feel falls in that category.

Not in a million years would i have said, "Do not publish or read this book." Because I'm gonna tell you something. First of all, there's still good shit in this book--shit that's worth studying because very few people can write at this level or quite in this way. And second of all, it's the kind of thing I can see a person making an accident about and growing from. Stephen King strikes me as a pretty cool and grounded dude. I'd love to meet him someday. Not even kidding. This was written in the 80s, okay. Times were different, ideas were still bubbling to the surface--not everyone picks up on the same ideals at the same times or in the same ways. And you must understand that the transference of ideas was much slower pre-Internet.

Third of all, and perhaps most terribly, the awful shit is here for us to learn from.

It is special for more than one reason. For one thing, it's extremely well-written, clearly thought-through, well-researched, and intelligent. It's on a different level than, say, Twilight--a story that's about power play, but thoughtlessly so. That's the problem with most authors and artists in general--just popping out what they feel is hot or interesting without really understanding why they feel the concepts are hot or interesting.

Another problem is: as artists, as people, we're not going to think of everything from every necessary perspective, and are bound to make a host of mistakes. Stephen King, despite writing at a level most people only dream of, made a big, foundational mistake. It's huge--it's on the level that it has the capacity to break the book--and it's huge precisely because he writes at such a high level. Clearly he was horny on main for Beverly and was letting Little Head do the thinking. Maybe she reflected the girls he thought of at that age. I actually don't think he's a pedo or anything--I think he just got passionate and didn't think about what he was really saying. He pulled a No-Thinking All-Wanking.

Let me tell you, when I realized that was the problem, it threw a cold bucket of ice water right over my head. I have a character I'm writing that I'm horny on main for, too. (Although he's an adult. Thanks)

King treats every boy character as a person. They experience sexual yearnings, but these are treated as matter-of-fact, part-of-life, normal--we all remember those experiences, we all had them, it's a universal human experience and part of growing up. Only Beverly is treated as a one-note sexual object from the beginning to (what I'm presuming will be) the end of the book. What's more, the evil/bad/conflicted characters are illustrated much the same way she is, putting her in their category--as a one-note Macguffin defined by appearance and how she serves/stymies other characters, not by selfish action or her private inner world.

Because It is written intelligently, that means its double standards are so much more clear, and it ends up teaching a lesson about characterization. It's a lesson I am taking--for I am finishing the book, as angry and objectified as it makes me feel.

Can I look at my character as a person first? A person who is experiencing life and challenges first? Every culture and subculture experiences a different world. Am I assuming? Can my assumptions harm? What do I need to know before I finish writing this work?

Say what you will. King is a writing god and I'll still kneel at his feet. Part of the reason I respect him is because I can tell from afar that he's the kind of person who has grown over time. Who knows where he is, really. I don't like him here, but I also feel like I could talk to past-him about this, if that makes sense--because he's also a goddamn adult human being with a functional brain.

If you're the kind of person who supports censorship, you're squelching the transference, transformation, discussion, and interpretation of ideas. And you can get right out with that bullshit. Whatever people experience, I want to know, in all its dirty, horrible truth. How else can I effectively respond to it?

It (the book) is passing boundary after boundary and I kinda hate it now. Can you imagine writing a book that's so good your readers read slowly on purpose, then fuck up 2% of it so badly that you render hundreds of pages powerless in a single moment? That's like my worst nightmare as a writer.

The worst kind of media is the media you fall into like a warm Jacuzzi dependably for hours on end only to discover the water is tainted by raw sewage. It doesn't matter how happy you were two hours ago; you have cancer.

i knew the underage sex scene existed already. I guess I just hoped it would be handled better. But who am I kidding? Stephen "Repeatedly Mentions Pubescent Girl's Underwear and Tits Like They Are Spiritual Experiences" King. Did he let his wife read this one too? Jesus. At this point in the book I would've divorced this man without comment. Just if you don't know then I actually don't want to be near you. Bye forever. I'm taking the kids and I'm giving your book to the police.

Does anyone argue for Beverly's tastefulness in this book? I will absolutely use that as a metric for a person's empathy. I will also fight this hypothetical person immediately and without mercy, probably with a brick.

[ceramicdove]

DEAR DOVE (explodes u in a mircowave) i was reading a nonfiction collection of articles on psychiatry and i was wondering if u liked reading nonfiction urself!

personally i love writing nonfiction the most because its easy to write about the world and argue about things but fiction requires a lot more of u thinking and having to unpack stuff! in fact as a child i rlly enjoyed reading encyclopedias, although i rarely absorbed it proper.

anyways enough of me,, do u have a favourite non fiction topic of interest or whatever!

DEAR LAB (explodes into a massive pile of glitter and confetti, subsequently setting the countertop on fire)

I do read non-fiction! I generally take more to other types of writing, but I did also grow up perusing encyclopedias, magazines, history books, textbooks, etcetera. so I regard it fondly in one way or another. I sometimes enjoy deep-diving for obscure academic papers when I'm in a brunt and want information on a specific subject, though it usually takes more time to digest due to higher-level technical language that I'm not familiar with as a high-schooler. I still find that it's worth it.

it's almost like a game when I hunt for things sometimes because it's interesting to see how obscure of a topic I can find: I start at something relatively basic and end up at papers specific enough that I'm not even sure how they exist (but I'm grateful). A recent example of this is a paper I found called "Exploring post-irony through narratives of love and suffering in VRChat" and, well, it's exactly what the titles says it is. I've yet to finish reading it, but I went crazy the moment I even saw that somebody would write such a deep article on a Steam VR game where people with 3D anime girl avatars go to scream at each other.

I occasionally dabble in reading self-help, but I interact with academic non-fiction the most.

I'm not sure if I can say I have a particular topic of interest, though in recent times I've been occasionally reading papers on cultural norms, traditions, historical evolutions and differences, and I have taken a liking to it. I also started (and need to continue) reading up on philosophy, death, mourning and other similar concepts (and especially how we as humans have interacted with death across time and space). It's not even just non-fiction, one of the recent books I picked up is a poetry collection about death from a local writer. This is something I made myself do due to two projects I have that both follow death as relevant themes: I wanted to make sure I can cover it in a way that goes beyond the surface level. I don't know if I can call this a Favourite Topic Of Interest, though, because it's actually quite an upsetting and suffocating thing to read about, at least for me, but I know I have to do it. Maybe this is exposure therapy of some sort.

And I like journalism! Before my English exam I actually forced myself to read a lot of British journalists just to pick up new language and get more used to Their Way of writing, since we study British English and therefore have to utilise it during exams (yuck). But it was fun, and I appreciate how certain journalists and researchers have a very fascinating way with words that almost feels narrative.

Regarding actually writing it, it's fun in its own way. I used to do it back when I was doing debate and had to write notes, reports, speeches and case files. It required me to read anything from entry-level articles on Google to more advanced papers and official government documents depending on the motion. It was fun compiling and sourcing all of that information! And it was fun gaining new knowledge. Nowadays a chunk of my classmates rely on me to guide them in writing non-fiction for our classes because they deem me to be good at it and think I have a solid vocabulary, so maybe it paid off a bit.

But ultimately, I'll always lean towards creative forms of writing. I can't sustain writing non-fiction for too long without feeling like my brain is shriveling up into a raisin.

[alphasmoonlit-selfships]

Got curious uwu, from two different ask meme:

⚠️ and 🍄

“Why hello @shinitai-i !” Atsushi greeted with a wide smile, his belt tail swishing, “Thank you for the asks! This time an answer from both Dany and I! We appreciate your patience and hope you enjoy our answers!” — 🐯🌙

“Curiosity is grand! Let’s jump right in shall we?” — 🐺✨

⚠️ have you and S/I ever been caught in an embarrassing/"It's not what it looks like" situation? Please tell us what happened.

Oh no… ah o(*////▽////*)q...

Well, I’d be lying if I said no,,, eh he…but ah surprisingly the first thing that came to mind might not be what others could be thinking.

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to just explain what happened. The main point being Dany and I were caught in a semi-naked state… Nothing like what you may be assuming, I swear! It was a deep, and just intimate, private moment before reality came slamming back >\\\\\\\>

I know most of you may be thinking it was a suggestive and funny moment, but it was rather serious prior to us being spooked soon after. I’ll try and keep some of the details vague and light as I can! Minor warning to past abuse and other indications, again, I'll leave as much of it vague as I can, but feel free to skip over to the last question, no worries!

We had just came back from a very serious mission that left both of us in a very heavily injured state. While my ability does help in self-healing a lot, sometimes the over exertion of it can slow it down. Dany has always struggled with her healing ability… especially due to her Shadow ability draining her more than heal.

Even so, we would have gone with Yosano-Sensei, but she was out on her own errands when we came back. We were told to just wait for her and get some rest in the patient room until she returned.

Ah, needless to say, we were concerned over each other’s injuries, and had some knowledge from Yosano-Sensei’s advice on basic aid. So we figured we could try and clean up some deeper cuts and try to wrap them up. Hopefully enough to keep away from Yosano-sensei’s usual treatments 😅

Just to note, Dany and I were definitely a few months into our relationship; we had become a generally sweet and foolishly in love and comfortable couple together and hadn’t done anything too intimate (…despite occasional nudges from our abilities ‘>>). So to say we were hesitant to remove at least our button-ups was an understatement…

We were both wary and embarrassed, we had never been semi-naked around each other before; but also just individually concerned on what the other thought. Especially when it came to old lingering scars of our pasts. Danielle definitely more than I…

Eventually, we both kind of just slowly let ourselves take that leap and removed our layers, enough to show the serious wounds that needed to be healed. Mine of course weren’t so bad and were starting to get better with help from my tiger ability. So that left mostly Dany to be treated and bandaged up.

Hers we’re definitely more serious and she needed to remove the rest of her blouse to really see her wounds. She was more tense and in a trembling panic at the time… I felt bad for being the cause of her nervousness. Though she has since reminded me that it wasn’t really me, but how she viewed herself and the scars that remained.

Eventually, with enough comforting words and settled with her own choice, she removed her layers.

…I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, definitely not the amount of scar marks that actually ran along her back and shoulders. Some long and small, some more darker than the others that are faded and silvery from age.

The moment of surprise and questions that wanted to fall from my tongue had came to a halt when I realized Dany was clearly struggling to hide her rising stress. She’s always been self conscious about herself and I never really pressed her on things she wasn’t comfortable talking about. At least not anytime soon at the time…

Of course I didn’t press, I knew a surface level of what she had dealt with before she was found by the Guild. But I couldn’t help but feel…angry at whoever had done this to her. My tiger was definitely far aggravated under my skin I’m sure she could sense it… but I kept my cool enough to help clean current wounds that she was struggling to heal with.

The silence felt like a long time, before Dany broke it herself. It seemed like I didn’t have to wait long for an explanation, as she bluntly stated how she received such marks.

I’ll leave a lot of it to the imagination…but the deep reflection about this bit of her past was enough to bring me to tears. It.. pained me to see Dany so melancholy and almost apathetic about the situation she had been under. Similar to how I’ve often seen Dazai-san’s own expression to things he’s reflected on from his past. Hell, even me to a fault during really bad days.

It was like she was a trance-like state, she honestly barely registered much of what I tried to say out of comfort and almost frustration towards her tormentors that had convinced her of something that was out of her control. It wasn’t until I calmed down a little when focusing on some scars on her upper back and shoulders that I decided on a different form of comfort.

I had placed a lingering kiss on her shoulder, directly onto one of the longer scars there; it definitely snapped her out of her daze then, practically breathing sharply from surprise. I pressed a few more before uttering some words of comfort that definitely brought Dany to tears. Likely from the very intimate kiss upon old wounds and from pent up emotions she’s hidden away for a long time without telling anyone.

I brought her into my arms then to hold her close in warm comfort, not really paying mind to our semi-clothed state. I merely wanted to offer her love and warm validation that she had been needing to hear, especially from me. I understand what that feels like and she’s always been there for me prior to our relationship and so many times after. I reminded her of how much I loved her and wanted to always love her despite such past hurts. Much like she has with me 💖

I gave her plenty of kisses, some lingering ones and others to draw her to laugh and out of her sadness. Thankfully, it worked after a few tickling ones… giving her a lasting one on her lips...before...

Well, the moment was ruined to say the least ། – _ – ། with Yosano-sensei, Dazai-san and Kunikida-kun walking in on…Well, us in our semi-naked state… and clearly noting we had just pulled away from a kiss...

Of course, we weren’t expecting them, so we both jumped out of our skins as soon as the door opened. My first instinct was to cover up Dany with the thin sheets out of respect for her and also knowing how intimate showing her scars was. Poor Dany practically hid midway under her shadow ability, but couldn’t entirely cause of her exhausted state..

…anyway the amount of scolding we got from Kunikida-kun was a mile long and I’m sure he would have strangled me for being indecent with Dany at the Agency, despite our relationship status. Of course, I say would have had Yosano-sensei not pulled on his ear for being such a parent… Dazai-san wouldn’t leave either of us alone for a week, especially without making a few innuendos when alone with me… 😓

Thankfully, Yosano-sensei was the only one not so overwhelming, but it’s not like we avoided her giving us a reminder of the Talk and giving us..well means of protection because of the situation…;>//////> I’m sure she has some level of understanding, considering she did give Danielle a check up prior to her joining the Agency, but wanted to just tease us for the fun of it..

Ah, but yeah, a bit heavy if a topic for something that was probably meant to be funny or even suggestive (U////▽////U)''. But regardless, if that moment is ever brought up, Dany and I do laugh with a bit of a look of soft comfort between each other. No one else needs to know the moment and understanding we felt in that point of our relationship. So everyone can continue to think otherwise if they want.

What matters is the moment before with my Darling and myself more than anything. 💞 🌸

🍄: Do you and your FO follow any familial or cultural traditions together?

Dany: Oh, traditions you say? 🤔 We do follow a few from our respective cultures. I try my hardest to keep up with memories of my mum’s traditions from our Hispanic/Latino heritage. Such as the food, recipes that I have long forgotten, but have gradually began to recall. I definitely researched how to make certain dishes I remember her making with the taste or flavor or ingredients it had.

Sometimes we try and mix up the foods in our cultures to have a variety of choices and cuisine! I’ve definitely made tamalés, with help from a chief that knew how to make the food, for the winter season. Sharing it with the Agency, to which I am really grateful that everyone really enjoyed it! ;;;w;;; thank god, I was very anxious they wouldn't or it came out bad ;;;v;;;

My mother definitely celebrated Día de los Muertos, I remember we had a small ofrenda in an extra room in my old cottage home. It was tiny compared to ones I’ve seen, considering my parents didn’t have much living family at the time and it was mostly just us…but anyway, present time. Atsushi definitely was curious about the holiday and give enough encouragement to me to try and replicate something similar to what my parents use to have. Some in Japan have tiny shines dedicated to family members and vary in size depending on the family.

Atsushi surprised me with a small casing box to dedicate to my passing parents…I had no lasting photos of them since I was a child. But he managed to find some individual photos of them from a report database, along with a family photo likely from whatever remained at my old home and investigators at the time found. All with Ranpo-kun’s intellect and help (the amount of praise and gratitude I gave him for it still is true uwu, and I give him plenty sweets in thanks).

Needless to say, I was very emotional and a crying mess when he did this for me. We both give our graces and often reflect a bit by the little ofrenda/shrine casing. I tell him a lot about how my parents would have loved to meet him and undoubtedly welcome him without any hesitation. Especially my dad, who was a shapeshifting animal gifted and had a favorite animal in the form of a falcon and a tiger too. Atsushi warms up a lot hearing that.

We’ve also celebrated the Lunar New Year too! That one was definitely new to me and had no idea on the festivities it entailed. We attended some of the festivals in Yokohama during the time with the Agency, the warm atmosphere and bustling energy has been beautiful and look forward to it. More so than the normal new year, keke.

Also the sakura blossom viewings are beautiful to see, very sweet and romantic if I may say… 😊🌸 we’ve taken a small boat ride though a canal that is littered with the blooms or taken a stroll and sat together under the beautiful view 💖 (❤ ω ❤). Definitely my favorite time, and I have collected blossoms to take home for the ofredna/shrine for my parents. I even made a lamination of one for safe keeping. 🌸 Definitely one of my favorite times of the year, the next being crisp autumn 🍂 !

The art provided is a commission by @/moon-fish-ghost and captures the awe and ethereal atmosphere during the sakura blossom viewing! It is truly a beautiful and romantic experience to have with my Darling 🌸🥰 she looks so beautiful in her wear 🌸💖 and love seeing her hair in a braid 💞🥰

Thank you again for the asks! We truly appreciated them and hope you enjoy these long winded asks! We try to make them as concise as we can, but sometimes we just dive into too much detail. We hope you understand. May you have a beautiful rest of your day! —Atsushi 🐯🌙

[hsu-liangyu]

“Orientalia”: White Fascination and Nostalgia for China and the Orient

4/11/2021

Denver, CO

CW: Racism, anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment, violence/sexual assault

Preface:

Today was certainly a day. I’ve been on a cross country trek, which I’ve come to call “The Great Journey East”, where I’m driving from my home in the Seattle area to Portland, Maine to ply my usual trade, working aboard some traditionally rigged sailing vessels that operate from the Maine State Pier. I’ve most recently arrived in Denver, CO, after a tumultuous night of camping in un-ideal circumstances on the shores of Great Salt Lake in Utah. I decided to treat myself to a middling hotel downtown to try to affect an aura of urban tranquility before I head out for Wichita in the morning, and then on to see my mother’s family in Oklahoma. The drive thus far has been marked by astounding natural beauty, kind people, and a long series of audio books that I’ve only just begun to make a dent in. I began this journey listening to “Tribe” by Sebastian Junger, which I found to be extremely interesting and helped some of my own understanding of how society today does not serve the community, and how we may one day return to a society where the people come first, as opposed to the individual. After finishing Mr Junger’s audiobook, I turned my ears to a tome that I have put off reading for a long time: “The Chinese in America: A Narrative History” by Iris Chang.

Listening to this audiobook over the last few days, which begins in Qing dynasty China and ends in the modern day, I can say a great many things. I can say that I deeply feel the experiences that were collected by the author and compiled into this book, not only on an intellectual and emotional level, but on a spiritual level. I can say that, despite years of my own research into my familial experiences and the experiences of contemporary Chinese Americans, my level of knowledge was severely lacking, even though I considered myself to be a relatively robust lay-scholar on the topic. I can say that the experience of we Chinese Americans, foreign and natural born, has changed very little in our time here. While circumstances change from person to person, family to family, and era to era, we are all bound together in trends that have haunted our communities, not unlike the tigers that have stalked southeast Asia for time immemorial, striking out when least expected.

All of that, however, is a surface level understanding. Those realities are the first few layers of a complicated and long history of horrific, violent, brutal, and inhuman oppression in the United States.

I began this audiobook believing that I knew most of what I needed, enough to enlighten the odd person in online discourse, or conversation over dinner. Enough to tell-off the casual bigot that accused me and other Chinese people of overblowing our racial, social, and economic anxieties while making them look a fool. I realized very quickly that while I was not wrong in my knowledge, my staunchly anti-racist rhetoric, or my suspicious attitudes towards the US government and law enforcement, I was missing so much of the story. I was not missing the statistics or the legislative history: I was missing word-to-paper stories of my ancestors -- our ancestors -- and the cold, hard, and hellacious reality that they faced when they got here. These realities may have differed from generation to generation (the Chinese washer-man and washer-woman, miner, and restaurateur of the 19th century was faced with markedly different circumstances from the Chinese who fled WWII, the PRC, or settled in other areas of the world during the diaspora), but they are cold and hard, none-the-less.

I have cried more in the last three days than I think I have in the last three years. My heart hurts for our ancestors, our elders, our parents, our siblings, our uncles, our aunties, and our future children as we exist in a country that has committed nearly every atrocity it could think of to rid us from their stolen land.

This was the state of being I’ve come to Denver with. Finally in the privacy of a hotel room, I showered and talked with my partner. She found a book today, written by the child of white missionaries who fled China just before WWII, that was a compilation of “Oriental” inspired needle-work patterns. She shared the preface of this book with me, which I found to be incredibly alarming, and has prompted me to write on the subject of “Orientalism”, the exotic, and how the experience of white Europeans and Americans in China was vastly different from the Chinese people. Out of respect for the author and their work, which I believe was written as an honest tribute to Chinese culture and its influence on them, I am choosing to omit the author’s name and the title of the book in question. While some may see this as underhanded, I am choosing to do so because I do not wish to wage a war of rhetoric with an author who I have very little personal knowledge of, because I believe it is unethical of me to do so.

However, I will be addressing some problematic concepts that are present in the preface of this book, as they are worth speaking about as we attempt to further society’s collective understanding of differential experiences between people and people groups.

Thank you for reading on, as well as for reading my preface. The following issues are things that I have struggled with for a long time, and I hope that my words bring you additional perspective on Chinese American issues.

“The Orient, the Oriental, and Orientalia: A Curious Lens of Exoticism Riddled with Racism”

Today, I saw a word that I had not seen in a very, very long time.

As most any Asian person will tell you, the words “orient” and “oriental” are generally unwelcome descriptors of Asian people and culture. These two descriptors are applied to clothing, architecture, pottery, art, furniture, cookware -- the list keeps going. I often joke to those who use these words, “what am I, a rug to you?”, which normally drives the point home in a friendly way They are both hangers-on from an era that we’d best leave in the past. An era where the Occident and the Orient were opposites of one another, incompatible, and fundamentally in conflict. The two terms saw relatively common usage in the 19th century, and many Euro-Americans considered “the orient” to be interchangeable with “the far east” while the occident was a catch-all word for Euro-American civilizations ranging from western Europe to the New World. It could be said that the Occident and the Orient began as harmless descriptor words that only communicated a vague notion of differences between cultures, they were rapidly weaponized as anti-Asian, especially anti-Chinese, sentiments began to flare in the western world. Imperial Germany used the two terms to great affect, framing the differences between the Occident and the Orient to be far more than cultural and societal. It was a matter of life and death.

The Occident was the pinnacle of industrialized civilization. It was moral and upright, beholden to the Christian god, supported by the titans of industry, government, and cutting-edge military technology. The Orient was backwards, overrun with dirty Chinese heathens who constantly lied, cheated, and stole from the superior whites. The Chinese were looking to enslave white women, turning them into sex slaves or take them as wives so that they could propagate a wretched half-breed race that would overrun the world and mark the end of all Occidental civilization.

This rhetoric was incredibly powerful, and one only needs to look at early anti-Chinese political cartoons and articles to see these words used in incredibly derogatory ways. The other side of the Orient/Oriental dichotomy was steeped in foreign luxury and exoticism, which served to peak the interest of wealthy whites that bought up all kinds of Asian furniture, clothing, fabrics, cookware, and art from unscrupulous dealers and certifiable importers alike. Affluent white women of the 19th century are well-documented as being deeply invested in luxurious goods imported from “the Orient” and marketed as “Oriental” or “Orientalia” to garner societal notoriety, whereas their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons would have dressing gowns, cravats, and handkerchiefs created out of fine imported silk. All of these goods were considered exotic and other-worldly, which is not a debased outlook for the time, considering that so few westerners had actually managed to travel in the vicinity of China, let alone disembark in one of the few official trading ports open to European traders. This fascination with all things Chinese, entirely divorced from the reality that many Europeans and Americans viewed the Chinese as grave existential threats to white civilization, is not without irony.

While Chinese peasants and workers died in droves from starvation, disease, localized conflict, or at the hands of white Europeans and Americans acting with impunity in a country that was barred from holding them legally accountable for their actions, cargo hold upon cargo hold of Chinese goods were exported for consumption by westerners. These westerners had military and diplomatic presence in China, especially in the mid to late 19th century, often seizing prime real estate in Chinese port cities for international settlements where it was the westerners, not the Chinese, in charge. These ostentatious settlements, coupled with missions run by Christian organizations from all over the western world, exercised great influence with local Qing dynasty officials, and western nationals all throughout the southern coast of China were free to use and abuse the Chinese around them as they please. These prosperous settlements, a highly visible and permanent show of colonization and foreign aggression, were made so by the labor of Chinese workers and peasants. The same workers who were forced into horrific working conditions in and around the settlements while western nationals were free to treat them as they please with no repercussions, ever for outright murder. Any fascination with the Chinese lifestyle, manner of dress, and other items that could be quickly imported to the west as exotic tokens of the Orient was inherently divorced from the horrific reality of daily life within China, and was nearly always a fascination that arose from social tiers that could afford to be ignorant of those realities while directly benefiting from them.

“Orientalia and the Noble Savage”

The westerners’ fascination with all things Orientalia outlines another phenomenon present in the west’s view of China in the 19th and 20th centuries, an phenomenon that Americans are familiar with as it is applied to Indigenous peoples in North America: the Noble Savage.

The Noble Savage idea and stereotype found quick traction with American colonists as they fought to drive out Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands all over North America. These Indigenous groups, savage as they were perceived to be, were often regarded as principled and noble in their way of life, whether that was seen in their treatment of the lands, natural resources, their art and craftwork, their societal structure, or in how they treated white settlers when they were taken prisoner. While all of this talk of nobility betrayed the slimmest undercurrents of admiration from white settlers towards Indigenous peoples, the second word of the phrase was integral to its application: Savage. Despite these noble ideas and practices, a savage is a savage is a savage. This two-faced admiration served only one purpose -- to communicate the slightest inkling of fake remorse in widespread acts of genocide against people that white settlers hated and chose not to understand.

For the Chinese and Chinese Americans, the idea of the noble savage is easily translated. While Indigenous peoples in North America had a comparatively low level of technology to Americans, the same could not be said of the Chinese. Despite lacking robust gunpowder arms and other advanced forms of military technology, the technological prowess of the Chinese people was without doubt. Massive cities, sprawling agriculture, advanced irrigation, roads, palaces, and so much more was plainly evident to any westerner who arrived on Chinese shores (the same can be said of Indigenous populations throughout the Americas despite the prevailing myth of "primordial wilderness" perpetuated by white settlers) . Despite the different perspectives that westerns had between the two groups, westerners applied the Noble Savage ideal to the Chinese just as quickly and easily as they did to the Indigenous peoples across the oceans.

While the Chinese were obviously proficient in architecture, engineering, and in art, many westerners were quick to follow up any admiration of their eastern counterparts with staunch, racial criticism, highlighting their savagery in their daily lives such as gambling, long fingernails, or their seemingly archaic dress. Much of the criticism leveled on the basis of savagery had to deal with the assumption that Chinese men would, without hesitation, steal from white men and kill them, while selling white women into slavery. And while this was based in very loose reality (the triad societies of Canton did, indeed, participate in the sex trafficking of Chinese women to California and the Coolie trade that sent enslaved Chinese men to work on plantations in South America), the fears were stoked by ferocious anti-Chinese rhetoric in Europe and America.

The Chinese who emigrated to America were seen no different, and while public opinion waxed and waned, it was always understood that the Chinaman was a noble savage at best, and the earthly embodiment of evil at his worst. While modern Chinese and Chinese Americans may not be subject to the Noble Savage ideas from two centuries ago, it is not uncommon for Americans, especially white American youths, to take this idea as gospel, tormenting their Asian classmates throughout their formative years.

“China’s Sorrow: Nostalgia for a China that did not exist”

(As a forewarning, this the section where I may become quite emotional.)

Something that I encountered today was nostalgia. Not my own nostalgia, but the nostalgia of an author who grew up in a mission or international settlement in pre-WWII China, and fled from the country just before Pearl Harbor. This author, who shall remain nameless for the reason I stated in the preface of this essay, spoke highly of China’s sights and sounds, the people, the food, the craftwork, and of their pleasant life as the child of white missionaries in China. They spoke on how the pace of life in China was different than America, and that they much preferred the comforts of life in the Orient, surrounded by Oriental people and objects, enamored with Orientialia well into their adult life.

I found this passage to be absolutely appalling. I understand that I may be picking the wrong fight here, but this is my emotional response to an issue that I have found difficult to articulate that managed to, somehow, someway, manifest succinctly in the preface of a book that I randomly encountered. I lay my thoughts here:

White missionaries in China lived privileged lives, much like the other westerners that inhabited international settlements all throughout the major cities of the country. Missionaries, like the other westerners, were an extremely privileged class, living privileged lives in a country that was being torn apart by colonization, internal strife, famine, disease, and violence. While the average Chinese peasant in late Qing, early republic-era China had to contend with the daily realities of starvation, material scarcity, and the reality that a western could beat them or kill them and face no legal consequences for that action. Merchants were forced to deal with countless one-sided trade and land treaties, while government officials struggled to keep the country together, if they weren’t themselves contributing to the horrendous reality. Life in international settlements for western nationals is often reminisced upon as idyllic, quaint, and prosperous, which paints a stark contrast to their Chinese neighbors’ experiences. The westerners were off-limits, exempt from legal prosecution, and largely able to conduct themselves as they saw fit, even when their conduct directly endangered Chinese lives.

Meanwhile, outside of these international settlements, war ravaged the country. When the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was established, the country fractured. The nationalist government was constantly at war, sometimes with itself, sometimes with bandits and warlords, sometimes with organized crime, and most of all with the Chinese Communist Party. The Koumintang government, in the wake of Sun Yat-sen’s death, saw Chiang Kai-shek seize power. The Japanese began to aggressively push their borders into China, fighting with superior military technology and training while the national army faltered from unwilling conscripts led into disastrous battles by inept, corrupt, and tyrannical officers. The CCP fought a guerilla campaign against the KMT that further muddied the conflict, with innocents caught between two radical and violent sides while Japan tightened the noose. Communist and Nationalist fought together against the Japanese one day, and may have fought against each other the next.

While the country was torn apart, the westerners in international settlements were unconcerned with the wars raging across the land. They continued to live their idyllic lives until the war was literally at their doorstop -- only then did they become concerned with the plight of the Chinese people.

Only then did the westerners in international settlements care for the circumstances of the average Chinese peasant in the countryside or worker in the city. They could bear no concern while they benefited from cheap Chinese labor, horrific working conditions, or while some of them got away with murder. They could bear no concern while Europe and America colonized China and ransacked the economy. And they could bear no concern for the Chinese being tortured, beaten, raped, and murdered in the countryside, far from their gates, until it was on their doorstep.

The nostalgia that some westerners feel for China, a China that existed before the chaos of the 1920s onwards, is propped up by lives of privilege and white-washed memories that ignore the struggle of the Chinese people right under their noses.

They feel nostalgia for a China that did not exist, because the one that existed was destroyed in part by their international settlements and the colonization efforts of their home countries.

This nostalgia for a China that was at least slightly better than the chaos of the 1920s through the 1940s, or better than the Cultural Revolution, or better before Tiananmen Square exists also within the Chinese immigrant community. But this nostalgia strikes in a way that the other does not.

While the westerner who lived in an international settlement may be able to intellectually sympathize with the Chinese experience during this tumultuous time, it is the Chinese themselves who bear the actual scars. Many of our elders long for a prosperous China as well, but there is a key difference in this: our elders, our family, sometimes we ourselves, bear the scars of the past. Our nostalgia is momentary, continuously shattered by the very real heartbreak that the Chinese and Chinese American community has been subject to over the last century. While circumstances and perspectives differed, the China that some of us long for is just as much a painful sore on our souls as it is a pleasant memory. The pain, the loss, the grief, anxiety, and struggle.

It is a nostalgia for our ancestral land that cannot be found anywhere else, as precious as it is painful.

Hsu Liang Yu

[multicolouredbeanbag]

pt 3 sorting characters into hogwarts houses

Part 1    Part 2

Tl;dr: April Stevens is a Hufflepuff who projects Slytherin; at her core she is a loyalist and she values community, even though her definition of a community has become GREATLY limited due to… reasons.

so here’s the thing. April looks like a Slytherin. She talks like a Slytherin. She walks like a Slytherin. But I don’t think she actually IS a Slytherin.

Today I defend the idea that April Stevens is actually a Hufflepuff (primary, ie. her motivations/values) and a Ravenclaw secondary (methods/tactics). I absolutely love this character even tho she is a lil mean, and I think that viewing her through this framework does justice to her complexities/core of who she is.

I mention the primary/secondary sorting hats system in Part 1 so feel free to google that or read my other analyses first.

Spoilers below:

Let’s talk about April’s secondary first, which addresses the HOW of person. How they approach situations, how they problem solve.

HP canon often posits Ravenclaws as the “intelligent” character, and while April IS very smart, that’s not why I consider her a Ravenclaw.

April is a HUGE planner and collector of information. She likes to be prepared because it gives her control over a situation. She’s an excellent strategizer. She’s less comfortable with improvising without having some tools/contingency plans to draw from, so when she’s stressed, she has a tendency to fall back on the tools that she’s brought with her (in contrast to Sterling, who absolutely thrives in improvisation)

My first example is the debate tournament - as team captain, she’s in it to win it. Her strategy of choice is to prepare detailed dossiers on all the other team captains. This works well enough for her, until opponent debater Craig pulls a move she couldn’t anticipate (using his own research against her), and she falls to pieces. Still, she takes some time, gathers herself again, and pressures Sterling to use the dossier on Craig to take him down (contingency plan).

Other examples:

Asked Sterling to debate her when deciding whether to come out or not - girl RUNS on logic

April’s approach to school is very organized/planning based, she’s also kind of a major nerd OBVIOUSLY, so this is a more conventional representation of her Ravenclaw-ness

S1E1, she snatches the condom wrapper but retreats with the information probably for processing purposes. She makes a plan - use threat of exposure to blackmail Sterling into giving her the fellowship position, and doesn’t deviate from it, even when the plan fails. Sterling has to save her from that situation ultimately.

This is a little more vague, but I’m thinking about how April comes off as a rigid, somewhat inflexible character. She’s not very easily persuaded to change her behavior (this, of course, makes so much sense! When you think about being gay in the south like? Her reluctance to come out is completely understandable) which contrasts very severely against Sterling’s expressive fluidity. April is a lot more static, and part of that is because it’s difficult for her to thrive when it’s an area that she hasn’t had the opportunity to prepare/plan/study.

Now for the much more interesting and complicated part, April’s PRIMARY.

Again, the Primary is all about WHY someone does something. Their motivations and values. I argue that April Stevens is a true Hufflepuff because she places utmost importance on community.

The HP canon defining qualities of being Hufflepuff are patience and loyalty. It’s the fair and inclusive house. However, it would be reductive to suggest that all Hufflepuffs are friendly, warm individuals. They are bonded together not by their shared amity, but by their value of people and groups—community.

April’s “community” on the show is unfortunately tied to her family and the Christian community. She fears not belonging (bc homophobia) so she overcompensates by conforming aggressively (see, Straight-Straight alliance S1E1).

The episode that really sold this analysis for me was S1E7, when April and Sterling had a number of conversations about April’s dad.

April: “My dad used to call my family a team. And I worked so hard to be the very best version of myself because Team Stevens wins. Teams Stevens is perfect, except that it’s not.”

With these words, we get some insight into why she’s so intense and high-achieving and obsessive all the time. It’s not so much because she wants to win for herself, it’s more the fact that she’s part of a team. She does her part for the team by excelling everywhere she thinks it counts, and of course her underlying gayness contributes to her NEED to be perfect. In practice, it comes off as personal ambition, which is why April seems, at least on the surface, pretty slytherin-y. In reality, it must be more about compensating for something she feels she lacks. Team Stevens can’t be perfect if they’re ostracized by the community due to their (only?) child being gay, so of course she has to keep it to herself, and she has to be the best on all other counts so no one can ever touch them.

Another example, S1E6, at the tournament April says, “You know what’s going on with my family right now; we have become the black sheep of the entire community. I needed a win!” She projects her personal problems onto external academic goals.

This framework of achievement as a prerequisite of community, flawed as it is, seemed to be working for her, at least up until her dad was arrested for attacking a prostitute. In a conversation with Sterl, back when April was trying to steal the fellowship title:

S: Why are you doing this? Is it because of what’s going on with your family?

A: What John did is his problem.

S: He’s still your dad.

A: I don’t care. He beat up a prostitute! I’m not a fan of sex workers but they deserve to be safe!

She obviously feels confused and hurt that her dad lied to her and was violent to women, which is something she cannot stand. For a while, she drops her father like a hot potato, throwing away his letters from jail and ignoring his calls. Hufflepuffs value people—fair is fair.

But she kind of still supports him at the end anyway, when he comes home (s1E10). She must be feeling so conflicted when this happens. Dad is a part of family (established community) therefore she has to support him. Dad possibly hurt someone, but then he did get cleared of his charges. April is essentially making a choice between Dad and Sterling, established community vs. possible (in fact PROBABLE) community alienation.

Hufflepuff and Slytherins are both loyalists because they both care about people—Hufflepuff because they’re people, Slytherin because they’re THEIR people. For all intents and purposes, by S1E10, Sterling is one of April’s “people.” So how does April choose? She goes with the established community, which is really to say she chooses culture and tradition.

April has spent her entire life locking away a significant part of herself for the sake of her family and more generally, her religious community. In S1E8/S1E9, April is almost convinced to come out—FOR Sterling. She probably would have gone through with it were it not for her dad showing up the next episode. April obviously has (justified) reservations about coming out because it’s honestly pretty dangerous to be out in the south, and these circumstances haven’t changed just because she found a girl that she likes. But she is reluctantly on board because Sterling would have been there to take the leap with her… at this point, April had expanded her definition of community to include Sterling, and for a moment Sterling’s optimism had broken past April’s defenses. Then her dad comes back, and April realizes that she has to make a choice even though this choice hurts them both terribly—Sterling is after all, one person, and what is one person in the face of boundless historical tradition and family values?

Hufflepuff morality tends to be influenced by external inputs, while Slytherin morality tends to come from the internal, the gut. Hufflepuffs can and will ignore their internal feelings when they contradict with the needs of the community. Slytherins are less easily swayed by external influences if they are sure they are right.

April has shrunk down her loyalties to a more manageable level (truly, a very LIMITED circle), but still prioritizes fairness and loyalty and of course, second chances. It’s partly why she’s open to reconnecting with her father. Maintaining these loyalties comes at the cost of her relationship with Sterling, but this is something April is willing to do: self-sacrifice for (greater) community.

Just to take a step back, April and Sterling’s relationship back in 5th grade is just… fascinating. In S1E6, we find out that April’s whole grudge against Sterling comes from when Sterling “gave her away” to another group at recess. An odd event that they both remember differently, and who can say what really happened? All we know is that April’s animosity comes from this perceived slight— the abandonment by someone she once trusted and considered part of her community. It’s very telling that their rivalry stems from this particular moment, the fracturing of a loyalty, as opposed anything else.

April: “the past is the past, we’re all adults here” but alsooo April, >:’(

Another example: at the tournament, when April is trying to convince Sterling to use the dirt on Craig to secure their win.

S: I don’t know if I can stoop that low.

A: He did it to me!

April’s first instinct was a quid pro quo, you attack me, my group will attack you. Which is why she is so offended that Sterling refuses to take the shot, because in April’s mind, it’s only fair. This exchange supports the idea that April considers community first, ambition second.

I like to think that April hides her vulnerable side, her honest hopes and dreams, behind her external perfectionism and ambition. I like to think that she cares a lot, that she’s a prickly, distrustful, kind of Hufflepuff who craves validation because she thinks it’s a substitute for connection. And I would like to see her find that type of community, that she and EVERYBODY deserves: love that doesn’t contain (in her words) “a post condition that we follow their rules for love.”

[hhawkeye]

Since you posted about it the other day, what are you thoughts on what makes either 1) an ideal museum (the institution) or 2) an ideal museum day (the overall experience)

OH BOY!!!!!!

so 1. an ideal museum contains a lot of engaging materials for various age ranges and knowledge levels, a lot of places will do this in the form of yknow “dress as x historical figure!” “touch here to feel a dinosaurs scales!” all the way through to things like “here is a computer with more in depth information, spend an hour diving deep into the subject why not” which i think is very important no matter what subject is being presented, if you can make the audience engage with the exhibits they will come away remembering more an wanting to come back. SECONDLY a good museum HAS to be transparent about where their collections are from, why they have these pieces, and what benefits it presents having the Real Actual Thing rather than yknow a replica or 3d scanned version. this is esp hard in places like the british museum which as we all know is literally overflowing with items stolen from various people and cultures and countries in the name of Education and Advancement and all those other words for imperialism. it fucking sucks and obviously im under no illusion that they will ever do this (see: the parthenon marbles where they give out actual pamphlets that basically say “hey we know these are controversial but we totally own them legally so :// go cry about it lol”) but i think its. extremely important and actually can provide a better insight into museums themselves and how they operate!! these items being stolen is part of their history and should be discussed bc it provides even more context! actually adding onto that i think more museums should have sections dedicated to things like How X Field Works such as palaeontology, archeology, anthropology etc and give more context for how researchers come to the conclusions that they do! i think academia in general should be more accessible and i know a lot of museums do have talks and ask the x events etc but i think a more permanent space dedicated to this would benefit everyone a lot more. this is all very geared towards like, history museums bc they are my favourites but a lot of what im saying can apply to most kinds of museums. ALSO: big one: digitising their content!! i know a lot of places are doing this and it takes forever but i think it should def be a priority esp considering the state of the world and how yknow. its been a year since museums were a normal thing for most people. digitising content, esp content that isnt normally on view, is really important and makes these things accessible for everyone!!! OH ALSO i didnt mention this at first bc i thought it was a given but im gonna say it: accessibility!!!!! not just in terms of disabled access although that is SO important, but also for people who speak different languages, presenting things in simple terms without too much scientific jargon, having plenty of stops and places to just Sit for a while, etc, is so so so important

ok i rambled on about that way too much and really only skimmed the very surface but like. you know.

AN IDEAL DAY AT THE MUSEUM WITH JAMES is as follows: if its a Big museum we get there before doors open so we can stand in line and be part of the first group to go in (we have breakfast while standing in line outside), we get a map but dont really make A Plan other than “ok this section next” and we move from room to room at our own pace, we dont always have to be within arms reach of one another but if we are going to be separated we have to let each other know and make sure we have our phones to hand so that nobody worries about getting lost. taking pictures is encouraged and so is reading over each others shoulder and sometimes making jokes about something, but in a quiet way because even though museums are Not libraries we are not here to be disruptive!!! usually theres one section im extra excited about and will spend way more time than i should in there. if we have to stop for lunch it is ideally a sandwich or some such consumed in the overpriced cafe inside the museum. if that is not an option then lunch is not an option for me. whoever is with me can feel free to go get lunch elsewhere but i Will be staying in the museum. also not to be self absorbed and vain but whoever is with me better be taking pics of me looking at everything<3 before our visit i will have checked if there are any interesting talks or events happening and i will have noted these down, sometimes i will go but sometimes i realise i have spent too much time in one area and have to speed up to stay on track to make it through the entire building before closing time so i will unfortunately have to skip the talk. if theres anything ive missed i Will force us to come back the next day (or on a later date which i have scheduled into the trip specifically so that we can revisit the museums we really enjoyed or the sections we missed) THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR THE GIFT SHOP i will do the penny press thing if there is one available and i Will spend far too much money on something that i found interesting that day but will likely not really look at when i get home. we do not leave the museum until closing time. we go get dinner and discuss all the things we saw and what our favourite parts were. whoever im with likely hates me now but i will continue forcing them to do this with me for the length of the trip and they had been warned about this in advance so really its not my fault

THANK YOU FOR THE MESSAGE im sorry it was so long

[coraxaviary]

An Essay on POC and Fics

[ORIGINALLY A WRITER ASK GAME]: Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

(AKA me explaining in long-form why June is white, complete with some drama and a lot of rambling. Do not feel obligated to read).

.

I’ve never talked about this extensively, but I want to discuss ethnic minority OFCs in fics. Specifically, SiA. I originally was going to make June partially nonwhite. And I ran into problems.

I really found myself worrying about relatability. If a character is POC, I thought it would ruin immersion for people who are looking for an OFC fic to lose themselves in. It’s no secret that I’m Asian-American, and I was originally all for making the character part Asian. It’s ironic that I was worried about immersion when outside of fic spaces, I argue unendingly for Asians to be cast as leads and stereotype-defying roles. Because any POC is also just a person who can be as “relatable” as any white character, theoretically. I feel a little hypocritical, but at the same time it’s true.

When I watched The Walking Dead, Glenn was my absolute favorite. Because he was Korean-American. And for the first time, I watched a major (Asian!) character in a show become hailed as a man defined not by his race, but for his achievements and his personality. If Glenn was white, he still would’ve been one of my favorites. But seeing Asians portrayed as... normal people shouldn’t be this rare. However, it is, at least in mainstream America.

The issue with creating POC characters is racism. That’s always the issue, isn’t it? Racism has been ingrained into every system and cultural dynamic, globally. The remnants of colonialism are alive and well, and the treatment of POC people, generally, is far from sterling.

Thus it became almost impossible for me to justify creating an Asian-American (or, for that matter, any other POC) OFC. They would be defined by race, because back in the 40s, any American ethnic minority had no choice but to be characterized by their appearance. It still happens today. And I wanted the focus to be on humanity, war, bonds, and gender. Not race, because race is unpleasant to talk about. It wouldn’t be fun for me to be researching 1940s race discrimination to create a character who must overcome that too. I’m not looking to undergo an identity crisis in the pursuit of a fic aimed at social justice. I just want to write something fun.

Fic is created, many times, by minority groups, including POC. However, like any institution, it’s white-centric. And I don’t fault it for that. Most media in the mainstream is white-centric and thus it makes perfect sense for the works created based on the material to be also that way. But I felt like I was betraying myself by writing fic and not taking a chance to diversify the narrative.

Because if a significant part of my irl advocacy is attempting to champion race diversity, and I don’t take that chance in the fandom space, am I a hypocrite?

The fault of this culture, and this struggle, is not with me. It’s with the centuries and ages of oppression and typecasting and discrimination in the pages of world history. It’s unavoidable.

However, to be kind of frank, it sucks to have to consider these things when all I wanna do is write a self-indulgent narrative about WWII boyfriends. I want to just be myself and imagine a fun time with my favorite characters. But I know, deep down, that anyone who is not white would not have been accepted into the group. I decided to just circumvent all these problems by writing a white character.

And it’s not true to the narrative if I wrote a POC OFC and then bent all the other characters OOC and forced them to be non-problematic. Because I know, regrettably, that the norm back then (and still in some areas) is casual racism. It was only 1948 when the American Army officially desegregated. You can watch The Pacific for yourself and find out what the Americans called Japanese people. The racial slurs, I’ll admit, made me uncomfortable despite how much I love the series. Army culture in the 40s towards a woman who is also a racial minority would have been egregious. And that’s not fun to write about in a fic.

I can’t not think about race -- not forever, at least. I don’t have that luxury. I do acknowledge that I, as an Asian-Amerian, benefit from a white-centric culture that has designated us (condescendingly) as a “model minority” and as an exception race. Systemic racism is less impactful towards Asians. This is, however, not to discount the terrible history of Asian-American discrimination that is not immediately apparent (I have been told that not everyone is educated of the existence of the Japanese-American internment or other examples of irrefutable discrimination). There is history in my family of experiencing both ends of the Asian-American experience: as a “model” and also discriminated against as a perceived threat (or a scapegoat, if you will, for the Vietnam war and other matters).

I went through a phase (as many American POC do) of wanting to be white when I was very young. I don’t know exactly why. Is it because the American identity is so deeply rooted in the striking visual of the white settler, despite the deep history of the continent in indigenous people? Is it because diversity is (or was) not common in the mainstream -- when we didn’t have people like Glenn at the forefront of media representation but instead had stereotyped caricatures like Mr. Yunioshi? I didn’t know what it meant to be beautiful back then unless the portrait was of caucasian features. I have a distinct memory of complaining to my mother when I was about five or six years old that I didn’t like my black hair, and I think my way of thinking unconsciously had to do more with my Asian heritage than the actual color. I cannot tell you honestly what specifically caused this type of thinking, but it’s more widespread than you’d think among POC children.

So this is why I am a POC and yet I choose to write a white protagonist. Historical fiction always contains complexities: decisions that must be made with the wisest discernment that I don’t feel like I can always make. History is a burden upon us all. The present will never be free of the past, and it’s our job as writers to navigate the gray patches between interpretation and accurate portrayal. Sometimes it seems like an insurmountable task, and sometimes it’s as if I can forget about my POC-ness altogether and lose myself in my OFC without thinking about heritage or discrimination.

But here we are, writing fanfiction of WWII heroes who come from a different time and a different era.

It had to have felt different back then, don’t you think? When I think of the forties, I think of patriotism and B-24s and victory; I think of a feeling of hope tinged with despair. I think of radios and dance halls and tragic heroes and the glory of soldiers dropping from the sky, backlit like angels and tasked with democracy and hope and things that are right and true. I think of a time where Americans united for good.

But this is a glamorized version of history. It’s the enjoyable version, we all know. And it genuinely consisted partially of these snippets of greatness, but there was a larger part that lay, vast, underneath the golden panorama that sometimes we forget about. And I think the WWII fic-writing community is keenly conscious of this aspect. I see it in the writing that we all so lovingly produce: a lot of us understand, at least on a surface level, that war is not glamorous and that the times were still as turbulent as they are today.

It’s something we all must grapple with.

And this, in a slightly dramatic fashion, is my personal conflict of being a person of color, and choosing to write a white character for the sake of joy and fun.

.

Thank you for reading if you got to the end! I love you all :)

.

(Partially inspired by this post by @rhovanian, but mostly my own ruminations based on the brief time I have existed on this earth).

.

[wbqotd]

What could you do for time or days if people live underground with out a Sun to help with time?

Sorry this one took so long to answer. I hope it’s still relevant to you! My advice is under a cut this time since there was a lot to say.

I think there’s a lot of ways you could take this without breaking readers’ suspension of disbelief. 

When it comes down to it people still need to sleep and eat at fairly regular intervals. Whether or not you have hours or minutes to measure time with, you can still conceptualise time though patterns of sleeping and eating. A ‘day’ could simply be the period of time a person is awake for after a long period of deep sleep. A ‘morning’ can still be the period of time between waking and a midday meal. Likewise, an ‘afternoon’ can be the period of time between the midday meal and the last meal of the day. That’s not to say you have to make three meals a day and eight hours of unbroken sleep the norm. You could have people eat four meals a day and have a siesta in the middle of the day or make segmented sleep and two meals a day the norm. As long as there’s some kind of pattern, you can use it to split time into pieces.

There’s been a number of studies involving sticking people in caves/underground bunkers and seeing what it does to their circadian rhythms and perception of time. It’s been a while (nearly ten years) since I studied the subject so take this with a big pinch of salt but if I remember correctly one of the big studies (Mills, 1974) suggested that most people will adopt a sleep/wake cycle of just over just under 25 hours when left in the dark without any way of measuring time. I’m sceptical about how applicable the results of studies involving isolated individuals or small groups who’ve lived above ground for most of their lives and are used to a 24-hour day are to a whole society of people living underground for generations. And I’m sure there are criticisms to be made about the reliability and validity of these studies. But I wanted to mention it because it’s somewhere to start if you want some science to base this on. 

Of course, on its own, the sleep/eating patterns thing really only works on an individual level. It’s hard to organise a society if your only concept of time is ‘in the morning’ or ‘after lunch’ because even when everyone in a society has a siesta and three meals a day people aren’t going to be doing everything at the same time every day. Such a society could be fun to explore. I imagine people would have to live in small close-knit communities, where everyone you know lives within walking distance and it’s normal to knock on your neighbour’s door if you need something at any time. It’s hard to organise large scale societies without a standardised way of measuring time - imagine trying to run a business or plan a wedding or use public transport without it. Your culture might also  place more empathise on certain events then we do. A baby’s first steps might be more important than reaching a first birthday. Menarche might be the indicator that someone is old enough to drink or get married or enter a legal contract. Perhaps a couple can’t divorce unless they’ve lived in separate dwellings for the length of at least one pregnancy, as opposed to something arbitrary like five years?

If you did want to look into real societies that don’t/didn’t have a calendar/clock system, I’d start by researching the Amondawa people. Again, it’s not a perfect parallel and you’ve got to be very very careful about generalising the ‘findings’ that come (Eurocentric) studies of one group of people to other populations, but it’s something to look into if you’re interested. 

Now, to answer your actual question: You’ve got a couple of different ways of measuring time without the sun. 

Firstly, you could base your measurements of time on natural phenomena. A ‘new year’ could be indicated by something like plants/fungi blooming or fruiting, the mating season of a particular animal, the migration of an animal that lives underground, or an underground lake filling up. 

Here’s an example of how something like this might work: Every spring the sun melts the snow on the surface. Water starts to seep into the ground, slowly at first and then faster as the world above gets warmer. You get lakes and streams and waterfalls in the summer. Until eventually all the snow is gone and the streams begin to dry up and the lakes become more shallow. The new year is marked by the return of the first trickle of water in a particular passageway where some legendary event was rumoured to have taken place aeons ago.  Once there’s water spotted in that passage, planting season begins because it’s not long before the lake will be full and that can be used to water all those fungi your population relies on for food.

If you use a natural event to mark a new year it’s unlikely that it’ll match up exactly to one of our years or that the length of a year will be exactly equal every year. It also leaves a lot of room for something to go wrong, which can be fun from a writer’s perspective because it can create problems for your characters or inspire further world-building.  

Going back to the above example: Imagine this is your system and a volcano went off and covered the Earth with a cloud of ash. The snow doesn’t melt that year. Those underground lakes and passageways don’t fill up. Planting season never comes or perhaps it’s started too late. There’s famine. People turn on each other. Maybe they have to invade another settlement or abandon everything they know for a better life? Or perhaps they run out of safe drinking water before they run out of food? Diseases caused by drinking unsafe water run rampant and kill off most of your population before starvation is an issue…. Things like this can be a part of your plot, but they can also be a part of your backstory or world’s history. If something like that happened previously in your setting it could have changed your fictional society dramatically. Maybe a particular sort of person was blamed for the disaster and that type of person is still persecuted? Maybe your people became more warlike and had to raid other settlements to survive? Maybe efforts were concentrated on developing better irrigation methods? Maybe someone invented a new way of cleaning water? Maybe religious rituals developed in hopes of preventing it from happening again? There’s a lot of ways you take it, whether it happened in the distant past or living memory. 

For measuring smaller units of time you can still use most of the methods we use above ground: water clocks, oil/candle clocks, hourglasses, mechanical clocks, quartz clocks and atomic clocks should all still work. I won’t go into detail about these since this already a long post and it’s easy to find more information about them. But I will say that if you use one of the above types of clocks, the units don’t have to match up to our own. You can create fictional units of time if you want to. But you can also translate those units to existing compatible units of time. I’d personally make the units comparable to our own. E.G. I wouldn’t have a character take a nap, eat a meal and take their pet glow-worm for a walk and then call the time-frame they did it in ‘a minute’ or ‘a month’ (unless some magic was at work) but you could call it an hour even it’s not 3,600 atomic seconds long.

If you get creative, you might even find a way for the above to work for longer periods of time. Imagine a giant hourglass that’s turned seven times a ‘year’ or a ‘week’ to mark which god you should be praying to. Or maybe you’ve got a giant mechanical clock in the centre of the town square that’s been counting down to something and chimes every 42 million heartbeats or so. It’s been there so long that no one can remember it’s original purpose but all those small hands are sure helpful for arranging meetups. 

Lastly, you can create periods of time through artificial means. The obvious method would be through artificial lighting but sound could work too or even something like set communal eating times can help you keep everyone on a similar schedule. For example, you could dim a large outdoor light for so many hours a day Or you could cut off power completely encourage people to sleep during those hours. You could even have a large city with limited power light up half the city for 13 or so hours while the other half is in darkness and then redirect the power supply so it’s the other way around for the next 13 hours. It could be a lot of fun writing something set in place where you can walk from day to night at will. 

I hope that’s given you something to work with. Good luck with your project! 

[petruchio]

Hii, I've recently got into pjo again after years and everyone went from saying Rick did a good job with representation to calling him racist and a bad writer. Did something happen while I was gone? Or is it just that standards change and he's still a white dude? Don't take me wrong I know his writing is far from perfect, I'm genuinely interested in trying to learn how his representation is flawed and why.

hi! thanks for the ask! i honestly don’t know if im the best person to answer this, but i will do my best. for any of my followers/mutuals, please add on in the tags/replies/reblogs if you guys have anything to say!! it’s a really valuable conversation to be having right now, and i really appreciate you wanting to learn more.

i think its a combination of standards changing and also just having sat with the works a lot longer people are able to think more critically about them. like, for example, right when hoo was coming out, i guess it seemed pretty revolutionary to have nico be revealed as gay--but after sitting with that for a few years now, i think its becoming clear that the way it was written is not really as progressive as the action itself. he’s forcefully outed against his will, he’s immediately put into a relationship with a random dude (sorry its true) without allowing him to explore his sexuality and outing on his own, he’s also like, what, fourteen? and thus there is no need for him to be in a relationship with anyone at that age! does the simple fact of including a gay character in your book excuse treating them that way?

issues surrounding race and culture in the books have had a similar shift. sure, when piper first came into the series, it was really cool just to have Native representation in the books at all! but after sitting with it, why does she have to be portrayed as a kleptomaniac? what does that do other than perpetuate harmful stereotypes? or braiding eagle feathers into her hair, which i think other bloggers have explained better than i can, but is essentially not at all appropriate to her culture? or even the fact that her father refuses to play any Native roles in hollywood--why? or the fact that she’s almost immediately sexualized at her claiming? 

i think the broader issue here is that it’s becoming clearer that rick didn’t really do his research. it just ends up that he relied on some harmful stereotypes and banked on the fact that including people of different backgrounds at all would absolve him of actually having to write them well. and once you really dig into that past the surface level of just “representation=Being There At All” you start to realize that an author, especially a children’s author, also has a duty to not just representation, but to GOOD representation.

there’s also some other issues that just become more uncomfortable the longer you sit with them. if you just sort of breeze through the books, maybe frank and hazel’s relationship isn’t that weird to you. but if you sit with it for 10 years thinking about the reality of a 16 year old boy dating a 13 year old girl starts to feel more and more icky. or the way that aphrodite children are portrayed as superficial and obsessed with appearance, while piper gets by with the whole “not like other girls” stereotype, implying that women who are interested in makeup and boys can’t also be strong and independent and powerful heroes.

when you add all those things together i think it just starts to really feel frustrating, because rick has such a large platform and the ability to do so much good, and instead we get these half baked stereotypes of characters.

in regards to the writing, like MAN i think it was just after boo came out and people realized that hoo really wasnt going ANYWHERE. like all through the series it seemed like we were building up to something and that there was like a point to ANYTHING that happened, and then it became clear that it was just sort of a cash cow that was written basically every book in response to how people felt about the last. like tlh doesnt have enough percy? ok here’s son which is basically another pjo book. we’ve never had an annabeth pov? ok here’s moa which is basically the annabeth show. oh i left a huge cliffhanger to make you buy the next book? here’s house of hades which you really are only reading because of percy and annabeth because all the other characters are written so boring. oh people liked nico and reyna? oh they’ll get a pov in the LAST BOOK! oh right, didn’t i say percy won’t be the focus of this series? no pov for him, even though i basically wrote a second pjo series in the middle three books but i just won’t wrap it up! i think alll those things really frustrated people and it’s hard to take any of hoo seriously after how it ended. 

and again, just after a long TIME, those things are more clear. yeah if you were in the fandom in like 2012 we were HYPED about hoo because it was like a bonus series with all these new characters and things seemed really awesome. but then boo just was Like That and people started to actually dig into the books more and pointing out all the issues there.

wow sorry this got so long, but i hope this answered at least some of your questions. also, welcome BACK!! the pjo fandom will always be here to welcome you and even though we criticize it to hell, there’s a reason we’re all still blogging about it in 2020. there’s lots to love. but, as with any media, it’s worth examining critically, and i just think the pjo fandom is better and perhaps more vocal at really being willing to engage with it in that sense. 

[meltangospelhour]

Notes on Reverie & Discipline: Chapter 1

Format: 1st Person Narrative

Chapter Rating: R / +17 [Implied Sexual stuff/it's smut]

Summary: This story was written after and based upon the 2020 GOFest that's been collecting dust. It's a first person recollection of thoughts after certain events, as well as repressed feelings coming to the surface between three characters in particular.

Chapter 2 // Chapter 3

Blanche

Comparing notes is how we’ve come to conclude our daily routine. It has been logical to do so; our research overlaps quite a bit. As you know, I oversee the handling of evolutionary components and deducting the requirements; Spark is an expert when it comes to breeding and handling Pokémon in their infancy; and Candela, in matters of improving overall stats of a Pokémon, which can involve a combination of stardust and candies.

To address it as Spark would: “Candy makes the candy.”

...Ahem.

So, because candies can trigger the evolutionary outcome of a Pokémon, it is inevitable and without question that I would be working alongside Candela quite often. It’s a fate inescapable. Even if we’ve discovered nothing new, she and I will come together out of a habit that’s formed over the course of these years. If one of us is too sick to appear in person, we’ll connect virtually. In all matters of candy, stardust, and now Rockets, there is always something to discuss.

Such evenings are somehow intense, yet still quiet. Cozy, if you will. The way my partner shifts from being so analytical in one moment, into a giggling fit the next, was a pattern that alarmed me in the beginning. Are you really a scientist, I’d wanted to ask countless times during our first sessions. Now, I’m happy to be a witness to the gamut of personalities that find themselves called into the field that are Pokémon studies.

Candela is far more crafty and even more calculative than I had come to imagine. If she loses, she still somehow wins. I have to work hard for my victories against her; she loses gracefully, but you will have most certainly earned that victory. Countless times, I have created elaborate defenses, counting on her weaknesses--proven and potential. And, repeatedly, I have seen her sidestep them before she’d even touch the surface of my hard work.

As if I were the purest ice, she sees right through me.

With her, there is no hesitation in matters of reading my face, my eyes, the way my fingers move, the pace of my breath, the tone of my voice, the quivering of my lips. Even down to the way I dress, she knows the language I speak past my mask, intentionally and not.

I could, at times, feel where those eyes went. It was distressing, yet oddly… alluring. That reaction has yet to change.

Within six months of observing me, she once asked of me: “You’re upset; aren’t you?”

“And why do you think this?” I sharply quipped.

“Your braid; it’s underhanded. When you’re in a better mood and have your hair braided, you’d usually opt for an overhand technique. Right?”

I found myself paralyzed; she was right. My Lapras had come down with Pokerus. While the virus itself is generally beneficial, it doesn’t make the course of the disease any easier to endure. Seeing someone you care about in pain and discomfort weighs heavily on the mind. As always, I kept my more guttural emotional responses suppressed. The issue of anyone knowing what my Lapras was going through wasn’t the problem; the issue was the potential of my raw emotions stifling my work.

I found myself angry; I had lost control. To opt for a euphemism so many are wont to make: she thawed past my glacial barrier. With this knowledge, would she take advantage of it?

She did, only…not in the way that I’d feared.

Candela stopped by to make sure my Lapras was comfortable, and told a story about how her Infernape, then a Monferno, came down with it. The Pokémon's massive head now resting in her lap, my research partner sang to it a lullaby that I’d never heard--Only to realize along the crescendo that it was Lugia’s Song in a different key. My Lapras, for the first time since falling ill, found enough will to make sound beyond agonized moaning and hummed along with her.

I looked on at the scene that churned impossible-to-pinpoint feelings from within: a woman who I’d feared, and, in a panic, further embraced water-types into my repertoire. Only to find that she seemed relieved I had done so while jovially complaining about needing a real challenge. Now doting upon the very Pokémon who could potentially, with its gains in its newfound recovery, could likely better withstand her team, if not devastate it, if I calculate my strategy accordingly.

It dawned upon me that she saw herself as a small part of something much bigger. If we were strong together, it was all that mattered to her.

She’d said to me some time ago, not the exact words, but akin to: Battles are frequent. They are won, they are lost. But war only has one victory, and that is the victory to focus upon.

That resonated true, especially now.

The feeling of partnership and friendship remained stable. However, something else within felt threatened.

...Something deeper that I’d repeatedly denied myself.

❄❄❄

I’ve worried. I’ve found myself knotting up within. I hadn’t fallen ill. I began to follow the pattern that was behind this sudden nuisance. One of the GO Rocket leaders we were up against is a person from Candela’s past. Someone close to her. A rival and a close friend. In a passing and annoyingly irrelevant thought, I immediately processed the possibility of them being doubles partners in that not-so-distant past.

I found myself thinking about it more, wishing to see the fight they’d engaged in in that field. I thought more about them than I did Cliff. I feel so terribly sorry for Cliff; Giovanni is unworthy of a man that loyal. But I found my thoughts wandering more often to a point that could be deemed unhealthy at worst, counterproductive at best.

The Salamence were the ones that drove my thoughts into this descent. Candela had one that she loved so dearly. That is not to say that she didn’t love her Pokémon equally, but her closeness and address of the dragon seemed so very unique in of itself. To compare, she addressed her Moltres with a certain deference, as we often did with our signature birds. To further illustrate the relationship, one could say that they were our patrons and we, their scions, in a sense. With the Salamence, however, there was a certain reminiscence and determination that I could never understand--

--Until I learned of Arlo’s possession of a Salamence. Though, his was tainted--as far as I was aware. Likewise, this could all be fallacious; I could be bringing up Sierra and Candela’s Houndooms, mine and Sierra’s Lapras, or Spark and Cliff’s Tyranitars. These coincidences potentially had just as little-to-no grounds for concern.

...Right? Of course. Of course, I’m right.

The Salamence themselves shouldn’t be a detail worth my mulling over; however, it drove my curiosity as to who filled the ranks of Arlo’s non-tainted team that Candela had, from what Willow said (who recounted what Candela told him) requested to battle. For old friends who dedicated themselves to the world of Pokémon battles to have matching Pokémon, or Pokémon who were romantically involved, it was often seen as what one might call a ‘cute’ gesture.

A cute gesture between old friends…

...Old friends who could be considered to be of ‘marrying age,’ no less…

To share a pair of dragons was no small matter in certain cultures. After all, Arlo is presumably Kantonian, or perhaps Johtonian; Candela is--

If the dragons are or were mates, then, possibly--?

(I still do not know Candela’s exact age. Her appearance is considerably younger than Spark’s, despite her being the eldest. I attribute this to a number of factors alongside her own healthy habits. One of my admins even teased that Valor’s old guards biologically engineered their higher ranks to fit a certain ideal, to which I immediately dismissed, but considered the potential sciences for my own personal application in terms of enhancing my own mental aptitude permanently.)

In addition, I suppose Spark being very open to discussing Sierra, but Candela’s withholding of Arlo, fuels my ruminations. Spark and Sierra have shared no past, but the level of transparency he was willing to offer is to be appreciated.

“...Has she mentioned him to you?” I asked Spark while watching Elekid and my Metagross play together.

“Nope.” He was careless and quick to reply. I wish he’d not assume before speaking.

“...You’re aware of whom I’m asking about?”

“Yeah,” Spark laughed. “Candela and Arlo. It’s all over your face.”

He wasn’t being careless, and I was wrong about him.

Sporting the audacity to gesture around the proximity of my own face with his finger just to drive his point home, I felt anger well inside of me. And yet, I wasn’t sure who or what I was angry towards. I quickly deducted that I was mad at the situation itself; that I had let my feelings over the situation shatter my façade. He didn’t need to ask “who” due to the fact I had, apparently, exposed my emotions out in the open more than I’d anticipated.

“I suppose that Professor Willow is the only one that Candela had spoken with in-depth about him. Are you not curious?” I asked Spark.

“Of course I’m curious!” he said as Elekid went flying. Nonchalant, Spark raised his hand to catch the flying ball of flailing and laughing energy. He was many things, but the manner that his ‘mother Beartic’ side often activated, as effortlessly as taking a breath, never ceased to impress me.

“You know what, though? When Candy’s ready to speak, she’ll speak! ‘Sides, it’s not like she’s got anything we can actually use! I mean, what’s she going to say? Dude likes boxers over briefs? What are we gonna do with that? Mail him thongs?”

I was fortunate that my anger had found focus. Spark was right; it was pointless. The thirst for my knowledge was driven by my own selfish desires, nor was it hampering Candela’s performance. If anything, it was a fuel.

And yet, my desires persisted. And grew.

...How would she know what sort of undergarments he preferred? Why would you even use such a crass example, Spark? They were only close friends. Nothing more.

I have had days where I absolutely abhorred Arlo. I’ve yet to speak with him; and yet, the reports from trainers and the fact he’d hurt Candela was beyond enough.

I had nights where I reveled in our time -- OUR time -- comparing notes with one another. That time Arlo could have shared with Candela, had he behaved and not fled like a spoiled coward, now belonged to me. Her closeness as she leaned over to see my work along the scattered papers and array of holo-screens...

...The firm, caring squeeze of her hand upon my shoulder;

...The warmth voluminous breasts brushing against my back when she leaned in for a closer look;

...The tenderness and melody of her voice uttering my name, telling me how proud she was to be my partner.

...The scent she wore that often compelled me to lick my own lips.

...I’ve experienced guilt for this indulging. We are working. I always kept still and drank in those moments. I dismissed the apologies from her when she soon realized how close she leaned over me as I worked in my seat and at my desk. For the record, I do not like it when anyone invades my space uninvited. I’d not prefer it.

But this? This was acceptable.

Desirable.

I always kept my voice to a whisper when I forgave her, and kept my face close to hers. At first, it was never planned; a pleasant accident. But, after conducting enough research regarding such gestures, I found that it was a way to sate this growing need for her I had within. To quell the steam without crossing the professional line, so to speak.

I began to realize that part of myself had lost control for her. Close to my proximity, I could feel her warmth, combined with that warm, sweet, spicy perfume that most certainly had traces of Salazzle pheromones imbued within. Alone and in the darkness of night, I then found myself yielding to the temptation of vivid fantasies and succumbing to the will of my own wandering hands.

I felt safe to do so.

Then, from within a dream, something clicked.

Awakened by epiphanies is the norm for my course of sleep. I keep a notebook upon my nightstand for such moments. However, this was the first time I felt too horrified to write. I didn’t want the degradation of my thoughts towards carnal desires to be committed to any tangible memory.

Still; it was a thought that felt as if I were gazing down a void that could envelope me at any time. I kept wanting to know just how close they had been.

Why are the notes on him so vague?

Why so much hatred just because of Candela?

Did she break your heart, losing a Pokémon battle?

Or stealing your potential title?

Am I missing something?

You seriously cannot justify abusing Pokémon because you lost against her!

You wanted the leadership position; didn’t you?

No, that’s too easy. That can’t be it.

Sometimes that’s all there is to it, Blanche.

Perhaps I’m committing the sin of over analyzing things. I still recall Cliff’s message, chiding me for ‘thinking too much.’

(While his observations are… sound, that did nothing to gain the upper hand against me in our previous battles.)

Perhaps these concerns I ruminate upon weren’t merely carnal desires. Perhaps they were more...

[He is sly and manipulative.]

That note. Who’s being manipulated? Why mention this useless detail in our dossier?

I can only compare him to anything but. I’ve met Rattata who were more sly than he.

Small. Loud. Does nothing but preach. Preoccupation with humiliation, and announces frequently for his desire to not be embarrassed. And yet, he seems so simultaneously proud and disgusted of Rocket. That isn’t very manip--

“Wait.”

My need to annotate took precedence over my stubbornness. This might be important. I took only a few notes; short ones for column [A]; extensive ones for column [C]. [C] would come to explain [A]. I will make [C] explain to me [A].

And yet, weeks later, we found ourselves standing beside one another. The subsiding heat from the summer sunset radiated upon us in the glow of victory as we watched the GO Rockets flee. With the aid of Victini’s blessing, we were able to overwhelm what could have become a potential disaster beyond words. One may call such a scene ‘romantic.’ Perhaps that would have been the moment where I should have confessed to her. Perhaps share a kiss? That’s how that sort of thing works; yes? Two warriors, victorious in their pursuits, succumbing to their long-repressed desires. In those stories Candela loved so much, it always seemed to play out that way.

Almost always. There was that one spy novel she complained for an entire week about.

Despite my successful duel with Cliff fresh upon my mind, I set aside enough space to recall what I’d observed of Candela and Arlo.

(Due to the sheer number of witnesses, Spark and Sierra’s battle was not worth recalling and was quite straightforward; to this day, and apparently to Sierra’s chagrin, people still speak of it extensively.)

I had witnessed the Valors; leader and traitor, from a distance; the unreadable faces; the wordless, pre-battle lingering. The reflection of the sunlight in Arlo’s spectacles from my position obfuscating the legibility of his emotions--while Candela, so expressive as can be with her enrapturing eyes, was no more different from when challenging one of our trainers. She radiated so much vivacity; and yet, she told me absolutely nothing.

...That was the point; wasn’t it?

My recollection was suddenly interrupted by that familiar voice so warm and bubbly: “I guess we won’t have any notes to compare tonight, huh?”

“...I suppose not,” I replied. Of course not; we were uncovering details at an amazing pace; my personal concerns aside.

Still, my chest began to ache, caused only by what I could only ascertain was due to tension. Candela; invite me to something after our dinner with the Professor. Ask me something, anything. A showcase battle? A doubles battle with Spark and the Professor? Chess? Would you… Care to spend the night? Anything? I couldn’t look at her. I looked at everything and everyone else around me but her. I knew that if I did, she’d call me a Piplup and ask what was wrong. Not that I minded, but I wasn’t ready to allow myself to react to that the way I desired to do so in public.

She said nothing.

Before I could take command of the situation and extend my own invitation, I finally directed my eyes where she was supposed to be.

She was already gone.

I last glimpsed her waving to Spark and Professor Willow before mounting her Rapidash and taking out beyond the valley’s treeline.

I took a step forward to call out to her, to simply give her the similar dismissal/greeting that I often did by announcing her name; but the echo of the sound of my heel clicking down on a flat rock seized me by surprise, thus disrupting my usual vocal range into a far more embarrassing octave.

It was the reverberation of both my voice and that step that suddenly alarmed me. Something about that echo, in my mind’s auditory hallucinations, made it feel as if I were speaking in a chamber.

No, a theatre.

What would have been something of a charm in a natural, open space--to hear one’s voice echoing in such a way--triggered a visualization of all the notes that I had taken, and what I had bore witness to today.

Something’s up. I was now beyond determined to find out just what it was.

Chapter 2 // Chapter 3

[halequeenjas]

Class, Sass, and a Little Bass || Evelyn & Jasmine

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @thronesofshadows & @halequeenjas SUMMARY: While visiting the Artesian, Jasmine notices Evelyn seems a bit down. Being the good Samaritan she is, she takes Evelyn out for a night on the town. 

The last time she’d been to the Artesian, Jasmine couldn’t help but notice that Evelyn seemed a bit glum. It was something she decided simply wouldn’t do. She’d insisted that they go out and have a night on the town to help the other woman get in better spirits. Jasmine pulled a few strings with the club owner and had them both on the VIP list. With endless wine and dancing, there was no way Evelyn was going to go stay sad for long. Being responsible adults who weren’t going to drive around town drunk, they had a driver for the evening. This evening, she donned a little red dress with her favorite pair of black Louboutins. Evelyn, of course, was also dressed to the aces and Jasmine linked arms with her. “You’re going to love this place. They have a huge selection of wine and the music is great,” Jasmine assured her friend, “Plus, the saxophone player is totally yummy.”

For someone who liked to pride herself on doing her best to not show emotions, Evelyn knew that recently she had been less successful than usual. Not that she entirely minded when Jasmine had commented on it - the other woman was both a friend and undoubtedly one of Evelyn’s favorite customers, though ever since they’d first hit it off, it felt a bit odd considering her anything but a friend. Which was why she’d so readily agreed to go out for the night when she’d been invited. She was appreciative of anything that helped her get her mind off of everything else. She’d worn an especially flattering black dress and had pulled on a new pair of heels. With a grin, she turned to her friend. “I find myself loving it quite a bit already, though I am certain the company of a lovely friend without a doubt contributes to that.” She bit her lip. “Well, you will have to show me this saxophone player. Though I think we ought to start with drinks. What will you be having?” 

One of the reasons she’d always loved this club was the contagious energy. Nothing like a little swing and fine wine to keep your spirits high. While Jasmine didn’t quite know why Evelyn seemed a bit down, she knew if anyone could bring some cheer, it was her. Whatever it was, she doubted her friend would be down for too long. She was far too beautiful, rich, and sophisticated to stay down. If Jasmine were to wager, she’d say she was already feeling better. She smiled brightly at her friend and responded, “I know you’d love it here. Jazz is so much classier than regular club music… not that I hate the regular clubs, but this dancing actually requires skill. And the wine selection is way better.” She leaned an arm on the bar and gave the bartender her most sparkling grin. “A bottle of Chateau La Tour White Blend, please.” She turned back to Evelyn and added, “I figured we both enjoy wine and white wine has a nice summer-y feel to it. I’m personally trying to enjoy these last bits of summer which I think requires one last pool day. I’ll definitely point out the sax player though I’m sure the whole band will be captivated with us once we start dancing.” Once, the bartender handed them an ice bucket and their wine, she took them in hand and asked, “Do you prefer one of the hightops or one of the sofa lounge tables?” 

“Well, you do know me.” Evelyn grinned. “I agree. I mean, as a former ballet dancer, this is not my typical style, but I do have some practice in it. I have always adored any sort of proper dancing.” She looked over to Jasmine as the other woman ordered a bottle of wine. “You do continue to have excellent taste. No proper offense to most of this town, but why on earth do so few people understand class? Or have properly good taste in anything?” She ran a hand through her hair, letting it fall over her shoulder. “You chose a good one, speaking as the resident wine expert of the two of us. Enjoying summer is an absolute must.” She tapped her red nails against the countertop as she glanced around the bar. “Good, though I agree. I mean, between the two of us, how could anyone think to look away?” At Jasmine’s question, she tapped her fingers against her chin. “I think a lounge table sounds quite nice, personally. If that works for you, that is?”

It was pretty easy for Jasmine to imagine Evelyn dancing ballet. She hadn’t really done it since before she was a teenager, but she’d always preferred jazz dance classes. It was a little more upbeat and fun. “Somehow, it’s no surprise that you’ve done ballet dancing. I did too when I was younger though I enjoyed the jazz classes more,” she started before she grinned wryly and added, “I can lead the way through the jazz dancing.” She set the wine down at the small table in front of the couch. It was a cozy little spot only open to those who made the VIP list. They had a good view of the stage while still maintaining a bit of privacy to chat freely. “Good taste in wine is surprisingly not an automatic, even among wealthy people. One of the richest people I know sent me a bottle of wine for Christmas that was yes, expensive, but just not good. The notes in wine are supposed to be subtle and have finesse. I don’t want my wine to taste like I’m gnawing on a piece of oak,” she noted dramatically. She ended up trashing that bottle of wine, not that her client needed to know that.  “You’re totally right,” she agreed brightly, “It’s nice and cozy over here. Good view of the stage and we still have a bit of freedom to chat amongst ourselves without anyone hearing. Speaking of--” She sneakily pointed to one of the saxophone players. He was wearing a white suit with coral accents and his skin always looked sun kissed like he had just spent a day on the beach… which was a hazard in this town, but a girl could dream of beach days with beautiful people. “That’s the saxophone player I was telling you about. His name is Ray. Not the brightest bulb in the box, but he’s talented and definitely nice to look at.” 

“My mother was in the Royal Ballet, so even though she was not around, I felt drawn to it. A way to be connected to her, I suppose.” Evelyn shrugged again.”You did? Well, perhaps you will have to teach me more sometime. Though for now, I am more than okay with you leading the way.” Sitting down, she took another glance around the club. She appreciated people like Jasmine - people who understood how to appreciate the finer things in life. Though she did not regret leaving London, she did sometimes miss the elegance that came with the city. At least, the parts of it that she had been a part of. “Well, I do own a bar, so I think that gives me a bit of a leg up, but you are correct, money does not guarantee taste in wine. I certainly have horror stories, even from my own bar.” She made a small face. “Oh yuck, that sounds horrible.” Evelyn nodded along to Jasmine’s words, following where she was pointing. “I do appreciate the privacy that it provides. For all I can enjoy showing off, I also enjoy not having my conversations with friends broadcast for the whole world to see.” Crossing her legs, she gave a satisfied nod at the saxophone player. “I can see what you mean. If nothing else, I can always appreciate good looks and good talent.” Evelyn turned to face Jasmine and held up the bottle of wine. “Might I pour you a glass?”

“Wow, talk about incredible. I get wanting to have that connection to her, I’m still just impressed she was in the Royal Ballet,” Jasmine said with wide eyes. With how much Evelyn spent on her home, it was no shock that she came from old money, but still, the Royal Ballet was one hell of a status indicator. It explained the refined elegance that Evelyn seemed to have about her. “Some time might start tonight because especially after some wine, I’ll definitely feel like dancing.” Hanging out with Evelyn was different than most of her high school friends. Even the ones with money weren’t nearly as refined. She had to admit she wasn’t even as much so growing up in American culture. How many classic night club evenings had she had with Bea and Leah? There was something more appealing about this though she wouldn’t trade those late nights closing out the clubs either. She supposed she could enjoy both the finer things in life and the more basic things. She laughed easily and agreed, “Yes, owning the nicest bar in town, I’d hope you have good taste in wine. I've personally never been disappointed with your choices.” It seemed they agreed the saxophone player was nice to look at. Not as nice to look at as either of them, but that was a tall order. “A glass of wine sounds perfect,” she responded with a wide smile. “So,” she started off unable to quell her curiosity, “I know tonight is a fun night, but if you’d like to talk about anything going on, I can be a good listener when I feel like it.” 

“For a few years, yes. It is how she and my father met. She was quite impressive.” Any of that sort of information was surface-level enough - and furthermore, it was information that came up if anyone searched for Evelyn anyhow - and she had very much wanted to be like her mother in many ways, even if being a dancer like her was not the primary one. However, it was one that she could connect with others about, even if they did not have the exact same shared experience. “It would be an honor to dance with you tonight, so please do let me know when it strikes your fancy.” It was nice, having someone like Jasmine around. A valuable, though uncomplicated friendship. Something she found herself craving more and more lately. “I do my research if the occasion calls for it, and while I may have not been a wine expert for years, I have always had good taste in many things, I think, and so it only took a little bit of reading when I decided that this was what the town needed. Thank goodness you both know how to sell the best houses in town and you appreciate my place of business.” She let a small smile cross her lips and she opened the bottle and poured each of them a generous glassful. “Most of all, I am quite pleased to consider you a friend. The others are simply added bonuses.” She took a sip of her wine as she considered Jasmine’s question. “I broke up with the person who I was seeing. Trying to move past that. Clearly not as smoothly as I might have liked. I never saw myself as the sort to react in such a way to romance, after all.”

“Oh my god, that sounds like something out of a rom com,” Jasmine commented somewhat incredulously. She was almost positive her own parents had married for money, not that they didn’t love each other, but it seemed like a primary factor of their marriage. They had both been very business minded. “After some wine and when the perfect song strikes, I’ll do just that.” It was nice to relax a little bit. Before visiting, she had placed wards around the building. She’d helped the owner buy his house and with an exorcism later on, so he had not qualms with her keeping wards up so she could enjoy some Larry Bob free evenings out. Plus, she’d surely have a hard time explaining a poltergeist to what was arguably her most normal friend. And definitely not in an average way. Evelyn was definitely classy and something else, but she didn’t want her thinking she was a freak. She found her fingers drumming along to the upbeat melodies of the trumpet and smiled as Evelyn spoke. “Oh makes sense, we’re still young. Research and learning is always applicable… especially when it comes to wine. And shoes,” she added the last part eagerly. If shoes being a hobby was wrong, Jasmine didn’t want to be right. “I’m pleased you’re my friend as well. The same could be said of you.” Evelyn was particularly great at gift giving, but her company was just as great. She frowned a bit at the mention of a breakup and the way she seemed to scoff at romance. She braced herself with a sip of wine before she said, “Oh, breakups are totally the worst. It’s not like you date people with the intention of ever breaking up, but sometimes it just happens. And hey!” She gave her a small nudge on the arm, “Romance is an okay thing to be sad over, though I’m positive you’ll find your person sooner rather than later. I mean-- you’re hot, you’re rich, you’re smart, you’re classy-- literally anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“Believe it or not, you are not the first person to tell me that.” Evelyn grinned. Despite having very little knowledge of actual rom-coms, from all that she did know, her parents’ marriage and meeting did sound like that. The deeper reality was far more complicated, and not something she often got into. Besides, some part of her liked to believe that her parents had been entirely in love up until her father found out about the fact that her mother wasn’t human. It was one of the few amounts of naïvety that she still held fast to. “I look forward to this quite a bit.” This night out was absolutely something that she needed - and though jazz was not normally the sort of music she listened to, Billy did have a fondness for jazz piano playing at the Artesian and so in the past few years she had come to be more aware, and she preferred it to whatever sort of electronic music that she knew was popular at most clubs these days. “We are indeed still young. Besides, why not make things into a learning opportunity. I must admit, I find it especially satisfactory to tell certain customers of mine all about wine, particularly because they rarely expect me to have such deep knowledge, despite owning the place. I have done a fair bit of reading about business and stocks as well, mostly out of spite. I do not like being put down, and if I can show them up when they are acting especially stuck up, all the better.” She took a sip of her wine and offered Jasmine a grin. “I am glad to hear all of that.” She ran a hand through her hair. “They are rather terrible, I must admit.” Evelyn bit her lip. “Well, thank you. You are all of those things and more. I think that in this case, I just thought that my ex was possibly my person. I suppose I do not like to be wrong.” She took another sip of her wine. “Is it wrong to still want to talk to him? Even though I feel mad, and I am certain he feels the same - or rather more certain that he wants to get rid of any memory of me? He left a box at my house with everything I had left by his house.” Evelyn shook her head. “At least I know that I have friends like you,” she gave Jasmine a small nudge back, “who are excellent at knowing just when I need a distraction.”

“Then it must be true,” Jasmine responded happily as she took another sip of the refreshing white wine in front of her. She could only hope her life eventually got its romantic comedy moment, but she wasn’t too worried about it. Outside a pesky poltergeist that wouldn’t leave her alone, she was doing well for herself and was happy with where she was. It only made her happier that Evelyn was all ready to do some jazz dancing with her. There had to be some sort of science somewhere that said it was impossible to be sad when buzzed on white wine and dancing to jazz. If not, maybe she’d fund that study. Her hands made a small clap as she exclaimed, “I love that. It’s always satisfying to surprise people older and more experienced than you with your knowledge. I imagine some of the older men must be the worst about that.” Was she snobby herself? Yes. Snobby old men still annoyed her to no end. Especially the older realtors who thought she didn’t have a place in the business yet still handed off the haunted houses they couldn’t sell to her. Selling them at record speed always showed them. It didn’t erase the annoying factor of having to prove she was worthy of respect. She nodded along as Evelyn spoke about her ex. She could relate easily enough. She had thought Josh was going to be her forever person until she found out about his side fling. If there was one thing she would not stand for, it was cheating. “I get what you mean. It is a crappy feeling to think someone is supposed to be that person for you and then they’re just not,” she said almost wistfully. She finished off her first glass and poured some more for herself. She gestured to see if Evelyn would like more. “Oh, dropping off your stuff is a rough part and I think it makes sense to still want to talk to him. I mean, you were a big part of each other’s lives and it’s hard to shake that, but you have to. Men take that as groveling or wanting them back even if it’s not the case. I take it things ended poorly?” The last part did make her smile a bit. “Glad to be here and bring some cheer.”

“It must be, I suppose.” Evelyn raised an eyebrow at her friend. Focusing on thoughts about her parents was not a good road to go down, particularly not right now. Not when that reminded her too much of everything she sought to ignore - when it provided her with memories of her first anxieties of not belonging. Of that time with her mother’s journals and the look on her father’s face that was forever etched into her memory. “Right? It is the best. Truly.” Making a face at Jasmine’s next comment, Evelyn gave a nod. “Oh, they are. It is particularly delightful when they think they can both hit on me and talk down to me. I remember when I first opened the place that I got to give a good few of them a shock when they found out that I owned the place.” Though she was well-aware that she could be stuck up herself at times, it was never in the same way that some of her customers were. “Exactly.” She forced herself to relax. This wasn’t her bar, and breaking a glass here would not end well - besides, the last thing she wanted was to cut herself and have her utterly delightful though wholly normal friend push her away. Taking in a deep breath, she adjusted her focus back on Jasmine. “Not used to it, I suppose. Though,” she bit her lip, “I mean, I was not exactly raised with the idea that showing all of my emotions is a good thing. So all of this was a bit overwhelming.” She scrunched her nose. “That much is also quite possibly the wine talking. Maybe my tolerance is not what it used to be.” It didn’t stop her from taking another sip before nodding for Jasmine to fill up her glass again. “We were. For four months.” Evelyn shook her head. “Yes, I am not going to give him that. Ended poorly? You could say that. He was not everything I thought he was, and I might have reacted strongly to that. But it is fine. I just worry a bit about running into him in town.” However, Jasmine’s smile brought one of her own across her face. “Glad to have you.” She took another long sip of wine.

Older generations of men really were something else. Jasmine couldn’t easily understand how a woman of any age would be attracted to them, but she assumed it had something to do with their wealth. Was wealth worth the complete loss of self respect? She’d say no and that was saying a lot. “Show them just how smart women can be. Who said we couldn’t have beauty and brains,” she asked playfully. At the mention of these same men hitting on her, Jasmine was not all surprised. For whatever reason, certain men thought mansplaining was attractive or something. It wasn’t. Respect was way more attractive, but some men just needed to feel like they were better than literally everyone. Usually that meant overcompensating. With a laugh, she retorted, “Oh, of course they do! Have to act all mighty and treat you like you’re dumb to show how great they are before they hit on you. Any woman with an ounce of self respect wouldn’t put up with that crap.” As she spoke more of her ex, Jasmine frowned a bit. It was clear she was really going through it and she wanted to go off on a limb and say no man was worth this much distress, but she’d had some rough break ups herself. “I can see that. You seem like a woman who is usually right, but some people are better at hiding who they are which makes it easy to be wrong about them,” she tried to assure. Sage wisdom wasn’t necessarily her forte unless it came to designer clothing and the best makeup products. Life-- well, she’d made a name for herself, but she was still figuring shit out too. They all were. She shook her head, “Hey, we’re all allowed to show emotion from time to time. We’re not robots. I don’t think they’ve figured out how to make robots look this hot just yet.” She cracked a smile at the last part and gestured to them. As suspected, it had ended poorly. “Well, it’s not your fault he wasn’t who you thought he was. Some things can be serious deal breakers and a woman of your standard is bound to have some of those. All I know for sure is you’ll find someone way better for you. I mean, come on, who could resist that Evelyn charm?” She gave her friend another playful nudge and finished off the last of the wine. She took her friend’s hand and said, “Come on, we’re dancing now. Trust me when I say it’s impossible to be sad while dancing to a song with some good swing.” Though Evelyn boasted she was more of a ballet dancer, she caught on quick as Jasmine led them through some moves. The energy seemed to be enough to have Evelyn in mostly good spirits again so Jasmine would consider the night a success.

[rayveewrites]

🖊 You can pick who! : D

Clue don’t give me this power-

Okay! Let’s talk about a character who’s been bouncing around in my head for a few weeks then. And her world- actually, probably mostly her world, because I have that a bit more fleshed out than her character.

Hoooo boy, this is a long one.

So in this world, there are three main races: Aenora, beings of air and light native to a chain of floating islands, Terrans, beings of earth and plantlife who live evolved for life on solid ground, and Arctar, beings of water and ice that are mostly aquatic. All three races have access to magic that I should probably make a proper system for.

Eventually the three races start to live together in multispecial cities usually located on solid ground, although there are some located both underwater and in the air. Interracial relationships eventually become normalized- two of the three named characters in this world are an Aenora-Terran couple (their names are Graceida and Kira, respectively. They’re lesbians). Different races can’t reproduce with each other- while Terran are mammals, Aenora are more closely related to birds despite producing live young, and Arctar seem to have evolved from fish.

This post is not about these people.

Eventually, the races start drilling for resources. Terran in particular have always been miners, but technology has meant they can dig deeper, faster, than ever before. Deep under the earth, they break into a series of massive caverns inside the planet’s crust, full of rare natural resources and strange, previously undocumented species.

There are plants down here- plants that live from the heat and light given off by magma that seems to fill the lower levels of the caverns. There’s little to no water down here- every living thing seems capable of surviving without it.

There are small, eight-legged lizards that crawl the rocky walls. There are metre-long snakes seemingly capable of gliding through the air. There are flightless bats, crawling the walls. There are eyeless fish that live their whole lives in magma pools. There’s a massive creature that can only be described as a worm, which crawls out of the deepest pits and devours anything that it can find before returning.

Among these strange creatures is a reptilian being that has only been documented in old myths and legends- humanoid beings that run on four legs as much as two, with hooked claws, lizardlike feet, batlike wings and whiplike tails ending in a blade shaped like an arrow. They’re covered from head to toe in thick scales that match their environment, have horns that curve from their heads in a multitude of lengths, and are capable of swimming in magma, climbing the rocky cavern walls, and flying through the vast spaces. They’re beings of fire and darkness, only known as strange, monstrous creatures used to scare small children: Umbraan.

Umbraan are possibly the biggest problems in the mining operation: they steal food, attack Terran, Aenora and Arctar alike, frequently damage or destroy valuable equipment, and just generally cause chaos.

They are quickly demonized by the corporations loosing money to them, and people are soon bought in to deal with them. These people are known to those on the surface as hunters, those in the caverns as exterminators, and to the Umbraan as the blood-hungry, the egg-breakers, or the light-bringers (not a compliment among beings of darkness). They have another dozen names for these people; it varies from region to region.

While the three races believe Umbraan to be no more intelligent than perhaps dolphins, they’re actually equal in intelligence to them! Their language sound like hissing, growling and snarling to most ears, their villages are hidden where they can’t be found unless you know it’s there, and they have no need for clothing or jewellery. It’s also worth noting that the caverns don’t have the same range of resources that the surface does- there’s no wood, no paper, no cloth; any tools are made of rock or bone. They dig with their own hooked claws, or by utilizing burrowing animals; they fly utilizing the natural air currents from the magma as much as by beating their wings. They eat meat almost exclusively, but don’t feel the need to farm; they’re careful to not let species numbers drop too low.

Their traditions are oral, and communicated mostly through song; not that hunters would know that. A chorus of Umbraan is something truly beautiful to listen to, and heard by few outsiders. They have no writing system; they don’t need it. 

They attack the drilling teams for several reasons- they’re damaging the integrity of the caverns; they’re wreaking havoc with the delicate ecosystem; they’re killing Umbraan indiscriminately, even those who don’t engage; and some of the largest pockets of gold ore happen to be found in the walls of a nesting cavern. With nests. Full of eggs. Which happen to look like the rocks around them. And are now being destroyed.

Eventually, a team of researchers capture a live juvenile Umbraan. They take her to the surface to study, but underestimate the strength her hands and feet possess- Umbraan can cling to walls and ceilings for hours at a time, even sleeping that way without issue. She escapes into the city and, unable to find her way back to the caverns, develops nocturnal patterns and steals food either from dumpsters, or from people after luring them into dark alleyways but doing an imitation of an injured cat. She’s fast, able to scale walls in a blink, capable of flight, and quite intimidating to normal people.

Eventually she has a run-in with a Terran who realizes that she’s just stealing food, and starts, well, feeding her, much to the chagrin of her girlfriend. The Umbraan (who by the way, is named Zuri, thought I should mention that at some point) is initially wary, and suspicious of poison, but eventually realizes that the Terran, Kira, doesn’t wish her harm. This continues on for some weeks, until one day when Kira has a run-in with a group of rather... nasty people. Zuri isn’t quite sure of their plans, but she can recognise a call for help and an expression of distress. So, naturally, she steps in.

Although ‘steps’ might not be the right word- she perches on a lamp post, knocks out the light, and manipulates the shadows to make herself appear significantly larger than she actually is. Combine that with her animalistic-sounding native tongue and glowing red eyes, and the men naturally bolt. Zuri leaves once she makes sure they’re gone, and Kira is confronted with the fact that Umbraan are clearly far more intelligent than everyone seems to think.

She keeps feeding Zuri, who’s a bit less worried about being seen by Kira now (though only Kira), and eventually starts talking to her. Zuri, who’s quite sharp, eventually figures out that the strange noises are words, and from there it’s not long before she starts picking up the language the three races all speak.

Eventually, though, Zuri gets seen and reported, and while she escapes the hunters sent after her, it’s with several broken ribs. She goes to Kira (who is unaware that Zuri actually knows where she lives) and just about gives poor Graceida a heart attack before passing out on the floor.

Nursed back to health in secret, Zuri isn’t out of action for long- she heals pretty quickly. Kira convinces Graceida to let the Umbraan stay, and Zuri soon becomes semi-fluent in their language, although she tends to translate several terms literally from Umbraan(Graceida was deeply disturbed when she learned that hunters were referred to as blood-hungry; her brother is one of those people).

Zuri learns more about surface culture as well- while she never really understands clothing, she does learn to wear it. Writing is of far more interest to her- after she figures out literacy and the internet, she actually starts translating and transcribing traditional songs and stories of the Umbraan people, as well as her own story and basic information about their society and culture. The blog gets quite big (it’s a Tumblr blog because why not), and she’s always happy to answer asks that anyone might have. Kira helps, either with finding the right words or navigating the internet in general, and Graceida’s constantly stressed that her brother will drop by unannounced one day and see Zuri. Ignoring the fact that Zuri is quite capable of taking care of herself, thank you very much.

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten, and man this ran long. Anyway, that’s Zuri!

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (135/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[14 November 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

Zatte was a Dorlun, born with a unique ability to manipulate energy. She mostly used this for bending light and other radiation around her body, to make herself invisible, or for deflecting ki to protect herself or to hide her own power level from those who could sense it. She had accompanied her wife, Luffa, the Legendary Super Saiyan, on what she considered to be a holy mission to Nagaoka. Luffa had sworn to destroy the planet, and the wicked Saiyan cultists who lurked beneath the thick grey clouds of the Nagaokan atmosphere.

Mostly, Zatte's job was to keep the ship running and coordinate with Luffa's attack fleet. And she was more than happy to do this. This was Luffa's epic story, and Zatte was simply honored to be a part of it. The Dorlun culture prioritized survival, and the Dorlun religion commanded its people to stay alive so that they might eventually find a worthy cause to support. Zatte believed that Luffa was her cause, a pivotal figure destined to change the course of history, what the Dorluns called xan-nil'Dor. Zatte's life had become a swirling mass of contradictions since she realized Luffa's importance. It was hard to balance out all her roles-- loving spouse, devoted disciple, martial arts student, sensible advisor, down-to-earth sidekick-- but now those roles seemed to have finally converged into one. As Zatte stood on the bridge of Luffa's yacht and watched Nagaoka, she felt a serenity in her heart that told her that everything had worked out for the best. Luffa would triumph, and the universe would prosper. All Zatte had to do was follow her beloved the rest of the way.

And then the bombardment failed. Every ship in the fleet fired conventional weapons on the planet, and nothing happened. It was like some enormous force field surrounded the entire planet, but Zatte couldn't locate a power source on the surface big enough to support such a technology. She had never heard of a force field big enough to shield an entire planet, but she knew such a device had to run on something.

Undaunted, Luffa went to the cargo bay to fire on the planet herself. As the Super Saiyan, Luffa's power was greater than any other Saiyan in the universe, greater than the firepower of the entire fleet. For a moment, Zatte felt reassured. Nagaoka would be destroyed in an instant, and its secrets would die with it. From the bridge, Zatte could sense her bride's immense ki energy building. On the viewscreen, she could see the lance of golden energy streaking out to the planet.

And then the energy faded away, only for the planet to split it up and shoot it all back from a hundred different directions. Even if there was a force field big enough and strong enough to do this, there was too much cohesion in the reflected energy. It should have just diffused evenly, leaving little more than a harmless wave of radiation. To split a beam into dozens of smaller beams was something more like Zatte's own innate ability, but how could anything achieve this on a planetary scale? It was impossible, unless...

Her mind raced with horrified speculations, but soon the answer appeared before her as she watched the clouds on Nagaoka shift and swirl until they formed the image of a man's face. She instantly recognized it as the likeness of King Rehval III, the Saiyan monarch who abandoned his kingdom to start his bizarre alchemical cult on Nagaoka.

And then, as the lips of the cloud-image began to move, Zatte could hear his voice in her mind. "Hello, Luffa. I'm so glad that you've finally arrived. Now, at last, we can put all of this to an end."

Saiyans all had a low-level telepathic ability. Over a limited range, they could send their thoughts to other beings, like a sort of mental walkie-talkie, although they lacked more advanced mind-reading powers. Luffa could read minds, but only by making physical contact. In this case, it seemed like Rehval was projecting his thoughts across a much larger range, not just addressing Luffa, but anyone nearby. Zatte began to wonder if the entire fleet could hear this.

"I'm sure you remember Pozet," Rehval began, and Zatte's heart sank. She remembered Pozet well. Zatte had killed that horrible creature aboard this very ship. It had tried to prevent her from rescuing Luffa on planet Pflaume. It should have marked the end of that nightmare, it looked like Rehval wasn't finished with it yet.

"Homuncular synthesis is one of the greatest tests of an alchemist's skills. Many of the greatest alchemists die without ever achieving it. I actually pulled it off on my first try, but I didn't feel like I had truly mastered the technique until I created Pozet using folicle samples from your wife. She's an amazing woman, really. My compliments."

Zatte forced herself to look away from the viewscreen and get back to the computers on the bridge. The energy bursts from the planet hadn't been aimed at anything in particular, but a number of ships had been hit anyway. She needed to contact the fleet commanders and get them to back off from Nagaoka before something else happened.

"I created Pozet to act as that serial killer," Rehval explained, "which I used to lure you to my trap on Pflaume City, but she was also a peace offering if you changed your mind and decided to see things my way instead. I thought we could join forces, Luffa. I thought there would be no limit to the things we could achieve together, but you rejected my gift and you spurned my friendship, and now you've come here to destroy me. Fortunately, Pozet served a purpose for that scenario too."

"No," Zatte murmured to herself. "No, no, no..."

"I made three of her, Luffa," he said. "One to present to you, the second to act as my 'serial killer'. You and your lovely bride made short work of them, but the third Pozet I used for my research. I was fascinated with the energy manipulation powers, you see. Imagine what a Saiyan could do with that sort of ability! Imagine what I could do with it, the greatest Saiyan of all!"

Zatte looked up at the viewscreen and clutched at the fabric of her shirt over her heart. She didn't know exactly what all of this meant, not yet. She didn't know how Rehval had become so powerful, or what he planned to do with that power, but she knew that it would be something terrible.

And worst of all, he had used her to make it all possible.

*******

[14 November 233 Before Age. Despye.]

Prester Ganzut paced in a tight circle around his office in the capital city of Despye. There had been no word from the Federation fleet they had sent to Nagaoka. He didn't expect to hear anything, since they were avoiding communications to prevent anyone from learning of their counterattack. He would only receive word when the battle was over, and by his reckoning, the fleet would have just arrived in the Nagaoka system. A cold pitcher of iced tea was waiting for him at his desk, slowly soaking the wood with condensation. Every time the pitcher caught his eye as he walked around the room, he told himself that he would drink it later, but he never got around to it.

Nothing would be the same when this was over. Even if Luffa won the battle, she had all but promised to bring sweeping changes to the Federation when she returned. He had no idea how drastic those "changes" would be, and she probably had no idea herself, which was what made her so dangerous. Even if it all went perfectly, he doubted that her plans would bode well for his career.

As he mulled over his political prospects, the ground began to shake under his feet. He wasn't sure what to do about an earthquake, as this part of the planet had never had one before. Just as he decided to take cover under his desk, two of his security detail rushed into the office and escorted him to an emergency transport. This was standard procedure during an attack on the city, but he couldn't hear any air-raid sirens or any other sounds he had come to associate with a battle.

The way to the transport was underground, connected to his building by a tunnel, but before they could reach it, they found the entire entrance smashed into rubble. A large column of earth was rising out of the ground, and the tunnel entrance simply had the misfortune of being located in its path. So too, was the ceiling above them, and the upper floors of the building.

His security team managed to get him outdoors, and they even evacuated most of the other people inside, but as Prester Ganzut watched the Despye Executive Hall being impaled by a giant column of rock and dirt, he was certain that there had to have been causalities. Angrily, he demanded an explanation for what was happening, even though he doubted that anyone else had one to offer.

Then the great tower of earth began to shape itself, like clay in the hands of an invisible sculptor, and Ganzut suddenly knew.

"The cultists!" he gasped as the column finally took the form of a man. He had heard of this taking place on other planets, but Luffa had always been there to stop them before they could do any real harm. But Luffa was at Nagaoka, supposedly fighting the cultists, wasn't she? If so, then she wasn't fighting them hard enough for Prester Ganzut's liking.

"Prester Ganzut, I presume!" the earthen giant said aloud. It looked right at him, and Ganzut's blood ran cold. "Good day to you, sir. I'm King Rehval III, also known as Trismegistus. Well, this is an avatar of me, anyway. My followers planted it here so that I could talk to you when the time was right."

"This can't be!" Ganzut said. "You... can't be here! Luffa's fortuneteller, she told us there wasn't gonna be any more attacks from you Jindan Saiyans!"

"Fortuneteller?" Rehval asked. By now, the avatar was so detailed that Ganzut could see the look of surprise in its "eyes". "Well, now, that does explain a few things. I expected her to defeat my warriors, but I could never understand how she always seemed to know exactly when and where to find them. Such a resourceful woman. Well, Luffa's fortuneteller was right, Prester. There will be no more attacks on your territory. Right now, my avatars are rising up on planets all over the Federation, but they aren't going to fight. They'll just be standing by, awaiting your unconditional surrender!"

"Surrender?" Ganzut asked. "Are you sayin' you already defeated her at Nagaoka?!"

"Prester, you don't understand!" Rehval said with a laugh. "I don't need to defeat Luffa, anymore than I have to attack you. As of today, I've become invincible, and Luffa? Well, she's simply no longer relevant!"

*******

[14 November 233 Before Age. Chai I.]

A similar scene was playing out on the grounds of the Imperial Palace on Chai I, seat of the Camelian Empire.

"The war with the Federation was never about conquest or revenge, your Majesty," the rock-Rehval explained to Zinenz 15, the Emperor of Camelia, who had been playing cricket on horseback when the avatar rose up from the field.

"It was a diversion," Rehval continued. "Luffa had to stay put inside her own territory to defend it from my warriors, while the rest of you watched from the sidelines, believing that I was only interested in the Federation. All the while, my agents were traveling to your planets in secret, and pouring a special potion into the soil of your planets."

"All of them?" Zinenz 15 asked with some skepticism in his voice. His mount was very nervous in the shadow of the earthen giant, but the emperor did his best to stand his ground.

"Enough of them," Rehval replied. "The figure that stands before you know is more than powerful enough to destroy Chai I with ease. I can't destroy every planet in your empire so quickly, but I can threaten enough of the important ones to throw Eternal Camelia into turmoil."

*******

[14 November 233 Before Age. Festid III.]

"Unless we submit to you, is that what you're saying?" asked General Zinfandel asked.

"Precisely," said the rock-Rehval that had manifested on Festid's capital city. "You cannot defeat this giant creature that stands before you, General. The potion that animates it was already absorbed into the very matter that makes up your planet. You might destroy this physical form you see, but another will rise out of the ground to replace it, again and again, for as long as I see fit. Luffa has the power to break the spell, but your armies simply don't have what it takes. You'd only destroy yourselves in the attempt."

"Or we could simply take the fight to you, Your Majesty," Zinfandel suggested. "Killing you on this planet, you mentioned, Nagaoka, would surely disrupt your control over this thing you have created."

"Indeed it would, General, which is why I've taken measures to protect myself," Rehval explained. "Even now, my stronghold is under attack by a Federation fleet, led by Luffa herself. The entire planet is impervious to her strongest techniques. Even if she could find a way to reach the surface, she would have to fight through tens of thousands of my followers. Each of them has been empowered by my Jindan potion. Luffa struggled to defeat twenty of my warriors at a time. How can she hope to beat them all at once?"

*******

[14 November 233 Before Age. Goldwall.]

"This planet has seen enough tyrants, Rehval. I won't allow it to be dominated by another, no matter how powerful."

These were the defiant words of M'ranga, formerly known as Ensign Liberty, now the Kami of Planet Goldwall. Being a goddess was still new to her, and her performance of the role was highly unorthodox. When the giant Saiyan-thing emerged from the dirt, she descended from her Heavenly Lookout and met him directly, rather than watch passively from a distance. The gods of the higher realms might not have approved of this hands-on approach, but Ensign Liberty was a revolutionary, and to her the divine hierarchy was just another power structure to be questioned whenever possible. Likewise, she saw King Rehval as simply another bully.

"I respect your position, Your Grace," the rock-Rehval said. It knelt before her in a mocking show of respect, and kept angling its ear closer to M'ranga as if straining to hear such a tiny creature. "For the time being, I'll allow you to indulge in whatever comfortable slogans you like. Devastating your planet right now wouldn't accomplish anything. I don't want to make an example of Goldwall, but if it comes to that, I'd prefer to have witnesses to see it happening."

"Then wh--?" M'ranga began to ask, but then the earthen giant rose to his full height and looked away from her.

"I only produced these giant avatars because I wanted to inform you all of what was happening," Rehval said. "The Age of Trismegistus has begun, but it hasn't really reached you just yet. For now, this is mostly just to prove a point to Luffa, but once I've finished discussing it with her, I visit all of your worlds again, and I'll explain exactly what it is I expect from each of you."

M'ranga continued speaking after that, delivering a fiery speech about freedom and the irrepressible spirit of sentient beings, but if the rock-Rehval could hear her, it gave no response whatsoever.

*******

[14 November 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

"It's amazing, truly amazing," Rehval said as he bathed in the glowing red liquid that filled his sunken bathtub. It was a public section of his compound, and his followers were encouraged to enter and watch him soak. Some fell prostrate at the edge of the bath and worshiped him, while a parade of attendants added scented oils and other chemicals to the liquid as he soaked in it. Behind him, Treekul lounged on a mat and massaged his neck and shoulders.

"Tell me about it, boss," Treekul said. The hair on her head was over two inches long.

"I'm everywhere at once now," he said. "Not literally, but but I might as well be everywhere. I'm talking to a thousand people at once right now. I can see them, Treekul. They all look so outraged, so envious of what I've become."

"I'm sure Luffa looks pretty ticked off right about now," Treekul said with a smile.

"Oh, I can't see her," Rehval said. "But I can see her ship, and all the other ships she brought along. They're just hanging there in space like little toys. And beyond them, the stars, my kingdom. My laboratory. The very clouds have become my eyes, Treekul. I can see it all as easily as I see you."

He looked back at her, and raised one of his hands to caress her cheek. She pulled back at the sight of the crimson fluid still dripping from his fingertips.

"Oh, it's harmless, I promise," he said. "I've been drinking different potions and rubbing ointments into my skin for weeks to prepare myself for this. Without all those treatments, all of this would be useless, like stewing in melted candlewax."

"That's what you said about this lotion, too," Treekul replied. She held up her hand to show the oily film she had been rubbing into his shoulders. "And you talked me into that, but let's just say I'd like to know more before I jump in there with you. How did you pull all of this off?"

"It's like I told you from the beginning, my Apprentice," Rehval said. "The energy of living things is what gives rise to ki. Saiyans have more of it than most, but it never seems to be enough, and there's more than one way to get it. There's untapped power within the very planets themselves. My namesake, the original Trismegistus, found ways to study that geomantic energy, but he lacked the vision to do anything with it. I named myself Trismegistus to honor the fulfillment of his discoveries."

"I thought you took that name to claim supremacy over all other alchemists," Treekul asked. "You know, 'Look at me, I'm the best.'"

"Well, that too," Rehval said with a satisfied smirk. "I can have more than one reason."

"Yeah, I guess you can have anything you want now," she said as she went back to rubbing his shoulders. One of the attendants handed him a crystal sifter of wine, and he sampled the bouquet with relish.

"I had more than one reason for keeping you here, too," he added. "Of course, I couldn't let you just tell outsiders about this place. Not until I had its defenses prepared, anyway. It took some doing to incorporate Pozet's abilities into my link with the planet's geology. But besides that, I needed someone I could talk to. Someone removed from the Saiyans, who could appreciate everything I put into this plan."

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "Well, it's not like there's anywhere else for me to escape to, is there?" she asked. "You've practically conquered the whole universe, so I might as well stay here where all the magic happens."

"Exactly," he said. "Admit it, you didn't think any Saiyan was capable of this sort of genius. We're all nothing but brutish warriors to you."

"I gotta admit, I have been rethinking a lot of old attitudes since I got here," Treekul said.

"The whole universe has looked down their nose at the Saiyan species," Rehval said. "And rightfully so, because many of us believe in the same stereotypes. I tried to reverse that perception, to play the dignified statesman, an ambassador of goodwill from the Saiyans to the rest of the galaxy, but I knew they didn't really believe me. They thought I was a curiosity, or an aberration. Sooner or later, they expected me to revert to type. What those haughty princes and emperors didn't understand was that I was counting on them to underestimate us."

He raised his glass to toast the worshipers at the opposite end of the bath, then drank. "That was how my flock was able to seed so many worlds in such a short span of time. No one thinks of a Saiyan using stealth. They expect us to crash onto a planet's surface and run wild, pillaging everything in sight. No one imagines a Saiyan infiltrating a group of tourists, or a work crew. No one is on guard against a Saiyan stepping out of sight and pouring a vial of liquid into the soil near a government building. And even if that Saiyan were spotted, no one would understand what he was doing. They wouldn't even know he was a Saiyan, not without a tail to give him away."

Treekul gestured at everyone else in the room. "That's why you had everyone lop off their tails?" she asked. "So they'd be sneakier?"

"More than that," Rehval said. "I did it to prove that we no longer need the tails, that we're so much more without them. Look at Nagaoka. Surrounded by clouds, its moonlight is useless here. Even if you had a tail, on another planet it wouldn't be good for more than a day or two. But I've channeled the geomantic currents of this solar system. The planet's relationship to the moon serves me at all times, without a tail. That's progress, Treekul. Why would anyone want to escape from that?"

*******

"Aren't you forgetting something, dad?" Seltiss asked from the bridge of the SFC's command ship. It was unnerving to stare into the eyes of his image on Nagaoka's surface, but she fixed her gaze anyway, determined to show her resolve.

"Ah, Seltiss," Rehval said telepathically. "I hear you've kept busy while I've been away. I'll admit, I was somewhat surprised when I found out you had joined forces with Luffa."

"You were surprised? I thought you were dead," Seltiss shouted. "Or that you had gone totally freakazoid after you evacuated Planet Saiya! Then this cult shows up and I thought some lame-o wizard was trying to enslave us all! Turns out it was you all along."

"Then you should be relieved," Rehval said. "The Saiyans are in no danger from me. The Jindan power is a way for them to become stronger, and a way to make myself stronger in return. That's how I've made all of this possible. By merging my spirit with the planet, and drawing power from my followers, I--"

"You've empowered yourself," said Xibuyas, who stood beside Seltiss on the bridge. "But only yourself, from what I can see. You say you have rock-avatars on a thousand key planets, ready to destroy them if anyone defies you. The only way to stop them is to destroy Nagaoka, which you've made indestructible. That's not like you, Your Majesty. You always taught Princess Seltiss and me that wielding power was a much more subtle art."

"Yeah," Seltiss added. "It's a scalpel, not a club. That's what you always told us. Its like a strategic game. You make one move at a time, building your position until you can win."

On the viewscreen of Seltiss' ship, the clouds on Nagaoka chuckled in time with Rehval's telepathic laugh. "Don't you understand, children? It was a game, but it's over now! I've won! I wielded the scalpel, since long before you were born, and now the surgery is finished! The game is over, and this is the end of history. Whatever happens from now on will be decided by my power, and mine alone. This was always the point, Seltiss. It was always about securing the future of the Saiyans at the top of the universal food chain. Everything before today was a means to an end."

"But you've forgotten something, dad!" Seltiss insisted. "Whatever this creepy future is you've envisioned for the Saiyans, it can't outlive you! Who's going to maintain all of this when you're gone? You need heirs for that, and right now you haven't got any!"

She was trembling now, and Xibuyas nearly reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, until he thought better of it. He knew this was something she had wanted to say to her father for a long time, and now that the moment was finally here, she was building confidence in her words. Seltiss pointed her thumb at herself, then poked her own chest with it, deforming the logo of whatever musical act was featured on her 7000-credit t-shirt.

"I know about your eugenics plans, dad," Seltiss said. "You told me about it often enough. The genetic profiling, the incubation chambers, that was only just the beginning. You wanted to breed a stronger generation of Saiyans, and you wanted your descendants to be the strongest of each new generation, right? That's why you needed Xibuyas! He was your special project to make an ultimate Saiyan, but you needed me to bear his offspring, so they would share your bloodline!

"Well guess what? Xibuyas and I aren't playing along anymore. You may need us, but we sure don't need you, not anymore! So even if you are invincible, your new era won't even last another century... unless!"

Her lips curled into a triumphant smile, like a high-stakes gambler on the brink of winning the pot. Xibuyas couldn't help but smile himself. He didn't understand her fashion sense, or why she insisted on dyeing her black hair pink, or how she could possibly think Luffa was "cool." Xibuyas only knew that he admired this girl more than he could possibly express.

"We can work something out, father," Seltiss said. "You'll have to agree to share power, and grant certain concessions to my Saiyan followers. They have their pride, you know. They're not about to start bowing down to you like some sort of graven image, not when they came to me to get away from your bogus brand of order."

The cloud-image of Rehval seemed genuinely impressed by her bold demands. "Concessions," he said, as though trying the word on for size. "Interesting, Seltiss. Suppose I agree to your terms. What do I get from you in return?"

Seltiss relaxed slightly. "When we're older, Xibuyas and I will produce those heirs you want," she said. "And the two of us can take over your rule when you... well you know... die. And I can talk the Free Companions into a working relationship with you. They can act as enforcers, since you and yours are probably, like, stuck on that planet for the long term right?"

Xibuyas chuckled quietly. Luffa and her Federation fleet would be furious over this, but what could they possibly do about it? She had them over a barrel. As powerful as Rehval had become, she was the one person in the universe who had something he wanted. He watched Rehval's face on the atmosphere of Nagaoka, curious to see how he would react.

The face in the clouds simply laughed.

"Seltiss, Seltiss, Seltiss," he said as the cloud-image shook its "head". "I'm impressed with how far you've come. I really am. Organizing this Free Company of yours, building a coalition against me, well I knew you would try it, but I honestly wasn't sure how well you would succeed. You really are my twenty-seventh greatest creation."

"You... you knew I would turn against you?" Seltiss asked.

"I raised you, my dear. Sent you to all those private schools to teach you political theory. I chose those programs because I knew they would fill your head with ideas about taking bold steps to secure power, and how important it is for leaders to take initiative. I wanted you to grow up looking for ways to seize power from me wherever you could. At first, it was just so you would be a worthy successor if something ever happened to me. But when I abandoned Saiya, I knew you might start gathering all of my enemies together. Every Saiyan who would oppose my rule, all united under one banner. And how thoughtful of you to deliver them to my doorstep!"

"You wanted me to do this?" Seltiss gasped.

"Either this, or maybe you'd get them all killed in a war you couldn't win. Or they'd abandon you in disgust and recognize my power as the only one that works. But this! Oh, you've made me very proud. Your sisters were never capable of this kind of leadership, Seltiss. That's why I chose you to be the one who bore Xibuyas' children. It had to be you."

"Well it won't be!" Seltiss shouted. "I'm not your puppet, dad! I don't care how powerful you are, I'm not going to play along with your sick plans!"

She began to stamp her feet on the deck, not quite hard enough to smash the deckplate apart, but enough for everyone on the bridge to feel the rumble.

"We won't do it!" Seltiss insisted. "You can send your goons to chase us all over the galaxy, but you'll never get your heir! And Xibuyas can beat those rock monsters of yours. Luffa's already shown us how! So unless you plan to die of old age on that planet of yours, you'd better--"

Rehval started to laugh again.

"Seltiss, do you really think you were ever that important to my plans?" Rehval asked. "Would I really let a spoiled teenager out of my sight if I actually depended on her cooperation?"

"You knew you couldn't stop me, so you didn't try!" Seltiss protested. "That's why you didn't send your men to stop me from rescuing Xibuyas from Pflaume--"

"I let you have Xibuyas," Rehval said, "because I had no further use for him. He failed to defeat Luffa, and I knew he wouldn't bother me too much while he was with you, so I abandoned him. Just like I abandoned you when I had no further need of you."

The cloud image shifted, forming a planet-sized monochrome photograph of a cryonics laboratory. A scientist could be seen handling frozen embryos.

"I wanted grandchildren through you and Xibuyas," Rehval expained, but I never needed your cooperation to get them. I took genetic samples from both of you when you were small children, and sent them to a facility that specializes in genetic engineering projects. It's on Planet Bliff in the Nullon Sector. I'm telling you this because one of my avatars is already on the planet, ready to protect it in case one of you tries to interfere with my business there."

Seltiss was horrified. "You... you what?"

The image in the clouds shifted into a wider view of Rehval, soaking in his alchemical bath, surrounded by his faithful. "I saw great potential in both of you, but I had to see what you could do in practice, and I didn't want to risk losing your genomes if you got yourselves killed. You see, Seltiss, I want a line of descendants, but not as heirs. No, I needed you to produce a line of enforcers. Saiyans of royal blood who would go out and handle provincial matters in my new kingdom. You would be the matriarch of that line, and I think you'd be very good at that work. But your sons and daughters will fill the role just as well. I wanted you to cooperate, I really did, but I only needed one thing from you, and..." he paused to chuckle, "I already have it."

In the cloud-image, Rehval clapped his hands together with great enthusiasm. "As for my death, I wouldn't mark your calendars anytime soon. I'm not just bonded with the energy of this planet. I am the planet now. Its vast geomantic energies are mine to control, like the ki of my Saiyan body. The process has merged us in a way that I can't quite put into words, but I think I'll have plenty of time to figure that out. We Saiyans think of planets as things that are fairly easy to destroy, but Nagaoka is now a planet that can defend itself. Or rather, myself. And we think of Saiyans as creatures with a finite lifespan, but I've become so much more than that now. How long does the moon live in the sky? Well now I am the moon. I am the sky. I am the planet. So now that we've got that straightened out, let's talk about the concessions you can make for me, my daughter."

Xibuyas saw Seltiss trembling again, but this time it wasn't out of anxiety or excitement. Now, it was despair. He couldn't help but share it. He wanted to call Rehval's bluff, to say that it was impossible for him to do the things he was claiming. And yet, he knew he owed his life to Rehval's alchemical skills, and he had fought the rock-Rehval creatures before. As for Nagaoka, he could sense the strange power of this planet, and he had already seen how ineffective their weapons were against it.

"Every Saiyan who partakes in the Jindan potion has given me a portion of their energy," Rehval began. "Every Saiyan who does not, will be considered an enemy of the state. You, Seltiss, my daughter, will bring your followers to the surface of Nagaoka, and they will join me. Any who refuse, well, that's fine. I can destroy you here and now, or my followers can hunt you down later. I know there are other Saiyans out there who haven't taken sides yet. I'd like your help in finding them, Seltiss. But I don't need your help, and honestly, I don't mind taking my time. Those other Saiyans are no threat to me."

*******

Aboard Luffa's star-yacht, Luffa and Guwar watched Rehval from the open door in the cargo bay. The force field that maintained the bay's atmosphere offered a perfect view overlooking Nagaoka, and Rehval's telepathy relayed everything he had said to Seltiss.

"I'll go ahead and offer an invitation to Luffa as well," Rehval said. "No harm in that, since I know she won't accept it, but I would suggest that you consider the alternative, Luffa. You can't defeat me here. Even if you reached the surface, you'd never stand a chance against my armies. You can defeat my avatars, true, but you'd have to get to them first, and it'll take you weeks to get back to your precious Federation. If I were you, I wouldn't bother. I'll command my avatars to destroy any planet at the first sign of your approach. The Federation will surrender to me, immediately, I think. And you... well, I guess you can roam the stars, Luffa. No inhabited planet in the universe will dare accept you, not if it means incurring my divine wrath. I suppose you can find some remote world to settle on, or just fly your star-yacht as far as you can go until it runs out of fuel.

"I'm willing to let Guwar return the fold as well. Yes, I can sense you aboard Luffa's ship, Guwar. You were part of my plan, after all. I knew my scheme would make no sense without an understanding of what I intended to do with this planet. That was why I took you into my 'confidence', Guwar. I knew your faith in me would falter, and that you would go running to the only person you thought was strong enough to stop me. Hopefully, you see just how wrong you were to doubt."

It horrified Guwar to hear Rehval speak to him directly. He hadn't wanted to come along on this mission at all, and he had hoped the cult wouldn't learn of his presence on Luffa's ship. But now, Rehval had seen him, and.... forgiven him?

"I hope you appreciate my revenge, Luffa," Rehval went on. "I sacrificed so many of my favorite things when I tried to kill you on Pflaume City. And then I had to give up my kingdom on Planet Saiya. Well now I've taken away the thing that matters most to you, Mrs. 'Super Saiyan'. I've taken away your relevance. I've become more powerful than you now, and that makes your power meaningless. Now you can slither under a rock, the way I only seemed to do when I left Saiya. The difference is that I came here to achieve an even greater glory! While all you can do is decide how you want to die. Have fun making up your mind, woman."

Here, the telepathic words of Rehval Trismegistus came to an end. Luffa didn't move as she watched the clouds resume their natural patterns. She didn't move when Guwar approached her.

"I guess that's it then," he said with a sigh. "He played us all. Nothing left to do but head down there and accept d--"

Luffa powered down, her gleaming yellow hair resuming its natural black color. She turned and shot Guwar a murderous glare. "I'm going to kill them," she said. "Every last one of them."

"What?" Guwar asked. "Whoa, wait, you heard what he said! You saw what happened when you fired on the planet. There's nothing anyone can do! Let's just be glad that he's being graceful enough to let us join him. I mean, I've been there before, you know. The cult's not so bad, once you get used to it--"

There was a loud "crack" as Luffa swatted her hand across Guwar's head. Guwar himself didn't hear it, as the force of the blow killed him a split second before the sound arrived at his ears. The last thing to go through his mind was the right side of his skull. For a brief, horrific moment, his dead body remained standing, and then it finally collapsed, as though remembering what it was supposed to do.

Luffa turned and walked out of the bay.

NEXT: Become The Wind.

[scriptlgbt]

My story is about pirates. The MC is a trans guy and the captain is a lesbian who is some sort of big sister/mother figure to him. It's quite violent. I was wondering if it could be problematic? I know it's problematic to show trans woman being overly violent in fiction but what about cis lesbians and straight trans guys? Also, do you know about real any queer pirates i could read about? And what did pirates think about homosexuality/transness?) How was it being queer in the pirate world?

A conversation that I had, that is relevant:

ME: [PARTNER], do you know anything about queer pirates?

PARTNER: I know that there were many, and they’d sometimes be like -

ME: Sea husbands kind of thing?

PARTNER: Yeah, and one would inherit from the other’s booty, and when it was divided up, they’d share their share of the booty.

ME: [mischievous grinning face]

PARTNER: [nodding] And they might share each other’s booty.

Disclaimer: This whole thing is going to largely focus on what is known as the Golden Age Of Piracy. I’m also not a historian, I just hardcore, love pirates with my heart and soul. This is going to be a long post.

So, this is super generalized, but pirates, and even sea-faring folks in general (see: - or sea, hahahahaha - the LGBT+ history of Brighton in the UK), have tended to have a much higher rate of LGBT+ folks and minoritized people in general, throughout history. As far as most research I’ve done goes. Being in a travelling situation and having the anonymity of being able to move around with chosen family generally has great appeal to folks whose existences are filled with oppression and a sense of not belongingness. This has also applied for racialized people, women in general, impoverished folks in general, a lot of different people who wanted to reclaim a place in the world that ostracized them.

Another fun fact, the use of the term “Friend of Dorothy” as a euphemism for gay folks was investigated by the US Navy. They misunderstood it as meaning that there actually was a woman named Dorothy who could be routed down and coerced into outing her “friends” to the military. Cruise ships and others have also used this phrase to covertly advertise that there were meetings for these folks. (Source: Wikipedia | “Friend of Dorothy”) 

But to get to the pirates, specifically.

Most pirate ships largely had their own code that everyone on their ship had to agree to. Some had things like, “you’ll be marooned with one knife, and no food if you are caught not reporting loot to be divvied up by the crew fairly” and things like that. But generally, whoever ran the ship, the Captain, would get to pick the rules. And with the partial-democracy that comes with the idea of mutiny, and the more notable reliance on the labour of it all, in general, things were able to be slightly more consensus-based than the on-land governments.

There are numerous women who became pirates to take ownership of their lives in ways that weren’t permitted on-land. Anne Bonny and Mary Read are historical figures that might be worth looking into. The two of them shared lovers, sailed together, had intense care for one and other and with their dressing up in masculine-coded attire and the like, there’s a lot to go off of in assuming they may have been romantically involved with each other. If not, at least they had some iteration of what a lot of contemporary folks might find comparable to a QPR.

The concept of “sea husbands” was also called matelotage (or bunkmate) depending on your crew. It was kind of the buddy system, but gayer. With little need to consistently explain it to outsiders, folks at sea were freer to explore the different ways a relationship with another person can be, without so much worrying about how it looks to others at a passing glance. And as pirates, there’s less concern that you’ll get shit from the law for gay stuff Of All Things. 

Buccaneer Alexander Exquemelin wrote: ‘It is the general and solemn custom amongst them all to seek out… a comrade or companion, whom we may call partner… with whom they join the whole stock of what they possess.’  (Source)

It was just normal. They also had a version of health insurance where someone was compensated if they ended up disabled from battle. The compensation of death of your partner also works into this.

As for transness, these kinds of things have had fickle definitions and historically, it’s hard to be able to pinpoint specific people as fitting cleanly into contemporary cultural definitions of transness, because frankly, the past had different culture to now. When it comes to writing canonically trans characters in contexts where the language might have been different, it’s important to focus on making sure that a trans reader can identify the personal connection with that character’s experiences and feelings, just as much as it is to use language to name folks as trans. 

Representation can go deeper than surface terminology and the like, and in cases where the terminology doesn’t necessarily match, it has to. Language like, “I never really felt like a [assigned gender] - I see myself more like [desciption of actual gender identity or name for it].” - is as good as just saying the character is trans in my opinion.

Depending on where the character is from, they also may have just outright had a word in their language for their identity. 

Gender presentation was significantly freer with pirates than it was for folks on land. Things like earrings, frilled sleeves, varied hair length and similar, were not uncommon, although the gendered coding associated with these aspects of appearance had different implications than they do now. Gold earrings on seafarers were there to fund a proper burial if someone’s body washed ashore. Gendered clothing was also coded in more binary ways on land. Folks who wanted to be coded as men could do so by wearing pants and folks who wanted to be coded as women could do so with skirts and dresses. (Tangential but fun fact yet again: dressing in those big poofy skirts usually included massive pockets. They were generally not physically attached to the skirts, but if you wore it all properly you would easily be able to reach into them.) 

Pirates and other seafarers also had clothing referred to as ‘slops’ for cleaning (if they were of the rank that cleaned anyway) which were pretty wide-legged pants that could almost pass for a skirt. 

Material that pirates used for clothing was largely what they stole, but it was cut and sewn into the same shapes a lot of other seafarers wore. At the time, it was largely illegal (under English rules anyway) for people who weren’t the bourgeoisie to wear anything made with nice fabric. Rich people saw this as deceitful, and these laws enabled richer people to not mingle on an equal level with those of a lower socioeconomic status.

As pirates, if you’re already shunning the law, may as well wear full calico suits. (Like Calico Jack Rackham.)

There’s more info on pirate and privateer clothing here. (The link is to a free book in HTML format, complete with illustrations and talk of materials, and how the clothes worn at sea varied from clothes they wore when they came into shore and towns.)

I could write a book on this and still not have covered enough. But the gist is that pirates were a big counterculture of outsiders living their lives. LGBT+ people and racialized people got thrown into the mix (and jumped right in) and experienced much more liberated lives than they might otherwise. That isn’t to say they were flawlessly inclusive - there still definitely were a lot of things people thought of in congruence with colonial beliefs. There was racism and homophobia - but it looked a lot different, and was a lot lighter than you’d think. And there were some ships which banned women, but mainly I think that was because they typically didn’t have the background to hold their ground on the ships, and were considered more of a plus one to certain crew members (who brought them - the rules were specifically about bringing them onto the ship rather than them being there of their own accord) than part of the crew. Sometimes women were part of the crew.

Notably, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were in a polyamorous triad with Calico Jack Rackham. (I think a cis + het historian might argue about this but that would seem like denial to me tbh. There is much, MUCH more evidence pointing in this direction than against it, and it would be extraordinarily hard to argue otherwise.) I would definitely do some research on them!

I also recommend this book (link is the free text on WikiSource), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. It is perhaps the most famous contemporary record of the lives of a number of pirates from the time, including Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

As for the sensitivity aspect of this ask, I’d say that what you are describing is completely fine. As long as the violence isn’t used to dehumanize or completely demonize, I would even say that I don’t have any warnings for you about it, or precautions to advise on.

Thank you for this opportunity to infodump about LGBT+ pirates. I hope this is not overwhelming, but I’m also happy to parse out segments of this better upon request. (Our ask will be open eventually, I promise.)

- mod nat