#the well - book 2 chapter 37

[itsalwayswellattheworldsend]

Book 2 Chapter 37 - How Ralph Justed With the Aliens

Text Audio

Synopsis:

Ralph cleans up at the jousting tournament.

Summary:

"Now make we an end of it! We have no might against this youngling, man to man: or else would Otter have done it. This comes of learning a craft diligently."

Meanwhile, Captain Otter took Ralph to the lists[1], which were being hastily set up. Now the young man of Upmeads stood beside a good horse which they had brought him, and Otter was having a friendly conversation with him. But Ralph saw the Lord come out of the pavilion and take his seat on an ivory chair set on a ridge close to the edge of the lists, this being the customary place of honor at such games in the lands of Utterbol. Shortly afterwards, the Lady’s women came out of their tents and—being led by Agatha—went to the Queen’s pavilion, after which they emerged once more like a garden of moving flowers, surrounding a woman so fair, that even at a distance Ralph stared at her, noticing her beauty. She sat down beside the Lord, and Ralph was sure she was the Queen whom he had seen when they first came to the pavilion. In truth, Joyce was almost as tall as the Queen, and as fair-skinned, but otherwise was far more beautiful.

Otter said to Ralph: “I must leave you here, lad, and go to the other side, since I’ll be running against you.”

“Are you running first?”

“No, I’m last,” said Otter, “they’ll test you against one of the sergeants first, and if he wins then it’s all over and you’ll be in a bad way. Otherwise, they’ll find two more, and then it will be my turn. Good luck, lad.”

Then he rode off, and one of the sergeants came up to Ralph, giving him a spear and telling him to mount up. When Ralph had done so, the sergeant said: “You’re to run at whoever’s on the other side at the third sounding of the horn. Are you ready?”

“Yes, yes,” said Ralph, “but I see the spear hasn’t been blunted, so we’re playing at sharps, as they say.”[2]

“Are you afraid, boy?” said the sergeant, who was old and bent, “if that’s the case, go and tell the Lord. But you’ll find he won’t have his game completely spoiled, and will find some way to make you entertaining.”

Ralph said: “I was just joking; I don’t think I’m any closer to death today than I have been twice already this summer, perhaps even more often.”

“It’s a bad idea to joke about things that involve my Lord. Now you’ve heard what I have to say, so get to it.”

Then he left, and Ralph laughed and waved his spear in the air, finding it not very strong, but comforting himself with the idea that his opponents would be using similar weapons.

The horn blew three times and Ralph urged his horse forward like one very used to tilting, but he kept good control of it. He saw the man coming against him with his spear already in its rest and thought that he looked nice and big, but he could tell that the man was poorly suited for this and was struggling with his horse like one who is not willing to trust his mount in a charge. Indeed, he rode on so awkwardly that it was clear he’d never land a good blow. He swerved as they came on each other, and the point of his spear never went near Ralph, who turned his horse toward him a little and caught the man by the armor around his neck, dragging him clean out of his saddle. He let him drop and rode quietly back to his place, dismounting to check his saddle and gear.

 He heard a great laughter rising up from the ring of men and women, but the Lord of Utterbol shouted: “Bring out someone who doesn’t eat my food for nothing, and put that coward aside until the games are done so I can have him pay a bit for the food and drink I’ve wasted on him.”

Ralph got back in the saddle and saw a very big man come out at the other end of the lists, and at first he wondered if he could match him, but then he judged that the man’s horse did not seem very good. The horn blew and he pressed on, and his opponent met him squarely in the middle of the list, but he aimed his spear poorly as though her were going to stab rather than brace against it, and Ralph turned the blow away with his shield. Ralph struck him on the shoulder and broke his spear, the head  piercing the armor and breaking off in the wound, but the man did not fall from his saddle.

The Lord shouted: “Well, Black Anselm, you’ve done a bit better—still, you’re quite big and skilled to be beaten by this young man.”[3]

So the man was helped off the field and Ralph went back to his spot.

Then the next man was brought out to run against Ralph, and it went much as one might expect: Ralph hit him in the middle of the shield and the spear did not break, so the man was sent flying from his horse.

Ralph beat or wounded six of the sturdiest men of Utterbol in this way, and then he went against Otter three times. In the first two bouts, they broke their spears against each other, and on the third pass Otter hit him so squarely in the shield that he nearly fell out of his saddle and lost control of his horse, but he just barely stayed in.

Then the Lord shouted: “Now we will end this. Clearly we cannot overthrow this young man one-on-one, or else Otter would have managed it. He has learned his craft diligently.”

Ralph dismounted and took off his helmet to wait for someone to tell him what to do. A rough-looking sergeant came and brought him a cup of wine and said: “Young man, you are to drink this, then go see my Lord; and I think you’re in his good graces. So, if you are not too great to show some mercy, I would ask that you put in a word  for poor Redhead, that first man who did such a poor job. My Lord intends to have him set up, head down and butt in the air, to be used as a target for our bowmen.[4] He’ll be lucky if he dies to the third shot and not the twentieth.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Ralph, “I’ll do that, even if it angers the Lord.”

“Oh, you won’t anger him,” said the man. “Like I said, he favors you greatly right now. And could you also put in a good word for me once you’re raised to greatness? I brought you a good bowl of wine, after all.”

“Of course I will,  if I ever make it safely to Utterbol.”

“That’s a bad wish for someone who wants to do well in Utterbol. But come on, let’s not lollygag.”

He led Ralph to the Lord, who was still sitting in his chair beside that fair woman. Ralph bowed to him, but glanced at that beautiful, queen-like woman, and he found her both so proud-looking and white-skinned that she seemed wondrous, like a queen of the fairies. As he did, he thought that this was the same Queen he had stood before earlier in the day when they had first arrived—therefore, he did not doubt the woman’s royalty.

The Lord said to him: “Well, young man, you have done well, even better than you promised. And since you were using real spears, I do not doubt that you would do well in battle, if it came to that. So now I am thinking I will use you for another purpose than I’d considered before, because I believe that you are good enough to be one of my men. Now, if you have anything to ask for from me—so long as it’s not too much—I will give it to you.”

Ralph knelt and said: “Great Lord, I thank you, but as I am in a foreign land and seeking great things, I know no gift I would ask for myself except my freedom, and I do not think you would give me that. But, if you are still angry with the man whom I first defeated, I ask that you forgive him for his bad luck.”

“Bad luck!” said the Lord, “Why, from where I sat it looked like he was downright afraid of you. If my men become soft-hearted cowards, where will I be then? But tell me, Otter, what’s the name of that man?”

“He’s called Redhead, Lord,” said Otter.

“And how is he in battle?”

“Not so bad, my Lord,” said Otter. “In this case, like the rest of us, he was unused to his gear. It’d be bad if we didn’t have him next time we were in a pinch. It would be enough to beat him with straps a few dozen times, it would not be the first time it happened to him.”

“Ha!” the Lord laughed, “and why, Otter, why?”

“Because he was already beat up from the jousting,” said Otter.

“Then we will keep him for the next time we need him. Let him go scot free and do better next time.[5] There is your gift, knight, and on another day you may ask for something more. Now David will take care of you, and when we come to Utterbol we shall see what I do with you.”

Ralph got up and thanked him, and David came and took him to his tent. There, he was very subservient as though Ralph were now a powerful man who might do him some good if he felt like it.

And the Lord went back into the Tower.

As for the Lady, she stayed in her pavilion with her many fears and desires, until Agatha came to her and said: “My Lady, so far everything has gone smoothly.”

“I assumed from the noise and shouts of the crowd that he was doing well. But tell me, how did he do?” asked the Lady.

“My Lady,” said Agatha, “he knocked our men around easily, and seemed to hardly have to try.”

“And Joyce, what about her?”

“She looked like a queen, every inch of her,” Agatha continued. “She is tall, and in truth some people stared at her, but not many knew who she was, since she is new to our house. Though all that matters is that our new knight thought it was you sitting there. My Lord was quite happy, and now he has taken her by the hand and led her into the Tower.”

The Lady reddened and scowled, and said: “And he… did he come near her?”

“Oh yes, he came and stood before my Lord for a good while, and then kneeled to ask that he pardon one of our men who had done poorly in the tilting. Yes, he was close enough to touch her if he had dared, and to smell the perfume of her clothes.[6] He took the opportunity to look at her from the corner of his eye, though she did not favor him with a smile.”

The Lady jumped up, her cheeks burning, and walked around angrily for a while, trying to find her words. At last she said: “When we get back to Utterbol, my lord will see his new thrall again, and will forget about Joyce. Then I’ll do with her what I want, and she will learn that I am truly the greatest woman in Utterbol! Ha! what do you think? Why are you smiling at me like that? I know what you’re thinking. It’s a good thing that this young man has not met that new thrall, Ursula.[7] In truth, I say that if I could get my hands on her, I would get her to finally say why she always wears those beads around her neck.”

“Now, my Lady,” said Agatha, “you’re ruining the beauty of your face again. You should calm down—everything is going better than you expected. Did you get our Lord to promise me immunity?”

“Yes, he swore on the edge of the sword that you can say what you want and neither he nor any other will punish you for it.”

“Good,” continued Agatha, “Then I will go to him tomorrow morning after Joyce has left. Keep your chin up these two days we’re staying in the Tower Dale: trust me that this very evening I will set things going that will work and grow, and one day will make you very happy.”

So their discussion went.

Notes:

[1] Basically the jousting field. I had previously changed the term, but I have a feeling it’ll pop up a lot in this chapter so I’m just gonna keep it and explain what it means here.

[2a] Here’s where I explain jousting/tilting (fun fact: the term “tilt” in this context apparently dates to the 1500s, which may serve to date this story a bit better). The idea is that two knights wearing armor and wielding spears/lances (usually blunted to make it less lethal, but not in this case) ride their horses past each other, and as they pass they attack each other with their weapons, attempting to knock each other off their horses.

[2b] Specifically, as they pass, the two combatants level their spears at each other, each striking the other in the shield, using the horse’s speed to drive the blow. On armor, there is a hook to rest the haft of the spear in, taking some of the weight off of the knight, and helping hold it steady while riding. It’s very much a game of poise and stance, with the winner being the one who best understands how to transfer their force to unseat the other without losing their own position. Deflect the opposing spear with your shield while making sure your blow goes straight against the other knight’s body.

[2c] Even with blunted weapons, jousting was a dangerous game (hence the Lady of Utterbol’s worry for Ralph’s safety), with lances splintering, piercing armor, people being knocked off their horses, sometimes dragged along behind it.

[3] I amend my previous guess about an in-world play and replace it with the idea that Black Anselm and the other guy are both real people and that Black Anselm is bad at chess.

[4] I swear I’ve seen this depicted as a method of torture/execution, but looking for it now I can’t find anything about it.

[5] “Scot free” is the original phrase used here. Apparently, “scot” here refers to taxation, and someone who was “scot free” was given an exemption from the charges.

[6] Perfume in this time period was applied not just to the skin, but also clothing, accessories, and basically anything else you wanted to not smell bad. Something smelling good was akin to it being clean, so fancy clothes being treated with perfume was a thing.

[7] When the Lady of Utterbol talks about punishing a woman she feels slighted by, I’m not sure if she’s talking about Joyce (who drew the eye of both the Lord of Utterbol and Ralph), or this mysterious new thrall named Ursula, whom the Lord is very taken with and whom we definitely haven’t met before.

[8] A beautiful thrall, newly come to Utterbol, who has captured the King’s heart and wears a set of beads? How mysterious!

Map:

[noneorother]

I bought Aziraphale's Bible so you don't have to.

Am I insane? Yes. Was it worth it? Maybe. In most* of both season 1 and season 2 of GO, there's a very specific Bible on a bookstand next to Aziraphale's desk. It's a vintage illustrated plate book by Harold Copping, known as the Harold Copping Bible, published by the religious tract society in London in 1910. It features some of the most well known Old Testament stories, summarized and annotated by the Bishop of Durham at the time, and illustrated by Copping, who was freshly returned from a sojourn in the middle east. Ironically, It was meant as a lay-person's version of a comic book, short, exciting by use of exotic illustrations, and easy to read.

But my (expensive) gain is now your gain! As I've collected here every visible page in both seasons for your reading and viewing pleasure.

Season 1: All episodes Adam & Eve Genesis iii (1:3) / HCB page 10

Season 2: Episode 1 Joseph known to his brethren Genesis xlv (1:45) / HCB Page 28

S2E1 14:21, S2E1 17:41, S2E1 39:45

Season 2: Episode 2 Jacob's vow Genesis xxviii (1:28) / HCB Page 22

S2E2 5:49

Season 2: Episode 2 Joseph known to his brethren Genesis xlv (1:45) / HCB Page 28

S2E2 13:38 (see S2E1 above)

Season 2: Episode 2 The Brazen Serpent Numbers xxi (4:21) / HCB page 36

S2E2 16:12, 43:40

Season 2: Episode 2* Bible on the desk, Magazine on the stand Annuel L'art Pour Tous, Cover (1861-1880 most likely)

S2E2 22:10

The French L'art pour tous industrial design periodical will have to be a story for another post. For now, just enjoy this 1880 edition copperplate of cherubs discovering a microscope...

Season 2: Episode 2 Imaginary page from HCB, Job KJV Job (18:1) / HCB N/A

S2E2 22:29, S2E2 40:05 Obviously, the plate illustrations and text look different here than in the real bible, because they were created for the show. But there are a few more particularities here. For one, this layout with the thin grid around the text, as well as the paragraph symbol next to the first title, indicate that this would have been a printer's proof copy, not a finished book. It shows you the layout grid and can be annotated for changes. Second, there seems to be a war going on between fonts. Where the "chapter" of Job begins, we get a font and a style similar to the original bible, which gets rudely interrupted by a dropped capital (from the real book) and a Gothic-style font/verse numbers like in the original King James version of the printed Bible.

Season 2: Episode 3 The Brazen Serpent NUMBERS xxi (4:21) / HCB page 36

S2E3 1:18 (see episode 2)

Season 2: Episode 5 By the Rivers of Babylon Pslam cxxxvii (19:137) / HCB page 52

S2E5 21:20

Season 2: Episode 6 Bible missing, L'art pour Tous on the stand Annuel L'art Pour Tous, Cover (1861-1880 most likely)

S2E6 10:21, 17:21, 18:15, 34:28 (see episode 2)

Season 2: Episode 6 Closed HCB, L'art pour Tous on the stand behind HCB page 0

S2E6 37:58, 44:20, 48:08

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Link 1, Link 2 :)

Digital Good Omens 2 Sountrack is coming out in 4 days! 🥳 CD version in October! :) ❤ Coming soon on vinyl…

Out to Stream/Download from 25th August. Out on CD 13th October. Coming soon on vinyl…

David Arnold’s ‘end of the world’ complex and multi-genre soundtrack.

From the Award-winning composer of Sherlock and Casino Royale comes a follow up to the hugely successful, Emmy nominated Good Omens soundtrack.

Good Omens series 2 premiered on Prime Video on 28th July. The series follows the odd couple, angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and demon Crowley (David Tennant) in their quest to sabotage the end of the World. The six-episode sequel to the popular adaptation of the novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, concerns the Archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) arriving without his memories to Aziraphale’s bookshop. Aziraphale and Crowley attempt to find out what happened to Gabriel, whilst hiding him from Heaven and Hell, both eager to find him.

The Soundtrack

David Arnold’s soundtrack to Good Omens was first released in 2019 to favourable reviews, with BBC Music Magazine calling it “a rollicking trip to hell and back”. Blueprint Magazine described it as “a great listen” and Sci Fi Bulletin commented on “plenty of memorable themes” to conclude that “This is another work of art from Arnold”. At times nostalgic and eerie but always varied, beautiful and full of excitement, the Good Omens 2 soundtrack showcases Arnold’s every skill from his composer arsenal. Featured here are orchestral arrangements with sprinkling of Sugar Plum Fairy pizzicato and percussion, jaunty strings and mighty choral sweeps from Crouch End Festival Chorus. Added to the mix are rock guitar riffs, and psychedelic 70s sounds and all together they create a haunting otherworldly feel, complementing the fantasy and the quirky humour of the show. The spirited Waltz of the opening theme is also present in the second series and it wonderfully sets the scene for fantastical mayhem. In series 2, this robust, evocative, and funny music entity, becomes yet again another character in the story. Award-winning composer David Arnold is well known for his blockbuster scores, including Stargate, The Chronicles of Narnia: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Hot Fuzz, Paul, Independence Day, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Casino Royale as well as for his TV work such as Sherlock and Dracula. Also available: The original soundtrack to the first series of Good Omens >

Tracklist

– Disc 1 – Chapter 1: The Arrival 1. Before the Beginning 2. Good Omens 2 Opening Title 3. Into Soho 4. Something Terrible 5. To The Bookshop 6. Maggie and Nina 7. He’s Smoking 8. Tiny Miracle 9. Heavenly Alarm Bells Chapter 2: The Clue 10. Avaunt! 11. The Song is the Clue 12. It’s What God Wants 13. A Mighty Wind 14. Whales 15. Gabriel Returns 16. His New Children 17. Am I Awful Now? 18. Fallen Angel Chapter 3: I Know Where I’m Going 19. Police Arrive 20. Scotland 21. We’re Going to Hell 22. People Get a Choice 23. My Car is Not Yellow 24. Beelzebub in Hell 25. The Book 26. The Fly 27. Mr. Dalrymple 28. We Need to Cut 29. I’m Going to Save Her 30. Crowley Goes Large 31. Not Kind 32. Beelzebub Isn’t Happy – Disc 2 – Chapter 4: The Hitchhiker 33. Hell-O 34. Nazi Zombies 35. March of the Nazi Zombies 36. Crowley Pep Talk 37. The Magic Shop 38. Catch The Bullet 39. Zombies in the Dressing Room Chapter 5: The Ball 40. I’ll Let You Have It 41. We’re Storming a Book Shop 42. Monsieur Azirophale 43. The Candelabra 44. Here Comes Hell 45. Gabriel Gives Himself Up 46. Shax 47. The Circle Chapter 6: Every Day 48. Bin Through the Window 49. Gabriel Leaving Heaven 50. The Halo 51. Gabriel Revealed 52. Gabriel’s Love Story 53. Leaving The Bookshop 54. Gabriel and Beelzebub 55. Crowley and Muriel 56. I Forgive You 57. Don’t Bother 58. The Biggest Decision 59. The End?

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Hope you’re well. Do you know how much extra content volumes usually have compared to the number of weekly pages? Apparently we’re getting 60 extra pages. Is that a lot more than normal?

Hello! Thanks for the well wishes.

You've come to the right person, because I'm a weirdo who has done a ridiculous amount of research on Shueisha's tankōban releases and how they differ from WSJ serialization, so I have a good idea about how some of those pages are going to be used. I'm also gonna compare what we know about this final volume to those of other series.

Strap in for the spreadsheets and data party, pal!

First, here's a look at a selection of MHA volumes.

EDIT: These numbers come from Shueisha's official listings of the volumes and their table of contents, cross-verified with the MHA fanwiki's chapter page counts, some of my own physical copies, and online fan scans.

As you can see, roughly 20 pages is typical. 58 seems wild in comparison. I wanted to know what those 20 pages were usually used for.

So, I went through my copy of volume 37 and did a breakdown of its contents.

Now lemme explain some things:

Every tankōban will have between 4-6 pages for legal disclaimers ("this is a work of fiction", etc.), table of contents, and copyright information.

A "door" is a printing term for what one might call the volume title page or chapter title page (example in link). Not all chapters have "doors," most have their titles integrated into the first page, like so:

The vast majority of tankōban have page counts that are divisible by four. This is related to the physical mechanics of printing and binding books, so it is unusual to find ones outside this format. Volume 11 is an outlier in this regard with 210 pages; in fact, the English language release cut those two surplus pages.

Tankōban may have dust jackets. MHA tankōban with dust jackets often have a second, internal "sketch cover" and a final page promoting the next volume. These are not included in page counts, and are thus not included in my breakdown.

Manga is of course read right-to-left; this means if you hold a tankōban open, odd-numbered pages will be on the left side and even-numbered pages will be on the right.

In professional publishing, chapters are structured so their first page of actual story content is on the left. Page planning, which is taught to new artists and enforced by editors, involves the odd-numbered page ending on some sort of "pull." Basically, page 2 might be drawn to lead your eye across the book, but page 3 has to make you want to turn the page and find out what happens next.

Basically everything published in Weekly Shonen Jump has chapters with an odd-number of pages, so it'll have 15, 17, 19, or 21 pages, instead of 16, 18, 20, or 22. This allows the chapter to both begin and end on the lefthand side; even-numbered pages before and after the chapters separate the different series with promotional ads.

What we think of as bonus material is mostly what I personally call adjustment pages: in order for every chapter to still begin and end on the odd-numbered page in the tankōban, they must be separated by at least one page that fills the even-numbered gap.

Sketches, quotes, doors, all that extra stuff is really just there to make the structure of the tankōban a little more appealing to the reader. In my breakdown, "adjust" refers to an even-numbered page that is totally blank except for a MHA logo in the bottom corner.

So, 4-6 pages for legal stuff and at least 1 page separating each chapter (typically 8-12), plus a few pages of extra art like character pages or chapter doors, you can see why we end up with roughly 20 pages more than the total of the chapter pages combined.

With this information, let's imagine what Volume 42 might look like.

In this estimate, I just guessed it would have the same pattern of extras as Volume 37, since we know the final volume will have the results of the last WSJ popularity poll. This totals 146 pages, so basically, even accounting for the inter-chapter sketches, that's 38 pages of new, unknown content!

I've seen people guessing that the final volume will include the 2008 one-shot Horikoshi used as the basis for My Hero Academia, but I can basically guarantee you that won't happen, because when it was published in Akamaru Jump (which is now called Jump GIGA), it was 47 pages long. Yes, I went and found a Japanese blog post from January 2008 to verify this page count.

126 chapter pages + 4 legal pages + 8 adjustment pages between chapters + 4 pages for popularity poll + 47 one-shot pages = 189 pages, 5 pages too many. They would have to remove the adjustment pages to make it work, which totally fucks the flow of the manga.

Furthermore, the word used in the WSJ ad to describe the bonus material for the final volume (描き下ろし) specifically refers to drawings newly made for a special purpose. They simply would not use this to refer to a previously published manga being included.

For comparison, I researched the tankōban releases for a number of other WSJ series.

Dr. Stone and Mashle's final volumes were basically identical to their regular volumes in terms of extras and content. I also researched The Prince of Tennis and Naruto as older comparisons, but I couldn't find information exact enough to warrant inclusion, but what I saw more or less matched Dr. Stone and Mashle.

As you can see, Demon Slayer is the weird one here, and it's obvious why. The series ended during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Gotouge mentioned having a family member they needed to care for; a lot of people felt these issues contributed to Gotouge not being able to end the series as they had originally intended.

Demon Slayer chapters were typically 19 pages, but the last two chapters were 26 pages and 24 pages, uncommonly even-numbered. If you look at the final chapters and the epilogue in the tankōban, just numbers-wise, the ending could have been four 19-page chapters. But for whatever reason, that wasn't how it went down during serialization.

It's worth noting that the pages added to the tankōban do not change the ending, they merely provided greater emotional closure.

Side note but if anyone's gonna try and bring up Attack on Titan, I'm just gonna point out that AOT was a monthly manga published by Kodansha, a different company entirely. I imagine they have their own approach to marketing tankōban or special releases. You also have to consider the tastes and intentions of the creator, and hot take but I have absolutely no fucking positive opinions on that dude or his work, so it was no surprise to me that anything he added just made the ending worse.

TL;DR: Yes, it's a lot more than regular volumes! Content-wise, we'll probably get beautiful new illustrations and some revised page art that add details which improve pacing or themes. We might get a few extra chapter pages where a single serialized page gets turned into a big double-page spread, like we saw for Katsuki's fight with AFO.

There could be a couple new panels that bring more closure to things that were hinted at in the final chapters, who knows.

The only thing I personally want is a true bkdk handhold.

I'd love a double-page spread of Izuku taking Katsuki's hand and beaming up at him. Just insert it right there at the end before we see them all scampering off to make the world a better place. That would do my heart good.

[so-many-ocs]

fifty creative writing warmups

1. search for lists of writing prompts, select one at random, and write from it for 15 minutes. the goal should be to write as much as possible, rather than trying to write something “good.”

2. read or watch a scene from a book/film/show/etc. and then rewrite it from memory.

3. choose one of the five senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, sound) and write a brief scene focusing primarily on that sense.

4. write an interview as if it were occurring between yourself and a character you’re writing about.

5. rewrite something you wrote a long time ago.

6. shuffle your favorite music and write something based on the first song that plays. 

7. choose a scene from your least favorite book and try to rewrite it in a way that you like. pay attention to the changes you make and why, in your opinion, they improve the scene.

8. choose an object in the same room as you and write as much as possible about that object: descriptions, history, personification, etc.

9. choose an author whose style you like and read one of their works for about twenty minutes before sitting down to write.

10. write a short scene with no adverbs (words ending in -ly such as quickly, hastily, quietly, dimly, etc.)

11. reread a scene from a book you like and write down what you think the author did well: characterization, use of literary devices, foreshadowing, dialogue, etc. then write down the characters, goals/motives, and conflicts of the scene.

12. go outside or look out a window and simply write what you see.

13. write a scene with no dialogue.

14. write a scene with only dialogue.

15. choose a scene from your current work in progress and rewrite it from a different character’s point of view.

16. without editing, reread the last couple of scenes you wrote.

17. describe a room where you live.

18. learn a new word and try writing a few different sentences that each use that word.

19. reread something you’ve written out loud. pay attention to things like sentence flow.

20. write an alternate ending for a piece of media you’ve enjoyed recently.

21. write a short story based on a side character in a piece of media you’ve enjoyed recently.

22. rewrite a classic fairytale, but find a way to turn it on its head.

23. go to a random word generator and write a quick scene based on the first word that comes up.

24. describe your day as if it were the first chapter of a book.

25. choose a book from your shelf. find the fifth word on the fifth page and write something based on that.

26. go for a walk. or, if you can’t do that, try to find a way to move your body around.

27. choose an emotion and write a scene where that emotion is the central focus.

28. rewrite a scene you’ve already written, but switch the perspective—so, if your story uses first person present tense (I, me, my, mine), try third person past tense (they, them, their, theirs), or second person present tense (you, your, yours).

29. rewrite an important scene in your work in progress from the point of view of a complete outsider with no stake in the plot.

30. read three pages of a random book, making note of the author’s style, and then try to write a page in that author’s writing style.

31. write a news article about one of your characters. what is the headline? what is the article about?

32. in public, transcribe a conversation happening near you.

33. write a short dialogue exchange, then choose an emotion to highlight and rewrite the dialogue with that emotion in mind.

34. choose an object near you and describe it three times. each time, try to capture a different emotion or vibe.

35. if you’re within earshot of a conversation, write down 2-4 lines of that conversation and then continue it by making up your own dialogue.

36. write brief, 1-2 sentence descriptions of people you see in passing.

37. pick something you love and write about it as if you hate it.

38. pick something you hate and write about it as if you love it.

39. read something you wouldn’t normally read: an author, genre, style, medium, or subject matter you’d usually avoid.

40. write a goodbye scene between two people three times to capture different emotions: somber, cheerful, angry.

41. find a random photograph online of a person or place and write a story about it. what is the history behind the image? how did the picture wind up being taken—why?

42. find a random image online and write 1,000 words describing it.

43. watch a scene in a tv show or movie and try to adapt it into a written format.

44. read a few pages of a book about writing.

45. describe your main character’s home.

46. describe a day in your main character’s life.

47. set a timer for five minutes and list as many words as you can think of.

48. write a page of pure stream of consciousness. put down anything that comes to mind.

49. write a page describing the appearance of a side character.

50. choose one of your characters and create a new character based on them. for every trait your character has, this new character will have its total opposite—so, generous → selfish, cowardly → bold, short → tall, etc.

---------------------------

psst check out radio apocalypse

[daichiduskdrop]

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚⋆·˚ ༘ *𝙎𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙡 ⋆·˚ ༘ *ੈ✩‧₊˚

Chapter 37

Pairing: BTS Ot7 X fem! reader

Genre: A/B/O AU, Fluff, Angst, Strangers to lovers,

Warnings: None! Enjoy!

Words: 3547

A/N: I have added a small part from the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and all credit goes to the original writer.

Lots of love, thank you for the support

Taglist: @thelilbutifulthings @ilovemoneymorethenmen @singukieee @cherrysainttt @felicityroth @mageprincess7 @lucis-noctiana @danielle143 @osakis-gf @girl-nahh @vintageoldfashionstyle-blog @neverthefirstchoice @juju-227592 @silentreadersthings @i-have-no-life-charlie @everyonehatesshani @iamkookiesforyou @dragons-flare @fangirl125reader @roseidol @frieschan @popcatx0 @liz67900 @exfolitae @plexcaffeinate @strawblueberrys @massivelyfullenthusiast @iimichie

(open)

Previous:

⋆·˚ ༘ *ੈ✩‧₊˚˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚˚ ✩‧₊˚⋆·˚ ༘ *

Namjoon looked at you gently, his eyes caring. The alpha reached for a book he had been reading for a while now, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

The packalpha kept you close as you layed sweetly tucked away with Jimin and Jungkook on each side of you. The youngest alpha layed in front of you, his eyes sweet and caring on your form.

The young man wasn't able to go to sleep; he was far too worried about you to truly rest. Even when your scent has lifted by now and you don't seem as upset anymore, he was still worried in the back of his mind.

Instead, you just seemed tired and yawny and definitely had enough for the day. They all knew well why this happened and that it would be for the best if you would get to rest up for a while longer.

And so, when your hand reached up and nudged against Namjoon's, looking up at the packalpha with those eyes he learned to adore over time. Looking up at him in hope, he couldn't help but coo at you.

„Aigoo, aren't you just the cutest baby?" He said under his breath, smiling softly so that his dimples showed, letting his much bigger hand cover yours.

You squeezed his fingers slightly, letting your interwoven fingers rest next to you as Namjoon got into reading, his calming timber filling the large room.

"The two systems of thought can best be understood as separate and complementary modes of processing information.

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, without explicit attention or conscious effort or awareness. It operates on the basis of heuristics, the mental shortcuts that allow us to process and respond to the world with remarkable efficiency.

System 2, by contrast, is slow and effortful. It operates with deliberate attention, logical analysis, and conscious reasoning. Although we can voluntarily direct our attention and choose to engage System 2, in most instances, we rely on System 1.

The two systems work in tandem, but they do not work in harmony. System 1 often leads us astray because of its tendency to produce easy, quick, and emotionally pleasing responses that we accept without questioning.

System 2, by contrast, is capable of correcting the errors of System 1, but it takes time and effort to do so."

The packalpha's voice was gentle, calming your eyes as you watched Jungkook's rising and falling chest.

You rested calmly, the oldest of the three alphas settling you down even further. All of the plush and comfortable blankets and fabrics you were tucked away into felt comfortable on your skin.

You didn't understand everything Namjoon was reading to you about, but you found comfort in his presence, and while poetry was sometimes complicated with the language for you, you liked it a lot when he would read for you. And so you listened closely.

„Another key aspect of the two systems of thought is that they are influenced by different types of motivation. System 1 is motivated by the desire for immediate gratification and pleasure, whereas System 2 is motivated by the desire for accuracy and logic.

This means that our mental processes are often influenced by our goals and emotions, which can lead to biases and errors in our thinking and decision-making. It is important to be aware of these biases and to use System 2 to correct for them when possible.”

„Oppa?” You asked softly, playing with the packalpha's fingers as the man looked over to you, the book in hand that was borrowed from the library.

While the alpha owned stacks upon stacks of books, full bookcases in his room until he couldn't get any more, just stacking the stories onto themselves on the floor or any space available.

He has enjoyed going to the libraries since forever. He used to go there to study growing up, but he always loved reading, and the relationship developed as he grew older.

The man didn't get to go that often to see new stories as much as he wished he could, but whenever he could, he left with a bunch to read, even though he knew he wouldn't have enough time to read everything.

He loved visiting bookstores, especially whenever they went to different countries. Sometimes, his packmates would get angry at him for his suitcase going over the weight limit (even though he packed less to keep space for the books he would bring home! ).

„Hm?” He hummed softly, looking at you with soft eyes. He leaned closer to brush your hair behind your ear, smiling at you.

„Do you like cupcakes?" You asked almost in a whisper, your grip tightening onto his fingers.

Even when the mall trip didn't go as well as everyone hoped it might, you remember the sweet time you shared with Jimin earlier this morning when you and him baked.

The almond cupcakes with butter cream that you so carefully decorated and prepared with the sweet help of the alpha were still waiting in the fridge.

You weren't sure if any of the alphas had seen them yet or even had a bite or taste of them, but you really hoped that they would like them. They would, right?

„Of course I do, little pup, do you?” The packalpha wasn't sure where the question came from, but he watched you lovingly.

You nodded. The times when you got to have a sweet treat weren't many, but the last time you tasted a cupcake, probably in elementary school in a baking class, was a nice memory you kept.

„M-Me and Jimin-Oppa made cupcakes for every-one." You whispered softly, having Jungkook's sleepy eyes open wider, soon creasing as he smiled, his teeth showing.

Namjoon followed suit, his dimples on full display as he leaned over, leaving sweet pecks on your forehead.

„Really? Awh, babybun!” The youngest gushed, his arms wrapping you closer to his chest, having Jimin grumble lightly from his deep sleep.

The alpha slept calmly, with occasional soft snores leaving him. He felt content with you in his arms, your back right against his chest as he breathed calmly.

The third youngest made sure you were kept warm and cuddly, as during sleep his body naturally turned warmer as a natural reaction to your omega sleepy scent in close proximity for a longer time.

„That's so sweet of you, pup. Should alphas have a taste now?” The packalpha asked gently, not sure if that was what you wanted.

You nodded bashfully; you really wanted to see their reaction. Before you could say anything, Jimin woke up, lightly rising up as he blinked away his sleep.

„Hyung, you didn't tell me about making cupcakes with babybun!” Jungkook grumbled; he wanted to be the first one to cook with you. Though the eldest would surely be even more jealous,..

Jimin hummed, too sleepy to realise what he was necessarily saying, as he ruffled up his hair, looking over at the alpha, who sported a not too deeply meant frown.

To be truthful, the youngest alpha was still far too excited about the promised sweet treats to get really upset at his hyung for keeping away the exciting news, and he wasn't too upset in general either.

„Come on, bun bun, let's go!” The youngest said happily, picking you up quickly before Jimin could realise that you were suddenly out of his arms; he was already on his way.

The packalpha soon followed, chuckling at Jimin, who grumbled out a soft: What? as he watched you be carried away to the kitchen, closing the book and putting it away.

The two alphas who currently stood in the kitchen, Taehyung and Yoongi, preparing spring rolls, looked over, both smiling at seeing your still slightly dazed, ruffled-up state.

Both of the men had aprons on; the older was in charge of frying and preparing the few different fillings, while the younger helped with folding the spring rolls and making the side dishes.

„Hi kitty.” Yoongi said gently, his gummy smile on full display, as he turned back around to take out the crispy spring rolls.

They made three types, one vegetarian and the other two with meat. The first batch they prepared was already finished, with the filling consisting of cabbage, carrots, cilantro, garlic, and shallots with sesame oil and soy sauce, sugar, and a little rice vinegar and sriracha.

Taehyung was good with the folding; the rice paper never folded over itself, and he was clever in making sure to not place any of them too close to one another so when they would stick to one another.

„Babycheeks, do you want to have a taste? We are still making two more types; will you tell alphas which is your favourite?” You nodded sweetly, going over to the alpha, who smiled widely at you.

He picked up the still warm roll with chopsticks, dipping it into a sauce before he fed it to you, smiling as he saw you chew.

It was crispy but chewy, the filling delicious, and the sauce made the flavours pop even more. You nodded vigorously as you chewed, happy to have tasted something so nice.

„Is it a good kitten?” Yoongi asked gently, stirring the pan with the filling for another batch. This time it had shrimp and ground pork in it, along with fish sauce and some other things like cabbage and carrots.

„It's really tasty, oppa!” You exclaimed, your voice uplifted and happy, as you swallowed before speaking. You were very excited for dinner.

„Princess? Where did you go? ” Jimin's raspy voice from sleep mumbled, the alpha coming over to hug you close, letting his chin rest upon your head.

You hugged the alpha back, your arms wrapping around his waist. He kept you close, letting his scent go over you even more than had already happened.

„Hyung, the cupcakes!” Jungkook hoped to see them already, wanting to have a taste.

„Cupcakes?” Taehyung turned around from spooning the filling into the softening rice paper, his eyes filled with questions and a soft smile on his face. Yoongi looked over his shoulder too, but made sure to pay attention to the frying process.

"Yeah, pup and Jimin-ah made cupcakes for everyone this morning, right?” You nodded in response, agreeing with Namjoon's words. The alpha that helped you hummed softly, agreeing.

„You kept it secret, Hyung!" Tae gasped, acting as if Jimin had betrayed him. The older alpha chuckled.

„You don't have to eat them, Tae-ah." At his words, the younger gasped in offence, abandoning the now freshly folded spring roll and turning around, bewildered eyes on the older.

„Hyung!” 

„I'm just joking; don't stress yourself; you'll get white hair."

„You're older; if anyone, you'll be the one with white hair!"

As Jimin went to disagree, your soft giggles interrupted them instead, smiling at them.

„Oppa, look!” You said gently, holding a tray full of the baked cupcakes. Jungkook was already holding one as he chewed on it, and Namjoon was just taking one himself.

Before the two, playfully arguing alphas could realise what was happening, Yoongi himself walked over, praising your work. 

„They look really tasty, my kitten. Can I have one too?” He asked you gently, looking at the sprinkles and edible flowers you decorated the carefully done butter cream on top. 

„Of course oppa!” You said, the man smiling even wider at your answer, leaning over to give you a caring forehead kiss, letting his hands caress your cheeks before he took one of the corner ones too. 

„Bunny you have to bake more often, these are delicious!” Jungkook gushed, happily humming as he chewed, very pleased with the sweet treat. 

The youngest was used to keeping a strict diet in check, but he would always make an exception for you. Gosh, he would do anything if he would get to have such sweet treats everyday. 

It was fluffy, the batter rose so well, and the buttercream was airy and creamy, and overall a great mix of sweet and sour. 

„Oh wow...” Namjoon whispered, tasting the cupcake. Both Jimin and Taehyung bounded over by then, each grabbing one themselves. 

The younger hummed loudly, nodding at the taste, agreeing with everyone. 

„You're so clever babycheeks! Alpha is very proud.” He said softly, letting you set the tray onto the dining table before he hugged you close, his chin going over your head as he gently rubbed your arms. 

You smiled bashfully, not used to getting so many compliments. Just then Jin came inside, freshly showered with his hair only towel dried. 

The eldest packmember's cheeks were tinted pink and he wore comfortable clothes. He was quick to notice everyone in the room eating the sweet treat, looking for the source himself. Before he got to ask though, Jungkook already bounded over. 

„Hyung, have one too! Babybun and Jimin hyung made cupcakes, they are so good!” 

„Really? Aigoo, you're so sweet cub, making a sweet treat for everyone?” He gushed, crouching slightly before you as he pecked your forehead, Taehyung's arms still wrapped around you. 

„Oppa helped a-a l-lot...” You whispered softly, feeling bad that they were constantly complimenting you, but the alpha who helped you so much wasn't as praised. 

„No, no my princess. I only helped with the mixing, you did everything yourself!” Jimin was quick to let you know, as he smiled at you. The cupcakes were really tasty...

„Is that so? Aren't you just the most clever, little pup. Alpha is very proud of you.” The packalpha said gently, pouring himself a cup of water as he gently watched over you, leaning against the counter. 

Seokjin was quick to take one himself, and when he got the first bite of the sweet heaven, his eyes widened, quickly finishing the cupcake in a few bites. 

„Peaches it's really tasty! Let's bake more often baby, did you have fun?” At your smiley nod, he gently combed through your hair, already planning the different cakes and treats he would make with you. 

The alphas had you take a seat at the dining table, talking to you as they prepared all of the cutlery and plates, glasses and various dishes. 

„...Of course you can come with us little kitten, we wouldn't mind. You'll just have to make sure to stick close, okay?” You said an okay, looking forward to when they would take you to their group photoshoot tomorrow. 

The packalpha knew that it would require them being very careful, considering you would most likely be entering a slightly busy workspace, but they would always be close by to make sure you were okay. 

You would get a VIP pass, and would stick close, and surely you would be okay. Maybe, if you would feel like it, they could take a group photo with you too... 

When they would make an announcement, it might come in handy, to have a truly well photographed group picture with the whole pack to post online. 

They haven't really talked about when the news would be released to the public, they would have to discuss it with their managers too and set on a precise date.

Namjoon wasn't truly keen on making a structured, email-like message that would come from HYBE directly to the ARMY. Maybe mentioning it in a podcast or a radio show would be smarter and less in everyone's face.

Even when they hoped with every fibre of their being, there were bound to be people disagreeing with this, and so they needed to be careful with the backlash, especially the one purely directed at you.

He could only imagine how stressful this would be for you, and so as a well-structured pack, they knew it would be best for you to have as much time as needed.

They had to figure out more things beforehand anyway; for example, the den was important for everyone, and it would be sweet and precious to have a nice and calm Christmas and New Year too.

The pack has already planned a few upcoming trips and events with you; some they have discussed more, some left only in the back of their minds as an idea to share in the future.

And Jin had a small idea like this at the back of his head for a little while by now, and so, today while you were away at the mall and in the morning with Jimin, the oldest alpha found a little gap in his busy schedule for it.

He had voice training and dance practices pretty much the entire day and got home earlier this afternoon, but before then, he took a short trip to a few clothing boutiques, hoping to find something he was looking for.

The alpha was planning to buy you a swimsuit, but since he wasn't sure of your exact measurements, after a short discussion with the store assistant, he left the few luxury stores with different sizes and styles, hoping at least one of these would be comfortable enough for you to wear with no worries.

Jin didn't know what colours or patterns you would go for; heck, he didn't even know if you would like to go swimming with them. But surely, since you wanted to go to Hawaii to see the sea turtles, you wouldn't mind the water?

And so, the alpha was left with many decisions to face, but in the end, he chose enough of everything so he hoped to get it all covered.

He could imagine you being way too frightened to try swimwear on in the try-on rooms, and so his best bet was to save the receipts and return any that you wouldn't like and wouldn't fit right.

As you all took a seat at the table, a freshly purchased peach juice they knew you liked and wouldn't upset your tummy in a tall glass before you, all of the pack members dug in.

You had a few neatly placed spring rolls on your plate, along with some side dishes like kim-chi or the sweet radish Namjoon plated for you.

„It's really nice, oppa!” You gasped, having the second oldest who sat next to you show a gummy smile, the man saying a soft thank you.

Truth be told, Yoongi was on his knees for you.

„...And what about the Harry Potter series?” You shook your head at Jimin's question, the man's eyes widening.

„We have to watch it, princess! I think you would love it!” He gasped, and Jungkook and Hoseok, who'd come over to the table as soon as the dinner was served, nodded at his thought.

„How about we watch one of the movies tonight, Sunny Bub?" He asked you gently, taking another fried roll into his chopsticks before he placed it on your table, noticing that you only had about two left.

You nodded happily, smiling widely with your eyes creasing slightly.

„Okay...” You said softly, looking forward to the movie. The dinner continued, with everyone enjoying the well-prepared meal.

„Cub?” You looked up from drinking, your eyes meeting Jin's gaze for a little second before you set the glass down, the alpha's sweet eyes watching over you. You hummed in question, listening.

„Would you like to go swimming with alphas tomorrow? We don't have to if you don't want to,-" though, the older man was interrupted by your vigorous nodding and excited gaze.

You didn't swim in years; honestly, you weren't too good at it, but there was always something about it that seemed so fun and calming to you, unless you weren't in too much of a deep water, of course.

"B-But, oppa, I don't have a swi-msuit..." You mumbled, only now remembering.

„It's okay, baby, I went to look for some this morning. Would you like to see them?” You gasped quietly before you nodded happily, sliding off of your chair before you hurried over to the oldest alpha.

Jin took your hand in his, and the other pack members smiled sweetly at your excitement as they started to clean up the table, happy that your mood had lifted even after the terrible afternoon.

„Are we going swimming in the morning then?” Taehyung asked. They would have to leave by ten in the morning at the latest to go for the photoshoot, and they would most likely come back home late in the evening.

„I think so, yeah..." Namjoon said patiently, loading the dishwasher with the others.

„I'm not going to swim in the ice cold morning hell no-” Yoongi went to grumble. Why would he go swimming when he could be sleeping?

„But Hyung, have you seen Sunny's face? She is so excited!” Hoseok gasped, looking at the older man in disbelief. That would break your heart!

Yoongi sighed, closing his eyes for a little while. Sometimes, he would have to sacrifice his sleep for something—or rather, someone—more important.

„...fine.” 

The alpha grumbled, shaking his head as he left to go to his room and shower, already expecting them to rest once again together. You would probably fall asleep during the movie, as he could imagine.

Truly, he loved to rest and nap with you on any occasion. You were naturally sleepy and cuddly, and so the alpha that was able to fall asleep anywhere loved to keep you company while you rested.

Yoongi has truly gone soft for an omega—something he didn't think could ever happen to him.

⋆·˚ ༘ *ੈ✩‧₊˚˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚˚ ✩‧₊˚⋆·˚ ༘ *

Next:

[thebibliosphere]

Ms. Demorra,

First, I'm writing this at 2:37 AM while part of the way through an all-nighter sewing project for a rush order. (YES, there is misery. But at least I have something to read while I wait for things to wash/dry/cool/embroider/etc.)

I decided to treat myself and buy Hunger Pangs, as I've been meaning to pick it up for a while and I know it's just my thing!

I'm barely into the book, I'm fascinated and I love your writing style. But I noticed something and HAD to thank you for it:

"Also 1887"

ALSO! ALSO! You are telling me it is the SAME year, instead of me going "Wait, when was that first chapter set? I better flick back and check." It's so much nicer of a layout and it's fixed one of the things that drives me insane about most date tags in books. I *care* about the timeline and when things are happening in relation to each other, but *good heavens* is it annoying to have to flick back to reorient myself.

Anyways, best wishes, I hope you are feeling well today, and do give Holly Mop some pets on my behalf!

Boy are you going to love the next chapter,“also, also 1887” followed by “early spring 1888” and “later spring 1888” and “still spring 1888.” 😂

But yeah, I too struggle to keep track of dates (thanks, ADHD) and what started as my own way of keeping tabs in my notes sort of turned into a running gag with my editors which we decied to keep going and used it in the book proper because hey, why not? It works.

I’m really glad we did too, because I’ve had a ton of fellow ADHD’ers message me like “I could follow the timeline!!!!” which I know can be a major source of frustration, especially when a book’s story can span several months, or in this instance, years.

This way, you’re getting a reminder at the start of each chapter that yes, this is still the same season, so that when the season does change, it’s more noticeable (at least to me) than just throwing a random date out that requires you to go “wait when was the last date jump, I better go back and look” every single time.

Anyway, I am glad it works for you too, and I hope you continue to enjoy the rest of the story. And good luck with your rush order! I hope you get some rest soon 💖

[armandposting]

okay I've gotten about halfway through, which I think actually covers most of the sexual violence. i intend to come back for the second half in a reblog of this post, as I can't remember for sure if there's more sexual violence there and either way want to mark the particularly disturbing physical violence in the second half.

page numbers for sexual and physical violence in The Vampire Armand

using Ballatine Books mass market paperback, first edition (2000). I've used both page and chapter numbers so hopefully this is somewhat usable even with other copies. if you want to just blanket avoid the worst of the sexual stuff, I'd advise just skipping chapters 2-5, although you will miss most of the Venice years by doing this.

use notes:

if you don't want to know anything of what happens, just use the page numbers and don't read the descriptions. the descriptions specify what happens in each scene I've marked. I've tried to balance accurately covering everything that happens so people can effectively use the descriptions as a risk assessment without going into too much detail.

sex scenes in this book tend to be pretty esoterically described with a lot of flowery euphemisms, though to an adult reader it's clear what's happening. i have used the word rape to describe various sex acts occurring even when armand doesnt understand exactly what's happening or is enjoying it. I havent specified which sex acts are happening in these notes.

during the Venice years, armand sleeps in marius's bed and is frequently held and kissed by him, but I haven't marked all mentions of this, only times when sex acts or particularly erotic blood sharing is involved.

the other violence tends to be more graphic/directly described than the sex and I've noted those scenes as well.

to avoid confusion I've referred to armand as "armand" throughout, even though he doesn't get that name until later in the book.

armand is about 15 when marius first buys him and about 17 by chapter 4. he's turned later in his 17th year. most of the sex happens between these two events, the majority in chapter 4. 

the page numbers do not necessarily pick up every time that armand thinks about these things happening to him in passing or their impacts on him, so even skipping all of these pages is not going to be completely trigger-free.

chapter 2, pages 29-35: description of armand first being sold after his abduction from Kiev, slightly more descriptive than what's told in the show. we're told that he's raped, beaten, and eventually begins to refuse food and drink, but it's not described in detail, except for a brief description of other boys in the brothel molesting him. 36-37: marius takes armand to his house and bathes him. he rapes armand in the tub. 51-52: marius rapes armand.

chapter 3, page 66: marius and armand are intimate, unclear whether sex occurs or if it's particularly charged blood sharing. 67-71: armand tries to offer sex to marius, they share blood several times. 73: more blood sharing, only briefly described.

chapter 4, pages 74-75: marius drops armand off at a brothel so that he can learn about sex. multiple sex acts between armand and the sex workers are briefly described. 76: after marius picks armand up again, he lets armand mimic some of the things from the brothel on him. they share blood. 78-79: marius drops armand off at another brothel, this time with boys and eunuchs. multiple sex acts are described. 80-82: armand "lets himself be seduced" by an englishman at least twice his age, they have sex and the englishman threatens to kill him. armand doesnt feel particularly threatened by this at the time and leaves. 83-86: upset by the experiences described above, armand goes to bianca, who is a friend of his, and they have sex. armand feels guilty and sees it as a "rape" and a "ravaging" but bianca participates and isn't upset about it. (note: bianca's age is never really clear to me; she's younger than marius appears to be but runs her own household.) 92-97: marius beats armand with a switch. armand pretends to enjoy it for a while to piss him off. marius only stops when armand is bleeding and thinks he won't be able to walk. marius then undresses armand and heals the wounds, hitting armand a few more times when he talks back. all of this is very sexually charged. marius eventually rapes him and they share blood. in my opinion the most upsetting scene in terms of sexual violence.

chapter 5, pages 114-131: this scene is kind of a doozy but I'll try to hit the main points. marius has brought armand along to kill a group of men who have been forcing bianca to poison people. the men hit on armand and try to give him gifts for sex. some of them start touching him before marius starts killing people. one of the men continues to come onto armand who starts to get increasingly upset. marius asks if armand will have sex with the man as his dying wish, unclear if he's joking. the last man alive asks for a kiss, armand, now extremely upset, kisses him on the cheek but the man turns his head to kiss his mouth. marius, after killing the last man, berates armand about the value of human life or whatever and kisses armand several times. 138-144 [this is split over the end of chapter 5 and the beginning of 6]: the englishman armand previously had sex with comes to the palazzo in a jealous rage and kills several of the other boys. some are noted to be as young as seven. armand fatally stabs the englishman and is wounded with his poisoned blades. I've ended the page numbers after the fight is over but armand continues to be dying from the poison for the rest of chapter 6 and 7.

chapter 8 is when armand is turned, but it's not particularly sexually charged for once.

nothing else of note up to chapter 10, which is where I'll pick up for part two.

[aerequets]

I really liked the scene you drew for the fanfic Once more with feeling. Do you have other fanfics recommandations? PS. I love your art :3

thank you! :D and yes of course i do 😎 i have this list (twiyor) from a while ago but i have amassed more than enough new faves to make a new one!

i will try to get a mix of fics w/ different vibes, and different lengths, as well as those that you may not have heard of before. most if not all of them will be twiyor tho, bc that's what i read most.

i'll put them under the cut!

FUN FACT i spent like 45 mins writing a list and SOMEHOW DELETED IT ALL. so this is take 2 😭😭😭😭 ANYWAYS

The Woman in Red by @nightofnyx8

rated M, 7/7 chaps, 47.9k words

this fic feels like a book to me if i was already invested in the characters. it revolves around yor, who gets an assignment to find out where a bunch of trafficked girls are being kept by the asshole of the millenium, vito cohen. it is also post reveal, post relationship twiyor. this fic has dark moments just by virtue of the subject matter, but none of it feels gratuitous if that makes sense? like every bit of violence lends to the whole picture. there are also some Steamy ™ twiyor moments, which are easily skippable if that's not your thing, but their whole relationship here is just written so well. the trust is there and the protective loid vibes are 👌 i m m a c u l a t e

Smoldering by @julphines

rated G, 1/1 chaps, 2.1k words

i freaking love the look into post reveal, pre relationship twiyor we get here. it's not overtly romantic but instead them getting to know each other. i especially love the details of them having to make themselves be vulnerable in some ways because they just aren't used to it. a really nice, in-between sort of fic :)

In Love With the Distance by Newt on ao3

rated T, 37/37 chaps, 21.5k words

this one is formatted as a collection of letters and i am OBSESSED. i think the author does a very good job getting the character voices down, and the fact that the progression in their relationship is clear despite being in this letter format will never cease to amaze me. it's also incredibly consistent and has cute 'ciphers' at the top that are used to disguise the letters. this one is also post reveal, and kinda follows what happens immediately after. some bits are outside the letter format, but for the most part, it's loid and yor writing to each other. love

La Vie En Rose by @jubileen

rated T, 1/1 chaps, 3.7k words

i love me a good ol 5+1 fic, and this one did not disappoint 😌 i especially liked how the thing that is being counted here (you know, the "five times x and one time x") is not explicitly stated each time. it's something that is as slowly revealed to the reader as it is to the characters, which is a nice touch. and there are more things you catch after a reread, which i am also a great fan of!

An Ever Fixed Mark by Spiraling (Stormwind13) on ao3

rated T, 3/3 chaps, 3.8k words

soulmates that share wounds!!!!!! need i say more?? ALSO, there's some GORJUS artwork in this fic! actually, the first "chapter" is just the cover page, and then in the third chapter is another illustration which is so well done! so that's a plus :) this fic has the nice ol heartwrenching mix of backstory and present for the characters, another plus!

this fic is restricted tho, so u gotta be logged into ao3 to read it 🙏

Love, He was Certain by toteally on ao3

rated M, 1/1 chaps, 3.2k words

this one is so funny and good to me bc loid goes head empty seeing fruit juice dribble down yor's chin KJFDHSJ i love when overthinking characters suddenly can't form a thought at the most mundane of happenings. ALSO the thing fics/books do when the title comes up and you're like OHHHH THERE IT IS!!! yeah that as well

Macabre Theme and Variations by @piracytheorist

rated T, 15/15 chaps, 66.6k words (lol)

WOOOO TIME LOOP FIC! yet another thing that i am a fan of :DD although HEED THE WARNING because there IS violence but there is also a happy ending. this fic follows twilight as he goes through the same day over and over again and tries not to die a horrific death forever. mans gets more trauma, BUT he also gets character progression and a happy ending so fair trade off right 🤔 (yes. the answer is yes)

anyways, this list is hardly even the tip of the iceberg. there's also my bookmarks which, at the time of writing this post, are at 354... most of which are sxf/twiyor.... so yeah LMAO obviously i couldnt put all of them into this post but definitely check those out. i've also got my own works if you're interested but hopefully this list contains fics you have not yet read, and that you will like 🙏🙏

(if your fic is on this list and you haven't been tagged + would like to be, pls let me know!)

[graysoncritic]

A (Negative) Review of Tom Taylor's Nightwing Run - What Went Wrong? Bludhaven (PART 2)

Introduction Who is Dick Grayson? What Went Wrong? Dick's Characterization What Went Wrong? Barbara Gordon What Went Wrong? Bludhaven (Part 1, Part 2) What Went Wrong? Melinda Lin Grayson What Went Wrong? Bea Bennett What Went Wrong? Villains Conclusion Bibliography

Instead, Taylor readily abandons the statue just as soon as it is introduced. We don’t return to it, we don’t even use it as a set piece that can ground Bludhaven and make it feel like an actual place. It doesn’t make an appearance in any covers, nor in establishing shots. In fact, even its thematic symbolism is forgotten when Alfred’s statue is built. Such a decision is especially infuriating when one considers the fact that not only would Alfred hate having a statue in his honor, but that Alfred means absolutely nothing to the people of Bludhaven. He means something to the reader, but not the citizens of the city that Dick is meant to protect. In this, we see how once more Taylor’s online mindset interferes with his storytelling, replacing a set piece that was tied to the in-universe history of the city he was writing with fanservice.

By contrast, Humphrie’s Bludhaven is filled with specific locations that are unique to, well, Bludhaven. We have the different casinos

(Humphries, Sam. Ruthless, writer. Janson, Klaus; Campbell, Jamal, illustrator. Nightwing: Rebirth no. 37, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2018. pp. 22)

The Tiki District

(Humphries, Sam, writer. Chang, Bernard, illustrator. The Untouchable: Chapter Two: Relentless. Nightwing: Rebirth no. 36, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2018. pp. 13)

Which greatly contrasts the darkness of the docks…

(Humphries, Sam, writer. Chang, Bernard, illustrator. The Untouchable: Chapter One: Hunter. Nightwing: Rebirth no. 35, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2018. pp. 17)

And the melancholy of the sunken city

(Humphries, Sam, writer. Jimenez, Phil; Campbell, Jamal, illustrator. The Untouchable: Chapter Five:Face Off. Nightwing: Rebirth no. 39, e-book  ed. DC Comics, 2018 pp. 05)

All of it is so specific that it makes Bludhaven feel alive. It gives Bludhaven an identity rather than keeping it a generic location.

Let’s take a closer look at the establishing shot of the sunken city and see how the page is laid out to emphasize the storytelling going on in the dialogue and enrich Bludhaven. There's something so visually poetic about that last panel. The intimacy between the Judge and Nightwing, the opulent throne atop a simple boat in a sunken, destroyed home. 

It feels a bit like a visual metaphor for Bludhaven and corruption. Bludhaven is thriving because of the casinos, but they are also corrupt. And yet, despite their rich aesthetic, they are built on top of a tragedy, of a city that was lost and had to rebuild itself, taking advantage of a corrupt system that devastates its citizens while also being the only thing keeping them from drowning. 

The lighting of the page is also so beautiful. Light coming in from above, appearing almost heavenly, and yet it makes the scene so still and lonely

During Dixon and Grayson’s runs, and during Taylor’s run, Bldhaven does not have an identity outside of Gotham and Nightwing. It is difficult to describe it without relying on those two factors. It is not impossible, of course, but those descriptions would be rather bare, relying on what one wishes Bludhaven could be rather than what is actually on the page.

In The Untouchable, however, Bludhaven can be described independent of Gotham and Nightwing. Yes, those elements are still crucial to its depiction, but rather than being all that there is to it, they serve to enhance what is already there. Dick’s interactions with people from Bludhaven further fleshes out the city while also demonstrating that they have their own lives outside of their meetings with Dick or Nightwing. Guppy, Svoboda, Lucy, Dick's clients at his gym... All of them are clear products of Bludhaven, they are affected by what happens in Bludhaven, and they interact with different parts of Bludhaven. Because they are characters with their own interiority, the reader really is able to feel the consequences of the Judge's actions. 

Yet, Taylor and Redondo both refuse to pay Bludhaven any of the attention it deserves. They do not even give it the respect of making it into Gotham-light. Instead, they opt for the generic, lazy, and morally simplistic depiction that is yet more proof of just how little thought they give to anything remotely related to Dick Grayson.

Bludhaven, as it exists in The Untouchable, was built on top of a corrupt foundation, and its systems are so intertwined with the rot that you can't neatly separate them. There's no easy answer to this, no solution without a victim. It adds some nice stakes to the story, creates constraints which Dick must creatively work around, and demonstrates how Nightwing’s fight is far larger than just The Judge. It illustrates how even if Dick catches this one guy, he still has so much more to do, creating a perfect comic status-quo where the hero can progress and make a difference without eliminating conflict sources for future stories.

Through the Judge, we also get to see Bludhaven’s history, and through this evolution, we also get to see just how much Humphrey cares about Bludhaven. I have yet to encounter another writer who has devoted so much care to Dick’s city. I have yet to encounter a writer who put so much effort into making this city feel alive. Gotham is beloved by many writers and fans alike, and The Untouchable showed that Bludhaven has the potential to be just as great if only it was given to a writer who cares enough to develop it. 

Needless to say, Taylor is not that writer.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator. Leaping into the Light Part 4. Nightwing: Rebirth. 81, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2021. pp 13)

While this may be wholesome, the truth is that by giving such a triumphant moment early on in the story, Taylor robbed his characters of any opportunity to change, and any opportunity for a well-earned pay off later. In turn, this robbed the story of its ability to engage with its themes by creating a very simple morality. Evil can be manifested in different ways and anyone is capable of it. Perhaps not all of us will be uppercase Evil, but we're all capable of the smallest acts of lowercase evil by letting our anger blind us to what is right, not helping others because we tell ourselves we have to survive, upholding unfair systems because they benefit us.

The city of Gotham does something similar. We have the evil of the rogues, but we also have the crime families, a myriad of corrupt institutions -- from the police department to the justice system to the politicians who are in the pockets of those on the top – and the ordinary citizens who have been disillusioned by the hardship they face. We have greed on a massive scale but also a small and personal one that is far more relatable, we have chaos of the Joker and we have more relatable pettiness, selfishness, apathy, and cruelty. 

Some of these play a larger role than others, their influence has a wider reach, but it is the different layers that makes Gotham feel so difficult to tackle. There’s a reason why Batman's origin story works best when it's just about a mugging gone wrong, and when Joe Chill is just a simple man who fired two shots in a dark alley because he wanted a pearl necklace. There's a reason why Bruce stays in Gotham rather than trying to save the entire world all the time. Batman, after all, is not about fighting the just grander Evil, but about bringing justice to everyone, even in what may be perceived to be a small scale. 

While I do not believe Batman: The Knight was perfect (and, indeed, I have a lot of problems with it and dislike Zdarsky’s current Batman run nearly as much as I dislike Taylor’s Nightwing), I do think that Zdarsky did a good job when having Ra’s Al Ghul confront Bruce on this matter. 

In #09, Ra’s challenges Bruce to work on a macro scale, and Bruce explores that idea before deciding he needs to work on a more personal level.

(Zdarsky, Chip, writer. Di Giandomenico, Carmine. The Knight Part 9. Batman: The Knight. 09, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022. pp 13)

Bruce’s world did not fall apart because of a war or an alien invasion, but that did not mean his pain is invalid. There might be far more important things than catching a mob boss who orchestrated the murder of two circus acrobats, but that doesn’t mean that their lives did not matter or that their son does not deserve to see justice. One of the beautiful things about the detective stories of Batman and of Nightwing is that they treat everyone’s trauma with equal respect. Batman and Nightwing aren’t just about catching the bad guy, they are about giving the victim a chance to heal by offering them closure. 

You can also observe the dichotomy of these two evils in The Untouchable. The entire plot of The Untouchable is about the Judge using people’s desires to corrupt them, luring them into committing evil deeds. At the same time, the story does not condemn those who fell prey to the Judge’s promises. Instead, it portrays them as complex individuals, and this reaffirms the themes of corruption through desire and the necessity for forgiveness.

Lucy, for example, is not vilified for betraying Dick. She did the Judge’s bidding, but she is not a bad person. She is still Dick’s friend and cares deeply for him. And yet, her choices are not portrayed as excusable. The comic perfectly balanced having Lucy not be a bad guy for what she did while also making it clear that she was still in the wrong for accepting the Judge’s offer. She is not Evil but she made an evil choice and she needs to be held accountable for that. 

This plays into the idea that to Dick, people are not naturally Good nor naturally Evil. They just are who they are, they have the potential for both, and it's their choices that dictate their nature. 

(Humphries, Sam, writer. Chang, Bernard, illustrator. The Untouchable: Chapter Six: Deep Dive. Nightwing: Rebirth no. 40, e-book  ed. DC Comics, 2018. pp. 18)

And as mentioned previously, Grayson also played with such ideas when she introduced the character of Sophia into the story. 

Taylor flirts with similar ideas without ever committing to them. His Bludhaven supposedly has corrupt institutions, big men on top who oppress others in order to stay rich, but to lay every wrong and every sin in the city at Blockbuster’s feet is morally simplistic. It's flattening. Immature. It's, frankly, boring. It just doesn't work on a narrative level. Most importantly, it makes Nightwing's presence superfluous.

Once more, I must emphasize that I do not believe that one must incorporate a social commentary in the themes of one’s story. However, as Taylor's narrative seems to signal he wants to discuss these matters, I think it is only fair to point out how his actual writing is uninterested in examining the complications inherited in these subjects. Taylor wants those big, meaningful moments that claim to say something thematically important, yet he creates easy-to-take down strawman villains who can take the blame for everything while wrapping them in the trappings of social commentary. 

Nothing in Taylor's supporting characters, conflicts, villains, or city were created to challenge Dick in any way. Part of the reason why you can feel Bruce's genuine love for Gotham is that that city is always challenging him, always giving him a reason to give up, but Bruce never does. Again and again, Gotham shows itself as a place that perhaps should not be saved, that is too rotten, literally cursed to bring out the worst of humanity. It would be easier to burn the whole thing down and start new. 

But Bruce doesn’t do that. He still sees something in Gotham worth saving. No matter what he uncovers, Bruce won’t give up, and that makes us, the readers, root for Batman and root for Gotham.

Bludhaven should challenge Dick in a similar way. But in this run, it doesn't. Dick's assertion that the citizens of Bludhaven are good and there are only a few bad apples ruining it for everyone is never challenged. Dick is never asked to question his beliefs. When he decided that the solution to one of Bludhaven's biggest problems (homelessness) was just to create a shelter, Dick is never challenged for his savior mentality, he never faces push back from those above him or below, is never paralyzed by bureaucracy, never has to deal setbacks that force him to re-strategize. He's just... Proved right. And everything goes on smoothly. 

Taylor’s approach gives Dick no room to grow and no room to stand his ground. I can’t help but think how much more powerful Dick’s own belief in Bludhaven and its people would have been if, during that earlier scene when the tent city was in flames, no one came to help. Nightwing and Robin would have had to save everyone on their own, and Dick would be faced with the difficult to swallow possibility that maybe he’s wrong. Maybe the people of Bludhaven are too disillusioned to do good. Maybe Babs and Tim, both characters who are known for being pragmatic, would even tell him so. But he refuses to accept that. As he looks upon the octopus statue, Dick affirms  the resilience of the city and how it does not need to come at the cost of kindness. Bludhaven is worth saving, its people are worth saving, and Dick will continue to believe in them, even though he was just given a reason not to. 

Again, I must emphasize that it is fine if a person is not interested in writing a story about this. Not every superhero story needs to explore these real-world, complex themes. One of my personal favorite Batman stories (and one I believe should be required reading for any Batman fan) is Murderer/Fugitive. While there are certainly themes of forging of identity, the story is far more concerned with what the forging of one’s identity means in the specific context of Batman rather than that of the real world. That is not to say you couldn't do an analysis on identity about Murderer/Fugitive, but the work as a whole serves more as a commentary on Batman, and it is in conversation with the popular idea that "Bruce Wayne is the mask that Batman wears." 

And just because one wishes to engage with themes of class and economic inequality, it does mean one needs to tackle it directly. Again I must bring up the modern masterpiece that is Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls. That story beautifully uses the fantastical and noire elements of the Court and the creation of the Talons to engage with themes of wealth inequality and to explore Bruce’s complex relationship with Gotham. The secret cult, of superhuman assassins, and the murder mystery element provide enough distance between the real world issues and the story itself that Snyder has the creative freedom to play with his characters and narrative while the specificity allows him to dig deeper than he ever could should he have decided on going for a broad approach.

Taylor tries to ground his themes by using real-world issues, but he refuses to engage with what those real-world issues look like in, well, the real-world. He deals with them in the context of his morally simplified, perfect little society. As Braxis perfectly pointed out “When Dick starts a charity to help the homeless he never actually explains how that will be done, what causes homelessness, or what the homeless are asking for support.” (Braxi, Steve, “On Superman, Shootings, and the Reality of Superheroes” Comics Bookcase, September 2021)

Taylor’s Bludhaven demonstrates a frustratingly simplistic view on morality that prevents the story from engaging with these issues with the care they deserve. By not fleshing out the city, by denying Dick’s interactions with other characters, Taylor creates a world of simple morals. This means that rather than engaging with the progressive ideology he claims to care about he is simply creating the appearance  of social commentary and rich themes. This demonstrates that he’s not actually interested in the work required to make that work, only the prestige that comes from it.

[snowdice]

Big Bang Editing Story [Day 122]

I started writing this fic while editing my Big Bang story years ago, but am going to continue doing it for other things now that Kill Dear is out. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing whatever task I’m doing. If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag ‘proofread stories.’ I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today. Edited chapters are linked; everything else I’ve done so far is under the cut.

My Master Post Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51 Part 52 Part 53 Part 54

Not going to do much this morning because I only have an hour or so. I may do more later today however.

Chapter 55 (Logan)

Virgil was beginning to be able to read some of the common instructions in magic books, but Logan still made sure to read out the instructions to him at least twice before setting him loose. He’d started to jot down notes to himself about things, though these notes were not words, but various symbols that only made sense to the boy himself.

Logan had asked about their meaning at one point and received an answer that, while earnest, was unintelligible. The symbols were mostly just pictures of things to represent certain steps in spell casting, but they were filtered through Virgil’s rudimentary penmanship and often bizarre perception of the world.

Though, despite the fact that Logan could not often decipher his chicken scratch, it did seem to help him produce more and more quality charms even as Logan began to introduce more complicated processes to make them. He was a very good student even if he didn’t have the best foundation for learning.

“I add lavender for the next step, right?” Virgil asked, his finger on a word in Logan’s magic book.

“That is correct,” Logan confirmed.

Virgil looked back at the book and mouthed the word ‘lavender’ to himself before turning back to his potion. He grabbed a few sprigs of lavender and threw them into the cauldron.

The liquid popped and bubbled violently, but Virgil didn’t flinch as he once would have, prepared for it now.

After the lavender, Logan knew that it would have to simmer for 5 minutes. Virgil looked down at the boiling liquid, contemplating it for a long moment.

“Can I soak a knife in it?” he asked.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Can I soak a knife in the potion once it’s done?”

“In that potion?” Logan clarified. “In the emergency hand warmer potion?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think a hot knife would be useful,” Virgil said.

“For what?”

Virgil shrugged. “Cooking food on the road,” he said, “burning wood, stabbing someone and immediately cauterizing the wound.”

“That is… not a standard use for this potion,” Logan said.

Virgil titled his head at him. “Would it work though?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Logan contemplated. “Perhaps. The potion can cause burns if one uses too much of it or if it is used without an appropriate layer between it and the skin. If one were to pick a knife with enough surface area and let it soak long enough, it could in theory get hot enough to do as desired. Hmm…” he thought about it. “There would perhaps be the problem of the potion not sticking to the knife very long as it is intended to soak into fabric. However, cardamom could solve that issue as long as it doesn’t interact with any other ingredients. Let me see that spell.”

Virgil stepped out of his way so he could study the page. “Yes,” Logan said after scanning through all of the ingredients. “I think cardamom would work for something like that. Let me go find some.”

He turned to walk towards where he kept his supplies of potion ingredients. Virgil followed on his heals.

“Can we use a serrated knife?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea, Virgil,” Logan said, nodding as he searched through the cupboard that should hold the coriander. “The knife being serrated would help keep the potion stuck to the blade after many uses and would increase the surface area.”

“That was certainly my intention,” Virgil said smoothly. There was something odd about the tone that had Logan turning and blinking at him. Virgil just smiled at him innocently and Logan turned back to the cabinet finally locating the cardamom.

“So how are we going to use that?” Virgil asked.

“We’ll put it in right before the last step and let it sit for about 3 minutes,” Logan said. “If it doesn’t quite work, we may need to make another batch. There are options other than cardamom, but that’s the first idea that comes to mind and it’s a lot simpler if it works.”

He continued to speak of the many other options they could try as they returned to the caldron as well as how they could test the hot knife. It was already about time for the next step and Virgil did it without interrupting Logan’s rant.

Virgil listened to his suggestions with interest all while still making sure the potion he was making was progressing well.

Logan did eventually take over to finish the potion with the revised steps he’d come up with and they ended up with a potion that looked perfect except it was a few shades darker than the one they’d originally been planning to make.

“Well, it looks good,” Logan declared. “We will need to acquire a knife to test its effectiveness, however.”

“There are a few good ones in the kitchen,” Virgil pointed out. “I especially like the one 10 inch one with the black and white handle.”

“You have been eyeing up the kitchen knives?” Logan asked.

Virgil rolled his eyes as though that was not a perfectly reasonable question to ask him. “We should steal that one,” Virgil said.

“Do you think we’ll be able to sneak past Ms. Heart to steal a knife from her kitchen?” Logan asked.

“We can’t,” Virgil said. The ‘but I can’ was implied.

Logan almost didn’t believe him… and then he remembered the water pouch incident. “It’s the dinner rush,” Logan said. “We should probably wait for a bit.”

Virgil was shaking his head. “The dinner rush is the best time,” he said. “Everyone will be distracted, and all of the knives will be out and in prime stealing position.”

“And if Patton’s mother catches us messing around in her kitchen during her busiest time of day, she will have Father ground us for a week.”

“Then we just won’t get caught,” Virgil said.

“I’m not sure if it’s that simple,” Logan said with a frown.

“You can stay here if you want,” Virgil offered. “I’ll just go by myself.”

“No, I’ll come too,” Logan relented, though he did still have some reservations about the idea.

He let Virgil lead him towards the main dining hall. By now, Virgil knew the kitchens and dining hall very well.

“Stay here,” he said. They were in a hallway a few feet down from the staff entrance to the main kitchen. “I’m going to do some reconnaissance.”

“What type of reconnaissance?” Logan asked, but Virgil had already vanished before his very eyes. With a blink, Logan looked up and saw a dark figure disappear onto a balcony overhead.

Well, Logan really had no choice but to wait there for him. It wasn’t like he could follow him. He could hear the clatter of silverware on plates from the dining hall down the corridor as he impatiently waited. It only took Virgil a bit over five minutes to return. He dropped suddenly from above and landed in front of Logan in a crouch.

“Well?” Logan asked, letting a bit of irritation into his tone so Virgil knew he was displeased. Virgil did not seem to care.

“Got it,” Virgil said with a wide grin, brandishing a large kitchen knife.

Logan flinched back at the unexpected sight of a weapon.

“You said you were doing reconnaissance!” he sputtered. “Not…” he trailed off remembering that while they weren’t in eyesight of anyone right now, they could be in earshot of someone. He lowered his tone, “stealing the knife already.”

“I was doing reconnaissance,” Virgil said with a shrug, “and then I used the information gathered by that reconnaissance to steal a knife.”

Logan narrowed his eyes at him.

Virgil just smiled. “You would have gotten in my way.”

“I would not have,” Logan insisted.

“How many times has Patton’s mom caught you stealing food from the kitchens in the past?” he asked.

Logan pursed his lips. “That is Patton’s doing,” he said.

“Sure,” Virgil said with an eyeroll. “I’ll have you prove it some other day, but for now,” he twirled the knife around in a way that made Logan cringe even though he did seem to have an expert handle over it. “We have a knife.”

“Right,” Logan agreed with a nod. “We should continue the experiment.”

Virgil stored the knife away… somewhere on his person, and they snuck back to Logan’s rooms.

When Virgil handed over the knife, Logan did have to admit it was a perfect specimen for their project: long and saw-like with a heatproof handle.

Logan carefully set it in a shallow dish and proceeded to pour the potion they’d made onto it. They let it sit for a little under half an hour before carefully pulling it out of the concoction with tongs and letting it airdry. Meanwhile, Virgil suggested they set up a testing area with various old sheets and clothing. They’d even found and decorated an armor stand with an old suit that Logan particularly disliked.

“Well,” Logan said once he’d tapped the handle and had not gotten burned by the potion. “I think we can test it now.” For safety, he made Virgil put on thick heatproof gloves before handing him the knife.

“So how do I make it work?” Virgil asked.

“The original potion works through light friction,” Logan said.

“So just start stabbing things?”

Logan went to respond, but before he could, Virgil had already twisted around and sliced through one of the sheets hanging in Logan’s potion room. There was a sizzling noise as the knife cut through the sheet like it was tissue paper leaving two aflame halves flapping about.

Logan leapt forward to tear the pieces of sheet down and the two of them stomped on the flames to put out the fire.

“It’s perfect,” Virgil said with a grin once the charred remains of the sheet were extinguished.

“It does seem to work as intended,” Logan agreed.

“Let’s do it again,” Virgil said.

“Er, well, perhaps we shouldn’t…,” Logan started, but Virgil had already set his eyes on the armor stand they’d set up. That suddenly seemed like not such a good idea to Logan.

He stabbed the armor stand viciously. It went up in violent flames. Logan’s eyes widened as the blaze only seemed to get bigger as Virgil drew back the knife.

Virgil did not seem to share Logan’s worry as he turned and stabbed another piece of hanging clothing, setting it ablaze as well.

“Virgil, no! You’re going to burn the room down!” Logan yelped.

The armor stand, at that very moment, decided to fall to the ground. They had, perhaps, not set the testing area up as well as they should have because it fell directly onto one of Logan’s rugs and set that on fire as well.

“Oops,” Virgil said, eyes wide.

Above the sound of crackling fire, Logan heard a tapping on the door between his bedroom and work room. It opened slightly after a moment and Logan’s father’s voice called out as he was sticking his head into the room, “Um, what do you mean Virgil… is burning the room down!”

The moment Logan’s father fully processed the presence of the flames, he was bursting into the room. He at least remembered that there was a fire extinguishing powder stocked in Logan’s work room even though that fact had slipped Logan’s mind in the chaos. (Perhaps Logan should have thought to set it out when they were testing a fire knife, but Logan would just add that to his growing list of regrets.)

The king managed to put all of the fires out within 30 seconds of poking his head through the door, but the fire left in his eyes when he turned to look at them afterwards was perhaps more dangerous.

Virgil slowly hid the knife behind his back. It was probably a bit late for that.

“What were the two of you doing in here?” the king asked.

“Nothing,” Logan said. Virgil shot him a look that told Logan what the boy thought about his lying abilities.

Logan’s father put his hands on his hips. “‘Nothing’ set the rug on fire?”

“We may have been doing a small experiment,” Logan said.

“What experiment?” the king asked.

“…I do not wish to say.”

“Logan.”

“Virgil wanted a fire knife.”

“A what?”

Virgil frowned over at Logan. “Your resistance to interrogation techniques is deplorable.”

Father turned to look at Virgil and obviously spotted the fact that Virgil was holding something behind his back.

“Give it here,” Father said, though his tone was a bit gentler with Virgil than it had been with Logan.

Virgil debated it for a moment, but then offered over the knife with a pout on his face. Father gingerly took it and the fire-resistant gloves from him. “Where did the two of you even get this knife?”

“You can’t tell her,” Logan said.

“You stole a knife from the kitchens?!” the king asked.

“We borrowed it,” Logan said.

“Can it be used for cooking anymore?”

“…Well.”

“In the intended manner.”

“No.”

“Then you stole it.”

Logan just frowned and looked away.

“I’m going to go put this in a secure location,” Father said, grimacing at the fire knife in his hands. “No more experiments for you two for a month. I’ll sic Patton on you.”

With that, he picked up what was left of the fire extinguishing powder (just in case) and turned to exit the room.

“Well,” Logan said once he was gone. “That was irresponsible.”

“I could steal it back from him.”

“N-no don’t do that.”

“I definitely could though,” Virgil said.

“I did not hear you say that,” Logan said, putting his hands over his ears. “I am not responsible for any more of your actions in this matter. I am going to the library.”

He walked out of the room then and Virgil followed him to the upstairs library. He said nothing more about the fire knife, but Logan would be a fool to suppose he forgot about it.

Chapter 56 (Thomas)

“Good day for a picnic,” Helen commented as she handed over the basket Thomas had requested from her a few days before. He was taking Logan, Patton, and Virgil to the cliffs today and it was perfect weather for it. Spring was truly here, which meant that those of Thomas’s duties that had laid dormant over the harsh winter were about to start up again.

The world had been on pause for a bit considering no armies or agents from any kingdom could get through the snow the last few months, but the concerns of last fall were showing their heads once again.

Thomas had just gotten word a day ago that the queen of Lamir had routed out a second assassin hiding in her ranks over the winter. The assassin had been sent shortly after it was made clear that the queen wouldn’t bow down after the assassination of her mother. Luckily, the assassin sent for Queen Cecil had not managed to complete her mission during the winter months.

While there had been no similar attempt on Prijaznia soil, Thomas couldn’t help but feel it was only a matter of time now that the snow had melted. They were already working on increasing security in the coming weeks and, though it was doubtful an assassin had managed to hide in the castle all winter without revealing themselves, they’d be closely scrutinizing all of the newer staff members.

It would be a stressful time in the coming months, which is why, despite everything Thomas needed to do, he was still going to take his son and his son’s friends on a picnic today. Logan had already started taking on royal duties as of late, but he still hadn’t taken them all on quite yet. Considering this was last summer before Logan was of age, they should at least try to take advantage of it where they could. Patton was a year younger, but the sentiment held for him as well.

Then there was Virgil. Despite their best efforts, they still didn’t know enough about Virgil, but Thomas was fairly sure he’d never had a summer to enjoy until now.

“Thanks for prepping lunch for us,” Thomas said to Helen with a smile.

“No problem,” she said waving them off. “I put in some of Virgil’s favorites.”

“Great,” Thomas said. “Do you know where the kids are?”

“Patton said they were going to go pet the cats, so I’d guess they’re in the gardens.”

Thomas thanked her again and told her to have a good day before exiting the kitchen. There was a nearby door that led straight towards the part of the gardens Patton and Logan had always favored. He figured they’d either still be around there or they would have wandered towards the stables by now knowing that they’d be taking horses to the cliffs.

So, he decided to simply walk the normal path from the door to the stable, hoping to find them.

His prediction ended up being hilariously correct. They were indeed on the path Thomas had chosen. It was clear they (or at least Logan) were attempting to make it to the stable. However, as was typical, a portion of the party had been waylaid by whimsy.

Logan was standing further down the path, arms crossed and frowning as he watched his friends. Patton and Virgil were surrounded by cats. Patton was sitting down, holding two of them in his lap and watching Virgil’s legs being swarmed by the rest of them, maybe two dozen in total.

Virgil looked confused, but not unhappy about the presence of so many cats. He was leaning down to try to pet them all.

Logan met Thomas’s eyes as he approached and waved a frustrated hand at the two of them. Logan couldn’t help but smile.

“Virgil fed one of them,” Logan complained as though he wanted Thomas to somehow go into the past and prevent this crime.

Patton and Virgil looked over at Thomas, noticing him when Logan addressed him.

“You’re going to make Princess Marisol jealous,” Thomas said. Logan frowned at Thomas as he used the ‘Princess’ label for the cat.

“Princess Marisol decided not to come,” Virgil said with a shrug. He continued to pet one of the cats.

“She’s probably sleeping on my pillow,” Logan said, sounding grumpy.

Thomas just chuckled. Princess Marisol was technically Logan’s cat, at least that’s what the kids said, and she did spend much of her time in the royal rooms. However, she was very clearly actually Virgil’s cat. Virgil just spent a lot of time in the royal wing as well.

In fact, Thomas still didn’t know where Virgil was supposed to be sleeping. He and Mr. Deknis had actually tried to tail him a couple of times, but he always ended up sleeping in Logan’s room those nights.

Knowing Virgil, he might just sleep in the walls. Though that still did not answer the question of where his parents or guardians were. They still had not figured it out. Thomas would assume he was an orphan who’d snuck onto castle grounds for safety, but Virgil had told Mr. Deknis during their first meeting that he was supposed to be in the castle, and it had not been a lie.

Then again, it had slowly become apparent that Virgil was good at dodging the multrum’s powers. It was starting to seem more likely that he’d somehow inserted a second meaning into his answer to Mr. Deknis that night than he somehow had some ghost guardian no one was able to locate working in the castle.

“She deserves the pillow more than you,” Virgil said, bringing Thomas’s thoughts back to the situation at hand. The look of audacity on Logan’s face made Thomas chuckle.

Thomas cut in before it could become a fight. “I could get Princess Marisol a pillow, so she doesn’t sleep on yours. Or we can get you a new pillow if you’d prefer, Logan.”

“It’s not about the pillow for her,” Logan argued. “It’s about her inflated sense of superiority.”

“She deserves it,” Virgil declared. Thomas could tell he was just trying to rile Logan up, and Thomas was sure Logan knew it too, but still his son reacted exactly in the way Virgil wanted him to.

“You have enabled and encouraged this behavior from the start!” Logan seethed.

“She’s a Princess.”

“She is not a princess!”

Patton shook his head while squeezing the cats in his arms, completely used to this behavior at this point. He ran a chin idly over one of the cat’s heads while watching the argument.

“We’re never going to make it to the picnic at this rate,” Thomas said to him, “and after your mother made all of this wonderful food.”

“You’re the dad,” Patton said. “Make them stop.”

And, of course, Patton did just mean that he was Logan’s dad with that statement. However, when he glanced back up at the silly argument still going on between his son and the cat covered boy on the ground, it did almost look like a fight between siblings.

Especially with the dark hair and stubborn but mischievous look in Virgil’s eyes, Thomas could almost imagine the boy being his own child.

He shook away the thoughts and glanced at the picnic basket in his hand.

“We do have a lot of food in this basket,” Thomas said, pitching his voice up so that Logan (and more importantly) Virgil would hear them clearly.

Virgil immediately turned to look at him, abandoning all interest in antagonizing Logan to look at the basket curiously.

Thomas was never sure if he should be amused or worried about how food motivated Virgil often was.

“What’s in the basket?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not sure,” Thomas said. “Patton’s mom made it. We’ll just have to see once we get to the picnic area.”

Virgil nodded in understanding and began to gently scoot all of the cats out of his lap. Logan rolled his eyes, but didn’t seem inclined to continue the argument he’d been dragged into. Virgil and Patton got to their feet and they continued on their way towards the stables.

The horses Thomas had requested be prepared for their trip were already in saddles, though the stable hand who had been handling Mr. Apples seemed a bit dirtier and more exhausted than the rest.

The stable hand seemed as happy to hand Mr. Apples over to Virgil as Virgil was to have Mr. Apples handed over to him. Thomas received Bella with a smile and Logan and Patton got their own horses as well.

The Cliffs were about half an hour's ride from the main castle. There was a mostly well-maintained path to it, though it was easy to get lost if one didn’t know the way. Mr. Apples knew the way perhaps better than Thomas himself and seemed annoyed by the fact that Thomas was trying to lead the way.

Virgil and Thomas ended up side-by-side whenever the path allowed it to placate him.

He still marveled at how willing Mr. Apples was to let Virgil ride him, especially when he tossed his head in Thomas’s direction, a horse’s equivalent of giving Thomas a stink-eye.

“Are you excited for the picnic?” Thomas asked the boy beside him.

Virgil glanced over at him and nodded.

“I am too,” Thomas said. “It’s always beautiful this time of year. I’m glad I could find the time to take you all there this year.”

“Are you very busy?” Virgil asked curiously.

“I am king,” Thomas reminded, “and now that the world isn’t snowed in anymore things will be busy.”

“With the war?” Virgil asked.

Thomas paused for a few seconds. “Yes,” he confirmed. “With the war, but you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Virgil asked.

“You’re just a kid,” Thomas said.

“I’m 14,” Virgil said.

Thomas glanced at him. “Exactly,” he said, “a kid, and luckily, you’re in a place that can afford you the luxury of being one.”

“What do you mean?”

“The war has been mainly fought on Mocnejsi soil in recent years. Our boarders have held strong against invasions. Unless something goes horribly wrong suddenly, it would take a long time for the main conflict to get here. The only real threat in the castle would be assassins sent after me personally.”

“Right,” Virgil said. There was an awkward pause in conversation before he spoke again. “You’re winning the war then?” he asked.

“Something could always happen,” Thomas said, “but for the most part, yes, we have quite the advantage right now.”

“Oh,” Virgil said.

Thomas shook his head as they were coming up to a narrowing of the path. “Anyway, today is a day to not think about war. Today we’re going to have a lovely picnic and do some bird watching.”

“Right,” Virgil agreed from behind Thomas as Bella took the lead (to Mr. Apples discontent.)

When the path widened again, Thomas did his best to direct the topic to lighter subjects and soon they made it to The Cliffs.

Chapter 57 (Virgil)

Virgil had never been to a picnic. At least, that’s what Patton had informed him when Virgil had described his past experiences of eating outdoors. Logan had agreed even though he’d admitted that the definition of “picnic” was only eating a pre-packaged meal outdoors which Virgil had done plenty of times.

From what Virgil could tell, the main difference was just how much stuff one brought to a picnic.

In addition to the basket full of food (that Virgil still hadn’t gotten to look in yet), the king had brought a large soft quilt that he had Logan and Virgil spread out on the ground for them all to sit on.

Patton and Logan had also packed some things themselves to bring along. Logan had brought along a book to read, and Patton had brought along a board game (thankfully not checkers but something Virgil did not recognize). Virgil hadn’t brought anything (except for the fire knife he was definitely not supposed to have and was definitely not letting the king see) because he hadn’t known he was supposed to bring things. He wouldn’t have known what to bring anyway.

The blanket was soft and a much better alternative to sitting on the ground, especially because, while there was grass at the top of The Cliffs, there were also a good number of rocks.

The king set the picnic basket in the middle of the blanket once it was spread out and then lowered himself down to sit on one side. Patton quickly followed him, already fiddling with some of his board game pieces, though he wasn’t setting it up yet. Virgil highly doubted that Logan was going to be allowed to read his book unless Patton eventually got bored of the game.

However, they would, hopefully, be allowed to make use of the basket the king had brought along.

Virgil followed the king and Patton’s lead and got to his knees on the blanket across the picnic basket from the king. He peered at the basket curiously.

He didn’t quite know what picnic food was, but Patton had told them they’d be getting ‘picnic food’ and he was very curious about what that meant.

King Thomas smiled at him. “Let’s see what Patton’s mom packed us, huh?” He reached for the basket and flipped it open as Logan sat next to Virgil. “There is a lot more food than usual in here,” the king said, sounding amused. “Let’s see.”

He began to pull out packaged food and glanced in each package to identify it before setting it out.

“We have a few types of mini sandwiches,” he said, putting them down, “and some pasta salad.” He set down the bowl.

“We also have… er something else.” He showed it to Logan.

“They’re hot cauliflower bites,” Logan said instantly upon seeing them. Virgil perked up in excitement. That was one of his favorite foods.

“Ah,” King Thomas said, but shrugged and set it down. “We also have two desserts apparently: cookies and mini apple pies. That last one’s a bit extra for a picnic.”

“They’re very good,” Virgil said happily.

“And we also have.” King Thomas paused, looking confused. “Chicken alfredo?”

“Yes!” Virgil said.

“Why do we have chicken alfredo for a picnic?”

“It’s a Virgil picnic,” Logan groaned. “She packed us a Virgil picnic.”

“Hey, at least momma sent us something too,” Patton said.

“I think I’ll stick to sandwiches for today,” King Thomas said. He looked at Patton and Logan. “Do either of you want…?”

“No,” Logan said. Patton shook his head.

The king nodded and offered the entire covered bowl of chicken alfredo to Virgil. “Here, this one’s yours,” he said.

“Really?” Virgil asked tentatively. It wasn’t exactly strange for people here to offer him food, and he’d expected and anticipated getting to eat on this venture, but the king of the country offering him an entire bowl of his favorite food was something else.

“It’s not really my idea of a picnic food and you seem excited for it,” King Thomas said with a warm smile, still holding it out.

Virgil took it reverently. Despite the time it had taken to get to the cliffs, the bottom of the container was still warm. Virgil assumed it was one of the heating spells the kitchen sometimes used.

“Thanks,” Virgil said, setting it in his lap.

“Of course, Virgil,” the king said.

The bowl was enough for four people to have a little bit, but for one person it was a lot. Still, Virgil was offered a little of every other food in the picnic basket (and he ate a good number of the hot cauliflower bites).

“Where do you put all of that?” the king asked when Virgil finished polishing off the chicken alfredo bowl.

Everyone else seemed to have finished eating long before Virgil, though Patton still had a small plate of grapes, and he occasionally popped one in his mouth. King Thomas was currently setting up the board game they’d brought on the blanket between all of them.

Virgil shrugged in answer to his question. “It’s good,” he said, “and I don’t want to waste any of it.”

“You know we can just take the leftovers back to the castle and eat them later,” King Thomas said. “You don’t have to eat it all now.”

Virgil just shrugged again, watching as the king set out a group of 8 figures on the board.

“Here, which character do you want to be?” the king asked Virgil, gesturing at the group of figures. Virgil had not noticed the figures were different at first glance. They were all copper colored and about the size of his thumb, but they had slightly different shapes. He squinted at them each carefully, finding they all looked like people, but with different clothing. Some worse pants and some skirts, a few had hats, and one was even carrying a book.

After a few moments, he pointed at one that looked like it had vines wrapped around its arms and was wearing a floppy hat that almost covered its eyes.

“That’s the druid,” King Thomas told him with a grin. “Good choice, and luckily not one that anyone usually fights over.” He glanced at Logan who didn’t react to his father’s gaze. He just plucked the figure clutching the book off the board for himself.

Patton and the king picked pieces for themselves. Patton picked one with an apron that kind of reminded Virgil of his mom and the king picked one that was in a suit of armor before putting the other 4 figures away.

Unlike checkers, this game wasn’t just for two people, and so no one had to sit watching people play while bored out of their mind.

85949

They played a practice round so Virgil could figure out how the game worked, though honestly it wasn’t that complicated, so it wasn’t really necessary.

The theme of the game was all about stealing. They were supposed to steal special tokens from other players as well as characters in the game and the first person with 20 tokens won.

The other three players argued that stealing was not the point and not the main mechanism of the game, but considering Virgil was consistently winning the entire time, he would argue they were just playing it wrong. He managed to collect 20 tokens before anyone else. In second place at this time was Logan with 9 tokens.

Logan insisted on continuing to play the game to determine 2nd and 3rd place, so Virgil ended up watching them play for a bit. Virgil didn’t mind sitting and watching other people play this game, mostly because he still had the joy of victory running in his veins.

Thomas was definitely going to lose, he noted. He kept wasting his money feeding the nonplayer characters who lived on his lands. Virgil didn’t mention this faulty strategy to him in case Virgil ever played him again.

When Logan took too long thinking about his next move, Virgil took in their surroundings.

86167

He’d been a bit too distracted by the prospect of food and then trying to understand (and then win) the game to truly take in The Cliffs. They were settled a good distance away from the cliffside but Virgil could still see how quickly the edge dropped off. He couldn’t see the large river he was told was at its base from where he was sitting, but he did see a few of the promised wild birds (including doves) flying around. The king had promised they’d bird watch for a bit, and Virgil figured that would happen after the game was over.

A cool spring breeze brushed across Virgil’s face, and he put his hand in his hoodie pockets to warm them. Instead, his fingers hit something icy cold.

For a moment, he didn’t remember what it was. The crescent shape of it was familiar when he put his hand over it, but he had never felt it cold before.

It was the protection charm: the first charm Virgil had ever made with Logan so many months ago. It was meant to ward off small threats as well as warn you about larger threats by changing temperature…

It had always been warm.

“What?” Patton asked, having noticed Virgil suddenly tense. Virgil, despite how he drilled into his friend’s heads to stay alert had gone soft. He’d let himself be distracted by a full belly and warm blankets and fun games.

He didn’t answer Patton. He filtered the other boy’s worried face out as well as Logan’s face as he glanced at him and the king’s still focused on the game for now. He filtered out the picnic blanket and smell of food still lingering in the air and the vine covered figure set in the middle of the board on the winner’s space. He filtered out the sound of the breeze and the breath of his companions and the distant chirping of birds.

And he heard a whoosh.

[susansluvpage]

A chapter from my new book I am working on. Not published yet.

A few years later there was a 20-year reunion tour. JR was close to 6 years old. David was 37 years old I was 27 years old. Got a surprise of my own, right before the tour started. I was over 2 months pregnant. So, I made us a romantic dinner and hung baby booties all over the candle's sticks. I called him for dinner. He sat down at the table. Didn’t notice the booties right away. Took a drink of red wine I served, then seen the booties on the candle sticks. David laughed, is that your unique way of telling me, I have to put the crib back together again. I smiled yes! Honey swearing again while you are doing it. He smiled, then kissed me. His love making that night was gentler. The tour went extremely well. They played in a big auditorium and huge stadiums, to sold out crowds. Close to the end of the tour. I was a little over 5 months pregnant. We also had JR with us the whole tour. His nanny went with us also. In a city auditorium, we were leaving after the concert through the stage door exit. I was beside David, his bodyguard on his other side, we were heading for the waiting limousine. There was a big crowd there. About 10 feet away a guy, who looked vaguely familiar, pulled out a gun and shot David. I screamed as I watched David start to fall. I grabbed him, he had a shocked expression on his face. His bodyguard got on the radio saying David’s been shot. Get the paramedics to the backstage door now! I held him in my arms as I watched blood pouring out near his stomach all over his shirt. I was crying and screaming. David looked at me. I told him help was coming. He whispered “I love you! Then passed out. I was hysterical with grief. Everything was happening so fast. The paramedics arrived. Checked David’s wound put gauze on his wound and put him in the ambulance. I went with. By now I was in shock. They put in an I.V. and hooked him to monitors. I was trying to be calm for David’s sake, but I was shaking. I heard the monitor with his heartbeat. They had oxygen on him. He is stable let’s get him to the hospital. They had a police escort. Word had spread across the crowd exiting that David had been shot. The guys in the group and band were trying to find out what hospital they were taking him to. They all piled up in their limousines heading to the hospital. The paramedic was on the radio talking with the Emergency Room Doctor. As soon as we arrived, they took him to trauma. Held me back. I wanted to be with him. I had his blood all over me, I didn’t even notice. The paramedic told the nurse. I was his wife and in shock and looks like she is pregnant. Outside the news media and his fans were gathering in a big crowd. Security had to be called. The police were already here. They had the gunman in custody as the crowd disarmed him and held him. George came rushing in with his wife. He came over to me and took me in his arms. I cried and was shaking. George asked one of the band members to go to our hotel room to get her a change of clothes. He got my room key out of my purse. It was then I noticed I had his blood all over me. I started crying harder. The Doctors finally came out. They came over to me. David is stable but needs surgery, the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs but is lodged near his spleen. We need you to sign papers for consent for surgery. You can go in to be with him, till he goes to surgery. He’s heavily sedated right now. George’s wife suggested I clean up a bit in the bathroom before I see him. I will help you. As I was in there the one band member came back with a clean dress and under garments. George knocked on the door. Handing the clothes to his wife. They let me into his room. It frighten me to see him hooked up to so many machines. George was with me. I sat down next to the bed and took his hand. Please, David do not leave me. You have not even seen the baby yet. David, I love you with all my heart. Tears were streaming down my face. The hospital administrator was notified at home. He came right in to manage things. They took him to surgery a few hours later. I prayed again for him.

[mx-heinous]

El Filibusterismo: Poorly Summarized

Chapter 1: We're on a boat and here are the bad guys! :D

Chapter 2: Eyyyy Basilio! You wanna make a school? (Internally: This will not turn out well)

Chapter 3: Short stories with symbolism. That Ibarra guy? Pffft he's dead. Don't worry about him

Chapter 4: The government ain't shit. Something about crocodiles. Juli would rather be a servant than sell a locket

Chapter 5: Coach Driver Has The Worst Christmas Eve Ever

Chapter 6: Basilio Backstory Time

Chapter 7: Simoun Backstory Time (but you already knew he was Ibarra, didn't you?) + Two weirdos have a philosophical debate in the middle of the woods

Chapter 8: Unmerry Christmas

Chapter 9: People Responsible For Why Juli's Life Sucks

Chapter 10: Simoun sells stuff, and oh yeah, Tales killed 3 people or something idk.

Chapter 11: The government ain't shit pt. 2

Chapter 12: The most relatable guy in the book

Chapter 13: The education system sucks

Chapter 14: Meet the students. You're probably gonna forget about them by the next chapter

Chapter 15: Isagani argues with a guy named Spaghetti or something

Chapter 16: Chinese Guy's in debt

Chapter 17: Woohoo, we're at a fair! Wait a minute, where's Simoun?

Chapter 18: Ah, there he is

Chapter 19: Simoun reveals he's a terrorist to a college drop-out

Chapter 20: Turns out, Don Custodio ain't shit

Chapter 21: The friars make a fuss about a French play, backfires horribly

Chapter 22: Relationship Dramaaaaa. Also, yay! The new school got approved! Nvm, we can't direct it anyway

Chapter 23: Hey kid, wanna be a terrorist? Wait, WDYM MARIA CLARA'S DEAD?!

Chapter 24: Relationship Dramaaaaa pt. 2 (This isn't gonna end well, will it?)

Chapter 25: Eating food and making fun of the government

Chapter 26: The government ain't shit pt. 3

Chapter 27: Wait, a decent priest? No way

Chapter 28: People Are Scared, Tiago kicks the bucket, and oh hey, Placido, there you are

Chapter 29: Tiago's Funeral (that's pretty much it)

Chapter 30: Juli can't catch a break

Chapter 31: Look! A decent government official! Nvm, he resigned

Chapter 32: Literally everyone is out of prison except for Basilio because the government ain't shit pt. 4. Also, Juanito's a girlfriend stealing bitch

Chapter 33: Basilio has an emo arc

Chapter 34: Wedding planning ensues, and look, a pretty lamp that's definitely not a bomb

Chapter 35: Your ex just crashed your wedding but dw, it's a good thing

Chapter 36: Ben-Zayb finally gets his own chapter

Chapter 37: The people finally got some braincells

Chapter 38: Remember Selo? Well, he's dead now

Chapter 39: Simoun finally crokes and Tiburcio's there ig

[butterflydm]

wot reread: a memory of light (chapter 38-epilogue)

spoilers for a memory of light!

Well, the rest of the chapters have fewer pages in total than chapter 37 did, so this is going to be my last full reread post, though I do have a couple of follow-ups planned.

My timing ended up being pretty good, even though my original intention was just to reread books 1-3 in anticipation of the second season of the show. And now I’ve still got over a month to get good and excited about everything the show will be bringing to the table.

1. We go back to Rand, still deep in his conversation with TDO. The chapter “the Last Battle” really revolved around the battle between the forces outside Shayol Ghul, because it ended when the commander of the other army finally was killed (though there are still a ton of his forces to take care of, the head of the snake was cut off and so was the person who fancied himself Demandred’s replacement).

2. The ‘let go’ that Rand is hearing in his mind is in his father’s voice, and the meaning expands here -- let them sacrifice. it is their choice to make. And then Egwene’s voice -- am I not allowed to be a hero too?

Because this is something that Rand has been resisting over the course of the books -- basically ever since he accepted that he will be the sacrifice, he’s struggled with knowing that he’s not the only one, with knowing that other people are sometimes even sacrificing just to get him here, to this place. And, I imagine, with his tentative plans to maybe even survive this ‘sacrifice’, that’s going to make him feel even more guilty about other people giving up their lives in this fight.

3. He talks in dialogue with Egwene’s voice in his head (given that he’s existing around and between reality, it might really be Egwene’s voice too). He is not in charge of protecting her. He decided to take that charge on himself, back in EotW, but it was never his to claim. Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us.

4. And so Rand takes himself through his list again, backwards, this time, releasing his feelings of shame for failing to save them, releasing his need to protect them. Letting go of the mountain that has been crushing him for the majority of the series.

He hadn’t realized how large it had become, how much he had let himself carry.

...

Ilyena was last. We are reborn, Rand thought, so we can do better the next time.

So do better.

5. And now Rand, as he stands surrounded by all time and nothing at the same time, comes to understand that the Darkness was never a being, never an entity of its own. It is the between of everything. It can only win if no one is willing to keep fighting against it.

6. Mat gets the news of Lan’s reported death. As he did with Egwene and with Elayne, he swallows the grief and doesn’t let it show to anyone else, instead using the news to spur the army onward to attack the now-stunned foe.

7. Rand tells TDO that he can’t win, and TDO argues that it has Rand in its grasp right now, and Rand says that that’s missing the point, because it was never just about his victory. The people he lists:

Morgase (?) - a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet

Thom - a man who remembered stories and took fool boys under his wing

Moiraine - a woman who hunted truth before others could

Perrin (?) - a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall

Nynaeve - a woman who refused to believe she could not Heal those who had been harmed

Mat - a hero who insisted with every breath that he was not a hero

Egwene - a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten and who stone with the Light for all who watched

Rand realizes -- “it was never about beating me. It was about breaking me.”

8. Okay, I have to say. I have to! But this is... this is literally also how the Seanchan work. This is their philosophy of life -- to take people and break them to the Seanchan’s purpose. As I’ve said before, there really is no way around the fact that the Seanchan are going to be the Great Evil of the Fourth Age. There are just too many Shadow-Seanchan parallels! Maybe Mat and Min can slow the train slightly but I don’t think they can actually put the breaks on it.

9. But back to now -- Rand and TDO watch the battlefield, where Mat is fighting -- Tam at his side, then Karede and his suicide-slave troops, then Loial and the Ogier. “Outnumbered three to one”. Mat is shouting in the Old Tongue: For the Light! For honor! For glory! For life itself!

I will take a moment to be glad that, despite the first half of this book trying so hard to align Mat with the slavers for whatever fucking reason, he’s not fighting for the slavers in this battle. That he actually did become the General of the Forces of the Light, not primarily the General of the Slavers. Looking back, it really does feel like the change was signaled when Mat first took off his Seanchan clothes and put back on his Two Rivers coat*. That seems to have been a visual cue about his change in characterization -- how he started pushing back more against Tuon, forcing her into more compromises, and standing more aligned with the Forces of Light rather than pandering to the slavers all the time. idk, maybe forcing Mat over to Ebou Dar at the start of the book was Sanderson’s way of trying to finally create a synthesis between the horrible Mat of CoT & KoD and the non-horrible Mat of the earlier books, and he felt like he actually had to take Seanchan!Mat to his worst conclusion before bringing him out again? It still really sucks that the Mat and Rand reunion happened during our low point of Mat’s characterization, though.

(* which appears to have been triggered by the ‘not pleasant’ conversation that Mat and Tuon had after Tuon berates him for not telling her that Egwene was briefly enslaved by the Seanchan. After that (off-screen) conversation, Mat starts being much more combative re: the Seanchan -- after that conversation is when he has his bitter/sarcastic thought that he’s not done much to convince Tuon to stop using damane and when he suggests to Min that she mislead Tuon about her viewings to try to soften her stance on Aes Sedai; so I think we can safely give Egwene credit for the turnaround in Mat’s characterization -- I wish that that conversation between Mat and Tuon hadn’t happened off-screen! like so many important emotional moments!, but it seems like perhaps that was a watershed moment for Mat)

Rand and TDO watch, and TDO taunts Rand “the son of battles. I will take him [Mat!]. I will take them all, adversary. As I took the king of nothing [this is Lan, I assume]”.

10. Mat thinks about how he knows he can win this battle, despite the horrible odds. He just needs “a favorable toss of the dice”.

And, not too far away, with the Trollocs outside his hiding place, Olver gives up on the idea of trying to get the Horn to Mat, and lifts the Horn of Valere to his lips.

11. First Mat, and then everyone else, hears Rand’s voice -- he calls out Shai’tan as wrong, telling everyone that Lan isn’t dead. And just after he says that, Mat hears the familiar golden and clear note of the Horn of Valere.

...wow, the Seanchan feel so superfluous to requirements right now. They didn’t show up until after the final combat was engaged, after Rand had his final necessary epiphany, after the Horn was blown (they have still not shown up, technically).

I’m going to take a moment to daydream about a world where Tuon’s nature as marath’damane was revealed and accepted, so she really did flee with the Seanchan (so that she can try to recover from this blow to her powerbase) and the Seanchan never returned to the Last Battle. This would be a much easier way to de-tangle Mat from the Seanchan than whatever he’s gonna need to actually do post-canon.

12. The Heroes of the Horn return and our first sight of them is Birgitte coming to save Elayne from Mellar, with a shining silver arrow. 😍

Birgitte standing over her own corpse kinda cracks me up. Good for her! It’s also probably the first time she’s felt like herself in books and books.

“That was the bloody Horn of Valere!” Mat announces to his troops. “We can still win this night!” Inside, he marvels over how the Horn was sounded without him, showing that one of the things that he’d believed that he was permanently tied to isn’t tied to him after all.

Well, if that knot can be untied, Mat, maybe another one can be as well.

13. Between losing Demandred and the appearance of the Heroes of the Horn, the Shadow are now the ones who are on the defensive, with some Trollocs breaking and trying to run away.

The mist of the Heroes forms near Mat and he feels a moment of worry, wondering if maybe someone on the side of the Shadow summoned them. Hawkwing rides up to Mat, and tells him, “Do take better care of what has been allotted you. Almost, I worried we would not be summoned for this fight.”

I know, right? The lack of urgency in the Mat-in-Ebou-Dar half of the book about actually getting him to Merrilor to blow the Horn was really frustrating to me too!

When Mat confirms that this mean they’re fighting for the Light, Hawkwing tells him, “We would never fight for the Shadow.” The rumors about the Horn are wrong -- I feel like we learned this back in TGH as well but, you know, Mat was dying at the time, so I don’t blame him for not remembering.

Yeah, here’s the line: “We have come to the Horn, but we must follow the banner. And the Dragon.” So it was Rand, Perrin, and Mat who learned that. But, like I said, I don’t blame Mat for not remembering.

14. Hawkwing and Amaresu both scold Mat for not showing Rand enough appreciation for saving his life. Honestly, so fair and legit for Mat to finally be on the other end of a scolding like that. “I have seen you murmur that you fear his madness but all the while you forget that every breath you breathe - every step you take - comes at his forbearance. Your life is a gift from the Dragon Reborn, Gambler. Twice over.”

Mat feels so scolded. As he deserves.

He’s told that they can fight here because they have Rand’s banner and because Rand is... technically sort-of kind-of leading them... from a distance.

Amazingly, Mat takes a moment out of this encounter to marvel at how pretty one of the heroes is and then Remind Himself again that he’s married. He really does have to keep Reminding Himself. One of these days, he’s not going to remember to Remind Himself until after he’s already slept with someone else. It’s been more subtle in this book than in ToM, but Mat is still constantly checking out Every Other Lady around him.

15. Olver gets dug out of his hole by Trollocs but Noal, now one of the Heroes, arrives to save him. I don’t care about Noal, and Jordan definitely didn’t do enough to build up their relationship in CoT & KoD, but I still got a little misty at the tiny orphan child feeling grateful that one of the people who ‘abandoned’ him has finally come back.

16. haha, this next chapter is called ‘wolfbrother’ so I guess that Perrin is finally gonna wake up. But first, we have Elayne!

She’s able to wriggle lose enough to make the medallion copy shift away from her skin and fall to the ground, and now she can embrace saidar again. Elayne apologizes to Birgitte but Birgitte laughs it off, “Why do you mourn, Elayne? I have it all back! My memory has returned. It is wonderful! I don’t know how you stood me these last few weeks. I moped worse than a child who’d just broken her favorite toy.” Ah, yeah, that confirms that Birgitte’s spiral into bitterness was not meant to be a reflection of Elayne but on the dark place that Birgitte was in, with her loss of memories, I think. But it’s a shame that it feels like parts of the fandom just took Birgitte’s unrelated bitterness as a reason to slam on Elayne more. My girl gets so much undeserved hate.

And Elayne and Birgitte will ride back into the battle together. Not as Aes Sedai and Warder, but as friends. 😍 😍 😍 😍 

17. Aviendha! I’ve missed you! Her timeline isn’t advancing as quickly as it has been for those further away from Shayol Ghul, so not as much as happened here in the valley. She can feel the channeling inside the Pit of Doom - “a quiet pulse”. Oh! The wolfbrother of the chapter’s title is actually Elyas, who Aviendha runs across now. The Darkhound Wild Hunt is happening, and hundreds of wolves have come to fight back against them.

Aviendha is about to go fetch channelers to help bring down the Darkhounds, when she spies Graendal a bit higher on the slope, with some Turned channelers, and Aiel guards under compulsion. Aviendha alerts her companions (Amys & Cadsuane) and then begins the fight against Graendal.

18. Elayne has a sword again. Where is she getting these swords? I’m just gonna assume it’s made out of Air or something. More useful than the sword, Elayne creates a banner with the Power, the red lion of Andor, lighting up the night.

19. [Mat] remembered, within those memories that were not his, leading forces far grander. Armies that were not fragmented, half-trained, wounded and exhausted. But Light help him, he had never been so proud.

...

This was the moment he had been seeking. It was the card upon which to bet everything he had. Ten to one odds, still, but the Sharan army, the Trollocs and the Fades had no head. No general to guide them.

...

Elayne’s death had been a lie. Her troops had been in disarray - they had lost more than a third of their soldiers - but just as they were about to be routed by the Trollocs, she rode into their midst and rallied them.

20.  Catching up with Moggy! Hi, Moghedien. I bet your Last Battle is going pretty shitty. She kicks Demandred’s abandoned corpse. Oh, his devoted Shendla just left his body there to rot? Yikes. For Moghedien, she discovers that now that so many of the Chosen have been killed off, TDO is ready to let her have a taste of that sweet sweet True Power.

She disguises herself as Demandred and heads to the Sharan forces. I have to admit, given how open Min has been about her Talents, it’s kinda astonishing that Moghedien doesn’t know about her viewings. Min will tell anyone who stands still for five seconds, plus Tuon announced her as a Doomseer and has been plumping her up for the past whatever-number of chapters.

Moghedien starts to gear up for her role as Fake Demandred...

...and then she gets a blast of cannon/dragon-fire in her face from the Band’s part of Mat’s plan.

21. Instead of the Band leaving their caves to fight; channelers are opening them up brief windows to shoot through. Aludra is placed up on a high location with a spy-glass, giving orders to the channelers for the next locations for the booms. Honestly very clever.

22. As Aviendha fights in the valley, plants grow to cover her passage.

They had come right when she had needed them to hide her approach. Happenstance? She chose to believe otherwise. She could feel [Rand], in the back of her mind. He fought, a true warrior. His battle lent her strength, and she tried to return the same.

Determination. Honor. Glory. Fight on, shade of my heart. Fight on.

😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 

23. Aviendha kills a Compelled attacker, only realizing it’s Rhuarc after she has struck the fatal blow. She kills him moments before he would have killed her, and only her shoulder gets injured.

She does her best to convince herself that she only killed a shell. That Rhuarc was already dead.

There is a burst of determination from Rand (Strength, Aviendha) and her fatigue leaves her, and she refocuses on the fight.

24. Aviendha studies Graendal and decides on her approach -- she creates a spear made out of fire and light, and some other weaves in reserve -- and charges for Graendal. See, this makes a lot more sense that Elayne randomly having a sword, because this is a weapon and Aviendha knows and has trained in most of her life. I think that Sanderson Just Likes Swords tbh.

I really love the description here because of how it brings back Aviendha’s Maiden roots as she launches her attack on Graendal. The ground explodes underneath her (her legs get pretty destroyed, it sounds like), but she’s leaping up already aimed like a spear herself, and she sinks the spear into Graendal’s side just as Graendal is using the True Power to Travel... and because they’re touching, she goes along with Graendal when she Travels.

25. Mat rides with the Heroes of the Horn. He gets them to confirm that he isn’t one of them. He can see Elayne from where he is.

Mat saw Elayne’s banner glowing above them in the sky, crafted of the One Power, and caught a glimpse of someone who looked like her riding among the soldiers, hair glowing as if lit from behind her. She seemed a bloody Hero of the Horn herself.

26. And then the great battle is over, at least here on the battlefield.

He would have to thank Tuon for returning. He did not go looking for her, though. He had a feeling she would expect him to perform his princely duties, whatever they might be.

Hmm.

27. He does feel that tugging. Rand needs him. He tries to convince himself that this was his part, out here, and whatever is going on where Rand is... that’s Rand’s business. The dice are still tumbling in his head. This part here manages to capture Mat’s double-think in a way that I didn’t feel like came across in the actual chapter when we had the Rand & Mat reunion.

After trying to talk himself out of it, Mat ends up saying that he’s a fool because “I need to go to Rand.”

As a parting note, he asks Hawkwing to go have a conversation with “their Empress” (Tuon), and hmm, interesting. Okay, I need to break this down a bit.

So, one of the things that gave Tuon the big jollies back in the negotiation chapter with Rand was Mat referring to the Seanchan forces as “our forces”, which she basically interpreted as “haha you’re mine now, no take-backs”. And here, he does not call the Seanchan empress “my” Empress. He says she’s “their” Empress. The Empress of the Seanchan, who he is not currently identifying with, it would seem. So. That’s interesting.

We don’t get to see the conversation between Hawkwing and Tuon, of course, but what would Mat assume about what Hawkwing would tell Tuon? Why would Mat send Hawkwing to talk to her? The Heroes of the Horn follow Rand, pretty explicitly. They literally just recently scolded Mat for not appreciating Rand enough. They are aware of current events in the world and of the Seanchan Empire.

Which is to say... of course, Mat is assuming that Hawkwing will try to set Tuon straight on how to be an Empress without abusing millions of people under her power. Hawkwing told him that they would never fight for the Shadow. I think it’s reasonable for Mat to assume that he would disapprove of slavery. And Hawkwing’s hatred of Aes Sedai in his lifetime was canonically influenced by Ishamael, if I recall correctly, so the idea that Ishamael’s corruption is still influencing him in his Horn-form just seems like kinda silly to me. So. That’s my stance on that. Mat has clearly stated in recent chapters that he disapproves of the damane system, in particular, and that he wants to influence Tuon to soften her stance on Aes Sedai. So we know what Mat’s motivations are in sending Hawkwing off to talk to her. And it kinda fits Mat’s pattern of trying to use other people to influence Tuon to be less awful.

28. Rand has thought about Mat often, here in the battle with TDO. He thinks of him again -- Beneath them, on the battlefield, the Trollocs had fallen, beaten by a young gambler from the Two Rivers.

29. Oh, hey, Perrin just woke up. Page 853. He went to sleep on page 670. Nice long nap. Missed... a lot of stuff.

He learns that the battle at Merrilor has been won, but the battle at Thakan’dar, outside of Shayol Ghul, rages on. He gets his exhaustion washed away by one of the Aes Sedai and goes physically back into TAR (where he left Gaul to guard the cave where Rand fights).

30. In the waking world, Thom is the one guarding that cave entrance and he ponders the various ways that the ending of the world can be turned into a song, once this is all over.

31. Mat goes to Grady and tells him that he needs to be taken to Shayol Ghul. He’s brought Rand’s banner with him. Hanging out with Grady are Olver and Noal. The dice are still tumbling in Mat’s head. As far as I can tell, they haven’t stopped since Elayne asked him if he knew what he was doing.

Mat, on thinking about Noal/Jain becoming a Hero of the Horn:

Well, you wouldn’t find Mat trading places with him. Noal might enjoy it, but Mat wouldn’t dance at another man’s command. Not for immortality itself, no he wouldn’t.

Another data point that I’m placing into the pile.

Grady says that Traveling is wonky in that direction. Can’t be done.

Mat won’t accept that as an answer, and he gets Grady to take him (and Olver) as close as they can get -- a Seanchan scouting camp, a day away.

32. lol, we get a tiny glimpse into Fain the mist god-demon here. This just feels so anti-climatic, to still have Fain around at a time like this. Anyway, he’s basically a walking Shadar Logoth at this point. Fain kinda suffers from the same issues as Slayer, in that it feels like he’s a villain that the story grew past and yet he hung around anyway.

33. Gaul has been standing alone against Slayer all this time in TAR, fighting against him and protecting Rand, on his own, while Perrin was taking his restorative nap. But now Perrin is back to help. On the plus side, because of the time dilation stuff, only two hours has passed for Gaul in here.

34. Since he couldn’t take a gateway to Shayol Ghul, Mat is going by dragon to’raken. And, yes, Mat takes time out of his terror at being up so high to notice how pretty the morat’to’raken is, even as he thinks that anyone willing to do this must be “completely insane”. Olver, who is riding with them, is having a great time, though.

From up high, Mat sees a mist covering the valley below and gets a tingling that tells him... it’s about Fain and the dagger.

35. Then their to’raken gets hit by arrows, killing the rider or knocking her out. Mat undoes his straps and climbs over to take the to’raken’s reins. So he’s... he’s riding the closest thing that this world has to a dragon. Subtext, fun for the whole family.

He does his best to give them a gentle landing. It is not terribly gentle.

36. In the aftermath of the crash, Mat thinks that kidnapping Tuon (aka marrying her) is the worst decision that he’s ever made. Hmm. And this is after she ‘returned’ to the battlefield per their plan.

“That,” [Mat] finally groaned, “is the worst bloody idea I’ve ever had.” He hesitated. “Maybe the second worst.” He had decided to kidnap Tuon, after all.

And he doesn’t undercut that thought with any kind of caveat. He just lets it stand as he moves on to the next thing. Another interesting data point.

37. Mat literally panics when he realizes that Rand’s banner has gone missing during their dragon to’raken flight. Why does it seem like Sanderson is so much better at writing Cauthor-related scenes when Mat and Rand are separated from each other?

Olver points out that the swirling clouds above them are forming Rand’s sign, and then he blows the Horn again, for good measure.

38. Rand breaks out of his frozen battle with TDO and re-enters his own body. “From his watching of the Pattern, he knew that although only minutes had passed here since he’d entered, in the valley outside this cavern, days had passed, and farther out into the world, it had been much longer.”

He points Callandor at Moridin, and Moridin promptly throws a knife at Alanna.

Broke back to consciousness by Nynaeve’s herbs, Alanna pulls herself together long enough to release the bond she forced on Rand before she dies.

...I kinda feel the need to point out that Moiraine has done nothing but be a battery for Rand since she entered the cave with him.

I also feel bad for Alanna, who really disappeared from the story once Min was bonded to Rand and could take over as Cadsuane’s Rand mood-ring, and now is only here so that she can die. I have extremely large beef against Alanna for forcibly bonding Rand but it feels like the story really should have used that beat even more than it did, rather than it disappearing after WH.

39. Perrin kills Slayer. Finally. And then he pulls back out of TAR and is “on the rocks in the valley of Thakan’dar”, near where the Aiel are gathered.

40. Mat leaves Olver with the Heroes and meets up with Perrin at the mouth of the cave. So, yes, Mat and Perrin get another reunion. Why does Perrin! Get all the reunions! This is what I was talking about when I said how annoyed I was that Mat thinking about Rand tugging on him wouldn’t end up with any good payoff. All we get is yet another Mat and Perrin reunion.

That Rand is literally inside that cave and yet the three ta’veren do not reunite here is honestly somewhat infuriating for me. Genuinely those two things: the Emond’s Five reunite and the ta’veren three reunite should have been at the TOP of Sanderson’s priority list! There is a lot that I have enjoyed about AMoL but there are just way too many important emotional moments that were either skipped or didn’t happen at all but should have happened.

And, fuck, letting Mat and Rand have a scene that doesn’t take place during Mat’s weird Ebou Dar adventure. That would have been nice! Once Mat decides that he’s not going to be a lapdog for the Seanchan/Tuon anymore, his storyline and his PoV get so much better and so much more enjoyable and I am just... eternal bitterness that our only Mat & Rand reunion was plopped into our most lapdoggy-Mat era.

Mat came here specifically to protect Rand and then he never sees him! That is just fucking awful. They deserved a better reunion. What was the point of having the Heroes scold Mat if we didn’t actually get to see Mat and Rand interact again after it? This is kinda a place where the epilogue is mostly at fault -- Mat just strolling off to plan a fireworks show for Tuon post-Last Battle conflicts pretty hard with him spending time with his dying best friend, tonally-speaking -- but that really just makes it all the more frustrating that the only Cauthor reunion took place when Mat was in his worst Seanchan-era.

41. Aviendha attacks Graendal with an exploding gateway; and Mat kills Fain/Mordeth/etc.

And Perrin almost takes off to go searching for Faile but manages to resist the urge: If Rand died, then he would lose Faile. And everything else.

Yes. I have tried to yell this at the fictional characters so many times: if the world dies, then so does your sweetheart! It’s nice that Perrin finally listened.

42. And for his final trick, Moridin grabs Callandor, and Moiraine and Nynaeve spring their trap, using the flaw in Callandor to take control of the ‘circle’ that Moridin has accidentally formed with them. With Moridin having pulled the True Power, Rand is now able to enter the link, and Moiraine and Nynaeve can feed him all three sets of Power: saidar, saidin, and the True Power. Light explodes from him, and from Shayol Ghul, as Rand uses the True Power to protect himself as he reaches through the Bore and grabs onto the Dark One.

43. We get a quick beat of people reacting to the light:

Elayne is on the battlefield of Merrilor, as they search for the living among the dead. She feels the ���swelling of power in Rand” and her attention focuses on him.

Thom shields his eyes as the light bursts from the entrance to the Pit of Doom.

Min appears to have managed to get away from the Seanchan for now, changing linens for the wounded, perhaps also on the Field of Merrilor.

Aviendha is drawn back from the darkness of near-death by the light and the warmth of Rand inside her, and realizes that her explosion twisted the compulsion weave so that Graendal compelled herself to worship Aviendha. Awkward!

Logain sees the light and knows that it’s what was meant by the message that Egwene sent, and he breaks the seals on the Dark One’s prison.

44. In TAR, Perrin runs across Lanfear. Together, they walk into Shayol Ghul, and we learn that she apparently compelled Perrin a little while ago? He’s able to pull out of it by reminding himself of his duty and of Faile, and he snaps her neck, killing her.

*squints at the scene*

Yeah, I mean. That’s certainly still what looks like happened? Sorry, Sanderson, I’m not seeing your hints here about Lanfear tricking Perrin and surviving.

45. Rand holds the Dark One in his hand. Or the representation of his hand. And, once again, when Rand tells TDO how pitiful he is, all I see are echoes of the Seanchan:

You would have enslaved me as you would have enslaved the others. You cannot give oblivion. Rest is not yours. Only torment.

Rand can feel himself dying, his life blood slipping away. Realizing that the world that he’d seen without the Dark One would have been the truth, he knows that he cannot kill it. So he thrusts TDO back into his prison, braids saidar and saidin together to reforge a new shield onto the Bore.

With this new form of the Power, Rand pulled together the rent that had been made here long ago by foolish men.

He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy.

It never had been.

(because it only reflected the evil that people were already capable of)

46. The black hole inside the cave expands, as Moiraine and Nynaeve run for the safety of the cave entrance.

47. And now we are at the epilogue.

Much like I did with The Last Battle chapter, I’ll take the epilogue in sections by character. Rand & co will go last, this time.

Perrin

The spirits of the dead wolves fade back into the dream. Perrin voluntarily worries about Rand? Wow, that feels kinda out of character for Perrin, who has always been way better at pushing away thoughts of Rand than Mat has been, but I guess let’s go with it. It seems to exist to tell us that Perrin no longer sees color swirls and no longer feels any tugging towards anything. “Those seemed like very bad signs.”

“Have you sent for the three?”

What a weird way to ask “do Rand’s girlfriends know that he’s dying?”

I’m going to take a minute and count up the PoV & page counts everyone gets in the epilogue.

Rand: 3 PoVs (4 pages total)

Mat: 2 PoVs (1 1/5 pages)

Perrin: 3 PoVs (6 1/5 pages)

Loial: 1 PoV (3 pages)

Moghedien: 1 PoV (1 page)

Nynaeve: 1 PoV (2 pages)

Birgitte: 1 PoV (1 page)

Tam: 1 PoV (1 page)

Min: 1 PoV (1/2 page)

Cadsuane: 1 PoV (1 page)

That’s a lot of Perrin, comparatively-speaking.

Anyway, Perrin finds Faile, happy ending, etc.

...oh, I just looked it up and Sanderson answered some questions about the epilogue (tor[dot]com/2013/01/23/brandon-sandersons-wheel-of-time-answers-from-torchat/)! He added Perrin’s and Loial’s scene(s). Ha! I knew that Loial was a Sanderson addition because he uses “Matrim” instead of Mat (that is, imo, by far the easiest ‘tell’ of a Sanderson scene -- someone using ‘Matrim’ when they normally wouldn’t). And the Perrin scenes make sense too because it really builds off of and finishes the narrative thread that was at play earlier in the book for Perrin, which was presumably all written by Sanderson.

Mat

Mat strolls away from the aftermath of having killed Padan Fain, calling the dagger “a gamble I don’t want to touch”. The dice stop rolling in Mat’s head after he decides not to pick up the dagger. Hmm. Mat avoiding becoming the new Fain for the Fourth Age?

After that, we skip to his scene with Tuon. And there are only those two scenes with Mat in the epilogue -- killing Fain and finding out that he’s been baby-trapped into the Seanchan Empire. Though Perrin confirms in his own PoV scenes that he no longer gets the swirls or the tugging, we don’t get the same kind of confirmation in Mat’s (very short) scenes.

I will say that there is more subtlety in Mat’s ending here than I had remembered -- I was extremely unhappy about his ending but this marriage is pretty troubled already in the text, and so it’s not really the book that tries to pretend this is a happy “babies ever after” ending for Mat; I feel like that’s maybe more of a vibe that I got from fans at the time, rather than from the text. There are a lot of “male power fantasy” fans who just really like that Mat ends up married to an Empress and commanding vast armies, I think, at least from what I’ve seen around the internet (and especially back when the series was originally published).

And Mat specifically forces a grin at the news that Fortuona is pregnant, so he’s not genuinely happy about it (and we got things in recent chapters like Mat thinking that kidnapping Tuon was the worst idea he’d ever had).

But, honestly, I do still hate that it happens. I hate it up one side and down the other. It sucks as an ending for Mat so much. Miserable marriage, awful wife, horrible shackles tying him to a terrible fascist empire built on slavery.

That being said... just Tuon’s rule is incredibly fragile, this marriage is also incredibly fragile (which is probably why Jordan slapped a baby in there to begin with -- otherwise, given his general misery level in many of the Seanchan-related scenes, it’s difficult to see how Mat could bring himself to stick with Tuon for long enough to do whatever plot-related things Jordan was imagining would have happened in the outriggers -- the baby is a trap for Mat, not from Tuon but from Jordan).

There are still so many things about the Seanchan that could end up being deal-breakers for Mat if he finds out about them!

(ex. Bodewhin Cauthon is never mentioned in the books after Knife of Dreams, so it is entirely possible that she is among the new damane who were taken by the Seanchan in recent days, and Mat might end up seeing his sister with a collar around her neck post-canon. How would he react to that? And to Tuon’s unwillingness to let her go?)

In addition to Mat potentially seeing people he knows and cares about in collars, we also have the possibility of him learning just how brutal Tuon’s attack against the White Tower was (there isn’t any indication that he knows about the attack at all yet); or Talmanes telling him about Verin’s letter and Mat realizing how damaging his fear of Aes Sedai has been for the world; or further in the future there’s Mat’s potential reaction to the lethal political wrangling that Imperial heirs are meant to get up to (he was disturbed enough that Galgan liking him only means that subpar assassins will be sent against him -- when he realizes that Tuon might well encourage their own kids to kill each other to win her favor, it’s very hard to see him brushing that off). Plus he’s regained his sense of disgust over the damane system. So there are a lot of powderkegs waiting to be blown sky-high for Mat, post-canon.

idk, Mat’s storyline is maybe the one where I most have to untangle whether I dislike it more because I feel like it was executed poorly or if I dislike it because it sets up a situation that will never get resolution. And how connected are those things?

A big frustration that I’ve had with how Jordan and then Sanderson handled Mat’s storyline over the course of the last few books of the series was how many shortcuts were taken with his character and how artificial forcing him into the Seanchans’ arms has felt to me.

a. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar and then all the characters involved taking a vow of silence when it came to telling Rand about it. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar is plot nonsense: relatively forgivable. But having multiple characters being given the opportunity to change that situation and just... not bothering to do it is... that’s a characterization issue. It severely impacted my feelings about Nynaeve for Jordan to turn her into the kind of person who just doesn’t bother to tell Rand that his best friend was left behind in that kind of perilous situation. Plot manipulations... that’s just how the plot works. But over and over, characters got broken or bent for the purpose of jamming Mat into the Seanchan storyline.

b. Setalle Anan is a minor character, so I get why people don’t care about her, but she’s a character who pretty much completely reverses her characterization between WH & CoT (in WH, she is anti-slavery and finds Mat charming and trustworthy; in CoT & KoD, she protects and waits on Tuon while treating Mat like the dangerous one, including betraying Mat’s secrets to Tuon -- and her betrayals are never acknowledged by the text in any way; she just keeps on being treated as if she’s a friendly supporting character) and, from what I could see, it’s just so obviously done in order to protect Tuon from ever having even a sliver of character growth rather than it making sense for Setalle Anan’s character.

c. We keep tiptoeing up to the brink of Actually Having A Plot Happen with the Seanchan and then backing away at the last minute without really having a good reason to do it. Incredibly frustrating. This was one of my main annoyances with CoT & KoD. And in AMoL, both Rand and Egwene inexplicably back down when they have Tuon on the ropes and off-balance.

d. Mat’s teleportation to Ebou Dar in-between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. I’ve talked about this one a lot but yeah. It’s just... really bad? I do suspect that Sanderson couldn’t figure out any way to actually make it believable that Mat would go to the Seanchan and that’s why he had it all happen off-the-page. But the careless damage that it does to Mat’s characterization is just horrific. Mat gets ripped out of the action of the first third of the book, and doesn’t get to the Last Battle itself until the book is more than half over. Once Mat is actually engaging in the Last Battle, his characterization steadies a lot but especially those first four chapters with Mat, it feels like we’re only working with half of his characterization and the other half has vanished somewhere in-between ToM & AMoL.

(and if Mat hadn’t been cut-and-pasted from the Tower of Ghenjei over to Ebou Dar, then we would have had a full reunion at Merrilor. So I’m annoyed/bitter about that too)

I could keep going but... let’s keep it at four issues for right now so that we’re not here all day, lol.

All of those issues are problems that I had with the execution of the storyline.

I am not inherently opposed to depressing endings for characters that I love but... it has to be done well. It has to make sense. And Mat’s ending just... required cutting away too many parts of him (and other characters) for it to make sense to me.

But though it is not always handled well (to put it mildly), Mat’s storyline with Tuon (and Tylin before her) is an example of the ‘typical gender roles are swapped’ done in a way that is more down to the very core of his storyline than a lot of other storylines, which are more on the surface.

He’s much less politically powerful than his spouse and needs to use guile, intrigue, and manipulation to get his way and try to persuade her to a gentler and kinder path than her warlike nature naturally aligns towards.

He undergoes something of a gender-swapped version of “The Taming of the Shrew” storyline, in which a fiercely independent person gets coerced/’tamed’ into being a properly submissive spouse (or, depending on your interpretation, into pretending to be one) -- many of the tricks that Tuon and Tylin use are similar to what Petruchio does to Katherine in the play. Mat gets publicly humiliated and starved by Tylin into submitting to her (which is what Petruchio does to Katherine during/after their wedding), and isolated away from his past connections during his time with Tuon, where he constantly has to act to try to figure out how to appease her without provoking her temper (Petruchio compares taming Katherine to falcon-taming, but Tuon would probably compare it to horse-training or damane-breaking), and Petruchio changes her name from ‘Katherine’ to ‘Kate’, which fits pretty well with Tuon’s insistence on never once calling Mat ‘Mat’.

Plus Mat getting his name changed to indicate that he now ‘belongs’ to Tuon’s people fits into this general category --  and historically, in the culture that Jordan belonged to, that’s normally a role given to women, to be given a new name that shows that they are now of their husband’s people and not their father’s; it’s usually their last name but, in the not too-distant past (and maybe currently in some places as well, idk), at least in the USA, women were often referred to as Mrs. “husband’s first name” “husband’s last name” with none of their own name making it into the address.

But a lot of the issues that I have with how this was written is that it felt like Mat was behaving like his hand was forced even when it wasn’t. Which is definitely a writing issue -- it’s a similar issue to the one that I have with the Rand & Min romance, for example, where Min desperately chases after something even though she doesn’t really want it at the start. Prophecy gets used as a way to skip actually writing important character or relationship beats, instead of prophecy being one of many tools in the writer’s kit.

So, yeah, it really is the execution of the storyline that is the biggest problem for me with Mat & Tuon, and the way it feels like he is pulled away from his other attachments whether or not that makes any narrative or character sense.

I really hope that the show does better with them, and with Mat in his endgame (should we get there, etc.).

I will say that I do think that Sanderson handled the romance better than Jordan did; the main problem was that it was already fundamentally broken by how the relationship was written in CoT & KoD, imo (the KoD collaring chapter in particular made me despise them as a pairing and my feelings never recovered from that moment). But in Sanderson’s books, we actually see the effects of Tuon compromising with Mat during various points of the Last Battle (though we see don’t actually see their private discussions and/or arguments that lead to those compromises), and there’s always a throughline showing how miserable the Seanchan lifestyle is for Mat, and those are two things that were majorly missing from CoT & KoD for me, but that make sense as the only way to make the romance even half-believable for Mat’s pre-established characterization from WH and earlier.

The three big issues that I have with Sanderson’s Mat are: the terrible first chapter of TGS (with the gross sexism); the terrible first chapter of AMoL (now featuring inexplicable teleportation); and the deep deep disservice done to Mat and Rand’s friendship (Rand got a personal goodbye with EVERYONE important to him EXCEPT Mat! And Mat got a personal reunion with everyone important to him, except Rand! All they got was the negotiation scene that was ultimately all about Fortuona and the Seanchan treaty, with Mat and Rand’s friendship being the set dressing around the scene).

But the relationship with Tuon honestly... makes a lot more sense in this book than it did in CoT & KoD (once we work past the brain-breaking logistics of the first chapter or so). There are TONS of hints that Mat has uncomfortable vibes going on underneath his casual exterior, plus Tuon actually does make some attempts at compromising with him, and if the well hadn’t been poisoned by how much I despised CoT/KoD-era Mat & Tuon then... I might have had a chance at enjoying AMoL-era Mat & Tuon for the toxic trainwreck that it is.

But, like all the characters & relationships in AMoL, we skip some pretty big moments in the Mat & Tuon relationship -- we see the effects of them compromising but we never actually see them coming to that compromise in private, which I feel like we needed after how unyielding and frankly how annoying Jordan made Tuon about everything.

We do end up with a Mat & a ‘Fortuona’ who remain at cross-purposes -- Mat continues to think of and refer to her as ‘Tuon’ while Fortuona has kinda reversed from thinking of him as a ‘buffoon’ to instead believing that he has the same kind of practical motivations behind his choices that she does, which is also not accurate. But Sanderson did add in some actual give-and-take to their relationship, which Jordan never seemed willing to do, so the AMoL-era Mat & Tuon is a lot more genuinely engaging for me, even if I do still think that they are one of the most obviously doomed fictional marriages that I have ever seen.

Final Mat-related question for the moment: the Seanchan Empire is based on authoritarian governments throughout history, so does how the Seanchan Empire operates mimic the behavior of a cult?

The popular model for cults is the BITE model, which was developed by a man who was deprogrammed from the Moon cult in 1976 (Steve Hassan). It’s an acronym:

Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion control. BITE.

Do the Seanchan seek to control people’s behavior? (yes) Do they seek to control the flow of information that the people under them learn? (yes) Do they seek to have their members reject critical thought and only apply to the group-think? (yes)  Do they manipulate the emotions of their followers, usually instilling fear or paranoia about outsiders? (yes)

We know from earlier books that the Seanchan culture =/= the Seanchan Empire. There are constant civil wars and uprisings in their native land. This is explicitly why they are such good soldiers, because they are always fighting each other. Yet they present themselves as a monolith when they come to the Westlands, bragging about how they’re here to bring ‘order’ to a lawless continent. What they say about themselves does not match the truth of what else we know about them.

How does the Seanchan Empire exercise its control over its people? Everything I included here is something I think we’ve see the Empire do, but I did bold ones that are particularly blatant in the text.

Behavior control: Control types of clothing and hairstyles; permission required for major decisions; rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors both positive and negative; discourage individualism; encourage group-think; impose rigid rules and regulations; punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding; threaten harm to family and friends; encourage and engage in corporal punishment; instill dependency and obedience; kidnapping; beating; torture; murder

Information control: Distort information to make it more acceptable; systematically lie to the cult members; minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information; ensure that information is not freely accessible; control information at different levels and missions within group; allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when; encourage spying on other members; impose a buddy system to monitor and control member; report deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership; ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group; extensive use of cult-generated propaganda

Thought control: require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth; adopting the group’s ‘map of reality’ as reality; instill black and white thinking; organize people into us vs them; change person’s name and identity; use of loaded language and cliches which constrict knowledge; encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts; thought-stopping techniques to shut down reality testing: denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking; rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism; forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful

Emotion control: teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt; make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault; promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness; instill fear, such as fear of: thinking independently, the outside world, leaving or being shunned by the group; ritualistic and sometimes public confessions of sins; phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority, no happiness or fulfillment possible outside of group; shunning of those who leave; being told there is never a legitimate reason to leave.

“Destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause; it is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present.“ (in this case, that would be to the Empress, ~may she live forever~)

(all taken from freedomofmind(dot)com -- not linking because sometimes outside links make tumblr act weird about posts)

On the page, we witness the slow process of Leilwin née Egeanin pulling away and deprogramming from the Seanchan Empire, and then in this book, it feels like Mat has begun that process as well. And it feels like they started the same way -- because of a massive overreach by Tuon, the leader of the cult/Empire. Leilwin née Egeanin gets humiliated and punished by Tuon for no reason; just because Tuon felt like being a brat that day, and that moment of humiliation -- the re-naming and the forcing of the jewelry on her in a way that treated her like a slave -- was really what made Leilwin née Egeanin start to pull away from the other Seanchan and go into the path that eventually led to her being, however briefly, Egwene’s Warder.

For Mat, it really seems like whatever happened in that ‘not pleasant’ discussion that he and Tuon had after she berated him for, essentially, prioritizing Egwene’s privacy over Tuon’s desire to get information from him... that discussion (that we didn’t get to see) really seemed to lead to the more combative Mat who refused to back down and roll over for her. Mat still feels a level of protectiveness and affection for Tuon through the rest of the book but he stops letting her push him around and he starts acting like he cares about doing something about the slavery system in the Seanchan Empire again, which was a part of him that we lost at the start of CoT and I have hated so much that we lost in his character. But it slowly grows back over the course of the second half of AMoL.

Again, my big regret here is that the Mat & Rand reunion happened before Mat started his spine regrowth program. Even though Mat does start to push back on Tuon more here, he still never finished several of his character arcs that were set up over the course of the entire series: namely his own mistrust of Aes Sedai and his fear of Rand as a channeler. Both of those fears were things that he was actively working in the text and that he abruptly backtracked on when Tuon was introduced into his life (because being chill with channelers and being chill with people who enslave channelers is contradictory and so Jordan decided... to go with being chill with slavers). So those are two flapping loose ends for his character at the end of this series that never got to fully be addressed because the ‘romance’ was prioritized over Mat’s characterization.

Loial

Loial is looking for people to help him with accounts for his book and “Perrin ignored me and Mat cannot be found”.

Mat just completely disappearing from the Westlands side of things to go set up a fireworks show for Tuon (and asking Aludra to be the one to set it up, which just seems kinda mean, considering that the Seanchan pretty much completely eliminated the Illuminators) is just... frustrating. Apparently Mat visited the battlefield here “smiling and healthy” but then vanished. So, in theory, there’s an empty place here where Mat might have visited Rand and talked to Elayne & co one last time, since Rand is in the main healing tent on this battlefield.

Loial also notes how odd it is that Elayne and Min don’t seem to feel any urge to go in to hold Rand’s hand while he’s dying (Aviendha is getting her legs looked at). I know, Loial! They’re the worst fake-grievers who ever lived, I swear. If the whole point is to trick people into thinking Rand is dead, then it might be a good idea to... actually try to trick people?

Moghedien

In which Tuon’s people are already breaking the terms of the treaty by snatching up channelers from the battlefield at Merrilor. No hundred years of peace, Rand. I’m sorry.

Rand (& all those who say ‘goodbye’ to him, or who don’t)

Rand leaves the mountain, slipping on his own blood and carrying a body. Shayol Ghul is trying to close before he can leave and he only barely makes it out in time before the cave snaps shut behind him.

Moiraine tells Rand that he did well, and Nynaeve tries desperately to keep him alive, but eventually, and without ever waking back up, ‘Rand’ dies.

Elayne, Aviendha, and Min do the absolute worst job of playing grieving widows ever. Like, if Rand had actually died, I could understand this better. Because they might really be in shock. But they know he’s alive! And their whole job is to convince people that they absolutely believe that he’s dead! Just... pinch your arm until you start crying! This is literally the most suspicious way that they could have gone about things -- Nynaeve is already extremely suspicious of how they’re acting. Seriously, she’s gonna wiggle the truth out of them pretty much five seconds post-epilogue.

Birgitte comes to say goodbye to Elayne because she’s about to be reborn... and to mention that she’s tossed away the Horn of Valere. Sure hope that Elayne doesn’t regret that in ten years when they’re at war with the Seanchan!

Tam hopes that now his son can get some rest. My hope is that Rand will, you know, go and talk to his dad after he’s had a chance to recover from the stress and trauma of the Last Battle. Also, Tam... you’re gonna have grandkids. No thoughts on that, I see. Still no thoughts on that.

The funeral scene frustrates me to pieces.

Honestly, the most frustrating thing about the funeral scene is how easy it would have been to casually mention that Mat and Perrin were there? Like, that’s ONE SENTENCE. Just... the erasure of those years of friendship, because heterosexual marriage, in Jordan’s fictional world, meant that close male-male friendships just stopped existing. It’s depressing. That CADSUANE is considered to have more right to be at Rand’s funeral than his childhood friends who were also vital parts of the Last Battle. It’s insulting. And apparently Tam organized it? But he couldn’t be bothered to invite his kid’s best friends. Definitely a place where Sanderson should have done some editing of the original epilogue. One sentence is all that was needed.

*sigh*

I do think that Sanderson did try to set up why Mat wouldn’t have gone -- we have seen Mat, in several of his recent PoV scenes, swallowing his grief over losing people he loves and not letting it appear to affect him openly, even as it rocked him deeply, so Rand’s death would be another of those gut-punches that he would do his best to pretend didn’t happen. But, fuck... it just sucks that the friendship between Mat and Rand is such a sublimated thing in this last book, when Rand and Mat both got to much more openly deal with pretty much every other important relationship that they had (though I will note that Rand and Sulin never got a reunion either! Rude!).

Perrin didn’t get anything like that kind of subtextual explanation, but Perrin actually did visit Rand’s healing tent while he was dying, so at least he got that much. *shrugs*

Min thinking here about how the assembled people expect a ‘show’ of grief -- yes, they have all found it exceedingly odd that none of you appear to be grieving the man you said that you loved.

Rand wakes up in his new body, washed clean of the wounds that he’d taken over the course of the series. No more missing hand; no more agonizing pain in his side. 

I have to admit “she left me some money” feels like a pretty anti-climatic way for Alivia to “help Rand die”? She wasn’t really involved in his “death” at all -- it was really Moiraine and Nynaeve who were the ones who ‘helped’ him die. I mean, any one of Min, Elayne, or Aviendha could have left him some money, since they all know he’s alive. I wonder if Jordan was originally thinking that Alivia would be the one joining Rand & Nynaeve for the cave journey, and it was Sanderson who decided that Moiraine would be more appropriate? Nothing distinctively Moiraine happens in that cave, not the way that Nynaeve was needed to be there to heal Alanna without using the Power. Like, this poor woman was harassed by Min for a handful of books because of that prophecy and all she did was leave Rand some money! Min better find her and apologize to her! (I already know that she won’t)

Haha, so confession: my brain edited out that new!Rand had lost saidin. My brain was just like “nope, of course he can still channel”. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Rand not being a channeler at the end of the story, so that part I’m not thrilled about. He does have his newfound ability to use the threads of reality to basically channel anyway, though. Or at least I assume that’s what the pipe scene is about.

And then his thought, too, about ‘which’ of the women will follow him - yeah, you’re right that thinking that means you’ve gotten a swollen head! They all have responsibilities! Though since Rand leaves so abruptly here, there’s a lot that he doesn’t know, and the two things that most affect this specific question are: the extent of Aviendha’s injuries and the extent of Min’s involvement with the Seanchan. Literally zero of them is in a position to go chasing after Rand, even if they wanted to! Rand is the one who has no obligations and can easily visit them if he wants (well, maybe not ‘easily’ if Min does end up in the Empire).

But I can still remember, wow, what a relief it was that he was alive at the end, and free and unbound. The rest can be... adjusted by post-canon theories.

In terms of ‘things that aren’t covered but that we can probably assume’:

It does look like Elayne ended up with all three of the medallion copies -- the one Mellar used on her, the one that was on Birgitte’s body, and the third was with Lan and she probably reclaimed it (there’s nothing to indicate that Mat spoke with Lan and got it back), so the slaver empress never gets that medallion that Mat wanted to give her back in ToM. Tragic.

Despite Elayne and Tam speaking frequently over the course of AMoL, they somehow never speak about the whole grandkids issue. I feel like we can assume that this happens at some point, post-epilogue? Elayne and Aviendha both seem like they would go back to Caemlyn to rebuild. And Tam doesn’t really have a reason to go back to the Two Rivers at this point, so I can see him ending in Caemlyn too because: grandkids.

Technically, Min has slipped the Seanchan net at this point and could just not go back if she wants, so she can either go back to the Seanchan or she could go to Caemlyn with Elayne & Aviendha, but if she does stay away from the Seanchan, Tuon is going to try to get her back. Unless she was super-turned off by Min actually standing up to her in front of all the Blood and hastily makes Selucia her Truthspeaker again. That’s another possibility.

Ah, since we were told earlier that Melaine was about ready to give birth and Birgitte tells Elayne that she’s about to be reborn: Melaine might be her mom. I feel like Birgitte being reborn as Aiel sounds kinda fun.

I feel like Rand would not actually enjoy traveling all on his own after a while, given what we know about him, so he would probably end up visiting Caemlyn. And given how suspicious Nynaeve already is in the epilogue, I’m going to guess that she knows the truth by the time Rand goes to Caemlyn.

If Mat decides to leave the Seanchan behind at any point, he will probably also go to Caemlyn, and Mat and Rand can finally have a good reunion.

All in all, there are things about the ending that don’t thrill me but there are also things I really like. And having an ending at all helps in terms of sparking the imagination for fanfiction or meta or... an Amazon Prime television series. I don’t think we would have ever gotten the series if the books had stayed unfinished.

The epilogue checklist (and my theories about how it affected AMoL)

So, while reading AMoL, it felt like Sanderson took a couple of shortcuts in order to bruteforce the characters into reaching their epilogue endpoints, because there simply wasn’t enough time for it to happen naturally. This is my list of things that I believe got shortchanged due to “writing to the epilogue”:

Fortuona is pregnant in the epilogue: at the start of AMoL, Mat gets teleported to Ebou Dar without any kind of narrative or logistical explanation (contradicting his PoV chapter in the ending of ToM, where he was planning to return to Caemlyn, which would have thrust him directly into the main stories at play in the prologue & early chapters). I feel like part of it is that Sanderson really wanted to get that bun in the oven as quickly as possible.

“they expected something from the three of them; a show of some kind” : There’s just a wide acknowledgement in the epilogue that literally everyone knows that Rand has three girlfriends, so everyone just already knows in AMoL that Rand is in a relationship with three women now. No need for anyone to have emotional reactions to it, please! (not even Rand’s literal dad!) This one also ends up being weird because it seems to change from moment-to-moment whether or not the whole army knows that Rand has three girlfriends (if everyone knows already, why is Rand playing spy games with Elayne?).

Min is Fortuona’s pregnancy test: Min instantly respects ~Fortuona~ as an empress even while thinking that she doesn’t normally respect nobility. Bizarre, considering Min’s own history with the Seanchan from Falme.

Mat kills Fain: we got two super-quick glimpses of Fain earlier in the book to set up this moment but Mat had so much other stuff to do that Sanderson couldn’t really do more than say: yeah, Fain exists and he’s bad, lol.

Minor elements I think were affect by the epilogue:

Rand is still pondering over the idea of choosing between Elayne, Aviendha, or Min: we get Rand’s going “am I allowed to love three women? idk sounds fake” when he and Aviendha sleep together in chapter 4, which just was kinda silly. I think the epilogue is also the genesis of the vibe where Rand appears to consider “having sex with Min for months” to not be any kind of “choice” when it comes to the three women, but having a romantic interlude with Aviendha or Elayne would signal a choice -- because the epilogue acts like the situation between Rand and each of the three women is roughly equal, so “months of sex with Min” appears to hold the same emotional weight to Rand as “pining from afar with two nights of intense passion” does when he thinks of either Elayne or Aviendha.

Mat has no thoughts about any of the Westlands characters: I think that this is more of a subconscious effect -- as he focused more on the final book, I think Sanderson focused on the relationships highlighted in the all-important epilogue... and the only person that Mat cares about in the epilogue is himself *cough* I mean, Fortuona, of course, lol. In both TGS and in ToM, Mat’s deep affection for various Westlands characters was constantly on display, as shown in his own ‘loves lying to himself’ way. This gets curtailed in AMoL, especially in the early Ebou Dar chapters.

I think I’m going to let myself might let myself marinate over the various books before I post a final list of my personal ranking of the books.

One thing that I’ve really noticed is that, more than any other character, the quality of Mat’s storyline has a huge impact on my overall enjoyment of the book. In CoT & KoD, Elayne and Egwene (both of whom I love), got pretty good stories. But Mat’s story was so bad that it made it difficult for me to enjoy the good parts. But maybe some time just letting myself think about the series as a whole will balance out my thoughts. Does that make Mat my favorite character or just my most impactful character? idk. I feel like Elayne or Rand would more consistently hit the top of my favorites.

Overall top five characters throughout the entire series:

1. Elayne

2. Rand

3. Egwene

4. Mat (might be higher if not for CoT & KoD)

5. Nynaeve (might be higher if she didn’t basically disappear after she married Lan)

Then, moving on to the next favs, I think there’s more uncertainty there for me:

6. Verin, probably, but it could be Moiraine. Let’s say they tie.

7. Aviendha and Siuan can both go here. Both generally very good and interesting characters.

8. You know, I had a real turnaround with Gawyn in this reread of the books; I’m gonna put him here. He can share this spot with Leilwin née Egeanin.

9. Loial, probably. Needed more PoV; that would have been nice. I’ll put Faile here with him.

10.  For more minor characters, I gotta give a shout-out to Narishma (favorite Asha’man), Sulin, Pevara during her Black Ajah Hunter phase, Olver is really good in his sections here in AMoL, Asmodean for being my favorite fail-Forsaken and Moghedien for sticking it out until the very end, Elaida honestly very fun PoV as far as villains go, Teslyn and Joline for being troopers and enduring Mat Cauthon at his very worst, my girl Berelain who always deserved better, the ‘Finn in general always lots of fun, Aludra and Juilin who always kept their integrity intact.

[creamflix]

greetings pookie 🚬 😛 aka user creamflix, may this ask find u well in whatever timezone ur in. i have arrived with the following asks for the writer fic asks post from yesterday (?) 🫠 2, 4, 11, 17, 20, 22, 28, 37, 39, 46, 74

get to know your fic writer omg are we gonna makeout rn!!!....thank u for the ask daph aka curtins aka THE choso lover....

2 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?

— 1OO% write as i go, but if there are certain moments i want to include, i plan that ahead as per how i want the story to go. eg; in unscripted i deffo wanted a scene where reader and toji would read out the book during their sexy time, so i figured i'd keep that in the end.

4 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

— i have a very hyperactive imagination so i deffo use that to my imagination, otherwise song/lyrics are my bitch!!

11 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Link your three favorite fics right now

— wow.....only three 😒 anyways

do i even need to say this? deffo my bby aashi's ( @fushitoru ) spiderman!gojo fic that i will read out loud to my kids and grandkids as a bedtime story and as a prime example of love every night. if you aren't reading this....what r u doing with ur life.

recently read trish's ( @starmapz ) sukuna fic love and company and it was so cute!!! i love how she characterized him <3 that IS my man.

and also what you know is just so.....i don't know how to say this but it's written so good? it's so homely? comforting? brb crying

17 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

— i jork my it. i'm just kidding (cue that one freaky sonic gif) but i usually doze off, do something else (study 'cuz this degree isn't gonna be bagged herself!!), and also listening to music and/or walking helps a lot!

20 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

— i use italics a lot to denote feelings or just to be extra dramatic 'cuz i am mayor of sassyville duhh....hm i haven't written that many long-fics to say i have patterns in my writing but yea! i write about feelings a lot, i suppose. and also i write a LOTTT about found family. (੭˃ᴗ˂)੭

22 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

— first person pov, kinks i don't like, teacher x student fics [even if it's college ones, it's just so booooringgg], on the topic of boring, i probably would prefer not to write overused tropes unless i make it so heavily plot-twisted and dramatic that it's unrecognisable. initially, persephone was gonna be a secretary x boss story, but i changed it to what it is right now :)

28 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

— it depends on what i am writing! my drabbles ( e.g. happiness is a butterfly, my arranged marriage sukuna drabbles ) take maybe a day to work on, as it's just one idea/concept that i need to work on in short; for eg, walking together, tending to wounds etc. when it comes to my longer fics ( like how i wrote unscripted ), i usually write 500-3,000 words in a day - not in one sitting! just...throughout the day. to be honest this might seem like a wrong number 'cuz i don't really count...erm.

37 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ How do you choose where to end a chapter?

— answering this with my ao3 in mind, but i usually like to do so when there is a scene and/or perspective change :D or sometimes, i just end the chapter like....with a proper conclusion, before continuing onward with the story in the next chapter

39 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Share a snippet from a WIP

— wow are u trying to siphon work from me daph.... :evil: fine i will humour you.

i won't provide context as to who, what, when, where, why, how....but trust me, this is gonna be such a good freaky fic <3

46 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ How would you describe your style (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)

— deffo emotion driven :D and character traits shown through emotions. i love writing about feelings!!!

74 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

— if we're talking about a longer fic, probably the fact that i ramble so much about the reader [aka your!] feelings and thoughts in the scene. monologues are my fav gender, it's just a yassified rambling...

thank you for the ask mamas 😈

[lovelyladyabsinthewrites]

From the Ashes Pt. 35

Pairing(s): Pairing(s): Rhaegar Targaryen x Lannister!Reader, one-sided!Jaime Lannister x Lannister!Reader, Jaime Lannister x Cersei Lannister

Warnings: slow burn fic, changing povs, MC POV, long chapter ahead

Words: 6023

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 3.5  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 7  Part 8  Part 9  Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42

Book Two of Dārilaros hen ōrbar se perzys (Heir of Ash and Fire)

Panting and reeling away from her personal brazier, Alizah closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Her face was still warm from the gentle licks the fire gave her as she had been staring deep into its flames. She had to know of any situations that might follow them to Asshai. Especially with confronting the darkins in their own realm. Alizah had never anticipated seeing a screeching dragon in her visions. So clear, the dragon had emerged from an egg that was being held by (y/n). Soaring through the rippling orange and yellow before growing ever larger and landing next to its mistress.

Alizah pulled up a chair and mulls over what she had just seen and the true meaning behind it. If only she was able to write down what she saw like many of the other red priestesses. Alas her blind eyes would merely be able to make scribbles. The only time she ever saw clearly was looking into the heat of the things, the soul of a being. She knew it would be wise to tell High Priest Benerro, after all she was his shining star in the whole temple and was heavily relied on. That’s how the temple knew (y/n) was in Volon Therys. And it was the vision of a box being delivered by a stranger that tied into the scenes she had seen at that moment.

When Ser Barristan Selmy had arrived on the doorsteps with a dark wood box under his arm, she had seen the warmth emanating from inside. It was a sleeping warmth that she had nearly waved off for it was a faint flicker. A box from Thalina.

“Did she actually succeed?” Alizah thought out loud to just herself. Thalina’s talent in reading the flames had been growing steadily before her departure to Westeros. Helped by Alizah and Melisandre, there were high hopes for her but only a handful of people knew of Thalina’s ultimate fate. Thalina had seen her own end but had just laughed it off. She never did like being serious. The air around her was always jubilant and Thalina had always been a smiling fool. That was the impression she left on everyone in the temple.

“I’m sorry. . .” Alizah whispered behind her hand after Thalina had told her how her life would end.

Thalina merely cocked her head to one side, her long braids shifting ever so slightly. “For what?”

“That you will not live a long life. That you will die in Westeros. . .”

Her laugh had surprised Alizah and Melisandre who had also been present. There in that solemn council room sat the senior red priest members Hayri and Iomhar, as they were the ones to be in attendance when the High Priest was unable to physically be there. “Ah, I’m not too worried about that. I’m more so concerned about getting all of my tasks done before that happens. If I can accomplish all that I have set forth in front of me, then I can die happily.”

“You shouldn’t be so callous when talking about your own death.” Iomhar growled but it didn’t dampen her smile. “The temple has so few people who can read the flames as well as you three can. To lose one would be a setback.”

Hayri, although perturbed by the revelations, shakes his head at his younger companion. “Settle down, Iomhar. Thalina is thinking about the bigger picture. We won’t need any more readers if she procures Azor Ahai reborn.”

Thalina beamed and nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! If I’m able to get her here. . . Then I would have done my job. But there is also one more thing I aim to do.”

“And what is that?”

“Why, bring back dragons of course!”

Bring back dragons. . .

It was too crazy a thought, that’s what everyone was thinking at the time. Melisandre was the only one who didn’t think it quite as crazy. She had said it was exactly what Azor Ahai reborn would need to truly make a stand. Alizah had never thought that Thalina would actually succeed in procuring a dragon egg.

“You were always a crazy girl.” Her voice was sad as she thought back on the girl who was the same age as her yet already gone from this plain of existence. Everything Thalina did, she did fearlessly. An admirable quality. “Guess I’ll have to be the same. You have left her in my care. I will see to it that your visions come true, Thalina.”

Also important in the back of her mind was making sure that Rhiannon would be guided in the right path. That didn’t appear to be a problem. Rhiannon had immediately attached herself to (y/n) and (y/n) to her

They filled the empty spot in which Thalina’s death had left them.

A festive atmosphere had claimed Volantis, especially around the Red Temple; the hub of the ceremony. None of the jovial air reached you though. Thinking of being in front of so many people still made you nervous. All eyes would be on you. You hadn’t felt such trepidation since your wedding. There would be more people at your ceremony and certain expectations had already been set for you. You wouldn’t become Princess (y/n) Targaryen, no, you would be crowned as Azor Ahai reborn; the champion of R’hllor and the ender of the long night.

Your ceremonial headdress solemnly sat on its pillow. Tyrion had playfully tried it on and nearly toppled over, not used to such an accessory. While the robes had once belonged to Azor Ahai, the headdress was completely new, made specifically for you and this occasion. Inanna and another young temple girl named Farah were helping you get dressed, slipping your arm through the gilded sleeves. They chatted excitedly as they did so, apparently the temple was making this a very big deal. After all, their savior had finally been reincarnated and walking on the earth among them. The people of Volantis were already crowding near the bridge to get a sneak peek of the set up. Servants were setting up a pyre right outside the doors of the temple. A special feast was being prepared as well.

While Rhiannon positioned a gold armor breastplate in front of your chest, you examine your painted hands which Siofra had done for you. The dye was a dark brown and in intricate designs. You were worried about smudging it but tall Siofra merely laughed and told you it would not be an issue. The only thing that would wash away the ink would be hot water and soap.

Personally you didn’t think that it was an appropriate time to have your ceremony, but High Priest Benerro along with his council of priests insisted the people of Volantis see the face of Azor Ahai reborn before you left for Asshai.And most importantly to witness Lightbringer with their own eyes. You were nervous, what if you weren’t able to conjure up the flames when the time came? You had still been unable to call upon it freely, not since your fight with Inniros. Without its holy flames, Lightbringer was just like any other sword.

Farah helps Rhiannon by tightening the armor’s straps behind you. When her warm eyes flick up to your face, Rhiannon frowns. “Are you okay? You don’t look too well.”

Inanna pops up, having been helping Tyrion with his own outfit. Even Tyrion looks up with concern. “Perhaps I should get nuha kosh something to eat?”

Tyrion shakes his head. “Get her some tea. You don’t want her to develop an upset stomach and throw up during her ceremony.”

She smiles sweetly, making Tyrion’s cheeks turn a vibrant pink. “Ah, that’s a better idea! Good thinking Lord Tyrion.”

In the corner of your room, lounging at your round table was Jaime and Inniros being briefed on their roles by Alizah and Melisandre. Behind Inniros was Sirvart leaning against the wall but with a cautious eye on the darkin, her whip at the ready. The red priest Kafele, a man in his middle age, was in attendance as well to decorate Jaime’s own hands with the same dye Siofra had used on you. Initially he had grimaced when the older man had walked up to him with it and outright refusing. Tyrion told him to suck it up and to add salt to his wound had Kafele paint his own hands. Jaime, not being one to be outshined, relented.

Inanna goes to the packed table and pours you a cup of tea that would calm you. Carefully you take it from her small dark hands and thank her. A chair is also brought over to you so you could sit down and relax for a moment. Rhiannon helped you sit, holding your robes in such a way where they wouldn’t get stuck under you. “I’m fine. I’m just worried about using Lightbringer in front of all those people. I haven’t been able to summon the flames.”

“When the time is right, you will.” Melisandre says, although it didn’t necessarily make you feel any better. All you could do was blindly trust in her cryptic words.

“Maybe you just need to stab Inniros’ shadow again.” Jaime grins and teasingly looks at the bored darkin.

Inniros doesn’t blink an eye at Jaime’s remark, merely shrugging. “You can try.”

You shake your head. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Rhiannon hums thoughtfully, sitting at your feet and resting her head against your knees. “What emotions were you feeling when you first summoned Lightbringer’s flames?”

Thinking back to that day, you grow silent and close your eyes. You attempted to put yourself back there in your mind. You remember seeing Jaime, held down by Inniros’ shadow and about to be killed. Rage had filled you. Unadulterated rage ran through your veins and the urge to protect your older brother. Such an intense feeling was something you had never felt. Sorrow was nothing new to you. Even growing up with your cruel sister and distant father, you hadn’t felt resentment, only sadness that they didn’t love you or even care for you. Rage and anger was something entirely new to you.

You look at Jaime who wasn’t particularly paying attention until the red priest puts down his brush and turns around in his seat to face you. Kafele had the starting of wrinkles around his dark eyes and a peppered beard that covered his lower face. The top of his head was bald and shining. “Maybe you should call upon whatever you were feeling during that experience.”

“I’m not particularly angry about anything though. . .” You whisper against the rim of your cup.

“You have plenty to be angry about though!” chirps your little brother as he climbs atop of your bed, his red robes drag behind him. “Just think about all the things Cersei and father have done to you! And King Aerys!”

“I’m guessing you’re not used to feeling such a toxic feeling.” Alizah gently smiles.

“Obviously. Don’t you remember how she looked the first time we met her?” Sirvart speaks up from her place. “She didn’t even look like she could harm a fly. So sweet and wide eyed. Like a rabbit.”

Thinking for a moment, Jaime leans in his chair. “Well Cersei did use to call you a mouse.”

Clapping her hands, Sirvart nods. “That sounds more accurate!”

Blushing at their description of you, you still doubted that you could come up with such an intense rush again. It had nearly consumed you and. . . and something seemed to wake up inside of you. A feral beast that had been sleeping for so long. Just thinking about it made your heart pick up pace.

Rhiannon’s upside down face calms you back down and forces you to put on a wavering smile.

“It’s not the end of everything if you can’t do it yet.” Alizah’s words do happen to give you peace of mind. You trusted her word. “Of course Benerro will want you to show off, an actual testament that you are indeed Azor Ahai reborn. You’re still getting used to fighting with it. The two of you need to know eachother better. You and Lightbringer. It may be a sword, but it’s an extension of yourself and of the power of R’hllor.”

You had never really thought about it like that. If only you knew more about the actual Azor Ahai and how he had done all the things that was expected of him. True, the temple put you through lessons on their faith and history, never on a personal level. You had learned hymns and the many trials that Azor Ahai went through to forge Lightbringer. Definitely nothing you had to do. He had labored thirty days and thirty nights to forge the sword. Even then it broke had he had to repeat his actions again. And then again. Someone made your Lightbringer. Maybe it was because you didn’t put in your blood, sweat and tears into the steel? There was no personal connection.

Finishing up your tea, Rhiannon stood and took it from your waiting hand. She lingers before whispering for just your ears to hear “Don’t worry. Thalina had faith in you. Have faith in Thalina too.”

The first true smile you felt in the entire day warmed you from the inside. You couldn’t worry about it. Worrying now would do nothing for you in the long run. When the moment came, well, then you would deal with it. Thalina had gotten you this far and she hadn’t been wrong yet.

You nod and catch Jaime’s gaze. Hardly ever having his emotions on his sleeves, you saw evident worry in the depths of his eyes. The two of you had gone through so much. You had spent more time with him in Essos than you ever had growing up in Casterly Rock. Growing to know each other like the back of your hands you knew Jaime was concerned with all this fanfare and the pressure it was putting on you. He kept his thoughts to himself and merely pressed his lips together, returning his attention to the artful details being painted onto his hands and running up to his elbow. The dye was meant for warriors afterall. Sirvart was displaying her own designs as her arms were folded, obediently observing the darkin.

Going back to preparing the boys, Melisandre finishes with her words directed to Inniros. “I know you boys will be on your best behavior today. It will be the most important day of your lives. The world will know that (y/n) is Azor Ahai reborn.”

For the first time, Inniros showed interest. “The whole world?”

Melisandre nods, narrowing her eyes at him in suspicion. “Of course.”

“Even all the way to Westeros?”

Rhiannon caught on fast and a new sense of dread made her clutch her skirts. “The king will know she’s alive then. And. . . your sister will know where you are.”

Had she told you that a few months ago, most likely you would have been stricken with the same fear. You felt nothing though. If all of Westeros knew you were alive, Rhaegar would know too. Hope sprung up immediately and you couldn’t stop your smile from widening. “I’m not scared of Cersei. Or of Aerys.”

Melisandre smiled at you with great pride and even Sirvart smirked. The female Fiery Hand chuckles. “You certainly have grown since your days stumbling in Volon Therys.”

On your night stand was the box which the ancient dragon egg had been hiding. You get up from your seat and wander over to it, making sure your back concealed what you were looking at. But Tyrion knew as he craned his neck slightly on your bed. With the hope bubbling in you, touching the rough scales of the egg seemed to amplify that light feeling that tickled your chest. Rhaegar will know you’re alive. Hopefully once he knew maybe he would come for you once the war was over. Better yet, you hoped he would wait for your eventual return. You would always return to him. Now it felt like a closer reality.

Gentle footsteps fall behind you and in one fluid motion, you hide your opal and turn around. Alizah is standing in front of you, that permanent gentle smile. “Nuha kosh, may I have a private word with you in the antechamber?”

“Of course.” Picking up the skirts of your robes as not to get the hem dirty, you walk over to her.

“You as well, Rhiannon.” She addresses Rhiannon who had been polishing your ceremonial headwear. Slightly confused as to her summons, Rhiannon steadily joins you over to the door that leads to the antechamber. The walls are curved making the room a circular shape with a royal blue rug on the floor. A stout, round coffee table was in the center, surrounded by dark orange cushions. Other multi-colored pillows were present for added comfort.

Rhiannon made herself comfortable, laying on her side across the cushions. Honestly it was unladylike since she was in a dress, but that’s what you liked about Rhiannon. She was so comfortable with herself.

Without any assistance, Alizah sits down on the plush ground and looks up at you. Her smile widens at your expression. “Don’t look so worried. I was merely wanting to discuss the matter of that box that was so kindly delivered by Barristan Selmy.”

You had been waiting for one of the Red Temple clergy to ask you about it and you knew it lay heavy on their minds. If it was from Thalina that meant it was something of great importance. The question was on their tongues but they were willing to wait until you were ready to tell them.

Nodding, you decide that you trust Alizah enough to tell her the truth about what Thalina had sent you and the darkin confirming it’s true nature.

None of what you told her seemed to surprise the red priestess one bit. “And Rhiannon, you were the one who solved the puzzle to break open the box. How clever of your older sister. She planned out everything thus far and the events have been executed precisely. (y/n), Rhiannon, Thalina had another goal besides bringing the two of you together. Something else she had foreseen in the flames and that was bringing back dragons.”

That made Rhiannon sit up, her brows scrunched. “Bring back dragons? Thalina saw that actually happening?”

She nods and glances at you. “(y/n) is the key to everything. That is why I’m not too concerned if you can’t summon the fire of Lightbringer. Because during the ceremony you will take that egg and hatch it in front of all to see.”

You gawked at her before laughing nervously. When Alizah didn’t say she was kidding, you stopped and became anxious once more. “I think it would be more simple to try and get Lightbringer’s flames to surface. But, dragons Alizah. . . Dragons haven’t been seen for a century. Even Aerys couldn’t resurrect the last surviving dragon eggs. And now you truly expect me to do the impossible.”

“Thalina didn’t think it too impossible.” Alizah replies but pats the spot next to her for you to sit. “Relax. I have a plan set up. I’ve seen in my own visions a great pyre in which you sit in the center with your dragon egg.”

“She’ll burn!” Rhiannon exclaimed, looking panicked at the mere thought.

You were about to agree with her but then a faint memory arises; you laying down on the cushioned grass, still smelling of smoke while Jaime told you of the events that had previously taken place. You were still weak and slightly ill but you could never forget Jaime telling you how despite your room being up in flames, they didn’t touch you. Even as the fire consumed your bed and the corpse of Thalina. You had remained in one piece with no burn marks.

Alizah seemed to read your thoughts with her vacant, dark eyes. “Fire will not harm you. Not R’hllor’s champion.”

Rhiannon didn’t like it though, her fingers curling into her palm as she rocked on her heels. “We can’t risk it. . . If fire does harm her-”

“That’s the thing about faith. Sometimes you have to squash down your worries and blindly hope that things will work out. When you have a higher power to trust in, anything may be possible.”

“Sure, blindly believe. But what if your theory proves to be wrong? I’m not-” You noticed Rhiannon’s eyes begin to shine with the threat of tears that she tried to brusquely wipe away. “-I’m not losing another sister.”

Ever so slowly your own vision became hazy as your own tears became obstructive. Not even Cersei had claimed you with such pride and worry as her sister. Yet here Rhiannon was, calling you her sister. A lump developed in your throat as you try not to cry. They wouldn’t obey you and tears soon trickled down your cheek. It was too sweet and too heartbreaking.

“You told me to believe in Thalina, Rhiannon.” You took a deep breath and dabbed at your eyes with the sleeve of your robes. “To have faith in her. I’m scared too, but Thalina has yet to be wrong. If she saw that I was the one to bring back dragons, then I must be. Right? And If Alizah sees me not succumbing to the fire, then all I can do is try and live up to her vision.”

Pursed lips, Rhiannon’s shoulder trembled a little bit as her mind spiraled with all of the negative outcomes that could happen.

“In order to even hope to have the courage to go through with this, I need you by my side.” If Rhiannon wasn’t there with you to transfer her endless supply of bravery, you knew you would crumble on the spot.

“You shouldn’t let your fear show, Viserys is like an animal. He can smell fear.” Thalina had told you one day after he had threatened you. You had witnessed first hand the cruelty of Viserys after he had taken a blade and cut off Thalina’s beautiful braids. That incident had made you steer clear of the young Targaryen prince. He had the same malicious tendencies as Cersei.

“But he scares me.” You whimpered.

Thalina laughs. “That little squid? Trust me, he is nothing to fear. He’s just a bully. You just have to show him that you aren’t going to put up with his attitude.”

“I can’t do that. He’s a prince of the Seven Kingdoms. If I do something to displease him, he’ll tell the king.”

Moving a piece of your dirty blonde hair behind your ear, Thalina hums. “But you are Rhaegar’s future bride. One day you will be queen. That trumps being a prince. Viserys will be second in line for the throne until you produce an heir. Then he will be obsolete.”

When Viserys had cut off her hair, Thalina was livid and had grabbed the prince to promptly spank him on his rear. The horror you felt watching it. You had been sure that there would be terrible repercussions from her actions. You had tried to get Thalina to run away, worried that there would be guards showing up at any moment to execute her. But there was none. Only the matronly septa who turned her head, pretending not to see anything. Viserys had run howling to Queen Rhaella but received another reprimand from his mother.

You always wished you could be fearless like Thalina. Being next to her, you could feel her courage seep into you for as long as Thalina was by your side. When she was around you weren’t afraid of Viserys but Viserys was afraid of Thalina.

“I no longer have Thalina in my life. I need you Rhiannon.”

Gulping down her emotions, Rhiannon wipes her face. She was trying her best to put on a tough facade. Helplessly she looks at you with red rimmed eyes and determination.

“Then it shall be done, mandia(sister).”

A weight was lifted off of you. Now you could confidently ask Alizah “What do you need me to do?”

“Promise me one thing.” Jaime had one hand on the handle of the temple’s front door. A giant of a structure that led out to the crowd you could hear waiting with anticipation to see you.

Rhiannon on your left and Tyrion accompanying you on your right, you glance at your older brother.He didn’t look straight at you, choosing to keep his gaze focused forward.

Your entourage that trailed behind you stood silently.

Your left hand held your large opal while the other kept a steady grip on Lightbringer’s pommel. “What’s that?”

“Please don’t burn to a crisp.”

“Jaime!” Rhiannon remarks in a sharp tone before shaking her head with exasperation.

Actually you quite appreciated Jaime’s lighthearted attempt at diffusing your nerves that were already at a debilitating amount. “Hah, yeah, I’ll try.”

“You know what I mean.” He takes a deep breath.

“Do you not think I can do it?”

“Absolutely not.” Finally turning in him, you take all of Jaime in. The scar under his dancing green eyes. His long braid he had incorporated into his hair, casually resting on his shoulder. He wore armor over his ceremonial garb with vambraces that shimmered gold. Rubies and topaz decorated the rimmed arc “I would be a fool if I thought you couldn’t do this. I witnessed the most impossible things. Well, nothing seems impossible when you’re concerned. I know you can do this. Just. . . I’m still going to worry about you and feel like this could go terribly. And Tyrion, you look completely calm.”

“I believe in her too.” Tyrion smiles up at you, his long, curly hair framing his large forehead.

A knock from the outside was your signal to begin your descent to the circular plateau that led out to the plaza market of Volantis.

“The priests are ready for you, nuha kosh.” Melisandre instructed you, her hands folded in front of her and head held high.

Show time.

The booming voice of High Priest Benerro penetrated the door, a stream of words in Valyrian that were deaf on your ears as you tried to keep your composure. Heavily concentrated on your breathing, you stare as the doors slowly open; the other had been pulled open by Iyan. Bright, blinding sunlight makes your eyes squint up. You held the egg closer to your side, mentally trying to reach out to the warmth inside. That soothing closeness that reassured you.

Hanging tapestries that blew in the partial breeze portrayed the Red Temple’s burning heart against scarlet fabric. In the vestibule, the bridge was blocked off by Fiery Hands that held their weapons at the ready. People nearly spilled over them but you knew it would take a lot more to get past your guards. They clamoured on tip toes to try and be the one to catch the first glimpse of Azor Ahai.

The heat from the pyre in the center could be felt from miles away. There was no way you could get past the loud pounding of your heart in your ears to listen to the High Priest’s introduction. At a slow pace, you step forward until the sunlight fully reveals you for all to see. Vibrations from their cries of jubilation shook you to your core and you nearly lost the will to move forward had Rhiannon not given you an encouraging nudge.

Go on (y/n). You can do this. Even if every inch of me is trembling. . .

Summoning strength from your tightly clutched dragon egg you stiffly continue your walk until you are right next to Benerro. He had his arms out, welcoming the world to you.

“Chin up, (y/n).” Joanna smiled patiently, her index finger coaxing your chin up so that your eyes met hers. “There we go. That’s much better. Let everyone see your face.”

Remembering her words, you hesitantly raise your gaze up, your crown pulling you up. His tattooed face breaks out in a smile despite his mouth appearing to actually lack lips, the sun beating down on his bald head. Under the light of day, his pale face almost looked skeletal. You always thought he was a little ominous looking, but he had always been good to you so brushed off his horrendous appearance.

“Se dārilaros bona iksin kivio. Ōñosmaghare's āeksio se Rullor's kosh. Kessa mazilībagon se path va perzys se udrāzma iā azantyr naejot pryjagon se azantyr hen tolie. Rytsas se kosh qilōni kessa iōragon against sȳndror ,(y/n) Targārien. Azōr Ahaī sigligon! (The princess that was promised. Lightbringer's master and R'hllor's champion. She will set the path on fire and command an army to destroy the forces of the Others. Welcome the champion who will stand against darkness ,(y/n) Targaryen. Azor Ahai reborn!)” His thin and feeble stature betrayed his loud booming voice that reached even those who were looking out their balconies and windows. The city streets were completely covered in civilians. Not even when you married Rhaegar at the sept had there been so many people. They moved like a wave vibrating with energy enough to overwhelm you. You stood tall though and took a deep breath.

You knew Benerro wanted you to say a speech. Actions were louder than words though and you passed by him, down the small flight of stairs, Rhiannon falling beside you easily without a word. The red priests that were gathered along the sides murmured nervously, unsure of what you were about to do.

Closer to the fire until even the crowd started to voice their worry. From your periphery you noticed an older priest pull at the arm of a Fiery Hand who merely shook their head, having been given strict instructions from Weles not to interfere.

Face to face with the inferno, tongues of flames whipped out at you. While the heat was indeed intense, it wasn’t so bad as to deter you. No, a comfort of sorts beckoned you closer.

Before you stepped a foot any further, you shed yourself of your gaudy garlands and ancient robes that would be quickly engulfed in flames. Even the spiked crown made of precious gold. Everything that could be potentially destroyed were discarded, leaving you in a short sleeved, white dress made of soft cotton. It had taken so long to put on you yet mere seconds to take off. You unsheath Lightbringer and pierce an opening into the tall flames. The closer you were to the fire, the safer you felt. Worried shouts from the audience were suddenly becoming a mere muffle. Your hearing was overcome with the crackling of wood as the flames appeared to be parting just for you. Making a way to the heart of the pyre. Enclosing you in like a fairy nestled inside of a flower, you stare all around you.

Cozy was the first word that came to you. Flames did indeed start eating at your dress. If this did indeed work, then that meant you would be naked in front of possibly thousands of people. A self conscious thought you couldn’t help but think about as you saw your naked skin become visible.

You look down at the egg you were holding, your sword hand trembling a little as you held the blade up. Alright. . . If there’s still life in you, please, please let this be enough heat for you.

Cradling it closer against your chest, you carefully rest your chip atop of it’s soft teardrop shape. “It’s just us in here. It’s okay.” You squeezed your eyes shut and prayed. They were ancient prayers that Melisandre had told you of in a language that you had never heard before. She said they would help to stoke the flames if the heat needed to be increased. You muttered them quickly and with fervor. Within seconds you felt the temperature rise abruptly and it even made you begin to sweat. Slowly you brought your sword arm down and to your delight, Lightbringer’s own steel was swept up in it’s own flames. They didn’t tarnish your blade and you felt the same swirl of familiarity surge through you. You smiled wide and continued your chanting.

In your arms you felt a heartbeat and around you the flames began to depict figures. One looked like your regal mother, prim and proper smiling at you. The other was Thalina.

The figure of a man you didn't know manifested, tall and burly with long hair that whipped in the flickering flames. Features of his face were obscured and unclear, but you saw his cheeky smile.

The cracking of the shell as you felt the egg begin to budge.

Your orange blanket of safety began to dance erratically.

Pure joy had you crying when you saw a piece of the shell pop off.

An eager mouth poking out.

You became part of the pure warmth of the fire. Twining arms came out to hold you and you swore you could hear your mother's voice whisper in your ear.

The structure around the pyre began to crumble under the pressure of the rising flames as they seemed to reach for the sky.

Many people had begun to disperse, fearful of what would happen.

Jaime was starting to feel light headed, not realizing that he hadn’t been breathing since (y/n) stepped into the fire. His eyes were starting to burn and the smoke was almost unbearable.

The red priests and priestesses were not as concerned. They had been chanting louder and louder. Picking up tempo, Jaime noticed the flames begin to creep down. Intervention of the darkin brought the fire down immensely before his shadows completely snuffed it out, creeping back to their caverns and crevices. Jaime had never thought that the darkin would be able to use his shadow magic against the fire. It was bright after all and the light of it could have eaten his pathetic shadows.

“Have you not heard of that saying, Jaime?” Inniros, seeming to read his mind, glared at him with his only eye. Looking at him made Jaime feel sick. He was unnatural. “The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.”

Did everyone in the continent have to speak in that annoying, mystical manner? It annoyed him to no end that everything just had to be so vague with them.

With the flames having all but disappeared, he could see his sister and finally he allowed himself to start breathing again. Good, she was okay. Still standing with Lightbringer’s flames still burning despite her clothes having been burned off leaving her in her own skin. Her once long hair had been diminished to the length of her jawline and was patchy but even so she seemed alright.

Nothing could have prepared him for the wriggling creature in (y/n)’s ash covered arms. The creature that mewled pathetically to everyone's great shock as some red priests even jumped back when they heard the abnormal sound.

He knew this had been Alizah’s plan. They had informed everyone before making the descent to the ceremony what was to be expected leaving no time for Jaime to interject. He had to go along with whatever she told him.

Still. . . Jaime could only stare and smile like a maniac.

Of course she did it.

What was left of the crowd were starting to lean in, finding it hard to believe their own vision. Then there was a cheer from the congregation of Red Temple priests. Cheers grew to a deafening roar. Those who had run away at the sight of the towering inferno soon came back hesitantly at the cries of disbelief that were emerging.

The small dragon in (y/n)’s arms stretched its wings, the scales sparkling in different flecks of green, blue, yellow, and pink. Its small shriek could still be heard over the clamour.

Taglist:

@boywivlove

@esposadomd

@domoron

@yentroucnagol

@enchantingcupcakecollectionfan

@bregarc